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Climate Balance
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About this blog

My background

Hello and welcome to my blog — ClimateBalance.earth. My name is Adrian Reid, I'm located in Christchurch, New Zealand, and most importantly, I'm not a climate scientist. In fact I have zero training or background in climate science or any science for that matter.

But I am a technical writer by trade, and for the last twenty years I have been translating difficult technical ideas into easy-to-understand words for non-technical people. And that is what I am trying to do with this website.

Adrian Reid Why did I choose to write about the climate? It started with a journalism course I was doing a few years ago and we were discussing what was "newsworthy". One point we agreed on was that an event was newsworthy if it affected a lot of people. So I googled for events that affected hundreds of people, then thousands, or even millions of people. Finally I searched for events that affected billions of people. Climate change came back every time.

So if climate change is so newsworthy, why doesn't it make the news? That's an article worth writing in itself. And it also means that there are a lot of gaps in the public's understanding of the climate, myself included. Which is why I wanted to spend the time doing the research, writing the articles, to find out just what is happening with the climate.

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My background
Climate balance
Credibility
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Climate Balance

That led me to creating this website — Climate Balance. This is a reference to the balance between the sun's heat that warms the earth, and the energy that the earth reflects back into space, known as the Earth's energy balance. If the earth absorbs too much heat, we get global warming, which is what we have today.

But there's more to the name than that. The goal was to write objective and accurate articles, in other words — balanced articles.

I've also organised the site in a way which hopefully is balanced. On the one hand, there's the doomer articles about the climate disasters we could face in the future. On the other hand, I've included solutions to the warming and to reducing greenhouse gas. Somewhere between optimistic and pessimistic, there are also articles which consider the possibility of failing to solve climate change, in which case .. how can we survive the future?

It's no exaggeration to say it's not just the climate that is in danger, it's our future too. The downside to climate change is truly unimaginable. Or we could act to save ourselves. Our future is genuinely in the balance.

Credibility

But it's up to readers to draw their own opinions. I think everyone has learned by now you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. Still there are some sources that are more trustworthy than others. And that is what I have relied on for my articles.

The main sources I have used for these articles are scientific research papers, the press releases for these papers, and reports on these papers on hopefully trustworthy sites like the Guardian or Mongabay.

You can see the little number at the end of a sentence or paragraph which links to the source of the information I used, which you can go and investigate yourself. Like this one. All articles should be accessible.

And of course, a disclaimer. I've attempted to research and write the facts as accurately as I can, but naturally I'm going to make mistakes.

Contact

I don't have enough free time for a community with frequent interactions, but if there is a point that people want to discuss or ask about, contact me directly by email at adrian@climatebalance.earth.

Climate trolls are easy to spot and make fun of, so don't bother if that's your intention.

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