Category Communication
Why model climate?
I wrote a talk on climate modelling, aimed at the interested-but-non-specialist public. Here it is. It touches on: 1) The choices we have to make as a society. 2) The difficulty of doing controlled experiments with a single Earth. 3) The idea of a climate model. 4) A really simple climate model from first principles. […]
Vulnerability, exposure, and disasters
The office is half empty, so I’m just catching up here really. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a piece in the Guardian that I thought missed a really important part of the story regarding the increase of weather related disasters. I had a bit of a moan, and, fair play to the Graun, […]
A brief comment on timing
In a comment on Mora et al. (2013), we highlight some errors the authors make in calculating and expressing the uncertainty in the timing of “climate departure” – the time at which a particular place on Earth will see a climate unprecedented in the historical record. There is a reply by the authors of the […]
What got you into science?
I enjoyed watching Gavin Schmidt’s TED talk on climate models, and wondered if such a thing might inspire a new generation of climate modellers. Keen to find out about the way that others have wound up in science, and in rather a fit of whimsy, I asked a question on twitter: So, what got you […]
The great thing about UQ is we know how to spell it
It’s been pretty busy round these parts, here are a few notes from the last month or so. Natural variability – Energy budget Our paper on natural variability in the Earth’s energy budget got a nice write-up from John Abraham in the Guardian. Mat Collins happened to be passing, and took a nice picture of […]
Pausing for thought
I helped Ed and Tamsin to write a commentary on the communication of the “pause” in global surface warming, and it is online today at Nature Climate Change. We take a good look at the way the pause has been communicated and discussed by scientists and the media, offer some personal perspectives on engaging online, […]
Why I don’t advocate for climate science policy
I was going to write a long essay on why I try to avoid advocating for any one particular policy for climate, but I think this probably makes the point fairly well. One of the funny things about the hoo-ha around Tamsin’s piece was that the reaction rather confirmed the point*. People hate hate HATE […]
10 reasons you might not trust a climate scientist (in no particular order)
After the discussion started by Tamsin’s post on advocacy in climate science, I tweeted a bunch of reasons that you might not trust a climate scientist. The list is based on my own personal experiences, and isn’t scientific in any way. It was interesting then to see Liz Neely write about what science tells us […]
Some more thoughts on advocacy in climate science
I enjoyed the discussion kicked of by Tamsin Edwards’ piece in the Guardian yesterday. Maybe I’d had too much coffee or something, but I found myself in opposition to many of the leaders of my field. Oliver Bothe wrote a good, immediate and thoughtful response. Given that he quotes a few of my tweets, I […]
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