Judith Curry: Climate Scientists Can’t Intimidate Me | Stories of Us

I was clearly getting under the skin of several important climate communicators I'm not going to play games and suck up to these so-called important people just to try to get a pat on the back and Advance my career I'm not going to do that my name is Judith Curry and this is my story I am a researcher I'm president of climate forecast applications Network and I'm author of of the new book climate uncertainty and risk well I grew up in a suburb of Chicago I was a bookworm I was an Avid Reader I read everything I could get my hands on when I was in fifth grade at school they brought in a geologist this woman blew my mind she was talking about ice ages and the mastadons and you know all these amazing things that I could hardly even imagine imine so with my birthday money I went out and bought a book on geology I spent all of Junior High sort of pouring through that book you know just learning everything I could about the subject and so I carried that interest really all through my professional career I went to Northern Illinois University I was going to major in Earth sciences and I ended up taking a course introduction to meteorology which is about the weather and Atmos atmosphere and the teacher was so good I said okay this is what I want to do I liked it better than geology because it had more math and physics in it and I thought well that's what I want to do I want to combine math and physics with the Earth Sciences then I went on to graduate school at the University of Chicago When I Was An undergraduate you know I was the only woman in my class women were you know very much underrepresented you know back in the day and I'm talking you know 19 1970s I was definitely in the minority I had very good advisers who you know mentored me very well but overall I would say the environment was pretty hostile the few people clearly didn't want females around it motivates you to just work really hard and be the best I received my PhD at the University of Chicago I've held faculty positions first at Purdue University then at pen State University then at the University of Colorado Boulder and then finally at the Georgia Institute of Technology where I served as chair of the school of Earth and atmospheric sciences for 13 years so I was teaching really a broad spectrum of courses I was co-author on a paper on the subject of global hurricanes and warming we found that the percent of category 4 and five hurricanes had doubled since 1970 and this was published shortly after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans some people called me The High Priestess of global warming the environmental advocacy groups were treating me like a rock star you know I was flown around on private planes to meetings with donors and all sorts of things so I mean I was very much FedEd by the alarmist wing okay of the climate community and at the time I thought the responsible thing to do was to support the UN ipcc consensus on climate change but that all changed in a big way when a bunch of unauthorized emails were released from the University of East Anglia well they were written by a number of ipcc lead authors people who were involved in the climate assessment report and it revealed all sorts of skull dodgy um trying to keep data away from other scientists who they thought might criticize them trying to pervert the peer review process and get editors fired who were publishing papers that they didn't like and trying to ruin people's careers I mean it was really some pretty ugly stuff that was revealed and I was horrified I thought have I been duped by supporting the ipcc and I said no I can't do this but most significantly I spoke up and I said this is wrong we have to be more transparent we have to make our data fully available we have to clearly describe our methods we have to be more honest about uncertainty and not overhype with overconfidence and we need to be respectful of people who disagree with us but the important people and the climate establishment didn't like it at all then they came up with a bright idea just to call me a climate denier I wasn't denying any science I was criticizing the behavior of a group of scientists who I didn't feel were being objective and abiding by the Norms of science my biggest concern was their failure to acknowledge the extreme uncertainties in all of this the most consequential issues about you know what's causing the recent warming is it human cause or natural variability how climate change will play out in the 21st century and whether the warming is dangerous all of these things are deeply uncertain and there's a great deal of disagreement about these things people tried to shut me up certain journalists and certain media Outlets no longer contacted me I mean I was clearly on the undesirable list and even if they were interested in something that I had to say they just didn't want to go there I became very much marginalized by the universities the administrators really didn't like it so I left I mean I could have stayed around and sucked up my big salary for you know a long time but that's not who I am so I left and I went out and did my own thing and I couldn't be happier several scientists thought they could bully me into backing down because after all I was a female and I would start crying or something like that you know and I would probably back down and then they would let me back into the tribe but no I just double down I'm not going to play games and suck up to these so-called important people just to try to get a pat on the back and Advance my career I'm not going to do that I want to help real people and real companies and real governments make good decisions about their weather and climate risks I started my blog in 2010 climate Etc at Judith curry.com I began exploring all these uncomfortable issues that people didn't want to talk about that the climate establishment wanted to be swept under the rug and I was giving you know trying to get people from both sides of the debate across a political Spectrum to you know come to my blog and hash it out I developed this this new network of people of open-minded um intelligent people to work with and communicate with speaking out was incredibly important to me and that's who I am I mean I most certainly do not regret it there's a number of fact Checker organizations out there and they're all purely political they're all enforcing a particular political narrative I mean and the people who are doing the factchecking for the most part don't have a tenth of the knowledge of the people that they're supposedly checking I engage in the policy process but I'm not a political advocate for pretty much anything I'm I'm mainly an advocate for integrity and science that's the main thing that I advocate for at this point my advice to you is keep your mind open and don't make the mistake of thinking that fossil fuels are causing bad weather do a little bit of digging into the you know history of the first half of the 20th century or even the 19th century or even the 18th century remember George Washington at Valley Forge it was not pleasant weather back then and see all of the crazy weather that we have endured over the history of this country the recent weather that we're seeing is relatively benign human Ingenuity is the best thing that we have to help protect us from whatever Mother Nature might throw at us don't worry about the climate go out there and live your best life thank you for watching this video please consider making a donation to help keep these videos publicly available