[W]idespread knowledge and well-informed citizen support are not necessarily required for implementation of effective climate policies. From “Does effective climate policy require well-informed citizen support?”, Rhodes et. al, Global Environmental Change, Volume 29, November 2014, Pages 92–104
What makes the first tree decide, “OK, now’s the time to turn.”
One of my treasured memories of college thirty-plus years ago is the mornings spent in Bob Carson’s geology classes learning the physiographic provinces of the North American continent. It was a beautiful slide show combined with a deeply meaningful (to me) new set of organizing principles for looking at the landscape around me. I wasn’t …
Continue reading ‘Driving the seam of the North American continent’ »
Five years ago, Lissa and I stopped to talk to a ranger on the Petroglyph Point Trail at Mesa Verde. We’d been admiring the turkey vultures soaring above the canyon, and the ranger clued us in. If you like turkey vultures, she told us, go to the Spruce Tree House overlook at dusk tonight and …
Back from Mesa Verde and filing my pictures, there is this: More impressive to me, in some ways, than the big stuff. Eight centuries ago, some people went to a lot of trouble to climb up to that upper alcove and build a little wall. Maybe they built more. I don’t know.
Lissa and I stopped this morning at Mesa Verde’s “Mummy Lake”, more recently renamed “Far View Reservoir,” on account of apparently there was never any mummy. Now we learn, thanks to science, that there was probably never a reservoir or lake, either: The structure at Mesa Verde National Park known historically as Mummy Lake and …
Continue reading ‘“Mummy Lake” – we always want it to be about water’ »
You’ve seen lots of pretty pictures of the Colorado River flowing anew into its delta, right? But one of the most interesting things going on is the movement of water out of sight, beneath the ground (see “hydrology at the end of a river” for some background). I had a chance this morning to visit …
For Christmas, my friend Alison gave me the 1928 Popular Science Monthly “Pocket Guide to Science.” It’s a treasure, including things like this: What produced the Grand Canyon of Arizona? It was cut down, during millions of years, by the Colorado River which still flows in the bottom of it. The sand and clay cut …
James May explains why you can’t use tree rings to date the age of a Las Vegas casino (and some other dendro science): Learn more: The Tree Rings’ Tale: Understanding Our Changing Climate (Worlds of Wonder)
Big package in the Sunday newspaper and on line triggered by a visit to the Jemez Mountains by Journal multimedia guy Pat Vasquez-Cunningham and myself to spend time with Tom Swetnam: The son of the National Forest Service’s Jemez district ranger, Swetnam grew up with a hand-cranked phone in the front bedroom, hardwired to the …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I helped create elsewhere: “Is fire good? Is fire bad”?’ »