Submarine Volcano in Action
Most of the earth’s volcanoes are underwater. For the first time, using the submersible remotely operated vehicle Jason II, scientists have observed an actual eruption. They were able to move close to the vent, mainly because the physical conditions are so different than on land:
If we were observing this type of eruptive activity on land we would have to run for our lives! At Brimstone Pit the pressure of 560 meters (1837 feet) of water over the site reduces the power of the explosive bursts. Also, the water quickly slows down the rocks and ash that are violently thrown out of the vent.
The rocks formed by submarine eruptions have distinctive characteristics that usually make them easy to distinguish in the field from rocks that were formed on the land. Study of these submarine volcanic environments could lead to a better understanding of how certain types of mineral deposits form.
Image and quote from Submarine Ring of Fire 2006 Exploration, NOAA Vents Program
Jason II also captured video of the eruption.
For a news article: Underwater Volcano Erupts on Video.
Thanks to Bill M. for the link to the video.
Grace and Peace
My Favorite Study Bible
Is it the Ryrie Study Bible? Scofield Study Bible? NIV Study Bible? Reformation Study Bible?
No, right now it is the NIV Wide Margin Edition—lots of white space on all four sides of the page for notes. I’ve had this for about four years, and I estimate that I have about 3000-4000 comments, underlines, color-coded highlights, and other types of notations. There is room for more, but I have just about worn it out (I purchased the $40 hardcover rather than the $140 leather edition).
My color code scheme: red for what has been accomplished for me through the blood of Christ, green for the attributes of God, blue for prayer. I place short notations in the margin for other topics that are important to me: M for missions, CR for creation, EV for evangelism, F for family, B for baptism, and so on.
I do own an NIV Study Bible and a number of commentaries, but I find it best to put my own writing in the blank margins. This allows me to tailor my “study Bible” for what I’ve learned in my own meditation and study, as well as to put in notes from sermons I hear and books I read. By doing this, the thoughts are reinforced in my memory, and are there in front of me as a starting point the next time I read the passage.
I’d love to do my daily reading and studying with the more literal English Standard Version, but they haven’t come out with a decent wide-margin edition. They have a journal edition coming out in August, but it has a two-inch margin on the outside of the page rather than a one-inch margin on each side of the page, and I’m not sure that I will like that. I’m undecided at this point.
Grace and Peace
Bears in Germany — Found
Bears are common in some parts of Europe—Romania for example—but had not been seen in Germany since 1835. The news article is Bear Reported in Germany, First for 170 Years.
BERLIN (AFP) - A bear has been reported in Germany for the first time since 1835, police at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps said, following the discovery of seven sheep carcasses. The animal crossed into Germany from Austria, where about 30 bears live, and was spotted near the border on Thursday after destroying a beehive.
The German Alps are rugged, but also densely populated. I took the following photograph from the outskirts of Garmish-Partenkirchen, standing right next to the entrance to the U.S. military base there. The highest peak is Zugspitze; at 2962 m (9718 ft) the highest point in Germany.
Bears are, of course, much more common in the United States. Grizzly bears live in Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Washington, though their native range was much larger. Black bears are native to 49 states (not Hawaii), and still live in 40-43 states. The current population of black bears in the U.S. is in the 400,000 range, including >100,000 in Alaska. For a census of black bears in the U.S., click here or here.
Grace and Peace
Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part III
Back in March, I had a post about Scientific American’s blog entries on “Are You a Global Warming Skeptic, parts I and II“. Scientific American has updated this with Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part III. They posted this on April 24th, but it is still relevant. Rather than bashing opponents of global warming, this summarizes the arguments against global warming, and is worth a read.
The basic arguments people give against global warming were put into the following categories:
- Global warming is not occuring
- Present warming is a natural phenomenon
- CO2 emissions cannot explain the warming
- Climate models are unconvincing
- Warming would be a good thing
- Kyoto is worthless, or worse
- Can’t trust the enviro-wackos and journalists
I haven’t formed an opinion one way or another on these points, though I would like to (along with 100 other things I’d like to look into).
Grace and Peace
The ID “Debate”
There was a debate/panel discussion over intelligent design at Biola University on May 12th. The ID side was represented by Michael Behe , Paul Nelson, Guillermo Gonzales, Jonathan Wells, and Steve Meyer; all prominent ID-ers. The opposition included a philosopher, journalist, biochemist (the only scientist on this side), and a state university religion professor. I haven’t heard anything about how it went.
I think a strong case can be made for many aspects of ID, but I was disappointed when I saw the list of anti-ID panelists, and think they may have did themselves a disservice by selecting a weak panel of opponents. If a case can be made for ID, it needs to be able to stand up to the tough questions, and tough questioners.
Grace and Peace
Fusion Power?
Breakthrough?: Scientists say they have cleared technical hurdle in fusion research — The headline makes it look like a major breakthrough, but it is just one small step towards commercial fusion power.
Unlikely: Fusion Power: Will It Ever Come? (Science, 10 March 2006) — The full article is not available online, but it outlines a number of obstacles to producing electricity by fusion, and doing so cheaply. Fusion may not be the source of unlimited, cheap energy that some make it out to be.
[As long as the fusion reactors work in SimCity—the only computer game that really matters—I'll be happy]
Grace and Peace
Bonhoeffer Quotes
Some quotes to ponder, from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Perhaps it would be just as well to ask ourselves whether we do not in fact often act as obstacles to Jesus and his Word.
The command of Jesus is hard, unutterably hard, for those who try to resist it. But for those who willingly submit, the yoke is easy, and the burden is light.
Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship means joy.
Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.
Grace and Peace
Human Moral Ecology
“Although people are rightly worried about preserving natural habitats, too little effort has been made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology.” — Archbishop Celestino Migliore
I got this from The Evangelical Ecologist.
Grace and Peace
Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers — Not Found
Another species on the edge of extinction (or perhaps even extinct): birders and ornithologists were excited last year at reports of ivory-billed woodpeckers being spotted in a swamp in Arkansas. There was even a video tape, but of the same quality level as the bigfoot videos that showed up in the 70s.
A thorough search of the area has turned up no ivory-billed woodpeckers. It would be unfortunate if this species—a 50 cm tall woodpecker—were truly extinct.
I have seen pileated woodpeckers in the St. Louis area, which are similar in coloration, though “only” 40 cm tall, and those are incredible birds to see. An ivory-billed woodpecker would be even more of a sight.
eNature Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
eNature Pileated Woodpecker (pronounced pill-ee-ay-ted or pie-lee-ay-ted)
Grace and Peace
American Chestnuts — Found
In 1904, ornamental Chinese chestnut trees were imported and planted at the Bronx Zoo. These non-native trees carried a fungus, to which they had a high level of resistance. At this time, American chestnut trees made up a significant part of the eastern forests from New England and southern Canada down to the southeastern U.S. Numbering in the billions of individual trees, this was an important species: comprising up to a quarter of the trees in many forests, up to 45 m (100 ft) tall, with a trunk diameter of up to 3 m (10 ft). The nuts provided food for deer, wild turkeys, and black bears. The American trees were devastated by the blight. The species did not go extinct because stumps survived, which still put up new shoots. These saplings, however, succumb to the fungus in a few years.
A news article today reports that a grove of 20 to 30-year old American Chestnuts has been found in Georgia, the extreme southern end of their natural range. This increases hope that someday, fungus-resistant American chestnuts may make a comeback.
The Chestnut problem is typical of the ecological problems caused by our global culture. The list of introduced pests and diseases is long: zebra mussels clogging streams and lakes in the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi drainage, rabbits taking over rangeland in Australia, the Mediterranean fruit fly. One serious infestation of the Med fly in California was believed to have been started with one unauthorized apple carried into the state on an airplane; the eradication program cost hundreds of millions of dollars. (I couldn’t find a reference for this–it comes from the dark corners of my brain; I hope I got the facts straight).
Grace and Peace
Bush on Science and Technology
A good quote from President Bush’s commencement address at Oklahoma State University:
These advances in technology will transform lives — and they will present you with profound dilemmas. Science offers the prospect of eventual cures for terrible diseases, and temptations to manipulate life and violate human dignity. With the Internet, you can communicate instantly with someone halfway across the world — and isolate yourself from your family and your neighbors. Your generation will have to resolve these dilemmas. My advice is, harness the promise of technology without becoming slaves to technology. My advice is, ensure that science serves the cause of humanity, and not the other way around.
I got this from World Magazine’s bioethics blog, 2BHuman.
Grace and Peace
Birthday gifts #2
I also got a “An Earth Scientist’s Periodic Table of the Elements and Their Ions.” The “normal” periodic table is useful for chemistry, but not as useful for the earth sciences. In the earth’s crust the elements almost always exist in the form of ions: oxygen as O2-, silicon as Si4+, the metals in their ionic forms, such as Na+, Cu2+, Fe2+, and Fe3+. Because of this, this periodic table lists ions rather than elements, and many elements occur multiple times in different parts of the table.
It will take me some time to figure out everything on this table, but I look forward to it.
Grace and Peace
Birthday gifts #1
Not only was yesterday (May 17th) Norwegian Independence Day, it was my birthday. Shirley bought me a Martin Luther mug. On the other side it says:
“The Bible is a remarkable fountain: the more one draws and drinks of it, the more it stimulates thirst.” –Martin Luther
Thanks, Shirley.
Grace and Peace
White Horse Inn
In Bucharest, we attend a Romanian-language church, and often don’t get all that much out of the sermons. When we need a dose of solid English-language teaching, we download a John Piper sermon from Desiring God.
My favorite radio program is The White Horse Inn, produced by the same people who put together Modern Reformation magazine. The White Horse Inn is a roundtable discussion about theology and apologetics. These guys are not afraid to tackle deep subjects, as well as exposing goofiness in Evangelicalism.
This year, WHI is going through Romans, and last week the topic was “imputation.” Imputation is the theological term describing the transfer of Christ’s righteousness to us. This is good stuff: When God looks at the Christian, he sees them as being righteous, not because they are righteous on their own, but because Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to us.
In the program, they played portions of interviews with pastors at an evangelical pastors’ conference, where they asked, “How important is the concept of imputation in your ministry?” If the pastor didn’t know what “imputation” was, they explained it for them. Most of the pastors said that their people wouldn’t understand a concept like that, and that they would rather preach on topics about “Christian living.” In other words, they don’t want to talk about the wonderful things that Christ has done for us, because that isn’t practical.
Past programs I have enjoyed have been on finding Christ in all of Scriptures, the emergent church, the Purpose-Driven life, intelligent design, justification by grace through faith, apologetics, and parenting.
Grace and Peace
Fellowship in the Sciences
As an undergraduate student, at Montana State University, I knew of no other Christians in the geology department. They may have been there, but I felt very much alone. This was at a time when I was just starting to grow in my faith as a Christian, and I had no one with whom I could discuss issues like the relationship between science and the scriptures.
I expected the same to be true when I went off to graduate school at Washington State University. However, I was blessed to find a number of other believers among the geology graduate and undergraduate students, as well as among the physics students who shared the building. There was a time when we could consistently gather four to six students together for a Bible study and prayer time in one of the laboratories, and I treasure the fellowship I had with Glenn, Alan, John, Steven, and others.
I am experiencing some of that fellowship now as I work on raising the additional support we need for returning to Romania. I have been contacting people who I think might share my passion for “science, science education, and the gospel,” with the hope of developing relationships for mutual encouragement, as well as for financial support in our ministry. In the past few months, I have had good a good talk with a biochemist (or molecular biologist; I’m not sure which he prefers) about his research on transferring a gene for making luciferase (responsible for the glow of a lightning bug) into mice. This holds promise in cancer research. I have also visited with a physicist about cosmic ray research and supernovas. I think these men enjoyed having someone to talk to who could follow what they were saying, and I certainly enjoyed learning from them. Plus, it is good to have scientist-to-scientist fellowship. One of these men feels very alone as a Christian in the workplace.
If you are not a scientist, please pray for those who are. Many of them work in environments that are rather hostile to Christianity. I have been blessed in many ways to know each of these scientists who follow Christ.
Grace and Peace
Christian Scientists (????)
Here’s a pet peeve among those of us who are “scientists who are also Christians.” The natural phrase would be “Christian scientists” but we can’t say that; the phrase has been hijacked by a cult.
Grace and Peace
The Science of BarryBondsology
Whatever your thoughts are about Barry Bonds being at 713 career home runs, here’s an interesting editorial from USA Today called “No Scientific Evidence,” giving plenty of reasons beyond steroids for why baseball players today are so much stronger than they were in the past. The reasons include:
- Better nutrition, from childhood to adulthood
- Better training, from childhood to the pros
- Larger pool of players to choose from
- Year-round training and weight training
- Medical and surgical procedures that let players recover from injuries quicker and have longer careers.
- Changes in ballpark design
[We miss Romania, but it has been great to be able to go to a couple of Cardinals games (and see an Albert Pujols home run!) and to watch baseball on television.]
Grace and Peace
Introducing Myself, Again
Here is an information letter I send to Christian scientists scientists who are Christians who I think might be interested in supporting us in our ministry in Romania. Feel free to pass it on to people who have a passion for “science, science education, and the gospel.”
Grace and Peace
Yes and No
Here’s a quote I read today from Christianity Today:
“What good is it if people believe in intelligence? That’s no different than atheism in that if it’s not the God of the Bible, it’s not Jesus Christ, it’s not salvation.”
(Ken Ham, president of the creationist group Answers in Genesis, criticizing Intelligent Design as weakening scriptural authority)
Ken Ham is absolutely correct. The only way to have salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. It is not good enough to believe in an Intelligence, a supernatural Divine Architect, Allah, or the Supreme Being.
Ken Ham is also correct in that ID can only bring a person so far. It cannot bring a person to fully understand sin or salvation in Christ. As I brought out in my sermon Christ and Creation, posted earlier tonight, study of the creation could—and should—bring a person to the point of seeing that there must be a Creator, some things about the nature of that Creator, and that we are accountable to that Creator.
But I disagree with Ken Ham’s assertion that ID is a compromise. It is, in fact, consistent with what the Scripture says about natural revelation. ID is very much in line with Psalm 19 and Romans 1:18-20, and in no way contradicts what is said in the opening chapters of Genesis.
Natural revelation is incomplete. That, I believe, was God’s intention. A much more complete revelation of God is found in Scripture, and even more in Jesus Christ. Design arguments can point people to God. The Holy Spirit uses Scriptures to bring them the rest of the way.
Grace and Peace
Good Days/Bad Days
Here’s a quote from The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges:
Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.
This sums up our daily dependence on Christ and his grace. Every day we need to come to him for forgiveness and strength, and we will never outgrow this.
Teacher longevity
Consistent with past trends, a recent study shows that half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years.
I’ve been a teacher for six years, so I’ve beat the average. It certainly has more stress, longer hours, and lower pay than the job I had before, but I am happy to be where God has called me to be for now.
Grace and Peace
The Periodic Table of Comic Books
Who says scientists are boring? For a fun periodic table of the elements, check out the Periodic Table of Comic Books. Click on an element and see pages from comic books that refer to that element. The following are selections from oxygen, gold, and bromine.
Grace and Peace
The Future of Mt. St. Helens
I’m going to speculate a little bit about the future of Mt. St. Helens. My basic assumption is that the volcano has a future eruptive history; it is unlikely that it will become an extinct volcano anytime in the near future. I’ll give two scenarios for the next few hundred years of the mountain.
Scenario 1. The dome-building eruption will continue for decades. It may not be continuous—it could be extruding lava for a few years and then be quiet for a decade—but it could keep this up for a long time. The result would be a rebuilding of the mountain to something like its pre-1980 glory.
Scenario 2. The dome-building eruption stops sometime in the next few years, and then the mountain lies dormant for a century or even several hundred years. This would be consistent with its history over the past several thousand years. If this happens, it is likely that the crater will slowly fill with glacial ice. Even now, 26 years after the catastrophic eruption that created the present landscape at MSH, glacial ice reaches a depth of 200 m (600 ft) in areas between the crater rim and the lava domes in the center of the crater. The shape of the crater—a horseshoe facing north—is ideal for the formation of a large glacier, perhaps the largest individual glacier in the United States outside Alaska (this is my speculation; I haven’t looked into it closely).
Whether scenario 1 or 2 happens, it is highly probably that MSH will someday have another large, explosive eruption. If scenario 2 is the case, that eruption will be accompanied by an very large lahar, as volcanic ash mixes with melting ice to form a dense slurry that rapidly flows downstream.
Image of current glacial ice in the MSH crater, right up against the new lava dome. USGS/NASA
The crater of MSH is shaped like an ideal glacial cirque. Because the crater opens to the north rather than some other direction, the interior of the bowl does not receive as much direct sunlight as it otherwise would. USGS.
Grace and Peace, especially to whoever lives downstream from MSH 300 years from now if Scenario 2 comes to pass.
The Fin at Mt. St. Helens
USGS/Cascades Volcano Observatory
Mt. St. Helens, in Washington State, has been undergoing a slow eruption since October 2004. So far, this has been a relatively quiet eruption, compared to the explosive eruption of May 18, 1980. In the past year and a half, there have been a few minor eruptions that have ejected ash into the atmosphere, but the primary mode of eruption has been the slow extrusion of thick, sticky dacitic lava. This lava has a lower silica (SiO2) and higher water content than the more fluid basaltic lava that characterizes Hawaiian volcanoes, and it tends to pile up in a dome rather than flowing for any distance.
A good description of how a lava dome forms is from the Cascade Volcano Observatory:
The dome at Mount St. Helens is termed a composite dome by scientists, because it represents the net result of many eruptive events, not just one event. The dome-building process may be pictured as the periodic squeezing of an upward-pointing tube of toothpaste or caulking compound. The process is dynamic, involving the upward movement of new material, cracking and pushing aside of old material, sloughing of material from steep surfaces of the dome, and occasional, small but violent explosions that blast out pieces of the dome.
The “fin” in the picture above is being pushed up from beneath at a rate of 1-2 m per day by magma that is slowly rising from a magma chamber, perhaps 1 km beneath the crater. It is now about 100 m (300 ft) tall. It is quite hot at its base, and cools as it rises. The fin will likely collapse into a pile of boulders in the future.
What will happen long term at Mt. St. Helens? Will the volcano be in a dome-building phase for decades, eventually filling in the horseshoe-shaped scar from the 1980 eruption? Will it stop its present eruptive stage tomorrow? Will it have another explosive phase, wiping out the domes that have formed in the crater? No one knows for sure.
————————————————–
The following image from the USGS shows the lava dome that formed inside the crater of Mt. St. Helens during the 1980-1986 dome-building eruption.
The new dome (2004-present) is forming higher up in the horseshoe-shaped crater and is shown below. The new lava dome has steam rising from it; the 1980-1986 dome is the rocky area downhill from the new dome.
Grace and Peace
Missions Update 5 May 2006
My wife and I are missionaries in Romania with the Evangelical Free Church of America International Mission. We send out an e-mail update to our friends and supporters every couple of weeks. Here is part of our update for this week:
Dear Family and Friends in Christ,
The Mission of Bucharest Christian Academy
“BCA exists to provide a Christ-centered quality education primarily serving missionary and Christian expatriate families. BCA prepares students spiritually, academically, and socially, through a Biblical worldview, to face the challenges of living in today’s world. As a primary outcome of our mission, BCA students will be equipped to influence the world through Biblical thought, character, and action.”
By supporting us in our ministry of BCA, you are contributing to the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8). Consider the following:
- The parents of BCA students minister in a great variety of roles with a number of mission agencies. Their work includes evangelism, leadership training, church planting, university work, orphanage work, and youth work. Many of these parents say they would not be in Romania if it were not for the ministry of BCA.
- Many of the students at BCA are involved in their parents’ ministries. All high school students participate in community service projects.
- Many missionary kids eventually become missionaries themselves.
- Some of the students come from non-Christian families, and a number of these have come to faith in Christ through the ministry of the school. Many of the non-Christian families have come from Asian countries, such as China, Japan, and Indonesia.
- The population of Bucharest is only about 1% evangelical.
- In the bigger picture, Europe has a lower percentage of evangelical believers than any other continent. The need for workers in Europe is great!
You can see, therefore, that the ministry of BCA not only has an impact in the lives of its students, but on the country of Romania, and even throughout the world.
Prayer Requests
Thank you for your prayers for us as we visited churches in Farmington, Missouri and Oak Lawn, Illinois. We felt that both visits went well.
Please continue to pray for:
- We are still in need of $1400 per month in support. This hasn’t changed significantly for a month.
- Please pray as Kevin continues to contact scientists and researchers in industry, academia, and government with “a passion for science, science education, and the gospel.” This is our primary focus of making new contacts right now. Pray that he would also be able to make fruitful contacts through Christian professional organizations.
- BCA is still in need of teachers for next year: elementary, secondary English and math.
- Shirley is coming up on her last week of her Introduction to Counseling Class at Covenant Seminary. She is working on several papers, and then needs to take the final exam.
- We are presenting our ministry at our home church, Christ Community Church in St. Louis on May 7th.
- We are presenting our ministry at Rockport Baptist Church in Arnold, Missouri on May 14th.
- We are meeting with the missions committee of a potential supporting church on May 16th.
Grace and Peace
The Silence of Adam
I usually avoid men’s conferences and books written for men. So, when the men’s group I was in a few years ago selected The Silence of Adam by Larry Crabb as the book we would be in for a few months, I was skeptical. I was hoping for something with meat in it, not fluff. However, I was very pleasantly surprised, and recommend the book to you.
The passage of scripture that Crabb starts from is Genesis 3:11, which says, “She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” (NIV) Adam was right there in the garden with Eve while she was being tempted by the serpent, and he said nothing. Too often, we as men fail to respond to sin in our own lives or in the lives of those around us when we should speak with God’s voice (i.e. with Scripture and wisdom) in these situations.
Another point that Crabb makes that struck a chord with me is what he says about what he calls “recipe theology.” Recipe theology is expressed in “how-to” sermons that are primarily about what we do for God (e.g. a sermon series on how to be a better ___________) rather than what God does for us in Christ.
Here are some quotes from the book:
God’s Spirit is less interested in telling us how to get our lives together, and more concerned with stirring—in the middle of our ongoing difficulties—our passion for Christ.
We don’t believe the Bible provides a plan for making life work as we think it should. We think it offers a reason to keep on going even when life doesn’t work that way.
I am called to concern myself less with conformity than with integrity, less with fitting in and more with the visions of a dreamer.
Worshiping him, praying to him, eagerly looking for him throughout all the Scriptures, humbling ourselves before him in brokenness over our pride and our lukewarm devotion, waiting upon him to fill us with his Spirit, serving him with single-minded purpose and a passion that consumes all others; these are the old paths to which we must return.
The theological statements coming out of modern culture look more like recipes for living than declared truths about God.
When people try to handle their lives by merely working hard to do better, they either fail and live in defeat or succeed and become proud.
Men are called to pass on something important to future generations: not just a passing on of history but a passing on of the memory of God in our lives.
Sinful choices require that God be forgotten.
The root problem is the failure to believe that God is enough.
When I am silent, I live as an atheist.
Do I have the courage to do something with absolutely no guarantees other than that God’s ultimate purposes will be achieved?
Whenever you preach, make much of Christ!
I preached last Sunday, and that final quote was prominent in my thinking as I prepared my message. It would have been easy to talk only about our ministry in Romania, or how creation points to the Creator (my passage was Romans 1:18-20), but I have to make much of Christ or I am not really preaching.
Grace and Peace
Fashionable Space Suit From Mars
With NASA grant money, students at several North Dakota colleges designed this highly fashionable space suit.
The colors are designed to make the astronaut more visible against the rusty red surface of Mars. The news article does not say what kind of protection the suit offers against radiation. However, it does state that the astronaut has no way of going to the bathroom.
Grace and Peace
Recovering Ozone Layer
News story: Ozone Layer Shows Signs of Recovery
As the level of CFCs in the atmosphere decreases, the concentration of ozone in the stratospheric ozone layer appears to be recovering, and this is good news. Remember that the ozone layer protects us from much of the skin cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation that comes from the sun.
My thoughts on this: If it were not for scientific research, environmental activism, government regulation, and international cooperation (the Montreal Protocol of 1987 which banned many ozone-depleting chemicals), we would still be producing large quantities of CFCs, and the ozone layer would continue to diminish. I know, some of you will cry “liberal”, but I believe the government has an important role in environmental regulation.
For your information: If all of the ozone in the atmosphere were separated from the other gases, it would make a layer just a few millimeters thick (at 0°C and 1 atm pressure).
Grace and Peace
Graywacke
Our cat, Graywacke, died of kidney stones in Bucharest a couple weeks ago. To have a pet is to have a piece of nature in the home. It will be difficult to move back to Bucharest and not have him there.
© Kevin Nelstead (click on image to enlarge)
Where did I come up with the name “Graywacke?” A graywacke is a dark, coarse-grained sandstone with a high clay content. He was gray, and he was a bit wacky.
Grace and Peace
