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About Wallowa County chieftain. (Enterprise, Wallowa County, Or.) 1943-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 2019)
A10 NEWS Wallowa County Chieftain Wednesday, October 30, 2019 Watch out for phantom power load Enterprise City Council reschedules Bill Bradshaw Wallowa County Chieftain The Enterprise City Council has rescheduled its next meeting to Monday, Nov. 18, city Control- ler Lacey McQuead said Tuesday, Oct. 29. She said that since the origi- nally planned meeting was sched- uled for Monday, Nov. 11 – Vet- erans Day – it was considered to be rescheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 12, but a quorum was not going to be available that day. A quorum is the minimum number of members who must be present to make the meeting valid. McQuead said both Mayor Sta- cey Karvoski and Council Presi- dent Jenni Word were to be absent Nov. 12, so the meeting was set for Nov. 18. At that time, she said, the coun- cil will review the results of the Wednesday, Nov. 6 town hall during which the public will be able to give input on the city’s pro- posed ATV ordinance revision. The revision is intended to clarify who – besides the Public Works Department – may operate a four- wheeler on city streets. At present, the ordinance says nothing about the general public, McQuead said. “It’s very generalized,” she said. In a previous council discussion of the ordinance, council mem- bers expressed a desire to not hin- der youths younger than the legal driving age of 16 from operating four-wheelers when doing work such as plowing snow or mowing, but McQuead and the city attor- ney both recommended against a younger age than what the Oregon Revised Statutes allows – 16. She said she hopes the council can make a decision on the ordi- nance at the Nov. 19 meeting, as she believes the public input to be received at the town hall is the “fi nal step” members were wait- ing for. “I would love to have a decision made,” she said. Pacifi c Power and Light Looking for a treat this Halloween? Find and reduce the phantom load in your home to save energy and money all year long. Phantom load — or standby power — comes from the many electron- ics that draw power even when they aren’t in use. A typical American home has 40 products constantly drawing power, including DVRs, personal comput- ers, video game consoles and DVD players. Together these amount to almost 10% of residential electricity use. In fact, ENERGY STAR® estimates that phantom load accounts for more than $11 billion a year in energy costs in the U.S. Idaho Power encourages customers to reduce phan- tom load with these tips: Enable power-save fea- tures on computers, TVs and videogame consoles. Unplug electronic devices that don’t require reprogramming or aren’t frequently used. Buy ENERGY STAR products, which have lower standby use. Borrow a Kill A Watt™ meter from your local library and measure the standby use of devices in your home. Use a power strip — or better yet a smart power strip — to control groups of electronics like computer or video equipment. Evidence for controversial Ice Age meteorite impact theory grows, says study University of South Carolina A controversial the- ory that suggests an extra- terrestrial body crashing to Earth almost 13,000 years ago caused the extinction of many large animals and a probable population decline in early humans is gaining traction from research sites around the world. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, contro- versial from the time it was presented in 2007, proposes that an asteroid or comet hit the Earth about 12,800 years ago causing a period of extreme cooling that contributed to extinctions of more than 35 species of megafauna including giant sloths, sabre-tooth cats, mastodons and mammoths. It also coincides with a seri- ous decline in early human populations such as the Clo- vis culture and is believed to have caused massive wild- fi res that could have blocked sunlight, causing an “impact winter” near the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. In a new study pub- lished this week in Scien- tifi c Reports, a publication of Nature, UofSC archae- ologist Christopher Moore and 16 colleagues present further evidence of a cosmic impact based on research done at White Pond near Elgin, South Carolina. The study builds on similar fi nd- ings of platinum spikes — an element associated with cosmic objects like aster- oids or comets — in North America, Europe, western Asia and recently in Chile and South Africa. “We continue to fi nd evidence and expand geo- graphically. There have been numerous papers that have come out in the past couple of years with simi- lar data from other sites that almost universally support the notion that there was an extraterrestrial impact or Twice the Danger! The Double Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden 107 E. Main St. • 541.426.3351 Always open @ www.bookloftoregon.com • bookloft@eoni.com ATHLETE Ashlyn Gray WEEK 201 E. Hwy 82, Enterprise • 541-426-0320 www.edstaub.com OF THE to the week honor go As es hlyn of e et hl at s k’ ee w is Th ol volleyball player, Enterprise High Sc ni ho or, 17, is one of the finest 2A Gray. The EHS se the state and proved it night volleyball players t in on the floor. Whether the team after night ou s showed her consistency and at won or lost, her st ca ort. The Outlaws dedi tion to the r sp skills next season! udly will miss he Pro onsore d b y Sp University of South Carolina The possible meteor impact 11,200 years ago, returned a warming planet to much colder conditions almost instantly and may have been a driving force in mammoth extinction. comet airburst that caused the Younger Dryas climate event,” Moore says. Moore also was lead author on a previous paper documenting sites in North America where platinum spikes have been found and a co-author on several other papers that document ele- vated levels of platinum in archaeological sites, includ- ing Pilauco, Chile — the fi rst discovery of evidence in the Southern Hemisphere. “First, we thought it was a North American event, and then there was evidence in Europe and elsewhere that it was a Northern Hemisphere event. And now with the research in Chile and South Africa, it looks like it was probably a global event,” he says. In addition, a team of researchers found unusually high concentrations of plati- num and iridium in outwash sediments from a recently discovered crater in Green- land that could have been the impact point. Although the crater hasn’t been pre- cisely dated yet, Moore says the possibility is good that it could be the “smok- ing gun” that scientists have been looking for to confi rm a cosmic event. Addition- ally, data from South Amer- ica and elsewhere suggests the event may have actually included multiple impacts and airbursts over the entire globe. While the brief return to ice-age conditions during the Younger Dryas period has been well-documented, the reasons for it and the decline of human populations and animals have remained unclear. The impact hypoth- esis was proposed as a pos- sible trigger for these abrupt climate changes that lasted about 1,400 years. The Younger Dryas event gets its name from a wild- fl ower, Dryas octopetala, which can tolerate cold conditions and suddenly became common in parts of Europe 12,800 years ago. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis became contro- versial, Moore says, because the all-encompassing the- ory that a cosmic impact triggered cascading events leading to extinctions was viewed as improbable by some scientists. “It was bold in the sense that it was trying to answer a lot of really tough questions that people have been grap- pling with for a long time in a single blow,” he says, add- ing that some researchers continue to be critical. The conventional view has been that the failure of glacial ice dams allowed a massive release of freshwa- ter into the north Atlantic, affecting oceanic circula- tion and causing the Earth to plunge into a cold climate. Welcome to Winter in Wallowa County Whether you live here or are just plow’n on through, we’re here for you! The Younger Dryas hypoth- esis simply claims that the cosmic impact was the trig- ger for the meltwater pulse into the oceans. In research at White Pond in South Carolina, Moore and his colleagues used a core barrel to extract sedi- ment samples from under- neath the pond. The sam- ples, dated to the beginning of the Younger Dryas with radiocarbon, contain a large platinum anomaly, con- sistent with fi ndings from other sites, Moore says. A large soot anomaly also was found in cores from the site, indicating regional large- scale wildfi res in the same time interval. In addition, fungal spores associated with the dung of large herbivores were found to decrease at the beginning of the Younger Dryas period, suggesting a decline in ice- age megafauna beginning at the time of the impact. “We speculate that the impact contributed to the extinction, but it wasn’t the only cause. Over hunting by humans almost certainly contributed, too, as did cli- mate change,” Moore says. “Some of these animals survived after the event, in some cases for centuries. But from the spore data at White Pond and elsewhere, it looks like some of them went extinct at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, prob- ably as a result of the envi- ronmental disruption caused by impact-related wildfi res and climate change.” Additional evidence found at other sites in sup- port of an extraterrestrial impact includes the discov- ery of meltglass, micro- scopic spherical particles and nanodiamonds, indicat- ing enough heat and pres- sure was present to fuse materials on the Earth’s sur- face. Another indicator is the presence of iridium, an ele- ment associated with cos- mic objects, that scientists also found in the rock layers dated 65 million years ago from an impact that caused dinosaur extinction. While no one knows for certain why the Clovis peo- ple and iconic ice-age beasts disappeared, research by Moore and others is provid- ing important clues as evi- dence builds in support of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. “Those are big debates that have been going on for a long time,” Moore says. “These kinds of things in sci- ence sometimes take a really long time to gain widespread acceptance. That was true for the dinosaur extinction when the idea was proposed that an impact had killed them. It was the same thing with plate tectonics. But now those ideas are com- pletely established science.” Serving our Community! Dr. Geoff Maly Tires • Batteries • Brakes Shocks • Alignment • Struts A Non-Profit Community Health Center In Enterprise & Joseph www.windingwaters.org 541-426-4502 HOURS: MONDAY-FRIDAY 8 A.M. TO 6 P.M. • SATURDAY 8 A.M. TO 5 P.M. 802 NW 1ST •ENTERPRISE • 541-426-3139 Monday - Friday 7:00am to 7:00pm Saturday 9:00am to 1:00pm