Cambridge Professor: Climate Change Becoming a Dogmatic Ersatz Religion

Professor Ulf Büntgen says science should be divorced from activism, but in climate science, the trend is clearly the opposite.

“I am concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists,” writes Ulf Büntgen, Professor of Environmental Systems Analysis at the University of Cambridge in his recent article in Nature. According to him, scientists should have no vested interest in the results of the research they are doing. “Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization,” he adds.

Büntgen is certainly not a scientist who could be considered a "climate denier", as is the case with many other scientists who vigorously criticise climate crisis declarations. When last year was proclaimed the hottest in world history, Büntgen's comments, while not quite an assessment of such a long period of time, confirmed that the northern hemisphere did indeed experience the hottest summer in the last 2,000 years. “When you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is,” he said. “2023 was an exceptionally hot year, and this trend will continue unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically,” he added.

Quasi-religious belief undermining academic principles

In an article published in Nature, Büntgen also talks about the problems of anthropogenic global warming and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat it, but his main concern is that climate activism is stifling science. “Motivated by the continuous inability of an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to tackle global warming, despite an alarming recent rise in surface temperatures and associated hydroclimatic extremes, I argue that a quasi-religious belief, rather than an understanding of the complex causes and consequences of climate and environmental changes undermines academic principles,” Büntgen writes.

Büntgen explains that his article is not intended as a critique of climate activism per se, but above all, he is concerned that more and more climate scientists are themselves becoming activists. This is something they should not do, he says, as the results of scientific research should not be influenced by scientists' personal views. “Like in any academic case, the quest for objectivity must also account for all aspects of global climate change research. While I have no problem with scholars taking public positions on climate issues, I see potential conflicts when scholars use information selectively or over-attribute problems to anthropogenic warming, and thus politicise climate and environmental change,” he writes.

University of Cambridge professor Ulf Büntgen says he is concerned that climate scientists are becoming climate activists. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

In a recent interview with Freedom Research, Ross McKitrick, a professor at the University of Guelph in Canada, highlighted a very similar problem, saying that Western universities have become very left-wing and that this political attunement is affecting scientists and their research. “I think a lot of them do secretly think that I would like it if the papers that I publish are beneficial to politicians on the left, and I resent it if the work I publish is beneficial to politicians on the right. So I might even shape my publication and research work with that in mind,” McKitrick said.

An irrational 'follow the science' approach

However, Büntgen adds in his article that without self-criticism and a diversity of viewpoints, scientists will ultimately harm the credibility of their research and possibly cause a wider public, political, and economic backlash.

Alongside this, Büntgen is also concerned about activists. Activists take the arguments put forward by scientists and use them to justify their often radical and destructive movements. “Unrestricted faith in scientific knowledge is, however, problematic because science is neither entitled to absolute truth nor ethical authority,” writes Büntgen. “The notion of science to be explanatory rather than exploratory is a naïve overestimation that can fuel the complex field of global climate change to become a dogmatic ersatz religion for the wider public,” he adds noting that activists' calls to 'follow the science' are utterly irrational, since science cannot actually point in any particular direction.

Büntgen is also critical of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which tends to overstate a scientific understanding of the rate of recent anthropogenic warming relative to the range of past natural temperature variability over 2,000 and even 125,000 years. “The quality and quantity of available climate proxy records are merely too low to allow for a robust comparison of the observed annual temperature extremes in the 21^st century against reconstructed long-term climate means of the Holocene and before,” he says.

Overall, Büntgen assures that science should remain neutral. “I recommend that a neutral science should remain unbiased and avoid any form of selection, over-attribution and reductionism that would reflect a type of activism,” he writes.