72. An inconvenient truth about the climate debate – Roger Pielke Jr

Roger Pielke Jr labels himself an ”undisciplined” professor, which is apt since he engages in an impressively wide range of research areas. He is most known for his work on climate, and specifically extreme weather events. For this he initially got much acclaim, and his research has been cited in the IPCC assessment reports. But the last fifteen years or so this work has also given him many adversaries. Why? Because he tells what the science shows. And in this particular area it doesn’t show what the alarmist camp wants to hear. Most kinds of extreme weather events show no detectable trend, contrary to what is claimed in media headlines on a daily basis. Roger Pielke has had to get used to being called ”climate skeptic” or even ”climate denier”, also from members of congress. ”The idea is that if you can tar someone with being a climate skeptic, they can be ignored or dismissed without having to look at their work”, Roger  says. A professor in Environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Pielke has testified before Congress several times. After a hearing in 2013 some members made clear they didn’t like the message. One congressman from Arizona spread the suspicion that Roger Pielke was ”perhaps” taking money from Exxon in exchange for his testimony. Pielke was suddenly inundated with critical messages and emails. Until this day, every week he hears on social media or elsewhere that he was investigated by congress and ”perhaps” took money. The event pushed him to begin doing research on sports in order to attain some safety space from the climate hot spot. But he returns to the hot spot now and then–like when the IPCC’s latest assessment report came out in August. He realizes that he is one of few who can summarize in a simple manner what science actually says on weather extremes. ”For various reasons the IPCC report is largely ignored on those points. So what I tweet about it can be eye-opening.” And why are these results ignored? ”Extreme weather has been taken up as a poster child of the climate debate, and I don't see that changing any time soon”, says Roger. In large part the turning point was around Al Gore’s climate movie ”An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. ”The environmental community decided that climate change a hundred years from now is too far off for people to understand, so we must bring it home to them in the short term. The way to do that is to associate extreme weather with climate change, so people will feel viscerally and personally what it means, regardless of what the science says”, Pielke explains. He has much less patience with scientists and experts who become activists and exaggerate than with politicians who do it. ”We will never get exaggeration out of politics.” And the data? Here is the short version of what the IPCC says about weather extremes: Heat waves, extreme precipitation events (in certain regions), fire weather (not fires per se), ecological and agricultural drought (human induced drought) show upward trends. Storms, tropical cyclones, flooding, tornadoes, meteorological and hydrological drought (i.e. the headline phenomena), show no detectable upward trends. (From around 28 minutes until 30 minutes into the Youtube episode you’ll find illuminating graphs) Roger’s personal website Roger’s books include The Honest Broker, The Climate Fix, Disasters and Climate Change and The Edge Clip from Congress hearing in 2013 about weather extremes