[Coral-List] Re: big high pedestal

[Faerthen Felix]

This is unfair, Curtis.

Quite in contrast to this mythical pedestal, in recent years American
scientists, researchers and academics have seen one of the biggest
cuts in economic & popular support in history. Fight over whether
climate change matters or what we should do about it if you like, but
don't blame the messengers.

I don't know anyone in public research who isn't spending
unprecedented amounts of time "embracing advocates and
conservationists, sharing funding, and working together to solve
resource problems of mutual concern". There's less & less time to
actually do science. Coordination is a real job--who is going to do it & how
are they going to be funded? If you somehow feel like you've been denied a
piece of the pie, it's probably just that the pie is far, far smaller than
you imagine. The money went to the military.

This isn't coral-reef related, but here's a short video showing the
broad array of public agency, university, private, corporate & NGO
collaborators that had to come together for a recent road ecology
research project I'm involved with...and there is only a couple
hundred thousand dollars involved, not millions. This seems to be how
science works these days, at least for us:
http://sagehen-video.blogspot.com/2009/07/kyburz-flat-underpass-dedication.html

Universities & public agency budgets have been cut to the bone, so their
public affairs offices are not what they used to be. More & more, we have
to provide our own media & outreach or suffer whatever spin someone
else chooses to put out there about our work...& it's utterly amazing
how things
can be misinterpreted. Fortunately, I guess, the media is eager for pre-built
content, since their budgets are even worse off than ours, it seems.

It's really a mess if even people obviously interested in conservation
are demonizing scientists...what other hope have you got, Curtis?

FF

> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:36:17 -0600
> From: "Curtis Kruer" <kruer at 3rivers.net>
> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Public perceptions about climate change
> To: "'John Bruno'" <jbruno at unc.edu>, <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>,
>        "'Melanie McField'" <mcfield at healthyreefs.org>
> Cc: "'Richard B. Aronson'" <raronson at fit.edu>
> Message-ID: <00cc01ca57dc$02602f00$07208d00$@net>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> John - Seems it's going to be a long hard fall from that big high pedestal
> that scientists, researchers, and academic types have placed themselves on
> in recent years.  Instead of embracing advocates and conservationists,
> sharing funding, and working together to solve resource problems of mutual
> concern, the disdain from "above" has been obvious and a huge roadblock to
> reacting quickly to major issues. And this disdain will now be a roadblock
> to pushing government to implement new and aggressive site-specific
> management initiatives to take up the slack during this critical period when
> new stressors and impacts are overwhelming natural systems.
>
> Good luck.
>
> Curtis?Kruer
>