Rename to "Earth Sciences"

Question

Proposal: Geoscience

Rename to:

Earth Sciences

Rationale:

Geoscience has connotations of geology and geography (all to do with the surface of the planet, or what's under it. This could potentially turn off oceanographers or atmosphere scientists. (also, Geography is out of scope).

Earth sciences is a common department/faculty name for university departments that include geology, atmospheric science, and oceanography. It doesn't explicitly include environmental sciences, but it certainly implicitly includes most parts of environmental science that aren't biology of ecology-related (for which we already have biology.SE).

This is also an alternative to the name proposed on the merge discussion: Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. I believe Earth Sciences is better, because it is more concise, less tautological (the atmosphere is surely part of the earth), and less ambiguous (biology isn't even potentially included).

Answer 1

No

It's a community wiki, add your reasons here.

• The existing Geoscience proposal had after 9 months only garnered 39 followers. Given the two-year timeout on new-site proposals, an expanded Earth Sciencse proposal is unlikely to make it through commitment within the remaining 15 months: it would be better to start a new proposal now, and try to get existing followers of the various related proposals to join the new one.

• Geoscience is broader than Earth Sciences. It includes space and planetary sciences, solar physics, etc. Just look at the vast range of topics covered by the American Geosciences Union and the European Geosciences Union.

Answer 2

Yes

It's a community wiki, add your reasons here.

• The proposal already exists and has followers and sample questions, so it gives a kernel to build on

Answer 3

I've changed the name to Earth Science largely because we now have three places for asking planetary science questions outside of Earth:

• Physics:

  Explanations of observed physical or astronomical phenomena

• Space Exploration:

  Science discovered by space probes

• Astronomy:

  Planetary Science and Celestial mechanics

Astronomy further notes:

Earth science, unless directly related to phenomena observable on other celestials, Solar system in general of which Earth is a constituent part, or as an origin of observational astronomy where its movement, local and global phenomena might affect observations and measurements in any way, is off-topic on Astronomy but can be asked on Physics now or Geoscience once this Stack Exchange site proposal reaches public beta.

Earth Science is a name intended to focus the site on the topic space that is unique to the site: geology, oceanography, meteorology, climatology, and environmental studies. All of these (with the possible exception of the last) have application on other planets and I hope people will ask such questions. But what makes this proposal distinctive is our home planet's amazing combination of a rocky surface, pockets of water, an atmospheric shield, and life infusing all three layers.

So my suggested scope:

• Physics—theoretical understanding of physical systems including those on Earth.
• Space Exploration—practical application of physics to discover the universe outside of Earth.
• Astronomy—understanding of physical systems outside of Earth.
• Earth Science—understanding of physical systems on Earth.

Some questions might be ontopic on all four sites and that's ok. But I hope that Earth Science will develop its own culture and approach to questions that will make it stand out from the crowd. It should certainly be more practical in orientation than Physics and more grounded (sorry!) than Astronomy or Space Exploration.