The Honest Broker Profile picture
Oct 16, 2022 11 tweets 4 min read Read on X
🧵
By now everyone is aware of the two young people who spilled some soup on Van Gogh's Sunflower's at the UK National Gallery

I've seen a lot of debate over whether they should have, or not, or it's effectiveness, or not, as advocacy

Here I explore the WHY of @JustStop_Oil
First, let me express nothing but support for young people engaging in political advocacy & trying to make the world a better place

My advice to young people about advocacy is the same as it is to scientists ... know what you are doing and why

So let's take a look at their WHY
JSO says

"Humanity is on the verge of an abyss, accelerated human induced climate change will destroy human civilisation unless emergency action is taken to rapidly reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) to zero in a very short timescale"
juststopoil.org/wp-content/upl…
It's understandable that if a group truly holds millenarian beliefs they are going to act out in radical ways

They literally believe that "Further expansion of oil and gas production globally is putting us on course for human extinction"

Where did they get such views?

From us
I encourage you to read the @JustStop_Oil manifesto

It's a sad statement of what we experts have done to young people

It is chock full of hyperbole from authoritative figures, references to work of the "planetary boundaries" folks & RCP8.5 studies

The below from their preamble
What literature do they cite to support their millenarian, apocalyptic views?

They cite a lot from the commentaries on "planetary boundaries"

We responded to last week to these folks pushing back against their calls for even more apocalyptic focus in research
Of course, the "tipping points" commentary cited by JSO earned an all-time correction for misleading its readers about risk
And most of their references to the scientific literature to justify their doomed outlook lead to - what else - RCP8.5 studies
The JSO manifest dismisses the IPCC report based on a Washington Post article that quotes a number of scientists dissatisfied with the IPCC and then asks, ironically enough: "What danger is there in being overly alarmist on the subject?"
washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/…
So good job everyone

Efforts to undermine the IPCC, climate science & elevate the prospects of a near-term apocalypse have borne fruit, at least w/ this group

Climate change is real, serious & vigorous policy action makes sense

I am sorry to disappoint, but the end is not nigh

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More from @RogerPielkeJr

Feb 23
I have been digging into methodological and data errors in Grinsted et al. 2019, some of which you can see in the thread below

This nerdy thread on US hurricane loss data documents how bad data gets created (surely accidentally) . . .
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 Image
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 . . . Image
Read 5 tweets
Feb 22
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... Image
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" Image
@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

"Pielke Jr has finally made his bed!!" Image
Read 9 tweets
Feb 20
🧵
"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"

Take that 645 miles/year to the next Tweet...

gridstrategiesllc.com/wp-content/upl…
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%

repeatproject.org/docs/REPEAT_IR…
Image
Read 7 tweets
Feb 15
SpringerNature held off sending my submission for peer review because:

"We thought it prudent to seek advice on the potential risks of publishing claims that may appear to criticise the actions of government bodies"

Now under review

Read it here:
osf.io/preprints/soca…
Image
I was only informed of the evaluation of my paper for political risk after that review took place

This is a plain vanilla policy evaluation, but that should not matter

So in addition to passing peer review it had to pass political review

Just when you think you've seen it all
I was just asked if I am worried that commenting on this publicly might hurt my paper's chances of being published

Ha! Simply having my name on a paper probably does that ;-)

But sunshine is far more important
Read 4 tweets
Jan 26
Biden: LNG exports—>historic hurricanes & floods
But is that true?
🧵⤵️
How about hurricanes?
Not increasing Image
Well, what about major hurricanes?
Not increasing Image
Read 8 tweets
Dec 14, 2023
🧵
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? Image
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"

Whoopsy
Image
Image
Media clickbait in 3..2..1.. Image
Read 4 tweets

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