{"id":278013,"date":"2023-09-09T16:01:23","date_gmt":"2023-09-09T14:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=278013"},"modified":"2023-09-09T16:01:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T14:01:26","slug":"free-speech-fears-grow-after-springer-nature-meekly-obeys-activist-demands-for-alimonti-climate-paper-retraction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=278013","title":{"rendered":"Free Speech Fears Grow After Springer Nature \u201cMeekly Obeys\u201d Activist Demands For Alimonti Climate Paper Retraction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0CHRIS MORRISON<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Free speech is under attack in the politicised world of climate science and disgust at the recent cancellation of Alimonti<\/em> et al. by Springer Nature continues to grow. Readers will recall<\/a> that the paper written by four Italian scientists led by Physics Professor Gianluca Alimonti said past data did not point to a \u201cclimate crisis\u201d. It was retracted on August 23rd, 20 months after initial publication, following a concerted campaign by activist journalists and scientists. Science writer Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., who first published a number of whistle-blower emails about a Springer inquiry, has returned to the fray<\/a>, noting: \u201cWe should not be in a situation where activist journalists, many funded by billionaires, enlist activist scientists to demand retraction of a science article and then the world\u2019s arguably leading scientific publisher meekly obeys. We must do better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francis Menton writes the widely-read Manhattan Contrarian<\/em> and he recently noted that free speech today is under assault from the Left all the time. He used the Alimonti affair as an example of this crackdown on dissent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

If you wonder why the climate alarm narrative seems so completely to dominate public discussion (even though it is utter nonsense), then you need to understand that there is an orthodoxy enforcement police operating behind the scenes. Most of the time the operation of this orthodoxy enforcement mechanism is invisible to the general public. Climate sceptics can\u2019t get jobs in academia, and go into other careers; when sceptics write papers, they get rejected and are never heard of again. But every once in a while something happens to bring aspects of the orthodoxy enforcement mechanism momentarily into the open. That has recently occurred with respect to a paper published in a European scientific journal in early 2022.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Again regular readers will recall that the paper attracted little comment until September last year when the Daily Sceptic<\/em> covered the findings in an article that attracted 9,000 retweets<\/a>. Following subsequent coverage in the Australian<\/em> and Sky Australia<\/em>, the Guardian<\/em> and state-owned Agence France-Presse (AFP<\/em>) launched counterattacks. AFP<\/em> \u2018Herald of the Anthropocene\u2019 Marlowe Hood said the data were \u201cgrossly manipulated\u201d and \u201cfundamentally flawed\u201d. They were soon joined by a number of activist scientists including Michael Mann who sneered at his fellow academics, dismissing them as \u201cnuclear physics dudes in Italy\u201d from \u201ctotally unrelated fields\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Pielke\u2019s latest contribution, he says it is his \u201cstrong opinion\u201d that the sole reason to retract the paper is not to do with the analysis of the data, but the one sentence that reads: \u201cIn conclusion on the basis of observation data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The joy of the successful activists appears unconfined. Marlowe Hood recently collected \u00a388,000<\/a> from the foundation of the green technology supporting BBVA bank. He tweeted: \u201cIt may be akin to removing a speck of dust from a rubbish heap, but I confess to taking satisfaction in seeing this egregiously bad climate study retracted. The remaining question, of course, is how it got into a Springer Nature journal to start with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For its part, BBVA justified its recent large payment to Hood by noting \u201chis ability to synthesise complex scientific models and studies and explain them in simple terms\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final Springer retraction notice did not detail any substantive issue with the Alimonti paper, writes Pielke, only vaguely refering to the Guardian<\/em> and AFP<\/em> articles in the passive voice \u2014 \u201cconcerns were raised\u201d. The journal\u2019s year-long attempt to review the paper was \u201capparently invented as they went along\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Pielke is evidently an old-school science academic and he has a mild criticism about editorialising by using the term \u201cclimate crisis\u201d. Whether there is a climate crisis is a political judgement and not one that emerges from data and evidence. But he goes on to note that anyone familiar with peer-reviewed literature knows that editorialising is common, and in the climate literature, \u201cabsolutely pervasive\u201d. In fact, he conducted a review of Google Scholar and found more than 300,000 papers that assert a \u201cclimate crisis\u201d. A minor editorial comment by the Alimonti authors that passed through peer review, he observes, is no way a justification for a retraction. In his view it is one of the \u201cmost egregious failures of scientific publishing that I have seen\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, another academic whistle-blower has cast further shocking light on the policing methods that evidently lie behind much climate science publishing. As the Daily Sceptic<\/em> noted on Tuesday<\/a>, Dr. Patrick Brown of John Hopkins University said he wrote a new paper on California wildfires in Nature<\/em> according to the approved script in order to get it published. This of course involved boosting the role of \u2018climate change\u2019 and downplaying natural causes and the increasing role played by arsonists. He said he has learnt that there is a formula for success in getting papers published in high profile journals such as Nature<\/em> and Science<\/em>. \u201cUnfortunately, the formula is more about shaping your research in specific ways to support pre-approved narratives than it is about generating knowledge for society,\u201d he said. This formula, added Brown, distorts a great deal of climate science research, and misinforms the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francis Menton highlights Pielke\u2019s finding that 300,000 science papers assert the existence of a climate crisis. \u201cA few hundred billion dollars of Government money can buy a lot of fake climate alarmism,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Morrison is<\/em>\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0Daily Sceptic\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0Environment Editor.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Free speech is under attack in the politicised world of climate science and disgust at the recent cancellation of\u00a0Alimonti\u00a0et al. by Springer Nature continues to grow. Readers will\u00a0recall\u00a0that the paper written by four Italian scientists led by Physics Professor Gianluca Alimonti said past data did not point to a \u201cclimate crisis\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":278021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818951,691819134,691818056,691821918,691822122,691820151],"class_list":["post-278013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-censorship","tag-climate-alarmism","tag-climate-change","tag-free-speech","tag-nature","tag-the-science","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1ak5","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":275901,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=275901","url_meta":{"origin":278013,"position":0},"title":"The Climategate Gang Rides Again!","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"08\/27\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"The \u00a0renewed and reinforced Climategate Gang has risen once more, bullying Springer Nature Publishing into retracting a \u00a0peer-reviewed paper by colluding with the climate crisis news cabal, featuring The\u00a0Guardian, AFP, and the UK\u2019s\u00a0Sky News.","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0p07gj6xz-1024x576-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0p07gj6xz-1024x576-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0p07gj6xz-1024x576-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0p07gj6xz-1024x576-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":275733,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=275733","url_meta":{"origin":278013,"position":1},"title":"A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming\u2013Alimonti et\u00a0al","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"08\/26\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Further to Tony Thomas\u2019s\u00a0article, which goes into great depth about how the climate establishment used bully boy tactics to force Springer to retract a paper by Alimonti et al","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Wx-Web.jpg?fit=1200%2C525&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Wx-Web.jpg?fit=1200%2C525&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Wx-Web.jpg?fit=1200%2C525&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Wx-Web.jpg?fit=1200%2C525&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Wx-Web.jpg?fit=1200%2C525&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":276436,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=276436","url_meta":{"origin":278013,"position":2},"title":"Retraction of Paper Saying There is No Climate Emergency Illustrates How Dependent Climate Activists Are on Scaremongering","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"08\/30\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"The\u00a0recent cancellation\u00a0of Alimonti\u00a0et al\u00a0shows clearly that catastrophising bad weather events and attributing them to a collapse of the climate is now the main weapon deployed to scare populations into embracing the Net Zero agenda.","rel":"","context":"In \"Apocalypticism\"","block_context":{"text":"Apocalypticism","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=apocalypticism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Screenshot-2023-08-30-213821.png?fit=1156%2C828&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Screenshot-2023-08-30-213821.png?fit=1156%2C828&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Screenshot-2023-08-30-213821.png?fit=1156%2C828&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Screenshot-2023-08-30-213821.png?fit=1156%2C828&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/00Screenshot-2023-08-30-213821.png?fit=1156%2C828&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":413966,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=413966","url_meta":{"origin":278013,"position":3},"title":"Retracted by Nature, traduced by Michael Mann \u2013 Gianluca Alimonti is Back and He\u2019s Taking No Prisoners","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"11\/20\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019m calling it the \u2018Revenge of Alimonti\u2019. In 2023 a group of activists including \u2018hockey stick\u2019 inventor Michael Mann, Attribution Queen Frederike Otto and Marlowe Hood and Graham Readfearn from AFP and the Guardian respectively managed to get a paper led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti retracted by Nature because it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Censorship\"","block_context":{"text":"Censorship","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=censorship"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0AQP51UjyIYA3WAgu8FQHdQ2LI7mjtksuYsXnD-TJOzzIoSMPAA2Kvo3o5ns5cAXBORsi2oHo73lL2h-S9sOO9qo-GYrLXhACxyKc337g-h2YNFhAKlktzRVqyQCh6XmO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C709&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0AQP51UjyIYA3WAgu8FQHdQ2LI7mjtksuYsXnD-TJOzzIoSMPAA2Kvo3o5ns5cAXBORsi2oHo73lL2h-S9sOO9qo-GYrLXhACxyKc337g-h2YNFhAKlktzRVqyQCh6XmO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C709&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0AQP51UjyIYA3WAgu8FQHdQ2LI7mjtksuYsXnD-TJOzzIoSMPAA2Kvo3o5ns5cAXBORsi2oHo73lL2h-S9sOO9qo-GYrLXhACxyKc337g-h2YNFhAKlktzRVqyQCh6XmO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C709&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0AQP51UjyIYA3WAgu8FQHdQ2LI7mjtksuYsXnD-TJOzzIoSMPAA2Kvo3o5ns5cAXBORsi2oHo73lL2h-S9sOO9qo-GYrLXhACxyKc337g-h2YNFhAKlktzRVqyQCh6XmO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C709&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0AQP51UjyIYA3WAgu8FQHdQ2LI7mjtksuYsXnD-TJOzzIoSMPAA2Kvo3o5ns5cAXBORsi2oHo73lL2h-S9sOO9qo-GYrLXhACxyKc337g-h2YNFhAKlktzRVqyQCh6XmO-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C709&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":414529,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=414529","url_meta":{"origin":278013,"position":4},"title":"What is a \u201cclimate crisis?\u201d","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"11\/24\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"In a new\u00a0paper\u00a0by Gianluca Alimonti and Luigi Mariani, they argue that the public needs a proper definition of precisely what a climate crisis is to make rational decisions about how to address potential climate change threats (Alimonti & Mariani, 2025). They propose a set of measurable \u201cResponse Indicators\u201d (RINDs) based\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"\u201cResponse Indicators\u201d (RINDs)\"","block_context":{"text":"\u201cResponse Indicators\u201d (RINDs)","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=response-indicators-rinds"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMGHuBNMDMQEHS1pZ0Wh3vFNa49SpvhvsNfDoGHxh8kMS9yZ-SusihRq8AOq9gIZyonuqIiJqxmGGU1V91QirFatLBKwQ005nhbR0Szo317cV3agkIVj76R-_IA0iGx.jpeg?fit=960%2C947&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMGHuBNMDMQEHS1pZ0Wh3vFNa49SpvhvsNfDoGHxh8kMS9yZ-SusihRq8AOq9gIZyonuqIiJqxmGGU1V91QirFatLBKwQ005nhbR0Szo317cV3agkIVj76R-_IA0iGx.jpeg?fit=960%2C947&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMGHuBNMDMQEHS1pZ0Wh3vFNa49SpvhvsNfDoGHxh8kMS9yZ-SusihRq8AOq9gIZyonuqIiJqxmGGU1V91QirFatLBKwQ005nhbR0Szo317cV3agkIVj76R-_IA0iGx.jpeg?fit=960%2C947&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMGHuBNMDMQEHS1pZ0Wh3vFNa49SpvhvsNfDoGHxh8kMS9yZ-SusihRq8AOq9gIZyonuqIiJqxmGGU1V91QirFatLBKwQ005nhbR0Szo317cV3agkIVj76R-_IA0iGx.jpeg?fit=960%2C947&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":274213,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=274213","url_meta":{"origin":278013,"position":5},"title":"Team Climate Crisis Resorts to Bullying, Again","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"08\/17\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Are we entering into a new\u00a0ClimateGate\u00a0era in climate science, in which the bad actors rule and the majority, all good men and women, fail to call them out?","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate crisis\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate crisis","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-crisis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/OIG-2023-07-28T132225.382.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/OIG-2023-07-28T132225.382.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/OIG-2023-07-28T132225.382.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/OIG-2023-07-28T132225.382.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0Screenshot-2023-09-09-155955.png?fit=1052%2C594&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=278013"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278022,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278013\/revisions\/278022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/278021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=278013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=278013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=278013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}