Author Archives: gymnosperm

A Very Dry Season in California

The pre-Columbian California native people had a mystical and cultural relationship to the climate that did not involve measuring rainfall. The Franciscan fathers were on their own spiritual quest, and while they sometimes recorded wine production at the missions, they didn’t record … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Geography, San Francisco Rainfall | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Photon Food Fight

The fact that more energy cycles between the surface of the earth and the atmosphere than the earth receives from the sun strikes me as one of the great marvels of nature. This is the earth’s energy budget according to … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Energy Budget, Photon Food Fight | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Paving It Won’t Save It (The Planet, That is)

The oceans are the energy bank for the planet. They receive energy to great depth from the sun. Continents cool the planet. Daedalus suggested in jest that if we increased the area of the continents 5%, we could reverse the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Geography, Geology, Global Warming, Plate Tectonics, Serpentine | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Science and Government

We have become so accustomed to science by public institutions of higher education, and publicly funded science at private institutions , we easily forget that a century and a half ago this practice was unheard of. Charles Darwin was a … Continue reading →

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Sorting Rocks

Here at the gymnosperm/trunkmonkey research institute we have been spending a lot of time sorting rocks. It is utter drudgery and we would have quit a long time ago had the results not been so intriguing. Basically, we belatedly discovered … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Geological Evolution of the Western United States, Geology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Pacific Triangle

The triangle is formed by lines of equal age in the ocean floor derived from bands of alternating magnetism as the earth’s pole flipped. It is one of the great mysteries discussed previously. The ocean floor gets progressively older from all … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Geology, Pacific Triangle, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The Dinosaurs Died for our Sins

The original sin, secondary, tertiary, quaternary sins. Hurricanes, tornadoes are upon us. Quick! Find a witch to burn. Well, at least he saved the weed eater. Not to minimize the tragedies, just the sensationalism. Nobody wants their house trashed and … Continue reading →

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The Revenge of Gaia (and the Origional Sin)

Our brains are layered in the same way sedimentary rocks are. In our lower brains lie the basic functions: breathe, eat and drink, thermoregulate, and reproduce. These are Archean functions we share with all living things. All beautiful, non-predictive analogies can be … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Biology, Carbon Theology, History, Metaphor, Religion | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Follow the Granite

Granite is the currency in the construction of continents. Here we will time step through the existing surface expression of granites and related igneous and metamorphic rock in the Western US from the Archean to the present. Sediments are boring. … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Geological Evolution of the Western United States, Geology, History of Life, Paleogeography | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Primacy of Vulcan

In the beginning there was a great flash of light, and soon there was the primal proton, Hydrogen, which fused to produce Helium , and so on, within supernovae, to create our pantheon of elements. Honestly, we need to muster … Continue reading →

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