In this month’s GeoEd post, Sam Illingworth explores the pitfalls of being a scientist in the public eye. Following the recent acquittal of 6 geoscientists on manslaughter charges after ‘failing’ to predict the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, is it time we thought about improving how risk is communicated to the wider public? At the beginning of November of this year, six Italian scientists were acquitte ...[Read More]
The best of Imaggeo in 2014: in pictures.
From the rifting of the African continent, to mighty waterfalls in Slovenia, through to a bird’s eye view of the Glarus Thurst in the Alps, images from Imaggeo, the EGU’s open access geosciences image repository, they have given us some stunning views of the geoscience of Planet Earth and beyond. In this post we have curated some of our favourites, including header images from across our social me ...[Read More]
When Astronomy Gets Closer to Home: Why space weather outreach is important and how to give it impact
When the public think about natural hazards, space weather is not the first thing to come to mind. Yet, though uncommon, extreme space weather events can have an economic impact similar to that of large floods or earthquakes. Although there have been efforts across various sectors of society to communicate this topic, many people are still quite confused about it, having only a limited understandi ...[Read More]
Connecting Earth scientists and school students – Apply to take part in I’m a Geoscientist!
What and when Imagine a talent show where contestants get voted off depending on their skills in their area of choice. Then imagine that this talent show is populated by scientists with school students voting them off based on the scientist’s ability to communicate their research well. This is the basis of a recent EGU educational initiative that launched earlier in 2014, and that will return in 2 ...[Read More]