Driverless cars: the transportation revolution is coming

Posted on June 29, 2015 by | 275 comments

by Judith Curry

How driverless cars will change our lives.

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275 Comments

Posted in Energy

Scientists speaking with one voice: panacea or pathology?

Posted on June 25, 2015 by | 435 comments

by Judith Curry

The authority of a scientific body is not undermined by questioning, but rather depends upon it – Beatty & Moore

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435 Comments

Posted in Consensus

Pascal on the art of persuasion

Posted on June 24, 2015 by | 350 comments

by Judith Curry

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” – Blaise Pascal

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350 Comments

Posted in Communication

Science, uncertainty and advocacy

Posted on June 22, 2015 by | 535 comments

by Judith Curry

I’m attending an interesting conference in Nottingham:  Circling the square: universities, the media, citizens and politics.

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535 Comments

Posted in Communication, Policy, Uncertainty

Deforestation in the UK

Posted on June 18, 2015 by | 148 comments

by Judith Curry

More wood being burnt from British woods than since industrial revolution. – David Rose

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148 Comments

Posted in Energy

Against ‘consensus’ messaging

Posted on June 17, 2015 by | 366 comments

by Judith Curry

A decades’ experience shows that “Consensus messaging” doesn’t work. – Dan Kahan

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366 Comments

Posted in Communication, Consensus

State of the climate debate in the U.S.

Posted on June 15, 2015 by | 307 comments

by Judith Curry

I am just about to head to London, to make my presentation in the House of Lords:  State of the Climate Debate in the U.S.

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307 Comments

Posted in Policy, Politics

What matters (and doesn’t) in the G7 Climate Declaration

Posted on June 11, 2015 by | 95 comments

by Judith Curry

Most reactions ignore the fact that the G8 leaders already agreed to “the goal of achieving at least a 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050” in advance of the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009. (You judge the results.) – Michael Levi

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95 Comments

Posted in Policy

Driving in the dark

Posted on June 10, 2015 by | 367 comments

by Judith Curry

Long-term strategies should be built not on “visions” of the future but instead on the premise that longer term predictions (that is, forecasts of situations years and decades out), however presently credible, will probably prove wrong. – Richard Danzig

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367 Comments

Posted in Policy, Uncertainty

Improving climate change communication: moving beyond scientific certainty

Posted on June 8, 2015 by | 252 comments

by Judith Curry

A new report from The University of Nottingham looks at whether climate scientists threaten their own scientific credibility when trying to make their research accessible to members of the public.

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252 Comments

Posted in Communication, Uncertainty

Has NOAA ‘busted’ the pause in global warming?

Posted on June 4, 2015 by | 912 comments

by Judith Curry

A new blockbuster paper published today by NOAA:

These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.  

Color me ‘unconvinced.’

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912 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Why Skeptics hate climate skeptics

Posted on June 3, 2015 by | 397 comments

by Planning Engineer

In recent years many “skeptics” have become vociferously critical of anyone who expresses any doubts toward any part of what they see as a climate consensus (both problems and cures). How did the skeptic community grow to take on this role?

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397 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Tactical adaptation to Indian heat waves

Posted on June 2, 2015 by | 154 comments

by Judith Curry

Ahmedabad’s Heat Action Plan offers a proven track record and model to protect their residents from heat waves.  My Georgia Tech/CFAN colleagues Violeta Toma, Peter Webster and Mark Jelinek are enabling this Plan with a pioneering heat wave forecast product to help the Ahmedabad Municipal Council determine when to implement a heat alert.

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154 Comments

Posted in Adaptation

Solar grid parity?

Posted on May 31, 2015 by | 276 comments

by Rud Istvan and Planning Engineer                                                 

There are many journal articles, media stories, NGO papers, and blogs claiming solar already has, or soon will, reach general grid parity. Grid parity  is when the cost of solar equals the cost of conventional electricity alternatives. It should also mean equal without subsidies like feed in tariffs (FiT), net metering, and tax credits.

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276 Comments

Posted in Energy

Science: in the doghouse(?)

Posted on May 27, 2015 by | 459 comments

by Judith Curry

One of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations. – Richard Horton

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459 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

Observational support for Lindzen’s iris hypothesis

Posted on May 26, 2015 by | 190 comments

by Judith Curry

 It’s nice to see that our ‘discredited’ theory doesn’t seem to go away. – Richard Lindzen

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190 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Modeling Lindzen’s adaptive infrared iris

Posted on May 26, 2015 by | 70 comments

by Rud Istvan

In 2001, MIT’s Professor Richard Lindzen and colleagues published a controversial  paper titled “Does the Earth have an Adaptive Infrared Iris?” [1] If there were a tropical adaptive infrared iris, then Earth’s sensitivity to GHGs would be much less than the IPCC had supposed.

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70 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Scientific integrity versus ideologically-fueled research

Posted on May 25, 2015 by | 246 comments

by Judith Curry

The main intellectual fault in all these cases is failing to be responsive to genuine empirical concerns, because doing so would make one’s political point weaker or undermine a cherished ideological perspective. – Heather Douglas

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246 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Sociology of science

Did human-caused climate change lead to war in Syria?

Posted on May 22, 2015 by | 154 comments

by Chip Knappenberger and Pat Michaels

Understand climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world. It’s now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East – President Obama

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154 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

The method of multiple working hypotheses

Posted on May 21, 2015 by | 232 comments

by Judith Curry

With this method the dangers of parental affection for a favorite theory can be circumvented. – T.C. Chamberlin

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232 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

What can we do about climate change?

Posted on May 19, 2015 by | 431 comments

by Judith Curry

Do we have the resources (from, say, economics or ethics) to answer these sorts of questions?

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431 Comments

Posted in Ethics, Policy

Overreach at the EPA

Posted on May 18, 2015 by | 132 comments

by Judith Curry

When did the EPA become our Nation’s energy regulator? When did the EPA acquire both the statutory mandate from Congress and the required subject-matter expertise to do FERC’s and the States’ jobs? When did the EPA gain the expertise to determine the optimal and most reliable mix of coal and natural gas power plants? When did the EPA acquire the expertise to determine how much power can (or should) be reliably generated using wind farms and solar arrays? –  Forbes

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132 Comments

Posted in Policy

Tackling human biases in science

Posted on May 14, 2015 by | 326 comments

by Judith Curry

Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia says that the most common and problematic bias in science is “motivated reasoning”: We interpret observations to fit a particular idea.

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326 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

What would it take to convince you about global warming?

Posted on May 13, 2015 by | 261 comments

by Judith Curry

If the objective is to change public opinion, then changing elite opinion is a necessary prerequisite. In fact, I would say necessary and sufficient. I don’t think you need to win a war on talk radio to have your impact on right-of-center opinion. – Jerry Taylor

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261 Comments

Posted in Policy, Skeptics

True costs of wind electricity

Posted on May 12, 2015 by | 204 comments

by Planning Engineer and Rud Istvan 

Wind turbines have become a familiar sight in many countries as a favorite CAGW mitigation means. Since at least 2010, the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) has been assuring NGOs and the public that wind would be cost competitive by now, all things considered. Many pro-wind organizations claim wind is cost competitive today.  But is it?

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204 Comments

Posted in Energy