quakes can drop land

We often think of sea level as the height of water relative to the land. But geologists know that the land is also in motion, somewhat complicating measurements of rising sea level. (Alaska, which is tectonically rising, records less apparent sea level rise than elsewhere, for example.) In cases where land is subsiding, sea level rise may actually seem augmented. And no part of the Earth underwent a quicker subsidence than areas of coastal Japan during the great quake of 11 March 2011.

As a recent story confirms,

The March 11 earthquake that hit eastern Japan was so powerful it pulled the entire country out and down into the sea. The mostly devastated coastal communities now face regular flooding, because of their lower elevation and damage to sea walls from the massive tsunamis triggered by the quake.

One of my professors of geology remembers camping on a beach the night of the 1992 Mendocino earthquake, and finding in the morning that the coastline had been visibly uplifted, exposing mussell-covered rocks now well-above the high tide line, dooming their sessile molluscan tenants.

While we human like to imagine the solid land as solidly fixed in one place, the reality is far more complex, though our short life spans rarely allow us to the opportunity to observe changes first hand. This the nature of deep time; we can see the long term effects of geologic changes but usually only indirectly observe them occurring.

Japan is an exception:

Some areas in Ishinomaki moved southeast 17 feet (5.3 meters) and sank 4 feet (1.2 meters) lower.

"We thought this slippage would happen gradually, bit by bit. We didn't expect it to happen all at once," says Testuro Imakiire, a researcher at Japan's Geospatial Information Authority, the government body in charge of mapping and survey.

The now permanent situation in Japan should give those of us who live in California a moment of pause to reflect on how quickly the land around may one day change.

magma ocean on Io

Students always come to intro geology courses with the misconception that beneath our thin, rocky crust, there exists an ocean of magma. Intro geology students imagine that volcanoes are simply breaches in this ocean, where pressure forces this liquid rock to spew out.

The reality, of course, is that the mantle is solid, not liquid. The mantle's ability to flow over time makes it seem liquid-like, but it is in fact quite crystalline. Beginning geology students have no end of trouble over this distinction; maybe it's something wrong with the way I teach it, but I'd say at least a quarter of students just never quite get this fundamental fact about the earth. And when I throw in decompression and flux melting, students really start to have difficulty.

Now, to add to the confusion, it seems that Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, does in fact have a "magma ocean." In fact, estimates are that about 10% of the volume of Io involves liquified material. This may account for Io's strikingly-intense volcanic activity. Compared to our relatively tame planet, Io has frequent volcanic activity.

wither agate?

Well, it's happening again.

The great state of Louisiana is poised to enact a geological injustice. This time the victim is agate, which has held the distinction of being LA's state gem. Now under consideration is a much-debated proposal to downgrade agate to LA's state mineral.

The irony is that because agate is cryptocrystalline, it's borderline to call it either a gem or a mineral. "Gem" is a geologically-meaningless term synonymous with a mineral, which is an inorganic, naturally-occurring compound assuming a regular, orderly crystallinity.

But when you look at agate under a polarized light microscope, what you see is... well, not much. The crystals are so tiny that even under high magnification, what you mostly see in thin section is an iridescent swirl that reminds one of a CD refracting light. You could say these individual crystals are minerals, but the nature of agate as a whole is more amorphous than mineralic.

Nonetheless, more for the sake of convenience than consistency, geologists do classify agate as a mineral, a gem, or a rock, depending on the circumstances. And just as California should not have considered removing serpentinite as its state rock, so too should Louisiana refrain from offering any geological insult. Geologists vote... and we carry rock hammers, too.

anti-wolf, anti-science

Fear of wolves is one of those irrational, deep-seated human traits. As Farley Mowat and others have pointed out, wolves pose virtually danger to humans, and little danger to livestock. Yet in the West wars over the classification of wolves take on an unusual prominence.

As part of the unfortunate budget deal Obama agreed to last Friday, a hostage negotiation with the operation of the federal government on the line, Obama agreed to a small, little-noticed rider that allowed Congress to change the endangered status of wolves in Montana and Idaho.

Now there is nothing wrong, per se, with a species being taken off the Endangered Species list, if the evidence warrants such an action. But the process established by Congress does not--until this week--allow for political machinations to override scientific consensus. Now the status of every animal on the list is on the table, with congress members vying with each other for which animal--stubbornly confounding some development project with its insistence on living--is to be taken off next.

The issue is science denial. Do we have a system where scientists come to a conclusion based on evidence, and then take action on a species' status, or do we have a system where politicians make these decisions, based on their own economic interests?

In the reality based community, scientific facts have meaning and relevance. In the world of science denial, facts are as fungible as opinions, because at their core denialists do not accept the idea of an objective, rational world outside their own subjective experience. They engage in magical thinking at its worst.

Dam Failures

One of the worst ways to deny science is to ignore hazards to health, hazards which are well-understood by science. One of the least known dangers we face is from dam collapse.

During the early part of the 20th century, America's rivers became dammed at a prodigious rate. Virtually every major American river is dammed at multiple points. Virtually every dam is silting rapidly behind the dam, as the normal sediment flow is interrupted.

All dams are temporary, geologically-speaking. And our nation's dams, like so much of our infrastructure, are not holding up well.

As this recent report in the New York Times details, if you have water flowing out of your tap, you live downstream from a dam. You might not be directly in the flow expected from a dam failure, but many of your neighbors are.

Britain, the peninsula

When sea level started rising from its low point 17,000 years ago, the coastline of the world were dramatically changed. According to this recent BBC report,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12244964

Britain remained a peninsula, connected to Normandy, until 6,100 years ago, when a titanic tsunami inundated what would become the English Channel. So much for those wankers who say Britain shouldn't be in the EU.

Cops, or Libraries?

In reality this is not an either/or choice, but the police union in Los Angeles has just officially come out against libraries.

The union that represents LAPD officers came out strongly today against Measure L, an item on the March 8 ballot that would set aside funding for the Los Angeles Public Library system.

In a statement, Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul Weber said the measure "will create more problems than it solves"

Although this seems typical for a state that spends more on its prison system and its university system, yet it is remarkable to see such posturing to plainly.

One way to guarantee disorder and strife is to create artificial scarcity. Scarcity pits cops against libraries, university students against administrators, families against banks. Only by reforming the financing of such institutions as libraries, universities, and the police force can we hope to end such useless, futile conflicts. It is the current chaotic financing system for public institutions that should be shut down, not libraries.