Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Climate-neutral ecology conferences

There's a piece in the latest TREE on how to have a carbon-neutral conference. The reference list also shows that emissions caused by conferences are an issue that several people have thought about. Sample title: Are international medical conferences an outdated luxury the planet can’t afford? Yes.

None of this is exactly new. And while local food, paper plates and so on are all better than nothing, I still think the answer is fewer meetings, not offsetting. "Most importantly," write Oliver Bossdorf and co, "[meetings] provide ample opportunities for networking." Well, so does the web, and you can do that at home.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Rod Page's predictions for 2010

Rod Page at Glasgow is one of the most interesting and provocative thinkers/workers on biodiversity informatics - that is, how biological information is used online.

His many efforts include iSpecies, a zero-budget alternative to the over-budget, behind-schedule (according to this Science article, which is behind a paywall) Encyclopedia of Life.

His predictions for 2010 are worth a ponder.