“Getting an idea of natural climate change through the 11.65 thousand years since the end of the last period of extensive glaciation depends on a variety of indirect measurements or proxies for temperature. “
Global warming: an important revision
The oldest known impact structure (?)
“rocks of Archaean age form a very small proportion of the Earth’s continental surface, the bulk having been buried by younger rocks.”
How flowering plants may have regulated atmospheric oxygen
“Ultimately, the source of free oxygen in the Earth System is photosynthesis, but that is the result of a chemical balance in the biosphere and hydrosphere that operates at the surface and just beneath it in sediments. “
Tsunami risk in East Africa
“The 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was one of the deadliest natural disasters since the start of the 20th century, with an estimated death toll of around 230 thousand. “
Weak lithosphere delayed the formation of continents
“Development of depleted and viscous sub-continental mantle on the early Earth – a precedes b – TTG signifies tonalite-trondhjemite-granodiorite rocks typical of Archaean cratons (Credit, Capitanio et al.; Fig 5)”
Thawing permafrost, release of carbon and the role of iron
“Global warming is clearly happening. The crucial question is ‘How bad can it get?’”
Origin of life: some news
“Yasuhiro Oba and colleagues may have found the missing link between interstellar space, planet formation and the synthesis of life through the mechanisms that resolve the ‘water paradox’ outlined by Michael Marshall.”
Doggerland and the Storegga tsunami
” the swamps and river systems that immediately followed the last ice age have become known collectively as Doggerland.”
Human impact on surface geological processes
“during the last century the North American capitalism shifted as much sediment as would be moved naturally in between 700 to 3000 years.”
Earliest sign of a sense of aesthetics
“In 1925 Wilfred Eitzman, a school teacher, investigated a cave in the Makapansgat Valley in Limpopo Province, South Africa that had been exposed by quarry workers.”
