Category: Climate Change
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Advanced fermenters
I recently dipped my blogging toe into the microbiome, lured there by Jon Turney’s book I, Superorganism. A few days ago, while trying to find an old email on a completely unrelated topic, I came across a comment by Denis Noble that he had sent me when we were corresponding about the microbiome in around…
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Basic science and climate politics: A flashback to 1989
We were trying to empty a room for refurbishment. So we rummaged through some old papers which included amongst many others: Karl Popper’s last paper entitled “Towards an evolutionary theory of knowledge” (with the enigmatic scribble: ‘Popper’s last paper is better than ‘Krapps last tape’), and a typescript from 1989 of a speech by Margaret…
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Hottest year on record
Media reporting on climate change has heated up a little bit over the last ten days or so, after an announcement by NASA and NOAA which read like this: “NASA, NOAA Find 2014 Warmest Year in Modern Record”. This was taken up by the media and, between 15 January and 25 January 2015, the phrases…
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Mind change: Some thoughts on the moral implications of metaphors
This quick post was prompted by Andrew Anthony’s article in The Observer on Susan Greenfield’s forthcoming book Mind Change and subsequent exchanges on twitter. Some background Metaphors are essential to the development of science and indispensable to science communication. I have been fascinated by metaphor for a long time, well before I became fascinated by…
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Climate fiction: The anticipation and exploration of plausible futures
A few days ago Paul Collins asked me whether an emerging fictional genre, namely climate fiction or cli-fi, could help engage people with climate change. I had to confess that I had come across this new genre but had not thought about it in depth. This type of ignorance and confusion has never prevented me…
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Evidence-based policy: data has its limits
This post was originally published on the blog of the Alliance for Useful Evidence, an open–access network of more than 1,800 individuals that champions the use of evidence in social policy and practice. “Aaarghhh! Politics and policy-making is so frustrating! We spend so much time conducting careful scientific analysis in all kinds of fields of enquiry. The results are published…
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Tracking fluctuations in climate change debates
Our ESRC funded project on climate change is coming to an end soon and we are just starting to prepare our end of award conference in Amsterdam. As part of our project we intended to monitor and describe fluctuations in debates about climate change. This aim overlaps with that of a project within the Leverhulme…
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Climate realism: What does it mean?
During the publications of the various IPCC reports between September last year and today, I have increasingly come across the words ‘realism’ and ‘climate realism’. Here are just some examples: In a BBC report Roger Harrabin says about a draft of the IPCC WG3 report that it “adopts a new tone of realism”. This echoes…
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Climate change on Twitter 2013: who tweeted what about the IPCC?
Climate change is a fiercely debated public issue, with much of that debate taking place in various online fora. In a new paper for PLOS ONE with Kim Holmberg, Iina Hellsten and Brigitte Nerlich – Climate change on Twitter: topics, communities and conversations about the 2013 IPCC Working Group 1 report – I explore the…
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Adaptation
There has recently been a lot of talk about adaptation in the context of climate change. The Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGII AR5), published last week, certainly referred to adaptation quite often. This is not surprising, as WG2 deals with “pervasive risks” posed by climate change and opportunities for…
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