There is a particular kind of institutional decay that announces itself not through incompetence but through overreach – the moment a body built to advise quietly converts itself into an advocacy outfit. That moment arrived in plain view last week when the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a 253-page report claiming that scientists can now attribute individual heatwaves and rainstorms to man-made emissions “with a high degree of confidence”, and wildfires, droughts and cyclones with “moderate confidence”. Two days later President Trump did something no prior occupant of the White House had quite dared to do: he called the report what it is on Truth Social: “Fraudulent, biased and misleading,” ordering federal suspension and debarment officials to review the Academies’ conduct and taxpayers’ exposure to what he termed “Climate Fraud”.
The howls of outrage were immediate and predictable. But strip away the theatre of a Presidential Truth Social post – capital letters, “Radical Left Dumocrats”, the invented spelling – and what remains is a serious institutional question that deserved to be asked years ago: has the National Academy of Sciences become an advocacy organisation wearing the borrowed authority of ‘consensus science’?
From weights and measures to trial-lawyer auxiliary
Congress chartered the National Academies in 1863 for a modest and useful purpose: advising the government on technical matters such as the calibration of currency and the protection of ship hulls from corrosion. It is worth dwelling on how far the institution has travelled from that brief. As the
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So much to do to correct decades of destructive globalist ideology at home, which is a doable objective, yet drags America into another military adventure in the Middle East which is deeply unpopular with the American voter and the MAGA movement. The repercussions of this will potentially lead to losing the mid term elections leading to him being in a position unable to take on and defeat the globalist agenda. Is he really for America first or Israel first?
Any oil company defending such potential litigation should refer to the IPCC’s AR4 which clearly stated that climate is a ‘coupled, non-linear, chaotic system…future states of which it is not possible to predict’.
Unless that definition has changed i.e. their understanding of the climate system was totally wrong, they are surely hung by their own – what was at the time, honest – petard.
Alternatively how do they now define climate as a system that differs from that original AR4 assessment (linear, non-chaotic?), and in particular how does that new definition facilitate such accurate attribution of individual weather events?
Question: are the institutions that promote the climate change catastrophe narrative and net zero policies open to challenge, scrutiny and debate?
If the answer is no, and it seems pretty clear that it is no, then the route to pushing them back isn’t reason or debate. It’s basically war, in the broadest sense of the word.
I suppose one could try to defend oneself from being beaten over the head with a baseball bat through reasoned arguments with the assailant, hoping to persuade them to stop, but I don’t give that approach much chance of success.
The conundrum I struggle to solve is this: You want “expert” bodies to be independent of political influence, as far as possible, so that the advice they give is as honest and accurate as possible. But there are two kinds of political influence – that coming from capture of the body by those with a political agenda, and that coming directly from the elected government. There’s no point in having a body of experts that just agrees with the government all the time. I wonder if there should be any such bodies funded by the state, or whether they should emerge privately and the government takes advice from many of them and applies caveat emptor.
I’m not sure there is such a thing as independence from political influence. Maybe in theory, but in practice, I very much doubt it.
I agree, in which case the only “solution” I can see if we want useful “expert” input is to have multiple sets of “experts” whose allegiances are known/obvious, and for the elected politicians to get input from all/many of them and evaluate in the same way that any leader or non-expert evaluates advice, by questioning and applying critical thinking skills, and bearing in mind the probable motivations of those providing the advice. The government pretended to do that with “SAGE” and “Independent SAGE” but of course the independent one was just a bunch of lockdown fanatics so it didn’t help much. I think they did call Heneghan in, and some other sceptics, but their minds were already made up.
This is only an issue insofar as the state engages is central planning of the economy, which is of course the root of the problem.
MPs are lawmakers, not central planners. Or at least they shouldn’t be. But if they turn themselves, or allow themsevles to be turned, into central planners, then suddenly they have to know everything about everything.
If the state stays put of micro managing the economy, lawmakers can stick to politics and everyone can make their own minds up about economic matters, thereby guiding the invisible hand of the free market.
The problem of independent advice only exists because the state insist on micro-managing practically every aspect of our lives.
Well yes – why does the US Federal Govt think it needs a handsomely funded body of “experts”? Perhaps for strategic decisions that affect national security, such as food, energy or other essential resource independence. But as usual has all gone much too far.
So many things are based on ideology as opposed to truth and observation. Climate change, multi-culturalism, open borders, socialism etc are all Far Left.
The problem with private funding is, as shown in the article, that the Far Left billionaires like Bezos will step forward to ensure that the green propaganda persists.
Indeed but the politicians ought to be asking any “expert” group where their funding comes from. Of course politicians are quick to denounce “lobbying” when it suits them, happy to follow “experts” who are really just another bunch of people trying to influence things in a specific direction, when the “experts” tell them what they want to hear.