by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Richard Betts has an interesting comment re 2 degrees, excerpt: I see the ‘2 degree limit’ as rather like a speed limit on a road – both are set by policymakers on the basis of a number of considerations. I see the climate policy focus on global mean temperature (eg. 2 degrees C) as playing a similar role – a simple indicator for policy purposes, and as basis for discussing pros and cons of different policy choices, but not to be taken too literally as a real threshold.
Stefan Rahmstorf has a good post at RealClimate: Ocean Heat Storage: A particularly lousy policy target. I don’t often agree with Stefan, but on this one I think he pretty much nails it.
Andy Revkin writes of a new play “Extreme Whether” that explores the clashing passions around human-driven global warming and our fossil fuel fixation. Sort of a stage version of Cli-Fi.
Chris Mooney has taken a staff position at the Washington Post. His first effort is There’s a surprisingly strong link between climate change and violence. Matt Briggs is not impressed (I’m with Matt on this one).
An article at Climate Central: Polar Vortex Spiked U.S. CO2 emissions in 2013. Ryan Maue tweets: Nasty feedback: cold weather caused by global warming leads to more CO2 emissions due to increased heating demands.
John Cook is teaching an online course: Making Sense of Climate Denial. I hope some ‘deniers’ sign up for this, maybe Cook will learn something.
PayPal Co-Founder is Skeptical of Man-Made Global Warming because many refuse to allow debate on the subject.
Bonn UN Climate talks: key steps to protect the world’s most vulnerable [link]
An interesting article on Steve Schneider’s ‘double ethical bind’ [link]
Matt Nisbet has an interesting article in the Conversation Can people power drive action on climate change?
Washington Post: Companies shouldn’t cave in to demands of climate activists
Growing glaciers in the Himalayas – Nature arcticle [link] to press release
Pat Michaels: How to stop wasting money on science.
A new paper by Latif and colleagues on the AMO [link]
Global boom in hydropower expected this decade
This weekend, I am listening to the talks at the Rotman Institute Conference on Knowledge and Models in Climate Science: Philosophical, Historical and Scientific Perspectives. The program is [here], and access to video streaming and archived videos is [here]. I was invited to give a lecture, but unfortunately had to back out.
Filed under: Week in review