"If You’re Afraid Of Climate Change AND Nuclear Power, You Have A Math Problem" With Roger Pielke Jr., The Honest Broker

C.O.B. Tuesday

Today we were delighted to welcome back our good friend Roger Pielke Jr. for an engaging discussion on the evolving climate policy and energy landscape. Roger is the author of “The Honest Broker” on Substack which reaches 30,000+ subscribers across 153 countries. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he focuses on science and technology policy, the politicization of science, government science advice, and energy and climate. Since 2001, Roger has served as a professor in the Environmental Studies department at the University of Colorado Boulder and will retire from academia at the end of 2024. We last hosted Roger on COBT on September 29, 2023 (episode linked here) and were excited to get him back to hear his latest insights on how the world has changed in the past year, especially in the climate community.
Roger joined us from Tokyo, where he is speaking at a Symposium hosted by the University of Tokyo on Japanese energy strategy and climate policies. In our conversation, we discuss how 2023 so far has been one of the most inaccurate in seasonal hurricane forecasting history with fewer named storms than predicted, the history of hurricane forecasting, and the groups and organizations responsible for hurricane season predictions. Roger shares his perspectives on the complexity of climate modeling and its limitations, human impact on climate and the importance of focusing on risk management rather than debating the future, and Japan’s energy landscape and how it’s a serious national security issue for the country. We explore the debate within the climate science community about the accuracy and relevance of current climate scenarios, the slower pace of climate modeling with updates every 10-20 years, the importance of understanding historical climate variability to better prepare for the future, and critical population assumptions in climate models. We touch on the need for improved communication in climate science and energy policy, future trends for climate science, Roger’s diverse audience, and much more. It was a fascinating discussion and we greatly appreciate Roger helping us understand this complex field better.
Mike Bradley opened the conversation by highlighting that most markets so far this week (bonds, commodities, currencies & equities) were focused on Wednesday’s FOMC Rate Decision Meeting (1pm CST). On the bond market front, the 10-year U.S. bond yield was unchanged this week (~3.65%). He noted that odds last week had favored a 25-basis point interest rate cut but that consensus had shifted this week to a 50-basis point cut. He further noted (excluding 2001 & 2007 recessions) that the S&P 500 has typically rallied a little over 10% in the 6-months following the beginning of interest rate cuts. On the crude oil front, WTI surged back above $71/bbl after recently bouncing off a strong technical trading support level of $65/bbl. Mike shared a chart that exhibited Brent Oil Managed Money Net Long Contracts vs Brent Oil Price and noted that this was the first time, in the last 10-15 years, that Managed Money was actually “net short” Brent oil future contracts. This signifies that oil traders are extremely bearish Brent oil futures for what they see as a slowing global economy, surging non-OPEC oil production growth and oversupplied global oil S/D in early 2025. He further noted that this “net short” position was larger than it was in April 2020 (Brent price ~$20/bbl) which also seems to signal that oil traders today aren’t fearful that OPEC can or will curtail additional barrels (like in previous go-arounds) to balance global crude oil markets. Brett Rampal highlighted this week’s announcement of the NRC’s issuance of a construction permit for the Natura Resources Molden Salt Reactor (Natura MSR-1) at Abilene Christian University, marking the first liquid salt fueled reactor licensed by