Is it really the end of climate cancellation?

A guest post by Benjamin Zycher on the COP30 Information Integrity Declaration

This is a guest post by Benjamin Zycher, a valued colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute. Ben and I agree on many things and disagree on some. I am happy to host his guest post today challenging my recent post on the “climate cops” — which rocketed to near the top of all-time most read THB posts. My post led to a lot of debate and discussion about the efforts of some climate scientists to police discussion of climate and to create personal and professional harm to those with whom they disagree. For instance, one Substacker argues that climate change is far too important to worry about the climate thought police. On the contrary, says Ben Zycher below — the new UN focus on policing “information integrity” shows that the climate thought police are gearing up for more efforts to silence those with whom they disagree. Have a look and let us know your thoughts! —RP

A guest post by Benjamin Zycher . . .

My good friend and AEI colleague Roger Pielke Jr. argued recently that “Climate cancelling had a good run — but my Cornell lecture showed it’s finally over.”

Roger is an exceptionally smart and honest individual, and I truly have found delight in our interactions. Our disagreement on the 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding is only the latest example.

That he has found a collegial home at AEI after the disgraceful treatment he received at the University of Colorado is a blessing for both AEI and Roger. But let me be blunt: Even exceptionally smart and honest individuals — perhaps such individuals in particular — can find themselves in the grip of self-deception, and it is clear to me that with this latest argument Roger has fallen into that trap.

Let me begin with Roger’s THB post itself, in which he seems to be arguing that Cornell hosted him for a lecture despite the whining, lamentations, and rendering of the clothes (my words) from the climate alarmists:

“Following my lecture last week at Cornell, one Cornell professor, a well-known climate activist, called for the firing of the director of the Cornell Atkinson Institute for Sustainability — an accomplished scientist himself — simply for hosting my visit.”

Roger again:

“The ever-present Michael E. Mann weighed in as well, whinging (sic) that my invitation to Cornell was ‘problematic,’ explaining that, ‘there can be no balance between science and antiscience, between whether the Earth is round and whether it is flat.’”

More Roger:

“Bizarrely, the student reporter covering the event contacted another activist climate scientist from Hong Kong to opine on my invitation. This is the fellow who had a total meltdown on stage following a lecture I gave in Australia earlier this year. He explained on social media of my Cornell talk, ‘Giving climate deniers a stage isn’t balance — it’s a disservice . . . We must be vigilant about who we platform.’”

Well, now. Call me simple minded — I am, after all, a mere lowly economist and old, old, old to boot — but the complaints from the usual alarmist suspects are not consistent with Roger’s point, or hope, that “climate cancelling … [is] finally over.”

It must be the case that there were ubiquitous demands before Roger’s talk that the event be cancelled; that Cornell hosted Roger nonetheless indicates that the environment for climate free speech is improving, but Roger’s “finally over” observation is a bridge vastly too far.

And Roger’s experience at Cornell is not the central point here.

Instead, let us consider the “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change” adopted at the ongoing gathering of the planet’s best-and-brightest elites at the 30^th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) in Belém, Brazil. (Where the champagne, chilled with fossil energy, flowed like the Amazon.)

Behold, dear THB readers, climate totalitarianism in action:

… enabling the wide-scale mobilization of all [segments of society] requires access to consistent, reliable, accurate and evidence-based information on climate change, which is indispensable for raising awareness and fostering public participation, enabling accountability, and building public trust in climate policies and actions, with the urgency required for climate action.

Translation: Society must be mobilized for urgent climate action, and only propaganda in support of such action can be deemed accurate and reliable.

… the increasing threats to information integrity represents (sic) one of the defining challenges of our time, weakening the foundations of public debate and public trust and undermining societies’ capacity to build collective solutions

Translation: Contrary views weaken public debate, the two sides of which should be between supporters of our view and supporters of our view.

… the growing impact of disinformation, misinformation, denialism, deliberate attacks on environmental journalists, defenders, scientists, researchers and other public voices and other tactics used to undermine the integrity of information on climate change … diminish public understanding, delay urgent action, and threaten the global climate response and societal stability.

Translation: Our arguments represent the “integrity of information” while opposing arguments ipso facto are falsehoods.

Believe it or not, it gets worse:

We (the defenders of climate information integrity) call on the private sector to:

a. Commit to the integrity of information on climate change in their business practices, in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights;

b. Ensure transparent, human rights-responsible advertising practices that bolster information integrity on climate change and support reliable information and journalism.

We call on Governments to:

a. Create and implement policies and legal frameworks aligned with international human rights law that promote information integrity on climate change, and respect, protect and promote human rights, including the right to freedom of expression and access to information; and ensure the safety of environmental journalists, defenders, scientists, researchers and other public voices;

b. Ensure transparency and facilitate access to public data and reliable information related to climate change and the environment;

c. Support and ensure funds to research on information integrity on climate change, especially in developing countries, including through international cooperation;

d. Call on technology companies to assess whether and how platform architecture contributes to the undermining of climate information ecosystem integrity, providing researchers with access to data to ensure transparency and build an evidence base;

e. Promote campaigns on climate change and support initiatives that promote literacy and the public’s right to access reliable information on the matter.

Got that?

The private sector — which has no plausible path to understand the massive complexities of climate science — should defer to experts and officials, and it takes no leap of imagination to know which ones will qualify. (Decidedly not Roger.)

And governments in a nutshell should engage in censorship, notwithstanding the boilerplate blather about “align[ment] with international human rights law” and “the right to freedom of expression.”

Would anyone like to guess what it means to,

“Call on technology companies to assess whether and how platform architecture contributes to the undermining of climate information ecosystem integrity…?”

Precisely who is going to,

“Promote campaigns on climate change and support initiatives that promote literacy and the public’s right to access reliable information…?”

Merely consider the central components of the climate industry ecosystem with their snouts deeply embedded in the climate finance trough. The government bureaucracies. The NGOs. The leftist foundations. The universities. The leftist environmental groups. The climate litigation attorneys. The rent-seeking businesses. How many hundreds of billions of dollars do these interests receive annually in support of their ideological imperatives?

An accounting would be difficult, dependent on various definitions, but it can surprise no one that the number is enormous.

Accordingly, any hope that the eternal effort by the ideological and environmental left to silence opposing views will become a thing of the past is not to be taken seriously. Which is not the case for most of Roger’s other work, from which I have learned a great deal.

Comments welcome! Is climate cancellation at the end of its run? Or will it run some more? Remember the THB community commenting guidelines!

Invitation from RP — I am happy to host here at THB the persepctives of Michael Mann, Benjamin Horton, Andrew Dessler, Gavin Schmidt, Robert Howarth or other climate scientists who have very publicly sought to police public discussions of climate by their colleagues. Why do you engage in such behavior? What do you think you are achieving? What harms are you trying to cause to your colleagues in pursuit of control over public discussions?

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A quick update — My fall university tour has one more upcoming stop, Texas Christian University. Over the past few months I’ve visited or beamed into George Washington University, Clemson, Cornell, New College Florida, University of Wyoming and Johns Hopkins University. In the coming weeks I’ll share here at THB what I’ve learned about the current state of universities from these visits. Also, my next Dispatch column is coming out shortly, and it is a doozy. Next week I’ll be posting on the just-released Global Carbon Project 2025 report and the IEA 2025 World Energy Outlook. Stay tuned! —RP