Articles Tagged "Roger Pielke Jr."

New Climate Scandal Exposed: Will AP & NYT Retract Articles?! ‘Gross misrepresentation of the findings’ of New Hockey Stick Paper ‘via press release which appears to skirt awfully close to crossing the line into research misconduct’

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Sandy was terrible, but we're currently in a relative hurricane 'drought.' Connecting energy policy and disasters makes little scientific sense.

Hurricane Sandy left in its path some impressive statistics. Its central pressure was the lowest ever recorded for a storm north of North Carolina, breaking a record set by the devastating "Long Island Express" hurricane of 1938. Along the East Coast, Sandy led to more than 50 deaths, left millions without power and caused an estimated $20 billion or more in damage.

But to call Sandy a harbinger of a "new normal," in which unprecedented weather events cause unprecedented destruction, would be wrong. This historic storm should remind us that planet Earth is a dangerous place, where extreme events are commonplace and disasters are to be expected. In the proper context, Sandy is less an example of how bad things can get than a reminder that they could be much worse.

In studying hurricanes, we can make rough comparisons over time by adjusting past losses to account for inflation and the growth of coastal communities. If Sandy causes $20 billion in damage (in 2012 dollars), it would rank as the 17th most damaging hurricane or tropical storm (out of 242) to hit the U.S. since 1900—a significant event, but not close to the top 10. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 tops the list (according to estimates by the catastrophe-insurance provider ICAT), as it would cause $180 billion in damage if it were to strike today. Hurricane Katrina ranks fourth at $85 billion.

Professor Roger Pielke Jr lecture: 'The Climate Fix' - YouTube Link



Uploaded by ANUchannel on Feb 5, 2012

Professor Roger Pielke Jr gives this lecture entitled 'The Climate Fix' at The Australian National University on Thursday 2 February 2012. This talk was presented by the HC Coombs Policy Forum.

Professor Pielke's research focuses on the intersection of science and technology and decision making.

Daniel Greenberg, the widely respected journalist and author who focuses on science policy and politics, was invited by Nature to review my book, The Climate Fix. Little did he know that review would bring him up close and personal with the activist wing of the climate science community. After writing a positive review of my book, Greenberg found himself under attack by Michael Mann, Paul Ehrlich and Stefan Rahmstorf on the pages on Nature.

What followed was an email exchange that provides some insight into the mindset of the activist wing of the climate science community. Greenberg shared this exchange with me with the following message, published here with his permission:

Roger, Re my stirring experience of jousting with Mann, Ehrlich, and Rahmstorf: What a scurrilous bunch. My sympathy to you and anyone else who has to deal with them. They’re gravediggers of science. Nature will soon publish my riposte and, I think, a disclaimer of any ties to me by the Marshall Institute. Below, my further exchanges with the low-life trio.

Best regards, Dan

Here is Greenberg’s email to Michael Mann that concludes the exchange, reproduced with his permisison:

Tonite I was on BBC Newsnight (screenshot above) with Professor Chris Field, the (new) head of IPCC Working Group II. I knew that the interview was not going to go well when Professor Field explained, not-so-accurately, that as soon as the IPCC heard about the glacier error it quickly came out with a statement clarifying the matter. No mention of "voodoo science" or "schoolboy science" or the extended period of denial of error by the IPCC leadership.

I had a chance to summarize the problems in the IPCC associated with its creation of the "mystery graph" and the outright falsification of my views in the IPCC review comments. Professor Fields completely ignored these issues and instead chose to obfuscate and deny any problem whatsoever. This is remarkable because all Professor Field would have had to say was something like the following, "These are serious allegations, especially about the misrepresentations of Roger's views in the review process. We should tighten up our procedures to make sure this sort of thing does not happen again." And then the IPCC should follow it up with some improvements to the process.

Instead, Professor Field tried to talk over me and deny, deny, deny. As I said in the interview, this issue is not ambiguous. The studies are not equivocal. There is no signal of rising temperatures in the disaster record. Period. Maybe there will be in the future, but there wasn't in 2006, when the IPCC deadline for publication occurred and there is not now. Further, both the "mystery graph" and the falsification of my views are unambiguous failures of the IPCC process to ensure that accurate information is included in its reports. How can this be denied?

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I am a co-author on a paper that has just been accepted by the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres and is now in press (PDF here, I will add a link to a version on my personal page as soon as it is up). The paper originated in a “dinner table debate” between me and my father. It subsequently turned into a research paper involving a collaboration with Phil Klotzbach of CSU and John Christy and Dick McNider at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

The paper is important for two reasons. First, it provides confirmatory evidence that the globe has indeed been warming over the period of the satellite records. Indeed the argument that we make in the paper depends upon the presence of a warming trend, Second, it provides a parsimonious and logical explanation for a discrepancy observed in the temperature record that has been often highlighted but which to date been unsatisfactorily explained.

What a combination this has, we have James Hansen in The Guardian, how can people take someone who says the following serious......keep it up James and thanks to the editor of the Guardian for letting the people see how the mind of this man works!

by James Hansen

Excerpt: The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.

The government is expected to give the go-ahead to the coal-burning Kingsnorth power plant. Here, one of the world's foremost climate experts launches an excoriating attack on Britain's long love affair with the most polluting fossil fuel of all..

Updated below by Roger Pielke Jr

The UK's plans to cut emissions by 80% by 2050 are fundamentally flawed and almost certain to fail, according to a US academic. Roger Pielke Jr, a science policy expert, said the UK government had underestimated the magnitude of the task to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

He added that it would be more effective to "decarbonise" economic growth rather than focus on targets. Professor Pielke made his comments during a speech at Aston University. Professor Pielke said that a country's greenhouse gas trajectory was determined by three factors: economic growth; population growth; and changes in technology. This meant, the academic from the University of Colorado suggested, that if people migrate to the UK and the economy boomed, it would be harder for politicians to achieve emissions cuts based on historic levels.

The political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing. If you are not aware of this fact you will be very soon. The collapse is not due to the cold winter in places you may live or see on the news. It is not due to years without an increase in global temperature. It is not due to the overturning of the scientific consensus on the role of human activity in the global climate system.

It is due to the fact that policy makers and their political advisors (some trained as scientists) can no longer avoid the reality that targets for stabilization such as 450 ppm (or even less realistic targets) are simply not achievable with the approach to climate change that has been at the focus of policy for over a decade. Policies that are obviously fictional and fantasy are frequently subject to a rapid collapse.