Monthly Archives: January 2018

Confounding ECS estimates

Posted on January 30, 2018 by ...and Then There's Physics

Kate Marvel and colleagues have just published an interesting paper on how [i]nternal variability and disequilibrium confound estimates of climate sensitivity from observations. Essentially they compare three different ways of estimating Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS): atmosphere-only simulations with observed sea … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Research | Tagged , , , , , | 193 Comments

Polar Bears – a rebuttal

Posted on January 26, 2018 by ...and Then There's Physics

I wrote a post a little while ago about Harvey et als paper on [i]nternet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy. Their basic conclusion was that if you divide blogs into those that accept anthropogenic global warming (AGW) … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Pseudoscience, Research, Richie | Tagged , , , , , , | 163 Comments

Narrowing the climate sensitivity range?

Posted on January 20, 2018 by ...and Then There's Physics

There have been a couple of recent papers presenting analyses that claim to have narrowed the likely range for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). One is Dessler et al. (currently a discussion paper under review) which suggests that the 500hPa tropical … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Policy, Research, Science | Tagged , , , , | 151 Comments

Guest post: A ‘new’ measurement of climate sensitivity?

Posted on January 17, 2018 by ...and Then There's Physics

This is a guest post by Mark Richardson, who is currently a Caltech Postdoctoral Scholar at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mark has a particular interest in the role of clouds in climate change. This post is a response to … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Global warming, The scientific method | Tagged , , , | 150 Comments

A little bit of sociology of science?

Posted on January 13, 2018 by ...and Then There's Physics

I recently published a paper on turbulence in discs around young stars. The basic conclusion was that turbulence tends to inhibit, rather than promote, a potential planet formation process. However, rather than talk about the paper itself, I thought I … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal, Research, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , | 57 Comments

Can Contrarians Lose?

Posted on January 11, 2018 by Willard

No. Thesis. Contrarians always win. Proof. Let the following assumptions hold: (1) science is a corrective process; (2) scientific beliefs are revisable; (3) contrarians could (and probably will, one day, with AI) claim everything science doesn’t claim. Ergo, Betteridge’s Law … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Contrarian Matrix | Tagged , , | 84 Comments

No, we’re not slipping into a proper ice age

Posted on January 8, 2018 by ...and Then There's Physics

Matt Ridley, who I have written about numerous times before, has a new article in The Times called global cooling is not worth shivering about, which claims that The Earth is very slowly slipping back into a proper ice age … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, GRRRROWTH, Policy | Tagged , , , , , , | 67 Comments

Reproducibility?

Posted on January 5, 2018 by ...and Then There's Physics

I came across an interesting paper about the replication crisis that I thought I would briefly discuss (H/T Neuroskeptic). The paper in question is Reproducibility research: a minority opinion. It’s not open access, but I have found what I think … Continue reading →

Posted in Research, Scientists, Sound Science (tm), The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , | 49 Comments

Being wicked

Posted on January 3, 2018 by ...and Then There's Physics

There’s been an interesting discussion on Twitter about how to frame anthropogenically-driven climate change. In particular, should it be framed as a wicked problem? A number of people involved in the discussion had a problem with this framing. One very … Continue reading →

Posted in advocacy, Climate change, economics, Policy, Politics | Tagged , , , | 67 Comments