Paul Connett, Ph.D., co-author of “The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There,” responds to Thursday’s U.S. Senate hearing during which members of the Finance Committee accused U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of “politicizing” science.
Yesterday, the world watched as you bayed and sneered at Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for disagreeing with your beliefs on vaccines.
Were you following a script forwarded to you by the PR hate machinery of the pharmaceutical industry?
Ironically, a similar complex of industry, CDC and pseudo-professional bodies has kept you silent on another public health practice for decades.
You have remained silent while they have dripped poison into our children’s bodies for 80 years.
Where were you between 2017 and 2020, when U.S. Government-funded mother-offspring and infant fluoride IQ studies were published?
Where were you in 2022, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention witnessed this science but failed to warn pregnant mums to avoid fluoridated water?
Where were you in 2024 when the National Toxicology Program reviewed these and many other IQ studies and concurred that fluoride was a neurotoxin?
Paul Connett, Ph.D., is co-author of “The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There.”
A leaked memo from one of the pharma cartel’s most powerful trade groups has revealed a desperate plan to push Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. out of his role as United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). The document, apparently originating from a closed-door meeting of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), shows that industry leaders are prepared to spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress and manipulating public opinion to force Kennedy from his job. At stake is not just U.S. government vaccine policy, but the deeper question of who actually runs public health in America – democratically elected officials, or the corporations that profit from disease.
The plan unveiled
The memo appears to come from BIO’s Vaccine Policy Steering Committee, a powerful body representing companies such as Pfizer, Merck, Novavax, and Vaxcyte. According to whistleblowers, the group met on April 3, 2025, to discuss the “threat” posed by Kennedy’s healthcare reform agenda. The summary leaves no doubt about its intentions. One line is especially blunt: “It is time to go to The Hill and lobby that it is time for RFK Jr. to go.”
The threat to the cartel is clear. Kennedy has insisted on long-term safety data for vaccines, full publication of trial results, and the restoration of manufacturer liability for injuries. These proposals would dramatically slow down the fast-track approvals and legal protections that have allowed vaccine makers to rake in billions while avoiding accountability. In the eyes of BIO, this is not just policy reform – it is a direct attack on its business model.
Fear of accountability
BIO’s real fear is not scientific debate but financial disruption. The memo quotes one executive from Vaxcyte warning that “investors have stated they are leaving until the next data read out,” citing uncertainty caused by Kennedy’s push for tighter regulation. Capital, in other words, is fleeing the vaccine sector. Instead of reassuring the public with stronger safety standards, BIO is working to reassure Wall Street by removing the man calling for reform.
This exposes the heart of the problem: the pharmaceutical industry has become so dependent on weak oversight and political protection that it views accountability itself as a threat. Rather than adapt to higher safety expectations, BIO would rather manipulate politics to preserve the old system.
Buying influence
The most revealing part of the plan is financial. BIO has committed $2 million to a new communications campaign titled ‘Why We Vaccinate.’ But this is no ordinary public health initiative. According to the memo, its goal is not education but “inspire and frighten” messaging designed to sway the “movable middle” of public opinion. Essentially, by tying vaccination to national security, economic productivity, and workforce resilience, the campaign seeks to use fear as a political weapon.
This is not science. It is psychology. Instead of engaging Kennedy’s arguments on their merits, BIO plans to drown out discussion with a flood of fear-based advertising and carefully managed surrogates. Among those mentioned as possible allies are Dr. Mehmet Oz and Senator Bill Cassidy. These figures are expected to provide a veneer of bipartisan legitimacy while avoiding any real debate about the substance of Kennedy’s proposals.
Controlling the narrative
Equally troubling is BIO’s strategy of redefining language itself. The leaked document reveals plans to replace words like “protect” and “defend” with softer-sounding terms such as “streamline,” “optimize,” and “enhance.” But behind the rebranding lies a cynical truth. As Robert W. Malone MD has pointed out, when BIO says “efficiency,” it means fewer safety checks. When it says “transparency,” it means PR-polished talking points, not the release of raw scientific data. When it says “resilience,” it means consumer obedience, not real safeguards.
This is not reform – it is narrative disingenuity that would not be out of place in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. BIO is attempting to control the vocabulary while ensuring that nothing actually changes. It is a form of deception that goes beyond lobbying, seeking to manipulate the very terms of debate so the public never realizes reform has been hollowed out.
The plot is already underway
The memo points to this month (September 2025) as a critical deadline. Congress is back in full session, budget negotiations are getting underway, and the media cycle is returning to full speed after the summer lull. BIO’s campaign is timed to seize this moment, flooding the airwaves with its ‘Why We Vaccinate’ messaging before Kennedy’s reform agenda gains traction.
September also marks the reopening of schools, a time when vaccine debates are most prominent in the public eye. By striking early, BIO hopes to dominate the narrative and silence Kennedy before he can rally broader public support. For the pharma industry, this is not about science but survival.
Significantly, therefore, in the past couple of days, we have already seen nine former leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) speaking out against Kennedy, publishing an open letter in The New York Times that criticizes his policies.
Separately, and simultaneously, more than 1,000 current and former HHS employees are said to be calling for Kennedy to either resign or be fired. Their letter – which does not name the signatories but mentions vaccines eight times – accuses him of endangering the nation’s health. It is difficult not to see the hand of BIO behind these moves.
A threat to democracy
The implications of this plot go far beyond health policy. If corporations can secretly conspire to spend millions lobbying for the removal of a sitting government official, then democracy itself is in danger. Whether one agrees with Kennedy’s policies or not, it should not be the pharmaceutical lobby that decides who serves in public office. That decision belongs to the people and their elected representatives, not to an industry that stands to profit from the outcome.
This is why the BIO leak matters so much. It shines a light on the machinery of influence that usually operates in the shadows – closed-door meetings, carefully managed talking points, and money flowing into Washington to buy outcomes that serve shareholders instead of citizens.
Who decides about global health?
The BIO plot also has international implications, as it aligns with broader efforts to centralize health policy through global treaties and the algorithmic censorship of dissenting medical views. If left unchecked, this could lead to a future where drug companies, aided by international bodies, dictate not only U.S. policy but all global health decisions as well. The Kennedy reforms represent a direct challenge to that vision.
Ultimately, therefore, this story is not just about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. It is about whether public health will be guided by the principles of science, safety, and consent – or by the profit motives of an industry that sees accountability as a threat. Seen in this light, BIO’s efforts to remove Kennedy are not a sign of power. They are an admittance of weakness.
Kennedy’s reforms may be inconvenient for Wall Street, but they reflect the public’s increasing demands for safety, consent, and honesty in medicine. The real question now is whether corporations will continue to dictate the rules – or whether the American people can successfully reclaim health policy for the public good.
Paul Anthony Taylor
Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings.
In a contentious Senate hearing today, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. engaged in fiery exchanges with senators on both sides of the aisle who questioned his record in office, the administration’s vaccine policies, and the ouster of top officials and advisers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
During the hearing held by the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), many senators used their allotted five minutes to make impassioned speeches and air their grievances, often leaving Kennedy little or no time to respond.
The New York Times described Kennedy, who was visibly annoyed at times, as “remarkably salty and dismissive with senators at times today.”
“You don’t want to talk,” Kennedy told Sen. Elizabeth Smith (D-Minn.). “You want to harangue and have partisan politics. I want to solve these problems.”
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) called for Kennedy to resign or be fired by President Donald Trump during the hearing. This morning, Democratic senators on the committee issued a statement calling for his resignation.
Several senators also pressed Kennedy on whether Operation Warp Speed was a great accomplishment, and raised concerns about cuts to Medicaid and funding for rural hospitals.
Kennedy shot back at his critics, promising to fix the “malpractice” within the public health agencies, and touting his agency’s many accomplishments since he took the helm.
He blasted the CDC, which he said, “is the most corrupt agency in HHS,” for its history of failing to protect Americans’ health, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis, during which the U.S. “did worse than any country in the world.”
“The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” he said, adding, “That’s why we need bold, competent and creative new leadership at CDC. People who are able and willing to chart a new course.”
Wyden called Kennedy a liar, Kennedy accused Wyden of doing nothing to prevent chronic disease
After Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) kicked off what he predicted would be a “spirited debate,” ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) attacked Kennedy for the “costs, chaos and corruption” he allegedly brought to the agency.
That was also the title of a report Wyden co-authored with Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) and submitted to the record, summarizing their take on Kennedy’s tenure at HHS.
Wyden called Kennedy a liar and made what he called an “unprecedented” request that Kennedy be formally sworn in, presumably so the committee could later prove he lied under oath. Crapo refused the request, which isn’t customary in Senate hearings.
Wyden then launched a long attack on Kennedy’s “agenda,” which he said is “fundamentally cruel and defies common sense.”
Kennedy shot back:
“Senator, you’ve sat in that chair for how long? 20, 25 years? While the chronic disease in our children went up to 76%, and you said nothing. You never asked the question, why it’s happening. ‘Why is this happening?’ Today, for the first time in 20 years, we learned that infant mortality has increased in our country. It’s not because I came in here. It’s because of what happened during the Biden administration that we’re going to end.”
Kennedy says Monarez lied in WSJ Op-Ed
Several senators referred to an op-ed written by Monarez and published this morning in The Wall Street Journal. Monarez, who was fired last week by Trump, claimed Kennedy pressured her “to compromise science itself.”
“I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote.
When asked, Kennedy disputed Monarez’s account of her firing. “I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said ‘no,’” he said.
Wyden quoted Monarez to Kennedy and asked whether he had pressured her to preapprove recommendations. “No, I did not say that to her,” Kennedy responded.
So she’s lying today to the American people in the Wall Street Journal ?” Wyden asked.
“Yes, sir,” Kennedy responded.
Kennedy said the opposite was true. Monarez indicated she would refuse to endorse any CDC vaccine panel recommendations even before the committee met to make them, he said. He said he asked her to walk back that stance so she would hear the recommendations and their rationale before making any decision, but Monarez refused.
Taking away vaccines?
Several senators, including Smith and Warren, accused Kennedy of going back on his commitment and “taking away vaccines” from the American people.
Warren cited the FDA’s decision to end emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and limit approvals of the vaccines to people at high risk. However, HHS also confirmed the vaccines would be available for anyone who decided they wanted them anyway.
Defending the move, Kennedy told Warren, “We’re not going to recommend a product for which there’s no clinical data for that indication, is that what I should be doing?”
“I know you’ve taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator,” he later told Warren.
Operation Warp Speed — worthy of a Nobel Prize
Senators accused Kennedy of holding a contradictory position on Operation Warp Speed, which Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said deserved a Nobel Prize, but few gave him time to respond to the accusations.
Several senators also lambasted Kennedy for not acknowledging that the COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a physician who supported Kennedy and spent much of his five minutes questioning why the hepatitis B vaccine is given to all babies, asked Kennedy to respond.
Kennedy said that when the COVID-19 vaccines were first rolled out, they were necessary because the virus was dangerous, but that the vaccines were significantly less necessary now.
“The virus has mutated, it’s much less dangerous, where there’s a lot of natural immunity and herd immunity, and so the calculus is different, and it’s complicated.”
Kennedy added:
“They think I’m being evasive because I won’t make a kind of a statement that’s almost religious in nature, ‘it saved a million lives.’ Well, there is no data to support that. There’s no study. There’s modeling studies. There’s faulty data.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who thanked Kennedy for “putting up with this abuse,” backed Kennedy’s statements on the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines and said federal health agencies hid the early signals for myo and pericarditis.
At the end of the hearing, Crapo offered Kennedy the floor to make a statement if there were things he wanted to clarify.
“I think I’ll have mercy on everybody here,” Kennedy said. “Let’s adjourn.”
The Associated Press (AP), via ABC News, claims that climate change is responsible for the intensity of European wildfires in a story titled “Climate change made deadly wildfires in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus more fierce, study finds.” This is false. Data show no long-term trend of increasing wildfires in any of the countries listed, and overall global wildfire data shows declining fire extent.
The AP cites a non-peer reviewed report by World Weather Attribution (WWA) to claim that climate change was responsible for necessary conditions, specifically, hot and dry weather, which drove the widespread wildfire outbreaks in Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, and made them “burn much more fiercely.”
The story and the report it relies upon are suspect from the start. First, as discussed by Climate Realism previously, as a matter of geography the climate of the Mediterranean region is naturally arid, prone to drought, extreme heat, and associated wildfires. Fire helped shape the ecology of the entire region. Some past fires have been huge. For instance, more than 112 years of global warming ago, when global average temperatures were cooler and humans weren’t contributing significantly to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the great Thessaloniki fire burned for 13 days. It left more than 70,000 people homeless, and destroyed two-thirds of Greece’s second largest city. So hot and dry weather is the norm for the Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus, especially during the summer, rather than being unusual weather conditions.
The AP ignores this fact about the region’s climate. It also did not critically assess WWA. The AP portrays WWA an unbiased “group of researchers that examines whether and to what extent extreme weather events are linked to climate change.” But this is false. The entire reason for WWA’s existence is specifically to “attribute” extreme weather events to human-caused climate change, in part to provide material that can be used in lawsuits filed against governments and the fossil fuel industry. The WWA believes the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s data driven approach to understating the causes of extreme weather is far too cautious when it comes to attribution. WWA produces studies on the assumption that climate change caused or contributed to an extreme event, the only real question being how much more likely was the event to occur, or how much more severe was the event, than it would have been absent human fossil fuel use. That is the fallacy of affirming the consequent or assuming what you are attempting to prove.
In this case, WWA claimed the fires were “22% more intense in 2025, Europe’s worst recorded year of wildfires.” This claim is unverified and misleading, at best. The Mediterranean region the AP discusses is not all of Europe, and it was not that regions worst year of wildfires.
It is worth noting that WWA seems to only attribute extreme weather to climate change, never mild or good weather. WWA specifically identifies its goal as increasing the “immediacy of climate change, thereby increasing support for mitigation.” Climate Realismhas explained at length why single event attribution is scientifically misleading and unreliable at best in past articles, and we’ve specifically refuted flawed WWA reports previously dozens of times, here, here, and here, for example.
This year may well be a record fire year for parts of Europe and Asia, but only a sustained trend of worsening fires would prove that they were driven by climate change. No such trend exists, globally or in the individual countries mentioned.
Looking at the most recent available data from the joint collaborative project between NASA and the European Space Agency, Copernicus, for each country we can see the wildfire trends are far from consistent.
Again, particularly in the case of yearly burned area, there is no consistent trend in wildfire data for Cypress, and a possible overall decline in the yearly number of fires.
Downward or flat trends can’t honestly be portrayed as increasing trends.
Although global wildfire data also is spotty for long-term trends, what data exists consistently suggest a declining global trend. NASA data shows a global decline in acreage lost to wildfire since 2003.
Extreme weather event attribution studies, produced rapidly in hours after a natural disaster strikes, aren’t vetted science. Still, they are eagerly accepted as evidence of climate impacts by the alarmist media. This is absurd when any credible fact checker, editor, or investigative journalist could easily access publicly available data that devastates the climate change linkage at the core of the story. One would hope that the Associated Press’ writers are gullible or naïve, but even taking that charitable view, the lack of basic research is inexcusable for any journalistic outlet. One reason to doubt the charitable belief in how so many false climate tales are spun out of the AP is that the stories are all biased in the same direction of climate alarm – climate change is never not to blame – and that the AP’s climate coverage is specifically funded by foundations and non-profit organizations who have long pushed climate alarm.
In February, I highlighted a statement by Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph L. Abraham, commending it for its pro-freedom tone. I also noted that “I will be watching for follow-up actions.” Well, on Thursday, Abraham came out with a powerful editorial again strongly arguing for employing a pro-freedom approach in relation to medical issues.
In the editorial, Abraham took on squarely the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — a large and influential organization of pediatricians that Abraham termed an “authoritarian organization” that has been “captured by special interests.” The AAP, Abraham related, “thinks they know better than any parent or doctor in this country and wants you to bend to their will while they hold your child down and give them whatever pharmaceutical product they choose.”
In his editorial, Abraham threw his support behind United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who last week strongly criticized the AAP and its “Big Pharma benefactors” after the AAP took yet another step in its over-the-top campaign to maximize the amount of shots injected into children in America.
Abraham’s passionate and informative editorial, published at The Center Square, begins as follows:
By now, virtually every parent in the U.S. understands that COVID-19 shots for healthy children are a very bad idea. Public health authorities in nearly every country on earth abandoned the practice a couple of years ago. Even the World Health Organization (WHO), which admittedly lost whatever credibility it had left during the pandemic, stopped recommending the shot for healthy kids. At no point did the theoretical benefits outweigh the risks of an experimental product that had unknown long-term risks in the pediatric population.
Many are probably wondering why this topic is still being talked about at all, which would have been a valid question until recently, when an organization formerly known as the gold standard for pediatric advocacy defied logic and commanded that all babies, on their 6-month birthday, receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) made this recommendation in response to the CDC’s credibility-restoring move of removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the childhood schedule. They have even gone so far as to sue Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and the CDC over the very sound decision.
This is not the first time the AAP has done something crazy. In 2023, its board voted unanimously in favor of recommending transition therapy for “transgender” kids. We don’t let kids choose what they eat for dinner, much less make irreversible, life-altering decisions. To put a cherry on top of the insanity, the AAP has also called for religious vaccine exemptions to be outlawed. This authoritarian organization thinks they know better than any parent or doctor in this country and wants you to bend to their will while they hold your child down and give them whatever pharmaceutical product they choose.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to announce that autism is linked to the use of Tylenol during pregnancy in a report expected to be released this month, The Wall Street Journalreported today.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will also likely suggest that low levels of the vitamin folate also contribute to autism. The report will propose that a form of folate called folic acid, or leucovorin, can be used to treat symptoms of the disorder, according to the WSJ.
Acetaminophen, the ingredient found in hundreds of prescription and over-the-counter medicines — including Tylenol products — is routinely recommended for fever reduction and the relief of mild to moderate pain. Pregnant women commonly take it.
The drug has long been linked to liver toxicity, and several studies over the last decade — including one published last month by researchers at Harvard Medical School — have found that children exposed to the drug during pregnancy may be more likely to develop neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD.
Shares of Tylenol, made by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Kenvue, declined nearly 11% Friday after the WSJ published its report.
“Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of the people who use our products,” a Kenvue spokeswoman told the WSJ. “We have continuously evaluated the science and continue to believe there is no causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says Tylenol is safe to use in pregnancy. In 2021, as more evidence of the link was emerging, the organization published a statement opposing a consensus statement supported by a group of 91 scientists in the journal Nature Reviews Endocrinology. The scientists said that a growing body of research suggests that prenatal exposure to the drug may alter fetal development and increase the risks of neurodevelopmental, reproductive and urogenital disorders.
“ACOG and obstetrician-gynecologists across the country have always identified acetaminophen as one of the only safe pain relievers for pregnant individuals during pregnancy,” the pharmaceutical industry-sponsored medical organization insisted.
An estimated 1 in 31 (3.22%) 8-year-old children had an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis in 2022 — up from 1 in 36 (2.8%) in 2020, and 1 in 1,000 children in the 1990s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest study, published earlier this year.
“The body of evidence around acetaminophen and autism really suggests that the highest risks are not prenatal but neonatal and postnatal,” according to Children’s Health Defense Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.
“If I were to rank the risk periods, neonatal would be the highest, postnatal next and prenatal the least, given that pregnant women will be able to help detox the acetaminophen, reducing the burden on the developing unborn child,” Hooker said.
He said the effort involves hundreds of scientists globally and promised results by this month. Kennedy said that once the environmental causes of autism are identified, “We’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Last month, Kennedy told President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting that his agency was on track to announce the findings of an ongoing study on the causes of autism in September.
“We’re finding interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly almost certainly causing autism, and we’re going to be able to address those in September,” Kennedy said.
Reuters reported that researchers have submitted more than 100 proposals to participate in the Trump administration’s $50 million study into possible causes of autism. A list of 25 grant winners is expected to be announced at the end of the month.
Dr Peter Ridd has been researching the Great Barrier Reef and other things since 1984, has invented a range of advanced scientific instrumentation, and written over 100 scientific publications. Since being fired by James Cook University for raising concerns about science quality assurance issues, Peter Ridd receives no payment for any of the work he does.
As of 1 September, Sweden no longer recommends Covid-19 vaccination for children unless an individual medical assessment finds they are at increased risk of severe disease.
Even then, it is only available with a doctor’s prescription.
Adults are eligible for a single dose only if they are 75 and older, or belong to defined risk groups.
It is a strikingly cautious policy — yet in Sweden, there is no sense of crisis. Public health officials describe it as a proportionate step, aligned with the evidence.
By contrast, in the United States, the temperature has been rising over the narrowing of Covid-19 vaccine policy. The medical establishment has long been hostile toward Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr, but in recent weeks the attacks have escalated.
This week in the New York Times, nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that his decisions mean “children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines.”
On ABC TV, outgoing CDC official Dr Demetre Daskalakis intensified the rhetoric, claiming he “only sees harm coming” for America’s children. The language was deliberately alarming and intended to signal an emerging catastrophe.
Dr Demetre Daskalakis, former director, CDC National Center for Immunization & Respiratory Diseases.
In reality, though, the policies under review in the US look more like a belated effort to bring American practice closer to what Europe has already done.
The CDC’s own data illustrate why recalibration makes sense.
Figures show that the risk of children dying from Covid-19 equates to roughly 1 in 810,000 per year (0.000123%) — an infinitesimally low risk.
It’s even lower for children without underlying conditions, closer to 1 in 1.75 million (0.000057%).
Despite these tiny mortality figures, Daskalakis warned that half of infants hospitalised for Covid-19 last season had “no underlying conditions.”
But that claim paints a distorted picture.
A Covid-19 hospitalisation is defined as “a positive SARS-CoV-2 test ≤14 days before admission or during hospitalisation,” meaning any child treated for a broken arm or routine surgery but testing positive, is still counted as a Covid case.
When researchers examined hospital charts more closely, they found roughly 30% of paediatric Covid-19 admissions were ‘incidental’ – in other words, they were hospitalised with Covid, not for Covid.
Across Europe and beyond, other nations are moving in the same direction as Sweden.
The United Kingdom has also tightened eligibility as it heads into autumn, limiting Covid boosters to people over 75, nursing-home residents, and those with weakened immune systems.
Its guidance notes that “in the current era of high population immunity to Covid-19, additional Covid-19 doses provide very limited, if any, protection against infection and any subsequent onward transmission of infection.”
These are targeted, risk-based policies aligned to measurable benefits.
Australia, too, has shifted. In May, the Department of Health quietly updated its immunisation handbook to state that healthy children and adolescents under 18 without medical conditions no longer need the Covid-19 vaccine.
There was no press conference, no ministerial statement, no media blitz. And most notably, no outrage from the medical establishment.
Taken together, these changes show nations with advanced health systems are adjusting policies in response to the evidence.
Unlike in the US, no one accuses countries like Sweden, Britain, or Australia of ‘sacrificing children’ by narrowing access to Covid-19 vaccines.
Hepatitis B on the radar
On September 18-19, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will meet to vote on various issues, including the current hepatitis B schedule.
Daskalakis warned that at its upcoming meeting, ACIP might “try to change the birth dose,” arguing that public health only gets “one bite of that apple” to vaccinate newborns against hepatitis B.
But several advanced European programs already do not give a universal day-one dose.
Instead, they target it to babies of mothers who test positive for hepatitis B, since most are screened in hospital, and begin routine doses later in infancy.
Denmark follows this approach. It is mainstream policy, endorsed by national health authorities, and no one suggests Danish babies are being left unprotected.
Scrutiny, not sabotage
The criticism of ACIP has been fierce.
Current members are branded as “dangerous” or anti-vaccine when their real offense is pressing for increased scrutiny and asking difficult questions. That is what an advisory committee is meant to do.
Kennedy is accused of sabotaging access to vaccines, but his approach is simply a call for the ‘gold standard’ science that Americans were promised by this administration.
As FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said this week, the CDC is a “broken” agency. That is why proportional policies and humility matter.
The way forward is not to alarm Americans with talk of bans or lost access to vaccines. It is to deliver risk-based, evidence-driven recommendations, as peer nations already do, and to be candid about uncertainty.
That is how public health begins to rebuild trust…the trust Kennedy says he now hopes to restore.
A recent CBS News article, “Abrupt Antarctic climate shifts could lead to ‘catastrophic consequences for generations,’ experts warn,” claims that Antarctica is on the brink of irreversible collapse due to climate change, warning that sea levels could rise by meters and that “catastrophic consequences for generations” are looming. This is false or, at best, deeply misleading. The actual data and history of Antarctic ice show that “abrupt changes” are neither unprecedented nor a reason to panic. Natural variability and cyclical shifts are being ignored in favor of sensational headlines pushing the increasingly untenable climate crisis narrative.
CBS was not alone in pushing the Antarctic climate crisis narrative. On 21 August 2025, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) joined the chorus of media outlets with alarming headlines warning of pending ice collapse, publishing a report claiming Antarctica is undergoing “rapid, self-perpetuating changes” that are “potentially irreversible.” Each of the reports cited a new Nature review led by Professor Nerilie Abram, as the source of the information for their alarming articles.
ABC’s article presents Antarctica as being in a state of runaway decline, with imminent threats to emperor penguins and global sea levels, parroting language from the Abram paper as if it were observed fact, rather than the speculative synthesis of research papers that the Nature study cites. CBS, ABC, and other media outlets are covering this story as if a tipping point is upon us—but a closer look at the evidence reveals otherwise.
CBS News warns:
Abrupt and potentially irreversible changes in Antarctica driven by climate change could lift global oceans by meters and lead to ‘catastrophic consequences for generations,’ scientists warned Wednesday. … After increasing slightly during the first 35 years that satellite data was available, Antarctic sea-ice cover plunged dramatically over the last decade.
Australia’s ABC News, meanwhile, uncritically repeats Abram’s claims and, describing the Antarctic as “rapidly, self-perpetuating” on the cusp of collapse, while offering little discussion of data—leaning instead on worst-case modeling and literature reviews.
Antarctic data and an examination of its history show that such events have happened previously, long before anyone was worried about human-caused climate change, and they are not self-perpetuating but rather, seem cyclical in nature.
The CBS article claims that “Antarctic sea-ice cover plunged dramatically over the last decade,” citing a “regime shift” since 2014. ABC News, echoing the same theme, refers to a sudden and supposedly “irreversible” decline. But both articles omit key facts, among them:
The “Abrupt” Decline Follows Decades of Expansion. Satellite measurements of Antarctic sea-ice began in late 1978. For most of the next 36 years, Antarctic sea-ice was stable or increasing, setting multiple record highs between 2007 and 2014. In October 2014, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported: “Antarctic sea-ice extent set an all-time record high for the third straight year.” This expansion occurred for more than 30 years during the period when the Earth was warming, contradicting claims that warming inevitably reduces Antarctic sea-ice.
The recent sharp declines since 2016 are real, but as the most robust satellite records show, these represent a regime shift within a variable system—not evidence of permanent or “runaway” collapse as one recent paper detailed.
Evidence of Antarctica’s history shows that natural variability dominates changes in Antarctica. Longer reconstructions, stretching back to 1905, confirm that Antarctic sea-ice has experienced periods of large growth and subsequent declines over the past century. One 2020, study demonstrated that natural variability, including the influence of atmospheric and oceanic circulation, have likely played a role in any recent changes, as they drove such changes in the past.
As importantly as all this is, concern for the recent decline in sea ice is largely misplaced since, as even CBS news acknowledged in its story, [f]loating sea ice does not significantly add to sea level when it melts . . ..” As a result, neither the “record setting” expansion of sea-ice spanning the late 20th and early 21st century nor the recent decline significantly effect sea levels.
Perhaps that’s why the new stories tried to tie the sea-ice decline to rising seas indirectly saying the sea ice retreat, “ . . . does replace white surfaces that reflect almost all of the sun’s energy back into space with deep blue water, which absorbs the same amount instead.”
The problem here is, there is no evidence the earlier multidecade expansion of sea-ice or the recent decline has a causal connection to ice growth or expansion on mainland Antarctica, the latter of which could impact sea levels. Indeed, the record indicates that for some of the period when sea-ice was expanding, Antarctica was losing mass, and now, while it is in decline, Antarctica is gaining ice on net, reducing sea level rise.
Shifting focus from sea-ice to Antarctica’s mainland, the CBS and ABC News shift attention to recent ice losses on the West Antarctic ice sheet and in particular the declining Thwaites glacier.
When discussing ice sheets, both outlets repeat claims that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has crossed a point of no return. But they fail to mention that West Antarctica sits atop a tectonic rift system with elevated geothermal heat flux, which drives melting from below, regardless of atmospheric conditions. In short, subsurface volcanic activity or heating from tectonic shifts is melting the region’s ice from below, and causing increased flow into the sea.
Indeed, Direct borehole measurements, aeromagnetic surveys, and radar-based research confirm anomalously high heat flow in the region from beneath the mass. This subglacial influence helps explain why areas like Amundsen and Thwaites behave differently from the stable East Antarctic.
Also, the northern Antarctic Peninsula, which is frequently highlighted for its instability, extends north of the Antarctic Circle into sub-Antarctic latitudes. Its climate and dynamics cannot be generalized to the rest of the continent according to NASA Earth Observatory in 2014.
Climate Realism has previously discussed the causes and consequences of ice loss on the Antarctic peninsula and in the West Antarctic multiple times previously, here and here, for example, in each case debunking a media claim that humans are behind the loss.
Antarctica’s ice loss is important, CBS and ABC tell us, because the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s collapse could “raise sea levels by meters,” threatening “hundreds of millions.” But the actual rate of global sea level rise, measured by satellites and tide gauges, is about 3 millimeters per year as detailed in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise. At this rate, it would take 333 years to reach even a single meter of rise.
Loss of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is very unlikely over this century and beyond under scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions considered in this report. Complete loss of the EAIS would require sustained global warming significantly above the levels projected for this century, and would take thousands of years.
Putting the supposed amount of Antarctic glacier loss in context is important, because as a percentage of the continent’s total ice volume, recent reported losses from the continent are miniscule, contrary to media hype. See the figure below, as presented at Climate at a Glance Antarctic Ice Melt.
Figure: Comparison of satellite data for Antarctic ice mass loss. Cumulative ice mass loss on the left and that same data compared to the total mass of ice on the right.
Data source: http://imbie.org. Graphs originally by Willis Eschenbach, adapted and annotated by Anthony Watts.
Describing the ice changes in Antarctica as “irreversible” or “runaway” is nothing more than alarming speculation that ignores evidence to the contrary.
CBS, ABC, and the other mainstream media outlets touting the study’s warnings about the future also ignore the fact that contrary to the implication of the study, Antarctica is actually gaining ice at present and has for the past couple of years.
As discussed at Climate Change Weekly, In late April and early May, mainstream media outlets ran dozens of stories discussing the findings of a recent study that showed Antarctica’s ice mass was growing. The outlets called the ice and snow gain “astonishing,” “surprising,” and “shock[ing]” and said it “startled the scientific community.” That’s right, recent research shows that the Antarctic has not warmed over the past seven decades and that the vast bulk of Antarctica experienced substantial ice growth in the past couple of years, reversing the decline reported in Nature that ABC, CBS, and other outlets are writing about. Glacial melt which had been contributing to sea level rise reversed itself over a period of three years, adding mass and cutting Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise.
Any reporting that omits the physics, history, and current trends is incomplete and misleading. And any story that blames global warming for glacier melt in Antarctica and subsequent sea level rise, when the continent has not experienced warming, glaciers on the whole are growing and thus reducing sea level rise, is just false.
Both ABC and CBS also point to emperor penguin breeding failures as a result of climate change, implying an existential threat across the species. Yet the 2025 study making these claims conducted a regional and local survey of selected colonies from 2009 to 2024, reporting a 22 percent decline in those specific locations. It didn’t look at the health of emperor penguin colonies across Antarctic as a whole. The authors themselves specifically cautioned that their results may not represent the entire Antarctic coastline—a vital caveat that ABC and CBS’s stories lack. With emperor penguins living for decades, a 15-year record is simply too short to establish population trajectories. These penguins have survived warm and cold phases across the Holocene. To suggest continent-wide extinction risk by 2100 is not supported by the available evidence.
In the end, history shows that the expansion and contraction of Antarctic sea-ice are natural features of a highly variable system. Short-term losses are not proof of a “runaway” tipping point; rather, they are well within known ranges of natural variability.
CBS, ABC, and other media outlets are constructing a narrative of Antarctic collapse by cherry-picking short-term declines, ignoring decades of stability and increase, omitting key physical context, and leaning on speculative reviews. Climate Realism has factually debunked similar media scare stories in the past, here and here. The actual Antarctic observational record reveals a dynamic system—one that expands and contracts, shaped by natural variability, oceanic and atmospheric cycles, and unique geographic barriers.
The catastrophic claims ABC and CBS are parroting are not only unsupported, they fly in the face of decades of data and scientific understanding. Had the mainstream media displayed a little investigative curiosity, it would have questioned the recent study’s findings, since the evidence clearly shows Antarctic “climate shifts” are not a harbinger of doom but another chapter in a long story of natural change.
The tragic mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school by a 23-year-old shooter, who identified as transgender, has reignited concerns about a possible connection between SSRIs and violent mass shootings. HHS Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the National Institutes of Health will investigate whether these widely prescribed antidepressants may play a role in fueling such acts of violence.
On 23 August 2025, award-winning science journalist Robert Whitaker, founder of the evidence-based Mad in America website, published a very important article:
I summarize here Bob’s detailed article, adding my own thoughts and explanations about the issues.
On July 21, the FDA convened a panel on antidepressants in pregnancy, with a focus on possible harms to the fetus from exposure to the drugs.
The panelists’ brief presentations, and their plea for informed consent, did not sit well with medical organizations. They issued statements denouncing the panel as biased and misinformed; declared that the evidence showed that SSRIs and SNRIs are effective and safe treatments for prenatal depression; and claimed that the real concern was untreated depression. Major media echoed uncritically this flawed and erroneous expert consensus in their reporting on the panel.
The professional organizations betrayed the public’s right to know. They were putting their guild interests – protecting their prescribing practices and belief in the efficacy and lack of harms of antidepressants – ahead of their duty to provide an honest basis for informed consent. As detailed below, they misled the media, and the media in turn misled the public, in both cases very seriously so.
One of the panelists, Michael Levin, concluded that since serotonin is important for embryonic development, “manipulating its use by cells with SSRIs is very, very likely to cause certain kinds of defects.”
Animal experiments have proved him right. Fetal exposure to SSRIs leads to altered brain development, numerous risks to fetal health, and deficits in behavior after birth. At birth, fetal SSRI exposure in rodents is associated with low birth weight, persistent pulmonary hypertension, increased risk of cardiomyopathy, and increased postnatal mortality. After birth, such exposure is associated with delayed motor development, reduced pain sensitivity, disrupted juvenile play, fear of new things, and a higher vulnerability of affective disorders (such as anhedonia-like behavior). These behaviors are regarded as signs of anxiety and depression in animals.
With the animal studies showing also an increased risk for miscarriage, pre-term birth, and congenital malformations, the first wave of studies in humans focused on these concerns, in addition to low birth weight and persistent pulmonary hypertension. This research produced an abundance of findings that the risk of such adverse events is elevated with fetal exposure to SSRIs in comparison to healthy controls.
A fair number of studies tell of how in utero exposure to SSRIs alters brain development in humans and lead to other harms. For example, a study by Kaiser Permanente of Northern California of 82,170 pregnant women showed that if the depression was treated with counseling, the risk of a pre-term delivery was reduced by 18%, whereas treatment with an antidepressant increased it by 31%. In both cases, there was a dose-response relationship.
Another harm is the neonatal abstinence syndrome, which is common, e.g. it occurred in 30% of 60 newborns exposed to SSRIs in utero. Researchers have published an extensive list of abstinence symptoms, which includes jitteriness, poor muscle tone, weak cry, abnormal crying, respiratory distress, seizure, abnormal behavior, sleep abnormalities, poor feeding, vomiting, uncoordinated sucking, and lethargy. In a study using the World Health Organization’s database for adverse drug effects, researchers classified 84% of the reported abstinence symptoms as serious.
The Doubt Industry at Work
The rodent studies, which were not confounded, clearly showed how fetal exposure to SSRIs regularly leads to maladaptive adult rodents. Correspondingly, in comparison with healthy controls, studies of children exposed in utero to SSRIs show an elevated risk of getting diagnosed with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and affective disorders.
In a 2025 study, one of the FDA panelists, Jay Gingrich, and colleagues reported that prenatal exposure to SSRIs leads to a hyperactive amygdala both in mice and humans, which made both species more fearful and depressed as adolescents. Maternal depression could not explain these effects. Gingrich said at the FDA hearing that “these kids look pretty normal throughout early childhood, and then when they hit adolescence, their rates of depression really started to go up, which is what we see in our mouse studies.”
Bob Whitaker explains that studies in humans have produced inconsistent results. This is not surprising. When research results are threatening for a profession, researchers with guild or financial conflicts of interest always produce an avalanche of substandard studies casting doubt on the issues or denying them.
Maternal depression is known to confer developmental risks on children, and these researchers have therefore sought to account for this confounding factor by using statistical adjustments. Statistical adjustments are highly bias-prone, and in many of the studies Bob reviewed, the authors had not described their approach in sufficient detail nor whether the factors they controlled for had been published in a protocol before they looked at the data. Such studies can therefore be “torture your data till they confess” exercises.
A commonly used adjustment method is logistic regression, but what is little known is that the more baseline variables we include in a logistic regression, the further we are likely to get from the truth. This was documented in an excellent PhD thesis.
The Howl of Outrage
The same day the FDA had its panel meeting, or a couple of days later, leading medical organizations spread seriously misleading information.
The American Psychiatric Association wrote to the FDA that it was “alarmed and concerned by the misinterpretations and unbalanced viewpoints shared by several of the panelists…This propagation of biased interpretations at a time when suicide is a leading cause of maternal death within the first postpartum year could seriously hinder maternal mental health care. The inaccurate interpretation of data, and the use of opinion, rather than the years of research on antidepressant medications, will exacerbate stigma and deter pregnant individuals from seeking necessary care.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stated that the panel was “alarmingly unbalanced” and did not adequately acknowledge the harms of untreated mood disorders in pregnancy. They claimed that SSRIs in pregnancy are a critical tool in preventing the potentially devastating effects of untreated anxiety and depression.
They also claimed that “Robust evidence has shown that SSRIs are safe in pregnancy and that most do not increase the risk of birth defects. However, untreated depression in pregnancy can put our patients at risk for substance use, preterm birth, preeclampsia, limited engagement in medical care and self-care, low birth weight, impaired attachment with their infant, and even suicide…Unfortunately, the many outlandish and unfounded claims made by the panelists regarding SSRIs will only serve to incite fear and cause patients to come to false conclusions that could prevent them from getting the treatment they need.”
The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine stated they were “alarmed by the unsubstantiated and inaccurate claims made by FDA panelists concerning maternal depression and the use of SSRI antidepressants during pregnancy” and strongly supported the use of SSRIs.
They claimed that “Untreated or undertreated depression during pregnancy carries health risks, such as suicide, preterm birth, preeclampsia, and low birth weight…the available data consistently show that SSRI use during pregnancy is not associated with congenital anomalies, fetal growth problems, or long-term developmental problems.”
The National Curriculum in Reproductive Psychiatry was deeply concerned that some panelists “presented misleading or stigmatizing information about psychiatric treatment during pregnancy, undermined the scientific consensus, and failed to appropriately center the well-being of pregnant individuals.”
As shown in Whitaker’s article, virtually all statements were false, but they were propagated and enforced in major media, which did not investigate the issues at all.
The Los Angeles Timeswrote that the panel spread misinformation about the drugs’ use in pregnancy and that healthcare providers had said that the risks of not treating depression in pregnancy far outweigh those of SSRIs.
The New York Timeswrote that the panel was alarmingly biased against antidepressant use and did not adequately acknowledge the harms of untreated perinatal mood disorders in pregnancy.
NBC News accused the panel of promoting misinformation, “according to several psychiatrists who tuned into the meeting.”
National Public Radio talked about misinformation alarming doctors and claimed that
Well-controlled studies had not found the risks highlighted by the FDA panel.
Total Moral Meltdown
Those who spread misinformation were professional organizations riddled with conflicts of interest and – to paraphrase Lenin – their useful idiots among journalists.
There is nothing that hurts like the truth about healthcare. For the unborn child, fetal exposure to SSRIs only provides a tally of harms. Adam Urato, in his remarks at the FDA hearing, put it into a haunting perspective: “Never before in human history have we chemically altered developing babies like this, especially the developing fetal brain, and this is happening without any real public warning. That must end.”
An earlier Mad in America report on prenatal screening for depression showed that task forces set up in the UK, Canada, and the US all struggled to find evidence that screening plus treatment with antidepressants provided any benefit to the mother.
I describe in my freely available books, with numerous references to solid science, what the facts are:
As explained by psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff at the FDA meeting, meta-analyses of placebo-controlled trials have consistently shown that the benefit of treating depression with antidepressants is so small that it lacks clinical relevance. It is therefore impossible that the risks of not treating depression in pregnancy “far outweigh those of SSRIs.”
Antidepressants double the risk of suicide. Depression in pregnancy should therefore be treated with psychotherapy, which will not harm the fetus. The panel members spoke of treating depression with non-drug alternatives but the media did not find this essential information important. In the absurd world of psychiatry, unfortunately, “treatment” is synonymous with drugs.
All the claims above about the wonders antidepressants can achieve for the mother and the newborn are wrong.
Antidepressants are being increasingly used in children and adolescents, although they drive some of them to commit suicide and don’t work for them.
Even the unborn are being harmed on a large scale. Will this madness ever stop?
Dr. Peter Gøtzsche co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration, once considered the world’s preeminent independent medical research organization. In 2010 Gøtzsche was named Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen. Gøtzsche has published more than 97 over 100 papers in the “big five” medical journals (JAMA, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, and Annals of Internal Medicine). Gøtzsche has also authored books on medical issues including Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime.
Last December the Daily Sceptic published an article reporting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could be preparing to start blaming humans for individual bad weather events. Straws-in-the-wind stuff, based on an IPCC press release claiming a century of burning hydrocarbons had resulted in “more frequent and intense extreme weather events”. To date, the IPCC has failed to detect that humans using hydrocarbons have led to worse bad weather on the simple scientific ground that it is impossible, with current data sources, to remove the overwhelming role of natural variation. Our story was prescient. It’s all change at the IPCC, with the appointment of Attribution Queen Friederike Otto and a troop of fellow attributionists to take charge of writing a new chapter on extreme weather for its forthcoming seventh climate science assessment report. With the foxes now in charge of the chicken coop, political order can be restored, with the IPCC science more closely aligned with current Net Zero political requirements.
Dr Otto, who runs the Green Blob-funded World Weather Attribution (WWA) operation out of Imperial College, has been appointed the co-leader of the extreme weather chapter. “It will be a lot of work, but it also gives a lot of opportunity to shape the structure and focus of the chapter”, she notes. WWA paymasters who include the Grantham, European Climate and Bezos Earth foundations will no doubt be delighted with this news. Helping her shape the narrative going forward will be a number of writers who are all in on the single event attribution game. The science writer Roger Pielke Jr notes that the team is “stacked” with people who focus on extreme event attribution (EEA) – “far out of proportion to their presence in the field”. Few of the authors, if any, he adds, have expertise in the IPCC’s conventional framework for detection and attribution (D&A), and some have no publications on either detection or attribution. He points out that nine out of 20 of the authors focus their research on EEA, including two of the three coordinating leads.
One-off weather attribution is a pseudoscience based mostly on the flimsy findings of computer models. Two imaginary atmospheres with different levels of carbon dioxide are compared, and, hey presto, claims are made that a weather event is x times more likely to be caused by humans.
Complete with a suitable large multiple, the results are distributed to ‘join-the-dots’ merchants such as Jim Dale, as well as mainstream media climate desks. Worldwide publicity is given to ‘science’ findings that obviously fail the Popperian principle in that they cannot be tested and falsified. The non-peer-reviewed information is pushed out quickly in a press release, with the disaster fresh in the media minds. Climate fear levels in the general population are kept nicely topped up – job done. Climate ‘deniers’ can be dismissed with a head-in-the-hands sigh and a “can’t you even see the evidence outside your own window?” Of course, the entire unquestioning media meltdown is based on the false notion that computer models produce ‘evidence’, when in reality they just supply opinions.
In 2019, the former BBC Today editor Sarah Sands wrote a foreword for a WWA journalist guide to reporting extreme weather. She recalled the time when the UK politician Nigel Lawson managed to slip into a BBC broadcast that there had been no increase in extreme weather. “I wish we had this guide for journalists to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim,” she gushed. These days, she enthused, attribution studies have given us significant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse.
In the past, the IPCC has failed to detect and attribute most extreme weather to human involvement, and it did not expect to do so for the rest of the century. It is becoming increasingly obvious that computer models are poor at replicating the complex atmosphere and offer little guidance for future climate projections. Detecting changes in the climate requires many decades of observation. The idea that one event can shortcut an understanding of a long-term trend, when there is no way of knowing if it is a statistical outlier, is for the birds. Collecting one-offs from a number of different weather types and claiming that humans control the weather would just be silly if it wasn’t designed to induce mental anguish and screw oil and gas firms in court.
With many of the poster scares of climate collapse having to be retired – even melting Arctic sea ice has gone on strike for 20 years – the desperation of activists is getting noticeably worse. One of the last throws of the dice is running bad weather scares. Net Zero is dead in the United States, and a recent official government report stated that computer models offered “little guidance” on how the climate responds to higher CO₂ levels. It also noted that most extreme weather events are not increasing, while weather attribution claims are challenged by natural climate variation, along with an admission that they were originally designed with ‘lawfare’ in mind.
WWA was set up in 2014 by Otto and Dr Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, with Green Blob-funded Climate Central providing support and help with securing funding. These days, the operation notes that its methods have been developed over time and “peer reviewed in dedicated methods publications”. A link to the claimed peer review is helpfully provided on its website, and this brings up a paper titled ‘Pathways and Pitfalls in Extreme Event Attribution.’ Interestingly, the first peer reviewer is Dr Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, while the fifth is Dr Friederike Otto.
In 2022, a group of four Italian scientists led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti published a paper in Nature based on data used by the IPCC that concluded there had been little change in extreme weather events. Such findings and data are easy to find, although mainstream media is mostly absent from the search. On the basis of their factual findings, the Italians suggested there was not a climate crisis. All hell subsequently broke loose, and an alliance of activists, journalists and scientists managed to get the paper retracted a year later. One of those activists was Otto who said the authors were “of course” not writing their paper in good faith. “If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly, saying that it should never have been published”, she added. At the time of the infamous affair, Pielke observed: “The abuse of the peer-reviewed process documented here is remarkable and stands as a warning that climate science is as deeply politicised as ever with scientists willing to exert influence on the publication process both out in the open and behind the scenes”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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