See older notes on the new paradigm.
STOP PRESS: As of today gas is green energy! Some sense at last
The year 2021 was a busy one, but the fruits are slow to appear in print. These “fruits” are an odd set of densely packed and widely ranging reports that seem a bit disorganised. This was unavoidable for several reasons.
The folks that determine how a science paper should be written are biassed to the experimental sciences, proceeding in small, neat, increments. Papers are expected to be a process of hypothesis, observations, then a new interpretation. Unfortunately contributions from a non-experimental science such as SE Asian geology – which is also in a bit of a mess – has been slow to get past some reviewers, who seem to want simplicity and small, orderly steps.
The problem I have had is three-fold. Firstly, there is so much junk data in published accounts. These are not differing interpretations but junk observations. I used to have a low-key blog for students on this matter that stopped when I reached 35 examples of binary, right/wrong examples. Experimental science assumes a replicating experiment will correct or verify this, but in geology we have to present a counter argument, often from the same data source, which is in danger of embarrassing the original worker. A true example from my list of 35; an ophiolite reported in a paper at TD of a well around Sundaland is actually a meta-sandstone rich in quartz sand, mixed with mineralogically intermediate volcanics/volcaniclastics (unpublished thin section petrography report). You can waste a lot of words in a paper, and drift off track a bit, to politely kill such mis-information in a fair, clear way. As Charles Darwin said “To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact“
Secondly, no journals seem to want to publish even short monographs of data without a regional integration. They want a large scale narrative even when it is too early to speculate on implications. This precludes papers on rationalising subregional data sets, such as those errors mentioned above, supported by a set of parallel observations. I once joked that no one does observation-rich field work any more as there is nowhere to publish the results. Many a true word is spoken in jest. The 2021 papers were often a compromise, getting as much data in print under a loosely defined theme.
Thirdly, there is no hypothesis for SE Asian geology on which to carry out tests and build upon. Now, I won’t go on here about my views on the old, disjointed ideas; as there is a more fundamental concept to stress for 2022. These old ideas have defenders; people who have taught them, and the workers who have been guided by them. If you are a new worker (the next generation) you currently have to learn this disparate set of facts, basin by basin. You take so much on trust, especially if a lot of the raw data is not published. .
Let me go off topic to illustrate an important principle. The great physicist Enrico Fermi is said to have had a habit of considering new problems by returning to basics and rapidly, but completely, arguing from first principles to the subject under discussion. This was to make sure some factors or assumptions were not overlooked. This genuine depth of knowledge contributed to his recognition as being one of great physicists of the 20th century. He was nicknamed “the Pope”, partly as he was of Italian origin, but mostly because this ability usually made his arguments infallible (an in-joke for Catholics, sorry). We don’t have this backbone in SE Asian geology, just a current dogma, because we collect facts and present a “best story” from them. We often end up with different interpretations from different experts, and we live with this as scholarly differences. As the saying goes, we “agree to disagree”. I regard this as stagnation, and it must be such a turn-off for the bright youngsters learning the science.
“Doing a Fermi“: verb; to re-verify a framework built on data
But there is a way to “do a Fermi” in geology, and this was what the 2021 papers are building towards. We are slowly exposing some of the errors in the old stories and showing a new way to approach geological studies (which seems to be a return to the old ways of the mid 20th century geologists). Empirical and evidence-based. The recent paper on Early Miocene carbonates in SE Sundaland discusses a new empirical heuristic (an evidence-based strategy to approach problems) and, to borrow from that post: “Models cannot undo this change to evidence-based work, only more analysis and quantitative integrations such as geohistory can challenge the new empirical framework. … we will have at least succeeded in forcing a change back to objective, empirical methods!”
That was an aim of our 2021 work. We wanted to shake things up, and change direction. Prevent workers from getting trapped in, or hiding behind a familiar model. The new framework will not be as linear as Fermi tracing algebra from a wave equation, through the Pauli principle, to whatever his current topic was, but a web of cross-checking proxy data in wells and outcrops. Nevertheless it will be as rigorous and quantitative. This approach forces us to look outside the box. Look how long people thought that the “East Java Basin” and “North Sumatra basin” were back-arc basins, or that there was a Proto-South China Sea subducting under north Borneo. Having the same shape as an assumed model no longer stands up again geohistory analysis, validated stratigraphy and age dating from independent sources, along with environment and mineral analysis.
The 2022 New Year Resolution
This work will continue into 2022. Again working a lot with Xiwu Luan (which sadly excludes research in Sarawak and Sabah), we will look at big picture geology, tectonics, basin formation, and begin to look at what this means for overlooked hydrocarbon plays. South East Asia is not mature for hydrocarbon exploration, it is limited by the old ideas. Shots in the dark with borrowed hypotheses (shale gas, more basement or Mesozoic plays [same thing!]) will not give scientific progress. A new paradigm of tectono-stratigraphy, begun on Sundaland then extended into east Indonesia, will. This is testable work, in the style of Fermi, that you can take to shareholders or Senior Management.
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