Judith Curry Gives Up On Science & Peer Review, But Will Blog, Post Op-Eds To National Review

[hatrack]

A couple weeks ago, we noticed that Judith Curry admitted to more or less giving up on doing real peer-reviewed science She’s instead going to serve her (fossil fuel?) funders by publishing reports on her blog, where she can “editorialize” to her heart’s content “without worrying about the norms and agendas of the ‘establishment.’” The latest example of her turn away from the norms of established science is a roughly 80 page report on hurricanes and climate, for which she upgraded from a .docx to the much more professional .pdf format. But that’s about where the scientific professionalism ends.

As all good scientists do, Curry went to a conservative outlet to opine about her paper. So if you can’t be bothered to read the report she couldn’t be bothered to get peer-reviewed, head over to the National Review (or don’t!). In the op-ed, Curry (selectively) invokes the WMO and IPCC to warn against “overselling the possible effect of man-made climate change on hurricane impacts,” because it “risks eroding scientific credibility” and “distracts from addressing our vulnerability to the storms themselves.”

The irony here is… thick, to say the least. First off, there’s the basic failure of logic. Concerns that climate change is making hurricanes worse wouldn’t distract from calls to address our vulnerabilities to the storms, it would amplify them. If you’re planning to build infrastructure strong enough to protect people from climate-juiced storms, then you’ll also be protecting people from less intense storms. So in the event that the basic physics about heat and hurricanes is somehow disproven, the downside to worrying about bigger storms would be that people have more protection than they need. On the other hand, the failure to plan for stronger storms (and even existing ones) means people will die when they hit. Curry gets the logic of resilience exactly backwards.

It’s also backwards that in presenting herself as a defender of scientific credibility, Curry cites her report that she refused to put through the process of peer review, the most basic test of a scientific credibility. Here’s a quick tip for Curry and other contrarians: you can either eschew “the norms” of science for the freedom to “editorialize,” or you can claim the mantle of consensus and credibility. Not both!

EDIT

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/13/1885240/-Curry-Goes-To-National-Review-To-Protect-Scientific-Credibility-From-Hurricanes-Climate-link

[bronxiteforever]

1. K&R. The right is frightened that majorities believe in climate change

In real human created climate change at that. Their spin machines will recruit former scientists if they can. They have unending buckets of cash.
Money and the media megaphone won’t stop the warming. Judith Curry and her idiotic belief that there has been a “hiatus in global warming since 1998” won’t stop the oceans rising.