Author Archives: gymnosperm

Adventure and Science

What exactly is the distinction between play and work? The things some people do for recreation would seem like bloody hard work to others.I’ve spent a good part of my life climbing mountains and rafting rivers, and a good part … Continue reading →

Posted in River | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Carbon and Freight Trains

Everyone seems to think that carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere and sort of sits there like some invisible smoke, trapping outgoing IR like our automobile windshields and heating us up. Carbon dioxide is more like a freight train. Humans … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Climate Change, Geography, Oceanography | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Ring Around Antarctica

There are lots of rings around Antarctica. Sailors know the circum-Antarctic winds as the fearsome fifties, the screaming sixties, etc. These winds are not impeded by any land and they drive the circum-Antarctic currents in the Southern Ocean. The surface currents … Continue reading →

Posted in Geography, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, True Polar Wander | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Seafloor Isochrons Place a Hard Limit on Crustal Disintegration from the Chicxulub Impact

I always thought the entire form of the Gulf of Mexico might be the crater from the Chicxulub impact reputed to have wasted the dinosaurs. My imagination runs with that name. So much to work with. Chicxyclub…well, Club Med impact … Continue reading →

Posted in Asteroid Impacts, Geography, Geology, Magnetic Reversals, Oceanography, Plate Tectonics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Charybdis and the Oldest Ocean Floor on Earth

A few years back there was a much ballyhooed drilling effort to find some 175 million year old sea floor touted as the “oldest”. Incorrecto qui mo sabe. That particular ocean floor is interesting in its own right (see our … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Geography, Geology, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Global Warming and Prohibition

We like to think we live in an enlightened era, but even modern history keeps reminding us that a rigid and intolerant side of human nature lies just beneath the surface. It is ironic that Prohibition, and a corresponding amendment … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Carbon Theology, Climate, Climate Change, Global Warming | Tagged | 6 Comments

Great Mysteries of Nature Nobody Seems to be Thinking About

This list will be changed from time to time and some mysteries will be developed into posts. In some sense they all speak to our lack of understanding of the magnetic and gravitational forces that bear down on us. 1. … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Geography, Geology, Magnetic Reversals, Plate Tectonics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Creatures of Metaphor

We humans are creatures of metaphor. Our signal character, the sole remaining bastion between us and less godly creatures, is language. Language is metaphor, a music we infuse with meaning, infused with thousands of different meanings in as many different … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Maybe we’re all Chasing Ice

A hopeless task of course. It will melt. Our planet has been ice free more often than not. We are really chasing something far more ephemeral; an ethic, a lost connection to the natural world, even a return to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Carbon Theology, Climate, Climate Change, Geography, Geology, Global Warming | Tagged | Leave a comment

An Argument for the Necessary Existence of Negative Feedback to the Greenhouse Effect of Water Vapor.

A crucial component of the hypothesis that the one part in ten thousand in the atmosphere that represents human CO2 caused the atmospheric warming from the late 1970’s to the late 1990’s is the notion that the miniscule warming by … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Climate Change, Global Warming, Oceanography | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments