Oil Shale, what is it, and “drill baby drill” so to speak.
Oil Shale is one of those drill baby drill technology that we should be exploiting to get away from dependence of unfriendly regimes.
Geology is Detective Work
Geology is Detective Work Everyone likes a good book. Now days the genre has changed. With the proliferation of the internet, reading books may go the way of the Wooly Mammoth. Geologists, while having read their fair share of text books and technical articles also spend a great deal of their time (besides web time) reading [...]
Ground Water Geology 101
Ground Water Geology 101 The saying goes we are what we eat. I wish to stretch that bit of wisdom a tad further by saying we are also what we drink. Here is another case where Geology affects our daily lives. The water that we drink comes out of the ground most typically unless you handle [...]
Gastroliths
A little rock appetizer with that salad? On a "global warming" 60 degree day this January, I was out working on a fence line less that 200 yards from my house. I habitually scan grass less areas of ground looking for indian artifacts or traces of dinosaur fossil material. (Though I need glasses for every other [...]
Save the planet from Oil Production
I became aware of an email from the group at care2.com concerning a petition to prevent opening federal land in Utah to oil and gas exploration. Here's a quote from a page (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/192320016) on their site: "Without consulting the National Park Service, the BLM has opened thousands of acres for lease to oil and gas development [...]
Wrong Compass?
You can't even trust your compass anymore. (You actually never could!) Most people incorrectly believe that a compass needle points directly to the north magnetic pole. There are many complicating factors involving the molten iron/nickel core of the earth and multiple magnetic poles that average each other out as well as local effects. The net effect [...]
Dinosaurs in the Hills
Dinosaurs used to live here but you would be hard pressed to see any evidence of them. As a group, they are mostly romanced by children but some of us never really grow up. I spend a great deal of my spare time "climbing stairs" around the local hills looking for the evidence of their passing [...]
Dip
Does that rock have dip? No, this is not another food metaphor! Dip is a technical geologic term meaning the orientation of a rock layer in 3 dimensional space. This property has to do with both direction and magnitude of the angle that a rock layer slants away from that famous horizontal plane. The line that [...]
Earthquake
The last thing on anyone's mind around the Powder River valley is earthquake. Granted we are in a pretty low risk area for earthquake but we are not in the lowest possible category. In fact, according to the United States Geologic Survey, we have a 2% probability of exceeding 1/10th of the force of gravity (horizontally) [...]
Gumbo
"Darn that old Gumbo!" is a phrase you hear all too much this time of year. But what is that "old Gumbo". Geologically speaking, "gumbo" is a garbage basket term that refers to sticky soil that usually very high in clay. The term can refer to any kind of clay but some kinds of clay are [...]