THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE YOULL SEE IS THE LIVE BLOG.

Content We will live blog major climate talks and political moments as they happen, whenever they happen. When California ratifies emissions targets, or G.E. lays off workers because of an upturn in global fuel prices, the blog will be active, pulling together information from the digital zeitgeist and moderating comments. When air pollution spikes in downtown LA, or Obama makes a key note address on climate change, the blog will host tweets, Flickr photos and Youtube clips, along with short-form analysis from our resident experts from partner publications. As the blog develops its influence, so too will our most-trusted social media voices. Just like how knowledgeable Twitter-users in Tokyo like @timeouttokyo rose to guide international coverage of the 9-magnitude earthquake, we will begin to host conversations from our most-informed, most entertaining fans. Here are some examples of good-looking live blogs that all use social media:

Ill curate digital bits and scraps reporters just cant get to. These daily crumbs might be too small or havent yet developed into a full story. But they are interesting nonetheless: launches, lunch-sightings, memes and reactions. A MoJo reporter is on their way to cover a story? Ill let our readers know right away, with a pic and a tweet. One of our reporters is speaking at a big event? Same deal. The editorial arc of our publication will be longer than each single article, it needs to be. Think of it as being alive; balance and fairness will be achieved over a day, or as principle voices and sides develop. Actually, think of it like radio. Over the course of a day or a week, all sides will be presented. As always, Climate Desk will feature the best climate reporting from our partners in an all-in-one stream. Feature photos are presented in a slide-bar, giving readers an instant snapshot of which publications are promoting what. Articles are summarised and linked back to partners websites. Format Well do more with the format that the examples above. We will work with Storify to RESKIN the Climate Desk as a new live blogging platform customising Storifys current model with time stamps, tags and Facebook integration. 1. Each post embeddable in your own site, or viewed on a shared platform like Facebook. 2. Each post commented on using Facebook integration, building our potential FB audience. 3. Each post time-stamped, and tagged with subject/themes of our choosing.

AND INTRODUCING A NEW SERIES: LOCAL GLOBAL WARMING.

(Alternative names: Local Degrees; Taking the Temperature; The Local Weather.)

Every two weeks, I will crowd-source stories from LOCATIONS, PEOPLE AND INDUSTRIES that have risen to the top of the Climate Desk, to compliment our coverage of major issues. LOCAL GLOBAL WARMING is about climate change affecting people locally: businesses, big businesses, homes and individuals; it aims to present all sides of a local climate change problem. Too often opposition to climate change policies are articulated in broad, national terms; it most often coalesces around science denial, or resistance to economic change. But scratch the surface locally, and we get real, human opposition, rather than polarising debate. 1. The story will be crowd-sourced, using the live blog to target geographical areas, or industries. 2. The stories (posts) will be multimedia-based: slide shows, audio and video. 3. The stories themselves can be shared separately. An example I did a story this year about a wind farm outside Canberra for a new ABC TV series called Two On The Great Divide.

Wind is great, right? Sure, there was a good story about how alternative energy was changing a community. But through local reporting I discovered big opposition to the turbines, and not for the predictable reasons. Companies, encouraged by government contracts, were shirking due diligence. Basically, wind was being rammed through with no community consultation. This was a great local story, sourced through social networking, that painted the bigger story about climate change policy in Australia. Other segments I produced focussed on the local impacts of climate change: Climate change affecting the local work habits of seasonal fruit picking work in Victoria. Different fruits mean different skills (who knew?) and farmers mourned the good old days of single crop farming. A toxic mix of climate change and poo producing bad algae in the Murray Darling River System, Australias food bowl. A local sewerage plant was trying out a new way to manage sewerage, and its success was being rolled out down the river. Climate change and the change in migratory bird movements in upper reaches of Cape Tribulation at the very tip of Australia.