GeoNews Round-Up

Here is my delayed list of the latest, most tantalizing Earth news. We’ve been (sadly) moving house from Placitas, New Mexico, back into the city of Albuquerque, where my wife has a fine job teaching English at Albuquerque Academy. Moving has been so much fun that I couldn't tear myself away from the tape gun. On a related and gratuitously self-serving note, our sweet mountain-view home in Placitas is on the market, in case anyone out there wants to escape their urban wasteland or feels the need to break away from some oppressively green landscape for neatly spaced pinyon and junipers of the high desert. That said, on to the news.

July 31
Saving Great Migrations
Discovery News
Last spring my son and I were waiting in a parking lot near Albuquerque’s Old Town when we heard a strange droning noise. It seemed to come from every direction. Then we looked up and saw endless Vs of geese following the Rio Grande north. That week I saw thousands of birds on the same course -- while the humans below were mostly oblivious. Here’s a story about protecting the last remaining great migrations.

August 1
Naked Earth
BBC News
Getting a lot of buzz this week is the OneGeology project, which will soon be supplying the world with a free global digital, online, interactive database of geological mapping. For the vast majority of humanity who find geological maps darn pretty but downright impenetrable: Let the fun begin.

August 1
The Year After
Discovery News
Okay Hollywood, so you were only off by 300 or 400 days. In the movie The Day After an ice age literally chased the heroes down the street. That’s what movie makers call “rapid climate change.” The reality is that rapid climate change is generally though of in terms of decades, at fastest. Here’s a bit of research that cuts that down to a single year. 

August 2
Earthquakes Don’t Kill People…
CNN
…buildings do. But not in California, thanks to tough building codes. Here’s the only remaining “second day” news angle that hasn’t been thoroughly excavated from last week’s mediocre California quake. Will someone PLEASE find a seven-legged deer now?

August 4
Hurricanes: Quality or Quantity?
Discovery News
As it is with beer, wine, chocolate or sex, so it is with hurricanes. Sort of. In this story some researchers find evidence that no matter how much we fear hurricanes may be multiplying because of global warming, they aren’t. But global warming does appears to help hurricanes get better at hurricaning, i.e, those tropical cyclones we have are getting stronger. 

August 4
11 Killed on K2
AFP
This story made me feel cold, despite the summer heat.

August 4
Drill This Dude!
LA Times
A two-acre patch of ground near Fillmore, Calif., has heated up to 800 degrees. Firefighters and other emergency personnel are monitoring the situation and a local commercial bakery has asked permission to bury three tons of raisin bread dough on the land (okay, I made that last part up). So clearly there is an alien spacecraft under the ground there. Okay, okay, it’s not that either. Most likely it’s naturally-occurring hydrocarbons slowly smoldering away, say experts at the scene while discreetly pushing the antennae back into their heads. Seriously though, this latter explanation seems especially likely to me. Way back when I actually practiced geology I did a lot of drilling around Fillmore and struck a lot of “dinosaurs,” as my chemist always described the oil after he analyzed the soil samples. Alas, it was never my Texas Tea.