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2 December 2011
ACM
From “Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide” by Terry Gerlach in the June 14, 2011 issue of EOS: Human activities emit ~135 times as much carbon dioxide as the world’s volcanoes? Holy cow.
8 September 2011
A dismaying course, part I: climate change
You may have heard that the Republican party has been embracing non-scientific and anti-scientific positions lately. National Public Radio compiled a bunch of quotations reflecting this trend on their website yesterday. I thought I might take a moment here on the blog to critique their statements (both pros and cons), and then reflect on why, in total, the Republican trend towards anti-science strikes me as a dismaying course for my …
13 April 2011
The tricky business of SRM
Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill to attend a briefing arranged by the American Meteorological Society on the topic of geoengineering as a response to climate change. The two speakers, Ken Caldeira and David Keith, argued that the U.S. should invest heavily in geoengineering research, so we can figure out what’s safe and what’s irresponsible before we actually make any decisions about which …
25 January 2011
Uncommon Carriers, by John McPhee
Over the weekend, hideously cold temperatures kept me indoors. I baked a cake, I went to see the new movie “True Grit” (excellent), and I read the 2006 compilation of John McPhee’s writing on transportation, Uncommon Carriers. Like most everybody I know, I came to McPhee based on his geology writings — the quartet of books that were collectively republished en masse in 1998 as Annals of the Former World, …
Uncommon Carriers, by John McPhee
Over the weekend, hideously cold temperatures kept me indoors. I baked a cake, I went to see the new movie “True Grit” (excellent), and I read the 2006 compilation of John McPhee’s writing on transportation, Uncommon Carriers. Like most everybody I know, I came to McPhee based on his geology writings — the quartet of books that were collectively republished en masse in 1998 as Annals of the Former World, …
6 January 2011
Book review video: Climate change
Links, mostly to Amazon pages for the 6 books mentioned in the video: Thin Ice by Mark Bowen Ice, Mud, & Blood by Chris Turney Turney’s Twitter stream from Antarctica What’s the Worst that Could Happen? by Greg Craven Link to the AGU10 blog post mentioned and to Greg Craven’s response. The Carbon Age by Eric Roston Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum by William Ruddiman CO2 Rising by Tyler Volk Link …
6 April 2010
Suess effect II: corals sing an isotopic song
Almost a year ago, on my old blog, I brought up the issue of the Suess effect. Go read that post if you don’t remember what the Suess effect is. If you want an executive summary, digest this: The burning of low-14C fossil fuels (because the fuels are old and the 14C has all decayed), lowers the total atmospheric ratio of 14C relative to other isotopes of carbon. The carbon …
8 March 2010
When the Sturtian happened
Last Friday, I spent the evening riding up to New York on a bus. To pass the time, I had my iPod and a new paper by Francis Macdonald and colleagues in Science. The paper examines the timing of one of the episodes of “Snowball Earth” glaciation. There’s some important new data in this paper, and it helps constrain the “Sturtian” glaciation in time. So here’s the deal with Precambrian …
Video on carbon sequestration in Oman ophiolite
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=61206 (from one of the Skepchicks)
Callan Bentley is an assistant professor of geology at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Virginia. He is particularly interested in structural geology and the evolution of the Appalachian mountain belt. Callan draws cartoons and writes for EARTH magazine. He lives in the Fort Valley of Virginia.
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