Introduction

A spirit of open, courageous investigation lies at the heart of the Buddhist path. This means questioning not only our personal assumptions but also those that shape our societies, including dominant narratives within science, politics, and the media. When consensus hardens into dogma and dissent is silenced, we are no longer in the domain of free enquiry, but of ideology — and in such a context, much harm can result.

This article, like the others in this series, is about science and society, not about Buddhism. Nevertheless, the article is based upon a foundational principle of the Dharma: that the truth is best served by a fearless and penetrating examination of the way things really are. It scrutinises the fraught world of climate science, exploring whether its prevailing consensus has become impervious to scrutiny. In a field so closely tied to governmental policy, funding, and global activism, can we trust that scientific enquiry is being conducted with integrity and openness?

In my previous article I described the weaknesses that vitiate the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC is widely viewed as the world’s leading scientific authority on the topic of climate, and its reports are presented as authoritative analyses of the threat that climate change poses to humanity. However, the authors involved in writing those reports have often been inadequately qualified, and the IPCC’s claim of using only peer-reviewed scientific studies has been shown to be false. The reports’ conclusions are also dependent upon computer modelling of climate, which is very unreliable. Moreover, the report writing involves a process that is strongly politically influenced and shows significant bias against evidence contrary to the hypothesis of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW).

Alongside the specific weaknesses of the IPCC reports, climate science as a whole has been undermined. This began in the late 1980s, when the DAGW hypothesis gained worldwide attention. Since then, there has been serious bias against, and censorship of, alternative views. This affects the practice of climate science itself. Most notably, it can be difficult to get funding for research, or to work in academia at all, if one goes against the hypothesis. The bias is also evident in the mainstream media, as well as in internet sites that are devoted to promoting the DAGW hypothesis and denigrating those with alternative views.

Bias against Dissenters

In 1990 the climate scientist Richard Lindzen wrote:

The existence of skepticism on this issue has only recently been publicly recognized. Whatever the truth may turn out to be, there is an unusual degree of extremism associated with this issue. While environmental scares are not unheard of, few have been accompanied by recommendations that skepticism be stifled (an editorial to this effect in the Boston Globe [17 December 1989] is but one of a series of examples).¹

It is important to reflect upon the extremism of which Lindzen spoke. Why, from the late 1980s onwards, was there so much suppression of sceptical voices? Surely, the news that there is no climate emergency, if backed by good evidence, is to be welcomed? But the suppression of dissent was already under way in the early days of the DAGW hypothesis, and has continued to this day.

Over a decade after Lindzen wrote that article, the Climategate scandal occurred. This involved the publication of leaked emails between some climate scientists. For example, on July 8th 2004, Dr Phil Jones, the co-compiler of the HadCRUT global temperature series,² wrote an email to Michael Mann. With reference to two papers by people sceptical of DAGW, Jones wrote:

I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

The comment should shock us, revealing as it does an avowed intention to exclude relevant scientific work from consideration by the IPCC, and even a willingness to manipulate the principles of peer review.

On the whole, dissident scientists tend to be ignored or censored. It can be difficult to publish research that challenges the politically endorsed narrative. If such research does get published, it can be retracted following complaints by activists, as I will illustrate further on. Crucially, funding for research that contradicts the DAGW hypothesis can be withdrawn.³ (In contrast it is common to get funding for research, in a whole variety of areas, by explicitly affirming the hypothesis.)

The treatment of sceptics has gone well beyond the suppression of their views. It involves defamation — argument by abuse. In the early 1990s the scientist Fred Singer was a victim of defamation by people connected to the US Vice-Presidential candidate Al Gore, a prominent promoter of the DAGW hypothesis.⁴ Singer was accused of putting undue pressure on a co-author of a paper. In that paper the authors (Singer, Chauncey Starr and Roger Revelle) had stated that “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.”

Gore had been very embarrassed by the paper because he had cited Revelle, one of the co-authors, as the man who had persuaded him of the reality of dangerous man-made warming. Revelle had died not long after the paper was published, so persuading him to recant was not an option. Instead, Singer was attacked by Justin Lancaster a scientist associated with Revelle. Lancaster alleged that Singer had falsely put Revelle’s name as a co-author of the paper, and then had coerced Revelle, with the implication Revelle had been vulnerable, losing his mental capacities in the months before he died. When Singer sued Lancaster for libel, he discovered that Lancaster had close connections with Gore.

Singer won his libel case — largely because it became clear that Lancaster knew that Revelle had, in fact, willingly participated in writing the paper and had not been vulnerable to coercion.

Singer’s case serves to illustrate one method — the personal attack — by which politically motivated pressure can be brought to bear upon those who are sceptical of DAGW. But there are other ways to the same end. At the simplest level, there is the repeated use of stigmatising epithets. Climate sceptics are typically accused of being ‘deniers’ (which invokes associations with Holocaust denial), or ‘contrarians’ (i.e. of resisting a consensus just for the fun of it), or of being in the pay of the fossil fuel industry, or of not being the proper type of scientist (even if they are actually climate scientists).

One distinguished climate scientist whose academic career was ruined was Judith Curry, the former Head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Originally, Dr Curry had generally agreed with the DAGW viewpoint, and she was held in high regard in the scientific community as long as she did so. However, some sceptics pointed out to her some errors in a paper she had published.⁵ She took the criticisms seriously, realising that her conclusions in the paper were incorrect. She then started engaging with the sceptics on-line. This willingness to change her mind on the basis of evidence was to her great credit. Nevertheless, it earned her the hostility of the climate lobby, notably Michael Mann (whom I described, in my last article, as ‘one of the most influential prophets of climate doom’). Mann used his prestige to denounce Curry as a ‘serial climate disinformer’, with devastating effects on her reputation. She wrote that:

This defamation is affecting my academic reputation and my ability to conduct business. I note that I am far from the only person being attacked and libelled by Dr. Mann.⁶

Ultimately, Curry found she was unable to continue in academia because of this. She resigned from her tenured post in 2017 to work as an independent consultant.

Lennart Bengtsson is another example. He is a climate scientist who experienced extreme pressure when he joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a body that questions the existence of dangerous anthropogenic climate change.

I have been put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me. If this is going to continue I will be unable to conduct my normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety. I see therefore no other way out therefore than resigning from GWPF… Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc. I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy.⁷

A more recent example of bias and censorship is the retraction of a published scientific article which argued that the data do not show evidence of an increasing frequency of extreme weather events. Michael Mann was one of those excoriating the paper, as quoted in the Guardian newspaper:

Prof Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, told Temperature Check the journal article was “another example of scientists from totally unrelated fields coming in and naively applying inappropriate methods to data they don’t understand”.

“Either the consensus of the world’s climate experts that climate change is causing a very clear increase in many types of weather extremes is wrong, or a couple of nuclear physics dudes in Italy are wrong.”

The four physicists who wrote that article included at least one actual climate scientist, Franco Prodi. Furthermore, the article in question looked at statistical data on extreme weather events (showing that they have not, in fact, increased).⁸ One needs expertise in data analysis to do this, and being a climate scientist is not a necessary requirement. Moreover, as I discussed in my last article, there have been experts in the field of hurricane activity who have been ignored by the IPCC, because they stated that hurricane activity had not increased. Yet Mann talks of a ‘consensus’.

Given that climate science is a branch of physics, what exactly disqualifies a physicist from commenting upon it, or contributing to it? Mann himself has a first degree in physics, and his subsequent research was on data for temperature, especially proxy data such as tree rings. As I noted in my last article, there have been severe criticisms of the statistical analysis in Mann’s own research. How then can one have confidence in his opinions about other people’s statistical analysis? Is his own knowledge of atmospheric physics at all adequate? Does he understand computer modelling and its limitations?

This leads to a more general question. Which scientists can be deemed qualified enough to oblige the rest of us — particularly governments and the media — to take their opinions on climate seriously? For example, what about solar physicists who have expert knowledge about the influence of the sun on the Earth’s weather and climate? Why has their field of knowledge been so poorly represented in the IPCC reports, as I mentioned in my previous article?

Overall, since the late 1980s, there has been a pattern of bias and censorship within climate science that has unjustly marginalised those who argue against the DAGW hypothesis. It has also misled the public by suppressing debate and contrary evidence.

False Consensus

In Lindzen’s 1990 paper, mentioned earlier, he wrote:

The current state of our understanding of climate hardly justifies a consensus over the response of climate to the small increase in downward flux caused by a doubling of C02. It is not clear that models will ever be able to deal with this issue with great certainty.⁹

This is still true today. However, claims of a ‘scientific consensus’ have been very influential, and have convinced many people that the DAGW hypothesis must be correct. At times this claimed consensus has been quantified. For example, it has often been claimed that 97% of scientists agree with the DAGW hypothesis. But the 97% figure originated from a very flawed study where the researcher had initially approached 10,257 ‘earth scientists’ for their opinions, but then ignored all of them except for 77 who specifically described themselves as ‘climate scientists’ and who had published on the issue of climate change. 75 of these 77 (i.e. 97% of them) agreed that human activity had contributed to atmospheric warming. In other words, 0.7% of the 10,257 scientists first approached had agreed that human activity had contributed to the temperature change to some extent.¹⁰

When the details of the 97% figure became known and ridiculed, it was then supposedly confirmed in a study (done by climate activists) based on the abstracts of scientific papers. They found 11,994 papers whose abstracts included the terms ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’.  7980 papers expressed no position on this, so were left out of subsequent analysis. This left 34% of the original papers. 97% of these (i.e. 33% of the original papers) supposedly expressed strong support for the hypothesis.

However, in reality the percentage was much lower. Those particular abstracts had been categorised according to how strongly they endorsed the anthropogenic warming hypothesis. A mere 65 of them (1.6%) had apparently endorsed the statement ‘human beings are the primary cause of recent global warming’. However, even that figure may be too high, as scientists whose papers were cited as endorsing this statement disagreed with that interpretation.¹¹

In reality, the pressure on scientists to conform makes any claim of consensus illegitimate. Opinions and evidence contradicting the hypothesis are ignored or censored. Because of this silencing, the false impression of consensus persists.

But, even if there were a high proportion of relevant scientists agreeing with the DAGW hypothesis, without being under pressure to do so, they could all be wrong. I suspect that a high percentage or consensus of relevant scientists in the late nineteenth century would have agreed that Newton’s laws of motion were correct; but then along came Einstein to show they were not. Amusingly, there was even a book published, apparently supported by 100 scientists, arguing against Einstein.¹²

It is vital to understand that science does not work by consensus. It progresses through rigorous challenge, falsification, and openness to contrary evidence. Climate activism typically displays the opposite traits.

The Lobbyists’ Script

There seems to be a script that is followed by the climate lobby in response to anyone who dissents from the DAGW hypothesis, regardless of the quality of the evidence and argument underpinning the dissent. There are activist websites that seem devoted to this script, which runs broadly as follows:

1. emphasise the supposed consensus of scientists who accept the hypothesis
2. denigrate the scientific capabilities of any dissenters
3. call them ‘deniers’ or ‘contrarians’
4. impugn their ethics and motives — especially by alleging they are financially motivated and in the pay of fossil fuels industry
5. accuse them of ‘cherry-picking’ data (i.e. of being very selective in what data they use).

The cherry-picking charge is especially ironic, as those promoting the DAGW hypothesis have a marked tendency to be selective in their use of data. For example, somewhat unusual weather events are nowadays often cited as compelling evidence of calamitous climate change, with little discussion being given to the actual historical record of such events. This is ‘cherry picking’ par excellence.

There has also been some systematic ‘adjustment’ of recorded temperatures, and the downplaying or ignoring of the urban heat island effect. The latter refers to temperature stations that are located in increasingly large towns or cities, which of course are warmer than the surrounding countryside, and so give an inaccurate estimate of the surface air temperature as a whole. Indeed, the reliability of recorded surface air temperatures is a very serious issue, one that is typically ignored by the climate lobby.

Money, Authoritarianism and Groupthink

Why are scientists who disagree with the DAGW hypothesis denigrated, and the evidence they provide ignored? If there is evidence that climate change is not, in fact, an existential threat to humanity, one would expect it to be welcomed. Some promoters of the DAGW hypothesis behave like schoolyard bullies towards dissenters, yet the accusations they hurl would in many cases be better aimed at the bullies themselves. What is driving all this?

Part of the answer lies in the old adage ‘follow the money’. The ‘climate change industrial complex’ is lucrative. The renewables sector receives heavy government subsidies. The carbon trading market generates vast wealth. Thousands of jobs — in academia, NGOs, government departments, and the UN — depend on the DAGW narrative. Scientific research and publication are often tied to affirmation of the hypothesis. Climate advocacy is also funded by wealthy individuals. For example, the influential Risky Business report of 2014 was funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg and by Henry Paulson, former CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs.  The report warned of catastrophe from continued fossil fuel use, yet was based upon an ‘exceedingly unlikely’ computer model.¹³

Given all the money involved, is it not sensible to consider if it has had a seriously corrupting influence on climate science and the politics closely associated with it? The question becomes pointed when one considers the huge numbers of politicians, bureaucrats and activists that attend the annual climate ‘Conferences of the Parties’. This year an estimated 50,000 are due to fly to Brazil for COP30. In these days of the internet and online discussion groups, why do so many people need to fly across the world to such a conference? Their ‘carbon footprint’ would be much less if they stayed at home. Is the conference, with its accompanying social activities, a reward for their endeavours?

The other part of the answer lies in psychology. The behaviour of the DAGW lobby has strong parallels with the psychological traits that have been found in authoritarianism. As discussed in the book ‘Liberal Bullies’, authoritarians think simplistically, in binary terms, and are unwilling to consider complexities. They adhere to the views of their group, rather than follow principles of reasoning. They try to supress evidence that contradicts their views (these days often calling it ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’). They bully those that disagree with them.¹⁴ All such traits are very evident within the DAGW lobby.

Irving Janis’s concept of ‘groupthink’ also seems very applicable. Janis expounded this concept in his book Groupthink (1982), long before climate change became a headline issue. He had found that small groups of people in government, and their expert advisers, could reach harmful decisions through a process that involved squashing dissent. Such groups can resemble cults in their single-minded adherence to an idea, making them impervious to critique. The DAGW hypothesis was originally promoted by a small group of politicians and their associated experts. Of course, it has spread far beyond the original group, and become a virtual orthodoxy. It is now groupthink on a grand scale, yet the cult-like immunity to critique persists, partly through the material incentives just mentioned, and partly through the willingness of so many scientists — unlike Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry or Fred Singer — to be cowed.    

Summary and Concluding Thoughts

It is clear that climate science has been adversely affected by the proponents of the DAGW hypothesis for over thirty-five years. They have behaved in authoritarian ways towards those that disagree. In many ways they resemble a cult. They promote the idea of a consensus, which is false, and also contrary to science. This has all been amplified by the skewed presentation of climate science in the media. It is important for Buddhists (and others) to be aware of all this, because naively accepting and repeating the DAGW hypothesis, and the claims of its adherents, involves repeating untruthful and harmful communication. It is also very important to disengage from groupthink of any kind.

As I have mentioned, there are financial and psychological factors involved in the undermining of climate science. However, there is also the important factor of politics, both national and international. This will be explored in a further article.

1. Some Coolness concerning global warming; Richard Lindzen, 1990
2. See: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/07/hacked-climate-emails-analysis

   https://www.cato.org/commentary/climate-scientists-subverted-peer-review

   https://www.cato.org/commentary/climategate-whitewash-continues

3. https://dailysceptic.org/2024/11/07/vital-satellite-temperature-record-that-shines-light-on-corrupted-and-adjusted-data-could-be-lost-due-to-lack-of-funding/
4. The Revelle-Gore Story Attempted Political Suppression of Science (1994)

   https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/0817939326_283.pdf

   Statement by Justin Lancaster:

   The late Professor Roger Revelle was a true and voluntary coauthor of the article entitled “What To Do About GreenhouseWarming: Look Before You Leap,” along with Professor S. Fred Singer and Chauncey Starr, Ph.D. The article was published in April 1991 in the inaugural issue of Cosmos, the journal of the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C. I retract as being unwarranted any and all statements, oral or written, I have made which state or imply that Professor Revelle was not a true and voluntary coauthor of the Cosmos article, or which in any other way impugn or malign the conduct or motives of Professor Singer with regard to the Cosmos article (including but not limited to its drafting, editing, publication, republication, and circulation). I agree not to make any such statements in future. I fully and unequivocally retract and disclaim those statements and their implications about the conduct, character, and ethics of Professor Singer, and I apologize to Professor Singer for the pain my conduct has caused him and for any damage that I may have caused to his reputation. To the extent that others, including Anthony D. Socci, Ph.D., Edward A. Frieman, Ph.D., and Walter H. Munk, Ph.D.,18 relied on my statements to make similar statements and insinuations, I also apologize to Professor Singer. I also regret that I have caused Professor Singer to incur litigation costs to resolve this matter. /s/ Justin Lancaster Dated April 29th, 1994.

5. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Curry
6. See: https://judithcurry.com/2024/02/08/jcs-ethics-complaint-against-michael-mann/

   “On the other hand, serial climate disinformer Judith Curry, in a commentary for the same outlet five days later, announced, “Consensus distorts the climate picture.”

   Prior to this article, Mann had said a lot of very bad things about me.  But this is the one that destroyed my academic career.  I first spotted this article on Georgia Tech’s daily news feed, that highlights all the mentions of Georgia Tech in the media.  A link to Mann’s huffington post article appeared near the top of the news feed, including the serial climate disinformer quote.  For the first time in my life, I had the sensation of my heart falling to the floor.  This news feed is emailed to all Georgia tech students, faculty members, administrators, alumni and donors. At the time I was under consideration for an appointment in the higher administration at Georgia Tech, I was one of three finalists for the position.  Well this was definitely game over for that appointment.

   That day, as I was trying to evaluate the fallout from this, I googled my name.  The first page of the google search was filled with Judith Curry climate denier, judith curry science misinformer, Judith Curry climate heretic and so on.  My first reaction was that this is really bad for Georgia tech’s brand.  My second thought was that all this also made me unhirable at any other university.  My third thought was that Michael mann’s destruction of my reputation and academic career was now complete.  This is what real damage to someone’s career looks like.

   https://judithcurry.com/2024/02/08/jcs-ethics-complaint-against-michael-mann/#more-30985

7. See: The Scourge of Prosocial Censorship; John Ridgway, at:

   https://judithcurry.com/2025/01/22/the-scourge-of-prosocial-censorship/#more-31808

8. See:

   https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/think-of-the-implications-of-publishing

   https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2023/08/how-science-is-done-these-days/?mc_cid=7f6b135e2e&mc_eid=4961da7cb1

9. Some Coolness concerning global warming; Richard Lindzen, 1990, p297
10. From ‘Global Warming – a case study in groupthink’; Christopher Booker:

    https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/02/Groupthink.pdf

    This need to assure the world that only an insignificant handful of scientists did not agree with the climate orthodoxy had already prompted a first response back in 2008, when the Washington Post, the Guardian and others trumpeted a new survey which had found that ‘97 percent of climate scientists’ agreed with the ‘consensus’ on manmade warming. This was said to be based on questioning ‘10,257 Earth scientists’.

    But when the evidence for this claim was looked into, it turned out not to be quite what all those headlines had suggested. For a start, the survey was the work of a master’s degree student at the University of Illinois, under the guidance of her supervisor. She had indeed originally approached ‘10,257 Earth scientists’, but it was then decided that many of these represented disciplines which did not qualify them to answer, including physicists, geologists, astronomers and experts on solar activity (who might have believed there was a connection between global warming and the Sun). So the original number of those approached was winnowed down to 3,146.

    Those who remained were then asked two questions. First, did they accept that the world had warmed since the pre-industrial era. It might have been hard to find any reasonably well-informed person who disagreed with this, but even so 10 percent of them did so.

    Secondly, did they believe that human activity had ‘significantly’ contributed to this warming’? When only 82 percent said they did, this was not considered to convey quite the required impression of an overwhelming ‘consensus’. So the sample was winnowed down still further until the researchers were left with just 77 respondents who (a) described themselves as ‘climate scientists’ and (b) had recently published peer-reviewed papers on climate change. When 75 of the 77 gave the required answer to the second question, this provided the ‘97 percent’ figure which won all those headlines (although it amounted to only 0.7 percent of the ‘10,257 earth scientists’ originally approached).

    As these details emerged, they aroused so such mockery that in 2012 a group of highly committed advocates for the orthodoxy, including a journalist from the Guardian, decided to come to the rescue of the ‘97 percent’ claim with what they called ‘The Consensus Project’. The lead author of the paper which resulted was John Cook, an Australian with a PhD in psychology, who in 2011 had published a book called Climate Change Denial: Heads In The Sand and was co-founder of a blog called Skeptical Science, dedicated to ‘getting sceptical about global warming skepticism’.

    This time the team had searched the internet for the abstracts of papers published since 1991 that mentioned ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. Naturally it didn’t occur to them to allow for the fact that the overwhelming majority of studies published during that time could only have won their funding if they endorsed  the ‘consensus’ view. But their trawling produced 11,944 abstracts including those phrases, which they then divided into eight categories. These ranged from ‘explicit endorsement with quantification’ at the top, shading all the way down to ‘explicit rejection with quantification’ at the bottom.

    7,980 of the abstracts expressed ‘no position’. This left 34 percent of the papers still remaining. The overwhelming majority of these, 33 percent of the total, fell into one of the three categories which endorsed the belief that ‘greenhouse gases lead to warming’. 33 percent of that 34 percent thus gave Cook and his colleagues the ‘97 percent’ figure they wanted.

    On closer examination, however, this claim began to look ever more curious. The vast majority of the abstracts included in the 33 percent figure consisted of (a) those that had only agreed that human emissions were making some ‘unquantified’ contribution to global warming; and (b) those that merely agreed that greenhouse gases in general contribute to warming ‘without explicitly stating that humans are the cause’. These two categories were so vague that it would have been hard to disagree with either. But when it came to papers which fell into the top category, by ‘explicitly’ stating that ‘human beings are the primary cause of recent global warming’, these numbered only 65: just 1.6 percent of all those giving a position. Yet it was only by adding all these figures together that they could be translated into the claim that ‘97 percent of climate scientists agree on climate change’ which made headlines around the world: not least when, on 16 May 2013, President Obama tweeted ‘Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree climate change is real, man-made, dangerous’. The Cook paper had, of course, shown nothing of the kind. But a more accurate reflection of the survey’s findings, that ‘1.6 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are the primary cause of global warming’ would have won no coverage at all. (pp 59-60)

11. http://www.populartechnology.net/2014/12/97-articles-refuting-97-consensus.html

    http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html

12. See: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/11/100-authors-against-einstein-a-look-in-the-rearview-mirror/
13. See: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/climate-cooking

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51281986

    https://riskybusiness.org/uploads/files/RiskyBusiness_PrintedReport_FINAL_WEB_OPTIMIZED.pdf

14. Liberal Bullies -Inside the Mind of the Authoritarian Left; Luke Conway; Forum 2024