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...

Social scientific knowledge in times of crisis: What climate change can learn from coronavirus (and vice versa)

Mike Hulme | 29/05/2020

Read this new editorial commentary from WIREs Climate Change, written with colleagues from Orebro University, Sweden. Abstract. Crisis, by its very nature, requires decisive intervention. However, important questions can be obscured by the very immediacy of the crisis condition....

COVID-19 behind the numbers – statistics, models and decision-making

Mike Hulme | 28/05/2020

You can view this recorded webinar delivered on-line on Thursday 14 May for Cambridge Conversations, the Alumni Programme. “Unpick the numbers behind COVID-19 with Sir David Spiegelhalter, one of the world’s foremost biostatisticians, and Mike Hulme, professor of human...

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...

One Earth, many futures, no destination

Mike Hulme | 17/04/2020

Read my new Commentary in the journal One Earth, to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. Since the first Earth Day 50 years ago, it has become clear that it is easier to generate scientific insight...

‘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...

Podcast: ‘The Sustainability Agenda’

Mike Hulme | 14/03/2020

Listen to this interview with Fergal Byrne for his ‘Sustainability Agenda‘ podcast. The conversation is about climate change from a perspective that encompasses the relationship between science and policy, science and culture, the politics of climate change, and the...

Is the concept of climate ‘tipping point’ helpful?

Mike Hulme | 11/03/2020

A new paper published today in Nature Communications suggest that “shifts in Earth ecosystems occur over ‘human’ timescales of years and decades, meaning the collapse of large vulnerable ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest and Caribbean coral reefs, may...

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...

Climate change and Syrian war

Mike Hulme | 14/02/2020

Marwa Daoudy, a political scientist from Georgetown University, Washington DC, has just published her new book with Cambridge University Press — ‘The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security‘. Daoudy examines critically the claim that the...

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