New blog Planet Oz gets a slot on The Guardian

YOU might have seen or even read already that I’ve got a new blogging gig with The Guardian.

As you can see it features a lovely little banner and a picture of me which, I’m being told repeatedly, looks like it was taken by a police officer shortly before  charges were laid.

Anyway, the blog is called Planet Oz and it has a little homepage and RSS feed all of its own in the maelstrom of information that is The Guardian’s web-beast. There are already a couple of posts for you to chew over.

One – “How climate scientists are being framed” – looked at how some climate science mangling columnists and conservative opinistamakerpeople are trying in their writings to get us to associate climate scientists with things like sick children and totalitarian regimes. I sneaked onto the site’s front page with that one.

Another post – “Great Barrier Reef is at risk even if it doesn’t make Unesco’s danger list” – reviewed some of the recent research on the future of the reef. I argued that even if the United Nations does put it on its World Heritage “danger list” as it is threatening to do, the evidence suggests the reef is still facing a pretty dire future.

I’ll be hoping to cover a whole bunch of issues on the blog related to climate change, climate science denial, the environment, energy, sustainability and other such stuff. I’m still freelance so I’ll keep contributing to DeSmogBlog and hopefully I can keep writing for places like Green Lifestyle magazine and ABC Environment.

Planet Oz is part of a network of environment blogs which The Guardian has created in the mould of its science blog network project. In the same way that the science bloggers can write about “what they want, when they want” – within the boundaries of The Guardian’s own Editorial Guidelines – the environment bloggers should be given the same freedom once we’ve got our heads around the content management system and how not to fill our posts with garbled html code and pictures that don’t fit the screen.

Despite some confusion, Planet Oz and the blog network is separate from the approaching launch of Guardian Australia (hopefully though the very nice people at Guardian Australia will feature the posts).

The venture was actually announced back in December 2012 and I’m told about 800 people applied to be environment bloggers. Before the launch, some of the prospective bloggers had a little try out. I wrote about Australia’s love of exporting fossil fuels.

There are some cracking blogs already launched as part of the network and I’m kinda chuffed to be in their company. There’s Nafeez Ahmed’s Earth Insight, Jenni Duggan’s China’s Choice, John Abrahan and Dana Nuccitelli’s Climate Consensus – the 97%, Kavitha Rao’s Terra India, Canadian journalist Martin Lukacs’ True North, Emma Bryce’s World On A Plate and Africa Wild by Paula Kahumba. I think there are one or two more still to launch (I’ll add them here when I get them). UPDATE: Also now launched, fellow Aussie Alexander White’s Southern Crossroads, Peru-based David Hill’s Andes To The Amazon and  New York-based Sputh African film maker Adam Welz’s Nature Up.

Please go off and check them all out and share the posts if you like them. Even if you don’t like them, share them anyway and keep the comment threads healthy.

Author: Graham

Graham Readfearn is a Brisbane-based journalist. Go to the About page in the top navigation for more information.