,
Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability
2025 Climate Speaker – Roger Pielke, Jr. (The Honest Broker)
https://atkinson.cornell.edu/climates…
Recorded at Cornell University – November 12, 2025
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
1:18:15. Is there a transcript?
Very good question! I just skimmed through the talk..
a few anecdodes about him getting noticed by Obama politicians/advisers (he makes clear that the facts about no disaster trends are with him, but that didn’t matter much in politics)
followed by a few IPCC6 diagrams.
If you know those already, you are in danger to waste an hour of your life..
In particular he seems not to say much about the use of extreme model scenarios on these graphs..
I know this is the 4th time I am linking it here, but if you have some time read this
https://aeon.co/essays/todays-complex-climate-models-arent-equivalent-to-reality
I was surprised how open and clearly a climate modeler states that they all know that climate models cannot describe the real world in the necessary details needed to make statements we find in the press and also Pielke’s talk!
Nothing really new either, besides this time it comes from an alarmist..
I read about a page from your link and found this:
“It’s easy to pick holes in computer models. As the statistician George Box said:
‘All models are wrong, but some are useful.’ The real question is whether these
models are useful. And that depends on the problem you’re trying to solve.”
Solve? Wrong word:
And that depends on the problem you’re trying to create.
Thank you for looking at it . . He later gives his opinion about the role GCMs could play to test what he calls a storyline. I like the idea that passed the “modeling test” actually does not mean much, but failing might spell disaster for a particular story.
For example Rahmstorf discussing his cold water bubble in the Arctic.. he found it in older models but tried to downplay the fact the it disappeared in the newer models in January (neither him or other experts felt it necessary to address the critique in the comments back then). He then wrote another article in October stating that newer high resolution models (I am guessing better tweaked CMIP6 models) showed it again. INHO that fact that he can tweak models into showing the bubble means little, but when for a while the latest models excluded this phenomenon it was a problem for his research.
(This example is not quite right as there is good experimental evidence for that bubble to form at least sometimes)
It is a good example however to expose any models based dire future predictions as lacking in uncertainty treatment and dishonest!
I conclude there is no transcript. The AI still has a long way to go.
He has covered this topic on his Honest Broker Substack blog.
Yes, Curious. Click on Watch at Youtube to go to Youtube site for the video. The shaded box below it at Youtube has a link “more”. Click on it and further down is a button, “Show Transcript”
Climate scientists, experts etc say… a lot of tosh.
…natural causes cannot explain the particularly rapid warming seen over the last century, according to the UN’s climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
This has been without doubt caused by human activities, in particular the widespread use of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – in homes, factories and transport systems. – BBC
So much for the duty to educate, inform and entertain. They teach schoolchildren that models are evidence…
“…natural causes cannot explain the particularly rapid warming seen over the last century,”
At least 3 papers have concluded that all of modern warming can be explained by a reduction in clouds documented by NASA. They can’t explain why they ignore that empirical data.
That would be… false balance.
The CERES data, based on high repeatability of the measuring instruments, confirms that all energy uptake this century is due to albedo changes and higher radiating temperature. Earth is not as reflective as it used to be and radiates at high temperature. These two conditions are consistent with less cloud cover and/ot less snow cover. I have a chart that verifies that across latitudes:
?quality=75&ssl=1
Clearly it is not quite universal across all latitudes. The region just north of the Equator and a small region of Antartica have more cloud.
If the changes were only over land and ice covered water it could be just loss of snow cover but it is also apparent over warmer ocean. So loss of cloud is also a factor.
But you need to exclude the possibility of cloudiness being linked to CO2 to conclude CO2 is not involved.
I also would not bank on the trend in cloud reduction continuing. There could be reversal of cloudiness when the Sun moves south of Earth’s elliptic plane in the late 2030s. So far in the CERES era this century, the Sun has moved from a southern minor minimum around 2004 to a northern maximum in 2024:
?fit=947%2C592&quality=75&ssl=1
The Sun is southward bound in the late 2030s.
The Z-axis position of the Sun affects the distribution of solar energy over Earth. It makes significant difference to seasonal solar intensity because it changes the declination angle of the Sun and time it is over each hemisphere.
“But you need to exclude the possibility of cloudiness being linked to CO2 to conclude CO2 is not involved.”
That’s what alarmists claim. What would be the mechanism for that? A warming world produces more water vapor which should produce more clouds.
Which raises the question: What is causing the reduction in cloud cover?
One thought is the reduction in SO2, though can’t completely rule out CO2 having some role.
The cloud cover reduction occurred in 3 unique steps. Turns out those match natural factors.
“…natural causes cannot explain the particularly rapid warming seen over the last century, according to the UN’s climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”
The most recent warming (1980 to the present) was not particularly rapid. It warmed just as much and at the same magnitude, two previous times in the recent past, post 1850.
The IPCC is citing the bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick global chart as their source of “evidence”. The written temperature record disputes the Hockey Stick chart temperature trend line and disputes the IPCC claims that today’s warmth is particularly rapid.
The written, historic temperature records from around the world tell the true story. That story is: It was just as warm in the recent past as it is today, even though there was much less CO2 in the air in the past than there is today. The records tell us we have nothing to fear from CO2.
“particularly rapid warming seen over the last century”
I find going from 40F in the morning to 70F in the evening a rapid warming.
Not very bright . Still believes that CO2 causes Earth’s energy imbalance AND voted for Obama.
Two of my pet peeves jump out here. Number one we are not saying we deny climate change. Everybody knows the climate changes and there isn’t anything we can do about it. We deny catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Talking about climate change is cowardly, it lets people say yes I am with you I believe in climate change when saying that is completely meaningless. Number two since what we need to talk about is CAGW and the premise of CAGW is that we are causing catastrophe by adding CO2 into the atmosphere we need to talk about how our added CO2 can cause catastrophe. It can’t and that is why they don’t talk about it. Like I have said before if it isn’t anthropogenic what is the point, if it isn’t catastrophic what is the point? The point is it is neither so there is no point. Pielke needs to say that. I don’t think he could bring himself to say that. I respect Pielke he has a lot of guts to stand up to the people he has stood up to but he still has a way to go. His support for the IPCC is embarrassing all you have to do is look at COP 30 to see that.
“I respect Pielke he has a lot of guts to stand up to the people he has stood up to but he still has a way to go.”
Agreed. I watched and listened to the whole thing. I think he has done a decent and honest job on the extreme event and loss topic. But he is off base on the justification for the Endangerment Finding, the core claims of CO2-driven warming, and the idea of a “carbon tax” to drive “decarbonization.” I hope he keeps an open mind.
I wonder if Pielke ever reads this site?
Anybody who uses the word “science” like that, doesn’t know what science is. Richard Feynman said the same thing in the past.
There is no such thing as “climate science” anyway. Climate is just the statistics of weather observations. Not much science involved there, is there?
Thank you.
The expression “climate science” is equivalent to lipstick on a pig.
If he would still vote for Obama today, despite everything that’s been revealed about what he did, then Pielke is clearly not paying attention to current events. He also keeps saying that deep decarbonization is necessary but doesn’t actually explain why or how that could be done. He does mention the efficiency gains that have already happened, which obviously should continue, but that doesn’t necessitate a carbon tax or other government action