Classic denier merchant stuff. He has not uncovered anything that the climatologists didn't know. The jury is still out on number of hurricanes and tornadoes. They admit that. The scientists know this. They also know that LARGE hurricanes and LARGE single precip events seem to be getting more frequent as are natural didasters. But he doesn't bring that up. He makes it sound like the scientists don't know this. As if this is some momentous discovery and so therefore they are wrong. No it's not. No they aren't.
And who is this guy Pielke?
Let's Google him.
Roger A. Pielke, Jr. (born November 2, 1968) is an American political scientist and professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) where he served as Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2001 to 2007. Pielke was a visiting scholar at Oxford University's Saïd Business School in the 2007-2008 academic year.[1]
His interests include understanding the politicization of science; decision making under uncertainty; policy education for scientists in areas such as climate change, disaster mitigation, and world trade; and professional sports.
Education and background
Pielke earned a B.A. in mathematics (1990), an M.A. in public policy (1992), and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to his positions at CU-Boulder, from 1993 to 2001 he was a staff scientist[2] in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From 2002 to 2004 Pielke was Director of Graduate Studies for the CU-Boulder Graduate Program in Environmental Studies and in 2001 students selected him for the Outstanding Graduate Advisor Award. Pielke serves on numerous editorial boards and advisory committees, retains many professional affiliations, and sat on the Board of Directors of WeatherData, Inc. from 2001 to 2006. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Linköping University[3][4]and the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America.[5]
************************************
So has no education in climate science or physics or really anything related. He's a political guy. What a surprise. He's really not qualified to judge the science.
OK, so let's move on.....
Nate Silver has launched a new FiveThirtyEight blog with the intent of applying his data-driven approach to a wide variety of subjects. The problem is that Nate Silver is himself only one man, so FiveThirtyEight has hired a variety of contributors to write about the subjects that are outside his expertise and comfort zone. For the topic of climate change, Silver decided to hire the renowned obfuscator
Roger Pielke, Jr.
This was immediately disappointing for those familiar with Pielke's work, because FiveThirtyEight is a statistics site, and frankly
Pielke is not good at statistics. Instead, Pielke is known for taking a selective view of the peer-reviewed scientific literature in order to downplay
the connection between human-caused global warming and extreme weather. Predictably,
Pielke's first two posts at FiveThirtyEight did exactly that, and included a litany of errors:
- The headline and main point of his post are wrong.
- He misrepresents his own research.
- The references he provides don't say what he claims and don't support his argument.
- Research he neglects contradicts his conclusions.
- He doesn't include all available data.
- He incorrectly claims that weather-related disasters aren't becoming more frequent.
- He fails to account for the costs of improved technology and the damages they prevent.
- He considers only land-falling hurricanes whose damages are highly variable.
- His conclusions are contradicted by the increased intensity of North Atlantic hurricanes, and global warming's contribution to their storm surges and flooding.
for the full debunking of this climate misinformer....who is exactly in the mould of piezoe...
https://www.skepticalscience.com/fivethirtyeight-pielke-downplay-climate-damages.html