HR: 13:45h
AN: ED12C-01 INVITED     [PDF]
TI: Writing About Polar Regions for the General Public
AU: * Walker, G
EM: gabrielle.walker@rbi.co.uk
AF: New Scientist, 151 Wardour Street, London, W1F 8WE United Kingdom
AB: The Earth's polar regions hold an extraordinary attraction for members of the general public. In recent years, tales of polar exploration and derring-do have come to the public's attention through films, documentaries, novels and biographies of the early explorers. But the modern scientific exploration of Antarctica and the Arctic remains much less accessible to the lay public, and is often relegated by newspapers and magazines to disaster stories-for instance the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, the disintegration of polar ice shelves because of global warming or even tragic accidents involving scientists themselves. As Features Editor of New Scientist, I visited Antarctica twice under the NSF science media program and made several research trips to the Arctic, each time writing magazine pieces about my experiences for the public. I have also recently published a popular book "Snowball Earth" about ancient ice, aimed at the intelligent lay person. I will discuss several different writing approaches for integrating descriptions of scientific research with the romance of Antarctica and the Arctic, in order to stimulate the imagination of lay people who are afraid of science, but ready to be captivated by ice.
DE: 1863 Snow and ice (1827)
DE: 6605 Education
DE: 9310 Antarctica
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting