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164 comments on Report from 33d Intl. Geology Congress in Norway (By Charlie Hall)

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Powelliphanta on August 24, 2008 - 11:02am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Interesting to hear of the scepticism regarding anthropogenic climate change at this conference, which reinforces points made in a Drumbeat comments thread a couple of weeks ago. A colleague just returned from the same conference (33d International Geology Congress) has told me that he has never seen such a high ratio of industry to academia, at any other meeting. He had also attended in response to an invitation and would not normally have been at this conference - he was bored stupid by the experience and reckons that from a research perspective it was a complete waste of his time.

For research-focussed general Earth Science conferences of similar scale (~10,000 presentations each) see EGU (Europe) http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2008/ or AGU (North America) http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm07/ both held annually. Abstracts are available on-line for both for as many years as you could care to read through and paint a very different picture in terms of attitudes towards anthropogenic climate change. Nothing at all on peak oil, mind.

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drillo on August 25, 2008 - 2:08pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

high ratio of industry to academia

That was also my impression when I looked at the program and the abstracts. I think there are way too many "scientific conferences" and "technical journals", which in fact aren't really designed to bring science forward but rather serve to promote corporate PR, give a podium to certain speakers and to give an opportunity for business networking.
Otherwise I wouldn't understand presentations like that of Neil Williams, President of the Society of Economic Geologists, CEO Geoscience Australia, who seriously claims things like "The exhaustion of mineral resources is unlikely to be a major concern in the future; rather the concern will be the exhaustion of innovation."
From a PR point of view this statement is plain logic - he wants to get more funds for his "innovative" society members. If he'd talk about depletion he would (indirectly) say: Don't waste your money on us but spend it on renewables & conservation.

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tomc on August 25, 2008 - 3:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Don't you think you're pulling a fast one here ? Climate change denial = business ?

I mean do you read stuff like the BBC ? Business is VERY pro-AGW these days. I get a strong impression it is actually academia who are turning more and more anti-AGW.

And it is trivially true that this carbon trading scheme has put a LOT of money on the AGW bandwagon. A hell of a lot. Over 150 billion I believe.

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silence on August 25, 2008 - 4:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Climate change denial is in fact a rather large industry -- something like $400 million per year in the United States alone.

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Dryki on August 25, 2008 - 11:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Business is VERY pro-AGW these days.

Which is why there are proposals in your town Planning Board and Council to rip out developments? And why newspapers and TV are no longer pushing mortgages, new cars and whiter teeth. Business cares about selling more stuff. And lying to accomplish that is just fine.

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tomc on August 26, 2008 - 6:34am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Is this a real question ? What you're asking is "why haven't they halted the economy then".

You're basically asking "why haven't we killed all personal and business initiatives because of a potential future threat".

Does this question really need answering ? It is beyond obvious to me.

For starters, if "they" did that, "they" (and "we") would be dead. Suicide is not a reasonable response to the chance of a future accident or problem, no matter how large the chances.

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ericy on August 25, 2008 - 5:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Reminds me of an old physics joke.

The increase in the number of scientific journals means that the rate at which library shelf space is being taken up will soon exceed the speed of light. This doesn't violate the theory of relativity however as there is no information being transmitted.

But on a more serious note, back in the day I did some research and went to some conferences, and I found most of them to be rather tedious. You did have the opportunity to network with people, and this is valid in itself, I guess.

We used to have problems with government bureaucracy as well. For example, to measure your performance they would simply count up the number of papers you published, with no attempt being made to try and establish whether the papers were substantive in any way. Thus if we had just finished a set of measurements we would split things up and write several papers that essentially covered the same thing but with minor differences, and each paper might focus on a different aspect of the thing. I can't completely blame the government bean-counters for this though - the academics that we worked with had idiotic beancounters that were watching over their shoulders as well. After a while it sapped all of my energies...

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164 comments on Report from 33d Intl. Geology Congress in Norway (By Charlie Hall)

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