Satire comes to the defence of geologists

While it was gratifying to have the Geological Society of London post a rapid response to Iain-Duncan Smith’s (IDS) facetious comments about the relative value of geological knowledge versus being able to find things in the supermarket, I now find that Radio 4’s ‘Now Show’ has come to our defence.

In this week’s episode there is a section, around six minutes in, which satirizes IDS’s remarks. I think thanks are due to Hugh Dennis, who is a self-described ‘geology enthusiast’.  He is giving a talk on his passion for geology and landscape in London on March 12th.

British Trust for Ornithology BirdTrack App-Fantastic effort

Started using the BTO’s app for recording bird sightings that works on my smart phone. Really good interface and excellent georeferencing tools. Would have liked to be more involved in the Foot It challenge, which involves recording as many birds on foot from your home as possible on a round walk. 

The Hallowe’en Taphonomy Experiment: Five alive

A further teaser for the 2012 tumshie and friends taphonomy experiment. Here are the contenders. Jenna picked the pineapple, which I’ll admit looks more evil than Satan himself (let’s see where that leads in Google and Bing).  However, she has much to learn about the durability of soft fruit in the Scottish autumnal climate.

PB for Dublin: 4:42:04

I made it over the finish line at 4:42:04, which is a little under my previous time for Dublin. Thanks to Gina, Jonny and Bink for coming out to meet me at the end and shepherd me to the pub. Although a long way from my best marathon times in Germany, this is the first sub five-hour marathon for a couple of years, so I am pleased with that. Sub 4:30 may be in my grasp again.

Legs still a bit sore but not as sore as when I crossed the line!

http://www.Marathon-Photos.com/scripts/event.py?event=Sports/CPUK/2012/Dublin%20Marathon&match=14752&name=Alistair

Fruit and veg taphonomy experiment will be back soon…

Christine has bought five varied fruits and vegetables for this year’s experiment. Enjoy Samhain.

Dublin marathon today

Running the Dublin marathon today, in what should be good weather for me. A bit chilly, almost no wind, possibly a bit overcast. Went to the breakfast run yesterday morning, which was a pleasant trot round the North Quay area. The Irish folk music played live after the run was a welcome break from U2′s back catalogue. Why marathon organisers think that everyone wants to hear every up-beat tune of the 80s and 90s is beyond me.

Not planning to push it hard but I am better trained than for Dingle, so I would like to go better than my previous Dublin time of about 4:45. More news later.

Two publications in one week: PNAS and RSPB

I did have a good week of publications back in September.

One paper, with Peter Mayhew (University of York) leading the team including Tim Benton (University of Leeds) and Mark Bell (now at UCL after a couple of years at Glasgow), made it in to PNAS. The paper looked at the relationship between a large number of biotic and abiotic variables and marine invertebrate biodiversity.

Peter was very good at keeping track of where we were being covered on the web and the partial list below gives a cross-section of the coverage

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/27/1200844109.abstract

http://science.time.com/2012/09/04/biodiversity-has-increased-during-earths-warm-periods-but-climate-change-isnt-off-the-hook/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/sep/04/climate-change-biodiversity?newsfeed=true

http://news.discovery.com/earth/warming-to-boost-biodiversity-dnews-nugget.html

http://planetsave.com/2012/09/04/warming-earth-results-in-contrasting-consequences-but-not-so-fast/

http://frenchtribune.com/teneur/1213229-global-warming-not-harmful-biodiversity-researchers-claim

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=biodiversity-found-increase-during-warm-periods-earths-history

The coverage varies from very good (where Peter gave in-depth interviews) to missing the point. The most difficult thing for us was always the concern that the result would be taken by people with a purely political agenda to say that a warmer planet would be better for biodiversity in the current phase of increasing global mean average temperatures. So we wrote a very clear end to the press release to indicate that our results were not amenable to that conclusion. So that caveat tended to become ‘the story’ in the media.

The other paper was much lower key and got no press attention but looked at the similarities and differences in the biodiversity trajectories obtained when you make a correction based on changes in rock area versus a correction based on subsampling the lists of taxa recovered during a given time interval. The results indicated that the good news is that, because the two corrected curves are similar, there is a real biological signal out there in the fossil record.

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1746/4489.abstract.html.

Wicklow Mountains in the dark and mist

Now the consolidation period of my Summer Mountain Leader training has started, it is back to the hills in the dark days and nights. Last Friday I caught the St. Kevin’s Bus down to Glendalough (Glen of the Two Lochs) and headed for the Lugduff ridge for a night bivvy. I headed up the glen through the forest tracks towards Lugduff. This involved picking up the Wicklow Way, which is a good trail in some places but in others the trail makes extensive use of paired railway sleepers to raise the trail about the fragile bog. These are difficult in the dark, as the flat light from a LED headtorch can lead to missing steps down. I made it to the path below the ridge and struck off. Then the fun began!

Many of the summits are low and rounded with peat workings. The workings aren’t marked on maps but this doesn’t make them any less of an obstacle. I missed a trench and went down a good metre or so. No harm done to me but the walking pole did not survive.

Snap! Walking pole that didn’t survive

At this point I became aware of how extensive peat workings around me and decided it was time to bivvy down. New bivvy bag was deployed in a small hollow just big enough for me and dinner was accompanied by the roaring of the stags at the rut.

Spent a pretty comfortable night and moved with the early light. A brief spell of clearish visibility let me get over Lugduff easily enough. On the way up the slope I saw two stags eyeing each other up but one of the hinds barked and all parties were off to other parts of the hill.

On the crossing of the slope towards the next peak the sun broke through and cast my shadow on to the mist lying below me, generating a Brocken Spectre. I was the Great Grey Man of well, er, a nameless bit of bog.

Started making my way to Conavallal and the visibility closed in. I headed for the summit but ran into incised peat hags, which forced me to rely on the compass.
Eventually I decided to head down the hill and relocate myself. After 500m or so I hit a forestry edge and that gave me a new bearing for the summit cairn, which I found successfully.

Crossed towards Table Mountain but had similar problems there in peat banks and gave up and made for the Table Track and then down into Glenmalure. Passed several memorials to the people who fought for Irish Independence in the 1798 revolt against British Rule. As I retreated down the glen the cloud burned off on the ridges but such is life. There are no certainties on the hill.

One big difference in the Ordnance Survey Ireland maps (at least Sheet 56) is how few features are named, compared to the Scottish Mountains. It does make you rely a lot more on slope features, so you’re working harder on your navigation than looking for named topographic features.
Got a lift back to Laragh from a kind chap who had been up Mount Leinster that morning and back by bus for Korean BBQ and beer in Dublin.

Next trip I am looking at is Kippure by any route other than the track to the transmitter and then onwards to the ring of high hills above the Kilbride Firing Range.

Completed Mountain Leader Training Week

Waiting for the train back to Edinburgh after a week at Glenmore Lodge completing Summer Mountain Leader Training. More later, but in the meantime here are some pictures of a fogbow being cast near our campsite on Feith Buidhe.

Not all who wander are lost (we’re just walking on a bearing)

Final quality mountain day (QMD) out in the Wicklow Mountains, south of Dublin, before I undergo my 6 days of Mountain Leader Training from at the superb Glenmore Lodge in the Cairngorms, Scotland’s National Outdoor Centre. A sort of university of the Great Outdoors.

The bus to the planned village of Enniskerry on the NE edge of the Wicklow Mountains National Park was excellent value at €2.65 each way. Due to the more restrictive access laws in Ireland, I had to follow the road network for about 6km  to a Coillte site at Crone, where I got up the hill on to my first top, Maulin. Swung westwards over to Tonduff, which has a top of peat hags with deep erosion down to the granite bedrock. A handy tip for those walking in low cloud on these mountains is that the deep erosive features are concentrated on the summits and ridgelines.

Made my way over a saddle to War Hill in low cloud, mist and rain, so the map and compass were out. I did pick up faint tracks on the way up and hit the summit OK. I then took a bearing from the map towards Djouce, the highest peak of the day, and headed into another boggy gap. This was the least fun bit of the day as the gap was filled with peat hags and I had to head off bearing to the saddle. Danu then smiled upon me and the cloud was blown aside a bit, revealing the rocky shoulder of Djouce and one of the line of fenceposts I knew led to the summit, thanks to Paddy Dillion’s ‘Mountains of Ireland‘ guidebook. I topped out just as the cloud blew completely away and the sun came out. As quick lope over to White Hill finished the peaks for the day and I then returned to Enniskerry by the Wicklow Way and a kind lift from a couple of other walkers.

The strangest part of the experience was the names of the mountains and features given. Apologies in advance for lack of accents over vowels in Gaelic words in this section. Please point out any hilarious errors due to the lack of them! Djouce is a rendering of Dubh ais, black back. Paddy Dillion’s guidebook helpfully gives the Gaelic names, which are usually close enough to Scots Gaelic to give me information about the features but I am going to be interested to see how mountains are named in Ireland, relative to Scotland. Are the defining features the same? Tonduff is also rendered black back in Paddy Dillon’s book but from a bit of reading it could also be Black Backside. I reckon in Scotland it might have been named Druim Dubh (Black Ridge). Of course, what got written on the map might have borne little or no resemblance to the names used by the majority of people at the time. Just as in Wales and Scotland.

The Wicklow Mountains also possess a military road to the west of where I was walking, built to help suppress those who ‘took to the heather’ after being, well, cleared off their land, just as in Scotland. I am planning some more reading on this topic in the UCD library at some point.