Jules de Waart
Being right is not enough
Cargo cult science and the CO2 derangement syndrome
1. Introduction
After two relatively cool years temperatures in 2023 rose dramatically for over a year. This was followed by an almost equally dramatic decline starting around April 2024; a drop in temperatures that continued throughout 2025 and the first months of 2026. (See also the graph below with the satellite measurements, as published by Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville.)
From January 2023 to April 2024, the temperature rose by a full degree Celsius. This increase was spectacular and inexplicable. The warming during the entire industrial period (from 1850 to the present), the main reason for the IPCC’s concerns, was about one full degree Celsius. Established names in climate science, Zeke Hausfather and Gavin Schmidt, wrote a joint article in the New York Times stating that: “We do not fully understand why 2023 was as warm as it was.” Gavin Schmidt was in 2024 even more outspoken: “Climate models can’t explain the 2023 huge heat anomaly – we could be in unchartered territory”’. But the decline that began around April 2024 and continued throughout the year 2025 was equally inexplicable. In unchartered territory, the IPCC could no longer be our guide. We do not really know whether or not this cooling continues in 2026 and later, but we can be sure of one thing; CO2 and other greenhouse gases cannot have been the dominant cause of these temperature jumps. CO2 concentrations rose by about one percent a year, far too little to have had such dramatic effects!
Virtually all peaks and dips in the graph from 1980 till now coincide with natural causes. El Nino’s, ENSO and other periodic changes in the worldwide ocean currents, can explain at least a significant part of the warming. For an explanation of the “record heat” during 2023 and the beginning of 2024, Lightfoot&Ratzer concluded that it was not CO2 but an eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga that caused the rapid increase in temperature (Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences (August 2025). This single eruption increased the stratosphere’s water content by about 10%, enough to temporarily boost the temperature. They also predicted an imminent cooling; and were absolutely right. It was a crucial counterexample to the IPCC position.
A rapidly growing number of (peer reviewed) publications are appearing that cite other explanatory factors. These include changes in solar radiation, clouds, cosmic rays, water vapor emissions from submarine volcanic eruptions, atmospheric brown clouds, changes in the Earth’salbedo, whether or not due to human influence, and some (but not a dominant) influence of greenhouse gas concentrations.
This changes everything! The fixation of the international climate community (IPCC UNFCCC, universities, etc) on the mitigation of CO2, lacks a sound scientific foundation. CO2 is no longer the undisputed dominant cause of global warming. Natural factors are at least as Important. Yet Roy Spencer observed that “climate science is disproportionately focused on human causes, rather than investigating natural warming”. Virtually no research is conducted into the positive effects of CO2 on plant growth and agricultural yields. In virtually all models more CO2 means more warming. If you remove CO2, models show cooling. Tunnel vision obscures all alternatives.
2. The role of CO2 in climate change
Of course such far reaching and controversial statements can not be based only on the temperatures of the last 4 years, however dramatic and inexplicable they may be. And they do not! The case against CO2 is strong. It is supported by tens of thousands of skeptic scientists and a wide range of arguments. A brief summary.
-Most geologists and physical geographers do not buy a human control knob on the temperatures. They point to vastly different temperatures in the past, on scales of 1000, 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 years. Correlation between CO2 and temperatures on a geologic scale is weak. If it can be established at all, for instance in the case of the coming and going of glacials and interglacials, or the in recent “satellite aera” (Koutsoyiannis, 2023), temperature changes precede CO2 concentrations. Rising CO2 concentrations can not be a cause of warming, it is a consequence of warming. Moreover the influence of underground volcanic explosions and other geothermal factors has hardly been investigated studied or incorporated into the climate models.
-Climatologists and meteorologists are careful in their opinions and stress the complexity of the process on a world scale. The famous description of climate in the IPCC report 3 is: “The climate system is a coupled, non-linear, chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. (IPCC TAR, 14.2.2.2). This contradicts the most important statements of the IPCC itself.
– In 2021 Steven Koonin published his critical analysis of the statements of IPCC about extreme weather and emphasized the far from dominant role of CO2 in his book “Unsettled”. It is a much needed reality check by a top scientist and advisor to the Obama administration.
-In the publications of physicists and astrophysicists articles with a skeptical content seem now to dominate. Happer & Van Wijngaarden (2021) calculated that a doubling of CO2 from 400 to 800 ppm would mean an increase of CO2 forcing of up to 1% only.
-Cosmo-climatologists and plate-climatologists are usually skeptics. Zharkova (2023) predicted an impending cooling around 2025 associated with the current onset of a Grand Solar Minimum.
-Besides these proponents of natural causes is a group of scientists who believe in human causes, but other than CO2. (E.g. S. Bauer, 2022 on aerosols; V.Ramanathan, 2008 on atmospheric brown clouds; R.A. Pielke (2005) on land use; A.Watts (2009) on urban heat islands).
These scientific positions were recently expanded, summarized and defended in a 2025 Report of the Department of Energy of the US, “A critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate”. Lindzen and Happer two prominent physicists and founder/members of the CO2Coalition called it “an extremely important report”.
But …..being right is not enough
3. Science, cargo-cult science and the “double ethical bind”
It is now appropriate to ask a few questions: “But why do still a great majority of climate scientists believe in a dominant anthropogenic global warming and support the IPCC? An why do so many people strongly believe in human induced, catastrophic, climate change?”.
The short answer to the first question is relatively easy: “Most scientists do not!” A majority of climate scientists believe in an unquantified (“some”) human influence on global warming, but they do not support the IPCC’s “dominant cause” claim. I come back to this later.
The second part of the question is even more important and far more difficult to answer. I present a try in the final section of this essay.
Most people get their opinions from others. By reading books, viewing TV and talking to family, friends and neighbors. Few go out and check the facts. Opinions are free and that is a very good thing. But while opinions are free, the way to come to these opinions is not. For governments and markets it is very important to know what people think, what they want to vote, what they want to buy. They do not shy away from influencing people to do “the right thing”. Methods to influence people are now varied and sophisticated. Part of it is secret, like advertising strategies and the research on mass brainwashing and social engineering. Part of it is “open”.
A small part of opinions can be labeled “scientific fact”. With that label opinions get an aura of truth and have a much higher value of persuasion than other opinions. They can easily be used to influence people. What is the difference between an opinion and a scientific fact? What defines science?
Climate science has the look and feel of “science”. Its models, mathematical formula, its diagrams and figures are impressive. So is the amount of the peer reviewed literature that support it. But does it meet the requirements set by philosophers of science like Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feynman?
Popper famously argued that what distinguishes science from non-science (pseudo-science) is falsifiability: a theory is scientific only if it can, in principle, be proven wrong. Often added to it is T.E. Hugley: “The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact”.
Kuhn is less rigid. In his opinion during periods of “normal science”, scientists do not easily falsify the paradigms that fuel the entire field. Anomalies do not immediately overthrow the paradigm but are part of the research within it. Only in periods of paradigm shifts scientific revolution occurs.
Lakatos also believes that science does not perish because of a single negative experiment. What matters is whether a whole research program is progressive or degenerating.
And now Feynman comes into the picture. Feynman was, strictly speaking, not a philosopher of science but a famous physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate. He does not distinguish between “science versus pseudo-science” but between “science versus cargo cult science”. Feynman aligns with Popper on most subjects: “It does not matter how beautiful your theory is, …if it disagrees with observations it is wrong”. But Feynman adds a completely new point of view, intellectual honesty. In his famous Caltech lecture in 1974 titled “Cargo Cult Science” he argues that science is not just a method of experiments and equations. It requires a particular moral attitude, an “inner compulsion to find the truth”. He continues by saying that you must report everything that might make your result invalid and avoid giving only the evidence that support your conclusions. Do not fool yourself and do not fool others. Without this inner discipline you get what he calls “cargo cult science”; work that looks like science on the surface but is not because it lacks that essential inner compulsion for finding the truth.
Feynman’s lecture was highly praised but his “cargo cult science” was easily forgotten. Feynman referred to so-called cargo cults in the South Pacific after World War II. Islanders built runways and wooden airplanes hoping cargo planes would return – they copied the form, but did not understand the underlying mechanism. It did not fit well in the anti-colonial, “inclusive” attitudes that dominated the American universities. Nobody used the term for some decades, and with the name also Feynman’s underlying principles were forgotten.
None of these four philosophers of science mentioned climate change or climate science. From a philosophy of science perspective, and only checking against the definitions, climate science satisfies Popperian criteria of falsifiability; it is science not pseudo- science. A majority of climate scientists would support Kuhn; believing we operate in a world of normal science within a stable paradigm. Many think that the whole research program of the climate sciences is still progressive and neither stagnant nor regressive..
But appearances are not facts. On many critical subjects climate science does not progress. Equilibrium climate sensitivity range is still unacceptable high and not narrowing. Many skeptical scientists have shown considerable disagreements between the theory and observations in the field and the laboratory. Growing evidence suggest that temperature is not rising because of higher CO2 concentrations. Instead they think that the higher CO2 concentrations are a direct result of higher temperatures. The number of scientific articles with skeptical overtones is growing sharply. So, is the research program progressive or degenerating? I am afraid that it will be a bone of contention for some time. But a sudden paradigm shift and a new scientific revolution within a few years would not surprise me.
Enter Feynman again. He would probably agree that climate science is not pseudo science, but he would certainly not call it real science either. For him it is “cargo cult science”. He would be surprised to see that what he called and condemned as morally wrong, became openly the main pillar of international climate science and the IPCC.
The late Stephen Schneider, a much respected climate researcher and from 1988 onward to his untimely death a prominent voice the IPCC, in 1989 coined his “double ethical bind”. It is the exact opposite from the message that Feynman wanted to send about scientific honesty. Schneider became Lead Author of IPCC AR1(1990), AR2 (1996), AR3 (2003)and IPCC AR4 (2007). His description of how climate science is done in the real world was an open defense of pure cargo cult science.
I follow Koonin (2021) in citing him verbally:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we would like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change, To do that we need to get some broad based support to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenario’s, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubt we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
Koonin believes that the underlying premise of the double ethical bind is dangerously wrong. I agree strongly. Schneider follows all the points Feynman made in his Caltech speech. But all the attitudes Feynman attacked as morally wrong, he defends. He knows exactly what he is doing. He sees no harm in a bit of misinformation to get his ideas accepted. No longer an “inner compulsion to find the truth” is needed but a “broad based support to capture the public’s imagination”. Following Schneider the IPCC opted for the “double ethical bind” and cargo cult science; turning a blind eye to misinformation.
4. IPCC’s redefinition of the scientific method
Scientific knowledge must be derived by the scientific method. Agreement with observation is the measure of scientific truth. This has been the scientific method for more than four hundred years, bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment and its forbears. This scientific method totally differs from methods of analysis used throughout by contemporary main stream climate scientists and the IPCC.
What are the differences between “climate science” and “cargo cult science”?.
– While main stream climate science allows and accepts s falsification of its own theories by conflicting facts, refutation is certainly not the IPCC- method for finding the truth. IPCC prefers “consensus”, and invokes a consensus of 97 to 99% of scientist’s opinions as the scientific basis for its statements and scenarios.
But consensus is largely irrelevant, historically the consensus of scientists has often turned out to be wrong. No philosopher of science used consensus as a demarcation line for science. Consensus is a bonus for good science, it is not a way to arrive at the truth. Moreover, the numbers are totally wrong. The consensus between scientists’ opinions and the IPCC is not 97 – 99%, as they claim, but less than 1% ! (For those who do not believe it I recommend reading my article in WUWT, November 9, 2025 “Consensus, Likelyhood and Confidence” or my book “Crisis or Hoax?”)
– The number of scientific articles in the peer reviewed literature with the key term “climate change” or “global climate change” published during the years 2015 and 2025 was about 500.000! (Source; Scopus and Web of Science). The amount is shocking. Nobody and no institution can read 500,000 publications. Nobody can check whether or not the information is correct. Very often it is not! R. Lindzen (2018) observed that: “Misrepresentation, exaggerating, cherry picking, or outright lying pretty much covers all the so-called evidence for the need to fossil fuels be reduced to net zero by 2050”.
– The IPCC is not required to fact-check the literature it cites; the IPCC has no obligation to cite arbitrarily chosen articles from the vast body of literature. IPCC can pick whatever it wants even an minority view, its governing rules and “double ethical bind” permits it all; with the possible exception of outright lying. There is no evidence that the IPCC always selects the scientifically sound articles or even the most widely accepted view in the scientific literature.
– Feynman (1998) said it very clear: “No government has the right to decide on truth of scientific principles”. But that was 25 years ago and it was not about climate change. It is very different now. Few people know that IPCC governing rules make it clear that it is not controlled by scientists but by the 195 governments who are members of the IPCC. Government officials must approve the scientific findings at two levels. First IPCC governing rules expressly require that the IPCC’s highly influential Summary for Policymakers (SPM’s) be approved by all its governments, “line-by-line”. So the SMP’s are merely 195 governments’ opinions, not scientific knowledge determined by the scientific method. Second, the IPCC government rules specifically require their full reports’ scientific findings to be rewritten to “ensure consistency” with the government determined SPM’s.
– The IPCC uses climate models and scenario’s that are quite controversial. For example, the majority of models predicted higher temperatures than actually happened. Since the IPCC publishes many scenario’s with different parameters this does not necessarily present a problem. There are several scenario’s to choose from. At least five core scenario’s are based on varying greenhouse gas emission levels and socioeconomic development. But all models are programmed to predict higher temperatures when CO2 emission levels rise. Recently there has been serious scientific concern about this assumption, a concern that has not been reflected in climate policy.
– And finally, I never read a convincing refutation of the theory of a saturation of the atmosphere with CO2 above a certain level of concentration; a level that is most likely lower or much lower than the present concentrations.
5. Being right is not enough.
It is a fair question. “How is it possible that so many controversial and sometimes clearly exaggerated conclusions are so vehemently defended by so many? It is very difficult to answer, and it is not my field of competence. But I feel that I have to try.
“Why do so many respectable scientists defend the IPCC position?”.
– It is easy to see why the IPCC’s cargo cult science is so attractive for climate scientists. It gives you the best opportunity to do research, something most scientists like to do. You get your funding easily and you are never wrong! If you are wrong the double ethical bind permits you to offer up scary scenario’s, even if the facts do not permit it. You can make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubt you might have. Feynman said several times that you must report everything that might make your result invalid and avoid giving only the evidence that support your conclusions. But in cargo cult science you do not have to do that and are allowed to do exactly the opposite.
Most scientists are no liars. They are human beings who have learned which questions are safe and which questions cost marriages and mortgages. If their jobs are not secure they are very vulnerable for institutional pressure.
Yet a surprisingly large number of scientists tries to be honest, even under pressure.
It is a serious misconception that most scientists agree with all or even most of the statements of the IPCC. IPCC publications cite the “confidence” that the authors of the scientific reports have in their own texts. It is very honest but also remarkably low. Not more than 6% of the writers of the scientific chapters give their own opinions a “very high confidence”! The AR5 (2013) gives a “very low confidence” of 20%! In AR6 (2021) it is 6%, without explanation. And very few, certainly much less than 97% of scientific publications support the claim of a dominant human cause for climate change. Whether it is a deliberate misinformation or not, it is not true. The point is that the alarmistic decisionmakers do not make a distinction, deliberate in my opinion, between “a human cause” and “a dominant human cause”. Almost all scientists, mainstream or skeptic, believe in a human cause, an unqualified human cause, in “some warming”. But in AR6, the IPCC was very clear about a dominant human cause, and that is something quite different.
Two very well researched , anonymous and random counts of peer reviewed publications have been produced. ( J. Cook, 2015 and M. Lynas,2021) In both surveys the support for the IPCC position (“there is a dominant human cause”) was less than 1%! ( see WUWT, November 9, 2025). Even more surprising is the fact that both studies are considered as a support for the IPCC consensus. Has anybody actually read more than the title and abstracts of these publications?
Funding for scientific research is very generous, several billions a year, Most of it is for research on human causes, much less for research into natural causes. Universities and other institutions press their scientists very hard to do their research on anthropogenic causes, not on natural causes. This pressure can be very effective because most of (the younger) scientists do not have job security.
For a more level playing field and more relevant science it is imperative that the number of tenured faculty positions in universities be greatly increased. Curricula most be given room to skeptic science and post-doc be allowed to choose their own subjects
That leaves the last question: “Why do so many people, educated or not, interested in nature and the environment or not, so strongly believe in a catastrophic human influence on the climate? Why do they think that CO2 is a clear and present danger for all humans, for nature, for the society? Why are they willing to spend trillions on the mitigation of CO2, while it is blatantly nonsense?
Answers must be given on several levels; the group and the individual, scientists and non-scientists
Are “mainstream climate scientist” a group”. Are skeptics a group?
Yes, both are, be it in slightly different ways.
Mainstream scientists are a strong professional group; they operate in the same scientific institutions, publish in the same peer-reviewed journals, participate and follow the IPCC and UNFCCC and strongly defend their scientific opinions. When they feel attacked by outsiders, “deniers”, they close ranks and become an ideological group as well. Ideologically, they are very much the same as non-scientist and feel and react the same.
Skeptics are a looser collection of contrarian scientists and policy advocates. They are not a unified scientific group and often disagree with each other. But they feel an ideological bind with each other and with non-scientists that support their position.
Both groups are more than just a collection of individuals; they can act as psychological units in which people adapt their behavior, beliefs and identity. Social psychology looks at how the dynamics within a group can override an individual’s critical thinking. It researches “groupthink”, tunnel vision and crowd (mass) psychology. The field is not new but research object were not always the same. The famous psychiatrist S. Freud in 1921 focused in his book Massenpsychologie und Ich-analyse on the behavior individuals in crowds and on the fascination of a hypnotized patients with their hypnotist. In a slightly different setting hypnosis can be used in marketing and politics. Politics, but also scientists and talkshows use fear and hope, often by constantly repeating the message, often during a period of light trance.
In the yearly CoP’s of the UNFCCCP with more than 50,000 – 100,000 (!) participants and no critics present, alarmistic positions on climate change are repeated again and again. Contrarian views in de 50.000+ participants do not seem to exist. This offers a great opportunities for mass manipulation.
6. Lessons from the gorilla. The CO2 derangement syndrome
These phenomena can also be found in individual behavior.
Particularly interesting is the article “Gorillas in our midsts” by D. Simons and F. Chabris (1999). Most readers with an interest in consciousness, the subconscious or decision making has seen and read it, and were shocked. The article is accompanied with a video in black and white. We see 6 people, 3 in white and 3 in black shirts playing some kind of basketball. The experimenter asks the viewers to look closely at the white ones. After a few minutes he asks the viewers if they have seen something interesting. The far majority, more than 80%, saw nothing strange. Then the video is show again, but now the experimenter asks them to look at the far right of the field. And then they see it, at least most of the viewers see it. A huge gorilla enters the field and walks across it! Many viewers refuse to believe it, claiming it is another video. But it is not! At first glance they simply did not see the gorilla! It was called “inattentional blindness” and was repeated again and again in many laboratories.
Many theories have tried to explain it. But the fact remains that it is shockingly easy to deceive people, to let them miss the most obvious things. When attention is diverted, even by such a minor thing as by saying “watch the white players”, people miss a gorilla walking over the screen. Diverted attention? Sure, but probably much more than that. A gorilla walking through a basketball game is so strange to everything we know and expect and that our brains refuse to see it.
The “gorilla in our midsts” is an experiment with individuals but can also be an underlying explanatory factor for many results found by mass psychology. It shows how easy it is to influence people. Fear and uncertainty add to conformity, social pressure from the media strengthen groupthink and tunnel vision, polarization adds to conformity and bias.
When this overrides critical thinking it is dangerous. When a majority of the people is deaf and blind for criticism it is very dangerous. When this kind of uncritical thinking is supported by the scientific and (part of) the political world – when loyal supporters are praised and go unchallenged, when critics are labeled disloyal – it is very, very, dangerous
For me the gorilla walking across the floor, for anyone to be see, but noticed by only a few, is not only an interesting experiment. It shows that people do not see obvious facts that do not meet their long held opinions. As an example I cite the Dutch minister for climate, now our prime-minister, during a debate in the Dutch parliament. Asked how much impact an additional Dutch climate package of about 28 billion euro would have on global temperature he replied that this would correspond to roughly 0.000036 degree Celsius. In that year 2023 the Dutch government reduced the projected growth of healthcare costs and reduced spending in elderly care. So in financially difficult times 28 billion euro was spent on 0.000036 degree less global warming! It sounds absolutely ridiculous but he came away with it without a problem and with a smile.
And even today this decision is still defended; not only in his own party, but by a majority of parliament, courts and a majority of the people.
It is about CO2 that people are most extreme. For them CO2 is a poison, a threat for the Earth and a danger to humanity. They are willing to spend trillions on it. They are willing to destroy the environment, willing to forget the fundamental requirements for science. If people are being told that CO2 is not a threat they do not see it, do not hear it and do not believe it. It is the gorilla in our midsts and I think it is dangerous.
Can we call it mass-psychosis, a climate syndrome, a CO2 syndrome, a CO2 derangement syndrome? Strong words, but the reality is even stronger
Climate science in its alarmist form exhibits several symptoms described as signs of possible mass-psychosis. Psychology does not explicitly offer an official diagnosis “mass disruption”. I think this correct, but at the same time I think the term “CO2 derangement syndrome” acceptable because it is more limited in scope and easier to recognize.
Skeptics who want to challenge these ideas face a very tough battle.. And being right is not enough. Throwing a bomb, as the DOE, the US Department of Energy, did is helpful , but it is not enough to win the hearts and minds.
Replication and expansion of the gorilla experiment shows that the number of people that “see” the gorilla at first view grows when it is no longer totally unexpected. It is also higher when the gorilla is replaced by a woman. It is higher in a stress-free environment.
I think skeptics should keep this in mind. Do not to go all out against alarmist ideas, even if you think it stupid. If dissenting ideas are too outlandish, no one will listen. It is better to find opportunities to exchange opinions in a stress-less environments and soften the message. Try to keep the lines of communication open. A surprisingly high number of alarmists wants to be taken seriously by skeptics.
Finally, an example. The five most common IPCC scenario’s share one important fact. They are based on algorithms that assume a causal link between CO2 and warming. More CO2 emissions? Then it gets warmer! Less CO2? Then it gets cooler. I regard these scenarios as misinformation, every single one of them. How do you connect with alarmists about this? Not by calling it unscientific misinformation. They won’t see the gorilla! Better is to tell them that it is prudent to add one more scenario to the many scenarios that already exist. A scenario where CO2 is not the main control knob but one of many. A scenario that accepts natural causes as well as human. A scenario like A Murder in the Orient Express. A scenario in which investments in wind turbines, solar farms, and other forms of “renewable” energy transition can be scaled back. Where fossil fuels can continue to function as a reliable, temporary source of energy for decades to come; and can later be replaced by nuclear energy.
The “intermediate step” of a world with energy generated by wind and solar power can be largely skipped, creating financial incentives to accelerate the transition to nuclear energy and prevent the destruction of our environment and save nature.
Jules de Waart (born 1942) is a former Member of the Dutch Parliament and publicist. After studying physical geography at the University of Amsterdam, he received his PhD in 1971 for his geological research in southern France. He was one of the first (in 1971) to use clay mineral composition as an indication for past climates and landscape development. He subsequently worked as a geologist in Africa and later at the Ministry of Health and Climate Policy. After his political career he focused on writing and debating climate, science and politics. He is known for his critical approach to dominant assumptions in climate discourse and several books and articles. His latest book, “Crisis or Hoax?” was published in 2025.
.
1
(
