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.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY