Author Archives: ptbrown31

Can humanity maintain perpetual economic growth?

Posted on September 9, 2017 by ptbrown31

…to understand modern economic history, you really need to understand just a single word. The word is growth. –from Sapiens (2014) Humanity is far more materially wealthy today than any time in the past and our collective wealth continues to … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change | 2 Comments

Change in temperature variability with warming

Posted on September 4, 2017 by ptbrown31

We have a new paper out in Nature Climate Change on potential changes in natural unforced variability of global mean surface air temperature (GMST) under global warming. Paper News and Views piece Duke press release Unforced GMST variability is of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Credibility through honesty about uncertainty

Posted on August 1, 2017 by ptbrown31

An argument that I often encounter is that uncertainties in climate science shouldn’t be publicly emphasized since that will make it harder to inspire action on proposed climate policies. It is thought that publicly highlighting a lack of knowledge/understanding on … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change | 1 Comment

The fact illusion: Objective truth is elusive in (climate) science

Posted on July 28, 2017 by ptbrown31

Summary Science is the best system humans have ever created to address questions about how the world works and no other paradigm is better at moving us towards objective truth. However, contrary to a popular notion, science can rarely be … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Climate Science for People Really in a Hurry 2 – Economics

Posted on July 13, 2017 by ptbrown31

This is a video summary of the findings in Burke et al., 2015 regarding the relationship between temperature and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and how this relationship affects our projections of how global warming will impact the economy Video Series: Climate … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Modeled vs. observed global temperature: with and without ‘makeup’

Posted on July 10, 2017 by ptbrown31

Global average surface air temperature is one of the most well-recognized metrics of contemporary climate change – hence the term ‘global warming’. One reason for this is that many impacts of climate change are expected to be proportional to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change | 2 Comments

Defending science at the People’s Climate March

Posted on May 4, 2017 by ptbrown31

I accepted an invitation to speak at the San Jose People’s Climate March on April 29th, 2017 and I have reproduced what I said below. *Note that I do not necessarily endorse the People’s Climate March policy platform and I … Continue reading →

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Climate Science for People Really in a Hurry

Posted on May 2, 2017 by ptbrown31
Posted in Climate Change | 3 Comments

2016 Update to our ’empirical unforced noise’ analysis

Posted on February 7, 2017 by ptbrown31

This is an update to our 2015 Scientific Reports paper: Comparing the model-simulated global warming signal to observations using empirical estimates of unforced noise. The paper used a novel statistical estimate of unforced variability that was derived from reconstructed and instrumental surface … Continue reading →

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Do ‘propagation of error’ calculations invalidate climate model projections of global warming?

Posted on January 25, 2017 by ptbrown31

My thoughts on claims made by Dr. Patrick Frank (SLAC) on the validity of climate model projections of global warming:  

Posted in Uncategorized | 90 Comments