Read Simon Maxwell’s review of ‘Climate Change Isn’t Everything‘. Simon is the former Director of the Overseas Development Institute, the UK’s leading independent think-tank on international development and humanitarian issues, and has worked internationally as a development economist since 1970.

Based on this review, I clearly haven’t fully convinced him of my argument, but I am glad to see Simon engage the book seriously. His final paragraph is pasted below ….

“You don’t have to be a climatist or be obsessed about attribution to think that these are worrying signs. The UN Environment Emissions Gap Reports have documented year by year, with all the caveats and caution Mike Hulme would wish, the failure significantly to close the gap to Paris temperature targets. In June this year, Piers Forster and colleagues published an authoritative article documenting the increase in extreme weather events and showing that the remaining carbon budget is shrinking fast, because of the failure to cut emissions with sufficient speed. Mike Hulme may not like the data being presented in this way, and he is right that ‘climate is not everything’, but, to repeat, it is ‘quite a lot’.“

Mike Hulme, 10 July 2023