Freed of any values, Judith Curry slithers and slides and hurtles into deniersville

Addendum: I see there have been quite a few visitors from Judith Curry's blog today. I found out the reason. Judith has posted a link to this article describing it as "And now into the sewer". I agree that Poptech's article outing another blogger is properly describe as sewer-ish behaviour and I'm surprised that Judith would promote it, if she does indeed find that behaviour unseemly. (Perhaps she doesn't, which wouldn't surprise me.) I also find it strange that she thinks that this HotWhopper article, which points out Judith's lies and false innuendos about scientists, and how she implies that President Obama should not apply values, is sewer-ish. Another example of the Judith behaving as the black pot? Is the irony lost on her?

Sou Sunday 25 January 2015 2:13 pm AEDT

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Judith Curry cannot help herself any more and she'll find it hard to get anyone respectable to help her. She is now a gung ho denier of the extreme kind.

I first saw it in her years ago. It was as plain as the nose on her face. I wasn't the only one. I'm aware that many scientists denied the signs of Judith Curry's denial for a long time and some probably still do. I think they just cannot accept that one of their own could do such an about face. That a senior academic could turn her back on science and malign her colleagues. Those scientists are in denial.

Remember, we're not talking mere contrarian scientist here. Judith no longer does science. We're not even talking Richard Lindzen-style denialism. He's nothing more than a mildly eccentric emeritus contrarian by comparison. We're talking full blown denial of the wacky and nasty and vitriolic kind. The sort of person who will pick up and repeat any nasty rumour, without regard for facts. Who will malign her colleagues and keep on doing so, on no grounds other than she heard someone else say something.


Here's some of Judith's latest, if you're interested (from here). Her blog is now a parody. It's every bit as bad as WUWT. Judith's nuttery is in italics. (She's totally lost it.)

The problem is that President Obama is listening to scientists that are either playing politics with their expertise, or responding to a political mandate from the administration (probably a combination of both).   Not just administrators in govt labs (e.g. Schmidt, Karl), but think of the scientist networks of John Holdren and John Podesta:  to me the scariest one one is Mann to Romm to Podesta.

That's not any pot calling a kettle black. There's only Judith, the black pot. That's political Judith unable to accept that real scientists do real science and report it. They don't make up stuff, tell lies, make a fool of themselves over simple arithmetic, or tout deniers like Senator Inhofe as being reasonable people. And her personal animosity to Professor Mann? There's got to be a back story somewhere. Did he jilt her? Did he get the job she wanted? Is it just jealousy that his hockey stick beat her hurricane? Who knows. Michael Mann is probably as bewildered by her weird obsession with him as the rest of us.

So what is wrong with President Obama’s statements as cited above?
His statement about humans having exacerbated extreme weather events is not supported by the IPCC

Oh yes it is supported by the IPCC. The latest IPCC report refers to heat waves (killing thousands of people) and intense downpours in particular. Plus droughts that have been exacerbated by the warming.

The Pentagon is confusing climate change with extreme weather (see above)

 I doubt it.

‘Climate change is real’ is almost a tautology; climate has always changed and always will, independently of anything humans do.

Oh my! Is Judith really quoting the well-worn denier meme "climate has always changed"? Sheesh!

His tweet about ‘97%’ is based on an erroneous and discredited paper [link]

Bullshit. The Cook13 paper has never been discredited. It has won awards. Nor have any of the other papers been discredited, the other papers showing that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. Does Judith Curry seriously think that 97% of scientists don't agree that humans are causing global warming? What the heck does she think scientists have found is causing it. Oh, I forgot. She recently decided that it was 220% of something else that was causing global warming. We're all still waiting to learn what the 220% is. Could be Force X or the Notch.

As for ‘Denial from Congress is dangerous’, I doubt that anyone in Congress denies that climate changes.  The issue of ‘dangerous’ is a hypothetical, and relates to values (not science).

There are no deniers in Congress? More bullshit, disguised with a denierism ("climate always changes"). In the same article, Judith gave many column inches to one of the more infamous deniers in the USA - her idol Senator Inhofe.

As for the issue of "denial from Congress is dangerous" being a hypothetical and relating to values not science - yeah. I remember her being very hypothetical last year, when she wanted her city to close all the roads because of the 30% risk of a hypothetical inch of snow. A value judgement if ever there was one.

Did the 173 people who were burnt to death in the Black Saturday fires die happily knowing they were sacrificing themselves to Judith's lack of values? Was the lack of values a comfort to the people they left behind? What about the thousands who died in the heat waves in Russia and western Europe? And did all those who perished or lost their homes and livelihood in Haiyan figure they didn't count because "values"?

The President of the United States of America should not have values?

But the worst part is that Judith is basically saying that the President of the USA should not aspire to values. That he should be valueless. She wasn't quoting a scientist talking about 'denial from Congress' being 'dangerous'.  Judith was quoting one of the most powerful men in the world. One whose day-to-day decisions can determine the fate of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. Sometimes millions of people. If the President of the United States of America is not meant to have values, if he is not meant to let values guide his decisions, then there is no hope for humanity.

Walking back a conspiracy theory

After enough people accused her of being the wacky conspiracy theorist she's become, Judith thought better of it and deleted one of her conspiracy theories, but left the rest. She wrote:

(JC note:  I am deleting the following text ‘the timing of  the NASA/NOAA press release on warmest year was motivated by the timing of the President’s SOTU address’)

Give the lady a medal. One conspiracy theory down, a zillion more to come.

What I don't understand

I see apparently reasonable people still commenting on Judith's blog. That's the part that I don't understand. How can they lend their support to her? I don't get it. [Not nearly as many reasonable people comment there these days, I should add. The comments are predominately from other deniers. Sou 25 Jan.]