Monthly Archives: December 2018

2018: A year in review

Posted on December 31, 2018 by

Well, it’s the end of another year, so I should probably do a round-up of what’s happened on the blog. The blog seems to be ticking along quite well, but I still don’t really know what I’m doing; I just … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Environmental change, Personal | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

The exoplanets around GJ 9827

Posted on December 27, 2018 by

I hope everyone is having a good break. I have a bit of free time, so thought I would mention a paper I’ve just finished. It’s about the the three super-Earths that orbit a star known as GJ 9827. The … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, physicists, Research, Science, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , | 55 Comments

Sarah’s Wand

Posted on December 24, 2018 by

In the spirit of We Are Science, here’s an edited chat with Dr. Sarah Taber, whom I’ve met over the tweeter. She has things to say about land ownership, farming, and AGW. Enjoy. [Willard, so W] hello [Dr Sarah Taber, … Continue reading →

Posted in Scientists, We Are Science | Tagged , , , , | 18 Comments

There was no “pause” in global warming!

Posted on December 19, 2018 by

There are a couple of new papers that essentially analyse the various analyses of the supposed “pause” in global warming. One, lead by James Risbey considers fluctuation[s] in surface temperature in historical context: reassessment and retrospective on the evidence. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Gavin Schmidt, IPCC, Policy, Research, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 292 Comments

Decarbonising the electric power sector

Posted on December 16, 2018 by

Since I’ve been trying to better understand some other aspects of the climate change topic, I recently read a paper by Jesse Jenkins, Max Luke, and Samuel Thernstrom. It’s about Getting to Zero Carbon Emissions in the Electric Power Sector, … Continue reading →

Posted in Carbon tax, Open Thread, Policy, Politics, Research | Tagged , , , , , , , | 261 Comments

Five dimensions of climate science reductionism

Posted on December 12, 2018 by

Since I’ve been writing about social science papers recently, there are a couple of others I wanted to mention. I discovered that James has already covered one, so I don’t need to say more. The other is a paper called … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 36 Comments

Tame and Wicked Problems

Posted on December 7, 2018 by

Reiner Grundmann has a new paper on The rightful placeful of expertise. It’s rather long, but there were a couple of things I wanted to highlight, and it gives me chance to try and stress something I was trying to … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Global warming, Policy, Scientists, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 88 Comments

Between conflation and denial

Posted on December 5, 2018 by

I’m on my way back from Cambridge, where I had a very pleasant evening with our Stoatness. I also happened to have a look at Climate etc., where Judith is promoting a new paper by Peter Tangney, a Lecturer at … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Comedy, Policy, Politics, Pseudoscience, Research, Satire | Tagged , , , , , | 340 Comments

The plausibility of RCP8.5

Posted on December 2, 2018 by

I’m on the train to Cambridge for a meeting that starts tomorrow. Since I had nothing better to do, I thought I would have a quick look at the RCP8.5 data. There’s been quite a lot of criticism of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Policy, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 88 Comments