It is important to identify and reject both false arguments for a position one believes to be true and claims which make a false extension of that position. But when someone professing to be an “Honest Broker” focuses exclusively on such rejections on one side of an argument it becomes hard not to suspect that they are engaged in some kind of covert support for those who deny the position they claim to agree with.
This suspicion is strengthened when the rejected extreme position is not actually being put forward – except by the “Honest Broker” himself as a straw man to be cut down.
A case in point is the analogy drawn by some between CO2 emissions and a thermostat. No-one has suggested that reducing CO2 emissions now would have any immediate effect on heat wave intensity or frequency but rather just that if we don’t cut emissions then there is a good chance that the heat waves will get worse. In terms of the analogy there is a furnace but no AC and the thermostat has been turned up so the furnace is on. Turning it down is essential to prevent further heating but will not immediately make us cooler.
Of course Pielke is correct that the thermostat analogy would be wrong if it was thought to control air conditioning as well as a furnace, but noone without AC expects that turning down the thermostat will immediately cool an overheated house. He is also correct that in some cases reducing combustion might temporarily increase some temperatures due to reduced aerosols, and that local temperature spikes might be mitigated in various ways (eg by water flow adjustments, vegetation and other land use changes, etc). But none of that is new news and the fact remains that the extent of the mitigation required will keep on increasing so long as the “thermostat” is pointing into the red zone.
Pielke includes a disclaimer that “Getting to net zero still makes sense even though it is not a solution to heat waves or other extreme weather events . . .The fact that carbon dioxide is not an extreme weather control knob does not weaken the case for reducing emissions.” But his claim that “many climate advocates are justifying their calls for net zero based on a false promise — that emissions reductions will improve the weather” is itself false – and serves only to unfairly malign the credibility of all “climate advocates”.