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21 January 2022
#AntarcticLog: Giant glaciers & robotic friends
My post last week included a big comic about Julia Wellner and the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC). It featured a tiny comic showing Ran, the Hugin AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) that would become the first robot to explore under the glacier.
7 January 2022
#AntarcticLog: Happy New Year!
New Year’s is a great time for a life review — a look at past, present, and future. First, here’s a peek at Antarctic auld lang syne, in the form of ancient penguins.
24 December 2021
#AntarcticLog: In appreciation of dogs
It can be far easier for furry, four-footed friends to cross treacherous Antarctic ridges and formations than people or vehicles. Time was, back in the age of the heroic explorers, dogs were helpful for transport, warmth, companionship — and sometimes, food.
17 December 2021
#AntarcticLog: To Antarctica and beyond!
An immigrant to England from India, Prem grew up among a multicultural group of friends, and experienced culture shock as he rose through the ranks of science. His organization works to ease this shock as well as to increase the numbers of minority folks in his field and in the field, to reduce the problem — and enrich science.
10 December 2021
#AntarcticLog: Introducing I Was a Kid!
There’s something truly thrilling happening in the sciences — an effort to increase diversity and inclusion among the ranks. Across our research institutions I see a new emphasis on supporting all, and inspiring more to target science for their own careers. Because I write and draw so much for young people, that’s where I’ve put my energy for the last year and a half, and now I’m ready to share it.
29 November 2021
#AntarcticLog: Happy Antarctica Day!
#AntarcticLog is a series of comics by Karen Romano Young. You can find the originals here. Still full from Thanksgiving? Then maybe you’ll be able to resist a continuation of the cake theme I began last week with my fruitcake comics from the JOIDES Resolution’s expedition to the Amundsen Sea, into which the Thwaites and Pine Island Glaciers are both flowing faster and faster… Pause. Take a deep breath. Time for cake. …
19 November 2021
#AntarcticLog: Fruitcakes in Antarctica
At times I have the excellent opportunity to go into the field with scientists and report out through the lens of #AntarcticLog comics. Here’s a sampling, ready for the holidays. Perhaps, like me, you are thankful for fruitcake? This one time when I went to Antarctica aboard the drill ship JOIDES Resolution, my children’s author/poet/photographer/baker friend Leslie Bulion sent me with a fruitcake.
5 November 2021
#AntarcticLog: Happy Halloween!
I’ll make no bones about it: I love Halloween. There’s something freeing about masks (even in pandemic times), costumes (this year my costume is a raccoon), and decorations involving our deepest, darkest fears and nightmarish stories.
22 October 2021
#AntarcticLog: Amal, Shackleton, & Nansen
Last week I posted my 200th #AntarcticLog science comic, about the 200 million people that the World Bank estimates will have to move because of the effects of climate change. That present concern is well represented by the journey of Little Amal, a giant puppet of a Syrian refugee girl who is currently on a march of her own.
15 October 2021
#AntarcticLog: 200 million displaced by climate change
It’s a week to celebrate for me: #AntarcticLog #200 just posted. Here it is. To acknowledge the moment, I looked for a topic that would reflect that number: 200. And what I came up with was sobering: the World Bank’s assessment of the number of humans due to be displaced by climate change. (And that’s just the humans.)
The Plainspoken Scientist is the science communication blog of AGU’s Sharing Science program. With this blog, we wish to encourage scientists to reach out to non-scientists and to do so with plainspoken discussion.