Search Results for “pielke” – Page 2

Climate expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. slams ‘climate journalism’ & Lists Top 5 Media narratives – ‘A big part of climate reporting these days is simply climate advocacy’

April 28, 2023

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/top-five-climate-change-narratives Top Five Climate Change Narratives in the Media Coverage of climate has become more about narrative promotion than news By ROGER PIELKE JR. Source: University of Colorado Boulder I’ve seen a lot over the past three decades. For instance, I’ve seen my own research on climate go from being widely covered in the late 1990s to 2000s, to journalists actively advocating for me to be fired in the 2010s to today, where thankfully my writing exists in this parallel universe called Substack. All this time my work remains pretty much the same — my research remains widely cited in the research community, including most recently by all three working group of the IPCC. It is not me that has changed. … Below I provide a list of the five most common types of climate stories that I see in the legacy and specialist media. I’ll admit to being a bit cheeky — it is Friday after all, but at the same time I also think there is a lot of truth to the list below. I’m calling out climate journalism because I am seeing its pathological effects on public views (especially among young people), on the research community and in policy discussions, including political advocacy. Climate is too important to be just another cul-de-sac of identity politics. … With that, let’s get to the list! Climate reductionism We can explain everything with climate change Hay fever? Bumpy fight? Home runs? Infertility? There is probably no phenomena in the world that has not at one time or another been linked to climate change. Part of the ubiquity of this type of article is the presence of so many journalists now on the “climate beat” having to come up with frequent climate-themed stories to satisfy their editors and their niche. This has the knock-on effect of creating incentives for researchers to produce studies with links to climate — no matter how tenuous or trivial. This dynamic has been well described my Mike Hulme as “climate reductionism.” We ❤️ the apocalypse The coming apocalypse If it bleeds, it leads. There is a great market for studies that offer scary predictions of the future, typically employing implausible scenarios (hello RCP8.5). These studies are readily transformed into university and research institute press releases, which are then pretty much reprinted as news. … Your guide to the players Good guys and bad guys In any morality tale, it is important to know who the good guys and bad guys are. Usually this is easy, but in climate it is difficult as there are a lot of legitimate experts out there, but only a subset share the proper views. Hence, the media produces a steady stream of articles helping to identify those who are heroes and those who are villains. Associating someone with Republicans or fossil fuels is a tip that this person is a villain, and a similar association with the renewable industry or Democrats means that they are onside. Extreme weather, we can explain that The extreme weather that just happened Weather is a renewable resource. It happens every day, and somewhere it is extreme. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, hail, oh my! It has become fundamental to the climate beat to associate, link, connect — pick your favorite — the extreme event that just happened with climate change. Forget the IPCC and rigorous standards of detection and attribution. There are studies to cherry pick, quotable experts and a new cottage industry of rapid event attribution studies. Extreme weather is no longer about the weather. Go team! Cheerleading for our team …A big part of climate reporting these days is simply climate advocacy. For instance, when the Inflation Reduction Act was being debated earlier this year, the media simply cheered its passage, printing the views of those paid to promote it by the renewables industry, and nary a critical voice to be heard. More recently, criticism of the IRA has appeared to become legitimate as part of the cheerleading to go beyond the IRA. Climate reporting is apparently a team sport.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: ‘Is Global Warming Less than We Thought? A discussion of a provocative new climate science paper’

April 16, 2023

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/is-global-warming-less-than-we-thought By ROGER PIELKE JR. Excerpts: Tropospheric warming from Zou et al. 2023. … Zou et al. 2023 is the paper I am inviting you to discuss (thanks @weerrecords!), which I’ll call Zetal23. It is open access and can be found at the link below. Zou, C. Z., Xu, H., Hao, X., & Liu, Q. (2023). Mid‐Tropospheric Layer Temperature Record Derived from Satellite Microwave Sounder Observations with Backward Merging Approach. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, e2022JD037472. The authors explain what they did in the study: Long-term observations of global atmospheric temperatures from satellite microwave sounders play a vital role in climate change research. These observations involved multiple satellites spanning several decades. Careful intersatellite calibration and bias correction are needed to derive inter-consistent records from multi-satellite observations for reliable climate change detection. Here we develop a new version of the NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) mid-tropospheric temperature (TMT) time series for climate trend investigation. Long-timers in the climate space will know well that debates over satellite temperature trends used to be knock-down, drag-out affairs. In a wiseacre nutshell — if you favored the satellite temperature record, you were probably a denier, and if you saw the satellites as flawed, then you were onsides. Here is how Carbon Brief characterized the debate back in 2017: Climate sceptics have long claimed that satellite data shows global warming to be less pronounced than observational data collected on the Earth’s surface. The occasion for that characterization was a paper (Mears and Wentz 2017) that suggested that a leading satellite time series may have been flawed and as a result, underestimated warming trends. Carbon Brief explained at the time of the then-new paper: Researchers from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), based in California, have released a substantially revised version of their lower tropospheric temperature record. After correcting for problems caused by the decaying orbit of satellites, as well as other factors, they have produced a new record showing 36% faster warming since 1979 and nearly 140% faster (i.e. 2.4 times larger) warming since 1998. This is in comparison to the previous version 3 of the lower tropospheric temperature (TLT) data published in 2009. Well, as I often warn, be careful celebrating the results of any one study too much, because science moves ahead and there is no guarantee that any single paper stands the test of time. And that brings us back to Zetal23 — written by a highly qualified and well-published team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and published in a leading climate science journal. Zetal23 have produced a new estimate of global warming using satellites, which can be seen in the figure below. … Read that again, especially the last sentence. Zetal23 are suggesting the possibility that either observations of global warming are flawed, that climate models are flawed, or maybe both. These possibilities would — if true — be very scientifically important. Hence, why discussion of Zetal23 is important. My two cents: Nothing in the Zetal23 has any implications for my views of climate policy, which remain highly robust to the evolution of scientific understandings, uncertainties and ignorance, as they should be. The new study adds weight to an analysis I participated in in 2009 that offered “An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere,” (which, by the way, was published in the same journal as Zetal23) in which we hypothesized that there was a warm bias in the land surface temperature record as compared to the satellite temperature record due to real-world physical processes in the atmospheric boundary layer. The paper started as a “dinner table” debate between my dad and I — you can read all about it in non-technical language here and a more technical discussion here. With that, I invite you to join a discussion of Zetal23. Is it sound? If so, is it important?

‘Silly Science’: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. rips study linking increase in MLB home runs to ‘climate change’ – But there is NO INCREASE in Home Runs in AAA, Japan or NCAA D1 Baseball!

April 12, 2023

There is an obvious control group, AAA baseball (completely ignored in this new paper) And home runs are down in AAAhttps://t.co/zWzneW28fg Maybe climate change only has effects in the major leagues? Silly science is still fun! pic.twitter.com/Kkz136G1RF — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) April 7, 2023 Climate change did not lead to more home runs in Japan 1977-2003 Attribution science is tricky like that pic.twitter.com/GPEB65PID6 — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) April 7, 2023 And climate change has not caused more home runs in NCAA D1 baseball Climate attribution is a tricky business, I tell ya pic.twitter.com/iv4AtP0twv — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) April 7, 2023 https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/climate-change-causes-home-runs Excerpt: Pielke Jr.: “Thus, a more accurate reading of the paper’s quantitative conclusions is that climate change is a tiny, even insignificant, factor in MLB home run trends, easily swamped by everything else that can affect home runs. In our exchange, the paper’s co-author seems to have acknowledged this: “I think it’s straightforward to reason that one can have both a decline in HRs … while also having warming to date make a small contribution to enhanced HR likelihood.” Nuanced and accurate, to be sure, but not the stuff of headlines in newspapers, or these days apparently, representations of research in scientific journals. … No matter how you slice it, even using the most extreme scenario and taking the paper’s conclusions at face value, climate change is just not a big deal for home runs in baseball. And that should be OK, as not everything has to be reduced to climate.” Climate Change Causes Home Runs – What we can learn from making everything about climate By ROGER PIELKE JR. Last week a new study claimed to have identified a causal relationship between climate change and home runs in Major League Baseball. The paper — Global warming, home runs, and the future of America’s pastime, by Callahan et al. — asserted, “Several hundred additional home runs per season are projected due to future warming.” Looking to the past, the paper asserts, “human-caused climate change decreased home runs between 1962 and 1995 and increased them thereafter.” Predictably, the legacy media loved it, as you can see below. On Twitter, I commented that climate change didn’t have the same HR-boosting effects in other baseball leagues, with no similar home run trends in Japan, the AAA league or the NCAA — where in each instance home runs have declined in recent decades. One of the authors of the paper contacted me, I suppose after seeing my Tweets, and explained: Our model is not trying to predict home runs. It’s trying to estimate temperature’s effect on home runs. Those are, empirically, different endeavors. Yes, I agree. However, contrary to what the author told me via email, the paper is centered on projecting future home runs — it even predicts an increase in home runs by MLB ballpark. The paper states clearly, and erroneously: [T]hese model experiments allow us to quantify the influence of historical climate change on home run totals. They also allow us to project how home runs may change in the future with warming. In response, this is what I said to the paper’s author about their methodology and misleading description of their methods: Your methodology is formally a sensitivity analysis, which seeks to isolate a statistical relationship of temperature and home runs. I agree that such a sensitivity analysis simply does not allow for meaningful predictions or projections of future home runs . . . Of course, climate research is rife with studies (and reporting, such as the Wash Post article on your study) that confuse single-variable sensitivity analysis with meaningful projections (e.g., the effects of climate on crop yields is a textbook example of this). The author, in his exchange with me, also explained clearly and accurately that there could be other factors beyond climate change that might explain the declines in other leagues that are at odds with the trends in home runs in MLB. Indeed. Were I a peer reviewer of this paper, I would have required that they repeat their analysis with data from Japan, AAA and NCAA, all of which is readily available, as are relevant climate data and model projections. Patrick Brown of The Breakthrough Institute points out that the new study, taken at face value (which I do not, but let’s just posit that), asserts that since the 1970s an increase of about 0.04 HRs per game can be attributed to climate change out of a total increase of 0.75 HRs per game — or about 5% of the total increase. Thus, a more accurate reading of the paper’s quantitative conclusions is that climate change is a tiny, even insignificant, factor in MLB home run trends, easily swamped by everything else that can affect home runs. In our exchange, the paper’s co-author seems to have acknowledged this: “I think it’s straightforward to reason that one can have both a decline in HRs … while also having warming to date make a small contribution to enhanced HR likelihood.” Nuanced and accurate, to be sure, but not the stuff of headlines in newspapers, or these days apparently, representations of research in scientific journals. … No matter how you slice it, even using the most extreme scenario and taking the paper’s conclusions at face value, climate change is just not a big deal for home runs in baseball. And that should be OK, as not everything has to be reduced to climate. Yet, the paper concludes dramatically: “More broadly, our findings are emblematic of the widespread influence anthropogenic global warming has already had on all aspects of life.” A lesson here is that we have created strong incentives in science, in the promotion of science and in journalism to reduce everything to climate. If you are on the climate beat you are most certainly not going to be discussing steroids in baseball, seam size, humidor practices or any of the other myriad factors related to home run production. The climate beat needs climate stories. These incentives help us to understand what gets published, promoted and clicked. These incentives are also incredibly distorting to both journalism and, increasingly, to research. Baseball and climate might seem like a silly topic, but these dynamics can be found on far more important issues involving climate. … Full article here: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/climate-change-causes-home-runs # AP: ‘Global warming is juicing home runs in Major League Baseball’ – Project an extra ‘467 hot home runs by the year 2100′ – Study by American Meteorological Society’ By SETH BORENSTEIN The Associated Press: Climate change is making major league sluggers into even hotter hitters, sending an extra 50 or so home runs a year over the fences, a new study found. Hotter, thinner air that allows balls to fly farther contributed a tiny bit to a surge in home runs since 2010, according to a statistical analysis by Dartmouth College scientists published in Friday’s Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. They analyzed 100,000 major league games and more than 200,000 balls put into play in the last few years along with weather conditions, stadiums and other factors. “Global warming is juicing home runs in Major League Baseball,” said study co-author Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth climate scientist. It’s basic physics. … Both Nathan and the Dartmouth team found a 1% increase in home run likelihood with every degree the air warms (1.8% with each degree Celsius). Total yearly average of warming-aided homers is only 1% of all home runs hit, the Dartmouth researchers calculated. … The statistical analysis found no significant heat-aided homers at Tampa’s Tropicana Field, the only full-time domed stadium in Major League Baseball. … Mankin called what’s happening “a fingerprint of climate change on our recreation.” Callahan said what’s been seen so far is nothing compared to projections of hundreds of extra homers in the future. In the worst-case warming trajectory – which some scientists say the world is no longer on based on recent emissions – there would be about 192 warming-aided homers a year by 2050 and around 467 hot home runs by the year 2100. # ‘It’s so ridiculous!’ Global warming causes more home runs? Not so fast…FOX Houston Meteorologist Mike Iscovitz – ‘This paper is a foul ball’ The wacky world of climate change!Flashback: Mid-June in Calif.: Oakland baseball player blames hitting woes on cold weather Flashback: Can a carbon tax save baseball bats? ‘An unlikely victim of climate change: NY Yankees’ Derek Jeter’s favorite baseball bat’ — ‘Thriving in warmer winters, a beetle threatens a key source of Major League’s cherished wood bats’ Won’t global warming decrease home runs since the bats will be impacted by beetles?! Warmer temps will be offset by the subpar bats due to climate change-induced beetles! Flashback: New York Yankees trade baseball victories for — the UN Climate Agreement – Become 1st major sports team to sign on to UN Sports for Climate Action Framework Flashback: ‘Play baseball, not politics’ – NY Yankees’ UN climate plan a big swing and a miss Flashback: 56 Studies Confirm: Global warming to increase road rage & fights at baseball games! Baseball’s Tim McCarver: Global Warming Increasing the Number of Home Runs! Click here for contact form for McCarver Flashback: Major League Baseball Announcer Blames Home Run Spike on ‘Global Warming’

Definitive Guide to Extreme Weather: No trends or declining trends in hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, droughts, heat waves, disaster losses, wildfires – All peer-reviewed & official sources – By Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.

March 25, 2023

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1625530996958572545.html The Honest Broker by Roger Pielke Jr. Feb 14, 2023 • 18 tweets 🧵 What the media won’t tell you about extreme weather and its impactsHere is a thread of some of the figures I’ve posted in recent months about extreme weather that I have never seen in legacy media reportingAll peer-reviewed and official sources . . . Floods IPCC finds no trends in flooding globally Did you know that flood impacts in the US as a proportion of wealth are down >70% over 80 years? Huge news, good news!But don’t tell anyone 🥸 rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/series-what-… SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . Floods Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and recent research actually sayshttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/series-what-the-media-wont-tell-you-3b0 # Drought The IPCC finds no long-term trends in meteorological or hydrological drought In Western Europe specifically there is no trend in drought over >150 years rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/series-what-… SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . Drought in Western and Central Europe Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and recent research actually say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/series-what-the-media-wont-tell-you # US heat waves The US government’s official metric for heat waves comes from a paper I co-authored more than 20 years ago. It shows an increase since ~1960s but a decrease since <1930s rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med… SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . U.S. heat waves Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and official data really say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-9f9 US heat waves During the past 50 years, when heat waves have increased, mortality from extreme heat has fallen pretty much everywhere in the US rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med…That is good news! Let’s keep it up SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . U.S. heat waves Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and official data really say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-9f9 # US (mainland) hurricanes IPCC, WMO, UNNCA are all in agreement No upwards trends in landfalling hurricanes, including the strongest storms. Have you ever seen these graphs in the media (aside from Bill Nye and his sharpie;) rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med… SERIES: What the media won’t tell you about . . . hurricanes Let’s take a look at what the IPCC and official data really sayhttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about # US disaster costs As a proportion of GDP US disaster costs have gone down More good news! rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/billion-doll… “Billion Dollar Disasters” are a National EmbarrassmentYou won’t find a more obvious example of bad science from the U.S. governmenthttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/billion-dollar-disasters-are-a-national European disaster costs As a proportion of GDP European disaster losses have gone down Even more good news! rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/making-sense… SERIES: Making Sense of Trends in Disaster Losses Part 2: Normalized disaster losses in Europe 1995 to 2019https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/making-sense-of-trends-in-disaster-ced Global weather and climate disaster losses As a proportion of GDP global disaster (weather and climate, but also overall) have gone down Great news! rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/dont-believe… Don’t Believe the Hype Global Disasters in 2022, a Preliminary Assessment https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/dont-believe-the-hype Disasters This century the number of disasters tracked by EM-DAT has not increased, in fact down a bit Important to understand why so that progress with respect to the Sendai Framework can be maintained! rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/dont-believe… ] Don’t Believe the Hype Global Disasters in 2022, a Preliminary Assessmenthttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/dont-believe-the-hype # US tornadoes Reports of the strongest US tornadoes (EF3+) which cause ~70% of death and destruction are down in the long and short terms rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med… What the media won’t tell you about . . . Tornadoes Let’s take a look at what the data and science actually say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-3fe Damage from tornadoes supports the data on falling numbers of the strongest tornadoes Both inflation-adjusted and normalized tornado losses have decreased rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-med… What the media won’t tell you about . . . Tornadoes Let’s take a look at what the data and science actually say https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-3fe Normalized US hurricane losses As we would expect with no up-trend in US landfalls there is no trend in normalized US hurricane losses since 1900 rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/pielkes-week… Pielke’s Weekly Memo #19A sneak peak at normalized U.S. hurricane losses 1900 to 2022 https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/pielkes-weekly-memo-19 Global hurricane landfalls Lots of ups and downs over 70+ years but no overall trend rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-fac… Just the Facts on Global HurricanesMore storms? Fewer but more intense? More landfalls? No, No and Nohttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-facts-on-global-hurricanes Global hurricane energy More ups and down but no trend since 1980 rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-fac… Just the Facts on Global Hurricanes More storms? Fewer but more intense? More landfalls? No, No and No https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-facts-on-global-hurricanes Global hurricane energy per storm No trend since 1980 Storms are not getting stronger but fewerrogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-fac… Just the Facts on Global HurricanesMore storms? Fewer but more intense? More landfalls? No, No and Nohttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-facts-on-global-hurricanes Everything you find in this thread Everything Is consistent with what has been reported in the IPCC & found in official data and the peer-reviewed literatureShhh … don’t tell anyone How to Understand the New IPCC Report: Part 2, Extreme Events Contrary to what you’ve been reading, the massive new IPCC report offers grounds for optimism on climate science and policyhttps://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report-1e3 If you want to understand what the science of extreme weather, climate and disasters actually says, please sign up to The Honest Broker Amazing to me that some of the things I write about you cannot find anywhere else So I’m not gonna stop

Pielke Jr. on 1.5C temperature target: ‘There was essentially no science behind it’ – ‘More grounded in political aspirations than in science’

March 15, 2023

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-15-degree-temperature-target The 1.5 Degree Temperature Target is a Dead Man Walking By Roger Pielke Jr. … In today’s post I explain the origins of its companion, the 1.5 degree Celsius target that has in many respects eclipsed the 2C target in public discussions of climate. Most scientists in climate know that despite its prominent role in political exhortation the 1.5 C target is already obsolete. In fact, it has always been. Here is how that happened. According to climate scientist James Hansen, in 2007 environmental Bill McKibben contacted him for Hansen’s advice on what to call his new climate advocacy organization: “In 2007, the environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben began bugging me, very politely, to either confirm 450 parts per million [ppm carbon dioxide in the atmosphere] as the appropriate target level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or else to define a more appropriate one. He was developing a Web site to draw attention to this target limit and was thinking of calling it 450.org.” At the time, Hansen was working on a paper in which he and colleagues argued: “We suggest an initial objective of reducing atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm, with the target to be adjusted as scientific understanding and empirical evidence of climate effects accumulate.” For Hansen, 350 ppm was never a target not to be exceeded, since the world was already well past that when he wrote the paper, but a target for policy makers to seek to return to by the end of the century. McKibben and colleagues took Hansen’s advice and established 350.org in 2007. That year, he acknowledged that there world was already well past 350 ppm carbon dioxide, and that it was an aspirational target not to avoid hitting but to aim to return to in the future, much as Hansen had argued: We’re already at 383 parts per million, and it’s knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways. So, what does that mean? . . . Does that mean we’re doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over. Much like the way your body will thin its blood if you give up cheese fries, so the Earth naturally gets rid of some of its CO2 each year. We just need to stop putting more in and, over time, the number will fall, perhaps fast enough to avert the worst damage. In promoting his new organization worldwide, McKibben partnered with the Tällberg Forum, a Swedish foundation, to promote global advocacy of 350 ppm as a new target for climate policy. Their stated objective was to influence the upcoming major climate conference in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. 350 ppm goes global in 2008. On June 23, 2008 the Tällberg Forum published the full page advertisement above in the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times with more than 150 signatories. In the days that followed days the Tällberg Forum hosted an international conference to promote the proposed target, which was attended by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Their campaign was a resounding success. The nerdy concept of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had gone global, despite the fact that there was essentially no science behind it, just Hansen’s non-peer-reviewed draft paper and a bunch of sign-ons to a newspaper ad. Well done! … The desire to keep a global coalition together in the face of dissention at Copenhagen helped to give the 1.5 C target a political foothold in order to keep many countries engaged in the negotiations. As one summary of the Copenhagen conference explained: “Many countries supported a goal of keeping temperature increase below 2˚C above pre-industrial levels, with AOSIS [Alliance of Small Island States] underlining 1.5˚C and Bolivia 1˚C.” Acknowledging 1.5C was not about science, but realpolitik. Because climate policy target setting was shifting from carbon dioxide concentrations targets to global temperatures, to keep pace, the discourse needed to change as well. So 450 ppm became recast as 2 degrees Celsius and 350 ppm became 1.5 degrees Celsius, even though 350 ppm had never really been studied and the previous IPCC assessment associated 450ppm with temperature outcomes of 1.4C to 3.1C. These adoption of a temperature target over a carbon dioxide concentration target was reflected in the final text of the Copenhagen Accord which defined the long-debated concept of “dangerous anthropogenic interference” in terms of 2C: “To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change.” A nod to the small island states and their call for a 1.5 degree Celsius target was also included, with the Accord briefly expressing a commitment to consider strengthening the target to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2015. Notice what happened here – 350 ppm had long since been passed and was intended as a 2100 target, whereas the world had yet to hit a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius which became recast as a contemporary guardrail. As the language changed, so too did the underlying meaning. Goal posts = moved. The U.N. FCCC always recognized that the 1.5 C target was much more grounded in political aspirations than in science, noting in 2015, for instance, while following up on its commitment to reconsider the target: “while science on the 1.5C warming limit is less robust, efforts should be made to push the defence line as low as possible.” The political motivation is understandable (and seems to also have been appreciated by the IPCC), but it should not be confused with evidence-based policy. … In 2023, we are now seeing academic papers asking questions like the following: “How did an almost impossible target become the point of reference for climate action? How does it maintain its legitimacy despite the incompatibility between ambitions and actions that it makes evident?” It remains to be seen whether climate advocates will decide that the attention paid to the 1.5C target over the past 14 years represented an inefficient detour from more productive paths to decarbonization, or if the shared willing suspension of disbelief in hopes of gaining political currency moved things along. End excerpt # Related: Book reveals UN’s goal of ‘2 degree’ limit of ‘global warming’ has no scientific basis – ‘Pulled out of thin air’ Morano Book Excerpt: In 2007, Jones emailed, “The 2 deg C limit is talked about by a lot within Europe. It is never defined though what it means. Is it 2 deg C for globe or for Europe? Also when is/was the base against which 2 deg C is calculated from? I know you don’t know the answer, but I don’t either! I think it is plucked out of thin air.” “Two degrees is not a magical limit—it’s clearly a political goal,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Professor Roger Pielke Jr. explained in 2017 that the 2-degree goal “is an arbitrary round number that was politically convenient. So it became a sort of scientific truth. However, it has little scientific basis but is a hard political reality.”

Extreme Weather Expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.: Strong U.S. tornadoes have decreased as much as 50% since 1950 – Tornadoes are not being ‘juiced’ by ‘climate change’

March 15, 2023

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-3fe? What the media won’t tell you about . . . Tornadoes Let’s take a look at what the data and science actually say Roger Pielke Jr. Feb 13, 2023 1929 Hardtner, KS tornado. Source: Kansas Historical Society This is the latest post in an ongoing series, titled “what the media won’t tell you about . . .”, which is motivated by the apparent systemic inability of the legacy media to play things straight when it comes to extreme weather and disasters. Climate change is real and important, but its importance is not an excuse for the pervasive climate misinformation found across the legacy media. Here are the previous installments in the series, which are among my most popular posts and which have gone unchallenged. What the media won’t tell you about . . . Hurricanes U.S. Heat Waves Drought in Western and Central Europe Floods Today’s post focuses on U.S. tornadoes. This year so far has seen a lot of tornadoes — 178 were reported through February 11th, the 2nd most since 2005 and well above the 2005-2022 mean of 66 to date. Of course, nowadays wherever there is extreme weather, journalists rush to claim a connection to climate change no matter what the science actually says. For instance, after a tornado outbreak last month, the Associated Press reported that the tornadoes had been “juiced by climate change.” Similarly, The Washington Post said that in the past it was difficult to tie tornadoes to climate change but now, “science is accumulating to support the linkage.” Neither reported any of the data and science I share below. So, let’s take a look. Tornadoes are classified by their intensity according to the 6-category Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale, which runs from 0 to 5, and is shown in the table above (alongside the original Fujita Scale). The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) explains that “The Enhanced F-scale still is a set of wind estimates (not measurements) based on damage.” You can read about the EF Scale and its history here and here. In a 2013 paper, Kevin Simmons, Daniel Sutter and I used the EF Scale in a set of normalizations of U.S. tornado damage from 1950 to 2011 to account for changing wealth, population, and housing. You can see a recent update of our analysis through 2021 in the figure below and discussed in some detail here. Updated from Simmons et al. 2013. In performing our analysis of normalized U.S. tornado losses, we had to navigate the changing approaches used by the NWS to classify tornado strength from 1950 and various “oddities” of the dataset. See our paper (linked at the bottom) for an in-depth and technical discussion of these issues and how we dealt with them. Across our normalization approaches and NWS classification methods we found that from 1950 to 2011, tornadoes of EF3 strength or greater — accounting for about 6% of all reported tornadoes — were responsible for almost 70% of total damage. Here are the numbers for even stronger tornadoes: EF4+ tornadoes are about 1.2% of tornado reports and account for about 44% of damage; EF5 tornadoes are about 0.1% of tornado reports and account for about 14% of damage; According to The Tornado Project, from 1950 to 2011 EF4 and EF5 tornadoes were responsible for about 67% of all deaths from tornados. In short, about 70% or more of the death and destruction from tornadoes results from less than 7% of all reported tornadoes — those of EF3 strength or greater. Let’s take a look at trends in EF3 and stronger tornadoes, using official data of the NWS Storm Prediction Center. These data can be seen in the figures below. Source: NOAA NWS SPC The panel on the left shows reported EF3+ tornadoes from 1950 to 2022 and it indicates a dramatic decline, from about 60 per year to about 30. The figure on the right shows the same data for 2000 to 2022, also indicating a decline in incidence over the more recent period. Let’s now look at EF4+ tornadoes. Source: NOAA NWS SPC Here we also see declines over the longer (1950 to 2022) and more recent (2000 to 2022) periods. For completeness, let’s also look at the very rare EF5 tornadoes. Source: NOAA NWS SPC Tornadoes of EF5 strength are today rare, with almost 10 years since the last such event was reported in May, 2013. However, 2011 saw 6 such tornadoes in just one year. Here as well the official data indicate a long-term decline. The data consistently indicate a long-term decline in major tornado incidence on long- and near-term time scales. But are these trends real, or are they an artifact of changing methods for collecting data on tornado incidence? This is a question that we addressed directly in our research on normalized tornado losses. We concluded: The normalized results are also suggestive that the long-term decrease in reported tornado incidence may also have a component related to actual, secular changes in tornado incidence beyond reporting changes. To emphasize, we do not reach any conclusion here that stronger that ‘suggestive’ and recommend that this possibility be subject to further research, which goes beyond the scope of this study. While there are greater uncertainties in tornado counts prior to the deployment of Doppler Radar in the 1990s, we can have strong confidence that major tornado incidence so far this century has decreased. It may be that this recent trend reflects a longer-term decrease in activity. The case for a long-term decrease in strong tornadoes is stronger today than when we first suggested it in our 2013 paper. There has also been recent research on changing spatial and seasonal trends in tornado incidence (from 1979 to 2017), that finds that in recent decades activity has shifted east from the Great Plains to the Southeast. That research is explicitly equivocal on attribution: At this point, it is unclear whether the observed trends in tornado environment and report frequency are due to natural variability or being altered by anthropogenic forcing on the climate system. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its most recent report did not spend much time on tornadoes and none at all on trends in strong tornadoes. It concluded that any observational trends in tornadoes “are not robustly detected.” The data and research I have shared here would seem to contradict that conclusion — both in terms of the frequency of major tornadoes and their geographic and seasonal activity. However, there is strong agreement that major tornado activity has not increased, and no trends have been claimed to be attributed to climate change. Here is the bottom line: Strong U.S. tornadoes — the ones that cause the most death and destruction — have certainly not increased since 1950; In fact, evidence suggests that they may likely have decreased in frequency since 1950, perhaps by as much as 50%; It is almost certain that major tornadoes have decreased this century, by about 20%; The U.S. has not seen an EF5 tornado in almost 10 years, the longest such streak since at least 1950; The geography of tornado incidence shifted eastward from 1979 to 2017, but no strong claims or mechanisms of attribution have been advanced; Both inflation-adjusted and normalized tornado damage has decreased in the U.S. since 1950, providing good support and consistency for claims that overall incidence of strong tornadoes has decreased; Tornadoes are not being “juiced” by climate change. Looking to the future, a recent paper helps to place things into important perspective: “the impacts associated with projected 21st century increases in tornado frequency are outweighed by projected growth in the human-built environment” … Full article here: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/what-the-media-wont-tell-you-about-3fe?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=119454&post_id=102523346&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Pielke Jr. & Maue: Just the Facts on Global Hurricanes: More storms? Fewer but more intense? More landfalls? No, No & No

February 10, 2023

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/just-the-facts-on-global-hurricanes By Roger Pielke Jr. Note: This post is co-authored with Ryan Maue, an absolutely top notch atmospheric scientist and data wrangler. Give him a follow on Twitter: @RyanMaue and check out his tropical activity tracking page. Back in 2012, Jessica Weinkle (@Jessica Weinkle), Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) and I published in the Journal of Climate the first peer-reviewed paper with a comprehensive dataset of global tropical cyclone landfalls. In 2019 we shared an updated version of the data at the request of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as part of their assessment of tropical cyclones and climate change. That WMO assessment was heavily relied on by the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Today we share the most recent update, with data on global hurricane landfalls from 1970 to 2022 at the global level, and going back further in time for several of the most active locations for tropical cyclone activity. You won’t find these data anywhere else. In our 2012 paper we discussed the detection of long-term trends in landfall: “We have identified considerable interannual variability in the frequency of global hurricane landfalls; but within the resolution of the available data, our evidence does not support the presence of significant long-period global or individual basin linear trends for minor, major, or total hurricanes within the period(s) covered by the available quality data.” The figure below provides the latest update to Figure 2 of the original paper. An update of Figure 2 of Weinkle et al. 2012, showing global landfalls of tropical cyclones of hurricane strength, for weaker (S/S Category 1 and 2) and stronger (S/S Category 3+) storms Share In 2022 there were 18 total landfalling tropical cyclones of at least hurricane strength around the world, of which 5 were major hurricanes. Since 1970 the median values are 16 total hurricanes, with 5 of major hurricane strength. So 2022 was very close to the median of the past half century. Overall, based on IBTrACS best-track and preliminary data from Colorado State University since 1980, the overall number of hurricanes globally in 2022 was 86 (median = 87) and major hurricanes was 17 (median = 24). The figure below shows no long-term trends in hurricanes or major hurricanes. Running 12 month sums of global hurricane and major hurricane counts. If we look closely at the 12-month sums shown in the figure above we also see that the most recent 24 months has close to the least overall global activity of the past 40+ years, for both hurricanes and major hurricanes. This is not unexpected due to the ongoing triple-dip La Niña that tends to depress Pacific tropical cyclone activity while the Atlantic typically sees more frequent and intense hurricanes. Our data also allow us to provide estimates of global landfalls going back further in time to 1950. The figure below sums: (a) observations from 1950 from the Western North Pacific (WPAC, where aircraft reconnaissance of tropical cyclones has taken place since 1944) and North Atlantic, together representing >70% of global hurricane landfalls and (b) an estimate of the landfalls from the rest of the world for 1950 to 1969 based on their statistics from 1970 to 2022. Running 10-year average of global hurricane and major hurricane landfalls, 1950 to 2022. Share The most striking feature of this figure is the pronounced dip in global landfalls in the 1970s and 1980s. If we look at just the landfalls in the WPAC and North Atlantic since 1945 there has been an overall sharp decline. We have often urged caution in over-interpreting tropical cyclone time series that begin in the 1970s and 1980s because it is well understood that this period represented a low point in activity. Starting an analysis in that period invariably will result in upwards trends in tropical cyclone activity. But start the same analysis in the decades before, and those trends are muted or disappear altogether.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. rips the hype about ‘ExxonMobil’s global warming projections’ as ‘kind of ridiculous’

January 16, 2023

Short🧵 I'm taking a look at the new paper by @GeoffreySupran and colleagues on Exxon's climate researchhttps://t.co/EAJLDtfs17 There is a lot to unpack so these are just some preliminary comments Also, their data is not available (I assume a mistake) so I have requested it — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) January 12, 2023 Let me preface that I don't really have much of a view on whether Exxon should be driven out of business or whatever the aim is, I don't have a dog in that fight I mean sure, go for it, then you gonna do Saudi Aramaco next? But as a matter of science & policy, it is interesting — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) January 12, 2023 My first reaction is that the selection of "ExxonMobil’s global warming projections" is kind of ridiculous For instance, it includes IPCC projections (because an Exxon employee was a contributing author, along with 100s of others) & US DOE publications Exxon's work?Come on pic.twitter.com/XVA0WuR6XL — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) January 12, 2023 I can say that the forecast that gets the highest skill score "was a 1985 peer-reviewed publication [Hoffert and Flannery (1985, nominal CO2 scenario)], with a skill score of 99%" That is shown below, the middle line is judged the most accurate It is notSource: My eyeballs pic.twitter.com/PCw3HM6Sd2 — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) January 12, 2023 Further the most accurate "Exxon forecast" (of the US DOE) is based a 2023 CO2 concentration of ~450ppm (nominal scenario) It is actually ~425ppm That is … far off Check for yourself: https://t.co/iXggU0ONGM pic.twitter.com/2qrM1YdfPJ — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) January 12, 2023 Not sure I'll follow this up further, but there is sufficient "play" and complexity in the methods that anyone getting expertise is this work probably stands to make some bank in the court cases for which this research is designed That won't be me Climate "science" is a trip🙏 — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) January 12, 2023 # Background: ‘False’: Mike Shellenberger takes down the ‘The Exxon Climate Denial Myth’ – Exxon in ‘many cases advocated for climate policy!’ Mike Shellenberger, the President Breakthrough Institute, and a man who Time Magazine called ‘Hero of the Environment’: ‘The picture painted of Exxon seeking out & funding “climate change deniers” to mislead public & prevent climate policy is false.’ ‘The picture painted by @insideclimate is that Exxon was paying people to lie about climate while acknowledging it privately…In reality, Exxon funded conservative think tanks that were mostly *not* “climate deniers” — & in many cases advocate climate policy!’ But it was always obvious from looking at who Exxon funded that vanishingly few people were “climate change deniers.” A vast Exxon conspiracy to deceive public about climate turns out to be… a lukewarmish NYT ad & sunspots research.’ ‘Even if all $2M Exxon spent was on “deniers” — & it mostly wasn’t — drop in bucket compared to green $$’ ‘EXXON-KNEW ACTIVIST’ NAOMI ORESKES ON RETAINER WITH PLAINTIFFS’ LAW FIRM Oreskes has gone from planning the litigation campaign to becoming a full-on participant in these lawsuits, as CNN reports: “The company said Naomi Oreskes, one of the main authors of the study, is on retainer with a law firm that is leading lawsuits against Exxon and others in the industry. Exxon called this a ‘blatant conflict of interest.’ Oreskes was not immediately available for comment.” Fake News: #ExxonKnew Campaign Claims ‘Global Warming’ Caused 1989 Exxon Valdez Spill – Point By Point debunking

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. rips gas stove fears as ‘loathing of modern society’: ‘If you really care about emissions & not politics, then focus on cooking with oils’ or using ‘candles & incense’

January 13, 2023

A reader of THB (🙏) sent me this literature review of studies of the indoor air pollution effects of cooking, candles and incense I’m a nerd so I read it over my coffee this morning Some of what I learned …https://t.co/8lexR68jGM pic.twitter.com/qzV1okSnUB — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) January 12, 2023 Cooking indoors = emissions The type of stove matters to emissions rates If you really care about emissions and not politics, then focus on cooking with oils = emissions ~10x of gas stoves Want to regulate something to reduce indoor emissions? Cooking oil!Olive, corn etc pic.twitter.com/Snqjf51Jow — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) January 12, 2023 # More Bans! NY Gov. Hochul seeks gas heating ban in new homes & buildings ‘because climate change remains the greatest threat to our planet’ ‘Classic Junk Science’ Biden admin seeks ban on gas stoves based on single meta-analysis co-authored by WEF partnered climate activist group seeking ‘carbon free buildings’

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. on ‘Defund the Economy’ – ‘The marvelous, muddled mess that is ‘degrowth’

December 16, 2022

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/defund-the-economy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=119454&post_id=90633829&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email By Roger Pielke Jr. It has become fashionable over the past decade to promote the idea of “degrowth” — or if you wish to sound smart at a dinner party, décroissance. On Monday, Nature published a call to “degrowth,” claiming that “degrowth can work” and “wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective.” As they say — Big, if true. Let’s start with what “degrowth” actually means. Here, there is a lot of confusion, not least among advocates of degrowth. The Nature article this week leads with a policy objective: “Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as a goal . . . “. But elsewhere, in an article titled “What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification” the lead author of this week’s Nature commentary explains: It is important to clarify that degrowth is not about reducing GDP, but rather about reducing throughput. If the central concept of your economic theory requires an entire paper to clarify that it doesn’t mean what you think it means, you might rethink the concept. But I digress. So “degrowth” — which literally in the English language means reducing growth — may not actually mean reducing growth. In fact, “degrowth” according to another clarification might not have anything at all to do with GDP: “Degrowth is about reorganizing the economy to meet people’s needs regardless of what happens with GDP.” Still others explain that “degrowth” simply means getting more from less — which actually is the definition of “growth.” Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias This is how growth works is the thing 8:49 PM ∙ Dec 13, 2022 869Likes54Retweets One might be forgiven for thinking that “degrowth” — and by that, I mean, décroissance — might just be a code word for elite snobbishness. Consider that the sorts of activities that have been judged unnecessary in human society by degrowthers include many that are central to the American middle class. … Advocates of degrowth have explained what they envision in examples of societies that have degrown: [D]egrowth brings together diverse ideas about, and examples of, non-growing economies. Overgrown societies can learn from Indigenous peoples, peasant societies, ancient civilizations, our grandparents, the poor, and other movements from the tapestry of alternatives. While there is a lot to unpack here, I’ll just pick out “grandparents” from the above list and recommend that everyone drop everything and watch Hans Rosling below on his grandmother and the “magic washing machine” — some lessons to be learned there for sure: Long-time readers and followers will well know that the notion of “degrowth” (however defined) runs right into what I have called the “iron law of climate policy.” That’s the main reason that I haven’t devoted much energy to the topic. “Degrowth” is a perfect issue for classroom discussions, but it sits far outside the Kuiper Belt when it comes to policy relevance. You can read my most recent piece of this topic (2011) here. My views have not changed. It seems clear that everyone acknowledges that degrowth is not politically popular. No politician has gained office (that I am aware of) anywhere in the world on a platform of degrowth. Indeed, as the Nature commentary observes this week: [P]olitical parties that have put forward degrowth ideas have received limited support in elections. That begs the question: where would the drive for degrowth policy come from? It is a good question. I’m all for discussions of increasing social justice, greater income equality (and other types of equality), accelerating decarbonization, increasing the dematerialization of human activity, protecting biodiversity, eliminating poverty and more. These are incredibly important policy aims. After spending the past two weeks in South Africa I am even more aware of them. Such discussions are of critical importance. Let’s not be distracted by a slogan.

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