A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: Geotripper Emerges From the Apocalypse...

This week is my commemoration of ten years of geoblogging. I've been digging through the archives for some of my favorite posts of the last decade, and we've reached 2011. We had a series of epic trips that year, one with my students across the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains, and the other a personal journey across the Basin and Range, the central Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. They resulted in not one, but two blog series, A Convergence of Wonders, and Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel. I would recommend the first if you want to know what adventures await if you attend a Modesto Junior College geology field studies course, and the second if you want to know what happens when you just up and leave on a two-week trip without a plan, and just a vague goal (Rocky Mountain National Park). Those of you who know me will understand how hard that can be, starting out a day not completely certain where one will end up that night.

But as fun as those series were for me to write, I picked three individual posts from 2011 as my favorites. One was utilitarian, one was about the adventure of being a geologist (or geology fan), and the third, my response to yet another irresponsible prediction about a giant earthquake or apocalypse or some other world-ending thing that got the web and cable news all excited. Of course the predicted date came and went with no unusual activity as they always do. Frankly, I sort of lost it. That blogpost is below. The other two are coming shortly...enjoy!


From March 24, 2011: 

Welcome, survivors of the Apocalypse! Like you, I have been hiding in my underground bunker, safe from the radiation cloud and protected from the supermoon and giant earthquake that caused California to plunge into the sea. I'm waiting to see if my investment in oceanfront property on the Carrizo Plains has paid off with a nice seaside view. Did any of the southern California mountains remain as offshore islands? I was sort of hoping to have a few on the horizon. I've been rationing my Cheetos, Pringles and beef jerky. I lined my bunker with lots and lots of tin foil to protect myself from the electronic emanations of those pointy-headed "scientists" who kept poo-pooing the predictions of those who sensed the coming Apocalypse in their minds and mathematical calculations. As soon as I saw the work of the prophets on the Internet I knew it had to be true. Their prophecies were aired by the cable news networks, so I double-knew it had to be true. I didn't feel the earthquake because I built my shelter on a spring-loaded foundation. Was it really shaky? My clock broke, so I've been estimating the number of days I've been in hiding by making chalk marks on the wall; it's 2012 isn't it? The Mayan calendar came to an end and all? Have the Zombies died out yet?

Well, that's that. The supermoon weekend passed and California is still here. The full moon didn't scrape along the ground and erase cities. There were no tidal disruptions. There was no earthquake. There were no volcanic eruptions. No one melted from the radiation cloud. The prophets and predictors were wrong, yet again, wrong again for the umpteenth time. Over and over they are wrong. Hundreds of times they have been wrong. And still they find a stage on the cable news networks, the Internet, the radio...over and over. There always seems to be a crowd of uninformed and misinformed people who take them seriously, and there are uninformed and misinformed news readers who are unable to critically assess their irresponsible claims. At the same time they dismiss the statements and findings of academics who have given over their lives to the study and understanding of the earth sciences. And in the end the charlatans and fakes are never brought to account for scaring people and causing economic disruptions.

I've seen enough of "judgment journalism" in politics to know that cable news outlets are capable of shaming those who cross the line of honesty and decency. They are capable of using their media platform to upbraid and criticize officials who steal money or engage in hypocritical behaviour. Why are they not criticizing and shaming those who carelessly predicted earthquakes and radiation poisoning without regard to the consequences of being totally (and predictably) wrong? I have never seen the news readers take a self-proclaimed "psychic" to task for their hundreds of wrong predictions.

Wouldn't it be nice just once to see a camera crew waiting outside the home of one of those self-proclaimed psychics or would-be earthquake prophets and ask them over and over why they made yet another wrong claim that needlessly scared people? Just once to hear them told to their face that they are charlatans and fakes? How long will the con artists persist when they know they will be subjected to public derision when they make their spurious claims?

In the meantime, the media outlets need to learn the real facts about the possibilities of quakes and other hazards in California (and anywhere else) and make sure their audiences know the actual magnitude of the threat. The faults are here after all, and there is a lot of built-up stress. Damaging quakes will happen, and we need to all be as prepared as possible. The first thing to do is to arm yourself with knowledge. Get this knowledge from responsible government agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey, or the California Geological Survey, or academic organizations like the Southern California Earthquake Center. Then you make the appropriate preparations: keep emergency supplies of water, flashlights, radios, batteries, and first aid kits, both in your home, and in your car. Have a family plan for what to do when disaster strikes.

By the way, it is ok to have Pringles and Cheetos in your emergency supplies...but put some healthy stuff in there too. There is junk food and there is junk news. Too much of either can be harmful to your health.

Here We Go Again: Yellowstone is Going to KILL US ALL! Wait a minute...

I'm going to start with the conclusion (I've highlighted some parts using the bold font):

Geological activity at Yellowstone provides no signs that a supereruption will occur in the near future. Indeed, current seismicity, crustal deformation and thermal activity are consistent with the range and magnitude of signals observed historically over the past century [Lowenstern et al., 2006]. Over the past two million years, trends in the volume of eruptions and the magnitude of crustal melting may signal a decline of major volcanism from the Yellowstone region [Christiansen et al., 2007; Watts et al., 2012]. These factors, plus the 3-in-2.1-million annual frequency of past events, suggest a confidence of at least 99.9% that 21st-century society will not experience a Yellowstone supereruption. But over the span of geologic time, supereruptions have recurred somewhere on Earth every 100,000 years on average [Mason et al., 2004; Sparks et al., 2005]. As such, it is important to characterize the potential effects of such events. We hope this work stimulates further examination of ash transport during very large eruptions.

The reason I am doing so is because the media is reporting on the body of the report that came out recently concerning the possible effects of a major caldera eruption at Yellowstone National Park. That means we are getting the usual headlines like:

If Yellowstone Supervolcano Erupts, Ash May Reach NYC

Yellowstone Supervolcano Eruption Would Doom the United States

Eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano will turn the US into a Third World Country

Eruption of Yellowstone supervolcano could spell the end of the US

For the most part, the reports themselves aren't too bad (there ARE exceptions). The thing is, we've always known that a Yellowstone caldera plinian supereruption would be devastating. That's old news. The purpose of the research was to model the potential effects of such an event. I get that disaster and omens of disaster are what sell newspapers or put eyes on advertising, so headlines go over the top, just like they always have. But this approach leaves the readers with the wrong impression, and they are going to worry about whether eruptions of Yellowstone need to be added to their fears of terrorist attacks, Megalodon shark attacks on their Caribbean cruise, or whether vaccines cause autism. In other word, useless levels of stress based on incorrect or blatantly wrong information.
 
I want to send kudos to a couple of media outlets with less sensationalistic headlines, such as those from the Billings Gazette: Researchers predict ash fall if Yellowstone supervolcano erupted or the Daily Digest: New computer models show likely fallout of a volcanic eruption in Yellowstone.
These kinds of headlines actually communicate accurate information without the terror-inducing yellow journalism.

This report from the U.S. Geological Survey serves a useful purpose. It is part of the kinds of research that can help cities, states, and nations plan for and cope with natural disasters when they occur. The authors were careful to state in their conclusions the extreme unlikelihood of a rhyolite caldera eruption, but their computer model might be useful in predicting the effects of lesser eruptions elsewhere in the world, eruptions that are far more likely.

You can see the report here:
Mastin, L. G., A. R. Van Eaton, and J. B. Lowenstern (2014), Modeling ash fall distribution from a Yellowstone supereruption, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 15, doi:10.1002/2014GC005469. 

But don't fret. There are still the Yellowstone WOLVES to worry about!

Giant California Earthquakes and the Radiation Cloud; California Falls into the Sea: Geotripper Emerges from the Apocalypse...

Welcome, survivors of the Apocalypse! Like you, I have been hiding in my underground bunker, safe from the radiation cloud and protected from the supermoon and giant earthquake that caused California to plunge into the sea. I'm waiting to see if my investment in oceanfront property on the Carrizo Plains has paid off with a nice seaside view. Did any of the southern California mountains remain as offshore islands? I was sort of hoping to have a few on the horizon. I've been rationing my cheetos, pringles and beef jerky. I lined my bunker with lots and lots of tin foil to protect myself from the electronic emanations of those pointy-headed "scientists" who kept poo-pooing the predictions of those who sensed the coming Apocalypse in their minds and mathematical calculations. As soon as I saw the work of the prophets on the Internet I knew it had to be true. Their prophecies were aired by the cable news networks, so I double-knew it had to be true. I didn't feel the earthquake because I built my shelter on a spring-loaded foundation. Was it really shaky? My clock broke, so I've been estimating the number of days I've been in hiding by making chalk marks on the wall; it's 2012 isn't it? The Mayan calendar came to an end and all? Have the Zombies died out yet?

Well, that's that. The supermoon weekend passed and California is still here. The full moon didn't scrape along the ground and erase cities. There were no tidal disruptions. There was no earthquake. There were no volcanic eruptions. No one melted from the radiation cloud. The prophets and predictors were wrong, yet again, wrong again for the umpteenth time. Over and over they are wrong. Hundreds of times they have been wrong. And still they find a stage on the cable news networks, the Internet, the radio...over and over. There always seems to be a crowd of uninformed and misinformed people who take them seriously, and there are uninformed and misinformed news readers who are unable to critically assess their irresponsible claims. At the same time they dismiss the statements and findings of academics who have given over their lives to the study and understanding of the earth sciences. And in the end the charlatans and fakes are never brought to account for scaring people and causing economic disruptions.

I've seen enough of "judgment journalism" in politics to know that cable news outlets are capable of shaming those who cross the line of honesty and decency. They are capable of using their media platform to upbraid and criticize officials who steal money or engage in hypocritical behaviour. Why are they not criticizing and shaming those who carelessly predicted earthquakes and radiation poisoning without regard to the consequences of being totally (and predictably) wrong? I have never seen the news readers take a self-proclaimed "psychic" to task for their hundreds of wrong predictions.

Wouldn't it be nice just once to see a camera crew waiting outside the home of one of those self-proclaimed psychics or would-be earthquake prophets and ask them over and over why they made yet another wrong claim that needlessly scared people? Just once to hear them told to their face that they are charlatans and fakes? How long will the con artists persist when they know they will be subjected to public derision when they make their spurious claims?

In the meantime, the media outlets need to learn the real facts about the possibilities of quakes and other hazards in California (and anywhere else) and make sure their audiences know the actual magnitude of the threat. The faults are here after all, and there is a lot of built-up stress. Damaging quakes will happen, and we need to all be as prepared as possible. The first thing to do is to arm yourself with knowledge. Get this knowledge from responsible government agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey, or the California Geological Survey, or academic organizations like the Southern California Earthquake Center. Then you make the appropriate preparations: keep emergency supplies of water, flashlights, radios, batteries, and first aid kits, both in your home, and in your car. Have a family plan for what to do when disaster strikes.

By the way, it is ok to have pringles and cheetos in your emergency supplies...but put some healthy stuff in there too. There is junk food and there is junk news. Too much of either can be harmful to your health.

The Yellowstone Media Storm: We're all gonna die! Oh, well sure, but...

Is Yellowstone gonna blow? Sure. Will everybody die? Sure, absolutely. But there is pretty much no connection between the first question and the second. Yellowstone caldera will in fact erupt again some day; it's a forty mile wide caldera with a huge magma chamber miles deep in the crust. That's the reason there are geysers there, and all those hot springs. And everyone will die, eventually. That's kind of a rule about living. But worrying about whether I'm gonna die from an eruption at Yellowstone is so far down my list of concerns that I am more worried about being gnawed to death by a pack of angry prairie dogs. It could happen, but it is highly unlikely.
I'm writing on the subject because a commenter asked for my take on the news this week about the activity around the Yellowstone caldera (for the record, "supervolcano" isn't a geological term). My best advice, before I finish with my own two cent's worth, is to check out the Eruptions blog here and here. Erik Klemetti does some excellent analysis of the story and how quickly things can be overblown by a media that thrives almost exclusively on spectacle, and has little use for reasoned discussions of the actual risks.

As I considered the question of an 'informed' response, I had to wonder if I'm not guilty of the same sort of exaggeration and sensationalism of cable news and other media. In my pursuit of educating others, I am not above discussing lurid tales of death and geological mayhem. After all, when I talk about volcanoes in class, I lead with Krakatoa, Tambora and Pompei, and I discuss the potential effects of a gigantic rhyolite caldera eruption such as those that took place at Yellowstone three times in the last two million years (not to mention broadly equivalent eruptions at Valles Caldera and Long Valley Caldera). I have a clear conscience on the matter, because I follow up with a discussion of the actual risk and probability of such events happening to our time; an eruption like the Yellowstone Caldera happens somewhere in the world every few hundred thousand years. Smaller, but certainly dangerous eruptions like those of Tambora (1815), Krakatoa (1883) and Katmai (1912) happen somewhere in the world on a scale of decades. And when these events take place there are clear signals that something is about to happen.

So, the Yellowstone Caldera floor rose around a foot during the last decade (that's the caldera in the picture above; I was standing on one rim, the mountains in the far distance form the other rim). There was an intrusion, a sill, that was filling and inflating with magma. There is nothing unusual or particularly alarming about this, as Yellowstone is an active magma chamber, and such events are normal. Although it has been 70,000 years since the last eruption in the park (and more than 600,000 years since the so-called 'supervolcano' eruption), it could happen again, but any activity would be accompanied by many other phenomena that would provide plenty of information about the scale of the eruption and the hazard to people in the region. My take? Learn about Yellowstone; it is a fascinating place, worthy of our attention and worthy of protection as a crown jewel in our national park system. But worry about the end of civilization as we know it in a vast explosion of fire and volcanic ash? No, there are other problems that we need to think about.

The best quote on the matter? From Max Read at Gawker: "But who do you trust, some kind of "professor," or your overactive imagination?" To which I might add: "But what about professors with overactive imaginations?"

It's a bird! It's a flying dinosaur! It's...neither. Oh, and Abraham Lincoln was President of China

Pterosaurs from Ptexas! This article describing the new discovery is headlined "dinosaur", and is categorized under the "dinosaur" section of the paper's science division, but never mentions dinosaurs in the the text. And it shouldn't have. It turns out to be a well-written article about the discovery of a new pterosaur species with a 9-foot wingspan that used to soar over the Dallas, Texas region. The pterosaurs were a separate line of flying reptiles: they weren't dinosaurs at all. I did notice that a Google search of the new pterosaur Aetodactylus halli produces many stories of the discovery, and only a few make the dinosaur mistake (I'm afraid Fox News made the bad list, too). Unfortunately the Telegraph comes into criticism because it was the first story I saw, and I had to go looking for the others.

So, what's the problem? These pterosaurs lived when the dinosaurs did, and you invariably find one in the plastic dinosaur toy kits (along with sabertooths, mammoths, and cavemen). But morphologically they are descended from an entirely different group of Paleozoic reptiles. From a paleobiologist's point of view, you might as well call kangaroos placental mammals instead of marsupials. If this were an article about human history, it would be like saying that Abraham Lincoln was the president of China, or that Napoleon fought the battle of Waterloo in Florida. A newspaper editor would never let those headlines get printed, but the dinosaur mistakes happen all the time.

The only dinosaurs with nine-foot wingspans are the ones flying around southern California and the Andes right now. This is because birds are the creatures most closely related to dinosaurs still in existence.

Earth: The Alternative Story

I look at my posts for the last week and I see that I have been on quite a rampage of "munching Cheetos in the basement" blogging, complaining about treatment of geologic topics in the media. It was set off when I experienced the full brunt the appalling coverage of the impending tsunami in Hawaii (and the aftermath), and soon after came comments on headlines about the demise of the dinosaurs, the continuing lack of full opportunity for women (and minorities) in geology-related industries, and finally a bit on the manufactured doubt industry and climate change deniers.

Truth be told, people who know me well know that I am a pretty even-tempered person in person, and very few of my students have ever seen me angry. Those who have seen me angry have remarked about what a quiet experience it is. Very...quiet. But a couple of things brought me to a slow simmer and the tsunami business just caused my temper to boil over. I am reminded of an old Gary Larson Far Side cartoon about a herpetologist that gets an accumulated case of the willies after working for decades in the reptile house of a zoo. Or even better, the famous XKCD comic "Someone is wrong on the Internet". One doesn't want to be shrill, but things have just gotten so...ridiculous.

Like the denizen of the insane asylum who is "feeling MUCH better now", I'm beginning to think about returning to the Other California series, but I just wanted to deal with one more of THOSE topics. It's like I want to kick the beehive one more time...it has to do with the value of a good science education.

A poll by the University of Texas/Texas Tribune published a couple of weeks ago indicated that 30% of Texans believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted, and another 30% don't know. This is a sad commentary on the state of education in Texas, not to mention the rest of the country, and is obviously a religious issue as well (people who reject basic scientific knowledge on this topic generally do so because of a conflict with their religious beliefs).

We discussed this topic in my historical geology class this week. We've had seven weeks of basic stratigraphic principles, rock identification, analysis of sedimentary structures and environments, and some background material on paleontology. Evolution was the topic at hand, and being that I live in an exceedingly conservative part of California, I am quite sure I have some religiously conservative students. I've never tried to squelch their questions, nor have I attacked their beliefs, but I do insist that they at least understand why geologists, biologists and paleontologists accept evolutionary theory (and that's theory, mind you, not hypothesis). Our interactions are generally congenial.

I did try something new this week though. In an act that would make a creation-scientist proud (or perhaps very nervous), I presented the entire creation-science model to a classroom full of students with a certain level of geologic expertise. This has always been the wish of the creation-science community, that teachers "teach both sides of the issue". I don't think they've ever fully considered the ramifications of what happens when people with just a minimum of geologic knowledge hear the whole story. Keep in mind, we aren't "introducing God" into the science classroom, this is all "science".

Let's see, the earth starts. That's right, it starts, because it all happened only 6,000 years ago, and there was no evolution of the crust or anything like that. Life is present from the very beginning, and all life is living under a cloud. Well, actually a canopy of lots and lots of water vapor. The vapor prevents bad energy rays from the sun from striking the living things, so the living things live much longer, the humans for nearly a thousand years. There weren't any carnivores; T-rex ate leaves, and so did every other creature that we think of as animal devourers. The canopy also screws up radioactive carbon, so carbon-dating is inaccurate (unless it gives the right dates, that is). It's not clear how uranium, rubidium and potassium dating methods were affected. The surface of the earth is very smooth and covered with vegetation. If there are any seas at all, they are shallow. No major mountains to speak of.

Then something goes very wrong, and, well, all hell breaks loose. The canopy collapses into an incredibly vast rainstorm that goes on for several weeks (40 days maybe? Can't say for sure). A vast amount of water that was stored within the earth becomes superheated and blasts to steam at various seams in the crust as supersonic geysers shoot even more water in the atmosphere. The earth's crust destabilizes, and vast amounts of basalt come pouring out, producing what would become oceanic crust at a rate of around 3 feet per second, roughly 50 miles a day. In just a few months, this is enough to form our ocean basins. The smooth crust is broken up, and lots and lots of mud swirls around in the maelstrom of water, laying down tens of thousands of feet of sediment in just a few weeks or months. The continents rise, crash into each other, form giant mountain ranges, and deep subduction zones start swallowing up the crust. Water drained off the higher areas, carving deep canyons (like the Grand Canyon) in a few days, while the mud and lime layers were still soft.

Meanwhile, everything and everyone dies. All those things that died were left behind as fossils. The fact that there seems to be an order to the appearance of species in the rocks (fish first, amphibians later, reptiles after that) is an artifact due to the fact that the more intelligent species knew to climb hills while the water was rising, so they didn't get entombed until later in the flood. Of course, life still exists on the planet, so somehow all the species survived the "hydraulic cataclysm". One suggestion is that some humans gathered all the species on a big boat of some sort, and released the animals after the water drained away from the higher parts of the continents. The strange distribution of animals (marsupials in Australia, giraffes in Africa, llamas in South America) resulted from various humans taking their favorite animals with them as they repopulated the earth.

Now, a boat containing all the millions of species on the planet is an impossibility that even a young child can figure out. So it wasn't "species" that went on the boat, it was "kinds". Species are an artificial human convention anyway; they don't have meaning in the real world. These "kinds", or baramin, included a dog kind, a cat kind, a sauropod kind, and so on. In the aftermath of the flood, the dog kind diverged genetically (but not evolved; this isn't evolution) into foxes, wolves, coyotes and...good ole dogs. The cats changed into tigers, lions, and jaguars. And so on. This happened in a few centuries after the "hydraulic cataclysm". The dinosaurs lived on, too, but then there was another disaster.

Because the vapor canopy was gone, the sun was shining on the earth surface and the climate became exceedingly unstable. Within a few hundred years of the flood, an ice age covered much of the planet, and wiped out the dinosaurs and a whole bunch of other strange beasts that we only find as fossils today. Other incredible canyons in the world, like Yosemite, were carved by the glaciers in a few tens of years through solid granite.

Finally things settle down, maybe 3,500 years ago. Volcanoes slow down, earthquakes happen less often, sea-floor spreading declines to a few inches a year. And that's all you need to know.

If I have gotten some minor details wrong, don't bother me about it because life is too short to argue endlessly. It it seems fanciful, you can check out the details with groups like the Institute for Creation Research. But for some reason, they never seem to put the whole story in one place. It might draw too much attention towards the conflicts this story has with the basic laws of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and logic. And it will draw lots of derision too, just like it did in my historical geology class last week. You have work very hard to "believe" this model, much less accept the so-called evidence.

If you feel I have insulted your religious beliefs, you would be wrong. This isn't about religion. This is about an alternative "scientific" history of earth and life that would be taught in public schools under the banner of "equal time" if local governmental entities like the Texas Board of Education had free rein on their collective desire to stop the teaching of evolution (I am happy to hear that the worst member of the creation-science faction lost his primary race to someone else a few days ago).

Once again, this is also a rant of sorts about media treatment of science. I have grown accustomed to seeing stories of evolution "balanced" by an interview with a creation-scientist as if their model has some kind equivalency with actual science. It doesn't. Not even close. And believing really, really hard won't make it so either.

UPDATE: One of my students (commenting on my Facebook version) makes a really good point: "You know how little kids sometimes play pretend, and as they get more competitive with one another, they backtrack and add stuff to the game, changing the original 'rules'? Creation 'science' reminds me a lot of that... "

Scientists REALLY REALLY Know What Killed the Dinosaurs! Well, Kinda...Maybe...

What Bryan at In Terra Veritas said (and he said it better, but read on if you wish!)...

What's going on? Another group of headlines on scientific topics/events and the media response that I've been complaining about in the last week: a tendency to overstate, overhype and overdo things. A week ago it was the Chile earthquake and resulting tsunami. This week is a perennial favorite topic of the media: what did in the dinosaurs?

An article in Science (abstract only, check your library for access to the whole article) titled The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary would seem to be attempting to put an end to the ongoing debate about what did in the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago. I can't really speak to the merits of the paper, I haven't read it and I am not an expert in the area, but in my mind I immediately had questions.

The paper had 41 authors. Forty-one! I immediately wondered who they were. Were these 41 people the most prominent researchers on all sides (not "both" mind you, because there are not just two sides, but "all") of the decades-long debate? Was this the surrender of the opposition, and a final nail in the coffin of the hypothesis that an intense episode of volcanism in India caused the extinction? Was this a paper by the volcanism researchers agreeing that theirs was a failed hypothesis? Or were they all experts on the potential effects of asteroid impacts trying to present the final argument of the prosecution, presenting an overwhelmingly powerful case backed up by new evidence? I look forward to hearing from my paleontologist friends and colleagues. I'd like their take on this study.

My source of irritation is the response of the media. The headlines of the articles include phrases like "It's Official...", "Scientists Settle...", and "Mystery Solved!" that suggest that the matter is settled. I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect it is not. Bryan's take on the article strongly suggests that the debate is fated to continue. It's exceedingly rare for a single research article to be the final word on any debate in science. There are few of those "eureka" moments in science, but a great many bits of incremental advances of understanding brought about by newly emerging evidence. But for some reason, the media seems most often to miss the distinction.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of the media articles that do a better job of placing the report in proper context: Popular Science notes at the end of the article that the debate really is continuing, and the title ("According to New Comprehensive Review, a Giant Meteorite Caused the Dinosaur Extinction") is less sensationalistic. In the same way, an AP story also carries a more appropriate headline: "Researchers reassert that impact killed dinosaurs".

At least no one is going to die if the media gets the framing of the story wrong on this issue....

Today's picture focuses on some dinosaur tracks found near Moab, Utah, along the Colorado River.

UPDATE: Scientific American has a good review as well, but the subtitle would have made the better title ("remains the best explanation").

I Have a Dream...in which the 24 Hour Cable News Networks Serve a Useful Purpose

Photo of tsunami surge from West Hawaii Today

I have a dream, or more a fantasy, because dreams are more likely to come true. I fantasize about the day that a cable network newsreader (I know they like to call themselves "anchorpeople", but forget it) stands up in front of the television cameras and says, "I'm sorry, but I and the entire news team in this room and on the site of the geological event out there haven't got the faintest idea of what we are babbling about. So we are going to suspend our coverage until we have hired a correspondent who has the scientific education to give us a cogent and reasoned explanation of what is going on."

My dream isn't going to come true, is it? As I noted yesterday, the networks will spend tens of millions of dollars to cover minute aspects of sporting events, but they can't shell out, say, $90,000 a year to a competent geologist/earth scientist who can warn them that they have gone overboard on the hype, and to calm down.

What was the real story yesterday? There was a massive earthquake in Chile yesterday, an 8.8 magnitude monster that was the fifth biggest tremor in recorded (i.e. on a seismometer) history. It produced a tsunami that would affect the entire Pacific Ocean basin. The coverage of the earthquake itself earns the news networks a C+, because they apparently still remember some of the science they learned six weeks ago in Haiti.

But...their coverage of the effects of the quake on the Pacific Basin and Hawaii? An F. Not even a gentleman's F+. They've done grievous damage to the entire concept of responsible journalism. They hated that the Indonesian tsunami struck without warning so that they couldn't plan for their coverage of a tragic human event. So this quake hits, and they have a half day's warning to prepare for the event in Hawaii. They were so incompetent that they could position stationary cameras in what seemed to be only three locations (including what seemed hours of pictures of one moronic surfer), and then breathlessly babbled for hours about the approaching maelstrom. The tsunami arrived, and they didn't recognize it happening in front of them. Then they acted disappointed that it wasn't the disaster they had been building up for hours. And they cut to commercials. This, of course, is what I was raging about yesterday.

The story they missed? A giant earthquake produced what could very well have been a colossal tsunami. The civil defense apparatus of the state of Hawaii gears up for the event, sounding the warning sirens hours ahead of the arrival of the tsunami surge, and doing an incredible job of warning the population of what could be coming. The people of Hawaii do the right thing, stocking up on emergency supplies and taking shelter in the appropriate locations. The evacuations run smoothly, from what little I hear, and if a monster tsunami had hit, the death toll would have been very low. The tsunami hits with an intensity at the lower end of the predictions, and a number of fascinating phenomena take place (and I am still waiting for some decent coverage of what actually happened). There was a collective sigh of relief, and life returns to normal, after a brief interruption and a little inconvenience. That was the real story, and it was for the most part untold.

The damage they have done? By building up the story to a fever pitch, they could have caused unnecessary panic and worry, and when they expressed their disappointment (in their attitude, if not their words) at the outcome, they set up a situation in the future where people might not take tsunami warnings seriously. They have turned this into a "Peter cries Wolf" story in which the civil defense people actually seem to be apologizing for overestimating the size of the waves (and please follow and read the link). The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has nothing to apologize for; they acted appropriately for the situation, and the population responded well. I can only pray that in future events they will also respond correctly.

My friend at Phreatic Ramblings captures a particularly inane conversation that took place yesterday. I normally like Rick Sanchez if he is talking about politics, but he didn't do so well here.

UPDATE: Sorry Rick, but your cartography ain't so good either (Thanks, Rebecca)

What? You Were Expecting This?

If you were watching the coverage of today's tsunami in the Pacific Ocean basin, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was what was converging on Waikiki, given the breathless reporting that took place on the cable networks. This photo began life as a photoshop effort that circulated on the internet in the days following the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami of 2004. It wasn't enough that the tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people throughout the Indian Ocean. Someone had to try and make it seem bigger (if someone actually wants to admit owning a copyright to the photo, let me know and I will take it down if you wish).

I began the day being somewhat impressed with the quality of the discussion of the massive earthquake in Chile. Some of the newsreaders displayed some level of knowledge about just how big the quake was (the 5th largest ever recorded in the last hundred years or so) and something of how quakes are assessed and measured. But then the scene shifted to Hawaii and I became more and more disillusioned.

What a wonderful opportunity to educate an audience on the nature of geologic hazards and processes! A tsunami was coming and the story would unfold in front of the world. We would be able to see it happen and even better understand what was happening. What took place instead? Four or five wasted hours of breathless useless words, an unrealistic build-up to a climax that wasn't going to happen, and a near total misunderstanding of the extraordinary thing that did happen right there on the screen in front of us. The arrival of the tsunami was obscured by one of those ridiculous banners (which I could almost swear said "BREAKING STORY: HAWAII ABOUT TO WASH INTO THE SEA", but I could be mistaken). The newsreaders went on babbling, blithly unaware of what was happening on the screen. Because it wasn't killing anyone, I guess.

But I forget myself...of course television exists only to sell commercial products, and the only way products will be sold is if millions upon millions of people are watching. News is merely a means to an end, and the end has little to do with educating the public. But who am I to complain? I'm just a geologist and teacher who felt horribly disappointed today at what could have been.

I think about the Olympics I've been watching this week...tens of millions of dollars were spent designing a media extravaganza in which every aspect of every sporting event could be seen from three or four different camera angles. There seemed to be hundreds of expert commentators who could describe every single move made by every single athlete. Every triple-toe-lutz, every slalom turn.

But to describe a geologic event of worldwide importance and interest? With twelve hours of lead time, the networks got all of one camera pointed to Hilo Bay?? As far as I am concerned, the day was an epic fail by the news media.

I see little evidence that the cable networks employ even a single scientist. The only scientists ever in evidence are the "meteorologists" but does anyone think they were chosen for their expertise? Screen presence is everything, of course. Most of the weather people show a shocking ignorance of climate science and the issues involved in global warming and climate change. Of course when a volcano erupts or a fault slips to produce an earthquake, the network newsreaders interview volcanologists and geologists. But they almost never ask the right questions, and half the time they are looking for the answers that feed their preconceptions and the need to increase viewership.

Am I being too tough on the cable networks? What do you think?