Posted on 04/26/2008 3:20:58 PM PDT by blam
Its all about climate now, climate, climate, climate. I guess to get ANY money for research now you have to relate it to climate. Al Gore is detroying science.
Bump to a most interesting article. I remember talking to geologists in Baker, CA (which is just south of Death Valley and west of Palm Springs), and Las Vegas, Nevada. They described the geologic landscape in between as so complicated it looked like someone had dropped the whole thing out of an giant airplane. Rock layers hundreds of millions years apart in age stacked on top of each other.
A timeline of significant geological events in the evolution of western North America. Dates are approximate.
350 million years B.P. (Devonian) - An unnamed terrane collides and accretes to the North American Plate, along a line roughly coinciding with the Nevada-Utah border and called the Carlin Unconformity.
250 million years B.P. (Permian) - The Sonomia Terrane collides and accretes to the North American Plate, along a line called the Golconda Thrust (also the name of the event) which runs through central Nevada.
200 million years B.P. (Triassic) - Sierra Nevada batholith first develops.
165 million years B.P. (Jurassic) - The Smartville Block, an island arc terrane collides and accretes to the North American Plate, along a line which coincides with the Mother Lode country of California.
140 million years B.P. (Jurassic) - Second wave of plutons added to Sierra batholith.
90 million years B.P. (Cretaceous) - Third and last wave of plutons added to Sierra batholith.
43 million years B.P. (Eocene) - The Pacific Plate changes its direction of motion from north to northwest.
35 million years B.P. (Eocene) - Rio Grande Rift begins to form.
20 million years B.P. (Miocene) - San Andreas Fault comes into being as the North American Plate begins splitting the Farallon Plate in two.
8 million years B.P. (Miocene) - Onset of faulting creating the Basin and Range geologic province.
5 million years B.P. (Miocene-Pliocene)- Northward propagation of the East Pacific Rise into the North American Plate initiates rifting off of the Baja California peninsula.
4 million years B.P. (Pliocene) - Sierra Nevada begins to rise.
3.5 million years before present (Pliocene) - The Pacific Plate changes its direction of motion about 11 degrees east of its previous heading, from northwest to the present north by northwest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_timeline_of_Western_North_America
I fear you're creating a hostile climate.
Read "Assembling California" by John McPhee. Most of CA west of the Sierra consists of island chain terranes that have slammed into the continent from all over the planet. It's some really crazy mixed-up geology.
BP? You mean BC.
Geology is barely a science. Mostly opinions, like psychology.
That would be 350 million minus 2000 or 349,997,000 BC
Impossible! The world is only 6,000 years old. Those that say otherwise are idolators and a threat to our way of life.
BP = Before Present
Besides, I didn't write that piece. It came from wikipedia.
Have you ever taken a Geology class for credit or read, from start to finish, an actual peer-reviewed academic paper on geology?
You a geologist? If it has math it is natural science. Otherwise it is opinion.
A geologist is like a detective.
Psychology is a religion, although geology isn't far behind.
Thanks for the reference, I'll look it up.
I'm not a geologist. You didn't answer my question, btw; how can you make a judgement about an entire field of study without having taken even a basic class or read a scientific paper about the discipline?
Geology is chock-full of math; huge amounts of thermodynamics to understand rock formation, for example. Seismology involves vast amounts of data and statistical analysis. Understanding tectonics involves GPS data analysis, complex computer modeling, etc.
And of course it involves massive amounts of grueling fieldwork; weeks and months living in the field, walking thousands of miles, examining and sampling outcrop after outcrop, learning to visualize what's below the surface from what you can see at the surface.
Pick up an ACTUAL journal of geology, and you'll find many articles chock-full of mathematical equations (I don't mean press releases, Science Daily, etc.)
Your geological contributions seem to be, if I recall correctly, popping up every time there's a quake near a full moon to assert it caused the quake (and being completely quiet about the many quakes not near a full moon.) I guess that's your impression of what geology is.
Good gawd. I used to like to read your comments, but not so much anymore since they seem insane.
Take a vacation.
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