Where's the Black Hat?
An economist from Australia who had never heard of Roger Pielke Jr. until he saw this warped criticism from Joe Romm actually takes the time to read Pielke and concludes:
In no way is the guy a “climate denier”. Rather, he seems concerned that:
1. Proposed policy is too ineffective and instead more measures should be taken to directly encourage innovation.
2. Scientific results are used incorrectly by many climate policy advocates. This reduces the credibility of science in the eyes of the public when they realise “they’ve been had”.
So I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
Not enough time.
I was going to make a comment on Stern’s post but comments there seem to not be working, so I’ll leave it here:
Take note first that there’s a history to all of this going back a number of years, and that those who at first glance may seem to be persecuting RP Jr. unfairly tend to be doing so only after great provocation.
There are a multitude of incidents involving him telling physical scientists that results in their own field mean something quite different from what they and their colleagues might think. Such incidents are generally in service of RP Jr. providing aid and support for denialists and others with marginal climate science views, even while being careful to remain technically within the IPCC fold. See here and here for a recent example.
Around the same time, RP Jr. called Jim Hansen “boneheaded” for predicting that there would another record warm year quite soon. That took some real gall.
In short, RP Jr. is all about controversy.
Re Joe Romm, it may not be apparent that he’s campaigning to place RP Jr. beyond the pale in terms of influence on policy in DC and by now has succeeded to a considerable extent. RP Jr. feels the pain, believe me.
I didn’t see the damned hat at first, either.