by Judith Curry
Last January, I visited Prager U in California. I recorded some videos. Science.feedback.org fact-checked my 5-minute video, which is the subject of this post
Here is information about Prager U.
Here are the links to my two videos.
Good News About Climate Change
Stories about us: Climate scientists can’t intimidate me
JC’s Prager U Text
Let’s start with the good news.
By all accounts, planet earth is doing well. Humans are doing better than at any other time in history. Over the past hundred years, as temperatures have warmed about 2 degrees F:
- The global population has INincrease by 6 billion people
- Global poverty has had a significant impact deNoni
- And the number of people killed by weather disasters has been reduce per capita is 97%.
It is clear that we are not facing an existential crisis.
Anyone who tells you we are is not paying attention to historical data. Instead, they are concerned about what “might” happen in the future, based on predictions from incomplete climate models, driven by unrealistic assumptions.
I came to this positive diagnosis after some time researching the matter. Until recently, I was a professor of climate science and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
But it’s not all good news.
The biggest problem with climate change is not climate change, but the way we are handle with it.
We are trying to control the uncontrollable, at Great costs, by urgently phasing out fossil fuels. We have failed to put the risks from climate change in context other challenges the world is facing.
Climate change has become a convenient scapegoat. As a result, we are skipping work reality the cause of these problems.
There are countless examples, but let me show you one.
Lake Chad in Africa is shrinking. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari blames that. He declared: “Climate change is the main cause of Lake Chad drying up.”
But not so.
Yes, the initial drop in water levels was due to prolonged droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. But the lake has remained nearly empty over the past two decades, even as rainfall has recovered. During this time, rivers flowing into the lake from Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria were diverted by government agencies to irrigate inefficient rice farms.
In short, climate change has little to do with falling Lake Chad water levels. Rather, bad human decisions. Climate change is just a convenient excuse, masking mismanagement and governance.
Blaming every major weather disaster on human-caused global warming defies common sense as well as historical data.
Over the past 50 years, the global climate has been quite temperate. In the US, the worst heat waves, droughts and landfalling hurricanes occurred in the 1930s – far worse than anything we have experienced so far in the 21st century.st century.
Population growth, where and how people live, and how governments manage resources are more likely to create the conditions for disaster than the climate itself. We always have storms, droughts and floods, and we always will.
Maybe you think I’m too cavalier about the dangers we face. Don’t 97% of scientists agree that humans are causing dangerous climate change?
Well, here’s what all climate scientists actually agree on:
- Global average surface temperatures have increased over the past 150 years.
- Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
- And carbon dioxide emissions have a warming effect on the planet.
However, climate scientists disagree About:
- How much Warming is linked to our emissions
- Will this warming be greater? nature climate change.
- And how much The climate will change in the future.
There’s a lot we still don’t understand about how climate works. Ocean circulation patterns and cloud variability have a major impact. But climate models do a poor job of predicting these things. Solar variations and volcanic eruptions also have a significant impact, but these are simply unpredictable.
The reality is that we cannot predict future climate. It’s simply not possible. And everyone should admit that. And every scientist does the same.
Although humans influence the climate, we cannot control Climate. To think that we might be the height of arrogance, from the Greek word for overconfidence.
What we can do is adapt to whatever mother nature throws at us. Humans have a long history of being very good at that. We can build sea walls, we can manage water resources better and implement better disaster warning and management procedures.
These are our things Maybe control.
If we focus that thingThere is every reason to be optimistic about our future.
I’m Judith Curry of Prager University.
Science.feedback.org
Here is the link to ‘fcheck action‘
‘Fact Checkers’ include Ella Tilbert, Georg Feulner, Ian Richardson, Kerry Emanuel.
“Verdict: MISLEADING”
“Confirm: Climate scientists disagree about how much warming is linked to our emissions and whether this warming is greater than natural climate variability caused by the sun and volcanic eruptions or not”
“Important lesson: Scientific evidence shows that modern global warming is mainly due to increased CO2 emissions from human activities. There is no evidence that solar variations or volcanic activity are the main causes of recent climate change.”
Their objections centered on two of my statements:
“However, climate scientists disagree About . . . Will this warming be greater? nature Climate Change.”
“But climate models do a very poor job of predicting these things. Solar variations and volcanic eruptions also have a significant impact, but these are simply unpredictable.”
I could cite hundreds of articles published in reputable scientific journals that question whether recent warming is greater than natural climate variability (many of these articles have been discussed discussion on this blog). The IPCC chose to ignore these papers. This does not mean that disagreement among scientists does not exist. In fact, the IPCC AR4 and AR5 conclusions on attribution are framed as “most of of warming” and “more than a half of the increase in global average surface temperature”. So >50%. Imagining 49% is not too far-fetched. IPCC AR4 talks about “unresolved internal variability” to justify the relatively weak use of “most”.
Regarding the potential impacts of future volcanic eruptions, IPCC AR6 WG1 has this to say (Box Chapter 4.1):
“The low-probability high-impact outcome would be several large eruptions will significantly change the 21st century climate trajectory compared to SSP-based ESM predictions.”
There’s a lot to disagree about on these topics (they don’t mention internal natural variability, which IMO is the biggest problem). But that is the point of my statement: SCIENTISTS DISAGREE (for details, see Chapter 8 of my book Climate Risk and Uncertainty).
Comment by JC
The fact checkers missed the main points of my statement and focused on trying to emphasize the consensus that natural climate variability does not matter.
Because basically, fact checkers ignored the rest of my statement, they probably don’t object to these statements:
“All things considered, planet earth is doing well. People are doing better than at any other time in history.”
“It is clear that we are not facing an existential crisis.”
“The biggest problem with climate change is not climate change, but the way we do it handle with it.”
“We are trying to control the uncontrollable, at Great costs, by urgently phasing out fossil fuels. We have failed to put the risks from climate change in context other challenges the world is facing.”
“Blaming every major weather disaster on human-caused global warming flies in the face of common sense as well as historical data.”
“Population growth, where and how people live, and how governments manage resources are more likely to create the conditions for disaster than the climate itself. We always have storms, droughts and floods, and we always will.”
“However, climate scientists disagree About:
- How much Warming is linked to our emissions
- And how much The climate will change in the future.”
“The reality is that we cannot predict future climate. It’s simply not possible. And everyone should admit that. And every scientist does the same. “
“Even though humans influence the climate, we cannot control Climate. To think that we can be the pinnacle of arrogance, from the Greek word for overconfidence.”
“What we can do is adapt to whatever mother nature throws at us. Humans have a long history of being very good at that. We can build sea walls, we can manage water resources better and implement better disaster warning and management procedures.”
It seems they cannot refute these claims.
I would consider that a ‘win’.
