The Last Gasp of the Climate Thought Police

Climate cancelling had a good run -- but my Cornell lecture showed its finally over

Following my lecture last week at Cornell, one Cornell professor, a well-known climate activist, called for the firing of the director of the Cornell Atkinson Institute for Sustainability — an accomplished scientist himself — simply for hosting my visit. Gavin Schimdt, a NASA scientist and another well-known climate activist, took to social media to complain that I had cited the definition of “climate change” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which he apparently rejects, taking aim at both me and the IPCC.¹

The ever-present Michael E. Mann weighed in as well, whinging that my invitation to Cornell was “problematic,” explaining that, “there can be no balance between science and antiscience, between whether the Earth is round and whether it is flat.” Bizarrely, the student reporter covering the event contacted another activist climate scientist from Hong Kong to opine on my invitation. This is the fellow who had a total meltdown² on stage following a lecture I gave in Australia earlier this year. He explained on social media of my Cornell talk, “Giving climate deniers a stage isn’t balance—it’s a disservice . . . We must be vigilant about who we platform.”

A deep irony here is that my talk included several examples of efforts to “cancel” me based on my peer-reviewed research and my support of the assessments of the IPCC — overall and on disaster costs and trends in extreme weather.

A 2017 article about the “science police” in climate science recounted some of these failed cancellation campaigns, against me and others. Cambridge University climate scientist Mike Hulme — also the subject of various cancellation campaigns — had the last word in that piece:

Is the purpose of science to find evidence that supports a particular advocacy campaign or a policy course or ideological position—to keep ‘on message’? Or is the point of science to investigate (imperfectly, but systematically) how the physical world works? If the latter, then wrinkles in science, conflicts and arguments, due skepticism of previously established findings—all these things are essential.

In response to popular request, below is a link to my slides from my talk. Below that is the video of the event. Please share around!

Cornell Atkinson Lecture Pielke

9.81MB ∙ PDF file

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The next chance to freak out and try to cancel a university lecture of mine is this week at the University of Wyoming — Details below!

Comments welcomed — I am happy to open this post to all readers. Please note the THB comment policy, which mandates no perjorative comments about anyone. Strictly enforced. I especially invite those seeking to cancel my talks to show up and justify their efforts — I welcome an exchange!

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1. Activist climate scientists have a lot of frustration with the IPCC for not being much more alarmist and advocacy focused.

2. I have not written about this episode out of concern that this guy was having some sort of breakdown and it would be unkind. Now that he has gone public, I will also. His talk was bizarre and disturbing. I wish it was online.