Denial is not just a river in Egypt; paradigm changes

I am sure that Hurricane Sandy is a Democrat and a better politician than anyone else. Governor Cuomo, Democrat of New York, just said in his public address, that, "anyone who is denying the dramatic change in weather patterns' (that the impact of Hurricane Sandy is not about climate change), is denying reality." 

Here's a good run down of the relationships between Hurricane Sandy and climate change: 

http://grist.org/news/superstorm-sandys-climate-change-connection/

Is anyone out there listening? Thomas Kuhn, scientific historian and physicist, famously wrote in his seminal book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" pub. 1962, that what changes a paradigm of thinking is the preponderance of evidence that accumulates while the old style thinkers die off.

Meanwhile, needless to say, there is lots we can do once certain folks take their heads out of the sand. Fortunately, not everyone has their head in the sand. Even Gov. Christie, of New Jersey, a Republican, has praised Obama for his appropriate responses. Too bad there have to be so many casualties before we get to our new paradigm, from the ten people who died in this hurricane to all the fish in the local waterways, now threatened by oil and other pollutants from overwhelmed systems.

I read & appreciated Paul Greenberg's "4 Fish" on how we have come to farm and domesticate the world's wild fish for my dissertation research. His essay explains why oysters might be one of our best friends in future storm events. At the recent Restore Americas Estuaries conference (RAE) I attended, there were a lot of sessions on oysters. So maybe us humans can learn how to live in this world we've altered so dramatically, after all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/opinion/an-oyster-in-the-storm.html?smid=fb-share

The paradigm change suggested by Greenberg and others working on oyster restoration, is that nature is not simply our combination larder and toilet, but our indispensable hospital and retirement plan. The big shift is in how we experience our power in relation to nature's power. If I were a betting woman, I might take a bet on who speaks more eloquently: the climate change deniers or nature, in the Halloween guise of Hurricane Sandy.

Fish Story in a wider context

Gene Turner is on the "Gulf to Gulf" team and one of our science collaborators for Fish Story. When the launch announcement for Fish Story went out this morning, he was moderating a RAE panel, "Why we restore- an exploration of values," with Robin Lewis, an international restorationist with the Coastal Resources Group, myself and Bill Shadel of the American Littoral Society. In the background, as he introduced the panel, Gene was running this beautiful PPT, which I'm temporarily inserting as a movie until I can get Gene's permission to upload it to vimeo:

As I was uploading this, the following fish story came in on facebook:

Roman Taher

i was 12 my goldfish died but when it happen i thought it was just sleeping at the top of the greeny tank. An ever lasting sleep 3 days later the tank was empty my mum flushed lil fishy down the toilet.

Twilight at week's end of the RAE conference in Tampa. It seemed
to me, before news of Hurricane Sandy, that perhaps a big storm was coming,
 in more ways than one.

Restoring wetlands, Tampa, Florida

I'm winding down Day 1 of 5 at the Restore Americas Estuaries conference (RAE) here in Tampa, Florida:

https://www.estuaries.org/conference/

and I had a fabulous time today with the RAE Tampa Bay Watch:

www.tampbaywatch.org

In a few hours, about 80 of us planted about 10, 000 spartina alterniflora plugs in a restoration workshop. Apparently it was the last plug planting for the Cockroach (named for what the first settlers thought blue crabs look like) Bay project. Cockroach Bay began their restoration work in 1987. When they began, it was an ugly sand quarry and a moonscape. Today's work completed a big milestone for this most major piece in the restoration of Tampa Bay's 400 square miles of open water and 2000 miles of shoreline, so actually an interesting example of what I would call applied trigger point theory.

Blue crab carapace

This evening I am heading out to a special estuaries workers yoga class and then I'm off to the glamourous task of doing my laundry- I fell out of the canoe, slipped in the black mud 3 additional

 times).  And remarkably, I have preserved my manicure.

On the bus out to & back from Cockroach Bay, I sat next to Jeff Benoit, Pres of RAE and learned a lot about this important organization and how they have survived the shrinking federal budget for wetlands restoration, despite their essential role in so many environmental issues today. We also talked about engaging ecological artists in restoration and using social media for outreach. I told him that what I think ecological artists offer land managers includes imaginative framing and a captivating narrative. We approach & organize restoration work totally differently than land managers. I didn't add but will presume it will be obvious in my Wednes. presentation here, that we also make unique connections. About social media, I suggested he not try to make it perfect, just leave it raw. Raw is it's own style, most economical and actually, most accessible an has worked well for me without any marketing. The Gulf to Gulf webcasts on vimeo have been download from 58 countries..