Category Archives: Science

Some reflections on lecturing during a pandemic

Posted on November 27, 2020 by

I noticed, via Twitter, that a colleague had written an interesting post about survival strategies for lecturers [Edit: I hadn’t appreciated that this had been written pre-pandemic, but it is what largely motivated my post]. I had been thinking about … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal, physicists, Science, Universities | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Climate change doesn’t work like that

Posted on November 17, 2020 by

A couple of years ago I wrote a post where I tried to explain why I thought climate change was a different kind of problem when compared to most of the other issues we might face today. I find it … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Environmental change, ethics, Policy, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 67 Comments

Policy in the language of science

Posted on October 24, 2020 by

I was listening to the a Received Wisdom podcast. It’s a podcast by Shobita Parthasarathy and Jack Stilgoe, which I have written about before. At the beginning of the podcast, the hosts were discussing the Great Barrington Declaration, and Jack … Continue reading →

Posted in Policy, Politics, Science, Scientists | Tagged , , , , | 77 Comments

Evidence-led?

Posted on September 19, 2020 by

I was blocked on Twitter by Zion Lights after I, somewhat snarkily, retweeted one of her tweets. Zion Lights is the UK director of Michael Shellenberger’s organisation, Environmental Progress. Zion Lights has had a bit of a rough week, having … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, Philosophy for Bloggers, physicists, Research, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 156 Comments

The Auditing Problem

Posted on September 18, 2020 by

Auditing leads to an open problem. Let’s try to specify it as lightly as possible. Technical notes follow the main text, they’re tagged using curly brackets, like {this note}. §1. Alvaro’s Story Alvaro wrote a piece called What’s Wrong with … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy for Bloggers, Research, Science, Scientisits, Sound Science (tm), The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Directly observing the earliest stages of star and planet formation

Posted on August 27, 2020 by

Since I haven’t had much to write about recently (or, haven’t felt much like writing recently) I thought I would highlight one of my recent papers. It was lead by James Cadman, a PhD student who is been working with … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Research, Science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 42 Comments

Climate sensitivity – narrowing the range

Posted on July 22, 2020 by

Since I’ve discussed climate sensitivity on a number of occasions, it seems worth highlighting the new paper that assesses climate sensitivity using multiple lines of evidence. The authors include many who will be familiar to my regular readers. The key … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Philosophy for Bloggers, Research, Science | Tagged , , , , , | 98 Comments

Can climate sensitivity be really high?

Posted on June 13, 2020 by

The answer to the question in my post title is – unfortunately – yes. The generally accepted likely range for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is 2oC – 4.5oC. This doesn’t mean that it has to fall within this range, it … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Research, Science, The philosophy of science | Tagged , , , , | 36 Comments

Some thoughts about science advice

Posted on March 24, 2020 by

I hope everyone is keeping well and listening to all the advice which, in the UK, is basically to stay at home and to only go outside for food, some exercise, or to go to work (where this cannot be … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy for Bloggers, Policy, Science, Scientists, The philosophy of science | 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