Mountains that created themselves usually follow the general rules of isostasy/isostatic equilibrium and have a "keel" sticking down into the mantle- what would all that weight do to the crust if a mountain were built up, and what about the crust rebound from where the material was sourced? oh man, so many questions!!
This whole post just gave me chills! Thrilling in all sorts of ways. And, being a born and raised mountain girl myself, the whole topic of how those kinds of landscapes affect our psychologies is a fascinating question to me. This will be so fun!
I was looking at that long, skinny mega-city plan and all I could think about was a wall in wildlife migration patterns. Assuming there are wildlife migration routes that would be affected. I guess if China managed to build that gargantuan dam that measurably affected the planet's gravitational balance due to how much water it displaced, someone else can build the most absurd city in a desert ...
Hooray! I also with the chills - and I'll be using it as an excuse to get up a few local mountains and do a bit of in-situ recording...
You make an excellent point re. The Line. Where are the wildlife corridors, the kind that are proving popular additions to many big roads in the UK and in Europe?
I wonder if that was even a consideration - and whether the surrounding desert was seen by planners as an ecosystem or a blank canvas of a wasteland. When I see tech as startlingly artificial-looking as this, I wonder how much of the design is a stubborn (or fanatical) negation of what's already there, as opposed to a utilizing & collaboration with it. "Let's make this look as human-made as possible" can mean such different things to different people, I guess...
"a stubborn (or fanatical) negation of what's already there, as opposed to a utilizing & collaboration with it" is a wonderful way of describing many things!
What grates my cheese about The Line is that it's being built at least in part to make it possible for humans to live in a region that is rapidly becoming too hot for people to live... and financed by the sale of petrochemicals that are one of the main drivers of that situation. Gah.
I think it's one of those things where, as soon as you see it, you start seeing it *everywhere*. I've caught sight of it on more than a few islands since...
This is the first time I've seen "aggressively" and "Canadian" in the same sentence.
No, wait, I mean that as a compliment! I mean Canadians are all so nice. We Brits don't make mean-spirited jokes about our good friends the Canadians. We reserve all our mean-spirited jokes for the French!*
*Je plaisante, amis français. Haha, nous aimons les Français. Oui oui. (*Toux*)
This whole idea of geoengineering freaks me out. The idea of blocking out the sun proposed by Bill Gates is a potential worldwide disaster. What if instead of climate warming, we blocked out the sun too long and we get an ice age!!!
I love this and look forward to reading more--landscapes are so dynamic and we have dissected them from ourselves only to try and re-create them artificially in a way we deem we'd like to interact with them... ooof. Living among many mountains, I've often thought about how until quite recently mountains were considered ominous, forbidding, places to talk to gods perhaps, but not to go out and seek otherwise. I loved Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind--how he writes of that history, our fallacies in how we view and try to conquer nature, and yet the undeniable pull to mountains that he still feels....
Mountains that created themselves usually follow the general rules of isostasy/isostatic equilibrium and have a "keel" sticking down into the mantle- what would all that weight do to the crust if a mountain were built up, and what about the crust rebound from where the material was sourced? oh man, so many questions!!
Oh my. Mountains have keels? This is something I did not know. OK, I think I need to ask *you* so many questions...
That's so interesting! I also didn't know about the keel.
That is so cool!
This whole post just gave me chills! Thrilling in all sorts of ways. And, being a born and raised mountain girl myself, the whole topic of how those kinds of landscapes affect our psychologies is a fascinating question to me. This will be so fun!
I was looking at that long, skinny mega-city plan and all I could think about was a wall in wildlife migration patterns. Assuming there are wildlife migration routes that would be affected. I guess if China managed to build that gargantuan dam that measurably affected the planet's gravitational balance due to how much water it displaced, someone else can build the most absurd city in a desert ...
Hooray! I also with the chills - and I'll be using it as an excuse to get up a few local mountains and do a bit of in-situ recording...
You make an excellent point re. The Line. Where are the wildlife corridors, the kind that are proving popular additions to many big roads in the UK and in Europe?
I wonder if that was even a consideration - and whether the surrounding desert was seen by planners as an ecosystem or a blank canvas of a wasteland. When I see tech as startlingly artificial-looking as this, I wonder how much of the design is a stubborn (or fanatical) negation of what's already there, as opposed to a utilizing & collaboration with it. "Let's make this look as human-made as possible" can mean such different things to different people, I guess...
"a stubborn (or fanatical) negation of what's already there, as opposed to a utilizing & collaboration with it" is a wonderful way of describing many things!
It works for many things! Like "coffee is a stubborn (or fanatical) negation of my biological clock..."
- Mike, still answering emails at midnight.
😂
Get some sleep, Mike!
What grates my cheese about The Line is that it's being built at least in part to make it possible for humans to live in a region that is rapidly becoming too hot for people to live... and financed by the sale of petrochemicals that are one of the main drivers of that situation. Gah.
Same! Yes. See also: The U.S.'s desert Southwest, which is *still* expanding in population as the Colorado River dries up ...
Love this topic! And that picture of Madagascar -- talk about perfectly making your point!
I think it's one of those things where, as soon as you see it, you start seeing it *everywhere*. I've caught sight of it on more than a few islands since...
How do mountains affect us - that question catapulted me back in time, to Grade 5, 40-odd years ago... and this poem, which has stuck in my mind:
Bushed
by Earle Birney
He invented a rainbow but lightning struck it
shattered it into the lake-lap of a mountain
so big his mind slowed when he looked at it
Yet he built a shack on the shore
learned to roast porcupine belly and
wore the quills on his hatband
At first he was out with the dawn
whether it yellowed bright as wood-columbine
or was only a fuzzed moth in a flannel of storm
But he found the mountain was clearly alive
sent messages whizzing down every hot morning
boomed proclamations at noon and spread out
a white guard of goat
before falling asleep on its feet at sundown
When he tried his eyes on the lake, ospreys
would fall like valkyries
choosing the cut-throat
He took then to waiting
till the night smoke rose from the boil of the sunset
But the moon carved unknown totems
out of the lakeshore
owls in the beardusky woods derided him
moosehorned cedars circled his swamps and tossed
their antlers up to the stars
Then he knew though the mountain slept, the winds
were shaping its peak to an arrowhead
poised
But by now he could only
bar himself in and wait
for the great flint to come singing into his heart
This is fabulous, but in particular a "flannel of storm" might be my favourite meteorological metaphor of the last decade. Thank you.
You're welcome! It is an aggressively Canadian poem... and I have always loved it.
This is the first time I've seen "aggressively" and "Canadian" in the same sentence.
No, wait, I mean that as a compliment! I mean Canadians are all so nice. We Brits don't make mean-spirited jokes about our good friends the Canadians. We reserve all our mean-spirited jokes for the French!*
*Je plaisante, amis français. Haha, nous aimons les Français. Oui oui. (*Toux*)
Oh, I'm sure the French don't suspect a thing! *wink*
I was going to contest the "Canadians are so nice" comment, but that would be a bit rude. I'm sorry I even considered it 😋
Awesome, can’t wait!
This whole idea of geoengineering freaks me out. The idea of blocking out the sun proposed by Bill Gates is a potential worldwide disaster. What if instead of climate warming, we blocked out the sun too long and we get an ice age!!!
I love this and look forward to reading more--landscapes are so dynamic and we have dissected them from ourselves only to try and re-create them artificially in a way we deem we'd like to interact with them... ooof. Living among many mountains, I've often thought about how until quite recently mountains were considered ominous, forbidding, places to talk to gods perhaps, but not to go out and seek otherwise. I loved Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind--how he writes of that history, our fallacies in how we view and try to conquer nature, and yet the undeniable pull to mountains that he still feels....
Yes, that's a bad situation. I feel like it's going to go from "this is a bit worrying" to "this is a catastrophic emergency" VERY quickly.