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roger pielke jr bak

12 21 bak

MERRI OK

SEE LOMBORGIAN DELAY-ISM

Not to be confused with his father, atmospheric scientist Roger Pielke, Sr..

SEE CHRIS WRIGHT RED TEAM HACKS KILL NCA CURRY

LIBERAL MEDIA BS MYTH

ALARM

ATTACK MANN

BEZOS EARTH FUND PROOF OF X

wasn't sure about jr for a while b/c he tried to cover tracks, eg claimed to be hijacked by heartland?

// hockey stick climategate ~ Oreskes [ 97%] and peer review

out and proud 6/16 eg v shukula hit; Grijalva asked for his $ records (a year) after gop went after legit cli sci (eg Mann?)

OFFER CARB TAX AS EVIDENCE ON NOT DENIER BUT // EXXON CEO 5 BUCKS

after fired 538 said out of climate biz and no more congress testimony

PJ 5? 26

"Climate change’s worst-case scenario is officially canceled," young adult infotainment site Vox finally admitted this weekend, causing progressive heads to explode, from the writing staff to its readership.

"You’ve probably never heard of the term 'RCP 8.5' — the highest-emission scenario used by climate scientists to project the planet’s future," Vox's Bryan Walsh reported. "But if you’ve read about climate change, you’ve seen the numbers and nightmarish outcomes it produced: 4°C of warming by 2100, sometimes 5°C, sea level rising multiple feet, parts of the planet too hot for humans."

Scary stuff, right?

Wrong.

Even though "those numbers shaped a decade and a half of climate journalism," Walsh continued, he "didn’t always know — and didn’t always communicate — that the scenario behind the most apocalyptic, attention-getting findings was largely an attempt to imagine how bad things could get, not a true forecast."

Let's pause here a moment to contemplate what Walsh just admitted.

Walsh:

Now Walsh says, "The world that RCP 8.5 assumed will never arrive."

Mea culpa, much?

No, not nearly enough.

"RCP 8.5 was as much a climate journalism story as it was a climate science one," Walsh now says, in the exact same paragraph that ends with "In 2017, the writer David Wallace-Wells published 'The Uninhabitable Earth' in New York magazine. It was probably the most widely read piece of climate journalism of the last decade, and it was built almost entirely on RCP 8.5 projections."

Translation: The Climate Scare was a narrative first, science second. If that.

Of course, it's been weeks since Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit readers learned what Vox finally admitted, thanks to this item from May 5: It's Official: The Climate Scam Was a Scam All Along.

From that column:

The new IPCC framework [that ditches 8.5] actually dates back to 2021, but is only now becoming “news” because a bunch of slow-moving pieces have finally lined up. That's just how science works.

But Pielke's analysis is a week old, and the only way I learned about it was thanks to a Toby Young post on X — he's editor-in-chief of the UK's Daily Sceptic — that PJ Media's own Charlie Martin found.

Why, it's almost as though the mainstream media doesn't want to cover stories like this one.

So kudos, I guess, to Vox for finally coming clean, even if it took a full three weeks after VodkaPundit readers got the news, and a month after Roger Pielke's excellent analysis went live.

But Vox still has to Vox. So instead of asking how or why basically the entire news industry peddled a narrative instead of science — while vacillating as Walsh did between ignorance or "not always communicating" the truth, Vox readers got more political twaddle about President Donald Trump in the penultimate paragraph.

"The entire point of climate scenarios like RCP 8.5 was that there was no one certain future for climate change," Walsh concluded, "only multiple possible futures."

Then why did writers like Walsh and publications like Vox assure readers that the end of the world was nigh, right up until they couldn't get away with it any longer?

wiki denial hacks 3 26

Scientists

American and New Zealand climate scientist Kevin Trenberth has published widely on climate change science and fought back against climate change misinformation for decades.[241] He describes in his memoirs his "close encounters with deniers and skeptics"—with fellow meteorologists or climate change scientists. These included Richard Lindzen ("he is quite beguiling but is criticized as "intellectually dishonest" by his peers"; Lindzen was a professor of meteorology at MIT and has been called a contrarian in relation to climate change and other issues.[242]), Roy Spencer (who has "repeatedly made errors that always resulted in lower temperature trends than were really present"), John Christy ("his decisions on climate work and statements appear to be heavily colored by his religion"), Roger Pielke Jr, Christopher Landsea, Pat Michaels ("long associated with the Cato Institute, he changed his bombastic tune gradually over time as climate change became more evident").[241]: 95 

Sherwood B. Idso is a natural scientist and is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 1982 he published his book Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe?, which said increases in CO2 would not warm the planet, but would fertilize crops and were "something to be encouraged and not suppressed".

William M. Gray was a climate scientist (emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University) who supported climate change denial: he agreed that global warming was taking place, but argued that humans were responsible for only a tiny portion of it and it was largely part of the Earth's natural cycle.[243][118][244]

In 1998, Frederick Seitz, an American physicist and former National Academy of Sciences president, wrote the Oregon Petition, a controversial document in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed that "We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. [...] This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution".[165] In their book Merchants of Doubt, the authors write that Seitz and a group of other scientists fought the scientific evidence and spread confusion on many of the most important issues of our time, like the harmfulness of tobacco smoke, acid rains, CFCs, pesticides, and global warming.[128]: 25–29 

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[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!YStQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa0bf8b00-1620-4199-a24c-91fe28a84e19_1080x720.png)

Happy Holidays!

I’ve been sitting on this post for a long time. When I first drafted it, I thought it was partially tongue-in-cheek and poking a bit of fun. As time has gone on and I’ve observed the incredible efforts being made to undermine the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mainstream science, I’ve decided that this post reflects reality more than I would have liked.

The main purpose of this post is to provide me with a concise language to describe this movement and its participants, that I can use going forward. This post characterizes the Weather Truthers and their playbook.

Longtime THB readers will be aware that a parallel universe has developed related to climate change and extreme weather. This parallel universe — science-like but not science — is characterized by:

Each of these claims is counter to the terminology, frameworks, and assessments of the IPCC and the broad base of research on which the work of the IPCC is based upon. Those making such claims are every bit as incorrect as those who claim that humans cannot affect the climate, or that climate change is a hoax, or that climate science and policy is a scam.

Weather Truthers express a worldview in which every extreme weather event is at once caused by “climate change” and proof of such changes. No attribution is necessary because the occurrence of the event is self-evidently the result of “climate change.” The remedy to extreme weather is thus to drastically reduce emissions.

The Weather Truther playbook has three parts:

  1. P.A.N.I.C.— Political Advocacy Narratives In Climate. All framings of climate change and climate science are based on a felt need to justify emissons reductions. Individual extreme weather events are an asset in PANIC. So too is scientific (or, in some cases, science-like) research, which should be framed in terms of negative impacts that can only be reduced via climate policy. PANIC sets the stage.
  1. A.L.A.R.M.— Attribution Leads All Reporting in the Media. Whatever happens, climate did it — shark attacks, food price inflation, legal and illegal immigration, civil war in Syria, turbulence on your last flight, a building collapse in Miami, poor tasting beer, more divorces, and more divorces among albatrosses . . . I could go on, and on and on. ALARM requires a constant drumbeat of “climate change“ as a cause of whatever bad thing just happened. ALARM justifies PANIC.
  1. C.U.R.E.— CO2 emissions Understood as Remedy for Extremes. If carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the cause of ALARM then the obvious response is to focus on CURE.

The playbook: PANIC sets the stage, ALARM justifies PANIC, and points to the CURE.

Weather Truthers present a huge obstacle to effective climate policy, which will require that the broad public trust climate experts for many decades into the future. That means calling things straight, as IPCC Working Group 1 has done (mostly) over the decades. However, Weather Truthers are working hard to delegitimize mainstream climate science.

Weather Truthers give the public good reasons not to trust climate experts, even though the overwhelming number of climate experts are not Weather Truthers. CLAIM NO EVIDENCE; NOTE HE SAYS EXPERT NOT SCIENYTISTS SO TV WEATHERMEN? However, Weather Truthers are disproportionately represented in the media, quoted in media reporting, found in leadership positions within the mainstream scientific communitYy, and widespread among the most passionate climate advocates online and within the scientific community.

Climate scientists have long pushed back on false claims of “climate deniers.” It is long past time when the community should enforce scientific integrity when it comes to false claims of the Weather Truthers. NOTE NO SPECIFICS/EXAMPLE; THE WERE MEAN TO US SO THUS SHD BE TO THEM

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*Comments, questions, critique, requests — All welcome! remember the THB commenting rules, no comments of a personal nature about anyone. Thanks!

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Andy May

Andy May6d

Very good post, this quote is important in my opinion:

"Weather Truthers give the public good reasons not to trust climate experts, even though the overwhelming number of climate experts are not Weather Truthers. However, Weather Truthers are disproportionately represented in the media, quoted in media reporting, found in leadership positions within the mainstream scientific community, and widespread among the most passionate climate advocates online and within the scientific community."

This problem is very real, and I worry about it. One of the most serious problems with peer-reviewed journals is they force those that write for them to write for their peers and not for the public. This was not true in what I think of as the golden age of science, basically the late 19th century and the early 20th century when the common man often got his information directly from the science literature and not after the news media filtered it. Science and Nature in those days were widely read.

I wish to return to those times when scientists considered reporting their results directly to the public as a responsibility and a goal. Now they just write for each other in deliberately impenetrable prose that is usually very poorly translated into a "press release" or "plain language" summary. It all should be plain language!

Roger, you write well and clearly, why shouldn't everyone? Why allow the news media to screw everything up, write so that people can use primary sources. [rant over]

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Herbert Jacobi

Herbert Jacobi6d

This is more of a question and then a bit of snark because I get in these moods from time to time. There is another Substack called The Honest Broker. It's by Ted Gioia. He doesn't write about climate. More Art and Culture, etc. I gather neither of you have (or can?) Tm or Copywriter the name? Maybe you should talk or a Joan Rivers used to say "discuss".

Let me explain the history of Climate Change:

At first there was Global Cooling and the return of the Ice Age I believe Walter Cronkite mentioned it several times on his news casts. In order to combat it a lot of strange ideas were proposed such as painting the Arctic with black paint or covering it with soot so the glaciers would absorb more heat, I think solar reflectors in space were also mentioned. Alas and alack Earth started to not cool down but heat up. Sooo back to the drawing board and Global Cooling became Global Warming. That didn't quite work out either as the predictions (The End of Snow! Skiing would stop being a sport or only wealthy people could afford it and so on and so forth) didn't pan out.

As luck would have it Global Cooling had a chance meeting with Global Warming (opposites attract after all) They went out on a date, They hit it off, one thing led to another and so begat Climate Change.

Like the theme of "Love Story" Climate Change means Never Having to Say you are Sorry. Warm winter? Climate Change, Exceptionally cold Winter? Climate Change. Drought? Climate Change. Floods? Climate Change. More hurricanes? Climate Change, Fewer Hurricanes? Climate Change.

Climate Change is the Swiss Army Knife of excuses for all things Meteorological. It's always slightly over the horizon but on its way. It's coming, any day now, just you wait, soon, real soon. And while you are waiting send money. But like Zeno's Paradox never quite gets here. Missed it by that much! In the meantime we need more money to advert it.

And always will.

)

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6 replies by Roger Pielke Jr. and others

89 more comments...

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oreskes

von storch archive? pielke folder?

Environmental Science & Policy 7 (2004) 369–383 Science and public policy: what’s proof got to do with it? Naomi Oreskes Department of History and Science Studies Program, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0104, USA

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ANOTHER SCANDAL

Like a zombie, the so-called “billion dollar disasters” (BDD) tabulation is back. This week the advocacy group Climate Central announced that it was the new home of the effort, formerly housed at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). To much fanfare and media attention, Climate Central released its supposedly newly-tabulated numbers for 2025 to date.

Remarkably, the shenanigans associated with the BDD are apparently continuing, as documented in this post. Fool me once . . .

Before getting to the shenanigans, let me emphasize that Climate Central is a proper home for “billion dollar disasters,” because the tabulation has always been about promoting climate activism in the guise of science-like numbers. Political advocacy is often full of dodgy claims, of course, and climate advocacy is no different.

Climate Central, the group that also brought us World Weather Attribution, is funded by theBezos Earth Fund, among others. The group seeks to place the “existential threat” of climate change at the center of everything:

At Climate Central, we envision a world where public will to address the climate challenge is robustly deep, broad, and sustained—where it becomes a core element of culture everywhere.

The many problems with the “Billion Dollar Disasters” tabulation have been discussed extensively here at THB and in the peer reviewed literature, and won’t be revisited today.

This week does however bring a remarkable new twist in the saga, and perhaps even rising to the level of a new scandal.1

The Climate Central press release this week on their list of disasters so far in 2025 was dutifully and uncritically amplified by the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Time, among others.2

I took a look at the new 2025 tabulation and was surprised to discover that it simply copied loss estimates from Gallagher Re, a reinsurance company. You can see the near-identical numbers in the table below.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!YLA8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd3de6908-64fe-4941-b7c9-6967f4923f1b_1326x751.png)Sources: Climate Central and Gallagher Re.

I can think of three possibilities here:

That leaves plagiarism or conspiracy. Either way, Climate Central is playing us all for fools and apparently some are happy to take on that role. I am of course happy to publish a response from Climate Central and/or Gallagher Re about how they came to have the same numbers.

One final note — The architect of the Gallagher Re numbers is a one-time former collaborator of mine who I called out in*Forbes*back in 2020 when he was at Aon for putting a very heavy thumb on Aon’s loss estimates. At the time I concluded:

Whatever is going on here, it is clear that the Aon catastrophe dataset is not suitable for analysis of trends in losses, much less for academic research. Going forward, I will drop Aon data from my research and suggest that other researchers and the media exercise extreme caution in using it.

Not much has changed.

Leave a comment

I have some upcoming university events, please come and say “Hello” if you are in the neighborhood! All are free and open to the public, details at links below.

...34:24

messenger. We see that. I'm just leave that there. Um I I want to kind of get

34:29

into the weeds just a little bit. And so, um, I, you know, Roger, I think you were, you know, um, you earned your

34:37

chops. I think, um, looking at damaged data, um, uh, pretty diverse in some of

34:43

the science policy stuff. You wrote the Honest Broker, uh, uh, book. I think you were called, um, to testify a few times,

34:51

you typically early on by the Democrats. Um, and then something happened in 2013.

34:57

And so, uh, you gave some testimony that, um, shot down, uh, I think, uh,

35:04

that we were seeing climate signals in damage, uh, data. Uh, and, uh, John

35:12

Holddron, the science adviser for President Obama, testified about a month

35:17

or two later. Um uh the Republicans in Congress were very quick to point out

35:23

that his testimony is seems at odds with your testimony and then it all blew up

35:30

and went sideways and after that um you know things changed a little bit. um

35:38

walk us through, you know, what happened from your perspective and then I might have a a couple of follow-up questions

35:45

on not the not the the the personalized back and forth, but more so some of the

35:51

issues that I don't think quite got as much exposure as they should have. Yeah. So, how much how much time do you

35:57

guys have? Um, so one of the things I did when I was working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, my

36:02

first job, um, I was on a project looking at at hurricanes and floods and I did a big case study on hurricane

36:09

Andrew, uh, and spent a lot of time in Miami and did a lot of research, wrote a report, eventually wrote a book with my

36:15

dad titled Hurricanes. Um, and one of the the studies that I did, uh, eventually with a guy named Chris Lanc,

36:23

he works at the National Hurricane Center. Perfect name. Um he was he was uh a postdoc at Colorado State up the

36:30

road. We played basketball together and we used to write papers running up and down the court talking to each other. One of the studies we did was we asked

36:38

what would happen if hurricanes of the past hit with today's population,

36:44

today's building and today's wealth. How much economic damage would they cause?

36:49

Um and we published the first study on that. um held a funny little anecdote.

36:55

Um after that study came out, got a lot of attention, a lot of attention in reinsurance and insurance um and we were

37:01

contacted by the state of Florida and I think it was the insurance commissioner and they said, "Could you redo your

37:07

study just for hurricanes that hit Florida?" And we redid it and we wrote him a report and it said, "We think that

37:14

the average annual loss in Florida is about three times higher than you officially say it is." which would imply

37:21

for all you guys higher insurance rates. They didn't call us back. Um

37:27

so, so that work got a lot of attention and and we did a lot of work teasing out and one thing to say once we adjusted

37:33

for all the more people and more property, there's no trend just like there's no trend in hurricane landfalls

37:38

in the US. Um, and I started getting a lot of attention and I got some awards

37:44

for that. And I remember when things changed, it changed in May 2006 when Al Gore's movie came out, An Inconvenient

37:50

Truth. Um, and if you saw it, if you remember it, it had Hurricane Katrina, which was 2005 at the center of of that

37:59

movie. Um and and the climate advocacy community um really shifted at that

38:05

point to wanting to bring climate change home to normal people as as a tool of

38:10

advocacy. Um and extreme weather was the way to do that. And so I went pretty

38:15

instantaneously from being celebrated as a young scholar in my field to somebody

38:22

who's a a bad guy on the wrong side because our work showed that if you really care about damage, you maybe

38:28

there's some small trends in storms, but it's where we build what we build, how much wealth we have. All right, flash forward 2013 and I'm lucky. I'm

38:35

privileged. I get to testify before Congress. I just testified last month. Um, and it's it's a really special

38:41

opportunity. I did guess used to get test uh invited by Democrats exclusively. Now I'm invited by

38:47

Republicans exclusively and I say the same stuff. Um which which is itself kind of interesting. 2013 all right I

38:54

testified the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC many of you will have heard of that they

39:01

had just published a report called the special report on extreme events SREx.

39:06

Um and I was invited by Congress since I was an expert in this area to testify. what does this report say? You know,

39:12

it's like a thousand pages. Can you come testify on it? And I testified and most people are surprised and it still is

39:17

true today. Um, there are increases in heat waves. There are increases in extreme precipitation. There's not in

39:24

tropical cyclones or hurricanes, not in flooding, not in drought, um, not in

39:30

most of the headline issues that people think we've seen trends in. So, I gave my little five minute prepared remarks

39:37

as you do when you testify before Congress. for whatever reason, I will never know the reason why, it went

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viral. In two weeks, it had 400,000 hits on YouTube and people took notice and

39:48

they saw me. Um, and as Frank said, a couple months later, uh, John Holddron

39:54

from Harvard, President Obama's science adviser at the time, um, testified

39:59

before the same committee and, um, it was actually Jeff Sessions from Alabama,

40:05

uh, said said, "Dr. Dr. HDR, I'm not going to try the accent. Said, "Dr. Holddron, um, your testimony is at odds

40:12

with what we heard the IPCC says." And it wasn't just me, it was IPCC, it was the authoritative scientific assessment.

40:20

Um, and I think it really made him mad because he went back to the White House and wrote up a six-page, I call it a

40:27

screed, posted it on the White House website about me. And it, think about

40:32

like what your craziest uncle writes and puts on Facebook. It it was it was like that. But the White House is a bully

40:40

pulpit. Um and there was a lot of attention focused on me at that time. Um and we

40:48

get into the details, but not long after um about 10 months later, uh I got my

40:54

university got a letter from Representative R. Graalva from New Mexico recently passed away. His

41:00

daughter was just elected to fill a seat. um wrote a letter to my university said, "We'd like you to investigate

41:06

Professor Pelky because he is at odds with science advisor John Holddron. We

41:12

think Professor Pelky has taken money under the table from Exxon Mobile. Um my

41:18

Ferrari, it does say XXO in on the um

41:23

you know, I didn't take any money. I was investigating it, but you know, it was career changing, lifechanging sort of thing. Um, I would put that in the

41:30

category of pathological politicization of science. But but that's the sort of thing and you know I came to realize

41:37

we we study policy, we debate policy, we discuss policy to have effect, have

41:43

impact. People understand what the world is like. We don't always prepare people for the consequences of succeeding. Um,

41:51

and you know, I'm I'm things turned out great. I'm look I'm on a stage talking about my work, but but you know, we can

41:56

talk as much detail as any you guys want. You can ask questions. But it it was an interesting time and it

42:01

eventually, you know, it was a slow motion departure, but I left the University of Colorado at the end of last year. Um really based on the events

42:09

that started a decade ago. I have one quick followup in the weeds.

...

48:10

Hurricane Melissa which is, you know, made landfall over western Jamaica and

48:16

hope that they come out okay. Um, and I was watching CNN and it was a a constant

48:22

discussion of, well, this is climate change. This is climate change. And they said, this is the most powerful storm on

48:27

the planet this year so far. That is absolutely true. It is the most powerful storm on the planet. Why is it the most

48:34

powerful plan uh storm on the planet? One reason is the western North Pacific.

48:39

So think the Philippines, think Hong Kong, think Japan. Um is the most active

48:44

basin for tropical cyclones on the planet. They are well below average and have had very few powerful storms. The

48:52

Pacific Ocean, as everybody knows, is a little bit bigger than uh the the

48:58

Caribbean and has much more powerful storms. And so, yes, it's the most powerful storm, but it's the most

49:04

powerful storm because storm activity is well below average on planet Earth this year. Um, what happens if you're in

49:12

insurance or reinsurance or you're doing building codes for Florida, yeah, you got to get the actuarial science, answer all these questions in detail. But for

49:19

normal people, most normal people, the minute you find out that it's either the media or the campaigning climate

49:26

scientist that is is trying to pull a fast one over you, trust is compromised

49:33

at that point. And so what I tell my colleagues is just call it straight that

49:39

hurricanes have not increased on planet Earth in the Atlantic landfalling United

49:46

States for the period of record that we have. That's just the data. Don't and don't even believe me. Go look up the

49:51

data. Go look at the IPCC. Um and if that's inconvenient for somebody's

49:56

politics, I mean, tough beans. There's a lot of good reasons for improving our energy

50:02

policies. We could we can talk about that, but stopping reducing extreme weather is not one of

50:09

those reasons and that's just what the evidence says. Yeah. I'm going to turn attention quick to the um sort of maybe not so inside

50:17

baseball. It's certainly on climate policy relevant um Roger has talked

50:22

about uh the IPCC assessments. There have been six of them. They're in the

50:28

process of doing the seventh. They come out every few years. We here in the United States do a national climate...

frank nca wright 5 hacks disting cred

...

50:22

about uh the IPCC assessments. There have been six of them. They're in the

50:28

process of doing the seventh. They come out every few years. We here in the United States do a national climate

50:33

assessment. Uh it's congressionally mandated. Uh we've had I think uh I'm

50:38

not sure what the number is. You can tell me how many we we've had. Um but we're in the process of working on the next one. The the new administration

50:46

essentially disbanded. They weren't paid, but the scientists uh how many of them I 80 of them were working on it or

50:53

something on on those. Um and then uh uh our energy secretary um Chris

51:00

Wright um uh tasked uh five scientists

51:08

um to reassess the uh our our climate science sort of in lie of you know I'm

51:15

not sure what's going to happen with the national climate assessment but um all of these five scientists are

51:21

distinguished um credentialed scientists um all five of them are are viewed by um

51:29

what you know the boundaries of the mainstream climate community as skeptical uh for one degree of another.

51:35

I would caution against broad brushes against any collection but especially of these five they're they're different um

51:41

in terms of their areas of expertise. Um and so they put out um uh a reassessment

51:52

uh and heavily criticized by mainstream science got a little snarky uh again. Um

51:59

at the same time I don't you know we should not be naive with respect to um

52:04

the administration would like to roll back uh an endangerment finding um

52:09

through the EPA um which would allow them again to do um uh get rid of a lot

52:16

of regulation essentially if uh if uh greenhouse gases carbon dioxide is no

52:22

longer considered uh u dangerous. uh and in looking at the report, I want you to

52:29

give me your take on what the five of them uh did and then again the reaction on the part of the mainstream community

52:35

whether that was helpful uh or not. Uh it might have been an overreaction. um

52:41

there might be some uh things that they did that were helpful that just got lost in the uh in the crossfire. But at the

52:47

same time, if you look at what is emphasized and how it's framed, it looks like it's deliberately sort of

52:53

positioning uh the EPA to roll back its endangerment vir.

52:59

Yeah, if I could have my PowerPoint projector. No. Um I I know too much about this. In 1994, I did my PhD

53:06

dissertation on the legislation that created the National Climate Assessment. And if you told me 30 years later, I'd

53:12

be talking about the work I did in my dissertation again, I would have laughed really hard. Um, so when Congress

53:19

created the US National Climate Assessment, and assessing science is really important. We'll probably come

53:24

back to this when we talk about CO. Um, on climate, literally there are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands

53:30

of peer-reviewed academic scientific papers published every year.

53:35

None of us can read even a sliver of those. If you want to know what's up, I mean, there's probably 5,000 papers on

53:42

hurricanes. If you want to know what's and no one paper is definitive in any

53:48

topic. So, if you want to know what's what's the literature say, what's the what's the research say, you have to

53:54

assess the science. So, the idea behind creating a US national climate

53:59

assessment is right. It makes a lot of sense. But Congress and its wisdom back

54:04

in 1990 um introduced a design flaw in the National Climate Assessment. It

54:11

placed it in the White House. What could go wrong? Um it the the National Climate

54:18

Assessment since then has been overseen by political appointees of both parties.

54:24

And when Democrats are in office, they put their thumb on the scale. and written Republicans are in the office.

54:30

They put their thumbs on the scale and we all suffer because we get an

54:35

assessment that's not a fair assessment of the science, but an assessment that's framed in ways that the administration

NOTE NO EVIDENCE EXAMPLES

54:41

that's in power thinks is going to advance their political interest. That's not a good that's pathological

54:47

politicization of science. So, um, and we've had, you know, when when, um,

54:54

Trump first came in, he got rid of the people doing the climate assessment because he wanted his people doing it.

54:59

Then Biden came in and got rid of Trump's people and put his people in and they did their version and now, you

COLORADO GUY I KNEW HIM WELL GOOD SMART GUY RED TEAM NOT GTREAT EXEC, PILKE CITED ACCURATLY, NOT DISPUTED?

...

56:49

turnaround report." And they did their report. Um, and guess what? between the

56:55

two reports, they do not site any of the same papers or literature, completely

57:02

separate universes. And so for me, that's a sign that it's something is

57:07

deeply broken. Um, and what I would prefer is, all right, let's get those five scientists who did this report.

57:14

Let's get those other scientists and lock them in a room and say, figure it out. And if you can't agree on

57:20

something, tell us that. tell us where you don't agree and then give that

57:25

information to the public and to policy makers and guess what we're smart enough we can figure it out from there and

57:31

there's a lot of uncertainties in in climate and we can talk about some of it at the same time climate change is real

57:37

um I wrote I I did an event in Washington at AEI on the EPA endangerment finding

57:43

it's not important if you know the technical details it's basically the the basis for federal regulation of

57:49

emissions from cars and trucks power plants. Um, I said that this new DOE

57:55

report, the the one with the five alternate scientists, had sufficient information on the reality of climate

58:01

change to support EPA anyway. So, I don't know why the climate advocacy community didn't say, "Oh, thank you

58:07

very much. That supports what we're going to do anyway, even though there's small over this, that, or the other thing."

Frank Alcock is the Director of Academic Initiatives and Special Projects and a Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies at New College of Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University, a M.A. in International Affairs from George Washington University and a B.A. in Economics from Binghamton University. He has been at New College since 2003 teaching courses on world politics, international law and environmental policy. His academic research and publications have focused on fisheries policy, environmental politics and science-policy relationships. From 2006 to 2010 he served as the Director of a Marine Policy Institute at Mote Marine Laboratory. From 2009 to 2012 he was a Senior Fellow with the Collins Center for Public Policy. He has served as a Senior U.S. Fulbright Scholar to New Zealand and a Belfer Fellow in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He also spent five years at the U.S. Department of Energy. Frank appears regularly as a political analyst with ABC News in Sarasota and was a candidate for the Florida state Senate in 2016.

Recent Courses

.... I'm David Lodge. I'm the director of the Cornell Atinson Center for Sustainability and it's my

....2

National Climate Assessment. All right, flashback 2016. Wake up one

7:18

morning and uh my colleague, good friend at the University of Colorado text me um and says, "You're in the Wikileaks

7:24

release today." All right, get out of town. Come on. I'm not. I was in the Wikileaks. Um,

7:32

and I'll I'll talk a little bit about that. Um, you know, I tweeted immediately like, "All right, why am I

7:37

in the Wikileaks? Why why, you know, it's John Podesta's email?" For those of you that don't know, they'll look it up

7:42

after the talk. Um, and so there's an email in there from the Center for American Progress uh

7:48

to billionaire Tom Styer and John Podesta. Um, there was a campaign, an

7:53

online campaign. Um, journalists participated in it. Uh Nate Silver had hired me to write for 538 his website

8:00

and my first piece was a summary of the extract report. Nothing radical, nothing I had said before. And the email said,

8:06

"I think it's fair to say without climate progress, Pelky would still be writing on climate change." Um

8:14

so this was kind of a revelation that there was an organized campaign to to to

8:20

diminish or or silence my work out there. It was no surprise to me. Center for American Progress had hired um seven

8:28

authors who wrote 161 articles about me over the period leading up to this um

8:34

critical of my work. Uh and they wrote almost as many articles about me as they

8:40

did uh George W. Bush in his last years. So it was interesting. Um so let's go

8:46

back to the start. It's 1995. That's me. That's my good friend and colleague at the time, Chris Lansancy, who's now at

What Climate Science Actually Says About Extreme Weather - YouTube

*Postscript: Here is a fun little story related to this post — After my 2020 Forbes piece questioning Aon’s data was published, I was told by my editor at Forbes that Aon had complained about the post (but did not contest its content) and that all my future columns would have to be cleared in advance. That was enough for me to bid Forbes goodbye and helped motivate me to start The Honest Broker on Substack later in 2020.

REF

Funders | Climate Central

---

[### Socratic Stage – Archived Events

New College of Florida

https://www.ncf.edu › office-of-the-general-counsel › o...](https://www.ncf.edu/departments/office-of-the-general-counsel/office-of-public-policy-events-archived-events/)

Roger Pielke Jr. and Frank Alcock. October 28th, 2025 | 6:00 – 7:30 PM | Mildred Sainer Pavilion – New College of Florida. Tap to unmute. Your browser can't ...Read more

[### New College Foundation

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... Pielke Jr., renowned policy scholar, and Frank Alcock, New ... New College of Florida Athletics brought the energy, the spirit, and ...Read more

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don411.com

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Renowned policy scholar Roger Pielke Jr. and New College Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies Frank Alcock will explore how scientific ...Read more

[### SOCRATIC STAGE DIALOGUE SERIES

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https://www.ncf.edu › socraticstage](https://www.ncf.edu/socraticstage/)

The New College Socratic Stage advances civil discourse by fostering open discussion and debate on relevant public policy issues.

[### The Battle for the Soul of American Higher Education

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Ranging from building new state-of-the-art dorms and stadiums, to establishing footholds in new student populations, to experimenting with ...Read more

[### Insurance companies are making record profits off climate ...

New York Post

https://nypost.com › 2025/12/10 › opinion › insurance-...](https://nypost.com/2025/12/10/opinion/insurance-companies-are-making-record-profits-off-climate-change-panic-not-facts/)

Insurance companies are making record profits off climate change panic, not facts. By. Roger Pielke Jr. Published Dec. 10, 2025, 7:55 p.m. ET.Read more

[### ONE WEEK AWAY! Get your free tickets here: https://trellis. ...

Facebook · New College of Florida

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Get your free tickets here: https: //trellis.org/socratic-stage-pielke-and-alcock ... Looks like a great presentation by the "new" New College of ...Read more

JUL 2025

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-AkW!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9a316607-f0ab-4625-b1be-46440b16b2f9_480x556.png)

In the annals of history, the first half of 2025 will be remembered for many things. I’d venture that very few are aware of one of the most momentous achievements in human history occurred in the past six months.

In fact, there is an organized effort to keep you from understanding this achievement. Before getting to that effort, let’s first take a look at some remarkable new data on the impacts of weather on people.

Over the weekend, I was reading the Aon Global Catastrophe Recap, First Half ((1H) of 2025.1 In terms of economic losses, the first half of the year was overwhelmingly dominated by losses in the United States (especially the California fires) accounting for more than 90% of total insured losses ($100 billion).

What really jumped out to me was this conclusion:

At least 7,700 people were killed due to natural disasters during the first half of 2025, which is well below the 21st-century average of 37,250. Majority of the deaths (5,456) occurred as a result of the earthquake in Myanmar.

That means that ~2,200 people worldwide died in catastrophes related to extreme weather events during the first six months of the year.

On the one hand, ~2,200 deaths are a lot and every loss of life is tragic. On the other hand, in the context of historical losses related to weather extreme, on a planet of 8.2 billion people, ~2,200 deaths is incredibly low. Historically low, in fact.

It is likely that the first half of 2025 has seen the fewest deaths related to extreme weather of any half year in recorded human history

To place this number into context, I immediately went to the EM-DAT database of catastrophe losses, overseen by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Belgium.2 CRED also shows a very low tally of deaths from disasters for the first half of 2025.3 The EM-DAT total is less than that of Aon, so I’ll use the higher Aon numbers in the figures below.4

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!V1HI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0f5aeeb6-c433-4836-8682-ed0a8fff2bc9_1174x753.png)Sources: EM-DAT (black, 2000-2024), Aon (red, 2025).

The figure above shows deaths from weather and climate disasters, from January to June, from 2000 to 2025. You can see that deaths are dominated by years with large events — 2008, Cyclone Nargis (138,000 deaths, Indian Ocean); 2010, heat wave (56,000 deaths, Russia); 2022, heat wave (>50,000 deaths, Europe).5 The little red bar on the far right of the bar graph is 2025.

To see 2025 more clearly, I have zoomed in on the graph, shown below.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!00Yv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F991eaf07-1b6a-4a2a-99f5-9ebe1feb4fc8_1174x651.png)

You can clearly see that 2025 comes in well below any year of the past 25 years. Thus, we can conclude with some confidence that the first half of 2025 has seen the fewest deaths related to extreme weather of any January-June this century.

I’d go so far as to suggest that it is likely that the first half of 2025 has seen the fewest deaths related to extreme weather of any half year in recorded human history, given how large losses were in decades and centuries past, as you can see below.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DpWb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3bb0cfeb-5fd1-4335-baec-bdb1a97a0006_1056x720.png)Estimated decadal deaths related to weather and climate for four decades: 1870s, 1920s, 1970s, 2020s (estimated based on deaths over the past decade). These estimates are highly uncertain and the 1870s and 1920s numbers are certainly underestimates. They should be interpreted as order-of-magnitude and not as precise figures. Sources: Davis 2017, Our World in Data.

The put the 2025 first half numbers into context, we can also look at deaths in the second half of each year this century, shown below and zoomed in as above.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4uiJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F596f90ae-3676-40d0-b290-95c26306ef20_1181x649.png)

The first half disaster deaths of 2025 are also lower than any second half deaths in any year this century.

Some additional context:

Of course large losses of life related to extreme weather are still possible — and perhaps even likely if we do not emphasize disaster risk reduction.

However, make no mistake — the incredible progress in the reduction of overall deaths from disasters and the even more dramatic reduction in death rates is one of the most incredible accomplishments of humanity on this volatile planet, experiencing change and variability in extreme weather.

You probably haven’t heard much, if anything, about this very good news.

One reason for that is a climate advocacy industry who views their mission as scaring us about the weather to motoivate political change.

For example, last week, CNN’s Harry Enten lamented (emphasis added):

Climate activists have failed to make the case on climate change. Despite all the bad weather, just 40% of Americans are greatly worried about climate change. The same as in 2000. The % who worry about being a natural disaster victim has dropped from 38% in 2006 to 32% now.

Enten apparently views the job of climate activists is to make people “greatly worried” about climate change. Enten is far from alone in this view.

A media association called Covering Climate Now similarly lamented (emphasis added):

Americans Are Concerned About Climate Change—but They Should Be Afraid. Americans still don’t comprehend how imminent, dangerous, and far-reaching the threat is—and journalists are partly to blame.

Covering Climate Now quotes an climate activist in academia to highlight their worry-generating mission:

“I constantly make the point that only 29 percent are very worried, when it should be 100 percent. This reflects [climate change’s] lack of salience for most Americans. There are many who are not deniers, but do not adequately understand the risks, that the impacts are here and now, and the urgency of action.”

Below are some of the 500+ media outlets who have endorsed the Covering Climate Now mission of getting 100% of us very worried about climate change by promoting alarm about extreme weather:

Climate advocacy focused on scaring people about their impending doom due to extreme weather is also typically accompanied with a parallel appeal, encouraging them to repent. It is no exaggeration to call this climate evangelism.

Climate evangelism was the explicit message shared last week on LinkedIn by Katheryn Hayhoe, lead scientist of The Nature Conservancy and former head of the U.S. National Climate Assessment.6

Hayhoe quoted and endorsed Pope Leo’s sermon of last week:

“We must pray for the conversion of so many people, inside and out of the church, who still don’t recognize the urgency of caring for our common home. We see so many natural disasters in the world, nearly every day and in so many countries, that are in part caused by the excesses of being human, with our lifestyle.”

Hayhoe argued that the climate movement needs more evangelists like Pope Leo to scare people about the weather to increase support for climate policies (emphasis in original):

After disaster hits, it’s natural for people to ask: What just happened? But unless someone helps connect the dots between that event and climate change, most people won’t link the two—no matter how extreme the weather was.

A new global study looking at nearly 72,000 people across 68 countries found that just experiencing extreme weather wasn’t enough to increase people’s support for climate policies. What did make a difference? Understanding that climate change played a role in making the event worse.

Climate change did it. There is no need for science, for data, for logic. Connect the dots. Spread the good word.

Here is the theory of change at work here: Extreme weather is viewed as resource for creating an atmosphere of fear among the general population. Fear will lead people to demand changes in energy policies that are promised to reduce the risks of weather disasters, and thus address their fears. Research, assessments (like the IPCC), and researchers that don’t play along are viewed to be problematic.

Not only do opinion polls show that this theory of change is misguided as politics, so too does the real world. In contrast to apocalyptic sermons, at no point in human history have humans had less risk of death related to extreme weather and climate. Understanding why that is so is central to keeping that trend moving forward into the future.

Smart energy and climate policies, as I’ve long argued, make good sense. Climate evangelism centered on scaring people about the weather does not make sense — in politics, policy, or science.

---

JUL 20 HB BS

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a new assessment of climate science written by five scientists who have long-argued that climate science assessments have overlooked key issues.

The report — A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate — was released yesterday accompanying the Trump Administration’s announcement that it was reconsidering the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases.

While the authors do not use this terminology, I’m calling this report a “red team” report because it explicitly seeks to challenge aspects of climate science and policy in order to motivate debate and discussion. One of the report’s authors, Steve Koonin, has long argued for a “red team” approach for improving climate science assessments.

I certainly agree with Koonin that legitimate views and voices have been excluded from major climate assessments, as leaders in the community have sought to present a tidy story, convenient for climate politics. However, rather than having dueling assessments, I would much prefer that scientific assessments be run as big tents, with the full diversity of views included, highlight not just areas of consensus, but also areas of uncertainty, disagreement, and ignorance. Climate science has seen far too much gatekeeping.

In the coming weeks I’ll provide several opportunities here at THB to discuss and debate the report — All are welcome, and substantive disagreement is encouraged.

DOE Secretary Chris Wright commissioned the report and characterizes it in the report’s foreword as follows:

The rise of human flourishing over the past two centuries is a story worth celebrating. Yet we are told—relentlessly—that the very energy systems that enabled this progress now pose an existential threat. Hydrocarbon-based fuels, the argument goes, must be rapidly abandoned or else we risk planetary ruin.

That view demands scrutiny. That’s why I commissioned this report: to encourage a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy. With my technical background, I’ve reviewed reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. government’s assessments, and the academic literature. I’ve also engaged with many climate scientists, including the authors of this report.

What I’ve found is that media coverage often distorts the science. Many people walk away with a view of climate change that is exaggerated or incomplete. To provide clarity and balance, I asked a diverse team of independent experts to critically review the current state of climate science, with a focus on how it relates to the United States.

I didn’t select these authors because we always agree—far from it. In fact, they may not always agree with each other. But I chose them for their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate. I exerted no control over their conclusions. What you’ll read are their words, drawn from the best available data and scientific assessments.

Wright explains his view of climate change:

Climate change is real, and it deserves attention. But it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty. As someone who values data, I know that improving the human condition depends on expanding access to reliable, affordable energy. Climate change is a challenge—not a catastrophe.

Today, I see on social media many climate scientists who often appear in the media responding to the report with name calling. We won’t do that here at THB and the comments will be tightly moderated.

One of the report’s authors, Judith Curry, has a very interesting blog post on the report. Curry explains that the DOE and the author team (the “Climate Working Group” or CWG) is interested in comments and critique:

DOE welcomes public comments on this report and is setting up a website for comments. The CWG expects to expend considerable time responding to the comments. We’ve already seen a pretty broad range of comments from the DOE scientists; it will be interesting to see what the what the public comments look like

Speaking from the perspective of individuals who have commented on the IPCC and NCA reports only to see our comments ignored, we plan to take a different approach. Rather than primarily seeking to defend our Report, we regard the open comments as an opportunity for dialogue, learning, and clarification of areas of disagreement. We expect to spend considerable time and effort in responding to the comments.

When you read the report you’ll see that my peer-reviewed work with colleagues is widely cited, and you’ll also see multiple references to THB.

The full report can be found here and I look forward to engaging with THB readers in the comments. Also, let me know any requests for future posts on the substance of the report.

---

AND YET ANOTHER SCANDAL

I was speaking to a non-US non-climate beat reporter yesterday about undeniable issues of scientific integrity in climate science and he asked a question about the climate science community that got my attention:

“And no one cares? Aren’t scientists supposed to care about such things?”

Lapses of scientific integrity in climate science have become normalized. I no longer expect the community to care about obvious and egregious problems in climate science, even when documented in the peer reviewed literature. The community’s willful blindness has had a long time to develop muscle memory — More than 15 years ago I documented how the IPCC falsified a graph on disasters and climate change, inserted it into the IPCC assessment, and then lied about it when called out. No one cared then either.

A few weeks Sveriges Radio (Swedish public radio) released an English language version of its outstanding investigation into multiple exaggerations and falsehoods about climate change that have been promoted by the United Nations. Props to Swedish journalist Ola Sandstig and Sveriges Radio for conducting the investigation — they obviously care.

False claims and bad science are endemic to discussions of climate, but they should not come from the UN, which is the parent organization of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose job it is to call things straight on climate science. The climate science community should care that the UN has been systematically misrepresenting climate science, because it could affect how the IPCC is viewed, fairly or unfairly.

The Swedish investigation documented four false claims promoted by the UN. Let’s take a look at each.

  1. Samoan Sea Level Rise Misinformation

:{[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NdnE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7df9a342-2a73-49c6-ac18-09daa31c4b37_656x437.png)

Caption by the UN: “UN Secretary-General António Guterres visits an house that has been abandoned due to storm damage and flooding as a result of climate change during his trip to Samoa.” 22 Aug 2024.}:

In what can only be described as propaganda, UN Secretary General António Guterres visited Samoa last year and filmed a video in front of an abandoned house, which he claimed was abandoned due to sea level rise and increasing storms:

"Those who lived in these houses had to move their homes further inland because of sea level rise and the multiplication of storms. Sea level rise is accelerating. It is now the double of what it was in the 90s. If we are not able to stop what is happening with climate change, the problem that we see in Samoa will not stay in Samoa."

Ola Sandstig, the Swedish journalist, tracked down those who had abandoned the house in 2009, and found that they had actually left the home following the 2009 earthquake and tsunami, and notsea level rise or storms. Earthquakes and tsunamis have nothing to do with climate change. NOTE NO EVIDENCE

There has been no increase in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones in the Western South Pacific (or, the entire planet, for that matter). In fact, in 2009 when the house was abandoned following the tsunami, the region was in a bit of a tropical cyclone lull.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uLcf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F65814f21-6090-4ec1-a774-2e2c87e952f9_421x179.png)Source: Pacific Islands Climate Change Monitor 2022 PICCM caption: “

Like the other sub-regions, long-term trends do not suggest a notable up or down trend in the frequency or magnitude of major cyclones across the region. The recent period between 2010-2020 does indicate fewer major cyclones than 1995-2005 but the frequency counts are so low to begin with that these slight changes are not statistically significant.”

Relative sea level rise has accelerated in Samoa. But that also has nothing to do with climate change, but rather, increased subsidence following the 2009 earthquake.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!d-EL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62873d9e-ddce-4c23-8110-d92ea2dab384_1280x600.png)Source: NOAA

The reasons for the accelerated relative sea level rise are well understood, such as documented in Han et al. 2019:

The islands entered a new era of exacerbated (3–6 times faster) relative sea level rise due to continuous land subsidence after the 2009 earthquakes.

UN Secretary General Guterres’ Samoan photo op and press release can only be described as an intentional effort to mislead.

  1. A UN Correction — 1.7 million children die each year from climate change

Thanks to the Swedish Radio investigation, Swedish UNICEF corrected a false claim that it had previously been promoting — that 1.7 million children die each year due to climate change. Swedish Radio explains:

1.7 million children under the age of five die each year from climate change. Swedish UNICEF has had this figure on their website since 2019-09-27. It was removed after the Swedish version of the program in the fall of 2024. The article now states: 'In a previous version of the article, it was stated that 1.7 million children die from climate change. This is incorrect, the figure refers to environmental factors such as air pollution and dirty water.'

Mistakes happen what matters is what happens after they are identified. Swedish UNICEF shows how easy it is to correct false claims.

  1. A mythical number — Women and children are 14x more than men to die due to a climate disaster

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gA8P!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd44abda5-e138-4596-b433-40ca6dd9ac6a_657x494.png)Source: UNDP, accessed 5 March 2025.

The 14x number has been around for decades and is found across UN organizations. Swedish Radio explains:

Women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster / Women are 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster. These figures appear on the following UN agencies/websites: UN main page, UN Women, UNDP, UNDRR, UNESCO, UN, FAO, IUCN.

The claim is false, and others have pointed this out as well. In 2014, Henrik Urdal of the Peace Research Institute Oslo asked of the false claim, “Is it Acceptable to Lie for a Good Cause?”. He explained where the false number came from (ironically, the University of Colorado Boulder):

The claim that women and children are up to 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster is a classic example of a ‘mythical number’. It took fewer than five minutes to find and cross-check the source. Save the Children was citing a report published by Plan International in 2013. Both Save the Children and Plan refer to what at first glance seems to be to an article published in a research periodical, Natural Hazards Observer, in 1997. The article turns out, however, to be a two-page opinion piece authored by a pastor associated with Church World Service, a US ecumenical organization. Pastor Kristina Peterson does not provide any sources to back up her claim.

Swedish Radio tracked down Pastor Peterson in Lousiana, who expressed surprise that her undocumented claim form 1997 was making the rounds as scientific fact in 2024. Ola Sandstig contacted the UN for comment, and received no response.

  1. Too good not to be true — The number of weather disasters has fivefolded since the 1970s.

“The number of weather, climate, and water-related disasters has increased by a factor of five over the past 50 years.”UN Secretary General António Guterres 2022

The claim that disasters have increased by a factor of five over the past half century comes from the World Meteorological Organizaion (WMO) whch misrepresented the EM-DAT dataset, something longtime THB readers will be familiar with. The WMO report promoting the false claim was titled, ironically enough, United in Science.

The increase in disasters in the EM-Dat dataset from the 1970s results entirelyfrom improved reporting of disasters from the 1970s to the 2000s. Since 2000 there has been no increase in reported disasters, as you’ll see below.

Swedish Radio interviewed Deborati Guha-Sapir, who oversaw the EM-DAT database in Belgium for decades, and I have transcribed her responses at length here:

Reporting has improved in the sense that in a statistically misleading way because as communications becomes cheaper, easier, and now it is almost free and people are traveling a lot more you get much more reports of events as you can imagine. That may have happened before as well but we just didn’t get the reports . . .

You can actually argue that climate disasters or natural disasters have not actually substantially increased but the reporting has been much, much easier, much better, much quicker . . .

What can I say? I do think it is misleading and there is no point in misleading your audience, and to not underestimate the intelligence of your audience. Tell people the truth.People will understand . . .

People like a number and the more spectacular the better. All this behind the scenes explanation that says “Oh, better reporting” nobody is interested in that. It’s boring.

If we show that actually the number of disasters are not increasing two things happen. One is people say “how can this be, everyone says disasters are increasing” and Guha-Sapir is coming and saying “They are not increasing.” There is no evidence, no data. I am not saying they are not, I’m just saying our data doesn’t show it . . .

I think there a risk, credibility and trustworthiness of the data is dependent entirely on the quality and the accuracy of the data you provide. And if you are unable to maintain that, you are going to bring the whole thing down like a house of cards, because people won’t believe what you are saying any more . . .

Guha-Sapir states what should be obvious:

What really needs to be done is to be fair and accurate in your data and speak as good of scientific truth that you can.

Ola Sandstig was able to get a response from a UN official, who appeared to blame the misinformation on people who do not understand the data and not the false claims from the UN and WMO:

When you have this type of information there is this tendency to rushing to the striking pieces and the background information may be omitted by some people. Maybe some communicators or whatever don’t really appreciate the components that build the trend, but I’m telling you we are taking it seriously and we want to address the challenge here.

If the UN is taking the misinformation seriously, it is difficult to tell — The UN is using the misleading data to project a significant increase in global disasters to 2030, as you can see below.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UoUO!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fa1ec9c-0330-40e8-becf-4497e95c1f2e_3287x1707.png)Spurces: Left - X/Twitter, Right — UN 2022

Below is what the latest EM-DAT time series looks like since 2000, when reporting is believed to have become globally reliable. EM-DAT still needs to be used with caution. Reminder: If you want to look for trends in extreme weather, look directly at weather and climate data, not data on disasters.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gb2n!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2f771be6-31b6-4d04-9059-1e4b38611ae1_992x492.png)Graph created by Matthew Wielicki on X/Twitter. Note that how EM-DAT treats temperature-related deaths is not consistent across the time series, which may result in a upwards bias in recent years — See this post for discussion. You can explore this data at Our World in Data.

Bottom Line

The climate science community has a poor track record of addressing misinformation associated with those promoting climate change as a political agenda. This has been called noble cause corruption. If the United Nations is among those promoting such misinformation, we should not be surprised if the credibility of IPCC — which sits under the UN — becomes called into question, fairly or unfairly.

Does anybody actually care?

You can listen to the Swedish Radio report in English here — highly recommended, excellent and rare reporting on climate.

---

AND YET ANOTHER

...Of note, in addition to Otto, the chapter includes a second WWA collaborator. The Bezos Earth Fund partially funds WWA along with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences ongoing study of extreme event attribution. At least five of the 20 chapter authors have participated in some way in that study.

MOJO

This story was originally published by theGuardian and is reproduced here as part of the*Climate Desk*collaboration.}:

The Trump administration is breaking up a research center praised as a “crown jewel” of climate research after accusing it of spreading “alarmism” about climate change.

Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s office and management budget, said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, would be dismantled under the supervision of the National Science Foundation.

“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” he wrote in a social media post. “A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”

The announcement was the latest in a series of climate-skeptic moves by the administration, which has vowed to eliminate what it calls “green new scam research activities.”

It drew fierce condemnation from climate experts, who said the Colorado center was renowned for advances in the study of weather patterns, including tropical cyclones.

Roger Pielke Jr, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank, told *USA Today*, which first reported the story, that the facility was “a crown jewel of the US scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved not shuttered.”

He added: “If the US is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change.”

The move was also criticized by Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, who said it put “public safety at risk.”

“Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” he said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

The center employs approximately 830 staff and includes the Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, which Vought said would be shut. It also operates two aircraft for atmospheric research and manages a government-owned supercomputing facility in Wyoming.

The decision to dismantle it is consistent with Donald Trump’s frequent characterisations of climate change as a “con job” or a “hoax.”

The White House has accused the centre of following a “woke direction” and identified several projects that administration officials say are wasteful and frivolous, USA Today reported.

These include a Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences that seeks to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered,” as well as research into wind turbines, an innovation that Trump has repeatedly denounced.

The administration has already proposed a 30 percent cut to the funding of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing spending on its climate, weather and ocean laboratories, which work to improve forecasting and better understand weather patterns.

---

BUR AT SCI?!

Pielke has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado since 2001 and is a professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). At CIRES, he served as the director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research from 2001-2007. He is also a senior fellow of the Breakthrough Institute. Before joining the University of Colorado, Pielke was a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. His research focuses on the intersection of science and technology and decision making, and he is the author, co-author or co-editor of seven books. His most recent is The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell you About Global Warming.

Why has the world been unable to address global warming? Science policy expert Roger Pielke, Jr., says it€™s not the fault of those who reject the Kyoto Protocol, but those who support it, and the magical thinking that the agreement represents. In The Climate Fix, Pielke offers a way to repair climate policy, shifting the debate away from meaningless targets and toward a revolution in how the world€™s economy is powered, while de-fanging the venomous politics surrounding the crisis. The debate on global warming has lost none of its power to polarize and provoke in a haze of partisan vitriol. The Climate Fix will bring something new to the discussions: a commonsense perspective and practical actions better than any offered so far.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Pielke’s area of expertise is the crossroads where environmental studies and politics meet, and clearly he is very frustrated by how the hard cold facts of science have become subservient to the whims of political fortune. In carefully crafted chapters that rely heavily on widely acknowledged truths, he examines everything from carbon dioxide emissions to the recent climategate controversy. Pielke excels in pointing out the minutiae the climate discussion finds itself repeatedly bogged down in, compared to the larger issues of global warming, regardless of the cause, which are irrefutable. From Kyoto to Copenhagen, Gore to George W. Bush to Obama, he addresses the changing political winds, the myths used to justify weak political will, and the irrevocable relationship between environmental policy and the economy. For navigating a treacherous field with grace and aplomb, Pielke deserves much praise. Whether readers will feel reassured or not after reading his measured words and patient call for a broad-based climate policy will depend on future political response. Copious endnotes and sourcing material included. --Colleen Mondor

About the Author

Roger Pielke, Jr., is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. The author of The Honest Broker, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.

---

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You have been inundated with reports from media, governments, think tanks and ''experts'' saying that our climate is changing for the worse and it is our fault. Increases in droughts, heat waves, tornadoes and poison ivy - to name a few - are all blamed on our ''sins of emissions'' from burning fossil fuels and increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Yet, you don't quite buy into this human-caused climate apocalypse. You aren't sure about the details because you don't have all the facts and likely aren't a scientist. Inconvenient Facts was specifically created for you. Writing in plain English and providing easily understood charts and figures, Gregory Wrightstone presents the science to assess the basis of the threatened Thermageddon.

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aei 1 26

two things are true at once — First, humans influence the climate system, presenting risks that merit policy attention. Second, climate research, broadly construed, is a deeply politicized endeavor, leaving much room for improvement. THUS DO NOTHING

Of feature of the deep politicization of climate is that some people wish to only believe one of these two truths. Developing effective policies related to energy, development, extreme events and disasters depends upon grappling effectively with these two truths.

In 2024, I created a table of the top five climate science scandals in an effort to shine a bright light on areas where the climate community could readily address some of the most egregious failures within the field.

The scientific community can only control what it can control — Big P politics is not among those things, and there is no guarantee that efforts to uphold scientific integrity will make much difference in the political world. But it does seem clear that securing the confidence and trust of our fellow citizens and those empowered to lead will be much more likely if we act to uphold scientific integrity, rather than letting bad science stand.

In today’s post, I both identify fives scandal that I judge to be the most significant as 2025 comes to a close and recommend positive steps that the community might take to correct course.

With the throat clearing out of the way, let’s get to it . . .

5️⃣ An Undeniably Fake Dataset Used in Research and Promoted in Assessments

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!y-14!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4daa08bd-c16c-43cf-8db5-1c807615636b_1456x1092.webp)Would this be OK in climate research?

In any area of scientific publishing, you will not find a more open and shut case for the retraction of published studies than with those peer-reviewed papers that have used the so-called “ICAT dataset” of economic losses from hurricanes.

As I have documented in detail at THB (here, here, and here) and also in the peer-reviewed literature, the dataset is fake and should have no role in research.

Pielke Jr, R. (2025). Do not use the ICAT hurricane loss “dataset”: An opportunity for course correction in climate science. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 64(4), 401-407.

There are perhaps a dozen or more peer-reviewed papers that employ the fake dataset. One of these papers in particular has been promoted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. National Climate Assessment (USNCA) to call into question studies that use robust data, and remarkably, physical metrics of hurricanes, such as frequency and intensity.

Recommended actions: Journals that have published these papers should set up a small, ad hoc committee to quickly document the misuse of an Excel spreadsheet found online — This could be done in several weeks, the issues here are neither complicated nor out of sight. Papers that used the fake dataset should be retracted. The IPCC and USNCA should issue corrections. None of this should be difficult, it would be science working as it should and showing the world that when mistakes are made, science self-corrects because that is how science progresses towards truths and earns trust.

4️⃣ The U.S. National Climate Assessment

The U.S. National Climate Assessment (USNCA) was established in a 1990 law (that, as chance would have it, was the central focus of my 1994 PhD dissertation). The entire text of the relevant section of that law to the USNCA is shown below.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!meG1!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9edf9095-be2e-4fc8-9478-e2b184b09b6b_857x385.png)P.L. 101-606.

It would be easy to miss, but there is a design flaw in the directive that has plagued the USNCA over the 35+ years since the law was passed. The “Council” and “Committee” referred to in the legislation are bodies established within the Executive Office of the President — that is, the White House. THEN WHY WOULD TRUMP WANT FAKE DATA?

That means that the USNCA has always been under the political control of whichever administration happened to be in charge. As climate change became increasingly politicized, the USNCA has proven to be too tempting a target for political meddling — and both Democratic and Republican administrations have used the assessment to advance their political goals, rather than produce a balanced assessment of the state of scientific understandings.

Below, for instance, are just some of the organizations tapped by the Biden Administration to write the fifth USNCA.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HKfu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb977317-5510-4009-8a55-e1dd5326748c_682x398.png)Climate science assessors for the Fifth USNCA.

Not to be outdone, recent media reports suggest that the Trump administration is going to install its preferred leadership for the sixth USNCA. The pendulum swings.

The problems with the USNCA are bipartisan and extend well beyond Washington — Many in the media and scientific community welcome (and participate in) the politicization of the NCA when done by Democrats but oppose it when done by Republicans.

Recommended actions: Leaders in the scientific community (e.g., NASEM, journal editors, public intellectuals, etc.) should call for a depoliticized USNCA and recommend institutional reforms to make the process more balanced and further removed from political oversight. Congress could (in theory) play an important role here by amending PL 1010-606 to require an institutional structure further removed from White House control.

For further reading:

3️⃣ The Trump Administration’s Campaign of Vengeance as Science Policy

The Trump administration’s approach to climate science policy is, by their own account, a campaign against “woke programs.” Among these “woke programs” — whatever that means — facing major funding cuts or elimination are:

The Trump administration’s actions appear to respond to the blueprint of Project 2025, a manifesto published by the Heritage Foundation prior to the election (and which candidate Trump claimed never to have heard of) — Here is what Project 2025 says about NOAA’s climate programs, for instance:

Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.

Speaking of Project 2025 in a pre-2024 election “training video,” Bethany Kozma — now a high-ranking Trump political appointee — said that the administration “will have to eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere” in government.

This gets us back to the two truths I espoused at the top of this post — It is at once possible to critique the Biden Administration’s approach to climate change as an “existential threat,” and recognize that there are indeed risks that should be seriously considered. That means not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

:{:{Recommended actions: The fate of federal funding and agency programs sits almost entirely with the U.S. Congress. Science organizations will lobby of course, but these battle lines have been drawn and there is not much the broader scientific community can do in the near term to affect how the vengeance campaign plays out before the mid-terms. One important step the scientific community (including climate but also much broader) is to assess how it came to be that the scientific community finds itself at “war” with the Republican party. SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO SAID THE WIFE BEATER}:

Science is supposed to benefit all Americans, no matter who they voted for — Reestablishing our end of the social contract between science and society would be a good place for us to start, irrespective of electoral and partisan politics.}:

For more details on how we got here and what we might now do, see my talk in Oslo last summer, which is the second-most viewed post ever at THB:

What Did We Expect Would Happen?

2️⃣ The Invention of “Climate Risk” in Global Finance

Over the past few weeks, I’ve begun a series here at THB on the invention of “climate risk” in the global financial community. That series will continue to run into 2026. Changes in climate do indeed pose risks, but there is actually no unique risk to global financial stability that can be characterized as physical “climate risk” apart from baseline risks of extreme weather events, climate variability, and changes in climate in the broader context of changes in vulnerability and exposure.

A changing climate is a part of these risks, not a bespoke new risk that marks a break from the past.

Further, “climate risk” is, on many accounts, measured in terms of the economic costs of extreme weather events and projections from extreme and implausible climate scenarios — both of which are deeply problematic, to say the least, for measuring any kind of risk.

There is more to the story here as well (which will continue to be documented here at THB) including the creation of a cottage industry of climate risk modeling with questionable scientific quality. In addition, some of the groups being funded to provide “climate risk” scenarios for the global finance community are the same groups who create the scenarios that underlie most climate research as well as the assessment of the IPCC. There is a tangled web of institutional alignments and appearances of conflicts of interest.

Recommended actions: Much of the development of the “climate risk” industry has occurred beyond the mainstream scientific community. However, there are some important research overlaps (e.g., attribution) and questionable institutional relationships (e.g., scenarios). Leaders in the climate community, and especially those in the IPCC, shod be sure to understand the rise of “climate risk” as a parallel science-like construct outside mainstream science and assess possible risks to the integrity of climate science and its institutions.

For further reading:

The Climate-Risk Industrial Complex and the Manufactured Insurance CrisisHow the Financial System Invented “Climate Risk” Untethered from Climate ScienceThe Invention of “Climate Risk” – Politically Brilliant but Fatally Flawed

1️⃣ The Continuing Dominance of Extreme, Implausible Emissions Scenarios

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!G-Gm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F78b7d3dd-3060-429f-b465-b06922d83029_1282x552.png)What if Medium is High and High is implausible? Source:ScenarioMIP 2024

Longtime readers of THB will be deeply familiar with this topic — It was the top scandal in the 2024 version of this table and stays at the top in 2025.

Long story short — Climate science and assessment have been dominated by extreme emissions scenarios for decades. Over the past five years, the community has evolved from denying that reality to overwhelmingly accepting it — that’s the good news.CLAIM NO EVIDENCE

The bad news is that extreme scenarios continue to dominate climate research, media reporting, and policy discussions. During 2025 alone, Google Scholar reports more than 11,000 studies that employ RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5, or SSP3-7.0. Whatever scientific merit these studies have, they have little ability to inform us reliably about future climate or its impacts.

I had expected that the next generation of climate scenarios would have been released in 2025 — They appear to be overdue. Earlier this year, based on publicly available information, I reported that the high-end scenario of the new scenarios was to be something like SSP3-7.0, another implausibly extreme scenario, as discussed at the link below.

The Apocalypse Machine Rolls On

Lately, climate advocates have begun to justify the extreme scenarios as providing evidence that climate policy is not just working, but has been incredibly successful.

Our collective view of climate science and policy has been warped by the continuing misuse of scenarios. In theory, correcting that misuse should be easy. Politically however, it would represent a fundamental reordering of the entire catastrophic climate narrative that has a tight grip on many institutions. Climate change is indeed real and a threat, but it is not the end of the world.

Recommended actions: The climate community should take steps to decentralize scenario creation, and encourage greater diversity of participation (e.g., from India, Africa and elsewhere). Physical climate research should develop a capacity to utilize scenarios that are updated on an annual basis, perhaps in parallel to the decade-long cycle currently in place. As currently structured, climate scenarios are in place to primarily meet the needs of researchers, not policy makers. That is one reason why change would be difficult. If reforms do not occur, researchers should be prepared for policy makers who decide to take matters into their own hands. Finally, and most obviously, the research community should stop its continued prioritization of implausible scenarios in research, publication, press releases, and in assessments.

Others scandals from 2025 that did not make the cut, in no particular order:

OMG

REF GRNWIRE

https://www.eenews.net/articles/its-the-gold-standard-of-us-climate-research-contrarians-could-write-the-next-one/

It’s the gold standard of US climate research. Contrarians could write the next one.

By Scott Waldman | 12/22/2025

Researchers who have downplayed the threat of global warming have been asked to author the next National Climate Assessment.

The Trump administration has invited a small group of climate contrarians to help write the next installment of the National Climate Assessment, the nation’s preeminent report on global warming, says one of the researchers involved.

The move would advance efforts by the White House to inject widely disputed ideas about climate change into the federal government’s official appraisal of global warming. And it would almost certainly provoke a response from the hundreds of mainstream climate scientists who have worked for years on the National Climate Assessment.

Judith Curry, a former climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is one of the climate contrarians in line for the new assignment. Earlier this year, Curry joined with four like-minded researchers to produce a separate report for Energy Secretary Chris Wright that downplayed the threat of global warming and called into question the basic tenets of climate science.

Now Curry says that same team — known as the Climate Working Group — has been asked to write the next installment of the National Climate Assessment, or NCA, a congressionally mandated report that comes out every few years and outlines the many ways that global warming is expected to impact the United States and its people.

“The Climate Working Group has been contacted about the NCA,” said Curry, who added that she was open to the idea. “Personally, I would work with whoever’s in charge to get a reasonable outline and get reasonable authors.”

Curry said she expected all five members of the Climate Working Group to work on the National Climate Assessment.

Three of the other authors did not respond to requests for comment from POLITICO’s E&E News. The fourth, Canadian economist Ross McKitrick, said late Sunday that he had not yet been contacted about working on the assessment but declined to comment as to whether he would participate in the next version.

Curry also said that the Trump administration was looking to revive the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the initiative in charge of producing the National Climate Assessment. Earlier this year, the Trump administration dismantled the program and dismissed hundreds of scientists who were already at work on the sixth version of the National Climate Assessment.

Curry said the new effort is starting to take shape. She said the Trump administration already has interviewed candidates for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and she expected the administration would name a new program chief as soon as next month.

“I think in January, we should have a director of the USGCRP in place,” she said.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment from E&E News. Nor did the Energy Department nor the Office of Management and Budget.

But there’s at least one other sign the Trump administration is looking to write a new version of the National Climate Assessment.

Ryan Maue, who served as chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the first Trump administration, said last week on the social media site X that he was working on the new climate report.

He described it as a “volunteer effort” and said it would be “mostly completed before end of 2025.”

Maue did not respond to requests for comment from E&E News. But he wrote on X that he was enlisting artificial intelligence to help with the latest National Climate Assessment. He cited the Gemini 3 Pro program as well as Grok, an AI chatbot developed by xAI, the artificial intelligence company led by tech tycoon Elon Musk.

Grok in the past has downplayed the danger of global warming when compared with other AI programs.

The Trump administration’s push to revive the National Climate Assessment and resurrect the U.S. Global Change Research Program adds a new twist to the complicated history of the long-running research effort.

The program was created by Congress in 1990 and signed into law by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Its most visible product is the National Climate Assessment, which comes out roughly every four years and is used to help shape environmental rules, legislation and infrastructure projects.

Five installments of the National Climate Assessment have been published since 2000. The reports explore more than just climate change — they also examine land productivity, water resources, fisheries, ecosystems and the atmosphere.

But earlier this year, the Trump administration fired the federal employees who work for the research program — and it was effectively shuttered. The administration also deleted interactive webpages for the first five versions of the National Climate Assessment and then buried the documents on government websites.

The moves prompted a sharp outcry from the scientific community in part because the National Climate Assessment has earned a reputation for top-notch research. The document includes hundreds of peer-reviewed studies to inform its conclusions, and it relies on the work of hundreds of scientists to write its contents and review its findings.

In contrast, the Energy Department report written by Curry and her colleagues involved a much smaller group of researchers.

Her four co-authors were: McKitrick; Steven Koonin, a former chief scientist for BP who also served as an undersecretary at the Energy Department during the Obama administration; as well as John Christy and Roy Spencer, atmospheric scientists at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.

One climate scientist said the size of that group was indicative of how far the team members’ views fall outside the scientific consensus.

“Serious experts agree and action (on climate change) is needed as soon as possible,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who has served as a lead author on multiple versions of the National Climate Assessment.

If the Trump administration wants “people who are not going to tell them those truths,” she added, “those are the only people they have.”

The Energy Department report written by Curry and the rest of the Climate Working Group has been roundly criticized by climate scientists for its reliance on cherry-picked data and its omission of research that disproved its claims.

Scientists whose work was cited in the report said their research was distorted and manipulated. Dozens of scientists produced a 450-page report challenging its claims, and the National Academies offered its own rebuttal of the report as well.

Hayhoe said it’s critical the United States and its leaders get a clear-eyed view of climate change and its impacts.

“This is a matter of safety, security, well being, resilience and preparation for a better future for everyone,” she said. “Regardless of where they live and regardless of how they vote.”

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EXPERIENCE E&E NEWS FIRSTHAND

NO LNX

REF 2 HB BS MAR 2025

simberg and steyn alfred s irving jr dubya

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!76on!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0b37bd89-3aa7-43b6-a39d-9f4ec687ce9c_765x430.png)Michael Mann and his lawyers preparing for a very fateful day in court. Jan 2024.

The DC Court that heard the defamation case brought by climate scientist Michael Mann against two bloggers has ruled today that Mann and his lawyers acted in “bad faith” during the case, by presenting false claims on multiple occasions related to Mann’s grant funding:

Here, the Court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that Dr. Mann, through [his lawyers] Mr. Fontaine and Mr. Williams, acted in bad faith when they presented erroneous evidence and made false representations to the jury and the Court regarding damages stemming from loss of grant funding. . . The Court does not reach this decision lightly.

This ruling follows closely on the heels of the same court reducing the punitive damages awarded to Mann against one of the defedents from $1,000,000 to $5,000. That reduction follows the Court’s order that Mann pay $530,820.21 of legal expenses that his lawsuit resulted in for National Review —which Mann had also sued, but whose case was dismissed.

Today things went from really bad to a whole lot worse for Dr. Mann.

In today’s ruling the judge pulled no punches, writing of Mann and his two lead lawyers:

They each knowingly made a false statement of fact to the Court and Dr. Mann knowingly participated in the falsehood, endeavoring to make the strongest case possible even if it required using erroneous and misleading information.

That sentence has me thinking of RCP8.5, Billion Dollar Disasters, and the fake ICAT dataset, but I digress.

This case is part of a larger culture war in which research is distorted and the truth about the climate threat is dissembled

Michael Mann and Peter Fontaine in the NYT, 15 Feb 2024

The Court was none-too-pleased with the arguments put forward by Mann and his counsel:

Dr. Mann’s assertion that there was no falsehood or misrepresentation in his testimony or his counsel’s conduct borders on frivolity. Cf. In re Pearson, 228 A.3d 417, 424 (D.C. 2020) (“Ultimately, a position ‘is frivolous when it is wholly lacking in substance and not based upon even a faint hope of success on the legal merits.’” (quoting In re Spikes, 881 A.2d 1118, 1125 (D.C. 2005))). As detailed supra, the record plainly shows the deliberate and knowing misconduct of Dr. Mann’s counsel in eliciting false testimony from Dr. Mann and misrepresenting his grant funding.

The Court has awarded monetary sanctions:

:{The Court determines that the appropriate sanction is to award each Defendant the approximate expenses they incurred in responding to Dr. Mann’s bad faith trial misconduct, starting with Mr. Fontaine’s redirect examination. The Court arrives at such a sanction because the misconduct of Dr. Mann and his counsel (1) was extraordinary in its scope, extent, and intent;

(2) subjected a jury not only to false evidence and grievous misrepresentations about a crucial part of Dr. Mann’s case, but also to additional trial proceedings for correcting the record and the jury’s impressions thereof that otherwise likely would have been unnecessary; (3) further complicated a trial already rife with convoluted and difficult legal and factual issues; and (4) burdened Defendants and the Court with the time-and resource-intensive task of ascertaining the true extent of the misconductand determining appropriate remedial measures for the same, all without any meaningful acknowledgement of the nature of the misconduct by Dr. Mann or his attorneys.}:

The total amonut of these sanctions — based on my decidedly inexpert reading — is unlikely to be large (low $10,000s I’d guess).

The larger significance of this ruling is that a case which was widely celebrated within the scientific community as “a victory for climate researchers” reveals the putative hero to have engaged in misconduct involving the presentation of emprically-verifiable facts — Which was supposed to have been the focus of the case against the anti-heros.

The editor of*Science*, H. Holden Thorp, followed the original jury verdict with an impassioned defense of Mann’s long track record of egregiously bad behavior, arguing that it is misconduct, not passion that matters:

Although Mann has expressed strong—and even intemperate—emotions and words in political discourse, the finding of the District of Columbia Superior Court boiled down to the fact that it is not an opinion that determines when scientific misconduct occurs but rather, misconduct can be established using known processes.

The irony here is deep — The lawsuit Mann brought on the basis that he was intemperately accused of misconduct winds up revealing that Mann engaged in misconduct that was “extraordinary in its scope, extent, and intent.” It’ll be interesting to see what the climate science community does now.

{You can read today’s judgment here. You can read the judgment reducing Mann’s jury award from $1,000,000 to $5,000 here. Note: I was a witness in the case, and you can read my commentary about it after appearing in the trial here. This case has plenty more room to run, with appeals underway.*}:

//

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CARBON TAX

  1. ESG Today

https://www.esgtoday.com › eu-to-expand-cbam-carbon-import-tax-to-downstream-products-to-avoid-production-shift-to-countries-with-weaker-climate-policies

EU to Expand CBAM Carbon Import Tax to Downstream Products to Avoid ...

5 days agoThe European Commission announced the release of a series of proposed changes to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the EU's carbon tax on imported goods, including expanding the scope of the CBAM to some downstream products, in order to avoid a shift in production away from EU manufacturers to those in countries with weaker […]

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Roger_A._Pielke_Jr.

Roger A. Pielke Jr. - Wikipedia

Roger A. Pielke Jr. (born November 2, 1968) is an American political scientist and a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. [1]

rogerpielkejr.substack.com

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com › p › secret-sauce

Secret Sauce - by Roger Pielke Jr. - The Honest Broker

Dec 4, 2023Today, I expose RCP8.5 as the secret sauce in the Biden Administration' "social cost of carbon" or SCC. The SCC is supposed to tell us how much damage will result from emissions of carbon dioxide, and thus is intended for use in cost-benefit analyses. 2 The SCC is created using highly technical and opaque methods.

University of Colorado Boulder

https://www.colorado.edu › asmagazine-archive › node › 551

A new take on the climate fix - University of Colorado Boulder

Among others, Pielke suggests starting with a relatively low carbon tax, on the order of $5 per metric ton. A tax at that level has been proposed by ExxonMobil's CEO, a fact Pielke says indicates the possibility of political consensus.

National Review

https://www.nationalreview.com › corner › carbon-tax-clean-energy-innovation-coal-industry-workers

Rethinking the Carbon Tax | National Review

A number of more sober-minded carbon-tax advocates, such as Roger Pielke Jr., have backed a more modest approach, in which a low carbon tax would serve as a revenue source for clean-energy ...

The Conversation

https://theconversation.com › how-europes-new-carbon-tax-on-imported-goods-will-change-global-trade-and-our-shopping-habits-270496

How Europe's new carbon tax on imported goods will change global trade ...

4 days agoThe EU's new carbon tax is reshaping global trade - and starting to influence what people buy and how much they pay for it.

public.news

https://www.public.news › p › roger-pielke-jr-climate-change-is

Roger Pielke, Jr.: "Climate change is going to fade from view like ...

Mar 26, 2025And now Pielke predicts that climate change could go the way of past environmental scares. "One story for the future of the climate discourse and climate change is that it's not going to go away, but it's going to fade from the center of public view like overpopulation did." Why did climate change emerge as an issue of concern and then fade?

Investopedia

https://www.investopedia.com › terms › c › carbon-dioxide-tax.asp

Understanding Carbon Tax: Regulation, Implementation, and Impact

Dec 1, 2025Discover how carbon taxes penalize greenhouse gas emissions, encouraging environmentally-friendly practices, and see key examples of global adoption and impact.

pragmaticenvironmentalistofnewyork.blog

https://pragmaticenvironmentalistofnewyork.blog › 2025 › 05 › 06 › roger-pielke-jr-on-climate-variability

Roger Pielke Jr on Climate Variability

May 6, 2025Roger Pielke, Jr. described the underappreciated importance of climate variability in a recent post. It is increasingly obvious that there are so many issues coming up with the New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) net zero transition that we need to pause implementation and figure out how best to proceed.

IEEE Spectrum

https://spectrum.ieee.org › book-review-the-climate-fix

What Roger Pielke won't tell you about fixing global warming is far ...

Even if his carbon tax could raise $150 billion per year, as Pielke suggests, the pace of innovation can't match the pace of current emissions and subsequent temperature and sea level rise ...

---

ZELDIN

rogerpielkejr.substack.com

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com › p › is-the-epa-endangerment-finding-endangered

Is the EPA "Endangerment Finding" Endangered?

Feb 26, 2025Earlier today, The Washington Post reported that head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lee Zeldin, has urged the Trump administration to rescind the EPA's 2009 "endangerment finding" on greenhouse gases. The Post reports: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has privately urged the White House to strike down a scientific finding underpinning much of the ...

E&E News

https://www.eenews.net › articles › black-box-what-exactly-is-trumps-energy-council-doing

'Black box': What exactly is Trump's energy council doing?

May 28, 2025"It's not clear exactly what [the council's] functions are," said Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Vision Times

https://www.visiontimes.com › 2025 › 09 › 17 › congress-hears-arguments-urging-international-ban-on-solar-geoengineering.html

Congress Hears Arguments Urging International Ban on Solar ...

Sep 17, 2025Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, opened by urging the U.S. to take a lead role in banning solar geoengineering. "We have one Earth, and experimenting on it carries considerable risks," he said, adding that he has "likened geoengineering to risky gain-of-function research on viruses with uncertain ...

American Enterprise Institute - AEI

https://www.aei.org › profile › roger-pielke-jr

Roger Pielke Jr. - American Enterprise Institute - AEI

Roger Pielke Jr. is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on science and technology policy, the politicization of science, government science advice, and ...

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Roger_A._Pielke_Jr.

Roger A. Pielke Jr. - Wikipedia

Roger A. Pielke Jr. (born November 2, 1968) is an American political scientist and a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. [1] Before he was a professor of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and was the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics at the Center for Science ...

The Cornell Daily Sun

https://cornellsun.com › article › 2025 › 11 › ezwf81p823ef

AEI Fellow Roger Pielke Jr.'s Talk at Cornell Climate Impact Speaker ...

Nov 15, 2025Roger Pielke Jr. spoke at Cornell Atkinson's Climate Impact Series on Wednesday, eliciting concerns from members of the scientific community due to his ties to the American Enterprise Institute ...

American Enterprise Institute - AEI

https://www.aei.org › climate-risks-and-realities

Climate Risks and Realities: Science and Policymaking - AEI

Mar 2, 2025Instructor Bio: Roger Pielke Jr. is a senior fellow at AEI, where he focuses on science and technology policy, the politicization of science, government science advice, and energy and climate.

KOA 850 AM & 94.1 FM

https://koacolorado.iheart.com › featured › ross-kaminsky › content › 2025-06-16-aei-senior-fellow-roger-pielke-jr-on-global-population-decline

AEI Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. on Global Population Decline

Jun 16, 2025Roger Pielke Jr is professor emeritus at CU Boulder and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. We'll talk a little about "Trump and science" but mostly about the serious risk of a global population collapse.

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com › in › roger-pielke-jr-72721332

Roger Pielke Jr. - University of Colorado Boulder | LinkedIn

Roger Pielke, Jr. is concurrently a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute… · Experience: University of Colorado Boulder · Location: Boulder · 500+ connections on LinkedIn. View ...

environmentalaccountability.org

https://environmentalaccountability.org › wp-content › uploads › 2024 › 07 › Expert-Report-of-Roger-Pielke-on-FrEDI.pdf

Expert Report of Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. I. Introduction

  1. My name is Roger Pielke Jr., Ph.D. I have degrees in mathematics, public policy, and political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder. I was employed as a staff scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research from 1994 to 2001, at which time I joined the faculty at the University of Colorado where I am employed today as a Professor in the College of Arts and ...

American Enterprise Institute - AEI

https://www.aei.org › podcast › if-youre-afraid-of-climate-change-and-nuclear-power-you-have-a-math-problem-with-roger-pielke-jr-the-honest-broker

"If You're Afraid of Climate Change AND Nuclear Power, You ... - AEI

Sep 18, 2024Today we were delighted to welcome back our good friend Roger Pielke Jr. for an engaging discussion on the evolving climate policy and energy landscape. Roger is the author of "The Honest Broker ...

DeSmog

https://www.desmog.com › roger-pielke-jr

Roger Pielke Jr. - DeSmog

Roger Pielke Jr. Credentials Background Roger Pielke Jr. is a climate science policy writer who formerly worked at the University of Colorado Boulder before leaving academia in 2024 to join the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as a nonresident senior fellow.2"Scholars: Roger Pielke […]

Document Repository

https://docs.house.gov › meetings › GO › GO16 › 20250916 › 118609 › HHRG-119-GO16-Bio-PielkeJrR-20250916.pdf

Societal Vulnerability and Climate

Sep 16, 2025Roger Pielke Jr. is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on science and technology policy, the politicization of science, government science advice, energy and climate, and sports governance.

---

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Roger Pielke Jr.

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:{About

Roger Pielke, Jr. is concurrently a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder. Roger was on the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2024.

Roger teaches and writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, energy, climate, innovation and sports. Roger is an elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters.

Roger writes a popular Substack called The Honest Broker, with more than 35,000 subscribers in >160 countries. If you are not already a subscriber, you should be: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/

Read more and find a full CV here: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/about-roger-pielkeRoger Pielke, Jr. is concurrently a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder. Roger was on the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2024. Roger teaches and writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, energy, climate, innovation and sports. Roger is an elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters. Roger writes a popular Substack called The Honest Broker, with more than 35,000 subscribers in >160 countries. If you are not already a subscriber, you should be: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/ Read more and find a full CV here: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/about-roger-pielke…see more

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Second, this is where I try out arguments and present work-in-progress. My work and writing benefits enormously from the responses of the extended peer-review community. Thank you for engaging. Finally, doing my work out in public helps me to identify where and how it can best contribute to important policy debates. I won’t get everything right, but thanks to your help, the ideas presented here can always get better.}:

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Thank you for being a subscriber! Free, Paid, Founding — wow, I have been overwhelmed by the response since I announced last month my “experiment” with this Substack. Subscriptions continue to increase every day, and for that I am very grateful for your engagement and support.

With this post I provide a reader’s guide to The Honest Broker. What am I doing here? What can you expect? What is the value-added by being a paid subscriber?

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I work at that messy and important place where science and politics collide. From that place, this newsletter seeks to accomplish several things.

First, it is a place where I can share directly data, analysis and opinion unfiltered and not gatekept. I’ve been attacked by the White House, investigated by Congress, targeted by a billionaire and seen my share of mean tweets. But I also have academic tenure, and I use it.

Second, this is where I try out arguments and present work-in-progress. My work and writing benefits enormously from the responses of the extended peer-review community. Thank you for engaging.

Finally, doing my work out in public helps me to identify where and how it can best contribute to important policy debates. I won’t get everything right, but thanks to your help, the ideas presented here can always get better.

I welcome suggestions for topics, tips (anonymity always respected) and I always welcome your support.

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website.

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The Invention of "Climate Risk" - Politically Brilliant but Fatally Flawed

Part 3 of the THB series on insurance and climate change

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🎙️ New Risky Science Podcast

How much value does climate conditioning actually add to catastrophe risk models used for pricing, underwriting, and capital decisions?

In the latest episode of the Risky Science Podcast, I spoke with Roger Pielke Jr. about the growing use of climate-conditioned catastrophe models and where those approaches may be misaligned with how insurance and reinsurance decisions are made in practice.

We discuss:

-Why climate models and catastrophe models are built for fundamentally different time horizons

-What short-term climate signals do matter for annual loss outcomes

-Why rising catastrophe losses are more closely tied to exposure and vulnerability than to detectable changes in hazard

-How insurers and reinsurers should think about stress testing versus prediction

Whether you agree with Pielke’s conclusions or not, the conversation raises important questions about model purpose, uncertainty, and robustness at a time when climate risk analytics are becoming central to financial decision-making.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/eptxuAMt

📅 And join us on January 8 for a live discussion on cyber risk modeling (registration link in the show notes).

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LI FEED 12 25 THE HONEST BROKER

....column for The Dispatch published this week. I’m thrilled to have a regular gig there because it allows me to distill arguments developed and sharpened here at THB and bring them to a much larger audience. Today, I take on the many claims made during COP30 that the much moderated projections of future warming reflect the incredible successes of climate policy and advocacy. As THB readers well know — That just isn’t true.*

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In 2015 in Paris, countries from around the world agreed to accelerate the decarbonization of their economies in response to climate change. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), implementation of the Paris Agreement over the past decade has been a runaway success story, moving the world away from what would have been a global catastrophe. At the opening of COP30 earlier this month, U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell hailed the purported achievements of the initiative:

Over three decade [sic] ago in Rio, humanity set a new course of global climate cooperation. Ten years ago, in Paris, we took a major step forward. Without that act of collective courage, we would still be headed for an impossible future of unchecked heating, of up to 5 degrees. Because of it, the curve has bent below 3°C – still perilous, but proof that climate cooperation works.

The media amplified the victory lap. Take, for instance, CNN’s reporting on the summit:

Ten years ago, humanity was burning so much fossil fuel that Earth was on track to overheat by a catastrophic 4 degrees Celsius by century’s end. But then came Paris, when nearly 200 nations agreed to wean themselves off of oil, gas, and coal; protect more nature; and hold the global warming line at 1.5 [degrees Celsius]. The Paris Accords led to innovation and market forces that now make sun, wind, and storage cheaper and more popular than ever.

The world was headed for a climate apocalypse, and thanks to climate advocacy and an international agreement, the worst has been avoided. We simply need to stay the course to finish the job.

That’s the story that climate advocates and the media are now telling about global climate policy. Unfortunately, that narrative is not rooted in reality. More than 30 years after the Rio Earth Summit, global and national climate policies may have done many things—such as encouraging the redirection of investments toward low-carbon technologies and pushing countries to report on their emissions reduction targets—but accelerating the pace of global decarbonization is not among them, no matter what tall tales are told.

The UNFCCC shared the graph below to illustrate what it describes as the remarkable success of the Paris Agreement. The black line shows historical greenhouse gas emissions, while the red cone shows how those emissions were projected to increase dramatically after 2015. The blue cone showing a decrease in emissions represents where the world appears to be headed today, with emissions peaking and then declining.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HiM-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4cfb351b-7341-4e59-b9ca-ce704c280826_1199x755.png)Graph via the UNFCCC.

The large gap between the two projections, the UNFCCC asserts, is the direct result of policies implemented under the Paris Agreement. In reality, however, the differences between the two forecasts reflect the simple fact that the red cone represents erroneous projections, while the blue cone represents a more updated understanding of where we are headed. The story here is that extreme emissions projections were well off track, and real-world data pointed to a much more moderate future. Spinning that course correction as the result of policy success is not supported by the evidence.

Understanding the misinformation at play here requires a bit of a journey into the details of climate scenarios.

The UNFCCC explains that the red cone in the graph above represents the high and low boundaries of emissions scenarios projecting where the world was allegedly heading before the Paris Agreement. The scenarios are part of a larger group of scenarios developed beginning in 2005 that underpins most climate research seeking to project future climate change and its impacts, serving as the basis for the scientific assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

While these projections represent emissions futures that may have seemed plausible several decades ago, scenario experts have known for a while now that the core assumptions underlying them have turned out to be simply wrong.

The error across emissions scenarios rested on the premise that “long-run growth in future world energy demand must rely on increasing levels of per-capita coal use,” according to pioneering research by Justin Ritchie and Hadi Dowlatabadi in 2017. Coal is by far the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and thus projections that assume a dramatic expansion of coal energy into the 21st century will necessarily result in extreme carbon dioxide emissions. But Ritchie and Dowlatabadi explained that the presumption of rapidly increasing coal consumption was inconsistent with energy system trends, based on an untested theory, and repeated errors in energy system forecasts from decades past.

Back in 2017, Ritchie and Dowlatabadi’s analysis may have been debatable. However, by 2020, the evidence that the real world was not following coal-intensive trajectories was undeniable. That year, I was part of a team of researchers, including Ritchie, that compared scenario emissions projections to real-world trends and near-term energy outlooks. We found that Ritchie and Dowlatabadi’s analysis held up, concluding that the trajectory of actual carbon dioxide emissions was far below the extreme climate scenarios based on booming coal consumption.

A robust consensus has developed around this view, with most projections of future climate change suggesting that, on current policies, the world is headed in the direction of a 2- to 3-degree Celsius increase over preindustrial values by 2100—a far cry from the 4- to 5-degree or more increase envisioned under extreme scenarios that we now know were wrong.

The emissions scenario course-correction is today well understood by climate experts. However, the temptation has been strong to spin the course correction as instead representing the effects of the Paris Agreement. For instance, recent reports from the New York Times and *Axio*s commit this logical fallacy by relying on the International Energy Agency’s coal-intensive scenarios in their projections of “where we were going.”1 We now know that we were never going there.

A much better way to evaluate the possible effects of the Paris Agreement on decarbonization is to look at real-world data, rather than to compare how speculative projections have changed. The visual below shows the decarbonization of the global economy (that is, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels per unit of global GDP) from 1992 to 2024. There is simply no evidence of an acceleration in this metric, which would necessarily follow from an increasing pace of decarbonization, whether driven by the Paris Agreement or anything else.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XrLH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F99766676-020a-4ca2-9f5e-667baecc5120_1052x720.jpeg)Graph via The Honest Broker.

In fact, comparing the eight years that led up to Paris to the eight years that followed shows no change in global decarbonization. At the national level, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia were the countries that saw the fastest acceleration of the decarbonization of their economies, which was more than canceled out by the slowing decarbonization of China, Russia, and Indonesia. The United States saw essentially no change between the two periods.

To achieve deep decarbonization, or the reduction of total emissions by more than 80 percent by 2050, would require rates of decarbonization exceeding 8 percent per year, every year. The world is currently decarbonizing at about 2 percent per year, with no signs of progress toward that 8 percent benchmark. In fact, no country has ever sustained a rate of decarbonization even approaching 8 percent per year.

These are sobering numbers that illustrate just how challenging it is to transform the global energy economy. Effective policymaking will depend upon our willingness to hear these hard truths rather than to be comforted by falsehoods.

Even though projections of future climate change have moderated considerably in recent years, the human influence on climate remains real and poses risks to our collective future. Accelerating the pace of decarbonization remains important as we also seek to broaden energy access, secure supply, and reduce consumer costs while limiting environmental impacts.

But we won’t achieve accelerated decarbonization by spinning stories of policy success that simply are not true. As the UNFCCC put it this week, “increasing threats to information integrity represents one of the defining challenges of our time.”

SUCH AS THIS BS

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*To read more about the profound implications for climate science and policy of moderating projections of future carbon dioxide emissions, have a look at this THB post from two years ago:

## Jaws of the Snake

Roger Pielke Jr.

November 13, 2023

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DUCK 12 25

rogerpielkejr.substack.com

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com › p › energy-realism-and-climate-pragmatism

Energy Realism and Climate Pragmatism at the Department of Energy

Nov 19, 2024Chris Wright testifying before Congress in 2024. He's a climate denier! That is the standard reaction of many in the climate lobby when encountering views on climate and energy deviating from the monomaniacal view that climate is the world's single-most important issue.

Images for PIELKE CHRIS WRIGHT

AI images: show

"There Is A Design Problem In Climate Policy" Featuring Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. & Chris Wright ...

He’s a climate denier!

That is the standard reaction of many in the climate lobby when encountering views on climate and energy deviating from the monomaniacal view that climate is the world’s single-most important issue.

Reactions from climate advocates to the nomination of Chris Wright,1 CEO of Liberty Energy, to serve in Donald Trump’s cabinet as Secretary of Energy have followed this tired and lazy pattern. Here are some examples:

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kRJb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2ddeec4e-da1f-400c-af7a-0fe691a0d5e6_389x370.png)What even is a “climate crisis skeptic”?

The irony here is that Wright’s views on energy and climate, which he has expressed often and in detail, are largely consistent with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The views of his critics? Not so much.

Let’s take a look at what Wright has said about climate change in a recent 180-page report called Bettering Human Lives. Wright acknowledges two fundamental realities — climate change is real and fossil fuels have enormous benefits:

The expansion of the global energy supply by adding fossil fuels has greatly improved the human condition; it also brought the risk of climate change caused by increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Wright’s plain vanilla views on climate change are consistent with the most recent IPCC assessment:

Human industrial and agricultural activity increases greenhouse gas concentrations and is contributing significantly to a warming trend that earth has experienced over the past 150 years. Total warming over this period has been about 1.3°C (2.3°F).

Wright pulls no punches when characterizing the state of public discussion of climate change, and he is not wrong:

Climate change discourse is unfortunately rife with false claims and alarmist proclamations from all quarters.

Wright cites the IPCC on extreme weather, which — as THB readers know well — expresses findings that contradict many claims made in support of climate activism:

[R]eports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) actually show no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or weather-related droughts.

Wright supports pragmatic climate policies that reduce emissions:

Two things are required for positive progress on climate change: a sober understanding of the issue and the tradeoffs required, and massive improvements in energy technologies that can deliver low-carbon energy that is also low cost, reliable and secure.

Wright clearly differs from many climate activists in his view that while climate change poses real risks, it is one of many problems facing humanity, and not a crisis or existential threat:

LOMBORGIAN

Climate change is a real and global challenge that we should and can address. However, representing it as the most urgent threat to humanity today displaces concerns about more pressing threats of malnutrition, access to clean water, air pollution, endemic diseases, and human rights, among others.

As an energy executive, Wright has a deep understanding of the global energy economy, and he calls for “energy sobriety”:

:{Politicians, policymakers, pundits, and the press talk endlessly about how solar, wind, and batteries can transform our whole energy system and address the climate crisis. The reality is that these politically favored technologies have not, will not, and cannot replace most of the energy services and raw materials provided by hydrocarbons. Today they are deployed almost exclusively in the electricity sector, which delivers only 20% of total primary energy consumption. Manufacturing is the largest user of energy globally, mostly in the form of process heat that cannot effectively be supplied via electricity. Further, the ultra-high-power density required for the likes of aviation, global shipping, long-haul trucking, and mobile mining equipment have no viable replacements in sight.

Critical materials from hydrocarbons provide nitrogen fertilizer that is responsible for fully half of global food production. In addition, hydrocarbons supply critical materials to produce plastics and petrochemicals that are essential components of modern lives. They also provide asphalt, paints, lubricants, cosmetics, 60% of global clothing fiber, and thousands of other products. Without hydrocarbons we would have no way to produce the vast quantities of steel and cement that undergird our built world. Even wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries are made of hydrocarbon materials and require huge amounts of energy from hydrocarbons to supply the high-temperature process heat required for their fabrication. Energy sobriety is desperately needed.}:

What does DOE do, anyway? Here is a capsule summary:

In 1977, the establishment of the Department of Energy brought most Federal energy activities under one umbrella and provided the framework for a comprehensive and balanced national energy plan. While the Nuclear Regulatory Commission maintained its regulatory duties in areas like reactor safety and radiation protection, the Department of Energy undertook responsibility for long-term, high-risk research and development of energy technology, Federal power marketing, energy conservation, the nuclear weapons program, energy regulatory programs, and a central energy data collection and analysis program.

The figure below shows the major elements of the FY2025 DOE budget request to Congress.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FOwV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6f8c8f0d-a9cd-4807-8056-5a9ac332241a_854x574.png)DOE FY2025 Budget Request

DOE is not responsible for “drill, baby, drill” — That would be the Department of the Interior. DOE is however one of the leading science agencies of the federal government, overseeing more than $20 billion in research and development.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3bhU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1c4061b2-f42b-48ee-b081-8d2e6cadc751_1160x720.png)Source: AAAS

DOE is also home to 17 national labs around the country.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WqCU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc67e0f02-f8ba-45e0-ab47-52de3fe713bd_610x456.png)

DOE is focused on the science, technology, and policy dimensions of energy and not on the federal government’s oversight and management of energy resources. In that role, having a climate pragmatist and energy realist as DOE secretary will serve the agency and the nation well.

Rather than call Chris Wright silly juvenile names, the climate community should offer to work with Wright to help deliver — in his words — “massive improvements in energy technologies that can deliver low-carbon energy that is also low cost, reliable and secure.” That is a goal we all should support.

Bonus! Here is a video of me and Chris Wright talking energy and climate just over a year ago (for those who prefer to read, a transcript can be found here):

veriten.com

Veriten partners with corporate and financial customers drawn from a full spectrum of energy, power, mining, industrial, and technology companies and provides custom research and strategic advice for management teams and boards. Our work at Veriten is in constant pursuit of understanding where the energy world is headed, with a practical and commercial focus on the next ten years. This work includes identifying the opportunities and challenges associated with societal ambitions, government policies, engineering and physical realities, and geopolitics, as well as the impact of new technologies, capital flows, and, importantly, financial returns. We have intentionally built a community of diverse perspectives that includes great friends, great energy thinkers, experienced energy leaders, and leading energy companies to create a powerful network and collaborative environment that we can call on to try and crack the code to the next ten years in energy.

Chris Wright - en energiminister der ved noget om energi og klima | Klimarealisme.dk

klimarealisme.dk

Senate confirms fossil fuel CEO Chris Wright as energy secretary. He vows to 'unleash' US resources

Senate confirms fossil fuel CEO Chris Wright as energy secretary. He vows to 'unleash' US resources

cpr.org

Senate confirms Trump pick for Energy secretary Chris Wright

usatoday.com

Climate Depot

https://www.climatedepot.com › 2024 › 11 › 21 › roger-pielke-jr-on-chris-wright-energy-realism-climate-pragmatism-at-the-dept-of-energy

Roger Pielke Jr. on Chris Wright: Energy Realism & Climate Pragmatism ...

Nov 21, 2024By Roger Pielke Jr. Excerpt: He's a climate denier! That is the standard reaction of many in the climate lobby when encountering views on climate and energy deviating from the monomaniacal view tha…

Veriten

https://veriten.com › guest › chris-wright

Chris Wright Archives - Veriten

On Wednesday in Denver, we had the pleasure of joining Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. (UC Boulder) and Chris Wright, CEO and Chairman of Liberty Energy for a live discussion as part of Liberty Energy's "Liberty and Energy" Presentation Series.

Watts Up With That?

https://wattsupwiththat.com › 2024 › 11 › 20 › there-is-a-design-problem-in-climate-policy-featuring-dr-roger-pielke-jr-chris-wright-liberty-2

"There Is a Design Problem In Climate Policy" Featuring Dr. Roger ...

Nov 20, 2024Veriten On Wednesday in Denver, we had the pleasure of joining Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. (UC Boulder) and Chris Wright, CEO and Chairman of Liberty Energy for a live discussion as part of Liberty Energy's "Liberty and Energy" Presentation Series. Roger is a Professor in the Environmental Studies department at the University of Colorado Boulder and the author of "The Honest Broker ...

YouTube

https://www.youtube.com › watch?v=n4GULReQPFs

The Politics of Climate Science | Roger Pielke, Jr. - YouTube

"There Is A Design Problem In Climate Policy" Featuring Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. & Chris Wright, Liberty 1.8K views 1 year ago 43:06 Now playing

heatmap.news

https://heatmap.news › climate › chris-wright-mind?next_url= › climate › chris-wright-mind

Inside the Mind of Energy Nominee Chris Wright - heatmap.news

Jan 2, 2025Pielke called both Wright and Doug Burgum, Trump's nominee for Secretary of the Interior and the designated head of a planned National Energy Council "super competent. They know energy, and that's a fantastic starting point," he told me.

American Enterprise Institute - AEI

https://www.aei.org › articles › energy-realism-and-climate-pragmatism-at-the-department-of-energy

Energy Realism and Climate Pragmatism at the Department of Energy

Nov 19, 2024Reactions from climate advocates to the nomination of Chris Wright, 1 CEO of Liberty Energy, to serve in Donald Trump's cabinet as Secretary of Energy have followed this tired and lazy pattern.

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com › posts › chris-wright-b8370a17b_there-is-a-design-problem-in-climate-policy-activity-7113619155722924032-vnWd

Chris Wright's Post - LinkedIn

At our recent Liberty & Energy Breakfast, we hosted Roger Pielke Jr., a self-proclaimed "undisciplined academic" and leading expert on extreme weather phenomena.

Veriten

https://veriten.com › guest › roger-pielke-jr

Roger Pielke Jr. Archives - Veriten

"There Is A Design Problem In Climate Policy" Featuring Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. & Chris Wright, Liberty On Wednesday in Denver, we had the pleasure of joining Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. (UC Boulder) and Chris Wright, CEO and Chairman of Liberty Energy for a live discussion as part of Liberty Energy's "Liberty and Energy" Presentation Series.

rogerpielkejr.substack.com

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com › p › a-red-team-climate-report

A Red Team Climate Report - by Roger Pielke Jr.

Jul 30, 2025DOE Secretary Chris Wright commissioned the report and characterizes it in the report's foreword as follows: The rise of human flourishing over the past two centuries is a story worth celebrating. Yet we are told—relentlessly—that the very energy systems that enabled this progress now pose an existential threat.

WRIGHT HACK STUDY BS

Climate | Department of Energy

DOWNLOAD DOE_Critical_Review_of_Impacts_of_GHG_Emissions_on_the_US_Climate_July_2025

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a new assessment of climate science written by five scientists who have long-argued that climate science assessments have overlooked key issues.

The report — A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate — was released yesterday accompanying the Trump Administration’s announcement that it was reconsidering the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases.

While the authors do not use this terminology, I’m calling this report a “red team” report because it explicitly seeks to challenge aspects of climate science and policy in order to motivate debate and discussion. One of the report’s authors, Steve Koonin, has long argued for a “red team” approach for improving climate science assessments.

I certainly agree with Koonin that legitimate views and voices have been excluded from major climate assessments, as leaders in the community have sought to present a tidy story, convenient for climate politics. However, rather than having dueling assessments, I would much prefer that scientific assessments be run as big tents, with the full diversity of views included, highlight not just areas of consensus, but also areas of uncertainty, disagreement, and ignorance. Climate science has seen far too much gatekeeping.

In the coming weeks I’ll provide several opportunities here at THB to discuss and debate the report — All are welcome, and substantive disagreement is encouraged.

DOE Secretary Chris Wright commissioned the report and characterizes it in the report’s foreword as follows:

The rise of human flourishing over the past two centuries is a story worth celebrating. Yet we are told—relentlessly—that the very energy systems that enabled this progress now pose an existential threat. Hydrocarbon-based fuels, the argument goes, must be rapidly abandoned or else we risk planetary ruin.

That view demands scrutiny. That’s why I commissioned this report: to encourage a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy. With my technical background, I’ve reviewed reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. government’s assessments, and the academic literature. I’ve also engaged with many climate scientists, including the authors of this report.

What I’ve found is that media coverage often distorts the science. Many people walk away with a view of climate change that is exaggerated or incomplete. To provide clarity and balance, I asked a diverse team of independent experts to critically review the current state of climate science, with a focus on how it relates to the United States.

I didn’t select these authors because we always agree—far from it. In fact, they may not always agree with each other. But I chose them for their rigor, honesty, and willingness to elevate the debate. I exerted no control over their conclusions. What you’ll read are their words, drawn from the best available data and scientific assessments.

Wright explains his view of climate change:

Climate change is real, and it deserves attention. But it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty. As someone who values data, I know that improving the human condition depends on expanding access to reliable, affordable energy. Climate change is a challenge—not a catastrophe.

Today, I see on social media many climate scientists who often appear in the media responding to the report with name calling. We won’t do that here at THB and the comments will be tightly moderated.

:{:{One of the report’s authors, Judith Curry,:(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}: has a very interesting blog post on the report. Curry explains that the DOE and the author team (the “Climate Working Group” or CWG) is interested in comments and critique:}:

DOE welcomes public comments on this report and is setting up a website for comments. The CWG expects to expend considerable time responding to the comments. We’ve already seen a pretty broad range of comments from the DOE scientists; it will be interesting to see what the what the public comments look like

Speaking from the perspective of individuals who have commented on the IPCC and NCA reports only to see our comments ignored, we plan to take a different approach. Rather than primarily seeking to defend our Report, we regard the open comments as an opportunity for dialogue, learning, and clarification of areas of disagreement. We expect to spend considerable time and effort in responding to the comments.

When you read the report you’ll see that my peer-reviewed work with colleagues is widely cited, and you’ll also see multiple references to THB.

The full report can be found here and I look forward to engaging with THB readers in the comments. Also, let me know any requests for future posts on the substance of the report.

*Before you jump into the DOE report, please click that “❤️ Like”. More likes mean that THB rises in the Substack algorithm and gets in front of more readers. Thanks!

*Comments invited!

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attacks mann hotez pro sci bk 10 25

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/bunk-from-the-brink

Over at The Climate Brink, Andrew Dessler and Zeke Hausfather have taken on the role of self-appointed sheriffs of climate science, at times in highly partisan and personal terms. Recently, Dessler, along with another scientist, Robert Kopp, and dozens of others, prepared a lengthy response to the Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group (DOE CWG) report.

Today, Dessler posted a further critique of the DOE CWG —Is this the most embarrassing error in the DOE Climate Working Group Report? Dessler’s post is remarkable for the simple fact that he reveals in great detail that he does not understand the science he is policing.

The focus of Dessler’s post is his claim that the DOE CWG authors fail to appreciate the distinction between the concepts detection and attribution and time of emergence — and this represents “the central flaw” in the DOE CWG report.

In fact, as I show undeniably below, Dessler’s post reveals that he actually does not understand IPCC terminology or its application. Irony abounds. Someone should be embarrassed, and it’s not the DOE CWG authors.

Let’s dive into the details.

Dessler presents a definition of the time of emergence of a climate signal that is completely at odds with the definition used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dessler then uses his bespoke definition to argue that the DOE CWG authors made an “embarrassing error” by not employing his bespoke definition, rather than instead relying on the IPCC.

Here is Dessler’s bespoke definition (emphases in original):

Emergence is all about the size of the influence. It means that the climate has shifted so much that the average value of some parameter is larger than the largest value in a pre-industrial climate. In other words, you’ve emerged into a new climate.

The IPCC, in stark contrast, has a very different definition of the time of emergence(emphases in original):

Time when a specific anthropogenic signal related to climate change is statistically detected to emerge from the background noise of natural climate variability in a reference period, for a specific region (Hawkins and Sutton, 2012).

Lest there be any doubt, the IPCC in its definition cites Hawkins and Sutton (2012), who explain:

The signal of anthropogenic climate change is emerging against the background of natural climate variability. Only when the signal of change is of sufficient magnitude relative to this background variability can we be confident that a significant change has been detected. Such detection is a necessary step in the process of attributing a particular change to a specific cause, such as the observed rise in greenhouse gas concentrations [Hegerl et al., 2007].

Hawkins and Sutton (2012) explain that the time of emergence is a forward looking concept, in contrast to detection, which is backwards looking (emphasis added):

A headline conclusion from the IPCC AR4 was that “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”. Of greater importance for adaptation to climate change are changes on the regional and local scales that affect people, economies and ecosystems. However, on these smaller scales natural variability is larger, making detection more difficult. Some detection and attribution studies that have addressed these scales have obtained positive results [Hegerl et al., 2007; Stott et al., 2010], but for many regions and variables the signal of anthropogenic change has yet to clearly emerge from the ‘noise’ of natural climate variability.

So when will the signal emerge? And where and how?

Under the definitions of the IPCC, when looking at the past climate, detection of change (at a particular statistical level of confidence) and emergence of a signal of change (employing various possible methods) are conceptually identical, even if specific methodologies and results may vary.

....

Sign in linked in

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OMG

field eror bad code?

gmail

 Marc Morano

Weekly update ⋅ August 4, 2023

NEWS 

How data is manipulated to sell the climate hysteria narrative | Marc Morano - Rebel News

Rebel News

... pick and choose small samples of data to make extreme weather events seem like bigger issue than they are, says Climate Depot's Marc Morano.

:{:{}:

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New York's Falling Tower Of Pizzas - Forbes

Forbes

ClimateDepot.com's publisher, Marc Morano, compared the emissions of a wood-burning stove with the emissions from the private plane routinely used ...

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Strangely, an awful lot of these "climate change" wildfire were started by arsonists, not excess CO2

HotAir

... are other forces at work' | Climate Depot https://t.co/XJtGThKJ69 pic.twitter.com/DxDJ64gxPu. — Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) July 29, 2023.

:{:{}:

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HotAir

ED MORRISSEY SHOW

PODCASTS

NEWSLETTERS

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Premium

Strangely, an awful lot of these "climate change" wildfire were started by arsonists, not excess CO2

TWITTER 12:35 PM on July 30, 2023

fox chryon is it gw or arson? watters? twet

Watch: Morano on Fox News w/ Jesse Watters on how arsonists are responsible for ‘climate’ wildfires – Not ‘climate change’ – ‘There are other forces at work’ | Climate Depot https://climatedepot.com/2023/07/29/watch-morano-on-fox-news-w-jesse-watters-on-how-arsonists-are-responsible-for-climate-wildfires-not-climate-change-there-are-other-forces-at-work/

bad code?

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https://www.climatedepot.com/2023/07/29/watch-morano-on-fox-news-w-jesse-watters-on-how-arsonists-are-responsible-for-climate-wildfires-not-climate-change-there-are-other-forces-at-work/

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no lnx pix vid twt

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Watch: Morano on Fox News w/ Jesse Watters on how arsonists are responsible for ‘climate’ wildfires – Not ‘climate change’ – ‘There are other forces at work’

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Fox News Channel - Jesse Watters Primetime - Broadcast July 28, 2023 - Are arsonists responsible for global wildfires? 'The Green Fraud' author Marc Morano says there are 'other forces at work' as wildfires rage across the planet on 'Jesse Watters Primetime.'

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Morano: "Arson, of course, happened in the United States. Jesse, you mentioned the Yosemite fires. What that was a Democratic donor who had actually given to Democratic candidates started the fire. So we have Democratic politicians blaming wildfires on climate change when in reality it was one of their donors who actually started the wildfire.  And this goes on in Australia 42 percent of the Australian fires were said to be caused by mankind. They've had 700 unnatural fires started and over 250 arrests a few years ago in Australia. 

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This is a global problem of people starting fires. Now is it climate change? Well, this would be the equivalent of blowing up a dam or sabotaging a dam and allowing a valley to flood and then saying 'Oh look, climate change is causing more floods.'  There are other forces at work here, Jesse."

Jesse Watters: "All right Marc. Thank you so much. You're always on top of this. We appreciate it."

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By: Marc Morano - Climate Depot July 29, 2023 

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Fox News Channel – Jesse Watters Primetime – Broadcast July 28, 2023 – 04:26

Are arsonists responsible for global wildfires? ‘The Green Fraud’ author Marc Morano says there are ‘other forces at work’ as wildfires rage across the planet on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime.’

Rough Transcript:

Jesse Watters: Author of The Green Fraud Marc Morano joins me now. So Marc, can you distinguish between an arsonist fire or winds blowing and an already hot forest?

Marc Morano: No, not really. It looks like they started these fires, the arsonists at the worst possible times, with high winds, with dry conditions, with heat. So it sounds like they may even know what they’re doing. And there are two different islands in Greece, there’s Rhodes island and Corfu island, and in both of them now, the officials are saying these are intentionally started and they actually said they’re basically sick individuals who get pleasure out of causing other people pain.

Arson of course, happened in the United States. Jesse, you mentioned the Yosemite fires. What that was a Democratic donor who had actually given to Democratic candidates started the fire. So we have Democratic politicians blaming wildfires on climate change when in reality it was one of their donors who actually started the wildfire.

And this goes on in Australia 42 percent of the Australian fires were said to be caused by mankind. They’ve had 700 unnatural fires started and over 250 arrests a few years ago in Australia.

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This is a global problem of people starting fires. Now is it climate change? Well, this would be the equivalent of blowing up a dam or sabotaging a dam and allowing a valley to flood and then saying ‘Oh look, climate change is causing more floods.’  There are other forces at work here, Jesse.

Jesse Watters: All right Marc. Thank you so much. You’re always on top of this. We appreciate it. Have a great weekend.

Marc Morano: Thank you, Jesse.

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Background Info: 

Most fires in Greece were started ‘by human hand’, government says

The Guardian, 28 July 2023Most of the 667 fires that have erupted across Greece in recent weeks were started “by human hand”, the country’s senior climate crisis official has said. As the Mediterranean country emerges from an unprecedented, 15-day period of heatwave-induced infernos, the scale of the destruction is finally being laid bare.

While weather conditions have been different from any other year – with experts calling the first three weeks of July the hottest on record – most of the fires could have been prevented, the government claimed on Friday.  Vassilis Kikilias, the Greek minister of climate crisis and civil protection, told reporters:

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 “During this time 667 fires erupted, that is more than 60 fires a day, almost all over the country. Unfortunately, the majority were ignited by human hand, either by criminal negligence or intent.  Kikilias said that, in certain places, blazes had broken out at numerous points in close proximity at the same time, suggesting the involvement of arsonists intent on spreading fires further.   He added: “The difference with other years were the weather conditions. Climate change, which yielded a historic and unprecedented heatwave, is here. There were very few days where the extreme weather was not combined with strong winds.”

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LARGE PIX OF COVER DRAMA

Full story

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Spoof headline:

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Image

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https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/set-by-human-hands-are-arsonists-burning-rhodes/

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‘Fires are set by human hands. Whether it is due to negligence or fraud will be seen [but] people have been summoned for statements and others will be summoned. As soon as we have complete information – because the investigation is in full swing, we will make announcements…’ said Vassilis Vathrakogiannis, speaking on behalf of the Rhodes Fire Department.

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Rhodes has been burning for seven days, while other tourist locations, such as Corfu, face smaller localised fires. Corfu’s fires are also believed to have been deliberately lit, with the Deputy Mayor for Tourism and Construction speaking to the BBC about suspicions that they were started ‘by a group of people’. ‘[They] get pleasure out of this with the pain of other people,’ he said.

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Fewer Europeans would die if they installed a couple of air-conditioners instead of basking under ceiling fans like it’s 1976.

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“Fires are set by human hands. Whether it is due to negligence or fraud will be seen.”

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The Mediterranean is on fire as countries have been caught unprepared for the inevitable impact of climate change due to their disastrous capitalist policies. Austerity measures have hampered responses to the deadly wildfires that have paralyzed the region

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Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni has branded EU targets “climate fundamentalism”.

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Thousands of people evacuated as devastating wildfire threats Rhodes, Greece.

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Massive explosion in a NATO ammunition warehouse in Central Greece amid wildfires.

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When climate change doesn’t increase global fires… Activists take it upon themselves. There is NO climate emergency but there is an emergency surrounding mental health and climate anxiety that is leading people to start fires to save the planet.

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Corfu’s fires are also believed to have been deliberately lit, with the Deputy Mayor for Tourism and Construction speaking to the BBC about suspicions that they were started ‘by a group of people’. ‘[They] get pleasure out of this with the pain of other people,’ he said.

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Greece has been here before. Many people were arrested and charged over the 2021 fires in Greece, which were considered to be some of the worst on record. Some of the blazes were described as a ‘deliberate organised criminal activity’. In the devastating fires of 2007, arson was listed as a major cause of the blaze and some of the blazes were even suspected to be a form of terror attack. Charges of arson and murder were eventually brought. NOTE PASSIVE NO DETAIL

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As over 32,000 precautionary evacuations are carried out for the fires on Rhodes and surrounding areas, the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told his nation that they had ‘more difficult days ahead’.

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/07/24/greece-wildfire-island-thousands-evacuation-updates/70454961007/

Yiannis Artopios, a fire service spokesperson on Rhodes, told Greek television network Skai TV that authorities are currently questioning suspected arsonists.

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“Fires are not sparked on their own,” he told Skai TV. “They are triggered by the human hand, be it intentionally or not. We currently have several people being questioned in connection with their probable involvement.”

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In Corfu, the region’s deputy mayor for tourism and construction told the BBC the fires there were started by “a group of people.” Chariton Koutscouris said officials had a “suspicion” fires would be started this weekend.

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Officials are said to have been warned on Friday by the fire department chief that someone who started two fires last week would start another.

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“He was right,” Koutscouris said, adding that the apparent arsonists “get pleasure out of this with the pain of the other people.”

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Global wildfires are not historically unusual and have been part of the natural forest cycle for thousands of years and contribute to their regeneration.

But the media blaming ‘climate change’ anyway — even when humans start the fires!

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Arson and poor green policies of forest management cause many forest fires and increase CO2 emissions! see: U.S. Geological Survey: 2018 California Wildfires Emitted as Much CO2 as an Entire Year’s Worth of Calif. Electricity

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Recently, as Democratic politicians were blaming wildfires on climate change, it was revealed that it was Democratic donors that caused the wildfires.

Australia had the same issues with arson!

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Aussie police announce a crackdown on arsonists after investigations showed 716 fires this season did not occur naturally – 267 already charged with arson offences – The Daily Telegraph: Serial arsonists will face the full force of the law after NSW Police announced a crackdown on fire bugs in the wake of investigations which showed 716 fires this season did not occur naturally. Of that number it is unclear how many were the work of arsonists and what was the result of negligent behaviour. Dedicated investigators will now trawl through evidence to separate the two.

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Aussie ABC says Arson = 1%. NSW police say 42% of fires are man-made. 9% are ‘natural’. Rest unknown. (So far)

Australia’s Epic Fires Caused By Bad Forestry And Arson, Not ‘Climate Change’

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Then the odd thing about this is if you look at all the data on wildfires, there are dramatic drops from 100 years ago in the United States.

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There is no trend in wildfires, no trend at all the extreme weather, but it doesn’t matter. This is the narrative, and if they need an arsonist to help The Science along apparently they’re not beneath doing that at this point. And again, this is the same thing — blaming the wildfires on climate

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The Reality is Global & U.S. fires are declining.

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From my 2018 book: ‘Less fire today than centuries ago’ – Scientists, studies counter claim that wildfires due to ‘climate change’ – Book Excerpt – “There is increasing evidence that there is overall less fire in the landscape today than there has been centuries ago, although the magnitude of this reduction still needs to be examined in more detail.”…

“The ‘wildfire problem’ is essentially more a social than a natural one.” Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid found that “climate change” is not to blame for increased forest fires in the Mediterranean basin.”…

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“In the United States, wildfires are also due in part to a failure to thin forests or remove dead and diseased trees.

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You are being conned: Data, studies & UN IPCC all reveal Canadian fires not due to ‘climate change’ – ‘There has been a significant & continuing decline in the number of fires’

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr: What the media won’t tell you about … Wildfires – ‘Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries’

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Pielke Jr.: “The IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change

Globally, emissions from wildfires has decreased globally over recent decades, as well as in many regions

Canada wildfire trends show no increase in recent decades

Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries

Wildfires are a part of the natural eco-system.”

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TWIT LABEL HONEST BROKER?

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Dr. Roger Pielke Jr: What the media won’t tell you about … Wildfires – ‘Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries’

Pielke Jr.: "The IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change

Globally, emissions from wildfires has decreased globally over recent decades, as well as in many regions

Canada wildfire trends show no increase in recent decades

Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries

Wildfires are a part of the natural eco-system."

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By: Admin - Climate Depot June 13, 2023 

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https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/06/09/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-wildfires-roger-pielke-jr/#more-64678

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Roger Pielke Jr’s take on the Canada wildfires:

image S BEAR

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Wildfire, common to many healthy ecosystems, is a particularly challenging problem for society because of its impacts on property and health. It is also challenging because people like to locate themselves in fire-prone places and do things that ignite fires. We have learned through hard experience that complete suppression of wildfire is not the best policy — despite what Smokey Bear says — as it can actually lead to even greater and more harmful wildfire events. These dynamics together make wildfire a challenging issue for policy.

This week, wildfire smoke from fires in Canada have drifted south along the eastern seaboard of the United States, affecting New York City and Washington, DC, and correspondingly capturing a lot of media attention. The event should offer a teachable moment on the complexities of climate and the challenges of adapting to a volatile world.

With this post I discuss some of the aspects of wildfires that I see as missing in the public discussion. I start with what the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says about wildfire, discuss readily available data on wildfire trends and conclude with the complexities of policy in the face of interconnected human-environment dynamics.

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-783?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=119454&post_id=126926234&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

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As we have come to expect from Roger, this is another thorough, well researched and objective analysis. He makes the following points:

The IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change

Globally, emissions from wildfires has decreased globally over recent decades, as well as in many regions

Canada wildfire trends show no increase in recent decades

Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries

Wildfires are a part of the natural eco-system.

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https://www.climatedepot.com/2023/06/13/dr-roger-pielke-jr-what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-wildfires-wildfires-used-to-be-much-more-extensive-in-past-centuries/

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Bjorn Lomborg: Climate alarmists falsely claim the world is literally on fire – Satellites reveal global area burned annually has trended downward in past 2 decades

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Lomborg on Global wildfires: For more than two decades, satellites have recorded fires across the planet’s surface. The data are unequivocal: Since the early 2000s, when 3% of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned annually has trended downward.  In 2022, the last year for which there are complete data, the world hit a record low of 2.2% burned area…The latest report by the United Nations’ climate panel doesn’t attribute the area burned globally by wildfires to climate change.  Instead, it vaguely suggests the weather conditions that promote wildfires are becoming more common in some places. Still, the report finds that the change in these weather conditions won’t be detectable above the natural noise even by the end of the century. …

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America wildfires: While the complete data aren’t in for 2023, global tracking up to July 29 by the Global Wildfire Information System shows that more land has burned in the Americas than usual. But much of the rest of the world has seen lower burning — Africa and especially Europe.  Globally, the GWIS shows that burned area is slightly below the average between 2012 and 2022, a period that already saw some of the lowest rates of burned area.

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Australian Wildfires: Likewise, while Australia’s wildfires in 2019-20 earned media headlines such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Australia Burns,” the satellite data show this was a selective narrative. The burning was extraordinary in two states but extraordinarily small in the rest of the country. Since the early 2000s, when 8% of Australia caught fire, the area of the country torched each year has declined. The 2019-20 fires scorched 4% of Australian land, and this year the burned area will likely be even less.

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When reading headlines about fires, remember the other climate scare tactics that proved duds. Polar bears were once the poster cubs for climate action, yet are now estimated to be more populous than at any time in the past half-century.  We were told climate change would produce more hurricanes, yet satellite data shows that the number of hurricanes globally since 1980 has trended slightly downward.

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Filed under: astrology, avg, heatwave, mediacd, mediacdf, wildfires

« Climate Depot home

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2023 6 grassley?

his niche/ gig seems to be attack IPCC

victim

==

9 pp pielke

https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Dr.%20Roger%20Pielke%20-%20Testimony%20-%20Senate%20Budget%20Committee.pdf

Four Take-Home Points 1. At the outset, I emphasize explicitly and unequivocally that human-caused climate change is real, that it poses significant risks to society and the environment, and that various policy responses in the form of mitigation and adaptation are necessary and make good sense. 2. The best and likely, the only, antidote to misinformation is accurate information. Successfully producing, communicating, legitimizing, and trusting accurate information to inform policy requires upholding standards of scientific integrity. 3. Unfortunately, in important areas of climate science such standards have not been upheld and the self-correcting function of science has short-circuited. In my testimony, I illustrate examples of shortfalls, with a focus on the persistent misuse of outdated and implausible scenarios. 4. Concerns expressed about misinformation are sometimes weaponized by politicians, journalists, and experts, ironically and pathologically, to spread misinformation and to undermine accurate information.

...

For a deeper elaboration of my views on the science and policy of climate, please see my book The Climate Fix (2010).Nothing in the testimony that follows should be interpreted as downplaying the importance of climate change or policy responses to it. In fact, the issue is so crucial that we should expect nothing less than the absolute highest standards of scientific integrity in research and the information being provided to policymakers...

p 4

long-term future to produce projections of future changes in climate, their impacts on society and the environment, and the consequences of alternative possible policy actions. 11 However, the scenarios that are currently prioritized in climate research and in policy analyses are badly outdated, and for a range of reasons have not been updated.12 Carbon dioxide emissions in the real world are already – today -- at a level far less than those projected in the most commonly-used climate scenarios found in research and assessment. This can be clearly seen in the figure below which shows baseline scenarios of the IPCC for carbon dioxide emissions (from energy and industry) to 2100.13 The overwhelmingly most-used scenario in climate research and cited in the assessments of the IPCC is the highest curve on the graph (called SSP5-Baseline, or SSP5-RCP8.5). Under current policies, the real world is currently following a trajectory consistent with the blue curve titled “Stated Policies.”14 The difference between the two is wide and getting wider. Every day that we continue to prioritize the most extreme scenario in research and policy is a day that we mislead ourselves...

The most used climate scenario in research and assessment is the RCP8.5 scenario (meaning 8.5 watts per meter2 ) which represents a global temperature increase of 4.8°C above 1850-1900, according to the IPCC. 16 The real world is actually tracking below a RCP4.5 scenario (meaning 4.5 watts per meter2 ) which represents a global temperature increase of 2.9°C above 1850- 1900. 17 Here is why this matters: Much if not most policy guidance relies on the outdated RCP8.5 scenario as our current trajectory and a RCP4.5 scenario as indicating policy success. For example, the 2022 White House White Paper titled, “Climate Risk Exposure: An Assessment of the Federal Government’s Financial Risks to Climate Change” used the RCP8.5 scenario to represent where we are heading, the RCP4.5 scenario to represent successful climate policy, and the difference between the two to represent the benefits of mitigation.18,19...

The pervasive misuse of climate scenarios is not a unique failure of scientific integrity in climate

science. Here are several other important examples, documented in detail at the links provided:

• Misrepresentation of NOAA’s “billion-dollar disasters” as an indicator of climate

change;21

• Misuse of scenarios in the production of “social cost of carbon” estimates;22

• Promotional claims of disaster “event attribution” at odds with the IPCC;23

• Clear errors on tropical cyclone intensity in the IPCC AR6 report;

24 Confirmed by an

IPCC insider;25

• Misrepresentations of agricultural science by IPCC AR6;26

• Inaccurate IPCC AR6 challenges to the quality of NOAA’s hurricane “best track” data;27

• Conflicting claims between IPCC AR6 Working Groups 1 and 2;28

• IPCC AR6 claims in many places that the RCP8.5 is “business as usual”;29

• Misuse of extreme scenarios by the Network for Greening the Financial System;30

• False claims by the United Nations of increasing disasters;

31

Most of these examples are clear and unambiguous cases of information that are wrong or

misleading (as opposed to legitimate differences of judgment). There are enough examples of

failures of scientific integrity that the climate science community and those who oversee and

fund its research should take steps to ensure that quality is upheld....

Dr. Pielke- Senate Budget Testimony Page 7 of 9 21 June 2023

p7

  1. Concerns expressed about misinformation are sometimes weaponized by politicians,

journalists, and experts, ironically and pathologically, to spread misinformation and to

undermine accurate information.

In 2015, following testimony I delivered before both the House and the Senate summarizing

consensus conclusions of the IPCC, a member of Congress suggested that I may have been the

recipient of undisclosed funding from fossil fuel companies.He demanded that I be investigated

by my university. My university complied. I was investigated and the results were of course not

surprising to me – I was not the recipient of any funding from fossil fuel interests – openly or

hidden – and never had been. However, the very public accusation was enough to derail my work

and upset my career in ways that continue today.32

This is a good example of the creation of misinformation in the insinuation that I was receiving

payments from fossil fuel companies in exchange for expressing the results of peer-reviewed

science in my area of expertise. In this way, the substance of my research and testimony on

climate (and specifically on extreme weather and climate change) could easily be discounted as

misinformation paid for under-the-table by fossil fuel companies. Because my testimony was

based on the IPCC assessments, the creation of misinformation about me was used to turn robust

science and assessment into perceived misinformation, without confronting the IPCC assessment

itself.

My experiences are far too common. For instance, in Financial Times last week Oxford

professor Ben Caldecott, director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group, wrote of challenges

to academic freedom related to ESG research.

33 Specifically, he wrote,

. . . of instances where financial institutions and ESG data providers have sought to

undermine academic freedom. They have done this by trying to change the results of

research before publication, or have attempted to prevent it from being published at all, to

protect their products and services.

Harassment and intimidation, including threats of legal action and of funding being

withdrawn, have been used to bully universities and individual researchers. The

organisers of academic conferences have also been pressured to remove peer-reviewed

papers from schedules.

To cite another example, in 2020 several scholars published a paper in PNAS defending the use

of the most extreme RCP8.5 climate scenario as the most appropriate climate scenario to inform

policy.

34 It is of course common for researchers to disagree with each other’s work in the

literature, so a defense of RCP8.5 is neither unexpected nor inappropriate.

However, what was inappropriate was the authors’ failure to disclose an actual or perceived

financial conflict of interest. They were funded by McKinsey & Co., a consultancy that relies ...

heavily on RCP8.5 in its business promotion and services.35 In their funding disclosure

accompanying paper the authors declared “no competing interests.” This was false.

That PNAS study has been cited in other studies more than 500 times since it was published – a

rate of every other day – typically as justification for the continued use of the outdated and

implausible RCP8.5 scenario in research. Meantime, so far in 2023, about a dozen studies have

been published every day using the outdated RCP8.5 scenario, according to Google Scholar.

The mere fact that research is commissioned or funded by an interested party of course does not

mean that the research is improper or flawed, much less that it is misinformation. However, it is

standard practice in science to acknowledge funding and actual or perceived conflicts of interest,

as a basis for adding context to interpreting published research.

Climate research does not play by the same rules as, for instance, the medical sciences, in

disclosing or managing financial conflicts of interest. This is problematic in the context of many

billions of dollars devoted to climate advocacy and incentives found in philanthropy, business,

and government.36 Climate change is big business. Maintaining standards of scientific integrity

means that it is essential that everyone follow well-established standards of scientific integrity –

and this includes those funded by fossil fuel interests, renewable energy interests, and, in fact, all

interests.

Partisans may argue that the rules apply only to their opponents, and not their allies. They may

argue over which “side” is worse. Such behaviors are pathological – the simple fact is that

principles of scientific integrity apply to everyone.37 Anything less is a recipe for systemic

failures of scientific integrity and misinformation. Congress has an important role to play in

helping to ensure that standards of scientific integrity apply to everyone across the board.

---

WIKI SOME TALK HE EDITS OWN PAGE?

Talk:Roger A. Pielke Jr. - Wikipedia

EG These guys are really grasping at straws. When I testified before Senate EPW Jeffords was Chairman and Smith (NH) was ranking Republican. Smith was quite moderate on climate issues. Roger Pielke, Jr. 6 May 2007

Roger A. Pielke Jr. (born November 2, 1968) is an American political scientist and a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.[1] Before he was a professor of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and was the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.[2]

He previously served in the Environmental Studies Program and was a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) where he served as director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2007. Pielke was a visiting scholar at Oxford University's Saïd Business School in the 2007–2008 academic year.[3]

Pielke's research and views on climate change have been a subject of controversy.[4][5][6] Climate publications and scientists have accused him of spreading climate denial talking points and misinformation.[7]

Climate blog DeSmog lists Pielke in its Climate Disinformation Database.[8] Climate science blog Skeptical Science has accused him of spreading misinformation and misrepresenting scientific findings.[9] In a book review for Science Magazine, Kevin E. Trenberth criticized Pielke's work for mischaracterizing and "politicizing climate change science."[10]

A prolific writer, his interests include understanding the politicization of science; decision making under uncertainty; policy education for scientists in areas such as climate change, disaster mitigation, and world trade; and research on the governance of sports organizations, including FIFA and the NCAA.

Education and background

Pielke earned a B.A. in mathematics (1990), an M.A. in public policy (1992), and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to his positions at CU-Boulder, from 1993 to 2001 he was a staff scientist[11] in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From 2002 to 2004 Pielke was director of graduate studies for the CU-Boulder Graduate Program in Environmental Studies and in 2001 students selected him for the Outstanding Graduate Advisor Award. Pielke serves on numerous editorial boards and advisory committees, retains many professional affiliations, and sat on the board of directors of WeatherData, Inc. from 2001 to 2006. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Linköping University[12][13] and the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America.[14] In 2024 Pielke became a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.[15]

Professional writing

Pielke's early work was on the Space Shuttle program. In 1993 he argued that the shuttle was expensive and risky — that it was "probable" that another orbiter would be lost within 20–35 flights.[16] Shortly before the loss of Columbia he warned that loss of another shuttle was only a matter of time.[17] He has also been critical of the space station program.[18]

Pielke has also written extensively on climate change policy. He has written that he accepts the IPCC view of the underlying science, stating, "The IPCC has concluded that greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity are an important driver of changes in climate. And on this basis alone I am personally convinced that it makes sense to take action to limit greenhouse gas emissions."[19] He also writes, (in contradiction of the findings of the IPCC 6th assessment report ^[20]) that

"Any conceivable emissions reductions policies, even if successful, cannot have a perceptible impact on the climate for many decades", and from this he concludes that, "In coming decades the only policies that can effectively be used to manage the immediate effects of climate variability and change will be adaptive."[21][22]

On the issues of hurricanes and climate change he has argued that the trend in increasing damage from hurricanes is primarily due to societal and economic factors (chiefly an increase in wealth density), rather than change in the frequency and intensity.[23]

A "Guide to Climate Skeptics" published by Foreign Policy notes that Pielke's published views have led to him being considered by some a "denier" of climate change and by others an "alarmist".[4] In October 2016, in a hacked email disclosed by WikiLeaks,[24] Judd Legum states that a ThinkProgress blog was instrumental in his firing from the FiveThirtyEight website.[25]

In April 2015, Pielke joined with a group issuing An Ecomodernist Manifesto.[26][27] The other authors were: John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Stewart Brand, Barry Brook. Ruth DeFries, Erle Ellis, Christopher Foreman, David Keith, Martin Lewis, Mark Lynas, Ted Nordhaus, Rachel Pritzker, Joyashree Roy, Mark Sagoff, Michael Shellenberger, Robert Stone, and Peter Teague.[28]

Pielke was named in a letter sent by Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) to institutions that employed scientists who had testified to Congress about climate change. The letter stated, "My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships," and requested information including the sources and amounts of outside funding for those scientists who had testified.[29]

Pielke rebuked Grijalva's investigation into alleged financial influence on him by fossil fuel companies. "I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have. Representative Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the US Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest... the Congressman and his staff, along with compliant journalists, are busy characterizing me in public as a 'climate skeptic' opposed to action on climate change. This of course is a lie. I have written a book calling for a carbon tax, I have publicly supported President Obama’s proposed EPA carbon regulations, and I have just published another book strongly defending the scientific assessment of the IPCC with respect to disasters and climate change." Pielke stated in a blog post published after Grijalva began demanding Pielke's employer to disclose all of Pielke's personal correspondence (including draft letters) as it related to climate science.[30]

Pielke contends that Democratic members of Congress were motivated by political and partisan interests. He believes that he was targeted due to his view that it is 'incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases'.[30]

Publications

See also

2024

NORWAY BIOLOGY

References

  1. AEI Bio
  2. "Roger Pielke, Jr". Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  3. "James Martin Fellows" (PDF). Summer Newsletter. Oxford Martin School. July 2009. p. 10. Retrieved 2012-08-09.
  4. Larsen, Christina & Keating, Joshua (26 Feb 2010). "The FP Guide to Climate Skeptics". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
  5. Emanuel, Kerry (2014-03-31). "MIT Climate Scientist Responds on Disaster Costs And Climate Change". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 2025-08-30.
  6. Botzen, W.J. Wouter; Estrada, Francisco; Tol, Richard S.J. (2021-03-15). "Methodological issues in natural disaster loss normalisation studies". Environmental Hazards. 20 (2): 112–115. doi:10.1080/17477891.2020.1830744. hdl:1871.1/4e5c2e17-6444-448d-a813-692f20b03a75. ISSN 1747-7891.
  7. "Wayback Machine" (PDF). www2.cgd.ucar.edu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-07-25. Retrieved 2025-08-30.
  8. Fisher, Michael. "Roger Pielke Jr". DeSmog. Retrieved 2025-08-29.
  9. "Climate misinformation by source: Roger Pielke Jr". Skeptical Science. Retrieved 2025-08-29.
  10. "Wayback Machine" (PDF). www2.cgd.ucar.edu. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-07-25. Retrieved 2025-08-30.
  11. Revkin, Andrew (2008-08-07). "Climate-Change Program to Aid Poor Nations Is Shut". New York Times. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
  12. "Roger Pielke Jr. awarded an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Linköping University". Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. 2012-03-20. Retrieved 2012-03-22.
  13. Falklöf, Lennart (2012-03-20). "Four Honorary Doctors: News & Events: Linköping University". Linköping University. Retrieved 2012-03-29.
  14. "Roger Pielke Jr. awarded 2012 GSA Public Service Award". Center for Science & Technology Policy Research. 2012-07-09. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  15. "Akademiets nye medlemmer 2024". Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi (in Norwegian Bokmål). 2024-03-06. Retrieved 2024-04-10.
  16. Pielke, Roger (May 1993). "A reappraisal of the Space Shuttle programme" (PDF). Space Policy. 9 (2): 133–157. Bibcode:1993SpPol...9..133P. doi:10.1016/0265-9646(93)90027-7. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  17. Pielke, Roger (2002-09-16). "When, not if, we lose another shuttle, what then?". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  18. Pielke, Roger; Byerly, Radford (1992). "The Space Shuttle Program: "Performance Versus Promise"" (PDF). In Radford Byerly (ed.). Space Policy Alternatives. Westview Press. pp. 223–247. ISBN 978-0813386188. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  19. Roger A. Pielke Jr. (2006-07-20). "Statement to the Committee on Government Reform of the United States House of Representatives" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-08-09.
  20. "IPCC Summary for Policymakers" (PDF).
  21. Pielke, Roger; Gwyn Prins; Steve Rayner; Daniel Sarewitz (2007-02-08). "Lifting the taboo on adaptation" (PDF). Nature. 445 (7128): 597–8. doi:10.1038/445597a. PMID 17287795. S2CID 4365996. Retrieved 2012-08-09.
  22. Pielke, Roger (1998). "Rethinking the role of adaptation in climate policy" (PDF). Global Environmental Change. 8 (2): 159–170. Bibcode:1998GEC.....8..159P. doi:10.1016/s0959-3780(98)00011-9. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  23. Pielke, Roger; Daniel Sarewitz (January 2005). "Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate" (PDF). Population and Environment. 26 (3): 255–268. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.207.1022. doi:10.1007/s11111-005-1877-6. S2CID 2788487. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  24. Franceschi-Bicchierai, Lorenzo (20 October 2016). "How Hackers Broke Into John Podesta and Colin Powell's Gmail Accounts". Motherboard. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  25. Legum wrote: “I think it’s fair say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538”.
  26. "An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.
  27. Eduardo Porter (April 14, 2015). "A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development". The New York Times. Retrieved April 17, 2015. On Tuesday, a group of scholars involved in the environmental debate, including Professor Roy and Professor Brook, Ruth DeFries of Columbia University, and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, Calif., issued what they are calling the "Eco-modernist Manifesto."
  28. "Authors An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015. As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.
  29. Schwartz, John (2015-02-25). "Lawmakers Seek Information on Funding for Climate Change Critics". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-09-02.
  30. Pielke Jr., Roger (2015-02-25). "Roger Pielke Jr.: I am Under 'Investigation'". Financial Post. Archived from the original on 2020-11-08.

External links

...

https://www.**desmog.**com/roger-pielke-jr/ 6 23

Background

Roger Pielke Jr. is a climate science policy writer working at the University of Colorado Boulder. Pielke Jr.’s academic degrees are in mathematics, public policy, and political science.

According to his bibliographic notes, he started studying extreme weather and climate in 1991 at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. He discusses his views on climate policy in the book The Climate Fix(Basic Books, 2011).4

While Pielke Jr. argues that he is not a climate change skeptic, and accepts that man-made climate change is a real problem, he has consistently opposed the idea that extreme weather events and climate change are connected. Pielke’s father,Roger A. Pielke Sr., is also an outspoken critic of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Pielke Jr. has described research showing the link between extreme weather and climate change as “zombie science.”5 6

*Grist* writer David Roberts wrotethat Pielke Jr. has “been playing footsie with denialists and right-wing ideologues for years; they’re his biggest fans,”7 and critics have noted that Pielke Jr.’s work has often been cited by climate change deniers.8

Criticism

Joe Romm at *ThinkProgress*writesthat “the websites that most prominently feature or reprint Pielke’s attacks are climate denial sites like WattsUpWithThatand ClimateDepot.”

Romm describes him as “probably the single most disputed and debunked person in the science blogosphere, especially on the subject of extreme weather and climate change.” Romm also notes that Roger Pielke Jr. was included on Foreign Policy‘s 2010 “Guide to Climate Skeptics” — something that Pielke informed FP thathe strongly objected to.9 10

The website SkepticalSciencefeatures a page devoted to “Climate Misinformer: Roger Pielke Jr” where they have published an array of refutations to Pielke’s blog posts and arguments.11

Stance on Climate Change

December 2, 2016

Writing at The Wall Street Journal in an article titled “My Unhappy Life as a Climate:{Heretic,” Roger Pielke Jr. declared:12 13}:

“I believe climate change is real and that human emissions of greenhouse gases risk justifying action, including a carbon tax. Butmy research led me to a conclusion that many climate campaigners find unacceptable: There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather. This is a topic I’ve studied and published on as much as anyone over two decades. My conclusion might be wrong, but I think I’ve earned the right to share this research without risk to my career.”

November 2015

Included in the PDF of a lecture Pielke Jr. gave at the Dutch Association of Science Journalists,under the category of “questions NOT addressed in this talk” he wrote:14

“Is human-caused climate change real and/or significant? –

– Me: Yes it is

What policies make sense in response?

– Me: Read my book! [The Climate Fix]”

In his summary, Pielke says that extreme weather cannot be equated with climate change:

“Have disasters become more costly because of human-caused climate change? Only one answer to this question is strongly supported by the available data, the broad scientific literature and the assessments of the IPCC:

No.

There is exceedingly little evidence to support claims that disasters have become more costly because of human caused climate change.”

July 2013 [INHOFE]

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, Pielke Jr. declared:15

“It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally. It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”

However, in clarification, he adds that he does believe climate change is caused by man’s activity:16

“Humans influence the climate system in profound ways, including through the emission of carbon dioxide via the combustion of fossil fuels […] It does mean however that some activists, politicians, journalists, corporate and government agency representatives and even scientists who should know better have made claims that are unsupportable based on evidence and research.”

January 6, 2005

Roger Pielke and co-author Daniel Sarewitz write in *The New Republic Online*:17

“Global climate change is real, and developing alternative energy sources and reducing global carbon-dioxide emission is essential. But the claim that action to slow climate change is justified by the rising toll of natural disasters–and, by extension, that reducing emissions can help stanch these rising losses–is both scientifically and morally insupportable.”

Key Quotes

March 2014

Writing at the blog *FiveThirtyEight*, Roger Pielke Jr. declared:18

“When you read that the cost of disasters is increasing, it’s tempting to think that it must be because more storms are happening. They’re not.”

2010

Pielke Jr. said in aninterview with*Foreign Policy:*19

“We cannot make a causal link between increase in greenhouse gases and the costs of damage associated with hurricanes, floods, and extreme weather phenomena.”

November 2008

Co-writing with Christopher Green in the Rocky Mountain News,Pielke Jr. writes why he disagrees with cap-and-trade:20

“The Obama plan for climate policy involves one very good idea – investment in new technologies and infrastructure – and one very bad one: cap-and-trade.

To understand why cap-and-trade is a bad idea, we need only to look to lessons from Europe’s experiences.”

September 23, 2005

Roger Pielke and co-author Daniel Sarewitz write in the opinion section of the Las Angeles Times:

“Efforts to slow global warming will have no discernible effect on hurricanes for the foreseeable future. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adequately preparing for future disasters are essentially separate problems.”21

August 18, 2003

Writing in *Rocky Mountain News*, Roger Pielke discusses “pre-emptive” policies to combat climate change:22

“We risk bad policy when all choices before us are bad ones. For instance, the Kyoto protocol on climate change has its supporters and opponents, but very few are willing to admit that debate over its implementation has considerably more symbolic value than practical effect. The debate over the war on Iraq may have been similarly misguided as better policy options may have been ignored. In both cases, a commitment to pre-emption enables the politicization of intelligence, which then serves as a constraint on options that may be more effective but, for certain ideologues, politically less desirable.

Pre-emption hurts the policy process when it results in a dearth of choice.”

February 23, 2003

Writing in the opinion section of *Newsday*.com, Roger Pielke Jr. outlines his view on the Kyoto protocol:23

“Today we see a subset of scientists trying to use their science to affect political outcomes. The most obvious example is with the Kyoto protocol on global warming, where scientists are arrayed on both sides of the debate. What policy makers need from scientists is not support for or against the protocol, but practical alternatives to deal with climate change. The protocol is more a symbol than an proposal for a real solution.”

August 5, 2001

Writing in the Albuquerque Journal, in an article titled “Climate Changes; Society has to learn to adapt,” Daniel Sarewitz and Roger Pielke Jr. declare:24

“Of course, it is quite reasonable to believe, as many climate scientists do, that the record of past temperature increased, combined with knowledge of atmospheric chemistry and physics, foretells a warmer future. But what such scientists do not, and cannot, know is this: what will be the impact of such warming on humans and the environment,and how will those impacts change if we limit emissions?”

According to the authors, “climate policy makers continue to focus on energy policy as the primary means to address future climate impacts. The approach is simply doomed to fail. Why has the idea of adaptation been so neglected in the political and scientific arenas?”

February 2, 2000

Writring in The Washington Times, Roger A. Pielke Jr. and co-author Daniel Sarewitz write:“25

“Predictions of the future can be more dangerous than ignorance, if they induce us to behave in ways that reduce our resilience in the face of inevitable uncertainties and contingencies. When predictions are made about events decades or centuries hence, such as the level of the stock market or the conditions of a changing climate, it is simply impossible to verify their accuracy , no matter how impressive the supporting science may be.”

Key Actions

February 2022

Pielke co-authored astudy in *Environmental Research Letters*26 that was promoted by Ronald Bailey at the Reason Foundation as finding worst-case climate change scenarios to be “highly implausible.”27

“[M]an-made global warming of 4°C by 2100 above pre-industrial levels is not a real possibility,” Bailey concludes in the Reason Foundation article. “‘Is the world ready for good news on climate?,’ asks Pielke. ‘Yes, we are’.”

February 9, 2020

Pielke wrote an article at **Forbesalleging the website Skeptical Science, which provides in-depth debunkings of climate change denial arguments, maintained a “blacklist” of academics that made them “unhirable” by academic institutions.28

In the article, Pielke interviewed Judith Curry, former professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Curry resigned from her position at Georgia Tech on January 1, 2017, citing the “craziness” of climate science, and plans to focus on her private business, Climate Forecast Applications Network.29 30

Pielke Jr. accused Skeptical Science of orchestrating a smear campaign akin to “blacklisting” Curry, his father Roger PIelke Sr., and others, and pointed to leaked emails shared between Skeptical Science members as proof of a conspiracy against climate change skeptics.31

“I have made the judgment that discussing the leaked discussions relevant to their stated public interest mission – and which have been in the public domain for many years – is not only fair, it is important,” Pielke, Jr. wrote.32

In the interview, Curry attributed her departure from academia to “at least in part, to being placed on the Skeptical Science blacklist and its use, as expressed by [Dana] Nuccitelli, to make her ‘unhirable.’” Curry described to Pielke what she considered to be the circumstances surrounding her stepping down:33

“In 2012 I was informed by my Dean that the administration wanted me to step down as Chair. While there were several reasons for this, one obvious reason was extreme displeasure by several activist climate scientists who had a very direct pipeline to the Dean.”

“At the time, I was getting numerous inquiries from academic headhunters encouraging me to apply for major administration positions, ranging from Dean to Vice Chancellor for Research. I applied for several of these, and actually interviewed for two of them. I did not make it to the final short list.”34

When a headhunter gave her feedback on the search for work at university and relayed from the universities that her “public profile in the climate debate” affected the potential for hiring, she alleged that it was her presence on a Skeptical Science page that influenced that decision. Note that a Google Search for Judith Curry returns her blog, Climate Etc.,as a top result. Her blog regularly posts articles opposing “climate alarmism.”35

Pielke suggested that his decision to publish the leaked communications from Skeptical Science could also have repercussions for his own career:36

“I have been locked out from Twitter for sharing some of the information from the hackedSkeptical Science discussions,” he wrote. “Several Skeptical Science team members have contacted me by email in the past hours with vaguely sinister but eminently deniable threats. I expect they will come after this column next. And if you hear that I have left academia, like Curry, you’ll know why.”37

January 14, 2020

Pielke published an opinion piece at Forbes.com downplaying the role of climate change and global temperature rise in exacerbating the massive Australian bushfires:38

“We live in a time where every extreme weather or climate-related event is immediately associated with human caused climate change. Such associations are often not really about the science of climate, but rather a symbol used to exhort in the political battle over climate change.”

Claims that environmental policies and arson were to blame for the bushfires have been debunked, though they continue to be propagated by social media bots and fringe websites such as Alex Jones’sInfoWars.39

March 29, 2017

Roger Pielke, Jr. was a witness in a house committee hearing titled “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method” chaired by Lamar Smith. The hearing also featuring testimony fromJohn Christy, Michael Mann, and Judith Curry. DeSmog reportedthat the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology hearings “have officially turned into theater to stage climate science denial,” noting that Michael Mann was the only witness on the committee to represent the 97% consensus view that humans cause climate change.40 41

[vid]

officially, the hearing was organized to “examine the scientific method and process as it relates to climate change” and “focus on the underlying science that helps inform policy decisions.”42

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat from Oregon, noted from the outset that “The witness panel does not really represent the vast majority of climate scientists.” For an accurate representation of the science, she said to “Visualize 96 more climate scientists that agree with the mainstream consensus. […] For a balanced panel we’d need 96 more Dr. Manns.”43

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) published thewritten testimonies by Curry, Christy, Mann, and Pielke online.44

According to Pielke, who describes himself as “an inconvenient academic”:

“There is little scientific basis in support of claims that extreme weather events, and specifically hurricanes, floods, drought, and tornadoes, and their economic damage, has increased in recent decades due to the emission of greenhouse gases.”

He later clarifies, in response to a question from Lamar Smith, that “ there’s no evidence to suggest that hurricanes, either in the U.S. or globally are increasing. And the same goes for floods, drought, and tornados.” He adds, “Why people would hang their hat on long-term trends in extreme weather is a puzzle.”45

Later in his testimony, Pielke said “You can fund billions and billions of dollars more climate research and the findings will be very much the same. There’s fundamental risks, the future is uncertain, and we have choices about whether and how we might want to mitigate those risks.”46

Shortly after Congressman Clay Higgins of Lousianagrills Michael Mann on his affiliations, giving Mann little opportunity to respond, he puts forward a series of short questions” to Pielke:47

Higgins: “Are tornadoes increasing?”

Pielke: “There is a lot of uncertainty about tornadoes, but there’s no evidence to suggest they’ve been increasing.”

Higgins: “Are floods increasing?”

Pielke: “As the IPCC concluded, there’s not really good data worldwide to know if they’re going up or down.”

Higgins: “Are droughts increasing?”

Pielke: “Globally, and in the United States, according to the EPA and according to the IPCC, the answer is no.”

Higgins: “Can you explain why someone would say, with such certainty, that extreme weather events will increase given the fact they have not?”

Pielke: “Well, they may increase yet in the future. And there’s a number of projections made by the IPCC that suggest that they might.”

Michael Mannresponded to Pielke’s assertions in his own testimony. He also noted that Pielke has himself declared he was leaving the field several years ago:*48

“Roger is pointing to outdated reports. Outdated data,” Mann said.   “Three years ago, he actually posted the following on his blog: He said, ‘I am no longer conducting research or academic writing related to climate, I am not available for talks, and on the climate issue I have no interest in speaking with reporters,’” Mann pauses for effect,  ”’or giving testimony before congress.’ Well, that’s what he said back in 2015. That’s, you know, three years ago. There has been a lot of progress over the past three years. […].”49

Mann notes that we can now positively attribute, with a large degree of certainty, how much more large or severe an extreme weather event was likely made by climate change.50

Pielke goes on tclaim that he is representing mainstream science, and that is being attacked by being called on the “fringe”:51

”[…] I’ve come here representing the science that’s in the IPCC report.  It’s almost a bizarro sort of reaction to be called fringe when you’re representing mainstream science,” he said.52

December 2, 2016

Roger Pielke Jr. Wrote an article in The Wall Street Journaltitled “My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic,” Roger Pielke Jr. declared:53 54

According to Pielke, journalists and academics have “joined the campaign against me” due to political interests.55

“I believe climate change is real and that human emissions of greenhouse gases risk justifying action, including a carbon tax. But my research led me to a conclusion that many climate campaigners find unacceptable: There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. In fact we are in an era of good fortune when it comes to extreme weather. This is a topic I’ve studied and published on as much as anyone over two decades. My conclusion might be wrong, but I think I’ve earned the right to share this research without risk to my career.”

Pielke says that he earned the term “denier” after questioning an IPCC report graph. He adds, “I was right to question the IPCC’s 2007 report, which included a graph purporting to show that disaster costs were rising due to global temperature increases.”56

He emphasizes his point that “There is not a strong basis for connecting weather disasters with human-caused climate change,” noting that “The IPCC never acknowledged the snafu, but subsequent reports got the science right.”57

When Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee investigated Pielke for what he described as “serious misstatements by Prof. Pielke of the scientific consensus on climate change,” Piekle said that this significantly damaged his reputation and was why he decided to pursue other subjects than climate change. He concludes:

“Academics and the media in particular should support viewpoint diversity instead of serving as the handmaidens of political expediency by trying to exclude voices or damage reputations and careers. If academics and the media won’t support open debate, who will?”58

June 2016

Roger Pielke Jr.published59 a paper titled “Tracking Climate Progress: A Guide for Policy Makers and the Informed Public” (PDF) for the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan.60

Pielke writes in the paper that its objective is to present a “straightforward approach to tracking international (and national) progress with respect to implementation of the Paris Agreement” and is designed for “observers who may not be insiders to better understand climate policy.”

According to Pielke, in order to successfully reach emissions reductions targets, the world would have to “deploy about 190 x 1.5 gigawatt power plants worth of carbon-free energy every year from now until 2100.”

“The proportion of global energy consumption from carbon-free sources provides a readily understandable and easily tracked metric with respect to progress in the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Today, that percentage is less than 14%. By the end of the century, it needs to be greater than 90% if the ultimate objective of the FCCC is to be achieved,” Pielke Jr. writes.

November 29, 2015

Roger Pielke Jr.  gave a keynote lecture to the VWN – de Vereniging voor Wetenschapsjournalistiek en -communicatie, the Dutch Association of Science Journalists.According to the PDF version of his talk, Pielke covered extreme weather events, mentioning a study he co-wrote in 1998 with Chirs Landsea. He criticizes the IPCC for reliance on “one study” on extreme weather in 2007 while establishing a link between extreme weather and global warming. The later portions of his talk are devoted to his label as “climate change denialist” and equates this with having lost his job.61

In summary, Pielke says that extreme weather cannot be equated with climate change:

“Have disasters become more costly because of human-caused climate change? Only one answer to this question is strongly supported by the available data, the broad scientific literature and the assessments of the IPCC:

No.

There is exceedingly little evidence to support claims that disasters have become more costly because of human caused climate change.”

February 25, 2015

Roger Pielke Jr. was the subject of investigation62 by U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Democratic congressman from Arizona, onwhether Pielke, Jr. had received research funding from fossil fuel companies. This was one of seven requests that Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) sent to universities in February, 2015.63

In his letter to University of Colorado President Bruce Benson, Grijalva requested that the university disclose all of Pielke’s sources for external funding. The letter points out controversy of climate research by Dr. Willie Soon, and notes that his lack of disclosure “may not be isolated incidents.”64

“Prof . Roger Pielke, Jr., at CU‘s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research has testified numerous times before the U.S . Congress’ on climate change and its economic impacts,”  Grijalva writes in the letter. “His July 2013 Senate testimony featured the claim , often repeated, that it is ‘incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.’ John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has highlighted what he believes were serious misstatements by Prof. Pielke of the scientific consensus on climate change and his (Holdren’s) position on the issue.”

[…] “I am hopeful that disclosure of a few key pieces of information will establish the impartiality of climate research and policy recommendations published in your institution ‘s name and assist me and my colleagues in making better law.”

March 19, 2014

Writing at the blog**FiveThirtyEight, Roger Pielke Jr. contends that while natural disasters are costing more money, it is not due to climate change.65

“When you read that the cost of disasters is increasing, it’s tempting to think that it must be because more storms are happening. They’re not. All the apocalyptic ‘climate porn’ in your Facebook feed is solely a function of perception. In reality, the numbers reflect more damage from catastrophes because the world is getting wealthier. We’re seeing ever-larger losses simply because we have more to lose — when an earthquake or flood occurs, more stuff gets damaged. And no matter what President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron say, recent costly disasters are not part of a trend driven by climate change. The data available so far strongly shows they’re just evidence of human vulnerability in the face of periodic extremes,” Pielke Jr. writes.

Top climatologists responded to Pielke’s article, concluding thatNate Silver‘s FiveThirtyEight had “used flawed data to make its conclusions,”reported*ThinkProgress.*66

“Pielke’s piece is deeply misleading, confirming some of my worst fears that Nate Silver’s new venture may become yet another outlet for misinformation when it comes to the issue of human-caused climate change,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “Pielke uses a very misleading normalization procedure that likely serves to remove the very climate change-related damage signal that he claims to not be able to find.”

Two climate scientists, Michael Mann and Kevin Trenberth, later said the Pielke Jr. hadsent them emails threatening possible legal action in response to their criticism of his findings, reported Huffington Post. Pielke responded that it was “ridiculous” to characterize his emails as threats against Michael Mann, however apologized to both scientists.67

In an email to Huffington Post, Mann said Pielke sent him “a threatening email in response to my fair criticism of his piece.” Mann added that a representative from FiveThirtyEight later contacted him and offered “an apology for what they characterized as unacceptable behavior by Pielke.”68

Trenberth said that he considered the email he received from Pielke as “a threat to me,” telling Huffington Post “He was very accusatory and threatened me if I did not respond.” Trenberth forwarded some of the email’s text to Huffington Post:69

“Once again, I am formally asking you for a public correction and apology,” Pielke wrote to Trenberth. “If that is not forthcoming I will be pursuing this further. More generally, in the future how about we agree to disagree over scientific topics like gentlemen?”

FiveThirtyEight itself published a debunking of Pielke’s piece in March, 2014, written by an MIT Climate Scientist Kerry Emanuel.70

SkepticalScience also critiqued Pielke Jr.’s original blog piece, noting that Pielke only chose to examine economic losses from global disasters from 1990 to 2013 while Munich Re offers data71 going back all the way to 1980, data which was used on an article in *New Scientist*.72

The Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters also has natural disaster cost estimates ranging back to the year 1900. Skeptical Science notes that “Pielke has dismissed climate change as a causal factor using data from just 1990,” pointing out the irony in that Pielke himself had criticized Munich Re for using data only going back to 1980:73

“Thirty years is not an appropriate length of time for a climate analysis, much less finding causal factors like climate change,” Pielke Jr. said.

SkepticalScience found that the positive trend in global disaster losses in the Munich Re data was almost 30 percent larger for 1980–2013 than was for 1990–2013.  “What’s more, the trend in disaster losses for 1980–2013 is statistically significant at the 99 percent confidence level, whereas the trend for the 1990–2013 window cherry picked by Pielke is not statistically significant,” they wrote.74

Pielke Jr. wrote a follow post at FiveThirtyEight,noting that “Human-caused climate change is both real and important, so being careful about what claims science can support and which it can’t is imperative.” According to SkepticalScience, Pielke “dug himself even deeper into a hole by claiming that efforts and technologies to mitigate disaster damages don’t make a difference in damage trends ‘for floods, U.S. hurricanes or tornadoes.’  The problem is that those referenced papers he links don’t support his claims. ”75 76

Pielke’s post received criticism in a number of blogs and news sources including Climate Progress,77 The Way Things Break,78 The Huffington Post,79 Daily Kos,80 andColumbia Journalism Review.81

Pielke told journalist Keith Kloor that as of June 2014, he was no longer writing for the outlet “after 538 showed some reluctance in continuing to publish my work.”

July 18, 2013 [IMHOFE?] LAMAR?

Roger Pielke Jr. testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works at a hearing on climate change. In his full testimony (PDF), reprinted by the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), Pielke declares, as some “take-home points” that:82

“It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally. It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”

According to Pielke Jr., other “take-home points” include that weather-related losses have not increased since 1990, hurricanes have not increased in intensity since 1900, floods have not increased since 1950, tornadoes have not increased since 1950, and drought has become shorter and less frequent over the last century.83

In clarification, he adds that he does believe climate change is caused by man’s activity:84

“Humans influence the climate system in profound ways, including through the emission of carbon dioxide via the combustion of fossil fuels […] It does mean however that some activists, politicians, journalists, corporate and government agency representatives and even scientists who should know better have made claims that are unsupportable based on evidence and research.”

Writing about the testimony on his blog, Pielke Jr. says that he is “declaring victory in this debate” while any future claims associating floods, drought, hurricanes and tornadoes with human-caused climate change would be “Zombie science.”85

On February 28, 2014, in what *ThinkProgress* described as “an unprecedented move”the President’s Science Advisor, Dr. John P. Holdren, published a 6-page critique (PDF)of Roger Pielke Jr.’s 2013 senate testimony.86 87

Holdren noted that Senator Jeff Sessions had quoted both Roger Pielke Jr. and Roy Spencer in February 2014 testimony, to which Holdren had replied that “the indicated comments by Dr. Pielke, and similar ones attributed by Senator Sessions to Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, were not representative of mainstream views on this topic in the climate-science community.” Holdren said his comments were following through on his promise to “record a more complete response with relevant scientific references.”88

ThinkProgress also outlined an interchange between Pielke and Holdren on Twitter that happened in December of 2014. Pielke had criticized Holdren for staying “safe” on climate:

“Since becoming sci advisor Holdren has always stayed on safe (boring) ground in his public remarks,” Pielke Tweeted.89

In February, after Holdren made statements suggesting climate change was worsening Western droughts, Pielke responded in another Tweet, saying “it is brazen for zombie science to show up in the White House!”90

After receiving Holdren’s six-page response, Pielke Jr. criticized him on his blog in a post titled “John Holdren’s Epic Fail”:91

“In a nutshell, Holdren’s response is sloppy and reflects extremely poorly on him. Far from showing that I am outside the scientific mainstream, Holdren’s follow-up casts doubt on whether he has even read my Senate testimony,” Pielke claims. He concludes that Holdren “has gone too far” by supposedly attempting to “delegitimize a colleague.”

October 2010

Roger Pielke Jr. is the author of The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming. The book, according to one review, “wants everyone to take a giant step backward and restart the entire conversation” on climate change science. While “Pielke agrees with the rest of his field on the need to stop emitting carbon dioxide and to stabilize its concentration in the atmosphere at somewhere between 350 and 500 parts per million; he just doesn’t want scientists to tell the rest of us how to get there.” He instead focuses on the uncertainties of climate science and the politicization of the debate.92

He presented his book as part of a “Sustainability Series” (PDF) with Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability and the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. The event description read as follows:93

“Conventional wisdom on how to deal with climate change has failed us, according to Roger Pielke, and it’s time to change course. Using an arithmetic and logical explanation, Pielke explores the problem and practical ways of meeting growing energy demands. In this thought-provoking discussion of the interaction between science and politics, Pielke proposes a means for digging ourselves out of this climate change mess we’ve created.”

July 2000

Writing in *The Atlantic Monthly* with co-author Daniel Sarewitz, Roger Pielke Jr. and Sarewitz claim that the recent Hurricane Mitch may have been a “public relations gift to environmentalists” and claim that “disasters like Mitch are a present and historical reality, and they will become more common and more deadly regardless of global warming.”94

Discussing modern environmentalists, the authors claim they are “in the habit of calling on science to help advance their agenda.” They say that, in light of global warming, the call to reduce carbon dioxide emissions was “used to rationalize the moral imperative, unify the environmentalist agenda, and determine the political solution.”95

The authors go on to criticize the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) reliance on climate models. “Although various models can reproduce past temperature records, and yield similar predictions of future temperatures, they are unable to replicate other observed aspects of climate.” The authors write that “it is simply not possible to know far in advance if the models agree on future temperature because they are similarly right or similarly wrong.”96

Talking about sea level rise, authors say that while “Sea-level rise is a problem […] anthropogenic global warming is not the only culprit, and reducing emissions cannot be the only solution.” They add that “Predicting the impact on climate of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is so uncertain as to be meaningless.”97

Authors also put an emphasis on adaptation to climate change, which they say has been “taboo in many circles.”98

“Reframing the climate problem could mobilize this constituency [those subject to the effects of the weather] and revitalize the Framework Convention. The revitalization could concentrate on coordinating disaster relief, debt relief, and development assistance, and on generating and providing information on climate that participating countries could use in order to reduce the vulnerability.”

Pielke Jr. and Sarewitz claim that, while “[E]fforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions need not be abandoned […] An opportunity to advance the cause of adaptation is on the horizon.” They contend that the United nation’s Frameworkk Convention on Climate Chnage should instead focus on “promoting the diffusion of energy-efficient technologies that would reduce emissions” and that this should be “promoted independently” from emissions regulations.99

February 2, 2000

Roger Pielke Jr. and Daniel Sarewitz co-wrote an article in The Washington Times titled “Anyone for global warming?” In the article, the authors warn that “predictions of the future can be more dangerous than ignorance […]”100

“Understanding the strengths and limits of predictions is important because our sense of certainty about events in the future influences the actions we take today,”  Pielke Jr. and Sarewitz write. “For example, predictions of global warming have focused international environmental efforts on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But future economic trends, geopolitical events, and technological advances — three variables that defy predictive accuracy — will have a much greater impact on emissions than any conceivable international agreements.”

Affiliations

A complete list of Roger A. Pielke Jr. affiliations can be found on his CV on file at CIRES. Below are some notable examples:101

Professional Affiliations

Notable Board Positions

Social Media

Publications

Roger Pielke Jr. lists all of his publications, as of December 2016, on his website. Some that he lists under the category “Energy and Climate” include:

Pielke Jr. is also a polific author on blogs including:

Books

Other Resources

:{Resources...

Books and Articles

Dr. Pielke has authored or co-authored several books including:

And he has written hundreds of articles published by a variety of publishers. Here are some of the opinions columns written by Dr. Pielke:

Testimony to Congress

LAST UPDATE DEC 2019

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REALCLEAR ATTACK ON ORESKES FOR COI

Academics took to Twitter to point out that this relationship should absolutely been disclosed:

:{A significant (an undisclosed) conflict of interest

https://t.co/IPX2PgtsJ8}:

— Judith Curry(@curryja) May 14, 2021

Shot ‘n Chaser

LEFT – Authors of new paper about Exxon-Mobil complicity in downplaying climate states they have no relevant financial ties

RIGHT – Same author disclosing in a recent deposition (Mann vs CEI) that she is on retainer for a law firm suing Exxon-Mobil

This is fine pic.twitter.com/UGTxjAPizf

— Roger Pielke Jr.(@RogerPielkeJr) May 14, 2021

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jan 6 ?! julie kelly also forbes B miller GMO

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/313090-the-hypocrisy-of-climate-change-advocates/

so according to all the hysterical people, President-elect Donald Trumphas appointed the most climate denier cabinet ever. As cabinet confirmation hearings get underway, expect to hear the charge “climate denier!” a lot.

For those of you who don’t know what a climate denier is, it means you either challenge, question or flat-out reject the idea that the planet is warming due to human activity. In the scientific world and in the world of international liberal groupthink (but I repeat myself), this is blasphemy. Should you remotely doubt the dubious models, unrealized dire predictions, changing goal posts or flawed data related to climate science, you are not just stupid according to these folks, but you are on par with those who deny the Holocaust.

Even people who believe in manmade climate change (or AGW, anthropogenic global warming) have been excommunicated from the climate tribe for raising any concern about climate science. Last month, Roger Pielke, Jr. wrote a revealing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about how he became a target of the climate junta for saying there was no connection between weather disasters and climate change. Although Pielke believes in AGW and even supports a carbon tax to mitigate its impact, his scrutiny made him a target of powerful folks in Congress, the media and even the White House.

The first time I was called a climate denier was a few years ago, after I started writing about agricultural biotechnology or GMOs. The charge was an attempt to undermine my credibility on supporting genetic engineering: the line of attack was, if you don’t believe the science and consensus about man-made global warming, you are a scientific illiterate who has no business speaking in defense of other scientific issues like biotechnology. This was often dished out by climate change pushers who also oppose GMOs because they are anti-capitalist, anti-corporate ideologues (Bernie Sanderscould be the poster child for this).

As I did more research on climate change, I learned one important thing: being a climate change believer means never having to say you’re sorry, or at least never making any major sacrifice to your lifestyle that would mitigate the pending doom you are so preoccupied with (but, sea ice!). You can go along with climate change dogma and do virtually nothing about it except recycle your newspapers while self-righteously calling the other side names. From thePope to the presidentto the smug suburban mom, climate adherents live in glass houses that function thanks to evil stuff like oil and gas while throwing rocks at us so-called deniers. 

So who are the real deniers: those who are reasonably skeptical about climate change or those who give lots of lip service to it while living a lifestyle totally inimical to every tenet of the climate change creed?

To that end, you might be a climate change denier if:

You are the Holy Father of the largest denomination of the Christian faith who calls climate change “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day” and that coal, oil and gas must be replaced “without delay” yet lives a palatial lifestyle powered by fossil fuels.

You are the president of the United States who tried to ban fracking on public land because it emits greenhouse gases but then takes credit for cutting “dependence on foreign oil by more than half” thanks to fracking.

You are a presidential candidate whose primary message is blasting big corporations from Exxon to Monsanto for destroying the planet but then demands a private jet to make meaningless campaign appearances on behalf of the woman who beat you so you can keep getting attention for yourself.

You are a movie star who works in one of the most energy-intensive and frivolous industries but now earns fame by leading protests against fracking and demands the country live on 100 percent renewables by 2050 then jets your family off from Manhattan to Australia on a jumbo jet to take pictures of the Great Barrier Reef.

You are Robert Kennedy, Jr.

You drive a Tesla but don’t know the electricity comes from a grid supported by fossil fuels.

You are a legislator who pushes solar panels and wind turbines without having the slightest clue how much energy and materials — like steel, concrete, diesel fuel, fiberglass and plastic — are needed to manufacture them.

You are Leonardo DiCaprio

You are a suburban mom who looks down at other moms who don’t care/know/believe in climate change but you spend the day driving your privileged kids around in a pricy SUV and have two air-conditioners in your 6,000 square-foot house,

You oppose nuclear energy and/or genetically engineered crops.

You eat meat because meat production allegedly emits about 14.5 percent of greenhouse gases or some made-up number according to the United Nations.

You eat any sort of food because agriculture uses all kinds of climate polluting energy not to mention the big carbon footprint to process, package, ship and deliver that food to your local Whole Foods.

You are John Kerry.

So if you live off the grid, never fly in an airplane and don’t eat, then you can call me a denier. For the rest of you, please zip it. You deny climate change by your actions because you contribute daily to the very greenhouse gases you contend are destroying the planet. I’d rather be a denier than a hypocrite any day.

Julie Kelly is a National Review Online contributor. Her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill and The Huffington Post.

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The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

TAGS BERNIE SANDERSCLIMATE CHANGEDONALD TRUMPENERGYENVIRONMENTJOHN KERRY

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[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Z_IS!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F367ff233-bfd7-44c1-bcf0-05d5d69955e8_908x512.png)Clark et al. 2023: The potential epistemic consequence of scientific censorship. Green stars are evidence that X is true. Red stars are evidence that X is not true. Assume that each piece of evidence is equally weighty. Censorship that obstructs evidence against X will produce a peer-reviewed literature that concludes that X is true when most likely it is not.

In September, 2022 California Governor Gavin Newsome signed into law a bill that prohibited medical professionals from sharing “misinformation” with patients. Specifically, the law stated that it would be

[U]nprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19.

The law defined “misinformation”:

“Misinformation” means false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.

The law reflected a common perspective: A scientific consensus represents truth and views outside that consensus are misinformation. Thus, to identify those who are spreading misinformation we simply need to identify the relevant scientific consensus. Those out of step with the consensus, the argument continues, can then be called out or sanctioned for spreading misinformation — and public discourse can proceed based on accepted facts, not falsehoods.

The notion of consensus-as-truth has been operationalized in various forms: journalistic “fact checkers,” academic “misinformation” researchers, and content moderation on social media platforms. The practical effect is the creation of self-appointed arbiters of truth — journalists, academics, social media platforms, and even governments — who render judgments on acceptable and unacceptable speech according to conformance with an acceptable view.

There are many problems with the notion of consensus-as-truth and the (self)appointment of misinformation police to regulate discourse, whether of the public or, as in the case of the California law, of experts themselves.

A scientific consensus is not a single view, but a distribution of views. Almost 20 years ago I participated in an exchange in Sciencewith Naomi Oreskes on this point. Professor Oreskes shot to fame by publishing a commentary that argued that the consensus on climate change was universal, based on a review of 928 papers. Oreskes argument quickly moved from characterizing science to a call for political action, based on the asserted universal consensus.

I responded by arguing that a consensus is not a single thing, but a distribution, and policy should be robust to that distribution:

The actions that we take on climate change should be robust to (i) the diversity of scientific perspectives, and thus also to (ii) the diversity of perspectives of the nature of the consensus. A consensus is a measure of a central tendency and, as such, it necessarily has a distribution of perspectives around that central measure. On climate change, almost all of this distribution is well within the bounds of legitimate scientific debate and reflected within the full text of the IPCC reports. Our policies should not be optimized to reflect a single measure of the central tendency or, worse yet, caricatures of that measure, but instead they should be robust enough to accommodate the distribution of perspectives around that central measure, thus providing a buffer against the possibility that we might learn more in the future.

A further complication is that the notion of a “consensus on climate change” is incoherent. In a 2011 study of how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represented uncertainty in its Fourth Assessment Report, Rachael Jonasson and I identified 2,744 “findings” across the AR4 report — each finding was a specific scientific claim.

There was a degree of consensus associated with each of those claims — the distribution of views may have been narrow (e.g., climate change is real), bimodal or wide (e.g., future hurricane incidence), and with the advantage of hindsight, utterly wrong (e.g., a high emissions scenario is business-as-usual).

Last week, the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (a non-profit funded by a group called Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs) released a survey of expert views on the origins of COVID-19. The results of that survey were quickly invoked on social mediato claim support for whatever position that was held before the survey was released.

The far more important result of the survey was not what it says about expert views on the origins of COVID-19, but what it says about the futility of trying to use surveys of experts as a short-cut to truth.

Consider:

There is a little something there for everyone, and the results can be spun this way or that. But it gets more interesting. The survey asked participants whether or not they were familiar with key studies related to Covid origins. The results are shocking:

You can see the full results in the table below. It would have been quite interesting to have seen the results of the survey according to familiarity with the relevant literature.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!74uu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5f541c6b-eb17-4209-8f50-0636e101b002_1000x651.png)GCRI 2024

To the extent that the GCRI survey conveys useful information, it tells us that there are an extremely wide range of views on the origins of COVID-19, and some but not all of those views are well informed among credentialed experts. Less charitably, the survey tells us that identifying experts as a proxy for evaluating information — that is, actually doing the hard work of science, forensics and investigation — is problematic, as many of these “experts” are no such thing.

The notion of consensus-as-truth can create obstacles to improving understandings. In re-reading Oreskes 2004 on climate consensus for the first time in a while I was struck by this comment:

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies.

This is completely backwards — scientific assessments are an interpretive snapshot of what a scientific literature says about specific scientific claims. When done properly, they are a useful characterization of what is often a large amount of published research. But make no mistake — the scientific literature does not “agree” with assessments, the literature informs the assessments.

The notion that scientists should agree with a consensus is contrary to how science advances — scientists challenge each other, ask difficult questions and explore paths untaken. Expectations of conformance to a consensus undercuts scientific inquiry. It also lends itself to the weaponization of consensus to delegitimize or deplatform inconvenient views, particularly in highly politicized settings.

I have witnessed the weaponization of consensus many times. For instance, I have been asked in Congressional hearings and by colleagues whether I “endorse” the IPCC consensus, as a sort of litmus test. The correct, simple answer is that my work is cited in all three AR6 IPCC Working Groups and is thus a part of the IPCC consensus. A more complex answer is that the IPCC makes thousands of findings and my expertise allows me to make informed judgments on dozens or hundreds of them — And based on my expertise I conclude that for most of its findings the IPCC correctly summarizes the literature (e.g., human-caused climate change is warming the earth and presents significant risks) but for some other claims, the IPCC does not accurately represent current understandings (e.g., there are not more intense hurricanes and RCP8.5 is not BAU).

A recent study of scientific censorship by scientists by Clark et al. 2023 finds that pressures by scientists on their peers to conform to a consensus are fairly common within the scientific community:

Confirmation bias and other forms of motivated cognition can fuel a self-reinforcing dynamic in which censorship and self-censorship discourage empirical challenges to prevailing conclusions, encouraging a false consensus that further discourages dissent.

They cite the characteristics of almost 500 U.S. academics targeted for their views and a survey of researchers in New Zealand that finds that the notion of consensus has indeed been weaponized, as below:

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xks7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd94787e8-598b-4d6a-9313-a2d6e4684bd4_1280x700.png)Clark et al. 2023: Characteristics of U.S. higher education scholars tracked by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression who were targeted for their pedagogy and/or critical inquiry between 2000 and June, 2023 (n = 486) and characteristics of their targeters.

In a 2023 survey of academics in New Zealand, 53% reported that they were not free to state controversial or unpopular opinions, 48% reported that they were not free to raise differing perspectives or argue against the consensus among their colleagues, and 26% reported that they were not free to engage in the research of their choice.

The fate of the California law that I opened this piece with offers a cautionary lesson: In 2023, a U.S. District Court judge found that the law:

“fails to provide a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what is prohibited" and "is so standardless that it authorizes or encourages seriously discriminatory enforcement"

The California legislature soon after repealed the law.

It is tempting to think that surveys of scientific views to identify a scientific consensus offer a short cut to the truth. The truth is, there is no short cut. Science is the short cut.

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NATREV BS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/10/wikileaks-john-podesta-silenced-climate-change-dissent/}:}:}:

no lnx

WikiLeaks Exposes Podesta-Steyer Climate McCarthyism

Tom Steyer at a Center for American Progress conference in 2014. (Reuters photo: Gary Cameron)

By ROBERT BRYCE

October 26, 2016

How the Center for American Progress campaigned to suppress speech

The latest WikiLeaks dump contains plenty of insider dirt on John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress and the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the tawdriest story to be exposed by Podesta’s pilfered e-mails is the bragging by an employee of ThinkProgress, an arm of the Center for American Progress, about how they got Roger Pielke Jr.’s scalp.

A July 2014 e-mail from Judd Legum, an editor at ThinkProgress, to billionaire Democratic climate activist (and former coal-mine investor) Tom Steyer exposes the climate-change McCarthyism that the Left — and its myriad allies in the liberal media — use to discredit or silence anyone who doesn’t adhere to the orthodoxy of the climate catastrophists.

In the e-mail, Legum boasted to Steyer about how ThinkProgress had silenced Pielke by preventing him from publishing at Nate Silver’s then-new website, fivethirtyeight.com, on the issue of climate change. Legum was also asking Steyer, indirectly, for more money. Steyer and Podesta both sit on the board of the Center for American Progress. Between 2008 and 2014, Steyer gave the Center for American Progress some $3.85 million. I’ll come back to the specifics of that e-mail shortly.

First, some background. Pielke, a professor at the University of Colorado since 2001, holds degrees in mathematics, public policy, and political science. He has authored or co-authored seven books. He has won several awards for his academic work. For about two decades, he was a prolific writer and speaker on climate issues. In 2013, he testified before Congress and declared that there is “exceedingly little scientific support for claims found in the media and political debate that hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and drought have increased in frequency or intensity on climate timescales either in the United States or globally.” During that same testimony, he said that global weather-related losses have not increased since 1990 as a proportion of GDP. He went on, saying that there were also no observable increases in floods, tornadoes, or droughts.

Pielke’s work was backed up by data and, in many cases, by the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But that didn’t matter to Podesta’s attack dogs at ThinkProgress. Long before his congressional testimony, Pielke had been the subject of a years-long smear campaign led by ThinkProgress’s Joe Romm. In fact, Romm had what can only be described as an obsession with Pielke. In a recent Twitter posting, Pielke wrote: “Propaganda works: I count more than 160 articles at the Center for American Progress trashing me over the years.”

A review of those articles shows that the vast majority of them were written by Romm. In reply to Romm’sincreasingly shrill attacks, Pielke was civil, even gentlemanly. In 2010, Pielke challenged Romm to a public debate— in Romm’s hometown, at a date and venue of his choosing — offering to contribute up to $10,000 to the winner’s favorite charity. Romm, to his eternal discredit, refused. Furthermore, on his blog, Romm routinely deleted comments he didn’t like, including those that called him out for ducking Pielke’s challenge to debate.

[More from

ROBERT BRYCE

Freeman Dyson, RIP

Why Climate Action Flopped at the G-7

Cuomo’s Silly War on Natural Gas]

I have followed Pielke’s work for years. In 2007, while editing Energy Tribune, I published an interview with his father, Roger Pielke Sr., who is also a climate scientist.In 2009, I published an interview with the younger Pielke on the same subject. I find both of them to be careful observers and thoughtful writers. Last year, I reviewed one of Roger Jr.’s books for The Weekly Standard.

This week I spoke to Pielke by phone. Asked for his initial reaction to the ThinkProgress e-mail, he replied, “I was just a professor with a blog. I had no funding. Really? They are going to go brag to a billionaire to shut down a professor with a blog? If that’s the case, I guess I was doing some pretty good stuff.”

Pielke went on to say that Romm had waged a “campaign of personal destruction” against him. “Nothing less than removing my voice from the public space was acceptable.” That campaign was carried out by Romm and other members of theGreen Slime Machine at liberal media outlets like the Daily Kos and Huffington Post.Among other things, those outlets labeled Pielke a “disinformer” and “climate confusionist.” They did so even though Pielke’s views on climate are decidedly mainstream: He favors a carbon tax,increased energy efficiency, and a global effort at “removing incentives for fossil fuels and creating incentives for carbon neutral sources, including both nuclear and renewable.”

ThinkProgress’s smear efforts reached an apogee in 2014, after Pielke published a single article on fivethirtyeight.com — the website Silver had launched with the goal of using data and statistics to inform a new style of journalism. Pielke’s article addressed the inflation-adjusted cost of hurricanes. “I made the fairly mundane but obvious observation that disaster costs are not increasing because of extreme weather events,” Pielke said.

‘I made the fairly mundane but obvious observation that disaster costs are not increasing because of extreme weather events,’​ Pielke said.

Nevertheless, Pielke’s article met a storm of protest, led by the bloggers at ThinkProgress, who published not one but two articles on the same day (March 19, 2014) that Pielke’s article was published on fivethirtyeight.com. The first person quoted in both of ThinkProgress’s articles was none other than Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, one of the originators of the much-disputed “hockey stick” graph. It is worth noting that four years ago this month (October 22, 2012, to be precise), Mann sued National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Rand Simberg, and Mark Steyn for defamation. That litigation is still pending. (For Steyn’s paint-blistering take on Mann, the lawsuit, and climate McCarthyism, read his December 15, 2015, testimony before a U.S. Senate committee.)

And it wasn’t just ThinkProgress. Immediately after Pielke’s article appeared on fivethirtyeight.com, the Green Slime Machine went into overdrive. The Daily Kos expressed dismay that “Silver would hire as one of his science writers the egregious purveyor of disinformation on climate change, Roger Pielke, Jr.” Pielke was also trashed by writers at Slate, Earth Island Journal, and the Guardian. Rather than stand behind Pielke, Silver fired him. Silver didn’t even favor him with a phone call. Pielke told me that two and a half years later, Silver still hasn’t contacted him. “You can’t have a real journalistic enterprise if your only goal is to be popular,” Pielke told me.

Now, back to WikiLeaks. In Legum’s e-mail to Steyer, he wrote that “it’s fair to say” that without ThinkProgress’s continual trashing of Pielke and his work, “Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538.” Legum continued, “He would be providing important cover for climate deniers backed by Silver’s very respected brand. But because of our work, he is not. I don’t think there is another site on the internet having this kind of impact on the climate debate.” Legum concluded his note by writing, “Thanks for your support of this work. Looking forward to doing even more in the coming months.”

So there you have it: One of Podesta’s highest-profile operatives is bragging to one of America’s richest climate activiststhat he and his team have silenced a prominent academic for the sin of disagreeing with Mann and other climatologists. ThinkProgress, Romm, and their fellow travelersdenigrate anyone who might be getting money from the “wrong” funders. But when it comes to soliciting big bucks from Steyer — and then bragging about how effective you are at defaming people on the other side — well, that’s okay because, you know, climate change.

The WikiLeaks story about Pielke has, predictably, been ignored by the liberal media. No stories about it have appeared in the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, or Media Matters. It doesn’t fit their narrative. A few pieces about the Podesta-WikiLeaks story have appeared in conservative outlets, include a recent piece published on Breitbart by the British journalist James Delingpole, who got it exactly right. He wrote: “If the ‘science’ is as settled as it frequently claims, why is it necessary to orchestrate attacks on any scientist who speaks even slightly out of turn?”

Since the fivethirtyeight.com uproar, Pielke has quit publishing about climate change. He’s gone on to become a world-leading expert on sports and doping. He now heads the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, which is housed within the university’s athletics department. He has more than 8,000 followers on Twitter and is an active, maybe rabid, tweeter. “I’m having a blast,” he told me. Working on climate change, he said, “you wake up, it’s the same people arguing about the same stuff. In sports, you have no idea what idea you will be writing about. . . . There’s so much going on. There’s so much upheaval.”

What lessons did he learn from his stint in the climate-change discussion? He replied that the debate is “almost religious in its intensity.” Instead of having a rational discussion about the best ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the debate has become solely “about power, about who gets to speak and whose voices are deemed legitimate.” The smear campaign against him by Romm and ThinkProgress was designed “to make public speech costly.”

In a concluding thought, he told me: “After all this, I’m a big supporter of academic tenure. I have no doubt that if I didn’t have tenure, I’d be doing landscaping now.”

Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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kos

tag  TAG https://www.dailykos.com/tags/Shellenberger

With COP Closing, Deniers Beclown Themselves, Then Cry ‘I’ve Been Cancelled!’ When People Laugh

The disinformation around this year’s climate negotiations got off to a stupid start, got slightly funny and gross there for a minute, and then just gross as a TERF called climate reporters biased. But not to worry, it’s still getting stupider, and...

ClimateDenierRoundup

Nov 12, 2021

disinformation around this year’s climate negotiations got off to a stupid start, got slightly funny and gross there for a minute, and then just gross as a TERF called climate reporters biased. But not to worry, it’s still getting stupider, and more offensive!

On the stupid front, a member of the new denial PR pop-up CAR26 that we warned about last week tweeted on Monday that she was “chased” out of COP26, and had to do an interview while “hiding in the disabled loos.” But it turns out no one chased her out of COP26, she was just asked to leave a private meeting room at a side event, presumably because it was about to be used for, you know, a meeting.

“Anti-climate actors rely on a reactionary dynamic with ‘mainstream’ institutions, media, or experts,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) disinformation expert Jennie King told DeSmog, “and cultivate their brand, especially on social media, around being ‘cancelled’ or outcast by perceived elites.”

This dynamic is absolutely unmistakable across the deniersphere, to the extent that it even entices people who try to distance themselves from it, like “honest broker” author Roger Pielke Jr. While he’s long attempted to portray himself as sitting squarely within the consensus, and expresses support for a carbon tax, he’s also done plenty of work that’s immediately used by the sorts of people who cry persecution when they lock themselves in a bathroom, like alleging that Democrats have corrupted climate science.

And deniers return the favor by supporting him, for example with a new 20-page report published by GWPF detailing how, due to persecution, his university office is tiny and filled with boxes from his shuttered projects. Based on an interview with Donna LaFramboise, who’s past works have centered on smearing the IPCC, it’s built on the idea that the tenured professor who once complained about being silenced in the Wall Street Journal has been, as King described of the bathroom-dweller, “‘cancelled’ or outcast by perceived elites.”

:{(On Tuesday, }_{a COP26 event}_:{ honored the lives of the 1,000+ }:environmental activists murdered:{ since the }:Paris Agreement in 2015:{, a third of whom were from indigenous communities. But everyone should really feel very sorry for Pielke, because his office is very small and doesn’t even have any windows!)}:

While most may not be moved by such a harrowing tale of being told you’re wrong, refusing to admit it, and facing consequences for your toxic actions, one person who did praise Pielke yesterday was **Michael Shellenberger. Also on the anti-elitist kick, Shellenberger tweeted a link to his new substack post a couple dozen times as well, so we took the bait and gave “Why Wokeism Is A Religion” a read. And surprisingly, we were glad we did!

Because for years now, Shellenberger has slowly been evolving beyond his brand as the liberal presenting hard truths in the name of a stronger and more successful progressive movement, and despite naming his post-Breakthrough spin-off “Environmental Progress,” he is moving fully into the reactionary, alt-right space. This undoubtedly confirms it.

Shellenberger’s new “taxonomy” of the “woke religion” is a project with fellow anti-woke-ist Peter Boghossian, who recently quit Portland State University after getting blowback for writing fake academic papers and in an apparent preemptive self-cancellation, as announced on the substack of fellow preemptive self-canceller Bari Weiss.

Similar to the TERFs and trans disinfo we talked about last Thursday, this “woke religion taxonomy” links racism, climate change, trans people, crime, mental illness, and drug and homelessness issues by suggesting each has an “original sin” (history) committed by “guilty devils,” (white capitalists, mostly) perpetuated by “myths” (sociology) and impacting “sacred victims” (actual victims of racism)  who “the elect” (((elite[)))](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses) protect with “supernatural beliefs” (facts) and by outlawing “taboo facts” (alternative facts) and “taboo speech” (hate speech), and can only be improved through “purifying rituals” (reducing emissions, being respectful of people's identities by using their pronouns) and by embracing “purifying speech” of words and phrases as outlandish as “Black,” “Renewables,” and “Trans women are women.”

Seriously, those are the actual examples!  

Somehow, though, that’s not even the most disgusting content coming from a supposed ally of climate action yesterday. While the Republican plan to export natural gas as a climate cure would lead to a catastrophic 3.1°C of warming, apparently even that is too much climate action for so-called skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg. 

In this week's Wall Street Journal column, Lomborg argues that a "reasonable alternative" to the COP26 talks is to allow for 3.5°C (6.3°F) of warming. But just the difference between 1.5°C and 2·°C of warming is significant, with upward of 1 billion additional people who would be at risk of dying from extreme heat if they spend a summer day outside at 2°C (and half the world population is at risk at 4°C). Allowing fossil fuels to pollute us to{ to 3.5°C would put at }_}_{least}__{{ 275 million people’s homes under water}, including {entire island nations} (and {Louisiana} communities) that will be submerged by {sea level rise after just 2°C of warming}, literally {committing cultural genocide}.

Experts were quick to debunk Lomborg's claims, for example pointing out that if you look at the updated version of the study he cites to justify that genocide, it now matches the Paris goals.

While the antics of obvious anti-climate activists hiding in bathrooms may be an entertaining distraction, it seems these days the real danger is coming from those “honest brokers” pretending to offer “reasonable” advice.

c

SOMETHING COPIED?

12 21

a massive outbreak of tornadoes left scores dead across eight states this weekend, and given that this weather arose in a warmer, changed climate, President Biden, his FEMA Administrator, numerous news outlets, climate scientists and meteorologists discussed how such an extreme event could be influenced by climate change.

Despite all that qualified nuance, the right (predictably) went nuts. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Fox News were very mad but didn’t exactly have anyone on hand who knew the science well enough to offer any science to the contrary

For their attempted refutation, Breitbart cited Steven Koonin, who in turn cited now-quite-outdated reports and their wishy-washy trend observations (which aren’t the point!). Town Hall cited Steve Milloy, as did the Daily Caller, because apparently defending Big Tobacco gives you climate expertise to answer questions actual scientists are still working out.

In an email to supporters, Climate Depot’s headline claimed a “Meteorologist calls Biden’s tornado climate link ‘utter bullsh*t,’” quoting and linking to Chris Martz, who is in fact not only not a meteorologist, but not even a college graduate, having just completed his first semester at Millersville University. (Though Chris did note that geophysics PhD and American Meteorological Fellow Michael Mann “oversimplifies the issue” and “isn’t a trained meteorologist.”)

Marc Morano’s email also cites an old post by climate satellite mistake-maker Roy Spencer, followed by a reference toRoger Pielke Jr.,who is making good use of his cramped office by tweeting quotes from the IPCC as though the consensus view of tornado trends has a bearing on this specific event’s conditions. (Generous of Jr. to stop publicly airing his weird daddy issues long enough to give his opinion on tornadogenesis!)

After Pielke is our favorite climate-, covid-, Sandy Hook- and Obama birther-conspiracy theorist: Tony Heller. He excerpted a bunch of old newspaper clippings to prove that, since tornadoes happened in the past before climate change, that means climate change must not be changing the climate in which they form now. (Makes sense, right?)

But Pielke Jr.’s appearance in Morano’s email alongside his apparent peers Chris Martz (class of ‘25) and Tony Heller (no class at all) is just the warm-up, the paltering of what past trends may or may not mean for a current situation.

And others in conspiracy-land are offering their opinions and asking some “legitimate” questions, and it’s pretty entertaining, in the dark and depressing way this sort of thing is amusing.

As Media Matters reported, Alex Jones, fresh off his court losses regarding aforementioned Sandy Hook school shooting conspiracy theories, told his InfoWars audience that the Biden administration “officially” ordered Texas to turn off the power last February. Which means “the question is did [President Biden] use weather weapons to cause the tornadoes? That’s a legitimate question to ask.”

It’s not like this is the first time an InfoWarrior has offered some creative explanations for extreme weather. Remember back in 2018 when Jones’s co-conspiracy-theory-conspirator suggested that John Kerry saved Hawaii from a hurricane with an energy beam fired from Antarctica? (Or is that not a legitimate question to ask? We’re unsure of the meaning of the phrase at this point.)

Even that’s not the craziest take though! Remember the Wobble prediction that aliens are controlling the Earth’s movement — the real cause of climate change — and are soon going to wobble us so hard it reveals the mystery planet Nibiru?

Well, since Tony Heller’s banned from Twitter he’s taken to Gab, and his fellow poster there ROGTruth1 has an update for us on The Wobble we discussed the other day: It’s what actually caused the tornadoes, and a bunch of other events!

“The temporary wobble in the earth’s axis has been superseded by a severe wobble. So, the regular disturbances which have been a true cause of climate change are now manifesting as more significant events.” From an earthquake in Peru on November 28th, to cold in Europe, earthquakes in Japan, windstorm in Turkey and tornadoes in the US, the wobble’s just getting started.

Apparently “soon” in December, a “Massive New Madrid Adjustment (unzipping) will occur over a period of 3 weeks” leading to the “entire region west of the Mississippi” to “sink” and “shift Southwest,” causing “major disruption through the Ohio valley and up through the St. Lawrence Seaway.” After that 3 week cataclysm but also still in “December soon” will be a 150 foot tsunami that “will hit the UK and Western Europe,” while “backwash of up to 50’ will hit the Eastern seaboard of the USA.”

If you’re as concerned as we are, rest assured that while there will be “no warnings from the elite that are fully briefed and aware,” the good news is that “half of humanity has been subliminally contacted.”

Those of you who have been contacted already, you know the plan. Those that haven’t? Sorry, we can’t say anything further, but you should consider listening to the “experts” cited here if you’re worried, they seem to have things pretty well figured out.

---

BK REV 2011? IEEE

The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming*

By Roger Pielke Jr.; Basic Books, 2010; 276 pp.; US $26.00; ISBN 978-0-4650-2052-2

While many prominent climate scientists are spending their time advocating action and highlighting what we do know, Roger Pielke Jr. apparently wants everyone to take a giant step backward and restart the entire conversation. Despite its title, his new book, The Climate Fix, gives much more attention to climate failures than to climate fixes.

Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has found himself at the center of science-blogger wars in the past, and though he doesn’t address those battles directly, his thesis remains the same. In short: Scientists need to stay out of politics.

The politicization of a scientific debate is at the center of the book’s argument. What will surely rankle climate-change activists is that Pielke seems to focus on the foibles of the consensus scientists rather than on those of the lunatic fringe. Pages and pages are devoted to explaining why certain important papers and reports—from the iconic "stabilization wedges" paper to theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s monumental undertakings—are suspect because of their political motivations. Very little space is devoted to explaining just how urgently action is needed. Significantly, Pielke agrees with the rest of his field on the need to stop emitting carbon dioxide and to stabilize its concentration in the atmosphere at somewhere between 350 and 500 parts per million; he just doesn’t want scientists to tell the rest of us how to get there.

And so with all the "debunking" of prominent science, by the book’s end his readers won’t have learned very much at all. If you didn’t know that there were uncertainties in climate science before, then yes, you will definitely know that now. Pielke’s actual "fix," on the other hand, comes so late in the book and is so poorly highlighted that it might not get noticed at all.

What is that fix? Well, it involves an obscenely low price on carbon (US $5 per metric ton) that will pay for further innovations in renewable energy. Other than that, Pielke advocates setting specific goals, monitoring progress, and focusing on technology advancement. Yawn.

If Pielke’s first tenet is the completely unrealistic and potentially counterproductive divorce of science from policy, his second, as evidenced by the meager carbon price, seems to be aiming low in the name of political expediency. He suggests five bucks only because it seems feasible and cites the support of Exxon Mobil’s CEO as evidence. Seriously, Exxon Mobil. "The precise amount of the tax itself—whether $5 per metric ton, or $10, or only $3—is less important than that the tax be implemented at the highest price politically possible," Pielke writes.

Such "pragmatism" amounts to bargaining ourselves down in advance of the bargaining that we have to do with others. Pielke’s carbon price will force fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil to do absolutely nothing differently. Pielke admits this, noting that the point is simply to raise money for renewable energy technology innovation. Such a path, though, ignores the vast scientific consensus that we need to start lowering emissions yesterday. Even if his carbon tax could raise $150 billion per year, as Pielke suggests, the pace of innovation can’t match the pace of current emissions and subsequent temperature and sea level rise, ocean acidification, and various other problems. At its root, Pielke’s climate fix is to do almost nothing.

For more book reviews, see the full list.

About the Author

Dave Levitan is a science journalist based in New York City. He is a regular contributor to IEEE Spectrum’s EnergyWise blog.

==

NEW

roger pielke jr climate denier ggl 6 23

...

Roger A. Pielke Jr.

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Roger_A._Pielke_Jr.

A "Guide to Climate Skeptics" published by Foreign Policy notes that Pielke's published views have led to him being considered by some a "denier" of climate ...

Education and background · ‎Professional writing · ‎Publications

For those wondering why Roger Pielke Jr is the go-to ...

Twitter

https://twitter.com › MichaelEMann › status

For those wondering why Roger Pielke Jr is the go-to witness for the Republicans at nearly ever congressional hearing on climate change. A denialist w/ a veneer ...

Climate misinformation by source: Roger Pielke Jr

Skeptical Science

https://skepticalscience.com › Roger_Pielke_Jr_blog

Examines the science and arguments of global warming skepticism. Common objections like 'global warming is caused by the sun', 'temperature has changed ......

FiveThirtyEight undermines its brand by misrepresenting ...

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › environment › mar › f...

Mar 25, 2014 — Pielke isn't criticized because of a lack of "purity," he's criticized because he consistently provides a skewed representation of the body of ...

Current Climate Policy A 'Failure,' Says Pielke, Jr.

WesternWire.net

https://www.westernwire.net › current-climate-policy-a...

Jul 6, 2018 — Current Climate Policy A 'Failure,' Says Pielke, Jr. ... A University of Colorado Boulder professor is calling for a reset of “business-as-usual ...

My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic

Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com › Opinion › Commentary

Dec 2, 2016 — Roger Pielke Jr. ... In 2011 writers in the journal Foreign Policy signaled that some accused me of being a “climate-change denier.

Roger A. Pielke Jr. | Encyclopedia MDPI

Scholarly Community Encyclopedia

https://encyclopedia.pub › entry

Oct 20, 2022 — Roger A. Pielke Jr. (born November 2, 1968) is an American ... by some a "denier" of climate change, though Pielke strongly objects to those ...

Pielke misrepresents climate/extreme weather connection ...

Government Accountability Project

https://whistleblower.org › All Posts

Oct 26, 2018 — In a replay of the argument he's made for years, political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. attempts to dismiss the wide array of evidence linking ...

Ep93: Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. "The Inconvenient Truth about ...

cleaningup.live

https://www.cleaningup.live › ep93-prof-roger-pielke-...

Jun 29, 2022 — Roger Pielke, Jr. has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder since 2001, where he teaches and writes on a diverse range ...

Roger Pielke, Jr. “When scientific integrity is undermined in ...

Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York

https://pragmaticenvironmentalistofnewyork.blog › ro...

Mar 3, 2023 — Roger Pielke, Jr. has been analyzing climate change risks since 1994. ... of search suggestions included “Roger Pielke Jr climate denier”.

Has the IPCC Outlived its Usefulness? - by Roger Pielke Jr.

Substack

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com › has-the-ipcc-outlived...

Mar 22, 2023 — The empty exhortation and missing science of the IPCC Synthesis Report · The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important ...

Is Global Warming Less than We Thought?

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com › is-global-warming-le...

Apr 16, 2023 — Roger Pielke Jr. ... In a wiseacre nutshell — if you favored the satellite temperature record, you were probably a denier, and if you saw ...

Roger Pielke, Jr. | Department of Environmental Studies

University of Colorado Boulder

https://www.colorado.edu › envs › roger-pielke-jr

Roger is a professor in the Environmental Studies Program. Roger is currently focusing his research on a NSF-sponsored, 16-country evaluation of science advice ...

Missing: denier ‎| Must include: denier

The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell ...

ResearchGate

https://www.researchgate.net › publication › 261948554...

"In The Climate Fix, Roger Pielke, Jr., a political scientist and a world-renowned expert on the intersection of ... Are “Climate Deniers” Rational Actors?

ROGER PIELKE JR

The Global Warming Policy Foundation

https://www.thegwpf.org › Laframboise-Pielke

Nov 11, 2021 — Readers were told Pielke routinely expresses the kinds of concerns that dominate climate sceptic blogs. But that has never been the case. His ...

How Academic 'Blacklists' Impede Serious Work On ...

Forbes

https://www.forbes.com › rogerpielke › 2020/02/09

Feb 9, 2020 — An explosive, inside story of how a climate science blacklist is ... They sought to define Pielke Sr. as a “climate denier,” and to use his ...

The Climate Fix - HC Coombs Policy Forum | - ANU

Australian National University

https://coombs-forum.crawford.anu.edu.au › files

by R Pielke Jr · 2012 · Cited by 314 — Professor Roger Pielke Jr. Professor of Environmental Studies, Centre for Science & Technology ... and deniers. Climate change demands of us something.

Roger Pielke Sr. misrepresents the science of global ...

Grist

https://grist.org › article › roger-pielke-sr-misrepresent...

Jul 21, 2009 — Why do deniers like Pielke shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather? Roger Pielke, Jr. baselessly smears the ...

WikiLeaks exposes liberal group's efforts to thwart climate ...

Daily Camera

https://www.dailycamera.com › roger-pielke-jr-wikilea...

Oct 26, 2016 — Roger Pielke Jr., who has been a faculty member on the Boulder ... that he's a climate-change skeptic or denier, pointing to his public ...

Lamar Smith, unbound, lays out political strategy at climate ...

Science

https://www.science.org › content › article › lamar-smith...

House science committee chairman touts attacks on climate research before friendly ... policy specialist Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado in ...

Pielke Jr.'s false claims and abusive behavior

RedGreenandBlue.org

http://redgreenandblue.org › 2021/07/20 › congress-s...

Jul 20, 2021 — Frank Nutter of the Reinsurance Association of America. The last is Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado. By Climate Denier ...

Don't feed the climate trolls

The Week

https://theweek.com › articles › dont-feed-climate-trolls

A few people were outraged that I called Roger Pielke, Jr. a "climate troll" in my ... I call them climate trolls not because they are full-blown deniers, ...

Now even climate-change believers count as 'deniers'

New York Post

https://nypost.com › 2017/10/12 › now-even-climate-...

Oct 12, 2017 — Consider the case of Roger Pielke Jr, a political scientist who worked extensively ... You're a denier, says Chile's environment minister.

Opinion | Climate Change Is Real. Markets, Not ...

The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com › climate-change-bret-stephens

Oct 28, 2022 — For years, I saw myself not as a global-warming denier (a loaded term ... Another climate nonalarmist is Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of ...

Why Roger Pielke, Jr. is the Wrong Choice for FiveThirtyEight

Earth Island Institute

https://www.earthisland.org › journal › articles › entry

Mar 21, 2014 — Just about everyone of any reputation disagrees with him. Take Dr. Michael Mann, who has been fighting against phony science and climate deniers ...

GovInfo (.gov)

https://www.govinfo.gov › content › pkg › html

53 Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., Professor, Environmental Studies Department, University of ... anti-science, and a denier by a prominent climate scientist.

Breakthrough Institute's Pielke in a Pickle

Climate Investigations Center

https://climateinvestigations.org › breakthrough_instit...

Apr 7, 2014 — Roger Pielke Jr. is a Senior Fellow at Breakthrough Insitute and seemingly their lead ... Pielke is a novel species of climate 'denier'.

Tales from the climate-change crossroads

Nature Journal

https://www.nature.com › books & arts

by R Pielke Jr · 2010 · Cited by 3 — ... that exhortation and authority are not enough to solve the climate crisis — it is time for some humility, concludes Roger Pielke Jr.

Decarbonization

The Breakthrough Institute

https://thebreakthrough.org › ... › Decarbonization

Energy and Climate ... Roger Pielke, Jr. by Roger Pielke, Jr. Behind Japan's Climate Fail ... Conservative Deniers Main. Energy and Climate.

Terence Corcoran: New debate over the future of fossil fuels

Financial Post

https://financialpost.com › opinion › debate-future-fos...

Feb 8, 2023 — Climate 'deniers' Alex Epstein and Roger Pielke Jr. face off. Find out more.

The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell ...

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com › book › show

Science policy expert Roger Pielke, Jr., says it's not the fault of those who reject ... in an I-don't-know-if-this-guy-is-a-climate-change-denier-type way.

Rating: 3.7 · ‎127 votes

Climate of Failure

Foreign Policy

https://foreignpolicy.com › 2012/08/06 › climate-of-fail...

Aug 6, 2012 — Roger Pielke Jr. is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado and author of The Climate Fix: What Scientists and ...

---

re grijalva complained bitterly (said he would have been proud to take FF $ but never offered, sort of petulently quit sci --> brkthru inst

balling info leaked he got $1K mo from heartland, RP also?]

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... part two of Friends of Science Society's 18th Annual Event online will feature American author Marc Morano with "Green New Deal: The Great Regret".

==

SPONSORED [sm font] no lnx

New Yorker Magazine Has a Moral Obligation to Open the Climate Debate Before COP26, says Friends of Science Society

By Friends of Science Society Sep 29, 2021 Updated Sep 29, 2021 Comments

CALGARY, Alberta, Sept. 29, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- In response to the Sept. 27, 2021, interview in The New Yorker with Swedish climate activist Andreas Malm

who advocates for 'intelligent sabotage' of critical infrastructure that underpins modern society,

The New Yorker is morally obliged to interview Swedish climate scientists like Hans Jelbring to calm the dangerous rhetoric of Malm before the November 2021 COP26 climate conference,

says Friends of Science Society.

As discussed in the LA Review of Books of Jan. 2021, Malm's case is that humanity faces a 'hellscape' earth, and thus rather than march in the streets,

climate activists should sabotage equipment of energy developers and providers.

Friends of Science says extremist rhetoric from Malm and groups like Extinction Rebellion exist because of the lack of media coverage of rational, dissenting, scientific views on climate change. The promotion of climate hysteria by Columbia Journalism Review's "Covering Climate Now" project exacerbates the public fears, where some 400 media outlets preach climate catastrophe to an audience of 2 billion people. This one-sided coverage and intentional polarization has now created a danger for society itself with media giving a profile to people like Malm.

Local Trending News]

A sober reading of the ~4,000-page United Nations IPCC AR6 report released last month, mentions 'climate emergency' and 'climate crisis' only once on a page about media coverage.

The alarming 'hockey stick' graph that appears in the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers (that makes it seem as if now is the hottest time ever) does not appear in the scientific document

as explained in this Friends of Science video – obviously an effort to manipulate policymakers and the media. The 'hockey stick' data set has been deconstructed by Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit.

Roger Pielke, Jr. explains that this IPCC report has abandoned the view of a 'hellscape' future for humanity associated with a scenario known as RCP 8.5

and contrary to Malm's claim that wildfires and floods are evidence of climate change, Pielke, Jr.'s review shows the scientific report of the IPCC does not see any such trends. Pielke, Jr.

and colleague Justin Ritchie have shown in a peer-reviewed study that most catastrophic thinking on climate has stemmed from persistent use of the RCP8.5 scenario 'as if business-as-usual' when it is implausible. These scenarios were only meant for climate research and not for policy making.

Malm's claims about wildfires as evidence of climate change are misinformed, as Friends of Science Society explained last year to a SLATE journalist in this post and video.

Likewise, this year's alarming heat that occurred coincident to the tragic Lytton, BC fire can be understood by atmospheric conditions, as explained by Jean van Vliet and Brigitte van Vliet-Lanoie.

Friends of Science Society calls on The New Yorker to be responsible and open up the debate on climate science with qualified scholars holding dissenting views

such as Swedish scientist Gösta Petterson (author of "Falskt Alarm/False Alarm" – his work promoted in English by Elsa Widding),

or any of the scientists and scholars of CLINTEL, the climate intelligence organization of over 900 signatory scientists and scholars who state there is no climate emergency.

The CLINTEL World Climate Declaration can be read here.

CLINTEL's president, Dr. Guus Berkhout, will be the first speaker at Friends of Science Society's 18th Annual Event, online, this Saturday, October 2, 2021, at 10 a.m. MDT/12 p.m. EDT .

Dr. Berkhout will present "Climate Science: Let the Data Speak" and will show how the actual data does not support the 'hellscape' fears and rhetoric of activists like Malm.

On Oct. 6, 2021, at 7 p.m. MDT/9 p.m. EDT, part two of Friends of Science Society's 18th Annual Event online will feature American author Marc Morano with "Green New Deal: The Great Regret".

There will be live Q&A following each presentation. Both events are free to the public.

About

Friends of Science Society is an independent group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers, and citizens that is celebrating its 19th year of offering climate science insights.

After a thorough review of a broad spectrum of literature on climate change, Friends of Science Society has concluded that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2).

Friends of Science Society

P.O. Box 23167, Mission P.O.

Calgary, Alberta

Canada T2S 3B1

Toll-free Telephone: 1-888-789-9597

Web: friendsofscience.org

E-mail: contact(at)friendsofscience(dot)org

Web: climatechange101.ca

Media Contact

Michelle Stirling, Friends of Science Society, 8887899597, media@friendsofscience.org

Twitter

SOURCE Friends of Science Society

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Two of the professors under investigation have a CU Boulder connection: Pielke, a professor in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, and Steven F. Hayward, who now teaches at Pepperdine University but spent the 2013-14 academic year as CU’s first Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy[curry, RP and hayward all at shillenberger brkthru inst].

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IHE sorta

...beckwith Francis J. Beckwith is professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University. This piece was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.

So, in the fall I brought George Yancey (University of North Texas) and Patrick Deneen (University of Notre Dame) to campus. Yancey spoke on “Conservatives in Academia: Is There Bias Against Them?” while Deneen gave a talk on “The End of Liberalism: Why the World Is Falling Apart.”

In the spring, the university hosted lectures by Elizabeth Corey (Baylor University), who spoke on “Can Conservatives Support Diversity?” and author Rod Dreher, who discussed his New York Times best-seller, The Benedict Option.

==

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/James_G._Martin_Center_for_Academic_Renewal

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, formerly the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, is a right-wing 501(c)3 nonprofit and associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN).[1] The organization along with the John William Pope Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization that provides funding to many SPN and other right wing organizations, is underwritten by Art Pope.

The James Martin Center was founded by the John Locke Foundation in 2003 as the Pope Center, changing its name at the beginning of 2017. The organization aims to add conservatives to the faculty of public universities. Its vision for "improving" universities is:[2]

Increase the diversity of ideas taught, debated, and discussed on campus;

Encourage respect for the institutions that underlie economic prosperity and freedom of action and conscience;

Increase the quality of teaching and students’ commitment to learning so that they graduate with strong literacy and fundamental knowledge;

Encourage cost-effective administration and governance.

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Fact-Checking the Attacks

The administration and its allies appear to be repeating one main talking point in their effort to discredit the National Climate Assessment: They claim, inaccurately, that the report represents only a worst-case scenario. It actually reflects a broad range of possible future outcomes—along with an enormity of direct, present-day observations of the impacts of global warming.

The naysayers are trying to build that falsehood on a number of misleading assertions:

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said "even Obama's undersecretary for science didn't believe the radical conclusions of the report that was released." This appears to be a reference to Steven Koonin, a former chief scientist for BP, who spent 18 months as an undersecretary in the Obama administration's energy department. Koonin has long maintained climate science is not "settled," and has argued the government should have a red-team/blue-team debate—an idea championed unsuccessfully by former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Sanders also said that the National Climate Assessment "is based on the most extreme modeled scenario, which contradicts long-established trends." But in fact the report considered the full range of climate scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, looking at what will happen if carbon emissions decline, if they stabilize, and if they continue to grow unabated. As Hayhoe noted in her Twitter thread, "the observed increase in global carbon emissions over the past 15–20 years has been consistent with higher scenarios."

The Trump EPA put out a news release it called a "fact check" on Wednesday, citing an article on the conservative website The Daily Caller to try to bolster an assertion by Wheeler that Obama administration's science adviser John Holdren instructed the report's authors in 2015 to look at worst-case scenarios. "Mr. Wheeler's insinuation is absolutely false," Holdren, now at Harvard, responded in a statement. "Assertions by high officials of the Trump administration that these are 'worst case' reports are nothing more than a flimsy attempt to discredit the careful and comprehensive work of some of the best climate scientists in the country, inside and outside of government," Holdren said.

Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, said the administration might intervene in future climate reports. "Going forward, I think we need to take a look at the modeling that's used for the next assessment," Wheeler said. But the report underwent several rounds of technical and policy review by the 13 federal agencies involved. There was a series of regional engagement workshops that reached more than 1,000 people in over 40 cities, with listening sessions, webinars and public comment. An expert external peer review of the whole report was performed by a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado, took issue with the report for including a figure that was widely quoted in the media: that U.S. GDP could take a 10 percent hit by 2100 due to climate change. The estimate was derived from an innovative, cutting-edge modeling of climate impacts on the U.S. economy published in the journal Science. Pielke, who often says he agrees with the core science on global warming but disputes how it is applied, argued this headline-grabbing data point should not have been included, since it reflected a scenario of more global warming than is commonly reckoned in modeling. Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and co-author of the Science paper, said the team purposefully took into account the unlikely—though not impossible—scenario at the end of the charted curve because of its potentially large consequences. "We were deliberately trying to include tail risks, not just 'most likely' outcomes, because consideration of tail risks is crucial to sound risk management," Kopp said in an email.

The arguments of the Trump administration have been amplified in media coverage in the aftermath of the report's release.

Danielle Pletka of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute prefacing her remarks with the caveat, "I'm not a scientist," before delivering a blizzard of inaccuracies on Sunday's "Meet the Press" on NBC aimed at undermining the report's credibility. Pletka said the last two years have been the coldest on record, when in fact they have been among the warmest. She said the U.S. "is not using dirty coal anymore," when in fact about 30 percent of U.S. power is still generated by coal and only one U.S. coal plant has technology in place to capture some of its carbon emissions.

Hayhoe pre-taped an appearance on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 show to talk about the National Climate Assessment on Tuesday, but her appearance—though posted online—was bumped from the TV broadcast. CNN instead aired a segment with paid contributor Rick Santorum, a former Republican U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, who accused climate scientists of stoking alarm to make money.

==

3/17 signed letter with real sci?

BUT:

http://www.ecowatch.com/lamar-smith-climate-science-2336435692.html

Climate Deniers' Big Day on Capitol Hill

No one thought that Lamar "my career has been funded by fossil fuels" Smith was going to put on an unbiased hearing on climate science. After all, the minority Democrats on Smith's House Committee on Science, Space, & Technology published a report this month, Much Ado About Nothing, which details Smith's "crusade to attempt to undermine and invalidate" Tom Karl's pause-buster study. (Yet Smith still can't get NOAA's name right)!

Although little was said about Karl, Wednesday's House Science Committee hearing with Drs. Michael Mann, John Christy, Judith Curry and Roger Pielke Jr. was a quite a circus. Which is exactly why someone who's been through Smith's nonsense, Dr. David Titley, wrote for the Washington Post that scientists should boycott these biased hearings.

That would be nice, if that meant that Smith would stop holding them. But since he shows no sign of slowing his inquisition, someone needs to show up to set the record straight and push back on all the denial packed into the hearing like so many clowns in a tiny car.

And that's exactly what Dr. Mann did, successfully walking the tight-rope between correcting other witnesses and coming off as a jerk. Most notably and most clearly getting under Smith's skin, Mann cited a recent Science Magazine article describing Smith's comments at the Heartland conference. Mann read the killer quote about how Smith "acknowledged that the committee is now a tool to advance his political agenda rather than a forum to examine important issues facing the U.S. research community."

In response, Lamar Smith, the esteemed media critic who cited the Daily Mail's bogus Bates story, who has written for Breitbart and said that people should get their news directly from Trump, claimed that Science Magazine is "not known as an objective magazine." As Emily Atkin of the New Republic aptly put it, "The fact that the chairman of the House Science committee doesn't consider that source 'objective' is ACTUALLY MIND BLOWING."

Smith, with pie on his face, also demonstrated his media savvy by citing the never-correct editorial page of the Wall Street Journal on heat records. This opinion is about as solid as cotton candy and has been contradicted by the paper's own reporting.

[img]

Speaking of dumb Wall Street Journal opinions, Mann also did a nice job of calling out Pielke's hypocrisy for whining in the Journal about being harassed, after sending threatening letters to Mann and Kevin Trenberth's bosses when they criticized his awful FiveThirtyEight piece that needed correction.

Also needing correction was John Christy, who trotted out his error-laden graph of models and observations. Again, Mann highlighted the foolishness of his fellow witnesses by pointing out how others have corrected Christy many times on the satellite record vs. the thermometer record. And more importantly, he cited the recent research that totally debunks Christy's false contention that models overestimate warming.

And then there's Judith Curry who, true to form, was there to talk about uncertainty (inappropriately). Again Mann was prepared, pointing out that uncertainty is actually a reason to take stronger action sooner. Uncertainty cuts both ways: while Curry and the GOP would have you believe maybe warming won't be so bad, it could actually be much worse than we fear.

Curry also bristled at being referred to as a "climate science denier" in Mann's written testimony. That's silly: She's teamed up with the Kochs, questioned the validity of the endangerment finding and said in her opening statement that it's time to "make the debate about climate change great again." So it is safe to say that "Judith Curry is absolutely a climate denier."

And she proved it in the hearing, denying the science and claiming we don't know how much is human versus natural. In 2014, NASA's Gavin Schmidt laid out the case for Curry that our best estimate is that humans are causing 110 percent of warming. (It's more than 100 percent because natural forces and particulate pollution cause cooling, which CO2 is overcoming to cause warming).

Curry also questioned ocean acidification science, in a way that Brian Kahn noted "is way out of step with most ocean scientists" that he's talked with.

Other odds and ends that made an appearance include the 1998 documents showing Big Oil's plan to inject uncertainty into the climate debate, the long-debunked 70s cooling myth and Smith's tired denial of the consensus.

So like any good circus, there were plenty of clowns, people lion, tired grr-causing myths and bear-ly believable statements.

Oh my.

Here's the full hearing:

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:{===

he posted to 538:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2014/07/28/roger-pielke-jr-fivethirtyeight-climate-critics/}:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/disasters-cost-more-than-ever-but-not-because-of-climate-change/

One of the dangerous things about purporting objectivity because your journalism uses data is that even data can be conveyed with prejudice. “In a perfect world the data would just speak for itself, but that’s never the case,” the economist Allison Schranger wrote at Quartz following FiveThirtyEight’s launch. “Interpreting and presenting data requires making judgments and possibly mistakes.” That’s why so many writers have been concerned about FiveThirtyEight’s climate writer, Roger Pielke, Jr, a University of Colorado professor, who ThinkProgress once called “the most debunked person in the science blogosphere, possibly the entire Web.”

Though Pielke has a deep pool of knowledge about climate change, as The Week has chronicled, he also has strong personal opinions and a history of using data to back them up against the larger scientific community. President Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, has “accused [Pielke] of selective quotation and obfuscation,” and though Pielke claims to believe in climate change, Foreign Policy has included him on its list of climate skeptics. (He also has a shaky history with data, having once included the results of the filmmaker Michael Mann when analyzing the inflation of news coverage of a study by the scientist Michael Mann.)

Pielke’s first post for the site covers the link between climate change and extreme weather—or lack thereof: “Disasters Cost More Than Ever—But Not Because of Climate Change.” In the post, he first shows the rising rate of global disaster losses, then adjusts the figure for the rise in global GDP—showing that global disaster losses have actually flatlined. “We’re seeing ever-larger losses simply because we have more to lose—when an earthquake or flood occurs, more stuff gets damaged,” writes Pielke. Which is an interesting point, but not relevant to climate change.

The shame is, there are plenty of subjects that could use a parsing from FiveThirtyEight: Silver could suss out the actual climate impact of shipping oil by rail, or give hard numbers on how decreased public research dollars effects disease funding—a subject the The New York Times specifically said was missing “[comprehensive] tracking [of] the magnitude and impact of private science.” Even a rigorous look at how to parse out acceptable health coverage would be welcome.

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bs?

Roger Pielke Jr recently made the remarkable discovery that, in addition to his university salary from George Mason University (reported by Pielke as $250,000), Jagadish Shukla, the leader of the #RICO20, together with his wife, had received a further $500,000 more in 2014 alone from federal climate grants funnelled through a Shukla-controlled “non-profit” (Institute for Global Environment and Security, Inc.), yielding total income in 2014 of approximately $750,000.

Actually, the numbers are even worse than Pielke thought.

Pielke had quoted Shukla’s 2013 university salary, but his university salary had increased more than 25% between 2013 and 2014: from $250,816 in 2013 to $314,000 in 2014.

In addition, the “non-profit” organization had also employed one of Shukla’s children (not reported, but say $90,000); and,

IGES transferred $100,000 from its climate grants to a second corporation controlled by the Shukla family (the Institute for Global Education Equality of Opportunity and Prosperity, Inc.), which in turn transferred $100,000 to an educational charity in Shukla’s home town in India, doubtless a worthy charity, but one that Shukla could have supported from his own already generous stipend.

Over a million dollars in total in 2014 alone.

In addition, Shukla’s long-time associate, James Kinter, participated in the same double dip, though on a less grandiose scale. Kinter, also a Professor at George Mason, doubled his 2014 university salary of $180,038 with $171,320 from IGES, for a total 2014 income of $351,358.

In today’s post, I’ll make an attempt to follow the money.  This analysis is not an audit as I obviously do not have access to original documents – only public information and, for the purposes of this note, only online research.  In addition, the history is quite complicated,as the institutions reach back over 30 years and have changed relationships over time.  I’ve examined NSF, NOAA and NASA online grant information, which covers only part of the period (NOAA to 2001; NASA to 2006) and placed a summary spreadsheet online here.

Because “warmists” regularly re-assure skeptics that income from research is strictly regulated under federal policies (e,g. Andrew Dessler here), the parties who ought to have the most interest in the structure are warmists, rather than skeptics, though the opposite seems to be the case thus far.

NSF Policy

Before discussing Shukla’s structure, I’ll first quickly comment on institutional policies, as both the federal agencies (NSF, NOAA, NASA) and the university (George Mason) purport to have policies that prevent double-dipping.

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12/14

Here is a list of what I am calling my top 5 climate essays of 2014. No doubt there are others that deserve mentioning, but these are the ones that come to mind this morning. These essays are chosen because the stand out to me in some way, which I describe below. All are focused in some way or another on the climate policy debate as it occurs in the public sphere. Were I to pick essays or papers on various aspects of climate science I’d have a different list. In the comments, I welcome suggestions for other essays of 2014 worth reading and remembering.

  1. Dan Sarewitz, It’s the End of the World as We Prefer it and I Feel … Stupid.

In his characteristic style, ASU’s Dan Sarewitz explains that the debate on climate change has become intolerant and narrow. Climate change is important, but so too are other issues. Key excerpt:

…the climate-change-as-apocalypse orthodoxy thereby radically narrows the range of viewpoints we are willing to tolerate and the range of options we are willing to consider for dealing with complex challenges to our well-being like natural disasters and infectious disease and poverty and civil strife.

  1. Matt Nisbet, Engaging in Science Policy Controversies

This is a long essay, adapted from a book chapter, from a leading scholar on communication in science and policy. Nisbet brings fresh thinking, empirical analyses and an unwillingness to be cowed to provide some sharp insights on the nature of the climate debate. Key excerpt:

no matter how knowledgeable and adept the expert community might be in applying research to their public engagement efforts; resolution of intensely polarized debates take years, if not decades to resolve; and requires the different sides in a debate to give ground, negotiate and compromise.

see cites his nibs, and recs carbon tax? [DIVERSIFYING POLICY OPTIONS AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHOICES

Apart from recruiting new voices and emphasizing new frames of reference; the expert community can also balance the efforts of climate advocates by expanding the range of policy options and technologies considered. As Roger Pielke Jr. (2007) argues, instead of allowing their expertise to be used in efforts to promote a narrow set of policy approaches, experts and their institutions must act independently as “honest brokers” to expand the range of policy options and technological choices under consideration by the political community. The broader the menu of policies and technologies under consideration, the greater the opportunity for compromise among decision-makers.

In their research on cultural groups, the findings of Kahan and colleagues’ (2011) strongly suggest that perceptions of climate change are policy and technology dependent and that consensus is more likely to occur under conditions of a diverse rather than narrow set of proposed solutions. In these studies, when Hierarchical Individualists read that the solution to climate change was more nuclear power or geoengineering, their skepticism of expert statements relative to climate change decreased and their support for policy responses increased. In contrast, when the solution to climate change was framed as stricter pollution controls, Hierarchical Individualists acceptance of expert statements on climate change decreased, whereas Communitarian Egalitarians increased. “It isn’t the case, of course, that carbon- emission controls are the only policy response to climate change risks; technologies that furnish a substitute for and that offset the effects of greenhouse-gas-producing energy sources can contribute, too,” write Kahan and his colleagues. “Many of these alternatives, such as nuclear power and geoengineering, are likely to convey cultural resonances that affirm rather than threaten hierarchical and individualist confidence in the power of human ingenuity to overcome environmental constraints on economic production.”

Pielke (2011) notes that polls show the public for several years has favored action on climate change but at low levels of intensity, suggesting that it is not a lack of public support limiting policy action. “The challenge facing climate policy is to design policies that are consonant with public opinion, and are effective, rather than try to shape public opinion around particular policies,” he argues (p. 43). “A broad portfolio of technologies and practices should be supported…despite the fact that no one energy technology will be universally popular,” he writes. Eventually, tough choices will be needed politically about what technologies to deploy, but that “should not preclude innovation, lest we limit our options before those options are even available” (p. 229). In this case, he argues that once next generation technologies are available that make meaningful action on climate change lower-cost, then much of the argument politically over scientific uncertainty will diminish.

If we apply Pielke and Kahan’s reasoning to the climate debate, it follows that building political consensus on climate change will depend heavily on experts and their institutions calling attention to a broad portfolio of policy actions and technological solutions, with some actions such as tax incentives for nuclear energy, government support for clean energy research, or proposals to defend and protect local communities against climate change impacts more likely to gain support from both Democrats and Republicans. As effective honest brokers, scientists and their institutions should pro-actively encourage journalists, policymakers, and the public to discuss a broad menu of options, rather than tacitly allow (or sometimes promote) efforts by climate activists, bloggers and commentators to limit debate to just a handful of options that fit with their own ideology and cultural outlook.

I observed the dynamics identified by Pielke, Kahan, and others while conducting my own research analyzing a group of major U.S. foundations and funders who had bet heavily on the ability of technocratic expertise to overcome political differences on climate change and in the process committed the mistake of investing in an ideologically narrow set of policy goals and technologies (Nisbet, 2011). In 2006, several of the country’s wealthiest foundations hired a consulting firm to comprehensively survey the available scientific literature and to consult more than 150 leading climate change and energy experts. The result of this intensive undertaking was the 2007 report Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming.

Leading the report was the recommendation that “tempering climate change” required a strong cap and trade policy in the U.S. and the European Union, and a binding international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions. The report predicted that passage of cap and trade legislation would “prompt a sea change that washes over the entire global economy.” The report included little to no discussion of the role of government in directly sponsoring the creation of new energy technologies. The report was additionally notable for the absence of any meaningful discussion of social, political or technological barriers. Instead, the authors offered a decidedly optimistic outlook: “The good news is that we already have the technology and know-how to achieve these carbon reductions—often at a cost savings.”]

  1. Martin Lewis, Eco-Authoritarian Catastrophism: The Dismal and Deluded Vision of Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Lewis provides a devastating critique of a recent book, and in the process identifies much that has gone off kilter in the climate debate. Lewis recognizes that there are excesses on all sides of the climate debate, but he focuses his attention on those climate advocates who do much to hurt their cause. Key excerpt:

This essay addresses only one side of this spectrum, that of the doomsayers who think we must forsake democracy and throttle our freedoms if we are to avoid a planetary catastrophe. Although it may seem paradoxical, my focus on the green extreme stems precisely from my conviction that anthropogenic climate change is a huge problem that demands determined action. Yet a sizable contingent of eco-radicals, I am convinced, consistently discredit this cause.

  1. Roger Pielke, Jr., Disasters Cost More Than Ever — But Not Because of Climate Change

I add this essay not because it is either novel (it wasn’t) or particularly well-written (ho-hum). Rather, as you probably know this essay prompted a coordinated backlash against FiveThirtyEight and me (sordid details here). It was an important experience for me and for my thinking about my desire to continue doing climate-related research (much diminished). Two direct consequences of the episode are this blog, where I can ring-fence my climate work, and a new book on disasters and climate change. The substance in the essay was straight out of the IPCC and thus scientifically solid. It was the response to it that makes it memorable for me.

Key excerpt, which looks solid after another year of below average global disaster losses:

When you read that the cost of disasters is increasing, it’s tempting to think that it must be because more storms are happening. They’re not. All the apocalyptic “climate porn” in your Facebook feed is solely a function of perception. In reality, the numbers reflect more damage from catastrophes because the world is getting wealthier. We’re seeing ever-larger losses simply because we have more to lose — when an earthquake or flood occurs, more stuff gets damaged.

  1. Richard Tol, Hot Stuff, Cold Logic

Richard Tol has written a clear and powerful essay on climate policy. It really deserves to be widely read. It is a challenging piece and sure to make you think, and may even make you angry. You can’t ask for much more than that. Key excerpt:

In sum, while climate change is a problem that must be tackled, we should not lose our sense of proportion or advocate solutions that would do more harm than good. Unfortunately, common sense is sometimes hard to find in the climate debate.

These are my top five. How about you?

==

CU's Benson complies uneasily with Democratic probe into climate professor

4/1/2015

By Valerie Richardson

THE COLORADO STATESMAN

University of Colorado officials have turned over information — albeit grudgingly — on professor Roger Pielke Jr. to U.S. House Democrats on what he calls a “witch hunt” into the funding of certain climate scientists.

CU President Bruce Benson complied last week with a request by U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., for Pielke’s salary, external funding sources and financial-disclosure forms as part of a probe into whether professors who deviate from the so-called “consensus” view on climate change receive fossil-fuel funding.

At the same time, Benson bristled at the implication that the CU Boulder environmental studies professor had somehow slanted his research to advance a political agenda.

“We are aware of nothing to suggest that Professor Pielke’s research and conclusions were influenced by improper considerations,” said the March 23 letter signed by Benson and CU Boulder chancellor Philip DiStefano.

“As we provide this response, we would like to emphasize that Professor Pielke is a highly regarded researcher and that we fully support the principles of academic freedom,” the letter said. “Consistent with the principles of academic freedom, Professor Pielke’s research is subject to rigorous peer review, which helps advance and build scientific knowledge in the field.”

Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, has come under intense criticism from Republicans and scientific groups, led by the American Meteorological Society, for his investigation into the funding sources of seven professors.

He has defended the probe by noting that the professors have all testified before Congress on climate-change issues. All seven have also challenged the environmental movement’s assertion that elevated carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have triggered extreme weather events.

“I am hopeful that disclosure of a few key pieces of information will establish the impartiality of climate research and policy recommendations published in your institution’s name and assist me and my colleagues in making better law,” said Grijalva in his Feb. 24 letter to Benson.

Two of the professors under investigation have a CU Boulder connection: Pielke, a professor in the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, and Steven F. Hayward, who now teaches at Pepperdine University but spent the 2013-14 academic year as CU’s first Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy.

The House Democrats’ investigation comes amid a searing political debate over the funding of academics in the so-called “alarmist” or “warmist” camp versus those in the “denier” or “skeptics” camp. Senate Republicans produced a report last year tying liberal foundations to the funding of climate-change advocacy groups.

Grijalva launched his probe following a New York Times report on the conservative Koch Foundation’s funding of Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Soon failed to disclose his financial connection before testifying in the past before Congress, said Grijalva, although Soon has argued that his research is not influenced by his financial support.

In his letter, Grijalva said he was concerned about “potential conflicts of interest and failure to disclose corporate funding sources in academic climate research.”

He said that Pielke’s 2013 Senate testimony “featured the claim, often repeated, that it is ‘incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouses gases,’” adding that White House science adviser John Holdren disagrees with Pielke.

“My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships,” said Grijalva.

Of the seven professors named, Pielke has been the most outspoken, condemning the investigation as a McCarthyist “witch hunt” in a post on his Climate Fix blog headlined, “I Am Under ‘Investigation.’”

“I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest,” said Pielke in the Feb. 25 post. “I never have. Representative Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the US Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest. So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated ‘witch hunt’ designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name.”

Pielke also argues that he’s hardly a poster child for climate-change “denial.” While he disagrees with catastrophic global-warming scenarios, he agrees that “human-caused climate change is real” and supports a carbon tax as well as the EPA’s proposed carbon regulations on coal-fired plants. VERIFY

Still, that’s enough to make him controversial. He parted ways with the statistics blog FiveThirtyEight last year after his article, “Disasters Cost More Than Ever — But Not Because of Climate Change,” touched off a social-media campaign to have him fired, described by Discover columnist Keith Kloor as an “ugly pile-on.”

Other climate scientists have weighed in on the Grijalva probe by stressing that funding sources should be transparent while raising concerns about the politics. In 2010, the Republican Attorney General of Virginia came under similar criticism when he launched a probe into the funding of then-UVA climate professor Michael Mann.

“It was wrong when it was done by Republicans and right-wing think tanks, and it’s wrong when it’s done by Democrats and left-wing think tanks,” University of Washington climate professor Eric Steig told National Public Radio.

At least two other universities — Arizona State University and the University of Delaware — have responded to Grijalva’s request. Arizona State’s response was similar to that of CU: ASU President Michael M. Crow provided information on professor Robert Balling’s external funding, salary and financial disclosure forms, but not his testimony or communications, saying ASU did not keep those records.

But the University of Delaware refused to turn over any documentation specific to the funding of professor David Legates, saying such information was “protected by academic freedom,” according to a March 16 letter signed by the president and provost.

CU spokesman Ryan Huff noted that all of the information provided on Pielke was public information.

“Had we received a Colorado Open Records Act request from a member of the public for the identical information, our response would have been the same,” Huff said.

Meanwhile, Pielke has since announced that he will leave the field of climate research. A member of the advisory board for the Breakthrough Institute, which advocates technological solutions for environmental dilemmas, Pielke said in a March 1 blog post he plans to continue focusing on “science, innovation and politics.”

He added that he made his decision long before the launch of the Grijalva investigation.

“I have had my say and as a scholar I am ready to move on to more fertile fields of study,” Pielke said.

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Grijalva:

I am Under “Investigation”

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ~ ROGERPIELKEJR

As some of you will already know, I am one of 7 US academics being investigated by US Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) who is the ranking member of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. Rep. Grijalva has sent a letter to the president of my university requesting a range of information, including my correspondence, the letter is here in PDF.

Before continuing, let me make one point abundantly clear: I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have. Representative Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the US Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest. So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated “witch hunt” designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name.

For instance, the Congressman and his staff, along with compliant journalists, are busy characterizing me in public as a “climate skeptic” opposed to action on climate change. This of course is a lie. I have written a book calling for a carbon tax, I have publicly supported President Obama’s proposed EPA carbon regulations, and I have just published another book strongly defending the scientific assessment of the IPCC with respect to disasters and climate change. All of this is public record, so the smears against me must be an intentional effort to delegitimize my academic research.

What am I accused of that prompts being investigated? Here is my crime:

Prof. Roger Pielke, Jr., at CU’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress on climate change and its economic impacts. His 2013 Senate testimony featured the claim, often repeated, that it is “incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”

The letter goes on to note that John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor, “has highlighted what he believes were serious misstatements by Prof. Pielke.” (For background on this see here and here.) My 2013 testimony to the Senate is here and House is here in pdf (Q&A following hearing here and here). The testimony was the basis for my recent book on Disasters & Climate Change.

Congressman Grijalva doesn’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing on my part, either ethical or legal, because there is none. He simply disagrees with the substance of my testimony – which is based on peer-reviewed research funded by the US taxpayer, and which also happens to be the consensus of the IPCC (despite Holdren’s incorrect views).[note he does not say what those are? did he before?]

Adam Sarvana, communications director for Natural Resources Committee’s Democratic delegation, reinforced the politically-motivated nature of the investigation in an interview:

“The way we chose the list of recipients is who has published widely, who has testified in Congress before, who seems to have the most impact on policy in the scientific community”

Let’s see – widely published, engaged with Congress, policy impact — these are supposed to be virtues of the modern academic researcher, right? (Here in PDF is my view on the importance of testifying before Congress when asked. I still think it is important.)

I am pleased that some colleagues with whom I have had professional disagreements with in the past have condemned the investigation via Twitter, among them Eric Steig (of Real Climate), Bob Ward (LSE) and Simon Donner (UBC). This shows some real class. In contrast, Michael E. Mann, who I defended when a Virginia politician came after him, used the “investigation” as a chance to lob childish insults my way via Twitter. Some things you can always count on in the climate arena!

So far, I have been contacted by only 2 reporters at relatively small media outlets. I’d say that the lack of interest in a politician coming after academics is surprising, but to be honest, pretty much nothing surprises me in the climate debate anymore. Even so, there is simply no excuse for any reporter to repeat incorrect claims made about me, given how easy I am to find and just ask.

The incessant attacks and smears are effective, no doubt, I have already shifted all of my academic work away from climate issues. I am simply not initiating any new research or papers on the topic and I have ring-fenced my slowly diminishing blogging on the subject. I am a full professor with tenure, so no one need worry about me — I’ll be just fine as there are plenty of interesting, research-able policy issues to occupy my time. But I can’t imagine the message being sent to younger scientists. Actually, I can: “when people are producing work in line with the scientific consensus there’s no reason to go on a witch hunt.”

When “witch hunts” are deemed legitimate in the context of popular causes, we will have fully turned science into just another arena for the exercise of power politics. The result is a big loss for both science and politics.

https://theclimatefix.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/i-am-under-investigation/

The Climate Fix

Various musings on climate science and policy by Roger Pielke Jr

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Recent Posts

A Quick Guide to Pielke Jr. on Climate

[vid of petty won't back down as he back down]

This will be the last post on the short life of this blog. As friends and colleagues know, I have been on a glide path out of the climate field for a while now, mainly because I have had my say and as a scholar I am ready to move on to more fertile fields of study. This is a decision that I made long before the events of the past week. I had thought I’d just quietly fade away on the issue, but after the events of the past week, that obviously isn’t happening!

So to be clear: I am no longer conducting research or academic writing related to climate, I am not available for talks, and on the climate issue I have no interest in speaking with reporters or giving testimony before Congress. This is not a problem for me or the issue. The field is rich and full of smart people doing interesting work, and the topic will for a long time remain scientifically important and politically significant. I’ve been privileged as a scholar to have been able to participate in the debate, along with great colleagues with whom I’ve collaborated and learned from, and to have our views been heard at the highest levels of both science and policy. As a policy scholar I could not ask for any more.

If you wish to know my views on climate, you can easily find them here:

The Climate Fix (2011) – a book about climate science, policy and politics;

Disasters and Climate Change (2014)- A short book summarizing the state of the science;

The Hartwell Approach to Climate Policy (2015) –  an edited volume introducing the broader intellectual tradition to which my work has contributed;

Peer reviewed research, 1988-2014: dozens of papers with dozens of colleagues on many aspects of the climate issue, science, policy, politics. Google scholar has them here and most can be found for download on my University of Colorado website;

Commentary – I have written commentary on various aspects of the climate debate in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today and many other places. These too can be found at my University of Colorado website.

Blogging – I have blogged on climate since 2004, at times almost daily. You can see my views evolve, mature and change over that period at:

Prometheus blog, 2004-2009

Roger Pielke, Jr.s’s blog, 2009-2014

The Climate Fix (this blog), 2014-2015

Going forward, if I have anything further to discuss or report about the Congressional investigation of my work, it’ll be over at Roger Pielke, Jr.’s Blogwhere I will of course continue to write about science, innovation and politics. I do keep getting encouraged to do a 2nd edition of The Honest Broker, so perhaps that is still in the cards. If I do feel compelled to comment on climate issues, not likely, but if so, it will be on Twitter @RogerPielkeJr.

For the past few years the bulk of my academic attention has been focused on issues related to the governance of sport (as my Twitter followers know). I will continue to be blogging on that subject at The Least Thing, which is also the title of a book that I am completing this spring. People argue a lot about sports issues too. We policy scholars tend to gravitate to such issues. Thanks for reading!

I am Under “Investigation”

The Precipitous Decline in US Flood Damage as a Percentage of GDP

Future Trends in Carbon-Free Energy Consumption in the US, Europe and China

What Does the Peer-Reviewed Literature Say About Trends in East Coast Winter Storms?

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his link led to another of his links re mann? re fudge:

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/05/picking-cherries-and-hot-fudge.html

...?

In the comment thread to a post on the recent Der Spiegel article about the politicization of climate science a long series of comments has resulted from the following exchange about the IPCC presentation of the so-called Hockey Stick graph. First, Der Spiegel wrote the following (translated from the original German):

But what appeared at first glance to be fraud was actually merely a face-saving fudge

A frequent and thoughtful commenter said:

IMO hiding uncertainty _is_ research misconduct.

To which I responded:

I hear what you are saying, however, in the world of academia, this is just not the case. If it were, most work across most field would be guilty of such charges ;-)

Those two sentences have resulted in several lengthy comment threads, with many comments critically directed at me, fueled by a cheap-shot post by Andrew Montford who has since apologized and asked for clarification, which is fair enough. Here is the clarification.

First, what are we even talking about?

We are talking about the presentation by the IPCC of Figure 2.1. in the Third Assessment Report.

Why does this matter?

From the perspective of policy, it does not matter. Let me be very clear about what I mean by this: My views on climate policy are not sensitive to any of the information presented in IPCC TAR 2.21. The Hockey Stick could be rotated 180 degrees or mirror-imaged or shaken like a jump-rope and it would not alter my views of climate policy one bit. When, back in 2005, I asked Steve McIntyre and some of his critics at Real Climate about why the debate matters for climate policy, there seemed to be a consensus that that time that it did not.

Of course, things are a bit more complicated than this. For many observers, especially those more skeptical, the Hockey Stick debate has come to serve as a proxy for the integrity of all of climate science and the IPCC. It thus serves as a political proxy for larger debates about climate change. For better or worse, it is an important lens through which people view the practice of all of climate science.

What happened?

What happened with respect to the presentation of the IPCC graph is that uncertainties were hidden from view in an effort to present a "tidy story." Steve McIntyre has well-documented the events in a large number of posts, but this one pretty much tells the story.

From the CRU emails we are privvy to some of the inside discussion about this issue (quotes from here). One scientist explained that there are some complexities that should probably be discussed (emphases added):

I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is not quite so simple… [There are] some unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter.

Another scientist wanted that "nice tidy story" and protested that if they included the data showing "unexpected changes" then (emphases added):

. . . we have to comment that “something else” is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. . . Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. I don’t think that doubt is scientifically justified, and I’d hate to be the one to have to give it fodder!

You can see the problematic data series in the following early version of the IPCC 2.21 graph below in yellow, with its pronounced decline at the end.

You can also see the "decline" at the end of the series that was at odds with the instrumental record -- it was this divergence which complicated the "tidy story." But as you can see in the final IPCC figure 2.21 that was published (shown above) decisions were made to "hide the decline" and present a "nice tidy story."

Was it Fraud or Something Else?

The facts of what happened here should not be controversial. A group of scientists associated with the IPCC decided to simplify the presentation of paleo-climate data in orger to convey a "tidy message" and to try to avoid the "skeptics" some "fodder" with which to have a "field day." Of course, those plans backfired pretty badly!

The selective presentation of information is a form of cherrypicking, a widely used term that I described in 2004 as follows:

the careful selection of information to buttress a particular predetermined perspective while ignoring other information that does not

The actions by the IPCC scientists to "hide the decline" were a form of cherrypicking.

Semantics aside, anyone seeking to bring charges of formal scientific misconduct against these scientists or the IPCC would have a tough -- I'd say impossible -- case to make. To understand this you need to know what scientific misconduct actually is, and how it is judged. The scientists here were clearly shaping a message, explicitly motivated by a political agenda against the "skeptics" and grounded in a fundamental distrust of policy makers and the public to be able handle the complete information.

As I argue in The Honest Broker, the penalties for cherrypicking are a loss of credibility and legitimacy in scientific and political processes. But make no mistake, everyone is selective in the information that they present when making an argument, scientific or political. In fact, there is no practical way to present all of the information and all of the uncertainties. The question thus is not whether one seeks to manage the presentation of uncertainties -- but rather have you made a argument that is fair, robust and legitimate? Meeting these criteria typically means being open about uncertainties, warts and all. If you are perceived not to have made such an argument then you may see some of the following occur -- your paper could be rejected for publication, your peers might disagree with your views, your policy arguments dismissed, your credibility diminish and so on. Thus, while the selective presentation of information is unavoidable, one cherrypicks at some large risk.

What I find most remarkable about this episode, and others in which the IPCC has been found cherrypicking, is ultimately how very trivial the episodes actually are. Just take a look at the two figures above -- is the science of climate change undermined by that loose yellow thread dangling down in the original graph? Are non-experts incapable of understanding the uncertainties associated with the "divergence problem"? The IPCC has clearly allowed or perhaps even enabled some serious lapses in judgment by its authors by allowing them to risk so much for so little.

This episode is not about scientific fraud -- at least in the way that I understand the concept to be defined in the academy. This episode if one of several --too many -- in which the IPCC was found to be risking its credibility to present a "tidy story." Hopefully, the scientific community has learned that a desire for tidiness should not trump an overarching concern for maintaining the credibility and legitimacy of expert advice, even if that means presenting the science alongside uncertainties and complexities.

But there are lessons here for critics as well. It is reasonable to feel betrayed, angry and upset that the experts tried to play you for a fool. But making wild accusations of fraud and calling for legal sanctions (and worse) simply diminishes your own credibility and represents an ironic sort of overreach.

Posted by Roger Pielke, Jr. at 5/16/2010 07:21:00 AM

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Conflicts of interest and disclosure of funding sources have been topics du jour lately in science policy circles. Last month activists opposed to genetically modified food rattled academic scientists working in that field by submitting requests for their correspondence under state open records laws. Then the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report warning that such requests can become vehicles for harassing academic researchers. In Wisconsin, an ongoing effort by the state’s largest public university to shield some research efforts from freedom of information requests has caused controversy.

Then, in the highest profile development, news outlets releasedinformation gathered by environmental groups about the funding sources of Willie Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The groups alleged that Soon, a prominent critic of mainstream climate science and opponent of government action on climate change, had not disclosed funding from corporate sponsors to journals that published his work, potentially violating journal policies. The Smithsonian has launched an investigation.

The Soon revelations inspired Senator Edward Markey (D–MA) to send letters to numerous energy industry groups, asking them to disclose the names of scientists they had funded. They also prompted Representative Raul Grijalva (D–AZ), the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, to launch an investigation last week into the funding sources of seven academics who have studied climate change or testified before Congress on the matter, often to criticize research findings or policy proposals. Grijalva asked universities to provide the salaries of the seven, official disclosure policies and statements, details on any external funding sources of the academics, and copies of any “communications” related to testimony they provided to government bodies.

Grijalva’s wide-ranging request caused an uproar, including claims that it represented a “witch hunt,” as well as letters expressing concern about the balance between transparency and academic freedom from the American Geophysical Union and the American Metrological Society. This week, Grijalva backed off a bit, saying the request for correspondence was an “overreach,” but defending the push for disclosure.

One of the scientists targeted by Grijalva is Roger Pielke Jr., a science policy expert at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Pielke has been something of a lightning rod in climate debates, sometimes drawing attacks from all sides as a result of his views on research and policy. He’s also written extensively on conflict of interest, and has been actively tweetingand blogging in recent days in defense of himself.

Yesterday, ScienceInsider spoke to Pielke by phone. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: When the Soon stories came out last week, you said he should have mentioned his conflict of interest, but otherwise the issue was blown out of proportion. Yet the Smithsonian, which jointly runs his institution, is carefully investigating it.

A: I've written on conflict of interest for a long time, and I've participated in efforts to tighten up conflict of interest policies in the scientific community; I'm currently on a National Research Council committee that's doing just that. It's a really important issue. Five years ago I was one of the strongest critics of the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] for not having any conflict of interest policies.

By all means, Willie Soon, whom I don't know and I don't know anything about his research, should follow the guidelines of his institution, and the journals in which he publishes, and Congress when he testifies. If he's violated those requirements he's done something that's pretty serious … But if you look at our community, the failure to disclose conflicts of interest is fairly endemic. Economics has dealt with this; the medical sciences have dealt with this; the geosciences really haven’t.

Q: Senator Markey says that companies in the fossil fuel industry should disclose the outside scientists they fund. Do you agree?

A: The best way for that disclosure to occur is in the reporting process, by individuals who are funded, in their disclosures to journals, their institutions, or Congress when you testify. Getting companies to release information on who they fund and what they fund is probably a difficult fight.

Q: Do you think we have sufficient standards for disclosure for scientists?

A: I was part of a 2009 report by the Bipartisan Policy Center [a Washington, D.C. think tank] on conflict of interest policies. What we sought to do was to tell the government to harmonize policies on this across the federal agencies, to provide advice to the incoming Obama administration to restore integrity to science. And we said journals should have clear policies on disclosure.

But one thing to keep in mind is that you can’t judge research by who funds it. Once disclosure is done the research should be judged on its merits.

Q: Have you ever turned down funding because you were concerned about how it would look to disclose it?

A: Never. Unfortunately that's not a problem I've had, nobody's knocking on my door offering me money.

Q: Have you received any funding that you haven't disclosed?

A: No.

Q: Five years ago you told us you wanted to stop publishing on climate policy. Why?

A: Yes, [that decision has] been a few years in the making. You know, I wrote my dissertation on science in the climate debate. I've written on mitigation, adaptation, geoengineering, impacts of climate change. So, intellectually, the benefits of continuing to do work in this area aren't that high. On the other end of the conversation, the cost of participating in the issue continue to go up. Between being run out of [the popular statistics blog FiveThirtyEight.com] for writing on my research last year and what's happening this week [in] Congress, a lot of folks want to make the issues surrounding climate about me, instead of the issues. That makes it fairly untenable to participate.

Posted in Climate, Policy, Scientific Community

---

kloor

Earlier in the year, Roger Pielke Jr. was named as a contributing writer for Nate Silver’s newly re-launched FiveThirtyEight site. Shortly after that, Pielke, a climate policy scholar and political scientist at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, published an article at FiveThirtyEight headlined, “Disasters Cost More Than Ever–But Not Because of Climate Change.”

Critics pounced immediately in blogs and on Twitter. That harsh reaction was then reported and commented on at Salon, Huffington Post, Slate, theColumbia Journalism Review, and elsewhere.

I recently conducted a Q & A with Pielke about this episode and the aftermath. The links in my questions are from me. I asked Pielke to provide his own links.

KK: It’s been noted on Twitter that you are not listed on the main contributors page for FiveThirthyEight. Does this mean you no longer write for the site? If so, can you explain what happened?

RPJR: That is correct, I no longer write for 538. Last month, after 538 showed some reluctance in continuing to publish my work, I called up Mike Wilson, the lead editor there, and told him that it was probably best that we part ways. I wished them well in their endeavor going forward. I remain a fan. Since then I have joined up with SportingIntelligence, a UK-based website that focuses on analyses of economic and other quantitative aspects of sport. It’s a great fit. And of course, I continue to publish in places like USA Today and the Financial Times on a wide range of subjects

KK: What do you make of the uproar your FiveThirtyEight piece generated? I know it quickly degenerated into an ugly pile-on, which I and some other journalists found unseemly. But did critics have any legitimate points you want to acknowledge?

RPJR: Well, that first piece was written on a subject that I have written on many times before (and perhaps as much as anyone) – disasters and climate change. The short essay was perfectly consistent with the recent assessments of the IPCC. The fact that some folks didn’t like it was not surprising — most anything on climate change is met with derision by somebody. What was a surprise was the degree to which the negative response to the piece was coordinated among some activist scientists, journalists and social media aficionados. I think that took everyone by surprise. I learned some new things about certain colleagues and journalists — both really good things and some really pathetic things. Seeing a campaign organized to have me fired from 538 also taught me a lesson about the importance of academic tenure.

KK: If you could write the piece over again, what would you do differently, if anything?

RPJR: Looking back, probably the main thing I would do differently would be to simply not write about climate change at 538. When I was originally hired there was actually zero discussion about me focusing on climate or even science, but rather covering a wide range of topics. I made clear to Nate and Mike that I was looking to at least partially escape from the climate change wars by focusing on other issues.  The climate change piece was an obvious place to start even so because the IPCC reports had just been released and the topic is also covered so thoroughly in the peer reviewed literature. Clearly, that judgment was wrong!

KK: Have you and Nate Silver talked about this ordeal? What was his reaction?

RPJR: I have not spoken with or corresponded with Nate since that first piece. Of course, I do wish that 538 had shown a bit more editorial backbone, but hey, it is his operation.  If a widely published academic cannot publish on a subject which he has dozens of peer-reviewed papers and 1000s of citations to his work, what can he write on?  Clearly Nate is a smart guy, and I suspect that he knows very well where the evidence lies on this topic. For me, if the price of playing in the DC-NYC data journalism world is self-censorship for fear of being unpopular, then it is clearly not a good fit for any academic policy scholar.

KK: The condemnation of your 538 piece quickly spiraled into ugly personal broadsides painting you (incorrectly) as a climate skeptic. This happened in various high profile venues, such as Slate. How did you feel when this happened?

RPJR: If you are engaged in public debates on issues that people care passionately about, then you will be called names and worse. It goes with the territory. It is not pleasant of course, but at the same time, it is a pretty strong indication that (a) your arguments matter and (b) people have a hard time countering them on their merits. Even so, it is remarkable to see people like Paul Krugman and John Holdren brazenly make completely false claims in public about my work and my views. That they make such false claims with apparently no consequences says something about the nature of debate surrounding climate.

KK: You say you were surprised by “the degree to which the response to the piece was coordinated among some activist scientists, journalists and social media aficionados.” But this response did not happen in a vacuum, either. For years, your work–or more specifically–pointed statements you’ve made about the climate science establishment–have been heavily criticized by a number of outspoken climate scientists and widely read climate bloggers. Looking back, it appears that animosity directed towards you stems more from sharply-worded commentary on your blog and elsewhere, than your research.

For example, in his recently published book, “Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed–and What it Means for Our Future,” NYU’s Dale Jamieson wrote about you. Here’s an excerpt that was posted at Salon:

In a 2010 book, Roger Pielke Jr. claimed that “[c]limate science is a fully politicized enterprise, desperately in need of reform if integrity is to be restored and sustained.” “Climategate,” the episode in November 2009 in which thousands of documents were stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, revealed scientists “who saw themselves as much as activists as researchers,”  … “plotting to corrupt the peer review system.” According to Pielke Jr., the theft exposed a “clique of activist scientists” engaged in a “coup against peer review.” He went on to accuse a broad range of scientists and public figures of trying to scare people into taking action on climate change or advocating such scare tactics.

One remarkable feature of Pielke Jr.’s discussion is its shrillness. “Clique,” “coup,” and “plotting” are the kinds of terms usually reserved for organized crime syndicates, terrorist organizations, and other conspiracies against the public good. The repeated use of the word “activist” mobilizes a characteristic trope of right-wing ideologues. The term is typically applied to judges, who like scientists are supposed to be neutral when carrying out their duties, but all too often, on this view, betray their professional responsibilities. Even someone who is sympathetic to the claim that political considerations sometimes find their way into climate science might shrink from Pielke Jr.’s characterization of climate science as “a fully politicized enterprise.”

Perhaps you take issue with how Jamieson has characterized your statements. But even still, he appears to have identified the reasons for much of the animosity towards you that has built up over the years. This is the larger context that I think informs the ugly brouhaha over your 538 piece. What are your thoughts on this?

RPJR:  Anyone following these debates over the years and has observed whose arguments have actually been vindicated will no doubt understand why some of the louder critics of mine have resorted to bitter personal attacks. More generally, however, there is a common strategy of delegitimization used in the climate debates. It seems that labeling someone a “denier” offers a convenient excuse to avoid taking on arguments on their merits and to call for certain voices to be banished.

I’ve known Dale Jamison for about 25 years, dating back to the time that he was a philosophy professor at Colorado and NCAR. I have always got on well with him and learned a lot from him during the years that we were colleagues. I am perfectly comfortable with my claim that parts of the climate science field are indeed “fully politicized.” At the same time, as I have often said, there are many brilliant and hard-working scientists in the field. It just so happens that some of the most fervent ideologues find themselves in positions of authority. I don’t think that this is at all controversial.

What is controversial is the question whether the ends justify the means. That is to say, is the climate issue so important that we should look past issues of scientific integrity among those whose heart is in the right place?  Jamieson suggests that we should:

“I’ve known Roger for a long time, and he’s done a lot of work that I respect. Part of why I called him out in the book is because he’s not a climate change denier. He’s somebody who knows better, but the rhetoric that he’s used against scientists and the exaggerations and the kind of personal fights that he’s gotten into around the issue have really distracted from the broad consensus that actually exists around doing something.”

First, I’m flattered to see that Dale thinks that my views are so influential so as to distract from a broad consensus. I’d just disagree with that conclusion. As I document with evidence in The Climate Fix, there is a very strong and stable consensus in the US and worldwide about doing something on climate. But more generally, should an academic really be measuring his arguments by who they favor in a political debate? Or should I call things like I see them? I’ve chosen to call things as I see them, and I am quite happy with that career choice.

Second, many of the public debates that I have been involved in are associated with efforts to discredit or misrepresent my own academic work. The 538 episode is just one such example. I document in my book an episode when back in 2001 a leading climate scientist asked me to underplay my work for political reasons. Not only do I believe this to be unethical, I also think that it will be  counterproductive for those calling for action. Trying to trick policy makers or the public to believe that — say, disasters are getting worse because of climate change or that we have all the technologies we need for deep decarbonization — will only backfire in the end. I am a big fan of playing it straight with the science, because over the long term that reinforces public trust and leads to more reliable policy recommendations.

KK: I should say that I am in no way excusing or rationalizing the behavior of climate bloggers and others who have previously used slanderous language in an attempt to discredit you. But I guess what I getting at here is this: Do you feel in any way responsible for provoking the deep-seated anger directed at you over the years, which seems to have culminated in this mob-like attack on your reputation after publication of the 538 piece? I  just wonder if you feel like, given the chance to go back in time, might you have phrased your own criticisms of the climate science community differently?

RPJR: It is a fair question. Hindsight is of course 20/20. But let’s say that all the criticisms Jamieson levies are accurate: I have been hard on some climate scientists. I have criticized some of their work in public, and even accused some of exploiting scientific authority for political ends. Sometimes I have used colorful language (“coup against peer review” — though for actual “shrillness” I would point Jamieson over to Joe Romm!). Some people have disagreed with my arguments. I have even been critical of the IPCC at times. Also, I have popularized my work on carbon pricing, decarbonization, energy, disasters, and the politicization of science. My work has occasionally been cited by the bad guys. I have also challenged claims that are seemingly widely accepted, but which my work shows to be wrong. I believe that policy debates deserve a plurality of voices, not a harmonization of views. I do not focus obsessively on the skeptics and deniers.

What part of the above would I change? Not much at all.

To be very clear, it is only a few climate scientists who have engaged in the “mob-like attacks” (it was actually mostly journalists and bloggers). Almost all the feedback I get from colleagues in climate science is overwhelmingly positive. Those climate scientists engaged in the climate debate are all big boys (mostly) and girls. If they cannot take the rough and tumble of public debate, then they should not be in public debate. There is “deep-seate anger” because of colorful language and apparent thin skins? Right. Tell me about it.

Ultimately, what I learned from the 538 episode is how small and insular the community of self-professed “climate hawks” actually is. Sure they made a lot of noise online and got John Stewart’s attention. But that was because of Nate Silver’s fame, not mine. Back in the real world, outside the climate blogosphere and the NY-DC data journalism circle virtually no one knew or much cared about the 538 brouhaha, even within academia. I found that encouraging.

I do wish the 538 folks all the best going forward. They were put in a difficult position. I have no hard feelings. There are some brilliant people there and they will no doubt have some great successes.

But in conclusion, let’s take a step back. Disaster losses continue to increase worldwide. Carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere. The world continues to demand ever more energy. Climate policies in place or proposed are not up to the task. In short, we need more ideas, more debate, more disagreement if we are to make intelligent progress. Efforts to demonize or silence unwelcome voices probably don’t move the dial very far on any of these issues Was this campaign to have me removed from 538 a victory for the climate movement? Was it the right battle to wage? I hope the climate hawks ask themselves these questions.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2014/07/28/roger-pielke-jr-fivethirtyeight-climate-critics

CATEGORIZED UNDER: CLIMATE POLICY, CLIMATE POLITICS, CLIMATE SCIENCE, GLOBAL WARMING, SCIENCE

MORE ABOUT: CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE POLICY, CLIMATE SCIENCE, DALE JAMIESON, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GLOBAL WARMING, NATE SILVER, ROGER PIELKE JR., SCIENCE JOURNALISM

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breakthru:

it has become fashionable in some circles to come out against economic growth. Bill McKibben, the author and climate change activist, asserts that “growth may be the one big habit we finally must break.” He adds that this is “a dark thing to say, and un-American.” Such calls for an end to growth are typically advanced in environmental debates and those about economic globalization. But what does it actually mean to be against economic growth? I argue that to be anti-growth actually implies keeping poor people poor.

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Economic growth is simply a metric that reflects the accumulation of wealth over time, usually based on universalized US dollars. Economists define economic growth in three parts: (a) growth in labor, which refers to an increase in the number of people working; (b) growth in capital, which refers to increases in the availability of things that can be used by labor in the process of producing goods (like food) and services (like surgery); and (c) increasing productivity, which can be thought of as improvements in the efficiency with which we turn labor and capital into goods and services.

We can use the three components of economic growth to better understand what it means to be “anti-growth.”

Anti-Labor Growth, The Neo-Malthusians

One sort of objection to growth sits squarely in the tradition of Thomas Malthus and is focused on global population. Neo-Malthusians most recently rose to prominence and influence in the 1960s and 1970s, with Paul Ehrlich the most famous US advocate for population control. Today the neo-Malthusian moment seems to have waned, likely due in part to the fact that UN population projections now foresee the end of population growth later this century, followed by a decline in some scenarios. Even so, the Neo-Malthusian movement has its adherents. As Alan Weisman wrote in a book released last year (see In Review): “From the instant we’re born, even the humblest among us compounds the world’s mounting problems.” Neo-Malthusians see anti-growth as limits on population.

Anti-Capital Growth, The Peak Earthers

Another branch of anti-growth thinking focuses not on the number of people, but rather their consumption of resources. The Peak Earthers, as I call them, present their views through a suite of concepts, such as ecological footprints, planetary boundaries, and natural capital. Such concepts reflect valid concerns, but it turns out that, with respect to limits on continued economic growth, humans have had a tendency to break through physical limits through gains in efficiency and substitution. A good example is “peak oil,” which seems ever on the horizon yet keeps retreating as we tap new petroleum sources. Peak Earthers see anti-growth, rather than efficiency gains and substitution, as a solution to resource constraints.

Anti-Productivity Growth, The Luddites

The term “Luddite” refers to an industrial protest movement of the early 1800s, and derives from Ned Ludd, one of the lead protestors. “Luddite” is commonly used to mean anti-technology, a reference to the fact that the original Luddites destroyed industrial machines – but that’s a misreading of history. What the Luddites were protesting was the effect of productivity gains resulting from the introduction of machines into factories as a consequence of the industrial revolution. Today, we see Luddite concerns in other sectors. For instance, in December 2013, The Washington Post ran an article with the headline, “Eight Ways Robots Stole Our Jobs in 2013.” Luddites see anti-growth as a way to stop the effects of technology on the economy.

When we break down the idea of anti-growth into its component parts, we very quickly see that “anti-growth” is not a particularly coherent concept. For instance, those favoring what is often called “sustainable growth” – such as using renewable energy technologies, rather than using fossil fuels, to power growing material wealth – would not fit any of the three categories presented above. Sustainable growth clearly is not anti-growth.

In the near future, economic growth and its consequences for the planet will be dominated by today’s poor countries. The OECD estimates that between 2013 and 2030 82 percent of economic growth will occur in what are today considered to be the “poor” parts of the world, with just 18 percent of growth occurring in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and a few other wealthy countries. Similarly, in January BP released its 2014 “Energy Outlook to 2035,” which projects that 95 percent of growth in energy consumption worldwide to 2035 will occur in poorer countries.

Some try to sugar-coat their anti-growth arguments by focusing their attention on the rich world. But with most of the world’s expected growth to occur in the poor parts of the world, such arguments are simply mathematical non sequiturs. The reality is that to be anti-growth today is actually to be anti-growth with respect to poor countries. The fact that very few, if any, anti-growth activists are openly demanding that poor countries remain poor tells us how powerful a force growth is in today’s global politics.

Ultimately, debates over growth tend to mask more fundamental debates about ideologies, values, and what kind of world we wish to see in the future. Breaking concerns about growth into its component parts helps to focus such debates on questions that can be addressed empirically, and those which cannot. So when you encounter an anti-growth advocate, ask him or her, which kind are you, Neo-Malthusian, Peak Earther, or Luddite?

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2014 edition of Earth Island Journal, www.earthislandjournal.org.

Photo Credit: rt.com

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ROGER PIELKE, JR.*

Who is he? Environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder and a fellow of the university's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences; author of The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics

Chief beef: Hurricanes and the bottom line

Telling quote: "We cannot make a causal link between increase in greenhouse gases and the costs of damage associated with hurricanes, floods, and extreme weather phenomena." —interview with FP

Role: Pielke, whose father is also a scientist and an outspoken critic of the IPCC, is emblematic of just how confusing traditional labels are: For his work questioning certain graphs presented in IPCC reports, Pielke has been accused by some of being a climate change "denier." Meanwhile, for his work on adaptation, he has been accused by others of being an "alarmist."

One of Pielke's main additions to larger climate debate has been participation in studies and workshops that have concluded, in his words, "We cannot make a causal link between increase in greenhouse gases and the costs of damage associated with hurricanes, floods, and extreme weather phenomena." Whereas An Inconvenient Truth presented worsening storms as reason to support greenhouse gas mitigation, Pielke thinks that increased costs of disasters in recent years are due to "one overriding factor -- more wealth, more people, more property in harm's way." He took issue with the IPCC for one chart in its 2007 report, which seemed to imply causation when there was, if anything, only circumstantial evidence in his eyes. "Mine is an argument against using disasters as a justification for greenhouse gas emissions."

But his refutation of what he saw as sloppy logic certainly does not imply skepticism about climate change and the need to take mitigation and adaptation efforts seriously, he insists. In outlets like The New Republic and Yale Environment 360, Pielke has articulated a more nuanced point of view, often arguing for greater distinctions between debates about scientific integrity and those about public policy. For his part, he thinks, "Climate change is a huge problem, and it's a problem linked to human activity. Greenhouse gases are an important part of that, but it's not only greenhouse gases. And we need to respond accordingly."

*Editor's note: Pielke has informed the editors of FP that he strongly objects to being included on a list titled "Climate Skeptics." The aim of the list was, as the introduction states, to separate "the noise from the serious concerns" with regards to those offering critiques of either climate science or institutions charged with presenting climate science to the public or policy-makers; the article was explicitly not intended to equate the viewpoints of all people contained on the list. Pielke has been quoted in the mainstream media voicing concerns about the IPCC, as in today's Wall Street Journal, as well as questioning sloppy logic on the part of some environmentalists, for instance objecting to overstatements about hurricanes being linked to global warming.

==

In an unprecedented move, the President’s Science Advisor, Dr. John P. Holdren, has published a devastating 6-page debunking of one of the country’s leading climate confusionists, Roger Pielke Jr.

I’ll excerpt Holdren’s comprehensive critique, “Drought and Global Climate Change,” below. Worsening drought may be the climate impact that affects the most people in the coming decades, as I discussed in my 2011 literature review in the journal Nature. It is valuable to see the the subject laid out so clearly by the nation’s top scientist.

Our understanding of drought and climate change is evolving pretty rapidly, so even the latest IPCC reports are already out of date. Having read much of the recent drought literature and interviewed many of the leading drought experts in the last few years, I can say that Holdren’s views are right in the mainstream of climatologists’ view of drought. I can think of no climate scientists who share Pielke’s startling assessment of Holdren’s views as “zombie science.”

In fact, some drought experts believe the situation is considerably worse than is widely understood. As one top researcher on the climate-drought link confirmed with me recently, “The U.S. may never again return to the relatively wet conditions experienced from 1977 to 1999.”

HOLDREN AND PIELKE

John Holdren is one of the most distinguished scientists in America. He is a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Author of over 200 articles and papers, Holdren is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and a foreign member of the U.K.’s Royal Society.

I have known Holdren for more than two decades, and not only does he have more breadth of knowledge on all things climate than most, he is very judicious in his choice of words.

Roger Pielke Jr. is a political scientist who has publicly questioned the scientific integrity of more climate scientists than just about anyone else on the planet. He has smeared literally hundreds of scientists (as I document here).

That is no doubt a key reason Pielke was included on Foreign Policy‘s “Guide to Climate Skeptics.”

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/25/the_fp_guide_to_climate_skeptics

No doubt that’s why the websites that most prominently feature or reprint Pielke’s attacks are climate denial sites like WattsUpWithThat and ClimateDepot. It is also why he is probably the single most disputed and debunked person in the science blogosphere, especially on the subject of extreme weather and climate change (see here and here). Typical are:

A Few Things Ill Considered: “His [Pielke's] latest effort at sabotaging productive discourse on climate science and policy is a really low blow, putting to rest any lingering hopes one might have had that he still had some integrity stashed away in there somewhere.”

James Annan’s blog: “The consistently wrong chronicles…. Roger Pielke has been saying some truly bizarre and nonsensical things recently.”

Tim Lambert (Deltoid) has a whole category on Pielke: “Roger Pielke Jr has attempted to trash me using innuendo, fabrication and outright misrepresentation. I correct the record.”

Before his death, the widely revered climatologist Stephen Schneider described one of his run-ins with Pielke this way five years ago:

It is typical of a trickster and a careerist–which is how I personally see him–and so do most of my colleagues these days who I have discussed it with.

Now Pielke has embraced the widely discredited Bjorn Lomborg argument that climate action is bad for the poor, when the science makes clear that climate inaction would be devastating to the poor. Climate action is the only sustainable path out of poverty, as climate expert and development practitioner John Abraham explains in a UK Guardian piece that Pielke has yet to respond to.

It should be obvious that if you’ve garnered a 6-page debunking by the nation’s top scientist, then you’ve moved into the elite ranks of climate confusionists.

If you want the full story on how Pielke has attempted to scandalize his personal quibbles with Holdren (to use a phrase Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf first applied to Pielke), HotWhopper has amust read post. Here’s the short version.

Back in December, Pielke criticized Holdren for pulling his punches on climate science,tweeting, “Since becoming sci advisor Holdren has always stayed on safe (boring) ground in his public remarks.”

Then, in mid-February, when Holdren offered some straightforward well-grounded scientific statements about how climate change is worsening Western droughts, Pielke slammed him, tweeting “it is brazen for zombie science to show up in the White House!”

Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t!

As Holdren explains, in a February 25 hearing, “Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) suggested that I had misled the American people with comments I made to reporters on February 13.” In particular, Sessions quoted testimony Pielke had given in July:

It is misleading, and just plain incorrect, to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally.

Drought has “for the most part, become shorter, less, frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U.S. over the last century”. Globally, “there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.”

The first quote in the second paragraph is from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s 2008 report, “Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate,” and the second is from a 2012 paper by Sheffield et al. in the journal Nature.

As an important aside, Sheffield’s paper has been disputed. I recently interviewed Aiguo Dai, and he thinks the Sheffield analysis is flawed. Dai stands by his conclusion in a 2012 paper in Nature Climate Change that “Historical records of precipitation, streamflow, and drought indices all show increased aridity since 1950 over many land areas.”

When Holdren rebutted Pielke’s charges in Senate testimony, Pielke demanded “If you do indeed believe that my views are ‘outside the scientific mainstream’ could you substantiate that claim”?

Holdren’s full devastating reply is “Drought and Global Climate Change: An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr.”

Besides reviewing the drought literature, Holdren makes a crucial point that “any reference to the CCSP 2008 report in this context should include not just the sentence highlighted in Dr. Pielke’s testimony but also the sentence that follows immediately in the relevant passage from that document and which relates specifically to the American West.” Here are the two key sentences from the report in their entirety):

Similarly, long-term trends (1925–2003) of hydrologic droughts based on model derived soil moisture and runoff show that droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the U.S. over the last century (Andreadis and Lettenmaier, 2006). The main exception is the Southwest and parts of the interior of the West, where increased temperature has led to rising drought trends (Groisman et al., 2004; Andreadis and Lettenmaier, 2006).

Amazingly, Pielke’s testimony did include the second sentence about rising drought trend in the SW and West — which would seem to render most of his attack (and Sen. Sessions’ attack) on Holdren moot — but Pielke buried it in a footnote. Again, Hotwhopper explainsjust how head-exploding this all is.

Holdren makes a key point that I have made repeatedly — severe drought is much more than just a reduction in precipitation. He explains: “In my recent comments about observed and projected increases in drought in the American West, I mentioned four relatively well understood mechanisms by which climate change can play a role in drought. (I have always been careful to note that, scientifically, we cannot say that climate change caused a particular drought, but only that it is expected to increase the frequency, intensity, and duration of drought in some regions ? and that such changes are being observed.)”

These four mechanisms are:

In a warming world, a larger fraction of total precipitation falls in downpours, which means a larger fraction is lost to storm runoff (as opposed to being absorbed in soil).

In mountain regions that are warming, as most are, a larger fraction of precipitation falls as rain rather than as snow, which means lower stream flows in spring and summer.

What snowpack there is melts earlier in a warming world, further reducing flows later in the year.

Where temperatures are higher, losses of water from soil and reservoirs due to evaporation are likewise higher than they would otherwise be.

Holdren reviews the scientific literature on those statements in his reply, noting “the second, third, and fourth mechanisms reflect elementary physics and are hardly subject to dispute (but see also additional references provided at the end of this comment).” Holdren states:

As I have also noted in recent public comments, additional mechanisms have been identified by which changes in atmospheric circulation patterns that maybe a result of global warming could be affecting droughts in the American West. There are some measurements and some analyses suggesting that these mechanisms are operating, but the evidence is less than conclusive, and some respectable analysts attribute the indicated circulation changes to natural variability. The uncertainty about these mechanisms should not be allowed to become a distraction obscuring the more robust understandings about climate change and regional drought summarized above.

Holdren is being characteristically conservative in his language here. As I’ve written, climate scientists specifically predicted a decade ago that Arctic ice loss would bring on worse droughts in the West — and California is now in the death-grip of a brutal, record-breaking drought, driven by the very change in the jet stream that scientists had anticipated.

But Holdren’s main point is the important one — quite separate from any changes in precipitation that climate change may cause, there is little dispute that human-caused climate change is worsening droughts in the West and Southwest. I recommend his entire paper to readers interested in this important subject.

Tags: Climate ChangeClimate Change Deniersdrought

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/03/3349411/john-holdren-roger-pielke-climate-drought/

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comes with put head in vice caveat:

Revkin asserts (here) that a key litmus test of whether the IPCC is serious about restoring its credibility and good name is if it puts Roger Pielke, Jr. (!!!) on the author team of a special panel report, “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.”

Revkin sheds his reporter’s hat in the piece to campaign for Pielke, his long-time Rolodex BFF, since he manages to omit every single reason why that would be a uber-low priority for the IPCC as it goes about making a few needed improvements and defending its good name.  Revkin fails to interview or even link to all but one of the dozens of scientists and science bloggers and others who have debunked Pielke in recent years. Of course, being consistently wrong is no impediment to being an IPCC author, as John Christy can attest.

Guess who the one person Revkin links to is?

On the one hand, Pielke is identified by Revkin as “a researcher at the University of Colorado with a long publication record” who deserves to be an IPCC author — indeed, who must be an IPCC author to restore the organization’s credibility. On the other hand, here’s how I’m identified:

Here’s the test. Roger A. Pielke Jr., a researcher at the University of Colorado with a long publication record on climate and disaster trends was one of the 31 experts nominated by the United States to be an author of that study, but was not among the 13 chosen. While he has been an aggressive critic of the panel’s practices on his blog, and a frequent target of energy and climate campaigners, Dr. Pielke’s research record in this particular field stands on its own.

Yes, I’m “energy and climate campaigners.”  Well, at least I’m plural!

UPDATE:  Pielke challenges me to a “debate” and I reply.  See also “Debate the controversy!“

Anyway, welcome, Andy Revkin, to the ranks of “energy and climate campaigners.” I’m glad to see you lobbying hard to make your guy an IPCC author, insisting that is somehow a litmus test of the new IPCC.

Roger Pielke, Jr. is the single most disputed and debunked person in the entire realm of people who publish regularly on disasters and climate change.  He trashes the reputation of any scientist who even suggests that there is the tiniest link whatsoever between climate change and extreme weather “” even though he himself has stated such a link exists (click here, reposted below).

Consider Pielke’s knee-jerk response to Sen. Inhofe’s recent McCarthyite tactics to criminalize science, documented by climate whistleblower Rick Piltz here.

The science blog Rabett Run had pointed out:

This is indeed a Sister Soljah moment for the Pielkes…. Has Inhofe gone so far that even they will acknowledge and denounce his Climate McCarthy act, or not? Will they hide their ethics in the sand and do their Sgt. Schultz act?

But Pielke wrote his post on the subject merely calling Inhofe’s despicable move “a bit of clown-like bluffing” — and then he goes about attacking Rick Piltz.  Rick Piltz!  He says Piltz “focuses on the Inhofe report to … use these scientists for his own partisan purposes.”  To Pielke, defending scientists from Inhofe’s ‘Climate McCarthy act’ is using them for “partisan purposes.”  Seriously.

Foreign Policy’s “Guide to Climate Skeptics.

Pielke was just included on Foreign Policy‘s “Guide to Climate Skeptics.”  He disputed that, of course, but then, that’s what he does.  At least Foreign Policy didn’t back down, as Alternet did — see ClimateChangePsychology’s post, “AlterNet.org censors Buffalo Beast article on climate villains — deletes Roger Pielke, Jr., under pressure.”  Indeed, if you want to know how Pielke and company operate, you must read the science blog Rabett Run (click here) which noted, “It sure looks like the Climate McCarthy’s won here….  The Buffalo Beast and AlterNet editors blew it” by backing down in the face of pressure from “Pielke and friends.”).

As an aside, the term “climate skeptic” is meaningless, since all real scientists are skeptics.  What is most telling about the Foreign Policy piece isn’t their inclusion of Pielke, it’s the quote from Pielke about John Christy, who was also included as a climate skeptic:

“I respect him,” Pielke says. “I disagree with him, but I respect him.”

Now Christy has made far more egregious scientific blunders than most people Pielke regularly attacks, ones that just happened to all be in the direction of Christy’s skeptical views (see “Should you believe anything John Christy and Roy Spencer say?“)  But that doesn’t stop Christy from trying to smear scientists who haven’t made such mistakes (see here).  See also “Earth to John Christy: Misleading for free is wrong, too.“  In the Vermont case on the state’s effort to embrace California’s tailpipe GHG emissions standards, the car companies brought in Christy as an expert witness to rebut Hansen (see here). In one footnote on the sea level rise issue, the judge noted, “it appears that the bulk of scientific opinion opposes Christy’s position.“  The little respect that Christy shows the facts or other scientists is is reason enough not to respect him.

No, I’m not comparing Pielke to Christy.  It’s easy to tell where Christy stands, but impossible to tell where Pielke stands.  He asserts that he accepts the basic IPCC conclusions and in particular that he supports very strong emissions concentration targets — but then he trashes any scientist who actually proposes a plausible plan as “politicizing science” while only offering the mildest of policy proposals himself (see Finally, Roger Pielke admits he supports policies that will take us to 5-7°C warming or more).  That allows him to be quoted as a “contrarian” by the media (at least those who aren’t paying attention) — someone who supposedly believes in the science but is critical of scientists.

Ken Caldeira

Revkin says his litmus test for the IPCC’s credibility is a target of “energy and climate campaigners.”  But in fact he is far, far more a target of scientists and science bloggers.  Climate scientist Ken Caldeira was so shocked at Pielke’s remarks on IPCC chief Pachauri, he wrote me (click here) an email titled, “I can’t believe the New York Times has done it again “¦” that reads in its entirety:

Joe,

Does Roger Pielke Jr really believe that Pachauri is exaggerating the climate change problem in order to obtain more funds for his nonprofit research center?

If Pielke is going to make insinuations in the New York Times about the ethics of Dr Pachauri, he owes it to us to make his beliefs clear. He should state clearly which of the following two statements he believes:

(a) Dr Rajendra Pachauri is exaggerating the climate change problem in order to obtain more funds for his nonprofit research center.

(b) Dr Rajendra Pachauri is not exaggerating the climate change problem in order to obtain more funds for his nonprofit research center.

For a man with a $49,000 salary, donating all of his consulting fees to nonprofit organizations would ordinarily be seen as a sign of professional integrity and dedication. It is outrageous that Pielke attempts to turn this around and use it to insinuate an ethical lapse. It makes one wonder about Pielke’s motives.

Best,

Ken

PS. You can quote this if you would like”¦.

Revkin only links to one post I did criticizing Pielke, and not even a technical critique, and yet 0n matters of technical accuracy, Roger Pielke, Jr., is probably the most debunked person in the science blogosphere.

Science Bloggers

Here’s just a selection from Tim Lambert (Deltoid) at Science Blogs:

Pielke Pity Party:  Roger Pielke Jr has attempted to trash me using innuendo, fabrication and outright misrepresentation. I correct the record.

Another Pielke train wreck:  Roger Pielke Jr has greatly miscounted the number of news stories about a new climate study, leading him to make spurious charges of bias.

Pielke Jr vs drafts:  Roger Pielke Jr has been abusing draft documents to score points again.

Pielke train wreck continues:  More carriages have come off the rails in the Roger Pielke Jr train wreck. Pielke finally does a hypothesis test. Trouble is, it’s an unpaired t-test, which would only make sense if GISS and HADCRU were independent of each other….

Pielke train wreck:  If you haven’t been watching the Roger Pielke Jr train come off the rails and the carriages smashing into each other and exploding, I suggest you look at this post from James Annan: Roger Pielke has been saying some truly….

And then you can start on James Annan’s blog, with

The consistently wrong chronicles….  Roger Pielke has been saying some truly bizarre and nonsensical things recently.

But this isn’t just about being consistently wrong, which, of course, is in the eye of the beholder, “science” and “facts” being relative as we all know they are.  It is Pielke’s anti-fact nature, though, that you seem blind to, Andy, which is why he is the last person who should be a litmus test for the IPCC’s effort to restore its good name as an organization that is “just the facts, ma’am.”  Read those posts.  Interview the authors.

Here’s James Annan again:

Of course being the political scientist that he is, RPJnr is dropping the crucial rider and simply presenting the claim that the trend has a high bias. That transforms the claim from irrelevant to wrong….

UPDATE: This is getting rather surreal, which unfortunately seems to be a feature of many exchanges with RPJnr.

After Berkeley economist Brad DeLong posted an email from someone pointing out that Pielke (Jr) is “dishonest and wrong,” came this must-read email exchange where DeLong notes Roger “appears to go completely off the rails in email.”  Do read the comments for the many links to various debunkings of Pielke from various science bloggers, like this one:

Brian Schmidt said…

Roger Pielke Jr. has written that Jim Hansen supported open-air carbon capture and sequestration. Actually, Hansen supports biomass power-generation with point source carbon capture and sequestration. That’s a very big stretch to use Hansen as supportive of Roger’s quest for continuing the practice of sticking CO2 in the air and catching it later.

Also, Roger listed Hansen as supporting deep-ocean sequestration of captured CO2, a less-safe but possibly less-expensive form of sequestration (compared to other sequestration possibilities) that would be helpful for Roger’s interest. Actually, Hansen supported geological underground sequestration that is also under the ocean, the safest but most-expensive sequestration option.

Documentation here:

http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2009/02/tierney-and-pielke-jrs-wild.html

Then there’s the climate scientists at RealClimate.  Here’s a classic debunking of Pielke from 2008, “RealClimate: Model-data-comparison, Lesson 2.”  And here’s Dr. Stefan Rahmstorfafter one recent comment by Pielke (emphasis added):

… we’re discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You’ve been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here – how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as “honest broker”? Stefan

I know that Revkin wants to make this about me vs. Roger, but I ain’t the one who framed Roger, he did it to himself.

Sure the blogosphere is a rough place, and I get into my fair share of tiffs, mainly with the hardcore disinformers — but then again I’m not running to be on some IPCC panel, let alone the savior of the IPCC’s credibility, with you as campaign manager.  I might add that I am certainly qualified to be one on a few of the chapters in the Working Group III Report “Mitigation of Climate Change,” but I can only imagine how Roger would go ballistic if I were named as an author, and how you would quote him gleefully saying how that only serves to undermine the independence and credibility of the IPCC (and I seriously doubt you would call him an energy and climate campaigner).

Pielke wrote on my blog that

We define “acceptable levels” in our Nature paper as 500 ppm (the level focused on by IPCC WG III) and 450 ppm (the level focused on by the EU and implicitly in the FCCC).

Now I think you’ll agree that stabilizing at 450 to 500 ppm requires a whole lot of very specific policies and a high price for carbon starting pretty damn soon.

Indeed, the Hadley Center makes the rather obvious argument that if you want stabilization at those levels, you would need “early and rapid decline” in emissions and “Action starts in 2010?³ (see Hadley Center study warns of “catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path). Even the staid International Energy Agency makes the same painfully obvious point, that global emissions must peak by 2020 and that the price for CO2 in 2030 might hit $180 a ton (see “Must-read IEA report explains what must be done to avoid 6°C warming“).

But Pielke’s primary proposal is “a $5 charge on each ton of carbon dioxide” and then use the money to develop clean tech technologies and infrastructure!!!  You might as well bring a squirt gun to a firestorm.

But God forbid a climate scientist actually proposes even a moderate set of policies to get to 450 ppm, as Pielke will immediately come down hard attacking that scientist as politicizing science.

Indeed, while I have focused in this post on what countless climate scientists and science bloggers have said about Pielke — since my critiques can be so easily dismissed by you as that of a “campaigner” — let’s look at what Pielke says.  Let me go through once again how, in Dr. Rahmstorf’s words, Pielke works hard to scandalize personal quibbles.

[Regular readers can skip the rest of this.  Apologies for the length of this post, but I'm trying to do the reporting that Andy left out.  Feel free to add your own links in the comments.]

Scandalizing Personal Quibbles

Last June, Pielke launched one of the most absurd attacks in his career “” on a few innocuous sentences in the terrific new NOAA-led report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.  Pielke launched the strongest possible accusation on his blog — “misrepresenting science in a government report” — on the basis of four sentences in this 196-page, 13-agency report:

While economic and demographic factors have no doubt contributed to observed increases in losses,[346] these factors do not fully explain the upward trend in costs or numbers of events.[344,347] For example, during the time period covered in the figure to the right, population increased by a factor of 1.3 while losses increased by a factor of 15 to 20 in inflation-corrected dollars.Analyses asserting little or no role of climate change in increasing the risk of losses tend to focus on a highly limited set of hazards and locations. They also often fail to account for the vagaries of natural cycles and inflation adjustments, or to normalize for countervailing factors such as improved pre- and post-event loss prevention (such as dikes, building codes, and early warning systems).[348,349]

You will note that these sentences don’t actually make any strong scientific statement about the link between climate change and increased insurance-industry losses from weather-related disasters. Indeed, this paragraph is immediately followed by:

What is known with far greater certainty is that future increases in losses will be attributable to climate change as it increases the frequency and intensity of many types of extreme weather, such as severe thunderstorms and heat waves.

So it is impossible to suggest, as Pielke does, that the authors are stating or even implying that there is a high certainty of a very large connection between climate change and insurance losses. Now what is particularly laughable about Pielke’s attack is that he himself told Nature in 2006:

Clearly since 1970 climate change (i.e., defined as by the IPCC to include all sources of change) has shaped the disaster loss record.

Yes, that is what Pielke said. You can look it up yourself (see Pielke in Nature: “Clearly, since 1970 climate change “¦ has shaped the disaster loss record”).

Can anybody (other than Pielke) tell me how Pielke’s 2006 statement is consistent with his harsh assault on the credibility of the climate report and the integrity of the authors? Can anybody tell me who but the most uninformed journalists would rely on anything Pielke says about real science or real scientists?

Pielke isn’t a “skeptic.”  He is a disinformer.  He disinforms every debate he enters. After his smear of Mills, no other word fits him.

In fact, here’s an extended excerpt from the 2006 Nature story, “Insurers’ disaster files suggest climate is culprit” (PDF here):

Insurance companies, acutely aware of the dramatic increase in losses caused by natural disasters in recent decades, have been convinced that global warming is partly to blame. Now their data seem to be persuading scientists, too. At a recent meeting of climate and insurance experts, delegates reached a cautious consensus: climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes.

The meeting, held near Munich on 25-26 May, was jointly organized by Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, and the University of Colorado in Boulder. It brought together climate, atmosphere and weather researchers with economists and insurance experts to discuss what could be behind recent disaster losses, both economic and human”¦.

Delegates seem to have found the record persuasive. Their consensus statement, to be released on 8 June, says there is “evidence that changing patterns of extreme events are drivers for recent increases in global losses”"¦.

“Dissent over the issue is clearly waning,” says Peter H¶ppe, head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks department, who co-chaired the workshop with Roger Pielke Jr, director of the University of Colorado’s Center of Science and Technology Policy Research. “Climate change may not be the dominant factor, but it has become clear that a relevant portion of damages can be attributed to global warming.”

Previously sceptical, Pielke says that he is now convinced that at least some of the increased losses can be blamed on climate: “Clearly, since 1970 climate change has shaped the disaster loss record.”

Now remember, the NOAA-led report did not assert climate change was the dominant factor in the recent disaster loss record. In fact, the report merely says that “Analyses asserting little or no role of climate change in increasing the risk of losses tend to focus on a highly limited set of hazards and locations.”

Ironically, Pielke then proceeds to prove this criticism correct by then focusing in his post on a very highly limited set of hazards — hurricanes. I won’t repeat all of his torturous “logic” — his entire post is the blog equivalent of waterboarding — but you can see how he cleverly leaps from quoting his narrow paper on hurricane damages to the very broad assertion, “The CCSP report however, says the opposite, that these factors do not explain the upward trend in costs or numbers of events. To support this claim they provide two citations” [Evan Mills inScience and the 2007 IPCC report].

Now what is doubly ironic about Pielke falling into the exact mistake that the USGCRP report warns against is that in a blog post three days after his post attacking the report, Pielke praises a new article, “Tropical cyclone losses in the USA and the impact of climate change “” A trend analysis based on data from a new approach to adjusting storm losses” (subs. req’d), which concludes:

In the period 1971-2005, since the beginning of a trend towards increased intense cyclone activity, losses excluding socio-economic effects show an annual increase of 4% per annum. This increase must therefore be at least due to the impact of natural climate variability but, more likely than not, also due to anthropogenic forcings.

Yes, you read that right.

Pielke says an article that concludes there is a better than 50% chance that human-emissions are contributing to increased losses from hurricanes since 1971 is “a valuable paper”

Pielke of course dismisses the two citations the USGCRP use for their very mild claim, one of which is the IPCC, that Pielke claims to believe in. The other cite is a 2005 Science paper by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Evan Mills (a report coauthor), “Insurance in a Climate of Change,” which states (PDF here with figures and citations):

Global weather-related losses in recent years have been trending upward much faster than population, inflation, or insurance penetration, and faster than non-weather-related events….

According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, climate change has played a role in the rising costs of natural disasters. As an illustration of the linkages, the distribution and frequency of lightning strikes is expected to shift under climate change, and insurers indeed observe a notable increase in losses during periods of elevated temperatures.

This is another innocuous paper, used to support a very innocuous statement in the report, but Pielke uses it to smear the entire report and the author, Evan Mills, in the most over-the-top fashion because Mills has done some consulting with the insurance industry:

Imagine if an industry-funded government contractor had a hand in writing a major federal report on climate change. And imagine if that person used his position to misrepresent the science, to cite his own non-peer reviewed work, and to ignore relevant work in the peer-reviewed literature. There would be an outrage, surely….

How can we explain how such a patently bad paragraph full of misrepresentations appeared in a U.S. government report?

… So a person responsible for misrepresenting science in a government report has ties and presumably financial interests with companies that have an interest in climate policy outcomes? No, couldn’t be. Could it?

[Pause to clean up gray matter now scattered all over the vise.]

The paragraph Pielke attacks isn’t filled with misrepresentations. It isn’t filled with a single statement that Pielke or anyone else has disproven. Indeed, the thrust of the paragraph is no different than a statement Pielke himself made in Nature, no different than the conclusion of a journal article Pielke himself has praised.

I have known Evan Mills professionally for almost two decades. He is a world-class scientist, highly regarded in his field. His remarkable resume is here. His response in Science to Pielke’s original critique of his article is here. Unlike Pielke, Mills is trained scientist who works for one of the preeminent science-based institutions in the world, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and must meet the highest ethical standards.

Many insurance companies are desperately trying to understand and respond to climate change despite the best efforts of Pielke to smear anyone who suggests there is even the tiniest link between climate change and extreme weather. Obviously, we should encourage our leading insurers to consult with our top scientists.

To Pielke, any scientist who consults with an insurance company is forever tainted.

I would add that Mills is not the first scientist Pielke has smeared on this issue of a link between climate change and extreme weather/insurance losses due to extreme weather.Pielke said that the 3000 scientists listening to Gore at the AAAS meeting were “willing silent collaborators” to “the misrepresentation of climate science” because they did nothing while Al Gore made the link, albeit with very careful wordchoice(see “Unstaining Al Gore’s good name, Part 1“).

Merely listening to innocuous comments is enough for Pielke to slam your integrity.

In Pielke’s brand of political correctness, there simply is no word choice acceptable to even discuss the link, except of course whatever he feels like saying or blogging on, which is perfectly acceptable.

This is the guy Revkin says must be an IPCC author on a report on this very subject if the IPCC is to restore its credibility.

An exploded mind is a terrible thing to waste.

[This post has been updated.]

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/02/28/205559/foreign-policys-guide-to-climate-skeptics-includes-roger-pielke-jr-meanwhile-andy-revkin-campaigns-for-him-to-be-an-ipcc-author/

==

3/14 huffpo

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/19/3416369/538-climate-article/?ir=Green

One of the first articles on Nate Silver’s highly anticipated data-driven news site used flawed data to make its conclusions, according to some of the nation’s top climate scientists.

Silver’s FiveThirtyEight published its first article about climate change on Wednesday, entitled “Disasters Cost More Than Ever — But Not Because of Climate Change.” But climate scientists are condemning the article and its author, Roger Pielke Jr., saying he ignored critical data to produce a “deeply misleading” result.

The crux of Pielke’s article is this: Extreme weather events are costing us more and more money, but that is not because climate change is making extreme weather more frequent or intense. The reason we are losing more money, rather, is because we have more money to lose. Pielke came to this conclusion by measuring rising disaster damage costs alongside the rising global Gross Domestic Product. He also cited a U.N. climate report, along with his own research, to assert that extreme weather events have not been increasing in frequency or intensity.

“Pielke’s piece is deeply misleading, confirming some of my worst fears that Nate Silver’s new venture may become yet another outlet for misinformation when it comes to the issue of human-caused climate change,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “Pielke uses a very misleading normalization procedure that likely serves to remove the very climate change-related damage signal that he claims to not be able to find.”

Pielke, a political scientist who has proven to be Silver’s most controversial hire to date, has actually been making his argument about increased disaster costs for years.

His story in FiveThirtyEight is one that he has written before, in Chapter 7 of his 2011 book “The Climate Fix.” Just like in his article, the chapter argues that increased wealth and development is the principal cause of increased monetary losses from extreme weather events — not more extreme weather from climate change....

---

UPDATE (5/10 3:15 pm): Heartland Institute de-listed Roger Pielke Jr. as a ”Heartland Expert” today after Pielke asked them to make clear he has no affiliation with them in any way. Yet as recently as last night, in a response to this post, he asserted, “If they chose to highlight me as an expert, that is their business.” #FAIL. The other amazing thing is that Pielke knew about the listing as far back as May 4! Anyway, we’re now seeing an “exodus” of “Heartland experts,” since Benny Peiser also got de-listed after my post. Pielke’s original page is cached here. The delisted page is here.

Leo blog : The Heartland Institute conference billboard in Chicago

On day 6 of Heartland-gate, we visit their distinguished list of “Experts.”

As you know, the Heartland Institute is still unapologetic for its ad comparing the Unabomber to those who accept climate science or report on it. And they still insist on their website that “the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

Their website also lists as “Heartland Experts” many of the most prominent advocates of climate science denial: John Christy, Joseph D’Aleo, Myron Ebell, Richard Lindzen, Bjorn Lomborg, Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney, Patrick Michaels, Steve Milloy, Lord Christopher Monckton, Marc Morano, Benny Peiser, Ian Plimer, Harrison Schmitt, Fred Singer, Fred Smith, Roy Spencer, Anthony Watts, and, last but not least, Roger Pielke.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Pielke_Jr.

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==

hmmn

[Lord Lawson, former chancellor of the exchequer and now chairman of climate sceptic thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation]

Earlier this week, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times announced that the "climate sceptics have won". His comments echo those of former Nasa scientist James Hansen who told an audience in Edinburgh last year that the sceptics "have been winning the public debate with the help of tremendous resources." The action needed in response to this situation was spelt out by Lord Stern – the eponymous author of the well-known 2007 report on the economics of climate change – who once called sceptics "forces of darkness" who had to be "driven back."

Such comments reflect a conventional wisdom in the climate debate. Climate sceptics, or deniers as they are often called, are presented as all-powerful forces bankrolled by rich corporations who have wielded their awesome power to block efforts to deal with the threat of human caused climate change. How do we know that climate sceptics have such power? As Martin Wolf explains, it is the "world's inaction" on climate policy which reveals their power.

From this perspective then, a key challenge of securing action on climate change is to defeat the sceptics – to drive back the forces of darkness so that the forces of good might prevail. Victory will be achieved by winning the battle for public opinion on the state of climate science.

However, a closer look at the logic underlying such arguments reveals a chain of causality which scholars of the public understanding of science have long critiqued as the ineffectual "deficit model" of science. Even more troubling, there is reason to believe that the focus of attention by climate campaigners on sceptics actually works against effective action.

The so-called "deficit model" suggests that the public lacks certain knowledge that if it were known properly (so closing the deficit) would lead them to favor certain policy actions. In other words, if only you understood the "facts" as I understand them, then you would come to share my policy preferences.

The deficit model helps to explain why people argue so passionately about "facts" in public debates over policies with scientific components. If you believe that acceptance of certain scientific views is a precondition for, or a causal factor in determining what policy views people hold, then arguments over facts serve as political debate by proxy.

Dan Kahan, professor of psychology at Yale Law School, has conducted several studies of public views on climate change and finds that the causal mechanisms of the "deficit model" actually work in reverse: people typically"form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values." Our political views shape how we interpret facts. On an issue as complex as climate, there are enough data and interpretations to offer support to almost any political agenda. Thus we have arguments over the degree or lack of consensus among scientists, and see efforts to delegitimise outlier positions in order to assert one true and proper interpretation. Added to the mix is the temptation to push "facts" beyond what science can support, which offers each side the opportunity for legitimate critique of the excesses of their opponents. These dynamics can (and do) go on forever.

In the first half of the 20th century, the American political commentator Walter Lippmann recognized that uniformity of perspective was not necessary for action to take place in democracies. He explained that the goal of politics is not to make everyone think alike, but to help people who think differently to act alike. A vast body of scholarship supports the limitations of the deficit model, yet it remains a defining feature of debates over climate policy today.

It is bad enough that those operating under the assumptions of the deficit model are wasting their time, or working against their own interests. What is worse is that such strategies fail to recognize that the battle over public opinion on climate change has long been over – it has been won, decisively in fact, by those favoring action. ?

Data on public opinion on climate change has been collected, in some cases for several decades, in countries around the world. What it shows is remarkably strong support for the so-called scientific consensus, as well as strong support for policy action. Even in the notoriously climate sceptical United States, Gallup finds: "trends throughout the past decade - and some stretching back to 1989 – have shown generally consistent majority support for the idea that global warming is real, that human activities cause it, and that news reports on it are correct, if not underestimated."

Another Gallup poll of 128 countries in 2007 and 2008 found strong majorities in most countries - including most large emitters of carbon dioxide – believe that global warming is a result of human activities. Public opinion does vary a great deal, often literally with the weather, but it has overall been remarkably consistent over many years in support of action. Far from being an obstacle to action on climate change, public opinion is in fact a resource to be capitalized upon.

Studies of the relationship of public opinion and political action on a wide range of subjects show nothing unique or very interesting about the state of public opinion on climate change. Significant policy action has occurred on other issues with less public support on many occasions (as I documented in my recent book, The Climate Fix). Instead of motivating further support for action, efforts to intensify public opinion through apocalyptic visions or appeals to authority, have instead led to a loss of trust in campaigning scientists and a deep politicization of the climate issue. Citing the ample evidence of the ineffectiveness of such approaches, Dan Kahan complains of climate campaigners: "They keep pounding the data, and with a rhetorical hammer that drives home all the symbolism that generates distrust and resistance in larger parts of the population … Why?"

If public opinion is not an obstacle to action on climate change, then what is? The first is a failure of imagination. Conventional wisdom on climate policy has long been that energy prices need to be made more expensive. Dearer energy fits into a complex causal chain of policy action as follows:

Win public opinion via closing the science deficit, defeating the sceptics?then the public will pressure politicians for action?politicians respond by passing laws, and signing international treaties?dirty fossil energy then becomes more expensive?people consequently feel economic pain?not liking economic pain, people demand additional actions on energy efficiency and fossil fuel alternatives?such actions will stimulate innovation in the public and private sectors, as well as in civil society? these innovations then deliver low carbon alternatives?problem solved.

Laid out from start to finish, this entire causal chain seems like a Rube Goldberg invention. If the causal chain founders at the first step where the deficit model shows up, it completely collapses at the point where energy is supposed to become more expensive in order to create incentives (experienced by voters as economic pain) to propel efficiency and innovation.

The idea that higher priced energy can be used as a lever to transform the global energy system may work in abstract economic models, but fails spectacularly in real world politics. As Martin Wolf explains, "A necessary, albeit not sufficient condition, then, is a politically sellable vision of a prosperous low-carbon economy. That is not what people now see."

A second obstacle to action is the pathological obsession of many environmental campaigners with the climate sceptics. By concluding that the sceptics are the main obstacle to action, campaigners are not only demonstrating a spectacularly circular logic, but they are also devoting their energies to a fruitless fight. Make no mistake, fighting sceptics has its benefits – it reinforces a simplistic good versus evil view of the world, it gives a sense of doing something, and privileges scientific expertise in policy debates. However, one thing that it does not do is contribute towards effective action on climate change.

The battle over public opinion on climate change has long been won, and not by the sceptics. But simply by virtue of their continued existence, the climate sceptics may have the last laugh, because many climate campaigners seem to be able to see nothing else in the debate. Climate sceptics are not all powerful and may not even be very relevant to efforts to decarbonise the global economy. They have, however, cast a spell upon their opponents.

Roger Pielke Jr. is professor of environmental studies in the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado. On Twitter he is @RogerPielkeJr

---

Roger A. Pielke Jr. is a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research[2] at the University of Colorado at Boulder.[1]. Dr. Pielke is a prolific and controversial writer; his most recent book setting forth his views is called "The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics," which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. His doctorate is in political science.[2]

Some of Dr. Pielke's comments and work have proven to be controversial. Critics note that his work has been frequently cited by "global warming skeptics,"[3] Dr. Pielke and his allies have praised his  independence and called his critics "climate McCarthyists."[4] (For more information on who the "skeptics" are and which corporations fund skeptics, SourceWatch has created a global warming skeptic clearinghouse.)

Contents

[hide]

1 Politics

2 Controversial Positions

2.1 Testimony about Bush Administration Political Interference in Science

2.2 Scientific Integrity

2.3 Critique of the Predictions of NASA Scientist James Hansen

2.4 Hurricane Theory and Climate Change

2.5 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

3 Affiliations

4 Books and Articles

5 Testimony to Congress

6 Contact details

7 Other resources

7.1 Related SourceWatch articles

7.2 References

7.3 External resources

Politics

On political views, Dr. Pielke has stated "If you want to know what I think about things that I have some expertise in, just have a look at our blog and my publications and you’ll get a pretty good sense of my views on particular subjects."[5] He has written that he supported Barack Obama's 2008 campaign to be President.[2] Huffington Post writer David Roberts has argued that Dr. Pielke has "been playing footsie with denialists and right-wing ideologues for years; they're his biggest fans."[6] Dr. Pielke describes himself as a "Blue Dog Democrat."[7]

Controversial Positions

Dr. Pielke has published hundreds of articles in a variety of publications, and some of his statements and arguments have attracted significant controversy.

Testimony about Bush Administration Political Interference in Science

During 110th Congress, Democratic leaders investigated claims by numerous scientists that their research and findings were subject to political interference by members of the Bush Administration, and Dr. Pielke was selected by the Republican minority to testify during that investigation.[8] In the face of voluminous documentation of political interference by the Bush Administration, Dr. Pielke asserted that President Bush's actions were similar to those observed in the Clinton Administration, that science in policy was unavoidably political, and scientists had politicized science.[9]

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), along with many others in the scientific community, strongly disagreed that the Bush Administration's pattern of interference in scientific integrity was simply business as usual in Washington.[10] For example, UCS provided a thorough compilation of the manipulation, suppression, and distortion of critical scientific information in its "A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science."[11]

To take just one of many examples, Dr. Pieter Tans, a chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s Global Monitoring Division in Boulder, Colorado--in the same city as Dr. Pielke--"was asked by lab director Dr. David Hofmann to cancel a conference session on energy use and the carbon cycle due to its 'policy implications' and was told that the words 'climate change' could not appear in the titles of any presentations. Hoffman had previously told Tans and other NOAA scientists not to use the word 'Kyoto' in presentations or papers."[12] At the time of this political interference and censorship, Dr. Tans was chair of the Scientific Program Committee for the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference and was preparing to talk about "the dominant role that carbon dioxide plays as a forcing agent in climate change."[13] Dr. Tans was later told that any material dealing with climate change, including his laboratory’s website content, had to be pre-approved at the White House level.[14]

(Dr. Pielke has testified before other House and Senate Committees on climate issues, as listed in detail below.)[15]

Scientific Integrity

In 2006, Dr. Pielke drew parallels between the integrity of a non-scientist government contractor, Ms. Susan Hassol, who was serving as one of the editors of a climate report and who had previously written about climate changes underway, and the highly controversal Bush White House political operative Philip Cooney who edited government reports to downplay the science of climate change.[16] Ms. Hassol is a writer whose work documents climate changes; among other things, she wrote HBO's global warming documentary, Too Hot Not To Handle, which premiered in April 2006.[17]Before joining the Bush White House, Philip Cooney who had spent years on the payroll of the American Petroleum Institute where he worked as a leading lobbyist against regulation of the oil and gas industry and served as the former "climate team leader" of API. After the scandal described below documented that Cooney had extensively revised government scientific conclusions, which Dr. Pielke was referencing, Cooney resigned and took a job with ExxonMobil.)

Specifically, Dr. Pielke stated that "A prominent non-scientist responsible for editing official government reports on climate change is at the exact same time being paid to engage in advocacy work related that that issue. To quote the media question to Scott McClellen regarding the Phil Cooney affair, 'are there not indications of at least the appearance of impropriety?'" Dr. Benjamin Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who served as the Convening Lead Author of Chapter 5 of the U.S. CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Report 1.1 ("Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere"), argued that this was "a cheap shot," adding that the suggestion that associate editor referenced by Dr. Pielke, Susan Hassol, "is responsible for introducing some form of bias in the Report" could not be "further from the truth."[18] He explained that "Susan Hassol's expertise has been invaluable in helping the authors of the first CCSP Report explain complex scientific issues in terms readily understandable by a lay audience. She has made our Report a better and clearer Report. She has not modified the scientific conclusions of the Report," in contrast to the work of Bush political operative Philip Cooney.

(The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report documenting the numerous ways in which Philip Cooney modified the scientific conclusions of materials produced by government scientists. This report includes original documents showing how Cooney added and deleted text to advance a political agenda of undermining confidence in climate change issues and introduce greater doubt that climate change was underway. Links to documentary evidence of this interference is provided in this congressional report noted in the footnote below.[19])

Dr. Pielke responded to Dr. Santer by stating, "Let me reiterate that this post is not to disparage either Mr. Cooney or Ms. Hassol, but to compare and contrast their very similar professional roles and how it seems that each has been treated very differently by the media and commentators, and certainly by scientists."[20] Dr. Pielke noted that he also commented in his original note: "I am sure that Ms. Hassol must be good at what she does, given her resume ..."[21]

Answering a review by Michael Tobis of his book "The Honest Broker" Pielke writes "My concern about climate science is that too many science arbiters and honest brokers have decided to engage in advocacy. The choice to become an advocate is of course a personal one, but I would argue that some place needs to be reserved for honest brokering of policy options, a role best served by authoritative institutions. However, this role that has gone wanting in the context of climate as the IPCC, national academies and professional organizations have all jumped on the advocacy bandwagon to some degree."[22] Pielke goes on to argue that scope for action has been narrowed by the "advocacy" he complains of. In this interesting exchange he also says climate change is like "abortion politics."

Critique of the Predictions of NASA Scientist James Hansen

Dr. Pielke has argued that NASA Scientist James Hansen's 1988 prediction of global warming was inaccurate.[23] Of the two lower projections Pielke wrote that "neither is particularly accurate or realistic. Any conclusion that Hansen's 1988 prediction got things right, necessarily must conclude that it got things right for the wrong reason (italics in original)."[24]

Tim Lambert has argued that "Pielke's criticism of Hansen's scenarios is badly misconceived. The important input to Hansen's model was the total forcing from greenhouse gasses, but Pielke ignores this to focus on the growth rate of emissions of each gas. For instance, he claims that scenario B was off by a factor of 2 on CO2. This sounds like a lot until you discover that means that emissions grew by 0.5% per year instead of 1% a year. And that works out to scenario B having the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere within 1% of what has actually happened. Pielke is being much more than a little unfair by calling a prediction that got within 1% of the correct answer as not being "particularly accurate or realistic"."[25]

Hurricane Theory and Climate Change

Dr. Pielke has suggested that hurricanes should be part of the climate change mitigation debate. He published a peer-reviewed study on this topic in the journal Proceedings of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.[26] This paper updates and extends a study that he originally published in the skeptic journal Energy and Environment, and at the 2007 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Dr. Pielke gave a joint presentation on hurricanes and climate change with noted global warming skeptic Stephen McIntyre.[27]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

In a February 2, 2010 televised interview on BBC TV, Dr. Pielke said his work for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been misrepresented in a report produced by the IPCC. In particular, he cited a graph that was included in the report that showed a relationship between rising temperatures and the increasing costs of damages from weather-related occurrences. Dr. Pielke stated he was surprised to see the graph, "because there's no evidence in the literature to suggest that that relationship exists." "Even more troubling," Dr. Pielke said, was the fact that one of IPCC's reviewers asked the IPCC to check with him (Pielke) about this information. Pielke said that the IPCC responded by saying they thought he had changed his mind on the topic. Pielke maintains that this was not true. He also took exception to the IPCC's citing of information in its report from non-peer-reviewed sources, like NGO reports, newspaper articles and information from private sources. Dr. Pielke said that the IPCC must be sure that is has the public's trust and should make it clear when they are relying on non-peer-reviewed sources.[28] (As noted above, however, Dr. Pielke himself has cited his own prior works and others that were not subject to peer review.)

In response to criticism of how its Fourth Assessment Report handled the question of recent trends in economic losses from climate-related disasters, the IPCC issued a statement in January, 2010 saying

"...This section of the IPCC report is a balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue. It clearly makes the point that one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend. The tone is balanced, and the section contains many important qualifiers. In writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate." [29]

Affiliations

University of Colorado 2001 - present as Professor in the Environmental Studies Program;[30]

Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado 2001-2007; he is currently a Fellow of CIRES;[30]

As of April 2011, Pielke is also:

Visiting Senior Fellow, Mackinder Programme, London School of Economics[1]

Senior Visiting Fellow at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University[1]

Senior Fellow of The Breakthrough Institute[1]

From 2001-2006 he was a director of Weatherdata, Inc., "a leading provider of weather services", according to Wikipedia.

Member of advisory boards of the Societal Impacts Program at National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Pacific ENSO Applications Center at the University of Hawaii - dates not specified;[31]

Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research 1993-2001;[30]

Associate Fellow of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford University's Said Business School 2007;[31] and

as of May 2009 Pielke Jr. is a member of the editorial boards of Minerva, Darwin, Environmental Science & Policy, Global Environmental Change, Natural Hazards Review, Policy Sciences, and Water Resources Research [31].

Books and Articles

Dr. Pielke has authored or co-authored several books including:

Daniel Sarewitz (Editor), Roger A. Pielke Jr. (Editor) and Radford Byerly Jr. (Editor), Prediction: Science, Decision Making, and the Future of Nature, Island Press, April 2000. ISBN 1559637765 ISBN 978-1559637763

Roger A. Pielke Jr, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, Cambridge University Press, May 2007. ISBN 0521694817 ISBN 978-0521694810

And he has written hundreds of articles published by a variety of publishers. Here are some of the opinions columns written by Dr. Pielke:

D. Sarewitz and R. A. Pielke, Jr., "Breaking the Global-Warming Gridlock", The Atlantic Monthly, July 2000, Volume 286 No 1, pages 55-64.

Roger Pielke Jr. and D. Sarewitz, "Anyone for Global Warming?", The Washington Times, February 2, 2000.

Roger Pielke Jr. and D. Sarewitz, "Society has to Learn to Adapt", The Albuquerque Journal, August 5, 2001.

Roger Pielke Jr., "When Science Gets Political", Newsday, February 23, 2003.

Roger Pielke Jr., "Politics and science mix badly", International Herald Tribune, January 20, 2003.

Roger Pielke Jr., "Pre-emptive politics ignores science", Rocky Mountain News, August 18 , 2003.

Roger Pielke Jr., "Making sense of science in the politics of the stem-cell debate", Rocky Mountain News, July 31, 2004.

D. Sarewitz and R.A. Pielke, Jr., "Rising Tide", The New Republic, January 6, 2005.

Roger Pielke Jr. and D. Sarewitz, "Managing the next disaster", Los Angeles Times, September 23, 2005.

Roger Pielke Jr. "Accepting politics in science", The Washington Post, January 10, 2005, p. A17.

Roger Pielke Jr., "Science, Politics and Press Releases", The Albuquerque Journal, April 2, 2006.

Roger Pielke Jr, "Climate change is serious, but we have to have a realistic response", Guardian Unlimited, London, United Kingdom, October 13, 2006.

Roger Pielke Jr., "Overheated Claims", Financial Post, June 17, 2008.

Roger Pielke Jr., "Political realities will undermine energy pricing", Letter to the Editor, Financial Times, July 21, 2008.

Roger Pielke Jr., "Europe’s climate policy may be more about appearances", The Financial Times, December 24, 2008.

Roger Pielke Jr. and C. Green, "The cure for carbon", Rocky Mountain News, November 22, 2008.

Testimony to Congress all B 43

Roger Pielke Jr., Statement of Dr. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. to the Committee on Environment and Public Works if the United States Senate, Hearing on Economic and Environmental Risks Associated with Increasing Greenhouse Gas Emissions, March 13, 2002. INHOFE?

Roger Pielke Jr. "Response of Dr. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. to Questions Posed by the Committee on Environment and Public Works of the United States Senate, Hearing on Economic and Environmental Risks Associated with Increasing Greenhouse Gas Emissions, May 29, 2002.

Roger Pielke Jr., Statement to the Committee on Government Reform of the United States House of Representatives, Hearing on Climate Change: Understanding the Degree of the Problem, July 20, 2006.

Roger Pielke Jr., Statement to the Committee on Government Reform of the United States House of Representatives, Hearing on Political Interference in the Work of Government Climate Change Scientists, January 30, 2007.

Roger Pielke Jr., Statement to the House Committee on Science and Technology of the United States House of Representatives: The State of Climate Change Science 2007: The Findings of the Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change, May 16, 2007.

Contact details

Roger Pielke, Jr.

Center for Science and Technology Policy Research

University of Colorado

1333 Grandview Ave, Campus Box 488

Boulder, Colorado 80309-0488

Phone: 303-735-3940 (direct), 303-735-0451 (Policy Center)

Fax: 303-735-1576

Email: pielke AT colorado.edu

Website: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/

Blog: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/

Other resources

Related SourceWatch articles

Global warming

Father Roger Pielke, Sr., atmospheric scientist

Breakthrough Institute

Center for Science and Technology Policy Research

References

? 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Home page. Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog. Retrieved on 2011-04-13.

? 2.0 2.1 Roger Pielke Jr., "Interview with Brad Johnson, Center for American Progress", Prometheus (blog), February 25th, 2009.

? Dylan Otto Krider, ""Is Roger Pielke, Jr. Zelig?", Skepticism Examiner, March 1, 2008.

? See, e.g., The Breakthrough Institute's work on this point, which is available at http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2009/11/climate_mccarthyism_part_i_joe.shtml

? "Occasionally Asked Questions About Roger Pielke, Jr.", accessed May 2007.

? David Roberts, "Bashing Dirty Hippies and Getting Played: A Case Study in Six Chapters", The Huffington Post, January 17, 2007.

? "Occasionally Asked Questions About Roger Pielke, Jr.", accessed May 2007.

? David Roberts, "House committee hearings on politicization of climate science: guess who the Republicans invited?," Grist, 30 Jan 2007.

? Committee on Oversight and Government Reform - Republicans, "Testimony By Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.", January 30, 2007

? E.g., http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html

? E.g., http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html

? http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/cant-say-climate-change-at.html

? http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/cant-say-climate-change-at.html

? http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/cant-say-climate-change-at.html

? http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/publications/search.html?action=Search&searchString=&selectedMetadata[]=2432&showAllRecords=¤tPage=1&limitPerPage=500 accessed February 19, 2010

? Roger Pielke Jr., ""Conflicted about Conflicts of Interest?", Prometheus blog, 23 April 2006.

? http://www.climatecommunication.org/about_susan.html, accessed February 20, 2010

? Roger Pielke Jr., "Conflicted about Conflicts of Interest??", Prometheus blog, 23 April 2006.

? Committee Report: White House Engaged in Systematic Effort to Manipulate Climate Change Science http://oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3373:committee-report-white-house-engaged-in-systematic-effort-to-manipulate-climate-change-science-&catid=44:legislation&Itemid=&layout=default&date=2010-02-01

? Roger Pielke Jr., "Conflicted about Conflicts of Interest??", Prometheus blog, 23 April 2006.

? Roger Pielke Jr., "Conflicted about Conflicts of Interest??", Prometheus blog, 23 April 2006.

? "[1]"

? Roger Pielke Jr., "Evaluating Jim Hansen's 1988 Climate Forecast", Prometheus, May 29, 2006.

? Roger Pielke Jr., "Scenarios, Scenarios: Hansen’s Prediction Part II", Prometheus, May 30, 2006.

? Tim Lambert, Pat Michaels: "fraud, pure and simple", Deltoid, June 5, 2006. See generally, Tim Lambert, "Pielke train wreck", Deltoid, May 16, 2008; Tim Lambert, "Pielke train wreck continues", Deltoid, May 19, 2008; Tim Lambert, "Do not cite or quote", Deltoid, August 7, 2008.

? "Future economic damage from tropical cyclones: sensitivities to societal and climate changes", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 2007.

? Roger Pielke Jr. "AGU Powerpoint with Steve McIntyre" posted on Prometheus blog, December 10, 2007.

? BBC Scientists debate errors in IPCC climate science Television broadcast; debate/interview. Kirsty Wark interviews Professor Chris Field, co-chair of the IPPC Working Group, and Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. February 3, 2010

? Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC Statement on Trends in Disaster Losses (pdf) Press release, January 25, 2010

? 30.0 30.1 30.2 "Homepage", University of Colorado Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, accessed May 2009.

? 31.0 31.1 31.2 http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/about.html

External resources

Roger Pielke Jr. Publications list

"Occasionally Asked Questions About Roger Pielke, Jr."

Deltoid

Wikipedia page on Roger A. Pielke Jr.

Categories: Climate change | Environment | United States | People

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wiki

The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) is a research institute that is sponsored jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). CIRES scientists study the Earth system, including theatmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and geosphere, and communicate these findings to decision makers, the scientific community, and the public.

It is one of 16 NOAA Cooperative Institutes (CIs).[1]

Contents  [hide]

1 History and research

2 Divisions

3 Centers and programs

4 External links

5 References

History and research[edit]

CIRES was established in 1967 and is the oldest and largest of NOAA’s cooperative institutes nationwide. CIRES facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers at the University of Colorado and NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS), and the National Weather Service (NWS).

CIRES includes more than 700 scientists, staff, and students, and CIRES scientists publish more than 500 peer reviewed publications annually. Examples of research focused upon societal needs include monitoring changes in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, assessing the health of Earth’s ozone layer, projecting the impacts of climate change on water supply and other critical resources, documenting the thinning of polar ice, monitoring the quality of the air and water, helping to respond to drought and wildfire, developing microbial agents for degrading environmental pollutants, improving earthquake predictions, and providing decision makers with information for more effective risk assessments.

Divisions[edit]

Cryospheric and Polar Processes Division (CPP) The cryosphere comprises Arctic climate, ice sheets and glaciers, snow cover and snow hydrology, and permafrost. Cryospheric and Polar Processes Division research at CIRES combines data collection, modeling, and data analysis to understand how the cryosphere influences, and responds to, changes in the global climate.

Another major activity of this division is archiving and distributing satellite information about the cryosphere in the Snow and Ice Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) as a part of NASA's Earth Observing System(EOS) Data and Information Center. These data increase scientists’ understanding of how the cryosphere is changing and the global impacts of those changes.

Ecosystem Science Division (ES) This division research focuses on water quality, land-atmosphere exchanges, and regional and global disturbances. Research focuses on topics such as bacteria that break down environmental toxins; land use changes; nutrient and pollutant studies in lakes and streams; biogenic emissions of important trace gases to the atmosphere; and protection of crops against frost.

Environmental Chemistry Division (EC) Research topics include measurements and analysis of pollutants and naturally occurring compounds, reaction kinetics, surface science, and analytical instrumentation development. Recent studies cover wide-ranging subjects including acid rain, air and water pollution like that occurring in the Denver brown cloud, and climate change resulting from emission of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Other areas of research include stratospheric ozone depletion, tropospheric photochemical oxidant formation, and the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Environmental Observations, Modeling and Forecasting Division (EOMF) This division focuses on increasing understanding of interactive processes in the Earth's physical environment and developing a clearer picture of its sensitivities to natural and human-caused change. One chief area of study is the greenhouse effect and how to determine the onset of a theoretically predicted warming.

Solid Earth Sciences Division (SES) Active research areas in geophysics include earthquake prediction; studies of the size, shape, and dynamic forces of Earth; isotope geochemistry; and the behavior of Earth’score and mantle. This research involves the use of seismography, analytical and numerical modeling efforts, and space geodetic techniques, such as laser ranging, artificial satellites, and interferometric observations of radio waves emanating from deep space.

An important component of CIRES research in geodesy/geodynamics is participation in the multi-university consortium developed to assemble, test, and administer the deployment of instrument packages that use radio signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites to determine distances between points on Earth’s surface. The scientific objective is to monitor crustal deformation in tectonically active areas.

Weather and Climate Dynamics Division (WCD) This division focuses on understanding how global processes are intertwined to create the weather and climate observed from the troposphere to the mesosphere. This includes observational and theoretical research on the interactive boundary layers; the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and its effects on climate prediction; global waves and turbulence in the stratosphere; and fine-scale turbulence in the boundary layer.

Centers and programs[

CIRES supports four centers that provide the functional link between NOAA and 11 departments at the University of Colorado Boulder. The centers include the:

Center for Limnology, studying lakes, streams, and wetlands;

Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR), which conducts research and education to meet the needs of public and private decision makers for environmental science information;

Earth Science and Observation Center (ESOC), focusing on the development and application of remote sensing techniques for studying all aspects of the Earth system;

National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), which studies Earth’s frozen realms (called the cryosphere), including floating sea ice, lake ice, glaciers, ice sheets, snow cover, and permafrost.

CIRES also has two interdisciplinary programs: Western Water Assessment (WWA) and Education and Outreach. WWA is one of 11 NOAA-funded Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) programs across the country. WWA researchers, specializing in climate, water, ecology, law, and the social sciences, work with decision makers across the West to produce useful, policy-relevant information about climate variability and change.

External links

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)

References[

Jump up "Cooperative Institutes". NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. Retrieved 2014-04-26.

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