GOP State Rep Claims There's No Evidence The Earth Is Really Damn Old

Rep. John Ray Clemmons, Democrat of Nashville, is sponsoring a resolution to "recognize the beauty and cultural heritage of the Cumberland Plateau region."

Why? Who knows! Legislators love to sponsor these do-nothing resolutions that recognize this or that area or a state championship softball team or, in one notable case, an author of a hagiographic biography of a slave trader. 

Usually, the subjects of these resolutions are within the sponsoring lawmaker's district, not 120 miles away. But whatever, maybe Clemmons just wanted to get on the record regarding his affection for Crab Orchard. Or maybe he was trying to cause a ruckus.

It's also standard operating procedure that these sorts of things go on the consent calendar so the House doesn't spend a lot of time voting on them and they can get back to their most important duty: passing laws that will no doubt get the state sued.

In any event, the Cumberland Plateau resolution was on the consent calendar for Feb. 6, but was pulled and placed on the regular calendar and sent to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. At the Ag Committee meeting Tuesday, Clemmons drew some fire from State Rep. Chris Todd (R-Humboldt). First Todd said he was concerned about "the way it was presented" on the floor. "I expect people to treat each other honorably," he continued. "The caption did not accurately describe the bill." 

So, let's be gracious, and concede for the sake of argument that maybe Clemmons pulled some shenanigans, and that he filed this resolution for the purpose of putting the members opposite in a tough spot. After all, the resolution in one of its two "Be It Resolved" clauses (this is the part of the resolution that actually explains the action of the House; all the "Whereas" clauses are just window dressing) praises the U.S. Department of the Interior for safeguarding the Plateau from mining and urges that they continue to keep such activity off limits. That's not a popular position among Tennessee Republicans.

But Todd went on. He noted that in one of those Whereases, the resolution describes the Plateau as "a vast tableland of sandstone and shale dating as far back as 500 million years."

According to my intrepid colleague Stephen Elliott, Todd — who holds a bachelor's in biology from Union University — said we "don’t have any solid evidence that the earth is that old." 

There's plenty of research, however, that does in fact present solid evidence that the earth is that old. Scientists generally agree that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, though they didn't settle on that number until the 1920s, using fancy science stuff like "mass spectrometry, sampling and laser heating," none of which I understand, but that's because I'm a layman who is happy to allow people with Ph.D.s tell me what the science is. Plus, all my mass spectrometry equipment is in the shop. Back in 2013, Scientific American ran a cool series about the evolution (whoops!) of the science that led to the 4.5-billion-years figure.

Now, in the interest of fairness, we should note that Clemmons' resolution is wrong in one regard: The rocks of the Cumberland Plateau are not 500 million years old. Pith hit up Dr. Michael Harrison, a Tennessee Tech geology professor who specializes in Appalachian geology and rock deformation (whatever that is), for the straight poop.

"Those rocks are between 320 and 300 million years old," Harrison says. "The age is established by comparing the fossils in the rocks to those elsewhere where the age has already been determined by radiometric dating. For instance, a volcanic ash layer in rock of the same type in West Virginia was dated at 311 million years. Geologists commonly correlate rock, fossils and dates from one locality to another because the type of rock needed for radiometric dating is not found everywhere."

Cool! Thanks, Doc. We didn't follow up with Harrison to ask if it was possible the fossils were placed there by the Devil to confuse us, because that's ridiculous, since the Devil is too busy with the New England Patriots' free-agency plans.

Presumably, once Clemmons learns of his 200-million-year error, he will amend the resolution to accuracy, and then Todd — who, again, earned a degree in biology from an accredited university — will be happy to vote it out of committee.