On September 23rd 2025, President Donald J. Trump strode to the podium of the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a speech bold and uncompromising in its excoriation of the fictions hoisted by the elites of the collective West — ‘a world without borders’, ‘man-made catastrophic climate change’. In a world awash with sanctimonious platitudes about mass migration and climate change, Trump dubbed them the two forces “destroying a large part of the free world”. Directing his remarks to his hapless West European allies, he said: “You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you’re going to be great again. … This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer.”
With characteristic bluntness, he declared the global climate change movement as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, a multi-trillion-dollar scam foisted upon nations, economies and ordinary people by a cabal of self-serving elites, bureaucrats and green ideologues. This was no mere rhetorical flourish — it was a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the globalist establishment, a rallying cry for reason and a defiant stand for energy realism. This time, there was no sniggering from smug German delegates as had occurred during a previous speech Trump gave at the UN in his first term.
Drawing on the fearless spirit of the honey badger, as energy analyst David Blackmon aptly describes him, Trump’s speech was a root-and-branch repudiation of the climate industrial complex, exposing its contradictions and hypocrisies with unapologetic clarity. Manufactured climate hysteria got its greatest challenge to date by a President that frankly didn’t give a damn what Western delegates at the UN thought of him.
The Climate Con: A Multi-Trillion-Dollar Mirage
The climate change narrative, as Trump articulated, is a house of cards built on shaky science, political opportunism and economic predation. For decades, the world has been fed a steady diet of apocalyptic predictions — rising seas, burning forests and collapsing ecosystems — designed to instil fear and compliance. Yet, as President Trump pointed out, the promised catastrophes have consistently failed to materialise. The polar bears are not only still here but multiplying and getting fatter, the Maldives stubbornly remain above water with some islands even growing in size, and global food production continues to rise. The climate industrial complex, however, thrives not on evidence but on narrative, propped up by a web of NGOs financed by the Left-wing billionaire class, ideologically-driven academics prone to pushing ‘noble lies‘, and pliant mass media which serve as willing transmitters of propaganda.
Trump’s speech laid bare the economic toll of the climate con. The United States alone has spent hundreds of billions on renewable energy subsidies, tax credits and ‘green’ infrastructure projects that deliver paltry returns. Wind turbines and solar panels, heralded as the saviours of the planet, provide only weather-dependent intermittent energy flows but require vast land area and depend on fossil fuel backups to keep the lights on. In his inimitable way, Trump had this to say about wind and solar energy:
We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables. By the way, they’re a joke. They don’t work. They’re too expensive. They’re not strong enough to fire up the plants that you need to make your country great. The wind doesn’t blow, those big windmills are so pathetic and so bad, so expensive to operate, and they have to be rebuilt all the time, they start to rust and rot. Most expensive energy ever conceived, and it’s actually energy — you’re supposed to make money with energy, not lose money, you lose money the governments have to subsidise, you can’t put them out without massive subsidies.
The so-called energy transition is not a transition at all but a costly addition to an already robust energy mix dominated by fossil fuels. Trump echoed this sentiment, citing the absurdity of policies that vilify oil, gas and coal — the very fuels that power over 80% of global energy needs — while funnelling taxpayer money into inefficient technologies that cannot scale without crippling economies. The case of a rapidly de-industrialising Germany, the world’s leading ‘green energy’ proponent, comes to mind.
In his speech, Trump highlighted the manipulation of science to serve political ends. He spoke about an earlier period of ‘global cooling’ scares morphing into ‘global warming’, all encompassed by the generic ‘climate change’ in which every weather event can be construed as direct evidence of ‘crisis’. He said that the so-called scientific consensus on global warming was created by “stupid people”.
It is now apparent to objective observers that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – via its ‘Summary for Policy Makers’ report which gets full press coverage with the usual scare quotes of extreme weather and impending doom – is a political machine. It cherry-picks data and models to justify predetermined conclusions. The ‘97% consensus’ mantra, endlessly parroted by climate alarmists, is a statistical sleight of hand, ignoring the diversity of scientific opinion on the extent and impact of human-induced warming as opposed to natural variability.
Trump’s Energy Counter-Revolution
Since his inauguration in January 2025, Trump has unleashed what can only be described as an energy counter-revolution. His administration, led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has systematically dismantled the anti-fossil fuel edifice erected by the Obama and Biden administrations. From withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement — again — to halting funding for the UN’s climate initiatives, Trump has made it clear that America will no longer subsidise a globalist agenda that undermines its economic sovereignty.
The breadth of the Trump administration’s policy shifts have been extensively documented in these pages: defunding Left-wing NGOs and universities that promote DEI and ‘climate justice’, scrapping ‘efficiency’ mandates that restrict consumer choice and slashing regulatory barriers to energy infrastructure development. Trump’s team has prioritised energy security and affordability, greenlighting pipelines, refineries and drilling projects that had been stalled by bureaucratic red tape.
Trump accused European leaders of hypocrisy — pushing aggressive carbon targets on others – while itself being “on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda”. He mocked the folly of Germany’s Energiewende, which shuttered nuclear plants and doubled down on wind and solar, only to see energy prices soar and coal use rise. Yet, he also praised Germany for its decision to move away from purely ‘green’ energy policies and reopen fossil fuel and nuclear plants. The climate con, Trump argued, is not just a financial scam but a geopolitical one, weakening nations by forcing them to rely on unreliable energy sources while China and India build coal plants at breakneck speed.
Turning to his ‘special relationship’ ally Great Britain, President Trump humiliated Prime Minister Starmer as he slammed the North Sea oil tax regime and its support for wind farms. He said he regretted that the UK Government allowed mass migration and green energy to wreck the country. Leaving aside Trump’s attack on Sadiq Khan’s management of the great city of London, it is worth repeating Trump’s excoriating words on UK’s green policies:
They’ve given up their powerful edge, a lot of the countries that we’re talking about in oil and gas, such as essentially closing the great North Sea oil. Oh, the North Sea, I know it so well. Aberdeen [in Scotland] was the oil capital of Europe, and there’s tremendous oil that hasn’t been found in the North Sea. Tremendous oil, and I was with the Prime Minister who I respect and like a lot, and I said, “You’re sitting with the greatest asset.” They essentially closed it by making it so highly taxed that no developer, no oil company, can go there. They have tremendous oil left, and more importantly, they have tremendous oil that hasn’t even been found yet. And what a tremendous asset for the United Kingdom, and I hope the Prime Minister is listening because I told it to him three days in a row. That’s all he heard. North Sea oil, North Sea, because I want to see them do well.
I want to stop seeing them ruining that beautiful Scottish, English countryside with windmills and massive solar panels that go seven miles by seven miles, taking away farmland. But we’re not letting this happen in America.
The Honey Badger of Climate Geopolitics
David Blackmon’s characterisation of Trump as “America’s Honey Badger” could not be more apt. Like the fearless, tenacious creature that takes on lions and hyenas without flinching, Trump has shown an uncanny ability and a moral courage to confront entrenched interests head-on. His UN speech was a masterclass in this approach, blending defiance with plain-spoken truth. He didn’t mince words about the climate-industrial complex a.k.a. the Green Blob — a sprawling network of NGOs, rent-seeking and subsidy-farming ‘renewables’ companies and zealous bureaucrats who perpetuate the myth of an imminent climate catastrophe. As Blackmon notes, Trump’s willingness to say what others dare not — whether it’s calling out the corruption in climate science or exposing the economic folly of Net Zero policies — sets him apart as a leader unafraid of the Establishment’s wrath.
This fearlessness was on full display when Trump addressed the UN’s role in perpetuating the climate con. He accused the organisation of serving as a mouthpiece for globalist elites, using climate change as a pretext to redistribute wealth from developed nations to unaccountable bureaucracies. By pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement and defunding UN climate initiatives, Trump signalled that America would no longer play along with this charade. His message would have resonated with nations like India, Brazil and others in the Global South, who have long bristled at the West’s attempts to impose climate mandates that stifle their economic growth.
The climate movement thrives on a manufactured consensus that suppresses dissent and ignores inconvenient truths. The obsession with carbon dioxide — a trace gas essential to life — has been elevated to a near-religious dogma, despite evidence that its impact on global temperatures is far less certain than alarmists claim. Indeed, as physicist William Happer argues, more CO2 is much more likely to be good for the world. The push for Net Zero emissions, with its attendant costs in jobs, energy reliability and economic growth, is a solution in search of a problem, one that enriches green energy tycoons while impoverishing ordinary citizens.
Trump’s speech urged nations to prioritise their people over abstract ideals, to embrace energy abundance over artificial scarcity and to reject the fearmongering that has held global policy hostage for too long. By doing so, he positioned himself not just as America’s honey badger but as the world’s most consequential leader in dismantling the climate con. President Trump’s UN speech was a watershed moment, a bold declaration that the era of climate alarmism’s unchallenged dominance is over.
By calling out the climate change movement as history’s biggest con job, he has given voice to millions who have long questioned the wisdom of sacrificing prosperity on the altar of green ideology. His administration’s actions — dismantling subsidies, freeing energy markets and restoring scientific integrity — demonstrate that this is not mere rhetoric but a coherent strategy to reclaim energy security and economic sanity.
Exposing the Emperor’s New Clothes
Like the fabled emperor who paraded naked while his courtiers praised his invisible finery, the climate industrial complex has convinced the world that its costly, impractical solutions are the only path to salvation. Trump, like the boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, stood before the global elite and declared the obvious: the emperor is naked, and the climate con is a fiction sustained by fear, greed and groupthink. The analogy is not mere rhetoric. The boy, like President Trump, lacks the filters, self-interest and fear of embarrassment that adults have, so he speaks directly. This is often read as a symbol of uncorrupted truthfulness.
Like the boy in the fairytale, Trump has dared to speak the truth that others feared to acknowledge. The climate emperor stands exposed, and the world now faces a choice: continue to applaud the illusion or embrace the reality that affordable, reliable energy is the backbone of human progress. As Trump’s honey badger spirit continues to reshape global energy policy, one thing is clear: the days of the climate con’s unchallenged reign are over.
This article was first published in The Daily Sceptic (https://dailysceptic.org/2025/09/28/trumps-un-speech-the-climate-emperor-now-stands-exposed/ )
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
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“…I was with the Prime Minister who I respect and like a lot, and I said, “You’re sitting with the greatest asset.” Or just sitting on his ass.
In the narrative-compliant sector – ie the press and media – there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Donald Trump has worked tirelessly to erase all and any climate initiatives, to the extent of pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, opening up wilderness areas to drill for hydrocarbons, trashing regulation of the fossil fuel sector and shutting down investment in clean energy. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, US banks including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs quickly jumped ship from the net zero alliance – The Guardian
The petition follows news that planet-warming pollution from the US rose in the first half of 2025. It also comes amid widespread attacks on climate protections by the Trump administration, which has launched more than 150 anti-environmental and anti-renewable energy actions since retaking the White House in January. – The Guardian
And the beat goes on…
Labour must fight rightwing billionaires undermining net zero, says Ed Miliband
Exclusive: Energy secretary will hit out at the Tory and Reform ‘culture war’ and unveil target of 400,000 new jobs in clean energy
Conservatives and Reform UK were “importing a net zero culture war” and that accelerating the green transition would be key to winning the argument with the public.
…
Miliband said Reform’s pledge to end all net zero investments were attacks on “workers in Hull, people at cable factories in Scotland, at the people doing Net Zero Teesside, and it’s a war on future generations.”
…
Miliband said he acknowledged that Labour MPs were feeling the heat from the constituents – many also from parties on the left such as the Greens as well as Reform. But he said he had learned from his own experience as Labour leader that the argument had to be made for core values and beliefs, rather than as a kneejerk response. “I lost the election in 2015. The Guardian (again!)
Unfortunately it will take this winter to highlight just how bad things are. If you saw Kathryn Porter on Triggernometry, you’ll know just how completely, totally and utterly insane Mad Ed really is.
Talking of high skilled jobs…
Workers had travelled to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to appeal for help to save the refinery. The refinery produces petrol, diesel and jet fuel for the UK. The concern is that if the site is allowed to close, the UK will have to rely on supplies from overseas. – GB News
Strat, the question is whether or not the Starmer government will even survive this winter. Given the chaos in Labour Party right now, Starmer’s personal expulsion from the House, how long can this government hang on when it seems to be so thorougly hated by so many British voters?
I think they’ll hang on with a new leader. The Tories have done the trick a few times. Most recently Gordon Brown, Theresa May and Boris Johnson all entered office following the resignation of their predecessors. They are far from alone…
https://fullfact.org/news/unelected-prime-ministers-common-or-not/
They can hang it out until 2029 – unless the Labour party votes no confidence in its own government.
Slight correction – although the Tories have had their recent cretins, Brown was Labour.
I also saw a YouTube video saying that Miliband might be the next leader. They’d be better off digging up Sir Anthony Wedgwood Benn.
How many Americans stood in line at voting places, talking with neighbors about not liking DT, walked into the booth, and in the quiet, with nobody looking, thought about the alternative and voted for him?
There is a similar thing going on with telephone polls. Between the media telling everyone how evil Republicans are and the left seeking to cancel anyone who dares to express support for conservatives. A lot of Republicans and conservatives have learned to keep their opinions to themselves, especially when being queried by a stranger. Then when they are in the privacy of the voting booth. They vote their true feelings.
That and the tendency of almost every major poll, to over sample Democrats, pretty much explains why Republicans always out perform the polls during elections.
“400,000 new jobs in clean energy”
How should those words sound to someone whose job is in “dirty energy”?
“dirty”. What a way to describe energy.
The Guardian will have no chose but to publish photos of torches and pitchforks when the inevitable extended blackouts occur this winter.
Will that occur on Nov. 5?
I do not make predictions.
What about projections?
No projections. Only educated guesses.
Typo: correct “chose” to “choice.”.
“…… and unveil target of 400,000 new jobs in clean energy”
400,000 people digging ditches and filling them in. Although some might argue that it’s digging ditches and not bothering to fill them in. Not a zero-sum game even. This is the creepy destruction of UK prosperity by a really creepy human being.
Strativarius,
Mr Milliband also claimed he would cut electricity bills by £300.
The other point is that there are jobs and jobs, some productive, some merely a cost burden on the consumer.
No mention either, of industries that have closed, priced out of existence by the U.K.’s energy policies for the last couple of decades.
I for one, will not forget or forgive what smug politicians have done to the U.K.!
Bills have shot up and on this trajectory they can never come down.
There can be no forgiveness
Donald Trump is the leader the world needs right now. He is the bright light of truth exposing the futility and stupidity of leftist ideology that the mindless lemmings of the governing classes imbibe and promote. He has counterparts in Hungary, Argentina, Italy, Israel, and other places: Viktor Orban, Javier Milei, and Giorgia Meloni, and the indomitable Benjamin Netanyahu, with Nigel Farage in the UK, Marine Le Pen in France, and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil waiting in the wings to rescue their countries from the imminent disaster of their current leftist leaders.
Bolsonaro in Brazil waiting in the wings
Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years – BBC
Time is something he has plenty of.
Bolsenaro got the same treatment in Brazil as Trump in the US.
Besides massive lawfare there even was a jan6 style event(probably with the help of the CiA).
A similar thing is now happening to real president of Romania who got cancelled for Le Pen in France and AFD in Germany.
I merely pointed out that time is the one thing – in current circumstances – he has plenty of, be it in the wings or elsewhere.
Every western country is engaging in left-wing lawfare of one sort or another; the UK has the Thought Police…
British man called someone a “muppet” – was arrested by four police officers
….. and in Moldova yesterday. Opposition parties banned two days before the election (Source: The Duran on YouTube).
There are claims of Russian interference, voter buying, corruption, and so forth for 2 of the pro-Russia parties.
Is this true? We cannot possibly know. Is it possible? Yes, but the probability of it being true is non-deterministic.
One item that could slant perceptions is Transnistria, which is a slice of Moldova occupied by Russian military units. The slice of lnd lies between Moldova and Ukraine.
At the end of WWII the Europe was devastated. Asia was in the same state. The only developed country that was left unscathed was the U.S.
That circumstance led to decades of world domination by the evil empire of Yankees. Not coincidently, those same decades were largely peaceful and a time of world wide growth in prosperity.
Are we not entering a similar scenario? I say societal evolution is at work and therefore some creative destruction is in play.
Might be a good thing, eh?
A good thing? Unlikely. WW2 came with a pricetag of 85 million dead. That was the price paid for the demolishing of two utterly evil regimes: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. In 1946, the US constituted about 2/3rds of total world GDP. That is no longer the case today.
Societal evolution? What kind?
I get what you’re saying. At the end of WWII Europe was in a shambles solely due to their own stupidity and their embrace of ideas that where doomed to failure, as they are now. Then, as possibly now, it was the strength and leadership of America that led them out of ruin into an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity.
Umm…I hate to spoil the version of history you were taught….but reality is that the U.S. population did not want to involve its young men in European fighting in either WW1 or 2. But the financial people pushed politically for US military involvement when it became a real possibility that the vast sums of money US lent mainly to Britain for military equipment contracts was in danger of NOT being paid back.
Nobody mentioned WWI.
As to WWII, these financial types got Japan to attack the US and HItler to declare war on the US?
I tried to edit to fix the capital ‘I’ in Hitler’s name, however when I try to save, I”m getting a duplicate post warning.
Just a guess but maybe the edit function sometimes doesn’t recognize the difference between upper and lower case letters?
I “TEST” is still at the bottom of “ABOUT” in the title bar.
If you spot a typo or want to add additional info after posting comment, move the mouse pointer to lower right corner of the comment box. There will appear a small gear wheel. Click on the gear wheel and the massage “Mange Comment” will appear. Click on it and the message “Edit” appears, click on it, and your comment will be displayed for making corrections. After making correction, click on “Save”. You have a five minute window for making corrections after posting a comment.
That’s what I was doing.
Pretty unusual that it didn’t work.
Hitler declared war on the US because the US declared war on Japan, Germany’s ally.
Japan had resource problems, in substantial part due to the US no longer shipping scrap steel to Japan. Japan also needed oil.
There are reports that the Japanese ambassador with the declaration of war was deliberately held up so the attack happened before the declaration was served.
Obviously the sneak attack roused the public.
US intelligence had reason to believe an attack was coming but did not notify the forces in Hawaii of that possibility until about an hour before it started, roughly 6 am Hawaiian time.
Funny that the soldiers manning the radar that would have detected the attack when on break half an hour earlier. Others thought the attack was merely a flight of bombers that were expected.
Of course the victors get to rewrite history, so much of this can be challenged, but I did do a deep dive on this a few decades ago.
As far as it goes, there is never a control knob. Several factors played into it.
Wasn’t there an oil embargo against Japan because of their invasions of Manchuria and China for resources such as iron ore?
I do not recall. It is very possible, perhaps even likely.
There was. Let me emphasis that it was an embargo, not a blockade as some like to claim.
Hitler declared war on the US because he was hoping that Japan in turn would declare war on Russia.
Official reports are that the Japanese ambassador’s staff had trouble decoding then translating the document.
US analysts knew that an attack was being planned. Most thought it would be in the Phillipines. Nobody knew that Pearl Harbor was the target.
First you say that the soldiers who could have detected the attack were on break, then you say that others thought the attack was a flight of US bombers. Both statements can’t be true. The second one is correct.
Both are correct. It is the timing I muddled.
You forgot American aid.
Story tip:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/09/foreign-countries-forget-that-they-have-no-say/
This adds to this discussion.
The Emperors New Clothes is a great analogy…..love it!
U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, famously declared a couple of years ago that the “era of global boiling has arrived”. That might be the shortest era in Earth’s history.
Much as the Anthropocene might be the shortest epoch.
A few years ago, that stupid name was not adopted by whichever Society names epochs. I hope that’s still the case.
From what I read a while back, it was not and still has not been adopted although there seems to be a minor movement continuing to adapt.
Great article, Dr Doshi.
Gotta love Trump!
He’s the Man!
Like him or hate him, you never have to guess what he really means like you do with most politicians.
(Except, maybe, when he’s trolling the Left.) 😎
Ha ha yeah, and they don’t even know they’re being trolled sometimes. Anyone with more than half a brain cell knows that Trump is justifiably getting revenge on Comey, Letitia James, Schiff and whoever’s next in line, but even JD Vance says no, this isn’t political, ha ha ha.
It’s not revenge, it is defending the U.S. Constitution, which Hillary, Obama and Biden and their cronies were trying to undermine.
This can’t be allowed to happen again. Jail time is warranted for these Traitors to their country.
This is not just about Trump. It’s about the freedom of all of us. The Radical Democrats were trying to take our votes away from us by dishonestly undermining our candidate, in order to put themselves in power in perpetuity.
Never again!
So what did Comey do that required Trump to abuse his position to prosecute him?
Phil??? Do you have any evidence that Comey dd anything wrong? Anything?
One of the big problems on this side of the pond is that the MSM has pretty much ignored the content of the speech and are pretending he didn’t say anything about AGW, so the general public here don’t have a clue about what is happening in the USA on that issue.
I want to write something like “twenty years from now this will look important” but I’ve seen what higher education has done to public school, especially in history books.
Trump is definitely not a politician and that is a good thing.
Yep.
He came in not being dependent on –
unions
mainstream media
academia
military – industrial complex
diplomatic circles
central banks
a political party
hollywood
business
the UN, the WEF, the UE etc etc
activist groups
and so on . . .
How many politicians came into office not millionaires but left office multimillionaires?
Trump didn’t need the political power/insider information to become a billionaire when he first ran. He already was.
And Trump wasn’t a billionaire who tried to rule behind the scenes like Soros and his family.
(Soros. Talk about an “oligarchy”!)
LBJ is an example.
Sorry, but if Brazil and India “bristled” at climate change impositions from the global elites in the West, they also profited from their investments:
AI:Brazil…In 2023, Brazil attracted nearly $35 billion in energy transition investments, the highest among emerging markets outside of China. It also received a $96.5 million payment from the Green Climate Fund in 2019 for reducing deforestation in the Amazon.
India has received approximately $1.16 billion in climate finance through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from funds like the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility, as of early 2025
Maybe they were bristling on one side and … preening on the other. They’re kind of hairy in those countries.
I just checked. The GEF has a budget of $5.25 billion and was started by Carlos Rodrigues in 2020. I wonder what his salary is?
How to get rich? Started up a NGO and then send grant requests to all the big foundations.
Part of the original problem is that consumers let themselves be conned by the media largely controlled by by left-leaning governments. Canada’s CBC is a typical example because even today when most of the climate hysteria has been debunked and national carbon taxes have been rejected, it still insists on pushing its one-sided climate agenda; i.e. fossil fuels are destroying the planet, weather extremes are the new normal and the whole planet is going to hell in a handbasket if we don’t adopt greener lifestyles. At first Canadians fell for this drivel, but after they noticed living costs rising with no appreciable climate changes, they voted for the political parties that promised to drop carbon pricing. Now sluggish sales are causing the government to downscale it EV mandates, and more Canadians are scoffing at any references to climate crises that have become nothing more than bogus scare tactics.
Very nice Dr Doshi, I have nothing to add.
Whatever happened to John Cook?? The creator of the 97% lie.
The links between racism and climate denial are well established. Diatribe like this blog post reinforce how you can’t separate the two
A ridiculous statement by you.
The IPCC did not follow the scientific method regarding climate warming, but instead decided on a theory first and then collected supporting evidence, intentionally violating the principle of the method of multiple working hypotheses as introduced by Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin. This method emphasizes avoiding “parental affection” for a favorite theory by developing multiple competing hypotheses about a phenomenon and testing them impartially to see which best explains the evidence. It guards against researcher bias and premature attachment to a single explanation.
Chamberlin explained that by adopting multiple hypotheses, an investigator remains open to different explanations, seeing more than one cause and recognizing errors or ignorance. This method contrasts the “ruling theory” approach, which insures confirmation bias and selective evidence gathering to support a pre-chosen theory but does not maintain scientific impartiality.
In the case of the IPCC and climate change, evidence and critiques suggest that the process reversed this approach. The IPCC decided on the anthropogenic global warming theory first—human greenhouse gas emissions as the primary driver of warming—and then gathered evidence to support it. This “ruling theory” approach ignores or underweights alternative explanations, uncertainties, and natural variability.
For instance, the IPCC process involves consensus statements where governmental policymakers approve summaries, potentially reinforcing the favored theory. Critics have pointed out that this process leads to lengthy reports that aim to address objections but fail to equally test competing hypotheses. The IPCC’s high confidence language (“virtually certain”) reflects a near certainty in the human-driven warming theory, which is premature and unjustified without thoroughly applying the multiple working hypotheses method.
In sum:
The IPCC did not attempt to adhere to Chamberlin’s ideal of scientific method through multiple working hypotheses but instead intentionally embraced the very danger Chamberlin sought to avoid.