Bad Idea #14 “increasing disaster costs show extreme weather is getting worse” with Roger Pielke Jr
WePlanet 
🔍 Episode Summary:
Hurricanes. Floods. Fires. Tornadoes. Are extreme weather disasters getting worse because of climate change — or is that just the story we tell?
In this provocative episode, Mark Lynas sits down with climate scientist and policy scholar Roger Pielke Jr., one of the most polarising voices in climate debates over the last 30 years. Roger explains why the costs of disasters are rising — but not primarily because extreme weather is increasing. Instead, it’s us — where we build, how we build, and what we place in harm’s way.
Together, they unpack why pointing this out has gotten Roger attacked, investigated, and effectively blacklisted in parts of the climate community. They discuss hurricanes, attribution studies, politicisation of science, the breakdown of trust in expertise, and why nuance is often unwelcome in highly charged public debates.
This is a must-listen for anyone who cares about evidence-based climate science — and why getting the science right matters, even when it’s inconvenient.
🧠 Topics Discussed:
🌪️ Why rising disaster costs are mostly driven by exposure, not more extreme weather
☣️ The politicisation of hurricanes as climate symbols
📉 Why the IPCC still sees no detectable global trend in tropical cyclones
🌡️ What extreme weather is linked to climate change (hint: heatwaves & rainfall)
🧪 The shaky science behind rapid attribution studies
🔥 Why being “accurate but inconvenient” can get you cancelled
💰 Roger’s congressional investigation over alleged fossil fuel funding
🎯 How the academy became ideologically uniform — and why that’s dangerous
🇺🇸 The crisis of public trust in science amid US culture wars
🏳️🌈 The transgender athlete controversy as another case study in politicised science
🧭 How to rebuild trust in expertise after the populist backlash
👨🏫 Guest Bio:
Roger Pielke Jr. is a political scientist, climate policy expert, and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. For three decades, he has published widely on science, risk, and policy, often challenging simplistic narratives on extreme weather and climate change. He is the author of The Honest Broker and writes extensively on his Substack, also titled The Honest Broker.
📚 Recommended Reading & Resources:
The Honest Broker – Roger Pielke Jr.
Normalizing the Impacts of Disasters – Pielke et al. (original research paper)
IPCC AR6 Working Group 1 – Chapter 12 (Extreme Events)
World Weather Attribution – attribution study critiques
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/
Skeptical Environmentalist – Bjørn Lomborg
The Geek Manifesto – Mark Henderson
The Honest Broker Substack
💬 Quote Highlights:
“If you want to see the signal of climate change, don’t look at extreme events — look at temperature and precipitation. That’s where the evidence is.” — Roger Pielke Jr.
“We’ve built more hotels on the beach. Of course the costs go up when storms hit. That’s exposure, not stronger hurricanes.” — Roger Pielke Jr.
“When science becomes partisan, we put a target on our backs. The expert community needs support from everyone — right, left, and centre.” — Roger Pielke Jr.
“Evidence-based fairness — not identity politics — is the only way to regulate transgender athletes in sport.” — Roger Pielke Jr.
“The populist backlash against science didn’t start with Trump — but it accelerated under him. Rebuilding trust will take a generation.” — Roger Pielke Jr.
🌐 About WePlanet:
WePlanet is a global citizen and science movement challenging bad ideas and championing evidence-based solutions for climate, nature, and human development. Learn more at weplanet.org.
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About The Author
It's great to hear alternative voices on "STWF". But some more push back and scrutiny of Rogers ideas may have helped the audience.
The latest reports on extreme weather events from Nasa, Water Aid, Met Office, Copernicus etc potentially negate much of Peilke's older findings. Especially when he appeared by to overly reliant on assessments made by the notoriously sluggish and highly conservative IPCC, who publicly still think +1.5oC is achievable!!
Roger is a shining beacon of integrity for science in today's politicised world, where integrity matters not. As he said, the two things we can say for certain about climate change is that A) it's got hotter, and B) extreme precipitation has increased. After that everything is as good as pissing in the wind.
We don't measure the weather with dollars and cents, it takes decades of actual weather data to establish trends and this is all pretty new to science – there's no fossil record of weather.
If 'attribution science' says different then we may as well dismember the IPCC.
But then we'd have to reestablish it…because as he said, if it didn't exist, we'd have to create it.