Professor Judith Curry: Climate Science Has Become Pseudo Science

Autogenerated transcript. May contain errors.

Interviewer: The media wanted, you know, something, you know, a sensational story. Every hurricane, every flood, every wildfire was caused by, you know, fossil-fueled warming. Let’s turn now to three extreme climate events around the globe, which many believe are linked by man-made climate change. The Western drought and dozens of major forest fires, as well as flooding in the East, are all painful demonstrations of the reality of the climate crisis. But they’re all in agreement that global warming is causing more extreme weather events. Back up there with, are every major storm, flood, or wildfire truly evidence that human behavior has triggered a catastrophic climate crisis? Children swept away by monsoon rains, families running from the flames. For scientists, it is unequivocal: humans are to blame. Can we even claim that the extreme weather events are increasing?

Dr. Judith Curry: Oh, they’re not increasing. This is the issue. They’re not increasing, and you’d never believe that to be the case based on the reports in the media.

Interviewer: Dr. Judith Curry, a renowned climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, has had a distinguished academic career. If you sometimes get the impression from news reports that all scientists agree rising CO2 levels are driving the climate or disaster, Professor Curry assures you this claim is false. Okay, but scientists do not agree on the most consequential issues, such as how much of the recent warming has been caused by humans, how much warming can we expect for the remainder of the 21st century, is warming dangerous? [Music] In this interview, Professor Curry clarifies what we know about climate change for certain and debunks misleading and false narratives. There’s a popular claim—it is still alive, pretty much, I think—that there is a scientific consensus that 97% of scientists agree that human-caused climate change exists. So, many interpret this to mean there’s no room for any discussion left. But where does this claim actually come from?

Dr. Judith Curry: Okay, well, where it comes from was an activist scientist who had a blog, and he had some of his blogger buddies do a search of scientific abstracts, and they classified the abstracts as either for or against human-caused global warming. Well, most of them didn’t have, you know, that they just didn’t directly confront the issue, and they counted as for global warming papers that included cookstove technology being used in India. They counted that as in favor of the global warming narrative. So, it’s actually a big joke. What climate scientists actually agree on is very little. Everyone agrees that it’s been warming since about the middle 19th century. Everyone agrees that we’re adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and everyone agrees that carbon dioxide has an infrared emission spectrum that, all other things being equal, acts to warm the planet. Okay, but scientists do not agree on the most consequential issues, such as how much of the recent warming has been caused by humans, how much warming can we expect for the remainder of the 21st century, is warming dangerous, will humanity and human welfare overall be improved by a rapid transition away from fossil fuels? There’s huge debate—scientific and political debate—on these issues, and pretending that we shouldn’t have this debate and pretending that there’s some sort of agreement by all scientists on these issues, where there’s a lot of disagreement, not only is it bad for science, but it misleads policymakers. So, it’s not good for anybody other than for the activist scientists who want, you know, attention, fame, fortune, whatever—who knows what drives them.