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!
And if Curry is concerned about the erosion of scientific credibility and upholding the consensus, the National Review is an odd place to express such a worry. After all, it’s an outlet that runs pieces from fossil fuel front group employees, praised Trump’s Paris retreat, attacks the IPCC, and has run literal fake news falsely attacking climate science. Oh and it’s gotten funding from well-known science integrity advocates like the Kochs.
Speaking of the Koch network, at least one node noticed Curry’s National Review post. The American Energy Alliance tweeted out a link to and quote from the piece on Wednesday. AEA is the Koch-connected lobbying arm of the Institute for Energy Research, itself a group that emerged from a prior Koch group, and which has received Koch and Exxon money.
Meaning that Judith Curry’s logically backwards hurricanes-and-climate-science-policing op-ed, based on her report that traded the integrity of peer review for the opportunity to editorialize, was published in a climate-hostile conservative outlet rank with denial, and promoted by a Koch-funded fossil fuel lobby group.
Because, you know, scientific credibility and all...