Exploring Climate Change through Science and in Society

Reviews / Votes

Hulme (King's College London, UK), arguably the leading authority on climate science, provides a comprehensive treatment of cultural contexts and physical phenomena...Climate change skeptics and true believers alike should find the historical perspective enlightening and fascinating. Summing Up: Highly recommended.

-R. A. Delgado Jr., American Association/or the Advancement of Science, CHOICE

I doubt that anyone on Earth can match Mike Hulme's deep understanding of both the scientific and social aspects of climate change. Yet of course what really matters, and what is so clearly on display in this volume, is the way he combines, with a sensibility that is at once rigorous and enormously generous, these two knowledge domains to provide insight and, indeed, wisdom into the true and many meanings of climate change.-Dan Sarewitz, Arizona State University, USA

Here is a climatologist who has come to know that his discipline provides woefully poor impetus for political action. Whatever the prospects of averting the worst impacts of climate change, Mike Hulme is right: any proportional response must flow from deep reflection on who we are as humans, and what shapes us thus.- Tom Crompton, Change Strategist, WWF-UK

Climate change was first an issue of climate science. But climate change is now mostly a political process, which needs recognition of its diverse cultural dimensions. Mike Hulme allows us to follow this development by presenting himself as an involved person, who has learned that climate change is not a matter of preaching the truth but of us deciding how we want to live.- Hans von Storch, Director of Institute for Coastal Research, Geesthacht, Germany

Mike Hulme's work is especially valuable because it crosses disciplines; in no field can this intellectual broadness be more essential than in the complex and bitterly contested field of climate change. His background as a physical scientist gives special weight to his insights on climate change as an evolving cultural narrative. Anyone with an interest in climate should read this book, and read it with a mind as open as Hulme's has always been.- Mark Lynas, environmentalist and author, UK

Mike Hulme is reflective, scientifically precise and dispassionate. This engaging collection traces the 25-year trajectory of the writings of a fine public intellectual, as science and society become deeply entwined from climate science in the greenhouse summer of 1988 through to the era of the Anthropocene.- Libby Robin, Australian National University, Australia and KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Sweden

This is a fascinating collection of articles, providing a unique window on the inside world of climate change. Mike Hulme has done it all - the research, the institutions, the reflection, and the public speeches. Through his eyes, the co-evolution of climate change science and society unfolds, as it moved from the 20th Century into the 21st.- Corinne Le Quere, Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK

This book offers unique insights into the many facets of climate change from one of the leading voices in the field. Mike Hulme's commentaries, interviews, book reviews and speeches are a must read for anyone interested in the development of this important issue.- Reiner Grundmann, University of Nottingham, UK




This collection of articles brings together the innovative and always thought-provoking contributions and ideas that Mike Hulme brings to the debates on climate change. It represents a comprehensive collection that is honest and informative about a wide array of debates from climate science to policy to art. For those that appreciate Mike Hulme's interventions, this book is a real collector's item. For those less familiar, this is an excellent introduction to the extraordinary range of one of the world's leading thinkers on climate change.

- Samuel Randalls, University College London, UKThis collection of work by one of the world's leading authors on climate change, represents essential, engaging and enlightening reading on this most topical of social and environmental, global and local concerns. - Georgina Endfield, University of Nottingham, UK