Barry McMullin [Home]


Full Professor, DCU School of Electronic Engineering

(Last touched: 1 April 2022)

Photo: Barry McMullin

You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

Karl Popper

Graph: Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide - Global

Global CO2 trend via NOAA/ESRL

Graph: comparison of climate action pledges with the Paris Agreement temperature goals

Comparison of climate action pledges with the Paris Agreement temperature goals via Climate Action Tracker

Hi - welcome to my virtual presence on the Web!

Yes folks, it's a cheesy old "personal home page", but having been here since web pre-history (about 1995 -- the oldest recorded fossil dates from 1998) I can't just abandon it now... Anyway, if I wait long enough somebody will provide an upgrade...

You can also check my DCU "corporate" profile, find me on LinkedIn, see my publication list at ResearcherID or sample my Google Scholar aura. (Somebody did once even give me a wikipedia page; but it was fairly quickly deleted for the obvious reason that I am only a "... non-notable academic, fails WP:PROF". Mind you, at least I still get an "honourable mention" in Vicipéid...)

And if you are that way inclined, you can even follow me on Twitter.

But anyway ... right here you'll find:

My current academic focus is on climate change and, in particular, radical emissions reduction. I am co-PI on the Irish EPA Funded research project IE-NETs: investigating the potential for Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) in Ireland. You can find out more in our white paper (released January 2018): A Post-Paris Literature Review of Negative Emissions Technology, and Potential for Ireland; or view this public presentation given at Engineers Ireland in December 2017:

For whatever it is worth, I try to minimise the ecological footprint of my own acacemic work. In particular, I fly as little as possible, and am a signatory of the petition Flying Less: Reducing Academia's Carbon Footprint.

For context, here's my not-so-quick summary talk that I gave in March 2016, that reflects on the challenges of effective climate action, post the Paris Agreement (with due acknowledgement to Prof. Kevin Anderson):

See also, my submission, in August 2017, to the Irish Citizen's Assembly: TEQs: Empowering Citizens for Radical Climate Action

I have previously worked in a number of other areas. If you are interested in Artificial Life please check out the DCU ALife Laboratory. If you are interested in Web Accessibility please check out the DCU eAccessibility Lab. And if teaching and learning in higher education is your thing, please visit the All Ireland Society for Higher Education (AISHE).

I occasionally dabble in (Popperian) Philosophy; you can check out some ruminations on this in a video panel with Dan Schneider and Prof. Malachi Hacohen from July, 2017: On Karl Popper

And if you find anything here that doesn't work, please let me know by e-mail to Barry.McMullin@dcu.ie!