This is not helpful. Pielke has been heavily involved in one side (and only one side) of the political debate on this topic. It's dishonest to pretend that information isn't relevant in the context of a post like this. He's not a neutral academic that decided to look at the evidence and was shocked to see issues.

> How would atmospheric scientists be especially competent to assess 'key variables in climate scenarios compared with data from the real world'? Would they really want to skip their core science to put economic hats on to study how 'population, economic growth, energy intensity of economic growth and carbon intensity of energy consumption' relate to these key variables? Pielke's competence is in this field and climate policy generally.

While technically this is correct, it's deeply misleading (or whatever is the next step above that). Economists study those issues and have their own journals for publishing those results. Pielke, on the other hand, is trained as a political scientist. Trying to make it sound like he's the only one with the qualifications is, as they used to say, not cool.