Category Archives: Geology

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

Wild Rogue

Posted on June 25, 2014 by gymnosperm

It had been fourteen years since last running the wilderness section of the Rogue river with my two younger kids then chest high. The first June of the new millennium saw very high flows and few other boaters. The river … Continue reading →

Posted in Geology, Metaphor, River, Rocks, Wilderness | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Pacific Doughboy and the Core

Posted on April 22, 2014 by gymnosperm

Here at the Trunkmonkey Research Institute we’ve been possessed of late by the Doughboys. This representation is not really very good. It is a plate carree projection extruded as a box. Trouble is, when you bend it round like our … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Geoid, Geology, LLSVP, LLSVP's are Doughboys, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Doughboys

Posted on April 13, 2014 by gymnosperm

I have seen the following attributed to Ritsema and van Heist but have not found it in any of their papers. People with no sense of verbal aesthetics have named the red things LLSVP’s for Large Low Shear Velocity Provinces. Sometimes they … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa Keystone of Pangea, Asthenia, Geoid, Geology, Large Igneous Provinces, LLSVP, LLSVP's are Doughboys, Moho, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Huston, We have a Few More Problems

Posted on April 7, 2014 by gymnosperm

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

Large Igneous Provinces, Temperature, Sea Level, and Extinctions

Posted on March 25, 2014 by gymnosperm

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

Rocks, The Origional Hard Data

Posted on March 3, 2014 by gymnosperm

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

Around the World in Eighty Million Years

Posted on February 19, 2014 by gymnosperm

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

The Pacific Triangle Revisited, The Impact, The Wave

Posted on February 2, 2014 by gymnosperm

We have explored the Pacific Triangle and the Ring around Antarctica in prior posts. It just seems so outrageous that three spreading ridges would suddenly emerge from a single point in the Panthalassic Ocean 170 million years ago and begin migrating away in … Continue reading →

Posted in Asteroid Impacts, Geography, Geology, Pacific Triangle, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics, Seafloor Isochrons | Tagged , | 4 Comments

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

Posted on December 26, 2013 by gymnosperm

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