Air con and the apocalypse
July 3, 2018
I have recently spent a lot of time in official spaces, GP surgeries, hospitals etc. Where in the past one would sit with a window or door open, there is now air conditioning. In Eye Casualty the other day, I heard the head nurse tell a junior: “Didn’t you read the memo? We are not …
Antimicrobial resistance and climate change: Communication, governance and responsibility
April 13, 2018
Last week I was reading some tweets from an international science communication conference held at Dunedin, New Zealand. As I have blogged and written about hype, I was particularly interested in tweets about a fascinating Roundtable convened by Tara Roberson entitled: “Can hype be a force for good? – Debating the benefits and drawbacks of science …
Climate change politics and the role of China: a window of opportunity to gain soft power?
April 8, 2018
This is a guest post by Adrian Rauchfleisch (National Taiwan University) & Mike S. Schäfer (University of Zürich) In our new publication we analyse the nexus between climate change and soft power with specific emphasis on China. We discuss the role of soft power in the Chinese context and elucidate how international climate change politics is …
Climate alarmism and climate realism
November 24, 2017
In 2013 I wrote a blog post on climate alarmism and a year later one on its conceptual and ideological twin climate realism. A week ago, a comment by Jeffrey Levine appeared underneath my second post on climate realism which said: “We’re now three years out from the original date of this post. The usage of climate …
Science/climate communication: A view from reception theory
September 28, 2017
There has been some controversy recently surrounding a paper published in Nature Geoscience on global warming or, if I understand things correctly, about whether there might be a slightly better chance of avoiding it. This paper appears to have been misunderstood, misrepresented and misreported. One Mail Online headline read: “Fear of global warming is exaggerated, …
Hurricane Harvey: Some reflections on climate change communication
August 29, 2017
Hurricane Harvey has hit Houston and its aftermath is causing extreme flooding. This made me think… I remember sitting in an airport lounge in 2005 somewhere watching Hurricane Katrina unfold on TV screens and beginning to think about climate change as a social issue. A year or so later I started to notice the spread of a …
False balance
August 15, 2017
Last week an appearance by Lord Lawson on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme caused somewhat of a stir. This was not the first time this had happened. The same happened in 2014. In both instances the BBC invited Lord Lawson to talk about climate change. In both cases this was greeted with a chorus …
Tracing the contours of the consensus debate in climate change: The sequel
August 11, 2017
In August 2013 I wrote a blog post on the issue of ‘consensus’ in the context of climate change. This topic had been put into the climate communication spotlight by a paper published in May 2013 by Cook et al. entitled: ”Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature” (for more background, …
Do metaphors really matter?
June 16, 2017
I, like many others, from Leibniz to Lakoff, think that metaphors are important for human thinking and acting. They make us see the world in different ways – for good or evil. So, one should keep an eye on them. Recently I have read two articles which seem to imply that metaphors matter less than …
Climate Change on the Bathroom Wall: How Vice, BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post report on environmental issues
December 16, 2016
This is guest post by Mike S. Schäfer, Professor of Science Communication at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research (IPMZ) and Director of the Center for Higher Education and Science Studies at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. This article was first published in the European Journalism Observatory, Dec 14, 2016. *** Shouting protesters …
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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