After the Maui fires of 2023, officials blamed climate change. Were they looking to deflect responsibility from themselves and their poor decisions? Is climate change real? Climate scientist Judith A. Curry’s new book “Climate Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking Our Response” reports that while climate change is happening, it’s not the apocalyptic threat we’ve been told it is.
As readers will find, Ms. Curry has staked out a position as a centrist in the climate debate. She strives to be an objective writer with over 1,500 footnoted references supporting her analysis. Her book is technical in places but succeeds in forcing us to reconsider what many view as established fact. It was such a joy to read this factual, well-reasoned book.
Ms. Curry spent most of her career in academia, most recently as chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has published over 190 scientific papers, has authored two textbooks, and is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences. Prior to 2010, she publicly supported the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) consensus on climate change. The IPCC, established in 1988, is the body for assessing the science related to climate change.
When Ms. Curry spoke up about concerns regarding inadequate treatment of the uncertainty posed by some scientists, she suddenly became very unpopular with climate activists and some actively worked to discredit her. She was called a climate denier, which she vehemently refuted, and still remains firm in her conviction that she was labeled this because she asked uncomfortable questions. In 2017, she resigned her tenured faculty position at Georgia Tech.
Losing the Very Basis of Science
In Part I, we learn that while the public may understand little about climate science, nearly everyone has been exposed to the statement that scientists agree on climate change. Not true, according to Ms. Curry. Quoting Tamsin Edwards, a climate scientist, she says: “Science is always sold as facts, and it’s not, it’s process. And that process is mainly arguing.”Today, however, instead of many differing viewpoints, a singular view of climate change has drowned out other voices. This singular view was solidified through a redefinition of climate change. The UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) now makes a distinction between climate change—attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition (mainly CO2)—and climate variability, which is attributable to natural causes. This redefinition of “climate change” has effectively eliminated natural climate change from the public discussion.
Ms. Curry poses the question about whether global warming is even dangerous. Today, natural events have been categorized as climate change catastrophes. She talks about the manipulation of science for political gain, drawing some interesting parallels between the handling of climate change and COVID-19, whereby a false consensus on the origins of COVID was also enforced—politically.
Explaining the Science
Part II helps readers understand the science of climate change. Readers learn how climate research is done, the limitations of models, the range and the quality of data we have (and the data we don’t), and the challenges of predicting the complex climate system. She clarifies the links between global warming and extreme weather events: what we know (and with what confidence), what we don’t know, and what we can’t know.The sensitivity of climate to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is at the heart of the scientific debate and is covered here.
Rushing Toward a Solution
Part III of the book, Risk and Response, importantly discusses how the Paris Agreement has created a wide gap between ambition and obligation. The agreement has adopted ambitious temperature targets without specifying the means to reach them. She stresses that what policy makers wish to be true is very different from what is possible!Ms. Curry explains how policymakers and the media have exaggerated the incremental risks from the slow creep of warming. The emergency risks of extreme weather events that have little or nothing to do with a warming climate and blaming extreme weather events on human causes are being used as propaganda to motivate urgent reductions in fossil fuel emissions.
At the same time, this blame deflects from the real causes of our local vulnerabilities to extreme weather, which include inadequate infrastructure, poor land use decisions, and bad government policies and management. In addition, policymakers have neglected to account for any benefits of the warming or benefits from the use of fossil fuels.
Yet there has been little said about the risks of energy transition, including those we face regarding a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. As the world’s population continues to need and desire much more energy, we will continue to need fossil fuels to support the materials required for developing cleaner energy sources. Ms. Curry recommends abandoning the deadlines and targets in favor of providing time for learning curves as new technologies are developed and implemented.
Ms. Curry feels we have used a narrow framework—focusing on details at the expense of the big picture—to find solutions to complex problems. A much larger picture is required to accommodate uncertainty, ambiguity, chaos, and contradictions. She quotes American biologist E.O. Wilson: “We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.”
Ms. Curry wants climate politics to focus on opportunities that people are enthusiastic about addressing and not have to be bogged down by alarm, fear, and scarcity. She recommends climate pragmatism, which means “moving away from centralized top-down approaches, such as international treaties and accords, in favor of breaking the problem into smaller, human-relevant problems and solutions. She sees this way as a broad path forward for humanity to thrive in the twenty-first century and beyond.”
