Edited In

I’ve already discussed how geology is communicated via organised, professionally sourced organisations so I feel it’s time to have a quick overview of a method of communication I have a great deal of respect for, and although I would never use it as a source in anything I’d write, it’s handy for reference; Wikipedia.

From its founding in 2001, the lampooned yet invaluable site has grown to encompass 17 million articles in 270 odd languages, 3.5 million in English – yes, these are from Wikipedia. I have previously used it to show that people do not care about global warming.

I have written a couple of articles, and edited a fair few more. My current flagship is the ‘Geology of East Sussex’ article, written mainly to show up Kent and West Sussex’s attempts.  The geology of the area is fairly complex, situated in a huge anticline resting on reactivated Variscan faults; with a series of famous  sedimentary lithologies present too, also the first identified dinosaur, which is rather nice.

So, what did/do people need to know? I have (attempted) to write it with couple of main objectives

Ø  > What’s important near them

Ø  > Why there are some nice hills

Ø  > How old the rocks are

Ø  > If there is anything economical in the county.

For a simple, quick reference, people do not need to know about the ammonite flora of the Sussex Downs, if they have an interest that information can be found from other sources, topics, which relate are hyperlinked to the relative article; allowing for a growth of knowledge.  This leads to the question; Are articles like this useful though? It has been written to stimulate interest in geology in the local area, and is Wikipedia a suitable mechanism for communicating ‘solid’ geosciences (that is ideas that are widely accepted and not likely to receive undue attention and editing)?

Yes. In short. As long as these articles are written properly, from personal experience I know that plenty of knowledgeable people trawl through Wikipedia, removing and editing things that need it – yes there is some utter rubbish. But how many times have you wondered what a mineral, fossil or pretty much anything is, typed it into Google and Wikipedia has the answer?  For  free in a format that is quick and easy to comprehend (usually) resource it’s brilliant. Just don’t reference it. 

Warming to the idea?

Recently, (Thrusday Feb 3^rd 2011) the Western Morning News, a local paper to East Cornwall and West Devon ran a story on the how increasing temperature could affect the region.

The story ran with ‘West to become ‘the new Med’ by 2080’on the title page, a story that went on to document the increasing opportunities that will open up to what is traditionally a popular tourist destination, drier, warmer and longer summers and the opportunities to grow new crops (such as olives). The story did also run with the negative effects; but mainly as a sideline (floods – which have severely affected the region in the past and a decline in fish stocks are just two).

Interestingly, the paper also ran a story (on page 3, no less) about the risks to West Country rail links in a changing climate and the need to spend insane amounts of money to keep the route open; I’ll explain: for some reason Brunel decided to build his new railway to the west country along the sea, which provides a really nice introduction to the beautiful part of the world if travelling by train from pretty much anywhere in the UK.  However, as a result of rail cuts in the 1960 the 2 track route, which runs by the sea for about 13 miles and is open to storms takes all the rail passenger and freight traffic from West Devon and Cornwall – increasingly with more storms there are more cancellations.

Now, this seems a little odd to me; why separate the tourist / growing nice stuff article from the railway line costing lots to maintain article? Surely integrate it as part of the ‘bad things’ section? Is this indicative of the two minds people have with climate change; on one hand there are going to be benefits (warmer summers, olives in the back garden) but on the other, and more weighty in my opinion side there will be massive problems (large scale flooding, food price increases, increased desertification..... the list goes on). But these negatives effect’s won’t really effect the South West too greatly, when Boscatle suffered it’s disastrous flood, lasting 1 day 100 buildings were damaged, cars were swept away, but no-one died and two years later the village was functioning fairly well (I visited). The same thing can’t be said the potential floods in Bangladesh or Cyclones in the Far East. People, in order to care need to know  how it will affect them, and in our unfair world those that pollute (the West) are unlikely to be those who suffer the ramifications. 

Myths in Geoscience

As the oldest, and in some eyes the best way of telling a story Myths were powerful methods of communicating  science, to an audience without education (or limited science education) in time when science was considerably less well understood, in essences a myth is the first form of (geo) science communication. So let’s look at some examples and how they portray geological reality into stories and traditions of people.

The GSL recently (well, in 2007) published some papers on geology and mythology, which specific examples presented below are derived from.

Within Greek mythology Poseidon acted as both the earth shaker  and the king of floods, from a geological point of view the link between a shaking earth and raging water is a clear one; today known as a Tsunami. The form of Poseidon was a personification to fill-in an unseen force.  When geological events are intertwined with important historical evidence, such as the parting of the red sea, which has been attributed to wind, tide (Voltzinger &Androsov 2003) and seismic activity (there are a series of normal faults running down the valley). A group of wandering ancient peoples with limited understanding of earth’s processes are going to attribute an event that goes in their favour towards a God like figure – the same as the Greeks and Poisedian’s involvement in Tsunamis.

Changes in the biota, such as the growth of Plankton in rivers and lakes altering the colour of the water were taken to be blood; ancient peoples would have no idea about the growth of planktonic animals so attributing the bloodening of watercourses to a God’s displeasure.  A change from the normal was taken to herald bad events forthcoming, which was quickly taken to be the God’s displeasure... not unlike the position of Churches through the ages. Given that God was in those un-secular times viewed as the source and end point for everything on earth (and previously and presently in polytheistic religions numerous deities) it seems sensible that activities in the natural world would be applied to a supernatural being. 

Mythology and tradition are not things to be lampooned however; after the disastrous eruption of Lake Nyos, Cameroon, in 1986 resulted in 1700 locals dead as deadly carbon dioxide suffocated people and livestock as they slept. Traditional mythology and stories told by the elders ethnic groups of surrounding villages stated that houses should be built on stilts, advice that proved to save many a life.

So, what does this mean towards communicating geoscience?  It's no coincidence that TV programs and books popularizing geoscience (Fortey's brilliant Earth and Neil's great Super-continent) tell geology in terms of a story, beginning with the Earth's formation and ending up, after many an extinction, orogeny and a dinosaur with man. TV programs are fairly similar, following scientists discoveries (Men of Rock; BBC) or the manner in which the geological puzzle was unraveled (Earth Story, BBC and How the Earth was Made, History Channel); both are provided in a manner that relates it to people; exactly like a myth. 


How then, are we to communicate the big pressing Climatic Issue? via stories of people? - this assumes that we are going to let millions loose land and livelihood in flooding, and hurricanes tear up cities in order to provide those stories. Simply humanizing predictions does not have the same affect as stories of past devastation nor does presenting people with dry facts is neither inspiring or interesting - there needs to be body, life and excitement in a story, aspects which aren't always present in climate science

Slow News Day

The BBC recently ran a story in how the Lonely Planet has been a little nasty to the delightful Devonian city of Plymouth, naturally as someone who has reasonable ties to the city I had a quick read of the article and then set upon reading the actually Lonely Planet entry – I have a strange thing about reading guide book entries for places I know rather well.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/devon/hi/people_and_places/newsid_9373000/9373118.stm

It turns out that the BBC has been a little misleading on two counts,

Firstly news tends to be ‘new’ it’s kind of in the name, well this edition of the book is available on GoogleBooks (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tqpP0B-Hg7IC&lpg=PA196&dq) and does have an informative section on Plymouth which matches the text in the article; interestingly though this book has been out for three  years  (published in Feb 2008) and is duplicated in the Great Britain book (published 2009) , yet its cutting comments on Plymouth’s significant but at times God-awful architecture have been sitting about for three years... yet only make news on the 25^th of January 2011.

Secondary it subscribes to the Daily Mail manner of producing stories; that is ‘focus on the bit you want to bring across and only slightly mention any other aspect, oh and get something basic wrong’, it performs the later by successfully getting the wrong page number (it says 162, while in reality its page 196) while the former it delves into by essentially it indicating that Lonely Planet states that Plymouth is a bit of a dive but Exeter and Torquay are alright.

Well actually the only the negative text in the Lonely planet passage has been successfully mined out by the BBC, the rest of the article tends to be fairly nice, describing Plymouth’s history, wide range of attractions, bars and restaurants with the usual good flair – with a much larger slot that the more traditionally touristy Torquay and Exeter, besides , other than shopping and a day wandering round the compact barbican looking all historical– there aren’t many reasons for tourists to voyage to Plymouth.

So, this blog is roughly about geoscience; and its communication... what does the Lonely Plant describing Plymouth 3 years ago as grimy have to do with anything? Simple, the article was published not nationally, but in the local section, it’s audience was people from Plymouth or South Devon who may have strong feelings about the tourism knock-on effects of a poor write up, and travel guides are similar to scientific papers, they are an evidence based opinion, fieldwork has been conducted (the authors heading out and researching), it has been subject to peer review (has to be good quality or the ‘Rough Guide’ will sell more) and its audience is seeking knowledge and willing to gamble holiday time and money on it – the fact that the BBC felt it newsworthy to publish a three year old story on not a great deal of controversy points to how science can be reported; when a slow news day comes about, an old story, designed to generate aggravated feelings can be pumped out to generate emotions or concerns– something we’ve seen once or twice before

Sorry, This Text is Restricted

As a student I enjoy fairly complete access to a huge variety and mass of globally important academic publications, publications which host important topics to science, be it Climate Change, Stem Cells, GM crops or any other of the diverse and fascinating areas modern science encompasses.

If someone outside of the Academic or Government sectors wishes to access these papers, (which are publishing studies partly performed via publically funded money) they need to either pay for access of an article, which for a small amount of text is frankly a complete rip off, for example in Nature, where articles rarely top four pages the cost of an article in this weeks (25^th of Jan) Natures comes to $32 (£20) while Science charges a less painful $15 (9.50), although the journal is only available for 24hrs. Science Direct, which publishes the Goliath of Elseliver Publishing, charges $37.50 (£23) an article (although does make heavily cited articles free, which seems very responsible of them), other papers within geological societies aren’t much better, individual access to a paper in Geology costs $25 (£18), while in Proceedings of Geolsoc of London is $30 (£19).

Interested parties could purchase their own subscriptions, although these too are expensive:

Nature charges a personal subscription of: £135 + tax

Science charges a subscription of $234 (£148)

These are two of the most prestigious, important and accepted journals on earth, gathering what is widely accepted and often publically funded research and charging the public £20 for research papers.  So where can the public get up to the minute (well month) scientific data? Answer: Encyclopaedias, websites and with more politically, socially and economically stories can be presented in the media.

Now imagine you’re an editor for a newspaper, you want to report a story published in Nature, firstly assuming your paper doesn’t have a subscription you need to pay £20 to read it, then you may want to see what else if out there, shelling out from £9.50 a time to increase your knowledge – for a balanced article (academically) the journalist may need to spend a substantial amount of money, which for a cash strapped paper running a small story simply is not viable. Nor is it viable for a member of the public, educated or not, to pay frankly obscene amounts of money to access papers to learn more about information they may not fully comprehend when relying on fully partially digested and processed information; potentially that has been subject to journalistic or editorial ‘reinterpretation’ or spun to form ‘sensationist’ news.  Once a story starts rolling and papers being sold the consideration of how valid a source might be can get lost (See Daily Mail)

A variety of sites do offer free ‘news’ from these papers, such as http://www.sciencedaily.com/ and public media. Although these sites are subjected to the whim of editors and journalists they do allow glimpses through for the public to digest.

So can we blame journalists for not covering science as we’d like it? I’ll think about it

Communicating to councillor

'The Economic Downtown has, and is about to; hit Plymouth hard, as the South West’s Premier service city, the largest in Devon and a ‘focus point’ for employment and service our great maritime city is poised to receive £256,040 from central government in order to build ‘green technology’.

This grant, during the current time of coalition cuts and is a welcome addition to this proud cities ‘green’ portfolio, we already have adopted a ‘green agenda’ that has seen Plymouth gain one of the lowest carbon footprints of the UK at 1,410,000CO₂; with a reduction of the cities per-capita carbon footprint reduced from 6.0t CO₂ in 2005 to 5.5t CO₂ in 2008 – a drop of 8.4% against a target of 6.9%. 

As part of the Low Carbon Framework (LCF) The council is currently looking into further carbon (and cost) saving measures; including, but not limited to: the completion of a substantial desk study, the use of carbon scenario planning (i.e. potential for flooding and an alteration in the climate), a focus on the skills this city can offer and generate to create a low carbon economy – utilising both the public, business and community sectors we represent. These sectors will be involved in a variety of events that highlight Plymouth’s important involvement in maritime climate change; including the Scott 100 celebrations, ice sculptures (subject to fiscal evaluation), polar ‘fun days’ and a variety of interactive workshops and seminars. 

Plymouth’s requirement to provide 30,000 new jobs by 2020 and the involvement of the LCF are intimately linked, building on the achievements this great city has already performed and introducing fresh, new and sustainable businesses into Plymouth and South Hams.  The council has already released a press statement documenting its stance on climate change and the risks which Plymouth will face in a warming world.

I look forward to taking your questions.'

Ignorance is Bliss

‘Ignorance is bliss’

As geoscientist we have the idea that exploring the earth for its resources, secrets and good lunch spots is an important endeavour, many feel that the knowledge we have accrued can be passed on, but does it need to be? And is it required?

A dancer, whom I must agree is unlikely to share a similar wavelength to myself might just consider that knowing how new oceans are made, or how we get platinum out of the ground into a nice shiny ring is not important, but a knowledge of early 80’s progressive dance is... it is a matter of opinion. Everyone has opinions based on circumstance, upbringing, personal beliefs – it’s a good thing, a world of uniform drones is not an inviting prospect.

Equally, as a geoscientist I have (or feel I at least ought to have) a detailed knowledge of specific geological processes, but stick me with two physicist friends from back home and I’m lost, it’s not that I have no working knowledge of physics (despite was my A-Levels say) it’s simply that they have wandered down the path of nuclear physics and momentum a damn sight further than I have. If I was to strike up a conversation of metasomatic metamorphism I would have two confused, probably uninterested faces.

So how can the public be lured into an interest of the geosciences? Do they need to be? Should the general public be involved in decisions which require a substancial interest and knowledge of the geosciences?

In my opinion, which I believe is the reason for a blog, there is no need to lure people into knowledge, more than any other time in human history knowledge is widely accessible; I know, that as I write this I could if I desired find out how an air conditioning unit works, the (public) library has a stash of books, the internet is overflowing with pieces. If someone doesn’t understand how an earthquake works why do they need to? How will it benefit them in their daily life? People choose to watch a program on the geosciences; they choose to read an article on the earth. What else do they choose to expand their knowledge on?

Wikipedia, although much lampooned is arguably a major source of peoples information they receive, it is the fifth most popular website on the planet (BBC News) articles are simple to find, easy to read and cover virtually anything. The site helpfully charts its most popular articles; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_read_articles_in_2010.  Global Warming, is without a doubt, a major, if not the most challenging problem facing mankind, a potentially misunderstood and misguided challenge that many people don’t understand. So logically these people would want to use Wikipedia to expand their knowledge.

Not so, in 2010 ‘Global Warming’ was the 74th most read article, with 18,190 (or 0.01% of readership), above it was ‘List of sex positions’ (22,200), Eminem (26,870) and Michael Oher (an American football player, 20,490). Even the big environmental story of the year, the disastrous Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill came in 34th (with 27,850) with 1/3 of the readership of ‘Lady Gaga’ (65,500). In fact science as a whole is wildly under-read, considering some of the great articles available. No ‘pure’ science subjects make it into the top 1000 articles, this is on the the 5^th most popular site on earth, a major source. To put it bluntly people want to know more about organs and orifices than they do about any aspect of orogeny.

It’s not just science that is overlooked, important historical events and even countries are wholly overlooked; World War 1 is below ‘Sexual Intercourse’, the Soviet Union sits below Arney. Most shockingly perhaps AIDS, the worlds 4th biggest killer (www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp02/wp02-02.pdf) is relegated to 339th (8,920) position; below ‘Ejaculation’ & the brilliant, but somewhat less important band ‘Avenged Sevenfold’. 


Now of course, Wikipedia is subject to people spamming and perhaps is not a perfect profile of the world population, but still this is a concerning thought!

The majority of the public own some form of computer, but very few actually know how the thing works, more still own a mobile phone, but the limit of knowledge on the technical abilities of what happens when you press ‘send’ is fairly low. Why should geoscientists request a public audience, when aspects of people’s lives which demand a greater proportion of their time, money and effort are still mystical whizzing boxes? The answer could be that the geosciences offer solutions and problems which affect everyone; a faulty phone model is only going to affect the people who buy, sell and made it, an earthquake does not discriminate against those with understanding of the processes.

Here in the UK though, we don’t have earthquakes in any magnitude, so knowledge of their processes is more a curiosity, an interest if you like of the few; rather than in the case of a pop-star or film a more mainstream interest. Global Warming, though will affect us all. People need to know –but do they want to know? Looking at Wikipedia, they don’t, looking on the pavement, they don’t: A random sample of 10 people walking past my house at 7pm on a Friday night (party animal that I am) people are concerned about Global Warming (80%) but none wanted to talk to me about it. Either because I am a crazy person or they didn’t care enough to stop (or they thought I was going to give a lecture, which to be fair I was). Think about it, virtually everyone is against animal cruelty, but only 5% of people in the UK do not eat animals, (Food Standard Agency) millions of people have dogs, of equal intelligence to pigs, but would never think of munching on Fido.

People care about the climate or the earth, but maybe do not want to know the intricate details, or only want to know when it suits them, when their town has been flooded. Maybe, like many, they are scared and would rather be ignorant to the problem, happy to assist, turn off the light when they leave the room and try not to think about it.