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A new office, awards, conferences, and tips from Al Gore. Here are some highlights from our past three months.
Follow us on Twitter at @Scientell for updates, or check out our blogs at http://scientell.com.au/blog.
Simon Torok and Paul Holper
Directors, Scientell
New Scientell office
Scientell is moving into the beautiful, historic Royal Society of Victoria building. Having an office there provides a city location for meetings, and will enable us to build on the interests in science communication shared by Scientell and the RSV. Our new details are:
Street address: 8 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000
Postal address: PO Box 5200, Hughesdale, VIC 3166
Email: info@scientell.com.au
Monash Business awards
Recently, Scientell won the 2016–17 Monash Business Award in the Micro Business category. We were delighted to have been nominated for this award – and we nominated ourselves, so imagine how excited we were to have actually won.
The judging process included making a short presentation at a lunch, where we met other small business owners. This led to us catching up with a number of them over the ensuing weeks to share business ideas and look for opportunities to collaborate in future. As any small business owner knows, success comes from relationships. The Monash Business Awards introduced us to lots of people.
Sponsored by the City of Monash, the Monash Business Awards promote business excellence through the recognition of significant achievements and innovations. The City of Monash, with 18,000 businesses and almost 200,000 residents, is one of Victoria’s most populous municipalities.
2017 Best Australian Science Writing
We’re proud to see one of our feature articles included in the upcoming book, The Best Australian Science Writing 2017. The book will be published by New South Publishing next month and will include articles from some of our favourite authors and journalists. The feature article included from Scientell was part of a series of stories that profiled Monash University’s expertise in interdisciplinary research to highlight their Masters course on Environment and Sustainability. The stories showcased high-profile thought leaders at Monash University, including interviews with international colleagues to demonstrate research impact and reach. The stories took a stance on current issues, and highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary research and solutions.
The original story is at https://www.monash.edu/news/how-to-talk-to-humans-in-a-million-years and you can find out more about The Best Australian Science Writing 2017 at http://www.newsouthpublishing.com/articles/best-australian-science-writing-2017-authors-announced.
65 CoastAdapt features
CoastExchange was an online forum run by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) as part of CoastAdapt, which we moderated. It ran from April 2016 through to June 2017 and had over 250 registered users. As well as providing a platform to discuss adaptation issues, there were daily news items, weekly feature articles and every month registered users submitted questions about coastal adaptation, which were then answered by adaptation experts.
The full set of 65 weekly feature articles is now available at https://coastadapt.com.au/coastexchange-feature-articles. The expert questions and answers have been included in CoastAdapt and are available at https://coastadapt.com.au/ask-the-experts---questions-and-answers.
Al Gore at Ecocity
We were fortunate to be invited to hear Al Gore speak recently at the Ecocity 2017 conference in Melbourne.
He asked, ‘must we change, can we change, and will we change?’ His presentation started with what is now well-known information about the changing planet. Indeed, he said we know global warming is happening because the hottest year on record now always seems to be the year we’re currently in.
Then things went very dark very quickly. Mr Gore explained that heatwaves in Australia are now five times more likely than in the past, and he showed videos from around the world of people, vehicles and aeroplanes stuck in melting tar as temperatures soared above 50 degrees Celsius. The audience was shocked by videos of disasters, near misses and dramatic rescues that brought to life the rise in extreme events due to human activities.
But hang on, he said, the hope is coming. We generate 16 times more wind energy than was expected a decade ago; 75 times more solar energy. In 2016, the UK generated more electricity from wind than from coal. Solar energy plus batteries will change the world, according to Mr Gore.
Unlike a decade ago, Al Gore is not just promoting the problem. He’s promoting the solution; he is promoting hope. He called for us to join those who use their voices, votes and choices to do something about climate change.
To read more, see our blog post at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/today-al-gore-reminded-me-when-someone-tells-you-something-torok.
Factoid – climate change
We are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than at any time in the last 66 million years, and 16 of the world’s 17 hottest years have occurred since 2001.
-- From Al Gore’s presentation to the Ecocity 2017 conference
Events
Scientell is managing media liaison for CleanUp 2017 – the 7th International Contaminated Site Remediation Conference, incorporating the 1st International PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) Conference. The global forum is hosted by the Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC CARE).
Our support includes running a secondary school essay competition – the best 1000-word essays on a safer, cleaner environmental future have received cash prizes and a trip to Melbourne for the conference dinner. And we're working with Mary-Anne Waldren from MAW Action (www.maryannewaldren.com.au) on an ABC Radio National broadcast from the conference venue, hosted by Bernie Hobbs.
CleanUp 2017 will be held at the Crown Conference Centre in Melbourne from 10 to 13 September 2017.
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