Category Archives: Global Warming
The library of our living planet is burning down
Shortly before the COP26 climate conference began, another global conference, this one on biodiversity, known as COP15, took place in Kunming, China. My piece around the global biodiversity crunch ran in the Business Post in late October. THE NATURAL WORLD is … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Pollution, Sustainability
Tagged Biodiversity, IPBES, IUCN, Kunming, Living Planet Report, Malcolm Noonan, NWPS
Leave a comment
No time to lose as climate clock approaches midnight
This article was published in the Irish Times in late October, just days before the start of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. AHEAD OF the upcoming UN’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, many countries are now revising their nationally … Continue reading
Posted in Arctic, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability
Tagged Chatham House, COP26, IPCC, Peter Thorne
Leave a comment
The most dangerous man in the world?
It’s almost always a mistake to characterise any one person as ‘evil’. There’s good and bad in everyone, as the song says. Well, almost. You could make an exception for one noxious Antipodean nonagenarian who has, over the span of … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media
Tagged ICSF, Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, Nigel Lawson, Richard Lindzen, Rupert Murdoch, Thatcher
Leave a comment
We are Generation Incineration
This piece ran in the Business Post magazine in late August, as more and more media outlets rallied to engage with the climate emergency and its vast implications for all life on Earth, humans included. AT EXACTLY 1.18am, on June … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged Business Post, consumerism, Great Acceleration, Robert Pirsig, Thatcher
4 Comments
Which part of ‘Code Red’ don’t we understand?
The publication of the first working group report (physical sciences) of the IPCC’s keenly awaited AR6 report in mid-August came against the backdrop months of genuinely alarming extreme weather events across multiple continents, from killer floods in Europe and China … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Global Warming, Irish Focus
Tagged AR6, Business Post, extreme weather, IPCC, wildfires
1 Comment
Climate emergency ‘widespread, rapid and intensifying’
I was asked by TheJournal.ie to write a reaction piece to mark the release of the first part of the IPCC’s new climate report in early August. I also recorded an Explainer Podcast with TheJournal.ie later in August. JUST HOW … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus
Tagged heatwave, IPCC, TheJournal.ie, wildfires
Leave a comment
Feeling the heat, then seeing the light
The story of RTÉ’s Damascene conversion on climate coverage has continued to gather pace. Below is a piece I wrote for the Business Post in early August explaining the background and context. AS THE STATE broadcaster, RTÉ occupies a special … Continue reading
Winds of (climate) change finally blow through Montrose
I filed the article below for DeSmog, the international website specialising in climate denial and disinformation, in late July, in the wake of the sudden about-turn within RTÉ’s senior management over its climate coverage. IRELAND’S NATIONAL broadcaster has publicly apologised … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged Desmog, Jon Williams, Peter Thorne, RTE
Leave a comment
Climate emergency still failing to capture sustained media focus
Here’s a piece I filed with the Business Post in July which took a look at how the alarming extreme weather events ramping up this summer are still failing to raise a red flag in the media, both here and … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Leave a comment
More power to our fledgling solar industry
The missing piece of the puzzle from Ireland’s transition to clean and renewable energy has long been solar power. While wind energy has grown in just a couple of decades from almost nothing to providing more than two fifths of … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus
Tagged Conall Bolger, ISEA, Sarah McCormack, SEAI, Solar energy
Leave a comment
The heat is on: climate emergency deepens
After the savage heatwaves that swept the northern hemisphere in June and continuing into July, I was asked by TheJournal.ie to contribute a piece putting these ominous events into context. Here’s what I wrote: “WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE this historic event”. That’s … Continue reading
Dangerous myth of infinite economic growth exposed
Regular ThinkOrSwim readers will know that your correspondent is not a noted fan of mainstream economics, or most of its practitioners, for that matter. They have, in my view, done untold damage in impeding societal and political understanding of and … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged Amazon, Business Post, consumerism, European Environment Agency, marketing, Steve Keen
1 Comment
A mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam: our fragile world
Has there ever been a better science communicator that the late Carl Sagan? If you’ve watched the original version of the series ‘Cosmos’, you’ll have a good sense of his mastery of the medium. The BBC’s Brian Cox recalls watching, … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming
3 Comments
A safer future for all means a better future for most
This article appeared in the Irish Times in early May, based around an intriguing paper published in the journal ‘Global Environmental Change’, titled “Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario”. As the abstract begins: “It is increasingly clear … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged degrowth, Energy, IEA, inequality, Irish Times
1 Comment
Do we care enough about nature to bother saving it?
This piece ran in the Business Post in early May, inspired at least in part by the devastating fires that swept many of Ireland’s uplands yet again this Spring, an annual ritual, it seems, that comes around with depressing regularity, … Continue reading
