5 most popular posts this month:

• How to write a scientific abstract in six easy steps Jan 26, 2010 (4,962 views) Here's the abstract for a paper (that I haven't written) on how to write an abstract: How to Write...
• The difference between Verification and Validation Nov 29, 2010 (4,910 views) Sometime in the 1990's, I drafted a frequently asked question list for NASA's IV&V facility....
• Who first coined the term "Greenhouse Effect"? Aug 18, 2015 (314 views) Today I've been tracking down the origin of the term "Greenhouse Effect". The term itself is...
• Population growth vs. emissions growth Jun 18, 2009 (209 views) I gave my talk on SE for the Planet again this afternoon, to the local audience. We recorded it, and...
• Aerosols: Are They Good or Bad? Apr 3, 2012 (196 views) This week, I'm featuring some of the best blog posts written by the students on my first year...

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All time most popular posts:

• How to write a scientific abstract in six easy steps Jan 26, 2010 (318,682 views) Here's the abstract for a paper (that I haven't written) on how to write an abstract: How to Write...
• The difference between Verification and Validation Nov 29, 2010 (261,030 views) Sometime in the 1990's, I drafted a frequently asked question list for NASA's IV&V facility....
• Notes from Hurricane Sandy Nov 1, 2012 (18,269 views) "] We spent some time in my climate change class this week talking about Hurricane Sandy - it's a...
• Aerosols: Are They Good or Bad? Apr 3, 2012 (10,463 views) This week, I'm featuring some of the best blog posts written by the students on my first year...
• What Does the New IPCC Report Say About Climate Change? Oct 8, 2013 (9,035 views) I've been trawling through the final draft of the new IPCC assessment report that was released last...
• Initial value vs. boundary value problems Jan 16, 2010 (8,424 views) Weather and climate are different. Weather varies tremendously from day to day, week to week, season...
• Population growth vs. emissions growth Jun 18, 2009 (7,054 views) I gave my talk on SE for the Planet again this afternoon, to the local audience. We recorded it, and...
• Getting the source code for climate models Jun 24, 2009 (6,672 views) First, we have to be clear what we mean by a climate model. Wikipedia offers a quick intro to types...
• Who first coined the term "Greenhouse Effect"? Aug 18, 2015 (5,746 views) Today I've been tracking down the origin of the term "Greenhouse Effect". The term itself is...
• Simple Climate Models to play with in the classroom Jan 25, 2013 (5,415 views) I've been collecting examples of different types of climate model that students can use in the...
• TEDx talk: Should we trust climate models? May 23, 2014 (5,128 views) At the beginning of March, I was invited to give a talk at TEDxUofT. Colleagues tell me the hardest...
• A portable climate model Jul 22, 2010 (4,841 views) One of the exercises I set myself while visiting NCAR this month is to try porting the climate model...
• What is Climate Informatics? Sep 21, 2012 (3,736 views) I've been using the term Climate Informatics informally for a few years to capture the kind of...
• Skills needed for a successful PhD Apr 7, 2014 (3,652 views) My department is busy revising the set of milestones our PhD students need to meet in the course of...
• The Ethics of Climate Change Feb 24, 2011 (3,449 views) James Garvey: The Ethics of Climate Change. Continuum, 2008. One of the pleasures of teaching is...
• What makes software engineering for climate models different? Mar 24, 2010 (3,409 views) This week I attended a Dagstuhl seminar on New Frontiers for Empirical Software Engineering. It...
• Who is pulling the strings? Apr 7, 2010 (3,281 views) My exposé of why academics' private emails sometimes seem cranky has gotten a lot of attention....
• AGU Day 2: The role of CO2 in the earth's history Dec 17, 2009 (3,217 views) Yesterday afternoon, I managed to catch the Bjernes Lecture, which was given by Richard B. Alley:...
• Climate Model vs. Satellite Data Feb 14, 2014 (3,160 views) A few weeks ago, Mark Higgins, from EUMETSAT, posted this wonderful video of satellite imagery of...
• High level architecture of earth system models Aug 11, 2010 (2,888 views) To get myself familiar with the models at each of the climate centers I'm visiting this summer, I've...
• Climate Change: A Software Grand Challenge Aug 24, 2010 (2,766 views) Great news - I've had my paper accepted for the 2010 FSE/SDP Workshop on the Future of Software...
• How much extra energy are we adding to the earth system? Jan 11, 2012 (2,743 views) Update (Aug 15, 2013): After a discussion on Twitter with Gavin Schmidt, I realised I did the...
• Tracking down the uncertainties in weather and climate prediction Jul 6, 2010 (2,700 views) Gavin beat me to posting the best quote from the CCSM workshop last week - the Uncertainty Prayer....
• The future of Software Engineering? Nov 11, 2010 (2,592 views) I went to a workshop earlier this week on "the Future of Software Engineering Research" in Santa Fe....
• Why Systems Thinking? Aug 20, 2013 (2,586 views) Early in my career I trained as a systems analyst. My PhD was about the ability to identify and make...
• What will sea level rise mean for Venice? Oct 28, 2010 (2,525 views) I took a break from blogging for the last few weeks to take a vacation with the family in Europe. We...
• AGU Day 3 part B: Data Provenance and Open Science Dec 21, 2009 (2,432 views) Wednesday morning also saw the poster session "IN31B - Emerging Issues in e-Science: Collaboration,...
• Validating Climate Models Nov 30, 2010 (2,380 views) In my last two posts, I demolished the idea that climate models need Independent Verification and...
• The History of Climate Models Nov 2, 2012 (2,252 views) For a talk earlier this year, I put together a timeline of the history of climate modelling. I just...
• The CMIP5 Climate Experiments Sep 15, 2011 (2,235 views) I'm on my way back from a workshop on Computing in the Atmospheric Sciences, in Annecy, France. The...
• Do Climate Models need Independent Verification and Validation? Nov 27, 2010 (2,177 views) A common cry from climate contrarians is that climate models need better verification and validation...
• Verification and Validation of Earth System Models Sep 18, 2010 (2,147 views) I've been meaning to write a summary of the V&V techniques used for Earth System Models (ESMs)...
• The Climate as a System, part 1: the central equilibrium loop Aug 22, 2013 (2,142 views) I wrote earlier this week that we should incorporate more of the key ideas from systems thinking...
• Epistemology of Climate Modeling Sep 28, 2010 (2,124 views) This will keep me occupied with good reads for the next few weeks - this month's issue of the...
• The Climate as a System, part 4: earth system feedbacks Sep 2, 2013 (2,115 views) At the start of this series, I argued that Climate Science is inherently a Systems Discipline. To...
• A sad farewell to Susan Leigh Star Mar 27, 2010 (2,021 views) Susan Leigh Star passed away in her sleep this week, coincidently on Ada Lovelace day. As I didn't...
• On the Uses and Abuses of Infrastructural Inversion Aug 26, 2010 (1,950 views) Nearly everything we ever do depends on vast social and technical infrastructures, which, when they...
• Systems thinking and Genetically Modified food May 25, 2012 (1,936 views) I've been following a heated discussion on twitter this past week about a planned protest on Sunday...
• If we can't make mistakes, then we can't do science Apr 9, 2010 (1,904 views) My debate with George Monbiot is still going on in this thread. I'm raising this comment to be a...
• How Big is the Climate Change Deficit? Feb 15, 2013 (1,846 views) Last week, Damon Matthews from Concordia visited, and gave a guest CGCS lecture, "Cumulative Carbon...
• Open Climate Science or Denial of Service attacks? Nov 26, 2009 (1,766 views) I wasn't going to post anything about the CRU emails story (apart from my attempt at humour),...
• Disinformation Works (for receptive audiences) Feb 28, 2011 (1,587 views) Here's an interesting study by Lawrence Hamilton, published in Climatic Change in December:...
• AGU Day 3 part C: How good are predictions from climate models? Jan 7, 2010 (1,548 views) The highlight of the whole conference for me was the Wednesday afternoon session on Methodologies of...
• Oil Shocks and Food Prices Feb 28, 2011 (1,507 views) I've been dipping into another new book this week, "Transport Revolutions: Moving People and...
• Academics always fight over the peer-review process Mar 26, 2010 (1,466 views) Note: This started as a comment on a thread at RealClimate about the Guardian's investigation of the...
• The Climate as a System, part 2: energy consumption Aug 26, 2013 (1,445 views) In part 1, I described the central equilibrium loop that controls the earth's temperature. Now it's...
• "Daddy, what did YOU do in the climate wars?" Apr 16, 2009 (1,434 views) When my children grow up, the world they live in is likely be very different from ours. There's a...
• A simpler slogan? Sep 15, 2011 (1,351 views) Al Gore is part way through a 24-hour, round-the-globe, live broadcast, called Climate Reality. I...
• The Climate as a System, part 3: greenhouse gases Aug 27, 2013 (1,345 views) The story so far: First, I argued that Climate Science is inherently a Systems Discipline. To...
• Ethics of Climate - Talk by Ray Pierrehumbert Apr 23, 2010 (1,337 views) After catching the start of yesterday's Centre for Environment Research Day, I headed around the...
• Detecting Crap on the Internet Oct 27, 2014 (1,282 views) For our course about the impacts of the internet, we developed an exercise to get our students...
• The Software Architecture of Global Climate Models Dec 10, 2011 (1,276 views) On Thursday, Kaitlin presented her poster at the AGU meeting, which shows the results of the study...
• An AGU Global Environmental Change Bookshelf Dec 17, 2010 (1,223 views) I spent most of Wednesday attending a series of sessions featuring bestselling authors from the AGU...
• The Climate as a System, part 5: clouds Sep 3, 2013 (1,216 views) Yesterday I talked about three re-inforcing feedback loops in the earth system, each of which has...
• When did ignorance become a badge of honour for journalists? Aug 28, 2010 (1,199 views) Here's an appalling article by Andy Revkin on dotEarth which epitomizes everything that is wrong...
• A first glimpse at model results for the next IPCC assessment Sep 16, 2011 (1,175 views) Over the next few years, you're likely to see a lot of graphs like this (click for a bigger...
• Social epistemology and climate denialism Aug 6, 2009 (1,139 views) I've spent some time pondering why so many people seem unable or unwilling to understand the...
• The first Numerical Weather Prediction on ENIAC Jan 25, 2011 (1,128 views) Last summer, when I was visiting NCAR, Warren Washington gave me some papers to read on the first...
• Why I don't eat meat Jul 22, 2011 (1,090 views) My wife and I have been (sort of) vegetarian for twenty years now. I say "sort of" because we do eat...
• xkcd: How to Write Good Code Jan 7, 2011 (1,052 views) It would be very easy to re-post pretty much everything from xkcd, and I'm trying hard to resist,...
• Crowd-Sourced Carbon Calculators (inspired by David Mackay) Mar 11, 2010 (1,050 views) On March 30, David Mackay, author of Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air, will be giving the...
• Bill Gates is very wrong Jan 26, 2010 (1,044 views) In a blog post that was picked up by the Huffington post, Bill Gates writes about why we need...
• Measuring Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Cities Apr 22, 2010 (1,014 views) This morning I attended the first part of the Centre for Environment's Research Day, and I'm glad I...
• From Computational Thinking to Systems Thinking Jun 6, 2014 (1,003 views) I'll be heading off to Stockholm in August to present a paper at the 2nd International Conference on...
• Successful Predictions (AGU 2012 Tyndall Lecture) Dec 11, 2012 (994 views) Last week I was at the 2012 AGU Fall Meeting. I plan to blog about many of the talks, but let me...
• Systems Thinking for Climate Systems Feb 15, 2011 (988 views) In pulling together my thoughts for a workshop last week on systems thinking, I've realised how much...
• The Principle of Complementarity (1) Mar 22, 2011 (984 views) I introduced some ideas from systems thinking last month, and especially the idea of second order...
• Commuting by bike is a dangerous sport Jun 8, 2011 (983 views) I thought I'd write a little on cycling in the Toronto this month, partly because is Bike Month,...
• New Grad Course on Computational Models of Climate Change Jan 6, 2013 (970 views) This week, I start teaching a new grad course on computational models of climate change, aimed at...
• What is Science Literacy? May 29, 2012 (961 views) A few people today have pointed me at the new paper by Dan Kahan & colleagues (1), which...
• Some CMIP5 statistics Apr 29, 2012 (953 views) I'm attending a workshop this week in which some of the initial results from the Fifth Coupled Model...
• A Hierarchical Systems Approach to Model Validation Dec 6, 2011 (947 views) I'm at the AGU meeting in San Francisco this week. The internet connections in the meeting rooms...
• AGU talk: Tim Palmer on Building Probabilistic Climate Models Dec 19, 2010 (943 views) On Thursday, Tim Palmer of the University of Oxford and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather...
• Formal Verification for Climate Models? Sep 23, 2011 (939 views) Valdivino, who is working on a PhD in Brazil, on formal software verification techniques, is...
• Climate Science and Software Quality Feb 12, 2010 (924 views) Here's a letter I've sent to the Guardian newspaper. I wonder if they'll print it? Professor...
• The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet? Apr 10, 2013 (896 views) Next year, I'll be teaching a new undergraduate course, as part of an initiative by the Faculty of...
• Growth of code complexity Jul 2, 2009 (891 views) I'm busy revising our paper on the study of the software development processes at the Hadley Centre...
• AGU day 3: Science literacy means understanding the process Dec 20, 2009 (854 views) Picking up from my last post on communicating with policymakers, the first session on Wednesday...
• Fun with urban transport data Jun 30, 2011 (819 views) I spent a little time this afternoon trying to get hold of data. I guess I have high expectations...
• National Geographic's 6 degrees Jul 11, 2011 (803 views) Okay, so it's a few years old, but I'd never seen this series of videos by National Geographic...
• Do "Many eyeballs make all bugs shallow"? Dec 11, 2009 (791 views) As a follow-on from yesterday's post on making climate software open source, I'd like to pick up on...
• The Power to Change Systems Oct 16, 2011 (772 views) What unites both the climate crisis and the financial crisis? What is it that has driven scientists...
• Climate change is mankind's defining crisis (Mobiot/Lomborg debate) Dec 1, 2009 (770 views) This evening I'm attending a debate on climate change in Toronto, at the Munk Centre. George Monbiot...
• One Model to Rule them All? Nov 6, 2011 (738 views) I had several interesting conversations at WCRP11 last week about how different the various climate...
• How long have we known? Feb 18, 2010 (729 views) I'm giving a talk today to a group of high school students. Most of the talk focusses on climate...
• Data Challenges in Creating a new Surface Temperature Record Aug 25, 2010 (721 views) I've been invited to a workshop at the UK Met Office in a few weeks time, to brainstorm a plan to...
• IEEE Software Special Issue on Climate Change: Software, Science and Society Dec 5, 2010 (716 views) Call for Papers: IEEE Software Special Issue on Climate Change: Software, Science and...
• Are you aware of your own (in)competence? Jun 11, 2009 (686 views) I've been thinking a lot recently about why so few people seem to understand the severity of the...
• Another cognitive bug: Attempting to correct a misperception often reinforces it May 31, 2010 (678 views) I'm fascinated by the cognitive biases that affect people's perceptions of climate change. I've...
• AGU session on Software Engineering for Climate Modeling Dec 14, 2010 (674 views) Here's the first of a series of posts from the American Geophysical Society (AGU) Fall meeting,...
• The Affordances of Bike Lanes Jun 10, 2011 (664 views) As a followup to my post earlier this week about how dangerous cycling is in Toronto, I decided to...
• Another tiresome exoneration for climate science Jul 7, 2010 (660 views) The Muir Russell report came out today, and I just finished reading the thing. It should be no...
• The Need for T-shaped Students Aug 15, 2013 (657 views) I love working in a University. Every day I encounter new ideas, and I get to chat to some of the...
• Weather balloons vs. climate balloons Feb 21, 2014 (652 views) What's the difference between forecasting the weather and predicting future climate change? A few...
• How Climate Science is Done May 2, 2012 (645 views) In the talk I gave this week at the workshop on the CMIP5 experiments, I argued that we should do a...
• New Course: Systems Thinking for Global Problems Mar 28, 2012 (638 views) Sometime in May, I'll be running a new graduate course, DGC 2003 Systems Thinking for Global...
• Climate Models are Good Quality Software (?!) Apr 30, 2010 (631 views) Excellent news: Jon Pipitone has finished his MSc project on the software quality of climate models,...
• Inertia on the pathway to decarbonization Oct 21, 2016 (620 views) One of the biggest challenges in understanding climate change is that the timescales involved are...
• What's the pricetag on a Global Climate Model? Sep 3, 2010 (607 views) Here's a question I've been asking a few people lately, ever since I asserted that climate models...
• AGU Day 0: Restarting the Climate Conversation Dec 14, 2009 (597 views) This week I'll be blogging from the American Geosciences Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, one of the...