The annual report has come to be an expected yearly event for academics. For me it is called the FRPA – Faculty Report of Professional Activities and is due to my campus administrators in January. To get a head start I’ve put together a 2017 year in review.

Academic Publications

Pielke, R. (2017). Assessing Doping Prevalence is Possible. So What Are We Waiting For?. Sports Medicine, 1-3.

Pielke Jr, R. (2017). Sugar, spice and everything nice: how to end ‘sex testing’ in international athletics. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 1-18.

Pielke, Jr.R. (2017), Climate Change as Symbolic Politics in the United States, IEEJ Journal (October, pp. 11-15). (PDF)

Weinkle, J., & Pielke Jr, R. (2017). The Truthiness about Hurricane Catastrophe Models. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 42:547-576.

Book review, The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce (link)

Contributor, Climate Pragmatism: The Rightful Place of Science (CSPO/ASU)

Non-Academic Publications

The Least Thing blog (link)

The Honest Broker blog (link)

The Climate Fix blog (link)

Weather-related Natural Disasters: Should we be concerned about a reversion to the mean? Risk Frontiers

Has the United States reached peak (American) football? Play the Game

Is Youth Football Past its Prime? The Conversation

Nike two-hour marathon project reveals technological inequities in sport, The Guardian

Experts respond to Trump’s climate blitzkrieg, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

After April’s March for Science, what next for anti-Trump scientists? The Guardian

Amateur Sports’ Last Stand? Play the Game

Possible scenarios for the future of US college sports Play the Game

Putin “was at heart of Russian drug scandal” Mail on Sunday

A Litigious Climate Threatens Scientific Norms, Wall Street Journal

The Hurricane Lull Couldn’t Last, Wall Street Journal

Policy-related reports and testimony

Testimony before the House Science Committee on the importance of scientific assessments (my 5 minute statement via YouTube below, PDF, full hearing video here)

Submission to European Athletics on World Record Revision Proposal, European Athletics. (PDF)

The Climate Fix Newsletters

Pielke on Climate #1 (link)

Pielke on Climate #2 (link)

Pielke on Climate #3 (link)

Pielke on Climate #4 (link)

Pielke on Climate #5 (link)

Pielke on Climate #6 (link)

Pielke on Climate #7 (link)

Talks

A few years ago I committed to giving fewer talks, but ensuring that each provided the opportunity to say something new or (hopefully) important. Here are the talks I gave in 2017 that best fit into that category.

March – An Inside Look at the Politics of Climate (University of Florida, PDF)

March – The Science and Politics of “Sex Testing” in International Sport (University of Florida, PDF)

April – Scientific Integrity and Anti-Doping Regulation (Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, Oslo, Norway, Twitter talk)

July – New values for sport governance in the 21st century (Australian Society for Sports History, Sydney, Australia, abstract)

July – Climate Politics as Manichean Paranoia (GWPF, London, YouTube below)

October – What Should Scientists do When Science Gets Political? (Silas Ethics Lecture, Georgia Tech, link to video)

November – An Evaluation of the Governance of US Olympic Sports Federations (Play the Game, Eindhoven, Netherlands, PDF)

New Class Syllabi

Introduction to Sports Governance (PDF)

Propaganda and Politics (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

Interviews, Podcasts, Discussions

Making Science Count in Policymaking (YouTube below)

Science, Politics and the March for Science (WOSU, link)

Sex Testing in Sport (ABC News Australia, link)

IAAF & Testosterone Regulations (The Ticket, starts at 7:45, link)

Science in Policy and Politics (YouTube below)

Russia’s Ban Isn’t a Sure Win for Anti-Dopers (Colorado Public Radio, link)

As Concerns Grow About Health Risks, Has the US Reached Peak Football? (Colorado Public Radio, link)

Miscellaneous media reports (via Google News, link)

There is a new review of The Edge out — it is engaged and highly positive:

More than for its efforts to point out what sport bodies could be doing to improve their governance, The Edge is a valuable read for the way it asks you what the actual problems are and challenges you to consider how far you are willing to go to resolve them. The answers may surprise some.

Read the review in full here.

I have an essay on climate politics forthcoming at the IEEJ (Institute for Energy Economics, Japan) Energy Journal. The title  of my essay is, “Climate Change as Symbolic Politics in the United States” and is here in PDF.  Here is the bottom line:

United States’ climate policy is highly uncertain, mainly because it is a partisan issue and US political situation is fluid. A return to Democratic leadership in the White House might see the Trump approach similarly overturned, as with the Obama approach. At the same tie, because of the focus on political symbolism over policy substance, there is a real possibility that Trump Administration ultimately does not matter much for U.S. climate policies. Instead, larger trends likely to continue to dominate (e.g., markets, prices, technology, etc.).

The question for those interested in policy to accelerate decarbonization of the US and global economies is similarly clear: Can the issue be de-politicized for 2020 and beyond in order to better focus on policy over politics? Or is climate change to remain primarily a political symbol?