The Margin Notes blog is based on UA’s website and there is actually another one there (by Carolyn Steele called Career Sense which actually just put out an interesting piece for PhD holders that want to leave the academy and the need to “step down” in order to go up. So yes, an excellent resource for opinions as well as help for those making such choices now.

I’ve been away from the country since October and while I do my best to keep up with all things Canada, I only recently heard from a few colleagues that climate change skepticism is rampant and growing in Canada.

As you can imagine, I disagree with your last comment about valuing the “winners” like Canada in climate change. First of all, I don’t see Canada as a clear cut winner as the economic benefit for Canadians has severe social tradeoffs in the North where global warming is already changing people’s way of life. Secondly, most of these “economic benefits” are based on the same models that are decried as fallacious by climate change skeptics.

So yes… fair enough, you have me on this…it is polarizing. From one point of view, I can definitely say I am not against polarizing topics for this site, but the polarizing bit here probably isn’t the science (which I think we can agree states that the globe is indeed warming), nor does the main relevance fall particularly under the banner of “issues affecting science trainees”. From another POV though, the reason behind the CC article being on this site was to make people aware that scientists have been (and should continue to be) involved in the dissemination of their work and are very rarely if ever equipped with any skills of how to do this. It is especially important for two reasons in the CC debate: 1) it does have massive political, economic, and social consequences and 2) the doubt cast on the scientific community in recent months.

Thanks for the comment, positive remarks, and links to great sites though – always good!