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.

I debated Trenberth last week. From Kevin there was yelling, spittle & an apology. I stuck to IPCC AR5 which he called totally wrong. Weird.
— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) August 10, 2014

Roger is playing no limit absurdity