Setting low standards: bovine TB, badger culls and political pressure on science

If there's a single type of news story that's almost guaranteed to generate widespread sympathy across the British Isles it is one concerning the mistreatment of animals. Over the past five years, badger culls aimed at preventing the spread of bovine tuberculosis have generated much public debate, with opinions varying from those who think badgers are completely innocent victims to some who want to see the species eradicated anywhere domestic cattle are kept. Since the number of farmed cattle in the British Isles is close to ten million, this presumably means the no-badger zone is rather on the large size!

When debates concerning agriculture start to get overheated it usually reduces to a battleground between farmers and so-called townies, with mudslinging and emotive slogans taking precedence over the facts. In this particular case the badgers have an unusual ally in the form of rock musician and amateur astronomer Brian May, who has received much of the criticism usually reserved for tree huggers, animal rights' campaigners and environmentalist types in general.

As I've mentioned before, a species often receives support based more on its cuteness factor than anything else (I consider the irascible and curmudgeonly Mr Badger in Wind in the Willows as a fairly accurate representation of the true critter) so the farming community has seen fit to complain that ignorant, urban-based activists are unaware of the challenges Mother Nature throws at the agricultural sector.

Such stereotyping and reductionism does nothing to alleviate the issue, which other nations face in similar circumstances. New Zealand, for example, has a rapidly escalating battle over the use of 1080 to poison introduced predators. Even though many environmental organisations such as Forest and Bird proclaim it the most effective method the debate is far from settled, with the anti-1080 movement using emotive pleas in their campaign that at times combines hysteria and aggression in equal measure.

The UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has funded an independent scientific review from Oxford University as to the efficacy of the cull, resulting in popular press reports that the evidence does not support it. Indeed, the high ratio of dead badgers in return for a 'modest' reduction in the disease has been given as a key reason to stop the culls. This might appear to be a nod towards animal welfare, until you read that other issues include their cost and complexity and a desire for the Government to gain in the opinion polls. A key scientific argument against the effectiveness of the culls come from rural vets, who support data suggesting even at maximum success, the reduction in new cases of cattle TB would only be 12-16% - in exchange for a culling of over 70% of local badger populations.

So what does this example say about humanity's attitude towards the environment and the use of science to reinforce that attitude? In terms of numbers of individuals, humans and our domesticated species (both livestock and household pets) vastly outnumber the inhabitants of the wilderness. The once diverse ecosystem has been vastly reduced, predominantly in the temperate regions suitable for intensive farming. But in return for this largely irreversible loss we have gained all-year round access to an incredible variety of inexpensive foodstuffs; clearly, our gastronomic gains take precedence over the wider ecosystem.

In the case of wild badgers as disease vectors, it isn't just the livelihood of individual farmers that are at stake. The European Union's threat to impose trade sanctions on the UK, such as a ban on the export of live cattle, must be considered as a potential loss at the national level. Little wonder then that the British Government implemented the cull after what has been termed 'a randomised trial period' or more impressively, 'over fifteen years of intensive research.' Even so, was the result of all this enough to justify the finality of the chosen method - or was the scientific data manipulated in the name of political expediency?

One telling example of how the culling might have been ordered due to political pressure rather than any scientific smarts was the use of evidence from other nations that are successfully controlling bovine TB. Australia and New Zealand have been held up as examples of how control of the disease vectors can vastly reduce or indeed remove the problem altogether. Except of course that those two nations don't have any badgers; it is the possum, a semi-arboreal marsupial, that is responsible for the spread of tuberculosis there. It seems to me that two creatures from such vastly different lineages should never have been seen as workable comparisons; the natural world just doesn't fall into the neat categories we would like it to. As a matter of fact, the UK Government has partly blamed the lack of success on the badgers themselves for failing to follow predicted behaviour. In 2013 the then Environment Secretary Owen Paterson stated that the animals had cheated by 'moving the goal posts'!

The Oxford University research reports that far more cases of bovine TB result from transmission between cattle rather than directly from badgers, explaining that farmers are not following Defra guidelines to minimise the spread. Even Defra itself states that there has been not nearly enough implementation of badger-proof feed storage and fencing, while its chief scientific adviser, Ian Boyd, has been quoted as admitting that badgers may only be responsible for as little as 6% of bovine TB! This incidentally comes from the man who in 2013 wanted complete control over what scientific results were reported to Government ministers, presumably so as to maintain a clear-cut, pro-STEM political lobby. Hmm, methinks I smell something fishy...

What can we conclude from these shenanigans? If scientific research doesn't provide reliable support for a method, shouldn't the mistake be admitted and a new approach implemented? Science is the sole invention of humanity with built-in error correction but when it gets embroiled in politics, unabashed use of political tools such as spin can prove fatal. In this particular case, the fatalities in the short term were the badgers. In the long run, an unbalanced ecosystem would have resulted. And we all know which species likes to think of itself as the pinnacle of creation. There's enough denial of scientific results as it is, without distortion for the sake of political convenience. Let's hope Defra has the courage to own up and try other tactics against the wily badger.

Swapping gasoline with gas: are hydrogen fuel cells the future of land transport?

When I was a child, I recall being impressed by the sophistication of hydrogen fuel cells, a power source used in spacecraft that generated water as a by-product. What I didn't realise at the time was that the basis for fuel cell technology had been invented back in the 1830s. Now that automobile manufacturers are promoting fuel cell vehicles for consumers, is it time for the technology to expand from niche usage to mass market?

Road vehicles of all sorts have had more than their fair share of ups and downs, not least due to the conservatism of that unholy alliance between the internal combustion engine and fossil fuels sectors.  Although there were hydrogen-powered test vehicles in 1970s, it wasn't until 1991 that the development phase was completed. There are currently three car manufacturers with fuel cell models intended for personal customers: the Honda Clarity, Hyundai Nexo and Toyota Mirai. The latter two are intended to enter to take off (not literally) across South Korea and Australia respectively over the new few years, apparently selling at a loss on the assumption of beating rivals Nissan and BMW into the market. Brand loyalty being what it is, and all.

So what do fuel cell vehicles have that makes them a credible alternative to gas guzzlers and electric cars? Their primary benefit in this time-poor age is that they take only minutes to refuel – and with a range considerably greater than that of electric vehicles. Even so, this is hardly likely to be a convincing argument for petrol heads.

To anyone with even a vague knowledge of interwar air travel, hydrogen brings to mind the Hindenburg and R101 disasters. The gas is far from safe in large quantities, hence the rapid end of airship development; even with helium as a substitute, today's airships are smaller, specialist vehicles, their lack of speed making them an unlikely substitute for passenger jets. Although fuel cells themselves provide a safe power source, large quantities of hydrogen needs to be transported to the refuelling stations. A neat solution is to transport it in the form of ammonia (admittedly hardly a pleasant substance itself) and then convert it to hydrogen at the point of use.

What is less easily resolved is the cost of manufacturing the gas and the resulting high price for the customer. Most of the world's hydrogen is produced from natural gas; it can be made from renewable sources, but only at much greater expense. Wind-to-hydrogen methods are being tested, but in general there is a distinct lack of environmental friendliness to the gas production process that counteracts the emission-friendly usage in the vehicles themselves. To date, analysis is inconclusive as to whether en masse replacement of fossil fuel vehicles with fuel cell equivalents would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, some reports claim they use three times the amount of electricity per vehicle than the equivalent battery-powered car!

In addition to the price of hydrogen, fuel cells use rare elements such as platinum, contributing to the production costs. But most importantly of all, how will the vehicle manufacturers resolve the chicken-and-egg issue of providing adequate infrastructure when there is only a small customer base? Without enough refuelling stations and repair depots, most regions are unlikely to attract new customers, but how can a corporation afford to put these facilities in place before there is a demand for them? Most private vehicle owners would require an immediate advantage to migrate to the new technology, regardless of any environmental benefit. Unlike the early days of the internal combustion engine, fuel cell vehicles do not offer the paradigm shift that the automobile had over the horse-drawn carriage.

So with continuous improvements in battery technology, is there in fact any need for the fuel cell vehicles? Aren't electric cars the best alternative to the internal combustion engine? If so, wouldn't it make more sense to concentrate on battery development and not waste effort on a far from optimal alternative that might turn out to be a dead end? Perhaps this is a case of corporate bet hedging. After all, the telecommunications industry was taken completely unawares by the personal consumer demand for mobile phones - a device that was aimed squarely at business users - so this may be a Plan B if something happens with the growth of electric vehicles. At least vehicle manufacturers aren't anti-innovation this time, unlike their voracious gobbling up of advanced steam car development in the early 1970s.

If not for private road vehicles, could there be a future for fuel cell technology in public transport? China and some European nations such as Germany have been trialling hydrogen-powered buses and tram cars, whilst Boeing is one of the aircraft manufacturers investigating the use of fuel cells in small aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. That isn't to say the future of commercial air travel excludes the turbofan engine; fuel cells will probably only ever be used for auxiliary power units.

I wouldn't want to disparage innovation but can't help thinking that in this instance, the self-regulating capitalist model is failing to cope with the paradigm shifts required to face the challenges of climate change. Would it be better for governments to incentivise the front-runner replacements for environmentally poor technologies, in this particular case favouring electric-powered vehicles? Solutions are needed now and I'm just not sure that there is the time to solve all the issues surrounding hydrogen fuel cells and the necessary infrastructure. Perhaps this technology should be saved for a rainy day sometime in the future, once our current crises are over and dealt with?

Space is the place: did life begin in the cosmic void?

A few weeks' ago I was watching a television documentary about the search for intelligence aliens and featuring the usual SETI experts Jill Tarter and Seth Shostak when I realised that we rarely see any crossover with research into non-intelligent extra-terrestrial life. Whereas the former is often seen by outsiders as pie-in-the-sky work by idealistic dreamers, the latter has more of a down-to-Earth feel about it, even though it has at times also suffered from a lack of credibility.

Based on current thinking, it seems far more probable that life in the universe will mostly be very small and entirely lacking consciousness, in other words, microbial. After all, life on Earth arose pretty much as soon as the environment was stable enough, around 3.7 billion years ago or even earlier. In contrast, lifeforms large enough to be visible without a microscope evolved around 1 billion or so years ago (for photosynthetic plants) and only about 580 million years ago for complex marine animals.

The recent publicity surrounding the seasonal variations in methane on Mars has provided ever more tantalising hints that microbial life may survive in ultraviolet-free shelters near the Martian surface, although it will be some years before a robot mission sophisticated enough to visit sink holes or canyon walls can investigate likely habitats. (As for the oft-talked about but yet to be planned crewed mission, see this post from 2015.)

Therefore it seems that it is worth concentrating on finding biological or pre-biological compounds in extra-terrestrial objects as much as listening for radio signals. The search can be via remote sensing (e.g. of molecular clouds, comets and asteroids) as well as investigating meteorites - bearing in mind that the Earth receives up to one million kilogrammes of material per day, although less than one percent is large enough to be identified as such.

The problem is that this area of research has at times had a fairly poor reputation due to the occasional premature claim of success. Stories then become widespread via non-specialist media in such a way that the resulting hype frequently bears little relation to the initial scientific report. In addition, if further evidence reverses that conclusion, the public's lack of understanding of the error-correcting methods of science leads to disillusion at best and apathy at worst.

One key hypothesis that has received more than its fair share of negative publicity has been that of panspermia, which suggests not just the chemicals of biology but life itself has been brought to Earth by cosmic impactors. The best known advocates are Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, but their outspoken championing of an hypothesis severely lacking in evidence has done little to promote the idea. For while it is feasible - especially with the ongoing discovery of extremophiles everywhere from deep ocean vents to the coolant ponds of nuclear reactors - to envisage microbial life reaching Earth from cometary or asteroid material, the notion that these extra-terrestrials have been responsible for various epidemics seems to be a step too far.

It's long been known that comets contain vast amounts of water; indeed, simulations suggest that until the Late Heavy Bombardment around four billion years ago there may have been far less water on Earth than subsequently. Considering the volumes of water ice now being discovered on Mars and the Moon, the probability of life-sustaining environments off the Earth has gained a respectable boost.

It isn't just water, either: organic compounds that are precursors to biological material have been found in vast quantities in interstellar space; and now they are being found in the inner solar system too. That's not to say that this research has been without controversy as well. Since the early 1960s, Bartholomew Nagy has stirred debate by announcing the discovery of sophisticated pre-biological material in impactors such as the Orgueil meteorite. Examination by other teams has found that contamination has skewed the results, implying that Nagy's conclusions were based on inadequate research. Although more recent investigation of meteorites and spectrophotometry of carbonaceous chondrite asteroids have supplied genuine positives, the earlier mistakes have sullied the field.

Luckily, thorough examination of the Australian Murchison meteorite has promoted the discipline again, with numerous amino acids being confirmed as of non-terrestrial origin. The RNA nucleobase uracil has also been found in the Murchison meteorite, with ultraviolet radiation in the outer space vacuum being deemed responsible for the construction of these complex compounds.

Not that there haven't been other examples of premature results leading to unwarranted hype. Perhaps the best known example of this was the 1996 announcement of minute bacteria-like forms in the Martian ALH84001 meteorite. The international headlines soon waned when a potential non-biological origin was found.

In addition to examination of these objects, experiments are increasingly being performed to test the resilience of life forms in either vacuum chambers or real outer space, courtesy of the International Space Station. After all, if terrestrial life can survive in such a hostile environment, the higher the likelihood that alien microbiology could arrive on Earth via meteorite impact or cometary tail (and at least one amino acid, glycine, has been found on several comets).

Unmanned probes are now replicating these findings, with the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft finding glycine in the dust cloud around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2016. Although these extra-terrestrial objects may lack the energy source required to kick-start life itself, some are clearly harbouring many of the complex molecules used in life on Earth.

It has now been proven beyond any doubt that organic and pre-biological material is common in space. The much higher frequency of impacts in the early solar system suggests that key components of Earth's surface chemistry - and its water - were delivered via meteorites and comets. Unfortunately, the unwary publication of provisional results, when combined with the general public's feeble grasp of scientific methodology, has hindered support for what is surely one of the most exciting areas in contemporary science. A multi-faceted approach may in time supply the answers to the ultimate questions surrounding the origin of life and its precursor material. This really is a case of watch (this) space!

Sonic booms and algal blooms: a smart approach to detoxifying waterways

A recent report here in New Zealand has raised some interesting issues around data interpretation and the need for independent analysis to minimise bias. The study has examined the state of our fresh water environment over the past decade, leading to the conclusion that our lakes and rivers are improving in water quality.

However, some of the data fails to support this: populations of freshwater macro invertebrates remain low, following a steady decline over many decades. Therefore while the overall tone of the report is one of optimism, some researchers have claimed that the data has been deliberately cherry-picked in order to present as positive a result as possible.

Of course, there are countless examples of interested parties skewing scientific data for their own ends, with government organisations and private corporations among the most common culprits. In this case, the recorded drop in nitrate levels has been promoted at the expense of the continued low population of small-scale fauna. You might well ask what use these worms, snails and insects are, but even a basic understanding of food webs shows that numerous native bird and freshwater fish species rely on these invertebrates for food. As I've mentioned so often the apparently insignificant may play a fundamental role in sustaining human agriculture (yes, some other species practice farming too!)

So what is it that is preventing the invertebrates' recovery? The answer seems to be an increase in photosynthetic cyanobacteria, or as is more commonly - and incorrectly known - blue-green algae. If it is identified at all, it's as a health food supplement called spirulina, available in smoothies and tablet form. However, most cyanobacteria species are not nearly as useful - or pleasant. To start with, their presence in water lowers the oxygen content, so thanks to fertiliser runoff - nitrogen and phosphorus in particular - they bloom exponentially wherever intensive farming occurs close to fresh water courses. Another agriculture-related issue is due to clearing the land for grazing: without trees to provide shade, rivers and streams grow warmer, encouraging algal growth. Therefore as global temperatures rise, climate change is having yet another negative effect on the environment.

Most species of cyanobacteria contain toxins that can severely affect animals much larger than fresh water snails. Dogs have been reported as dying in as little as a quarter of an hour from eating it, with New Zealand alone losing over one hundred and fifty pet canines in the past fifteen years; it's difficult to prevent consumption, since dogs seem to love the smell! Kiwis are no stranger to the phylum for other reasons, as over one hundred New Zealand rivers and lakes have been closed to swimmers since 2011 due to cyanobacterial contamination.

Exposure to contaminated water or eating fish from such an environment is enough to cause external irritation to humans and may even damage our internal organs and nervous system. Drinking water containing blue-green algae is even worse; considering their comparable size to some dogs, it is supposed that exposure could prove fatal to young children. Research conducted over the past few years also suggests that high-level contamination can lead to Lou Gehrig's disease, A.K.A. amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the same condition that Stephen Hawking suffered from.

What research you might ask is being done to discover a solution to this unpleasant organism? Chemicals additives including copper sulphate and calcium hypochlorite have been tried, but many are highly expensive while the toxicity of others is such that fish and crustacean populations also suffer, so this is hardly a suitable answer.

A more elegant solution has been under trial for the past two years, namely the use of ultrasound to sink the blue-green algae too deep to effectively photosynthesise, thus slowly killing it. A joint programme between New Zealand and the Netherlands uses a high-tech approach to identifying and destroying ninety per cent of each bloom. Whereas previous ultrasonic methods tended to be too powerful, thereby releasing algal toxins into the water, the new technique directly targets the individual algal species. Six tests per hour are used to assess water quality and detect the species to be eradicated. Once identified, the sonic blasts are calibrated for the target species and water condition, leading to a slower death for the blue-green algae that avoids cell wall rupture and so prevents the toxins from escaping.

Back to the earlier comment as to why the report's conclusions appear to have placed a positive spin that is unwarranted, the current and previous New Zealand Governments have announced initiatives to clean up our environment and so live up to the tourist slogan of '100% Pure'. The latest scheme requires making ninety percent of the nation's fresh water environments swimmable by 2040, which seems to be something of a tall order without radical changes to agriculture and the heavily polluting dairy sector in particular. Therefore the use of finely target sonic blasting couldn't come a moment too soon.

Our greed and short-sightedness has allowed cyanobacteria to greatly increase at the expense of the freshwater ecosystem, not to mention domesticated animals. Now advanced but small-scale technology has been developed to reduce it to non-toxic levels, but is yet to be implemented beyond the trial stage. Hopefully this eradication method will become widespread in the near future, a small victory in our enormous fight to right the wrongs of over-exploitation of the environment. But as with DDT, CFCs and numerous others, it does make me wonder how many more man-made time bombs could be ticking out there...

The anaesthetic of familiarity: how our upbringing can blind us to the obvious

In the restored Edwardian school classroom at Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) there is a notice on the wall stating 'Do not ask your teacher questions.' Fortunately, education now goes some way in many nations to emphasising the importance of individual curiosity rather than mere obedience to authority. Of course, there are a fair number of politicians and corporation executives who wish it wasn't so, as an incurious mind is easier to sway than a questioning one. As my last post mentioned, the World Wide Web can be something of an ally for them, since the 'winner takes all' approach of a review-based system aids the slogans and rhetoric of those who wish to control who we vote for and what we buy.

Even the most liberal of nations and cultures face self-imposed hurdles centered round which is the best solution and which is just the most familiar one from our formative years. This post therefore looks at another side of the subjective thinking discussed earlier this month, namely a trap that Richard Dawkins has described as the "anaesthetic of familiarity". Basically, this is when conventions are so accepted as to be seen as the primary option instead of being merely one of a series of choices. Or, as the British philosopher Susan Stebbing wrote in her 1939 book Thinking to Some Purpose: "One of the gravest difficulties encountered at the outset of the attempt to think effectively consists in the difficulty of recognizing what we know as distinguished from what we do not know but merely take for granted."

Again, this mind set is much loved by the manufacturing sector; in addition to such well-known ploys as deliberate obsolescence and staggered release cycles, there are worse examples, especially in everyday consumerism. We often hear how little nutritional value many highly processed foods contain, but think what this has done for the vitamin and mineral supplement industry, whose annual worldwide sales now approach US$40 billion!

Citizens of developed nations today face very different key issues to our pre-industrial ancestors, not the least among them being a constant barrage of decision making. Thanks to the enormous variety of choices available concerning almost every aspect of our daily lives, we have to consider everything from what we wear to what we eat. The deluge of predominantly useless information that we receive in the era of the hashtag makes it more difficult for us to concentrate on problem solving, meaning that the easiest way out is just to follow the crowd.

Richard Dawkins' solution to these issues is to imagine yourself as an alien visitor and then observe the world as a curious outsider. This seems to me to be beyond the reach of many, for whom daily routine appears to be their only way to cope. If this sounds harsh, it comes from personal experience; I've met plenty of people who actively seek an ostrich-like head-in-the-sand approach to life to avoid the trials and tribulations - as well as the wonders - of this rapidly-changing world.

Instead, I would suggest an easier option when it comes to some areas of STEM research: ensure that a fair proportion of researchers and other thought leaders are adult migrants from other nations. Then they will be able to apply an outside perspective, hopefully identifying givens that are too obvious to be spotted by those who have grown up with them.

New Zealand is a good example of this, with arguably its two best known science communicators having been born overseas: Siouxsie Wiles and Michelle Dickinson, A.K.A. Nanogirl. Dr Wiles is a UK-trained microbiologist at the University of Auckland. She frequently appears on Radio New Zealand as well as undertaking television and social media work to promote science in general, as well as for her specialism of fighting bacterial infection.

Dr Dickinson is a materials engineering lecturer and nanomaterials researcher at the University of Auckland who studied in both the UK and USA. Her public outreach work includes books, school tours and both broadcast and social media. She has enough sci-comm kudos that last year, despite not having a background in astronomy, she interviewed Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson during the Auckland leg of his A Cosmic Perspective tour.

The work of the above examples is proof that newcomers can recognise a critical need compared to their home grown equivalents. What is interesting is that despite coming from English-speaking backgrounds - and therefore with limited cultural disparity to their adoptive New Zealand - there must have been enough that was different to convince Doctors Wiles and Dickinson of the need for a hands-on, media savvy approach to science communication.

This is still far from the norm: many STEM professionals believe there is little point to promoting their work to the public except via print-based publications. Indeed, some famous science communicators such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould were widely criticised during their lifetime by the scientific establishment for what were deemed undue efforts at self-promotion and the associated debasement of science by combining it with show business.

As an aside, I have to say that as brilliant as some volumes of popular science are, they do tend to preach to the converted; how many non-science fans are likely to pick up a book on say string theory, just for a bit of light reading or self-improvement (the latter being a Victorian convention that appears to have largely fallen from favour)? Instead, the outreach work of the expat examples above is aimed at the widest possible audience without over-simplification or distortion of the principles being communicated.

This approach may not solve all issues about how to think outside the box - scientists may be so embedded within their culture as to not realise that there is a box - but surely by stepping outside the comfort zone we grew up in we may find problems that the local population hasn't noticed?

Critical thinking is key to the scientific enterprise, but it would appear, to little else in human cultures. If we can find methods to avoid the anaesthetic of familiarity and acknowledge that what we deem of as normal can be far from optimal, then these should be promoted with all gusto. If the post-modern creed is that all world views are equally valid and science is just another form of culture-biased story-telling, then now more than ever we need cognitive tools to break through the subjective barriers. If more STEM professionals are able to cross borders and work in unfamiliar locations, isn’t there a chance they can recognise issues that fall under the local radar and so supply a new perspective we need if we are to fulfil our potential?

Seasons of the mind: how can we escape subjective thinking?

According to some people I've met, the first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere has been and gone with the first day of September. Not incidentally, there are also some, myself included, who think that it has suddenly started to feel a bit warmer. Apparently, the official start date is at the spring equinox during the third week of September. So on the one hand, the weather has been warming since the start of the month but on the other, why should a planet followed neat calendrical conventions, i.e. the first of anything? Just how accurate is the official definition?

There are many who like to reminisce about how much better the summer weather was back in their school holidays. The rose-tinted memories of childhood can seem idyllic, although I also recall summer days of non-stop rain (I did grow up in the UK, after all). Therefore our personal experiences, particularly during our formative years, can promote an emotion-based response that is so far ingrained we fail to consider they may be inaccurate. Subjectivity and wishful thinking are key to the human experience: how often do we remember the few hits and not the far more misses? As science is practiced by humans it is subject to the same lack of objectivity as anything else; only its built-in error-checking can steer practitioners onto a more rational course than in other disciplines.

What got me to ponder the above was that on meeting someone a few months' ago for the first time, almost his opening sentence was a claim that global warming isn't occurring and that instead we are on the verge of an ice age. I didn't have time for a discussion on the subject, so I filed that one for reply at a later date. Now seems like a good time to ponder what it is that leads people to make such assertions that are seemingly contrary to the evidence.

I admit to being biased on this particular issue, having last year undertaken research for a post on whether agriculture has postponed the next glaciation (note that this woolly - but not mammoth, ho-ho - terminology is one of my bugbears: we are already in an ice age, but currently in an interglacial stage). Satellite imagery taken over the past few decades shows clear evidence of large-scale reductions in global ice sheets. For example, the northern polar ice cap has been reduced by a third since 1980, with what remains only half its previous thickness. Even so, are three decades a long enough period to make accurate predictions? Isn't using a scale that can be sympathetic with the human lifespan just as bad as relying on personal experience?

The UK's Met Office has confirmed that 2018 was that nation's hottest summer since records began - which in this instance, only goes back as far back as 1910.  In contrast, climate change sceptics use a slight growth in Antarctic sea ice (contrary to its steadily decreasing continental icesheet) as evidence of climate equilibrium. Now I would argue that this growth is just a local drop in the global ocean, but I wonder if my ice age enthusiast cherry-picked this data to formulate his ideas? Even so, does he believe that all the photographs and videos of glaciers, etc. have been faked by the twenty or so nations who have undertaken Earth observation space missions? I will find out at some point!

If we try to be as objective as possible, how can we confirm with complete certainty the difference between long term climate change and local, short term variability? In particular, where do you draw the line between the two? If we look at temporary but drastic variations over large areas during the past thousand years, there is a range of time scales to explore. The 15th to 18th centuries, predominantly the periods 1460-1550 and 1645-1715, contained climate variations now known as mini ice ages, although these may have been fairly restricted in geographic extent. Some briefer but severe, wide-scale swings can be traced to single events, such as the four years of cold summers following the Tambora eruption of 1815.

Given such variability over the past millennium, in itself a tiny fragment of geological time, how much certainty surrounds the current changes? The public have come to expect yes or no answers delivered with aplomb, yet some areas of science such as climate studies involve chaos mathematics, thus generating results based on levels of probability. What the public might consider vacillation, researchers consider the ultimate expression of scientific good practice. Could this lack of black-and-white certainty be why some media channels insist on providing a 'counterbalancing' viewpoint from non-expert sources, as ludicrous as this seems?

In-depth thinking about a subject relies upon compartmentalisation and reductionism. Otherwise, we would forever be bogged down in the details and never be able to form an overall picture. But this quantising of reality is not necessarily a good thing if it generates a false impression regarding cause and effect. By suffering from what Richard Dawkins calls the “tyranny of the discontinuous mind” we are prone to creating boundaries that just don't exist. In which case, could a line ever be found between short term local variation and global climate change? Having said that, I doubt many climate scientists would use this as an excuse to switch to weather forecasting instead. Oh dear: this is beginning to look like a 'does not compute' error!

In a sense of course we are exceptionally lucky to have developed science at all. We rely on language to define our ideas, so need a certain level of linguistic sophistication to achieve this focus; tribal cultures whose numbers consist of imprecise values beyond two are unlikely to achieve much headway in, for example, classifying the periodic table.

Unfortunately, our current obsession with generating information of every quality imaginable and then loading it to all available channels for the widest possible audience inevitably leads to a tooth-and-claw form of meme selection. The upshot of this bombardment of noise and trivia is to require an enormous amount of time just filtering it. The knock-on effect being that minimal time is left for identifying the most useful or accurate content rather than simply the most disseminated.

Extremist politicians have long been adept at exploiting this weakness to expound polarising phraseology that initially sounds good but lacks depth; they achieve cut-through with the simplest and loudest of arguments, fulfilling the desire most people have to fit into a rigid social hierarchy - as seen in many other primate species. The problem is that in a similar vein to centrist politicians who can see both sides of an argument but whose rational approach negates emotive rhetoric, scientists are often stuck with the unappealing options of either taking a stand when the outcome is not totally clear, or facing accusations of evasion. There is current trend, particularly espoused by politicians, to disparage experts, but discovering how the universe works doesn't guarantee hard-and-fast answers supplied exactly when required and which provide comfort blankets in a harsh world.

Where then does this leave critical thinking, let alone science? Another quote from Richard Dawkins is that "rigorous common sense is by no means obvious to much of the world". This pessimistic view of the human race is supported by many a news article but somewhat negated by the immense popularity of star science communicators, at least in a number of countries.

Both the methods and results of science need to find a space amongst the humorous kitten videos, conspiracy theorists and those who yearn for humanity to be the pinnacle and purpose of creation. If we can comprehend that our primary mode of thinking includes a subconscious baggage train of hopes, fears and distorted memories, we stand a better chance of seeing the world for how it really is and not how we wish it to be. Whether enough of us can dissipate that fog remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the ice keeps melting and the temperature rising, regardless of what you might hear...

Hammer and chisel: the top ten reasons why fossil hunting is so important

At a time when the constantly evolving world of consumer digital technology seems to echo the mega-budget, cutting-edge experiments of the LHC and LIGO, is there still room for such an old-fashioned, low-tech science as paleontology?

The answer is of course yes, and while non-experts might see little difference between its practice today and that of its Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century pioneers, contemporary paleontology does on occasion utilise MRI scanners among other sophisticated equipment. I've previously discussed the delights of fossil hunting as an easy way to involve children in science, yet the apparent simplicity of its core techniques mask the key role that paleontology still plays in evolutionary biology.

Since the days of Watson and Crick molecular biology has progressed in leaps and bounds, yet the contemporary proliferation of cheap DNA-testing kits and television shows devoted to gene-derived genealogy obscure just how tentatively some of their results should be accepted. The levels of accuracy quoted in non-specialist media is often far greater than what can actually be attained. For example, the data on British populations has so far failed to separate those with Danish Viking ancestry from descendants of earlier Anglo-Saxon immigration, leading to population estimates at odds with the archaeological evidence.

Here then is a list of ten reasons why fossil hunting will always be a relevant branch of science, able to supply information that cannot be supplied by other scientific disciplines:

1. Locations. Although genetic evidence can show the broad sweeps connecting extant (and occasionally, recently-extinct) species, the details of where animals, plants or fungi evolved, migrated to - and when - relies on fossil evidence.
2. Absolute dating. While gene analysis can be used to obtain the dates of a last common ancestor shared by contemporary species, the results are provisional at best for when certain key groups or features evolved. Thanks to radiometric dating from some fossiliferous locales, paleontologists are able to fill in the gaps in fossil-filled strata that don't have radioactive mineralogy.
3. Initial versus canonical. Today we think of land-living tetrapods (i.e. amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds) as having a maximum of five digits per limb. Although these are reduced in many species – as per horse's hooves – five is considered canonical. However, fossil evidence shows that early terrestrial vertebrates had up to eight digits on some or all of their limbs. We know genetic mutation adds extra digits, but this doesn't help reconstruct the polydactyly of ancestral species; only fossils provide confirmation.
4. Extinct life. Without finding their fossils, we wouldn't know of even such long-lasting and multifarious groups as the dinosaurs: how could we guess about the existence of a parasaurolophus from looking at its closest extant cousins, such as penguins, pelicans or parrots? There are also many broken branches in the tree of life, with such large-scale dead-ends as the pre-Cambrian Ediacaran biota. These lost lifeforms teach us something about the nature of evolution yet leave no genetic evidence.
5. Individual history. Genomes show the cellular state of an organism, but thanks to fossilised tooth wear, body wounds and stomach contents (including gastroliths) we have important insights into day-to-day events in the life of ancient animals. This has led to fairly detailed biographies of some creatures, prominent examples being Sue the T-Rex and Al the Allosaurus, their remains being comprehensive enough to identify various pathologies.
6. Paleoecology. Coprolites (fossilised faeces), along with the casts of burrows, help build a detailed enviromental picture that zoology and molecular biology cannot provide. Sometimes the best source of vegetation data comes from coprolites containing plant matter, due to the differing circumstances of decomposition and mineralisation.
7. External appearance. Thanks to likes of scanning electron microscopes, fossils of naturally mummified organisms or mineralised skin can offer details that are unlikely to be discovered by any other method. A good example that has emerged in the past two decades is the colour of feathered dinosaurs obtained from the shape of their melanosomes.
8. Climate analysis. Geological investigation can provide ancient climate data but fossil evidence, such as the giant insects of the Carboniferous period, confirm the hypothesis. After all, dragonflies with seventy centimetre wingspans couldn't survive with today's level of atmospheric oxygen.
9. Stratigraphy. Paleontology can help geologists trying to sequence an isolated section of folded stratigraphy that doesn't have radioactive mineralogy. By assessing the relative order of known fossil species, the laying down of the strata can be placed in the correct sequence.
10. Evidence of evolution. Unlike the theories and complex equipment used in molecular biology, anyone without expert knowledge can visit fossils in museums or in situ. They offer a prominent resource as defence against religious fundamentalism, as their ubiquity makes them difficult to explain by alternative theories. The fact that species are never found in strata outside their era supports the scientific view of life's development rather than those found in religious texts (the Old Testament, for example, erroneously states that birds were created prior to all other land animals).

To date, no DNA has been found over about 800,000 years old. This means that many of the details of the history of life rely primarily on fossil evidence. It's therefore good to note that even in an age of high-tech science, the painstaking techniques of paleontology can shed light on biology in a way unobtainable by more recent examples of the scientific toolkit. Of course, the study is far from fool-proof: it is thought that only about ten percent of all species have ever come to light in fossil form, with the found examples heavily skewed in favour of shallow marine environments.

Nevertheless, paleontology is a discipline that constantly proves its immense value in expanding our knowledge of the past in a way no religious text could ever do. It may be easy to understand what fossils are, but they are assuredly worth their weight in gold: precious windows onto an unrecoverable past.