Tag Archives: Cumulative emissions

Worst case scenarios, or not?

Posted on October 6, 2019 by

I’ve been thinking a bit more about the debate around high emission scenarios, which I found rather frustrating. I think it’s an important issue, but the manner in which some people choose to frame this does make it difficult to … Continue reading →

Posted in Carbon tax, Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall | Tagged , , , , , | 47 Comments

Talking solutions and motivating action

Posted on March 6, 2018 by

There’s been a lengthy Twitter discussion about scientists moving away from simply discussing the science of climate change, to talking about solutions and motivating action. I broadly agree with this; I do think that the main discussion should be about … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Global warming, Policy, Research, Science, Scientists | Tagged , , , , | 493 Comments

More time …. really?

Posted on September 19, 2017 by

A recent paper about [e]mission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C essentially argues that it is still possible to follow an emission pathway that will give us a good chance of keeping warming below 1.5oC. More specifically, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Global warming, IPCC, Research, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 38 Comments

5000 GtC

Posted on January 13, 2016 by

The advantage of working at a university, is that you get the opportunity to attend interesting seminars, especially if Kit Carruthers reminds you (on which note, I also discovered that Kit submitted his PhD thesis last month). The talk today … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Global warming, IPCC, Personal, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Sensitivity to cumulative emissions

Posted on December 2, 2015 by

Something I’ve mentioned here quite regularly is the idea that warming depends roughly linearly on cumulative (total) emissions. This is slightly counter intuitive, in that warming depends logarithmically on atmospheric CO2 concentration. The reason is essentially that it incorporates climate … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Global warming, IPCC, Judith Curry, Science | Tagged , , , , , , | 202 Comments

If wishes were horses

Posted on November 28, 2015 by

There’s a proverb which goes if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, which basically means that it’s useless to simply hope that everything will be fine, it’s better to actually take action. If it isn’t already, it really should be … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, ClimateBall, Global warming, IPCC, Science | Tagged , , , , | 76 Comments

Climate change by numbers

Posted on March 3, 2015 by

I watched the much-hyped BBC4 show climate change by numbers and thought it was pretty good. It covered 3 basic numbers; why we think global surface temperatures have risen by 0.85oC since 1880, why we’re 95% (or more) sure that … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate change, Climate sensitivity, Global warming, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , | 185 Comments