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 new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.
Official NOAA temperature stations produce corrupted data due to purposeful placement in man-made hot spots
Nationwide study follows up widespread corruption and heat biases found at NOAA stations in 2009, and the heat-bias distortion problem is even worse now
The report, published by The Heartland Institute, was compiled via satellite and in-person survey visits to NOAA weather stations that contribute to the “official” land temperature data in the United States. The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards (see section 3.1 at this link) and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.
“With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”
NOAA’s “Requirements and Standards for [National Weather Service] Climate Observations” instructs that temperature data instruments must be “over level terrain (earth or sod) typical of the area around the station and at least 100 feet from any extensive concrete or paved surface.” And that “all attempts will be made to avoid areas where rough terrain or air drainage are proven to result in non-representative temperature data.” This new report shows that instruction is regularly violated.
This new report is a follow up to a March 2009 study, titled “Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?” which highlighted a subset of over 1,000 surveyed stations and found 89 percent of stations had heat-bias issues. In April and May 2022, The Heartland Institute’s team of researchers visited many of the same temperature stations as in 2009, plus many not visited before. The new survey sampled 128 NOAA stations, and found the problem of heat-bias has only gotten worse.
“The original 2009 surface stations project demonstrated conclusively that the federal government’s surface temperature monitoring system was broken, with the vast majority of stations not meeting NOAA’s own standards for trustworthiness and quality. Investigations by government watchdogs OIG and GAO confirmed the 2009 report findings,” said H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environment Policy at The Heartland Institute who surveyed NOAA surface stations himself this spring. “This new study is evidence of two things. First, the government is either inept or stubbornly refuses to learn from its mistakes for political reasons. Second, the government’s official temperature record can’t be trusted. It reflects a clear urban heat bias effect, not national temperature trends.”
An example of the bias problem
The chart below, found on page 17 of the report, shows 30 years of data from NOAA temperature stations in the Continental United States (CONUS). The blue lines show recorded temperatures and the trend from stations that comply with NOAA’s published standards. The yellow lines are temperatures taken from stations that are not compliant with those standards (i.e. near artificial hot spots). The red lines are the “official” adjusted temperature released by NOAA.
“If you look at the unperturbed stations that adhere to NOAA’s published standard – ones that are correctly located and free of localized urban heat biases – they display about half the rate of warming compared to perturbed stations that have such biases,” Watts said. “Yet, NOAA continues to use the data from their warm-biased century-old surface temperature networks to produce monthly and yearly reports to the U.S. public on the state of the climate.”
“The issue of localized heat-bias with these stations has been proven in a real-world experiment conducted by NOAA’s laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and published in a peer reviewed science journal.” Watts added.
“By contrast, NOAA operates a state-of-the-art surface temperature network called the U.S. Climate Reference Network,” Watts said. “It is free of localized heat biases by design, but the data it produces is never mentioned in monthly or yearly climate reports published by NOAA for public consumption.
The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank founded in 1984, is one of the world’s leading organizations promoting the work of scientists who are skeptical that human activity is causing a climate crisis.
The Heartland Institute is one of the world’s leading free-market think tanks. It is a national nonprofit research and education organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.
For many across the world, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to exit the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) is a sign that central banks can refocus on their primary mandates: stabilizing economies, controlling inflation and fostering growth.
For many across the world, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to exit the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) is a sign that central banks can refocus on their primary mandates: stabilizing economies, controlling inflation and fostering growth.
Developing nations that need financial backing for the development of fossil fuel projects to advance economic development hopefully can look forward to a reversal of the vacuous injection of a climate change agenda into monetary policy. This corruption of the financial system has burdened the impoverished of the Third World with “green” mandates that impede the eradication of poverty and the ills that accompany it.
Currently, NGFS membership includes central banks and financial institutions from 22 countries in Africa, 32 in Asia-Pacific and 20 in the Americas, which may now be emboldened to reevaluate – and abandon – whatever priority they have assigned to climate initiatives.
Banks and asset managers often look to central banks for guidance on regulatory priorities. The Fed’s departure may prompt others to scale back useless climate commitments, putting an end to the unnecessary diversion of resources from immediate socioeconomic challenges.
Time for Global Central Banks to Begin the Exodus
For instance, Canada’s federal government has implemented a plethora of climate policies, leading to higher carbon taxes, more volatility in the energy sector, lower export income and an overall disastrous state of the economy. Aspiring to drive Canada towards more climate idiocy is Mark Carney, recently elected Canada’s prime minister by the ruling Liberal Party.
However, other Canadians have different thoughts. “Major banks across North America are leaving Mark Carney’s international net-zero banking scheme, but some Canadian banks remain members, says Rebecca Schulz, Alberta Minister of Environment and Protected Areas. “The remaining Canadian banks must abandon Carney’s net-zero banking alliance and invest in safe, affordable, reliable Canadian energy again.”
Global South has No Time to Waste
Even global entities that act as a financial bridge for development projects – like the World Bank, African Development Bank and Asian Development Bank – are deeply entrenched in the climate politics that deny billions of people potential access to affordable fossil fuels. NGFS membership comes with expectations to adopt costly climate-related financial regulations. In the Global South, where millions still lack access to electricity or clean water, such priorities are utterly disconnected from reality.
More than 40% of the African populations – 600 million people – lack access to electricity. That translates to 20% of households with extreme food shortages and 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition. Every day, 2 in 10,000 succumb to famine.
Nearly 4 million across the world – roughly the population of Los Angeles – die prematurely each year due to a lack of clean cooking fuels like natural gas. Many could be saved if financial institutions removed the red tape smothering investments in production of fossil fuels.
Hyperinflation, currency instability and unemployment are immediate threats that demand urgent attention in developing nations. Redirecting resources toward these issues would go much further in improving living standards than the obsession with wind turbines and solar panels to prevent a fabricated climate crisis.
When even the Federal Reserve of the U.S. – the biggest funder of the United Nations and World Bank – is opting out of a woke climate cabal, then the central banks of poorer countries have no business participating in NGFS’s wasting of time and money.
The developing world must seize this opportunity to advocate for their financial autonomy. Central banks in poorer nations should choose to prioritize the well-being of their populations and ensure that global financial governance reflects economic realities that demand an end to coercive climate policies.
This commentary was first published atRealClearMarkets on March 12, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
It’s an absolute disgrace: the Climate United Fund, a shady nonprofit slapped together in November 2022, somehow wangled a jaw-dropping $7 billion grant from the Biden administration’s climate slush fund in April 2024—the largest nonprofit grant in U.S. history. This money, ripped from taxpayers’ pockets, was supposed to fuel clean energy projects under the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) of the Inflation Reduction Act. Instead, it’s become a glaring symbol of political cronyism, grift, and utter mismanagement, leaving Americans furious and demanding answers.
It’s an absolute disgrace: the Climate United Fund, a shady nonprofit slapped together in November 2022, somehow wangled a jaw-dropping $7 billion grant from the Biden administration’s climate slush fund in April 2024—the largest nonprofit grant in U.S. history. This money, ripped from taxpayers’ pockets, was supposed to fuel clean energy projects under the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) of the Inflation Reduction Act. Instead, it’s become a glaring symbol of political cronyism, grift, and utter mismanagement, leaving Americans furious and demanding answers.
This so-called “popup nonprofit shell” started with a paltry $547,000 in revenue in 2022. By 2023, it had burned through $451,000 in just two months, with a whopping $323,000 of that mysteriously unaccounted for in its tax returns. Where did it go? No one knows—because the fund’s filings are a black hole of transparency, offering no details on officer pay or project plans, which any legitimate nonprofit would be required to disclose. Yet, Kamala Harris and EPA Chief Michael Regan handed over $7 billion for vague solar projects in Idaho, Arkansas, and Oregon—totaling a measly $50 million, a drop in the bucket compared to the billions entrusted to them. It’s an insult to every taxpayer who’s been left in the dark about where their hard-earned money is disappearing to.
The fund’s ties to Democratic insiders make this scandal even more infuriating. Its CEO, Beth Bafford, is a former Obama aide and campaign operative, and its board includes heavyweights like California’s Democratic Party Chairman Phil Angelides, Obama’s Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, and Stacey Abrams, whose linked group, Power Forward Communities, quietly pocketed some of the cash. This isn’t climate action—it’s a taxpayer-funded piggy bank for political pals, a blatant case of favoritism that reeks of corruption.
And it doesn’t stop there. This outrage is just one piece of a broader fiasco with the GGRF, which rushed $20 billion to eight newly minted environmental nonprofits after Biden’s 2024 election loss but before Trump took office in January 2025. Reports from the New York Post and Project Veritas expose how Biden officials scrambled to dump the money, with an EPA insider caught on video calling it “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.” Now, Trump’s EPA head, Lee Zeldin, has rightly frozen access to that $20 billion held by Citibank, citing rampant fraud, waste, abuse, and conflicts of interest. The DOJ and FBI are digging in, but it’s maddening that no hard evidence of criminality has surfaced yet. It’s a betrayal of public trust and a slap in the face to every American worried about their tax dollars.
As investigations grind on and lawsuits pile up over the frozen funds, the Climate United Fund scandal screams for justice. Federal government spending needs ironclad transparency and accountability, not backroom deals for political cronies. This mess is an outrage that demands answers.
Back in March, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee produced a report on long-duration energy storage (LDES). This report urged the Government to “get on with it”. Among its key recommendations were to ask the Government to “support no-regrets investments for hydrogen”.
However, some of the members of the committee have significant conflicts of interest and incestuous relationships that call into question the objectivity of the report and the integrity of Government.
Back in March, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee produced a report on long-duration energy storage (LDES). This report urged the Government to “get on with it”. Among its key recommendations were to ask the Government to “support no-regrets investments for hydrogen”.
However, some of the members of the committee have significant conflicts of interest and incestuous relationships that call into question the objectivity of the report and the integrity of Government.
What Did the Lords LDES Report Say?
The Executive Summary of the report talks about “cheap” renewables and insists the prize for investing in storage is that the electricity system will be cheaper. We do not need to rehearse all the arguments against this statement again. It is sufficient to note that all existing renewables, whether funded by Contracts for Difference (CfDs), Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) or Feed-In-Tariffs (FiTs) are currently more expensive than gas-fired electricity, as most recently discussed here.
A grid that is solely or mostly powered by renewables will therefore be more expensive than a gas-fired grid. However, as wind and solar power are intermittent in nature, they require some sort of backup or storage to ensure that the grid can always meet demand. Adding storage adds extra capital costs to the system but does not increase the amount of electricity generated. This extra expenditure must therefore increase the full system costs of electricity. So, the opening premise of their report is wrong, calling into question the rest of their analysis.
They then go on to quote extensively from the Royal Society report on long term storage (dismantled here) which farcically suggested the system cost of a renewables plus hydrogen storage grid would be ~£60/MWh. However, this cost is less than half what we pay for renewables alone today and much lower than the prices being offered in AR6. The required electrolysers, storage caverns and generators will not come cheap and will further increase the system cost of electricity. It is likely that the true costs of a renewables plus hydrogen grid will be three or four times that suggested.
How Did the Lords Get It So Wrong?
It is worrying that such an eminent committee should get things so wrong. To understand how and why they made such a glaring error, we need to look at the composition of the committee.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge chairs the Lords Science and Technology Committee. Her register of interests shows she is also the chair of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). By pure coincidence, Baroness Brown is also a non-executive director of Ceres Power Holdings, which describes itself as a leading developer of “electrolysis for the creation of green hydrogen and fuel cells for power generation”. Baroness Brown’s other interests include chairing the Carbon Trust, and she is also a non-executive director of wind farm operator and developer Ørsted.
Seen in this context, it becomes easier to see why the LDES report is so enthusiastic about renewables and securing spending on hydrogen storage.
However, the web of relationships runs even wider. Professor Keith Bell acted as Specialist Advisor to the committee in the production of the LDES report. Professor Bell is also a member of the CCC having taken up the position of power sector specialist in 2019 and recently had his contract extended to April 2025.
One wonders if it is appropriate for one of the most senior people responsible for decarbonising the grid by 2030 should be a staffer for a Baroness and have such a close relationship with someone with such obvious vested interests in wind power and hydrogen.
We can see that the tentacles of the green blob have extended deep into the heart of the establishment and Government. One might term this situation a two-tier system of ethics. The extensive web of commercial interests and personal relationships makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the recommendations of the Lords Science and Technology Committee report on long term energy storage are tainted. It is also difficult to take seriously any recommendations made by the Climate Change Committee and the new Head of Mission Control. It’s so incestuous, seriously someone should check their hands and feet for extra digits.
Like rich nations have nothing better to do than discuss than giving big climate handouts to poor nations which have a shameful corruption index score.
Like rich nations have nothing better to do than discuss than giving big climate handouts to poor nations which have a shameful corruption index score.
For Cop29 to succeed, rich nations must get their parliaments to agree more finance now
Published on 30/01/2024, 2:49pm
Rich nations always say they need their parliaments approval for climate finance at Cops – now is the time to start
Although 2024 has just begun, the coming months will determine if Cop29 will be a success and whether benefits will trickle down to vulnerable communities in developing countries.
The Cop29 summit in Baku in November will focus on climate finance.
Government negotiators in the Global North always tell us that their ambition on finance depends on their parliaments.
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They stress that they have no mandate, or possibility to scale up funds, as parliaments will not approve.
So, as parliamentarian debates about budgets and allocations begin early in the year, they need to act now.
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Without more grant-based funding, our plans to adapt to climate change and cut emissions will not be implemented; our efforts to ensure green and sustainable growth and development will not be successful and our possibilities to address the growing threat of climate-related loss and damage will never occur.
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Evans Njewa is the chair of the Least Developed Countries group and an official in Malawi’s environment ministry.
The author is “chair of the Least Developed Countries group”.
Why are those countries so undeveloped?
Malawi has lots of sunlight, good agricultural land and abundant rainfall in the wet season.
But there are problems in paradise. Transparency.org, which tracks global corruption, paints a bleak picture of Malawi corruption. 72% of surveyed locals thought corruption had increased in the last 12 months. 28% of public service users admitted they had paid a bribe.
From the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom :- Economic expansion remains fragile in the absence of a dynamic private sector. Malawi lags in competitiveness and promotion of the broad-based economic activity that is needed to reduce poverty. The poor quality of physical and legal infrastructure, made worse by the government’s inefficiency, is a serious impediment to long-term economic development.
Somehow I doubt a plane load of climate cash would help improve this situation.
Officials like Evans Njewa should put their energy into fixing Malawi’s domestic problems, to encourage more development, instead of demanding handouts from other countries.
Vivek Ramaswamy worked in the pharmaceutical industry. Now that he’s free to speak, he distills the utter corruption of the FDA in under four minutes, it is beyond redemption, rotten to the core. “That’s’s why I favor a dramatic drastic gutting of the FDA…” — he says. Exactly…
Vivek Ramaswamy worked in the pharmaceutical industry. Now that he’s free to speak, he distills the utter corruption of the FDA in under four minutes, it is beyond redemption, rotten to the core. “That’s’s why I favor a dramatic drastic gutting of the FDA…” — he says. Exactly…
From his Twitter feed: “The corrupt FDA says you don’t have the right to even *try* medicines that haven’t been through 10+ years of testing, yet the government *mandated* Covid vaccines that sailed through FDA approval in less than 1 year. You can’t believe both things at once. Countless FDA regulations and actions are hypocritical, harmful & unconstitutional. I will rescind them accordingly, using the Supreme Court’s holding in West Virginia vs. EPA as my legal basis for doing so. For years I was coached by industry veterans not to speak out against FDA. It’s well known that if you anger FDA, they will punish you by blackballing review of your drug review applications. “FDA never forgets” is a quietly-whispered, well-known pharma industry adage. Well, they could only shut me up for so long. Now I speak freely as a citizen.” — @VivekGRamaswamy
Meanwhile — circulating somewhere on the web, sent in by Charles:
Over the last 2 decades, Germany has been at the centre of climate change activism and government policies like Energiewende that have had downside financial implications that might imply that the German philosophy had got it wrong.
Corruption has been in the news more and more in recent years.
Corruption is in politics, corruption is in medicine, corruption is in finances. corruption seems to be growing fast, but it is hard to measure and define it because many people consider it a bad thing that polite people should mention. So, let us have a look.
Here is one general definition of corruption:
“Corruption is the act and effect of giving or receiving something of value so that someone will either do or not do something, sidestepping a formal or implicit rule about what that person should do, to the benefit of the person giving the object of value or of a third party”.
“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills.”
‘In American laboratories and universities, the spirit of Trofim Lysenko has suddenly been woke.’
Source (3). July 12, 2020. Lawrence Krauss, Scientist and writer, in the Wall Street Journal.
‘When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die. Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say … the greatest deceptions are founded in a grain of truth. But the underlying behaviour is troubling”.
Source (4). November 13, 2020. An Editorial in the British Medical Journal discussed ‘Covid-19: politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of science’.
“ … the very colleagues who propelled too high, too fast. In the article he comes across as somewhat non-plussed as though worrying about the quality of your data is not what stars do”.
Source (5). February 7, 2020. The corruption of scientists by fame and money. In Clothing the Emperor forum.
Overall, the scientists I have met do not like corruption, but few have done much to combat it.
Scientists like science free of corruption because corruption hinders advancements that help society as well as themselves. Some of these advancements involve new concepts, like the discovery of the chemical polymerase chain reaction PCR by Kary Mullis (6). Other advances can replace conventional wisdom in one stroke, like the discovery by Marshall and Warren that ulcers (7) are caused by bacteria, not by stress, so are treatable with antibiotics. Corruption of science slows such magnificent advances.
The LNT model and the Rockefeller Foundation.
There is a US corruption example (8) now becoming more public following decades of investigation by Professor Edward Calabrese (9) a toxicologist from Amherst University, Mass. This corruption started maybe around the 1950s. It is still with us. It has cost the world billions, maybe trillions of dollars by now.
This particular corruption starts with what seems a mild topic, the relation of the dose of a toxin to its harm. Continuing corruption has kept some questionable science in approved use, while alternative scientific studies have been suppressed by deliberate actions. (10).
The example is about the questionable LNT model, for Linear No Threshold. It implies that there is no lower limit to a toxin dose because harm can be caused by all doses down to “zero” dose, whatever that is.
The alternative Threshold Dose Response models TDR allow for have a lower dose threshold beyond which no harm can be shown. TDR came first in time history. It was replaced by corrupt actions in the 1950s Cold War era.
These dose/harm models are important in science. There was a burst of study after WWII because more people might be exposed to nuclear bomb test radiation. Continued use of the questionable LNT model has affected peaceful uses of nuclear radiation such as electricity generation and how often a person has medical X-ray scans.
The LNT model is applied in many every-day matters. For pharmaceuticals, it is of fundamental importance to the safety of design of medical drugs. For environment protection, the LNT model has allowed regulatory bodies like the US Environmental Protection Agency EPA to exert control over many diverse products and methods. Dose/harm relations are involved with every new product on offer when we spontaneously ask “Is it safe?”
In this LNT case, the corruption began with a display of power and wealth at US Presidential level. This was done by the Rockefeller Foundation, here “The RF”.
Cut to the chase, in the 1950s The RF stacked the deck with its own people and money to get authorization from President Eisenhower for government-approved research into harm from nuclear radiation doses.
Here is a time series of some main events: Apart from Eisenhower, all people were linked to The RF
1949. Edward B Lewis, biologist, became a Fellow of The RF.
1950. Detlev Bronk from The RF was appointed President of US National Academy of Sciences, NAS.
1950. Dean Rusk became a trustee of The RF.
1951. Detlev Bronk joined Board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
1952. Dean Rusk became President of The RF.
1953. Detlev Bronk became President of the Rockefeller University.
1953. The RF Board discussed the strategy of study of nuclear radiation doses on humans.
1954. Warren Weaver became Vice President for Natural and Medical Sciences of The RF.
1955. Detlev Bronk became President of National Academy of Sciences.
1955. Dean Rusk, The RF President, wrote to US President Eisenhower, to authorise the National Academy of Sciences to conduct The RF research proposal. (Link to letter below).
1955. US President authorised National Academy of Sciences to be involved, as requested.
1955. Creation of the main NAS Committee on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, BEAR.
1955. Warren Weaver, The RF President for natural and Medical Sciences, appointed to head the BEAR Genetics Committee.
1955. BEAR program appointed six committees: genetics, pathology, meteorology, oceanography and fisheries, agriculture and food supplies, and disposal and dispersal of radioactive wastes.
1955. The BEAR Genetics committee was instructed by geneticist Tracy Sonneborn (earlier grantee of The RF) to dismiss alternatives to the preferred new LNT model.
1956. First BEAR report.
1956. The NAS arranged for Scientific American staff to write the Genetics Panel Public Report under Weaver’s guidance.
1957. E B Lewis (Fellow of The RF, 1949) published an influential paper in Science “Leukemia and Ionizing Radiation” describing harm from low doses, supporting LNT.
1960. Second BEAR report.
1961 Dean Rusk left The RF to be US Secretary of State under President Kennedy.
By these actions, The RF used power and money to capture the essence of the management of nuclear radiation risk, which is now excessive and costly. Power and money have been used to entrench the LNT model ever since. Its central role in regulation of industries and people has grown.
Incidentally, it is plausible that Australia’s post-1950s history of no nuclear electricity generation by law, is related to the LNT fearmongering by The RF and others. Elsewhere, the cost to build new nuclear power plants globally is now near an order of magnitude greater than the real cost.
The central importance of LNT is the enablement of regulators to intervene in every activity of people and industries that involves harm of one type or another.
This 2018 paper (14) by Cardarelli & Ulsh amplifies the theme. LNT has transformed from a scientific model to a tool of regulation. Proof of this comes from observing that those who promote LNT today are mostly in regulatory positions, while those objecting to LNT are mostly from industries with hands-on experience.
This split between researchers is also evident in publications about the reality and benefits of hormesis, a process described in many publications by Dr Calabrese.
The Rockefeller Foundation, “The RF” and Woke.
The RF began by philanthropic grants of money to advance science, especially in medicine. Its first big, successful project helped to eradicate the Hook Worm as a threat to human health and longevity. Today, scientific support by The RF seems to have metamorphosed like a beautiful butterfly turning into a caterpillar. The RF is now selling its soul to regulators as seen, for example, this extract supporting guesswork by EPA. (15).
“Nevertheless, unless compelling evidence for a practical threshold can be obtained, it must be acknowledged that there is likely to be a risk even at the lowest doses of ionizing radiation. Denials only fuel distrust. It is better to acknowledge that the science, so far, is consistent with a non-zero risk at low doses, even if direct verification is lacking”.
“We cannot escape the obligation, in this scientific age, to comprehend science; but in the supreme question which faces our generation, physics and chemistry and engineering have no answers for us.”
Today, The RF is not merely leading the woke inventory. It is a creator of woke ideas. Few people have yet studied and reported upon the woke movement – it is one that is savage in casting out those who criticise it. My personal preference for dealing with woke (17) aligns with descriptions in this March 2023 video by James Lindsay.
”Woke is supposed to advance equity … The definition of equity comes from the public administration literature – “an administered political economy in which shares are adjusted so that citizens are made equal”. They’re going to redistribute social and cultural capital in addition to economic and material capital. Woke is Maoism with American characteristics. Woke is Marxism.”
Recall that The RF started out in 1913 as a philanthropy to disburse money accumulated by John D Rockefeller (Snr.) from his business with Standard Oil and others. For a while, it stuck to its knitting as its Charter required. Today, much of its philanthropic funds is from investments in businesses. At the start, it did not pay income tax because there was no such tax. Today, it has tax benefits that to some might seem inconsistent with philanthropy. It is plausibly a scavenger of new ways to treat or to control Society. Some of the causes it is now funding are not in need of philanthropy. For example, it gives grants that promote the idea of climate change, which some regard as replete with corrupt science.
.“New York | June 20, 2023 ― Ahead of the New Financial Pact Summit, chaired by Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic, and Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and The Rockefeller Foundation announced USD 2,781,783 in funding from the $5.25 million Multilateral Development Banks Challenge Fund (“the Fund”): Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Caribbean Development Bank, FSD Africa, IDB Invest, Risk Control Limited, and University of Leeds. The six grantees, which were selected to help increase efficiency and innovation in the world’s development finance system, advance the Fund’s overarching goal of accelerating investment for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Climate Agreement”.
“The following is a statement by funders and philanthropic organizations in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
“A full list of signatories follows. The Supreme Court’s decision impedes colleges and universities from selecting their own student bodies and fully addressing systemic racial inequalities that persist. The ruling threatens to return this nation to a time when education and opportunity were reserved for a privileged class. It endangers sixty years of multiracial movements to challenge our nation to live up to the ideals enshrined in our founding documents. The decision erects new barriers to building a society in which everyone has the opportunity to improve their lives, communities, health, and education”.
One might ask if The Rockefeller Foundation, once a friend of science, society and industry, is now a powerful enemy.
Remediation.
(These remediations are purposely written in loose science language so that more people can understand.)
Suggestion 1.
For remediation, the regulatory industry should abandon unsupported loose science in favour of hard science.
Science is diverging into traditional “hard” science and newer “loose” science. Hard science is validated by measures to estimate, to display and to minimise uncertainty. Loose science tends to be silent about or pay lip service to uncertainty; belief tends to dominate over observation and measurement.
In financial circles, auditors used to be proud, even required, to account for the very last cent. Today, many people care little if a figure is in millions or billions of dollars. Despite the 3 orders of magnitude between them they are just large numbers that numb the mind.
The split between hard and loose science started in my lifetime. Nuclear radiation harm was a topic that I studied from 1972 at age 29 after we discovered the Ranger uranium deposits, for a while the largest and richest the world had known.
Suggestion 2.
Scientific publications should advise authors that their place of employment should not impact on their pre-publication scientific studies.
Hard science authors are now mainly from industry and research bodies within and close to industry. Loose science is more associated with those who regulate science. Many of the regulatory science authors are now expressing desperation, cutting corners in the “publish or perish” academic atmosphere, desperate for salary to fund the next sex-change operation on their children in accord with ideals of woke about what a modern parent should do.
Suggestion 3.
Try to advance science with impartial methods.
Traditional science has advanced through better science replacing poorer science. Objection to existing science is integral to the scientific advance. But, there has been an increase in the rate of disappearance of papers ready for publication and in the cancellation of papers already accepted. An example of such rejection happened recently when a medical science pre-print paper by Hulscher et al about autopsy results from Covid-19 vaccinated people was visible in The Lancet for only a few hours. (20).
Suggestion 4.
Scientific authors should learn more about the science of measurement uncertainty.
Proper estimates of the uncertainty of numbers used in publications is essential for their integrity. While some papers show excellent understanding of uncertainty, others publish works with naïve estimates that can mislead. The quality of treatment of uncertainty is a measure of the quality of the research. There are many examples from climate change science, where past temperature measurements are reported badly. An article that I wrote for Watt’s Up With That blog a year ago expresses some measurement uncertainty problems. (21).
Suggestion 5.
Be aware that the use of power and money continues to corrupt science; try to speak against this privilege.
Suggestion 6.
Study the actions of “philanthropic” bodies to discern if they are any different to a commercial organization that might not enjoy taxation advantages.
Bodies such as The RF, the United nations UN, the World Health Organization WHO, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to name just a few, comprise unelected people who at times are working against the directions of Governments and people. A recent example from medical sciences is explained in this video by a British MP in the House of Commons, Andrew Bridgen with Dr John Campbell about the WHO. (22).
Suggestion 7.
Smaller publishing companies from many countries could be more aggressive in earning market share for scientific publication.
Scientific journal ownership is complicated and under frequent change. Several of the major scientific publications like “Nature” and “Scientific American” are/were owned partly or mostly by German companies. (23).The leading journal “Science” is owned by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS. Over the last 2 decades, Germany has been at the centre of climate change activism and government policies like Energiewende that have had downside financial implications that might imply that the German philosophy had got it wrong. Scientific publications, if indeed affected this way, could improve with wider national diversity of ownership and direction. From Wikipedia:
“In 2013, prior to the merger with Springer and the creation of Springer Nature, Nature Publishing Group’s owner, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, bought a controlling stake[3][4] in Frontiers.[5] Before Springer Nature was formed in 2015, Nature Research (as the Nature Publishing Group) was a part of Macmillan Science and Education, a fully owned subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.[6]”
Much of the quoted material in this article is Copyright 2003 by The RF. The author of this article has reproduced material under the US fair use doctrine, summarised as: Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports.
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