faulker015

After all the negative things that I have said about President Trump, I thought I should contribute to his fear-mongering when it comes to immigrants.  I have thus provided a link to a worrisome post from July of 2007. See: Armored Immigrants

The tragic wildfires in California are, in large part, related to an ongoing drought but there has been some speculation that they are a consequence of global warming.  While stagnant weather patterns have set the stage for wildfires throughout the history of our planet, their current relationship to climate change is less clear.  On the other hand, one can reasonably speculate that a warmer climate will make dry areas drier and wet areas wetter; after all, latitude, geography and ocean currents will not change (at least in the foreseeable course of human history). As with hurricanes, the incidence of wildfires may not be directly affected by global warming but their severity will surely be augmented.  Those who live in fire-prone areas (e.g. semiarid forests), like those who live on barrier islands or in coastal lowlands, must accept the fact that the risk of disaster will continue to rise as the climate warms.  Economically, that risk will place a stress on society...

Watching a film set in Cape Town, South Africa, today, I wondered about the geology of Table Mountain, which looms above the city.  As is often the case, the natural history of that famous massif is complex. About 500 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period, a rift valley developed in the southern portion of a continental plate that included today's Continents of South America, Antarctica and Africa.  Initially flooded by a shallow sea, the rift accumulated sediments over the next 100 million years.  Throughout the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic Eras, this region was folded, lifted and eroded by tectonic forces as Earth's Continents merged into Pangea and then rifted apart. Among the sedimentary rocks that formed within the ancient rift valley was a thick layer of hard quartzite sandstone; resistant to erosion, this Table Mountain Sandstone now outcrops as the steep cliffs of Table Mountain and the Cape Fold Ranges of western South Africa.  Of note, the west...

Yesterday, as I flew from Missouri to Colorado, our route took us across the central latitudes of Kansas.  The low morning sun angle and clear skies provided ideal conditions for observing the topography below and I got a good look at the Smoky Hills. The Smoky Hills Province of the Great Plains stretches across north-central Kansas and into south-central Nebraska.  It is characterized by low hills that have been sculpted from Cretaceous bedrock by the tributaries of the Smoky Hill, Saline, Solomon and Republican Rivers (south to north).  That bedrock, deposited within and along a Cretaceous Sea that once covered most of the Great Plains region, is comprised of three bands: Dakota Sandstone, Greenhorn Limestone and Niobrara Chalk (east to west). Those who drive across Kansas on Interstate 70, cross the southern portion of the Smoky Hills Province between Salina and Hays; there, some ridges of the Province are adorned with turbines of the massive Smoky Hills Wind Farm....

The eruption of a volcano in Guatemala and its tragic consequences have drawn attention across the globe this week.  Some will blame the event on the random violence of nature while others will see the hand of God in the destruction and suffering.  But if you must accuse someone or something, blame the Atlantic Ocean. During the Permian Period, some 250 million years ago (MYA), the Continents had merged to form Pangea.  By the Triassic, about 200 MYA, the Tethys Sea opened, separating Laurasia (the northern Continents) from Gondwanaland (the southern Continents).  Then, during the Jurassic Period (some 150 MYA), the Atlantic began to open and the American Continents were pushed westward, a process that continues today.  In concert, the oceanic Farallon Plate was forced to subduct beneath the advancing Continental Plates; today, the Juan de Fuca Plate (in the Pacific Northwest), the Cocos Plate (west of Mexico and Central America) and the Nazca Plate (west of Sou...

While Switzerland is famous for its Alps, which cover the southern half of the country, it also harbors a second mountain range, the Juras, which stretch along its northwestern border with France.  More than 200 miles in length, the Jura Mountain Range arcs from the Rhone Valley, at Geneva, to the Rhine Valley, at Basel. The Jura Mountains have a core and outcrops of marine Jurassic limestone, deposited in the  Paratethys Sea when dinosaurs roamed the planet; these sedimentary rocks were uplifted during the Pliocene Period of the Cenozoic Era (some 5-2 million years ago) as pressure from the ongoing Alps Orogeny rippled the landscape to their north.  While Jura means forested or mountains in regional native languages, it is also the basis for the word Jurassic , a name chosen by geologists for the middle period of the Mesozoic Era.  The Jura mountains are indeed forested except for alpine grasslands on the higher summits and sheer rock cliffs on some of the mounta...