Restoring the Sciences: Rethinking Climate Risk with Judith Curry

episode of the National Association of Scholars webinar series restoring The Sciences I'm Scott Turner I'm director of science programs here at the National Association of Scholars and I'm the regular host for this webinar series and the National Association of Scholars obviously sponsors this webinar series today's webinar is around the topic rethinking climate risk and it's a special webinar for a couple of reasons the first reason is our guest Judith Curry who is America professor of Earth and Atmospheric science the Earth and atmospheric sciences program at Georgia Tech University I describe Judith Curry as a climate realist she's emerged as one of several public faces representing climate realism which is to say that before we are all stampeded into a climate Panic that we pause take a breath and think realistically about the issue since retiring from Georgia Tech she has founded and is president of the climate for cast applications Network which provides intelligence to manage weather in climate related risks she's recently published a very fine book climate uncertainty and risk rethinking our response this is from Anthem press and it's available on Amazon and she also posts regularly to her blog climate Etc at her website judithcurry.com and I'll be putting links to all these things momentarily into the chat box the second reason today's episode is special is that we have a guest host uh Catherine Kelly is president of the firm Delta toxicology Inc and she's also co-chair of the Nevada chapter of the National Association of Scholars and she's active in Science Education she's founder and president of ischool which seeks to formulate Innovative methods of teaching science to students in grades one through twelve and I'll be putting a link to ischool into the chat box as well before I turn things over to Catherine and Judas I there are just a couple of housekeeping issues I want to bring up we'll all be having a discussion among ourselves for about 45 minutes or so after which we'll be opening the floor to questions from you the audience which is probably the most important aspect of these webinars we encourage everyone to ask questions and to ask them at any time during the webinar you don't need to wait until the floor has been open for questions uh we'd like if you can to put your questions into the Q a box which is located at the bottom of your screen we can also handle questions put into the chat box but we like the Q a box because it's a little bit more interactive and so we prefer that but the main thing is that you feel free to put questions in there at any time also today's webinar will be available on YouTube shortly after we wrap up today and of course another place to ask questions is to put them into the comments section on the YouTube video okay without further Ado let me hand over the program to Judith Curry and Catherine Kelly welcome to the both of you to restoring The Sciences thank you and hello for to everybody from Nevada and I'm delighted that to have Judy Curry here a fellow now Nevada and moved across the country from Georgia Judy welcome without further Ado let's jump into your presentation well I don't have a presentation I can tell you a little bit about my book um and about what I'm all about um well my my journey in this rather unusual Direction started in 2010 when I became concerned about the behavior of climate scientists particularly ipcc authors it was becoming so political they were trying to sabotage their opponents evade Freedom of Information Act request and I became very concerned by all this and I called them out on it publicly you know saying that we need to do better we need to make all of our data and methods publicly available complete transparency we need to be more honest about uncertainty and we have to be respectful to other scientists who are critical of our research and we have to engage them in constructive dialogue and debate as we try to move our understanding forward now all that may sound like motherhood and apple pie but um there was a huge backlash against me by the climate Terry atheists the important scientists in the ipcc or whatever who am I to criticize all these important people and on and on it goes um this is so the more pushback I got from the climate science establishment if you will um I became very popular with people from other different fields you know from the policy sciences and the social sciences and engineers and oceanographers and Communications Specialists and philosopher of Sciences who thought my arguments you know were interesting and important when I started my blog shortly after that I mean the idea of my blog was to you know look at all these hidden assumptions and all the uncertainties that the climate establishment was trying to sweep under the rug let's get all these things out into the open the value judgments all of these things that nobody's talking about but are you know basic to the simplistic narrative that the UN has put forth and so you know I increasingly drew the ire of the climate establishment as I was doing this and um you know Academia became increasingly uncomfortable I seated my blog with a series on climate science and the uncertainty monster you know which represented a major theme of my work following 2010 both academic and in the public Communications world and when you know Academia just became very uncomfortable I was being marginalized and it was and impossible for me to find another academic position I mean if you Google Judith Curry at the time you would see Judith Curry serial climate misinformer Judith Curry climate denier and that was my you know the whole profile on page one of my group you have a Google search for Judith Curry you know I was you know unhirable in Academia at that point so I said okay so I headed for the private sector I had started a company a few years before and then I just went full time in my company and I tell you I couldn't be happier than where I am right now but so so that's my back story but on to the book um climate uncertainty and risk a big part of what I do in my company is help my clients better understand weather and climate risk and to help them develop strategies to manage those risks okay and it's um a very sort of different process that I go through with my clients people who are making real decisions about their company about their City about whatever then what you hear from the the top-down U.N you know we need to eliminate fossil fuels urgently or you know we're going to boil or we're going to be extinct or whatever the narrative du jour is so I developed this interest in this knowledge about the risk sciences that is to me is so Central to how we should be thinking about the climate issue and how we should consider responding to it so my book I'll just maybe hold it up quickly so you can see the cover um climate uncertainty and risk rethinking our response um it sort of is my sort of holistic integrated take on this whole issue ranging you know from the sociology of science the politicization of the whole thing how we should think about scenarios of how the 21st century weather and climate may play out and then also risk assessment and risk management strategies that make sense for a very complex uncertain ambiguous Wicked problems such as climate change so that's the back story and The quick summary on my book it's a it's a great summary thank you have have you do you do a book tour with something as in-depth as climate science I live in Zoom World um I I do okay last week was crazy I was doing two to three interviews podcasts whatever a day that this week is a bit Tamer I think I had six interviews so I'm doing a lot of you know long-form podcasts and radio shows um you know a range of things um you know trying people are interested I'm enjoying talking with all these different people all of whom have read the book and they all focus on different things you know they resonated with different aspects of the book you know and I I just find it fascinating as to which person responded and they're back with a given background responded to which aspect of the book and I found that really interesting but I think but the most interesting you know even though I've been categorized as a an higher contrary and whatever I've gotten decent reviews from people on the more alarm side um you know they might give me four stars instead of five stars but but they basically said although the book is biased there's a lot of good information here and there's some interesting ideas and solutions so I haven't really gotten hammered by the alarmed side of this debate I tried to make the book ruthlessly apolitical um you know and try to present both sides fairly and um yeah so I mean I haven't I'm sort of surprised that I haven't got trashed by the alarmist side of this issue so do you sense that the pendulum is at all starting to swing back due to the efforts of you and and other kind of Brave scientists that are trying to speak the truth to these issues and research and write about it well well a key aspect of the risk management approach is not to focus on the assumptions but focus on the solutions here we have two sides here each you know insisting that their version of The Facts the scientific facts is the right one you know and both have you know deep uncertainties surrounding their so-called facts and you know you're never this whole thing has been scientized which has been a mistake I mean instead let's talk about good policies that make sense no matter how the climate plays out that doesn't depend on getting people to agree on the scientific assumptions I mean research and development into new Energy Technologies that are cleaner cheaper more abundant you know whatever I mean Energy Efficiency better Water Management resource management technology these kind of things are things that everyone can agree on we don't have to agree on you know the scientific aspects of it so so that's part of the solution space that I recommend is like and agree on a robust decision making you know agree on the solutions don't bother trying to agree on the assumptions because it's not going to happen when you have a highly uncertain politically contested issue well you're smart to focus on the solutions because at the end of the day we all want to live in a healthy clean environment and it's it's great that you have laid out a lot of the suggested steps to come to those Solutions and a process by which we can hopefully come to more agreement than not yeah I think I think there's ways forward I mean the the real enemy of doing anything sensible is the urgency the code red kind of things where we have to urgently eliminate fossil fuels which means jeopardizing our the reliability of our electric systems it's going to increase the cost it's going to exacerbate land use issues it um it's the big footprint required by wind and solar is very harmful to ecosystems and so it's just not a good solution and they say well we that's the only option we have because we have to do it urgently nuclear power plants take 10 years to build things like that well you know just drop the urgency okay and and drop the top-down mandates and all these targets and deadlines and let each Community each state each country um work on Solutions and policies that they think will secure their common interests so more of a bottom-up approach is going to lead us to better and more politically viable Solutions and these top-down mandates from the UN which you know nobody can meet and it just develop you know it's just a source of so much acrimony and polarization that we're never going to get anywhere on this topic are you hearing from some government agencies about how to implement some of your ideas um I do have some clients among government agencies even some International ones um focused on specific topics like hurricane risk um is a big one and sea level rise is another big one so you know people listen to me um you know governments not not the U.S not the White House not the UN but I do have government clients that I'm looking yeah and and there's a question here are you also do you also have clients in the fossil fuel industry okay I provided okay even back when I was in more of an alarmist mode um I was providing hurricane forecasts to petroleum companies remember Hurricane Katrina you know this swipe oh it was a huge impact on the petroleum Industry gas price gas and oil prices Spike like crazy and there was even hurricane Gusto I think I think it was 2008 maybe um that wiped out all the refining capacity on the Louisiana and you couldn't get you know in big parts of the US you could not get any gasoline for your car for weeks okay so this has a huge impact um on petroleum companies I provide weather forecasts to Natural Gas Traders um and this is important for supporting the renewable energy industry because wind and solar are so intermittent that has to be backed up with gas and this is a very delicate balance you have to make sure that you know you have the supply that you need but that you're not paying too much and so that's what natural gas trading does a number of my clients are electric utilities companies who are trying to um want better predictions of extreme weather events so they can predict and manage outages so they can restore power as quickly as possible so yeah I mean I have that there's money from energy companies that lands in my company's bank accounts however I have never taken any funding from any company to speak publicly in a certain way about the climate change issue I mean what I'm providing them is information proprietary information to these companies to help them manage their weather and climate risk and when people say oh she's in the pay of Big Oil okay back in the day when I was at Georgia Tech I was making a whole lot more money from my Georgia Tech salary it was an administrative salary then I've made you know from my company so if I if this was about lining my personal Pockets I would have stayed at Georgia Tech and played the game good for you I've always had trouble with the perception that just because you provide a service to the private sector or petroleum or citizen groups or whatever that somehow they're buying your opinion or influencing the science somehow I I am glad for myself that petroleum industry is stepping up and wanting to learn from you how to what their part is in this whole picture and how they can be a creative part of the process well another thing is I I one of the things that my company does is we educate companies about climate change and various risks um people who oil companies who might be getting sued over sea level rise in a certain location or a power plant a company who's trying to install a power plant and somebody's suing them over that and I help educate them about you know what are the real issues what are the real risks um you know which of these um assertions made in the complaint are Justified and which aren't so I play a big role in educating clients about their their climate change risk and how to deal with litigation good for you I I don't know if you can reduce the main takeaways to in such a multi-faceted topic but what would you say are the three four main takeaways that you would like people to understand from from your book with fifth what is it 1500 references I mean you can go deep into the weeds but I'm just I'm asking for an overflight of what you think the key messages are okay well the first thing is we've badly mischaracterize climate risk I mean the slow creep of warming really influences sea level rise melting of glaciers things like that the extreme weather it seems to have Frozen here um maybe this is the time to introduce a a a point that's maybe as a counter argument to something that's playing out in the in the chat session um Judith to be back with us of course there's this uh Trope that anyone who expresses skepticism is somehow in the in the pocket of of an unfavored industry I think we've lost Judy and and uh of course the um the other question is well just how much money is flowing through the uh the the people who are pushing the the uh the the notion of a climate crisis and um you know I I have some some uh personal experience with this I I I've done quite a lot of my work in uh research in southern Africa and Namibia particularly and this is a place that has enormous uh reserves of not only fossil fuels but also uranium for a nuclear power industry and those have been completely gutted by the amount of money that's uh that's funneled into their economy by uh the ipcc the green climate fund and so forth and and uh it it's had the essential effect of suppressing a um an industry in that country which is capable of providing the energy that they need for economic development but it's being throttled by this extra money coming in so so certainly the other side of this question of of who's funding you uh has to be who's funding the other side as well and I Judy while you were away I just was making this point um that there's two sides to this story and that you know we should be aware that the ex to the extent that money and power uh actually uh promotes the climate catastrophist agenda so yeah I'm sorry I lost my zoom connections I moved to another room in case it was an international issue yeah but the issue about funding is such a Canard um you know the government funding really torques the research and in many ways you know in climate science you know all the announcements of opportunity implicitly or explicitly you know assume dangerous human cause warming and asked for proposals you know related to that um you know it's very hard to get anything else funded so so there's there's agendas all over the place and and there's fossil fuel money all over the place to many universities and but the the amount of money spent by environmental billionaire environmental activists is is huge I mean it dwarfs anything from the oil companies in terms of what they're spending on this issue so I mean money influences influences everywhere but um so it's everywhere it's just background noise in my opinion so so you just listen to the arguments don't try to Tar somebody you know with their funding sources just listen to their arguments and nobody seems willing to do that it's so tribal and they throw you into one tribe or another and then they dismiss you or you know follow you you know depending on which tribe you align with so it's just become completely divorced of of Reason logic you know and genuine argumentation and it's unfortunate so key takeaway number one is we've mischaracterized the risk what would you what's another one okay um the other one is that natural variability dominates our weather and climate extremes and even if we were ex you know successful at um eliminating fossil fuels Say by 2040 or 2050 or whatever even if you believe the climate models we probably wouldn't notice any different in the weather until the 22nd century so thinking that we're going to control the weather is you know is just hubris beyond anything that makes sense so that leads to the point is that we cannot control the climate Okay humans do impact the climate um in unintended ways and in principle they can influence it in intended ways um geoengineering and things like that but they can't control the weather and climate um you know and we just need to abandon that idea and get on with you know more realistic Solutions and more feasible Solutions um okay what else um that the other point is that I made this before is that the best Solutions are bottom up they're not top down these mandates from the U.N emissions targets and deadlines and on and on it goes I mean they're meaningless and they're not science driven they're politically driven you know to amplify the emergency as much as they politically think is feasible they're not science driven targets so so we just need to drop that and we need to support and enable individual countries individual states individual communities to try to figure out what makes sense for managing their resources for for providing energy Transportation water and food and well at the same time protecting their environment you know as much as they can within reason I mean we have to reckon where eight billion people on this planet and we're going to have an impact on the planet at the same time we shouldn't trash the environment unnecessarily and sort of old-fashioned fashioned environmentalism that worries about you know water and air pollution and species can we go back to that please rather than I mean that's all been completely dismissed in favor of uh the climate change agenda with um adverse impacts on the environment and species in many ways and Mining and on and on it goes so I mean those are some of the main points but thank you okay no add to that if you would like her or we'll ask you the next question one okay one more point in the middle part of the book I talk about scenarios of the 21st century and how we should think about how this might play out and I put it out you know and I dismiss climate models is not being useful for this purpose um you know you know they're they're too narrowly focused and they don't handle natural variability correctly and on and on it goes and so I put out there are some different methods for generating scenarios of future climate including plausible worst cases of specific events you know warming and things like that and so um the problem with climate science is that we've been Computing too much and thinking too little you know or just trusting what comes out of these climate models and it's just there's a growing realization even from the establishment that these climate models are running too hot they're not useful for decadal scale simulations or region you know Regional assessments anything like that they're useful for you know testing the sensitivity to different amounts of emissions that's about you know all they're useful for in the end so we just need other ways of trying to think about what weather and climate hazards we might be facing in the 20th Cent 21st century thank you you've got a unique overview of what we know and and what we what we don't know what what to you are the really interesting areas of research that we we need to learn more about oh my gosh for everything um okay the big the big categories of what we don't know um we don't know how much of the recent warming um is caused by human cause emissions we don't know how the climate of the 21st century will play out we don't know whether um warming is dangerous this is largely an issue of values um that you know to be resolved by the political process it's not something that science can tell you and we don't know whether a rapid transition to reduce CO2 emissions will overall be beneficial to humankind I argue in my book that it probably won't and that the the transition risk that we're undergoing with this rapid transition to wind and solar is probably far greater than any near-term risk from weather hazards and climate change that we're going to see in the coming decades so um and then when you get down to more detailed scientific things we don't understand the fast feet we don't have a good quantitative understanding of the fast feedbacks in the climate system we don't have a quantitative understanding of the carbon budget and processes related to the carbon cycle we don't have a good understanding of the vertical ocean heat and and carbon transport in the ocean we don't understand how to predict the natural modes the multi-decatal to Millennial scale modes of ocean variability um clouds is a huge it's a huge area of uncertainty we don't know if the clouds are a positive or A negative feedback as a result to warming I mean we just don't know I mean there are all sorts of we don't know how to model ice sheet Dynamics or how to realistically predict what trigger what what might trigger collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet I mean there's a huge long list but you hear the science is settled you know consensus right yeah oh yeah then you have the consensus well I have to say a few words about consensus and she brought it up I mean you see what we have is a manufactured consensus about climate change you know a naturally occurring scientific consensus you know the Earth orbits the sun I mean you don't have to talk about consensus on that one it's the well-known fact nobody disputes it but when you have something complex uncertainty uncertain and politically important policy makers will ask scientists to come to an agreement you know give me a consensus and of course the scientists are are carefully picked to give policy makers the answer they want and then you have you know the ipcc is just a big consensus manufacturing exercise so it's a manufactured consensus and it really and it it doesn't mean anything other than it it just reflects the night naive way that the policy makers think that they can handle uncertainty about this whole thing you know by wiping it out and it's it's been so polarizing in the scientific Community it's misled policy makers um and has driven us to this urgency of rapidly reducing fossil fuel emissions that is infeasible and will actually if we do this very quickly it will leave us much worse off economically and much more vulnerable to extreme weather events well thank you for that obviously you've given that topic a great deal of thought um for for all you participants Scott is monitoring the the questions so that we he can cover them all in the Q a but there's a there's a question in the chat room about what what do you think about Alex Epstein's work okay he makes the point that we need energy okay and we certainly do and we're going to need more energy than we're currently using especially if we Electrify everything but we need um electricity to protect ourselves from weather and climate change air conditioners desalination plants um you know air cleaners vertical farming all you know all these things but we also needed to advance you know humankind forward Quantum this and Robotics that and you know all these sensors and smart lists are all based on computers Advanced Materials research based on computers so in order to um all which require massive amounts of electricity so we need a lot more order of magnitude more electricity in the short term and this doesn't even account electrifying Africa um you know the most egregious thing about International climate policy is that we can't afford for Africa to develop its fossil fuels because that would put us over some targets I mean that you know you've got a billion people um you know farming without Machinery no grid electricity I mean it's reprehensible that um what used to be you know funds for development are now redirected towards renewable energy and you know to the great detriment of the development of Africa so I mean it's just for Maui yeah exactly okay so back to Alex Epstein I mean he talks in my opinion he pushes fossil I mean in the near term we need fossil fuels but I think when you look forward to the 22nd century I don't think we're going to still be burning fossil fuels for electricity I mean there'll be I think there'll be better fuels so let's promote Innovation um nuclear Advanced geothermal and on and on it goes I mean there's all sorts of innovations that I would hope for in the 21st century so I have no particular attachment to fossil fuels I hope we come up with better Solutions but wind and solar are not it thank you for that and just uh just to jump in here about Africa well the uh while the gods of Zoom were reigning uh fire and brimstone on your computer Judy uh we introduced uh when uh we filled in with a little bit of a conversation about uh energy policy in Namibia which is where I worked for on my own research for many years and and uh they have basically gutted their fossil fuels industry and this is a country that Imports nearly 75 percent of its energy uh from outside and uh and they have abundant uh energy resources that they can develop themselves but uh the the their their fossil fuel industry is is being crushed under the thumb of the ipcc and green climate fund uh funding they basically bought off the the uh economy of that country and the irony there is that it if you look at the impact of Namibia on global carbon emissions that country accounts for 0.03 percent of total carbon emissions so you're basically holding that country in economic uh as economic hostages to this agenda and um and uh you know to no impact whatsoever on the global carbon budget which supposedly is the villain at the heart of all this so and certainly as lasers was a cop 27 or cop 287 yeah account 27 there was a uh there was a movement uh uh afoot complete with a slogan and a meme don't guess Africa and uh that was so egregious that even some of the African presidents were pushing back against this you know I believe it was the president of Chad who who pointed out that well hey hang on you know what are you talking about you know this is an abundant cheap and relatively clean source of energy for us and there's an absolute almost inevitable uh a correlation causation I would say between energy use per capita and gross domestic product per capita you know it's a very clear relationship if you plot those things out and and so the whole climate agenda is really impacting badly on the global South which it of course is poorest half of our of our globe yeah they call it green colonialism energy apartheid and I think those are very app descriptors yeah yeah Scott we have 12 questions to get through you want to jump into this evening I see that yes okay so so let's go to the Q a and uh and and we'll work in the comments in the chat as well because there's quite a number of of comments in in the uh chat box um so let's uh go first to Jay reisman he says that implementing Net Zero is now the basic Blue State policy position and by Blue State I'm assuming he means not only States within the United States but also governments Nations following the what uh the well Walter Mead is called the Blue model and his question is based on ipcc modeling how much climate change will this avert do we know it won't be noticeable um against Natural climate variability um I think 50 years okay there was some climate Model simulations 50 years after cessation of CO2 emissions some models are still warming and others are still cooling others are cooling so we don't really know how the carbon cycle is going to react to all that in terms of extreme weather events which is the the main concern if you look at the media you wouldn't even notice a change until sometime in the 22nd century so it's it's really about maybe presenting preventing something really bad from happening in the 22nd or 23rd Century like collapse of an ice sheet or something like that so basically we have no clue on how much climate change this will avert and certainly not in the short term when we see in the news every night that the weather has become almost uh weaponized you know with the weather events suddenly becoming evidence of climate change like hot Weathers in summer hot temperatures in summer so um so our friend dick lynson he has a question uh which is an interesting one um science is supposed to be kind of independent and skeptical and he asked whether you think that politics have impeded actual research that would reduce uncertainty the kinds of things that are bedeviling these uh these the rational consideration of of climate change chapter four of my book I mean absolutely this is um you know there's been no you know the whole issue of natural climate variability has been completely marginalized NASA keeps funding some solar climate research which is good but more ocean related and thing and geothermal kind of natural variability has really been completely marginalized um that there's no the whole ipcc thing is about consensus and increasing confidence and what's really needed is to explore uncertainty and you know the department of energy is been trying to quantify uncertainty in climate models which I think is a hopeless task but at least they're acknowledging that there is uncertainty but yeah no we've completely missed the opportunity I mean you have to go back to the first assessment report I guess in in 1990 and they laid out a good agenda for climate research and they talked about you know what we don't know and that would have been a great agenda for climate research however since then everything is focused on the Assumption of dangerous human cause climate change and we've and and too much of the funding it goes to what I call climate model taxonomy where you look at the output of climate models to try to find something alarming like we won't be able to grow grapes in China and that'll tank the wine industry you know on and on it goes you know there's millions of examples like that and that's what gets funded it gets it gets headlines it gets um the scientists who publish those papers get rewarded um you know at their universities and by professional societies and you have this whole find you know the social contract between scientists and the policy makers just to you know reinforce this whole alarming narrative and you know the people who are doing the other kind of research are people in the private sector are retired people you know who don't rely on funding and there's a few sort of Think Tank type organizations who fund a little bit of this research but it's several orders of magnitude smaller than the funding that you get from the the billionaire environmental activists so it's a very small community um people doing this kind of work and what we've and in the universities it's bad because you know back in the day um 1970s 1980s whatever you study geology atmospheric science oceanography and you had a deep understanding now you you get your degree in climate studies and the only scientific part of this is they teach you how to recite ipcc talking points you don't develop any understanding of the science that's described in the ipcc worse yet there are very few scientists left that can critically evaluate the science in the ipcc assessment reports Richard Vincent is certainly one of them but um the people who can critically evaluate all this are small in number and the number is decreasing as this generation who really understood the Dynamics of this are getting older and older so it's a very big problem so it's just how did uncertainty and uh and uh variability become dirty words in the whole climate debate Naomi oreskies the merchants of doubt this book okay they talked about how that the pack and and Dick Lynn Sentosa story very well is about how um the tobacco companies bought off scientists to claim that it was uncertain as to what the impacts of smoking particularly second-hand smoke and so doubt and uncertainty became dirty words that vested Industrial interests were trying to sow doubt and uncertainty so as to prevent action and then they claim that the you know the climate scientists you know the skeptical climate scientists were playing from this same plain book so the word uncertainty and doubt automatically equated you with um you know the evil tobacco companies in terms of your behavior as a scientist and people just bought into that uncritically everybody likes a simple story and and there is no simple story about the complex highly uncertain climate change problem is there something more than just a love of Simplicity there though because uh Power exactly power and money and and of course this uh this this goes right to the heart of an issue that we're concerned with here the National Association of Scholars which is that the universities have become totally captured by a certain political narrative which is held in place by spending money government money and also the pursuit of power and you know that seems to me to be at the heart of of this alarmist climate agenda there's no science involved there it's all pursuit of money and power that's pretty much the case I mean like I said the scientists the true scientists who have enough knowledge and understanding to critically evaluate climate science and The ipcc's Binding are very few and far between and they all get tossed into the denier camp because they use the words uncertainty and natural climate variability yeah okay um so let's move on to another question here um uh Walter Hogle asks uh this question implementing a completely new and independent surface temperature data set with no need for adjustments Etc would that help restore the science to climate change or climate science he goes on to say the urbanization slash poor surface station placement these are corrupting the data and we're not really getting an accurate representation of what the climate is doing are we improving our uncert our assessment of uncertainty and risk or okay the measurements the surface temperature measurements are in a sad State um and I don't you know that there's inexpensive instruments that are out there we know where to cite these sensors but you know it's not going to happen so we need to get over that I think the the the re-analyzes the global re-analysis done by the European Center for medium range forecasting the the Japanese meteorological organization and Noah I think these dynamically integrate a whole bunch of observations and then they do produce among other things a global surface temperature data set and I find this to be more objective than analyzes that are solely observationally based and I think they're less susceptible to Urban heat island effects um because they don't explicitly occur in the model you know the fact that there's an urban heat island I even notice in my weather forecasting that we have to do a lot of there's a lot of bias correcting that needs to be done when we're in an urban heat island situation so I think these reanalysis data sets are getting better and better and I think they're far more objective than um surface instrument based data sets but are they reducing the uncertainty or just making well I mean the uncertainty yeah the uncertainty relates to our understanding of what's causing these variations um and the focus on to me on the global temperature is misleading because I mean it's the regional climate change and variability which matters to people you've got some places cooling some places warming some places warming a lot you know um there's so much Regional variability that this is where we should focus our attention on particularly with regards to the Paleo climate data record trying to get some sort of global paleo climate average temperature is a pointless exercise but can we please um apply this paleoclimate data to better understanding Regional climate variability and change so you know I think this idea of global temperatures sort of the focus on that is misleading if you're I mean just from socioeconomic point of view and even from a scientific point of view I think the regional change in variability is far more important and far more interesting uh Dave Peterson asks kind of a follow-up question to that uh but this involves comparison of uh observational research I think compared to the computer modeling so so this improved um improved uh set of data that you just mentioned is being developed has that made the computer models better or made them look more out of touch with reality well the latest version the cmic six version of the global climate models which were used in the ipcc6 assessment report were worse than the previous generation they were a majority of them were running way too hot um and this really had to do mostly with the changes to cloud microphysical parameterizations and how Cloud particles interacted with aerosols and and it was this change that made them overly sensitive to warming made the feedbacks too why so a couple of lessons here the more complicated you make these models putting more and more stuff into it you know with chemistry and cloud microphysics and things like that you're not necessarily getting a better solution in terms of the global climate model um and the second the second issue is that the climate models the the climate modeling has become a topic of interest for philosophers of Science and they have some very interesting insights among that is that these climate models are so uncertain that any serious attempted model verification with observations is probably pointless you know you're talking many many millions of degrees of freedom I mean how do you evaluate them on what spatial scale what time scale which variables which levels in the atmosphere um people have attempted to do this and and you come up with well a couple of climate models are really bad obviously some are better but still not very good so what does that leave you with not very much um so I think I think we have to work around there's a lot more emphasis even in the most recent ipcc report on on simpler models you know climate emulators and things like that that you know for for very specific applications and I think this makes more sense than trying to use these very intractable couple or system models that just that they're useful for exploring processes and tweaking them and playing games with them and maybe we can learn something from it but from but for use and prediction or an attribution studies um I don't think they're useful at all we just need to move on from the climate models but think harder and compute Less in my opinion remember that I have a format question for you what do we do when we have more questions than we have time to answer do we ask Judy to stay over or do we oh oh I'm game okay nothing else about my schedule this is fun yeah our nominal uh run time is an hour but we often go for as long as 90 minutes so so we try to uh if if our guest is willing and you've said that you are uh we'll go we'll run out the clock to 90 minutes to try and get into questions but if we don't get great questions thank you they are great questions and I hope to get to all of them but again if we don't get to the all of the questions I'll mention this at the end as well then what we typically do is ask everyone to submit their questions to me at my email address at NES that's Turner nas.org and I'll do my best to get them into the hands of of either Judy you or or Catherine and of course as I mentioned the YouTube video there's a comment section there and I try to go through and monitor that to you know answer any questions that come up there so that's that's the that's the format there so so not not to take away any more of our time for uh q a so um there are several questions uh Jack budney for example has uh has has posted a couple of these but there are other aspects of this question um he asked to what extent have you experienced or perceived a climate change issue as a vehicle to control Society rather than to solve a problem that Society needs to solve and by the problem I'm presume he means uh what do we do if the climate goes askew or what are we using this to control our society is it an instrument of political power rather than science okay well you have to go back to the 1980s the U.N environmental program um very anti-capitalist um trying to promote non-governmental U.N control over a lot of things and they picked up on climate change as an ideal vehicle for this and you know and they push this hard and you know in 1992 we had the U.N framework convention on climate change treaty to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change and this was before there was any evidence of any any anomalous warming at all and the U.S even sign this treaty so you had the policy cart way out in front of the scientific horse from the very beginning of this okay and you know in the U.S you know the the two political parties have evolved you know where at least in the current Democratic Administration you know they soon be in favor of control you know thinking about declaring a climate emergency more covid lockdowns Etc or the other political party is you know none of that thank you um you know from you know probably about freedoms um and so yeah there's all sorts of politics in this from the very beginning you know we've had that this whole that the evolution of the science has been so constrained by the UN Agenda um in terms of national funding priorities and on and on it goes and what universities perceive as um being the right thing to do and and the topics that will attract funding from donors you know like I said there's just whole this this whole positive feedback between the scientists and the policy makers that have brought us to this sorry state uh okay so um we'll probably come back to that with some further comments but if we go to the to the uh chat box there are a couple of interesting questions actually there are many interesting questions in there but let me just focus on on uh on a couple of them um uh Segar this is the person's tag asks uh that the Renewables Renewables industry knows that for many years they can't make their own products without burning fossil fuels and of course I would just add to that the enormous environmental impact of mining uh the the metals and minerals and materials that we'll have to go into you know basically you know bringing solar power or wind up to a major contributor to our energy budget and and so um somehow the politics have actually led us to ignore that impact I I rarely see any comments about about just how uh well well the what the environmental footprint is for for say uh fracking and horizontal drilling versus mining uh lithium and and the other one uh Walter uh yakubovsky I hope I pronounced your name correctly uh Walter how does one respond to the alarmist view that we have created created an anthropogenic runaway greenhouse so so these two questions sort of address the trade-offs that we are being asked to make between fossil fuels and the impacts of going full solar and full wind okay well we can dismiss the runaway feedback um just read the ipcc okay put on your thinking cap take some effort to read the scientific literature and the ipcc reports runaway greenhouses there's no such thing even the U.N um is now talking about expecting 2.5 degrees Centigrade of warming by the end of the 21st century and we've already warmed 1.2 so we're talking about another 1.3 degrees I mean so the climate crisis isn't what it used to be you know but that doesn't stop the alarming rhetoric okay back to the other question Renewables okay I am not a fan of wind I think there's a place for rooftop solar um but but we're told that wind and solar energy is free there's no greenhouse gas emissions okay well of course there's greenhouse gas emissions you know you look at the the cement especially in these wind turbines you know and the fiberglass and the the steel and whatever those all made made with fossil fuels okay and the transportation of these things if you're you know on the big interstates you see these insane you know trucks transporting this stuff these things are huge they're massive okay huge amount of fossil fuels needed to implement all this I mean the the mining I mean there's a reason all the rare earth um minds are in China and Africa is because the US and Europe don't want to trash their environment to do this mining which is tremendously hard on the land and the landscape and pollutes and on and on it goes so this is not a good thing um but but the bigger issues is wind and solar will not work it's not just the intermittency it's the asynchronicity you need to maintain frequency control and once you lose that you know your whole system crashes so you have to back it up with natural gas or you have to add very expensive synchronous condensers to your grid and so that what you have to do to the grid to make this workable is extremely expensive and you know battery storage is you know just not up to the task at any kind of scale that you think it can happen um you know there's so many problems with this is chapter 14 in my book um you know there's a lot of problems with Windham solar so and but but the main thing the urgency even the U.N you know the cop 27 they were working from a 2.5 degrees Centigrade warming by the end of the 21st century they finally got rid of all these extreme emission scenarios that gave you four or five degrees Centigrade or 10 degrees Fahrenheit warming they finally gotten rid of those crazy implausible scenarios so I mean what we're left with this is a little slow creep of warming that we can easily adapt to or that could very likely be counteracted by some big volcanic eruptions um a solar minimum on and on it goes you know there's all sorts of natural variability that could act to counteract it so we're just being stupid speaking of volcanoes Sharon and the Q a ask a question about how the Tonga volcanic eruption of water vapor into the stratosphere may be affecting our current warming Trend in global temperatures okay the Tonga eruption is a little bit subtle usually volcanoes erupt and any you know put a bunch of sulfate particles into the stratosphere well Tonga only put a little a small amount of sulfate particles into the atmosphere and put a bunch of water vapor into the atmosphere so in the summer hemisphere the long wave and the shortwave effects of Tonga it's hard to cancel out in the winter hemisphere you have the long wave effect which is a warming effect from hungotonga but I think the real impact of hungotonga is on the Dynamics right now we're seeing in the southern hemisphere the winter all sorts of weird things going on I'm an early onset for the ozone hole we're sitting very strong winds in the region which are pushing the sea ice against the continent giving rise to um a small or reduced extent of sea ice so I think there's a lot of changes to the Dynamics in the winter hemisphere associated with hungotonga that may be the main effect but we could see the impact go on for you know a decade you know slow you know it slowly tapering down it'll be interesting to see what it looks like in the northern hemisphere winter if we see some weird things also so but yeah but you have natural climate variability um all the time happening and you know speaking of volcanoes in in the first half of the 19th century there were three Mega volcanic eruption um the biggest one was Tambora the year without you know a winter and that was estimated to have caused a drop of of a half a degree Centigrade you know over several decades I mean something like that happening in the 21st century would completely change the trajectory of climate over the 21st century all this is being ignored um it's all being ignored yeah and uh of course speaking of those uh those those huge impacts of of things like volcanic eruptions I mean the unthinkable amounts of energy go into that we still see reports I don't know if this is uh alarmist or not of people thinking that they can engineer the climate by injecting particles into the stratosphere or having giant reflective satellites uh up there um and when I actually taught about this when I was an active faculty member I used to tell students that people with environmental engineering solutions to this scare the bejesus out of me because they have no idea what they're talking about and and uh that was just my limited understanding but Judith what do you say about proposals for environmental engineering you know inadvertent climate impacts like emissions of CO2 and putting aerosols into the atmosphere I mean that happens on a slow incremental basis you know a big huge shock um like putting aerosol into the stratosphere um it would have many unintended consequences that could be extremely undesirable um you know why we would do this to you know to prevent a small amount of warming you know it is absolutely Beyond me absolutely Beyond me and once it gets into the stratosphere it's not that easy to get rid of um and if you stop doing it and then the warming would come right back so it's just a terribly bad idea a terribly bad idea um I mean sure people talk about it and write papers and do modeling simulation but okay there are some you know ideas for locally um engineering like in in the summertime over the Greenland ice pack you know putting some reflectors or something like that for a month during the peak melt season to try to slow that down to help maintain the Greenland ice balance something like that would be I would expect completely harmless you know to the global and Regional climate but trying to do something like this stratospheric um solar engineering would be an absolute catastrophe but do these ideas have any traction in the in the hands of the policy people talk about them and people talk about there could be Rogue people you know doing something so you know I it's just so utterly stupid um it's it's really utterly stupid yeah I think stupid is the way to go but then we have to persuade the general uh public that it is stupid and they seem to be very open to uh this uh media Onslaught that somehow we're all in danger and we have to have to do something about it and we see this on the Nightly News every night almost and uh and so what's their motivation in in pushing this climate agenda alarmist climate agenda what do they get from it it's you know media attention control um you know who knows what goes on but they don't really understand climate Dynamics if they're proposing stuff like this you know I just send them back to look at the the first half of the 19th century and the impacts of those three volcanic eruptions say is this the world you want no it isn't so um are we making any progress in informing the public better geez no it's it's a pseudo-religious issue I mean it's all become cult-like it's just insane I mean I mean there's some Oasis so it's you know a number of oacs of Sanity out there um but you know it's hard it's hard um you know the information's out there but it's it's drown being drowned in all the um Extinction code red and all that kind of rhetoric yeah yeah I suppose because they're the ones that make the headlines um yeah if compelling uh video footage um there are several questions that I think we've already kind of addressed but let me just uh lay them out for you um we've had a number of well Dave Peterson for example asks is there any insight on issues of research done by computer modeling compared to observed measurements and I I think you've addressed that already Judy but uh do you have anything to add to that well I I just think we need more climate Dynamics um using both models and observations to improve our understanding of how the system works so it just a model simulation and a bunch of data doesn't really increase understanding by itself yeah uh Gregory Campbell goes on to ask are the models used by the spokesman for the climate crises the same models that were incorrect for 30 years regarding global warming and I think the answer to that is that the models have changed but perhaps they haven't changed enough and in the right direction to give us a more realistic handle on climate change well the models aren't really helping that much but you know the alarmist rhetoric at this point is tied to extreme weather events oh my gosh a heat wave oh my gosh a flood oh my gosh a hurricane so you know they blame every extreme weather event on human cause global warming and even the ipcc acknowledges that there's very little evidence that there's any influence of of the CO2 Emissions on worsening weather events um so it's it's just this very simple Association which of course gets amped in the media and and you know climate scientists not climate dynamicists climate scientists who are you know looking for the cheap paper and the chief publicity who hyped this but again we come back to the question how is it that we as scientists can effectively fight back against this kind of thing because in my opinion the whole science has been hijacked uh all aspects of climate science has been hijacked by political interests shoving scientists to the background so until we do it it's hard to do in the universe okay if you're in a government lab you just keep your mouth shut okay if you're at a university you're taking a very big risk even if you're tenured um this is why you know in the private sector and in think type Think Tank type organizations that this is really the place where these scientists are congregating and communicating with the public I mean the universities many universities are hostile not all of them to you know serious critical thinking and questioning about all this okay so um uh Larry asks an interesting question in the Q a he says just one thing that has puzzled me is the notion of the Earth's correct temperature in quotes or normal temperature can you address that briefly oh yeah um section 1.3 of my book you know so so what's that's how good this book is okay so what's the Goldilocks climate you know too hot too warm just right well the ipcc is implicitly assumed that the pre-industrial climate was just right before fossil fuel emissions this was towards the end of the little Ice Age which was horrendously horrible weather it was cold there were famines they were drowning witches because they needed somebody to blame the cold weather on you had all those you know a lot of volcanoes solar Minima I mean it was just very very bad situation and why we think that pre-industrial at those temperatures was just right I don't know um there's a couple of papers where they've surveyed people one in the U.S and one in China you know do you think that the weather now and the climate is better now or back in the 1980s the general consensus is that the what the weather is better now than in the 1980s in the U.S people don't move north they're moving south the states with a big population increases or Florida Texas Arizona you know not Montana so um you know in terms of our preferences people don't like cold Winters you know so why people think this is a bad climate I don't know um sea level rise is increasing at a slow creep since you know like about 1860 you know at about seven inches a century it goes up and down with circulation patterns and El Nino's and La niñas and whatever but you know these crazy projections of five feet six feet sea level rise by Twenty One Hundred are just it just isn't happening um you know so the the whole issue of weather warming is dangerous is the weakest part of their whole argument yes and of course never mind the issues of just what is global temperature which you addressed in an earlier part of our of our discussion today um so uh just moving on here um uh Richard Voss asked an interesting question he asked what are your views on the issue of attribution that is to what extent and to what degree of certainty or anthropogenic CO2 emissions responsible in contrast to natural causes for any climate change that's actually occurring and of course climate is always changing we know this uh you you mentioned that in the natural variability so do we have a handle on how much anthropogenics to the Natural components of climate variability I mean the climate models say a hundred percent the ipcc the fifth assessment report said most more than half but they really mean a hundred percent but okay here's here's the uncertainties I mean there's we were in a grand solar maximum you know in the last half of the 20th century but the ipcc said it was a trivial effect we do not properly understand the solar indirect effects in addition to the actual insulation so that's a big unknown some studies and some interpretations of solar indirect effects say that they're large enough to explain the warming in the second half of the 20th century you know so who knows uh the internal modes of climate variability the multi-decatal variability in the Atlantic and ocean some estimates are that that's been four tenths of a degree centigrade in the second half of the 20th century I mean these are Big effects I mean so in principle you can plausibly explain most of the warming by natural climate variability um we don't know because we we're not looking at this we've put this very narrow frame around the issue dangerous anthropogenic climate change and everything outside of that frame just gets completely marginalized so the sad State of Affairs is that we really don't know because we haven't been paying attention to trying to understand natural climate variability okay um say or ask an interesting question kind of related to what we were talking about about how you reverse this and he asks is uh with Niger and the rest of Africa starting to talk up that they want a fair price for their resources and and the Italian Prime Minister saying green energy energy is colonialist she's making that point do you think that these voices may open up the debate about the ethics of Renewables on many levels do you think that's the way to to uh to bring science back to this well I don't think it's going to help the science but even if you Electrify all of Africa to any reasonable level I mean this would not exceed one percent of global emissions and to to not do that for a billion people I mean it's just it's just evil okay you know the the moral arguments are all over the place you know are you for the planet or against it you know so trying to make moral arguments here doesn't always help but you have to ask you know what do we owe you know people say well we we owe our and this is the lawsuits our children's trust you know the Montana lawsuit and Juliana lawsuit we owe our children a stable climate a safe environment well the climate has never been stable it's always very it's always out of equilibrium it's always varying on many time scales so you know there's no way we can guarantee it a stable climate so we just need to get over that and figure out how we can adapt to climate variability and change how to make um Society is more prosperous so they can afford to protect themselves from whatever bad climate and weather that nature might throw at us and trying to um inhibit economic development is really going to make and the screw with our electricity Supply is going to make all of us more vulnerable to extreme weather and climate events yeah and uh of course one of the big issues in Africa of course is uh not only economic development but the development of of human rights such as the right to Freedom free speech and those kinds of things and and uh you know one uh question in the Q a uh I hope I pronounce this tag correctly uh treta yoshu uh he makes a point that others have made which is that the climate change agenda especially the alarmist one is tied into pursuit of money and power mostly by Northern uh interests and and so he asked that would you please comment on strategies to find fight anti-freedom anti-education anti-science anti-ethics uh anti-judea Christian ethos and more and uh you know we've spoken about education and facts and all these kinds of things but this this question seems to go more deep into some fundamental questions of Human Rights well you know I I wish I had answers but I regard education real education is key I mean critical thinking not indoctrination um logic debate discussion we need to you know in freedom of speech is so Central to all of that so I mean this to me the freedom of speech and and real education you know is a foundation upon which everything else you know can can grow and of course one of the things is that you suppress those things to the extent that you make people uh dependent on on you know a higher level uh political power which of course in this case includes uh what kinds of resources do you develop and and uh you know just to make a personal comment you know that seems to be one of the things that's keeping uh political development in Africa down is that we are creating a continent of billions of dependent people who can't realize their own their own desires and agendas and and they're being held in place by a political structure that's actually empowered by the amount of money that's flowing into them from the green climate fund and those sorts of politically motivated funding sources [Music] so that's my thought on that so um let's see let's go on now uh okay so and of course John butney makes this point uh I see and just come across this that this basically creates a situation of social slavery and uh so we'll put that comment out there perhaps uh that will elicit some other comments here in the Q a um Emily Huebner asks how do satellite space debris and air travel impact temperatures and weather well so I mean air travel I mean contrails jet contrails those white streaks across the sky do have an effect on climate um there's some new ideas out there to use weather forecasts to better you know estimate which altitude the plane should be flying to um avoid making contrails of course this might use more fuel if you're flying at a lower level so there's trade-offs but no the jet contrails are a factor um in terms of influence and climate how about space debris space should be no it's too small to um influence our climate and dangerous to spacecraft but I'm not so sure it affects this unless it gets very very thick and thick indeed just to well we're reaching the end of our time here so let's just let's just start to wrap up here so uh Segar asks uh will you we be doing more Zooms for more open debates so that people can learn to discern and rather than obey and follow corporate climate Dogma interesting phrase we need to hear your voices more in this uh thanks very much to you but I would just uh I would just mention to everyone that have a look at our restoring The Sciences webinar as well as webinar series as well as many of the writings on the National Organization of Scholars website that's nas.org and you know you'll find a lot of resources there so and we do have more planned coming up so yes thank you for that comment uh cigar let's see here moving on the treachioshu talks about the block the sun to prevent global warming by Biden regime and Gates okay again this is an aspect of social engineering which I think we've already spoke about um uh Segar asks if you think roof solar is fine then which African country will be still supplying us the key minerals when they plan to stop supplying to France that's that's kind of an interesting geopolitical thing quite real but uh I don't know if you have any comments on on Judy yeah okay all right so um yeah and getting back to the universities I just uh I just uh mentioned a personal experience I I was active in a college of environmental science uh in Upstate New York here and I I vividly remember us having a teach-in on climate change this is about 10 years ago and and the two positions were do we Panic now or do we Panic later and very little in a way of an objective assessment of the um of the likelihood and perhaps dangers of changing climate and and with that I think we will close out for today I'd like to thank both you and you Judy and you Catherine for appearing on today's restoring The Sciences it was thoroughly enjoying we had a number of really wonderful questions and again I will just reiterate that if you uh if we didn't get to your question and uh you'd like it to be addressed as well please do send me the questions at my email address at National Association of Scholars and to repeat that's Turner at n-a-s.org and of course if you enjoyed today's webinar thanks for coming we're really glad you're here if you're already a member of the nas we thank you again for your support and if you're not ever consider joining us because we're kind of a fun fun group I can say that and and finally I'd like to put in a plug for the next episode of restoring The Sciences this will be in one week Friday September 1st and our guest that day is going to be Brian fresa who is CEO and founder of emerald Cloud labs and he'll be discussing with us uh the Practical aspects of doing science outside the university and tangentially whether scientists can be better scientists outside the university rather than in and there's a link to that at the beginning of the chat box as well and we do hope that you consider joining us there and again I would just say uh by all means share this when it comes out and it just remains for me to thank Judas and Catherine for this fantastic conversation and I will leave the final word to the both of you uh Judy why don't you go first okay um well thank you everyone this is a very interesting um conversation and I appreciate you joining in and you know please continue the dialogue um you can join the discussion at my blog climate Etc judithcurry.com and I also look forward to your comments about my book climate uncertainty and risk you know leave a review at Amazon um I I'm doing a number of these kind of podcasts and different venues with different people so and it's always interesting to see what kind of different questions and points you know that get brought up but I'm hoping you know that this will spark a rational dialogue and at least some little corner of the scientific Community are you posting some of these interviews on your website oh God I I've been slow some of them are I should probably bring that up today but you can just Google Judas Curry podcast or whatever and a lot of them will pop up great well Judy we we so appreciate the breadth of your research the depth of your research the critical thinking that you bring to it and above all your courage to share all this under sometimes very trying circumstances you're really in an inspiration to a lot of scientists out there of all generations so thank you for sharing your time with us today okay well thank you and I'll add my thanks to that and to the audience out there when this YouTube video is up by all means share with all your friends and even your interviews okay with that I will bid the both of you goodbye thank you again for appearing on restoring The Sciences it was a wonderful discussion thank you

Channel: National Association of Scholars

Views: 36,097

Keywords:

Id: PXomKN6eMz4

Length: 90min 0sec (5400 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023