But you said the science was settled

Written by News Roundup on March 10, 2025. Posted in Current News

Donald Trump’s latest and most evil sin against the climate, apparently, is that he “could be derailing a major global climate report”. And we all know how much we need another one of those doorstoppers.

Though oddly the document in question is the next IPCC Assessment Report, AR7 to the cognoscenti. And as we’ve pointed out on a number of occasions, the number of people who claim the IPCC supports their own hysterical position on climate is a great deal higher than the number who actually read its technical material and realize it does not. So why do they care if it’s not on time and not up to the usual standards, since they already decided what it would say and won’t care whether it does or not?

According to the Washington Post, whose owner just declared to our astonied delight that it will now champion personal and economic liberty editorially so maybe good sense on science won’t be far behind, part of the Orange Lord’s evil plan is that:

“The Trump administration has blocked work that is central to major international climate change research, and barred federal scientists and diplomats from attending a key global climate event in China this week, according to three officials close to the situation who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.”

Well whoop de doo. And not just because anyone who thinks China is a world leader on climate, or that people who speak “on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly” are anything but “leakers”, is missing the point. (And yes, “astonied” really is a word.)

Surely these people, or person since the only identified individual is “Katherine Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist and senior climate adviser”, possess fairly modern personal computers, maybe even the portable kind the kids call “laptops”, which may very well have “ethernet ports” and certainly have built-in “WiFi”, this marvellous modern invention that allows you via the “Internet” to connect with people remotely and save a whole lot of jet-fuel CO2, though alas not to sample the canapés.

Young people of our acquaintance have also been pestering us about something called “email” through which, amazingly, we are told that it is apparently possible to communicate and even share documents in this same wondrous remote fashion. (Not to mention this new-fangled “videoconferencing”.) And surely NASA’s chief scientist knows about these wonders of the globalized digital economy, or at least employs or knows someone familiar with them.

Speaking of paperwork, the Post also whimpers that:

“NASA also terminated its contract with a U.S.-based group of scientists and staff who were working closely with Calvin to coordinate global efforts to craft the next assessment, essentially leaving one-third of the IPCC’s next report adrift, with no staff assigned to pull it together.”

“Coordinate global efforts” is the sort of tell-tale phrase that really means “fly around to meetings to talk about crafting plans to make plans.” We would enjoy reading the responses from the coordinate-global-efforts crowd to the dreaded Elon Musk-ordered “List 5 things you accomplished this week” email.

Of course the question of what anyone actually accomplished on this file might be in bad taste given the amount of time, money and rhetoric expended on climate change by governments around the world, including that of a country called “the United States of America” under presidents called “Joe Biden” and “Barack Obama”, and the pitiful results. As the Post piece also propagandizes:

“Past IPCC reports have made clear that human burning of fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect have the planet on the brink of catastrophic levels of warming that have already decimated wildlife populations, harmed agricultural productivity, allowed infectious diseases to thrive and caused weather disasters to intensify. Since the last major IPCC report was published in 2023, global average temperatures have soared to even higher extremes: Last year was the first in which global temperatures surged 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial averages.”

As noted, the author of this piece seems not to care that past IPCC reports did not say these things. But if they did say so, what else exactly will this next AR7 contain, if the bureaucracy can pull itself together somehow sufficiently to produce it, that we haven’t already heard? Do they really think governments around the world, having yawned through the first six reports will suddenly change course upon receiving the seventh?

According to its own website:

“The IPCC currently has 195 members. Thousands of people from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC.”

Well then. These thousands of people can write the report, or assign some staff to do the actual work. And indeed in whining about this development Reuters actually blurts out that:

“While American scientists will be in attendance and continue to work on climate research used by the IPCC, the absence of the U.S. in the IPCC process will be felt. The Hangzhou meeting from 24-28 February is expected to make a few key decisions that will shape the outcomes of the next climate assessment, including around the role of carbon removal and capture technology. China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it was unaware of the withdrawal of U.S. participants.”

Gee. Some crisis this turns out to be. But in any case, why bother with the report as a whole, never mind “a few key decisions” at some massive gabfest?

Along those lines a Canadian Press story “Scientists scorn EPA push to say climate change isn’t a danger, say just look around at the world”, about the possible revocation of a tendentious “cornerstone finding that climate change endangers human health and welfare”, insists that:

“scientists say they just need to look around because it’s obvious how bad global warming is and how it’s getting worse. New research and ever more frequent extreme weather further prove the harm climate change is doing to people and the planet, 11 different scientists, experts in health and climate, told The Associated Press soon after word of the administration’s plans leaked out Wednesday. They cited peer-reviewed studies and challenged the Trump administration to justify its own effort with science.”

So the science is settled, the planet is ablaze and who needs further research because you can just look out the window. But if they really thought so then everyone could stop hobnobbing and do something practical to put out the fire.

Or is that one somebody else’s job, and it’s nobody’s job to assign it to them? Is that how we’re going to save the planet one committee meeting at a time?

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