Category Archives: The scientific method

What does net-zero actually mean?

Roger Pielke Jr had a recent guest post on his substack by Tom Wigley called Net-Zero Does Not Mean What You Think it Does. The post concluded that CO2 emissions do not need to be eliminated to meet the Paris … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Roger Pielke Jr, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 69 Comments

Scientifically intriguing?

Last week, Judith Curry had a guest post about causality and climate. I was initially a little confused, because I thought it was about a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, that I’d discussed in an earlier … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 82 Comments

The Bad Boy of Science

I realise that this was mentioned in the comments of my previous post, but I thought I would just advertise that I spent a bit of time last Friday chatting with Sam Gregson, who runs the Bad Boy of Science … Continue reading

Posted in advocacy, Climate change, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 39 Comments

Alimonti et al. – retracted

The paper that we wrote about in this Skeptical Science post, which I reposted here, has now been retracted. In case people don’t remember, the paper was [a] critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming, and … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, physicists, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 64 Comments

Proximal Origins

I wrote a recent post about the Covid Origins debate in which I was arguing that all non-experts have to use heuristics to try and assess the arguments being made and that the similarity with the climate debate suggests – … Continue reading

Posted in ClimateBall, Contrarian Matrix, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 335 Comments

The origins debate

I’ve mostly tried to avoid the Covid origins debate, but I listened to a very good Guruspod episode, where they covered this. It was an interview with Eddie Holmes, Kristian Andersen, and Michael Worobey, and was partly intended as a … Continue reading

Posted in Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , , | 613 Comments

Escape from model land

I listened to an interesting podcast that some of the regulars may find interesting. It was on the Volts podcast and was on the abuse (and proper use) of climate models. It is an interview with Erica Thompson, who has … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, Research, The philosophy of science, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 25 Comments

Climate science as a social process

I came across a paper that might be of interest to regular readers of this blog. It’s by Hans von Storch and is a Brief communication: Climate science as a social process – history, climatic determinism, Mertonian norms and post-normality. … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, physicists, Research, Resilience, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 74 Comments

Plausible scenarios

New Scientist has a recent article about [t]he worst-case climate scenarios are no longer plausible today. This is a topic that has been covered here before, and is partly motivated by a paper discussed in this post. The basic premise … Continue reading

Posted in Climate change, ClimateBall, ClimateBall Bingo, economics, Scientists, The scientific method | Tagged , , , , | 242 Comments

The role of mathematical modelling

Christina Pagel and Kit Yates have an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on the Role of mathematical modelling in future pandemic response policy. It’s part of a series in the BMJ on the UK’s covid-19 inquiry. I have … Continue reading

Posted in Research, Scientists, The philosophy of science, The scientific method, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 203 Comments