Climate change can be categorized as a “wicked problem.”[Note] Wicked problems are difficult or impossible to solve, there is no opportunity to devise an overall solution by trial and error, and there is no real test of the efficacy of a solution to the wicked problem. Efforts to solve the wicked problem may reveal or create other problems….
Xu, Crittenden et al. [Note] argue that “gigaton problems require gigaton solutions.” The wickedness of the climate problem precludes a gigaton solution (either technological or political).
Judith Curry abandoned science this year. She asserted I was “directly involved in Climategate”; James Annan explained “(S)He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense“; William Connolley eviscerated a recent paper on Antarctic sea ice (here), which notes, “The main problem with the paper is the uncritical use of invalid data“; and Bart Verheggen explained, “Her unfounded allegations are insulting for the whole profession.”
Her House testimony quoted above is another confusing mess. It uses the word ‘wicked’ in various forms 11 times, glomming onto a 27-year-old paper by an architect and an urban designer, apparently to prove that the climate ‘problem’ may be ‘impossible’ to solve and indeed that even trying to solve it may only make things worse.
Like much of what she is saying today, it is pseudoscientific garbage. She has utterly abandoned any interest in the actual science itself.
Her testimony simply asserts, “Based upon the background knowledge that we have, the threat does not seem to be an existential one on the time scale of the 21st century, even in its most alarming incarnation.” Of course, she can hide behind the undefined word “existential,” but for those who actually follow the recent science, which Curry clearly doesn’t since she hardly ever either quotes it or blogs on it.
The literature from the last year alone makes clear that doing nothing is the only surefire way to make things worse — most likely unimaginably worse with a confluence of catastrophes any one of which would motivate action and combined is indeed an existential threat to the health and well-being of billions of people (see “A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice“).
It simply makes no sense to try to make sense of what she is saying anymore. What, for instance, does this mean:
Weitzmann [sic] characterizes the decision making surrounding climate change in the following way:
“Much more unsettling for an application of expected utility analysis is deep structural uncertainty in the science of global warming coupled with an economic inability to place a meaningful upper bound on catastrophic losses from disastrous temperature changes. The climate science seems to be saying that the probability of a system-wide disastrous collapse is non-negligible even while this tiny probability is not known precisely and necessarily involves subjective judgments.”
When a comprehensive decision analysis includes plausible catastrophes with unknown probabilities, the policy implications can be radically different from those suggested by optimal decision making strategies targeted at the most likely scenario. Weitzmann [sic] argues that it is plausible that climate change policy stands or falls to a large extent on the issue of how the high impact low probability catastrophes are conceptualized and modeled. Whereas “alarmism” focuses unduly on the possible (or even impossible) worst-case scenario, robust policies consider unlikely but not impossible scenarios without letting them completely dominate the decision.
Aside from repeatedly misspelling his name — Google anyone? — Weitzman’s point is almost exactly the opposite of Curry’s (see my 1/09 post Harvard economist: Climate cost-benefit analyses are “unusually misleading,” warns colleagues “we may be deluding ourselves and others”).
Weitzman argues that the economic damages from possible catastrophic impacts (what he believes are unlikely) render traditional cost-benefit analyses pointless and should completely dominate decision-making. This is doubly true because Wetizman has underestimated the probability of these impact.
For completeness’s sake, I’ll review what Weitzman has in fact said.
Weitzman believes that the damage posed by, say, 6°C is considerably worse than what traditional cost-benefit analyses calculate.
Weitzman says, that for any fat-tailed distribution, like the damage function for unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions, it is the possibility of extreme negative outcomes that overwhelm the traditional cost-benefit analysis.
The extreme or fat tail of the damage function (click on figure at right) represents what Weitzman calls “rare climate disasters,” although as I’ve shown above, they aren’t rare at all, they are highly likely with business-as-usual emissions. For Weitzman, disaster is a temperature change (delta T) of > 6°C (11°F) in a century, as he explains in an earlier paper on the Stern Review on the economics of climate change:
Societies and ecosystems whose average temperature has changed in the course of a century or so by delta T > 6C (for U.S. readers: 6C = 11F) are located in the terra incognita of what any honest economic modeler would have to admit is a planet Earth reconfi…gured as science …fiction, since such high temperatures have not existed for some tens of millions of years”¦.
With roughly 3% IPCC-4 probability, we will “consume” a terra incognita biosphere within a hundred years whose mass species extinctions, radical alterations of natural environments, and other extreme outdoor consequences of a different planet will have been triggered by a geologically-instantaneous temperature change that is signi…cantly larger than what separates us now from past ice ages.
Weitzman says the IPCC Fourth Assessment gives the probability of such an “extreme” temperature change as 3%, and that “to ignore or suppress the signi…ficance of rare tail disasters is to ignore or suppress what economic theory is telling us loudly and clearly is potentially the most important part of the analysis” “” more important than the discount rate.
Indeed, in his most recent paper Weitzman says again,
Six degrees of extra warming is about the upper limit of what the human mind can envision for how the state of the planet might change. It serves as a routine upper bound in attempts to communicate what the most severe global warming might signify, including the famous “burning embers” diagram of the IPCC [above] and several other popular expositions.
One recent study asked 52 experts for their subjective probability estimates of triggering a “tipping point of major changes” in each of fi…ve possible categories: (1) the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation; (2) the Greenland ice sheet; (3) the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; (4) the Amazon rainforest; (5) the El Ni±o/Southern Oscillation. For what it is worth, at an average temperature increase of T [approximately] 6C the expected (probability weighted) number of such expert-assessment tipping points was three (out of a possible …five).
It is 6C warming “” and the multiple catastrophic outcomes it probably brings “” Weitzman says you really, really want to avoid.
Curry simply doesn’t understand the first thing about Weitzman’s work and so utterly misrepresents it.
For me, what is especially important about Weitzman’s analysis is that the science is now crystal clear that there is far greater chance than 3% chance we will have a total warming of 6°C in a century or so if we don’t reverse emissions trends soon.
Again, you can go here: “Hadley Center: Catastrophic 5.5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path.” For the Hadley folks, there is a 50% chance warming will exceed 5.5°C if we listen to the do-nothing confusionists like Curry and Lomborg.
Or look at MIT 2009 analysis:
As Andrew Freedman at washingtonpost.com explained:
For the no policy scenario, the researchers concluded that there is now a nine percent chance (about one in 11 odds) that the global average surface temperature would increase by more than 7°C (12.6°F) by the end of this century, compared with only a less than one percent chance (one in 100 odds) that warming would be limited to below 3°C (5.4°F).
To repeat, on our current emissions path, we have a 9% chance of an incomprehensibly catastrophic warming of 7°C by century’s end, but less than a 1% chance of under 3°C warming.
“The take home message from the new greenhouse gamble wheels is that if we do little or nothing about lowering greenhouse gas emissions that the dangers are much greater than we thought three or four years ago,” said Ronald G. Prinn, professor of atmospheric chemistry at MIT. “It is making the impetus for serious policy much more urgent than we previously thought.”
Duh.
Judith Curry would realize this if she had not abandoned science and if she actually read the work of the people she cites.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
“Confusionist” – nice term – it’s good replacement for “heretic” and serves the same purpose.
So Judith Curry is all talk and no action. Who isn’t? Will someone please make a list of significant climate change mitigation actions taking place anywhere in the world?
Joe,
Can we get Weitzman himself to issue rebuttal?
Great coverage of the testimony Joe. And great theater for sure. I was watching most of the morning and enjoyed it tremendously.
My favorite part was Ben Santer completely destroying Michaels in a rebuttal. Santer made Michaels look ignorant and disingenuous.
The bad: Unfortunately there was something for everyone. Lindzen dominated the first panel and certainly someone who was a denier could have come away with the feeling that scientists were very divided about the science.
The problem is that deniers have an outsized voice in the conversation. Even including one denier/delayer on a panel of four gives the idea that there is scientific disagreement. Hard to be fair when being fair would mean having no deniers represented until your panel is about 20 members.
Even 2 C of warming could be a disaster because it could lead to a major permafrost meltdown, just one of the feedbacks. If the Arctic warms 6 C we lose half of the permafrost says Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. With Arctic amplification +6C could result from +2C global
http://stephenleahy.net/2010/09/23/arctic-ice-in-death-spiral-risks-climate-catastrophe/
Has any economist taken feedbacks into account?
“Has any economist taken feedbacks into account? …”
What, and give up the remote control?
Report: Warming threatens water supply
Tahoe warming
Predictions indicated by new report on global warming’s effect on Lake Tahoe:
» Average Tahoe snowpack will decline by 40 to 60 percent by 2100. Some years, all precipitation could fall as rain.
» Prolonged droughts will lower Tahoe below its rim, cutting flow to the Truckee River by up to 10 to 20 years at a time.
» More frequent flooding is likely.
» Algae blooms could diminish lake clarity.
Source: UC Davis
http://www.rgj.com/article/20101117/NEWS/11170396/1321/news/Report–Warming-threatens-water-supply
I loved the Santer v. Michaels smackdown. Santer just ripped him to shreds.
She’s stopped making any sort of sense what so ever and has become a parody of the University professor. She’s become the sort of professor that those with a negative view of higher education hold up as a stereotype. That is the professor who knows lots of fancy sounding words but knows nothing of value and can’t put together a logical argument.
“Based upon the background knowledge that we have, the threat does not seem to be an existential one on the time scale of the 21st century, even in its most alarming incarnation.”
This is her unsupported opinion which she then contradicts.
Listening to Curry earlier, it occurred to me that someone pulled at random from a mall and given a couple of hours to read a few denier blogs could have contributed as much as Curry did in the House Climate Hearing. It was risible.
How did she get a PhD? How bad does her output need to get before someone at Georgia Tech considers her role there?
Ever notice that when a denier speaks, 30,000 people somewhere are fleeing for their lives ?
The price of rice -
Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) — Thai rice prices, the benchmark for Asia, gained 2 percent to an eight-month high after the worst floods in five decades disrupted supply and damaged crops, according to the Thai Rice Exporters Association.
The price of 100 percent grade-B white rice rose to $552 a metric ton from $541 the previous week, said Pisanu Sangyoo, an official at the association.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-17/thai-rice-price-rises-to-eight-month-high-on-supply-disruption.html
———–
Flooding may damage 11 percent of the nation’s rice plantation area and lower output from the main crop by 3.9 percent to 22.34 million metric tons, the Farm Ministry said Nov. 9. About 7.56 million rai (2.99 million acres) are estimated to have been damaged by flooding, it said.
Thailand is the world leader in rice exports.
———
The Russian grain estimates were at 25% when the drought hit . Their total loss was 39 %, over 2009.
Santer is a brilliant man, and Michaels is just a tired old whore. I hope the video of them goes viral.
Curry:
Panel II: Some fireworks between Santer and Michaels; Michaels seemed to come out on top. Michaels has some interesting stuff in his written testimony on attribution in the latter half of 20th century. … – ja curry
Anyone have a link to the Santer-Michaels smackdown?
I certainly hope the house knows more about climate science than just was discussed today. I assume they do and that this was just a show to get some things on record. But to any politician that says they don’t know if AGW is real, you think it may be your job to learn.
One thought occured to me as I read this post: we often talk about temperature change by the year 2100. This is, of course, beyond our lifetimes, but a good time frame to think about in the context of climate change. It is a good psychological number to frame discussion.
However, we also know that temperature changes will not stop at the year 2100. Perhaps some discussion or presentation should be made on the equilibirium temperature change of various scenarios, or estimations beyond the year 2100.
Until someone comments on my limerick about Curry, I’ll have to keep re-posting it (a mild threat, admittedly):
There once was a woman from Atlanta
Who questioned climate science and data
She threw quite a tizzy
About IPCC
But nobody knew what the hell she was talking about
“Based upon the background knowledge that we have, the threat does not seem to be an existential one on the time scale of the 21st century, even in its most alarming incarnation.”
An existential threat literally means a threat to one’s existence.
She is saying that global warming is not a threat to our existence during the 21st century, and we shouldn’t worry about anything beyond that.
Is this a good reason for not adopting a law like Waxman-Markey, which would have limited global warming and reduced GDP 3% in 2050?
It is like saying that I am not going to spend $10 a month on medicine because my disease is not an “existential threat.” The disease will make me utterly miserable for the rest of my life, but it does not threaten my existence, so it is not worth spending any money on medicine.
Santer completely owned Michaels in panel 2.
Interesting testimony from the Montana based biologist in panel 3.
The fact that the Navy has realized the threat could help quite a few otherwise denial prone people understand that this thing is for real.
Esop – I thought so. Curry did not think so. How?
The Global Hazards for Oct. 2010 -
Rainfall reports from Vietnam ………
First week of Oct. 51 inches (1,300 mm) of rain reportedly fell in parts of the region.
Torrential rains poured over north central Vietnam on October 14th–18th. According to Reliefweb, up to 38.1 inches (968 mm) of rain fell in Nghe An, up to 36.9 inches (938 mm) in Ha Tinh, and up to 31.0 inches (787 mm) in Quang Binh.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=hazards
The average rainfall over the last two days, from 7pm, Nov.14 till 7pm, Nov. 16, is 150 to 300mm, with larger rainfall at Nam Đông (TT. Huế) 412mm, Tà Lương (TT. Huế) 506mm, Thượng Nhật (TT. Huế) 460mm, Trà My (Quảng Nam) 475mm, Ba Tơ (Quảng Ngãi) 365mm, Sơn Giang (Quảng Ngãi) 355mm, Minh Long (Quảng Ngãi) 387mm, Trà Bồng (Quảng Ngãi) 741mm.
From 7pm yesterday till 4am this morning the average rainfall has been 10 to 30mm with some places in Quang Ngai with 30 to 50mm.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/MUMA-8BA7AT?OpenDocument
Dear Joe,
Please read JC’s section you quote. She is saying something different from the IPCC, but not something different from what you write.
I read Curry’s statement — sort of a random walk.
I was curious about the source of her statement “For example, the recent catastrophic flooding in Pakistan{11} apparently owes as much to deforestation and overgrazing as it does to heavy rainfall.”
Although certainly poor soil conditions promote flooding, I thought the inordinate amount of rain would overwhelm anything. So I traced the sources of her statement. Surprising (to me) her reference {11} is to her blog. This references a newspaper article which quote a scientist (background unclear) who was using the flood to argue for more attention to illegal deforestation. No professional research, but more opinion.
She also refers to the rain as the heaviest in 80 years. She forgot the rest of the phrase “of weather records”. The Pakistanis have been clear that the event is unprecedented in history.
Here is NASA’s findings on the cause of summer 2010 floods “due to intensification of the water cycle – a common pattern seen in climate modeling as global temperatures increase – causing an increase in atmospheric humidity and precipitation.” The TRMM measurements show this, twice the rainfall in 2010 as the normal monsoon season in 2009.
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gesNews/pakistan_flooding_monsoon_rainfall
This and other scientific findings are easy to find by googling. I’m astonished that she would testify to Congress on the basis of opinions rather than definitive evidence.
I gather Curry doesn’t like global climate models. Some scientists who are not used to modeling since to be very hung up on models. They don’t accept them as an input, not the only input but a complementary one, to climate science. Apparently, if you’ve never done any modeling, it is very confusing to you. Thus her incoherent discussions about identifying ‘uncertainty’. If you don’t understand modeling, you won’t understand how the uncertainties are identified and bounded.
But the subject of human contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide and the consequences should not be bandied about by confused souls.
In case you’d really like to read Curry’s reference {11} for yourself here’s the link
http://judithcurry.com/2010/09/20/pakistan-on-my-mind/
Okay, Richard, I will. It’s not a limerick. Does that suffice?
obfuscator
highly skilled, calculated attempt to confuse
Richard, I’ll do better than comment, I’ll plagiarize!
There once was a woman from Atlanta
Who questioned climate science and data
She wouldn’t agree
With the IPCC
And went on and on yatta yatta!
Enough already?
Judith Curry has gone emerita as the saying is.
I did not listen to Curry’s testimony. But if the quote PurpleOzone provides is correct, then that’s the same reckless, mindless error so many people make in insisting that the consequences of Climate Change have to be shown to be completely due to climatological considerations induced by GHGs, or somehow they ‘don’t count’.
Another clearer instance of it would be to say, after a 3 foot rise in sea level inundates huge portions of some of the world’s major inhabited areas, that “the costs and damage were largely due to inadequate sea wall defenses”. Of course the horrible tragedy that unfolded in Pakistan is due in part to land use practices and probably other considerations about how we organize and conduct our lives in modern times. The impact of climate change is always going to be due to the interaction of pure climate change and features of world we live in now, not from sometime in the remote past.
Explaining climate science to determined, dogmatic deniers is like explaining a joke to completely humorless people – they’ll never get it.
Speaking of limericks (#18) – here’s one i came up with last year after Copenhagen:
There once was a planet called Earth,
Then, 4.5 billion years after birth,
It evolved a new species,
From DNA pieces,
That polluted for all they were worth.
This continued ’til everyone felt,
The impact of artic-ice melt,
A global nightmare,
(Or full of hot-air?)
For many, disaster was spelt.
The science said 350 per mil,
Was the most CO2 we could spill,
If it grows any more,
We’ll see famine and war,
Our chances? Effectively nil.
Our last shot to counter stagnation:
A treaty to unite every nation!
We all tried to fight,
But it wasn’t done right,
Like a roll made with egg but not bacon.
The trouble was there from the start,
Wonderful Copenhagen was breaking apart,
Counting offsets, a subtraction:
A dangerous distraction,
Like methane from a cow’s fart.
This cautionary tale I now tell,
Whilst chiming our lonely death-knell,
The science was clear,
But it fell on deaf-ears,
Humanity was too hard a sell.
Curry’s language is self referential, her data non existent, her logic backwards. Good thing it’s only the earth at stake here.
Wicked harsh dude.
Seriously, how does someone old enough to have “gone emeritus” use the word “wicked” so much? Got caught up in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure?
This sums the curry bs up:
WTF
Cato’s Pat Michaels admits 40 percent of funding comes from big oil.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/16/oil-fueled-pat-michaels/
“My favorite part was Ben Santer completely destroying Michaels in a rebuttal. Santer made Michaels look ignorant and disingenuous.”
@ Mark S #4 above, about where in the broadcast does this occur? Has anyone made a YouTube clip of this smackdown? I’d really like to see it.
Steve O’Connor (#32) – Kudos (or other snack bar of your choice)! It must be the O’Connor in you!
You quote Curry, “The climate science seems to be saying that the probability of a system-wide disastrous collapse is non-negligible even while this tiny probability is not known precisely and necessarily involves subjective judgments.”
Is that even an actual sentence? At about the 2/3 mark (“even while …”), her words just tumble out until they stop.
Anyone have a link to video of the testimony? The webcast has been removed from science.house.gov.
Raleigh Latham @41 — Pass along words from Dr. Dai: This is very alarming because if the drying is anything resembling Figure 11, a very large population will be severely affected in the coming decades over the whole United States, southern Europe, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Chile, Australia, and most of Africa.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.81/full
Maybe she is trying to curry favor.
Matt @40,
Try here.
http://capitalclimate.blogspot.com/2010/11/if-it-limps-like-duck-congressional.html
Raleigh Lathan @41: I’m not encouraging anyone to email Judith Curry but if you choose to do so, please be courteous, fact based, and respectful, even as you express strong disagreement with her views. It doesn’t help the cause to use words like “will not be tolerated”, which to my ear sounds vaguely threatening (I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but sometimes words come off differently than you expect). Leave it to the other side to be inappropriate and rude, because they surely will. The people expressing serious concern about the business-as-usual path the world is now on related to climate have the facts on their side and there’s no need to dilute the message with words and tone that might be misconstrued.
climate undergrad (#15),
The Santer-Michaels smackdown is at about 35:15 in Panel 2 (see the link in MapleLeaf #44).
The hearings were sparsely covered in MSM, on a slow news day. Maybe that’s their new tactic
Meanwhile in the UK Cornwall gets a walloped…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-11772262
Sam wrote:
I look forward to a return to a more measured tone, to which one can confidently and proudly refer climate “fence-sitters.” No matter how provoked, try to be respectful to your opposition at all times.
I am sorry to say so, but that is just wishful thinking, sir. The debate over global warming now mirrors that of the debate over slavery in 1858. Everyone who can be persuaded has already been persuaded. The only option now is to choose a side and do your best to make sure that it prevails. Just as one cannot educate the willfully stupid, so one cannot persuade those who have rejected reason and logic (which is essentially what denialists have done.) The best that we can hope to achieve is to prevail without resorting to violence as our ancestors did.
I found this statement particularly weird (in boldface):
FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!
We HEAR YOU, but who’s listening anymore?
Judith Curry may simply be saying, in so many incoherent words and sentences, that climate science might just as well be climate fiction, considering what little impetus for action it’s having on anyone.
It’s time we stop talking and DO SOMETHING! If the sky is about to fall, stop running around screaming, “THE SKY IS FALLING” and DO SOMETHING about it.
A Google search on climate change mitigation will yield the most common consensus, Ask not what you can do about climate change, but what your governments and businesses can do about it. When it comes to climate change mitigation, the buck stops at our doorsteps, for it is our offspring who will suffer from our inaction, not our governments’ and businesses’. Let me repeat, it is our offspring who will suffer from our inaction, not our governments’ and businesses’.
We have heard and understood the climate mitigation messages hundreds, if not thousands of times. Whether we are professed deniers or believers, we know that the dangers are real and that action must be taken now. BUT WE AIN’T DOING IT! The only real way to mitigate climate change is to change the way we live, BUT WE AIN’T DOING IT! People, look around you at your sprawling megalopolises and your hundreds of millions of CO2-spewing vehicles and houses and businesses and your oceans of asphalt and concrete that service them. All that stuff is ours, not someone else’s. How are we going to change our environments in realistic ways that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions now, not tomorrow? Real climate change mitigation will happen when we sacrifice our five favorite vices, our houses, cars, food, luxuries, and wealth or income. If we are not prepared to sacrifice these vices then the rest is just talk and wishful thinking.
For goodness sake, Roger. Many of us already do lots of individually responsible things, some even live simple lives. Individually, none of us can install a public transport system in our own, let alone anyone else’s, neighbourhood nor can we nag everyone in our street or suburb to sell their gas-guzzling cars and grow their own vegetables. Individually, we cannot close down power stations or buy a high speed rail system to substitute for short haul flights or redesign or renovate bad urban planning.
Our best option is to urge governments to get going on those things and, simultaneously, make it easier for those less thoughtful or responsible to reduce their negative impacts on the environment – without even trying.
Curry questions whether “betting big” will fix the problem or make it worse. She has it wrong. The bet is already placed and we lost. The oil is already burned and CO2 levels are already up a third.
A second bet is now being placed by denialists. That bet is more like not buying car insurance. Except if you lose on the car insurance bet you’re out the value of a car. But if we lose the AGW bet farms turn to dust, species go extinct, coastal cities flood, etc, etc.
Oh, and you can reduce the chance of an accident by careful driving, but these guys have the pedal to the metal on fossil fuels.
Santer called Michaels’ testimony “misleading” (41:21) and “not correct” (47:05) on panel II http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/296637-101
I would call it a shame (and any serious democratic institution outside the U.S. would indeed perceive it a shame) to re-invite a man whose 1998 testimony had already been identified as fraud, pure and simple, as Krugman put it. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/06/pat_michaels_fraud_pure_and_si.php
“For example, the recent catastrophic flooding in Pakistan{11} apparently owes as much to deforestation and overgrazing as it does to heavy rainfall.”
@24 She is clearly speaking codewords to her base.Totally irrelevant the source. This is only meant to be a talking point they can use to absolve white americans of any responsibility for the disaster (notice no mention was made at all of the West’s CO2 emissions) and blame all those ignorant,irresponsible brown-skinned MUSLIMS (aka sand-ni***rs) Wow,she really is a quick study.
I posted the recent article with her picture at the top on my Facebook page on Saturday and commented that I hadn’t been able to decide whether Curry is the Maribel Morgan (of The Total Woman infamy) or the Phyllis Schlaffly of climate change.
“For example, the recent catastrophic flooding in Pakistan{11} apparently owes as much to deforestation and overgrazing as it does to heavy rainfall.”
————
I have 2 reports from Pakistan on rainfall totals one of 16 feet, the other of 12 feet. 2 different valleys, over the course of a week.
It appears that people like Tom Yulsman (former colleague), Gavin Schmidt, and even Joe Romm have some respect for her for her past work. I think there must have been something there. Does anyone know of earlier credible work, and if so, at what point did it stop?
wassup?
Bob Doublin (#53),
Apparently she is attempting to be the Roger Pielke III of climate change.
#30 Gestur: Curry’s statement is taken directly from her written statement on page 4 paragraph 2,
http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/file/Commdocs/hearings/2010/Energy/17nov/Curry_Testimony.pdf
I was shocked at the lack of scientific sense in her claim. The trouble is that local environmental degradation is indeed a factor in some of the recent floods around the world. But when you have unprecedented rainfall you will have severe flooding. She leaves the impression it’s the fault of greedy locals without actually saying it; she counterbalances the impression with weasel words like ‘apparently’ and ‘as much as’ to give herself an out if chastised by scientists; she still provides a wide-open door for deniers to exploit or the general public to confuse, because certainly local pressure on the environment is a real problem.
You could frame the statement: The extreme rainfall resulted from global warming, and was somewhat worsened by deforestation and overgrazing. (see #24 for Curry’s phrasing).
I agree with #54 she is framing her discussion for her base. Previously I had thought maybe some of the flack she was catching could be an overreaction. But tracing down this example crystalized my opinion of her motivations.
Roger #50
Real climate change mitigation will happen when we sacrifice our five favorite vices, our houses, cars, food, luxuries, and wealth or income. If we are not prepared to sacrifice these vices then the rest is just talk and wishful thinking.
CORRECT! You choose.
Following on from PurpleOzone #58…
Curry’s statement to Congress is taken from her blog post, which refers to a piece of journalism by Rebecca Conway:
“Human failing behind Pakistan floods”:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/world/2010/08/31/15194681.html
The scientists and experts quoted talk about the issues of deforestation and soil erosion (which seem like real factors), however, it seems that it was the journalist (Rebecca Conway) who stated that:
“poor land management, outdated irrigation systems and logging are at least as much to blame.”
So let me get this right. Judith Curry is basing her testimony to Congress based on the opinion of a journalist?
Susan Anderson — It seems she hasn’t published much of anything in the last couple of years. So instead, as CapitalClimate suggests, she is setting up trying to be RP III.
The attempt by the denialist forces of darkness to diminish the significance of the Pakistani flood cataclysm is similar to the disinformation campaign they mounted in Australia after the catastrophic wildfires in Victoria on the seventh of February in 2009. These fires came after years of historically unparalleled drought, after months of extreme dryness, weeks of record high temperatures and on a day of absolutely unprecedentedly extreme weather conditions. Temperatures were well over 40, even 45 degrees in places and the wind was harsh and dry, with relative humidity amongst the lowest ever recorded in Victoria.
After the fire catastrophe of 1939, a fire intensity index was created, that measured the weather conditions conducive to fire, ie heat, wind, humidity etc, and set 1939′s conditions as a base of 100. In many parts of Victoria in 2009 the index reached levels around 180, ie well beyond any heretofore forseen circumstances.
With that, I would say, well nigh irrefutable evidence that climatic conditions were at fault, and that once again the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis had been demonstrated to be relevant by dreadful experience, what did the denialist forces of darkness do? Why, they lied, misrepresented and vilified, as ever. The fires were not caused by extreme weather conditions, one camp asserted, but by evil ‘environmentalists’ who had stopped ‘hazard-reduction’ burn-offs to reduce the fuel load. Despite this proposition being immediately refuted, as hazard reduction burning has greatly increased in recent years as the result of several recent mega-fires in south-east Australia, and the only limiting factor being, not evil ‘Greenies’ but the unsafe weather conditions even in the depths of winter, this denialist lie was pushed for all it was worth, by the Murdoch media pathocracy in particular. One Rightwing commentator even openly called for ‘Greenies’ to be lynched for their alleged culpability, and this incitement to homicide was published in a journal of record (not even one of Murdoch’s).
The answer to the question as to why humanity has chosen species suicide and ecological omnicide, is easy to answer, in my opinion. Decisions in market fundamentalist capitalist societies are taken by the elite owners of those societies. Capitalism is a system that preferences and promotes psychopaths, those without conscience, empathy or scruples, who care only for themselves and in whom insatiable greed is the prime motivating force. It is they who have chosen self-destruction because they hate other people, because they hate life and because they simply do not care what happens after they are dead. As long as they remain the totalitarian rulers of the planet, humanity is doomed.
So far, this who affair with Curry testifying has gone precisely as I expected. I predicted she would be called to testify, and Monckton wouldn’t (prediction made in a private e0mail list, not here or on my own site). And I said she will prove to be a huge asset to the denier side. That has yet to unfold, obviously, but I stand by it.
All they want is more material they can use to sway voters to support denier politicians. And by “denier politicians” I mean politicians willing to leap on any issue just to get votes, whether they have an opinion on the matter or even understand it. In Curry’s ongoing involvement, they’re getting metric tons of exactly what they want. She has a position at a US university (head of the dept., I believe?), she doesn’t come across sounding like a loon (ala Monckton), and because she’s a she, that makes her that much harder to attack without being (falsely) accused of sexism. Oh, and the fact that she’s not saying all those climate scientists are nutjobs trying to take over the planet, but merely talking about “uncertainty” and (seemingly, to the unschooled) making an appeal to centrism is just perfect.
I expect to see Curry rack up a lot of frequent flier miles in trips to WDC in the next 2 to 6 years as she continues to give the deniers all the endlessly recyclable material they could wish for. Anyone here who thinks that whether she’s talking in circles or is flat out wrong makes any difference just isn’t paying attention.
re Curry, I get it that the last two years are fallow. What was so good before that? Anyone spare the time to provide coupla links for a layishperson (calculus limited)? Yeah, I should google her, but lazy is as lazy does.
I have a new cheer:
Wehage, Wehage, Wehage
Others make excellent points and it is always a relief to read sense rather than antisense, but this is on us.
However, for a quick visual on why that is incomplete, I recently found myself in the midst of a bunch of huge trucks (me with my antique Obama sticker). Have you noticed that a statement is being made by millions of teabaggers?
And the superrich now dominate public entertainment with kids growing up to be wannabes believing education has nothing to do with it. What about them? (last year startler “average US woman spends 300,000 a year on hair and makeup (Newsweek) – but last I heard average US woman doesn’t have that much. I must be misremembering) – not really OT as the issue is fakery on all levels. Cosmetics and virtual reality.