Some commonsense (at last) on living with Sars-CoV-2

Mike Hulme | 21/09/2020

Amidst the panic and fear, here is a sensible perspective on living with COVID-19 risk, articulated by responsible people who understand the sociology, psychology and statistics of risk. It’s time to listen to these experts rather than epidemiological modellers...

Defending “the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”

Mike Hulme | 24/07/2020

Having just finished reading Dorian Lynsky’s wonderful Ministry of Truth, a biography of George Orwell’s 1948 novel Nineteen Eighty Four, a recent headline from The Times newspaper caught my attention. The Harvard professor of psychology Steven Pinker was accusing...

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...

‘Window of Opportunity’

Mike Hulme | 05/12/2019

This essay will appear in Connectedness – an Incomplete Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, edited by Sidsel Kjaerulff Rasmussen and Marianne Krogh and published later in 2020 by Strandberg Publishing, Denmark. ….. “We have a window of only 10-15 years...

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...

Mike Hulme

Professor Mike Hulme's Site

Essays & Blog Posts

Some commonsense (at last) on living with Sars-CoV-2

Defending “the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”

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

‘Window of Opportunity’

Climategate – 2pm on 19 November 2009

Climate Emergency Politics is Dangerous