European science conversations
by the community, for the community
Farming contributes 10% to European greenhouse gas emissions, especially when current techniques are anything but eco-conscious.
The agricultural industry must conduct a massive overhaul of its current practices to avoid pushing the planet closer to permanent harm.
moja global is a collaboration among governments to develop software informing land use policies. It is also designed to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from the land sector. Thanks to its open governance structure, funders, developers and users, have their say in the development of the software. The private sector is rapidly adjusting to this opportunity to gain value from the process. According to an opinion piece by Guy Janssen, interim director at moja global, this should, in turn, inspire governments to explore how open governance can create a vituous circle leading to a similar multiplier effect for the common good.
Prioritizing green infrastructure like urban gardening, cities can better adapt to climate change and reduce their environmental impact.
Experts of various fields recognized that the future of smart city planning is multidisciplinary and that COVID19 crisis is an opportunity.
The COVID-19 brought disruption. As societies tentatively begin to reopen, the pandemic holds lessons for how the world faces the climate crisis threat.
This episode is inspired by recent research, which suggests that fracking may be responsible for the increase in atmospheric methane that has been observed over the past decade.
The need to live more sustainably and reduce our carbon footprint is weighing heavily on the population. What can individuals do to make an impact on the fight against climate change?
Climate change is a fact and all of us should be concerned about it. One of the main causes of climate change is the human-caused environmental impact, especially in developed countries like Europe or North America. A number of European companies and institutions are determined to give an example to the whole world and stop the increase of emissions produced on the continent. Transport accounts for a fourth of global CO2 emissions and it is one of the few industrial sectors where pollutant emissions are still growing. Our generation has a chance to stop this trend and build a better future for our children.
Science fiction authors are a motley crew, which includes a small number of professional scientists but also many others with no particular background in science or technology. EuroScientist published a short story called The Blame Game by Ian McKinley, who is a scientist involved in the rather esoteric area of radioactive waste management. In this story, a number of experts caught up in the chaos resulting from sudden environmental collapse argue about the root cause. The bottom line is that that there are so many interacting factors that it’s impossible to disentangle them. McKinley chose fiction as a means to talk to non-specialists about radioactive waste. He sets out to debunks the myths around the topic which stem from films, novels and, increasingly, comics, manga and anime, to get readers to ask themselves key questions about the topic.
This article is sponsored by
4th European Conference for Science Journalists
Find out how to become a sponsor
In 1973, a group of scientists published a report linking rising CO2 with global warming and some of the resulting meteorological patterns. It was one of the first publications on what would later be called ‘climate change’. Surprisingly, the report’s authors worked at Munich Re, one of the big players in the global insurance business. “Our industry […] started monitoring this issue long before the public even noted that there was a problem,” says Peter Höppe, head of the company’s Geo Risks Research division based in Germany. Höppe will join the roundtable “Climate: facts, figures and future” at the 4th European Conference of Science Journalism.
Climate change is on the mind of many scientists, beyond experts in the field. It is where science diplomacy has been at work in the month preceding the climate change conference, COP21, opening in Paris on 30th November 2015. But does science diplomacy make a difference? EuroScientist talks to various experts in the field and analyses the likely outcome of such talks.
Surveillance and security technologies do not exist in a vacuum. This is why it matters to study societal impacts and compliance with fundamental rights and values of citizens. Find out the perspective of Johann Čas, an economist from the Institute of Technology Assessment, at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in Vienna. In an opinion piece, he talks about the findings of one of his latest projects, SurPRISE, which consulted 2,000 European citizens on their views of different security technologies and surveillance measures. This lead to interesting finding on what is acceptable to them in terms of security versus privacy trade-off.
EuroScientist journal 
