Search
Close this search box.

Search Results for: pielke – Page 3

Roger Pielke Jr: ‘Are we focusing too little on a climate apocalypse?’

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/are-we-focusing-too-little-on-a-climate By Roger Pielke Jr. Yesterday, Matt Burgess, Justin Ritchie and I had a new letter appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The letter was a response to a recent opinion piece in PNAS by Luke Kemp and colleagues (hereafter KXDL22) who argue that “worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction” due to human-caused climate change is currently “a dangerously underexplored topic.” Apocalyptic visions of climate change are all the rage. For instance, they are a staple of speeches by UN General Secretary António Guterres by who argues that we are presently “firmly on track to an unlivable world.” President Joe Biden often invokes similar rhetoric: “Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world.” Just yesterday PNAS published another commentary repeating the arguments of Kemp and colleagues, and again making the case for greater attention to climate change and “civilizational collapse.” In this post I provide an overview of our exchange with KXDL22, and go into greater detail than we were able to in that short piece. Of course, the views expressed here are mine, not necessarily those of my co-authors. In their original PNAS opinion calling for more attention to catastrophic climate scenarios — titled “Climate Endgame” — KXDL22 make three empirical claims. The first is that the scientific community is neglecting to pay sufficient attention to extreme climate scenarios. The second claim is that the world is presently on track for as much as 3.9 degrees Celsius temperature increase by 2100, which would be catastrophic. And the third claim is the scientific community should emphasize catastrophic scenarios as a way to motivate desired political action. Let’s take each in turn. Share Does climate science focus enough attention on extreme scenarios? In our letter, we agree with KXDL22 that the most extreme scenarios presently available in climate research focus on high levels of radiative forcing (specifically 7.0 and 8.5 watts per meter squared). I and my colleagues have published considerable research in recent years on the prevalence of various climate scenarios in the scientific literature and the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). KXDL22 were apparently unaware of this research. The figure below from our letter in response (hereafter BPR22) shows the frequency of mentions of different scenarios in the IPCC Working Group II reports (on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability) of the most recent two assessments. This is the IPCC working group that focuses on the consequences of projected climate change. Scenario mentions in the IPCC’s Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) contributions to the Fifth (AR5) and Sixth (AR6) Assessment Reports There can be no doubt that the scenarios that receive the most attention, by far, are the most extreme — RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5. In fact, a more comprehensive accounting that we published last year showed that the most extreme scenario dominated the IPCC AR5 and the U.S. National Climate Assessment, as you can see in the table below. Prevalence of mentions of the RCP scenarios in the IPCC Fifth Assessment across all three working group reports and the 2017/18 U.S. National Climate Assessment reports. A simple search of Google Scholar for publications in 2022 that use the most extreme climate scenarios indicates that 20 studies per day have been published this year which use RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5. The extreme scenarios are by far the most used in climate research, for reasons we explain in depth (start here). Catastrophic climate scenarios are not being neglected. Far from it. We love them.

Dire climate change model scenarios for Colorado’s High Country called ‘untethered from the real world’ by Dr. Pielke Jr.

https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2021/12/30/extreme-climate-change-scenarios-for-colorados-high-country-untethered-from-the-real-world/ By Jake Fogleman Frisco–Local governments in Colorado’s High Country have spent thousands of dollars in taxpayer money on climate studies pushing questionable emissions scenarios. The studies—conducted by Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) on behalf of Summit and Eagle Counties and the towns of Frisco and Breckenridge—project a future of extreme heat that threatens to disrupt quality of life in the mountain communities if no action is taken to mitigate climate change. “These numbers show both how much Summit County has at stake as humans continue to change the climate and how much difference climate protection actions can make to head off unacceptable changes,” Stephen Saunders, President of RMCO, said. “And this will be of interest in other Colorado mountain communities with similar elevations, because they can expect similar changes.” While the predictions sound startling, a deeper look into the methodology uncovers that the dire consequences are the result of models using an unrealistic greenhouse gas emissions trajectory. Climate myopia These scenarios are reliant on a faulty “business as usual” projection known as Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5, which experts like Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado Department of Environmental Studies calls “untethered from the real world.” “The misuse of RCP 8.5 involves the transformation of what is more accurately described as a worst-case scenario into the sole ‘business as usual’ or baseline scenario that has become a centerpiece of climate policy discussions,” he wrote in a 2019 Forbes article. Complete Colorado has previously covered Professor Pielke and his criticism of RCP 8.5’s ubiquitous presence in climate reporting despite its flaws. “The consequences of RCP scenario misuse include a myopic perspective on alternative futures and a correspondingly limited view on policy alternatives, the creation of a vast academic literature with little to no connection to the real world, and an unwarranted emphasis on apocalyptic climate futures that influences public and policy maker perspectives and the climate policy discourse in broader society,” he said. Local media coverage of these reports has in turn run with the questionable science, publishing catastrophizing tales of the mountain communities in climate-induced upheaval without new policy interventions. The Summit Daily published two separate articles based on the report’s findings, each leading with the worst-case scenario effects of RCP 8.5 projections. “New study predicts worst-case scenario of 54 days with temperatures above 80 degrees by century’s end,” the subheading of an August article detailing RMCO’s findings reads. Another September article shared the predictions of RMCO President Stephen Saunders, who suggested emissions projections in Summit County will  “create more smoke and hazy conditions, create a lack of water availability, impact tree mortality and insect infestations, and have negative effects on the local winter and summer tourism seasons.” In total, the articles dedicated only one line each to considering any alternative, less dramatic scenarios. Clinging to bad science When climate scientists want to paint a picture of the planet’s environmental future, they use a set of four RCP emissions scenarios ranging from very low (2.6) to very high (8.5) concentrations of greenhouse gases in the future. But for some, an emissions trajectory of RCP 8.5 represents a “business-as-usual” path, assuming no steps are taken to mitigate global emissions from a base-line scenario estimated over a decade ago, resulting in severe consequences for the environment by the end of the century. A trajectory of RCP 8.5 would lead to an average temperature increase of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to the Inergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, there are many reasons to be skeptical of RCP 8.5’s “business-as-usual” designation. In addition to unrealistically predicting the undertaking of zero mitigation efforts, it also relies on equally unrealistic assumptions about the future of global energy trends. As climate scientists Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peters write in Nature, “Emission pathways to get to RCP8.5 generally require an unprecedented fivefold increase in coal use by the end of the century, an amount larger than some estimates of recoverable coal reserves.” According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) it is generally understood that global coal use actually peaked in 2013. Additionally, the scenario discounts the pledges many countries have already made to shift away from coal well before 2100.  At this year’s UN Climate Summit, over 40 countries pledged to end their uses of coal power by the mid-century. Colorado, for its own part, is looking like it will phase out coal by 2035. And while the US did not agree to end coal development at the summit, trends in the domestic energy market have made a phase-out of coal power all the more likely. According to the US Energy Information Administration, coal consumption in the United States peaked in 2007, and coal production peaked in 2008. Both have declined in nearly every year since those peak years mainly because of diminishing demand for coal-fired electricity generation. Zero mitigation just isn’t so Meanwhile natural gas, which emits half the amount of CO2 as coal, reached record levels in 2019 and now accounts for more than three times coal’s share of energy produced and consumed domestically. Likewise, renewable energy production and consumption both reached record highs in 2020, driven mainly by record-high solar and wind energy production. Renewables now make up a greater share of the country’s energy mix than coal, and will only see that share increase as public and private sector investments continue to pour into the industry. Great strides continue to also be made in carbon capture technology that will make it possible to remove existing GHG emissions from the atmosphere, further reducing the impact of residual coal use. In other words, the emissions scenarios imagined in a world under RCP 8.5 become increasingly unfeasible by the day as much of the world transitions away from coal power and as developed countries continue to take major steps to combat climate change. Yet, according to Pielke, you wouldn’t know it based on much of the media coverage and reporting from some in the climate science community. “The result of the disproportionate emphasis on RCP 8.5 combined with its mischaracterization as the ‘business as usual’ scenario has been an avalanche of studies and corresponding media coverage that presents a worst-case scenario as the most likely future,” he said. “At best, this represents a form of cherry picking.” Eagle County reportedly paid $15,000 for its study, while Summit County, Breckenridge, and Frisco each paid $5,000, $3,000, and $5,000 respectively.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. : ‘What is climate attribution about? Politics first, science second’

What is climate attribution about?Politics first, science second So let's err on the side of claiming every weather event is linked, connected, fueled by climatehttps://t.co/ENdfSbebDr pic.twitter.com/DG8QT2Up7K — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) December 15, 2021 As I explained here: https://t.co/gwBEtQRWcd — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) December 15, 2021 The Politics of Our Climate Attribution Obsession Linking disasters to climate change is typically about more than just interesting science By Roger Pielke Jr. https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-our-climate-attribution After every extreme weather event, politicians, journalists and scientists can be found quickly making claims that the event was caused by, made worse by, linked to, fueled by, or otherwise tied to climate change. This week’s tragic tornado outbreak in Kentucky and surrounding states is no different. Yesterday, President Biden linked the tornadoes to climate change, and called for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the details, even as the big picture was clear: “the fact is that we know everything is more intense when the climate is warming. And obviously it has some impact here.” … In this post I focus not on the science of climate attribution but on the underlying politics of attribution claims. When attribution claims are made, more is being conveyed than just scientific details about the causes of a particular disaster – a message is being sent that climate change is important and support for climate policies is the goal. This is the argument advanced in an insightful new article published last week by Myanna Lahsen and Jesse Ribot. … So if it is so well known that disasters are the result of a complex interplay of social and climate factors, why then is climate typically the main focus of attention after every extreme event? The answer, according to Lahsen and Ribot, is politics: The desire to persuade the public of the dangers of climate change via attributions of climate events pressures scientists and the media alike to attribute extreme climate events (and associated crises) to climate change. Dedicated to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct climate skepticism and related misinformation circulating in U.S. media and society, the progressive research and information center Media Matters for America regularly scolds U.S. media outlets for failing to mention that climate change is driving the conditions that create this “new normal” of frequent crises—as, for example, in the form of destructive wildfires (Robbins, 2015). Indeed, just today Jack Tapper, CNN journalist and the head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Deanne Criswell, exactly followed the recommended Media Matters script when discussing the tornado disaster. TAPPER: And scientists warn that extreme weather events such as this one will only happen more frequently as the climate continues to warm. Is your agency, is FEMA equipped to handle this new normal? CRISWELL: This is going to be our new normal. And the effects that we’re seeing from climate change are the crisis of our generation. Far from being a “new normal”, on tornadoes the recent IPCC assessment report is quite clear on the state of detection of trends and attribution: ·         “observational trends in tornadoes, hail, and lightning associated with severe convective storms are not robustly detected” ·         “attribution of certain classes of extreme weather (e.g., tornadoes) is beyond current modelling and theoretical capabilities” ·         “how tornadoes or hail will change is an open question” Consider also that according to data from the U.S. National Weather Service from 2000 to 2020 only four of the strongest category of tornadoes were observed (which are labelled as F/EF5 tornadoes) In comparison, from 1954 to 1974 36 (!) such powerful tornadoes were observed. Our research on tornado damage in the United States over many decades shows a decline that is suggestive of an actual decline in tornado incidence. Based on the IPCC assessment of the literature, along with the underlying data and research, the only scientifically valid answer to the question of whether greenhouse gas emissions and associated climate change are leading to more or more intense tornado outbreaks — a “new normal” — is that neither tornadoes nor the most intense tornadoes have increased since at least the 1950s. … So every time you hear or read a claim about this or that disaster being linked to climate change, as interesting as the underlying science may be, what is actually being conveyed is a stealthy promotional message encouraging you to consider climate change to be important and thus to support efforts to decarbonize the economy. # Related: Climate Skeptics turn tables on ‘attribution’ studies – Ask: Is ‘global warming’ causing a decrease in ‘extreme weather’ events? ‘We never hear the absence of extreme weather analysed.’ Is ‘global warming’ causing less ‘extreme weather?!’  How Do They Explain ‘The Extreme Weather Events That Did Not Happen’ Here are the key facts via climate analyst Paul Homewood:  ‘US land falling hurricanes have been at record low levels in recent years, and it is now more than ten years since a major hurricane hit.’ ‘There has been a long-term decline in both the number of tornadoes, and particularly, the frequency of stronger ones.’ ‘Droughts were much more commonplace, prolonged and severe prior to the 1970s.’ ‘There is no indication of precipitation becoming more extreme. The wettest year was 1973.’ ‘There has been a marked absence of extreme heatwaves in recent years, and nothing approaches the run of intensely hot summers in the 1930s.’ The IPCC’s attribution methodology is fundamentally flawed & ‘largely meaningless’ The UN IPCC’s “Optimal Fingerprinting” methodology on which they have long relied for attributing climate change to greenhouse gases is seriously flawed and its results are unreliable and largely meaningless. NYT reveals how climate ‘attribution’ is tool to silence ‘denialists’: ‘Goal is to publicize any climate connection quickly, in part to thwart climate denialists’ NYT: “The study is the latest in a growing body of research termed “rapid attribution” analysis, which aims to establish if there is a link between climate change and specific extreme events like heat waves, heavy rain storms and flooding. The goal is to publicize any climate connection quickly, in part to thwart climate denialists who might claim that global warming had no impact on a particular event. The study, which took a little more than a week, is not yet peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. # Extreme weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke reacts: “This is such an odd and troubling motivation for doing scientific research – to win the daily news cycle over your political opponents.” Charles Rotter also noted that climate activists also promote “pre-event attribution science.” NY Times Claims ‘Climate Change’ Behind Western Heatwave Using ‘Rapid Attribution’ Study – Physicist Koonin rebuts: ‘It’s like a spiritual adviser who claims his influence helped you win the lottery — after you’ve already won it’ “Attribution” analysis is specifically criticized by former Obama administration climate scientist Steven E. Koonin in his new book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. Koonin: “Practitioners argue that event attribution studies are the best climate science can do in terms of connecting weather to changes in climate. But as a physical scientist, I’m appalled that such studies are given credence, much less media coverage. A hallmark of science is that conclusions get tested against observations. But that’s virtually impossible for weather attribution studies. Its like a spiritual adviser who claims he influence helped you win the lottery — after you’ve already won it. … The bottom line is that the science says that most extreme weather events show no long-term trends that can be attributed to human influences on the climate. (What models might project for future extremes is quite a different matter, though its often conflated with what the observational record shows.) Yet the popular perception that extreme events are becoming more common and more severe remains.” CLIMATE LITIGATION SUPPORTERS ADMIT THAT ATTRIBUTION SCIENCE IS FAILING IN COURT Climate Expert: Attribution Science Was Designed To Bolster Climate Lawsuits Friederike Otto, a climate expert at the University of Oxford: ‘Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.”  In fact, Otto herself has relied on climate attribution work to support climate lawsuits as a 2019 E&E News story mentions: “Friederike Otto, a climate expert at the University of Oxford and lead scientist at the World Weather Attribution project, said she talks ‘a lot with lawyers’ about how attribution science could be used as a litigation tool.” … Otto also signed onto a motion in support of San Francisco and Oakland’s climate lawsuit and the E&E News article mentions that she works with Myles Allen, another climate academic at Oxford, who, the publication notes, “authored what is widely considered the first attribution study on the 2003 European heatwave,” and he wrote an op-ed that same year linking attribution science and lawsuits. Watch: Morano on One America News TV: Linking every weather event to ‘climate change’ is ‘seance science’ – Talks ‘climate lockdowns’, national security, OPEC, Russia & China

‘Gross misinformation’: Extreme weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. Slams New hurricane study – ‘Re-invents history by using modeled historical hurricane activity to find the right trends’

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/12/03/pielke-jr-slams-kerry-emanuels-latest/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pielke-jr-slams-kerry-emanuels-latest Pielke Jr. Slams Kerry Emanuel’s Latest Originally tweeted by Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) on December 2, 2021. Absolutely amazing & somewhat sad Observations of hurricane activity apparently don’t show the right trends. So this new paper re-invents history by using modeled historical hurricane activity to find the right trends. Predictably, gross misinformation follows This is where we are at in hurricane research?😐 And the MIT press release fails to accurately reflect the paper Irresponsible It goes undisclosed that the author runs a consulting firm that sells modelled hurricane projections under RCP8.5 Bottom line⬇️ Originally tweeted by Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) on December 2, 2021.   Here is EurekAlert!’s release on the study. Climate modeling confirms historical records showing rise in hurricane activity New results show North Atlantic hurricanes have increased in frequency over the last 150 years. Peer-Reviewed Publication MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY When forecasting how storms may change in the future, it helps to know something about their past. Judging from historical records dating back to the 1850s, hurricanes in the North Atlantic have become more frequent over the last 150 years. However, scientists have questioned whether this upward trend is a reflection of reality, or simply an artifact of lopsided record-keeping. If 19th-century storm trackers had access to 21st-century technology, would they have recorded more storms? This inherent uncertainty has kept scientists from relying on storm records, and the patterns within them, for clues to how climate influences storms. A new MIT study published today in Nature Communications has used climate modeling, rather than storm records, to reconstruct the history of hurricanes and tropical cyclones around the world. The study finds that North Atlantic hurricanes have indeed increased in frequency over the last 150 years, similar to what historical records have shown. In particular, major hurricanes, and hurricanes in general, are more frequent today than in the past. And those that make landfall appear have grown more powerful, carrying more destructive potential. Curiously, while the North Atlantic has seen an overall increase in storm activity, the same trend was not observed in the rest of the world. The study found that the frequency of tropical cyclones globally has not changed significantly in the last 150 years. “The evidence does point, as the original historical record did, to long-term increases in North Atlantic hurricane activity, but no significant changes in global hurricane activity,” says study author Kerry Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. “It certainly will change the interpretation of climate’s effects on hurricanes — that it’s really the regionality of the climate, and that something happened to the North Atlantic that’s different from the rest of the globe. It may have been caused by global warming, which is not necessarily globally uniform.” Chance encounters The most comprehensive record of tropical cyclones is compiled in a database known as the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS). This historical record includes modern measurements from satellites and aircraft that date back to the 1940s. The database’s older records are based on reports from ships and islands that happened to be in a storm’s path. These earlier records date back to 1851, and overall the database shows an increase in North Atlantic storm activity over the last 150 years. “Nobody disagrees that that’s what the historical record shows,” Emanuel says. “On the other hand, most sensible people don’t really trust the historical record that far back in time.” Recently, scientists have used a statistical approach to identify storms that the historical record may have missed. To do so, they consulted all the digitally reconstructed shipping routes in the Atlantic over the last 150 years and mapped these routes over modern-day hurricane tracks. They then estimated the chance that a ship would encounter or entirely miss a hurricane’s presence. This analysis found a significant number of early storms were likely missed in the historical record. Accounting for these missed storms, they concluded that there was a chance that storm activity had not changed over the last 150 years. But Emanuel points out that hurricane paths in the 19th century may have looked different from today’s tracks. What’s more, the scientists may have missed key shipping routes in their analysis, as older routes have not yet been digitized. “All we know is, if there had been a change (in storm activity), it would not have been detectable, using digitized ship records,” Emanuel says “So I thought, there’s an opportunity to do better, by not using historical data at all.” Seeding storms Instead, he estimated past hurricane activity using dynamical downscaling — a technique that his group developed and has applied over the last 15 years to study climate’s effect on hurricanes. The technique starts with a coarse global climate simulation and embeds within this model a finer-resolution model that simulates features as small as hurricanes. The combined models are then fed with real-world measurements of atmospheric and ocean conditions. Emanuel then scatters the realistic simulation with hurricane “seeds” and runs the simulation forward in time to see which seeds bloom into full-blown storms. For the new study, Emanuel embedded a hurricane model into a climate “reanalysis” — a type of climate model that combines observations from the past with climate simulations to generate accurate reconstructions of past weather patterns and climate conditions. He used a particular subset of climate reanalyses that only accounts for observations collected from the surface — for instance from ships, which have recorded weather conditions and sea surface temperatures consistently since the 1850s, as opposed to from satellites, which only began systematic monitoring in the 1970s. “We chose to use this approach to avoid any artificial trends brought about by the introduction of progressively different observations,” Emanuel explains. He ran an embedded hurricane model on three different climate reanalyses, simulating tropical cyclones around the world over the past 150 years. Across all three models, he observed “unequivocal increases” in North Atlantic hurricane activity. “There’s been this quite large increase in activity in the Atlantic since the mid-19th century, which I didn’t expect to see,” Emanuel says. Within this overall rise in storm activity, he also observed a “hurricane drought” — a period during the 1970s and 80s when the number of yearly hurricanes momentarily dropped. This pause in storm activity can also be seen in historical records, and Emanuel’s group proposes a cause: sulfate aerosols, which were byproducts of fossil fuel combustion, likely set off a cascade of climate effects that cooled the North Atlantic and temporarily suppressed hurricane formation. “The general trend over the last 150 years was increasing storm activity, interrupted by this hurricane drought,” Emanuel notes. “And at this point, we’re more confident of why there was a hurricane drought than why there is an ongoing, long-term increase in activity that began in the 19th century. That is still a mystery, and it bears on the question of how global warming might affect future Atlantic hurricanes.” This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation. ### Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office JOURNAL Nature Communications ARTICLE TITLE Atlantic tropical cyclones downscaled from climate reanalyses show increasing activity over past 150 years

The 15-year Hounding of Climate Expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr: He has endured ‘harassment & persecution from Democratic Party operatives, green campaigners, journalists, & academic colleagues’

In 2015 Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) initiated an investigation of me suggesting I had been on the take from fossil fuel companies I was vindicated but the investigation & fallout changed my career No one has asked me about what happened sinceUntil thishttps://t.co/yVncnlHlwd pic.twitter.com/jqG40P7zJV — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) November 11, 2021 https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/the-hounding-of-roger-pielke-jr/ The Hounding of Roger Pielke Jr In a week when the UK has seen a prominent academic forced from her post by an activist mob, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has published a new paper that describes the 15-year hounding of environmental studies professor, Roger Pielke Jr.  Professor Pielke, one of the world’s leading environmental scientists, has been a vocal supporter of decarbonisation efforts, but this has not prevented green activists from engaging in an extraordinary campaign to silence him because he refuses to support claims that extreme weather is worsening. And he is still being hounded today, with the University of Colorado Boulder launching and then dropping an investigation of his conduct, and forcing Pielke – their most senior environmental studies professor – to move to a tiny windowless office. The paper’s author, civil liberties journalist Donna Laframboise said: “The hounding of Roger Pielke has been abhorrent. It is time that university administrations stood up to cancel culture and the outrage mobs.” And Laframboise points to this week’s announcement of a new university in Austin Texas, dedicated to the cause of academic freedom: “Universities that behave this way will lose their best people to new and independent institutions that protect free thinking.” GWPF Director Dr Benny Peiser said: “The witch-hunt against Roger Pielke Jr. is symptomatic of a problem that we are seeing in universities across the developed world, with activists trying to silence dissenting opinions, and with the tacit, and in many case the active, support of administrators. “Universities need to take great care – if the public lose faith in the system, public funding and generous donations from alumni can dry up very quickly.” Donna Laframboise: The Hounding of Roger Pielke Jr. (pdf) # Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. on climate ‘Witch Hunt’: ‘My 11-year old asked me if I was going to jail’ Pielke Jr.: ‘Yesterday, my 11-year old asked me if I was going to jail. Really nasty stuff.’ ‘My older kids in High School had teachers pull them aside to ask about their father’s ‘investigation’. Smear campaigns are about collateral damage.’ Several reporters have asked me: ‘Why present research results liked by Republicans?’ ‘Eric Holthaus – a widely read scientist and climate activist – taunted me with the following bizarre Tweet: “It’s getting harder and harder for @RogerPielkeJr to remain relevant.” Upon later learning that I’m no longer doing climate change research Holthaus Tweeted that his earlier taunt was no longer relevant. Great evidence that a lot of this is about eliminating unwelcomed voices in the debate.’

‘A lie is born’: Extreme weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. rips media’s false claim that ‘1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer’ – Pielke slams ‘spectacular…quality control problems in climate journalism’

How to trick a president with poor data practices ➡️Trump issued zero statewide disaster declarations for weather/climate events 2017-2020➡️Biden has already issued 8 statewide declarations in 2021 Of course more people are covered by declarations in 2021 https://t.co/kn4iDbY15X pic.twitter.com/k5bzzM4Pl2 — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) September 7, 2021 Did every single person in these states experience a disaster? Each of these states received a statewide disaster declaration in 2021 WAMTCAWATNMONYNE If not then this headline is wrong Pro tip: Federal Disaster Declarations reflect presidential politics + disasters pic.twitter.com/uugv8ts2xr — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) September 7, 2021 A lie is born1-"More than 32% of Americans live in a county or state that has been declared a disaster area by FEMA"2-"Nearly 1 in 3 Americans live in a county hit by a weather disaster in the past 3 months"3-"Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer" pic.twitter.com/WOABfx9k9S — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) September 7, 2021   Climate change is real & aggressive adaptation and mitigation policies make good sense So does that mean that we can just make stuff up? I do not understand the quality control problems in climate journalism but they are spectacular — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) September 7, 2021

‘Catnip for climate advocacy’ – Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. on UN climate report: ‘There’s a ‘catastrophe bias’ baked into the IPCC’

  https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/13/climate-change-is-real-but-its-not-the-apocalypse/   ‘Climate change is real – but it’s not the apocalypse’ Roger Pielke Jr on what the IPCC report actually tells us about the climate. The release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report this week provoked a wave of apocalypticism. Newspapers carried dire warnings of disaster. Social media were swamped by videos of wildfires and flooding. But should we really be so terrified about the climate? Roger Pielke Jr is a political scientist and professor of climate studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. spiked caught up with him to discuss what the IPCC report actually says. spiked: How concerned should we be by the IPCC report? Roger Pielke: It’s a mistake to think that individual reports should make us concerned. The core conclusions from the climate-science community have been very consistent since the IPCC started more than 30 years ago. The findings indicate very strongly that humans affect the climate and that the effect is going to increase in the future. That carries with it some considerable risks that we might want to take into account as we make decisions about development, growth, future energy use and so on. This report is simply another milestone in a 30-year journey for the IPCC. spiked: How realistic are the ‘disaster scenarios’ that the report presents? Pielke: Scenario planning is extremely important. But at some point, the IPCC went down the path of favoring extreme scenarios. Not extreme climate scenarios, but extreme societal scenarios. Imagine a future, for example, where the only energy source we rely on is coal. We get rid of solar, wind, nuclear and natural gas. That’s pretty extreme. And it’s pretty out of line with where the world actually is now and where it’s headed. But still, this scenario is then fed into the climate models that produce projections of future impacts. There’s a ‘catastrophe bias’ baked into the IPCC. The IPCC has recognised this problem, finally, in its new report. But it hasn’t corrected it, which is unfortunate. The dynamic of the IPPC favouring the extreme scenario has been overlaid with the media, which takes an ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ approach to discussing the climate. It has also been overlaid with climate politics, which favours the extremes, too. You have activists who say that it’s ‘code red for humanity’ and the world is going to end tomorrow. And on the other end, you have people who say it’s all a hoax. Both of those endpoints are far from the science. The discourse favours extreme statements and to some degree the IPCC bears responsibility for enabling that. spiked: What about the report’s conclusions on extreme weather? Pielke: The IPCC has systematically and very helpfully gone through a large list of extreme-weather phenomena and looked at whether they have changed, and why. Any extreme-weather phenomenon is accompanied by a multitude of variables. Precision is very important. But there is a tendency among some scientists and some of the media to say that climate change has affected extreme weather events. Floods are not more frequent. Hurricanes and tropical cyclones are not more frequent. Meteorological and hydrological droughts are not more frequent. Tornadoes are not more frequent. Hail is not more frequent. Lightning is not more frequent. Strong winds are not more frequent. Heatwaves are more frequent, as is extreme precipitation (though the IPCC is very explicit that extreme precipitation is not to be conflated with flooding). And there are two other types of drought, agricultural and ecological drought, which have increased. There are only four phenomena that the IPCC claims to have detected an increase for, then. Saying that floods or storms have become more common because of climate change is just out of step with what the IPCC says. The IPCC can be right or wrong. But if we want to accurately reflect the report, then showing pictures of flooding in Belgium or Germany or China, or a picture of a hurricane, is just flat-out misleading. spiked: Have politicians and the press misunderstood the science in the report, or is the report itself misleading? Pielke: On the issue of the extreme scenarios, the IPCC has some responsibility for the misinterpretations. On trends in extreme-weather phenomena, I don’t think the IPCC bears much responsibility. If you actually read the report, it is, overall, accurate with respect to the wider literature. It is very appealing, even seductive, for activists and the media to latch on to extreme events, because we can all see them happening. They are catnip for climate advocacy. But at some point we have to say that science matters on this issue. We can beat up the IPCC, sometimes with good reason. But at the same time, it’s an important institution. If it didn’t exist we would have to invent it. It doesn’t tell us what we should do. But it does tell us that there is a situation that, as a society and as individual countries, we should have an open discussion about and deal with. spiked: Are there reasons to be optimistic about the climate? Pielke: There are two perspectives that people need to keep in mind. Firstly, some of the gravest risks are certainly lower than we thought they were. That’s good news. The bad news is that the IPCC is quite conclusive that we are changing the climate and we are going to continue to do so. And it’s going to have negative effects and create risks. The IPCC report obviously did not tell us that climate change isn’t a problem. But just because it’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s the apocalypse. Climate change is real. It’s serious. I’m a strong advocate for mitigation and adaptation policies. But that doesn’t mean that it’s ‘code red for humanity’ and billions of people are at immediate risk, as the secretary-general of the UN claimed. That’s just irresponsible hyperbole. I would encourage scientists and activists to be careful with science. If you invoke science to support the agendas you are pursuing, then you must be certain that you are doing it with integrity. Roger Pielke Jr was speaking to Paddy Hannam.

Extreme weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. rips ‘event attribution’ science as the ‘relaxing of rigor & standards…in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy & even lawsuits’

There is no doubt that attribution claims have run far out ahead of detection of trends "Since 1951, the number of heavy rainfall days per year for the whole of Germany has hardly changed, almost independently of their definition"https://t.co/ruEC7TZftq HT @AndrewSiffert — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) July 21, 2021 It turns out — and science scholars will love this — the choice of methodology, and thus choice of result, depends upon the message one wishes to convey pic.twitter.com/JYa54gpCyu — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) July 21, 2021   As I have argued often, if conventional IPCC detection & attribution work showed clearly increasing extremes & plausible causes, then the post-modern "event attribution" methods would be unnecessaryhttps://t.co/L3zxmY9OPF pic.twitter.com/RXa5PJOjKV — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) July 21, 2021   IPCC D&A methods have identified trends & causes in (many regions) for extreme temps & precip with various levels of confidence But not tropical cyclones, floods, drought, tornadoes So enter "event attribution" to fill the gapWhy? Explained below via NYT to win a PR battle pic.twitter.com/In406XFh4r — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) July 21, 2021     I can think of no other area of research where the relaxing of rigor and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits . . . But there you go /END — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) July 21, 2021     PS. There is an absolutely awesome STS dissertation to be written based on this thread. Career prospects might be limited though 😎 — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) July 21, 2021

NYT claims ‘no one is safe’ from extreme weather: Dr. Pielke responds: ‘I can’t get over how egregiously wrong this NYT article is’ – People ‘have never in all of history been more safe in the face of weather & climate extremes’

I can’t get over how egregiously wrong this NYT article is Vulnerability to weather extremes is currently lower than it has ever been – in rich and poor countries — ever! This is one of the most significant science, technology & policy success stories of the past century👍 pic.twitter.com/6CKlYgbzdW — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) July 18, 2021 My 2 cents ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/9Cea4nbrer — The Honest Broker (@RogerPielkeJr) July 18, 2021

Extreme weather expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. shows the latest data showing no alarm on droughts

  https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/14/pielke-jr-weighs-in-on-drought/   Roger Pielke Jr. Weighs in on This Week’s Hysteria: Drought Originally tweeted by Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) on June 14, 2021. I was curious So I graphed percent of CONUS in drought according to the US drought monitor, data is weekly from 1/2000 https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap.aspx Here from US EPA is the same data by drought category https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-drought And here from EPA is a longer time series, 1895-2020 for CONUS Note: On this graph up means wetter, down means dryer https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-drought And here is the percent in drought (D0-D4) of the Colorado River Basin over Jan 2000 to present https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap.aspx And here is Colorado River Basin drought 1901-2015 via McCabe et al 2020 https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/eint/24/2/eiD200001.xml And for a much longer perspective, here is Colorado River Basin drought over the past 1800 years Also from McCabe et al 2020 TL;DR Here are the conclusions of McCabe et al 2020 Well worth reading carefully And here is what the US National Climate Assessment concluded on drought in 2018 https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/ PS A side note For accurately citing peer reviewed literature & US NCA on drought trends in 2013 Congressional testimony, I earned the distinction of being the only US researcher in history to be attacked by the president’s science advisor (Holdren) in a White House blog post 😎 PPS Holdren is still wrong The IPCC, USNCA & peer reviewed literature that they rely on is still correct Climate change is real, and aggressive mitigation & adaptation policies make good sense The reality of climate change doesn’t mean scientific integrity can be ignored /END Oh, I guess I should point out Holdren’s false claims about me posted on White House website were basis for a subsequent Congressional investigation of me that turned my life upside down & almost ended my career But I’m still here And that kids is how I came to understand tenure Originally tweeted by Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) on June 14, 2021.

For more results click below