Monthly Archives: February 2011

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation. Part IX: Chris Colose’s Comment

Posted on February 8, 2011 by | 394 comments

by Judith Curry

Renewed attention (e.g. Tamino) is being given to Chris Colose’s comment that was originally posted on the thread Education versus Endocrination:

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394 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation. Part VIII: McKitrick’s Comments

Posted on February 8, 2011 by | 53 comments

by Judith Curry

Prior to the Lisbon Workshop, the participants were asked to write a 2 page essay with their thoughts on the topic of the Workshop.  There were some very interesting and provocative statements.  Ross McKitrick has published his statement here (h/t Bishop Hill).  The section headings are:

  • The Key to Intellectual Freedom in Economics:  No Society Statements
  • The Unintended Consequences of the IPCC

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53 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation. Part VII: Ravetz speaks

Posted on February 8, 2011 by | 65 comments

Just in from Tallbloke:

Jerry [Ravetz] has written a new, short, clear essay to try to clarify some issues of misunderstanding of what he is philosophising about on my blog concerning truth and PNS [Post Normal Science].

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65 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation: Part VI

Posted on February 8, 2011 by | 339 comments

by Judith Curry

The recent dust-up between Eric Steig and O’Donnell et al. is an interesting case study as we ponder the issue of reconciliation.   This dust-up is in regard to the analysis of temperatures on Antarctica:

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339 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation. Part V: The Science is not Settled

Posted on February 6, 2011 by | 453 comments

by Judith Curry

In Part IV, we explored the kerfuffle surrounding Fred Pearce’s attribution of “the science is settled” to Gavin Schmidt.   Kim summarizes it this way:

The great irony, as Shub has pointed out elsewhere, is that here we have alarmists fighting like cats and dogs to make sure it is well understood that the science is not settled.

Well, that is more of a reconciliation than any of us could have hoped for, for all of us to agree that the science is not settled.  Even Joe Romm is incensed by the “science is settled” statement (see here and here).  The title of Romm’s 2nd post “Fabricated quote used to discredit scientist” adds a whole new dimension:  a scientist associated with the “science is settled” statement is discredited. Wow.

So where did “the science is settled” come from?  Manacker provides some history.  It seems that journos and politicians are the main ones using this phrase.   But many scientists have used words that sound similar.  There is at least one instance of a leading IPCC scientist using these words, that I am aware of.

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453 Comments

Posted in Policy

Slaying a greenhouse dragon. Part III: discussion

Posted on February 4, 2011 by | 333 comments

By Judith Curry

In Part I, we critiqued Claes Johnson’s chapters in the book Slaying the Sky Dragon.   In Part II, I have posted a published article by Martin Hertzberg, who authored a chapter in the Dragon book.   My original motivation for doing these threads is to try to lay to rest the debate over the fundamental physics of infrared radiative emission of gases such as CO2 and H2O.

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333 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Slaying a greenhouse dragon. Part II

Posted on February 4, 2011 by | 274 comments

by Judith Curry

Martin Hertzberg, one of the authors of Slaying the Sky Dragon, has requested that we assess his paper (published in E&E).  Since we had so much “fun” with Part I, I said sure.

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274 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Lisbon Workshop on Reconciliation: Part IV

Posted on February 4, 2011 by | 975 comments

by Judith Curry

Fred Pearce’s article in the New Scientist is creating a stir in the climate blogosphere.  Fred, a participant in the Workshop, wrote:

But the leaders of mainstream climate science turned down the gig, including NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, who said the science was settled so there was nothing to discuss.

Across the spectrum, participants were mostly united in disagreeing with Schmidt. Climate science, they said, is much less certain than the IPCC mainstreamers say, and peace can be found only if all accept what they dubbed “the uncertainty monster”.

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975 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds

Posted on February 3, 2011 by | 138 comments

by Judith Curry

Juoakola spotted an interesting paper, that I missed when it was originally published:

NONLINEARITIES, FEEDBACKS AND CRITICAL THRESHOLDS WITHIN THE EARTH’S CLIMATE SYSTEM

JOSÉ A. RIAL , ROGER A. PIELKE SR., MARTIN BENISTON , MARTIN CLAUSSEN, JOSEP CANADELL , PETER COX, HERMANN HELD , NATHALIE DE NOBLET-DUCOUDRÉ , RONALD PRINN, JAMES F. REYNOLDS and JOSÉ D. SALAS

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138 Comments

Posted in climate models, Sensitivity & feedbacks

Politics and predicting the Pakistan floods

Posted on February 2, 2011 by | 77 comments

by Judith Curry

My Georgia Tech colleagues Peter Webster, Violeta Toma and Hyemi Kim have a new paper out entitled “Were the Pakistan floods predictable?”  The topic of the 2010 Pakistan floods were discussed on previous threads here and here.

The punchline of this paper is:

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77 Comments

Posted in South Asia