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The challenges of being a “Climate Change Heretic”

The challenges of being a “Climate Change Heretic”

Roger Pielke Jr. describes being targeted by climate justice warriors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZTlN5PKjYU

The flood of Wikileaks emails that were released in late October featured several involving Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., who is on the faculty of the University of Colorado as a professor in the Environmental Studies Program.

Pielke is no skeptic of man-made warming; however, he did challenge a cherished climate alarmist talking point that global warming was making extreme weather more severe. The Wikileaks emails made it clear that he was Climate Justice Enemy #1 and was being targeted by an organized campaign to smear his reputation and his ability to advocate for sound science-based policies by ClimateProgress (which is part of the Center for American Progress Action Fund created by John Podesta).

He penned a Wall Street Journal column recently about his experiences, detailing what occurred after President Obama’s science adviser John Holdren published a screed smearing Pielke’s climate analysis.

…But when the White House puts a target on your back on its website, people notice. Almost a year later Mr. Holdren’s missive was the basis for an investigation of me by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Grijalva explained in a letter to my university’s president that I was being investigated because Mr. Holdren had “highlighted what he believes were serious misstatements by Prof. Pielke of the scientific consensus on climate change.” He made the letter public.

The “investigation” turned out to be a farce. In the letter, Rep. Grijalva suggested that I—and six other academics with apparently heretical views—might be on the payroll of Exxon Mobil (or perhaps the Illuminati, I forget). He asked for records detailing my research funding, emails and so on. After some well-deserved criticism from the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, Rep. Grijalva deleted the letter from his website. The University of Colorado complied with Rep. Grijalva’s request and responded that I have never received funding from fossil-fuel companies. My heretical views can be traced to research support from the U.S. government.

But the damage to my reputation had been done, and perhaps that was the point…

This experience makes it clear that even the lesser-known political appointments can have a significant impact on this country and individual citizens. There is currently no word on who will be holding the position of Science Advisor in Donald Trump’s administration.

…“Any enquiries I’ve made has [sic] led me to believe that the transition process isn’t yet organized,” says Neal Lane from Rice University, who acted as [the Office of Science and Technology Policy/OSTP] Director under Bill Clinton. “I think the election was a surprise to everybody, and my guess is that they’re just discovering many of these offices for the first time.”

The appointment is crucial—as close to a cabinet-level position in science and technology as exists. “It’s an easy thing to say that it’s another bureaucratic office,” says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “but it’s a critically important voice for the broader science community within the administration.”

For perspective, Obama’s OSTP Director Holdren is the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Hopefully, Trump will appoint someone who has more respect for how scientific discourse is suppose to be approached. I hereby nominate Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. for this position.

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Comments

Henry Hawkins | December 6, 2016 at 1:09 pm

I nominate Dr. Sheldon Cooper.

I nominate Anthony Watts, hwo has been holding the line for years…

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/20/josh-takes-on-xkcds-climate-timeline/

Consensus science isn’t a science at all. It’s a feeling an emotion. The very thought that man can control nature is laughable. I know that walking through the monsoon I occasionally had a one sided conversation with the rain god, but he seldom listened. Nature is what it is and that is something so complex and powerful a person has to be a real nutcase to think he can change it.

Henry Hawkins | December 6, 2016 at 1:36 pm

Here’s how science works – the debunking of AGW does not prove that mankind’s actions have not caused global warming. All it means is that the hypothesis that global warming is caused by man has not been proved by the evidence they’ve presented.

A good scientist might postulate, with codicils, that it remains possible that mankind has caused global warming by processes not yet discovered, but that the likelihood of that is low, given the length and breadth of study to date.

A good scientist would point out that it hasn’t been determined with scientific certainty that global warming has occurred at all, beyond the natural cycles of warming and cooling. A scientific hypothesis or theory is an attempt to explain a scientific observation, but with AGW, there is noi certainty about the founding *observation*, let alone explanations.

Build your Mexico wall, Mr. Trump, but then please build a wall between science and politics/government, because that’s how science gets co-opted for political exploitation. That’s all AGW is, a political ploy towards a political goal, wrapped in false robes of scientific respectability.

I am weary of the criticisms of Trump’s appointment processes.
It probably would be easier and faster simply to have a bunch of minority hacks to toss into all positions.

Any enquiries I’ve made has [sic] led me to believe that the transition process isn’t yet organized,” says Neal Lane from Rice University, who acted as [the Office of Science and Technology Policy/OSTP] Director under Bill Clinton.

So a short-term Clinton appointee (98-2000) is the go-to person to get quotes from regarding the upcoming Trump cabinet (which won’t even matter for another month and a half). Hey Wall Street Journal! I think I see a small problem with your article…

    (darnit, still no post editing)

    “It’s an easy thing to say that it’s another bureaucratic office,” says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists

    Ah, the UCC. Another fine, outstanding Conservative (cough) organization. Who else were they going to interview with a more leftist agenda, Castro’s brother?

    (I’ve been seriously tempted to create an organization called the Union of Really, Really Concerned Scientists just to lampoon these fools, but the problem is I can’t write anything nearly as over the top and silly as parody than they do every day.)

    Old0311 in reply to georgfelis. | December 6, 2016 at 11:35 pm

    I’d rather have a quote from David Bailiff. His team is 3-9 and is coming back next year.

“Climate justice warriors” = corrupt, useful idiots of the left.

I’m no scientist. I read a lot and have always been interested in the concept of “Man-Made Global Warming.” Also, I am a graduate student of the institute of human nature.

What I see from the AGW proponents can only be described as the academic equivalent of the “Bum’s Rush”. In other words, scientist whores and politicians are pushing, pulling and threatening us in order to make their position appear factually justified. But they do this without facts, only supposition. Why the rush to their conclusion?

    Henry Hawkins in reply to Redneck Law. | December 6, 2016 at 8:09 pm

    Think of it as wealth redistribution on a global scale, where countries with wealthy economies pay a tax or fee on the amount of CO2 into a global fund(s) which is given out to poorer countries for development of approved ‘green’ economic bases. The politicians, of course, find a way for much of that money to end up with political cronies, who donate money to said politician’s campaign coffers. AGW is meaningless to them, simply a framework to justify the process. Individual scientists as well as university-based research labs, private labs, etc., are essentially bribed with large federal grants to come up with the desired outcomes, lest the free money come to an end.

      Henry Hawkins in reply to Henry Hawkins. | December 6, 2016 at 8:13 pm

      I meant to add that they present their ‘findings’ not to legitimate scientific bodies, but to their own created panels and journals. Basically, they bypass the usual scientific scrutiny and make their case straight to the media. Very few in media know how to vet scientific claims. So, they simply lie wherever their case is weak, manipulate data, exaggerate here, minimize there, whatever it takes to create the impression of solid science to a media and population largely incapable of vetting what they hear.