Category: End of year summaries, general musings

EPN might seem to include a disproportionate number of items on hominin evolution, including several on genetic evidence. An outcome of the Earth System’s 4.5 billion-year evolution increasingly depending on physical resources, we lie at the focus of our own curiosity studying the past primarily for ourselves. That is why the discovery from the partial genome of Neanderthal remains that all humans outside those who live in Africa carry in our DNA the ‘fruits’ of intimate relations with Neanderthals is surely the most explosive development of the 21^st century so far (see Yes, it seems that they did…in May 2010 issue of EPN). It is deepened by the publication in late 2010 (Reich, D and 27 others 2010. Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia. Nature, v. 468, p. 1053-1060) of genetic findings from remains of a third distinct hominin group that inhabited central Siberia 30 to 50 ka ago (see Other rich hominin pickings in the May 2010 issue of EPN). [Thanks go to Dr Bill Deller, legal historian, for alerting me to this.] The DNA from a tooth and a finger bone show that the individual female was genetically neither a fully modern human nor a Neanderthal in a statistical sense, but parts of the sequence, as with the Neanderthal genome, pop up in the genomes of living people. The ‘Denisovan’ signature – the authors do not assign the female to a new species – contributes 4 to 6 % of the genomes of present-day inhabitants of Papua-New Guinea and other Melanesian people of the Pacific north of Australia, but appears in no others. Since Melanesians carry some Neanderthal genetic material the new finding can be interpreted as the result of similar interfertile mating between the ‘Denisovans’ and a limited group of early fully human travellers who crossed central Asia and eventually moved through Indonesia to cross the West Pacific to Papua-New Guinea and Melanesia about 45 ka ago. For up to a twentieth of the genetic outcome of such liaisons to survive to the present suggests no idle dalliance, but proportionately common relationships.

Every geoscientist will salute the fortitude and bravery of the 33 Chilean miners rescued from a refuge 700 m below ground, that of the 5 volunteer rescuers who descended the 80 cm shaft, not knowing whether it was safe and the skills of voluntary engineers whose drill managed to find the small refuge, despite its depth. Many geologists have been in underground mines, though only a minority have worked in them, but all admire the mental and physical resilience of the 33. Trapped by the caved-in access tunnel on 5 August, the miners faced and survived 17 days with fading lamps and tiny supplies of food and liquids. The final rescue came with remarkable swiftness during 13-14 October. Apart from one with a chest infection all seemed little the worse for wear. The growing tension during the rescue was almost palpable, even at a distance of more than 11 000 km: would the narrow tunnel collapse; would the rescue shuttle jam? The likelihood of either grew with each rescue.

The rise in gold and copper price since the global crash of 2008 has seen the reopening of dozens of once uneconomic mines, kept for years on a ‘care and maintenance’ basis. Not knowing when the metal-price boom would collapse, mine owners have rushed to restart operations, paying locally premium wages to attract miners. The San José mine near Copiapo, was one such mine, whose fabric had deteriorated after years of neglect. It would be unsurprising if another disaster, with less happy outcomes, occurred during the current metal-mining boom.

Added 26/11/2010. So soon after such a victory over being buried alive for so long, it is especially tragic to learn that the methane explosion of 19 November in New Zealand’s largest coalmine at Pike River on the South Island killed 29 miners. They were declared dead after a second explosion on 24 November. Today a third blast ripped through the mine not long before a memorial service was to be held, vindicating the decision not to send in rescue parties as soon as the initial explosion took place. Inevitably, there will be a major inquiry into how such a build-up of explosive gas could possibly have gone unnoticed.

Readers of EPN do not need reminding that in the last year Earth processes wrought tragedy on a scale rarely witnessed. That scenes from each disaster reached TV screens globally within hours does seem to have been a wake-up call to geoscientists to at least try to make the next event trigger more timely and efficient assistance, hopefully with clearer advance warning. The year has seen increased understanding of seismic processes in general, and the beginnings of greater co-ordination among scientists concerned about natural hazards. Yet we live in a world with more chronic tragedy too: millions dead or whose lives have been shattered by the anarchy in Congo from the scramble for diamonds, gold and even the tantalum used for boom-time cellnet ‘phones; more still across Africa lack water to drink safely; and mineral booty continues to support repressive regimes, that hold back and disrupt most people’s aspirations and talents.

It is not hard to see that geoscientists have a central role that they could play in alleviating such blights, given the will – we certainly have the time as well as the skills to use and share.

Because of the horrific events at the end of 2004, this is not a time to celebrate geoscientific achievements during the year that has passed.

The horror of Boxing Day

Unlike the collapse of Manhattan’s Twin Towers on 11 September 2001 the world’s cameras were unable to focus on the minutiae of terrible events around the rim of the northern Indian Ocean.  They did not catch the sudden dawning of fear, but the tsunamis of 26 December 2004 were witnessed by millions of coast dwellers in Indonesia, SW Thailand, Sri Lanka, eastern India and as far away as Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya.  At the time of writing the death toll had reached 150 thousand, but it will rise inexorably, and countless people’s lives will be blighted for years to come.  The world did change on Boxing Day 2004 in a way that dwarfs the events of “9/11”.  The majority of those swept in minutes into a debris-loaded sea were among the poorest of their communities, and the dead are dominated by children and old people who simply did not have the strength to save themselves.  News came first from popular tourist resorts dotted on palm-fringed beaches, through cell phones and from hastily shot videos of what must at first have seemed a curiosity.  Before great waves appeared, the sea drew back to leave fish flapping on beaches, which local children rushed to gather as an unexpected benefice.  Ocean waves driven by great seismic events have immense wavelengths, so previously unseen sea floor lingered for 10 to 20 minutes before devastating surges suddenly rose above the horizon..

Off the western coast of Sumatra, a subduction-zone thrust displaced the sea floor by several metres, into which an unimaginable tonnage of ocean rushed.  Its rebound set in motion the most devastating natural phenomena, yet on the open ocean their passage would have been imperceptible because of their broad wavelength.  Unlike wind-waves, tsunamis travel extremely fast, around 400 km per hour; they are seismic disturbances affecting the entire water body.  The further they travel the greater the volume they affect, so they dissipate with distance.  Two days after the initial shock, sea-level rose perceptibly in California, half a world away.  When tsunamis meet shallows, the frictional effect causes the wave to slow, rise and steepen.  The wave breaks far offshore in shallow water, resulting in a surge that rises inexorably on land.  It rips up sea-floor materials, including boulders where they are present.  Damage and deaths result mainly from the backwash that can rip debris and victims several kilometres out to sea, until the next tsunami arrives, and in this case there were at least three.  We have all seen the aftermath, like nuclear devastation but not sterile.  Debris, rotting flesh and sewage breed disease, and as many may die from cholera, insect-borne disease and exposure as perished on Boxing Day morning.

The magnitude of the Sumatran sea-quake was 9.0 on the Richter Scale.  That is a logarithmic measure of the ground displacement, so that for every increase of 1.0 in magnitude ground motion increases by 10 times.  However, it is the energy released that damages and the corresponding increase is 32 times.  The Sumatran sea-quake was the largest recorded since that off Alaska in 1964 (magnitude 9.2) and the fourth largest in a century.  Tsunamis generated off Alaska reached a height of over 60 metres close to the epicentre, but they travelled parallel to the coast of the Americas and caused only 130 deaths.  Those of 26 December 2004 hit land head on, and there are large, densely populated coastal tracts around the Indian Ocean that are below 10 m above mean sea level.  Buildings, particularly for poor people, are fragile and lightweight, so the devastation was almost total, unlike the effects of on-land earthquakes.  In their case, single-storey dwellings that are little more than wood and grass structures cause less deaths than in areas with multi-storey dwellings made of stone or concrete, and the effects are localised.

The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is responsible for tsunamis warnings for the eastern Pacific (http://wcatwc.gov/), which are issued in the same way as extreme weather warnings.  Other organisations maintain a permanent watch and warning service for the entire Pacific basin, which is surrounded by the majority of the world’s large earthquake zones, mainly connected to subduction, and is the most prone to tsunamis.  Using bathymetry and landmasses, it is possible to model in detail the wavefronts of tsunamis and their travel times for any circum-Pacific earthquake.  So adequate warning is possible for most coastal areas following a major earthquake.  The Indian Ocean has only one major, tectonically dangerous plate margin, where the Indian Plate drives beneath Eurasia to form the Sunda Trench off the Indonesian archipelago.  Although discussed as recently as mid-2004, no tsunami-warning service is in place for the Indian Ocean.  One reason given for this lack of foresight is that the north-western part of the Sunda Arc has had little major seismicity for more than 150 years.  Therein lay the danger; subduction was locked and a major earthquake grew more likely the longer the quiescence lasted.   All the world’s seismic observatories recorded the massive disturbance and the exact location of the Sumatran event within minutes of its occurrence, but no warnings were issued.  The tsunamis arrived in Sri Lanka and India over 4 hours later, though within less than half an hour in Thailand and Sumatra, which were most devastated.  For the millions whose lives have ended or are in ruins, the greatest advance in the geosciences, plate tectonics, utterly failed them.

What is to be done?

Many geoscientists take pride (and a fair amount of public funding) in focusing their research on dangerous natural phenomena, supposedly aimed at giving warnings or mitigating their effects.   Take any natural calamity, whether it be earthquake or tsunami, volcanic eruption, mudslide, flood or even something so simple as helping provide clean water for the victims of drought or displacement by conflict.  Now list the lives saved by the direct efforts of geoscientists against the torrent of their publications and attendances at conferences.  Is there any cause for pride in the instrumentation, the theory and the field experience?  Or should we reflect on the hubris of scientific endeavour in the aftermath of such awful events?  Two days after the disaster struck I put together detailed topographic elevation data (from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission – SRTM) for the coastlines that surround the Indian Ocean.  I had had them for 6 months, but did nothing except make some pretty maps for a conference presentation.  I had known what potential they have for predicting areas of flooding, and more important where refuges from inundation might be, but I found “better” things to do.  All coastal areas below 15 m elevation are at risk, and a great many correlate with the tsunamis’ worst effects.  What we could have done and what we did do generally emerge only in retrospect, and indulging in mea culpa serves no purpose.  Individuals have their own agendas, and they are rarely useful in any wider sphere.  The organisations that draw scientists together are not in themselves altruistic, but serve largely academic ends.  However, human tragedies surely remind us of a wider set of responsibilities, even if only momentarily.

A collective organisation of both knowledge and real needs, which sets aside career and the “advancement of science”, is probably the only means of putting the geosciences to work for fully human benefit.  For 40 years such a collective existed in the small form of the Association of Geoscientists for International Development (AGID), which aimed at knowledge transfer from its members to less fortunate areas.  For the latter half of its existence, AGID was subsidised by the Canadian International Development Agency.  A handful of members met at the 32^nd International Geological Congress in Florence during late August 2004, the agenda being wholly about its survival or winding up following CIDA’s withdrawal of financial support.  The vote went for continuation.  But, despite helping some young geoscientists of the “Third World” make progress, AGID’s small size and limited aims and funding have proved unable to make it a force that matches real needs or the geosciences’ potential for assisting development.  Data and theory now present the opportunity to resolve two great challenges: giving every man, woman and child on the planet access to safe drinking water; and predicting and mitigating all natural hazards.  Every senior politician in the developed world pays lip service to both, each UN agency convenes to discuss them on a regular basis, and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) has proposed the International Year of Planet Earth (2005-2007) with those themes at the top of its agenda.  IGC-32, the largest ever gathering of geoscientists was dominated by humanitarian themes and the launch of the IUGS initiative. The International Year of Planet Earth was supposed to have been proposed by the Peoples’ Republic of China at the September 2004 UN General Assembly 59.  It does not appear on the UN web site, and the supporting web site www.esfs.org gives no news of its adoption. But there have been many “Years of…” and even several “Decades of…” from which we have yet to see any tangible outcomes, and little of the “awareness” that they are supposed to generate, certainly not in those areas of the world towards which they were directed.

One collective of professionals that has had a powerful impact on emergencies since 1971 is Médicins sans Frontières (www.msf.org), founded and administered independently of the world’s “great and good”.  Would a geosciences equivalent be feasible and supported?  Yet there are measures that even individuals can take.  At a UN Office for Outer Space Affairs meeting on the use of satellite data for mitigating disasters (Munich, 18-21 October 2004) www.zki.caf.dlr.de/events/2004/unoosa_workshop/unoosa_programme_en.html – Margaret Andrews Deller of the UK Open University presented her ideas (see link at the above web site) on a simple and low-cost way to reduce the impact of natural disasters.  Briefly, she based her suggestions on indigenous people’s deep knowledge of their surroundings.  Recognising that, it should be possible to provide communities with graphic images that highlight potential threats, in forms that are low-cost and easily understood by anyone, such as the use of images that incorporate perspective and show features in near-natural colours.  Her most important point is that such information would not be just a warning, but a means of showing people their homeland in a way that they can learn from and value. That would bring together those affected with those who come to their aid, should catastrophe strike, and would empower local people to take charge of their lives instead of being victims.

Easily understood information and advice is vital for potential victims of catastrophes, and a quick search of the internet reveals lots on all manner of hazards and how to avoid them.  NOAA’s tsunamis website http://wcatwc.gov/ is an excellent example.  Such information needs to be recast into forms that people outside the “information society” can easily understand, and to be distributed – not such a massive task.  What drew children to south Asian beaches on Boxing Day, the massive withdrawal of the sea, is the first sign of a tsunami.  On Pacific islands everyone knows what threat such a weird occurrence signifies, but nobody on the rim of the Indian Ocean did.  But isn’t it also essential for geoscientists to donate some of their publicly and industrially funded time to share their expertise directly with those so much less fortunate than ourselves?  Without that, our claim to be resolving humanity’s problems is a transparent sham.

As in previous years, the landmark developments in 2002 chosen by editorial staff of major journals sideline the Earth sciences.  Both Nature and Science consider the discovery of Sahelanthropus tchadensis the only geoscientific advance worthy of a headline (See Bonanza time for Bonzo in Earth Pages News of August 2002).  Scientific misconduct tops Nature’s list, the exposure of monumental fudging by physicists Jan Hendrick Schön and Victor Ninov being something which should concern every scientist.  Molecular biology was, unsurprisingly, the front runner for both august periodicals, with issues related to terrorism, climate change and the soon-forgotten World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg appearing in both.  Jo’burg received typically trenchant comment from water specialist Fred Pearce in New Scientist, particularly about the weasel phrase “sustainable development” – read “make money”, according to Pearce.  New Scientist’s main look forward to 2003 is Oliver Morton’s perspective on ESA’s Mars Express, which carries the British Beagle 2 miniature life-sniffing lab, and the two NASA Mars rovers scheduled for launch this year.  This is big-budget science, yet carries big risks, judging from the frequency with which giga-dollar missions ended up in flames or the sea recently.  Morton pours scorn on the hype that Mars missions will solve “great mysteries” on which their funding depends – and that of the agencies who launch them.

Anyone who has the brass neck to comment month by month on geoscientific news cannot resist picking developments that most marked the year, so here is my own personal choice.

The most exciting advances were in palaeoanthropology: March (Taking stock of hominid evolution), April (Homo erectus unification?), April (Phyllogeography and “Out of Africa”), August (Bonanza time for Bonzo), November (A considered view) , December (Central Asian Y chromosomes and the source of migrating humans)

Most hammered hypothesis: “Snowball Earth” came in for some stick in February (Meltdown for Snowball Earth?) and December (Snowball Earth hypothesis challenged, again).  Running that a close second was the BLAG hypothesis that subduction metamorphism is a source for CO₂ recycling: December (Deep carbon cycling, and gold mineralization)

Biggest technological advances: April (Satellite-based gravitational surveys), October (Microgravity and diamonds); August (Tungsten and Archaean heavy bombardment), September (Very early differentiation of planetary bodies).  The most important technical consolidation was in seismic tomography: May (Mantle motions from seismic tomography), August (Seismic tomography and the African superplume), this issue (Beowulf and mapping the mantle)

Most connective research: November (The lost world of the Galápagos hotspot track), linking plume activity, Pacific and Caribbean tectonics, closure of the Central American climatic “door”, and intercontinental migration of flora and fauna.

The biggest slanging match: April (Doubt cast on earliest bacterial fossils).

The greatest scandal emerged in autumn 2002: October (British Geological Survey sued over arsenic), December (More confusion over Bangladesh arsenic crisis)

March saw hopefully the last word on the influence of extraterrestrial impact on the K-T mass extinction (Extinctions by impacts: smoking artillery) when the fullerenes in the K-T boundary layer were matched with those in carbonaceous chondrites.

Lesser categories: Biggest scam: August (Exploration licence lepton by physicists).  Most amusing discovery: November (Dinosaurs did urinate). Latest frightener: May (Magnetic reversal on the way?)  Most promising palaeontological theory: September (The Malnourished Earth hypothesis – evolutionary stasis in the mid-Proterozoic)

Amid the desperate search for classical names to lend weight to the study of asteroids palaeotectonic features, and even theories of the Earth system, there has been one particularly unfortunate choice.

Gaia (Earth) emerged from Chaos, the great void of emptiness within the universe.  She gave birth to Uranus (Sky), apparently by some form of parthenogenesis.  Their incestuous coupling produced the 3 Cyclopes, 3 Hecatoncheires and the 12 Titans. Uranus was a bad father and husband. He particularly hated the Hecatoncheires (they had 100 arms and 50 heads each), and stuck them deep within Gaia’s womb causing her to plot against him.  To rid herself of Uranus she begged her children to kill him. All refused apart from the youngest child, Chronos (Time and the father of Zeus).  Gaia made Chronos a flint sickle, which he used to castrate his father and threw his testicles into the sea.  From the spilt blood came the Giants, the Ash Tree Nymphs and the Erinnyes.  When Uranus’ severed genitalia landed in the sea, foam bubbled around them. From this foam sprang Aphrodite (meaning foam-born), Goddess of Love.

This doesn’t quite tally with the eponymous hypothesis, but seems to have a more realistic ring for what we know about Earth history.

Source: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~u9dam/myth/immortals/

2001 was the year of the human genome, stem cells and carnage in the USA and Britain delivered by self-justifying fanatics and the agricultural wing of government respectively.  It ends with serious inroads into basic freedoms of expression and privacy in the wake of violence.  Both 11^th September and the British foot and mouth epidemic feature prominently in the authoritative end-year reviews by both Science (v. 294, p. 2446-2447) and Nature (v.  414, p. 836-841).  It is hardly surprising that Earth science, bar comments on climate change, has no entry to rank with downturns in science budgets, development of neural circuitry, high-temperature superconductivity, bio-molecular chips, the unending hunt for the neutrino, adventures with the Large Hadron Collider and the farce of NASA’s Space Station .  Nonetheless, our progress has been marked by the sublime and the ridiculous, to a satisfying degree, as 2001 Earth Pages has tried to summarise.  No doubt its limitations have meant that some major advances have been missed, for which I apologise.  I leave it to readers to judge from the archive what were the highlights of the year.

In Britain, the last month has been one for either celebration or sober reflection by university academics, on announcement of the results of the latest round of the Research Assessment Exercise by HEFCE.  Science in general seems to have done rather too well over the last 5 years, for there is insufficient cash in the pot to suitably reward those departments whose rating has risen (Watson, A.  2001.  Universities raise their game, but the money doesn’t flow.  Science, v. 294, p. 2448-2449).  The £1.3 billion kitty to boost research infrastructure falls about £150 million short of the improved departments’ supposed expectations.  The board of HECFE is to tinker with the goalposts to eke out the dosh.  No doubt the well-endowed will benefit even further, the middle rankers getting less than their improvement ought to warrant, and then there are the also-rans.  In Earth sciences a financial squeeze ought not to have such an inequitable outcome as in more lab-dependent disciplines, but the whole exercise seems destined to result in marginalization of research topics into a dwindling bunch regarded as world-ranking.  That would be a recipe for a cut in diversity, that does not match the increasing need for breadth in getting to grips with processes in and history of the Earth System.

Returning, finally, to the events that have gripped the world for the last quarter of 2001, the central theme of most commentary is that the world changed on 11^th September.  I do not believe that it did.  For two thirds of the world’s population it is “business as usual” – an ever widening gap between hope for the future and expectation of any relief from poverty, disease and the fear of falling victim to natural and anthropogenic calamities that scientific advance might bring.  Despicable as the perpetrators and those who motivated their actions were, the attacks on the USA arose from the growing powerlessness of hundreds of millions of dispossessed people to secure their livelihoods and lives.  Global communications ensure that they are confronted daily by what they lack set against what is possible, leading to a deep sense of unfairness and perpetual victimhood   Scientists, whose work is enmeshed with emergence of the possible, should dwell on how they might help close that growing human fault line, rather than raging at or cringing before the monstrosity that they have helped to nurture.  Assisting the dispossessed to secure safe, dependable water supplies, to improve their agricultural yields, to rid themselves of endemic disease, to gain access to cheap energy and transportation, and above all to acquire knowledge and the ability to solve their own problems is not a problem of cosmological or genomic proportions.  It is a simple, human duty.

Robert Shackleton FRS died aged 91 on 3 May 2001. Shackleton’s long career began as a survey geologist in Africa.  After a period at Liverpool University he took up a chair at Leeds, and became an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Open University.  He was not a retiring man, and was of the school of which it was said, “The best geologist is the one who sees the most rocks”.   His peregrinations were legendary.  Shackleton’s forte was structural geology and tectonics, and he was a central figure in driving forward our understanding of Africa’s evolution.  Sadly, he did not live to witness the publication of his Geology of Africa project.  His touch and his flair were felt by many throughout the world, and they will be missed.

Earth science competes for space in both the prestigious scientific journals, Nature and Science, and the popular science press with the rest of the sciences.  2000 AD was the year of the genome (human and watercress), nanobots, AIDS in Africa, the quark-gluon plasma of the Big Bang, killer proteins and stem cells.  In Nature’s review of the year (2000 in context.  Nature, v. 408, 21/28 December 2000 issue, p. 894-904), only water on Mars and global warming figured as aspects of Earth science with “big-push-forward” status.  No doubt Science will conclude much the same, in the manner of the Time-Newsweek topic tracking.

The 2000 AD issues of Earth Pages have shown that, even in the pages of the “Big Two”, Earth scientists  from many branches have had that wider impact that heads everyone’s wish list, but one that continues to dwindle in proportion to other headlining subject areas.

A publication in Nature or Science is today a waving Papuan head-dress, not just a feather in a researcher’s cap.  An item in News and Views or Perspectives, provoked by their publication, is the nearest Earth scientists ever come to a Nobel Prize, for the eponymous pyrotechnician eschewed the breadth of our discipline.  Well, perhaps not the ultimate “gong”, but definitely an accolade that did not stem from incestuous back slapping.

My personal Hogmanay thought, in the run-up to the odd “cup of kindness”, is a bit depressing.  If a department that inwardly congratulates itself – probably about now in its end of year festivities – on the quality and quantity of its research neither features in News and Views, nor in the popular-science press, does it really have any status?  It seems no longer enough to pursue “scholarship” for its own, self-defined sake, as if it ever was.  Without more effort to raise awareness, in the widest sense, of Earth science’s relevance, much of it risks being sidelined.  Whose interest do we serve now, and how should we foster wider impact beyond the Disneyesque view of the K-T boundary and that of the damp anorak seen dimly in the mist?

Comments welcomed!  Maybe Earth Pages should open a discussion on “branding” in the New Year.