Thursday, August 22, 2013

Quotes that stick. #INT13

I'm back in Toronto now, and here are some quotes from talks that have really stuck with me. INTECOL was a great meeting, it was very interesting to hear about all the research from around the world. I hope all the attendees had a great time.


Sandra Diaz: “We just don't know enough to understand how functional diversity links to environmental change and ecosystem services.”

Erika Edwards: “big phylogeny, big trait data set analyses leave me feeling a little empty”

Erika Edwards: “carbon economy is part of the whole organism, not single traits.”

Joel Cohen: “Mathematics is like sex, you can talk about it but you shouldn't do it in public.”

Enrique Chaneton, Describing what happen during a study looking at the effects of grazing on ecosystem decomposition rates: “A volcano erupted during the study and sometimes shit happens, ….. the volcano killed many of the cattle.”

Carsten Meyer, Talking about global data availability in large databases: “Countries that under report are large emerging economies (china, India, Brazil, Russia) which could finance these efforts but for some reason do not.”


Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, ‘To get change we need to reach more than the brain, but the human heart”

2 comments:

Hans Castorp said...

I fully agree with Joel. At last sound science! For instance, physicists and geneticists never talk about mathematics, neither in private nor i public. This is the reason why their disciplines are more predictive than ecology.

Marten said...

...Hoegh-Guldberg's point is exactly what ecology needs now. The scientific basis is more or less there but we need to overcome a emotional threshold to reach for more now...otherwise its too late...