Date: May 14, 2012

Title: Diamond Planet Finder Is A Star

Podcaster: Michael Greenwell

Links:
http://michaelgreenwell.wordpress.com/ and http://exitstageright.wordpress.com/

Description: Last year, after making an enormously publicized discovery astronomer Matthew Bailes used his moment of fame to defend his scientific colleagues and to try to point us in the direction in which we need to be looking. I think he should be applauded for this and we would do well to listen to what he had to say.

Bio: Michael Greenwell has worked, at various times, as a university tutor, a barman, a DJ (not a very good one), an office lackey, supermarket worker, president of a small charity, a researcher, a librarian, a volunteer worker in Nepal during the civil war there, and some other things that were too tedious to mention. He blogs here and also runs the animal extinction site Exit Stage Right.

Today’s Sponsor: “This episode of 365 days of Astronomy is sponsored by ‘The Heliochromologist’ ”

“This episode of 365 days of astronomy was sponsored by iTelescope.net – Expanding your horizons in astronomy today. The premier on-demand telescope network, at dark sky sites in Spain, New Mexico and Siding Spring, Australia.”

Transcript:

At the end of last August, you probably read about the scientists who found a planet that is, in their words “certainly crystalline” or in other words, a large…. well… ok…a VERY large diamond…in fact, it is about 4 times the diameter of the Earth. The planet orbits a pulsar, which they referred to as Beyonce on account of the amount of Bling it was showing off.

The story got a lot of coverage but one of the scientists involved, Matthew Bailes, did something a couple of weeks later that was rather brave and just as worthy of note – and I think that he should be applauded for it and that we would do well to listen to what he had to say.

Specifically, he wrote an article for an Australian website called “The Conversation” in which he used the opportunity the extensive media coverage this discovery gave him to defend climate scientists and try to draw people’s attention to a problem that is ever worsening ie the fact that while the media are happy to report about weird weather on Jupiter or Saturn for example, they show a certain reluctance to talk about Global Weirding and the problems of Climate change here on planet Earth.

I’ll quote to you now a slightly shortened version of what he said…

Following the publication of our finding in the journal Science, our research received amazing attention from the world’s media.
I was asked by many journalists about the significance of the discovery. If I were honest, I’d have to concede that, although worthy of publication in Science, in the field of astrophysics it isn’t that significant.

And yet the diamond planet has been hugely successful in igniting public curiosity about the universe in which we live.
Imagine for a minute that, instead of discovering a diamond planet, we’d made a breakthrough in global temperature projections.
Let’s say we studied computer models of the influence of excessive greenhouse gases, verified them through observations, then had them peer-reviewed and published in Science.

Instead of sitting back and basking in the glory, I suspect we’d find a lot of commentators, many with no scientific qualifications, pouring scorn on our findings.

People on the fringe of science would be quoted as opponents of our work, arguing that it was nothing more than a theory yet to be conclusively proven.

Before long our credibility and findings would be under serious question.

But luckily we’re not climate scientists.

It may come as a big surprise to many, but there is actually no difference between how science works in astronomy and climate change – or any other scientific discipline for that matter.

We make observations, run simulations, test and propose hypotheses, and undergo peer review of our findings.

Of course we all make mistakes. But eventually the prevailing wisdom of the community triumphs and the field advances.

It’s wonderful to be a part of that process.

But on occasion those from the fringe of the scientific community will push a position that is simply not credible against the weight of evidence.

This occurs within any discipline. But it seems it’s only in the field of climate science that such people are given airtime and column inches to espouse their views.

Those who want to ignore what’s happening to Earth feel they need to be able to quote “alternative studies”, regardless of the scientific merit of those studies.

In all fields of science, papers are challenged and statistics are debated. If there is any basis to these challenges they stand, but if not they fall by the wayside and the field continues to advance.

When big theories fall, it isn’t because of business or political pressures – it’s because of the scientific process.

Sadly, the same media commentators who celebrate diamond planets without question are all too quick to dismiss the latest peer-reviewed evidence that suggests man-made activities are responsible for changes in concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere.

The scientific method is universal. If we selectively ignore it in certain disciplines, we do so at our peril.

OK, So there you have it. This guy took what he described himself as his 15 minutes of fame, and used it to say something that was in dire need of saying and at the cost of making himself suspect for some of the media.

The personal sacrifice of downplaying his own discovery in order to support the climate scientists that are constantly under attack and to support the environment is not to something be sniffed at.

However, an article such as the one he wrote in afterwards receives hardly any coverage compared to the discovery of the planet, and such an article is usually smothered in an atmosphere that is so thick full of obfuscating and false reports about climate change, it’s almost worthy of Venus. These reports are being produced for many of the world’s great energy companies and they are being done by many of the PR groups that were initially employed by tobacco companies in order to try and convince people that smoking wasn’t bad for them.

Eventually they lost that battle and with a bit of work we can ensure that they lose this one before our atmosphere ends up like Venus too.

That’s why for me, the Diamond Planet Finder is a star and we should appreciate what he did, and act on what he said.
From somewhere in the currently breathable and livable atmosphere of Planet Earth, this is

Michael Greenwell

Michaelgreenwell.wordpress.com

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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