Monthly Archives: February 2016

AGU, Exxon and the corporate funding dilemma

Posted on February 29, 2016 by curryja | 236 comments

by Judith Curry

. . . to assess whether our partner/sponsor statements are in conflict with our position statements and accepted scientific consensus. – Margaret Leinen, AGU President

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236 Comments

Posted in Ethics

Nature: Making sense of the early 2000’s warming slowdown

Posted on February 24, 2016 by curryja | 369 comments

by Judith Curry

It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. The evidence presented here contradicts these claims. – Fyfe et al.

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369 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Is sea level rise accelerating?

Posted on February 23, 2016 by curryja | 288 comments

by Judith Curry

Estimates of the rate of sea level rise are diverging.

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288 Comments

Posted in Oceans

Arctic winter sea ice puzzle

Posted on February 22, 2016 by curryja | 320 comments

by Judith Curry

Arctic sea ice extent has been anomalously low this winter.

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320 Comments

Posted in Polar regions

Walking the climate talk

Posted on February 21, 2016 by curryja | 324 comments

by Judith Curry

Their [climate scientists] actions may have limited discernible influence in terms of ‘bending the curve’ on emissions, but their efforts to ‘walk the talk’ have tremendous symbolic value – Max Boykoff

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324 Comments

Posted in Ethics

New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision and Environmental Control Initiatives

Posted on February 18, 2016 by curryja | 158 comments

.by Roger Caiazza

The excellent series of posts on energy planning by Planning Engineer and Rud Istavan, a similar series at the Science of Doom and a recent post by Peter Lang all outline the difficulties implementing renewable energy and other components of the so-called energy system of the future.

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158 Comments

Posted in Energy, Policy

Some realism about technological fixes

Posted on February 16, 2016 by curryja | 320 comments

by Judith Curry

Not all problems will yield to technology. Deciding which will and which won’t should be central to setting innovation policy, say Daniel Sarewitz and Richard Nelson.

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320 Comments

Posted in Energy, Policy

Asymmetry and the power of the 3%

Posted on February 14, 2016 by curryja | 270 comments

by Judith Curry

The minority rule will show us how it all it takes is a small number of intolerant virtuous people with skin in the game, in the form of courage, for society to function properly. – Nassim Taleb

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270 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Opinion: Don’t go nuclear on climate change just yet

Posted on February 11, 2016 by curryja | 214 comments

by Yousaf Butt

Current nuclear technology is not a sensible solution to the climate change challenge – but research on “new-nuclear” and renewables infrastructure should be aggressively pursued.

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214 Comments

Posted in Energy

Are land + sea temperature averages meaningful?

Posted on February 10, 2016 by curryja | 371 comments

by Greg Goodman

Several of the major datasets that claim to represent “global average surface temperature” are directly or effectively averaging land air temperatures with sea surface temperatures.

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371 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Sensitivity & feedbacks

Assessing U.S. temperature adjustments using the Climate Reference Network

Posted on February 9, 2016 by curryja | 244 comments

by Zeke Hausfather

Measuring temperatures in the U.S. no easy task. While we have mostly volunteer-run weather station data from across the country going back to the late 1800s, these weather stations were never set up to consistently monitor long-term changes to the climate.

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244 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Flint water crisis: profiles in scientific courage

Posted on February 8, 2016 by curryja | 277 comments

by Judith Curry

[T]the systems built to support scientists do not reward moral courage and the university pipeline contains toxins of its own — which, if ignored, will corrode public faith in science. – Marc Edwards

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277 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

(Mis) communicating science in public controversies

Posted on February 7, 2016 by curryja | 330 comments

by Judith Curry

Bringing uncertainty to the public debate or putting the credibility of climate science at risk matters less to them than interest groups misusing or the public misinterpreting their results. – Senja Post

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330 Comments

Posted in Communication, Uncertainty