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17 September 2021
#AntarcticLog: The importance of stories
By now I shouldn’t be surprised — just grateful — at the way certain stories have broad appeal. I’m beginning to learn to trust myself — that stories and images that appeal to me will affect others too. Maybe not the same way as they affect me, but in the way of individual people wherever they are. For example, this one, featuring Mother Earth.
10 September 2021
#AntarcticLog: Caring for one ocean
The idea of the seven seas is a romantic notion; every ocean on Earth is one ocean. What happens in one part of the ocean system — say the melting of glacial ice into the Southern Ocean — impacts the rest. Likewise, the global warming causing glaciers to melt comes from an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that makes the ocean warmer — and more acidic.
8 September 2021
Blogging for Science Unsealed
For six years, I participated in one of the most impactful science communication endeavors I’ll ever embark on: I ran Science Unsealed, the blog from the Illinois Science Council. The ISC aims to give folks an opportunity to explore their scientific curiosity, and the blog was my opportunity to further their mission. Besides educating the public, running Science Unsealed did something extra for me: it helped me discover my passion for science writing.
3 September 2021
#AntarcticLog: Melting glaciers
The most vulnerable part of the Antarctic Ice is the Thwaites Glacier, part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Could it melt? Yes — and it’s likely that it has, under different conditions many years in the past.
24 August 2021
#AntarcticLog: Science Education
Unlike many people in the sciences, I didn’t have much formal education myself. Much of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned on my feet, by wandering around behind scientists, watching and asking questions. All the more reason that the moment I first walked into the science classroom at my middle school looms large in my mind.
4 August 2021
#AGURocks: Soon May the Kennicott Thin
We arrived in the small town of McCarthy, Alaska in early June 2021 to quantify the retreat of the Kennicott Glacier just up the valley. As part of a project under direction of Dr. Regine Hock, formerly at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and now at the University of Oslo, we measured glacial melt and installed weather stations on debris-covered ice, bare ice, and high up in the mountains.
2 August 2021
Astrobiology Studies for Kids (ASK)
This summer, something beautiful and unique took place in the STEM education world. Run by Blue Marble Space Institute of Science (BMSIS), an online Astrobiology Studies for Kids (ASK) program invited undergraduate students from all over the world to discuss astrobiology with dozens of pre-teens. The topics ranged from exoplanets, planetary geology, and ocean worlds to space fungi, astrovirology, and cyborgs.
26 July 2021
Community Science as a Method of #SciComm and #SciPol
Are you interested in breaking down jargon in your scientific field to be more inclusive of others? I found a community-oriented science project did just that. After receiving messages and questions about the state of water systems in Oklahoma during late spring/early summer of 2020, I knew there was an interest within my community to understand water quality.
16 July 2021
#AntarcticLog: Feeling Dumb and Doodling – My Superpowers
Every #AntarcticLog starts with a doodle: an image that comes to me while I’m reading or listening to or otherwise learning something; an image that leads to a story I’m about to tell in comic form.
9 July 2021
#AntarcticLog: Midwinter Celebrations
This June things seem special, and fragile. Might as well say hooray about what I can say hooray about. Here are a few celebratory #AntarcticLog to mark this June.
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.