Uncommon Ground

I've referred to David Goldston's column in Nature many times over the past few years. (Here's a link to a Google search that will bring up half a dozen links.) I've read every one of the 33 columns he's written. Every one of them was filled with insight and wisdom.

Unfortunately, this week's column was his last. He is becoming director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Nature is losing a valued contributor, but the NRDC is gaining a director of government affairs who will help them to become even more effective.

Goldston did leave us with a summary of the themes he's emphasized throughout his columns. I expect to return to this post periodically for a reminder of those themes. They summarize well the relationship between science and policy.

Click through for my summary of the four themes he identified.

Live in a city. That's what Adam Stein argues, and he's pretty persuasive. A couple of weeks ago he gave Green Metropolis, a new book by David Owen, a favorable review. As the subtitle to Owen's book puts it, the key to living sustainably is living smaller, living closer, and driving less are the keys to sustainability. Put that way it's hard to argue with.

Living smaller? Sure. Living smaller means consuming less and making fewer demands on the planet's resources. My partner and I live reasonably simply. We're mostly vegetarian, for health reasons as much as environmental ones. We recycle as much as we can, we keep the thermostats turned down, and we turn lights off whenever we leave a room.

Driving less? Sure. Part of living smaller, isn't it. Who wouldn't take public transport if they live in a place where its comfortable and convenient. Public transit is non-existent in rural northeastern Connecticut, so I drive less by combining trips to school with stops at the grocery store and by combining several shopping trips into one whenever I can.

Living closer? This is where it gets interesting. I'll quote just a little of Stein's response to comments on his favorable review:

I recently read that a freight train can move a ton of goods 460 miles on a single gallon of diesel. Your car can move a bag of groceries about 20 miles on a single gallon of gasoline. Sustainability is best measured by proximity to a supermarket, not a farm. (emphasis in the original)

That's right. It matters more how close you live to where you buy your food than where it's produced. And it matters even more how it's produced. Over 80% of the carbon footprint associated with food is associated with producing it, not with transporting it (source).

Bottom line. Your friend with a small apartment in Manhattan probably has a smaller carbon footprint than you do. She almost certainly has a smaller carbon footprint than I do, since I live in a comfortable house on a little over an acre of land, and I have to drive back and forth to work, to the grocery, to the pharmacy, to anywhere I want to go other than for a walk around my neighborhood.¹

So if you really want to be green, move to Manhattan (or DC or San Francisco or Chicago or Seattle or Boston), take the subway or bus to work, and grow your vegetables in a community garden.

A couple of months ago, I pointed out that Carmine Gallo told us how to give a really bad presentation. His plan, of course, was to share that advice so that we'd know what not to do. Knowing what to avoid is helpful, but knowing what to do is even better.

Well, Gallo now has some advice on what to do.

Steve Jobs does not sell computers; he sells an experience. The same holds true for his presentations that are meant to inform, educate, and entertain. An Apple presentation has all the elements of a great theatrical production.

And those elements are

1. A headline.
2. A villain.
3. A simple slide.
4. A demo.
5. A holy smokes moment.

It won't be easy to make a simple slide or a demo about Bayesian hierarchical modeling, but I can probably come up with a headline, a villain, and a "holy smokes", and three out of five would make me a hall of famer in baseball.

From a recent e-mail:

Live, Free Webcast of "Evolution in Extreme Environments" Symposium

Those who cannot attend this year's National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in Denver will nonetheless be able to participate in the fifth annual evolution symposium, cosponsored by AIBS and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. Educators and students are encouraged to tune in to the live Webcast on Friday, 13 November, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Mountain Standard Time, and to take advantage of this opportunity to hear internationally renowned researchers discuss their fascinating, cutting-edge work in "extreme" evolutionary biology. Speakers will talk about how life evolves, adapts, and flourishes in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, such as high-altitude areas, the deep-sea, Arctic ice, and caves. Classrooms around the world will be able to submit questions online and speakers will respond in real time. For full program information, including speaker names, talk titles and times, and the link to view the live Webcast, please visit www.nescent.org/NABT09Webcast.php or send an e-mail to eog@nescent.org.

A student in my conservation biology course just pointed out that a previously unreported tunicate has been found in Long Island Sound. It's a member of the genus Clavelina -- and that exhausts my knowledge about it. But I'm sure if you check in occasionally at James Reinhardt's blog, you'll be able to follow updates.

My Graf von Faber Castell is another of the pens I regularly carry with me. It's one of three morning pens in my journal rotation. My other morning pens are the Namiki Falcon I wrote about last week, and another of the pens I haven't mentioned yet.¹ My evening pens are my Pelikan 400 and two other pens I haven't written about yet.

Mine has a indigo blue body, but other than that, it's identical to the one pictured above. I fight with this one a little. Even though I fill it every time before I use it, it often seems that the ink stops flowing smoothly after I've filled a page or two. I have to stop writing and manually feed the nib by rotating the converter. Other than that it's a very nice pen. The nib is firm, and it leaves a beautiful line. It's enough of a defect that I wouldn't call it my favorite, but it's still a part of my morning rotation. Clearly I like it pretty well. It feels solid and well-engineered, like a well-made German automobile. Here's part of Fahrney's blurb:

Don't let the graceful lines and elegant looks fool you - these German-made pens are built for precision and performance. The Graf von Faber-Castell Guilloche fountain pen has a unique design that distinguishes it from the ordinary. As the name implies, the finish is characterized with guilloche patterns etched into the colorful resin barrels. The fluted metal caps, curved, spring-loaded clips and tapered grips are silver-plated and coated with rhodium to prevent tarnishing. The Guilloche fountain pen has a superior, two-tone 18K gold nib

Scientists tend to view disagreements as matters of fact and theory that can be settled by data and logic. If the data are consistent with one view and inconsistent with another, that's the end of the story. We often complain when the public doesn't understand or doesn't get it. We figure that if we just explained ourselves more clearly, the facts would speak for themselves.¹

If you've been reading this blog for more than a couple of weeks, you know that I don't buy that view of the world.

The editors of Nature agree. From yesterday's issue:

The public reception of scientific ideas depends largely on two factors: people's ability to grasp factual information and the cultural lens through which that information is filtered.

And this:

The lesson for today's scientists and policy-makers is simple: they cannot assume that a public presented with 'the facts' will come to the same conclusion as themselves. They must take value systems, cultural backdrops and local knowledge gaps into account and frame their arguments accordingly. Such approaches will be crucial in facing current global challenges, from recessions to pandemics and climate change. These issues will be perceived and dealt with differently by different nations -- not because they misunderstand, but because their understanding is in part locally dependent. (emphasis added)

Newspapers are dying, and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University is suspending its program in environmental journalism. At a time when the greatest challenges facing us -- global climate change, loss of biodiversity, emerging infectious diseases, nanotechnology, energy -- are centered on science and technology, the science division of CNN shut down its science division late last year and the number of science journalists is decreasing. The task of covering issues with a large scientific/technological component increasingly falls to general beat reporters who don't have specialized training in science. They're often very smart, but they aren't experts, and they could use some help.

Which is where our friends north of the border are ahead of us (source).

The Science Media Centre of Canada will help journalists cover stories in which science plays an important part.

...

More than two dozen organizations from the private, public and corporate sectors have donated $5,000 to become Charter Members of the SMCC and are recognized on the Centre's website (www.sciencemediacentre.ca). This support is allowing us to push ahead aggressively in these areas:

• Governance models, location, start-up funding and long-term financing have all been examined by Halifax Global and that Business Plan is posted on the Centre's website.
• Formal application has been made to incorporate the SMCC federally as a non-profit corporation.
• A project manager will be engaged shortly to help the Steering Committee identify "Champions" of greater public engagement with science and to raise funds for the start-up and initial year of operations, estimated at $1 million.

Here's hoping that the Centre is successful and that it inspires a similar effort in the United States.¹ In the meantime, journalists in the U.S. may have to hope that

non-Canadian non-science reporters who suddenly have an assignment on, oh, the relative merits of biofuels made from krill or algae, or a giant comet aimed straight at our Moon, or a finding that tuna are fully sentient, can call up something called the Science Media Centre of Canada for a tip on what to do and what's this about anyway. (source)

A week ago leaders of 18 scientific organizations released a letter to Congress restating the consensus view on climate change. The letter has not been widely noticed, but there are a few people who noticed. The ones I know about are:

• Joe Romm, Climate Progress
• Jon Gelbard, Conservation Value
• Dina Cappiello, Associated Press (a glancing mention in the 4th paragraph of the article)

If you happen to run across others, let me know, either in an e-mail or in comments here.

The PBS documentary series, NOVA, has produced many, many useful programs on evolution and the history of life. Now many of those resources are collected into a single, comprehensive web site, NOVA evolution. The site provides a variety of resources for students, teachers, and everyone who's interested in learning more. It looks like a tremendously valuable resource, and they asked Carl Zimmer to come up with his list of the ten biggest developments in evolutionary biology over the last dedade. Check it out.