[Coral-List] big high pedestal

[Bill Allison]

Faerthen ("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?") has
identified a key strategic asymmetry.

The deniers do fund coordination and anti-science and employ teams of
marketing communication experts to devise sophistries intended to subvert
rational thought (examples in Walter Goldberg's recent post). These people
are not distracted by truth-seeking or testing activities such as science
entails.






On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Faerthen Felix <faerthen at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>