Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Annus Horribilis

As Ethon points out this has been a very difficult year for Roger Jr. who, poor lad, has been exposed to the love that others have for him.  Roger has not taken this well, and his tried and true tactics of lashing out and expecting bunnies to back away have been tried and truly just did not work this time.

Of course the 538 comedy was difficult enough.  Before that there was his challenging John Holdren and having his teeth handed to him (indirectly of course).

The pushback is the result of going to the well too often.  The first rule of life, and academic life is that enemies accumulate.  Roger has any number and some of them now have bigger megaphones than he does.

Brad Johnson put together a fine collection of Roger's best for Grist in honor of Nate Silver shooting himself in the head by giving Roger a forum (a mistake soon rectified).

Pielke's response to criticism at the time was typical, demanding apologies from those who criticized him.
Trenberth said he considered Pielke's email "a threat to me.” “He was very accusatory and threatened me if I did not respond,” Trenberth told HuffPost. 
Trenberth forwarded the text of the email to HuffPost. Pielke wrote that Trenberth had "made some pretty coarse and perhaps even libelous comments" in the ThinkProgress article. Pielke requested that Trenberth correct his public claims and noted that "an apology would be nice also."  
Kevin is, of course, a long standing critic of Pielke Jr., no more clearly put than his review of Roger's The Climate Fix but Roger has never stood by idly when the opportunity beckoned and not loathe to give it a helping hand.

It is indeed a difficult thing to be exposed to the lack of respect others have for you. Given the past, bunnies could only expect the typical victim bully response
Unlike simple passive-aggression, victim bullies use accusations as weapons, and ramp up the accusations over time. Unlike a normal person, who would slink away in shame as the initial accusations are discredited, a victim bully lacks either guilt or shame, honestly believing that s/he has been so egregiously wronged in some cosmic way that anything s/he does or says is justified in the larger scheme of things. So when the initial accusations are dismissed, the victim bully's first move is a sort of double-or-nothing, raising the absurdity and the stakes even more
The absurdity stakes could not be any higher than the denouement of a panel on which both Roger and Kevin Trenberth had at each other last week.
Roger is playing no limit absurdity

17 comments:

  1. An unequivocal apology from Pielke for his Pachauri fiasco would go a long way.
    After all, it's generally the case that one sincere apology is anodyne for more than one insult. For Pielke a half dozen or so humble and sincere apologies are his to make, leaving him with a substantial remaining debt many would nonetheless forgive.

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  2. Pielke Jr has a lot more to apologize for. For example, he blindly repeated McIntyre's false claims about an IPCC meeting discussing how to deal with the divergence problem (supposed solution: cut the data off the graph), and then there was his long whine about being thrown of an Editorial Board because he was certain, certain I say, that they had done so because he had written a critique of one of the papers. When he was informed that it was because he wasn't doing his job as an Editorial Board member (review papers and submit papers to the journal), he never apologized for not doing his job, nor for his false accusation. And let's not forget how he claimed Rahmstorf had agreed with some supposed criticism of Pielke Jr of one of Ramhstorf's paper, which made the latter less than pleased with Pielke Jr.

    Maybe the bunny has some time to compile all the examples?

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  3. Yes, often wrong* but has seemingly passed beyond the ineffable and indistinct prestige horizon beyond which social credit is divorced from truth or consequences. It's a simian thing.

    *Mostly in the matter of mishandling other people's reputations?

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  4. The latest is Roger accusing Lord Deben (Chair of the UK's Independent Commission on Climate Change) of an Ad Hom when his response to Roger's claim that the UK's Climate Change Act had failed was, "What would be surprising would be Mr Pielke Jr saying the opposite." Firstly, this is nowhere near an Ad Hom (why do so many not understand what an Ad Hom is) and, secondly, is - I would have thought - something everyone could agree on. It would have been remarkably surprising if he'd said anything else.

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  5. John Mashey21/8/14 10:08 AM

    The old UNIX fortune program provided a random quote each time you logged in.

    Perhaps an equivalent program might provide a random choice for Brad Johnson's list of 111, each time one visits Rabbet Run.

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  6. Unfortunately, the last item in the Grist List of Pielkiana is true to the point of tautology.

    111 stopped clocks are right more than twice a day.

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  7. My favorite was always "Megan the Undergrad" where Pielke kept doubling down over and over again, and, as far as I can tell, never apologized for being blatantly wrong.

    http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2008/05/putting-roger-out-of-his-misery.html

    -MMM

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  8. I can never comment on my mobile, but I expressed sadness that people like Roger and Judith do not have working mirrors. I reject the hypothesis that they are vampires. I hate kind of speculating about psychology, but Roger is a mess.

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  9. Anon,
    My favorite was always "Megan the Undergrad" where Pielke kept doubling down over and over again, and, as far as I can tell, never apologized for being blatantly wrong.
    It actually took me a while to realise what Roger had wrong, which - I think - is because I didn't really consider that anyone could be quite that silly.

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  10. > Maybe the bunny has some time to compile all the examples?

    Lists are good, links are better, eg:

    http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/12/trick-in-context.html

    Interestingly, there's a q by our beloved Bishop:

    > A word or two of explanation of the difference between "misrepresent[ing] scientific complexity" and "scientific fraud" would be useful.

    There were 70 hits for "fraud" in that thread alone.

    This f-word hurly burly may be connected to this comment:

    > And while many of your commenters seem to think that I have made accusations of "fraud" against Mann at Climate Audit or elsewhere, I have consistently refrained from using such terms in criticizing Mann's work and have editorially snipped or deleted such allegations by commenters at Climate Audit.

    http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/8/11/krugman-homeopath.html?currentPage=2#comments

    An editorial practice that deserves due diligence, considering the Auditor's pro bono defense of Steyn.

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  11. As long as the money keeps rolling in and the invitations to testify for Congress and such continue, this is not going to affect the guy's self love. It is necessary to find a way to make the truth stand out, unhidden from those who will pay to avoid the truth, as demonstrated neatly here:
    https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/information-aversion/

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  12. But I see that despite his having disgraced himself and Silver's brand, Pielke Jr still is listed as a contributor to 538, and continues to post material (though nothing, since the first one, dealing with climate).

    --raypierre

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  13. Ray, RP Jr.'s most recent (sports) contribution seems to be from June 3rd, I'm assuming produced in accordance with whatever agreement was in place between them prior to the big blow-up, and he's no longer on the main contributors page. I'd be surprised if Silver had scrubbed the site of any traces, however much he might have been tempted.

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  14. I might be just a country doctor, but Dick should just quit when he is getting paid. It is just sad.

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  15. Holy crap! Pielke has a piece on The Guardian, saying that science advisors are too political. It's in the science/science policy section.

    When I read it out lound, my dog started running around and whining. I think he was hearing a whistle somewhere.

    Not many comments there; I comment there a lot, so I jumped in. The phrase "both barrels" comes to mind.

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  16. ditto. thx for the h/t, john, it was quite hard to find at first...

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  17. In addition to his unprofessional conduct, Roger Jnr seems to suffer from a number of afflictions. That Roger Jnr is a "victim bully" also describes him incredibly well.

    Roger and his ilk rarely apologize, and if they do, it is usually followed by a "but" or not terribly gracious or sincere.

    Oh well, Roger is welcome to keep digging his grave ever deeper.

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