A feature interview on Green Majority Radio: Fresh from the New York City climate march, host Daryn Caister chats with Michael Riordon about Bold Scientists.
We range far and wide: science and scientists – bold and not, knowing our place (in nature), who owns knowledge, hubris and humility, power and resistance… Far and wide.
Hear it here: http://greenmajoritymedia.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/419-bold-scientists/.
Photo: Brian Woods.
Bold Scientists (and the author) at work in the non-fiction reading tent, at the giant Toronto literary festival Word on the Street, Sunday September 21, 2014.
This was the book’s public debut.
Wild thunderstorms in the morning, then the clouds cleared, and throngs of people filled the streets around Queen’s Park in downtown Toronto. The reading tent was full.
I gabbed a little and read several pieces from the book, including – in honour of Sunday’s climate change marches around the world — two excerpts on scientists who challenge official silence and inertia on the urgent climate crisis we all face.
Next event: Thursday October 16, 7 pm, at the Picton Public Library, 208 Main Street in Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada.
Come along!
Scientists Biased, Talk Too Much: Confidential government memo.
Details here, in Blacklock’s Reporter: minding Ottawa’s business, August 11, 2014.
Tar sands, Alberta, Canada. Photo: The Nation.
The primary target of the confidential memo, John Smol, is a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, a widely acclaimed paleolimnologist (fathoming the life stories of lakes), and Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change.
Why does the Harper government want to silence John Smol and his co-researchers? Because they know too much. The current regime in Ottawa is an aggressive booster of the enormously destructive tar sands colossus, and is determined to keep Canadians strictly on message: tar sands = good for Canada, with minimal harm. Period. Trouble is, their message keeps getting shredded by the findings of honest science.
Why won’t John Smol shut up? He knows too much:
“The huge problem is that many environmental problems are long scale. They can take years, decades to show up – or longer, sometimes I work in centuries, even millennia. But politicians think in terms of four years, at best. Look at the tar sands – go ahead, pump it out as fast as you can, we’ll be out of here in four years, what do we care? Industry is even worse, they think in quarters, 90-day intervals. Costs for the future are horrendous, but they’re not in this fiscal cycle. When things go extinct, they’re extinct forever. You destroy a river system, it’s gone. Destroy a fish population, it’s gone. How do you gauge what that’s worth?”
Delve into John Smol’s research, paleolimnology, and why he speaks out, in Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science. Available September 4, 2014, in print and e-book from Between the Lines.
Photo: MR, August 18, 2014
This morning, a Great Spangled Fritillary visited our garden. Probably a female, according to The Butterflies of Canada, which says males are bright orange, females subtler. (I’m open to correction.)
Although I kept a respectful distance, at least ten feet, each time I shifted to a better angle she disappeared. Then finally she permitted a single photo. I call her Greta Garbo.
Yesterday a Monarch visited. Only one, but given their perilous state, one is 100% better than none. I watched it feed for almost an hour on Brazilian verbena, verbena bonariensis.
A tip: Though it rarely appears on how-to-attract-butterflies plant lists, these tall, dignified plants with tiny purple flowers draw many more visitors than any other plant in our garden. Brazilian verbena self-seeds lavishly, but doesn’t crowd its neighbours.
Perhaps the monarch will return. And Greta Garbo.
For more on how gardens illuminate our ambiguous place in nature, science and power, see Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science. Available September 4, 2014, from Between the Lines.
Available September 4, 2014
Critical comment:
“A gripping tale of heroic scientists working in the public interest despite powerful
opposition. At once, both tremendously hopeful and profoundly disturbing. The world
needs more bold authors like Michael Riordon.”
Thomas Duck, Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science,Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
“Silence is consent, my fellow scientists. Riordon’s profiles in courage encourage us to take our data and our voices into the gladiator’s arena and engage in the great moral and political battles of our time. As Bold Scientists so clearly shows, it’s where we belong.”
Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment; co-founder, Concerned Health Professionals of New York
The menu/chapters:
When the river roared. First Nations, a long view.
Digging thistles. An experimental post-oil farm.
A dialogue with the world. Biology, from the ground up.
Blood on my hands. Life and death in the garden.
Stolen children. In El Salvador, war, genes and human rights.
The Cloud. Watching Big Brother.
ODD. Psychology and power
Awe. The wisdom of a spider web.
Pesky data. Under lakes, dark truths.
The unsolved problem. Fracking: homeland insecurity.
When the lights go out. Awakening in an ice storm.
No time for cowardice. An elemental fight for science and democracy.
Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science
Now:
After September 4th:
Unspun science for dangerous times
Michael Riordon 