Climate Etc.

Perversions of open-minded thinking on climate change

Posted on December 1, 2016 by curryja | 342 comments

by Kip Hansen

Climate skepticism: a ‘perverse’ effect of ‘actively open-minded thinking’.

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342 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Prospects for a Prolonged Slowdown in Global Warming in the Early 21st Century

Posted on November 30, 2016 by curryja | 274 comments

by Nic Lewis

[W]e estimate that the warming slowdown (< 0.1 K/decade trend beginning in 1998) could persist, due to internal variability cooling, through 2020, 2025 or 2030 with probabilities 16%, 11%, and 6%, respectively. – Knutson et al.

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274 Comments

Posted in Attribution, climate models

The real war on science

Posted on November 21, 2016 by curryja | 596 comments

by Judith Curry

The Left has done far more than the Right to set back progress. – John Tierney

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596 Comments

Posted in Politics, Sociology of science

Carbon is not the enemy

Posted on November 19, 2016 by curryja | 138 comments

by Judith Curry

Design with the natural cycle in mind to ensure that carbon ends up in the right places. — William McDonough

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138 Comments

Posted in Adaptation

Climate models for lawyers

Posted on November 12, 2016 by curryja | 315 comments

by Judith Curry

I have been asked to write an Expert Report on climate models.

***SEE UPDATE

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315 Comments

Posted in climate models

Post-mortem on the forecasts of Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew

Posted on November 7, 2016 by curryja | 27 comments

by Judith Curry

Reflections on forecasting hurricanes in light of U.S. landfalling Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew, highlighting the complexities of forecast ensemble interpretation.

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27 Comments

Posted in Extreme events, Hurricanes

Climate modelers open up their black boxes to scrutiny

Posted on November 5, 2016 by curryja | 220 comments

by Judith Curry

Paul Voosen has written a remarkable article in Science about climate model tuning.

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220 Comments

Posted in climate models

International Water Prize

Posted on November 2, 2016 by curryja | 62 comments

by Judith Curry

Peter Webster has been awarded the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Creativity Prize for Water.

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62 Comments

Posted in Extreme events

Vehicular decarbonisation – two new technologies to watch

Posted on November 2, 2016 by curryja | 65 comments

by Rud Istvan

This post addresses issues related to ‘vehicular decarbonization’. It is an energy storage insider’s narrative of how tough a slog developing some of the requisite applied science technologies has been over the past decades. It is a saga of research twists and turns, abject failures, near misses, and ‘before its time’ inventions.

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65 Comments

Posted in Energy

Advocacy research, incentives and the practice of science

Posted on October 27, 2016 by curryja | 98 comments

by Judith Curry

There is a problem with the practice of science. Because of poor scientific practices, and improper incentives, few papers with useful scientific findings are published in leading journals. The problem appears to be growing due to funding for advocacy research.

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98 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

Tamino’s adjusted temperature records and the TCR

Posted on October 26, 2016 by curryja | 215 comments

by Frank Bosse

Separating out the impacts of internal variability on evaluations of TCR.

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215 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Sensitivity & feedbacks

Politics and the Changing Norms of Science

Posted on October 25, 2016 by curryja | 133 comments

by Lucas Bergkamp

“The politician is sometimes tempted to encroach on the normal territory of the scientific estate. In such issues the problem is less often whether politics will presume to dictate to science than it is how much politics is to be influenced by the new findings of science.”[1]

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133 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Nature Unbound I: The Glacial Cycle

Posted on October 24, 2016 by curryja | 269 comments

by Javier

Insights into the debate on whether the Holocene will be long or short.

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269 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Determinism and predictability

Posted on October 16, 2016 by curryja | 408 comments

by Tomas Milanovic

There are few scientific concepts that are more often misunderstood in blog debates than Determinism and Predictability. For many commenters, these two concepts are considered to be in fact equivalent, which leads to faulty or irrelevant arguments.

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408 Comments

Posted in climate models

How Gaia and coral reefs regulate ocean pH

Posted on October 13, 2016 by curryja | 160 comments

by Jim Steele

Although some researchers have raised concerns about possible negative effects of rising CO2 on ocean surface pH, there are several lines of evidence demonstrating marine ecosystems are far more sensitive to fluxes of carbon dioxide from ocean depths and the biosphere’s response than from invasions of atmospheric CO2. There is also ample evidence that lower pH does not inhibit photosynthesis or lower ocean productivity (Mackey 2015). On the contrary, rising CO2 makes photosynthesis less costly.

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160 Comments

Posted in Oceans

What is the relationship between Arctic sea ice decline and Eurasian cold winters?

Posted on October 11, 2016 by curryja | 116 comments

by Judith Curry

We conclude that the observed cooling over central Eurasia was probably due to a sea-ice-independent internally generated circulation pattern ensconced over, and nearby, the Barents–Kara Sea since the 1980s. — McCusker et al.

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116 Comments

Posted in Attribution, Extreme events, Polar regions

The value of very long instrumental data series

Posted on October 10, 2016 by curryja | 133 comments

by Alan Longhurst

Because the climate change science community habitually concentrates attention on surface data from a very short recent period – nominally a little more than 100 years – it would be very interesting to know how the pattern habitually derived from these data compares with longer data archives that have been processed independently by the observing nations.

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133 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Generating regional scenarios of climate change

Posted on October 9, 2016 by curryja | 100 comments

by Judith Curry

This post is about the practical aspects of generating regional scenarios of climate variability and change for the 21st century.

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100 Comments

Posted in climate models

Lorenz validated

Posted on October 5, 2016 by curryja | 386 comments

by Kip Hansen

Some reflections on NCAR’s Large Ensemble.

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386 Comments

Posted in climate models

Dust deposition on ice sheets: a mechanism for termination of ice ages?

Posted on October 2, 2016 by curryja | 398 comments

by Donald Rapp

In a recent paper, Ellis and Palmer (2016) proposed that deposition of dust on giant ice sheets, thus reducing their albedo, was a principal factor in the termination of Ice Ages over the past 800 kyrs.

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398 Comments

Posted in Attribution, Sensitivity & feedbacks

How to constrain the abuse of science by Federal agencies

Posted on September 28, 2016 by curryja | 112 comments

by David Wojick

There is a recurring pattern of Federal agencies twisting science in order to support confiscatory actions. The agencies can get away with these tricks because there is a general lack of controls on how they use science when making policy, crafting regulations, etc.

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112 Comments

Posted in Policy, Sociology of science

Impact of the ~ 2400 yr solar cycle on climate and human societies

Posted on September 20, 2016 by curryja | 490 comments

*by Javier

The role of solar variability on climate change, despite having a very long scientific tradition, is currently downplayed as a climatic factor within the most popular hypothesis for climate change.

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490 Comments

Posted in Solar

NYTimes & Zika: a brief case study on climate change hype

Posted on September 20, 2016 by curryja | 134 comments

By David Wojick

The folks who make their living by hyping the supposed threat of runaway global warming use a lot of scary language in the process. Here the ever creative New York Times has set what may be a new standard in scary climate change hype, by tying it to the Zika outbreak.

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134 Comments

Posted in Communication

Is the Arctic sea ice ‘spiral of death’ dead?

Posted on September 18, 2016 by curryja | 749 comments

by Greg Goodman

This year, as every year, there has been much excitement in the media about ‘catastrophic’ melting of Arctic sea-ice, run-away melting, tipping points, death spirals and “ice-free” summers.

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749 Comments

Posted in Polar regions