Ed Note: This (re)post from two-and-a-half years ago is reproduced below (verbatim) given its continuing relevance to the climate debate today.

A recent piece in Climatewire by Scott Walderman, “‘Doomerism’: Why scientists disagree with Biden on 1.5 C,” begins:

Damned. Lost. Done. President Joe Biden keeps saying the world as we know it will be gone if global temperatures rise beyond 1.5 degrees.

Which led Michael Mann (a leading climate scientist/activist) to complain that Biden’s pitch was “misleading and unhelpful.” Mann continued:

It indeed feeds doomerism since there’s a very real possibility that we will fail to limit warming below 1.5 C. If we miss that exit ramp, we don’t continue headlong down the fossil fuel highway. We get off at the earliest possible exit.

“Doomerism” Everywhere?…

“There is no doubt that these emails are embarrassing and a public-relations disaster for science.” – Andrew Dessler, “Climate E-Mails Cloud the Debate,” December 10, 2009.

Another anniversary is marked regarding one of the greatest scientific scandals in the history of physical science, politicized physical science. Many books have been written on Climategate, one of the best, in terms of finding middle ground, being Fred Pearce’s The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth About Global Warming (Random House UK: 2010).

Pearce, then climate reporter at the The Guardian, wrote an extensive opinion-page editorial at the Progressive Left organ. His “Climategate’ was PR disaster that could bring healthy reform of peer Review,” was fronted by this editor note:

In a unique experiment, The Guardian published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature.

Ed. Note: These comments were prepared in support of the U.S. Department of Energy study, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” For legal reasons, the DOE has disbanded the effort, inviting the authors to respond to criticisms on their own time. The comments below are for the record.

The new DOE report, A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate (July 29, 2025) is a welcome rebuttal to “the cause” (a Climategate term) of climate alarm and policy activism. Its optimistic view of CO₂ enrichment and climate change should be welcomed by all interested in the subject.

This comment highlights quotations from climate scientists who are not associated with the “skeptic” or “realist” school of climate science (such as the 2025 Climate Working Group), but who nonetheless rightly understand energy as the master resource and the uncertainties of climate modeling.…

“Personal character matters for scientific transparency and honesty. Andrew Dessler does not pass the temperament test in a field of unsettled causality and ambiguous data.”

The intellectual case for CO2/climate optimism in place of doomism and despair is straightforward. As neatly summarized by Steven Koonin (a ‘climate flat earther‘ to Andrew Dessler) in the Wall Street Journal:

• Elevated carbon-dioxide levels enhance plant growth, contributing to global greening and increased agricultural productivity.
• Complex climate models provide limited guidance on the climate’s response to rising carbon-dioxide levels. Overly sensitive models, often using extreme scenarios, have exaggerated future warming projections and consequences.
• Data aggregated over the continental U.S. show no significant longterm trends in most extreme weather events. Claims of more frequent or intense hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and dryness in America aren’t supported by historical records.