Monthly Archives: December 2018

2018: A year in review

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

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

Sarah’s Wand

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!

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 , , , , , | 293 Comments

Decarbonising the electric power sector

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

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

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

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

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