Why value investors should doubt “climate science”

The drumbeat has long been incessant, and lately it’s become deafening. For years, “the consensus” has decreed that “the science is settled.” And on 27 July, the UN’s Secretary General, António Guterres, proclaimed: “the era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived” – and for good measure alleged that July was the hottest month of the past 120,000 years. The hyperbole extends to Australia. “Lethal humidity is already here,” said the mining magnate, Andrew Forrest, last week. “Millions of people will die. If you can’t get rid of that heat because of humidity,” The Australian (4 September) quoted him, “you cook yourself.”

Global investment institutions champion this dystopian consensus: the impact of climate change, they reckon, is massive, pervasive and permanent. GIC, the manager of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, reckons that it “is a systemic risk affecting all sectors and markets.” “Considering the direct threat it poses to global GDP and prosperity,” adds Bank of America Merrill Lynch, “climate change will likely become a more central feature of corporate decision-making in the years ahead ...”

“For investors,” BAML concludes, “these trends suggest making environmental considerations a part of their long- and short-term portfolio strategies. Companies that embrace climate-friendly business models, operations, products and services are likely to experience the potential for sustained growth opportunities over the long term ... Companies that fall behind, meanwhile, could risk greater costs due to regulation.”

The RBA, too, harbours no doubts. According to Michele Bullock, its incoming Governor, climate change will have “broad implications” for Australia’s economy and monetary policy (see “Climate Change and Central Banks,” Sir Leslie Melville Lecture, 29 August 2023). Finally, Jim Chalmers, the federal Treasurer, has boarded the bandwagon: “the Intergenerational Report made clear,” The Australian quoted him on 30 August, that “climate change and the energy transformation will be the biggest challenge and also the biggest opportunity for our country in the decades ahead.”

How seriously should investors – especially conservative value investors – regard such assertions? In particular, how should they consider claims such as “rising levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere cause the climate to warm; therefore governments must combat climate change by slashing the level of CO₂?”

Four Starting Points – and a Preview of My Conclusion

In this article, I answer these crucial questions. I proceed from four premises:

1. Value investors are naturally sceptical, and always think for themselves.
2. They don’t let conventional wisdom sway them – whether in the form of crowds, a “consensus” of academic and other “experts” or stampeding mobs led by jet-setting UN Secretaries General, Australian billionaires, etc.
3. In key respects and at crucial junctures value investors are bold contrarians.
4. They think independently, but they’re also humble. In particular, when necessary they heed competent external views and research.

Applying these principles to an assessment of “climate science,” it’s clear that climate change isn’t a systemic risk: it’s a mass hysteria. Like all manias, it will collapse when people – above all, energy consumers and taxpayers – recover their senses.

Value Investors’ Contrarian Mindset

Benjamin Graham is widely known – and has been fittingly recognised, not least by his most famous and successful student, Warren Buffett – as the “father of value investing.” At its core, this approach to and philosophy of investing entails the purchase of securities whose value (derived from analysis of their financial statements) exceeds their price. Among other things, Graham emphasised analysis, caution (buying with a margin of safety), stability (buy-and-hold) and a contrarian mindset.

What does this mindset entail? Investment is ultimately a matter of character, and Graham expressed value investors’ ethos – and the crux of science – in these words: “Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ. You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right).”

Warren Buffett agrees – and also expresses the gist of science: “you will not be right simply because a large number of people momentarily agree with you. You will not be right simply because important people agree with you.” Equally, you won’t be wrong simply because a large number of influential and prominent people disagree. Instead, “you will be right ... if your hypothesis is correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct.”

Value Investors Recognise That a Consensus Can Be Wildly Mistaken

“When everybody is on one side of a market,” reckons Jim Rogers, the consensus “has nearly always proven to be wrong. We human beings have not changed in hundreds of years, so we are still guided by the same fears and aspirations.” 

Howard Marks concurs: “What’s clear to the broad consensus of investors is almost always wrong.” Carl Icahn is less categorical: “The consensus ... is generally wrong ...”

Few investors will find these statements remarkable; even fewer with regard them objectionable. Many people, however, strictly limit the permissible scope of contrarian thinking. In Jim Rogers’ quote, replace “a market” with “an issue like climate change.” Why is the result so contentious – and, to many people, intolerable?

If the consensus can be and often is mistaken, what should investors do? “I would recommend that (they) tune out the prevailing views they hear on the radio, television and the internet,” counseled Irving Kahn. 

“Watch which asset classes they’re holding conferences for and how many people are attending,” adds Howard Marks. “Sold-out conferences are a danger sign. You want to participate in auctions where there are only one or two buyers, not hundreds or thousands.” I guess that means he’ll skip COP28 (the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference) in Dubai!

It’s Superficially about Being Different ...

“Never follow the crowd,” advised Bernard Baruch. Jim Rogers agrees: “When everybody is on one side of the boat, you should go to the other side.” So did Phil Fisher: “Training oneself not to go with the crowd but to be able to zig when the crowd zags, in my opinion, is one of the most important fundamentals of investment success.”

Buffett has elaborated: “good investing is a minority sport, which means that in order to earn returns better than everyone else we need to be doing things different from the crowd.” Further, “most people get interested (in stocks) when everyone else is. The time to be interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy (or believe) what is popular and do well ... That’s why Berkshire buys when the lemmings are heading the other way.” “An ability to detach yourself from the crowd” is “a quality you need.”

But It’s Fundamentally about Thinking for Yourself ...

“The consensus is often wrong,” cautions Ray Dalio. “So I have to be an independent thinker (to ascertain when and why it’s wrong) ... Look at the numbers and think for yourself. All the great investors do, and that’s what makes them great ... In the top financial ranks are disproportionate numbers of contrarians.” (We’ll shortly see that great scientists dispassionately and rigorously analyse data and think for themselves, and that’s what makes them great. Disproportionate numbers of contrarians populate the top ranks of science.)

Buffett has also added a crucial caveat. Being contrarian merely for the sake of being stubbornly different “is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What’s required is thinking rather than polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell’s observation about life in general applies with unusual force in the financial world: ‘Most men would rather die than think. Many do.’”

... Therefore Contrarianism Is NOT Mere Obstinacy

John Neff agreed: “Do not bask in the warmth of just being different. There is a thin line between being contrarian and just being plain stubborn ... I will also concede that at times the crowd is right ...”

Howard Marks also concurs. “My good friend Joel Greenblatt, an exceptional equity investor, provided a very apt observation regarding knee-jerk contrarianism: “... just because no one else will jump in front of a Mack truck barreling down the highway doesn’t mean that you should.” In other words, the mass of investors aren’t wrong all the time, or wrong so dependably that it’s always right to do the opposite of what they do. Rather, to be an effective contrarian, you have to figure out what the herd is doing; why it’s doing it; what’s wrong, if anything, with what it’s doing; and what you should do about it” (italics in the original).

Ray Dalio concludes: “You have to be an independent thinker because you can’t make money agreeing with the consensus view, which is already embedded in the price. Yet whenever you’re betting against the consensus, there’s a significant probability you’re going to be wrong, so you have to be humble.”

But Beware: Defying the Herd Is Much Easier Said Than Done

“The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable willpower to keep from following the crowd,” said Graham. “Non-consensus ideas have to be lonely,” says Marks. “By definition, non-consensus ideas that are popular, widely held or intuitively obvious are an oxymoron.” Klarman adds: “It is always easiest to run with the herd; at times, it can take a deep reservoir of courage and conviction to stand apart from it.”

“The hardest trait for humans,” reckons Mohnish Pabrai, “is they are adverse from stepping away from the crowd. So having no concerns about how people think about you based on what actions you take is a very important trait. And having no stress about it.”

Why is ignoring and defying the crowd so hard? According to Morgan Housel, the author of The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness (2022), many people possess the potential to think for themselves, regularly ignore and sometimes defy the crowd, but few do “because they care what other people think of them, and taking the other side of a popular view doesn’t make you look smart. Your boss won’t like it. Your friends won’t like it.”

Robert Cialdini, the author of one of Charlie Munger’s favourite books (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984, new and expanded edition, 2021), adds two key results of his research. “We seem to assume that if a lot of people are doing the same thing, they must know something we don’t. Especially when we are uncertain, we are willing to place an enormous amount of trust in the collective knowledge of the crowd. Second, quite frequently the crowd is mistaken because they are not acting on the basis of any superior information but are reacting, themselves, to the principle of social proof.”

A consensus thereby comprises two groups: (1) a large majority which believes that others know better than they do, and has therefore abdicated critical and independent thinking; and (2) a small, overconfident minority which believes that they know better than anybody else – and therefore whose facts are often wrong and/or whose logic is invalid.

“The only way for investors to (succeed)” concludes Klarman, “is to periodically stand far apart from the crowd, something few are willing or able to do ... We at Baupost march to our own drumbeat ...”

Which Scientists to Take Seriously?

Value investors always think for themselves, and when necessary they defy the crowd, “experts” and baying mob. Equally, however, when necessary they seek and accept competent external advice and research. As Graham wrote:

“The intelligent investor will (heed competent) advice ... especially those known by him to have an excellent reputation; but he will be sure to bring sound and independent judgment to bear upon these suggestions ..."

There’s no question that William Happer (Ph.D., Columbia University, formerly Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics and currently Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University) and Richard Lindzen (Ph.D., Harvard University, formerly Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology and a lead author of the Third Assessment Report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and currently Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), are highly qualified and eminent scientists. They’ve trained, taught and researched at the world’s most prestigious academic institutions.

For that reason, what follows relies primarily upon their written submission dated 19 July 2023 to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; it’s the most recent and among the best (that is, most reputable and readable) one-stop shops of penetrating – indeed, I believe profound and fatal – criticism of “climate science.” (Unattributed quotes are mostly from this submission.)

If you want to learn about climate models, then my third source, Steven Koonin, is very well-placed to distinguish fact from fantasy. A theoretical physicist who holds a Ph.D. from MIT, for nearly 30 years he taught at the California Institute of Technology. He quite literally wrote the book on computational physics, and from 2009 to 2011 was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the administration of Barack Obama. In his superb book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters (BenBella, 2021), particularly the chapter entitled “Many Muddled Models,” Koonin demonstrates that much of what the public has been led to believe about climate and “climate science” simply ain’t so.

My fourth major source, John Clauser, is a theoretical and experimental physicist who cheerfully calls himself a “climate change denialist.” A graduate of Cal Tech and Columbia University, in 2022 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

What Is Science? 

In conversations over the years, I’ve come to realise that climate zealots, Net Zero nutters, etc. – including those who claim that they’re scientists – fundamentally misunderstand science. The tell-tale sign is their use of the phrase “the science” (note the insertion of the definite article). They falsely regard science as a body of knowledge at a given point in time. Furthermore, they arrogantly believe that today’s “climate science” is 100% correct – and therefore that it always will be.

History and logic escape them: science is the process of conjecture and refutation that, over time and in fits and starts, generates an increasingly accurate (in the sense that they withstand rigorous challenge) descriptions of reality.

This process comprises reliable observations (data), valid logic (theory), honest and rigorous testing of theories against data – and, above all, humility. Results which presently withstand challenge are contingent; scientists understand that they might subsequently be superseded or overturned.

The litmus test of a true scientist (and, although investing isn’t a science, of a competent investor) is that he openly acknowledges the possibility that he’s wrong – and encourages others to investigate this possibility. Open debate is to science what oxygen is to human life. Consequently, the scientist (and investor) worthy of the name rejects the dogmatism that certainty spawns, and embraces scepticism and humility.

It’d be amusing if the consequences weren’t so serious: “climate scientists” emphatically reject science in favour of advocacy and ideology!

So-called “climate science” rests not upon credible theories and valid and reliable data, “but rather political opinions and speculative models that have consistently proven to be wrong.” Moreover, “the Unscientific Method ..., relying on consensus, peer review, government opinion, models that do not work, cherry-picking data and omitting voluminous contradictory data, is commonly employed in these studies.”

Happer and Lindzen therefore reject the assumption – which the mainstream media and politicians, spoon-fed by “climate scientists,” gullibly swallow – that “climate science” is genuine science.

Clauser agrees:

“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience ... (that) has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.”

“The Consensus”

Proponents of the global warming narrative insist – often stridently – that “the science is settled” (notice the definite article) and that nearly all scientists agree that climate change is the result of human activity. According to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Agency (undated), “the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97% – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world.”

So what? As I’ve already shown, value investors never unthinkingly accept, always question – and, when necessary, reject – the consensus; moreover, they know that the more strident is a consensus, the greater is the likelihood that it’s mistaken. The bigger and faster is the bandwagon, the more likely – and severe – severe its eventual crash.

Additionally, and even more importantly, consensus isn’t science and science isn’t consensus. Richard Feynman (who in 1965 received the Nobel Prize in Physics) emphasised that scientists test theories’ observable implications (hypotheses) against observations. If the data don’t support the hypothesis, then the hypothesis is wrong. “In that simple statement,” Feynman concluded, “is the key to science.”

“Science has never been made by consensus,” Happer emphasises. “It doesn’t matter if there’s a consensus; if (a theory) disagrees with observations, it’s wrong. And that’s the situation with climate models. They are clearly wrong because they don’t agree with observations.”

As in financial markets, so too in science: “historically, the consensus ... has often turned out to be wrong, and many of the greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with consensus.”

Science advances not by the creation and enforcement of consensus but by a process of conjecture and refutation. Ten thousand studies, each agreeing with the rest, avail nothing – but one valid and reliable analysis that disproves them is invaluable. In science, what matters most is the ability of a theory to withstand rigorous attempts to demonstrate that it’s false. “Climate science” abjectly fails this test.

The Central Core of “Climate Science” Is Unambiguously False

The refrain of “climate scientists,” is relentless: a rise of the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere causes the climate to warm; therefore governments must combat climate change by slashing emissions.

The claim is ubiquitous; but is it true? “600 million years of CO₂ and temperature data contradict the theory that high levels of CO₂ will cause catastrophic global warming” (see Figure 1, which appears on p. 23 of the submission).

These data (the blue line depicts levels of CO₂; the red line shows temperature) demonstrate that over millennia both series have fluctuated greatly. By past standards, “the often highly emphasised 140ppm increase in CO₂ since the beginning of the Industrial Age is trivial compared to ... changes over the geological history of life on Earth.”

Figure 1: Level of CO₂ (Blue) and Temperatures (Red) over 600 Million Years

Moreover, both series have been much higher in the past than they are today. Indeed, the current level of CO₂ isn’t merely very low from a very long-term historical point of view: the extreme low of the mid-19^th century – which forms the baseline from which the present is relentlessly and invariably negatively compared – approached the lower bound (ca. 150ppm) that can sustain plant (and thus human) life.

From these data emerge two very inconvenient (for the consensus) facts. First, it’s indisputable that levels of atmospheric CO₂ were much greater in the distant past than they are today. Second, it’s also unquestionable: human activity couldn’t have caused these past high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

What, then, explains the comparatively trivial increase since the 19^th century? Manmade emissions have certainly risen since then; hence it’s one candidate. Yet given the much larger degree of past variability, which is incontrovertibly natural, it’s a much stronger candidate than human activity.

Most damning for the consensus, the two series of data are inversely correlated. Figure 1 “shows an inverse relationship between CO₂ and climate temperatures during much of Earth’s history over the last 600 million years. Higher levels of CO₂ correlated with lower temperatures and vice versa.” Happer and Lindzen conclude:

“Although the data are based on various proxies, with the attendant uncertainties, they are good enough to demolish the argument that atmospheric CO₂ concentrations control Earth’s climate and the theory that fossil fuels and CO₂ will cause catastrophic global warming. They will not” (see also the additional discussion and graphics on pp. 23-26 of their submission).

Finally, “increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere create more food for people worldwide, including more food for people in drought-stricken areas ... (These) increases ... over the past two centuries since the Industrial Revolution, from about 280 parts per million to about 420 ppm, caused an approximate 20% increase in the food available to people worldwide, as well as increased greening of the planet and a benign warming in temperature.”

Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide aren’t a threat to humanity. Quite the contrary: they’re a boon. The core conjecture of “climate science” isn’t just incorrect: it’s diametrically wrong.

A Second Key Hypothesis’ Implications Have Been Grossly Exaggerated

Both Happer and Lindzen “have special expertise in radiation transfer, the prime mover of the greenhouse effect.” Radiation physics explains the effect of adding CO₂ to the atmosphere. “Radiation in the atmosphere is my specialty,” Happer says, “and I know more about it than, I would guess, any climate scientist.” His expertise “involves much of the same physics that’s involved in climate, and none of it is very alarming.”

The global warming narrative asserts that as humanity burns fossil fuels they emit higher concentrations of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. These emissions, in turn, absorb sunlight and create a “greenhouse effect” which traps the sun’s radiation and warms the earth. Eventually, emissions allegedly reach a “tipping point” that produces “runaway climate change.”

Does the “greenhouse effect” exist? Yes. Is it a problem? No. Why not? CO₂ becomes a less effective greenhouse gas at higher concentrations because of what physicists call “saturation.” Each additional 50 ppm increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere causes a smaller and smaller change of temperature (Figure 2, which appears on p. 27 of the submission).

Figure 2: The Greenhouse Effect Doesn’t Increase in Proportion to Rises of CO₂

“This means that from now on, our emissions from burning fossil fuels will have little impact on global warming. We could double atmospheric CO₂ to 840 ppm and have little warming effect. Saturation also explains why temperatures were not catastrophically high over the hundreds of millions of years when CO₂ levels were 10-20 times higher than they are today.”

Climate Models Are Rubbish

Climate models assume that increases of atmospheric CO₂ cause temperatures to rise. But that’s clearly false; not surprisingly, given that they rest upon false premises, for decades and considered as a whole, climate models have consistently been wildly inaccurate. Specifically, they’ve predicted FAR more warming than has actually occurred. John Christy, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama, has analysed climate models from 32 institutions from the fifth phase of the “Coupled Model 18 Intercomparison Project” (“CMIP5”). Figure 3, which appears on p. 19 of the submission, summarises Christy’s results.

The blue, purple and green lines show the temperature observations against which the models’ predictions have been tested. The dotted lines are 102 temperature predictions made by the models for the period 1979–2016. The red line is the “consensus” (average prediction) of the models.

“In our (Happer’s and Lindzen’s) opinion and his (Christy’s), the graph clearly shows 101 of the 102 predictions by the models (dotted lines) and their consensus average (red line) fail miserably to predict reality.”

Figure 3: Climate Models’ Predictions (Red Line Shows Average) versus Actual Observations

“Models,” conclude Happer and Lindzen, “are a type of theory; they predict physical observations. The scientific method requires models to be tested by observations to see if they work. If a model’s prediction disagrees with observations of what it purports to predict, it is wrong and never used as science.” Moreover,

“The models supporting the climate-crisis narrative simply do not align with observations of the phenomena they are supposedly designed to predict. Instead, they consistently overestimate the warming effect of CO₂ emissions, often predicting two or three times more warming than has been observed.”

Today’s Temperature Data, Too, Are Fatally Flawed

Climate models also perform abysmally because the global warming narrative has rested upon a rotten foundation of flawed data. “Since theories are tested with observations, fabricating data, falsifying data, and omitting contradictory facts to make a theory work is an egregious violation of the scientific method.”

Richard Feynman stated this fundamental moral principle of science: “If you’re doing an experiment (that is, testing a theory or model with data), you should report everything that you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it ... Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.” Albert Einstein agreed – and went further: “the right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.”

“Climate science” breaks this trust. “Misrepresentation, exaggeration, cherry-picking, or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called evidence marshaled in support of the theory of catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and carbon dioxide, and of the urgent need to achieve Net Zero fossil fuel and other human CO₂ emissions.”

“The most striking example is the temperature record,” said Happer. “If you look at the records that were published 20 years ago, they showed very clearly that in the United States by far the warmest years we had were during the mid-1930s. “If you look at the data today, that is no longer true. People in charge of (these) data, or what the public sees, have gradually reduced the temperatures of the ‘30s, then increased the temperature of more recent measurements.”

Figure 4: Heat Waves in the U.S. Were More Frequent in the 1930s than Today

Page 33 of the submission shows an example of the misleading data commonly cited as “proof” of global warming. “This chart does not actually show ‘daily temperatures.’ Instead it shows a ratio of daily record highs to lows – a number that appears designed to create the impression that temperatures are steadily rising” (for details, see Chap. 1 of Koonin’s book). By contrast, Figure 4 (reproduced from p. 33 of the submission) “indicates significantly higher temperatures in the 1930s versus today.”

In a recent interview, John Christy rejected the “narrative” of record-high temperatures. “Regionally, the West has seen its largest number of hot summer records in the past 100 years, but the Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest are experiencing the fewest. For the continental U.S. as a whole, the last 10 years have produced only an average number of records. The 1930s are still champs.” Has “the era of global boiling” actually arrived? Was July 2023 really “the hottest month of the past 120,000 years”?

Charitably, in some places it was among the hottest since the 1930s; in other words, António Guterres’ hysteria misses its target by a mere 119,910 ÷ 120,000 = 99.9%. What a hoot! (see also “That’s Smoke, Not Climate Change, The Wall Street Journal, 11 June and “Canadian Wildfires Came from Rotten Luck, Not Climate Change,” The Wall Street Journal, 12 June).

“Wrongthink” and the High Price of Dissent

In his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell uses the word “thoughtcrime” to describe any and all beliefs, doubts, facts and opinions that contradict Ingsoc (Newspeak for English Socialism, the ideology of Oceania). In Newspeak, which is Oceania’s official language, “crimethink” describes the actions of a person who holds any unacceptable thought. Purportedly for everybody’s good, The Party “protects” inhabitants by strictly controlling their thoughts, speech and actions.

In today’s real world, “wrongthink” denotes conclusions that (1) you can defend empirically and logically, but (2) “leaders” and “experts” regard not just objectionable but unfit even to consider. Wrongthink prompts “leaders,” “experts” and “moral” or other busybodies to demand the censorship and sanction of reprobates. The problems of thought control are many and various – and include the propagation of error.

Given the coercive “climate consensus,” academic publications now routinely reject any submissions that – regardless of the reliability of their data, the validity of their logic and the rigour of their tests – question the global warming narrative. Indeed, in response to zealots’ dummy spits, they also reject articles that don’t toe the line but nonetheless have somehow surmounted high ideological hurdles for publication (see, for example, “Climate Paper Too Hot to Handle,” The Australian, 28 August).

“I’m lucky because I didn’t really start pushing back on this until I was close to retirement,” Happer says. By then he’d established himself as a tenured professor at Princeton, a member of the Academy of Sciences and director of energy research at the Department of Energy.

“If I’d been much younger, they could have made sure I never got tenure, that my papers would never get published. They can keep me from publishing papers now, but it doesn’t matter because I already have status. But it would matter a lot if I were younger and I had a career that I was trying to make.”

In an interview (“How ‘Climate ‘Science’ Got Hijacked by Alarmists,” 8 August), Dr Judith Curry reports that she’s “contradicted the narrative” – not least by calling the climate consensus a “manufactured consensus” – and paid a heavy price. The former chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences said that when she published a study claiming that hurricanes’ intensity is increasing, “I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists and I was treated like a rock star; I was flown all over the place to meet with politicians and to give these talks, and lots of media attention.”

When several researchers questioned her findings, she investigated their claims and concluded that they were correct. “Part of it was bad data; part of it was natural climate variability.” But when she acknowledged that fact publicly, she was shunned; citing the “craziness” of “climate science,” in 2017 she retired from academia.

Lindzen received similar mistreatment once he began to question the climate narrative. “Funding and publication became almost impossible, and I was holding the most distinguished chair in meteorology” (MIT’s Sloan Professorship of Meteorology).

The latest target of the mob is John Clauser – the winner, it’s worth emphasising, of last year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. “I am, I guess, what you would call a ‘climate change denialist,’” he told The Epoch Times (“’We Are Totally Awash in Pseudoscience’: Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist on Climate Agenda,” 29 July). “I believe that climate change is not a crisis,” he added in a speech earlier this year.

“Climate,” he concludes, “is a self-regulating process ... more clouds form when temperatures rise, resulting in a compensatory cooling effect.” Atmospheric carbon dioxide is rising, but “it may or may not be made by human beings,” and in any case “it doesn't really matter where it comes from” because “its effect on global warming is swamped by the natural cloud cycle.”

Clauser has also condemned the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “one of the worst sources of dangerous misinformation.” Curry has concluded that it’s “corrupt.”

Clauser agreed to address the International Monetary Fund on 25 July. In recent years, it has championed the climate industrial complex; in particular, it advocates international carbon taxes. Days before his talk, the IMF advised that it “has been postponed (and will be) reorganised into a panel discussion ... We are working to reschedule it after the summer.” No new date has been set.

Beware the “Climate Industry Complex”

In his Farewell Address to the Nation (17 January 1961), U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower stated: “the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity ... The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Sixty years later, it’s not just obvious that universities have repudiated their role as dispassionate assessors of ideas, and that they’ve become pillars of a “military industrial complex” (a phrase that Eisenhower’s speech coined): more recently, they’ve also prostituted themselves to the “climate industry complex.”

Happer and Lindzen ask: why do climate zealots, Net Zero nutters and others alter data and peddle false theories and bogus models to spread climate change propaganda?

Lindzen provides one answer: “climate science is a hoax.” “There is this huge fraction of the population that has been brainwashed into thinking this is an existential threat to the planet,” Happer adds. “I don’t blame the people; they don’t have the background to know they are being deceived, but they are being deceived.”

Why have “climate scientists” adopted the mentality of a lynch mob? Happer asks: “what would happen to the worthless windmills and solar panels if suddenly there were no climate change emergency?” He answers: “they’re really not very good technology and they’re doing a lot more harm than good, but nevertheless people are making lots of money.”

Many investors, including Warren Buffett and BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, have cited government regulations and subsidies as key reasons that underpin “green” investments. Without massive support from governments and taxpayers, the “climate-industrial complex” would collapse.

The money doesn’t just attract investors. “This was a small field in 1990; not a single member of the faculty at MIT called themselves a climate scientist,” says Lindzen. “By 1996, everyone was a climate scientist ... If you’re studying cockroaches and you put in your grant application, ‘cockroaches and climate,’ you’re a climate scientist.”

Clauser concurs: science has been sacrificed on the altar of greed. The dominance of vote-grabbing politicians – and of grant-grubbing academics, power-grasping bureaucrats, money-hungry CEOs, and ESG, eco- and enviro-hucksters, etc. – “is all the worse because so much money has already gone to climate initiatives. We’re talking about trillions of dollars ... powerful people don’t want to hear that they’ve made trillion-dollar mistakes.”

Why do “climate scientists” seek to silence doubters and critics? Diversity of opinion encourages honest and open debates which help to reveal strengths and weaknesses, pros and cons – and thereby to produce balanced and sensible decisions.

When some seek to silence others, however, the “enforcers” not only expose their hypocrisy about “diversity” and undermine the process of deliberation: they threaten the foundations of the open society and aid and abet its enemies (which, I suspect, is the ultimate goal of the climate industry). To its enemies, “diversity” actually means coerced homogeneity. They seek not to “save the planet” but to control its people.

Conclusions and Implications

What is a “climate science denier”? Somebody who, on the basis of logic and evidence,

• rejects the assumption that “climate science” is legitimate science;
• concludes that its core hypothesis is false;
• recognises that climate models are woefully inaccurate; and
• denies that “climate scientists” collate data reliably and analyse it objectively.

“The most dangerous man to any government,” said H.L. Mencken, one of America’s finest writers and fiercely independent thinkers, “is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”

Whether or not they seek to discredit the regime, value investors think for themselves. Hence they never automatically accept a consensus, always question it and when necessary defy it. I conclude that climate change isn’t a systemic risk: instead, “climate science” is an anti-scientific, ideological craze that, like all manias, will collapse when people – above all energy consumers and taxpayers – come to their senses.

The implications are huge: the “energy transition,” “Net Zero” and all the rest are immensely destructive, ruinously expensive and thus colossally wasteful irrelevancies that enrich an anointed few but impoverish the benighted many. They therefore provide rotten foundations for trillions of dollars of actual and envisaged investments. As the unsound basis of “climate science” becomes more obvious, these investments will disappoint – or worse.

Benjamin Graham’s classic book, Security Analysis (1934), quotes from Horace’s Ars Poetica. “Many shall be restored that now are fallen. And many shall fall that now are in honour.” Meanwhile, I’ll decline to take seriously – but enjoy immensely as slapstick comedy – the claptrap of “climate science.” “Climate change is the defining issue of our time – and we are at a defining moment,” bloviated António Guterres in 2018. “We face a direct existential threat … Climate change is moving faster than we are – and its speed has provoked a sonic boom SOS across our world … If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us.”

Five years after Guterres’ risible outburst (“global boiling” is his latest; it surely won’t be his last), and three years after his deadline, actual and eminent scientists like John Christy, John Clauser, Judith Curry, William Happer, Steven Koonin and Richard Lindzen remain far closer to the truth.

“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement,” says Lindzen, “that the early-21^st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

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