YET MORE P3 BOOSTERISM
We seek to provide the missing journalism, the long view that is hopelessly missing from the obsessions of the press and the political sector.
That is what we will deliver on the front page, at a rate of a story or two per day. This site is above all an attempt to answer the question of what journalism would be doing differently if it weren’t hopelessly screwing almost everything related to sustainability. We intend to do it right.
As you can see we have a long way to go. We’re scrambling to prime the pump right now.
YOU CAN HELP
Prominent among our weapons will be crowdsourced journalism. We want some fraction of readers to participate in developing the stories and resources.
This is why we hope our comment sections will be something different than what you have seen elsewhere. The authors of the articles and the developers of the site will try to make the comment sections into actual progress-making conversation. In web jargon this is “crowdsourcing”.
Here’s a simple example of a crowdsourcing opportunity. We would like to provide a resource page categorizing and linking to the best online resources about sustainability.
Please chime in. The more the merrier.
AN INNOVATION
The author of an article on this site may prescribe a format for comments for that particular article. Let’s call it a “creative constraint”, inspired by the Danish film “The Five Obstructions”.
Here is
- our first experiment with constrained comments,
- and our first effort to draw upon our readership to help us construct useful information.
THE RULES
A comment to this article should have one of three forms:
a) anything you want, preceded by the word “COMMENT” in all caps.
COMMENT: <comment text> (anything you want, really, including suggestions as to how to improve the data structure )
EXAMPLE:
COMMENT: “I am adding a whimsical comment”
b) a link to a single site as follows:
SITE NAME: <name>
SITE URL: <site URL>
SITE FEED: <full-text-RSS-feed if known>
TYPE OF SITE: <one of ACADEMIC, ADVOCACY, GOVERNMENTAL, INDIVIDUAL, JOURNALISTIC, SOCIAL>
SPIN: (optional) <free form, a description of the philosophy of the site>
FORMAT: <one or more of DATA, ARTICLES, BLOG>
EXAMPLE:
SITE NAME: In It for the Gold
SITE URL: http://initforthegold.blogspot.com
SITE FEED: http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
SPIN: This guy is a jerk
FORMAT: BLOG
c) as with b, with recommended changes. All fields except URL are optional. Add or change anything, typically SPIN:
MODIFY
SITE URL: <site URL>
other fields…
EXAMPLE:
MODIFY
SITE URL: http://initforthegold.blogspot.com
SPIN: He sometimes comes up with interesting stuff though
SITE NAME: RealClimate
SITE URL: http://www.realclimate.org
SITE FEED: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/feed/
TYPE OF SITE: ACADEMIC
SPIN: climate scientists speak out
FORMAT: BLOG
SITE NAME: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
SITE URL: http://www.ipcc.ch/
SITE FEED:
TYPE OF SITE: GOVERNMENTAL
SPIN: the official consensus
FORMAT: ARTICLES REPORTS
COMMENT: Help!
SITE NAME: Arctic Sea Ice Blog
SITE URL: http://neven1.typepad.com/blog
SITE FEED: http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/atom.xml
TYPE OF SITE: JOURNALISTIC
SPIN: reports of news and data concerning Arctic sea ice mainly with community-based, shared knowledge
FORMAT: BLOG
SITE NAME: Sustainable Agriculture Network
SITE URL: http://sanstandards.org/sitio/
SPIN: Biodiversity & conservation collective
FORMAT: ARTICLES REPORTS NEWS
COMMENT: need a “suggestion” box, for suggestions other than site links. BTW, where is the years-old (American Progress?) article on how environmental policies enacted typically turn out to be far cheaper than predicted? I can’t find it – and IMO it’s a crucial resource.
(re my “where’s the article” query, never mind:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=polluted_data )
KEYSTONE
TITLE: The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science
AUTHOR: Chris Mooney
URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney
FORMAT: magazine article
DESCRIPTION: “How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.” Motivated reasoning.
SITE NAME: The Discovery of Global Warming
SITE URL: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
SITE FEED:
TYPE OF SITE: ACADEMIC
SPIN: Spencer Weart’s book in electronic form, frequently updated.
FORMAT: ARTICLES
SITE NAME: Skeptical Science
SITE URL: http://www.skepticalscience.com/
SITE FEED: http://www.skepticalscience.com/feed.xml
TYPE OF SITE: ADVOCACY, SOCIAL
SPIN: Explaining climate change science, rebutting global warming misinformation. Handy responses to the most frequently raised “skeptical” claims.
FORMAT: ARTICLES, BLOG
SITE NAME: Grist
SITE URL: http://www.grist.org/
SITE FEED: http://feeds.grist.org/rss/gristfeed
TYPE OF SITE: ADVOCACY, JOURNALISTIC, SOCIAL
SPIN: Environmental news and commentary with a wry twist since 1999. Some good coverage of political decision-making – and obstructionism – on climate, energy, and more. Take some articles with a grain of salt though.
FORMAT: ARTICLES
SITE NAME: Climate Progress (Joe Romm)
SITE URL: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/issue/
SITE FEED: http://thinkprogress.org/rss-feeds/?c=52
TYPE OF SITE: ADVOCACY, JOURNALISTIC, SOCIAL
SPIN: Generally science-based, sometimes overstated, always passionate discussion of news and events in climate and energy.
FORMAT: ARTICLES
COMMENT: If you have a bunch of sites to add, feel free to make a Google spreadsheet or a .csv spreadsheet and share it with mt@planet3.org
COMMENT: Anna’s soliloquy adds another sort of resource, the KEYSTONE, being an essay or book that substantially advances the discussion. Such a resource may be listed separately from a website which includes it. If it’s a book that’s not apparently online, use its Amazon link or its ISBN.
SITE NAME: Biochar Discussion List Web Site
SITE URL: http://biochar.bioenergylists.org/
SITE FEED: none available
SPIN: This is where all things biochar are collated, reported, linked and discussed. There is a focus on agricultural production before carbon sequestration.
FORMAT: DIGEST
SITE NAME: REAP Canada
SITE URL: http://reap-canada.com
TYPE OF SITE: Academic, advocacy
SPIN: strong on detailed analysis of life cycle impacts of varying agricultural practices, including biochar, variius biofuels, no-till, etc.
FORMAT: articles
SITE NAME: The Daly News
SITE URL: http://steadystate.org/learn/blog/
SITE FEED: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DalyNews
TYPE OF SITE: ACADEMIC, ADVOCACY, SOCIAL
SPIN: Articles for the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) written by various economists, such as Herman Daly
FORMAT: BLOG
COMMENT: The front page looks nice for browsing, but for finding stuff I find it easier to look at a chronological list like the ones at the bottom of this page. Maybe a link to lists on the front page?
[We are working on various indexing and archiving schemes. So far there is not much more than fits on the front page. -mt]
SITE NAME: Resilience Alliance and Resilience Science
SITE URLs:
http://www.resalliance.org/ http://rs.resalliance.org/ http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/
SITE FEED: unknown
TYPE OF SITE: Academic
SPIN: All about system resilience, with special application to sustainability of socio-ecological systems, from folks who have thought as long and hard about it as anyone.
FORMAT: Web pages and associated blog and online journal
SITE NAME: SmartPlanet
SITE URL: http://www.smartplanet.com
SITE FEED: http://www.smartplanet.com/rssfeeds?tag=footer (multiple feed options)
SPIN: Planet 3.0 on corporate steroids
FORMAT: Featured stories, blogs, weekly “highlights” email
Might be worth considering their categories and “shadowing” them?
SITE NAME: Gapminder.org
SITE URL: http://www.gapminder.org/
SITE FEED: http://www.gapminder.org/feed/
SPIN: Hans Rosling’s site. Main site has heaps of goodies on it – great stuff for thinking through growth and development.
FORMAT: Shop window site and blog
COMMENT: Feel free to add any resource from my list there
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/tagged/a-resource
Reformatting everything is too much for me.
SITE NAME: The Azimuth Project
SITE URL: http://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/HomePage
SITE FEED: http://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/feeds
TYPE OF SITE: PROTO-ACADEMIC
SPIN: The Azimuth Project is an international collaboration to create a focal point for scientists and engineers interested in saving the planet. Our goal is to make clearly presented, accurate information on the relevant issues easy to find, and to help people work together on our common problems.
FORMAT: WIKI
SITE NAME: From a Glaciers Perspective
SITE URL: http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/
SPIN: Naked glaciers.
FORMAT: Photo blog.