Next week there will be a conference on Climate Change on Nature’s home in Second Life, the Elucian Islands. I would write more, but the press release says it all and it’s Thanksgiving! So:

From the Nature Press Office:
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/elucian.pdf

The Elucian Islands in Second Life are playing host to a virtual climate change conference in December. Speakers will present live from Imperial College London and Stanford University in California, and researchers and university students will attend from the UK and the United States.

Co-organised by Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and Imperial College London, the one-day Virtual Conference on Climate Change and CO2 Storage will take place on 3 December 2008 from 4-7pm GMT (11am-2pm Eastern, 8-11am Pacific).

Martin Blunt, Head of the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Imperial College, and Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of the Grantham Institute, will speak live from Imperial College London, UK. Lynn Orr, Director of the Global
Climate and Energy Project at Stanford, will give his talk live from Stanford University in California. The talks will be live-streamed into Second Life.

The conference will be ‘attended’ by researchers and students from universities including Imperial College London, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University and the University of Wyoming. Talks will be screened from Second Life via video screens into lecture theatres on campus, and attendees will be able to ask questions via a representative avatar in Second Life. Individuals are also welcome to join the conference in Second Life, and should register in
advance as space is limited.

“We are proud to be hosting this conference on the Elucian Islands,” said Kristen French, Head of Community Business Development at NPG. “With economic uncertainty and concern about carbon emissions, virtual environments like Second Life offer a valuable way for people from across the world to meet ‘face-to-face’ to discuss this global issue.”

A broad-based conference covering all aspects of climate change and CO2 storage research, the presentations will be accessible to researchers and students interested in learning more about CO2 storage. There will also be a technical poster session on all aspects of climate change, with posters available to view after the conference. The programme has been put together by Tara La Force, Lecturer at Imperial College London who spoke at the virtual event series on climate change NPG hosted in Second Life in 2007.

Attendance is free, but registration is required. To register send your contact details to Erica Thompson at e.thompson07@imperial.ac.uk and Tara La Force t.laforce@imperial.ac.uk

For those who can’t make the event, all talks will be recorded and made available retrospectively online.