Episode 190: Judith Curry and the Consequences of Climate Alarmism
STEM-Talk
Challenges Linking Warming to Extreme Weather
Curry explains short records, cherry-picking start dates, and historic extremes like the 1930s and 1861–62 California floods.
Dr. Judith Curry, a climatologist known for her criticism of alarmist, doomsday rhetoric about climate change, returns to STEM-Talk for her second appearance.
Judy most recently was one of five researchers commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy to draft a Climate Assessment Report summarizing the current state of climate science with a focus on how it relates to the United States. In this interview, Judy summarizes the climate report’s key points, including the finding that that carbon-dioxide induced warming of the planet appears to be less damaging economically than has been commonly believed. The report, which was released this past summer, also argues that aggressive mitigation strategies for carbon dioxide emissions could be more harmful than helpful.
Our interview comes on the heels of the prestigious journal Nature retracting a study that predicted climate change and carbon emissions would cause catastrophic economic damage by the end of the century. Our conversation with Judy also followed an about-face from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who wrote last fall that it’s time to tamp down the alarmist rhetoric that climate change will lead to humanity’s demise.
Curry is president of the Climate Forecast Application Network and host of the blog, Climate Etc, which you can find at JudyCurry.com. Her blog provides a forum for climate researchers, academics and technical experts from other fields as well as citizen scientists to discuss topics related to climate science and science policy.
Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, climate models, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for atmospheric research. She has published more than 100 scientific papers and is the author of “Climate Change and Uncertainty: Rethinking Our Response,” a book that provides a framework for understanding and rethinking the climate-change debate.
Show notes:
[00:03:59] Ken opens the interview explaining that Judy was one of the five authors of a climate assessment report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy. Before diving into the key findings of the report and the response it has received, Ken asks Judy to explain how she became one of the five authors.
[00:06:21] Ken mentions that critics of the climate working group have accused the authors of being hand-picked skeptics of the effects of climate change. Judy argues that she and her co-authors are scientists determined to get the science right. Ken asks Judy to talk about her co-authors and the working relationship of the group.
[00:09:18] Ken asks Judy to talk about how she and her co-authors came to their key finding that the economic impacts of climate change are less severe than typically thought.
[00:13:08] Ken asks Judy to provide examples that demonstrate how climate mitigation strategies can be more harmful than helpful.
[00:16:08] Ken follows up by asking about the report’s proposal to shift climate science from alarmism to focus more on a better understanding of natural climate variability.
[00:18:14] Ken asks Judy what her thoughts are on the next steps that should be taken for a better understanding climate variability.
[00:20:06] Ken asks Judy to elaborate on the findings of chapter six of the report regarding global warming and extreme weather events. In particular, Ken asks about the problems with associating specific extreme weather events like hurricanes to climate change, and the issues created by the short historical records we have at our disposal.
[00:24:20] Ken asks Judy to talk about chapter nine of the report, which is about the need to focus on reducing vulnerabilities in our infrastructure instead of mitigating carbon emissions.
[00:28:43] Ken asks Judy to comment on the accusations that she is a “climate change denier.”
[00:31:18] Ken asks Judy to talk about a paper she co-authored with her colleague Dr. Harry DeAngelo titled “A critique of apocalyptic climate narrative.”
[00:36:27] Ken brings up Bill Gates’ recent about-face on climate change and the need to pivot away from doomsday views of cataclysmic climate disasters. Ken asks Judy to elaborate on what she has dubbed “climate alarmism fatigue.”
[00:39:32] Ken asks Judy to give her thoughts on the issue of sea level rise, particularly in light of the pushback that the DOE report faced on this topic. He also asks her to discuss the recent paper that was released after the DOE report titled “A global perspective on local sea level changes” which proports that there is no statistically significant acceleration of the rate of sea level rise for 98% of the suitable global locations.
[00:50:47] Ken points listeners to Judy’s blog, Judycurry.com, where she discusses many of these same issues. Ken goes on to explain that his perspective as well as Judy’s perspective is that climate change has become a scapegoat for many issues. He asks Judy to talk about this phenomenon.
[00:55:24] Ken asks Judy what she would like to see in terms of follow-up research to the DOE climate report.
[01:00:23] Ken asks Judy about her book “Climate Uncertainty and Risk.”
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