From Katrina to Sandy: Searching online for links to climate change
November 16, 2012
This blog has been written by Alan Valdez (Open University) and Brigitte Nerlich When Hurricane Sandy, aka Superstorm, aka Frankenstrom, hit the Eastern Seaboard on 29 October and in particular New York, it caused extensive damage and left at least 199 people dead. It has been widely reported to be “the largest Atlantic hurricane on …
Short circuiting the language of Sandy – how to balance literalism and lucidity?
November 14, 2012
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 …
Echoes of Climategate: focusing on uncertainty?
November 13, 2012
The ever-lively climate blogosphere was given an extra jolt recently by a new BBC Radio 4 documentary – Climategate Revisited. The programme assessed the fallout from the infamous publication of emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) server, rather than attempting to adjudicate on scientific claims or the contents of the emails. The programme …
Science, politics and the new scepticism
October 14, 2012
While I blogged on MSP a couple of times while finishing up my thesis on local and regional climate policy, I have now started on the programme full time as a Research Fellow. My project has a working title of Science, politics and scepticism in the age of new media, and aims to “map the …
Unseasonable weather; unseasonable climate? Facts, fictions and fantasies
July 15, 2012
I have just come back from a place in Dorset that my husband’s family has visited every summer for the last forty years or so and that I have visited for the last twenty. I sometimes needed to take and wear an anorak. This has changed and I have been wearing it more often over …
Scepticism: Process, not position
June 16, 2012
Scepticism activism Scepticism is as old as human thinking, as old as philosophy and as old as science. Most recently scepticism has, on the one hand, become embroiled in a major controversy about climate change, and on the other hand scepticism has also become a form of activism, with Skeptics in the Pub being a …
Communicating climate change on the right (report)
May 3, 2012
This is a guest blog by Warren Pearce who will be starting work on the Making Science Public project in October this year. Warren reports on an event organised by the Policy Exchange: A greener shade of blue? Communicating climate change on the right. The blog was originally published here. ‘A grit in the oyster’ …
Languages of uncertainty
April 4, 2012
Communicating scientific uncertainty There has recently been a lot of discussion about communicating uncertainty in science in general and climate change/climate science in particular. Many scientists, including Sir Robert May and Sir John Beddington have talked about how uncertainty is intrinsic to science and have advocated being more open about uncertainty, with the latter stressing …
Climategate, media volume and public concerns – what’s the relation?
March 2, 2012
In my last blog I promised some further discussion of the link between media volume and public concern about climate change. This is what today’s blog is about, based on some work I carried out with a former MA student, Alan Valdez. Discussions about the agenda-setting power of the media, particularly in the context of …
Weather or Climate? Enjoy or worry?
February 27, 2012
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, …
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