Saturday, February 17, 2007

That Could Have Gone Better

I saw this AP story today in the St. Paul Pioneer Press: Using tires for ocean reefs is a good idea gone bad

A mile offshore from this city's high-rise condos and spring-break bars lie as many as 2 million tires, strewn across the ocean floor — a white-walled, steel-belted monument to good intentions gone awry.

The tires were dropped there in 1972 to create an artificial reef intended to attract a rich variety of marine life and to free up space in clogged landfills. Decades later, the idea has proved a huge ecological blunder.

Very little sea life has formed on the tires. Some tires that were bundled together with nylon and steel have broken loose and are scouring the ocean floor across a swath the size of 31 football fields. Tires are washing up on beaches. Thousands have wedged up against a nearby natural reef, blocking coral growth and devastating marine life.


I have to give Professor McAllister credit. There are many academics who would have just pretended that their earlier concepts were still right, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Many would try to shift the blame to those who did the actual work or to who donated the tires, etc. Professor McAllister is not too prideful to say "My bad."

The scope of the error, which was not Prof. McAllister's alone obviously (there seems to have been a scientific consensus that this was a good idea), is mind blowing:


"They're a constantly killing, coral-destruction machine,"

[emphasis added]

So these tires, which scientists predicted would foster ocean life, didn't do anything of the kind. In fact, these tires not only didn't foster ocean life they positively destroyed it.


Science can be a very humbling discipline. It is supposed to be. This experience should act as a cautionary tale for those in other scientific research areas, such as climate change, who are convinced that they know exactly what should be done and precisely what the effects will be. If the history of scientific discovery is any guide they should realize that they more than liekly have something wrong, perhaps catastrophically wrong.

Unfortunately the CC crowd seems more intent on lecturing others with cautionary tales, instead of learning from them.


Tully said...

But they meant well! They had good intentions!

(Thanks for beating me to that one so I don't have to write about it. :-) )

The Iconic Midwesterner said...

The saddest part is even if neither of us covered the same story once we would each have dozens of these every year.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the sad part is how long it took the story to reach you in the upper mid-West. I read about this close to a year ago.


The Iconic Midwesterner said...

well it was published in the Pioneer Press. Maybe it came by stagecoach.