Yearly Archives: 2011

Uncertainty abounds in issues related to climate science and climate changes, the impacts of those changes, and the efficacy of strategies that might be used to mitigate or adapt to change. There are, however, a few things about which we can be quite certain. There are also a number of things about which many people are certain, but should not be.

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53 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Love your monsters

Posted on December 27, 2011 by curryja | 214 comments

by Judith Curry

The Case for Modernization as the Road to Salvation

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214 Comments

Posted in History

Reducing the future to climate

Posted on December 26, 2011 by curryja | 271 comments

by Judith Curry

One hundred years ago, a popular theory contended that various aspects of climate determined the physiology and psychology of individuals, which in turn defined the behavior and culture of the societies that those individuals formed. As the ideological wars of the twentieth century re- shaped political and moral worlds, environmental determinism became discredited and marginalised within mainstream academic thought. Yet at the beginning of a new century with heightening anxieties about changes in climate, the idea that climate can determine the fate of people and society has re-emerged in the form of ‘climate reductionism’.

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271 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

New research on the links between climate change and conflicts

Posted on December 25, 2011 by curryja | 141 comments

by Judith Curry

the emerging links between climate, conflict, and national security are far from being thoroughly understood

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141 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Week in review 12/23/11

Posted on December 23, 2011 by curryja | 209 comments

by Judith Curry

Here are a few things that caught my eye this past week.

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209 Comments

Posted in Week in review

A better climate for disaster risk management

Posted on December 22, 2011 by curryja | 141 comments

by Judith Curry

how building new capacity, tools and partnerships between disaster risk managers and climate information providers can lead to improved disaster risk management, including prevention, preparedness and response.

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141 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts, Policy

A biologist’s perspective on ice ages and climate sensitivity: Part I

Posted on December 21, 2011 by curryja | 300 comments

by DocMartyn

This is the first of a three part presentation where I will attempt to explain the climate of the last 800,000 thousand years, drawing on the role of the biosphere’s response to interstellar dust.

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300 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Arctic Update II

Posted on December 20, 2011 by curryja | 288 comments

by Judith Curry

Here is a synopsis of some recent papers and other issues in the Arctic

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288 Comments

Posted in Polar regions

Week in Review 12/16/11

Posted on December 16, 2011 by curryja | 555 comments

by Judith Curry

Here are a few things that caught my eye this past week.

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555 Comments

Posted in Week in review

Hegerl et al. react to the Uncertainty Monster paper

Posted on December 15, 2011 by curryja | 615 comments

by Judith Curry

Gabrielle Hegerl, Peter Stott, Susan Solomon, and Francis Zwiers have published a comment to our paper “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster.” Webster and Curry respond. The CRU emails provide some interesting context for this discussion.

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615 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Another IPCC error: cloud albedo forcing

Posted on December 14, 2011 by curryja | 104 comments

by Paul Matthews

Climate Etc has discussed the IPCC’s new protocol for alleged errors and an error found by Nic Lewis regarding climate sensitivity. This post discusses another error in IPCC AR4, one that has been around for some time but has only recently been reported to the IPCC.

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104 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Durban outcome(?)

Posted on December 13, 2011 by curryja | 354 comments

by Judith Curry

From the latest UNFCCC press release:

Countries meeting in Durban, South Africa, have delivered a breakthrough on the future of the international community’s response to climate change

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354 Comments

Posted in Policy

Energy-water nexus

Posted on December 12, 2011 by curryja | 236 comments

by Judith Curry

Producing energy uses water, and providing freshwater uses energy. Both these processes face growing limits and problems. In most power plants, water cools the steam that spins the electricity-generating turbines. Refining transportation fuels requires water, as does producing fuels—for example, mining coal, extracting petroleum, or growing crops for biofuels. Using water in our homes and businesses requires getting it there, treating it, heating it, and more.

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236 Comments

Posted in Energy

AGU Fall Meeting: Highlights

Posted on December 11, 2011 by curryja | 176 comments

by Judith Curry

Last week, over 20,000 scientists met in San Francisco at the annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

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176 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Kyoto Protocol: unintended consequences

Posted on December 6, 2011 by curryja | 350 comments

by Judith Curry

Gail Tverberg writes:

In a recent post, I discovered something rather alarming–the fact that in the last decade (2000 to 2010) both world energy consumption and the CO2 emissions from this energy consumption were rising as fast as GDP for the world as a whole. This relationship is especially strange, because prior to 2000, it appeared as though decoupling was taking place: GDP was growing more rapidly than energy use and CO2 emissions. And even after 2000, many countries continued to report decoupling.

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350 Comments

Posted in Policy

Why the decision to tackle global warming isn’t simple

Posted on December 5, 2011 by curryja | 449 comments

by Judith Curry

A June 22, 2010 article in the New Republic provides one of the most sensible analysis of global warming policy that I’ve seen (h/t Roger Caizza). It is particularly relevant in light of the current negotiations at Durban

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449 Comments

Posted in Policy

Climate Smart Agriculture

Posted on December 4, 2011 by curryja | 204 comments

by Judith Curry

In 2010 a cluster of United Nations and pan-African organizations released a little book entitlted “Climate Smart Agriculture.” Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) “seeks to incease sustainable productivity, strengthen farmers’ resilience, reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration.” The little book and the concept are getting a lot of attention here at COP17. [link]

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204 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Week in review 12/3/11

Posted on December 3, 2011 by curryja | 196 comments

by Judith Curry

Its been a busy week for climate news, I am travelling and am trying to catch up. Here are some things that caught my eye the past few days:

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196 Comments

Posted in Week in review

The long, slow thaw?

Posted on December 1, 2011 by curryja | 338 comments

by Tony Brown

A warming trend can be observed from 1659, the start date of Central England Temperature (CET)- the oldest instrumental record in the world- to today. It would be a notable coincidence if the warming started at the exact point that this record began. The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct CET from its current start point, through the use of diverse historical records, to 1538, in order to see if the commencement of this centuries long warming trend can be identified from within this time frame.

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338 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, History

Data libertarianism

Posted on December 1, 2011 by curryja | 404 comments

by Judith Curry

“The fuss over climategate showed that the world is increasingly unwilling to accept the message that “we are scientists; trust us”. Other people want to join the scientific conversation. Good scientists, interested in finding truth, should want to encourage them, not put up the shutters. The wider world instinctively knows to distrust those in all walks of life who reject openness.”

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404 Comments

Posted in Open knowledge

Shifts, phase-locked state and chaos in climate data

Posted on November 30, 2011 by curryja | 180 comments

by David Douglass

Recent studies of observational climate data have shown that Earth’s climate system: has many abrupt climate shifts; is phase locked to an annual cycle of Solar origin; and is chaotic. These phenomena are related and are summarized below.

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180 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized