Yesterday, I mentioned climate change visualizer extraordinaire Zack Labe. As delineated then, he’s a PhD student at U.C. – Irvine in the Earth Systems Science department. He’s producing some really excellent #dataviz on climate change. Today, I’d like to share a short exchange I had with Zack about his work. 1) Please give … Read more
The amount of sea ice on planet Earth is much, much lower than ever recorded at this time of year. Will this anomaly turn out to be a relatively minor “weather” event? Or is this what a sea ice tipping point looks like?
Here are three pairs of GIGAmacro images to illustrate a few techniques I’ve used in preparing the samples and the images. The image pairs here illustrate the effects of transparent acrylic coatings, pressure-washing, and post-imaging clean-up in Photoshop. Let’s begin with a meta-ignimbrite of the Catoctin Formation, cut with a rock saw and polished using … Read more
I tried something new this morning, and polled Twitter for their choice of Friday fold: Quick poll – What do you want for the Friday fold? 30 minutes to respond. — Callan Bentley (@callanbentley) November 18, 2016 As of the time of this posting, the first choice, “Lewisian gneiss @ Tarbet” won out with 7 … Read more
I listen to a few podcasts, and I’ve been meaning for a long time to write down some thoughts about them to share, in the same spirit in which I review books, or less frequently movies or television programs. First, a general comment: I really, really like podcasts. This is a medium that is unique … Read more
Now that we’ve examined the geology of the outcrops at Funzie Bay on the island of Fetlar in northeast Shetland, let’s stroll along two beaches. Here we have cobbles from Funzie Beach and a small beach eroded from serpentenite and metaharzburgite of the island’s ophiolite complex. Compare. Contrast. Rejoice. [gigapan id=”193073″] Link GigaPan by Callan … Read more
It’s been a week since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the race for the President of the United States. I’ve been processing the news, and I’m not happy about it. I’ve been on “radio silence” for a week, mourning, ruminating, fretting. From my perspective, this is one of the most disturbing developments in the … Read more
Funzie Bay in eastern Fetlar, Shetland, is the place with a stretched-pebble metaconglomerate that triggered the development of the Flinn Diagram. Join Callan on a pilgrimage of structural geology to this special place.
Here’s the answer to the contest: This is an outcrop on the beach at Funzie Bay, Fetlar, Shetland, U.K. The modern beach sediment is the lightest-colored, rounded cobbles at both the top and bottom of the photo. Poking out in between is a layer of light-gray colluvium (angular fragments) overlain by dark peat, now perhaps … Read more
Lens cap for scale. Correctly tell me what’s going on here, and you get A Big Prize!