Science In General

Update: Climatists Wrongly Exploiting Nepal

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Update: NYT Rushes To Blame Climate Change For Nepal’s Glacier Collapse—It Wasn’t

Anthony Watts writes at Climate Dispatch:

The New York Times (NYT), in its article “Climate Change Raises Risk of Disasters Like Nepal Floods,” claims that climate change increased the risk of the catastrophic glacier collapse and flooding in Nepal by thawing permafrost and destabilizing the mountainside. [some emphasis, links added]

This is false. The best evidence suggests the disaster was primarily caused by a complex cascade of geological failures and vulnerabilities in human infrastructure, not proof of a “climate crisis.”

“Climate change is heating up the Himalayas and supercharging the risk of disasters like the deadly flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet,” says the NYT, which quotes one researcher saying, “‘There’s a very straight link between climate change and these types of disasters.’”

Yet just a few paragraphs later, the article quotes Newcastle University geomorphologist Stuart Dunning,

“I don’t think we can simply say this is a result of climate change.”

A top meteorologist says the evidence points to geological failure and vulnerable infrastructure, not a “climate crisis.”

That caution should have been the headline. Instead, it was buried.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.’s analysis of the event, “What Actually Caused the Nepal Disaster,” reaches a much more measured conclusion.

Ironically, the NYT itself provides historical context that weakens its central narrative. The article acknowledges that glacier failures have occurred dozens of times in the China-Nepal border region since 1900.

Since these events occurred repeatedly for well over a century, long before human greenhouse gas emissions rose, this event cannot be automatically linked to modern greenhouse gas emissions and human-induced climate change.

Addendum: News-Making Nepal Region Has Had As-Warm Or Warmer Periods Than The 2000s In The 1600s, 1700s, 1800s

Background from Previous Post

The disaster in Nepal is likely not over.  And as expected, the climate alarmists are already claiming humans and CO2 are implicated.  Some examples from the usual suspects.

CBC: Scientists fear Nepal’s disaster is just a glimpse of the carnage climate change could cause
Global warming contributes to conditions that make a glacier collapses, floods more likely, experts say

ABC Australia: Nepal flood exposes risks from melting glaciers and thawing permafrost. Scientists have warned for years that a warming climate is destabilising the Himalayas.

New York Times: Climate Change Raises Risk of Disasters Like Nepal Floods

The Guardian: Climate crisis could be destabilising mountain areas like Nepal

Forbes: Nepal Flash Flood: Experts Say Climate Change Primed Disaster 

Scientific American: the Nepal disaster—and why climate change could make these events more likely

Etc., Etc., Etc.,

A more balanced perspective is presented at Explore All About Nepal: Are Himalayan floods becoming more dangerous as the mountains warm?  Excerpts with my bolds.

The answer is increasingly concerning but it is not as simple as saying that every flood is caused by climate change.  The danger comes from a combination of changing climate conditions, unstable terrain, expanding glacial lakes, extreme rainfall, rapidly changing rivers and development in narrow mountain valleys.

Glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya are losing ice, while many high-altitude areas are experiencing changes in snow cover and frozen ground. These changes do not simply mean that there is “less ice.” They can also alter the stability of the entire mountain environment.

Flooding is not new to Nepal. Every monsoon, heavy rainfall causes rivers to swell, while landslides frequently block roads and damage settlements. But high-mountain floods can have another source. Water can suddenly be released from a glacier, a glacial lake or a temporary blockage in a mountain valley. A  flood can also be triggered by a rock or ice avalanche entering a river. This is one reason Himalayan floods can be so difficult to predict.

The August 2026 disaster in the Nepal-China border region has highlighted precisely this problem. Preliminary scientific assessments indicate that an ice-rock avalanche entered the Lhende Khola system before producing a destructive downstream surge. Researchers have also emphasized that the exact chain of events is still being investigated.

Recent research has shown just how complicated the region can be. A 2026 study documented major outburst floods from supraglacial lakes along the China-Nepal Himalayan border in 2025, demonstrating that water can also accumulate and drain within or on top of debris-covered glaciers in ways that are difficult to observe from the ground.

Following the August 2026 disaster, scientists told Reuters that warming temperatures are contributing to instability in high mountain ice and rock, while emphasizing that the precise trigger of the event remains under investigation. That scientific caution is important. Climate change is a risk multiplier, not a single switch that turns every mountain hazard on.

The August 2026 disaster is a painful reminder of what can happen when a high-altitude event suddenly connects with a populated river valley. It also demonstrates why Himalayan hazards cannot be viewed separately. A glacier can influence a lake. A lake can interact with a landslide. A landslide can change a river. A river can destroy infrastructure many kilometres away. That chain is what makes the Himalayas so difficult—and increasingly important—to understand.

Further Commentary on Switzerland 2025 Disaster: Unstable slopes and warming peaks: Scientists race to understand Blatten collapse

Blatten dominated discussions at an international landslide conference held last month in Lausanne, where over 60 experts gathered to understand how such an event unfolded — and how to anticipate the next one.

Six months on, certain patterns have emerged, say scientists. The three largest Alpine landslides of the past 20 years — Piz Cengalo (2017), Piz Scerscen (2024) and now Blatten (2025) — all involved rockfalls onto glaciers that transformed into massive rock-ice avalanches and debris flows.

Whether Blatten can be attributed to climate change remains a central, unresolved question. Some scientists argue the link is evident. University of Zurich scientist Christian Huggel believes climate change played a key role in Blatten. “Of course, the geology, especially the layering and composition of the rock, is the key factor in such an event,” he told a conference in Innsbruck, Austria, in September. But Huggel believes that without climate warming, the Blatten landslide would have happened centuries later, if at all.

Others are more cautious. A July factsheet from the federal technology institute ETH Zurich concluded it was “quite likely” that warming was a relevant factor, noting that the unstable rock zone lies within permafrost, which is sensitive to rising temperatures.  Switzerland has warmed 2.9° degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times — about twice the global average — leading to widespread glacier loss, altered snowfall patterns and thawing permafrost.

Rockfalls are increasing as snowmelt and permafrost thaw worsen, but scientists say it’s still unclear whether larger rockslides are becoming more frequent, and it’s hard to make reliable statements about very big, rare events as data is uneven.  “Processes are interlinked and difficult to disentangle,” says ETH Zurich glaciologist Daniel Farinotti, who hopes to present firmer conclusions about the Blatten disaster next year. “What can be said is that the local geology, climate, glacier and permafrost all played a role [in the Blatten disaster].”

Complete Geology Page Discussion: Nepal Flash Flood, August 2026: Ice-Rock Avalanche, River Damming, and Cascading Himalayan Hazards

Beware Climatists Exploiting Nepal

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The disaster in Nepal is likely not over.  And as expected, the climate alarmists are already claiming humans and CO2 are implicated.  Some examples from the usual suspects.

CBC: Scientists fear Nepal’s disaster is just a glimpse of the carnage climate change could cause
Global warming contributes to conditions that make a glacier collapses, floods more likely, experts say

ABC Australia: Nepal flood exposes risks from melting glaciers and thawing permafrost. Scientists have warned for years that a warming climate is destabilising the Himalayas.

New York Times: Climate Change Raises Risk of Disasters Like Nepal Floods

The Guardian: Climate crisis could be destabilising mountain areas like Nepal

Forbes: Nepal Flash Flood: Experts Say Climate Change Primed Disaster 

Scientific American: the Nepal disaster—and why climate change could make these events more likely

Etc., Etc., Etc.,

A more balanced perspective is presented at Explore All About Nepal: Are Himalayan floods becoming more dangerous as the mountains warm?  Excerpts with my bolds.

The answer is increasingly concerning but it is not as simple as saying that every flood is caused by climate change.  The danger comes from a combination of changing climate conditions, unstable terrain, expanding glacial lakes, extreme rainfall, rapidly changing rivers and development in narrow mountain valleys.

Glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya are losing ice, while many high-altitude areas are experiencing changes in snow cover and frozen ground. These changes do not simply mean that there is “less ice.” They can also alter the stability of the entire mountain environment.

Flooding is not new to Nepal. Every monsoon, heavy rainfall causes rivers to swell, while landslides frequently block roads and damage settlements. But high-mountain floods can have another source. Water can suddenly be released from a glacier, a glacial lake or a temporary blockage in a mountain valley. A  flood can also be triggered by a rock or ice avalanche entering a river. This is one reason Himalayan floods can be so difficult to predict.

The August 2026 disaster in the Nepal-China border region has highlighted precisely this problem. Preliminary scientific assessments indicate that an ice-rock avalanche entered the Lhende Khola system before producing a destructive downstream surge. Researchers have also emphasized that the exact chain of events is still being investigated.

Recent research has shown just how complicated the region can be. A 2026 study documented major outburst floods from supraglacial lakes along the China-Nepal Himalayan border in 2025, demonstrating that water can also accumulate and drain within or on top of debris-covered glaciers in ways that are difficult to observe from the ground.

Following the August 2026 disaster, scientists told Reuters that warming temperatures are contributing to instability in high mountain ice and rock, while emphasizing that the precise trigger of the event remains under investigation. That scientific caution is important. Climate change is a risk multiplier, not a single switch that turns every mountain hazard on.

The August 2026 disaster is a painful reminder of what can happen when a high-altitude event suddenly connects with a populated river valley. It also demonstrates why Himalayan hazards cannot be viewed separately. A glacier can influence a lake. A lake can interact with a landslide. A landslide can change a river. A river can destroy infrastructure many kilometres away. That chain is what makes the Himalayas so difficult—and increasingly important—to understand.

Further Commentary on Switzerland 2025 Disaster: Unstable slopes and warming peaks: Scientists race to understand Blatten collapse

Blatten dominated discussions at an international landslide conference held last month in Lausanne, where over 60 experts gathered to understand how such an event unfolded — and how to anticipate the next one.

Six months on, certain patterns have emerged, say scientists. The three largest Alpine landslides of the past 20 years — Piz Cengalo (2017), Piz Scerscen (2024) and now Blatten (2025) — all involved rockfalls onto glaciers that transformed into massive rock-ice avalanches and debris flows.

Whether Blatten can be attributed to climate change remains a central, unresolved question. Some scientists argue the link is evident. University of Zurich scientist Christian Huggel believes climate change played a key role in Blatten. “Of course, the geology, especially the layering and composition of the rock, is the key factor in such an event,” he told a conference in Innsbruck, Austria, in September. But Huggel believes that without climate warming, the Blatten landslide would have happened centuries later, if at all.

Others are more cautious. A July factsheet from the federal technology institute ETH Zurich concluded it was “quite likely” that warming was a relevant factor, noting that the unstable rock zone lies within permafrost, which is sensitive to rising temperatures.  Switzerland has warmed 2.9° degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times — about twice the global average — leading to widespread glacier loss, altered snowfall patterns and thawing permafrost.

Rockfalls are increasing as snowmelt and permafrost thaw worsen, but scientists say it’s still unclear whether larger rockslides are becoming more frequent, and it’s hard to make reliable statements about very big, rare events as data is uneven.  “Processes are interlinked and difficult to disentangle,” says ETH Zurich glaciologist Daniel Farinotti, who hopes to present firmer conclusions about the Blatten disaster next year. “What can be said is that the local geology, climate, glacier and permafrost all played a role [in the Blatten disaster].”

Complete Geology Page Discussion: Nepal Flash Flood, August 2026: Ice-Rock Avalanche, River Damming, and Cascading Himalayan Hazards

Conrad’s Catchy Climate Chats

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Raymond Inauen is creating a series of light-hearted chats about CO2 and climate at his blog World of CO2.  These are conversing in plain language apart from technical complexities.  An example is above from the first four at the Youtube channel Conrad – The World of CO₂

These chats are also available at Raymond’s website World of CO2 Conrad

This is a work in progress and more content is forthcoming, and he is hoping to get suggestions for future videos. Thanks Raymond for opening up a new form of communicating about these matters.

Updated: Fears and Facts about Reservoirs and Methane

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A previous post explained how methane has been hyped in support of climate alarmism/activism. Now we have an additional campaign to disparage hydropower because of methane emissions from dam reservoirs. File this under “They have no shame.” Excerpts below with my bolds.

On March 5, 2018 a study was published in Environmental Research Letters Greenhouse gas emissions of hydropower in the Mekong River Basin can exceed those of fossil fuel energy sources

“The hydropower related emissions started in the Mekong in mid-1960’s when the first large reservoir was built in Thailand, and the emissions increased considerably in early 2000’s when hydropower development became more intensive. Currently the emissions are estimated to be around 15 million tonnes of CO2e per year, which is more than total emissions of all sectors in Lao PDR in year 2013,” says Dr Timo Räsänen who led the study. The GHG emissions are expected to increase when more hydropower is built. However, if construction of new reservoirs is halted, the emissions will decline slowly in time.

Another recent example of the claim is from Asia Times Global hydropower boom will add to climate change

The study, published in BioScience, looked at the carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted from 267 reservoirs across six continents. In total, the reservoirs studied have a surface area of more than 77,287 square kilometers (29,841 square miles). That’s equivalent to about a quarter of the surface area of all reservoirs in the world, which together cover 305,723 sq km – roughly the combined size of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“The new study confirms that reservoirs are major emitters of methane, a particularly aggressive greenhouse gas,” said Kate Horner, Executive Director of International Rivers, adding that hydropower dams “can no longer be considered a clean and green source of electricity.”

In fact, methane’s effect is 86 times greater than that of CO2 when considered on this two-decade timescale. Importantly, the study found that methane is responsible for 90% of the global warming impact of reservoir emissions over 20 years.

Alarmists are Wrong about Hydropower

Now CH4 is proclaimed the primary culprit held against hydropower. As usual, there is a kernel of truth buried beneath this obsessive campaign: Flooding of biomass does result in decomposition accompanied by some release of CH4 and CO2. From HydroQuebec:  Greenhouse gas emissions and reservoirs

 

Impoundment of hydroelectric reservoirs induces decomposition of a small fraction of the flooded biomass (forests, peatlands and other soil types) and an increase in the aquatic wildlife and vegetation in the reservoir.

The result is higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions after impoundment, mainly CO2 (carbon dioxide) and a small amount of CH4 (methane).

However, these emissions are temporary and peak two to four years after the reservoir is filled.

During the ensuing decade, CO2 emissions gradually diminish and return to the levels given off by neighboring lakes and rivers.

Hydropower generation, on average, emits 50 times less GHGs than a natural gas generating station and about 70 times less than a coal-fired generating station.

The Facts about Tropical Reservoirs

Activists estimate Methane emissions from dams and reservoirs across the planet, including hydropower, are estimated to be significantly larger than previously thought, approximately equal to 1 gigaton per year.

Activists also claim that dams in boreal regions like Quebec are not the problem, but tropical reservoirs are a big threat to the climate. Contradicting that is an intensive study of Brazilian dams and reservoirs, Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Reservoirs: Studying the Issue in Brazil

The Itaipu Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River located on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. The name “Itaipu” was taken from an isle that existed near the construction site. In the Guarani language, Itaipu means “the sound of a stone”. The American composer Philip Glass has also written a symphonic cantata named Itaipu, in honour of the structure.

Five Conclusions from Studying Brazilian Reservoirs

1) The budget approach is essential for a proper grasp of the processes going on in reservoirs. This approach involves taking into account the ways in which the system exchanged GHGs with the atmosphere before the reservoir was flooded. Older studies measured only the emissions of GHG from the reservoir surface or, more recently, from downstream de-gassing. But without the measurement of the inputs of carbon to the system, no conclusions can be drawn from surface measurements alone.

2) When you consider the total budgets, most reservoirs acted as sinks of carbon in the short run (our measurements covered one year in each reservoir). In other words, they received more carbon than they exported to the atmosphere and to downstream.

3) Smaller reservoirs are more efficient as carbon traps than the larger ones.

4) As for the GHG impact, in order to determine it, we should add the methane (CH4) emissions to the fraction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions which comes from the flooded biomass and organic carbon in the flooded (terrestrial) soil. The other CO2 emissions, arising from the respiration of aquatic organisms or from the decomposition of terrestrial detritus that flows into the reservoir (including domestic sewage), are not impacts of the reservoir. From this sum, we should deduct the amount of carbon that is stored in the sediment and which will be kept there for at least the life of the reservoir (usually more than 80 years). This “stored carbon” ranges from as little as 2 percent of the total carbon output to more than 25 percent, depending on the reservoirs.

5) When we assess the GHG impacts following the guidelines just described, all of FURNAS’s reservoirs have lower emissions than the cleanest European oil plant. The worst case – Manso, which was sampled only three years after the impoundment, and therefore in a time in which the contribution from the flooded biomass was still very significant – emitted about half as much carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2 eq) as the average oil plant from the United States (CO2 eq is a metric measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases based upon their global warming potential, GWP. CO2 eq for a gas is derived by multiplying the tons of the gas by the associated GWP.) We also observed a very good correlation between GHG emissions and the age of the reservoirs. The reservoirs older than 30 years had negligible emissions, and some of them had a net absorption of CO2eq.

 

Keeping Methane in Perspective

Over the last 30 years, CH4 in the atmosphere increased from 1.6 ppm to 1.8 ppm, compared to CO2, presently at 400 ppm. So all the dam building over 3 decades, along with all other land use was part of a miniscule increase of a microscopic gas, 200 times smaller than the trace gas, CO2.

Background Facts on Methane and Climate Change

Methane pollution surrounding Porter Ranch, LA, ( Photo credit: Energy Efficiency Team)

 

The US Senate is considering an act to repeal with prejudice an Obama anti-methane regulation. The story from activist source Climate Central is
Senate Mulls ‘Kill Switch’ for Obama Methane Rule

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote soon on whether to use the Congressional Review Act to kill an Obama administration climate regulation that cuts methane emissions from oil and gas wells on federal land. The rule was designed to reduce oil and gas wells’ contribution to climate change and to stop energy companies from wasting natural gas.

The Congressional Review Act is rarely invoked. It was used this month to reverse a regulation for the first time in 16 years and it’s a particularly lethal way to kill a regulation as it would take an act of Congress to approve a similar regulation. Federal agencies cannot propose similar regulations on their own.

The Claim Against Methane

Now some Republican senators are hesitant to take this step because of claims like this one in the article:

Methane is 86 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years and is a significant contributor to climate change. It warms the climate much more than other greenhouse gases over a period of decades before eventually losing its potency. Atmospheric carbon dioxide remains a potent greenhouse gas for thousands of years.

Essentially the journalist is saying: As afraid as you are about CO2, you should be 86 times more afraid of methane. Which also means, if CO2 is not a warming problem, your fear of methane is 86 times zero. The thousands of years claim is also bogus, but that is beside the point of this post, which is Methane.

IPCC Methane Scare

The article helpfully provides a link referring to Chapter 8 of IPCC AR5 report by Working Group 1 Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing.

The document is full of sophistry and creative accounting in order to produce as scary a number as possible. Table 8.7 provides the number for CH4 potency of 86 times that of CO2.  They note they were able to increase the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CH4 by 20% over the estimate in AR4. The increase comes from adding in more indirect effects and feedbacks, as well as from increased concentration in the atmosphere.

In the details are some qualifying notes like these:

Uncertainties related to the climate–carbon feedback are large, comparable in magnitude to the strength of the feedback for a single gas.

For CH4 GWP we estimate an uncertainty of ±30% and ±40% for 20- and 100-year time horizons, respectively (for 5 to 95% uncertainty range).

 

Methane Facts from the Real World
From Sea Friends (here):

Methane is natural gas CH4 which burns cleanly to carbon dioxide and water. Methane is eagerly sought after as fuel for electric power plants because of its ease of transport and because it produces the least carbon dioxide for the most power. Also cars can be powered with compressed natural gas (CNG) for short distances.

In many countries CNG has been widely distributed as the main home heating fuel. As a consequence, methane has leaked to the atmosphere in large quantities, now firmly controlled. Grazing animals also produce methane in their complicated stomachs and methane escapes from rice paddies and peat bogs like the Siberian permafrost.

It is thought that methane is a very potent greenhouse gas because it absorbs some infrared wavelengths 7 times more effectively than CO2, molecule for molecule, and by weight even 20 times. As we have seen previously, this also means that within a distance of metres, its effect has saturated, and further transmission of heat occurs by convection and conduction rather than by radiation.

Note that when H20 is present in the lower troposphere, there are few photons left for CH4 to absorb:

Even if the IPCC radiative greenhouse theory were true, methane occurs only in minute quantities in air, 1.8ppm versus CO2 of 390ppm. By weight, CH4 is only 5.24Gt versus CO2 3140Gt (on this assumption). If it truly were twenty times more potent, it would amount to an equivalent of 105Gt CO2 or one thirtieth that of CO2. A doubling in methane would thus have no noticeable effect on world temperature.

However, the factor of 20 is entirely misleading because absorption is proportional to the number of molecules (=volume), so the factor of 7 (7.3) is correct and 20 is wrong. With this in mind, the perceived threat from methane becomes even less.

Further still, methane has been rising from 1.6ppm to 1.8ppm in 30 years (1980-2010), assuming that it has not stopped rising, this amounts to a doubling in 2-3 centuries. In other words, methane can never have any measurable effect on temperature, even if the IPCC radiative cooling theory were right.

Because only a small fraction in the rise of methane in air can be attributed to farm animals, it is ludicrous to worry about this aspect or to try to farm with smaller emissions of methane, or to tax it or to trade credits.

The fact that methane in air has been leveling off in the past two decades, even though we do not know why, implies that it plays absolutely no role as a greenhouse gas.

More information at THE METHANE MISCONCEPTIONS by Dr Wilson Flood (UK) here

Summary:

Natural Gas (75% methane) burns the cleanest with the least CO2 for the energy produced.

Leakage of methane is already addressed by efficiency improvements for its economic recovery, and will apparently be subject to even more regulations.

The atmosphere is a methane sink where the compound is oxidized through a series of reactions producing 1 CO2 and 2H20 after a few years.

GWP (Global Warming Potential) is CO2 equivalent heat trapping based on laboratory, not real world effects.

Any IR absorption by methane is limited by H2O absorbing in the same low energy LW bands.

There is no danger this century from natural or man-made methane emissions.

Conclusion

Senators and the public are being bamboozled by opaque scientific bafflegab. The plain truth is much different. The atmosphere is a methane sink in which CH4 is oxidized in the first few meters. The amount of CH4 available in the air is miniscule, even compared to the trace gas CO2, and it is not accelerating. Methane is the obvious choice to signal virtue on the climate issue since governmental actions will not make a bit of difference anyway, except perhaps to do some economic harm.

Give a daisy a break (h/t Derek here)

Daisy methane

Footnote:

For a more thorough and realistic description of atmospheric warming see:

Fearless Physics from Dr. Salby

Ending Government’s Addiction to Junk Science

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In their American Thinker article Junk science and government,  S. Stanley Young and Warren Kindzierski describe the corruption problem and a solution pathway.  The article includes links to research studies exposing how pseudoscience is employed to promote governmental agendas in fields such as climate, environment, medicine and social policies. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Science controversies have become left-right wars fought on the internet. These days everything exists, from run-of-the-mill issues such as (fake) climate change or extreme numbers of unsafe vaccines children need to receive — up to 80 by age 18, including boosters, and COVID vaccines saving lives (hardly, but anyhow), to the Tylenol-autism dustup.

Even people with life experience and common sense have problems judging such controversies; and the internet is where sound science competes with junk science.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) spent the past few years examining the methods of four different fields of science that lead to irreproducible (false) evidence used by governments. Flawed methods are big part of what leads to false evidence and junk science. Guess where most of this junk originates? Government-funded academia.

Academic junk science has been allowed to run amuck for decades and with little or no policing from university administrations. Elite universities, e.g., Harvard, seem to be right in there among the infestation. They would have us think they are important for science innovation. They’re wrong: more often than not — key innovations come from private industries and industrial laboratories rather than from universities.

So where does junk science fit in? It works in favor of government policymakers who mostly spend their career on our dime trying to make their jobs more important. They do this by using junk science to create irresponsible polices and regulations that are costly, meaningless, or even harmful to us.

Government policies should be built on transparent and accountable scientific research. Policies (and regulations) developed from research should clear a high barrier of proof. They should be based on reproducible science. Unsurprisingly, too many government science policies fail here.

All this points to a policy crisis in government. The current situation is win/win for government bureaucrats and universities: agency propaganda is supported and universities get grants. The citizens — us — are the ones paying for the loss of freedom.

The road to fixing this mess has already started at the top — the White House, with a landmark executive order Restoring Gold Standard Science. This order is a return to foundational scientific principles in government — fostering discovery, innovation, and trust in science. To this end, we offer four reforms to help governments.

Source: NIH Publishes Plan to Drive Gold Standard Science, August 22, 2025

1. Cut the funding of junk science. Federal government agencies need to change their regulatory and funding practices to fix the irreproducibility crisis in academic science and the irresponsibility crisis in our government.

2. Sever the fraudulent relationship between government policymakers and academic junk scientists. Federal and state policymakers need to end the arbitrary procedures of using government-funded scientific research for regulation if it is irreproducible.

3. Fix the process fueling this train wreck. Federal and state policymakers need to change the teaching of undergraduate (and K‒12) science and math to educate properly a new generation of science professionals, policymakers, and informed citizens. They certainly should cover junk science and fossil fuel development, the latter which is linked to our prosperity.

4. Refocus policy institutes to dedicate themselves to sound science policy as a priority. These institutes need to be staffed with people who know the difference between sound and junk science, and the benefits of fossil fuels.

Previous administrations have allowed a cesspit of relationships between government policymakers and academic junk scientists, including radical activists disguised as scientists.

Government experts employed to judge scientific research and academics (whom mostly lean left) are naïve or sly practitioners of political groupthink. They are not our friends.

These reforms will go a long way in reversing the current situation of government bureaucrats and academics jointly using regulation based on junk science to advance corrupt, self-serving policy goals.

S. Stanley Young, PhD, is the CEO of CGStat in Raleigh, North Carolina and is Director of the National Association of Scholars’ Shifting Sands Project. Warren Kindzierski, PhD, is a retired college professor (public health) in St Albert, Alberta.

See Also

Why Federalized Science is Rotten

Government Funding Corrupts Science, How to Stop It

Noble Climate Cause Corruption: PIK exemplar

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Thomas Kolbe explains the sordid history in his American Thinker article Potsdam climate researchers under fire. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Critics of climate policy have long pointed to the problematic dominance of politics in climate science. A recent study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), which systematically exaggerated the economic consequences of climate change, has reignited the debate over scientific standards and political manipulation in the field.

On April 17, 2024, the science journal Nature published a study by PIK researchers Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann, and Leonie Wenz. They calculated that global GDP would shrink by 19% by 2050 due to climate change, regardless whether future emissions were reduced. This projection corresponds to an annual output loss of around $38 trillion — an economic apocalypse, given that no society has the resilience to absorb such a dramatic collapse.

A Solution Delivered Alongside the Doom

The authors also provided a ready-made “solution”: according to their math, the costs of climate damage would be at least six times higher than the expenses required to keep global warming below 2°C. The implication is clear:

This was less a scientific exercise than a political directive for policymakers
to accelerate the fight against alleged man-made climate change.

A year later, the material was “corrected” and republished with slightly toned-down results. The timing was not coincidental: peer review — the scientific quality control process — loomed in the background and threatened to spark controversy.

Peer Review Delivers a Devastating Blow

That controversy soon arrived. Three U.S.-based scientists who reviewed the PIK paper identified serious methodological flaws and faulty data — problems that had been known for over a year. According to their report, PIK’s methodology had no scientific foundation. One reviewer wrote: “I have major concerns about the uncertainty and validity of the empirical model they built and used for the forecasts. It would help this study not to follow the often-exaggerated claims found in the literature.” From the Abstract of paper  by Bearpark et al (link in red above):

Kotz, Levermann and Wenz1 (henceforth, KLW) analysed how subnational gross domestic product (GDP) growth responds to year-to-year changes in temperature and precipitation. They reported that if historical relationships continue to hold, global GDP would be lowered by roughly 62% (central estimate) in 2100 under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 ‘high emissions’ scenario, an impact roughly 3 times larger than similar previous estimates,2,3. Here we show that (1) data anomalies arising from one country in KLW’s underlying GDP dataset, Uzbekistan, substantially bias their predicted impacts of climate change, (2) KLW underestimate statistical uncertainty in their future projections of climate impacts, and (3) additional data-quality concerns in KLW’s subnational GDP data warrant further investigation. When Uzbekistan’s data are removed and statistical uncertainty is corrected to account for spatial correlations, KLW’s central estimate aligns closely with previous literature and their results are no longer statistically distinguishable from mitigation costs at any time this century.

Such devastating words cast doubt not just on PIK’s work, but on the broader foundations of climate science itself. Yet papers like this are routinely used to justify green transformation policies, with their web of subsidies, NGOs, regulations, and deep intrusions into economic life.

Finance Dragged Into the Climate Matrix

The significance of this critique lies not only in the study’s flaws but also in the murky financing behind it. These alarmist reports are not just shaping public opinion; they are the cornerstone of a new “climate economy.” The goal is to channel capital flows so that state funds and private wealth are merged into politically favored projects — a carefully orchestrated fusion of financial power and ideology.

International organizations and political institutions amplify these narratives, embedding them into economic governance. The “Network for Greening the Financial System” (NGFS) — closely tied to PIK and consisting of central banks and regulators — projects future climate costs and uses them as a basis for political and financial decisions. The European Central Bank relies on such scenarios for stress tests on banks, forcing higher capital buffers and restricting lending — with direct consequences for growth.

Networks, Obfuscation, and Propaganda

Additional funding flows through organizations like Climate Works, which bankrolls both NGFS and PIK while paying for the calculation of key scenarios. This blurring of lines between sponsor and reviewer, between science and political agenda, opens the door to propaganda. Genuine public debate becomes nearly impossible under such conditions of institutionalized opacity.

The end result is soulless landscapes scarred by wind turbines, the shutdown of modern power plants, and intrusive state regulation extending into private households. The energy sector is sacrificed, home ownership turned into an ideological experiment — all justified by the apocalyptic narrative of man-made climate collapse.

The Origins of CO2 Politics

The roots of this orthodoxy can be traced back to 2009, when the Obama administration declared CO2 a “dangerous pollutant” via the EPA’s Endangerment Finding. This politically-driven decision, made without congressional approval, laid the groundwork for carbon pricing, emissions trading, and sweeping regulatory interventions.

Europe embraced the same model, perhaps even spearheaded it. As an energy-poor continent, the EU saw an opportunity: by making fossil fuels expensive and heavily regulated, it could level the playing field and prevent resource-rich competitors from exploiting their natural energy advantages.

Donald Trump briefly broke with this orthodoxy, scrapping central EPA rules, declassifying CO2 as an existential threat, and freeing coal, gas, and oil. It was a signal to the world: growth and sovereignty take precedence over panic-driven climate politics.

Politicized Science

The PIK case highlights the dangers of academia’s fusion with state agendas. The old saying applies: “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.” It was only a matter of time before such politically tailored studies surfaced.

Just as with government-influenced modeling during the COVID crisis, climate research now faces the urgent task of disentangling politics from science. On the back of the man-made climate narrative, an entire apparatus of subsidies, NGOs, and Brussels bureaucracy has entrenched itself. Untangling this nexus is no longer just a scientific issue — it is a historic necessity.

Footnote On the Failings of PIK GDP Study

Climate study from Potsdam – how questionable forecasts misled politics and business

A controversial climate study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is one of the biggest scientific scandals of recent years. Media outlets like “Tagesschau” and “Spiegel” made it headlines in 2024. “Scientifically completely invalid,” economist Richard Rosen declared. However, politicians and the financial world made far-reaching decisions based on the PIK study. The alleged annual economic damage of $38 trillion shaped global debates. (welt: 25.08.25)

The publication of the PIK study by “Nature” lent its brilliance. But internal documents show that all four reviewers reported serious deficiencies. One expert wrote: “The statistical methodology … [has] no scientific basis whatsoever.” Another emphasized that the forecasts seemed “unintuitively large.”

Roger Pielke Jr. calls it a scandal. Incorrect figures have been known for over a year, yet they continue to shape climate policy and financial decisions. Weinkle criticizes that “Nature” has “turned into a doormat.” This is how science loses credibility.

Just a few weeks after publication, Christof Schötz of the Technical University of Munich presented a detailed critique. He made it clear that the results “do not provide the robust empirical evidence required for climate policy.” Nevertheless, Nature suppressed the analysis for months.

Other researchers from Princeton and the Bank Policy Institute responded. Gregory Hopper describes his unsuccessful attempts to submit comments. Rosen described the PIK study as “completely scientifically invalid.” It has since become clear that while the criticism was suppressed, the NGFS continued to use the data. This resulted in massive economic and political damage.

Under pressure, the PIK researchers published a new version. In this “preprint,” they claimed their core findings remained intact. However, they had to swap methods to produce similar results. For Pielke, this is “a tacit admission… that the original analysis is no longer valid.”

Hopper is even more critical of the new version. “The revised climate damage model is even more flawed,” he explains. The statistical problems persist. This demonstrates that science is serving politics here rather than providing objective results.

Government Funding Corrupts Science, How to Stop It

Posted on by Ron Clutz

William Briggs explains in his blog article The Case For Ending Government Funding of Science.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Direct government funding of science has to end.
Here is why, and what should replace it.

Some are making a big deal of a new paper in which “researchers found that between 1994-2023 not one of the 82 ‘climate science’ papers they identified had a financial or non-financial COI disclosure from at least one author.”

For the last decade, or more, I have been waving my arms around like a deranged monkey shouting that scientists, ante-Trump, did not view money from the government as tainted, biased, interested, dirty, suspicious or, especially, obliging. Instead, they thought of it as a natural and expected reward from the god Beneficence, i.e. Government, giving his people what they deserved, and they deserved because they were smart and spoke the right beliefs. They constantly told each other they were smart, anyway. And awarded credentials to each other to verify it.

Point is, when the moola was from Beneficence,
scientists saw NO conflict of interest.

They could not conceive of it existing. They thought their payoff was natural. And that was just as true when the money came from Beneficence’s brother god NGO. From the same source quoted above: “The research also found that:

“funding from NGOs was a significant predictor of studies reporting a positive association between climate change and hurricane behavior.”

No kidding.

How is it scientists claim purity, innocence, and disinterestedness when it is they themselves who hop on the Acela to DC and sit on the government committees that decide who gets the grant money from Beneficence? Of course the government has interest in the outcomes of research! How could they not? They asked for the research done specifically. They culled from consideration all proposals that were deemed hostile, inadequate, or politically incorrect. They, in cooperation with the gift getters, chose who lived and who died by the grant. Then Beneficence paid out! The government also asked for regular updates on the work which they asked and paid for.

I become exasperated every time I discuss this topic because I can’t see how this is not obvious. But it isn’t! We saw last week the (now) 3,400+ scientists who rage-signed a petition purportedly against Musk, but really to signal the scientists’ waning respect and fear over loss of all that free money they felt they so richly deserved.

Every source of money, save exceedingly rare completely
anonymous no-known-source gifts, has an interest.

When the sole source of funding, or near enough, is the government, the government thus has total interest and total control over the course of science. And those scientists who participate in the process, especially those who serve on grants committees, become part of the government, even though they hold no official position.

This system would be wonderful if the government was truly beneficent and wise. It is not. It is neither. I need only say to you DIE, “pregnant men”, “climate change”, “women in STEM”—and these are only a fraction of what has gone wrong—to prove that single-source behemoth control of science funding leads to absurdities.

And arrogance. Scientists in universities grew, as Eisenhower warned, too used to the largess, too hubristic over the “we pay; you do” system. That is not my phrase, but The Atlantic’s. They report on growing alarm over the new administration breathing Reality back into science (purging DIE), and from the loss of funds (like overhead). They say “The government has funded science and then largely left well enough alone.” This is as false as “pregnant men”. The government funded what it wanted! And it got what it wanted. They didn’t just leave pools of money from which scientists came and freely grazed. They controlled who got every cent.

Scientists are right to be frightened.
The new small cuts should only be the start.

 The entire grants apparatus, except perhaps for rare special exceptions (which I am not here prepared to name), ought to be dismantled. There are too many scientists, fed by too much money, which leads to too much bad science, which drags the entire system down. I have written about this scores of times and won’t justify that opinion more here.

Notice I do not say “do not fund science”. I say the government grants system ought to be abolished. Here are some ideas what could replace it.

If every source of money is interested, then spread the interest around so it’s not concentrated to serve one cracked master. This reduces the chance science becomes degraded and cancerous and calcified as it now is.

I’ve already written a good deal of science can be shunted to private interests, who are free to pursue that which interests them. That is the most obvious route. Pharmaceuticals rely on this, and they ain’t hurtin’ (Trump will soon sign an executive order banning p-values). Stop counting on universities to churn ideas which private interests might use. Instead, do it yourself, homegrown. A larger spend up front, but an even larger return on investment at the end.

Patronage is a traditional route. The best off should indulge in noblesse oblige. Which, of course, many do. But they give the money to universities, which are corrupted to the bone, not least because of all the government money, but also because of misguided Equality (too many kids go to university), and managerialism (universities have more administrators than professors). If, and once, universities are restored to their former glory, the rich can return and have buildings named after them.

For now, fund individual scientists,
who can be anywhere and not just campus bound.

Or not just for now, but forever. This is the idea of Jacob Shell. He would give university scientists large salaries, and no grants. See if you’re not crying “Amen!” at the end of this:

Academic freedom of inquiry is the opposite of the grant system. The two cannot cohabitate the same cosmos. Because academic grants exist, nobody in the academy is really intellectually free. If academics were really intellectually free, then there could not be such a thing as an academic grant.

Scientists would use their own money, however obtained, to fund their own research. Which would be whatever they wanted it to be. Or not. Groups of scientists could form bands and pool their money to do more expensive research. If they wanted. Or not.

This brilliant idea results immediately in far fewer scientists, which brings freedom. It instantly reduces publish or perish, since scientists won’t have to grub for grants. The breathing room bought by this is wonderful to imagine. If this is done at universities, the extra money to pay scientists would have to come from firing administrators and asssistants to the asssistant Deans. A giddy thought.

It’s not that scientists won’t have to beg for money from someone. It’s that they will have to beg from someones. It spreads the interest around. The system becomes more adversarial and independent and thus creative. It would indeed result in a reduction of science. That is a blessing.

It forces the government, which would be out of the business of funding scientists, to find scientists which support whatever programs the government loves, and convince those who have money to fund these scientists. That requires real work, and will be forever a path to corruption. But a tangled one, which slows the rot. Now, government pays scientists directly to give them the support for The Science, so politicians and announce “Follow The Science!” and pretend there is no taint.

Science needs to feel the pain of hugeous cuts. Pain is necessary to grow.
If anybody reading this has access to our new rulers,
get them not just to cut overhead, but cut it all.

See Also

Why Federalized Science is Rotten

Keystone Pipeline Revival?

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The News

Smith backs Trump’s call to build Keystone XL pipeline

Trump revealed on his Truth Social platform that the shelved pipeline project is still on his mind

Background

In 2011, Congress forced then-President Barack Obama to make a decision on Keystone XL by including a provision in an unrelated tax bill that required him to decide the project’s fate within 60 days or determine it wasn’t in the national interest. After several years of turmoil, Obama finally rejected Keystone XL in 2015.

But when President Donald Trump took office in 2017, he invited parent company TC Energy to reapply for a new permit for Keystone XL. They did and were approved.

On the first day of Biden’s presidency, he issued an executive order canceling the Keystone XL pipeline — making good on his promise to the climate activists who helped get him elected, but inviting the lawsuit brought by 21 states who say they will be hurt economically by Biden’s decision.

The Bigger Picture: Br’er Canada and the Tar Baby

Disney animation of “Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby” from Songs of the South, a collection of Uncle Remus American folk tales.

On Nov. 6, 2015, President Obama canceled the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada PM Trudeau, just installed and wanting not to offend, politely said he was “disappointed.” Here is the back story that you won’t hear in the media.

background
Americans should know all about tar pits. As the traditional folk tale suggests, there have been many tar pools across the US. A famous one is in Los Angeles: La Brea Tar Pit. Pictured above around 1910, it’s an oil spill produced by Nature.  Notice the many oil derricks nearby.

Tar pits are composed of heavy oil fractions called gilsonite, which seeped from the Earth as oil. In Hancock Park, crude oil seeps up along the 6th Street Fault from the Salt Lake Oil Field, which underlies much of the Fairfax District north of the park.[3] The oil reaches the surface and forms pools at several locations in the park, becoming asphalt as the lighter fractions of the petroleum biodegrade or evaporate.

This seepage has been happening for tens of thousands of years. From time to time, the asphalt would form a deposit thick enough to trap animals, and the surface would be covered with layers of water, dust, or leaves. Animals would wander in, become trapped, and eventually die. Predators would enter to eat the trapped animals and also become stuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits

La Brea Tar Pits and Museum today.

Canada’s Tar Baby

So, as you can see, tar pits are hazardous to animal and plant life. In Canada, we have a much greater problem bestowed on us: the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta. The oil deposits are much too large to put fences around it and open it as a museum, as was done in L.A. No, in Alberta the environmentally responsible thing is to clean up the mess Nature left behind.

The cleanup requires a massive effort, but costs can be offset by processing the tar into petroleum products and shipping them to markets who want to use them.  Using those products from syncrude oil liberates CO2 once trapped in bitumen, and in the air becomes available to plants who grow larger and faster from the increased concentration.  The Japanese would call this a “virtuous cycle.”

Br’er America is a neighbor with the facilities to help, but because of CO2 hysteria, the Obama and the Biden administrations were afraid of getting some tar on their hands. Actually a pipeline is the environmentally friendly way of transporting the crude oil, but now trains will be used instead of the pipeline.

The origin of the Alberta oil sands is a debated subject. Two primary theories are asserted:

1.) These sands are the remnants of a once vast reserve of crude oil that, over extremely long periods of time, has escaped or been destroyed microbiologically; thus leaving behind some bitumen and also converting the lighter crude oil into bitumen through bacterial processes.

2.) The bitumen evolved from highly organic cretaceous shales (similar to oil shale). Underground pressure forced the bitumen out of the kerogen rich shales where it soaked into existing silt grade sediments and sand bodies.

In the first theory, petroleum would be formed in the traditional manner, and then converted to bitumen by some additional process.  More description here.

Summary

So whether Nature created the tar mess by bacteria or by underground pressure, it’s up to us humans to clean it up. Canada is doing the heavy lifting, while the Dem administrations preferred posing as innocent bystanders.  Maybe a Keystone Pipeline Revival will be triggered by Trump to the benefit of energy dependent North Americans.

See Also:

Pipeline Facts vs. Fears

Funding for University Wokism Cut

Posted on by Ron Clutz

William M Briggs explains in his blog article Trump Slashing The Cancerous “The Science” Bloat: Cut Cut Cut! Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

I responded on Twitter (follow me): “You might not know it, but this is a MAJOR VICTORY of outstanding proportions. Overhead is what fed the administrative beast. Overhead paid for DIE. Overhead paid for assistants to the assistants to the assistant Deans for development. Kill the Beast by starving it.”

For those new to grants, the overhead is the amount tacked on by the researchers’ institution to a researcher’s grant. If a Harvard grant is for, say, $1 million, an amount already bloated for all the usual reasons of excess, then the amount NIH pays to Harvard is $1,690,000. That extra $690,000 feeds the Beast. The Beast grows and causes the original grant totals to swell, for reasons not directly related to the research, like increased salaries for all and such like. Bureaucrats are spawned from the overhead funds. They emerge from their pods with gaping maws mewing to be fed—fed—fed! Overhead is a slow-motion monster movie.

(If you want more detail on overhead, this is a good article.)

Now I know this next part will make no sense to you, but not all are taking well the splendiferous news overhead will be treated like a bikinied teenager in a Wes Craven movie. The far-left politics journal Science screamed “NIH slashes overhead payments for research, sparking outrage“.

“Outrage”, as we have said many times, is the second of only
two emotions a woke can express. The first being smug self-satisfaction.
They don’t get the first anymore, though.

Or take as representative lead covid panicker Eric Fing-Ding. Through sweet, sweet tears, he tweeted (among other things) that the cuts will “COMPLETELY DECIMATE MEDICAL & PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH”.

Bad news, because we’d like the effect to be greater than a mere measly ten percent. We need to whack, with pitiless remorseless brutality, at least half of governmental science funding. The Science article was more hopeful. They said “‘This is a surefire way to cripple lifesaving research and innovation,’ said a statement from the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR)”.

Crippling is much better than decimating.

Bring on the pain. Their pain. Universities have had it good too long. And we’ve had it bad.  It’s not only your old Uncle Sergeant Briggs saying this.

Here’s a ripe pull from “The natural selection of bad science” by Paul E Smaldino and Richard McElreath. These fellas are not critiquing cellar-dwelling simulacra of science, like say sociology, but what’s taken as the good stuff, like medicine.

These are not the only ones on the inside saying these things. The word is out. Science has gone bad: “A 2015 British Academy of Medical Sciences report suggested that the false discovery rate in some areas of biomedicine could be as high as 69 percent.”

Data Republican says: “Universities are among the largest drains on taxpayer money in my dataset. They receive massive funding from NGOs and USAID, and they take more government grants on top of that. Meanwhile, anonymous professors have reported to me that true scientific research is stagnating due to DEI mandates and administrative bloat.”

Understand: universities were ground zero for the DIE zombie invasion. And much worse. A tsunami of bad ideas flowed from universities over the last century. Many of those responsible are still employed there. These people need to be made to go. It’s not only DIE, but the base bloat caused by government micro-managing science. It is government, almost completely, that decided what got funded, and funded to ridiculous levels. This forced consensus-based science upon us. This has stifled much innovation, as we have seen time and again. It must be made to change, for change won’t come from within.

Now that 15% might eventually rise, given the wounded howling coming from universities (an AFMR email said “We have also launched an E-Action Alert to engage the broader scientific community and mobilize support for advocacy efforts to reverse or mitigate these changes.”).  But the rate must fall. The NIH and NSF budgets need to treated like the mess they are.

The only way to rid ourselves of this stuff is to stop feeding those producing it. We need to force a restructuring and rethinking. The old ways need to go. The only way to do this is to cause pain. Minor course corrections are not enough. Cut, cut, and cut some more. Make it sting.

See Also:

Examples of Debased Government Science

Trust Me, I’m a Scientist. Really?

Why Federalized Science is Rotten

Good Reasons to Distrust Climatists

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The most recent case of climatists’ bad behavior is the retraction of a peer-reviewed paper analyzing the properties of CO2 as an IR active gas, concluding that additional levels of atmospheric CO2 will have negligible effect on temperatures.  From the Daily Sceptic:

Another important paper taking issue with the ‘settled’ climate narrative has been cancelled following a report in the Daily Sceptic and subsequent reposts that went viral across social media. The paper discussed the atmospheric ‘saturation’ of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and argued that higher levels will not cause temperatures to rise. The work was led by the widely-published Polish scientist Dr. Jan Kubicki and appeared on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect website in December 2023. The paper has been widely discussed on social media since April 2024 when the Daily Sceptic reported on the findings. Interest is growing in the saturation hypothesis not least because it provides a coherent explanation for why life and the biosphere grew and often thrived for 600 million years despite much higher atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases. Alas for control freaks, it also destroys the science backing for the Net Zero fantasy.

Below are some comments responding to a Quora question, text in italics with my bolds and added images:

What are some reasons why some people do not believe in climate change or global warming despite scientific evidence? Is there any additional information that could help us understand their perspective?

Answer from Mike Jonas,  M.A. in Mathematics, Oxford University, UK, 

Good scientists do not lie and cheat to protect their science, they are happy to discuss their evidence and their findings, and they always understand that everything needs to be replicable and verifiable.

When Climategate erupted on the scene, and the climate scientists behind the man-made global warming narrative were found to have lied and cheated, all honest scientists thought that would be the end of it. Instead, what happened was that those climate scientists closed ranks and carried on, supported by a massive amount of government (ie, the public’s) money. One of the first things they did was to deflect Climategate by saying the emails involved had been hacked so should be ignored, but some of the people involved confirmed that all of the emails really were genuine.

It has been about 15 years since Climategate, and study after study has shown virtually all of the components of the man-made global warming narrative to be incorrect, even that none of the computer models used by the IPCC are fit for purpose,

And yet they maintained their closed ranks,
and the government money kept pouring in.

Did you know that the IPCC does not do any research (please do check that, on their web page About – IPCC they state “The IPCC does not conduct its own research”). It is, as its name says, an inter-governmental organisation, and it is run by and for governments. They say lots of persuasive sciency things, but the simple fact is that they cherry-pick and corrupt the science to achieve their ends. Regrettably, almost all the scientific societies are on the gravy train too. This is part of what the highly respected physicist Professor Hal Lewis said in his resignation letter to the American Physical Society (APS):

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare.

I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge?
It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it.

If you want to find out more about this “greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud”, the website Watts Up With That? is a good place to start (the fraudsters absolutely hate it), and it links to many other good websites. It has the full text of Hal Lewis’ resignation letter at:

Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society – an important moment in science history

Answer from Susannah Moyer

It’s curious that climate science is the rare scientific field where dissenting scientists, those with contrarian views, are unwelcome and even ostracized.

There are some well known climate scientists that have doubts about the role of CO2 and man made global warming as it pertains to global temperature. They have raised the issue that computer generated prediction models have been inaccurate in predicting temperature patterns because the modeling requires assumptions that have not been shown to be accurate.

Here is a contrarian view from climate scientists who have published climate research results in Nature, which is no small feat:

McNider and Christy are professors of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and fellows of the American Meteorological Society. Mr. Christy was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.

It is not a known fact by how much the Earth’s atmosphere will warm in response to this added carbon dioxide. The warming numbers most commonly advanced are created by climate computer models built almost entirely by scientists who believe in catastrophic global warming. The rate of warming forecast by these models depends on many assumptions and engineering to replicate a complex world in tractable terms, such as how water vapor and clouds will react to the direct heat added by carbon dioxide or the rate of heat uptake, or absorption, by the oceans.

We might forgive these modelers if their forecasts had not been so consistently and spectacularly wrong. From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s, these forecasts have, on average, always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate.

For instance, in 1994 we published an article in the journal Nature showing that the actual global temperature trend was “one-quarter of the magnitude of climate model results.” As the nearby graph shows, the disparity between the predicted temperature increases and real-world evidence has only grown in the past 20 years.

“Consensus” science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker. The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.

Another questioner, Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama’s first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of BP, where his work focused on renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.

But—here’s the catch—those questions are the hardest ones to answer. They challenge, in a fundamental way, what science can tell us about future climates.

Firstly, even though human influences could have serious consequences for the climate, they are physically small in relation to the climate system as a whole. For example, human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere’s natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%. Since the climate system is highly variable on its own, that smallness sets a very high bar for confidently projecting the consequences of human influences.

A second challenge to “knowing” future climate is today’s poor understanding of the oceans. The oceans, which change over decades and centuries, hold most of the climate’s heat and strongly influence the atmosphere. Unfortunately, precise, comprehensive observations of the oceans are available only for the past few decades; the reliable record is still far too short to adequately understand how the oceans will change and how that will affect climate.

A third fundamental challenge arises from feedbacks that can dramatically amplify or mute the climate’s response to human and natural influences. One important feedback, which is thought to approximately double the direct heating effect of carbon dioxide, involves water vapor, clouds and temperature.

Climate Science Is Not Settled

Another group questioning what some consider “settled science”:

  • Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris;
  • J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting;
  • Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University;
  • Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society;
  • Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences;
  • William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton;
  • Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.;
  • William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology;
  • Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT;
  • James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University;
  • Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences;
  • Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne;
  • Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator;
  • Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem;
  • Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service;
  • Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society (APS), from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue?

There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question
“cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”