Flying scientist

In the previous blog post I mentioned that being a scientist means flying ruthlessly across the globe. And I was hardly exaggerating. I was reminded again of how much more than the average citizen I am used to flying when my sister came to visit, and she turned out to have no clue concerning modern day security procedures. I can dream them. I decided to quantify my own behaviour, starting with when I moved to Tromsø. It isn’t technically the moment I became a scientist; a PhD student already is one, but I cannot possibly remember my exact flying behaviour in that time. From my entrance into postdoc life I kept this most excellent blog, which makes it much easier to recall my past behaviour.

When I was living in Tromsø, which I did for 27 months, I flew 35 times (I count actual flights here, not trips), covering approximately 35000 km. That includes initially moving there. I flew slightly more for private reasons (53%) than business. During my time in Plymouth, which so far has been 15 months, I flew 24 times, coincidentally covering almost the same distance (that's what fieldwork in the USA does!). And 70% of that was business*.

The business flights are hard to avoid. Science demands the gathering of data, and places like Svalbard, Iceland and the USA are not easy to reach by other means than by plane. And we don’t always fly; we drove to Portugal, and Rob drove both to and from the fieldwork in Norway. That we didn’t fly to the Isle of Wight is less spectacular. NERC (the council than funds our project) demands we present the data at conferences, and is there any other practical way to go to San Francisco, for example?

The private flights reduce themselves: in my flight kilometers in my Norwegian time there's a big imprint from having a boyfriend in the Netherlands. But well, that 2000 km distance took care of the relationship, and behold the much lower percentage of private kilometers in my UK time, in which I was single! Can you imagine the carbon footprint if Floor wouldn't have called it a day after less than a year of separation...

Being single makes the private flights less numerous, but even single I flew 10000 private kilometers in the last 15 months. Most of that was visiting Tromsø, and only 20% was visiting the Netherlands. If science forces you to live in all sorts of different countries, and you still want to see your friends and family, you have to travel far.

Is something likely to change? Fieldwork will still have to be done in earth science, and often there would be no feasible way to travel to the field site involved beside flying. Conferences are not only good for listening to talks and watching posters, which could be done online, but also for having a beer with a specifically inspiring speaker and coming up with future collaboration plans. But perhaps the day may come that air travel becomes either so expensive or so frowned upon, or both, that not flying becomes the standard, unless unavoidable. And if that moment comes, funding agencies would probably no longer demand conference attendance, and allow more time for fieldwork (or rather, for the travel to and fro) in research proposals.

And the living abroad? I think that will not change. Perhaps science will simply become even more incompatible with a private life, and visiting relatives in your motherland will be something a mere scholar can only rarely afford.

Any sign of change yet? Yes, perhaps! I got both my foreign jobs through a job interview at distance. When I applied for my Norwegian job in 2007, I just used a phone. The job interview for my UK job was more sophisticated: that was done through video conferencing. And though it is a disadvantage (I noticed during the rounds of recruitment here at Plymouth University), my CV proves it’s not impossible to get a job without having to fly all over the world for it. And that’s at least a start!

But what would we conclude? Are climate scientists, who almost invariably fly all over the world, hypocrite bastards? Are they (we!) the victims of overpowering pressure from those who employ them? Should flying scientists be a sacrifice we have to make in return for understanding of the system? Should a conscientious person choose not be to a scientist, in order to be able to maintain a low carbon lifestyle? If you’re a good enough scientist, should you not be so damn good you can demand the right to not go to distant conferences and get away with it? But if you are that good, would that not be a waste? Are we all going to hell anyway, so why don’t we just fly as much as we can; that way we get to see as much of the spectacular damage we are causing as possible? Should scientists, like most other people, just wait until the political will to act on a larger scale comes into being? Questions!




*: these figures are approximations. I just took the distance as the crow flies between the cities I had flown to and from, and in my UK time there's a few trips of which I don't remember if I flew from Exeter or Bristol. The first approximation means I'm hopelessly optimistic, as airplanes don't fly like crows, but the latter would hardly influence the picture.

Low carbon life

“An excellent, practical and reassuring guidebook to the most important issue on everybody’s to-do list this year. Why not buy a few and distribute them to your friends next time they wring their hands and ask “what can I do?”. It’s one of the recommendations on the back of the latest book I read: How to live a low-carbon life, by Chris Goodall. I hadn’t read that, when I bought it, but I do agree with it. I gave a copy to my sister, who put me to shame by finishing it months before me, but now I have finished it myself, and I could recommend it to anyone.

It is quite the book a leftie tree-hugger would buy, but that doesn’t make it a tree-hugger book. As far as I can tell, it’s an objective assessment of what individuals can do to keep their carbon footprint moderate. And it’s quite exhaustive! In a way it’s the smaller-scale version of George Monbiot’s excellent book “heat”, in which he deals with a similar topic but on a national scale. “Heat” is also mentioned in this book, and in equally flattering terms. Buy that too!

I won’t try to do honour to the level of detail of this book, but I’ll mention what struck me as particularly useful, painful, or surprising. The author is clear about one thing: if you want to keep your carbon footprint low, then don’t fly. Everything else you do will pale in comparison by air travel. And that is not only the main message of the book, but also one that hurts. About half the population of the UK flies less than once a year, and I, a leftie climate scientist, fly much, much more. “Leftie” might suggest prudence in this matter, while “scientist” dictates ruthless flying. And that makes it a bit absurd it is me who writes blog posts such as this one, but not writing them would be even worse in my view. But I'll discuss that in a separate post.

What else does this book suggest? A lot of the measures one could take involve serious tampering with one’s abode. And these chapters appealed less to me. You’re not going to add wall insulation to your rented apartment that you live in for the course of your two year contract. And beside it being a sacrifice beyond what can be expected, it might even be simply prohibited. So yes, house insulation is important, as is a high efficiency boiler, and some source of renewable energy as a wind turbine or solar panels on the roof are a splendid idea, but it is, basically, a thing for house owners.

They discuss car use as well. And that made me sigh with relief! I don’t drive very often, but my car is an old wreck that drinks like a fish, and every time I see the fuel meter run towards zero it hurts my leftie heart. But the author lights the topic of ditching an old car in favour of a newer and more efficient one from all angles, and comes to the conclusion, and I quote: “The lesson? Don’t replace your car – drive the old jalopy until it retires from the road. Take pride in the age of your car and boast your credentials even as you fill up the tank for the third time in a week.”  Excellent. And I think I’m already quite conscientious by making an effort to carpool. There is no house in Plymouth (except my own) that I’ve visited as much as Dave’s, and almost invariably this concerns me biking to his place to hitch a ride to some hole in the ground. And yes that’s partially inspired by my love for biking and my much lesser sympathy for driving, but the environmental argument does count.

I'm starting to have quite a library of climate books. I have to admit, though, that I haven't read all of them yet: "requiem for a species" is still on the to do list, as are 3 of the 5 Gaia books. And "De menselijke maat" is the odd one out: it's written by a climate sceptic. I bought it, because I leafed through it in a book store and took about 10 seconds to find an, in my eyes, unforgivable error, that takes the whole book down. Know thy enemies! "Prosperity without growth", by the way, is reviewed here and "Seasick" here.

What surprised me was that after air travel, the next big thing was food. Food is often grown half the world away, cooked, chilled quickly, kept chilled, and then bought and reheated. That takes tonnes of carbon! It’s amazing what a difference you can make with eating locally produced foods that you buy in raw products. And every citizen cooking for themselves is maybe not so efficient, but cooking in bulk and then chilling is worse. Being a nerd and eating in the campus restaurant, though, very well might be quite responsible! And when I buy fruit and vegetables, which come with information on the country of origin, I always try to buy British, but that’s more complicated with other foodstuffs. Being vegetarian is something he is critical of; if one compensates the meat with dairy products (as I tend to do), you are not improving your CO2 output, as dairy cows burp much more methane than meat cows. Being vegan does help a lot, but it’s a radical thing to do.

So that were the most important things. What were the most remarkable ones? One thing that struck me was the discussion on very short trips by car. The author mentions they infuriate the overly environmental-conscious, and he might be right. But he calculates that walking might be worse; if you consume the calories you burnt by doing that in food, that may be worse than driving. He does mention, though, that not compensating for the extra used energy in food may not at all be detrimental to the average Brit.

Another thing that I found peculiar was that the author argues that paper often ends up in landfills, where it rots away and emits methane. And as long as that is not resolved, plastic actually is a more environmental friendly option. And that says more about the need to improve paper recycling than it does about the merits of plastic, but still.

The author may be critical, and is not buying all of the eco-babble that goes around, partially uttered by those who have something to sell, but he does point out that quite many apparent environmental-friendly measures, that actually don’t help (yet), will help get the message across to both the political and commercial world that we, the consumers and electorate, may want a change. And I think that is an important message. If politicians think they won’t get elected if they don’t enforce environmental friendly laws they will enforce them. If business folk think they can make money by putting energy-efficient, of renewable-energy, products on the market, they will. And the first thing will help inspire people to make a difference without losing all hope in the great futility of the greater scheme, and the second will make measures more accessible to the greater public. And I think that’s what we need!

Liverpool

When I write this, my blog has 39 posts with the label “caving”. Only 19 with the label “science”. And of these 19, only 11 deal with the job I actually had while writing the blog post. And of these 11, 5 deal with the relatively spectacular and photogenic fieldwork. That leaves 6 for my daily job*. This clearly shows my blog does not know proportional representation. And it shouldn’t, as it would become way, way too boring if it did, but it might be worth bearing this in mind.

One thing that might not show very much on the blog is the fact that I work within a project that has three institutes as the main players: Plymouth University, Durham University, and Proudman Oceanographic Laboratories**. The Durham people feature on the blog when there’s fieldwork to be described, but the POL people remain in the dark. And that is mainly due to me rarely meeting them. We saw them for the first project meeting, on the eve of the conference in Durham, and that basically was it. But they exist, and they do beautiful work! And it was time for the second project meeting, this time hosted by POL, and therefore in Liverpool.

With a memory stick containing three powerpoint presentations I boarded the train, together with Roland. I had been reminded of how welcome that was when I had been discussing dinner plans with Tasha, through email, and it turned out she had already extensively covered that topic with Roland. Everybody has more contact with my own boss than me! Sabbaticals suck sometimes. Anyway. We boarded the train, and Roland thought it was appropriate to spend the first hour moaning about everything that is wrong at the university. Lovely!

We got to Liverpool in high spirits, after all, and only a short while later Antony and Tasha did too, and we could retire to a restaurant. As usual, we left the planning to Tasha and her iPhone. It almost always works! And Antony made sure the Plymouth delegation was almost dying of curiosity about the newest Durham results at the end of the meal. But we had to wait until the next day.

My hotel room had a view on the railway station. Cool!

Bright and early Tasha drove us to the institute, fiercely regretting she had agreed with letting the professors, and not her satnav, do the navigation, but we arrived alive and almost on time. Soon we were complete!

We then used 9.00 to 14.00 for updating one another on the state of the project. It’s coming along! And of course we had encountered some pitfalls, but we will get there. And at 14.30 one of our POL collaborators gave a seminar, which we could enjoy as the icing on the cake. And then time was already up! And in order to be at home before 22.30 (or after, for Roland), we had to abscond without further delay to the train station, and do the whole trip again, but now backwards. 12 hours in the train for a 5 hour meeting is a lot, but the meeting will keep us going through the coming 6 months, until the next one!

It didn't take long before I found some underground, delapidated space with lots of intriguing collections in the university building!

*: this means I haven't properly labeled all my posts, but even with that in mind it shows a certain bias towards photogenic activities, and away from day-to-day lab and office work.

**: officially renamed to the National Oceanograhy Centre, but I haven’t gotten used to that yet

Project Seatpost continued

I thought I'd get that seatpost out in a few hours. I was wrong! After day #1 I was left with a seatpost of which two 90 degree sections were twisted and mangled inside the frame. That leaves one little room for manouvering around. But if violence doesn't help, you're not using enough of it. So after another day of teeth-gritting sawing (I'm getting a muscular right arm) I had managed to remove the gnarled metal, and create a free view again. Now I can continue with plan B: try narrower slivers! And if even that doesn't work it's not the end: Dave is willing to come to the rescue. He has access to equipment that can drill the bloody bugger out. And I think for such job one needs a very large drill bit, but it seems Dave doesn't think a drill bit is big until it's 2.5 inch thick. But I only keep that as an emergency solution: I want to personally rip the bastard out!

A free view down!

This is what I got out so far...

After every sawing session I turn the bike upside down and tap it. This is what typically comes out... (the sawdust, that is; it's not a money-spewing bicycle. The pound is for scale!)

Strictly come mining

Mark, one of the Cornish nutters, came abseiling down, and landed with unprecedented elegance. That inspired us to come up with the infallible concept of the title. We were entering a pretty mine within the framework of a combined Cornish/Plymouth underground trip.

So where were we? Well that's where it becomes tricky. We had permission to be there, but we had no permission to tell anyone. Or portray this place in a recognisable way. So therefore: no details! And this time no pictures either. So what can I blog about? Not very much!

Maybe I'll restrict myself to saying it was beautiful, it was a good opportunity to hone our rope techniques, and the company was good. And I could test two of my new acquisitions: I had bought a new foot ascender, and a waterproof flash gun! And I must say, I think I don't use that ascender to the max. It should make ascending a rope easier, but I didn't notice much difference. But the flash was good! It wasn't very wet down there, but at some point I laid it down in a 2 inch puddle, facing upwards, and the resulting picture was promising! And especially with wet trips this thing will come in handy. Stay tuned for documentable trips!

My foot ascender, fastened to highly inappropriate footwear, and the waterproof flash gun

Academic bredth

On Monday we have phunch. Physical lunch. And lunch tends to be physical, but in this context the adjective is used in the sense of "pertaining to physical geography". So we have lunch while enjoying a presentation on a topic that's close to home; the last time we were informed on the sea level evolution and archaeology of the Scilly Isles. The school I work in contains both physical and human geography, resulting in the dichotomy between the "physicals" and "humans". I am not one of the latter, evidently.

I get a taste of human existence on Wednesday; then we have geography seminars of either persuasion. That's already a view into an unknown world. The latest one dealt with "sustainability transitions". It looked very woolly on the announcement but it turned out to be quite concrete. These transitions, that's from consumerism to sustainability, with the talk focussing on the establishment of small communities living a low-impact life, if I may summarise it such. The speaker was the founder of charming initiatives such as Lammas. It's good to stay updated on such goings-on.

But this is a university, and then there's a much wider spectrum on offer. For instance; this Monday there was a talk by Julian Richards, a name some may know from the BBC series "meet the ancestors". He spoke of bringing archeology to a wider audience. And doing that evidently is one of his talents!

On Wednesday there was a talk by Simon, one of our own historians, on "Taxi Driver". I have to admit that I never had seen the film. But now I want to! Simon kindly offered me his copy of the film to watch, and I intend to take that offer.
Today I managed to not attend either of the lectures on offer. No ocean acidification from a marine molecular biological point of view, and no green economics.

Two weeks from now there'll be two inaugural lectures. One will be on fairly familiar ground for me, as it concerns marine biology. The other one I may miss, as I will go underground. Its title is " Curtains for the Albertian Window ~ Digital Alchemy for the Scale Electric". It doesn't get much more elusive than that if you ask me. I'll try and sneak that one in before buggering off to a muddy place. It is bound to give me a view on things I never thought about! And that was only a selection. Academia is good!

Swimming rocks!

It's autumn! The leaves have pretty colours and the weather is often bleak. Time for many mines to get flooded. We wanted to do a few of these early in the season, hoping they wouldn't yet be TOO flooded. And this was one of them.

Given this was the specific aim, I decided it was wetsuit time again. And I never regretted it! Ali lead this trip, and first scouted out an entrance that was flooded. Coming close you could see there were air pockets, but I figured it would go a bit far to try to go through there. So we went looking for the alternative entrance, of which it became apparent Rick had already found it. And then we went in.

Going in! Pic by Dave

Pic by Dave

What a beautiful mine! Lots of stopes and winzes and whatnot, and most of it covered by between a foot and a fathom of crystal clear water. Excellent! The water meant you could go anywhere; I happily swam over several gaping holes in the floor. And this time the water was really water, and not some crap that looks like tomato soup, so I could admire all the structures. Swimming underground is the real deal! I've been lucky recently. Redmoor, the Tamar (not underground, but fresh, cold and dark, and thus nice, anyway) after Wheel Russell, and now this. I like!

Me in a state I increasingly like

It allows one to just swim over structures like this! Pic by Dave.

In the end I went into a tunnel of which we assumed it came out at that entrance we first scouted out. The water didn't reach all the way up to the ceiling, but for comfort you need about 20 cm; the space between your mouth and the top of your helmet. If it's less you have to tilt your head all the way back, and then you can't see what you're doing, and it's freaking cold as well. So I dived two less-than-20cm-stretches, but then I decided to go back. I was alone there (the only one in a wetsuit), and if I would get myself into trouble it would immediately be big trouble. The others were tens of metres away in a tunnel you could only swim through, and so was the exit, and sticking your head in water of such temperature makes you really funny in the head really soon. I thought it was very wise of me to turn around!

Ali wasn't impressed; he wanted me to come out on the other side, and was quite willing to shine a torch into the tunnel to guide the way, but as finding the way was the easy part, and I didn't see how light prevents you from drowning in cold water, I decided he could figure it out. Bring a wetsuit yourself if you want to know if one can get through! 

A remarkably large number of men in yellow that night!

By then we had seen it all, and we went back to the cars. Wrong! Dave and John were still in there, taking pictures, and we were going nowhere until they were back. I could have stayed! But well, what can one do. We waited for them, and then buggered off to the pub. And we had had an enormous turnout this day, so we almost filled it up. A good night!