Are you ready? The IF Oxford science and ideas festival starts this weekend; a community festival with over 100 events across the next 3 weeks. Take a look at the programme - there’s something for everyone! if-oxford.com/events/
www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪
Many UK universities are in a financial crisis. But the government is leaving them to flounder, treating higher education as a private-sector industry and research as a public investment. Many UK univ...
🌋-ology is a subject dominated by 🌋! Those volcanoes are found in countries 🌍🌎🌏 But knowledge is disproportionately shared from Europe, North America, New Zealand and Japan, where only some of 🌋are found. We need to get better at collaboration and inclusion . 🍀 New papers reflect on this 1/4
New paper: Led by newly-awarded Dr, Anna Brookfield (& her first paper!): 'Magmatic volatile content and the overpressure ‘sweet spot’: implications for volcanic eruption triggering and style': authors.elsevier.com/a/1i2ys1LkU3...
This paper could have been much longer and there's some things we don't cover in as much detail as we would have liked, but it serves as first discussion of this notion in volcanology, should we ever decide to go down this route in decades/centuries to come. END
If volcano geoneringering ever becomes a discipline, we lay out some guiding principles, slightly adapting the 'Oxford principles' from Climate geoengineering.
We come to the conclusion that volcano engineering should not be conducted in the short-term. Currently, we know so little about whether it could be safe or effective. BUT we do argue there's a strong moral case for conducting research to see it ever could be in the future.
There are many ethical considerations, such as uncertainty, justice and equality, risk communication, acts-omission asymmetry, biodiverity, miltary uses, safety, culture and governance we all cover in the paper. shorturl.at/DXYZ5 e.g.
Lasty, the consistent threat of volcanoes, esp large eruptions (1 in 6 per century) that pose global catastrophic risks, means the question of whether we can intervene will keep arising. We support a proactive and informed debate before society tries anything in an emergency.
Also, increased research on solar radiation management, means that our our understanding of the stratosphere and how to manipulate it is likely to increase, especially should we want to reverse any stratospheric injections. E.g. 2nd type of volc geoengineering we outline (below)
