Toxic TV Fairytale – Part II

I’ve just e-mailed this addition to my earlier written complaint to the ASA about the dreadful, manipulative TV advert Bedtime Stories. I’m not sure if it will have any effect now – for all I know, a decision has already been made as to whether or not to uphold complaints against this ad. But I think I’ve probably done my best, in the circumstances.

Dear Sir/Madam,

As an addition to my letter of complaint, I would like to provide the following material, which I consider to be helpful in backing up my assertion that the Bedtime Stories advert could be emotionally harmful to very young children. Normally I would have sent this by post, but am e-mailing this instead, due to the erratic quality of postal services at the moment.

1) My first reference is to a web page maintained by the National Mental Health Information Center of the US Department of Health and Human Services – Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA.)

PSYCHOSOCIAL ISSUES FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES IN DISASTERS:
A Guide For The Primary Care Physician

On this page is a table (Table 5) showing various points to consider when understanding the comprehension of death in children and adolescents. I believe this is relevant, as people and pets such as dogs can and do lose their lives in natural disasters such as floods, and a dog drowning in a flood is depicted in the Bedtime Stories advert.

In this table, developmental considerations for preschool children include the terms “magical thinking”, “egocentric” and “no concept of time.” My interpretations of these are as follows:

“Magical thinking” would be the erroneous connection between thoughts such as “I didn’t switch off the light”, or “Daddy left the lights on” and either recollections such as “There was a flood (and I must have caused it)” or anticipations such as “There will be a flood (and it will be my fault).”

“Egocentric” is self-evident; it appears very possible for preschool children to imagine that what is happening to them is happening to everyone, or that their actions or private thoughts and feelings have a direct and magical effect on the rest of the world.

“No concept of time” again is self-evident. Preschool children do not have a realistic notion of long periods of time such as decades or centuries. The idea that the energy generated to provide power for electric lights also generates CO2, and that the UK’s man-made CO2 emissions (about 2% or less of the world total) would contribute (according to the controversial theory of anthropogenic global warming) to the increased likelihood of floods in unspecified locations and in future decades, would be more or less incomprehensible to preschool children. In the advert, they see the catastrophic consequences of not switching off a light occurring immediately and nearby, perhaps the very next day in their own neighbourhood.

2) My second reference comprises quotations from a 2005 article from the US-based News-Medical.Net, which recommended that parents limited television viewing of the Katrina disaster for children under 12 years of age.

THE MEDICAL NEWS: from News-Medical.Net – Latest Medical News and Research from Around the World

“Although they were not directly involved with the tragedy, repeated television viewing of the disaster puts these children at high risk for developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression.”

“Research on the impact of the World Trade Center attack indicates that children who viewed more television news of the attack were two times as likely to develop symptoms of PTSD than children with lower TV exposure,” said Harold S. Koplewicz, M.D., Director of the NYU Child Study Center. “Our job as parents is to protect our kids from unnecessary media coverage of this event. Good parents will stop the television.”

3) My third reference is from the University of Michigan Health System website
This lists the following ways that TV can scare or traumatize children.

“Children can come to view the world as a mean and scary place when they take violence and other disturbing themes on TV to be accurate in real life.”

“Symptoms of being frightened or upset by TV stories can include bad dreams, anxious feelings, being afraid of being alone, withdrawing from friends, and missing school.
Fears caused by TV can cause sleep problems in children.
Scary-looking things like grotesque monsters especially frighten children aged two to seven. Telling them that the images aren’t real does not help because kids under age eight can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
Many children exposed to scary movies regret that they watched because of the intensity of their fright reactions.
Children ages 8-12 years who view violence are often frightened that they may be a victim of violence or a natural disaster.”

4) My fourth reference is from Pediatrics – the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics
Published online August 31, 2005

CLINICAL REPORT

Psychosocial Implications of Disaster or Terrorism on Children: A Guide for the Pediatrician
Joseph F. Hagan, Jr, MD and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health and the Task Force on Terrorism

I have excerpted three paragraphs from this report (below) which I consider to be particularly relevant:

“Traumatic and disrupting events can have adverse effects even on children who are too young to verbalize their distress. Although infants and toddlers may have no cognitive comprehension of a disaster, the destruction of routine and loss of loved ones can lead to regression and detachment. In the first year of life, such experiences can manifest as increased crying and irritability, separation anxiety, and an exaggerated startle response. Toddlers and preschool-aged children are likely to experience sleep terrors and nightmares and exhibit behavioral and skill regression manifesting as helplessness, clinging behavior, and increased temper tantrums.”

“School-aged children often demonstrate the experience of trauma through play, expressing trauma-related themes and aggressive behavior. Similar to their younger counterparts, sleep disturbances and regressive behaviors such as separation anxiety are often seen. School-aged children also may become withdrawn or apathetic or exhibit somatization and behavioral problems. Although fear was the most common primary reaction to the events of September 11th among school-aged children, the developmental diversity of this age
group leads to a wide range of responses to such trauma.”

“Children remote from catastrophic events by both location and experience are not immune to the acute and chronic psychopathologies related to disaster. Several studies have implicated indirect television exposure to disaster as a risk factor for children’s reactivity. The amount of information that a child will find valuable in understanding a disaster largely depends on a child’s developmental stage. Parents and caregivers should be aware that gruesome and disturbing details are likely unnecessary in facilitating a child’s comprehension of a tragedy. Such information has a great potential to engender fear and may be psychologically injurious and thus impede a child’s psychosocial recovery. In addition, the subjective response of a child to disaster has been demonstrated to have a high predictive value for symptoms of PTSD.”

Due to the very short time frame, I have not had the time or opportunity to access the primary sources, i.e., scientific studies and books, cited in these web pages. I am confident that were I able to have full access to these primary sources, I would be able to build an extremely robust case against the Bedtime Stories advert. However, even with the limited material I have been able to find on the internet, I am confident that I have been able to demonstrate convincingly some the factors by which the Bedtime Stories advert could be injurious to the emotional health of small children, and to summarise, I have listed some of these factors below.

1) The prevalence of “magical thinking” among very small children (“I didn’t switch off the light, so there will be a flood.”)
2) The natural egocentricity of very small children (“My thoughts and actions have a direct and powerful impact on everything around me.”)
3) The lack of a clear concept of time among very small children (“By not switching off the light, I could cause a flood tomorrow.”)
4) The fact that frightening TV stories can, in general, lead to bad dreams, anxiety, withdrawal from friends and sleep disorders in children.
5) The fact that scary images (such as a giant black CO2 sky monster, or pets drowning in a flood) may upset children between two and seven years especially, because they cannot differentiate between fiction and reality.
6) The fact that there is strong evidence to suggest that repeated TV viewing of disasters can lead to PTSD, anxiety and depression in children.

I believe that I have put forward a case strong enough to persuade the ASA to at least investigate this appalling advert, and I hope that there is enough of a case for the advert to be withdrawn as soon as possible. I think that children and parents in 21st century Britain have enough on their plates without the Halloween spectre of CO2 emissions, however illusory this threat may ultimately prove to be, hanging over them as well.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Cull

UK Gov’s Toxic TV Fairytale

On 9th October 2009 at 8.45 PM, viewers of Coronation Street on British TV channel ITV1 watched a commercial that had been put together by the UK Government, at a cost of about £6,000,000 and which is part of their “Act on CO2″ initiative. You can watch it in all its sinister glory here on YouTube.

This commercial shows a little girl being told a scary bedtime story by her father, a story in which man-made CO2 causes “strange” weather and the possibility of lands disappearing under the sea. This story is in a children’s picture book, which shows a group of distressed-looking animals, including a weeping rabbit, looking down at a drought-stricken patch of dried-up mud. It shows little grey blobs of CO2, anthropomorphised into tiny faces with hands, rising up into the sky and forming a giant grey monster cloud with jagged teeth and glaring eyes. It shows what appears to be a small town in the English countryside being overwhelmed with floodwater and people waiting for rescue on rooftops. It shows a dog disappearing under the water, presumably drowned. Finally it shows a suburban street with lights glowing from windows, and a little girl smiling as she switches off the light in her room.

Where to start with this? I have just written to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to complain about it, and here is what I wrote:

I am writing to the Advertising Standards Authority to complain about the Government’s TV advert that was aired on 9th October 2009 at 20.45 on ITV1 and which is part of their “Act on CO2″ initiative. It shows a father telling his little daughter a frightening bedtime story about horrible things happening as a result of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere.

On your website, under “A short guide to what we do”, you state: “The main principles of the advertising standards codes are that ads should not mislead, cause harm, or offend.” I assert that this advert misleads and also that it is likely to cause emotional harm. In the numbered points below, I will explain why I believe this is the case.

1. Firstly, in my view, this advert is blatant, unabashed scare-mongering. This advert is not telling us about the likely consequences of irresponsible behaviour such as drink-driving or drug taking. It is putting forward the unproven view that people doing “ordinary, everyday things” like keeping their houses warm, driving cars and switching on lights are the direct cause of “strange weather” such as “awful heat waves” and “terrible storms and floods”. It was shown before the 9 PM “watershed”, which means it is likely to have been watched by very young children who may well have identified with the little girl in the advert and who would have been upset to see pictures of distressed animals and what appears to be a drowning dog.

What associations will have been formed in the minds of these children? I believe that when they continue to see their parents and other people around them carrying out harmless activities such as switching on a light, they will make an association between these harmless activities and distressing scenes of scary clouds and animals drowning in floods. People are not going to stop using electric lights or driving cars, so when impressionable children see lights continue to be switched on or cars continue to be driven, they are likely to recall this advert and expect that disastrous consequences will follow. In this way, I believe this is likely to cause emotional harm, in that it is going to evoke excessive and unfounded anxiety in young children.

2. I also assert that this advert is likely to cause unnecessary anxiety and guilt in parents. We are currently experiencing a recession, with many parents already worried about how to make ends meet and look after their families, in the face of threats such as redundancy and the higher cost of living, and with many families already economising by reducing their energy bills and car use, as far as they are able to do so. What message does this advert send to parents? That even while being sensible and economising, simply by using electricity, gas and motor vehicles they are still somehow being irresponsible parents because by doing so they are causing “strange weather” and endangering their children? In a few weeks’ time, it will be winter here in Britain, with darker, shorter days, and colder temperatures. People will need to use electric lights more in order to carry out their everyday activities – keeping them switched off will not be an option. People will need to switch on the heating in their homes. People will need to use motor vehicles, as an alternative to the barely adequate public transport system in this country. Should a parent who decides to give their child a lift somewhere in the family car, as an alternative to letting them walk along cold, dimly-lit streets on some dark November evening, be made to feel guilty about it? It would be unreasonable to think so, surely. In this way too, I assert that this advert is liable to cause emotional harm.

3. I finally assert that this advert is misleading. It states that higher levels of man-made CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere are the direct cause of “strange weather” such as heat waves, storms and floods. This remains a highly contentious theory, nothing more. Even the BBC is now stating: “For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.” The last major heat wave we had here in Britain was in 2003, over six years ago now. And far from being “strange”, extreme weather events have happened in every epoch – in the 18th century alone there was no shortage of such “strange” events. In 1774 the bridge over the Thames at Henley was swept away in disastrous floods. Europe had a record heat wave in 1757, much like the 2003 heat wave in its intensity. The most catastrophic storm in England’s historical records took place back in 1703.

Scottish scientist Wilson Flood is reported to have analysed the CET (Central England Temperature) records, which started in 1659, and found that UK summers in the 20th century were cooler than those of two centuries previously (average UK summer temperature 15.46 degrees C in the 18th century, 15.35 degrees C in the 20th century.) As for sea level rise, historically sea levels have been rising by an average of several millimetres a year, a few tens of centimetres a century, for the last couple of centuries at least, and there is no sign of any significant acceleration.

According to the advert’s narrative, “There was once a land where the weather was very very strange. There were awful heat waves in some parts, and in others terrible storms and floods. Scientists said it was caused by too much CO2, which went up into the sky when the grown-ups used energy. They said the CO2 was getting dangerous. Its effects were happening faster than they had thought.”

The facts are that global temperatures have not risen in 11 years, “strange” weather events are actually not strange at all, and the rate of sea level rise has not changed much for centuries. I therefore assert that there is little or no evidence to support the advert’s claims that CO2 is causing or is about to cause the sort of disastrous effects that it portrays. I believe that this advert thus contravenes the advertising standards code, as it sets out deliberately to mislead viewers. The way it misleads is to imply certainty, with sentences like “They said the CO2 was getting dangerous”, where in fact there is a complete absence of certainty, and where there is plenty of evidence that suggests a very different scenario, i.e., that CO2 plays a very minor role (perhaps a vanishingly small role) when it comes to the rise and fall of global temperatures.

In short, I consider this advert to be an egregious piece of misleading, scare-mongering nonsense, and conclude that the UK Government should have done better things with the £6 million it spent creating this work of propaganda, to use the most accurate word to describe it. I would like to see, as a result of ASA adjudication, the Government withdrawing it with immediate effect and issuing an apology and a retraction in its stead.

I look forward to receiving your response by return of post.

Yours sincerely,
Alex Cull

I intend to update this as soon as I have a response.

UPDATE

No adjudication by the ASA yet (this is Sunday 18th October) but there may be one this coming Wednesday (21st). There have, however, been over 200 complaints so far – see this article in The Guardian.

Also please visit TonyN’s excellent climate blog Harmless Sky for news about this ad campaign and the views of some of us who oppose it.

Invisibility

I’m having a short break from climate-related stories, and thought I’d write about invisibility instead. Last month I found an article in the Metro about a Chinese artist, Liu Bolin, who paints his body so that he merges with the background, a bit like a chameleon. (Here’s a similar article in the Mail on Sunday.) The idea is simple, actually, but the procedure is very fiddly and time-consuming, taking over ten hours to complete. Obviously you can still see that he’s there, if you look closely, but the average passer-by might not notice him at all.

When I was a lot younger, I was very self-conscious and the idea of moving around unseen seemed cool. That was before I learned about the possible drawbacks, though, by reading about the many problems faced by the character Griffin in The Invisible Man, by HG Wells – even moving around without being constantly bumped into would be a challenge in itself. Clearly, unless you just happened to be trying to infiltrate a military base in some sort of ninja operation, actually being invisible would be a pain for much of the time.

But there might still be occasions when being unnoticed would be helpful, for instance when trying to avoid a talkative but very boring acquaintance in the street. So it’s probably worth asking the question: is invisibility possible?

Surprisingly, science says yes, it is. In theory, a cloaking device could be devised consisting of “metamaterials” that can guide electromagnetic radiation around a central region (this has already been done on a small scale with microwaves.) However, it is foreseen that the device would have to be rather rigid and substantial, so unless you happen to be a Romulan spaceship, it probably won’t be something you can just slip on. In the near future, anyway. And even if they developed a prototype suit made of light-bending material (or something resembling Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak), making it work convincingly is likely to be something of a technological nightmare.

How do animals do this? Of course, chameleons, squid, flounder and other creatures that change colour, either for display purposes or to conceal themselves by matching their backgrounds, do so not by bending light rays but by using specialised skin cells called chromatophores, which change colour and form patterns. We humans have skin cells that darken when UV light stimulates the production of melanin, but alas their repertoire is limited (we range in colour from deep brown to pale pink – no sky blue, avocado or mauve, of course) and we cannot alter them quickly or at will.

(Incidentally, I had always thought that the skin cells of animals such as squid must somehow sense nearby colours and change themselves accordingly. Not so – the squid must be able to see its surroundings – the information reaches the chromatophores via the squid’s eyes.)

However, even if humans were genetically modified so that our skin could reproduce any colour of the rainbow in any conceivable pattern, this would still leave a problem, as we’d have to go about naked for this to work. So it’s back to the invisibility cloak idea, but instead of light-benders, the outer layer of the cloak might consist of arrays of cells that would sense their surroundings and change colour accordingly.

Something like this – “chameleon cloth” – has already appeared in science fiction, featuring in George RR Martin’s story Dying of the Light and more recently in the Polity novels by Neal Asher. So is it feasible? At least one company – Philips – is already developing “photonic textiles” which can be programmed to display text and images. Further down the line, a combination of minuscule programmable pigment cells and tiny sensors – nano-scale CCDs – could do the trick, perhaps.

Wearing a cloak or a sort of burkha made of chameleon cloth, a person might eventually be able to emulate Liu Bolin and fade into the background. It would be a lot faster and more sophisticated than using a paintbrush and palette, but the prototype would be somewhat expensive – for the likes of you and me, anyway. Maybe by AD 2075 invisibility cloaks will be manufactured on an industrial scale and everyone will be able to afford one, but until then, I imagine this technology is likely to be the prerogative of secret agents and super villains, the Bonds and Blofelds of this world.

Perhaps it already exists, and there’s someone standing unseen, just a few feet away from you, watching…

(It has also occurred to me that there are other ways to become invisible than distorting light or changing colour. Blending in with the surroundings is often simply a matter of not drawing attention to oneself, which can sometimes be a simple matter of carrying a clipboard and looking “official”. But that, I think, is the subject of a whole new blog post.)

Letter to my MP

On 28th October 2008, the Climate Change Act was debated in the UK Parliament. It became law a month later. In November I wrote the following letter to my MP, Mrs Ann Keen, Member of Parliament for Brentford and Isleworth.

14th November 2008
Dear Mrs Keen,

I am writing in connection with the Climate Change Bill, which was passed through the Commons last month and supported by a majority of MPs. I understand that this Bill, when it becomes law, will commit the UK to reducing its emissions of CO2 by 80% by 2050, including the emissions from shipping and aviation. Personally, I am sceptical about the extent to which man-made carbon dioxide has much, or any, impact on average global temperatures, but aside from this, I think there are additional good reasons why the Bill should have been challenged, or at least more thoroughly debated in Parliament.

1) Even if the proponents of man-made Global Warming are correct in their basic assumptions, I understand that the UK’s CO2 emissions come to a very small percentage (probably under 5%, and I’ve seen at least one source which states under 2%) of the world total, smaller by far than the portions of the USA, China, Russia and India. I’m surely not alone in thinking that a 60%, 80% or even a 100% reduction of the UK’s carbon emissions would thus appear to have minimal consequences for the climate as a whole.

2) An additional problem would appear to be that even if the UK drastically reduces its carbon emissions, it is not clear what measurable results the reduction would have (if any.) Normally, if there is some sort of economic sacrifice, such as an increase in income tax or council tax, we can be sure that the money levied will be spent somewhere and that we will experience tangible and measurable benefits, e.g., more police on the streets, schools and hospitals with better resources, fire stations with more up-to-date equipment, etc. There is also some accountability if such benefits do not occur, i.e. there is an audit trail that can be followed, to determine how the money was spent (or not spent, as the case may be.) There seems to be no measurable outcome that can be confidently predicted for a cut in the UK’s carbon emissions, e.g. a corresponding reduction in global temperatures or a reduction in the rate of sea level rise. In other words, this cut appears to represent an economic sacrifice for which there seems to be no evidence of a guaranteed or measurable return.

3) Furthermore, it is not very clear how far this cut will affect the UK economy in the decades to come. Common sense suggests that the cost of generating energy and doing business will rise by a large amount, but the extent of this is not fully known. Extending the emissions cut to shipping and aviation will surely affect the UK’s trade and our competitiveness in the world economy – again, it is not clear by how much. From my (admittedly limited) understanding of Parliamentary procedures, it does not seem that this matter has been properly assessed and debated, especially as the financial and social consequences could be far-reaching.

4) I would add that the science of climate change, far from being “settled”, as some proclaim, appears to be anything but, on further inspection. Institutions monitoring global temperatures, such as NASA GISS and the UK’s Hadley Centre, rely on computer models which provide a range of projections for future temperatures; however, these are highly controversial and appear to be flawed in quite a few ways. In December 2003, for instance, the Hadley Centre’s Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia were confident that temperatures would rise during 2006-2010. This year, however, we were told that temperatures will probably not rise again until after 2010; basically, my understanding is that they had underestimated the cooling effect attributed to La Nina.

The concept of due diligence seems to me to be as important in science as it is in business, and I’m concerned that not enough was done in this instance, before approving a decision which could have very far-reaching consequences for the UK economy during the next 42 years and beyond. Personally, I would like to see more openness, in the British media and in British politics, regarding the uncertainties and the limitations of the scientific models upon which these important economic decisions are based. Proponents of man-made Global Warming might argue that the time for debate is over, and that urgent and unilateral action is required. However, I take a different view – that when the economic stakes are high, it is better to be cautious, to consider both sides of a proposition and to make sure that there is a proper, public and thorough audit of the science.

As a constituent, I am therefore asking whether you would be prepared to put the following questions to Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change:

1) What actions are the Government taking to scrutinise and assess the likely impact of the 80% emissions cut on the UK economy?

2) What actions are the Government taking to determine exactly (if at all possible) what measurable effect the UK’s 80% emissions cut will have on world climate?

3) What actions are the Government taking to carry out due diligence on the science of climate change, and ensure that the public and media are aware of the uncertainties and limitations involved in modelling climate trends?

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter.
Yours sincerely,
Alex Cull

UPDATE

And here is the reply, in a letter dated 13th April 2009, to Ann Keen from Joan Ruddock MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change:

Dear Ann,

Thank you for your letter dated 9 December enclosing a copy of a letter from your constituent, Mr A Cull of [address supplied] about the Climate Change Bill (now Act). I am replying as the Minister responsible for this area and apologise for the delay in doing so, which is due to departmental reorganisation.

Your constituent expressed a number of concerns regarding the Climate Change Act in his letter.

Firstly, he questioned whether man-made carbon dioxide impacts on average global temperatures. It is evident that atmospheric concentrations of key greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, have increased significantly since the pre-industrial period. The concentrations of these gases have now reached levels unprecedented for tens of thousands of years. Carbon dioxide concentrations alone have risen by around 35% to 382ppm (parts per million) [US NOAA data - 2006 average], since 1750. The current level now far exceeds that at any time measured over the last 650,000 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report concludes that most of the observed warming since the mid-20th century is very likely, i.e. a more than 90% chance, due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. The assessments of the IPCC represent the consensus of thousands of scientists worldwide, based on peer-reviewed research.

Mr Cull asked whether by reducing its carbon emissions the UK would be able to impact on climate change, given its relatively small percentage contribution to global emissions. The UK is fully aware of the need for international cooperation on this matter and by setting a target of an 80% cut in carbon emissions – rather than the legal requirement of 60% – the Government has set an example for other countries to follow. We recognise that developed countries bear most of the responsibility for the climate change already underway and that we have a moral duty to prevent its harmful effects. It is also worth considering that British businesses throughout the globe increase the UK’s percentage contribution to carbon emissions.

Thirdly, Mr Cull highlighted the difficulty in measuring the effects of meeting carbon emissions reduction targets to ensure accountability. Action on climate change is taken to reduce the likelihood of detrimental effects in the long term. Due to the time lag in the carbon system, and our past emissions, we are already committed to a certain level of climate change. This means that even if we stopped all emissions tomorrow we would still expect another 30-40 years of temperature rise, and more than a century of sea-level rise. Predicting the exact outcomes of UK reductions in carbon emissions is extremely difficult therefore. Scientists can, however, use models to estimate how human activities have changed the likelihood of the event occurring. For example, scientists have calculated that the likelihood of a heat wave like that seen in Europe in 2003 has already at least doubled because of human-induced warming. Similarly, it is now becoming possible to attribute long-term trends in weather to human influence. For example, the recent report of the IPCC concluded that human activities have likely contributed to observed changes in wind patterns and temperature extremes globally.

I do agree that it is important for governments to be held to account on their progress. That is why the Act created an expert, Independent Committee on Climate Change to suggest the levels of budget and provide an annual progress report to Parliament, which the Government must publicly respond to. This will help keep progress towards a low-carbon economy transparent and accountable.

Finally, Mr Cull raised concerns that the Climate Change Act will adversely affect the UK economy. Ultimately, the aim of the Act is to provide a framework for the UK to make a transition to a low-carbon economy. By being the first to introduce radical emissions targets, the UK Government is giving businesses a head start in this transition, which should benefit the economy in the long term. A comprehensive approach to tackling climate change needs to include emissions from corporations, international aviation and shipping. We ensured that the Act aimed to include these emissions in its targets and budgets by the end of 2012. If this is not the case, the Government will have to explain to Parliament why not. This provides sufficient time for corporations to adapt to the legislation and for an international agreement to be reached on how to allocate aviation and shipping emissions between countries.

Should your constituent wish to examine further Parliament’s scrutiny of the Climate Change Bill, he can do so here: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2007-08/climatechangehl.html [link]

With best wishes,
Joan Ruddock

Douglas Adams: The Salmon of Doubt

In 2001, when I heard that Douglas Adams had just died at the age of 49, I remember feeling an acute sense of loss. This was not only because I was, and still am, a fan of his, and not only because he was dead and at a relatively young age. Quite a few of my favourite SF writers have died during my lifetime, including Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, and while I’ve always felt a sadness and a sense that their absence has taken some of the light out of the world, there’s also often been the feeling (certainly in the cases of Asimov and Clarke) that they had a good innings and pretty much fulfilled their destinies as writers. It was different in this case.

I felt that after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the Dirk Gently novels, Douglas Adams still had a lot more to write about and would have taken his stories to some pretty exciting new places. There would have been another Dirk Gently book, of course, and then an embarking on who knew what amazing projects. Alas, it was never to be.

Instead, we have The Salmon of Doubt, a posthumous collection of Adams’s articles, bits and pieces salvaged from his computer, and some rather fragmentary chapters of the third Dirk Gently novel (which is where this book’s title comes from.) Reading it left me amused and entertained, as always with Adams, but also inevitably quite melancholy. I wish he were still alive.

The articles are a showcase for Adams’s wit, his curiosity about the world and his love of technology, and have titles such as Hangover Cures, The Rhino Climb, Little Dongly Things and Is There an Artificial God? There is also – and this is poignant – a review of P.G.Wodehouse’s unfinished novel Sunset at Blandings. He writes: “…But you will want to read Sunset for completeness, and for that sense you get, from its very unfinishedness, of being suddenly and unexpectedly close to a Master actually at work – a bit like seeing paint pots and scaffolding being carried in and out of the Sistine Chapel.”

I say this article is poignant, because Adams is also describing something akin to the sense I get from reading what there is of his novel The Salmon of Doubt. There are 11 chapters in all, most of them featuring the eccentric and perennially disorganised Dirk Gently of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, although one chapter is about a rather laid-back, godlike person called Dave, who inhabits DaveLand in DaveWorld, and there is also a bewildered rhinoceros called Raymond, who is teleported somehow into Los Angeles and ends up in someone’s swimming pool.

None of these elements hang together really, or make any kind of sense. But you just know that Adams would have edited them, written the rest of the chapters, added other characters and plot threads, and in some magical sense made it all work out beautifully, albeit in a supremely unpredictable way. The secret of Dirk’s mission would have been revealed in all its cleverness, Dave’s existence would have fitted in perfectly, and Raymond the rhino’s story would have shown us that being teleported into a Los Angeles swimming pool was logically the most likely fate that could have befallen him.

Unfortunately, now we will never know how Douglas Adams would have done it. A few months ago (I’m writing this in early 2009) it was announced that Eoin Colfer (author of the Artemis Fowl stories) has been commissioned to write a sixth Hitchhiker novel, possibly using some of the material Adams had been working on. It might be that Colfer will also go on to write a third Dirk Gently book and carry it off very well indeed – in this unpredictable universe of ours, who knows? But it wouldn’t be the novel Douglas Adams would have written.

For me, he was one of those people who left the world a better place, because he wrote stories that were funny, intelligent, brimming with ideas and that somehow made you feel happier for having read or listened to them. I have been a fan of Douglas Adams from that day in 1978 when I happened to hear the very first radio broadcast of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; over thirty years later, reading The Salmon of Doubt made me feel sad, amused, exasperated and delighted all at the same time, a mix of emotions that seems somehow appropriate, given the wonderfully quirky nature of the man and his stories. How typical, really.

© Alex Cull, 29th January 2009

(As usual I’ve posted this on Helium.com and Planet Bookworm. Also on Ciao!)

Complaint to the BBC

The following is a complaint I made to the BBC earlier this year:

I am writing to complain about the BBC’s recent “montage” of words from Barack Obama’s inaugural speech, which were taken from different paragraphs and put together out of order to make it seem as if he said: “We will restore science to its rightful place, roll back the spectre of a warming planet. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” This changed version of the speech was aired on Newsnight recently and also appears in the video segment attached to Susan Watts’s blog on the BBC website, dated Tuesday 20th January. It was noticed by blogger TonyN, who posted an article about it on his climate-related blog Harmless Sky.

There was, in fact, little in Obama’s inaugural speech that referred to Global Warming. The paragraph where he says “We will restore science to its rightful place” and “We will harness the sun…” etc., is mostly about building infrastructure such as roads and bridges, relying more on renewable energy sources and transforming schools. In the same sentence about science, he mentions using medical high tech to improve health care. Even the parts about renewable energy could just as well be interpreted as an intention to rely less on foreign oil; in other words, a possible emphasis on energy security.

As for “roll back the spectre of a warming planet”, this occurs in a different paragraph altogether, one that is all about war and security. Here he mentions Iraq, Afghanistan, the nuclear threat, defending the American way of life and not giving in to terrorists. The “warming planet” phrase seems rather odd in this context, and could possibly (to my mind, anyway) have been a slip of the tongue or a last-minute change to his notes. Associated Press appear to have misheard it as “warring planet”, and “warring” would have been a much better fit for the context, although listening to the speech, “warming” is what he actually said.

On the Newsnight blog, editor Peter Rippon wrote that the aim was to give people an “impression or montage”. However, to someone listening to the speech without benefit of the transcript, it might well have seemed that this was what Obama actually said, in the order that he said it. Mr Rippon also wrote that this “was signposted to audiences with fades between each point.” Listening carefully to the speech several times, I found that there was a slight cut at the end of the first segment, which is audible, but I didn’t think was obvious enough to be described as “signposted”. The second and third segments had no audible fade between them that I could detect.

Mr Rippon wrote: “It in no way altered the meaning or misrepresented what the President was saying.” I disagree – it altered the meaning completely, changing the emphasis from improving technology, infrastructure, renewable energy sources and security, to Global Warming. In a nutshell, this spliced and edited version places “a warming planet” at the centre of what he was saying, when that is certainly not the impression I get when I read the actual transcript.

I believe that in this case, the BBC have misrepresented President Obama and have manipulated his words to give a false impression. The BBC’s own editorial guidelines state: “We should ensure that any digital manipulation, including the use of CGI or other production techniques to create scenes or characters, does not distort the meaning of events, alter the impact of genuine material or otherwise seriously mislead our audiences.” I believe that the BBC is in breach of these guidelines and that a correction and a public apology are required.

(I still like much of what the BBC produce, and have enjoyed immensely such programmes as Doctor Who, Walking with Dinosaurs, Masterchef and the recent Around the World in 80 Faiths. However, in my opinion, their advocacy for the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming is causing certain sections of the BBC to sleepwalk across the line between journalism and propaganda. Hence the rather stern nature of my message. I had hoped to post their reply to my complaint, which was made over a month ago now, but I have received no response yet. Hopefully I shall receive one soon.)

© Alex Cull, 2nd March 2009

UPDATE

I got the following reply by e-mail on 15th March 2009:

Dear Mr Cull

Thank you for your recent e-mail. Please accept our apologies for the delay
in replying. We know our correspondents appreciate a quick response and we
are sorry you have had to wait on this occasion.

I must inform you that we have nothing further to add to Peter Rippon’s
response. However, if you believe a serious and specific breach of the
BBC’s published Editorial Guidelines has occurred here and you wish to
pursue this complaint further, you are open to contact the BBC’s Editorial
Complaints Unit who will independently investigate it. You can write to
them at the following address:

Editorial Complaints Unit
BBC
Room 5168
White City
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TS

Alternatively you can e-mail the Unit at the address: ecu@bbc.co.uk

Please note that any complaints submitted via e-mail must include your
postal address as all responses will continue to be issued via letter.

Whether or not you choose to pursue your complaint with the ECU please be
assured your concerns have been registered.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your views.

Regards

Paul Hunter
BBC Complaints
__________________________________________
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder: The Chilling Stars

That man-made carbon dioxide is causing the Earth to overheat, and there is an urgent need to reduce levels of this trace gas in the atmosphere, is something that national governments all over the world, NGOs, the UN, environmental groups and corporations have been impressing on each and every one of us, over the last two decades.

But what if carbon dioxide was largely irrelevant when it came to determining global temperatures? And what if there was some other factor that controlled the planetary thermostat? This is what the authors of The Chilling Stars are attempting to demonstrate in this extremely readable and controversial book.

Henrik Svensmark is a physicist at the Danish National Space Center, and Nigel Calder is an experienced science writer, and former editor of New Scientist magazine. The hypothesis they present is a direct challenge to the supremacy of AGW, or Anthropogenic Global Warming.

I will not be able to do justice to the theory in this short review, but here it is, in a nutshell. Our Galaxy is teeming with stars, many of which end their days in colossal stellar explosions. These detonations create vast amounts of cosmic radiation, which are floods of charged particles (mostly protons.) When these particles encounter the Earth’s atmosphere, they tend (according to this theory) to seed clouds, especially low-level clouds below the 3000-metre mark.

The more cosmic rays there are, the cloudier the Earth gets, and thus the cooler it becomes. However, if something (for example, the Sun’s magnetic field) acts to shield the Earth from cosmic rays, the fewer low-level clouds there are and the warmer Earth becomes.

Over the billions of years since the planet was formed, it has veered from one extreme to the other. At times it has been in a torrid “hothouse” state, with no ice at the poles and with sea levels much higher than they are now. At other times, however, the planet has been in an “icehouse” condition – or even a “Snowball Earth” state, with ice sheets reaching down as far as the Equator. We are currently in an icehouse phase, incidentally.

There have been numerous cooling events, as revealed by “ice-rafting”, where ice sheets have transported northern grit south for great distances and deposited it on the Atlantic sea-bed. The authors link these episodes to times when the cosmic-ray flux was higher, as shown by varying traces of radioactive beryllium-10 in ice cores extracted in Greenland and Antarctica.

Also mentioned is the work of Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv, who has correlated variations in the cosmic-ray flux to the solar system’s orbit around the centre of the Galaxy and its passage through the Galaxy’s four great spiral arms. In these crowded stellar neighbourhoods (such as the Orion Arm, which is where we currently are) there are more cosmic rays and thus the Earth tends to become cooler.

There is much to fascinate in this book. As well as physics and astronomy, it invokes Medieval and Roman history, describing times when high Alpine passes, such as the Schnidejoch, were accessible in the warmer conditions, as well as a later period called the Little Ice Age, when reduced solar activity (as revealed by lower numbers of observed sunspots) led to a cooling. The book also touches on paleontology, discussing the possibility that birds and feathered dinosaurs evolved as a response to a cooling event in the Early Cretaceous Era.

(My favourite image from The Chilling Stars is that of our solar system leaping exuberantly in and out of the galactic plane, like a playful dolphin, as it completes journeys lasting hundreds of millions of years around the Galaxy’s core.)

Is Svensmark’s hypothesis a convincing alternative to Anthropogenic Global Warming? The SKY cloud-chamber experiment at the Danish National Space Center in 2005 went some way to demonstrate a link between cosmic rays and cloud formation.

Its successor will be the CLOUD experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, which I understand is scheduled for 2010. Perhaps success at CERN will turn the tide in Svensmark’s favour?

The jury is still out, I think, although for several reasons, I tend to rate Svensmark’s hypothesis over AGW. The main reason I do so is that it is able to explain the connection between sunspot activity (or lack thereof) and cold episodes in history, such as the Maunder Minimum. Also, I find AGW not generally all that convincing, in the face of the mid 20th-century cool period, when atmospheric CO2 was shooting up but temperatures dipped (as has also happened in the last few years.)

However, whether or not Svensmark and Calder are vindicated in 2010, they have produced a very fine and thought-provoking book of popular science, which has stirred up controversy and ruffled a few feathers, and at the same time has inspired a sense of wonder in open-minded readers all over the world.

© Alex Cull, 15th February 2009

(I’ve also posted this on Helium.com and Planet Bookworm.)

‘Tis the Season for Regifting

“Regifting” is an interesting word, but let’s be honest, it’s a euphemism; basically, regifting is the offloading of an unwanted present onto some other poor unwitting soul. It’s similar to indulging in a modestly unsavoury personal habit; most of us have done it, but few will admit to the fact. Regifting is the mechanism whereby such items as novelty underwear, toy donkeys wearing sombreros, or neckties with mooning Santas on them circulate perpetually and invisibly through the economy – a bit like the black market in that respect, but with the crucial difference that the black market is always in something that people actually want.

So why does it happen, and can it be stopped? More importantly, should we be doing it anyway? To regift or not to regift, that is the question. And like Hamlet, I will dither; my answer is yes and no, depending on the circumstances.

If your only alternative is to throw the offending item away, I would say yes: regift it, bearing in mind the well-known environmental mantra with three Rs – Re-use, Recycle and the other one that I always forget. We are continually being told the world is running out of holes in the ground in which to bury unwanted stuff; although this may not be strictly true, it does seem thrifty and sensible to squeeze more use out of something rather than lay it to rest for eternity in landfill. Even if that something is just a horrible scarf with pictures of tap-dancing cartoon chipmunks on it.

But you may find better things to do with that scarf than pass it on to an unsuspecting relative as a last-minute birthday gift. Before I get to that, however, I want to ask the question: why is this madness happening in the first place?

The short answer to that question is: society. Don’t get me wrong, I love our 21st-century consumer culture; it has brought with it fantastic wealth and abundance. After all, without it we wouldn’t be equipped with personal computers – I would probably not be writing this article, you would not be reading it, and none of us would have as much free time to devote to these activities. But coupled with well-established gift-giving traditions and festivals, such as Christmas, the global consumer culture has also become something of a monster, spewing a vast torrent of stuff our way and pressurising us to buy it, just so that we can observe the ritual of passing it on to friends and loved ones.

There is a spectrum of desirability. Some gifts, such as iPods and PlayStations, are at one end, and at the other end are objects such as luminous garden gnomes. Like life forms in an ecosystem, they all have their allotted niches.

So what could give a plastic garden gnome an evolutionary advantage over an iPod? Price is one factor: iPods are relatively expensive, gnomes are cheap. And there’s the fallibility of human judgement. Look – it glows in the dark, Aunt Harriet will love it! No, foolish consumer, take it from me: she won’t. Alas, too late – the damage is done, and yet another regifting cycle has just been spawned.

Anyway, I digress. Can it be stopped? Yes it certainly can. This chain can be broken by the simple act of making sure an item goes to someone who will want it. There are charity shops which exist partly for this very purpose. And there is the excellent Freecycle network, which is basically a no-cost dating service for people and items of junk. One person’s tat is another person’s treasure trove, and in a vast global community there are a near-infinite number of perfect matches to be made. I’m a great fan of Freecycle; many an old belonging of mine has passed on to a happy and (I hope) permanent home, this way. And let me emphasise – it’s free, hence the name; that should appeal to you, if you’re anything like me.

The other way to stamp out the horror of regifting is to make sure you give items that people won’t want to ditch at the first opportunity. Some obvious strategies are to give someone something they’ve specifically said they wanted – a box set of Eurovision Song Contest DVDs, for instance; whatever floats their boat. Or something very personal – a beautifully framed copy of their Tractor Salesman of the Year 1985 award certificate. Now that’s perfectly unregiftable.

On the other hand, in a tribute to our fine consumer society, you could always give something that can be consumed, i.e., eaten or drunk. A bottle of rather splendid single malt whisky, perhaps. Or a box of luxury Belgian truffles. These are things that always seem to go down well, and which don’t tend to be regifted, strangely enough.

However, if you do happen to receive a bottle of single malt whisky or a box of luxury truffles and feel the old regifting urge, don’t despair; you can always send them on to me.

© Alex Cull, 4th January 2009

(Never having watched Seinfeld, I had no idea what “regifting” was, until I read about it on Helium.com. After that, of course I just had to write my own article on the subject.)

Michael Crichton: Jurassic Park

It’s difficult these days to fully appreciate the impact of Jurassic Park, the novel. We’ve watched the movies, bought the merchandise, played the computer games and been exposed to over a decade and a half of advertising and media hype, so no wonder it’s a little hard to recapture the freshness and audacity of Michael Crichton’s original concept. But I think it well worth the try.

Humans and dinosaurs are a potent mixture, as novelists and moviemakers have always known. We have the brains; they have the brawn. Humans have the technology; dinosaurs have size, grace, ferocity, speed and power, not to mention voracious appetites. The problem has always been to get the two together in the same era. Humans are from the Cenozoic, dinosaurs are from the Mesozoic and never the twain should meet, in normal circumstances.

Previous to Jurassic Park, there were two main ways to get around this impasse. You either had to find a remote spot on the planet where dinosaurs might have survived until recent times (a plateau in South America, a lost continent in the Pacific, a cavern somewhere under the Earth’s crust) or you had to invent time travel in order to send humans back to the Age of Reptiles.

There are problems with these two methods. Since the Victorian era it has become increasingly difficult to find a hard-to-reach spot where an animal the size of a brachiosaurus could lurk undiscovered. And time travel brings with it a whole parcel of paradoxes, hurdles and conundrums which every author who attempts it needs to address.

At a stroke, Crichton dispenses with these. Instead, he invokes an emerging technology which has become ever more potent and convincing in recent times – genetic engineering. His scientists recreate dinosaur DNA from fragments preserved inside mosquitoes caught in prehistoric amber. Pow! It’s an absolutely brilliant idea, and still gives me goose bumps when I think about it.

But there’s more to the book than that. What we also get is the splendid idea of a dinosaur theme park (as opposed to a mere lab somewhere) and the trademark Michael Crichton slide from order into chaos, all wrapped up in a fast-moving and highly readable thriller. It even has decent characters, in particular the acerbic and eccentric Dr Ian Malcolm, who alone would have made Jurassic Park a cut above your average airport paperback.

What I also especially relish is Crichton’s message, not that technology is bad or that progress is evil, but that we can easily become overconfident and fail to see that which our mindset has excluded. A telling scene is the one in which the operators of the park realise – very late in the day – that they have relied too much on the computer system they have installed to count the dinosaurs. The lesson is clear – make incorrect assumptions and however sophisticated your software might be, you will have set yourself up for a fall. Climate modellers, please take note.

Should we try to resurrect the dinosaurs? My head says there are more important things to aim for, but my heart says: absolutely! Dinosaurs, mammoths, the dodo, the aepyornis – yes, bring them back and create comfortable and interesting habitats for them to live in (better not put them all in the same one, though.) I would pay good money to go and see a live T.rex, hopefully before he sees me.

But before we venture down that road, I think we should make sure that we take the lessons of Jurassic Park to heart. There is a fine line between confidence and hubris, which we would do well not to cross. And although we have devised immensely powerful computing machines, they are not (yet) gods or oracles but tools, basically, which are liable to be misused by the unwise and incompetent.

I was sorry to hear about the death of Michael Crichton last month. Although he never wrote anything quite as amazing as Jurassic Park in the years since 1990, a new Crichton novel was always something to look forward to. I will miss him.

And to anyone who has enjoyed the movies, eaten the popcorn and played with the action figures but has not yet read this book, I most heartily recommend it.

© Alex Cull, 27th December 2008

(Another Planet Bookworm review.)

Stuck in a Rut

It can happen to any of us. One moment you’re working contentedly away, doing what you do every day to earn a wage and bring home the bacon (or the tofu, if your family have gone vegetarian.) The next moment – something has changed. Maybe it’s the realisation that you’ve been in this job for eleven years without promotion. Or that everyone seems to have received training on the new instant messaging software – except you. Or that your line manager is the same age as your daughter. (Or perhaps even worse, she actually is your daughter.)

Whatever the reason, the outcome is this: the knowledge that your career has stalled in its tracks, has faltered, and that this faltering has been going on for some time. Like a horse and cart trundling down the same stretch of country lane every day of the year, you find that the wheels of your career have worn such a deep groove in the surface of the road that it would seem almost impossible to change direction, and that you are in danger of getting bogged down for good.

In other words, you have become stuck in a rut.

I’m about to tell you that this is not always a bad thing to happen. But it’s difficult to think that way, if you’re sitting there at the reins of your cart, despondent. What you need to do – really what everyone could benefit from doing, whether they feel they’re a success or not – is to step down from the cart, take a stroll, sit for a while on a small hill some distance off. In other words, develop some detachment. Take a few moments to survey the scene (the horse won’t mind, he’ll use this opportunity to chomp some grass.) Take stock.

To those of us still working in the old-fashioned sort of corporation, with its established hierarchy and all its multifarious layers, branches and twigs of management (which can – when displayed in an org chart – uncannily resemble a very complex organic molecule) getting stuck can feel depressing, frustrating, scary even. We’re supposed to be forging onward and ever upward, climbing the corporate ladder vigorously, rung by hard-won rung. Either vertically (from grovelling tea-boy up to supreme leader) or sort of diagonally, by moving sideways to another department or another company and then upwards again – a bit like moving up the board in a game of snakes and ladders (without landing on a snake, of course; I mean, that just wouldn’t do.)

You keep the momentum up, because if you didn’t keep moving, progressing and evolving within the career niche you inhabit, then – gasp – something might be horribly wrong with you. Maybe you hadn’t got what it took, after all. Maybe you were just not cut out for success, or you didn’t have enough of the right stuff. Pick your cliché. Even in this informal age, it’s still possible to fall under the spell of all the rules and the rituals and the roadmaps of the workplace. Caught up in the daily grind, when is it ever a good time to stop, appraise your work-life and start asking yourself the important questions?

This is where getting stuck in a rut comes in. It can be a golden opportunity. (Or possibly a silver one, or bronze at the very least, depending on how well you use it.)

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) they have a saying: there is no failure, only feedback. And this is true (with the proviso that you have to survive or otherwise be in a position to benefit from the feedback – this might not apply to situations involving snapped bungee cords or loaded revolvers.) Another way of putting it is: failure happens, but if you change your frame of reference, it can become crucial feedback enabling you to change course and achieve a different kind of success. And before you start thinking that “different kind of success” is just a polite way of saying “pig with lipstick”, read on.

Actually, if you consider it, failure is not really the problem. If you had messed up utterly and got slung out of school, college, fame academy, corporation, or whatever institution it was that you were in, either one of two things would probably have happened.

One – you would have known beyond all doubt that this was not your mission in life. This would have enabled you to advance a step closer to your true mission, with the slate wiped clean.

Or two – you would have become all fired up to persevere and prove your critics wrong. This is what happens when the Elvis Presleys, Marilyn Monroes and Thomas Edisons of this world show what they’re made of. “Never in a million years will you amount to anything as a (singer/actor/inventor/board game designer.)” “Oh yes, I will. I’ll show you and everyone else too, that I am simply the best, so shove that in your pipe!” (Maybe not in those very words, you understand.)

But you don’t even have to first be a ghastly flop to find your true calling, although, as I say, it probably helps. The fact that you’re stuck in a rut means that, ironically, you have been all too good at some sort of activity – creating pivot tables in Microsoft Excel, for example – that isn’t really part of your life’s mission.

Being mediocre, adequate or even good at one thing, doesn’t mean you can’t be even better at something else. However – here’s the crux – you need to find out what this elusive “something else” is. And I can’t help you there. Or maybe I can, but that will have to wait for a whole different essay.

Someone who illustrated this well was Albert Einstein. He was a good clerk in the Swiss patent office between 1902 and 1909, apparently competent and well-liked – they even promoted him. Then, of course, he decided to go off and become a world-famous professor of physics. But the day job suited him just fine, while he was there – he did patent office stuff during the day, and thought deep thoughts about matter and energy in his free time.

And this conveniently brings me to my next point. Who says you have to go mad, throw away your sensible job in the circus and run away to be an accountant (or even vice-versa)? Why should it need to be an either/or proposition, when a both/and proposition could be just as doable, and probably more lucrative too? Be a trapeze artist by night and study for your accountancy exam by day.

You don’t need to be a super-genius to make this work. But it takes discipline, energy and focus (which, as a trapeze artist, you should know, really.)

Where was I? Ah, yes. To summarise, getting stuck in a rut can help you, as per the following points:

1) It provides a much-needed opportunity to stand back, break the spell, develop some detachment and take stock.

2) The realisation of failure or mediocrity can provide a springboard for success as something else entirely. Dick as a world statesman – not that wonderful; Dick as a sheep farmer – runaway success. Jane as a sheep farmer – dull; Jane as President – winner!

3) Or lead you to the knowledge that you could have a second string to your bow, and develop a parallel career. Have both security and fulfilment; by day, a humble supermarket shelf-stacker, by night – drag artiste extraordinaire! But you need to be self-organised for that.

4) There isn’t actually a 4). But this is perhaps as good a place as any to reflect that now, more than ever before, the world of work is rife with uncertainty, in flux and undergoing transformation. Job titles exist now that never before existed in the entire history of employment. More and more people are dispensing with jobs altogether and doing things like making a fortune selling stuff online, and not caring that it creates huge gaps in their CV, or that they’ve spent the whole of Tuesday in their pyjamas. Could this be you?

To summarise the summary, getting stuck doesn’t have to be the end of the world, career-wise. And even if it is the end of the world, it could signal the creation of a brand new world, or even an entire new solar system, all there just for you to discover.

Returning to my original horse-and-cart metaphor (which I’ve grown quite fond of, by the way), after you have wandered off to gain some detachment and perspective, you will need to wander back and pick up the reins again, to put your insights to the test. And you may find, to your surprise and delight, that what you thought was a boring, rutty old country lane – has just become a crossroads.

(After the success of my Thank You piece, I thought I’d write another article for the Jobs & Careers section of Helium.com. And now this one seems to be doing very well too. So… expect a few more career-related essays and reviews from me in the New Year.)