Holliday et al.'s Gish Gallop: Nanodiamonds
Holliday et al.'s "comprehensive refutation" of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) is a highly misleading Gish gallop . An earlier blog post addressed the presence of impact melts and microspherules in the YDB. By themselves, they confirm a cosmic impact at Abu Hureyra near the YD onset. Due to the similarity of debris at the YDB across a wide range of sites, it's likely there were cosmic impacts across a wide area within a short timespan, indicating a singular event. The remaining topics to be discussed are, therefore, the presence of nanodiamonds and platinum at the YDB, and the apparently synchronous timing of this evidence across ~ 50 sites on several continents. This blog post, therefore, focusses on the nanodiamond evidence. This corresponds to section 12 of Holliday et al.. Given the clear presence of nanodiamonds in the Abu Hureyra YDB, it is very likely they too are products of a cosmic impact. The main paper on nanodiamond abundances at the YDB