Monthly Archives: August 2011

Water: too little, too much: Part II

Posted on August 31, 2011 by | 15 comments

by Judith Curry

I’m in Boulder, attending the NOAA Water Cycle Science Challenge Workshop.  The Workshop now has a website, which includes the plenary presentations.

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15 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Consumer options for choosing renewable energy

Posted on August 30, 2011 by | 246 comments

by Allen Green

What options do consumers have for choosing renewable energy?

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246 Comments

Posted in Energy

ACS Webinar on Climate Change: Part II

Posted on August 29, 2011 by | 118 comments

by Judith Curry

A very interesting session yesterday, I now have links to  the ppt presentations.

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118 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Cosmic ray discussion thread

Posted on August 28, 2011 by | 293 comments

by Judith Curry

The publication last week of results from the CERN CLOUD experiment on cosmic rays is generating significant buzz, with substantial debate on the implication of these results for climate change,

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293 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Water: too little, too much

Posted on August 27, 2011 by | 149 comments

by Judith Curry

Next week, I will be in Boulder attending a workshop on the topic of understanding and predicting conditions associated with either too much or too little water.

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149 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts, climate models

Hurricane Irene: psychology of risk perception

Posted on August 26, 2011 by | 258 comments

by Judith Curry

As Major Hurricane Irene prepares to sideswipe the entire east coast of the U.S. north of North Carolina, what makes people discount or respond to to information on an impending disaster?

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258 Comments

Posted in Hurricanes

ACS Webinar on Climate Change

Posted on August 24, 2011 by | 235 comments

by Judith Curry

The forthcoming annual meeting of the American Chemical Society is hosting two sessions on Climate Change, one of which is available for public participation by registering to participate in a webinar.

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235 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

CO2 residence time discussion thread

Posted on August 24, 2011 by | 1,192 comments

by Judith Curry

There was some discussion of this topic in the context Murry Salby’s talk, but it has been suggested that this topic deserves its own thread.

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1,192 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Climate boomerangs

Posted on August 23, 2011 by | 477 comments

by Judith Curry

A boomerang effect occurs when a message is strategically constructed with a specific intent but produces a result that is the opposite of that intent.

Both sides of the political debate surrounding climate change in the U.S. seem to be feeling the boomerang effect.

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477 Comments

Posted in Communication, Politics

Can we make good decisions under ignorance?

Posted on August 22, 2011 by | 384 comments

by Judith Curry

Does decision making require high levels of confidence? Can there be such a thing as making good decisions under deep uncertainty and even ignorance?   What decision making criteria or guidelines make sense under these circumstances? How does overconfidence hamper the decision making process?

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384 Comments

Posted in Policy

A modest proposal for reforestation

Posted on August 20, 2011 by | 97 comments

by Judith Curry

Douglas Sheil from Uganda sent me an interesting article with the provocative title “A modest proposal for wealthy countries to reforest their land for the common good.”  Following in Swift’s footsteps, the paper uses satire to highlight some inconsistencies regarding international agreements on land cover and ecosystem conservation.

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97 Comments

Posted in Communication, Policy

Planetary Energy Balance

Posted on August 19, 2011 by | 989 comments

by Judith Curry

By Judith Curry

Here is another attempt at trying to untangle the Skydragons’ misunderstanding about the greenhouse effect and the planetary energy balance.

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989 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Should we assess climate model predictions in light of severe tests?

Posted on August 18, 2011 by | 382 comments

by Judith Curry

This question is posed and addressed in a recent article by Joel Katzav in EOS.

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382 Comments

Posted in climate models

reanalyses.org

Posted on August 17, 2011 by | 134 comments

by Judith Curry

How do you estimate the state of the global atmosphere and ocean when observational data sets are incomplete, imperfect and noisy?

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134 Comments

Posted in climate models, Data and observations

Postma on the greenhouse effect

Posted on August 16, 2011 by | 1,289 comments

by Judith Curry

With over 1000 comments on Saturday’s greenhouse thread, here is a new thread devoted to technical discussions of Joseph Postma’s paper on the greenhouse effect and Chris Colose’s rebuttal at Skeptical Science.

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1,289 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Climate sensitivity to ocean heat transport

Posted on August 16, 2011 by | 98 comments

by Judith Curry

A paper in press in the Journal of Climate  provides some insight into the interaction of cloud feedback with ocean heat transport.

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98 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

On e-salons and blogospheric argumentation

Posted on August 14, 2011 by | 579 comments

by Judith Curry

On a previous thread, I made the following statement:

I am striving for something different, sort of an e-salon where we discuss interesting topics at the knowledge frontier.

Lets take a closer look at how this might work.

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579 Comments

Posted in Communication

Slaying the Greenhouse Dragon. Part IV

Posted on August 13, 2011 by | 2,041 comments

by Vaughan Pratt

While I seriously doubt whether climate skeptics will thank me for pointing it out, I don’t believe their arguments impress the swing voters in the climate debate as convincingly as they might.  With this in mind I’d like to propose a strengthening of the skeptic argument that downward longwave radiation or DLR, popularly called back radiation, cannot be held responsible for warming the surface of the Earth.

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2,041 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Meta-expertise

Posted on August 12, 2011 by | 97 comments

by Judith Curry

How can we cope with becoming more hyper-specialized and fragmented in our personal knowledge bases while at the same time being exposed to too much relevant formation on the internet for any of us to learn and process?

Michael Smithson provides a modest proposal for addressing this challenge: We should all become expert about experts and expertise. That is, we should develop meta-expertise.

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97 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Two (+1) new uncertainty papers

Posted on August 12, 2011 by | 172 comments

by Judith Curry

My paper “Reasoning about climate uncertainty” has now been published online at Climatic Change; it looks like mine is the first to make it online of the papers in the special issue entitled Framing and Communicating Uncertainty and Confidence Judgments by the IPCC.

Also of relevance, there is a new working paper from the LSE Grantham Research Institute entitled “Scientific uncertainty: a user’s guide” (h/t Bishop Hill).

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172 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Representative Concentration Pathways

Posted on August 11, 2011 by | 168 comments

by Judith Curry

“Representative concentration pathways” is the new phrase for what the IPCC used to refer to as “emissions scenarios.”  Lets take a look at the new RCP’s being used for the AR5.

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168 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect, IPCC

Greenhouse dragon technical discussion thread

Posted on August 10, 2011 by | 514 comments

by Judith Curry

Six months after the thread Slaying a Greenhouse Dragon, discussion still continues with well over 2000 comments.

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514 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Critique of the IPCC Report on Renewable Energy

Posted on August 10, 2011 by | 142 comments

by Judith Curry

Over at BraveNewClimate, Ted Trainer provides the most detailed critique I’ve seen of the recent IPCC Report on Renewable Energy.

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142 Comments

Posted in IPCC

Bardian insights

Posted on August 9, 2011 by | 125 comments

by Judith Curry

Shakespeare’s writings are infused with with weather references, and even some that are arguably relevant to climate change.  The insights, however, come from the academic debate surrounding the actual authorship of the Shakespearean opus.

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125 Comments

Posted in Communication

Arctic Imperative

Posted on August 8, 2011 by | 97 comments

by Judith Curry

In my congressional testimony, I discussed the idea of climate change winners and losers.   In the Arctic, where climate is changing most rapidly, will there be winners or losers?

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97 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts, Polar regions, Policy