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Unforced variations: Jan 2020

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The new open thread on climate science for a new year, and a new decade – perhaps the Soaring Twenties? What precisely will be soaring is yet to be decided though.

Two things will almost certainly go up – CO2 emissions and temperatures:

But maybe also ambition, determination, and changes that will lead to reduced emissions in future? Fingers crossed.

AGU 2019

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Another year, another AGU. Back in San Francisco for the first time in 3 years, and with a massive assortment of talks, events and workshops. For those not able to go, there is an increasing, though not yet exhaustive, availability of streaming and online content.

Notably, the AGU GO service is streaming 15 sessions live on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with the ability to ask questions and interact with other registrants, both in San Francisco and online.

Additionally, there are many posters available electronically at the ‘eLightning’ sessions covering the full range of AGU topics.

The hashtag to follow on Twitter is #AGU19.

How good have climate models been at truly predicting the future?

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A new paper from Hausfather and colleagues (incl. me) has just been published with the most comprehensive assessment of climate model projections since the 1970s. Bottom line? Once you correct for small errors in the projected forcings, they did remarkably well.

[Read more…] about How good have climate models been at truly predicting the future?

10 years on

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I woke up on Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009 completely unaware of what was about to unfold. I tried to log in to RealClimate, but for some reason my login did not work. Neither did the admin login. I logged in to the back-end via ssh, only to be inexplicably logged out again. I did it again. No dice. I then called the hosting company and told them to take us offline until I could see what was going on. When I did get control back from the hacker (and hacker it was), there was a large uploaded file on our server, and a draft post ready to go announcing the theft of the CRU emails. And so it began.

From “One year later”, 2010.

Many people are weighing in on the 10 year anniversary of ‘Climategate’ – the Observer, a documentary on BBC4 (where I was interviewed), Mike at Newsweek – but I’ve struggled to think of something actually interesting to say.

It’s hard because even in ten years almost everything and yet nothing has changed. The social media landscape has changed beyond recognition but yet the fever swamps of dueling blogs and comment threads has just been replaced by troll farms and noise-generating disinformation machines on Facebook and Twitter. The nominally serious ‘issues’ touched on by the email theft – how robust are estimates of global temperature over the instrumental period, what does the proxy record show etc. – have all been settled in favor of the mainstream by scientists plodding along in normal science mode, incrementally improving the analyses, and yet they are still the most repeated denier talking points.

[Read more…] about 10 years on

Do you want to share your views on climate change and reading blogs?

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A survey is being conducted by researchers of Cambridge University and Wageningen University. They have asked us to post information about it. Please share your views on climate change and reading blogs by filling out this survey. The data will be used to get a better understanding of climate change blog audiences’ views on climate change and their blog reading behavior.

What’s in it for you?

  • You have a chance on winning a $20 gift card of Amazon;
  • You will get a sneak preview of the preliminary results;
  • You will contribute to research on climate change blogs.

Participation is anonymous, and your answers will be handled confidentially. The data is only used for research purposes.

The Cambridge University and Wageningen University team highly value your input. Please fill out the survey by following this link.

Update (22 Dec 2020): The paper describing the results of this survey has now been published (van Eck et al., 2020).

References

  1. C.W. van Eck, B.C. Mulder, and S. van der Linden, "Echo Chamber Effects in the Climate Change Blogosphere", Environmental Communication, vol. 15, pp. 145-152, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2020.1861048