Category Archives: ClimateBall

Tropospheric temperature trends

Roger Pielke Jr appears to have been pondering why it is that discussions, on social media, about the physical science of climate change (WG1 in IPCC-speak) has dissipated in recent years. There are probably many reasons, but amongst them might … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Contrarian Matrix, Roger Pielke Jr, Science | Tagged , , , | 104 Comments

The Secret Square

People send me stuff {1}. Brandon Gates (whom I often refer to as BG) has been toying with the free version of ChatGPT. He grilled it about climate science. He also asked it about Climateball. The first response to “what … Continue reading

Posted in ClimateBall, ClimateBall Bingo | Tagged , , | 85 Comments

How we frame extreme weather events

To maybe move the discussion on from the origins of Covid, I thought I’d write a post about detection and attribution. It is somewhat motivated by a brief dicsussion withTed Nordhaus, from the Breakthrough Institute, who suggested that a good … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Gavin Schmidt, Global warming, Philosophy for Bloggers | Tagged , , , , , | 162 Comments

Conflicts of Interest

Since I have little (no?) self-control, I sometimes find myself checking what RPJ is up to. I mostly find it worth ignoring, but I found myself considering one of his recent posts on [w]hen scientific integrity is undermined in pursuit … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Philosophy for Bloggers | Tagged , , , | 22 Comments

True Contrarians

I like contrarians, and consider contrarian a term of endearment. If we believe the investment lore, only contrarian traders achieve success. The myth rings true: to beat the market, one must go against it. To win, contrarians need to believe … Continue reading

Posted in ClimateBall, ClimateBall Bingo | Tagged , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Plausible scenarios

New Scientist has a recent article about [t]he worst-case climate scenarios are no longer plausible today. This is a topic that has been covered here before, and is partly motivated by a paper discussed in this post. The basic premise … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, ClimateBall Bingo, economics, Scientists, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 242 Comments

Revkin and Lomborg

I was listening to a podcast hosted by Lex Fridman with guests Andy Revkin and Bjorn Lomborg. The podcast was billed as a Climate Debate, but it wasn’t really. It was mostly two guest who seemed to largely agree with … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Global warming, Resilience | Tagged , , , | 133 Comments

Beyond Catastrophe

Since some commenters on my previous post have mentioned this, I though I might comment on David Wallace-Wells’ recent article in the New York Times. It’s called Beyond Catastrophe, and argues that Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Global warming, Roger Pielke Jr | Tagged , , , , | 149 Comments

Responses to Considering Catastrophe

A while ago I wrote a post about a paper by Luke Kemp, and colleagues, suggesting that we should put more effort into exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios. There’s now been a response by Burgess et al. suggesting that Catastrophic … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Environmental change, Philosophy for Bloggers, Severe Events | Tagged , , , , , | 62 Comments

How To Lord Comment Sections

On the 2022-10-03, Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount of Brenchley (viz. Christopher) wrote a piece at Tony’s showcasing a paper he allegedly wrote two years ago. Nobody ever read it. It has not been published anywhere. Co-authors are unnamed, yet … Continue reading

Posted in ClimateBall, how-to | Tagged , , | 30 Comments