GSW: 2003
MEETING MINUTES
Geological Society of
Minutes
of the 1360th Meeting,
Wednesday, January 8th, 2003
John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
President Applegate called the meeting to
order at 8:01pm. The minutes of the 1359th Meeting, prepared by former Meeting
Secretary Paul Tomascak, were read with a minor amendment and approved without
comment.
Five visitors were introduced: Mark Frank,
Julia Suh-Frank, and Courtney Crummett all from the
Four new members were announced: Gunther
Kletetschka (Howard Univ./
The society observed a moment of silence in
honor of the passing of former members Russ Wayland and Don Tatlock.
President Applegate announced the date of the
20th Annual Meeting of the Society for Organic Petrology in
President Applegate presented a plaque to
Dick Fiske as a recipient of the AGI Annual Award for Outstanding Contributions
to the Public Understanding of Geosciences.
Dick Fiske gave a very brief acceptance speech.
There were no formal Informal Communications,
but Dallas Peck pointed out that the announced future meeting for April 24th
was a Thursday. President Applegate
vigorously denied any tampering with the traditional meeting day.
Three papers were presented:
The first talk was by William Minarik of the
Questions from E-an Zen, Moto Sato, Paul
Tomascak, and a final question by Meg Rogansack concerning Bill's choice of
undergraduate schools was initially announced by Pete Stifle. Bills response
was followed by a quip from an unidentified person concerning the relative
beauty of girls from the different colleges (I think it was Bill Clinton) and a
description of a ribald T-shirt by Dave Applegate.
The second talk was by Henry Scott of the
Carnegie Geophysical Lab, "The chemical stratification and habitability of
Jupiter's Ganymede". Henry related
how he constrains the compositional structure of Ganymede beneath a thick layer
of ice, using experimental apparatus that mimic pressure and temperature within
Ganymede. The hot core and icy exterior
produced a model with a molten core of pyrrhotite, surrounded by hydrous
silicates, then ice. I had trouble following the arguments concerning the
potential of hydrothermal vents on Ganymede for life, if only he used Re/Os,
but the punch line was that his latest experiments suggest life, hydrocarbon,
or methane is possible.
Questions by Moto Sato (2), George Helz, and
finally Bill McDonough who pointed out that pyrrhotite is a crystal and cannot
comprise a molten core.
The third talk was by Margaret Caruthers who
is a freelance science writer and editer, "Innovative uses for the lasso
and chainsaw: Snaring black smokers from the Juan de Fuca Ridge." Margaret guided us through the efforts of the
Questions from George Helz, Mark McBride,
E-an Zen, and George Sellers.
President Applegate finished the evening by
exhorting the members to provide Informal Communications, and declaring that
the future meeting of April 24 will actually be on April 23. He adjourned the meeting at 9:36 PM.
Attendance was a trend-breaking 72.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of
Minutes
of the 1361st Meeting,
Wednesday, January 22nd, 2003
John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
President Applegate called the meeting to
order at 8:03pm. The minutes of the 1360th Meeting were read and accepted as
written following a comment, reportedly from the beer man, to the effect
"Read my lips, RHENIUM".
Two visitors were introduced: Russ Harmon
from the Army Research Office, and Warren Allmon, one of the speakers.
Two new members were announced: Alexander
Korbeinikov a GeoRef editor with AGI and Joseph Sentfle the Senior Vice
President of Advanced Power Technologies Inc.
President Applegate announced an upcoming
special evening exhibit in the Janet Annenburg Hooker Gem and Mineral Hall of
the
There was an informal communication by Tom
Dutro who announced that in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the Cosmos
Club and the 125th anniversary of the publication of John Wesley Powell's
Report on the Lands of the Arid Regions there will be a symposium on Water in
the West. Tom promised that this would
be more than historical and would include points of view from those who did not
find Powell "the end all and be all".
There were two questions by E-an Zen.
The first formal presentation was by Jay
Kaufman from the
Questions from Barbara Am Ende, Chris Fedo,
Doug Rankin, Bevan French, Moto Sato, and three from George Helz.
The second speaker was the previously
mentioned Warren Allmon from the Paleontological Research Institute who told us
about "Building a new Museum of the Earth in
Questions by Bill Burton, E-an Zen, Craig
Schiffries, Gene Robertson, Bevan French, and two by Barbara AmEnda, and a
comment by Pete Stifel.
The final talk of the evening was by Paul
Hoskin of the Albert-Ludwigs-Univeritat Freiburg entitled "Mapping the
lithology of the mid and lower continental crust using zircon composition: The
Ripley Principal". In this novel
presentation, Paul presented evidence that a hypothetical map that was never
produced by an unnamed researcher was probably incorrect. As numerous plots of major elements, minor elements,
and rare earth elements in zircons failed to distinguish the original rocks, I
expected the beer man to leap to his feet and shout "RHENIUM". Paul concluded in his talk that anyone who
wished to apply the data or results from the never produced hypothetical map
should do so with caution.
Questions from Bevan French, Bill Burton, and
Chris Fedo.
President Applegate adjourned the meeting at
10:05 PM to a group notably smaller than the starting attendance of 65.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of
Minutes
of the 1362nd Meeting,
Wednesday, February 12th, 2003
John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:01 P.M.
by a clearly ashen and feverish President Applegate. The minutes of the 1361st
Meeting were read and accepted as written.
Two visitors were introduced: Lisa Collins
and Jason Cassara from GW University
No new members were announced.
President Applegate requested a moment of
silence in honor of the astronauts of the shuttle
There was an announcement from Tom Dutro that
was remarkably similar to his informal communication of the previous meeting concerning
a symposium on Water in the West in concert with the 125th anniversary of the
Cosmos Club and the publication of John Wesley Powell's Report on the Lands of
Arid Regions.
The "end all to be all" will be
held right here
But if they want big crowds, they should promise
beer
There was an informal communication by Ellis
Yochelson about fieldwork conducted by Charles Walcott 124 years ago in
The first formal presentation was by Sean
Brennan of the US Geological Survey entitled "Did changes in sea water chemistry
play a role in the Cambrian explosion ?".
The unfortunate choice of title was scanned by Homeland Security leading
to an Orange Alert for the greater
Two questions from Jay Kaufman and questions from George Helz, Julio
Friedman, Ellis Yochelson, and Joe Smoot.
The second speaker Bob Dymek of
Two questions from Dallas Peck and two from
E-an Zen and questions by Paul Owen, Doug Rankin, Craig Schiffries.
The last speaker was John Merck from the
Questions from Dianne McDaniel, Chris Swezey,
Julio Friedman, E-an Zen, Craig Schiffries, and Mark McBride.
President Applegate adjourned the meeting at
9:51 PM and made a rapid escape back to his sick bed. Attendance was 60.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of
Minutes
of the 1363rd Meeting,
Wednesday, March 12th, 2003
John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:03 P.M.
by President Applegate. After the minutes of the 1362nd Meeting were read,
there were two ammendments. Jay Kaufman pointed out that the two guests identified
as
Two visitors introduced themselves: Sarah
Penniston from
Three new members were announced: Jonathon
Tuthill with no current affiliation, Margaret Carruthers, a free-lance science
writer and editor, and Richard Ash, who manages the ICP-MS lab at the
University of Maryland.
There were two announcements from president
Applegate: one concerning science fair judges and the other about a mysterious
e-mail requesting information about Charles Greely Abbot. Tom Dutro recommended that Ellis Yochelson be
contacted for the latter, but presumably not the former.
There were no informals.
The first speaker was Illa Amerson, the AGU
Congressional Science Fellow to Senator Kent Conrad, whose talk was entitled
"Natural attenuation of MTBE in groundwater", at least before her
first slide. Illa described a project
where she attempted to measure rates of migration, dispersion, and
biodegradation of MTBE under anaerobic conditions associated with a fuel tank
leak in the Ventura basin south of Santa Barbara, California. By carefully
tracking MTBE and bromide marked with dye
a year after its introduction, Illa found that migration rates were more
rapid and irregular than predicted, and that MTBE appeared to be created rather
than biodegraded.
George Helz, speaking anonymously, asked the
first question, followed by three questions from E-an Zen and one from Joe
Smoot. The last two questions are
typical of this society. Mike Ryan made
a polite, carefully worded inquiry about the characterization of the site
geology. This was followed by an incredulous amplification by Dallas Peck who
was clearly horrified that the host sediment was constrained as medium sand
that was probably marine, but may have been a river in olden times.
The second speaker, Mulugeta Fesaha, from the
University of Texas at Austin, promised to have more sedimentary detail with
the title "Sequence stratigraphy, petrography, and geochronology of the
Chilga rift basin sediments, northwest Ethiopia". Mulugeta worked on overexposed Tertiary
outcrops, that is well-exposed outcrops, the photos were over exposed. The remarkably consistent sediments resisted
characterization by a variety of chemical measurements, everything short of
Rheenium and Osmium, but the presence of root casts below lignitic layers
provided a means of separating subaerial deposits from sideritic lake
deposits. Using ash layers to correlate,
Mulugeta noted the lateral loss of the oldest part of the section, which he
attributed to fault movement, and the presence of three mega-cycles of lake
drying, which he linked to climate change.
Two questions from Chris Swezey, and one each by Julio Friedman, Joe Smoot,
E-an Zen, and Mike Ryan.
The final speaker of the night was Rafe
Sagarin, the GSA/USGS Congressional Science Fellow to Representative Hilda
Solis, entitled "Betting on climate change: The case of the Nenana Ice
Classic" and subtitled "Pope Gregor XIII puts a curse on
Phenology". I was a bit disappointed
that phenology did not involve reading the bumps on ones head, but we did get
to see how meaningful climatological data can be derived from an attempt to
relieve cabin-fever in a small "Northern Exposure-like" town in
Alaska. For 85 years, the residents
placed bets on the exact moment the ice melted in the local river, using
elaborate means to ensure continuity of technique and precision of
measurement. The vagaries of the Julian
calander and the Gregorian calendar forced Rafe to deal with Physics envy, and
data correction to the Vernal equinox.
He recognized cooling episodes embedded within the general warming trend
which he correlated to the somewhat fishy "anchovy" oceanic regimes.
There were two questions each from Dallas
Peck and Julio Friedman, and questions from Sean Brennan, Joe Smoot, E-an Zen,
John Wycoff, and an anonymous George Helz.
The meeting was adjourned by President Applegate
at 9:36 PM. Attendance was a paltry 43..
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of Washington
Minutes
of the 1364th Meeting,
Wednesday, March 26th, 2003
John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M.
by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1363rd meeting were presented by
Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as read. Although subsequently, Sean Brennan pointed
out that a correction to the previous meeting minutes attributed to Jay Kaufman
was, in fact, made by Julio Friedmann.
A flurry of visitors were introduced. Nadine Piatak, an intern at USGS, Travis
Hudson, AGI, Walt Snyder and CJ Northrup, Boise State, Karen Viskupic, MIT, Amy
Kremen, fiancée of speaker Boz Wing, and her mother Adele Siegel, an 80 year
member of the Cosmos Club, the fiancée of speaker Chris Swezey, Torre Hinnant,
and two guests introduced by Doug Rumble.
No new members were announced.
Jane Hammarstrom provided a brief eulogy to
Mary Mrose, a former USGS mineralogist and GSW member, who served as treasurer
from 1956-1958 and vice president in 1976.
There was an announcement from Rick Diecchio
asking for volunteers for committee slots for the 2004 NE/SE GSA meeting to be
held in Tysons Corner, VA. A surprise
announcement from Tom Dutro concerned a symposium on Water in the West in honor
of the 125th anniversary of the publication of Powell's "Report on the
Lands of Arid Regions" and the
125th anniversary of the Cosmos Club.
There are rumors that he will give this announcement as a formal presentation
at the next meeting.
There were no informal communications.
The first formal presentation was by Alex Speer
of the Mineralogical Society of America entitled "The other GSW -
Geoscienceworld, the proposed internet resource for earth science research and
communications". Alex provided a
vision and actual progress toward a futuristic integrated cyber-resource where
almost every journal, map, and publication can be summoned on line, translated
to and from any language, and each reference within them available, at least as
an abstract, with a click. Questions
about 400-pound Geophysical gorillas, rapidly obsolete data platforms,
penny-pinching librarians, and proliferating journal mediocrity failed to dim
the potential brilliance of this exciting development.
The questions include two from Chris Neuzil,
and one each from Dallas Peck, Pete Stifel, Tom Dutro, Gene Robertson, E-an
Zen, and George Helz.
The second speaker, Boz Wing, from the
University of Maryland, shifted gears to "Multiple sulfur isotopes and
Earth's earliest global glaciation".
In the spirit of March Madness, Boz introduced the "big D 33",
a ratio of sulfur isotopes that is remarkably constant in igneous to
sedimentary environments, but strongly affected by ultraviolet radiation. Since the conditions for production and
preservation of the big D require low atmospheric oxygen, Boz used the abundance
of this ratio in the pre-Cambrian Ramsay Lake Formation as a proxy for oxygen
abundance. He produced a snake's nest of curves that may have included rheenium
or osmium. Anyway, the curves appeared
to show an atmosphere depleted in oxygen becoming oxygen rich then becoming
oxygen poor, all presumably due to whoopee cushions.
There were questions by Dan Milton and Walt
Snyder.
The final speaker was Chris Swezey of the
USGS in Reston who provided a deeper look at sulfur isotopes with "Gypsum
in caves of Virginia and West Virginia".
Chris wished to find the origin of sulfur that produced gypsum in some
caves, but not others. The sulfur isotopes
he measured did not follow conventional wisdom and led to a search through a
variety of possible suspects, each finger-printed by a histogram of
sulfur-isotope distribution. The culprit
proved to be the butler, and the butler is a marine shale rich in sulfides.
Questions were asked by Jane Hammarstrom,
Barbara Am Ende, E-an Zen, Dallas Peck, and, as helpfully pointed out by Pete
Stifel, an anonymous Joe Smoot.
The meeting was adjourned by President
Applegate at 9:46 PM. Attendance was a
relatively robust 74.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
The Geological Society of Washington
Minutes
of the 1365th meeting,
Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club, Wednesday, April 9, 2003.
President Applegate called the meeting to
order at 8:00 PM. Acting Secretary Jeff
Grossman read the minutes of the 1364th meeting, and they were approved as
read. Guests included Bret Leslie’s
in-laws, the Sterns, Adrian Hughes and speaker Wolfgang Losert, both of University
of Maryland, and both of whom should be members!, Jay McCray, GWU, and Larry
Widfor [???], state geologist of West Virginia.
The President announced that E-an Zen will
lead the spring field trip May 17th to Great Falls. The new GSW delegates to AAPG will be Hal
Gluskoter, Edith Allison, and Carl Alvin Taylor, with Chris Swezy serving as
alternate. The president also announced
that the next meeting would be May 14, not April 23rd. So for all of you here tonight, check your
calendars, and if it's still April then come back in three weeks. The last announcement was by Tom Dutro, who
once again invited us to attend his program on “Water in the West,” where we
could learn about the “checkered history of water policy.”
There was one informal communication, but it
was given at the end of the meeting because, at this point, the speaker still
did not know he was giving one.
The first formal talk was by Rick Diecchio of
George Mason University, entitled “Did the Chesapeake Bay meteorite impact have
any effect on the Virginia Valley and Ridge?”
Diecchio argued that this late Eocene impact was somehow related to a
dike swarm of similar age as well as to hot springs in western Virginia. The springs and volcanics lie on a small arc
segment of a circle ~300 km from the crater.
A swarm of small earthquakes defines a line connecting the crater to the
rocks. Major drainage divides in the
area also radiate outward from the crater.
But are all of these features related or was the speaker standing in the
hot water he was attempting to explain?
Several questioners tried to get at this issue, including Bob Burruss,
Chris Swezy, Doug Rankin (anonymously), Doug Rankin again, this time named but
unable to remember what he was going to ask, and Julio Friedman. The talk ran an efficient 12 minutes.
The next presentation was by Wolfgang Losert,
University of Maryland, “The physics of flowing sand”. Rocks, sand, coffee, grain, and lots of
other things behave in a complicated way when they form avalanches (as anybody
with a small child can testify).
Stresses are transmitted non-uniformly and anisotropically through these
materials. Losert showed a series of
PowerPoint videos demonstrating what happens in laboratory experiments that
simulate such particle flows. He
sheared, tumbled, and cascaded grains in a variety of ways to show just how
complicated and fascinating this behavior can be. Scaling his laboratory experiments up to
represent real avalanches of rocks or corn is challenging, but has many practical
applications. There were questions by
Dallas Peck, Bob Burruss, Peck again, Jurate Landwehr, and Mark McBride. 24 minutes.
The last formal talk was by Bret Leslie of
the NRC, “Independently assessing geochemical issues at the proposed Yucca
Mountain repository.” Just as Leslie
started his talk with a legal disclaimer, so must the Secretary: I do not make any warranties (express or implied)
that what I think I heard the speaker say bears any resemblance to what he
actually said. Whatever. Congress gave DOE the job of doing all the
hard work to establish the Yucca Mountain repository, and NRC the job of
looking over their shoulders to set safety standards. The NRC has to make sure that nobody is going
to get a dose of greater than 10 mrem/year for the next 10,000 years. At the 99% probability level, the repository
would be expected to last nearly 100,000 years without leaking. To look at the
other 1%, Leslie assumed various worst-case
scenarios including infiltration of fluoride and chloride, heat, volcanic
events, etc. It turns out that it takes
a lot of very bad stuff to happen to cause unacceptable failures. There were lots of questions, including about
three by Zen, Dan Milton, who wanted to know if the degree of engineering
complexity was increasing infinitely,
Mark McBride, who worried about tomb robbers, Mac Ross, mumble, Julio
Friedman, and somebody the acting secretary should have recognized but spaced
out.
Finally, acting secretary Grossman gave an
informal communication about the fall of a meteorite in the Chicago area on
March 26. The Park Forest meteorite sent
stones crashing through houses and the local fire station, and send meteorite
dealers into a feeding frenzy.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:44 pm. 53 people attended.
Respectfully submitted,
Jeff Grossman, acting Secretary.
Geological Society of Washington
Minutes
of the 1366th Meeting,
Wednesday, May 14th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:03 P.M.
by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1365th meeting as prepared by Acting
Secretary Jeff Grossman were presented with minimal editorial comment by
Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as read.
Guests introduced include Derek Learman of
AGI, Barbara Saffin a freelance writer and reporter for the Washington Post,
Kalyulch Yurly from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and Science Fair winner
Rachel Harris and her mom.
Walt Snyder was introduced as a new member. He is a section head in the Earth Science
Division of NSF.
Gene Robertson informed the members of Doug
Rankin's hospitalization for heart surgery and his current recovery.
President Applegate reminded members of the
GSW Field Trip on Saturday May 17 and invited them to pick up flyers after the
meeting. An unidentified person asked if
non-GSW members were welcome and was assured that they are.
President Applegate announced the winners of
the latest Science Fairs including Christopher Silberholz for the Junior Class
(Grade 6-8) in Montgomery County, Wei Gan for the Senior Class (Grade 9-12) in
Montgomery County, Huan Song a 6th grader in DC, and the Fairfax County Senior
Class winner Rachel Harris.
Rachel Harris provided a brief informal
communication on her winning Science Fair project on Karst Hydrology in West
Virginia, followed by a ten minute break to allow members to view her poster
and discuss it with her. Rachel traced
the flow path of water entering a sink hole near Greenbriar and measured pollutants
over a period of a month. Although here
pollution data was ambiguous, she did document that flow was parallel to the
structural grain rather than controlled by the surface topography.
The first formal presentation was by Barbara
am Ende of the Aerospace Corporation in Chantilly entitled "Karst terrain:
from the inside looking out".
Barbara provided a world-hopping tour of caves from Guatemala, India,
and Cuba among other places that ranged from unimaginably deep sinkholes in
picturesque karst pinnacles to claustrophobic crawlways in fractured sandstone. Relating tales of days in complete darkness ,
crawling or swimming through flooded passages and painstaking mapping were less
foreboding than the picture of the giant scary spider. Her presentation concluded with a plug for
her book "Beyond the Deep: The Deadly Descent into the World's Most
Teacherous Cave" by William Stone and Barbara Am Ende, published by Warner
Books, and available for the incredibly modest price of $26.96 at any bookstore
worthy of your patronage.
There were questions from E-an Zen, Joe
Smoot, and Gene Robertson.
The second speaker, Larry Kennedy, AGI
Congressional Fellow to Senator Harry Reid of NV, was entitled
"District-scale alteration and sub-sea metamorphism in an Archean
volcanogenic sulfide district, Noranda, Quebec". Larry illustrated the various intrusive and
extrusive igneous rocks and their metamorphic mineral assemblages and discussed
how the chemistry indicates hydrologic metamorphism. The speaker displayed dazzling footwork as he
dashed from slide projector to the computer at the speaker podium. I started to lose the drift of Larry's
argument in the chemical plots of iron, silica, magnesium and combinations of
two or more of these for each rock type.
There were oxygen isotopes, but I didn't see rheenium or osmium, or
other things which would help me tie the data together. The summary slide showed intrusives
cross-cutting their metamorphic haloes, but perhaps due to anticipation of the
upcoming break or possibly the extra time to drink beer, I missed how that fits
with what we were shown.
There were questions by Dave Applegate and
Dallas Peck, E-an Zen asked two questions, and a question from George
Helz. President Applegate concluded by
asking about a campaign pin worn by the speaker touting Denver mayoral candidate
Hickenooper, brewer, geologist, patriot?
President Applegate reminded the members that
we would not meet again until September and adjourned the meeting at 9:40
PM. Attendance was 41.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of Washington
Minutes
of the 1367th Meeting,
Wednesday, September 10th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M.
by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1366th meeting were presented by
Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as read.
Four guests were introduced: Barry Reno a new
University of Maryland Graduate student, Acca Merman a professor of paleontology
at George Washington University, Lisa Pinsker at Geotimes, and Lee Hirsch a
congressional fellow at the American Institute of Physics.
President Applegate requested a moment of
silence in honor of the passing of two former members: Roy Baily who worked at
the USGS and Hatten Yoder a former director of the Geophysical Lab.
There were no announcements.
An informal communication was presented by
Peg Kay of the Washington Academy of Sciences who told about the recent effort
to digitize the tables of contents of all past issues of their journal and
their ideas for new publications. She
also expressed hope for GSW involvement in Capitol Science 2004 next
March. George Helz corrected the affiliation
of Bill Philips mentioned by the speaker.
The first formal presentation was by Gerald
Baum of the Maryland Geological Survey entitled "Sequence stratigraphy
applied to Maryland's aquifer system".
Gerry condensed a four day seminar on the basics of sequence
stratigraphy into 15 minutes, and in the remaining time, he showed how assuming
the transgressive and regressive signficance of Gamma log readings in a few
wells provides insight on their correlation and even their tectonic
history. The speaker was ably assisted
by Paul Tomascak who creatively overlapped slides on the screen and, by often
leaving one side unfocussed, produced an eerie 3-D effect.
There were questions from Dan Milton and Al
Taylor.
The second speaker was Randy Orndorff of the
USGS in Reston, "Geologic controls on the karst system of the Ozarks of
Missouri: Implications for federal land management". Randy presented a summary of the USGS
research he and others are conducting in southeast Missouri determining the
distribution and connectivity of karstic aquifers. They established that the caves were
independent of regional fractures and were concentrated along bedding planes beneath
silicified sandstone units. Randy's
closing shot of a cave interior bore an uncanny resemblance to my 10-year old
daughter's photos of the interior of Mount Vernon, that clearly emphasized his
theme of the natural wonder of caves.
There were questions by Dave Applegate, Hal
Gluskoter, Sean Brennan, Dan Milton, and Joe Smoot.
The final speaker of the night was Gene
Whitney of the Office of Science and Technology Policy speaking on "A
geologist's perspective on science at the White House". Gene provided a clear, reasoned glimpse of
what some scientist's would consider life in hell. There, a scientist is
commonly asked to provide technical information in areas not even remotely
related to his expertise, acceptable logic consists of using conclusions to
assess the quality of data, and a major accomplishment is to have a critical
area of research recognized as possibly important. Despite this gruesome scenario, Gene has
maintained a positive outlook and aspires to have an impact on our nations scientific
priorities.
Questions were asked by Hal Gluskoter and
Mark McBride, but Blair Jones, who asked a piercing question about Gene's
actual impact, hammered home the true nature of science and politics.
President Applegate adjourned the meeting at
9:34 PM. Attendance was 49.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of Washington
Minutes
of the 1368th Meeting,
Wednesday, September 24th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:04 P.M.
by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1367th meeting were presented by
Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot along with a brief diatribe laced with thinly
veiled threats concerning the need to report spelling of visitor names and affiliations. The minutes were accepted as presented.
A flurry of guests were introduced: James
Rubenstone with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Christian Koeberl from the
University of Vienna, Uwe Reimhold from the University of Witwatersrand, Lee
Hadden from the USGS in Reston, and Jeff Flescher from the University of
Arizona.
There were no announcements or informal
communications.
The first presentation was a quickie by Bruce
Marsh of the Johns Hopkins University entitled "Magma differentiation by
emulsion dynamics: Giant impacts and bimodal sills". In less than 10 minutes, Bruce explained how
magmas separate like viscous emulsions. In this model, blobs of differing
density coalesce and separate leaving a thin transitional band in the middle,
thus explaining the stratification and mixture of igneous rocks beneath impacts
and in large sills. I expected Bruce to
support this model with observations on minerals, chemistry, or elements like
Rheenium and Osmium in the transition zone, but he admitted early on that it is
a work in progress. Presumably, when it
is more complete it will produce a 20 minute talk.
Questions started from an unnamed individual,
then from Patrick Taylor, Joe Smoot, Roz Helz (which may have been two
questions), Uwe Reimhold, Bevan French, Julio Friedman, Rich Walker, and Jeff
Grossman.
The second speaker was Robert Whisonant from
Radford University entitled "Salt, lead, and rails: Geology and the Civil
War in southwestern Virginia". Bob
laid out the geography and geology of lead and salt production in Virginia
which provided almost all of those essential supplies to the Confederate Army.
Zooming in and out of maps of key areas, Bob described a daring raid by the
Union Army to blast a key railroad bridge linking these materials to the
troops, but creating only a brief delay of their delivery. The talk was peppered with fun facts such as
lead production in the Shady Dolomite in southern Virginia was sustained for
over 225 years and that Saltville, Virginia salt helped to provide fuel for the
Saturn V rocket that propelled man to the moon.
There were questions Dallas Peck, E-an Zen,
and an anecdote by James Rubenstone.
The final speaker was Kevin Krajick, a
freelance science journalist and author of several books including "Barren
Lands". His talk was "The
secret hunt for North American diamonds".
Kevin described the long history of diamond hunting in North America, filled
with defeat, blind luck, charlatanism, and rare success. As the geologic setting of diamond formation
became better understood and technology provided better means to search, a
major diamond mine was found in the Barren Lands of northern Canada in
1991. The details of this discovery, of
course, require reading his book. Kevin
concluded that the origin of the occasional diamonds found in various parts of
the U.S. are largely unexplained and, therefore, anyone could get lucky.
Questions were asked Bruce Marsh, James
Rubenstone, Julio Friedman, Lee Hadden, Kevin Marvel, and Margo Kingston.
President Applegate reminded the audience
that Kevin Krajick would present a longer version of his talk on Friday,
September 26 at the Smithsonian. He adjourned
the meeting at 9:29 PM. Attendance was
65.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of Washington
Minutes
of the 1369th Meeting,
Wednesday, October 15th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M.
by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1368th meeting were presented by Meeting
Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as presented.
One guest was announced, Lily Greenwald an
undergraduate student at George Mason, and Naomi Lubick from AGI quietly
slipped her name in the guest book.
Three new members were announced: Lee Hirsch
an American Institute of Physics Congressional Science Fellow, Mark Peters from
Los Alamos National Lab on detail at DOE Headquarters, and Alexander Wardle a
regulatory analyst with Regnet.
President Applegate requested a moment of
silence for recently deceased former member Gerry Carrol, a long-time George
Washington University professor.
President Applegate announced that he was
giving an informal communication announcement which consisted of a dramatic
reading of an upbeat letter from the other president, George Bush, celebrating
Earth Science Week. President Bush emphasized the need for earth awareness,
citing Eyes on Planet Earth and the Earth Observation Conference, and applauded
all earth science researchers, teachers, students, enthusiasts, and anyone else
of voting age.
President Applegate finally announced that
dues statements are in the mail and he urged members to pay early and often.
The first presentation had an
extraterrestrial flavor as Susan Sakimoto from NASA Goddard, presented
"Mars volcanism and floods: recent? related?". Susan demonstrated that the old ideas of
martian volcanic activity and water movement having ceased billions of years
ago, are probably incorrect. Using new
photo images and laser altimetry she argued that there is abundant evidence for
volcanism and channel cutting in relatively recent times. She suggested that volcanic melting of the
abundant ice frozen just below the surface was one cause of the recent
flooding. Another constraint on the
relative newness of flooding is that in 600,000 data points and innumerable
photos, not one channel is still spanned by the cool futuristic bridges from
the ancient Martian Empire.
Questions from Al Tanner, two from Pete
Toulmin, and one each from Cal Bently, Raymond Rye, Margaret Carruthers, E-an
Zen, and Joe Smoot.
The second speaker was Karen Prestegaard from
the University of Maryland, with the explosive sounding title "Nitrate
delivery and in-stream denitrification process, Raccoon River, Iowa". Karen's research group noted that nitrate in
the Raccoon River actually increased during major floods rather than being
diluted by the extra water. Their investigation of this phenomenon, lead them
to conclude that the nitrate was removed from the upper soil of agriculturally
active areas during times of rising groundwater tables in response to
rainfall. An unexpected drop in nitrate
concentration down the drainage was interpreted as evidence of denitrification
by bacterial action. This hypothesis was
supported by nitrogen isotopes and carbon chemistry.
There were questions from Dallas Peck, E-an
Zen, and a third person whose name I didn't catch.
The final speaker was Earl Brooks of the USGS
entitled "Coal and cremation at Chan Chan, Peru". Earl led us into the jungles of Peru to the
site of an ancient Incan village with three mysterious circles of ash. Armed with a profound faith in the power of
geochemical analyses, he easily discarded the generally accepted explanation
that these were smelting pits. Instead,
Earl concluded that the pits were coal fires used to cremate humans, perhaps
for dark and sinister reasons. But,
there are no body parts. I was surprised
the Von Danaken explanation was never raised.
The unexplained circles obviously mark the exhaust of a large
intrastellar spacecraft, perhaps influenced by their bridges having been washed
out. I am certain the geochemical
analysis of more exotic elements, such as Rheenium or Osmium, would help prove
this scenario.
There were two questions each from Dan Milton
and Diane McDaniel, and one from Susan Sakamoto, Margaret Carruthers, Mark
McBride, George Summers, E-an Zen, George Helz, Richard Ash, and Barbara
Am-Enda.
President Applegate adjourned the meeting at
9:39 PM. Attendance was 51.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of Washington
Minutes
of the 1370th Meeting,
Wednesday, November 12th, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M.
by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1369th meeting were presented by
Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot and accepted as presented.
A number of guests were announced - Lillian
Greenwald, George Mason University; Jurate Landwehr, Jason Williams, and
Rebecca Flaherty, all students at the University of Maryland; someone who wrote
Dankesher and nothing else in the guest book; Mark Carpenter from AGI; and
Pierre Caron, president of the Potomac Geophysical Society who provided an
impromptu announcement about meetings of his society each month.
A new member was announced: Kristina Brody
who was formerly a managing editor at Geotimes and is now a graduate student at
the University of Maryland.
Tom Dutro announced the next meeting of the
Paleontological Society of Washington with speaker Bruce Wardlaw to provide an
"esoteric" presentation on paleostratigraphy using
"CHRONOS".
President Applegate repeated his plea for
members to pay their membership dues early and often and to provide
contributions to the society funds.
An attempt to provide an informal
communication by Doug Rankin was thwarted by his stubborn adherence to outdated
technology rather than embracing the new digital age. His presentation will be rescheduled to the
next regular meeting after someone excavates a slide projector for his use.
The first speaker was Rob Weems, U.S.G.S.,
Reston, entitled "Diverse dinosaur and other footprints from the Lower
Cretaceous Patuxent Formation of Virginia". Rob noted the dearth of vertebrate fossils
from the Cretaceous in Virginia, consisting of a single partial fish skeleton,
has prompted some researchers to speculate that Virginia was a faunal
desert. The vertebrate fossil record was
increased by an order of magnitude by Rob's discovery of twelve different taxa
of footprints at two sites. Various vertebrates ranging from a tiny toad to a
70-foot behemoth literally left their mark in an outcrop too small for a
ping-pong match. The dearth of squashed amphibians is attributed to the
stratigraphic juxtaposition of tracks through time. A daunting parade of shallow
pits and scratches were each identified as footprints of various genera of
dinosaurs or other reptiles by their size, toe number, and toe length. Rob attributed the difficulty in finding
vertebrate fossils in Virginia to the coarse-grained facies that is dominant
there.
Questions from E-an Zen, Dallas Peck, George
Helz, and Pete Toulmin.
The second speaker, William Hooke, American
Meteorological Society: "A ten-step program for disaster
reduction". Identifying himself as
a "token non-geologist", Bill entoned in a Zen-like manner "The
largest hurricane or earthquake is not a disaster, if no person is injured and
no property damaged, Grasshopper".
Working from the paradigm that society causes natural disasters, not
nature, he listed ten ways for society to reduce the damage produced by its
collision with natural phenomena. His
list included some things that people might do, such as expecting natural extremes
or building resilience to natural events, and some things that will probably
never happen, such as shouldering individual and corporate liability for
hazards or simply working together. Bill
is striving toward the last step by building international working groups to
assess societal vulnerability to natural events.
Questions from Alan Tanner, Julio Friedman,
E-an Zen, and Fred Simon.
The final speaker was Daniel Lathrop,
University of Maryland, who spoke about "Laboratory experiments modeling
planetary cores and astrophysical processes". Desiring to model the development and
instability of magnetic fields generated by the spinning of planetary bodies,
Dan constructed a foot-scale model sphere loaded with liquid sodium and
outfitted with numerous sensors. This
experiment provided some intriguing results that suggest 5 separate magnetic
states developed in the magnetosphere.
Such data may explain numerous phenomena observed in other planets and
moons and even spiral galaxies. Following
the dictum that bigger is better, Dan is currently building a 3-meter-scale
sphere for further experiments.
There were questions from Alan Tanner, George
Helz, and Joe Smoot.
President Applegate adjourned the meeting at
9:45 PM. Attendance was 53.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
Geological Society of Washington
Minutes
of the 1371st Meeting,
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2003, John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
The meeting was called to order at 8:02 P.M.
by President Applegate. The minutes of the 1370th meeting were presented by
Meeting Secretary Joe Smoot. After an
unnamed person pointed out that the secretary had pronounced "meteorological"
as "mineralogical" when describing the affiliation of the second
speaker, William Hooke, the minutes were accepted as presented.
Tom Dutro announced Ellis Yochelson as a
guest, alluding to the fact that Ellis has failed to pay dues for some
time. Ellis defended his fiscal
irresponsibility by claiming that his town, Bowie, should be eligible for
reduced membership.
There were no announcements or new members
President-elect Jeff Grossman provided the
results of an internet search on outgoing president David Applegate which
indicates a broad and checkered past spanning over 100 years. The remarkably youthful-looking president denied
everything.
In accordance with GSW protocol, a
presidental address by the outgoing president, this being the 100th, was presented.
The presidential address by David Applegate
was entitled "Monkey business: Confronting political opposition to the
teaching of evolution in a new century".
The talk centered on the controversy as to whether dim-witted,
thick-skulled, brutes can be related to humans.
Dave conceded that he was "preaching to the choir" since even
though there is no absolute evidence for intelligence, most in the audience
would agree that there is some link to us, despite the fact that they have insistently
introduced legislation to block the teaching of evolution in schools. Dave documented the long history of attempts
to ban the teaching of evolution beginning with the Scopes Trial in 1925 and
continuing today. He cited two kinds of
anti-evolution movements: Bible-based opposition, citing Genesis, and the more
insidious design-based opposition which is obscured in a cloak of scientific
inquiry. Dave showed that the courts
have repeatedly voted in favor of keeping science teaching separate from
religeous belief. A surprising success
rate considering that polls show that a clear majority of the U.S. population
believes that the Genesis story can be taken literally. Dave concluded that the success reflects the
consitutional separation of church and state, the economic impact of having a
state labeled as "backwater" if it makes science teaching illegal,
and the possiblity that the polls are inaccurate.
President Applegate adjourned the meeting at
8:55 PM and announced a ten minute break preceeding the start of the 111th
Annual Meeting. Attendance was 60.
Respectfully submitted,
Joe Smoot, Meeting Secretary
[not yet received]