https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-climate-beat-goes-on
The Climate Beat Goes On My response to 10 questions from the Associated Press on the DOE CWG report
Excerpts:
Last week I was contacted by two reporters at the Associated Press with a request to comment on the Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group (DOE CWG) report and the proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to rescind the 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding:
We’re Seth Borenstein and Michael Phillis, reporters on the climate and environment team at The Associated Press. As you know last week, the Trump administration’s EPA proposed rescinding the 2009 Endangerment Finding on climate change. It did so with two documents. One was the actual EPA proposal and the other was the Department of Energy Climate Working Group’s “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” We have decided to ask the authors of every science-oriented reference in both documents about this. That’s why we are contacting you.
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Pielke Jr.: “…the report reflects the perspectives of five scientists who believe that certain topics within their areas of expertise have been neglected or underplayed in major climate assessments. As such, the report is a very high quality presentation of their views, and at the same time, the report largely overlaps with the findings of the IPCC.”
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Pielke Jr.: “The scientific community, including the IPCC, has acknowledged that the envelope of plausible emissions scenarios for the remainder of the 21st century are significantly lower (less extreme) that those considered plausible in 2009. That alone leads to less extreme projections of future climate change.”
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Pielke Jr.: “The IPCC is not a sacred text that can be used to identify believers and apostates. Weaponizing the notion of ‘mainstream’ to dismiss or denigrate legitimate scientific views that one does not like is contrary to how science advances — through challenge, debate, discussion, and not gatekeeping.”
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AP question: “On a scale of 0 to 100 with 100 being the best, how would you rate the EPA report? What about the DOE report?”
Pielke Jr.: “If the goal of the DOE CWG report is to open up discussion of various aspects of climate science, then the report certainly gets an ‘A.” Consider that this is the first time that the AP has contacted me for comment in years,3 if not decades, and I am among the most published and cited researchers on extreme events and their impacts in the United States.
Would you guys be contacting me if I wasn’t one of the most cited researchers in the report?”
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AP Questions: “If you were teaching an undergraduate class and your student delivered the EPA document as an assignment, what grade on the standard A to F scale would you give it? Why?”
“If you were teaching an undergraduate class and your student delivered the DOE document as an assignment, what grade on the standard A to F scale would you give it? Why?”
Pielke Jr. answer: “These are absolutely ridiculous questions and suggest that your goal here is not journalism but team sport.”
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