Where did that come from?

An attempt as PR professionals to define good practice in environmental PR might be heard from them. I’m surprised it hasn’t been done (or has it? do science journalists use any higher standard for facts? From what we see in press releases at EurekAlert, maybe not).

It’s a tough issue. I watched Connolley (Stoat) go after Romm about accuracy several times a while ago. At first I agreed with William; I’m always leaning toward precision not passion.

But I started reading Romm more and realized his style is a rational choice and works. I think he’s improved the precision of his science without losing his convincing passion.

I realized passionate intensity conveys conviction to readers who don’t understand that scientists emphasize uncertainty.
And even more so, for listeners who don’t read — the conviction has to be there in the voice.

It made me realize convincing the public about science is a big, big problem.

I don’t like the answer you quote above _at_all_. But I fear it’s the answer from experience that as we see all the time, fake stories _do_work_ in real life, realpolitik. That’s why there are so many “environmentalists” who never read ecology.

It might be a tragedy, technically — no good answer. I say might, not is for sure.

You can get the facts precisely right, reach all the thinking people, and as Adlai Stevenson so famously observed “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”

The Great Garbage Gyre is too big to sieve out until hydrocarbons get a lot more valuable. It seems to me that a survey in 2003 found that plankton nets in the Gyre collected 90% plastic by weight and 10% plankton. As the plastic erodes, small organisms are preferentially ingesting shrimp-coloured motes. It’s not good for them. Albatrosses are feeding plastic to their young, thinking it’s calcium-rich shell. Sea turtles are sucking down plastic bags, thinking they’re jellyfish.

I don’t think we can get genie back into the bottle. The only way to keep it out is to educate everyone not to drop or lose the damn stuff. If Plastiki makes people more aware and more careful, then good. If they come back saying that their hydroponics should have been better planned and their energy balance was miscalculated, even better. But I like that they’re going.

I even have a soft spot for Thor Heyerdahl. He arrived alive and thus proved a concept. The seafaring skills of an island race would improve after people colonized the islands.

But if X donates a million dollars a year to, let’s say, childhood canncer, and Y would like to make a living studying and/or treating childhood cancer, Y better not become known as the person who did something that could make X really really mad one day, even if in truth X may not really ever get mad at Y.

There are many factors, many institutions, many people, many pathways, many ways in which things can turn out.

But from the perspective of a single, given person, there is only one career to throw away needlessly.

That is what I assume the caution comes from.

But the situation is even worse than that because of what appear to be the misguided efforts of a British Billionaire who has managed to frighten those best in a position to criticize him into remaining silent

Greg, I don’t know if you’ve ever read John D. MacDonald’s “Nightmare in Pink“, but even though it’s fiction it points up a real issue regarding how people behave when very large amounts of money are at stake.

To put it simply, the threats may well have come from “free-riders” close the the source of the money rather than the source himself. Indeed, IMO this is by far the most probable scenario: somebody doesn’t want word of his shortcuts to get to the boss, and is willing to make (and probably carry out) whatever threats he (or she) thinks can prevent it.

This doesn’t mean de Rothschild definitely hasn’t made threats, rather that he may not have; may not even know about them. Either scenario is plausible, but IMO the one I’ve presented is more probable.

I know of at least one person who has communicated with at least one of those concerns and the response was, quite literally, “The important thing is that the message gets out there, not that it is accurate.”

Which is frustrating. But, I’ve got this blog thing going….. that make it less frustrating.

“Corrupt Techniques in Evidence Presentations
… The emphasis is on consuming presentations, on what alert members of an audience or readers of a report should look for in assessing the credibility of the presenter.”

Greg, have you considered going to the National Geographic and other sites promoting the Plastiki story to clean up the facts and language used, before they lose credibility?

Sounds like the whole Plastiki story needs the Feynmann treatment. http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix.html

It’s hard to be Feynmann — to come in with utterly devastating criticism and be ‘framed’ as contributing to saving and improving the organization. But someone has to.

What is YOUR stake in this?

This is absurd. They don’t want their names attached to it because they don’t want to get fired. It’s nothing for the rest of us to get worried about.