The Climate Change Working Group held its first meeting on 27 March. If you want to know what happened, read Riccardo Biondi’s account of the key points discussed.
Why a Climate Change Working Group?
The Climate Change Working Group is completely unofficial since the MCAA does not allow thematic Working Groups. However, the topic is multi and inter-disciplinary and many researchers are interested in it, especially as so many policies from the last two decades have stemmed from climate change and global warming.
The story so far…
I launched the idea of this WG last year with the objective of creating a group within the MCAA, strong enough to submit a proposal at EU level. For some EU calls, participants’ CVs have a high impact on the evaluation of proposals. Being an all MC Alumnus could give an added value to a proposal. The WG wasn´t very active for a while – it is hard to discuss when you do not yet have a critical number of active members and it is especially hard to prepare a proposal talking to people who have never met before and who have no possibility to meet face-to-face.
At the last General Assembly, I met Luigi Caranti (Chair of Sicily Chapter and member of the Climate Change WG) and over a glass of wine, we decided to re-launch the WG, organising a joint meeting with the Sicily Chapter.
What happened at the first meeting
We did not know how many people would be interested, but surprisingly there were 10 persons participating in the meeting (mostly on Skype) and many others interested, but not able to attend the meeting that day. There are currently about 20 people interested in the WG, from eight countries. All are especially interested in the coming proposal, the number is increasing day by day. Their expertise covers a wide spectrum of areas, from atmospheric physics to philosophy, from archeology to mathematics, from dendrology to volcanology. Climate Change is a very broad topic and is regularly debated, and this makes the subject intriguing.
The Climate Change working Group needs you!
At the meeting we mainly discussed how to organise our collaboration, since it is impossible to meet, and what EU call to respond to. The proposed options were COST Action, Marie Curie ITN or EU Cooperation project. After a long discussion on the procedures and type of collaboration we want to establish, we decided that the Marie Curie ITN would be the most appropriate call for us, giving value to our CVs, giving importance to the fact that we are already MCA and providing funding simultaneously for research and networking. We are now studying the call documentation, collecting CVs and ideas and thinking about how to connect all the different fields into a meaningful proposal. The MC-ITN call should open in a few months and we would like to be ready with a good draft at that point. Everybody interested in the project is very welcome to contribute.