Monthly Archives: February 2012

JC interview

Posted on February 28, 2012 by | 337 comments

by Judith Curry

Oilprice.com has posted a fairly lengthy interview of me.  So if you have ever wondered what I thought about the following issues/questions, check out the interview.

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337 Comments

Posted in Welcome

Lindzen’s Seminar at the House of Commons

Posted on February 27, 2012 by | 1,483 comments

by Judith Curry

Lindzen’s seminar last week that was presented at the House of Commons may be the most effective seminar he has given on Global Warming.

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1,483 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Gleick’s Testimony on Threats to the Integrity of Science

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | 479 comments

by Judith Curry

The enduring question re Peter Gleick is how to reconcile his apparent commitment to the integrity of science with his behavior in the Heartland affair.

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479 Comments

Posted in Ethics

Energy policy discussion thread

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | 356 comments

by Judith Curry

A few articles that I’ve collected on energy policy.

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356 Comments

Posted in Energy

Week in review 2/24/12

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | 409 comments

by Judith Curry

What a week.

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409 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Why target Heartland?

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | 756 comments

Update:  Email from Joseph Bast, President of Heartland Institute, appended at the end of the post.

So, imagine you are a climate scientist and climate change ideologue, and want to “take down” the single organization (or individual) that is doing the most damage to the movement (i.e. with the end result of thwarting CO2 emissions/stabilization policy).  Who would you target?

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756 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Teaching (?) the controversy

Posted on February 22, 2012 by | 758 comments

by Judith Curry

One of the most important issues raised by the Heartland affair is what should be taught to students in K-12.   On the one hand, we have the efforts of the NCSE (where Peter Gleick was a board member).  On the other hand, Heartland is funding David Wojick to develop curricula that teaches the controversy.

So, should we teach the consensus, the controversy, or none of the above?

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758 Comments

Posted in Communication

Gleick’s ‘integrity’

Posted on February 21, 2012 by | 653 comments

by Judith Curry

How can we reconcile Gleick’s possibly criminal behavior with his essays and testimony on scientific integrity?

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653 Comments

Posted in Ethics

Breaking News: Gleick Confesses

Posted on February 20, 2012 by | 438 comments

by Judith Curry

Peter Gleick Admits to Deception in Obtaining Heartland Files

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438 Comments

Posted in Ethics

God and the arrogant species

Posted on February 20, 2012 by | 346 comments

by Judith Curry

There is a well-known story in the Bible about arrogance. People were speaking one language, engineering progressed, and they started to build a tower which they intended to make so high it would reach the heavens.  In the story of the bible, God descended and confused he language of the people, so that they could not understand each other; and then they were scattered all over the earth.

I think that the meaning of this can be felt in large conferences, where we are thousands of scientists in hundreds of sessions, each one of us working in his own isolated domain, with hardly any knowledge of nearby domains, let alone of the big picture. So we think that what the story is trying to tell us is that good communication leads to progress, progress is followed by arrogance, and arrogance is followed by loss of communication, which leads to stagnation, which is, we think, where science is now.

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346 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Autocorrelation and trends

Posted on February 19, 2012 by | 94 comments

by Richard Saumarez

A recent debate at Climate Etc. has involved autocorrelation and trends.   Essentially, the argument is that the temperature signal is perturbed by a random signal, and the influence of this random fluctuation persists for an unknown length of time and so the temperature at any particular instant is influenced by its past history.

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94 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Climate fast attack plan

Posted on February 18, 2012 by | 299 comments

by Judith Curry

The United States and five other countries agreed this week to fund an effort to cut emissions of methane, soot and other pollutants to start to slow the rate of human-induced climate change.

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299 Comments

Posted in Policy

New version of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature data set

Posted on February 18, 2012 by | 251 comments

by Steve Mosher and Zeke Hausfather

Today the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project publically released their accumulated minimum, maximum, and mean monthly data.

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251 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

What if they are wrong?

Posted on February 17, 2012 by | 667 comments

by Judith Curry

Suppose it turns out that CO2 has essentially nothing to do with the earth’s climate. How will the history of this colossal mistake be written?

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667 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

Heartland

Posted on February 15, 2012 by | 839 comments

by Judith Curry

I am starting to get requests from journalists to comment on the documents leaked from Heartland.

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839 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Ergodicity

Posted on February 15, 2012 by | 242 comments

by Tomas Milanovic

On the thread Trends, Change Points and Hypotheses, the issue of ergodicity was mentioned numerous times, and some clarification of this concept is needed.

So what is and what is not ergodicity and why does it matter in physics?

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242 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Climate change & war

Posted on February 13, 2012 by | 317 comments

by Judith Curry

Overall, the research reported here offers only limited support for viewing climate change as an important influence on armed conflict. However, framing the climate issue as a security problem could possibly influence the perceptions of the actors and contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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317 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Nullius in Verba

Posted on February 10, 2012 by | 447 comments

by Judith Curry

The motto of the Royal Society is:

Nullius in verba:  on the word of no one

“…it is an established rule of the Society, to which they will always adhere, never to give their opinion as a Body upon any subject either of Nature or Art, that comes before them.”

The ‘advertisement’ to The Philosophical Transactions, 1753.

Andrew Montford’s new report provides a lucid account of the transformation of the UK Royal Society.

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447 Comments

Posted in Ethics

Solar discussion thread II

Posted on February 9, 2012 by | 125 comments

by Judith Curry

So, what’s going on with the sun?  The latest research was presented at the Nagoya Workshop on the Relationship between Solar Activity and Climate Changes.

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125 Comments

Posted in Solar

Trends, change points & hypotheses

Posted on February 7, 2012 by | 1,022 comments

by Judith Curry

Jonathan Leake asks in the Sunday Times: “Why has it warmed so much less than the IPCC predicted?”

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1,022 Comments

Posted in Attribution, Prediction

Consensus or not (?)

Posted on February 6, 2012 by | 333 comments

by Judith Curry

Is there or isn’t there a scientific consensus on climate change?  And does it matter?

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333 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Human choice and climate change

Posted on February 6, 2012 by | 69 comments

by Judith Curry

What can public and private decisionmakers learn from a wide-ranging look at the social sciences and the issue of human choice and climate change that illuminates the evaluation of policy goals, implementation strategies, and choices about paths forward? 

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69 Comments

Posted in Policy

Climate and Energy Policies: Two Sides of the Same Coin (?)

Posted on February 5, 2012 by | 161 comments

by Peter Hartley

It has been claimed that energy security and climate policy should be considered “two sides of the same coin.” In 2006, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said, “We must treat energy security and climate security as two sides of the same coin.” Other leaders in Europe, members of the United States Congress and many commentators have echoed Blair’s statement.

Are both energy security and climate policy best addressed by the same policies, or do policies that are best for one goal possibly compromise attainment of the other goal?

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161 Comments

Posted in Policy

Argument and authority in the climate fight

Posted on February 4, 2012 by | 419 comments

by Judith Curry

The opinion pieces published in the WSJ continue to be discussed, and perhaps finally they are stimulating some useful insights.

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419 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Tracking the line between treatment and diagnosis

Posted on February 1, 2012 by | 436 comments

by Judith Curry

Do you consult with your dentist about your heart condition?  In science, as in any area, reputations are based on knowledge and expertise in a field and on published, peer-reviewed work.  If you need surgery, you want a highly experienced expert in the field who has done a number of the proposed operations.

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436 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized