Author Archives: gymnosperm

The Pause That Refreshes

We hear more and more about the Pause. This pause refers to a hiatus in lower atmospheric warming for a human generation since 1997. This “pause” by its very name implies that warming will resume sometime soon. Only zealots will claim … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, Global Warming, Paleoclimate, the "Pause" | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Huston, We have a Few More Problems

Humans are not naturally inclined to science. We yearn for certainty, the sort of certainty mathematical equations could provide if only we could be certain of the factors. We cannot. We don’t really yearn for mathematics, it is just another … Continue reading

Posted in Asthenia, Geology, Large Igneous Provinces, Magnetic Reversals, Moho, Oceanography, Plate Tectonics, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Spectra, Goddess of Light

We worship in strange and disjointed ways. One seeking to better understand how Spectra’s blessings arrive and leave our planet is confronted with a bewildering array of graphics. This one shows incoming light in nanometers. This one shows outgoing in … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, Greenhouse Spectra, Optical Material Properties, Photon, Spectra | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Large Igneous Provinces, Temperature, Sea Level, and Extinctions

We had been looking at the stuff one can easily google regarding global temperature and large igneous provinces (LIP’s) and it seemed there might be something, so we dug in. There is an organization, largeigneousprovinces.org, that has excel data in … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, Cretaceous normal superchron, Extinctions, Geology, Large Igneous Provinces, Magnetic Reversals, Paleo Sea Level, Paleoclimate | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Nature and Chaos

We don’t even know what randomness is. In gambling and cryptography computer algorithms are used to create “pseudo” random strings that are difficult to cipher, but ultimately these are “determined” by the algorithm. To get “true” randomness we resort to … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropology, Biology, Chaos, Fourth Law of Thermodynamics, god of chaos, Randomness | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

California Drought Update Early March

San Francisco did break the record of 1917 as of January, but just barely. Had the rains begun a day earlier as forecast, the monthly record would have held. Anyway, the drought is definitely not the end of life as we … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, San Francisco Rainfall | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Cold is the New Hot

Once it was that everything was getting hotter and hotter and pretty soon we would be frying eggs by just putting the pan outside. This was to have been because a certain trace gas was invested with magical powers far … Continue reading

Posted in Anthropology, Climate, Climate Change, Cold is the New Hot, Global Warming, Religion, Shamanism | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Rocks, The Origional Hard Data

You simply can’t deny rock. Kick it and it throbs your toe. They lie around us, largely ignored, Farmers curse them and pile them in walls, yet a few dedicated folks with pointed hammers have picked them to yield an … Continue reading

Posted in Continental Wander Path, Geography, Geological Evolution of the Western United States, Geology, hard data, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Graphic Study of the Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect is poorly named. Nothing about it even vaguely resembles the protective shield of a greenhouse. The effect is about the florescence of certain gasses in a discontinuous fashion according to their individual spectral properties. When they shine, … Continue reading

Posted in Greenhouse Effect, Greenhouse Spectra, Photon Food Fight, Unsaturated "black hole" H2O bands | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Around the World in Eighty Million Years

We have been doing a puzzle like you might have been given in first grade where there is some large animal with lines missing and your job is to connect the dots and fill it in. The joy is still … Continue reading

Posted in Cretaceous normal superchron, Geography, Geology, Magnetic Reversals, Pacific Triangle, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons | Tagged , , | Leave a comment