Judith Curry Interview
By Paul Homewood
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/05/chatting-climate-heretic/
Quadrant Online have the edited transcript of Judith Curry’s conversation with Tony Thomas, a couple of weeks ago.
When climatologist Judith Curry visited Melbourne last week she took the time to chat with Quadrant Online contributor Tony Thomas. The professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology is something of a stormy petrel in the climate-change community, as she has broken ranks with alarmist colleagues to question the articles and ethics of the warmist faith. This has made her less than popular in certain circles, even inspiring Scientific American, house journal of the catastropharians, to brand her “a heretic” who has “turned on her colleagues.”
Such criticism leaves Curry unmoved. If anyone needs counselling, she says, then it is those academics who continue to preach the planet’s sweaty doom despite the fact that no warming has been observed for almost two decades.
The edited transcript of Curry’s conversation with Thomas is below:
TONY THOMAS: If the skeptic/orthodox spectrum is a range from 1 (intense skeptic) to 10 (intensely IPCC orthodox), where on the scale would you put yourself
(a) as at 2009
(b) as at 2014,
and why has there been a shift (if any)?
JUDITH CURRY: In early 2009, I would have rated myself as 7; at this point I would rate myself as a 3. Climategate and the weak response of the IPCC and other scientists triggered a massive re-examination of my support of the IPCC, and made me look at the science much more sceptically.
THOMAS: The US debate has been galvanised in recent weeks by strong statements against CO2 emissions by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. What is your view of the case they made out, and your thoughts about why the statements are now being made?
CURRY: I am mystified as to why President Obama and John Kerry are making such strong (and indefensible) statements about climate change. Particularly with regards to extreme weather events, their case is very weak. Especially at this time, given that much of the rest of the world is pulling back against commitments to reduce emissions and combat climate change.
THOMAS: Re the halt to warming in the past 15-17 years, has this been adequately explained to the public? If it continues a few more years, is that the end of the orthodox case?
CURRY: Regarding the hiatus in warming, I would say that this has not been adequately explained to the public, the IPCC certainly gave the issue short shrift.
The hiatus is serving to highlight the importance of natural climate variability. If the hiatus continues a few more years, climate model results will seriously be called into question. When trying to understand and model a complex system, there is, unfortunately, no simple test for rejecting a hypothesis or a model.
THOMAS: What empirical evidence is there, as distinct from modelling, that ‘missing heat’ has gone into the deep oceans?
CURRY: Basically, none. Observations below 2 km in the ocean are exceedingly rare, and it is only since 2005 that we have substantial coverage below 700 metres.
Read the rest here.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It is not really correct to say that climate warming has “halted” over the last 17 years. It is true that the slope of the regression is positive, but not significant at p<0.05. It is correct to say that the slope is not significantly different from 0. However that is not the same as demonstrating there has been no warming.
The statistic of interest is the power of the test (linear regression in this case) to reject the null hypothesis (Ho: slope = 0) if the positive slope shows there really has been warming. In this case the power is quite low (only about 1 chance in 4) that null hypothesis would have been rejected if the warming indicated was real and not just chance.
So we can't say there has been no warming with confidence from the global atmospheric temperature record. We also cannot say there has been warming with confidence from the global atmospheric temperature record. What we can say is that if there has been warming over this interval the warming has not been as rapid as it was in the previous 20 years (trend was regression-significant at p<0.05).
The 0-700 meter global ocean temperature record has problems, but does show warming over the last 17 years with p<0.05. In fact, one only needs to look back 4 years to see a significant slope in the upper ocean record. This difference between the atmospheric and oceanic result is at least partly because the atmospheric record has a higher variance than the upper ocean record.
So warming seems to have has continued, but not at the rate that the climate models forecast given the observed atmospheric CO2 accumulation. Maybe there is a little more to learn about climate after all?
@_”THOMAS: Should there be a 6th AR from the IPCC? Why/why not?
CURRY: In my opinion, the IPCC has outlived its original usefulness. The framing of the climate-change problem by the UNFCCC/IPCC,….”
IPCC was never useful and failed already in preparing UNFCCC (1992) when saying: ““Climate change” means a change of climate…. “, without defining ‘climate’ or ‘weather’ in the first place. http://www.whatisclimate.com/b206_need_to_talk_July_2010.html
A science which is not able to define the central terms they use: weather and climate, will fail to advise politics and the public fair, competent, correct, and thoroughly. http://www.whatisclimate.com/index.html
She sounds like an entirely reasonable, level headed scientist with an open mind. She is far more credible than the alarmists, who by comparison seem hysterical and desperate.