Aletho News

Judith Curry: How Climate “Science” Got Hijacked by Alarmists

John Stossel | August 8, 2023

Climate alarmists insist there’s a “scientific consensus” that says climate change is a crisis, and man causes it! Researcher Judith Curry tells me, “it’s a manufactured consensus.”

Curry was a department chair at Georgia Tech when she spread alarm about climate change.

The media loved her then. She claimed there was an increase in hurricane intensity.

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research: years with low levels of hurricanes.

“Like a good scientist, I went in and investigated.”

When she acknowledged a lack of evidence that hurricane intensity had increased, she was ruthlessly attacked by climate alarmists. Her career suffered.

Now Curry reveals nefarious ways “the science” about climate change has been corrupted.

John Stossel:

We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus”.

“It’s a manufactured consensus,” says climate scientist Judith Curry in my new video. She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune”.

She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change.

Media loved her when she published a study that seemed to show a dramatic increase in hurricane intensity.

“We found that the percent of Category Four and Five hurricanes had doubled,” says Curry. “This was picked up by the media,” and then climate alarmists realised, “Oh, here is the way to do it. Tie extreme weather events to global warming!” …

“I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists and I was treated like a rock star,” Curry recounts. “Flown all over the place to meet with politicians.”

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research – years with low levels of hurricanes.

“Like a good scientist, I investigated,” says Curry. She realised that the critics were right. “Part of it was bad data. Part of it is natural climate variability.”

Curry was the unusual researcher who looked at criticism of her work and actually concluded “they had a point”.

Then the Climategate scandal taught her that other climate researchers weren’t so open-minded. Alarmist scientists’ aggressive attempts to hide data suggesting climate change is not a crisis were revealed in leaked emails.

“Ugly things,” says Curry. “Avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests. Trying to get journal editors fired.”

It made Curry realise that there is a “climate change industry” set up to reward alarmism.

“The origins go back to the… U.N. environmental programme,” says Curry. Some U.N. officials were motivated by “anti-capitalism. They hated the oil companies and seized on the climate change issue to move their policies along.”

The U.N. created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“The IPCC wasn’t supposed to focus on any benefits of warming. The IPCC’s mandate was to look for dangerous human-caused climate change.” …

The researchers quickly figured out that the way to get funded was to make alarmist claims about “man-made climate change”.

August 10, 2023 - Posted by aletho | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | United States