If we get sucked into a “forest management” vs “climate change” framing Trump has already won the propaganda battle
Winning this debate (whatever that means) does not restore trust, legitimacy, competency or work against autocracy
It gets RTs & excites people
But don’t do it
I have no doubt that Biden & a future Biden administration will depart from Trumpian autocratic governance
That won’t be about mouthing appropriate words about “the science” but securing respect for expertise in federal agencies among elected & appointed figures and the public
The idea that Trump’s delegitimization of federal agencies & their expertise = Biden’s exaggeration of climate change is the false equivalency
They are not remotely comparable
Which is why I question Biden’s appeals to “the science” rather than going straight to competency
Of course Biden should play things straight on climate change — it is both tactically smart & the right thing to do
But more importantly, he should avoid getting trapped in a “forest management” vs “climate change” debate that feeds red meat to partisans but little else
Bottom line:
Central issue here is competency in governance — getting stuff done, like protecting people from hazards, responding to the pandemic, decarbonizing the economy
Pretending this is about “the science” gives Trump an easy win
It is about competency & autocracy
🙏
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A time series of base (i.e., current-year) loses was first compiled from annual reports published in the Monthly Weather Review by Chris Landsea in 1989 for 1949-1989
I extended the data using same methods to 1996
Chris and I extended back to 1900 for Pielke and Landsea 1998
Then, Pielke et al. 2008 extend the dataset to 2005, again using the same methods
The heavy lifting was done by my then-student Joel Gratz
Joel graduated and went to an insurance company called ICAT . . .
Last month I revealed based on files part of the public record of the Michael Mann trial how Mann coordinated peer review of a paper of mine to ensure that it "would not see the light of day"
I only had a snippet of the relevant Mann email
Now I have the whole thing
And JFC...
First
New: the editor of GRL, Jay Familigetti, originally sent our submission to Mann!
That's right
A paper by Pielke & @ClimateAudit was sent to Mann to peer review
Mann wisely didn't accept but instead recommended hostile reviewers so that "it would not see the light of day"
@ClimateAudit Mann emails his partners Caspar Amann (NCAR) and Gavin Schmidt (NASA) to express his glee that this gives him an opportunity to cause harm
🧵
"The U.S. installed 1,700 miles of new high-voltage transmission miles per year on average in the first half of the 2010s but dropped to only 645 miles per year on average in the second half of the 2010s"
The US has 240,000 miles of high voltage transmission capacity
An expansion of 645 miles/year is just about 0.3%/yr
Take that 0.3%/year HV grid expansion to the next Tweet
The Princeton study (@JesseJenkins) used to promote the Inflation Reduction Act claimed the HV grid has been expanding at a rate of 1% per year based on a newsletter from JP Morgan
That 1% is >3x greater than actual recent grid expansion rates of 0.3%
🧵
I have a new favorite example of bad statistics on disasters
By 2085, climate-fueled natural disasters will cost more than $100 trillion, or more than the entire US GDP
Big if true!
What is the methodology?
EM-DAT of course
Misinterpretation Left
What EM-DAT says right:
"what the figure is really showing is the evolution of the registration of natural disaster events over time"