Original subtitles

it leaves me open mouth in amazement

that we in the developed world with our

functional economies and our high level

of luxury and security

can say to developing Worlds the

developing World well you know we've

gotten pretty good here and we're

probably willing to cut back a little

bit but you guys down there in the

developing countries you know you should

be pretty damn careful about your carbon

output we're not going to help you

develop your economy so that you can

benefit from the same Industrial

Revolution that have that has that has

that has enabled us to educate our

children and to have plenty to eat and

to be warm in the winter and cool in the

summer and then what's all even more

Preposterous is it's the very people who

are constantly clamoring about the

oppressive nature of Western culture who

are foisting this very story on these

developed countries yeah the irony is

that even if the African nations

were given you know the carbon credits

or whatever and allowed to develop

to where they want to be and where

anyone expects them to be at most they

would be emitting like five or six

percent of global emissions and this is

for like a billion people in the

population we're not talking about a lot

of extra emissions to allow them to

develop I mean it just makes absolutely

no sense and it's evil it's absolutely

evil

[Music]

hello everyone on YouTube and Associated

platforms I'm here today with another

climate denialist because you know I've

been racking those up

um it's all part of my attempt to become

the most reprehensible commentator on

YouTube and so uh at least in the eyes

of my of those who think they're my

enemies anyways I'm talking to Dr Judith

Curry today very accomplished scientist

she's an American climatologist with a

bachelor in science degree in geography

Sharon doubt at Northern Illinois

University and a geophysical Sciences

PhD from the University of Chicago

Curry is the professor emirita and

former chair of the school of Earth and

atmospheric sciences at the Georgia

Institute of Technology she's had an

accomplished career working with NASA

the U.S government and numerous academic

institutions in the field of climate

change a real scientist with 190

Publications Curry advocates

so reprehensively for a non-alarmist

approach acknowledging Earth's Rising

temperature with a grain of salt the

grain being in-field research and a

refusal to shut the doors of science to

those with contrary views and findings

in 2017 Dr Curry retired from her

position at the Georgia Institute of

Technology citing

the poisonous nature of the scientific

discussion around man-made climate

change as a key factor Curry co-founded

and acts as president of the climate

forecast applications Network a company

a private company which seeks to

translate cutting-edge weather and

climate Research into tenable forecast

products insurance companies financial

institutions rely on Dr Curry to provide

them with information that can guide

them with regard to their future

financial decision making

she's a controversial figure on the

climate front being somewhat of a

contrarian with in regard to the

hypothetically the hypothetical

scientific consensus on the climate

apocalypse front so the first thing I'd

like to ask you Dr Curry is if you would

walk people through your professional

qualifications and to let everyone know

why it is that you might be regarded as

a credible commentator on such issues

okay well I received my PhD in 1982 in

geophysical Sciences from the University

of Chicago

and I spent my entire career in Academia

um

with jobs at the University of

Wisconsin-Madison Purdue University Penn

State University

University of Colorado Boulder and most

recently at the Georgia Institute of

Technology and at Georgia Tech I served

as chair of the school of Earth and

atmospheric sciences for 13 years

I've written

several books and published about 190

Journal articles I'm a fellow of several

major professional societies have you

know received some recognition for my

research

I left my University position

in 2017. I felt it was too constraining

um I wanted to

do a broader range of things and I had

started a company

about 10 years before it was a startup

under Georgia Tech's you know Venture

lab

program and so then I started devoting

full time to it after I left Academia

um

I inadvertently stepped into the

Limelight on the

global warming issue in 2005. if you

recall at the time of Hurricane Katrina

which devastated New Orleans

I and my co-authors had a paper that was

published in the Journal of science

two weeks after Katrina hit

um

and we we had found that the percentage

of category four and five hurricanes

had doubled in recent decades okay and

so this was

with rather explosive media attention

and this was

you know the first time you know that I

did TV interviews or anything like that

and it was a very

a very antagonistic debate people were

coming at us from all sides of course

the Enviro advocacy groups thought

you know I was the greatest thing since

sliced bread but there are a lot of

people on the other side of the debate

you know thought I was absolutely evil

um

so so for the first time I started you

know giving a lot of public lectures and

it

and people would invariably ask me

questions that were you know outside of

my expertise or knowledge everyone was

asking about the hockey stick for

example or what's going on with the sun

and all these kind of things I figured

oh my gosh you know I really need to

just step out beyond my personal areas

of expertise and try to understand a lot

more of this you know so so which I did

and

eventually the hurricane and global

warming issues settled down a little bit

and then a few years later

climate Gates struck this was in

November of 2009 with the unauthorized

release of

emails from the University of East

Anglia it was it was a big it was a very

big scandal at the time ipcc authors

hiding the decline you know Mike's

nature trick all this kind of stuff

um you know and it it was hugely

important politically and it's believed

to have derailed the Waxman Marky

a bill that was you know making progress

you know towards being passed and it's

just pretty much derailed it and I took

the controversial you know

step of saying help you know we need to

do better we need to make all of our our

data publicly available we need to make

our methods transparent we need to pay

more attention to uncertainty and be

more honest about the level of

confidence we actually have in this

stuff and we also need to pay attention

to Skeptics you know and treat them with

respect and you know pay attention to

their arguments and refute them if

they're serious

and you know to me this sounded like

motherhood and apple pie right right

absolutely okay but um the people within

the climate Community were very angry at

me saying that I needed to be more

sensitive to the feelings of these

scientists who were involved

excuse me no one was sensitive to my

feelings during the hurricane and global

warming Wars and also I wasn't worried

about their feelings I was worried about

the ipcc and The credibility of it and

you know what we what we should be doing

about this you know they were much

bigger issues at stake here than the um

feelings of these scientists well

anybody any scientist who talks to you

about whether you're hurting their

feelings when you're launching a

discussion of the factual basis of their

claims has immediately stepped outside

of the scientific domain I mean one of

the things I loved about being a

scientist was that the rules of

engagement at professional conferences

let's say that were genuinely scientific

in nature were pretty damn clear I mean

we were discussing the

empirical reliable empirical and

statistical reliability and validity of

your claims on a technical basis that

was that and if we weren't doing that it

wasn't science and so the idea that what

you should be attending to when you're

criticizing someone's work which doesn't

mean denigrating it it means trying to

separate the wheat from the chaff by the

way that has nothing to do with your

regard for the emotional well-being of

your say antagonist I mean you could be

polite and that's helpful but it's also

not mandatory right but well there's a

subtlety here because I was not so much

criticizing the substance of the science

but the behavior of the scientists that

I felt violated the Norms of Science in

terms of you know everybody you know

universalism you know everybody should

you know have a chance or a shot you

know we

at the data

um we should listen to Skeptics you know

and we should try to

keep politics out of our science to the

extent that we can I mean these are the

kind of behaviors you know these emails

reveal people trying to get editors

fired you know playing fast and loose

with the guidelines of the ipcc

evade Freedom of Information Act

requests

um from people they thought would

challenge their research this kind of

behavior that I strenuously objected to

and I thought that we should not defend

and we should call out so I was not

challenging the substance of anybody's

science it was really the behavior

in the public debate well right well

that is that is a form of that is a form

in some sense of methodological

criticism right I mean your point was

that your there's rules to to the

investigative process and the

communication process and politicization

breaks those rules and the response on

the front of the climate apocalypse

apocalypse let's say you see this with

biologists who are concerned about

Extinction from time to time too is that

well this this issue is so important

that it's unethical to abide by those

normative principles because we need to

do everything we can to draw as much

attention to this looming catastrophe as

possible and in some sense All is fair

in Love and War and that would be fine

if they were correct and 100 correct

possibly although I still think they're

violating the science politics

distinction but when there's doubt and

there's substantial doubt here then

that's a real problem I wanted to take

apart some of the things you said so you

came at this in a very interesting way

and some sense because the first time

that you Rose to something approximating

public prominence you were actually

putting forth a set of propositions that

you could argue supported a more dire

view of climate outcome right making the

claim that these hurricanes severe

hurricanes had increased in frequency do

you believe now that have they continued

to increase in frequency or was that a

momentary Spike do you know that

literature still oh oh yes it's um okay

first off there were lots of pot shots

thrown at us okay the couple of

criticisms turned out to be valid one is

that the the global data before 1985 is

pretty dodgy you know we went back to

1970s so we you know so realistically

you have to throw out 15 years and the

other thing was looking at you know just

the natural variability and could really

distinguish a warming signal from the

natural variability and at this point we

still can't with a lot of confidence so

yeah well a big a big part of the

problem here is you know what time frame

over this is a huge problem and I don't

even know how you solve it in some sense

if you're trying to define something

like a trend towards cooling or warming

or increased or decreased variability

the question that immediately arises

well are you talking about a hundred

years or a thousand or ten thousand or a

million like there's an infinite number

of time frames consider and exactly that

that is that that is a key Challenge and

one of my major themes you know coming

out of the climate gate thing was a more

serious look at uncertainty and I wrote

a paper called climate change and the

uncertainty monster and I use that paper

a series of you know to launch my blog

climate Etc Judith curry.com in

2010 and

again this was people outside The Clique

of establishment climate scientists

thought this was great this is important

this is obvious however within the

clique they viewed me as trying to

destroy a consensus that they had been

trying to build for 20 years well this

whole manufactured consensus and it was

on very flimsy ground you know so and

there was okay how would you care how

would you characterize that so-called

consensus is that associated with this

idea I talked to Richard Franzen about

this recently

um

is that associated with the idea that

like 97 percent of scientists agree that

well it isn't clear what they agree

that's the issue is that climate change

is a severe and catastrophic problem

which is that that statement in itself

is not true by any stretch of the

imagination what's the consensus here oh

okay the the issue is the ipcc the

intergovernmental panel on climate

change they did their first assessment

report in like 1991 and following that I

mean that was a good report it was a

good assessment at the time and then the

powers that be says we need to strive

for consensus in our statements and so

this sort of narrowed the framing and

the people they were picking to be on

the committee were people who were all

going to agree and so they were working

to manufacture a consensus you know it

was their view of how the policy process

deals with uncertainty so it was sort of

a

speaking consensus to power approach and

and this was like formalized by the ipcc

and you know people challenging

the consensus and there's many

dimensions to it but but the most

fundamental one is that

most of the warming that we've seen

since 1950 is caused by humans I mean

that's the most Central

that there is warming that there is

warming even though now the narrative is

changed that there is warming there's a

certain idea about its potential

magnitude and then hypothetically the

consensus is that what about 50 of that

is no no not an activity no they used to

make the statement more than half but

they really meant 100 percent

okay but there's certainly no con

there's certainly no scientific

consensus that a hundred percent of the

global warming that's occurring at the

moment is anthropogenic that I don't

believe it

oh no no no no there isn't the scientist

okay there's no measure I mean

when you have

a complex highly uncertain situation

like this the issue of consensus is

scientifically meaningless it's only

meaningful right you know for political

purposes this whole idea

um of speaking consensus to power that

that was some pathway you know to policy

making it hasn't really turned out to be

um

it yeah so so yeah there's no consensus

the most well it's also it's also a

Preposterous claim scientifically

because the way science works is that

a great scientist

is the first person who challenges the

consensus that's kind of how you define

a great scientist and one of the things

that's so wonderful about science is

that it can reveal when the universal

consensus is wrong

and it it's it's powerful in its methods

precisely because of that and you know

that as a practicing researcher is that

the probability that you're going to do

a study and that the data is going to

reveal

the consensus of your lab Theory the

validity of the consensus of your Labs

theory is basically zero something

unexpected is going to crop up when you

actually test your idea against reality

itself so the idea that science is

consensus based is is wrong it's wrong

yeah it's okay it's amazing that the

idea got anywhere okay look at the

social factors in play okay there was a

big drive by the U.N

you know to deal with human you know

dangerous anthropogenic climate change

again this was a 1992 treaty before we

even had any evidence of human cause

warming at all okay and then you had

scientists become invested in this you

know in their career goals and the

funding that comes into the field and

all of this kind of stuff that there was

a this sort of social contract between

the scientists and the policy makers

that perpetuated this situation and you

know and they were the policy makers

they we need you know more you know we

need more and more confident statements

from the ipcc even though the dimensions

of the problem were growing and growing

and growing every year and clearly

becoming more complex and obvious that

there was a lot of things that we didn't

understand but there was this drive you

know well it it it's not as if the IPC

documents themselves or even that

radical I mean my understanding of the

IPC doc C documents is that the

projection is something like one to two

degrees of further warming with some

increase in variability especially in

the polar regions and a small degree of

sea level rise no indication in the ipcc

reports that this will produce runaway

out of control feedback loop that will

have a devastating consequence no real

vision of Apocalypse um and so that's

not quite correct um until okay until

recently

people were looking at projections of

four to five degrees Centigrade more

warming over the course of the 21st

Century

okay the the

issue was wildly ridiculous emissions

projections which are now believed to be

implausible

the more recent ipcc assessment Report

with more plausible emissions scenarios

is looking at more two to three degrees

Centigrade of warming

and we've already had one degree so it's

an additional one to two degrees

Centigrade of warming that people expect

based on the climate models so that they

were pretty alarming up until recently

because everyone was focused on this

extreme Omission scenario which is now

widely accepted as implausible if not

impossible

so there was a lot of alarm and all the

you know when you talk about all the

projections of extreme weather events

and we won't be able to grow wine in

California and crazy projections of sea

level rise all these projections were

tied to that extreme emission scenario

and it's taking a community a long time

to reject it in fact this extreme

Omission scenario was still the most

often the most widely used in the

six assessment report which was

published only like

two years ago

so I mean that this is still pervasive

these excessively alarming

projections of what could happen in the

21st century mostly driven by

implausible to Impossible emission

scenario but also driven by climate

models that are running too hot okay

let's go into that a bit so so I I

talked to Richard lindsen about a week

ago about the problems with models he

said for example that the models are

based on cells let's say so those would

be the the whole earth can't be modeled

so you have to oversimplify it you have

to Clump it into chunks and the chunks

are about 70 miles wide I think they

don't they can't really model Cloud

activity very well there's a lot of

error in relationship to projecting and

forecasting the effect of water vapor

um the models the models have to build a

lot of assumptions in and that doesn't

mean that we shouldn't build models but

it does mean that they have very large

potential for error and that error is

magnified as you project out into the

future and so I've read for example you

tell me if you think this is accurate

that are estimates of the cumulative

effect of carbon dioxide on global

warming or climate change are smaller

than our estimates of the magnitude of

our error in measuring the effect of

water vapor and like that's a big

problem because water vapor is a major

contributor to to warming in principle

and so that's carbon dioxide effects are

under the size of the error in that

measurement that's really well well I I

wouldn't put it that way

um

we have a pretty good idea of how much

water vapor is in the atmosphere the

question is how is that going to change

with warming the bigger issue is the

clouds what clouds are doing clouds have

a huge and they're not modeled very well

and the observational basis for

you know understanding how they're

trending you know only goes back a few

decades

so you know that's a tough one but but

the

the net result of these uncertainties in

water vapor and Cloud feedback is that

we don't know how sensitive the climate

is to increasing CO2 because the way the

model is treated is that CO2 and clouds

amplify the warming

um and what and I think the cloud

feedback might even be negative

water vapor does overall amplify the

warming but in the tropics where Richard

lynson has done his research he

proposes that there is a negative

feedback and that's something that's

hotly debated but I think the clouds are

the bigger issue but apart from what's

going on in the atmosphere to me it's

really the oceans and the Sun that are

the biggest

um sources of uncertainty in terms of

understanding what's going on and be

able to project into the future

so there are okay why the oceans oh my

goodness okay the the oceans have these

large

circulation systems overturning okay

that

El Nino La Nina people are familiar with

that that's a mode of natural internal

variability there's also decadal and

multi decadal

oscillations cycles that change the

patterns of clouds the whole patterns of

sea surface temperature influences

snowfall on Greenland the Arctic sea ice

rainfall Regional climates Etc and the

models don't treat these very good well

there's a whole spectrum of these ocean

circulations all on out to ten thousand

years you have Millennial scale

overturning that influences the climate

and the models have

far too little power

you know in in that part of the spectrum

so we're just missing that and then so

is that is that a consequence does that

mean that the degree to which the ocean

takes up carbon dioxide is is permeated

by error in measurement is it is it also

an indication of our lack of

understanding of how the temperature of

the ocean itself is regulated by the

motion of water from the depths up to

the top all of that oh yeah is that

where the error is well no it vertical

transport of heat and carbon in the

ocean as part of the consequences of the

uncertainty in these large-scale

circulations but more fundamentally

these large-scale you know they change

the weather patterns and change the

clouds among other things so

you know this is trying to get all that

modeled right let alone make incredible

predictions into the future we're not

there I mean not even close to being

there okay and and then if if you once

you get into the sun it's even you know

crazier I mean the ipcc

has pretty much dismissed the role of

the sun you know in the last 150 years

but the interesting thing is that in the

six assessment report chapter six they

finally acknowledged the great

uncertainty in the amount of solar

forcing in the late 20th century and

this arises from there was a gap in this

satellites measuring the sun output that

occur at the time of the Challenger

shuttle disaster if you recall that

um and and so one solar sensor was

running out and they were supposed to

launch another one but all the launches

were put off for a number of years until

they sorted out what was going on

um at Nasa with the launches and

everything so there's this so-called Gap

and depending on what was actually

happening in that Gap

you know you can tune tune the solar

variability to high variability or low

variability so all the climate models

are being run with low solar variability

forcing but for the first time

chapter 2 in the observational chapter

of the six assessment report acknowledge

this issue that there is huge amount of

variability

and this doesn't even factor in the

so-called solar indirect effects in

terms of there's a lot of it's not just

the heat from the Sun there's a lot of

issues related to ultraviolet and

Stratosphere and cosmic rays and

magnetic fields and all these other

things that really aren't being factored

in they're at the Forefront of research

but they're certainly not factored into

the climate models so there are so many

uncertainties out there

um

that affect

certainly the projections of what might

happen in the 21st century but also our

interpretation of what's been going on

with the climate for the last 100 years

ago and exactly what's been causing what

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well so I would say that those who

object to the line of reasoning that

you're putting forward I believe would

make an argument analogous to the

following they would say well look we

have despite all the objections on the

measurement front we have pretty good

evidence that there's a warming Trend we

have reasonable evidence that at least a

reasonable proportion of that is a

consequence of anthropogenic activity

most particularly the production of

carbon dioxide the potential consequence

of of this could be apocalyptic a

hundred years down the road or 50 years

down the road even with all those doubts

in mind it's incumbent upon us to take

something like emergency action now so

that we ameliorate this risk of

apocalyptic transformation and so this

is just okay obstructionist hand-waving

your objections and if you were moral

and on board you'd see that this issue

is so serious and so apocalyptic that

it's inappropriate to stand in the way

of the amelioration and so so what what

do you think about that as a counter

proposition okay the weakest part of

their argument is whether all this is

dangerous

um you know the sea level rise is you

know creeping up you know the ice cap

Greenland Antarctic you know it changes

from year to year with a little bit of

melting but there's no

catastrophe looming on those fronts and

so they've turned to extreme weather

oh global warming is calling and I have

to say the hurricane and global warming

first put this idea into their head ah

you know if we can show that even one

degree can cause something bad like more

category five hurricanes then we have

something so so this started this whole

trend of every extreme weather event is

associated with um

human cause global warming which just

isn't true right and and if you look

back and and they tend to go back to

1970 or 1950. oh this is the

warmest year the worst storm or the

biggest drought or whatever since 1970

maybe since 1950 but if you're looking

um to the first half of the 20th century

the weather was way worse certainly in

North America and over much of the globe

also

um right now in the U.S West

um we're being assaulted by these

atmospheric River events bringing huge

amounts of rain and snow which is going

to cause flooding it's still snow yet

and you know this is horrible global

warming and everything like that but

if if you go back to the winter of 1861

and 1862

15 inches of rain and fell in central

um California over a period of a couple

of months which huge floods over a very

widespread area that lasted for absolute

months okay and paleoclimate

evidence showed that these tend to

happen about every 200 years or so where

you have this massive accumulation of

these atmospheric Rivers so this is

nothing at all unusual so if you look

back into the historical record or

better yet the Paleo climate record

invariably you will find worse weather

events so TR so so that's part of the

time frame problem right it's like well

over what span do you evaluate these

events before you draw your conclusions

so but you can't so do you believe in do

you believe that any of the Tipping

Point hypotheses friends and told me

something interesting you know this was

a kind of a technical proposition he

said that in complex systems with many

degrees of freedom on the entropy front

so many ways they can potentially react

the probability of a Tipping Point

positive feedback loop you know like

that that runaway global warming or

something like that the melting of the

Greenland ice ice caps because we hit a

Tipping Point said in complex systems

that have multiple potential outcomes

that kind of all or none Tipping Point

is unlikely you get that more more

likely in a simple system that's

characterized by the probability of

radical State change like water freezing

for example and so I thought I I can't

evaluate that argument you know it's

outside of my domain of scientific

competence but it struck me as an

interesting idea well uh to some extent

it's true there is one sort of Tipping

Point

that we could encounter and if this does

happen I would expect that

human cause global warming would play

only a small part and this is the West

Antarctic ice sheet which is an unstable

ice sheet so if you took the ice sheet

away the continent would actually be

under water but what it is you have this

huge ice sheet that sits on the

continent and part of it's above water

okay and and it has an overhang and

because and this just dynamically

unstable situation and it moves fairly

fast

underneath this ice sheet are lots of

inactive volcanoes even the occasional

active volcano so if these volcanoes

became active and we had you know a

greater heat Source under this combined

with sea level rise and a little bit of

um

global warming

this could accelerate and on the time

scale of you know three or four

centuries we could see this collapse you

know which could lead to

a substantial sea level rise so so

that's the one

kind you know if we saw that happening

are there engineering ways of dealing

with it I don't know but it was

something that would be

a slow process but that's the only one

of the so-called tipping points

that I see could happen

because you know the

if there's going to be some solid earth

you know if the Earth what wants to have

an earthquake or a big volcanic eruption

you know there aren't a lot of you know

negative feedbacks in the earth system

to prevent that so to me that that's the

one like bad thing that could happen but

it would take centuries

um but the other ones yeah I don't see

it

so what do you think when you look at

the ipcc reports now and you look 50

years ahead or 100 years ahead what what

would you regard as a credible

representation of the so-called climate

science

what

do you accept the new IPC

prognostications or do you think the

models are so error ridden that even the

hypothesis of one to two degrees warming

isn't isn't reliable enough even though

it's the best we have well the

interesting thing is that the ipcc six

assessment report working group one

they also sort of rejected the climate

models to some extent they were Guided

by them in their projections but they

also

you know defined a plausible range of

climate sensitivity and looked at the

projections from there so even the ipcc

is stepping back from the global climate

models as being useful for projections

and people are going to these climate

emulators these simple climate models

well for this amount of warming you know

run it through a damaged model or an

economic assessment model or something

like that so people are really stepping

back from these big Global Climate

models and it's about time and one of

the

innovations that I've been undertaking

in my projection work and and this is

what I do for clients of my company

climate forecast applications network is

that I look at it I don't just look at

the ipcc scenarios and I choose the low

end ones I think those are more credible

but I also look at scenarios of what the

ocean circulations could be doing well

you know scenarios of volcanic eruptions

um and solar variation scenarios and try

to put forward a broader range of what

we might be looking at and so I have

like a network-based approach to combine

all this into producing a much broader

range of scenarios and at least over the

next three decades

like the natural variability piece of

this is pointing towards cooling rather

than amplifying the warming you know it

would Tamp down the global warming of

whatever magnitude it is from fossil

fuel emissions so that's the approach

that I'm taking

okay so let's go into that a bit you

earlier you indicated that you left the

university in 2017 to pursue an

entrepreneurial activity that you had

initiated at Georgia Tech and uh you

just made allusion to that again so so

tell me tell me if you would how you are

modeling and you've laid out some of the

conclusions but who's interested in your

models and obviously you're doing this

on an entrepreneurial basis so people

are willing to pay you for your opinion

which gives I think some what would you

say indication of their faith and its

credibility because people are actually

spending money on it like how are how

are your models different than the

models that are more broadly publicized

let's say and

um and who is it that is paying you to

produce these models why is there

interested in that and why are they

doing it okay well

insurance companies financial

institutions have an interest in

Atlantic hurricanes what are we looking

at over the next three decades in terms

of Atlantic hurricane activity a big

issue is a potential shift to the cold

phase of the Atlantic multi-decatal

oscillation this is one of those

multi-decatal oscillations

that I talked about which we would

expect would

start to Tamp down the Atlantic

hurricane activities so this is a very

big deal for them another client was

Wind Farm owners who wanted to know is

the wind going to keep blowing for the

next 30 Years and are my wind farms in

the right location

okay they wanted to know that

um some Electric utilities want to know

what could we be looking at in terms of

like how frequent these really bad

situations could be

you know for Renewable Power like a

massive cold air outbreak that lasts for

weeks the wind doesn't blow and it's

winter time and there's no sun you know

how bad can it get and how frequently

might these occur so these are some of

the things that I've been looking at and

also people interested in sea level rise

projections you know in their particular

location looking at scenarios of what

their location a lot of interest from

people in Florida San Francisco along

the Atlantic coast

um

you know what what could we be looking

at yeah yeah we see that those

projections from the the ipcc which of

those should we believe but we already

know that you know how are the ocean

circulation patterns going to influence

their local sea level rise what kind of

um

what kind of

what do I what kind of Trends do I see

for the vertical land motion both from

local effects and large

more planetary scale up and down kind of

affects so so those are some of the

projects that I've been working on

looking at scenarios out say 30 to 50

years

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so why do these companies believe that

your models are credible enough for them

to pour economic resources into and why

do you believe that your Mortals are

credible enough to provide them with

accurate guidance I mean we talked about

some of the limitations of models and so

what what is it that you're doing that

is credible to the companies and why do

you believe scientifically that you're

providing accurate information okay the

first thing that I did and I did this

before

most other people did I say look

you're you're wasting your time looking

at that extreme emissions scenario

you know if you look at the

International Energy agency their

scenarios show emissions being fairly

flat for the next several decades and I

think this is a much more plausible

scenario so so let's focus on that one

and this is apart from

trying to predict what policy is going

to do and how much they're going to

change but

the thinking is now that emissions are

going to stay fairly flat for the next

few decades and I saw this and you know

I saw the journal Publications and this

is what I was pushing to my clients if

you want something realistic this is

what you should be looking at the other

thing is is

not accepting the extremely high values

of Ip of climate sensitivity to CO2

doubling I don't go as low as Richard

lindsen does but I'm certainly on the

low end and I justify why to them based

on Publications including some of my own

why we shouldn't be looking at these

very high sensitivity values and I run

it through a range so they can look but

I'm right but I'm saying you know so I

give them all the scenarios they want

I'll give the high emission scenario

I'll give the

High climate sensitivity low climate

sensity I'll say my best

judgment is that this is what it is but

then I uniquely put in scenarios of the

natural variability and they really like

this they get it I mean they've seen it

okay they've seen it and they understand

it's out there they've just never seen

anybody try to project it before and I

have Publications on this they can

parameterize their risk given your

plethora of models so they yeah here's

the worst case scenario here's the best

case scenario here's a here's the likely

scenario here's the range and then they

can calculate how to uh you know will

mitigate their risk across those

scenarios exactly I mean and a lot of

times they want to know well what's the

worst case what's the worst plausible

case okay and so I give them that and so

they have this whole range okay so so

for example in the Wind Farm

profitability study I gave them 81

scenarios

okay they're different scenarios of how

this could play out

over the next 30 Years and these

different you know there was a cluster

of scenarios you know in a certain area

and I say you know

you might infer that these are the most

plausible outcomes because there's

multiple different Pathways right for

reaching that but here's your plausible

worst case here's your plausible best

case okay and and this gives them some

information

okay for making their decision

um right so uh so you admit you admit

right up front in some sense that there

are inputs into your models that are

somewhat arbitrary right that that you

have to decide about and and those might

be for example your projections of of uh

carbon dioxide output and then you say

given a variety of initial assumptions

here's a variety of outcomes but a lot

of the models tend to converge at this

Vision you know this range of visions

and so if the convergence of multiple

models constitutes evidence which we

generally assume it does then this seems

to be the most plausible pathway right

and so how does that differ from the

iupcc approach okay well I don't say

it's the more well first they neglect

all the elements of natural variability

that I conclude they're not giving

scenarios of volcanic eruptions they're

not giving

um

different scenarios of sun activity

they don't have

that they do a bunch they have a bunch

of different scenario you know scenarios

of what the internal ocean variability

is doing but I can anchor it more

closely to what the observations are and

my own network model in terms of what

the plausible trajectories are so I'm

giving them a more plausible trajectory

for the

for the ocean oscillations and generally

going out 30 years these other scenarios

are cooler than the ipcc scenarios

well and so and do they actually do they

actually point to to cooling or just

less rapid warming some of them go as

far as cooling okay and others are less

rapid warming and there have been

another of Publications you never see

them publicize that show for certain

combinations of these ocean circulations

or volcanic eruptions or solar activity

that you could see cooling for a decade

or two during the 21st century

that could happen

and the ipcc ar-6 did you know if you

read the fine print deep in the chapters

you know you'll you'll see these papers

referenced and it is acknowledged but

it's not something

that you hear you know in the public

debate is just this Relentless warming

that we're going to be seeing okay okay

so so that's interesting because you

know the the warming

advocates

are doubtful enough about their own

prognostication so that it's no longer

appropriate to refer to global warming

you're supposed to refer to climate

change which I think is a terrible

sleight of hand but in any case that's

what's happened but nonetheless the the

apocalyptic prognostications are still

predicated on this idea of warming now

your claim is that the consensus that

that might be apocalyptic was never

there to begin with and the initial

estimates of the magnitude of warming

were out by about a factor of two partly

because people accepted equally

apocalyptic in some sense

prognostications of carbon dioxide

output but then you're taking that

further you're saying that the models

are so prone to variability that there

is some non-re non-trivial possibility

that there'll be a global cooling Trend

over the next 30 Years instead of a

global warming Trend and so in the face

of all that

someone might ask themselves well if the

situation with regards to these models

is as uncertain as you suggest and also

you know it's interesting just as an

aside that Financial companies will pay

you for your prognostications which is

another form of validation of your

opinion why in the world are we

stampeding madly to spend Untold

literally trillions of dollars trying to

ameliorate a problem that we haven't

properly measured like what's going on

here as far as you can tell okay you

have to go back okay the the policy

cart has been way out in front of the

scientific course from the very

beginning

in the 1980s the U.N environmental

program

you know was looking for something we

hate capitalism we don't like the oil

companies we like World Government all

this kind of thing and they latched on

to the climate chain the globe

the CO2

global warming is what it was called

back then and this seated you know the

night the you the formation of the UN

framework convention on climate change

and there was a treaty signed by 192

nations in 1992 including the US okay

this was before we knew anything we were

had to avoid dangerous anthropogenic

climate change before we had any idea of

any of this and so that this Frame the

climate problem you know in a very

narrow frame

um

all of climate is now caused by CO2 and

by definition warming is dangerous and

why was that such an attractive

political hypothesis like why did

politicians decide that in the absence

of this uh you know stringently produced

scientific evidence that the proper

place for the world's political

Community to focus was on the Cardinal

danger of global warming that was

anthropogenically produced like what the

hell is going on there especially

because it's so expensive okay well

people didn't pay much attention to it

for decades I mean the coyote protocol a

bunch of country in 1997 a bunch of

countries site on to reduce their

emissions but even the ones who signed

on didn't really reduce their Admissions

and of course the U.S never signed on

and reduced its emissions weirdly enough

so that's pretty funny I I know and it

wasn't really until the Paris agreement

that

they came up with you know this more

voluntary thing and then they started

phrasing it and there was a Spate of you

know bad weather Big El Nino and stuff

like that that they latched on to you

know the this extreme you know if we

just got rid of all this the weather

would be nicer we'd get rid of all these

floods and droughts and hurricanes and

whatever else and heat waves that was

plaguing humanity and so people bought

that kind of simple argument and then

once that there was a real shift in 2018

after the Paris agreement you know the

rhetoric was um you know climate crisis

climate emergency from the world leaders

the U.N President Obama macron Merkel

all of these leaders saying this but in

2018 people started paying attention and

Greta this is when Greta thundberg

came onto the scene and she was she's a

remarkable person and she's wrong a lot

of things but a remarkable person

nevertheless but but this what she was

doing spawned the sunrise movement

Extinction Rebellion all this kind of

stuff and and the journalists Amplified

this the climate crisis the climate

emergency

ten years ago climate even 10 years ago

climate change was like really a fringe

Topic at journals now major media

Outlets have a climate desk you know I

have a whole team of journalists and and

and there's huge money going into things

like carbon brief things that Focus

specifically on climate change and so

it's just exploded and again there's

this social contract between the policy

makers the media and the scientists it's

great for the sign there's nobody 10

years ago people with a PhD in climate

science

you know what would be trying to get a

postdoc and whatever and now the

universities can't even hang on to them

there's so many jobs in the media and

the private sector that you know this is

just a hot thing every University now

has some sort of climity

um Department Institute it's just big

business for everybody and so there's

this Mutual reinforcement between the

the scientists the policy makers and the

media so that's where the positive

feedback loops are that's right right

they're on the sociological side yeah

definitely definitely yeah well it's

quite something to behold so now what

has been the consequences I mean you've

been pilloried I believe I don't believe

I'm overstating this you've been

pilloried or satirized as a sort of

Fringe figure on the client denial front

I think that's fair to say and it's

pretty easy to smear someone with

tactics like that and it's

psychologically very effective mean what

has it you you know you said you Rose to

public prominence partly because you

formulated an argument at least to begin

with that was that could be latched onto

by the climate apocalypse and quite

effectively and but then you you you

produced all sorts of other material

um mitigating producing a mitigated view

what's been the consequence for you of

of being involved in this okay let me

tell you what my sin was

people don't object to my science

I mean I'm I'm within

you know

the likely range of the ipcc for the

most part on the low end but you know I

it's not Fringe perspectives and I

commonly cite the ipcc

what happened the the reason I was

shuffled off into denier Camp is because

I criticized the behavior

of climate scientists I criticized the

ipcc

for some ethical violations as well as

not paying enough attention to

uncertainty so that was my sin okay I

offended and criticized the grand pubas

of the climate community and then I was

very quick and most importantly in was

it 2011 I criticized Michael Mann's

hockey stick

um on my blog and then he started

calling me a denier and that was really

the beginning of the end so my sin yeah

so let's talk about that terminology for

a second just so everybody knows so this

is quite the rhetorical move on the part

of the climate the the climate purveyors

of apocalyptic doom and so we already

established in our society broadly

speaking in the west that to object to

the idea that the Holocaust was a

historical reality puts you outside the

pale of normative and reasonable

political discussion and so you can be a

holocaust denier and if you are such a

creature then you're lumped in with the

Nazis and put on the shelf for no

further contact right you're you've

you've entered the realm of the

reprehensible now one of the most

effective rhetorical moves of the people

who are making a great living or putting

themselves forward morally as climate

apocalyptic doomsayers was to Target

people who objected to their views with

terminology that was derived directly

from that rhetorical move so now if

you're a climate change denier the

connotation is you occupy the same

category morally as people who refuse to

believe on the grounds of their

appalling anti-Semitism and their blind

historical ignorance that the Holocaust

was a historical reality and so in some

sense there's no real difference between

labeling someone a climate change denier

and labeling labeling them a Nazi

enabler and the rhetorical move was

designed precisely to produce that

outcome and so I'm not I'm not a big fan

of that kind of return Oracle move and

let's talk about Michael Mann for a

second too now because a lot of people

listening and watching they're not going

to know what that hockey stick graph was

and they don't know what Cardinal role

the Scandal around that graph has

produced in the in the discussion so do

you want to walk through the hockey

stick graph a little bit okay if you go

back to 2001 this was the release of the

third assessment report from the ipcc

and Sir John Houghton who was the head

of the ipcc was giving the press release

and the backdrop behind him was this

image a curve that looked like a hockey

stick which was meant to portray that

you know the climate was very stable for

the last thousand years and all of a

sudden you've got this big uptick

you know that is caused by humans okay

and this was

um based on the work of Michael Mann it

was a recent PhD this was his post-doc

work before the ink was dry on his PhD

he was appointed um a lead author of The

ipcc which was a fairly unusual move to

a point that's an insane move let me let

everybody watching and listening no like

your PhD is the is putting your foot in

the or your toe in the water of

scientific endeavor

so I mean so Judith has 190 Publications

and just so those you were listening no

generally speaking a PhD thesis requires

approximately as much work as three

scientific Publications if it's a high

quality PhD and so when you get your PhD

um you've you've entered the domain of

genuine scientific contribution the PHD

is actually a marker of that and if you

do a postdoc that means that you you

have the opportunity to to do a little

bit more research work to establish your

credibility now as a more independent

researcher who isn't dependent on the

ideas of your supervisor so you're a

neophyte you're a beginner when you do a

PhD in a postdoc and maybe you're you

have to do one or maybe two and then

maybe you can get hired as a junior

Professor but you're by no means at the

peak of your career and it's very very

rare for initiatory research that might

be done at the PHD level to be regarded

as canonical unless you're a Nobel

prize-winning you know genius by the

scientific community and so the fact

that man's work got so much attention

even though it was done at this initial

level of scientific investigation I mean

that doesn't speak to its validity but

my point is it's an aberration in the in

the process and it also points to this

problem we discussed earlier of time

frame I mean when you construct graphs

you can play with their psychological

impact and all sorts of inappropriate

ways you can expand and contract the

time frame you can expand and contract

the scale on the left and you can make

what's really a small effect across some

historical span of time look big by

playing with the with the scale and you

can make up an effect that isn't very

large temporally speaking by shrinking

the time scale of evaluation and so the

man's graph showed this uptick in

climate transformation that was

attendant on human industrial activity

but he picked a very narrow time frame

and a very particularized scale so that

this maximized the psychological impact

of the graph and so but that does bring

us to this problem of time scale it's

like well and variability how much has

things changed over ten thousand years

like what's the right time scale here

and that's a very difficult problem well

the issues of the hockey stick were not

so much

that

um

the the trigger the hockey stick trigger

the important one is around 2 000 right

after that this was viewed by a mining

engineer

um Steve McIntyre said hockey stick

hockey stick I've seen these things this

is usually a con game trying to get

somebody to buy mining stocks he says

you know then he got intrigued he wanted

to look at the data so he asked for the

data they gave him some of it and he and

um Ross McKittrick

Canadian economics professor took a look

at this and they found all sorts of

Errors you know mishandling of data

inappropriate statistical methods on and

on it goes and

man went after these guys big time

rather than you know

destructively trying to deal with these

criticisms he went after these guys and

has turned into a pretty big flame war

and then McIntyre and McKittrick

published two additional papers in 2005

and the controversy you know was just

explosive there were Congressional

hearings on this and on and on it went

so it was this huge controversy and

these climate gate emails that were

released in 2009 revealed all sorts of

skull dodgery you know trying to keep

data away from McIntyre and McKittrick

trying to

put pressure on Journal editors not to

publish their papers and on and on it

goes and and you know and so this was

revealed in climate gate

so those were more egregious sins than

just picking a convenient time frame and

a convenient scale oh yeah yeah no but

but there is a graphical issue and this

is was the theme of my blog post hiding

the decline so the Paleo climate record

just you know showed these little

oscillations and to get that sort of

hockey stick piece they spliced on the

observational record on top of that okay

and

it wasn't clear in the ipcc report that

was that was done it was sort of in some

sort of a footnote or an obscure

reference but it never occurred to me as

someone in the field that this is what

had been done so no I don't understand

that go go into that more detail I don't

understand exactly what what was done

there okay you see the handle okay if

you look at the actual pre the tree ring

rate data that went into their analysis

it was just like

the flat handle in order to get the

blade the uptick of the blade they

spliced on the historical temperature

record completely different data set oh

oh I see because the tree rings weren't

showing this uptick

um this is a so-called hide the decline

um and so you know to me this is

something

without doing that is a bad idea but

doing that without explaining it is

marginal and and

this is known in some circles

subsequently would be given a label as

image fraud

um and so this is what I wrote my blog

post about and I wasn't particularly

attacking man because he wasn't the only

person involved in this little

um

deception

but

you know this got a lot of attention and

apparently Michael Mann was unhappy and

pretty soon after that you know he was

calling me denier on Twitter and then I

started appearing on all these

misinformer lists and by 2012 you know I

was firmly established as a denier and

this the the Society of environmental

journalists put together a a list a

description of all the climate blogs and

my blog was under the list of denier

blogs and the description says unlike

most other denier blogs Curry is a real

scientist she looks at both sides of the

issues digs deeps into the issues

discusses the uncertainties and all this

other stuff and I said well that's a

beautiful description of my blog but why

did they accept prima facie that my blog

is a denier Blog I mean it just shows

how pervasive and how stupid this whole

thing was so I you know I got tossed

into the denier camp

um I don't align myself

with either side you know I I

preciously fought for my Independence

which included resigning my academic

position so you know I think for myself

I think deep I look at the evidence make

judgments

um and it's mostly about trying to

better characterize uncertainties and

what we don't know this is a key part of

rational policy making is to understand

the uncertainties of what we don't know

we'll be back in one moment first we

wanted to give you a sneak peek at

Jordan's new series Exodus

so the Hebrews created history as we

know it

you don't get away with anything and so

you might think you can bend the fabric

of reality and that you can treat people

instrumentally and that you can bow to

the Tyrant and violate your conscience

without cost you will pay the piper it's

going to call you out of that slavery

into Freedom even if that pulls you into

the desert

and we're going to see that there's

something else going on here that is far

more Cosmic and deeper than what you can

imagine the highest ethical Spirit to

which we're beholden is presented

precisely as that spirit that allies

itself with the cause of Freedom against

tyranny I want villains to get punished

but do you want the villains to learn

before they have to pay the ultimate

price that's such a Christian question

well we've got we've got a three-fold

problem here by the sounds of things in

some real sense I mean the first problem

is kind of a positive feedback loop that

you alluded to is that a lot of

attention was paid to this potential

issue a lot of money was put into

funding investigation into it that

incentivized the growth of a huge

scientific Enterprise that incentivized

people who were primarily motivated by

the money including the grants and I

mean it's hard not to be motivated by

that if you want to be a practicing

scientist and so there was a lot of

Financial and practical pressure to

produce a an environmentally apocalyptic

story and then you can imagine that's

Amplified by the fact that

reporting that there's no problem on the

climate front is not something that's

going to produce an attention-grabbing

headline especially in the era of

declining attention being played to paid

to Legacy Media outlets and so we know

perfectly well that human beings are

much more sensitive to negative

information comparatively speaking than

to positive information and that you can

attract attention with a story of gloom

and threat much more effectively than

one that states there's no story here at

all or something positive so that's a

big problem and then the third problem I

would say is that it's easy for venal

and narcissistic politicians and that's

not all of them to latch on to a

convenient money generating apocalyptic

nightmare to put themselves forward as

white Knights on the moral front and to

pull the wool over the eyes and maybe

even their own eyes in relationship to

whether or not they're making any

practical progress in the actual world

and so there's a situation where we have

a set of positive feedback loops right

operating in sociological space that are

producing a kind of Chicken Little

outcome and so we're running around

claiming that the sky is falling and

dumping tilting our economic systems in

a dangerous Direction and spending

Untold hundreds of billions of dollars

addressing a problem that is ill-defined

and likely nowhere near of the magnitude

that we think it is and so and then I I

want to I want to follow that with uh I

tried to make a strong case for why you

might be regarded with a certain degree

of apprehension

from the perspective of the climate

apocalypse but I'm also curious about

this the piece of data that has really

emerged as most striking to me

on the environmental front over the last

20 years is the recent observations or

they've been going on for about five

years or ten years perhaps that one of

the consequences of except extra carbon

dioxide output is that the planet has

greened

15 since the dawn of the Millennia and

that most of that Greening has taken

place in what would have otherwise been

semi-arid and rather denuded areas and

so I don't see a statistic on the

anti-carbon front that's as powerful

negatively as the statistic that the

planet is 15 Greener and that our crops

are also in a consequence quite a lot

more productive on the pro carbon

dioxide front so you know you made the

claim earlier that maybe we're in for a

period of cooling that's within the

error predictions of the models but I

would like to say well why shouldn't I

look at the fact that the planet has got

15 percent greener in 15 years that's an

area bigger than the United States and

say well why are we so sure that carbon

dioxide output is a bad thing at all

I mean some of the people who are

initially hypothesized about the

greenhouse effect were quite effusive in

their predictions that this would

produce a Greener more Lush and more

productive World a more habitable world

so is is it is it unreasonable to put

that forward as a proposition

um

again the apocalypse types are pushing

extreme weather events as being caused

by warming you know the Hurricanes the

Pakistan flooding the heat waves you

know unusual this that and the other

this is what they're pushing as being

caused by warming you know it's

conceivable that there is some

element

of contribution

from fossil fuel warming to this but

it's because of the large

amount of natural weather and climate

variability it's impossible to discern I

mean if we were to immediately stop

emitting fossil fuels

we probably wouldn't notice any change

in the weather you know throughout the

rest of the 21st Century

so the this is the key error in logic

that people have been made well I mean

it's

it's not an error in logic it's a it's a

very effective selling point for the

alarmist but people have bought it and

people have weather Amnesia I mean if

you just look back to the 50s to the the

1950s to the 1930s or whatever the

weather was much worse certainly in

North America

um so it's just something that doesn't

make sense does that mean we should just

keep amping up the fossil fuel emissions

no we just really don't quite understand

the consequences of this but but neither

does it imply that we should um

urgently

reduce emissions and disrupt the global

energy systems that will make people

less off and you know less well-off and

more vulnerable to whatever extreme

weather and climate events might happen

to occur so so we're hurting ourselves

but we're not doing much in the way of

reducing emissions anyways

and we're just making ourselves less

prosperous and more vulnerable

to extreme weather events well okay so

there's there's two consequences of that

I would say is the first is if we do

make people less well off by making

energy much more expensive by

restricting fossil fuel use like

unreasonably let's say or by not

pursuing nuclear power for example as an

alternative the major consequence of

that will be that a lot of poor people

who are right on the edge and there's

lots of them are poorer than they need

to be and will be you know off the edge

and the consequence of that is as you

already pointed out that if anything

untoward does happen on the weather

front they're going to be much more

vulnerable to that like I mean

distinguishing between infrastructure

inadequacy and whether catastrophe is

very very difficult even when Katrina

hit New Orleans you could say that it

was a natural disaster but you could

also say it was an abject failure of

planning because the Army Corps of

engineer dikes were only designed to

withstand a one in a hundred year storm

whereas when the judge build dikes they

designed them to withstand a one in ten

thousand year storm so whether that was

a natural disaster or a consequence of

human foolishness is not precisely

obvious and the same thing applies on

the energy front you know if we

impoverish the already poor by making

energy expensive not only do we expose

them to much more risk to life and limb

let's say in property but we also

decrease the probability that those

self-same people are going to be able to

take an environmentally oriented view

because the data indicates that if you

can get people up to producing or

benefiting from economic growth to the

tune of about five thousand dollars a

year in average GDP then they start to

take a medium to long-term view of the

future and start to attend much more

carefully to what you might describe as

environmental concerns

so panicking about climate in the way

that we're doing if the consequence is

to raise Energy prices and impoverish

people looks like it's going to kill

more people first because they'll be

more vulnerable and second that it's

going to make it's going to deliver us

far fewer people who are capable of

taking the kind of medium to long-term

view of sustainability that would be

actually beneficial to producing a a

more livable planet and I still want to

ask your opinion about The Greening

um yeah the greetings happening I think

it's attributed mostly to carbon dioxide

but also more rainfall and warmer

temperatures I mean Health

um so so The Greening is definitely a

benefit

um

that

The Greening is happening over a big big

portion of the globe actually

um so it's um it's clearly a benefit

um well it's also so perverse eh because

one of the it's it's as perverse is the

fact that the Americans decrease their

carbon output by returning to fracking

nobody predicted that but here we have a

situation where not only is the planet

not getting Browner and drier which was

the apoplectic apocalyptic Vision but

many of the areas that were really Brown

and dry like the southern edge of the

Sahara Desert are actually seeing the

Ingress of vegetation in a manner that's

well unprecedented even up to 15 years

ago and so you know not only is that not

what was predicted it's the very

opposite of what's predicted and it's

it's it's the opposite in a in a very

very massive manner I mean 15 percent

increase recent Greening is just it's

almost beyond comprehension as I said

that's an area bigger than the

continental United States and and then

to say as well that that's also produced

quite an increment in the productivity

of human crops and enabled us to grow

more food in less area it's like that's

those are facts that need to be taken

with dead seriousness they're very

positive perhaps I mean you could argue

that maybe that rate of vegetation

change brings with it threats that we

haven't yet envisioned and that could be

the case but nonetheless this it

certainly isn't the spreading of the

deserts that we were led to be

apprehensive of

um well that's correct again the framing

of this that going back to 1992 was

around dangerous

anthropogenic interference in the

climate system so the focus was on

dangers they were looking for dangers

the benefits

you know weren't even acknowledged

until

maybe the fifth assessment report in the

ipcc I mean everything they were just

looking for dangers

um that there was no counterweight of

the benefits so right right and no cost

benefit analysis analysis I mean I've

talked to Bjorn lomberg a lot yeah and

the reason for that was that well I

looked through all the data that you're

describing for a long period of time one

of the things that struck me

instruct me as well about the

multiplicity of goals that the UN was

hypothetically pursuing was that no one

was assessing these risks and benefits

in any systematic manner ranking them

and then I came across Lombard's work

and he tried to do a cost benefit

analysis looking at our capacity to

adapt and ranking the problems that face

Us in terms of their severity and also

what we could do about those problems in

some effective Manner and like Lumber

like you accepts the ipcc

prognostications of a mild warming Trend

over the next hundred years but he's

done calculations showing that the net

consequence of that even if it is uh

somewhat detrimental economically if we

Factor all those costs into account is

that we'll be less more Rich than we

would otherwise be right because our GDP

is going to increase something like 400

percent on average in the next hundred

years and one of the negative

consequences of global warming will be

that it'll be slightly less than 400

percent and that it's clear that we can

manage that in any real sense and that

we're very good at adapting to a huge

range of weather other situations and

and climate scenarios some of us live in

damn near Arctic conditions and other

people live in the desert and so it's

not outside the realm of human

adaptation to adapt to a one or two

degree climate transformation and

animals should be able to do the same

assuming that we don't you know that

we're reasonably intelligent on the

Environmental Conservation front and so

I don't know are you aware of

laurenburg's work oh yeah no I've Bjorn

and I are in close contact and I'm very

well aware of what he's doing and he's

doing a very good job of making those

points

um you know the thing that you know the

U.N has the 17 sustainability goals I

think the first one is to um

eliminate poverty the second one is to

eliminate hunger or maybe number seven

is um

energy affordable energy for all the

number 13 is climate action

and you've got to wonder how did climate

action even one piece of that which is

you know elimination of fossil fuels

come to Trump

um

pot elimination of poverty and

elimination of hunger development aid

from the U.N from the World Bank and

whatever is now focused on mitigation

the traditional objectives of Economic

Development and help with adaptation

those are put on the back burner

right right that's in favor of

mitigation and this is making that's

insane this is making people less

well-off and we're squandering

opportunities for human development and

you know it for senseless

objectives that aren't expected to

improve anyone's life over the course of

the 21st century and could very well

make us all worse off okay so well well

so this is part of the

incomprehensibility of this to me

because it looks to me like a lot of the

arguments for example that would force

us to take the apocalyptic

prognostications of the doomsayer

seriously the moral arguments go

something like this well you know

a hundred years if there's a lot of

climate change

it's primarily going to be the world's

poor who pay the largest price for that

the world's poor and oppressed and to

mitigate against that we have to adopt

policies that however painful they are

in the short term will mitigate against

that because of our concern for the

long-term viability of let's say these

poverty-stricken people but the problem

with that is that the models aren't very

reliable and it's absolutely 100 percent

certain that if we raise Energy prices

which we have been doing quite

effectively and food prices we're going

to make life much more difficult for

impoverished people throughout the

developing world right now and in a way

that's going to kill plenty of people

and it's certainly going to deprive many

others of educational opportunity and

nutritional nutritional optimal

nutritional input and all of that 100

certain that's going to occur but the

moral the morale moral aspect is well we

shouldn't be doing things that would

endanger those people who are oppressed

and poor but the call policies we're

pursuing do precisely that so I again I

I'm still left with this complete

incapacity to understand how this can

possibly be the case I I don't get it

because there's lots of other things we

could be doing

well leaders in Africa are quite

outspoken they're on the front lines of

being the victims of all this they refer

to Green colonialism energy apartheid

you know that they're facing over this

um global warming policies right right

right and they can't they can't get

loans from development Banks to build

you know they have plenty of fossil

natural gas coal a lot of fossil fuel

resources in Africa they can't get loans

to build their own power plants the only

thing that they're able to do is sell

their fuel

to Europe so Europe is exploiting them

doubly by taking their fuel but not

allowing you know it's Politically

Incorrect for these Banks to fund the

development of power plants so right to

develop their own economy it's just evil

and I think green colonialism and energy

apartheid are perfect descriptors for

what's going on well it's it's just it's

just again it leaves me open most in

amazement that we in the developed world

with our functional economies and our

high level of luxury and security

can say to developing Worlds the

developing World well you know we've got

it pretty good here and we're probably

willing to cut back a little bit but you

guys down there in the developing

countries you know you should be pretty

damn careful about your carbon output

because you know we've only got one

planet and so it isn't really obvious

that any of you should have the same

kind of benefits that we have the planet

can't sustain that level of luxury and

security and so we're just not going to

let you have any money

we're not going to help you develop your

economy so that you can benefit from the

same Industrial Revolution that have

that has that has that has enabled us to

educate our children and to have plenty

to eat and to be warm in the winter and

cool in the summer and then what's all

even more Preposterous is it's the very

people who are constantly clamoring

about the oppressive nature of Western

culture who are foisting this very story

on these developed countries yeah the

irony is that even if the African

nations

were given you know the carbon credits

or whatever and allowed to develop

to where they want to be and where

anyone expects them to be

at most they would be emitting like five

or six percent of global emissions and

this is for like a billion people in the

population so we're not talking about a

lot of extra emissions to allow them to

develop I mean it just makes absolutely

no sense and it's evil it's absolutely

Yeah well yeah yeah yeah yeah that's

that's how it looks to me too well I'm

glad to hear that you're in regard

Lombard as a credible oh absolutely a

commentator on such things well you know

I've looked I've looked across a wide

variety of political and scientific

thinkers over a 20-year period trying to

identify people that I believe to be

credible on the interface between

economic development and energy and

Environmental Management and I I like

shellenberger

um I think Epstein has some interesting

things to say I like Marion tupi

um

um what's there's the the English what's

what's his name um

Richard told Matt Ridley I think Matt

Ridley is good yeah yeah and so but of

all those people I think laurenburg has

done the most credible job and he's also

been given a damn rough ride in the

media I mean he's doing pretty well now

I think promoting his message which is a

it's such a lovely what he lays out is

such a lovely scenario because he shows

how much good we could do in the world

especially with regard to the

amelioration of absolute poverty and the

provision of education at such a tiny

fraction of the amounts of money that

are being devoted to this insane

what prevention of a non-existent

climate apocalypse and why you know I've

been doing everything I can for whatever

it's worth to draw attention to his work

but uh you know the fact that he's been

pilloried like like you've been pillory

is makes it

well there's always a question lurking

in the back of my mind it's sort of like

well where there's smoke there's fire if

people are constantly being attacked for

their views on moral grounds you know

maybe there's something to that but I

certainly I haven't been able to find

that my analysis of your work or Francis

I certainly have seen none of that

whatsoever in relationship to laurenburg

so the mystery Still Remains for me okay

they went after lombborg early on you

know

2003 whatever following his book The

skeptical environmentalists and the

issue

was

that he didn't regard you know the

reduction of fossil fuel emissions as

the be-all and end-all you know there

were more important things to do and for

that he got labeled you know that that

was a very dangerous perspective because

they were just so set on this one

particular policy

um yeah for reasons for poorly Justified

reasons and for reasons that became

harder to justify as time went on and

they're still stuck on this and it just

defies logic and it's going to cause a

lot of damage in the world it defies

logic unless your primary goal is easy

moral virtue so imagine you know the

problem with Lombard's work

fundamentally and this is the problem

with marketing it too is that he offers

a multivariate and multi-dimensional

Analysis of the problems besetting the

world he says well we don't just have

one problem climate apocalypse we have

like 100 problems and then we have the

problem of how to rank order these

problems and then we have the problem of

generating actual Solutions and

assessing them and that's actually

requires a lot of cognitive effort you

know to walk through those and so and

but where if you're a climate apocalypse

you can reduce the entire panoply of

human problems to one problem and then

you can put yourself forward as a moral

person by just saying well I'm

definitely concerned about the fate of

the planet and that's all anybody

reasonable should be concerned about and

because I'm concerned in that manner I'm

a fully credible and reputationally

remarkable person and that's part of the

psychological proclivity that is is

behind this okay and so everything bad

that happens someone finds a path to

blame it on climate change

okay and yeah and the media amplifies it

and this gives politicians an easy out

so rather than dealing with their real

problems you know

poor land use poor regulations poor

whatever inadequate infrastructure

whatever might be the cause of their

actual problems they simply blame it on

global warming and so that it gives them

an easy out

yeah I read an article yesterday that

climate change was increasing the risk

that women were being abused in their

homes

that was just a classic example you know

I mean you know you could make the case

that whatever produces economic

instability is going to raise the roots

you know the rates of abuse but to link

it directly to climate change is a

really egregious example of exactly the

kind of thing that you're describing all

right well look on we're out of time on

this segment I'm going to talk to Dr

Curry for an additional half an hour on

the daily wire plus platform for those

of you who are watching and listening

you might be interested in that where

I'm going to talk about the development

of her interest in in her scientific

Endeavors and and in her entrepreneurial

Endeavors as well

hello everyone I would encourage you to

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