'I Left Out The Full Truth': Climate Scientist Admits He Omitted Key Factors In Study To Fit The Climate Change Agenda

Climate scientist Patrick T. Brown, writing in The Free Press, recently admitted that he "left out the full truth" when he published a recent study on the impact of climate change on wildfires in order to get his study published by the prominent science journal Nature that pushes the climate change narrative.

Brown's paper, which is titled “Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California,” ended up getting published in the magazine but only after the scientists left out various contributing factors other than climate change that contribute to wildfires.

"I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell," Brown explained, adding that getting published in a journal is what determines an academics success.

"And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society," the climate scientist explained.

He went on to explain that modern-day climate research doesn't focus on finding out the facts but instead fits into the preapproved narrative that climate change is getting worse and is an existential threat to mankind.

Brown emphasizes that researchers constantly attempt to angle their studies in a way that would get approved by the journal editors and their reviewers in order to achieve more name recognition, funding, and opportunities for themselves.

"Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted," he wrote. "I know this because I am one of them."

"The first thing the astute climate researcher knows is that his or her work should support the mainstream narrative—namely, that the effects of climate change are both pervasive and catastrophic and that the primary way to deal with them is not by employing practical adaptation measures like stronger, more resilient infrastructure, better zoning and building codes, more air conditioning—or in the case of wildfires, better forest management or undergrounding power lines—but through policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Brown went on to explain that he purposefully omitted factors from his paper that have just as, if not more, of an impact on wildfires than climate change, explaining that including them would "detract" from the scientific journals' preferred narrative.

"This type of framing, with the influence of climate change unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers," the scientist wrote.

The researcher goes on to explain that academics often stay away from practical solutions that could actually cancel out or combat the impacts of climate change: "But studying solutions rather than focusing on problems is simply not going to rouse the public—or the press."

He goes on to emphasize that climate scientists often use timescales that aren't useful, such as analyzing climate change since the Industrial Revolution without taking into account technological advancement and other factors. 

The opposite of this approach would be to analyze climate change impacts on a more recent timescale. This, however, would go against the prevailing narrative and impact the ability of these journals to push an agenda centered around cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

"I sacrificed contributing the most valuable knowledge for society in order for the research to be compatible with the confirmation bias of the editors and reviewers of the journals I was targeting."

The researcher adds that he left academia in order to move away from the biases present in the field and in scientific publications.