Category Archives: Uncertainty

Doubt has been eliminated (?)

Posted on May 26, 2012 by | 710 comments

by Judith Curry

In a speech before the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, said:

So what is it that is new today? What is new is that doubt has been eliminated. The report of the International Panel on Climate Change is clear. And so is the Stern report. It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation. The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act (Brundtland 2007).

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710 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Education and the Art of Uncertainty

Posted on April 25, 2012 by | 156 comments

by Judith Curry

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. Erich Fromm

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156 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

UQ

Posted on April 17, 2012 by | 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

Messes and super wicked problems

Posted on March 11, 2012 by | 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

Consensus or not (?)

Posted on February 6, 2012 by | 333 comments

by Judith Curry

Is there or isn’t there a scientific consensus on climate change?  And does it matter?

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333 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Keith Seitter on the ‘uncertainty monster’

Posted on January 28, 2012 by | 288 comments

by Judith Curry

Keith Seitter is Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society.

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288 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Not 100% sure?

Posted on January 19, 2012 by | 221 comments

by Judith Curry

The drunk notoriously searches for his keys not in the dark where he dropped them, but under the lamp-post where he can see. This is an apt metaphor for much of what is written on the subject of risk management.

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221 Comments

Posted in Communication, Uncertainty

The real holes in climate science

Posted on January 3, 2012 by | 546 comments

by Judith Curry

The American Meteorological Society 2011 Award for Distinguished Science Journalism in the Atmospheric and Related Sciences goes to  . . .

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546 Comments

Posted in Communication, Uncertainty

Climatic Change special issue on uncertainty guidance for the IPCC: Part II

Posted on December 28, 2011 by | 53 comments

by Judith Curry

Uncertainty abounds in issues related to climate science and climate changes, the impacts of those changes, and the efficacy of strategies that might be used to mitigate or adapt to change. There are, however, a few things about which we can be quite certain. There are also a number of things about which many people are certain, but should not be.

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53 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Hegerl et al. react to the Uncertainty Monster paper

Posted on December 15, 2011 by | 615 comments

by Judith Curry

Gabrielle Hegerl, Peter Stott, Susan Solomon, and Francis Zwiers have published a comment to our paper “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster.”  Webster and Curry respond.  The CRU emails provide some interesting context for this discussion.
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615 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Smith and Stern on uncertainty in science and its role in climate policy

Posted on November 16, 2011 by | 249 comments

by Judith Curry

Risk assessment requires grappling with probability and ambiguity (uncertainty in the Knightian sense) and assessing the ethical, logical, philosophical and economic underpinnings of whether a target of ‘50 per cent chance of remaining under +2◦C’ is either ‘right’ or ‘safe’. How do we better stimulate advances in the difficult analytical and philosophical questions while maintaining foundational scientific work advancing our understanding of the phenomena? And provide immediate help with decisions that must be made now?

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249 Comments

Posted in Policy, Uncertainty

Proc. Roy. Soc. Special Issue on ‘Handling Uncertainty in Science’

Posted on November 14, 2011 by | 161 comments

by Judith Curry

The Royal Society Discussion Meeting on Handling Uncertainty in Science, held 22/23 March 2010, played a seminal role in motivating me to investigate uncertainty in the climate debate.

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161 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Defending the Uncertainty Monster paper

Posted on October 27, 2011 by | 122 comments

by Judith Curry

I’ve completed a revised draft of my response the to Reply to our Uncertainty Monster paper.

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122 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

IPCC and traceability

Posted on October 24, 2011 by | 342 comments

by Judith Curry

I just got the reviews on my reply to the rebuttal submitted regarding my uncertainty monster paper.  They take exception with my criticism of transparency of the IPCC’s attribution argument.

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342 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Does the Aliasing Beast Feed the Uncertainty Monster?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by | 271 comments

by Richard Saumarez

Many continuous signals are sampled so that they can be manipulated digitally.  We assume that the train of samples in the time domain gives a true picture of what the underlying signal is doing, but can we be sure that this is true and the signal isn’t doing something wildly different between samples?  Can we reconstruct the signal between samples and, more important, can we tell if the signal has been incorrectly sampled and is not a true representation of the signal?

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271 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Uncertainty

The case(?) for climate change alarmism

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | 509 comments

by Judith Curry

“Rather than justifying a lack of response to climate change, the emphasis on uncertainty enlarges the risk and reinforces the responsibility for pursuing successful long-term mitigation policy,” according to a 2010 analysis by researchers at Sandia National Laboratory.

All things considered, alarmism seems like common sense to me.

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509 Comments

Posted in Policy, Uncertainty

Climatic Change special issue on uncertainty guidance for the IPCC

Posted on October 4, 2011 by | 190 comments

by Judith Curry

It is now published:  the Climatic Change Special Issue on Guidance for Characterizing and Communicating Uncertainty and Confidence in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change.

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190 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Uncertainty monster visits MIT: Part II

Posted on September 30, 2011 by | 276 comments

by Judith Curry

I’m in San Diego, with a few moments to catch up on the blog and share my impressions of my visit to MIT.

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276 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Uncertainty monster visits MIT

Posted on September 28, 2011 by | 409 comments

by Judith Curry

This Thursday, I will be visiting the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT, giving the Victor Starr Lecture.

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409 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification in scientific computing

Posted on September 25, 2011 by | 337 comments

by Judith Curry

I think I am gaining some insight into the debate between scientists versus engineers regarding climate model verification and validation.

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337 Comments

Posted in climate models, Uncertainty

Probabilistic estimates of transient climate sensitivity

Posted on September 14, 2011 by | 213 comments

by Judith Curry

An important new paper on this topic has been published in J. Climate, that raises the bar in terms of uncertainty analysis.

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213 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks, Uncertainty

Uncertainty Monster paper in press

Posted on September 10, 2011 by | 289 comments

by Judith Curry

My paper “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster” is in press at the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

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289 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Two (+1) new uncertainty papers

Posted on August 12, 2011 by | 172 comments

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).

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172 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Agnotology, Agnoiology and Cognitronics

Posted on July 11, 2011 by | 281 comments

by Judith Curry

I’ve just come across three really interesting words, that I have somehow missed up to this point in my studies on uncertainty and ignorance:  agnotology, agnoiology and cognitronics.

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281 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Critique of the HADSST3 uncertainty analysis

Posted on June 29, 2011 by | 207 comments

by Judith Curry

On the previous sea surface temperature thread, I stated “Do you for one minute believe that the uncertainty in global average sea surface temperature in the 19th century is 0.3C? I sure as heck don’t.” Sharper00 challenged me to further support this statement, which provides the motivation for this thread along with the recent release of the latest version of the Hadley Centre SST dataset (HADSST3).

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207 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Uncertainty