Making Footsteps

You may recall, some time ago (news travels slowly to my cave) that a large, exciting dinosaur was identified and tag lined with the term ‘Thunder thighs’ or to people with beards ‘Brontomerus’. Dinosaurs are without doubt the most well known thing about paleontology. More people might study ammonites and microfossils but its the big things that get people interested – does new stories reporting a new discovery get people interested?

Now this is a dinosaur ‘discovery’ so it’s going to get lots of people interested, but will it sustain that interest and get people interested in geology. There is plenty of communication out there, but for this post I’m going to examine the effect of a big geosciences story on patterns of search for a variety of geological terms – and see if there is any great increase as a result.

Blue is 'thunder thighs', red is 'Brontomerus' and yellow is 'paleontology'

So the story ‘hit’ on the 20^th, resulting in no change in the search volume for ‘Paleontology’ but a sharp peak (oddly a few days later) for the creatures scientific name: Brontomerus’. This seems a little odd, but what about the effect on ‘dinosaurs’. Oddly there is actually a decrease in searches for dinosaurs, with a small ‘hump’ 5 

days later.

Search volume for 'Dinosaur' note the comparison to the blue line in the above chart. 

The search volume for ‘Dinosaur’ way outstrips that of anything on the above chart – and since there is no real change it can be assumed that there is enough background demand for information on dinosaurs to lead a small story to not cause a great deal of ripples.

Search volume for 'Geology' note slight peak around the 20th, second peak around the 28th is likely related to the New Zealand Quake. 

 A similar story is present for ‘geology’ ; although there is a peak which coincides with the story, a second peak coincides with the New Zealand Quake  – whether this is simply a result of a general pattern of as a result of the story is difficult to attain .The background interest in both terms is a great sign – constant interest which for engaging people into geosciences is clearly a good thing! What does it teach us about communicating geosciences? Well that a news story is just that, its a story, it’s been a week and news has moved on – thankfully there is enough interest in this facet of geosciences to maintain a steady stream of minds looking for information allowing educators to easily plan and generate interesting topics and articles.  

The Oily Elephant in the Room

How are geological and non-geological organisations communicating peak oil? And for the former, why should they?  Why should any geosciences organisation act to educate the public in what is essentially an economical matter?

Other than the fact a lot of geologists depend on the petroleum industry for employment everyone requires oil, and recent price hikes have caused difficulties on a global scale, from pig farmers in Devon to airlines loosing money (again) the looming prospects of demand for petroleum outstripping supply is a concern. We all need oil for our lives. Also, given that geologists, when attempting to communicate geology to the public often utilise global resources in order to make our subject important (oil for fuel, steel for bridges etc....), well if we run out of oil we’ll have nothing to talk about (damn biologists might get a look in).  It seems a good idea to have a look how a couple of different organisations, with different outlooks illustrate peak oil.

Geol Soc of London

The Society has a limited number of resources, mostly in the form of personal writings attacking or promoting the theory. Unlike Climate Change of which a statement is provided Peak oil is instead,  relegated to a conference (of which proceedings are not presented and anyway, would the public have an interest in reading them?) and a personal letter in the Societies Magazine; Geoscientist (available to the public). Even the Specialist petroleum group of the society has only one direct publication discussing peak oil – hardly a great result of outreach.

USGS

Virtually nothing on Peak Oil... in fact searching for ‘Peak Oil’ results in more queries on the generation of oil (i.e. Peak Oil production over geological time) and oil companies with ‘Peak’ in their name. There is none of the usual material produced by the USGS in educating the public into particular geologic processes and theories.  This is incredible irresponsible; not only does this lead people looking into peak oil  to have to slightly less reputable and balanced sites (See ‘peakoil.org.uk’) it also indicates that there is no concern about resources becoming limited.

Exxon-Mobile 

Now, I wasn’t expecting much from a nice big oil company, but this was amazing.

On the home page I was greeted by a nice flash animation telling me ‘Global energy demand in 2030 will be 35 percent higher than in 2005’ and that Exxon’s tagline is: ‘Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges’.

Upon searching the Exxon Mobile site (with the site’s search engine and Google) there are no direct results for Peak Oil (i.e. articles that feature that term). Now, given that Exxon are known for having involvement in various governmental organisations, but do not accept peak oil on their website this is a major consideration, particularly if a concerned (and savvy) member of the public  went searching for resources from an organisation you’d think might have an inclination as to the upcoming risk of resources running out! This could be an indication for a Global Warming like fight with Oil giants as the problems of Peak Oil

BP – Beyond Petroleum:

‘We don’t see oil running out in the immediate future and we  don’t subscribe to the peak oil view that it’s doomed tomorrow and it’s going to run out.’ Gerry Hueston, President BP Australasia, May 2006. Enough said.

Shell

The site actually has a flashy little interactive animation that touches upon ‘resources will struggle to keep up’ but that’s about it. Shell energy scenarios to 2050 does not mention ‘peak oil’. While searching for ‘Peak Oil’ recommends that I look at lubricants responding at 'peak times of stress' in engines. Failing that articles it does generate appear to not have the two words together. What is it with Oil Companies? Almost like they don’t want to accept Peak Oil.

And in the green corner: Greenpeace:

Not a particular fan of them, but out to give them some air time. Oddly this site is not crawling in Peak Oil information, but gives an acceptable biased opinion of the economic forces behind peak oil. No results had anything related to geology (a bit on rock music and peak oil). Surely the threat of energy security is the perfect opportunity for Greenpeace to get people concerned and campaigning? Maybe not. 


On an interesting side note, the UK’s ‘All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil & Gas’ a governmental policy group who can’t really make policies or do anything (I called to ask) but still have voices in Westminster has as its five main roles people Greenpeace members – I’m not being political or difficult. Just surely with that sort of involvement surely Greenpeace could have put together more of a show!

Geology.com

Having been so pleasant to this site in a previous post I now need to be a little bit mean; following in the footsteps of Exxon, USGS, and GeolSoc of London; Geology.com does not have any resources for Peak Oil, various articles and news reports discuss particular oil feeds reaching ‘peak’ production, similar to that on offer with the USGS.

So, there is limited information from NGO’s and even Government Organisations.  Where can the public go to get information on Peak Oil? Well it seems that a casual reader (ie someone using Google!) will be presented by 38 million results; since I don’t have the rest of my life to ponder, I’ll choose the top 4 to analyse:

1              Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil.

Really really good article; thorough, balanced (well, as balanced as Wikipedia gets on an environmental issue) with heaps of references. As I’ve already demonstrated in earlier blogs Wikipedia is often used to access quick information – and this page well deserves to be on the top of the list. I can imagine that it is a well used resource for people looking into Peak Oil. Just don’t reference it.

2              Broken link: www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net; as the second response from Google. Fire up the alarm bells.

3          Peak Oil http://peakoil.org.uk/ [note – I’m writing this in the UK, Globally different areas may generate different results – I truly hope it does]. A pretty poor site from a Sociologist with an interest in peak oil and writing websites who’s site consists of, in the majority pictures of publications and opinion.... this is at number 3 in Google searches!

4              Peak Oil.com http://peakoil.com/ - exploring Hydrocarbon depletion. An online community, so a mixture of interested parties, knowledgeable parties and lunatics.  Looking into these boards they are utterly useless; with a variety of obscure topics which are not suitable to demonstrate peak oil to the public.

So why is there no decent, reputable (sorry Wikipedia, it's not you, its 'established science') site for information on Peak Oil? Well, unlike Climate Change its fairly difficult to prove, there is no evidence in the geological record of resource peaking, what it does have in common though is money – both issues are threatening Oil Companies, who neither governments nor their shareholders are particularly interested in educating the public and customers as to a potentially rapid alteration in lifestyle.  It seems wise then, to observe how interest in peak oil has, to excuse the pun, peaked and fallen: 

Search Volume top
News volume bottom

It can be seen that there is clearly interest in Peak Oil, with strong peaks roughly coinciding with news (middle of 2008) during 2005 there is a massive amount of interest, despite limited stories – although there has been some commentary as to that year being ‘Peak Oil’. What, from the perspective of geoscientists wanting to communicate can this tell us? Well from looking at the available resources there is a severe gap in the market for sensible discussion, potentially from a governmental viewpoint (although that is probably just dreaming) which incorporates geosciences. After all, mitigating or confirming peak oil will fall to people out there, looking for the stuff. It beggars belief that there is so little out, available for such an important topic, a topic which has 10% of the searches of ‘Global Warming’

Global Warming in Red
Peak Oil in Blue. Representing 10% all searches in comparison to 'Global Warming'

 On an ending note:

According to BP, global oil reserves were 1,333bn barrels at the end of 2009. That was 23 per cent higher than a decade earlier, despite consumption of 300bn barrels over the period. (Financial Times)

REEaly a concern?

So, Rare Earth Elements are becoming a little bit short;

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927995.700

and threatening our non elemental lifestyle of ipods and (hopefully soon!) battery powered cars. This ‘shortage’ is in my opinion more of a political problem and a resource problem, with 95% of the supply of these elements originating in China and the government there looking to lower exports, presumably to prop up its high tec manufacturing industries at the cost of western jobs.

But this isn’t a blog into politics, however interesting it may be, this is about communication geosciences. So where does this fit into that framework?

Well we could use the increase in prices of electrical items to get people interested in minerals, after all these REE’s seem to reside as a accessory phase within a variety of different rocks and minerals. Or bounce off the REE’s shortfall to discuss the environmental effects of minerals important to the ‘green revolution’:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/july-dec09/china_12-14.html

Searches for Copper (Google Trends)

 Firstly, though it would be good to check if there is a market; see if people really care about where minerals come from? Well Google track a certain number of searches for statistical analysis, and within Google trends, users can see how much interest is generated.

Looking towards copper (since most REE’s don’t generate enough interest) we can see that searches for ‘copper’ as a term have fallen over the last six years, despite the news coverage regarding its shortage increasing and the price in the last 3 years ballooning.

Searches for 'Copper Ore' (Google Trends)

Now if we also take into consideration that ‘copper’ is far from a geological concept, instead we need to use a term that interested parties may search in order to gain greater insight into copper generation. Copper ore, which would be the logical thing to type if you wanted to know what it was and how you get it. This too doesn’t seem to be bourgeoning with popularity, despite prices peaking in the past few years, the search queries have remained stable in the last 5 years.

  

Does this mean that people are looking less into the generation of ores? Of course, it doesn’t, this is one term, further research into this could well generate more interesting patterns. Also it doesn’t take into account

Searches for 'Geology' Google Trends)

Although searching around there is a more interesting pattern, over the last 7 years there has been a steady decrease in the number of searches for ‘geology’ Despite the news volume increasing (coinciding perfectly with the Boxing Day Tsunami) which highlights something else, unless there is a background interest, events need to occur in order for interest to be generated.  Is recent price increases to REE’s and the media coverage that has explored the trigger? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

No Lasting Shock.

As in geology, the present is the key to the past, so with the media quake over
Christchurch’s recent devastating earthquake  ongoing it seems prudent to see how
interested people were in geology last time this happened. A similar, although less devastating event occoured in September 2010. Which resulted in There is a massive peak in searches for ‘christchurch earthquake’ (blue) in September of last year, presumably due to this: http://bit.ly/gKU4Ht. The red line demonstrates searches for ‘earthquake causes’  which gives no change at the September event.

Search volume for Christchurch Earthquake (Blue)
Earthquake causes (Red)

Comparing these results to other terms, such as ‘seismic’ or ‘plate tectonics’ there is a
similar story (see diagram below);  In fact looking at a variety of terms related to the quake (Canterbury Plains, ring of fire, pacific plate) do not have any alteration in their search patterns at the time of the event.

Search Volume for:

Blue: Christchurch Earthquake

Red: Plate Tectonics

Orange: Seismic

Even today, where the 10^th most searched term in the English speaking world is ‘Christchurch
Earthquake’ (Aelxa) it is beaten by Justin Biebers new hair cut and the ever popular Rihanna. There has, to present been no change in search traffic for geologic concepts.  If someone does search for the terms highlighted above there is plenty of really good information, from a variety of sources – even if people don’t look for it after an earthquake

What are we to learn from this? Well simply, people want to know the story, but do not want to know how it works. As previously discussed in this blog, people are interested in the stories of people. Not rocks.

Finally, my thoughts go out to the People of Christchurch. I wish you all the best during this time. 

Looking Closely

The importance of practical geosciences to the public tends to focus in on petroleum or engineering. Base metals and REE (Rare Earth Elements) tend not to get a look in, until their shortage threatens society. Price hikes combined with increased demand have raised the media profile of a variety of minerals, from the important copper to the ever growing in importance REE in the electrical industry.  

The only real aspect of mining people see is either the end product, the huge holes in the earth dug to extract the material, or the people who extract the ore (and then get stuck). Economic geology, the field that deals with the economic potential of areas of rock tends not to get a great deal of press coverage - fewer than 1000 articles on Google-News discuss economic geology, with only 4000 articles tied to ‘mineral exploration’, compared with ‘oil exploration’ that generates over 11,000 articles. Even though, metal prices are at all time highs. ‘Mainstream’ press appears to completely ignore mineral exploration;

The Daily Mail, although only utilised by myself as something to get annoyed with has only a handful (10!) stories on mineral exploration, while oil exploration generates 450 odd, looking to a more educated paper, the Independent, mineral exploration yields just over 100 results, while petroleum exploration strikes around 1500 articles (oil exploration; 340). The UK’s most read paper, the Sun finds 45 articles under the search ‘oil exploration’ (although most seem to be on BP or the Falklands) while looking for minerals  provides 2 results – one of which is on Mars.

So, why the public dis-interest in  the mineral industry when it is the backbone of virtually everything we use everyday; from the laptop I type on, to the knife I butter my toast with? Well, the UK doesn’t really have much of a mineral exploration industry because of cheap imports and exhaustion few people see the effects of mining; with the majority of mines operation in countries far beyond our borders.

When an oil spill occurs, be it Deepwater horizon, Exxon Valdeez or the Esso Portsmouth off Milford Haven it’s all over the news, black gold coating seabrids, stones and beaches, the idea of striking oil in a romantic vision of derricks and desert. While few people (bar myself) get excited by the prospect of discovering copper. On the surface oil is a lot more visible as a commodity, cars are ubiquitous, we all require petrol/diesel for our daily lives, whether it gets us to work, delivers our food to the supermarket or provides us with a livelihood. While the usage of minerals isn’t immediately obvious – we are all in constant contact with something derived from the earth (be it the dye in our clothes or jewellery).

So how can the economic area of the geosciences and the importance to society are broadcast? There is the usual manner of showing people a bit of ore and the pointing to something nice and shiny. But there is so much more to an ore than that; from my limited (at present) experience of ores I feel that simply showing a hand specimen isn’t all that; remembering the first time I looked at a thin section, I was captivated (seriously, not kidding!) by the beautify of the slide, learning more about them what can be seen from a sliver of rock is amazing;  why not bring this subtle beauty to the public? A rock is a rock, but people love to look at close up images of hair, dust and plants – a close up image of an ore shows so much more, a story almost!

The public rarely see this, I have been fortunate enough to volunteer at events where the public have had an opportunity to observe what every geology student either loves or hates. Generally they are interested – the chance to make granite more than that grey rock or to see every grain in a sandstone seems to interest people. Yet most of the public never have the chance to be captivated.

Can one blend the subtleties of economic geology, the need for minerals in our society and a new way for people to look at rocks? Well, I’ve already discussed how myth’s and stories brought the geosciences to peoples before modern science and today are still used in popular science books – why not use the same approach to bringing the components of today’s society to the public? Illustrate how an ore forms, from (depending on the type) a gentle crystallization, with hydrothermal alteration via miscropacy.

Now, wait, I know miscropacy needs some skill to interpret, but as does a hand specimen; and an image of a rock is a novelty, anytime someone can pick up a rock, but few can slice it into a slither and see what it really looks like.  

What other ways are there to get the public interacting with the minerals that make their society? Short of visiting a mine there are few; the story of how an ore forms is just that a story; one that should be told – and looking closely is, in my mind the best way to do it. 

Missing out on Maps

Geological maps are hypnotic and beautiful creations, which happen to be practical – particularly in communicating geosciences. a while ago I joined a couple of fellow students in a windy tent in a muddy field as part of my university’s ‘outreach’ programme, the table was coated in rocks from the local region, but what got the most attention? The piece of paper – a map. People seemed to love seeing what their house was built on, see why their granddads house had sandy soil while theirs was clay... it was practical and interesting.  It related directly to their life, not a convoluted way of how a fossil lived.

The BGS provide a variety of mapping data to the public for free, at pretty decent resolution – fairly similar to that of published maps, via a service called ‘Open-Geoscience’

http://maps.bgs.ac.uk/geologyviewer_google/googleviewer.html - which, as part of the BGS as whole is according to Alexa the 17,674^th most visited site in the UK –  not overly impressive as a whole.

This is what is under people’s houses – so why isn’t this data used and looked more in daily life? How awesome would it be to have geological maps displayed in empty shop windows? Wouldn’t this inspire interest in the geosciences? There are few other countries that make such data available so easily – why aren’t the public embracing it?

Well, the first entry on a Google Search for ‘geological map’ is for the BGS, just not the brilliant resource above. It’s for a rather less useful mapping tool, a broad brush approach almost:

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/education/makeamap/

Which is nice, but gives rocks by ages, and at a countrywide scale, rather than what’s under someone’s lawn.  Instead, the 6^th result, a BBC story on the accessible maps is the only way off Google to get to Open Geoscience – it is linked via the ‘make a map’ service . Alexa stats show the site has a bounce rate of 60% (i.e. 60% of people visit the site then move on) people aren’t interested in exploring the maze of the BGS; so they are missing out on a beautiful little gem sitting on the BGS site. Please BGS, help the public and get this great resource out there, easy to find onto Search Engines!

Battle of the Giants

Last time I moaned a little about how the GeolSoc didn’t serve an aspect of educating the public quite as well as they could; this time I’ve decided to be a little nicer.

So what do people look at online?

Alexa.com records various online statistics, but its most useful function is to record the number of visitors to a website, under keywords related to that search; the most popular site with the keyword ‘Geology’ is USGS (2,714th most visited site on earth), while Geology.com is second, (24,528th most visited site on earth).  What Alexa also provides is a minor demographic of who visits it, USGS has visitors who are predominantly older that the general internet population, with some college education (but no grad school) and look at home. While Geology.com has an older audience, predominantly female with some college education. The two sites have similar, although subtly different audiences, what are their surface differences in communicating geosciences?

Given that USGS is a publically funded entity, it has to reflect various governmental projects and reports, but also provides various educational resources through links. While Geology.com appears to be funded via advertisements and the site’s shop, the lack of government interaction allows for the site to be flexible in its coverage of the geosciences. In terms of interesting and educating people the Geology.com frontpage is more exciting than the USGS one, with a variety of up to date geological stories, maps and interactive tools to help people enjoy the geosciences and answer potential questions they may have.  The articles are on topics, which people can relate to, from Tsunamis, formation of the Hawaiian Islands; they pose questions to entice people to look further.  

Beyond the front page; looking into Volcanoes – since it’s something everyone has at some point an interest into and it is fairly likely that that area of the geosciecnes will attract more ‘non geologist’ attention. The USGS’s front page on Volcanoes is hardly an exciting prospect, it introduces you with a quote, which is nice, but a bit dull. There are no pictures, considering the USGS’s enviable volcano monitoring service there is no live feed; although this feature does exist, but it’s in the menu. The information is there, but it’s not easy to get at.

Geology.com however has bountiful pictures and diagrams, although the whole site does not have as much information as the USGS – but what it does have is introduced in a better, in a more attractive way.  Looking into more statistics that Alexa records is the amount of pages viewed per a visitor, Geology.com receives an average of 1.7 pageviews per a person, while USGS achieves 3.1 unique page views per a person.   What can we see from this? Well, either the information on Geology.com is easier to get at, or people who use that site, look around a bit, then give up. While on the USGS, people either can’t find what they want immediately (maybe?) or they are after the detailed information on seismics which the USGS wants – in truth using these statistics gives such a ‘broad brush’ approach to such a massive and detailed site.

Continuity is an important consideration; we all like things to look the same from the same place, the USGS at sometimes seems to have an individual continuity for each article, since information on the  site is stitched together from various USGS publications, which results in varying continuity. From the front page of the volcano section, the 10 different articles linked from there have 4 different themes; all of which are different from the front page. It’s not a major problem, but it just reassures the reader and makes for a more pleasurable read. Geology.com does not suffer as much, yes there are differences between pages, but due to the clean, simple and efficient design of the site, (basically white) continently is maintained.

The ease of reading on both sites was fairly consistent, terms are introduced and explained (See ‘Minor Faulting’ post), moving to further articles is easy on Geology.com – while the USGS seems to be composed, as mentioned earlier of individual articles, resulting in a lack of hyperlinks between articles – which as Wikipedia has demonstrated makes exploring topics a much easier task.

This leaves the questions what site is better for geosciences communication? This results in another question; who is being educated? If it is the general public, or those who are just inquisitive then Geology.com is considerably better, while the USGS although has buckets of information, doesn’t get it across in a clean and interesting way – leaving causal visitors (my non geologist housemates) uninterested and looking elsewhere. For, say geology students and people with a basic level of geosciences education the USGS is better, particularly in the scope of the information it has, every earthquake is recorded and plenty of technical information is present. – Clearly the two sites are catering to two different audiences, and both take different approaches. Geology.com also benefits from the USGS; since it can use data from that site (amongst others) to gather the best of the web. This aspect, seems to have resulted in  Geology.com being the more attractive, easier to find information