Author Archives: curryja

UQ

Posted on April 17, 2012 | 159 comments

by Judith Curry

The new International Journal of Uncertainty Quantification has some very interesting papers. Lets take a look at a paper entitled ‘Error and Uncertainty Quantification and Sensitivity Analysis in Mechanics Computational Models.’

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159 Comments

Posted in climate models, Uncertainty

The Internet: World War 3.0 (?)

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 68 comments

by Judith Curry

There is a war under way for control of the Internet, and every day brings word of new clashes on a shifting and widening battlefront. Governments, corporations, criminals, anarchists—they all have their own war aims.

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68 Comments

Posted in Open knowledge

Assessing climate model software quality

Posted on April 15, 2012 | 290 comments

by Anonymous

[O]ur notion of software quality with respect to climate models is theoretically and conceptually vague. It is not clear to us what differentiates high from low quality software; nor is it clear which aspects of the models or modelling processes we might reliably look to make to that assessment.

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290 Comments

Posted in climate models

Psychological(?) effects of global warming

Posted on April 13, 2012 | 341 comments

by Judith Curry

Global warming in the coming years will foster trauma, depression, violence, alienation, substance abuse, suicide, psychotic episodes, post traumatic stress disorder and many other mental health-related conditions.

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341 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

The ongoing debate . . .

Posted on April 12, 2012 | 335 comments

by Judith Curry

Lindzen has responded to Hoskins et al.

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335 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Conservation in the Anthropocene

Posted on April 10, 2012 | 230 comments

by Judith Curry

Conservationists need to work with development, not condemn it as leading to the end of nature. In truth, nature’s resilience has been overlooked, its fragility “grossly overstated.” Areas blasted by nuclear radiation are bio-diverse. Forest cover is rising in the Northern Hemisphere even as it declines globally.

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230 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts, Policy

Aerosols and Atlantic aberrations

Posted on April 6, 2012 | 201 comments

by Judith Curry

If Booth and colleagues’ results can be corroborated, then they suggest that multidecadal temperature fluctuations of the North Atlantic are dominated by human activity, with natural variability taking a secondary role. This has many implications. Foremost among them is that the AMO does not exist, in the sense that the temperature variations concerned are neither intrinsically oscillatory nor purely multidecadal.

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201 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Lindzen et al.: response and parry

Posted on April 4, 2012 | 1,195 comments

by Judith Curry

In recent weeks, we are seeing two very interesting debates, both of which involve Richard Lindzen. The first debate involves the recent WSJ op-ed No Need to Panic About Global Warming. The second involves Lindzen’s seminar at the House of Commons.

Lets take a look at the latest response and parries in these ongoing debates.

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1,195 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Authority(?) in political debates involving science

Posted on April 3, 2012 | 193 comments

by Judith Curry

In political debates that involve considerations of science, it is tempting to characterize scientists who demand particular types of action simply as political partisans. But when scientists make demands of the political process there is often more going on than just an effort to achieve political gain for one’s preferred policies.

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193 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Meteorological March Madness

Posted on April 2, 2012 | 157 comments

by Judith Curry

Nature’s exuberant smashing of daily high temperature records [in the U.S.] in recent weeks can only be described as “Meteorological March Madness”. Conditions more fitting of June than March prevailed east of the Rocky Mountains since the start of the month. NOAA’s National Climate Data Center reported that over 7000 daily record high temperatures were broken over the U.S. from 1 March thru 27 March.

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157 Comments

Posted in Attribution

U.S. weather prediction: falling behind

Posted on March 30, 2012 | 84 comments

by Judith Curry

“It’s a national embarrassment. It has resulted in large unnecessary costs for the U.S. economy and needless endangerment of our citizens. And it shouldn’t be occurring.

What am I talking about? The third rate status of numerical weather prediction in the U.S. It is a huge story, an important story, but one the media has not touched, probably from lack of familiarity with a highly technical subject. And the truth has been buried or unavailable to those not intimately involved in the U.S. weather prediction enterprise.” — Cliff Mass, UW

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84 Comments

Posted in climate models

Republican(?) brain

Posted on March 29, 2012 | 484 comments

by Judith Curry

Multiple choice test: Republicans are more skeptical than Democrats about climate change because:

a) A defensive ideology is hardwired into their brain

b) A growing distrust of scientific institutions because of the politicization of science

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484 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

U.S. greenhouse gas regulations

Posted on March 28, 2012 | 330 comments

by Judith Curry

The Obama administration proposed on Tuesday the first ever standards to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, a move likely to be hotly contested by Republicans and industry in an election year.

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330 Comments

Posted in Policy

A science-policy research agenda

Posted on March 26, 2012 | 139 comments

by Judith Curry

The need for policy makers to understand science and for scientists to understand policy processes is widely recognised. However, the science-policy relationship is sometimes difficult and occasionally dysfunctional; it is also increasingly visible, because it must deal with contentious issues, or itself becomes a matter of public controversy, or both. We suggest that identifying key unanswered questions on the relationship between science and policy will catalyse and focus research in this field.

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139 Comments

Posted in Policy

NRC’s artless untruths on climate change and food security

Posted on March 22, 2012 | 274 comments

by Rud Istvan

Here is a recent example of artful lack of disclosure in the climate change debate, on the possible negative impacts of climate change on food security.

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274 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Nuclear power discussion thread

Posted on March 21, 2012 | 260 comments

by Judith Curry

THE LIGHTS ARE not going off all over Japan, but the nuclear power plants are. Of the 54 reactors in those plants, with a combined capacity of 47.5 gigawatts (GW, a thousand megawatts), only two are operating today. A good dozen are unlikely ever to reopen . . . (from the Economist)

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260 Comments

Posted in Energy

Pseudoscience (?)

Posted on March 20, 2012 | 604 comments

by Judith Curry

Climate science is sometimes characterized by skeptics as pseudoscience. Here are the arguments for why climate science is not pseudoscience.

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604 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

On the adjustments to the HadSST3 data set

Posted on March 15, 2012 | 381 comments

by Greg Goodman

**UPDATE at end of thread**

The effect of the adjustments introduced in Met. Office’s HadSST3 release are compared to the original ICOADS data to evaluate their effects on the frequency content of the data. The relative merits of making a simple adjustment for the war-time glitch in ICOADS are also investigated. It is demonstrated that the various adjustments made in preparing Hadley SST versions combine to effectively removing long term variations from the climate record. Frequency analysis shows the adjustments generally disrupting, rather than improving the data.

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381 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Sir Paul Nurse on the science-society relationship

Posted on March 14, 2012 | 273 comments

by Judith Curry

In late February, Sir Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, gave the Dimbleby Lecture for the BBC. There are some good statements in his address, but here I focus on his statements about the relationship between science and society.

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273 Comments

Posted in Policy

Demon Coal

Posted on March 12, 2012 | 626 comments

by Judith Curry

Last week I conducted an extensive interview with Max Allen of the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.

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626 Comments

Posted in Communication, Policy

Messes and super wicked problems

Posted on March 11, 2012 | 159 comments

by Judith Curry

Believe it or not, “messes” is a technical term used to describe complex problems. Social messes are resistant to analysis and to resolution.

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159 Comments

Posted in Policy, Uncertainty

21st century solar cooling

Posted on March 10, 2012 | 510 comments

by Judith Curry

During the 20th century, solar activity increased in magnitude to a so-called grand maximum. It is probable that this high level of solar activity is at or near its end. It is of great interest whether any future reduction in solar activity could have a significant impact on climate that could partially offset the projected anthropogenic warming. (Jones et al. 2012).

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510 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks, Solar

Should we tell the whole truth about climate change?

Posted on March 8, 2012 | 416 comments

by Judith Curry

In principle, yes of course. In practice, many journalists, scientists and government officials are not so certain as to how to balance telling the whole truth and being truthful in an “effective” way.

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416 Comments

Posted in Communication, Ethics