The Best Australian Science Writing 2013

by Jane McCredie

  Not everyone in the scientific community welcomed this theory. Critics were scathing, largely because there was no evidence for how Wegener envisaged the continents moved across the surface. Comments such as ‘German pseudo-science’ and ‘purely fantastic’ indicate the depth of feeling. It was not until the 1960s that Wegener’s ideas became widely accepted, once it was recognised that it wasn’t the continents that moved per se but the plates on which they sit and float. Plate tectonics was able to explain how new continents and oceans were created, destroyed or rubbed along uncomfortably together.

  Ironically, a focus of the Australasian effort, Macquarie Island, is now known to lie on the eastern boundary of the Indo-Australian Pacific Plate, explaining the frequent earthquakes experienced by Mawson’s men based there. It was not enough, however, to convince the Australian leader, who remained distinctly cold to the idea, though Sir Edgeworth David did come round to the concept. More importantly, though, continental drift suddenly made it possible to argue that the Antarctic coal had formed in lower latitudes and then moved on. But was this the whole story?

  During the Permian, Glossopteris dominated the Gondwanan scenery. But it was not the only thing growing in the landscape. The diversity of Antarctic vegetation found alongside Glossopteris was relatively low, implying cooler conditions. More significantly, associated deposits were found to contain magnetic particles that sit close to vertical – the same principle behind dipping compasses – proving Antarctica was close to the magnetic pole at the time of Glossopteris and the formation of coal. It appeared that Antarctica had not been that far north, after all: at least, not far enough to avoid several months of 24-hour darkness each year. And yet, given the large size of Glossopteris, it must have been relatively warm.

  A strong clue to how this was so is provided by a remarkable living fossil, the Chinese deciduous tree ginkgo, or Ginkgo biloba. Fossils of this plant have been found in Antarctic rocks dating back to the Cretaceous period, some 100 million years ago. Although this was after the time of Glossopteris, we know greenhouse gas levels were at similarly high levels. Concentrations of air-breathing stomata on fossil leaves provide a first-order estimate of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The greater the concentration of gas, the more efficiently the plant photosynthesises and the fewer stomata it needs. By nourishing the plants at different levels of carbon dioxide the relationship can be quantified, and the results make fascinating reading. Compared to today’s level of 396 parts per million and rising, estimates for the time ginkgo was flourishing in Antarctica suggest it was around 800 parts per million. The Earth was in the grip of an extreme greenhouse effect.

  The corresponding high temperatures meant there were no icecaps. Instead, the landscape was dominated by rainforest and inhabited by a wealth of wildlife. By growing ginkgo seedlings in blacked-out greenhouses with high levels of carbon dioxide, scientists at the University of Sheffield, in England, have been able to test whether the tree was capable of withstanding complete darkness for months on end. Although the ginkgo plants used up precious food reserves during winter, they could more than compensate for this by photosynthesising during the 24 hours of summer daylight. So long as carbon dioxide levels remained high, the forests of Antarctica could not only survive in the dark but thrive.

  With the ceaseless shuffling of plates on the surface, Gondwanaland’s time was limited. Huge flows of lava dating back to the Jurassic period are preserved within the Transantarctic Mountains, testament to the massive forces Alfred Wegener envisaged. By the late Cretaceous, some 80 million years ago, the last hanger-on, New Zealand, finally split from the West Antarctic. The supercontinent was no more. The rifting continues today: the Mount Erebus volcano in the Ross Sea is a visible sign of the process that began all those years ago. Satellite data collected since the 1980s shows how perceptive Wegener was. The crust still carries the physical scarring that marks the break-up of Gondwanaland, and the links between Antarctica and the other southern continents. It is a spectacular confirmation of the German’s idea of a ‘flight from the poles’.

  The end of Gondwanaland had global repercussions. The opening up of the Drake Passage and Scotia Sea around 30 million years ago brought one of the world’s great ocean currents, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, into being. Although this Antarctic current sustains abundant life in the Southern Ocean – including South Georgia and other sub-Antarctic islands – it isolated the southern continent from the rest of the planet. Temperatures in Antarctica dropped precipitously and the vast ice sheets we see today began to grow. With the accompanying cooling there were massive evolutionary changes.

  For those left behind on the keystone continent of Gondwanaland, the future would prove considerably challenging.

  * * * * *

  No group encapsulates the spirit of scientific exploration more than Robert Scott and his South Pole party. Unfortunately, their deaths overshadowed their expedition’s great work – and arguably much of that achieved by the other teams. Heroic tales of sacrifice and endurance in the face of extreme hardship became the main story, to the detriment of almost everything else.

  When I started researching this era in Antarctic exploration, I had no desire to add to the commentary on the deaths of Scott and his men. There are many wonderful books on the events surrounding this journey and all give a more comprehensive view of them than I could hope to. But, during my research, I stumbled across a new part of the story, with implications for the way we honour the men’s memory and, more generally, how science is communicated to people outside the profession.

  With the news of the tragedy, rumours circulated that the full story had not been told: that something else had happened on the ice, something that was being quietly ignored. To try to understand what, I went in May 2011 to view some of Lord Curzon’s papers held by the British Library.

  The first clue was in a short set of notes: seven pages that had been buried in a file for nearly a century. They shed light on a chain of events that was precipitated in April 1913 by Lady Kathleen Scott’s arrival in London from New Zealand, returning after news of her husband’s death. During the month-long voyage Lady Scott had pored over her late husband’s diary and correspondence. Arriving in London on 14 April, she immediately contacted Lord Curzon, in his role as president of the Royal Geographical Society, and arranged a meeting in two days’ time.

  Curzon made notes of the meeting after what appears to have been a wide-ranging discussion over Lady Scott’s findings. The meeting began, unsurprisingly, with talk of her late husband:

  Scott’s words in his Diary on exhaustion of food & fuel in depots on his return. He spoke in reference of ‘lack of thoughtfulness & even of generosity’. It appears Lieut Evans – down with Scurvy – and the 2 men with him must on return journey have entered & consumed more than their share.

  This must have come as a shock to Curzon. Had one of the returning parties, led no less by the expedition’s second-in-command, taken more than their fair share of supplies? Scott’s Antarctic venture was seen in some quarters as the society’s expedition. If Teddy Evans was even remotely suspected of being complicit in Scott’s death, the RGS might be asked some very difficult questions, particularly as he had since assumed the leadership of the expedition.

  Curzon immediately initiated an inquiry, asking several senior RGS members if they would discreetly help him investigate the matter. Most were supportive but things changed a few days later, when he met Edward Wilson’s widow, Oriana.

  His notes of this meeting record an unknown part of the expedition’s story:

  Mrs Wilson told me later there was a passage in her husband’s diary which spoke of the ‘inexplicable’ shortage of fuel & pemmican on the return journey, relating to depots which had not been touched by Meares and which could only refer to an unauthorised subtraction by one or other of the returning parties. This passage however she proposes to show to no one and to keep secret. C.

  Scott’s dog driver, Cecil Meares
, was known to have removed extra supplies from one of the supply dumps, the Mount Hooper Depot. Halfway back across the Ross Ice Shelf in 1912, Meares was starving. He had travelled the entire ice shelf on the outward journey, and the extra two weeks meant he and his dogs were desperately short of food. Taking the bare minimum, he left a letter telling the others of his actions.

  However, it was not Meares’s removal of the food that Wilson was referring to. The returning South Pole team did not reach Mount Hooper until 10 March, 11 days after Wilson’s last journal entry. The shortage of food must have been elsewhere. But the published version of Wilson’s diary makes no mention of a shortage of fuel or of pemmican.

  To check Curzon’s claims, I was fortunate to view Wilson’s original journal at the British Library. The small dark hardback book contains remarkably light writing in pencil. Dates are jotted in the margins and the accompanying text is of varying length before the entries end abruptly, on 27 February 1912. All the material aligns with the published version, but the latter fails to convey a vital characteristic of the journal. Before 11 February, each line is filled with jottings; not one is wasted. After this date there are gaps in the text, with some entries missing entirely.

  The key date seems to be 24 February, when the returning party reached the Southern Barrier Depot at the bottom of the Beardmore Glacier. Scott was horrified to find there was a large fuel shortage, and could not account for it. It appears there was natural leakage through the lids: something Amundsen avoided by soldering all his tins. In the published version of his diaries Wilson not only fails to mention the fuel shortage in the relevant entry; he does not even remark upon the team having reached the all-important depot. In the original diary there are gaps in the text: the final statement of the day, ‘Fat pony hoosh’, is a separate entry from the rest of the text; half a line, clear of text, precedes it, followed by a blank two and a half lines before the next day’s entry.

  Whether someone has rubbed out text is unclear, but the gaps in the diary entry for 24 February correlate with Curzon’s notes. It suggests that one or more individuals did indeed take more than their fair share of food. And this was not the first time. On its return the South Pole team found a full day’s biscuit allowance missing in the Upper Glacier Depot on 7 February, and both Scott and Wilson remarked upon this in their diaries.

  The evidence pointed towards Evans’s team as the guilty party. And Lord Curzon could not risk the story getting out. Scott and his companions had been declared heroes. To suggest that one of the returning team – albeit suffering scurvy – had helped themselves to more than their share of food, contributing to the men’s deaths, would have changed everything. There was little appetite for public scandal. Curzon appears to have shut down the inquiry – after 24 April 1913, there were no further references to it. By the end of July 1913 Evans had been removed from the official leadership of the expedition.

  It is a shame that the complete, correct text in this and the other sledging diaries is not better known. The nature of the British explorers’ deaths and the editing of their final words have for too long created a fixation on the ‘race’, rather than the bigger story of how the five expeditions of the era worked towards understanding what made Antarctica tick.

  By focusing on the race we do these men a disservice. Scott and his men died for science. I hope that, after a century, we can get the balance right and remember the pioneering work they did. It was all about the science – and it is time we remembered them for that.

  Sampling

  Epic expeditions

  Mr Jevons and his paradox

  Antony Funnell

  That’s always been the promise; that’s always been the thought, that growth in the economy is what raises people up. But there comes a certain level where growth really isn’t improving the quality of your life. We’re not asking the important question: How much is enough? Because with all of this profusion of stuff, there’s certainly no correlation with the improvement in whether we’re happy.

  – David Suzuki, Canadian environmentalist and author

  The very word ‘efficiency’ speaks of dullness – nothing exciting is ever efficient – try imagining efficient sex or efficient cuisine and I’m sure you’ll grasp what I’m getting at. But it’s important to explore the concept, because it’s one of those terms we hear all the time, and it’s one of the main goals we’re supposed to strive for as we charge into the future.

  Let me cut to the chase and be brutally honest: the biggest problem I see with society’s push to become more energy efficient is that it’s a bit like people and exercise machines. Just because you fill the garage with bikes, treadmills and the like, doesn’t mean you’re going to get fit. In other words, the technology is only of benefit once you’ve changed your mindset and your habits. Owning it, but not using it, is no good at all. In fact, it’s counterproductive, because at the end of the day you’re still just as unfit, but with less room in your garage and less cash in your wallet.

  It’s hard to imagine anyone arguing against energy efficiency. It’s self-evidently a good thing. It’s a goal even normally divergent groups can agree on: from an environmentalist’s point of view, energy efficiency means less pollution and less waste; and from a manufacturer’s perspective, it offers the chance of reducing costs and thereby maximising profit. So energy efficiency can make for a greener future and also a stronger economy. Win–win, as they say.

  Then there’s sustainability. Again, who would argue against that concept; surely if our world was run on the pursuit of sustainability we’d all be better off – no question about it.

  But here’s the odd thing: while we talk a lot about the pursuit of energy efficiency and the need for sustainability – the desire to conserve resources – the reality is something entirely different, because growth in public awareness about energy and resource depletion has perfectly coincided with the explosion of a lifestyle that actively promotes rather than discourages consumption.

  Sustainability is a dangerous concept, according to international design expert Tony Fry, the head of the Design Futures Program at Australia’s Griffith University, and he calls for the abandonment of the term, though not necessarily its original intent. ‘We’re at a watershed,’ he says.

  The future of humanity as we understand it is really about a choice which says, ‘Do we change direction or do we try to maintain what we already have?’ Now the question in terms of sustainability and sustainable development, to a large extent reduces to the proposition of sustaining what we already have, sustaining, in a sense, the unsustainable.

  Dr Fry argues that our focus on sustainability has impeded progress and diverted energy away from a nuts-and-bolts reassessment of how we can reshape modern life to match the economic and resource capacities of the world. ‘In the end, we are the problem,’ he declares. ‘Unsustainability isn’t a problem of the environment. It is us, it is our way of treating the resources that we utilise, it’s our way of living or not living together. It’s the way in which we treat all the things that we depend upon pretty carelessly.’

  So it’s not just that we don’t ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to genuine sustainability and moderation, we’re not even off the couch!

  Here are some extremely disheartening figures to illustrate my point. The US Government’s Energy Information Administration estimates fossil fuel use during the 26 years to 2006 grew annually by around 2 per cent. And energy usage in the G20 group of nations in 2010 grew by more than 5 per cent. And the G20 countries, don’t forget, are meant to be among the smartest, as well as the wealthiest, in the world.

  Now, we don’t like to admit it, but we all secretly know that human beings are pretty stupid, as evidenced by the fact that we invented reality television and the means to blow the entire planet to smithereens hundreds of times over. But it’s not as if we’re the dumbest creatures on Earth. We’re not brush turkeys, are we? And the average person has more smarts than a cow. So why haven’t our efforts
to create a more efficient and less wasteful planet actually matched our ambitions? It’s entirely possible, of course, that it’s simply a matter of not trying hard enough. I can’t help thinking we’re a bit like those people who drink diet cola and talk all the time about calories, but then sit down to lunch and eat three times their own body weight in chips and hamburgers.

  But what about that issue of language I mentioned? Sustainability, as we’ve already seen, isn’t really a helpful term. It can whitewash over some pretty significant problems. And what about efficiency? Well, there is a school of thought that says that it, too, is more of a hindrance than a help. To understand why, we have to journey back in time to meet a 19th-century Liverpudlian gentleman by the name of William Stanley Jevons.

  Jevons made his name as a professor of economics at University College, London, in the 1870s. He specialised in political economics and logic and he’s credited with being one of the pioneers of modern economic thinking. At the age of 19, Jevons had left a reasonably comfortable life in the UK for the frenetic madness of the colonies, taking up a job at the Macquarie Street Mint in Sydney.

  Colonial Australia wasn’t all sheep stations and bushrangers. It was sheep stations, bushrangers and gold! The place was booming and so during his time Down Under, Jevons had a chance to observe the raw dynamics of an economy undergoing massive change. And it obviously had an effect on him because, upon returning to England, he began publicly questioning contemporary economic thought. Then in 1865 he published an influential book on the future of the British resource industry called The Coal Question. In it, Jevons foresaw a rapid depletion of the UK’s coal reserves brought about not by a lack of initial resources, but by increasing efficiencies in the way in which coal was being used. He suggested that efficiencies in the extraction and use of coal simply fed greater demand, as people found new ways to use the excess. And that in turn, he argued, led to greater extraction. He wrote: ‘It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth’.