Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Judith Curry understood risk in 2007

Judith Curry doesn't understand risk. But it wasn't always so. Check out this 2007 WashPo op-ed:
Think of risk as the product of consequences and likelihood: what can happen and the odds of it happening. A 10-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100 is not likely; the panel gives it a 3 percent probability. Such low-probability, high-impact risks are routinely factored into any analysis and management strategy, whether on Wall Street or at the Pentagon. The rationale for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide is to reduce the risk of the possibility of catastrophic outcomes. Making the transition to cleaner fuels has the added benefit of reducing the impact on public health and ecosystems and improving energy security — providing benefits even if the risk is eventually reduced.
Hard to believe someone so smart has made themselves, in four short years, so dumb.

9 comments:

  1. How did Willie Soons, a very smart guy, get so dumb so fast? Was the cause of Judith Curry's dumbness dive similar to that influencing Willie?

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  2. I favor the capitalist explanation: "they get more money trashing science than they were ever able to by attempting to do science."

    John Puma

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  3. True for Willie (an astrophysicist FWIW) but not true for Judy (a climate scientist). Her competition in the field is the modelers, and it's them she goes after even while sort-of defending the field as a whole. This isn't just professional competition, there's a private profit motive since Judy (with hubby Peter Webster) has a climate forecasting business that uses statistical analysis rather than GCM-type models. Follow the money.

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  4. La Curry's commercial site, for the masochists among us.

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  5. "How did Willie Soons, a very smart guy, get so dumb so fast?"

    Did Soon ever do anything good? I hadn't heard he had a golden age.

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  6. Tracker: Willie's at the big H no? To many, H is a proxy for ... well like, really smart or something. But as I type, exceptions come to mind. Please illuminate for someone who is just a guy trying to understand how the world works.

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  7. "Hard to believe someone so smart has made themselves, in four short years, so dumb"

    Um, perhaps over those 4 short years she became unconvinced about anthropogenic climate change based on the science. Like the rest of the world. Perhaps it is not she who is so dumb around here.

    Climate change is dead. You bet on the wrong horse.

    cheers

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  8. "Climate change is dead. You bet on the wrong horse."

    And that's how deniers see it -- as a horse race, rather than as a matter of objective fact that doesn't justify or refute any political position or ideology.

    Regardless, neither the political war waged to deny the facts, which deniers are losing, nor the facts themselves, make climate change "dead." Try again.

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  9. Tracker: Willie's at the big H no? To many, H is a proxy for ... well like, really smart or something. But as I type, exceptions come to mind. Please illuminate for someone who is just a guy trying to understand how the world works.

    Willie took a million dollars in fossil fuel money in recent years. Prior to his exciting new career on his back, he was an astrophysicist. I can't really judge if he made any great waves with that, but certainly, unlike Curry, he never produced anything of note on climate, and there is no indication he ever understood climate.

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