PODCAST with Dr. Roy Spencer – Climate models and coronavirus models are being used to set public policy. Both have proven to be failures. It’s that old “uncertainty monster” again. Climate models and coronavirus models have both been used to predict the future, and both have been used to form public policy. In this podcast…
Guest Essay by Kip Hansen What is a smörgåsbord? And who is Sarewitz? From the top, a smörgåsbord is “a buffet meal of various hot and cold hors d’oeuvres, salads, casserole dishes, meats, cheeses, etc.” and, as a derivation from that, can also be “an extensive array or variety (of something).” And Sarewitz? He…
Guest Essay by Kip Hansen One hundred years have passed since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 swept around the world, circumnavigating at least twice between 1918 and 1920, killing outright between 50 and 100 million human beings. The pandemic was so shattering, so pervasive that more accurate numbers of the dead cannot be calculated.…
KEVIN KILTY Introduction A guest blogger recently1 made an analysis of the twice per day sampling of maximum and minimum temperature and its relationship to Nyquist rate, in an attempt to refute some common thinking. This blogger concluded the following: (1) Fussing about regular samples of a few per day is theoretical only. Max/Min temperature…
Guest post by Nick Stokes, Every now and then, in climate blogging, one hears a refrain that the traditional min/max daily temperature can’t be used because it “violates Nyquist”. In particular, an engineer, William Ward, writes occasionally of this at WUWT; the latest is here, with an earlier version here. But there is more to…
From the “we’re gonna need a bigger computer” department. Climate model uncertainties ripe to be squeezed The latest climate models and observations offer unprecedented opportunities to reduce the remaining uncertainties in future climate change, according to a new study. Although the human impact of recent climate change is now clear, future climate change depends on how…
So What Happened to the Philosophy? Guest essay by John Ridgway Many years ago, when I was studying at university, an old joke was doing the rounds in the corridors of the physics department: Question: What is the difference between an experimental physicist, a theoretical physicist and a philosopher? Answer: Experimental physicists need thousands of…
Guest Essay by Kip Hansen Introduction: Temperature and Water Level (MSL) are two hot topic measurements being widely bandied about and vast sums of money are being invested in research to determine whether, on a global scale, these physical quantities — Global Average Temperature and Global Mean Sea Level — are changing, and if…
From the GWPF. “This documentary has all the ingredients to become a milestone in the debate on climate change” – is what Science journalist Jan Jakobs wrote after seeing the 90 minutes documentary `The Uncertainty Has Settled`. The multiple award winning film is now available worldwide through online-demand. After eight years of travelling through…
This is the first in a series of several essays that will discuss ongoing scientific controversies, a specific type of which are often referred to in the science press and elsewhere as “Wars” – for instance, this essay covers the Salt Wars.
Guest Essay by Kip Hansen “…we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” – IPCC TAR Chap 14, Exec Summary Introduction: The IPCC has long recognized that the Earth’s climate system is a…
WUWT readers may remember ultra climate activist David Roberts, a self described “climate hawk” who wrote regularly for Grist, and became so burned out he had to take a year off from the “climate wars” to recharge. It seems that hiatus may have done him some good. In case you’ve never heard of it, the web…
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach Following up on his brilliant earlier work “The Black Swan”, Taleb has written a paper called Error, Dimensionality, and Predictability (draft version). I could not even begin to do justice to this tour-de-force, so let me just quote the abstract and encourage you to read the paper. Abstract—Common intuitions are…
WUWT readers may recall this paper from Dr. Judith Curry where the “uncertainty monster” was given life. The uncertainty monster has bitten back. It seems that the IPCC botched more than just AR5 in 2013, they also botched their own press conference on the Summary for Policy Makers in Stockholm by not paying attention to…
Brandon Shollenberger writes in with this little gem: I thought you might be interested in a couple posts I wrote discussing some odd problems with the BEST temperature record. You can find them here: http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2015/01/how-best-overestimates-its-certainty-part-2/ http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2015/01/how-best-overestimates-its-certainty-part-1/ But I’ll give an overview. BEST calculated its uncertainty levels by removing 1/8th of its data and rerunning its…
New Paper by McKitrick and Vogelsang comparing models and observations in the tropical troposphere This is a guest post by Ross McKitrick (at Climate Audit). Tim Vogelsang and I have a new paper comparing climate models and observations over a 55-year span (1958-2012) in the tropical troposphere. Among other things we show that climate models are…
This story from the Hockey Schtick is a verification of an analysis on WUWT from Bob Tisdale: No Consensus among Three Global Precipitation Datasets According to a paper published today in Atmospheric Science Letters, global precipitation has either decreased, increased, or not changed over the past 30 years, depending upon which of 3 global datasets are…
This is a bit of a bombshell to those that claim sea level rise is accelerating and certain. From the University of Southampton: Back to the future to determine if sea level rise is accelerating Scientists have developed a new method for revealing how sea levels might rise around the world throughout the 21st century…
Policies That Try To Stop ‘Global’ Sea-Level Rise Are Costly & Ineffective A new report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation stresses the importance of revising the current expensive policies that seek to mitigate an assumed global sea-level rise by cutting human carbon dioxide emissions. The report, co-authored by Dr Willem de Lange…
No smear psychological categorization mission is too offbeat for Lew. Now he’s on about “leakage”. Try to stifle the images that conjures up while thinking about your choice of preventative antiemetics. s mac says: in WUWT Tips and Notes: Anthony, there is a YouTube video (link below) of Lewandowsky giving a talk at the AGU…
UN IPCC WG report process fails to integrate critical information Guest essay by Larry Hamlin The world has experienced over the last 15+ years a remarkable absence of increasing global temperatures despite huge and growing increases in global CO2 emissions by the globes developing nations and despite claims by the UN IPCC that global temperature…
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley It is time to be angry at the gruesome failure of peer review that allows publication of papers, such as the recent effusion of Professor Lovejoy of McGill University, which, in the gushing, widely-circulated press release that seems to accompany every mephitically ectoplasmic emanation from the Forces of Darkness these…
Guest essay by Eric Worrall Stephan Lewandowsky (of retracted Recursive Fury fame ) has just released a paper supporting the “precautionary principle” (h/t JoNova). According to Lewandowsky, the more uncertain you are about risk, the more you should spend to contain the risk. Lewandowsky of course applies this principle to climate sensitivity – he suggests…
Tamsin Edwards has a new essay on uncertainty, here is an excerpt: About a month ago I was invited to represent the Cabot Institute at the All Parliamentary Party Climate Change Group (APPCCG) meeting on “Communicating Risk and Uncertainty around Climate Change”. All Party Groups are groups of MPs and Lords with a common interest they…
New peer reviewed paper finds the same global forecast model produces different results when run on different computers Did you ever wonder how spaghetti like this is produced and why there is broad disagreement in the output that increases with time? Graph above by Dr. Roy Spencer Increasing mathematical uncertainty from initial starting conditions is…
Tom Nelson captures this delicious irony, apparently it isn’t a travesty any more, it’s the sun.
While looking for quotes on an upcoming post about Ocean Heat Content, I ran across the press release for a new paper (in press) by Neely et al, which blames the recent slowdown in global warming on smaller more moderate volcanos. ADD ANOTHER REASON TO THE NON-CONSENSUS Many readers will recall the October 2011 article…
This comment from Dr. Robert Brown at Duke University is elevated from a comment to a full post for further discussion. Since we have a new paper (Shepherd et al) that is being touted in the media as “certain” using noisy data with no stable baseline, this discussion seems relevant. rgbatduke says: December 2, 2012…