This link is a couple of days old now - but that's OK, because this came out the same day that Curiosity landed on Mars. So it was a bit overshadowed, you might say.
Friedman wrote an op-ed in the NY Times about the importance of the natural gas boom, and the need to get it right. In it he argues points that I've put forward before, that is that a natural gas boom, as is currently happening in the U.S., is good for the economy and the environment - but only if done right.
Good for the economy because this is "home grown" energy, mined from U.S. lands, and it will create jobs in the gas industry as well as other industries that could make the switch from coal or oil, such as the automotive industry. Switching away from oil is also beneficial for our national security, since many of the nations that benefit from huge oil prices are also ones that don't care for the U.S. very much.
Good for the environment is a bit of a harder sell, because natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and therefore CO2 is released as a product of combustion. CO2 being the leading cause of climate change, the continued release of CO2 is still problematic. However, natural gas releases much less CO2 than coal, and so therefore represents a reduction in the amount of CO2 we emit. Combining that reduction with other reductions, such as increased energy efficiency and more reliance on non-fossil fuel energy sources, really gets us headed in the right direction of emitting less CO2. One problem is that methane itself, the principal constituent of natural gas, is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. Leaky gas pipes, therefore, could potentially offset the gain by reduce CO2. Therefore we need to continue to build a culture of good stewardship of our natural resources, and reduce waste by fixing things like leaky pipes. It isn't just regulations and laws and infrastructure that we need to change; we need to continue to change hearts & minds as well toward stewardship of our planet. Again, however, the point that Friedman makes is that the gas boom is a good thing if we do it right. If we don't, then problems like leaky gas pipes could possibly offset the gains.
Another perspective on the environment is the amount of other toxic materials often released with the burning of coal. Toxic metals such as mercury are released when coal is burned, but they are not found in natural gas. Switching from coal to natural gas therefore reduces the amount of these pollutants. It also reduces the mining of coal, which is the cause of mountain top removal in my beloved Appalachia.
Another con argument for the natural gas boom is the process of fracking - again, the point being made by Friedman that this gas boom is only beneficial if we do it right. We need proper procedures, good engineering practices, sound regulations, and proper enforcement. These are all problems of political will and of engineering, and they are not at all problems that we should not be able to overcome. After all, we just dropped a mini-cooper sized mobile chemistry laboratory on Mars - this problem should be relatively easy in comparison!
Lastly, I want to again stress that natural gas should be seen as a transition fuel from the dirtier fossil fuels toward cleaner sources of energy, eventually eliminating our use of them in favor of fully renewable sources. But that process is going to take a long time. In the mean time, we can make some positive gains.
Geoscience news & issues on planet Earth, as well as anything else geological I feel like yabbering about.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Curiosity Stuck the Landing!
After posting the Curiosity Round-Up last night, it was amazing to watch the events of the landing unfold. We landed a mini-cooper sized robot on Mars by lowering it down by a rocket-propelled Sky Crane, and then it started sending back images! It was an amazing feat.
Someone posted this today on about a billion websites:
I enjoyed watching the Virtual Landing Party, a Hangout on Air, hosted by Fraser Cain of Universe Today, which featured a number of astronomers discussing the events.
This stunning image is IMO the best so far returned from Curiosity, as it shows 2 of the rover's wheels, its shadow, and Mt. Sharp, Curiosity's target area, in the background.
One of my favorites, however, is this one sent back by the Mars Reconassaince Orbiter, which has been in orbit around Mars for the past 6 years, taking images of the Martian surface. Here it captured Curiosity on the way down with the parachute deployed, as well as Curiosity's heat shield, still in descent, after it was shed from the space craft.
And finally, can't miss today's xkcd:
Way to stick the landing, NASA! There ought to be a dozen gold medals for this one.
Someone posted this today on about a billion websites:
I enjoyed watching the Virtual Landing Party, a Hangout on Air, hosted by Fraser Cain of Universe Today, which featured a number of astronomers discussing the events.
This stunning image is IMO the best so far returned from Curiosity, as it shows 2 of the rover's wheels, its shadow, and Mt. Sharp, Curiosity's target area, in the background.
One of my favorites, however, is this one sent back by the Mars Reconassaince Orbiter, which has been in orbit around Mars for the past 6 years, taking images of the Martian surface. Here it captured Curiosity on the way down with the parachute deployed, as well as Curiosity's heat shield, still in descent, after it was shed from the space craft.
And finally, can't miss today's xkcd:
Way to stick the landing, NASA! There ought to be a dozen gold medals for this one.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Curiosity Round-Up
Tonight, we humans are attempting to land the biggest & most amazing space robot ever on Mars. If landing goes well, this will be a tremendous achievement.
For starters, Curiosity is GIANT compared to previous Mars rovers.
It was 15 years ago that the first rover, Sojourner, landed, and 8 years ago that Spirit and Opportunity landed. Opportunity has just finished up another Martian winter and is revving up for another great season of discovery. Curiosity will have more tools, cooler tech, & bigger guns. Spirit & Oppy were like geologists with hammers & hand lenses. Curiosity is more like a geochemist, a mobile analytical laboratory. More on the 3 generations of Mars rovers here.
The descent down to the surface is the part where problems might occur, which is why so many are talking about it and paying attention tonight. It should land within the next half an hour! If you haven't seen it yet, watch this NASA JPL video to see what it takes to land a robot the size of a dune buggy on another planet.
Today, CNN ran a story on Scott Maxwell, a guy who drives these rovers around. What a cool job!
Even a couple of celebrities from Star Trek fame have gotten in on the fun. Watch William Shatner & Wil Wheaton welcome Curiosity to the surface of Mars.
Finally, get your own Curiosity at 1:64 scale.
We're about 15 minutes to touchdown, so I'd better post this and get to watching the show!
For starters, Curiosity is GIANT compared to previous Mars rovers.
It was 15 years ago that the first rover, Sojourner, landed, and 8 years ago that Spirit and Opportunity landed. Opportunity has just finished up another Martian winter and is revving up for another great season of discovery. Curiosity will have more tools, cooler tech, & bigger guns. Spirit & Oppy were like geologists with hammers & hand lenses. Curiosity is more like a geochemist, a mobile analytical laboratory. More on the 3 generations of Mars rovers here.
The descent down to the surface is the part where problems might occur, which is why so many are talking about it and paying attention tonight. It should land within the next half an hour! If you haven't seen it yet, watch this NASA JPL video to see what it takes to land a robot the size of a dune buggy on another planet.
Today, CNN ran a story on Scott Maxwell, a guy who drives these rovers around. What a cool job!
Even a couple of celebrities from Star Trek fame have gotten in on the fun. Watch William Shatner & Wil Wheaton welcome Curiosity to the surface of Mars.
Finally, get your own Curiosity at 1:64 scale.
We're about 15 minutes to touchdown, so I'd better post this and get to watching the show!
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
New EarthCache Developed: Hill City Fold, Black Hills, SD
I've mentioned a couple of times previously that I spent the month of June out in the Black Hills of South Dakota, teaching field camp for Wheaton College at their Science Station. It was a great experience and hopefully I'll get to give it a go again in the future. I've also written recently about EarthCaches, a program between the Geological Society of America and Geocaching.com. While in the Black Hills, I logged a number of EarthCaches and also recorded information about a couple of places in order to place some new ones.
The first one I've set up is a roadcut on Highway 16/385 near Hill City, SD, within the Black Hills. The roadcut exposes a fantastic example of a fold. EarthCaches must have an educational component, and for this one I ask the geocacher to identify whether the fold is a syncline, anticline, inclined, or recumbent, so the geocacher has to learn something about the axial plane of a fold and be able to recognize it in the rocks. So, forgive me if I don't post a picture of it! The cache description contains enough information for geocachers to know what these terms mean, so by observing the fold in the field this ought to be easy to answer this question.
I also ask the cacher to measure the horizontal length of the fold as exposed in the roadcut. One of the easiest ways to measure distance over land is with a GPS, which every cacher ought to have with them in the field. In order to navigate toward a point of interest, geocachers often enter the coordinates of a location into their GPS to set a waypoint, tell the GPS to "GoTo" the point, and the GPS will then tell them how far away the point is. This obviously makes it easy to see your distance to the point decreasing as you get closer. I have cachers use this technology in reverse - establish a waypoint (POI) at one end of the roadcut, tell the GPS to "GoTo" that point, and then they themselves physically walk away from it to the other end of the roadcut. When they reach the other end of the roadcut, the GPS will tell them how far they've gone. This exercise hopefully helps cachers to learn to use GPS technology in a way they might not have thought of before. After all, why would I tell the GPS to "GoTo" a point, but then I myself "GoAway" from it? It isn't an intuitive use of a GPS but works really well.
The new EarthCache was just approved, so we'll see how long it takes someone to visit the site and log it.
The first one I've set up is a roadcut on Highway 16/385 near Hill City, SD, within the Black Hills. The roadcut exposes a fantastic example of a fold. EarthCaches must have an educational component, and for this one I ask the geocacher to identify whether the fold is a syncline, anticline, inclined, or recumbent, so the geocacher has to learn something about the axial plane of a fold and be able to recognize it in the rocks. So, forgive me if I don't post a picture of it! The cache description contains enough information for geocachers to know what these terms mean, so by observing the fold in the field this ought to be easy to answer this question.
I also ask the cacher to measure the horizontal length of the fold as exposed in the roadcut. One of the easiest ways to measure distance over land is with a GPS, which every cacher ought to have with them in the field. In order to navigate toward a point of interest, geocachers often enter the coordinates of a location into their GPS to set a waypoint, tell the GPS to "GoTo" the point, and the GPS will then tell them how far away the point is. This obviously makes it easy to see your distance to the point decreasing as you get closer. I have cachers use this technology in reverse - establish a waypoint (POI) at one end of the roadcut, tell the GPS to "GoTo" that point, and then they themselves physically walk away from it to the other end of the roadcut. When they reach the other end of the roadcut, the GPS will tell them how far they've gone. This exercise hopefully helps cachers to learn to use GPS technology in a way they might not have thought of before. After all, why would I tell the GPS to "GoTo" a point, but then I myself "GoAway" from it? It isn't an intuitive use of a GPS but works really well.
The new EarthCache was just approved, so we'll see how long it takes someone to visit the site and log it.
Monday, July 23, 2012
New Animated Landscape Cover Photo for my Google+ Profile
When a lot of people hear the term "animated gif" they shudder. Unless it has cats in it, then a lot of people squeal with delight. On Google+, I've seen a few people use animated gifs in some really cool ways, so I decided I'd take a crack at it with the cover photo.
The cover photo is a very wide shot, 940 by 180 pixels, so landscape panoramas work well. While I was out west teaching field camp earlier this summer, I got to visit a number of cool geological sites, and I took a number of photos of places like the Black Hills, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, the Beartooth Mountains, & others. Of course, a regular camera doesn't take pictures with such wide dimensions, so at several locations, I took overlapping shots so I could stitch them together. I stitched the photos together in Photoshop to create each individual panorama image. This is fairly easy through the photomerge function.
The first one is from Badlands National Park, in an overlook area where these colored rocks are located. The Badlands are notoriously white and shades of gray and lacking in much color, but here a couple of Fe-rich layers stand out nicely as yellow & red layers.
The second is from Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park, a short walk from Old Faithful. The colors here are fantastic; I didn't really capture the deep blue in the center of the pool, unfortunately.
The next is a shot of the Grand Tetons. Here I really liked the various shades of blue and green in the sagebrush and other vegetation in the foreground paired with the blues of the mountains and the sky in the distance.
The next is within Grand Teton National Park, along Cascade Canyon Trail, looking up and to the North. My goal with this one was to capture the height of the peaks in the distance in contrast to the talus pile in the foreground. Sometimes it can be tricky to keep the trees all upright in an image like this one, but a "cylindrical" stitching usually works to keep the trees upright. I've found that different stitching options in Photoshop work for different situations, so many times I'll stitch a set of photos together in a couple of different ways and choose the one I prefer.
The last is from the Beartooth Mountains, a view of an enormous glacier-carved valley. A number of glacial features, such as cirques & hanging valleys, can be seen in the image.
To overlay them and animate them, I must give credit to Scott Horwath, who has a fantastic cover photo; I modeled mine after his. Back when Google+ had "Scrapbook photos" (5 small images instead of one large one), he wrote up a great tutorial on how to created animated scrapbook photos, including a video he posted on youtube, and a .tiff template file that you can download. I originally put something together for the scrapbook photos, but those are now gone and it was time for an update. The template file Scott has created has guidelines showing what the image will look like in Google+. The panoramas that I took and stitched together were much, much larger than the size of the Google+ cover photo, so shrunk them down and imported each one into a layer. Then it was a matter of tweaking the size and position of each one to fit in the template. The simplest animation would be to simply flip through the pics, but that's a bit boring. To get this thing into awesome mode requires just a bit more in my view, so I went with a simple fade between shots. This is fairly easy to do in Photoshop. The animation consists of each photo being displayed for 3 seconds, followed by 0.1 second steps where the photo becomes more & more transparent (10% each step) until it is completely gone. As the photo becomes more and more transparent, the image below comes into view. The animation ends with the original photo showing up under the last one, and then the animation loops & repeats the sequence over again. If you haven't seen the final product, check it out on my Google+ Profile.
Beyond just showing some pretty pictures, animated photos could be used could be used to highlight one's areas of expertise, or show off places from a recent trip as mine does. But to make this a bit more scientific, an animated photo could also be used to demonstrate a process, such as the rock cycle, or the development of a structure or feature. To understand materials that form over millennia, geologists look at similar features that are in various stages of formation, and try to connect the dots between them to understand the underlying process. Also, I didn't include anything this time around of considerably smaller scale. I'm thinking the next one I create might include some thin sections images.
What say you, geos? What other kinds of photos would work well here? How could this type of thing be used to do something cool?
The cover photo is a very wide shot, 940 by 180 pixels, so landscape panoramas work well. While I was out west teaching field camp earlier this summer, I got to visit a number of cool geological sites, and I took a number of photos of places like the Black Hills, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, the Beartooth Mountains, & others. Of course, a regular camera doesn't take pictures with such wide dimensions, so at several locations, I took overlapping shots so I could stitch them together. I stitched the photos together in Photoshop to create each individual panorama image. This is fairly easy through the photomerge function.
The first one is from Badlands National Park, in an overlook area where these colored rocks are located. The Badlands are notoriously white and shades of gray and lacking in much color, but here a couple of Fe-rich layers stand out nicely as yellow & red layers.
The second is from Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park, a short walk from Old Faithful. The colors here are fantastic; I didn't really capture the deep blue in the center of the pool, unfortunately.
The next is a shot of the Grand Tetons. Here I really liked the various shades of blue and green in the sagebrush and other vegetation in the foreground paired with the blues of the mountains and the sky in the distance.
The next is within Grand Teton National Park, along Cascade Canyon Trail, looking up and to the North. My goal with this one was to capture the height of the peaks in the distance in contrast to the talus pile in the foreground. Sometimes it can be tricky to keep the trees all upright in an image like this one, but a "cylindrical" stitching usually works to keep the trees upright. I've found that different stitching options in Photoshop work for different situations, so many times I'll stitch a set of photos together in a couple of different ways and choose the one I prefer.
The last is from the Beartooth Mountains, a view of an enormous glacier-carved valley. A number of glacial features, such as cirques & hanging valleys, can be seen in the image.
To overlay them and animate them, I must give credit to Scott Horwath, who has a fantastic cover photo; I modeled mine after his. Back when Google+ had "Scrapbook photos" (5 small images instead of one large one), he wrote up a great tutorial on how to created animated scrapbook photos, including a video he posted on youtube, and a .tiff template file that you can download. I originally put something together for the scrapbook photos, but those are now gone and it was time for an update. The template file Scott has created has guidelines showing what the image will look like in Google+. The panoramas that I took and stitched together were much, much larger than the size of the Google+ cover photo, so shrunk them down and imported each one into a layer. Then it was a matter of tweaking the size and position of each one to fit in the template. The simplest animation would be to simply flip through the pics, but that's a bit boring. To get this thing into awesome mode requires just a bit more in my view, so I went with a simple fade between shots. This is fairly easy to do in Photoshop. The animation consists of each photo being displayed for 3 seconds, followed by 0.1 second steps where the photo becomes more & more transparent (10% each step) until it is completely gone. As the photo becomes more and more transparent, the image below comes into view. The animation ends with the original photo showing up under the last one, and then the animation loops & repeats the sequence over again. If you haven't seen the final product, check it out on my Google+ Profile.
Beyond just showing some pretty pictures, animated photos could be used could be used to highlight one's areas of expertise, or show off places from a recent trip as mine does. But to make this a bit more scientific, an animated photo could also be used to demonstrate a process, such as the rock cycle, or the development of a structure or feature. To understand materials that form over millennia, geologists look at similar features that are in various stages of formation, and try to connect the dots between them to understand the underlying process. Also, I didn't include anything this time around of considerably smaller scale. I'm thinking the next one I create might include some thin sections images.
What say you, geos? What other kinds of photos would work well here? How could this type of thing be used to do something cool?
Friday, July 20, 2012
More on "fracking"
Building on my post from yesterday, today Forbes posted an article where a prominent natural gas industry leader has spoken out for more regulation over the industry. This article high-lights one of the points I was making yesterday - "fracking" and "irresponsible fracking" are not the same thing. It is the latter that we need to eliminate. The article gives some good background on the development of modern hydraulic fracturing of shale to release natural gas, which is informative. It follows the work of George Mitchell, who established some of the modern techniques that are leading to a boom in natural gas across the U.S. He's quoted in the article as saying "The administration is trying to tighten up controls. I think it's a good idea. They should have very strict controls. The Department of Energy should do it." He goes on to say "Because if they don't do it right, there could be trouble. There are good techniques to make it safe that should be followed properly." In other words, it is not "fracking" itself that is a problem, but rather irresponsible fracking. I completely agree.
Some of the comments suggest that this big-money corporate guy is just saying this to stomp out some competition, and that increased regulations will hurt the smaller drilling companies. I don't see any reason why small drilling companies should be able to cause pollution problems just so they can compete with the larger firms. We need to have laws in our lands that clearly make it a crime to cause pollution, and we need to have agencies that are equipped with the tools they need to adequately enforce the law. That's where proper regulations come in.
Some of the comments suggest that this big-money corporate guy is just saying this to stomp out some competition, and that increased regulations will hurt the smaller drilling companies. I don't see any reason why small drilling companies should be able to cause pollution problems just so they can compete with the larger firms. We need to have laws in our lands that clearly make it a crime to cause pollution, and we need to have agencies that are equipped with the tools they need to adequately enforce the law. That's where proper regulations come in.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
natural gas, energy, "fracking", & climate change
Two webblurbs last week caught my eye. In the first one from Boulder Weekly entitled "Fracking out of a recession", the author makes the case that the natural gas boom has the chance of bringing a number of U.S. states out of recession. "Fracking" is a term that's stirred up a lot of controversy over the past year, but I think much of that is overblown. Hydraulic fracturing of rocks deep underground through pressurized wells is a process that's been used for a number of decades to release more oil & gas from rocks than is otherwise possible. Hydraulic fracturing also occurs naturally when fluid pressure in small cracks in rocks increases high enough to overcome the stresses holding rocks together. To be sure there are some ways that this process could cause environmental problems. The fluids used in the process are no longer as benign as they used to be, and care must be made that they aren't dumped or spilled at the surface & cause contamination. That is a problem that can be solved by having 1) political will to make good laws against polluting, i.e., requiring corporations to take care of their messes; and 2) having an oversight agency that has the resources necessary to enforce the law. There is also the concern that the fluids used in hydraulic fracturing could contaminate ground water sources. I don't want to go into this in detail, but I think this is not likely to be a major issue in most places. It certainly could be in some areas, but overall the layers of rock that are intended to be fractured to release resources are not usually close-by to fresh-water aquifers. But again, that's an issue that could be solved by appropriate laws and appropriate enforcement of those laws. In short, I'm definitely not "against fracking". I'm against irresponsible fracking. I generally agree with the main points of the BW article, but the article I'm referring to makes too little of the need for responsibility and proper oversight in this business. I think the tone & attitude toward the environmental problems is too dismissive. Pollution problems need to be taken seriously, but all too often in our society the positions are polarizing: fracking is the solution to our economic problems, or fracking is the worst attack on the environment. The truth is somewhere in between, & always more nuanced.
I know a lot of people would still oppose an increase in extraction of natural gas because of the problem of climate change. I would argue that the increase in the use of natural gas as a fuel source for electricity is a much better option for the environment than coal. Coal produces a lot more CO2 per unit energy released, and it also released all sorts of heavy metal toxins like mercury. Natural gas is, in my opinion, a great transition fuel to move away from coal and toward fuels that are more environmentally friendly. I would love it for us as a society to move more toward renewable fuels, and I think we will, but that process of societal change is going to take a long time. Moving away from coal and toward natural gas will be better for the environment.
I'm something of a pragmatist when it comes to these issues, and I also enjoyed a recent post at the DotEarth blog about how a ski resort has entered into an agreement with a coal mine of all things in order to reduce carbon output. This is another example of a step in the right direction.
I know a lot of people would still oppose an increase in extraction of natural gas because of the problem of climate change. I would argue that the increase in the use of natural gas as a fuel source for electricity is a much better option for the environment than coal. Coal produces a lot more CO2 per unit energy released, and it also released all sorts of heavy metal toxins like mercury. Natural gas is, in my opinion, a great transition fuel to move away from coal and toward fuels that are more environmentally friendly. I would love it for us as a society to move more toward renewable fuels, and I think we will, but that process of societal change is going to take a long time. Moving away from coal and toward natural gas will be better for the environment.
I'm something of a pragmatist when it comes to these issues, and I also enjoyed a recent post at the DotEarth blog about how a ski resort has entered into an agreement with a coal mine of all things in order to reduce carbon output. This is another example of a step in the right direction.
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