Debate on Climate Change Consensus

Climate change is a crisis, we're told.

Anyone who's skeptical or raises any questions about the

alarm is dismissed.

I'm going to bring out two people who agree with you, climate skeptic.

I'm also going to bring out 96 other scientists.

The smug media mock so-called skeptics.

And what is the overwhelming view of the entire scientific community?

Well...

Okay. Okay. Any response to that? Any response?

I, I, I can't, I can't hear you over the weight of

scientific evidence.

The consensus is so strong, there shouldn't even be a debate.

This whole debate should not have happened.

I apologize to everyone at home.

Climate alarmists claim there's an-

Overwhelming scientific consensus

... but.

It's a manufactured consensus.

Researcher Judith Curry says climate scientists have an incentive

to exaggerate risk. Why? What's in it for them?

Fame and fortune.

She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change,

and the media loved her when she published this study saying there

was an

increase in hurricane intensity.

We found that the percent of category four and five

hurricanes had doubled.

Really? Doubled?

And so this was picked up by the media.

The alarmists said, "Oh, here's the way to do it."

It being get the public alarmed.

Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and more destructive.

Tie extreme weather events to global warming.

So this hysteria is your fault.

Well, sort of. Not really. They, they, they would've picked up on it, on,

anyways.

But Curry's more intense hurricanes gave them fuel.

I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and

the alarmists, and I was treated like a rock star.

What does that mean, treated like a rock star?

Oh my God. I was flown all over the place to meet

with

politicians and to give these talks, and lots of

media attention.

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research, years

with low levels of hurricanes.

So like a good scientist, I went in and investigated all that stuff.

She realized her critics were right.

Part of it was bad data. Part of it is natural climate

variability.

So you're the unusual researcher who looks at criticism

of your paper

and actually concluded they had a point.

They had a point, for sure.

Then the Climategate scandal taught Curry that many researchers

aren't so open-minded. Leaked emails showed university climate

scientists conspiring to hide data.

It showed a lot of really ugly things, um,

avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests, trying to get journal

editors fired from their job.

One email read, "If you think this Yale professor

is in the skeptics

camp, get him ousted." Seeing emails like

that made Curry

realize that climate change fanatics had corrupted the

science because there's a climate change industry set up to

reward alarmism.

The origins go back to the 1980s and the UN

Environmental Program.

Some UN officials had a specific agenda.

Anti-capitalism, they hated the oil companies,

and they seized on the

climate change issue as one to move their policies

along.

The UN created what's called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change.

The IPCC wasn't supposed to focus on any benefits

of warming. The IPCC's mandate was to look

for dangerous human-caused climate change.

Obviously, if you're only looking for risk,

that's what you'll find.

Then the national funding agencies directed all the

funding in the field.

If you say, "We're all gonna die, and we gotta spend a ton of money on

this," you get funding. If you say, "We don't know,"

you don't get funding?

No, it, it's more subtle than that.

The announcements of opportunity for funding are really

tied to assuming

that there are dangerous impacts.

So the researchers aren't stupid. They know what they need to say to get

funding.

Exactly.

This is how manufactured consensus happens.

Then even if a skeptic does get funding, it's harder to publish 'cause

journal editors are alarmists.

About 10 years ago, the editor of the journal Science,

she wrote

this political rant about we need to stop emissions now

that was published in Science. So what kind of message does that give?

Promote the alarming papers and don't even send the other ones out for

review.

Getting published is crucial to researchers because that's how they

advance in academia.

If you wanted to advance in your career,

like be at a prestigious university, get a big salary,

have big laboratory space, get lots of grant funding,

be director of an

institute, well, there was clearly one path to go.

So alarmist researchers control the discussion.

They publish lots of scary papers, and alarmist media jump

on those. Time Magazine says, "Climate is everything."

Good Morning America agrees.

Climate change is impacting everything from, uh, conception to pregnancy.

Transportation congestion, the size of frogs,

you know, everything.

Airplane turbulence.

Expect turbulence like this to become more frequent due to climate change.

Childhood obesity.

Climate change is making our children more obese.

Experts say that we have until 2030 to avoid catastrophe.

Activists hear the media and freak out.

Children are starving.

The potential extinction of the human race.

Why don't other scientists who recognize the nonsense push back?

If they work at a university, it's gonna be very uncomfortable for them.

Universities are become idiots, and they punish people who tell the truth?

I mean, I felt the hostility.

Curry was a department chair at Georgia Tech until she

concluded that fossil fuels aren't so terrible.

They want fossil fuels to go away.

When they made life uncomfortable for her, she looked for other university jobs

but was told...

Nobody will hire you because if you Google Judith Curry,

you know, everything that shows up was Judith Curry denier, Judith Curry

serial climate disinformer. At that point, I started making my

plans to transition 100% to the

private sector.

She started this weather forecasting company.

Now climate alarmists smear her as a climate denier

doing it for the money. But she made more money at Georgia Tech.

If I was doing this for the money, I would've stayed at Georgia Tech

and sucked up

my big salary, but that's not who I am.

My personal and professional integrity would not allow me to, to play that

game.

Good for her. It's unfortunate that many university departments

now shut down debate and reward alarmism.

Curry agrees that climate change is a problem, but she says it's not a

crisis. In a few weeks, I'll post our full interview with

a more complete discussion about climate and what scientists really

agree about.