Somehow, 'feels like' and 'some skepticism' doesn't add up too much of a critique.
He says Evidence indicates the scenarios of the future to 2100 that are at the focus of much of climate research have already diverged from the real world and thus offer a poor basis for projecting policy-relevant variables like economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions.
The question is: is he right or wrong and if the latter, why? We're spending trillions of dollars & affecting people's lives on a massive scale - on betting he's wrong. The issue at least needs discussion.
One other point: How would atmospheric scientists be especially competent to assess 'key variables in climate scenarios compared with data from the real world'? Would they really want to skip their core science to put economic hats on to study how 'population, economic growth, energy intensity of economic growth and carbon intensity of energy consumption' relate to these key variables? Pielke's competence is in this field and climate policy generally. Some of his publications: https://rogerpielkejr.com/pielkeonclimatechange/
> Somehow, 'feels like' and 'some skepticism' doesn't add up too much of a critique.
This is not helpful. Pielke has been heavily involved in one side (and only one side) of the political debate on this topic. It's dishonest to pretend that information isn't relevant in the context of a post like this. He's not a neutral academic that decided to look at the evidence and was shocked to see issues.
> How would atmospheric scientists be especially competent to assess 'key variables in climate scenarios compared with data from the real world'? Would they really want to skip their core science to put economic hats on to study how 'population, economic growth, energy intensity of economic growth and carbon intensity of energy consumption' relate to these key variables? Pielke's competence is in this field and climate policy generally.
While technically this is correct, it's deeply misleading (or whatever is the next step above that). Economists study those issues and have their own journals for publishing those results. Pielke, on the other hand, is trained as a political scientist. Trying to make it sound like he's the only one with the qualifications is, as they used to say, not cool.
Nowadays, the scarce resources are humility and intellectual courage, not qualifications. This is especially true when looking at public policy that is guided by scientific results, because the science often needs to take a back seat to more human concerns. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the science is all that matters, but for every scientific paper published on a subject there are an infinite number of unpublished papers and unexamined data sets. See also: Frederic Bastiat’s essay on “The Seen and the Unseen”
He says Evidence indicates the scenarios of the future to 2100 that are at the focus of much of climate research have already diverged from the real world and thus offer a poor basis for projecting policy-relevant variables like economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions.
The question is: is he right or wrong and if the latter, why? We're spending trillions of dollars & affecting people's lives on a massive scale - on betting he's wrong. The issue at least needs discussion.
One other point: How would atmospheric scientists be especially competent to assess 'key variables in climate scenarios compared with data from the real world'? Would they really want to skip their core science to put economic hats on to study how 'population, economic growth, energy intensity of economic growth and carbon intensity of energy consumption' relate to these key variables? Pielke's competence is in this field and climate policy generally. Some of his publications: https://rogerpielkejr.com/pielkeonclimatechange/