Roger Pielke Jr. at The Honest Broker: For more than a decade I have evaluated the so-called “billion dollar disaster” tabulation promoted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I have watched it go from a clever marketing gimmick to NOAA”s leading scientific indicator representing climate change. The “dataset” employs methods that are not public and various versions of the tabulation includes entries and changes that are undocumented. I recently published a peer-reviewed paper documenting problems with the dataset and its complete intransparency. Despite the tabulation’s obvious flaws, it is a good example of bad science that is too big to fail. You can read about its many issues here and here.
A Love Affair with Extreme Emissions Scenarios
The top of the table won’t be a surprise to longtime readers of THB. Extreme emissions scenarios that map out implausible and even apocalyptic futures are a favorite in climate research and assessment. This space continues to be dominated by a scenario called RCP8.5 — which has coal consumption increasing more than 10x by 2100 (see figure above and all credit to my colleague Justin Ritchie). However, as the community comes to accept the ridiculousness of RCP8.5, efforts are being made to replace it with another extreme scenario — Right now that appears to be SSP3-7.0 which also foresees a massive increase in coal (~6x) and a world of about 13 billion people in 2100, far more than projected by the United Nations. You can read up on the backstory to how extreme scenarios ate climate science here and the community’s stubborn refusal to reorient here. Climate science and policy discussions are often grounded in the unreality of implausible scenarios, and course correction to date has proven impossible.
More here.
