Cleaning Up: Leadership in an Age of Climate Change

The Inconvenient Truth about Climate Science - Ep93: Prof. Roger Pielke Jr.

Jun 29, 2022

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr., an expert in policy and governance related to science, technology, environment, innovation, and sports, discusses various topics including the tension between scenarios and forecasts in climate change, the Kaya Identity for understanding carbon emissions, hurricane impacts and policy responses, detecting climate change impacts on extreme events, concerns about the misuse of scenarios in climate science, and the ethics of climate change communication.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

The Tension Between Scenarios and Forecasts in Climate Change

02:00 • 15min

Understanding Carbon Emissions: The Kaya Identity

17:13 • 5min

Understanding Hurricane Impacts and Policy Responses

22:19 • 10min

Detecting Climate Change Impacts on Extreme Events

32:24 • 23min

Concerns about Climate Science and the Misuse of Scenarios

55:11 • 5min

The Implausibility of RCP 8.5 Scenario

59:55 • 22min

Flaws in Climate Science Scenarios

01:22:03 • 11min

Misuse of Scenarios by the Climate Science Community and Lack of Recognition

01:32:45 • 2min

The Ethics of Climate Change Communication and Building Trust

01:34:32 • 5min

Roger Pielke, Jr. has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder since 2001, where he teaches and writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, innovation and sports. Roger is a professor in the Environmental Studies Program. Roger is currently focusing his research on a NSF-sponsored, 16-country evaluation of science advice in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roger holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science, all from the University of Colorado. In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and was also awarded the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America. In 2006, Roger received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich, Germany in 2006 for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research.

Roger has been a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan since 2016. From 2019 he has served as a science and economics adviser to Environmental Progress. Roger was a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences from 2001 to 2016. He served as a Senior Fellow of The Breakthrough Institute from 2008 to 2018. In 2007 Roger served as a James Martin Fellow at Oxford University’s Said Business School. Before joining the faculty of the University of Colorado, from 1993 to 2001 Roger was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

At the University of Colorado, Roger founded and directed both the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and the Sports Governance Center. He also created and led the university’s Graduate Certificate Program in Science and Technology Policy, which has seen its graduates move on to faculty positions, Congressional staff, presidential political appointees and in positions in business and civil society.

His books include Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society (with R. Pielke Sr., 1997, John Wiley, full text free as PDF), Prediction: Science, Decision Making and the Future of Nature (with D. Sarewitz and R. Byerly, 2001, Island Press), The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics published by Cambridge University Press (2007), The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell you About Global Warming (2010, Basic Books). Presidential Science Advisors: Reflections on Science, Policy and Politics (with R. Klein, 2011, Springer), and The Edge: The War Against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports (Roaring Forties Press, 2016). His most recent book is The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change (2nd edition, 2018, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes).