English punk-fecker pledges support for Israel.

Scores of Irish artist-feckers pledge to boycott Israel.

The figure 23,001 should be stamped onto my forehead, it being my membership number for the Cloud Appreciation Society. I have only just got around to joining this community of cultured and fluffy folk who celebrate the patron goddesses of idle fellows. This is more than a year after first watching Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s most splendid television documentary, Cloudspotting, which was re-broadcast by the BBC last Saturday.

Manifesto of the Cloud Appreciation Society…

WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned
and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.

We think that they are Nature’s poetry,
and the most egalitarian of her displays, since
everyone can have a fantastic view of them.

We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it.
Life would be dull if we had to look up at
cloudless monotony day after day.

We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the
atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of
a person’s countenance.

Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked.
They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.
Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save
on psychoanalysis bills.

And so we say to all who’ll listen:
Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!

The Cloud Appreciation Society membership certificate I shall treasure. It is already more valuable to me than my PhD diploma, and is most likely more useful.

From a letter today in the Groan…

“We urge Waterstone’s to reconsider its decision to host a book-signing on 8 September for Tony Blair to launch the publication of his memoirs. We believe this event will be deeply offensive to most people in Britain. A large majority of the British public say Mr Blair told lies and fabricated evidence to take Britain into a war with Iraq that he knew to be illegal under international law. According to a recent poll, 25% believe Mr Blair should be indicted for war crimes.”

The letter is signed by…

Iain Banks, AL Kennedy, Moazzem Begg, Andrew Burgin, Ben Griffin, Lindsey German, Dr Felicity Arbuthnot, Tanya Tier, John Pilger, Michael Nyman, Andrew Murray

Well, that’s the reputations of two half-decent novelists and an occasionally interesting composer gone for a Burton. But never mind, there’s plenty more where they came from.

Oh, and, er, cheers Tony!

The Guardian‘s Katie Allen reports that regions of Britain vulnerable to public sector job cuts could soon see a house price crash. For example, in Aberystwyth in Wales and Morpeth in England, property prices are currently stagnating if not falling.

House price falls have been forecast throughout the British Isles, so one has to question the relevance of the data presented by Hometrack and reported in the Grauniad. But still they are interesting, and particularly so to me, given that for years I lived in or around Aberystwyth, and would quite likely return to the Ceredigion region if I could afford to do so, even without a job at the university. After all, Aberystwyth lies just 10 kilometres south of Borth, the cultural capital of mid-Wales, I felt more at home in Aber’ than in most places in which I’ve resided during my 46 years, and I speak the language.

The view of Bae Ceredigion above is similar to that from my apartment on the hillside next to the funicular railway running between Aber’s world-famous promenade to the top of Y Graig Glais.

Having fallen off the so-called ‘property ladder’ following my divorce in Denmark back in 2002, and being reliant for the moment on a wildly fluctuating income as a freelance writer, editor, consultant and dogsbody, I cannot risk buying a house anywhere in Britain. It would seem that a majority of middle class professionals who do not currently own their home are in a similar situation, with no chance of buying a house unless they can stump up at least fifty grand in deposit, and have an annual income way above the UK average.

This leaves me in a bit of a moral quandary. Do I accept my fate as a second-class citizen in what is still largely a property-owning, petite-bourgeois society, or do I bank on the imminent misfortune of others in a fucked-up, Con-Lib hellhole, and hope for a house price crash on the back of mass public sector redundancies, and further job losses in a grossly mismanaged private sector?

Given the I’m all right Jack attitude of many property-owning young professionals, and the swelling ranks of middle-aged baby boomers whose final salary pensions remain assured, I’m afraid that my sympathies do not stretch very far.

Dead hat, even. This web lodge was earlier today visited by the ghost of a long since departed UK government research council…

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council breathed its last on 1 April 2007, but it appears that the wandering soul of PPARC continues to roam cyberspace.

Industrial jetty on the River Thames near Greenwich (photo: Francis Sedgemore)

When in the southeast of England, I do most of my cycling around the rolling hills of rural northwest Kent. But in the past few months some of my rides have been explorations of London’s waterways, including the River Thames and its tributaries the Ravensbourne and Quaggy, and man-made channels such as the Regents and Grand Union canals, and the River Lea Navigation.

Between Greenwich and Woolwich is a 10 kilometre stretch of the River Thames with a long industrial heritage, and along the riverbank one can cycle with only a few short detours away from the waterfront. In East Greenwich, near the Millennium Dome (aka Blair’s Folly, or the O2 Arena), there are a number of industrial jetties such as the one shown here.

On the surface they may be ugly structures, but, with the often rich texture of decaying concrete, the jetties fascinate me, and occasionally I stop to contemplate how they were once used. There is still some industrial activity in the area, but this is now limited mostly to aggregate firms, with ships bringing in sand from the Thames Estuary and North Sea regions. The smaller jetties are left unused, memorials to a bygone age.

The blogging Zionist cartoon character Snoopy the Goon has given us an affectionate obituary of Winnie Langley, a smoker of this parish who recently inhaled her last, just a week short of her 103rd birthday.

RIP Winnie Langley (1907–2010).

My maternal grandfather John Boult may not have made it as far as 103 years minus a week, but he had a good innings, all things considered, and smoked like a trooper through virtually all of it. I appear to possess not a single photograph of Granddad John without a lit tab in his hand.

The picture to the right is of Granddad and me out for the afternoon in the summer of 1966, poisoning pigeons in the park. See how lean my Granddaddy was? That’s nicotine for you. Now contrast that elegant thinness with the chubby-chops sitting on the bench, stuffing himself with cake.

On the day of his funeral I put a pack of Bensons into the breast pocket of Granddad John’s suit as he lay in his coffin, waiting for the undertakers to haul him out to the hearse for his final journey … to the crematorium. The other packs of ciggies Granddad left behind I kept for myself. That was three years before I quit smoking, and for me it’s been all downhill since then.

RIP John Boult (1917–1999).

Tightening of the public purse strings is beginning to filter through to the world of academia, and it would seem that one particular consequence of anticipated spending cuts is a withdrawal of funding for the science communication initiatives known as the Partnerships for Public Engagement (PPE). Funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, PPE have provided opportunities for researchers to undertake public outreach projects related to their work.

But no longer, according to the EPSRC, which has announced that it will cease operating the scheme with immediate effect. It has cancelled the PPE call planned for this autumn.

Why has the EPSRC done this? That is a good question, and one for which we do not yet have a credible answer. The council’s press office claims that an as yet undefined “new structure” will enable the EPSRC to build a “high quality portfolio that is more closely linked to the research we fund,…”, and promises a consultation exercise. Yet the very same statement refers to resource allocation and spending reviews.

Science communication specialists are divided in their response to the move, with some, after seeking clarification from the EPSRC press office, opting to give the council the benefit of the doubt. However, the clarification in question amounts to yet more PR spin, and other science communicators have responded with negative comments and pertinent questions.

Science and engineering public outreach is nothing if not “inherently linked with research”, to use the EPSRC’s words, so the original press release is meaningless unless one reads between the lines. I interpret the statement to mean that research councils could soon withdraw funding from professional science communicators. They will instead put more pressure on research scientists and engineers to engage in public outreach, and penalise them if they fail to do so.

Actually, that’s not such a bad idea, but it’s not nearly enough. You might say that researchers are already encouraged to engage in public outreach. That is indeed so, but, when it comes to bean-counting, public outreach plays little or no part in the formal assessment of grant applications and research programmes. This applies not only to the UK research councils, but also to the European Union through its Framework Programmes.

What I would like to see are some numbers detailing the financial savings to be made by the research councils in withdrawing support from public engagement programmes. Relying on academics to do the outreach work is unlikely to achieve the desired results. A few notable academics may be outstanding communicators, but most are not particularly good at public outreach, and many object to activities they see as a distraction from research.

My worry is that money earmarked for public engagement will be increasingly diverted toward impact-evaluation consultancy fees. One thing you can be sure of in any public spending cuts exercise is that management consultants will continue to thrive. That is the way of the world.

And what of the brickbats mentioned in the title? As I’ve said, some academics do not approve of wasting precious research time and resources with public outreach activities, and this sad fact has come out in recent discussions surrounding the EPSRC’s decision to terminate the PPE scheme.

Public outreach efforts are expected of academic research scientists and engineers, and the importance of communication is stressed in various invitations to tender for research funding. The problem is that, when left to their own devices, academics will often attempt to fulfil their outreach obligations by promising no more than to set up a website, based on an “If we build it they will come” rationale. And that, apparently, is good enough for many of those whose job it is to evaluate research grant applications. Here I speak from personal experience, as an occasional consultant commissioned to evaluate research grant applications.

When the inadequacy of a website-only public outreach strategy is pointed out to the academics responsible, back comes the reply that, if there is a choice between keeping contract research staff and technicians in their jobs, “or” keeping public outreach websites up-to-date, it is perfectly acceptable to neglect communications work.

But there is no such choice to be made. In presenting science communication as a chore to be set aside when there are more pressing needs, these shortsighted academics prove the point made by science communication professionals. The arguments made by such academics are brickbats, and most offensive ones at that. There is no “or” involved in professional project management. Either you do the job or you don’t.

Clearly we have a way to go in convincing academic scientists of the need to look beyond their ivory towers and peer groups.

Democracy 101…

1. Research Councils are controlled by the Government.
2. The Government is accountable to Parliament.
3. Parliament is elected by the People.
4. The People are a collection of individuals with views on this, that and the other.
5. Ergo, the Research Councils are accountable to the public.

I’ve been attacked for this “condescending lesson in democracy”, but make no apology for using such a deliberately provocative form of words.

Science communication matters when public opinion (and prejudice) can have a significant influence on research priorities. Forget political party election manifestos; pressure on politicians from civil society through single issue campaigns is what’s important, and it often filters through quickly to the policymaking process. For good or ill.

Public engagement is essential in science and engineering research. It should be integrated closely with the research itself, and must not be seen as a side issue. What we should be discussing is how best to communicate science with the public, and who is best qualified to do it.

In light of the EPSRC’s decision to kill off the PPE scheme, maybe it’s time to formulate some very specific questions for our political leaders and their executive agents in the research councils. Questions that cannot be answered with meaningless PR spin.

So it’s farewell to Jimmy Reid (1932–2010): socialist, trade unionist and self-taught, working-class intellectual. In 1971 Reid led the disciplined Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in which resulted in Ted Heath’s Tory government abandoning its plans to close the shipyards.

“There will be no hooliganism, no vandalism and no bevvying.”

A one-time member of the Communist Party who in 1979 left to join Labour, and subsequently the Scottish National Party in 2005, Jimmy Reid was a man of passion and integrity who rose through the ranks of the labour and trade union movement without compromising his principles for the sake of personal advancement. He never succeeded in entering the UK Parliament, but so what? Reid achieved more in his distinguished career than many left-wing MPs of whatever party.

One of the arguments put forward by climate sceptics and deniers is that CO₂ = life. That is, more carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere will result in increased plant growth, which will in turn lead to a relative cooling of the atmosphere, thereby mitigating if not reversing climate change.

Do the sceptics have anything to go on when making this statement? Not really, as we do not yet understand in detail the mechanisms involved, and there are thus no hard numbers with which to back up the cooling feedback claim.

A team of researchers led by Lund University bioscientist Almut Arneth has now given us a first estimate of the effect of atmosphere-biosphere feedbacks, and the numbers do not look good for those who see in the process a natural means of mitigating anthropogenic climate change.

In a paper published recently in the journal Nature Geoscience, Arneth and her colleagues show that, by the end of the 21st century, the positive radiative forcing arising from feedbacks between the terrestrial biosphere and atmosphere could be as much as 1.5 watts per square metre of the Earth’s surface, per degree of temperature change.

What does this mean in practice? If Arneth’s estimate is correct, the biogeochemical feedback mechanisms described could substantially reduce or even eliminate the cooling effect of carbon dioxide fertilisation in the terrestrial biosphere. The overall magnitude of the feedbacks could, say the researchers, be similar to that of feedbacks in the physical climate system. It all depends on the synergies between individual feedback mechanisms, and the extent to which interactions with the nitrogen cycle stimulate or restrict carbon sequestration.

The researchers say that an improved knowledge of interactions between the Earth’s biosphere and atmosphere should be a priority for the scientific community. Such an understanding will facilitate atmosphere and ecosystem management in the light of post-Kyoto negotiations, and the development of climate and air pollution control strategies.

Further reading: Arneth et al., “Terrestrial biogeochemical feedbacks in the climate system”, Nature Geoscience 3, 525 (2010)