PREVIOUS EVENTS

Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change states that its goal is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.  Understanding how human actions change the climate system, and the impacts of these changes on people and their life-support systems is a role for science, whereas deciding what is dangerous (to whom?), and how to avoid it (at what cost?), is within the realm of politics. This logical mix of science and politics had led to much confusion. The 15^th UN meeting on climate change was no exception, despite unprecedented media scrutiny.

Dr Simon Lewis is a Royal Society research fellow at the Earth & Biosphere Institute, University of Leeds , and an expert in the role of tropical forests in the changing Earth system.  He was in Copenhagen advising a central African government and took time out of doing science to get involved in the negotiations. He will give a brief summary of how we got to Copenhagen via the IPCC and CRU email hack and what the outcome of the UN talks might mean.

This talk was suggested by Dominic Rayner, so he will chair the meeting and there will be  short presentation by Phil Exell, who manages our website, which has been upgraded.