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Nobel prize

Clauser-ology: Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

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John Clauser’s theory of climate explained.

Some of you will have heard of John Clauser because he was an awardee of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his role in the experimental verification of quantum entanglement. Some of you will have heard of him because the first thing that he did after winning the Nobel was join a climate denial organization and make some rather odd claims about climate science. And some of you will never have heard of him (in which case, feel free to skip this post!).

At no point in his long and, by all accounts, successful, career has he ever published a paper on climate[1]. He has not penned an article, nor even a blog post or a tweet on the topic, and so any scientific basis for his opinions (if any) has been opaque… until recently. In the last few months he has given two interviews in which he goes into to detail about what he describes as a ‘missing element’ in climate science and what he imagines the consequences are for climate change. The first interview was for the Epoch Times (a far right-wing newspaper and media organization affiliated with Falun Gong). The second was a podcast with the somewhat troubled Chris Smith, an Australian journalist. (The material is somewhat similar in each). And more comprehensively, it was repeated in a recent video lecture as well.

And what is this supposed ‘missing element’? Clouds.

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A Nobel pursuit

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Klaus Hasselmann and Suki Manabe

Last week, the Nobel physics prize was (half) awarded to Suki Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann for their work on climate prediction and the detection and attribution of climate change. This came as quite a surprise to the climate community – though it was welcomed warmly. We’ve discussed the early climate model predictions a lot (including some from Manabe and his colleagues), and we’ve discussed detection and attribution of climate change as well, though with less explicit discussion of Hasselmann’s contribution. Needless to say these are big topics which have had many inputs from many scientists over the years.

But RC has a more attuned audience to these topics than most, and so it might be fun to dive into the details of their early work to see what has stood the test of time and what has not, and how that differs (if it does) from their colleagues and rivals at the time.

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