From Omicron to Omega: What’s in a name?
September 22, 2023
The last few years have been years of planetary upheaval. We have all lived through a Covid-19 pandemic and are, in fact, still living with it, and we have all felt the effects of climate change. To deal with these planetary events, we had to invent and learn new concepts and new names. Quite recently, …
Orange is the new bleak*
September 1, 2023
I was recently reflecting on the way extreme weather events manifest themselves in different colours. Floods are brown and ugly; there is brown flood water and then there is brown mud everywhere (more on that here). Wildfires are orange and, in a sense, beautiful; there are orange sunsets and sunrises, but what’s left behind is …
Global boiling
August 4, 2023
On 27 July Secretary-General António Guterres gave a press conference at United Nations headquarters. He spoke about climate change against the backdrop of widespread floods, terrestrial and marine heatwaves and wildfires unfolding around the world and in the context of new data coming in from the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate …
The climate speaks in words and pictures: Is anybody listening?
July 21, 2023
I can’t open twitter nowadays without being confronted by red-hot images of heatwaves, just like a few weeks ago it was all about wildfires, orange skies and smoke. The climate is speaking to us, indeed sending us smoke signals, from the air, the land and the water which are all alarmingly warm. This is not …
Climate change and health: Early and late warnings
February 10, 2023
Last week I saw various tweets from the Wellcome Trust announcing a new funding scheme that will support research on the impacts of #ClimateChange on human health, centring on communities most at risk (an announcement that by the way, was illustrated with a tryptic of photos of lone individuals dealing with a flood, a fire …
Making Science Public 2022: End of year round-up of blog posts
December 9, 2022
This is now the 10th time that I have written an overview of the blog posts I have published over the preceding year. Phew! How time flies. Strangely, this year has been quite productive. I have posted more stuff about Covid, of course, but also about monkey pox, as well as about climate change, gene …
Tipping point
September 16, 2022
Over the past 15 years or so, the use of the term ‘tipping point’ has exploded in the scientific literature. My current interest was sparked by a new paper on tipping points published in Science. The lead author is David Armstrong McKay, a University of Exeter Earth systems scientist, and the paper is an update …
Climate change and language change
July 1, 2022
For over ten years I have now been thinking and writing about extreme weather events, especially floods and fires, and how they are verbally and visually represented in the media and beyond. Over that decade the issue of extreme weather has become increasingly topical and people no longer hesitate to discuss this topic in the …
Extreme event/weather communication
May 27, 2022
Communication sciences span a large array of fields and issues. We have science communication, risk communication, crisis communication, health communication, and, of course climate change communication. Over the last few years, it has become clear to me that when it comes to climate and weather, all these communication efforts converge and become part of what …
The sky is falling and the trees are crying: Reflections on extreme weather
May 6, 2022
For some weeks now, I wanted to write something about ‘rain bombs’, a relatively new weather/climate phenomenon and metaphor – but I didn’t get round to it. Then, last week, when I sat down to write, thoughts about strong rain were displaced by thoughts about fire and heat. In the end I decided to write …
MSP bookmarks
- Twitter May 8, 2017
- Social innovations in Europe #RRI November 3, 2015
- Harvey Graff, the undisciplinarian September 20, 2015
- Replacing Pesticides With Genetics August 31, 2015
- Addressing hazardous chemicals in the circular economy August 25, 2015
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