Showing posts with label geology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geology. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
The Anthropocene Has Arrived
I am so happy that the BBC has made the entire length of these shows available on YouTube. All 58 minutes and 19 seconds of Iain Stewart's wonderful episode on how humanity is affecting the geological processes of the planet are here for the watching!
The Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, is upon us. It's a moot point to argue whether our species is changing the Earth, or even whether we should. The fact is that we are, and that we have to take responsibility for that power.
Read more here: A man-made world: Science is recognising humans as a geological force to be reckoned with via Economist.com
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The Floating World
When I was a little kid, my parents would take me to the U.K. for summer vacation to visit my father's family in Scotland. Even though I had been told (and shown, using a globe) that the world was a sphere and knew logically therefore that Scotland existed somewhere on the same continuous surface as us, I whimsically decided one day that the clouds overhead were the bottoms of islands and continents, and that we had to fly to get to see Aunt Martha because really she lived up in the sky somewhere.
Scotland may not float in the air, but the rock we live on actually does float on something: other, denser rock. It floats because it's lighter (granite and sediment being lighter than basalt), and also because it's hotter, and hot stuff rises. It can be disconcerting to think about the Wasatch Front as equivalent to so much floating soap scum on the surface of Bathtub Earth, but there you have it. The planet is dynamic and living, and the continents underneath us are moving all the time. We need not worry about "saving the Earth," because whatever we do to the surface of this sphere - up to and including turning it into a vast, radioactive wasteland devoid of higher lifeforms - will eventually be digested, tamed, and recycled by the forces of erosion and plate tectonics. Even with all of our power to remove mountains for copper and to drill the deep seabed for oil, from a geological standpoint, we are still inconsequential. The Earth will be fine; what we should be worrying about is our continued ability to live upon it.
Read more about it here: World On Water: Geophysicists Show That Crust Temperature Variation Explains Half Of Elevation Differences In North America via ScienceDaily
Scotland may not float in the air, but the rock we live on actually does float on something: other, denser rock. It floats because it's lighter (granite and sediment being lighter than basalt), and also because it's hotter, and hot stuff rises. It can be disconcerting to think about the Wasatch Front as equivalent to so much floating soap scum on the surface of Bathtub Earth, but there you have it. The planet is dynamic and living, and the continents underneath us are moving all the time. We need not worry about "saving the Earth," because whatever we do to the surface of this sphere - up to and including turning it into a vast, radioactive wasteland devoid of higher lifeforms - will eventually be digested, tamed, and recycled by the forces of erosion and plate tectonics. Even with all of our power to remove mountains for copper and to drill the deep seabed for oil, from a geological standpoint, we are still inconsequential. The Earth will be fine; what we should be worrying about is our continued ability to live upon it.
Read more about it here: World On Water: Geophysicists Show That Crust Temperature Variation Explains Half Of Elevation Differences In North America via ScienceDaily
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)