Should Climate Change Worry Us? Interviews with Scientists

I interview three climate scientists with different opinions about climate change: Simon Clark, Judith Curry and Ben Cook.

[JeffHoldenWS-NC]

The warmest place on Earth is at the equator.... There aren't a lot of deserts on the equator. Heat doesn't make deserts. Lack of humidity does.

[graemetunbridge]

not contentious - global heating is well understood and you only need to know physics from the 1800s that has been verified thousands of times.

[vtrials]

Thank you for being courageous in presenting opposite opinions. I’m sure you’ll get the haters but shutting off discussion is one of the biggest problems we face at trying to find the truth of the any matter.
I think you’ve shown well that we really don’t know the answers and their are many variables and that we should not be driven by a popular narrative just because.

[mikeharrington]

Curry always reverts to her climate variability backstop & attaches a disproportionate amount of importance to the Sun's influence on gobal warming, which at best is around 0.01°C. Yet climate records for the past 200 years show a consistent & continuous warming trend, which appears to correlate with CO2 emissions data over that same period, & also since 1958 with the Keeling Curve.

She doesn't discuss the huge increase in Ocean Heat Content which mirrors atmospheric warming, & which over time is gonna dissipate that heat to further warm the atmosphere more. Apparently she seems to accept that the warming oceans may now be at the point of discharging CO2 instead of absorbing it, thus adding to total cumulation of atmospheric CO2. She needs to debate an oceanographer & be taught a few new things.

She doesnt attempt to explain the significance of the Earth Energy Imbalance. & trivialises it as well as further warming projections to 2100, & clearly she is not able nor willing to discuss solutions to climate problems which she says do not exist.

When she says the IPCC is driven by politicians not climate scientists she is absolutely right. Those politicians are beholden to their fossil fuel lobbyists & masters, and those same politicians doctor the final IPCC reports to "water down" the warnings from the scientific data. We CANNOT adapt to the speed of global warming.

[ExtinctionLife]

Next up, a panel discussion if wildfire smoke is really that bad for our health.

[skatemonki]

I find it interesting that geoengineering is completely excluded from the models and is never taken into account.

[rabka-mv]

Dr Roy Spencer, Prof John Christy, Prof Ian Plimer, Dr Richard Lindzen, Dr Steven Koonin, are all voices that need to be heard.

[nts]

This is an interesting discussion on a vital subject. Thank you for holding it. You have a nice following. I suggest that you up your audio quality to help more people become interested.

[charlesashurst]

Judith Curry, I think, 1. Assumes uncertainty argues in favor of inaction, which is not a sound approach to risk management, and 2. Ignores the well understood laws of physics that predict that greenhouse gas emissions have consequences that don’t bode well for humans.

[peterz]

Is there really a need to set up a two sides scenario?

[mikepotter]

Curry's developed her position without thinking very hard. Now she just throws mud at the wall in the hope that some will stick.

[brunawitt]

Next debate: is the Earth really round? It’s great to hear all opinions on those mattes.

[rabka-mv]

Of course Simon Clark doesn't like Judith Curry as she totally destroys his climate alarmist grift

[SamWilkinsonn]

I liked the first scientist, however he’s not being truthful on his understanding of how severe our predicament is and how rapidly it’s getting worse (I say ‘not being truthful’ instead of ‘wrong’ because anyone with his clear understanding on the topic wouldn’t agree with the amount of time he claims that he thinks we have remaining.) It’s not just his children he should be worried about, it’s everyone that will be around in the next decade. Food and potable water shortages are going to cause major issues any year now, many other crises all happening at once too, it’s just a matter of time before everything comes crumbling down (it’s started to already.)

[michaelmcphillips]

What Simon didn't refer to is that a two and a half to three degrees global increase which includes the temperature of the seas will mean a five to sex degree increase on land and very few if not any people could survive in such heat.
If Judith can't accept Simon Clark's evidence, ice core records from 800, 000 years, ancient tree ring circles and lake sediment contents, and the Mauna Loa and satellite records of the 20th century (admittedly there was a glitch in how the measurements were being made for a time that was later amended) as evidence for CO2's part in global warming and climate change, she needs to offer reasons more substantial than those mentioned. When school children can do experiments in labs showing that adding carbon dioxide to an atmosphere increases the temperature of it and the real and actual temperature records made at Mauna Loa support the hockey stick temperature record while the actual solar measurement made there too in the 20th century show no substantial increase in solar radiation reaching the earth, therefore given the relative steady temperatures of the last 8, 000 years in this interglacial period, without an obvious and real chemical alternative to GHGs as the cause, it seems that she requires us to believe in some imaginative possibility of one to convince us that CO2 is not the culprit. As anything occurring in the temperature in the oceans is already included in the global warming increase, I don't think that wherever is happening there is going to have a significant and long-term effect on the overall global temperature of the atmosphere.
If she can't tell us that adding GHGs to the atmosphere will not warm it and that it won't melt ice that will also warm it, and that there's something else that will cool it enough to stop warming it and refreeze the ice that we don't know about then she can't claim to be an authority we must listen to, to end the warming that's going to destroy our ability to grow food and our biological systems that evolved to enable us live with the atmosphere we've got and with its temperature that should not increase by more than 1.5 degree C in order to preserve as much life as possible for at least most of us.
She needs to concentrate on the chemical nature of the atmosphere when deciding what's occurring in it along with the forces acting on that chemical mix to create its variability when extinction is the inevitable consequence of continuing warming it with chemicals otherwise she is merely assisting those who do not want any change that's going to lose them money to succeed in the killing of more than the present annual 8.7m victims from climate change and eventually to that of all human and animal life on the planet.

[rabka-mv]

You should have invited Richard Lindzen - he knows a thing or two about atmospheric physics.

[JeffHoldenWS-NC]

There's a reason ice cores in Greenland only go back about 150, 000 years... It's because the ice sheet didn't exist where those ice cores were taken 150, 000 years ago.. We did not go extinct just because the Greenland ice sheets melted

[helgefan]

Simon Clark explained that Michael Mann's hockey stick had issues but with new data, the shape of the hockey stick has just become more pronounced (with the flat part even flatter and longer, and the warming even steeper).
And yet right after 40:25 Judith Curry claimed that all graphs since Michael Mann - which still look like a hockey stick - are using the same flawed and allegedly cherry-picked data as Michael Mann did 25 years ago. I find it very hard to believe that somehow climate scientists have not done their job and are still using data from 25 years ago. Apparently she's trying hard to create an impression that climate researchers have been lazy and that there's been no scientific progress regarding measurements. And then she even claims that the influence of the sun is neglected, even though this stuff is actually routinely measured using satellites and other modern instruments.
In contrast, Simon Clark actually gave a fairly detailled explaination of solar influence over vastly different time scales.
Somehow I get the impression that Judith Curry's main theme is to emphasize and often exaggerate scientific uncertainties - just as the fossil fuel lobby is known to do.
I'm suspecting a conflict of interest, or maybe it's a sort of revenge on climate scientists after they rejected some of her work?

[charlesashurst]

Let's look at greenhouse gas emissions as a practical problem we absolutely can address if we choose to. Put aside the alarmism, the extreme politics, and look at it as a practical problem we need to address on behalf of ourselves and our children. How much is this going to cost us to clean up the greenhouse gas emissions? That's the wrong question. It's how much wealth is this going to produce? The 20th century is over. Fossil carbon energy lifted vast numbers of people out of poverty, thank you very much, and now it's over. We have cleaner less expensive alternatives now.

[doudlewouzle]

@35min "... there are some people, what ever evidence you present them, they will never change their mind" -- Simon Clark. so true!!! just need to remember that it goes both ways, and if your side is the dominant one, you are most definitely concerned. Join the Climate Change Church!