Activist scientists on the Federal payroll in the United States are reeling from President Trump’s recent executive order designed to promote openness and integrity in an often corrupted and politicised scientific process. The order mandates transparency, objectivity and it provides a protection for dissenting views and safeguards against political interference. Scientific results must be falsifiable, computer models must be explainable and negative results available. Needless to say, not everyone is happy with this return to the “gold standard” with a group of scientists including Michael ‘Hockey Stick’ Mann writing in the Guardian – seemingly without irony – that it will “destroy American science as we know it”. A group called Stand Up for Science, whose executive director also helped write the Guardian article, is collecting signatures noting that “state sponsored” scientific programmes in Nazi Germany led to the deaths of millions of Jews, people with disabilities and people identifying as LGBTQ+.
Of course, the Hitler trope is often deployed when political activists are circling the wagons to defend a way of doing business “as we know it”. In fact, the Trump executive order does no more than provide guidance as to how science should be conducted. It is patently necessary because much of the science produced during the recent Covid panic and in the current fake climate emergency is biased towards promoting the political agenda of an influential, moneyed elite. Even the Guardian finds it hard to quarrel with the new requirement that science produced by Federal employees should be informed by “the most credible, reliable, and impartial scientific evidence available”. Quite how the newspaper’s writers believe “science is under siege” with an order enshrining such basic scientific principles is not immediately clear.
Over the last five years in the US, public confidence in science has fallen, according to the executive order. In several cases the Federal Government has contributed to this loss of trust. During the pandemic, schools remained closed despite the “best available scientific evidence” showing that children were unlikely to transmit or suffer serious illness or death from the virus. On climate change, agencies have regularly used the RCP 8.5 scenario to produce ‘worst case’ computer model projections. In fact, RCP 8.5 is the basis for most climate and weather fear-mongering. The order notes it is based on highly unlikely assumptions like end-of-century coal use exceeding estimates of recoverable coal reserves. The science writer Roger Pielke Jr has long been a critic of this widespread ‘pathway’, calling its continued misuse, “one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the 21st Century so far”.
For the avoidance of any doubt, the order lays out in simple terms what is meant by “restoring gold standard science”. It means it must be reproducible; transparent; open about error and uncertainty; collaborative and interdisciplinary; sceptical of its findings and assumptions; falsifiable; subject to unbiased peer-review; accepting of negative results as positive outcomes and without conflicts of interest. Highly unlikely and overly precautionary assumptions and scenarios should only be relied upon in agency decision-making where required by law or otherwise relevant to an agency’s action. Any outside ‘contractor’ working for a federal agency will also be obliged to follow the new rules as though they were directly employed.
There is nothing out of the ordinary in the order to those immersed in the traditional scientific process and without an ideological axe to grind. But in the climate sphere it is likely to spike the guns of a number of activists and their alarmist claims. After years of producing junk science to promote the Net Zero fantasy, great care will now need to be taken in promoting ‘worse case’ scenarios. Meanwhile, the pseudoscience of attributing individual weather events to humans burning hydrocarbons will need to be confined to gullible journalists and lawfare operations, two purposes for which it was originally designed.
As the Guardian article shows, opposition to the gold standard requirement is a little tricky given that it lays down perfectly reasonable rules and procedures for employees paid by the taxpayer. “It all sounds very non-objectional, but it’s extremely dangerous in its details and subtext,” observed Gretchen Goldman, president of the Green Blob part-funded Union of Concerned Scientists. The only objection left is to criticise the ‘political’ appointment of administrators to examine the workings out. But these will be made by the heads of agencies such as the weather service NOAA and space operation NASA who are themselves appointed by the Government. The oversight will not set the scope of any work or require certain conclusions to be produced. It is highly unlikely that any LGBTQ+ people will be marched to the gulag any time soon. Federal employees are simply being required to follow best scientific practice.
Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman for the US Office of Science and Technology Policy, which coordinates science policy across the government, told Nature that the order created a path to rebuilding trust between the scientific community and the public “through common sense scientific principles”. According to Nature, she also accused the recent Biden Administration of incorporating radical woke ideology into the scientific enterprise by introducing diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. “If that’s not politicised science, I don’t know what is,” she added.
Meanwhile, the Guardian concludes its thoughts on the Trump order by stating that “science depends on free speech – free and continuous discussion of data and ideas”. This is the same newspaper that has spent decades attempting to close down any debate that does not accept the central role of carbon dioxide and humans in its imaginary climate crisis. No alternative ‘denier’ view from however distinguished a scientist or observer is allowed. Climate science is always described as ‘settled’. It is also the same newspaper that in August 2018 published a letter from 60 writers, politicians and academics under an editorial ‘climate crisis’ subhead stating they would “no longer lend our credibility” by debating with anyone who disputed the overriding role of humans in changing the climate. Debating all views on how the climate works was said to create a “false equivalence” – not the most scientific of approaches, it might be concluded, in spite of the Guardian’s claim to be on the side of ‘the Science’.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic Environment Editor.
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Off-T
“…a police station in London has been surrounded by a mob chanting “Let them go!” There is no information…”
Apparently Darren Grimes has some information on his Twitter feed. I don’t do Twitter unfortunately.
https://x.com/darrengrimes_/status/1809986616347254922?s=48&t=z-QEFmo-T7EyF1VraAWbsg
Here is some video of the incident.
I wonder what the plod response would be if a
ReformFar Right crowd had done this?“It looks like the author has confused market value and cost”————NOPE. —-There is no confusion. This is deliberate activism for a particular product whether that be sun or wind because of the political leanings of the person writing the article.
—–Government and their bought and paid for scientists know full well that wind and sun are expensive unreliable energy solutions but for political purposes they are going to fob you off with those anyway. You only have to understand what those politics are. ——They are Sustainable Development, emanating from the UN that says the wealthy west has used more then our fair share of fossil fuels and must STOP. ——Our parasite politicians are fully onboard with this and are prepared to impoverish us with expensive unreliable energy, adversely affecting our economy, our manufacturing base and our prosperity since standard of living is directly tied to the price and availability of energy. ——Anyone who listens to Miliband talk about “cheaper bills” from wind is seriously misinformed. But please do not take my word for it. The countries with the most wind turbines in Europe are Germany and Denmark and lo and behold their electricity prices are the highest.———————-As that old song says “There may be trouble ahead”
Only a fool predicts exponential growth. Compound interest may be exponential growth but interest rates change.
Without viable bulk storage, which may be centuries or millennia away or just impossible, energy sources that are not “always on” and cannot be tapped at will when needed seem really pointless to me. I can’t think of much else to say.
We have viable bulk storage – coal, oil and gas enough to last centuries, maybe millennia.
Indeed. You probably realise this but I was talking about storing energy from “renewable” (intermittent) sources like wind and solar.
The only thing that could save it is continuing generous subsidies awarded by virtue-signalling politicians.
Those subsidies can only come from a wealth producing economy which so far has been driven by coal, oil and gas. Unless the intent is to destroy value?
Well intent or not, the wealth being created will decline with ‘decarbonisation’ and money for those subsidies has to come from somewhere – taxpayers and consumers who, made poorer, will be able to afford less thereby reducing consumer demand and economic activity.
That is simple economics, and therefore quite incomprehensible to the political bird-brains in charge.
Exponential?
Oh FFS!
With apologies to any commentator who controlled themselves long enough to read further than the headline.
OK. I’ve managed to read the first paragraph before shouting at my screen again.
Yes, it certainly would – but not in a good way.
I just can’t take it seriously. Ask them “what are you going to do when the sun isn’t shining?” and see what they answer. The whole thing is so implausible.
You just get less exponential growth, it will take a little longer to reach infinity.
Lol
To infinity and beyond
The Economist understands what it wants to understand
You would think that The Economist of all publications would understand what exponential means. The key fact is that it rises at an ever increasing rate – towards infinity. That means an ever increasing use of raw materials and an ever increasing amount of power being used to manufacture them.
The whole idea of exponential growth over a sustained period is nonsense.
It is the notion of perpetual motion.
I’ve had more than one discussion with “renewable fanatics”. Many of them simply don’t realise that renewable electricity has to be stored for up to three months to bridge the gap between supply and demand. Others just believe in the fairy tale that “batteries are getting cheaper”.
Cheap or not, they still have to be charged… intermittency not only affects grid supply but battery charging too.
Leaving aside Britain would need a battery the size of France to store enough electricity even for just a few days.
Solar power = electricity. It is not a primary energy source. Solar arrays are energy collectors like wind turbines – neither are very efficient and are limited: neither can produce energy.
This is the salient point the nitwit Net Zeroids cannot understand – it’s physics.
Solar radiation is a primary energy source, but unlike fossil fuels it is not controllable.
Electricity is a secondary energy source.
When you have an essential secondary energy source entirely dependent on energy collectors entirely reliant on intermittent, variable, uncontrollable primary sources like solar and wind energy, that’s when things come unstuck. No Sun, no wind, no energy, no matter how many pv panels or wind turbines scattered hither and yon there are.
If wind and solar were practically, economically viable and more beneficial, we would have adopted them years ago by natural free market evolution
Simples.
By the by: the limitation due to silver applies more widely to the Net Zero fantasy with respect to copper and the practical amount of copper ore that can be produced to meet requirements within the time frame.
The standard supply/demand/price mechanism works. As demand exceeds supply prices will go up, making all present day calculations and estimates worthless.