Highlights from her testimony:
Whenever I despair over what’s going on in the climate field I look at the recent collapse of the consensus on cholesterol and heart disease… even though it’s strongly enforced by funding and reputations and authority… these things if they are not correct will eventually collapse.
Skepticism is one of the four norms of science, it’s absolutely essential for scientific progress. It’s our job to question the evidence and reassess conclusions. That’s what we’re supposed to do.
However in the climate field there’s this manufactured consensus that we’re all supposed to step in line and follow, and it's rather bizarre given this very complex and poorly understood climate system.
We need lots more debate, we need to explore natural climate variability in particular if we’re ever gonna understand all these. It’s disagreement and debates that really what moves knowledge to move forward. - Video on Judith Curry
More quotes from her statement:
he IPCC’s model assumptions that long-term natural net rate of accumulation is constant and anthropogenic emission rates are the only contributor to total long-term accumulation of atmospheric CO2, is false.
Is it possible that something really dangerous and unforeseen could happen to Earth’s climate during the 21st century? Yes it is possible, but natural climate variability (perhaps in conjunction with human-caused climate change) may be a more likely source of possible undesirable change than human causes.
In any event, attempting to avoid such a dangerous and unforeseen climate by reducing fossil fuel emissions will be futile if natural climate is a dominant factor.
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| Dr. Judith Curry testifying at House committee on space, science and technology, |
The perspective that emphasizes natural variability:
• Our understanding of circulation regimes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (stadium wave
hypothesis) suggests that the ‘hiatus’ will continue at least another decade, perhaps into the
2030’s. Arctic sea ice will recover over the next two decades.
• Climate models are too sensitive to human forcing; 21st century warming will be on the low end of IPCC projections (or even below).
• Solar variations and volcanic eruptions are a wild card. Russian scientists argue that there was a Grand Solar Maximum that peaked in the late 20th century, and that we can expect a Grand Solar Minima (contributing to cooling) to peak around 2060.
• And finally, we can’t rule out unforeseen surprises. The hiatus in warming in the early 21st century was an unforeseen surprise.