Category Archives: ClimateBall

Considering Catastrophe

Posted on August 9, 2022 by ...and Then There's Physics

There’s been quite a lot of recent coverage of a paper suggesting that climate endgames, such as global societal collapse or human extinction, have been dangerously unexplored. For those who recall the contentious RCP8.5 debate, this may seem a surprising … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Gavin Schmidt, Policy, Research, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 90 Comments

FAIL Better

Posted on August 1, 2022 by Willard

Recently AT reminded us of FLICC, a taxonomy of contrarian tactics introduced in 2007 by MarkH. His bro’s Deck still shines. As a first post of a science blog, it does the job. As a permanent classifier, it deserves some … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, how-to, Pseudoscience, SpeedoScience | Tagged , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Scenarios

Posted on April 9, 2022 by ...and Then There's Physics

Just before the release of the IPCC’s AR6 WGIII report (Mitigation of Climate Change) Joeri Rogelj had a Carbon Brief guest post on how not to interpret the emission scenarios in the IPCC report. It might have been to try … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Philosophy for Bloggers, Policy, The philosophy of science | Tagged , , , , | 38 Comments

Techniques of climate denial

Posted on April 3, 2022 by ...and Then There's Physics

Steve Koonin, who I’ve written about before, had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago claiming that Greenland’s melting ice is no cause for climate-change panic. The article uses a graph of mass loss rate to … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Global warming | Tagged , , , , | 89 Comments

A couple of highlights

Posted on February 4, 2022 by ...and Then There's Physics

Since it has been a bit quiet, I thought I might highlight a couple of things the regulars might find of interest. Climate blogging in a post-truth era: Thanks to Stoat, I’ve become aware that Giorgis Zoukas finished his PhD … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Philosophy for Bloggers, Scientists | Tagged , , , , | 47 Comments

How to Do Things with Claims

Posted on December 18, 2021 by Willard

A recent paper introduced the idea of contrarian claim. Expectedly, contrarians raised concerns about it. A recurring one is: what if the claims were true? This note shows how this may lead to a head fake {1}. Let’s look at … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, how-to | 21 Comments

Classification of contrarian claims about climate change

Posted on December 11, 2021 by ...and Then There's Physics

The latest controversy in the climate debate is the publication of a paper on [c]omputer-assisted classification of contrarian claims about climate change. The authors are Travis Coan, Constantine Boussalis, John Cook, and Mirjam Nanko. You may recognise John Cook as … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Philosophy for Bloggers, Research | Tagged , , , , , | 203 Comments

The Hack That Changed the World

Posted on November 12, 2021 by ...and Then There's Physics

After airing the movie, The Trick, the BBC has also broadcast a series of podcasts on Climategate called the Hack That Changed the World (H/T Dikran Marsupial). I’m not sure if all can listen to them, but I thought they … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthony Watts, Climate change, ClimateBall, Global warming, Steven McIntyre | Tagged , , , , | 122 Comments

How to Reason by Analogy

Posted on June 16, 2021 by Willard

Issues echo one another. Unimaginativeness alone prevents us from connecting any two of them. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if the usual Climateball ™ suspects voice Covidball (tm pending) concerns that sound familiar. While similarities may be infinite, tropes converge. Take … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, Philosophy for Bloggers | 25 Comments

The Bingo Core

Posted on May 23, 2021 by Willard

A few months ago I posted a Bingo Card. Thanks to feedback, more Climateball exchanges, with contrarians, and some vacation days, a clearer image has emerged. Here is the current version (1.1): The up-to-date version will be found on the … Continue reading →

Posted in ClimateBall, ClimateBall Bingo | 37 Comments