South Mountain BATHOLITH debated by skygods and earthlings

hunka,hunka burnin' lava

One reason why Nova Scotia has such an unique lobster like shape is that its backbone is one immense chunk of highly-erosion-resistant granite, by far the largest chunk on the entire east coast of North America : the famous South Mountain batholith.

A batholith is an giant upwelling of granite-like magma, from deep down below melting its way through the surface rocks.

The South Mountain batholith, which is hundreds of kilometres long is indeed big, but not the biggest in the world - ones on the west coast of North America can be thousands of kilometres long.

Batholiths and thermodynamic laws

Basically batholiths are one enormous rock that erodes about as slow as anything does on earth ; this one in Nova Scotia is about 350 million years old and hardly changed since its birth.

Skygods are People of the First Law (of thermodynamics) and in their understanding of the South Mountain, its surface impression of solidity is in fact just that, an impression.

In fact, they are argue, its solidity is all an illusion. Matter and energy can't be created or destroyed only changed from one form to another ----- and change is easy, even for granite.

Granite can be easily reduced to its constitute atoms and then reduced no further : atoms are the simple, small, easily controllable, harmless "solid" fundamentals of reality : mix and match them and turn granite's atoms into the atoms of silicon oven gloves or concrete or whatever.

Earthlings , as People of the Second Law (of thermodynamics)see the South Mountain totally differently.

They think that its granite is surpassingly solid - one of the most solid objects in the Universe in fact.

But once they divide it into its atoms, they find they are not solid but rather dividable and in fact,  "a waste of space" : tiny busy electrons swirling around the vast distance between them and a tiny heavy nucleus.

But that nucleus isn't solid either : it breaks down into ever smaller sets of Russian dolls and ends up feeling like nothing more than whirling bits of energy.

So mass, it turns out, isn't just convertible into energy : it IS energy , bits of energy whirling about so fast that it gives us mega-sized humans the illusion of weight and solidity.

Energy popping in and out of existence constantly, but always moving slowly,ever slowly, to a totally dispersed state where they will slow down into the Universe's death at near absolute zero temperatures.

(Aka : Entropy).

Skygods: big is dynamic and complex and small is solid, stable and knowable-controllable. Optimism as high as the blue skies themselves.

Earthlings: big is solid and while dynamic is at least a bit knowable-controllable. The small ? mercurial, unknowable, non-solid. Cautious (grounded in what we do know, not what we might know) and skeptical we will ever begin to 'control' reality.

Which side are you on ? Is granite more solid-seeming than atoms or vice versa ........

The Panglossian NAIVETY of the climate denier cum skeptic

NAIVE denier cum skeptics

The Early-Victorian era may have ended over 150 years ago, but living fossils of its optimism, exuberance and naivety still beat on, inside the hearts of today's climate denier cum "skeptic" .Think of  today's deniers as  perfect clones of Voltaire's Doctor Pangloss (albeit as updated by Sir Charles Lyell).


In the 1830s, Lyell chose to modify Pangloss's famously naive philosophy.

It now read - in the light of Lyell's own even more optimistic theory of Uniformitarianism : "We live in the most average, the most normal, the most typical and representative of ages : our charmingly tasteful present is a roadmap back into the mists of the past and forward into those sunlit uplands of our future."

In the Lyellian cum deniers' minds , Man is endlessly progressing : ever upward, ever forward.

But the Universe ? The Universe, by way of total contrast, with all its inanimate but varying objects and all its animate, varying, beings, is in their minds but a passive backdrop.

 A crudely painted canvas drop , with only one actor allowed on stage : Man.

Reality, to a denier, is literally, "all about me". Selfish self-centeredness deified into a scientific philosophy and political ideology.

Libertarianism is the political wing of Uniformitarianism 

Libertarianism is Uniformitarianism is Libertarianism : a perfect circle, round and around a static, mildly oscillating , Universe.

Oh yes, the Universe, and our Earth : to the Lyellian denier, they do not progress  forward and upwards or backwards and downwards - in fact, do not radically move any which way.

Instead they merely oscillate, over a very narrow range, back on forth over a normal, typical, average, representative, mean : the mean of  present day values.

Local, temporary volcano up, local, temporary earthquake down neatly balancing each other : the perfect proof of the First law of Thermodynamics.

That Law, crudely and incorrectly stated, holds that Matter and Energy can not be created or destroyed but merely (and usefully for Man) changed into different forms of themselves, back and forth ; forever and ever Amen.

The early Victorian optimists and their 21st century kinfolk  viewed this law - erroneously - as the fundamental law of the universe.

But don't blame them too much ; instead blame our High School science teachers from the 19th , 20th and 21st century  for teaching that to them.

The true fundamental law of the universe, the one from which the First law of Thermodynamics is derived , is the Second law of Thermodynamics.

(First and Second refers to the time of their formulations : the First was formulated and popularized before the Second was realized to be the truly important one.)

The Second (in simple english) states that , statistically, all energy and matter becomes less and less useful to humanity with each use and eventually all energy and matter and life will be frozen dead at a temperature very near Absolute Zero.

So, in fact, the Universe and Life does have a direction and is constantly changing and that direction is more or less steadily downhill, albeit very slowly.

So, some of the heat from every time we burn even a small lump of coal eventually escapes the world's atmosphere and winds up heating, ever so ineffectually, some distant corner of the frozen Universe.

Probe a climate change denier skeptic or climate change believer warmist and you will find the concept of a steadily changing universe is their dividing line : both are people of either the First or the Second law.....