Inside climate

Climate is the statistics of weather. True. But there is more to it. Climate is also the atmospheric envelope we live in. There is no outside to climate; we are always in it.

Martin Parry, Chair of IPCC AR4, working group 2, on 13 February 2010

I got a copy of this letter, which presumably was sent to Working Group II authors and others on 13. Februrary 2010 by the chair of Working Group II of  AR4, Prof Martin Parry. This part of the 4 Assessment report (AR4) of the IPCC has attracted significant criticism in the past. It seems that Martin Parry considers the critique inadquate.
When commenting on this, please pay attention to netiquette. I will not hesitate to delete inflammatory, insulting or otherwise stupid comments.

Cold winter 2010

Geert Jan van Oldenburgh of KNMI has prepared an analysis "Klimaat 2010: a winter of extremes - Cold in Europa, Siberia and the US, but above normal globally".

Frank Furedi: Turning peer review into modern-day holy scripture

Frank Furedi as an interesting article in spiked on the peer review system. He finds:
The treatment of peer-reviewed science as an unquestionable form of authority is corrupting the peer-review system and damaging public debate.

Climate models and the laws of physics

Climate science is solid because it is based on the laws of physics, we hear sometimes, but perhaps this sentence conveys subliminally a level of uncertainty that is debatable. Even if the laws of physics are perfectly known, calculations based on these laws may be just approximate. This is the case for climate models. A simple comparison of the mean simulated by climate models and real data shows that the story is not that simple

Climate wars in the blogosphere

There is a war going on in the blogosphere. Have a look at one of the current debates between two heavy weight bloggers, Joe Romm versus Roger Pielke jr:
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2010/03/why_joe_romm_wont_debate_roger.shtml

Climate science in the NYT: Not an obituary yet

The New York Times, the 'hegemonic bulldozer', sums up after the Phil Jones grilling:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/science/earth/03climate.html?scp=1&sq=scientists%20take%20steps%20to%20defend&st=cse

Model uncertainty

I am opening a new thread to discuss issues arising in the Grilling Jones post. This has to do with data sharing and the relation between datasets and theoretical models. So please stay on this topic when commenting. The reference is to a sociological study (thanks to Jin W for alerting me!). In case you find it difficult to access this article(free our data!), I reproduce the main findings from the conclusion below.

Phil Jones gets a grilling at hearing

The UK Select Committee on Science and Technology has had its hearing today and there is a video link up here. Jones is about 1 hour into the proceedings. Takes a while to load.

Dutch PBL checks IPCC reports

Guest Post
Marcel Severijnen

The Dutch government has fallen on a discussion on the prolongation of the Afghanistan military mission. There was full coverage in all media during this discussion period. Hidden in this noise the Dutch Parliament also discussed a few outcomes of climategate, and with every new item members of the different parties in the parliament got more nervous and claimed more action from the Ministry of Environment.