Curry at Slow Boil

The climate change argument has been repetitive for years now, but so is the back and forth of a tennis game. Slow changes in scientific opinion, and subtle shifts in scientific findings, will make no difference to the climatistas who are invested in the catastrophic climate scenario, nor to the grasping politicians who pant to take control of the energy marketplace.

Still, it is worth taking note of new research even when it simply adds to existing research—especially when the existing research is ignored. Such is the case with Judith Curry’s article today in the Wall Street Journal on “The Global Warming Statistical Meltdown.”

Prof. Curry is professor and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the president of Climate Forecast Applications Network. She is regarded today in the climate “skeptic” camp, though she wasn’t always regarded as such. She slowly transited toward a more skeptical position out of scientific honesty, but also because of her disgust with the conformism and bullying of the “mainstream” climate scientists, who nowadays talk about Curry with language that would get anyone else censured for sexism. I’ve met Curry once, and what strikes you most in talking with her is that she’s not an especially political person at all, and was perhaps naïve in thinking that scientific honesty, and fairness toward people who disagree with you, would be honored by her fellow climate scientists.

Curry and co-author Nicholas Lewis recently published a paper in Climate Dynamics that concluded climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases has been overestimated. Note, before you say “But 97 percent!”, that this paper would fall within the compass of that brainless slogan. Here’s the key paragraph of Curry’s WSJ article today:

Our paper is not an outlier. More than a dozen other observation-based studies have found climate sensitivity values lower than those determined using global climate models, including recent papers published in Environmentrics (2012),Nature Geoscience (2013) and Earth Systems Dynamics (2014). These new climate sensitivity estimates add to the growing evidence that climate models are running “too hot.” Moreover, the estimates in these empirical studies are being borne out by the much-discussed “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming—the period since 1998 during which global average surface temperatures have not significantly increased.

JOHN adds: We wrote about the Curry/Lewis paper here.

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