@micefearboggis
Occasional climate scientist, diagram monkey, probabilistic historian, science anti-communicator. All views and opinions are my own. This is not, sadly, a promise of novelty: it’s a disclaimer. He/him. https://www.jkclimate.fr/
Science needs a culture of trust much more than a culture of interpersonal skepticism and suspicion. Verification is important but we cannot base verification systems on extreme distrust. Scientists' cynicism about their colleagues' values, priorities, and integrity leaves no room for social growth.
"Will she read novels? I hope so, because a novel is one of the last technologies that still trains attention as an ethical act. It makes you inhabit another mind without extracting a summary."
Interesting piece that gazes across the epistemic abyss
RealClimate: How robust is our accelerometer? www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...
It is, but the question is whether it is factored in correctly. They had to make projections of what various emissions would be and volcanoes always come as a surprise.
Up to a point, yes. Aerosol pollution has been decreasing too, which also adds to warming. The concern is that all of that information isn't regularly updated and included in climate model projections, so when we see a surge in warming, it's hard to say exactly what it means eg for future warming.
Would have liked to see some more outside reporting on these surface temp acceleration stories. Like discussion of the shortwave rise, the uncertainty if a cloud feedback is at play, whether you can remove the triple-dip La Nina to El Nino combo like a normal ENSO signal...
Thank you. That's very nice of you to say. An audience of one is better than I hoped for when I started blogging!
Some comments on John Kennedy (the climate scientist, not the ex-president)'s post (a post with which I largely agree!) 🧵
1. Nobody familiar w/ my views could "everything is consistent with existing model projections". Even Gemini knows my views are far more nuanced:
For a rainy day
Has global warming accelerated? Why? How much? How do we know? What does it all mean? etc. With hand-drawn illustrations, dodgy metaphors, and a complete lack of clear answers.
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/07/f...
It's free now.
This morning, it is free!
The rate of change from Forster et al paper (note the different spelling) in contrast has a physical meaning.
essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...
Alternatively, their model doesn’t address the causes and if we don’t know what caused recent changes then we don’t know if that rate will continue into the future, increase or decrease.
I think the answers to the two questions are related. Their model is statistical with limited physical meaning. It’s not so much that the rate of warming isn’t credible but that we can’t relate that to the physical factors in future scenarios.
A small update to my long and unjustifiably profane blog post on the rollercoaster that is global temperature and the interpretations of its wrigglin' innards.
ENSO is coming
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2025/07/04/a...
They come after.
Yes! All analyses should be written to be updated on a regular basis.
at this point, if I wrote an opinion piece about how Nature indiscriminately publishes every ridiculous essay about AI, I have little doubt they would publish it
OK, that's one glowing AI article too many in Nature and one cosy fireside editorial too many from Science.
Can we have a prestige journal with a bit of attitude please, a little bite, a hint of tooth. Articles I want to read not shred. Papers the authors might actually have enjoyed writing.
The preprint is now a year out of date. I read it last year, but I wondered if it had improved at all since...
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2025/02/16/a...
ha!
Still paywalled, alas.
Screen cap from the journal Geophysical Research Letters saying that an article is "Free Access" and instant access can be purchased for between $12 (for 48 hours of fun) and $49 for PDF download and online access.
Which is it GRL? Free or not free?
When you get older, you start making them up by mistake because you've forgotten the correct word.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
A screen capture of six figures from Nature journals. Each of the figures contains multiple panels, often in wildly different styles and colour schemes. None of them is legible at this scale nor, one suspect, at any scale.
Dear Nature, how are those figure limits working out for you?
Lovely. The word, that is.
Q. What do CGI cigarette butts and global temperature estimates have in common?
A. Verisimilitude.
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/03/v...
Word of the day is verisimilitude
On data, reality, realism, the texture of reality and, yes, verisimilitude.
diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2026/03/03/v...