{"id":318163,"date":"2024-04-16T09:56:24","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T07:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=318163"},"modified":"2024-04-16T09:56:26","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T07:56:26","slug":"climate-cooking-from-roger-pielke-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=318163","title":{"rendered":"Climate Cooking:\u00a0 from Roger Pielke Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Excerpts from Roger Pielke Jr.\u2019s Substack<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cHow a few billionaires helped push climate science to the extremes<\/strong>\u201c<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Pielke Jr. starts with an update on his important work in challenging flawed narratives of catastrophe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy Saturday! First, a few announcements. My paper, Scientific Integrity and U.S. \u201cBillion Dollar Disasters\u201d<\/a> has passed peer-review and will soon be published in the new Nature journal <\/em>npj Natural Hazards<\/em><\/strong>. You can read the as-accepted-draft of the paper at OSF<\/a>, which I have just posted. On Tuesday at 2PM ET, I\u2019ll be testifying at the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic at a hearing titled, \u201cAcademic Malpractice: Examining the Relationship Between Scientific Journals, the Government, and Peer Review<\/a>.\u201d Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of Science is also scheduled to testify. I\u2019ll post my testimony and reflections following the hearing, which you can watch here<\/a>.<\/em>https:\/\/rogerpielkejr.substack.com\/p\/climate-cooking<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The rest of his post is an update to a 2020 article in Forbes.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I strongly recommend reading the piece in its entirety.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction: The Genesis of a Narrative<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roger Pielke Jr.\u2019s exposition reveals the origins and impacts of the influential RCP8.5 climate scenario, which has shaped much of contemporary climate research and policy. The narrative begins with Tom Steyer\u2019s 2012 gathering, where leading environmental and political figures discussed strategies to make climate change a more palpable issue for the public through economic narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Billionaire\u2019s Table and the Birth of a Strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the center of the corruption of climate science discussed here sits a highly technical scenario of the future called Representation Concentration Pathway 8.5 or RCP8.5. Longtime readers of THB will no doubt be familiar with RCP8.5 and its consequences, but for anyone needing a quick primer, have a look at our short paper in <\/a>Issues in Science and Technology<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I add further details to this incredible story by explaining the important role in promoting RCP8.5 played by billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The meeting, described as a turning point, was not merely a discussion but a strategic planning session that aimed to reframe climate change as an immediate economic threat. \u201cSteyer was focused on the question: \u2018How do you make climate change feel real and immediate for people?’\u201d The outcome was a targeted approach to influence public perception and policy through economic impact studies, leading to the creation of the \u201cRisky Business\u201d project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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According to the <\/a>New York Times<\/a><\/em>, in November 2012, one month after stepping down from the hedge fund he led, Steyer gathered environmental leaders and Democratic party leaders around the kitchen table at his ranch in Pescadero, California. Among those in attendance were Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org<\/a>, and John Podesta, who had founded the Center for American Progress (CAP) in 2003<\/a> to promote progressive causes.1<\/a> Today, John Podesta serves as President Biden\u2019s \u201cclimate envoy,\u201d<\/a> recently replacing John Kerry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the 2012 kitchen table meeting, Steyer was focused on the question: \u201cHow do you make climate change feel real and immediate for people?<\/a>\u201d He was convinced by attendees that the best way to answer this question was by appealing to people\u2019s pocketbooks, through the economics of climate impacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following this meeting, Steyer invited two collaborators and co-funders to join him \u2014 One was Michael Bloomberg<\/a>, then a political independent who was completing 12 years as the mayor of New York. The other was Hank Paulson<\/a>, a Republican who was a former CEO of Goldman Sachs and who had also served as Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of Steyer, Bloomberg and Paulson contributed $500,000 to the initial project, which had the goal of,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cmaking the climate threat feel real, immediate and potentially devastating to the business world<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Risky Business and the Misuse of RCP8.5<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The core of the \u201cRisky Business\u201d report was to project the economic implications of the most extreme emissions scenario\u2014RCP8.5\u2014as the most likely outcome if no action was taken. This projection was fundamentally flawed, as it misrepresented RCP8.5 as \u2018business as usual\u2019 and suggested, erroneously, that policy changes could shift us from one RCP scenario to another. Pielke critiques this approach: \u201cBoth of these methodological choices were contrary to the appropriate use of the scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The approach focused on characterizing the extreme RCP8.5 scenario as \u201cthe closest to a business-as-usual trajectory<\/a>\u201d and centered its economic analysis on that scenario:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cwe focus on RCP 8.5 as the pathway closest to a future without concerted action to reduce future warming<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By focusing on the most extreme scenario as business-as-usual they guaranteed that the economic impacts of climate change that they projected into the future would be eye-poppingly large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in generating large economic impacts, the authors of the Risky Business<\/em> report made two significant methodological mistakes. In addition to improperly characterizing the extreme RCP 8.5 scenario as \u201cbusiness as usual,\u201d they improperly presented other scenarios of the IPCC as representing different policy outcomes, suggesting that we could \u201cmove\u201d from one scenario to another: \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving from RCP 8.5 to RCP 2.6 (as well as RCP 4.5 and RCP 6.0) will come at a cost<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both of these methodological choices were contrary to the appropriate use of the scenarios, according the modeling experts who created them<\/a>, and who explained at the time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRCP8.5 cannot be used as a no-climate-policy reference scenario [\u201dbusiness as usual\u201d] for the other RCPs because RCP8.5\u2019s socioeconomic, technology and biophysical assumptions differ from those of the other RCPs\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scenarios are completely independent from each other, and policy cannot \u201cmove\u201d us from one to another. Consider that RCP2.6 represents a world with 3 billion less people than RCP8.5<\/a>. The Risky Business<\/em> methodology ignored such critical details while promoting a simple narrative.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Propagation Through Scientific and Media Channels<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dodgy science published by climate advocacy groups is certainly not uncommon and it is usually not that interesting. But the genius of the Risky Business<\/em> project was that it did not stop with a flashy report aimed at the daily news cycle. It undertook a far more sophisticated campaign focused on introducing its methods into the mainstream scientific literature, where they would take on a life of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, soon after the initial Risky Business<\/em> report was released in 2014 the Steyer-Bloomberg-Paulson funded work was the basis for 11 talks<\/a> at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union<\/em> in San Francisco, which is the largest annual gathering of climate researchers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The flawed assumptions of the \u201cRisky Business\u201d reports did not remain confined to a single project but spread through scientific literature and the media, influencing major assessments and policy decisions. This widespread adoption was facilitated by continued advocacy and publication in prestigious journals, despite the methodological errors. \u201cThe Risky Business analyses published in the scientific literature\u2026influenced subsequent research and served as a basis for authoritative scientific reviews,\u201d Pielke notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The next step was to get the Risky Business<\/em> analyses published in the scientific literature where they could influence subsequent research and serve as a basis for authoritative scientific reviews, such as the U.S. National Climate Assessment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, a 2016 paper published in the prestigious journal <\/a>Science<\/a><\/em> from the Risky Business<\/em> project featured the erroneous notion of moving from one RCP scenario to another via policy, comparing \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d (RCP 8.5) and \u201cstrongest emissions mitigation\u201d (RCP 2.6). That paper has subsequently been cited more than 1,100 times<\/a> (as of April 2024) according to Google Scholar<\/a>. Despite the obvious methodological flaw, the paper passed peer review and received little or no criticism. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of papers followed similarly in adopted the same assumption of \u201cmoving\u201d between incommensurate scenarios.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 2018 U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA) offers a particularly notable example. The work initiated by the Risky Business<\/em> project was cited almost 200 times in that report, including direct references to the project\u2019s reports as well as the work of its lead consultant, the Rhodium Group<\/a>. One of the lead researchers for Risky Business<\/em> was also a lead author of the NCA<\/a>. His research, supported by Risky Business<\/em>, was cited more than 150 times in the NCA<\/a>. Yet, nowhere that I have seen was it disclosed by the NCA that this lead author was under contract with the Rhodium Group<\/a> from 2015 to 2022.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Pielke Jr. notes the subsequent creation of the Climate Impact Lab<\/a> used to inundate the media with catastrophic alarmist stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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