Originally published in The Western Journal
For years, Americans have been told that we face an existential climate emergency aka the so-called “climate-crisis.” That claim has reshaped public policy, transformed education, redirected enormous public and private investment, and justified sweeping government intervention into nearly every sector of the economy.
If the public was misled, whether intentionally or through reckless disregard for evidence, it is time to ask a difficult question: Who should be held accountable?
For nearly a decade, climate activists have pursued lawsuits against energy companies under the banner of #ExxonKnew, arguing that corporations should be financially liable for allegedly misleading the public about climate change. That raises an obvious question.
What if the same legal standard were applied to everyone?
If accountability is the standard, then it should apply equally to every institution that shaped public understanding of climate change.
If evidence exists that institutions knowingly exaggerated risks, relied on implausible scenarios while presenting them as likely outcomes, ignored contradictory observational data, or blurred the distinction between scientific inquiry and political advocacy, then they deserve the same scrutiny they demanded of others.
That scrutiny should extend to universities, researchers, advocacy groups, public education, renewable energy interests, politicians, and media organizations that blurred the line between reporting and advocacy.
But the greatest cost wasn’t measured in federal budgets. It was measured in classrooms.
An entire generation of children was taught that civilization was approaching collapse and that they might never enjoy a stable future because of climate change. Schools, documentaries, social media, and news coverage routinely presented Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5’s most extreme projections as though they were the expected outcome rather than a worst-case modeling exercise. Even after leading researchers concluded the scenario no longer represented a plausible baseline, it remained embedded in textbooks, classrooms, government reports, and popular media.
Studies now document rising climate anxiety among young people, with many believing humanity is doomed or questioning whether they should have children. Presenting an increasingly implausible worst-case scenario as their expected future has consequences.
The financial consequences have also been enormous.
Since 2021 alone, Congress has enacted hundreds of billions of dollars in climate and clean energy spending through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, with the latter now projected to exceed $1 trillion over its lifetime. Utilities and consumers have absorbed billions more in costs associated with grid restructuring, renewable mandates, transmission expansion, and related policies.
Federal agencies also directed billions of dollars into climate research built around RCP8.5, even after many researchers concluded it was out of touch with reality and no longer represented a plausible “business as usual” future. Yet it continued to underpin government assessments, climate litigation, financial stress tests, educational materials, and thousands of scientific papers.
If the underlying scientific claims were exaggerated, if worst-case scenarios were repeatedly presented as the most likely outcomes, or if advocacy became indistinguishable from objective science, then accountability should follow.
That accountability should begin with congressional investigations and independent scientific reviews. It should include audits of federal grant programs, greater transparency in research funding, and a careful examination of how climate science has been communicated to policymakers, educators, journalists, and the public.
Where evidence supports it, civil litigation, including class action lawsuits, should also be on the table.
Discovery alone could prove invaluable. Internal emails, grant proposals, and communications among researchers, advocacy organizations, government agencies, philanthropic foundations, educators, and media organizations could reveal whether scientific uncertainty was honestly conveyed or deliberately minimized in pursuit of political, financial, or institutional objectives.
Climate activists established an important principle: those who knowingly mislead the public can be held legally accountable for the harm that follows.
If that principle has merit, it cannot apply only to fossil fuel companies. It must apply equally to every institution that shaped public understanding and influenced public policy.
Science advances by questioning assumptions and correcting mistakes. Continuing to promote claims after their weaknesses become clear, especially when those claims shape legislation, litigation, classrooms, and public opinion, deserves careful scrutiny.
If discovery in the #ExxonKnew lawsuits was intended to reveal who knew what and when they knew it, then the public deserves the same transparency from the institutions that built and promoted the climate emergency narrative. Internal communications, grant proposals, policy discussions, and media strategies should receive the same scrutiny that activists demanded of the energy industry.
Accountability should not depend on politics. It should depend on evidence.
If the legal standard is that knowingly misleading the public carries consequences, then it is time to ask not simply whether Exxon knew, but who else knew, what they knew, when they knew it, and why the public wasn’t told.
Only then can we begin to restore the public trust upon which both science and journalism depend, and ensure that climate science once again informs public policy rather than climate alarmism driving it.
I grew up during the Cold War, at the height of Mutually Assured Destruction, and there were periods there when you weren’t sure when you went to bed at night that there would be a world in the morning.
Despite that we weren’t pumped full of fear inducing statements by our teachers on a daily basis, even though we were shown civil defence films about what to do in case of a nuclear attack.
As a result, even though we lived in a much more frightening time, we didn’t have anywhere near the anxiety levels and other psychological problems that modern children had.
‘Despite that we weren’t pumped full of fear inducing statements by our teachers on a daily basis…’
Back then, our teachers were respected members of the community, who held degrees in real subjects from real schools. While I’m sure some of them may have considered themselves ‘progressive’, if they went too far off the rails, they would have heard from the parents in a NY minute.
During the Biden administration, parents who spoke up during PTA meetings were labeled as domestic terrorists and went on the FBI’s watch list.
My dad was an engineer working for DOD, McDonalds and Lockheed in Los Angeles. He purposely bought a house in Malibu, west of downtown so if the big one happened, prevailing winds would take the fallout away. We didn’t live in fear but the threat was real.
I grew up within the blast radius of the Proviso rail yards outside of Chicago-the Cuban crisis was scary, and Mom sent me and my sister to buy all the flour, sugar and salt we could could get for $20 (alot of money back then)-her thinking was not fear, but survival of her family and kids. It would have been probably hopeless, but one never knows. My Grandfather worked for Hughes Aircraft in LA. He, like your Dad, recognized the threat, and planned accordingly also. Tough people in those days.
I worked at the McDonnell Douglas plant in Huntington Beach just across the road from the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. An Orange County Register article around 1978 – 1980 claimed the Soviets were targeting 200 nukes on that weapons station. The good news was that they expected only 20 would hit, with the others malfunctioning or hitting some other part of Seal Beach and the nearby counties due to targeting problems.
Fallout would be a problem from that many nukes, but I think the blast would be a greater threat, with the destruction of infrastructure that would cause the failure of supply systems. No gasoline, no food, no water, no electricity, and many roads/bridges destroyed – which means it would be difficult to escape the aftermath.
The children in the South learned to duck under their desk at school during the Cuban missile crisis. If none did so in other parts of the country, it was because of the limited range of the missiles pointed at them.
Today real science is being demonstrated daily here at WUWT, where new and old truths are are being promulgated to the worlds climate innocents; while many advocates of CC are flipping their opinions to produce a new majority of a different stripe..
RCP8.5 is just the tip of the iceberg of the damage the Climate Liars caused. I’m not sure that involving the legal system is the right answer though, considering the further damage that could cause. The Climate Liars, if they don’t already know it, will come to know of their responsibility of the damage caused by the Greatest Scientific Scam of all time. Let their own shame be their punishment.
Not really good enough.
It’s never good enough. It was not good enough at the end of WW2 to simply execute the worst of the Nazis. Their crimes were far, far beyond redress.
It is similar to the Climate Mafia. There can be no adequate compensation for what they have done. There is no accounting system of any kind capable of adding up the cumulative damage, let alone the impossible task of aportioning compensation. Nor can we fully identify all of those who were responsible and their roles. The greatest of the criminals, Maurice Strong, is now safely (for him) dead.
Bruce is right. The only long term possible result is infamy.
“I’m not sure that involving the legal system is the right answer though…”
Agreed. Be careful what you wish for. Just expose the errors aggressively.
…and cut off the funding.
Agreed!
Make it impossible for them to ever be employed as anything more than a janitor.
Even then.. would you trust them !
Most of them have no shame. If they did, they wouldn’t be involved in this scam in the first place
The only regret the vast majority of them will feel will be at the loss of income when their funding organizations are shut down.
Abb SARS-CoV-2 to that, please…Like it or not, the WEF have their rapacious, filthy paws in BOTH evil schemes…
Keep your filthy, narcissistic paws off the bold button.
Hear, hear
Wake up! The Chinese military was making a very lethal biological weapon in Wuhan. They did not use the borrowed knowledge and expertise wisely and the virus got out of the laboratory before they had made the perfect weapon.
It is already a killer, a lethal virus, still killing people around the world, but it could have been far more lethal with more research.
It could have been much worse.
As it was more infectious than measles most of the known and effective isolation, quarantine and social separation responses failed with no little blame on the small proportion of people who refused to co-operate and became each a Typhoid Mary causing explosive spread.
It is a real pandemic lethal virus, just like HIV/AIDS was and still is a pandemic lethal virus but it just came out of the Green monkeys in Africa, not from a lab and is a silent killer.
The “Spanish” flu was a real lethal pandemic too, but it came out of USA from farms with pigs, people and migratory birds all in the same farm ecosystem.
There will be others.
Covid was NOT a fake pandemic and there are real people to blame.
AGW is false in a different way, a worldwide superstitious panic and I cannot understand how it happened and how it spread and how it took hold of the whole human consciousness.
ah but covid was NOT more infectious than most other flu or colds and no where near mealses ..and im of the older let em get it get over it gen for mealses n chickenpox thousands of kids in various schools and I never heard of one having “events or dying” and kids DO love a scare story
( and fauci and his mates sure werent clean or innocent were they)
It can be shown that Dr. R. Steve Nerem massaged the sea level data to show acceleration that doesn’t exist
Sir John Hougton devised the Global Warming Potential Number scheme that produced the ridiculous claims that methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
Michael Mann’s Hockey stick.
Hougton passed away several years ago and who’s pushing the nonsense about coral reef bleaching, polar bear decline, glacier’s and water supply, extreme weather exaggeration.
Oh, how ’bout Mark Hertsgaard and his Covering Climate Now propaganda mill?
And of course Al Gore.
Al Gore may suffer some loss in his carbon credit huckstering and other green investments but his net worth is estimated at $300M. He will still be far richer than most if he lost 3/4ths of that. And, insofar as he can claim he was only saying what “scientists” told him — at Harvard “he did not do well in science and math” — other than embarassment, nothing will be done to big Al.
He would still be far richer than lost 97% of that… Figuring 97% is more appropriate for this site than 3/4ths.
And let’s not forget Maurice Strong’s actions in setting up the Rio conference, a forerunner of IPCC, claiming it was a “scientific conference on climate” while loading it with activists.
The cris de coeur of the alarmist: Why won’t the weather play ball?
It never does.
“That accountability should begin with congressional investigations and independent scientific reviews.”
Invite the modelers of the general circulation to testify to Congress about the concept of dynamic energy conversion. It is fundamental to numerical weather prediction and modern reanalysis products. Once understood, the entire “climate” movement is exposed as a huge misdirection.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PDJP3F3rteoP99lR53YKp2fzuaza7Niz?usp=drive_link
There. That should be fun.
most of congress would be blankfaced unable to even get a grip on the basics I reckon..the few smart ones there must have a hell of a time coping with the rest
Well, as far as accountability goes, journalists are off the hook – they can argue diminished mental capacity and inability to distinguish right from wrong and fact from fiction, and it’d be really hard to prove otherwise…
It has been said that Exxon Knew, some people in Exxon most likely believed CO2 was causing man-made warming, some may even have thought it was a serious problem. Other people in Exxon most likely believed CO2 was not causing man-made warming, or they thought it was not a serious problem. If some people in Exxon disagreed with others in Exxon, if some people in Exxon published some papers that warned of a serious problem and others in Exxon did not agree with those papers, it can’t be said that all Exxon Knew, or that they held that as a consensus. I know a retired executive from Shell who did not believe in the great harm from man-made CO2. The evidence for harm from man-made CO2 is so flimsy that anyone believing the harm were likely just wrong. The huge profits that came from the Green Energy Projects, likely more than a Trillion or Trillions have been spent, land has been destroyed to build Green Energy Projects, once stable power grids fail under conditions that caused little problems, or much less problems a couple or three decades ago. Ice Storm URI took out Houston and other City Water systems, much colder weather in past years did not cause that much damage. How could Exxon have known when it is still not even known now. Forecasts that have for sure come true is that, now we have Power Grids that are much less reliable and the cost of power has gone way up. During the Ice Storm URI there was not enough reliable power on the Grid to pump Natural Gas for some major Power Plants. During the Ice Storm URI, for the first time ever, most of the State of Texas has power outages at the same time. That was not caused by an alarmist paper Exxon covered up, that was caused by Green Energy and unreliable Grid replacing what used to work much better.
If someone should be held accountable for harm caused, it needs to be those responsible for replacing Power Generation and Distribution with much less reliable renewables that caused many more people, much more harm, killed and injured many.
Minor nit, land isn’t destroyed, no matter how much it may be transformed, it is still there. At least until the expanding sun vaporizes the Earth.
Eco systems on the other hand, can be destroyed, and frequently are by building these alters to the global warming scam.
Yup.
Those responsible for replacing reliable power with renewables are the people who voted in the politicians who wrote the laws and chose the members of the BPUs, etc. That is the public. And the public is suffering the consequences of their choices–that is one form of accountability. You could argue that Al Gore and the UN pushed unwise policies, but they did not force people to follow their directives–we did that on our own.
Do you really believe so? If this is the case you may have a very little idea of how the system of international governance works. Nothing personal, I fully acknowledge that nobody knows everything.
My point is that our elected officials do what we allow them to do. If we don’t like what they do, we vote them out. That may be much clearer in local elections, but it happens in every election one way or another. I do think with most elections in the US, people do not vote on climate matters, they vote on other more hot-button issues, and climate tags along. Part of the problem is lack of information on the consequences of shutting down reliable power sources. Most people don’t understand much if anything about the myriad of intersecting issues involved, and find it complicated enough that they assume their leaders are doing the right thing.
Unfortunately, you are right.
Still, we should be able to punish non-profits who continue to push climate crap. I’m thinking Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice, Carbon180, The Climate Coalition, and The Nature Conservancy to list just a few.
the public suffers from biased education run BY activists and firmly entrenched IN all unis teaching the next gen to be the same
I agree with you there. But we do little to nothing about it. It is the rare family that is in the public schools for any length on time (12-15 years), and takes the time to challenge teachers at any grade level. Most parents don’t have time to get involved with school boards, etc., and may not know enough themselves to challenge the curriculum.
Which parties have a legal duty to be honest with citizens, and are those parties indemnified in some way? While I would love to see somebody sued over the misinformation and scare tactics, I am not sure any discrete party fits the bill.
Just a reminder.
The 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, 8.5 all have units, i,e. W/m^2 and in the big picture are insignificant.
NS:
Yes, but the policies they produce have immense significance.
We are in far more danger from the policies than the actual climate since they are worsening our resilience to the weather and keeping billions in energy poverty.
The current heat-related deaths in the EU are a glaring example [and also show the climate alarmists don’t really care about yearly deaths elsewhere, like Africa].
Note: the yearly EU heat-related deaths are larger than the gun related homicides in the US.
Climate change policies have killed thousands, perhaps 10’s of thousands.
On the other hand, climate change hasn’t killed anyone and there is no possibility of it killing anyone in decades, if not centuries.
In these times of conflict, a minor enemy could take out our renewable power generation, wind and solar, and our unprotected long distance power lines and pipelines and power grid interconnections with a truck load of drones. Most likely, whichever enemy accomplished this would blame it on some other enemy. We need regional power generation, compact power generation that could be protected and operated in each region so the whole state or multi-state grid could not all fail.
Wouldn’t need drones-some drive-bys and a good rifle would shut down all kinds of smaller electrical faciliies. It already has been done, once to my knowledge, out West where a sub-station was shot up so the perps could rob-I think-a liquor store.
A small bit of plastic explosive at the base of a high voltage line tower could do a lot of damage.
True, but I was thinking more along the lines of small scale, do-it-yourself difficult to prevent or apprehend stuff-the kind of thing that needs no funding and leaves no trail to follow. Asymmetric warfare, bogymen in the dark type stuff…like was done in our Revolutionary War against the “loyalists” and unaware Brits…or more recently, VietNam.
Herman:
I just finished “The Great Heist” book by Badger & Shedd (2025) who document the long running government sponsored theft of US intellectual property by China – since before ever joining the WTO ~2000. Its a good, convincing, but sobering read. [Spoiler ALert: The West is being screwed. Surprise!]
To your point, one of the examples was a Chinese solar manufacturer who in a corporate spat [not government] with another company remotely shut down all its solar inverters sold to Canada. Remotely! No drones, C4 , or rifles needed. Recall the hack of the Colonial pipeline on the eastcoast USA 2021. We (the West) are quite vulnerable.
We need to remember China’s policy of “Military & Civil Fusion” where all companies and all citizens – even those living abroad, who might also have dual citizenship – are by law required to assist the CCP. With penalties of fines or jail [or more likely threatening family back in China]. China does not play by the rules; even though it signs the documents – like those of the WTO.
And yet, and yet…plans for programmable CBDCs with personal carbon tracking and control goes forward, data centers are being built to make it possible, etc. It ain’t over till it’s over.
central bank digital currency (CBDC)
Any accountability needs to start with the bureaucrats, university scientists and school teachers. They are the people who settled the science and taught our kids of the “dangers” of a warming planet. Sadly, a great number of our politicians are too dumb to understand. They are just parroting words/phrases they have heard from the bureaucrats because they think they sound good and politically correct. After following the climate BS for many years now, I’m so looking forward to seeing the demise of the evil people who promoted this cult. Obviously, as Anthony points out, it has cost trillions of dollars and produced a society, especially amongst our young people, who are completely paranoid.
“An entire generation of children was taught …”
Most of the teachers have been poorly trained in any sort of science and “climate science” was not a subject years ago. Many schools would have required a beginning class in “a science” that might have been GEOG 101, GEOL 101, PHYS 101, BIOL 101, and so on. The geography and geology texts would have had sections dealing with the atmosphere and oceans. This exposure would not be enough for them to evaluate the pronouncements of James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Bill Nye, and similar.
Teachers, scientists, etc., must conform to consensus to keep their jobs, get grants, the skeptics are those of us who can be more independent, retired or whatever, the institutions and government is going to be hard to fix.
I taught high school maths for 20 year in NSW, Australia.. starting 1979
I do not recall seeing any of these “climate” issues creeping into the Maths syllabus over that period…
Maybe it was in other subjects, can’t say.
Any exposure to geology means exposure to deep time – that right there is forbidden
Start with those creating the models, follow then with those promoting and distributing them and last but not least those using them to legislate, regulate and tax the living shit out of our very daily lifes.
Verdict: guilty. Since they obviously are truly believers they all can take their appeals to the final judgement, see if they find mercy there…but not on this planet.
Start with how the bogus instrument-era “hotter and hotter and hotter” portion of the global Hockey Stick temperature chart was created.
The only real data available to the global instrument-era temperature creators (Phil Jones and Berkeley Earth), was, and is, the written, regional temperature records from around the world.
The written, regional temperature data shows it was just as warm in the recorded past as it is today. This means that CO2 has had no discernible effect on the temperatures.
The bogus instrument-era Hockey Stick global temperature chart shows the temperatures getting hotter and hotter and hotter, since the end of the Little Ice Age, and shows today’s temperatures to be the hottest in history.
This is the Big Lie that has been used to sell everything else in this climate scam. Without “hotter and hotter and hotter” the Climate Alarmists would be dead in the water.
So we should ask Phil and Zeke just how they managed to get a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile out of data that has a completely different, benign temperature profile.
In the past, Phil Jones refused to tell us how he got his numbers. He just expected us to take his word for it, and, amazingly, a lot of people accepted that.
How about you, Zeke? Tell us how you got a hotter and hotter and hotter temperature profile out of data that has no such profile? You made it up out of whole cloth, didn’t you? Or did you just take Phil’s word for it, too?
Think of the children this has harmed. It’s an unbelievable situation that has developed because of bogus temperature data. The Big Lie that sells.
I have noted several times that there is no real data for much of the planet, ie the oceans, up until ARGO was implemented.
You cannot measure temperature even remotely accurately by dropping a bucket into the ocean at random times and places, mainly along shipping routes.
And you certainly cannot combine that near non-existent data with land data measured at 2m ! … To do so is scientific nonsense.
Even the land had basically no real coverage for a large amount of the time they pretend they can create graphs for, mostly concentrated in USA, parts of Europe and some parts of Australia.
Most of the raw land data that does exist shows the 1930s,40s warmer than the first decades of this century.
Notice that neither Zeke or any of the other Climate Alarmists have anything to say about this particular situation.
You challenge the very basis of their “science” and all we get are crickets.
Obviously, they cannot support the bogus Hockey Stick with any evidence. If they could, we would never hear the end of it.
Silence = They don’t know.
I’m no pagan, but they all need to go into the volcano for the betterment of the rest of us.
Sadly, when it comes to liberal politicians the Gander often escapes the Goose sauce. Hypocrisy is their Forte.
and lawyers everywhere jumping for joy!
start with Michael Mann, creator of Mann-made global warming. Next the IPCC section that creates the Summary For Policy Makers, a scare story document, meant to finesse gobs of cash for their selves and their friends. Then, every jerk that waved the (invented out of thin air) 1.5 degree hoax around like gospel. Add EVERY major media for shouting the “we’re all gonna die!!” on continuous replay. Follow up with the fascist bastiges in politics who took every opportunity to curtail our comfortable lives with nonsense restrictions like cars so weak you die if you hit anything bigger than a tennis ball.
There’s more, but this would be a good start, IMHO.
Michael Mann won his case against Mark Steyn. That alone should tell you something.
Not really- the damages that Steyn had to pay was actually an insult to Mann. A buck in compensatory damages to Mann and a $5,000 bill for damages to Mann, but Mann was found to be liable for $477,000 in defense attorneys fees because of providing misleading info about his supposed financial losses in grant monies. Hardly a win for Mann and actually,to my and other’s minds, a very serious loss.
Tim Wirth Knew$
James Hansen Knew$
Al Gore Knew$$$$
Antonio Guterres Knew$$
Obama Knew$$$$
Biden Knew$$$$
Markey Knew$$$
John Kerry Knew$$$
Hillary Knew$$$$
Publishers and Editors Knew$$$$$$$
RG:
IMO we should add the CIMP modelers since they parameterized the models to produce something that can get published. They knew!
Follow the money.
Story Tip.
Wind industrial estates cause warming at night.
Doing The Opposite: Studies Show Gigantic Wind Farms Significantly Warm The Night
Global Warming is possibly the world’s longest-running financial and political scam. The only hope for redress for such a crime is that it be held in infamy forever.
There are so many grifts from which to choose.
No one should worry too much about students being misled by climate propaganda because if the schools are already doing such a lousy job teaching math, language skills, history, geography, general science and the other basics, why would anyone believe the kids will retain anything more about the so-called climate crisis that doesn’t exist in the first place?
It’s simple. For each subject in school there are many rules, progressions and interactions. For climate change there are only two: more CO2 makes climate hotter and climate getting hotter is catastrophic.
While I agree wholeheartedly with this post I am not at all confused how we got here. It is not a single thing but is many things some big some small. Much of it is due to the internet, anybody can put out information to millions of people with a single post. A majority of the readers may know the information is wrong but good luck correcting it, think Wikipedia. Just as important is that we are living in an age where we are not only expected to accept lies but punished if we don’t, think men can have babies, men can become women, women can become men and so on. It is outrageous. It all comes down to one thing an out of control and unaccountable government. They control primary education, secondary education and the universities. Universities create a lot of the climate research as well as government agencies. Government pays for a lot of the research therefore decide who gets the money. Government can create regulations and mandates that must be followed right or wrong. I could go on and on but you have all heard this before, it is not a mystery.