Category Archives: Global warming

A little domain knowledge can go a long way

Posted on November 14, 2020 by

A rather bizarre paper has been published in Scientific Reports (yes, that Scientific Reports) claiming that [an] earth system model shows self-sustained melting of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020. One immediate problem is that the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, The philosophy of science, The scientific method, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 24 Comments

Understanding methane

Posted on September 26, 2020 by

There was a recent Conversation article about methane called Climate explained: methane is short-lived in the atmosphere but leaves long-term damage that caused a bit of a stir on Twitter. One way people assess the significance of different greenhouse gases, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Policy, Research, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , | 38 Comments

Extreme precipitation events

Posted on July 5, 2020 by

This post is partly motivated by something I think I either heard Michael Shellenberger say, or write, but I can’t find it anymore. I have tried reading some of the articles again, and listening to some of the podcasts again, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Environmental change, Global warming | Tagged , , , , , | 36 Comments

Extreme event attribution and the nature-culture duality

Posted on June 19, 2020 by

I’ve been reading a paper by Shannon Osaka and Rob Bellamy called Weather in the Anthropocene: Extreme event attribution and a modelled nature–culture divide. I’ve written about event attribution before, and I’m largely in favour of the storyline approach; given … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, Global warming, Philosophy for Bloggers, Severe Events, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 138 Comments

Outgoing longwave radiation

Posted on April 30, 2020 by

Something that often strikes me is that when I think I understand something quite well, there often turns out to be an aspect that I haven’t understood particularly well. I sometimes think that this is can be an important thing … Continue reading →

Posted in Global warming, Greenhouse effect, Philosophy for Bloggers, The philosophy of science, The scientific method, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 37 Comments

Chanting to the choir?

Posted on April 22, 2020 by

Before I head off to the office (or, more correctly, go from watching the news in the living room, to the dining room table) I thought I would briefly mention a recent paper that has analysed blog comments. It’s by … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Global warming, Philosophy for Bloggers, Scientists | Tagged , , , , , | 70 Comments

A couple of highlights

Posted on March 8, 2020 by

Since I haven’t had much chance to write anything recently, I thought I would briefly advertise a couple of papers that may be of interest to my regular readers. One is by Clare Marie Flynn and Thorsten Mauritsen and is … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Global warming, Research, Science | Tagged , , , , | 19 Comments

Zharkova et al. – retracted

Posted on March 4, 2020 by

Just a quick post to highlight that the Zharkova et al. paper, that I’ve discussed in a couple of previous posts, has now been retracted. The retraction notice is here. There’s a Retraction Watch post, which also includes a link … Continue reading →

Posted in Gavin Schmidt, Global warming, Philosophy for Bloggers, Sound Science (tm), The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 115 Comments

Debate about communicating tipping points

Posted on February 23, 2020 by

The new book about Contemporary Climate Change Debates, that I discussed in this post, includes a debate about whether or not ‘tipping point[s]’ [are] helpful for describing and communicating possible climate futures? James Annan suggests that the answer is “no”, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Global warming, Policy, The philosophy of science, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 340 Comments

feedbacks, runaway, and tipping points

Posted on February 1, 2020 by

There’s been some discussion on Twitter about feedbacks, runaways, and tipping points. The issue is that some seem to confuse these and sometimes imply that we could cross thresholds where we’ll undergo a runaway. I thought I would briefly try … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Global warming, Severe Events, The scientific method, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 213 Comments