Geo 730: November 3, Day 672: Rooted in Geology

The factor that drew settlers to Oregon was its rich farmland, but the factor that shaped the first incorporated city west of the Rocky Mountains was geology. Skipping inland and north from the previous post, we find... Yes! More basalt. Specifically, more Columbia River Basalt. Here it forms a resistant lip over which the Willamette River pours, creating the largest waterfall by volume in the Pacific Northwest (see note). That sort of hydraulic head is a wonderful source of cheap power- early on, mechanical, later, as you can see from the sign, electrical.

Note: Celilo Falls, in the Columbia River Gorge, was the most voluminous in the PNW, and it certainly deserves the title, but it was inundated by the construction of the Dalles Dam. I'm very sorry to have missed it. Among other interesting trivia, "Celilo was the oldest continuously inhabited community on the North American continent until 1957..."

Photo unmodified. October 10, 2012. FlashEarth Location.

Accretionary Wedge #57: Seeing Geology Everywhere!

Evelyn is hosting AW # 57, Seeing Geology Everywhere.

I see rocks. They're everywhere, in everything. And most of the time, people don't even know they're rocks.

This is a topic I've brought up more times than I can count at this point. (See "Show Me Your Sidewalk," "Geology is All Around Us!" "Geology at Oregon State University," "AW #52: Geology Dream Course," "The Geo Biz," "We Dohn' Need No Steenkin' Rocks," "98 102 97 88" "Cycles Without End (AW #30)," and, in particular, "A Worldview That Resonates With Me," as a few selected examples.) The question I keep getting stuck on is, "What can I say that I haven't said before?"

The only thing I can think of is to phrase it as a challenge: I defy you to find *anything* in your environment that isn't directly or immediately indirectly (by which I mean only one or two steps of remove) dependent upon, or shaped by, geological resources and processes. The thing is, there really isn't anything that doesn't fit that description. The landscape you live in (or vacation in, for that matter), however modified by human engineering, was created in its basic outlines by water, the solid earth, climate and biological interactions. The computer you're reading this on is a creation of a wide variety of minerals and petrochemicals, painstakingly fabricated, doped with extraordinary precision, and despite its incredible complexity, assembled and sold at a price people can readily afford. Almost everything in your home was delivered by (mainly) steel vehicles propelled by hydrocarbon combustion. It's a rare meal indeed, at least in the developed world, that doesn't have a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of table salt, NaCl, or halite. For the sodium sensitive, you can substitute in a certain amount of KCl, or sylvite. If you get heartburn after a hearty meal, you can take an antacid made of fine-grained calcite, CaCO3, or gibbsite, aluminum hydroxide, Al(OH)3, to neutralize the acid. Then you can relax with a glossy magazine or coffee table book. The reason the pages are glossy is that a mixture of clay minerals has been rolled and compressed into the paper; the tiny clay flakes are flattened parallel to each other, giving the paper the appearance of reflectivity. It's the man-made equivalent of phyllite.

Geology's ubiquity and importance in terms of materials and energy make it among the most economically important of the sciences. The fact that so few people seem to get that is frustrating. I am by no means arguing that everyone should be an expert in geology, but I would argue that nearly everyone would benefit by having a good high school-level, year-long, geology course. What rightly or wrongly is perceived as a recent spate of billion-dollar disasters have been in large part geologically mediated. It doesn't require a college degree to be able to pick out settings that are more or less susceptible to flooding, storm surges, wind damage, landslides, slumps, debris flows/lahars, tsunamis, earthquake damage and so on. In many cases, a minimum of education, rather than waiting for the intonations of experts, could help an intelligent consumer make better choices about places that are more or less safe to live.

And I haven't even touched (here) on the awe and amazement I feel when, with the help of both what I know, and research performed by others, I stand on an outcrop, and gaze clearly into the past, through an abyss that might measure billions of years in duration. I have felt nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, that makes me feel one with creation, in the way that experience does.

So, yes. I see rocks. They're everywhere. Most people don't even know they're rocks. And from my perspective, that's an enormous loss on their part.

Another "Funny" Ternary: Energy Sources

This occurred to me a few days ago, but it took me some time to decide how I wanted to lay it out. Based on 2010 data from Wikipedia.

Followup: I was actually a bit surprised at how much of the total went to renewables. If I'd had to guess, I'd have pretty much reversed that with nuclear. Also, adding "geology" tag. As I commented elsewhere, "where ever we go from where we are, the geology community and professionals will be the ones to allow us to get there." Whether petroleum/coal, nuclear or REE's, geology is going to be a significant part of whatever energy future we ultimately decide upon.

AW #52: Geology Dream Course

Note: This wedge has now been accreted at Agile Geoscience.

For Accretionary Wedge number 52, Shawn asks us to expound on a dream course in geology. I'll start by pointing out I've already taken quite a few courses that were ever so much more exciting and engaging than I could have imagined they might be. One that comes to mind is "The Tectonic Evolution of Western North America," by Bob Yeats, which was both far more complex and far more fascinating than I had any inkling it might be. And the Petrography/Petrology Sequence by Harold "Sharkey" Enlows... perhaps the best indicator for that one is that we were expected to spend 6 hours of scheduled lab time per week on that one, and I regularly spent 12 or more hours, just so I could see and learn more. It seems selfish to ask for other courses I might take.

One option offered is to design a course we might like to teach. I'd been contemplating sitting this one out, but a confluence of factors has forced me to choose otherwise. First, most geology people love their subject, and I'm no exception. Second, as I've said before, first and foremost, I consider myself to be a teacher. I can't help it. If geology comes up in conversation, I'm going into teaching mode. Internally, the discussion goes, "What do they know? What do they want to know? How do I get them there? What is the minimum of new information I need to bring up to accomplish that?" Then off I go. Third, another point I've made repeatedly is that I'm often appalled at the lack of regard and respect for the earth sciences, especially given our dependence on both the planet's resources and comparative peacefulness, even as we deplete the first and disturb the second. Finally, and I don't know that I've mentioned this, the main work I've actually done in science education involves curriculum design and evaluation. I don't bring it up much, even in face-to-face conversation, because I find it extremely tedious. It also happens to be in high demand, but people don't want to pay for the background, effort and patience it takes to do it right- much like the rest of education.

So it seems obvious I should come up with a course that helps address my concerns in point three, while enjoying aspects of points one and two, and taking advantage of my skills in point four. What I've come up with is a class with the working title, "Earth Systems and Society." As an overview, it would provide a minimal background with respect to geology and other earth sciences- notably oceanography and meteorology; it's focus, as the title indicates, is really more on the interactions of earth's systems and the human population those systems support.

I've spent enough time on this that, while the outline is more telegraphic than I might like, I think it's fairly clear what I might do with a class like this. This is by no means developed to the degree I would normally expect, but I do think it works as an outline.

Prerequisites: {What I consider to be a basic high school math education:] Algebra I and II, geometry and trigonometry. Basic skills in written English and expository and persuasive communication.

My philosopical positions/assumptions:

• Western culture generally, and US culture particularly, does not grasp the intimacy and necessity of human interaction with earth systems, let alone the complexity and feedbacks that can make those relationships profoundly difficult to grasp in their entirety.
• This is particularity true of people in non-science disciplines.
• Too few people are well-educated in science to substantively shape national and international debates on issues that not only affect all of humanity, but in fact make the medium to long term survival of Homo sapiens a question of real concern.
• Despite the overall complexity of interactions between Earth systems and society, individual components are intuitive and easily grasped. The difficulty lies in trying to plausibly project the outcome of simple processes and actions interacting with innumerable other processes and actions.
• Science does not reach social decisions, but informs them. Thus other social skills- including communication, argumentation, processes of political valuation, along with the values of disparate interest groups and individuals- are of great importance in applying and using scientific results
• To address the problems outlined in the above points, I propose a class focusing on 1) Simple facts regarding earth systems and processes, 2) opportunities to think about and practice projecting how different processes can and do interact to create outcomes that might not necessarily be intuitive, but nevertheless can be foreseen.

To assure the broad goals of this class are addressed and achieved, the following approaches will be important:

• Start with broad frameworks and the most familiar aspects of earth processes.
• Move into less familiar processes, but still focus on broad frameworks.
• Work toward more specificity in various earth system/resource knowledge as term proceeds, while at the same time frequently tying new knowledge back to broad frameworks.
• Revisit earlier topics frequently and explicitly, to illustrate interactions, reiterations.
• Expect students to be able to use basic algebraic skills; simple mathematics will play an important role in homework. Students should be able to work with scientific notation.
• Expect students to show competence with written English.
• Ramp up critical thinking, evaluation and critical skills expectations as course proceeds, with extensive feedback to written assignments ahead of two major written works, along with at least one required review of each draft of latter, and other reviews as requested by students.
• Given my background, the solid earth will ground the course [heh], and other component systems will be related to that foundation. However, those based in other science disciplines should have no problem approaching this from another basis, for example bio-science, oceanography or atmospheric science.
• Above all, keep it exciting. There is much that can be frightening in this topic, but always balance potential scares with potential solutions, alternatives and adaptations.

General Outcomes: Students will be able to

• Review and analyze environmental risks of a small (>50 km sq, about the area of a medium-sized town) area of their choosing, using historical media reports, skills and knowledge developed in class, along with information from relevant local to national level government agencies. Other source materials should be cleared with instructor. (This will be the final project, and I want to avoid asking S's to go to primary literature.)
• Recall fundamental terminology and concepts accurately, and use it appropriately in context.
• Give multiple examples of the concept of opportunity cost, and explain factors that can lead to forgoing more valuable opportunities for less valuable opportunities in terms of earth resources.
• List ways to increase preparedness, and decrease risks of injury and mortality, with respect to a number of different natural hazards (e.g. floods, earthquakes, tidal surges, tsunamis, lahars, volcanic hazards, etc.)
• For selected hazards, describe methods of avoidance (e.g. floods, tidal surges, tsunamis, lahars, etc.)
• Given examples of common household items, describe earth resources used in the production of each.
• Describe current thought regarding global climate change. This is not intended to be ideological, and I don't care whether you "Believe in it." Even if you don't, you should be able to explain accurately why others do, and in general terms, what their predictions are.
• Describe feedbacks that could worsen or moderate climate change.
• List and explain examples of resources whose availability may potentially be affected- for better or worse- by climate change.
• Keep a log (or blog, preferably) of media stories about earth resources, hazards, processes, and other stories relevant to the content of this class. Include comments, which should note strengths and weaknesses of the story, "flashing lights," that is, evidence that the story should treated with caution or skepticism, and thoughts of how the topic covered in this story relates to other topics relevant to this class.
• Given hypothetical situations (or generalized portrayals of real situations), create an argument to support one of two or more options. The point here is not to have the "right answer," but to muster pertinent information to argue for one choice from what might be a number of options. As an example, Federal, state and local governments heavily subsidize rebuilding after floods and coastal storms. This encourages people to rebuild/use resources in areas that have in the immediate past been proven vulnerable. Potential options for this problem include 1) The system works as it is, albeit with weaknesses. Don't change anything. 2)a] Require those in vulnerable areas to purchase government-subsidized insurance; 2)b] Require insurance coverage that reflects the best assessment of real risk; 2)c] Require insurance that is overpriced with respect to real risk, thus discouraging development in vulnerable areas. 3)a] Prohibit rebuilding in areas that have been proven by experience to be high risk for calamitous disasters; 3)b] Prohibit rebuilding in areas that have been proven by experience to be high risk for calamitous disasters, with exceptions on a case-by-case basis [e.g, sites of historic importance]. 4) Some combination or variation of the above possibilities, or [an]other[s], suggested by student.
• An important component of the course will be a summary and conclusions essay. This should be about 3 pages long, and discuss the following: 1) What topics regarding resources, risks, and earth systems should be addressed by your state and/or local government in the near future? 2) In what ways do you think this course may affect your thinking and future decision-making with respect to natural and man-exacerbated risks and hazards, and consumption of resources? 3) What topics in this course did you find of particular relevance or interest? 4) What aspects of this course were less interesting or less relevant? 5) Overall, how would you rate this course? As with the previous point, I'm not looking for any particular answer, but rather your choices regarding the pertinent information you bring to bear and the coherence with which you frame your answer. I'm thick skinned, so don't be afraid to be critical where it's warranted. I suggest you start keeping notes in whatever format is convenient and effective for yourself from early in the term.

[I've spent my career and entire college student-hood in a quarter system- my feeling is that this might be too much for what I think of as a ten-week term, but it might work better in a semester system. Nevertheless as an outline, here's a general overview of what I'd like to tackle. Each bullet represents a lecture & discussion- format class period, with the exception of assignments due at the ends of weeks 8 and 9.]

Week 1

• Intro, rationale, overview/outline, "deep time" and intro to surface processes
• Fluvial processes
• Mass Movement

Week 2

• Internal processes: plate tectonics and the big picture. Global outline of active areas
• Seismicity
• Volcanism. Focus on North American tectonics.

Week 3

• Integrating surface and internal processes: the consequences of an active planet
• Exam
• Geosphere-atmosphere interactions

Week 4

• Geosphere-hydrosphere interactions
• Interactions [of previous 3] with the biosphere- elemental cycling
• The centrality of life in creating earth as we know it today: the importance of microbes and "The age of bacteria."

Week 5

• Living on a limited planet: risks, hard walls, options, and choices
• A delicate balance: to use or not to use.
• It's complicated. Land and resource use versus natural, man-made, and man-exacerbated hazards

Week 6

• Exam
• Stuff we take for granted I: energy resources
• Stuff we take for granted II: metallic resources

Week 7

• Stuff we take for granted III: industrial and construction resources
• Stuff we take for granted IV: water and land
• Stuff we take for granted V: an unchanging planet [climate and other large-scale environmental change]

Week 8

• Site-specific risks: thinking about risks from floods and mass movement. [do so before land purchases!]
• Site-specific risks: thinking about risks from seismicity and volcanism. [and special associated mass movement risks]
• Site-specific risks: atmospheric phenomena and erosion
• Final project due

Week 9

• A culture blind to earth systems
• How to talk to others: dos and don'ts
• Reasons for optimism: it's too easy to be fatalistic. Life is and has always been a puzzle with lives at risk.
• Summary and Conclusions essay due

Week 10

• Study session, Q&A
• Final Exam

Now, in honesty, I don't have the stamina to teach anymore- I get tired too quickly, and apathy can shut me down without warning. Even if I was offered a generous salary to teach something like this, I would be hesitant to accept it. I'm very reluctant to take a job I'm not certain I can complete. But the fact is, I think this would be a very good experience for non-science folks: enough science to be a valid science "credit," but at the same time, drawing in aspects of life most people wouldn't think of as "hard science." Geo-types get exposed to this kind of uncertainty and ambiguity over and over again throughout their education and career. The thing that I'm curious about is can a similar education be condensed into a one-term class for non-science folks?

4/20

A year ago today, this drill rig had a gas problem and went "boom." Eleven people died outright, and the ensuing disaster lasted 85 days. An estimated 200 million gallons of crude spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, disrupting the lives of people throughout the region, and killing tremendous number of other creatures. The above image is from In Focus, where you can, if you have the stomach for it, see 38 other photos from this sickening disaster.

The Guardian answers a number of key questions regarding the spill.

The Christian Science Monitor asks another important question: In the end, did huge Gulf oil spill underwhelm oil-hungry Americans?
As shocked and angry as I was at the way the disaster unfolded- and the way it was handled- I'm chastened to be reminded that no one was as heavily impacted as the families whose loved ones were lost in the initial seconds of the disaster. (picture from the linked article)

And if anything, The Rude Pundit is even more pissed about the situation than I am. Oddly, it's the relative lack of profanity in this post that puts me in mind of Eastwood-esque cold fury in this post... most of his work is much saltier.

On a lighter note, it's also Hitler's birthday. (If you aren't familiar with Hipster Hitler, today's strip is a good one. I guess it helps if you're familiar with hipsters, too.)

Followup: Oh yes... Skynet was activated last night, becomes self-aware any time now, and launches Judgment Day sometime tomorrow. In the movies, it always looked like mid-afternoon LA time, so adjust to your local time zone, and lather up with sunscreen as needed.

The Most Dangerous Illusion

I was just going through my (week) daily newsletter from Spiegel Online, and saw this attention-grabbing headline:

'Our Most Dangerous Illusion Is that We Can Control Nuclear Energy'

Well. I'm not going to argue that there aren't dangers associated with nuclear energy. Having followed the efforts to determine a site for a US nuclear waste repository for about 30 years now, having been frustrated with the process from the outset, and seeing that we still haven't succeeded in finding a satisfactory location, I'm well aware of the many dangers that can arise from nuclear power.

The issue I have with the overly dramatic statement above though is that the person quoted seems to be utterly unaware that other power sources have higher associated risks. Though I linked this chart a week and half ago without reproducing it, I think I'll be more explicit here:

Energy Source              Death Rate (deaths per TWh)

Coal – world average               161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – China                       278
Coal – USA                         15
Oil                                36  (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas                         4  (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass                    12
Peat                               12
Solar (rooftop)                     0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind                                0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro                               0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao)    1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear                             0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

The biggest danger of nuclear power is that it and its effects are invisible; without some special devices- which hadn't even been invented a century ago- there is no way to know what your exposure is. The fact that it is imperceptible to an untrained and unequipped person means that the only response possible is panic. Run Away! You can't see it, you can't fight it, you can't protect yourself from it, so the only sensible option is to be somewhere else.

On the other hand, the background knowledge required to deal safely with radiation (in day to day circumstances, not in a reactor) is not that extensive or demanding, the equipment to detect and measure it isn't that expensive, and it's easy to use, so from my perspective, I just don't find radiation or nuclear power all that intimidating. I worked for the better part of a year at Oregon State's research reactor, doing neutron activation analysis on a potential ore body in Africa. I'm no expert, but I know the safety precautions, I know how to keep from being contaminated, and I know what to do if I do find myself contaminated.

On the other hand, I have no idea what the excess mercury load in western Oregon from coal burning is. I suspect it's pretty low compared to what I grew up with in southeast Ohio, but I get the willies wondering what's coming out of the ground water there now, after another half century of intense coal power generation. Not to mention the excess uranium and thorium- two elements that are naturally concentrated by and bound to organic carbon, and which are simply broadcast to the open environment after combustion. Or alternatively, piled up in immense reservoirs of fly ash waste, then ignored until the dam fails. Which amounts to the same thing.

Another note I received this morning from the Union of Concerned Scientists focused on the same issue:

Help Protect the Public from Toxic Air Pollution

Dear Lockwood,

Toxic air pollutants from power plants—mercury, lead, arsenic, and others—are linked to health problems such as cancer, heart disease, neurological damage, birth defects, asthma attacks, and even premature death. Mercury, for example, is a potent neurotoxin that poses a threat to fetal and infant brain development. And coal plants are far and away the greatest source of mercury air emissions in the United States.

Shockingly, there are currently no national limits on the amount of mercury and other toxic pollutants that power plants can spew into the environment. This gap in our public health protections is all the more disturbing since the Clean Air Act required the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to start regulating toxic pollutants more than two decades ago. Thankfully, in mid-March, the agency finally proposed a mercury and air toxics rule, which will limit hazardous air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants.

Even though the new standards are affordable and would deliver enormous health benefits, some energy companies and their allies in Congress are already working to block or weaken them.

The EPA is now accepting comments on its proposed mercury and air toxics rule. The agency needs to hear from concerned citizens like you, who want a strong rule that protects the public from these dangerous pollutants.

Take Action Today!

Sincerely,

Kate Abend
National Field Organizer
UCS Climate and Energy Program

In short, my response to the Spiegel interview is exasperation. Here we have a person who probably has very little knowledge about, or experience around, radioactive materials, and who has a predictable panic response to them. He is advocating for an end to human use of such materials- again, predictably. But- and once more, predictably- he does not propose realistic alternative sources of energy.

I am not a strong advocate for nuclear power generation; I feel it has many shortcomings. On the other hand, so does every other power source we have developed or have contemplated. To argue that one specifically should be eliminated because it's dangerous, while overlooking the dangers inherent in others, seems ignorant at best and dangerously naive at worst.

The "most dangerous illusion" is not that "we can control nuclear energy." It is that uninformed opinion, generated without consideration of the pros and cons of other options, is a useful springboard for fruitful policy decisions.

Answers To a Couple of Long-Standing Questions

A couple of questions that have nagged me for a while- but for which I haven't bothered to track down answers- are "What is the rate at which we are using oil compared to the rate at which it forms," and "When was the last formally (i.e. Congressionally) declared US war?" On the surface they're unrelated, but looking at our current conflicts, I think you can make a case for an important relationship. Even Afghanistan, which has little in the way of fossil energy resources, can be interpreted at least in part as a manifestation of Muslim anger at perceived exploitation by western corporate interests.

Yesterday, I came across a quote in an interview in Der Speigel claiming "...we consume as much oil in one year as was created in 5.3 million years." I have guesstimated that our rate of consumption is about a million times greater than the rate of generation, but that was just an off-the-cuff stab at the magnitude. While I'd sure like a citation or link to how the method by which "5.3 million" was calculated, it sits comfortably in the range I'd expect, and I'm pleased (though uneasy) to finally see an estimate.

I just Googled the second question, and found this in a PDF (817 kb) from the Congressional Research Service: "The last formal declaration of war was enacted on June 5, 1942, against Rumania during World War II." I had thought maybe Grenada or Panama (during the Reagan administration) had been formally declared wars, but I wasn't sure. Nor was I sure about Desert Storm under Bush Senior. I guess I'm kind of surprised that there has never been an "official" US war during my lifetime.

Oregon's Geyser Geysing Again

...though maybe not for long. About a year ago, there was a report in The Oregonian that Old Perpetual, at Hunter's Hot Springs, just north of Lakeview, Oregon, had stopped erupting. For reasons unknown- though geothermal development and groundwater extraction were suspected- the geyser just stopped in June of 2009.

I first visited the geyser in spring of 1984, I think, on Harold Enlows' petrology class field trip to southeastern Oregon and northwestern Nevada. The geyser was not particularly large, with a plume reaching about 50-60 feet, but it erupted every minute and a half or so. The show was, as the geyser's name implies, pretty much perpetual. So it was with disappointment I read about the feature's apparent extinction.

A report in OregonLive today, however, says the geyser has started erupting again.
(for full-size image and area map, visit the OregonLive article linked above) However, the article warns of the potential for impending projects to negatively impact the geyser and surrounding thermal area. I have mixed feelings about this; I feel strongly about developing alternative energy sources, but it sounds as if this site is unique in a lot of ways. I was startled to read that it is one of the most carefully studied thermal sites in the Americas- though it's so easily accessible, I guess it shouldn't have surprised me that much. But this is the first I had heard of its biological importance:

Even if the water level remains unchanged, heat loss from the re-injected water would "completely wipe out the natural organisms" in Hunter's Hot Springs' 20 geothermal pools and pots, said University of Oregon professor Richard Castenholz.

The 79-year-old professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology has studied the microorganisms there since 1965. He's penned 35 scientific papers on the life forms and discovered a phylum new to science and a waterborne microorganism that grows at the highest known temperature for photosynthesis anywhere on earth, he said.

Hunter's Hot Springs is "one of the classic hot springs of the world," he said, and "the most studied of all the hot springs in the Americas," excluding three geothermal springs in Yellowstone National Park.

Lakeview is remote (though it is on a major north-south route, US 395), out of the way, and unless you're looking for it, the resort and thermal area aren't hard to miss. But I doubt many people have even heard of this spot, let alone visited it. It really is special, and even after a dozen or more visits over the years, a spot I don't get tired of seeing again. If you're going to be in the OR-CA-NV borderlands, it's an especially delectable little morsel in a veritable smorgasbord of tasty geology. It's future is uncertain. I definitely recommend seeing it while you can.

Perfect!

For Zappadan Day thirteen, I was privileged to be in the target area for this commercial, shown by PGE to get consumers to find ways to cut their electricity use... I'm thinking 1986.

"No One Could Have Anticipated..."

The go-to phrase for the new millennium.

• No one could have anticipated Bin Laden was determined to strike inside the US
• No one could have anticipated New Orleans was so vulnerable to a major hurricane- though my first-term geo prof spent 10-15 minutes discussing said vulnerability... lecturing in Oregon, not the southeast... in 1981.
• No one could have anticipated attempting to privatize social security would drive down the ratings of the president trying to do so.
• No one could have anticipated deregulating banks, investment firms and insurance companies would lead to fraudulent lending, use of the loans as investments, and overconfident insurance of those investments, leading to an economic crisis.
  
• No one could have predicted that reneging on numerous campaign promises and continuing policies created by a deeply unpopular predecessor would tarnish the glow of a promising new president.
  
• No one could have anticipated...
  

Yada, yada, yada, I could continue this list for the better part of the day and still have examples left. But the one I wanted to get to was this:

• No one could have anticipated that not enforcing safety regulations, administering agencies tasked with enforcement with members of the regulated industries, and allowing lobbying for exemptions by the same industries, in a potentially phenomenally dangerous and destructive activity could lead to, well, phenomenal destruction.

Via NYT's Green Blog:

“The containment story thus contains two parallel threads,” the commission staff wrote in a summary passage in their 39-page reconstruction of the four-month effort to kill the Macondo well. “First, on April 20, the oil and gas industry was unprepared to respond to a deepwater blowout, and the federal government was similarly unprepared to provide meaningful supervision.

“Second, in a compressed time frame, BP was able to design, build and use new containment technologies, while the federal government was able to develop effective oversight capacity. Those impressive efforts, however, were made necessary by the failure to anticipate a subsea blowout in the first place,” the report concluded.

Headline, 2040: "No one could have anticipated the drastic sea-level rise and increasing severity of extreme weather events."

Yeah, no one could have anticipated. Shame, that.

The Geo Biz

I remember being quite struck, taking economic Geology, when the prof started out the first lecture by pointing out that of the ten top corporations in the US (I presume ranked by revenue), nine were geologic in nature- either energy or minerals. I just checked in Wikipedia- and with the proviso that the page says it may need updating, that number is now seven of the top ten. Walmart, Toyota and Samsung are not (directly) involved in geological resources- though of course, the products they sell do depend on extractive industries- but the remainder are described as "oil and gas" industries. Amusingly, Samsung is described as "conglomerate," but I don't think that is intended in the geological sense.

The point is, geology is big business. There's a lot of money to be made there. (Incidentally, "economic geology," as it was called at the time, is focused on the geology, genesis, and clues to metallic ore deposits, not on the role of geology in economics.) Though I took the three-term intro sequence in economics, it was voluntary. I wasn't surprised that it wasn't a requirement for the degree, but I felt then, and still do, that it should be. There have been several stories over the last few days that have brought this connection between geology and economics back to my attention.

Last Sunday I posted an image of an enormous excavator- thanks to Lost Geologist, I now know that it is located in Germany, near Cologne. In this Flash Earth link, you can see the three enormous excavations west and northwest of that city. (Followup: Holy Cow! Zooming on, you can see the excavators in that pit, too!) Lost Geologist says, "The Garzweiler open pit, one of the largest man-made holes in terms of surface area, is located about 35 km WNW of Cologne, Germany." Again popping over to WikiP, I find they're mining lignite, and the pit has a surface area of 48 square km- about 18.5 sq. mi.

It is the nature of geological resources to occur in enormous amounts, thus requiring enormous infrastructure and capitol investment to get at, extract and process them. Another case in point showed up at Dark Roasted Blend on Monday: The Ultimate Moving: Troll-A Gas Platform. DRB has quite a number of photos of moving the platform, and some interesting information. This monster is incomprehensibly huge, but the following image shows its size compared to the Eiffel tower- keep in mind that much of the structure is underwater.
Currently the largest of these is the Petronius platform, "A compliant piled tower design, it is 609.9 meters (2,001 ft) high, and was arguably the tallest free-standing structure in the world, until surpassed by the Burj Khalifa in 2008..." At a cost of about half a billion dollars, you can begin to get a sense of the investments needed to do geology.

Somewhat closer to home, and much smaller in economic scale, there's a story in today's Oregon Live about Esco:

Esco managers don't mind that each tooth, or point, may wear out in two or three days. In fact, they like it that way.

That's because Portland-based Esco specializes in "wear parts," ground-engaging tools whose lifetimes are limited, much like expendable cartridges that drive printer makers' profits. The 97-year-old heavy-equipment manufacturer could be considered an anachronism in its hometown, known for green industries.

While the corporate offices may be in Portland, the foundry that is the focus of much of the story is near Edmonton, Alberta, and manufactures wear-intensive parts for the Athabasca tar sands operations. One passage I found particularly interesting shows it's not always best to design these points for maximum durability:

For Shell, Esco makes screens for huge cylinders known as rotary breakers that spin continuously like cement mixers, sifting tar sand for processing into crude. Opening a rotary breaker every few months to change parts can cost $2 million, including downtime expenses measured in thousands of dollars a minute. Therefore Shell asks Esco to harden one part and soften another, so everything wears out at once.

Again, the costs of geological extraction are far beyond what most people realize- it's not just wealth in the ground that you can dig up with a garden shovel.

The news regarding geological resources, economics and international relations that I have been most watchful for over the last few weeks is about rare earth elements (REE's)- it hasn't been front page stuff, and I don't know if it's made it into the teevee news, but it should have been up front and center in both. China currently controls the vast bulk of the planet's REE production, and apparently is willing to use those materials as an adjunct to their foreign policy positions. They, of course, claim other reasons, though I'm skeptical. I did a post on this topic 14 months ago, so this problem is not exactly new. I have been hoping to do a meatier post on this, but I keep getting caught up in other shiny things, so I'll just point out some recent pieces that I found especially useful and illuminating. Today's NYT has a very good article (in the business section!) talking about the importance of REE's, the problems created by China's recent (apparent) export embargo, and the environmental dangers that go with their production. As I commented in that older post, I know very little about the geology of REE deposits, but Ole Nielsen at OleLog helped somewhat on Thursday in his discussion of the geology and mineralogy of a particular prospect in Greenland. I say "somewhat" because I have the impression there are a wide variety of deposit types, and this is just one. He also has a list of pertinent links if you're curious to read more on the topic. Another article/editorial from The Idaho Statesman indicates there are some prospects in that state as well.

So even though people rarely think or speak of geology and economics in the same sentence, they are truly inextricable. Both in terms of what it costs to find, extract, and process a resource, and in terms of the revenues and profits derived from such operations, geology is an enormous, even dominant, discipline of importance in today's world.

For The Record

I regularly see the claim from climate denialists that volcanoes dump much more CO2 into the atmosphere than human activities. Only rarely do I see it pointed out that this is simply false.  The Guardian does so today:

If you have been a victim of the rumour, persistent in some circles, that volcanic CO2 emissions dwarf those of human activity, now is the time to be liberated.
According to the British Geological Survey:

The contribution to the present day atmospheric CO2 loading from volcanic emissions is, however, relatively insignificant, and it has been estimated that subaerial volcanism releases around 300 Mt/yr CO2.

The US Geological Survey estimate is lower still:

Volcanoes emit … about 130–230 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts.

What I hadn't seen before was the estimate that human CO2 production was on the order of 100 times that of volcanoes.  Wow.

A Worldview That Resonates With Me

From The Guardian, a fascinating profile of a member of an indigenous tribe who, quite literally, are making a movie in an attempt to save the world: Save the planet – a message from another world

"The first thing that is noticeable to me is that this is still the world," he says. "What's visible is construction, what you have made. This is not something we, the Kogi, are used to seeing. You give precedence to the use of a thing rather than its source. That's the intellectual error. Ultimately, it's all nature." From Jacinto's viewpoint, when we glance at a car we might assess its cost and the status conferred on its driver. We don't recognise it as a clever piece of engineering of resources that once lay inside the earth.

The Kogi are witnessing some of this extraction first hand. Coal mining in the Sierra Nevada has boomed in recent decades (fuelled in part by the demand for cheap foreign coal in post-miners' strike Britain). Over centuries, they survived the wars waged on them by retreating further into the mountains, through dense rainforest and cloud forest dubbed "El Infierno" by settlers. There are still no roads to the Kogi's traditional settlements (Jacinto's home does not exist on official maps), but global capitalism is slowly conquering the Kogi's isolation.

This gets at one of the greatest benefits of having some background in geology.  I can't look at any man-made creation without also considering the natural resources, particularly those that are geological in nature, that went into making it.  I don't think most people ever really stop to look at the stuff around them and wonder where that stuff came from.  I've done this activity with students, but I don't think I have on my blog.  Looking around the room...
Aluminum & linoleum table= bauxite, petroleum + LOTS of energy
Concrete floor= shale, limestone, gravel + LOTS of energy
Paint and Varnish= petroleum products, titanium oxide, pigments
Drywall= paper (=fertilizer- ammonium, potash, phosphorus & insecticides-petroleum + salts) and gypsum
Window Glass= quartz sand + sodium, potassium, calcium oxides +/- boron minerals (not so likely for windows)
Cotton Fabric= fertilizer- ammonium, potash, phosphorus & insecticides-petroleum + salts
Copper wiring, Compact fluorescent lights, fan, clock- copper, iron, mercury, glass, plastic (=petroleum)
...and of course, all the transportation infrastructure and fuel/energy costs to get all this stuff from its point of manufacture to this location.
...and of course, I'm JUST focusing on earth materials, because that's what I know.
...and of course, this is just a cursory skim; I could spend the next day or two looking carefully.

That is a deceptively brilliant comment: "The first thing that is noticeable to me is that this is still the world."  It is still the world.  No matter what we've done to it, no matter how we've processed it to better fit our wants, needs and sensibilities, it's still the world.  I do wish there was a greater awareness of that simple fact.

Car-Free Today? Tomorrow?

Via blogger buddy Pyglalia, I'm reminded that today is "World Car-Free Day." I understand and accept that in today's world, for the majority of people, a car is a necessity- at least occasionally. I don't think it's reasonable to suppose that parents in the US, for example, aren't going to need to have personal transportation available at a moment's notice. My own circumstances, while maybe not unique, are certainly unusual, so it would be terribly unfair to judge others' choices based on my own decision to give up on cars more than 20 years ago. I have driven- a lot, by my own standards- since then, but mostly in university carpool vehicles for educational and research purposes. Almost the entirety of my own personal needs have been taken care of on foot.

Commemorative "days" such as this are a little irritating and exasperating to me. I feel they provide a psychological reward for doing something on one day, for which there should be constant and consistent pressure to try to do every day. Some days you can't go without a car, some days you can. Rather than feeling smug for that one day out of 365 on which you figure out a way to go without one, seek ways to make that the norm for as many of them as you can. And don't sweat the days when you need to drive. Don't make it an issue of pride and guilt. Just don't take daily driving for granted. Mark my words: change is coming. Either renewable energy or the demise of personal transportation is coming at us, faster than most can imagine- and the loss of the latter would be tragic.

Evacuate The North Sea Region. This is NOT a Drill.

"Hayward tells committee of MPs that there are no fundamental weaknesses in BP's North Sea operations, saying he has made safety the firm's top priority"

Yes, that's Tony "I want my life back" Hayward. Demonstrating the depths of BP's commitment to safety first, The Guardian reports

• inspections on BP's North Sea installations found some did not comply with guidelines over regular training for operators on how to respond to an incident.
• inspectors also found the firm had not conducted oil spill exercises properly at some of its offshore sites.

Hayward stated bluntly, "We have made the safe and reliable operations the number one priority of BP." He then didn't add, "Making scads of cash really isn't the point, now, is it?"

More Good News

I don't know how much of this I can take: my inner cynic is screaming bloody murder. Elena Kagan has been confirmed. Now I haven't been following this closely. She seemed like a decent nominee, but I wasn't paying attention to the details of her testimony. I have come to expect confirmation hearings generally to be exquisite exercises in bobbing and weaving, with every effort made to avoid substance. That said, I anticipated that the goopers were going to throw another two-year-old supermarket tantrum: no, no! NOOOOOO! Screeeeeetch! I'm just glad it's over.

Also too, it looks as if the "Static Kill" approach to closing BP's Macondo blowout has succeeded. I had planned on posting that particular bit with the title "Ding Dong, The Bitch is Dead." But two pieces of good news in a day took precedence.

And You Thought The Pelicans Were Horrifying

The Big Picture had a couple of great photo essays this week, though in both some of the pictures made my stomach jumpy."Oil Spill in Dalian, China." The worker was apparently trying to repair an underwater pump.
"Stormy Skies" This is a nice flicker gif that nicely draws out the three-dimensional nature of a storm column, taken from the ISS in December.

Only An Expert

According to OregonLive, there is no longer any oil leaking from BP's Macondo prospect.

"I am very pleased that there's no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, I'm really excited there's no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico," Wells said.

The stoppage came 85 days, 16 hours and 25 minutes after the first report April 20 of an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and triggered the spill.

Now begins a waiting period to see if the cap can hold the oil without blowing a new leak in the well. Engineers will monitor pressure readings incrementally for up to 48 hours before reopening the cap while they decide what to do.

It's not clear how confident engineers are regarding the integrity of the casing under the BOP; this is the reason for carefully monitoring the pressure over the next two days. If the pressure at the wellhead does not reach the calculated value, and stays closer to the hydrostatic pressure at that depth, it would indicate that oil is still leaking in the subsurface. I want to be optimistic...

But given the massive miscommunication and outright dodging of communication that has taken place over the last three months, optimism is hard to come by. Laurie Anderson, on Letterman last night, sums up the gibberish of the language of news in our brave new world.

Sacrifices

Matt Bors is a Portland-based editorial comic artist whose work I see frequently, and whose style is immediately recognizable to me. I suppose it helps that most often I'm in agreement with his points, as above.

Whether or not you agree that energy is a central- if somewhat obscured- cause of the two conflicts in which we're currently engaged, I think one of the most important differences between our current wars and the one I grew up with, Vietnam, is that there seems to be more or less uniform agreement across the political spectrum that we honor the people in uniform who are carrying out the orders of our leaders, whether or not we agree with the leaders' decisions. Apparently, Bors and I are in agreement on that, as well. From Steve Duin's OregonLive column,

He's also among the first to respond professionally. On Aug. 9, Bors will fly -- via New York, Moscow and Dubai -- into Tajikistan, then caravan across the border with cartoonists Ted Rall and Steven Cloud for a first-hand look at how Afghans are dealing, yet again, with war.

"Obligation is too strong a word, but I feel obligated to put myself out there, to risk a little bit," Bors said.

"Am I going to make a difference to anyone on the ground in Afghanistan? No. But I want to do something as an editorial cartoonist beyond simply reacting to today's news."

(...)

The war in Afghanistan is in its 105th month. U.S. troop levels approach 100,000. "Twenty-six million Afghans have been dealing with this my entire adult life," Bors said. "As someone who cares about the politics, I can get on a plane and check it out for myself. And I should, given the opportunity."

I can't help but feel a great deal of admiration for a cartoonist, of all people, willing to put his life at risk for the sake of bringing better perspective to his art.

Why No Oil Wells Off Oregon's Coast?

Simple answer: no oil. There's some minor gas, both offshore and on (with commercial development at Mist, as a minor producer and as a storage site). The gas was thought by Allan Niem, my first term geo prof, and a sedimentary petrologist specializing on the Oregon Coast Range, to have resulted from "cooking" of organic-rich sediments by re-intrusion of Columbia River Basalts into the unconsolidated mud, silt and sand. As a result, gas is not abundant, and is spotty in its occurrence- Mist is the only producing gas field in Oregon.

For oil you need several factors that come together. First you need an organic-rich source rock. Second you need an appropriate thermal history- the sediment needs to be heated and held at 60 to 120 degrees Celsius- the so-called "oil window." Third, you need a reservoir rock- a porous and permeable rock that can store the petroleum; this is typically a sandstone or fragmental limestone. And fourth, you need a trap. The reservoir must be overlain by rocks that don't permit further upward migration of gas and oil, and the two units must be oriented in such a way that oil and gas won't migrate to the surface and be lost.

I suspect Oregon is fine with respect to the first and fourth factors there. The third I'm really not sure about- we have plenty of sandstone, but a lot of it is full of clay. There's some porosity, but I'm guessing permeability is pretty poor. But the killer is the thermal history- few of the coast range rocks have ever been hot enough to generate oil. I suspect there are plenty of potential source materials- particularly in the northern portion, where there is a higher mud to sand ratio, I'd be surprised if there weren't structures that would be appropriate for trapping oil, I'm really not sure about the quality of potential reservoir rocks, but the cooking just hasn't been there.

So that's the answer to this specious little bit of sanctimony in today's OregonLive:

As we all know, drilling for oil off the Oregon coast didn't happen. I don't really know why. Today I can't seem to find anyone who remembers anything about the issue. Whatever the reason, it was a victory for the Oregon coast. Oregon's drilling scheme died in 1981 and seemed buried for all time when Congress banned drilling for oil and gas in offshore waters.

I'm curious if Mr. Love has a car, and how many miles he drives per year. Two Sundays ago, I got into a car for the first time in a year and a half... and it was with a twinge of regret and guilt. Once again, I was just as guilty as the author and everyone else for the ongoing disaster in Louisiana.

Oregon's lack of oil wells is no victory of environmental consciousness. "Drilling for oil off the Oregon coast didn't happen" because there's no oil there. The only real conclusion I can draw from this op-ed, which concludes, "Do we ever learn anything from our history in this country?" is no, we really don't. And that extends to op-ed writers who pointedly note their ignorance even as they assert some opinion on subjects of which they are ignorant.