[Rockhounds] California’s Cliffs Are Collapsing One by One

[J Bryan Kramer]

I learned in my one Ocean Engineering class that west shores of continents
tend to be steep and half ocean currents along the shoreline. Steep cliffs,
wave action, equals cliffs falling down in my book. I doubt bentonite hills
would resist wave action all that much better...heh.
BK

““There exists a law…inborn of our hearts…by natural intuition. … If our
lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any
and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.””
Cicero

J Bryan Krämer       North Florida, USA
photos at: http://pbase.com/photoburner


On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 3:18 PM Alan Silverstein <ajs at silgro.com> wrote:

> > Californias Cliffs Are Collapsing One by One
> >
> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/californias-cliffs-are-collapsing-one-one/619462/
>
> Lemme say this about that, having gone to college and taken a geology
> class in California...  I'll assert the following, someone here can
> correct me, and we'll all learn from that:
>
> California falls into the ocean because it doesn't have a lot of rocks
> like feldspar that contain much aluminum, which weathers into sticky
> clay, and instead features low-Al stuff like serpentine, which is
> slippery, and so are its weathering products.
>
> Is that a fair oversimplification?  :-)
>
> Yeah, yeah, I'm personally aware that parts of the state have a lot of
> feldspar rocks, eg the Sierras; I've hiked Mount Whitney.  I'm just
> thinking of the coastal regions.  In fact, while Colorado has 54-58
> (depending on who you ask) Fourteeners (peaks over 14,000' in the silly
> old system we use), not one of them is strictly a technical climb
> (although a few are close); while of the ~13 Fourteeners in CA, about
> half are evil granite spires you do NOT just scramble up.
>
> Cheers,
> Alan Silverstein
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rockhounds mailing list
> Subscription Services:
> http://rockhounds.drizzle.com/mailman/listinfo/rockhounds_rockhounds.drizzle.com
> List Usage Policy:
> http://Tomaszewski.net/Kreigh/Rockhounds/Rockhounds.shtml
>