How the Left’s Global Warming Ideology Wrecked Science—And How to Stop It (Pt. 2)

We don’t have a “climate crisis,” we have a crisis of lying about climate. It’s time for a sensible energy policy that rejects junk science and promotes prosperity.

Manipulating the Data

Michael Mann has gotten away with his tricks for so long, it’s seemingly emboldened others to engage in similar chicanery.

Data manipulation is a feature of climate science—not a bug. The more the general public ignores the alarm bells coming from the climate cultists, the more these cultists seem to think they need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt their theory holds water. Let’s review a few representative examples of blatant data manipulation here in the U.S.

Many folks have documented the data manipulations over the years. Few have been as prolific as Tony Heller, a self-proclaimed environmentalist and computer and electrical engineer who used to write climate modeling software for the federal government. Heller’s blog (RealClimateScience.com) exposes the many ways in which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has manipulated surface temperature station readings—manipulations so brazen it strains credulity that they’d have the gall to do it.

NOAA has maintained temperature records at over 1,200 traditional surface weather stations for over a century. A large proportion of those have been observed by volunteers over the years. Heller has demonstrated, in painstaking detail, that NOAA has replaced over 40 percent of those observation stations since 1990 with estimated data, instead of replacing the aging equipment or retired staffers who used to collect the data manually. NOAA has also changed the time of day many of the stations record their readings, which further massages the data to produce the results desired to demonstrate warming.

In other words, 40 percent of the data NOAA publishes from weather stations around the country is simply made up.

The data manipulations may result from pressure due to observations not matching the hypothesis. According the EPA’s own data, only 19 percent of all domestic climate stations show any warming since before 1950.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) convened a congressional hearing in 2015 to invite testimony from various witnesses to discuss this issue. Dr. Judith Curry agreed to testify. Aaron Mair, the president of the Sierra Club, did not. The graph Cruz displayed in his hearing came from Heller’s blog. That graph shows the difference between measured temperatures and “adjusted” temperatures—the adjusted temperatures showing a very clear warming trend that doesn’t exist in the mere measured data:

In July 2023, the CO2 Coalition noted that the EPA’s own website reported a full 81 percent of weather reporting stations across the United States reported either a decrease in average temperatures or no change at all since 1948. Perhaps this explains why so many government agencies (EPA, NOAA, NASA) feel the need to manipulate the data to show an increase—because without that manipulation, no increase would show up.

Shortly after the Climategate scandal broke, Professor Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, admitted he didn’t believe current warming trends really counted as historically “unprecedented.” In fact, he further admitted there had been no statistically significant warming between 1995 and 2010. This was remarkable because Jones was one of the key figures at the center of the email scheme to manipulate data to “hide the decline.”

In 2023, a new report completely debunked the doom predicted by the climate cult, backed by junk science, that coral reefs would die off due to bleaching caused by ocean acidification, driven by CO2 increases in the Earth’s atmosphere. The theory holds little credibility on its surface, as salt water creates a buffer system that can absorb a lot of carbon dioxide without acidifying. Real-world observations bear that out: Australia has seen a record level of new coral growth after a bleaching event that the media touted as the beginning of the end for the Great Barrier Reef.

The mainstream media has failed to follow up with a correction to its original doomsaying, much like it failed to follow up on the ozone layer (which has stubbornly refused to disappear). It turns out coral bleaching might very well be an adaptation by the corals, not a result of atmospheric conditions at all, and certainly no harbinger of doom. While this isn’t an example of data manipulation per se, it is an example of hyperbolic conclusions drawn by cult members—who got their research published in a peer-reviewed journal—with cherry-picked data designed to come to the worst conclusion imaginable.

Computer Models Aren’t Data

The data manipulation we’ve documented would not be possible if this entire branch of science didn’t rely so heavily on computer models, both for recreating past temperature records, and for forecasting future average temperatures. Simple temperature observations over the last century have failed to yield any evidence of warming, but computer models often do.

A British scientist who was included on the leaked Climategate emails has spent a couple of decades demonstrating this point. Despite his experience, the rigor of his work, and his history of prior publications, peer-reviewed journals have used the most specious excuses to repeatedly avoid publishing his discussion paper on the flaws in computer climate modeling.

Richard Courtney served as the senior material scientist of the UK’s National Coal Board, as well as the Science and Technology spokesman for the British Association of Colliery Management. He circulated a draft of his paper in 2003 calling for scientists worldwide to revise their use and definition of mean global temperature (MGT) data sets. As he demonstrates, if scientists cannot agree on how to measure MGT—or, alternatively, an average daily temperature, or any other standard measure of temperatures—it follows that anomalies cannot be defined.

Put simply, if we cannot define a normal temperature, we cannot define abnormal either. Courtney wrote of the several teams that compiled separate calculations of MGT:

One important use of data sets of MGT anomalies is in “attribution” studies of climate change. Attribution studies model the effects that can alter climate, (e.g. changes to solar radiance, atmospheric injection of volcanic aerosols, etc.). Differences between the model results and the observed changes to MGT are usually attributed to anthropogenic climate change (AGW). Any errors in the MGT data sets will clearly affect the results of attribution studies which use those data sets.

There are significant variations between the results of MGT calculated by the different teams that compile them. The teams each provide 95% confidence limits for their results. However, the results of the teams differ by more than double those limits in several years, and the data sets provided by the teams have different trends. Since all three data sets are compiled from the same available source data (i.e. the measurements mostly made at weather stations using thermometers), and purport to be the same metric (i.e. MGT anomaly), this is surprising.

In his discussion, Courtney demonstrates that computer models are hopelessly simplistic in their modeling of the Earth’s climate, for several fundamentally flawed reasons.

Several other climatologists have argued that computer models, and the scientists who created them, have failed to account for other significant variables. For instance, it’s well understood that solar radiation fluctuations correlate more strongly with temperature variations over historical time periods than with CO­2_­ concentrations. Yet computer models fail to adequately account for the effects of solar radiation. Same for atmospheric water vapor, ozone, and other trace gases. Water vapor, in particular, seems to have a much greater effect than the computer models calculate.

Observed temperature data often doesn’t match the computer-modeled historical temperature reproductions, like those favored by Michael Mann and others. As just one example, the CO­2_­ Coalition published a graph showing an observed temperature decline in the 20th Century as atmospheric CO­2_­ levels rose:

Another peer-reviewed paper this year by former NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer shows definitively that almost a quarter of all observed warming from satellite measurements can be attributed to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, and climate models have completely failed to account for this major effect on temperature trends. The Urban Heat Island effect is a known phenomenon, in which the modern materials of construction—concrete, steel, asphalt, etc.—absorb more heat than natural landscapes. That heat then radiates back out, causing temperatures in dense cities to rise above natural averages.

Fundamentally, computer models are predictions, not observations. Too many climatologists have abandoned empirical data—crucial to genuine science—in favor of models which represent the bias of the programmer. The old programming rule comes to mind: Garbage in, garbage out.

Where Does CO2 Come From? Not Just Fossil Fuels

Little dispute exists over atmospheric CO­2 concentrations having increased from around 270 parts per million (ppm) in the late 19th century to around 421 ppm (and rising) today. The assumption is that it correlates with the Industrial Revolution and humanity’s reliance on burning fossil fuels. But this argument leaves out important details that call that correlation into serious question.

Natural sources of CO­2 _­include so many different variables it’s virtually impossible to ascribe human causes as the main culprit. CO­2_­ makes up about 0.04 percent of the atmosphere. Of that, human emissions of all types—combustion, agriculture, and so on—make up about 3.4 percent of annual CO­2_­ emissions.

In other words, humans account for 0.00136 percent of the observed increase in atmospheric CO­2_­ concentrations.

Remember, the Cult of Scientism has never proven its claim that CO­2_­ causes global warming. Its adherents have never proven a causal link between CO­2_­ concentrations and rising near-Earth temperatures. They make claims about the absorption of certain types of radiation, but that absorption cannot account for the entirety of the greenhouse effects they claim.

All they really have is a correlation between supposedly rising temperatures and rising atmospheric CO­2_­ levels. Actually, they don’t even have that.

CO­2_­ Increases Follow Warming, Not the Other Way Around

The AGW adherents have no answer to the following observation: Several climate scientists have shown that a rise in CO­2_­ concentration follows warming—it does not precede it. If a rise in CO­2_­ concentrations doesn’t precede temperature rise, it simply cannot cause it.

This is not speculation. This geological observation completely destroys any argument in favor of carbon causing global warming. This has been published in peer-reviewed literature multiple times by credentialed scientists. These papers are summarized on the website of theoretical physicist Dr. Ed Berry, who asserts that human CO­2_­ emissions do not control the overall CO­2_­ level.

So, even the weak claim by the cultists that increased human CO­2_­ emissions correlate with increased temperature change can’t be true.

Consensus Is Not Science

It doesn’t matter how many scientists say they believe in the AGW theory if the theory is wrong. Never mind the supposed consensus of scientists and supposedly overwhelming number of peer-reviewed papers the adherents claim show support for the theory. That consensus has been debunked innumerable times over the years. One new paper, peer-reviewed and published in November 2023, demonstrates that two-thirds of all scientific papers can be said to reject the theory of AGW. And, after all, consensus is not science. Appeal to a consensus is the equivalent to appealing to authority, never mind argumentum ad populum: “It must be true because many believe it to be true.”

Albert Einstein famously noted, in retort to the book, One Hundred Authors Against Einstein, to defeat his theory of relativity, “one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”

Judith Curry recently sat down for an interview with John Stossel, who asked her about the supposed consensus among climate scientists. She said the “climate change industry” rewards alarmism and discourages alternate views. “The origins go back to the UN environmental program,” Curry said. “Some U.N. officials were motivated by anti-capitalism.” She added (emphasis mine):

They hated the oil companies and seized on the climate change issue to move their policies along. The IPCC wasn’t supposed to focus on any benefits of warming. The IPCC’s mandate was to look for dangerous human-caused climate change. Then, the national funding agencies directed all the funding . . . assuming there are dangerous impacts. The researchers quickly figured out that the way to get funded was to make alarmist claims about man-made climate change.

So, even if a consensus existed, it would only be due to financial motivations and professional survival.

Worse for the warmers, the authorities to which the alarmists appeal have increasingly been saying there is no global warming. For instance, Norway’s government issued a scathing report in September 2023 in which their top scientists state it definitively: “Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests we find that the effect of man-made CO­2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years.”

They further state, “​​Even if recent recorded temperature variations should turn out to deviate from previous variation patterns in a systematic way it is still a difficult challenge to establish how much of this change is due to increasing man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.”

One final point. The ability of CO­2_­ to cause warming logarithmically decreases as concentrations increase. That’s because infrared radiation reaches an absorption saturation level around 400 ppm. Bottom line: Even if CO­2_­ caused warming, it is not at all clear that increased CO­2_­ saturation would lead to increased warming of any consequence.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the theory of AGW is on life-support.

Carbon Dioxide Is Not A Pollutant

The Cult of Climate Change has decided the only way to convince the public of the urgency of the problem is to reclassify CO­2_­ as a pollutant. This flies in the face of the basic science even the worst of students learn in elementary school. Humans are carbon-based life forms. Carbon is the basis of all life on Planet Earth. It exists all around us, naturally, in every ecosystem and every geological formation. This biology unit from the Khan Academy teaches students how important carbon is for life on Earth:

As a brief overview, carbon exists in the air largely as carbon dioxide—CO­2—gas, which dissolves in water and reacts with water molecules to produce bicarbonate—HCO­₃. Photosynthesis by land plants, bacteria, and algae converts carbon dioxide or bicarbonate into organic molecules. Organic molecules made by photosynthesizers are passed through food chains, and cellular respiration converts the organic carbon back into carbon dioxide gas.

CO­2 _­is plant food. Many scientists note that a warming climate, with more atmospheric CO­2_­, would produce a world in which fewer organisms (including humans) died of cold, and would lead to more productive agriculture to produce more food for more humans.

This should really go without saying, but climate cultists have forced us to state the obvious.

“Green Energy” Cannot Replace Traditional Energy Sources

The Biden administration has jumped into the deep end of so-called green energy, declaring its full dedication to abandoning “dirty” fossil fuels altogether in favor of throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into wind, solar, hydrogen, and lithium battery technology. They don’t even want to contemplate expanding nuclear energy, and have taken an active role in removing hydroelectric dams in western states that have relied on them for cheap energy over the past century.

The problem with wind and solar should be obvious even to the cultists: the wind isn’t always blowing and the sun isn’t always shining.

Every alternative form of energy either requires batteries of sufficient storage to power the grid when power can’t be generated, or it requires a traditional power source as backup. Unfortunately, we’ve decided not to rely on natural gas, coal, and oil as a backstop when the grid needs more power. America could meet its electrical demand with nuclear power, but because of the anti-nuke protests of the 1970s the people and their governments have irrationally shied away from that source of (carbon-free) power.

With current technology, we simply cannot create a reliable electrical grid with renewables. Any reliance on wind and solar would require us to go backwards as a species, reversing over a hundred years of technological and economic progress that has lifted billions of humans out of poverty across the globe.

It should also be obvious that electric vehicles (EVs) cannot outcompete the ever-more efficient and clean internal combustion engine, run either by gasoline or by diesel fuel. Electric vehicles have been around longer than horseless carriages. The first were invented in the early 1800s, and commercially available electric cars started appearing in the 1890s. They simply couldn’t compete with vehicles powered by hydrocarbons in terms of range, speed, and reliability. More than a century later, they still can’t.

EVs run on batteries. It takes an electrical connection to charge those batteries. A recent study showed that “fueling up” an EV costs at least four times as much as an internal combustion vehicle—the equivalent of $17.33 per gallon!

The batteries for these EVs also weigh hundreds of pounds, up to 1,100 pounds for an SUV model. Building just the batteries emits 74 percent more CO­2_­ than building a whole internal combustion engine car. The batteries also require rare-earth materials. Those markets are dominated by countries like China and the Democratic Republic of Congo which have poor environmental protection laws and rely on slave labor—in the Congo’s case, child slave labor.

The Biden administration has thrown billions of dollars into “clean hydrogen hubs” to develop hydrogen as an energy source. As Restoration News has previously reported, “the technology to efficiently store and cleanly burn hydrogen gas doesn’t currently exist, while attempts to harness hydrogen as a zero-emission fuel have failed for decades.” Another green energy pipe dream.

Given the hoax of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, the myth of global warming, the lies told by governments about their policies, the failure of green energy technology, and the benefits of a warmer world with more carbon, a “whole of government” approach to decarbonization makes no sense and will likely lead to much more harm than good done in the misguided pursuit of green policies.

The Media Atmosphere That Allows Climate Hysteria To Thrive

Such climate hysteria and junk science shouldn’t thrive. Voters and consumers of the news should see such obvious manipulations and know they don’t add up. And yet these terrible ideas dominate our public policy and our body politic. In fact, they’ve grown out of control, increasing in frequency and intensity in recent years. They need another element to propagate and grow to the extent they have.

That element is Big Journalism.

The corporate media complex has jumped all in on “centering” climate in everything it reports. It doesn’t matter which subject—immigration, business, sports, economics, local politics, or anything else—increasingly they have a mandate to manufacture a climate connection. These efforts are more and more driven and funded by radical nonprofits. Those nonprofits are themselves often funded by politicized foundations and corporations whose boards have been commandeered by activist directors more dedicated to DEI and ESG than sound economic decisions.

Many nonprofits, like ProPublica, produce partisan investigative reports and peddle it as “news” to local outlets, most of which have cut way back on investigative journalism in recent decades. Many others have made donations to for-profit news companies to fund environmental reporters in newsrooms across the country. Several run seminars, training programs, and even college degree tracks on how to report on the environment and connect every story to climate change.

In such a radicalized atmosphere, presenting dissent or debate about climate science has completely vanished. It used to be that an occasional climate skeptic could get on TV or into the local paper’s op-ed pages. That simply won’t do in an environment in which dissent can no longer even be acknowledged. Rather than skeptics merely being labeled as “climate deniers,” increasingly they get no access at all. Honest debate has disappeared.

What a Sensible Environmental and Energy Policy Actually Looks Like

The more governments try to shift free markets toward a command economy to force their green energy revolution, the more money and natural resources they waste on concepts destined for failure. A sensible approach to energy and the environment would lead with lower costs for all consumers, which would lift more humans across the globe out of poverty. Study after study has proven that as more humans are able to build more wealth and lift themselves above the poverty line, the more they care for their land and environment.

Whether or not carbon emission reduction remains a viable and desirable goal, we can and must do significantly better in our public policies. A sensible energy policy would incorporate the following goals:

1. Despite the warnings of doomsayers and peak oil acolytes, we have enough petroleum and natural gas in the U.S. to become completely energy-independent, even before considering the use of nuclear-generated electricity. Even under the Biden administration, the country produced a record amount of oil in 2023 and is exporting it all over the world. New technologies have further minimized the environmental impact of resource extraction.

2. Expand our already extensive network of pipelines. Regardless of energy goals, our present economy requires the transportation of oil and gas across the country and overseas via ports. Pipelines have a far safer and cleaner record than train or truck transportation and are much more energy-efficient.

3. Follow the example of France by expanding our use of nuclear power. France has successfully employed nuclear for approximately 70 percent of all the power it produces, without a major accident in decades. This would obviously lead to serious reductions in carbon emissions while reliably powering the next phase of human advancement. We should invest in technologies to recycle spent fuel, reusing it instead of disposing of it wherever possible.

4. Onshore manufacturing to shorten supply chains, reduce our carbon footprint, and reduce our reliance on countries who don’t have our best interests in mind, while diversifying our ability to make things in the U.S. again. Domestic manufacturing would significantly reduce environmental harms over relying on regimes that don’t have similar ecological goals as us. We do our economy and the world no favors by sending our “dirty” industries to other countries like China, thereby pretending we’ve cut pollution by sending it overseas.

5. Stop listening to the population reductionists. Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb more than 50 years ago, yet news programs still trot him out from time to time to talk about the perils of overpopulation. He based his work on the debunked work of the 18th century scholar Thomas Malthus, whose own predicted doomsday never came true. 95 percent of the world’s population lives on just ten percent of the land. The entire human population could fit in the city of Los Angeles with about a meter and a half between us. The Earth is NOT overcrowded. We have no environmental or limited resource need to stop using the land to produce our food and our resources.

6. Producing high quality, nutritious meat and produce with America’s agricultural might will increase our ability to feed the world’s people. The notion that livestock produce an unnatural amount of CO­2_­ and methane flies in the face of known natural emissions from megafauna throughout geological history. The notion that we should not fertilize our crops and maximize agricultural yields, because it produces “nitrogen pollution,” has no basis in fact or science. The land owners, farmers, ranchers, and producers care for the land they work, and produce a cleaner environment than what previously existed. We should support and encourage free markets in which they can thrive, with a minimum of government intervention.

A sensible energy and environment policy would really be quite simple, if we simply stopped listening to the lies that make up the Cult of Climate Change and did the things that make basic sense for all humanity, instead of enriching the elites and ceding ever more power to totalitarian governments.

Jeff Reynolds is the senior investigative researcher for Restoration News

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