An inconvenient tiff: climate scientist chides his home team

Right before game time, Team Green opted for a locker-room fistfight, giving Team Brown what would seem an advantage at kickoff.
Roger Pielke, an environmental scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has taken issue with one paragraph in a White House report on climate change released last week. Based on the paragraph, Pielke contends the report cherry picks data to support its claims about global warming impacts in the United States, which include the celebrated prediction that the Florida Keys will be submerged. Pielke says the report ignores more recent evidence that droughts and weather events have not, in fact, been on the rise. These contentions, which have already made headlines in New York Times and BBC blogs, seem secondary to Pielke’s main concern, which I’ll address shortly. What has mattered in coverage so far is that Pielke agrees humans are causing global warming, and he accuses his like-minded colleagues of misrepresenting science, including his own work.
Global warming deniers could not have asked for much more, with a vote sort-of expected next week on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, more casually known as the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill. I say sort-of expected because there are rumors the vote will be delayed. Apparently Democrats have been unable to reach a compromise on the bill’s provisions affecting agriculture. Unlike the tiff between climate scientists, that fistfight has been going on mostly behind closed doors, though Fox seems to have gotten a peek through the keyhole.
Pielke didn’t mean to impugn the White House report as a whole, or so he said to a commenter on his blog, who asked him if the dubious paragraph meant the whole report is flawed. He replied, “I wouldn’t think so and would certainly hope not. At the same time the section which covers my research does not give me a lot of confidence in the process that led to the report.”
Last sentence, again, not helpful politically, but probably deserves points for sincerity.
On to Pielke’s main concern, which seems to be that the report was coauthored by Energy Dept. scientist Evan Mills, who cited some of his own work, which was not peer reviewed. Pielke also alleges that Mills has a financial interest in climate change.
But then, who doesn’t?
Hard to say why the Heritage and Heartland foundations haven’t caught on to Pielke’s complaints yet and sent them ricochetting around the rightosphere. Maybe they’re simply accustomed to ignoring climate scientists who aren’t on the Exxon payroll, but it seems inevitable they will catch on, since Pielke looks a lot like a dagger right now, pointed at the heart of the effort to halt global warming. Among other things, Pielke gives credence, as he believes a balanced scientist should, to these claims:
1. Over the long-term U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.
2. Nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.
3. Despite increases in some measures of precipitation (pp. 46-50, pp. 130-131), there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (high flows above 90th percentile).
4. There have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms
5. There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters.
6. There are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.