Pielke's Weekly Memo #21

Ehrlich & Eugenics, Climate Change Makes Us Stupid and a Flawed New Hurricane Paper

It’s the smell. Source: The Matrix (1999)

Happy 2023 and Welcome New Subscribers! I use these (almost) weekly memos to provide quick looks at work in progress and to share things that I found interesting or notable. These “weekly memos” are often more informal than my normal posts and some parts are reserved only for paid subscribers to The Honest Broker. So let’s get to it.

After the jump this week:

• Paul Ehrlich, still going strong at 90 (and good for him, too) made news this week by appearing in a 60 Minutes interview, prophesizing yet another end of civilization. His appearance prompted much discussion, and here I take a look at his self-described intellectual influences — two scientists from the 20th century American eugenics movement.

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has for decades been responsible for keeping the official record of U.S. hurricane damage. This time series is was useful to researchers and industry. NOAA has made changes to their methods that have ruined the time series and now NOAA is going back and changing history. I have the details and they are not pretty.

• A new paper just came out in the journal Science Advances that seeks to quantify U.S. hurricane losses. As readers here know, U.S. hurricane losses make up a large share of “global” economic losses from catastrophes. Unfortunately, this new paper appears to be compromised by an error so simple and obvious that it raises questions about what is going on in peer review these days.

After the jump, all the details.