May 9th ushered in the 9th National Oceanography Centre (NOC) Association meeting, held among the crowds, statues, flags, and banners, at Central Hall in an unseasonably chilly and rainy Westminster. But it was the first such meeting where the University of Bristol was represented, and I was honoured to fly our own flag, for both University of Bristol and the Cabot Institute for the Environment.
NOC is – currently – a part of the Natural Environment Research Council (one of the UK Research Councils, under the umbrella of UKRI), but is undergoing a transformation in the very near future to an independent entity, and a charitable organisation in its own right aimed at the advancement of science. If you’ve heard of NOC, you’re likely aware of the NOC buildings in Southampton (and the sister institute in Liverpool). However, the NOC Association is a wider group of UK universities and research institutes with interests in marine science, and with a wider aim: to promote a two-way conversation between scientists and other stakeholders, from policy makers to the infrastructure organisations that facilitate – and build our national capability in – oceanographic research.
The meeting started with an introduction by the out-going chair of the NOC Association, Professor Peter Liss from the University of East Anglia, who is handing over the reins to Professor Gideon Henderson from Oxford University. The newly independent NOC Board will face the new challenges of changing scientific community, including the challenge of making the Association more visible and more diverse.
Professor Peter Liss, outgoing chair of the NOC Association,
giving the welcome talk
As well as the changes and challenges facing the whole scientific community, there are some exciting developments in the field of UK and international marine science in the next two years, which are likely to push the marine science agenda forward. In the UK, the Foreign Commonwealth Office International Ocean Strategy will be released in the next few months, and there is an imminent announcement of a new tranche of ecologically-linked UK Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for consultation. On the international stage, a new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on the Oceans and Cryosphere is due to be released in September; the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) report on deep sea mining will be announced in the next few months; and the next United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC ) Conference of Parties (COP) climate change conference, scheduled for the end of this year in Chile, has been branded the “Blue COP”.
The afternoon was dedicated to a discussion of the upcoming UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, starting in 2021. With such a wealth of national and international agreements and announcements in next two years, the UN Decade will help to “galvanise and organise” the novel, scientific advice in the light of ever increasing and cumulative human impacts on the oceans.
Alan Evans, Head of the International and Strategic
Partnerships Office and a Marine Science Policy Adviser, giving a presentation
on the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development
The UN Decade is aligned strongly with the key global goals for sustainable development and has two overarching aims: to generate ocean science, and to generate policy and communication mechanisms and strategies. The emphasis is being placed on “science for solutions”, bringing in social scientists and building societal benefits: making the oceans cleaner, safer, healthier and – of course – all in a sustainable way.
Research and development priorities include mapping the seafloor; developing sustainable and workable ocean observing systems; understanding ecosystems; management and dissemination of open access data; multi-hazard warning systems (from tsunamis to harmful algal blooms); modelling the ocean as a compartment of the Earth system; and pushing for a robust education and policy strategy to improve “ocean literacy”.
Whilst these are exciting areas for development, the scheme is still in its very early stages, and there’s a lot to do in the next two years. As the discussion progressed, it was clear that there is a need for more “joined-up” thinking regarding international collaboration. There are so many international marine science-based organisations such that collaboration can be “messy” and needs to be more constructive: we need to be talking on behalf of each other. On a national level, there is a need to build a clear UK profile, with a clear strategy, that can be projected internationally. The NOC Association is a good place to start, and Bristol and the Cabot Institute for the Environment can play their parts.
Lastly, a decade is a long time. If the efforts are to be sustained throughout, and be sustainable beyond The Decade, we need to make sure that there is engagement with Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and mid-career researchers, as well as robust buy-in from all stakeholders. Whilst there are several national-scale organisations with fantastic programs to promote ECRs, such as the Climate Linked Atlantic Sector Science (CLASS) fellowship scheme and the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS) doctoral training program, this needs to be extended to ambitious international ECR networking schemes. Together with the future generation of researchers, we can use the momentum of the UN Decade make marine research sustainable, energised and diverse.
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This blog is written by Dr Kate Hendry, a reader in Geochemistry in the University of Bristol School of Earth Sciences and a committee member for the Cabot Institute for the Environment Environmental Change Theme. She is the UoB/Cabot representative on the NOC Association, a member of the Marine Facilities Advisory Board (MFAB), and a co-chair of a regional Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) working group.
The record-breaking, El Niño-driven global temperatures of 2016 have given climate change deniers a new trope. Why, they ask, hasn’t it since got even hotter?
In response to a recent US government report on the impact of climate change, a spokesperson for the science-denying American Enterprise Institute think-tank claimed that “we just had […] the biggest drop in global temperatures that we have had since the 1980s, the biggest in the last 100 years.”
These claims are blatantly false: the past two years were two of the three hottest on record, and the drop in temperature from 2016 to 2018 was less than, say, the drop from 1998 (a previous record hot year) to 2000. But, more importantly, these claims use the same kind of misdirection as was used a few years ago about a supposed “pause” in warming lasting from roughly 1998 to 2013.
At the time, the alleged pause was cited by many people sceptical about the science of climate change as a reason not to act to reduce greenhouse pollution. US senator and former presidential candidate Ted Cruz frequently argued that this lack of warming undermined dire predictions by scientists about where we’re heading.
However, drawing conclusions on short-term trends is ill-advised because what matters to climate change is the decade-to-decade increase in temperatures rather than fluctuations in warming rate over a few years. Indeed, if short periods were suitable for drawing strong conclusions, climate scientists should perhaps now be talking about a “surge” in global warming since 2011, as shown in this figure:
Global temperature observations compared to climate models. Climate-disrupting volcanoes are shown at the bottom, and the purported hiatus period is shaded. 2018 values based on year to date (YTD). NASA; Berkeley Earth; various climate models., Author provided
The “pause” or “hiatus” in warming of the early 21st century is not just a talking point of think-tanks with radical political agendas. It also features in the scientific literature, including in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and more than 200 peer-reviewed articles.
Research we recently published in Environmental Research Letters addresses two questions about the putative “pause”: first, is there compelling evidence in the temperature data alone of something unusual happening at the start of the 21st century? Second, did the rise in temperature lag behind projections by climate models?
In both cases the answer is “no”, but the reasons are interesting.
Reconstructing a historical temperature record from instruments designed for other purposes, such as weather forecasting, is not always easy. Several problems have affected temperature estimates for the period since 2000. The first of these was the fact that uneven geographical distribution of weather stations can influence the apparent rate of warming. Other factors include changes in the instruments used to measure ocean temperatures. Most of these factors were known at the time and reported in the scientific literature, but because the magnitudes of the effects were unknown, users of temperature data (from science journalists to IPCC authors) were in a bind when interpreting their results.
‘This glacier was here in 1908’: warming might fluctuate, but the long-term trend is clear. Matty Symons/Shutterstock
A more subtle problem arises when we ask whether a fluctuation in the rate of warming is a new phenomena, rather than the kind of variation we expect due to natural fluctuations of the climate system. Different statistical tests are needed to determine whether a phenomena is interesting depending on how the data are chosen. In a nutshell, if you select data based on them being unusual in the first place, then any statistical tests that seemingly confirm their unusual nature give the wrong answer. (The statistical issue here is similar to the fascinating but counterintuitive “Monty Hall problem”, which has caught out many mathematicians).
When the statistical test is applied correctly, the apparent slowdown in warming is no more significant than other fluctuations in the rate of warming over the past 40 years. In other words, there is no compelling evidence that the supposed “pause” period is different from other previous periods. Neither is the deviation between the observations and climate model projections larger than would be expected.
That’s not to say that such “wiggles” in the temperature record are uninteresting – several of our team are involved in further studies of these fluctuations, and the study of the “pause” has yielded interesting new insights into the climate system – for example, the role of changes in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
There are lessons here for the media, for the public, and for scientists.
For scientists, there are two lessons: first, when you get to know a dataset by using it repeatedly in your work, make sure you also still remember the limitations you read about when first downloading it. Second, remember that your statistical choices are always part of a cascade of decisions, and at least occasionally those decisions must be revisited.
For the public and the media, the lesson is to check claims about the data. In particular, when claims are made based on short periods or specific datasets, they are often designed to mislead. If someone claims the world hasn’t warmed since 1998 or 2016, ask them why those specific years – why not 1997 or 2014? Why have such short limits at all? And also check how reliable similar claims have been in the past.
The technique of misinformation is nicely described in a quote attributed to climate researcher Michael Tobis:
“If a large data set speaks convincingly against you, find a smaller and noisier one that you can huffily cite.”
Global warming didn’t stop in 1998. Don’t be fooled by claims that it stopped in 2016 either. There is only one thing that will stop global warming: cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
This is an article from The Conversation’s Head to Head, a series in which academics from different disciplines chew over current debates. Let us know what else you’d like covered – all questions welcome. Details of how to contact us are at the end of the article.
Rob Bellamy: 2018 has been a year of unprecedented weather extremes around the world. From the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Japan to the largest wildfire in the history of California, the frequency and intensity of such events have been made much more likely by human-induced climate change. They form part of a longer-term trend – observed in the past and projected into the future – that may soon make nations desperate enough to consider engineering the world’s climate deliberately in order to counteract the risks of climate change.
Indeed, the spectre of climate engineering hung heavily over the recent United Nations climate conference in Katowice, COP24, having featured in several side events as negotiators agreed on how to implement the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, but left many worried that it does not go far enough.
Matt Watson: Climate engineering – or geoengineering – is the purposeful intervention into the climate system to reduce the worst side effects of climate change. There are two broad types of engineering, greenhouse gas removal (GGR) and solar radiation management (or SRM). GGR focuses on removing anthropogenically emitted gases from the atmosphere, directly reducing the greenhouse effect. SRM, meanwhile, is the label given to a diverse mix of large-scale technology ideas for reflecting sunlight away from the Earth, thereby cooling it.
An engineered future?
RB: It’s increasingly looking like we may have to rely on a combination of such technologies in facing climate change. The authors of the recent IPCC report concluded that it is possible to limit global warming to no more than 1.5°C, but every single one of the pathways they envisaged that are consistent with this goal require the use of greenhouse gas removal, often on a vast scale. While these technologies vary in their levels of maturity, none are ready to be deployed yet – either for technical or social reasons or both.
If efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning away from fossil fuels fail, or greenhouse gas removal technologies are not researched and deployed quickly enough, faster-acting SRM ideas may be needed to avoid so-called “climate emergencies”.
SRM ideas include installing mirrors in Earth’s orbit, growing crops that have been genetically modified to make them lighter, painting urban areas white, spraying clouds with salt to make them brighter, and paving mirrors over desert areas – all to reflect sunlight away. But by far the best known idea – and that which has, rightly or wrongly, received the most attention by natural and social scientists alike – is injecting reflective particles, such as sulphate aerosols, into the stratosphere, otherwise known as “stratospheric aerosol injection” or SAI.
MW: Despite researching it, I do not feel particularly positive about SRM (very few people do). But our direction of travel is towards a world where climate change will have significant impacts, particularly on those most vulnerable. If you accept the scientific evidence, it’s hard to argue against options that might reduce those impacts, no matter how extreme they appear.
Do you remember the film 127 Hours? It tells the (true) story of a young climber who, pinned under a boulder in the middle of nowhere, eventually ends up amputating his arm, without anaesthetic, with a pen knife. In the end, he had little choice. Circumstances dictate decisions. So if you believe climate change is going to be severe, you have no option but to research the options (I am not advocating deployment) as broadly as possible. Because there may well come a point in the future where it would be immoral not to intervene.
SRM using stratospheric aerosols has many potential issues but does have a comparison in nature – active volcanism – which can partially inform us about the scientific challenges, such as the dynamic response of the stratosphere. Very little research is currently being conducted, due to a challenging funding landscape. What is being done is at small scale (financially), is linked to other, more benign ideas, or is privately funded. This is hardly ideal.
A controversial idea
RB: But SAI is a particularly divisive idea for a reason. For example, as well as threatening to disrupt regional weather patterns, it, and the related idea of brightening clouds at sea, would require regular “top-ups” to maintain cooling effects. Because of this, both methods would suffer from the risk of a “termination effect”: where any cessation of cooling would result in a sudden rise in global temperature in line with the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If we hadn’t been reducing our greenhouse gas emissions in the background, this could be a very sharp rise indeed.
Such ideas also raise concerns about governance. What if one powerful actor – be it a nation or a wealthy individual – could change the global climate at a whim? And even if there were an international programme, how could meaningful consent be obtained from those who would be affected by the technology? That’s everybody on Earth. What if some nations were harmed by the aerosol injections of others? Attributing liability would be greatly contentious in a world where you can no longer disentangle natural from artificial.
And who could be trusted to deliver such a programme? Your experience with the SPICE (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering) project shows that people are wary of private interests. There, it was concerns about a patent application that in part led to the scientists calling off a test of delivery hardware for SAI that would have seen the injection of water 1km above the ground via a pipe and tethered balloon.
MW: The technological risks, while vitally important, are not insurmountable. While non-trivial, there are existing technologies that could deliver material to the stratosphere.
Most researchers agree that the socio-political risks, such as you outline, outweigh the technological risks. One researcher remarked at a Royal Society meeting, in 2010: “We know that governments have failed to combat climate change, what are the chances of them safely implementing a less-optimal solution?”. This is a hard question to answer well. But in my experience, opponents to research never consider the risk of not researching these ideas.
The SPICE project is an example where scientists and engineers took the decision to call off part of an experiment. Despite what was reported, we did this of our own volition. It annoyed me greatly when others, including those who purported to provide oversight, claimed victory for the experiment not going ahead. This belies the amount of soul searching we undertook. I’m proud of the decisions we made, essentially unsupported, and in most people’s eyes it has added to scientists’ credibility.
Moral hazard
RB: Some people are also worried that the promise of large-scale climate engineering technologies might delay or distract us from reducing greenhouse gas emissions – a “moral hazard”. But this remains to be seen. There are good reasons to think that the promise (or threat) of SRM might even galvanise efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
MW: Yes, I think it’s at least as likely that the threat of SAI would prompt “positive” behaviour, towards a sustainable, greener future, than a “negative” behaviour pattern where we assume technology, currently imaginary, will solve our problems (in fact our grandchildren’s problems, in 50 years time).
RB: That said, the risks of a moral hazard may not be the same for all climate engineering ideas, or even all SRM ideas. It’s a shame that the specific idea of stratospheric aerosol injection is so frequently conflated with its parent category of SRM and climate engineering more generally. This leads people to tar all climate engineering ideas with the same brush, which is to the detriment of many other ideas that have so far raised relatively fewer societal concerns, such as more reflective settlements or grasslands on the SRM side of things, or virtually the entire category of greenhouse gas removal ideas. So we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
MW: I agree with this – somewhat. It’s certainly true all techniques should be given the same amount of scrutiny based on evidence. Some techniques, however, often look benign but aren’t. Modifying crops to make them more reflective, brightening clouds, even planting trees all have potentially profound impacts at scale. I disagree a little in as much as we simply don’t know enough yet to say which technologies have the potential to reduce the impacts of climate change safely. This means we do need to be thinking about all of these ideas, but objectively.
Anyone that passionately backs a particular technology concerns me. If it could be conclusively proven that SAI did more harm than good, then we should stop researching it. All serious researchers in SAI would accept that outcome, and many are actively looking for showstoppers.
RB: I agree. But at present there is very little demand for research into SRM from governments and wider society. This needs to be addressed. And we need broad societal involvement in defining the tools – and terms – of such research, and indeed in tackling climate change more broadly.
MW: Some people think that we should just be getting on with engineering the climate, whereas others feel even the idea of it should not even be discussed or researched. Most academics value governance, as a mechanism that allows freedom to explore ideas safely and there are very few serious researchers, if any, who push back against this.
A challenge, of course, is who governs the governors. There are strong feelings on both sides – scientists either must, or cannot, govern their own research, depending on your viewpoint. Personally, I’d like to see a broad, international body set up with the power to govern climate engineering research, especially when conducting outdoor experiments. And I think the hurdles to conducting these experiments should consider both the environmental and social impact, but should not be an impediment to safe, thoughtful research.
RB: There are more proposed frameworks for governance than you can shake a stick at. But there are two major problems with them. The first is that most of those frameworks treat all SRM ideas as though they were stratospheric aerosol injection, and call for international regulation. That might be fine for those technologies with risks that cross national boundaries, but for ideas like reflective settlements and grasslands, such heavy handed governance might not make sense. Such governance is also at odds with the bottom-up architecture of the Paris Agreement, which states that countries will make nationally determined efforts to tackle climate change.
Which leads us to the second problem: these frameworks have almost exclusively arisen from a very narrow set of viewpoints – either those of natural or social scientists. What we really need now is broad societal participation in defining what governance itself should look like.
MW: Yes. There are so many questions that need to be addressed. Who pays for delivery and development and, critically, any consequences? How is the global south enfranchised – they are least responsible, most vulnerable and, given current geopolitical frameworks, unlikely to have a strong say. What does climate engineering mean for our relationship with nature: will anything ever be “natural” again (whatever that is)?
All these questions must be considered against the situation where we continue to emit CO₂ and extant risks from climate change increase. That climate engineering is sub-optimal to a pristine, sustainably managed planet is hard to argue against. But we don’t live in such a world. And when considered against a +3°C world, I’d suggest the opposite is highly likely to be true.
If there’s a specific topic or question you’d like experts from different disciplines to discuss, you can:
Email your question to josephine.lethbridge@theconversation.com
Tell us on Twitter by tagging @ConversationUK with the hashtag #HeadtoHead, or
Quality through Equality organising committee (l-r Dr Francesca Pianosi, Dr Valentina Noacco, Sebastian Gnann, Lina Stein, Dr Maria Pregnolato, Elisa Coraggio, Melike Kiraz, Lina Wang)
Results of a 1-day workshop organised by the Bristol University’s Water Engineering Group
A professor asked our group of PhD students last year, “Who here thinks of staying in academia after finishing their PhD?” Of the 10 male students present, 4 or 5 said they could imagine continuing in academia. None of the 5 female students raised their hand. When asked for their reasons for not wanting to stay in academia, some of the things mentioned were the challenge of combining family and academia, a lack of role models or different career aspirations.
This experience started the idea of organising a workshop on gender issues in hydrology, with the aim of raising awareness of unconscious biases, offer role models and discuss ideas on how to make the hydrologic community more diverse. Although the focus of the workshop was on gender diversity, most things we learned apply as well to issues related to misrepresentation of ethnic minorities or disabled scientists.
To achieve the aims mentioned above, the workshop included: three invited speakers (Prof Hannah Cloke, Dr Joshua Larsen, Prof Elena Toth) who shared their experiences regarding gender issues in hydrology; a talk and a training on unconscious biases (Prof Havi Carel); and a group discussion. The workshop was attended by 44 hydrologists, mainly PhD students, of which 28 were female and 16 were male.
One highlight of the day was the presentation of Hannah Cloke talking about her career progress to full professor while at the same time raising four kids. Together with Elena Toth and Joshua Larsen, she agreed that combining academia and raising a family is possible, because academia offers one of the most flexible work environments possible. However, it does need a supportive stance of the university to enable that flexibility (flexitime working hours, childcare facilities, flexible childcare support for conferences) and supportive colleagues. Hannah finished with good advice for all PhD students, but especially women or members of minorities: A work-family-life balance is essential. Say no before you are overwhelmed and exhausted, but: be brave! Say yes to opportunities that scare you and do great science! And encourage each other to be brave. This is definitely advice I will try to implement in my life.
Often postgraduate and early career researchers suffer from lack of communication at their institutions. Peer-to-peer mentoring or senior-to-junior mentoring may offer opportunities for discussion to take place, particularly about equality/inclusion/diversity issues. When exclusion/discrimination problems are experienced/witnessed, having a range of peer and senior people to discuss with becomes very important, and facilitates reporting to leadership if needed. These meetings and discussions will also give opportunities to people who may otherwise feel their problems are overlooked, to find support, be empowered and build up their self-confidence.
What can leadership do?
To specifically include researchers with caring responsibilities some attendees mentioned that it would be helpful if institutions could improve access to affordable childcare – this may include nurseries at University as well as more flexible reimbursement for childcare during specific events, such as conferences, where children cannot be brought along by parents.
What is the role of role models?
The attendees agreed that role models can be vital in shaping career pathways as they inspire, work as advisors and can start or change career aspirations. Role models should be relatable (by gender, ethnicity, etc.) and are thus not always available in less diverse environments. However, if role models do not exist new ways to develop them can be used and should be encouraged. For example, Twitter or other social media can offer a great selection of diverse role models from all over the world.
What is success in academia (or in life)?
Success can be defined in many ways. Some people want to make a difference, some want to publish high quality material, some want a good work-family-life balance, and some want all of those together. This highlights how important it is for line managers, supervisors, and colleagues to accept and nurture this diversity. A redefinition of success should be flexible and shaped according to the people in a certain work environment. This will hopefully lead to a more enjoyable and a more productive work environment.
The feedback we received from the day was overwhelmingly positive. This includes both talking to attendees and evaluating questionnaires people filled out at the end of the day. The discussions about the topics and the opportunity to share experiences with others were found the highlights of the workshop. A large part of the participants felt more aware about biases and more empowered to tackle them. Some changes are already happening as a result of the workshop, for example our research group is diversifying social activities to be more inclusive, and both the British Hydrological Society as well as the Young Hydrologic Society have appointed EDI (Equality, Diversity & Inclusion) champions now! With one third of the 44 attendees being male, the workshop demonstrated that not just women are interested to learn about biases and discuss their experiences.
We thank the GW4 Water Security Alliance, the Cabot Institute and the School of Engineering of Bristol University for funding this event. A big thank you to our three speakers and Havi Carel who conducted the training, and to all attendees for creating an inclusive and productive atmosphere. Now it is our task to implement what we have learned and communicate the results as widespread as possible. And on a personal note, I definitely feel there is a future in academia for me now.
If you are interested in organising a similar event at your institution and have any questions, feel free to contact us: hydro-equality2019@bristol.ac.uk
Further information and material can be found on our website.
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This blog was written by Cabot Institute member Lina Stein and other members of the organising committee, a hydrology PhD student in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol.
Back on dry land after seven-and-a-half weeks at sea, the sights of the Southern Ocean are already drifting from my mind into the whirlwind of modern life. The threats of land-sickness never materialised and the taste of fresh fruit and vegetables is everything I hoped it would be. Reflecting on a research cruise is not dissimilar to reflecting on a PhD.
“We only remember half”
Looking back can be a glorious thing. We all know the benefits that hindsight can bring. There are few things in our lives we couldn’t improve, whether they be things we said, research we carried out or ideas we had, if we got but one trial run at everything first. But looking back also gives the past a magical quality. The vividness of a blue sky intensifies, the significance of a rare sight swells and all the hardships are suppressed into one dense ball that our mind tries not to remember. The retelling of tales reconsolidates the good memories at the expense of the bad.
Of course this isn’t always the case and, if we really take the time, all of the gory details can be unpacked. I’m reading an amazing book at the moment, The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, that gives the most warts-and-all description of early Antarctic exploration. His descriptions are detailed, his wit hilarious and his tale harrowing. He is one of three who dragged two sleds to an emperor penguin colony in the heart of the Antarctic winter, being physically frozen into their clothes, losing their tent to a blizzard and of course getting plenty of frostbite. They did this just to collect three penguin eggs for science, as they hoped the embryos could be used to shed light on the evolutionary history of these creatures, which they believed were more primitive than other birds. The following year several of his closest friends died on the return leg of making it to the South Pole with Scott and he had to help recover their bodies.
Needless to say, Apsley didn’t have the greatest time in Antarctica, but still he writes:
Whatever merit there may be in going to the Antarctic, once there you must not credit yourself for being there. To spend a year in the hut at Cape Evans because you explore is no more laudable than to spend a month at Davos because you have consumption … It is just the most comfortable thing and the easiest thing to do under the circumstances.
This book is a definitive grim account of fieldwork and I really had nothing to complain about during our research cruise. To rephrase Apsley:
The [James Clark Ross], as [ships] go, was as palatial as is the Ritz, as hotels go.
A few nods towards monotony in work and some bad nights’ sleep in the previous blog articles in this series are all the negative memories I need to keep, otherwise the rest can go down for the record as one of the most interesting experiences of my PhD.
Southern Ocean Bridgeman Island Bridgeman Island off the Antarctic Peninsula. The sea was a bit choppy that day, but nothing too major to complain about.
Questions remain
I have just completed my PhD viva and, pending some minor corrections to my thesis, I have drawn a line under a four-and-a-half-year period of my life. During that time, most of my intellectual energy has gone into trying to understand what Antarctica was like in the past. Despite having been situated more or less in the same position over the South Pole for over 100 million years, this continent twice the size of Australia hasn’t always been the cold, inhospitable place that Apsley and co. experienced so brutally.
Fossils found on the few exposed outcrops of rock around the coast of the continent, on the sub-Antarctic islands and in the Transantarctic mountain range that cuts across between the Weddell and Ross Seas, show that up until relatively recently, diverse vegetation lived on this continent. (By relatively recently, I mean up until potentially 5 million years ago or so.) Definitely up until the end of the Eocene (the period I researched), much of the continent is believed to have been ice free.
The past environment of the Earth can be reconstructed using all sorts of complex chemistry and dating of past rocks and sediments, but the simplest and sometimes most compelling evidence can be those geological indicators that can be seen with the naked eye. Fossilised leaves, branches and seed pods from a variety of Southern Beech, most similar to modern Nothofagus Antarctica, show quite clearly what kind of ecosystem used to exist.
Nothofagus Antarctica and the Magellanic Forest, Southern Chile: a window into the past environment of Antarctica?
Nothofagus Antarctica and the Magellanic Forest, Southern Chile: a window into the past environment of Antarctica?
Today, Southern Beech forests can be found in Patagonia and other high latitude regions of the Southern Hemisphere. On our one day off we had in Punta Arenas before we set sail, I went with the other researchers from Exeter up into the Magellanic Forest Park just outside the town. As we walked through this ancient forest, snarled up in Old Man’s Beard lichen, with birds singing on a warm, sunny autumn day, I had to think ‘So this is what I (and lots of other people) have said Antarctica might have been like 34 million years ago?’
My PhD research also focussed a lot on the importance of deep water formation on the regional temperatures in the Southern Ocean around the end of the Eocene. There could be little fieldwork more relevant therefore than going to try to understand deep water formation occurring around Antarctica today. Through conversations with researchers from all over the UK and beyond on the many long days of the cruise, I got an insight into the uncertainties that still exist in understanding this process today. Compared to the observational data we collected on our cruise, I looked at how the climate model we use compares in how it recreates the present day ocean. While there are some realistic elements, there are also some important differences which have planted future research questions in my brain. If these are the uncertainties in the model for the present day, how uncertain might my simulations of the ancient world be?
Crabeater seal in Antarctic pack ice. Understanding deep water formation remains challenging, in part because of how extreme the environment is.
Terra Australis Incognita
Looking back isn’t always easy. The deeper back in time we try to look, the harder it becomes to find data and to synthesise it with our knowledge of how the Earth and its oceans, atmosphere and biology work. In writing my PhD thesis, I had to come to terms with not knowing all of the answers. There are many, many questions that are too big and too complex to solve even with years of effort and 50,000 words. Stepping onto the James Clark Ross reminded me of that fact like a blast of 40 knot southerly Antarctic air to the face.
In the 17th Century, cartographers grappled with their limited understanding of this world, putting together the pieces of information they had and using artistic license to fill in the unmapped gaps that explorers had yet to reach. This map by Blaeu includes the Terra Australis Incognita, or ‘Unknown Southern Land’. While modern science would generally not approve of such guess work, exploring the history of the Earth system is a similar step into the unknown, with geologists, palaeoceanographers and palaeoclimatologists having to build the picture around what limited information they have.
A section of map by Blaeu (1645-1646), showing the as yet uncharted and hence imagined Terra Australis Incognita. Image courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library.
From 1646, when Blaeu’s map was published, it was a further 174 years before the first humans saw the Antarctic continent. Now, nearly 200 years on from that first sighting, the Unknown Southern Land still holds many secrets.
Still, looking back also shows how far we have come: a pleasant relief from thinking how far we have yet to go. We know so much more about Antarctica today than we ever have. Unfortunately, with hindsight, Apsley and co.’s journey to find emperor penguin eggs in the middle of winter was a relatively fruitless exercise as the hypothesis they were collecting the eggs to test has since been proven wrong: emperor penguins are actually very specialised and highly evolved birds, not primitive or reptile-like.
Should we give up because we might never know the answers or we might be going down a blind alley? I don’t think so. I’ll give the last words to Apsley, as he really, really earned them.
The question constantly put to us in civilization was and still is: ‘What is the use? Is there gold? Or is there coal? … The members of this expedition believed that it was worthwhile to discover new land and new life, to reach the Southern Pole of the Earth, to make elaborate meteorological and magnetic observations and extended geological surveys … They were prepared to suffer great hardship; and some of them died for their beliefs. …We travelled for science … in order that the world may have a little more knowledge, that it may build on what it knows instead of on what it thinks.
Apsley Cherry-Garrard in The Worst Journey in the World
I was really proud to see that the University of Bristol declared a climate emergency. It was one of those moments that makes you feel part of a worthwhile institution (despite its many other flaws, like all institutions). Inspired by the exploding #Fridaysforclimate movement and the speeches of brave activist @GretaThunberg, I had been thinking about what I could personally do to contribute to the needed paradigm change. It did not take much reflection to realise that the most effective change in my professional life would clearly be to cut down travel, specially by air. And so, the University’s announcement prompted me to ‘go public’ with it.
This is great news. I take this opportunity to personally pledge to minimise conference travel, especially by air. It is tricky, but we academics need to rethink the way we organise conferences and other events #smallerco2footprintforknowledgexchangehttps://t.co/6YkJWQ9XCX
— Dr Albert Sánchez-Graells (@asanchezgraells) April 17, 2019
This tweet prompted a series of exchanges with colleagues from Bristol and elsewhere. The reaction was mainly in three directions. First, that such a personal ‘no travel policy’ may be impossible to adopt in the context of (UK) academia, where public and conference speaking is used as both a measure of ‘academic productivity’ and as a proxy for esteem/standing in the field for the purposes of eg promotion—so, either you travel, or you may be seen as not doing your job or/and not worthy of (further) promotion. Second, that this would reduce the likely impact of my research and cut me off from potentially relevant audiences. Third, that this would exclude some of the very enjoyable moments that come with academic conferences, where you end up socialising with likely-minded colleagues and developing networks of collaborators and, if lucky, friends.
All of these are important points, so I have given this a little bit more thought.
First, I have to concede that not traveling to conferences will be an issue in terms of justifying my engagement with the academic (and policy-making) communities unless I manage to find a way to still participate in conferences. But this should not be too difficult. Today, there is large number of options to organise webinars and to allow for remote participation in meetings, so there is really no excuse not to take advantage of them. The technology is there and most institutions offer the required equipment and software, so it is high time that academics (and policy-makers) start using it as the default way of organising our interactions. This can even have secondary positive effects, such as the possibility of recording and publishing all or part of the conferences/meetings, so that different people can engage with the discussion at different times.
I also concede that not traveling to conferences and workshops can have a negative impact on ‘CV-building’ and that this will reduce any academic’s prospect of promotion. But I can only say that, to my shame and regret, I have been burning too much CO2 to get to my current academic position. In current lingo, I have exhausted (or, more likely, exceeded) my CO2 budget for conferences, so I can no longer afford to do it. If this means that my employer may not consider me deserving of a higher academic position as they may otherwise have, then I will have to accept any delays that come from implementing a no travel policy. In the grand scheme of things, this is a tiny sacrifice.
I acknowledge that this is something I can do from the very privileged academic position I am lucky to have, so I have no intention of proselytising. However, I do plan to try to change the system. I will work with my local trade union branch to see if we can make specific proposals to reduce the CO2 footprint of the promotions procedure. I will also organise webinars and non-presential conferences and offer every opportunity I can, in particular to early career researchers, so that academics can carry on with ‘CV-building’ (and, more importantly, knowledge-exchange) despite not traveling. These are the remedial actions I can and will implement. If you can think of others, please let me know. I would be more than happy to chip in.
Second, I must say that I have generally reached the audience for my academic work online. Only very rarely have I spoken at a conference or workshop where participants did not know my work from my SSRN page and this blog. With the partial exception of Brussels-based policy-makers (when I have been member of expert groups), every other policy-making body and NGO that has engaged with my work has done so remotely and, oftentimes, without any sort of direct conversation or exchange. There are plenty opportunities for academics to share their work online on open access and this has made the need for last-century-type conferences and workshops largely redundant for the purposes of knowledge and research dissemination. We need to realise this and use it to the advantage of a lower CO2 footprint for knowledge exchange.
Third, the social component is more difficult to address. There is no question that socialising at conferences and workshops has value in and of itself. It is also clear that, once you establish a network, you do not need to meet regularly with your collaborators and friends (however nice it is) to keep it going. So this may be the only aspect of conference travel that could justify going to a very specific event eg to establish new connections or to rekindle/deepen existing ones. But maybe this can be done without flying—eg in the case of UK-based academics like me, to prioritise conferences in Europe and convincing our employers and ourselves to take the extra time to travel by train or bus (anecdotally, most academics I know love train trips).
So, all in all, I have reaffirmed myself in the commitment to minimise my conference travel and, from today, I plan to not accept invitations to speak at or attend any conferences that require me to fly (although I will still fulfill the few prior commitments that I have). I will always ask for a ‘virtual alternative’, though, and I am really hoping that this will be acceptable (or even welcome).
Thus, in case you organise a conference on a topic within my expertise, here is my message: I will not fly to your conference, but I hope you will still invite me to participate. I hope you will because we have the technology to do this and because I value of our exchanges.
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This blog is written by Dr Albert Sanchez Graells, Reader in Economic Law at the University of Bristol. This blog was reposted with kind permission from Albert. You can view his original blog post here.
