Earth Scientists love the lightblueline

Although I'm still a social scientist, I've been working in a community of earth scientists, earth data providers, and geographers for almost a decade now, including leading scientists and information specialists here in Santa Barbara (Catherine Gautier, David Lea, Jim Frew, Mike Goodchild, Keith Clarke, Reg Golledge, to name just a few), and every one of them--from NASA Goddard to the Artic workshop in Seattle-- that I've talked with about lightblueline in the past year is excited and grateful about the lightblueline project.

Excited, because they really like how the message can be condensed into a simple story so that the public can realize the scope of what climate change might do in the centuries ahead. Grateful, well because they've been dedicating their lives to bring this information to the public and every time they read the news, the message is lost. It seems that the work of a thousand top scholars can barely hold its own in the press against the work of the paid skeptics.

Sure, there are a lot of new discoveries to be made, particularly in the area of regional-scale effects of climate change. The global picture has much less noise left in it.

This month, 400 scientists studying the Antarctic will convene at UCSB. Lightblueline hopes to get their opinions about the project. Not that that would hold any weight against the skeptical blogs, but it certainly will with the people of Santa Barbara who like their information straight up with a dash of fact.

It can't be said too often that lightblueline is ART. It is temporary, but then so is our chance of stopping dangerous climate change. Scientists are getting tired of shouting and not being heard. That's why they are excited about lightblueline... what's your reason?