Category Archives: Policy

Research should inform, not influence

Posted on August 5, 2018 by

Thomas Basbøll, who I sometimes have discussions with on Twitter, has a guest post on the LSE impact blog claiming that we need our scientists to build models that frame our policies, not to tell stories that shape them. If … Continue reading →

Posted in advocacy, Policy, Politics, Research, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 141 Comments

zero emissions

Posted on July 8, 2018 by

There’s a recent paper on carbon cycle uncertainties and the Paris agreement (Holden et al. 2018). It considers two mitigation pathways, one that keeps end of century warming to below ~2oC, and the other that keeps end of century warming … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Policy | Tagged , , , | 104 Comments

Rethinking climate policy

Posted on July 3, 2018 by

Roger Pielke Jr has been promoting his new paper in Issues in Science and Technology. The paper is called opening up the climate policy envelope and Roger has been suggesting that people should read it. I’ve read it a couple … Continue reading →

Posted in advocacy, Carbon tax, IPCC, Policy, Roger Pielke Jr | Tagged , , , , | 290 Comments

No, Hansen wasn’t wrong!

Posted on June 22, 2018 by

It’s 30 years since James Hansen testified before the US Congress about climate change. In the same year, he published a paper that produced some forecasts. I wasn’t going to write about this as there are a number of articles … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 213 Comments

Airtime for policy experts

Posted on June 7, 2018 by

As I discussed in this post, there’s been a lengthy discussion on Twitter about climate scientists publicly discussing policy/solutions. In response to this, David Roberts tweeted the following: I think a) the over-reliance on climate scientists to do all the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, economics, Policy, Scientists | Tagged , , , , , | 110 Comments

Carbon budgets and the impacts of climate change

Posted on May 16, 2018 by

I’m somewhat stealing this from Stoat, but it’s an interesting topic, and it really originates from a tweet by Gavin Schmidt anyway 😉 I think this is correct. There's no connection to speak of between the impacts of carbon emissions … Continue reading →

Posted in Carbon tax, Climate change, Gavin Schmidt, Policy | Tagged , , , , | 81 Comments

RCP8.5

Posted on May 10, 2018 by

There’s been a lengthy discussion on Twitter about RCP8.5. I think it was initiated by Roger Pielke Jr, who continues in his campaign to police the scientific community: RCP 8.5 is by far the favorite in climate impact studies (graph).I … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Policy, Research, Scientists | Tagged , , , , | 271 Comments