hello, and welcome to was a part throughout history. humanity has tried many times to solve problems by means that have not only exacerbated the pre existing challenges, but also create as much bigger ones. they can nuclear weapons, for example, borne out of the need for security. they come with the risk of total elation. my guess today argues that our efforts to deal with climate change fell into a similar pattern at times doing more harm than good. why is it so difficult to prevent the treatment from becoming the disease in its own right? of to discuss that. i'm now joined by judith curry and american plumbing, total induced, and professor america at the georgia institute of technology. it's professor curry . it's amazing to talk to you. thank you very much for being available. well, thank you for inviting me now in one of your articles, your role that and let me quote here. all things considered planet earth is doing

fine. humans are doing better than of any other time in history. and i think it sounds incredulous in our era of almost paramount doomsday anxiety if, why are you so chill population, you know, over the last 100 years population has substantially increased poverty has reduced substantially, globally on agricultural productivity is way up. um, fewer people per cap adults are dying from weather and climate related disasters on the planet is green me. it seems to enjoy the warmer temperatures and the additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. so overall it, it seems like we've done pretty well over the past century. during a period when the planet has been warm and so yeah,

that warming is dangerous. i think it was the weakest part of the whole argument. but as an adult said, show, that's why we have witnessed all these technological progress. our requirements of safety and security have increased dramatically and people are far less toller and not only of the real dangers. but even though if a basic uncertainty you reach our ancestors took for granted. i want to have that in and of itself necessitates postulating some major danger. that would be a sort of a, you know, a designate is designated aggregates for all the existential anxiety. yeah, exactly. it's a convenient and climate global warming fonts. so field warming has become a convenient scape code for, you know, all of the plan that's problem is, you know, whatever, there is a water resource shortage. they don't blame power, water management, bad governance or extravagant use of water instead, they blame climate change. so by blaming climate change for everything that goes

wrong, we ignore the real causes of many of our problems. so professor curry is a just a scape goat, to escape responsibility or, or is it also in a way a trojan horse to smuggle in some human vested interest? oh, well it's, it's driven by a particular world, the or neil male suzy, in world view the, you know, humans or of light on the planets that the environment is fragile. and the only way that we can deal with all this is through non government world controlled through organizations like united nations world economic forum at such a at the end of the day to me, this looks like a big power grabs rather than something. and that helps humanity, well, uh, given the state of relations between russia and the united states. and you can hardly suppose that the crime is in the, in the pop can sofa washington activist. and yet i think, you know,

some people here are also not necessarily share the, the entire debate, but they, they do see the temperature changing and the extreme weather of lands. uh, is there any relation between uh, new weather phenomenon that we witness and uh, climate change. we've had extreme weather and climate events for, you know, for several 1000000000 years of the earth has been in existence. we've always had bad weather. we currently have bad weather and we'll have a bad weather in the future. there's even an un climate assessment report spines, no relationship between extreme weather events and global warming apart from hayward's . that's the old one. that seems to be increasing and that makes sense of the overall temperatures. think thing, but for games plugs, drought pale,

you know, whatever bandwidth or is it off and gets blamed on fossil fuels, warming even the your on climate assessment reports 5 is low confidence in any trend, let alone anything that can be blamed on fossil fuel warming. mm. hm, but i don't mean only, uh, quote unquote, bad weather because here in russia for example, we have witnessed some unprecedented unheard of weather phenomena. for example, um, over the last couple of years we have been witnessing a lot of what we call ice rain when temperatures fall precipitously during the rainfall. creating essentially a huge ice rings. and that's would be very unpredictable. and also very traumatic, especially for the elderly. and i've heard the countries also experience something like that, a phenomena that they either network never experienced before or perhaps have forgotten about. and do you think there is any relation between these uh,

like unheard of uh, things and uh what we see happening uh, when they atmosphere globally, a miss the key point is forgotten about. for example, in the u. s. bad weather, everything from the worst he waves the worst drought see the worst land following hurricanes occurred in the 19 thirty's. okay. and that is outside of most people's living memory, but it's there in the records. and if you look back further, you know, into the 1800s, you will find all sorts of crazy weather. so the key point is forgotten about it or they, that there are natural, very ations in the weather and climate extremes. and i mean, some of these are multi the cables, so maybe you may have to go back 6070 years, a 150 years before you find something comfortable. but it's very rare that

you owe the completely new weather event. that's untrusted. so do i understand you correctly, the climate and the weather patterns are, may be changing simply because nature always changes. it's never static. i'm claiming that it's all due to human activity may be not only misleading, but perhaps a little bit of brand deals. even if you just look back a 100 years, rather than one person was a live thing memory, you will find lots of extreme weather events. lots of you'll see lots of natural weather and climate variability. so this is nothing unusual and people have just been fed, the hype that, you know, a fossil fuels cause bad weather and it's is just ludicrous, but people have to somehow fro, at least people in the, in the united states, on more largely within the western world. and i do want to ask you a sort of a cultural, i guess question because to russian. and i think more broadly for an i,

the american debate on climate change is characterized by implausible, with high predictions of emissions. and the sort of, uh, theorized farm that they may, may, may cause the most governments around the world tend to stay on the conservative side of the forecast in the policy settings. simply because the resources are limited and there are many present day issues competing for those resources. but i think in the united states we see a totally different trend. i mean, there is a predilection for the most dramatic forecasts possible. and not only in 5 mentions, take example take, for example, the public health debate, then all the comic projections. they were also hugely uh overboard. do you think that's a cultural issue or is it perhaps an ideological one? even the un climate assessment reports have focused on the extreme emission

scenario and the very warm, you know, it gives a whole lot of warming and exaggerated 6th stream weather events. but even the contents of the parties, climate negotiators of band, at these extreme emissions scenarios in 2021. so why are the scientists still using them? and it's not just us scientists, there's a, a very healthy contingent. but what i would call alarm of scientists in europe, and particularly in germany, many and they view k for example. so it's not just to us phenomena and a lot of motives. i mean, individual scientists get far more attention and funding and whatever if they make an alarming pronouncement on any of our attention. and they have states that the big table is, you know, making policy and things like that. and so, so there's various social motives for people to exaggerate and in the us and,

and in europe. and by and think it's becoming more and more apparent. and you know, something is very wrong. and, and these is that there's a growing move just to abandon the extreme emissions scenarios and look at the service of scenarios. and i have to say the russian climate models have one of the lowest sensitivities to um c o 2 emissions. and i think it's one of the better climate models out there giving more real projections. well, as, since you mentioned that, i think at least within the russian collective cycle, there is a, um, you to our soviet past. i think the sort of outlined this plans that the we were striving for at that time. there is now a very clear distinct distinction between uh uh, trying to implants and trying to control. we come implants lots of things through

varying degrees, but we can't control them. absolutely. and we have, i think this is what the west and policies premised on the, the demand for germany, not only as a do a political concept, but also as a, something that you know, human need to have. isn't that one of the reasons why the climate change narrative and perhaps, as i said, many other issues like public house international polls, etc, has become so intolerant to opposing points of view or even, you know, scientific data that doesn't know what they agree with, the diagnostic proposition and yes or you should on a keep point. but basically they've tried to characterize like, pandemic management and control of the client that as simple problems. so you know, these are things that we can control. and in fact, these are what can probably deeply complex a lot of uncertainty and

a lot of ambiguity and the values surrounding the issue. and so, you know, for a problem like the climate change or a pandemic. i mean, we have to abandon the idea that we can control it, but we need to seek to understand and then manage the impacts. i mean all it may be to a certain extent, but not in any substantial way. and so we just phantom the idea that we can control these things well uh at least you and me, we can control our conversation to some extent in the sense of taking a short break right now. but we will be back to this fascinating discussion if in a few moments station the,

the welcome back to wells of parts with judith curry and american claim, intelligence and professor america at the georgia institute of technology. this is occurring just before the break. we were talking about, or rather you were talking about the need to abandon the attempts to control everything and instead focus on adapting on whatever and my, the nature brings our way. but i think that's what the require. a lot of humility, perhaps, and a certain degree of tolerance of, of uncertainty. how do you think those values could be a and sort of brought back into the public debate at least on climate change? you know, the be certain the issue is out there and by trying to ignore it,

or minimize that or frame a problem. you know, so narrowly that uncertainty, you know, it doesn't seem so large. i mean, it's just a very, very big mistake and is very bad for policy making. so, in scientific discourse, when there are sort of political values in play, there's always a lot of uncertainty and disagreement as a spice of academic life. and you know, nothing is ever settled and you know, that tell the norm, the scientific process normally works. but when politics come into play, no, everything becomes very overly certain. and you have tribal communities develop to try to cancel each other and marginalize each other. and we've seen the similar academic climb and debate and is the very pernicious thing,

not only for science, but also for the policy making process. when honestly, makers are simply misled. i'm thinking that you know, this is simple. we know how to fix the climate and we have these very specific targets and timelines and we need to meet them and then bad weather will go way simply of a fairy tale. so can knowledge it and get on with trying to better understand the situation and to adapt to extreme weather events and the climate variability and change smells. speaking about understanding the situation better. i know that the hallmark of your approach to climate and weather forecasts takes a particular attention to natural ver, very ability such as volcanic eruptions, san activities, ocean, those solutions, etc. why do you think it's important to take those parameters into account?

well, because you know, we've had climate variability, huge variations in climate, and time scales from century 2 millennia to a hundreds of millions of years. and these were not caused by fossil fuels. ok before caused by natural processes involving ok. nose. the sun shields um, as an ocean circulations and to all of a sudden, a trivialize, those processes and blame everything. so, you know, emission of fossil fuels, those just items facility. now correct me if i'm wrong, i think those processes move on very long scale. so not only of thousands of years, but perhaps even millennia and a lot of studies are investigating them. but uh, speaking generally, how well do we as humans understand what affects watch within the

planetary system? well, you know, unfortunately we've lost 2 decades of research on trying to understand natural processes that contribute to climate variability. because everyone has been focused on the c o 2 issue and global climate models. but the ocean oscillations i think are particularly relevant on scales from entre annual to multi decalle to multi century, which are the time scale, the same time scales that we're talking about in terms of fossil fuel missions so. so this is huge in terms of racial climate variability. you know, like the l nino and la nina are examples and then there's, you know, the candle very abilities, mid atlantic and pacific ocean and the arctic ocean southern hemisphere. all of these things, the circulation patterns heavily influenced our climate and our regional extreme

weather pattern. and lost sight of this is just by looking at globally average temperatures and c o 2 emissions. now from what you're saying, it looks like uh, an area that almost requires authentic global corporation. i understand that the, the discourse on climate change within the west has been somewhat igniting. but what about international academia? is it also under the pressure to conform to certain dog most or is it more sort of independent and it's forecasts and conclusions? well, in europe, in australia, i would say the situation is pretty much the same as in the you of the, you know, in asia, things may be more open. i mean, i, i would say in asia, things are a bit more open, but i've seen it as policy makers started abandoning mich stream emissions scenarios. all the climate scientists are going to have to move the natural climate

. variability is much more important than previous thought because a few properties, extreme emissions scenarios are so huge that yeah, they swamp natural variability, but once you get back to reasonable emission scenario, then natural variability definitely becomes a major player. mm hm. and as far as i understand you are already a working in that field advising companies or private businesses on how to go about their own decisions. how to invest that own money. and that may be sort of in, in, not in the pull agreement with the mainstream view. so how much interest do you see uh, to the kind of, for that's new, do, uh, from private businesses, do they do they buy into they don't mind. okay. the people who are trying to meet some government regulations, you know, they're, they're looking for the, you know,

the main dogmatic kind of thing. but my clients are people who have a direct economic interest or their have specific infrastructure that they're developing and they need to make sure that it can withstand whatever mother nature's froze it's way over the next 3050 years. then they come to me and they say, oh, well we, we've heard the hype. now we need to hear from you some, some scenarios about how this might really play out a range of possible scenarios the on certain days, you know, give us store, it's laid out for us, you know, so when people have real decisions that impacts, you know, i cannot make or engineering or infrastructure related, they want to hear from me fantastic from what you're saying they all, they have to think not only about what mother nature, so those are way, but what their government surf imposes on data that may be

a burden over of its own kinds and perhaps even uh, a heavier than the natural situation. oh exactly. i mean, we're in a situation right now where the cure is worse and then to seize, particularly in the us and europe, with all the renewable energy use and tearing down nuclear power plants and coal power plan. so, you know, in and they're running the environment and they're ending up with the very reduced and unstable power generation, which is non helping anybody. well, but you're, you're just had the change of power in washington. and i don't want to get us into the sort of political discussion, but i'm sure you're heard some of the statements that the last, for example, who is prominent in the near trump administration, has been making about the energy policy and the use of the renewables from what i understand his point of view is that he believes that there, there is a place for them within the energy balance, but they have to be

a they have to be backups by traditional energy sources. are you in any way hopeful that the they may be a change not necessarily in policy, but at least in the way those issues are discussed. um okay, um i think rooftop solar power is a good solution. but um, offshore wind is probably the worst solution and then lives when solar farms that there's a need for them in some regions. but that there is no way we're going to get around this without firm based load power either of, of fuels, nuclear power, or maybe, you know, you know, advance geothermal or some new developments that are often about so, so we just need a on the trump administration has a very forward looking team of people looking at the energy issue and i'm very optimistic. the things will move forward in the us in a sense, simple way,

as well as things move forward in, in the united states. i also want to ask you about international policy because over the last couple of days, because there has been a strong international drive towards some sort of a uniform climate or environmental a treaty, that's what half of you know, all countries agreed to certain conditions. so regardless of the you of drastic call climate or economic cult situation, do you think there is a need for some sort of a global agreement on those issues or are they better addressed on the regional or perhaps local basis? they're much better addressed on a regional or a local basis so that each country, each state or whatever kind of work to secure their own environmental economic and security issues. and then we need bottom up solutions to all these problems. not top down man, dave, likely when and world economic forum i've tried to impose on everybody in the

parent the brand, we've seen malay withdrawn, now trump has withdrawn. i think this has got to start a number of different countries withdrawing from the mobile cream. and but what, what do you then say to people from various pacific communities like tomorrow or the marshall islands, who are facing very precipitous, arise in the, and their sea level ascend, their officials like giving speeches, public speeches, sending any high in the water to sort of dramatize the, the impact would you just tell them okay guys, you know, but lots of nature, habits coming your way. okay, 2 issues. first off, the sea level rise. issue is complex. you have to look at each individual location and see what's going on. often a lot of what's going on if thinking where the land is thinking, either geologically or because of ground water extraction or even fossil fuel

extraction. so a lot of the so called sea level rise problems are caused by thinking not by the sea level eyes. the other thing is even if you blame all of the sea level rise on human and it's still not a lot. it's basically like 9 inches over the last 100 years, and it's now a lot, even if you blame at all on humans, if we were to stop emitting fossil fuels now. and even if you believe the climate models it would take several 100 years for this to reverse. we can't on ring those particular bell. so there's a lot of inertia and very long time scales in the ocean. suddenly i sheets. so even if we stopped admitting the sea level is going to continue to do what i do. and even, you know, i don't know what the people of to, i'll look into. but i think it's pretty clear that large industrial countries,

like the united states or russia for that matter, you know, can do a lot of things by making sure that the hydrogens have enough water and they have, uh, you know, well, find functioning early warning systems either for the hurricanes or perhaps for uh, wild fires. and that brings us back to these very mundane issue of uh, governance and what is it for, and how do you invest your time, your resources, whether you're investing into some abstract future or version goal, or whether you're trying to deal with boring, mundane, but still resource requiring issues of the present day. do you have anything to say on that? well, i think we need to focus on the local and regional issues. i mean, the climate crisis is really a summation of thousands of local vulnerabilities. to do that because we live on coastal regions in flood plains and,

and various folder of both places like that. and putting all of this can be exacerbated to some small it's done by global warming, but most of its population increased in increasing property in vulnerable full region. so, you know, we just, we need to confront that and we need to increase our resilience when a better warnings. we need better infrastructure, we need better water management. and we need to harden our electric utilities. so they're less vulnerable to extreme. whether there's all sorts of things that we can do, and again, it's mundane, but it's going to make people's lives better and it's going to reduce the large economic losses associated with it, whether faster. so when they do occur, ok, well, professor curry, we have to leave it there. but thank you very much for highlighting that though we

get into the future by attending to the present and on the other way around. and i think that's very important to, to keep in mind. okay, good. thank you. and thank you for watching hope to share again on was a part of the the

media posts, again is a display. yes. we shouldn't have that us while usually to hans google bush, just simple boys names, i left them with me and i will extend it. you know about this book when they fitted curious to electronic signature. so those are what are you that you live in? the do what, just anything you could with this name with general store when, when les leslie use of game is a couple of really features to interest me of a new digital video press menu immediately using the barber what the course are now. ok, so look of me. what do i suggest one way useful. let me go by the summer available because i'm at the see what is more is nowhere near

the in the headlines 0 and off the international as rushes for administer. and is us count about hold of the telephone call that washington's request. lensky is coming to terms that i distinctly different future lies ahead with america. now looking for a piece done to take some of the if the data will be in such a large manner, which now demonstrates united states to depression. i think yes. so we are not very happy with it. to be honest. but the interesting question, the other day that washington is on our support for kia have seemed to be over a strong fine food and told.