PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
4 December 2007
Contact: Grace Baynes
T: +44 20 7014 4063
E: [email protected]
Ruth Francis
T: +44 207 843 4562
E: [email protected]
Second Life climate change conference is Second Nature to NPG – and almost carbon neutral
Bali is not the only island that will be hosting a climate change conference this week. Second Nature, Nature Publishing Group’s (NPG) archipelago in Second Life, will host a series of talks to coincide with the UN climate change conference.
Three speakers are already confirmed, with more sessions expected to be announced in the coming days on Nature Network, NPG’s social networking website (http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/joannascott). The confirmed programme includes:
Tues 4th Dec, 6pm GMT, 10am PST, SLT
Tara LaForce, Lecturer at Imperial College London, on her research into carbon capture and storage
Tues 11th Dec, 6pm GMT, 10am PST, SLT
Dr Simon Buckle, Director of Climate Change Policy at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change
Thur 13th Dec, 5pm GMT, 9am PST, SLT
George Monbiot, Guardian Columnist and author of Heat: How we can stop the planet burning
All events are free and open to all. Second Life avatars can teleport to Second Nature via http://slurl.com/secondlife/SecondNature/218/213/28. For those who can’t make the events, all talks will be recorded and made available retrospectively online.
A debate has been raging about the carbon footprint of avatars in Second Life, currently calculated as approximately 75kWh per avatar per year[i], or less than the average American household would use in just three days[ii]. Estimates suggest that 75kWh of electricity produces just over 39kg of carbon dioxide (CO2)[iii], compared to over 1,200kg of CO2 per passenger generated by a round trip flight from London to New York[iv]. Joining the debate on Second Nature is certainly more environmentally sound than jumping on a plane to the Indonesian island where the official conference is taking place.
The Second Nature talks are by no means NPG’s only offering during the Bali conference fortnight. A pre-Bali podcast is already available at www.nature.com/climate/podcast, and a second podcast will be recorded in Bali and broadcast during December. During the conference, Olive Heffernan will be blogging from Bali on http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/. Nature News will round-up Nature’s 2007 coverage of the UN Climate meeting, and collect its previous coverage of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) activities, at www.nature.com/news/specials/bali/index.html.
Nature Reports: Climate Change (www.nature.com/climate), an online resource from NPG, provides ongoing coverage of the news behind the science and the science behind the news of global climate change. Complementing Nature's existing coverage of climate change, Nature Reports: Climate Change is available free of charge and updated continuously.
NPG’s archipelago of three virtual islands in Second Life, dubbed Second Nature, was established in November 2006. The islands are now covered in exhibits from scientists who have borrowed land on Second Nature to trial virtual collaboration. NPG is now focusing Second Life as a venue for events, and has been hosting a series of weekly talks since September 2007. Further events are planned for 2008, and will be announced on Nature Network.
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About NPG
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, dedicated to serving the academic, professional scientific and medical communities. NPG's flagship title, Nature, was first published in 1869. Other publications include Nature research journals, Nature Reviews, Nature Clinical Practice and a range of prestigious academic journals including society-owned publications. NPG also provides news content through Nature News. Scientific career information and free job postings are offered on Naturejobs.
NPG is a global company with headquarters in London and offices in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Delhi, Mexico City and Basingstoke. For more information, please go to www.nature.com.
Press contacts:
Grace Baynes
Corporate PR Planner
Nature Publishing Group, London
T: :+44 20 7014 4063
E: [email protected]
Ruth Francis
Senior Press Officer, Nature
T: + 44 207 843 4562
F: + 44 207 843 4951
E: [email protected]
[i] http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/avatars_consume.php
[ii] The average household in the US consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to Department of Energy figures. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html
[iii] and iv Formula and information taken from: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/envrp/pdf/conversion-factor...
