The Seas and Science

We know only a little bit less about outer space than we do about the depths of the oceans. OK, Maybe that's a little hyperbolic, and I'm all in favor of continuing the quest for answers to cosmic riddles, but I'm really excited about a coordinated global scientific effort to conduct a Census of the Seas.

Three hundred scientists from 53 countries are working on the decade-long census to learn the number of different species, the species' populations and where they live. So far, the Census of Marine Life includes 15,304 different species of fish and 194,696 to 214,696 -- there's disagreement among the experts -- species of animals and plants.

So far, the research is coming up with about 150 to 200 previously unknown species of fish and 1,700 new species of other aquatic animals and plants each year.

The scientists said they believe the oceans that extend across 70 percent of Earth's surface hold about 20,000 species of fish and up to 1.98 million species of animals and plants. Many of those could be basic and small life forms, such as worms and jellyfish.

Knowledge is power, baby. Here's the Census of Marine Life site. The front page is a little too visually distracting for my taste, but it's well organized and fascinating beyond that.

Perusing it got me thinking about Bruce Babbit's National Biological Survey from several years ago. I knew the absolutist property rights folks were freaked out by it and its kickoff coincided with Gingrich's revolution in 1994. I imagined the Republican Congress killed or at least castrated it. Guess I was right. Timely information seems rather scarce on the web. Is this their reincarnation? Any readers know anything more current?

Anyway, while stumbling about I found this article from last month's Washington Monthly about the history of the Culture Wars ™, manifested dangerously in our current Science-hostile administration. Good read; here's a tease:

Not long ago, President Bush asked a federal agency for evidence to support a course of action that many believe he had already chosen to take on a matter of grave national importance that had divided the country. When the government experts didn't provide the information the president was looking for, the White House sent them back to hunt for more. The agency returned with additional raw and highly qualified information, which the president ran with, announcing his historic decision on national television. Yet the evidence soon turned out to be illusory, and the entire policy was called into question. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, you say? Actually, the above scenario describes Bush's decision-making process on the issue of stem cell research.

[...]

The administration's stem-cell stand is just one of many examples, from climate change to abstinence-only sex-education programs, in which the White House has made policies that defy widely accepted scientific opinion. Why this administration feels unbound by the consensus of academic scientists can be gleaned, in part, from a telling anecdote in Nicholas Lemann's recent New Yorker profile of Karl Rove. When asked by Lemann to define a Democrat, Bush's chief political strategist replied, "Somebody with a doctorate." Lemann noted, "This he said with perhaps the suggestion of a smirk." Fundamentally, much of today's GOP, like Rove, seems to smirkingly equate academics, including scientists, with liberals.

Given the hardcore realism that you'd think would be so central to hypercapitalist ideology, the bankrollers of Republicanism resisting scientific opinion so rabidly just doesn't make sense to me. Ralph Reed's and Pat Robertson's objection I can fit into the puzzle; that makes sense. But the alliance with big biz just seems so unsustainable. I guess I just don't understand.

UPDATE: Oooh! Go here and cruise around, including the various image libraries. Specifically check out "Ceph Base" - it's all about octopi and I just love writing the word octopi.

It's the "Ocean Biographic Information System" and it's the public repository of all the data and photographs the guys at the Census of Marine Life collect, plus a lot more.