The East is Red [Stoat]

Rather appropriately, with all the murk swirling around Trump’s ties to the Commies, Judith Curry and John Christy are looking for new sources of income suggesting that Congress fund “red teams” to investigate “natural” causes of global warming and challenge the findings of the United Nations’ climate science panel according to the WaPo. In case you’re in the slightest doubt about where La Curry was aiming her testimony, she concludes Let’s make scientific debate about climate change great again. FFS. This, in case you’ve been asleep, is all in the context of the House Committee on un-American Climatology aka Full Committee Hearing- Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method.

I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than skim Curry’s words, because it is the same old stuff all over again. To pick out some bits:

* I realized that the premature consensus on human-caused climate change was harming scientific progress because of the questions that don’t get asked and the investigations that aren’t madeand yet she is rather short of ideas about things to investigate. Like the denialists, she knows that she doesn’t like the IPCC conclusions, but that’s about it.
* As a result of my analyses that challenge the IPCC consensus, I have been publicly called a serial climate disinformer, anti-science, and a denier – this is dishonest, and from the std.septic playbook. The truth is that she has many any number of inaccurate or unsupported statements, and wild allegations about people who should be her colleagues. That is what people have attacked. See Judith Curry WTF? and links therein, which helpfully provides my title image, too.
* A scientist’s job is to continually challenge their own biases and ask “How could I be wrong?” – but obviously this only applies to other scientists; not to Curry or Christy. At least, I can’t find any reflection of that sort in her testimony.
* As usual, her only real contribution is “things are more uncertain than we think”. And this might be true (how certain are we of our uncertainty, after all). But the clear implication of her testimony is “and this means we don’t have to worry”. Her implication is that if we’re uncertain, we don’t need to worry about the impacts of GW; completely forgetting that (a) it could be worse, as easily as it could be better; and (b) if it is worse – in terms of temperature deviation from the expected mean – then the impacts increase non-linearly, so the overall effect of uncertainty is to increase, not decrease, the expected damages.

Enough of Curry. What of Christy? I don’t think I have his testimony available. The WaPo reports him saying credible ‘red teams’ that look at issues such as… the huge benefits to society from affordable energy, carbon-based and otherwise,” said witness John Christy… “I would expect such a team would offer to Congress some very different conclusions regarding the human impacts on climate. Which is stupid. Your views on the benefits of fossil-based energy should not affect your conclusions on the impacts in the slightest¹.

Anyone got links to the testimony of Mann or Pielke?

Notes

1. That’s Bellamy logic.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2nk2KJ8

Rather appropriately, with all the murk swirling around Trump’s ties to the Commies, Judith Curry and John Christy are looking for new sources of income suggesting that Congress fund “red teams” to investigate “natural” causes of global warming and challenge the findings of the United Nations’ climate science panel according to the WaPo. In case you’re in the slightest doubt about where La Curry was aiming her testimony, she concludes Let’s make scientific debate about climate change great again. FFS. This, in case you’ve been asleep, is all in the context of the House Committee on un-American Climatology aka Full Committee Hearing- Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method.

I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than skim Curry’s words, because it is the same old stuff all over again. To pick out some bits:

* I realized that the premature consensus on human-caused climate change was harming scientific progress because of the questions that don’t get asked and the investigations that aren’t madeand yet she is rather short of ideas about things to investigate. Like the denialists, she knows that she doesn’t like the IPCC conclusions, but that’s about it.
* As a result of my analyses that challenge the IPCC consensus, I have been publicly called a serial climate disinformer, anti-science, and a denier – this is dishonest, and from the std.septic playbook. The truth is that she has many any number of inaccurate or unsupported statements, and wild allegations about people who should be her colleagues. That is what people have attacked. See Judith Curry WTF? and links therein, which helpfully provides my title image, too.
* A scientist’s job is to continually challenge their own biases and ask “How could I be wrong?” – but obviously this only applies to other scientists; not to Curry or Christy. At least, I can’t find any reflection of that sort in her testimony.
* As usual, her only real contribution is “things are more uncertain than we think”. And this might be true (how certain are we of our uncertainty, after all). But the clear implication of her testimony is “and this means we don’t have to worry”. Her implication is that if we’re uncertain, we don’t need to worry about the impacts of GW; completely forgetting that (a) it could be worse, as easily as it could be better; and (b) if it is worse – in terms of temperature deviation from the expected mean – then the impacts increase non-linearly, so the overall effect of uncertainty is to increase, not decrease, the expected damages.

Enough of Curry. What of Christy? I don’t think I have his testimony available. The WaPo reports him saying credible ‘red teams’ that look at issues such as… the huge benefits to society from affordable energy, carbon-based and otherwise,” said witness John Christy… “I would expect such a team would offer to Congress some very different conclusions regarding the human impacts on climate. Which is stupid. Your views on the benefits of fossil-based energy should not affect your conclusions on the impacts in the slightest¹.

Anyone got links to the testimony of Mann or Pielke?

Notes

1. That’s Bellamy logic.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2nk2KJ8