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 […]
News
Why setting a climate deadline is dangerous
The publication of the IPCC Special Report on global warming of 1.5 oC paved the way for the rise of the political rhetoric of setting a fixed deadline for decisive actions on climate change. However, the dangers of such deadline rhetoric suggest the need for the IPCC to take responsibility for its report and openly […]
Climate, armed conflict and the problem of attribution slippage
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...
Latest articles in WIREs Climate Change, Vol 10(4), 2019
The latest issue of WIREs Climate Change, Volume 10(4) 2019, is now available on-line. The 9 review articles in this issue include Jakob Skovgaard and Harro van Asselt on the politics of fossil fuel subsidies, Sophie Chiari on...
Engineering climate debt
My colleague Shin Asayama and I have co-authored this new paper, titled “Engineering climate debt: temperature overshoot and peak-shaving as risky subprime mortgage lending”, which is now available open-access online in the journal Climate Policy. In this paper, we...
Debating Climate Change: A New Book
It is unusual to find myself agreeing with Nigel Farage. But a comment he made a few months ago about the importance of teaching critical thinking at British universities puts him on my side. “Ultimately it seems to me...
The Nobel Conference: Climate Changed
This September, I shall be speaking at the 2019 Nobel Conference at Adolphus Gustavus College at St.Peter, Minnesota. The Conference theme this year is ‘Climate Change: Facing Our Future’ and I shall be addressing the following questions: How do...
Am I a denier, a human extinction denier?
There has been a lot of talk recently about climate change and extinction. It is undoubtedly the case that species go extinct. And sometimes large numbers of species disappear together in mass events caused by the same physical stresses....
Prospective PhD Students
I am interested to receive approaches from students who would like to study for a PhD with me in the areas of the cultural history of climate change, STS approaches to studying climate science and knowledge, representations and discourses of climate in the media, and the philosophy of climate and climate change. Please state clearly your […]
Morality by numbers? Against the regulatory power of carbon metrics
Mike Hulme, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge Presented at ‘Multiple Carbons: Historical and Contemporary Approaches to Governance’ Friday-Saturday 5-6 April 2019, Harvard University’s Center for the Environment Introduction In 2007, a new web-site CheatNeutral offered an on-line service...