The case for a greenfields renaissance Feature - Geological Society ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

should be a new IAVCEI Commission on Statistics in Volcanology (COSIV). This was established in 2007, and held its first meeting in Iceland in 2008. There have been other recent seminars on this topic, including one at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, Austria in April 2008, and Volcanic Hazard and risk in the Asia-Pacific region at the American Geophysical Union Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Cairns in 2008. We can conclude that there is a rapidly growing interest amongst volcanologists in applying statistical techniques to dating and distribution of volcanoes so that future eruption hazard and risk can be evaluated. Do you know these geologists Hint: Location is Luina Tin Mine, Tasmania, 1965. (See page 45) In Victoria, South Australia and northern Queensland, young monogenetic volcanoes are common. The similarity of the Armenian and German volcanic areas to those of Australia’s young provinces suggest we should also be studying our own volcanic risk and hazard. Detailed dating is not complete in Australia, but the techniques used in Armenia and Germany provides good examples of what can be done. With the help of a more mathematically-inclined engineering colleague, I'm currently working on a statistical study of eruption risk for the young volcanoes of Victoria (Zeitschrift fur Geomorphologie NF, Supplementary Vol 140, 2005) and beyond (‘The risk of volcanic eruption in mainland Australia’ AESC 2006 Extended Abstract) and I found this book to be a useful starting point for further work. Other volcanologists working on the nearby large long-lived stratovolcanoes of New Guinea and Indonesia should also find this book useful. EB JOYCE Honorary Principal Fellow School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne Books for reviews Please contact the Geological Society of Australia Business Office (info@gsa.org.au) if you would like to review any of the following publications. New for March 2009 Gold deposits of the CIS Gregory Levitan www.Xlibris.com Mining and the environment; from ore to metal K Spitz and J Trudinger Taylor & Francis / CRC Press / Balkems www.taylorandfrancis.co.uk / www.crcpress.com / www.balkema.nl Re-advertised Putting Queensland on the map — the life of Robert Logan Jack, geologist and explorer Felicity Jack www.unswpress.com.au The evolution of clastic sedimentology H Okada and AJ Kenyon-Smith www.inbooks.com.au SP244 – Submarine slope systems: processes and products DM Hodgson and SS Flint SP257 – Geomaterials in cultural heritage M Maggetti and B Messiga SP263 – Fluid flow and solute movement in sandstones RD Barker and JH Tellam SP264 – Compositional data analysis in the geosciences A Buccianti, G Mateu-Figueras and V Pawlowsky-Glahn SP274 – Coastal and shelf sediment transport PS Balsom and MB Collins SP276 – Economic and palaeoceanographic significance of contourite deposits AR Viana and M Rebesco SP277 – Seismic geomorphology RJ Davies, HW Posamentier, LJ Wood and JA Cartwright SP281 – The role of women in the history of geology CV Burek and B Higgs Key issues in petroleum geology: stratigraphy P Copestake, J Gregory and JM Pearce TAG March 2009 | 41
Letters to the Editor On the importance of identifying and citing original sources of scientific ideas This is about geomorphology, because that is my field. People in other disciplines may find something familiar. It is prompted in part by a note in Nature Geoscience (2008, Vol 563) reporting that online, peer-reviewed journal publication has led to increased citing of more recent papers in fewer journals (see also Science, 2008, Vol 321, p 395–399). (The difficulty of online access to expensive “mainstream” journals has also resulted in a “parallel” body of free online science – but I’ll leave that for another time.) Scientists should remember Isaac Newton’s words to Hooke (1676): “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” If they don’t, their scientific horizons may become mundane and of little consequence. The credit for the status of geomorphology as a science belongs to those early pioneers (1890s–1960s) who laid its foundations, such as (to name some of the most illustrious) Gilbert, Davis, Penck, Savigear, King, Baulig, Wooldridge, Wolman, Schumm, Chorley, Pitty, Tricart, Cailleux, Dury, Carson, Kirkby, Thomas, Young, Baker, and in Australasia, Griffith Taylor, Craft, Cotton, Jennings, Mabbutt, Ollier, and Twidale, and to others who have followed in their footsteps during the latter half of the 20th century. If you don’t recognise their names, and are not familiar with their contributions, you don’t know the science of geomorphology. If you don’t acknowledge the lasting relevance of these contributions you don’t appreciate the power of relatively simple observations, experiments and ideas to capture essential elements of the complex world around us. Another reason for reading the early work, in the original, is to make sure they really said what you have been told they said by later workers. And this should extend to citing the original work in your papers, rather than the latest or most accessible paper on the subject. The alternative that dominates much research today is describing the complexity of landscapes at a level of detail allowed by remotely-sensed images by means of increasingly complex computerised models. People think this brings us closer to reality, but instead it is an over-reliance on the computer at the expense of simple but rigorous reasoning, focusing on minutiae at the expense of scientific depth, insight, and the ability to generalise. We also show a cavalier disregard for the simple but fundamental science handed to us by our predecessors, on which rests much of what we presently know and do. In 2007, I attended the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, and went to as many of the 11,000 talks and posters as I could. One in particular stood out for me. It was about water movement on a small hillslope in Switzerland, in particular the rates and locations of routes of subsurface water following rainfall events. It was a fine paper, well presented, and obviously represented a great deal of effort. Trouble is, the same conclusions had been reached in the 1960s and 70s by, among others, Mike Kirkby in his book, Hillslope hydrology. And Mike Kirkby was in the audience! This is representative of many papers presented at conferences I have attended over the years. Peerreviewed journals are not immune to this kind of reinvention of the wheel. Another current fad in papers, particularly obvious at EGU 2008, is to present a description, with measurement and reporting of various aspects of interest. This is fine, and as it should be. But then the whole effect is ruined by the construction of a mathematical model that gives the illusion of rigour, but in fact adds nothing to the argument. All the model does is to provide great, and misleading, precision while doing nothing to enhance the original data or descriptions, let alone any interpretations that might arise. In this context the model is a waste of time and space. Our predecessors didn’t have all the fancy tools and data that we have now, but they still managed to produce great results and lasting work. We must recognise that, without the scientific depth, insight, and the ability to generalise, the tools remain expensive doorstops, and the data pretty pictures that Jackson Pollock might have been proud of. If you ignore the early work the chances are you will repeat it, and produce papers and reports that will end up in the dustbin of history. COLIN PAIN Can scientific consensus really be science People believe scientists. When the IPCC’s third assessment report was presented in January 2001, Sir John Houghton stood before a blow-up of figure 1(b) “the past 1000 years” from its Working Group I (scientific) Summary for Policymakers. This “Mann hockey-stick” showed, in the Northern Hemisphere, nine centuries of gentle cooling (the “handle”) followed by one of abrupt warming (the “blade”). The Mediaeval Warm Period, and subsequent series of Little Ice Age cold periods, had vanished. A further stain on IPCC’s credibility was the “Simulated annual global mean surface temperatures”. Figure 4(a) “natural” showed that, without the “anthropogenic” warming from Fig 4(b), Earth would have been cooler in the latter decades of the 20th Century, than in 1860–1880. The warming trend, between Maunder Minimum quiet Sun (1645–1715) and Modern Era hyperactive Sun (last half of 20th Century), had also vanished. But there was no outcry from the international scientific community. President of the Royal Society, Sir Robert May – from Sydney, now the Lord Mayor of Oxford – organised a statement by 17 learned academies including Australian academies (‘The science of climate change’ Science 18, May 2001, 292 p1261). It began: The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise the IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes; and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus. Despite increasing consensus on the science underpinning predictions of global climate change, doubts have been expressed recently about the need to mitigate the risks posed by global climate change. We do not consider those doubts justified. 42 | TAG March 2009
Page 1 and 2: The Geological Society of Australia
Page 3 and 4: From the President This is our plan
Page 5 and 6: Guest Editor’s Comment It is a gr
Page 7 and 8: New members The GSA welcomes the fo
Page 9 and 10: SocietyUpdate From the AJES Hon Edi
Page 11 and 12: SocietyUpdate Education&Outreach In
Page 13 and 14: The use of liquid crystal displays
Page 15 and 16: SocietyUpdate Data Metallogenica Mi
Page 17 and 18: From left: Neville Stevens Medal re
Page 19 and 20: from the extensive network and acti
Page 21 and 22: The QEMSCAN system is now the basis
Page 23 and 24: Feature Tsunami hazard and mitigati
Page 25 and 26: This pit was dug to study the effec
Page 27 and 28: The Western Australia context The p
Page 29 and 30: including overlaps, is smaller than
Page 31 and 32: How should we interpret these data
Page 33 and 34: ARC 2009 grants for Earth Science r
Page 35 and 36: PROJECT SUMMARY GRANT Resistivity o
Page 37 and 38: PROJECT SUMMARY GRANT Civil enginee
Page 39 and 40: ief discussions of the various part
Page 41: appeared more of a book than a seri
Page 45 and 46: institutions. The fourth seemed to
Page 47 and 48: Calendar 2009 13-21 April The Macqu
Page 49: Publishing Details The Australian G

The case for a greenfields renaissance Feature - Geological Society ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?