date: Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:25:33 +0100 from: Rob Allan subject: Fwd: Follow up to NY Times Editorial to: Fairweather Helen , Helen Fairweather , Andrew Lorrey , Lisa Alexander , Brönnimann Stefan , Gil Compo , Gil Compo , Chris Lintott , Scott D Woodruff , "J.G. Guzman" , Joelle Gergis , Joelle Gergis , Juerg Luterbacher , Phil Jones , Roger Stone , Russell Vose , Tom Ross ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Buchanan Date: Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 1:29 PM Subject: Re: Follow up to NY Times Editorial To: "allarob@googlemail.com" , "R.Crouthamel@iedro.org" , "rick.crouthamel@gmail.com" , "Catherine.Marzin@noaa.gov" , "egeary@globe.gov" , "Howard.Diamond@noaa.gov" , "rdd@ldeo.columbia.edu" Cc: "philip.brohan@metoffice.gov.uk" Rob. Very timely. Overall, I don't believe a letter to the editor would have the desired impact. I believe a better avenue would be to see if an article can be written for the Science Times section of the NYT, which appears every Tuesday. To that end, subsequent to our conversation two weeks ago, I have been pulling information together on various related items that have appeared in the NYT, and identifying the columnist who would be most keen to followup with an ACRE based story. I was hopefully going to pull this together this weekend and send over an initial information pack to him, also hopefully this weekend. The main thrust would be building off the CORRAL Cook BBC et al launching but introducing a US flair. As discussed before, I believe a good (populist) angle would be to have the story include the Franklin voyages/ACRE video along with Cook etc. Bringing it current and mainstream, would involve highlighting Ed's Globe Student Initiative (very timely with the October data collection). For reasons detailed in prior emails I also thought a good angle would be Stefan's Data Rescue at Home initiative (for added international flair) also aimed towards kids but when they are away from school. This has the always good angle of bridging gap of kids at school vs. home (like the entire concept of homework and getting them away from video games and into something productive). As before, this student driven initiative could have a good cross generational non-partisan angle of possibly Michelle Obama and Laura Bush (Laura as you may recall was behind the Franklin Legacy project from a few years ago of showing relevance of Franklin to today which is what the Franklin Climate Change video is all about). Perhaps GLOBEs connections to Gore can be brought in as well. As you know, I was also going to follow-up with Google in California (and maybe NY), about the data visualization angle and their overall interest. Not sure if this would be something to also make it into the NYT foray, but please send over whatever you have as update from the Exeter meeting that could possibly build upon the work that Philip, Stefan, and I have done. Let me know if this plan sounds reasonable. Would of course get the NYT person in contact with you, Ed, or whoever else if indeed they want to run with the concept. John ----- Original Message ----- From: Rob Allan To: Rick Crouthamel ; Rick Crouthamel ; John Buchanan; Catherine Marzin ; Ed Geary ; Howard Diamond ; Rosanne D'Arrigo Sent: Fri Oct 16 06:34:00 2009 Subject: Follow up to NY Times Editorial Guys, One of the people we're linking with to take ACRE's outreach and output with visualisations and such to include the social sciences and humanities at the Centre for e-Research at King's College London, suggested to me that we might want to respond to the recent Editorial in the NY Times on the historical logbook efforts by writing a letter to the NY Times explaining how it all fits into the wider ACRE picture. The NY Times Editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/09fri4.html?_r=1&ref=opinion) was only responding to the media launch of the results of the CORRAL project, which is one of several international efforts focusing on the recovery, imaging and digitisation of historical marine and colonial data that are all linked under ACRE. One of my colleagues behind the CORRAL effort always seems to miss the opportunity with such media events of couching or projecting it to point out how the historical logbook efforts fit into the wider scope of what ACRE is doing, so we miss out on 'airing' a much bigger story, and I think potentially wider impact. If it a Letter to the Editor was published, I'm not sure if it would have much impact, and I'd like to get your ideas as some of those 'on the ground' in the US as to whether you see this is something worth doing. I think my King's College colleague was wondering if doing this might give us a chance of appealing to someone benevolent in the US who might consider supporting ACRE and its activities. Rick, in this sort of same vein, did anything come of the possibility of getting an 'in' to Al Gore that you mentioned a while back? Could we 'use' the NY Times Editorial to get an 'in' to Al Gore or whoever so as to explain that so far they've seen only the 'tip of the iceberg' in what we are doing? Any and all suggestions are most welcome. Cheers, Rob. -- Dr Rob Allan, ACRE Project Manager, Climate Monitoring and Attribution Group, Met Office Hadley Centre. E-mail: rob.allan@metoffice.gov.uk ACRE WWW Page: http://www.met-acre.org/ Alternative E-mail: allarob@googlemail.com Phone: +44 (0)1392 886904 Mobile: +44 (0)7545 142536 Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681 International phone: +44 1392 886552 Address: Met Office FitzRoy Road Exeter EX1 3PB United Kingdom. -- -- Dr Rob Allan, ACRE Project Manager, Climate Monitoring and Attribution Group, Met Office Hadley Centre. E-mail: rob.allan@metoffice.gov.uk ACRE WWW Page: http://www.met-acre.org/ Alternative E-mail: allarob@googlemail.com Phone: +44 (0)1392 886904 Mobile: +44 (0)7545 142536 Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681 International phone: +44 1392 886552 Address: Met Office FitzRoy Road Exeter EX1 3PB United Kingdom.