AGU Wrap-Up

San Francisco sunset, December 2010. Picture taken by my friend Kyle.

I am currently in the San Francisco airport waiting to fly back from the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting to my home base in Woods Hole. My flight back to Boston was supposed to leave an hour or so ago, but the flight has now been delayed by several hours due to "severe weather." The weather didn't look so bad when my fiance and I left our hotel this morning, but I guess that there are some bad clouds and high winds up where the airplanes fly. Looking outside the airport window now, the fog is producing pretty much white-out conditions.

Oh, well. Hopefully, we'll be able to rebook our connection in Salt Lake City and make it to Boston sometime late late late this evening. I have the best fiance ever- he flew in from South Africa (about 30 hours of traveling) on Saturday night and left with me for AGU Monday afternoon (another 13 hours or so of travel). He sat patiently through a full day of AGU on Tuesday and partial AGU days on Wednesday and Thursday. Fortunately, since he's also a geologist his company paid for him to attend AGU as well, so he was able to go off to some interesting sedimentary talks while I met up with colleagues and attended the CO2 sequestration talks which are related to my research. Now that we're looking at a very long trip home, my fiance is still being very sweet. He's been standing in line for about 30 minutes waiting to rebook our flight. I definitely have found myself a keeper.

A Geology Conference in an Earthquake Zone

Hotel Earthquake Evacuation Guide, San Francisco, December 2010.

After a long day of travel yesterday, I arrived in San Francisco for the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Conference. The conference is held here in San Francisco every year. This is my first time at AGU. I'm very excited to be here, if a little overwhelmed by all of the people! I have to wonder a little, though, about the choice of conference venue. San Francisco, as the above "Earthquake Procedures" emergency evacuation guide I found in my hotel room reminds me, is located along the San Andreas fault and is prone to Earthquakes.  Sure, there hasn't been a major earthquake (as far as I know) during this or previous AGU conferences, but it's only a matter of time. Hopefully, during this (and subsequent) AGU meetings there won't be a repeat of the great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Perhaps AGU should consider moving their fall conference to a more geologically stable interior region- Kansas, for instance. Though I guess then you'd have to worry about tornadoes. And perhaps it wouldn't be quite as scenic.

I've had a great conference so far- I spent the day meeting with colleagues and attending a session on geological carbon sequestration. I also visited the vendor's hall and visited the life-size mock-up sphere of the Alvin deep-sea submersible, which was transported by truck from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), my home base of operations. Be sure to stop by and visit the sphere- you can also enter a raffle to win a real Alvin porthole! WHOI, by the way, is an oceanographic institution located on ephemeral glacial till that will likely be underwater in the near future due to sea level rise...

Me and the Alvin Sphere Mock-Up, San Francisco, December 2010.

Okay, off to explore San Francisco a little! Hope to see some of you tonight at the AGU Movie Event!

AGU Movie Event

"The Core" movie poster. Image from wikipedia.com.

 "Deep Impact" movie poster. Image from wikipedia.com.

For those of you who like bad geology movies and who are attending the American Geophysical Union conference next week in San Francisco, I just wanted to advertise that there is an event called AGU Sciences Meet Hollywood.

The director of "The Core" and the screenwriter for "Deep Impact" will be there, among others. Sounds like fun!

This event takes place Tuesday night in Moscone Center South, Room 300. Hope to see some of you there!