by Judith Curry
I have been intending to write a post on NOAA’s proposed Climate Service, but hadn’t gotten around to it. The announcement today regarding the final FY 2011 Appropriations deal includes language stating that none of the funds appropriated to NOAA may be used to “implement, establish, or create a NOAA Climate Service.”
by Judith Curry
I spotted this presentation by Arthur Dempster, Harvard statistician, in the Series on Mathematical and Statistical Approaches to Climate Modeling hosted by the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
Dempster is widely known as the co-originator of Dempster-Shafer Evidence Theory (see the Wikipedia for an overview). Elements of evidence theory have been discussed on several previous threads (see Italian Flag, reasoning about floods).
Posted in Prediction, Scientific method, Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
Motivated by an exchange by Chief Hydrologist and Max on the David Montgomery thread, lets a take a look at the Hartwell paper. Almost one year after its publication, has this paper been a game changer?
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
Climate scientists, bloggers, and journalists are increasingly providing business for lawyers. What’s going on here?
Posted in Ethics
by Judith Curry
David Montgomery has testified twice in the past few weeks on the economics of climate change. Lets take a closer look at his testimony, and at some of the critiques of his testimony.
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
The issue of separating natural from anthropogenically forced variability, particularly in context of the attribution of 20th century climate change, has been a topic of several previous threads at Climate Etc. The issue of natural vs anthropogenically forced climate variability/change has been a key issue of contention between the climate establishment and skeptics. There are some encouraging signs that the climate establishment is maturing in their consideration of this issue.
Posted in Attribution, climate models
by Judith Curry
Well I thought it was probably impossible at this point for someone to come up with a fresh perspective on Climategate. A new article in Inside Higher Ed entitled “Scholars and Scandals” arguably fits the bill. The article tackles the broader questions of:
What is the best course of action when scholars’ motives and research are attacked? How quickly should they respond? Who should vet such allegations — universities, disciplinary societies, or some other entity? If scholars move too hastily, do the risks of getting it wrong (or of being later disproven) outweigh the damage of letting allegations fester without rebuttal?
Posted in Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
Last week, Richard Muller testified at the U.S. House of Representatives Hearing on Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy [see here].
Posted in Data and observations, Politics
by Judith Curry
The U.S. House of Representatives Hearing on Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy has commenced. The House website for the hearing is here.
Live blogging: Gavin Schmidt, Eli Kintisch, Jay Gulledge
Real time rebuttal (password required): Kevin Trenberth, Andrew Dessler, Gary Yohe.
by Douglas Sheil
JC note: this post is a follow on to the Water Vapor Mischief thread that discussed a paper by Makarieva et al. entitled ” Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapor condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics.” Douglass Shiell is coauthor on the paper.
Posted in Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
NSF has a press release on a perspective published in Nature Climate Change, by Baruch Fischoff, which I reproduce here in full. The full perspective can be found online here.
Posted in Communication
JC note: this essay was prepared for a recent address at given at the Manning House, in Australia.
The debate tonight is about ‘anthropogenic global warming’, and it is a debate, not a one-sided exposition. The debate exists because many people say the matter is important, and it is plainly also most contentious. To understand why our government is going down the path that it has chosen, a carbon tax, while the USA is not doing so, we need to know more than simply the local and American political contexts. What is ‘climate change’ all about? Why is there any debate at all? Why are people so divided about it? The answers to these questions involve different elements of history, politics, ideology, narrative, science, mathematics and statistics. You can get some handle on it by recognising that if the matter were quite straightforward we would be doing something else tonight. In my judgment it is not at all straightforward, and it is hardly getting any more so.
Posted in Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
There is a forthcoming Hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology entitled “Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy.”
Posted in Policy, Politics, Uncategorized
by Judith Curry
Here is a complete (albeit rough) draft of my paper for the special issue in the journal Climatic Change (founding editor Steve Schneider) entitled Framing and Communicating Uncertainty and Confidence Judgments by the IPCC.
Posted in Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
This post is stimulated by an email I received from Georgia Tech alum Rutt Bridges, who asked for feedback on a recent article he published in First Break entitled “Economic Challenges for Carbon Capture-Storage and the Role of Natural Gas.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
I spent the 1990’s conducting research on the climate dynamics of the Arctic Ocean, and then moved onto other things circa 2002. My interest in the Arctic has recently been reinvigorated by the increasing societal implications of reduced sea ice extent in terms of security issues, the prospect of a northern sea route, implications for resource exploration and extraction, and adaptation issues for coastal villages along the Arctic Ocean coast.
This multi-part series will begin with an overview of what we know about the climate dynamics of the Arctic Ocean sea ice.
Posted in Polar regions
by Judith Curry
The UK House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology has launched an inquiry into peer review.
Posted in Sociology of science
by Judith Curry
I just came across a paper that I view to be remarkably important, entitled “Influence diagrams for representing uncertainty in climate-related propositions,” by Hall, Twyman and Kay. This paper integrates a number of themes that we have been discussing here: reasoning about uncertainty, consilience of evidence, attribution of extreme events, floods, and even the Italian flag(!). And it does the best job I’ve seen of assessing uncertainty and confidence in a climate-related proposition.
Posted in Attribution, Uncertainty
by Judith Curry
Robert Ellison sent me a link to a review of a book entitled “Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail and Why We Believe Them“, by Dan Gardner, which describes the research of UC Berkeley Professor Philip Tetlock.
Posted in Prediction
by Judith Curry
Jonathan Adler has an interesting article at the Volokh Conspiracy (a libertarian legal blog) entitled “The GOP’s Anti-Climate Policy.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
There is a recent article in the NYTimes entitled “Snubbing skeptics threatens to intensify climate war, study says.” The NYTimes article refers to a study entitled: “Talking Past Each Other: Cultural Framing of Skeptical and Convinced Logics in the Climate Change Debate.”
Posted in Communication, Policy, Politics
by Judith Curry
Roger Pielke Jr. brought to my attention a provocative paper entitled “Discursive stability meets climate instability: A critical exploration of climate stabilization in contemporary climate policy.”
Posted in Policy
by Judith Curry
In Part I, the Congressional testimony of John Christy and Francis Zwiers on extreme events was discussed. In this post, I focus in on issues related to floods. This topic was also discussed in a previous post on Attribution of Extreme Events Part II.
Posted in Attribution, Politics
by Judith Curry
In today’s Hearing on “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations,” John Christy and Francis Zwiers both presented testimony that focused on extreme events, climate sensitivity and warming trends.
Posted in Attribution, Politics
by Judith Curry
From the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power are holding a hearing today Tuesday, March 8, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. entitled, “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations.”
