How the Science is Rigged on Global Warming

“An Inconvenient Bigfoot.”

What percentage of Americans do you think believe that Bigfoot is real? According to this poll of 23,316 American adults, somewhere around 24%:

To the best of my knowledge, there is no poll taken that addresses what percentage of scientists believe that Bigfoot exists, but if we had to take an educated guess, the numbers would probably be significantly less. It wouldn’t be a surprise if, let’s say, 10% or less of scientists believed in Bigfoot.

So, here’s a question. What if we wanted to get 50, 60, or even 70% of scientists to say they believed Bigfoot exists? How would we do it? Well, first of all, we’d need lots of money. If you have enough money to spread around, not only can you influence people, but self-interest will cause people to change what they claim to believe to get a piece of all that money.

Let’s take a look at how this works with “manmade global warming.”

It starts with the astronomical amount of money that goes into pushing, promoting, and reinforcing the idea that man-made global warming is happening. Despite the staggering numbers in it, this article from 2018 is only the tip of the iceberg:

How big is the Climate Change Industrial Complex today? Surprisingly, no one seems to be keeping track of all the channels of funding. A few years ago, Forbes magazine went through the federal budget and estimated about $150 billion in spending on climate change and green energy subsidies during President Obama’s first term.

That didn’t include the tax subsidies that provide a 30 percent tax credit for wind and solar power — so add to those numbers about $8 billion to $10 billion a year. Then add billions more in costs attributable to the 29 states with renewable energy mandates that require utilities to buy expensive “green” energy.

Worldwide the numbers are gargantuan. Five years ago, a leftist group called the Climate Policy Initiative issued a study which found that “Global investment in climate change” reached $359 billion that year.

Of course, there’s much more:

The World Bank Group delivered a record $31.7 billion in fiscal year 2022 (FY22) to help countries address climate change.

Much, much more:

The Budget presents President Biden’s vision for the strategic and sustained investments needed through annual appropriations to continue to decrease energy prices and grow the economy over the long term. The President’s Budget invests a total of $44.9 billion in discretionary budget authority to tackle the climate crisis, $16.7 billion more than FY 2021 or an increase of nearly 60 percent.

Much, much, much more:

The U.S. government will spend more than $500 billion on climate technology and clean energy over the next decade under three recently enacted laws, an analysis by non-profit RMI found.

We could go on and on with this, but essentially, there is a virtually limitless pot of money out there waiting to be claimed by people who agree that manmade global warming is real and happening. It goes to universities, the media, activists, scientists, and well-connected ex-politicians like Al Gore:

Warning the world that it is on the brink of disaster has been lucrative for Al Gore. His wild prediction at Davos that Earth faces 'rain bombs' and 'boiling oceans' is just his latest in decades of climate alarmism. At the same time, the former VP has been at the forefront of green technology investment that has seen his wealth balloon to an estimated $330 million.

When hundreds of billions of dollars are floating around and people are building vast fortunes predicated on the idea that global warming is happening and caused by man, guess what? Large numbers of people in a position to get some of that money are going to conclude that global warming is happening and caused by man. If Al Gore needed to publicly state Bigfoot existed to have multiple mansions, he’d have made, “An Inconvenient Bigfoot” a long time ago:

Al Gore is just one of many, many pigs feeding themselves at this trough and that money has allowed advocates of manmade global warming to add another layer of control over scientists.

It’s very important for scientists and academics to get funded and published in prestigious scientific journals and all that money has allowed the pro-global warming people to almost control totally what gets funded and what doesn’t, along with what gets published and what doesn’t.

Of course, since the journals want the gravy train to keep running, they reward articles, even bad or dishonest ones, that promote manmade global warming and punish skeptics. Ph.D. climate scientist Patrick Brown gives a great rundown of how the science is rigged on this issue when it comes to journals like Nature. He published a piece there, admitted that he slanted the truth, and then described why and how the scientists do that:

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.

...Why is this happening?

It starts with the fact that a researcher’s career depends on his or her work being cited widely and perceived as important. This triggers the self-reinforcing feedback loops of name recognition, funding, quality applications from aspiring PhD students and postdocs, and of course, accolades.

...In reality, though, the biases of the editors (and the reviewers they call upon to evaluate submissions) exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields. They select what gets published from a large pool of entries, and in doing so, they also shape how research is conducted more broadly. Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted. I know this because I am one of them.

...Here’s how it works.

The first thing the astute climate researcher knows is that his or her work should support the mainstream narrative...

...This leads to a second unspoken rule in writing a successful climate paper. The authors should ignore—or at least downplay—practical actions that can counter the impact of climate change....

...Here’s a third trick: be sure to focus on metrics that will generate the most eye-popping numbers.

...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.

In other words, he’s saying he played the same game that our mainstream media plays every day of the week. He dramatically overemphasized some facts and left other critical pieces of data out because they undercut the case he wanted to make. He’s saying he didn’t lie, but in reality, like all the scientists pushing manmade global warming, he lied by omission.

There are a lot of things you can say about this, but one thing you can’t truly say is that this is science.

For one thing, science requires a level of honesty that global warming research doesn’t meet. Real science wants to know all the genuine facts, even if those facts don’t support the theory you’re trying to prove because that’s the only way you get to the truth.

On the other hand, global warming “science” starts with the presumption that certain facts can’t be challenged not because they’ve been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but because there’s an enormous amount of money on the line and all the groups profiting from it insist you stick to the company line.

It’s a broken system. It’s a corrupt system. Most importantly, you can call it junk science, pseudo-science or even just putting a scientific spin on the marketing of companies profiting off global warming, but it’s definitely not real science.

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