Judith Curry (climatologist, author)

Dr. Judith Curry is a climatologist and author. She was a member of National Research Council’s Climate Research Committee and published over a hundred scientific papers.  Her latest book “Climate Uncertainty and Risk” discusses the risks and response to current and future climate issues. We discuss the book, climate hypocrisy, propaganda, worst case scenarios and more.

0:00:00 - Intro
0:00:14 - Dr. Judith Curry's Background
0:06:25 - Politics, Labels & Transparency
0:12:10 - Use of Fossil Fuels & Alternate Energy
0:18:45 - Issues in Africa
0:20:30 - Facing Political Reality of Energy Policies
0:23:05 - History of Climate Propaganda
0:24:35 - Climate Hypocrisy 
0:28:10 - Climate Models & Population Growth
0:32:40 - Problems with Electric Cars
0:34:40 - United Nations & Biggest Polluters
0:36:55 - Agriculture,  Best Diet For Climate & Policy
0:41:05 - Climate Predictions & Worst Case Scenarios
0:44:00 - Volcanic Cooling
0:48:00 - Traditional Environmentalism, Soil & Farming
0:52:28 - Solar Variations & Possible Cooling
0:54:05 - Sea Levels Rising & Misdirected Blame
0:57:20 - California, Rolling Blackouts & Nuclear Power
1:02:57 - Outro

Dr. Judith Curry website:
https://judithcurry.com/

Chuck Shute link tree:
https://linktr.ee/chuck_shute

Transcript

Chuck Shute: 0:12

Yeah, so welcome to the show. And thank you so much for doing this. By the way, I love the book. It's very technical. I think you have, like 1500 footnotes I think I heard you say so. It mean, you really delve into it. It's really great. But just for my, my viewers or my listeners, can you describe a little bit of your background and credentials and such?

Dr. Judith Curry: 0:34

Okay, well, I got my PhD in 1982, the University of Chicago and geophysical sciences, researching Arctic weather and climate. And so you know, following that I spent, you know, decades in the academic environment, most recently at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where I served as chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences for 13 years 2017. I retired from academia, and I'm working full time with my company, which is climate forecast applications network, which is the weather and climate services company. And over that period, I've had, you know, a fairly wild ride. And I've explored a lot of different dimensions of the climate debate. Everything from not just different subfields, but legal aspects, social psychology, philosophy of science, a science policy, interface, and, and so on. And all of those demands, different dimensions were integrated in my book, my new book, climate uncertainty and risk. Now, this was published by an Academic Press. So it is, you know, very well documented with a lot of footnotes, but I tried to make it. It's intended for a broad readership. In fact, my publisher, and the series I'm in is really targeted at social sciences and humanities, not the hard science. So you know, anybody with some, you know, college background, you know, college education, or in any field or who is otherwise motivated to take a deep dive into the climate issue, my book shouldn't be accessible to them.

Chuck Shute: 2:30

Yeah, I recommend it for a while not only just every American, I mean, they should, they should get him this book out in schools and high schools, maybe, or colleges, at least, and definitely the policymakers. But what I also find some interesting is just, you know, like your background, I mean, you, you touched on your PhD, but you really started with this topic. I mean, I heard you talking about a story on another podcast, where you're saying that you you fell in love with this topic in fifth grade, that you spent your birthday money on a geology book, or whatever. And so I mean, that just proves, though, that how much you're invested into this topic, like you're not a shill for, I think that's what your your center because you get accused of being a climate denier, and all this stuff. And it's like, that doesn't when you do the deep dive into your background, and it doesn't make any sense, you're this is a topic you're very passionate about.

Dr. Judith Curry: 3:22

And I'm not sure passionate is the right word, because I'm deeply invested in trying to understand the Earth system, particularly the climate system, but I do my best to keep passions and politics out of it. You know, I try to be as objective as I can, as thorough as I can, really looking at all the evidence, trying to understand disagreements, where they come from and how they might, you know, disagreements, I view it as a good thing for science, cuz it often spurs you to resolve the disagreements and helps you make progress. So, personally, I think scientific disagreement is a good thing. It spurs debate, which is a good thing for MOVING SCIENCE FORWARD. But in this era of highly politicized science, you know, once a scientific field becomes policy relevant, certainly public health COVID climate, you know, GMOs, gender, you know, all of this kind of stuff, you know, certain political politically correct, perspectives become dominant and they become enforced and people who challenge those perspectives tend to be marginalized at the very least, but even ostracize. And you know, you we've seen that in the climate field and then COVID Most recently, so it's not a healthy place for science. But once I left the University of environment and on my own On boss, you know, I can say whatever I want, I can investigate whatever I want. And you know, if somebody doesn't like it well, that's, they can, that's their choice not to like it, but I try to be as objective as possible. And I'm, and to me, it's science is more about the process. It's not about the result. I mean, scientific evidence finding this is all provisional. Most of the papers that are published in the last year won't survive the next 10 years. With, you know, people have either found them to be wrong or irrelevant or boring. So, you know, when somebody publishes a paper, it's not like it's carved in stone, it's just part of the process. And a big part of the process is challenging people's findings and arguing about them debating about them. And this is how science moves forward. So I'm a big fan of the scientific process. I am not wedded to any particular scientific finding or outcome. And I'm certainly not invested in any of the policies or politics that surround this issue. So and

Chuck Shute: 6:22

that's what's so fascinating me because I feel like if people just read the surface, they would think that you're an ultra right Q anon. Trump supporter Magga. And you're not you're you're actually a moderate in the middle of more like libertarian independent is from what I understand.

Dr. Judith Curry: 6:38

Yeah, if you if you read my book without any context about me, yeah. And you would think that this was an extremely reasonable, you would not think that there was any reason at all to call me a denier. But people get called a denier. In the climate space. Other academics, I know, the word denier gets thrown around for politicians and journalists, and I don't mind that. But when the word denier is applied to a scientist, and I really, really object to that, what and it's really more about the social aspects. I mean, I got tossed into denier land for criticizing other scientists. And this was the Climategate emails, you know. And it revealed a whole bunch of skullduggery, where people who were, you know, IPCC lead authors were trying to evade Freedom of Information Act requests for their data, they were trying to rig the peer review system, they were violating rules and regulations set out by the IPCC, in preparing the IPCC reports, and they generally set out to sabotage anybody who disagreed with them, or interfered, you know, with the broader climate narrative as they thought it should be. You know, and I spoke out against that as this is absolutely wrong, we need to be open and transparent. We need to make our data publicly available. We need to be honest about uncertainties, we need to avoid overconfidence on our findings. And finally, we need to be respectful of other people who disagree with us. And you know, and I thought that was very straightforward, you know, motherhood and apple pie kind of statements, but no, you know, Thou shalt not criticize important people, and people try Oh, what are we going to do about Judith curry? She's very inconvenient. And, you know, after trying a few strategies that didn't work so well, it's an oh, we'll just call her a denier. We'll toss her into the denier camp, you know, with all the scientific ranks and the oil company people and you know, journalist, every blogs whatever, just picked up on a great very convenient. So even when I mentioned, you know, in a relatively mainstream media article will be well known climate denier Judith curry said that it just become like a tagline. Just because a few self important climate scientists were upset that I criticize their unethical behavior. So I became a denier. So the people who you know, people who are scientists who get called deniers, it's really more about the social aspects than about the science and that's just absolutely reprehensible kind of behavior for scientists and scientists who behave like that calling people like me a denier. They get awards from the professional society, including communication words, I mean, Michael Mann being the poster child for cashing in on calling people like me a climate denier. You know, it's a very bad state of affairs, but, you know, to some extent, you know, I can just ignore it and get on with my work. I don't answer to anybody, my clients who hire me to, you know, help better understand their weather or climate related risks, they, they highly value what I have to say and the skills that I bring to the table and the products and scenarios and forecasts that I deliver them. So you know, people who really have skin in the game, you know, and want some really good information, they'll come to me, people who want to play politics with science, you know, will join the bandwagon and just call me a denier. Because I'm inconvenient. Yeah,

Chuck Shute: 10:34

well, then, but it also hasn't kind of the right wing, hijacked some of your research to like the it's like they want to simplify it and put it in, there's two categories, either the world is going to end in seven years, or climate change is a total hoax, drill, baby drill or not, right? It's like, there's no and you're kind of in the middle, you're saying, Well, maybe we're exaggerating this a little bit. And there's other factors and things. And then people just want to put you on one side of the other. And it's,

Dr. Judith Curry: 10:58

yeah, you can't there's no nuance, the US has become so politicized. There's no nuance in this, you know, debate, that there's a large number of scientists who support what I'm doing and agree with me, but when they do speak out in public, and they're very much more circumspect about what they say, and they do not criticize the IPCC or other important scientists, they know enough to stay away from that third rail, you know, and they get away with it. You know, there's a lot, you know, like I said, I have 1500 footnotes in my book, where I'm citing, you know, publications that generally, you know, support the arguments I'm making, it's not like I'm a voice in the wilderness, you know, that there's a lot of scientists doing work that supports a similar perspective to mine. And it's, and the biggest problem is thinking that, you know, making this about the science is not about the science, there's three separate problems. We have extreme weather, we have the slow creep of global warming, then we have energy policy. Okay, the climate teria that has lumped all those things into one, you know, climate change emissions, you know, we get rid of fossil fuels, we'll get rid of extreme weather. And you know, the world will be wonderful. But we're I mean, we're seeing what's happened in Europe, particularly Germany, as they try to transition to wind and solar, they've basically destroyed their industry and our and their economy. I mean, it's really bad. I mean, this is, I mean, trying to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels towards a system that is not fit for purpose, like wind and solar based electricity system means an absolutely colossal mistake, that I hope that this country doesn't go too much further down that road, several states are being very aggressive. New York is being extremely aggressive. New Jersey is joining and of course, California has been going down this road for a long time. There's all sorts of lawsuits and individual states, notably Montana, trying to get them to stop producing fossil fuels stop using fossil fuels. Well, what happens when can't use fossil fuels, it gets really cold there as if they burn wood. Okay, biofuel,

Chuck Shute: 13:36

they call her I watched a whole documentary about this. They tried to it makes it sound better biofuel. But are we going to run out of that? Well,

Dr. Judith Curry: 13:43

not only that, but in the wintertime, you have these big temperature inversions. And you get this huge smog, that gets trapped in this cold air mass is horrible air pollution from burning from wood burning stoves, in these very, you know, cold states, you know, Montana, Wyoming, stuff like that. So it's bad for the environment, in many ways is bad for human health. There's just so many things wrong with it again, and I outline all of that and chapter 14 In my book, you know, we're not the issue. I mean, I have no particular attachment to fossil fuels. I mean, if we look forward to 2100, I don't think we're going to be burning fossil fuels anymore.

Chuck Shute: 14:28

We could get to that point is I wouldn't say yeah, I think you said 120 150

Dr. Judith Curry: 14:34

not wanting to either

Chuck Shute: 14:35

sun, wind and solar, right. Yeah, no,

Dr. Judith Curry: 14:39

I mean, wind and solar will be gone and 2100 they just don't make sense. There'll be some niche use of that, and maybe rooftop solar will work. But, so then the future, I mean, nuclear power, advanced geothermal. And, you know, fusion is a possibility, but I think generally issue for nuclear and advanced geothermal are the two most promising ones right now, there are others that are being researched. But you know, we're talking about 75 years from now, you know, of course, there's going to be some better solutions, then. And, as we, it's not just said that wind and solar don't produce enough electricity, or, I mean, it's intermittent. It's a synchronous, it's just not a really good match for anything, and you certainly can't run an industrial economy, with wind and solar. So but even the bigger issue is the land use and the resources. I mean, I don't know if you've ever been driving down, like I ad across the western US and you see these enormous, they're trying to transport you know, one single blade for a wind turbine, you see how enormous this thing now?

Chuck Shute: 15:56

Break? And then they're just what do they do with it? Not only,

Dr. Judith Curry: 15:59

okay, not only that, they break, but after about 1012 years, they, they lose their efficiencies. So the blades need to replace, you know, every 10 to 15 years. And all the investment that's been made into wind turbines, you know, in 1015 years, it's all going to need to be replaced. And how

Chuck Shute: 16:21

do you make the wind turbines on these blades? Don't you have mine resources with gas powered vehicles? Not?

Dr. Judith Curry: 16:28

What not? Yeah, you need a whole lot of fossil fuels, to to build and build and transport these wind turbines? So you know, common sense is left the rope? Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense. And, you know, it's just propaganda, mass delusion. And people aren't thinking is become tribal. I mean, people who don't want to think they aren't going to belong to this tribe or that tribe. But then, you know, the people in the you know, if you think hard about this, you most often end up in the middle. Yeah, you know, this is a really complex,

Chuck Shute: 17:06

they wouldn't be nice if either one either if we could create wind and solar. And that could be that would be nice. Or it would be nice if fossil fuels were totally harmless, and we could just do whatever we wanted. I mean, but neither one of those is accurate. Yeah,

Dr. Judith Curry: 17:21

no. Well, fossil fuels are finite. And also, there's they happen to be concentrated in countries that are very friendly, you know, in the Middle East, Venezuela, places like that, although, North America, we have more than our share of fossil fuel resources. But, you know, it engenders Geopolitical Problems. I mean, all the wars that we've fought in the Middle East in the late 20th century, where, I mean, if the Middle East didn't have oil, I don't think the US would have been involved in in the Middle East at all. Right. So I mean, you know, I'm no huge fan of fossil fuels, but we sure as heck need them, you know, in the near term, and probably for the next five decades. Yeah. And we will slowly transition away to, you know, to better fuel sources that are cleaner, cheaper, more abundant. I mean, it'll happen, but we're interfering with it right now, with all these silly deadlines. You know, net zero by 2030. We don't have time to build nuclear power plants, let's do wind and solar. I don't know if you've seen these huge big solar farms that people are putting in and, you know, six months into their, you know, lifecycle, they get wiped out by a hailstorm. You know, come on, on,

Chuck Shute: 18:41

it sounds like from what I'm learning from your book and interviews is that the people that got screwed the most from this whole thing is the continent of Africa. There's all these countries in Africa that didn't have electricity, and they were trying to get a power grid so they can have power. And they were being turned down from the banks, because the bank was pressuring No, we can't have any more fossil fuel. We can't have coal plants, but then people are coming in and mining their resources and taking that and using that for the cobalt for the batteries for electric cars. And

Dr. Judith Curry: 19:10

well, even they're even taking their fossil, you know, their oil and gas and coal and shipping it to Asia and Africa so that they convert it. I mean, you know, that it's been called Green colonialism, energy apartheid, but it's absolutely unethical. For a billion people in the world, half the world's population do not have access to grid electricity. And majority of them are in Africa. I mean, you know, their farming, you know, they're done with tools, you know, wheelbarrows, you know, and axes and shovels and you know, they're

Chuck Shute: 19:52

basically living like an Amish lifestyle. And a lot

Dr. Judith Curry: 19:56

of those people are very well educated. They just okay what they need is a Energy, you know, if we just loan them the money, so they can build fossil fuel power plants, they there's, they're smart people, there are well educated people, or they can take it and run with it. But they're being held back. Because of the lack of electricity and fuel for transportation. It's just it's absolutely insane. Absolutely fine. And what, why? Why people by this? I mean, you know, I don't know, I mean, Bill Gates, who was a big proselytizer for global warming, He now gets it, you know, you know, it's been way exaggerated than genomic, we need, it's a problem we need to deal with. And he admits he probably has one of the biggest personal carbon footprints on the planet. But people aren't, you know, people who are smart and are thinking are starting to get it. And even countries in Europe as they face a political reality of what this will actually cost, in terms of money, land use, loss of industrial capacity, etc. I mean, people are voting out those politicians like the Netherlands had, I mean, the Netherlands have been very aggressive, and they've voted out. Okay, their leader who was pushing this, and now they've got someone that's hopefully a bit more rational. So I think people are going to, you know, start to vote, I mean, don't mess with people's energy. And food is not just energy is the food supply, for cow farts, and fertilizer, and ammonia and nitrates and all of this. Again, I'll go back to the Dutch, I mean, the Dutch, they've engineered pretty much every inch of that country. And they produce most of Europe's food is this tiny country? Fruits, vegetables, livestock, everything, and they're supposed to get rid of, you know, very quickly a majority of their livestock. Okay, well, what are people in Europe going to eat? And even for vegetables, and fruits that are grown in like greenhouse like structures, no fertilizer, you know, things aren't going to grow very well. And this is not just the Dutch being stupid, but they're abiding by EU guidelines. And the Dutch provide food, a lot of the food for the entire European continent. So people are starting to get that this does not make sense. So I think, as people bump into the realities of of unreliable and inadequate electricity, that is very expensive. And land use issues. I mean, people are just going to revolt. So I think I think we've peaked, you know, climate craziness, I think peaked around 2021 2022.

Chuck Shute: 23:03

Do you think they'll rebranded though, because explain the history here, you probably know about this stuff more than I do. But I think in the 70s, they called it the fear thing was the Ice Age, and then the 80s, it was acid rain, and then in the 90s, it was ozone layer, and then the 2000s global warming, and now it's climate change, like why does it Why does the thing keep changing? And whatever happened to those old ones that we was that still concerned the ozone layer and all that stuff?

Dr. Judith Curry: 23:29

Sort of the, the issue is, and this is a lot of this is driven by the UN United Nations, and, you know, they have a globalist agenda. Their goal is, you know, non governmental, world control through the UN. I mean, that's their agenda. And they, you know, decades ago, you know, 50s 60s 70s 80s, they picked on two topics, where they can push the the environment and health. Okay, and so they saw climate change, as the, you know, a great vehicle for this and more recently with COVID. The public health issue has picked up steam where they're trying to get the World Health Organization to have to have a national government see their authorities to the World Health Organization in managing pandemics they're trying to get away with

Chuck Shute: 24:33

I certainly hope that there's Yeah, there's definitely some hypocrisy there because a lot of these UN meetings that people are flying on private jets, and Oh, it's terrible. Yeah. What is that? Because I heard a statistic, the top 1% account for more carbon emissions in the poorest 66%. So what if What did I mean what how much does a private jet? What is the carbon footprint on that? Like, what if they banned private jets and everyone had to fly? I mean, you can still fly first class but we just got rid of private jets. What would that do for the climate?

Dr. Judith Curry: 25:02

Well, it would certainly go in the right direction. I don't really know what the numbers would be. But it's just math of hypocrisy, all these preachers of doom, you know, flying around in their private jets, and, you know, the movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and his ginormous yacht. I mean, that's like the size of my neighborhood. You know, this is just massive hypocrisy. And people see that. And part of the problem is, is, and they're clever, is the indoctrination of kids, you know, from kindergarten, you know, so So you got this whole, whatever, whatever the Gen Z, I don't even know what the latest generations are, but they're scared to death of global warming, they think they have no future, think the world is going to end in 2030, the all sorts of stupid thing that they think they've been, you know, all of the marketing and whatever that is targeted to children and young adults is worse even than what we see. It's just a bad situation. You know, I, you know, I do my, my thing, but I'm just one little voice, and I'm not a very aggressive one. I mean, I don't court media attention, I don't go out there and travel around and do rallies or anything. It's just, you know, me and my laptop, you know, and the occasional podcast, and my blog and my Twitter account, and you know, whatever. But there's other people. You know, this is substantial community of highly educated people who are knowledgeable about the climate situation, who are speaking out who have sub stacks and blogs and Twitter accounts. Again, they don't have access to the mainstream media, you know, in the way that Michael Mann and the, you know, the bullying alarmist, people that the mainstream media seems to like, and but you know, that anybody who wants to find these voices can find these voices. There's some good books out there. Of course, there's my own book. There's a book by Steve Koonin, and Bjorn Lomborg and Roger Pielke Jr. Michael Shellenberger that there's a lot of good books out there, writing about different aspects, you know, of this whole situation, that and I like the books, because it allows a single person to put forward a worldview and some arguments. And to me, that makes more sense than just as a scattershot of articles and Twitter accounts and things like that. So personally, I like the books as really sort of educating people and motivating them to think more broadly and deeply about these issues.

Chuck Shute: 28:06

Right? And it's hard to say, because it's there is no exact we don't know exactly how much damage humans are doing with the fossil because we don't have a control group. We don't have another Earth where nobody's using fossil fuels. Right. We just we've seen an increase since the industrial revolution. So they're kind of tying that to but it also could be some other natural things too, right. I mean, there's a lot of factors which, yeah,

Dr. Judith Curry: 28:30

we haven't really, I mean, there's no simple way to sort out natural climate variability from human caused climate variability is not simple. People use climate models to try to do that. But the climate models aren't fit for purpose. They don't treat natural climate variability correctly. So of course, you're going to get the they're going to overemphasize human caused climate change. So it's, so the climate models are not fit for purpose to sort that out. So we don't know humans that are influencing the climate, not just through fossil fuel emissions, but through their land use. For example. cutting down forests, agriculture, urbanization, all this kind of stuff changes the local climate as well. So, I mean, we are changing the climate. But the point is, is say, for the past 100 years, the climate has warmed about one degree centigrade. And over that 100 years, the population has increased by about four times. A fewer percentage, much smaller percentage of them are living in poverty. Okay, agricultural productivity has gone way up. People are far smaller percentage by two orders of magnitude lose their lives in extreme weather events. So we've done really well over the last 100 years and And the reason that we've done so well over the last 100 years is because of energy and electricity. And we were able to build wealth, and we're able to reduce our vulnerability, we're able to figure out ways to increase agricultural productivity, we figured out ways to protect ourselves from extreme weather. So, I mean, we've done really well, the first degree of warming. So why do we think that all of a sudden, there's going to be catastrophe if we have another degree of warming over the next 80 years? I mean, it makes absolutely no sense. And, and by restricting the energy supply and keeping, you know, electricity away from the Africans and everything else, we're increasing their vulnerability to extreme weather. And, you know, we're not helping with poverty and hunger and things that

Chuck Shute: 31:00

cost for everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Dr. Judith Curry: 31:04

exactly. So we're just being really, really stupid. You know, in this early part of the 21st century, hopefully, mid century, we will have come to our senses and figure out how we can how 8 billion people on the planet can live harmoniously and in cooperation, you know, with our environment, and, you know, taking advantage of ecosystem services, but not over, over taxing the environment. I mean, this is, you know, I'm an old fashioned environmentalist. I care about water pollution, air pollution and soil quality. And, you know, that kind of thing. I mean, all this stuff about co2 and global warming. I mean, it's people have lost the plot. I mean, back in the 1970s, maybe before you were born. I mean, Greenpeace when Greenpeace got its start, it was about saving the whales. Okay. And, and now, Greenpeace has done a full one ad. Who cares if whales are being killed or dying, you know, off the Atlantic coast, because of the offshore wind turbines and all the activity and all the infrastructure there. I mean, it's a huge problem. Oh, but it's okay. Because global warming? Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. It goes.

Chuck Shute: 32:38

Explain this to me, too, because I saw this article was really interesting. It was on like, it was on like multiple sources on the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or Washington Examiner, but they talked about the, the problem with electric cars, is that the batteries are so heavy that it weighs down on the tires, and then you burn more of the tire material, the rubber, and then that goes into the soil. And so it's actually could be in a way, it's worse for the environment. What are your thoughts on that? Well,

Dr. Judith Curry: 33:06

I don't think the full accounting has been done on electric vehicles. I mean, in terms of the overall impact on the environment. I mean, I think it's an experiment, to be done to, you know, to develop electric vehicles and have people use them, try them, evaluate them and whatever. But once you start mandating them, then you're in a different territory, it's not clear to me that electric vehicles, I mean, let's say we're gonna get rid of the gasoline powered fuels. It's not clear to me that electric vehicles are a way to go, there may be you know, synthetic fuels, liquid fuels that we would use, or hydrogen or whatever, it's not clear to me that mandating electric vehicles is makes any kind of sense at this point. You know, just let the market play out and invest in developing new alternatives. Like I said, and 2100, I don't think we're going to be burning fossil fuels. I think petroleum is a valuable resource, you know, we'll be using it for, you know, materials and whatever else, I don't think we'll be burning it. We will evolve away from that over the course of the 21st century, but trying to kneecap the fossil fuel industry, and think that we're going to run an industrial economy and whatever and support 8 billion people wind and solar is a complete joke. It's a complete joke.

Chuck Shute: 34:38

Do you think it's short sighted? Or do you think this is on purpose that we're using this as like you said, the UN is the way to control people that oh, we're, we're trying to help the environment really. They just don't want us to have any power? Would they want to limit it and have put like carbon taxes on and things like that?

Dr. Judith Curry: 34:54

Well, you know, I think they're, you know, I hate to say it, I think there is a sort of a colonial As long kind of agenda it's hard to know, it's hard to know, it's when I listen to these UN officials, you know, they're cold read and the highway to hell, you know, for another degree centigrade of warming over the 21st century, all this rhetoric that they use is completely unmoored from the science. You got to wonder what's going on. I mean, there's some agenda that has nothing to do with human thriving or the climate, or anything else that I can think of. There's some other agenda and I you know, it's just like the power the global non government, world control globalization kind of agenda. That's been the UN stamp since the very beginning.

Chuck Shute: 35:46

Yeah, because China is technically they're the number one biggest polluter. They're about three times the US even. We're number two, right?

Dr. Judith Curry: 35:56

Ah, I'm not sure. I think Europe is ahead of Oh, roulette. Oh, yeah. Overall integral Europe, I think, I'm not sure. India, no India's emissions at this point. So the universe is like maybe 14% of the global emissions right now.

Chuck Shute: 36:17

What about the US military that that's there? They're up there to where they are the US military has more carbon emissions than some entire countries?

Dr. Judith Curry: 36:26

That I don't know, I know, the US military has been very aggressive and trying to generate power locally. Yeah, it makes them vulnerable. So but I don't know what the carbon footprint. It's just

Chuck Shute: 36:42

interesting. That's that's never discussed the the private jets and the US military, those that's just out of the conversation. It's all about what we can do.

Dr. Judith Curry: 36:52

Air travel is not is far from the biggest source, you know, of co2 emissions. Right?

Chuck Shute: 36:59

It's agriculture, right? And that's another thing. And that's agriculture is a big one. And

Dr. Judith Curry: 37:04

yeah, agriculture is a big one industry is a big one electricity, but transportation isn't that big. And then jet transportation is only a subset of out. So that's not a big driver. I mean, it's important, but it's not, not a big driver.

Chuck Shute: 37:22

What about you, we talked about food a little bit, which one? Which diet is better for the climate? Because I've heard conflicting things I've heard, oh, you need to eat vegan, it's better for the planet. And then I've heard other people say, No, you need to eat meat that's more natural, that's better for the environment.

Dr. Judith Curry: 37:37

I think people are going to eat what they want. And if they're going to be, you know, and we should figure out how to accommodate that difference. You know, for example, I have celiac disease, I have, you know, trouble with wheat and a lot of other grains and meats, one of the things that I digest very easily, okay, you know, all of these impossible burgers and whatever, there's no way I could ever put one of those into my digestive system, I would get really, really sick. You know, so meat is healthy is a healthy food. So vegetation, so I think we should just let them people, you know, people eat what they want to eat and have agriculture, local agricultural systems that support that. That said, we can, you know, far more efficiently and, and environmentally, and whatever. And there's lots of, you know, best practices that are being developed that perhaps could be better communicated to global farmers. So it's really, you know, like, more environmentally conscious agriculture. I think that would be good, rather than getting rid of certain food options.

Chuck Shute: 38:59

Yeah. Because some of the, it's I just think it's interesting, because I've heard like, vegan is better. But then I've also heard that it takes a lot of water, or even just like one almond, it's like something like ridiculous.

Dr. Judith Curry: 39:10

Almonds, or Yeah, almonds are very water intensive. So people are

Chuck Shute: 39:15

drinking almond milk, which is so like, how much water we're using for like, like a glass of almond milk? Like, come on, how much water did it take to make that? I don't know, it's interesting to think about?

Dr. Judith Curry: 39:24

Yeah, for sure. So my point is, is I think, you know, lose the mandates, you know, put these things back into local control, and let you know, local governments and regions and companies, whatever, figure out how to secure their common interests, you know, in terms of their environment, and their food supply and their energy supply and, you know, do things that make sense for them rather than trying to figure out how to respond to these top down mandates from the UN, about energy, food and whatever I mean, because they're, they're weekly justified. And a top down approach almost never makes sense when you're talking about, you know, a global scale. So we just need to get over that sort of global approach and try to look, look at bottom up approaches for dealing with our problems and challenges and opportunities. And you know, what, once you start looking at human sized problems in a particular state, community, country, whatever, very easy to get people to identify the problems in and sort through the possible solutions, and then get behind the ones that make the most sense. I mean, you can manage to improve things, you know, when you're cut things up into human sized bite size problems, rather than trying to change the composition, the global atmosphere, or whatever we have going on with these crazy un policies.

Chuck Shute: 41:02

Yeah, we go. That's one thing that I think that I would hope that people could agree on is that we really can't control the climate. I mean, we can influence it a little bit. But we don't have I mean, ultimately, like, something crazy could happen. I mean, you look at the history, and we don't know what's coming for. I think that's what my point was about the, you know, the Ice Age, those are, there's always something like you're trying to predict. And I think even that Al Gore movie said, though, that these things are gonna, it's gonna be over in seven years, we only have seven year, it's always like, we have this many years. And I don't know where they come up with these numbers.

Dr. Judith Curry: 41:35

Well, they pull them out of thin air, and pretty much they try to figure out, you know, how can we apply maximum political pressure? If you put something off too far in the future? People will ignore it, if you make it to Oh, no, we have to completely change everything tomorrow. People say it's impossible. So they're looking for, you know, the sweet spot that will apply maximum political pressure. I mean, that's the game they're playing.

Chuck Shute: 42:04

Yeah, I mean, so in your book, I mean, you talk about the risks. And like, I mean, there's so much about risk assessment and like, the, the pluses. And I mean, really analyze this down. I really like approach, because it's so realistic. What is, I mean, so if the if the people were right, that are saying that, you know, the world's gonna end like what is the worst case scenario? Like, how does this end the world? And how soon is it even possible that the world will just

Dr. Judith Curry: 42:29

co2 emissions, I mean, that's not going to cause anything bad. It's just a slow creep of warming and the oceanic and land carbon sinks will slowly adjust over time. And you know, we'll have some equilibriums and whatever and will adapt so that there's no huge issue associated with the slow creep of co2 Warming? Could something really bad happen on a timescale of 100 or 200 years? Will maybe the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is very unstable, and there's lots of under ice volcanoes? I mean, people are trying to blame. Blame every iceberg that leaves the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and global warming. Well, no, it's a very dynamic ice sheet. And there's lots of under ice volcanoes, it's just unstable. I mean, if that were to start to collapse, we would see, you know, some pretty significant sea level rise over a course of a few centuries. That's probably the worst that we would see, you know, happening, you know, an asteroid striking the earth. I mean, that would be a big deal. But, you know, certain bad things could happen. But fossil fueled warming, you know, just really is not one of them, particularly, you know, the timescale of the 21st century. Yeah.

Chuck Shute: 43:58

So you mentioned the volcanoes, and I think you just touched on this briefly in the book, but explain this concept of Volcanic Volcanic cooling, that actually the planet might be cooled by some of these volcanoes, or maybe I didn't understand that. Right. Okay.

Dr. Judith Curry: 44:13

Well, back in the early 1800s, there was three explosive volcanic eruptions. One of them was called tam Bora. I don't recall the name of the name of the other two, and explosive volcanoes. And you know, this cause, you know, that was a year without a summer, I think following one of those volcanoes. I mean, it was just really bad. And there was cooling, you know, for a couple of decades because of these volcanic eruptions. More recently, the Hunga Tonga volcano, this is the one that erupted I think, in 2022, you know, right in the tropical, you know, near the Philippines, whatever. And this was an underwater volcano and it's been have a bunch of water into the troposphere. And unlike most volcanoes by spewing water vapor, okay, into the, into the stratosphere, I mean, this is actually having a small global warming effect. So some of the warming that we've seen in the last year or so has been associated with the hunger toggle volcano. So there's lots of external things that can go on the large scale ocean circulation, systems evolve and oscillate and shift. I mean, those can cause big changes to regional climates and our weather. There's all sorts of natural variability that goes on that is properly accounted for, in I say, predicting how the climate might play out in the 21st century, and, and blaming extreme weather events on fossil fueled warming is a complete joke because the weather there's no trends, even apart from heat waves, there's no trends in hurricanes or floods or droughts or anything like that. And the IPCC, that you when assessment reports even acknowledged that but that doesn't stop. Journalists, advocate, you know, activists, and even some scientists from blaming every extreme weather event on fossil fueled warming. And it's a complete joke. If you just look at the US. The weather was far and away worse in the 1930s than anything we've seen in the 21st century, we had the worst heatwave by far, the worst drought source forest fires, even the worst us landfalling hurricanes occurred in the 1930s. And this is, you know, well before the fossil fueled warming began. So trying to tie extreme weather events to fossil fueled warming is scientifically unjustified.

Chuck Shute: 47:01

Yeah, I think you said in the book that cause cat, what does it Qatar's catastrophe narrative is not supported by mainstream science. So I mean, yeah, you can look at that, but it's like, it seems very unlikely or impossible.

Dr. Judith Curry: 47:16

Yeah, implausible, I guess is the word I mostly use never say impossible. But certainly, yeah. So you know, the objective of my book is to, you know, for people just to broaden the way they think about this whole issue, you know, both the science and also the policy solutions, and you know, and try to step back and, you know, figure out, you know, how, how can 8 billion people, you know, best live on this planet, in terms of supporting human well being thriving and flourishing. I mean, that should be the goal. And we know that we can't thrive if we totally trashed the environment, some sort of balance.

Chuck Shute: 48:03

And it's not just the people, it's the the animals too. I mean, you talk about this, where warming isn't the only problem. It's the land use and the deforestation, deforestation, resulting in habitat destruction, loss of species overfishing, polluting the air, water and soil from these agro chemicals. And I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that we don't really talk about that as much I

Dr. Judith Curry: 48:24

know, we have sort of traditional environmentalism has been lost. And that's not a good thing. We need to go back to that. And stop worrying about co2 so much.

Chuck Shute: 48:37

Yeah, cuz that's only one piece of it. And I mean, the soil thing is interesting, too, because now, I'm hearing all these things like people that you said you had celiac disease. And I've heard things like people go to Europe, and they can eat bread there because of the way it's farmed, or something. And then there's people that are now here in America going on, like the carnivore diet, and they're being cured of all these autoimmune disorders. And it's something to do, the theory is maybe that there's something in the fruits and vegetables in the plants here that with the soil that is harming them, and, and those agrochemicals or whatever they're called the fertilizers and things

Dr. Judith Curry: 49:12

well, to a certain extent, but some of it's just different, like the cows produce milk with different strain of calcium protein, that I can drink milk in Europe, I can't drink milk in the US from us cows so that there are just certain genetic differences that have evolved between the two continents. And you know, some of it relates to soil health and pesticides and processing and whatever else. So you know, a lot of the things that we do to the food supply does not really support human health, you know, a lot of over processing and this that and the other and I'm You know, I think you can't feed a billion people without industrial scale farming so that people who just promote very small farming, I mean, that certainly can't cut it by itself. I mean, smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia, they produce, I don't know, maybe a third of the world's food, you know, and the other people living right on the edge of poverty and my company actually works. With other companies who are trying to other organizations who are trying to help the smallholder farmers reduce their vulnerability with better weather forecasts. Having water tanks to tide them over, you know, when the rains aren't falling, you know, in lots of other kinds of simple things to help make the smallholder farmers the existence easier and make them more profitable, it's a big challenge, because a big fraction of that's, that's where a big fraction of the world's food does come from in Africa and South Asia. So, you know, we need to figure out how we can help them on the other side, then we have big scale and industrial farming, and, you know, some of those practices, you know, aren't very good, but they couldn't be improved. But yeah, there's lots of, there's lots of room for improving agricultural practice these and if you, if those people have enough fertilizer, and enough energy and electricity, then they can, you know, do better with the food supply and all that then are really gonna mess up the global food supply. Because

Chuck Shute: 51:53

it seems to if people didn't have to travel the food, enough travelers bar, then that could burn less fossil fuel. If we had, you know, if I just the farm is down the street from my house, that's a lot a lot less travel for the fossil fuels burning for the food to get some meat.

Dr. Judith Curry: 52:08

It seems that should be the case. But it isn't always the case that yeah, it's not quite that simple amount of time, or efficient, energy wise, and whatever if there's food transportation, but it's not obvious. Yeah.

Chuck Shute: 52:24

Well, we talked about the volcano, explained this one to the solar variations, I found this very interesting. And this was kind of this model says that we might actually hit a cooling period instead of a warming period, that natural cooling would would is predicted. Possibly,

Dr. Judith Curry: 52:41

okay, well, there's a lot of debate and uncertainty in the solar community even about what went on in the second half of the 20th century. Because the opposite, you know, the satellite coverage was discontinuous, and so on. So so there's debate. But it's generally agree that we did have a grand solar maximum in the late 20th century. And that, you know, things are relatively less intense. As we enter the 21st century, whether we're headed towards a significant minimum, in the mid 21st century, or just, you know, a century scale minimum. You know, it's hard to know. But the point that I raised is that we really don't know how to predict what the sun is going to do. And we don't adequately treat indirect solar effects in the climate models. So the simplistic idea that the sun doesn't have very much impact on the Earth's climate, I think is wrong. And we're not adequately accounting for all the different complex ways that's the Sun interacts with the climate. So it's just one of those unknowns that I think we should be paying more attention to. Yeah,

Chuck Shute: 54:03

well, and then the sea level thing he talked about that the prediction is that the sea levels are going to rise and it's going to be dangerous. So I guess again, this just goes back to this hypocrisy, and I just don't understand why are all these rich people building their houses right on the water? If I mean, this is like if the doctor says, You know what, you have cancer, and then you go out and smoke a pack of cigarettes, right? I mean, I just don't understand if this is such a dire thing. Why are they fine jet jets and building their houses on the water if it's going to end if the world's gonna end?

Dr. Judith Curry: 54:33

Yeah, President Obama. Okay. And this big house on Martha's Vineyard is right on the coast and he I think he has a 5000 gallon propane tank for backup fuel in case the power goes out. Okay. Yeah, that's, I think, a pretty clear case of climate hypocrisy by storing all that fossil fuel on your property and living on the coast. But yeah, No, I mean, the slow creep of sea level rise really is a slow creep. And in our coastal engineering and getting rid of mangrove swamps, and all of this kind of stuff is really had a bigger impact on you know, local sea level issues and also landfills trying to do landfills, like like the San Francisco Airport is built on landfill and it's sinking. Okay, and so the, they sort of have a sea level problem, but blaming it on fossil fuels as a joke is really that the airport's sinking? Not that not that the oceans rising over there. Yeah, there's a whole lot of complex processes in play, you know, ocean circulation patterns and, and a sinking that there's a lot of subsistence in the mid Atlantic States, from withdrawal of groundwater. And that makes the land sink and Louisiana, withdrawn groundwater and also fossil fuel extraction. So the sinking of New Orleans in the nearby regions, a lot of it is just driven by local sinking, and also by the engineering of the Mississippi River, that keeps the Delta from being replenished. So there's a lot of what humans have done that have brought the excessive local sea level rise in. Yeah, New Orleans. And it's really more related to what humans have done to the environment, the

Chuck Shute: 56:41

misplace blame, as you talked about in Chapter 13, with the like, with things, they reroute the rivers and then the lakes dry out, but like, oh, it's climate change, like, Well, no, you rerouted the water out of the HERSA.

Dr. Judith Curry: 56:52

And this is the issue, when you blame everything on climate change, it gives you an excuse for not dealing with your real problems, in a rational way. You just throw up your hand at climate change, and act of God, we can't do anything about it other than stopping burning fossil fuels, but it just gives policymakers and out are not real sources of their problems.

Chuck Shute: 57:15

And it's kind of an interesting experiment, right? Because I'm in Arizona, you're in Nevada, but like, if you look at like a state like California, that's really enforcing a lot of this stuff. I've heard that they have a lot of like rolling blackouts because of all these policies, and they're I think they're closing down power plants, or they're not building enough new ones, and they're having a lot of new people come in, and so they're having issues. So I don't know if I mean, if that's going to be an example, that the whole country is going to have the rolling blackouts. I don't think that's a good thing. Well,

Dr. Judith Curry: 57:44

yeah, electricity. Premature, you know, shutting down nuclear power plants is a stupidest thing that you can do an existing power plant that has no co2 emissions, that the investment has already been made, and but they're shutting down nuclear power plants all over the place, because they think they're somehow bad. They're not, they don't want to admit any fossil fuels. I mean, any carbon dioxide emissions or whatever, and they're shutting them down thinking it's the right thing to do for the environment is completely insane. And people are left with not enough power. Yeah, like New York, shutting down nuclear power plants and going wind and solar in a big way. And there was like a big a year ago, Christmas, there was extreme cold event. And the middle Atlantic states. And New Jersey was particularly hard hit and they didn't have that, you know, knuffel electorate, you know, they were caught way, short way short, you know, no wind, no solar gas lines, freezing everything else. The only thing that bailant bailed them out, is nuclear power, transmitted from Illinois. Okay, a lot of nuclear power in Illinois, but Governor Pritzker of Illinois wants to stop let's get rid of the nuclear power and prevent more building of nuclear power. Fortunately, I think the Illinois Congress overrode his veto, so that they can still build nuclear in Illinois. I mean, what is the point of that? I just don't get it if you want to get rid of a coal power plant. Okay. Well, you can make an argument for that in terms of air pollution and co2 emissions. But getting rid of a nuclear power plant makes no sense. Yeah.

Chuck Shute: 59:43

Is it just a fear of the risk if if a meltdown happens that that's that's the biggest catastrophe that they would be worried about? The nuclear

Dr. Judith Curry: 59:51

powers? power plants are more safe than any other power plant that's safer than wind, solar or gas, whatever. There's no live As last they're completely never say completely but 99.999% You know failsafe in terms of a meltdown, even like really old badly built nuclear power plants like Chernobyl, you know, had sort of a meltdown but with relatively minor impacts.

Chuck Shute: 1:00:24

So this is, yeah, especially if they build it kind of in the middle of nowhere. If something does happen,

Dr. Judith Curry: 1:00:30

the safest power supply we have is nuclear power. So I mean, try and make this out into some horrible bogeyman is just totally unjustified by.

Chuck Shute: 1:00:41

It's just not Yeah. Because like you said, I don't think it's realistic that we could rely on wind and solar now the the, the new killer, and the would just call it geothermal. That's the could. That's thermal. Yeah. Okay. Great. What else? Is there anything else that we can do as citizens? Maybe just have these discussions and bring awareness to this issue? Well,

Dr. Judith Curry: 1:01:01

the biggest thing, and I think you have a younger audience here is how people live their best lives and just don't freak out about the climate change problem. Climate change is a very slow thing. And do what makes sense. Okay, for you, certainly, for your community. Don't buy an electric vehicle, unless you really liked the technology. If you think it's gonna save the planet, don't waste your time. But if you like the technology, go for it.

Chuck Shute: 1:01:32

Because I have a gas car, so but I don't drive it very much. I mostly work from home. So I think my carbon footprint is okay. I hope. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Judith Curry: 1:01:43

Yeah, so So this problem, this whole issue has been way over inflated. And we just need to people just need to get on with their lives and live their best lives. Try to be, you know, not be totally awful to the environment, you know, do the best you can, and, you know, just wait for research and development and new companies and entrepreneurship and government investment and newer, more abundant, cheaper, cleaner technologies. And if we don't get in the way that would happen over the course of the 21st century, you know, in the normal course of events,

Chuck Shute: 1:02:25

all right. Well, I hope so. Thank you so much for doing this and people can check out your blog, your book is available now. I listened to it on Audible, so you can just fly right through it if you do double speed and anything else you want to promote.

Dr. Judith Curry: 1:02:37

Okay, my blog is climate at cetera. Judith curry.com. I'm on Twitter, at Curry ja. And my book is climate uncertainty and risk.

Chuck Shute: 1:02:49

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Okay, thank

Dr. Judith Curry: 1:02:53

you. I enjoyed talking with you. You too.

Chuck Shute: 1:02:55

All right. Have a good one.