3. Roger Pielke on the politics of climate change, scenarios, and extreme weather

Challenging Climate

Roger Pielke Jr. is a political scientist who writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, innovation and sports. He is most famous (or infamous?) for his work on climate change. We cover his Iron Law of climate policy, his views on the problems with business-as-usual climate scenarios, and the challenges of attributing extreme weather. We also touch on the extent of his relationships with climate change skeptics and the efforts to discredit him, including the congressional investigation into his funding.
Roger is a Professor at the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is the author of The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell you About Global Warming, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, and The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change .
Links:
- the report detailing the campaign to discredit Pielke https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/11/Laframboise-Pielke.pdf [PDF]
- his chart in The Climate Fix showing the historical change in the proportion of carbon-free energy and how it will need to change in future https://theclimatefix.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/bp-2017-3.jpg
- the IPCC's latest report on the physical science of climate change https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
- two blog posts by Pielke on this recent report https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report and https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report-1e3
- Pielke's academic paper on scenarios with Justin Ritchie https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629620304655 and a popular article summarizing their work https://issues.org/climate-change-scenarios-lost-touch-reality-pielke-ritchie/
- The Climate Fix https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/roger-pielke/the-climate-fix/9780465025190/
- The Honest Broker https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/honest-broker/A41AD4D7D14077165807DBE057B5FAF9
- The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change https://cspo.org/publication/the-rightful-place-of-science-disasters-and-climate-change/

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Chapters

1. 3. Roger Pielke on the politics of climate change, scenarios, and extreme weather (00:00:00)

2. Background (00:02:50)

3. General approach to climate change (00:04:33)

4. Relative pessimism of mitigation and the Iron Law of climate change (00:05:53)

5. Scenarios (00:18:01)

6. Extreme weather events (00:35:25)

7. Relationship with climate change sceptics (00:40:01)

8. Persecution and partisanship (00:44:38)

9. Future plans (00:55:13)

10. Reasons for optimism (00:57:09)