I came across this video today of my short, 5 minute opening statement before the House Science Committee last March. The focus of my testimony was to ask members of Congress not to spend their time going after scientists whose work they don’t like and instead, to defend the importance of scientific assessments for obtaining robust answers to their questions.
Here is me being interviewed on the issue of “sex testing” in elite sport on ABC News Australia.
On July 20th 18:30 I’ll be giving a lecture on climate politics in Westminster, in London, hosted by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. My title is “Climate Politics as Manichean Paranoia.” Details, including how to secure an invitation, can be found here.
Here is my abstract:
Climate Politics as Manichean Paranoia
Roger Pielke Jr.
20 July 2017
The decision by US President Donald Trump to remove the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change was met with both derision and applause. Such is climate politics in the United States in the 21st century. This talk focuses on climate politics as “Manichean paranoia,” a term used by the late US statesman Zbigniew Brzezinski to describe an worldview in which your opponent is considered to be malign and willfully ignorant, whereas your own side is noble and uniquely enlightened. While the two sides of the contemporary US climate debate disagree on many things, they are firmly united in their Manichean paranoia. I will describe this pathological approach to climate politics and why it matters. There are alternatives, and I’ll recommend five specific actions to improve political debate over climate. Changing climate politics won’t be easy and isn’t possible without a demand for change. The shared commitment to partisan battle between otherwise dueling camps of the climate debate is deeply held, and the siren calls to join the ranks on one side or the other is difficult to resist. However, rethinking climate politics should matter — not just for those who care about climate policy, but more generally for achieving the broadly shared goals of economic growth and the sustainability of liberal democracy.
On July 4th, I am opening the 2017 Sporting Traditions Conference in Sydney with a keynote address titled, “New Values for Sport Governance in the 21st Century.”
Details can be found here. I gather that copies of The Edge will be available and the entire conference looks great.
You can hear a long discussion with me and Erik Nisbet (Ohio State) on WOSU, discussing science and politics, and the March for Science. Here is the link.
To help myself stay organized I thought I’d start a list. Here are all my 2017 publications so far.
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.
Weinkle, J., & Pielke Jr, R. (2017). The Truthiness about Hurricane Catastrophe Models. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 42:547-576.
Weatther-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
Submission to European Athletics on World Record Revision Proposal, European Athletics. (PDF)
Nike two-hour marathon project reveals technological inequities in sport, The Guardian
Statement by Roger Pielke Jr. before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology US House of Representatives, Hearing on Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method, 29 March (PDF).
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
I testified before the House Science Committee on 29 March 2017. In my testimony I asked members of Congress to call a bipartisan truce in attacking scientists whose work they find inconvenient. I also emphasized the importance of scientific assessments such as the IPCC.
You can see the whole hearing above and read my testimony from the link below.
Statement by Roger Pielke Jr. before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology US House of Representatives, Hearing on Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method, 29 March (PDF).
