Arquivo da tag: Educação

Festival interativo leva visitantes a experimentar situações de desastre ambiental (Agência Brasil)

01/06/2012UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, participatividade, Previsão, Psicologia, Semiótica, Sensacionalismo, Visualidaderenzotaddei

01/6/2012 – 10h42

por Thais Leitão, da Agência Brasil

Rio de Janeiro – Uma floresta que entra em chamas colocando em risco a vida de animais e da vegetação existente; uma geleira intacta que de repente começa a derreter ou uma casa que sofre inundação. Todas essas situações, provocadas pelo desequilíbrio ambiental, podem ser experimentadas pelo público durante o Green Nation Fest, festival interativo e sensorial que começou hoje (31) na Quinta da Boa Vista, zona norte do Rio de Janeiro, e vai até 7 de junho.

De acordo com o diretor da organização não governamental (ONG) Centro de Cultura, Informação e Meio Ambiente (Cima), que organiza do evento, Marcos Didonet, o objetivo é levar experiências práticas aos visitantes e estimular o público a agir de forma mais sustentável. A Cima desenvolve há mais de 20 anos ações em parceria com instituições privadas, governamentais e multilaterais.

“O objetivo é alcançar o grande público que não está acostumado a vivenciar a questão ambiental, trazendo o assunto de forma mais interessante, agradável e prática. Para isso, nossos artistas e cientistas bolaram essas instalações capazes de promover sensações que serão ainda mais frequentes se não mudarmos nossos padrões de consumo e comportamentos cotidianos”, afirmou.

No local, também há tendas onde ocorrem oficinas lúdicas e educativas. Em uma delas, montada pelo Instituto Estadual do Ambiente (Inea), um grupo de 30 alunos da rede municipal do Rio aprendeu, hoje, a produzir carteiras usando caixas de leite e recortes de tecido.

Para a estudante Ana Beatriz Leão, 14 anos, a ideia é criativa e pode servir para presentear amigos. “É legal porque a gente geralmente joga no lixo e agora sabe que dá para fazer outras coisas com a caixa. A que eu fiz, vou dar para uma amiga que tenho certeza que vai gostar”, contou a adolescente.

Na mesma tenda, os visitantes podem conferir outros produtos feitos com material reutilizado, como uma pequena bateria produzida com latinhas de refrigerante, livros infantis com retalhos de tecidos e bonecos com caixa de sapato.

Entre os meninos, uma das atividades preferidas é o Gol de Bicicleta na qual os participantes pedalam e geram energia para seu time. A cada watt gerado, um gol é marcado para o time de preferência. Além disso, uma bateria é abastecida e leva energia para ser utilizada em outra instalação do festival.

Os amigos Gustavo Fonseca e Roberto Damião, ambos de 11 anos, também alunos da rede municipal do Rio, disseram que a experiência é “muito intensa”.

“Foi muito legal porque a gente aprendeu outra maneira de gerar energia e ainda fez gol pro Mengão”, disse Roberto, que torce pelo Flamengo.

O evento, com entrada gratuita, também oferece uma a Mostra Internacional de Cinema, com 12 longas-metragens, e seminários com convidados brasileiros e internacionais sobre economia verde e criativa, que serão abertos para debates. A programação completa pode ser conferida no site www.greennationfest.com.br.

* Publicado originalmente no site da Agência Brasil.

Faculdade de Direito recomenda cotas na USP (OESP)

01/06/2012UncategorizedDiscriminação, Educação, Opinião pública, Políticas públicas, Raça, Racismo, Visualidaderenzotaddei

01 de junho de 2012 | 10h 00

AE – Agência Estado

A Faculdade de Direito do Largo São Francisco, a unidade mais tradicional da Universidade de São Paulo (USP), aprovou ontem, por “aclamação” (unanimidade), recomendação para que a USP adote cotas raciais. A declaração, que deve seguir para o Conselho Universitário, pode ser o primeiro passo para que a instituição comece a discutir esse tipo de ação afirmativa.

A recomendação foi votada na Congregação da faculdade, que reúne professores e alunos. A reunião teve a participação de representantes do movimento negro, que defenderam as cotas. “Esse é um passo muito importante porque reconhece que o debate sobre cotas está amadurecido e que os programas da USP não alteram a desigualdade entre brancos e negros”, afirma Clyton Borges, do movimento Uneafro Brasil. A Uneafro faz parte da Frente Pró-Cotas, que reúne 70 organizações do movimento negro e fomentou a discussão.

A USP não adota sistema de cotas ou mesmo bonificação para negros no vestibular. A universidade mantém apenas um programa de inclusão para estudantes da rede pública e o considera satisfatório. Mesmo após o Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) decidir pela legalidade das cotas, fortalecendo o debate do tema, a USP não cogitou discutir o tema.

Para o professor de Direito Marcus Orione, é simbólico que a primeira declaração oficial pelas cotas na USP tenha saído do Largo São Francisco. “A decisão nos faz resgatar a história da faculdade em defesa da democracia. Temos uma unidade onde não há negros.” As informações são do jornal O Estado de S.Paulo.

How Bad Is It? (The New Inquiry)

29/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Cultura, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, jornalismo, Marketing, Mediação tecnológica, Semiótica, Sensacionalismorenzotaddei

By GEORGE SCIALABBA

Jasper Johns, Green Flag, 1956 (Graphite pencil, crayon and collage on paper)

Pretty bad. Here is a sample of factlets from surveys and studies conducted in the past twenty years. Seventy percent of Americans believe in the existence of angels. Fifty percent believe that the earth has been visited by UFOs; in another poll, 70 percent believed that the U.S. government is covering up the presence of space aliens on earth. Forty percent did not know whom the U.S. fought in World War II. Forty percent could not locate Japan on a world map. Fifteen percent could not locate the United States on a world map. Sixty percent of Americans have not read a book since leaving school. Only 6 percent now read even one book a year. According to a very familiar statistic that nonetheless cannot be repeated too often, the average American’s day includes six minutes playing sports, five minutes reading books, one minute making music, 30 seconds attending a play or concert, 25 seconds making or viewing art, and four hours watching television.

Among high-school seniors surveyed in the late 1990s, 50 percent had not heard of the Cold War. Sixty percent could not say how the United States came into existence. Fifty percent did not know in which century the Civil War occurred. Sixty percent could name each of the Three Stooges but not the three branches of the U.S. government. Sixty percent could not comprehend an editorial in a national or local newspaper.

Intellectual distinction isn’t everything, it’s true. But things are amiss in other areas as well: sociability and trust, for example. “During the last third of the twentieth century,” according to Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone, “all forms of social capital fell off precipitously.” Tens of thousands of community groups – church social and charitable groups, union halls, civic clubs, bridge clubs, and yes, bowling leagues — disappeared; by Putnam’s estimate, one-third of our social infrastructure vanished in these years. Frequency of having friends to dinner dropped by 45 percent; card parties declined 50 percent; Americans’ declared readiness to make new friends declined by 30 percent. Belief that most other people could be trusted dropped from 77 percent to 37 percent. Over a five-year period in the 1990s, reported incidents of aggressive driving rose by 50 percent — admittedly an odd, but probably not an insignificant, indicator of declining social capital.

Still, even if American education is spotty and the social fabric is fraying, the fact that the U.S. is the world’s richest nation must surely make a great difference to our quality of life? Alas, no. As every literate person knows, economic inequality in the United States is off the charts – at third-world levels. The results were recently summarized by James Speth in Orion magazine. Of the 20 advanced democracies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. has the highest poverty rate, for both adults and children; the lowest rate of social mobility; the lowest score on UN indexes of child welfare and gender inequality; the highest ratio of health care expenditure to GDP, combined with the lowest life expectancy and the highest rates of infant mortality, mental illness, obesity, inability to afford health care, and personal bankruptcy resulting from medical expenses; the highest homicide rate; and the highest incarceration rate. Nor are the baneful effects of America’s social and economic order confined within our borders; among OECD nations the U.S. also has the highest carbon dioxide emissions, the highest per capita water consumption, the next-to-largest ecological footprint, the next-to-lowest score on the Yale Environmental Performance Index, the highest (by a colossal margin) per capita rate of military spending and arms sales, and the next-to-lowest rate of per capita spending on international development and humanitarian assistance.

Contemplating these dreary statistics, one might well conclude that the United States is — to a distressing extent — a nation of violent, intolerant, ignorant, superstitious, passive, shallow, boorish, selfish, unhealthy, unhappy people, addicted to flickering screens, incurious about other societies and cultures, unwilling or unable to assert or even comprehend their nominal political sovereignty. Or, more simply, that America is a failure.

That is indeed what Morris Berman concludes in his three-volume survey of America’s decline: The Twilight of American Culture (2000), Dark Ages America (2006), andWhy America Failed (2011), from which much of the preceding information is taken. Berman is a cultural and intellectual historian, not a social scientist, so his portrait of American civilization, or barbarism, is anecdotal and atmospheric as well as statistical. He is eloquent about harder-to-quantify trends: the transformation of higher (even primary/secondary) education into marketing arenas for predatory corporations; the new form of educational merchandising known as “distance learning”; the colonization of civic and cultural spaces by corporate logos; the centrality of malls and shopping to our social life; the “systematic suppression of silence” and the fact that “there is barely an empty space in our culture not already carrying commercial messages.” Idiot deans, rancid rappers, endlessly chattering sports commentators, an avalanche of half-inch-deep self-help manuals; a plague of gadgets, a deluge of stimuli, an epidemic of rudeness, a desert of mutual indifference: the upshot is our daily immersion in a suffocating stream of kitsch, blather, stress, and sentimental banality. Berman colorfully and convincingly renders the relentless coarsening and dumbing down of everyday life in late (dare we hope?) American capitalism.

In Spenglerian fashion, Berman seeks the source of our civilization’s decline in its innermost principle, its animatingGeist. What he finds at the bottom of our culture’s soul is … hustling; or, to use its respectable academic sobriquet, possessive individualism. Expansion, accumulation, economic growth: this is the ground bass of American history, like the hum of a dynamo in the basement beneath the polite twitterings on the upper stories about “liberty” and “a light unto the nations.” Berman scarcely mentions Marx or historical materialism; instead he offers a nonspecialist and accessible but deeply informed and amply documented review of American history, period by period, war by war, arguing persuasively that whatever the ideological superstructure, the driving energy behind policy and popular aspiration has been a ceaseless, soulless acquisitiveness.

The colonial period, the seedbed of American democracy, certainly featured a good deal of God-talk and virtue-talk, but Mammon more than held its own. Berman sides emphatically with Louis Hartz, who famously argued in The Liberal Tradition in America that American society was essentially Lockean from the beginning: individualistic, ambitious, protocapitalist, with a weak and subordinate communitarian ethic. He finds plenty of support elsewhere as well; for example in Perry Miller, the foremost historian of Puritanism, according to whom the American mind has always “positively lusted for the chance to yield itself to the gratification of technology.” Even Tocqueville, who made many similar observations, “could not comprehend,” wrote Miller, “the passion with which [early Americans] flung themselves into the technological torrent, how they … cried to each other as they went headlong down the chute that here was their destiny, here was the tide that would sweep them toward the unending vistas of prosperity.” Even Emerson and Whitman went through a phase of infatuation with industrial progress, though Hawthorne and Thoreau apparently always looked on the juggernaut with clearer (or more jaundiced) eyes.

Berman also sides, for the most part, with Charles Beard, who drew attention to the economic conflicts underlying the American Revolution and the Civil War. Beard may have undervalued the genuine intellectual ferment that accompanied the Revolution, but he was not wrong in perceiving the motivating force of the pervasive commercial ethic of the age. Joyce Appleby, another eminent historian, poses this question to those who idealize America’s founding: “If the Revolution was fought in a frenzy over corruption, out of fear of tyranny, and with hopes for redemption through civic virtue, where and when are scholars to find the sources for the aggressive individualism, the optimistic materialism, and the pragmatic interest-group politics that became so salient so early in the life of the nation?”

By the mid-nineteenth century, the predominance of commercial interests in American politics was unmistakable. Berman’s lengthy discussion of the Civil War as the pivot of American history takes for granted the inadequacy of triumphalist views of the Civil War. It was not a “battle cry of freedom.” Slavery was central, but for economic rather than moral reasons. The North represented economic modernity and the ethos of material progress; the economy and ethos of the South, based on slavery, was premodern and static. The West — and with it the shape of America’s economic future — was up for grabs, and the North grabbed it away from an equally determined South. Except for the abolitionists, no whites, North or South, gave a damn about blacks. How the West (like the North and South before it) was grabbed, in an orgy of greed, violence, and deceit against the original inhabitants, is a familiar story.

Even more than in Beard, Berman finds his inspiration in William Appleman Williams. When McKinley’s secretary of state John Hay advocated “an open door through which America’s preponderant economic strength would enter and dominate all underdeveloped areas of the world” and his successor William Jennings Bryan (the celebrated populist and anti-imperialist!) told a gathering of businessmen in 1915 that “my Department is your department; the ambassadors, the ministers, the consuls are all yours; it is their business to look after your interests and to guard your rights,” they were enunciating the soul of American foreign policy, as was the much-lauded Wise Man George Kennan when he wrote in a post-World War II State Department policy planning document: “We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population … In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity … To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives … We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

As a former medievalist, Berman finds contemporary parallels to the fall of Rome compelling. By the end of the empire, he points out, economic inequality was drastic and increasing, the legitimacy and efficacy of the state was waning, popular culture was debased, civic virtue among elites was practically nonexistent, and imperial military commitments were hopelessly unsustainable. As these volumes abundantly illustrate, this is 21st century America in a nutshell. The capstone of Berman’s demonstration is a sequence of three long, brilliant chapters in Dark Ages America on the Cold War, the Pax Americana, CIA and military interventions in the Third World, and in particular U.S. policy in the Middle East, where racism and rapacity have combined to produce a stunning debacle. Our hysterical national response to 9/11 — our inability even to make an effort to comprehend the long-festering consequences of our imperial predations — portended, as clearly as anything could, the demise of American global supremacy.

What will become of us? After Rome’s fall, wolves wandered through the cities and Europe largely went to sleep for six centuries. That will not happen again; too many transitions — demographic, ecological, technological, cybernetic — have intervened. The planet’s metabolism has altered. The new Dark Ages will be socially, politically, and spiritually dark, but the economic Moloch — mass production and consumption, destructive growth, instrumental rationality — will not disappear. Few Americans want it to. We are hollow, Berman concludes. It is a devastatingly plausible conclusion.

An interval — long or short, only the gods can say — of oligarchic, intensely surveilled, bread-and-circuses authoritarianism, Blade Runner- or Fahrenheit 451-style, seems the most likely outlook for the 21st and 22nd centuries. Still, if most humans are shallow and conformist, some are not. There is reason to hope that the ever fragile but somehow perennial traditions and virtues of solidarity, curiosity, self-reliance, courtesy, voluntary simplicity, and an instinct for beauty will survive, even if underground for long periods. And cultural rebirths do occur, or at any rate have occurred.

Berman offers little comfort, but he does note a possible role for those who perceive the inevitability of our civilization’s decline. He calls it the “monastic option.” Our eclipse may, after all, not be permanent; and meanwhile individuals and small groups may preserve the best of our culture by living against the grain, within the interstices, by “creating ‘zones of intelligence’ in a private, local way, and then deliberately keeping them out of the public eye.” Even if one’s ideals ultimately perish, this may be the best way to live while they are dying.

There is something immensely refreshing, even cathartic, about Berman’s refusal to hold out any hope of avoiding our civilization’s demise. And our reaction goes some way toward proving his point: We are so sick of hucksters, of authors trying — like everyone else on all sides at all times in this pervasively hustling culture — to sell us something, that it is a relief to encounter someone who isn’t, who has no designs on our money or votes or hopes, who simply has looked into the depths, into our catastrophic future, and is compelled to describe it, as Cassandra was. No doubt his efforts will meet with equal success.

A corrupção acadêmica e a crise financeira (Guardian)

28/05/2012UncategorizedCapitalismo, ciência, Corrupção, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Políticarenzotaddei

CHARLES FERGUSON

DO “GUARDIAN”

Muitas pessoas que viram meu documentário “Trabalho Interno” (2010) acharam que a parte mais perturbadora é a revelação sobre amplos conflitos de interesses em universidades e institutos de estudos e entre pesquisadores acadêmicos. Espectadores que assistiram às minhas entrevistas com eminentes professores universitários ficaram estarrecidos com o que saiu da boca deles.

Mas não deveríamos ter ficado surpresos. Nas duas últimas décadas, médicos já comprovaram de modo substancial a influência que o dinheiro pode exercer num campo supostamente objetivo e científico. De modo geral, as escolas de medicina e os periódicos médicos vêm reagindo bem, aderindo às exigências de transparência.

Os cursos de pós-graduação em economia, as faculdades de administração, as de direito e as de ciência política vêm reagindo de modo muito diferente. Nos últimos 30 anos, parcelas importantes do mundo acadêmico americano foram deterioradas, convertendo-se em atividades do tipo “pay to play” (pague para participar).Hoje em dia, se você vir um célebre professor de economia depondo no Congresso ou escrevendo um artigo, são boas as chances de ele ou ela ter sido pago por alguém com grande interesse no que está em debate. Na maior parte das vezes esses professores não revelam esses conflitos de interesse. Além disso, na maior parte do tempo suas universidades se fazem de desentendidas.

Meia dúzia de firmas de consultoria, vários birôs de palestrantes e diversos grupos de lobby de setores diferentes mantêm grandes redes de acadêmicos de aluguel, com o objetivo de defender os interesses desses grupos em discussões sobre políticas e regulamentação.

Os principais setores envolvidos são energia, telecomunicações, saúde, agronegócio e, sem dúvida, o setor de serviços financeiros.

Alguns exemplos: o economista Glenn Hubbard virou reitor da Columbia Business School em 2004, pouco depois de deixar o governo George W. Bush (2001-09), no qual trabalhou no Departamento do Tesouro e foi o primeiro presidente do Conselho de Assessores Econômicos do presidente, entre 2001 e 2003.

Boa parte de seu trabalho acadêmico é dedicado à política fiscal. Num resumo justo de suas posições intelectuais, pode-se dizer que ele jamais viu um imposto que tenha gostado de ver aprovado e em vigor. Em novembro de 2004, ele escreveu um artigo espantoso em coautoria com William C. Dudley, então economista-chefe do banco de investimentos Goldman Sachs.

O artigo em questão, “Como os Mercados de Capitais Elevam a Performance Econômica e Facilitam a Geração de Empregos”, merece ser citado. Vale lembrar que estamos em novembro de 2004, com a bolha já bem encaminhada:

“Os mercados de capital têm ajudado a tornar o mercado imobiliário menos volátil. ‘Arrochos de crédito’ do tipo que, periodicamente, fecharam a oferta de recursos aos compradores da casa própria […] são coisas do passado.”

Hubbard se negou a dizer se foi pago ou não para escrever o artigo. E se negou a me fornecer sua declaração mais recente de conflitos de interesse financeiros com o governo, documento que não pudemos obter de outra forma porque a Casa Branca o destruiu.

Hubbard recebeu US$ 100 mil para depor na defesa criminal dos dois gerentes do fundo hedge (de alto risco) Bear Stearns, processados por envolvimento com a bolha; eles foram absolvidos. No ano passado, Hubbard se tornou assessor econômico sênior da campanha presidencial de Mitt Romney, o pré-candidato republicano à Presidência dos EUA.

RABO PRESO

Outro economista, Larry Summers, já ocupou quase todos os cargos governamentais importantes na área econômica. Secretário do Tesouro sob o presidente Bill Clinton (1993-2001), em 2009 ele se tornou diretor do Conselho Econômico Nacional na administração Barack Obama.

Embora seja sensato em relação a muitas questões, Summers cometeu uma sucessão bem documentada de erros e concessões. E seus pontos de vista sobre o setor financeiro dificilmente seriam distinguidos dos de, digamos, Lloyd Blankfein (chefe do Goldman Sachs) ou Jamie Dimon (presidente do banco JPMorgan).A maior parte de nossas informações sobre Summers vem de sua declaração obrigatória de conflitos de interesse, exigida pelo governo. De acordo com a declaração dada em 2009 por Summers, sua fortuna líquida estava calculada entre US$ 17 milhões e US$ 39 milhões. Seus recebimentos totais no ano antes de ingressar no governo chegaram a quase US$ 8 milhões. O Goldman Sachs pagou a Summers US$ 135 mil por um discurso.

Larry Summers é um homem com o rabo preso, que deve a maior parte de sua fortuna e boa parte de seu sucesso político à indústria de serviços financeiros e que esteve envolvido em algumas das decisões de política econômica mais desastrosas da última metade de século. Na administração Obama, Summers se opôs à adoção de medidas fortes para punir banqueiros ou limitar a receita deles.

A universidade de Harvard ainda não exige que Larry Summers divulgue seus envolvimentos com o setor financeiro. Tanto Harvard quanto Summers negaram meus pedidos de informação.

O problema da corrupção acadêmica hoje está tão profundamente entrincheirado que essas disciplinas e essas universidades importantes estão gravemente comprometidas, e qualquer pessoa que pensasse em se opor à tendência ficaria racionalmente muito assustada.

COMEDIMENTO

Considere a seguinte situação: você é estudante de doutorado ou um membro júnior do corpo docente que estuda a possibilidade de fazer pesquisas sobre, digamos, as estruturas de pagamento aos profissionais que assumem riscos nos serviços financeiros, ou sobre o impacto potencial das exigências de divulgação pública de informações sobre o mercado de “credit default swaps” –instrumentos financeiros que funciona como um seguro contra calotes. O reitor de sua universidade é… Larry Summers. O chefe de seu departamento é… Glenn Hubbard.

Ou você está no MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) e quer estudar o declínio dos pagamentos de impostos de pessoas jurídicas. A reitora do MIT é Susan Hockfield, que faz parte do conselho de direção da General Electric, uma empresa que vem conseguindo evitar o pagamento de quase todos os impostos corporativos há vários anos.

Até que ponto essas forças de fato afetam as pesquisas acadêmicas e as políticas das universidades? As evidências das quais dispomos sugerem que o efeito é grande.
Os comentários sobre a crise financeira proferidos por economistas na academia têm sido bastante comedidos. É verdade que existem algumas exceções notáveis. Na maior parte do tempo, porém, o silêncio tem sido ensurdecedor.

Como é possível que um setor inteiro seja estruturado de modo que funcionários sejam encorajados a saquear e destruir suas próprias firmas? Por que a desregulamentação e a teoria econômica fracassaram tão espetacularmente?

O lançamento do documentário “Trabalho Interno” claramente mexeu com sensibilidades que foram tocadas por essas questões. Fui contatado por estudantes e docentes em grande número, e houve debates em grande número.

Algumas escolas, incluindo a Columbia Business School, adotaram exigências de divulgação de informações pela primeira vez.

Mas a maioria das universidades ainda não faz essas exigências, e poucas ou nenhuma impõem qualquer limitação à existência de conflitos de interesse. O mesmo se aplica à maioria das publicações acadêmicas.

Repórteres de jornais são proibidos terminantemente de aceitar dinheiro de qualquer setor econômico ou organização sobre o qual escrevam matérias. O mesmo não acontece no mundo acadêmico.

Houve um avanço positivo importante. No início deste ano, a Associação Americana de Economia passou a exigir uma declaração de conflitos de interesse para os sete periódicos que edita.

Mas a maioria das instituições ainda se opõe à divulgação de mais informações, e, quando eu estava fazendo meu filme, se negou até mesmo a tratar do assunto.

Tradução de Clara Alain

Rio+20: ruptura ou ajuste? (Mundo Sustentável)

28/05/2012Uncategorizedambientalismo, Índios, Cidadania, discurso ambiental, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, participatividade, sociedade civil, Violência, Visualidaderenzotaddei

Se você entende que há alguma razão para a mudança, manifeste-se. A Rio+20 é uma obra em construção. Ainda há tempo.

Diante do risco de a mais importante conferência do ano se transformar em uma “terapia de grupo”, onde o falatório e a papelada possam resultar em um novo acordo político genérico, convém prestar atenção desde já no posicionamento dos diferentes segmentos que marcarão presença na Rio +20.

Reunidos na PUC-RJ durante a conferência, aproximadamente 500 cientistas deverão compartilhar novas avaliações sobre o estado de fragilidade e degradação dos ecossistemas que fornecem água, matéria-prima e energia à humanidade. De lá deverá surgir mais um grito de alerta em favor da vida sem nenhuma conotação política ou religiosa. Quem usa a ciência para medir os estragos causados pelo atual modelo de desenvolvimento é basicamente um cético: se orienta apenas e tão somente pelas evidências que a metodologia científica lhe revela.

Os povos indígenas causarão enormes constrangimentos aos organizadores da Rio+20. Representantes das etnias que sobreviveram a sucessivos massacres no Brasil e no exterior denunciarão o absurdo do uso insustentável da terra.

Os empresários engajados exibirão os resultados contábeis da ecoeficiência e assumirão novos compromissos em defesa da inovação tecnológica e da redução do desperdício. Haverá entre eles os que fazem maquiagem verde (falam de “sustentabilidade”, mas não praticam), os neo-convertidos, que ajustaram procedimentos mais por conveniência (do que por convicção) e os que, de fato, estão convencidos da necessidade de mudanças e conseguem enxergar mais além do lucro imediato.

A constelação das ONGs deverá confirmar o tamanho e a diversidade das múltiplas correntes de pensamento que não cabem na moldura da ONU, mas que emprestam densidade e legitimidade a uma das pautas mais importantes da Rio+20: governança. Os tomadores de decisão já reconhecem a força do terceiro setor num mundo onde as articulações em rede robustecem a democracia, oxigenam as instituições e promovem a transparência e a justiça.

Caberá às organizações civis e às mídias (todas as mídias, de todos os tamanhos) aquecer a panela de pressão onde os chefes de estado vão cozinhar o texto final da Conferência. Sem isso, será mais do mesmo. Obnubilados pelos afazeres e interesses mais imediatos, de curtíssimo prazo, os chefes de estado não conseguirão justificar mudanças estruturais de longo prazo sem que haja uma boa razão para isso. Se você entende que há alguma razão para a mudança, manifeste-se. A Rio+20 é uma obra em construção. Ainda há tempo.

André Trigueiro

14.mar.2012

Artigo publicado na edição de março 2012 da Revista GQ

Mudando para que nada mude (Cineclube Ciência em Foco)

25/05/2012Uncategorizedambientalismo, Antropologia, Índios, ciência, Cidadania, Cinema, Clima, Cultura, discurso ambiental, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, participatividade, Política, Previsão, Sensacionalismo, sociedade civil, Visualidaderenzotaddei

SEXTA-FEIRA, 25 DE MAIO DE 2012

“A exaustão dos recursos naturais não será resolvida enquanto os padrões de subjetividade ocidentais não forem incluídos como parte fundamental do problema. […] A insatisfação crônica do cidadão ocidental, e a forma irresponsável com que se relaciona com as coisas […] são coisas tão importantes quanto a discussão sobre matrizes energéticas”.

Renzo Taddei – Doutor em Antropologia pela Univ. de Columbia, pesquisador da Coordenação do Núcleo Interdisciplinar de Estudos Contemporâneos da ECO-UFRJ e palestrante do Ciência em Foco de 2 de junho.

1) O personagem central do filme Árido Movie é um profissional que apresenta diariamente a previsão do tempo para o Brasil em uma rede de TV em São Paulo. Ao voltar para sua terra natal no sertão nordestino, ele se vê deslocado na fissura entre estes dois “nordestes”: o da previsão do tempo, distante e virtual, e o concreto. Diante dos vários contrastes com os quais se defronta, como podemos pensar seu deslocamento?

Essa fissura não se limita à questão do “nordeste”, mas é ainda mais importante, ainda que menos saliente, na própria questão do clima. Somos levados a crer todo o tempo que o clima que importa está em algum outro lugar, e que só é acessível através da mediação de especialistas e equipamentos. Obviamente isso ocorre de fato, mas há efeitos deletérios nessa alienação entre os indivíduos e o meio ambiente: a questão passa a ser entendida como problema distante, vivido apenas de forma abstrata. Isso gera a atitude caracterizada pela ideia de que “eu não tenho nada com isso” – o que é exatamente o que o personagem do filme diz à avó quando percebe que esta espera que ele vingue a morte do pai. De certa forma, ele vivia a sua própria relação familiar de forma alienada, como algo abstrato, virtual, e as contingências da vida o obrigam a enfrentar a incontornável materialidade dos contextos locais. A crise ambiental atual nos confronta com esta materialidade incontornável. Se o personagem vivesse as suas relações familiares de forma mais integral, talvez o destino de todos ali fosse outro. Há responsabilidades que nos implicam, mas que não escolhemos – algo difícil de aceitar no contexto liberal em que vivemos. Mas a analogia acaba por aqui: felizmente não há morte alguma a ser vingada na questão climática (ou haverá?).

2) O fenômeno climático da seca é recorrente na filmografia brasileira. Pode-se dizer que o cinema traz representações do meio ambiente que muitas vezes nos forçam a pensar seus elementos a partir de sua relação com a sociedade e a cultura. Sem entregar muito de sua fala, poderia comentar algo em torno desta relação? Qual a importância destas perspectivas e seu papel no cenário das discussões oficiais?

Mais do que a seca propriamente dita, o elemento que povoou a imaginação de escritores e artistas foi o “sertão”. Hoje, especialmente para as audiências do sudeste urbano, sertão é quase sinônimo de nordeste rural, mas no passado a situação era diferente. Há debates acadêmicos sobre de onde vem a palavra sertão: uma das hipóteses é que tem origem na palavra desertão, sugerindo a ideia de área remota e desolada; outra, sugere que a palavra vem de sertus, termo do latim que significa entrelaçado, enredado. Na história do Brasil, o sertão sempre foi o espaço refratário à penetração do poder oficial, das instituições de controle do Estado. Um dos lugares onde isso é mais claro é na obraGrande Sertão: Veredas, de Guimarães Rosa. A obra se ambienta toda em Minas Gerais, em uma região que não é semiárida como o sertão nordestino, e numa época onde sequer existia o “Nordeste”, mas tudo o que ficava acima da Bahia era considerado “Norte”. No início, o Brasil todo era sertão; com a expansão do Estado ao longo do século XX, houve uma redução considerável do território que pode ser considerado sertão, nos sentidos mencionados acima: praticamente toda a região sudeste, por exemplo, se “dessertaniza” à medida que o espaço passa a ser ocupado por cidades e atividade agrícola em larga escala.

Desta forma, na imaginação artística o sertão funcionou, ao longo dos últimos dois séculos, como o “outro mundo” onde há liberdade em contraposição aos controles que marcam as sociedades urbanas, e onde há mais autenticidade, o que pode ser encarado por um viés romântico (como vemos em José de Alencar, por exemplo) ou onde coisas impensáveis podem ocorrer, numa espécie de mirada conradiana [referente a elementos da obra do escritor britânico Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), autor de Coração das trevas]. Mesmo com o Cinema Novo, onde há uma sociologização mais intensa do sertão, esse não deixa de ser espaço de liberdade e experimentação, como vemos em Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol, de Glauber Rocha. Mas é preciso que se diga que isso tudo marca uma perspectiva de quem olha de fora. O sertão não é uma coisa, são muitas.

O que a seca faz, em certo sentido, é ressertanizarmomentaneamente um território dessertanizado, porque ela tem o potencial de desorganizar processos políticos e sociais locais, inclusive no que diz respeito às instituições oficiais de poder. Em lugares onde as variações climáticas (como as secas) são recorrentes, como no nordeste brasileiro, em geral as relações de poder locais existem de forma associada às epidemias de sofrimento trazidas pela seca. A infame indústria da seca é um exemplo disso. Mas há limites em quanto as sociedades e instituições locais conseguem se ajustar à variação do clima: secas muito intensas podem efetivamente colocar toda uma sociedade em situação de crise, como se vê atualmente nos sertões de Pernambuco e da Bahia.

Um segundo ponto da questão menciona a forma como o cinema nos faz pensar o meio ambiente em sua relação com sociedade e cultura. Há duas formas de relacionar natureza e sociedade que parecem ser recorrentes na experiência humana. Por um lado, usamos elementos da natureza para pensar relações sociais, coisa que na antropologia chamamos de totemismo. A forma como usamos figuras de animais para pensar torcidas de futebol (urubu, gaviões, porco etc), ou como destacamentos militares usam símbolos animais (a onça em quartéis na Amazônia), ou ainda quando nos referimos a qualidades pessoais através de imagens animais (ao dizer que alguém “é” uma cobra, um rato, ou uma anta), são exemplos disso. Por outro, projetamos na natureza elementos humanos, culturais e sociais, o que, por sua vez, é conhecido na antropologia como animismo. Desta forma, uma tempestade é “traiçoeira”, ou uma estação chuvosa, como ouvi várias vezes em pesquisa de campo no sertão do Ceará, pode ser “velhaca” (isto é, promete e não cumpre). O cinema naturalmente se utiliza disso tudo como recurso narrativo.

Além disso, nossa percepção do ambiente é visceralmente marcada por nossas perspectivas contextuais. Uma pesquisa que coordenei a respeito das respostas sociais e culturais às secas do ano de 2005 – um ano em que houve secas na Amazônia, no Nordeste e no sul do Brasil – mostrou que as populações locais não pensam o meio ambiente como algo desconectado das demais dimensões da vida; como tais dimensões são variáveis, a percepção do ambiente o é também. Os resultados da pesquisa foram publicados no livroDepois que a chuva não veio, disponível em texto integral na Internet. O problema é que os governos centrais, como o federal, no Brasil, têm a tendência a homogeneizar tudo com o qual se relacionam, ignorando os contextos locais; e a ciência climática tende a pregar que o contexto local e o clima não têm relação causal direta (especialmente quando estão contestando a capacidade do conhecimento tradicional de produzir previsões climáticas válidas). No que diz respeito às relações entre sociedade e clima, vivemos uma situação verdadeiramente neurótica. O meio ambiente pode inclusive ser uma forma de eufemizar uma discussão demasiadamente sensível em termos políticos e sociais. Um manual de infoativismo editado na Inglaterra, por exemplo, sugere que personagens em forma de animais sejam usados em campanhas públicas em que questões politicas sensíveis dificultem a comunicação através de exemplos humanos.

As discussões oficiais são, infelizmente, demasiadamente economicistas e unilineares, presas a um utilitarismo frustrante, para levar qualquer dessas questões a sério.

3) No mês de junho, o Rio de Janeiro sediará a Rio+20, a conferência das Nações Unidas em torno do desenvolvimento sustentável, que articulará líderes mundiais em discussões que convidam à cooperação mundial para a melhoria de problemas sociais. Tendo em vista o cenário de mudanças climáticas, como abordar a participação social nestas discussões, face às diferenças culturais que estão em jogo?

As diferenças culturais não devem ser entendidas como obstáculo às ações relacionadas à crise ambiental. Pelo contrário, são recursos importantes. É interessante observar como a biodiversidade é hipervalorizada, ao ponto de ser fetichizada, e ao mesmo tempo a diversidade de formas humanas de ser e estar no mundo é desvalorizada – por exemplo, quando se acredita, com as melhores intenções, que é preciso “educar” as pessoas que praticam queimadas para plantio, por exemplo, para que “entendam” os efeitos deletérios de algumas de suas práticas cotidianas. Projetamos o problema sobre os outros, sem perceber que esse nosso foco em informação e no pensamento, ou seja, ao diagnosticar tudo como “falta de informação” ou diferentes “formas de pensar”, é parte fundamental do problema. Tudo ficou cibernético demais, de forma que as questões morais e éticas nos escapam muito facilmente.

A ideia de que diferenças culturais dificultam a construção de um entendimento mundial sobre as questões ambientais em geral, e sobre a questão climática, em particular, me assusta. A própria ideia de “entendimento mundial” em torno do meio ambiente evoca perigosamente um centralismo pouco democrático. Nunca na história da humanidade houve uma tentativa tão articulada para a criação de um discurso único sobre o meio ambiente. A polarização política que se vê nos Estados Unidos, em torno da questão climática, é uma farsa: o comportamento do partido republicano mostra com clareza que se trata de uma disputa pelo poder, onde os envolvidos se comportam estrategicamente e defendem qualquer posição que maximize suas chances de vitória. E, acima de tudo, apresentam o problema climático como se houvesse apenas duas alternativas – aceitar ou negar o efeito das ações humanas nas mudanças climáticas –, mas as duas são validadas dentro do mesmo paradigma ocidental, exacerbadamente materialista e utilitarista. E as outras formas de pensamento e de vida, outras epistemologias e ontologias? Como diz o antropólogo Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, é preciso aprender a pensar “com” os outros. Segundo o pensamento ameríndio, por exemplo, ao invés de tomar os humanos como excepcionais em sua humanidade, há a ideia de que a humanidade é a essência comum de todos os seres vivos. Que tipo de ética e moralidade decorre dai, na relação entre humanos e não humanos? Não se trata de romantizar as formas indígenas de vida, mas apenas de mostrar como outros pensamentos são extremamente interessantes na abordagem dos problemas ambientais.

No meu entender, o que sobressai nesta questão da participação social e da multiplicidade cultural é o fato de que é preciso que os ocidentais, e nós, ocidentalóides, entendamos que há dimensões do problema que transcendem a materialidade e o utilitarismo. A exaustão dos recursos naturais, por exemplo, não será resolvida enquanto os padrões de subjetividade ocidentais não forem incluídos como parte fundamental do problema. Não adianta criar esquemas institucionais para evitar a “tragédia dos comuns”, por exemplo, sem lidar com os temas da satisfação e da responsabilidade. A insatisfação crônica do cidadão ocidental, e a forma irresponsável com que se relaciona com as coisas (ao pagar os governos municipais para “sumir” com o nosso lixo, sem que nenhuma pergunta seja feita, de modo que não precisemos pensar mais nele, por exemplo), são coisas tão importantes quanto a discussão sobre matrizes energéticas.

4) Contraplanos – expresse em poucas palavras (ou apenas uma) sua sensação com relação aos sentidos e problemáticas evocadas pelas seguintes palavras:

– tempo e clima: clima é um ponto de vista[1]; tempo é a vista (a partir) de um ponto[2] (notas: [1] Clima é “ponto de vista” no sentido de que trata-se de uma construção abstrata, resultante de cálculos estatísticos sobre medições de indicadores atmosféricos em intervalos amplos de tempo, e onde as técnicas estatísticas, o termômetro e outros mediadores técnicos têm tanta importância quanto a vibração das partículas que o termômetro busca medir; [2] tempo, no sentido dado ao conceito pela meteorologia, é o fenômeno atmosférico que existe num prazo de tempo mais curto, e portanto tende a fazer referência ao fenômeno em si, enquanto singularidade experiencial, ou seja, coisas que vivemos e lembramos, porque nos afetam num tempo e espaço específicos, e desta forma são a experiência a partir de um ponto).

– sustentabilidade: o que exatamente se está tentando sustentar? Precisamos pensar a “mutabilidade” tanto quanto sustentabilidade. É muito difícil mudar o (insustentável) sistema econômico em que nos encontramos, e é preciso atentar para o fato de que, sob a fachada de “sustentabilidade”, há um esforço imenso de mudar apenas o que é necessário para que nada mude no final. O mercado de carbono é o exemplo paradigmático disso. Ou seja, em geral os debates sobre sustentabilidade (e sobre adaptação, resiliência etc.) são conservadores e insuficientes.

– construção social: já não há mais muita clareza a respeito do que significa tal associação de termos (o que é bom). Se tudo é construção social, a ideia deixa de ser relevante, porque não explica muita coisa. Tudo está em fluxo; se é “construção”, e se é “social”, depende de qual jogo semântico se está jogando. A expressão diz mais a respeito de quem usa a expressão do que sobre o fenômeno em questão. Tenho a impressão que dizer que o clima, por exemplo, é uma “construção social” constitui uma forma de evitar levar o clima a sério – e aqui estou repetindo ideias de autores como Bruno Latour ou Roy Wagner, por exemplo.

– ciência e cultura: há muito menos clareza a respeito do que significam tais termos (o que é melhor ainda). Num sentido mais propriamente filosófico, são duas ideias que morreram no século XX. Ou seja, tanto a Ciência como a Cultura, assim com “c” maiúsculo, que constituíam o santo graal do pensamento acadêmico Europeu dos séculos XIX e grande parte do XX se mostraram quimeras, principalmente em função dos trabalhos de gente como Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, dentre muitos outros. Sobraram “ciências” e “culturas” com “c” minúsculo, ou seja, tais conceitos se transformaram em problemas empíricos. Puxando a sardinha pro meu lado (risos), se tornaram problemas antropológicos.

5) Roteiros alternativos – espaço dedicado à sugestão de links, textos, vídeos, referências diversas de outros autores/pesquisadores que possam contribuir com a discussão. Para encerrar essa sessão, transcreva, se quiser, uma fala de um pensador que o inspire e/ou seu trabalho.

No meu blog Uma (In)certa Antropologia (http://umaincertaantropologia.org) mantenho um arquivo de notícias e materiais acadêmicos sobre as relações entre cultura, sociedade e o clima. Há lá uma gravação em áudio de uma apresentação do antropólogo Eduardo Viveiros de Castro que toca no tema das mudanças climáticas como crise do Ocidente, e como outros povos e outras culturas se relacionam com isso, que vale a pena ser ouvida. Ela está no link http://www.taddei.eco.ufrj.br/ViveirosdeCastro_IFCS_20111123.wav.

O livro Depois que a chuva não veio, mencionado acima, está disponível no link http://www.taddei.eco.ufrj.br/DQACNV.htm.

O documentário “10 tacticts for turning information into action”, também mencionado acima, está no site http://informationactivism.org/original_10_tactics_project#viewonline, com subtítulos em português – o exemplo de uso de animais como personagens está na tática número 3.

Há um vídeo provocativo do Slavok Žižek, cujo título éEcology as Religion, que evoca discussões importantes sobre como o meio ambiente existe no senso comum e nas discussões políticas. O video está reproduzido em https://umaincertaantropologia.org/2012/04/12/slavoj-zizek-on-ecology-as-religion-youtube/

6) Como conhecer mais de suas produções?

Há uma lista de artigos acadêmicos e também escritos para jornais e revistas em meu website, no link http://www.taddei.eco.ufrj.br/Textos.htm

Educational Games to Train Middle Schoolers’ Attention, Empathy (Science Daily)

23/05/2012UncategorizedCognição, Cultura, Discriminação, Educação, Enquadramento, Interatividade, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, participatividade, Políticas públicas, Psicologia, Redes sociais, Sensacionalismo, Violênciarenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2012) — Two years ago, at a meeting on science and education, Richard Davidson challenged video game manufacturers to develop games that emphasize kindness and compassion instead of violence and aggression.

With a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is now answering his own call. With Kurt Squire, an associate professor in the School of Education and director of the Games Learning Society Initiative, Davidson received a $1.39 million grant this spring to design and rigorously test two educational games to help eighth graders develop beneficial social and emotional skills — empathy, cooperation, mental focus, and self-regulation.

“By the time they reach the eighth grade, virtually every middle-class child in the Western world is playing smartphone apps, video games, computer games,” says Davidson, the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UW-Madison. “Our hope is that we can use some of that time for constructive purposes and take advantage of the natural inclination of children of that age to want to spend time with this kind of technology.”

The project grew from the intersection of Davidson’s research on the brain bases of emotion, Squire’s expertise in educational game design, and the Gates Foundation’s interest in preparing U.S. students for college readiness-possessing the skills and knowledge to go on to post-secondary education without the need for remediation.

“Skills of mindfulness and kindness are very important for college readiness,” Davidson explains. “Mindfulness, because it cultivates the capacity to regulate attention, which is the building block for all kinds of learning; and kindness, because the ability to cooperate is important for everything that has to do with success in life, team-building, leadership, and so forth.”

He adds that social, emotional, and interpersonal factors influence how students use and apply their cognitive abilities.

Building on research from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center, the initial stage of the project will focus on designing prototypes of two games. The first game will focus on improving attention and mental focus, likely through breath awareness.

“Breathing has two important characteristics. One is that it’s very boring, so if you’re able to attend to that, you can attend to most other things,” Davidson says. “The second is that we’re always breathing as long as we’re alive, and so it’s an internal cue that we can learn to come back to. This is something a child can carry with him or her all the time.”

The second game will focus on social behaviors such as kindness, compassion, and altruism. One approach may be to help students detect and interpret emotions in others by reading non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and body posture.

“We’ll use insights gleaned from our neuroscience research to design the games and will look at changes in the brain during the performance of these games to see how the brain is actually affected by them,” says Davidson. “Direct feedback from monitoring the brain while students are playing the games will help us iteratively adjust the game design as this work goes forward.”

Their analyses will include neural imaging and behavioral testing before, during, and after students play the games, as well as looking at general academic performance.

The results will help the researchers determine how the games impact students and whether educational games are a useful medium for teaching these behaviors and skills, as well as evaluate whether certain groups of kids benefit more than others.

“Our hope is that we can begin to address these questions with the use of digital games in a way that can be very easily scaled and, if we are successful, to potentially reach an extraordinarily large number of youth,” says Davidson.

New Classroom Science Standards Up for Review (Dot Earth, N.Y.Times)

21/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Cidadania, Clima, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, participatividade, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, sociedade civilrenzotaddei

May 18, 2012, 11:46 AM

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The first substantial update to national science teaching standards in roughly 15 years — and the first including the science of human-driven climate change — is open for public comment through this month. Here’s a short video description:

The effort has been directed by Achieve, an organization created by states and corporate backers eager to boost student performance and prospects as science and technology increasingly drive economies. The final (optional) standards will help guide states in shaping science curricula and requirements.

The foundation for the standards was laid in a National Academy of Sciences report. Other groups involved in the effort are the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Teachers Association and theCarnegie Corporation of New York, which has provided much of the money.

The standards were drafted by a team of 41 writers from 26 states, range from Bob Friend, a Boeing aerospace engineer, to Ramon Lopez, a physics professor at the University of Texas at Arlington to Rita Januszyk, an elementary school teacher from Willowbrook, Ill.

Click here for middle school standards on weather and climate and here for a section for high schools on managing human environmental impacts, including greenhouse-gas emissions. I like the way each such section links directly to the relevant section of the underlying National Academy of Sciences report — “A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas.”

The National Science Teachers Association has posted heaps of valuable background and context.

Juanita Constible, a wildlife ecologist who’s spent time in Antarctica, has a piece summarizing the climate context at the Web site of the Climate Reality Project. Here’s an excerpt from Constible’s post:

The Next Generation Science Standards lay out core ideas K-12 students should understand about the basics of science – from biology, to physics and chemistry, to earth science. The last national standards were released back in 1996, and manmade climate change wasn’t mentioned. However, the new standards recognize that students need to know human activities are changing our climate. They also recognize that schools are training the next generation of engineers and scientists who can help solve the problem.

In the standards for middle school, for example, one of the core ideas is that “human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (‘global warming’).” The standards for high school note that “changes in the atmosphere due to human activity have increased carbon dioxide concentrations and thus affect climate.” [Read the rest.]

Explore the standards and weigh in with your reaction, both on the Nextgenscience.org site and here.

Conflict abounds in climate education (The Daily Climate)

21/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Cidadania, Clima, Discriminação, discurso ambiental, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Psicologiarenzotaddei

Teachers are loath to teach climate science because it exposes them to charges of politicizing the classroom. They have reason to be cautious.

By Lisa Palmer
For the Daily Climate

The battles over teaching climate change science in schools are diverse, myriad and, like teaching evolution, being fought mostly district by district, classroom by classroom.

Unlike evolution, climate change doesn’t have a U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring that teaching efforts be accurate.

Some recent conflicts around the nation:

This spring the Tennessee Legislature passed a bill, with broad, bi-partisan support, to protect teachers who do not agree with accepted climate science and want to teach alternative explanations. Gov. Bill Haslam, acknowledging the veto-proof majority in a press release, allowed the bill to become law without his signature but noted that the measure won’t change state education standards.
Last year the southern California town of Los Alamitos, the school board passed but then rescinded a policy identifying climate science as a controversial topic requiring special instructional oversight.
Earlier this year an Oklahoma House committee approved a bill permitting teachers to review “scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories” such as evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning. It remains stuck in the Senate, with the Legislature adjourning this week.
A 2007 study found that 20 percent of Colorado’s earth science teachers disagreed that “recent global warming is caused mostly by things people do,” while nearly half agreed that “there is substantial disagreement among scientists about the cause of recent global warming.” Meanwhile in Mesa County, in western Colorado, tea party activists tried to prohibit the teaching of manmade climate change.
An earth science teacher in Clifton Park, N.Y., taught a global warming unit but inserted his own view that climate change is not caused by humans. A parent complained, pointing to the New York State Regents science standards, considered among the best in the nation. The teacher relented after the school’s science administrator clarified what was expected according to the standards.

Earlier this year the National Center for Science Education stepped into the climate arena, announcing it would apply techniques it honed in the evolution wars to defend and promote climate science education.

McCaffrey-150 “It’s one thing to have climate in the standards and assessments, and another thing altogether to make sure the teachers are well prepared, are not teaching the debate, if they teach about climate change at all, and are using effective practices,” said Mark McCaffrey, the center’s program director.

The Oakland-based nonprofit’s effort hit a snag in February after Peter Gleick, a prominent scientist recruited to help advise the organization’s climate education effort, disclosed that he had improperly obtained internal strategy documents from the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank. Gleick withdrew his nomination to the NCSE’s board a few days before his term was scheduled to begin.

But the Heartland memos show that the institute, known for undermining climate science in political and scientific arenas, is working to influence climate education in schools, too. The budget memos Gleick obtained indicated the group had raised an initial $100,000 for a “global warming curriculum” designed by a part-time consultant at the Department of Energy.

The curriculum, designed for grades 10 through 12, according to the Heartland memos, would emphasize that climate change is a “major scientific controversy” and that models underlying the science are questionable.

Lisa Palmer is a freelance reporter in Maryland. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Nature Climate Change, Fortune, and The Yale Forum, among other outlets. DailyClimate.org is a foundation-funded news service that covers climate change.

Photos: “No” icon created by Paula Spence for the National Center for Science Education. Photo of Mark McCaffrey courtesy NCSE.

Perspective: Troubled by Interdisciplinarity? (Science)

21/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, comunicação científica, Discriminação, Educação, Enquadramento, Incertezarenzotaddei

Career Advice

By Stephanie Pfirman, Melissa Begg

April 06, 2012

Do program managers and senior faculty tell you “that idea is not really in my bailiwick, and I’m not sure where else to send you”? Do you spend more time choosing a publication venue than writing your paper? Are you asked to be on committees and panels to provide a “fresh perspective” — and then told you spend too much time on service? Is your e-mail full of correspondence about how to handle overhead, subawards, and subcontracts on collaborative proposals?

If any of these descriptions apply to you, you may be suffering from the pain and inconvenience of interdisciplinarity, one of the fastest-growing problems among researchers today. It’s not a problem that goes away on its own. Rather, it festers if it’s not addressed, diminishing creativity and productivity.

Despite the pain and inconvenience, increasing numbers of scientists are pursuing interdisciplinary career paths, and a growing proportion of research funding opportunities from federal granting agencies is interdisciplinary. In May 2011, 30% to 40% of all requests for proposals from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health explicitly required an interdisciplinary approach.

Interdisciplinarity can be wonderfully rich and rewarding, but there are dangers attendant to choosing this non-traditional route. Interdisciplinary scholars go “out on a limb” and “often must fight for identity, recognition, roles, legitimacy, and standing.” This takes a personal — as well as a professional — toll: While the status of their peers grows with accomplishments within the disciplinary community, interdisciplinary scholars have to “live without the comfort of expertise” and often without the comfort of community. Scholars report that they no longer fit in as well after they leave their disciplinary base.

This connection between research direction and community fit is supported by the 2003 Faculty Worklife Survey conducted by the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute. The belief that their colleagues did not perceive their research to be “mainstream” left people feeling more negative about colleagues’ valuation of their research, their respect in the workplace, departmental decision-making, informal departmental interactions, and overall isolation and “fit.”

The messages from a number of recent publications can be distilled to this: Interdisciplinary research doesn’t fit into traditional academic structures. Therefore, if you choose this route, the onus is on you to take additional steps to become aware of the pitfalls and prepare yourself to succeed in this arena.

What kinds of steps are we talking about? Our recommendations include building skills for interdisciplinary collaboration, extending your mentorship team, bolstering your interdisciplinary CV for disciplinary review, and preparing for the complications of writing and submitting interdisciplinary grant proposals.

Recommendations for interdisciplinary scholars

Prepare yourself for new ways of working, thinking, and interacting.

• Specialize within your interdisciplinary research area. Avoid the tendency of many interdisciplinary scholars to branch out too quickly and in too many directions, which can diffuse your impact.

• Focus on your disciplinary strength and skills. It may sound counterintuitive, but in many situations your value as an interdisciplinary colleague is directly proportional to your skills in your own discipline. Keep up with the latest literature and theoretical developments in your disciplinary field so that you will be prepared to apply new knowledge and skills in diverse areas.

• Build core competencies that sustain interdisciplinary research by taking courses or learning on your own. For example, you could take courses that use the case study method to enhance interdisciplinary skills or include practice reviewing interdisciplinary papers and proposals.

• Attend seminars and workshops in other disciplines. Participating in research seminars outside your own department is a great way to expand your thinking, add a new batch of colleagues to your network, and develop expertise in new research areas.

• Seek new mentorship. The old model of one scholar, one mentor is fast becoming a distant memory. Find a mentor or two from beyond your field to help broaden your mindset and approaches.

When preparing manuscripts and grant applications, enhance your credibility as a successful researcher whose work crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries.

• Include a cover letter with your paper or proposal that highlights its interdisciplinary nature and suggests reviewers with complementary expertise so that all of your research aims receive appropriate review.

• Frame research aims to satisfy the needs of both disciplinary-leaning reviewers and interdisciplinary-eager granting agencies. Incorporating conceptual models and grounding your ideas within the disciplines establishes common ground with diverse reviewers.

• Involve respected colleagues with expertise in the techniques you plan to use.

• Try to have at least one publication in each field in which you propose to work. If the work requires an area you haven’t published in, get a letter of support from a well-known investigator in that field offering assistance.

• Start early on budget preparation for collaborative proposals. Most interdisciplinary endeavors are collaborative — and collaborative grant activities have financial implications, with potential revenue losses to departments due to diversion of overhead costs to other units. It may sound like a minor issue, but the most aggravating problem identified in the 2004 report of the National Academies Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research (CFIR) was the logistics of interdisciplinary research: budget control, institutional cost recovery, space, unit reporting, and award agreements. More than 40% of scholars and provosts picked one of these as the top impediment to interdisciplinary projects. A recent study found that faculty and administrators at universities with overhead-sharing policies reported satisfaction with their policies, and most felt that they indeed helped to foster interdisciplinary science.

• Use the Kulage study to support budget negotiations. Your colleagues and administrators may be resistant at first to innovations like overhead sharing, so showing them evidence of the effectiveness of overhead sharing may help you close the deal and reach an agreement that recognizes and rewards the contributions of the interdisciplinary collaborators involved in your proposal.

It’s never too early to start thinking about tenure and promotion. You need to plan for a portfolio that withstands the scrutiny of discipline-oriented review committees while also allowing you to pursue interdisciplinary interests. You can take steps to prepare yourself for rigorous evaluation by disciplinary and interdisciplinary reviewers.

• Annotate your CV to explain your contributions to collaborative publications and grants. While this task may seem onerous, if you don’t do it, people have to guess, and they often guess wrong. Increasingly, journals require people to clarify their roles in publications, and some institutions now require that CVs articulate not only specific roles but also the percentage of effort devoted to various activities. Use such policies to your advantage.

• Ground your research statement. As with proposals, incorporating conceptual models and explaining connections to key disciplinary theories and approaches helps to contextualize your work for reviewers with diverse backgrounds.

• Seek a spectrum of reviewers. If asked to suggest reviewers to evaluate your work and advise your tenure or promotion review panel, be sure to include experts from multiple departments or from outside of the institution. Choose experts who can address the particular research areas you work in. For example, you might propose one letter writer who could attest to your disciplinary strength. Another might emphasize how another field is using your research. This could broaden the perspective of the review panel and permit consideration of less traditional CVs.

If you’re on the job market, look for institutions and departments that really value interdisciplinarity. In 2004, more than 10% of scholars identified “strategic plans” as the top impediment to interdisciplinary research. Seven years later, some institutions are finally tackling this: Take a look at the case studies of Ohio University and Macalester College in the National Council for Science and the Environment report. Fostering interdisciplinarity is a strategic decision at the institutional level, but integration of interdisciplinarity into departmental missions is key. Check to see if these pieces are in place at the institution you’re thinking of working for. You can use the NIH template for interdisciplinary offer letters as a mental checklist as you discuss expectations with the chair of the search. You don’t want to come across as too demanding, but having this model letter in mind will help you think of questions to ask about the position.

When push comes to shove, department chairs and supervisors often look askance at activities they perceive to be “extra-departmental.” As noted in a 2011 article in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences,

There is a significant and growing need for interdisciplinary … scholars to develop, teach, and apply successful problem-solving approaches and to educate the next generation of scholars and professionals. Yet such professionals often work in departments where most of their colleagues are disciplinarians and the reward and incentive system is based on disciplines or is at best multidisciplinary. They need diverse strategies and support to overcome the many difficulties that they face day to day in research, teaching, and administration, as well as over the course of their careers.

Increasingly, institutions are addressing what is perhaps the single most vexing problem identified by the 2004 CFIR report: promotion criteria, which 15% of provosts and faculty members identified as the top impediment. Some institutions have turned to using the Boyer criteria of discovery, integration, application, and teaching, rather than focusing mainly on discovery (often with passing reference to teaching). Beyond these traditional criteria, Boyer’s “integration” criterion, in particular, is important in the evaluation of interdisciplinary research. “Application” can also be important. These are all positive signs that smoother sailing may be ahead.

Interdisciplinary research is laudable and undeniably enriching. But until academia’s reward system catches up to its desire for interdisciplinary collaboration, researchers — especially early-career investigators — must take additional steps to prepare for and protect themselves from choppy waters ahead.

References

Boyer E.L. (1990) Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Jossey-Bass, New York

Clark, S.G., M.M. Steen-Adams, S. Pfirman, R.L. Wallace (2011) Professional Development of Interdisciplinary Environmental Scholars, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.

Collins, J.P. (2002). May you live in interesting times: Using multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary programs to cope with change in the life sciences. BioScience 52:75-83.

Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research (2004). Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine.

Heemskerk, M., K. Wilson, and M. Pavao-Zuckerman. 2003. Conceptual models as tools for communication across disciplines. Conservation Ecology 7(3): 8. [online]

Kulage, K.M., E.L. Larson, and M.D. Begg (2011). Sharing facilities and administrative cost recovery to facilitate interdisciplinary research. Academic Medicine 86: 394-401.

Larson, E.L., T.F. Landers, and M.D. Begg (2011) Building Interdisciplinary Research Models: A Didactic Course to Prepare Interdisciplinary Scholars and Faculty. Clinical and Translational Science (4)1: 38–41.

Lattuca, L.R. (2001). Creating interdisciplinarity: interdisciplinary research and teaching among college and university faculty. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Pfirman, S. and P. Martin (2010). Fostering Interdisciplinary Scholars. Chapter in Oxford Handbook on Interdisciplinarity, Editors: R. Frodeman, J. Thompson Klein, and C. Mitcham, Oxford University Press, 624 pp.

Pfirman, S.; Martin, P.; Danielson, A.; Goodman, R.M.; Steen-Adams, M.; Waggett, C.; Mutter, J.; Rikakis, T.; Fletcher, M.; Berry, L.; Hornbach, D.; Hempel, M.; Morehouse, B.; Southard, R. (2011). Interdisciplinary Hiring and Career Development: Guidance for Individuals and Institutions. National Council for Science and the Environment.

Porter, A.L., Cohen, A.S., Roessner, J.D., and Perreault, M. (2007) Measuring Researcher Interdisciplinarity, Scientometrics, 72(1): 117-147

WISELI (2003) Study of Faculty Worklife at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Stephanie Pfirman is Hirschorn Professor and co-chair of the environmental science department at Barnard College and a member of Columbia University’s Earth Institute faculty, both in New York City. Melissa Begg is Professor and Vice Dean for Education at the Mailman School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University in New York.

10.1126/science.caredit.a1200040

Rio+20: ONU lista 56 recomendações para um mundo sustentável (Folha de São Paulo)

21/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, discurso ambiental, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Visualidaderenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4501, de 21 de Maio de 2012/Folha de São Paulo – 19/5

Documento apresentado no Rio foi preparado por 22 especialistas convocados pelas Nações Unidas.

A ONU lançou, na última sexta-feira (18), no Rio, a versão em português de um relatório com 56 recomendações para que o mundo avance em direção ao desenvolvimento sustentável. O documento, elaborado por 22 especialistas ao longo de um ano e meio, traz sugestões mais ousadas do que aquelas que devem ser acordadas na Rio+20, a conferência da ONU sobre o tema que ocorre em junho na cidade.

Entre as propostas estão o fim dos subsídios aos combustíveis fósseis e a precificação do carbono, com a cobrança, por exemplo, de impostos sobre as emissões de gases do efeito estufa. Espera-se assim estimular a disseminação de tecnologias verdes. “É um relatório com frases e recomendações muito diretas”, diz o embaixador André Corrêa do Lago, negociador-chefe do Brasil para a Rio+20.

Para ele, o documento final do encontro de cúpula da ONU deverá trazer formulações “mais sóbrias”.

Outras medidas sugeridas são a criação de um fundo apoiado por governos, ONGs e empresas para garantir acesso universal à educação primária até 2015 e a inclusão dos temas consumo e desenvolvimento sustentáveis nos currículos escolares.

As recomendações são divididas em três grupos, de acordo com seus objetivos principais. O primeiro visa a capacitar as pessoas a fazerem escolhas sustentáveis; o segundo, a tornar a economia sustentável; e o terceiro, a fortalecer a governança institucional para o desenvolvimento sustentável.

“As pessoas participaram desse painel a título pessoal, ou seja, elas não estavam representando governos. Isso dá mais força [ao documento], porque o painel pode dizer certas coisas que não são consenso [entre os mais de 190 países da ONU]”, diz Corrêa do Lago.

O coordenador do relatório, porém, disse esperar que as recomendações sejam levadas em consideração pelos negociadores da Rio+20. Janos Pasztor citou o estabelecimento de metas numéricas para o desenvolvimento sustentável como uma sugestão que pode ser adotada no curto prazo. O tema está em discussão na Rio+20.

A ex-primeira-ministra da Noruega Gro Brundtland, considerada “mãe” do conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável, participou da elaboração do relatório.

O documento completo pode ser acessado pelo link http://www.onu.org.br/docs/gsp-integra.pdf.

José Goldemberg: Cotas raciais – quem ganha, quem perde? (OESP)

21/05/2012UncategorizedCidadania, Discriminação, Educação, História, Opinião pública, participatividade, Políticas públicas, Raça, Racismorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4501, de 21 de Maio de 2012.

José Goldemberg é professor emérito da Universidade de São Paulo. Artigo publicado no jornal O Estado de São Paulo de hoje (21).

O Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) decidiu recentemente, por unanimidade, que a introdução de cotas raciais no acesso às universidades públicas federais não viola a Constituição da República, seguindo a linha adotada nos Estados Unidos há algumas décadas de introduzir “ações afirmativas” para corrigir injustiças feitas no passado. A decisão flexibiliza a ideia básica de que todos são iguais perante a lei, um dos grandes objetivos da Revolução Francesa.

Ela se origina na visão de que é preciso aceitar a “responsabilidade histórica” dos malefícios causados pela escravidão e compensar, em parte, as vítimas e seus descendentes. A mesma ideia permeia negociações entre países, entre ex-colônias e as nações industrializadas, na área comercial e até nas negociações sobre o clima.

Sucede que, de modo geral, “compensar” povos ou grupos sociais por violências, discriminações e até crimes cometidos no passado raramente ocorreu ao longo da História. Um bom exemplo é o verdadeiro “holocausto” resultante da destruição dos Impérios Inca e Asteca, na América Latina, ou até da destruição de Cartago pelos romanos, que nunca foram objeto de compensações. Se o fossem, a Espanha deveria estar compensando até hoje o que Hernán Cortez fez ao conquistar o México e destruir o Império Asteca.

É perfeitamente aceitável e desejável que grupos discriminados, excluídos ou perseguidos devam ser objeto de tratamento especial pelos setores mais privilegiados da sociedade e do próprio Estado, por meio de assistência social, educação, saúde e criação de oportunidades. Contudo, simplificar a gravidade dos problemas econômicos e sociais que afligem parte da população brasileira, sobretudo os descendentes de escravos, estabelecendo cotas raciais para acesso às universidades públicas do País, parece-nos injustificado e contraprodutivo, porque revela uma falta de compreensão completa do papel que essas instituições de ensino representam.

Universidades públicas e gratuitas atendem apenas a um terço dos estudantes que fazem curso superior no Brasil, que é uma rota importantíssima para a progressão social e o sucesso profissional. As demais universidades são pagas, o que prejudica a parte mais pobre da população estudantil. Essa é uma distorção evidente do sistema universitário do País. Mas o custo do ensino superior é tão elevado que apenas países ricos como a França, a Suécia ou a Alemanha podem oferecer ensino superior gratuito para todos. Não é o nosso caso. Essa é a razão por que existem vestibulares nas universidades públicas, onde a seleção era feita exclusivamente pelo mérito até recentemente.

A decisão recente do Supremo Tribunal Federal deixa de reconhecer o mérito como único critério para admissão em universidades públicas. E abre caminho para a adoção de outras cotas, além das raciais, talvez, no futuro.

Acontece que o sistema universitário tem sérios problemas de qualidade e desempenho, como bem o demonstra o resultado dos exames da Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB) – garantia da qualidade dos profissionais dessa área -, que reprova sistematicamente a maioria dos que se submetem a ele, o mesmo ocorrendo com os exames na área médica.

Órgãos do governo como a Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes), do Ministério da Educação, ou o Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), do Ministério de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, têm feito esforços para melhorar o desempenho das universidades brasileiras por meio de complexos processos de avaliação, que têm ajudado, mas não se mostraram suficientes.

Esses são mecanismos externos às universidades. Na grande maioria delas, os esforços internos são precários em razão da falta de critérios e de empenho do Ministério da Educação, que escolhe os reitores, alguns dos quais, como os da Universidade de Brasília, iniciaram o processo de criação de cotas raciais como se esse fosse o principal problema das universidades e do ensino superior no Brasil.

O populismo que domina muitas dessas universidades, há décadas, é a principal razão do baixo desempenho das universidades brasileiras na classificação mundial. Somente a Universidade de São Paulo (USP) conseguiu colocar-se entre as melhores 50 nesse ranking.

O problema urgente das universidades brasileiras é, portanto, melhorar de nível, e não resolver problemas de discriminação racial ou corrigir “responsabilidades históricas”, que só poderão ser solucionadas por meio do progresso econômico e educacional básico.

O governo federal parece ter tomado consciência desse problema ao lançar o programa Ciência sem Fronteiras, que se propõe a enviar ao exterior, anualmente, milhares de estudantes universitários, imitando o que o Japão fez no século 19 ou a China no século 20 e foi a base da modernização e do rápido progresso desses países.

Daí o desapontamento com a decisão da Suprema Corte não só por ter sido unânime, mas também por não ter sido objeto de uma tomada de posição de muitos intelectuais formadores de opinião, exceto notáveis exceções, como Eunice R. Durham, Simon Schwartzman, Demétrio Magnoli e poucos outros que se manifestaram sobre a inconveniência da decisão.

O único aspecto positivo na decisão do Supremo Tribunal Federal foi o de que simplesmente aceitou a constitucionalidade das cotas raciais, cabendo aos reitores, em cada universidade, adotá-las e implementá-las.

Há aqui uma oportunidade para que os professores mais esclarecidos assumam a liderança e se esforcem para manter elevado o nível de suas universidades sem descuidar de tornar o acesso pelo mérito mais democrático, e sem a adoção de cotas raciais, como algumas universidades estaduais de São Paulo estão fazendo.

* A equipe do Jornal da Ciência esclarece que o conteúdo e opiniões expressas nos artigos assinados são de responsabilidade do autor e não refletem necessariamente a opinião do jornal.

The Beginning of the End of the Census? (N.Y.Times)

21/05/2012UncategorizedÍndios, Demografia, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, História, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Políticas públicas, Raça, Racismo, Saúde, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Published: May 19, 2012

THE American Community Survey may be the most important government function you’ve never heard of, and it’s in trouble.

This survey of American households has been around in some form since 1850, either as a longer version of or a richer supplement to the basic decennial census. It tells Americans how poor we are, how rich we are, who is suffering, who is thriving, where people work, what kind of training people need to get jobs, what languages people speak, who uses food stamps, who has access to health care, and so on.

It is, more or less, the country’s primary check for determining how well the government is doing — and in fact what the government will be doing. The survey’s findings help determine how over $400 billion in government funds is distributed each year.

But last week, the Republican-led House voted to eliminate the survey altogether, on the grounds that the government should not be butting its nose into Americans’ homes.

“This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators,” said Daniel Webster, a first-term Republican congressman from Florida who sponsored the relevant legislation.

“We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective,” he continued, “especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.”

In fact, the randomness of the survey is precisely what makes the survey scientific, statistical experts say.

Each year the Census Bureau polls a representative, randomized sample of about three million American households about demographics, habits, languages spoken, occupation, housing and various other categories. The resulting numbers are released without identifying individuals, and offer current demographic portraits of even the country’s tiniest communities.

It is the largest (and only) data set of its kind and is used across the federal government in formulas that determine how much funding states and communities get for things like education and public health.

For example, a question on flush toilets — one that some politicians like to cite as being especially invasive — is used to help assess groundwater contamination for rural parts of the country that do not have modern waste disposal systems, according to the Census Bureau.

Law enforcement agencies have likewise used the data to predict criminal activities like methamphetamine production.

Their recent vote aside, members of Congress do seem to realize how useful these numbers are. After all, they use the data themselves.

A number of questions on the survey have been added because Congress specifically demanded their inclusion. In 2008, for example, Congress passed a lawrequiring the American Community Survey to add questions about computer and Internet use. Additionally, recent survey data are featured on the Web sites of many representatives who voted to kill the program — including Mr. Webster’s own home page.

The legislation is expected to go to the Senate this week, and all sorts of stakeholders are coming out of the woodwork.

“Knowing what’s happening in our economy is so desperately important to keeping our economy functioning smoothly,” said Maurine Haver, the chief executive and founder of Haver Analytics, a data analysis company. “The reason the Great Recession did not become another Great Depression is because of the more current economic data we have today that we didn’t have in the 1930s.”

She added that having good data about the state of the economy was one of America’s primary competitive advantages. “The Chinese are probably watching all this with glee,” she said, noting that the Chinese government has also opted not to publish economic data on occasion, generally when the news wasn’t good.

Other private companies and industry groups — including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Home Builders — are up in arms.

Target recently released a video explaining how it used these census data to determine where to locate new stores. Economic development organizations and otherbusiness groups say they use the numbers to figure out where potential workers are.

Mr. Webster says that businesses should instead be thanking House Republicans for reducing the government’s reach.

“What really promotes business in this country is liberty,” he said, “not demand for information.”

Mr. Webster and other critics have gone so far as to say the American Community Survey is unconstitutional. Of course, the basic decennial census is specifically enumerated in the United States Constitution, and courts have ruled that this longer form of the census survey is constitutional as well.

Some census watchers — like Andrew Reamer, a research professor at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy — say they do not expect the Senate to agree on fully eliminating the American Community Survey (as well as the Economic Census, which would also be effectively destroyed by the House bill).

Rather, Mr. Reamer suspects, Republicans may hope that when the Senate and House bills go to a conference committee, a final compromise will keep the survey, but make participation in it voluntary. Under current law, participation is mandatory.

If the American Community Survey were made voluntary, experts say, the census would have to spend significantly more money on follow-up phone calls and in-person visits to get enough households to answer.

But Congress also plans to cut the census budget, making such follow-ups prohibitively expensive.

“If it’s voluntary, then we’ll just get bad data,” saidKenneth Prewitt, a former director of the census who is now at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “That means businesses will make bad decisions, and government will make bad decisions, which means we won’t even know where we actually are wasting our tax dollars.”

Catherine Rampell is an economics reporter for The New York Times.

A Student’s Conversation With Michael Mann on Climate Science and Climate Wars (Dot Earth, N.Y.Times)

18/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Cidadania, Clima, discurso ambiental, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Psicologia, Sensacionalismo, Visualidaderenzotaddei

May 3, 2012, 4:00 PM

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Casey Doyle, a student at Warren Wilson College who writes for the Swannanoa Journal, the publication of the school’s Environmental Leadership Center, had the opportunity to speak with the climate scientist Michael Mann when he visited the campus to speak about his book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.”

Here’s their exchange, which counts as a Dot Earth “Book Report” (you are welcome to contribute one as well, when you find some book, new or old, particularly relevant to the discussions on this blog):

In your book, you talk about the importance of the general public being able to understand climate change, and how the hockey stick graph allows for this. When writing your book how did you keep this accessibility in mind and who were your target readers?

I was hoping that the book would be accessible to a pretty broad range of readers because I really wanted to use my personal story as sort of this reluctant and accidental public figure in the debate over climate change, to talk about the bigger issues, the reality of the problem, the threat that it represents, the need to have a good faith discussion about what to do about it. There are aspects of my story that are intrinsically a little technical, and I have to get a little into the science and technical issues, and so I do that briefly in certain places in the book. My hope was that readers who didn’t want to struggle through those sections could more or less skip them, and the rest of the story still remains intact. My hope is that it will be accessible to a lay audience, a non-technical audience.

What did you expect to find when you began your research on climate change?

Well, the work that ultimately led to the so-called Hockey Stick— this reconstruction that demonstrates recent warming to be unprecedented in a long time frame— arose from an effort that really had nothing to do with climate change per se. My colleagues and I were using what we call proxy records, like corals and tree rings, and ice cores to try and extend the climate record back in time so that we could learn more about natural climate variability. As we began to untangle what these data were telling us, it did lead us inescapably to a conclusion that did have implications for climate change, but it really wasn’t what we had set out to try to understand. We were interested in natural climate variations and accidentally found ourselves once again in the center of the climate change debate because of the implications of our findings.

What were some of the biggest surprises you found during your research?

When we tried to reconstruct past climate patterns we learned that there was this interesting relationship between past very large volcanic eruptions and the timing of some of the large El Nino events in past centuries. It actually ended up reinforcing a controversial hypothesis that had been put forward more than two decades ago by a scientist who had argued there was a relationship between tropical volcanic eruptions and El Nino events. But the instrumental record was so short that he was never able to convince people that this was a real relationship… so, by extending the record back in time, one surprise was that we ended up confirming his hypothesis, that there really does appear to be this relationship. And it’s just not academic because it has implications for one of the big uncertainties about climate change. One thing that the various climate models don’t yet agree upon is how climate change will influence the behavior of the El Nino phenomenon. And it turns out that’s really critical if you want to know how regional weather patterns will be influenced and what will happen with Atlantic hurricanes, which is something that at least the coastal regions of North Carolina worry about. Then you actually need to be able to say something about how climate change will influence El Nino, and by studying the past relationship between El Nino and natural factors like volcanic eruptions we could potentially better inform our understanding of how the El Nino phenomenon will respond to climate change. That was probably one surprise, and it turned out having some relevance for certain issues relating to climate change as well.

In your book, you explain your research began with natural climate variability and you said you believed this was a more important aspect to climate change than many scientists thought. How did you start with these ideas and end up where you are today?

My Ph.D. thesis was about natural climate variability. It was specifically about understanding the role of natural oscillations in the climate system that might explain some recent trends. Our foray into analyzing proxy data was to give us a longer data set with which we could explore the persistence of these long-term oscillations. One of my earlier papers showed that in the proxy data was evidence for a 50-70 year time scale oscillation that ended up getting named the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. It’s the interest in these natural oscillations and what impact they may have on things like hurricanes that led us to investigate these proxy data. But as we started to try to piece together the puzzle of what those data were telling us, they also were telling us about natural variations in temperature in the past and how they compared to the warming trends of the past century. What our reconstruction of temperatures showed was that the recent warming was outside the range of the natural variations that we saw, eventually that we were able to extend back to 1,000 years– that there was no precedent in our entire 1,000 year reconstruction for the warming of the past century. It was clear at that point, once we put together this curve depicting that finding, and it became featured in the IPCC summary for policy makers. It got a name, the Hockey Stick, then it sort of took on a life of its own, and we found ourselves in the middle of the climate change debate.

What is the proxy data used in your studies and why is it being challenged?

In science, there is a very important role for legitimate skepticism and scientists in this field have been debating for decades how reliable different kinds of proxy data are. In fact, just a few months ago I published a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience that demonstrated one potential flaw in using tree rings to estimate past volcanic cooling events. So real scientists are engaged in real skepticism, basically subjecting all findings to appropriate scrutiny and critical analysis, and challenging other scientists in the field to either disprove what you’ve done or validate it independently. That’s how science moves forward, that’s what keeps science progressing, is… what I would call a good faith, honest debate between scientists… To some extent, this good faith debate has been hijacked. This has been true in climate science, but as I describe in the book, it dates back decades to the debate over tobacco and the influence of tobacco products on human health. Whenever the findings of science have found themselves on a collision course with powerful vested interests, unfortunately those interests have seen the need to try to discredit the science. Then we are no longer talking about a good faith debate, we’re not talking about honest scientific skepticism, but what I would call contrarianism or denial. It’s a cynical effort to put forward disingenuous arguments, often to attack the integrity of the scientists themselves to try to discredit their findings, not because of a belief that the science is wrong but because of the threat that the science opposes to vested interests.

We saw this with the debate over tobacco products and lung cancer decades ago, where the tobacco industry did their best to try to discredit the science linking their products with adverse health effects. We saw this with acid rain and ozone depletion, where industry groups and front groups advocating for industry special interests, again did their best to try and discredit the science. Unfortunately, we‘ve seen that in the climate change debate, and it’s not just with our work on Paleoclimate, though I think our work became a touchstone because it was very simple. You didn’t need to understand the physics of how a theoretical climate model works to understand the picture that our hockey stick was telling about the unprecedented nature of climate change; it represented a potent icon and it was attacked.

There were legitimate debates between scientists working in this field about how reliable different kinds of proxy data are and what are the limits, what are the uncertainties, and then there were the dishonest attacks against the science. We experienced both; the good faith back and forth with our scientific colleagues, all of us just interested in figuring out the truth, and we were also subject to attack by those that saw our findings as a threat to particularly fossil fuel interests who don’t want to see the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

What do you say to those who accuse you of keeping your research process secretive? Would you regard this process as your intellectual property?

All of our research is out in the public domain, all of our data. Unfortunately, those looking to smear us have made false accusations of us not making the data available, which was just a lie… There are legitimate issues over whether a computer program you have written to implement an algorithm; if you’re talking about a Microsoft or Apple computer, they would defend to the end their right to keep that. You can’t get access to Microsoft’s computer code because they consider it their intellectual property. Scientists for a long time have argued that a code that you write to implement algorithms is your intellectual property, and the National Science Foundation has stood firmly behind that.

When our critics asked us to turn over our computer code, we understood what they were doing: if it was the computer code, they didn’t care, because then it would be something else. It would be our personal emails, and in fact they ended up stealing our personal emails. They weren’t interested in seeing our computer code or trying to independently implement it. They were looking for something to try to discredit us, to be able to say ‘oh look how sloppy their computer code is, they’re not good computer programmers, you shouldn’t trust anything they do.’

We were aware of that and so we didn’t want to go down that slippery slope of saying yes, we’ll turn that over and then pretty soon you’re turning over personal emails, you’re turning over your private diaries. We didn’t want to set a precedent that would allow those looking to smear scientists, to go down this endless road of subjecting scientists to vexatious demands that would basically tie us up — we wouldn’t have any time to even do research any more. Unfortunately that’s what we’ve seen ever since. We’ve seen politicians try to subject us to subpoena all of our private emails. Its part of this cynical effort to discredit scientists, confuse the public, to intimidate scientists.

…But in the end, we even put our computer program out there in the public domain, recognizing that maybe it was going down a slippery slope, because what were they going to demand next? We knew there was nothing wrong with it at all, we put it out there, and what we predicted was exactly what we saw. We didn’t see any discussion, nobody ever even downloaded, as far as I can tell, the code or try to run it, because they didn’t care about the code, they were just looking for something that they could say, ‘oh look, scientists won’t provide this’, and then once you provide it—’oh well they won’t provide this’, and then once you provide that, ‘oh well they won’t provide that.’ And pretty soon what do they want? Do they want you to provide them literally with the dirty laundry from your house? So sadly, scientists have been subjected… to smear campaigns for decades and it is no different in this field. There are all sorts of lies that you can read on the Internet about me and many of my climate science colleagues. I think I’ve been accused of just about everything under the sun, and its part of the life of being a scientist in this field, and having to deal with efforts to impugn your integrity and discredit you

How do you feel now that State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s case against you in the Virginia Supreme Court has been brought to a halt?

On the one hand, we’re glad that the Supreme Court rejected it without merit, in fact they rejected it with prejudice, meaning that he can’t even try to appeal that decision to the court…. So that’s a good development, but what saddens me is the fact that he spent millions of dollars of Virginia taxpayer money and forced the University of Virginia to come up with significant funds themselves, wasted on this witch hunt, wasted on this personal vendetta, this effort that he was using to try to discredit climate science, to do the bidding of the fossil fuel interests that fund his campaigns. All of that money could have been spent on helping Virginians for example, adapt to the impacts that they are already seeing with the Chesapeake Bay from sea level rise and increased coastal erosion.

There are things that can be done to try to adapt to those changes that are already in the pipeline and that we are going to have to contend with because there is nothing we can do about them. We are committed to a certain amount of future climate change even if we curtail our emissions quickly. Wouldn’t it have been great if Virginians had been able to use those millions of dollars productively to deal with the already very real impacts of climate change rather than to bury their heads in the sands because this attorney general wanted to not only discredit us, but send a message to all scientists in Virginia that… if you too decide to talk about the impacts of climate change then you too can be subject to a subpoena from the attorney general? It was a very chilling development and I think Virginians recognized that and I think it was overwhelmingly decried even by newspaper editorial boards that had supported Cuccinelli’s candidacy, that basically called him out for what was transparently an effort to intimidate scientists.

I understand that you have received threats due to your reporting on climate data. Who or what is the threat?

Many climate scientists have received hundreds, and probably now even thousands of threatening emails… attacking us, or using very nasty language to criticize us… Some emails, letters, and phone messages that have been left on my office phone contain thinly veiled threats of violence, death threats. I had an envelope sent to my work address that contained a white powder, obviously it was intended to make we think I had been exposed to anthrax. The FBI had to send that off to the regional lab to test it, and it turns out it was just cornmeal, but using the mail to intimidate in that way is a felony… I’m not sure if they were ever able to track down the person who was responsible, but there are dozens of climate scientists who had been subjected to threats of violence and death threats…. Anytime that the findings of science have come into conflict with the interests of certain industries there has been a fairly nasty effort to try and intimidate the scientists through whatever means possible, and I’ve seen some of the worst aspects of that myself.

Do you in any way regret the fame of the hockey stick graph?

I am often asked the question, if I could go to that point in my career, back in the early 90s where I had made the decision whether to continue on in theoretical physics or to move into this new field of climate research… would I do it differently? And the answer is that I wouldn’t. I mean even though I became this reluctant and accidental public figure in the debate over climate change, over time I’ve learned to embrace the opportunity that has given me to talk to the public about this problem and the threat that it represents, to inform the public discourse on this issue. Frankly, I can’t imagine anything more important that I could be doing with my life than trying to educate the public about the reality of this problem, to do my best to make sure that we make decisions today as far as the environment and in particular carbon emissions, that will preserve the planet for my daughter — I have a six year old daughter — our children and our grandchildren. So no, I wouldn’t do it over because I’ve found myself in a position to try to inform the discussion of what might be the greatest challenge we have ever faced as a civilization, and I consider that a blessing rather than a curse.

Recap a Live Chat on How to Teach Climate Change in the Classroom (PBS.org)

18/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, discurso ambiental, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Visualidaderenzotaddei

CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION SCIENCE — May 2, 2012 at 12:06 PM EDT

BY: NEWS DESK

http://www-tc.pbs.org/s3/pbs.videoportal-prod.cdn/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf

Watch Teachers Endure Balancing Act Over Climate Change Curriculum on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Post updated 6 p.m. ET May 3.

For the first time, national science standards will include guidelines on how to teach climate change kindergarten through 12th grade students — but how will teachers incorporate the subject into the curriculum?

We had more on this struggle Wednesday on the NewsHour, as part of our Coping with Climate Changeseries.

On Thursday, Hari Sreenivasan chatted here with some of those featured in the broadcast piece. The participants included:

Cheryl Manning, who teaches honors earth science and Advanced Placement environmental science at Evergreen High School in Colorado.
Susan Buhr, education outreach director at theCooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado, Boulder, where she works on professional development and training for teachers on science topics.

Also, check out the creative ways in which some teachers are already teaching climate science.

Time to tackle ‘last taboo’ of contraception and climate – experts (Alert Net)

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29 Feb 2012 11:13

Source: Alertnet // Lisa Anderson

A health worker explains methods of contraception during a reproductive health fair held to mark World Population Day in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, July 11, 2009. REUTERS/John Javellana

By Lisa Anderson

NEW YORK (AlertNet) – Finding a way to put the environmental impact of population and women’s reproductive health more prominently on the climate change agenda is increasingly urgent, experts said in Washington this week.

Suggesting a strong connection between family planning and the environment often risks an explosion in the highly charged political landscape of climate talks, meaning the word “population” is rarely heard, observed speakers on a panel assembled by the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP).

Kavita Ramdas, executive director of Stanford University’s social entrepreneurship program, calls making the link between population and the environment “the last taboo”.

“This connection … needs to be in a place where we can talk thoughtfully about the fact that yes, more people on this planet – and we’ve just crossed 7 billion – does actually put pressure on the planet. And no, it is not just black women or brown women or Chinese women who create that problem,” she told a session on women’s health and climate adaptation strategies.

“In fact, the issues around consumption in the more developed part of the world are profoundly significant. And when you know that every American baby born consumes 40 times as much as every Indian baby born, clearly there is a need to be able to tie those issues together,” she added.

Daniel Schensul, a technical specialist in the climate change, population and development branch of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), noted that adapting to a shifting climate amounts to building resilience in the face of change. “Women’s ability to control fertility, I think, is at the very centre of this,” he said.

Kathleen Mogelgaard, a consultant on the Wilson Center’s ECSP, described universal access to reproductive health as “a win-win opportunity for climate change adaptation”. Compared with other adaptation strategies, family planning is already in demand among women around the world, although many lack access to it, she said.

And it’s relatively inexpensive, she added, requiring only an additional $3.6 billion a year to fully meet women’s reproductive health needs.

FEAR OF LIMITING RIGHTS

Nonetheless, social and political barriers to including population in climate discussions persist, Stanford University’s Ramdas said. Climate experts avoid talking about population issues out of fear they will be labelled racists or eugenicists, and in an effort “not to muddy the waters” surrounding the already delicate subject of climate change, she said.

“At the same time women’s rights activists also have been reluctant to jump into the argument. You can’t discuss contraception without being drawn into a debate about abortion,” she added.

The ECSP’s Mogelgaard noted that population is rarely included in assessments of climate change vulnerability and adaptation. In her experience, climate specialists have a limited understanding of population dynamics and the scale of coming demographic change – such as populations tripling in countries like Malawi by 2050.

And, if they do grasp the issues, they “assume that doing something about population means limiting people’s rights,” she said. “What this says to me is that there is a real need for raising awareness of the connection between population, climate change and reproductive health.”

More academic evidence supporting the connection would help get population considered as a legitimate issue in the climate community, the experts argued. “There hasn’t been enough work that directly shows us that, when a woman’s need for reproductive health is met, how that impacts on adaptation,” Mogelgaard said.

She knows of only one study – “Linking Population, Fertility and Family Planning with Adaptation to Climate Change: Views from Ethiopia”, issued byPopulation Action International (PAI) in October 2009 – that “shows that when women have access to reproductive health they say they are better able to cope with climate change”.

Schensul said UNFPA wants to see population and reproductive health on the June agenda of Rio+20, the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development. To that end, it is working with partners to “establish a nuanced, evidence-based and human rights-based perspective on the operational links between population, reproductive health and climate change”.

If these inter-related factors remain neglected in climate discussions, “silence around this issue will continue to leave us in a space where the planet and her women will continue to have no voice,” Ramdas warned.

New issue of the journal Ephemera – Theory and Politics in Organization, on “The atmosphere business”

18/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Cidadania, Clima, Cognição, comunicação científica, discurso ambiental, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Sensacionalismo, Visualidaderenzotaddei

volume 12, number 1/2 (may 2012)
editorial
Steffen Böhm, Anna-Maria Murtola and Sverre Spoelstra	The atmosphere business

notes
Mike Childs	Privatising the atmosphere: A solution or dangerous con?
Oscar Reyes	Carbon markets after Durban
Gökçe Günel	A dark art: Field notes on cardon capture and storage policy negotiations at COP17
Patrick Bond	Durban’s conference of polluters, market failure and critic failure
Tadzio Mueller	The people’s climate summit in Cochabamba: A tragedy in three acts

interview
Larry Lohmann and Steffen Böhm	Critiquing carbon markets: A conversation

articles
Robert Fletcher	Capitalizing on chaos: Climate change and disaster capitalism
Jerome Whitington	The prey of uncertainty: Climate change as opportunity
Ingmar Lippert	Carbon classified? Unpacking heterogenous relations inscribed into corporate carbon emissions
Joanna Cabello and Tamra Gilbertson	A colonial mechanism to enclose lands: A critical review of two REDD+-focused special issues
Rebecca Pearse	Mapping REDD in the Asia-Pacific: Governance, marketisation and contention
Esteve Corbera and Charlotte Friedli	Planting trees through the Clean Development Mechanism: A critical assessment

reviews
Siddhartha Dabhi	The ‘third way’ for climate action
Peter Newell	Carbon trading in South Africa: Plus ça change?
David L. Levy	Can capitalism survive climate change?

Ásia corre o risco de ver deflagrada uma guerra da água (O Globo)

15/05/2012Uncategorizedágua, China, Desenvolvimento econômico, Educação, Política, Violênciarenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4497, de 15 de Maio de 2012.

Planos da China de usar rios que nascem no Tibete alarmam os países vizinhos.

Atravessando o planalto do Tibete, cinco grandes rios – Indus, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween e Mekong – carregam a água das geleiras dos Himalaias e das monções que abastece 1,3 bilhão de pessoas em vários países do Sudeste da Ásia. Agora, no entanto, este fornecimento está ameaçado pelos planos da China e de outros países da região de construir usinas, barragens e desvios em seu curso, o que pode gerar o primeiro grande conflito mundial em torno deste recurso cada vez mais escasso.

A luta pelo controle desta verdadeira “caixa d’água” continental teve seu primeiro contragolpe desferido pela Índia, onde a Suprema Corte do país ordenou no mês passado o início dos trabalhos para a construção de canais que vão interligar os principais rios indianos. No centro do projeto está uma estrutura de 400 quilômetros de extensão que vai desviar a água do Brahmaputra para o Ganges, visando a irrigar terras cultiváveis sedentas a cerca de mil quilômetros ao Sul.

A decisão indiana é uma reação aos planos chineses de construir barragens e desviar o Brahmaputra, um dos últimos grandes rios do mundo ainda sem modificações no seu trajeto pelo homem, mais acima no seu curso, no Tibete. No Cânion de Tsangpo, o governo da China pretende levantar duas gigantescas hidrelétricas, cada uma gerando mais do dobro da energia da usina de Três Gargantas, no Yangtsé, atualmente a maior do mundo. Além disso, ainda mais alto no curso do Brahmaputra, os chineses querem criar um desvio que levaria até 40% de seu fluxo para as planícies do Norte do país.

O choque entre os projetos de China e Índia – duas potências nucleares -, no entanto, deve fazer uma vítima ainda mais vulnerável: Bangladesh. O país depende do Brahmaputra para conseguir dois terços de toda água que consome, grande parte usada para a irrigação dos campos de arroz durante a longa estação seca da região. Com o fluxo do rio desviado e reduzido, cerca de 20 milhões de agricultores de Bangladesh podem ver suas plantações, e eles próprios, morrerem de sede.

“No caso do Ganges-Brahmaputra, já existem barragens como a de Farakka, construída pela Índia, que trouxe impactos reduzindo áreas úmidas [pântanos] em Bangladesh”, lembra Benedito Braga, professor de Engenharia Civil e Ambiental da USP e vice-presidente do Conselho Mundial de Água. “Mas não acredito que veremos um choque armado entre países por causa disso. Iniciativas como a comissão multilateral para gestão da bacia do Rio Mekong e a South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc), fundada em 1985 com representantes do Butão, Índia, Paquistão, Nepal, Bangladesh e Sri Lanka, mas infelizmente sem a presença da China, mostram que há maior potencial para colaboração do que para conflito no caso da gestão das águas.”

Controle chinês – Até recentemente, a China havia focado a construção de suas usinas em rios que correm dentro do país. Mas, diante da explosão na demanda por eletricidade devido ao forte crescimento econômico, os chineses começaram a se voltar para os rios transnacionais. Nos últimos anos, o país já construiu uma série de barragens em afluentes do Brahmaputra e a primeira no curso principal do rio, a Usina de Zangmu, orçada em US$ 1 bilhão, deverá estar pronta em 2014. Depois, será a vez das obras no Cânion de Tsangpo, onde seriam instaladas as usinas gigantes de Motuo (38 gigawatts) e Daduqia (42 gigawatts). Para ser ter uma ideia do tamanho destas barragens, a usina das Três Gargantas, atualmente a maior do mundo, tem capacidade instalada de 22,5 gigawatts, enquanto Itaipu pode gerar até 14 gigawatts.

Mas a China não está de olho só na água dos rios tibetanos que fluem para Índia e Bangladesh. Suas ambições também preocupam outros países vizinhos. Outro atrito recente envolve a barragem de Myitsone, que os chineses estão construindo no Rio Irrawaddy, no Norte de Mianmar. Há três anos, a junta militar que governava o país aprovou a construção, embora 90% da energia que vai ser gerada na usina de 6 gigawatts será exportada para a China. No fim do ano passado, porém, o governo militar de Mianmar suspendeu as obras depois que dezenas de pessoas morreram em choques entre a polícia e moradores locais, cujas vilas serão inundadas pelo reservatório.

A confusa situação política em Mianmar deixa em dúvidas o destino das usinas de Myitsone e 12 outras planejadas pelos chineses na região – seis no Rio Irrawaddy e seis no Rio Salween. Muitas das barragens estão em áreas remotas designadas Patrimônio Mundial pela Organização das Nações Unidas por seus ecossistemas únicos de florestas e água doce. Depois que a construção da usina Myitsone foi paralisada, veio a público um relatório ambiental de 900 páginas encomendado pela própria China desaconselhando as obras da barragem pelo perigo de inundação dos ecossistemas listados pela ONU.

Já o impacto do projeto indiano de desviar o Brahmaputra para alimentar o Ganges foi avaliado por Edward Barbier, da Universidade do Wyoming, nos EUA, e Anik Bhaduri, do Instituto Internacional de Gerenciamento de Água em Nova Déli. Eles alertam que uma redução de 10% a 20% no fluxo do rio poderia deixar secas grandes áreas em Bangladesh. Além disso, com um fluxo menor de água doce, a água salgada da Baía de Bengala invadiria boa parte do delta do rio, causando uma verdadeira catástrofe ambiental.

A melhor prova de que as usinas podem provocar danos ecológicos graves está ali perto, no Rio Mekong, onde a construção de barragens pela China está mais adiantada. Até agora, o país já levantou quatro das oito hidrelétricas que pretende instalar no rio. Estas barragens capturam o fluxo de água das monções e o liberam durante a estação seca. O governo chinês argumenta que, ao regular o fluxo do rio, elas são benéficas, mas há três anos o Programa das Nações Unidas para o Meio Ambiente (Pnuma) alertou que o fim do pulso natural de inundação e seca é uma “ameaça considerável” aos ecossistemas na parte baixa do rio. No estudo para o Pnuma, Ky Quang Vinh, do Centro Vietnamita de Observação dos recursos Naturais e Meio Ambiente, mostrou que um pulso mais fraco faria a água salgada do Mar do Sul da China invadir mais de 70 quilômetros adentro do delta do Mekong, destruindo grandes extensões de plantações de arroz na principal região de produção do segundo maior exportador mundial do cereal.

A luta pela água dos Himalaias está acirrada, mas muitos especialistas argumentam que o aproveitamento do potencial hidrelétrico da região é fundamental se o mundo quiser que países como a China e a Índia alimentem suas crescentes economias com fontes de energia de baixa emissão de carbono. Numa região onde o abastecimento de água já está no limite, no entanto, a disputa pelo recurso pode acirrar os ânimos. A China foi um dos países que votou contra proposta de tratado da ONU para regulamentar o aproveitamento de rios transnacionais, deixando seus vizinhos praticamente como reféns de seus projetos.

“Na verdade, esta resolução sobre usos não navegáveis de rios transfronteiriços está para ser ratificada desde 1997”, lembra Benedito Braga. “Há 15 anos, portanto, o sistema das Nações Unidas não consegue colocar em prática esta proposta de regular o aproveitamento pelos países dos rios que correm além das suas fronteiras políticas”.

Braga destaca ainda que o próprio Brasil, Turquia, EUA, Israel e Áustria, entre outros países, são contra os termos da proposta da ONU por entenderem que ela interfere com o princípio da soberania dos Estados.

“A perspectiva para solução desta questão seria o conceito moderno de compartilhar os benefícios advindos da gestão racional e integrada dos recursos hídricos das bacias transfronteiriças e não simplesmente compartilhar a água”, defende. “Um exemplo típico disso é o aproveitamento hidrelétrico de Itaipu, onde Brasil e Paraguai dividem a energia gerada na bacia do Rio Paraná”.

‘Climategate’ Undermined Belief in Global Warming Among Many TV Meteorologists, Study Shows (Science Daily)

14/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, discurso ambiental, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Previsão, Visualidaderenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2011) — A new paper by George Mason University researchers shows that ‘Climategate’ — the unauthorized release in late 2009 of stolen e-mails between climate scientists in the U.S. and United Kingdom — undermined belief in global warming and possibly also trust in climate scientists among TV meteorologists in the United States, at least temporarily.

In the largest and most representative survey of television weathercasters to date, George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication and Center for Social Science Research asked these meteorologists early in 2010, when news stories about the climate e-mails were breaking, several questions about their awareness of the issue, attention to the story and impact of the story on their beliefs about climate change. A large majority (82 percent) of the respondents indicated they had heard of Climategate, and nearly all followed the story at least “a little.”

Among the respondents who indicated that they had followed the story, 42 percent indicated the story made them somewhat or much more skeptical that global warming is occurring.These results stand in stark contrast to the findings of several independent investigations of the emails, conducted later, that concluded no scientific misconduct had occurred and nothing in the emails should cause doubts about the fact which show that global warming is occurring.

The results, which were published in the journal Bulletin of the American Meteorology Society, also showed that the doubts were most pronounced among politically conservative weathercasters and those who either do not believe in global warming or do not yet know. The study showed that age was not a factor nor was professional credentials, but men — independent of political ideology and belief in global warming — were more likely than their female counterparts to say that Climategate made them doubt that global warming was happening.

“Our study shows that TV weathercasters — like most people — are motivated consumers of information in that their beliefs influence what information they choose to see, how they evaluate information, and the conclusions they draw from it,” says Ed Maibach, one of the researchers. “Although subsequent investigations showed that the climate scientists had done nothing wrong, the allegation of wrongdoing undermined many weathercasters’ confidence in the conclusions of climate science, at least temporarily.”

The poll of weathercasters was conducted as part of a larger study funded by the National Science Foundation on American television meteorologists. Maibach and others are now working with a team of TV meteorologists to test what audience members learn when weathercasters make efforts to educate their viewers about the relationship between the changing global climate and local weather conditions.

Ultimately, the team hopes to answer key research questions about how to help television meteorologists nationwide become an effective source of informal science education about climate change.

“Most members of the public consider television weather reporters to be a trusted source of information about global warming — only scientists are viewed as more trustworthy,” says Maibach. “Our research here is based on the premise that weathercasters, if given the opportunity and resources, can become an important source of climate change education for a broad cross section of Americans.”

Weathercasters Take On Role of Science Educators; Feel Some Uncertainty On Issue of Climate Change (Science Daily)

14/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Sensacionalismo, Visualidaderenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2010) — In a time when only a handful of TV news stations employ a dedicated science reporter, TV weathercasters may seem like the logical people to fill that role, and in many cases they do.

In the largest and most representative survey of television weathercasters to date, George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication shows that two-thirds of weathercasters are interested in reporting on climate change, and many say they are already filling a role as an informal science educator.

“Our surveys of the public have shown that many Americans are looking to their local TV weathercaster for information about global warming,” says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication. “The findings of this latest survey show that TV weathercasters play — or can play — an important role as informal climate change educators.”

According to the survey, climate change is already one of the most common science topics TV weathercasters discuss — most commonly at speaking events, but also at the beginning or end of their on-air segments, on blogs and web sites, on the radio and in newspaper columns.

Weathercasters also indicated that they are interested in personalizing the story for their local viewers — reporting on local stories such as potential flooding/drought, extreme heat events, air quality and crops. About one-quarter of respondents said they have already seen evidence of climate change in their local weather patterns.

“Only about 10 percent of TV stations have a dedicated specialist to cover these topics,” says University of Texas journalism professor Kristopher Wilson, a collaborator on the survey. “By default, and in many cases by choice, science stories become the domain of the only scientifically trained person in the newsroom — weathercasters.”

Many of the weathercasters said that having access to resources such as climate scientists to interview and high-quality graphics and animations to use on-air would increase their ability to educate the public about climate change.

However, despite their interest in reporting more on this issue, the majority of weathercasters (61 percent) feel there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about the issue of global warming. Though 54 percent indicated that global warming is happening, 25 percent indicated it isn’t, and 21 percent say they don’t know yet.

“A recent survey showed that more than 96 percent of leading climate scientists are convinced that global warming is real and that human activity is a significant cause of the warming,” says Maibach. “Climate scientists may need to make their case directly to America’s weathercasters, because these two groups appear to have a very different understanding about the scientific consensus on climate change.”

This survey is one part of a National Science Foundation-funded research project on meteorologists. Using this data, Maibach and his research team will next conduct a field test of 30-second, broadcast-quality educational segments that TV weathercasters can use in their daily broadcasts to educate viewers about the link between predicted (or current) extreme weather events in that media market and the changing global climate.

Ultimately, the team hopes to answer key research questions supporting efforts to activate TV meteorologists nationwide as an important source of informal science education about climate change.

Television Has Less Effect On Education About Climate Change Than Other Forms Of Media (Science Daily)

14/05/2012Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Cognição, comunicação científica, Cultura, discurso ambiental, Economia, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Previsão, Sensacionalismo, Visualidaderenzotaddei

ScienceDaily (Oct. 16, 2009) — Worried about climate change and want to learn more? You probably aren’t watching television then. A new study by George Mason University Communication Professor Xiaoquan Zhao suggests that watching television has no significant impact on viewers’ knowledge about the issue of climate change. Reading newspapers and using the web, however, seem to contribute to people’s knowledge about this issue.

The study, “Media Use and Global Warming Perceptions: A Snapshot of the Reinforcing Spirals,” looked at the relationship between media use and people’s perceptions of global warming. The study asked participants how often they watch TV, surf the Web, and read newspapers. They were also asked about their concern and knowledge of global warming and specifically its impact on the polar regions.

“Unlike many other social issues with which the public may have first-hand experience, global warming is an issue that many come to learn about through the media,” says Zhao. “The primary source of mediated information about global warming is the news.”

The results showed that people who read newspapers and use the Internet more often are more likely to be concerned about global warming and believe they are better educated about the subject. Watching more television, however, did not seem to help.

He also found that individuals concerned about global warming are more likely to seek out information on this issue from a variety of media and nonmedia sources. Other forms of media, such as the Oscar-winning documentary “The Inconvenient Truth” and the blockbuster thriller “The Day After Tomorrow,” have played important roles in advancing the public’s interest in this domain.

Politics also seemed to have an influence on people’s perceptions about the science of global warming. Republicans are more likely to believe that scientists are still debating the existence and human causes of global warming, whereas Democrats are more likely to believe that a scientific consensus has already been achieved on these matters.

“Some media forms have clear influence on people’s perceived knowledge of global warming, and most of it seems positive,” says Zhao. “Future research should focus on how to harness this powerful educational function.”

Mixed Methods Should Be a Valued Practice in Anthropology (Anthropology News)

04/05/2012UncategorizedAntropologia, Educação, Etnografiarenzotaddei

METHODS

By Thomas S Weisner

1 May 2012

Methods are systematic, socially agreed upon ways to represent the world. Mixed methods integrate qualitative and quantitative evidence through intentional efforts to focus “on research questions that call for real-life contextual understandings, multi-level perspectives, and cultural influences” (Cresswell, et al, 2011, Best Practices for Mixed Methods Research in the Health Sciences, p 4).

Good anthropology will always benefit from the widest variety of data. High quality examples of combining qualitative and quantitative methods abound in anthropology today and have done so throughout our history. Although ethnography and qualitative methods remain central, it has always been true that other methods are commonly used as well in every field of anthropology.

SOME EXAMPLES
Elinor Ochs and colleagues at UCLA assembled what is arguably the richest family database in the world today (combining video, sociolinguistic, ethnographic, questionnaire, daily diary, material possession, stress hormone and other evidence) in their study of the everyday lives of two-parent, middle class working Los Angeles families and their children (www.celf.ucla.edu). Robert LeVine and collaborators combined sociolinguistic, ethnographic, systematic observational, demographic, historical and child assessment methods in their study of the connections between women’s gains in literacy, lower completed family size, improved health and changes in maternal care in communities around the world (Literacy and Mothering: How Women’s Schooling Changes the Lives of the World’s Children, 2012). The New Hope community based work and family support study (Duncan, Huston and Weisner, Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and their Children, 2007) used a random-assignment social experiment, survey, questionnaire, child assessment and qualitative ethnographic fieldwork to discover why the program was successful in improving the well-being of parents and children, and yet why sometimes only selectively so.

Andrew Fuligni, Nancy Gonzalez and I currently collaborate on a study of the daily activities, family responsibilities and obligations, and academic and behavioral outcomes of 428 Mexican American immigrant teens and parents in Los Angeles (first, second and later generations, documented and not). Methods include 14-day consecutive daily diaries, survey and questionnaire data, and school and behavior assessments. In addition, a 10% nested random sample of parents and teens from this larger sample participate in a qualitative study in the homes of parents and children in addition. We gave cameras to adolescents in ninth and tenth grades with instructions to take 25 pictures of people, places, events and activities important to them. We plugged the cameras into our laptops and talked with the teens about their photos. We asked questions such as: Who are these friends; oh you have a boyfriend? Tell me more about your soccer team. That’s your Mom cooking; what do you do for chores? That’s one of your teachers? What class is it; how is school going? Teens take photos of other family members’ photos such as grandparents they cannot visit in Mexico; one took a photo of the moon, mentioning the film Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna).

The narratives then can be recorded, transcribed and uploaded to a mixed methods software program such as Dedoose (www.Dedoose.com), a web-based mixed method software tool. Indexing and coding are a matter of dragging and dropping codes on the relevant portions of the text. Quantitative data from the larger study also are uploaded and linked to adolescent and parent narratives and photos. Narratives can be coded; patterns in quantitative data can be enriched qualitatively. The same fieldworkers who went to the homes and did interviews, also often worked on analyses of quantitative data.

STRENGTH OF INTEGRATED METHODS
Methods and research designs are languages understood across the social sciences. To the extent that we can speak those languages in our work, we more likely will draw in those in other disciplines into conversations with us. A study that creatively integrates quantitative and qualitative methods sends a positive message to those fluent in only qualitative or quantitative methods that we take their methods (and so their identities and ideas) seriously. The increased believability in our and others’ work which often results is itself a criterion for successful mixed methods research. The use of integrated methods is growing across the social sciences; psychology (eg, Yoshikawa, et al, Developmental Psychology 44[344–54]), sociology (eg, Mario Small in Annual Review of Sociology 37[57–86]), psychiatry (Palinkas, et al, Psychiatric Services 62 [3]), public health (Plano-Clark, Qualitative Inquiry16 [6]), political science, education, economics and other fields are benefitting and sometimes looking to anthropology for collaboration. Policy and practice research benefits hugely from integrating qualitative and quantitative methods. Funders increasingly see integrated methods as a strength in grant proposals.

The stark binary contrast of the “two Q’s”—qualitative vs quantitative—is not very useful; it restricts our thinking and limits our conversations. The two Q’s oversimplifies the debates and obscures important shared goals common to all methods. A better narrative and discourse about methods should use a richer conceptual framework. The actual contrast with quantitative levels of measurement (ordinal, interval, ratio scales) should be nominal or categorical levels (words, categories, narratives, themes, patterns); both are useful. The contrast with naturalistic research should not be experimental but research that is contrived or controlled in some systematic way to aid understanding. A useful framework for anthropology should distinguish person and experience-centered, or context-centered and variable-centered methods, not a qualitative/quantitative binary. Such a methods conversation could then focus on the most important Q—our common questions.

Many of us use ethnographic settings, events or activities as our units of analysis to be sure we do not bracket out context that provides essential meaning. However, inquiry across levels of analysis beyond settings and beyond projects often requires mixed methods. We often deal with suspicions about the “bias” of ethnographic and qualitative methods. Mixed methods do not necessarily lead to common findings; there is method variance just as there is expectable heterogeneity, conflict and inconsistency in cultural beliefs and practices themselves. A more useful question is whether our methods have been systematically context-examined or remain context-unexamined—since all methods (whether qualitative or quantitative) entail a context or a set of presumptions and methods effects of some kinds.

Quantitative methods and statistical analyses have guidelines and procedures (not uncontested of course) for deciding if they are done well—if they met accepted standards and should be published and disseminated for example. These include judgments of reliability, validity, sample size and representativeness or generalizability, power, and so forth. Qualitative and ethnographic work can and should have recognized criteria as well, such as breadth, depth, holism, veridicality, specificity of context, meaning centered, narrative and behavioral coherence, shared cognitions, interpretive richness, and others. These are of course more variable, and not so easy to define, yet they are valuable and defensible if carefully described. These should be in addition to explicit descriptions of sampling, setting, and so forth. Reasonable, flexible mixed methods criteria are being developed in these respects (Weisner and Fiese in Journal of Family Psychology 25[6]). Recent NIH guidelines have been developed for the use of mixed methods in health research and in applications for funding (Cresswell, et al, 2011).

METHODS PLURALISM IN ANTHROPOLOGY
I would guess—or at least hope—that most anthropologists are fairly tolerant pluralists regarding methods. Most of us appreciate the vast range of qualitative and ethnographic methods and their integration, as in Russ Bernard’s Research Methods in Anthropology. Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (2011). I suspect many if not most of us generally agree with this view or use mixed methods in our own research and teaching, and regularly cite such work even if we don’t do this ourselves. If we don’t do quantitative research, we may have partnered with others who do and are interested in similar questions, or we may have taught courses using books and papers with quantitative evidence. And yet it is fair to say that those who critique quantitative methods, or dismiss systematic methods altogether, including mixed methods, sometimes, without justification in my view, seek to claim the dominant view. To the contrary: the future of our field and the social sciences is far more likely to be characterized by interdisciplinary methodological pluralism, often including integrated mixed methods. Anthropology should be at the forefront of such research and practice, not critiquing from the margins or simply ignoring important methodological and research design innovations.

Donald Campbell long ago described this more modest, pluralist, pragmatic, skeptical, empirically based approach to methods: he argued that all methods are valuable and important, but that all methods are also weak in the sense that they are incomplete representations of the incredibly complex world that we hope to understand. Hence we should use the widest range of methods, so that the weaknesses of one method can be complemented by the strengths of another, and so that phenomena in the world that are holistic qualities best or only to be represented by narrative, text, photos or sound are represented that way, and phenomena best or only to be represented with numbers, variables and models are represented quantitatively. As a result, we will get closer to understanding the world, and then persuading others of the truth of what we discover and believe.

Thomas S Weisner (www.tweisner.com) is anthropology professor in the departments of psychiatry and anthropology at UCLA, and director of Center for Culture & Health. His research and teaching interests are in culture and human development; medical, psychological and cultural studies of families and children at risk; mixed methods; and evidence-informed policy.

Novelas brasileiras passam imagem de país branco, critica escritora moçambicana (Agência Brasil)

25/04/2012UncategorizedCultura, Educação, Enquadramento, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Moçambique, Raça, Racismo, Religião, Telenovelarenzotaddei

17/04/2012 – 15h35

Alex Rodrigues
Repórter da Agência Brasil

Brasília – “Temos medo do Brasil.” Foi com um desabafo inesperado que a romancista moçambicana Paulina Chiziane chamou a atenção do público do seminário A Literatura Africana Contemporânea, que integra a programação da 1ª Bienal do Livro e da Leitura, em Brasília (DF). Ela se referia aos efeitos da presença, em Moçambique, de igrejas e templos brasileiros e de produtos culturais como as telenovelas que transmitem, na opinião dela, uma falsa imagem do país.

“Para nós, moçambicanos, a imagem do Brasil é a de um país branco ou, no máximo, mestiço. O único negro brasileiro bem-sucedido que reconhecemos como tal é o Pelé. Nas telenovelas, que são as responsáveis por definir a imagem que temos do Brasil, só vemos negros como carregadores ou como empregados domésticos. No topo [da representação social] estão os brancos. Esta é a imagem que o Brasil está vendendo ao mundo”, criticou a autora, destacando que essas representações contribuem para perpetuar as desigualdades raciais e sociais existentes em seu país.

“De tanto ver nas novelas o branco mandando e o negro varrendo e carregando, o moçambicano passa a ver tal situação como aparentemente normal”, sustenta Paulina, apontando para a mesma organização social em seu país.

A presença de igrejas brasileiras em território moçambicano também tem impactos negativos na cultura do país, na avaliação da escritora. “Quando uma ou várias igrejas chegam e nos dizem que nossa maneira de crer não é correta, que a melhor crença é a que elas trazem, isso significa destruir uma identidade cultural. Não há o respeito às crenças locais. Na cultura africana, um curandeiro é não apenas o médico tradicional, mas também o detentor de parte da história e da cultura popular”, detacou Paulina, criticando os governos dos dois países que permitem a intervenção dessas instituições.

Primeira mulher a publicar um livro em Moçambique, Paulina procura fugir de estereótipos em sua obra, principalmente, os que limitam a mulher ao papel de dependente, incapaz de pensar por si só, condicionada a apenas servir.

“Gosto muito dos poetas de meu país, mas nunca encontrei na literatura que os homens escrevem o perfil de uma mulher inteira. É sempre a boca, as pernas, um único aspecto. Nunca a sabedoria infinita que provém das mulheres”, disse Paulina, lembrando que, até a colonização europeia, cabia às mulheres desempenhar a função narrativa e de transmitir o conhecimento.

“Antes do colonialismo, a arte e a literatura eram femininas. Cabia às mulheres contar as histórias e, assim, socializar as crianças. Com o sistema colonial e o emprego do sistema de educação imperial, os homens passam a aprender a escrever e a contar as histórias. Por isso mesmo, ainda hoje, em Moçambique, há poucas mulheres escritoras”, disse Paulina.

“Mesmo independentes [a partir de 1975], passamos a escrever a partir da educação europeia que havíamos recebido, levando os estereótipos e preconceitos que nos foram transmitidos. A sabedoria africana propriamente dita, a que é conhecida pelas mulheres, continua excluída. Isso para não dizer que mais da metade da população moçambicana não fala português e poucos são os autores que escrevem em outras línguas moçambicanas”, disse Paulina.

Durante a bienal, foi relançado o livro Niketche, uma história de poligamia, de autoria da escritora moçambicana.

Best Practices Are the Worst (Education Next)

24/04/2012UncategorizedEconomia, Educação, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

SUMMER 2012 / VOL. 12, NO. 3 – http://educationnext.org/

As reviewed by Jay P. Greene

“Best practices” is the worst practice. The idea that we should examine successful organizations and then imitate what they do if we also want to be successful is something that first took hold in the business world but has now unfortunately spread to the field of education. If imitation were the path to excellence, art museums would be filled with paint-by-number works.

The fundamental flaw of a “best practices” approach, as any student in a half-decent research-design course would know, is that it suffers from what is called “selection on the dependent variable.” If you only look at successful organizations, then you have no variation in the dependent variable: they all have good outcomes. When you look at the things that successful organizations are doing, you have no idea whether each one of those things caused the good outcomes, had no effect on success, or was actually an impediment that held organizations back from being even more successful. An appropriate research design would have variation in the dependent variable; some have good outcomes and some have bad ones. To identify factors that contribute to good outcomes, you would, at a minimum, want to see those factors more likely to be present where there was success and less so where there was not.

“Best practices” lacks scientific credibility, but it has been a proven path to fame and fortune for pop-management gurus like Tom Peters, with In Search of Excellence, and Jim Collins, with Good to Great. The fact that many of the “best” companies they featured subsequently went belly-up—like Atari and Wang Computers, lauded by Peters, and Circuit City and Fannie Mae, by Collins—has done nothing to impede their high-fee lecture tours. Sometimes people just want to hear a confident person with shiny teeth tell them appealing stories about the secrets to success.

With Surpassing Shanghai, Marc Tucker hopes to join the ranks of the “best practices” gurus. He, along with a few of his colleagues at the National Center on Education and the Economy, has examined the education systems in some other countries with successful outcomes so that the U.S. can become similarly successful. Tucker coauthors the chapter on Japan, as well as an introductory and two concluding chapters. Tucker’s collaborators write chapters featuring Shanghai, Finland, Singapore, and Canada. Their approach to greatness in American education, as Linda Darling-Hammond phrases it in the foreword, is to ensure that “our strategies must emulate the best of what has been accomplished in public education both from here and abroad.”

But how do we know what those best practices are? The chapters on high-achieving countries describe some of what those countries are doing, but the characteristics they feature may have nothing to do with success or may even be a hindrance to greater success. Since the authors must pick and choose what characteristics they highlight, it is also quite possible that countries have successful education systems because of factors not mentioned at all. Since there is no scientific method to identifying the critical features of success in the best-practices approach, we simply have to trust the authority of the authors that they have correctly identified the relevant factors and have properly perceived the causal relationships.

But Surpassing Shanghai is even worse than the typical best-practices work, because Tucker’s concluding chapters, in which he summarizes the common best practices and draws policy recommendations, have almost no connection to the preceding chapters on each country. That is, the case studies of Shanghai, Finland, Japan, Singapore, and Canada attempt to identify the secrets to success in each country, a dubious-enough enterprise, and then Tucker promptly ignores all of the other chapters when making his general recommendations.

Tucker does claim to be drawing on the insights of his coauthors, but he never actually references the other chapters in detail. He never names his coauthors or specifically draws on them for his conclusions. In fact, much of what Tucker claims as common lessons of what his coauthors have observed from successful countries is contradicted in chapters that appear earlier in the book. And some of the common lessons they do identify, Tucker chooses to ignore.

For example, every country case study in Surpassing Shanghai, with the exception of the one on Japan coauthored by Marc Tucker, emphasizes the importance of decentralization in producing success. In Shanghai the local school system “received permission to create its own higher education entrance examination. This heralded a trend of exam decentralization, which was key to localized curricula.” The chapter on Finland describes the importance of the decision “to devolve increasing levels of authority and responsibility for education from the Ministry of Education to municipalities and schools…. [T]here were no central initiatives that the government was trying to push through the system.” Singapore is similarly described: “Moving away from the centralized top-down system of control, schools were organized into geographic clusters and given more autonomy…. It was felt that no single accountability model could fit all schools. Each school therefore set its own goals and annually assesses its progress toward meeting them…” And the chapter on Canada teaches us that “the most striking feature of the Canadian system is its decentralization.”

Tucker makes no mention of this common decentralization theme in his conclusions and recommendations. Instead, he claims the opposite as the common lesson of successful countries: “students must all meet a common basic education standard aligned to a national or provincial curriculum… Further, in these countries, the materials prepared by textbook publishers and the publishers of supplementary materials are aligned with the national curriculum framework.” And “every high-performing country…has a unit of government that is clearly in charge of elementary and secondary education…In such countries, the ministry has an obligation to concern itself with the design of the system as a whole…”

Conversely, Tucker emphasizes that “the dominant elements of the American education reform agenda” are noticeably absent from high-performing countries, including “the use of market mechanisms, such as charter schools and vouchers….” But if Tucker had read the chapter on Shanghai, he would have found a description of a system by which “students choose schools in other neighborhoods by paying a sponsorship fee. It is the Chinese version of school choice, a hot issue in the United States.” And although the chapter on Canada fails to make any mention of it, Canada has an extensive system of school choice, offering options that vary by language and religious denomination. According to recently published research by David Card, Martin Dooley, and Abigail Payne, competition among these options is a significant contributor to academic achievement in Canada.

There is a reason that promoters of best-practices approaches are called “gurus.” Their expertise must be derived from a mystical sphere, because it cannot be based on a scientific appraisal of the evidence. Marc Tucker makes no apology for his nonscientific approach. In fact, he denounces “the clinical research model used in medical research” when assessing education policies. The problem, he explains, is that no country would consent to “randomly assigning entire national populations to the education systems of another country or to certain features of the education system of another country.” On the contrary, countries, states, and localities can and do randomly assign “certain features of the education system,” and we have learned quite a lot from that scientific process. In the international arena, Tucker may want to familiarize himself with the excellent work being done by Michael Kremer and Karthik Muralidharan utilizing random assignment around the globe.

In addition, social scientists have developed practices to observe and control for differences in the absence of random assignment that have allowed extensive and productive analyses of the effectiveness of educational practices in different countries. In particular, the recent work of Ludger Woessmann, Martin West, and Eric Hanushek has utilized the PISA and TIMSS international test results that Tucker finds so valuable, but they have done so with the scientific methods that Tucker rejects. Even well-constructed case study research, like that done by Charles Glenn, can draw useful lessons across countries. The problem with the best-practices approach is not entirely that it depends on case studies, but that by avoiding variation in the dependent variable it prevents any scientific identification of causation.

Tucker’s hostility to scientific approaches is more understandable, given that his graduate training was in theater rather than a social science. Perhaps that is also why Tucker’s book reminds me so much of The Music Man. Tucker is like “Professor” Harold Hill come to town to sell us a bill of goods. His expertise is self-appointed, and his method, the equivalent of “the think system,” is obvious quackery. And the Gates Foundation, which has for some reason backed Tucker and his organization with millions of dollars, must be playing the residents of River City, because they have bought this pitch and are pouring their savings into a band that can never play music except in a fantasy finale.

Best practices really are the worst.

Jay P. Greene is professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas and a fellow at the George W. Bush Institute.

Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems
Edited by Marc Tucker
Harvard Education Press, 2011, $49.99; 288 pages.

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology