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 …
The concept of net zero hangs in the balance
November 12, 2021
‘Net zero’ has been in the air for a while and I let it waft over me without taking much notice. However, a few days ago I read Ken Rice’s thoughts on this matter on his And Then There’s Physics blog. He argues against a “recurring narrative that the concept of net-zero is flawed”, saying …
Geoengineering metaphors: 2011 and 2021
October 29, 2021
I recently saw this call for papers for a Preconference at the 72nd Annual Conference of the International Communication Association on May 25, 2022 “The Science of Science Communication: Mapping the Field”. The invitation starts with this paragraph: “The beginning of the new century’s ‘Roaring 20s’ is determined by global crises around climate change, biodiversity …
IPCC reports, climate change and language work
September 6, 2021
This blog post is not about climate change communication. It is about what I call the ‘language work’ carried out by scientists when writing the various IPCC reports. Introduction On 9 August 2021 the first part of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, namely the Contribution of Working Group 1 …
When climate change hits home: A personal story
July 18, 2021
This month, Alice Bell has published an important book entitled Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis. In it, she takes us “back to climate change science’s earliest steps in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the point when concern started to rise in the 1950s and right up to today, where the …
Metaphors and realities: Coronavirus and climate change
September 18, 2020
We have been surrounded by global disasters this year, inflicted on us by ‘invisible enemies’. These invisible enemies have been made visible in two ways. In the case of the pandemic, disaster metaphors related to floods, fire and storms have made the coronavirus visible. In case of climate change, real floods, fires, storms and droughts …
Chanting to the choir: The dialogical failure of antithetical climate change blogs
April 20, 2020
This is a guest post by Jennifer Metcalfe on a paper she just published. The article explored the potential for people commenting underneath two very different, even antithetical, blogs dealing with climate science, to chat about and engage with climate science. *** My paper, Chanting to the choir: the dialogical failure of antithetical climate change …
Bushfires and climate change communication: Between amplification and attenuation
January 10, 2020
For about a decade I have been thinking and writing about extreme weather events and their links to human-induced climate change, and this included quite a few references to Australia, especially droughts, heatwaves and bushfires. I thought the Las Conchas Fire in New Mexico, lived through by some of my family, was bad. I thought …
Climategate: Some reflections
November 15, 2019
Ten years ago (it seems like yesterday), I was doing relatively pedestrian research on how people talked about climate change. Then, one morning I woke up to the news that emails by climate scientists had been hacked and were being used to cast doubt on the credibility of climate science and the integrity of climate …
A Whole New (re-cycled) World? An interdisciplinary conversation about the Circular Economy, Synthetic Biology and Sustainability Goals
August 21, 2019
This is a guest post by Penny Polson, Carmen McLeod, Sarah Hartley and Eleanor Hadley Kershaw *** Introduction to the Circular Economy The notion of a ‘circular economy’ has been gaining a lot of traction lately. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, in particular, has raised the profile of this radical rethinking of how consumer goods are …
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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