Tag: climate change

We already know what another Trump Presidency would mean for the ocean

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Policy

Yesterday, we published a rundown of all the ways in which Trump’s Project 2025 would impact ocean science and conservation. Trump’s Project 2025 is an agenda, a glimpse at what a future administration might do. Trump already served one term as president. We already know what the Trump Ocean Doctrine looks like, and it doesn’t … Read More “We already know what another Trump Presidency would mean for the ocean” »

How Trump’s Project 2025 would reshape America’s oceans

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Climate change, Featured, Policy

Near the end of last year, the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project 2025, a sweeping, 900-page document that outlines their vision for a second Trump administration. Authored by key leaders of the former administration and Trump’s campaign team, this document lays the groundwork for Trump’s policy agenda, should he defeat Vice President Harris in the 2024 … Read More “How Trump’s Project 2025 would reshape America’s oceans” »

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Plug-in Electric Hybrids are better than you think

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Climate change, Featured, Popular Culture

We have a problem.  Collectively, we need to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions over the next few years to stave off the worst climate change outcomes. While this demands sweeping changes to energy policy at national and international levels, for individuals and organizations, electrification of the world’s automotive fleets offers the most direct change.  Electric … Read More “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Plug-in Electric Hybrids are better than you think” »

Of all the things that haven’t happened, these are the things that haven’t happened in the Ocean so far this year

Posted on By Southern Fried Science
Blogging, Climate change, Conservation, Exploration, Featured, Science

In the past, we’ve done a little write up whenever some exaggerated of fabricated piece of ocean news crosses our desk. This year, we’re going to try something new. A one-stop, periodically updated clearinghouse for all the things that did not happen in the ocean this year. A shark did not impregnate a stingray Some … Read More “Of all the things that haven’t happened, these are the things that haven’t happened in the Ocean so far this year” »

Taking Initiative: My 2023 year in environmental education, outreach, and activism

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Education

2023 was a year of endings. I closed several projects and spent a lot of time, behind the scenes, laying the foundation for project I hope will have an impact in 2024. I don’t really think of myself as a science communications person anymore. We are activists, working to achieve specific science-informed policy outcomes. We … Read More “Taking Initiative: My 2023 year in environmental education, outreach, and activism” »

Deep Ocean Exploration needs to move beyond Imported Magic

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Exploration, Featured, Science

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that deep ocean exploration is an expensive endeavor. Vessels, instrumentation, deep-submergence vehicles, and analytical tools are costly to run and the specialized training needed to maintain that equipment is often a career in itself. Deep-sea research cruises are among the most logistically complex peacetime operations in human history. When access to … Read More “Deep Ocean Exploration needs to move beyond Imported Magic” »

Deep-Sea Mining: A whirlwind tour of the state of the industry and current policy regimes

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Science

On April 28, 2022, I was invited to give a short talk to a gathering of Environmental NGO representatives to provide an overview and my perspective on the current state of development for deep-sea mining. Below is the transcript of that talk.

Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me. Today I’m going to give you a very brief whirlwind tour of the current state of deep-sea mining and the policy regime around this developing industry.

The first thing I need to highlight is that we often talk about deep-sea mining as one cohesive thing, but it’s really four separate and distinct industries, all developing in tandem, with significant differences in the types of metals targeted, the technology necessary to exploit those metals, and the motivations for doing so.

Read More “Deep-Sea Mining: A whirlwind tour of the state of the industry and current policy regimes” »

The climate denial industry in full swing, 5 storms rage across the Atlantic, and Orcas seek vengeance – What’s up with the Oceans this week?

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 1 Comment on The climate denial industry in full swing, 5 storms rage across the Atlantic, and Orcas seek vengeance – What’s up with the Oceans this week?
News

Denial Incorporated. Over the weekend, the Administration announced the appointment of David Legates, an anti-science activist embedded in the climate denial industry. Legates will answer directly to acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs. Expect to see Legates making the media rounds downplaying the impact of climate change on the occurrence of more frequent and powerful tropical … Read More “The climate denial industry in full swing, 5 storms rage across the Atlantic, and Orcas seek vengeance – What’s up with the Oceans this week?” »

A decade of failures in Science Communication.

Posted on By Andrew Thaler 4 Comments on A decade of failures in Science Communication.
Blogging

Eleven years is a long life for a science blog. Southern Fried Science was born in 2008, when the main writers were all graduate students. Over the last decade the online landscape has changed. Science Communication changed with it, adapting and evolving to meet an ever-shifting ecosystem. Looking back on the last decade and thinking about the next, it’s becoming easier to see where we went wrong. It’s not quite as easy to determine what we need to correct the course.

This is not a scientific assessment, this is my own personal observations from the last decade of running Southern Fried Science, from teaching Social Media for Environmental Communications for the last 7 years, from working with Upwell, one of the most dynamic and visionary ocean NGOs ever conceived, from helping build and launch multiple online platforms, dozens of novel programs, and hundreds of outreach campaigns, and from spending a lot of time since November 2016 reflecting on what we’ve done wrong.

That Hideous Deficit

Do we really need another 200 words on how bad the deficit model is and why it needs to die?

Apparently, yes.

The basic premise: that science perception and policy is shaped by an information deficit and that if we just make good science education content and spread it, we can combat the spread of misinformation, people will learn, and everything will get better.

It doesn’t work. It never worked. And it ignores the reality that misinformation is manufactured for political and financial gain, with tremendous incentives and, often, far better funding than science outreach campaigns. But beyond that, multiple studies have shown that, when confronted with information that challenges their fundamental world view, people don’t throw out their worldview, they reject the science, creating a more entrenched and intractable audience.

Read More “A decade of failures in Science Communication.” »