A Canada-Related Headline Illustrates the Difficulty of Focusing Attention where Alertness Is Most Required — Would Most People Pay Attention to a News Piece Entitled, “Tories Put Pipeline Ahead of Phytoplankton”? — Probably Not, and that’s the Point

10 February 2012

The following essay flips the perspective about good writing that I took yesterday

(Yesterday’s point is here.)

Today — rather than focusing on uncommunicative science writing — we will look at good writing that necessarily depends on readers’ educated acuity to get its message across.

There is a fundamental knowledge base that has to be in place, before we can communicate effectively about some necessary subjects.

First, the “boring-ness” of paying attention to the Real World’s complexity

We need to overcome our distaste for complexity and scientific detail, if we are to comfortably survive.

That means we have to stop watching Lady Gaga (whom I admire) long enough to think about some even more important things.

Because I like subtleties that can kill — if ignored — I chose Dr. David Suzuki’s Canada-related headline to illustrate humanity’s need for near-universal, substantive science education.

Citation — here is the headline that I’m referring to

David Suzuki, Tories Put Pipeline Ahead of Phytoplankton, Huffington Post (10 February 2012)

Not exactly riveting, is it?

Tories and phytoplankton are not attention-getters. Nevertheless, the title concisely states the issue that Dr. Suzuki is addressing.

This is a good example of a good writer, and an important topic, both of which depend on readers’ knowledge base to communicate.

There are subtle (and inevitable) problems with the “phytoplankton” headline — an introduction to the need for substantive science education

Most people don’t know what phytoplankton are. Much less the roles they play in maintaining a habitable biosphere and feeding humanity.

Most non-Canadians could not care less who Canadian Tories are.

And virtually no one but tree-huggers cares about pipelines. Pipelines just move “stuff” from one place to another. Big deal.

From the average person’s perspective, there is not one good reason to read David Suzuki’s essay. Despite the fact that he is addressing an issue, which in the long run, just might kill some of us or our children.

Why Dr. Suzuki’s title and essay matter, despite our predictably bored response

Let’s grant that Tories mentioned in the Suzuki’s lead-in serve only as the “bad guys.”

Outside Canada, we don’t need to know who Tories actually are. Being implied “evil-doers” is enough to generate at least a slight interest in Suzuki’s article title.

But phytoplankton?

This is where the science education component of this essay enters.

Let’s cut the word into its two parts, “plankton” and “phyto.”

Plankton are drifting life-forms. Most of us think of them as being microscopic in size, although even huge jellyfish are technically included under the name’s umbrella.

Plankton are defined by their ecologic niche, not by their formal classification as plant, animal, bacterium, or archaea. Taken together, plankton provide crucial sources of food for ocean creatures and, indirectly, us.

Now, what is “phyto”?

Phyto refers to “plant.” This is the key to the importance of Dr. Suzuki’s essay. It’s the hook, for the biologically knowledgeable, in his title.

Phytoplankton contain chlorophyll. They make their food with sunlight, just like plants do. And they live in the sun-lighted top layer of the ocean.

NASA says:

Single-celled phytoplankton fuel nearly all ocean ecosystems, serving as the most basic food source for marine animals from zooplankton to fish to shellfish.

In fact, phytoplankton account for half of all photosynthetic activity on Earth.

The health of these marine plants affects commercial fisheries, the amount of carbon dioxide the ocean can absorb, and how the ocean responds to climate change.

Notice, here, that phytoplankton account for “half of all the photosynthetic activity on Earth.”

The majority of multi-cellular life on Earth is dependent on chlorophyll-bearers’ ability to turn sunlight into energy-storing sugars. We humans would not be here without the sun and without plant and phytoplankton’s ability to convert solar energy into food.

With that understood, Dr. Suzuki’s title implies that Tories (the “bad guys”) care more about (oil) pipelines than do about half the photosynthetic activity on the planet. He is criticizing the Tory government’s survival priorities.

Does an informed perspective about “phytoplankton” turn Suzuki’s headline into slightly more of an attention-getter?

Complex reality — David Suzuki begins his essay with a science report from the Royal Society of Canada

Suzuki is an outstanding communicator. And he does not deal with unimportant topics. Some of you will have seen his televised science presentations.

His essay today drew attention to an environmentally disturbing report from the Royal Society of Canada’s marine scientists.

Citation — to the Canadian fisheries report that Dr. Suzuki used as foundation to his article

Isabelle M. Côté, Julian J. Dodson, Ian A. Fleming, Je¬ rey A. Hutchings, Simon Jennings, Nathan J. Mantua, Randall M. Peterman, Brian E. Riddell, Andrew J. Weaver, and David L. VanderZwaag,, Sustaining Canada's Marine Biodiversity: Responding to the Challenges Posed by Climate Change, Fisheries, and Aquaculture, Royal Society of Canada (February 2012)

The Royal Society provided direct links to the report’s components:

Official Press Release (authors’ qualifications and their 6 questions)

Main Messages (one page of 4 short summary statements)

Executive Summary

Report in Brief

Full Report (which did not download for me)

Dr. Suzuki’s points — which we would not have gotten to, if we had not read past his title

Suzuki begins his essay about mistaken government priorities with the Royal Society’s report. It concludes that the Canadian government has made no attempt to target recovery of Canada’s collapsed fisheries or to maintain the health of Canada’s adjacent oceans.

The Expert Panel noted that Canada has violated international commitments to protecting marine diversity. And Canada significantly trails other prominent countries (including the United States) “in almost every aspect of fisheries management.”

The problem, according to the Canadian experts, is not the lack of knowledge, but the government’s lack of focus.

In this regard, Dr. Suzuki wrote:

For a country surrounded on three sides by oceans and with the longest coastline in the world, that's shameful.

Beyond the jobs, recreational opportunities, food, medicines, and habitat that our oceans provide, they also give us life.

Half the world's oxygen is produced in the oceans by phytoplankton, which are threatened by rising ocean temperatures and acidification because of global warming.

You'd think the decline of the Northern cod fishery, largely caused by mismanagement, would have taught us something.

Now, with some West Coast salmon fisheries on the verge of collapse, and little real effort to protect our oceans, it appears we can expect more of the same -- unless we start demanding more from our government.

Another subtlety — again demonstrating how knowledge and education matter

There’s another subtlety in the above paragraphs. Did you catch it?

“[W]ith the longest coastline in the world.”

This “longest coastlines” fact has two implications beyond the obvious:

The first has to do with international law and a nation’s right and/or responsibility to govern its seas out to their territorial limits.

The second implication refers to the significantly superior productivity of many comparatively near-shore fisheries, as opposed to the barrenness of much of the deep ocean. This means that, despite their extent, oceans are not uniformly productive. Near shore waters’ increased primary productivity matters. Canada (due to its lengthy coastlines) very probably has more than its share.

Canada is (arguably) failing humanity by being profligate with its legally assigned, once productive maritime resources — which, scientifically seen, more accurately belong to humanity as a whole.

This is the implication that most concerns Dr. Suzuki. Canada is complacently ruining its, much larger than globally typical, share of one-half of the planet’s photosynthetic base.

Now, guess where the Canadian government’s focus actually is

What has Dr. Suzuki angry is that:

[T]he federal government recently rejected millions of dollars in funding for a collaborative effort to establish a marine spatial plan and network of protected areas in Canada's Pacific North Coast waters.

The reason?

The government was worried that marine protected areas and marine use plans based on ecosystem science might restrict oil tanker traffic.

Rather than protect the Pacific's valuable resources, opportunities, and habitat on which 40 per cent of the world's marine mammal species and countless other plants and animals depend, it appears the government would rather risk it all by pushing the Northern Gateway pipeline project to ship crude bitumen from the tar sands through precarious Pacific Coast waterways to China and California.

Premise Complex 1 — there is no free ride

For purposes of putting Dr. Suzuki’s upset into perspective, consider the following interrelated premises:

Reality always implicates competing interests.

Indulging one interest at the total expense of another can be environmentally death-dealing.

Some interests are so critical that they cannot be significantly compromised, without endangering a vitally necessary system.

The heavier the pressure on an integrated mechanism (or interacting complexes of mechanisms), the more attention one has to pay to balancing inputs and outputs.

There is no way to control a system’s balance, without first having the knowledge and continually honed insights that define the dynamics of its equilibrium and end points.

Premise 2 — active stupidity kills

Toss in an arguably valid evolutionary principle:

It is arguably forgivable to be stupid, ignorant, and lazy.

But it is not survivably okay to combine ignorant complacence with imbecilically active self-destruction.

Implementing these premises — back to phytoplankton — and to balancing environmental health against “oil greed”

The pipeline that Suzuki refers to is the Canadian component of the larger North American oil sands pipeline complex. It includes the proposed Keystone XL extension across the center of the United States.

Note

I am on record as thinking that the building of this pipeline (somewhere) is inevitable, given our “oil greed.”

But I have suggested, as Suzuki seems to be, that it is essential for both governments to ensure that the environmental costs of the Canadian and American portions of the pipeline(s) are minimized.

The important point is that one cannot minimize negative impacts, when one deliberately closes one’s eyes to them.

Suzuki’s essential point (as I interpret it) is — If we remain uncaringly complacent, air-headedly ignorant, and stupidly greedy — we are going to get ourselves into big-time biosphere trouble

Widely distributed science education overcomes some of the above-listed evils.

Being widespread, it will inevitably include a proportion of people, who are able to overcome personal greed for the benefit of human community and the planet.

The gist of Tories Put Pipeline Ahead of Phytoplankton is that (metaphorically) remaining in a band of homogeneously avaricious ignoramuses is not the best way to an environmentally-sustained future.

The moral? — Ignorance prevents effective communication regarding some vital subjects

Notice (again) that receiving Dr. Suzuki’s scientifically valid warning hinged on our informed understanding of the word, “phytoplankton.” There are, indeed, some essential subjects that require an educated foundation, if writers are to communicate.

That is why I am so concerned about the anti-scientific trend that our political leaders and much of our public mutually reinforce.

The pressures that humanity is now imposing on the planet are extreme enough that we have no choice but to pay attention to the biosphere’s operating intricacies. And we cannot pay effective attention to much of anything, without knowing how it works.

We should not allow our Political Ignorami — and the ignorant people and special interests who pay to keep them that way — to continue running roughshod over what we already know and that which we seek to find out.

Low level baboon-cognition is not a successful evolutionary adaptation, when it is exercised in human form.

PeteFree.com

A Canada-Related Headline Illustrates the Difficulty of Focusing Attention where Alertness Is Most Required — Would Most People Pay Attention to a News Piece Entitled, “Tories Put Pipeline Ahead of Phytoplankton”? — Probably Not, and that’s the Point