The old man leaves the cave

Climate Change has been an interest/obsession/issue for me since around 2006, though the original mental question about the future of the world and the people in it probably goes back to my formative years.

I started engaging online in the public debate about climate science and other matters via the forums on the Netweather.com community. This encouraged me, along with extensive research and online engagement in related blogs, to create my own site, Old man in a cave . Thanks to many friendly contributors, the hit count hit over 50,000 by the time it got put into the attic, thanks to life's normal interventions.

During this time I collaborated in a minor paper on scientist's opinions of the AR4 and climate change, along with the eminent Roger Pielke Sr. and James Annan, both real scientists (unlike me). I like to think that this work, indirectly, is the source of the current crop of 'consensus' statistics such as those produced by John Cook, used by a headline by Abraham, Nucitelli & Co. and cited by President Obama recently, since it was the first to identify (indirectly) that around 97% of climate scientists were in agreement that the climate is warming.

At the time I was previously active, major issues were about the IPCC AR4, communicating science effectively, the politicisation and framing of the climate science debate, skepticism and what to do about it. Plus ca change. Coming back to the web, I find that the same issues have come around again (not that they ever went away), many of the same voices are speaking the same lines as before, that many 'ordinary people' (which is really here just saying 'people not trained in the sciences') still struggle to understand what is happening to our climate or why it is a problem.

So, for better or worse, I've decided to give it another go - to try and study developments in the science, the politics and the philosophy of climate change - and put an 'ordinary person's slant on the communication. As before, I'll lean heavily on the blogosphere and the freely available journals. Soon, I'll post some links/blogroll and other stuff to help readers get a wider perspective and coincidentally up my hit rate.

I am not a scientist. But I am reasonably rational. I do not have strongly directed political views, apart from a dislike of extremism and polemic (so I'm probably a Liberal...). I'm writing in the hope of reaching some other 'ordinary people' and responding to their feelings and opinions, about climate change, society, sustainability, the future. As before, all are welcome. This works if it is a dialogue. 

To encourage response, I'll shortly publish my first post on current topics. I look forward to hearing from my old online friends and renewing discussions and debates.

Be loved.