I was tracking down some of the history of erosion theories. Specifically, I wanted the sources behind the widely accepted theory that we live on a cold planet today because we have so many mountains. Mountains expose rock to the elements, and weathered rock releases nutrients to the sea, and life turns nutrients into buried carbon. We appear to have not just very low atmospheric CO₂ levels these days, but basically the lowest possible CO₂ levels. (As civilization is accustomed to that, it means that a rather small perturbation in CO₂ levels, in geologic terms, has a relatively great effect in human terms.)

The theory linking mountain uplift to the late Cenozoic ice ages was propounded by Maureen Raymo in the 1980s. I'm thanking her in this post because her Web site, www.moraymo.us, has a bunch of papers tracing the theory's development since then.

And I'm thanking her father, the writer Chet Raymo, for his wonderful blog at sciencemusings.com, treating science in a most humanist way. I've added it to my blogs list.

On erosion:
Not Your Grandfather's Erosion
Mass Wasting: Power Erosion
The Remarkable Tibetan Plateau

The usual variety of geothermal energy involves drilling into hot rocks and pumping up the steam or hot water there. But the greater potential lies in dry hot rock, because there's much more of that. If you drill into hot rock, though, you need a working fluid to carry the heat to your turbines. You need water. This story in today's Bend Bulletin is about such a dry-rock or "enhanced" geothermal project in southern Oregon. We tend to think that geothermal energy is free energy, but it does use resources, especially water, and in many places that is scarce. Regulators are keeping a close rein on the project's planned water use. (Thanks to @TimMerrick on Twitter for pointing the story out.)

More:
On Geothermal Energy
The Coso (Calif.) Geothermal Field

While updating my article on Sicily's Mount Etna, I had occasion to read about the efforts in Iceland to stop lava flows with firehoses. That was in 1973, when the volcano Eldfell, on the island of Heimaey, sent a flow of lava toward the town of Vestmannaeyjar. Given a big enough hose and water pressure, pumping seawater on the active flow was quite effective in freezing it in its tracks. A single hose, scientists found, could cool an entire hectare because as the cooling lava cracked it allowed the water to penetrate in all directions. (The problem was getting equipment of the right caliber to the scene.)

Being scientists, they checked by drilling holes. "In the boreholes, the cooling extended down to depths of 13 to 15 m, after cold water had been poured on the lava for about two weeks. A hole was bored in an area which had not been cooled by water, and molten lava was encountered directly below the surface." The whole report is online from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Also:
Eternal Etna
About Volcanoes
About Volcanism
Drilling into Volcanoes

The coastline of the Pacific Northwest and northernmost California—the land also known as Cascadia—is prone to gigantic earthquake/tsunami combinations like the one that struck Sumatra in 2004. An engineer for the state of Oregon, Yumei Wang, wants every seaside town to have strong platforms on stout stilts where people can run when earthquakes strike. Many of these communities, she says, are too flat and congested for people to reach high ground in the few minutes they'll have between the shock and the wave.

Wang is talking to the town of Cannon Beach about constructing America's first tsunami evacuation building or TEB. Because tsunamis are rare events, these structures should also have an everyday use. Wang's idea is for Cannon Beach to use its building for a city hall. She made a presentation on the idea at the GSA meeting in October; the GSA also has a white paper with more detail.

More background:
The Great Cascadia Earthquake of 2xxx
About Tsunamis
The 10 Most Deadly Tsunamis in Each Ocean
The 2004 Sumatra Earthquake
_{Conceptual TEB design by Ecola Architects — image courtesy GSA}