[Coral-List] More sunscreen

[Douglas Fenner]

I wish to apologize.  When I first read Mike's first post on this subject,
he addressed it to me and I reacted too strongly, my reply was more than
necessary.  I reread his post the other day and it had no aspects of an
attack in it.  I overreacted, and that turned the temperature up.  That's
not a good thing to do.  I apologize.  We want to keep this discussion
rational and based on the facts.
    I did not get a blank message posted by you, Mike.  I'd like everybody
to know that I highly respect Mike and his expertise, and I appreciate his
posts, they always are good contributions.
Cheers,  Doug

On Thu, Feb 7, 2019 at 5:51 AM Risk, Michael <riskmj at mcmaster.ca> wrote:

> Good day all.
>
> I am sure there are spirits that control our lives-I would like to be on
> their side.
>
> A couple of days ago I posted a response to your sunscreen riposte. The
> wonderful people at the -list flagged it, as they feared (quelle surprise)
> it came close to breaching their code of conduct-something about profanity.
> Nonetheless, after due deliberation, they passed it on-and I am now
> informed a blank message has appeared from me. Please treat that as
> generalised best wishes from me-fill in your own cheerful message.
> Meanwhile, here is the original:
>
> Doug.
>
> You are correct, that post is far too long-especially as you could have
> read the freakin paper in the length of time it took you to compose it. I
> had expected better from you.
>
> You have dug into Downs' website and quote-mined from an article which was
> clearly discussing local stresses. We scientists don't go by blog posts, we
> go by the literature. To save you the trouble, here is a quote: "BP-3
> contamination from beaches can travel over 0.6 km in distance from the
> pollution source. The threat of BP-3 to corals and coral reefs from
> swimmers and point and non-point sources of waste-water could thus be far
> more extensive than just a few meters surrounding the swimming area." Sound
> reasonable? And, if I can read that paper and understand it, so can you.
>
> This is a large field, with by now a voluminous literature. Those to whom
> I have talked have always said, this is a local problem, one that may be
> larger than we had thought-and it's easy to fix. What is wrong with that??
> What is wrong with those who would challenge that?
>
> I am also disappointed that you managed to slide in the suggestion that
> Craig's results were coloured by his finances. Doug, there are hundreds of
> people working on this! If you are going to chuck around driveby's you will
> be very busy. Yes, Craig supports his foundation on donations and
> contracts. Please don't go after him for this.
>
> My original post has only been up for a few hours. Here is one off-line
> response I have received, from a well-known reef scientist with 8,000
> citations: "This article is really upsetting. Glad you responded. I'm a tad
> shocked that Terry wrote this. Seems that ignoring 'precautionary
> principles' is what often gets us in these messes in the first place and
> then its too damn late."
>
> What's wrong with saying, we can fix this and move on?
>
> Mike
>


-- 
Douglas Fenner
Ocean Associates, Inc. Contractor
NOAA Fisheries Service
Pacific Islands Regional Office
Honolulu
and:
Consultant
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

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