Monthly Archives: October 2017

Carbon Dioxide Removal

There’s a bit of a debate going on a about economics and ethics, mostly on MT’s blog, but also on Stoat, and a little bit here. I have to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what people are actually disagreeing … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Global warming, Policy, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 77 Comments

Civility

A recent discussion has led me to think a bit more about civility. This was partly motivated by my own intention to maintain it when I started this blog (which didn’t always succeed) and by the other party being someone … Continue reading

Posted in ClimateBall, Personal | Tagged , , | 152 Comments

Watt about breaking the ‘pal review’ glass ceiling

Pat Frank has a guest post on WUWT about breaking the ‘pal review’ glass ceiling in climate modeling. It’s essentially about a paper of his that he has been trying to get published and that has now been rejected 6 … Continue reading

Posted in Anthony Watts, Climate change, ClimateBall, Gavin Schmidt, Research, Watts Up With That | Tagged , , , , , | 86 Comments

Infrared absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide

Geoff Price made me aware of a paper, by an apparently highly published physicist, that considers the infrared absorption of atmospheric carbon. It concludes that CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas and cannot be accepted as the main driver … Continue reading

Posted in Climate sensitivity, physicists, Pseudoscience, Research, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , | 55 Comments

Sound Science

By some serendipity, I noticed and responded to a tweet where Kevin Folta was trying to ridicule the accusation that he was “pro-GMO”: https://twitter.com/nevaudit/status/916704866092843012 I rather like the “pro-biotech” label as it seems more precise than “pro-GMO.” Not Kevin: https://twitter.com/nevaudit/status/916714281772699655Continue reading

Posted in advocacy, Science, Scientists | Tagged , , , | 58 Comments

Bruno Latour

I came across an interesting interview with Bruno Latour, a sociologist with an interest in Science and Techology Studies (STS), who was involved with what has been called the “science wars”. I actually found much of what he said in … Continue reading

Posted in Pseudoscience, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 107 Comments

Economics and Values

Michael Tobis has a post in which he argues that what we are doing to the climate will persist for many generations and, consequently, that it is immoral to continue what were’e doing and that we should address this as … Continue reading

Posted in advocacy, Climate change, economics, ethics, Research | Tagged , , , , , | 180 Comments

The Virial Theorem

I had another brief Twitter discussion with Ned Nikolov, whose paper I discussed in this post. Ned seems to think that there is no atmospheric greenhouse effect and that the enhanced surface temperature is due to atmospheric pressure somehow enhancing … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Comedy, Global warming, physicists, Pseudoscience | Tagged , , , , | 199 Comments

A bit more about clouds

A few years ago I posted a video by Andrew Dessler that was discussing whether or not Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity could be less than 3oC. The bottom line was that the best estimate for ECS is about 3oC. Given that … Continue reading

Posted in Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Global warming, Research, Science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 34 Comments

Chatham Air Raid

For the 100th anniversay of the start of World War I, I wrote a post about an ancester of mine, Kenneth Smith, who died on 1 January 1919, when Her Majesty’s Yacht Iolaire sank after hitting rocks in the mouth … Continue reading

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments