Thank you for writing this so that those of us who are barely keeping up with the rapid fire onslaught of nonsense have an intelligent and inside look at what is actually being done. This is so helpful and simultaneously infuriating.
The "Fix" is indeed "in process" to undermine US climate policy. Seen in the light of Erik's article, I suspect it's all part of alarger plan is to "flood the Academic Zone" with crap, disinformation, and pure bunk anti-climate action-oriented papers, undermine with massive disinformation, attack scientific institutions, tariff renewables and the move toward electrification out of existance, remove government support for anything considered "green" and wring every single $ out of every drop of fossil fuels still in the ground....
Then? Then the extractive, fossil fuel, financial, petro complex will shift to "carbon sequestration" and look to corner that trillion dollar market, paid for by desperate governments wtih your tax dollars.
These people are evil and smart - that's a wildly dangerous combination, and we're already seeing the devastating effects.
Please keep writing - we need your insightful and incisive perspectives.
Thank you for your important work, Dr. Dessler. I'm reminded of Winston Churchill, who said you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else. Truth and solid science will eventually win out. I hope the hole we're digging doesn't get too deep. The American Meteorological Society and Carbon Brief also have rebuttals to the DOE political report.
I had a major run in with Curry in the Montana case in which I conclude:
"Judy Curry has consistently overstated uncertainties and failed to adequately recognize the certainties related to climate change. There are many certainties: that humans have
changed and continue to change the composition of the atmosphere, that the increasing greenhouse gases cause warming, that the planet (and Montana) are observed to be warming, and that human activities are the cause. ..."
She has long over emphasized natural variability magnitudes and emphasized uncertainty.
Curry also only emphasizes the "upside" uncertainty (e.g., maybe natural variability explains more of the historical change, maybe climate sensitivity is lower, etc.) and never "downside" uncertainty (maybe natural variability actually reduced observed warming, maybe climate sensitivity is higher, maybe there are more ways for forced human climate change to create negative impacts than we'd realized, etc.)
I don’t disagree with anything here. But, in addition to scientific peer review, there must also be public engagement. Scientists no longer have the luxury of hiding from the public and only talking to other scientists. Members of the public, who don’t necessarily have scientific backgrounds, vote in elections. And lately, they’ve been electing some very anti-science politicians. I agree that there is no real debate anymore about anthropogenic climate change among peer-reviewed scientists. But the public is being spoon-fed junk science by well-funded organizations like The Heartland Institute, in plain, easy-to-understand English. Dr Peter Hotez writes about the need for public engagement in his recent book, “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.” Shawn Otto expresses similar sentiments in his book, “The War on Science.” And both of these authors claim that most scientists only talk to other scientists.
Yes, I agree that we need a push to convince people to respect science. The problem is that we live in such a polluted media environment that it's hard to get people's attention. There are so many incentives for bad actors to monetize misinformation that I don't know how to break through.
It was apparent DOE was uninterested in legitimate science when they brought on Curry. I remember when she got into it with Gavin Schmidt... she is a reprehensible dissembler
I think scientists (and normal people) have a tendency to get defensive and explain things when attacked. Tactics like "never play defense" may be immoral, but seem to work pretty well. Which reminds me, I was reading a Samuel Alito legal ruling the other day, and I noticed a highly misleading but very juicy sentence near the beginning, a zinger that seemed specially designed for Republicans to be able to copy onto Twitter.
Can we get some of the benefit of bad tactics without being immoral or using ad-hominim attacks? I mean, your response here is fine, but a little dry. What I like to do is have a set of compelling arguments that the dismissives don't have a good answer to (I don't call them deniers - no sense triggering the poor dears), and mentioning whichever ones are relevant in a punchy way at the beginning of my response. Also point out whatever fallacies or bad behavior they're leaning on, again in a concise and punchy way before moving on to the thing you really prefer to talk about (in this case: that the science process has integrity).
Examples of quick general arguments that bear repeating:
- Global warming was predicted long before it was observed. Fourier, of the famous Fourier transform that powers innumerable technologies today, discovered the greenhouse effect in the the early 19th century; later Nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius published his model of global warming from CO2 in 1896; the first consensus report was Charney et al 1979. All of this and more came before global warming was ever observed. No hyperenvironmentalist government was paying Fourier or Arrhenius to pump out nonsense, now were they? Was the Nixon administration demanding Manabe & Wetherald make a climate model that predicted 2 degrees C of warming? (you will recognize which dismissive argument I am prebunking)
- Every 15-year moving average global temperature anomaly has been warmer than the previous one for the last 40 years in a row (or so), with no exceptions.[1]
- There is a 97% consensus - I mean I have been critical of the specific number 97%[2] but the late Andy Skuce had a good argument for why even that is reasonable. (Also noteworthy that the 97% paper was made by volunteers, which is interesting in light of all those claims that supposedly scientists are super biased because they earn money. Of course they'll also say volunteers are equally biased, unless they bravely fight against the consensus of course. I wonder if there are any new consensus papers since I wrote that article.)
- Dismissives are always partisan, never neutral observers. You can find mainstream climate scientists who are conservative (Lonnie Thompson?) but good luck finding even a single dismissive who isn't a Republican/conservative. I mean, maybe one in a hundred is a communist or something, but never neutral or centrist.
I haven't read the Trumpist DOE report so I have no suggestions there, but I bet their tactics could probably be described in a way that is more clear (and biting) to people who would never read Naomi Oreskes' book.
Many thanks, Andrew, for pointing out the important difference between analysis and advocacy. The former is informed by data, logic, probability, even uncertainty. The latter, boringly, is satisfied by confirmation of however flimsy a supposition. Your work is inspiring. Keep it up!
99 doctors say smoking causes cancer but they’re gonna believe the one doctor paid by tobacco companies who says it doesn’t. As if they’re equal in weight.
I liked your comment, but IMHO your last line is more aspirational than predictive. The primary goal of the US Constitution was to *forestall* tyranny, by making it hard for one person or party to overcome the separation of powers. It left "progress" up to the voters. There's never been a guarantee we won't elect a kakistocracy, i.e. "rule by the worst"; nor that once dug in to all branches of our government, the worst will be easy to dislodge, even as they aggressively roll back prior progress. We're witnessing the consequences.
The last US election was discouraging for climate realists. Yet AFAICT, there aren't any "better" (i.e. less bad) ways to rule ourselves! I still hold on to a faint glimmer of hope. Soon enough, it won't be my problem anymore.
I'm so glad you are doing this substack in general and this analysis of the DOE nonsense specifically. I'm happy to report that I'm finding opportunities to use the contents of this blog to supplement some of what I am doing in my climate change class (for which we are using your text of course). Lastly, I had the opportunity to heard the Secretary of Energy speak on his recent visit to Fermilab. SMFH. Remember when the Secretary used to be a Nobel Laureate? Pepperidge Farm does...
Just a note: I ventured to click on one of WE's WUWT articles on the greenhouse effect, and got an eyeful of TimeCube class thinking. I can't believe how much time I have wasted on him, but now I've blocked him and got part of my soul back.
You have to really be ruthless about who you spend time talking to online. There are a lot of people out there (e.g., everyone at WUWT) who are just 100% time wasters. Ignore them and your life will be better. If those people want to get into the scientific debate, they can publish a paper in the peer-reviewed literature.
I feel better giving them the benefit of the doubt before damning them to the eternal flames of my blocked list. I'm always in search of the merely ignorant and will toss the willfully ignorant (or, in this case, the ultra-confident maverick geniuses).
Dr Curry has been warning about consensus science for over 15 years now and she is right to point out that in the history of science, there has never been such insistence on acceptance of an hypothesis than what we see with the anthropogenic CO2 hypothesis. It is a valid plausible hypothesis but still in its infancy and nowhere near becoming an accepted Law of science, mainly because many early predictions have proven to be incorrect. But that does not disprove the hypothesis itself.
Ultimately, we need populations to stop growing but still have improving living standards (a tough economic challenge). Paradoxically, the best way to reduce population growth is for developing nations to build the cheapest, fastest and easiest form of electricity, because with cheap electricity comes late night sport programs on TV, so population growth slows back to ZPG almost immediately.
And what is the cheapest, fastest and easiest form of 24/7 electricity for developing nations? It is mainly diesel gensets for small community grids and coal fired electricity for larger grids. It is an example of the law of second best and it raises the important question; Are we letting the perfect be the enemy of the good?
[11 AM PDT 09/06/2025: I think I'm done polishing this turd. MA]
[12:14 PM PDT: I lied. I changed "over" to "under" in the last pp. Couldn't let that one go! MA]
Ian Levy:
"...in the history of science, there has never been such insistence on acceptance of an hypothesis than what we see with the anthropogenic CO2 hypothesis."
I, for one, am convinced that's because there's never been a $trillion/year industry dedicated to transferring fossil carbon to the atmosphere (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-gas-industry-earned-4-trillion-last-year-says-iea-chief-2023-02-14/) that fears collective intervention in its profits, driving a relentless, sophisticated campaign to drown climate science out with a flood of denial in the public sphere: see "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2). Not even Darwinism provoked as much lavishly-funded, profit-motivated, organized opposition, overflowing traditional and social media with deception by disinformation professionals and useful idiots alike. There wasn't that kind of money at stake*!
"...still in its infancy and nowhere near becoming an accepted Law of science, mainly because many early predictions have proven to be incorrect...nowhere near becoming an accepted Law of science"
That's your opinion. Are you a peer climate science professional? You supply no examples of "incorrect" hypotheses. A scientifically-metaliterate adult recognizes the relativity of wrong, you know. The radiative properties of CO2 and the physics of Earth's atmosphere are verifiably derived from established natural laws, by 200 years of advancing climate science. Only a secondary-school knowledge of science is needed to grasp that. And the stable, near-complete consensus of thousands of publishing climate specialists around the world (common knowledge, no need to cite it) reflects the maturity of their understanding, albeit always temporary and provisional, for how could it be otherwise? I don't know what Curry's primary cognitive motivator is, but she must know science can only progress by consensus. Why is she in such a tiny minority of her putative peers? Sure, they laughed at Galileo and Einstein. They laughed at Mike Mann, too. *Eppur si riscalda*!
Sorry, but after your first paragraph, IMHO Prof. Dessler's readers may be forgiven if they retain a slight suspicion of your motives. But following NSAlito's example: do you support domestic and international public intervention to take the profit out of driving global warming? There are multiple collective measures available: direct carbon pricing, incentives for alternative energy development and consumer uptake, or even command-and-control fiat. Do you have a favorite?
AFAICT, poor nations would benefit most from incentives funded by wealthy ones; and every decrement in emissions anywhere, or even in emissions growth, under [12:14 PM PDT: former 'over' -MA] what they would be without collective intervention somewhere, benefits everyone in the world. I await your thoughtful, deliberate reply.
* The tobacco industry may come close, but look what happened to it!
Thank you for writing this so that those of us who are barely keeping up with the rapid fire onslaught of nonsense have an intelligent and inside look at what is actually being done. This is so helpful and simultaneously infuriating.
Great explanation. Also, my guess is that the goal of the DOE report does not align with the hunt for an unbiased editor.
UPDATED w/ correct link, below.
Hi Andrew -
Excellent piece - thanks! You might appreciate and find the connections in Erik Lee's new piece:
Science as Organized Crime
A Massive Fraud Ring Is Publishing Thousands of Fake Studies
https://medium.com/@alysion42/science-as-organized-crime-a8c117edbd89
The "Fix" is indeed "in process" to undermine US climate policy. Seen in the light of Erik's article, I suspect it's all part of alarger plan is to "flood the Academic Zone" with crap, disinformation, and pure bunk anti-climate action-oriented papers, undermine with massive disinformation, attack scientific institutions, tariff renewables and the move toward electrification out of existance, remove government support for anything considered "green" and wring every single $ out of every drop of fossil fuels still in the ground....
Then? Then the extractive, fossil fuel, financial, petro complex will shift to "carbon sequestration" and look to corner that trillion dollar market, paid for by desperate governments wtih your tax dollars.
These people are evil and smart - that's a wildly dangerous combination, and we're already seeing the devastating effects.
Please keep writing - we need your insightful and incisive perspectives.
Jonathan
that link is dead; can you repost?
Updated the post to include the correct link:
https://medium.com/@alysion42/science-as-organized-crime-a8c117edbd89
I was missing the "9" at the end. Hopefully, it works for you and others now.
I agree that our publication system is broken, a point I've made a few times on social media, e.g.: https://bsky.app/profile/andrewdessler.com/post/3l7zrsxmy3o2m
Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.
—Scott Westerfeld
🙄 That's worse than an Austin Powers script.
*sigh* I hate "liking" depressing news.
Thank you for your important work, Dr. Dessler. I'm reminded of Winston Churchill, who said you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else. Truth and solid science will eventually win out. I hope the hole we're digging doesn't get too deep. The American Meteorological Society and Carbon Brief also have rebuttals to the DOE political report.
This is why I do not do social media: no editor.
I had a major run in with Curry in the Montana case in which I conclude:
"Judy Curry has consistently overstated uncertainties and failed to adequately recognize the certainties related to climate change. There are many certainties: that humans have
changed and continue to change the composition of the atmosphere, that the increasing greenhouse gases cause warming, that the planet (and Montana) are observed to be warming, and that human activities are the cause. ..."
She has long over emphasized natural variability magnitudes and emphasized uncertainty.
Kevin
Curry also only emphasizes the "upside" uncertainty (e.g., maybe natural variability explains more of the historical change, maybe climate sensitivity is lower, etc.) and never "downside" uncertainty (maybe natural variability actually reduced observed warming, maybe climate sensitivity is higher, maybe there are more ways for forced human climate change to create negative impacts than we'd realized, etc.)
Love how they co-opt the criticism as evidence of their argument that there's disagreement. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I don’t disagree with anything here. But, in addition to scientific peer review, there must also be public engagement. Scientists no longer have the luxury of hiding from the public and only talking to other scientists. Members of the public, who don’t necessarily have scientific backgrounds, vote in elections. And lately, they’ve been electing some very anti-science politicians. I agree that there is no real debate anymore about anthropogenic climate change among peer-reviewed scientists. But the public is being spoon-fed junk science by well-funded organizations like The Heartland Institute, in plain, easy-to-understand English. Dr Peter Hotez writes about the need for public engagement in his recent book, “The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.” Shawn Otto expresses similar sentiments in his book, “The War on Science.” And both of these authors claim that most scientists only talk to other scientists.
Yes, I agree that we need a push to convince people to respect science. The problem is that we live in such a polluted media environment that it's hard to get people's attention. There are so many incentives for bad actors to monetize misinformation that I don't know how to break through.
It was apparent DOE was uninterested in legitimate science when they brought on Curry. I remember when she got into it with Gavin Schmidt... she is a reprehensible dissembler
I think scientists (and normal people) have a tendency to get defensive and explain things when attacked. Tactics like "never play defense" may be immoral, but seem to work pretty well. Which reminds me, I was reading a Samuel Alito legal ruling the other day, and I noticed a highly misleading but very juicy sentence near the beginning, a zinger that seemed specially designed for Republicans to be able to copy onto Twitter.
Can we get some of the benefit of bad tactics without being immoral or using ad-hominim attacks? I mean, your response here is fine, but a little dry. What I like to do is have a set of compelling arguments that the dismissives don't have a good answer to (I don't call them deniers - no sense triggering the poor dears), and mentioning whichever ones are relevant in a punchy way at the beginning of my response. Also point out whatever fallacies or bad behavior they're leaning on, again in a concise and punchy way before moving on to the thing you really prefer to talk about (in this case: that the science process has integrity).
Examples of quick general arguments that bear repeating:
- Global warming was predicted long before it was observed. Fourier, of the famous Fourier transform that powers innumerable technologies today, discovered the greenhouse effect in the the early 19th century; later Nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius published his model of global warming from CO2 in 1896; the first consensus report was Charney et al 1979. All of this and more came before global warming was ever observed. No hyperenvironmentalist government was paying Fourier or Arrhenius to pump out nonsense, now were they? Was the Nixon administration demanding Manabe & Wetherald make a climate model that predicted 2 degrees C of warming? (you will recognize which dismissive argument I am prebunking)
- Every 15-year moving average global temperature anomaly has been warmer than the previous one for the last 40 years in a row (or so), with no exceptions.[1]
- There is a 97% consensus - I mean I have been critical of the specific number 97%[2] but the late Andy Skuce had a good argument for why even that is reasonable. (Also noteworthy that the 97% paper was made by volunteers, which is interesting in light of all those claims that supposedly scientists are super biased because they earn money. Of course they'll also say volunteers are equally biased, unless they bravely fight against the consensus of course. I wonder if there are any new consensus papers since I wrote that article.)
- Dismissives are always partisan, never neutral observers. You can find mainstream climate scientists who are conservative (Lonnie Thompson?) but good luck finding even a single dismissive who isn't a Republican/conservative. I mean, maybe one in a hundred is a communist or something, but never neutral or centrist.
I haven't read the Trumpist DOE report so I have no suggestions there, but I bet their tactics could probably be described in a way that is more clear (and biting) to people who would never read Naomi Oreskes' book.
[1] I haven't updated this recently but it surely still holds true: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:4800/format:webp/1*2p7QGffOwVy81xaDUbFdrA.png
[2] https://dpiepgrass.medium.com/scrutinizing-the-consensus-numbers-70faf9200a0c
Keep going Andrew and colleagues, you are waging the just fight for us all!
Many thanks, Andrew, for pointing out the important difference between analysis and advocacy. The former is informed by data, logic, probability, even uncertainty. The latter, boringly, is satisfied by confirmation of however flimsy a supposition. Your work is inspiring. Keep it up!
I agree with your comment, but I don't actually like it 8^(.
99 doctors say smoking causes cancer but they’re gonna believe the one doctor paid by tobacco companies who says it doesn’t. As if they’re equal in weight.
I don't think this bunch will last long.
"The man that once did sell the lion's skin / While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him." Shakespeare, Henry V (Act IV, Scene 3)
Sic semper tyrannis
I liked your comment, but IMHO your last line is more aspirational than predictive. The primary goal of the US Constitution was to *forestall* tyranny, by making it hard for one person or party to overcome the separation of powers. It left "progress" up to the voters. There's never been a guarantee we won't elect a kakistocracy, i.e. "rule by the worst"; nor that once dug in to all branches of our government, the worst will be easy to dislodge, even as they aggressively roll back prior progress. We're witnessing the consequences.
The last US election was discouraging for climate realists. Yet AFAICT, there aren't any "better" (i.e. less bad) ways to rule ourselves! I still hold on to a faint glimmer of hope. Soon enough, it won't be my problem anymore.
I'm so glad you are doing this substack in general and this analysis of the DOE nonsense specifically. I'm happy to report that I'm finding opportunities to use the contents of this blog to supplement some of what I am doing in my climate change class (for which we are using your text of course). Lastly, I had the opportunity to heard the Secretary of Energy speak on his recent visit to Fermilab. SMFH. Remember when the Secretary used to be a Nobel Laureate? Pepperidge Farm does...
Thanks for the kind words and I'm glad you find this useful! That makes this effort worthwhile.
Thanks for "SMFH"! I'm hopelessly behind on Internet argot.
Just a note: I ventured to click on one of WE's WUWT articles on the greenhouse effect, and got an eyeful of TimeCube class thinking. I can't believe how much time I have wasted on him, but now I've blocked him and got part of my soul back.
You have to really be ruthless about who you spend time talking to online. There are a lot of people out there (e.g., everyone at WUWT) who are just 100% time wasters. Ignore them and your life will be better. If those people want to get into the scientific debate, they can publish a paper in the peer-reviewed literature.
Thanks.
I feel better giving them the benefit of the doubt before damning them to the eternal flames of my blocked list. I'm always in search of the merely ignorant and will toss the willfully ignorant (or, in this case, the ultra-confident maverick geniuses).
Er - not that it really matters, coming from WUWT, but who's "EW"?
Willis Eschenbach (I fixed it in the original comment).
I suspected as much, but I don't hang out at WUWT, and for all I know it harbors a denialist with initials EW, who's just as egregious!
Dr Curry has been warning about consensus science for over 15 years now and she is right to point out that in the history of science, there has never been such insistence on acceptance of an hypothesis than what we see with the anthropogenic CO2 hypothesis. It is a valid plausible hypothesis but still in its infancy and nowhere near becoming an accepted Law of science, mainly because many early predictions have proven to be incorrect. But that does not disprove the hypothesis itself.
Ultimately, we need populations to stop growing but still have improving living standards (a tough economic challenge). Paradoxically, the best way to reduce population growth is for developing nations to build the cheapest, fastest and easiest form of electricity, because with cheap electricity comes late night sport programs on TV, so population growth slows back to ZPG almost immediately.
And what is the cheapest, fastest and easiest form of 24/7 electricity for developing nations? It is mainly diesel gensets for small community grids and coal fired electricity for larger grids. It is an example of the law of second best and it raises the important question; Are we letting the perfect be the enemy of the good?
[11 AM PDT 09/06/2025: I think I'm done polishing this turd. MA]
[12:14 PM PDT: I lied. I changed "over" to "under" in the last pp. Couldn't let that one go! MA]
Ian Levy:
"...in the history of science, there has never been such insistence on acceptance of an hypothesis than what we see with the anthropogenic CO2 hypothesis."
I, for one, am convinced that's because there's never been a $trillion/year industry dedicated to transferring fossil carbon to the atmosphere (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-gas-industry-earned-4-trillion-last-year-says-iea-chief-2023-02-14/) that fears collective intervention in its profits, driving a relentless, sophisticated campaign to drown climate science out with a flood of denial in the public sphere: see "Disinformation as an obstructionist strategy in climate change mitigation: a review of the scientific literature for a systemic understanding of the phenomenon" (https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-169/v2). Not even Darwinism provoked as much lavishly-funded, profit-motivated, organized opposition, overflowing traditional and social media with deception by disinformation professionals and useful idiots alike. There wasn't that kind of money at stake*!
"...still in its infancy and nowhere near becoming an accepted Law of science, mainly because many early predictions have proven to be incorrect...nowhere near becoming an accepted Law of science"
That's your opinion. Are you a peer climate science professional? You supply no examples of "incorrect" hypotheses. A scientifically-metaliterate adult recognizes the relativity of wrong, you know. The radiative properties of CO2 and the physics of Earth's atmosphere are verifiably derived from established natural laws, by 200 years of advancing climate science. Only a secondary-school knowledge of science is needed to grasp that. And the stable, near-complete consensus of thousands of publishing climate specialists around the world (common knowledge, no need to cite it) reflects the maturity of their understanding, albeit always temporary and provisional, for how could it be otherwise? I don't know what Curry's primary cognitive motivator is, but she must know science can only progress by consensus. Why is she in such a tiny minority of her putative peers? Sure, they laughed at Galileo and Einstein. They laughed at Mike Mann, too. *Eppur si riscalda*!
The rest of your comment isn't actually wrong, and reducing the investment cost of developing renewable energy in the global South is imperative for timely decarbonization (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2023/05/16/breaking-down-barriers-to-clean-energy-transition). But the socialized cost of fossil fuels, now being paid disproportionately by the world's poor (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1) and mounting inexorably with atmospheric CO2 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0), must be included in all economic analyses.
Sorry, but after your first paragraph, IMHO Prof. Dessler's readers may be forgiven if they retain a slight suspicion of your motives. But following NSAlito's example: do you support domestic and international public intervention to take the profit out of driving global warming? There are multiple collective measures available: direct carbon pricing, incentives for alternative energy development and consumer uptake, or even command-and-control fiat. Do you have a favorite?
AFAICT, poor nations would benefit most from incentives funded by wealthy ones; and every decrement in emissions anywhere, or even in emissions growth, under [12:14 PM PDT: former 'over' -MA] what they would be without collective intervention somewhere, benefits everyone in the world. I await your thoughtful, deliberate reply.
* The tobacco industry may come close, but look what happened to it!
Do human have a place in Nature?
Yes. Do humans have a place *for* Nature?