Geobulletin alpha

Imaggeo on Mondays: The British Winter Storms 

This week’s imaggeo on Monday’s photography is Godrevy Lighthouse in North Cornwall (UK) experiencing the full force of the 2013/14 British Winter Storms which caused damage across the south west of the country. During mid-December 2013 to mid-February 2014 the UK was hit by six major storms bringing record precipitation, strong winds, huge waves and generating overall hazardous conditions. Despite the overall consensus being that these winter months were very wet, the question arose: did [...]

Which Are Older? Lakshadweep Islands Or Andaman Nicobar Islands? 

A friend asked me this question: Which formed first, Andamans or Lakshadweep? My answer was- Lakshadweep islands as a system of living coral atolls etc is a Holocene system (past 12 thousand  years). These coral communities rest on earlier Pleistocene reefs. So the history of reefs and atolls is probably a Quaternary phenomenon going back several hundred thousand years when ice age driven

Roaring Inferno in Alberta is What Climate Change Looks Like. 

The wildfire in NW Alberta grew much larger overnight and now over 85,000 people are evacuated as fire crews try to save the city. The question about how this is related to climate change is an easy one, a very easy one. It is related, and the data backs it up. Jeff Masters (at Weather Underground) has an exc. post on this, and he posted a graph from Rutgers (see

Once again looking at the seismic safety of Canada's nuclear stations 

Reference The question of seismic safety for nuclear plants has arisen in New Brunswick.  There, they seem to have people dedicated to killing themselves over the issue. In Ontario, it's a different story.  Nobody cares and nobody is willing to kill themselves, especially me.  If some eager starving young reporter tries to raise the issue, they are met with the stony silence of the

The Consensus on the Consensus Is Itself Overwhelming 

My friend Ed Maibach at George Mason Univ. emailed me some interesting abstracts today that show how overwhelming the consensus is on climate change among scientists working in the field. Researchers like Ed and Dr. Oreskes (among others) have shown that the consensus now is nearly unanimous among those in the field. The belief that scientists are divided over the question must be the greatest scientific myth in the United

EGU 2016: Get the Assembly mobile app! 

The EGU 2016 mobile app is now available for iPhones and Android smartphones. To download it, you can scan the QR code available at the General Assembly website or go directly to http://app.egu2016.eu/ on your mobile device. You will be directed to the version of the EGU 2016 app for your particular smartphone, which you can download for free. Once you open the app, the dashboard will show you five possibilities: you can browse and search the meeting programme, select presentations to be [...]

Proud of the Linux world 

Sometimes I have something to tell, but also need to realize that it is not so easy to explain. How many times have you heard of Linux, or maybe Ubuntu? Probably very often, right? I imagine that the comments were (between you and those who spoke, newspaper or friend who is): “Do I need to delete Windows?”, “It is easy, just if you know to program!” or “but there are problems with the printer…” But what makes me proud is when I ask the question, but you [...]

How Does Earth’s Continental Crust Form? A New Bottom-Up Theory 

Scientists have long believed that continental crust forms in volcanic arcs. The lingering question has been how exactly that

If Journalism is About Truth, Then Why Are Top Newspapers Knowingly Publishing This Lie 

Astrology is bunk. Hopefully you know that, but it really does beg the question of why almost every Sunday paper in America will publish a load of silly lies tomorrow, and yes it does matter. Science literacy is a serious issue in the U.S. How do I know? First of all, not ONE of the top Republican candidates for President of the United States will admit that climate change is

Some Thoughts About The Coming Winter: Part One 

This time of year it’s the number one question that every meteorologist hears: “What’s the winter going to like??” The correct answer is, “We can’t predict the weather 3 months in advance with any real accuracy.”. That said, we can make some decent guesses about the climate patterns that we may see, in some areas more than others. First, let me show you why we really cannot use numerical weather

Can you change the world? 

That’s a tall order contained in that question, but it’s something that everyone’s thought about at some point or another. The realisation that you don’t have to settle for being a bystander, that you can do something that will affect the world, is a potent one, and one that forms the basis of most great

Citi’s Sustainability Strategy 

By Chandler Precht After being the first global bank to be confronted by activists over 15 years ago, Citi was forced to address some of the environmental issues surrounding its business, including the question: If banks are financing companies whose practices impact the environment, who is responsible for the associated waste and risks? Since then... read

Being objective (with yourself) 

I recently recorded a podcast with Chris Jones of Rock Your Research (check out that website – he’s had some great guests on so far!) The very first question I got to answer about grad school was what I struggled the most with, and all those of you who’ve gone through grad school can probably guess that I said “impostor syndrome”. I’ve written a little bit about it before, but it’s

Which was the biggest dinosaur? (Answer: it’s complicated) 

I just gave an answer to this question on Quora, and it occurred to me that I ought to also give it a permanent home here. So here it is. This is a great example of a question that you’d think would have a simple, clear answer, but doesn’t. In fact, as a palaeontologist specialising in

Come to Energy Day for a fun look into the future (and for funnel cake)! 

What do funnel cakes and energy have in common? That’s not a question most people ask. Thankfully there’s an easy answer and that’s Houston’s Energy Day this Saturday, Oct. 17 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.! Houston’s Energy Day is the largest free … Continue reading

Climate change is coming to a place near you 

What are the local consequences of a continued global warming? And what kind of future climate can you expect for you children? Do we expect more extreme events, and will a global warming affect the statistics of storms? Another question is how the local changes matters for local communities and the ecosystem. It may be

How Many Dinosaurs Are There? 

Palaeodiversity and formation counts: redundancy or bias?. 2015. M. Benton, Palaeontology. In a new study published this week, Professor Mike Benton has explored how knowledge about dinosaurs has accumulated over the past 200 years, since the first dinosaur was named in 1824. His research does not answer the question once and for all, but it suggests that strong caution is needed with

Am I The Only One Who Noticed.. 

Knowing that NASA,NOAA, and EVERY major scientific society on Earth says that we must immediately reduce our emissions of Carbon, or risk dangerously changing the planet’s life support system, you’d expect that at least one question in the debate Thursday night would be about that subject. You’d be wrong. Now, I could understand skipping something real difficult, like is the Earth over a million years old?, or are the fossils

Short Announcement: Leaflet 1.0 

Leaflet is one of a kind in the list of javascript webmapping libraries. It was designed with simplicity, performance and usability in mind. Unfortunately the development seemed to have stopped for a while. This week Vladimir Agafonkin (the creator of Leaflet) released a Beta version of Leaflet 1.0 Leaflet 1.0 Leaflet is used by a variety of companies as their major mapping engine when it comes to the question “Where is my ‘stuff'”: Github, Facebook, Flickr and other big [...]

Introducing The One Repo 

You know what’s wrong with scholarly publishing? Wait, scrub that question. We’ll be here all day. Let me jump straight to the chase and tell you the specific problem with scholarly publishing that I’m thinking of. There’s nowhere to go to find all open-access papers, to download their metadata, to access it via an open