In the previous post, I looked at the first of Martin Rees Reith Lectures. The President of the Royal Society believed that there is ‘a 50 percent chance of a setback to civilisation as bad as a nuclear war, or some consequence of 21st century technology equally...

While we were busy, the Royal Society’s diktats on climate change got the world’s oldest scientific academy into the news, again. Back when we started this blog in 2007, we found the language used by those in and around the RS to be perhaps the most peculiar...

Rotation has long been a problem for humans seeking to understand the world. Who or what is rotating? Any sufficiently drunk person or dizzy child sees everything else revolving, yet they both remain static in relation to the world they fall to. A more sober...

Final exams and babies have preoccupied us editors over the last few months. And a lot has happened in the climate world. We've not gone away. We will be back in a week or so. Please stay tuned.

Juliette Jowit reports in the Guardian that a "British campaigner urges UN to accept 'ecocide' as international crime". "Ecocide" is defined as "The extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other...

Regular readers of this blog will know that we’re been trying to develop the idea that a great deal of politics exists prior to the science in the argument for a political response to climate change. This was the basis of our criticism of studies such as the GHF’s and...

According to the Observer today, Some of the planet's most powerful paymasters will gather in London on Wednesday to discuss a nagging financial problem: how to raise a trillion dollars for the developing world. Those charged with achieving this daunting goal will...

Venture a doubt about climate change politics or ethics, and you’ll likely be asked, “Don’t you believe in global warming?” If you express suspicion about the prominence and function served by alarm and catastrophe in arguments for political responses to climate...

The desire that things be “ethical” has developed in the same era as climate change anxiety. Naturally, there is some convergence. Things which promise to lessen ‘environmental impact’ are considered ‘ethical’, and the implication is that things that aren’t clearly...

The public opinion expert's opinion on the public's opinion of experts is that the public still have confidence in the experts. (H/t: Roger Pielke)