It can only be a good sign that one’s views are having some influence when your critics begin to focus on ad hominem attacks and cartoonish mischaracterizations of your work. This has happened to me in, of all places, an interview of Georgia Tech’s Judy Curry by journalist Paul Thacker of Environmental Science & Technology. Here we can set the record straight with respect to some egregious errors and misrepresentations.

Thacker says to Curry, “Another apparent rising media star is Roger Pielke, Jr. I noticed that in a recent news story in Science he was listed as a “climatologist”, and he made no attempt to correct that.” In fact, I emailed Richard Kerr September 15, 2005 immediately after the Science article came out correcting the mistake. Had Thacker just called me up, I could have easily confirmed this; instead he has tried to suggest something that is not. I have sent to Thacker my email to Kerr and asked Thacker to issue a correction.


Curry responds to Thacker by trying to diminish my academic background, “Well, he’s a prolific writer, but he is really a policy person [who] has a qualitative understanding of climate science. He is not a climatologist. I don’t know that he’s ever even taken a class in atmospheric science. In fact, he got his degree at the University of Colorado, where I used to teach, well before we instituted the program in atmospheric and ocean sciences.” I am pretty comfortable with my academic background and publishing record, and feel absolutely no need to defend it here. I simply don’t understand Curry’s motivation for the ad hom criticism.

Curry then goes on to demonstrate that she has never really read any of my work when she writes, “So he has no formal training in atmospheric science. His mantra, if you will, is, “Let’s not worry about why we have climate change; let’s look at what we can do to adapt.” This is not bad, but in the situation of hurricanes, it’s been taken to an absurd position.” As I have stated here and in peer-reviewed papers numerous times, climate change is a problem worth worrying about. We have to adapt and mitigate at the same time. Exactly what to do, when, by whom and at what costs are difficult policy questions. Even a cursory reading of my work will show these points. On hurricanes, I simply don’t know what Curry is referring to, since she relies on inflammatory language (“mantra” and “absurd”) rather than engaging in anything close to substantive debate.

So let’s make it easy for Judy, here is a very short op-ed (PDF) on hurricanes in the context of climate change and climate policy that places our views in a nutshell. I am offering an open invitation to Judy Curry to prepare a response of similar length, which we will gladly publish here, to offer a different perspective. Let’s talk about the issues, shall we?