Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
A single, obscure handbook sitting on federal judges’ desks could help decide whether your energy bills skyrocket — and President Trump just moved to do something about it.
On July 19, President Trump called for a review of the Federal Judicial Center and the scientific reference manual it publishes because a proposed revision gutted the scientific method in favor of a hyper-politicized “consensus” approach.
A single rewrite of scientific evidence rules could affect thousands of climate lawsuits in the radical Left’s favor.
A single, obscure handbook sitting on federal judges’ desks could help decide whether your energy bills skyrocket — and President Trump just moved to do something about it.
On July 19, President Trump called for a review of the Federal Judicial Center and the scientific reference manual it publishes because a proposed revision gutted the scientific method in favor of a hyper-politicized “consensus” approach. That’s how the Left wants it — because the revision could tip the scales in environmental extremists’ favor on literally thousands of frivolous climate lawsuits.
Trump put it best: The National Academy of Sciences (which helped write the chapter in question) is run by “Radical Left Dumocrats.” Now he’s righting that wrong, and your wallet can breathe a sigh of relief.
Congress established the FJC in 1967 as the research and education arm of the federal courts and made the Chief Justice of the United States — currently John Roberts — its chair.
This reference manual is used by judges at all levels across America to set rules for evaluating scientific evidence in cases before the court.
A December 2025 revision of the manual tried to sneak unscientific consensus and global warming hysteria into the best practices for judges who must render judgment with varying levels of formal scientific training.
Your utility bills are on the line. If these 1,000-plus lawsuits succeed, energy producers face massive liability payouts — costs that get passed straight to you at the electrical meter and the gas pump.
The rules were changed without anyone noticing. A stealthy rewrite in December 2025 swapped courtroom standards from tested evidence to “consensus,” tilting the field before most Americans even knew the manual existed. That’s not fair.
Conservatives have the power to fix it. Chief Justice Roberts has the authority to revert the manual to its evidence-based version — no act of Congress required — which is why the pressure campaign matters right now.
Beyond the Headlines
Removing the scientific method in favor of “consensus” could bias courts away from proving the claims of the global warming extremists.
Over 1,000 frivolous climate change lawsuits have been filed against energy producers and other carbon emitters, claiming they have liability for a warming planet.
If successful, these suits could cripple energy production and cause costs to skyrocket.
What’s Next:
Trump posted on Truth Social: “With this TRUTH, I hereby order Federal Suspension and Debarment Officials to review this conduct. Our Taxpayers should not be funding Climate Fraud, and Judges should never have relied upon it.”
According to Reuters, the chapter was authored by Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton of Columbia Law School, a leftist bastion, to “help judges evaluate the admissibility and weight of expert testimony and documentary evidence involving climate science.”
Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts faces mounting pressure to return to the original version of the guidance on using scientific evidence that relies solely on the scientific method.
While an educational manual for federal judges was improved when a biased representation of climate change was removed, a remaining chapter on the fundamentals of science would poison the judiciary with quackery.
While an educational manual for federal judges was improved when a biased representation of climate change was removed, a remaining chapter on the fundamentals of science would poison the judiciary with quackery.
The “How Science Works” chapter of the “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence” allows for an overreliance on the unproven assumptions of computer models and an acceptance of “consensus” as proof even when contradicted by empirical evidence.
This violates tenets of the hundreds-year-old Scientific Method that require data obtained through experimentation or observation of the physical world as the means of supporting scientific conclusions. The undue regard for models and consensus is emblematic of climate alarmists whose claims fail scrupulous examination and whose views are shared by at least one of the chapter’s authors.
In defining the concepts of hypothesis, theory and scientific law, the writers exclude the elements of testing, observation and experimentation. Neither is it acknowledged that all three can be disproven, even though the ability to demonstrate the falseness of a conclusion has long been recognized as the path to advancing scientific knowledge.
Along these lines, the chapter even says that science cannot “disprove hypotheses,” although science has done so many times. A famous example is geocentricism that was supplanted in the 1500s by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. Others include phrenology, eugenics, spontaneous generation and miasma theory of disease. All were embraced by much of the scientific community of their time – a consensus – until proven false. German scientist Alfred Wegener was dead for 30 years – and rejected by a consensus of his peers – before his theory of plate tectonics gained support in the last half of the 20th century.
The authors may misunderstand the Scientific Method. Or perhaps they believe that computer models relying on unproven assumptions that fail to explain or predict outcomes should be accepted over the extensive experimentation and observation required by the Scientific Method.
The chapter also misses the mark with this statement: “In the context of testing hypotheses, the term prediction refers to a logical consequence of a hypothesis, not necessarily what will happen in the future.” On the contrary, a prediction is all about what will happen in the future. Either objects of different weights dropped from the same height in a vacuum hit the ground at the same time or don’t. (They do.) A hypothesis also can be tested by determining whether it can explain something that has happened in the past.
Are the authors saying that a hypothesis paired with a model is sufficient confirmation, even when they fail to predict the future or explain the past? Or perhaps they believe that computer models predicting the climate 50-100 years in the future are more accurate than weather models that are reliable less than a week in advance — and sometimes failing that.
Apparently, there is no need to fret about such failures because the authors say: “The fact that there is room for improvement in the process of science does not necessitate distrust of hypotheses that have gained widespread acceptance in the scientific community and about which consensus has been achieved.” This is a justification for using consensus as a defense against evidence that challenges a popular narrative – a common ploy of climate alarmists.
In places, the chapter is self-contradictory. For example, the writers seem to embrace key elements of the Scientific Method when they say that a testable hypothesis must ultimately predict a set of observations that could or could not be made. This suggests a less cavalier relationship with traditional science than exhibited elsewhere, such as when key features of hypotheses and theories are omitted from their definitions. Unfortunately, the contradiction conveys a desire “to have it both ways” more than a commitment to rigorous scientific inquiry.
Ultimately, the chapter’s confusions and inordinate 62-page length muddy a reader’s understanding of the Scientific Method. More problematic, the writers introduce wrongheaded practices like the overuse of models and consensus in settling important questions. Such departures from the empirical tradition of Isaac Newton and Marie Curie make for superficial and specious investigations of reality known as pseudoscience.
Having received objections from state attorneys general and others, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg excised the offending chapter on climate change from the reference manual. This is a remedy that needs to be applied by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which still includes the chapter on its website.
In the meantime, as head of the Federal Judicial Center, the manual’s publisher, Judge Rosenberg should do the same with “How Science Works.” The judiciary and the public it serves deserve nothing less.
Originally published in The Blaze on March 3, 2026.
Sharon Camp, senior education advisor for the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia, has a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology, and has worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and as an advanced placement science teacher.
What’s New!
The CO2 Coalition has released its new episode of the Climate DebriefPodcast featuring Ron Stein. Watch the full video here!
I’ve just been made aware of a paper critical of the “consensus” view that man-made climate change is dangerous. It is by Ashutosh Sharma, Vinit Vithalrai Shenvi, and Mohit Sain of the MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology in India (or MSRIT) (Sharma et al., 2024). It was published just two months before “Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems,” by Marcel Crok and myself (May & Crok, 2024) and makes similar points, at least until we reach the paper’s conclusions. The paper argues that: “climate change policies impose unwarranted economic strains on nations and impede technological advancement.”
I’ve just been made aware of a paper critical of the “consensus” view that man-made climate change is dangerous. It is by Ashutosh Sharma, Vinit Vithalrai Shenvi, and Mohit Sain of the MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology in India (or MSRIT) (Sharma et al., 2024). It was published just two months before “Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems,” by Marcel Crok and myself (May & Crok, 2024) and makes similar points, at least until we reach the paper’s conclusions. The paper argues that: “climate change policies impose unwarranted economic strains on nations and impede technological advancement.”
Unfortunately, like many papers, after it completely destroys the whole idea of dangerous climate change it turns around and claims the consensus is correct after all:
“The consequences of climate change are already evident in rising temperatures, melting ice caps, and extreme weather events, and if left unchecked, these effects will become increasingly severe in the future. It is crucial for policymakers, businesses, and individuals to acknowledge the reality of climate change and take proactive measures to mitigate its effects.”
I have seen this sort of nonsense in too many papers to count. First, they show there is no evidence that man-made climate change is unusual or dangerous, and then they say that future will be different, trust me. The conclusions in May and Crok are more sensible:
“The infrastructure to replace fossil fuels does not exist and likely cannot be built in a short time. Current realistic estimates of future energy use suggest that fossil fuels will still supply half our energy in 2050 and beyond. Yet no credible evidence exists that this is a problem or will become a problem. Recent research into climate change has suggested that nature plays some role, and certainly greenhouse gas emissions may play some role as well. What we do not know is how much of climate change is human-caused and how much is natural. No drastic changes to our economy are justified until we can figure this out.”
Key points made by Sharma et al.:
Climate change is not solely driven by anthropogenic factors. The main factor emphasized by the consensus is that increasing CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels will somehow create problems for mankind. While some impact from burning fossil fuels on climate is expected, it is likely minor and not dangerous (Sharma et al., 2024) and (May & Crok, 2024).
The research supporting dangerous anthropogenic climate change is based upon manipulated data, biased methodologies, and political agendas.
Renewable sources of electricity require fossil fuel backup and cannot provide a consistent and reliable source of power.
Government subsidies have driven the growth of renewables and distorted the energy market.
Government spending on renewables has diverted spending from education, health care, and infrastructure, areas that should take priority.
Trends in mid-late Holocene climate change, particularly the transition from Holocene Climatic Optimum to the Little Ice Age challenge assumptions that recent changes are due to human activities or extreme in a proper historical context. This is also a point made by May and Crok.
The Holocene period (~9700BC to the present) is a brief warm interlude in a three-million-year ice age. As this paper and May and Crok point out the warmest period in the Holocene, was not the Modern Warm Period (1850 to the present), but 6000 years ago in the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This casts considerable doubt on the man-made climate change hypothesis.
The dark side of environmental activism has had a significant effect on public perception of climate change, also see the discussion of this factor in May, Politics and Climate Change: A History, 2020.
They acknowledge that the increase in climate disaster costs in recent years is primarily due to increasing populations and affluence in vulnerable areas.
The paper accepts the reduced uncertainty in climate sensitivity in AR6, as explained by (Sherwood et al., 2020), yet this new subjective Bayesian analysis technique for deriving climate sensitivity has been successfully debunked by Nic Lewis (Lewis, 2023).
Conclusions
It is an awful thing to read through a good paper that lays out a very good case why there is nothing to worry about regarding man-made climate change and then watch the authors do a complete U-turn in the conclusions and push the idea of potentially dangerous climate change. The change from downplaying concern to emphasizing it is abrupt in this paper and unexpected.
But I’ve seen it many times before. Roger Pielke Jr.’s otherwise excellent book: The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming does the same thing;I explain the discrepancy here. First Pielke completely destroys the argument that man-made global warming and climate change are dangerous, then he states that “carbon dioxide matters a great deal.” He never really explains why but states it anyway. Pielke is an excellent scientist and a good writer but is just as susceptible to unsupported conjecture about the supposed “dangers” of carbon dioxide emissions as most other scientists. Sigh.
Sharma et al. emphasize the importance of critical thinking and evidence-based decisions and then immediately ignore all the fine evidence they present in the earlier part of the paper that climate changes today are not unusual and are not dangerous. They go on to immediately use unsupported conjecture to proclaim that climate change is dangerous and urgent action is needed. It is truly absurd how often this logical error is found in otherwise good climate change papers.
The IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report (IPCC, 2023) is another good example. The detail chapters review the data on extreme weather and find no global increase attributable to human activities, yet in the conclusions and in The Summary for Policymakers they focus on future projections and conjecture to imply the opposite of what the data shows. Roger Pielke Jr. provides a very thorough critique of the Synthesis Reporthere.
Bottom line: Scientists should stick to the facts as we know them today, conjecture and predictions are fine, as long as they are clearly labeled as such. We all are susceptible to defending our ideas and conjectures, it isn’t just Sharma, et al. However, logic and common sense tell us to stick with clear evidence. Reasonable conjectures should be kept in mind but not acted upon until facts and observations support them.
May, A., & Crok, M. (2024, May 29). Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12579
Sharma, A., Shenvi, V. V., & Sain, M. (2024). Reevaluating the Concern of Climate Change. International Journal of Environment and Climate Change , 14(3). https://doi.org/10.9734/IJECC/2024/v14i34056
Sherwood, S. C., Webb, M. J., Annan, J. D., Armour, K. C., J., P. M., Hargreaves, C., . . . Knutti, R. (2020, July 22). An Assessment of Earth’s Climate Sensitivity Using Multiple Lines of Evidence. Reviews of Geophysics, 58. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RG000678
The Department of Energy’s new climate report is making waves, offering a fresh look at the alarmist claims pushed by special-interest groups and prior administrations. The report’s five scientists lay out data showing that while climate change is real, it isn’t the threat suggested by media or the climate lobby.
The Kim Strassel interview at WSJ is Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Resetting the Climate Debate. Below in italics is a transcript from the closed captions with my bolds and added images.
The Department of Energy’s new climate report is making waves, offering a fresh look at the alarmist claims pushed by special-interest groups and prior administrations. The report’s five scientists lay out data showing that while climate change is real, it isn’t the threat suggested by media or the climate lobby. On this episode of All Things, Energy Secretary Chris Wright takes Kim Strassel through the findings, including the upsides of warming, the minimal economic effects of climate change, the limits of U.S. policy actions and the lack of evidence that climate is related to the frequency or intensity of extreme weather.
KS: Tell us why you commissioned that report.
CW:The climate chain is a real physical phenomenon. It’s scientifically fascinating. It is a truly global issue. But you know there’s certain facts and data about it. There’re certain implications about it. And most everything I hear in the media, in the news from politicians, from protesters when I speak at universities, they’re just so unaware of the basics of what is climate change.
And and to give one example there, you hear these kids, I’m choking, I’m coughing on so much carbon pollution, you know. And look, the Clean Air Act was about real pollutants that do make you cough, that are toxic, that do have, you know, acute human impacts in local concentrations. As for carbon dioxide, I say it’s like oxygen and water, H2O, CO2 is one of the three most critical molecules for life on Earth. It is the essential life-giving plant food that makes our life possible.
So it does absorb infrared radiation. So we can have a real dialogue about too much of it or too little of it. which is actually I think a bigger risk. But you know calling it a pollutant is just nuts.
KS: So let’s go through some of the big takeaways of it because I think people would be amazed that it’s not what they hear in the media every day. One important thing that I think is is notable and I’ll just say it at the the top is that you know that no one in this entire report is denying that the climate is changing. We all agree that it’s changing. It’s always changing in some way.
One thing that might surprise people was that some aspects of a changing climate can actually be good. Because you only ever hear about the apocalyptic points. But the report goes into some detail about how this can be better for agricultural production. It also talks about throughout history, cold has been a much greater threat to human health than heat. More people die from cold every year.
A 2015 study by 22 scientists from around the world found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat. Thus the planet’s recent modest warming has been saving millions of lives.
It might also surprise people that we still don’t know the extent to which humans really affect the climate. I would like you to talk about that because that’s going to be really confusing to some folks out there because all they hear is, the consensus is that humans are causing massive damaging climate problems. That’s what you constantly get from the media refrain on this. How do you put those through things? How do you explain that to folks who might be surprised with what this report says compared to what they have heard non-stop for more than a decade now?
CW: Of course everyone says that, Republican politicians, Democratic politicians, the media everywhere because that’s what they hear. But it shows they don’t actually read, and of course, why would people read these giant bureaucratic clunky reportsfrom intergovernmental panel on climate change, the IPCC that you hear about? The problem with the IPCC is actually the layers of reporting. There’s the report that’s by the scientists, and then there’s the release or the summary for policy makers as they call it in the IPCC world that’s written by politicians and it is striking there are things in the summary for policy makers just directly contradictory to the science actually in the reports themselves.
And the biggest thing there that everybody hears is that weather, extreme storms are getting stronger and more frequent and the damage of this is taking an increasing toll on society and hence we’re in a climate emergency. None of that is true and none of that is clear in the intergovernmental panel on climate change reports. These are the reports written by people that have dedicated their life to climate change.
If you thought ah you know it’s a real thing but it’s not that big of a deal, you’re not going to spend your whole life as an author of an IPCC report. It’s sort of self- selecting for the people most interested in climate change. They’re honest scientists, for the large majority of them, but they’re the most interested in this thing. Maybe they think it’s the most important thing, the most exciting to them.
In these IPCC reports, there’s the collection of data on extreme weather: hurricanes, no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. floods, droughts, no increase in the frequency or intensity of them. The only the only meaningful extreme weather event that shows a trend and it’s not a huge trend is tornadoes and it’s downward. There’s like 50% less extreme high energy tornadoes today than 50 years ago. We don’t know why but you know that one’s sort of a favorable trend.
Most all of them have variations from year to year. Some of them have decadal oscillations. So they they go through phases of stronger and weaker but none of them show a scary upward trend. And my punch line, if you look at the deaths from extreme weather, they’ve just declined like a stone throughout the last hundred years, including in the last 20 or 30 years. So your risk of dying from extreme weather is the lowest we’ve ever had data on.
But yet 20% of kids report nightmares about fears of climate change. Like, how do those go together? And that’s despite the fact that we have much greater populations in a lot of these areas that are hit.
And that’s all useful information out there as well about not conflating the economic damage of a of a storm with meaning that it’s actually a bigger or worse storm. It just might mean that there were more things in its path to actually get wrecked. And people conflate those things too often with really sloppy consequences for the science.
KS: In the broader debate, if you look at many areas of science, for example we’ve been studying physics for millennia. There’s a been a lot of work done and a lot of people coming up with theories and then them getting knocked down. And we crawl our way forward but we have gained a pretty good understanding of many things in nature. Still climate science is new in the grand scheme of things, kind of in its infancy and we’re still learning a lot. Is that an accurate statement?
CW: Oh yeah. Look, it’s an incredibly complicated system. This is a tightly coupled, chaotic system. And you know, best exemplified by weather forecasts. We get better at weather forecasts now. 50 years ago, maybe you could have a reasonable projection out four or five days. Today, it’s closer to two weeks. There are people in the AI world telling me we can do a reasonable projection all the way out to a month today. I’ve never seen that, but that is a claim of massive, advanced computing going out a month. That’s just how complicated these phenomena are.
So when you come back and report that with this little knob CO2 concentration, you’re going to dial in to a tenth of a degree the temperature at the end of the century. That should be greeted with a lot of skepticism. There’s some reality. It is a warming fact. There’s a bias. There’s an upward average trend. But yeah, this you know attributing this storm, this much damage came from climate change.These are stretching science beyond science and going into science fiction.
There are more items from this report that I think might surprise people. It is very important to broaden this out to a couple other findings that would surprise people One point is that there’s not been so far and they’re not projected to be a lot of negative economic effects from this. And moreover the US’s ability to change global climate is extremely limited. Even if we were to take some very drastic policy measures it would generally have a negligible effect on global climate trends.
And that’s another part of the IPCC reports that not only is never read, but it’s never even talked about. In the past, I put out the summary of what are the economic conclusions of the IPCC authors. They survey all the economic literature on climate change. And yet our current warming trends, the projections are that maybe at the end of this century, we might lose a few tenths of a percent or maybe two, three or four percent per capita income, if we do nothing about climate change by the end of this century.
But in that same model with economic growth projected ahead, we’re about 400% richer than we are today. So, our great great grandchildren might be 400% richer than us or in the worst case, if you take the outer bounds scenarios, well, they might only be 380 or 85% richer than us. I don’t think that qualifies as a climate catastrophe or this disaster meme around something projected to be relatively modest. And even in the words of the climate economists, they’ll say, “Look, climate impacts are nowhere near as important as education policy or trade impacts or efficiencies and other things.” So people studying these things closely, I think, are quite sober and reasonable about them.
The problem is you never hear from them. Only the most extreme ones that made the dramatic, you know, that, you know, the Statue of Liberty is going to be underwater, you know, the people that make the crazy claims, they’re the newsworthy ones. So, they’re the ones that are put on TV all the time, but they’re not representative at all of the consensus.
Now consensus does not mean correct, but just the center point of people looking at this. Yeah. That you know their centrist view of climate change is a very slow moving but significant process. Nothing about alarmism, nothing about disaster. You know all the crazy stuff you hear is out of line with mainstream climate science and mainstream climate economics, but not the five authors of this report. They’re just making accessible to the broader public or at least the moderately scientifically inclined public to get in tune with what we think we know about climate change to date. They don’t talk a lot about projections because no one knows the future, but I think we’ve got a hundred years of pretty good data. That’s a good place to start when you’re trying to think how might things be in another 10 or 50 or 100 years.
KS: Yeah. And that’s what I loved about this report. If you go through it, every single statement in there is just common sense and you can’t really disagree with it if you’re looking at the numbers and the data. They really summed up the state of climate science at the moment.
Why I like this report and the way you framed it in your introduction at the beginning is that we as a country and as a member of this globe, we’re always facing myriad problems. And if you don’t have the whole picture, it’s impossible to prioritize which of those to focus on because by the way, we do have limited focus and limited resources to sort of manage some of these to a certain degree. In your introduction you put that perhaps the world’s greatest problem at the moment is actually energy poverty. And to fix that, to truly lift people up, we need reliable, affordable energy.
CW: And that’s just common sense. And in fact, I would say that’s why President Trump got elected. People were eventually tiring of these kind of alarmist claims that didn’t seem to make much sense. You know, every every 10 years the world’s going to end 10 years from now. And and honestly, unless you’re watching the news, no one would notice climate change if it was not in the news. If I were to change the temperature in the room you’re sitting right now by a couple degrees Fahrenheit over 20 minutes, you wouldn’t even notice it unless you’re very sensitive. I’m not. But that two degrees Fahrenheit, that’s the warming the planet has observed over a century, you know. But if I did it in 10 minutes or 15 minutes, you wouldn’t notice it.
So, President Trump got elected because, you know, 15%, 20% of Americans are struggling to pay their monthly electricity bill. They’re struggling to pay for gasoline to get to work. They’re struggling to start a new business because energy costs and energy connections are more expensive. That’s a problem in the here and now.
And that’s not an unrelated problem. We’ve driven up the cost of energy in the United States and Europe has done it dramatically all in the name of combating climate change. You know, we’re barely tweaking global emissions of greenhouse gases that might lead the planet to be a hundredth of a degree cooler in the year 2100. That’s the potential output if we implement these policies, but yet the short-term impacts are just crushing people’s opportunities and the ability to pay their bills. That’s getting way way off track.
That’s why the American public elected President Trump and maybe why President Trump tapped me. What I want to do is engage the public in this discussion: what do we know about climate change? What do we know about energy systems and how they could change and what kind of trade offs do we want to make? And the more people get exposed to the facts, the more I think people become realistic.
You talked about affordability problems in the United States. Let me just give one other punchline, World Health Organization data. Around two to three million people die every year from indoor air pollution. And that’s because two billion people, a quarter of humanity, cook their daily meals and heat their homes burning wood or dung or agricultural waste indoors. That smoke is just a deadly toxic pollutant that kills millions and crushes the freedom of women and children who gather the wood and spend hours a day over these smoky fires.
That’s an energy crisis we know how to solve. It’s affordable. It’s reliable and massively transformative of lives. But yet we never hear about that. That’s clearly a bigger priority than shaving a few hundreds of a degree off global temperatures three or four generations from now.
KS: Last question here, I do just want to ask a political question. Those of us who believe in free markets, who want opportunity, abundance, you know, the ability for people to succeed and have more, have understood a long time ago that if the activist climate agenda were imposed from above and government, that’s just an end to most of those free market ambitions. Because in order to to follow the agenda they want, which is total control over what you drive and what you eat and what kind of job you have and what kind of house you live in. You squash that freedom.
And I think a lot of free marketers have nonetheless struggled to know how to engage in these climate wars. For a while they said, “Well, the climate’s not changing.” And then for a while it was like, “It’ll just cost too much.” And then for a while it was, “Well, we’ll just have to do everything all of the above.” You seem to be saying, actually, you want to talk about the science, let’s talk about the science. And what it actually shows is that we don’t need to go down that road of stripping everything away to control everything given the actual level of what we’re dealing with here. Is that right?
CW: That’s right, Kim. Yeah. And I say two things created the modern world. doubled our life expectancy, you know, created planes, trains, and automobiles and modern medicine. The growth of human freedom, bottom-up social organization or human liberty, and the explosion in affordable energy from the arrival of hydrocarbons. First coal, then oil, then wood, and now the derivative energy sources of hydrocarbons like nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar. You can’t have any of those without abundant hydrocarbons.
And this climate movement opposes both of them. They’re making energy more expensive. They’re trying to get in the way of the main energy source. Hydrocarbons were 85% of global energy when I was born and they’re 85% of global energy today. Turns out it’s hard to change the energy system, but they’re making them more expensive.
And to your point, they’re going back to top-down control. The government’s going to decide what’s virtuous, what car you can buy, how you can heat your home. We’re going to force you to electrically heat your home, which is two to five times more expensive than burning natural gas. And when you heat your home electrically, guess what? The US’s main source of electricity comes from natural gas.
You’re not even changing. You’re not reducing gas consumption. You’re just making it more expensive. But it’s about political control. It’s about reducing human freedom. So, let’s do this. Let’s shine light on all of this on the trade-offs we’re making. And I think Americans will choose a much more reasonable, informed pathway for energy and climate policy going forward.
I’m hugely optimistic. Shining light on this, I think, is going to get us to a much better place.
The United Nations adjourned its plastics summit in Geneva, Switzerland, with no version of a global treaty coming close to reaching “consensus.”
This is great news for the global economy, as radical proposals sought to place taxes and controls on every phase of plastic production and use.
The UN plastics summit tried to follow the climate conference script, where launching into late-night overtime is standard. Bleary eyes, however, induced no parties to alter their positions.
Developing nations and the EU were unable to convince manufacturing and petroleum-producing nations to agree on a draft.
The anti-plastics nations attempted to kill production via a death by a thousand cuts strategy, by calling for the elimination of important chemicals used in plastics production. The pro-plastics nations saw through the ploy and blocked it.
Plastics have been a crucial factor in enabling people at every economic level to afford high-quality manufactured goods. They are essential to societal abundance.
The ideal solution is to keep plastic in our economies, but to do a great job at managing recycling and waste. Nations with advanced economies have already made huge strides. The vast majority of plastic pollution in the oceans comes from fishing gear and a few rivers in Asia and Africa. Forbidding the use of plastic straws in Paris or Peoria achieves nothing meaningful to combat this waste.
As CFACT President Craig Rucker recently wrote, “The real tragedy isn’t plastic itself, but the mismanagement of plastic waste—and the regulatory stranglehold that blocks better solutions. In many countries, recycling is a government-run monopoly with little incentive to innovate. Meanwhile, private-sector entrepreneurs working on advanced recycling, biodegradable materials, and AI-powered sorting systems face burdensome red tape and market distortion.”
A new UN regime of taxation, mandates, and bans is not the way to deal with the issues surrounding plastics (or pretty much anything else). Working with developing nations to up their recycling and waste management is the way to go.
Universities have traditionally served as bastions of free inquiry and impartial research. This tradition is long past. The recent shift towards unabashed advocacy and activism, is championed by “From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency,” and continues this disturbing trend. This paper, ostensibly published in the name of sustainability, reeks of ideological fervor rather than any kind of genuine pursuit of knowledge. Let’s dissect this document, piece by piece, and unveil the glaring absurdities and dangers inherent in this new academic dogma.
Universities have traditionally served as bastions of free inquiry and impartial research. This tradition is long past. The recent shift towards unabashed advocacy and activism, is championed by “From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency,” and continues this disturbing trend. This paper, ostensibly published in the name of sustainability, reeks of ideological fervor rather than any kind of genuine pursuit of knowledge. Let’s dissect this document, piece by piece, and unveil the glaring absurdities and dangers inherent in this new academic dogma.
A Manufactured “Emergency”
The paper begins with a dire warning: “Planetary heating threatens the collapse of human civilization and ecosystems worldwide”. Such alarmist rhetoric, reminiscent of doomsday cults, sets the tone for what follows. The authors rely on the declarations of over 11,000 scientists to assert that the Earth faces a “climate emergency”. However, they conveniently overlook the nuances and complexities inherent in climate science. The use of the term “emergency” is a rhetorical tool designed to stifle debate and justify extreme measures. It is a classic case of crying wolf, where any dissent is labeled as denialism, and only the most radical solutions are deemed acceptable.
“An emergency is an urgent situation requiring immediate action, yet, despite thousands of Higher Education (HE) institutions around the world having issued their own ‘climate emergency declaration’ [UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), 2019] and the widespread recognition that universities play a key role in contributing to the public good, the HE sector is not rising to the collective challenge with the urgency commensurate with the warnings”.
The Call for Activism
In a stunning departure from traditional academic roles, the authors argue that universities should move “from publications to public actions”. They propose that academics should engage in advocacy and activism to affect “urgent and transformational change”. The paper outlines several actions that universities should adopt, including altering work allocation models to incorporate advocacy as part of academic duties, facilitating engaged research sabbaticals, and providing training to enhance the effectiveness of engagement. The paper’s agenda is clear: transform universities into breeding grounds for ideological warriors rather than centers of learning.
“We therefore suggest that academics should move from publications to public actions and engage in advocacy and activism to affect urgent and transformational change. We discuss the barriers to engagement in advocacy that academics face, and propose a number of actions that universities should adopt to help overcome them”.
The Illusion of Consensus
The authors lament that the higher education sector is not rising to the collective challenge with the urgency commensurate with scientific warnings. This criticism is rooted in the false assumption that there is a monolithic consensus within the scientific community regarding the climate crisis. In reality, science thrives on skepticism and debate, and the portrayal of a unanimous consensus is a dangerous oversimplification. The paper’s authors seem eager to silence any dissenting voices, branding them as betrayers of humanity. This approach not only undermines the scientific method but also fosters an environment of intellectual intolerance.
“So poor has been the collective response of the HE sector to the CEE that universities have been accused of failing–and even betraying–humanity”.
The Push for Civil Disobedience
One of the most concerning aspects of the paper is its endorsement of civil disobedience as a legitimate form of academic engagement. The authors argue that non-violent civil disobedience has been a driver of major 20th-century changes and should be embraced by academics to address the so-called climate emergency. This call for law-breaking under the guise of noble intentions is reckless and irresponsible. It places universities in a precarious position, encouraging faculty and students to engage in potentially illegal activities. The glorification of movements like Extinction Rebellion and School Strikes for Future further illustrates the paper’s bias towards radical activism.
“One powerful mechanism to rapidly influence policy is non-violent civil disobedience, which has been a driver of major 20th-century changes including universal suffrage, independence from empire, and civil rights for people of colour. In recent years, and particularly since 2018, a number of popular climate and environmental civil disobedience movements have sprung up around the world”.
The Flawed Premise of “Public Good”
The paper posits that universities should play a pivotal role in contributing to the public good, not just through research and education but also by engaging with the public and other audiences outside the sector. While this notion might seem noble on the surface, it is fundamentally flawed. The definition of “public good” is highly subjective and often politicized. By aligning themselves with specific political agendas, universities risk alienating a significant portion of the population they serve. The paper’s suggestion that universities should take an active role in promoting social justice issues, such as race and gender, further politicizes the academic environment.
“Universities have the potential to be ‘pivotal change agents’ in catalysing transitions towards sustainability (Giesenbauer and Müller-Christ, 2020), and over 200 universities have signed the SDG Accord, the HE sector’s ‘collective response’ to the UN Sustainable Development Goals”.
The Ideological Takeover of Academia
The paper’s authors advocate for the incorporation of advocacy into the work mandates of academic staff and propose that universities should reject the notion that political engagement should only be carried out in academics’ spare time, as private citizens. This blatant attempt to politicize academia is alarming. The role of universities should be to foster critical thinking and allow students to explore a diverse range of perspectives, not to indoctrinate them with a particular ideology. The authors’ call for universities to defend the right of academics to engage in protest and push back against emerging threats to academic freedom is ironic, given their own attempts to stifle intellectual diversity.
“Given the urgency of the CEE, we suggest that universities must expand their conception of how they contribute to the public good, and explicitly recognize engagement with advocacy as part of the work mandate of their academic staff”.
The Danger of Groupthink
The paper’s authors express concern over the lack of engagement by academics with environmental activist movements, attributing it to the fear of losing scientific credibility or attracting scorn from colleagues. This statement is a textbook example of groupthink. By promoting a homogeneous viewpoint and discouraging dissent, the authors are fostering an environment where critical inquiry is sacrificed at the altar of ideological conformity. The pressure on academics to conform to a particular narrative, lest they face professional ostracism, is a dangerous trend that threatens the integrity of higher education.
“We note that there is in fact no consensus in academia on what the ‘proper channels’ consist of, and that the theory of change for connecting research to action should itself be a topic of open research and experimentation”.
The Corporatization of Higher Education
Ironically, the paper criticizes the corporatization and marketization of higher education institutions, suggesting that these trends may limit universities’ willingness to promote forms of engagement that call into question the neoliberal agenda. This criticism is particularly rich coming from authors who seek to turn universities into propaganda machines for their own ideological pursuits. The corporatization of higher education is a genuine concern, but the solution is not to replace one form of dogma with another. True academic freedom requires a commitment to intellectual diversity and a rejection of all forms of ideological coercion.
“Nevertheless, while universities have an important role in facilitating greater engagement and advocacy by the whole academic community, their willingness to do so may be limited by the increasing corporatization and marketization of higher education institutions”.
The Hypocrisy of Academic Activism
The paper’s authors argue that those with the greatest knowledge and understanding of these crises have a moral obligation to provide leadership and engage in advocacy and activism. This self-righteous stance is not only patronizing but also hypocritical. It presupposes that only those who agree with the authors’ worldview possess the moral authority to speak on these issues. The idea that academics should use their positions to advance specific political agendas is antithetical to the principles of academic freedom and impartial inquiry.
“We suggest that the traditional academic roles of research and teaching are not sufficient to drive transformative change in a time of rapidly accelerating global crises, so those with the greatest knowledge and understanding of these crises have a moral obligation to provide leadership, and engage in advocacy and activism”.
Conclusion: A Call for Intellectual Integrity
The publication of “From Publications to Public Actions” continues and highlights the troubling shift in the role of universities. The authors’ unabashed call for activism and advocacy undermines the very foundations of higher education. Universities should be spaces for open dialogue, critical inquiry, and the free exchange of ideas. They should not be transformed into echo chambers for ideologically driven agendas. The academic community must resist this encroachment of political activism and recommit to the principles of intellectual integrity and impartiality.
In conclusion, the push for academic advocacy and activism, as outlined in this paper, is a dangerous and misguided attempt to politicize higher education.
While the true mission of universities should be to pursue knowledge and truth, free from the constraints of political dogma, one has to wonder if many if not most universities have deteriorated beyond salvaging. If the university system is to be saved, it will likely be done by emulating the actions being taken in Florida. noted below. Most of the higher education initiatives implemented to date are more about eliminating cultural Marxism practices. But cultural Marxism is the common thread woven through all related “Intersectional” academic issues, whether it is climate change, white supremacy, or that men can menstruate.
Legislative Actions and Policies
Defunding DEI Programs:
Florida has enacted laws that prohibit public colleges and universities from using state or federal funds to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. This move is part of a broader effort to eliminate what state leaders consider politically motivated programs from academic institutions.
Stop WOKE Act:
The Stop WOKE Act, signed into law in 2022, restricts how race and gender can be taught in public universities. The law aims to prevent teachings that suggest systemic racism or sexism are inherent in American institutions. Although its implementation has been challenged and blocked by federal courts, it represents a significant attempt to free academic content from dogma.
HB 1285:
This legislation focuses on enhancing classical education and providing students with opportunities to explore military service. It also includes measures to protect against conflicts of interest in postsecondary institutions and supports the development of classical teaching certificates.
HB 999:
Aimed at furthering Governor DeSantis’s higher education reforms, this bill seeks to defund DEI initiatives, centralize hiring power with trustees, allow for post-tenure faculty review, and eliminate certain academic programs focused on race and gender.
Governance and Administrative Changes
Board Appointments:
Governor DeSantis has appointed critics of campus diversity initiatives to leadership positions at state universities, such as Florida Polytechnic University. These appointments are intended to steer these institutions away from DEI-focused policies and towards a more traditional academic framework.
Realignment of General Education:
The state has mandated that the Board of Governors and the State Board of Education review and realign general education core courses to ensure they provide historically accurate and foundational education while avoiding identity politics.
Promotion of Classical Education
Classical and Civic Education Centers:
Florida has invested in the creation and expansion of centers dedicated to classical and civic education, such as the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. These centers are intended to promote a curriculum grounded in Western civilization and civic responsibility.
Classical Teaching Certificates:
The state has introduced classical teaching certificates to bolster the teacher pipeline and ensure that educators are well-versed in classical education principles. This initiative is part of a broader effort to prioritize traditional academic subjects and methodologies.
Civil Discourse and Intellectual Freedom
Intellectual Freedom Assessments:
Florida has implemented annual assessments of intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity among students, faculty, and administrators. These assessments are designed to measure and promote a culture of open inquiry and diverse perspectives within academic institutions.
Promotion of Civil Discourse:
Legislation has been introduced to elevate civil discourse and intellectual freedom in higher education. This includes ensuring that universities’ missions align with the values of liberty and the Western tradition, and that they provide education relevant to citizenship and workforce needs.
This four year old presentation by Dr. John Robson investigates the unsound origins and fundamental inaccuracy, even dishonesty, of the claim that 97% of scientists, or “the world’s scientists”, or something agree that climate change is man-made, urgent and dangerous.
This four year old presentation by Dr. John Robson investigates the unsound origins and fundamental inaccuracy, even dishonesty, of the claim that 97% of scientists, or “the world’s scientists”, or something agree that climate change is man-made, urgent and dangerous.
There are so many empty slogans out there I wish we could tackle all of them at once. But the “97% of scientists agree” is surely the elephant in the room. Lots of people have tried to rebut it by dismissing the notion of consensus itself, or by praising the historical examples of renegade scientists who went against a prevailing consensus and turned out to be right. But that unnecessarily concedes the major claim itself, which the evidence shows is simply not true. I hope you enjoy the video, and that you’ll share it widely. -JR
Narrator
The claim that 97% of the world’s scientists agree is pretty much the ace of trumps in the whole climate debate. After all, who’s going to argue against a consensus that strong, backed by so many experts. But what exactly are they supposed to agree on? If you look behind the curtain, no one seems sure what the experts actually said. Or who they are. Or… anything.
John
At first glance it seems straightforward enough. In 2013 President Barack Obama famously tweeted that “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”
In 2014, his Secretary of State John Kerry said 97% of “the world’s scientists tell us this is urgent.” And that same year, CNN said “97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening now, that it’s damaging the planet and that it’s manmade.”
Narrator
That’s pretty much what most people think when they hear the 97% slogan: Every scientist believes man-made climate change is an urgent crisis.
But there are millions of scientists in the world. How many exactly were surveyed? When were they surveyed? Who did it? And what exactly did they agree on?
John
Let’s find out. I’m John Robson and this is a Climate Discussion Nexus Fact Check on the 97 percent consensus slogan.
To begin with, there are some ideas that pretty much all scientists accept. For instance that birds are descended from dinosaurs, though that idea was once dismissed as highly eccentric. And when it comes to climate, you don’t need a poll to tell you that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, meaning it likely has some overall warming effect. That’s been known since the mid-1800s. And if you did do a survey, you would find overwhelming scientific agreement on that point.
Also, there are lots of indications that the world is somewhat warmer now than it was in the mid-1800s, the end of a natural cooling period called the Little Ice Age.
Finally, virtually nobody disputes that humans have changed the environment of our planet, by releasing emissions into the air, changing the land surface, putting things in the water, and so forth.
These aren’t controversial ideas, and they’re accepted even by most climate skeptics. What we don’t accept is that any of them prove that humans are the only cause of global warming, or that climate change is a dangerous threat.
If 97% of scientists believed that, it would be troubling. Though even so, we’d still have to find some plan whose benefits outweighed its costs. In any event, that level of consensus that the problem was manmade and urgent would certainly be noteworthy. But the thing is, they don’t agree on that.
A close look at what survey data we have, and there isn’t much, tells us, yes, there is a great deal of agreement that CO2 is a greenhouse gas to some degree, that the Earth has warmed in the last 160 years, and that humans affect their surroundings. But that survey data also tell us there’s far less agreement on everything else including whether we face a crisis.
So where did this 97% claim come from and why is it so widely repeated?
Narrator
The 97% claim seems to have begun with a historian of science named Naomi Oreskes who, in 2004, claimed she’d looked at 928 articles about climate change in scientific journals, that 75% of them endorsed the “consensus view” that “Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities” and that none directly disputed it.
By 2006, in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, this finding had somehow morphed into “a massive study of every scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal written on global warming for the last 10 years and they took a big sample of 10%, 928 articles, and you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we’re causing global warming and that it’s a serious problem? Out of the 928, zero.”
John
That was a fib. Gore took a study that found 75% endorsed the idea that humans have some effect on climate and turned it into proof that 100% of scientists believe it’s a serious problem. It does no such thing.
Narrator
And nor do the handful of other surveys on the subject. For instance five years later, in 2009, a pair of researchers at the University of Illinois sent an online survey to over 10,000 Earth scientists asking two simple questions: Do you agree that global temperatures have generally risen since the pre-1800s? and Do you think that human activity is a significant contributing factor? [Note: They asked some other questions too, but didn’t report the questions or results in the publication.]
John
They didn’t single out greenhouse gases, they didn’t explain what the term “significant” meant and they didn’t refer to danger or crisis. So what was the result?
Narrator
Of the 3,146 responses they received, 90 percent said yes to the first question, that global temperatures had risen since the Little Ice Age, and only 82 percent said yes to the second, that human activity was a significant contributing factor.
Interestingly, among meteorologists only 64 percent said yes to the second, meaning a third of the experts in the study of weather patterns who replied didn’t think humans play a significant role in global warming, let alone a dominant one.
What got the most media attention was that among the 77 respondents who described themselves as climate experts, 75 said yes to the second question. 75 out of 77 is 97%.
John
OK, it didn’t get any media attention that they took 77 out of 3,146 responses. But that’s the key statistical trick. They found a 97 percent consensus among 2 percent of the survey respondents. And even so it was only that there’d been some warming since the 1800s, which virtually nobody denies, and that humans are partly responsible. These experts didn’t say it was dangerous or urgent, because they weren’t asked. [Note: or as noted above, if they were the results weren’t reported.]
So far the claim that 97% of “world scientists” are saying there’s a climate crisis is pure fiction. But wait, you say. There must be more. Yes, there is. But not much.
Narrator
Another survey appeared in 2013, by Australian researcher John Cook and his coauthors, in which they claimed to have examined about 12,000 scientific papers related to climate change, and found that 97% endorsed the consensus view that greenhouse gases were at least partly responsible for global warming. This study generated headlines around the world, and it was the one to which Obama’s tweet was referring.
John
But here again, appearances were deceiving.
Two-thirds of the papers that Cook and his colleagues examined expressed no view at all on the consensus. Of the remaining 34%, the authors claimed that 33% endorsed the consensus. Divide 33 by 34 and you get 97%. But this result is essentially meaningless, because they set the bar so low.
The survey authors didn’t ask if climate change was dangerous or “manmade”. They only asked if a given paper accepted that humans have some effect on the climate, which as already noted is uncontroversial. It could mean as little as accepting the “urban heat island” effect.
So a far better question would be: How many of the studies claimed that humans have caused most of the observed global warming? And oddly, we do know. Because buried in the authors’ data was the answer: A mere 64 out of nearly 12,000 papers! That’s not 97%, it’s one half of one percent. It’s one in 200.
And it gets worse. In a follow-up study, climatologist David Legates read those 64 papers and found that a third of them didn’t even say what Cook and his team claimed. Only 41 actually endorsed the view that global warming is mostly manmade. And we still haven’t got to it being “dangerous”. That part of the survey results was simply invented, by politicians and activists.
Other researchers have condemned the Cook study on other grounds too. For instance economist Richard Tol showed that over three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsing even the weak consensus actually said nothing at all on the subject. And evidence later emerged that the authors of the paper were drafting press releases about their findings before they even started doing the research, which indicates an alarming level not of warming or of consensus but of bias.
The reality is that neither this study, nor a handful of others like it, prove that 97% of scientists believe climate change is mostly manmade, let alone that it’s a crisis. The fact that people who claim to put such stock in “settled science” accept such obvious statistical hocus pocus is both astounding and disappointing.
Narrator
So what do climate experts really think? The year before Obama sent out his tweet, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) surveyed its 7,000 members. They got about 1,800 responses. Of those, only 52% said they think global warming over the 20th century has happened and is mostly manmade. The remaining 48% either think it happened but is mostly natural, or it didn’t happen, or they don’t know. And while it’s possible that the three-quarters who didn’t answer split the same way as those who did, it’s also possible that committed alarmists are more likely to answer such surveys. In any case, it’s a small sample, even of AMS members, let alone of the world’s scientists.
John
There was one more survey a few years later by the Netherlands Environment Agency that claimed 66% of climate experts believed humans were mostly responsible for warming since 1950. Which falls far short of 97% even if it outperforms the other studies.
A social psychologist named Jose Duarte, who specializes in survey design, published an analysis of that one, pointing out that they diluted the sample by including large numbers of psychologists, philosophers, political scientists, and other non-experts, making their results meaningless as a measure of what scientists think. Just as you’ll find that the people who cite that 97% number are overwhelmingly not trained scientists, certainly not trained statisticians.
Narrator
So we’re no farther ahead than when we began. Most experts agree on the basics, namely that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and probably causes some warming and that humans have some impact on climate probably including some warming. But they actively debate the rest: How much warming will there be? Is it a problem? Should we try to stop it, or adapt, or wait and see? These are all important questions and we need good answers.
John
And there’s the claim that many of the world’s national science academies, representing hundreds of thousands of scientists across the globe, have issued statements supporting the consensus about global warming and demanding government efforts to cut emissions. The problem is, not a single one of those societies took a survey of their members before issuing their statements in the name of their members. The statements were put out by a small number of activists using their committee positions to make it look as though their views are shared by all the world’s experts. But if they are, why didn’t these authors survey their members before publishing the statements?
There are a couple of other studies that claimed to prove a consensus. But they run into the same problems. All they show is wide agreement on the uncontroversial bits. They offer no information about whether a majority of scientists think global warming is a crisis. And then they’re spun wildly by non-scientists to tell us things they don’t begin to say, often about questions they didn’t even attempt to investigate .
The problem isn’t just that we don’t know what percentage of scientists agrees with this or that statement about global warming. It’s something much worse. All this talk of a 97% consensus amounts to a dishonest bullying campaign to stifle scientific debate just when we need it most because the question looms so large in public policy.
As physicist Richard Feynmann once said, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” And that’s especially true when we’re asked to take drastic action based on those answers.
Not long ago that survey expert I mentioned earlier, Jose Duarte, warned his fellow scientists about the negative consequences of claiming consensus. He said:
“It is ill advised to report a consensus as though it is an aggregation of independent judgments. Humans are an ultrasocial species, and dissent is far costlier than assent to a perceived majority… A scientist who contests the prevailing narrative on human-caused warming, or merely produces smaller estimates, will likely end up on a McCarthyite blacklist of ‘deniers’. Self-described mainstream climate scientists refer the public to such lists, implicitly endorsing the smearing of their colleagues. This is disturbing, and unheard of in other sciences.”
The unfortunate truth is that there is strong political pressure for climate experts not to question claims of impending doom. Those who do so face steep personal and professional costs, including a barrage of abuse that can be highly unpleasant for people who mostly wanted to devote their lives to the quiet pursuit of knowledge not to noisy polemics. And that means we should listen carefully to them when they feel compelled to speak out anyway.
Whether they represent 50%, or 10%, or 3% of experts, what matters is the evidence they bring and the quality of their arguments.
And on that, I would hope we have 100 percent agreement.
For the Climate Discussion Nexus, I’m John Robson.
If a thing, an idea, an opinion, or a consensus is contemporary is just means it “exists now”. The fact that it could or does “exist now” means that it could have been different in the past and might be different in the future.
Two of my favorite substackers, William “Matt” Briggs and Roger Pielke Jr., have articles up that touch on the subject of what is disparagingly known as “The Science”.
The initial caps version – The Science – invariably means the opinions about some scientific subject held by those telling you to Follow The Science. It very often means a strong consensus position being promoted or enforced by a group advocating some particular belief about a scientific topic or policy position prescribed by those holding that belief. And there are too many of these today to list – one The Science for almost each and every topic you might choose to mention.
Now, there is nothing wrong with any group, even a professional association, like the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association (ALA) or the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), having a group consensus position on a topic that falls under their purview. The AAP even has whole section of their website dedicated to advocacy, which includes such things as advocating to keeping guns out of the reach and hands of kids and making sure kids get their childhood illnesses vaccinations.
The problem comes when we see things like this, as related by Pielke Jr.:
“In September, 2022 California Governor Gavin Newsome signed into law a bill that prohibited medical professionals from sharing “misinformation” with patients. Specifically, the law stated that it would be:
[U]nprofessional conduct for a physician and surgeon to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19.
“Misinformation” means false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”
And there you have it….California passed a law that threatens the professional license of any medical professional who shares their professional opinion or any information that contradicts a “contemporary scientific consensus”. It is considered “false” because it contradicts the current consensus. And in this case about a topic that has a lot of controversy and a broad range of opinion.
The “contemporary scientific consensus” thus becomes legally enforceable under State law.
Let’s parse that:
Contemporary: If a thing, an idea, an opinion, or a consensus is contemporary is just means it “exists now”. The fact that it could or does “exist now” means that it could have been different in the past and might be different in the future.
Scientific: Simply means “Scientific is used to describe things that relate to science or to a particular science”. When “scientific” is used as an adjective in today’s language, it is often used as code word for “true or truth”.
Consensus: Even the meaning of the word “consensus” is a bit controversial. Its core meaning is that of “a generally accepted opinion; wide agreement”. Some dictionaries use “unanimity” as a synonym but unanimity means “agreement by all people involved”, which is close but gets no prize. There will be varying opinions, but for this essay today, I will differentiate between consensus – something which is generally accepted or has wide agreement – as different from unanimity which carries the concept that everyone agrees. This is a bit tricky because a consensus reached by a democratic group would be a statement with which all, or almost all, can agree.
Pielke Jr. argues like this: “The notion of consensus-as-truth has been operationalized in various forms: journalistic “fact checkers,” academic “misinformation” researchers, and content moderation on social media platforms. The practical effect is the creation of self-appointed arbiters of truth — journalists, academics, social media platforms, and even governments — who render judgments on acceptable and unacceptable speech according to conformance with an acceptable view.”
And goes on to say:
“The notion of consensus-as-truth can create obstacles to improving understandings. In re-reading Oreskes 2004 on climate consensus for the first time in a while I was struck by this comment:
This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. [Oreskes 2004]
This is completely backwards — scientific assessments are an interpretive snapshot of what a scientific literature says about specific scientific claims. When done properly, they are a useful characterization of what is often a large amount of published research. But make no mistake — the scientific literature does not “agree” with assessments, the literature informs the assessments.” [ emphasis mine – kh ]
The assessments Pielke Jr. refers to are the “consensus statements” arrived at by the IPCC committees in the science chapters, by far more often, the consensus statements agreed upon by the politicians writing the Summaries for Policy Makers, which then get represented in the media as talking points as the “contemporary scientific consensus” on climate change – by which the media and politicians really mean “the truth about climate change”.
Peilke Jr. uses this illustration from Clark et al. 2023 to make a point about the “consequence[s] of scientific censorship” noting that “Assume that each piece of evidence is equally weighty. Censorship that obstructs evidence against X will produce a peer-reviewed literature that concludes that X is true when most likely it is not.“ There are 11 papers which conclude “X is not true” and only 6 which conclude “X is true”, but 5 “X is true” were published, and only 1 “X is not true” got past the academic censorship and made it into press.
Have we seen this recently? Of course, in the Covid Origin Wars and consistently for many years in the Climate Wars.
When Clark or Pielke Jr. use the word “censorship” they don’t just mean that a specific person or viewpoint is forbidden to be spoken or printed. Academic Censorship is when academic journals consciously, out of fear of pushback or out of blatant bias either refuse publish, refuse to consider or refuse even to send for review papers that on their face are contradictory to consensus positions. In the image with stars we see only one dissenting paper made it into press.
We saw this regarding a paper from Alimonti et al. just last year in which a team of Climate Crisis scientists raised havoc in the mass media (really, Climate Crisis News Cabal outlets) and bullied the editors of a high ranking scientific publisher to retract an already peer-reviewed, approved, and published paper. [ here, here, here ]. The authors tell the story from their viewpoint here: .pdf.
And what about the censorship-by-bias in the Main Stream Media? You only see or hear news when some news outlet makes the decision to have a journalist cover a story and then decides to publish it. Even if actually published, a story may be “buried on page 29”. In our electronic world, only front-page stories or pages elected for broad exposure as “click bait” or “push news” arrive at the majority of readers/viewers. Which stories those are results from decisions of editors who are constrained by their Editorial Boards and Editorial Narratives.
William “Matt” Briggs takes a slightly different approach – he is, after all, a statistician. He talks about the probability of some proposition, written in statistician-ese as Pr(Y). Pr mean ‘the probability of” and of Y, being the proposition, such as Covid originated in a Lab in China, based on the Evidence provided to be considered E, which in the end becomes Pr(Y|E) – read as “the probability of Y given evidence E”.
That, he says, “is, or should be, all of science.“
Every science finding, every point of scientific “truth” is based on a Pr(Y|E), the probability of the proposition “Y” [ say, rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere cause dangerous global warming ] being true —- wait for it, here is the pivot point —- given this particular set of evidence “E”.
If one changes the set of evidence, adds something or subtracts something, as we do everyday in the journals of science, then the Pr(Y|E) changes because the “E” has changed – and you can not and do not ever ever ever (like really, never) have simply a probability of Y – it must be, is always always always Pr(Y|E). The probability, you can just consider this as meaning “the probability that this statement / view / proposition / etc. is true, depends entirely on the whole set of evidence as presented — change the evidence = change the probability of truth.
“Scientists should announce their Y and E, and then state Pr(Y|E)—and then stop. Since the E picked by scientists (with some exceptions for mathematicians and the like) won’t be necessarily true, and only contingent, all need to consider what different evidence would do to Y.
In any case, it is always scientism to say “Pr(Y|E)means we should all do the following”, and this is so even if there are no problems whatsoever with Pr(Y|E). From this it follows that nearly all research that involves statistics is deeply saturated in scientism.“
And when someone says “we should all do the following” – that we should Follow The Science — then we have left the field of Science and entering into the hazy domain of Scientism.
And even if we all believed with all our hearts on that Pr(Y|E) – the probability that proposition Y given evidence E being true is nearly 100% – that doesn’t mean that we would all make the same decisions about what to do about it. We wouldn’t necessarily follow, nor should we.
Why? It’s the Evidence, stupid!
Science didn’t stop being done last year, or even yesterday – so the cumulative evidence supporting last year’s “contemporary scientific consensus” has changed already and will change more in the future.
“The notion that scientists should agree with a consensus is contrary to how science advances — scientists challenge each other, ask difficult questions and explore paths untaken. Expectations of conformance to a consensus undercuts scientific inquiry. It also lends itself to the weaponization of consensus to delegitimize or deplatform inconvenient views, particularly in highly politicized settings.”
Followed by:
“A recent study of scientific censorship by scientists by Clark et al. 2023 finds that pressures by scientists on their peers to conform to a consensus are fairly common within the scientific community:
Confirmation bias and other forms of motivated cognition can fuel a self-reinforcing dynamic in which censorship and self-censorship discourage empirical challenges to prevailing conclusions, encouraging a false consensus that further discourages dissent.“
Bottom Lines:
1. “There is no such thing, therefore, [as] Following The Science.” – William Briggs
2. Science changes moment to moment – as new evidence is produced and found for and against various hypotheses.
3. Generally accepted understandings of scientific topics – commonly referred to as “consensuses” – are themselves momentary and must be allowed to change as evidence changes.
4. Enforcing a consensus view, in any manner, is anti-science and calls to “Follow the Science” are always made to enforce some consensus and thus also anti-science.
And, a final word: The California law, mentioned at the beginning of the essay, has been repealed, after being shot down by the courts.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Read the two substack pieces from Pielke Jr. and Briggs (here and here). Worth the effort.
My ongoing series on Monarch Butterflies is an example of the changing of a consensus by new evidence – albeit by just a little. Once Chip Taylor weighed in, the pre-existing consensus began to crack. In a couple more years, the consensus will have shifted considerably.
Even the Skeptical Climate View shifts and changes as time goes on and more and broader evidence is presented for and against the prevailing consensus view.
Enforced consensus is tyranny and is destructive of the scientific enterprise.
Learn to spot when consensus enforcing is taking place – and don’t fall for it. Brute force methods, think Michael Mann et al, are obvious – biased journal editing is much more subtle.
And have courage! The very fact that the Left now find it essential to spend so much time and effort on silencing all debate on climate (their number one topic) and on a growing range of other topics shows that the Left themselves know that if free speech were once again permitted they would lose the debate, and lose it comprehensively
Operation Hymn-Sheet: identifying points on which skeptics agree
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The restless and eternal search for objective scientific truth is of its essence skeptical, not consensual (e.g., Aristotle, Refutations of the Sophists; Popper: Logik der Forschung). While the totalitarians responsible for originating and maintaining the climate-change scam and the consequent targeted economic destruction of the hated West all parrot the same Party Line, which they rebrand as an imagined “consensus” of supposed “experts”, skeptics do not usually sing from the same hymn-sheet, for we are no less skeptical of our own arguments than of the totalitarians’ arguments.
Welcome, then, to Operation Hymn-Sheet. The purpose is to identify a series of perhaps one or two dozen powerful and irrefutable climatological, economic or pragmatic propositions on which we can all or nearly all agree, so that in our interactions with governments hitherto deceived by the totalitarians we can speak as far as possible with one voice.
The following are the suggested criteria for including a proposition in our Hymn-Sheet:
First, each proposition should be of sufficient importance that, if it were generally known about and understood, it would materially influence the climate-change debate.
Secondly, each proposition should be clear enough and simple enough to be expressed, explained and justified in not more than 100 words. Complex theories have no place here.
Thirdly, for the sake of argument each proposition should be based on mainstream, midrange data and generally-accepted methods as far as possible.
Fourthly, though each proposition should be simple and clear, it should be sufficiently rigorous to be unimpugnable by any legitimate method.
This is where you come in, gentle reader. In comments, please put forward, explain and justify each proposition that should, in your opinion, stand part of Operation Hymn-Sheet.
Once the Hymn-Sheet has been compiled, we can all draw upon it in briefing our governments, so that they will no longer hear only the hysterical, endlessly-chanted mantras of the totalitarian enemies of the West and the host of useful idiots they have fooled.
Here are some sample propositions for the Hymn-Sheet.
If it’s consensus it’s not science: if it’s science it’s not consensus
The imagined “consensus” that recent warming is chiefly anthropogenic was fabricated. Police investigated and concluded that the report by Cook et al. (2013) of a 97.1% consensus constituted a “deception”. In reality, Cook had marked only 0.5% of the 12,000 papers on his list as having stated that recent warming was chiefly anthropogenic. In any event, his consensus proposition does not say global warming is dangerous. Moreover, argument from consensus conflates the two shop-worn logical fallacies of mere headcount and of appeal to the imagined authority of supposed experts. Argument from consensus has no place in science.
Wind and solar power cannot get us anywhere near net zero
Unreliables are the currently-favored method of trying to reach net zero emissions. However, weather-dependent renewables must be backed up at all times by thermal generation capable of supplying the entire demand on a grid. Wind and solar are, therefore, a deadweight capital and operating cost. They also increase thermal-generation operating cost because spinning-reserve backup is inefficient. In any event, installing nameplate capacity of wind and solar power in excess of mean hourly grid demand cannot further reduce emissions: yet most Western nations’ installed renewables’ capacity already exceeds the demand limit.
Warming since 1990 is less than half the then midrange prediction
In 1990 IPCC presented four emissions scenarios. Scenario B predicted that the effect of annual emissions would remain constant at 1990 levels until 2025. Scenarios C-D predicted the effect would decline. Instead, emissions have increased by more than half since 1990. Thus Scenario A, the business-as-usual scenario, has proven closest to reality. It predicted 0.3 C/decade midrange warming over the 21st century, but only 0.13 C/decade, or 45% of the midrange prediction, has been measured in the 33 years since 1990.
Even worldwide net zero would cut 2050 temperature by less than 0.1 C
Our influence on temperature has increased at 1/30th unit/year since 1990, with another 0.9 units by 2050 on business as usual. If all nations went straight to net zero by 2050, 0.45units would thus be prevented. Unit warming is the ratio 0.46 C per unit of 1.8 C midrange transient 21st-century doubled-CO2 warming to 3.93 units midrange doubled-CO2 forcing. Finally, adjust for the ratio 0.45 C/C of 0.136 K/decade real-world warming to the predicted 0.3 K/decade warming since 1990. Then worldwide net zero would abate <0.463 C: that is, less than 0.1 C.
Individual nations would contribute infinitesimally to cutting warming
Since even worldwide net zero would reduce global warming by less than 1/10 C, individual regions’ or nations’ contributions to that minuscule reduction in global temperature would be infinitesimal. Chinese net zero would prevent only 1/30 C warming; Western net zero would also prevent only 1/30 C; US net zero would prevent 1/70 C; UK net zero would prevent 1/1000 C; Chilean net zero would prevent 1/10,000 C.
Each $1 billion spent would prevent one ten-millionth C warming
The UK’s grid authority estimates that net-zeroing the grid will, on its own, cost $3.6 trillion. Electricity generation accounts for only a fifth of total UK generation. On this basis, UK net zero would cost $18 trillion and global net zero would cost $1800 trillion. McKinsey Consulting reckon the capital cost of global net zero at $275 trillion. Opex, at least twice capex, would raise the total cost to $900 trillion. Using the lesser estimate, each $1 billion spent on emissions abatement would prevent future warming of only one ten-millionth C – the worst value for money in history.
Weather-related disasters are not increasing as predicted
Hurricanes, tropical cyclones, tropical storms and tornadoes show no trend in combined frequency, intensity or duration. The frequency and extent of forest fires and the frequency of record-breaking temperatures have declined since they peaked in the 1930s. The global land area under drought has decreased for several decades. Floods have not increased in frequency, intensity or duration. Global rainfall has risen beneficially: the world’s longest record (UK Met Office), shows an uptrend of just 2 inches in 250 years. Sea level is rising at only 4 to 8 inches/century.
More CO2 and warmer weather have benefits
Benefits of emitting CO2 and warming the planet include recent planetary greening by >15% and increases in global crop yields by CO2 fertilization; a 96% decline over a century in weather-related deaths; and a reduction in deaths from cold exceeding any increase in deaths from heat by an order of magnitude, both globally and in each region. In Africa, there are 40 times more deaths from cold than deaths from heat. Such benefits are widely unreported.
Exaggerated predictions arose from an error of physics
Climate feedbacks respond not only to 8 K natural and 1 K anthropogenic direct greenhouse warming but also to the dominant 260 K emission temperature. In 1850, final warming per 1 K direct warming was not 28 / 8 = 3.5 K/K but (260 + 28) / (260 + 8) < 1.1 K/K. But only a 10% increase in feedback strength since 1850 would hike 21st-century warming from 1.3 K to 3 K, since the difference between feedback strengths for 2 K and 5 K final warming is only 0.03 units per degree. Thus, feedback analysis cannot reliably predict warming.
Observational methods suggest only 1.4 C warming this century
Climate scientists had thought they could omit the 260 K emission temperature in their feedback calculations because in control theory the base signal is usually omitted because it is tiny and the feedback-response signal is orders of magnitude larger. In climate, though, it is the other way about: the 260 K base signal exceeds the feedback-response signal by orders of magnitude. That is why feedback analysis cannot reliably predict warming. Yet IPCC (2021) mentions “feedback” >2500 times. Warming since 1990 is only 1.4 C/century equivalent. The energy-budget method, not dependent on feedback analysis, shows a similar value.
Models’ predictions of global warming are purely speculative
An elementary error of statistics in the interpretation of climate models’ outputs led climatologists to assume that dangerous warming was very likely when, on correction, all predictions based on the outputs of models are proven to be no better than guesswork. Climate scientists had not realized that propagation of uncertainty in models running hourly time-steps over decades implies that any global-warming prediction falling between –12 and +12 C (as all do) is statistically insignificant and thus speculative. The paper by Dr Patrick Frank establishing this fact was published in 2019 and has not been refuted in any learned journal since.
Selectively targeting the West increases global emissions
Climate treaties are selectively targeted against the West on the specious pretext of purported “climate debt”. Therefore, manufacturing – particularly if it is energy-intensive – is being priced out to chiefly Communist-led nations that are greatly expanding inexpensive and affordable coal-fired generation. The unintended consequence of the West’s economic hara-kiri is to transfer manufacturing to nations with far higher emissions per unit of production than the West, increasing global emissions – precisely the opposite of what was intended.
.o0O0o.
Now, gentle reader, it is your turn. What are the main points that every schoolboy would know about global warming if it were not for the outright censorship now inflicted upon nearly all media by the hate-filled, totalitarian far Left?
And have courage! The very fact that the Left now find it essential to spend so much time and effort on silencing all debate on climate (their number one topic) and on a growing range of other topics shows that the Left themselves know that if free speech were once again permitted they would lose the debate, and lose it comprehensively.
Recall that the execution by Robespierre of a dozen pious, habited nuns, who chanted hymns of praise and joy as the guillotine fell and the normally noisy crowd of sans-culottes stood utterly silent, led to the execution of Robespierre himself scarcely two weeks later, ending the Reign of Terror. Perhaps, then, the climate nonsense – and, as the above instances show, it is obvious, arrant nonsense – is the last gasp of totalitarianism. Perhaps, as it dies, so will die with it the notion that free speech should be curtailed so that Communism may continue to advance, slaughter and destroy. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit!
You must be logged in to post a comment.