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International audience; This article contributes to the study of climate debates online by examining how the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15) played out on YouTube following its release in October 2018. We examined features of 40 videos that ranked the highest in YouTube's search engine over the course of four weeks after the publication of the report. Additionally, this study examines the shifting visibility of the videos, the nature of the channels that published them and the way in which they articulated the issue of climate change. We found that media activity around SR15 was animated by a mix of professional and user-led channels, with the former enjoying higher and more stable visibility in YouTube ranking. We identified four main recurrent themes: disaster and impacts, policy options and solutions, political and ideological struggles around climate change and contested science. The discussion of policy options and solutions was particularly prominent. Critiques of the SR15 report took different forms: as well as denialist videos which downplayed the severity of climate change, there were also several clips which criticized the report for underestimating the extent of warming or overestimating the feasibility of proposed policies. Contents Introduction Research approach and method The IPCC communication strategy and SR15 Features of top ranking videos Visibility of top ranking videos Salient themes in top ranked videos Conclusion

Research into adaptation strategies to climate change has become a point of great interest for today’s urban environmental planners. At the same time, addressing adaptation to climate change in Sub-Saharan cities is an ethical and epistemological challenge. This article presents an approach, developed in the context of a scientific collaboration between an Italian and a Tanzanian university, to adaptation planning in the coastal peri-urban areas of the city of Dar es Salaam. After situating the research within the international discourse on responses to global warming, the specific spatial context of the study is introduced, together with the assumptions that derive from the interpretive key: the adaptive capacity of inhabitants. The three theoretical pillars upon which the approach is based are also explored: uncertainty as an opportunity for an unfettered vision of the city’s future; the centrality of incremental environmental stress in assessment of vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events; and crossing boundaries within science and between science and society for an effective and equitable definition of the problem.

Since 2005, a growing number of vulnerable communities and nations have used the human rights lexicon to argue their case for an urgent and ambitious response to climate change. The purpose of this Social Development Department Working paper is to examine the emergence of a new discourse linking climate change and human rights, and to assess its social and political implications, particularly as they relate to development practitioners. The scope of this paper is to explore what relevance this new discourse has on what David Kennedy calls the 'vocabularies, expertise, and sensibilities' of development practitioners (Kennedy 2005). The methodology for this paper involved interviews with academics and policy practitioners who have shaped this emerging discourse; a wide-ranging literature review of texts relevant to the fields of development, climate change and human rights; discussions with development professionals who have the daily responsibility of operationalizing approaches to reducing vulnerability and building resilience; and finally drawing upon the author's own experience leading the Maldives' government's initiative on the Human Dimensions of Climate Change and as a consultant within the Social Dimensions of Climate Change Cluster of the World Bank's Social Development Department. It is important to stress that this paper is not a legal piece. Human rights are as much about ethical demands, calls for social justice, public awareness, advocacy, and political action as they are concerned with legal norms and rules. Sen has pointed out a 'theory of human rights cannot be sensibly confined within the juridical model in which it is frequently incarcerated' (Sen 2004, 319). Consequently this piece will focus on the wider, political economy aspects of the interface between human rights and climate change. It is further appropriate to state that this is not an advocacy piece. The paper deliberately avoids being normative or prescriptive in recommending a human rights-based approach to developing climate change operations. It does examine why vulnerable populations chose to embrace this approach, why they continue to view it as a transformative strategy, and what some of the successes and challenges have been.

The debate on the 'science of climate change' focuses mainly on 1) whether the climate is changing and 2) if mankind's activities play a role in climate change. This report was written after the symposium on "Man-made versus natural climate change; Changes in climate during the past 100 years from a Holocene perspective" at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, March 1999, where these issues were also dealt with. The report provides same additional background, review of same recent work on climate and includes some more philosophical reflections as well. The following topics are addressed, in same detail: introduction to the climate change debatewhat is known of climate (change) what is known of climate ( change) in the near past and in geological time scales how climate variability and climate change are interrelated what factors force climate ( change and/or variability) same observations relevant to the climate change debate same recent climate modeling relevant to the climate change debate