Posted On: Tuesday - April 30th 2024 6:54PM MST
In Topics: University Global Climate Stupidity Pundits Science
Just as an aside (can you start a post with an aside? I dunno...), the interviewer in the video below is long-time Libertarian - non-Reformed John Stossel. I've always liked this guy. That I barely recognized him is due to my not having watched him in 30 years or more, I bet* - we've both gotten older. I'm glad he's still at his work, which has always been skepticism of the Lyin' Press narratives.
In the comments under a recent post we discussed just for a bit what to do with, or think about, those who have been on the wrong - stupid - side of a political issue after they eventually see the light and become experts for the other side. Should we listen to them now? People can learn, but then, some of us - I'm picturing the Kung Flu PanicFest here - got it in the first place. If someone did not, how fundamentally smart could they be, at least on that subject?
Here, I present Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech (before that U. of Colorado**) Climate/Atmospheric Science Professor. She made the big time in the Climate Calamity™ world about 20 years back with her research on hurricanes. I'm sure she'd done real technical work in this area, but her publishing of a famous article in Science magazine linking an increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes to Global Warming (the term of art at the time) sounds more like playing to the audience. That audience HATES HATES HATES American industry and wants CONTROL. They like people whose research suggests we PANIC, NOW.
Dr. Curry became, as she says in the interview with Mr. Stossel, a "rock star". I imagine it IS pretty hard to resist being made famous, being introduced to big shots around the country (and the world) and to be made into a savior of sorts. It's like being Greta but with 50 more IQ points and an understanding of math and the scientific method.
That she understands the scientific method, as opposed to Nitwit Brit John Oliver and the other idiots in the TV clip below (early on in the 7 minute video), is what got Judith Curry to go on-line and reason with her "denier" critics about her hurricane research. She came to understand their scientific points and agreed that she'd been mistaken. This particular issue itself, the "increase" in big hurricanes, has me thinking less of Dr. Curry than I would have otherwise. It was, after all, just observation***, the tabulating of categories of hurricanes over the years and sea temperature data. I can't read the full paper, but here is the abstract from that '05 article:
We examined the number of tropical cyclones and cyclone days as well as tropical cyclone intensity over the past 35 years, in an environment of increasing sea surface temperature. A large increase was seen in the number and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5. The largest increase occurred in the North Pacific, Indian, and Southwest Pacific Oceans, and the smallest percentage increase occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean. These increases have taken place while the number of cyclones and cyclone days has decreased in all basins except the North Atlantic during the past decade.Well, if you look at a longer time-scale, it turns out, no, she was wrong. Where have we seen that before? A pretend would-be scientist like Al Gore would just ignore any criticism and proof that he's been wrong as all hell about his predictions. A real scientist would want to know why his (her, this time) predictions were "off", to put it nicely and would welcome input that might give some reasons for the discrepancies. Judith Curry is a real scientist, then.
I'll write some more about what we may think about the Judith Curry's of the world after the video. (I give credit to Gateway Pundit article for bringing this to my attention.)
Dr. Curry explained in the interview how the incentives that encourage scientists to become Climate Alarmists work in this "industry" of academic research. This is pretty much what Peak Stupidity explained long ago, but with more detail and her own personal story. After acting like a scientist and working to get to the root of arguments and discrepancies, she was no longer a rock star. She was officially a denier, and life is not as nice when you are a denier.
Judith Curry looks pretty young in some of the pictures of her as a scientist in her early days. One can forgive her lack of rigor and yearning for fame in the political world of Climate Alarmism. However, once I realized this paper on hurricanes was from only 19 years ago, I did the arithmetic on this now 70 y/o lady and realized she was over 50 when she got her big break as the next Carl Sagan or something. She was no wide-eyed young researcher saving the world. She really should have known what was going on politically. She retired from Georgia Tech finally due to the "anti-skeptic bias" and the "craziness" (both her own words) of the political nature of climate science.
Good on her, but what are we to think of her? She let herself go along when they gave her the rock star treatment. She bought into the Climate Calamity™ even if she did think her initial work on hurricanes was correct. That's not very principled. Then, she did know what would happen when she tried to correct her scientific errors and political bias. She stood up anyway.
OK, but I'm not really up for any climate forecasts (her current occupation, in industry) from Judith Curry no matter what they conclude. She showed us that she can be influenced politically
I hate to bring up this sore point, but, say Steve Sailer tried to write more now about a new contagious virus and what we should all do? (It's only the latter part that I had any problem with.) I think he's wise enough to just drop it now. That'd be like your Peak Stupidity blogger here, 20 years from now with a still-humming (somehow!) American economy - with no great turmoil or crash in between - deigning to expound more on our Global Financial Stupidity views. I would not blame you - there reading on your 25 y/o kluged-together computer hooked up to power supplied by a generator run by a guy on a stationary bicycle - for skipping those particular posts.
* I remember his expose of the Lyin' Press, NBC affiliate, when it had rigged up explosives to better "prove" the non-crashworthiness of certain model Chevy pick-up trucks with side-saddle gas tanks. Holy moley, that article is from 1993. I changed "20 years" to "30 years" above. I'd have lost my initial bet.
** Also Penn State University, Purdue, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but I mentioned U-Colorado because the school in Boulder has a well-known program.
*** Of course, there's the common-sense view that increasing sea surface temperatures in the parts of the ocean where hurricanes form and develop would mean bigger hurricanes. However, that's not difficult theoretical science there, just simple observation, based on concepts that have been around since way before Judith Curry.
Comments:
Moderator
Wednesday - May 1st 2024 8:21AM MST
PS: Thanks, Alarmist.
They want to connect weather events with the overall climate, but weather is so variable, a chaotic process that one cannot predict well*. So they go back, as younger Judy Curry did, and look at some weather even trend over well-selected period. Now, since it's not Global Warming anymore, but Climate Change, or Global Climate Disruption (I made that up 12 years back and am proud of it) or whatever, this is easier.
"Yes, that's what we're saying, weather events are becoming more unpredictable due to the Climate Calamity™!" "How do you know that?" "From the predictions from our models, dammit!"
Anyway, much of what you say is covered well in the movie I'll embed later on this week. (I want to get my notes together - this time I took screenshots of the (video-playing) times that I want to go back to and comment on.)
* I already wrote a post on this, but let me say again the the built-in icrap weather app really SUCKS. All I wanted to know a few days back was weather [sic] there was a good chance of rain. The old way was 10%, 30%, 70%, 100%, I believe taken from the NOAA forecasts. Now, they deign to inform me exactly what hour the rain will start, which was no hour - there was a picture of a cloud only. So, I watered all these small trees, and then, later in the day it poured!
These forecasts are getting to be worthless. From what I learned it's the Apple company itself making these. That's pretty easy for Cupertino, California... sunny all day and 75 degrees! (That the default city on these apps.)
They want to connect weather events with the overall climate, but weather is so variable, a chaotic process that one cannot predict well*. So they go back, as younger Judy Curry did, and look at some weather even trend over well-selected period. Now, since it's not Global Warming anymore, but Climate Change, or Global Climate Disruption (I made that up 12 years back and am proud of it) or whatever, this is easier.
"Yes, that's what we're saying, weather events are becoming more unpredictable due to the Climate Calamity™!" "How do you know that?" "From the predictions from our models, dammit!"
Anyway, much of what you say is covered well in the movie I'll embed later on this week. (I want to get my notes together - this time I took screenshots of the (video-playing) times that I want to go back to and comment on.)
* I already wrote a post on this, but let me say again the the built-in icrap weather app really SUCKS. All I wanted to know a few days back was weather [sic] there was a good chance of rain. The old way was 10%, 30%, 70%, 100%, I believe taken from the NOAA forecasts. Now, they deign to inform me exactly what hour the rain will start, which was no hour - there was a picture of a cloud only. So, I watered all these small trees, and then, later in the day it poured!
These forecasts are getting to be worthless. From what I learned it's the Apple company itself making these. That's pretty easy for Cupertino, California... sunny all day and 75 degrees! (That the default city on these apps.)
The Alarmist
Wednesday - May 1st 2024 4:30AM MST
PS
These folks continually conflate climate with weather. As an aside, great alliteration there, niet war? Anyway, we have roughly a century and a half of relatively good weather observations, which by itself is not really enough to make informed inferences about a natural state of the climate, much less whether or not that state is optimal for Mother Gaia. Mixed in with that data is a lot of bad data (95% of US temperature sensors are not installed in a manner consistent with the controlled circumstances that insure their readings are not influenced and biased by factors in their locale, like roads or runways being too close, etc.). Along with that, we are globally recording data at many more global locations for which we have no reliable historical data.
In short, anyone who tells you the Earth has warmed by X° over the past century and a half is peddling junk science pulled out of his or her posterior. Anyone peddling cures like net zero is little more than a high priest plunging a knife into a sacraficial victim’s chest to pull out its beating heart to appease imaginary climate gods.
These folks continually conflate climate with weather. As an aside, great alliteration there, niet war? Anyway, we have roughly a century and a half of relatively good weather observations, which by itself is not really enough to make informed inferences about a natural state of the climate, much less whether or not that state is optimal for Mother Gaia. Mixed in with that data is a lot of bad data (95% of US temperature sensors are not installed in a manner consistent with the controlled circumstances that insure their readings are not influenced and biased by factors in their locale, like roads or runways being too close, etc.). Along with that, we are globally recording data at many more global locations for which we have no reliable historical data.
In short, anyone who tells you the Earth has warmed by X° over the past century and a half is peddling junk science pulled out of his or her posterior. Anyone peddling cures like net zero is little more than a high priest plunging a knife into a sacraficial victim’s chest to pull out its beating heart to appease imaginary climate gods.
Judith Curry is interesting and good - and Stoessel is good too. A video to watch.
She is on my list of decent climatologists etc. - like Thomas Allmendinger, Boris Smirnov, Richard Lindzen, Patrick Moore, Bjorn Lomborg, Steven Koonin etc. - Christian Schlüchter - the Swiss glaciologist who found out that glaciers grow and shrink in the last thousand years not least .i.n.d.e.p.e.n.d.e.n.t.l.y. of CO-2-concentrations.
I vividly remember, when I first talked about him about ten years ago at a meeting with friends at a fine summer evening in the garden of the Konstanz Restaurant "Wessenberg" - the engineeer at the table, who had worked in the weapons-industry before for decades and had retired not long ago was the one who - understood Schlüchter's findings and was willing to talk about them. Most of the others were rather in a state of disbelief - they felt and talked very uncomfortable - : Stressed!
- A difference maybe also in mentality. For me Schlüchter's findings were thrilling, because they are super-practical - and solid. I like it when strong evidence/arguments appears on the scene. I enjoy such moments. - Could be because of my philosophy studies: They teach you that you are wrong all the time - but you get used to it and over time and - - like it to .a.r.g.u.e. (= "give and take reasons"), wether you are right - or not.