Author Archives: curryja

by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands climate change.” J. Vinós, paraphrasing Richard Feynman’s words about quantum mechanics.

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by Planning Engineer

The first week in September of this year California was facing rolling blackouts due to a forecast 20-year high Peak. Residents were asked to cut down electric usage and at risk of rolling blackouts. Is this a new normal? Or can the threat of rolling blackouts be avoided?  The likely answer is that the risk of rolling blackouts could be greatly reduced, but because of other priorities such reliability risks are the new normal.

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by Judith Curry

In which wicked scientists are the good guys.

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by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“No philosopher has been able with his own strength to lift this veil stretched by nature over all the first principles of things. Men argue, nature acts.” Voltaire (1764)

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by Judith Curry

Does our future hold a plethora of wind turbines, solar farms, and transmission lines covering an ever-growing fraction of the planet’s surface as energy demand increases?  The output of farmland and forests being burned to provide power?

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by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“Once you start doubting, just like you’re supposed to doubt. You ask me if the science is true and we say ‘No, no, we don’t know what’s true, we’re trying to find out, everything is possibly wrong’ … When you doubt and ask it gets a little harder to believe. I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing, than to have answers which might be wrong.” Richard Feynman (1981)

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by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s.” Anastasios A. Tsonis, Kyle Swanson & Sergey Kravtsov (2007)

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by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“The atmospheric heat transport on Earth from the Equator to the poles is largely carried out by the mid-latitude storms. However, there is no satisfactory theory to describe this fundamental feature of the Earth’s climate.” Leon Barry, George C. Craig & John Thuburn (2002)

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by Judith Curry

The Inflation Reduction Act that has passed in the US Senate contains a healthy dose of funding for energy and climate initiatives.  There is much discussion as to why this bill looks like it will pass, when previous climate bills (carbon tax, carbon cap and trade) failed.

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The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (II). Solar activity unexplained/ignored effects on climate

by Javier Vinós & Andy May

“The complicated pattern of sun-weather relationships undoubtedly needs much further clarification, but progress in this field will be hindered if the view prevails that such relationships should not be taken seriously simply because the mechanisms involved in explaining them are not yet identified.” Joe W. King (1975)

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by Javier Vinós and Andy May

“Probably no subfield of meteorology has had as much effort devoted to it as the effects of solar variability on weather and climate. And none has had as little to show for the research labor.” Helmut E. Landsberg (1982)

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by Judith Curry

An exciting new project for my company, Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN) to support smallholder farmers in Pakistan and India.

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by Ross McKitrick

• Optimal fingerprinting is a statistical method that estimates the effect of greenhouse gases (GHGs) on the climate in the form of a regression slope coefficient.
• The larger the coefficient associated with GHGs, the bigger the implied effect on the climate system.
• In 2003 Myles Allen and Simon Tett published an influential paper in Climate Dynamics recommending the use of a method called Total Least Squares in optimal fingerprinting regression to correct a potential downward bias associated with Ordinary Least Squares
• The problem is that in most cases TLS replaces the downward bias in OLS with an upward bias that can be as large or larger
• Under special conditions TLS will yield unbiased estimates, but you can’t test if they hold
• Econometricians never use TLS because another method (Instrumental Variables) is a better solution to the problem

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by Dan Hughes

A brief continuation of previous discussions about calculation of viscous heat dissipation in the flow of liquids having linear stress/rate-of-strain constitutive description.

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by Dan Hughes

I recently ran across the paper by Isenko et al. [2005] listed below. The second paragraph of the introduction states:

“According to the conservation of energy, the loss of potential energy for a volume of water is sufficient to warm it by 0.2 C for each 100 m of lowering.”

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by Judith Curry

I have a new article published in the latest issue of International Affairs Forum.

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by Dan Hughes

The contribution of viscous dissipation conversion of kinetic energy into thermal energy has been significantly over-estimated in three recent publications. The kinetic energy content of the macro-scale mean flow is assigned to be the heat dissipation into thermal energy. The estimate leads to temperature increases that make significant contributions to melting ice on Greenland.

A recent news release announced the findings of the research, and a video of a melt-lake draining into the glacier ice is in the news release and also at YouTube here.

A different estimate, in which the viscous dissipation is determined at the micro-scale of the flow, is calculated in these notes. This estimate, and the associated temperature increases in the flow, are significantly less than that based on the macro-scale. A PDF file with my analysis is here [BSLdissip02]

Comments, especially corrections for incorrectos, will be appreciated.

by Robert Ellison

I don’t raise the alarm at all, but there are tipping points in the Earth system.   Megafloods and megadroughts. Abrupt warming or cooling of many degrees C in years or decades.  Glacials and interglacials.  Solar energy driving patterns of planetary turbulence and an ice, cloud and biology response.   These have always been with us.  Our limited geophysical instrumental series reveal a variability that can’t be distinguished from anthropogenic warming effects (Koutsoyiannis 2020 ).    So it’s happening but perhaps not quite the end of the world yet.

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by Judith Curry

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is inextricably linked to the global energy crisis, which is inextricably linked to the so-called climate ‘crisis’.

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by Judith Curry

“The current thinking and approaches guiding this conceptualization and description have been shown to lack scientific rigour, the consequence being that climate change risk and uncertainties are poorly presented. The climate change field needs to strengthen its risk science basis, to improve the current situation.” – Norwegian risk scientist Terje Aven

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by Javier

My perspectives on managing personal Covid risk, based upon my knowledge of microbiology, genetics, immunology, cancer, and neurobiology.

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by Judith Curry

“The first rule of climate chess is this.  The board is bigger than we think, and includes more than fossil fuels.”  – Jon Foley

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by Judith Curry

Some reflections on the movie Don’t Look Up.

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by Judith Curry

Politics versus the data versus communicating science.

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by Judith Curry

My follow up interview on the Strong And Free podcast [link].

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