Monthly Archives: June 2017

Meeting people

I was away all of last week on a mini UK-research tour. I had some work to do with people in Leicester, including with somone who has just finished doing a PhD with me and who has a couple of … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

The Science Police

Keith Kloor has an article in Issues in Science and Technology called The Science Police. I became aware of it because he linked to one of my posts so as to highlight a comment by Michael Tobis. I tried to … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Research, Roger Pielke Jr, Science, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 61 Comments

Heatwaves

I’ve been away for a week (more about this later, maybe), so haven’t had a chance to post anything. It has been a fairly warm week here in the UK, so it’s seem worth mentioning a recent paper about the … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Science, Severe Events | Tagged , , , , , | 212 Comments

What does the Vostok ice core tell us?

Euan Mearns, who runs a blog called Energy Matters, had a post in 2014 about The Vostok ice core: Temperature CO2 and CH4. This post has apparently had 8000 reads, is probably one of the most read texts on the … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Global warming, Greenhouse effect, Pseudoscience, Research, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 88 Comments

Peddling

https://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/150362283819 Peddling is arguably the most favorite way for contrarians to lob factoids behind enemy lines. Once a door opens, peddlers block it with their foot and dispatch their sale pitches. Peddled talking points seldom matter to the topic at hand, … Continue reading

Posted in ClimateBall, Freedom Fighters | Tagged , , | 79 Comments

Climate communication

Doug McNeall recently gave a talk about surviving the climate communication environment, which he discusses in this post. A lightly edited version of the slides are available here. The slides, of course, don’t tell you precisely what was said in … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall | Tagged , , , , , , | 97 Comments

Lukewarmers resurgent

I’ve noticed a slight resurgence in those claiming to be lukewarmers and trying to argue that this is some kind of reasonable middle ground. I’ve written about lukewarmers before, but the basic issue with the lukewarmer argument is that they … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Global warming, Greenhouse effect, Politics, Science | Tagged , , , , | 661 Comments

The crisis of free speech in higher education

I came across an interesting post by Mark Carrigan called the (coming) crisis of free speech in the digital university. The underlying issue is the suggestion that there is a crisis of free speech in higher education. This is related, … Continue reading

Posted in Freedom Fighters, Politics, The philosophy of science, Universities | Tagged , , , , | 132 Comments

Trump and Paris

So, Trump has decided to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. It’s not really a great surprise, but disappointing nonetheless. The thing that gets me is how inconsistent the arguments for leaving seem to be. I particularly liked David Roberts’s … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 179 Comments