Wow I'm special, huh!? Well, I know I'm not. But please let me tell you about something called "TH!NK".
TH!NK2 Climate Change is a 3 month blogging competition with a focus on UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) in December 2009. Some 90 bloggers from 43 countries, including all 27 EU Member states, India, China, Brazil and the USA, the world's biggest players in climate policy, will come together on the European Journalism Centre's thinkaboutit.eu platform, to exchange ideas and debate the issues of climate change. And I'm in it.
One of my ideas for participating was registering with ResearchBlogging.org and write a bit about climate science. That will help me keep my brain sharp and put a bit of traffic towards TH!NK. And it's something I, as a master of horticulture, can do better where some phd in European politics will probably do better on the COP15 details.
So far I did...
- Predictions of irreversible, unavoidable climate changes
About the huge buffer effect from ocean absorption of CO2. Disturbingly huge, actually. It strongly argues that there is pretty much no way we can work around a certain level of sea level rise and drying out of the subtropics. Possibly the strongest argument for geoengineering? - Food and climate change - save or doom the world while eating
Confirming some of the usual postulates about food choices. But also has some new stuff about different sorts of fish. Doesn't go into organic vs conventional food and keeps certain meats in the somewhat safe area for us. - Limiting warming to 2°C: How much more can we drill, baby?
Simple math, or what. How many more drums before we pass those two degrees? Well, not so simple at all. Predicting the future requires quite a bit of statistical confidence in more ways than one. But it is possible to show that we're in a bit of a hurry - which also makes sense in the light of the first article.
Next up is probably something closer to my core area: plant biology. (But I'm sorry to say I'm a bit disappointed with the response to the first three so I don't know how much of a hurry I'm in.)
There's also a couple of articles about scientific method in there. I did one. But if to recommend one - that isn't mine - check out Climate Change scepticism, science and reason by Italian Federico Pistono. Other than that: so far there is no science stuff in TH!NK that I can recommend (although there is some "scepticism" there that I cannot recommend).
But what I did notice was how great ResearchBlogging is for finding quick and often very good posts about recent science. The site's got tags (doh!) so clicked the Climate Science tag and enjoy. I have to highlight two:
- Byte Size Biology / the Methane Pulse
Good article about a gas we shouldn't forget about. And cool name for the blog ;-) - Observations of a nerd / Climate Change - what's worse than the heat?
Excellent article about changes in ocean acidity as CO2 levels climb. Really good.
Never heard of any of these blogs before. Thank you ResearchBlogging for meta'ing them my way!
Now... I have been meaning to do something here at scientificblogging.com for a while. But TH!NK at least temporarily stopped me. I am very eager to get your comments.
How does this site relate to ResearchBlogging in your opinion. Complimentary or competition?
What do you think of my stuff at TH!NK? Why isn't it that popular there?
How do you use scientificblogging.com to get what interests you the most? (Please don't tell me to navigate to the front page every now and then 1995 style.) Where is the equivalent of ResearchBlogging's Climate Science tag?
Well.. I'll be back ;-) Wish me luck "th!nking", I'll need it.
