The consensed climate science community has developed a narrative regarding climate change and has been actively working to silence scientists skeptical of the narrative and the research on which it is based. This effort has occurred mostly out of the public eye and has been largely ignored by the media. The extent of the effort and the methods employed began to be revealed by the Climategate scandal. Research which did not support the narrative, or which questioned its validity, was excluded from the IPCC Assessment Reports. Data sharing requests were ignored or refused, even in the face of Freedom of Information Act requests. Researchers even threatened to destroy data rather than share it with skeptical researchers who might question its validity.
Members of the consensed climate science community pressured the editors of scientific journals not to accept papers from skeptical scientists, used the peer review process to keep papers from publication and even refused to serve as peer reviewers for the papers of certain scientists who were known to question the consensus narrative. Government agencies directed research funding to scientists known to support the narrative.
The effort has now begun to receive media coverage since US EPA announced its intention to re-evaluate the 2009 Endangerment Finding and US DOE commissioned and released “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S.”, prepared at the request of Secretary of Energy Chris Wright by a Climate Working Group.
The Center for Biological Diversity has sued US EPA on the basis that the reconsideration effort has been “hidden from the public”. This is interesting, since EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has been very public about the agency’s intent to reconsider the scientific basis for the Endangerment Finding and perhaps retract it. This lawsuit appears to be seeking detailed information from EPA which has not yet been fully developed and reviewed. Dr Michael Mann described the EPA reconsideration as Stalinist Lysenkoism. Congressman Sean Casten stated ‘. . . when the history of this era is written, Donald Trump will have been responsible for more deaths than Stalin, Mao and Hitler combined.’. These were hardly the only hyperbolic responses.
A broader effort is underway regarding the DOE Climate Working Group Report. Carbon Brief has contacted scientists whose research was cited by the CWG authors. They requested examples of how published research had been “falsely or misleadingly characterized in the CWG report. This is clearly an attempt to secure negative comments on the report during the open review period to discredit the report and its authors. The Associated Press, through its funded climate desk, has submitted 10 questions to scientists whose research was cited in the CWG report. Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. has described some of the questions as “absolutely ridiculous” and questioned the journalistic exercise.
The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental Defense Fund have sued DOE attempting to prevent the use of the CWG report by DOE and also by EPA. UCS and EDF believe that they should have been informed that DOE intended to have the report prepared and that they should have been involved in its preparation.
These lawsuits are arguably the most public airing of the efforts of the consensed climate change community to silence skeptics, though they are far from the only current efforts.
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