Yo all, I've been waiting for a way to link my off-topic Dave Barry-style musings to quakes. Here goes nothing. On my way back from Montreal I skiied one day at Stowe on Monday. Wednesday morning I noticed purple blotches all over the windward side of my face-frostbite, which is now peeling off. First time this ever happened to me on my face. Ironic because my co-workers are just coming back from research in Antarctica-where I was not allowed to go by the NSF and Raytheon doctors. There has really been exceptional cold, which continues. ten days ago the air temperature was -45 F and windchill -102 F on the top of Mount Washington, and this level has been approached since. My friends in northern Vermont, in a town in the valley, did not go above 0F for 2 weeks.

So, to one of the points: this cold allowed the lakes at the edge of NY suburbia to freeze thick. My daughter and I discovered yesterday some beautiful black ice that froze only on the last week, since the last snow-it is about 4" to maybe 5" thick. It is full of curving cracks-very smooth. We played a little bit of cross-cutting relations-which cracks came before which. We were generally able to tell with confidence. I am now reviewing a not-so-well written paper where the author did the same with real faults. These curving cracks though the ice seem to be analogous to extension fractures in rocks (no John, I will not use "mode" terminology). About 2 years ago, we skated on a small lake, and also the small Lamont-Doherty pond, and then and there there was a dramatically-different style of ice fracturing (OK, only dramatic to me). I believe that these were shear fractures. They were not smoothly curving. They had bends. Every time they bent to the left, near the ice surface there is an en-echelon left-stepping pattern, as is expected for "R" shears in a trantensional fault (e.g, North Anatolia fault west of Hershek Peninsula, Izmit Gulf, Marmara Sea, Turkey-see Polinia, Cormier et al., EOS). Non Geologists-feel free to ask what En-echelon left-stepping means-or look it up. I don't want to explain it in this post because it is already long.

Evertime the ice crack goes through a right bend, the shallow cracks are right-stepping en-echelon. These little cracks are like petals or potato chips in size and shape, and they merge downward to a through-going fracture. These type of cracks were all over the place 2 years ago. I did not see a single example yesterday, on a 400 x200 m clear ice area.

Unfortunately, I did not take pictures of these. I'll do it next time-could be next year, could be 5 years-we have had winters with NO ICE recently

A couple of decades ago I was skating on a km-across lake in Rhode Island, with 8" black (clear) ice. There was an ice fisherman chopping a hole at distance across the ice. He triggered an ice-quake, with the rupture running right by me, hissing. It was an irregular crack-maybe a shear fracture. I thought I should do some chopping on the shear-fractured lake and see what I could trigger (yes officer, just research). But, it snowed, and I did not get back out....

Nano at Lamont was not impressed that these crack patterns are analogous to earthquakes and faults, but I have a feeling that there is some insight to be learned here-John?

So, global warming. This cold probably has nothing to do with global warming, but it could-changes in heat patterns can cause changes in atmospheric circulation, which this winter has brought Siberian air to east Canada, and then to the NE USA. I saw a talk by the public by a big-shot from NSF-let's see, what's her name-she was Dean of URI-GSO before. About 1000 scientists agree that there is man-induced global warming, and maybe 4 that don't agree. the 4 get a lot of press, and the right-wingers seize upon it. I've asked people on this page to discriminate-to use logic. It is a fact that heat is held in to earth by Greenhouse gasses. It is a fact that CO2 and methane are greenhouse gasses. It is a fact that the CO2 level has been measured for some decades on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and that it has increased by some 10s of percent (I think about 35%). So, temperatures SHOULD be warming.
It is a fact that global temperatures have been warming the last 2 or 3 decades.

It is not a fact that the rising temperatures have been rising because of the rising CO2: it is a logical deduction (principle of least astonishment=Occams razor).

The following is not a fact: it has been modeled that if CO2 release continues to increase, levels within 100 years will be the highest in 50 million years. the climate was completely different then-no ice sheets. Also, there were not 9 or 12 billion people. If you are young, or have children, be afraid. Be very afraid. And vote out the elected officials who simply are too ignorant to be able to discriminate.

OK-need to establish credibility-I am about 1 course short of being a meteorologist, and have read quite a bit on sea level and climate.

Thanks for allowing me to go a bit off topic. I'll try not to do it often.
Chris