Ben Black

Interesting point in the editorial. They say: “A good peer-reviewer should be responsible and reliable. He/she should (1) accept promptly an invitation, (2) not turn down any invitation for review…”

I agree with most of their points. But never turning down an invite? That’s a heavy lift… thoughts?

It really helps me just to start by reading what I have written already. Sometimes the day before I plan to spend some time writing so that ideas can settle and grow

Cowboy and sidekick herding cattle off the road and into the frenchglen corral. Mooo

Rocky canyon with sunlit flats

Pre-Steens rhyolites with the Alvord Desert in the background

Just for your eyes to feel better

What is better than pet photos?

You know the answer is a praying mantis on a rock hammer

Columbia River Basalts in the background

Highly recommend this essay, which underscores the risks posed by under-the-radar volcanoes

Photos or it didn’t happen!

The world has so much to learn from Norwegians about the critical importance of saunas.

(did you guess that I would end the sentence with that word?)

Here is a nice sauna overlooking the harbor in Storekorsnes. Spotted while waiting for a ferry transfer back to Alta.

These are cloudberries (with a gabbro intrusion cutting metasedimentary rocks in the background).

Cloudberries have a short Arctic growing season and have twice as much vitamin C as an orange by weight.

Rocks

Rocks

Rocks

I will just put these photos here without much comment beyond wow this is a nice place

One way to judge how fresh a rock is: the sound it makes when the 4.5 kilo sledge lands on it

(Wielding the hammer: Ben Klein)

There were a lot of mosquitoes and biting flies in Siberia. But Norway may have Siberia beat for the sheer diversity of biters… a very heterogeneous mix of small biting flies, giant biting flies, and mosquitoes.

All living their best lives

We climbed through a remote Norwegian valley on a reindeer path, and you’ll never guess what we saw next…

It was a cliff of hornblendite and carbonatite!

We have been discussing the extent to which this place could be analogous to the plumbing system beneath that place (guessing you are thinking of Ol Doinyo Lengai?)

Yesterday we were working near a mine. We thought maybe mining the carbonatites because they are one of the major sources of rare earth elements.

But actually they were mining the nephrite syenite to make porcelain! Just a reminder that we use rocks for all kinds of things. Rocks->teacups

Tomorrow we will try a new way to reach the interior of the island and then meet the boat on the other side. There are some bugs… but the geology is very exciting!

First cell reception after two great field days! We are looking at an enormous magmatic system at 5-10 kbar pressure (mid to lower crust). Very volatile rich, including carbonatites (inaccesible today due to snow). Big thank you to @fredrhog.bsky.social for sharing some nice NGU maps of the area.

Quick run around Alta in the morning. Tons of wildflowers on the streets. Some old classic wooden houses…. Plus lots of buildings that feel like bunkers against the winter months

Made it to Alta! Some photos from the flight in. It is 11 PM and the sunlight is golden.

Tomorrow we meet up with colleagues from Uni of Lausanne to take a boat out to the rocks

The compare/contrast between Denmark and Norway—photos taken just a few minutes apart across the Skagerrak strait—is stark. Sand vs rock. Next: the journey 1500 km north, to the Arctic

How do others feel about packing for field work? I don’t especially enjoy normal packing, but there is a pleasure in trying to imagine a future moment on an unknown mountain, and what you might wish for in that moment—and then later, with luck, being on the mountain and having just what you need

Leaving for field work tomorrow with a team heading to northern Norway to explore the exhumed remnants of a very large mafic magmatic system—possibly the lower crustal roots of an Ediacaran large igneous province! I don’t know if I will have any internet, but if so I will try to tweet along the way…

I see we are talking about ROSES-2025 and Mike Wong’s analysis (which implies a dismal 5% funding rate for solar system science).

I will say, as depressing as the NASA funding outlook is, I appreciate these nice visualizations of that depressing funding.

research.ssl.berkeley.edu/~mikewong/bl...

Hi Goldschmidt! Catch my Berner Lecture at 2.30 today!

Some nice fresh looking tephra from Laki. Imagine these fragments quenching in fire fountains a kilometer high

Figure from the paper showing our model results when considering the tropical vegetaiton collapse - a long-high temperature period following the PTME

Great to see this finally out today! We show that the collapse of tropical vegetation during the Permo-Triassic extinction is a key driver of the long-term super-greenhouse climate that followed it.

Read more at www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you are in Eastern Oregon today, stop by the C2C project’s booth at the Watershed Festival, where we explore how ancient volcanic eruptions have shaped climate and life.

Volcanoes, Lava, and Life—words to live by!

Featuring Leif Karlstrom, Lauren Adamo, &
@pedromonarrez.bsky.social

Shocked to learn this incredibly tragic news - we have lost one of the most influential volcano scientists of our times.

Super valuable live posting of today’s NSF Earth Sciences informational session…

(Thanks for this @brandontbishop.bsky.social)

This poses a particular challenge for Neoproterozoic glaciations… if LIP weathering is not the primary driver of cooling, what might be?