Nobel Prize Winner John Clauser: “Climate Discourse is Dangerous Corruption of Science”
By: Mattias Desmet
August 14, 2023: Dr. John Clauser, Nobel laureate in Physics 2022, recently made a remarkable statement: the climate narrative is a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. My chest opened and filled with fresh relief as I read these words.
It's not that I think we should wallow in unrestrained comfort and luxury, flying to Barcelona to get our hair cut. The silence of nature is worth more to me than a Bugatti. I love the fresh mountain air more than the most delicate perfume; the teeming light of dusk more than the glitz and glory of all the world's cities combined.
And it’s not that I don't know there are a thousand other scientists for every John Clauser. Nobel laureate or not, John Clauser is an exception. Opposing him is the consensus of the academic community.
But what is that consensus actually worth? Is it the product of genuine passion for knowledge? Or is it rather the result of rampant mass formation among academics, fear of stigmatization (“climate denial”), the thirst for research resources, and perhaps even some pleasure in spreading the doomsday message?
In addition to these phenomena, there is undoubtedly also the ideological dominance of globalist institutions such as the United Nations. The climate narrative is largely a product of the propaganda with which these institutions push their technocratic agenda. Aided by their army of “digital first responders,” the UN censors any voice that criticizes their ideological program.
Academic consensus eventually comes about as follows: those who do not endorse the dominant narrative are removed from the “A List” of scientists who have clout, credentials, and funding, until it can be said that “all scientists” endorse the dominant narrative. Ask yourself: how likely is it that tens of thousands of scientists around the world all agree? Such a consensus could only be a curated consensus.
Where has this kind of pseudo consensus led us in recent year? Well, among other unfortunate places, to a widespread belief that the coronavirus would kill more than 80,000 people in Sweden by the end of May 2020 if the country did not go into lockdown and that the vaccine would prevent transmission of the virus. And if the woke discourse continues to gain momentum, the consensus will soon be that there is no biological difference between a man and a woman.
Real science comes from an individual's courage to break through the consensus, not from false deference to "the consensus." John Clauser performed the highest political act a human being can perform: exposing himself to the risk of social exclusion by speaking sincerely in public space. And indeed, the backlash, and the frenzy to cancel him, began immediately after he spoke up.
Dissenting opinions are dismissed with rhetoric such as “most scientists agree that things are this or that, why would that lone exception be correct?”. But we can also reason the other way around: only a commitment to the truth will give you the courage to risk the ostracism of your peers, and even your entire professional standing.
Moreover, what masquerades as “climate science” is increasingly taking the form of propaganda. I frown upon the relentless media coverage that portrays every hot day as a climate apocalypse, and that presents man-made wildfires and even the sudden increase in miscarriages and blood clots as the result of global warming.
Beginning next year, you can even pursue a master's degree in “climate psychology” at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. You will learn how to get the population involved in the climate story. I can, of course, somewhat understand the logic by which well-intentioned people might pursue such a degree: given man’s insatiable thirst for comfort and luxury, the masses will drive the world straight to ruin; so there is no other option than to manipulate the masses back on track.
The choice of propaganda is therefore understandable in a sense, but nevertheless extremely problematic for a number of reasons. First, its excessive use to save humanity is internally contradictory. The backbone of the human being, the fiber of the social fabric, is honest and trustworthy speech. A society based on propaganda is, by definition, the end of humanity.
Second, those who believe they must manipulate the masses are no better off morally than the masses themselves. Remember the hundreds of private jets and super-yachts at the climate conferences . . . where solutions were supposedly being sought for the climate problem?
Third, the ecomodernist solution to “the climate problem” that runs throughout the discourse of the UN is not the solution to the problem- it is rather the cause of it. Concentrating humanity in uniform housing units in 15-minute cities, detonating nitrate bombs in the stratosphere to block sunlight, banning farmers from working their land, switching to insect meal and lab-printed food, planting artificial trees to filter CO2 from the air – doesn’t all that seem more dangerous than eating a steak, especially from an animal raised by a small local farmer, and driving a diesel car? Insofar as there are real problems with nature, it’s this rationalistic hubris, which pursues a world as artificial as possible, that is the cause rather than the solution.
So, just keep doing what we’re doing? As I said above: I do think that we must be concerned about human impact on nature. For example, I believe that the problem of microplastics and plastic soup in the oceans is real, that industrial farming destroys the soil and that industrial fish farming threatens life in the oceans. And when I'm on the steppe in Africa and I feel a sacred silence palpable in the air, a rending realization overwhelms me that, in our “progress,” we have lost the essence of life.
This is the real task we face: to distinguish false problems from real problems and to find real solutions to the real problems, beyond ecomodernism. That is the best way to render propaganda powerless and secure a livable future for life on earth and future generations.
Source: Mattias Desmet Substack
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