Death of a hard drive

All kinds of exciting things are going on out here. We had the last field trip a couple of weekends ago, I've been editing a proposal, end of the quarter is coming, so that means I was overdue for a hard drive failure. So, the critical bits are intact, some things are missing, but mostly I realize how much I rely on having my own computer and the flexibility it gives me. Currently limping along on the department laptop and computer lab and annoyed with Apple Care....

Then there is the wildfire ~20 minutes from here. It was super windy yesterday, so this little fire that started yesterday morning grew quickly, but weather is better today (fire-wise) and just smells smoky. I walked out of the house this morning and had a flashback to late fall field work in SE China; they were burning the fields while we were there so every day had that acrid smell. Not such a happy situation for the folks in the mountains though. It sounds like there is a decent amount of property damage already, some evacuations and school closures. Here is a link to the Summit Fire info in case you're curious.

I'll post more in early June, once things are a little less hectic....

climate and bicycles

"When it rains, it pours," "if it's not one thing, its another," everything comes in threes" all speak to that familiar phenomenon, where it seems like events converge and seemingly unconnected things become connected. So, I'm just going to take a moment to revisit to recent topics I've posted on since recent updates just converged for me today.

A week or so ago, I went to a public lecture given by a climate scientist talking about climate models and model validation. He concluded the talk by mentioning why, despite the alarming forecasts, he was still optimistic about our future as a species. One of the questions he was asked alluded to a recent article by a group of notable climate scientists calling for an immediate return to atmospheric CO2 levels of 350 ppm. We're currently a little shy of the 390 ppm mark, so that is no mean feat. And why? Well, according to the group, if we don't get back to 350, we'll cross some critical tipping points in the climate system that mean dramatic (possibly fatal) changes for our species. So the questioner finished by wondering how the speaker could still be optimistic?

So, after my mom also recently mentioned allusions to this article, it seemed like I had to read it. In case you're curious, the approachable synthesis of the article is a piece by Bill McKibben, but if you want the real article you can download it off of Jim Hansen's website; called "Target CO2; where should humanity aim."

On the heels of this, I also looked into an article in the Sentinel (the local paper) about one of the cyclists killed in the last year on Santa Cruz's streets. I provided the link not so much for the article itself, but for the response to it. Scroll down and you'll see over a hundred comments to the article that consist primarily of back-and-forth rudeness and name-calling between motorists who hate cyclists and cyclists who hate motorists.

So how can the speaker still be optimistic? If the local solutions we can all participate in cause so much divisive behavior, where is the room for optimism? That's tricky. I find some hope in the recent and rapid transformation of public opinion and media focus regarding global warming. I found another kernel of hope in the McKibben article, which also promoted a new organization just starting, called 350.org, designed to raise awareness for this new target. Give it a look! And I'll stop preaching. Well, maybe not. But I will get back to posting about geology galor (last field trip for the quarter this weekend!) and my vague attempts to become a gardener. This last topic ought to be quite entertaining.....

Oh, Turbidites!

(Sed/stratters near the top of the section)

Saturday we headed to one of my favorite field trip locations, Pebble Beach (NOT the famed golf course) and Pigeon Point. This beach is home to a fantastic set of tilted turbidite deposits, so the students get to walk upsection while walking across the beach. It also represents a nice study in long-shore currents since the pebbles that give the beach its name come from an isolated exposure of Franciscan rocks north of San Francisco Bay.

(beautiful convolute bedding)

For those of you not familiar with turbidite deposits (what??), they are the result of underwater landslides and debris flows. These particular turbidites were deposited during the Cretaceous to Paleocene (circa 65 millions years old). We tried to convince the students that one of the many fantastic things they could see in these rocks were trace fossils made by the rare, long-necked snorkling dinosaur that paddled around, and used its long neck to reach down and scavenge off the bottom. They didn't buy it.

We did all buy into the story about the "doomed pioneers." Apparently this is the term for little shallow marine critters that ride the rocks down the slope in these flows and continue to burrow through their displaced sediment homes, fully unaware of the fact that they are in WAY over their heads (ok, that bad pun was intended) and therefore doomed to die. I'd never thought about the fact that it seemed a little odd that these deposits can be quite burrowed.

(Honey comb weathering adds to the whole picture...)

(Bryn, look! California has turbidites. You should come see the flame structures....)

Pigeon Point is the second stop for the day and is full of jumbled rocks that represent large-scale slumping and folding of the same kind of turbidite rocks. In this case, the landsliding and mass-wasting are of such a huge scale that entire beds are ripped up and folded very shortly after they've been deposited. The students are supposed to wander around and figure out which way is "up." No one leaves fully convinced.

(Wow!)(yes, that is one, single sandstone bed)

And then we all stopped in Davenport for pie and hot chocolate on the way home.