Related Blogs

Earth & Environment

  • Speaking of Geoscience: The Geological Society of America's guest blog. "....scientists sharing ideas and information, asking questions, and dissecting issues across a range of earth-science topics..."
  • Real Climate: "Climate Science from Climate Scientists." The scientists who blog at this site are especially good at: (a) explaining the science behind climate-related news, (b) providing context for important, newly-published scientific publications.
  • Highly Allochthonous: focus on tectonics and continental deformation. This site posted an excellent and early account of the tectonic setting of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
  • Hypocentre: The blogger, Ian Stimpson, is a seismologist/structural geologist at Keele University, and the posts tend towards earthquakes and UK topics. In addition to the usual chronological archive, there is also a clickable map of his blogged-about localities.
  • "Earth science observations, news, photos, teaching, & commentary,"by Callan Bentley, of Northern Virginia Community College. Strong on photography of geologically interesting sites.

Interactions between Humans and Earth/Environment

  • The Oil Drum: "Discussions about energy and our future." Strong on "Peak Oil" and challenges of running a society/economy with diminishing energy supplies. Deeply engaged commenter community.
  • The Archdruid Report: "... perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society."Goes deeper into philosophy and has a more literary writing style than most of the other blogs listed here.
  • Climate Progress: "...climate science, politics, and solutions." Overlaps somewhat with Real Climate but slants more towards societal implications, and the voice is more journalistic.
  • Question Everything: "...How does the world work?"Topics covered include: biophysical economics, education, evolution, sapience, and systems science. The blogger, George Mobus, has a background in zoology, decision science, and computer science.

Communicating about the Earth & Environment

  • The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media: "...forum to foster dialogue on climate change among scientists, journalists, policymakers, and the public."Their take on "media" is broad, including museums, the arts, and music, as well as traditional news media and digital new media.
  • Columbia Journalism Review: The Observatory: "...online critique of science and environmental journalism."Covers a wider range of science topics and a narrower range of media types than the Yale Forum.
  • Skeptical Science: "Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism..." "Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation"

Teaching about the Earth & Environment

  • Earth Learning Ideas: "Innovative, Earth-related Teaching Ideas." This site posts a new hands-on teaching teaching idea every two weeks; most are low-cost, hands-on student activities suitable for middle school or high school.

Thinking (Cognition)

  • Cognitive Daily: "A New Cognitive Psychology Article Nearly Every Day." Readable summaries of recent research articles, leavened with humor. Covers a wide range of topics, especially strong on perception.
  • The Frontal Cortex: Well-written musings about the intersection between neurosciences and everyday life. The name comes from the part of the brain that is thought to control complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, and decision making, among other things.

Visualizations and Representations

  • Information is Beautiful: "Ideas, knowledge, issues, data--visualized." Original, creative visualization of all sorts of intriguing data and information. The blogger, David McCandless, describes himself as a visual and data journalist. Unfortunately not much data from nature, and little metacognitive reflection on how the visualizations are invented and why they work.
  • Visualizing Sustainability page from the blog "Computing for Sustainability." 282 diagrams or visualizations depicting the concept of "sustainability." Many variations of flowcharts and Venn diagrams, but also cartoons, tables, and much else.
  • High level architecture of earth system models page from the blog "Serendipity:" "... what has software engineering got to do with climate change?"