This post was timely as I engaged with a New Zealand based (mainstream) climate scientist regarding adaptation. In NZ, climate is dominated by natural variability from the ENSO, SAM and IPO, amongst other climate systems. Consequently, the IPCC AR5 reported, based on NZ weather station data, that there are no trends relating to heavy precipitation, tropical cyclones etc and we do not expect to see the anthropogenic signal from the background variability, for at least this century. This flies in the face of the climate narrative, so I was referred to an Extreme Event Attribution study as 'evidence' of climate change.
The study, which was contracted for by the New Zealand Treasury, assessed climate over a period of study (2007 – 2017) which overlapped with the period that a NZ Royal Society study covered where the conclusion, based on conventional attribution approaches, was there had been no change in flood events. But the Treasury study focused on a drought event – the models suggested drought in NZ would be likely from circulation changes, rather than higher pressure, which the model considered would be the anthropogenic cause. Nevertheless, human activity was ascribed a measure of blame for the drought and associated cost by reference to a ‘counterfactual’ world which shows global temperatures well below actual ones due to fossil fuel combustion.
The author is a close collaborator of the WWA group so it's not surprising that the associated slide presentation https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2018-05/djf_Treasury_March18.pdf , acknowledges the strategy as stemming from the tobacco litigation, where no medical evidence of a link between smoking and early mortality could be proved, but that the likelihood of sickness was enhanced. The authors fail to realise that the USA is about the only place in the world where a smoker could blame a deep pocket for enjoying the products provided and accepted freely, and not exercise self-responsibility (or spill hot coffee on themselves and blame the vendor). In the climate context, there are significant problems with this strategy for climate litigation, in addition to the inconsistency of EEA with the conventional approach. Who is the correct defendant? Oil companies, with deep pockets, sell raw product to refineries who choose what products to make from customer signals. The customer buys the refined product and chooses to burn them (or not). And whilst US tobacco firms could be responsible for US health, for climate you have the influence of other global actors that far outweighs what, say Exxon did – Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, other national oil companies, dwarf the output of the likes of Exxon.
Exxon knew? Seems to me Exxon knew as much as the gov't scientists but were prepared to communicate the uncertainties with the science that are real, and communicate the energy security issue as associated with closing down oil and gas - issues that are materially accurate.
On this note, we need to consider the ‘counterfactual’ world without emissions which, by implication, is without fossil fuels. Poor, brutal, early mortality, less equal, more famine/poverty, barely 2 billion souls. It's just not a world anyone would choose to live in – an argument exists that a counter law suit could claim for ‘unjust enrichment’ being the intangible benefits that fossil fuels have given to humanity.
The current president of NAS is Marcia McNutt. I can't recall the details, but wasn't she involved in some questionable actions concerning peer review? Does the rot start at the top?
“I cannot emphasize how unusual it is to have a litigator briefing a NAS committee on how their work can help support his firm’s work. Absolutely bonkers.”
And absolutely par for the course in “climate science”.
And by the way, SCC is negative not ultra low, something like -$500
It appears that the National Research Council is setting themselves up for violation of their "guardrails" set out in their Stratic Plan. Their selection of participating organizations is unlikely to result in:
• Seek the truth in conducting the work of the NRC but acknowledge uncertainties
presented in the evidence.
• Remain nonpartisan and evidence based to continue to serve as a neutral, objective
source of advice.
• Honor the charter and applicable laws.
• Manage and disclose conflicts of interest. The NRC must carefully consider and
manage any conflicts of interest—actual or perceived—in its volunteers, staff, and
Well done, Roger. You might have gone further and used the concept of Social Benefit of Carbon, as is described in an essay by Ken Gregory of the Friends of Science: Social Cost (Benefit) of Carbon Dioxide from FUND with Corrected Temperatures, Energy and CO2 Fertilization. https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Social%20Cost%20of%20CO2-June11.pdf
Dr. Who in 1977 may have said it best: “You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views”
When I was a younger man, I was contemplating going to law school as a career change. I met with a professor at a law school I was considering to discuss which direction to given my science background. I initially thought patent law. But he suggested environmental law. He said it was an area with a never ending source of litigation, a very lucrative area. I went another direction, but never forgot his advice.
Follow the money. You’ll find lawyers behind this that see this as a never ending source of riches. No matter the impact (negative) on science.
I am a strict Falstaffian - "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers." (Henry VI, Part 2)." Every solution to every problem that lawyers try to solve involves making more work for lawyers. Would that we poor struggling scientists had the same craft unity.
Is this an isolated incident at NAS? I note that Marcia McNutt was recently elected president of NAS. I seem to recall that she was involved in a peer review controversy. Does the rot start at the top? Just asking.
Don’t disagree. But I think if you dig, you’ll find a greed motivation behind this. I’ve seen it in other lawsuits (for example the Microsoft lawsuits).
I did the opposite - did law and have more recently studied and graduated with a masters in climate change. I'll do a separate response on this issue. It is live here in New Zealand whereby a senior 'mainstream' scientist is referring a gov't working group to Extreme Event Attribution studies, as 'evidence' of climate change, in contradition to the IPCC's consistent messaging and the 'not-much-to-see-here observational record.
Dr. Pielke ==> Maybe we could just admit outright that WWA and their collaborators are simply intentionally cooking up 'evidence' to fed to lawfare in support of their favored political policies. WWA must know that their methods are questionable and would never ever pass a strict disinterested peer review, especially from statisticians.
The very idea that the National Academies would participate in such a perversion of science is -- I struggle to find a word strong enough -- beyond appalling.
Have they no shame? No self-awareness? Not even a sense of self-preservation?
Darn, I can't remember the details. But see the PNAS publishing some Russian sourced fiction about nuclear safety (health effects?) as if they were reviewed, valid papers and refusing to take them down. The author was a known charlatan.
Point is, bad actors at the NAS are nothing new. It's terrible.
Happy for someone with a better memory to supply the details.
Dr.Pielke ==> I too believe they are sincere in their desires and viewpoints about Climate Change -- just as many of those attacking you -- for writing and publishing the truth about disasters and extreme weather -- were equally sincere.
WWA [and Climate Central] looks for, using highly questionable statistical methods and thus finds, a climate change fingerprint in various extreme weather events. But I believe both groups have an innate awareness that they are "stretching" reality to fit their desired outcomes.
If this were not so, they too would be "beyond appalled" by involving the National Academies in this farcical NAS Attribution committee.
"The first public meeting of the NAS Attribution committee will take place a few weeks from now. UOn that agenda is a litigator from Sher Edling, LLC, a firm that is litigating almost two dozen climate cases that depend up claims of extreme event attribution.⁶ Somehow, that litigator’s role as a counsel-of-record in these various lawsuits was left off of the NAS public meeting agenda.
The second sentence starts with 'UOn' - maybe 'Upon'?
If the word is 'Upon', then it is incorrect, as persons are not 'on' agendas'. Maybe "Upon that agenda is a briefing from a litigator..."? Also "depend up claims" should probably be "depend on claims"
Great post, Dr. Pielke, thank you. Your thought experiment was very provocative. I took a slightly different tack than most of your readers. One could ask the question, does it matter if the patient is contaminated by e coli, or typhus, and it's answer is a vector having both magnitude and direction.
Noted climate scientist Richard Lindzen has said that “you have to fund science in ways that there are no incentives for promoting things.” But the bitter truth is that money equals advocacy. My risk management instructor taught me that perception equals reality. If you think the guy is from the “other side,” you automatically don’t trust his words, regardless of what evidence he or she might present.
Science should inform a decision, not persuade it. It is the arbiter’s responsibility to incorporate the information provided with direct evidence from other sources before arriving at any conclusions. For example, I look at Piltdown Mann’s “hockey stick” and see yes, the past few decades have seen rapid warming. But then I look at the geologic record and see evidence of enough hockey sticks to supply an NHL team. Life did not cease to exist then, so I conclude it will not cease to exist now; just be different.
Yes, this is a pretty simplistic analogy, but my point is, how science is presented is only half of the problem. The other half is how it is understood. When the public is gullible and looking for a scapegoat for their miseries, they’ll believe the sky is falling if they hear it shouted enough times or accompanied with words like “consensus.” Make you afraid of the problem first, then blame the other guy.
If I were your student, I would answer your thought experiment by saying there would be no change in magnitude of emotion, but there would be a change in direction of that emotion. I would then say to correct the direction (e.g., stop its oscillations between extremes), replace "fear" of climate change with "understanding" of that change.
Climate change is real, as you note every time, but it should not be feared. It seems like science now looks upon it as a disease, something that can be cured or eradicated, like polio or small pox. Many of us are of the age to have seen that happen in our lifetimes. They espouse decarbonization and economic sacrifice vaccines that offering a miraculous cure, as if it would stop the earth from rotating upon its axis.
But climate change cannot be stopped by any NGO donation, agency proclamation or campaign promise. Until we figure that out, scientific contamination on this subject matter will always exist.
My two cents, adjusted for inflation. Did I pass, or fail?
Never ever trust the government. They are never neutral. You get folks like Fauci who become king and arbiter of their domain by little else but longevity. They are the needed filter to decide what info gets in and what doesn’t. Will a panel, committee etc not connected with government be less influenced if the government isn’t involved. Nothing is perfect. But government intervention assures political truths and not actual truth. I worked for the government for 25 years. Why do we have thousand toilet seats on government planes etc? Because the government is over run with “engineers” who need to produce anything to get a paycheck. One of government’s roles is to the set goals. It is up to the private sector to figure out how. That’s how you get to Space X.
Roger, you do certainly know the Chair of the Committee from you time at NCAR, yes? And you have one of the smartest people on the planet, Tim Palmer, on the panel. I have no problem with any entity funding NAS. I do have a big problem with some being on the committee. And you must not have had much experience with NASA NAS panels of the 1900s and early 2000s where you could identify the recommended instruments by each panel member's interest. So, NAS panels have been also advocacy groups for some time. It doesn't make it right, but it certainly is not unique. They must, however and as you correctly point out, identify those interests and conflicts.
I'd characterize this particular panel as 1/3 excellent and accomplished scientists, 1/3 political advocates, and 1/3 other
I served on many NAS/NRC committees in the 1990s/2000s and I do indeed remember members of the committee there to advocate for their area of science or instrument. That was science politics, not politics politics. Steve Hilgartner has a nice book on these dynamics.
I do think that what I have documented in this post is qualitatively different though.
This post was timely as I engaged with a New Zealand based (mainstream) climate scientist regarding adaptation. In NZ, climate is dominated by natural variability from the ENSO, SAM and IPO, amongst other climate systems. Consequently, the IPCC AR5 reported, based on NZ weather station data, that there are no trends relating to heavy precipitation, tropical cyclones etc and we do not expect to see the anthropogenic signal from the background variability, for at least this century. This flies in the face of the climate narrative, so I was referred to an Extreme Event Attribution study as 'evidence' of climate change.
The study, which was contracted for by the New Zealand Treasury, assessed climate over a period of study (2007 – 2017) which overlapped with the period that a NZ Royal Society study covered where the conclusion, based on conventional attribution approaches, was there had been no change in flood events. But the Treasury study focused on a drought event – the models suggested drought in NZ would be likely from circulation changes, rather than higher pressure, which the model considered would be the anthropogenic cause. Nevertheless, human activity was ascribed a measure of blame for the drought and associated cost by reference to a ‘counterfactual’ world which shows global temperatures well below actual ones due to fossil fuel combustion.
The author is a close collaborator of the WWA group so it's not surprising that the associated slide presentation https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2018-05/djf_Treasury_March18.pdf , acknowledges the strategy as stemming from the tobacco litigation, where no medical evidence of a link between smoking and early mortality could be proved, but that the likelihood of sickness was enhanced. The authors fail to realise that the USA is about the only place in the world where a smoker could blame a deep pocket for enjoying the products provided and accepted freely, and not exercise self-responsibility (or spill hot coffee on themselves and blame the vendor). In the climate context, there are significant problems with this strategy for climate litigation, in addition to the inconsistency of EEA with the conventional approach. Who is the correct defendant? Oil companies, with deep pockets, sell raw product to refineries who choose what products to make from customer signals. The customer buys the refined product and chooses to burn them (or not). And whilst US tobacco firms could be responsible for US health, for climate you have the influence of other global actors that far outweighs what, say Exxon did – Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, other national oil companies, dwarf the output of the likes of Exxon.
Exxon knew? Seems to me Exxon knew as much as the gov't scientists but were prepared to communicate the uncertainties with the science that are real, and communicate the energy security issue as associated with closing down oil and gas - issues that are materially accurate.
On this note, we need to consider the ‘counterfactual’ world without emissions which, by implication, is without fossil fuels. Poor, brutal, early mortality, less equal, more famine/poverty, barely 2 billion souls. It's just not a world anyone would choose to live in – an argument exists that a counter law suit could claim for ‘unjust enrichment’ being the intangible benefits that fossil fuels have given to humanity.
Interesting!
The current president of NAS is Marcia McNutt. I can't recall the details, but wasn't she involved in some questionable actions concerning peer review? Does the rot start at the top?
“I cannot emphasize how unusual it is to have a litigator briefing a NAS committee on how their work can help support his firm’s work. Absolutely bonkers.”
And absolutely par for the course in “climate science”.
And by the way, SCC is negative not ultra low, something like -$500
This is dynamite. Thank you, Roger, for an essay which brings to mind Emile Zola's J'Accuse in the Dreyfus Affair.
Bravo to you Roger. Your critique is devastating. THB is indeed THB.
It appears that the National Research Council is setting themselves up for violation of their "guardrails" set out in their Stratic Plan. Their selection of participating organizations is unlikely to result in:
• Seek the truth in conducting the work of the NRC but acknowledge uncertainties
presented in the evidence.
• Remain nonpartisan and evidence based to continue to serve as a neutral, objective
source of advice.
• Honor the charter and applicable laws.
• Manage and disclose conflicts of interest. The NRC must carefully consider and
manage any conflicts of interest—actual or perceived—in its volunteers, staff, and
sponsors.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/documents/embed/link/LF2255DA3DD1C41C0A42D3BEF0989ACAECE3053A6A9B/file/DB4DC1F0F8C6D4707DAA110A4790523122A000124DB5?noSaveAs=1
Well done, Roger. You might have gone further and used the concept of Social Benefit of Carbon, as is described in an essay by Ken Gregory of the Friends of Science: Social Cost (Benefit) of Carbon Dioxide from FUND with Corrected Temperatures, Energy and CO2 Fertilization. https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Social%20Cost%20of%20CO2-June11.pdf
Dr. Who in 1977 may have said it best: “You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views”
When I was a younger man, I was contemplating going to law school as a career change. I met with a professor at a law school I was considering to discuss which direction to given my science background. I initially thought patent law. But he suggested environmental law. He said it was an area with a never ending source of litigation, a very lucrative area. I went another direction, but never forgot his advice.
Follow the money. You’ll find lawyers behind this that see this as a never ending source of riches. No matter the impact (negative) on science.
I am a strict Falstaffian - "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers." (Henry VI, Part 2)." Every solution to every problem that lawyers try to solve involves making more work for lawyers. Would that we poor struggling scientists had the same craft unity.
Interesting ... law was on my radar screen at some point while I was contemplating grad school. Would have been a very different path.
I've got no problem with any of these scientists or groups working with lawyers or in support of litigation.
The failures of scientific integrity at NAS are the problem here.
Is this an isolated incident at NAS? I note that Marcia McNutt was recently elected president of NAS. I seem to recall that she was involved in a peer review controversy. Does the rot start at the top? Just asking.
Don’t disagree. But I think if you dig, you’ll find a greed motivation behind this. I’ve seen it in other lawsuits (for example the Microsoft lawsuits).
I did the opposite - did law and have more recently studied and graduated with a masters in climate change. I'll do a separate response on this issue. It is live here in New Zealand whereby a senior 'mainstream' scientist is referring a gov't working group to Extreme Event Attribution studies, as 'evidence' of climate change, in contradition to the IPCC's consistent messaging and the 'not-much-to-see-here observational record.
Dr. Pielke ==> Maybe we could just admit outright that WWA and their collaborators are simply intentionally cooking up 'evidence' to fed to lawfare in support of their favored political policies. WWA must know that their methods are questionable and would never ever pass a strict disinterested peer review, especially from statisticians.
The very idea that the National Academies would participate in such a perversion of science is -- I struggle to find a word strong enough -- beyond appalling.
Have they no shame? No self-awareness? Not even a sense of self-preservation?
Darn, I can't remember the details. But see the PNAS publishing some Russian sourced fiction about nuclear safety (health effects?) as if they were reviewed, valid papers and refusing to take them down. The author was a known charlatan.
Point is, bad actors at the NAS are nothing new. It's terrible.
Happy for someone with a better memory to supply the details.
Well, I start with a belief that these folks are sincere in their beliefs and work.
The evaluation of scientific claims does not believe on what any of us think about motivations.
In this series we will get into the scientific claims at play here.
That said, we are in agreement about what is most - beyond appalling - which is a very nice characterization. What in the world is the NAS doing here?
Dr.Pielke ==> I too believe they are sincere in their desires and viewpoints about Climate Change -- just as many of those attacking you -- for writing and publishing the truth about disasters and extreme weather -- were equally sincere.
WWA [and Climate Central] looks for, using highly questionable statistical methods and thus finds, a climate change fingerprint in various extreme weather events. But I believe both groups have an innate awareness that they are "stretching" reality to fit their desired outcomes.
If this were not so, they too would be "beyond appalled" by involving the National Academies in this farcical NAS Attribution committee.
I think this is related, too.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2024/05/communicating-the-effects-of-climate-change-with-britt-wray
I hesitate to use the word "creepy" too often in one day, but...
"Climate activists who experience massive burnout, outrage, and grief"
This is much deeper than describing the need to decarbonize. I don't know exactly what it is but it's not about science.
"The first public meeting of the NAS Attribution committee will take place a few weeks from now. UOn that agenda is a litigator from Sher Edling, LLC, a firm that is litigating almost two dozen climate cases that depend up claims of extreme event attribution.⁶ Somehow, that litigator’s role as a counsel-of-record in these various lawsuits was left off of the NAS public meeting agenda.
The second sentence starts with 'UOn' - maybe 'Upon'?
If the word is 'Upon', then it is incorrect, as persons are not 'on' agendas'. Maybe "Upon that agenda is a briefing from a litigator..."? Also "depend up claims" should probably be "depend on claims"
That was supposed to be just On
And in a rare event, several others got that one first!
Thanks for the eagle eyes!!
Great post, Dr. Pielke, thank you. Your thought experiment was very provocative. I took a slightly different tack than most of your readers. One could ask the question, does it matter if the patient is contaminated by e coli, or typhus, and it's answer is a vector having both magnitude and direction.
Noted climate scientist Richard Lindzen has said that “you have to fund science in ways that there are no incentives for promoting things.” But the bitter truth is that money equals advocacy. My risk management instructor taught me that perception equals reality. If you think the guy is from the “other side,” you automatically don’t trust his words, regardless of what evidence he or she might present.
Science should inform a decision, not persuade it. It is the arbiter’s responsibility to incorporate the information provided with direct evidence from other sources before arriving at any conclusions. For example, I look at Piltdown Mann’s “hockey stick” and see yes, the past few decades have seen rapid warming. But then I look at the geologic record and see evidence of enough hockey sticks to supply an NHL team. Life did not cease to exist then, so I conclude it will not cease to exist now; just be different.
Yes, this is a pretty simplistic analogy, but my point is, how science is presented is only half of the problem. The other half is how it is understood. When the public is gullible and looking for a scapegoat for their miseries, they’ll believe the sky is falling if they hear it shouted enough times or accompanied with words like “consensus.” Make you afraid of the problem first, then blame the other guy.
If I were your student, I would answer your thought experiment by saying there would be no change in magnitude of emotion, but there would be a change in direction of that emotion. I would then say to correct the direction (e.g., stop its oscillations between extremes), replace "fear" of climate change with "understanding" of that change.
Climate change is real, as you note every time, but it should not be feared. It seems like science now looks upon it as a disease, something that can be cured or eradicated, like polio or small pox. Many of us are of the age to have seen that happen in our lifetimes. They espouse decarbonization and economic sacrifice vaccines that offering a miraculous cure, as if it would stop the earth from rotating upon its axis.
But climate change cannot be stopped by any NGO donation, agency proclamation or campaign promise. Until we figure that out, scientific contamination on this subject matter will always exist.
My two cents, adjusted for inflation. Did I pass, or fail?
Never ever trust the government. They are never neutral. You get folks like Fauci who become king and arbiter of their domain by little else but longevity. They are the needed filter to decide what info gets in and what doesn’t. Will a panel, committee etc not connected with government be less influenced if the government isn’t involved. Nothing is perfect. But government intervention assures political truths and not actual truth. I worked for the government for 25 years. Why do we have thousand toilet seats on government planes etc? Because the government is over run with “engineers” who need to produce anything to get a paycheck. One of government’s roles is to the set goals. It is up to the private sector to figure out how. That’s how you get to Space X.
I agree that a NAS committee with conflicts, biases, and an overt political agenda is in fact INappropriate.
Roger, you do certainly know the Chair of the Committee from you time at NCAR, yes? And you have one of the smartest people on the planet, Tim Palmer, on the panel. I have no problem with any entity funding NAS. I do have a big problem with some being on the committee. And you must not have had much experience with NASA NAS panels of the 1900s and early 2000s where you could identify the recommended instruments by each panel member's interest. So, NAS panels have been also advocacy groups for some time. It doesn't make it right, but it certainly is not unique. They must, however and as you correctly point out, identify those interests and conflicts.
Yes agreed
I'd characterize this particular panel as 1/3 excellent and accomplished scientists, 1/3 political advocates, and 1/3 other
I served on many NAS/NRC committees in the 1990s/2000s and I do indeed remember members of the committee there to advocate for their area of science or instrument. That was science politics, not politics politics. Steve Hilgartner has a nice book on these dynamics.
I do think that what I have documented in this post is qualitatively different though.