Monthly Archives: April 2011

A prediction market for climate outcomes

Posted on April 30, 2011 by curryja | 185 comments

by Judith Curry

I am a strong believer that academic freedom is essential for scientific progress, and such freedom includes the right to be “wrong.” In fact, scientists can often learn much from failed experiments and failed predictions. However, for regulatory science and science for policy, should there be some premium on (and some reward for) actually being “right”? How can we know what is “right” in the short term? Shi-Ling Hsu has a provocative new essay that advocates an entirely different path for evaluating climate science that draws upon an institution that is truly independent: markets.
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Posted in Prediction

Tornado madness

Posted on April 30, 2011 by curryja | 104 comments

by Judith Curry

I’ve been pretty clear about where I stand with regards to the attribution of extreme events to global warming, e.g. see this thread. The recent tornado outbreak in the southeast U.S. has spawned a number of statements and articles about the cause of the outbreak including, inevitably, global warming.

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Posted in Attribution

Uncertainty in Catastrophe Modeling

Posted on April 28, 2011 by curryja | 66 comments

by Judith Curry

Roger Pielke Jr. has a very interesting post on uncertainty in catastrophe modeling. The basis for the post is an interview with Karen Clark. Karen Clark developed the first catastrophe model, and is worried that these models are being given more credit and influence than they deserve.

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Posted in Uncertainty

Brain sprain

Posted on April 26, 2011 by curryja | 228 comments

by Judith Curry

There is an interesting new paper in press in Behavioral and Brain Science that is generating substantial discussion in the blogosphere, entitled “Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory.” Perhaps this article can provide us with some insights on the climate debate.

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Posted in Communication, Scientific method

Science without method

Posted on April 25, 2011 by curryja | 639 comments

by Judith Curry

Since people are clamoring for a new thread, lets talk about this article in the the Australian Quadrant entitled “Science without method,” subtitled “Global warming research: whatever happened to the scientific method?” To review previous Climate Etc. posts on the Scientific Method, click here.

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Posted in Greenhouse effect, Scientific method

Overstretching Attribution

Posted on April 23, 2011 by curryja | 190 comments

by Judith Curry

Attribution of climate change and its impacts has been a recurring theme at Climate Etc. The first issue of Nature Climate Change has a provocative article entitled “Overstretching Attribution.”

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Posted in Attribution

Polyclimate

Posted on April 22, 2011 by curryja | 510 comments

by Judith Curry

I am trying to germinate an idea on how to move forward on the climate debate. Bear with me through this argument, and let me know what you think.

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Posted in Communication, Open knowledge, Scientific method, Sociology of science

Hidden knowledge

Posted on April 20, 2011 by curryja | 368 comments

by Judith Curry

I stumbled across this essay by Michael Nielsen entitled “Science Beyond Individual Understanding,” which I think is very relevant to the climate problem.

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Posted in Open knowledge, Scientific method, Sociology of science

Climate Shift

Posted on April 19, 2011 by curryja | 271 comments

by Judith Curry

Matt Nisbet has published a new report entitled “Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate,” that is generating substantial controversy in the blogosphere.

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Posted in Communication

Earth’s Energy Imbalance

Posted on April 18, 2011 by curryja | 306 comments

by Judith Curry

Jim Hansen has just posted his latest draft paper, entitled “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications.” This is quite a meaty paper, and will be of particular interest to those of you wondering “where’s the missing heat?”

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Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Climate refugees

Posted on April 17, 2011 by curryja | 238 comments

by Judith Curry

This post is motivated by the article in the Asian Correspondent by Gavin Atkins entitled “What happened to the climate refugees?”

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Posted in Climate change impacts

Climate Capitalism

Posted on April 15, 2011 by curryja | 282 comments

by Judith Curry

There is a new book out entitled “Climate Capitalism: Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change,” by Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen, authors of an earlier book entitled “Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution“.

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Posted in Policy

Scafetta on climate oscillations

Posted on April 14, 2011 by curryja | 325 comments

by Judith Curry

David Hagen wrote on the Dempster thread:

There appears need for much more effort on grappling with both with major statistical issues involved (as highlighted by Dempster and Scafetta) as well as identifying natural causes that can have strong impacts on climate far beyond what is currently included in climate models (per Scafetta, and Svensmark).

As a case in point, lets examine one of Nicola Scafetta’s papers, which ties in with our previous threads on attribution of decadal variability.

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Posted in Attribution

Scientists Often Pigeonholed by Political Debates

Posted on April 13, 2011 by curryja | 258 comments

by Judith Curry

This post takes its title from the NPR interview with Richard Muller, Director of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.

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Posted in Sociology of science

Axing NOAA’s Climate Service

Posted on April 12, 2011 by curryja | 51 comments

by Judith Curry

I have been intending to write a post on NOAA’s proposed Climate Service, but hadn’t gotten around to it. The announcement today regarding the final FY 2011 Appropriations deal includes language stating that none of the funds appropriated to NOAA may be used to “implement, establish, or create a NOAA Climate Service.”

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Posted in Policy, Politics

Dempster on climate prediction

Posted on April 11, 2011 by curryja | 113 comments

by Judith Curry

I spotted this presentation by Arthur Dempster, Harvard statistician, in the Series on Mathematical and Statistical Approaches to Climate Modeling hosted by the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

Dempster is widely known as the co-originator of Dempster-Shafer Evidence Theory (see the Wikipedia for an overview). Elements of evidence theory have been discussed on several previous threads (see Italian Flag, reasoning about floods).

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Posted in Prediction, Scientific method, Uncertainty

Hartwell Paper: Game Changer?

Posted on April 10, 2011 by curryja | 374 comments

by Judith Curry

Motivated by an exchange by Chief Hydrologist and Max on the David Montgomery thread, lets a take a look at the Hartwell paper. Almost one year after its publication, has this paper been a game changer?

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Posted in Policy

Lawyering up

Posted on April 9, 2011 by curryja | 508 comments

by Judith Curry

Climate scientists, bloggers, and journalists are increasingly providing business for lawyers. What’s going on here?

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Posted in Ethics

Montgomery’s testimony on climate economics

Posted on April 8, 2011 by curryja | 167 comments

by Judith Curry

David Montgomery has testified twice in the past few weeks on the economics of climate change. Lets take a closer look at his testimony, and at some of the critiques of his testimony.

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Posted in Policy

Separating natural and anthropogenically-forced decadal climate variability

Posted on April 7, 2011 by curryja | 524 comments

by Judith Curry

The issue of separating natural from anthropogenically forced variability, particularly in context of the attribution of 20th century climate change, has been a topic of several previous threads at Climate Etc. The issue of natural vs anthropogenically forced climate variability/change has been a key issue of contention between the climate establishment and skeptics. There are some encouraging signs that the climate establishment is maturing in their consideration of this issue.

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Posted in Attribution, climate models

Scholars and Scandals

Posted on April 6, 2011 by curryja | 198 comments

by Judith Curry

Well I thought it was probably impossible at this point for someone to come up with a fresh perspective on Climategate. A new article in Inside Higher Ed entitled “Scholars and Scandals” arguably fits the bill. The article tackles the broader questions of:

What is the best course of action when scholars’ motives and research are attacked? How quickly should they respond? Who should vet such allegations — universities, disciplinary societies, or some other entity? If scholars move too hastily, do the risks of getting it wrong (or of being later disproven) outweigh the damage of letting allegations fester without rebuttal?

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Posted in Sociology of science

Reactions to Muller’s Testimony

Posted on April 4, 2011 by curryja | 328 comments

by Judith Curry

Last week, Richard Muller testified at the U.S. House of Representatives Hearing on Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy [see here].

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Posted in Data and observations, Politics