Monthly Archives: February 2018

Climate Hawks

Posted on February 22, 2018 by

After a brief Twitter discussion with Ted Nordhaus (who authored the article I wrote about here) I came across another of his recent articles. It’s about Climate Hawks’s revealed preferences. The basic suggestion is that Climate Hawks don’t really behave … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, ethics, Global warming, Policy | Tagged , , , , | 315 Comments

The two-degree delusion?

Posted on February 16, 2018 by

Ted Nordhaus, of Breakthrough Institute fame, has a recent article in Foreign Affairs called [t]he two-degree delusion. Basically, it argues that we cannot possibly achieve this target without harming the poor, and that continuing to try and do so also … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, GRRRROWTH, Policy | Tagged , , , , | 73 Comments

Political Scientists

Posted on February 14, 2018 by

Gavin Schmidt had a bit of a rant on Twitter about some political scientists find[ing] ways to blame climate scientists for the lack of progress in CO2 emission reductions. We should dedicate February as #findaclimatescapegoat month as yet again some … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Gavin Schmidt, Policy, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 50 Comments

A challenge for my readers

Posted on February 11, 2018 by

John Cook and colleagues have new paper out about [d]econstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors. The basic idea is to inoculat[e] against misinformation by explaining the fallacious reasoning within misleading denialist claims. and to [o]ffer a strategy based on … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Pseudoscience, Satire, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , | 400 Comments

Overhype much?

Posted on February 6, 2018 by

There has been quite a lot of news coverage suggesting that astronomer have, for the first time, discovered planets in another galaxy. It’s from a paper by Xinyu Dai and Eduardo Guerras called Probing Planets in Extragalactic Galaxies Using Quasar … Continue reading →

Posted in Science, Research, The scientific method, Sound Science (tm), Scientists | Tagged , , , , | 31 Comments

ECS from a modified energy balance approach

Posted on February 4, 2018 by

Andrew Dessler’s paper (technically Dessler and Forster), which he mentioned in this comment, has now appeared as a pre-print. Essentially, they use an energy balance approach to estimate equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), but – as I mentioned in this post … Continue reading →

Posted in Global warming, Climate sensitivity, Science, Research, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , | 142 Comments

SciComm for the IPCC

Posted on February 3, 2018 by

There is a newly released Communications Handbook for IPCC scientists. It’s already been covered in a Guardian article and in a Realclimate post. There are six basic principles Be a confident communicator Talk about the real world, not abstract ideas … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Policy, Research, Scientists | Tagged , , , , | 128 Comments