The massive M 8.8 earthquake in Chile resulted in a tragic loss of life which, as of 2010-03-01, numbered more than 700. We won’t know the full extent of the damage inflicted on Chile or the interesting geological information we can gather from this event for a while yet. What we have been able to determine, or at least what we’ve been reminded in the 24-48 hours following the earthquake and the Pacific-wide tsunami alert, however, is that the Main Stream Media, as a whole, is absolutely clueless when it comes to geology or science in general.

Perhaps enamored by such “scientific” “triumphs” as The Core and 2012, the main stream media decided to employ superlatives, overtly panicky headlines and outright lies to gain hits and advertising dollars. Had they simply asked a geologist what to expect, perhaps this page wouldn’t have been necessary. The time for giving a pass for scientific ignorance and lying is over. If your organisation appears in the list below, which has been amassed by a massive range of geologists and other scientists online, you should be absolutely ashamed.

Reuters – Tsunami brings flooding to Australia (as it appeared on stuff.co.nz) – If you read the article, it says nothing of the sort. (via @Yorrike / www.goodschist.com)

Garry at Geotripper bemoans the expectation of the MSM with What? You Were Expecting This? (via Geotripper)

Erik at Eruptions posts Chilean earthquake fallout: MSNBC implies nature is “out of control” – which is an astonishing headline for MSNBC to post. Astonishing in it’s stupidity (via Eruptions).

Lockwood posted this staggering video of CNN reporter Rick Sanchez asking “9 Meters In English Is What?” It’s 9 meters you twit. Or for a rough calculation in feet times it by 3 (via Outside the Interzone). There’s a takedown of Sanchez at Phreatic: Anchorperson Science Stupidity Award.

Reuters (again) – reports that Japan nuclear plants continue ops after tsunami. The height of the Tsunami waves that his Japan? 0.6 metres (22 inches in English). What a pointless article. A more interesting article would have been along the lines of “Japan shuts down nuclear plants in preparation for tsunami,” but then again, that’d be a worthwhile thing to read about.

The Mirror is so blasé about the whole topic, it’s reports on the Millions in fear of tsunami that never came following Chile quake. Yeah. All of us who live around the Pacific look pretty stupid being prepared for a natural disaster.  Here’s a quote for that article:

They battened down the hatches or simply prayed after one of the planet’s most powerful earthquakes struck South America.

But experts’ predictions of huge waves sweeping across the Pacific and smashing 53 countries proved to be a false alarm last night.

[...]

California, Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand there were small waves and flooding with little damage. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology cancelled its tsunami warning last night.

Really? Experts predicted that? I have to be honest, I have serious doubts you actually listened to an expert on the topic. And a false alarm? “There’s a possibility of large, damage-causing event happening in the coming hours” is a false alarm now? It’s not a real alarm unless it happens? It’s not a false alarm, it’s a triumph of scientific intrigue, investigation and monitoring which could have resulted in saving millions (MILLIONS!) of lives. And the last quoted line there – I live in New Zealand, there was NO flooding and NO damage, liars.

The Associated Press notes that it’s now necessary that Scientists defend warning after tsunami nonevent. Again, it was a warning and something that’s only been possible in the last 50 years. You’d prefer nothing? This story does have a good point at the end, though:

But Okamoto said his family understands the tsunami threat better than most because some of his relatives lived through the tidal surge in 1960. They remember how the water was sucked down the beach moments before the wave hit.

“My uncle was on the top floor when all the water washed away and all the kids ran out to grab the fish and before they could get back, the wave came. He was way up top, he saw all his friends get washed away and none of them were found, ever,” Okamoto said, as he sat with his father in a hotel lobby. “They did the right thing.”

And that’s the only conclusion you can reach on this story. There was a warning, luckily it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but had it been the worst case scenario, you’d be thankful there was a warning at all. Perhaps the article should have been titled “Scientists pleased with warning system and response, urge countries at risk not to become complacent”.

Have you seen any other panic-inducing anti-scientific howlers like those above? Post a link int he comments section here, or Tweet it with the hashtag #tsunamistupid

2010-02-28 | by Chris | Comments (5)

From the Stuff.co.nz article “Wellington still prone to quakes” comes this little gem of stupidity:

Bart Hanson (09:08 pm Sep 18 2009) This article epitomizes my disgust for experts who cannot tell us when the next huge natural disaster will hit and merely being in a particular place at that moment will decide who lives and who dies, but still we are being told not to be complacent? Like hell, get stuffed I’ve got better things to worry about.

You are beyond ignorant if you think the experts can even start to accurately predict earthquakes or many other major natural disasters. Even having a basic grasp of geology of seismology will tell you that these things are not predictable to within a useful accuracy or precision. We had a discussion about the dangers, and inadequacies, of earthquake prediction in Episode 11 of the podClast.

Other things science can’t do: accurately predict when the next killer asteroid will strike the Earth. The reasons are the same, there’s not enough data on either scenario in order to make an accurate, down to the minute-, hour-, month-, year- or decade-accurate forecast or as to exactly where either event will exactly occur.

The best geologists can do is look to the past, i.e, the old geology phrase “The past is the key to the future.” If a fault has ruptured roughly once every 100 years (and you’d be able to see this in the geological record), you should expect it to do so again in 100 years since the previous event. Or 150 years. Or 80 years. Earthquakes don’t run on a precision clock, and thus are never “early” or “overdue”. They occur when they occur.

If you’re caught out by having “better things to worry about”, Mr Bart Hanson, don’t go crying to others for food, shelter or clean water when you are caught in a natural disaster. Obviously the tiny amount of effort it takes to store some water, canned food and other supplies somewhere (details here at the USGS) is far outweighed by your necessity to spend time complaining on the internet.

Being prepared for natural disasters is important. Like not paying tax, not taking medication or indulging in smoking, you may think you’re getting away with it, but after a while, it could catch up with you, and the results could, literally, be deadly.

If you live in an earthquake zone, like I and many others do, the seriousness of being prepared cannot be overstated. Again, a list of the things you need can be found at the USGS. It’s not difficult and it could well save your life.

2009-09-21 | by Chris | Comments (6)

Hello everyone.

Although I haven’t posted here in a while, I’m still actively working on the site and this brand spanking new theme is proof.

Have a look around. If you feel like it, tell me of anything you spot that looks wrong either in the comments, or just by tweeting it to me on Twitter @Yorrike . If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, try using the “tweet this” link below and watch in delight as any tweets regarding this post will appear in the “tweetbacks” section of this post.

If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can wait a few days until I get around to fixing any display bugs you’ll no doubt be seeing (even though it’s all perfectly valid XHTML and CSS, which is displayed properly in Safari, Firefox and Opera).

2009-09-18 | by Chris | Comments (2)

Update: Andrew from About:Geology noted that the original address (for the 21st Amendment Bar) I had on this post was wrong. It’s now been updated.

Hello everyone.

Sorry for the long hiatus here on goodSchist and on the podClast, I’ve been traveling to various places in Europe for the past month and I’m about to head out on the second leg of my long trip home later this morning with a flight to San Francisco.

This will, of course, bring about the long talked about San Francisco GeoBloggers in the Pub event that I’ve hinted at to various people over the last few months.

So, if you’d like to come along, have a few beers or drinks of various other types with geologists and geobloggers, and participate with a live recording of the podClast, here are the details you’ll need:

Date: Saturday the 25th of July
Time: from 1400 (2pm) onwards (podClasting from about 1500 I reckon)
Place: The 21st Amendment Brewery, 563 2nd St, San Francisco (Google Map)

If you’re intending on joining us for the podClast recording and you have an iPhone, it’d be really handy if you loaded a copy of the Griffin iTalk app (website here). It’s free and means we can have a few recordings going on at once for prosperity/volume levels. Also, if people could suggest topics for discussion in the comments section below, that’d be great too (although a free flowing discussion will no doubt ensue).

Hopefully see a reasonable group of you there.

2009-07-15 | by Chris | Comments (8)

Just a quick reminder to all of you lovely Londoners, that the Geobloggers in the Pub meetup is tomorrow afternoon (May the 2nd), 2pm onwards at the Cittie of Yorke tavern in London (22 High Holborn, Camden, London, WC1V 6BN, United Kingdom (map) – a short walk from the Chancery Lane tube station).

More thorough details can be found in this post, I’ll be placing an piece of A4 paper on the table which looks like the following image so you can find us (or just me, depending on turnout).

See some of you there!

2009-05-01 | by Chris | Comments (0)

Attention geologists and geobloggers alike: mark your calenders for Saturday, May the 2nd for the first ever Geobloggers in the Pub in London. Come along for an afternoon of drinking and a live podClast recording. Here are the details you’ll need:

Time: 2pm onwards

Date: Saturday the 2nd of May 2009

Place: Cittie Of Yorke Tavern, 22 High Holborn, Camden, London, WC1V 6BN, United Kingdom (map) – it’s a short walk from the Chancery Lane tube station, and it looks like this:

In order to find us, I’ll place a piece of A4 on the table which will look like this:

Hopefully see some of you lot there.

2009-04-20 | by Chris | Comments (8)

The medieval city of L’Aquila in Central Italy suffered a magnitude 6.3 earthquake this morning at 0132 GMT. Below is the shake map of this quake from the USGS. Full details can be found at the USGS.

Earthquakes in Italy are not unusual. The collision of the African tectonic plate with the European portion of the Eurasian plate cause these seismic events just as in any other tectonic collision. What IS unusual about this particular event, however, is the strength of the quake. Below is a map of all earthquakes in this area between 1973 and today from the USGS.

So since 1973, there have been 11 earthquakes in the Italy/Northern Africa region of magnitude 6 and above (0.5%), vs 2,234 earthquakes between M4 and M5.9. This is also expected, as smaller earthquakes are simply more common than large ones, but there’s a stark contrast here as all of the strongest quakes are extremely shallow (<33 Km in depth) while weaker quakes vary across the entire lithosphere/upper mantle (due to the nature of this collision). As a contrast, here’s the same segmented data from New Zealand:

Earthquakes in New Zealand >M6 (left) vs M4-M5.9 (right)

That’s 46 earthquakes of M6 or greater (1.25%), and 3660 quakes between M4 and M5.9. You’ll notice there’s a spread of depths with both quake groups in the New Zealand case, due to the subduction-related interactions of the Pacific and Australian plates (with a patch of ≥M6, 300-500 Km, purple, earthquakes at the start of the Kermadec arc, a classic case of back arc volcanism).

If you’re interested in the human side of this story, the BBC has an article about the 27+ deaths and building damage which includes video.

2009-04-06 | by Chris | Comments (0)

As many of you may know, I’ve been in the UK for a couple of months, and I’ve got a couple more to go before jetting off to Europe in June and California in July.

On the first weekend of May I’ll be stomping around the mighty city of London and in between catching up with the 7 million kiwis who live there, I’d like to initiate the first Geobloggers in the Pub (calling it “Geologists in the Pub” would have set off my redundancy meter – but either will do). Before announcing official times and a location, I’d like to just get a show of hands from geologists or geo-interested persons who’d be willing to sit around a table in the mid afternoon in a pub in central-ish London on Saturday, May the 2nd.

Since it’ll be a podclasting weekend, I’m intending on doing a recording with whoevers there too, getting opinions on whatever geonews is around for 20-40 minutes. That’ll make it the first “live” podclast.

So, who’s up for drinks and some light conversation?

2009-03-25 | by Chris | Comments (7)

The geoblogosphere is fantastic. We tweet (a lot now), we have carnivals and we even podcast once a fortnight. One thing we don’t do, though, is pool our combined centuries worth of geological knowledge in unified, constructive ways. At least not all that often.

I would like to make this post a call to arms of sorts to all geobloggers and internet-savvy geologists out there to help with something. This particular page, Wikipedia’s entry on the mantle, is an absolute shambles. Not only are things like the Mohorovičić discontinuity only mentioned in passing without much description:

The top of the mantle is defined by a sudden increase in seismic velocity, which was first noted by Andrija Mohorovičić in 1909; this boundary is now referred to as the “Moho.”

(The page on the Moho is equally as vauge), but the figures, links and some of the references and suggestions in this page are simply stupid. Look at this bit of the extremely brief section on temperature:

Modern observations suggest that the mantle is cold.[15][16][17][18][19]
The mantle of Mars is also cold.[20]
This has very serious implications for those who believe the mantle is convecting hot fluid.

That has a very serious whiff of the EEdiots about it. Especially considering that every single reference given about the “cold mantle” is either in regards to an underlying section of the equatorial Atlantic MOR being colder than expected, or other areas of other MORs or spreading regions being cooler than expected (for the record, references 16 and 17 are the same). Not a single one of those references suggests the mantle is cold. The reason being that the mantle isn’t “cold” (whatever that means anyway, cold compared to what? Very unscientific). Any layperson reading this page would, however, be left with the impression that there’s serious debate regarding whether the mantle can flow at all.

I hereby kindly request that anyone out there with sufficient expertise in the mantle or associated sciences to please help in righting this travesty. I’m not asking for this to be done today, but over the next year we should endevour to pretty much rewrite this entire Wikipedia entry (lest the EEdiots take it upon themselves to do it for us and misinform the public even further). Wikipedia is fickle, however, and the formatting can be difficult to master, so getting a grasp on it now would be advantageous if you intend to contribute.

I’ll be doing some of my own research and clean-ups, but it’d be great if other concerned parties could help out too. After all, we blog about our science because we want to inform the layperson about how cool it is and to advance public awareness. Ensuring the go-to website for basic scientific facts is accurate can only help our cause.

2009-03-20 | by Chris | Comments (9)

Callan at NOVA Geoblog has a new meme going:

What are ten things that every geology major ought to know about? The only restriction is you’re not allowed to list anything that has already been listed by a previous geoblogger. You don’t have to list everything, just ten important things

Mel at Ripples in the Sand has added to the list (both can be seen at the bottom of this post) and now it’s my turn. Embarrassingly I know nothing of “Pedogenesis” or “How aquifers work” as listed by Mel, but this is all about brushing up, isn’t it? : )

Here’s my list of 10 things every geology major should know:

1. The difference between absolute and relative radiometric dating.
2. Uranium-lead dating and how each element on the uranium 238 decay chain interacts differently with the environment.
3. The difference between a continent and a tectonic plate.
4. The properties of felsic, intermediate and mafic lava types.
5. How and why the melting temperature of a rock changes depending on the the concentration of volatiles therein.
6. What an ophiolite is and the significance of very old ophiolites.
7. The structure of the deep Earth (the upper and lower mantle including the MoHo and other zones)
8. The biological explanation for the formation of banded iron formations.
9. The insignificant difference between a volcanic sill and a volcanic dike.
10. How to spot changing environments in a stratigraphic column.

I could go on, but those seem pretty important. Below are Callan and Mel’s lists

Callan’s list:

1. The relationship between cooling rate and crystal size in igneous rocks.
2. The fact that rocks can flow, given sufficient temperature and pressure [and low strain rate, for the purists out there].
3. The idea that sedimentary rocks reflect specific depositional settings. By studying modern depositional settings and the sediments they contain, we can interpret ancient sedimentary rocks in light of the conditions under which they accumulated.
4. The fact that the chemical stability of molecular configurations (minerals) changes with different temperatures and pressures (metamorphism).
5. Large Igneous Provinces, and their potential role in tectonics and expressing mantle plumes.
6. Elastic rebound theory for the origin of earthquakes.
7. The notion of partial melting, and its relationship to Bowen’s Reaction Series.
8. An understanding of the carbon cycle, and an understanding of the atmospheric physics that facilitate global warming.
9. The role that rivers play in shaping the landscape: nickpoints, terraces, quarrying, abrasion, drilling of potholes, etc.
10. The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, which is extremely old in comparison to human life — and the reasons we think it’s so old [Pb isotopes, etc.].

Mel’s list:

1. Evolution.
2. Evidence for plate tectonics.
3. That fossils (and trace fossils) can provide more information about the rocks they reside in – depositional environment, chronology and correlation, water temperature, stratigraphic up, relative rate of deposition, water depth, etc.
4. And vice versa, the rocks can tell you a lot about the fossils that are contained within them – geography, taphonomy, chronology and correlation, etc.
5. The relationship between sediment production –> sediment transport –> sediment deposition.
6. How to identify minerals.
7. Differentiation and fractionation and how they apply to the planet, the solar system, and isotopes.
8. How aquifers work (or don’t work if we drain them too quickly).
9. Where our energy supply comes from. All facets from petroleum products, to solar radiation, to conductive metals extraction, etc. (These are also useful for seeking gainful employment as a geologist.)
10. Pedogenesis. How it takes thousands of years of chemical reactions and transport to generate the soils we use for agriculture. (And how we should be taking better care of them.)

2009-03-16 | by Chris | Comments (7)