by Judith Curry
There is a problem with the practice of science. Because of poor scientific practices, and improper incentives, few papers with useful scientific findings are published in leading journals. The problem appears to be growing due to funding for advocacy research.
Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science
by Frank Bosse
Separating out the impacts of internal variability on evaluations of TCR.
“The politician is sometimes tempted to encroach on the normal territory of the scientific estate. In such issues the problem is less often whether politics will presume to dictate to science than it is how much politics is to be influenced by the new findings of science.”[1]
Posted in Sociology of science
by Tomas Milanovic
There are few scientific concepts that are more often misunderstood in blog debates than Determinism and Predictability. For many commenters, these two concepts are considered to be in fact equivalent, which leads to faulty or irrelevant arguments.
Posted in climate models
by Jim Steele
Although some researchers have raised concerns about possible negative effects of rising CO2 on ocean surface pH, there are several lines of evidence demonstrating marine ecosystems are far more sensitive to fluxes of carbon dioxide from ocean depths and the biosphere’s response than from invasions of atmospheric CO2. There is also ample evidence that lower pH does not inhibit photosynthesis or lower ocean productivity (Mackey 2015). On the contrary, rising CO2 makes photosynthesis less costly.
Posted in Oceans
by Judith Curry
We conclude that the observed cooling over central Eurasia was probably due to a sea-ice-independent internally generated circulation pattern ensconced over, and nearby, the Barents–Kara Sea since the 1980s. — McCusker et al.
Posted in Attribution, Extreme events, Polar regions
by Alan Longhurst
Because the climate change science community habitually concentrates attention on surface data from a very short recent period – nominally a little more than 100 years – it would be very interesting to know how the pattern habitually derived from these data compares with longer data archives that have been processed independently by the observing nations.
Posted in Data and observations
by Judith Curry
This post is about the practical aspects of generating regional scenarios of climate variability and change for the 21st century.
Posted in climate models
Posted in climate models
by Donald Rapp
In a recent paper, Ellis and Palmer (2016) proposed that deposition of dust on giant ice sheets, thus reducing their albedo, was a principal factor in the termination of Ice Ages over the past 800 kyrs.
Posted in Attribution, Sensitivity & feedbacks
