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Deniers?
I really enjoyed New Scientist’s Special Report: Living in Denial. What a fascinating phenomenon, and a fascinating batch of articles exploring it. The denial of science is a growing problem. It’s not...
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Global Surface Temperature Change
I really enjoyed reading “Global Surface Temperature Change“, by James Hansen and his team at GISS. Keep in mind that it’s still in the draft stages – they haven’t submitted to a journal yet, but they...
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Be Critical of Critics
Cross-posted from NextGen Journal Of all the inane arguments made against the phenomenon of anthropogenic global climate change, the strangest – in my opinion – are the conspiracy theories. Yes,...
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The Nature of Scientific Consensus
Cross-posted from NextGen Journal It is common for one to fail to grasp the difference between “consensus” and “unanimity”. A consensus does not require agreement from absolutely every member involved....
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In Other News…
The Arctic is getting so warm in winter that James Hansen had to add a new colour to the standard legend - pink, which is even warmer than dark red: The official NASA maps – the ones you can generate...
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What Can One Person Do?
Next week, I will be giving a speech on climate change to the green committee of a local United Church. They are particularly interested in science and solutions, so I wrote the following script,...
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Why Trust Science?
Part 1 of a series of 5 for NextGen Journal. What’s wrong with these statements? I believe in global warming. I don’t believe in global warming. We should hear all sides of the climate change debate...
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Is There Consensus?
Part 2 of a series of 5 for NextGen Journal We hear the phrase “climate change consensus” tossed around all the time. But what does that even mean? And does it actually exist? In Part 1 we discussed...
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My Dishpan Climate Model
About two years ago, I discovered the concept of “dishpan climate models”, through Iain Stewart’s Climate Wars documentary. The experiment is pretty simple: a large bowl filled with water (representing...
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Uncertainty
Part 5 in a series of 5 for NextGen Journal Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 Scientists can never say that something is 100% certain, but they can come pretty close. After a while, a theory...
View ArticleOn model development, and sanity
When I was a brand-new PhD student, full of innocence and optimism, I loved solving bugs. I loved the challenge of it and the rush I felt when I succeeded. I knew that if I threw all of my energy at a...
View ArticleHow I became a scientist
For the first fourteen years of my life, I thought science was boring. As far as I could tell, science was a process of memorising facts: the order of the planets, the names of clouds, the parts of a...
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