The Origins of Climate Change

"Look what I've made! If we have enough of them, we can raise the climate by 2 degrees C!"

NERC plans a scientific study of shale gas (and other resources)

Thanks to the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, I am currently at the British Geological Survey with 50 or so British scientists, members of industry and representatives of the UK government, DECC and the Environment Agency. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss and plan two facilities for the scientific analysis of resource provision in the subsurface over at least the next 20 years. Shale gas is of central importance, as is geothermal energy, CCS and the storage underground of gas and radioactive waste.

The mood is extremely positive that, at last, there might be the measurement of the processes involved in shale gas exploitation, from the source of the resource to the monitoring and analysis of any environmental risks that might occur. There, it seems, will be the opportunity to monitor the whole process in 4D from the borehole to the surface and the atmosphere, depending upon scale, position and time.

The buzzword is "integration", such that data of all types are available to compare as time passes, and so that changes can be linked to the drilling and fracking processes which are occurring at the time.

There is an agreement that data should be taken from a long time before any drilling starts and include air and water monitoring, reflection seismic and seismological measurements, borehole and aquifer measurements, microseismic measurements, and satellite measurements, and continue throughout the multi-decadal lifetime of the project. It has been repeatedly proposed that the atmosphere and surface will continue to be fully monitored.

Underground, wells can be drilled and measured during and after the process has finished. The integrity of the boreholes can also be monitored and the presence of any pollutants entering local aquifers. Cross-borehole techniques and 3D seismics can be used to delineate and monitor the rocks between the wells so that they are fully understood and that any changes to them or the fluids they contain can be monitored.

Only a few from industry were invited, but those to whom I have talked are very happy that a collaboration between them and British scientists could provide UK data for the first time, which they believe will provide evidence for their claims. They have pointed out that it is incredibly important for the process to be completely open and transparent, and to fully involve the general public.

The UK government have committed £31 million to this ESIOS study so far, and the hope is that the measurements will ultimately allay fears, where fears are groundless, understand the scope of the risks, where they really occur, so that risks can be removed, minimised or mitigated, and also to lead to swift changes in policy and rules where they are necessary. All so that the general public can gain trust in processes involving the exploitation of the Earth's resources in the UK.

Public Engagement in the Shale Gas Debate - A note to the Prime Minister

More than 60% of British land might be subject to shale gas licensing according to today's Guardian.

Hence, there is a sizeable population of the UK who would and should be concerned about the implications that shale gas exploitation may have for them.

The main issues are all concerned with the environment and its protection, either for its own sake or for our own sake. They can be categorised as:

• Global (i.e., the effect of burning fossil fuels on the climate).
• Regional (e.g., earth tremors).
• Local (e.g., noise, transport inconvenience, water pollution, water availability, air pollution, social unrest, cost of housing).

There would also be benefits from shale gas at all of these levels, but often the debate centres around the threats rather than the benefits, which is only natural because most people prefer a ‘precautionary principle’ approach to assessing unfamiliar opportunities.

Unfortunately, sources of information are limited in availability, relevance, quality and trustworthiness. This results in opinions being formed on hearsay and based on anecdote, followed by a polarisation of views and the almost immediate inability of people with different views to debate the merits of shale gas properly.

For example, almost all of the ‘solid facts’ that are offered to me about the water pollution caused in the USA by shale gas exploitation on investigation turn out either not to be true or to be irrelevant to Europe. The much vaunted flaming water in the film Gas-Land turned out to be gas that existed in the aquifer long before shale fracking was ever carried out in the USA, and what was worse, its makers knew that when they mispresented it as being caused by fracking. How are we, therefore, to judge these disparate and sometimes contradictory pieces of information? One standard answer is to ask an expert – but which one?

Among the experts; the industry, environmental campaigners, politicians, lobbying groups such as Greenpeace, journalists and even scientists, all have their own agenda. They are driven by different desires and have their own natural biases. But what if you are not in any of these groups? What if you are a ‘normal’ person who just wants sufficient reliable evidence to make up your mind? How can you do that? You can pick an expert, but then you know what they are going to say before they tell you. One is forced into an unbalanced position without wanting to.

There are several blogs including this one and Frack-land that seek to provide balanced comment supported by scientific evidence, but frankly it is not enough. We desperately need information.

• It is clear that we cannot know whether there is sufficient economically feasible gas under the UK until we drill and frack many more wells than we have (at least 10 and probably 20).

• It is clear that we cannot know what the environmental risks are associated with drilling and fracking those wells until a comprehensive study is carried out on the first 10 to 20 wells in the UK.

In my view we should not freeze in the on-coming head-lights of shale gas. We should not dash for that gas either. We should walk into the gradual development of shale gas carefully, making high quality, relevant and useful measurements as we go, and making all results public.

In the UK (and elsewhere in Europe) we need:

• Reliable, relevant scientific data on all aspects of shale gas and coal bed methane (CBM) production.
• An independent body of sensible people to oversee shale gas development as well as to commission and analyse such studies.
• A database of all the scientific data, analysis and reports that is fully accessible to the general public (which is something that I have already asked the Prime Minister to provide).

20 Things politicians should understand ... (Part 4)

Continuing the previous three postings here is the last set of 5 more "Things politicians need to know about shale gas science", inspired by the recent Guardian article entitled "Top 20 things politicians need to know about science" from an original article in Nature.  

It is not just politicians that need to know this stuff - without it the whole debate is not possible.

16. Data can be dredged or cherry picked

Evidence can be arranged to support one point of view.

Shale gas is a subject which stirs strong passions and in which opinions are extremely polarised. I would say that more than 95% of public commentators hold a strong view on shale gas, yet the majority of the general public would like clear unbiased, evidence-based information upon which they can make their minds up.

Everyone should realise that Nature is unbiased. If we make certain decisions Nature will give us the unbiased consequences, whether good or bad. We have, therefore, a duty to be unbiased too.

This disconnection between the sources of advice and those who need it is worrying. The few who try to give balanced and factual information are constantly being badgered by both sides to accept views which are not based on tested or testable reality. In this way sources of independent advice are eroded and silenced.

One should realise that industry will not lie to you, at least UK-based industry will not. It is not in their interest to do so, and existing local, national and European regulations are such that there are huge penalties for getting it wrong, in the courts of justice and in the courts of public opinion.

Industry, will, however, put the best possible spin on what they are doing. In the past most of what they did was kept secret; not so much in order to keep the general public in the dark, but because most information is commercially sensitive in a competitive business market. Now, in the UK at least, there is a move towards being more transparent, such that the general public knows more of the information which the companies are using to make their own decisions. An example of this is the before and after water and air quality analyses that Cuadrilla carried out at Balcombe, which are freely available.

Individuals who are against shale gas do not lie either, but they also commonly choose results which and support their preconceptions.  For example, there are very real worries concerning the environmental damage that mining and processing of rare earth elements in China is causing.  Some of these rare earth elements, such as neodymium, are necessary to make the magnets that wind turbines use, and the by-products of mining and processing are toxic and radioactive.  Yet search for neodymium on the Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth web sites and you will not find it.  Rare earth element pollution is not consistent with the message that these organisations want to convey.  Since the pollution happens in rural China, it is simply ignored.  As lobbying groups, these organisations are simply controlling what is made public, and therefore behaving exactly like industry.

Studies have shown that the conscious or subconscious choice of results to fulfil preconceptions is a very human trait, and extremely difficult to guard against no matter how mindful the individual is.

George Bernard Shaw once said “The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.


Scientists are trained to keep an open and unbiased mind, but even they have a duty to be constantly mindful of what the evidence says, and not to interpret the evidence beyond its limits. One of the best tests of such a commentator is to ask whether all of the evidence supports his or her main point.

The authors of the article “Top 20 things politicians need to know about science” concern themselves with the needing to know whether the authors set out to test a sole hypothesis, or happening across a finding in a huge data set. Data that one happens across when not looking for it can be extremely good, useful and relevant. However, often it is not applicable to the argument because it applies to a different group/location/problem/population etc., or was obtained using inapplicable assumptions or using different premises.

The question one should ask is whether the study was designed to answer the particular question it is being used on, and if not whether there are differences that make its use inapplicable.

17. Extreme measurements may mislead

Any set of data (concentrations of methane in ground-water, say) will show  

• natural variation between locations (due to different geological histories), 
• plus sampling (sampling may be atypical because it is done in areas where problems are suspected),
• plus bias (the concentration of methane may depend on some other unknown factor),
• plus measurement errors (different testers using different methodologies in different locations, or simply using erroneous methods, inaccurate tools or uncalibrated tools).

However, the resulting variation is typically interpreted only with respect to the distance to the nearest well, ignoring the other sources.

Difference, even extreme ones, may be due to a combination of other factors than that in which you are interested.

18. Study relevance limits generalisations

The relevance of a study depends on how much the conditions under which it is done resemble the conditions of the issue under consideration.

For example, there are limits to the generalisations that one can make from US data when trying to predict the effect in the UK or Europe.

19. Feelings influence risk perception

Broadly, risk can be thought of as the likelihood of an event occurring in some time frame, multiplied by the consequences should the event occur. People’s risk perception is influenced disproportionately by many things, including the rarity of the event, how much control they believe they have, the adverseness of the outcomes, and whether the risk is voluntarily or not.

According to David Ropeik roughly 20% of Americans still do not wear safety belts in motor vehicles. The risk perception literature would suggest that this is, in part, because we have a sense of control when we are behind the wheel, and the risk of crashing is both familiar and chronic—factors that make risks seem less threatening. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that if safety belt usage increased from 80% to 85%, 2,700 lives would have been saved in 2002 (National Center for Statistics & Analysis (2003) Traffic Safety Facts 2002: Occupant Protection. Washington, DC, USA: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, DOT HS 809 610).

Similarly, many people fail to protect themselves adequately from the sun, in part because the sun is natural and because, for some of us, the benefit of a healthy glowing tan outweighs the risks of solar exposure. However, solar radiation is widely believed to be the leading cause of melanoma, which will kill an estimated 7,910 Americans this year (American Cancer Society (2004) Cancer Facts & Figures 2004. Atlanta, GA, USA: American Cancer Society).

Focussing on the negative aspects of a development such as a shale gas pollution incident may raise fear despite the extent, timescale and likelihood of the event being small, while ignoring the risks of not carrying out the development, which would include financial and social growth, provision of jobs, better health care etc.

Risk perception should be judged both ways: the risk of doing and the risk of not doing!

20. Dependencies change the risks

It is possible to calculate the consequences of individual events, such as an extreme storm, high tides and the availability of key workers. However, if the events are interrelated then the probability of a disaster is much higher than might be expected.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/11/06/super-typhoon-haiyan-hits-category-5-an-extremely-serious-threat-to-philippines/

This is exactly what happened recently in the Philippines. The government was well prepared for storms because it gets lots of them (together with earthquakes and volcanoes – who would want to live there!?). It had dumps of emergency stuff distributed around the country. Yet a combination of a large storm, an unexpectedly large storm surge and the death or ineffectiveness of police and local government workers ensured that Typhoon Haiyan was a dreadful disaster.

 Most disasters that damage the environment and take lives in Europe are due, in the last analysis, to more than one factor, which exacerbate each other. That is the reason why all new and unusual processes have to be considered extremely carefully. Shale gas operations qualify for special care simply because we have not carried many of them out in Europe.

20 Things politicians should understand ... (Part 3)

Continuing the previous two postings here is the third set of 5 more "Things politicians need to know about shale gas science", inspired by the recent Guardian article entitled "Top 20 things politicians need to know about science" from an original article in Nature.  

It is not just politicians that need to know this stuff - without it the whole debate is not possible.

11. Seek replication, not pseudoreplication

Results consistent across many studies, replicated on independent populations, are more likely to be solid. There is nothing better than good quality data and lots of it from different locations. Unfortunately data is often man-power intensive and hence expensive. However, government and companies must be prepared to spend money on collecting that data if the general public are to trust their operations (and here).

Moreover, data from different scenarios or locations can often be combined in a systematic review or a meta-analysis to provide an overarching view of the topic with potentially much greater statistical power than any of the individual studies. This requires that data is made freely available between companies and to the general public as well as academics.

Since data is expensive and represents a commercial advantage, companies are not likely to share it or make it available on their own, however enlightened they are. Interestingly Cuadrilla have released a large amount of water quality testing data here and here because they recognise that it represents part of the community patrimony. It is hoped that this will continue. The government should take a central role in coordinating the archiving and publication of all shale gas data through, for example, the British GeologicalSurvey, but is currently avoiding it.

12. Scientists are human

It is not a case of companies bad, politicians bad, activists bad, scientists good – scientists are human too. Although most scientists take extreme care in balancing evidence and following a scientific rationale, a few are less than candid. One must always remember that scientists have a vested interest in promoting their work, often for status and further research funding, and occasionally for direct financial gain. This can lead to selective reporting of results and occasionally, exaggeration. Peer review is not infallible: journal editors might favour positive findings and newsworthiness.

All this adds up to the statement that scientists should not be believed blindly nor their statements regarded dogmatically. If shale gas extraction is to be carried out successfully, it needs the informed consent of the local communities – informed consent means listening to the statements of a range of scientists and others to form a balanced evidence-driven view upon which solid decisions can be made.

13. Significance is significant

Opinion is not important. The only way of testing data is by using valid statistical tests.

One of the most common ways of stating whether an effect, such as whether hydraulic fracturing has contaminated an aquifer, is real is the statistical significance or P-value. The P-value is a measure of how likely a result is to occur by chance. Thus P = 0.01 means there is a 1-in-100 probability that what looks like a link (say fracking and aquifer contamination) actually occurred randomly. We would call P=0.01 very significant as it also indicates that there is a 99-in-100 probability that the link is real. Usually P<0.05 is taken as the limit where a link is considered to be proven.

So far we have no data in the UK that can be used to carry out a test like this because there has been no fracturing where back-ground data is available (no fracking was carried out at Balcombe). Similarly, no background data is available in the USA and so proper statistical tests cannot be carried out there either. However, such tests will be common in future, in the UK at least, because companies are committed to carrying out before and after water quality tests on aquifers.

14. Separate no effect from non-significance

The lack of a statistically significant result (say a P-value > 0.05) does not mean that there was no underlying effect: it means that no effect was detected. A small study may not have the power to detect a real difference. For example, tests of local wild-life around the Balcombe drilling site may suggest that it suffered no adverse effects from disturbance by the drilling operation. Yet if the tests sampled too few animals it would not have the power to detect impacts had there been any. Even then, it would be extremely difficult to distinguish between disturbance by the drilling operations and disturbance by the large number of protestors.

15. Effect size matters

Small responses are less likely to be detected and may fall below the measurement sensitivity of whatever instrument is being used. However, a study with many replicates might result in a statistically significant result but have a small effect size (and so, perhaps, be unimportant).

Let’s take drilling or fracturing induced earthquakes. When hydraulic fracturing is carried out it results in thousands of tiny earth tremors by definition – the whole process is designed to make fractures in the rock and each fracture formation is an earthquake, however small. These earthquakes are mapped in the sub-surface by microseismic methods, and it is possible to see where each one occurs and to delineate the fracture network that forms. If one correlated these earth tremors with the hydraulic fracturing process, there would be, not surprisingly, an extremely significant result -  an apparent smoking gun! However, all of these earthquakes have such a small magnitude that they are never felt at the surface, and are hence unimportant – in fact, a smoking pop-gun!

However, occasionally one earthquake might be big enough to be felt at the surface, but it would not materially alter the significance of the correlation. We must try to correlate problem earthquakes with hydraulic fracturing, but so far there are just too few for this to be possible (only two in the UK, and few in the USA where most of the bigger earthquakes associated with shale gas are not due to hydraulic fracturing, but the irresponsible and thankfully obsolescent habit of disposing of old fracking fluid by deep underground injection).