Schmidt's refusal to acknowledge the incredible work @jritch and focus on me suggests that this is once again more of a personal issue he has with me than anything else
That would explain why his letter pretty much agrees with & acknowledges our claims while posturing otherwise
Those Real Climate guys really can hold a grudge 😉
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
🧵
Why are climate scientists so mad at me?
Here's one answer
For almost 30 yrs I've been writing abt the conflicts between (a) the special interests of the climate science community and (b) the broader social responsibilities of this community
Pretty normal STS fare ... read on
My 1994 PhD dissertation was an evaluation of the then newly-created US Global Change Research Program link.springer.com/content/pdf/10…
I argued that the USGCRP would do a lot of good science but have limited policy relevance (a conclusion later reached by a @theNASEM study)
I was a post-doc at NCAR when this paper came out
It resulted in a furor
NSF funded NCAR & the program officer who oversaw NSF funding was central to creation of USGCRP
My job was threatened
A huge debate ensued
UCAR leaders pushed back on the pressure
I kept my job
A preview...
Scenario misuse in climate science is far deeper and nuanced than semantics of reference scenarios (as some would have us believe)
They are also very pedestrian mistakes, common to efforts to use scenario methods in research
Not surprising or unique to climate, but significant
The petulance, name-calling and invented quotes we saw earlier today suggests that our first recommendation won't be easily taken😉
Easier to attack messengers than hear their messages
We all all suffer the consequences when science gets off track and some try to keep it there
The responses I've had today the this discussion have me optimistic that the powerful few gatekeepers in the climate space of 2009 are not so powerful in 2021
The teeth gnashing & name calling remains the same, but most now see it for what it is, and that's good news
🧵 @ISSUESinST several climate scientists & Marcia McNutt (@theNASEM pres) respond to @jritch & my recent article on misuse of climate scenarios, offering a unified defense of RCP8.5
With the IEA now projecting a near-term emissions trajectory <RCP4.5 I've been taking a peek at the gatekeeping on RCP8.5 debates over recent years
A rich vein to explore
Really remarkable public evidence of how scientific progress gets stunted by a few powerful people
Examples
Despite @bradplumer recognizing implausibility of RCP8.5 in 2017 (props!) the NYT has apparently never written anything critical about the misuse of the scenario (my NYT search finds only 6 articles that explicitly mention RCP8.5 or "RCP 8.5")
With powerful figures Mann & Hayhoe (they weren't alone) warning critique of RCP8.5 is "denial," no wonder it has taken so long for researchers and journalists to deem its discussion to be legitimate
What's the difference between a for-profit climate analytics firm & a non-profit one, both living off of RCP8.5? 🤷♂️
I'm all for people making good money
Especially when they have paying clients for their services
But non-profit expectations are (and should be) different
Don't even get me started on sports organizations!
Latest haul of RCP8.5 headlines
Catnip for the climate beat and utterly irresponsible
The same group did the same analysis with the same conclusions based on RCP8.5 in 2015
Rinse, repeat
The exploitation of shoddy, inattentive peer-review processes by climate advocacy groups is extremely well done
Props to their cleverness
But that really shouldn’t happen
Some text peer reviewers can use when reviewing RCP8.5 (& similar) studies:
“RCP8.5 may have appropriate uses as an extreme, exploratory, implausible scenario, but it is absolutely and undeniably inappropriate to use to generate plausible or likely projections of the future.”