A Critique of the Climate Apocalypse with Dr. Judith Curry — The Climate Realism Show #156 - Environment and Climate News Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Jim Lakely (00:58):
That's right, Greta. It is Friday, and this is the
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(01:20):
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So welcome to you all, and Ihope you will follow all of
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YouTube and Rumble bysubscribing to the Heartland
Institute channel on YouTube andRumble. Okay. We have a big show
today and a very special guest,so let's get rolling. Today, we

(03:07):
have with us Anthony Watts,senior fellow at the Heartland
Institute and the publisher ofthe most influential website on
climate in the world. What's upwith that?
We have Linea Lucan. She's aresearch fellow for energy and
environment policy at theHeartland Institute. And we are
so happy to welcome back to theshow once again, Doctor. Judith
Curry. Doctor.
Curry is the president and coowner of Climate Forecast

(03:28):
Applications Network, CFAN. Inher previous life, she was a
professor and the chair of theSchool of Earth and Atmospheric
Sciences at Georgia Institute ofTechnology. She has testified
before Congress on climatematters at least a dozen times.
She's been the star of severalinterviews of influential people
in new media, including JohnStassel and Jordan Peterson. And

(03:50):
Doctor.
Curry is also the author of manybooks, the latest of which from
2023 being Climate Uncertaintyand Rethinking Our Response,
which I believe the last timeyou were on our program, we
talked about that book. Oh, andshe's also been a speaker at
Heartland's InternationalConference on Climate Change.
Doctor. Judith Curry, it is sucha pleasure to have you back with

(04:11):
us and our audience.

Judith Curry (04:13):
Well, thanks for inviting me. It's always fun to
talk with this group.

Jim Lakely (04:18):
Yes. Should be a lot of fun in the chat for all these
people watching it live and alsowatching it after we post it on
our channel auto archived as wealways do. But like I said, we
have a lot to cover today. It'sbeen a big news week in climate
and energy. And, of course, wewanna talk about a new paper
that doctor Curry and and acolleague had published just

(04:38):
this week.
It's a pretty good paper, and wewill go over that as well. But
first, we'll start the show offas we always do with the crazy
climate news of the week. Hitit, Andy. Thank you very much,

(05:02):
Bill Nye. Safety first.
Safety first. Good thing youwere taking care of that fire
there. Alright. Our first itemtoday is titled Noah Die In.
Anthony Watts found this thisweek.
This is a Facebook post from theBoulder County Democratic Party,
and that's about as progressiveas it gets, Boulder County,
Colorado. And it's describedthis way, and we'll play the

(05:25):
video for you. Boulder hits theground for workers' rights. On
May Day, which I call commieChristmas, but they call
International Workers' Day,protesters staged a die in at
NOAA to symbolize the lives atrisk from climate science cuts.
With over 1,800 NOAA employeeslaid off nationwide, the protest
highlighted the urgency ofprotecting federal workers and

(05:48):
the essential services theyprovide.
Getting involved with your localparty can help turn this protest
into policy change. Alright.Andy, we got the video of that.
It's well, it is what it is. Whydon't you hit that video for us?
Yes. Good.

Good job. Federal workers. Immigrant rights.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Oh, boy.

Jim Lakely (06:17):
Oh, boy. Alright. Well, I guess that could have
gone on and on. Fourteen secondsis quite long enough. And in a
week that we got a new pope, Ilike I thought the the ringing
of the bells and the chimes wasa nice touch.
Andy I'm sorry. Anthony, I wannastart with you because you
shared this video with us. TheHeartland Institute, we haven't
had a good die in at our officesfor quite a while, several years

(06:39):
now, and I'm starting to feelneglected.

Anthony Watts (06:41):
Yeah. It's just amazing what the people get this
impression that since NOAA isbeing trimmed, you know, they're
taking up some programs thataren't necessarily For example,
the billion dollar weatherdisaster thing. They're taking
that out because it's it's likeit's just government backed
propaganda. It's scaring people.So, they're taking out some of

(07:03):
these programs, right?
And these folks treat this as ifthe whole weather service is
going away. Weather forecastsare going to stop, you know.
Rain, storms, pestilence aregonna come from the sky and
destroy us, all this stuff.That's the way they view this.
And, of course, it's acompletely irrational view.
And by the way, speaking ofirrational, get this. I found

(07:23):
that I found that this week. TheNational Weather Service is
putting up their guard. They areordering all their offices to be
on the lookout and, enhancetheir security because a group
of nutballs is out to attack theweather radar stations at NOAA.
Why?

(07:44):
Because there are dangerousdeath rays in the atmosphere.
Seriously, they're that's whatthey're saying. They're saying
this on Twitter. They'rebasically heating up the sky and
causing all kinds of weathermodification and so forth. So
the WSR 88 d radar, a lifesaversince the early nineties, is now
being viewed by a left wingnutballs as some kind of a

(08:05):
weapon against the atmosphere,you know, designed to oppress
us, and therefore, they wanna goout and attack these things.
That's the kind ofirrationalization we are dealing
with here on this side of theclimate equation.

Jim Lakely (08:17):
Yeah. Wow. Well, you know, it's funny, Judy. Right
before we went on the air, youknow, went live today, we were
talking about, you know, thekind of the state of climate
coverage in the media or climatealarmism. And as mentioned here
in the setup for that littlevideo, they're out there hitting
the chimes and having a die inbecause 1,800 NOAA employees had

(08:40):
been dismissed, that the Trumpadministration doesn't feel very
necessary anymore.
And you had remarked that, Iguess other than this Diane,
it's gotten very little mediaattention.

Yeah. The this whole issue, you know, of of
climate change and the activismand the alarmism, you know,
people are losing interest init, you know, as far as I can
tell. The media coverage on itjust isn't there. With regards
to NOAA, it's interesting.They're targeting the Office of
Atmospheric Research, whichfunds the cooperative

(09:17):
institutes, a number of theresearch labs, and the
university grants program.
This is the main thing that'sbeing targeted at NOAA. And you
may not realize it, but Boulderhas 10 NOAA labs. I couldn't
name more than about two orthree of them, so I don't know
what most of them even do. But,you know, if NOAA really hits

(09:48):
this funding like it looks likethey might, I mean, this could
really make Boulder a big partof their population and economy
is tied to these NOAA labs andthe big cooperative institute at
University of Colorado. And soall of the, you know, a lot of
what goes on in Boulder has beensort of subsidized by these
government labs for decades now.

(10:09):
So that'll be a big change forthat community.

Jim Lakely (10:12):
Yeah. It made me think of that song Allentown by
Billy Joel, but they're closingall the climate alarmism
factories down, I guess, inBoulder, Colorado. Alright.
Let's hit our second, itemtoday, a little bit more
substantive. The polar icenarrative is melting.

(10:32):
Now I I wanna get into this.Actually, I am gonna play this
video. We can kinda set this upa I think a little a little bit
by this video by John Kerry, whosaid this at the time he was the
climate czar during Joe Biden'spresidency. I think it's a great
example of combining bad scienceand romantic myth that adds to

(10:53):
the apocalyptic narrative, whichis kind of our topic today. So
go ahead and hit that Kerryvideo for us, Andy.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
The scientists there said to me, Mr. Secretary, if
you really want to understandwhat's happening with climate
change, you have to go toAntarctica. And so I went back
to Washington and told my staff,We're going to Antarctica. And
indeed, I flew out. I voted byabsentee ballot.
I flew out on the very electionday in The United States. And

(11:22):
learning the news, I learnedflying over the Pacific, we
almost thought we'd stay in theAntarctic. But I decided,
obviously, to come back for thefight. But in the Antarctic, it
was magical. I mean, I've neverseen wilderness like that.
There was something eerilygrounding in this. And the

(11:46):
firsthand impact of climatechange that was being described
to me by the, what, nearly 20plus scientists from each of 20
plus countries that go there todo research, chilled me in terms
of beyond the cold, in terms ofwhat we are facing. I was at
ground zero for climate changeat McMurdo Station. As I

(12:10):
listened to these scientistsfrom all over the world and
looked at chart after chartwhere they traced what has been
happening, describing thelatest, deeply alarming evidence
of what is going on, I wasgenerally scared. How do you
translate this into a languagethat the average citizen can
understand and connect to?
I flew by helicopter over thegreat West Antarctic ice sheet,

(12:33):
which now people say isthreatened to perhaps break off
or slide down and go off intothe ocean to melt. I learned how
the warmer water is spillingover the continental shelf and
churning below the ice andcreating instability in

Jim Lakely (12:49):
Yeah. Okay. So even before we get into the data and
analysis that we have queued upto rebut that soliloquy by John
Kerry, I want to ask you, whatdo you think when you hear
powerful people with greatinfluence but no scientific
training say such things withsuch confidence?

Well, he's repeating what he was told. I
don't doubt that there were somescientists there who were
spinning this yarn for him. Imean, what he wanted to hear,
this way they get more funding,they get, you know, their names
in the newspaper, you know,their university or their
institution is happy. So, youknow, I don't think John Kerry

(13:31):
made this stuff up. I thinkscientists were feeding it to
him.
But I think there are scientistswho don't pay very much
attention to the actual data, orthey don't pay much attention to
the uncertainties and trying tounderstand what we don't know
about natural climate andgeologic variability in that

(13:53):
region, which is verysubstantial.

Jim Lakely (13:56):
Yeah, that's true. You definitely heard what he
wanted to hear. All right, solet's Andy, you can pull up the
story. This is from the New YorkPost. This has been covered in
other places, but I thought thispiece from Roger Pelkey Jr, who
I'm sure Doctor.
Curry is familiar with, wecertainly are. He's a brave
scientist. He follows the dataand not the narrative. And he
had a piece in the New York Postthis week. Let me read a little

(14:16):
bit from it.
When it comes to climate change,to invoke one of Al Gore's
favorite sayings, the biggestchallenge is not what we don't
know, but what we know for surebut isn't so. The two new
studies show that the Earth'sclimate is far more complex than
often acknowledged, reminding usof the importance of pragmatic
energy and climate policies. Oneof them, led by researchers at

(14:39):
China's Tangie University, findsthat after years of ice sheet
decline, Antarctica has seen asurprising shift, unquote, a
record breaking accumulation ofice. Doctor. Pelkey notes that
since 02/2002, Antarctica hasseen a steady decline in the
total mass of its glaciers, yetthe new study found the decline
reversed from 2021 to 2023.

(15:03):
A second new paper, a preprintnow going through peer review,
finds a similar change at theopposite end of the planet.
Quote, the loss of Arctic Seaice cover has undergone a
pronounced slowdown over thepast two decades across all
months of the year, the papersUS and UK Authors write. They
suggest that the, quote, pausein Arctic sea ice decline could

(15:24):
persist for several moredecades. Together, the two
studies remind us that theglobal climate system remains
unpredictable, defyingsimplistic expectations that
change moves only in onedirection. Helke then goes on to
note that John Kerry predictedin 02/2009 that the Arctic would
be ice free in the summer by2013, and that didn't happen.
And Al Gore has made similarpredictions that also did not

(15:46):
come true. So again, since we'dso great to have you here, I
want to start with you again,Judy, and maybe get your
reaction to that. I mean, you'vebeen studying climate as a
scientist in academia andoutside now for decades. These
predictions on sea ice werewrong. In fact, they were
unknowable, really, but theywere pushed out there to create
a panic that now seems difficultto stop or maybe easier to stop

(16:09):
now.

Yeah, I mean, I'll start with the Arctic sea ice,
because that's the one that'sgotten the most publicity over
time. But there's a lot ofnatural climate variability
involved in what goes on withthe Arctic sea ice. In terms of
melting, I mean, it's really theocean currents and the heat

(16:32):
transfer from the ocean that'smore effective at causing any
melt than any, you know,infrared CO2 driven heating from
above. And a lot of this relatesto the winds, about how the ice
gets packed and moves aroundfrom, you know, sub basin to sub
basin. So there's just a lot ofvariability tied up with the

(16:53):
circulations.
And, you know, the timing ofcloudiness and, you know, all
sorts of things play into howthe Arctic Sea ice, you know, is
varying. But you saw this bigdrop from about the year
February to 02/2007, a big drop.Okay. And then you had some

(17:15):
fluctuations, and then you had alow year in 2012, and then you
saw some more fluctuations. Butat the end of the day, where
we're at right now is the sameice extent that we really saw in
02/2007.
Okay? So we haven't seen any netchange in, you know, approaching
twenty years. And this

is It's a new stable regime, basically, that
it's reached.

Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, when we see a
big shift in the Atlanticcirculation patterns, this could
actually cause an increase.Natural variability is really
the key driver. Yeah.
There probably is some slowcreep of declining sea ice from

(17:59):
global warming, but it's reallynot in the driver's seat in
terms of what we see ontimescales of a few decades,
which is really driven bynatural variability. Now in the
Antarctic, I mean, ironically, Imean, at McMurdo, there's no I
mean, that's that's one of thefew places on the planet where

(18:19):
there isn't any climate change.This is in the center of the
continent. I mean, that's prettystable climate right there. And
overall, the ice mass ofAntarctic, which we can now
measure with, you know, newsatellite systems.
I mean, it's a delicate balancebetween accumulation of snowfall

(18:40):
and then melting. And we'veactually seen, if you recall, in
2023, there was very littleAntarctic sea ice. I mean, even
during the winter. And this wascaused by winds coming from the
north, strong winds coming fromthe north that kept the ice very
compact and close to thecontinent. So you had a very low

(19:03):
sea ice extent.
And they say, oh my gosh, globalwarming. Well, wasn't. It just
was a particular wind patternthat was actually tied to what
was going on in the stratosphereassociated with the Hunga Tonga
eruption. This was also a yearwhere you had a big Antarctic
ozone hole. So there's all sortsof complicated things going on.

(19:23):
And ironically, that low sea iceperiod allowed more evaporation
from the ocean close to thecontinent, and they had a big
batch of snowfall on thecontinent, which increased the
ice mass balance. So these aresome of the processes that are
going on and trying to blameeverything on, you know, CO2

(19:46):
fueled warming. You know, that'sjust a small piece of what's
going on here.

Linnea Lueken (19:54):
Oh, you're both muted.

Sorry, had to pull the gem there. What I said
was CO2 is a bit player inclimate.

Jim Lakely (20:05):
Terms of scale.

Regional and decadal scale climate
variability, CO2 is a bitplayer.

Jim Lakely (20:13):
Yep. Alright. Very well analyzed. Thank you very
much, doctor Curry. Let's moveon to our third item right here
for our news rundown, and I'vetitled it, funnily, I think,
Bernie and the Jets.
Now socialist senator BernieSanders of Vermont who has
called climate change theexistential threat to humanity

(20:34):
and has proposed getting rid ofall fossil fuels and banning the
internal combustion engine. Hewas interviewed by Brett Bear on
Fox News the other day. Brettasked him about taking private
jets on his, quote, unquote,fighting the oligarchy tour, and
that hit 17 cities from Februarythrough April. And let's just
say that Bernie's reaction ofbeing asked about this hypocrisy

(20:57):
for the first time didn't go toowell for him. Go ahead and play
that, please, Andy.

Speaker 7 (21:05):
Gotten criticized from other people. Free Beacon
says Bernie Sanders spent221,000 on private jets fighting
the oligarchy tour paid for byfriends of Bernie Sanders, that
you've spent millions of dollarsin campaign funds on private jet
travel over the years. How howdo you push back on both of
those things?

Speaker 8 (21:22):
The last time you saw Donald Trump during a campaign
mode at National Airport? No.No.

Speaker 7 (21:28):
No. It doesn't. But the he's also not fighting the
oligarchy.

Speaker 8 (21:31):
No. You you run a campaign and you do three or
four or five rallies in a week.The only way you can get around
to talk to 30,000 people. ThinkI'm gonna be sitting on a
waiting line at United waitingyou know, what, 30,000 people
are waiting? That's the only wayyou can get No apologies for
that.
That's what campaign travel isabout. We've done it in the
past. We're gonna do it in thefuture. And you

Jim Lakely (21:52):
Right.

Just do not change.

Jim Lakely (21:55):
Yeah. I mean, Lynne, I want I do wanna start with
you. I mean, can you imagine asenator sitting in an airport
where all the dirty, smellypeople waiting to board a United
Airlines flight?

He has like three speeches. He has three speeches
a week. He can't stand in line,you know, like James Taylor or
something, president of theHeartland Institute, who
definitely stands in line at theairport to go do three speeches
in a week, sometimesinternational. Yeah. No, it's
nonsense.
But, you know, I you know, itwould be one thing if he wasn't

(22:27):
running around doing this, like,oligarchy tour. Like he said,
you know, Donald Trump takes aprivate jet. I don't have any
issues with people takingprivate jets. I do have an issue
with people taking private jetswhile they're telling the rest
of us that we shouldn't bedriving our cars to and from
work. We should be taking publictransportation because we're
killing the planet withemissions.

(22:47):
That's that's what bothers me.

Jim Lakely (22:49):
Yeah. I mean, the carbon footprint, if you care
about that, of taking privateaviation as opposed to flying
commercial is 20 times higher.So yeah. And he doesn't feel the
need to apologize for that, Iguess.

Yeah. So I think the thing to do to combat this
is that we start spreading therumor that all of the chemtrails
in the sky are caused byburning.

Jim Lakely (23:12):
Anthony, you promised it was gonna be a chem
chemtrails free podcast today,and you just broke your

That was a joke. That was not on a discussion.
Alright.

Jim Lakely (23:21):
Alright. Let's move on to this next one. This comes
from our very own Anthony Wattsat our very own Climate Realism
website, climaterealism.com.Climate change and school days.
Anthony writes a story with theheadline, wrong, Fizz.org.
Climate change isn't causing arise in lost school days.

(23:42):
Anthony writes here, in a recenteditorial published by Fizz.org,
researchers claim that climatechange is driving more powerful
and frequent hurricanes, whichin turn are causing widespread
school closures, labeling it an,quote, overlooked consequence of
our supposedly worseningclimate. This narrative is
false. The available data showsno trend of increasing hurricane

(24:04):
frequency or intensity due tohuman induced climate change.
And if the storms themselvesaren't worsening, the claim that
they are causing more missedschool days due to climate
change collapses under its ownweight.
According to NOAA's GeophysicalFluid Dynamics Laboratory, there
is no strong evidence of anincrease in either the number or
intensity of hurricanes globallydue to human caused climate

(24:26):
change. And if you're wonderinghow any of this relates to kids
missing days of school, Anthonyexplains, the authors of the
phys.org piece make thespeculative leap from, quote,
climate driven hurricanes to,quote, missed school days. But
if their logic runs off therails here, there is no credible
evidence that links climatechange to educational

(24:46):
disruptions. And even if stormrelated school closures are
increasing in some areas, thecause is due to shifts in
administrative policy, liabilityconcerns, and enhanced emergency
response protocols rather thanintense weather. So, Anthony,
obviously, you need to go firston this one.
There seems to be no end to thelong list of, calamities, social

(25:08):
calamities caused by us drivingour SUVs.

Yeah. This is one of the worst cases of a reporter
basically having a narrative intheir head saying, you know,
climate change is makinghurricanes worse. That's that's
all the research they did onthis before they wrote this
piece. They make thatassumption. Climate change is
worsening hurricanes withoutactually looking at any data.
And then they write from thatnarrative. And so they make

(25:32):
these fantastic leaps of illogicto come up with these things
such as, you know, well, it'scausing more lost school days.
But when you go really look atwhat's been going on with
schools over the last thirtyyears or so, I mean, they've
been much more cautious aboutweather and, you know, back when
when I grew up, we had to walkboth ways uphill in the snow to
school, you know, that kind ofstuff. They they would keep

(25:54):
schools open, you know, unlessit was a real calamity. And so
now, even the hint of ahurricane may be hitting Florida
or South Carolina or wherever itmight be, there's school
closures instead of waitinguntil the actual thing gets
here.
So the increase in days can beattributed to changes in policy,
not climate change, but theynever made that connection. And

(26:17):
that's really shoddy journalism.Yeah.

Okay. I have a comment on this one. There is
some nuance here. The biggestissue with hurricanes in recent
years has been inundation andflooding. Okay, compound
flooding from, you know, stormsurge, rivers and heavy
rainfall.
And the exacerbating factor,well, apart from, you know, land

(26:43):
use and building too much stuffin the way of all this, there is
an issue. Since about 2017,there's been a shift in the
frequency of Atlantic landfallsmore towards September and
October and away from August.And this means that these

(27:03):
hurricanes then interact withthe mid latitude storm systems
and produce more rain, or theycan stall like Harvey. So we're
seeing more interactions withlandfalling hurricanes happening
in the fall, interacting withmid latitude storms and

(27:23):
producing more flooding. Soflooding is something that you
want to, it's not like the winddamage, know, it's over in two
hours.
So the flooding is somethingthat can fool you, it can happen
before landfall, and it canpersist for a long time. We of
course saw the huge mess fromHurricane Helene in Western

(27:48):
North Carolina. So there arecomplexities here, and there are
maybe more school closures. Idon't know, it's not something
I've looked at related to, youknow, maybe a shift in when
these hurricanes are happeningover the seasonal cycle. But,

(28:09):
you know, you can't blend thaton CO2.
So, there is some, there isperhaps an issue to look at, but
you can't blame it on CO2.

Right. Yeah. Well, that's the whole narrative
lately. Everything is caused byCO2, you know. There's been a
meme going around on Facebook inthe last week where people have
this they say, I was tying myshoes today, and my shoelace
broke.
Obviously, it was caused byclimate change. Seriously,
that's the kind of mockingthey're doing now because
regular people are starting torecognize that the the level of

(28:44):
of fear mongering that's goingon out there has become absurd.
And so they're starting to mockit now. And I think that that is
a contributes to the decline ofinterest in the whole climate
change thing that's going onright now. That and, of course,
the, the Trump administration issquishing it like a bug,
wherever they can.

(29:04):
But, yeah, here it is. This isgoing around Facebook. It gets a
lot of it gets a lot of repeats.It gets a lot of reposts. People
are laughing at that.
And it's a good meme because itbasically illustrates that the
level of claims are reaching theabsurd. They're getting
desperate. And so we see moreand more absurd claims.

Well, I think some of that you can really see
with the what what I think seemsto be quite a bit of a scam or a
racket that's made just formedia posts. And that's the like
attribution, the individualevent attribution studies that
come out where they go and theysay this storm would have been

(29:48):
this percentage less severe hadwe not been using carbon, you
know, had we not been emittingcarbon dioxide. And it's to me,
all of those, the rapidattribution studies seem to be
just tailor made for headlines.They come out so fast. There's
no way that they could have,especially with hurricanes that

(30:10):
they could have incorporated allthe data because the National
Hurricane Center doesn't evenconsolidate everything and
finalize everything until likepotentially days to weeks after
the hurricane is already over.
So yeah. No, it's veryirritating.

Jim Lakely (30:28):
Yeah. Didn't I hear news this week that NOAA or some
federal agency is ending thecollection of the so called
billion dollar storm thingtracking anymore. I think they
started it in 1997. So actually,the reason I thought of it is I
saw this morning a tombstone,and it's a billion dollar

(30:49):
weather disasters, 1997 to02/2025, rest in peace. So,
yeah.
You know, do you have anythoughts on that, Judy? There it
is up on screen. Thanks forthat.

Yeah. They failed to take account of you know,
various changes, you know, interms of, you know, they tried
to make this look like, youknow, climate change is causing
all this. They failed to, youknow, account for various
inflationary and populationchanges and property development

(31:25):
changes and adaptation changes.You know, they didn't scale for
any of this. And Roger PilkeyJr.
Has called this out as beingcompletely misleading. When you
do the appropriate scaling, youdon't see a trend. But at the
end of the day, if you're tryingto show that global warming

(31:46):
causes worsening hurricanes, Imean, leave the damage data out
of it. You know, just look atthe physics of the storms and
the data, and and try not torelate it to damage because that
is just, you know, far toofungible in terms of all the
many factors that influence it.

Yeah, the whole thing about billion dollar
disasters has been it reinforcesthe need for more climate
research. Know, it's like fromtheir perspective, a disaster
away keeps the budget hatchetaway. And so they just keep
trying to put out more and morestuff to make you think it's
getting worse or bad orwhatever, and we need more

(32:28):
money. And so it boils down toempire building within the
government. And so that's cometoppling down very quickly now.
Course, there's a lot ofscreaming going on with all of
that, but it's it's justifiable.You know, we do not need to have
a government arm of climatepropaganda out there pushing out
things that are not necessarilytrue, that are based on, you

(32:51):
know, illogics leaps of illogicfrom, you know, some indications
of data to something that'stotally irrational. And we've
seen a lot of that. And RogerPiocke Jr. Was very right to
call us out.
And kudos to him for being aspearhead against this nonsense.

Jim Lakely (33:09):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it seems climate realism
is on the rise. I don't just saythat because that's the name of
this show. But we're going totalk about something that I
think bolsters that argument,that is our main topic. And
that's Judy Curry on the climateapocalypse.
You should be visiting her ifyou're interested in this topic
at all. You should be a regularvisitor of her blog, Climate,

(33:31):
etcetera. And she gave a littlesummary of her paper that was
just released this week with apost titled Critique of the
Apocalyptic Climate Narrative.Now, Judy, you wrote on your
blog that you and economistHarry DeAngelo have a new paper,
as I just mentioned, publishedin the Journal of Applied
Corporate Finance. It's titled ACritique of the Apocalyptic

(33:53):
Climate Narrative.
The paper reflects the journal'songoing interest in publishing
articles that analyze importantenvironmental, social, and
governance, ESG, issues in waysthat are useful for investors,
money managers, and corporatedirectors, as well as for the
economists and legal scholarswho study corporate governance.
Now, uh-oh, you know, wementioned ESG, but stay with us

(34:13):
here because I have a feelingthis paper, this is a paper that
the corporate investor audiencethat doctor Curry is targeting
were not maybe expecting this,but maybe relieved to see. So
here, you and Harry D'Angelowrite, the apocalyptic climate
narrative is a seriouslymisleading propaganda tool and a
socially destructive guide forpublic policy. Their narrative

(34:35):
radically overstates the risksto humanity of continued global
warming, which are manageable,not existential. It prescribes
large scale near termsuppression of fossil fuel use
while failing to recognize thehuge costs that such suppression
would inflict on humans becausefossil fuels are currently
irreplaceable inputs forproducing food via ammonia based

(34:57):
fertilizer, steel, cement, andplastics.
This paper details the flaws inthe apocalyptic climate
narrative, including why thethreat from human caused climate
change is not dying and whyurgent suppression of fossil
fuel use would be unwise. Weargue that sensible public
policies would focus instead ondeveloping a diversified
portfolio of energy sources tosupport greater resilience and

(35:21):
flexibility to respond towhatever weather and climate
extremes that might occur. Weidentify nine principles for
sensible US public policiestoward energy and discuss
implications of the flaws in thenarrative for investors and
their agents. Now, doctor Curry,I applaud your work and your
adherence to science and dataand not alarmism. And I imagine

(35:41):
the analysis and data and theconclusions of this paper might
be quite lonely in the academicliterature.
I wonder if you can just startus off talking a little bit
about this paper and what youfound.

Okay. Well, just a little bit of backstory. You
know, my day job, you know, aspresident of climate forecast
applications network, we have alot of clients in the insurance
and the energy sector broadlydefined. So, you know, I work
with them to help understand andmanage their weather and climate

(36:15):
related risk. And I've alsohelped several companies to work
through the ESG process.
And I'm continually, especiallymy insurance clients, mostly
insurance linked securities,their investors are always
saying, you know, like the fundmanagers are saying, you know,

(36:39):
this is what we think is gonnabe happen. This is how we should
allocate our money. And then theinvestors say, what about global
warming? You know, and they haveto come up with some sort of an
argument to say, know, if youwere just going invest based
strictly on a global warmingargument, you know, you're going

(37:00):
to lose a lot of money and Ihave to help them figure out how
to make that case. Was maybe twoyears ago, I was invited to
testify before the SenateBanking Committee, Senator White
House's committee on the impactof global warming on the

(37:20):
insurance sector.
And I wrote, you know,testimony, you know, explaining,
you know, where I thought allthis was going and what was
wrong with it. And, you know,with the ESG and investing. And
when Harry DeAngelo, hecontacted me, you know, some
months ago, you know, and had adraft of a paper that he wanted

(37:43):
my take on it. And he wanted topublish it in the Journal of the
Corp. Applied Corporate Finance.
He said the editor, you know,wanted him to submit a paper on
this. And I didn't like thefirst draft of the paper because
it was a bit of a polemic. And Ithought, you know, I was
interested in this audience. Andso we decided to collaborate.

(38:06):
But basically, I, you know, tooka lot of the arguments from my
book, Climate Uncertainty andRisk, you know, and summarized
them in terms of, you know, isthis really, you know, the
climate crisis isn't what itused to be.
A lot of these arguments that Imade in my book, and we tailored
them to this particularaudience. Specifically with

(38:31):
regards to ESG, I mean, arestruggling, you know, to show
some harm to their company ortheir activities that would be
caused by human caused warmingon timescales of maybe thirty
years, because that's, you know,the length that we're looking
at. I mean, this is a timescalewhere natural weather and

(38:53):
climate variability dominates,you know. And so what are they
supposed to say? You know, aheat wave might be, you know,
two tenths of a degree warmer.
What kind of an impact is that?You know, so there's very little
they can show. And and so it'svery frustrating for them to try

(39:13):
to make up some sort ofnarrative. And so people use the
8.5 extreme emissions scenariosto try to show an impact. And,
of course, real policymakershave abandoned the extreme
emissions scenarios since 2021.
You know, it's only thescientists who keep pushing the
extreme emissions scenario, notpeople who energy economists who

(39:40):
realize that these are totallyimplausible scenarios, and
policymakers have even abandonedthem. So we have this little
fiction keeping this whole thingafloat. And then the other irony
thing that you're supposed todo, this is part of the
governance part of ESG. You'resupposed to warn your
stockholders of any strandedassets that you might have

(40:04):
because of all this. And whatthey really mean is, petroleum
and coal related assets.
All of this is going to bedefunct, and you're going to
lose money. And the real ironyof this is right now it looks
like biggest stranded, potentialstranded assets would be

(40:25):
offshore wind turbines. So thoseare the ones that are looking
and even onshore wind that arelooking, you know, in a decade
or two, my guess is that a lotof that is going to be stranded.
So it's really misguided. Youknow, some of the ideas behind
ESG, you know, in terms of, youknow, environmental

(40:46):
responsibility and stuff, youknow, they're just fine.
And being aware of yourvulnerability of your supply
chains to extreme weather. Imean, those things are all good.
But the real motivation for thisis related to human caused
climate change and the drive toget rid of fossil fuels. And so

(41:07):
it really torques companies toeither waste their time putting
together these reports, and todo a real thorough report with
the climate impact assessment,you know, can cost upwards of
200 ks if you hire these firmswho have developed a cottage

(41:29):
industry and downscaling themodels and impact models and
stuff like that. Or worse yet, Imean spending that money and
wasting all that time is onething, but worse yet, it can
guide your investments inunfortunate directions.
Not only can you lose money onthings like offshore wind, but
there's an opportunity cost.There's better places for your

(41:52):
money to go, okay, that is beingtaught by this whole ESG game.
So these are some of the issuesthat we try to address. Going
through all the science bits,you know, most of this comes out

(42:15):
of my book Climate Uncertaintyand Risk, if you're familiar
with that. So there's, it'sreally, the climate crisis isn't
what it used to be.
We're no longer using theextreme emissions scenario. Even
the IPCC agrees that the extremehigh values of climate
sensitivity are unlikely, and soforth and so on. You know, there

(42:42):
needs to be more of a realistic,pragmatic approach for companies
to try to deal with theseissues, you know, make sure they
have enough energy. I mean, thebiggest issue facing a lot of
these companies is having enoughenergy, especially with the AI
and the need for data centersand everybody adopting this

(43:05):
technology. There's a hugeexplosion in the need for
electricity.
So, mean, this is the biggestproblem facing these companies,
not trying to carbon credits andall this kind of thing. So, you
know, just trying to give moreof a rational basis for

(43:28):
companies and investors to tryto cope with this issue. And,
you know, I think what I'mhearing from the new Secretary
of Energy and Secretary ofInterior and the EPA is that
they're looking for pragmaticapproaches. They're not looking

(43:52):
just nuke the whole thingbecause they realize we can have
this windshield wiper thing backand forth between Republican
administrations versusDemocratic administrations. The
way I read it, they're lookingfor some sort of pragmatic,
sensible compromise to moveforward on a rational twentieth

(44:14):
century energy transition andreduce our vulnerability to
extreme weather and make sureeverybody has enough energy.
So, you know, I I think that'swhere this is going. And to
worry about real pollutionrather than, you know, these

(44:34):
Biden put in place so many ofthese stringent anti pollution
things designed to make itimpossible for a coal plant to
operate. And, you know, puttingit at levels that make no sense
for human or ecosystem health.So, you know, a lot of
nonsensical things have beengoing on. We just try to lay

(44:55):
out, you know, a rational basisfor moving forward in a sensible
way on this stuff.

Yeah. One of the most nonsensical things that's
been going on with the climatenarrative in the past decade or
more has been focusing on severeweather equals climate change.
And in every situation, it seemslike when you actually look at
the data, it actually fails. Butyou have a paragraph in your
paper I want to highlight thatsays, second, the risks from

(45:23):
human caused global warming aredifficult to separate credibly
from natural weather and climatevariability. And the risk to a
large degree reflect thevulnerability vulnerabilities of
less developed countries andpoorer population generally.
Increasing wealth andproductivity will continue to
reduce humanity's vulnerabilityto weather and climate related

(45:44):
risk. And that is so true. Imean, you look at what we what's
happened in the last century inThe United States and around the
world. As we have become morewealthy, more affluent, more
knowledgeable, enabled by fossilfuels, by the way. We have been
better at predicting hurricanes,getting people out of the way,

(46:05):
predicting tornadoes, andgetting people out of the way,
you know, mitigating against sealevel issues, mitigating against
all kinds of weather events.
And so we're going to get evenbetter at that as the future
comes our way. And, you know,we're going to have better
models for predicting weather.We're going to have better

(46:26):
systems for the mitigation ofthe effects. And so, what
Doctor. Curry has basically donehere in this one paragraph is
basically created a path for thefuture that's, like you say,
pragmatic.
And I applaud you for that.

Thanks, Anthony.

It's also pretty funny, you know, when you were
talking about the things thatTrump is doing to unwind a lot
of what Biden had done inprevious administrations had
done, especially with regards toagencies kind of misusing their
power. Like, something cameacross my feed this morning
about how the US GeologicalSurvey has been asked to stop

(47:10):
focusing all in on climatechange stuff and actually start
doing some geological surveys.So that's pretty incredible. I
like to hear that. That was verynice.

Yeah. Everybody's gotten on the bandwagon of
trying to save the planet. Wemust do something, you know, and
it's invaded virtually everygovernment organization. And so
Trump is right to get thesepeople back on track to their
core emissions.

Jim Lakely (47:37):
Well, I mean, Judy, you've talked about this a lot.
I mean, this is where thefunding is. And, you know, if
you put climate change, you canbasically research anything your
heart desires as long as you putand the impact on climate change
in the proposal. And the federalgovernment has been funding that
for decades now. And there's anew sheriff in town, and he's

(47:58):
not going to be willing to payfor that sort of stuff anymore.
So it seems to me that it mightbe drying up because that's the
incentive for a lot of this, Ithink.

Well, okay. The funding, they're just not
funding climate scientists likeme. But the National Institute
of Health, if you want to get aproposal funded by the National
Institute of Health, you somehowfit the words climate change in
there, and you have a muchbetter chance of getting funded.
I mean, you know, it'sridiculous. I mean, completely

(48:26):
ridiculous.
But that's the game, okay, thatpeople have to play. And I
think, as far as I understandit, proposals at NSF and NOAA
and federal funding agencieslike that are being flagged for
certain keywords, not thatthey're being thrown out, but

(48:46):
they're being flagged for extrascrutiny. I certainly hope that
fundamental climate dynamicsresearch will continue, but some
of this impacts work, wherepeople just look at the output
of climate models and try tofind something scary. You know,
it just isn't useful. But, youknow, so I'm hoping we can get

(49:09):
back to basics in climateresearch.
That would

Jim Lakely (49:12):
be good. Yeah, before we get to the Q and A
here from our audience, we havequite a few questions already.
What kind of reaction has thispaper gotten or what kind of
feedback have you gotten fromboth the corporate business
community and you know, fellowscientists and researchers?

Okay, well, Harry sent preprints to a number of
people that he knew in theeconomics and business
community, you know, severalhundred, you know, responses
from a lot the vast majoritywere very favorable, you know,
maybe two of them were, youknow, sort of hysterical, but

(49:50):
the consensus and, know, allthis kind of thing. And, this is
just gonna be a disaster ifpeople pay attention to this
paper. Were a few reactions likethat, but most of them were, Oh,
well, this is a lot of materialthat I didn't know. I mean, this
puts it into perspective. Thismakes sense.
So I was very gratified by that.And then when it was published,

(50:12):
I started tweeting and posted anarticle on my blog, and this
gave the paper more exposure in,you know, the atmospheric and
environmental and energy space.I think the paper has been
downloaded maybe some 3,500times or something. Still early

(50:34):
days, the paper was justpublished. So it is getting some
readership and also I thinkAnthony post cross posting this
on what's up with that also.
I mean help the paper downloadsand help, you know, spread the
word. But I'm hoping, you know,the article gets some traction,
because, you know, there's a lotof common sense. And I think it

(50:57):
resonated with a lot of people.Yeah, I'll also send a copy of
the paper to my clients, youknow, in the insurance and
energy sector, because they faceall these kind of issues too. So
I'll see what kind of a responseI get from them.
I'll probably do that early nextweek.

Jim Lakely (51:17):
All right. And we'll and we'll put a link to your
blog post on this and also thepaper itself in the description
of this video so people cancheck it out for themselves.

Great. Thank you.

Jim Lakely (51:28):
All right. Well, let's We do have a lot of
questions for you, Judy, and therest of the panel here. So why
don't we get going with that?One of our favorite parts of
this show. So Linea, take itaway.
Alright. That's a morecontroversial drop.

Yeah. I made a joke behind the scenes. I'm
gonna get out my handy dandynotebook with that with the with
the intro the way it is there.Okay. Thank you very much.
So I'm going to address a coupleof kind of funny questions that
we have from some of our usualviewers today to start. And that
is from Chris, who says, isn'tSterling back from Rome yet?

(52:08):
Sterling Burnett, our otherpanelists on the show, who is,
in fact, the Archbishop ofRancher Berry. He is not back
from Rome. No.
He unfortunately was not able tojoin us today, but he'll
appreciate knowing that peoplewere asking for him. All right.
Let's see. John Hunter says,where's Al Gore these days?

(52:29):
Anybody seen him?
Anthony, where is Al Gore?

No idea.

He popped up. I I saw him. He popped up somewhere,
you know, spouting the samestuff. I said, oh, haven't seen
Algar in a while. And I spottedthis within the last few weeks.
So he's still out there stillsaying the same things. Again,
people are obviously aren'tpaying too much attention to him
anymore.

Yeah. I think what's happened with a lot of
the climate alarmists MichaelMann did this. He and and some
of the other ones, they movedfrom Twitter over to this other
platform called Blue Sky, whichthey basically did that to get
away from criticism. And,they've got their own little
click going on over there. And Ithink Gore's over there too.

(53:16):
And so what's happened is, istheir visibility has actually
gone down because they've movedto this other platform that's
not mainstream. And they get tohave their own conversations
where they're reinforcing eachother's egos and ideas and so
forth and so on, you know, andman can blather all he wants and
not have to worry aboutcritiquing because all of his
acolytes will go, oh, that'swonderful. That's perfect.

(53:38):
That's visionary. All that otherrubbish that they think because
they don't have criticalthinking skills.
But I think that's what'shappened here with our climate
cabal in general. They'veisolated themselves now, from
social media to preventcriticism, and they're getting
ignored or just looking likethey've disappeared.

Yeah. Michael Mann, he had an announcement on
his Twitter that he was leavingTwitter on January 20 when Trump
is inaugurated largely becauseMichael Mann hates Elon Musk,
not to mention hates DonaldTrump. So, you know, all his
little minions followed him andand left. And you're right. Now

(54:19):
they just have a big echochamber over there, and nobody's
paying attention.

Yep.

All right. Excellent. Let's see. This is a
quick one. I'm not actuallysure.
This Ian oh, I think the answeris yes to this. But Ian McMillan
says, and there are volcanoesunder the Antarctic ice sheet,
right?

Yes, for sure. The number 80 comes to mind, and I'm
trying to figure out what partof the West Antarctic ice sheet
was actually covered by that.But there are a lot of
geothermal heat flux coming up,and there was actually one
active volcano. The WestAntarctic ice sheet is

(55:06):
uplifting. It also has there's alot of geologic activity in that
region.
Believe me, everything on globalwarming is just really
misguided. A lot of geologicactivity.

Awesome. Okay. This is an interesting question.
I wonder if Anthony might havean interesting answer and as
well as Doctor. Curry.
So Chris Nisbet asks, does lesssea ice cover actually allow for
more heat to escape from thesea? So inherently, it's self
regulating.

Yeah, that's a good question. The answer is
yes. It's not only about heat,it's also about evaporation and
snowfall. Okay. So we saw thisin Antarctica, where the sea ice
extent was reduced because thewind was just pushing it all
towards the continent.
That enabled more water vaporand more snowfall to fall on the
continent. So there's boththermal and rainfall kind of

(56:07):
feedbacks.

How does albedo change too?

Albedo change too. So it's lots of interesting
processes, not just like a oneway causality associated with
CO2 increasing.

This is another interesting question from
Gilbert Guise, who asks, I'mcurious, what are your thoughts
on polar shifting and climateeffects? And I think what he
means is magnetic polar

Well, there is probably something there, but
people aren't paying attentionto it. And that sort of
surprises me, because if youtalk to planetary scientists,
you know, I'm talking about, youknow, Mars or Saturn or
whatever, the magnetic field isreally a big part of how they
understand and explain theatmosphere of those planets. And

(57:02):
I asked the planetaryscientists, well, why don't you
do magnetic field modeling, youknow, for the Earth? Oh, that's
way too complicated, so we don'tdo it. Woah, okay, that was sort
of a signal that there'sprobably something there, but
people aren't looking at it.
You know, that's one of thoseknown unknowns that people

(57:25):
really should pay attention to.I don't know what kind of
effect. I would be verysurprised if it had no effect.

Yeah, but whether it's a large effect is the
question.

I don't know. Yeah, it could. It could. I
don't know.

That's the honest answer that a lot of scientists
won't do. They don't wanna say,we don't know, because they
wanna appear like they knoweverything or they're, you know,
on top of their game orwhatever. But the honest answer
that you just gave isrefreshing, and we need more of
that.

Absolutely. If

Jim Lakely (58:00):
you don't know, you can't impose the policy
preferences that you you want toimpose. Exactly.

That and I think that, you know, lay people
really hate hearing I don't knowfrom scientists a lot of the
time. So I think and especiallygovernment people. Right. So I
think there's also probably alot of pressure on scientists to
manufacture an answer. Theyshouldn't be doing that, but I
think there's a lot of pressureto do it.
So nothing as it seems says, askJudith about the Heinrich event

(58:29):
that was at the end of theYounger Dryas.

Okay. Well, Heinrich, you know, this is like
huge fluctuations in globaltemperature, like, after the end
of the previous ice age. Andpeople still don't quite
understand what caused them. Ithink it was feedbacks from the
sea ice and changing massbalance of glaciers, ocean

(58:55):
circulation patterns, and allthese interactions. So it was,
you know, a lot of big changeswent on during the period that
we don't have convincing simpleexplanations, but it was almost
certainly associated withthermodynamic feedbacks

(59:18):
associated with ice sheets andalso large scale ocean
circulations.
Natural climate variability inother words.

Absolutely. Okay. We have this is a good question
from Gustavo. Oh, I'm sorry,Gustavo. Your your name is gonna
kill me here, but I think he'sfrom Portugal.
And he says, one claim made byalarmist that is the core issue
is not unprecedented warming,but rather the rate of warming,

(59:48):
which prevents ecosystems fromadapting. How true is this?

Okay. Whether or not the rate of warming that
we're seeing is unusual issomething we don't know, largely
because, you know, the thegeologic, you know, you look at
the hockey stick and all thoseeven longer records going back
ten thousand years ago, the timeresolution is like three hundred

(01:00:13):
to five hundred years. So toidentify a fifty year spike of
warming, you know, you justsimply can't resolve it in those
data sets. So almost certainly,this is not unprecedented rate
of warming, but we're unable todocument this because our
paleoclimate proxies don't havea small enough time resolution

(01:00:37):
for us to resolve this.

Linnea Lueken (01:00:43):
Awesome. Great questions today, you guys. Thank
you. Let's see. Diane, I seeDiane Selby has two questions
about hurricane season thisyear.
I'm gonna save that in case wehave time, Diane. We're
definitely gonna have ahurricane season starter episode
Once we get a lot of thatinformation and we'll have

(01:01:04):
hurricane experts on again, likeStan or someone. So we will This
is a big part

Judith Curry (01:01:09):
of what I do is hurricane seasonal hurricane
forecasting. So if you want toask me, I'm good.

Oh, sure. Okay. So we can ask it.

Anthony Watts (01:01:16):
We're good.

Okay. So Diane Selby asks, what's the hurricane
predictions for 2025, and howwas hurricane prediction for
2024? How accurate was it?

Okay. Okay. We'll start with 2024 first. Most
forecast providers werepredicting a crazy active
season. There was recordAtlantic temperatures, and they
expected a La Nina to occur.
The main metric that people lookat for seasonal forecast is the

(01:01:47):
accumulated cyclone energy.Okay, so average since 1995 is
about 135. The average forecast,ACE forecast last year was two
fifteen, which with some as highas two forty. Okay, the end of

(01:02:07):
season ACE accumulation was 168.My company nailed it last year.
Our forecast starting December,the season before, ranged from
161 to 171. So as far as I know,my company is the only one that
nailed it. For this season,we're also looking at another

(01:02:29):
active season. Most of theforecasts are coming in around
150 for ACE, which is stillabove average activity even for
this active period since 1995.My company is a little higher
than average at around 170.

(01:02:51):
In terms of landfalls, againwe're looking at higher than
average landfalls in The U. S,and we're looking at them
focused on Florida and the GulfCoast rather than the Atlantic
Coast. So that's what I seeright now. There will be a new
batch of seasonal forecastscoming out in early June. So if

(01:03:14):
you time your hurricane episodeto be, you know, after mid June,
I think you'd have a goodrepresentative sample of
forecast to talk about.

Awesome. Well, there you go, Diane. Thank you
so much. Okay. Let's see.
I'm going to get another onethat's directed directly at
Doctor. Curry. So this is fromDavid Schnare, who says,
question for Judy, are the newPhDs in climate taking more
rational positions than thehardcore of my generation?

No, it's getting worse. The current cohort, okay,
with all this, what I would say,DEI stuff in the universe, I was
talking to a faculty member atone of the premier, at the AMS
meeting, at one of the premier,you know, departments for
atmospheric science research.And the faculty member said, we

(01:04:12):
can't flunk, we have to passeverybody through the PhD
qualifying exam, otherwisethere'll be a lawsuit or
something. So we pass all thesestudents in that are, you know,
some of which are marginallyqualified, and then they all
want to do a thesis where theyanalyze the output of climate
models to try to find some scaryimpact so they can do a press

(01:04:35):
release and, you know, get a lotof publications and get a job at
some, you know, NGO think tankthat pays a big salary. So, you
know, that's what I see comingdown the pike.
There's a few universitydepartments that have kept true,
you know, to studying climatedynamics and really having a

(01:04:58):
very rigorous program, butthey're the exception rather
than the rule. So I don't see inthe current cohort that are PhD
students, I think it's gonna bethe worst cohort yet.

Do you think it's possible, Judy, that the wins on
that will kind of change evenwithin that group if there ends
up being some kind of pushbackin their industry towards, you
know, against kind of alarmismand against the overuse of
models?

Because the people who the cohort who are attracted
to get these degrees, they wantto save the world, they're
environmental crusaders, are notfundamentally physicists who
want to understand, you know,the climate system. So we've had
the wrong personality typeapplying into these programs,

(01:05:51):
and the universities havecapitulated and keeping them
happy so they can keep the millturning. So I think we just need
a new cohort. Okay, once thefunding dries up for a lot of
this kind of what I would callapplied climate research, and
there's modest grants to supportclimate dynamics research, then

(01:06:14):
we'll get back to the traditionof attracting physics based
students, you know, into thefield to do a serious PhD. So,
it's going to take a while.

And I have another related question up on
screen here from over underabove who says, Do you think
pragmatism and realism will everprevail? And in terms of
forecasting, if it does, howlong do you think it's going to
take?

Well, I think we've seen a seismic change, you
know, with the Trumpadministration. I mean, we now
realize how much of all thisalarmism was just pure politics.
You know, people don't reallycare when the politics change,
they just move on to somethingelse. It's not like they're, you

(01:07:02):
know, all of the just stop oiland all these people, you know,
they've just moved on. GrettaThunberg has moved on.
You know, all of these peoplehave moved on because it's no
longer the political issue dujour. I mean, the wind have gone
from the sails of this issue.So, you know, I think, you know,

(01:07:23):
it's gonna take a little bit. II think there's a sensible
approach, you know, with the theTrump administration and the EPA
Department of Energy andDepartment of an Interior who
are gonna tackle this issue in asensible way from what I
understand. So, you know, Ithink that's a good thing.
You know, if the tables turn inthe next election and Democrats

(01:07:46):
are back in power, will theythen embrace climate change like
Joe Biden did? I suspect theywon't. I suspect there'll be
other issues that they think aremore important. So, you know,
this may be a change point.

They a tendency to move on very quickly when it
something becomes unpopular.

Jim Lakely (01:08:08):
Right. Well, again, if the funding dries up, then
that that that ends it. I mean,there are a lot there are a lot
of very deep pocketed not a lot,but there are some deep pocketed
so called progressiveorganizations out there.
Oligarchs. Oligarchs.
You could use that word. That'sright. Funding journalism that
pedals only alarmism, and we'llsee how long that continues.

Yeah.

From Kite Man Music, we have, what was the CO2
level during the 1970s ice ageprediction?

I'm trying to remember. I think it was about
03:30.

I'm looking it up right now.

Yeah, 03:30 is what I'm thinking.

Will have it

for you Ask

Gruk.

Yeah.

Gruk, is this true?

Gruk, is this true?

In 1975, it was about 330 or two Wow.

Right on it, Judy. Well done. Now

is that a good thing that you were able to pull
that right out right out of yourmind, doctor Courier, because
you've been looking at it fortoo long?

My PhD thesis, you know, during the 70s, and I
remember, you know, the standardwas three ten that everyone was
using. Said, you know, because Ihad a radiative transfer, I
said, you know, CO2 isincreasing, I better update that
value. And then I updated it tothree thirty. And again, it was
less than a 10% difference. Soit wasn't huge.

(01:09:43):
But I remember, that's why Iremember that number. I mean,
that's a very long time toremember anything.

This is a really good question from David
Cunningham, who says, forDoctor. Curry, what research
should be funded at present, andwhat are important questions to
attack?

Okay, the key topics to attack are sun climate
connections, including solarindirect effects. There's not
enough attention paid to that.General issues related to
natural climate variability,both in the oceans, ice sheets,
and geologic type processes. Weneed more funding of that. We

(01:10:23):
need to better understand hownatural climate variability
influences extreme weatherevents.
So we get like certain regimesof activity and quiet periods
and better understand that so weknow how to predict things, you
know, ten, thirty years down theroad. So investors, insurance

(01:10:47):
companies, whatever, can makedecisions about infrastructure.
There's still a huge amount ofresearch that needs to be done
on clouds, you know, all thedifferent scales of motion, we
still don't have that figuredout in a way that we can
appropriately include clouds andclimate predictions. We need to

(01:11:13):
just basic climate dynamicsissues broadly defined. We've
lost a whole generation ofclimate dynamicists because
everyone just looks at theoutput of climate models.
They don't think about theprocesses anymore. How the
oceans transport heat and carbonand digest carbon is a big one.

(01:11:37):
A lot of uncertainties in thecarbon cycle, both in the land
portion of the carbon cycle andthe ocean part of the carbon
cycle. We can throw magneticeffects out there. I mean,
should be looking at that.
So there's a whole host ofthings that we don't
sufficiently understand. Andwe've stopped investigating

(01:11:58):
these issues, not completely,but it's just so much easier to
analyze the output of climatemodels and try to write a quick
and easy paper and get aheadline.

Absolutely. Well, we've gone past the one hour
mark, but Doctor. Currie, ifyou're willing to answer a few
more questions. Okay. Okay.
Awesome. Great. We've got awhole lot of questions. I'm
trying to pick ones that areones that we haven't frequently
covered before or ones that arevery specific to your work. Oh,

(01:12:35):
here's one that's kind of alittle bit of a fluff question,
but I think it's good.
This is from Tech and he says,has anyone approached Doctor.
Curry about turning climateuncertainty and risk into a
documentary or movie?

Well, no. I mean, I've done, you know, several
hundred podcasts on the book andmany interviews and stuff like
that. I don't think, it's reallya philosophy of science book in
many ways, so I don't think itlends itself into a movie. Yeah,

(01:13:09):
I

I'm almost afraid to say this, but people in the chat
can leave who they would like tohave play Doctor. Curry in the
film version of her film.

Yeah, we had this discussion a while ago. I think
we came up with Jodie Foster.

Jodie Foster.

Perfect. Alright.

It's like in the movie Contact, you know?

Yeah. Okay. Chris Nisbet asks, what is the primary
problem with rapid attributionstudies that the mainstream
media doesn't seem interested inasking about?

Good question. I mean, I was just writing a
chapter for something on thistopic this past week. First off,
people don't look far enoughback in the data, you know, in
the historical data. Half thetime, they don't even look
before 1950. There are plenty ofextreme events occurring early

(01:14:07):
in the first half of thetwentieth century and in the
nineteenth century.
And then there's longerhistorical records. Then if you
look at the paleoclimaterecords, some of them, you know,
sedimentary analyses that arelocal, you can find a lot of
extreme events much worse thananything we're looking at. So

(01:14:27):
most extreme events fail thedetection test to identify
anything that's unusual. Okay.But even if you go ahead and you
try to do an attribution likethe World Weather Attribution
Group in The UK and Europe.
I mean, they crank these thingsout, you know, within a week of

(01:14:50):
the event, you know, and theyrun regional climate models with
current levels of CO two and preindustrial levels of CO and
compare that and then try tomake up something related. They
say it's a one in a thousandyear event. It's three fifty

(01:15:11):
times more likely. All thesestatistics that make absolutely
no sense, they do not have adata distribution that can
support those kind ofconclusions. The climate models
are not fit for purpose forsimulating most of these extreme
events.
So it's mostly just fairlymeaningless stuff.

They're basically nothing more than headline
generators. That's all they do.

Oh, that's their objective.

That's their Right after the headlines.

That's their objective, to try to, you know,
amp up the alarm so people willstop burning fossil fuels, and
to get the headlines. I mean,that's their stated purpose. You
know, the world weatherattribution, you can find those
kinds of statements right ontheir webpage.

Here's a good one from Ian who says, anthropogenic
water emissions are alsosignificant and water is a far
more powerful greenhouse gasthan carbon dioxide. So why do
they claim that carbon dioxideis a driver, but water is merely
a feedback?

Well, depends on how you define your system. So
if you define a climate modelwithout a carbon cycle, okay,
then CO2 is an external forcingagent, whereas CO2 can evaporate
and rain out and, you know, fallback down. So that's a feedback.
But in the Earth system modelsnow, where they actually have an

(01:16:40):
interactive carbon cycle, CO2 isactually a feedback also in
those models. So, it depends onhow you define the system.

All right.

So. These are good questions.

They're really good questions. You guys are on
it today. All of our wonderfulviewers. How about this one from
a viewer I have not seen before?Croikey Is Antarctica land ice
net gaining or is this unknown?

Well, we just had the paper that we talked about
where it was increasing for awhile then decreasing. Now it's
turned the corner to increasing.Increasing. And this is the East
Antarctica, the main continent.The West Antarctic ice sheet is
the unstable one, the one that'sa marine ice sheet.

(01:17:37):
Like if you took the ice sheetaway, the actual part of the
continent would be way below sealevel. So this is an unstable.
And this is unstable becauseit's a marine ice sheet, it's
unstable from geothermal heatflux and even under ice
volcanoes, and is being possiblydestabilized to some extent from

(01:18:02):
CO2 driven warming. So the bulkof the ice is in the East
Antarctic, and that's verystable, Whereas the West
Antarctic is the unstable,unstable one.

Let's see. This one's kind of a general
question, but I think it's onethat we might wanna talk about
for a second from Walter whosays, wonder if anyone has
calculated how much money hasbeen sent on green energy in the
last forty years in taxpayersubsidies and higher energy
costs. I think it was energy.Imagine if that had been spent

(01:18:43):
on nuclear.

Oh, yeah. No. I think people have done these
calculations. I can't cite themoff the top of my head, but no.
We we we took the wrong path.
We should have been investinginvesting in nuclear all along.
But, you know, Greenpeace andsome of these other
environmental groups, I I thinkthey actually hate nuclear worse
than they hate fossil fuels.They still hate nuclear. But I

(01:19:08):
think the international politicsare turning in favor of nuclear
now, and hopefully we'll see arapid expansion. I think Doug
Bergen, Department of Interior,is trying to figure out how to
make the permitting and all thiskind of stuff far more efficient

(01:19:28):
and quick so that we can buildnuclear power plants in six
years, not sixteen years.

Yep. Here's a good one from our longtime
viewer, Bob Johnson, who asks,are the oceans boiling?

Well, not if you dipped your toe in it lightly.
Actually, oceans since last yearhave cooled off quite a bit.
It's pretty striking since fromwhat

they Rhetoric has heated up.

Alright. Let's see. Here's an interesting
question from Tech who says, candoctor Curry compare the quality
of code from her time inacademia versus her time in
private industry?

Okay. Code, well, I mean, my time in academia,
okay, software packages are muchbetter now. Like, we used to
have to code a lot of things byhand. Now, we use MATLAB, you
know, there's all thesepackages, including AI packages,

(01:20:35):
that you have very robust codethat you can apply and integrate
into your into your specificcode. So I think coding is
better.
AI is coding. I mean, we'veplayed around a little bit with
that to, you know, pose aproblem to AI and have it code.
And AI is pretty powerful atcoding. So I think overall,

(01:20:59):
coding is better than when itwas way back when. I mean, you
know, debugging a program and,you know, I mean, I started, you
know, in the bad old days, youknow, decks of computer cards,
and two boxes.
My program was two boxes ofcards. And you would feed it

(01:21:21):
into a card reader, and you'dwait overnight for the results,
and then you'd have one littleproblem, and oh shoot, have to
fix that card and then start theprocess all over again. And so
it was a massively slow processin the old days. And the
computers, you know, themainframe computers that I was
using back then, order more yourcell phones in order of

(01:21:43):
magnitude more powerful. So, youknow, computing is in a much
better place now than it wasback in the old days.

Yeah. I was in that era, learned on the era of
punch cards and paper tape andteletype machines and deck
writers and all that stuff.Yeah. We've come a long way from
that. Alrighty.

Just a couple more here, then we'll have to
get going. Let's go. BoxwoodGreen, who I'm not sure I've
seen in the chat before says,did the CO two level not drop to
70 or 80 at the end of the lastice age? Just barely over the
total death zone for plants. Ithink the death zone is quite a

(01:22:27):
bit higher is a little bithigher than that.

It was Oh, yeah. It did not drop to 70 or 80.
That's wrong.

No. It was about maybe a 80 at its lowest in the
interglacials. And the dust zonefor plants is still below that.
But it's getting close at oneeighty is not a good place to
be.

Yep. Absolutely. Oh, you know what? I like let's
go. This is a good question,both for Anthony and Doctor.
Curry, which is, do we havethirty good years of data to
base future predictions on?

Well, I want to say no in terms of the
temperature record. The surfacetemperature record is, as you
know, badly corrupted, badlymanaged. And it's inflated.
Know, when I did my surfacestation study and I found, you
know, that over 90% of thestations had been encroached

(01:23:28):
upon, and the remaining fewpercent when we went and
examined the data from themversus the stations that had
been encroached upon versus theentire dataset, we see a rate of
warming in the past thirty yearsof about half. So, in terms of
the surface temperature data, Idon't think we do have good
data, but we might have someother good data for some other

(01:23:48):
datasets that doctor Curry couldtalk about, I'm sure.

No, the surface temperature data is much better
than most data. But in terms ofmaking predictions, we use these
on model. We use global climatemodels that don't directly use
the data. I mean, they're spunup for a few decades, and then
they equilibrate to the currentclimate, and then they're forced
with whatever climate change. Sothey don't directly rely on

(01:24:16):
climate data.
But, you know, the state of thedata is very frustrating.
Satellite data sets give yougood coverage. So they're
important. But at the end of theday, satellites are measuring
voltages in order to get, youknow, real geophysical things

(01:24:36):
like temperature, humidity, orice mass balance, there's a
whole lot of manipulations thatare needed. And then if you look
at the paleoclimate data, that'seven worse.
So that's, know, so the datajust isn't good enough, but we
do what we can and try to piecethings together.

Thank you very much. All right. Well, I think
unfortunately, we probably haveto get going. I think Anthony
has to go. We have a lot ofquestions still, but
unfortunately, you guys, we arejust not going to be able to get
to them.
I'm going to hand it off to JimLakeley. Thank you, guys.

And thank you, guys. This has been a fantastic show.
I want to thank our guest,Doctor. Judith Curry. You can
check her out at Climate, etc.
But actually, it's easy just toput her name in there,
JudithCurry.com. And be sure tocheck out her latest book. I
want to implore people to visitsome of these great websites

(01:25:39):
from the Heartland Institute,climaterealism dot com,
climateataglance dot com. What'sup with that? And of course,
always go to heartland.org, oryou can subscribe to our Climate
Change Weekly newsletter.
And I want to thank all of youin the audience. The live chat
today was very, very lively,fantastic questions. And I hope
to have Doctor. Curry back onthis program again in the

(01:26:01):
future. Thank you all forwatching, and we will talk to
you next week.
Bye bye.

How dare you?

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A Critique of the Climate Apocalypse with Dr. Judith Curry — The Climate Realism Show #156

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}A Critique of the Climate Apocalypse with Dr. Judith Curry — The Climate Realism Show #156