Communication & Education

Sometimes I write and present things other than terse scientific journal articles, including for media, outreach, and scicomm. Here’s some examples:

Science Communication & Outreach:

Project (ongoing): Climate Tipping Points: The Point of No Return?
In 2016 the ReCoVER network supported me to do a science outreach project associated with my ReCoVER ECR PostDoc project in Southampton, which involved setting up and writing articles for climatetippingpoints.info, public speaking and conversations (at Southampton Researcher’s Cafe, The Science Room, & Winchester Cafe Scientifique), engaging with questions on social media, and commissioning & storyboarding an explainer animation posted on Youtube:

I carried on maintaining climatetippingpoints.info as a scicomm blog after the funded project ended, and in 2019 I started a new Fact-Check series on climate tipping points in response to a recent upsurge in both interest and exaggerated claims, as well as writing twitter thread explainers on new climate tipping point stories and doing street talks with Researchers Desk at #FridaysForFuture climate strikes.

Project: Researchers Desk & #ScientistsForFuture
Researchers Desk began as a stall held at #FridaysForFuture protests in Stockholm where youth strikers and members of the public can directly ask climate scientists questions about climate change. I have featured as one of the scientists taking questions, and helped recruit other scientists to come along as well. The first outing was at the May 2019 Global Climate Strike day in Kungsträdgården (for which I was interviewed beforehand about it by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter), and there were more desks over the summer 2019 at Mynttorget, Sergels Torg, and the September strikes. I also gave a joint talk at PowerShift Sverige 2019 (“Reaching the Tipping Point: tip society, not the planet!”) and did a street lecture on climate tipping points for the FFF strikers outside the Swedish parliament. This is linked to my support of #ScientistsForFuture, including signing open letters to Science and Dagens Nyheter stating that the concerns and demands of the climate school strikers are justified.

Fact-check: Destruction of the Amazon forest very likely contributes to global warming, as accurately described in The National Geographic article Climate Feedback, March 2021

Podcast: Re.Think Talks / While all eyes are on COVID-19, the Amazon forest is burning June 2020
In 2020 I took part in a podcast with Stockholm Resilience Centre colleagues on the Amazon rainforest, covering the recent up-tick in forest fires and how close it may be to a tipping point:

Project: Keystone Collapse
I helped run the website and stalls for a science-meets-art outreach project on lake ecosystem collapse centred on a sculpture by artist Chris Cudlip, which was led and commissioned by Dr. James Dyke and funded by the British Ecological Society.

Interview: “Die Mächtige Moleküle“Natur, February 2019
I was quoted along with my SRC colleague Ingo Fetzer on the natural history of carbon dioxide and climate in this German nature magazine. Not available online, unfortunately…

Media

Coverage of our paper on climate tipping points in Science (Autumn 2022):
Interviews – Carbon Brief, The Guardian, New Scientist, New York Times, Dagens Nyheter, Sveriges Radio, SVT Nyheter, TV4
Broadcasts – BBC World Service, Euronews
Podcasts – RTÉ Hot Mess, Radio Ecoshock, Voice of America
Articles by me – Paper Explainer blogpost (climatetippingpoints.info), “Climate tipping points could lock in unstoppable changes to the planet – how close are they?” (The Conversation & syndicated), “Tipping Points Research Makes Urgent Case for Limiting Global Temperature Rise to Lowest Possible” (IPI Global Observatory)

Interview on EuroNews, 16/9/22

Articles: The PG Chronicle (2011-15)
I regularly wrote for a monthly newsletter for PhD Students at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton; I mostly contributed ludicrous things and also edited many an issue. Classic articles included “Ducklingageddon”, the manifesto of the National Oceanography Centre Official Freedom Front (NOC-OFF), the introduction of fun licensing to prevent unsafe whimsy, and the NOC-MAN video game. This was not an entirely serious organ.

Articles: The Wessex Scene (2008-2011)
I wrote articles on environmental activism (such as “The Great Copenhagen Cop-out” after the Copenhagen 2009 climate talks) in the Politics section of Uni. Southampton’s official student newspaper Wessex Scene.

Education

University Teaching

I have taught on several Masters-level courses, including Masters modules such as ‘Challenges of the Anthropocene’ (2018-20), ‘Field-based data collection for assessing sustainability’ (2016-17), & ‘Introduction to Sustainability’ (2017). I was also a Graduate Demonstrator for Undergraduate modules on ‘Palaeoclimate change’, ‘Biogeochemical cycles in the Earth system’, and ‘Geophysical field methods’ (2011-15), and have also worked as an Assistant Bushcraft Instructor (2011-12).

Online seminars

Climate Tipping Points: how to tip society, not the planet, AIMES – Earth Commission – Future Earth – WCRP Tipping Points Discussion Series, 26th January 2023