Recommendation: RealClimate takes on Superfreakonomics
Labels: books, climate change, global warming, politics, tech
Labels: books, climate change, global warming, politics, tech
Labels: books, geology, meetings, national parks, nova, oregon
Awesome. The perfect little book for those interested in geology. Looking at the world through a grain of sand. Very diverse, chock full of fascinating stuff that appeals to the intellect on many levels. Smart, erudite, funny. Recommended.Stories In Stone - David Williams [blog]
A good read; like reading a compliation of feature stories in EARTH magazine; however, unlike Sand, no single unifying theme ties them all together. The overall idea is that the rocks we make our buildings out of have interesting backstories. The book is organized into a dozen or so chapters, each about a different building stone. Some are common (Indiana limestone), some are rare (petrified wood). All have got interesting stuff going on in terms of their geological history, human tie-ins, and architectural tweaks. If you live or work in a building, it's worth reading.Your Inner Fish - Neil Shubin
Superb. Learned a ton about evolution's lingering fingerprints on our bodily blueprint. Did you know that the nerve which controls our larynx runs from the brain to the larynx via the heart? This unintelligent design is a vestige of the way our body develops from an embryo -- and can be traced directly to fish. There wasn't as much about Tiktaalik in here as I expected, but just enough to make the point.Bones, Rocks, and Stars - Chris Turney [blog]
Really interesting, though the chapter on King Arthur didn't do much for me. But the rest of it is a great introduction to the various ways we figure out how old things are (Subtitle: "The Science of When Things Happened"). Great chapters on the orbital forcing of ice ages, carbon dating of Homo florensis (which Turney did), and Pleistocene megafauna extinctions. Recommended.
Glacial Lake Missoula - David Alt
Bretz's Flood - John SoennichsenNot so great as a book. Really more of a field guide, but not even all that great on that level. It essentially traces the geologic evidence of GLM "and its humongous floods" from Missoula north, west, south, and west again -- the path of the big Channeled Scablands-forming megafloods. A good resource for specific outcrops that illustrate parts of our understanding of this huge event, but not especially enjoyable to read.
Much better -- a lovely biography of J. Harlan Bretz, the geologist from the University of Chicago who first documented the Channeled Scablands and deduced that they must have been carved by an enormous flood. A perfect little portrait of an academic's career. Bretz appears to have been quite a character! I really enjoyed the perspective this gave me on the whole "megaflood" idea.
Labels: books, evolution, floods, geologic time, sediment
Labels: art, books, connecticut, maps, maryland, new york, oregon, washington
Labels: art, books, california, georgia, idaho, maps, utah, west virginia
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Labels: books, climate change, CO2, global warming
Labels: art, blogs, books, climate change, global warming, websites
Labels: arizona, books, grand canyon
Labels: blogs, books, climate change, global warming, humor
Over the winter break, I read the new book Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, by Ron Blakey & Wayne Ranney. This is an excellent read, and a terrific introduction to the geologic history of one the world's most dramatic landscapes. Blakey's maps have been featured on this blog before, and he has been kind enough to allow me to modify some for use on my field course websites (like here and here and here). The book goes through geologic time and makes extensive use of beautiful paleogeographic maps to reveal the story of mountain-building, transgression, regression, sand-dunes, faulting, volcanism, and erosion that characterizes the Colorado Plateau. It's not just paleogeographic maps, by the way: there are also plenty of shots of fossils, Colorado Plateau landscapes, and comparable modern depositional environments to enliven the story. It's a graphic story, well told with excellent graphics. I recommend you get yourself a copy if you've ever been to the Colorado Plateau, or if you ever plan on going there.
Find the book: On Amazon ... At the NOVA library
Labels: arizona, art, books, colorado, maps, new mexico, utah
John McPhee and Eldridge Moores give a talk at UC Davis...
Labels: books, geologists, plate tectonics
Labels: books, dinosaurs, global warming
In preparation for my time out west this summer, my friend Michelle loaned me her copy of Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway, by Kirk Johnson and Ray Troll. It's a great read, and it's got me really psyched to start driving around the west, looking at geology. It also makes me wish for an informed local guide to clue me in to good outcrops.Labels: books, environmental, oil
Labels: books, fossils, geologists, history, stratigraphy
What upset him most was not the destruction that had already occurred, but the devastation yet to come and the waning sense of awe -- or simple respect -- toward nture that he sensed in each successive generation. "One time I was out watching the ATVs. I saw these two little boys trudging up a dune. I went running after them. I wanted to ask why they weren't riding machines -- maybe they were looking for something else out there. They said their trail bikes were broken. I asked if they knew what was out there in the desert, if they had seen any lizards. 'Yeah,' one of them said, 'But lizards just run away.' These kids were bored, uninterested. If only they knew."
Labels: books, environmental, teaching
Over the first half of the semester, I've been reading Vaclav Smil's comprehensive book The Earth's Biosphere. It's an incredible work of scholarship, and I recommend it to anyone with a solid foundational understanding of both biology and geology who's ready for "the big picture": an overall review which will give contextual perspective on each of the details of how the living portion of our planet works. It's a remarkable book, really. It covers so much, in such a precise, well-written manner, that it makes my head spin. It has forty pages of references (in small type)! As an example of the multidisciplinary nature of the book, I offer the following graphic from page 134:
In one image, Smil integrates information about seven variables: clay varieties, latitude, biome type, depth of weathering in the crust, precipitation, temperature, and evaporation! That's an incredible accompishment graphically, but he does the same thing in just about every sentence.
I read the book originally because a potential student recommended it as providing a "balanced" look at climate change. Curious to see what that meant, I checked it out of the library here on campus, and read it. It has an excellent and comprehensive scientific discussion of climate change, with a particular focus on how the Earth's biosphere will effect it, and be effected by it.
I feel obliged to give an example of something I learned, so here's amazing fact #3546 from the book: photosynthesis is really inefficient! Plants vary in how photosynthetically efficient they are, but the values range from plants that capture 0.1% of incoming solar radiation to the really efficient ones, which max out at capturing about 2% of incoming solar radiation. That's so not efficient! I had no idea.
Of course, no book is perfect, and I'll offer two complaints about The Earth's Biosphere: (1) A general theme is woven throughout the book of examining the work of neglected Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky, who made critical advances to our understanding of the biosphere, but hasn't gotten enough credit. Smil goes overboard in giving Vernadsky his due: it's Vernadsky this, Vernadsky that, every couple of pages through the whole book. I got sick of reading about him, and wished Smil could stick to the (excellent, fascinating) science, divorced from the persons who wrought it. (2) Every now and again, he threw in a superflous graphic, like this one:

Is the fish really supposed to be ~16 m tall? What's the point of this graphic anyhow? To show that fish live below the ice? Seems to me you could just say so. (Plus, the graphic needs the scientific name italicized, as in the caption.) I don't mean to snipe -- most of the book is super, but stuff like this irritates me. A fly in the ointment, I guess. The book's worth reading regardless.
Labels: books, climate change, global warming
Labels: books, grand canyon