Climate Etc.

Asymmetry and the power of the 3%

Posted on February 14, 2016 by curryja | 270 comments

by Judith Curry

The minority rule will show us how it all it takes is a small number of intolerant virtuous people with skin in the game, in the form of courage, for society to function properly. – Nassim Taleb

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270 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Opinion: Don’t go nuclear on climate change just yet

Posted on February 11, 2016 by curryja | 214 comments

by Yousaf Butt

Current nuclear technology is not a sensible solution to the climate change challenge – but research on “new-nuclear” and renewables infrastructure should be aggressively pursued.

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214 Comments

Posted in Energy

Are land + sea temperature averages meaningful?

Posted on February 10, 2016 by curryja | 371 comments

by Greg Goodman

Several of the major datasets that claim to represent “global average surface temperature” are directly or effectively averaging land air temperatures with sea surface temperatures.

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371 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Sensitivity & feedbacks

Assessing U.S. temperature adjustments using the Climate Reference Network

Posted on February 9, 2016 by curryja | 244 comments

by Zeke Hausfather

Measuring temperatures in the U.S. no easy task. While we have mostly volunteer-run weather station data from across the country going back to the late 1800s, these weather stations were never set up to consistently monitor long-term changes to the climate.

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244 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Flint water crisis: profiles in scientific courage

Posted on February 8, 2016 by curryja | 277 comments

by Judith Curry

[T]the systems built to support scientists do not reward moral courage and the university pipeline contains toxins of its own — which, if ignored, will corrode public faith in science. – Marc Edwards

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277 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

(Mis) communicating science in public controversies

Posted on February 7, 2016 by curryja | 330 comments

by Judith Curry

Bringing uncertainty to the public debate or putting the credibility of climate science at risk matters less to them than interest groups misusing or the public misinterpreting their results. – Senja Post

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330 Comments

Posted in Communication, Uncertainty

George Washington’s winters

Posted on February 5, 2016 by curryja | 232 comments

by Judith Curry

Frozen rivers, knee-deep snows, sleet, frigid temperatures, and other winter miseries helped shape the story of George Washington’s life.

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232 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts, History

Now that climate science is ‘settled’ . . .

Posted on February 4, 2016 by curryja | 209 comments

by Judith Curry

Climate science is being gutted in Australia.

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209 Comments

Posted in Policy

Paris climate promise: a bad deal for America?

Posted on February 3, 2016 by curryja | 162 comments

by Judith Curry

The U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology held a Hearing yesterday — Paris Climate Promise: A Bad Deal for America.

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162 Comments

Posted in Policy

Discussion: can we hit the ‘restart’ button?

Posted on February 2, 2016 by curryja | 374 comments

by Kip Hansen

Some problems require a restart.

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374 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Violating the norms and ethos of science

Posted on January 31, 2016 by curryja | 419 comments

by Judith Curry

Don’t let transparency damage science. – Stephan Lewandowsky & Dorothy Bishop

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419 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

Insights from Karl Popper: how to open the deadlocked climate debate

Posted on January 28, 2016 by curryja | 654 comments

by Larry Kummer, from the Fabius Maximus website.

Many factors have frozen the public policy debate on climate change, but none more important than the disinterest of both sides in tests that might provide better evidence — and perhaps restart the discussion. Even worse, too little thought has been given to the criteria for validating climate science theories (aka their paradigm) and the models build upon them.

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654 Comments

Posted in Attribution, Scientific method

On the likelihood of recent record warmth

Posted on January 26, 2016 by curryja | 192 comments

by Judith Curry

[O]ur results suggest that the recent record temperature years are are roughly 600 to 130,000 times more likely to have occurred under conditions of anthropogenic than in its absence. – Mann et al.

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192 Comments

Posted in Attribution, climate models

Huge efficacy of land use forcing in one GISS-E2-R simulation: is an ocean model error involved?

Posted on January 25, 2016 by curryja | 137 comments

by Nic Lewis

In a recent article here, which summarised a longer piece at ClimateAudit, I discussed the December 2015 Marvel et al.[1] paper, which contends that estimates of the transient climate response (TCR) and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) derived from recent observations of changes in global mean surface temperature (GMST) are biased low.

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137 Comments

Posted in climate models, Sensitivity & feedbacks

Undersea volcanoes may be impacting long-term climate change

Posted on January 24, 2016 by curryja | 380 comments

by Alan Longhurst

I think this paper on on ocean tides, sea-floor volcanoes and Milankevitch cycles is a game changer.

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380 Comments

Posted in Oceans

History and the limits of the climate consensus

Posted on January 22, 2016 by curryja | 339 comments

by Judith Curry

Acknowledging the science of global warming does not require accepting that it is immune to criticism.

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339 Comments

Posted in Consensus, History

The trojan horse of the Paris climate agreement

Posted on January 20, 2016 by curryja | 176 comments

by Judith Curry

How multi-level, non-hierarchical governance poses a threat to constitutional government.

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176 Comments

Posted in Policy

Is nuclear the cheapest way to decarbonize electricity?

Posted on January 19, 2016 by curryja | 266 comments

by Peter Lang

The cheapest way to decarbonize the British electricity system is with all or mostly nuclear power.

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266 Comments

Posted in Energy

On the status of scientists’ emails

Posted on January 13, 2016 by curryja | 412 comments

by Judith Curry

The issue of scientists’ emails is heating up.

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412 Comments

Posted in Ethics

ACE in the hole

Posted on January 11, 2016 by curryja | 241 comments

by Greg Goodman

Pondering the recent downturn in Atlantic hurricane activity.

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241 Comments

Posted in Hurricanes

Appraising Marvel et al.: Implications of forcing efficacies for climate sensitivity estimates

Posted on January 10, 2016 by curryja | 265 comments

by Nicholas Lewis

Different agents may have effects on global temperature (GMST) different to those which would be expected simply by reference to the radiative forcing they exert. This difference is encapsulated in the term “forcing efficacy”.

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265 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

On distinguishing disbelief and nonbelief

Posted on January 9, 2016 by curryja | 401 comments

by Judith Curry

It is important to distinguish between disbelief and nonbelief– between believing a sentence is false and merely not believing it true.

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401 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Skeptics, Sociology of science

Renewables and grid reliability

Posted on January 6, 2016 by curryja | 316 comments

by Planning Engineer

The costs of major grid outages are staggering and recovery from such outages is challenging; therefore the North American grids are planned and operated to ensure high levels of reliability.

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316 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized