by Judith Curry
Over at nature.com, Dave Ropeik has posted an essay entitled “Risk Perception.”
“No matter what the hard risk sciences may tell us the facts are about a risk, the social sciences tell us that our interpretation of those facts is ultimately subjective.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
“So when you take uncertainty into account, it actually leads to the decision that we should take action more quickly.”
I first spotted the statement in the Discover Magazine interview with myself and Michael Mann . I thought it had to be a typo or misquote (note, Mann said this, not me :))
Posted in Policy, Uncertainty
by Tony Brown (tonyb)
This article assesses the impact of UK’s proposed climate change legislation.
“To achieve the target of an 80% reduction in (UK) carbon emissions by 2050 virtually all our electricity will need to come from clean sources.” – Gordon Brown, 2007
“(UK) Families will have to get used to only using power when it is available”-Steve Holliday, Chief Executive of National Grid- Sunday Times of 22 May 2011
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
There is some “buzz” about a new paper and essay by Timothy Lenton on dangerous climate change.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
George Monbiot has published an interesting essay in the Guardian entitled “Lets face it: none of our environmental fixes break the planet-wrecking project.” The subtitle to the article is “All of us in the green movement are lost before the planet’s real problem: not too little fossil fuel but too much.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
I just received the reviews on the manuscript I submitted to special issue of the journal Climatic Change, entitled “Reasoning About Climate Uncertainty.” Overall, the review was pretty mild. One comment from the editor was about my paragraph that mentioned “black swans.”
Posted in Policy, Prediction
by Judith Curry
There is a new book out entitled “Climate Capitalism: Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change,” by Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen, authors of an earlier book entitled “Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution“.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
I have been intending to write a post on NOAA’s proposed Climate Service, but hadn’t gotten around to it. The announcement today regarding the final FY 2011 Appropriations deal includes language stating that none of the funds appropriated to NOAA may be used to “implement, establish, or create a NOAA Climate Service.”
by Judith Curry
Motivated by an exchange by Chief Hydrologist and Max on the David Montgomery thread, lets a take a look at the Hartwell paper. Almost one year after its publication, has this paper been a game changer?
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
David Montgomery has testified twice in the past few weeks on the economics of climate change. Lets take a closer look at his testimony, and at some of the critiques of his testimony.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
The U.S. House of Representatives Hearing on Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy has commenced. The House website for the hearing is here.
Live blogging: Gavin Schmidt, Eli Kintisch, Jay Gulledge
Real time rebuttal (password required): Kevin Trenberth, Andrew Dessler, Gary Yohe.
by Judith Curry
There is a forthcoming Hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology entitled “Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy.”
Posted in Policy, Politics, Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
This post is stimulated by an email I received from Georgia Tech alum Rutt Bridges, who asked for feedback on a recent article he published in First Break entitled “Economic Challenges for Carbon Capture-Storage and the Role of Natural Gas.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
Jonathan Adler has an interesting article at the Volokh Conspiracy (a libertarian legal blog) entitled “The GOP’s Anti-Climate Policy.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
There is a recent article in the NYTimes entitled “Snubbing skeptics threatens to intensify climate war, study says.” The NYTimes article refers to a study entitled: “Talking Past Each Other: Cultural Framing of Skeptical and Convinced Logics in the Climate Change Debate.”
Posted in Communication, Policy, Politics
by Judith Curry
Roger Pielke Jr. brought to my attention a provocative paper entitled “Discursive stability meets climate instability: A critical exploration of climate stabilization in contemporary climate policy.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
From the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power are holding a hearing today Tuesday, March 8, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. entitled, “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations.”
by Judith Curry
Schellenberger and Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute posted an interesting essay last week entitled “The Long Death of Environmentalism.” The summary reads:
Last week Breakthrough co-founders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus returned to Yale University for a retrospective on their seminal 2004 essay, “The Death of Environmentalism.” In their speech they argued that the critical work of rethinking green politics was cut short by fantasies about green jobs and “An Inconvenient Truth.” The latter backfired — more Americans started to believe news of global warming was being exaggerated after the movie came out — the former made false promises that could not be realized by cap and trade. What is an earnest green who cares about global warming to do now? In this speech, Nordhaus and Shellenberger reflect on what went so badly awry, and offer 12 Theses for a post-environmental approach to climate change.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
In Part IV, we explored the kerfuffle surrounding Fred Pearce’s attribution of “the science is settled” to Gavin Schmidt. Kim summarizes it this way:
The great irony, as Shub has pointed out elsewhere, is that here we have alarmists fighting like cats and dogs to make sure it is well understood that the science is not settled.
Well, that is more of a reconciliation than any of us could have hoped for, for all of us to agree that the science is not settled. Even Joe Romm is incensed by the “science is settled” statement (see here and here). The title of Romm’s 2nd post “Fabricated quote used to discredit scientist” adds a whole new dimension: a scientist associated with the “science is settled” statement is discredited. Wow.
So where did “the science is settled” come from? Manacker provides some history. It seems that journos and politicians are the main ones using this phrase. But many scientists have used words that sound similar. There is at least one instance of a leading IPCC scientist using these words, that I am aware of.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
At the Workshop, there was an interesting presentation made by by Jeroen van der Sluijs, who also presented this at the public event. The talk addresses paradigms of uncertain risk, and how to act under conditions of uncertainty.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
The Financial Times has an interesting article entitled “A disastrous truth” by Simon Kuper (h/t Roger Pielke Jr.). The title is a clever play on the words of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
The impacts of climate change and natural disasters can interact with the political, social, and economic circumstances of a region to alter its security environment. Through its primary security planning and strategy documents, the U.S. government has formally recognized the central importance that climate change and natural hazard impacts can have in degrading regional security. Among the key documents providing guidance regarding climate change are:
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
The previous thread on “Understanding conservative religious resistance to climate change” generated over 800 comments that is still active, so I thought I should start a new thread on this general topic. Some of you complained that only one perspective was presented, that of Dr. Gushee. This post addresses the other side.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
Over the past week, there have been several notable events on the “Hill” of relevance to U.S. science policy, addressing issues of concern related to the integrity of science. In a word, Bravo!
RESPONSE TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Pursuant to Judith Curry’s Testimony for the
Hearing on “Rational Discussion of Climate Change: the Science, the Evidence, the Response”
Posted in Policy
