Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Camille Parmesan is a US / UK based scientist who has accepted President Macron’s challenge to President Trump, Macron’s offer of funding for US climate scientists who move to France. Camille thinks climate “deniers” live in a world of fiction – but she does not present any real evidence to back her claims.
Camille Parmesan: ‘Trump’s extremism on climate change has brought people together’
Interview by John Vidal
Sun 31 Dec ‘17 18.00 AEDT
The climate scientist on leaving the US to work in France – with funding from President Macron – and why she believes Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement will backfire on him.
Camille Parmesan, a biologist at the universities of Texas and Plymouth, is one of the world’s most influential climate change scientists, having shown how butterflies and other species are affected by it across all continents. She is one of 18 US scientists moving to France to take up President Macron’s invitation of refuge after Donald Trump’s decision to cut science funding and withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris agreement.
What has made you leave the US?
The impact of Trump on climate science has been far greater than what the public believe it has. He has not only slashed funding, but he’s gone on the attack in any way he can with his powers as the president. University researchers are buffered from this, but scientists working at government agencies have really felt the blow. They have been muffled and not allowed to speak freely with the press, they have had their reports altered to remove “climate change” from the text, and are being told to leave climate change out of future reports and funding proposals. This degrades the entire climate science community. Scientists are fighting back, but Congress needs to exercise its constitutional powers and keep the executive branch in check. This is not a partisan issue – this is about the future of America.
Are you angry?
None of us expected Trump to win. It was a real shock. It was horrifying to have him as a candidate. He was so extreme. Frankly, I am not just angry at the far right, extreme Republican groups but also with [some] liberals who bought the Russian propaganda and who are not taking responsibility. And with people who didn’t vote. Good lord. You need to vote! It was a bit like Brexit. Many young people did not vote. I understand they did not want a mainstream candidate but they got Trump and Brexit.
…
When do you expect the major impacts to take place?
Things will shift to the extremely negative in the next 50 years. Climate scientists are doing decadal projects and it starts really shifting about 2070-2090. That is in my children’s lifetimes. They will have to deal with it. That’s what makes me angry. Policymakers are mostly in their 50s and they will be dead by then. The worst impacts will hit their grandchildren. That’s what annoys me about young people not voting. They will be the most severely impacted.
…
What about the deniers?
People like believing in fiction in the face of reality. We’ve had many climate disasters and they haven’t woken up the minority who are still living in a fictional universe. People want to believe this lie and I don’t know how to get through to them. But hurricanes like Harvey and Katrina have woken up middle-of-the-road people. It’s not that they were denying climate change, but it was unimportant to them. These people are beginning to understand it is impacting whole countries and regions.
…
Camille, if you want to “get through to deniers”, you could try offering some real evidence to back your claims.
Hurricane Katrina and Harvey are not evidence of imminent climate catastrophe. Powerful hurricanes occurred before the industrial age, and they will continue to occur regardless of what we do about CO2 emissions. If anything, long term there has been a decline in strong hurricanes making landfall on the continental USA.
The incontestable stream of climate disasters Camille predicts will not strike until 2070 – 2090, by which time most of us will be dead. Her climate claims are not falsifiable on any reasonable timescale.
Camille’s 2070 – 2090 timescale seems a bit of an advance on most climate disaster predictions. Is it just me, or does the settled science date of this “imminent” climate disaster always seem to be galloping off further into the distant future?
Update (EW): Hilited “this is not a partisan issue” (h/t BallBounces)
To our rational minded friends in France: You have my sincere condolences.
You will now have to support and endure both your nitwit leader and one of our US nitwit climate seance prognosticators. Quel dommage….
…et quelle fromage!
Parmesan? Diddums.
Reality comes to the fore in the USA,
…..so you run off to the next source of funds…
Stiff cheese !!
Does she need help packing?
Maybe we could set up a fund to pay for her one way ticket?
Is she the one who did the study that found that butterflies were dying out in clear cut areas, but ignored the fact that the same butterflies were doing well in areas that were still forested nearby?
Yes.
See Juan’s comment at 4:55.
“Things will shift to the extremely negative in the next 50 years. Climate scientists are doing decadal projects and it starts really shifting about 2070-2090.”
That’s handy. Presumably she’ll be suppin on her cocktails on the veranda of her beachfront retirement property in the Bahamas around that time?
Apologies, my cynicism has emerged over the last 10 years. I used to be a content little drone.
You can tell when a cheese is really on the nose.
Not one of the usual AGW dismayed comes to face the grater.
She’s just biting the hand that quit feeding her.
Don’t be too sure that the hand(s) have quit feeding her. I’ll bet she is not giving up her Texas and Plymouth jobs.
I’m just glad the French are now paying for her existence.
I’m all for the French paying to relocate scientists and maintain their lifestyles in France. He’s doing us all a favor.
No scientist involved here. A Socialist activist is relocating to a more cynical jurisdiction for financial gain.
This is at least the 2nd butterfly expert that has gone off the rails.
The first dove head first into demography.
Now one dives into political science and how the U. S. government should work.
If you can’t swim, learn where the deep end of the pool is, and stay out.
HAPPY NEW YEAR !
“This is not a partisan issue…. None of us expected Trump to win. It was horrifying to have him as a candidate…. This is not a partisan issue.” O-K then.
Indeed.
“…….When do you expect the major impacts to take place?
Things will shift to the extremely negative in the next 50 years. Climate scientists are doing decadal projects and it starts really shifting about 2070-2090. That is in my children’s lifetimes….”.
So….ummm…what exactly happened to the logarithmic response of the Earth’s climate to increasing CO2 levels? Must have been repealed or something.
And where are those positive feedbacks?
Wish everyone in the WUWT community a prosperous and happy 2018.
Too many alarmists view AGW skeptics as disbelieving in any kind of climate change or that such change is capable of producing changes in the environment. Most skeptics (especially those with some technical knowledge of the topic) accept that climate can change (as it always has) and that changes are capable of affecting butterflies (as Ms. Parmesan studies). The critical climate questions to be debated are these. 1) What natural processes and forces produce climate change and to what extent are they now active? 2) What activities of humans alter climate and to what extend are they currently doing so? 3) How well can human influence on specific environmental factors in the future be predicted? 4) Given the large uncertainties in 1), 2) and 3) how precisely can any climate model predict what climate and its effects really will be like decades into the future? (The answer, of course, is not very well.)
You forgot about the critical question of exactly how a few degrees of warming on our ice age having planet is supposed to be some sort of a disaster, instead of a positively wonderful outcome?
Especially considering that warming seems to consist of a somewhat less frigidly fatal Arctic wasteland, somewhat less deadly cold Winters, and somewhat milder night time temps, all of which amount to an average change, over many decades, that would be barely detectable by an unaided person if they occurred in the span of a few minutes?
Almost undetectable. Except for the increased agricultural production we are enjoying.
The only really measurable effect I can think of is Urban Heat Islands.
Those cause – or ‘are’, to your choice – local climate change, heating a modest area by, yes, a few degrees [F/C – again, to your choice].
Change of land-use, of which UHIs are a specific case, may also change temperature profiles through the day, and, perhaps, peak temperatures.
Soot from coal-burning – much worse in the UK before 1960 – will perhaps affect snow-fields, but will that affect climate? Melted snow – water on rock – reflects less sunlight, I suppose.
Auto
Below is a link, regards my request that Parmesan’s horrendous science paper be retracted because she kept half the evidence off the books a la Enron. She blamed climate change for the extirpation of a newly formed population that had recently colonized a logged area and had switched to a different, more fragile food plant. Meanwhile just 10 meters away the long established population in its natural habitat had its best year on record. Despite her flagrant sins of omission, the AMS refused to retract her paper, most likely because several leading climate scientists had cited it as evidence for catastrophic climate change.
http://landscapesandcycles.net/American_Meterological_Society_half-truth.html
Dishonesty is rampant in the Alarmist camp.
Jim,
Well stated scientific points that any objective entity could not possibly ignore……….but the AMS did ignore them.
I WAS a member of the AMS for 20 years, much of that time holding their broadcast television seal of approval. My separation from the organization had more to do with a career change(predicting crop conditions/production and energy use from updated weather forecasts and the effect on commodity prices) but I have still followed them over the past 15 years.
The example you provided defines the mindset of today’s AMS. What is interesting is that its membership in the field of operational meteorology, who actually analyze and predict the weather using models(which is what I do) have one of the highest rates of skeptics(of catastrophic human caused climate change).
It’s hard not to be skeptical after 35 years of observing the best weather/climate and CO2 conditions for food production and most life on this greening planet in at least the last 1,000 years………since the Medieval Warm Period.
“This is not a partisan issue…”
“None of us expected Trump to win. It was a real shock. It was horrifying to have him as a candidate.”
It’s good to know there’s nothing partisan about Camille Parmesan. /sarc
Everybody she knows felt that way.
Right up there with that editor who couldn’t understand how Nixon could have won because everyone she knew voted against him.
Echo Chamber redux.
Trump has only been in the public eye since around 1976, hardly long enough for us to get to know his temperament, personality, etc. /sarc
It absolutely slays me how “The Donald” was this loveable, roguish, “everyone’s millionaire” until he won the office, and now he’s a racist misogynist jingoistic moron who’s not smart enough to run a Boy Scout patrol. Saturday Night Live had him on before he won the candidacy, and it was all jolly good fun. Then he was actually candidate, and then won — horrors! — and now suddenly he’s a monster.
And these people wonder why they aren’t taken seriously.
A couple of ‘dire consequences’ alarmists have suffered. David Viner of the ‘children-no snow’ alarm seems to have disappeared up a time warp somewhere and Australia’s very own Rainman Flannery is equally non-sighted. Big Al continues to work the Giggle, but it seems to me he is increasingly looked on as the dotty uncle at a wedding.
Furthermore Parmesan had already re-located to England long before Trump was president. (If memory serves from my emails with her husband, he went to England to take care of his failing mother}.
For her to blame Trump is just another example of her dishonest political agenda
There is a much smarter and wiser Camille.
When I’m feeling sick from listening to postmodern crap, a few quotes from Camille Paglia or Jordan Peterson perk me right up.
CAGW is an ideology and it is pathological.
‘nother TDS sufferer has complete meltdown. Year 1 of Trump isn’t done yet either.
Popcorn future in 2018 exploding as the Left continues its steady meltdown providing much entertainment.
Jim Steel demolished her paper and demonstrated that it was not only bad but deceptive. Any sentient publisher would have withdrawn it. Dont beat around the bush.
She is a poor butterfly “scientist” yet is “lauded as a “climate scientist”!!!!!!!!!!!!
If i recall he also pointed out possible conflict of interest with her husband.
And not just any so-called “climate scientist”, but one of the most influential!
WTF?
The more closely one looks at these people and the things they say, the harder it becomes to believe any of them are even sane, let alone intelligent.
Thank you Lord, and President Trump. This blood sucking vampire can suck the lifeblood out of France now, instead of these United States.
Vampire?! More like an annoying mosquito in need of a good swat. Her past blood meals tho’ (like a vampire) have left her in want of more. French blood is sweet presumably.
CO2 makes French blood sweeter. Sounds like a good subject for research grant.
Some got in trouble at the University of Texas during the last presidential administration for political advertising at the school facilities. I got a Ph.D. there 3 decades before her and such a thing never had a thought that I can recall. I saw such exhibited in the main UT library some years go, didn’t bother me, but no doubt symptomatic. It has so far remained a strong library, some members of which came immediately after Harvey the to exceptional Port Aransas Marine Science Institute to rescue classic materials.
The UT library website however, has a link to a new Austin Public library in which is this comment “ For instance, food and drink, cafes and gift shops have become normal features in libraries.”
https://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/texlibris/2017/12/18/why-austins-new-central-library-is-a-vision-for-the-future/
There is a serious problem in our culture and academia about the role of libraries, some of which are closing or adopting the above strategy. Libraries are more than books, true, but they are anchors of learning, and as is well known, anchors are necessary for successful refuge. Too much is published, electronic storage, however long it may last, is welcome, but I worry that they will become the modern example of how libraries past ceased to exist.
I would like to have the opportunity to talk to her about marine science and health. I will not knock butterfly research, but if I were to pick an organism of little significance in the ocean, and I have published on everything from protists to mammals there, it would rate high. Therefore, it is something of great significance. I am still learning so will keep a ‘skeptical’ open mind.
However, this quote from her is not true. “My 1996 Nature study on Edith’s checkerspot butterflies was one of the first to document impacts of climate change on wildlife.”
“Things will shift to the extremely negative in the next 50 years. Climate scientists are doing decadal projects and it starts really shifting about 2070-2090. That is in my children’s lifetimes.”
Camille has no children.
Maybe best to wait as long as possible, then “in my childrens’ lifetime” can be pushed further into the future.
She could reach some cd^s here. We love to get through to people like Camille…
“This is not a partisan issue”
Hehe. Nooo, it’s a Parmesan issue …
The Left has already lost the infernal CAGW debate.
None of CAGW’s dire climate predictions have come close to reflecting reality for 30~100 years (depending on climate phenomenon), which means the CAGW hypothesis is dead.
All CAGW grant-grubbing “scientists” can do is to extend their failed predictions 50~80 years in the future and desperately hope the gullible public and Leftist polical hacks will keep their money flowing before their tenures expire.
Such childish delusions are futile. In about 5 years, both the PDO & AMO will all be in their respective 30-year cool cycles, and a 50~75 year Grand Solar Minimum starts from 2021, which will likely cause significant cooling for the next 50~75 years.
CAGW grant-grubbers will desperately try to convince the public that global warming causes global cooling, but eventually, such fantasies will be laughed at.
I find it fascinating – like a slow-motion train wreck – how many of the readers here seem to think it MATTERS that “the debate is lost.” Here in Canada we see new taxes driven through (as promised on the campaign trail) without a whimper, the economy of Alberta (our oil-producing province that went decades debt-free) gutted by a green socialist government, and promises of much more of the same to come…and all I see here is “we have won, victory is ours, the paid mouthpiece prostituted pseudoscientists lost handily, hooray!”
What am I missing? Do you think they CARE that they’ve lost the debate on the Internet? Their theory is being made law all over the developed world, and you’re celebrating? Jesus wept! YES, the narrative is shifting constantly, because that’s what politicians DO – they have a keen eye for the intelligence and attention span of most of their citizenry. Are you seriously congratulating yourselves for noticing what has been screamingly obvious all along?
I’m on the verge of despair here as the new year begins…please give me hope that the battle is not just being fought here in the comments at WUWT. I have repeatedly put up links to my petition to the Government of Canada asking for a moratorium on climate expenditure while the skeptical POV is given the serious consideration it merits – AND NOT ONE OF YOU HAS BOTHERED TO SIGN.
At least half the readers here seem to treat the whole matter as a cute joke. When your children and grandchildren are freezing in the dark, tell me how funny it seems. Less Internet, more talking to your elected representatives as the employees of the public they are, like I’m trying to do, is my recommendation for 2018. Good luck to us all, peace on earth to men of good will, and be damned to all tyrants.
For what it is worth, I would sign your petition if I had known about it, and if a petition to the government of Canada signed by people who have never even been to that country would mean a whit.
Maybe it does not matter who signs the darn thing for whatever purpose it is intended to serve.
But I can tell you that I am not congratulating myself, and have noticed not a lot of declarations of a battle won and an evil vanquished.
I sincerely believe that, however well intentioned of sincere such an effort may be, a petition on such a matter will do about as much good as a pussy hat parade did for the anti-Trump crowd.
Michael-san:
Trump pulling out of the Paris Accord is the beginning of the end for the most expensive Leftist sc@m in human history because it creates a huge funding deficit among the remaining participants which they can’t cover for economic and political reasons.
The Left is quickly running out of credibility, excuses and money to keep this f@rce going.
Various polls, tanking eco-SJW movie sales, rising energy costs, dismal economic indicators, waning public interest, growing disparity and duration between CAGW predictions vs. reality, etc., are all conspiring against the silly CAGW sc@m.
The inevitable demise of CAGW will occur much more swiftly than most think possible.
Patience, Michael, patience.
The war was lost when we reached the point where more than half of voters got more from government than they pay in taxes.
The only question remaining is how long till the crash, and how bad it will be.
MarkW,
Read “Atlas Shrugged” or look at current events in Venezuela. That’s how bad it could be! The Trump presidency is a ray of hope, but it’s still too soon to know if he can make a lasting difference.