The Science Isn’t Settled: Get Over It
By Ian Harvey
Okay.I’ve been challenged: Here’s my position and my background reading for why I don’t believe that climate change is a crisis.
First, yes, the climate changes. It has always changed. And will always change.
There is some argument that we’re actually heading toward normal temperatures and still exiting the ice age. Not stating it as fact, just as there is a discussion. Indeed, things were a lot colder a couple hundred years ago. The mighty Thames river in London used to freeze and there were festivals held on the ice.
(Paradoxically it was also pretty much an open sewer so I wonder how it froze with all that organic material floating around. Perhaps it was so congested the water slowed enough for the ice to form?)
Anyway, back to climate change.
We’ve been warned again and again that the world is going to end. Maurice Strong kicked it off with the UN in the 1970s. Then we remember Al Gore warning the ice caps would melt by 2012 and of course, Greta, warning that we would all die in five years. That was 10 years ago.
Here’s something showing the doom and gloom predictions have been wrong for 50 years!
So predictions of dire consequence are somewhat risky. The science is clearly not settled.
Let’s look at the controversies and discussions that are embroiled in this polarizing issue. In most cases I’ve tried to have these leading subject matter experts argue directly in their own voices rather than summarize indirectly.
Of course, there are climate fearmongers who attack the contrarians. The Michael Manns, Kathleen Hayhurst and James Hansen have their own conspiracies and will brook no other theories which counter their views. Some resort to bullying. Mann tried to sue a scientist, Dr. Tim Ball, a Canadian, and lost badly.
Further Mann was ordered to pay Ball’s estate (who subsequently passed away) $1 million in costs after Ball sued for defamation when Ball attacked the famous “Hockey Stick” graph which was doctored.
Mann was an active litigant.
So clearly passions are inflated on all sides here and when things are polarized we often find the debate shifting to personal attacks and litigation with contrarians often finding themselves “cancelled” and driven out of academia, as Judith Curry was.
And many of the sources cited here aren’t “pure” climate scientists. Lomborg is an economist, Heller is a data scientist, Soon is an astrophysicist. What it comes down to is data theories applied to that data and I argue economists, data scientists, physicists and others are just as well educated and equipped to look at that data while their background in science gives them the credentials to challenge the conclusions.
That said, I don’t claim to be a scientist either. I’m just a reporter presenting the contrarian side to illustrate the science is not settled.
The following is a deep dive into some of the more pivotal and contentious claims about climate change and the doom and gloom so often associated with the discussions.
I suspect it may not change anyone’s mind. No matter. It serves to illustrate my core point and that is the science is not settled.
Is CO2 the cause of climate change? And if so, does the increase in CO2 come from the extraction, processing, transportation and consumption of oil and gas?
This group of scientists doesn’t agree.
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“At the beginning of the report, the authors emphasize that CO₂ is essential for photosynthesis, and doubling its concentration (from 420 ppm to 840 ppm) could increase crop and forest yields by about 40%, while the temperature rise would remain minimal—no more than 0.28 to 0.56°C. They criticize the claims by the IPCC and EPA that ‘CO₂ is the main driver of climate warming’ as being based merely on governmental consensus and climate models, lacking the core scientific principle of hypothesis testing. They argue that policies like the EPA’s endangerment finding rely excessively on ‘selective generalization of evidence’ and ignore actual physical observations. Against this backdrop, they question the scientific and social validity of Net Zero policies and call for their redesign based on empirical measurements.”
The US Department of Energy also issued a detailed report in 2025 which stated, among other things:
“Among the key findings, the report concludes that CO2-induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and that aggressive mitigation strategies may be misdirected. Additionally, the report finds that U.S. policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate and any effects will emerge only with long delays.”
Reality check: In 1908, fossil fuels accounted for 85% of U.S. energy consumption. In 2015, more or less the same.
As Marc Morano notes in this interview:
“If you go back to the Roman warming period at about 0 A.D., we probably have cooled. That was at or warmer than current temperatures. If you go to the medieval warm period, about 900 to 1300 A.D., we probably have the same temperature or cooler.
If you go to 1850, when the end of the Little Ice Age happened, we’ve definitely warmed. If you go to the time since the 1930s in the United States, heat waves were much, much worse in the continental U.S. during the 1930s.
One of the things that climate activists do is they start at 1970. And they say since 1970, we’ve increased our warming this much. And they’ll say, if this continues… Well, 1970 is one of the coldest periods of the 20th century.
They [climate activists] pick data points like that.
To answer your question, yes, mankind does influence the climate. We influence it through carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gasses, but we can also cool it through aerosols.
The way to look at it is there’s hundreds of factors that influence the climate. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has been one of mankind’s contributions, but the climate is a very complex system. We’ve had many times higher CO2 levels in the past. We’re actually within the coldest 10% of geologic periods right now.”
In fact, argue many, CO2 feeds vegetation
But what about those hurricanes and wildfires? Hurricane Activity is not increasing at least in the US.
So how did we get here from there?
Climate Professor Judith Curry on where the Climate Crisis Cult originated.
There have been many reports from many scientists surely they outnumber the contrarian crackpots who are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry?
Sure. You can say that but the facts don’t bear it out.
IPCC walks back dire predictions
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has admitted that its worst-case carbon emissions scenario, RCP 8.5, is implausible and has been scrapped. This scenario served as the foundation for tens of thousands of climate research papers and runaway global warming models over the years.
Roger Pielke, Jr. a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder, joined to discuss how these outdated assumptions impacted global insurance, central banks, and regulations.
Instead of the nearly five degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century predicted by RCP 8.5, current policies project a temperature rise between two and three degrees Celsius, with a midpoint around 2.5 to 2.7 degrees. Pielke explained that the extreme scenario incorrectly assumed the world would shift its energy consumption entirely to coal without accounting for technological advancements like solar energy. While climate change remains a risk management challenge, expectations have been scaled back considerably, signaling a more manageable problem than previously thought 15 years ago.
The discussion also highlighted the political and academic challenges of questioning prevailing climate narratives. Pilkey detailed his past experiences facing pushback and investigations from political figures after testifying before Congress using mainstream IPCC data on extreme weather. Despite the institutional momentum that kept the flawed scenario in circulation for over a decade, Pielke expressed optimism about human adaptability and technological advancement, pointing to a current global revolution in secure nuclear energy as a key driver for future carbon reductions.”
Yet the climate is warming! How can you deny that?
It warms. It cools. Remember the Ice Age?
Further, things aren’t always what they seem to be, it all depends on your perspective.
https://realclimatescience.com/spectacularly-poor-climate-science-at-nasa/#gsc.tab=0
Tony Heller argues in this undated piece that James Hansen of NASA misrepresents the facts.
“Dr. James Hansen of NASA, has been the world’s leading promoter of the idea that the world is headed towards “climate disaster.” There is little evidence to back this up.
In 2008, Hansen wrote about “stabilizing” the climate :
Stabilizing atmospheric CO2 and climate requires that net CO2 emissions approach zero, because of the long lifetime of CO2
Yet in 1999, he made it quite clear that past climate was not stable, and that there was little evidence to support that idea that the climate was becoming unstable.
Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.”
But Al Gore and Greta warned us. They were saying what the science tells us.
Heller shrugs. 50 years of predictions have been wrong, he writes.
Lomborg, always a cool level headed economist on this issue says the claims aren’t upheld and calls for a more rational approach to climate change. Fix the low hanging fruit, he argues.
In fact, he says, climate cultists may be doing more harm than good.
These contrarians and many others have been saying for years that climate fear mongering is overblown.
In 1998, for example, these scientists raised red flags. They didn’t get any attention because the media was too focused on fear. You see, I can tell you from my years of media experience that fear drives newspaper, magazine sales and TV and radio audience shares. Fear sells. No one wants a good news story. We want fear.
I could go on. In fact, this discussion goes on and on and on. It’s circular. Someone posts a link to a NASA page and someone else posts a link shooting it down. Someone posts a no crisis comment and the world goes crazy pointing to fires, floods, droughts and alien invasions.
Some want net zero. Others point out the incredible global cost and the economic disruption which would create the equivalent of a post-nuclear war devastation. Someone the other suggested: “No one needs a car. They can take transit or ride a bike or walk.”
Amusing. Getting the kids to hockey practice and dance class on the TTC going in two different directions. Humping lumber for a weekend DIY project. Getting anywhere. Disabled people, well enough to drive their own vehicles, but condemned to ride transit.
It’s this totalitarian, authoritarian approach by the real believers that drives me to keep posting contrarian views. I don’t want a world where my movement, choice of food and mobility is dictated by a committee of people who have set themselves up as Guardians of the Climate. Extinction Rebellion and George Monibiot of the UK being prime examples.
Fuck that.
My conclusion? The science is not settled. Our best approach is to skip trying to force solutions and let the market decide. When EVs make sense and are affordable people will buy. When insulating your house makes sense, we do it (and have done it for 40 years).
It’s developing AI strategies to mitigate forest fires. We will never stop forest fires, the entire boreal forest is designed to renew itself through fire every few years. Those pine needles are excellent tinder, dripping with pine tar and ready to go up like a roman candle. It’s not necessarily drought.
We need to fight the fires we can through management and mitigation, clear cuts, prescribed burns, AI to locate where fires are likely following lightening strikes, a mobile army/airforce under the CAF to respond as battle ready fighters on the ground and water bombers galore. Instead of sending money to Poland, Pakistan or Ukraine lets fund out backyard’s greatest threat.
Rural communities need to ensure mitigation by clear cutting around towns and creating fire breaks. Fort McMurray and Jasper both burned because that wasn’t done despite demands that it be a priority.
Regular dredging and shoreline protection will mitigate against floods which tend to occur in the same places every so often, so its no surprise when they do again.
Remember, we’re a cold country. More people die from cold than heat. Let’s ensure that we have the resources in place. Defend our land from nature’s wrath. Never mind about the Russians. And stop bleating about oil and gas, we need energy. The only countries without their own energy resources are dirt poor. Energy built this nation. Let’s embrace it and build it out: Pipelines, Mines and Ports.