climate science
The Credibility of Climate Science
Climate denialists contend that climate science is either the result of a conspiracy of some kind or of groupthink plus institutional incentives to support alarmist predictions. The conspiracy theory makes even less sense than most conspiracy theories, because there would have to be hundreds, perhaps thousands of people involved, scattered across the world at numerous …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change: A Plausibility Check
No doubt there are many reasons for the existence of climate skepticism, but at least one is probably based on a sense of scale. The amount of CO2 emissions is large in absolute term — now about 10 gigatons per year roughly speaking — but the atmosphere is much, much bigger. Of course, CO2 has …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Roots of Climate Skepticism
if you’re a libertarian, an evangelical, a populist, and a corporate officer — or any one of those three — it may be just a little easier to live in a world that lacks the kinds of deep interdependencies highlighted by climate science.
CONTINUE READINGThe Attack on Scientific Freedom
A disturbing report from Science magazine: The news that Australian climate scientists were relocated into secure offices after receiving death threats and abusive e-mails became a political issue in parliament this week. . .. Contacted by ScienceInsider, a spokesperson for the Australian National University in Canberra said, “In response to increasing harassment, including death threats, …
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CONTINUE READINGU.S. House of Representatives v. Modern Science
Nature, one of the two leading scientific journals in the world, has a strongly worded editorial about the recent House hearings on climate change: At a subcommittee hearing on 14 March, anger and distrust were directed at scientists and respected scientific societies. Misinformation was presented as fact, truth was twisted and nobody showed any inclination …
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CONTINUE READINGClarifying a Cloudy Situation
One of the biggest difficulties in climate models is posed by clouds. Modelers need to know what kinds of clouds will form, at what altitudes, and with what precipitation resulting. These turn out to be very hard to calculate, and scientists use heuristic approximations to fill the gaps. A new study suggests that on the …
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CONTINUE READINGMelting the Ice (But Not in a Fun, Life-of-the Party Way)
The Ny Times has a lengthy article about glacial melting and sea level rise, with bad news: But researchers have recently been startled to see big changes unfold in both Greenland and Antarctica. As a result of recent calculations that take the changes into account, many scientists now say that sea level is likely to …
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CONTINUE READINGI, Robot
The claims of climate deniers are so repetitive that someone has figured out how to automate the twitter wars: Getting into a climate change debate on Twitter could be even more exhausting than it sounds now that a software developer named Nigel Leck has automated the process. Tired of arguing with climate change deniers in …
CONTINUE READINGTipping Points and Feedback Effects
From the title, this could be a posting about the election results. It isn’t — although I do wonder whether the relatively rapid changes we’ve seen in the House over the past decade are a sign of increased feedback effects. My topic, however, is climate science. The curve at the left shows how feedback effects …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change and the Royal Society
Despite claims to the contrary in the blogosphere, the Royal Society’s views seem to be entirely consistent with the IPCC’s.
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