Extreme weather talk: The sequel

Two years ago I published a blog post on extreme weather. This showed that unlike media reporting on climate change, which has generally been going down since 2007 (with some variations and a bit of an upsurge now, see Max Boykoff’s graph at CSTPR), media reporting on ‘extreme weather’ seems to be going up more …

Weather 1, Climategate 0

A short post sparked by this new paper linking public ‘belief’ in climate change with the weather conditions at the time they were polled (£). From the abstract: Belief that humans are changing the climate is predicted by temperature anomalies on the interview and previous day, controlling for season, survey and individual characteristics. Or, as David …

Short circuiting the language of Sandy – how to balance literalism and lucidity?

My previous post here at MSP reflected on comments in the BBC’s Climategate Revisited programme, suggesting that uncertainties in climate science have come to the fore in the years following the  publication of scientists’ emails. By being more open about such uncertainties, there may be a hope that some of the public trust lost after …

Weather or Climate? Enjoy or worry?

Gardening One afternoon last week I was watering some newly planted shrubs in the garden. The sun was warming my back and I was trying to enjoy that experience. However, there was this nagging voice in my head saying ‘drought, drought, drought’.  In the evening I did the washing up, which I usually also enjoy, …