Podcasts
1. Tom Nelson Pod #392
Thomas Kurz discusses his upcoming book, Why There Is No Climate Crisis (Kindle in May, print in June), and argues modest warming is largely natural, claiming the IPCC obscures evidence of past climate variability. He explains paleoclimate proxies (oxygen isotopes, carbon-14, beryllium-10) and links climate shifts to Milankovitch cycles, solar cycles, galactic cosmic rays influencing clouds, and ocean oscillations (AMO/PDO). Using temperature reconstructions, glacier, treeline, sea-level, historical freeze, agriculture, insect, and civilization records, he says warm periods brought prosperity while cold periods drove drought, famine, disease, and upheaval. He concludes about half of post-1850 warming is natural, warming is generally beneficial, and future cooling is likely.
2. Tom Nelson Pod #419
Thomas Kurz discusses chapters from his book Why There Is No Climate Crisis, (paperback, Kindle, audiobook in late August) citing positive reviews, then explains the greenhouse effect and argues carbon dioxide’s warming is limited and logarithmic. He claims doubling carbon dioxide yields about 3 W/m² effective forcing, or ~0.9°C via Stefan–Boltzmann calculations, and says even burning all known fossil fuel reserves would add under ~1°C. He argues “climate crisis” claims rely on compounded positive feedbacks in IPCC models, but says observations show models overpredict warming, relative humidity aloft is declining, and a predicted tropical hotspot is missing. He attributes discrepancies to cloud/aerosol cooling, proposing an Earth “thermostat” and net slightly negative feedback.
