Yesterday, I was saddened to learn that Dr. Judith Curry had resigned her position at Georgia Tech. At the same time, I was impressed by her reasoning, and with her candor. I’m certain that she’ll still make some wonderful contributions in her new role. I thought this part of her post was very germane:
Once you detach from the academic mindset, publishing on the internet makes much more sense, and the peer review you can get on a technical blog is much more extensive. But peer review is not really the point; provoking people to think in new ways about something is really the point. In other words, science as process, rather than a collection of decreed ‘truths.’
I left this comment on her blog:
Dear Judith,
It is my wish that you find satisfaction, happiness, and effect as you travel down the new road. You’ve previously made a detour in 2010 to follow the “road less traveled” and along the way, you’ve made enemies, as well as many new friends. That took exceptional courage, and we are all better for it. Now, you can choose the road you like.
Best wishes, and kindest regards, with respect.
Anthony Watts
Her husband, Peter Webster, left this note:
A PERSONAL NOTE:
Judy and I have been together for many years and partners in many endeavors. I would like to make a number of personal observations relative to her post.
I have never met another person with higher integrity, honesty and forthrightness. When you ask Judy for an opinion, one expects her to be honest. There is no flim flam! I have been the recipient of advice in many joint areas of our lives and when I pick myself off the floor, bruised ego and all, one finds her advice has been sound.
She is an eloquent spokesperson for the integrity of science and stands apart from many academics that, for their own survival, have been forced along paths that allows a lack of questioning we would hope would exist in all areas of science. In my opinion she has challenged the “oligarchs of conformity” on either side of the climate discussion. But I think you may have noticed these characteristics within her blog.
Let me say a few things about her scientific career of which many of many of you may be less aware. Judy ranks extremely highly in many areas of science ranging from radiation theory, cloud physics, thermodynamics and arctic climate. Besides modeling and theoretical work she has organized field experiences in hazardous parts of the world. Of late, she has major contributions in extended prediction that have been discussed on the blog. She has published nearly 200 papers in the standard peer reviewed literature and two major scientific text books as well. Given her extremely high citations and scientific influence, one has to wonder (but not very far) why she has not received the accolades she clearly deserves. She has been nominated for awards and prizes many times. But, simply put, there are no prizes or awards for those not in lock-step with the conformity of the field. However, Judy’s awards and distinctions have come from her efforts from other towards the sanctity of science. I think Judy would agree to that.
Her service to academia has been stellar. She took over a struggling department at Georgia Tech and now, 15 years later after 24 hires it ranks in the top echelon of earth and atmospheric schools globally. I would dearly love to say that the present high-level administrators of Tech appreciate her efforts but they are more concerned with being in “lock-step” with consensus positions as well. God forbid that a prominent GT faculty member may question consensus science! Judy, thus, is correct in her assessment of the state of higher education beyond Georgia Tech.
Finally, Judy in retirement! I think it is the correct move for her at this stage of her career. Note that I said “at this stage” as I have no doubt that she will continue to be a strong voice promoting scientific integrity. I am equally sure she will excel in business as well.
Judy, thanks for our exciting ride and to all those things you have given me and our field in general. Ethics have risen and dogma has suffered through your efforts! Academia is merely a stepping stone!
Peter W
(submitted without permission or review!)
CFACT writes via email. (link here)
Dr. Judith Curry, a respected climate scientist, has announced her resignation from her tenured position at Georgia Tech.
She’s had enough of the politics and propaganda that beset climate science.
Dr. Curry explained,
“the deeper reasons have to do with my growing disenchantment with universities, the academic field of climate science and scientists… I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.”
“How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide.”
More on her blog here
Dr. Curry appears in CFACT’s documentary film Climate Hustle which touches upon her journey from member of the climate establishment to principled dissenter, after being shocked by what was revealed in the “Climategate” emails.
Restoring integrity to climate science and making it once again a welcoming field for researchers like Dr. Curry won’t be easy.
Renowned atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen of MIT has called for severe measures.
“They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up,” he said. “Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”
As 2017 begins change is in the air.
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All climate science research must be done outside in the real thing.
No fire for heat
No air conditioning for cool
Do it like the old ones of Chaco Canyon
Climate Change Fraud
Worlds Largest Most Dangerous Lie
Dr Judith Curry has really made a big impact on my understanding of climate science. Thank you Dr Curry, and best wishes for your less formal career outside GT. You will surely prosper in all your new activities.
I have been inside academia for seven years, but have now been exiled for not conforming to the required profile of an obedient peer-reviewed publisher of State-financed (read taxpayer) and rewarded consensus CAGW papers in obscure but approved journals. For the financial benefit of the university, you understand, don’t you? After all, we do pay you!
My erstwhile and younger colleagues in the Ivory Tower are mostly insecure, overworked, fearful of the Dean’s disapproval, desperate to hold onto their jobs because they have young families and home bonds to pay, and they are under huge pressure to PUBLISH.
So they do exactly what is expected of them, and what better way than to start with a reference to the IPCC Summary for Policymakers to set the scene?
From this IPCC alarming scenario you can confidently research the impact of climate change on agriculture, malaria, coffee and tourism, the latter in all its wonderful guises. The result is a flood of academically acceptable, financially rewarding, but totally meaningless and inconsequential publications that are touted by the universities as their contribution to the progress and well-being of humankind.
I particularly like the impact of climate change on craft beer tourism (I kid you not!) and if you look deeply enough you will find a number of these aforesaid government-subsidized academic publications on this topic in peer-reviewed journals.
Cheers!
“From this IPCC alarming scenario you can confidently research the impact of climate change on agriculture, malaria, coffee and tourism, the latter in all its wonderful guises. The result is a flood of academically acceptable, financially rewarding, but totally meaningless and inconsequential publications”
That’s exactly what we have been getting, too.
Climate change blamed for putting Belgium beer business at risk, The Guardian, 4 November 2015
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/04/climate-change-blamed-for-putting-belgium-beer-business-at-risk
Unusually warm autumns mean traditional open air brewing can no longer take place causing concern for artisan brewers.
She built the GT EAS department from scratch. Her last major paper was Lewis and Curry 2014 on observational ECS. She published MicroPhysics of Clouds. Her reward was to be removed as EAS chair because of her evolving views on CAGW. She is better off advancing weather and seasonal climate forecasting at CFAN, where the harsh peer review is from customers. Lets hope she continues with Climate Etc as a complementary forum to WUWT.
Good luck to Dr. Curry, an authentic climate science champion.
Lysenkoism, redux II is how I view CAGW.
John Holdren will soon be exiting Stage Left (pun intended) so President Trump will need a new Director for the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
I have no clue what political leanings Dr Curry may have, nor do I care. The fact that she dared to take the right positions rather than cave into the political orthodoxy so pervasive in her scientific discipline illustrates to me that she would be perfect as the President’s science advisor.
You may be right, Dr. Dave, but how do you arrange for the new President’s staff to get to know this fact and then act on it?
If appointed as such, the fact that she was once a true believer who saw the light is something that will MLHE (Make Liberal Heads Explode).
I have a sneaky hunch the timing of her departure was more than just coincidence (certainly she could see the next 4 years would bring a vastly different mindset to the reigning administration).
We’ll just wait and see (and hope).
It’s too bad more skeptics didn’t take on her positions..she needed more allies..
Instead she got sky dragons.
I second that, the sky dragons are a scourge
Pardon my ignorance, but wtf is a sky dragon ?
The “Sky Dragon Slayers” are well-meaning group of genuine deniers. They attempted to recruit me for their second e-book after my first post here at WUWT, regarding the differences between Antarctic ice cores and plant stomata as sources of pre-industrial atmopsheric CO2. Rather than questioning the validity of the alarmist position, they deny the existence of an atmospheric greenhouse effect. I purchased and read most of their first e-book and was relieved to see the second book never get off the ground,
The sky dragons aren’t all wrong, some of what they contend is just wrong, contending that if you reflect light back to a lightbulb you wont heat the filament defies conservation of energy. But the position that increasing CO2 partial pressure should Increase the absolute number of photons to space increasing overall cooling is probably correct. The View that a column of air heated from the bottom and cooled from the top in a gravity well will have a natural temperature gradient due to the conversion of kinetic to potential energy as the gas rises is probably also correct.
30 years ago I was a technician repairing electronic typewriters, when we couldn’t find a fault I remember joking with the cleaner who just pointed at something randomly, that set off a new line of thought in me that ended up repairing the typewriter.
One should never exclude views different or “inferior” to ones own as there are always interesting insights to be had.
Of scourges;
So are skeptics who ignore or minimize the AGW movements basic politically route from inception and view it largely as a “science” debate when it at moments like this reveal it was and is something completely different.
It was largely the wuss skeptics (dishonest frankly, skeptic) that enabled the AGW movement every step of the way. Many of whom can’t face the globalist/central planning monster that the AGW belief system always harbored. Instead it was trivia contest that empowered/protected the very paid climate science lobby while claiming various degrees of often obscure dissent.
For those celebrating the recent AGW policy trend reversal as a victory of science reason only shows how delusional the internal skeptic forces remain. It was Trump who capitalized on the public’s common sense on the politics underlying AGW/Greenshirt intensions not the phony history of lonely science skeptics battling with spaghetti charts or recent converts like Dr. Curry’s “epiphany” a tad 40 years too late in my opinion.
Dr. Lindzen called it right, the person on the street called AGW bs while the would-be elite waffled around all sides of the green argument for decades. No one cares about Sky Dragons either way. Until skeptics get the basics of the AGW/Greenshirt culture straight in their heads at least back to Earthday 1 then we are never going to be safe from a revival or another scam metamorphosis with another obscure science laced theme in the future. AGW was an enormous central planning success that is far from dead and the basic opposition of many skeptics remains delusional.
Right, Steven!
Yes, help me out, wtf is a “sky dragon”?
Damn straight, Proffessor Mosher!
Blog lizards need to be reminded that, unlike politics, sound science doesn’t rely upon alliances. It’s not miscomprehending “sky dragons” who dragged Curry off her academic perch; it was the polemics of grant-seeking oligarchs and of “lukewarm” carpetbaggers with their agenda-adjusted data that pushed the idea of objective inquiry into disrepute.
Her motto: “What, me curry?!”
The second Madam Curry of science?
I tried to thank Dr. Curry on her web site but being the original technodinosaur couldn’t do so.
So, Dr. Curry, thank you, and keep up the good work.
It’s difficult to be an honest person in an environment of total corruption. Most people just go with the flow until they become corrupted themselves – corruption becomes the standard.
Dr. Curry you have more courage and fortitude than anyone invested in persecuting you can ever know.
I wish you all the best.
Very unfortunate because of the strong model of climate science integrity that Dr. Curry represented. She was one of the most important and credible scientists that exposed the massive politicalization of climate science brought upon us by that idiot Obama and his dishonest and deceitful followers.
Obama’s politicalization of all science through massive federal funding toward serving only government policy objectives with a compliant liberal press cheering all the way has been a disaster for our country.
The magnitude of the government swamp that President elect Trump and Republican Congress must clean up is simply “huge”.
But this effort however difficult and frustrating must be undertaken with full purpose and discipline not withstanding the effort of ideologically driven Democrats who will utilize every deception and distortion possible to disrupt this critically important government science cleanup process.
Obama and his Democratic supporters – what a bunch of scumbags.
Free at last!
Trump should appoint a ad hoc climate science advisory committee to the President. Curry, Christy, Spencer, Lindzen, Soon and others. Heads would explode—and that’s a good thing.
I think heads would IMplode, since they have already reached maximum radius of fabrication (MRF, for short).
There’s a black hole joke in there somewhere, or a collapsed star joke, or something. I’m too lazy to figure it out at the moment.
Dr Curry, uber Schwarzschild.
The liberal brain is so dense that it is essentially a black hole from which there is no escape.
It’s a bit of an insult to include Curry on that list. The others were far more consistent for far longer.
I refuse to give the hero’s welcome to calculated defectors or include them in the same category as a Dr. Lindzen.
She was way late, still with a false political minimization narrative to this day.
Dr. Judith Curry: one has to admire and respect such integrity. Thank you.
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/07472bb4-3eeb-42da-a49d-964165860275/11614hearingwitnesstestimonycurry.pdf
Dr. Judith Curry, U.S. Senate Testimony, December, 2015
(youtube)
She looked them straight in the eye, took careful aim….. and
“BLAM! ….. BLAM! ….. BLAM!
This concludes my testimony.”
All well and good Janice, trouble is, every observation that developed from 2009 was well known in the 1980’s if not long before as the IPCC was incubated for a generation with a foregone conclusion before the first paper was reviewed. She only alludes to the underlying core political motives that were found then (as her career started in fact) and now.
So in it’s own way Dr. Curry is walking, talking disinformation to the greater event of the AGW orthodoxy and WHY it exists in the first place. Sure, you want them all to renounce. Clinging to the “uncertainty” talking point while ignoring the obvious politics inflicted long before 2009 is a bit pathetic.
Just imagine someone defecting from the Soviet over noticing abuses from the early 1980’s in say 1988? Hmmm…let’s just skip millions of dead in Soviet history from inception, no problems there. Yeah…lets go with the “I didn’t notice until around my point of defection” line??
I’m glad she defected, the rest of the narrative is pure self white washing bordering on obscenity. After 40+years of leftist science corruption and standards we’re going to have to accept the belated contrition of former AGW operatives, like Dr. Curry, and her version in the history books as well?? Her story is a fairytale at best. She didn’t notice the blood lust global regulatory/wealth distribution culture while supporting the IPCC until 2009? She didn’t notice dissent being labeled Holocaust Deniers until that point?
I’m sorry, it’s all too obtuse to accept. She worked the AGW fraud gains as long as was politically and personally tenable and then she defected fully as it met her needs. Now comes the book deal or worse reading this board some job in the new administration with far better skeptics then her. It’s a travesty.
Such is the toxic world of policy-based ‘evidence’. Dr Curry is well rid of the institutional burden. Her light can now shine all the more brightly.
What a great scientist, brilliant and ethics driven.
Dr. Curry has always embraced the consequences of her actions, including this year one.
No whimpering about ‘glass ceilings’, blaming Donald Trump or the Ruskis.
I expect to hear and read great things.
Pat, she should be treated like a captured Nazi rocket scientist in 1945. She can exist and maybe serve a positive purpose in the future but spare me and many the blathering about her “ethics”.
She is 30 years late in her conversion at best, her narrative is obtuse (even evil) to the price actual dissenting scientists paid over a similar time frame.
You can never tell how much or how little people know on a blog board, some of this is so ill informed and misguided. One thing the Greens had going for them was a weak minded opposition that remains clear.
@ur momisugly cwon14,
I’ve got a spare shovel if you want to keep digging.
I’ve been a true believer more then a few times in my life about enviro/ climate change(warm to cold ice age to warm again)/ozone/acid rain,,,, and it was all BS(bad science).,
I was made a fool and then decided to take the red pill(do some research) and now have become a pariah ,its cost me a lot, friendships, family.. a marriage,
Dr. Curry I appreciate your candour and respect your choice, but we need the expertise and level headed thinking you have brought to the debate.
Anthony’s closing in the lead post: “As 2017 begins change is in the air.”
You better believe it! Make Science Great Again!
I don’t think we have seen the last of Dr. Curry. This may be first of the free/unleashed Dr. Curry. I certainly hope so.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/01/03/jc-in-transition/
Dr. Judith Curry, in her own words:
“Stepping back from all this, I reminded myself that I was a tenured faculty member – in principle I could do whatever I wanted. The intellectual pursuits that now interest me are:
Assessment of climate science in a manner that is relevant for policy, with full account of uncertainty
Explore philosophy of science issues as related to epistemology of climate models, reasoning about uncertain complex issues
Decision making under deep uncertainty
Sociology of science and experimenting with social media”
WR: ‘Climate science’ still on ‘one’.
No one ever can take away the status she earned herself. In the future she will feel free, and some words of her can / will make the difference. She will speak, freed from any double role. I am happy for her and I am sure that in her new ‘free’ position the climate world will experience that her role will not be diminished.
On the contrary.
That is truly heartbreaking and extremely unfortunate. To make matters worse, this is viewed as a “victory” by the liberal left and enemies that have completely and absolutely corrupted our universities. They are simply completely blind to their evil and misguided nature and agenda. America wasn’t made great by supporting junk scientists and pouring trillions of dollars down nonsensical uncompetitive liberal boondoggles. Just walk down the hall of any Social Science Department to witness the unbelievably and overtly hostility and hatred towards Conservatives. They don’t even try to pretend that it isn’t a hostile work environment, they flaunt it. No “Women’s” Organization will celebrate here, no “Scientific” organization will run to her defense. The corruption of the liberals is complete and absolute. I only hope Donald Trump hears of this and hires here to clean up the liberal cesspools that our universities have become. Here is a humorous response to an event here at OSU when a target of the Global Warming Gestapo took to the airwaves.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=49m20s
“They are simply completely blind to their evil and misguided nature and agenda.”
BUT, they have their “safe space.”
I’ve read and understand he reasoning for her resignation.
Yet, somehow I’m still saddened.
I feel like she will be less “in the fray.” Less effective.
However, I hope I’m wrong and wish her all the best!
I have the feeling that she will be even more influential with her new freedom. She can still testify in front of congress with her extensive background. Judith, I wish you the best on your new venture…(adventure)…
Dr Curry is the ‘real deal’ and will be missed
I suspect she’ll be called to testify to congress again, this year sometime.
A person of integrity has no business being in climate science — it’s practically unethical of her! 😉
Is this a prelude to an appointment to the Trump administration?