Posts have been less frequent because I’ve been prepping for the ScienceOnline 2010 conference in North Carolina where I’ll be speaking on the topics of Science in the Media (with Dr. Kiki); Adult Science Literacy; and Citizen Science.
Exciting news to add: I’ll be doing a soft launch of SciCheer’s sister site: ScienceForCitizens.net . It’s something my partner, Michael Gold, and I have been working on for a long time. Thanks to the generous support of Science House and help from our own Dr. John Ohab, the site is finally crystalizing! Known as “THE source for people who want to do science,” the site will serve as a Craigslist meets Match.com in the realm of citizen science. Interested in learning about or participating in research projects? We’ve got something for you (no degree? no worries! ). Looking to find volunteers for your project? Just add it to our (soon-to-be extensive) database of projects.
Sign up to be notified when the site is live (Saturday morning) and consider joining us on Twitter (@sci4cits) and Facebook: Science For Citizens .
Look forward to meeting you. I live nearby in Chapel Hill.
Dear Darlene,
Thanks to you for being in the Research Triangle Park, NC this weekend and for all you are doing to protect life as we know it on Earth from huge human-induced threats. Surely you are probably correct about the formidable global challenges that are likely the result of human activity, stupidity, arrogance and greed. To be a species with such remarkable self-consciousness, intelligence and other splendid gifts and to do no better than we are doing now is a source of deep sadness and occasional outbreaks of passionate intensity (likely signifying nothing).
Still I believe in remaining engaged with you in this necessary struggle for the future of life as we know it, a sacred struggle in which so many human beings with feet of clay have been involved for a lifetime. The first fifty years of my life were lived as if in a dream world, the profane one devised by the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us. I had no awareness a single generation would elect sponsors of powerful, greed-mongering economic powerbrokers who would formulate policies and implement business plans that irreversibly degrade Earth’s environs, recklessly dissipate its limited resources, relentlessly diminish its biodiversity, destabilize its climate and threaten the very future of children everywhere. My failures include not realizing that I and my selfish generation were ravaging the Earth and effectively behaving in a way that could lead to the destruction of our planetary home as a fit place for habitation by the children (let alone coming generations). Even though it is discomforting and difficult to responsibly perform our duties to science and humanity, at least we can speak out loudly, clearly and often about these unfortunate circumstances and in the process educate one another as best we can. Like you, I do not have answers to forbidding questions related to the patently unsustainable ‘trajectory’ of human civilization in its present, colossally expansive form. Much more problematic, however, is the ruinous determination of many too many experts who have colluded to consciously obstruct open discussion of the best available scientific evidence of “what could somehow be real”. If what could be real about the human condition and the Earth we inhabit is not confronted with intellectual honesty and moral courage, how is the family of humanity to adapt to the practical requirements of “reality” in a reasonable, sensible, sustainable and timely way?
An ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort is likely to be the end result of experts choosing to remain willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute rather than examining extant science of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth. This refusal to respond ably by acknowledging evidence and accepting responsibility for the distinctly human-driven global challenges that have emerged robustly and converged rapidly in our time could be one of the greatest mistakes in human history. After all, what mistake in history could be greater than the ones made in our time that lead humanity inadvertently to precipitate the demise of life as we know it and to put at risk a good enough future for the children?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, est. 2001
Chapel Hill, NC
http://www.sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://www.panearth.org/