Comments on: Alien species in your backyard

By: shorty

shorty — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:50:04 +0000

I guess the fear of coming off as alarmist does encourage people to be more conservative with their proclamations. On the one hand you don’t want people to think you are inflating the facts just for the sake of action. You don’t want to cause a panic paralysis. However if your argument comes across as anecdotal, if there is a problem to address it appears more trivial, and there’s less drive to consider 1) whether action should be taken, or 2) to what degree should action be taken. There should be a balance between the two to achieve the goal of getting people to think about material presented, not necessarily to act or not to act.

However, if it is decided by a considerable amount of people (how many is debatable) that action should be taken, there should be a non-static process of policy making. It is at this point that we move forward instead of recirculating the facts.

By: sieber

sieber — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:07:13 +0000

It’s an important question, though. I think that people may assume you’re alarmist i you carry the label environmental scientist. Does that make you more cautious in your scientific pronouncements (i.e., I must appear dispassionate else someone thinks I’m an activist)? Or does it make you feel that you have a special responsibility to “get the word out” about significant environmental problems?

By: shorty

shorty — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:04:19 +0000

In my opinion, global swarming didn’t come off so much as sounding alarming but rather energetic on what he was presenting. I think I recall it being mentioned that the information presented was not to come across as good or bad, but just to annouce the facts on what was happening. I also find it amazing at some of the different ways invasive species can come across continents, not just intentionally but unintentionally (clothing, ballast water, stowaways). And he didn’t only concentrate on visible invasive species but classified bacteria and viruses as foreign invaders as well. It’s mind boggling, all the things we have to watch out for when considering alien species crossing geographical and climatic boundaries.