[Coral-List] More sunscreen

Mike Jankulak - NOAA Affiliate mike.jankulak at noaa.gov
Fri Feb 8 15:05:57 UTC 2019


Note to coral-listers: for three days I've been working with Mike Risk to
try to figure out why certain of his posts are forwarding as blank
messages. I believe it's something to do with how his email software is
formatting some text that he is cutting and pasting from outside his
message. The resulting message is malformed and html-only, and the list
software incorrectly strips the html instead of reformatting it as plain
text.

At this point, rather than continuing to debug the problem here on the live
list, I am forwarding his unposted messages in two parts. The first was
submitted on Tuesday and the second on Thursday. Please take care to
address any followups to the appropriate Mike.

Here ends the Mike J+ material, and begins the Mike R material.

---

From: "Risk, Michael" <riskmj at mcmaster.ca>
To: Douglas Fenner <douglasfennertassi at gmail.com>
Cc: Coral List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2019 22:17:49 +0000
Subject: RE: More sunscreen

A gracious an appropriate response. I accept the apology without
reservation.


From: Douglas Fenner [douglasfennertassi at gmail.com]
Sent: February 7, 2019 2:47 PM
To: Risk, Michael
Cc: Coral List
Subject: Re: More sunscreen

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 d--n 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

How to win public support for a global carbon tax

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00124-x

Global warming will happen faster than we think.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5

Nations falling short of emissions cuts set by Paris climate pact, analysis
finds

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/nations-falling-short-emissions-cuts-set-paris-climate-pact-analysis-finds?utm_campaign=news_daily_2018-11-28&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=2515903


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