Related papers: Global Warming: the Sacrificial Temptation
A review of some of the evidence for the IPCC's conclusion that doubling CO$_2$ levels will warm Earth significantly, in contrast to the claims of a recent article$^1$. Simply looking at raw temperature and CO$_2$ data over the past 150…
An updated and extended meta-analysis confirms that the central estimate of the social cost of carbon is around $200/tC with a large, right-skewed uncertainty and trending up. The pure rate of time preference and the inverse of the…
Cosmology seems extremely remote from everyday human practice and experience. It is usually taken for granted that cosmological data cannot rationally influence our beliefs about the fate of humanity -- and possible other intelligent…
Multiple changes in Earth's climate system have been observed over the past decades. Determining how likely each of these changes are to have been caused by human influence, is important for decision making on mitigation and adaptation…
There is a perception that climate science can only be approached with complex computer simulations. But working climate scientists often use simple models to understand their simulations and make order-of-magnitude estimates. This article…
Research on heat waves (periods of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity) is a newly emerging research topic within the field of climate change research with high relevance for the whole of society. In this…
In the present paper we state a problem of the colored noise nonremovability on the climatic 30-year time scale, which essentially changes the angle of view on the known problem of global warming.
Using optimal detection techniques with climate model simulations, most of the observed increase of near surface temperatures over the second half of the twentieth century is attributed to anthropogenic influences. However, the partitioning…
The pursuit of particle physics requires a stable and prosperous society. Today, our society is increasingly threatened by global climate change. Human-influenced climate change has already impacted weather patterns, and global warming will…
Science is a fundamental human activity and we trust its results because it has several error-correcting mechanisms. Its is subject to experimental tests that are replicated by independent parts. Given the huge amount of information…
We seek to model the coupled evolution of a planet and a civilization through the era when energy harvesting by the civilization drives the planet into new and adverse climate states. In this way we ask if triggering "anthropocenes" of the…
Contemporary societies are often "polarized", in the sense that sub-groups within these societies hold stably opposing beliefs, even when there is a fact of the matter. Extant models of polarization do not capture the idea that some beliefs…
Improved knowledge of glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is 1.2 +/- 0.3{\deg}C (2$\sigma$) per W/m$^2$. Consistent analysis of temperature over the full…
This paper argues that philosophers of science have before them an important new task that they urgently need to take up. It is to convince the scientific community to adopt and implement a new philosophy of science that does better justice…
Causality is omnipresent in scientists' verbalisations of their understanding, even though we have no formal consensual scientific definition for it. In Automata Networks, it suffices to say that automata "influence" one another to…
Overconfidence is a prevalent problem and particularly consequential in its relation with scientific knowledge: being unaware of one`s own ignorance can affect behaviours and threaten public policies and health. We introduce both analytical…
Most scientists would hold that science has not established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible - i.e. such that there is some as-yet undiscovered true physical theory of everything that is unified. This is an empirically…
The end (for human scientists) is nigh? The posit of this discourse is that the majority, if not all, scientific research will eventually be undertaken by one, or a number of, weak artificial intelligences.
Global warming is a major environmental concern of our times. It has been suggested that the planting of trees could constitute a way of mitigating the adverse effects of the increasing anthropogenic carbon emissions. We developed a simple…
Whether natural factors could interpret the rise of the Earth's surface temperature is still controversial. Though numerous recent researches have reported apparent correlations between solar activity and the Earth's climate, solar activity…