Monthly Archives: January 2011

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation: Part III

Posted on January 31, 2011 by | 351 comments

by Judith Curry

At the Workshop, there was an interesting  presentation made by by Jeroen van der Sluijs, who also presented this at the public event.   The talk addresses paradigms of uncertain risk, and how to act under conditions of uncertainty.

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351 Comments

Posted in Policy

Slaying a greenhouse dragon

Posted on January 31, 2011 by | 2,518 comments

by Judith Curry

On the Pierrehumbert thread, I stated:

So, if you have followed the Climate Etc. threads, the numerous threads on this topic at Scienceofdoom, and read Pierrehumbert’s article, is anyone still unconvinced about the Tyndall gas effect and its role in maintaining planetary temperatures?   I’ve read Slaying the Sky Dragon and originally intended a rubuttal, but it would be too overwhelming to attempt this and probably pointless.

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2,518 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation: Part II

Posted on January 29, 2011 by | 658 comments

by Judith Curry

Here are some reactions from the Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Debate.  These are my personal reflections, and include some of the perspectives and statements made by others (without any attribution of names).  First, I would like to thank  Jerome Ravetz and Angela Pereira for organizing this Workshop.

The first issue is what exactly is meant by reconciliation, and who actually wants it?  Reconciliation is defined (wikipedia) as re-establishing normal relations between belligerents: re-establish dialogue, reinstate balance,  restore civility.  It is not clear that there has ever been normal relations between, say, the mainstream IPCC researchers and  the skeptical climate blogosphere. Consensus building was not seen as having any part in a reconciliation.  Rather there was a desire to conduct impassioned debates nonviolently, and to create an arena where we can fight a more honest fight over the science and the policy options.

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658 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate

Posted on January 24, 2011 by | 449 comments

Update:  WUWT has posted the rationale statement prepared by the workshop organizers, Jerome Ravetz and Angela Pereira

by Judith Curry

This week, I will be in Lisbon attending a Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate.  The Workshop was conceptualized by Jerome Ravetz, Silvio Funtowicz, Angela Pereira, James Risbey, and Jeroen van der Sluijs.

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449 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Probabilistic(?) estimates of climate sensitivity

Posted on January 24, 2011 by | 144 comments

by Judith Curry

James Annan (with Hargreaves) has a new paper out, entitled “On the generation and interpretation of probabilistic estimates of climate sensitivity.”  Here is the abstract:

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144 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks, Uncertainty

AMS Annual Meeting

Posted on January 23, 2011 by | 118 comments

Update:  notes on Trenberth’s presentation here.  Ryan Maue comments at WUWT.

by Judith Curry

The Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) will be held this week (Jan 23-27)   in Seattle, WA.    Program details are provided here.  An overview of what is going on at the meeting is provided in here.

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118 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

A disastrous truth

Posted on January 22, 2011 by | 317 comments

by Judith Curry

The Financial Times has an interesting article entitled “A disastrous truth” by Simon Kuper (h/t Roger Pielke Jr.).  The title is a clever play on the words of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.”

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317 Comments

Posted in Policy

Mid 20th Century Global(?) Warming

Posted on January 21, 2011 by | 205 comments

by Peter Webster

The mid-20th century temperature “bump” (peaking circa 1940) is an interesting feature of the temperature record.  This “bump” was discussed in an email from Tom Wigley to Phil Jones referring to a WUWT post that  discusses a paper by Thompson et al.

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205 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Politics of Climate Expertise: Part IV

Posted on January 20, 2011 by | 110 comments

by Judith Curry

Donna Laframboise at NoFrakkingConsensus has a new post entitled “IPCC Nobel Laureates Lack Scientific Credibility,” with the subheading:

IPCC insiders say many of those who shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize have weak scientific credentials. They were chosen because they are of the right gender or come from the right country.

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110 Comments

Posted in Politics

Pierrehumbert on infrared radiation and planetary temperatures

Posted on January 19, 2011 by | 693 comments

Raymond Pierrehumbert has written an excellent overview on infrared radiation and planetary temperature.  The article was published in Physics Today, and unfortunately behind paywall.  Fortunately, Climate Clash has posted the article in full.  I suspect that this article is digest of  the corresponding chapter in his new book, Principles of Planetary Climate, which is hot off the press (published December 2010).  On a previous thread, Chris Colose highly recommended  Pierrehumbert’s treatment of infrared radiation and planetary temperature.

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693 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Climate Change and Security

Posted on January 16, 2011 by | 267 comments

by Judith Curry

The impacts of climate change and natural disasters can interact with the political, social, and economic circumstances of a region to alter its security environment.  Through its primary security planning and strategy documents, the U.S. government has formally recognized the central importance that climate change and natural hazard impacts can have in degrading regional security. Among the key documents providing guidance regarding climate change are:

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267 Comments

Posted in Policy

Learning to love uncertainty

Posted on January 15, 2011 by | 92 comments

by Judith Curry

I am returning to the topic of uncertainty (my article for Climate Change on this topic is overdue).  I just spotted this article (h/t Bishop Hill):

We must learn to love uncertainty and failure, say leading thinkers Planet’s biggest brains answer this year’s Edge question: ‘What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?’

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92 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Attribution of extreme events

Posted on January 15, 2011 by | 456 comments

by Judith Curry

Climate scientists have made public statements attributing extreme events to global warming.  The first such attribution that I recall was made by Kevin Trenberth, to the effect that 7% of Hurricane Katrina’s intensity and rainfalls could be attributed to global warming.  Trenberth has subsequently made public statements about the attribution to global warming of the Russian heatwave, Pakistan floods, and Queensland floods. Others have made similar public statements, most recently Richard Somerville.

NOAA is serious about including attribution of extreme events as part of its proposed National Climate Service.  Their rationale is described in this Workshop summary:

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456 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Politics of Climate Expertise: Part III

Posted on January 14, 2011 by | 793 comments

by Judith Curry

The recent controversies surrounding Kevin Trenberth deserve its own thread.

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793 Comments

Posted in Politics

(AGW) Skeptical Environmentalists

Posted on January 12, 2011 by | 389 comments

by Judith Curry

The archetypal “skeptical environmentalist” is Bjorn Lomborg, although this post is not about him (for a recent interview with Lomborg, see dotearth).

This post is about the increasing muddiness between environmentalism and AGW.  A recent youtube animation highlights this confusion: which character in this discussion seems more protective of the environment?

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389 Comments

Posted in Politics

Politics of climate expertise. Part II

Posted on January 11, 2011 by | 397 comments

by Judith Curry

Over at Roger Pielke Jr’s blog, there is a guest essay by Sharon Friedman, who blogs at A New Century of Forest Planning. Her essay is on the topic of scientific integrity.  She makes the following four recommendations:

Here are my four principles for improving the use of information in policy, (1) joint framing and design of research with policymakers (2) explicit consideration of the relevance of practitioner and other forms of knowledge (3) quality measures for scientific information (including QA/QC, data integrity and peer and practitioner review), and (3) transparency and openness of review of any information considered and its application to policy.

The bolded statement is of particular relevance to this topic.  In the politics of climate expertise, which experts should be paid attention to?

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397 Comments

Posted in Politics

Winter Weather

Posted on January 10, 2011 by | 99 comments

by Judith Curry

In Atlanta right now, we have about 2″ of snow, overlain by freezing rain, a classical “winter mix.”  The whole city is pretty much closed down (including Georgia Tech).  This is a fairly wimpy storm relative to what I used to encounter in Boulder or Chicago, but dealing with weather is relative to what you have adapted to.  Madhav Khandekar from India posts at Pielke Sr.:

For last two weeks or about most of north and central India are witnessing cold wintry weather; some places in Kashmir and the Himalayan foothills have low temperatures at -5C to -20C! This is cold for India, since most houses are not insulated, not heated (except some small room heaters in north India) . . .

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99 Comments

Posted in Prediction

Politics of climate expertise

Posted on January 8, 2011 by | 561 comments

by Judith Curry

Over at Die Klimazwiebel, Hans von Storch has a provocative post where he provides his answers to recent interview questions on the subject of climate scientists’ attitudes.   The first question is:

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561 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Where’s the “missing” heat?

Posted on January 7, 2011 by | 443 comments

by Judith Curry

I’m bowing to pressure to prepare a post on a current science topic that people seem to want to talk about.  This topic refers to Kevin Trenberth’s infamous statement in the CRU emails:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

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443 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Libertarianism and the environment

Posted on January 6, 2011 by | 733 comments

by Judith Curry

On several previous threads, there has been considerable discussion of libertarian perspectives, some of which were rather heated.  This comment by Gary M convinced me that we need a thread on this topic:

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733 Comments

Posted in Politics

Pakistan flood follow-up

Posted on January 5, 2011 by | 128 comments

by Judith Curry & Peter Webster

The flooding of the Indus River system in Pakistan during the summer and autumn of 2010 was a cataclysmic  humanitarian disaster.  The destruction wrought by the 2010 floods could set Pakistan back years or even decades, weaken its struggling civilian administration and add to the burdens on its military, distracting from their efforts to keep the Taliban in check.

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128 Comments

Posted in South Asia

Scenarios: 2010-2040. Part III: Climate Shifts

Posted on January 4, 2011 by | 247 comments

by Judith Curry

Interpretation of statistical or dynamical predictions of future climate change needs to appropriately interpret the modes of natural internal climate variability, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO).  This interpretation is needed in the context of forced climate change (e.g. solar, greenhouse gases).

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247 Comments

Posted in Prediction

Evangelicals and environmentalism

Posted on January 1, 2011 by | 660 comments

by Judith Curry

The previous thread on “Understanding conservative religious resistance to climate change” generated over 800 comments that is still active, so I thought I should start a new thread on this general topic.  Some of you complained that only one perspective was presented, that of Dr. Gushee.  This post addresses the other side.

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660 Comments

Posted in Policy

Blogospheric New Year’s resolution

Posted on January 1, 2011 by | 414 comments

by Judith Curry

Motivated by discussion initiated by Brandon Shollenberger, I put together a post that discusses conduct for effective rational discussion and blog netiqette.

A code of conduct for effective rational discussion

I just came across an excellent post at Evolving Thoughts, entitled “A code of conduct for effective rational discussion” (h/t Bob Grumbine), based upon Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments by Edward T. Damer.

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414 Comments

Posted in Communication