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2 months ago | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Yuval Levin |Roger Pielke Jr
In his classic 1960 book, The Semisovereign People, political scientist E.E. Schattschneider identified a dilemma of democracy: All of us are ignorant about most things, making each of us unsuitable to govern — yet we also have a belief that everyone should be allowed to participate in governance, with our political leaders chosen from among the ignorant.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr
This is a guest post by Mike Hulme, Professor of Human geography at Cambridge University. Mike is one of the world’s most accomplished climate scientists. Hulme participated in the IPCC second and third assessments, was part of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, where he subsequently founded the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA. He has been at Cambridge University since 2017.
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Jan 12, 2025 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr
In 2024, the world experienced $298 billion dollars in catastrophe losses related to weather events, according to Munich Re, which just released its annual tabulation.
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Jan 11, 2025 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr.
The tragic fires in Los Angeles are on track to be among the costliest and most consequential disasters in U.S. history. Various claims are being promoted as to the cause of the disaster — climate change, DEI, poor governance, unwise development among them — usually by those crassly using the fires to promote their favorite pre-fire issue.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr
Today, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced that it would immediately stop using “fact checkers” to police the content on its platforms, which also include Instagram and Threads. Meta explained:“In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr
Yesterday, The Washington Postpublished what can only be described as a hit piece on the nominee for Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. The Post took issue with Wright’s claim that:“[R]eports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) actually show no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes."The Post claimed that Wright was misrepresenting the most recent IPCC assessment report.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr
This is Part 2 in the THB series, Politicization of the American University. You can read Part 1 here. Faculty in U.S. universities overwhelmingly hold views on the political left. That probably won’t be news to most THB readers. Today’s post documents just how extreme today’s left-leaning ideological uniformity has become among professors and shows that in the past, across disciplines faculty were much more politically diverse.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr.
Support THB at $1 per week and lock that in forever. Your support makes THB both possible and sustainable!Of the American holidays, Thanksgiving is by far my favorite. Over my academic career, Thanksgiving provided a much-needed respite in the final weeks of the fall semester before the home stretch leading to final exams.
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Nov 21, 2024 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr
This week I was invited by a colleague to try out the BSky app as an alternative to X/Twitter. They told me that it is far more welcoming for discussion about energy and climate. Sure, I thought, I’ll give it a try. I actively posted there for a bit and learned that climate activists have created a Bsky climate “blocklist” that focuses on me and anyone who mentions me — Matt Yglesias of Slow Boring and Ted Nordhaus of The Breakthrough Institute are also on it.
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Nov 19, 2024 | 
rogerpielkejr.substack.com | Roger Pielke Jr
He’s a climate denier!That is the standard reaction of many in the climate lobby when encountering views on climate and energy deviating from the monomaniacal view that climate is the world’s single-most important issue. Reactions from climate advocates to the nomination of Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, to serve in Donald Trump’s cabinet as Secretary of Energy have followed this tired and lazy pattern. Here are some examples:Rep.