The Honest Broker at Two Years
The Honest Broker at Two Years
A status report and a thanks for your support!
In the United States this is our Thanksgiving week. For many, it is a special time to take a break and gather with family as the holiday season really gets underway. It is also a time for turkey, football, and reflection.
Here, The Honest Broker is celebrating more than two years of publishing and 6 months under Substack’s paid subscriber model. I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the response.
The Honest Broker is within sight of 10,000 total followers and 1,000 paid subscribers. The site recently debuted at number 6 on the Substack leaderboard for all sites in the category of “climate and environment.” Wow.
I am deeply appreciative of all of you. I know that the fare here is not partisan red meat — and that at times it can be esoteric (RCP8.5 anyone?), sometimes niche (FIFA governance?) and maybe even uncomfortable (pragmatic regulation of elite trans athletes?). I am thrilled that there is an audience for deep dives, wonkery and heterodox thinking. I am also really impressed by the diversity of subscribers and the thoughtful exchanges in the comments from many people, including many with considerable experience and expertise. It is an absolute pleasure to have readers who both agree and disagree with things that I argue or claim, and are willing to say so in the comments. So thanks!
It is no secret that I am using Substack as a sort of professional experiment. I’m 54 and have been a full professor for 17 years. It has been great (mostly). But I don’t see myself doing this same thing for the next 17 years.
I’m also at the age where many of us have seen friends and colleagues die early and unexpected deaths. No one has ever told me that they wished that they had spent more time in faculty meetings, but some have told me that they wish that they had taken more time to think, read and write. I’ve been listening.
For the next stage of my career I am ready to explore new possibilities for doing independent research and writing as a sort of junior varsity public intellectual. Based on the incredible growth of The Honest Broker to date, I am convinced that Substack can be a big part of such a model. I know that am truly privileged to have such possibilities and I am determined not to let them pass by.
I expect that I will always want to have a university affiliation of some sort, since I also love to teach and also to learn from smart students and colleagues. Whether that will be in Boulder or elsewhere is to be determined — but that is a discussion for another time. It will be interesting to see how things develop. I’ll continue to keep you updated on how things progress with this novel experiment since you are a participant in it as well!
Next week it is back to work. I have some posts in the works on topics including the following:
The 2022 seasonal hurricane forecasting bust. What to make of it?
The 1.5C global temperature target. It’s origins and demise.
The latest on regulation of trans athletes in elite sport.
Can citizen juries or assemblies help to improve the practice of democracy?
Global disasters: 2022 in long-term context
US disasters: why do we wrongly think a quiet year is much worse?
The secular apocalypse: why do we love it so much?
Climate imperialism, as uncomfortable as it is real
COVID-19 origins: where from here?
Lessons of COVID-19 for governmental science advice
That is just a sample of topics I’m working on and are in the queue. I always welcome your pointers, tips and requests — another benefit of this site is the incredible amount of learning I get to do thanks to readers and commenters. Where science, policy and politics collide is never a dull place.
Lastly, for today, I am happy to announce that I have just committed to a title, outline and delivery date for the sequel to The Honest Broker, my 2007 book that gives this site its name. I’m thrilled. It is going to be lit, as the kids say. More to come on that, watch this space.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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p.s. you might add modules to the course about ice ages, and the benefits that may come to some areas because of higher temperatures and higher CO2 (or both). I'm continually amazed how there is no "NO' good news about climate -- only death and destruction get covered, breathlessly.
We are very happy to have found your column and read some sense on the highly complex climate issue! That being said, I do have a thought for a crying need you might put your hand to. First reporters and then the public desperately need some help understanding:
1. How are weather and climate different?
2. How are weather and climate forecasting different?
3. What are the inputs and outputs of the climate models in use by the IPCC?
4. What climate model has best ever tied to past observations and:
a. How long did it attempt to forecast forward?
b. What were its geographic parameters?
I could see you putting together a class for reporters and making it available online. People always learn best when there are exercises and so forth, but I bet you could come up with some. I see this need as arising out of the difficulty we are about to find ourselves in having spent much of the no-cost money decade of the 2010's hyping the "existential" danger of climate change and now running into the deadly combination of far more expensive money and the end of low-cost trial runs at 'renewable resources'. With a higher amount of renewables and higher cost money, first electric utilities and then many others are going to find out that this big, scary thing can't be 'addressed' cheaply and will simultaneously feel bad and rebel. If someone has laid the groundwork for a deeper, better understanding of weather, climate, modeling and so forth, I think this will go more smoothly. Staffers to our elected representatives might also be part of the market for such work, along with the p politicians themselves if they actually want to learn. Anyway, just a thought!