Fetishising ‘The Number’: How Not To Govern Pandemics, Climate and Biodiversity

Mike Hulme | 09/07/2020

As the pandemic continues to dominate public politics around the world, a single number – the reproduction rate (R) – has become the focus of policy-making and public communication. Keeping R below 1.0 appears to be the primary objective...

How the Hadley Centre came to be … 30 years ago

Mike Hulme | 30/05/2020

Thirty years ago last week, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opened the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction (now the Hadley Centre for Cliamate Science and Services). The current Director – Albert Klein Tank – has offered a brief ‘perspective‘ and...

Do Not Reduce the Future to Covid-19

Mike Hulme | 27/04/2020

Nearly 10 years ago I published a paper in the history of science journal Osiris titled Reducing the Future to Climate: A Story of Climate Determinism and Reductionism. It was a warning about viewing the future—and making decisions about...

‘Mobilising for War’: Why COVID-19 is Not a Dress Rehearsal for Dealing with Climate Change

Mike Hulme | 19/03/2020

Many politicians and public figures are calling for the response to COVID-19 to be put on a war footing. Emergency declarations and executive powers are being appropriated by the state. Climate campaigners, too, have frequently called upon nations to...

Why Extinction Rebellion’s Tactics Are Deeply Misguided

Mike Hulme | 20/02/2020

Extinction Rebellion’s latest protest against ‘recalcitrant public authorities’ in the fight against climate has been this week to blockade the most strategic road junction in the city of Cambridge. And as a spin-out action to dig-up one of the...

Climategate – 2pm on 19 November 2009

Mike Hulme | 19/11/2019

Ten years ago today, at 2pm in the afternoon on Thursday 19 November 2009, I received a circular email from the deputy-head of my School at the University of East Anglia. It read: “There seems to have been a...

Climate Emergency Politics is Dangerous

Mike Hulme | 04/10/2019

Read my latest essay in Issues in Science & Technology, Volume 36, Fall 2019 Issue. Summary: Declarations of emergencies create ‘states of exception,’ often justified by governments under conditions of war, insurrection, or terrorist threat. Emergencies promise the mass...

Climate ‘Medicines’ do not Alleviate the Symptoms of Climate Change

Mike Hulme | 29/08/2019

Sustaining popular support for long-run climate policies is confronted with a serious problem. In nearly all other areas of public policy there are manifest experiential benefits for citizens that result from policy implementation. But climate change is different. Citizens...

Betting on speculative geoengineering may risk an escalating ‘climate debt crisis’

Mike Hulme | 18/07/2019

The opening of the Oscar-winning film The Big Short, a comedy-drama on the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, begins with a famous quote: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Co-authored with my colleague Shin Asayama, read more at The Conversation […]

Climate, armed conflict and the problem of attribution slippage

Mike Hulme | 22/06/2019

A new paper in the journal Nature explores the role of climate as a risk factor in armed conflict. It is interesting for a number of reasons, not least since it uses the method of expert elicitation to explore...

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Mike Hulme

Professor Mike Hulme's Site

Essays

Fetishising ‘The Number’: How Not To Govern Pandemics, Climate and Biodiversity

How the Hadley Centre came to be … 30 years ago

Do Not Reduce the Future to Covid-19

‘Mobilising for War’: Why COVID-19 is Not a Dress Rehearsal for Dealing with Climate Change

Why Extinction Rebellion’s Tactics Are Deeply Misguided

Climategate – 2pm on 19 November 2009

Climate Emergency Politics is Dangerous

Climate ‘Medicines’ do not Alleviate the Symptoms of Climate Change

Betting on speculative geoengineering may risk an escalating ‘climate debt crisis’

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Climate, armed conflict and the problem of attribution slippage

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