Science Evolved. The Narrative Didn’t.

A big lie in climate policy and my Cornell talk

Cornell University, home of the chicken nugget.

I spent this week in Ithaca, New York visiting Cornell University. It was a fantastic visit. I met with faculty, researchers, students, staff, administrators, and taught a few classes. I was warmly welcomed and had a chance to discuss, debate, listen, learn, agree, disagree, and break bread with many colleagues. In short, my visit revealed the very best of universities. For me, the visit underscored why universities are a national treasure — which should be improved, not compromised. I am grateful to my colleagues at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability for hosting me.

On Wednesday evening, I gave a public lecture that was ostensibly about extreme weather and climate, but was really more about the tenor and tactics of the climate community (including the media and academics). I draw on some of my experiences to show how some have chosen to engage colleagues and research perceived to be politically unhelpful to the cause of climate action. You can see my full lecture at the bottom of this post. I found the Q&A discussion at the end particularly interesting. Again, Cornell, Thank you! Go Big Red!

Next week, my column at The Dispatch focuses the reinvigorated promotion of the implausible climate scenario RCP8.5 as COP30 has gotten underway. At this point, the high-profile promotion of RCP8.5 can only be called misinformation.

As background for that upcoming column, today I am sharing a three-part series I did a few years ago on how the climate science community made major missteps — errors, to be blunt — in how they developed and framed the scenarios that came to dominate climate research and policy for a generation. These errors have been profoundly consequential, and are still with us today. More on that next week.

The three part series explains, in detail and with full documentation, how climate science got so badly off track, misinforming both science and policy.

Part 1, linked below, documents what happened — a departure from treating scenarios as scenarios. Specifically, the IPCC transitioned from treating scenarios as plausible alternative representations of the future, to effectively treating scenarios as predictions of where the world is actually headed. The community was very much on the right track, until it wasn’t.

Part 2, linked next below, explores how the error happened. I trace how, over time, a relatively sophisticated view of scenarios was transformed into an overly simplistic and scientifically unsound approach to scenarios. The failure here is collective and a story of interdisciplinary science going off track, with profound consequences — one that we are at risk of repeating (discussed here).

Part 3 of the series concludes by explaining why the error happened. It is much easier to identify why the error happened, than it is to explain why the community has not yet authortatively corrected the error. The failure of the community to correct course has set the stage for the incredible misinformation that is right now being widely promoted during COP30. But more on that next week.

Further reading, for an even deeper dive: 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, 72, 101890.

Finally for today, below is the full video of my public talk this week at Cornell. Comments welcomed on the above or the below!

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