Author Archives: gymnosperm

The Ocean Ate It

Posted on October 5, 2014 by gymnosperm

One of the arguments one hears often these days to explain the lack of lower atmospheric warming for a human generation is that the ocean is somehow absorbing the “heat” or enthalpy that Carbon dioxide is supposed to be creating … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Climate Change, Geography, Global Warming, Oceanography | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Stigma, The Scarlet Letter, and The Red Blotch

Posted on September 21, 2014 by gymnosperm

In the highly competitive business of marketing wine, consumer perception is everything and nobody wants to admit their vineyards have problems. This fear has slowed research into the habits of a virus now known to cause Red Blotch Disease. It is not such … Continue reading →

Posted in Microbial Dark Matter, Red Blotch Disease, RGBaV, Wine | Tagged , | Leave a comment

GRBaV, The Highway Hypothesis

Posted on September 7, 2014 by gymnosperm

On our highways fossil energy propels nearly incessant rivers of iron and plastic machines at velocities approaching one hundred feet per second. These machines produce billowing vortices of dust, microbes, micronutrients, and exhaust chemicals in the surrounding atmosphere as they … Continue reading →

Posted in Biology, Ecology, Red Blotch Disease, RGBaV, Wine | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wink

Posted on September 1, 2014 by gymnosperm

It happens I have an extremely goofy dog. Teasing him as he thrust his legs in the air as if doing some high hurdle in reverse lying on his back on the couch, he looked over upside down and winked at … Continue reading →

Posted in Animal Behavior, Anthropology, Biology, Body Language | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Aftershocks Implicate Unusual Fault System in American Canyon Quake

Posted on August 25, 2014 by gymnosperm

California can be thought of as a ice flow where multiple independent blocks with different inherent buoyancies are at times pressed together, pulled apart, and slid past each other. The M 6.1 American Canyon quake did not take place on … Continue reading →

Posted in American Canyon Earthquake, Geography, Geology, Plate Tectonics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Grape Vine Red Blotch Associated Virus

Posted on August 16, 2014 by gymnosperm

Ebola is on our minds, but we easily forget that the biosphere is a churning cauldron of microbes whose tenure on the planet extends back several billion years. They live deep in the earth’s crust. They live in the mesosphere. … Continue reading →

Posted in Biology, Microbial Dark Matter, Wine | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Ecology Now!

Posted on August 10, 2014 by gymnosperm

This exhortation has a strange ring to it now, and it is likely that no one under the age of fifty ever heard it, but  the image above is a poster of an actual flag created by the activist organization … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Biology, Climate, Ecology, Ethics, History, Religion | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Pacific Triangle, The Pacific doughboy, and the wave

Posted on July 14, 2014 by gymnosperm

Folks just don’t seem to have their arms around the disarray in the earth sciences these days. Climate science and plate theory are going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up, or more appropriately from the core-mantle boundary. … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Geoid, Geology, Large Igneous Provinces, LLSVP, LLSVP's are Doughboys, Oceanography, Pacific Triangle, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Broke Down in Bishop

Posted on July 11, 2014 by gymnosperm

Kyle, my son in law, missed out on circumnavigating Mt. Whitney last October. Unsure if it would work out we latched onto the latest available permit for the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek last Christmas and listed our means … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Geology, History of Life, Mount Whitney, Paleogeography, Sierra View | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Russians R Us

Posted on July 5, 2014 by gymnosperm

So perhaps you are red headed and fancy yourself Celtic. Well, I’ve got news for you. There may have been a few red genes somewhere but the Celtic genome and culture were centered in France and characterized by brown hair … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Geography, History, Plate Tectonics, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment