It’s a Virtual Meeting you shouldn’t miss! And it’s FREE to all TSOP members – if you are not a member, it still will only cost you the price of joining TSOP for a year ($US25 for professionals and $US15 for students). Check out the meeting website: https://tsop.org/TSOP2022/index.html The Society for Organic Petrology (TSOP) is […]
The beautiful thing about data is its uncertainty. That is, in a world where sometimes it is hard to know what is real and what is…well, lets say not real, with data you can actually characterize how certain you are about such and such. After a couple of decades of working in coal seam gas […]
Of all the particles in a sedimentary basin, organics are arguably the most insightful. Think about it: they tell you how hot things got, millions and millions of years ago, and that is both within the basin at depth but also at the surface when they were deposited; they tell you what plants were evolving; […]
Ever get that sinking feeling? Well, if you were standing in the Kutai lakes area in central Borneo you’d be right to think so. And its not just because it is full of peat and wetlands. Located about 100 km from the nearest coast and surrounded by low, heavily vegetated hills, that border on becoming […]
When someone says ‘hydrogen’, what do you think of? I think BOOM! I wasn’t sure why I thought that until I looked up the range at which hydrogen can explode compared to methane. And indeed hydrogen is more flammable. Methane’s range of concentration in which it can explode is between 5 and 15% (so lower […]
There was a recent article in the Eos Science News by the AGU. As a whole the AGU is doing a great job at being relevant and topical in today’s geoscience world. Its dynamic and attracts a lot of young professionals, which is fantastic. The article that caught my eye was titled “Teaching Geoscience History […]
“Without data, you are just another asshole with an opinion”, said John Ferm standing at the blackboard, chalk in one hand and a cigar in the other with smoke swirling around his head (this was, after all, 1985). It’s a phrase John (my MSc and PhD advisor) would often use when we, his students, started […]
I was flying through the chill Christchurch air with my arms outstretched like some newbie superhero about to make a hard landing on frosty, frozen gravel. I had just been cycling through Hagley Park on my way to work thinking about how to put together a disparate set of papers for a book when I […]
Though mostly overlooked by sedimentologists and climatologists coal provides highly detailed information on past climates and tectonics. In a recent paper* by myself and my colleagues (available Here) we take a look at a very thick (>40 m) coal of Early Cretaceous age in Inner Mongolia, near the borders with Russia and Mongolia. Using stable […]
Two geologists walk into a bar. The first orders a ‘Flaming Volcano’ (he’s a neo-tectonics/Quaternary guy). Without blinking an eye the bartender asks him what sort of rum he’d like. The second geologist orders a ‘Black Coal’ Stout (she is an organic petrologist). Everyone in the bar freezes then slowly slinks out the door …. […]