I got tired of repeatedly preemptively-deleting & reposting-with-addenda my waiting-for-moderation post on When Science Influencers Polarize Our Politics, so have decided to post newly-found material on a ‘Side Conversation’.
A few people were outraged that I called Roger Pielke, Jr. a “climate troll” in my last post. I meant that in a particular way, and it’s worth a bit of explanation.
As I said, I believe both Pielke and the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank which shares his general political strategy towards climate change, are basically worthless. I call them climate trolls not because they are full-blown deniers, but because their strategy, which consists primarily of dogpiling any green or allied scientist who puts a toe out of line (and many who haven’t) is politically idiotic, and a lot better at getting them media attention than achieving anything substantive.
Pielke’s constant attacks on credentialed climate scientists have somehow failed to convince Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. In fact, they have probably done a nontrivial amount to increase the confidence of conservatives that there isn’t a strong consensus behind basic climate science.
Now, after close examination, I don’t think Pielke is actually someone who argues in good faith. The time he accused the IPCC lead author Christopher Field of misleading Congress (noticing a theme here?), for example, is some tendentious strawman pillaging of the kind Stephen Schneider warned about.
Based upon this, and similar comments, I would question whether Roger Pielke, Jr. is an “honest broker” (to use the title of both his own book and his substack column) on topics such as Climate Change, “Polarization”, and the Politicisation of Science.