Tribes

Roger Pielke is a climate change researcher.  His life changed drastically when some of his work became controversial in surprising ways. 

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Transcript

When We Disagree-Roger Pielke Jr.

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. All the cars I saw in Europe were small. Therefore, Europe has more small cars than we do in the United States. Every time I see Mark, he needs a haircut. Therefore, Mark rarely cuts his hair.

Think about the logic of these two statements. Do the first, more specific sentences logically support the broader conclusions drawn in the second sentences? Regardless of the logical or real world truth of the statements, this kind of logical movement or logical progression is called an inductive syllogism.

That's the fancy term, at least. In these, we are reasoning from something really specific to something really general. Think Inductive reasoning is how we make sense of our world and place our specific experiences into broader categories. Sometimes with great accuracy, [00:01:00] oftentimes with great error. I've parked illegally on this street before and not gotten a ticket.

Therefore, I'm a park here now, and I'm hopefully not going to get a ticket this time either. This is also the type of reasoning we see often in science or even in crime solving and detective work. Whether you're a scientist or a detective, you're interested in gathering very specific data and then inducing a more general conclusion that makes sense.

I'm Michael Lee, professor of communication and director of the civility initiative. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Roger Pelkey Jr. Roger is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a non resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He studies controversies that arise when science and politics collide and his popular sub stack is called The Honest Broker.

Roger, tell us an argument story. 

Roger Pielke: Am I great to be here? I'll just tell you a short but involved story, uh, involving how I got [00:02:00] crossways with climate activists. Um, I, I, 30 years ago when I was doing a postdoc, I started doing research, um, on hurricanes. And, um, I and my colleagues, um, discovered, I think we were the first to really quantify this, that the reason behind increasing hurricane damages Uh in the United States and really globally it's not actually anything to do with the hurricanes themselves We have many more people much more property in harm's way Um, and I you know for a long time i've been an advocate for action on climate change.

It's really important Sometime around 2006 when al gore's movie came out an inconvenient truth that featured Hurricane Katrina. Everything changed professionally for me. Um, arguments that climate change was not the most important factor in driving hurricane damage became very unwelcome, unacceptable.

Found myself the target of the Center for American Progress in Washington D. C. Uh, the Obama White House. Eventually I got [00:03:00] Congress accused of taking money under the table from fossil fuel companies and abandoned by my university. Um, so, you know, this fall I'm leaving after 24 years, University of Colorado.

It's all good. I've come out the other end. But what I found is a pretty profound intolerance of discussing, uh, in particular, um, disasters and why they occur and the role that humans play in it, not just climate change. 

Michael Lee: Took us through your claim specifically over this argument about hurricane damage.

And then we'll kind of fan out from there and talk about your greater collision with these forces. You talk about your university, climate activists, Congress, et cetera. So your claim is that hurricane accelerating hurricane damage is not the cause is not caused by increasing climate change. What is it caused by?

Roger Pielke: It's caused by, I mean, anyone should be able to see this. I mean, you know, when I give talks I show a picture of Miami Beach in 1926. It had one little structure on there. [00:04:00] Go to Miami Beach now or really any place along the gulf or the east coast. We have a tremendous amount of wealth. People like living by the water.

This is not to say that climate change is not real. It's not important or it may not even affect hurricanes. The fact is climate change as expected, um, will by 2100 result in An increase, but possibly in the intensity of hurricanes measured in the single digit percents. 

Michael Lee: Okay. 

Roger Pielke: Um, over that timeframe, we're going to become 100, 200, 300 times richer.

So damages are always going to be going up. So I always tell people, if you want to look for signals of climate change, look at climate data. Don't look at economic data. 

Michael Lee: Oh, I follow you. So in other words, wealth by the coast, if there's more, just more stuff that's wealthy by a coast and a hurricane comes, therefore there's going to be more property damage.

very much. 

Roger Pielke: Right, which should not be a super complicated or difficult to understand argument. That sounds like a pretty narrow argument to me. So controversial, yeah. 

Michael Lee: Yeah, is it right to say that's a fairly narrow [00:05:00] argument? And at least the way you present it seems self evidently true. If more people build more stuff and the same strength of a hurricane comes along, it will then therefore destroy more stuff.

Roger Pielke: Yeah, I would have thought so also. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, many people have heard of, they have the weather service and they, you know, they do a fantastic job. I was affiliated with them for 16 years. They've gotten in the business of promoting what's called billion dollar disasters.

And, you know, the increasing count every year of the number of billion dollar disasters, um, is one of their leading indicators of climate change. So what, what seems like a self evidently obvious argument, um, gets warped and, um, really unrecognizable once it gets into the hot politics of climate change.

Michael Lee: Is that, is your sense of the hot politics of climate change that if you're saying something that flies in the face of what some climate activists might believe, in other words, you're in any way mitigating [00:06:00] the potential for climate change to be as destructive as possible, then you're, you're cast out.

That's kind of a tribal affiliation. 

Roger Pielke: Yeah, I think that's true. And let me just say, you know, most people either, you know, normal people or experts fully understand. I mean, my word, it's a bizarre situation where, you know, my research papers are cited thousands of times. Um, but, but, you know, if you mention it on Twitter, you're going to, you know, get a whole series of attacks.

So there is this like two, two step, you know, two phase discussion out there. Um, but it is amazing the degree to which people, particularly in universities and the research community. feel like they're being sufficiently bullied by climate activists, that they're unwilling to really open up discussion of these topics 

Michael Lee: when so much of what we hear goes the other direction in terms of freedom of information act requests being filed against climate reporter or climate researchers at universities.

And your experience seems to be the opposite and both. Yeah. I [00:07:00] mean, I, 

Roger Pielke: yeah, I, you know, I was investigated by a democratic member of Congress. Um, attacked for almost a decade by the, the progressive, uh, Center for American Progress. Um, and you know, that has a very strong advocate for action on climate change.

I wrote the first dissertation, I think in the world on how climate science can better inform climate policy. Um, so it's just, you get a little crossways, uh, and it's, it's, it's a big response. 

Michael Lee: Is it just over? I mean, it sounds like a congressional investigation, NOAA, your university, climate activists, All over the claim about hurricane destructiveness, or is there more?

Roger Pielke: Yeah, I think that's, that's a big part of it. Um, a lot of my early career was spent, um, focused on the role of, of science. And I mean, physical science in politics. And there is this, this belief out there that if just everyone believes the in climate change, the climate policy, or, you know, politics will spring naturally as a result, um, [00:08:00] I'm trained as a mathematician and political scientist.

And, you know, in, in my discipline, it's well understood that, uh, trying to get everybody to think the same thing is probably not the best route to political compromise and action. Um, and so there was some tension among particularly, you know, climate modelers that, you know, Hey, if you don't say climate modeling is the key to climate politics, then you're not, you're not on sides with us.

So I do think there's some disciplinary. Issues there that, you know, more with the policy oriented social scientists, um, being involved in what normally is physical science research. 

Michael Lee: This might be a hard question to answer because we're talking about several decades and we're talking about different groups ranging from universities to scientists, to climate activists, to Congress, but characterize for us, if you will, the argument over the data in so much as there is one.

Roger Pielke: Yeah, I mean, if you go, there's a group called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, most people have probably heard of them if they haven't read the 10, [00:09:00] 000 page reports. And they summarize every five to seven years, kind of the, you know, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of papers.

And if you go into those reports, there's not a lot of controversy on these topics. It is well understood that heat waves have become more common. Um, extreme rainfall has become more common, but the IPCC has not concluded with high confidence that floods, hurricanes, more generally known as tropical cyclones, drought have become more common or more intense.

Um, and so within the scientific literature, I think there's a pretty strong consensus on this area and the, and the community to its credit, plays things straight. Um, the issue comes. Um, and everyone sees it. Whenever there's an event, um, you know, the headlines blare the next day that, you know, this was caused by climate change, made more intense by climate change, made more likely by climate change.

And, um, you know, I'm, I, I, you know, there are people out there who say climate change is a hoax. And there are plenty of people who will set them [00:10:00] straight, uh, as they should. But when climate change is overstated or exaggerated, Um, the expert community is pretty silent. And so I think, you know, for better or worse, I'm, I'm middle aged man now, but, um, at some point I decided like, I'm going to be that guy that's going to, you know, push back on the exaggeration side because we need people to have faith in science and calling things straight is one way to get there.

Michael Lee: In your estimation, what is their incentive to be silent? 

Roger Pielke: So I think right now it's really been about 15 years. Um, we're in an era where a theory of change. for climate action is that people, normal people in local places will come to accept that the event they just experienced or that they just saw on CNN, um, was associated with climate change and they will become fearful or motivated enough to want to implement certain climate policies.

Anyone who pushes back against the exaggerations, therefore, gets in the [00:11:00] way of that theory of change. So if I say, well, actually, you know, hurricane landfalls have not increased in the United States since at least 1900. Um, I've had people say, well, you know, that may be true, but it's not helpful if we're trying to use hurricanes to motivate people to support climate policies.

So extreme events have become very much a political football in, in climate politics. Um, and they shouldn't be. 

Michael Lee: We described earlier this kind of tribal politics, the kind of circling the wagons, and you just described this theory of climate change, of political action on climate change that's possible.

Is there more to it in terms of tribalization than just a kind of common fealty to a theory of how change works in the world? 

Roger Pielke: Yeah, I do. I mean, I do think that that the climate movement, Um, and I've seen this, you know, over my career in teaching, um, you know, I, I can say 25 years ago when I would have students and grad students come to me and say, you know, I want to study climate change for the most part, not all, [00:12:00] not everybody, but for the most part, they were, they were nerds like me who want to better understand issues.

And they, you know, they have a fascination with the climate system and how it impacts humans. And over, over the years, I've noticed that that particular field has drawn in Uh, people who, you know, they appreciate the climate, but they have much of an activist bent. They want to change the world. They're coming to that discipline because they want to affect change.

Um, and I do think that the community has become more, more vanilla in, in the sense that there's not a lot of diversity, um, in how people view policy or politics. Um, and, you know, obviously climate action is the top priority, then everything else comes second. 

Michael Lee: I'm, I'm having a thought about the difficulty to be, to, to kind of marry science and revolutionary politics.

And I'm gonna sketch it out for you and see if I can do justice to it and see what you think about it. So it strikes me the more scientists I talk to, both hard and soft, that some of the bedrock principles of science are that our conclusions have [00:13:00] shelf lives. that we can really get out of our, out over our skis in terms of over claiming where we don't have sufficient evidence that science is always in the process of needing to be replicated and verified.

And so even if our conclusions have shelf lives, they also have kind of low levels of confidence. Until they've been proven and re proven and they've shown to be true over time. And we're also deeply, deeply skeptical of our own biases, both methodologically and in terms of perspective. And so for these and many more reasons, it's very difficult for science to be a kind of revolutionary project or a kind of radical project.

But when we have something like climate science, The earth is warming and that's terrifying and that affects our lives and our livelihoods. We do need in terms of a rallying cry, something more than this is what I think is true now, check with me again tomorrow. 

Roger Pielke: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think, I mean, that's, that's a big part of it.

And, and, you know, uncertainties and particularly areas of [00:14:00] ignorance, um, You know, sometimes people view those as problematic when it comes to political action. Um, the American political commentator, Walter Lippman, more than a hundred years ago in his, his book, Public Opinion, he said, the goal of politics is not to get everyone to think alike.

It's to get people who think differently to act alike. So when I, when I encounter people who say, Oh, climate change is a hoax, or I, you know, I don't believe it, you know, believe what you want, I say, but you know, would you like lower price energy? Would you like cleaner energy? Would you like it less dependent on foreign sources?

Um, it turns out that climate policy rests on a, uh, The stool that has more than one leg and you've got a climate science tells us there's some risks about the future. And as you say, they can be very terrifying, but it's not the only reason why climate policies make sense. So this very much reductionist view that that everything has to be based on.

Everyone having the same understandings of science. Um, for me that doesn't get us to first base. That's, that's, that's a big, big problem in, in climate politics. 

Michael Lee: Well, and [00:15:00] scientists who take this kind of dim view of what is knowable and provable in the world, and the world's a complicated gray, messy space and we can make limited conclusions through excellent science, but that kind of kicks the can of understanding down the road, rather than just opening it up and letting us see with 20, 20 vision, everything in our purview.

And so if you're taking that point of view, then you find yourself caught between two potential extremes and those extremes are based on certainty. So, The certainty of climate activists that the worst is coming and everything is perhaps the fault, including hurricane damage of an escalating climate.

And then on the other end that this is all a hoax, right? So the hoaxers are certain about the hoax and then vice versa. And so you find yourself caught in the middle. My question is. You have caught some enemies amongst climate activist community. It sounds like quite a few of them. Have you found yourself having strange bedfellows of people who are, who are liking your work?

Uh, because they come from an alternative point of view, hoaxers and deniers, et [00:16:00] cetera. 

Roger Pielke: Yeah. I mean, the, the, the folks that are on the hoaxer denier view, they give me a lot of crap too, because I take climate change seriously and I'm, I'm a big supporter of climate policies. Um, but it is true that there are a lot of, I would say center, right folks.

who find my arguments persuasive. Um, and, um, you know, there's a lot of center left folks who do to, um, you know, the problem is that a lot of the discourse on climate change is is captured, um, and elevated, uh, you know, among the very progressive left, you know, the degrowth crowd or, uh, you know, we have to get off fossil fuels tomorrow.

Um, and then on the, on the right, um, there's, you know, an inordinate amount of attention paid to the mega, it's all a hoax, it's not real stuff. Most Americans are super pragmatic. Um, they understand that, um, you know, they may not know the numbers, but you know, the vast majority of our economy runs on fossil fuels and getting off of it is going to be a many decades long enterprise.

So, so I'm, I'm pretty happy. [00:17:00] Um, when people who don't vote like me. I tend to find agreement with my academic arguments because that means that they're persuasive and it's not simply tribalism. 

Michael Lee: Along those lines, you know, feeling like you're a part of a community and then being in a way excommunicated from that community can be ideologically and psychologically painful.

Unless I'm overstating my case here or your case, it sounds as if you, you had a kind of tribe and then by force, Have been excommunicated in a way, um, up until I presume this hurricane argument persisted, you were easily on the left on this issue. 

Roger Pielke: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting because like two months before Al Gore's movie came out, I was at the Smithsonian accepting the Roger Rebell award, um, from the national academy of sciences for that same hurricane research.

Um, but I would say, you know, one thing I realized is, is, you know, the progressive left climate [00:18:00] Hawk group. That was never my tribe. And you know, maybe that was part of my my problem. Um, intellectually, I'm part of a community that's in science and technology policy. Um, and, and that community, you know, has that those are my people and that's never changed.

So, um, you know, for me, during the time when there was a lot of conservative attacks on climate science and the climate establishment, I was getting it from the left. And, you know, it helped me to understand that, that attacks on experts and expertise, um, can come from any direction on the political spectrum, if you're sufficiently, uh, inconvenient.

Um, it doesn't bother me, um, and it really hasn't, you know, as a tenured full professor for the last few decades, there's a few places, um, You know, my, my, I could pay the mortgage, I guess. Um, my university hasn't been super supportive, but you know, that was neither here nor there in, in, you know, I've been there for 24 years.

Michael Lee: Can you talk about the, the forest as it were, [00:19:00] not just our cultural debate about science and climate science or COVID science, vaccine science, but in a general sense, what you're talking about on this issue, the kind of. concretization of each side, these immovable objects, this need to be completely internally consistent, otherwise you can risk doxing and trolling and bullying, et cetera.

What's a, you've got a lot of experience with this, multi decades of experience with this kind of tribal politics. What's, what's a way out? Or even a partial way out. 

Roger Pielke: And you, and you alluded to it, but in the debate over COVID origins, um, you know, I've dabbled a bit in that topic and, you know, who knows the exact origins, but you know, one thing I do know is that open, uh, scientific discussion and debate is probably a good thing and it's helpful for understanding points of view, but you know, the same sort of nastiness and intolerance that I've seen in the climate debate, you know, has shown up there also.

I mean, from, from where I [00:20:00] sit, we experts. We can't control politics or, you know, national level discussions. We can control our own communities. And I think I have witnessed a failure of scientific leadership, um, in journals, in professional societies, in universities, um, you know, maybe the tide's starting to turn where universities now are, are being more open to, um, you know, viewpoint diversity, institutional neutrality, the idea that, you know, the university is a place where there's Um, different ideas are aired, even if some people disagree them for their political implications.

Just recently, there was a conference at Stanford, um, on COVID and COVID origins, um, and I saw the same sort of thing. There were academics taking to social media to say, this should be shut down. These people shouldn't be allowed to talk. Um, Stanford president made a real nice, you know, explanation that, you know, we want to hear from a diversity of views.

That's leadership. And we don't see enough of it right now. Um, I guess in part of it's motivated by A fear of expertise [00:21:00] that if there are people out there who have views you disagree with, um, rather than counter them, you know, maybe we can just shut them down. And, um, you know, one thing from my experience that I've, you know, come to appreciate.

If you don't want to be, you can't be canceled. I mean, it's, it's, um, doing good academic work, publishing it in the peer reviewed research. You might get a lot of crap for it, but, um, you know, guess what? You can be out there as much as you want, uh, if you're willing to take the, you know, take the slings and arrows.

Michael Lee: Final question is your popular sub stack, the honest broker in the wake of all this has got to feel very liberating to express yourself without this kind of fear of cancellation, like you were talking about in what ways do you integrate your commitment to open inquiry and viewpoint diversity on your sub stack?

Roger Pielke: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, let me just say sub stack has been an amazing platform. I was an early blogger, but there's nothing like sub stack. It showed me that there is a hunger really across the political spectrum for challenging ideas. [00:22:00] Um, one of the, one of the best features of sub stack is I get to hear every day from people who don't agree with me.

Um, and, uh, I I've done a lot of peer reviewed research and there is no level of peer review, like the extended peer review that, You know, why Substack provides. So, um, I air my ideas out there. Some of them are boneheaded, some of them are bad. I make mistakes like everybody else. Um, but once you do that out in public, I think my, my scholarship is better than ever because it's a community effort.

Um, and, and I invite disagreement and debate and, um, and my readers are generous in providing it. 

Michael Lee: Roger Pelkey Jr. Thanks so much for coming on When We Disagree. Thanks Mike. When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz and Lance Laidlaw.

Reach out to us at whenwedisagreeatgmail. [00:23:00] com.