Oxford, my Oxford

It’s the end of a year and the new one has a great ring to it: 2020. That’s pronounced twenny-twenny if you cultivate the currently trendy glottal stop – or, if like me you doan’ speak proper. Looking back over twenny-nine’een I think how lucky I am to live in this great ci’ty with its history, fine buildings, good pubs, live music and free lec’ures.

Enough of that, it’s the lectures I want to reminisce about. I probably go to two or three a week when I and the students are in residence (not many outside of term time). They span a universe of subjects from politics to geology, quantum computing to genetics. Here’s a few that have stuck in my memory from last year.

A very topical one held at the Martin School was entitled ‘How China will save the planet’. That brought them out – or was it the free wine following the lecture (happens sometimes)? The lecturer shocked us by saying that China has the most solar panels in the world. What’s more China has the most wind generators in the world. But then again he told us that China burns more coal than any other country in the world. Actually, he told us, their use of coal had been declining, but economic incentives to encourage that were removed and it has risen again. I have seen piles of the stuff lying about in the streets of some Chinese cities.

Then there was the lecture by the Geology Group on the origin of plant roots. There were very few of us there for some reason but I found it fascinating. Most fossils are derived from quite large things of course, but roots, especially pre-historic roots are thin and wispy, hardly likely to become fossilized. But there is a fine grained rock called chert in which fossilized plants have been found in extraordinary detailed form – particularly in Scotland. This provides views of root formation from the Devonian period some 400 million years ago and provided some strong theories of how plants evolved roots .It might sound a dull subject, but with a good speaker and many colourful slides it was fascinating.

Around the same time there were a couple of lectures which updated the whole subject of human migration out of Africa. The lectures were intent on combining knowledge gained from the fossil record with that available from the analysis of DNA. They introduced me to the term anatomically modern humans (us) and how our genetic make up contains DNA from other extinct human groups such as the Neanderthal, which I knew of, but also the Denisovan which was new to me and contributes as much as 5% to the DNA in Asians, including, presumably, my half Taiwanese grand-children.

Another lecture addressed time: its measurement over the ages from the basic egg-timer to today’s cesium clocks which are accurate to one second in 150 million years! The lecturer was quite old, which sort of befits the lecture, but his lecture was bang up to date. He told us that all the measures that we use in everyday life, like the meter or kilogram are derived in some way from the measure of time and other constants of nature. Disappointing really, I always like the idea that that there was a rod and a ball which standardized these things in a triple locked cellar somewhere near Paris.

Other lectures covering everything from the gig economy, to fracking to Brexit filled many pages of my indecipherable notes and maybe, just maybe, improved my understanding of the world in 2019.

In conclusion don’t forget to listen out for the glottal stop in twenny-twenny. Still not sure what it is? Laager drinkers can try the Elocution Bar within my website pub for elucidation.

Rewilding: Green or Greener

Yes, I’ve learned a new word. I hated it at first: my normal reaction to hearing a new word is revulsion and deep suspicion that somewhere in the OED there is already a perfectly good word with the same meaning. But then I realised that we are rewilders and this new word has swiftly been added to my vocabulary!

Since we managed to buy the field behind our 

house in the Cotswolds we have planted many trees, hedge plants and wildflowers and I have created a pond. I had been feeling a little guilty about owning a few hectares and not farming it productively, but now I find that as a rewilder I am actually part of the growing army who claim to be saving the planet! Gosh. And there’s more: I am one of the few people who, during trips, collects their own urine, brings it home and pours it into the compost bin! I know you do not want to know the details of that so let’s just recall, and slightly rephrase, the words of the Yorkshireman from the Fast Show: “I’m considerably greener than you”. 

In fairness we were green before the word was ambushed by conservationists.  We dutifully took our old newspapers and magazines to a place that recycled them, we grew a lot of our own food, why, at one time we kept goats, pigs, chickens and sheep on our smallholding where we planted hundreds of trees. We also composted, manured and ploughed the fields and scattered. Yet, somewhere along the line we have developed an antipathy towards the near religious zeal of many of the greenies and hearty dislike for the Green Party’s sole MP. How has this arisen?

For one thing, though always concerned by my own, often grudging, use of the air transport, I am constantly amazed at the vast number of activists who fly to conservation conferences. Also I began to sense that the core activists have agendas which are not centered on conservation. My personal belief is that the problems caused by technology will be solved by technology – not by zealots who are anti-technology, have strong beliefs in controlled economies, collectivism and the like and imagine a paradisal society of low population living close to nature yet with all the benefits of modern medicine. They reject the potential technologies of ocean cloud whitening, carbon capture or fusion, yet embrace a future where the planet is densely covered in ugly, destructive wind turbines and solar farms. What’s more they delight in a future imagined by a sixteen year old child of high intelligence but little experience or breadth of knowledge and are often vegans with a wish for us all to live amongst soya bean plantations without a cow, sheep or pig in sight.

Yes we are rewilders and in the pub I only drink real ale (no added CO2). But I’m sure we can do better. Less travel, less meat, scrap the diesel motor caravan and buy an electric version, etc, etc. Then again perhaps I can offset my warming sins with our rewilding activities on the field? Is that permitted?