Two Degrees: China, South America, Europe...

More grim predictions from climate scientists, courtesy of Mark Lynas and his book

Droughts in Northern China. In a 1999 study, Chinese scientists showed that around 129 000 years ago, Northern China dried out and suffered continental-scale dust storms. China warmed by about 2 degrees during this period (the Eemian period) and the cold dry winter winds in the North responded much more quickly than the warm wet summer winds, causing massive dehydration. Lynas speculates that recent droughts in Northern China have the same root cause.

Chen, F. et al, 2003: "Stable East Asian monsoon climate during the Last Interglacial (Eemian) indicate by paleosol S1 in the Western part of the Chinese Loess plateau," Global and Planetary Change, 36, 171-9

Ocean acidification. Carbon dioxide dissolves in water to give carbonic acid. When there is enough CO2 in the atmosphere to raise temperatures by 2 degrees, there will also be enough to make large areas of the Southern Oceans and part of the Pacific effectively toxic to organisms with calcium carbonate shells. Affected organisms will include some varieties of plankton, the most important food source for ocean-dwellers. (Lynas likens this to spraying weedkiller over most of the world's land vegetation.)

Orr, J., et al, 2005: 'Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms,' Nature, 437, 681-6

The Royal Society, 2005: Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Policy Document 12/05

Gazeau, F., et al, 2007: 'Impact of elevated CO2 on shellfish calcification,' Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L07603

Withering vegetation in Europe. The European heat-wave of 2003 caused -- among many other things -- a 30% drop in plant growth across Europe. Dying plants released an amount of carbon equivalent to one twelfth the annual carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Averaged across Europe, temperatures in Summer 2003 were 2.3 degrees above the norm.

Ciais, Ph., et al, 2005: 'Europe-wide reduction in primary productivity caused by the heat and drought of 2003,' Nature, 437, 529-33

Greenland melt. 115 000 years ago, melting ice meant that the sea level was 5-6 metres higher than today, yet average global temperatures were only 1-2 degrees warmer than today. Debate continues about how fast such melting can occur. But a 2007 study shows that sea levels are rising at 3.3mm a year, 50% faster than the 2007 IPCC report assumed.

Rohling, et. al., 2002: 'African monsoon variability during the previous interglacial maximum,' Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 202, 61-75

Tarasov, L., and Richard Peltier, W., 2003: 'Greenland glacial history, borehole constraints, and Eemian extent,' Journal of Geophysical Research, 108, B3, 2143

Rahmstorf, S., et al, 2007: 'Recent climate observations compared to projections,' Science, 316, 709

Drying India. A modelling study has concluded that a 2 degree increase in temperatures over India would decrease the agricultural yeild by 8%.

Kavi Kumar, K., and Parikh, J., 2001: 'Indian agriculture and climate sensitivity,' Global Environmental Change, 11, 147-54

South American water loss. In dry seasons the Rio Santa in Peru draws almost all of its flow from glacial melt. The melt from the glaciers is expected to drop by 40-60% by 2050. The Rio Santa powers hydroelectric turbines that are responsible for large-scale irrigation, 5% of Peru's electricity, and the drinking water for over a million people in the cities of Chimbote and Trujillo. (The 8 million people in Lima are also drawing for water on glaciers that are expected to dwindle in a 2-degree world, but no scientific studies have been conducted on Lima's glaciers.)

Kaser, G., et al, 2003: 'The impact of glaciers on the runoff and the reconstruction of mass balance history from hydrological data in the tropical Cordillera Blanca, Peru,' Journal of Hydrology, 282, 1, 130-44

Chevallier, P., et al., 2004: 'Climate change impact on the water resources from the mountains in Peru,' paper presented to the OECD Global Forum on Sustainable Development: Development and Climate Change, Paris, 11-12 November 2004

Juen, I., Kaser, G., and Georges, C., 2006: 'Modelling observed and future runoff from a glacierized tropical catchment (Cordillera Blanca, Peru),' Global and Planetary Change, 59, 1-4 37-48

California melting. California relies for its water on rivers stemming from the Sierra Nevada, Cascades and Rocky Mountains. During winter, more of this water is stored in "snowpack" in these mountains than in man-made reservoirs. A 2004 study predicted that this snowpack will decline by between a third and three-quarters in a 2 degree world. One study (Ruby Leung et al.) concludes: "Current demands on water resources in many parts of the West[ern US] will not be met under plausible future climate conditions, much less the demands of a larger population and larger economy."

Hayhoe, K., et al, 2004: 'Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California,' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101, 34, 12422-7

Ruby Leung, L., et al., 2004: 'Mid-century ensemble regional climate change scenarios for the western US,' Climatic Change, 68, 153-68

Crop failures. Crop failures are expected to be widespread in a hotter world, though failures in the tropics will be partially offset by successes at higher latitudes. In Mali, losses of maize crops are expected to leave up to three quarters of the population at risk of hunger, up from a third today. In Botswana, up to a third of the maize and sorghum crop could be wiped out due to a declining rainfall. A 2003 study predicts that North Sea cod population will disappear with around two degrees of warming.

Butt, T., et al., 2005: 'The economic and food security implications of climate change in Mali,' Climatic Change, 68, 355-78

Chipanshi, A., et al., 2003: 'Vulnerability assessment of the maize and sorghum crops to climate change in Botswana,' Climatic Change, 61, 339-60

Clark, R., et al, 2003: 'North Sea cod and climate change -- modelling the effects of temperature on population dynamics,' Global Change Biology, 9, 1669-80

Large-scale extinction. A study published in Nature in 2004 argued that over a third of all species on earth would be 'committed to extinction' if temperatures reach 2 degress in 2050. The lead author said in a Univeristy of Leeds press release that 'Well over a million species could be threatened with extinction as a result of climate change.' The study was based on models of expected movements of ecological niches due to changing climate.

Thomas, C., et al., 2004: 'Extinction risk from climate change,' Nature, 427, 145-8

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One Degree: drought, fire, extinction

Part one of my guide to Mark Lynas' guide to the peer-reviewed literature on the consequences of global warming

America's desert. The remains of trees have been found in a river bed and lake bed in the West Walker River Canyon and Mono Lake respectively. These remains have been dated to the medieval period. Fire scars on trees in the Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks have been dated to the same period. This evidence suggests medieval California was hit by a severe drought many times more punishing than the "dust-bowl" years of the 1930s. US in medieval times was 1-2 degrees warmer than pre-industrial US.

Stine, S., 1994: 'Extreme and persistent drought in California and Patagonia during medieval time,' Nature, 369, 546-9

Swetnam, T., 1993: 'Fire history and climate change in giant sequoia groves,' Science, 262, 85-9

Kilimanjaro forest fires. Rising temperatures and diminishing rainfall have increased the risk of fires in the high forest on the sides of the mountain. This forest is responsible for 96% of the water coming off the mountain. A hit to the water supply would put fish supplies and hydroelectric turbines at risk in Tanzania.

Agrawala, S., et al, 2003: 'Development and climate change in Tanzania: Focus on Mount Kilimanjaro,' OECD Environmental Directorate, 6799

Arctic melting. In the decade up to 2001, the biggest Alaskan glaciers lost 96 cubic kilometres of ice, raising global sea levels by nearly 3mm. A recent modelling study has concluded that the Artic ocean will be free of ice in summertime by 2040. Scientists expect that a warmer Artic will push the North Atlantic storm belt north. Satellite images from the last 30 years show a 1 degree movement of the wet-weather belt towards the poles of both hemispheres.

Arendt, A., et al.: 'Rapid wastage of Alaska glaciers and their contribution to rising sea level,' Science, 297, 382-6

Holland, M., Bitz., C., and Tremblay, B., 2007: 'Future abrupt reductions in the summer Arctic sea ice,' Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L23503

Fu, Q., et al., 2006: 'Enhanced mid-latitude tropospheric warming in satellite measurements,' Science, 312, 1179

Swiss rockfalls. Meltwater from mountain snow can destabilise rocks, causing lethal and unpredictable landslides. A year after the European heat-wave of 2003, a Swiss team of scientists showed that the 2003 thaw was up to a half a metre deeper than in any of the last 40 summers.

Gruber, S., Hoezle, M., and Haeberli, W., 2004: 'Permafrost thaw and destabilisation of Alpine rock walls in the hot summer of 2003,' Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L13504

Extinction in the Australiam Wet Tropics. The Wet Tropics in Queensland Australia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, holds -- among many other things -- half of the continent's bird species and 700 plant species that are found nowhere else in the world. A modelling study of 65 species in the area concluded that 63 of the species would lose a third of their core habitat with one degree of warming. The author called this an "environmental catastrophe of international significance."

Williams, S., et al., 2003: 'Climate change in Australian tropical rainforests: an impending environmental catastrophe,' Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 270, 1887-92

Atlantic hurricanes. In a 2006 paper, two climatologists wrote that anthropogenic climate change contributed half of the warming that resulted in high ocean water temperatures in 2005. The warm surface water is thought to be responsible for the devastating 2005 hurricane season that caused damage totalling $100bn. An earlier analysis showed that the number of the strongest storms in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans nearly doubled in the period 1970-2004.

Trenberth, K., and Shea, D., 2006: 'Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005,' Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L12704

Webster, P., et al., 2005: 'Changes in tropical cyclone number, duration, and intensity in a warming environment,' Science, 309, 1844-1846

Kilimanjaro. In 2002 a US team led by scientist Lonnie Thompson concluded that 80% of the ice on Mt Kilimanjaro had disappeared in the last century, and that at the current rate there would be none at all by 2020. Similar meltrates have been recorded on peaks in other parts of the world, such as the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda. As Lynas points out, glacial melt is responsible for only 1/15 of the water coming off Kilimanjaro: a "significant, but not catastrophic" amount.

Thompson, L., et al., 2002: 'Kilimanjaro ice core records: Evidence of Holocene climate change in tropical Africa,' Science, 298, 589-593

Taylor, R. G., et al, 2006: 'Recent glacial recession in the Rwenzori Mountains of East Africa due to rising air temperature,' Geophysical Research Letters, 33, 10, L10402

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Six degrees: our future in six posts

A compressed and referenced version of Mark Lynas' data-rich book on global warming

Mark Lynas' Six Degrees is a fine book and a paradise for climate change activists, but it calls out for compression. For climate change newbies out there, the 2007 book (republished 2008) takes each degree of possible warming -- from one to six -- and catalogues the likely consequences they will bring for climate, geography, and life on earth. "Catalogue" is the right word, since Lynas (a UK journalist) based the book on a systematic study of peer-reviewed articles he found in the Oxford University Radcliffe Science Library.

Lynas clearly did his homework. In the 56 pages of the chapter on Three Degrees, I count 102 separate references to peer-reviewed articles and other respectable authorities (this excludes newspaper articles, press releases, and Worldwatch Magazine, but includes government, UNESCO, and WWF reports). That's almost two per page, which may not be a lot for an academic paper, but is rare for a 300-page popular book.

Lynas' research ethic has a downside. It means that Six Degrees is a bit like listening to Lord Stern talk about the economics of climate change -- you are soaked in a torrent of very informative details, but once the flood has passed you feel a bit damp and confused. Plus there is a lot of froth in the book, speculative sketches of a warming world that go beyond the published science.

What one wants is a neat row of frozen facts that one can pick up, examine at leisure, and launch at any passing skeptics. To this end I am going to list 5-10 of the most striking and well-supported scientific results in each chapter, starting with One Degree and moving up the mercury. To be useful, the items on the list need to be:

authoritative: no NYT articles or press releases
consensual: ie. Lynas doesn't cite any contrary evidence (fallible, I know, but the best I can do here)
convincing: a study of the extinction of six species is more convincing than a study of one
novel: ie. I haven't heard about them before -- shockingly subjective, but again it's the best I can do
powerful: if their predictions come true, they will effect large numbers of people and/or people close to home, where "home" is England
precise: numbers are better than words

Six Degrees was so successful that it is unlikely that any of the results are really novel. By now most of them, from the greening of the Sahara to the melting of Peruvian glaciers, have probably been raked over by skeptics and activists alike. But jogging the memory is an excellent form of exercise.

Some of the results in the book may been challenged since 2007. And there is no guarantee that Lynas has given us a representative sample of the peer-reviewed literature on climate change (though I'm inclined to think he has, given the scale of his research and his willingness to report countervailing results, when they arise). So the next six posts may give a lop-sided view of the consequences of warming. But as Lynas shows -- and as the next six posts may show -- that view has a lot going for it.

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"Ice, Mud and Blood" by Chris Turney

A chirpy, detailed book that delivers on past climate but not on present climate

Anyone new to the climate change debate is bound to wonder whether a 5-6 degree increase in temperatures is really all that bad - especially if the person is cold, English, and nostalgic for summer. A good reply to this wonderment is to say that the last time the globe was 5 or 6 degrees colder, there were glaciers in the South of England, and the melting ice caused Britain to split off from France.

Chris Turney, a geologist at the University of Exeter, knows as well as anyone that climates past have lessons for climates present. In Ice, Mud and Blood, Turney's humour and expertise make for a jaunty, fascinating account of how past climates worked and how scientists find out about them. But Turney spends little time linking past climate to present climate; so, as a contribution to the climate change debate, the book doesn't live up to its promise.

As Turney points out, it's a wonder that we know anything about past climate at all. Natural climate change occurs over vast periods, and events in the intervening millennia have played havoc with the evidence. Turney does a great job of showing how scientific detective work can, against the odds, give a clear and convincing picture of some key events in the last three-quarters of a billion years of earth weather.

To give one example: how could we possibly know that the tropics were covered in ice between 580 and 710 million years ago? As Turney explains, certain kinds of rocks tell us that glaciers once appeared in, among other places, Namibia; and the magnetism of the rocks assures us that those glaciers did indeed form at tropical latitudes. You might object - as some scientists did - that the earth had a bigger tilt back then, so that Namibia once swung around the freezing poles. A study of 'evaporites' - salt deposits from drying lakes that only occur in hot dry areas - puts paid to that objection, as do ocean deposits of iridium. As this example hints, paleo-climatologists can get technical at times. But their work is as impressive as cosmologists probing into deep space or particle physicists getting into the guts of an atom.

The instruments used to detect past climates have their own fascination. The ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica - pipes of ancient ice, kilometres in length, drawn from some of the world's most inhospitable climates - make for a good story, and Turney tells it well. Because these 'archives' of past climate are so hard to read, paleo-climatology is also tale of wrong turns, misinterpretations and dead-ends. Where there is just not enough data for scientists to draw solid conclusions - about the effect of climate change on cyclones in the Western Atlantic, for example - Turney is not afraid to say so. Where multiple sets of data converge on the same conclusion, he drives the point home.

Turney's chirpy prose is helped along by sketches of the charismatic pioneers and hard-bitten explorers in the science of weather. Extra spice comes from Turney's taste for history, love of hands-on research, and nose for a big idea. The big ideas include some intriguing conjectures about the interaction of climate and early humans. For example, Turney argues that the concentration of diabetes in Northern Europe could be explained as an evolutionary response to the Younger Dyas, a cold period in the North Atlantic that ended around 10,000 BC.

Turney is rock-solid on the science of past climates, but cracks start to appear when he draws conclusions about current climate change. The problem starts with the book's structure. It is arranged as a chronology of past climate, not as an argument for the state of current climate. Turney tries to link past to present in a final conclusion, where he asks 'What does this all mean for the future?' But it's all a bit vague and last-minute. He simply draws some general lessons from the preceding 192 pages of history: greenhouse gases can power massive changes in climate; feedback effects can amplify small changes; and human action can rearrange our land, sea and atmosphere on a large scale. Compared to the quantitative detail of the other chapters, this conclusion is just hand-waving.

There is no doubt that, in the past, human activity, high temperatures, and high levels of methane and carbon dioxide, all caused big - sometimes cataclysmic - changes to weather and geography. But is our current situation quantitatively similar to those past changes? Turney does not give a clear case. When he asks the numbers question, his answer is a short account of the famous 'hockey-stick' study, a comparison of temperature changes in the last century with those over the previous millennium. One wonders what happened to the previous seven chapters and the previous 700 million years they cover. Do the most recent climates give the best lessons, after all?

A determined reader might dig through the chapters to see if Turney makes the link between past climate to present climate on the run. Such a reader will find a number of hearty calls to action, but little hard-and-fast argument. For example, Turney emphasises the role of CO2 in the warming that occurred during the Eemian period around 120,000 years ago. But he also emphasises that increases in carbon dioxide lagged behind the warming. And the evidence he cites for CO2-driven warming considers just one ice core and takes up one paragraph. On some topics - such as the dynamics of melting ice - Turney makes a stronger case, but only with the help of models and evidence drawn from studies of present-day climate.

Ice, mud and Blood could have been more streamlined and persuasive. As a call to action on climate change, it is a missed opportunity. But as a story of scientific ingenuity and the wonders of nature, it takes every chance - and succeeds.

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"The Emperor's New Drugs" by Irving Kirsch

A persuasive debunking of anti-depressants, with eye-opening coverage of the placebo effect

They say that the Origin of Species is "one long argument." Irving Kirsch may not share Darwin's eloquence, but in The Emperor's New Drugs he shares his passion for persuasion. Thanks to its wide scope, smooth delivery, and mastery of the data, this book is about as persuasive as a popular science book can be.

"The belief that antidepressants can cure depression chemically is simply wrong." So Kirsch claims. A claim like this raises a host of questions. Some are easy to answer: why would drug companies exaggerate the value of their pills in an anti-depressant market worth $19 billion a year? Why would regulatory agencies that are partly funded by drug companies play along with these exaggerations? Other questions are harder: if antidepressants do not cure depression chemically, how do they do so? And if the answer is "the placebo effect", how can the placebo effect be so strong as to convince millions of patients, thousands of doctors, and dozens of editors, that antidepressants are more than just glorified sugar pills?

Some of the tough questions turn out to have simple answers. The reason everyone was duped by the chemical-imbalance theory of depression, says Kirsch, is that the theory itself was based mainly on the (supposed) effectiveness of chemicals in treating depression. Some answers rely on clever reasoning. Clinical trials show that antidepressants are actually more effective, by a small but significant amount, than placebos. Kirsch explains this deftly as an "enhanced placebo effect": patients who detect the side-effects of antidepressants know that they are on active drugs, raising their expectations about the treatment and enhancing the placebo effect.

What all Kirsch's answers have in common is thorough attention to the relevant data (published and unpublished) and a keen nose for interpretation. Kirsch marshals an impressive range of evidence to back his case: the bibliography runs to 25 pages and consists mainly in articles from top medical and psychology journals. If he does not have a study or meta-analysis to back up a claim, he says so. And he knows that a striking anecdote is just a striking anecdote, even if it punches for his own team.

The book a good first course in scientific method, and a key lesson in the Kirsch curriculum is that data alone does not put a hypothesis to the test. Data, plus a dose of careful interpretation, is the only real medicine in science. Drug companies did not falsify the reports of individual patients or doctors. Nor did they (usually) fudge individual studies. The devil was not in the details but in the grand design, the way they selected out negative studies and re-hashed positive ones. In lifting the lid on the cover-up, Kirsch gives a running response to those say that meta-analysis, as a scientific technique, is indefensible; nay, says Kirsch, it is indispensible.

The question every reader will have is partly an ethical question: given that antidepressants would no longer be effective if everyone knew they were only placebos, should the "dirty little secret" be made public? Kirsch, true to form, answers this question with a patient summary of studies and meta-studies. In doing this, he does not ignore the ethical core of the question. The aim is to cut through the empirical flesh to make the core issue as clear as possible. Kirsch shows that if you cut deftly enough, the core issue might not be ethical at all. This book asks: if we can show that psychotherapy is cheaper, safer, and more effective in the long run than anti-depressants, what ethical argument could possibly warrant the continued prescription of anti-depressants? Good question.

When it comes to writing clear prose, it is not always advantageous to be a scientist. But for Kirsch, it is so. He is no wordsmith (or doesn't want to be), and if you are looking for blazing rhetoric then this not the book for you. But if you want to understand what a balanced-placebo test is and why it works, how neurotransmitters are meant to explain depression, and the difference between "response-rate" and "average improvement" in clinical trials, Kirsch is a lucid guide. His prose might read dryly for some. But the result is that if you can understand a bar graph, you can understand this book.

What Kirsch lacks in verbal charisma, he makes up for in arresting content. His chapters on the placebo effect make for fascinating reading. My favourite is the man who swallowed all his pills and collapsed in a heap on his GP's floor -- only to find, when he came round, that he had overdosed on fake pills. Equally striking are the basketball-players whose knee problems were fixed using placebo surgery, and the angina, dermatitis, and electro-shock victims who were all cured or assuaged by the power of belief. Kirsch describes lots of experiments designed to tease out the details of the placebo effect. The methods are clever, and the results run a skewer through our intuitions about physiological cause and effect. The results seem like voodoo, but the methods do not. As this book reminds us, implicitly but forcefully, it is the methods that matter.

Kirsch is sometimes not as methodical as he might be. One defence of anti-depressants is that they have both a placebo effect and a real chemical effect, but that these two effects are not additive. Kirsch describes how this hypothesis might be tested, but admits that no such tests have been done. He tells us that drug companies, who would otherwise sponsor such tests, are running scared. Fair enough; but the fact remains that the tests have not been done. Also, a bullet-point summary would be useful to tie up the threads of evidence against anti-depressants; sometimes the same thread turns up in widely separated chapters, making it hard to keep track.

Kirsch could do better to explain the weirdness of the placebo effect. How can the mind restore the cartilage in a bad knee just by expecting the knee to be cured? Kirsch suggests that this is easily explained as a purely physical causation, the brain acting on the knee. But it seems just as weird for the brain to cure cartilage as for the mind to do it. It also seems weird to say that the brain "expects" something. Lastly, it seems weird for positive expectations to have a positive effect. Why don't positive expectations just make the brain more complacent, and therefore idle? Kirsch seems complacent about explaining the placebo effect, even if (or because) the evidence for its existence is overwhelming.

These quibbles do not threaten Kirsch's argument. In the epilogue Kirsch says he enjoys "rocking the boat." And the evidence suggests he has knocked antidepressants into the water. He reports a recent survey of UK clinicians showing that almost half will (or have) changed their practices because of Kirsch's work. He has also made waves in the murky waters of drug regulation, helping to bring about proper tracking of drug trials. But he is a placid revolutionary, and his easy prose and wide knowledge make for a smooth ride – and a persuasive one.

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WCSJ 09 interviews

A little feedback on the World Conference of Science Journalists

After a few months of deplorable inactivity on this site*, here are some notes on the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists, which happened at the end of June this year.

All the people, sessions, events, and controversies at the conference are much better covered by the dedicated people at the WCSJ news site than I can do so here. But before rushing off to those sites, take a look at some of these nuggets from interviews we conducted with some of the many journalists (mainly from developing countries) who attended the conference on the scholarships programme.

Names are suppressed but the countries of the interviewees are not....

"I know so many people now. I have so many great contacts, and that is what is important to me as a journalist” - Cameroon

"[Saleemul] Huq is known worldwide, and he will very useful in the future to answer my questions about climate change...this will improve the quality my articles” – Algeria

"Once researchers interact with science journalists, [we have] a new era in science journalism" - Rwanda

"I am going to use these skills and impart them to others. I have a network of five radio stations [in Tanzania] that immediately I will impart knowledge to…it is really needed [in Tanzania]." – Tanzania

“I want to organise and campaign to make science journalism real and accurate in the Ukraine" – Ukraine

"WCSJ was essentially a well-timed kick up the backside for me. I have returned home determined to be more proactive in my day-to-day work. From now on, I will be putting more effort into seeking out good science stories and selling them." -- UK

The conference "has really helped to broaden my view of science journalism, and [has given me] a whole lot of new perspectives on how to tell my tale, how to reach an audience with science." -- Netherlands

The conference provided "better strategies to survive in hard economic circumstances, gave an idea of new trends in science, and [helped me to] find more accuracy and unbiased attitudes in my stories. A memorable place [in which to] learn." - Pakistan

"Loads of concrete information provided about how to pitch to specific publications: what to pitch, what not to pitch, who to pitch to, what to expect in the editing process, rates of pay, etc.... The ultimate bluffers' guide. Have returned home determined to be more proactive about pitching and widening my client base. I expect to be sending pitches to several of the publications featured at this breakfast during the next 3-12 months and getting at least some of them accepted. I particularly like the idea of being paid by [major UK magazine on science] to travel around the globe, and then return home to write-up a mega-feature. All sounds terribly glam (I'm sure the reality isn't quite as cushy but I won't know until I give it a go....)" - UK

"For me, the green energy workshop was very important. I talked to Giovanni de Santi, director of European Commission's Institute of Energy, and he gave me more detailed information about EU plans on renewable energy. Ethanol is big business in Brazil, so this is an important issue for my readers" - Brazil

*Disclaimer: the main reason for the inactivity on this site recently is that I worked for the conference. This blog is not an official outlet of the conference, and the contents of this post and this blog do not necessarily reflect the views of the organisers of the World Conference of Science Journalists, the World Federation of Science Journalists, or the Association of British Science Writers

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Anyone for a journalism prize?

The Newswise journalism award listings are interesting reading, up-to-date or not.

If you ask a science journalist how they earn a living, they might point you, with a mix of hope and desperation, to this page. It's the Newswise list of journalists prizes, the most respected list of its kind.* Newswise is a service in "knowledge-based news", so you an expect them to be biased towards science and environment reporting. Even so, they list a surprisingly large number of prizes for science journalists. I trawled through the list of links and found that some are quirky, some are lucrative, and some are broke (and not just the links).

One of the most lucrative prizes is broke. That's the Pirelli INTERNETional Award, which until 2007 gave a total of 80,000 Euros each year to those who helped "promote the spread of scientific and technological culture." The Pirelli website has a marvellous euphemism for the award's current state. They call it a "sleeping initiative", as if it is busy initiating things while dormant, and could spring into life any second. I'm skeptical -- 80,000 euros doesn't just appear overnight.

The Grantham Prize is the US's answer to Pirelli. It is one of the youngest prizes and probably the richest: $75 000 a year going all the way back to 2005. It is for Excellence in Environmental reporting, and last year it went to the New York Times for "Choking on Growth," a series on China's pollution problems. So what kind of story gets $75 000 from Mr. and Mrs. Grantham? Extrapolating from a modest sample of one, they want a story about large-scale environmental damage and human suffering, industrial misdeeds, political intrigue, and brave but beleaguered activists. Some sharp photography [see below] or eerie slide-shows* wouldn't go amiss either.

* see "A Lake in Crisis" tab on this page.

Money doesn't necessarily correlate with prestige, of course. Awards from the American Institute of Physics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science both look a bit tight, each giving a $3000 money prize. Nevertheless, the AAAS believes its prize "represent the pinnacle of achievement for professional journalists in the science writing field" -- and it's hard to argue with an award that goes back to 1945. And who could resist the engraved Windsor chair that goes along with the AIP cash?

Nor does fame correlate with age -- well, not exactly. The AAAS prize and the Gerald Loeb prize (for economics, business and finance reporting) both have a strong lineage -- the latter goes back to 1957. (Incidentally, the Loeb prize seems to include a crystal globe [see image]. I'm not sure what globes have to do with finance, or what crystal has to do with journalism. But the award would certainly brighten up the mantelpiece.)

Is the American Chemical Association famous? Perhaps it is. Still, it has an impressive history for a single-discipline award. It goes back to 1957; past winners include Isaac Asimov and (most recently) Roald Hoffman. And it has a name to match: The American Chemical Association James T. Grady and James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public.

Then there are the smaller heroes of journalism awards. If you had won the Images of Aging Communication Award, the Association for Geriatric Psychiatry will give you a plaque and a mention at their annual do. It won't buy you lunch, but it should give you a warm feeling in your writing fingers.

But there are some prizes on this list that won't warm any journalistic souls, because they (the prizes) no longer exist. The Aging Communication Award is one of many to fall over in recent times. There are some ominous signs in the UK. The Royal Society has suspended this year's Junior Book Prize for lack of funding. And the Association of British Science Writers has not caught enough funding fish this year, so the "Oscars of the science writing world" are on hold. Where the 2008 winners should be listed in all their glory, there is a sad message from the prize organisers.

(As for all of these awards, the list of past winners of the ABSW award is a useful guide to the best science writing of the last few years. The ABSW prize goes back to 1967, which makes their downfall all the sadder and their backlist all the more interesting.)

Money problems seem to have hit some smaller awards as well. The International Osteoperosis Foundation (IOP) will no longer give out its Osteoperosis Journalism Award. And the National Multiple Sclerosis Society has updated its website but not its Public Education Award -- the award has vanished on the new site. These small, specialist awards may not be gravely missed by the journalism profession. But perhaps there are bone stories not being written, and MS scandals not being aired, for lack of professional recognition for journalists.

The list of broken links and lost prizes on the Newswise page is almost as long as the list of active ones. This may have as much to do with Newswise's lack of systematic updating. According to their website, the list is continously refreshed (as of today, the last update was 2 days ago). But Newswise are only as good as the information they receive from prize-giving institutions. And one expects that a media officer for the IOP (say) would have more enthusiasm for logging an award than logging its downfall.

But Newswise must be updating something, and if it's not the dead prizes it must be the living ones. So the best route to science writing glory -- apart from sending imploring emails to Pirelli, joining the New York Times staff, or donating your salary to the ABSW -- is to keep an eye on the new awards that keep appearing over at Newswise.

Or for an up-to-date list of science-related awards, see my next post....

* journalism.co.uk has a similar list, but there's not much on the Newswise site that you can't find on its British equivalent.

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