THE UN’S MISSION IS TO IMPOSE CLIMATE ACTION AND THE IPCC’S JOB IS TO PROVIDE A “SCIENTIFIC” RATIONALE FOR CLIMATE ACTION. THE EXPLANATION OF THE ODDITY THAT ALL CLIMATE IMPACTS ARE BAD, THAT ALL BAD THINGS ARE CLIMATE IMPACTS, AND THAT IN THE SCIENCE OF CLIMATE IMPACTS THERE ARE NO GOOD IMPACTS AND NO ATTRIBUTION FAILURES DUE TO UNCERTAINTY IS THAT IPCC SCIENCE IS NOT UNBIASED OBJECTIVE SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY BUT AGENDA DRIVEN TO PROVIDE THE RATIONALE NEEDED  BY THE UN FOR ITS PRE-DETERMINED CLIMATE ACTION AGENDA. IT IS THUS, THAT IN THE AGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, ALL PROBLEMS – BE IT POLITICAL OR SOCIAL UNREST, WAR, FAMINE, MIGRATION, OR DISEASE – CAN BE FRAMED IN TERMS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND THEN SOLVED SIMPLY BY CUTTING EMISSIONS. 

A CAUTIONARY TALE ABOUT THE INNER WORKINGS OF THE IPCC AND OF THE EXTREME RISK TO CLIMATE SCIENTISTS OF NOT CONFORMING TO CONSENSUS

ATTRIBUTION OF EXTREME WEATHER TO AGW & THE IPCC

by Roger Pielke Jr published as a Twitter Thread

1. I started studying extreme events in 1993 when I began a post-doc at NCAR on a project focused on lessons learned in Hurricane Andrew & the Midwest floods of 1993. I worked for MickeyGlantz, who was one of my most significant mentors. On March 15, 2006 I received an award from the NAS & gave a lecture to a large audience at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in DC. My work was viewed to be important, novel and, legitimate. Two months later, An Inconvenient Truth came out, focused on politicizing extreme weather in the climate debate. Extreme weather had always been part of the debate, but it was becoming more central as advocates tried to make climate more relevant to the public.

2. That same May, 2006 I was busy organizing a major international workshop in partnership with MunichRe in Hohenkammer, Germany. We wanted to assess the science of disasters and climate change as input to the upcoming IPCC AR4 report. We wanted to assess scientific understandings on the causes of the trend shown in the data. Why were disasters getting more costly (Chart#1)?  We started by thinking that we’d produce a “consensus/dissensus” report, but wound up with 100% consensus. The workshop [LINK] involved 32 participants & we comissioned 24 background papers. We produced a summary that was published in Science [LINK] [LINK] .
3. The three consensus statements most relevant to this talk are: [Analysis of long term records of disaster losses indicate that societal change and economic development are the principal factors responsible for the increasing losses to date] and [Because of issues related to data quality, the stochastic nature of extreme event impacts, length of time series, and various societal factors present in the disaster loss record, it is still not possible to determine the portion of the increase in damages that can be attributed to climate change due to GHG emissions]. If increasing disaster losses were the result of climate change due to GHG emissions, we could not detect that. It was not a close call, it was unanimous.
4. So when the IPCC AR4 came out, I excitedly looked to see what role this report played in their report. I went to Section “1.3.8.5 Summary of disasters and hazards” only to be blindsided. The report cited “one study” that was apparently at odds with what we had concluded in our assessment. How could 32 experts have all missed this “one study”? The IPCC report said, [1.3.8.5 Summary of Disasters and Hazards: Global losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather related events Since the 1970s. One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of the exposure at risk, once losses are normalized for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend].
5. The IPCC AR4 included a mysterious chart [Chart#2] that relates increasing catastrophic losses to rising global temperature. It had never seen that chart before. The reference was [Muir-Wood et al 2006]. It was one of the papers we had commissioned for the Hohenkammer workshop. But I knew it did not include that mysterious graph nor any analysis of temperatures and disasters [Chart#3]. The mysterious temperature to catastrophic loss chart was mysteriously slipped into the IPCC report by one of its authors. who mis-cited it to our Hohenkammer white paper to circumvent an IPCC deadline. He had expected the chart to appear in a future publication but had to mis-cite it to meet the IPCC deadline [Chart#4].
6. That future paper was eventually published well after the IPCC AR4 was released. The paper says [We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and normalized catastrophe losses.] That seemed like a big deal & it was. The Sunday Times did a very good news story on it [Chart#5]. I was interviewed by Christina Larson and it was this interview in which I described the IPCC AR4 irregularities, that resulted in the hit job below [Chart#6] which turned me into a climate “denier”. The Center for American Progress amplified the hit job & continued a campaign of de-legitimization of me & my work. It was relentless. In 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner Paige St. John quoted me innocuously, only to have others calling for her to be fired for doing so. She wrote: [You should come with a warning label. Quoting Roger Pielke will bring a hail storm down on your work from the Guardian, Mother Jones, and Media Matters]. 
7. In 2012 the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) was published. It arrived as the same conclusion as we had at Hohenkammer. Key conclusion: [Long term trends in economic disaster losses adjusted for wealth and population increases have not been attributed to climate change, but a role for climate change has not been excluded. Medium evidence. High agreement] [Chart#7].
8. Despite the IPCC consensus aligned with and drawing upon the work of our  Hohenkammer workshop, the de-legitimization efforts intensified. In 2015 I was the subject of an Congressional “investigation” (w/ 6 other academics), accused of secretly taking Exxon money  [Chart#8]. I cannot describe how penal, professionally and personally, it is to be identified as the subject of a congressional investigation.
   I suppose that was the entire point. I never have taken any money from energy companies. I was cleared in the “investigation [Chart#9]. The reality is Dr. Holdren got caught out while articulating the Al Gore version of disasters & climate change and ignoring the latest IPCC version. I had testified to the IPCC version before the Senate in 2013.

CHART#1 & CHART#2

CHART#3 & CHART#4

CHART#5 & CHART#6

CHART#7 & CHART#8