Author Archives: rogerpielkejr

New Project on Honest Brokering and Citizen Juries

The Honest Broker (Cambridge University Press)

I am starting a small new project focused on honest brokering and citizen juries in practice.

The notion of an “honest broker of policy alternatives” is one that I introduced in my 2007 book, The Honest Broker. Since that time, the concept (and associated ones) has been explored both in academic work and in the actual practice of government science advice, in many settings around the world. I have led an NSF-sponsored project over the past two years looking at science advice in the pandemic in more than 15 countries.

For this project I will survey work done related to the implementation of honest brokering mechanisms in actual practice, with a focus on developing guidelines for real-world practice, with a focus on California (such and the MOST program in Missouri, the CCST in California and LSEN of the AAAS) and across policy issues.

A citizen jury is a small group of people (typically up to several dozen) who are asked to meet to conduct extended deliberations on an important topic of policy. They are not expected to be experts, but citizens. They are compensated for their time and accommodations are made to facilitate participation (e.g., childcare or travel), in order to facilitate participation of those who otherwise may be excluded from participating. Citizen juries have been used, with positive results, in countries around the world. For this project I will survey work done related to the implementation of citizen jury mechanisms in actual practice, with a focus on developing guidelines for real-world practice, with a focus on U.S. and international settings where such techniques have been applied, and across policy issues. 

The project is supported by Environmental Progress, and products will be made public as they are produced.

Challenging Climate Podcast

Roger Pielke Jr. is a political scientist who writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, innovation and sports. He is most famous (or infamous?) for his work on climate change. We cover his Iron Law of climate policy, his views on the problems with business-as-usual climate scenarios, and the challenges of attributing extreme weather. We also touch on the extent of his relationships with climate change skeptics and the efforts to discredit him, including the congressional investigation into his funding.

Roger is a Professor at the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is the author of The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell you About Global Warming, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, and The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change .

Links:
– the report detailing the campaign to discredit Pielke https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/11/Laframboise-Pielke.pdf [PDF]
– his chart in The Climate Fix showing the historical change in the proportion of carbon-free energy and how it will need to change in future https://theclimatefix.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/bp-2017-3.jpg
– the IPCC’s latest report on the physical science of climate change https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
– two blog posts by Pielke on this recent report https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report and https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report-1e3
– Pielke’s academic paper on scenarios with Justin Ritchie  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629620304655 and a popular article summarizing their work https://issues.org/climate-change-scenarios-lost-touch-reality-pielke-ritchie/
– The Climate Fix https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/roger-pielke/the-climate-fix/9780465025190/
– The Honest Broker https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/honest-broker/A41AD4D7D14077165807DBE057B5FAF9
– The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change https://cspo.org/publication/the-rightful-place-of-science-disasters-and-climate-change/

My 2022 Publications & Talks

Updated 31 Jan 2022

Here are my 2022 publications:

Pielke Jr, R., Burgess, M. G., & Ritchie, J. (2022). Plausible 2005-2050 emissions scenarios project between 2 and 3 degrees C of warming by 2100. Environmental Research Letters.

Pielke Jr., R. 2022 (in press). Making Sense of Debate Over Transgender Athletes in Olympic Sport, Chapter in H. Lenskyj and A. Greey 2022, eds. (in press). Sport, Sex, and Difference: The Struggle for Trans Athletes’ Justice in the 21st Century, (Emerald Publishers).

Here are some of my 2022 talks:

Keynote Address, We Got This: Five Reasons for Optimism in Securing Sustainability, SDG Conference Bergen, Bergen, Norway, 9 February.

Research Seminar, TITLE TBA, Department of Geography, Memorial University, St. Johns, Newfoundland, 4 March.

Invited lecture, TITLE TBA, Cosmos Club, Washington, DC, 7 June.