by Judith Curry
A boomerang effect occurs when a message is strategically constructed with a specific intent but produces a result that is the opposite of that intent.
Both sides of the political debate surrounding climate change in the U.S. seem to be feeling the boomerang effect.
Posted in Communication, Politics
by Judith Curry
Does decision making require high levels of confidence? Can there be such a thing as making good decisions under deep uncertainty and even ignorance? What decision making criteria or guidelines make sense under these circumstances? How does overconfidence hamper the decision making process?
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
Douglas Sheil from Uganda sent me an interesting article with the provocative title “A modest proposal for wealthy countries to reforest their land for the common good.” Following in Swift’s footsteps, the paper uses satire to highlight some inconsistencies regarding international agreements on land cover and ecosystem conservation.
Posted in Communication, Policy
by Judith Curry
By Judith Curry
Here is another attempt at trying to untangle the Skydragons’ misunderstanding about the greenhouse effect and the planetary energy balance.
Posted in Greenhouse effect
by Judith Curry
This question is posed and addressed in a recent article by Joel Katzav in EOS.
Posted in climate models
by Judith Curry
How do you estimate the state of the global atmosphere and ocean when observational data sets are incomplete, imperfect and noisy?
Posted in climate models, Data and observations
by Judith Curry
With over 1000 comments on Saturday’s greenhouse thread, here is a new thread devoted to technical discussions of Joseph Postma’s paper on the greenhouse effect and Chris Colose’s rebuttal at Skeptical Science.
Posted in Greenhouse effect
A paper in press in the Journal of Climate provides some insight into the interaction of cloud feedback with ocean heat transport.
Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks
by Judith Curry
On a previous thread, I made the following statement:
I am striving for something different, sort of an e-salon where we discuss interesting topics at the knowledge frontier.
Lets take a closer look at how this might work.
Posted in Communication
While I seriously doubt whether climate skeptics will thank me for pointing it out, I don’t believe their arguments impress the swing voters in the climate debate as convincingly as they might. With this in mind I’d like to propose a strengthening of the skeptic argument that downward longwave radiation or DLR, popularly called back radiation, cannot be held responsible for warming the surface of the Earth.
Posted in Greenhouse effect
by Judith Curry
How can we cope with becoming more hyper-specialized and fragmented in our personal knowledge bases while at the same time being exposed to too much relevant formation on the internet for any of us to learn and process?
Michael Smithson provides a modest proposal for addressing this challenge: We should all become expert about experts and expertise. That is, we should develop meta-expertise.
Posted in Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
My paper “Reasoning about climate uncertainty” has now been published online at Climatic Change; it looks like mine is the first to make it online of the papers in the special issue entitled Framing and Communicating Uncertainty and Confidence Judgments by the IPCC.
Also of relevance, there is a new working paper from the LSE Grantham Research Institute entitled “Scientific uncertainty: a user’s guide” (h/t Bishop Hill).
Posted in Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
“Representative concentration pathways” is the new phrase for what the IPCC used to refer to as “emissions scenarios.” Lets take a look at the new RCP’s being used for the AR5.
Posted in Greenhouse effect, IPCC
by Judith Curry
Six months after the thread Slaying a Greenhouse Dragon, discussion still continues with well over 2000 comments.
Posted in Greenhouse effect
by Judith Curry
Over at BraveNewClimate, Ted Trainer provides the most detailed critique I’ve seen of the recent IPCC Report on Renewable Energy.
Posted in IPCC
by Judith Curry
Shakespeare’s writings are infused with with weather references, and even some that are arguably relevant to climate change. The insights, however, come from the academic debate surrounding the actual authorship of the Shakespearean opus.
Posted in Communication
by Judith Curry
In my congressional testimony, I discussed the idea of climate change winners and losers. In the Arctic, where climate is changing most rapidly, will there be winners or losers?
Posted in Climate change impacts, Polar regions, Policy
Posted in Polar regions
While I have culled considerably the previous thread, it is getting unwieldy for those of you that want to carry on extensive technical discussions. So here is another thread for extended technical discussion. Keep your more general comments on the previous thread. Thank you.
Posted in Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
I just finished listening to Murry Salby’s podcast on Climate Change and Carbon. Wow.
Posted in Greenhouse effect
by Judith Curry
The hypothesized link between a warming climate and increased frequency and magnitude of floods goes something like this: a warmer climate is associated with more water vapor in the atmosphere, which means more rainfall and more floods. Is there any observational support for this link?
Posted in Attribution
by Judith Curry
The viral “Climategate” has had a substantial impact on public perception of climate science and scientists. Several strategies have been tried to put the Climategate genie back in the bottle, without much success. An article by Peter Wood published in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Climate Thuggery” describes one such strategy, which I don’t think is working too well.
Posted in Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
Climategate – where did this almost perfectly strategic — yet deeply unfortunate — catchphrase come from? Was the term the genius of a conservative think tank and industry-backed strategy or does evidence support an alternative explanation?
Posted in Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
[P]ublic support for the environment is at more than 30 year-low, cap and trade is dead, perhaps for good, and global warming has become as partisan and polarizing an issue as abortion and gun control.
Climate Pragmatism offers a framework for renewed American leadership on climate change that’s effectiveness, paradoxically, does not depend on any agreement about climate science or the risks posed by uncontrolled greenhouse gases.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
There is much hype and debate surrounding Spencer and Bradwell’s new paper “On the misdiagnosis of surface temperature feedbacks from variations in earth’s radiant energy balance.” So lets sort through all this.
Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks
