Draft APS Statement on Climate Change

Posted on April 7, 2015 by | 496 comments

by Judith Curry

The American Physical Society has released its draft Statement on Climate Change to the APS membership.

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496 Comments

Posted in Policy

Climate sensitivity: Ringberg edition

Posted on April 5, 2015 by | 262 comments

by Judith Curry

Presentations are now available  from the WCRP Workshop on Earth’s Climate Sensitivity.

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262 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Road to Paris: Tracking climate pledges

Posted on April 1, 2015 by | 368 comments

by Judith Curry

I’m working to wrap my head around the emerging UNFCCC pledges to cut carbon emissions, in preparation for the Paris meeting next December.  Here’s what I’m reading.

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368 Comments

Posted in Energy, Policy, Politics

Criticism, tolerance and changing your mind

Posted on March 31, 2015 by | 589 comments

by Judith Curry

“That’s your responsibility as a person, as a human being — to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don’t contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you’re not thinking.” – Malcolm Gladwell

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589 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Is climate change a ‘ruin’ problem?

Posted on March 30, 2015 by | 393 comments

by Judith Curry

So, is climate change a local or global threat?  Are we risking global ruin?

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393 Comments

Posted in Policy

Christopher Essex on suppressing scientific inquiry

Posted on March 26, 2015 by | 624 comments

by Judith Curry

As the issue of bias in climate science heats up, Christopher Essex has written the best defense of freedom of scientific enquiry that I’ve seen emerge from the Grijalva inquisition.

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624 Comments

Posted in Skeptics, Sociology of science

Whats up with the Atlantic?

Posted on March 25, 2015 by | 267 comments

by Judith Curry

The Washington Post has this dramatic headline:  Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the ocean with potentially dire consequences.

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267 Comments

Posted in Attribution, Polar regions

The stupid party

Posted on March 24, 2015 by | 383 comments

by Judith Curry

The emergence of candidates for U.S. President in the 2016 election is raising some interesting issues about climate change.

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383 Comments

Posted in Politics

Climate sensitivity: lopping off the fat tail

Posted on March 23, 2015 by | 272 comments

by Judith Curry

Interest is running high this week on the topic of climate sensitivity.

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272 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Taking Melbourne’s temperature

Posted on March 22, 2015 by | 61 comments

by Tom Quirke

The raw Melbourne temperature records of the Bureau of Meteorology are compared to the ACORN-Sat values. The ACORN-Sat adjustments are evaluated. This analysis shows evidence for a strong urban heat island effect.

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61 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Blog discussions

Posted on March 22, 2015 by | 396 comments

by Judith Curry

People seem to want to discuss blog discussions/comments, so here’s a thread to deflect such conversation from other threads.

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396 Comments

Posted in Communication

Implications of lower aerosol forcing for climate sensitivity

Posted on March 19, 2015 by | 191 comments

by Nic Lewis

A new paper on aerosol radiative forcing has important implications for estimates of climate sensitivity.

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191 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

On the social contract between science and society

Posted on March 18, 2015 by | 309 comments

by Judith Curry

Our geosciences community too often gives the impression that we care primarily about more funding for our research. Such overt self-interest poses risks to our community and to society. – Bill Hooke

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309 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Temperature adjustments in Australia

Posted on March 17, 2015 by | 252 comments

by Euan Mearns

UK blogger Paul Homewood and Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker have managed to stir public interest in the veracity of adjustments made to temperature records by the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN).

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252 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

Bankruptcy of the ‘merchants of doubt’ meme

Posted on March 15, 2015 by | 416 comments

by Judith Curry

Naomi Oreskes’ new movie Merchants of Doubt has recently been released. Does this movie provide the seeds for ending the ‘merchants of doubt’ meme?

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416 Comments

Posted in Communication, Sociology of science

Blog moderation etc.

Posted on March 15, 2015 by | 197 comments

by Judith Curry

I am trying to take a harder line at moderating the blog.

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197 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Adaptive problem solving: Integral approaches to climate change

Posted on March 12, 2015 by | 387 comments

by Judith Curry

I (and others) have characterized climate change as a ‘wicked problem’ – systemic, self-fuelling tangles, which are multidimensional, hard to define and generate new problems when one tries to solve the old ones.

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387 Comments

Posted in Policy

The albedo of Earth

Posted on March 10, 2015 by | 569 comments

by Judith Curry

An important new paper finds that the albedo of Earth is highly regulated, mostly by clouds, with some surprising consequences.

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569 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

‘Big players’ and the climate science boom

Posted on March 8, 2015 by | 386 comments

by Judith Curry

Big Players of any sort distort the normal systemic activity and render the emergent outcomes unstable and unreliable and create an ideal breeding ground for incentives that motivate ideologically biased people to circumvent normal constraints in the name of pursuing a “greater good”.

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386 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

2 new papers on the ‘pause’

Posted on March 5, 2015 by | 649 comments

by Judith Curry

Two new papers were published last week of relevance to the hiatus.

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649 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower atmosphere

Posted on March 4, 2015 by | 262 comments

by Roger Pielke Sr., Phil Klotzbach, John Christy and Dick McNider

An update is presented of the analysis of Klotzbach et al. 2009.

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262 Comments

Posted in Data and observations

IPCC in transition

Posted on March 3, 2015 by | 521 comments

by Judith Curry

Will Pachauri’s karma run over IPCC’s dogma? – Peter Foster

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521 Comments

Posted in IPCC

Lessons from the ‘Irreducibly Simple’ kerfuffle

Posted on March 1, 2015 by | 435 comments

by Rud Istvan

UPDATE:  Response from Christopher Monckton

The Monckton, Soon, Legates, and Briggs paper “Why models run hot, results from an irreducibly simple climate model” appeared in the January 2015 Science Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Hereinafter MSLB.

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435 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Conflicts of interest in climate science

Posted on February 25, 2015 by | 745 comments

by Judith Curry

Once you tug on the thread of undisclosed financial interests in climate science, you’ll find it more a norm than exception. – Roger Pielke Jr (tweet)

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745 Comments

Posted in Ethics

NARUC Panel Discussion on Climate Change

Posted on February 24, 2015 by | 198 comments

by Judith Curry

At its recent Winter Meeting, The National Associated of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) asked the following question: You’re Still Not Sure Global Warming is Real?

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198 Comments

Posted in Communication