All right, I’m going to do it. Apparently it’s THE COUNTDOWN TO MELTDOWN. Or something.
Same rules as usual – I will update the liveblog every five minutes or so. If you’re reading this on LJ or Dreamwidth you’ll need to come to the blog at katsudon.net to see the updates most likely, though I think edits are now supposed to push through so we’ll see.
If you’d like to play at home, this likely stinker of a miniseries is on Reelz. Yes, with a Z.
Liveblog commencing in 10… 9… 8…
Hello Rachel Acks, this is Shawn Alli. I came across your article about abiotic oil: “4.5 Billion Years of Wonder.” If the abiotic oil theory is a laughable then so is the fossil fuel theory indoctrinated to everyone in the West as a child, a student, a young adult and by the time they’re an adult, there’s no need to question it all at. As a philosopher everything can and should be questioned, no matter how long a current theory has been in practice. The day we stop questioning scientific theory and current ideologies is the day humanity dies. Hopefully it will never come to that even though it’s moving in that direction.
Your small attacks on Thomas Gold’s status as an astrophysicist not being a petroleum geologist would be called a low blow, below the belt in reality. You’re attacking his credibility as a scientist believing that he can’t or anyone else for that matter can have a justified view of a topic outside the norm of their research. Your attack is similar to global warming advocates. If a meteorologists says man made climate change is bunk, the standard scientific dogma reply is “he’s not a climate change expert.” If someone is an arctic research scientist and refutes man made climate change…”he’s not a climatologist, clearly he knows nothing.” A paleo-climatologist refuting man made CO2, “clearly he’s being paid by oil corporations.” These attacks on credibility need to stop despite the fueling of the media to people wanting a showdown. Stick to attacking the arguments, not the credibility.
While I condemn your sarcasm to the abiotic theory I thank you for bringing in Richard Heinberg into the mix, doing so shows a more objective point of view, different from your starting laughable position. Heinberg’s paper makes a good point about nothing in science being conclusive, but that’s the crux of the problem as well. While nothing is objectively conclusive in all scientific disciplines, mainstream science/media/schools push the dominant findings into the norm of common knowledge, thereby taking away the concept of objective science being unfalsifiable with absolute conclusion. While this can be said to be a problem, the real problem (so many now…) is when scientists are funded based on their research, and not objective uninterested research, but massive bias that goes on to produce corporate science. And this is where almost all scientific discipline is. If large stakes of money are involved in the research, if status and reputation is in the pot, corporate science will be the result….(What was my point again?…what a tangent…but I’m a philosopher, so it’s allowed). Ah yes, Mr. Heinberg’s point about abiotic oil being impossible to prove with absolute certainty. Good point, but absolute certainty is not what science is about nor what people need. They think they need absolute results from science only b/c they’re conditioned to from society’s garbage institutions called schools and universities. By the way, congrats on your thesis defense coming up. While I could care less about any higher education in the current archaic educational system (as if real knowledge is being obtained…sound of philosophers laughing), I understand why people go onto MA’s, MSc and PhD’s; for status, jobs and money. All of which are necessary to live a comfortable western lifestyle in the cities/suburbs.
I believe I’ve taken up enough of your time Rachel and wish you all the best while attacking your views on abiotic oil. I’m sure we could get along with respectable conversation. But feel free to read my book for more info. Hmm…I wonder, if I just said that at the beginning of the sales pitch would the end result have been the same?
“Oil, The 4th Renewable Resource”
Sincerely,
Shawn Alli
P.S. Forget about kungfu with fixed styles. Look more into Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do where movement is free and flowing. So when it’s necessary to use, it won’t be dependent on the other person’s style.
Hello back atcha, Shawn Alli:
Having done my thesis on one tiny bit of paleoclimate, I have a lot of respect for what kind of bulk exists in the research literature. And you are darn right I’m skeptical about people making wild claims outside their field of expertise precisely because they do not generally prove they have a good grasp of current research – and often make claims that a simple literature search will show are false. I would also point out there is a fine but very important distinction between questioning conclusions (good) and wasting someone’s time with unfounded claims that are not backed up with good research (bad).
I do find it curious that you spend an entire paragraph scolding me about my rather throw-away mention that Thomas Gold is an astrophysicist and not a geologist (literally a single sentence in a much longer post) as an attack on his credibility… then spend your lengthy next paragraph attacking the basic credibility of research and educational institutions. You similarly complain about people questioning the motivations and funding of climate change deniers and then turn around and question the motivations of scientists based on their research funding.
The congratulation on my defense is appreciated, by the way, though it would have been much more congratulatory if not preceded by a paragraph tearing down the entire concept of higher education and the presumption of entirely mercenary motives on my part.
Feel free to read my book when it comes out on April 5th. It’s a steampunk murder mystery, a topic that is, to my mind, far more interesting than diving further down the crackpot rabbit hole of abiotic oil, and probably about as fictional.
Sincerely,
Rachael Acks
PS: I like my kung fu style just the way it is.
PPS: The end result of my complete lack of interest in reading your book would have been the same, but without the added bonus of me thinking you’re a patronizing jerk.
PPPS: I have posted your e-mail with links intact on my blog at https://www.katsudon.net, as well as my answer. Seems fair to me.
Words cannot begin to express how upset, angry, and filled with contempt I am by this:
Italian scientists resign over L’Aquila quake verdicts
Two scientists resigned their posts with the government’s disaster preparedness agency Tuesday after a court in L’Aquila sentenced six scientists and a government official to six years in prison. The court ruled Monday that the scientists failed to accurately communicate the risk of the 2009 quake, which killed more than 300 people.
We wish we could predict earthquakes. We really, really do. So many lives could be saved. But there is as of yet no way to make those kind of predictions. A series of small earthquakes? Depending upon how you define it, those occur all the time. Hell, we can only sort of predict the imminent eruption of a volcano, and the mechanics of that, the pressures that dictate an eruption, are relatively simpler and there are far more “tells” – seismic activity, increased outgassing, etc.
There will be time enough to ponder the wider implications of the verdict, but for now all efforts should be channelled into protest, both at the severity of the sentence and at scientists being criminalized for the way their opinions were communicated. Science has little political clout in Italy and the trial proceeded in an absence of informed public debate that would have been unthinkable in most European countries or in the United States
Hey Italy, while you’re jailing people for failing to predict disasters, how about extraditing the horrendous human beings who played fast and loose with the financial markets and caused the global economy to shit itself? That had far more potential for being predicted and arguably has caused even more human suffering. What about jailing people who have refused to listen to repeated warnings about global climate change?
Or I suppose this pattern could continue and the next time a doctor fails to predict a heart attack, or a traffic cop fails to predict an accident, they’ll end up in jail.
This is ridiculous. Contemptible.
Because I do. I really, really do.
For this internship, I’ve had to give four presentations, in front of rooms filled with people I don’t know that well, many of whom seem to delight in asking really hard questions. I guess it’s one of those sink or swim things. Even better, for three out of the four presentations, I had to go first out of my group since it was my responsibility to set up the background for the larger presentation.
So much anxiety.
I think the secret is acting. As in, acting like I’m not someone who is utterly terrified. It seems to be working for me. To the point that statements like, “You know, I wish I could answer that question but I can’t remember at the moment because I’m scared out of my mind,” get treated as laugh lines rather than a pathetic truth. Or maybe everyone just sympathizes.
Also, ostracods. Why can’t I remember your name when I’m actually trying to give a presentation, yet it comes popping back into my head the instant I sit down? This has happened all three times I’ve given this presentation. Enough is enough.
I’m grateful that at least I’m no longer paralyzed with vomit-inducing terror when it’s time to give a talk. I can fake being a normal human being who can communicate without looking like she’s about to get strapped into the electric chair.
I think Skepticamp’s helped me with this a lot, actually. It’s one of the few places I’ve ever willingly given a talk, and several times at that. Even if I am, as usual, absolutely terrified while I do it. Though I seem to mask my fear well enough with enthusiasm, from what I’ve heard. My desire to nerd out about something geology-related is apparently enough to get me over the pant-shitting prospect of a room full of people I don’t know who might ask me a question for which I have no answer.
Skepticamp is also where I cemented my bad presentation habit of just throwing slides on the screen and bullshitting at them. Everyone else in my team wrote exhaustive notes to themselves on their slides. I… don’t. Ever. I just make my slides, go through them a few times so I can remember the approximate order (even I know it’s a bad, bad thing to be surprised by your own slides), and then figure if I know the subject well enough, I’ll be able to talk through it just fine when the time comes. So far it’s worked out okay for me.
Except the damn ostracods.
Anyway, I’ve survived the intern forum, which means I’m home free! I have another two weeks at work, but no more presentations, thank goodness. I shouldn’t have to stare Powerpoint in its stinky, evil little eye again until it’s time for me to put together a presentation for my Masters thesis and AGU. (Ah, AGU. I will begin dreading you now so I can pace myself.)
At least there are no ostracods in the Bighorn Basin.
It’s May 3, 2012. Ten hours to go until the US premiere of Avengers and I’m in central Pennsylvania with a group of friends specifically to see that movie. How to pass the time?
Well, the native of Pennsylvania (my dear friend Rynn) mentions that we’re maybe an hour away from Centralia.
If you’re not a fan of horror videogames or somewhat obscure but recent east coast history, Centralia probably doesn’t ring any bells. It’s the town that was devastated by an underground coal fire. It’s a haunting place where white smoke stinking of sulfur billows from the ground itself and the roads collapse as the fire continues to eat its way through the coal veins. Trees in the area are bleached and blasted by the fumes.
Centralia was the inspiration for the fictional town of Silent Hill, which spawned a successful franchise of survival horror videogames as well as a somewhat less impressive movie. In the original game (Silent Hill) and the movie, it was clear that the billowing white fog engulfing the town was actually smoke and ash from the underground fires. In later games, the fog was left to be more traditional water vapor and the mining town history fell by the wayside.
Needless to say, as a fan of the games, I leap at the chance to see Centralia.
If you’re expecting someplace as haunting and creepy as the video game setting, I can’t guarantee that Centralia will deliver. On the day we go, the fires aren’t burning with particular ferocity – the air is almost entirely clear. It’s sunny and more than a little muggy, the surrounding hills bursting with plant life in a way I’m still not used to as a resident of Colorado. But the trip is perhaps more interesting because it’s nothing like what I expect.
There are two halves to a look at Centralia. There’s the town itself – or what’s left of it – and a closed-off portion of road that used to be part of Route 61.
The actual Route 61 now circumvents this section, swinging wide between two hills to avoid the slowly extending fire damage that undermines the landscape. But if you follow the road north out of Ashland, you’ll come to a cemetery at the top of a hill before you hit the next town. Park nearby and the old section of Route 61 isn’t hard to find.
It’s utterly deserted, but you can still hear the sounds of traffic from the nearby reroute. The road itself is covered with graffiti. Apparently when you’re a teenager in rural central Pennsylvania, this is what you do for a good time on a Friday night. Most of the graffiti is penis-based, or names and dates from visitors. There are a disturbing number of swastikas that have been drawn on the asphalt. And here and there are nerd shout-outs to the other reason people come here, the one that doesn’t involve drinking and drawing cartoonish genitalia – Welcome to Silent Hill, PA and There was a hole here. Now it’s gone. The road surface buckles, wavers, and cracks, broken-up graffiti showing that the surface destruction is recent and continuing as the subterranean fires march ever onward.
I think in the future, I’m going to have a hard time seeing how clean the roads look in post-apocalyptic future visions. Because if there is even one remaining teenager in the world, and one remaining can of spray paint, it seems almost inevitable that things will end up covered in dicks.
Getting into the remains of the town itself requires backtracking and going around the side of the hill. Rynn’s GPS unit still shows the ghost of streets that no longer exist. At the base of the hill, a few houses still stand, and are obviously occupied. The rest are empty lots surrounded by low stone walls, showing where houses once existed.
Further up the hill, the destruction of Centralia is total, and largely man-made. If the streets were ever paved, they aren’t any more. It’s dirt and gray gravel now, slices of thinly-laminated black shale showing through where runoff has carried away the surface soil. The black shale crawls with tiny, bright pink mites that look like they should belong to a 1980s Atari game.
There were obviously once houses up and down this hill, but nothing remains, just flattened lots that have plainly been bulldozed.
Broken up bricks and concrete are still visible, the remains of walls and foundations that haven’t been completely removed. The ground is littered with broken glass and shotgun shells; I guess since unpaved tracks don’t provide the same graffiti opportunities, this part of the disaster is used as a shooting range. Strange little bits of civilization still peep out of the surrounding trees, like this wooden utility pole.
This is where it finally begins to feel eerie, seeing these ghostly remains of what was once a town. There are a lot of reasons for the government to have seen to the destruction of the unoccupied houses. With toxic fumes rising from the ground, allowing abandoned buildings to stand and invite squatters is a potentially lethal proposition. They’d be fire hazards. And it’s a way to discourage gawkers like myself from picking over the bones of Centralia.
But all the same, it’s disquieting to see there was once life and it has been so plainly removed.
And even on this clear, beautiful day, there is a reminder of the fires that still rage through the coal seams. Smoke isn’t billowing, but the air smells faintly and pervasively of sulfur. There are holes in the ground from which wispy smoke drifts. Like a ghost, it doesn’t photograph, but it’s there to see with your own eyes.
Seeing smoke come out of the ground is something that disturbs a deep, primal portion of your brain. The smoke stinks like matches, and you know that’s bad and you really should just get the hell away. Even worse, when the breeze shifts and the smoke washes over you, it’s notably hotter than the muggy air. You feel it like breath on your face.
And you let yourself imagine that this might just be a little hint of hell. Because an endlessly burning, unquenchable fire that burns slowly underground, eatings its way through the bones of old trees certainly fits the bill. In that moment, sunny day or no, you’re still waiting to hear the old air-raid sirens.
There’s something else you can see from the ruins of Centralia, which sums up so much of the way the region feels to an outsider like myself.
Throughout the region, there are enormous, flat topped tailings piles, the remains of open-pit mines where machinery has chewed up all the coal and spat out the pieces we didn’t want to burn. They are ugly sores on the landscape, though you do see places where plants have begun to move back in. From Centralia, standing in the bulldozed shadow of a house, you can see one of these flat-topped monstrosities lined with the graceful white forms of enormous windmills, blades turning slowly in the breeze.
With the stink of sulfurous coal smoke permeating the air, the windmills really do feel like a distant promise, one that you might be able to reach if you can just stretch your arms far enough.
For a little more about the history of Centralia and its underground fire here is one site.
For the rest of my pictures from Centralia you can look through my online album.
Okay, a little belated, but I wrote a post for the Clarion blog about sandstone as a building material, since a commenter had asked about it a while ago: Sandstone: It’s a Living.
My next post will be due mid-December… I’m trying to decide what to write about. I’m kind of tempted to talk about undersea hydrothermal systems (black smokers, white smokers, carbonate chimneys) because they’re really cool. And it lets me share something I’ve learned in oceanic geochem this semester.
In a few short hours, I’ll be on my way to the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming, to participate in the coring portion of the Bighorn Basin Coring Project. Things are moving much faster than expected – the rig is already at Polecat Bench, where it wasn’t planned to be until Friday, because coring went so quickly at the first location, called Basin Substation.
(All of the amazing pictures for this post taken from the BBCP Facebook page.)
This was kind of a surprise, but a good one. It also means my advisor and I are scrambling to get up to the Basin as soon as we can. And that instead of one two week stretch, I’ll be coming back to Denver with her, and then flying back out to Wyoming on July 31 to help out at the third site. (The third site, Gilmore Hill, is on BLM land and we’re literally not allowed to start until August 1.)
I’ve set up a twitter account for just BBCP-related stuff. I don’t know how many good pictures I’ll get, since I’m on the nightshift, but here’s hoping! Please follow and spread the word. It’s a chance to see some science in action.
So why should you care about this project? Two words: climate change. In geology, the present is often the key to the past – we can observe processes today and use them to figure out the how and why of ancient rocks. During the PETM, the Earth’s climate changed remarkably, and in a fairly short period of time. I’ve written about it in more detail here, and you can also get more information on the project’s website. While the Bighorn Basin Coring Project is focused on understanding the PETM and many related issues, there is also this to consider:
This will allow us to investigate, in an unprecedented way, the high-frequency climatic and biotic variability of a continental depositional system during greenhouse conditions.
There are no guarantees in science, but there’s a possibility that this time, the past might provide a key to the present. Climate change induced by a rapid influx of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere? While it’s not a perfect parallel (for the PETM it was methane, rather than our own carbon dioxide), it still could be very relevant. And I would think it’s something we want to understand well before our personal contributions of carbon get anywhere close to the rather voluptuous 6800 gigatons of methane that went into the atmosphere during the PETM. (As of 2004 we were at ~500 Gt.)
One thing we’re hoping is that we’ll not only capture the PETM, we’ll also maybe get some data for the other, smaller hyperthermals in the Eocene. How much carbon input equals how much climate change? As part of a species with a vested interest in climate not changing much, that’s a question I’d personally like to examine, and I’m hoping I’ll get my chance.
(And don’t worry, Mom, I’ll watch out for snakes!)
Actually, it’s been online for a few days, but there was this whole TAM thing (you may have heard of it) and I had no real internet access for four days because the Southpoint Casino is run by vampires1.
It’s 1000+ words about tuff, which is a good example of how geology influences culture. And there are also bad puns. Because, you know, tuff: The Whole Tuff and Nothing But the Tuff
1 – Leave my non sequitor alone. Something about bloodsuckers. I’m tired.
I didn’t actually go to GSA, even though it was in Denver. Mostly because I didn’t want to cough up the registration fee, and had projects I should be working on besides. And of course, no one I know heard about this at the time, probably because I don’t think people tend to get excited about field trips into their own backyards when it costs money.
But apparently, there were young earth creationists at GSA. And they ran a field trip to Garden of the Gods without telling anyone that they were young earthers. And then later bragged about how convincing it was to the real geologists. Please see PZ’s blog post, since he’s already done a lovely job of laying it all out and I see no reason to reproduce his links and do my own less entertaining version of the commentary.
I’ll just note here for anyone not familiar with the geology of Colorado, that the pretty bits of Garden of the Gods are mostly from two formations: Fountain and Lyons.
The Fountain Formation is a series of alluvial fan deposits that run up and down the Front Range of Colorado (and have a sister formation on the western side of the continental divide, called the Maroon Formation) which was laid down on a probably dry plain at the feet of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. The formation was mostly deposited by flash floods screaming out of mountain canyons, carrying loads of poorly sorted sediment. So in it, you see rocks ranging from conglomerates to sandstones to mudstones, which vary depending upon which flood stage they were laid down in. And you see these layers repeated over and over. You also see some very nice sedimentary structures that indicate successive floods, such as scours and channels cutting through lower layers.
So technically, the Fountain Formation was laid down by water, but it was fresh water. Fresh water in what was likely an otherwise dry environment. And it was also technically laid down by flooding, but by a lot of flash floods rather than one enormous Noah’s flood. I think trying to fuzzy the two together is pretty disingenuous.
And then there’s the Lyons. The Lyons is a quartz arenite, which means it’s almost pure quartz. All the grains are super well-sorted and well-rounded. (And those of you that remember undergrad sed/strat are probably now nodding your heads, because you know what sort of thing typically makes these deposits already…) It’s got enormous cross-beds as well as fissile ripple laminations that occasionally show as classic reverse-graded pinstriping, though pinstriping in the Lyons is much less common or pronounced than it is in other similar formations.
Dunes. In a desert. Giant sand dunes. We see formations like this all over the world, and we understand pretty well how they form.
I personally have a very, very hard time believing that any honest (as in not self-deluding) geologist who can even dimly remember anything about undergrad (let alone graduate) sedimentology/stratigraphy would look at the Lyons in particular and say, “Oh yeah, totally a giant flood.”
But it sounds like the young earthers spend a lot of time muttering their more wacky assertions or dropping them in to the discussion quickly and moving on, so those not listening for it just didn’t notice. From the article in Earth magazine, that’s certainly what it sounds like.
The Earth article also makes this point:
Creationists may come to conclusions that the geological community challenges, but as long as they present their conclusions as derived from accepted scientific methodology, rather than religion, it is unfair to reject their participation. In any event, the field trip I attended was not a platform for proselytizing to participants, but involved real observations on real outcrops — even if the perspective was slanted towards a nonstandard interpretation. No harm, no foul.
To me, this seems like a really tricky thing. Because Mr. Newton makes a good point that completely excluding the young earthers from meetings isn’t really going to do us much good. It just gives them ammunition. And to a certain extent, I think it’s healthy for geologists who aren’t necessarily involved in organized skepticism to run across young earthers, because if you’re in academia it’s pretty easy to forget that cranks like this exist or just dismiss them out of hand. They’re a lot harder to forget if you’re actually confronted with them and forced to consider what they’re claiming, which then calls for a response.
On the other hand, what causes the downside of participation is the basic dishonesty the young earthers displayed at GSA. They’re not being upfront about what their driving hypothesis is. They’re being very subtle and cagey about their most scientifically insupportable views, and then running off to claim that they’ve convinced people. Because let’s be honest, it’s pretty easy to nod vaguely at a poster at GSA or AAPG or SEG or any other meeting when it’s extremely technical and not precisely your area of expertise; it’s easy to make fine details sound reasonable when the main crux of the research – trying to prove a young earth – is hidden precisely to prevent academic disagreement.
There’s not any easy answer to this problem. You can’t really make young earthers wear dunce caps at meetings, as amusing and righteous as that idea must feel, because it ultimately leads to the same place as excluding them entirely. I think maybe the best solution would be outreach and education to let geologists know that hey, these people are out there, and by the way, they’re coming to meetings to try to give themselves a veneer of credibility so you ought to pay attention. Not that I think turning GSA into a pit of seething hostility is the way to go, but it’d also be a good idea to make sure people know why there will occasionally be confrontations at presentations. And also maybe give some hints on how to be listening for the subtle, cagey distortions that are apparently all the rage.
Ultimately, it’s just a bitch and a half to try to engage in a scientific debate with people who aren’t being up front and honest to begin with. But I think this also makes the point that we need to be a little more cautious about our nods of vague approval when we’re browsing the posters.
Thoughts?