Category Archives: Science

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 , , , , , | 46 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 , , , , , , , | 23 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

Listen to the (political) science

Posted on December 30, 2019 by

I’ve been meaning to post a review of 2019, but wanted to first comment on something else. I quite often see criticism of how some people approach the issue of climate change. For example, in the Guardian yesterday, there was … Continue reading →

Posted in Carbon tax, Climate change, Policy, Politics, Science, Scientists | Tagged , , , , | 78 Comments

Science and Technology Studies podcast – part 2

Posted on December 20, 2019 by

There’s a post I’ve been thinking of writing, but I thought I might first comment on something else. I wrote a post about a Science and Technology Studies podcast that I’d listened to. This is a topic I find interesting, … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy for Bloggers, Science, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 67 Comments

Depolarising the debate?

Posted on November 7, 2019 by

I’ve always been a little puzzled by the (mostly) social scientists who seem to argue that to develop effective climate policy we should stop using labels, be depolarizing the debate, and should prioritise civil disagreements. It’s not that I object … Continue reading →

Posted in advocacy, Climate change, Environmental change, Policy, Science | Tagged , , , , | 172 Comments