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Despite the scientific consensus on climate change, allegations have been made that scientists and institutions involved in global warming research are part of a global scientific conspiracy or engaged in a manipulative hoax.
There have been allegations of malpractice, most notably in the Climatic Research Unit email controversy ("ClimateGate"). Eight committees investigated these allegations and published reports, each finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The Muir Russell report stated that the scientists' "rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt," that the investigators "did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments," but that there had been "a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness." The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged at the end of the investigations.
Alleged conspiracies by scientists who accept the reality of global warming
Faked scientific data: In 2002, after Clive Hamilton criticized Lavoisier Group, the Cooler Heads Coalition published an article supporting the Lavoisier Group's conspiracy theory that hundreds of climate scientists have twisted their results to support the climate change theory in order to protect their research funding. In 2007, climate change denier John Coleman wrote a blog post claiming that global warming is "the greatest scam in history". He wrote "So when these researchers did climate change studies in the late 90's they were eager to produce findings that would be important and be widely noticed and trigger more research funding. It was easy for them to manipulate the data to come up with the results they wanted to make headlines and at the same time drive their environmental agendas". The climate deniers involved in Climategate in 2009 claimed that researchers faked the data in their research publications and suppressed their critics in order to receive more funding (i.e. taxpayer money). Some climate change deniers claim that there is no scientific consensus on climate change, and they sometimes claim that any evidence that shows there is scientific consensus is faked. Some of them even claim that governments have used the research grant money to pervert the science.
Corrupted peer-review process: It is claimed that the peer-review process for papers in climate science has become corrupted by scientists seeking to suppress dissent. For example, climate change denier Frederick Seitz wrote an article in Wall Street Journal in 1996 criticizing IPCC Second Assessment Report. He suspected corruption in the peer-review process, writing that "A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version".
Alleged political conspiracies
Aiming at global governance: In a speech given to the US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works on July 28, 2003, entitled "The Science of Climate Change", senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, concluded by asking the following question: "With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" He further stated, "some parts of the IPCC process resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are predetermined, and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor." Inhofe has suggested that supporters of the Kyoto Protocol such as Jacques Chirac are aiming at global governance. William M. Gray said in 2006 that global warming became a political cause because of the lack of any other enemy following the end of the Cold War. He went on to say that its purpose was to exercise political influence, to try to introduce world government, and to control people, adding, "I have a demonic view on this." The TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle was made by Martin Durkin, who called global warming "a multi-billion-dollar worldwide industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists." In the Washington Times in 2007 he said that his film would change history, and predicted that "in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bunk."
Liberal extremists: There are theories claiming that "climate change is a hoax perpetrated by leftist radicals to undermine local sovereignty", or "climate science is less about science and more about socialist ideology". In 2017, James Inhofe told the 12th International Conference on Climate Change "The liberal extremists are not going to give up. Obama has built a culture of radical alarmists, and they’ll be back. You and I and the American people have won a great victory, but the war goes on. Stay vigilant."
Green scam: "Another conspiracy theory argues that because many people have invested in renewable-energy companies, they stand to lose a lot of money if global warming is shown to be a myth. According to this theory, environmental groups therefore bribe climate scientists to doctor their data so that they are able to secure their financial investment in green energy."
China is behind it: In 2010, Donald Trump claimed that "With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore....Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn’t care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America’s stupidity." Then in 2012, he tweeted that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." Later in 2016 during his presidential campaign he suggested that his 2012 tweet was a joke saying that "Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less. They have very—you know, their standards are nothing. But they—in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it’s very hard on our business."
To promote nuclear power: One of the claims made in The Great Global Warming Swindle is that the "threat of global warming is an attempt to promote nuclear power".
Effects on public opinion and climate inaction
Section 'Effects on public opinion and climate inaction' not found
Reception and push-back
Temperature data:Global average temperature datasets from various scientific organizations show substantial agreement concerning the progress and extent of global warming: pairwise correlations of 1850+/1880+ datasets exceed 99.1%.Causation: The Fourth National Climate Assessment ("NCA4", USGCRP, 2017) includes charts illustrating how human factors, especially accumulation in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, are the predominant cause of observed global warming.
Steve Connor links the terms "hoax" and "conspiracy," saying, "Reading through the technical summary of this draft (IPCC) report, it is clear that no one could go away with the impression that climate change is some conspiratorial hoax by the science establishment, as some would have us believe."
The documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle received criticism from several experts. George Monbiot described it as "the same old conspiracy theory that we’ve been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years". Similarly, in response to James Delingpole, Monbiot stated that his Spectator article was "the usual conspiracy theories about the 'powerful and very extensive body of vested interests' working to suppress the truth, which presumably now includes virtually the entire scientific community and everyone from Shell to Greenpeace and The Sun to Science". Some Australian meteorologists also weighed in, saying that the film made no attempt to offer a "critical deconstruction of climate science orthodoxies", but instead used various other means to suggest that climate scientists are guilty of lying or are seriously misguided. Although the film's publicist's asserted that "global warming is 'the biggest scam of modern times'", these meteorologists concluded that the film was "not scientifically sound and presents a flawed and very misleading interpretation of the science".
Former UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural AffairsDavid Miliband presented a rebuttal of the main points of the film and stated "There will always be people with conspiracy theories trying to do down the scientific consensus, and that is part of scientific and democratic debate, but the science of climate change looks like fact to me."
National Geographic fact-checked 6 persistent scientific conspiracy theories. Regarding the persistent belief in a global warming hoax they note that the Earth is continuing to warm and the rate of warming is increasing as documented in numerous scientific studies. The rise in global temperature and its rate of increase coincides with the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity. Moreover, global warming is causing Arctic sea ice to thaw at historic rates, many species of plants are blooming earlier than expected, and the migration routes of many birds, fish, mammals, and insects are changing.
Funding
Section 'Funding for scientists who are skeptics or deniers' not found
Biello, David (Feb., 2010). "Negating 'Climategate'". Scientific American. (302):2. 16. ISSN0036-8733. "In fact, nothing in the stolen material undermines the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that humans are to blame"; See also: Lubchenco, Jane (2 December 2009) House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming (House Select Committee). "The Administration's View on the State of Climate Science". House Hearing, 111 Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office. "...the e-mails really do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus and the independent scientific analyses of thousands of scientists around the world that tell us that the Earth is warming and that the warming is largely a result of human activities." As quoted in the report published by Office of Inspector General.
Jones, D; Watkins, A.; Braganza, K.; Coughlan, M (2007). ""The Great Global Warming Swindle": a critique" (PDF). Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. 20 (3): 63–72. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
Temperature data: Global average temperature datasets from various scientific organizations show substantial agreement concerning the progress and extent of global warming: pairwise correlations of 1850+/1880+ datasets exceed 99.1%.
Causation: The Fourth National Climate Assessment ("NCA4", USGCRP, 2017) includes charts illustrating how human factors, especially accumulation in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, are the predominant cause of observed global warming.
