Welcome to Climate Feedback, a new blog hosted by Nature Reports: Climate Change to facilitate lively and informative discussion on the science and wider implications of global warming.
Launching in May, Nature Reports: Climate Change is a new online resource from Nature, dedicated to in-depth reporting on global change. In light of the need for greater understanding of and access to information on climate change, the new website will vastly extend Nature’s reporting on this issue of incalculable importance.
As its accompanying blog, Climate Feedback aims to encouarge less formal debate and commentary on climate science featured in our journals and others, in the news, and in the world at large. The blog will host the climate-related musings of editors of Nature and Nature Reports: Climate Change, as well as of a select group of climate scientists and policy experts. For details of our regular contributors, go to ‘Contributors’ on the blog home page. We will also host postings from other contributors outside of the core group from time to time. As Nature’s first exclusive climate blog, Climate Feedback will join the list of existing Nature blogs, which cover a diversity of subjects from neuroscience to science news.
Why the need for another climate blog?
Despite a twenty fold in increase in coverage of global warming over almost two decades in the UK (and a five fold increase in the US over the same period) (see papers by Max Boykoff) , climate change remains a low priority for the mainstream media. More importantly, climate change issues remain poorly understood among even the well-informed public. Mainstream coverage of climate change often leaves readers out in the cold when it comes to separating the known from the unknown, fact from opinion and even fact from fiction. And while the contribution of human activity to climate change is well-established, the extent and timescale of future changes and how to minimise and deal with these changes remain topics of huge debate.
Here at Nature, we have launched Climate Feedback with the aim of providing a forum for authoritative discussion on climate issues, hosting a balance of voices and a diversity of well-informed opinions. We will discuss the broader issues surrounding climate change, as well as cutting-edge climate science. Our goal is to provide a respected and trustworthy source of discussion and debate for a wide audience, from climate scientists to the scientific public.
Why ‘Climate Feedback’?
We have called our blog Climate Feedback as a tribute to the inherently complex feeedback mechanisms in the climate system that can diminish or amplify the effect of initial greenhouse warming, and which remain one of the least well understood components of climate change. Feedback occurs when one processes triggers another that then has a positive or negative influence on the first. Similarly, we hope that postings on this blog will generate feedback to which we can respond, generating dynamic discussions on climate issues.
What will we host on the blog?
-Discussion of the weekly content of Nature Reports: Climate Change and of our monthly podcasts
-Comment and analysis on climate science in our journals, other journals and in the news
-Musings from us on meetings and conferences we are attending
-Details of upcoming events, books, interesting sites, articles etc.
-Notes from climate scientists in the field ….updating us with their in situ observations
-And much more, of course!
We will be posting to the blog frequently, so do check in regularly to see what’s new. Please join in our discussions by leaving comments. If you want to contact us, email climatefeedback at nature dot com. We look forward to hearing from you!