"I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published"
"I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published"
Most academics in the field agree that climate change is happening, but many do not agree with climate alarmism, the C02 narrative and the politicization/manipulation of climate science.
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Physician, producer and writer Michael Crichton once wrote:
“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled…Consensus is the business of politics….The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”
How hard is it to oppose the narrative in academia? Very hard.
Questioning mainstream narratives and mainstream “consensus” or “politically correct” sentiments can lead to trouble. These days, it seems as if academia has become one big institution that’s being used to uphold certain narratives and continue to push them as if they were/are unquestionable.
We saw this with COVID-19, where thousands of academics were punished, censored, and ridiculed. For the first time in history, vaccine experts, even vaccine developers, were erroneously labelled as anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists (sigh).
But this type of behaviour is not limited to COVID-19, it’s been happening for quite some time in multiple areas of study, including climate change, or climate alarmism. The idea that the world is going to end due to multiple weather catastrophes created by mankind. Interestingly, most who oppose this alarmism believe in climate change but are not seeing the same details around catastrophe.
In academia, the alarmism narrative has been pushed as an unquestionable truth. It’s not science per se, but more so a theory loosely based on science that is more similar to a religious belief.
It’s become so bad that it’s virtually impossible for renowned scientists and climatologists to publish evidence that is contrary to the climate alarmism perspective.
Many academics have been relegated to article writing, publishing their perspectives, opinions and evidence in respected media outlets, like The Wall Street Journal. But we will get to some examples of this later.
The Curious Story of Patrick T. Brown
For now, I want to focus on an article published by Patrick T Brown, a prominent American climate scientist. Brown believes climate change is real, as most who have been labelled “heretics” and “skeptics” do. But he also believes that its impact is much exaggerated. This, he says, distorts climate science, misinforms the public and makes practical solutions much more difficult to achieve.
He left academia over a year ago because he felt the pressures put on academic scientists caused too much of the research to be distorted. Now, he’s a member of a private nonprofit research center, The Breakthrough Institute, where he feels “much less pressure to “mold” his research to the “preferences of prominent journal editors and the rest of the field.”
Brown explains,
“This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain pre-approved narratives— even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.
To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”
Researchers have a career, and their work depends mostly on their work being cited and accepted in prominent academic journals. Real science is not really open, it’s not about uncovering truth more so than it is about narrative control when it comes to major global issues. And for those who are already convinced of their conforming and ‘accepted’ perspectives, opinions like the one presented in this article are simply ignored and unacknowledged. These people have a much easier time advancing in life professionally and financially.
Brown uses his recent paper published in Nature as an example, which he authored with seven other researchers. The focus of the paper was on the influence of climate change on extreme wildfire behavior.
What was purposefully left out of the paper were other factors, as Brown explains, “can be just as or more important, such as poor forest management and the increasing number of people who start wildfires either accidentally or purposefully.”
He also points out, not in his Nature paper of course, that over 80 percent of wildfires in the US are ignited by humans. Furthermore, fossil records show that wildfires are an extremely old phenomenon,
Wildfires existed long before we did. Homo sapiens didn’t appear until 100,000 years ago; the fossil record shows that wildfires are much, much older. As soon as there was terrestrial life, there was fire.
A 2001 study from geologist Walter L. Cressler III describes fossilized charcoal uncovered in an ancient riverbed in north-central Pennsylvania, dating back to the Late Devonian Period. That was over 360 million years ago. There’s even evidence indicating that wildfires appeared as early as the Silurian Period (443 million years ago).
“In my paper, we didn’t bother to study the influence of these other obviously relevant factors. Did I know that including them would make for a more realistic and useful analysis? I did. But I also knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.”
— Brown
There are several examples of what Brown describes. In another influential Nature paper, scientists claimed that that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture. But Brown points out that the authors never mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts.
“heat-related deaths have been declining, and crop yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change. To acknowledge this would imply that the world has succeeded in some areas despite climate change—which, the thinking goes, would undermine the motivation for emissions reductions.”
Another point Brown makes is something we at The Pulse have been covering for years, that studying and focusing on solutions is not something that happens as it should in academia. Be it groundbreaking technology that can help us adapt to climate change, or anything else. Instead, addressing carbon emissions via taxation schemes seems to be the only ‘right’ approach. Brown explains, “so the savvy researcher knows to stay away from practical solutions.”
Behavior, disaster preparedness, etc., have had far more influence on our sensitivity to weather extremes than climate change has since the 1800s as Brown points out. And instead of focusing on practical solutions in these areas, all we are bombarded with is climate alarmism.
Current research indicates that simple changes in forest management practices could completely negate the detrimental impacts of climate change on wildfires. But we don’t talk about that do we?
“This more practical kind of analysis is discouraged, however, because looking at changes in impacts over shorter time periods and including other relevant factors reduces the calculated magnitude of the impact of climate change, and thus it weakens the case for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.”
— Brown
Those who have dove deeply into the subject of climate change see this very quickly: you cannot simply solve our climate woes by planting more trees or lowering CO2 emissions, as you are just looking at one TINY aspect to the puzzle. The climate and climate change is an extremely complex phenomenon. This direction won't truly help us solve the problems, it will only make us think we are doing that.
“You might be wondering at this point if I’m disowning my own paper. I’m not. On the contrary, I think it advances our understanding of climate change’s role in day-to-day wildfire behavior. It’s just that the process of customizing the research for an eminent journal caused it to be less useful than it could have been.
As to why I followed the formula despite my criticisms, the answer is simple: I wanted the research to be published in the highest profile venue possible. When I began the research for this paper in 2020, I was a new assistant professor needing to maximize my prospects for a successful career. When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula, my papers were rejected out of hand by the editors of distinguished journals, and I had to settle for less prestigious outlets. To put it another way, I sacrificed contributing the most valuable knowledge for society in order for the research to be compatible with the confirmation bias of the editors and reviewers of the journals I was targeting.”
— Brown
The Truth About The CO2 Narrative?
Contrary to popular belief, many scientists, especially climate scientists, believe there is no evidence that decarbonizing society will have any major impact on climate change, and that it’s even necessary or extremely harmful to our environment.
It’s been a common theme among doomsday scenarios that have permeated mainstream narratives for years. One classic example I’ve used previously comes from June 29, 1989, the Associated Press (AP) ran a story containing an interview with Noel Brown, a United Nations Environment Program Director at the time.
In it he stated:
“Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”
A major headline of course.
But what Brown discusses above is something that’s been happening for quite some time, and it’s not hard to see why modern day academia may have led to a massive culture of self censorship
For example, in 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the prestigious Climate Research Journal at the time published a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect conclusion that the global warming we see occurring is not unusual in context of climate change over the past thousand years.
“I am not a global warming sceptic. I accept that rising human-caused CO2 from fossil sources could ‘change the climate’. The basic physics is there to support this view. But where is the evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging?”
— Freitas
The academic and climate alarmist community quickly moved to have Freitas fired from his job. This is not how science is supposed to work but, again, we’ve seen it many times.
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 even condemned to death!
I’ll remind you that we are talking about climate here. Most scientists and everybody on the planet wants cleaner air, cleaner water, less pollution, more biodiversity etc. but they don’t support the carbon narrative as the pinnacle of helping our environment. It would be great if more or at least similar attention was given to the destruction of our ecosystems, for example. What we see from political climate science is not a holistic view of our planetary environment and its natural systems that we are destroying.
“Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to any, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers and excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet.”
— “No need to panic about global warming.” 16 scientists WSJ
According to Roy Spencer, a meteorologist and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who served as senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and Joseph Bast, a Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute,
“The assertion that 97% of scientists believe that climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction. The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.”
Arguments demonstrating that studies promoting the alarmism theory are based on inadequate computer projections, flawed statistical sampling or outright academic fraud and much more are all dismissed. The point made repeatedly by eminent climate scientists, that researchers simply don’t get grant funding unless their work upholds the theory, is scoffed at or ignored, or even worse.
During a World Economic Forum (WEF) anti-disinformation panel in September last year, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming, announced that they "own the science.” She was specifically referencing their new climate change agenda, and their efforts to censor “misinformation.”
Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose the alleged consensus, so why don’t we ever hear about it? Perhaps labelling information as misinformation, along with making it difficult for climate scientists to publish evidence that opposes the narrative plays a big role.
Our crop plants evolved about 400 million years ago, when CO2 in the atmosphere was about 5000 parts per million. Our evergreen trees and shrubs evolved about 360 million years ago, with CO2 levels at about 4,000 ppm. When our deciduous trees evolved about 160 million years ago, the CO2 level was about 2,200 ppm – still five times the current level.
At the end of the day, as philosopher Carl Popper argued, the difference between pseudoscience and science is that pseudoscientific experiments are designed to use evidence to try to confirm hypotheses, while science experiments focus on trying to falsify them. Given our propensity to seek out evidence that confirms our hypotheses, we are all naturally pseudoscientists.
“How did we get to this point where the science ceased to be interested in the fascinating question of accounting for the remarkable history of the Earth’s climate for an understanding of how climate actually works and instead devoted itself to a component of political correctness. Perhaps one should take a broader view of what’s going on.”
— Dr. Richard Lindzen, lead author of Chapter 7, "Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks," of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report on climate change, and retired Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Recommended article: The Dubious Origins of The Carbon Dioxide Driven Global Warming Hypothesis
We are only on this planet for a drop in the bucket of time. I enjoy the speculation of what was going on hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago. At the end of the day, capture the moments that count and enjoy what God gave us with respect and content.
Excellent article btw.
Really great analysis Arjun, of exactly how scientific research should function in order to most efficiently drive the acquisition of human knowledge, and how today, it does not. i myself had worked in experimental lab research, as a research assistant, and have my name, as 4th author, on one influential study in J of Brain Research which for a time was well cited.
Since i went to uni in the 1970s, what stands out for me now, in hindsight, about the whole unrestrained research-for-growth-of-knowledge idea -- is that it's kind of a deliberate set-up to influence public opinion, rather than evolve the body of human knowledge. For example, in the 70s, in the study of the brain, there was a lot of emphasis on laterality differences -- how the two essentially independent hemispheres could effectively function together as a whole to give us our singular consciousness. Today however, there is no longer any interest in lateralization of function between the hemispheres but rather there is a revival of functional localizationalism (identifying which neural structures are active in both hemispheres) using the more recently developed functional magnetic resonance imaging procedures. So all that focused research on laterality, over several decades, all came to naught. This seems to be the case in many areas of research, where when the focus of interest switches over to new directions, all of the previous research becomes irrelevant.
Also as a research assistant, i discovered that some well accepted effects, could sometimes be reversed by manipulating some previously not considered variables, suggesting the effect was not based on the new conclusion it was implied to demonstrate. However, since a lot of continuing research was now taking "the effect" for granted and building upon it, these questions about its fundamental validity, were just swept under the rug. Also some important effect like this that might come into question would likely have been discovered, by either someone already well respected running an ingeniously designed experiment, or by someone who made their name by doing this -- and it was sort of secretly discussed among colleagues and competitors alike -- along the lines of "letting this great experimental ingenuity itself die, would be catastrophic for the whole field." Thus it seems to me that research is often more about maintaining the integrity of the research process itself, and also evolving it and demonstrating its inherent value, rather than about what this research methodology is aimed at discovering.
Many people in the know also say, in regards to what is being taught in universities and researched at the public level, that it is several decades behind what has already been discovered and technologically implemented at the secret black budget operations in many 1st world nations. This involves things like antigravity and time travel. So the real function of research that the pubic is aware of, is not about being cutting edge at all, but more like maintaining an illusion of full-out, no holds barred pursuit to answer important questions of our times, while in truth it is the exact opposite -- intended to hold back and discount and discredit (the 1989 Fleischmann and Pons Cold Fusion discreditation debacle being a prime example of this) since the guys who know the truth and have the goods, never want us to have it as well.
Another example of how this works is the Smithsonian Institute which maintains an air of high respectability for science, yet has been reputed to have also been tasked with maintaining the status quo on many important issues for 'them' at all cost, e.g. it has been reported that some Smithsonian flunkies destroyed once numerous artifacts, which unequivocally demonstrated Europeans were on North America well before Columbus.
Then of course there are the secret societies and their agendas for our perceived course of evolution of science. Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) has been called the father of empiricism (which is epistemologically fundamental to the scientific method). Bacon was a medieval British Parliamentarian and acquired a lot of influence and numerous titles, becoming Queen's Counsel to Elizabeth I and Attorney General to King James I, but although it can't be said with absolute certainty that he was a Rosicrucian (since it is a secret society) there is significant evidence that he was the "Imperator" (leader) of the Rosicrucian Order in both England and the European continent
( https://www.amazon.ca/Rosicrucian-Enlightenment-Frances-Yates/dp/0415267692/ ). The Rosicrucian movement became public in the early 17th century and is known to operate within and under the guise of traditional religions of the time, and use them as well as high posts of public office (as in the case of Bacon) as a means of influence as well as, an operational façade.
The Rosicrucians share certain secret rites with the Freemasons and are known to be highly invested in magical practices. Their capabilities should be taken seriously and i recently watched an interesting documentary about the 17th century Dutch Rosicrucian painter, Johannes Torrentius (on Amazon Prime: Mysterious Masterpiece: Hidden in Plain Sight) whose only surviving painting exhibits qualities that can't be explained by science. He himself said he didn't paint it, but that it painted itself under an aura of humming bees. The Rosicrucians are also known to have been responsible for erecting the infamous Georgia Guide Stones which claimed that the world's population should be reduced to 500 million.
Lastly, in light of all this, it seems likely to me that the real agenda that is being played around climate change is that they indeed do "own the science" and will not have any dissention on that issue from anyone. Maybe why "own it" is because if they can control the weather (which it is known they do have the ability to manipulate globally now), if they can control it most of the time -- it will 'become' for all intents and purposes, "climate" that they are controlling. Somehow they do still seem to need us -- maybe because humans are conscious creator beings, able to create the planet they want -- but they also need us to believe we are the ones responsible for climate change, not that it is them, so they have to have this illusion of "independent scientific validity" and that's all it is -- a bunch of manufactured BS to keep up the illusion that the climate is changing for worse due to greenhouse gasses, so we won't see that it is them directly making it hot and dry, which is what they seem to need for their ideal planet hosting an alien lifeform.