Shifting winds blew this week across Google's ethical standing among several prominent practitioners and followers of good science and concerned environmentalism, blowing this way and that a-way. Yesterday a tracker post related the angry disappointment in Google by several such people. They do not care for Google playing host last spring to a fund raising event at its DC lobbying offices for climate skeptic supreme Sen. James Inhoff. They wrote a stiff letter to Google's top people – I started to call them suits but then realized that at Google HQ few wear business suits.
While doing that post I held back on an irony. Also out yesterday was a news story right in my backyard that related a contrary facet of Google's persona. But it was behind a paywall. I have a digital subscription but the barricade would hobble any reference I might have made to it. There was hope however it would emerge quickly into the open. Some other outlets covered this news as well, but I wanted to include this one. For 26 years I worked with – and am still learning the trade from – its writer. So I waited. It didn't take long to break from cover.
- San Francisco Chronicle – David Perlman: Google's voyage to botttom of the sea's dead zone ; This is straight-ahead science writing about a marine voyage. The twist is that the research vessel, named Falkor, is operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. That is, Google honcho Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy, through their family foundation, paid $94 million to transform a German fishery patrol vessel into a floating laboratory. The ship came this week to SF Bay to dock at the new waterfront home of the famed Exploratorium. Yesterday her crew and complement headed for the waters off British Columbia to study a seasonal patch of low-oxygen water, a 'dead zone.' That's important science that may bear on where climate change is taking the world ocean. Also on the itinerary is study of active volcanic vents.
Perlman has been at the Chron continuously for more than 60 years, has covered science since 1958, and when WWII broke out was a copy boy there. So he knows how to spin a yarn. In this one he picks out a few details that set this 272-foot vessel apart from standard, government-issue or federally subsidized (as at Scripps, Woods Hole, etc.) equivalents. Such as, aside from nice laboratories and cool equipment inside and on deck for dropping overboard to gather and measure stuff, the R/V Falkor has a library fitted out in full bling corporate style "decorated not only with ocean charts but with color-coordinated pillows on upholstered benches." Elsewhere are down-filled bunks and a fancy sauna. That's posh. I once spent time at the National Science Foundation's Palmer Research Station in Antarctica. Somebody had jury rigged a fabulous hot tub on a balcony walkway for musing, wine or beer in hand, upon Marr Glacier's calving edifice under the slanting sunlight of the austral summer evening. But I don't think a hot tub was in NSF's original specs for the place. The Falkor sauna is built-in. Another distinction: while the ship's research is peer-reviewed and may have federal grants behind some of it, once researchers step on board all their research costs, meals, berth, the whole deal, are included.
So, if anybody tells you he or she is putting Google down in the "willing to be evil" bin, suggest that the picture merits deeper inspection. To be sure, this ship sails under the pennant of a foundation separate from Google. But Schmidt is its chairman. When his family foundation spends big money on ocean research that has some penumbral influence on public perception of the place where he made that money. Headlines on news stories sure don't suggest much of a gap between Schmidt's and Google's money.
Of some interest, given the quantity of private philanthropy at work here, is that one of the research projects aboard the next leg reflects the interests of another tech and science-savvy entrepreneurial mind as expressed through the J. Craig Venter Institute.
Perlman's is not the only coverage of the visit, although some outlets just rewrote or credited his story as their source. Others did it the old fashioned way – they reported it. Examples:
- Forbes – Kerry A. Dolan: Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's Falkor, A Dream Ship For Ocean Researchers, Makes San Francisco Debut ; As fitting for a Forbes article, this one emphasizes how much more efficiently private philanthropy obtained and rebuilt this ship than could any federal requisitioning. It also goes light on climate change as a target of its research. The story also appears to get the ship's schedule wrong. It says it is heading for Hawaii. Other news accounts and the institute's 2013 research plan (see Grist) say next up is Vancouver, BC.
- AP – Google-funded sea research vessel sets sail ; Rewritten and sourced from SF Chronicle.
- And an older one… Washington Post (May 27) Mark Schrope: Wealthy backers support scientific efforts to explore deep seas ;
Grist for the Mill: Schmidt Ocean Institute, Falkor 2013 research plan ;
Leave a Reply