Pielke's Weekly Memo #20

A new podcast, three freshly ungated articles & my UCL talk on science advice

Above is a link to a podcast just out with Martin Ågerup, the director of the Center for Political Research (CEPOS) in Denmark. We discussed various topics of climate — extreme weather, decarbonization, politics — and in the second half of the interview spent some time on various topics of sport governance, including the regulation of gender eligibility.

We covered a lot of ground and I really enjoyed the conversation, thanks Martin!

Below is the Spotify link, and it can be found also at the CEPOS site or wherever you get your podcasts. I welcome your comments and questions!

After the break, paid subscribers can find video of a recent short talk I gave at University College London, “Institutions of Appropriate Expertise” — focused on emerging lessons for science advice from the pandemic.

I also provide after the break non-paywalled PDFs of the follow three papers of mine, which I think help to explain in part how it is the climate issue is where it is today:

• In this 2020 article I document a successful effort supported by a couple of billionaires to influence climate science — to emphasize extreme climate scenarios. (Steyer is also the billionaire funder behind efforts to attack me and my work by the Center for American Progress from ~2007-2015, but that is another story!):

  • Pielke, Jr. R. 2020. How billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg corrupted climate science. Forbes, January 2.

• This long academic paper provides a much more detailed look at how climate scenarios got off track, it is a complex and technical story, but important to understand in order to assess where climate science is today and the reasons why getting back on track may take some effort:

  • Pielke Jr, R., & Ritchie, J. 2021. Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios. Energy Research & Social Science.

• This article, now a decade old, was written to explain how climate policy was off track. I think it was (and remains) a pretty good analysis. The opportunity to write this article was provided by the editor of Foreign Policy as a sort-of-apology for their inclusion of me in their climate skeptics list the previous year in an effort to distract from my accurate critique of errors in the IPCC at that time. Back stories are often interesting!

  • Pielke, Jr. R. 2012. Climate of Failure. Foreign Policy, August 6.

These are part of my continuing effort to provide non-paywalled versions of all of my writings to my paid subscribers. Before the end of the year I will provide a summary post with all the 2022 articles (and my disasters book) that I have ungated in a convenient single list. Stay tuned for that.

As always your comments are welcomed!