Primary v. Secondary Industry
There is a lot being said these days about bringing back our nation’s lost glory. This causes me indigestion on multiple levels. Fortunately, two of them are easy to reconcile: I cannot agree with...
Category: Earth Materials
Deep Sea Mining: Part 2
Before we jump into the deep water, a couple possibly irrelevant tangents: I love the earth, am fascinated by its processes, and wish it a long and happy life. Anybody who has opened their...
The Phantom Tollbooth
It was 1981, and we were continuing our exploration for copper, zinc, gold, silver, and cobalt in a massive sulfide deposit in Southwestern Oregon, just north of the California border. It was a vigorous...
Desalination (and political suicide?)
Another short one. I tried to abandon poli-sci over fifty years ago, but here I am… old and staring down toward the end of the tunnel, and sucked back into the swamp (thanks DD)....
It’s Still All About the Water
This one will be short, but really, what is there to say at this point when absolutely none of us know what is actually happening? A recent article in the New York Times titled...
White Sand Beaches
I got a question from Jane who, while reading Marker Bed, became intrigued by the reference to quartz sand on page 29 of the print versions. (By the way, if you have not yet...
Reflection v. Refraction
It was late afternoon on Christmas and I was driving west into the setting sun. It had been wet most of the day, but the rain machine had turned off for a bit, the...
Paleontology: How the Earth Makes a Fossil
We’ve spent a couple recent posts discussing geologic time and the two methods earth scientists use to describe and measure it. We started with a general introduction to earthtime and absolute age dating (Intro...
Intro to Geologic Time
One thing about time is that it keeps moving—always into the future and always in polar opposite, yet mutually supportive rhythms: relative and absolute. Relative time is agreeably flexible and adapts itself to the...
Yes, Virginia, Lead IS Toxic
This is a follow-up to earlier posts regarding the toxicity of lead, and is in response to an 8 July 2025 article on the Associated Press website titled “A Kindergarten in China Added Lead...
