The Natural News article from March 3, 2025, titled "Conflicts of Interest in Climate Science: A Systemic Blind Spot,"
https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-03-03-conflicts-of-interest-in-climate-science.html
offers a scathing critique of the mainstream climate science narrative by spotlighting a preprint study from Jessica Weinkle and colleagues. From a position sceptical of the received climate science orthodoxy, this piece serves as a rallying cry against what many contrarians see as a deeply compromised field, riddled with bias and hidden agendas. It argues that the pristine image of climate research as an objective, data-driven pursuit is a façade, shattered by evidence of pervasive conflicts of interest (COI) that align suspiciously with alarmist conclusions—conclusions that just happen to bolster the policy goals of powerful NGOs and governments.
The article seizes on the study's analysis of 82 peer-reviewed papers, spanning 1994 to 2023, which explored the link between climate change and hurricane characteristics. Not one of the 331 authors across these studies disclosed a conflict of interest, a jaw-dropping omission when compared to fields like biomedical research, where disclosure rates hover between 17 percent and 33 percent. To a sceptic, this isn't just negligence—it's a smoking gun. It suggests a field so insulated from scrutiny that it operates under a tacit agreement to bury inconvenient ties, especially when the study finds that NGO funding strongly predicts papers claiming a climate-hurricane connection (odds ratio of 8.72, p-value 0.03). This correlation screams bias to those who've long suspected that climate science is less about truth and more about serving the interests of its paymasters—environmental NGOs with a vested stake in pushing catastrophe narratives to justify carbon taxes, regulations, and wealth redistribution.
From this critical vantage point, the lack of transparency isn't an oversight but a feature of a system rigged to perpetuate a specific story. The article underscores how studies from 2016 onward were nine times more likely to tie climate change to hurricanes (odds ratio 9.19, p-value 0.002), hinting at a temporal shift where political and funding pressures increasingly shaped outcomes. Sceptics would argue this reflects not a scientific evolution but a hijacking of the discipline by activists masquerading as researchers. The absence of COI disclosures—when authors were found holding patents or advising climate risk firms—further fuels the suspicion that personal enrichment and ideological zeal, not evidence, drive the "consensus." Mainstream climate science, often touted as settled, begins to look like a house of cards built on undisclosed incentives.
The Natural News piece doesn't mince words, framing this as a double standard that would be unthinkable in other sciences. Biomedical journals demand COI statements, yet climate science floats above such accountability, despite its outsized influence on trillion-dollar policies and public fearmongering. To a critic, this reeks of elitism—a clique of insiders shielding their work from the kind of rigour they demand of dissenters. The article's call for mandatory disclosures, independent audits, and a COI database resonates as a common-sense fix that the establishment will likely resist, precisely because it threatens to expose how much of the field's output is shaped by who's writing the checks.
Sceptics of the received narrative, such as myself, would see this as validation of a broader conspiracy: climate science isn't about understanding the planet but controlling it—and us. The NGO funding link suggests a feedback loop where money flows to researchers who deliver the "right" results, amplifying claims of climate-driven disasters that conveniently prop up globalist agendas. Hurricanes, a natural phenomenon with complex drivers, become pawns in a game where correlation is dressed up as causation, all to keep the public compliant and the funding spigot open. The article's tone aligns with this worldview, painting climate science as a tool of manipulation, its authority propped up by silence on conflicts that should discredit it.
From this critical lens, the implications are damning. Policies built on this research—like insurance premium hikes or carbon schemes—rest on shaky ground, potentially fleecing taxpayers and consumers based on tainted studies. The mainstream's refusal to address these flaws only deepens the distrust. If climate science were truly confident in its findings, wouldn't it welcome transparency? To a sceptic, the Natural News article isn't just a critique—it's a wake-up call to question the sacred cow of climate orthodoxy, revealing a field less interested in truth than in preserving its own power.