Hearing on Climate Change: The Impacts and the Need to Act 6 February 2019
Judith A. Curry
I thank the Chairman, Ranking Member and the Committee for the opportunity to offer testimony today on ‘Climate Change: The Impacts and the Need to Act.’
I am President of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN) and Professor Emerita and former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
I have devoted four decades to conducting research on a variety of topics related to weather and climate.
Overreaction to a possible catastrophic threat may cause more harm than benefits and introduce new systemic risks, which are difficult to foresee for a wicked problem.
The known risks to human well being associated with constraining fossil fuels may be worse than the eventual risks from climate change, and there are undoubtedly some risks from both that we currently do not foresee...
Climate has always changed, independently of human activity, so climate change is nothing new...
The only tipping point that the IPCC considers likely in the 21st century is disappearance of Arctic summer sea ice (which is fairly reversible, since sea ice freezes every winter).
Given that emissions reductions policies are very costly, politically contentious and are not expected to change the climate in a meaningful way in the 21st century, adaptation strategies are receiving increasing attention in formulating responses to climate change
