Just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump changed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 by limiting penalties for bird deaths across the country. Now companies can’t be penalized if they “inadvertently” affect bird populations, a huge change from the original Act from 100 years ago. This isn’t the only policy he’s changed. He’s rescinded Clean Water Act protections from thousands of streams and wetlands; significantly changed the Endangered Species Act to improve access for…

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Climate change is a complex concept to understand, given all of the positive and negative feedbacks in the climate system that interact to affect global climate. The best way to illustrate climate change is by looking at annual average global air temperatures, and how they’ve changed over time. This is also a good way for artists to illustrate climate change – by looking at the changes in annual average global air temperature. My first example…

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Last week I read a really intriguing and interesting book called “And Then We Grew Up: On Creativity, Potential, and the Imperfect Art of Adulthood,” by Rachel Friedman. Friedman is a writer (obviously), who works part time as a managing editor for a journal. She started playing viola when she was eight years old, and not only did she love it – she was talented at it. “As a shy, angsty preteen, the only time…

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Recently I had in interesting discussion on Twitter about neurodiversity and science communication. Someone had shared an article about how the academy needs to recognize science communication done by faculty, and I had commented that many scientists do this off the side of their desks and it would be great if they could be rewarded, either through annual merit increments and/or through tenure and promotion. This brought up an interesting response from Mel Cosentino, a…

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For Christmas this year, my sister got us a copy of In The Valleys of the Noble Beyond, by John Zada, a Toronto-area author (a signed copy and everything!). It’s about Zada’s search for the Sasquatch, mostly along the west coast of British Columbia in the Great Bear Rainforest, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, Rivers Inlet, Ocean Falls, and other isolated coastal communities. He follows leads from locals about Sasquatch sightings and experiences, and learns about…

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Since it’s a snow day today (at least 20cm of snow out there!), there’s no better time to talk about this fabulous book I just finished reading: The Ice at the End of the World, by Jon Gertner. It’s all about the history of Greenland exploration and science, starting with Fridtjof Nansen, Robert Peary, and Alfred Wegener, and going all the way to present day with Richard Alley, Koni Steffen, and others. I loved this…

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The other day my librarian friend told me that 2020 is equidistant from both 1990 and 2050. I had to let that sink in for a minute. The 90s seem so close to the present day, while 2050 seems as though it’s ages away. Strange how our minds work. The other reason it’s weird to turn the calendar to 2020 is because, during my scientific career, most of our modelling of the future response of…

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When I started this new web site, I personally resolved not to talk as much about mental health issues and to focus more on science communication and literature. However, this January marks the sixth year since I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder, and there are a few things I’ve learned in the past year that I think are important as we head into the New Year. I spent the first 3-4 years of my…

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I used to love Christmas when I was a kid. The anticipation building up to the day of, particularly opening a new door every day on the chocolate Advent calendar. The guessing about what gifts we’d find under the tree on Christmas morning. The Christmas rituals: getting up early on Christmas Day to start a fire in the fireplace and wait for the rest of the family to get up. The croissants for breakfast. And…

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A few weeks ago I talked about how we should communicate science communication to scientists using scientific approaches. As an example, the next week I featured a paper that outlined what kind of “reach” scientists had when using Twitter. Using a series of statistical techniques, the authors discovered that there were particular follower number thresholds, beyond which scientists started to reach a more diverse audience than just other scientists, and actually began to engage policy…

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