Category Archives: Global Warming
A crisis in media and climate communication
Overlaying the climate crunch, there is a parallel full-blown crisis, in Ireland and elsewhere in the Anglophone world in climate change communications. This will not be news to regular visitors to this blog, but happily, there is now a lot … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability
Tagged Media, Oxford, research, RTE
4 Comments
Cultivating hope, managing despair
There have been countless millions of words written and spoken in recent years on how humanity can and must begin at last to grapple in earnest with the existential challenges of climate change, resource depletion and the ongoing global biodiversity … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Psychology
Tagged acceptance, denial, psychology, workshop
6 Comments
Raising the bar on climate change coverage in Ireland
I’ve often wondered aloud what it might be like to live in a place and in a time where climate change, the world’s biggest, baddest and most persistent crisis, was given media coverage something even vaguely approaching its actual significance. … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged Denis Naughten, Irish Independent, Media
2 Comments
Battling for Ireland’s battered biodiversity
My interview below, with Dr Liam Lysaght, Director of the National Biodiversity Data Centre, was published in the September edition of Village magazine: IRELAND’S largely dysfunctional relationship with its natural environment was neatly summed up by former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Liam Lysaght, National Biodiversity Data Centre, Wildlife
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Welcome to the Climate Madhouse
Below my article, as published in the September edition of ‘Village’ magazine IMAGINE for a moment the dilemma: you’re a celebrated climatologist whose work has helped shaped the modern science of climate change. In the course of your work, you … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Sceptics
Tagged Climate deniers, hockey stick, Michael Mann
1 Comment
Who’d choose to bring a child into a climate-changed world?
Below is my article, as published in yesterday’s Irish Times, under the headline (not my wording) ‘Is having children bad for the planet?’ I’ve added in some of the sources below that I used when researching this piece. The features … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Psychology
Tagged 2050, pollination, population, solastalgia, WWF
4 Comments
It’s a Vision thing
Last week the Visions 2100 international roadshow came to Dublin. I first encountered it, driven by the irrepressible John O’Brien, as a side event at last December’s COP21 conference, where, as one of 80 contributors to the book from around … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Psychology
Tagged John O'Brien, Tailors Hall, Visions 2100
1 Comment
Flights of folly at Dublin airport
Fallout from the recent Brexit vote may prove something of a gift for the Dublin Airport Authority’s (DAA) ambitious plan to have a second runway built and ready for business by 2020. The huge cloud of economic uncertainty now parked … Continue reading
An Inconvenient Truth – 10 years on, it’s truer than ever
How’s this for a deeply unpromising script idea: making a movie about a failed politician trailing around the world presenting wonkish slide shows on his laptop to mostly small audiences about, of all things, climate change? It hardly helped that … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Psychology, Sceptics
Tagged Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, documentary
6 Comments
Bord na Mona: of strip-mining and greenwashing
You can hardly have missed the hugely expensive PR and advertising blitz from the semi-state, Bord na Mona, whose ad agency has come up with a snazzy new campaign called ‘Naturally Driven’. They even managed to get RTE’s George Lee … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged An Taisce, bogs, Bord na Mona
7 Comments
We had better hope Jim Hansen is wrong this time
Former NASA chief climatologist, Jim Hansen has an unfortunate knack of being right a lot more often than he’s wrong. And when it comes to projecting the future path of climate change, he has an equally unfortunate habit of being … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged AMOC, Jim Hansen, Peter Thorne, sea level
4 Comments
One man’s meat is another’s global ecological calamity
The article below is a referenced version of my piece that appeared in the Weekend Edition of the Irish Times on Saturday last. Writers don’t get to choose the headlines ‘Meat is madness’ – my preference would have been to … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Chatham House, dairy, meat, obesity, Oxford, WHO
6 Comments
Choosing to fail: Prof Kevin Anderson interviewed
Prof Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester and deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, is one of the world’s best known and most influential “and outspoken” climate specialists. He … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Energy, Global Warming, Sceptics
Tagged IPCC, Kevin Anderson, Tyndall
13 Comments
Election 2016: more fudge and waffle on climate change
Below, my article written for Village magazine’s post-election special issue. The election campaign was notable for the fact that environmental issues generally and climate change specifically were completely written out of the political and media script. Twenty, maybe even 10 … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged Election 2016, emissions targets, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael
6 Comments
2011-2016: five more lost years for Ireland’s climate response
Below, my article as it appears in the Election Edition of Village magazine. This was written ahead of the publication of the assorted party manifestos (these are just now starting to trickle out) but it seemed a more useful exercise … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
5 Comments
