Category: Resources

2025-01-11 Paul Bierman – When the Ice is Gone

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THE LECTURE
Cold War Science and Engineering Today Reveals Greenland’s Fragility in an Overheating Climate

 

 

QGS hosted Paul at 4 PM on January 11, 2025

Paul’s lecture focused on how Greenland, a remote arctic island, holds in its ice enough water to raise sea level over six meters (20 feet). That is enough to flood every major coastal city and displace up to half a billion people. As he discussed, until recently we knew very little about the past comings and goings of this massive ice sheet. Through the lens of climate science, environmental history, and the stories of people who studied Greenland over the past century, Paul used the past to look into a warming future. He filled the talk with photographs, movies, and recordings from the 1930s onward, reviewed the science done by the international team that he led, and told stories from his book, When the Ice is Gone. A key finding of Paul and his fellow researchers is that the Greenland ice sheet appears to have melted away completely during a previous interglacial warm climate, which suggests it could do so again if today’s warmer climate continues. The talk was popular with those with an interest in science and history.

An additional resource to Paul’s lecture may be found on Youtube – CLICK HERE. You can find the featured book by Paul at this link: https://www.paulbierman.net/books/.

Paul’s lecture was ZOOM-only at 4 PM on January 11, 2025.

BIO

Paul Bierman, environmental science professor at the University of Vermont, develops methods to date ice and rocks. He has published in Science and Nature, with the findings covered by CNN, USA Today, and the Weather Channel. Paul is a 1993 graduate of the University of Washington (Seattle) where he earned his MS and doctorate in Geoscience after a BA at Williams College.

Paul lives in Burlington, Vermont and his passions include telling stories and solving the mysteries of our planet. He is equally at home in a dusty archive and a cleanroom without a speck of dust. A history and geoscience researcher by training and a teacher for over four decades, Paul looks at our planet with wonder and curiosity. His career has taken him to searing deserts and frigid ice sheets. Throughout, he has focused his energies on understanding the link between our Earth and human societies – what today we call sustainability. He enjoys education at all levels and is the author of three textbooks and a book for the general public, When the Ice is Gone.

2023-07-08 Walk to the Rocks Field Trip

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Geology of Tamanowas Rock and Peregrines Rock, Chimacum, WA

Tamanowas Rock aerial image

On Saturday, July 8, 2023, several QGS geologists led a 4-mile, 4-hour hike (12 PM—4 PM) from HJ Carroll County Park near Chimacum to the Tamanowas Rock Sanctuary, then up on top of Tamanowas Ridge to see Peregrine’s Rock. The elevation gain on the walk is about 300 ft. This is a repeat of our 2022 trip and includes a 13-page illustrated guidebook.

The upper part of the trail is moderately difficult but slow paced and the hike is tailored to agile citizen scientists who are knowledgeable about basic geologic principles and vocabulary. Subjects to be discussed include the glacial history of the Quimper Peninsula and Chimacum Valley, glacial erratics on the peninsula, and the geology of the underlying Eocene volcanic rock that forms Tamanowas Rock, which is a special part of this story and a sacred place of the S’Kallum people. Allie Taylor of the Jamestown S’Kallum Tribe described the history of the site and its importance to the Tribe.

Tamanowas Rock is a remnant of deposits from an explosive volcano that stood near here about 43 million years ago; it is comprised of adakite, an uncommon type of rock that forms when subducted oceanic plate melts. Aadakite requires unusually hot conditions in the mantle, which in this case occurred during establishment of the Cascades.

Conversely, Peregrine’s Rock is a glacial erratic named by Erik Nagle, a participant in our 2020 Great Erratic Challenge. It currently is the largest erratic documented on the Quimper Peninsula. We believe that it is greenstone (metamorphosed basalt) that originated to the north, perhaps in Canada.

2023-03-15 KPTZ Interview with David Williams, prelude to Seattle’s Geologic Secrets

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Nan Evans of KPTZ and Seattle Naturalist David Williams, discussed “A Sense of Place – What is it?”  This is a prelude to David’s March 18th lecture entitled “Secrets of Seattle Geology—Connections of the human story and the geology story.”

The interview was delivered for Nature Now, a weekly radio broadcast on KPTZ 91.9 MHz. The interview was recorded as a MP3 file and broadcast three times preceding David’s March 18, 2023 lecture for the Quimper Geological Society:

Show #610: David Williams—A Sense of Place:  What does that mean?
Broadcast on March 15 at 12:30 PM; March 16at 5:30 PM; and March 18 at 12:30 PM

A recording of the interview is available on KPTZ’s Nature Now