Exploring Climate Change: Full Length Interview with Dr. John Christy

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Here today with Dr. John Christie, and the NSSTC stands for... [00:00:05] Dr. John Christie: National Space Science and Technology Center. [00:00:08] Speaker 1: Okay. [00:00:09] Dr. John Christie: I'm the director of the Earth Center, I'm sorry, I'm director of the Earth System Science Center. [00:00:14] Speaker 1: Okay. Which is a unit of this building. Gotcha, like a subset of it. Okay, all right. So, a couple of these questions may sound a little strange, but I'm just sort of doing it to make sure that we're on the same page. So, you do accept the argument that the pre-industrial level of greenhouse gases has a significant impact in terms of whether or not the Earth is at a temperature where life can exist, and at least as we know it, and being an ice ball. Is that part in agreement among most scientists? [00:00:55] Dr. John Christie: Yeah, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere pre-industrial is enough to warm up the planet. However, there have been times in the long past, geologic past, where the CO2 has been at least as much, and yet we've had much more ice. So, it's not the controlling factor, but it is necessary really for a lot of warmth to occur. [00:01:15] Speaker 1: Okay. So, even though it's a trace gas, what, 400 parts per million, and is it correct, the correct interpretation of that is that it's 400 molecules per 1 million molecules of air? Yes. Okay. So, that's, a lot of people would argue that something that insignificant in terms of concentration couldn't possibly have that big of an effect, but in a sense what science is saying is that, yes, it does. [00:01:41] Dr. John Christie: Right. So, CO2 absorbs a particular energy band for which there's lots of energy on the earth, so it is able to interact with that energy and basically prevent its escape as it normally might have. [00:01:56] Speaker 1: Okay. All righty. Now, water vapor exists in greater concentrations than CO2 does, and you often hear the argument that, why are we so worried about carbon dioxide and not so much about water vapor? What's your answer to that? [00:02:18] Dr. John Christie: Well, water vapor is just abundant because the oceans cover 70% of the earth, so the atmosphere has access to all the water vapor it needs, basically. And the issue about water vapor here is that how will it change if a little extra CO2 is added to the atmosphere? If it warms the atmosphere, does that mean there is more water vapor that can be held in the atmosphere, which is another greenhouse gas, and therefore a greater influence on the atmosphere than just CO2 alone? Because CO2 alone, if it's doubled, is only about a degree of warming. And so it's these feedbacks like extra water vapor as a greenhouse gas might affect it. And that's where the real controversies are in climate science right now, is what are those other effects that happen as you add CO2 to the atmosphere? CO2 alone is not going to be much of a deal, but it's the other effects that we have to nail down and figure out what they're going to be doing. [00:03:22] Speaker 1: So when you, a lot of people, when they hear about feedbacks, they think, oh, you're giving me positive feedback or negative feedback. In the science sense, it's whether or not those feedbacks amplify the initial process or cancel it out. [00:03:36] Dr. John Christie: Right. Yeah, and the reason that's so difficult to measure is that there are innumerable feedbacks that occur. And what generally happens in a climate model is that when it warms up because of CO2, it shrinks the cloud coverage, which allows more sunlight to heat up the earth. And that's the feedback that really creates the extra warmth that people think is dangerous. But yet when we look at the real data, we don't see that kind of amplification. And certainly when we compare model temperatures with real temperatures, they're not even close. The models are warming up way too fast. So there's something wrong there, I think, with the feedbacks in the models. [00:04:18] Speaker 1: Okay. I wanted to digress here for just a second and just talk about the work that you and Roy Spencer have done with the satellite temperature record going back to, what, 1979? And you're, the two of you are very well known for that. And I just wonder if you could give us, like, just a little brief history of, you know, how that has all evolved. [00:04:41] Dr. John Christie: Well, the satellite data came about because back in 1988, there was a big brouhaha raised about the planet warming. It was a very warm summer here, and NASA scientist Jim Hansen testified before the Senate. And so we were looking at this problem and knowing that the surface temperature record was pretty poor in terms of a metric for understanding the global temperature. And so Roy Spencer was a pretty good satellite meteorologist, and he thought of the layer temperatures of the atmosphere that microwaves measure. Pretty robust kind of measurement. And so we were the first to grab all those data, and I mean, it was a truckload of data, especially computers back then were not nearly as fast as they are now, and process all of that and figure out how to combine the different satellites in such a way as to get a continuous time series to tell us what has happened over time. The real advantage of the satellite data, it is the deep layer of the atmosphere, precisely where the impact of carbon dioxide is supposed to be greatest. So we are measuring the layer of air that we should see the biggest response. Whereas the surface temperature records, you know, there's a shelter here, a ship over there, huge gaps in it, they're not calibrated. So it's a hodgepodge of things that I would not have confidence in, nor is it really the kind of variable you want to measure for the greenhouse effect. You want something with lots of bulk and mass, and that's what we measure with the satellite data. So in March 1990, we published it, and from there on, we've been continuing to improve the data set. We'll be coming out with a new version here very shortly. It doesn't really change, you know, the numbers much. But as others do, show quite a lack of warming in the deep layer of the atmosphere than what is projected to have occurred. [00:06:40] Speaker 1: Now, was there one time, and correct me if I'm wrong, where there was some sort of an orbital degradation that was discovered, and there was a temperature adjustment for that? [00:06:51] Dr. John Christie: Yes, there were actually two events where an outside group discovered a problem with what our satellite data was. And one of them was the orbital decay of the satellites, where they sink slowly down into the atmosphere, and that changed the perspective or the aspect angle that is seen, and that changed the temperature a little bit. So that had a spurious cooling effect on our time series. However, what is never mentioned is at the same time, we discovered something called the instrument body effect, which has a spurious warming in the event. Now, they don't quite cancel out, but it's pretty close, and so the net change was not that much. And then later on, there was another, there was an error in one of our codes. We make three products, and one of the products, there was an error in how we accounted for satellite drift east-west. [00:07:40] Speaker 1: Okay. [00:07:41] Dr. John Christie: And once that was fixed, it was also a smallish error within our error bounds, but that's been taken care of too. So because we make things public in this way, others are able to look at it, and if there are mistakes, they find them, we make them better. [00:07:56] Speaker 1: Right. And, of course, I think we all know that if you're trying to discredit somebody, you find any uncertainty you can find and just capitalize on that. Now, does the, I guess to follow up on that, does the satellite temperature record show about the same thing as the land-based record, or is it significantly cooler than that? [00:08:19] Dr. John Christie: The satellite record is slightly cooler than the land-based record, by, you know, three hundredths per decade. Okay. However, the real issue here is that in climate models, the atmosphere is supposed to be warming faster than the land. So we have a disconnect here. [00:08:39] Speaker 1: Okay. [00:08:39] Dr. John Christie: And it's especially the case in the tropics, where the upper air is the, shows the greatest response in climate models. Very rapid warming there that should have occurred by now. [00:08:50] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. [00:08:50] Dr. John Christie: And yet none of our measuring systems show that rapid warming. And so I think that's another piece of evidence to show that it's the cloud systems, the water vapor that models portray is not quite the way it is in the real world. Because the real world is telling us something else is happening. The heat is not accumulating in the atmosphere. And so perhaps there are negative feedbacks that are operating that models just do not capture. [00:09:15] Speaker 1: Okay. So what would you say is your primary disagreement with those who are genuinely worried about man's influence on the climate? [00:09:27] Dr. John Christie: The primary disagreement is the rate or the degree to which extra carbon dioxide will affect the climate. The evidence that we have shows it's a pretty small effect. And we're talking about evidence, real changes in bulk atmospheric temperatures. We're not talking about, you know, beliefs or climate model projections. We're talking about real data. And these notions of extreme weather changing, we don't find it. Whether you're talking about hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, droughts, floods, they're all pretty much like they've always been. And they're going to continue to plague us, but not really changing. [00:10:05] Speaker 1: Do you think a lot of that is just because there's better communication now than there's ever been? There are more people living in more spots and it's easier to put it on the news every night? [00:10:14] Dr. John Christie: All of that is true in the sense that now we have video of events that occur. And that really grabs people's attention. And you're exactly right in the sense that we have put up more people and infrastructure in the way of these naturally occurring events so that when the next one happens, it's going to hit more stuff and make a greater disaster. And, you know, it's been nine and a half years or so since the United States has had a Category 3 hurricane. That is the longest hurricane drought in our history that we have. So when the next one comes, I just fear it's going to hit something big and be a real disaster. [00:10:53] Speaker 1: I remember Neil Frank, when I first moved to Raleigh, went up and down the East Coast almost like an evangelist, you know, saying, it's not if, it's when, you know. Okay, the hiatus since 1998, I realize I'm grossly oversimplifying this, but just for fun, I went into Excel and I plotted two graphs on top of each other. One was Y equals X, straight line, which was my way of, you know, putting the CO2 effect in there. And then I put Y equals sine of X, sort of trying to demonstrate natural variability. Added the two Y values and, in a sense, got something akin to a stair step where it would go up for a while, level off, go up for a while, level off. And that seems to have some similarity to what we've seen maybe in the last, you know, 50 or 60 years. And the climate scientists that I've talked to up until now have said that the climate models are terrible at handling natural variability. And how did the idea ever get out there in the first place that the temperature was going to increase in a linear manner as opposed to sort of a, you know, something like this? Was that a gross mistake on the, part of the IPCC to even suggest that that could happen? [00:12:18] Dr. John Christie: What I think, where the mistake comes in, I think, is the notion that natural variability is captured well. That is kind of an unsaid hypothesis that the scientists like to keep under wraps. But the truth is, we cannot even model the natural variability. That the decadal changes, the inter-century changes, these kinds of things are part of a, this system that's quite complex. Now, is the last, are the last 18 years not warming because of some natural cooling cycle that's being balanced by CO2 warming? Or is it simply that CO2 warming is just very benign and small? We really don't know. There have been all kinds of, I saw a list of 60 reasons for the lack of warming. So, that tells you our ignorance about the climate system is just enormous. We have so far to go. You know, if you, this point about natural variability is terrific because in basic scientific understanding, when you understand a system, you can predict it. You can predict its behavior. That tells you you understand the system. When we look at our model output, we haven't been able to predict this system well at all. And so, that tells you our understanding is not far enough along to really have confidence in these models, much less make policy based on these models. [00:13:44] Speaker 1: Right. Now, one of the things that Kerry in his discussion with you last year brought up was a risk assessment approach. That, you know, he said that he expected a 2 to 9 degree Fahrenheit increase, which he conceded was a huge range, which made the argument you just made, is that we don't really understand this very well. That if it was 2, no big deal. If it's 5, significant, we can probably still adapt. If it's 9, catastrophic, potentially. And that even if there's a small chance of something horrific happening, and you have it within your means to reduce or eliminate that risk, why wouldn't you do something? What's your response to that? [00:14:24] Dr. John Christie: That's a very common argument that misses one complete side of the situation. Okay. When you make policy to try to attack an issue like a believed warming of the planet, what are you doing to people? What are you doing to your economy? How many people are you throwing out of work by increasing energy costs? How many people are now struggling and suffering in greater extent because they do not have access to energy? This is the big issue. And that is why countries like China and Germany and Japan are increasing their coal output, their coal burning electricity. Their emissions are rising. That's why these countries are not really signing up to the CO2 thing in the real world because their people need energy they can afford. And that is part of the equation in the risk assessment I don't see doing from that side of the debate. All they're worried about is, oh, this is a terrible thing that might happen. Climate models say it might happen. The real data says it's not going to happen. I mean, the real data. And so I've got those two points to say. This risk you're talking about doesn't seem to be apparent when you look at real data. And then the other side of that risk is, what are you doing to damage real people's lives? And having lived in Africa, I know for certain that without energy, life is brutal and short. And to create access to energy, to provide affordable energy for people, should be the moral argument here, not whether the planet might get a little warmer or not. [00:15:57] Speaker 1: So that's my view on that. Do you think it's even possible that we could suddenly come up with a different way of generating energy that is relatively cheap and clean and efficient, and then we could save these third world countries their 100-year industrial revolution by simply saying, hey, we've come up with something better, we'll share it with you right now. I mean, is that even doable? [00:16:22] Dr. John Christie: You know, in 2006, George W. Bush, President Bush said that we were addicted to oil. Well, that's not quite right. We are addicted to the things that affordable energy provides, like long life, affordable food, transportation, medical advances. Those are the kind of things that affordable energy supplies. I don't think we care where it comes from, whether it's cold, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, some new source. I am all in favor of having new sources of energy, as long as they're affordable, scalable, which means they can supply large amounts of energy on demand, and go from there. Nothing's popping up right now. I mean, the only thing that is not really related to CO2 emissions so much would be nuclear power. Some countries are going in that direction. We're a little slow in the United States. It's so expensive to get through the regulatory regimes on something like that. So, burning carbon right now is the most, back to my argument about human life, it's the most moral thing to do, is to allow carbon, because that is the only thing that really people can afford in large quantities. [00:17:34] Speaker 1: Do you think that people that were anti-nuclear power post Three Mile Island are afraid to admit that maybe this is a reasonable alternative, and that to do so, they would have to say that they were wrong? [00:17:52] Dr. John Christie: Well, they are on a dilemma. The environmentalists have a dilemma here, because nuclear power is the safest form of power. When you look, and Kerry Emanuel will agree with me on this, when you look at, like, for production of electricity, deaths per megawatt-hour production, nuclear power is by far the safest form of energy. And so, here's the dilemma. Do you go with nuclear power and overcome your fears of storage of waste materials and so on? Or do you just hold on to the hard line of environmentalism that, you know, there's the only kind of energy that's good is what you believe is good? Which doesn't turn out to be true, like, solar and wind is just so not scalable. You can't bring enough power. A nuclear power plant per square yard produces 2,000 times more energy than a solar plant. [00:18:47] Speaker 1: Wow. [00:18:47] Dr. John Christie: So, just the space required for the amounts of energy we're talking about is much favorable, much more favorable for the nuclear and even natural gas and coal. [00:18:57] Speaker 1: Okay. [00:18:57] Dr. John Christie: It's on the order of 1,000 times less area required. And the resources for solar and wind are pretty significant. You're talking about concrete, special metals, rare earth metals, expensive metals, and transmission is very difficult with these things. Then, because you can't count on it, the variability of it makes it extremely difficult to incorporate into a grid system that requires energy on demand. [00:19:26] Speaker 1: Okay. All right. We're getting close to the... Oh. Again, another counter-argument to the greenhouse gases, anthropogenic global warming, is that the sun is driving all of this. I have heard from various atmospheric scientists that the smoking gun against that is that the troposphere overall has been warming and the stratosphere overall has been cooling and that if it was the sun driving it, both would have warmed up. [00:20:03] Dr. John Christie: All right. That's a little bit not correct. Okay. The stratosphere has not been cooling for 20 years. Okay. It's... After Mount Pinatubo erupted, the stratospheric temperature has been pretty level. But another thing that does cause stratospheric decline in temperature is ozone depletion. And so whether the sun's hotter or not, that was going to happen anyway. The troposphere has warmed, not nearly at the rate of greenhouse gas projections. I've looked at this pretty carefully in my examination of global temperatures and so on. And for the 36 years of satellite data we have, I really can't find a solar signal. Okay. So the solar signal, if it's there, must be on a longer time scale. I'm not saying it's not there. Mm-hmm. And I suspect there is some impact from solar variability. It's just very difficult to tease out of the very noisy nature, the ups and downs of the natural climate system from ocean circulation and other kinds of things that happen to tease out that little bit of solar signal. It's still a work in progress, I think. [00:21:14] Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. I think we've already touched on this. In fact, we did about, you know, about the time you lived in Africa and robbing developing countries of their chance to, you know, brands. [00:21:29] Dr. John Christie: Well, I always say this about that. The developing countries and even others, for example, Japan has 43 coal-fired power plants on the boards or started to build Germany, 26 more coal-fired power plants. Their emissions are rising, CO2 emissions. The developing world, they'll never look back at trying to develop for their people. They will not have this environmental notion about themselves. They look at people starving. They look at people in need of electricity and clean water and so on. They're going to meet that demand. And that demand for them right now will be carbon, burning carbon in some form. Right. And no matter what the United States says, that's going to go on. [00:22:11] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. So if indeed we could have a positive impact by reducing emissions, we can't do it alone. [00:22:19] Dr. John Christie: If the United States disappeared today, no people, no industry, no cars, no factories, nothing, the impact on the global temperature would be about a tenth of a degree by the end of the century. The United States is not driving the bus on carbon dioxide emissions anymore. So whatever we do is going to be essentially minuscule. And as I said, the other countries are not looking our way for energy plans. [00:22:47] Speaker 1: All right. So now I want to get into a little bit about some other issues, which when I talk to scientists about this, they get defensive and squirmish, but I think it's something we need to deal with. In an age where we now have social media and cable news channels and Internet blogs and so forth and everybody's an expert, do you think it's possible that real credible scientists that are writing peer-reviewed stuff, although we'll talk about that later, are becoming less relevant because there are less credentialed people that are more charismatic and articulate and passionate about talking about a subject? Is there a chance that we're going to start dictating public policy by not our best effort in terms of educated people? [00:23:46] Dr. John Christie: Well, that's a big question there. First of all, the Internet and blogs and everything, it's become a two-edged sword because there is a lot of very poor information out there, very biased stuff. But out of this has also come an independent eye looking at peer-reviewed papers and finding faults with them, especially papers who try to exaggerate the global warming issue. They have found, through these citizen scientists, you might call them, found real and significant errors that, when accounted for, reduce this alarmist message that's out there. So we can say, at least in that sense, it's good to have many more independent eyes looking on the situation. I think that's an issue, too, that what we find in the large scientific councils, reports of these councils, is really a mindset that is not objective. They are self-selecting the views they want. The greatest example is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the big reports that come out every six years. Those lead authors are selected primarily because of their views. And so that outside views that try to demonstrate errors and problems and misstatements have very little chance to really make an impact. And these reports then flow into the governments already biased. And we can't really get the truth. So I would just say, you know, it really does come down to the numbers. All science is numbers, and you may have the greatest voice and articulate the story the best. I want to see the numbers. And that, I hope, is where the public can make their decision, and our policymakers can. I think you see in congressional hearings, and I think you see in congressional hearings, that is what tries to happen, is that there's an attempt, at least there, to go around the noise of this scientific slash blogosphere and so on. Because, in a sense, peer-reviewed science has its problems, it really does, to see, well, show me the numbers. Show me what the numbers say and let me make my decision. [00:26:06] Speaker 1: So not to overstate this, but you're, in a sense, suggesting that maybe corruption is too big of a word, but there's at least a credibility issue or an integrity issue within the peer-reviewed process. [00:26:19] Dr. John Christie: I think, to a large extent, there is a credibility issue in the peer-reviewed process. Those that pretty much run the show are all on one side of this issue. They know that their support for resources comes as they make the story more alarming. That's the way things work. If you have a real problem and exaggerate it, that's when Congress funds you, or the President wants to fund you, you know, solve a problem. You can't solve it unless you make it a problem, as big as you can. We have had virtually no success at making the pitch to our funding agencies for the study of natural variability because our models can't do it, obviously, and yet it is probably the biggest wild card out there that needs to be nailed down, and we don't see that happening. [00:27:08] Speaker 1: Now, one thing I asked Dr. Trenberth and also Dr. Toms, and I'll ask you the same thing, the advocacy groups out there, even the ones that agree with you and think that we need to sort of take a step back here, when they overplay their argument, and perhaps that leads to discrediting an otherwise very valid argument that you're making, does that frustrate you? And in a sense, your friends are hurting you by overplaying the issue, or overplaying the opinion? [00:27:51] Dr. John Christie: You know, the role of those groups in a democracy, I suppose, is necessary. We need to have all the voices heard. What I think frustrates me is to see just the terrible lack of information, real information that can be backed up with facts, you know, coming out. And so, I don't know if you're referring to a specific thing or not, but I have seen, what I've found with advocacy groups is their main goal is to satisfy their constituency, and because their funding relates to satisfying their constituency, so it behooves them to go out on the edge and to make it more extreme. And that way their own sources of funding will feel good, they are preaching to their choir, and so when the offering plate is passed, it will be full. And you can't do that unless you really scare the congregation, and give the congregation the feeling that you are really out there in front on their view of the issue. [00:29:03] Speaker 1: The two major political parties appear to have dug themselves these ideological or ideological trenches that are so deep that if they wanted to climb out, they probably couldn't. What do you think has led to that in terms of this confirmation bias where you only look for people and information that are going to pump up what you already think, and that nobody is willing to have a civil conversation with somebody of an opposing view, and with at least the remotest of possibilities, they might have to say, you know what, I haven't thought about that, there might be some credibility there. What's happened in this world to get us to this point? [00:29:47] Dr. John Christie: Not that there's an easy answer to that. I don't have an easy answer. I would say that politicians like to have the majority of their constituents on their side. So every district, congressional district or state for the Senate, will want to find what issue will the majority of people vote on me on this particular one. And so in some places, that's making climate change out to be no problem. In other places, it's making it out to be a horrible problem. And that appeals to their constituents. There's, you can dredge up evidence for both sides. I think the lack of alarm is what's warranted by the real data. Then there are also corporations that stand to make lots of money either way it goes. There are corporations that love the notion of selling windmills and solar panels at great cost. There's a lot of profit in that. And there are other corporations that provide electricity based on coal or natural gas or so on that know that any influence of the price on that could lose their business. So, you know, corporates are in there. And then there are also people that just religiously believe things about the Earth system. And so they believe, you know, that, for example, humans are sort of an infestation on the planet. And so anything we do is bad for the environment. And maybe we need to be exterminated. I don't know. I've heard that from a few extremists. But that's another source of an issue there. [00:31:33] Speaker 1: Now, in terms of the whole religious aspect of this thing, and from the conversations that we had earlier, is it fair to say that you're definitely a person of faith? [00:31:45] Dr. John Christie: I am definitely a person of faith, yes. [00:31:48] Speaker 1: And do you see that as being incompatible with being a scientist? [00:31:53] Dr. John Christie: I think being a person of faith is exactly compatible with being a scientist because scientists need to be completely honest and open with what they're doing, willing to admit errors when they come about. And also, from a person of faith who has actually been a missionary in Africa, I can add to this component the consequence of what a scientific result might imply. And I think about that quite a bit. It doesn't affect the numbers or the science that comes out. But when I see those numbers being used in a certain way that harms the livelihood of people, I've got to stand up and say, no, this is not right. Because in my view of faith, human life is the most precious of creation. And so that is what we are about in the sense of preserving and enabling to survive from the struggle of this earth. [00:32:54] Speaker 1: And you had mentioned earlier about the, if you could restate the how and when and the why and who. [00:32:59] Dr. John Christie: Okay. You know, one of the things that comes about in this struggle that people have between science and faith is, well, what was creation? And you can find all kinds of answers to that question. And for me, as a scientist and a person of faith, I see the questions in those two categories. I'm very much one who loves to discover as a scientist. And so questions about how and when of creation, I think, are perfect for the scientific method. And that's how we learn about the fossil record and changes in that and things like the mechanisms of development and change in life through DNA and so on. And, but on the other side, the real questions of life about who and why, why am I here? Those are questions that faith answers. Like, we really can't go in the laboratory and figure them out. We're not going to be able to measure the value of human life in a laboratory. That is a faith claim is, as I said earlier, I think human life has ultimate value. And so removing the struggle and enabling life to overcome the difficulties of this world, which electricity and energy provide. There is no question that when you have access to energy, your life improves. It lengthens. It's better. That's the moral argument for moving forward with providing energy, safe energy, energy that doesn't. Despoil the planet in any significant way. And utilizing our resources in a responsible way that continues the beautiful creation we see out the window here. [00:34:44] Speaker 1: One of the, I recently gave a talk at a religious-based college in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, about science and Christianity. But I think it applies to really, you know, all religions and whether or not they were compatible. And the, I said, I want to give you two examples of large groups of people that were convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt they were right and turned out to be wrong. The first was all the people that thought the earth was the center of the solar system. And Copernicus and Galileo come along and say, no, that's not right. And my understanding is Galileo was called a heretic and lived under house arrest and the church didn't apologize for four centuries for, you know, what they did. And I guess, you know, and I told them, I said, you know, whether or not the earth is 6,000 years old or 6 billion years old, does it really change the crux of the faith? You know, if it's evolution versus coming directly from Adam and Eve, does it really change, you know, that thing? My other example, which I don't think is going to make the final cut here, is the Pharisees. And I'm not a Bible scholar, but this story has always resonated with me, is that Pharisees thought they had the whole God thing down. You know, they followed all the rules and regulations of the T. And Christ comes along and says, you sort of missed the point. And they got so mad, they killed him. So if those two groups of people can be wrong about something, then don't we all, in a sense, need to wake up every day and at least consider the possibility there's something we've thought worked a certain way for a long time, and we might be wrong. And that's okay. [00:36:31] Dr. John Christie: Well, that's a good point, because admitting that we are ignorant about much of the climate system is very hard for a scientist to do. He doesn't go to a funding agency and say, you know, I'm really ignorant about this climate system and plan to get money. You just can't do it that way. Yet the evidence shows we cannot predict next month's weather. We can't. Right. So we have a lot to learn. Humility is not a word that people ascribe to the general world of climate scientists. I think you find very few that are willing to say, I don't know. You could be right. I could be wrong. That's a human dimension of this climate story that probably needs to really be examined even more. Why is it that we just are devoted? And see, there's not a scientific notion that we are devoted to a particular view on things, when the evidence might be in front of us to go against that. It's scientists are people, and people believe what they want to believe, unfortunately. And only through the, I guess, the interaction of as many independent eyeballs as possible, looking at the data, looking at the information, can ultimately the real story unfold. And I think the real story is that the Earth is not changing anywhere near what was projected, and that we really have a lot more to learn about the system. We're just not very smart when it comes to all the things that interact with this incredibly complex but beautiful system that we see out there. [00:38:04] Speaker 1: And I guess I'm just stating this a different way, but I mean, I've always been, my understanding of the scientific method is that it's okay to have a hypothesis, that that's perfectly legal to have one, but that you're supposed to, in a sense, do everything in your power to disprove it. [00:38:18] Dr. John Christie: Yeah. Your hypothesis is really a claim. Here is a claim, here is a hypothesis. And it must be stated in such a way as to be falsified, that there will be tests that can be done to check and falsify it if possible. And you have to be open to that. That's hard for a climate scientist. You see, one of the ways this has gone so long, I think, is because we have no way to validate our stories about climate science. We don't have a thermometer that says, this is the temperature change, and this much was due to mankind, and this much was due to humans. All we have is the temperature change. We don't have a smart thermometer that tells us why the temperature changed. And so we are left to argue about why the temperature changes. And you can come up with all kinds of reasons. Some of them are very plausible. But in the end, it must be verified through a modeling and predictive exercise that has yet to occur. There is a confusion in climate science that, unfortunately, has really caused problems with the public, is the notion of climate change. The climate always changes. It will never, ever be the same. It's a system that is never in balance, so it always changes. But it has been sort of co-opted by the current views of some people that think, anytime you say climate change, you're talking about human-induced climate change. And there you get down to the why of climate change, and we don't know why. If we did know why, we could predict what is happening. We can't predict what is happening very well at all. Unfortunately, in climate science, we can't prove the why of changes that are here. We just don't have the ability to prove it. All climate scientists don't think the same thing, for sure. In fact, the American Meteorological Society only had 52% of its members agreeing with the statement that over 50% of the warming in the past 50 years is due to humans. It's only 52%. So we don't even have a consensus in our own society on this. Our science is just murky. We've got a long way to go in terms of this proof stuff, and I don't know if you can ever prove a particular thing right or wrong. It's just very murky. And there won't be a Nobel Prize in it because there is no Nobel Prize in atmospheric science. That's physics, medicine, economics, things like that. There is a strong element of non-objective information going out there to convince people of one way or another about this climate issue. [00:41:01] Speaker 1: Right. And do you feel like the real scientists are still a significant part of that debate, or are they being drowned out by non-scientists who have an agenda one way or the other? [00:41:17] Dr. John Christie: You know, that's a question you might be able to answer better than me. When you say real scientists, I don't know exactly who those are anymore. Right. Some of them are very public advocates of their view. Some are pretty quiet about it, and we never hear too much about their results and their caution. Most of those are pretty cautious kind of people. It has been taken over, really, by the political world, and that's where things are being done. Just witness, you know, our Secretary of State or Vice President saying, if you don't believe climate change the way I do, you don't believe in gravity. That was said just three weeks ago. [00:42:00] Speaker 1: Really? [00:42:01] Dr. John Christie: And so I evidently don't believe in gravity, if you follow that logic. So there is some bullying, obviously, going on from this particular administration. And as someone who was on the list of seven scientists to be investigated by Congress, because I testified with information counter to the administration's view on climate change, I know about that political pressure. I know that they're trying to silence critics of their view of climate change. [00:42:30] Speaker 1: Have you had any, because I know others have, but I mean, have you had any threats? [00:42:35] Dr. John Christie: The threats I've received, I would not consider them serious. Okay. Not at all. Okay. The threats, though, come from when the administration singles you out, as it was in this kind of case. That lets everyone know, this is someone I don't want you to deal with. And that's the fallout of things like that. It's just in the accusation that they make their point. [00:43:00] Speaker 1: And I knew somebody that worked at EPA years ago who admitted to me that we have to overplay our case a little bit in order to get funding. So, I mean, is a little bit of that okay, but there's some sort of a threshold, you know, where you really shouldn't go past that? [00:43:21] Dr. John Christie: You know, in the real world, I understand about funding that you have to dramatize your concern to be heard and to be funded. So, that goes along, I think, just as an aspect of the way we do funding in this country and the political emphasis that is behind that funding. That's an unfortunate way to do it in a science like climate because it is so murky. The answers are just so difficult to find that I think it was like the old preacher when he was looking at his sermon notes. He underlined one point and said, "Weak point, yell louder." That's what you find in the climate science debate. There are nothing but weak points out there, so you yell louder to get your point across. So, we are looking at a climate system that is so complicated, we can come to different views. It is so complicated with so much information that is only obliquely apparent to us as to how the climate system might work. So, having different views is hopefully the way science progresses. The one that wins is the one that is backed up by the most evidence. And as someone who is a working stiff climate scientist, I am one of the few people in the world who actually build these climate data sets from scratch. The evidence just does not support the notion of alarming climate change. [00:45:05] Speaker 1: And yet, you are not suggesting that man is not having some influence, and yet, as soon as you say that you are not an alarmist, then there are all sorts of things equated with your view which you are not saying. In other words, you know, they are saying, "Well, he does not believe in any human influence. He does not even believe that CO2 is important." And that is not what you are saying. [00:45:30] Dr. John Christie: Right. It is all a matter of degree, I suppose, that carbon dioxide is a radiatively active gas. It can't be anything else but a radiatively active gas. And so, it will have some effect. What we believe, based upon the information we have, is that the responses in the climate system to that extra CO2 are not amplifying it at all, hardly at all. And so that the catastrophe out there that is being promoted is just not going to happen. [00:46:06] Speaker 1: Is there a way to get the spectrum back? I mean, do we really, do we live in a binary society, to put it in mathematical terms, where you are either a zero or you are a one and the point sevens have gone away? Well, that is a good point. [00:46:19] Dr. John Christie: It will get back to the real scientific nature of it when it is removed from the political sphere, removed from legislative actions, and I don't know, I don't see that anytime soon. Because our science relates directly to energy policy. Energy policy relates directly to the cost you pay for your electricity and for your gasoline. And those are real costs. And we, our science, as murky as it is, is related directly to those regulations that determine the cost you pay for power.