Are you kidding me?
Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
I have a hard time believing this is true. But if it is: Wow.
Update: It’s not true. See comments. Apparently, I need to start clicking links.
December 29th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Pure, grade-A bullshit. I was at the Canyon just last year, virtually every piece of official literature tells you it’s about 15 million years old.
This is all about some park employees getting their panties in a wad because they can’t ban books they don’t like from the park bookstores. Which says alot more about them than it does about religious conservatives.
December 29th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Yup, the press release (linked to at the other end) is 100% spin. There is no censorship going on at Yellowstone, and that is what they are complaining about.
December 29th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
From the Grand Canyon National Park site.
“Geologic formations such as gneiss and schist found at the bottom of the Canyon date back 1,800 million years.”
December 29th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Here’s the Park’s Newsletter
Go to page 3 and look on the right. There is a complete breakdown of the ages of the various geologic features.
This research took me around 5 minutes.
December 29th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
PEER is a pretty fringe environmental group. Well, not fringe so much as not credible. I say not fringe because at least here in DC they are about as mainstream as NRDC, sierra club, greenpeace, EDF, etc. Of course, they all run on a business model strinkingly similar to the gun banners (and most other liberal left wing special interest groups … Don’t fret, libs, right wing groups tend to operate in a similar fashion to each other too, its just that their revenue streams are slightly different – corporate donations vs donations from the trust foundations set up by capitalists and then taken over by communists – see Joyce, Tides, et al))