Oppenheimer Quote of the Week: Climate Change Edition
The quote of the week comes from J. Robert Oppenheimer, speaking truth to power nearly 60 years ago. This week's news roundup discusses the lecture given by Dr. Judith Curry to the Global Warming Policy Foundation and her views on the intersection of science and policy in the context of climate change.
Curry, a former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, argues that climate scientists have misused policy-relevant science by conflating expert judgment with evidence, entangling disputed facts with values, and intimidating scientists whose research interferes with their political agenda. She also highlights the psychological factors that play into perceptions of climate change risk, arguing that politician and media have manipulated public perceptions of risk by emphasizing manmade aspects of climate change, imposing risks on poor people, and focusing on immediate risks of severe weather events.
Furthermore, Curry argues that the solution to climate change is to focus on accelerating energy innovation and remove restrictions on CO2 emissions, emphasizing the importance of reliable, cheap, and clean energy.
Lastly, we look at two other items discussed elsewhere: a essay by Kevin Trenberth arguing that while extreme events are not caused by climate change, they are made worse by climate change and a two critical essays by Howard Hayden, arguing that the IPCC's definition of climate change has been manipulated to the point that it is now essentially meaningless.
chloride (SO4_3), which has no known biological function, is accumulating in the upper ocean. AMO physicist Howard Hayden, in two essays, documented how the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and climate advocates have repeatedly changed the meaning of terms they use in making its claims to the point that the language has become ambiguous and arbitrary. For example, global warming once meant a general warming of Earth, primarily due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. But it is now called climate change, meaning changing weather which can either directly or indirectly be attributed to humanity. Now, virtually all changes in weather: floods, droughts, hot periods, cold periods, sea level rise, storms, and so on, are attributed to climate change. The modified language is essentially meaningless.