Okay, I’m an American, so no one would expect me to remain current in international events, but what’s with this “mud volcano” in Java? The images above come from the Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing, which offers web page with a (must admit) spiffy viewer to examine the extent of the damage.

To me, the above images represent the power of remote sensing and our new-found ability to contextualize terrestrial events (cf. the extensive use of such imagery in Al Gore’s impressively illustrated An Inconvenient Truth).

Just bizarre. Listening to a bunch of talks at the recent Pale Blue Dot meeting convinced me that I really don’t understand geology, and this just confirms my suspicion…