Author Archives: curryja

Just the facts, please

Posted on July 12, 2012 | 632 comments

by Judith Curry

“Get your facts first; then you can distort them as you please” – Mark Twain

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632 Comments

Posted in Communication

Explaining (?) extreme events of 2011 from a climate perspective

Posted on July 12, 2012 | 170 comments

by Judith Curry

The latest issue of the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society has published a collection of papers that illustrate different methodologies for attributing causes of recent extreme weather events.

Attribution of extreme events shortly after their occurrence stretches the current state-of-theart of climate change assessment. To help foster the growth of this science, this article illustrates some approaches to answering questions about the role of human factors, and the relative role of different natural factors, for six specific extreme weather or climate events of 2011. – TC Petersen, PA Stott, S. Herring

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170 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Between tribalism and trust

Posted on July 10, 2012 | 557 comments

by Judith Curry

By addressing the symptoms (lack of information and communication) rather than the underlying causes (lack of public accountability and transparency), the IPCC leadership is failing to adequately address the problem of restoring expert credibility. By using its communication strategy as a means of “gatekeeping,” the IPCC is exacerbating rather than solving the problem of public trust caused by the authoritarian and exclusive performance of the “establishment.” – Silke Beck

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557 Comments

Posted in Consensus

5 logical fallacies that make you more wrong than you think

Posted on July 9, 2012 | 496 comments

by Judith Curry

The Internet has introduced a golden age of ill-informed arguments.  But with all those different perspectives on important issues flying around, you’d think we’d be getting smarter and more informed. Unfortunately, the very wiring of our brains ensures that all these lively debates only make us dumber and more narrow-minded. – Kathy Benjamin, CRACKED

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496 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

The Government-Climate Complex

Posted on July 8, 2012 | 255 comments

by Rud Istvan

Groundbreaking science is sometimes a global collaborative effort (CERN, Higgs boson, July 4). It is more often a contact sport—especially when individuals challenge a prevailing paradigm. In 1926 the president of the American Philosophical Society called Wegener’s theory of continental drift “utter damn rot”. Climate science has become just such a contact sport. There is a consensus paradigm represented by 4th IPCC. There are apparent  flaws and uncertainties in that consensus. The government-climate complex stifles healthy scientific discourse about them.

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255 Comments

Posted in Policy

Machiavelli and Fortuna’s whim

Posted on July 5, 2012 | 437 comments

by Judith Curry

So, how do you think Machiavelli would advise the Prince on dealing with climate change?

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437 Comments

Posted in Policy

What global warming looks like (?)

Posted on July 3, 2012 | 527 comments

by Judith Curry

But since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now. – Seth Borenstein (AP)

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527 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Garth Paltridge held hostage (?) by the uncertainty monster

Posted on July 2, 2012 | 795 comments

by Andy Lacis

JC note:  this essay responds to Garth Paltridge’s recent post Science held hostage in climate debate.

What’s up with Garth?

Why the surprisingly out of touch lack of understanding of what it is that makes the global climate change?

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795 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Epidemic of false claims

Posted on July 1, 2012 | 162 comments

by Judith Curry

False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. – John Ioannidis

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162 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

Back to the Greenhouse Future

Posted on June 28, 2012 | 195 comments

by Judith Curry

How confident can we be in our current and (recent) past observations of atmospheric composition and its impact on the Earth’s radiation balance?

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195 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Climate for Corruption

Posted on June 27, 2012 | 271 comments

by Judith Curry

Corruption and climate change? Most people don’t see a connection. This is likely because they aren’t in the habit of thinking of climate change as a multi-billion dollar global industry. And wherever money flows plentifully, corruption is quick on its heels. – Alice Harrison, Transparency International’s Climate Governance Program

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271 Comments

Posted in Policy

Questioning the Forest et al. (2006) sensitivity study

Posted on June 25, 2012 | 895 comments

by Nicholas Lewis

Re:  Data inconsistencies in Forest, Stone and Sokolov (2006)  GRL paper 2005GL023977 ‘Estimated PDFs of climate system properties including natural and anthropogenic forcings‘

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895 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Science held hostage in climate debate

Posted on June 22, 2012 | 522 comments

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by Garth Paltridge

The broad theory of man-made global warming is acceptable in the purely qualitative sense. If humans continue to fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, there can be little doubt that the average temperature of the world will increase above what it would have been otherwise. The argument about the science is, and always has been, whether the increase would be big enough to be noticed among all the other natural variations of climate. The economic and social argument is whether the increase, even if it were noticeable, would change the overall welfare of mankind for the worse.

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522 Comments

Posted in Politics, Skeptics

Three new papers on interpreting temperature trends

Posted on June 21, 2012 | 137 comments

by Judith Curry

What do these three papers share in common?  All were written by scientists well outside the fields of atmospheric and climate science.

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137 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

A new perspective on drought in the American southeast

Posted on June 20, 2012 | 119 comments

by Judith Curry

Imagine that you are planning for water resources in the greater Atlanta region for the next 50 years.  Which information would be more helpful:

A.  Global climate model simulations for the 21st century that are downscaled for the region

B.  Paleoclimatic analysis for the last 400 years of droughts and wet periods.

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119 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Analyzing people who talk about AGW denialism

Posted on June 19, 2012 | 822 comments

by Judith Curry

Sociologists and journalists are writing articles about understanding AGW skepticism and denialism.  This latest article from Nature  makes me think somebody needs to study these people who think that:

Study 2 examined whether framing climate change action in these ways (increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development) may be a more effective approach for motivating action in deniers than the more traditional focus on the reality and risks of climate change. 

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822 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Economic and security impacts of climate change in the Arctic

Posted on June 17, 2012 | 107 comments

by Judith Curry

In the long run the unfrozen north could cause devastation. But, paradoxically, in the meantime no Arctic species will profit from it as much as the one causing it: humans. Disappearing sea ice may spell the end of the last Eskimo cultures, but hardly anyone lives in an igloo these days anyway. And the great melt is going to make a lot of people rich. – The Economist

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107 Comments

Posted in Polar regions

Analyzing AGW skepticism: missing the point?

Posted on June 15, 2012 | 718 comments

by Judith Curry

There is a growing body of aca­demic lit­er­ature that seeks to under­stand, explain – and even over­come – cli­mate change scep­ti­cism. But is it get­ting to grips with scep­ti­cism, or missing the point? – Adam Corner

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718 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

State shift (?) in Earth’s biosphere

Posted on June 12, 2012 | 652 comments

by Judith Curry

A  new study published study in Nature alerts to impending catastrophic developments – this time not mainly based on climate change impacts but on wider developments caused by resource use. 

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652 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Causes(?) of ocean warming

Posted on June 11, 2012 | 288 comments

by Judith Curry

Yesterday, I started writing a post on air/sea fluxes.  A new paper just published in Nature Climate Change  changed my mind about what I want to write about.

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288 Comments

Posted in Attribution, Data and observations

Psychology of Uncertainty

Posted on June 10, 2012 | 284 comments

by Judith Curry

When we fail to distinguish between discovering order IN nature and imposing order ON nature, we have lost relationship with the very thing we yearn to know. Whereas once we were students of nature, looking to her for meaning, we now denigrate her in the belief that it is our inalienable right to have dominion. – Kerry Gordon

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284 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Conservative perspectives on climate change: Part II

Posted on June 7, 2012 | 433 comments

by Judith Curry

Philosopher Roger Scruton agrees that the environment is the most urgent political problem of our age but argues in his new book “How to Think Seriously About the Planet” that conservatism is far better suited to tackle environmental problems than either liberalism or socialism. 

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433 Comments

Posted in Policy

Uncertainty is not your friend (?)

Posted on June 6, 2012 | 419 comments

by Judith Curry

It is very clear that uncertainty is no one’s friend. We have seen that greater uncertainty about the evolution of the climate should give us even greater cause for concern. We have seen that all other things being equal, greater uncertainty means that things could be worse than we thought. We have also seen that greater uncertainty means that the expected damages from climate change will necessarily be greater than anticipated, and that the allowance we must make for sea level rise will also be greater than anticipated. All of those results arise from simple mathematics, and we do not even have to resort to any economic modelling to understand how greater uncertainty translates into greater risk. – Stefan Lewandowsky

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419 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Sea level rise discussion thread

Posted on June 5, 2012 | 532 comments

by Judith Curry

Recently, there have been a number of interesting papers on sea level rise.  Let’s take a look.

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532 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Conservative perspectives on climate change

Posted on June 3, 2012 | 775 comments

by Judith Curry

Two recent articles of interest, both from a conservative perspective.

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775 Comments

Posted in Policy