'Uplift' baffles scientists, transforms area beach...

Homer News ^ | July 10th, 2009

[visualops]

You posted a live link to your AOL inbox email??

[visualops]

They only have one dinky picture.

[landerwy]

I know. It was Sarah palin’s anouncement that did it.

[count-your-change]

It must be an illusion since changes like that takes millions of years to occur, shifting plate tectonics and such. Must be the ginandtonics causing it.

[dr_lew]

Here's a Google Maps link with the site at center, AFAICT. Bluff Road, mentioned as being "above the new uplift" is at the upper right. Other details also check out. ( Notice the hang glider at the mouth of Diamond Creek. )

Even if the exact cause and timing of the uplift presents a puzzle, I don't think you can really say it's a huge surprise, geologically speaking, that some kind of shift would occur at the base of these cliffs, which show obvious signs of slumping in the geologically recent past.

[dr_lew]

...At the island of S. Maria (about thirty miles distant) the elevation was greater; on one part, Captain Fitz Roy founds beds of putrid mussel-shells still adhering to the rocks, ten feet above high-water mark: the inhabitants had formerly dived at lower-water spring-tides for these shells. The elevation of this province is particularly interesting, from its having been the theatre of several other violent earthquakes, and from the vast numbers of sea-shells scattered over the land, up to a height of certainly 600, and I believe, of 1000 feet. At Valparaiso, as I have remarked, similar shells are found at the height of 1300 feet: it is hardly possible to doubt that this great elevation has been effected by successive small uprisings, such as that which accompanied or caused the earthquake of this year, and likewise by an insensibly slow rise, which is certainly in progress on some parts of this coast.

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, Chapter XIV - Chiloe and Concepcion : Great Earthquake

[TaraP]

Maybe there is a Supervolcano down beneath?

[dr_lew]

I think this is a result of slumping, as speculated in the article, “A huge land mass above the zone might have slipped,...”

[TaraP]

Alaska Region.. Not sure if this means anything regarding the Uplift...

[dr_lew]

I suppose that the mild shaking due to small or distant earthquakes could trigger some kind of slippage in the cliffs. According to the article, the uplift cannot be accounted for by a local fault movement, since this would have been felt locally as a severe earthquake. Also, I think that the area of uplift is very small and isolated.

[TaraP]

The Ring of Fire looks pretty active right now.... Not sure what any of this means, at least not yet...

[dr_lew]

The older I get, the more I understand we know jack little about a lot of things. Half the stuff science says is the "truth" is simply their best WAG

This sort of impression is typical of the "decadent phase" of modern science. "Decadent" here is a term of art, and refers to the stagnation, or solidification, if you will, in the fundamental theories of science, with the advances occurring in application and "filling in details".

As working scientists work at more and more refined levels, things do get a lot hazier, and one sees only a flat plateau, forgetting the height that has been climbed to attain it.

Where's the WAG in an iPhone? This technology is BTWD of fifties SciFi. Just try reading some.

[dr_lew]

You would have to compare this map with a sampling of others like it. I checked the “archives” but they didn’t have this type of map in them, that I could see. At any rate, if there’s something big cookin’, we’ll know in due time.

[TaraP]

Exactly!

Just posted this one as well...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2289367/posts

[ASOC]

Looks like a good time to head to Homer and pick up a truck load of beach coal.

[Daniel II]

I would love to see a before and after shot of the whole area.

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, it's gotta be due to CO2 emissions. Thanks fanfan. ;')

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[SunkenCiv]

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[Fred Nerks]

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/darwin/charles/beagle/complete.html

“...It is impossible to reflect on the changed state of the American continent without the deepest astonishment. Formerly it must have swarmed with great monsters: now we find mere pigmies, compared with the antecedent allied races. If Buffon had known of the gigantic sloth and armadillo-like animals, and of the lost Pachydermata, he might have said with a greater semblance of truth that the creative force in America had lost its power, rather than that it had never possessed great vigour. The greater number, if not all, of these extinct quadrupeds lived at a late period, and were the contemporaries of most of the existing sea-shells. Since they lived, no very great change in the form of the land can have taken place. What, then, has exterminated so many species and whole genera? The mind at first is irresistibly hurried into the belief of some great catastrophe; but thus to destroy animals, both large and small, in Southern Patagonia, in Brazil, on the Cordillera of Peru, in North America up to Behring’s Straits, we must shake the entire framework of the globe...”

---

I always enjoy reading from Darwin’s Journals. He describes what he sees and tries his best not to step on uniformitarian toes...but doesn’t really succeed.

[gleeaikin]

Actually if this area is near Redoubt, an active volcano, the uplift could be due to a phenomanon call “inflation” in which liquid magma builds up under a land area. The fact that they have not had much in the way of earthquakes suggests that if this is happening, then the magma must be at quite a deep level. Any other volcano buffs had some ideas or info? I think I will Google Redoubt and see if I can find their seismic info.