Ken Rice

Emergence vs Detection & Attribution Since effective communication often involves repeating things, I thought I would repeat what others have pointed out already. The underlying issue is that there is a narrative in the climate skepto…

andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2025/10/04/e...

Is this the most embarrassing error in the DOE Climate Working Group Report? mistaking detection for emergence

My latest on The Climate Brink:

Is this the most embarrassing error in the DOE Climate Working Group Report?

The DOE CWG authors confuse detection and attribution with emergence.

Last week the German Meteorological Society warned that "the 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050".

While not possible to fully rule out, the assessed warming scenarios we published in the IPCC AR6 report find this to be extremely unlikely.

A small crowd of people, including members of the public and University of Edinburgh scientists, chatting and standing around the Euclid pop up exhibition. This includes a large display of Euclid’s first mosaic, containing lots of stars and galaxies, in the background against the wall. On the right side of the room is a small model of the Euclid spacecraft, as well as tabletop activities.

A small crowd of people, including members of the public and University of Edinburgh scientists, chatting and standing around the Euclid pop up exhibition. This includes a large display of Euclid’s first mosaic, containing lots of stars and galaxies, in the background against the wall on the left. On the right side of the room on the background is a large interactive gravitational lensing display on the projector wall.

Its Doors Open Days at @uni-of-edinburgh.bsky.social!

All weekend, find Euclideans at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and learn more about how the #Euclid mission will transform our understanding of the Dark Universe. 🌀🔭🌌 #ROEopen

All set for @lsstuk.bsky.social at #DoorsOpenDay #ROEOpen #lsst

RealClimate: “But you said the ice was going to disappear in 10 years!” RealClimate: Almost two decades ago, some scientists predicted that Arctic summer sea ice would 'soon' disappear. These predictions were mentioned by Al Gore and got a lot of press. However, they did ...

RealClimate: “But you said the ice was going to disappear in 10 years!” www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

RealClimate: Time and Tide Gauges wait for no Voortman RealClimate: Here we go again. An obscure, methodologically poor, paper published with little to no review makes a convenient point and gets elevated into supposedly 'blockbusting' science by the merc...

RealClimate: Time and Tide Gauges wait for no Voortman www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

👇

The US right claimed free speech was sacred – until the Charlie Kirk killing Rightwingers had long complained of a censorious leftwing ‘cancel culture’ but seem happy to now reframe that as ‘consequence culture’

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

I'm not quite sure what you're suggesting then. I don't think anyone argues that energy balance estimates aren't useful. It's mostly a suggestion that Nic Lewis has tended to be over-confident about his analyses and that - as many have suggested - these estimates have tended to be biased low.

But it's not just uniform vs Jeffreys. There are other priors and there are other ways to estimate ECS. As Andrew points out, if your method suggest a good chance of the ECS being < 2K, then there's probably an issue with the method, or it's at least worth considering this.

Credit to @atomskssanakan.bsky.social for providing the data.

New from me on The Climate Brink: The Cartoon Villain's Guide to Killing Climate Action
www.theclimatebrink....

chart showing how Nic Lewis tends to increase bit by bit the median climate sensitivity

@kenrice.bsky.social traces the trend of the limits of justified disingenuousness

andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2025/08/30/c...

The evidence is public. Martz thinks that "most of the warming could be natural" 🤦. (This isn't a surprise, of course).

The image shows seven hexagonal images put together like a flower. All the images show the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in front of an orange sun or moon rise. All the hexagons are dated and show the ELT assembly at the specific date.

1/ A rising telescope under a rising Sun and Moon! 🔭☀️🌕

This montage is a kaleidoscope of moments from the construction of our Extremely Large Telescope.

Creating this #ELT collage took Boris Häußler, an ESO astronomer in Chile, years of meticulous planning.

I used to think that climate change was a somewhat unique example of a topic that was challenging to discuss publicly. The last few years have made me realise that it's not just climate change; we seem incapable of having nuanced discussions about any complex/contentious topic.

Koonin providing clarity on climate? It seems that the US Department of Energy has now disbanded the Climate Working Group that drafted the report that I discussed in this post. However, about a week ago, Steven Koonin – one of …

andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2025/09/13/k...

Caught a bus today to pick up my car and wanted to go to the last stop. When we got to the second last, the bus driver checked if I wanted to get off. When we got to the last stop, I asked why and was told it's because most people who go to the last stop have fallen asleep and missed their stop :-)

🤣

He is a Viscount which - I think - is higher than a Lord. However, rather confusingly, might also be referred to as Lord ...., when being addressed.

YouTube video by Professor Dave Explains Matt Ridley is Lying to You About Climate Change

If you would like to watch a rather blunt YouTube videos about why Ridley - like Monckton - is not someone whose views you should take seriously, this one is pretty good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-gd...

I should have added that at about the same time as this, maybe even roughly the same day, I was involved in "discussions" with another Viscount (Ridley) which led me to muse that I was "annoying" two Viscounts at the same time.

Everything not written down Science is a process. If we consider it merely for the purposes of momentary illumination as an animal, then it is an animal that blunders around somewhat blindly and clumsily, consuming things and…

I totally agree, the two articles you mention are really worth reading - esp by those not asking what science 'is' (or even worse 'should be') but how it's 'done'. (This one is also good: diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2025/08/10/e...)

Some thoughts about doing science I’ve often thought that science communicators should spend a bit more time discussing what we might call the scientific method and a bit less time highlighting what are seen as exciting scien…

andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2025/09/07/s...

Many years ago I had a somewhat "amusing" discussion with Viscount Monckton that included his clerk (James Rowlatt) taking over because "his Lordship [was] engaged on other business". climateconomysociety.blogspot.com/2015/01/monc...

There was outrage in Conservative circles at the revelation that Angela Rayner has a property empire extending to two actual residences.

From the new Private Eye, out now.

NEW STUDY: How much CO2 can we safely store in geological formations?

In a new @nature.com study, we cross-check established academic and industry estimates with various risk factors.

We find a prudent geological CO2 storage limit that is about 10x smaller. /1

Climate sensitivity In 2020, a large group of scientists published a paper in which they used multiple lines of evidence to assess Earth’s climate sensitivity. The lines of evidence they used were the physical p…

andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2025/08/30/c...

Metathugs This is a sort of second part to How to science a science with science but it’s somewhat bleaker and made the whole thing rather long, so I cut it in two. As the ads say: when the fun stops s…

Metathugs

Science, metascience, metametascience, *critical* metascience, and how science's greatest strengths are its greatest weaknesses.

Gloomier than usual and it's only Wednesday.

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2025/08/13/m...