Do you think that the constant catastrophising of weather and climate in the mainstream media, politics and science has just appeared by accident? Over the last few years, the BBC and the Guardian, as of one mind, decided to float improbable ‘tipping point’ scares under cover of ‘scientists say’, while UN officials concluded that we had two years to save a ‘boiling’ planet and the ubiquitous ‘Jim’ Dale has been given free rein to make it up as he goes along on Talk TV and GB News. Of course all this didn’t suddenly happen. Each of these examples is testament to an extraordinary corruption of the true scientific process – an “amazing tale” according to political science writer Roger Pielke Jnr., “a story of how wealth and power sought to shape climate science in pursuit of political goals”.
The main culprit in this amazing tale will not be unknown to regular readers of the Daily Sceptic and it is the improbable scenario of RCP8.5. This has been promoted as a ‘business as usual’ set of scientific, economic and societal assumptions and it suggests temperature rises up to 4°C in less than 80 years. Although downgraded by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of late as “low likelihood”, it is still estimated to be behind about 50% of the climate modelled ‘impacts’ highlighted over the entire scientific literature. Almost all the claims of climate Armageddon and economic disaster peddled by those identified in our first paragraph are based on RCP8.5 input. It is a tale of how three wealthy men bankrolled a project to promote an extreme scenario to guarantee that the economic impact of climate change they projected into the future would be “eye-poppingly large”.
It will also not be a surprise to learn that the billionaire green activist Michael Bloomberg has played a key role over the last decade in lifting this implausible pathway to underserved prominence. Notes Pielke: “It’s a story of privilege and conceit – the privilege in American democracy that accompanies being mindbogglingly wealthy, and the conceit that climate policies can best be pursued by corrupting the scientific literature on climate change.”
In 2012, three wealthy men, Bloomberg, hedge fund manager Tom Steyer and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson chipped in $500,000 each to fund a project “making the climate threat feel real, immediate and potentially devastating to the business world”. An early funded report was part-titled ‘Risky Business’ and it focused on RCP8.5 “as the pathway closest to a business-as-usual trajectory”. The pathway was said to be “closest to a future without concerted action to reduce future warming”.
In Pielke’s view, the authors of the ‘Risky Business’ report made two significant methodological mistakes. They characterised the extreme RCP8.5 scenario as ‘business as usual’ and suggested the world could move from one scenario to another. As Pielke notes, the four different scenarios are independent with, for instance, RCP2.5 assuming a world with three billion people fewer than RCP8.5. Both of the mistaken methodological choices were said to be contrary to the appropriate use set by the people who created them.
The “genius” of ‘Risky Business’ was it undertook a “sophisticated campaign” to introduce its methodological ideas into mainstream scientific literature, “where they would take on a life of their own”. In 2016, a paper from the ‘Risky Business’ project was published in the prestigious journal Science featuring the erroneous notion of moving from one RCP scenario to another. Despite the obvious methodological flaw, notes Pielke, the paper passed peer-review with little or no criticism, and to date has been cited more than 1,100 times. “Hundreds, maybe thousands of papers followed similarly in adopting the same assumption of moving between incommensurate scenarios”, observes Pielke.
A year later, Science published another study from ‘Risky Business’ with the bizarre suggestion that the United States would see a 10% hit to its economy under the most extreme version of RCP8.5, with an incredible 8°C rise in temperature by the end of the century. This prominent paper has been cited more than 1,100 times in other studies and, noted Piekle, the 10% GDP loss would become the top line conclusion of the U.S. National Climate Assessment the very next year.
“Publishing papers in the academic literature based on the flawed ‘Risky Business’ methods was a formula that would be repeated time and time again. Like the introduction of a virus, the misleading reinterpretation of climate scenarios expanded throughout climate science,” states Pielke.
The work begun by Bloomberg-Steyer-Paulson was subsequently taken up by a group called Climate Impact Lab, a collaboration of ‘Risky Business’ leaders and several universities. According to Pielke, Climate Impact Lab has thrived on using RCP8.5 to generate a steady series of media-friendly studies projecting extreme climate impacts. Among them are stories suggesting rising sea levels could swamp major cities and displace almost 200 million people, while a rise in climate related deaths will surpass all infectious disease. All backed, of course, by ‘scientists say’.
Pielke concludes that there is no hidden conspiracy – “all of this is taking place in plain sight”. The political advocacy was “absolute genius” – a well-funded effort to fundamentally change how climate science was reported in the media, and ultimately how political discussion and policy options are shaped.
“This effort has been phenomenally successful,” says Pielke – or as we might put it, complete Dale-ification of most climate and Net Zero debate has been achieved.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
That’s a tour de force of a letter!
Thanks for writing it
Read Viz for more laughs and better science. The BMJ (Bill and Melinda Journal) and The Lancet jumped the shark some time ago.
What a risible position to find themselves in and what more vivid example can there be of ‘painting themselves into a corner’.
What a suppurating stench emerges when the lies are stacked so high and so precariously.
The letter is fine although the restraint is unnecessary. Personally I would have ripped the article apart, bit by bit. Viciously.
At least the authors have shown their colours. No need to take any notice of their uneducated tripe again, they can be consigned to the dustbin.
Where is Peter Doshi?
He gave up, clearly. He understands that the jabs are not vaccines. Must be an awful position to be in.
Whoo, over the target.
I haven’t read the BMJ article, but from what I’ve seen of it here it demonstrates the level of ignorance and banal evil that our society is up against.
Yet it’s hardly surprising that these sort of people want to suppress criticism now – by all rights, and if and when the truth comes out, many of them will be looking at very long jail sentences.
I hope and pray that they pay for the crimes they’ve committed.
The BMJ is captured. Let them expose themselves, don’t interrupt them.
Their hubris, desperation and extremism will hopefully be their downfall
The BMJ know, seemingly quite well, which side their bread is buttered. Does anyone here know where the butter comes from?
Great name btw.
Can’t imagine…
Yep give ‘em enough rope….
But there never was a pandemic. Unless you count the one of government misinformation.
The problem with smear articles of this kind is that they’re luring the people thus attacked into defending themselves, often heatedly, against the contained allegiations, thus promulgating a kind of conversation of the author’s choosing[*] and – ideally – burying whatever the attacked the group was actually trying to communicate under a tsunami of irrelevant noise.
This is a standard disinformation tactic.
[*] eg, intentionally crude example, Is or isn’t UKFSMA a fascist organization?
I’m not entirely sure why the author is so shocked; the entire establishment in most rich world countries has been captured by these people.
At least, it’s a good, honest reaction.
There is relentless hubris eminating from the pro-jab, pro-lockdown side of the debate, that always attempts to silence dissenting opinion. This occurs whether the holder of the opinion is a professor of medicine, or a reporter.
I have never seen this push for censorship from our side, merely a desire for robust discussion.
But then again, history has never shown us tolerance by a ruling elite class for dissenting thought.
I have never seen this push for censorship from our side, merely a desire for robust discussion.
That’s why I think we’re going to win (if ‘win’ is the right word, after all that as happened).
I suspect that’s correct, though as you say, “win” may not be the most apt term! In small ways the truth is becoming more evident to an ever- increasing number of people.
It is very worrying that so many journals and institutes consider it is acceptable for them to aid the suppression of freedom which the political class gives wvery sign of leading. The silence of MPs and Peers is shocking.
The article wasn’t peer reviewed, was it?! Not very well written, either. Referring to the shadowy & extreme-left leaning CCDH simply as an innocuous ‘non-profit’ is its own disinformation; to compare questioning of a clearly biassed and manipulated narrative to the machinations of the tobacco industry is outright malevolence. But of even more concern is the apparent intent to sway the process and outcome of the Covid-19 public enquiry, using all the nudge and psyops methods it mentions in its playbook. The only upside is that by doing so it has, to a certain extent at least, shown its own hand and what we’re up against next time. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.
‘BMJ’ and the phrase ‘respected journal’ should no longer appear in the same sentence – it went over to the dark side a long time ago.
The. BMJ article appears to have been written by people with no clinical background, bar one (Martin McKee, whose opinion I have disagreed with before). I am firmly of the view that measured responses are more effective than rant and applaud UKMFA for its restraint.
They ask “The public inquiry should do three things. Firstly, it should examine the extent to which groups promoting contrarian messages were able to influence policy. We think it unlikely that they were able to do so directly but, given their links to the media and influential politicians, they should be investigated. (emphasis added)”.
The answer is that they were not able to do so directly, as I myself discovered early on. All my attempts to engage failed. This is a major plank of my personal submission to the Hallett Inquiry, which I sent this week, suggesting that ignoring my professional clinical advice led to the unnecessary deaths of possibly 25000 people in the UK.
The BMJ has been running a series of articles on what the COVID inquiry should be looking at. I have responded to a couple but this one I missed. I think UKFMA should send their letter through the journal’s Rapid Response channel ans see what happens.
Have just realised why I missed it – it’s in this weeks issue, which hasn’t yet dropped through my door. There are some wider points to be made so I will be following my own advice and penning a Rapid Response!
…yes, one of the ‘authors’ ….Karam Bales, is an ‘executive member of the National Education Union’…”Together we’ll shape the future of education”.
Personally I wouldn’t want him ‘shaping’ (or as we call it in the real world..propagandising..) anything for my children….but feel free to look him up……he has a Twitter page where he and Deepti Gurdasani (another ‘author!) decry anyone who doesn’t agree with mask wearing…..!!
Look on the bright side. We currently have the most inept governance and a police force akin to the Keystone Cops. They haven’t a snowball in hells chance of muzzling us.
Does the BMJ receive any funding from TBMGF per chance? Just asking.
While I agree with the article, and I hope a retraction is forthcoming…we have obviously passed the point of no return where independence, honesty and integrity is concerned. The BMJ, sadly, is no more trustworthy or worth reading than any of the MSM…ALL the opinions are bought and paid for….
This is pretty obvious to millions of us, which is why they desperately need to close down any dissent…
The London school for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has been a cheerleader and promoter of the ‘vaccines’ from the beginning…..and suffice to say a little bit of investigation shows that one of the lead authors, and the chair of the ‘advisory group’ on the paper are from the said London school of hygiene and tropical medicine…(LSHTM)…(Martin McKee/Kara Hanson)
Outside of the USA, Oxford University and the LSHTM are the two biggest recipients of funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation…and between 2014-2018 the LSHTM received $344 million…..
Once I started going down the ‘funding’ rabbit hole I also found this….from 2021..
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2021/vaccine-confidence-projecttm-awarded-macarthur-funds-supporting-equitable
The Vaccine Confidence Project™ awarded MacArthur funds supporting an equitable recovery from the pandemic..The VCP has spent the last ten years listening to understand the drivers of vaccine confidence. Through the Vaccine Confidence Index™, a tool for mapping confidence, the VCP has helped to inform the strategies and designs for immunization programs so human and financial resources can be designed for and with the communities they serve. A significant grant has been awarded to the LSHTM….
The MacArthur Foundation is funded by private donation..Microsoft being just one…(shock horror)!,”……..and round and round they go…….
Methinks the Gates-funded Propagandists in the Global Health Bureaucracies are rattled by their failure to shut down dissent and are very well aware of the large and growing evidence that their methods have made a bad situation far, far worse.
Well done to the authors of this letter for magnificently calling the BMJ out.
“Throughout the pandemic, some people have opposed almost all measures introduced by Governments at Westminster and in the devolved administrations, from the initial lockdown to mask mandates and vaccination certificates”
Er yes mainly because they were all totally stupid, ineffective and in most cases life threatening and dangerous.
You have to realize that – when The Good People[tm] govern – opposition becomes a crime perpetrated by The Bad People[tm]. This is also again centrally controlled wording. I’ve read the same in German as justification why a singer of German ditties most popular in the early 1980s (Nena) shouldn’t be allowed to appear on shows of the German public broadcasters anymore — during the pandemic, she opposed government decisions, especially about mandatory social distancing at her concerts. This cannot be tolerated by The Spanish Inquisition[tm].