Monthly Archives: September 2011

Uncertainty monster visits MIT: Part II

Posted on September 30, 2011 by | 276 comments

by Judith Curry

I’m in San Diego, with a few moments to catch up on the blog and share my impressions of my visit to MIT.

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276 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Uncertainty monster visits MIT

Posted on September 28, 2011 by | 409 comments

by Judith Curry

This Thursday, I will be visiting the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT, giving the Victor Starr Lecture.

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409 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Climate scientists are different(?) from the general public

Posted on September 27, 2011 by | 519 comments

by Judith Curry

…on average, climate change researchers will prefer to reach a decision or come to closure and ‘move on’ to the next step more quickly than the general population.

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519 Comments

Posted in Communication

Relationship of Lower Tropospheric Cloud Cover and Cosmic Rays

Posted on September 26, 2011 by | 95 comments

by Judith Curry

A new paper is in press that sheds some light on the relationship between cosmic rays and lower tropospheric cloud cover.

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95 Comments

Posted in Solar

Verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification in scientific computing

Posted on September 25, 2011 by | 337 comments

by Judith Curry

I think I am gaining some insight into the debate between scientists versus engineers regarding climate model verification and validation.

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337 Comments

Posted in climate models, Uncertainty

Trends in tropospheric humidity

Posted on September 25, 2011 by | 85 comments

by Garth Paltridge

It is difficult these days to get a paper published in a mainstream climate journal if it emphasises the uncertainty associated with some basic aspect of global warming.

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85 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Sensitivity & feedbacks

Who’s anti-science?

Posted on September 24, 2011 by | 487 comments

by Judith Curry

A blogospheric debate has erupted this weekend over who is more anti-science: the political right, or the left.

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487 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Water vapor feedback: evaporation

Posted on September 24, 2011 by | 118 comments

by Judith Curry

New research from Carnegie’s Global Ecology department concludes that evaporated water helps cool the earth as a whole, not just the local area of evaporation, demonstrating that evaporation of water from trees and lakes could have a cooling effect on the entire atmosphere. 
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118 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Climategate and American TV Meteorologists

Posted on September 22, 2011 by | 327 comments

by Judith Curry

“Climategate”—the unauthorized release of, and news stories about, e-mails between climate scientists in the United States and United Kingdom—undermined belief in global warming and possibly also trust in climate scientists among TV meteorologists in the United States.

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327 Comments

Posted in Communication

The Myth(?) of Easter Island’s Ecocide

Posted on September 21, 2011 by | 247 comments

by Judith Curry

Update:  response from Jared Diamond.

Several years ago, I read with great interest Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The starkest example in the book was the ecological collapse of Easter Island.

Mark Lynas has written a provocative essay that argues that “recent archaeological work suggests that the eco-collapse hypothesis is almost certainly wrong – and that the truth is far more shocking.”

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247 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Cloud wars

Posted on September 21, 2011 by | 231 comments

by Judith Curry

Circa 2003-2005, we had the “hockey wars”.  In 2005-2006, we had the “hurricane wars”.  It looks like this is the season for “cloud wars.”

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231 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

How scientists view the public, the media and the political process

Posted on September 20, 2011 by | 192 comments

by Judith Curry

Here is the punchline of a new paper by Besley and Nisbet:

Most scientists in the US and UK blame public ignorance of science for flawed policy preferences and political choices. They tend to be critical of media coverage, yet rate favorably their own experience with the media.  Scientists say policy-makers and journalists are the most important groups to engage and view the public as having secondary importance in political decision-making. Among scientists, perceptions of science-related policy debates are likely to be influenced by ideology and like-minded information sources such as blogs.

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192 Comments

Posted in Communication

4 degrees

Posted on September 20, 2011 by | 258 comments

by Judith Curry

John and Michel are hypothetical pub owners in Britain and France.  Lenny Smith asks the following questions:

Can today’s science tell John what +4 degrees would be like for his pub? Or his insurer? (or their reinsurer?) Or better still “climate-proof” his business? Is it a question of mere probabilities? Or might models see a “Big Surprise”? How to best manage Expectations (Theirs) and Credibility (Ours) ? Why is this so hard? Should Michel care about global mean temperature?

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258 Comments

Posted in Climate change impacts

Climate models as ink blots

Posted on September 18, 2011 by | 329 comments

by Judith Curry

From Roger Pielke Jr.:  A fundamental problem with climate science in the public realm, as conventionally practiced by the IPCC, is the essential ink blot nature of its presentation. By “ink blot” I mean that there is literally nothing that could occur in the real world that would allow those who are skeptical of scientific claims to revise their views due to unfolding experience. That is to say, anything that occurs with respect to the climate on planet earth is “consistent with” projections made by the climate science community. 

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329 Comments

Posted in climate models, Prediction

Likely causes of the recent changes in Arctic sea ice

Posted on September 16, 2011 by | 141 comments

by Judith Curry

A new paper by Polyakov, Kwok and Walsh is in press in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, entitled: “Recent changes in arctic multi-year sea ice coverage and likely causes.”  This is the best paper I’ve seen on this topic, which clearly articulates the complexity of the issue.

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141 Comments

Posted in Polar regions

On torturing data

Posted on September 15, 2011 by | 205 comments

by Judith Curry

although very few researchers will go as far as to make up their own data, many will “torture the data until they confess”, and forget to mention that the results were obtained by torture….

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205 Comments

Posted in Data and observations, Ethics, Scientific method, Sociology of science

Gore-a-thon

Posted on September 14, 2011 by | 389 comments

by Judith Curry

I was going to try to ignore Al Gore’s 24 Hours of Climate Reality, but I am starting to get queries from journalists.

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389 Comments

Posted in Communication, Politics

Probabilistic estimates of transient climate sensitivity

Posted on September 14, 2011 by | 213 comments

by Judith Curry

An important new paper on this topic has been published in J. Climate, that raises the bar in terms of uncertainty analysis.

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213 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks, Uncertainty

Santer on timescales of temperature trends

Posted on September 12, 2011 by | 353 comments

by Judith Curry

Santer et al. have a new paper in press entitled “Separating Signal and Noise in Atmospheric Temperature Changes: The Importance of Time Scale.”

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353 Comments

Posted in Attribution, climate models

Uncertainty Monster paper in press

Posted on September 10, 2011 by | 289 comments

by Judith Curry

My paper “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster” is in press at the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

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289 Comments

Posted in Uncertainty

Extreme measures

Posted on September 8, 2011 by | 419 comments

by Judith Curry

[I]n the past year, climate researchers in the United States and Britain have formed a loose coalition under the banner ‘ACE’ — Attribution of Climate-related Events — and have begun a series of coordinated studies designed to lay the foundations for a systematic weather-attribution programme.

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419 Comments

Posted in Attribution

Global portrait of greenhouse gases

Posted on September 7, 2011 by | 185 comments

by Judith Curry

NCAR/UCAR has issued a press release: “First global portrait of greenhouse gases emerges from pole-to-pole flights.”

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185 Comments

Posted in Greenhouse effect

Spencer & Braswell: Part III

Posted on September 6, 2011 by | 476 comments

by Judith Curry

The story surrounding Spencer & Braswell has gotten more interesting with the pre-publication of the rebuttal paper by Dessler.

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476 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Detection of Global Economic Fluctuations in the Atmospheric CO2 Record

Posted on September 6, 2011 by | 268 comments

by Jonathan Huddleston

Current attempts by national governments worldwide to control industrial CO2 emissions following the recommendations of the IPCC could be viewed within the scientific paradigm as the projection of a large scale experiment on the earth’s climate system to validate the hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 emissions through the burning of fossil fuels and land use changes (inter alia) are a major factor driving climate change. If such policies are to be effective,  it is hypothesized here that periodic global economic and industrial fluctuations in activity of sufficient magnitude should be capable of producing a signal detectable by atmospheric CO2 monitoring programmes.

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268 Comments

Posted in Energy

Update on Spencer & Braswell: Part II

Posted on September 5, 2011 by | 845 comments

by Judith Curry

Given the substantial number of comments on Part I, I’m starting a new thread to discuss the post by Trenberth, Abraham and Gleick, and Pielke Sr’s response.

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845 Comments

Posted in Ethics