Climatologist Judith Curry announced she is retiring her blog, Climate Etc. She has an impressive CV, which I will not detail here, and more than that, I’ve always enjoyed her writing and combativeness. Michael Mann, the seemingly psychopathic pseudoscientist, took pains one time to claim that her relationship with a divorced man at Penn State was “sleeping her way to the top.” He did so in a public email, finding Curry to be particularly dislikable, to her credit.
Here’s her closing statement:
“It’s time to declare victory against climate stupidity and move on.
Well, the definition of victory here is about as fuzzy as that for the Iran war. Here is a summary of why Climate Etc. is being euthanized:
- Major progress has been made in the climate debate, and the political climate has changed.
- My interests have evolved in other directions.
- The logistics and cost of keeping the blog running are substantial.
State of the Climate Wars
There have been some decisive battles in the past two years, notably President Trump’s election, the DOE Climate Report, and widespread acknowledgement that RCP8.5 is an implausible emissions scenario. As a result, many news agencies have dropped or substantially reduced their climate desk, we don’t hear about climate change so much in the media (particularly as related to extreme weather events). Also, we can’t underestimate the impact of substantially reduced funding for climate-related NGOs, with USAID and other funds drying up.
The leaders of the climate alarmism movement have not conceded defeat but have done much whining, notably over President Trump and the RCP8.5 scenario. They are still trying to discredit the authors of the DOE Report. Triggered by the DOE Report, they have mostly stopped flogging the warming/extreme weather link, although there is a hardcore group that is committed to extreme event attribution as a mechanism to support litigation against fossil fuel companies. With the demise of the extreme weather link, the climate alarmists are now focused on climate “tipping points,” which simply doesn’t resonate with the public (extreme weather events were much more alarming).
But most importantly, the whole issue has lost its political relevance. During the past several months we have watched the entire world panic over loss of access to Middle Eastern oil, and major concerns raised about the need for massively more electricity to support data centers. Putting a tourniquet around our energy supply in the name of eliminating CO2 emissions is a much worse idea now than it was even a few years ago, and that seems to be widely recognized (even in Europe). Most tellingly, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has dropped climate change as an issue, now focusing on AI (and health).
We are perhaps at an inflection point; one can only hope that the climate enterprise will redirect its efforts away from flogging the CO2 climate control knob mantra and towards understanding regional climate variability, particularly as influenced by natural variability, to support efforts at reducing vulnerability to weather extremes. And figure out how to better work with nature to support our needs for food, water, energy.
JC moving on
When I was planning my retirement for Georgia Tech, I viewed Climate Etc. as a hedge against becoming bored in my retirement. Ha! Seems that it is impossible for me to become bored, too many interesting things to do and to learn about and to ponder.
After publishing my book Climate Uncertainty and Risk and co-authoring the DOE Climate Report (I have prepared revisions for my sections, who knows when this will ever be published), I frankly don’t have much more to say on the topic of the climate wars. I have no interest in battling with the likes of Michael Mann, Andrew Dessler, et al. (does anybody still care what they have to say?)
Apart from the climate wars, I remain very interested in the fascinating and complex climate system, I erratically consume new research as I come across it (which can be pretty random sometimes). But most of climate science has become BORING . . . too much mega-modeling and politicking, and not enough thinking. In any event, I no longer have an interest in writing for the public on these topics.
My professional interests are more focused on extreme weather on timescales from hours to a year, which is the focus of my company Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN), along with decision making under uncertainty and risk science. It’s a fascinating time for weather forecasting, and CFAN is deeply immersed in the new opportunities afforded by AI. I write reports on a range of related topics which are sent to CFAN’s clients (they are not made public). I continue to do consulting on climate-related topics, supporting litigation and developing regional, decadal scale scenarios to support risk assessment for specific client needs.
I’ve been pretty quiet on twitter (I can’t bring myself to call it X) for the last several months, maybe I should step up my commentary there — I still have a lot to say, and short comments responding to a paper or news item is about the right level of effort at this point.
Now that my granddaughter is in high school (yes she is very interested in science), I have been paying more attention to what is going on at the universities, which I abandoned in disgust almost a decade ago.”
__________________
Roger Pielke, Jr., writes a Substack blog called The Honest Broker, and I like his work even as I think he leans a bit too hard into the CO2 as climate-driver supposed-science. As John Robson of Climate Discussion Nexus has said, and I roughly quote, he is fun to read even when he is wrong. If John did not say that, somebody did or should have. On his most recent post, Another Pillar of Climate Advocacy Collapses, about a secret British Petroleum link to an influential scientific paper, he has gone through the comments, maybe 60 at last count, and stuck a “Like” on most of them. When he does that, a red ♥ Liked by Roger Pielke, Jr. appears at the top. He has done that so much on this recent post that the absence of the ♥ makes it appear that he does not like a given comment.
I comment infrequently, and he has occasionally [twice] liked my comments, one that comes to mind when I quoted comedian Demetri Martin, who said about a sign that read “Bridge May Be Icy” that it could be changed to read Bridge May Not Be Icy, without changing the meaning. At least we share that offbeat sense of humor. Martin is one of my favorites. However, when he likes as many comments as he does but fails to like a few, he is making a statement about those who do not totally agree with him, a way of casting dispersion.
Ah well, it’s his blog, do as thy will. I do keep him at arm’s length. Today I left this comment on the the Another Pillar post:
I note that a large number of comments here receive the Pielke imprimatur, others not, and choose [this] one [above] not receiving it to place my “Like”, that Facebook approval-garnering fetish. It’s hard not to seek approval, but I do not, so do not “like” this comment, dammit! Here goes: There is power behind the climate change movement, and real power does not show its face. If you know a name, it is not a powerful person’s, by definition. I got a hint of this reading once long ago that Zbigniew Brzeziński claimed to be the one (maybe he said “we”) who spotted Bill Clinton and saw him as having presidential timbre, charm and charisma and a good memory, highly useful.**
So I’ve wondered why the silence of the oil giants, the dogs not barking, about climate change. This is not a timid force among us, but rather an ultra-powerful controlling hand. The link here to BP is intriguing, silently acting behind the scenes to guide the movement.
So powerful is the climate change movement that it was able, by use of carrot and stick, to set the entire scientific community off on a scavenger hunt seeking apparent validation of pseudoscience used to attack the very thing that gave us our wealth and comfort, fossil fuels. To end their use is to end us as we are, and make us into something less. More importantly, we deny its use in the developing world, especially Africa, keeping that continent poor and in the dark. It is essentially a misanthropic and racist movement backed by hidden hands of immense power. I do not like it.
**Younger readers: William Jefferson Clinton III (birth name Blythe) was elected president in 1992 and 1996, each time attaining less than 50% of the vote. The reason he won was the candidacy of H. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent. Due to high media exposure, the Perot campaign in ’92 garnered 19% of the vote, enough to allow Clinton to take office over Republican Bob Dole, from whom Perot siphoned votes. In 1996 there was a similar outcome. Perot, obviously watching the polls would step in and out of the race as they dictated. (I take this to mean that back then the vote counting system was intact, so that it took a third-party candidate to get Clinton, the fair-haired boy, elected. These days it would only take the push of a button to achieve the same outcome.)
Piece of Mindful 