by Judith Curry
Corruption and climate change? Most people don’t see a connection. This is likely because they aren’t in the habit of thinking of climate change as a multi-billion dollar global industry. And wherever money flows plentifully, corruption is quick on its heels. – Alice Harrison, Transparency International’s Climate Governance Program
Posted in Policy
by Nicholas Lewis
Re: Data inconsistencies in Forest, Stone and Sokolov (2006) GRL paper 2005GL023977 ‘Estimated PDFs of climate system properties including natural and anthropogenic forcings‘
Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks
by Garth Paltridge
The broad theory of man-made global warming is acceptable in the purely qualitative sense. If humans continue to fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, there can be little doubt that the average temperature of the world will increase above what it would have been otherwise. The argument about the science is, and always has been, whether the increase would be big enough to be noticed among all the other natural variations of climate. The economic and social argument is whether the increase, even if it were noticeable, would change the overall welfare of mankind for the worse.
by Judith Curry
What do these three papers share in common? All were written by scientists well outside the fields of atmospheric and climate science.
Posted in Data and observations
by Judith Curry
Imagine that you are planning for water resources in the greater Atlanta region for the next 50 years. Which information would be more helpful:
A. Global climate model simulations for the 21st century that are downscaled for the region
B. Paleoclimatic analysis for the last 400 years of droughts and wet periods.
Posted in Climate change impacts
by Judith Curry
Sociologists and journalists are writing articles about understanding AGW skepticism and denialism. This latest article from Nature makes me think somebody needs to study these people who think that:
Study 2 examined whether framing climate change action in these ways (increasing interpersonal warmth and societal development) may be a more effective approach for motivating action in deniers than the more traditional focus on the reality and risks of climate change.
Posted in Skeptics
by Judith Curry
In the long run the unfrozen north could cause devastation. But, paradoxically, in the meantime no Arctic species will profit from it as much as the one causing it: humans. Disappearing sea ice may spell the end of the last Eskimo cultures, but hardly anyone lives in an igloo these days anyway. And the great melt is going to make a lot of people rich. – The Economist
Posted in Polar regions
by Judith Curry
There is a growing body of academic literature that seeks to understand, explain – and even overcome – climate change scepticism. But is it getting to grips with scepticism, or missing the point? – Adam Corner
Posted in Skeptics
by Judith Curry
A new study published study in Nature alerts to impending catastrophic developments – this time not mainly based on climate change impacts but on wider developments caused by resource use.
Posted in Climate change impacts
by Judith Curry
Yesterday, I started writing a post on air/sea fluxes. A new paper just published in Nature Climate Change changed my mind about what I want to write about.
Posted in Attribution, Data and observations
by Judith Curry
When we fail to distinguish between discovering order IN nature and imposing order ON nature, we have lost relationship with the very thing we yearn to know. Whereas once we were students of nature, looking to her for meaning, we now denigrate her in the belief that it is our inalienable right to have dominion. – Kerry Gordon
Posted in Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
Philosopher Roger Scruton agrees that the environment is the most urgent political problem of our age but argues in his new book “How to Think Seriously About the Planet” that conservatism is far better suited to tackle environmental problems than either liberalism or socialism.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
It is very clear that uncertainty is no one’s friend. We have seen that greater uncertainty about the evolution of the climate should give us even greater cause for concern. We have seen that all other things being equal, greater uncertainty means that things could be worse than we thought. We have also seen that greater uncertainty means that the expected damages from climate change will necessarily be greater than anticipated, and that the allowance we must make for sea level rise will also be greater than anticipated. All of those results arise from simple mathematics, and we do not even have to resort to any economic modelling to understand how greater uncertainty translates into greater risk. – Stefan Lewandowsky
Posted in Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
Recently, there have been a number of interesting papers on sea level rise. Let’s take a look.
Posted in Climate change impacts
by Judith Curry
Two recent articles of interest, both from a conservative perspective.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
“Extreme Event Learning Through Serious Fun”– a completely new way of engaging with the risks of climate change impacts and how we manage them.
Posted in Communication, Policy, Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
This past week, legislation was introduced in the U.S. Congress to cut NSF funding of political “science” . This amendment . . . brings to light an important debate on the more fundamental nature and scope of science itself.
Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
I seem to be saying two things that contradict each other. On the one hand, we trust scientific knowledge, on the other hand, we are always ready to modify in-depth part of our conceptual structure about the world. But there is no contradiction, because the idea of a contradiction comes from what I see as the deepest misunderstanding about science: the idea that science is about certainty. — Carlo Rovelli
Posted in Scientific method, Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
So, what can we expect for the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season? All of the seasonal forecasts are coming in for a near or below normal year. But already, we have seen two named storms, before the official start of the hurricane season on June 1.
What do I think the 2012 season holds?
Posted in Hurricanes
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).
Posted in Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
UPDATE: Email from Joe Bast
“You can not simultaneously say that you want to promote a debate while equating the other side to terrorists and mass murderers.” — Ross McKitrick
Posted in Skeptics
by Judith Curry
“Our results also serve to highlight the importance of Atlantic multidecadal variability in mediating the rate of global warming, and they suggest that these variations deserve more explicit consideration in twentieth century climate simulations and in attribution studies based on recent observations of the rate of change of [global mean surface temperature]. — Wu et al. (2012)
Posted in Attribution
by David Hagen
The results of The Copenhagen Consensus 2012 have just been released. Bjørn Lomborg assembled a blue ribbon panel including Nobel Laureate economists. They ranked the top 30 most important humanitarian projects.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
The CMIP5 decadal simulations are now available for seven climate models. The first intercomparison results have just been published.
Posted in climate models
by Judith Curry
How the controversy over climate change affects America’s classrooms is receiving increasing attention.
Posted in Communication
