People see the most interesting things in the world around them. Some people see Stephen Hawking's initials in the universe's microwave background radiation. Others seek patterns in the clouds or lines on a palm. People are hard-wired to look for meaning in patterns. Not all patterns have meaning, but many do. Geologists, for instance, pay a lot of (legitimate) attention to patterns in ancient sediments: these patterns, called primary structures, give information about current flow direction, exposure to air, and the presence of living organisms. Others can orient us to which way was "up" when the sediments were deposited. Cross-bedding, mudcracks, and bioturbation are some examples of patterns with meaning. Seeing a dog's face in a rock exposure is an example of a pattern that lacks meaning, as surely as if one saw the same dog's face in the meaningless blobs of ink in a Rorschach test.

Lately, I've been thinking about the human predisposition for perceiving meaning in patterns.

The week before last, I gave a presentation at a local middle school about climate change. Before my talk, one of the teachers came up to me to ask if I thought that global warming could have triggered the earthquake. He whispered conspiratorially, "There have been a lot of earthquakes lately!" I said no, because (1) I couldn't think of a plausible mechanism for that to work in Haiti* and (2) there are perfectly good tectonic reasons for the Haiti earthquake, and (3) there haven't been more earthquakes lately than usual, at least not in any significant way.

As I type these words, the first snowflakes are falling in the second major snowstorm to hit Washington, DC, in less than a week. The first, dubbed Snowmageddon or the Snowpocalypse, dumped more than 18 inches of snow on the capital city. The city does not respond well to that amount of snow: schools shut, the government closed, and there were insane panicked runs on groceries at the area's stores. The new storm, dubbed Snoverkill, adds insult to injury with another 6 to 16 inches predicted. The schools I teach for, NOVA and GMU, have both been closed since last Friday. The way it's looking now, I'm not going to be working again until this coming Friday -- a full week lost due to the white stuff.

What's interesting to me is how people react to the snow. I mean this on two levels: one is the obvious fact that both the culture and infrastructure of Washington, DC, are quite poorly equipped to deal with a couple feet of snow. However, that's not as interesting as the way the snow serves as a reflection on people's mental states. Some people look at the two big snowstorms coming back to back and say, "Where's global warming now?" Others look at the same two storms, with fear that this is the new paradigm like The Day After Tomorrow, and say, "See what climate change hath wrought?" The thing is, they are both wrong.

Weather is not climate, even when two weather events occur in the same week. Tamino calculates that you need about 14 years of temperature data to tease out the long-term trend. Nine years isn't enough, and one week isn't enough. Yet people notice the "clumping" of these data: "two storms in one week! That's a pattern! It must therefore be significant! If it's significant, it's therefore reflective of a common cause, and that common cause is the one I have already decided to be true. Therefore these two storms are evidence of global warming / global cooling**" (depending on who you're listening to).

The thing is, data are clumpy. There is going to be noise in the data. When it comes to snowstorms, the noise is the weather. The noise is superimposed upon a longer-term trend. That trend is the climate. Likewise with earthquakes: no one expects earthquakes to occur with a periodicity regular enough to set to music. Earthquakes of a certain size have a certain probability of occuring in a given period of time, but there's no guarantee that one will occur. If you calculate the average number of earthquakes during a given period of time, and then compare any period of time to that average, your comparison time period will either have more earthquakes than the average or less earthquakes than the average. Ditto for snowstorms: some winters will be more snowy. Some winters will be less snowy.

There are exceptions, such as earthquakes triggered by other earthquakes, or a common cause. The recent earthquake storm at Yellowstone is sufficiently constrained in time and space to suggest that it indeed is a group related by a common cause (though it does not show a magmatic signature, another case of people seeing what they want in the data). Haiti's aftershocks play the same game, though not every earthquake that occurs in Haiti is necessarily connected to the big shock.

Anyhow, this stuff has been on my mind this week. The world is one big Rorschach blot, and humans see what they want in it. We are psychologically all too likely to jump from pattern recognition (noticing clumps in data) to conclusions (often pre-determined), without taking the time to really analyze whether there is in fact a trend present, and if that trend is significant, and if there is a logical causal mechanism to explain that trend.

We are a species that seeks meaning: some augur the future from tea leaves, while others engage in science and reason. Some methods of gaining access to meaning are themselves meaningful. Others are meaningless. Both surround us.

Stay warm out there.
________________________________________
* Though potentially up in Greenland it could work due to glacial melting causing unloading on the crust, changing the stress field that's keeping a fault locked in place.
** It's probably also worth pointing out that snow does not equal temperature. It's precipitation. People are visually susceptible to the sight of snow: it registers more than numbers.

Labels: analogies, climate change, dc, movies, nova, primary structures, science and society, snow

"Green Guilt," an article in the Chronicle Review by Stephen T. Asma, offers a nice follow-up to my earlier examinations of my own travel-induced carbon anxiety.

Via Idea of the Day.

...Also, on that same topic, it occurred to me that I should share this quote by my favorite author, Edward Abbey (emphasis is mine):

"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a
reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted
fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure
and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more
important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get
out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the
forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep
of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the
precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves,
keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the
body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet
victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a
safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you
this: you will outlive the bastards."

Labels: environmental, science and society

Last Friday, I went to a briefing in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill about adaptation to climate change. I present here a transcription of my notes as a quick, unpolished rundown of what was discussed there. It may be of interest to you.

The speakers, their titles, and their topics were:

• Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, the Climate Institute: Projected impacts of Climate Change on the United States


• Kristie L. Ebi, Executive Director, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 2 Technical Support Unit - Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability: Adaptation


• Katharine L. Jacobs, Professor, University of Arizona Soil, Water and Environmental Science Department: Adaptation to water resource changes


• Susanne Moser, Director and Principal Researcher, Susanne Moser Research & Consulting: California as a case-study in adaptation planning

MacCracken was first up, and gave [what I was surely biased to percieve as] the most compelling talk. I felt this way not because he was the only dude, but because he was talking science, while everyone else was talking adaptation -- how humans should/can/might respond to climate change -- a topic I find fundamentally less interesting than the science. However, I'm teaching environmental geology again this semester, and having some clue as to policy options is a part of my job. That's why I went. Citing the IPCC and a UNEP report (reproduced above because I think its cover design is pretty clever), MacCracken informed us that the overall projections for North America is that it will get wetter in the north and drier in the south. He noted that there is less confidence in precipitation projections than there is in temperature projections. Water is going to be one of the most important aspects of climate change, MacCracken asserted. Tangentially, he also suggested that the large amount of snow we're seeing in the U.S. this winter has to do with less ice cover on the Great Lakes (encouraging evaporation and precipitaiton as snow). He showed a cool graph of corn yields over time, showing the crop's susceptibility to extreme climate events (superimposed on an overall upward trend). I found this to be interesting, and coveted the graph. [Eventually, all the speakers' PowerPoints will be available at the AMS Climate Briefing site - but they are not there yet.] He showed some good graphs showing projections of sea level rise under high, medium, and low emissions scenarios. He also cited Isabella Velicogna (2009), displaying graphs which show estimates of ice mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica. (I need to get a copy of these images: very compelling! The Way Things Break discussed them in October, when they were first published.) Finally, he brought up ecosystem changes, showing us maps of the spruce bark beetle infestation on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska (a forest catastrophe I have seen firsthand).

Ebi spoke quietly about adaptation in general. Adaptation is in contrast to mitigation, which is what most people spend their climate time talking about: Mitigation attempts to prevent future climate change (by limiting emissions of CO2 or by capturing CO2 and sequestering it), while adaptation says, "given a certain level of climate change, what do we do in order to maximize human welfare?") She noted that the impacts we face are entirely contingent upon which adaptation strategies we adopt: a given quantum of climate change will have different effects upon identical communities which adopt different levels of adaptation. Ergo, adaptation is important, and we really need to start talking about it. She made the claim that the federal Stimulus package was a major missed opportunity, as major infrastructural investment was made without consideration as to whether long-term infrastructure should be modified or moved. For instance, before rebuilding a bridge, perhaps we should be asking ourselves if it should be taller, or before repaving a coastal road, we should perhaps consider moving it to a higher elevation where it is likely to last longer. She gave a compelling example of Barbados (I think), where coastal mapping showed that with year 2100 projections for sea-level rise plus a category-3 hurricane, the portion of Barbados' coast to be flooded will include both the power plant and the coastal road! While Barbados has been proactive in addressing these issues, Ebi says the U.S. has not. Adaptation, she argued, is nothing more than iterative risk management. She gave a list of criteria necessary for action, and you can see that the U.S. is falling short of the minimum threshold for action on many of them:

• an awareness of the problem
• an understanding of the causes
• a sense that the problem matters
• a capability to influence outcomes
• political will to deal with the problem

The third expert to speak was Kathy Jacobs. She pointed out that many of the projected impacts of climate change will be delivered, one way or another, via the water cycle. One example she gave that caught my attention was the declining amount of snowpack in the western U.S. Historically, this snowpack has been a fundamental reservoir of water during the summer months, and as it melts away, we are going to need to build artificial reservoirs to compensate. She noted that this sort of adaptation is uniquely human: ecosystems do not have the foresight or ability to build reservoirs and the like -- so if we want those ecosystems to continue to function, we will have to do their planning, too. She discussed the Colorado River, which is estimated to decline somewhere between 11% and 40% at the same time demand for its water is increasing. She said, "We may not know the magnitude or the rate of change [in Colorado River discharge], but we know the direction of change" (i.e., downward). The comment she made that impressed me the most was that the current uncertainty (in U.S. society) about whether climate change is real is blocking action. She was citing the frequently-made argument that because we don't understand everything about climate change, we shouldn't take any action. "Yet we make decisions with imperfect information all the time," she said. "Climate change shouldn't be any different. We need to get past that." She made two final points: (1) that there is no silver bullet solution to our burgeoning water resources crisis ["We will need a broad portfolio approach" including things like desalination], and (2) Many of the current water technologies are energy intensive, and these technologies will be less attractive in the future because of their carbon cost.

Susanne Moser was the last one at bat. She detailed California's response to the question of adaptation. It was an interesting case study, because under the leadership of Governor Schwarzenegger, an office was formed to examine what adaptation might mean for the Golden State. This office provides bi-annual updates to the government of California on the state of the science. They are the only state to do this, so far (though ~a dozen other states have taken less decisive measures). Unfortunately, "California is also adapting to bankruptcy," and so really this golden example of adaptation is hamstrung by economic constraints: It is really only a baby step.

I enjoyed the briefing. It was the sixth or seventh AMS-sponsored briefing I've attended on Capitol Hill, and it was informative as always. Typing up these notes reminds me how useful it was. I'd like to thank AMS for making these sessions open to the general public, and for providing lunch to all the participants.

Labels: alaska, antarctica, art, barbados, california, climate change, CO2, dc, global warming, graphics, greenland, politics, science and society, water resources

Happy new years! The grammar police return! A while back (May!), I commented on a few words that had gotten my attention through their misuse. Since then, a few more peaked piqued my interest, and now I return with the third installment of "Words' worth."

Peak / Peek / Pique - "Peak" means summit or maximum value; "Peek" means look at quickly or furtively; "Pique" means provoke or stimulate. You can "take a peek," but you cannot "take a peak" (unless you're involved in Appalachian coal mining). You can have something "pique your interest," but you cannot "peak your interest" in anything.

(Similiarly): Eke / Eek - People can "eke out a living" but they should reserve "eek" for unexpected encounters with mice.

Cite vs. site - a "site" is a place, either in the real world or on the web. You use "cite" when you're attributing work to someone else (or issuing a ticket, if you're a traffic cop).

Extinction vs. extirpation: extinction of a species or variety means there are none left, anywhere. However, the local version of the phenomenon is properly known as extirpation. Thus, if say you killed every single wallaby in Australia, but the wallabies on New Guinea were still numerous, you would have extirpated them from Australia, but you would not have made them extinct. Even professionals use "extinction" where they ought to be saying "extirpation."

Similarly, a lot of people use the word decimate "incorrectly." To decimate a population (say, of Roman soldiers) was to kill one out of every ten. 10% die, in other words, and 90% are left alive. That may be the official definition, but the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of people use the term decimate in exactly the opposite sense: that 90% die, and only 10% survive (or thereabouts). At what point do we switch the definition of a word: when 90% understand the meaning to be one thing, and only 10% stick with the old definition?

Shear vs. Sheer - There are many definitions to both "shear" and "sheer," but the one I see fuddled up most frequently is when people use "shear" to describe cliffs, or use "sheer" to describe geological stresses.

Oh dear: did you hear about the omission of "emission" on a Kansas state test (wherein some test-writer swapped the word omission for emission). Don't worry: the kids caught the error!

Literally - "Literally" means "actual," not an exaggeration, analogy, simile, or hyperbole, but actual truth. Amazing how many people use this incorrectly. Sometimes it seems like literally the entire world!

Metamorphosize - The first time I put up a post like this (see link above), I harped on the word "orientate." I pointed out that the word "orient" (verb) means the same thing, without an extra, unneccesary syllable. In spite of my harangue, orientate remains in the dictionary. Even worse, I find a lot of people want to throw an extra syllable in at the end of "metamorphose" even though "metamorphosize" is not an actual word.

Standing on line versus standing in line. This one seems to be cultural. Some people claim that when you queue up for, say, a movie, you're standing "on line." This grates on my ears, and I would instead say that you're standing "in line." (I reserve "online" for internet presence.) But I don't know that I am justified in feeling this way -- I think it's more likely that I just grew up in an "in" household, versus an "on" household.

As before, I'd like to know which words bug you. Chime in.

Labels: geologists, science and society, teaching, words

So I'm in Patagonia right now, doing the thing I love to do most: travel across my home planet, checking out its less explored corners. Chile and Argentina are my 20th and 21st countries to visit. It is my second trip to South America. I've also travelled twice to Africa, four times to Asia (including my stint in Peace Corps Mongolia), and extensive travels in North America. I've only hit North Atlantic island nations as far as Europe is concerned. I've been to Australia once. I have not been to Antarctica.

So why am I listing all of this?

Because I'm a freaking hypocrite. I'm very concerned about how humanity is altering atmospheric chemistry, and what that's going to do to our (shared) planet's natural systems. Because I am convinced that we are releasing carbon into the atmosphere at a faster rate than natural systems can remove it, we are endangering ourselves (or at least some of ourselves) and also endangering the ecosystems that we depend on. I recognize the role the individual can/might/should play in reducing their personal carbon emissions through efficiency and lifestyle choices. I drive a Prius, use energy efficient light bulbs, recycle my cans and bottles and paper, serve on the College's "Green Committee," and teach (and blog) about the science underlying environmental issues, like climate change. I'm spreading the word, see?

But I really love to travel, and travel is a high-carbon endeavor. The best thing I could do for the world would probably be to stay home, but home gets stale. The world is big and diverse and full of landscapes and people and food and culture and birds and all kinds of interesting things. And there is nothing like getting out there and experiencing it firsthand. My time on this planet is finite, maybe close to half used up (assuming an average lifespan). What am I going to do during my time here? I figure I should live morally, attempt to improve things a bit, and enjoy myself. And I enjoy travelling more than anything else. I don't have kids (or an interest in having them), I'm not a religious person, I'm not tied down to a garden or a dog or a network of people that can't live without me. There's little to keep me in town when the opportunity for travel arises. And I have a career which gives me three and a half weeks off each winter and three months off each summer, plus a week of spring break. I have chosen my career in no small part because of the tremendous amount of free time it grants me each year. (Having a third of the year "off" makes up for the fifteen hour days I work during the fall and spring semesters, I reckon.)

My philosophy of life is essentially to facilitate and accrue a suite of fond memories and cool experiences. My goal is to enjoy my limited time here. Secondary goals: be a good person, help others out, learn as much as possible about the world I will spend my life in, share this perspective by spreading an understanding of the natural world, be creative, be responsible (but not so responsible, CO2-wise, that it cripples Goal #1). I am aware that this is a fundamentally self-centered approach, and I accept it.

So I know that there is a tangible global negative to my jetsetting habits, but the personal positive is what sways me. I'm going to keep travelling, because although environmental concerns mean a lot to me, experiencing the world means even more.

So that's my philosophical postcard from the austral hemisphere. ...Wish you were here!

--Mr. Hypocrite

Labels: argentina, chile, climate change, CO2, energy, environmental, global warming, patagonia, science and society, south america, travel

A quick review: I just got done watching the 4-part series "Faces of Earth" (which was produced by the American Geological Institute, publishers of EARTH magazine).

Labels: art, faults, geology, movies, science and society, tv

Holy cow... Have you seen this?



I found a reproduction of this lovely map in the pages of this month's Discover magazine. It is a map of the most remote places on our planet, as defined by their distance from major cities (and also shipping channels). The scale at the bottom shows you how many hours (or days) it would take to get from pixel A to the nearest city. The darkest spots are the most remote ones.

The map was produced by Andrew Nelson of the Global Environmental Monitoring Unit of the European Commission. It is available here in a bigger form. They grant authorization to reproduce it, so long as you attribute them as the authors. Amazing work, Mr. Nelson; Gorgeous!
The Sahara, the Amazon Basin, the Australian Outback, New Guinea, boreal Canada, Greenland, the Rub' al Khali, northern Siberia, the interior of Borneo, and the Tibetan Plateau all jump out as remote locations. I post this map today because this evening I'm getting on a plane and heading for another remote location, the dark spot down at the southern tip of South America. Lily and I are spending the holidays in Patagonia. I'll be there for the next two and a half weeks, and I'll be back to DC and NOVA in the new year. To keep you amused in the meantime, I've scheduled posts to appear here on the blog while I am away. Enjoy your holidays!

Labels: maps, patagonia, science and society, south america, travel

I thought this video does a nice job of investigating the hacked e-mails from CRU:

Rational, in context, and well-presented. I especially like the video author's advice at the end: if you don't believe his presentation, go check for yourself, with specific advice about what to check if you want to verify or refute his interpretation.

Labels: climate change, global warming, politics, science and society

The Way Things Break has a nice "review" post up pointing to the "emerging scientific consensus on the SwiftHack e-mails."

I hope my e-mails never get published online because I can sometimes be brusque or snarky or dimwitted and ignorant, and this incident has reminded me never to type something online that I don't mind the whole world seeing. A good thing to be reminded of, particularly (listen up, young people) in terms of the sorts of stuff that gets press time on Facebook.

That being said, I think it was wise of (CRU head) Phil Jones to step aside for an inquiry. My sense of things so far is that there isn't anything wrong, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise if the inquiry suggests there was any kind of fraud. The e-mails I've seen are not particularly damning scientifically, given that they are taken out of context. All data gets processed, and I suspect that's all that was going on at CRU, though the words used to describe it are unfortunate. A lot of scientists I know write e-mails the way I do, and I'm sure it would be easy to take any particular e-mail completely out of context and interpret it incorrectly and embarrassingly.

I wonder what life would be like for other scientists if they were working on politically-charged topics like climate change. What would the structural geologists say if a tectonics working group got hacked and a media firestorm erupted with individuals quoting a line or two of an e-mail out of context to suggest that plate tectonics was a vast conspiracy of left-winger outdoorsy types just looking for research dollars so they could go hang out in the mountains? Or a group of sedimentologists get hacked, and the hackers scream that their e-mails show geologic time is a fraud? Maybe some physicists could get hacked, and the resulting headlines on Fox News would be that "Theory of Gravity called Into Question. Inquiry Launched." Chemists: it could happen to you too. You won't be able to keep your "everything is made out of atoms" charade up much longer...

One more, for reals: I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there were some creationists out there looking at this chaos and thinking, "We should hack some biologists' e-mails, and then publish the lines that would call evolution into question." Stay tuned for that. You heard it here first.

I want to be excited for Copenhagen, but this CRU "Climategate" business definitely casts a shadow over things. Unfortunate timing...

Labels: climate change, evolution, geologic time, global warming, humor, politics, science and society

Yesterday I went to see 2012, the new movie by Roland Emmerich. It was a LOT of fun. I love so-called "disaster porn" movies, the genre including Dante's Peak, Volcano, Cloverfield, Independence Day, the Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact, the Core, etc. What these films have in common is that they gratuitously display major scenes of destruction as a way of luring audiences to the theater. Most have a plot stapled on too! And maybe some pretty celebrities!

The science is not all there, though. I'm sure you're shocked to hear that.

Here's Emmerich's scenario:
Planetary alignment --> solar flares --> neutrino storm --> neutrinos heat up Earth's interior --> crust gets detached and starts sliding around willy-nilly --> hilarity apocalypse ensues

Here's the problems with that:

1. Planetary alignments don't trigger solar flares.
2. Neutrinos (mostly) don't interact with matter in the Earth. (50 million neutrinos will pass through your body today without any issues that we're aware of.)

...but if you ignore those two basic fundamental problems, you can enjoy the death and destruction that result. It's a smorgasbord for the eyes.

One of the main characters is a geologist, which is cool. The scene of Yellowstone erupting was probably the neatest part for me, geologically. Even crazy man Woody Harrelson thinks so, and it's the last thing he ever sees. The magnitude 10-plus earthquake that hits southern California/Las Vegas is pretty awesome visually, but doesn't really square with geological realities of how earthquakes happen. Basically the way Emmerich runs the show, soCal breaks into a huge number of separate chunks which mainly move apart from one another, although occasionally they exhibit convergent motion (maybe 1% of the time). Mostly, it's huge chasms opening up, and people/cars/buildings/airplanes/trains/Russians dropping into them. And of course, "California slides into the sea" (that old trope which ain't actually what geologists predict for the Golden State*).

There's a plot, too, but who really cares about that? That's not why you go to see 2012. So I won't even bother. Go for the effects; revel in the destruction of the world, but try not to think about the death of billions. It's all about planetary chaos, adrenaline, eye-popping awesomeness. You know you like to watch.

Some reviews worth reading:

1. Rebecca Watson on Skepchick
2. Ian O'Neill on Discovery News

____________________________________________________

* A better depiction can be seen in the AGI-produced Faces of Earth, episode 2, where Los Angeles (still a city much like the current one ~10 million years in the future), atop the block of continental crust west of the San Andreas Fault, slides past San Fransisco, briefly merging the two megalopoli into one.

Labels: california, movies, pseudoscience, science and society, sun

If you don't read Tree Lobsters already, you should. Today's episode seemed particularly on-target.

Labels: art, humor, pseudoscience, science and society

Awesome: right-handed Anomalocarids!
Elizabeth Kolbert on getting things moving re: climate policy.
The volcanological blogs are all agog over tephra and teeth.
Lockwood tears into sloppy "press release" style "journalism."

Labels: blogs, climate change, evolution, politics, science and society

WHAT: Earth Science in the Spotlight: Engaging the Public

WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 5:30-8:00 PM; program begins at 6:15 PM.

WHERE: The Front Page Restaurant, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA, Located near Ballston Metro on the ground floor of the NSF building. Parking is available under the NSF building or at Ballston Common Mall.

WHO: Ann E. Benbow, Ph.D., Director of Education, Outreach and Development, American Geological Institute

HOW: Special 1/2 price burgers start at 5:30 PM. Please come early to order table service and socialize. Short presentation begins at 6:15 PM, followed by Q&A. No science background required- only an interest! Cafe Scientifique is free and open to the public. Register online here.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: The news media routinely sound alarms about natural disasters, climate change, and the energy crisis. But who helps the public make sense of these issues? More and more, scientists are stepping up to help ordinary people, from school children to policy makers, understand the earth science behind the headlines. Earth science, after all, encompasses virtually all the sciences, from biology to chemistry to physics. Learn how AGI, an association of 45 member societies across the geosciences, is tapping the expertise of professional geologists, oceanographers, meteorologists, and other scientists to improve education and promote public awareness on such timely topics. Join us for a brief discussion, exciting video and hands-on activities showing how you can play a vital part.

COMING NEXT MONTH: November 3, Mario J. Molina, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1995 will speak on ozone depletion in the atmosphere.

Labels: meetings, science and society, teaching

The first of our monthly science seminar series is coming up at the end of the month:

"Cameras we cannot picture"
Dr. Ravi Athale, Senior Principal Scientist, The MITRE Corporation
Monday, September 28, 2009, Ernst Center Forum, 12 noon - 1pm

Abstract: The world of imaging has evolved from its humble origins as a pinhole camera to its current incarnations of very large (Hubble Space Telescope) and very small (pill cameras that one swallows). Last 10 years, in particular, has seen more rapid growth in our ability to record static and moving images than anytime in human history. This has been enabled by replacing film with semiconductor devices for recording imagers. Dr. Athale argues that as dramatic as this progress has been, the future will bring even more startling and unimaginable changes due to the integration of imaging with equally spectacular progress in computing, communications and storage technologies.

Ravi Athale is Senior Principal Scientist and Department Head, Emerging Technology office at the MITRE Corporation. Over past 30 years he has worked as a scientist, educator and manager in government, academic and industrial institutions. In 2007, he received Leadership Award of the Optical Society of America and Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. In addition, he is a co-author of a high school engineering textbook published by Prentice-Hall and is a co-founder of company that develops consumer products based on computer generated holograms.

Please join us, if you can!

Labels: art, meetings, nova, science and society, tech

WTF? Really?

Labels: evolution, primates, science and society

...Doggone it. There are other rock stars out there.

Labels: geologists, science and society, websites

I saw Ray Stanford, an enthusiastic amateur paleontologist, speak last month at a meeting of the Paleontological Society of Washington.

It was my first PSW meeting, and I got a warm welcome from PSW president and University of Maryland paleontologist Tom Holtz, who gave a specific shout-out to NOVA Geoblog, encouraging the ~30 attendees to check it out. (If you're arriving as a consequnce of that endorsement, welcome!) Four of my Honors students joined me for the talk. Just getting to go behind the scenes at the Smithsonian is a treat in itself. From the Easter Island moai in the Constitution Avenue lobby of the museum, we were escorted through labyrinthine passageways to the Cooper Room. Our route brought us past immense fossil collections, cossetted away in row after row of cabinets. It was enticing, and made me resolve to arrange a special tour there sometime for the Honors students.

The point of the talk was Stanford's immense collection of fossil dinosaur tracks (and at least one apparent mammal track which is quite large: raccoon-sized at least, with apparent dinosaur skin impressions right next to it). It used to be thought that Maryland only had Triassic/Jurassic fossil tracks, from the Newark Supergroup rift valleys that opened up during the breakup of Pangea / opening of the Atlantic Ocean. Stanford has made a real scientific breakthrough by demonstrating that there are early Cretaceous-aged tracks in the area too.

None of his Cretaceous-aged tracks are collected in situ. Instead, he finds them all as "float" (weathered-out loose blocks) in streams draining exposures of (what I infer to be) the Patuxent Formation. (He didn't specifically mention source formations that I heard during the talk.)

He's found a ton of stuff! Actually,if I'm being literal, he's found tonS of stuff! And he stores it all in his living room! He recently had the foundations of his house reinforced because he has so much STUFF. Hundreds of tracks, and other fossils, too. Whoa! This guy does not play by the same rules as most folks.

There were a lot of coprolites mentioned, including:

• a 98-pound coprolite (!)
• a coprolite with a dinosaur footprint in it
• a dinosaur footprint with a coprolite in it

He also shared what he claimed were skin textures preserved in tracks. Some were self-evident, and I readily accepted them as valid. However, others weren't visible to the naked eye, and he only "demonstrated" them with Photoshopped images wherein the contrast dial was turned up to 11 -- I think this "technique" generated patterns that resembled skin impressions, but when I looked at the fossil itself, they were nowhere to be seen. I am dubious about this particular claim.

The talk gave me lots to think about, but not so much about dinosaur lifestyles or anatomy so much as the role of amateurs in science. Here's a guy with boundless enthusiasm, and he's finding stuff that the books literally said didn't exist. His efforts have resulting in expanding Maryland's Mesozoic paleontological record into the Cretaceous, and he's found all sorts of stuff that's super-duper interesting, like that mammal track.

Stanford was profiled last year in Geotimes magazine, before it switched its name to EARTH. Discovery News also ran a story about his findings. Interestingly, when Googling his name for this blog post, I also came across some other wacky stuff he's involved in, including UFO's. This definitely jibes with the lack of scientific rigor that I perceived in his presentation. (Quote from the interviewer: "In the 1970s, Stanford was the moving force behind the Association for the Understanding of Man (AUM) and Project Starlight. The former an attempt to decipher the UFO enigma by psychic means, the latter using advanced scientific instruments.")

So, having learned this, what do I make of his paleontological data? The best I can come up with is to trust my own eyes and view his claims open-mindedly but with the traditional scientific filter of skepticism. I accept the coprolite data; I found it self-evidently convincing. The skin-texture data? Not so much. The UFO stuff? Don't get me started...

Labels: coastal plain, cretaceous, culpeper basin, fossils, maryland, meetings, mesozoic, museums, psw, science and society, smithsonian

This of mine doodle accompanied Cassandra Willyard's article on the role of non-specialist citizens in advancing scientific understanding.

Labels: art, humor, science and society

For a few months now, prompted by a comment on one of my blog posts from fellow geoblogger Bryan, I've been listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. It's pretty darned good. Last week, the team interviewed Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for SETI, who made an offhand statement that there was "plenty of bauxite" on the Moon. Considering that the moon's anorthosite has plenty of aluminosilicate minerals, but none of the tropical rains required to produce a secondary concentration of gibbsite, bohemite, and diaspore, a.k.a. bauxite, I wrote in to compliment the show in general but correct this one small tidbit. This week on the show, they acknowledge my correction, though (of course) they mis-pronounce my name. It starts at 25:35 into the podcast. Ah well -- my own little cross to bear. Glad to help advance human understanding of geological processes!

Labels: astronomy, minerals, moon, ore, podcasts and vodcasts, science and society

"Climate Change in the American Mind"

Tuesday, April 28th, 10am

National Science Foundation
Arlington, VA
Room 1235

Anthony Leiserowitz
Yale Project on Climate Change

Report here

Labels: climate change, meetings, science and society

Paul Hoffman is speaking next Wednesday (April 22) at the Geological Society of Washington; I've just recieved word that his topic has changed from Snowball Earth to "The Pleistocene glacial controversy and the discovery of climate warming and crustal dynamics." I'm curious to see what Hoffman has to say about the 160-year old controversy as to whether there had been recent "Ice Ages," and how that relates to his currently-controversial ideas about the Snowball. Whatever he says, it's likely to be thought provoking.

Labels: geologists, glaciation, gsw, ice, pleistocene, science and society, snowball earth

The Association of Environmental and Engineering Geologists is having NOVA adjunct geology instructor Steve Stokowski talk at their meeting on Thursday. His topic blends petrology (the study of rocks) with applied science.

Sexy Pictures, Busted Bridges, Broken Buildings, and Messed-Up Monuments: A Petrographic Odyssey

Microscopic analyses and geologic understanding are essential for the correct diagnosis and corrective actions necessary when rock, brick, concrete and similar building materials deteriorate, as these four case histories illustrate. The first case history is of the deteriorated brownstone loggia at the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall, North Easton, MA. The second case history is of a total replacement failure of a large memorial to WWII veterans in the Rhode Island Veterans Cemetery, Exeter, RI. The third case history concerns the use of defective, cracked, and residually expansive brick to construct the Prospect Mountain High School, Alton, New Hampshire. The final case history concerns deterioration of the 1930's Fore River Bridge between Quincy and Weymouth, Massachusetts. It can be expensive to correct the effects of the deterioration of common building materials!

Pulcinella's Restaurant
6852 Old Dominion Drive
McLean, VA 22101

AEG members, guests $30.00
Students $10.00

6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Social Hour and Section Business
7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Dinner
8 p.m. Presentation
9 p.m. Closing Statements

Labels: geology, meetings, minerals, science and society

Even if you don't have iTunes, the NOVA-Annandale Science Seminar series will be televised...

Check at our new webpage: http://www.nvcc.edu/annandale/scienceseminar/

Specific video: Dick Pellerin on math's many uses; Me on my western roadtrip.

Labels: geology, meetings, nova, science and society, travel

I've been really digging my iPod. Yeah, yeah: "late adopter" and all that. But it's really cool!

The podcasts and vodcasts (video podcasts) available for free are diverse and awesome, and I'm finding them much more interesting, rich, and deep than traditional radio. I've got music podcasts, science podcasts, story podcasts, and humor podcasts. In the interest of sharing the love, here's what I'm listening to:

All Songs Considered - From NPR, an every-few-days podcast showcasing new and interesting music from a wide variety of genres, often accompanied by insightful commentary from host Bob Boilen and his guests.

Morning Becomes Eclectic - From KCRW in Santa Monica, California, Jason Bentley (no relation) hosts an excellent radio show of... well... eclectic music. The only shows they podcast are the ones where guest artists are performing live in the studio, but that's fine by me -- there's some real gems here. (Although, I'll admit that I miss the former host Nick Harcourt.)

The Moth - An incredible storytelling podcast featuring one person per episode telling a true story, live onstage & without notes. These are incredible tales from our fellow humans: people who have experienced surreal, heartbreaking, or uproarious things, and know how to describe them to others. An absolutely inspired series. Five stars!

Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me! - The oddly informative NPR news quiz show. Invariably funny, sometimes hilarious. Hosted by Peter Segal, accompanied by luminaries like Carl Kasell, P.J. O'Rourke, and Tom Bodett.

USGS CoreCast - A weekly podcast from the United States Geological Survey, wherein stilted-sounding hosts interview scientists about their work, usually related to some story that's in the current news cycle. Mediocre listenability, but often interesting content.

Nature Podcast - From the acclaimed journal Nature comes this hip, well-produced podcast that features several hosts (male, female, British, American) interviewing scientists about their recent Nature publications and why they matter. Sometimes they give background information, too -- to bring listeners up to speed before the interview. It's detailed enough to be satisfying for a professional scientist, but not stiff or formal. Two thumbs up!

Central Washington University Natural Science seminars - Video of seminars on cool topics like mammoth digs, etc.

American Meteorological Society Climate Change video: Environmental Science seminars - These are a series of science seminars put on by the AMS on Capitol Hill for the benefit of policy makers, captured on video. I often try to attend, but if I miss one, I can get it via the iPod.

The Ricky Gervais podcast - From the talented British comedian comes this sporadic podcast which varies tremendously in content and satisfaction from one episode to the next. When this one is on while I'm driving to campus, the ones that leave me guffawing are the ones where Ricky and Stephen Merchant talk with Carl Pilkington. The three of them have a remarkable style of mutually-insulting comedy.

You can get all of these for free, searching on iTunes. Enjoy!

Labels: environmental, geology, humor, music, news, podcasts and vodcasts, science and society

Chris Nedin alerted me (via his excellent Ediacaran blog) about this video (which was in turn posted at Larry Moran's The Sandwalk blog). I found it worth watching, though the language change partway through (from the third-person to the second-person) gives it an accusatory feel. In spite of that, this is probably worth viewing for introductory science students to distinguish what they hear labelled as "science" in general society from what a scientist considers "science." It's 10 minutes long, but in many places cleverly illustrated:

Labels: blogs, evolution, pseudoscience, science and society

Ann Hornaday authored an interesting piece in this morning's Washington Post about Ota Benga, the Congolese Pygmy who was displayed for a time in a cage in the Bronx Zoo. It turns out that Ms. Hornaday's great-great-great-uncle, William Temple Hornday, was the one who put Ota Benga there.

Labels: africa, anthropology, new york, science and society

The Freakonomics blog draws our attention today to a new study suggesting that beer consumption and low publication records are correlated. Hmmm.

Labels: blogs, news, science and society

I reckon I'm due for a rant. Here's a list of words that bug me:

Dolomite in place of dolostone: dolomite is a mineral. A huge pervasive second use of the word, however, is to mean a rock made mainly of the mineral dolomite, for which the proper name is dolostone. This is so, so, so common it's hardly noticed. And it's so incorrect. Rocks and minerals are not the same thing.

Orogen in place of mountain belt: the word orogen is technically correct, and quite accurate, but in spoken speech, it sounds too much like "origin," and its use can sow confusion. The only real difference I am able to hear when people say "orogen" is that they tend to pronounce all three syllables, while "origin" is generally pronounced with just two: ore-gin. But maybe that's just the Virginians I hang around with. Mountain belt has the same meaning, but I guess it has problems of its own, since mountain belts may not be topographically mountainous any more. Hmmm. ...Toughie.

Extra-syllable words: Should we say benthonic when benthic means the same thing but with one fewer syllable? What about people orientating themselves instead of orienting themselves? What advantage do these extra syllables provide? Are they vestigial structures in our language?

An educational peeve is that students regularly refer to teachers giving grades. I don't know about the other professors, teachers, and instructors out there, but this one really rankles me. My students earn their grades. What I do is keep track of what they have earned, and eventually assign the proper grade to them. I am merely a secretary, an accountant. I tally it up, but the points they accrue (or don't) depends on them. No gifts required!

A huge bummer is the continued use of theory in non-scientific circles to mean hypothesis. In general use, "theory" has a tenuous, shaky implication, while in science it means "as solid and dependable as an explanation gets." David Quammen explored this well in his discussion of evolution in National Geographic a couple years ago. For the record: a hypothesis is a possible explanation of a phenomenon, calling to be tested. A theory is a well-corroborated hypothesis (i.e. it has passed a great many tests) that coherently unites a number of disparate phenomena under one central explanatory umbrella. Big difference there; huge. Makes communication about important concepts difficult.

Lastly, my all-time least favorite word: Believe.

Everywhere I look, I see statements like "Scientists believe that the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago," and it drives me up the wall. Scientists infer that the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, based on their reliance on data and logic. We have physical evidence (lead isotope ratios from three different radiogenic systems, measured in Earth rocks and in meteorites) that all suggest the solar system's solid-state clock started counting 4.5 billion years ago. Because we've never observed anything other than the steady, statistical decline of radioactive parent isotopes to produce daughter isotopes, we assume that the past worked in the same way as today (actualism/"uniformitarianism") and that these empirical measurements have meaning. We logically deduce that the Earth is the implied age, but we don't "believe" it.

Similarly, I get apoplectic when students ask me "Do you believe in global warming?" No, I don't believe it; I'm convinced of it on the basis of (a) physical evidence (data) and (b) logical inference from that data. To spell it out:

1. CO2 absorbs infrared radiation.
2. Infrared radiation is reflected upwards from the surface of the Earth.
3. CO2 is produced by the burning of coal, oil, natural gas, wood, ethanol, and biodiesel.
4. We burn a lot of these carbon-rich fuels by oxidizing them.
5. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are measurably increasing.
6. Oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere are measurably decreasing.
7. Globally, average temperatures are observed to be increasing.
8. Therefore, based on #1-7, the increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere is causing the increase in temperature.

There's nothing there to believe in. It just is. Fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, and a logical inference that stems from those facts.

Ditto for the theory of evolution by natural selection. It's not something I believe in; it's something I'm convinced of because it's logically coherent and supported by reams of data gathered over 150 years of hypothesis-testing.

If there is one thing that scientists believe in, it's that the universe makes sense. Our starting assumption is that the physical world operates according to unchanging laws which may be deduced if we're clever enough. On the other hand, if the universe is mercurial in its physical laws, then science doesn't have a chance of figuring things out because the laws that apply on Tuesday will be different from the laws that apply on Wednesday. It should go without saying that, as far as we can tell, this is not the case. The universe does behave in a consistent and predictable manner, insofar as we can tell. Ergo, science is an appropriate way to go about elucidating its structure and properties. No belief necessary.

Which words bug you? Chime in.

Labels: geologists, science and society, teaching, words

I was somewhat astonished to see this image on the cover of this week's issue of Science:

At first glance, you might think this was the cover of the New Yorker or something -- a bold, clever piece of art, with a distinct (and satisfying) lack of screaming headlines. It draws you in, this art -- you wonder who made it, why they made it, what's art and what's photograph, and most importantly, why is this image on the cover of Science?

It turns out that there is an article in this issue about how societies deal with antisocial behavior. According to some, the work of the artist known as "Banksy" counts as antisocial behavior. Here's the caption Science provides for the cover: "An example of' 'art' by self-styled guerrilla artist Banksy, as seen in East London in November 2007. Human behavior that would be characterized as antisocial punishment can also be called art; prosocial institutions, most notably the campaign Keep Britain Tidy, refer to Banksy's work as vandalism."

I don't know much about psychology, and I'm not going to attempt to review the article, but seeing this particular artist on the cover of Science gives me an excuse to introduce others to his (admittedly controversial) work.

I've been a fan of Banksy's work for a couple of years now -- he does a couple of things worth noting: First, his bread and butter is outdoor "graffiti" of elaborate black and white designs, usually done with stencils, sometimes highlighted with deliberate focused use of color, and often exploring the "police state" aspects of the modern world, as in this example:

Labels: art, humor, science and society