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Competitive Enterprise Institute
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August 13, 2026 – This week we cover unemployment data, stadium subsidies, and how Americans feel about the U.S. economy right now. Our interview is with climate scientist and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Roger Pielke, Jr. We talk about climate science, academic politics, fossil fuels vs. renewables, and the future of energy policy.
Keep up with new episodes by following us on Twitter at @freethe_economy and read our episode summaries, with links to the stories we cover, at cei.org/blog. Interview transcripts are at greatcapitalism.substack.com.
Wrongway Roger is wrong about our climate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with our climate, nor would there be anything we could do about it if there were, because our effect on it if it exists, is minimal.
Consensus science?
Well, he made reasonable sense up until he said: Consensus science. Then my ‘political scientist’ alarm went off.
I always thought it was settled science 🤓
Pielke Jr is a political economist, despite being introduced in the video as a climate scientist.
A shame, but he seems to be another Lomborg.
He was hated at the University of Colorado by administrators and faculty because he wasn’t communist enough, even though he endorsed Hillary.
I tend to believe that there is no such thing as an individual earth climate expert. There are far too many complex fields requiring significant expertise that influence climate. There is only a handful of experts on a number of the important fields and are well connected with a number of experts in other key fields and who can be relied on to give trustworthy information. It’s not clear to me if Pielke, Jr. is among them.
He still seems to be stuck in the mantra that CO2 emission scenarios are any sort of science. !
They are actually meaningless nonsense based on a scientifically unproven hypothesis.
And climate models are nothing but glorified computer games.
Badly written computer games.
I have no idea what phrase in the video above you might have extrapolated that from, but please check out what the man himself actually wrote most recently on the subject.
In his latest Substack article (at the time of typing this into my computer) his number 1 peeve with the NCA5 climate assessment report is :
Among his recommendations for “fixing” the NCA5 problems you will find :
His attitude appears … to me, at least … to be that “CO2 emission scenarios” (or “pathways” in IPCC-speak) should be clearly compared to “reality” in any scientific paper (/ assessment report / “survey of the literature” / …).
I don’t know if that “could” be done in practice or not, but it definitely looks like a good “in an ideal world” goal for someone to come up with.
If his recommendation were to be followed it may well be that the final conclusions would include a bullet-point saying that emissions pathways / scenarios are indeed (almost ?) all “meaningless nonsense based on a scientifically unproven hypothesis”.
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PS: The entire article linked above is well worth a read … directly, rather than somebody else’s “summary” of it …
“…scientifically unproven conjectures,” if you please. 🙂
You are correct, I mis-interpreted what he was saying.
Many of us have been long familiar with this self-serving ‘expert’ and know his position in detail.
Offering plausible adaptations is one thing, affirming AGW another.
Tell us some of his adaptations which you think are going to be useful or beneficial.
“Science is self-correcting”. Nope, not always, and most certainly not once governments get involved. Not once money and careers are involved with some supposedly scientific viewpoint. Roger, unfortunately is part of that, and he doesn’t see it, because it is not in his best interests to see it, and that’s not science. It’s lab coat science.
It is more that errors, omissions and misconceptions can only flourish until they hit reality head on.
Ultimately the justification of science is that it allows some control over reality.
Climate science has not so far allowed that control, despite the blossoming of renewable energy, the only real effect has been on the world economy.
What will happen is that reality will force nations to abandon ‘net zero’ and friends, and nothing much will actually happen as a result.
And ‘climate science’ will cease to be anything but the province of a very few scientists who may actually know what they are talking about.
If we are charitable, we will understand that you meant “live with reality” because being in control of reality is a drug addict nightmare or a megalomaniac boast.
Science is self-protecting
just like any other group of interest, the omerta is the 1st commandment.
That’s why Planck used to say:
” Science advances one funeral at a time ”
One does not do a thing for years and decades and then simply admits that they have been wrong all the time – especially not people who consider themselves to be the Apex of intellect. Those are way too smart to be wrong – and there are only few around they’d actually consider worthy to criticise them.
9:55 About “perturbing the system” (with CO2 emissions) Dr. Pielke says, “we’re adding energy to it.”
No, we are not adding energy to the system. It has been ASSUMED that adding CO2 suppresses the overall time- and location-integrated full-spectrum longwave emission to space. Let’s be honest. NO ONE KNOWS THAT.
Don’t get me wrong – Dr. Pielke is doing good work, especially on loss and damage from extreme weather. But he exhibits tunnel-vision about the likely influence of rising concentrations of CO2 and about the use of the time-step-iterated models to compute a long-term response.
There is no plausible case for trusting ANY projection from such models using ANY scenario of CO2 emissions.
So on this issue of the acknowledged retirement of RCP 8.5, skeptics of climate alarm should stop taking the bait. It gives undue attention to the emissions outlook, diverting scrutiny from the models themselves and the core assumption that incremental CO2 operates as a “forcing” to which amplifying “feedback” must be expected.
Thank you for listening.
A problem I have with Dr. Pielke’s position on CO2 is that he seems to be blissfully unaware of the recent papers by Happer, Lindzen and van Wijngaarden on CO2 having a weak greenhouse effect on temperature. If he’s aware, he has an obligation to discuss them. If he’s unaware, shame on him.
A slight, gradual change does not “perturb” anything.
Perturbation requires an impulse or step function or magnitude level change with a steep slope.
The earth coupled energy systems are never in equilibrium and as such cannot be perturbed in that sense of the word.
Perturbation is now the replacement for tipping point, which is abused by the Trans-Reality Alarmists.
Thank you for your reply.
“A slight, gradual change does not “perturb” anything.”
I don’t disagree on that point.
But from the IPCC FAR WGI report (1990) – “perturbation” is not a new usage.
“1.2.2 Anthropogenic Perturbations
The concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are primarily affected by two anthropogenic processes release of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, and changes in land use such as deforestation.”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
I agree. Perturbation is not new usage, but it is now moving to replace tipping point in the alarmism.
Science never proves anything.
Nothing can be proven in absolute terms.
Science is one failed experiment after another.
With each failure we learn and learn how to construct better experiments.
The “Laws of Science” have not been proven, but they have proven useful.
It’s not what we “know.”
It’s not what we know we don’t know.
The risk comes from what we do NOT know we don’t know.
The greatest challenge is pushing back on the efforts to redefine language to support a political narrative.
How many definitions are there of heat?
Which of those legitimately apply to atmospheric physics or thermodynamics?
Certainly not “my dog is in heat.”
It is correct that science is a history of failure – 99% of the time.
That’s why it took centuries to gather all the knowledge and information that we now consider most common knowledge without realising how many years and even lifetimes were wasted to get to the results.
Therefore it is hilarious that a group of people comes up with a consensus about a supercomplex system like climate and declare it the ultimate truth – while they still fail to even predict its little brother – weather – correctly.
Btw – I’m pretty sure it can be proven if someone ‘s dead or that 2 +2= 4; in absolute terms.
But maybe I’m wrong.
2 + 2 = 4 is a human symbolic construct under the Theory of Mathematics and is only addressing quantities, not physical realities.
The Theory of Math starts out with the postulates that there is a unit quantity (1) and there are operands that can combine quantities.
So 2 + 2 = 4 is based on 2 assumptions.
Ad to death, there are enough examples of a person being declared dead only to have them sit up in the coffin to argue your point.
But you are confusing belief with proof.
It goes into deep philosophy (Protagoras and Plato) so I will depart conversation at this point.
Pease. 🙂
I wish I could auto correct as I type.
Peace. 🙂
there is an edit facility; I know because I proof read my comments and often need to correct spelling mistakes or typos.
Or, after decades of real-world OBSERVATIONS that our
hypothesesconjectures don’t stand up, we should give the game away, and apply ourselves to matters of more reality.I agree. Each of those observations constituted a failed hull hypothesis test.
Roger is well worth subscribing to as he tears down the cli-sci industry with well thought out arguments and statistics. Unfortunately, he still is too soft on the motives of the other side, which I find strange given his life story. He was cancelled by his university for challenging the consensus. He was even attacked by the White House after the establishment piled on. Luckily, their attempts to destroy his life only made him stronger and prompted him to go Substack. This softly-spoken professor deserves our admiration.
During the middle ages, his head would have ended up on a spike. Progress.
Cancelled or tenured, he undermines the core opposition by affirming human agency in the climate of the whole planet. Not admirable.
“With friends like this, who needs enemies?”
Any person who publicly affirms the error that human use of carbon compounds for energy is raising the atmospheric carbon dioxide and that the carbon dioxide is a direct cause of the planet getting warmer is no expert. Not an actual scientist.
Bjorn Lomborg is honest about being a political ‘scientist’ and emphasises adaptation to climate change rather than pretending that humanity has any power to control it. Pielke Jr not so much but might have some contribution to make if he has some expertise in adaptation. I’m not a fan.
While I am glad to see content like this I can’t say I am comfortable with some of the commentary. I cringe when I hear someone talking about both sides are guilty or both sides are doing it. For the most part most skeptics especially average people don’t give a damn about what scientists or professors say. But when what they say translates into policy that is bad for us and for no good reason that is when we give a damn. To much is made of the split between democrats and republicans. It is no secret that nearly all higher education institutions both administrators and professors are grossly lopsided to the left. It is no surprise that those on the left would put more stock in those institutions and their graduates. The scientific community pushing the CAGW case and the education institutions supporting them and the media supporting them and the science publishers supporting them have knowingly let information circulate that they know is not true and have done nothing to correct it. That is really bad. Now when the rest of us see this we are not going to sit on our ass and just let bad things happen. I think Pielke was being disingenuous when discussing the RCP scenarios. Yes he said there were four but he skipped over the fact that RCP 2.6 scenario is over three times smaller than RCP 8.5. I would think that would be a big difference. As for the coal study, done in the 1970s I think, that study is no excuse for assuming coal would dominate in the future. To say that this was still valid in the 1990s is pure poppycock.