Judith Curry on the toxic rhetoric of climate change

Via Mark Perry.

"Dr. Judith Curry is an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. According to her Wikipedia page, Curry has argued that climatologists should be more accommodating of those skeptical of the scientific consensus on climate change and has stated she is troubled by the “tribal nature” of parts of the climate-science community, and what she sees as stonewalling over the release of data and its analysis for independent review. Below are some excerpts of her recent blog post “The Toxic Rhetoric of Climate Change“:

To further complicate climate model projections for the 21^st century, the climate models focus only on manmade climate change – they make no attempt to predict natural climate variations from the sun’s output, volcanic eruptions and long-term variations in ocean circulation patterns. We have no idea how natural climate variability will play out in the 21st century, and whether or not natural variability will dominate over manmade warming.

We still don’t have a realistic assessment of how a warmer climate will impact us and whether it is “dangerous.” We don’t have a good understanding of how warming will influence future extreme weather events.  Land use and exploitation by humans is a far bigger issue than climate change for species extinction and ecosystem health.

We have been told that the science of climate change is “settled.” However, in climate science there has been a tension between the drive towards a scientific ‘consensus’ to support policy making, versus exploratory research that pushes forward the knowledge frontier. Climate science is characterized by a rapidly evolving knowledge base and disagreement among experts. Predictions of 21^st century climate change are characterized by deep uncertainty.
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We have not only oversimplified the problem of climate change, but we have also oversimplified its “solution.” Even if you accept the climate model projections and that warming is dangerous, there is disagreement among experts regarding whether a rapid acceleration away from fossil fuels is the appropriate policy response. In any event, rapidly reducing emissions from fossil fuels to ameliorate the adverse impacts of extreme weather events in the near term increasingly looks like magical thinking. ….

We don’t know how the climate of the 21^st century will evolve, and we will undoubtedly be surprised. Given this uncertainty, precise emissions targets and deadlines are scientifically meaningless. We can avoid much of the political gridlock by implementing common sense, no-regrets strategies that improve energy technologies, lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient to extreme weather events.

The extreme rhetoric of the Extinction Rebellion and other activists is making political agreement on climate change policies more difficult.  Exaggerating the dangers beyond credibility makes it difficult to take climate change seriously.  On the other hand, the extremely alarmist rhetoric has frightened the bejesus out of children and young adults."