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Roger Pielke, Jr. has an essay in The New Republic on the recent debate with John Holdren, Science Advisor to President Obama.
An Obama Advisor Is Attacking Me for Testifying That Climate Change Hasn’t Increased Extreme Weather by Roger Pielke, Jr.
The New Republic
March 6, 2014
Excerpt: Last Friday, the White House posted on its website a six-page criticism of me by the president’s science advisor, John Holdren, expanding on testimony he had given to Congress last week claiming that my views on climate change and extreme weather are outside of “mainstream scientific opinion.” Holdren was specifically responding to Senate testimony I gave last year where I argued that recent extreme weather events, including hurricanes, droughts, floods, and tornadoes, have not increased in recent decades due to human-caused climate change.
In this debate the facts are on my side. The claims I made in my congressional testimony are no different from the ones made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“Long-term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded”) and broadly supported in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Even Warren Buffett recently explained that more extreme events haven’t affected his insurance investments, but that “I love apocalyptic predictions” because they increase insurance rates, earning him more money. When Holdren links specific weather events to human-caused climate change—such as the California drought or the cold winter—he is exaggerating the state of scientific understandings.
His subsequent attack on me has him serving not as science advisor to the president, but rather wielding his political position to delegitimize an academic whose views he finds inconvenient. We academics wouldn’t stand for such behavior under George W. Bush and we shouldn’t under Barack Obama either.
Our debate aside, Holdren’s exaggerations on climate science will make it harder, not easier, to establish a bipartisan consensus for action on climate change.
As background, I am an expert on the relationship between natural disasters and climate change. I have published extensively in the scientific, peer-reviewed literature over the past several decades. I believe the basic science of climate change is sound and has been for decades. Humans influence the climate today and will into the future, mainly through the emission of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, and this influence poses unknown, but potentially large and irreversible risks in the future. The conclusions lay at the core of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which despite a few missteps along the way, has well-summarized these fundamental understandings.
Moreover, I have argued for nearly two decades that stronger policy action is needed by nations to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. I have called for a carbon tax linked to greater government spending on energy technology innovation. And I have supported what President Obama has done to combat climate change, including stronger regulations on efficiency, power plants, and his funding for energy innovation and investment overseas.
Why, then, am I being attacked by the White House science advisor as outside the scientific mainstream?
Because I have also argued against exaggerating the relationship between climate change and extreme weather. While politicians and environmental advocates routinely attribute natural disasters with human-caused climate change, the uncomfortable reality is that such attribution remains speculative. There is not yet a scientific basis for making such a connection. That is not an argument against taking action, but it is an argument for accurately representing the science. Read more …
