‘I was tossed out of the tribe’: climate scientist Judith Curry interviewed
被踢出局的气候学家，采访Judith Curry
For engaging with sceptics, and discussing uncertainties in projections frankly, this Georgia professor is branded a heretic
由于在全球变暖问题上和怀疑论者打交道，还坦率地谈论预测的不确定性，这位来自美国佐治亚理工学院的教授被指斥为异端。
It is safe to predict that when 20,000 world leaders, officials, green activists and hangers-on convene in Paris next week for the 21st United Nations climate conference, one person you will not see much quoted is Professor Judith Curry. This is a pity. Her record of peer-reviewed publication in the best climate-science journals is second to none, and in America she has become a public intellectual.
可以明确的说，下周在巴黎举行的第21届联合国气候变化大会上，两万参会者将包括各国领导人、官员、环保主义者和各种跟班，但是你恐怕不太可能听到Judith Curry教授的声音。这很让人遗憾。她在气候学顶尖期刊上发表的经同行评审的论文数量首屈一指，而且她在美国还是一位公共知识分子。
But on this side of the Atlantic, apparently, she is too ‘challenging’. What is troubling about her pariah status is that her trenchant critique of the supposed consensus on global warming is not derived from warped ideology, let alone funding by fossil-fuel firms, but from solid data and analysis.
然而，她在大洋彼岸却不受待见，很明显，她太诘问不休咄咄逼人了。但她的这种受排斥地位颇为棘手，因为她对据称的全球变暖共识的尖刻批判并非基于意识形态扭曲，更不是由石化企业赞助的，而是基于真切的数据和分析。
Some consider her a heretic. According to Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a vociferous advocate of extreme measures to prevent a climatic Armageddon, she is ‘anti-science’. Curry isn’t fazed by the slur.
有人把她看成是个异端。宾夕法尼亚州立大学的Michael Mann 教授一直呼吁运用极端手段防止气候“末日决战”灾难发生，就曾称Curry为“反科学”份子。Curry并未被这一诽谤吓慌。
‘It’s unfortunate, but he calls anyone who doesn’t agree with him a denier,’ she tells me. ‘Inside the climate community there are a lot of people who don’t like what I’m doing. On the other hand, there is also a large, silent group who do like it. But the debate has become hard — especially in the US, because it’s become so polarised.’
她告诉我：“怪我咯，他把所有和他意见不同的人都叫做‘抵赖派’。在气候研究群体中，有很多人讨厌我所做的事。但是，的确有那么一大群沉默份子喜欢我的观点。但讨论已经变得困难重重——尤其是在美国，已经严重两极化了。”
Warming alarmists are fond of proclaiming how 97 per cent of scientists agree that the world is getting hotter, and human beings are to blame. They like to reduce the uncertainties of climate science and climate projections to Manichean simplicity. They have managed to eliminate doubt from what should be a nuanced debate about what to do.
全球变暖的危言警世者总喜欢宣称，97%的科学家都已同意人类活动导致了世界变暖的观点。他们喜欢忽略气候科学和气候预测的不确定性，像摩尼教徒那样以善恶二元对立论简化问题。关于我们要做什么，本来需要细致讨论，但经过他们努力，现在一切疑虑都被忽略了。
Professor Curry, based at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, does not dispute for a moment that human-generated carbon dioxide warms the planet. But, she says, the evidence suggests this may be happening more slowly than the alarmists fear.
这位来自亚特兰大市佐治亚理工学院的Curry教授，从没有说过要质疑人类排放二氧化碳使地球变暖这个事实。但她提到，证据表明，变暖速度可能比那些危言警世者所担忧的要慢得多。
In the run-up to the Paris conference, said Curry, much ink has been spilled over whether the individual emissions pledges made so far by more than 150 countries — their ‘intentional nationally determined contributions’, to borrow the jargon — will be enough to stop the planet from crossing the ‘dangerous’ threshold of becoming 2°C hotter than in pre-industrial times.
Curry提到，迄今已有超过150个国家提出了减排目标承诺——行话叫做“国家自主贡献”，巴黎峰会预热阶段，大部分媒体都在讨论这些目标是否能够确保地球不会超过预警阈值——比工业化时代之前变暖2℃。
Much of the conference will consist of attempts to make these targets legally binding. This debate will be conducted on the basis that there is a known, mechanistic relationship between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how world average temperatures will rise.
会议的一个主要内容就是要让这些目标在法律上生效。进行这种讨论需要一个前提：我们已经掌握了大气二氧化碳浓度与世界平均气温提升程度之间的数学关系。
Unfortunately, as Curry has shown, there isn’t. Any such projection is meaningless, unless it accounts for natural variability and gives a value for ‘climate sensitivity’ —i.e., how much hotter the world will get if the level of CO2 doubles.
遗憾的是，Curry已经表明，我们没有掌握。任何此类预测都是没有意义的，除非我们在预测中把气候的自然变异考虑进去，并能够为“气候敏感度”定一个值——即当二氧化碳浓度翻倍时，地球会升温多少度。
Until 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave a ‘best estimate’ of 3°C. But in its latest, 2013 report, the IPCC abandoned this, because the uncertainties are so great. Its ‘likely’ range is now vast — 1.5°C to 4.5°C.
截止2007年，联合国政府间气候变化专门委员会（IPCC）给出的“最佳预测”是3℃。但是，在2013年最新的报告中该部门放弃了这一数字，因为不确定因素太多。现在，“可能值”的变动范围很大，在1.5℃—4.5℃之间。
This isn’t all. According to Curry, the claims being made by policymakers suggest they are still making new policy from the old, now discarded assumptions. Recent research suggests the climate sensitivity is significantly less than 3˚C. ‘There’s growing evidence that climate sensitivity is at the lower end of the spectrum, yet this has been totally ignored in the policy debate,’ Curry told me.
这还没完。Curry接着说到，决策者们提出的种种主张，表明他们还是在用旧的、已被弃用的假设来制定新政策。而最近的研究表明，气候敏感度显著小于3℃。“有越来越多的证据表明，气候敏感度是在变化范围的低值端，但是这在政策辩论中已经被完全忽略了，”她告诉我。
‘Even if the sensitivity is 2.5˚C, not 3˚C, that makes a substantial difference as to how fast we might get to a world that’s 2˚C warmer. A sensitivity of 2.5˚C makes it much less likely we will see 2˚C warming during the 21st century. There are so many uncertainties, but the policy people say the target is fixed. And if you question this, you will be slagged off as a denier.’
“即使敏感度是2.5℃，而不是3℃，这也是实质性的区别，会直接影响到世界究竟会以多快的速度变暖2℃。如果敏感度是2.5℃，那么我们在21世纪遭遇全球变暖2℃的可能性就会大大降低。有这么多的不确定性，但制定政策的人却说目标已经定了。如果你怀疑这一点，你会被贬成一文不值的‘抵赖派’。”
Curry added that her own work, conducted with the British independent scientist Nic Lewis, suggests that the sensitivity value may still lower, in which case the date when the world would be 2˚C warmer would be even further into the future. On the other hand, the inherent uncertainties of climate projection mean that values of 4˚C cannot be ruled out — but if that turns out to be the case, then the measures discussed at Paris and all the previous 20 UN climate conferences would be futile. In any event, ‘the economists and policymakers seem unaware of the large uncertainties in climate sensitivity’, despite its enormous implications.
Curry补充道，她自己和英国独立科学家Nic Lewis一起完成的研究，甚至认为敏感度的数值可能更低。若是这样，全球升温2℃的日期甚至还在将来的将来。另一方面，气候预测固有的不确定性，意味着敏感度为4℃的可能性也不能排除。但是，若是如此，此次巴黎大会和之前20届联合国气候大会讨论的措施都是白搭了。无论如何，“经济学家和决策者似乎都没有意识到气候敏感度的巨大不确定性”，尽管这种不确定性影响极大。
Meanwhile, the obsessive focus on CO2 as the driver of climate change means other research on natural climate variability is being neglected. For example, solar experts believe we could be heading towards a ‘grand solar minimum’ — a reduction in solar output (and, ergo, a period of global cooling) similar to that which once saw ice fairs on the Thames. ‘The work to establish the solar-climate connection is lagging.’
于此同时，执意认为二氧化碳是气候变化的祸首，也使得其他关于气候自然变异的研究被忽视了。例如，太阳研究专家认为我们可能正在进入一个“太阳活动极小期”——即太阳能量输出减少（因此意味着一个全球变冷期）。类似情况过去发生时，泰晤士河上都曾出现冰雕展览（泰晤士河封冻）。“确定太阳活动与气候变化之间的关系这项工作还很滞后。”
Curry’s independence has cost her dear. She began to be reviled after the 2009 ‘Climategate’ scandal, when leaked emails revealed that some scientists were fighting to suppress sceptical views.
Curry的卓尔不群让她损失惨重。自2009年“气候门”丑闻后，她就开始遭到辱骂。当时，有泄密邮件显示，一些科学家正组织起来强力压制怀疑论观点。
‘I started saying that scientists should be more accountable, and I began to engage with sceptic bloggers. I thought that would calm the waters. Instead I was tossed out of the tribe. There’s no way I would have done this if I hadn’t been a tenured professor, fairly near the end of my career. If I were seeking a new job in the US academy, I’d be pretty much unemployable. I can still publish in the peer-reviewed journals. But there’s no way I could get a government research grant to do the research I want to do. Since then, I’ve stopped judging my career by these metrics. I’m doing what I do to stand up for science and to do the right thing.’
“那时我就说科学家应该更有公信力一点，并开始和一些持怀疑论的博客作家交流。我以为那可以缓和一下气氛。结果却是，我被踢出局了。如果我不是一名终生教授，而且即将退休，我绝不会寻根问底。如果现在我要去美国的学术圈重新找工作，估计没人请我吧。我现在仍然可以在同行评鉴期刊上面发表文章。但我已被封杀，不可能得到政府研究资助来做我想做的课题。自那以后，我停止了用这些东西来衡量我的职业生涯。我现在做的，只是坚持科学，做正确的事。”
She remains optimistic that science will recover its equilibrium, and that the quasi-McCarthyite tide will recede: ‘I think that by 2030, temperatures will not have increased all that much. Maybe then there will be the funding to do the kind of research on natural variability that we need, to get the climate community motivated to look at things like the solar-climate connection.’
她依然乐观的相信，科学会找回它的平衡，现在的这种麦卡锡主义式潮流终会退去。“我认为到2030年，温度还不会升至那么高，也许那个时候，我们会找到研究资金来做我们需要做的气候自然变异研究，也能让气候组织有动力去寻找太阳活动和气候变化之间的关联。”
She even hopes that rational argument will find a place in the UN: ‘Maybe, too, there will be a closer interaction between the scientists, the economists and policymakers. Wouldn’t that be great?’
她甚至期待联合国内部能允许气候问题上的理性争论，“让科学家、经济学家和决策者们有更好的互动。这也是可能的。那样不是更好？”
翻译：龟海海（@龟海海）
校对：沈沉（@你在何地-sxy）
编辑：辉格@whigzhou