[Coral-List] Is there data to indicate an electronic ICRS would be valuable?

Sun Mar 22 16:02:45 UTC 2020

This reminder is a red herring. We all know that choosing to forgo a single trip is not going to lead to a cancelled flight and will not have an immediate, direct impact. That does not mean our personal choices have /no/ important impacts. Run the model showing what happens when we sacrifice our moral authority; hypocritically calling for broad scale economic policy changes that would reduce the ability of poorer or otherwise disadvantaged people to travel while failing to demonstrate that our own privileged selves have the ability and will to reduce our own contributions. By frequently flying around the world for our research and our conferences, we are giving our money to an industry that puts more carbon into the atmosphere per user than many others. We are saying that OTHER people should make sacrifices for their businesses or personal lives, but OUR business is more important than that. All those people around the world selfishly contributing their negligible personal impacts by eating the products of agriculture should stop doing that, but we, the relatively rich, can keep going with business-as-usual because, as a minority, our gigantic personal impacts still add up to a negligible collective impact. Let them eat cake!

A reminder that the power of our personal choices lies in the power of leadership. We are not just a couple of people among billions. We are the experts: the people often making the most noise, who should have an outsized influence in this global debate. Reducing the impact of airlines will be a very important part of climate change solutions as the world's economy develops. It will require a society-wide change in attitude toward travel. We have to demonstrate our willingness to be part of that change before hoping for a larger movement or demanding that it be imposed on society-at-large. 

Another cliché: With great power comes great responsibility!

Of course, none of that means I'm against things like ICRS. There is obviously a LOT of value in in-person meetings that simply doesn't exist with remote discussions. I have no problem with our community deciding that such meetings are worthwhile - as long as we use consistent arguments, hang a lantern on the trade-offs, and competently address the apparent hypocrisy. Maybe our business really is more important, but we must be able to justify that publicly. Simply dismissing our impacts with this kind of 'scientific' argument reduces our legitimacy and harms our image as objective scientists and leaders.

Sincerely, 
Dr. Ryan McMinds

> On 19 Mar2020, at 21:39, Gregory Boland via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
> One last reminder (and I'll shut-up); The equation continues to be comparing the incredible benefits of in-person meetings vs: carbon footprint. The old timers (including me) place an extremely important value on past in-person meetings and unexpected exposure to ideas and approaches etc.
> 
> Just be scientific about it. Say 3,000 people flying to a meeting at the same time in the same place every 4 years. Wild guess; people fly in from 20-30 different countries on something like 100 different flights to the meeting location from dozens of different airports, probably on different days. A generous estimate of 30 scientists on a single flight that holds 200-300 people. The new Airbus A321LR will be one of the standards to fly to London. It holds 236 passengers. Run the model for a decision to hold symposia remotely to include the probability that any flight that would have been utilized would be cancelled with 30 less people flying (the difference the extra 6,000 pounds makes is probably not even measurable).
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> on behalf of Dennis Hubbard via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 9:44 PM
> To: Nohora Galvis <icri.colombia at gmail.com>
> Cc: Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
> Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Is there data to indicate an electronic ICRS would be valuable?
> 
> All:
> 
> This is a difficult topic to get "right" as there are so many different
> perspectives involved. As one of the "older" participants, I can still
> remember my first symposium in Miami. It was a much smaller meeting back
> then and I will never forget being able to go to a talk about reef
> drilling, then run across the hall to a talk on parrotfish, then others on
> seagrass, marine chemistry.... in the first morning. To be cliché, it was
> like being a kid in a candy store.
> 
> As the meetings grew larger, it became harder to just "go across the hall"
> to learn about things I just wanted to know more about. My sense is that
> regional meetings will still be large by comparison to many others. At the
> same time, I fear that they will be narrower in topical diversity. At the
> meeting in Hawaii, I stumbled into the wrong room. As it turned out, this
> was the most important talk at the meeting for me. I am not advocating this
> approach to choosing a session, but the diversity of topics that turned
> this error into a tremendous positive is the essence of the reef symposium.
> I feel that this topical diversity would be compromised in regional
> meetings because the narrower interests of the organizers and the limits
> that a smaller size will place on how many sessions (and topics) can be
> considered.
> 
> My fascination with reef science has always been related to its unique
> ability to bring together scientists with disparate interests and
> experiences. I have always felt that this is one of the most valuable
> elements of the Reef Symposium relative to any other meeting I have ever
> attended. I can say with some certainty that the most valuable learning
> experiences I have had came from talking with people outside of my central
> area of interest. From my perspective, while I do enjoy catching up with
> old friends and colleagues, the real value of the symposium is the ability
> to have meaningful discussions with people I didn't even know existed. -
> and on topics not closely aligned with my discipline. This will be
> significantly compromised by regional meetings and will all but disappear
> with remote meetings.
> 
> So, any decision will ultimately make comes down to how much we value the
> factors related to one large  meeting versus the environmental gains of
> regional meetings to reduce travel distances - or video meetings that
> eliminate it altogether. I would argue that if we are going to go to
> digital meetings, we might as well invest those efforts into increasing the
> topical diversity and integration within the society journal and eliminate
> meetings altogether.
> 
> Having said this, I remain concerned about the lack of balance in the
> Society journal. I feel that the strength of the Society is in its
> diversity (cultural and disciplinary). In my opinion, regional meetings
> have historically reduced both. So, what do we do? Let's do our best to
> quantify the carbon footprint of one global meeting every four years versus
> some number of local ones held every year (or every four years). Then,
> let's try to predict whether regional meetings would equate to more
> topically constrained meetings (I can't imagine this to not be the case,
> but... we are scientists). Finally, we need to decide whether the present
> every-four-year meeting increases the diversity of thought and perspective
> over the entire society than having regional meetings. The strength o the
> Society has traditionally been in its diversity of thought and the bringing
> together of reef workers with different backgrounds and perspectives. My
> experience is that regional meetings have always compromised this.
> 
> If we are really going to treat this as a scientific question, we should be
> balancing the value (in carbon) of maintaining interdisciplinary scientific
> perspectives as they relate to important socio-political issues against the
> environmental costs (in carbon) associated with not having the meeting to
> share ideas, scientific results and perspectives. Unfortunately, I doubt we
> could define a metric to do this that anyone would agree on.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Dennis
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 12:09 PM Nohora Galvis via Coral-List <
> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
>> Dear Colleagues,
>> 
>> Months ago, I was talking to ICRS Symposium organizers through the ICRS
>> Society about the need to evolve ICRS Symposium to an online meeting, if we
>> teally want to be coherent with diminishing our carbon footprint.  I was
>> proposing to start video clips of 15 minutes per participant shared by the
>> Coral List. Authors that way can be contacted with comments and questions
>> publically.
>> 
>> The effectiveness of online meetings is tacit to diminish CO2 from flights
>> of >2500 participants. To accomplish the objective of socializing, it is
>> recommended using virtual meeting software like Zoom (used for webinars).
>> There are also open-source solutions for running services like Zoom on your
>> own. Jitsi is one option: https://jitsi.org/, which is actually what
>> powers
>> the video-conferencing.
>> 
>> Plenaries were agreed to be shared live streaming on social media (e.g.
>> Facebook or YouTube). Thus, an online ICRS would be valuable !!
>> 
>> El dom, mar 15, 2020 12:55, Lescinsky, Halard via Coral-List <
>> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> escribió:
>> 
>>> While the Carbon footprint and (now) health repercussions of in-person
>>> conferences are certainly worth considering, it would be naïve to
>> suggest,
>>> without any sort of data, that a teleconference would accomplish the same
>>> goals as an in-person conference.  Does anyone have any assessment data
>>> that compares the effectiveness of in-person vs electronic conferences?
>> As
>>> a teacher I know that just making something available on-line is very
>>> different from someone actively participating and learning.  Electronic
>>> chatrooms might be equivalent to the casual brainstorming that occurs
>> over
>>> coffee and a Danish, but is there any evidence to suggest that this is
>>> true?   The oft repeated mantra is that conferences are primarily for
>>> networking (particularly for young scientists).  It might be possible to
>> do
>>> this electronically- but does it actually happen?
>>> 
>>> My more scientific concern about teleconferences, is one that I posted on
>>> Coral List several years ago when there was similar discussion about ICRS
>>> going electronic.  I think each person keeps current in their particular
>>> subfield pretty well, but the real value of an ICRS is the exposure to
>> all
>>> the other subfields of coral reef science, the ones we don’t know as
>> well.
>>>  The co-mingling of ideas and the updates in areas we haven’t thought
>> much
>>> about are the key value (beyond networking) of a big multidisciplinary
>>> conference such as ICRS.  An electronic conference would be more like an
>>> electronic newspaper, where people tend to only read the stories they
>>> immediately connect with.  Sure, the same happens to some extent with
>>> multiple concurrent sessions at a big meeting, but the bottom line is
>> that
>>> at a physical conference, attendees are stuck there for several days, and
>>> just walking around, or getting stuck in a session they hadn’t planned to
>>> go to, they are exposed to a breadth of topics they wouldn’t have
>> otherwise
>>> considered.
>>> 
>>> Perhaps scientists would lock themselves in their individual offices and
>>> live and breathe reef science of all types for the better part of a week,
>>> but I doubt if any of us actually would.  Just because something can be
>>> done technologically, doesn’t mean it will have the same value and
>> utility
>>> to the attendees.  I’d want some data about how useful an electronic
>>> conference would actually be, before scrapping a face to face conference.
>>> Of course if Corona renders a face to face conference impossible, than an
>>> electronic option might be better than nothing, but it’s naïve to think
>>> such an e-conference would be comparable in value unless robust
>> assessment
>>> data suggested otherwise.
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>>> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> --
> Dennis Hubbard
> Chair, Dept of Geology-Oberlin College Oberlin OH 44074
> (440) 775-8346
> 
> * "When you get on the wrong train.... every stop is the wrong stop"*
> Benjamin Stein: "*Ludes, A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream*"
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