Exploring Climate Change

Mike Hulme is one of the best-known climate scientists, having established the Tyndall Centre and the University of East Anglia in 2000 and been a common spokesman for the science of climate change over the last 25 years. This volume brings together his most popular and prominent articles, essays, speeches, interviews and reviews over this period as is divided into eight sections: the public life of climate change, science, research, culture, policy, communication, controversy and futures. This means that the contents are arranged thematically as well as chronologically, with an introductory overview to each section. This gives the reader a good idea of the evolution of thinking in this area over a generation and reminds one of the changing discourse, mediated both by IPCC reports and periodic international negotiations where science and politics overlap. A good example of this is the so-called Climategate at Copenhagen in 2009, which can best be understood as a political rather than a scientific strategy, although it to some extent mirrored divisions in scientific opinion. The inherent uncertainties of prediction make it all the more difficult to translate data into policy, especially when vested oil interests are spending great deal of money muddying the waters in their favour. As Hulme points out, the key question is the extent to which climate change is anthropogenic, although I myself regard the overall impact of humans on the environment as the most serious issue, of which climate change is one of the symptoms. Anyone looking for a deeper understanding of science and policy on climate change should read this book.