Driving to Distraction

UK politics is taking a very spooky turn. I came across this today in the course of some research... Lords Science Committee expand Behaviour Change Inquiry to consider interventions to reduce car usage in towns and cities The House of Lords Science and Technology...

The Life of Brian – Science Messiah or Very Naughty Boy?

Brain Cox is a great science communicator. That is to say, he makes very effective TV programmes, which do not condescend, and do much to encourage an interest in science. But there is surely science as process, and there’s ‘science’ as an institution. It’s not clear...

Cancun & the Met Office

I have a story on Spiked today, about the pre-Cancun messages from the Met Office. In retrospect, I wish I'd called it "Some of our Global Warming is Missing", but I expect it's been said before. Conventional climate wisdom has it that once ‘the science’ is put before...

Climate Science and the Climate Debate

I've been too busy for blogging recently. To break the silence, I thought I'd post this presentation I gave at a debate at York University this time last year. The discussion was about the view often expressed by environmentalists that there is no need for any further...

What the Greens Really Got Wrong

Read my article about Ch4's What the Green Movement Got Wrong at Spiked-Online. Environmentalists have long claimed that their desire to save the world has been thwarted by conspiracies of Big Oil and right-wing think-tanks. Channel 4’s What the Green Movement Got...

What? The Green Movement Got Something Wrong?!

Channel 4 will be showing “What the Green Movement Got Wrong” tonight. Tune in at 9pm... It’s too early to say much about the film -- I haven’t seen it yet -- but it appears to feature prominent environmentalist, Mark Lynas saying that environmentalists were wrong to...

What Next for the Royal Society?

In May this year, the UK’s science Academy, the Royal Society, announced that it was going to publish a “new guide to the science of climate change to help the public gain a better understanding of the issue.” This announcement appeared to follow in the wake of a...

Pastiche Politics: Redux

The previous post on this blog looked at the bizarre relationship between former Labour government minister (now Labour Party leader) Ed Miliband, and the 10:10 founder and Age of Stupid director, Franny Armstrong. One of the most curious things that this uneasy...

8 Executions and a Funeral

Ed Miliband -- the previous government’s Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change -- has been elected leader of the Labour Party. Hmm. This is unusual. Not only is Miliband relatively young for someone hoping to convince the voting public...

Going Green, or Growing Mould?

During my very busy spring and summer, one of the things I didn’t have time to do was look more closely at the UK’s General Election results. This post comes a bit late, but it’s worth saying, nonetheless. The election was perhaps the dullest and least inspiring in...