Where headlines scream "12 years to save the planet" and politicians jet to COP conferences to pledge trillions in reparations for cow farts, it's refreshing when a genuine heavyweight steps into the ring and calls bs. Enter Richard Lindzen, MIT's Professor Emeritus of Meteorology and one of the last unfiltered voices in atmospheric science. In a no-holds-barred Daily Mail interview this week, Lindzen didn't mince words: the global warming panic isn't rooted in data, it's a trillion-dollar grift, peddled by politicians eyeing control of the energy jackpot and scientists chasing grants like kids after candy. As he put it, "The fact that you have a multi-trillion dollar industry and you have an opportunity to completely overturn it had a great appeal to a lot of politicians." It's the kind of plain talk that makes TED Talks sound like infomercials.
Lindzen's not some fringe crank; he's spent decades peering into the climate's black box, publishing in top journals, and watching the alarmist machine rev up. His verdict? The maths doesn't add up, the history laughs it off, and the real driver is cold, hard cash. Let's unpack why this isn't just scepticism; it's a demolition of the dogma that's cost us trillions and counting.
The Trillion-Dollar Temptation: Energy as the Ultimate Prize
Global energy isn't an industry, it's the industry, a $6-7 trillion behemoth that powers everything from your morning coffee to missile silos. Over 80% still runs on fossil fuels, the reliable workhorses that lifted billions from poverty. But flip that script with "net zero" mandates, and you've got a chance to redirect rivers of revenue into renewables, subsidies, and carbon credits, the new casino where governments and cronies place their bets.
This year alone, clean energy sucked in a record $2.2 trillion in investments, double what went to fossils. In the US, the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund alone shovelled $27 billion into "clean" projects, taxpayer dollars funnelled to solar farms in deserts and windmills that freeze in winter. Federal climate R&D? Up to $5 billion annually, with the White House's 2024 budget lobbing another $1.6 billion at universities and NGOs to study "imminent disasters." That's not science; that's stimulus for the apocalypse lobby.
Lindzen nails it: CO₂, the bogeyman du jour, gets demonised not because it's a planet-killer (it's a trace gas that greens crops and boosts yields by 30-40%), but because it's the perfect Trojan horse for control. Double atmospheric CO₂? Maybe 0.5°C of warming, tops, peanuts compared to the Little Ice Age's chills or the Medieval Warm Period's toasts, neither pinned on SUVs. Yet "net zero" by 2050? It'd shave off a fraction of a degree at a cost of hundreds of trillions, per Lindzen's back-of-the-envelope. Bad trade? No, for the politicians, it's jackpot: taxes, regulations, and pork for pet projects.
Here's the rub: Climate models aren't oracles; they're tuneable toys that spit out doom if you crank the knobs right. Lindzen's "Iris Effect" flips the script, tropical thunderstorms act like natural AC units, venting heat to space and countering water vapour's trap. No runaway greenhouse; just equilibrium. But fund the alarmists? Billions flow to studies assuming feedback loops that amplify every belch into Armageddon. Challenge it? Your paper gets "filtered," as Judith Curry (ex-Georgia Tech chair) learned the hard way, co-authors cherry-picking data, editors fired for publishing dissent.
Lindzen's been there: On Joe Rogan this fall, he roasted the echo chamber, noting how "older colleagues" whisper scepticism but stay silent for the grants. It's not conspiracy; it's incentives. Sceptics like him get labelled "fossil fuel shills" (despite his oil-consulting gigs being pocket change compared to green grants), while alarm mills churn out headlines. Even Bill Gates, after dropping $2 billion on climate fixes, is pivoting to nukes and admitting the hysteria's bar keeps moving. Ted Nordhaus, ex-activist turned Breakthrough Institute co-founder, echoes: Old models predicted 9°F doom by 2100; now it's 5°F for the same apocalypse. Goalposts on wheels.
The Human Cost: Trillions Wasted, Billions Hungry
While elites virtue-signal at $100,000-a-plate galas, the poor foot the bill. Net zero hikes energy prices, blacking out grids in California and Germany while China builds coal plants like it's 1950. Arable land's booming thanks to CO₂ fertilisation, feeding billions more efficiently, yet we're subsidising intermittent wind that needs fossil backups. Lindzen's hopeful: "People are beginning to question this... it'll be an embarrassment to our era."
Cash Rules Everything Around the Climate
Lindzen's blast isn't anti-science; it's pro-reality. The hysteria thrives because it's profitable, trillions rerouted from productive ends to virtue bureaucracies. Politicians get power, scientists get funding, NGOs get slush funds, and we get blackouts and bankruptcies. Follow the money, and the "crisis" evaporates like morning fog.
Time to defund the panic and invest in actual innovation, like cleaner fossil fuels and nuclear, not fairy tales.