Fragilecologies

Tag: CRU

  • “SKEPTICS, SHOW US YOUR EMAILS: ‘turn-about’ is fair play.” Mickey Glantz, DAY 4 at COP 15

    Let’s be honest. We have all said things on email ranging fro m serious to silly to stupid. We have all sent curt responses based on the fact that those receiving it understand the context of the abbreviated message. I am not condoning or excusing the sometimes dumb, sometimes uncaring and sometimes deceptive comments that have appeared in the so called “climategate” so called “scandal”. That situation will be sorted out by others, invesitgative committees most likely. Yes, the emails were illegally hacked. Nevertheless, they are now public. So, the public will read them and they have through the media. E-mailing has its consequences.

    Thank you Bizarro. All scientists, global warming hawks and deniers should have paid attention to your message
    Thank you Bizarro. All scientists, global warming hawks and deniers should have paid attention to your message

     

    There is no question in my mind that the integrity of both the scientists and of email security has been damaged. Others will assess that level of impact. But here i want to call for a level playing field. It’s a good faith challenge to the climate skeptics who are using climategate to discredit the science of climate change, though they cannot discredit impacts of a changing climate on people today and in the future.

    I call upon the climate change skeptics, political, scientific and media to share with the world a block of their unbroken years-long chain of emails about climate change . I am asking them to do this on a voluntary basis in order to show us that they are super human and do not share the  human frailty of ‘loose lips’ that the rest of humankind is subect to.

    Doing so would provide outsiders an even broader context in which we can evaluate the content of the emails that had been hacked and released from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at University of East Anglia [and also at Penn State]. Let society be the judge about the words and motives of all involved in the climate change issue at the political, scientific and media levels, and let society be the judge on the merits of the finding and interpretation of the science of climate change.

    After all, isn’t turn about fair play? or what is good for the goose should be good for the gander as well, no?

  • A message to climate scientists: Emails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus

    The following excerpt is from an editorial I wrote in 2002 called “E-mails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus.” I believe it is relevant to the controversy swirling around the hacked files (emails and documents) of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Those emails expose a side of science that does not receive much attention, except from an occasional writer whose manuscript might have been rejected for publication. Perhaps some of those disappointed writers, rejected research manuscripts in hand, were right to complain. Their voice collectively is now being heard around the world.

    E-mails are from Mars. Letters are from Venus
    Mickey Glantz

    Emails are impersonal. No matter how hard one tries, transmitting warm and emotional thoughts by way of email is a difficult task. The pressure of time, the need to spell check, the pressure to type in a correct representation of one’s thoughts, the pressure to answer other emails, typing with two or three fingers in front of a 15- or 17-inch monitor – all these factors lead to an impersonal communication. An email also lacks a personal signature.

    emails and Mars
    emails and Mars

    Letters, on the other hand, convey a much higher level of sincerity. There is little room for correction, unless a draft is first written and then a clean copy is made. People writing letters on paper must think through what they want to say, thought by thought, sentence by sentence, before it is written down. The letter-writer must go to the trouble of putting the letter in the mail. For centuries, writing on papyrus, animal skins, or parchment has been the preferred way to communicate. By analogy, writing on stone or clay tablets is, to me, more like writing down one’s thoughts in email.

    letters are from venus
    letters are from venus

    With written letters, there is a tendency to rethink what has been said and therefore there is a delay in sending them – a safety period, so to speak. With emails, the tendency is to fire them off, once they have been written. One may not actually want to take the time to modify (or mitigate) his or her first thoughts. And it is so easy to hit the “send” button. Not only that, but the sender does not have to wait several days before the recipient receive the message, and wait several more days for a reply. With emails, sending and receiving messages can take place in real time, and then often do. What was not clear in the first message can perhaps be cleared up on a second or third email.

    The writer of an email is also stripped of the trouble that the letter-writer must go through in order to mail a letter: address an envelope, find a stamp (remembering which is the latest stamp with the correct price on it – I don’t know what they currently cost), and then remember to get the letter into a mailbox.

    It is important to be aware of the differences between emails and hard-copy letters. They are not the same. While they do convey information from one person to another, they can be very different in the depth of thought that goes into them. The level of sensitivity varies, with email tending to be less sensitive, often incomplete thoughts that can mislead or provoke the recipient. I have actually witnessed a situation in which email correspondence between people in the same office went on a downward spiral, as one misleading statement led to an equally insensitive response, and so forth, until both parties ended up completely estranged, with no further communication possible between them.

    I suggest that, when writing an email, we take the time to go back and read it through and think about its content, and more importantly, its tone before sending. Try to put ourselves in the place of the recipient. This would lend a little “Venus” to our emails and mitigate their “Mars” aspect.