I Will Be Installing a Turbo on My Fountain Pen

From June 26 through August 6 this summer, I will be attempting to complete the rough draft of my current novel-in-progress. I can't tell you how many words that will end up being, but my guess is I'll be putting in at least 80,000 words in that six week period. A good portion of this writing will be done while I'm in the middle of the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming, with only other geologists and inquisitive snakes for company. Why?

Because I'm fucking insane!

No, I mean because I'm participating in the Clarion Write-a-Thon. Clarion is a Big Deal, intensive writing bootcamp for writers who want to improve their scifi/fantasy short story skills. It also needs money, so that it can keep training the budding authors in our favorite geek genres. And I can always use motivation to write, so it's like a match made in heaven.

(And if you all love me enough to pledge dirty wads of cash, I might win an iPad. But that's beside the point, I promise.)

Here's my writer page, complete with an en-hatted picture. Because I am nothing without my hat. It's for a good cause, and it's getting me to do things with my summer other than throwing rocks at rattlesnakes, so please consider donating!

I Have No Words

Photos of Pictures and Documents found after the April 27, 2011 Tornadoes

Words fail me. Tears don't.

* * *

After a breather and several kleenex, I think I've got a few words in me. It's scary as hell, how much of these things are ending up 60, 80, even close to 100 miles away from their point of origin. Which really shows the terrifying force that nature is capable of - as if we needed another reminder this year after the Sendai earthquake.

It's scaring me that there have been this many tornadoes, and this strong, and this early in the year already. Makes me wonder what the rest of the summer has in store for us. Makes me wonder what hurricane season is going to bring. And makes me wonder if we may be lining up for more years like this, considering one of the predicted effects of the current climate shifts is storms of greater severity. You know, the climate change that a horrifying percentage of Congress isn't even willing to admit exists.

We can't fight nature. In the end, nature wins. Nature always wins; it has more time, more power. We've got each other, though, and that shouldn't be downplayed. And I was crying because there's something indescribably sad about pictures torn and cast into the world by a storm, when you don't know what happened to the people in those pictures - you just know that the person, the moment, was important to someone. But I was also crying because humans are amazing, though I wish it didn't require tragedy to remind us of that fact.

Red Cross

Hydrocarbon Formation at Depth

I think this got mentioned on this week's Skeptic's Guide to the Universe in the science or fiction. I thought it might be the fiction, but wasn't all that surprised when it turned out to be science:

Hydrocarbons in the deep earth (press release...?)
Stability of hydrocarbons at deep Earth pressures and temperatures (PNAS article)

And this of course ties back in to my previous linking and random ruminations about abiotic oil.

Mostly, I think this article is interesting, but not something explosive in terms of what we know about the formation of petroleum. I actually found this PNAS article via a post with the faceplam-worthy title "Oil and Gas Forever?"¹ on the website of The Global Warming Policy Foundation - which is apparently supposed to be "devoted to challenging conventional wisdom about climate change." I do think that if you just check the front page of the site (The GWPF's, not the Daily Mail's), the axe they're grinding is evident. Though maybe it is with the Daily Mail's too, I wouldn't know.

But I digress.

Despite the murky chain of links I followed to find the little PNAS article, I think it's interesting. And will probably be horribly misused by excited people who think "Oil and Gas Forever" sounds like a lovely concept in general. The article itself is about computer simulations run to see if methane could form in to longer hydrocarbon chains at deep pressures and temperatures, and according to the simulations, the answer is yes. Which can be considered a point in the camp of abiogenic oil, but I would add the following cautions:

1) Whether long hydrocarbons can form abiogenically or not, that doesn't in any way mean that all hydrocarbons - or even the majority - form in that way. Please see the bit about kerogens in my previous post.

2) This doesn't really address any of the other questions important to developing hydrocarbons, such as: What's the migration path, and how long does it take to get there? (And many more...)

3) It's also not necessarily a realistic simulation. Quoting the first article:

"Our simulation study shows that methane molecules fuse to form larger hydrocarbon molecules when exposed to the very high temperatures and pressures of the Earth's upper mantle," Galli said. "We don't say that higher hydrocarbons actually occur under the realistic 'dirty' Earth mantle conditions, but we say that the pressures and temperatures alone are right for it to happen."

Emphasis mine. So, like much science that gets slapped with melodramatic headlines, this is more of a, "Huh, that's interesting," than anything else.




1 - Actually, it's not what you'd imagine out of an article with that title... it's just the LLNL press release, and a C&P from a blog post that also pretty much emphasizes that there's not really evidence for this being a major source of hydrocarbons, but that this is just sort of interesting.

One Down, One and a Bit Left...

Today was officially my last Petroleum Reservoir Characterization class and the final project is out of my hands, so that's that. It's been an interesting class, but between wrestling with Petrel and wanting to stick my head under a pillow and scream every time I have to read about geostatistics, I'm pretty sure I don't want to go into reservoir modeling when I grow up. But it's certainly given me an appreciation of just what it takes to do that sort of job.

What I have left now is my last Facies Analysis project, which is ticking along quite nicely. Today I did a rough description of the last core, though I'm going to give it a pretty strict second pass through. This core and I are not getting along well, which I find strange since it's from the Almond formation, which is the same formation as the Stagecoach Draw cores. I loved those cores to bits when I looked at them as an undergrad, and have still found them quite loveable while inflicting them on the current class of sed/strat undergrads. They've got the same lovely black lagoon shell that's laced with oyster shells, even.

As weird as it is, I think I just don't like the Almond core because:
a) It's in a different sort of box, which makes it harder to look at the cores without pulling them out.
b) There's a ton of swelling in clays in the upper part of the formation, which means all of the mudstone is covered with a crackly gray skin of clay. And if you want to look at those core sections, you have to clean them off thoroughly (in the process covering your hands with deep gray mud) and then look fast, since they get their clay skin back as soon as they dry off.

But I'm almost done. There will not be pictures of this core, though, since it's not very pretty and I'm not getting along with it. I do have pictures of the Williams Fork core I just finished looking at. I'm hoping to post those for anyone who might be interested, but I think I want to check with my teacher first to make sure it's okay to do so. I don't see why it shouldn't be, but my grad bff is doing her thesis on that core (and a few others) and I don't want to risk stepping on toes or messing anything up.

But anyway, that ought to all be done by the end of the week, if all goes well. Though I unfortunately won't actually be done then - I still need to finish grading! The Stagecoach Draw core projects are stacked in the plastic crate next to my desk, glaring at me accusingly because I've been too chicken to even look at them thus far. Once I get this last project done, though, I'll be out of excuses and I'll need to get started on them. Particularly since I need to have grades turned in as soon as possible next week.

And then I'll be done with my second semester. This one's gone better than the first semester... and has been a lot less stressful. But I'm definitely looking forward to the summer!

Also, from the department of It's The Little Things: When you e-mail someone and specifically mention that your advisor is female, it's pretty sad when the reply steadfastly refers to said advisor as male.

I Wrote a Story!

A story of mine (The Falling Star) got picked up for an anthology that's now available! The New Fairy Tales Anthology can be bought from Createspace, and because I love you all so very much (or rather, Mike Pennington, the head honcho of Aurora Wolf loves you all so very much), there's a discount code that you can use for $2 off the cover price, which makes the book an even $10: 9RWWE4QP

This code ought to work for all Aurora Wolf offerings if you buy them off of Createspace, if there are any other books of theirs that you'd like to pick up.

And you can get the book on Amazon, if you'd rather, though no discount then.

I think the story's a little different from my usual stuff, in that it's a bit cute and sweet, and I don't generally do cute and sweet. But I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and I hope that you'll like it whenever you get to read it.

In less happy news, I got a rejection note (it wasn't big enough to be called a letter) that came on a square of paper barely bigger than a business card. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I guess if nothing else, it's certainly appropriate for Earth Day - it's a reduction of paper use. Though I admit that I won't be recycling it, since it's now decorating my wall. But that counts as reuse, right?

Happy Earth Day!

Boy Fiction Versus Girl Fiction

A quote:

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

(Emphasis added by me.)

Okay, so let me first admit that I should probably get my nerd card taken away, since I don't give much of a crap about Game of Thrones, having not read the books yet since I've heard so many people whining about the series being unfinished and I don't like to be left hanging. And at this point, so many people have been going on and on and on about it that I'm just kind of tired of hearing about it and the contrary little gremlin that lives somewhere around my pituitary gland is whispering, "Well if it's that popular you don't want anything to do with it anyway."

So this has really nothing to do with Game of Thrones per se, but rather the mind-boggling stupidity that it's brought out in some people. Namely the person that penned the above quote, in a NYT review.

Seriously, can we please dispense with this absolutely stupid notion of boy fiction and girl fiction already? Can we please let go of the tired, ridiculous notion that women don't like things unless there's like, sex and romance or some shit, because apparently we just don't enjoy politics or watching people getting blown up or whatever?

I'm actually not even sure if Ms. Bellafante is saying that she thinks women couldn't possibly like Game of Thrones if it weren't for all the sexy-sexy time, or if she's just saying that studio execs must believe that, or what. Though after reading the paragraph over and over, through the red haze of sheer annoyance I feel pretty sure that it's a ridiculous statement any way you read it. And by the way, if we're being stereotypical and sexist, isn't lots of sex a boy thing? Because chicks just want relationships and romance and shit, and then all the subsequent sex is candle-lit and arty and there's a mushy soundtrack with piano and lots of strings.

I could go on and on about just how many women I know who utterly love the book series and are excited about the TV series. I could also go on and on about how I got hooked on fantasy in general because my mom read The Hobbit to my brother and I when we were little kids. But I'm not.

My gripe is actually a lot more general. You know, from high school on I've been exposed to a lot of sneering comments about how, of the available nerd genres, fantasy is girl fiction and scifi is boy fiction because our pitiful ladybrains can't handle all the science and guns and whatever in scifi. And now apparently fantasy isn't girl fiction any more either, not unless it includes a sufficient quantity of mushy stuff to go with the violence, because our ladybrains just can't enjoy anything if people aren't frantically humping each other.

FFS, could you assholes make up your minds about what women are allowed to like? At this rate, I'm going to have to give up reading all together, and then I'll apparently only be allowed to watch Jersey Shore or something similarly vacuous. At which point I intend to put a hole through my skull with my dad's cordless power drill.

Or maybe we could just dispense with all the stupidly sexist generalization and - I admit this is a radical notion, but hang with me here - just let people like whatever the hell it is they like without linking it to their gender?

You'll get my copy of Old Man's War when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Climate Change and Plate Tectonics

My awesome mom found the following article on Alternet and sent it to me, with the question "Plausible or wingnutty?" : Scientists Find Link Between Global Warming and Earthquakes

At this point, I know better than to accept at face value what an article claims that a scientific paper says, so I set out to find the paper - particularly since for once I have a chance of understanding at least some of the paper since it's about geology! I had to comb through the RawStory article that the Alternet article links to in order to actually find the paper in question. Which is:

Giampiero Iaffaldano, Laurent Husson, Hans-Peter Bunge, Monsoon speeds up Indian plate motion, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 304, Issues 3-4, 15 April 2011, Pages 503-510, ISSN 0012-821X, DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2011.02.026.

The article is available on ScienceDirect, though you may not be able to read the whole thing for yourself if you don't have a subscription to the service. You should be able to at least read the abstract, which should give you the gist of it.

So what does Alternet take out of this paper? "Climate change can affect plate tectonics, oh shit, that's why we've got all the huge earthquakes OH MY GOD."

I will point out that there's one VERY salient quote from Giampiero Iaffaldano (the lead scientist) that's in the RawStory article that Alternet leaves completely out:

Iaffaldano stressed that his study did not mean that global warming would translate to stronger earthquakes happening more often, with the relevant patterns developing over "the order of millions of years."

"Of course earthquakes do occur at the boundaries between plates because of plate motions, but our work doesn't imply at all that we will see an increase in these types of events," he told AFP.

Emphasis added by me. This little omission really leaves me wondering about the motivations of the Alternet author.

As for the paper itself, what does it actually say, and is it interesting? The paper does make a reasonable case for linking climate change with an effect on plate motion and speed. However, the important part that also gets left out of the Alternet article is that this link is explored on a million year scale. It's an examination of how the change in climate over the last 10 million years or so - the climate change in question being a strengthened Indian monsoon - has affected the erosion of the Himalayas, which ultimately lead to decreased resistance in the convergence between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.

Now, personally, I find this fascinating, since it links relatively "fast" surface processes (eg weathering and erosion) to much slower tectonic processes. I think that opens up a lot of very interesting research questions - Iaffaldano points out that he's curious to see if there's a climate signature to be found in other fairly recently uplifted areas.

But I think for general interest, it's VERY important to note that when we're talking a scale of millions of years - which is what plate tectonics operates on - the current climate change we are inflicting on the planet is NOTHING in terms of duration. It's not even a blip. Now, if we keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere and manage to really fuck things up in the long, long, long, long term, maybe in ten million years future humans or aliens will be using simulations to wind the tectonic clock back and say, "DAMN, look at those plates move!" But this will have no measurable effect on our short little human lives.

It really bothers me that an interesting study is being misrepresented in this way. While I appreciate wanting to add some urgency to the issue of climate change - trust me, I do, BIG TIME - this is not the way to do it. It smells like a scare tactic, and it plays into the hands of the climate change deniers.

Abiotic/Abiogenic Oil

You know, the stuff I squeeze out of people who ask me what abiotic oil is on Twitter.

Today, shortly after I admitted (gasp) to being a geologist, one of the guys on my judging team asked me about abiotic oil, saying that "there's been some study in Russia about this." Which I hadn't heard about, but he then said that it was a recent thing.

To the best of my knowledge, abiotic oil is a fairly laughable theory. But I decided to do some googling around, just so I don't get caught off guard by this again.

The first post that I find via google is from FreeEnergyNews.com, which gives me a tingle of apprehension to begin with, just from the website name. Abiotic Oil: This post has a bunch of links for stories from WorldNet Daily, which I'm more familiar with as WingNut Daily, insert logical fallacy here (possibly poisoning the well?). It also posts links to two books from an author whose name I recognize, Thomas Gold. And my recognition of his name comes from this mention of him at the Oil Drum, which is not terribly complimentary. Thomas Gold was also an astrophysicist, not a petroleum geologist.

Now, the post over at the Oil Drum brings up one example where people got all excited about oil being abiotic because OMG IT'S COMING OUT OF BEDROCK, when the facts really looked more like it was oil migrating through faulted horst blocks of the bedrock, since tectonics had partially shifted source rocks so they were under the basement rock in some places. This conclusion comes from this AAPG article, and I will say that AAPG is a professional organization of petroleum geologists and puts out several trusted publications, including the one this article appeared in (Explorer), so I'm going to take their word for it.

However, the "abiotic" oil of Vietnam is not what I'm after here, rather I'm looking for Russia in particular. By adding Russia to my search, I came up with some interesting sites:

An introduction to the modern petroleum science, and to the Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins: I think this pretty much outlines the theory, and is in favor of it. As an amusing aside, there's a link to a discussion of plagiarism of the theory. Specifically Thomas Gold plagiarizing the theory from Russian scientists.

One of the sections in the Russian-Ukrainian theory post talks about refuting a biotic origin of oil. While at this point I could see trying to find some wiggle room to allow for both biotic and abiotic oil, but trying to claim that no oil is biotic makes little sense. As just one example, one thing we look for when exploring possible oil sources are kerogens, which come in different types (dependent upon original depositional environment) and release oil when sufficiently cooked. Trying to take kerogens out of the equation (or claiming they're not organically sourced) really flies in the face of a lot of well-established science.

I will also note that going on the theory that oil comes from sedimentary source rocks (where you find those kerogens) has proved to be extremely predictive in oil exploration. Which is a good sign for oil coming from dead critters.

On the other side, a post at FromTheWilderness.com examines many of the fields considered to be "abiotic" proof, and finds them wanting. This post also has found a special place in my heart because of this:

While everyone is free to form his or her own opinion, when people start talking about a conspiracy of scientists to cover up the supposed abiotic origin of oil, then all an honest scientist can do is to shrug her or his shoulders and say that he or she is not aware of any such conspiracy. In fact, such a contention makes numerous logical errors; based on the logical fallacies listed at http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html, I can count at least 17 errors of logic frequently made by those who argue that the biological origin of oil is a conspiracy. Such errors of logic are the province of a politician, not a scientist.

Back to the Oil Drum post, they recommend reading Richard Heinberg's The "Abiotic Oil" Controversy, which I wholeheartedly recommend as well. Heinberg makes a very well-thought out, reasonable argument, and here's the summation of his take-home point:

There is no way to conclusively prove that no petroleum is of abiotic origin. Science is an ongoing search for truth, and theories are continually being altered or scrapped as new evidence appears. However, the assertion that all oil is abiotic requires extraordinary support, because it must overcome abundant evidence, already cited, to tie specific oil accumulations to specific biological origins through a chain of well-understood processes that have been demonstrated, in principle, under laboratory conditions.

I don't think it's possible to, in detail, refute every claim of abiotic oil genesis. Because if nothing else, we don't know everything there is to know about how most oil is generated, let alone how all of it is generated. And Heinberg makes another good point - even if we eventually reach the conclusion that some hydrocarbons are generated abiotically, this does not really change the energy crisis our dependence on fossil fuels is causing. He says:

What if oil were in fact virtually inexhaustible—would this be good news? Not in my view. It is my opinion that the discovery of oil was the greatest tragedy (in terms of its long-term consequences) in human history. Finding a limitless supply of oil might forestall nasty price increases and catastrophic withdrawal symptoms, but it would only exacerbate all of the other problems that flow from oil dependency—our use of it to accelerate the extraction of all other resources, the venting of CO2 into the atmosphere, and related problems such as loss of biodiversity. Oil depletion is bad news, but it is no worse than that of oil abundance.

To a certain extent, I think the attraction of the abiotic theory is that it means people can ignore the thought that we might some day (some very soon day) effectively run out of oil. But whether we can run out of oil or not changes nothing about the environmental damage we are causing by recklessly burning a natural resource that really deserves to be treated with more care.

Colorado State Science Fair 2011

And yes! I made it to the state science fair! After mono stopped me last year, I was kind of wondering what the follow-up act might be.

This fair wasn't really any different from the other fairs I've done, other than being bigger - and of course, the projects generally being incredibly high quality. Which makes sense, considering these were the winners from the regional science fairs. I think that everyone in my category did a great job and had a lot of enthusiasm for science, which makes me happy.

There were five judges in my group. I was the only woman, and also the youngest by far. The latter isn't really a surprise; the average age of a science fair judge is pretty high. Probably because science-y people don't have a lot of volunteering time to use in the middle of the week until they're long out of grad school or their entry-level industry job. I'm also used to there not being many women in my normal category - Earth sciences - because that's really what the demographics for older people working in that field look like right now. And all of the guys were really nice, as usual - downright avuncular, truth be told.

The surprising thing was that every student in my category was female. For reals. I think the other judges were a bit shocked, and were kind of wondering where all the boys had gotten to. (One of them made a joke about none of the boys going outside any more because they're all playing too many video games...) I'm guessing that this was just some kind of fluke, since I have no idea what the makeup of the category looked like last year, or will look like in the future. But it was pretty exciting to see that many young women that enthusiastic about earth sciences.

One difference from the regional fairs was the huge number of "special awards" judges, which isn't something you normally see in smaller fairs. This was a bit frustrating at times, since some projects were in line to be judged for a lot of special awards, and that made it really hard to get in and actually talk to the student. I'll have to check tomorrow to see what all of the results ended up being. As soon as we'd done places for our category, I got to go home... our poor team captain has to stay until late tonight, since that's apparently when the knock-down drag-out fight between judges over best in show happens. Good luck to him.

From the Department of Squee

First, huge congratulations to the amazing Stuart Robbins, who kicked butt at his dissertation defense and is now... Dr. Robbins! YAY STUART!

In personal squee news, I just found out I won one of the department research awards! So I get money to go toward my BBCP project, which at this point I think will be going toward big girl scientist grain size analysis, which involves - rather than a microscope or screens - a very fun-sounding piece of equipment called the Mastersizer. (No, really.) YAY GRAIN SIZE!

And tomorrow is the Colorado State Science Fair, so I will be up in Fort Collins all day looking at the projects of budding young scientists. I even get to be the co-captain of the Earth Sciences junior division team. YAY SCIENCE!

The Bighorn Basin Coring Project

From mid-July to the beginning of August, I'm going to be outdoors, in Wyoming. No, I'm not crazy. Yes, I have a good reason for doing this. Because in the summer, that's when we'll be coring through the Willwood Formation in the Bighorn Basin. And this is a big deal.

The Willwood Formation is about Eocene in age, and sits on top of the Paleocene Fort Union Formation. The Willwood Formation is mostly a lot of paleosols (lithified soils) and river sandstones. And more importantly, the sediments that form these rocks were laid down during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and then the later, smaller thermal maximums during the Eocene. As a quick summary, taken from a thesis proposal I've been using in order to beg for money¹:

The sedimentary geologic record can be used as a window into the past conditions of the Earth, including the climate in which sediments were laid down. In the Cenozoic, there are many examples of shifts in global climate. Potentially significant to the modern climate in which humans live are the hyperthermal events that occurred during the Eocene. Hyperthermals are relatively brief (~100,000 years) warming events that coincide with the release of massive amounts of carbon from terrestrial reservoirs. The most well understood of these hyperthermals is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred 55.5 million years ago. During the PETM, 6,800 Gt of carbon were added to the shared carbon pool of the atmosphere and ocean, and global temperatures rose 5-9° C (Sluijs et al. 2006, Zachos et al. 2008). Slightly more recently (53.7 Ma), the Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM2, also called ELMO) occurred. ETM2 is about half the size of the PETM isotope excursion (Lourens et al. 2005), and generally much less well understood.

This project is a big deal, for several reasons. Just to start, coring is not a cheap process, and this project is funded by a pretty major grant from the NSF. But what's more important is what we hope to learn from the cores. The PETM is of great interest to climate scientists and geologists right now, because it's perhaps our best historic example of what humans are currently doing to the planet. There weren't a bunch of little proto-horses in the Eocene burning oil so they could roar around in ridiculous cars, but it was a sudden, rapid surge of carbon being put in to the atmosphere, even if the source is being debated.

This is important because, no matter how many people² in the world are short-sighted and basically sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "Lalala can't hear you" every time someone brings up this science, that doesn't make it any less real and pressing.

The paleosols, which are what I'm mostly interested in, can tell us a lot about how the local climate shifted in response to the PETM. This is important, since most human beings have a vested interest in their local environment not suddenly changing and, say, making it impossible for them to grow food. Also, one of the cores will be through the ELMO thermal maximum, which I think will end up providing a valuable set of comparative data. There's already some pretty robust data for the PETM in the Bighorn Basin, and the cores will give us even more. If we then compare that data to what we come up with from ELMO, that may give us a sense of just how far a local environment will shift pushed by how much carbon - because it may not need an input as big as that in the PETM to really mess things up.

Hopefully, that's enough to get you interested! The BBCP has a facebook page now, here. When we're actually coring during the summer, there will be a blog for the project hosted by Smithsonian, which I'll link to when it's up. I'll also no doubt be blogging about it here, and I think I'm going to be responsible for tweeting about it as well.

The coring is going to run from July 13 through August 8. I'll probably be on the rig from July 19 through the end of the project, since I'm going to try to go to TAM before I head up to Wyoming. I'll also be on the night shift the whole time - coring is a 24/7 process - so I guess I'll be documenting BBCP - After Dark³.

Once we've got our cores, we'll actually be sending them out of the country (since this is a project with multinational investigators!) to Bremen, Germany. They'll be living at the Marum core repository, which is also where all of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program cores go. That means in January 2012 (if I can find the funding for it!) I'll be heading off to Bremen for three weeks of intensive core prep, description, and sampling.

And then, science! Lots of science!

Year two of grad school is looking ridiculously exciting.


1 - It's a time-honored scientific endeavor. I wish I was joking when I say that.

2 - Here, I use the term people in place of the perhaps more true but less polite term: idiots.

3 - I actually volunteered for this. If you knew how badly I sunburn, you would understand why. I also don't like the heat, and it'll be much cooler at night.

References
Lourens, L. J., Sluijs, A., Kroon, D., Zachos, J. C., Thomas, E., Rohl, U., Bowles, J., and Raffi, I. 2005. Astronomical pacing of late Palaeocene to early Eocene global warming events. Nature, vol. 435, p. 1083-1087.

Sluijs, A., Schouten, S., Pagani, M., Woltering, M., Brinkhuis, H., Sinninghe Damsté, J. S., Dickens, G. R., Huber, M., Reichart, G.-J., Stein, R., Matthiessen, J., Lourens, L. J., Pedentchouk, N., Backman, J., Moran, K., and and the Expedition 302 Scientists. 2006. Subtropical Arctic Ocean temperatures during the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum. Nature, vol. 441, p. 610-613.

Zachos, J. C., Dickens, G. R., and Zeebe, R. E. 2008. An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics. Nature, vol. 451, p. 279-283.