Wednesday
May212014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Curry in Quadrant
May 21, 2014 Climate: Sceptics Tony Thomas has an interview with Judith Curry in Australia's Quadrant magazine.
When climatologist Judith Curry visited Melbourne last week she took the time to chat with Quadrant Online contributor Tony Thomas. The professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology is something of a stormy petrel in the climate-change community, as she has broken ranks with alarmist colleagues to question the articles and ethics of the warmist faith. This has made her less than popular in certain circles, even inspiring Scientific American, house journal of the catastropharians, to brand her “a heretic” who has “turned on her colleagues.”
Reader Comments (27)
Excellent responses by Judith Curry. She has shown great integrity and a willingness to be open and change her mind dependent on the evidence. She is a brave woman, to be commended for her willingness to stand up to the bullying, at great expense to her future career.
I particularly like this:
Professor Curry is, as always, level-headed and fair in her assessments of the climate debate in this interview. Every new pronouncement of hers increases my admiration for her fair-mindedness and good sense. Would that various 'statesmen' followed her example.
quick comment about one question (then I will get back to reading this fine interview!). -- Tony Thomas says that the US public debate has just been "galvanized" by statements from Obama and Kerry. This does not seem to be the case at all, although it was the wish of those two officials. All I can detect so far is a vast collective yawn (I am in the USA), and the head of CNN was just bemoaning the great difficulty of getting the US public to care anymore about climate change stories -- when that network tries to do more (which they would dearly love to do), the ratings are in the toilet, commercial flop. No signs of "galvanized" debate in USA that I can see....
For all his brilliantly nuanced world view Senator Kerry couldn't galvanize a mop bucket.
THOMAS: Why is academia so strongly supportive of the orthodoxy, if the orthodox case is flawed?
CURRY: Well, that is a topic for social psychologists at this point. The academic community has a lot invested in the case for anthropogenic climate change – substantial government funding, prestige, and political influence.
So many things to be said. I just wish I had the words to say them.
“a heretic” who has “turned on her colleagues.”
remind me again what scientific principle is involved in the idea of ‘heretic ‘
Climate science needs to be redone from scratch. By physicists, statisticians, chemists, and research engineers, with a track record of research accomplishment in other areas. Professor Curry is one of the few existing climate scientists I'd wish to see involved in such an effort.
Greg
"So many things to be said. I just wish I had the words to say them"
Likewise. Judith Curry is a heroine.
I think I'm always going to be in awe of Judith Curry. Not so much because of her views on climate change but, instead, because of the way she came to hold them. She's not just some cliché "beacon of scientific honesty and integrity", she's Magnetic North. The real deal.
Spot on!
CURRY: Well, that is a topic for social psychologists at this point. The academic community has a lot invested in the case for anthropogenic climate change – substantial government funding, prestige, and political influence.
1) Sounds like a good topic of study for Lewandowsky
2) Climate science is a gravy train and the pigs take a dim view of any attempt to remove their snouts from the trough.
@May 21, 2014 at 9:17 AM | Registered CommenterSkiphil
The political climate report being peddled by the White House is not designed to galvanize Americans, and is not. Its purpose is to provide talking points to fuel news reports and to justify extra-legal policies being imposed without law by the President.
RadicalRodent - it isn't just a direct quote from SA, it is the headline.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-heretic/
The article itself is more balanced, and the first comment is from Judith Curry, herself.
Yes, rogue; I followed the links (eventually). Yet another seismic event occurred as my jaw hit the floor. With these idiots sharing the reins of politics, we are surely doomed.
Simon Hopkinson (10:07 AM): as magnetic north is more of a region, and mobile at that, I would have thought a more apposite title would be TRUE North.
Interesting to compare Professors Curry and Bengtsson.
I have had the benefit of a few email exchanges with Prof Curry. She has been always polite and responsive, "a scholar and a gentleman." When the history of this lamentable episode is written, there will be few scholars and even fewer "gentlemen".
Professor Curry is my hero. Right up there in the very teeth of the enemy and never flinches. How they must hate her and wish that they had a fraction of her courage and sheer class. Brava!
I wanna add another dimension to the cavernous chorus. She and Steve McIntyre have both proven to be superlative editors, wisely and infallibly censoring my best stuff. I'm not being snide; I'm glad they have.
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As a person who attended Georgia Tech and is intensively loyal to the college I cannot express my joy in her association with that fine engineering school. She is the very definition of a scientist.
RR, unfortunately those words are a direct excerpt from a Scientific American editorial. For another example, after her 2014 Congressional testimony on climate science uncertainties, Mann tweeted that she was anti science.
I have guest posted several times on her blog, most recently this week on sea level rise tipping points. Each time, she took the time to vet the material thoroughly, making suggestions, asking questions, strengthening the final post. Her teaching skills and energy are as boundless as her evident wisdom and integrity.
Warmism to science is what the bbc is to journalism:
Lefturd hegomony
It's all there in climate-gate email #0810, really.
Michael Mann and Phil Jones sharing disdain and contempt for Judith Curry and Steve McIntyre:
I knew there would be human emotions in those emails, but I was still surprised by what was found. Their hockey-stick has proved flaccid, [and there is an upcoming court-case with a more politically savvy-opponent, in a theatre where "peer review" is not under their control]. I think history is not going to be kind to that email.
Judith Curry will have the last laugh.
I admire Professor Curry's sober ,on occasions august, response to these questions. However I wonder if she might have been more assertive when dealing with the subject of leading scientific bodies still being strongly supportive of the orthodoxy when the case is flawed.She rightly suggests that amour-propre, political influence and funding have all played a part.But would it not be worth asking that the processes by which this support was obtained should be examined more closely? To the best of my knowledge, and I admit that this is based on no comprehensive research and therefore could be wrong, none of these learned bodies :
a) sought the views of its ordinary membership but relied only on decisions taken in committee by its governing body;
b) sought to establish the strength of the "alarmist" case by commissioning its own research but simply rubber stamped the conclusions of the IPCC policy document;
c) took any guidance from its own constitution which prohibited or sought to dissuade it from taking a position on any scientific dispute; the body's main purpose being to promote science not to become partisans for a particular thesis.
Other correspondents will be in a better position to say what strength there is in these three points.
May 21, 2014 at 1:38 PM | Unregistered Commenter kim
What have you written that someone would censor? You are the master of haiku-commentary.
I suggest that rather than Judith Curry "turning" on her colleagues, her colleagues formed up into a religious cult that she refused to join. How she conducts herself and bears up under the abuse directed at her for not joining the cult is heroic.
Dr. Curry still will not put the left-wing/green tag on the broadest assessment of the AGW movement, she'll allude to it but will not speak it directly.
Can anyone at this time justify her calculation and rationalization of this posture?
If you don't admit "why" people behave the way they do in CAGW advocacy it permits a false equivalency of sides and arguments. If we pretend its mostly "science" not political agenda the marginally interested public is further deceived. It shouldn't be coded messaging and language that the truth of CAGW agenda is conveyed, Dr. Curry has done this dance since she started her blog. Of course she knows, politically she refuses to say it.
cwon14, I can't speak on behalf of Dr Curry. But as a long time reader of her blog and other contributions to the debate, my impression is that she does not want to get into political foodfights, because they potentially distract from her message about science. She does not want people to be able to dismiss her as a political partisan in the scientific debate.
It's certainly not due to lack of courage or conviction - she has suffered years of personal and professional abuse and her career has been hampered.
It may also be that she wishes to maintain privacy about her political views, which is her right. There is not a skerrick of evidence that political partisanship has tainted her work, much to the annoyance of her opponents.