Sorry to pester on this Roger. You have invested a lot of reputational capital on claiming that the RCP8.5 scenario is implausible to the point of impossibility. I agree with your arguments so have also invested a lot of reputational capital making the same claim to anyone who will listen (and even those who do not).
In James Hansen's November 21 post, he seems to be presenting defendable scientific arguments that we are on track for RCP8.5 warming independent of the faulty assumptions of the scenario itself. Hansen has been a leading climate change catastrophist for 40 years so I am inclined to be skeptical of his claims, but I don't have the skill to refute them. I would therefore very much appreciate it if you (or any of the commenters here) could provide some comments or at least point me in the direction of research I could reference to critique his claims.
Hi Greg, RCP8.5 is indeed impossible as a scenario. Hansen is arguing that more plausible scenarios will lead to extreme temperature increases. His argument is based on claiming that the IPCC and broader community has the physical science of climate wrong. Our arguments are that the sociology economic scenarios that feed into the ESMs are implausible. So different arguments.
That said, Zeke Hausfather discusses Hansens near term temperature prediction here:
I recently participated as an expert reviewer for an IPCC report. I was surprised to find references to SSP5-8.5 as having relevance for policy making. I suggested the IPCC make very clear how the high ends should be treated and create a box explainer in the introduction that clearly and unequivocally rejects conclusions drawn from the high ends as having relevance for policy making. I cited the usual and more recent papers so it will be interesting to see if the IPCC accept my suggestion.
Happy New Year Roger. Your steadfast defense of the institutions that you have worked with and along side of throughout your career is both understandable and laudable. Yet in your first example you make reference to the underlying fact that makes their reform prior to their destruction impossible. Absolutely no honest scientist could “peer review” a study using the ICAT spreadsheet and yet you cite several studies that passed peer review doing so. Thus the conclusion is inescapable that the current generation of scientists, as represented by existing institutions, are hopelessly compromised. It’s a horrible position for mankind to be in, but apparently no institutionally supported scientist exists today that is capable of pursuing their discipline independent from the question of whether their research helps or hurts Donald Trump. Perhaps we get out of this when he exits the scene, but I suspect not. Climate apocalypse is simply too compelling of a global control mechanism for anyone to let go of so it will potentially need to be pried from, “their cold dead hands”, to paraphrase Charlton Heston.
Not sure how you depoliticize something that is a zero sum game to the alarmists.
If you aren’t 100% on board you will be destroyed.
For all Trumps faults, he’s the only reason this dialog is happening at all, the left is littered with people who want to criminalize what we are doing right here, talking about it.
I would have included the "tossing gold bars off the Titanic" funding scandal at the EPA uncovered by Lee Zeldin (and others) shortly after taking office in early 2025. If anyone here is not aware of this or wants a refresher on why this is a scandal see this:
Sadly, this old man’s opinion is that the corruption of “climate science” is just a subset of the corruption of Science, and tiny mite of the massive corruption of anything government touches. The fraud, and more importantly its denial, is mind boggling to me. It’s likely in the trillions of dollars annually, but who cares since it will be my children and grandchildren who pay, in one form or another.
So many awful, possibly fatal, actions in the last five years; many of which reinforce each other, and prevent reforms.
The revelations are daily, endless corruption everywhere you look. The amounts of money involved is astounding and that tells you why the pushback against the slightest questioning of the narrative is instantaneous and overwhelming.
There are likely a lot of people that need to see the inside of a jail cell.
“ Publications on replicated with-and-without field experiments using very tall (kilometres high) towers examining the effect of adding co2 and ch4 on temperature , humidity and precipitation in columns of turbulent air with water in all phases present.”
GROK replied
“ Based on extensive searches across scholarly sources and general web content, I found no publications describing replicated with-and-without field experiments that involve adding CO2 and CH4 using very tall (kilometers-high) towers to examine effects on temperature, humidity, and precipitation in turbulent air columns with water present in all phases (vapor, liquid, ice).
GROK continued
“Such experiments appear not to have been conducted, likely due to practical limitations: no physical towers exist at kilometer scales (the tallest meteorological towers are typically 300–500 meters), and controlled addition of greenhouse gases to large atmospheric columns in field settings is extremely challenging, if not infeasible, without relying on lab-based chambers, models, or … “
In my view This is a category 5 scandal OF DECIDING NOT TO KNOW
( the first 4 categories are Conquest, war, famine, death).
My question to ICSF is:
Who will call out the absence of the scientific gold-standard in meteorology: the with-and-without experiment at all scales? NSF, IPCC, NCAR(?), …
I don’t really expect Roger to take this challenge, but it would be interesting if he would explain the juxtaposition of two apparently irreconcilable statements:
“Over the past five years, the community [of climate science] has evolved from denying that reality [of unrealistically negative scenarios] to overwhelmingly accepting it”
“extreme scenarios continue to dominate climate research”.
If the climate science community at the same time accepts most of its work is based on biased scenarios with a vested interest but continues to churn out and accept research based on such fake premises, what does that tell about the “climate science” community, about their integrity and ability to self correct? I don’t like the indiscriminate, wrecking ball approach that the Trump Administration has taken to institutions like the NOAA, but exactly what other realistic path does Roger recommend for mending a corrupt community who merrily continues to produce fake science?
Forcing tax payer funded science agencies to justify their existence and asking them to show that they add value commensurate with the money they spend is not vengeance in my opinion. Going after Letitia James, James Comey and several others is probably driven by vengeance but given what they put Trump through, how many amongst us would be able to resist the urge to hit back.
These are the times when an Honest Broker can truly shine, brokering a truce between opposing ideological factions by steadfastly refusing to deviate from what unites the opposite factions, the scientifically proven climate sciences. But would an Honest Broker cast aspersions on the motives of one party, insinuating they are acting on such baser motives such as vengeance, in stead of an honest desire to weed out wasteful programs that don't belong to an institute's tax-funded mission? Would an Honest Broker claim he speaks for "the scientific community" that "finds itself at “war”" with one of the partys, while some eminent climatologists (Steve Koonin, Judith Curry, John Christy, Roy Spencer, and Ross McKitrick) have decided to work with "the enemy" in order to ensure the scientifically valuable survives? Would an Honest Broker be honestly confused about the difference between a woke program ("Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences") with a mission-critical science program such as atmospheric modelling (it's in their name!), when all he needs to do is ask AI? The problem is that an Honest Broker cannot afford to be a partisan, as he needs to earn the trust of both parties as one who speaks scientific truth, even when inconvenient or (economically, socially, ...) damaging. Only then can he be trusted as the advisor who suggests that the bathwater must go, but we better keep the baby. It is much more difficult to recreate an organisation once it has been destroyed, as competent scientists will immediately find employ elsewhere. Now is the winter of the Honest Broker.
Roger's post I think is somewhat self-contradictory. Obviously he sees the utter corruption of climate science and the politization of science generally but especially the auxilliary institutions such as publishers, professional societies, and NGO's. These are now institutionally captured by the left (often the far left in the case of medicine where professional societies and standard setting bodies now recommend genital mutilation of children as a best practice) and then Roger seems to want continued funding of these institutions (at least in atmospheric sciences) that are often far outside real scientific standards. That's not going to happen nor should it happen. Defunding is a major tool to effect reform. It's worked for Trump with elite Universities to get the new Jim Crow of DEI excised. It's worked with private companies to the same end. It has been only partially successful with the neo-Confederate blue states and localities but the pressure on funding may eventually work there too. This tool of defunding has a long and honorable history of being used for example to force desegregation of public schools.
I have vastly more trust in people like Marco Rubio, JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Sean Duffy, RFKJ, Marty Makary, and Jay Battacharia than I do in any of our corrupt institutions to decide who should be funded and who should be cut. Howard Lutnick is not the best person in Trump's cabinet and he may be making some unwise decisions even though I can't disagree with combining weather and modeling groups and shutting down (after review) the alarmist supporting parts of NCAR. NASA is an independent agency but I know from first hand experience that merging all their modeling efforts would be a very good thing and save a lot of money. This happens all the time in private industrial research. I don't understand why Roger doesn't trust them as well. It could be emotion and nostalgia for his fondly remembered student days or some happy time as a Professor. He seems to have developed a fondness for the very institutions that organized and collaborated with his cancellation. I cannot for the life of me come up with a rational explanation.
I also think atmospheric sciences is a fantastic field to target first for partial defunding and redirection. Almost all research in this field is based on modeling which is flawed and is not skillful and/or continued massive funding for modeling groups that are really at the end of their useful improvements. We desperately need more risky but valuable fundamental research for example shadowing theory and practice for dynamical systems. The atmospheric sciences have essentially become a money laundering operation to keep the money flowing to enterprises that we know theoretically cannot make further progress. This is a mathematical certainty, not speculation either.
The atmospheric sciences all accept that rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause global warming, when in fact it can irrefutably be proven that CO2 has NO climatic effect.
ALL of the warming that has occurred since the industrial revolution has has been due to decreases in the amount of SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere, some due to the fallout of SO2 aerosols from volcanic eruptions, but since 1980, due to American and European "Clean Air" legislation of the 1970's to reduce the amount of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution in our troposphere, because of Acid Rain and Health concerns..
As the air became cleaner, the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth's lower atmosphere and its surface increased, and warming naturally occurred.
In his June 1988 presentation to the US Senate, Dr. James Hansen erroneously attributed this warming to the "Greenhouse Effect", and this fallacy was, unfortunately, accepted by almost everyone.
His error has resulted in untold misery for millions of people as draconian measures to reduce the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere have been implemented, and trillions of dollars have been wasted in a useless effort.
Nice summary again. Certainly a lot to choose from.
With regards to number 3, you describe it as a vengeance tour on woke programs. I’m not sure what that means. And you even invoke Project 2025 (which was a Democrat campaign red herring) as if this somehow is illustrative of this. I think this section is a bit misleading and overly political.
First, a number of the changes being implemented come out of the DOGE work. This impacted NOAA as well as a number of environmental programs. This included cancelling fraudulent grants and eliminating unnecessary programs. Can’t argue with that.
Project 2025 goes into detail on what should be done in this and other areas. The recommendations suggest elimination in some areas, but reallocation of others to where they make more sense. It does recommend to “Downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. OAR provides theoretical science, as opposed to the applied science of the National Hurricane Center. OAR is, however, the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism….”. As I recall, you’ve pointed out alarmism in some of your articles.
Perhaps in a future article you could review the work done in DOGE and Project 2025. But throwing it out and not explaining where you disagree (or agree) leaves the reader with a misleading impression.
With regards to your Number 1 scandal "The Continuing Dominance of Extreme, Implausible Emissions Scenarios", do you have any comments on Dr James Hansen's November 21 Substack post "Warning! This “Colorful Chart” is Censored by IPCC" where he essentially argues we are on track for RCP8.5:
"(RCP2.6) intended to provide a 66% chance of keeping global warming below 2°C. Actual growth of GHG forcing has diverged dramatically from that scenario (Fig. 1), with reality being close to the extreme RCP8.5 scenario."
We have a massive over spending problem in this country. Any non essential government “ agencies “ which is pretty much all of them need to be thoroughly examined to determine if they are actually benefiting the country or just the people that run them and their lobbyists. Climate studies are top of my list to be investigated. Far too many doomsday predictions and absolutely no accountability for the fear mongering they seem to push.
Sorry to pester on this Roger. You have invested a lot of reputational capital on claiming that the RCP8.5 scenario is implausible to the point of impossibility. I agree with your arguments so have also invested a lot of reputational capital making the same claim to anyone who will listen (and even those who do not).
In James Hansen's November 21 post, he seems to be presenting defendable scientific arguments that we are on track for RCP8.5 warming independent of the faulty assumptions of the scenario itself. Hansen has been a leading climate change catastrophist for 40 years so I am inclined to be skeptical of his claims, but I don't have the skill to refute them. I would therefore very much appreciate it if you (or any of the commenters here) could provide some comments or at least point me in the direction of research I could reference to critique his claims.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimehansen/p/warning-this-colorful-chart-is-censored?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Hi Greg, RCP8.5 is indeed impossible as a scenario. Hansen is arguing that more plausible scenarios will lead to extreme temperature increases. His argument is based on claiming that the IPCC and broader community has the physical science of climate wrong. Our arguments are that the sociology economic scenarios that feed into the ESMs are implausible. So different arguments.
That said, Zeke Hausfather discusses Hansens near term temperature prediction here:
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/my-2026-and-2027-global-temperature
Near term predictions are useful for accountability purposes.
I recently participated as an expert reviewer for an IPCC report. I was surprised to find references to SSP5-8.5 as having relevance for policy making. I suggested the IPCC make very clear how the high ends should be treated and create a box explainer in the introduction that clearly and unequivocally rejects conclusions drawn from the high ends as having relevance for policy making. I cited the usual and more recent papers so it will be interesting to see if the IPCC accept my suggestion.
Happy New Year Roger. Your steadfast defense of the institutions that you have worked with and along side of throughout your career is both understandable and laudable. Yet in your first example you make reference to the underlying fact that makes their reform prior to their destruction impossible. Absolutely no honest scientist could “peer review” a study using the ICAT spreadsheet and yet you cite several studies that passed peer review doing so. Thus the conclusion is inescapable that the current generation of scientists, as represented by existing institutions, are hopelessly compromised. It’s a horrible position for mankind to be in, but apparently no institutionally supported scientist exists today that is capable of pursuing their discipline independent from the question of whether their research helps or hurts Donald Trump. Perhaps we get out of this when he exits the scene, but I suspect not. Climate apocalypse is simply too compelling of a global control mechanism for anyone to let go of so it will potentially need to be pried from, “their cold dead hands”, to paraphrase Charlton Heston.
Not sure how you depoliticize something that is a zero sum game to the alarmists.
If you aren’t 100% on board you will be destroyed.
For all Trumps faults, he’s the only reason this dialog is happening at all, the left is littered with people who want to criminalize what we are doing right here, talking about it.
So dangerous.
I would have included the "tossing gold bars off the Titanic" funding scandal at the EPA uncovered by Lee Zeldin (and others) shortly after taking office in early 2025. If anyone here is not aware of this or wants a refresher on why this is a scandal see this:
https://gemini.google.com/share/82bddf97c829
More "color" provided here:
https://gemini.google.com/share/0f7a133fcbac
Sadly, this old man’s opinion is that the corruption of “climate science” is just a subset of the corruption of Science, and tiny mite of the massive corruption of anything government touches. The fraud, and more importantly its denial, is mind boggling to me. It’s likely in the trillions of dollars annually, but who cares since it will be my children and grandchildren who pay, in one form or another.
So many awful, possibly fatal, actions in the last five years; many of which reinforce each other, and prevent reforms.
The revelations are daily, endless corruption everywhere you look. The amounts of money involved is astounding and that tells you why the pushback against the slightest questioning of the narrative is instantaneous and overwhelming.
There are likely a lot of people that need to see the inside of a jail cell.
Dear friends,
I asked GROK to find
“ Publications on replicated with-and-without field experiments using very tall (kilometres high) towers examining the effect of adding co2 and ch4 on temperature , humidity and precipitation in columns of turbulent air with water in all phases present.”
GROK replied
“ Based on extensive searches across scholarly sources and general web content, I found no publications describing replicated with-and-without field experiments that involve adding CO2 and CH4 using very tall (kilometers-high) towers to examine effects on temperature, humidity, and precipitation in turbulent air columns with water present in all phases (vapor, liquid, ice).
GROK continued
“Such experiments appear not to have been conducted, likely due to practical limitations: no physical towers exist at kilometer scales (the tallest meteorological towers are typically 300–500 meters), and controlled addition of greenhouse gases to large atmospheric columns in field settings is extremely challenging, if not infeasible, without relying on lab-based chambers, models, or … “
In my view This is a category 5 scandal OF DECIDING NOT TO KNOW
( the first 4 categories are Conquest, war, famine, death).
My question to ICSF is:
Who will call out the absence of the scientific gold-standard in meteorology: the with-and-without experiment at all scales? NSF, IPCC, NCAR(?), …
Wishing you a very happy new year,
Philip
Sent from my iPhone
I don’t really expect Roger to take this challenge, but it would be interesting if he would explain the juxtaposition of two apparently irreconcilable statements:
“Over the past five years, the community [of climate science] has evolved from denying that reality [of unrealistically negative scenarios] to overwhelmingly accepting it”
“extreme scenarios continue to dominate climate research”.
If the climate science community at the same time accepts most of its work is based on biased scenarios with a vested interest but continues to churn out and accept research based on such fake premises, what does that tell about the “climate science” community, about their integrity and ability to self correct? I don’t like the indiscriminate, wrecking ball approach that the Trump Administration has taken to institutions like the NOAA, but exactly what other realistic path does Roger recommend for mending a corrupt community who merrily continues to produce fake science?
Forcing tax payer funded science agencies to justify their existence and asking them to show that they add value commensurate with the money they spend is not vengeance in my opinion. Going after Letitia James, James Comey and several others is probably driven by vengeance but given what they put Trump through, how many amongst us would be able to resist the urge to hit back.
These are the times when an Honest Broker can truly shine, brokering a truce between opposing ideological factions by steadfastly refusing to deviate from what unites the opposite factions, the scientifically proven climate sciences. But would an Honest Broker cast aspersions on the motives of one party, insinuating they are acting on such baser motives such as vengeance, in stead of an honest desire to weed out wasteful programs that don't belong to an institute's tax-funded mission? Would an Honest Broker claim he speaks for "the scientific community" that "finds itself at “war”" with one of the partys, while some eminent climatologists (Steve Koonin, Judith Curry, John Christy, Roy Spencer, and Ross McKitrick) have decided to work with "the enemy" in order to ensure the scientifically valuable survives? Would an Honest Broker be honestly confused about the difference between a woke program ("Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences") with a mission-critical science program such as atmospheric modelling (it's in their name!), when all he needs to do is ask AI? The problem is that an Honest Broker cannot afford to be a partisan, as he needs to earn the trust of both parties as one who speaks scientific truth, even when inconvenient or (economically, socially, ...) damaging. Only then can he be trusted as the advisor who suggests that the bathwater must go, but we better keep the baby. It is much more difficult to recreate an organisation once it has been destroyed, as competent scientists will immediately find employ elsewhere. Now is the winter of the Honest Broker.
Roger's post I think is somewhat self-contradictory. Obviously he sees the utter corruption of climate science and the politization of science generally but especially the auxilliary institutions such as publishers, professional societies, and NGO's. These are now institutionally captured by the left (often the far left in the case of medicine where professional societies and standard setting bodies now recommend genital mutilation of children as a best practice) and then Roger seems to want continued funding of these institutions (at least in atmospheric sciences) that are often far outside real scientific standards. That's not going to happen nor should it happen. Defunding is a major tool to effect reform. It's worked for Trump with elite Universities to get the new Jim Crow of DEI excised. It's worked with private companies to the same end. It has been only partially successful with the neo-Confederate blue states and localities but the pressure on funding may eventually work there too. This tool of defunding has a long and honorable history of being used for example to force desegregation of public schools.
I have vastly more trust in people like Marco Rubio, JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Sean Duffy, RFKJ, Marty Makary, and Jay Battacharia than I do in any of our corrupt institutions to decide who should be funded and who should be cut. Howard Lutnick is not the best person in Trump's cabinet and he may be making some unwise decisions even though I can't disagree with combining weather and modeling groups and shutting down (after review) the alarmist supporting parts of NCAR. NASA is an independent agency but I know from first hand experience that merging all their modeling efforts would be a very good thing and save a lot of money. This happens all the time in private industrial research. I don't understand why Roger doesn't trust them as well. It could be emotion and nostalgia for his fondly remembered student days or some happy time as a Professor. He seems to have developed a fondness for the very institutions that organized and collaborated with his cancellation. I cannot for the life of me come up with a rational explanation.
I also think atmospheric sciences is a fantastic field to target first for partial defunding and redirection. Almost all research in this field is based on modeling which is flawed and is not skillful and/or continued massive funding for modeling groups that are really at the end of their useful improvements. We desperately need more risky but valuable fundamental research for example shadowing theory and practice for dynamical systems. The atmospheric sciences have essentially become a money laundering operation to keep the money flowing to enterprises that we know theoretically cannot make further progress. This is a mathematical certainty, not speculation either.
David Young.
The atmospheric sciences all accept that rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause global warming, when in fact it can irrefutably be proven that CO2 has NO climatic effect.
ALL of the warming that has occurred since the industrial revolution has has been due to decreases in the amount of SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere, some due to the fallout of SO2 aerosols from volcanic eruptions, but since 1980, due to American and European "Clean Air" legislation of the 1970's to reduce the amount of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution in our troposphere, because of Acid Rain and Health concerns..
As the air became cleaner, the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth's lower atmosphere and its surface increased, and warming naturally occurred.
In his June 1988 presentation to the US Senate, Dr. James Hansen erroneously attributed this warming to the "Greenhouse Effect", and this fallacy was, unfortunately, accepted by almost everyone.
His error has resulted in untold misery for millions of people as draconian measures to reduce the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere have been implemented, and trillions of dollars have been wasted in a useless effort.
Nice summary again. Certainly a lot to choose from.
With regards to number 3, you describe it as a vengeance tour on woke programs. I’m not sure what that means. And you even invoke Project 2025 (which was a Democrat campaign red herring) as if this somehow is illustrative of this. I think this section is a bit misleading and overly political.
First, a number of the changes being implemented come out of the DOGE work. This impacted NOAA as well as a number of environmental programs. This included cancelling fraudulent grants and eliminating unnecessary programs. Can’t argue with that.
Project 2025 goes into detail on what should be done in this and other areas. The recommendations suggest elimination in some areas, but reallocation of others to where they make more sense. It does recommend to “Downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. OAR provides theoretical science, as opposed to the applied science of the National Hurricane Center. OAR is, however, the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism….”. As I recall, you’ve pointed out alarmism in some of your articles.
Perhaps in a future article you could review the work done in DOGE and Project 2025. But throwing it out and not explaining where you disagree (or agree) leaves the reader with a misleading impression.
Many thanks for the past year, and all the best for 2026. (2nd paragraph: Of... should be One...?
Hi Roger
With regards to your Number 1 scandal "The Continuing Dominance of Extreme, Implausible Emissions Scenarios", do you have any comments on Dr James Hansen's November 21 Substack post "Warning! This “Colorful Chart” is Censored by IPCC" where he essentially argues we are on track for RCP8.5:
"(RCP2.6) intended to provide a 66% chance of keeping global warming below 2°C. Actual growth of GHG forcing has diverged dramatically from that scenario (Fig. 1), with reality being close to the extreme RCP8.5 scenario."
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimehansen/p/warning-this-colorful-chart-is-censored?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
We have a massive over spending problem in this country. Any non essential government “ agencies “ which is pretty much all of them need to be thoroughly examined to determine if they are actually benefiting the country or just the people that run them and their lobbyists. Climate studies are top of my list to be investigated. Far too many doomsday predictions and absolutely no accountability for the fear mongering they seem to push.
I appreciate the review of sorts for the year and look forward to what you'll have in stock for 2026! Happy New Year!