Who am I?

I am not a scientist (my job was in IT - I'm now retired), but as far as climate change goes the facts are pretty settled and we all have the "proof" of this in the scientific consensus .

Of course, a proper understanding of climate science is a lifetime's work, not something that can be picked up from the Internet, but I do have an MSc in Information Studies and so I can claim some understanding of how to evaluate and collate information. If you see facts, figures and graphs on this blog they will be from well-researched, reputable sources. (If you disagree please let me know.)

My understanding of weather systems is currently pretty basic but I will be following a Future Learn Course (Understanding the Weather) this Spring so hopefully my understanding of the principles will improve. I also hope to get involved in weather watching at a more practical level and will be joining the BBC's Weather Watchers  

As I am not an expert there is no danger that any discussion I engage in will ever get bogged down in scientific nitpicking, i.e. no scientist is ever likely to disagree with me on the basis that the information I'm publishing is false - their argument will be with the primary source, not me. Scientific debate is vital of course, but this blog is meant for us ordinary mortals, there should be no danger of it degenerating into the kind of detail which would allows us non-scientists to engage in "I don't understand and they can't agree anyway, so I'm turning the page" behaviour.

Communicating Science

There has been some discussion recently on whether the public apathy regarding climate change is down to a partial failure in the the way the science of climate change has been communicated.  Scientists themselves are doing a lot of work on how best to translate their findings into a narrative that those of us without a scientific background can understand.

Update Feb 4th 2017 - This subject came up in my #ExClimate MOOC course (Week 1) please see here for further discussion.