Recently a climate scientist caused an uproar among scientists and peer-review journals when he admitted in an op-ed that the only way he could get his climate paper published in the journal Nature was to fake his results in order to fit them to the narrative that human-caused global warming is causing all our environmental problems.

In my paper, we didn’t bother to study the influence of these other obviously relevant factors. Did I know that including them would make for a more realistic and useful analysis? I did. But I also knew that it would detract from the clean narrative centered on the negative impact of climate change and thus decrease the odds that the paper would pass muster with Nature’s editors and reviewers.

While that op-ed brutally exposed the political biases at Nature that make it impossible to get honest research published, it only told a part of the story. Nature is only one journal, and if it was the only place this corruption of science was occurring, the problem would be manageable.

In truth it is only one example of a far more widespread problem, because it is now practically impossible for any skeptic of global warming to get his or her work published in almost any scientific journal. Worse, most of the major science organizations worldwide no longer simply favor pro-global warming climate research, they act aggressively to promote only one kind of result, to the point that the things they publish sometimes are little different than Soviet propaganda.

The American Geophysical Union, where
science is no longer practiced

As a prime example, I want to focus today on the American Geophysical Union (AGU), an scientific organization initially formed as an umbrella group to help American scientists publish and publicize their research on the study of the Earth, its interior, and its nature as a planet. To do so the AGU publishes a wide range of peer-review journals, all intended as fair-minded outlets for new research.

Sadly, in the past two decades the AG abandoned that primary function. For example, it has made its global-warming biases clear for several decades, essentially telling every climate scientist worldwide that if you submit any paper that raises any questions about global warming, it will be rejected outright.

More recently however the AGU has become even more up front and public about its close-minded approval of the as-yet unproven theory that humans are causing the climate to heat up. In the past, the weekly press releases put out by the AGU tried to highlight the most interesting and surprising recent results. Now, practically the only thing these releases do is scream: “We are all gonna die, and it’s all YOUR fault!”

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this list of every press release since June. I include them all, so no one can claim I am cherry-picking.

Sept 14, 2023: As Earth heats up, rain pours down: Global warming conjures images of drought and fires in the minds of many, but a new study finds most communities will encounter heavy rainfall, excessive heat and their combined repercussions.

Sept 12, 2023: 100-year floods could occur yearly by end of 21st century: Some floods are so severe they rarely strike more than once a century, but rising seas could threaten coastal communities with yearly extreme floods.

Sept 7, 2023: Temperature-related deaths could rise five-fold by end of century in US: Milder winter temperatures reduce the risk of death from cold, but heat waves take more lives in summers. In the U.S., gains and losses caused by global warming will be roughly equal until temperatures rise 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages, when heat will begin to take a greater toll, a new study finds.

Sept 5, 2023: Air pollution harms Indigenous and low-income Canadians: Canada’s Indigenous peoples, including the First Nations, Métis and Inuit, and low-income communities are more likely to experience air pollution-related deaths than non-Indigenous, wealthier populations living in the same cities.

Sept 5, 2023: Disparities in who dwells behind US levees: Historically underserved and disadvantaged populations disproportionately live behind levees throughout the United States. Many of these communities lack resources to maintain and upgrade necessary infrastructure, putting them at greater flood risk.

Aug 23, 2023: Toxic lead in urban soils harms Black Americans: Urban populations, and particularly majority Black communities, have elevated concentrations of lead in their blood. Previous studies assume that today’s atmospheric lead concentrations are caused by current lead emissions; however, new research finds that urban soils contain lead from the 20th century that becomes airborne during dry seasons, harming vulnerable communities.

Aug 13, 2023: “Planting” rocks in farms, along with emissions reductions, could help meet key IPCC carbon removal goal: Adding crushed volcanic rocks to agricultural fields can both improve the soil and suck down carbon dioxide. Doing so in the hot, humid tropics would be most efficient, a new study finds.

Aug 9, 2023: The Great Lakes are heating up: The Great Lakes in the U.S. Midwest have complex climate effects, and accurately modeling those effects can be difficult. New and improved models capture more of that complexity and reflect lake surface temperatures more accurately, revealing higher temperatures than previously estimated.

Aug 1, 2023: Earth’s most ancient impact craters are disappearing: Earth’s earliest history still holds mysteries for geologists, and ancient craters could provide some answers — scientists are racing against time to find them.

July 24, 2023: Colorado River Basin has lost water equal to Lake Mead due to climate change: A rapid rate of reductions in runoff associated with the Colorado Basin’s snowpack region, quantified here for the first time, is largely responsible for the water loss.

July 12, 2023: Mega forest fires mean mega flood risk for southeast Australia: Wildfires, which are becoming more frequent in many places due to climate change, are increasing runoff and river flooding in southeastern Australia, a new study finds. This means people living in fire-prone areas may face higher flood risk following wildfires.

June 28, 2023: Eastern North American snowstorms to shift north as climate warms: Annual total snowfall is likely to decrease across the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada as temperatures rise. However, major snowstorms will shift northward and produce most of the region’s snowfall during a few large events.

June 21, 2023: Climate cooling strategy may raise wildfire risk in some areas: Scientists have proposed injecting aerosols that reflect sunlight into the stratosphere to cool global temperatures. But this climate intervention method could actually increase wildfire risk in some regions such as western Central Africa.

June 10, 2023: Tonga’s Hunga eruption produced the most intense lightning ever recorded: The eruption produced 2,600 flashes per minute at peak intensity. Scientists used the lightning to peer into the ash cloud, teasing out new details of the eruption’s timeline.

Of these fourteen releases, all but five focus on climate change, and the horrible consequences predicted by climate models. Of those remaining five releases three push critical race theory by focusing solely on the impacts of environment on certain favored racial and ethnic minorities, while a fourth touts how human activity is destroying the ancient crater record on Earth.

Only one paper, on June 10th about the intensity of lightning during a volcanic eruption, describes pure research without any apparent political agenda.

In other words, since early June the only research the AGU has cared about and was willing to promote was research that either pushed the evil of global warming, caused by humans, or the evil of white supremacy, caused by white Europeans. Note too that almost all these papers do not involve actual observed data, but instead depend on computer models that have for almost forty years repeatedly failed to predict anything.

From the perspective of a science journalist who understands research, this endless weekly stream of political propaganda gets tiresome and boring, especially because it doesn’t involve research but the opinions of computer modelers, who have amply proved over the decades that their work is not worth the paper it is printed on. Why pay any attention to any press release from the AGU if this is the only thing it talks about?

Modern science

From the perspective of a legitimate scientist, this list is even more depressing. It not only means the AGU will enter any editorial process with a decided bias against certain results — no matter how well documented — it tells us that the people who run the AGU have no understanding of the scientific process at all.

The scientific method requires you to question everything, at all times. Skepticism must be your watchword. You must let your data rule, not your own beliefs or desires. The AGU however no longer follows this scientific method. Now, to get your research published or even publicized by the AGU it must either prove human-caused global warming, or show how systematic racism continues to oppress minorities and indigenous people.

And as I said, the AGU, like Nature, is now typical of most science organizations and publications. The scientific method is dead, and the AGU is now proud to announce this, every single week in its press releases.