Toxic Workplaces
Robert Bryce hosted climate scientist Judith Curry, PhD, as his guest on the Power Hungry Podcast recently. Curry has written a book examining the alleged debate about climate science and climate policy.
She was once unceremoniously run out of academia for analyzing the evidence on climate change and global warming and arriving at the wrong conclusion from what is politically desired. Previously, she had taken the so-called consensus view of a climate emergency at face value, and was considered an acceptable scientist. After the “hockey stick” affair, she took a close look at the scientific evidence available and determined the data presented as supporting the claims was insufficient. She then said so publicly. This failure to join the panic-mongering chorus made her into someone whose career would need to be destroyed in order to discredit her views and remove her voice from the public discussion. She saw the writing on the wall, and took her expertise to private industry, where accurate climate and weather forecasts are in high demand, as opposed to the overblown claims desired by activists.
You can even see the ripples of this expected viewpoint conformity in that the YouTube video is marked by the standard warning note on what the social media platform deems to be the certainty of man-made global warming/climate change. Curry goes on to explain what it’s been like having undergone serial attempts to silence her speech and bully her into submission.
The amazing part, to my mind, is that what she has to say is hardly controversial if taken as a scientific claim. It merely points out that the available evidence is too weak and poor to support any solid conclusions about what causes the earth’s climate to change. As an example, she points out that this summer’s extreme heatwave in Texas was anomalous: the rest of North America was dealing with a cooler-than-average summer season. But no one knows exactly what caused the summer heat anomaly, or sited it over that particular geographic region.
There are quite a few experts who tend to agree with the likes of Dr. Curry: Roger Pielke, Jr., Bjorn Lomborg, Stephen Koonin, John Christie, and many other researchers who have established careers in the field. These are researchers who call into question the politically enforced “consensus” view that apparently requires a lot of bullying and aggression to maintain. In contrast with the overheated climate of public discussion on the subject, this interview tends toward less panic—at least when it comes to climate predictions. As to the climate of academia and public discussion, on the other hand…
And . . . the Wednesday G-File is out. (Sorry but I don't like to say something has "dropped." It feels negative.) The first paragraph mentions that they are--or were--in Utah on the way to Iowa for a wedding. I'll read the rest of it later.
Unrelated to today’s topic but interesting nonetheless, especially in light of the “threat to democracy” campaign. https://open.substack.com/pub/robertfkennedyjr/p/rfk-jr-open-letter-to-the-dnc?r=50b9j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web