Ice Fog

I am home from San Francisco. I really enjoy the city a lot, but I didn't take the time to explore it.  Someday I'll go back and I want have a conference to go to.  Presenting my poster was my favorite part. I always like answering people's questions, even if it is hard if I don't know the answers.  I talked to Allen Glazner about his poster.  I almost worked with him instead of Calvin, but I am glad I didn't. Glazner is known in the volcanology/petrology/geology community for creating these large crazy ideas and arguing for them, but everyone else knows that these ideas he comes up with are just plain wrong and crazy.  Guil says that what he does isn't pointless though because it causes others to argue his points and really think about them, and pushes science to go forward in that way.  I agree with Guil.  So....Glazner's poster was on how large ignimbrite forming volcanoes (the REALLY REALLY BIG ones) are affected by climate.  He states that when the climate is dry, there is not enough ground water to convect the heat out of a magma chamber, causing it to remain melted and grow large, while smaller volcanoes or pluton clusters are caused by wet climates, where there is enough water moving about to convect the heat out, sufficiently cooling the magma chamber beyond eruption.  An example would be Yellowstone.  Yellowstone will not erupt, according to Glazner, because of all the hydrothermal activity (geysers) removing the heat.  Most everyone is skeptical of this theory, and if you can't see why, you'll just have to trust me.

My whole poster was presenting data that proved a paper Glazner wrote in 2008 wrong.  Luckily he didn't come to my poster.

But Bachmann did.  Olivier Bachmann.  I read his nametag and I knew it was him.  But I did not connect it to my poster where I had a curve of data that I cited as his.  So when I was discussing my poster, I showed him his own data and his name and then I discussed how my data was "better".  Not necessarily better b/c his data is good, mine is just more complete.  I think though he was the type of guy who would have found that funny.  I hope so.

This morning Josh got up and helped me get ready for work, and he was checking out the weather for me.  He told me it was Frosty with Ice Fog.  There were two accidents, one on 40 right where I work due to the ice fog caused by the dam.  What in the world is ice fog?  Josh told me it was a giant block of floating ice and is very dangerous because if you run into it it's like running into a wall.  I drove my truck in watching out for frost and a giant cube of floating ice.  I found neither, and I have concluded that these southerners are crazy.

My fifteen minute break is now over.