The Rightful Place of Science
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[87] IPCC, Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012), available at: http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/
[88] Z.W. Kundzewicz, S. Kanae, S.I. Seneviratne, J. Handmer, N. Nicholls, P. Peduzzi, R. Mechler, L.M. Bouwer, N. Arnell, K. Mach, R. Muir-Wood, G.R. Brakenridge, W. Kron, G. Benito, Y. Honda, K. Takahashi, and B. Sherstyukov, “Flood risk and climate change: global and regional perspectives,” Hydrological Sciences Journal 59 (2014): pp. 1-28.
[89] K.M. Simmons, D. Sutter, and R. Pielke, Jr., “Normalized tornado damage in the United States: 1950-2011,” Environmental Hazards 12 (2013): pp. 132-147.
[90] IPCC, Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012), available at: http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/
[91] Ibid.
[92] See the National Climate Assessment report at: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/; similarly, the U.S. NCA did not find evidence of an nationwide increase in floods, tornadoes or landfalling hurricanes, perfectly consistent with the IPCC and the information presented here.
[93] “Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional,” Ch. 10 in IPCC, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), available at: http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/ report/WG1AR5_Chapter10_FINAL.pdf
[94] R.P. Crompton, K.J. McAneny, K.P. Chen, R.A. Pielke, and K. Haynes, “Influence of Location, Population, and Climate on Building Damage and Fatalities due to Australian Bushfire: 1925-2009,” Weather, Climate, and Society 2 (2009): pp. 300-310.
[95] That paper prompted a response from Neville Nicholls and a subsequent rejoinder from us. I encourage anyone interested in this subject to read all three papers, which can be found at: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/publications/special/australian_bushfires.html
[96] M. Drajem, “Obama Uses Your TV Weather Guru to Show How Wind Blows on Climate,” Bloomberg (6 May 2014), available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-06/obama-looks-to-weathermen-to-make-case-on-climate-change.html
[97] “President Obama’s Plan to Fight Climate Change,” The White House website (25 June 2013), available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/climate-action-plan
[98] The National Climate Assessment report, available at: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/
[99] With the challenges to the president’s claims coming almost exclusively from those opposed to his political agenda on climate, it reinforces the politicization of the science of climate change and extreme events. When science advisor Holdren was challenged under the so-called Data Quality Act by a conservative group on one of his public claims about the association of extreme winter weather of 2014 and climate change, the White House responded by explaining that Holdren’s comments represented personal opinion rather than scientific conclusions. The exchange went unreported by the major media.
[100] The following section draws on and updates an essay that first appeared in Foreign Policy in 2012. That piece was in turn based on the much more comprehensive analysis found in The Climate Fix (Basic Books, 2011).
[101] These (round) numbers come from the calculations found in Chapter 4 of The Climate Fix, and refer to a 2.5 megawatt turbine and a 10 megawatt solar thermal plant, each operating at 30% efficiency. As I explain there, these numbers are measuring sticks: they ignore technological deployment issues like storage and transmission.
[102] J. D. Jenkins, “Political economy constraints on carbon pricing policies: What are the implications for economic efficiency, environmental efficacy, and climate policy design?” Energy Policy 69 (2014): pp. 467-477.
[103] “Daily Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney and Senior Advisor to the President John Podesta 05/05/14,” The White House, Office of the Press Secretary (5 May 2014), available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/05/ 05/daily-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-and-senior-advisor-president-j
[104] Carbon “offsets” refer to the practice of paying a price for emissions reductions made elsewhere. Often these “reductions” are in the form of reductions from a counterfactual baseline, that is, increases which occur at a lower rate than expected. Much has been written on this topic.
[105] As quoted in The Climate Fix.
[106] This section draws upon a piece of mine first published in The Guardian. See R. Pielke, Jr., “Have the climate sceptics really won?” The Guardian (24 May 2013), available at: http://www.theguardian.com/science/political-science/2013/may/24/climate-sceptics-winning-science-policy
[107] M. Wolf, “Global inaction shows that the climate skeptics have already won,” Financial Times (21 May 2013), available at: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9742cc76-c142-11e2-b93b-00144feab7de.html#axzz3GLVge28C
[108] F. Harvey, “Prince Charles attacks global warming skeptics,” The Guardian (9 May 2013), available at: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/09/prince-charles-climate-change-sceptics
[109] D.M. Kahan, H. Jenkins-Smith, and D. Braman, “Cultural cognition of scientific consensus,” Journal of Risk Research 14, No. 2 (2011): pp. 147-174.
[110] L. Saad, “American’s Concerns About Global Warming on the Rise,” Gallup Politics website (8 Apr. 2013), available at: http://www.gallup.com/poll/161645/americans-concerns-global-warming-rise.aspx
[111] B.W. Pelham, “Awareness, Opinions About Global Warming Vary Worldwide,” Gallup World website (22 Apr. 2009), available at: http://www.gallup.com/poll/117772/Awareness-Opinions-Global-Warming-Vary-Worldwide.aspx#2
[112] D. Kahan, “Annual ‘new study’ finds 97% of climate scientists believe in man-made climate change; public consensus sure to follow once news gets out,” The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School website (17 May 2013), available at: http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/5/17/annual-new-study-finds-97-of-climate-scientists-believe-in-m.html
[113] I have also concluded based on my experiences that for many, participating in the climate wars serves as a fun online hobby.
[114] Editorial Board, “Palm Oil’s Deceptive Lure,” New York Times (4 May 2014), available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/ 05/opinion/palm-oils-deceptive-lure.html
[115] T. Nordhaus and M. Shellenberger, “Fast, Clean, and Cheap: Cutting Global Warming’s Gordian Knot,” Harvard Law and Policy Review, Vol. II (Jan. 2008).
[116] For much more in this direction of thinking, I recommend G. Prins, I. Galiana, C. Green, R. Grundmann, M. Hulme, A. Korhola, F. Laird, T. Nordhaus, R. Pielke, Jr., S. Rayner, D. Sarewitz, M. Shellenberger, N. Stehr, and H. Tezuka, The Hartwell Paper: A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009 (Oxford and London, UK: University of Oxford and London School of Economics, May 2010), available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/ 27939/1/HartwellPaper_English_version.pdf