The return of KK!

swing KK tweets My latest @ISSUESinST feature just went online. It covers some sensitive issues in ecology & climate spheres. It’s kinda standard fodder, headlined “The Science Police” in order to wind you up, like The Fail, bylined On highly charged issues, such as climate change and endangered species, peer review literature and public discourse are aggressively patrolled by self-appointed sheriffs in the scientific community. Provocative or wot? I’ll skip the ecology, because I have no expertise there, and come on to the climate. Which is… RP Jr. And if you don’t know who he is, KK helpfully provides a potted description: An interdisciplinary scholar, his research for over two decades was at the intersection of public policy, politics, and science—largely in the treacherous climate arena… Pielke is among the most cited and published academics on climate change and severe weather. Well no, not really. I haven’t looked at his actual citations, but this is deeply misleading. As KK continues, The controversy centers on his research finding that although the climate is warming, this does not necessarily result in the increased frequency or severity of extreme weather disasters. Which is correct, but shows you how narrow RP’s contribution to the science is.

KK essentially destroys his own case by posting mt’s

Michael Tobis, another climate scientist who has locked horns with Pielke, posted a more judicious response on a widely read climate science blog. “Roger is a problematic figure, who is quick to criticize while being quick to take offense,” Tobis wrote. “He’s often right and often wrong, which can be a useful role in itself, but he ought to be able to take as well as he gives if he wants the net of his contribution to be constructive.”

And I think I’ll stick that, and my That’s a touch misleading, because James wrote “recently” in 2008. Otherwise: RP is a big boy and shouldn’t be whining that everyone is being cwuel to him. And I say that as someone who defended him over the Nate Silver stuff.

Possibly somewhat dubious, but didn’t KK use to be RP’s student? Or at U Colorado with him?1

Refs

* Chez ATTP

Notes

1. There’s an early connection but its not that; see APS or SB here.

43 thoughts on “The return of KK!”

  1. KK was there on a year’s mid-career journalism fellowship under Tom Yulsman, so nothing direct to RP Jr. IIRC. But Yulsman was also a big fan/defender of RP Jr. As you will recall one of the latter’s tactics was to assiduously cultivate the press.

    [Maybe that was it. My memories are form the early days, Prometheus and so on. I’m sure I remember somewhere sometime – possibly on Klimazweibel – twitting KK that it was OK for him to disagree with RP -W]

    Like

    Reply

  2. You implied, I’ll say outright: Can’t Kloor come up with something new after all these years? I don’t think the ecology stuff is any better. All just variations on hippie-punching IMO.

    Like

    Reply

  4. Strange to see KK back to his climate games after all this time. He’s as insubstantial as ever, isn’t he.

    I just wrote a very profound response meant to go here, but I think I sent it to the Washington Post by mistake – ha ha. I’ve no idea what article it ended up under. It will confuse the heck out of anyone if they come across it, and probably embarrass me if I stumble upon it.

    Time I did some real work 😦

    Like

    Reply

  5. Somehow the fact that Pielke was (broadly, with some notable exceptions) correct in most of what he has written on weather related losses, the frequency and intensity of climate events, etc., seems to escape the attention of his critics.

    People will forgive most anything, except when the other guy is right. Pielke’s right. The climate brigade hates him for it.

    [RP said some unwelcome true things, which I’ve defended him for. But he has also deliberately courted controversy, and so… well, read the quote from mt. Read the quote from me -W]

    Like

    Reply

  6. Did Fuller forget to mention that he sees himself as just the same sort of martyr? What a coincidence.

    No, he wasn’t right (in a broad sense), although he was very good with cherry-picking things to be right about.

    Among other things, time doesn’t stop at 2100.

    Like

    Reply

  7. Not that I really want to revisit the past, but I’ve read what MT and you have written about me (sometimes but not always in response to wicked things I’ve written about you). Hence I’m not inclined to put much credence in what you’ve written about Pielke.

    Like

    Reply

  8. Tom Fuller: “… I’ve read what MT and you have written about me (sometimes but not always in response to wicked things I’ve written about you). Hence I’m not inclined to put much credence in what you’ve written about Pielke.”

    Considering some of the boners you have written (ex: lied about participating in Operation Rolling Thunder, claiming Tim Lambert called Pielke a denier and not being able to provide a single example), I’m not inclined to put much credence in much of anything you’ve written.

    Like

    Reply

  9. Pielke Jr’s unforgivable sin is assiduously quoting the actual conclusions from the IPCC regarding severe weather, losses etc. Makes it harder for the alarmists to twist the data.

    Like

    Reply

  10. Pielke asked an interesting question: can we detect climate change in terms of extreme weather damages? He pointed out an important confounder: GDP growth. He wrote some papers showing that when controlling for GDP, there is no observed trend in extreme weather damage. In the papers, he notes a key caveat, which is that he didn’t account for the possibility of trends in other key factors, for example better building codes. But in public pronouncements, he always left that caveat out. That is one of the reasons people were annoyed with his work. (while I haven’t seen a definitive synthesis on the subject that I really trust yet, I have seen a few studies suggesting that when normalized against earthquake damages, weather damages have increased. This, of course, is a separate question from whether we expect some kind of weather-related damages to increase in the future).

    And Pielke has shown both his innumeracy _and_ his combativeness in two public episodes where he dug his heels in to defend wrong-headed statistical approaches, e.g.:

    http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-many-of-rogers-findings-about.html
    http://julesandjames.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/putting-roger-out-of-his-misery.html

    Finally, when Pielke goes to testify on the Hill on climate change, the impression his testimony gives is that of a non-problem: he might claim that’s not what he personally believes, but it is a role that he happily plays.

    Like

    Reply

  12. “I actually don’t believe men of honour publish correspondence without permission”

    So writes Tom Fuller, co-author of The CRUTape letters which published the Climategate correspondence without permission.

    From

    [Ah, tantalisingly, you’ve cut that off… -W]

    Like

    Reply

  15. “I actually don’t believe men of honour publish correspondence without permission”

    Yes, but you see, in the first case Tim was publishing part of an email which had been sent to him personally, but in the latter case, Tom Fuller was relying on emails hacked by the Russians, and as we all know, when the Russians hack emails, that cleanses sharing of those emails of all sin.

    Like

    Reply

  19. “ex: lied about participating in Operation Rolling Thunder”

    Because apparently I like wasting time with Google, I looked up the genesis of this… and I’d argue that Fuller is not at fault for this one. Misremembering “Operation Frequent Wind” for “Rolling Thunder” three decades after the fact is completely understandable.

    Like

    Reply

  20. Yes, Rolling Thunder was years prior, and not a Navy operation anyway. But Fuller did otherwise exaggerate his military exploits. Nothing big, just things that burnished his image as a Very Clever Boy and wouldn’t have been caught by someone who hadn’t been in the Navy around the same time.

    But actually the worst instance of his puffery was when, prior to starting his blog, he took a tour de climate science/debate lasting all of (IIRC) 3 weeks and decided that was enough to come to a firm judgement in favor of the likes of McIntyre.

    Also, he’s a liberal Democrat. Just ask him.

    Like

    Reply

  21. Actually, no. I didn’t exaggerate anything and you’ve been lying about it for close on to a decade, Bloom.

    You’ve been lying about it because we’re on different sides of the climate issue. You don’t know me. You don’t know my history. It’s just enough that we’re on different sides.

    The fact that you were in submarines on the other side of the planet apparently gave you license to pronounce on what surface vessels could and should do with regard to bucket tossing for temperature measurements. Your head exploded when I told you the practice had not disappeared and showed you how to buy one from the federal catalogue. So you began to lie about my history. I helped by confusing the two campaigns. Other than that, what I wrote was true.

    It’s the fact that you (and others like you) were so freely willing to lie about me that has shaped everything I felt, wrote and published about the climate conversation ever since.

    But that’s okay, Bloom. I tell the story to people who belonged to the Sierra Club. I work hard to persuade them to leave. Some do.

    Like

    Reply

  23. Would someone with more patience than I have post the links that back up TF’s claims that he’s being mistreated here?
    I’d especially like to see a cite for
    > Your head exploded
    Mere assertions on blogs don’t carry much weight, as memory starts to fade and get distorted.

    Rolling thunder, frequent wind, all sounds like bad gas.

    Like

    Reply

  24. Mr. Roberts, the fart connection probably contributed to my (forgive me) conflating the two.

    I did not claim that I’m being mistreated here. It was elsewhere.

    Like

    Reply

  27. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Remote_Sensing_Systems&type=revision&diff=788338689&oldid=766421181

    The details there look slim by comparison with
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset#Corrections_made
    Perhaps someone with more knowledge could improve that.

    Some updating done at
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Satellite_temperature_measurements&type=revision&diff=788342906&oldid=788228472
    Is that the sort of ‘worth mentioning’ sort of notes you think appropriate?

    Like

    Reply

  28. A certain indicator of the nothingness associated with this is that Eli is too bored by it to comment.

    Like

    Reply

  30. To reply to Tom would be to care
    To reply to Tom would be to comment
    It is a far far better thing to do to not.

    Like

    Reply

  31. So *I’m* responsible for Evil Fuller. Well, that’s sort of… empowering.

    As for your campaign to strip the Sierra Club of its members (who then will pay Carl Pope’s pension?), keep it up. Maybe they’ll join a more aggressive enviro organization.

    Like

    Reply

  32. Be careful what you aggress for.

    Pruitt might sign off on UNEP paying Appalachian coal miners to lop off the Sierras at the snow line , and export the spoil to shore up Kiribati & the Maldives.

    Like

    Reply

  36. For Tom Fuller, who asked
    > “Where’d you find a picture of my grandmother?”

    Here’s the source page:

    Like

    Reply

  39. Mr. Roberts, you may not know, but I am somewhat to the left of Marx–either Groucho or Karl, not quite sure. I campaigned for Hiillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey.

    And donated to most of their campaigns. And supported most of their policies. Including climate change.

    Like

    Reply

  40. 39

    And supported most of their policies. Including climate change.

    My condolences. How is Presdent Carter’s Strategic Oil Shale Initiative coming along ?

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment