Learning from Dogs

A breath-taking film from the BBC Horizon series about a vast hidden lake under the Antarctic ice sheet.

My apologies for putting very little effort into today’s Post.  It’s because Jean and I will be in Phoenix for much of Tuesday (I’m writing this on Monday, 7th!) and it felt easier on me to drop this in for your elucidation than try and write something in a scrabble on Tuesday evenning.

Jean and I watched this last week-end and, …. well just watch it!

It sometimes seems as if our planet has no secrets left – but deep beneath the great Antarctic ice sheet scientists have made an astonishing discovery. They’ve found one of the largest lakes in the world. It’s very existence defies belief. Scientists are desperate to get into the lake because its extreme environment may be home to unique flora and fauna, never seen before, and NASA are excited by what it could teach us about extraterrestrial life. But 4 kilometers of ice stand between the lake and the surface, and breaking this seal without contaminating the most pristine body of water on the planet is possibly one of the greatest challenges science faces in the 21st century.

In 1957 the Russians established a remote base in Antarctica – the Vostok station. It soon became a byword for hardship – dependent on an epic annual 1000km tractor journey from the coast for its supplies. The coldest temperature ever found on Earth (-89°C) was recorded here on the 21st July 1983. It’s an unlikely setting for a lake of liquid water. But in the 1970’s a British team used airborne radar to see beneath the ice, mapping the mountainous land buried by the Antarctic ice sheet. Flying near the Vostok base their radar trace suddenly went flat. They guessed that the flat trace could only be from water. It was the first evidence that the ice could be hiding a great secret.

But 20 years passed before their suspicions were confirmed, when satellites finally revealed that there was an enormous lake under the Vostok base. It is one of the largest lakes in the world – at 10,000 square km it’s about the extent of Lake Ontario, but about twice as deep (500m in places). The theory was that it could only exist because the ice acts like a giant insulating blanket, trapping enough of the earth’s heat to melt the very bottom of the ice sheet.

A reflection of our unconscious minds – and the potential perils ahead.

Last Monday, March 12th, the BBC aired a programme under their excellent Horizon science series.  This programme was entitled, Out of Control?  Here’s how the programme was introduced,

We all like to think we are in control of our lives – of what we feel and what we think. But scientists are now discovering this is often simply an illusion.

Surprising experiments are revealing that what you think you do and what you actually do can be very different. Your unconscious mind is often calling the shots, influencing the decisions you make, from what you eat to who you fall in love with. If you think you are really in control of your life, you may have to think again.

The whole 60 minute programme was fascinating right from the start when Professor Nobre introduced the secret world of our unconscious mind.  Professor Anna Nobre heads The Brain & Cognition Laboratory, a cognitive neuroscience research group at the Department of Experimental Psychology in the University of Oxford.

For starters, how much of your mind do you think is your conscious mind as opposed to your unconscious mind?  Watch this clip and be amazed!

“Are you in control of your unconscious, or is it in control of you?”

So let me link how our mind works to something more relevant today than possibly any other aspect of life.

I’m thinking of the fundamental question that bothers me and, perhaps millions of others.  That question being: “Why, with the overwhelming scientific evidence that man is critically threatening the planet’s biosphere upon which we all depend, is there not an equally overwhelming global commitment for change to a sustainable way of life?“

Take, for example, this compelling story.

Last Saturday the BBC News website published a report by Richard Black, the BBC’s Environment correspondent, that opened thus,

An eminent UK engineer is suggesting building cloud-whitening towers in the Faroe Islands as a “technical fix” for warming across the Arctic.

Scientists told UK MPs this week that the possibility of a major methane release triggered by melting Arctic ice constitutes a “planetary emergency“. [my emboldening]

The Arctic could be sea-ice free each September within a few years.

and later goes into this detail (do please read it all, it’s only a few minutes of quiet reading),

On melting ice

The area of Arctic Ocean covered by ice each summer has declined significantly over the last few decades as air and sea temperatures have risen.

For each of the last four years, the September minimum has seen about two-thirds of the average cover for the years 1979-2000, which is used a baseline. The extent covered at other times of the year has also been shrinking.

What more concerns some scientists is the falling volume of ice.

Analysis from the University of Washington, in Seattle, using ice thickness data from submarines and satellites, suggests that Septembers could be ice-free within just a few years.

Data for September suggests the Arctic Ocean could be free of sea ice in a few years

“In 2007, the water [off northern Siberia] warmed up to about 5C (41F) in summer, and this extends down to the sea bed, melting the offshore permafrost,” said Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University.

Among the issues this raises is whether the ice-free conditions will quicken release of methane currently trapped in the sea bed, especially in the shallow waters along the northern coast of Siberia, Canada and Alaska.

Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though it does not last as long in the atmosphere.

Several teams of scientists trying to measure how much methane is actually being released have reported seeing vast bubbles coming up through the water – although analysing how much this matters is complicated by the absence of similar measurements from previous decades.

Nevertheless, Prof Wadhams told MPs, the release could be expected to get stronger over time.  ”With ‘business-as-usual’ greenhouse gas emissions, we might have warming of 9-10C in the Arctic.  That will cement in place the ice-free nature of the Arctic Ocean – it will release methane from offshore, and a lot of the methane on land as well.”

This would – in turn – exacerbate warming, across the Arctic and the rest of the world.

Abrupt methane releases from frozen regions may have played a major role in two events, 55 and 251 million years ago, that extinguished much of the life then on Earth.

Meteorologist Lord (Julian) Hunt, who chaired the meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change, clarified that an abrupt methane release from the current warming was not inevitable, describing that as “an issue for scientific debate”.

But he also said that some in the scientific community had been reluctant to discuss the possibility.

“There is quite a lot of suppression and non-discussion of issues that are difficult, and one of those is in fact methane,” he said, recalling a reluctance on the part of at least one senior scientists involved in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment to discuss the impact that a methane release might have.

Reams of other factual evidence shows that mankind may have only a few years left to stop the planet going into a runaway condition that would then extinguish much of the life on Earth!

So what’s stopping us?

Dr. Sharot

Well back to that Horizon programme.  In the programme, Dr. Tali Sharot of University College London explains how we are all optimists despite the risks.  I.e. our unconscious mind deliberately prevents negative information from affecting our conscious mind, our conscious judgment.

In an experiment, an individual is asked to guess the likelihood of a whole range of outcomes, 80 in all.  Ergo, you see a gentleman guessing the likelihood of cancer as 18%, of a bone fracture as 10%, of Alzheimer’s as 2%, and so on.

In some cases he guessed a pessimistic probability, in others an optimistic probability.  After each guess he was shown the correct probability.  E.g. cancer 30% vs his estimate of 18%, for a bone fracture 34% vs his guess of 10%, and the risk in reality of Alzheimer’s is 10% versus his instinct of just 2%.   I’ve just quoted his optimistic guesses, in many questions his guess was a pessimistic view, i.e. he guessed a higher likelihood than the statistical reality.

Then he was asked all 80 questions again, having seen the accurate probability compared to his intuitive guess.

So here’s the fascinating outcome.

Where his instinct was a negative guess versus the statistical probability then he adjusted his mind and was able to quote a more accurate figure the second time around.  But where the reality was more pessimistic than his first guess, then that adjusted knowledge wasn’t retained.  In other words, our beliefs only change when we can adjust to a more positive view of the future.

I just hope I have made that clear.  Readers may like to view an article written by Dr. Sharot published in TIME Magazine in May, 2011, called The Optimism Bias or read the introduction to a lecture given in Seattle in June, 2011;  ”A sunny outlook doesn’t just make you a more pleasant companion: Tali Sharot argues that optimism is a tool for survival and happiness that gets us through hard times—even an economic recession. Sharot, author of The Optimism Bias, uncovers myths about optimism, illuminates the ways it can affect our lives, examines why optimism is necessary for us to function, and illustrates how the human brain is extremely adept at turning lead into gold.“

A summary of a publication, Sharot, T. (2011). The optimism bias. Curr Biol 21(23), R941-R945, reads,

The ability to anticipate is a hallmark of cognition. Inferences about what will occur in the future are critical to decision making, enabling us to prepare our actions so as to avoid harm and gain reward. Given the importance of these future projections, one might expect the brain to possess accurate, unbiased foresight. Humans, however, exhibit a pervasive and surprising bias: when it comes to predicting what will happen to us tomorrow, next week, or fifty years from now, we overestimate the likelihood of positive events, and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. For example, we underrate our chances of getting divorced, being in a car accident, or suffering from cancer. We also expect to live longer than objective measures would warrant, overestimate our success in the job market, and believe that our children will be especially talented. This phenomenon is known as the optimism bias, and it is one of the most consistent, prevalent, and robust biases documented in psychology and behavioral economics.

More fascinating information can be found at the Affective Brain Lab.

So here’s the crunch!

Our bias towards an optimistic future is a “tool for survival and happiness that gets us through hard times.”  But if that ancient bias is preventing mankind from recognising just how close we may be to some form of ‘tipping point’ then this tool for survival may be our undoing.

But if on the other hand, we now unite in changing our ways, first by community then by town then by country our future is incredibly optimistic.

 “A single candle may light a thousand others and they in turn many thousands more” – Buddha

Yesterday, I included Parts One and Two of a recent BBC television programme put out under the Horizon banner that had found their way onto YouTube.

Nothing more to say in this Post than to let you watch the concluding parts.  As I wrote yesterday, this may change forever the way you look at everything!

Concluding this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

Part Four is here.

Part Five is here.

By Paul Handover

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

Part Four is here.

By Paul Handover

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

By Paul Handover

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

By Paul Handover

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

By Paul Handover

This may be of no surprise to dog owners!

The BBC recently screened one of the most fascinating programmes in ages (OK, subjective comment!).  It was about the relationship between dogs and humans.  The hour-long programme demonstrated just how important that relationship between dog and man really is.

Indeed, within the first few minutes of the programme, one of the contributors says that without that early domestication of dogs, civilisation of man might not have taken place!

Luckily someone has uploaded this programme onto YouTube.  This Post contains the link to the first of 6 parts with the following 5 parts being presented on this Blog each day.

Please, please take time to watch these videos – they will amaze you, and very possibly bring tears to your eyes.

So if you are a dog owner, prepare to see your dog friend in a totally new way.

By Paul Handover

This is a very strange world that we live in.

It would be fair to say that my knowledge about what I am writing in this Post is minimal to the point of total ignorance.  So why open my mouth and prove it!  Because the conquest of fundamental questions about our world is not only an example of mankind at its greatest but also something of broad appeal.

That is proved by the continuing popularity of the BBC Television Series – Horizon.  In that series there have recently been two fascinating programmes: Who’s afraid of a big Black Hole? and How long is a piece of string? (Readers outside the UK will not be able to view these programmes.)

Here are the programme summaries:

Black holes are one of the most destructive forces in the universe, capable of tearing a planet apart and swallowing an entire star. Yet scientists now believe they could hold the key to answering the ultimate question – what was there before the Big Bang?

The trouble is that researching them is next to impossible. Black holes are by definition invisible and there’s no scientific theory able to explain them. Despite these obvious obstacles, Horizon meets the astronomers attempting to image a black hole for the very first time and the theoretical physicists getting ever closer to unlocking their mysteries. It’s a story that takes us into the heart of a black hole and to the very edge of what we think we know about the universe.

and

Alan Davies attempts to answer the proverbial question: how long is a piece of string? But what appears to be a simple task soon turns into a mind-bending voyage of discovery where nothing is as it seems.

An encounter with leading mathematician Marcus du Sautoy reveals that Alan’s short length of string may in fact be infinitely long. When Alan attempts to measure his string at the atomic scale, events take an even stranger turn. Not only do objects appear in many places at once, but reality itself seems to be an illusion.

Ultimately, Alan finds that measuring his piece of string could – in theory at least – create a black hole, bringing about the end of the world.

Read more of this strange world