AGU Fall Meeting. Part III: An Open Letter From Greg Craven

Posted on December 18, 2010 by | 761 comments

Received via email from Greg Craven, posted in entirety:

Mea Mega Culpa: an Open Letter from Greg Craven re: Dec. 15th speech at AGU.

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761 Comments

Posted in Communication

Scientists in fiction

Posted on December 18, 2010 by | 103 comments

Judith Curry

I recently read Ian McEwan’s book Solar, which motivated me to ponder putting together a thread on scientists in fiction.   The classics in this genre, e.g. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Strangelove, represent scientists as evil geniuses unrestrained by ethics.  Contemporary books in the genre provide more complex images of scientists.

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103 Comments

Posted in Communication

AGU Fall Meeting: Part II

Posted on December 17, 2010 by | 243 comments

by Judith Curry

I’ve spent the last several days at the AGU meeting in San Francisco.  With 19,200 participants, there is an overwhelming amount things going on all that the same time.   Here are some highlights of the meeting (some of which I witnessed first hand, others are based on second hand reports).  And also some comments on some of the controversies that are being discussed in the blogosphere.

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243 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Michaels’ controversial testimony: Part III

Posted on December 16, 2010 by | 108 comments

by Judith Curry

Pat Michaels’ frequent collaborator, Chip Knappenberger, has written an extended post on MasterResource that is a follow up to Michaels’ testimony and Climate Etc. previous two threads.  Chip has given me permission to repost in entirety at Climate Etc., and Chip will be available for discussion.

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108 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Lies, damned lies, and science(?)

Posted on December 14, 2010 by | 199 comments

by Judith Curry

A fascinating article appeared in the November issue of the Atlantic, entitled “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.”  The article is an absolute must read, about the prevalance of (unconscious) bias in medical science.

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199 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Sociology of science

CO2 no-feedback sensitivity: Part II

Posted on December 14, 2010 by | 236 comments

by Judith Curry

So how to define this problem to make sense?  Or can we?  To focus the discussion started on the previous thread, I am highlighting some of the defining or thought provoking statement from the the previous thread:

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236 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

AGU Fall Meeting

Posted on December 13, 2010 by | 109 comments

by Judith Curry

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is holding is annual Fall meeting this week (13-17 Dec) in San Francisco.  I’m posting on this to give the broader Climate Etc. a sense of the main professional society for climate scientists.

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109 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

CO2 no-feedback sensitivity

Posted on December 11, 2010 by | 377 comments

by Judith Curry

The IPCC defines climate sensitivity as “a metric used to characterise the response of the global climate system to a given forcing. It is broadly defined as the equilibrium global mean surface temperature change following a doubling of atmospheric CO2concentration.”

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377 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Testimony followup: Part II

Posted on December 9, 2010 by | 369 comments

RESPONSE TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Pursuant to Judith Curry’s Testimony for the

Hearing on “Rational Discussion of Climate Change: the Science, the Evidence, the Response”

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369 Comments

Posted in Policy

Open thread: 12/08/10

Posted on December 8, 2010 by | 290 comments

Unusual for me to post an open thread mid week, but this has unexpectedly turned into a very busy week for me.  Responding to the follow up questions is turning into as much work as the original testimony (even with all that help from my friends :) )

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290 Comments

Posted in Week in review

Education versus indoctrination: Part III

Posted on December 7, 2010 by | 234 comments

Michael Larkin has done an excellent job of synthesis and analysis of the some of the more cogent points made on the previous threads.   The text of Michael’s comments are provided below:

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234 Comments

Posted in Communication

Education versus indoctrination: Part II

Posted on December 6, 2010 by | 211 comments

by Judith Curry

The previous thread has gotten long, and has wandered off topic.  Lets focus the discussion on this thread on some of the interesting ideas that are being discussed on the previous thread, including the following:

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211 Comments

Posted in Communication

Confidence in radiative transfer models

Posted on December 5, 2010 by | 1,207 comments

by Judith Curry

The calculation of atmospheric radiative fluxes is central to any argument related to the atmospheric greenhouse/Tyndall gas effect.  Atmospheric radiative transfer models rank among the most robust components of climate model, in terms of having a rigorous theoretical foundation and extensive experimental validation both in the laboratory and from field measurements.   However, I have not found much in the way of actually explaining how atmospheric radiative transfer models work and why we should have confidence in them (at the level of technical blogospheric discourse).  In this post, I lay out some of the topics that I think need to be addressed  in such an explanation regarding infrared radiative transfer.  Given my limited time this week, I mainly frame the problem here and provide some information to start a dialogue on this topic, I hope that other experts participating can fill in (and I will update the main post).

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1,207 Comments

Posted in climate models, Greenhouse effect

Education versus indoctrination

Posted on December 4, 2010 by | 592 comments

by Judith Curry

The Wikipedia defines indoctrination as:

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592 Comments

Posted in Communication

Testimony follow up

Posted on December 3, 2010 by | 266 comments

by Judith Curry

Pursuant to my recent congressional testimony, I have received  some follow up questions that were submitted by Members of the Committee.

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266 Comments

Posted in Policy

Best of the greenhouse

Posted on December 2, 2010 by | 295 comments

by Judith Curry

On the previous two threads, we had a lively, rollicking, illuminating and often frustrating discussion on the physics of the greenhouse effect.  On this thread, I try to synthesize the main issues and arguments that were made and pull some of what I regard to be the highlights from the comments.

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295 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Climate model verification and validation

Posted on December 1, 2010 by | 256 comments

by Judith Curry

On the thread building confidence in climate models , a small amount of text was devoted to verification and validation (V&V).  In raising the level of the game, I included the following bullet:

• Fully documented verification and validation of climate models

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256 Comments

Posted in climate models

Skeptical discussion

Posted on December 1, 2010 by | 357 comments

This is a wide open thread, discuss whatever you like here.  I am starting this new thread in an effort to keep the threads on greenhouse effect and skeptics make your best case on topic.   Please keep your comments that are not directly relevant to these two topics off those threads, and post them over here.  I will start deleting extraneous comments from the other two threads.  Thanks for your cooperation in this.

p.s.  I am really pleased to see the discussion interest transitioning from climategate to the actual science :)

357 Comments

Posted in Open thread

Physics of the atmospheric greenhouse(?) effect

Posted on November 30, 2010 by | 698 comments

by Judith Curry

The skeptics thread has shown that it is plausible to be skeptical of a number of issues regarding the findings of  IPCC WG1.  However, whether atmospheric gases such as CO2 (and H20, CH4, and others) warm the planet is not an issue where skepticism is plausible.

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698 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Waving the Italian flag. Part I: uncertainty and pedigree

Posted on November 28, 2010 by | 95 comments

by Judith Curry

The Italian flag (IF) is a representation of three-valued logic in which evidence for a proposition is represented as green, evidence against is represented as red, and residual uncertainty is represented as white.  The white area reflects uncommitted belief, which can be associated with uncertainty in evidence or unknowns.

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95 Comments

Posted in Scientific method, Uncertainty

Raising the level of the game: Part II

Posted on November 28, 2010 by | 100 comments

by Judith Curry

There has been considerable interesting discussion on the previous thread.  I plan to follow up with thread on verification and validation of climate models, and am pondering how to deal with explaining the greenhouse effect.  On this thread, I would like to see discussion on this thread focus on the following:

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100 Comments

Posted in Open knowledge

Skeptics: make your best case

Posted on November 26, 2010 by | 600 comments

This thread provides an opportunity to put forth skeptical arguments related to the topics broadly covered by the IPCC WG I Report The Physical Science Basis. This thread is designed for academic and other professional researchers as well as citizen scientists.

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600 Comments

Posted in Skeptics

Raising the level of the game

Posted on November 26, 2010 by | 450 comments

by Judith Curry

Documenting, understanding and predicting climate variability and change is an issue of substantial scientific and socioeconomic importance.  The IPCC put forth a strategy for assessing the science that is based upon reducing uncertainty and building a consensus.  This consensus was used to convince the public and policy makers of the IPCC’s scientific findings, which were linked with the UNFCCC treaties and policies to urge action on carbon stabilization.  The partial success of this strategy was reflected by the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC.

Failures of this strategy in terms of the actual science are to overly focus the science on one aspect of the climate problem, marginalize dissenting voices, polarize the scientific community, and alienate a large segment of the educated public who have the desire, interest, logic, and often the mathematical and physical science skills to understand and even contribute to the science.

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450 Comments

Posted in Open knowledge

The Principles of Reasoning. Part II: Solving the Problem of Induction

Posted on November 25, 2010 by | 131 comments

by Terry Oldberg

This essay continues the argument which I initiated in Part I. To summarize, in Part I, I described a kind of model that was a procedure for making inferences. One kind of inference was a prediction from a known state of nature called a “condition” to an uncertain state of nature called an “outcome.” Conditions and outcomes were both examples of abstracted states. I pointed out that sets of conditions of infinite number could be defined on the Cartesian product space of a model’s independent variables and that each of these sets defined a different model. Thus, models of infinite number were candidates for being built.

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131 Comments

Posted in Scientific method

Engaging the public on the climate change issue

Posted on November 24, 2010 by | 585 comments

by Judith Curry

The anniversary of Climategate has engendered much reflection on the climate change issue, specifically with regard to communicating and engaging with the public.

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585 Comments

Posted in Communication