Dawn's Blog and General News Items

COP 28 delivered a compromise deal that disappointed scientists but we are expanding opportunities for YorkU to participate in UN Climate Change spaces

  You may have stumbled across recent newspaper articles stating that 2023 was the hottest year on record since humans have tracked temperatures. Should you be alarmed? Without a doubt, yes, especially since scientists have long warned about these climatic changes if greenhouse gas emissions were not curbed. The planet's main hope for slowing anthropogenic […]

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf - Advent Botany Day 9

In the Washington Post, Michael Dirda recently listed 22 books that he re-reads. I also have a weirdly catholic list of books that I like to re-visit regularly. Of course, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is on my list. Legendary Dracula actor, Christopher Lee (1922-2015), who played Saruman in the films reportedly re-read them every […]

Advent Botany returns for 2023 with Botanical Book Gift Ideas for the holiday season

The popular Advent Botany blog series, launched in 2015 by Drs. Alastair Culham and Jonathan Mitchley of the University of Reading, has been on hiatus for the past two years. Correction: In fact, they first launched Advent Botany in 2014. The first post that I ever contributed was about Red Osier Dogwood. Alastair thought to […]

Getting back to blogging after a nearly two year hiatus

The covid-19 pandemic has been tough on science communication and social media. X (formerly Twitter) is a toxic virtual space, and the algorithms of Instagram make it difficult to see the content that I want to see. As well, we are now getting slower, less hasty research about the long-term  impact of the pandemic, including […]