Apparent Dip

I just added a new link to my "Awesome Links" sidebar to a blog i just found (thanks to Blogger! Surpirse there!) called Apparent Dip. It's written by a post-doc researching at a college near the Bay Area, and it's got some interesting stuff about geology (yes, the title is a geologic term).

By the way, the new line beneath my blog title is the motto for the Great California ShakeOut, which, Apparent Dip tells me, is a series of events set up by southern California to educate and prepare people for "the Big One." I'm gonna go make myself an earthquake kit now. Maybe I'll post its contents and such here later.

My Week in Healdsburg

Some people have complained about my lack of posting. Well, it's only been 10 days or so, I don't think that that is so bad.

Anyway, I've spent most of this week in Sonoma County, specifically the city of Healdsburg, looking at landslides and other recent geomorphic things. We were working for the Preservation Ranch that is planning to build vineyards in the Gualala Watershed (go ahead and keep saying "Gualala" to yourself over and over; it doesn't get less funny). So my partner and I were tasked with helping professional geologist Martin Trso in determining what is called a Sediment Budget. Basically it is just figuring out how much sediment is being transported from the ridgetops, where the vineyards are to be built, to the valley floor below. So I spent four days hiking up and down through stream channels and gullies trying to figure out how much stuff had been deposited. Not real easy, let me tell you. Especially when the hillsides are slippery and are 50% gradients. Regardless, it was much fun, though very tiring.

And I'm back now, but the twists keep coming. A strange job opportunity came knocking this week for me, but I'll have more on that later.

We're All Ignorant

I had a Professor once who enjoyed pointing out that anytime people make a "best guess" or average line, it means that they're just ignorant, and don't really know what the hell they're talking about; or rather, don't know all the variables in the system they are dealing with.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Climate study, where even when we think we know stuff we're usually wrong.

Take, for example, this story. See, in the 1980s it was found the CFCs (the stuff that used to be in hair spray and refridgerators) were really, really bad for ozone, and that our ozone layer was being destoryed. So the whole world stoppped using CFCs. Amazing, right? Well, recently the ozone layer has picked back up slightly, and most people concluded that this proves the dramatic effect humans can have on the environment. But wait!

The model indicates that the apparent slowdown of ozone loss during the late 1990's most likely resulted from a maximum in solar intensity rather than from the ban on CFCs, the team reported 8 February in Geophysical Research Letters.

Yes folks, it turns out that it probably wasn't humans causing a hole in the ozone, just the sun going through its normal cycles.

Like I said, we're all just ignorant.