Alarmists Airbrush Judith Curry Out of ‘Women in Climate Science’ History

Alarmists have airbrushed a top female scientist out of ‘women in climate’ history because she has taken the ‘wrong’ side on global warming.

Dr Judith Curry, is professor and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and one of the world’s most respected climate experts. But as a “luke warmer” – who believes in man-made global warming but not the catastrophic variety beloved by alarmists – she has grown increasingly distant from the CliSci establishment.

She originally appeared last year on a list of “20 women making waves in the climate change debate” on the website of the International Council for Science. (The ICSU was founded in 1931 to “promote international scientific activity in the different branches of science and its application for the benefit of humanity”)

But when an alarmist organisation in Australia called The Climate Council appropriated the list for its own propaganda purposes, the 20 women were mysteriously reduced to 19.

The Climate Council – a non-profit run by Australian alarmist Tim Flannery – had given Curry the Stalin airbrush treatment.

This was especially vindictive given that of all the women on the list, Curry was the one with by far the most expertise in the “climate change debate.”

As Tony Thomas, who spotted her omission, noted:

Pit Dr Curry against other women on the 20 list, and it would be no-contest. The only other listee of similar stature (about 140 publications) is Joanna Haigh FRS, a solar expert and ex-president of the Royal Meteorological Society. Among the others, lightweight author Naomi Klein never managed to finish her BA at the University of Toronto. Sharan Burrow, ex-ACTU boss, makes the list but her credentials stop at “high school teacher”. Listee Naomi Oreskes calls herself a science “historian” and carries on about climate skeptics being the same as tobacco lobbyists. Then there’s US EPA boss Gina McCarthy, who doesn’t what percentage CO2 comprises in the atmosphere. Annie Leonard is boss of Greenpeace US.

Tim Flannery’s aversion to promoting Curry – one of the rare climate scientists who actually believes in science rather than political activism – becomes more understandable when you know his background.

Like of many of the dodgiest propagandists on the global warming gravy train – see also Green MP Caroline Lucas; ennobled Friends of the Earth activist Bryony Worthington; BBC house ecoloon Roger Harrabin – Flannery is an English Literature graduate. (It’s why they’re so good at spinning yarns).

After his English degree, Flannery managed to land (H/T Philip Bradley at Watts Up With That) a taxpayer-funded gig digging up kangaroo bones, which got him that impressive-sounding and all-important science PhD (palaeontology) before landing a job as a museum bureaucrat cum author of bestselling environmental alarmist books like The Future Eaters. (Sir David Attenborough once described him as ‘in the league of the all-time great explorers like Dr David Livingstone’ – which tells you rather more about the erratic judgement of David Attenborough than it does about the achievements of Tim Flannery).

Subsequently, Flannery talked himself into the job of Australia’s $180,000 a year (for a three-day week) Climate Commissioner, where he helped oversee the squandering of billions of Australian taxpayer dollars on sundry utterly pointless “green” schemes.

Curry, meanwhile, is one of those pesky realist scientists whose research using awkward facts shows that global warming isn’t nearly the peril it’s cracked up to be and which may ultimately be one of the reasons why Flannery no longer has that $180,000 a year (for a three-day week) job. No wonder he prefers to pretend she doesn’t exist.