Interview with William M. Briggs

On Scientism, Climate Change, Feminism, Equality and more.

In June of 2021 William Briggs shared one of my earliest substack posts, the letter to my adult kids, with his audience, and that helped kickstart this journey that continues today.

At the time, I had no idea who William was, but was very grateful for the support and encouragement.

I saw him interviewed with JJ Couey recently and I decided to reach out.

I’ve been very much looking forward to this interview and am grateful that William agreed to it. William Briggs was a most important truth teller during the darkest days of Covid mania, and he remains so today.

With thanks and gratitude to William M. Briggs.

Science Is Not The Answer | William M Briggs | Substack

Everything You Believe Is Wrong: Briggs, William M

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1. William, to start, could you please tell us a bit about your background and what led you to become a "renegade scientist"? What has your journey been like up to this point?

I started in the Air Force doing electronic cryptography. I always say Staff Sergeant was the only title I ever cared for. Didn’t start college until after the service, in 1989. This was when global warming was just becoming big, after global cooling was big in the late 1970s. I was convinced global warming was important, so I studied meteorology and atmospheric physics (BS then MS). I used climate forecasts in my work, specifically in integrating climate and crop models, which is important because the weather isn’t that important, but what it does (to things like crops) is. I wanted to know how good these models were.

It was a good thing I asked this question in meteorology, because answers on how to verify forecasts (models/theories) were common there. And my advisor’s (Dan Wilks, at Cornell) advisor (Alan Murphy, now dead) were the two top guys in the field. That led me to switching over to statistics for a PhD, in deriving new methods to examine goodness and badness of weather and climate predictions. Or any kind of prediction or theory, in any field.

Turns out weather predictions are pretty good, for maybe five sometimes even six days. And even short-term climate predictions, out a few months, had some small value. But for decades? Not good. And even unknown.

I didn’t know it then, but it turns out that a lot of what passes for (what we now call) The Science is crap. I just today read of a new “study” that claims “climate change” could “reduce the speech complexity and productivity of politicians”. Speech complexity! Their evidence consisted in correlating speech length and the like with temperatures. Now I ask you, how do you let yourself be that stupid. No question mark because it’s rhetorical.

You have to be a renegade to stay sane.

2. In your view, how did the death of millions of men in World War I contribute to the rise of feminism in the 20th century? What cultural and demographic shifts occurred as a result of the war?

Ah, you want me to quote Mussolini. Very well. He said at a famous meeting in Munich, with top fellows from Germany, England, and others, in 1938, “In a country where animals are adored to the point of making cemeteries and hospitals and houses for them, and legacies are bequeathed to parrots, you can be sure decadence has set in. Besides, other reasons apart, it is also a consequence of the composition of the English people. Four million surplus women. Four million women sexually unsatisfied, artificially creating a host of problems in order to excite or appease their senses. Not being able to embrace one man, they embrace humanity.”

Nailed it, as the kiddies say. The women’s missing men were all dead in the previous needless war, a lesson the participants of that meeting leading up to the next needless war had already forgotten. Even though they had Mussolini’s reminder there in front of them of course, socialism had also settled in by this point, and England was already pummeling the aristocracy with punishing inheritance taxes in purposeful effort of breaking up traditionalism. Women by their nature need two things, one, to embrace, as Mussolini said, and two, to be embraced. If they can’t have a strong man do it, they’ll have the state or employer as surrogate.

Even by the start of the Great War, Equality had taken too firm a root to be easily slain. Most nations had woman’s suffrage around then, ceded by weakened men in thrall to equalitarian arguments. It was too late to go back. These arguments are now so common, we are saturated in them. It takes monumental effort to convince some that they are all fallacies, and most won’t ever understand. We have to let it play out to its logical conclusion and then rebuild from the ashes.

3. You've argued that feminism has had a detrimental impact on fields like physics and glaciology. Can you explain what you see as the negative influence of feminist ideology on the natural sciences? How does feminism distort or undermine the scientific process in your view?

Because these ladies get into science, discover that they aren’t as good as it as the people there, and then start whining and carping about being Victims. Look at all the annual (sub) conferences Women In Statistics, Women in Physics, Women Here, Women There. Believe me, if they had anything worth saying about the world, and could prove it, then nobody would care if they were one-legged midget MAGA-hatted gypsies. There would be no reason to organize and complain of unfair treatment if the women in science were as good as the men. Men are not rejecting arguments and evidence from women because they are women. If some men do, then the other men that don’t will use that evidence (when its good) to get ahead themselves. Sexism would be naturally self-limiting.

But that’s not what happens. Instead we see demands poor work be accepted as good because of who did the work. Money being given to scientists based on who they are. Promotions handed out by who you are, at all levels, from kindergarten on up.

The problem is not with women per se in science. But in adding bodies in science merely to get Victim quotas where they should be. That Equality business again. It infects and degrades and eventually destroys everything it touches. This is inevitable.

4. In your writing, you often critique what you call the "Cult of Safety First". Why do you believe that "safety first" is an impossible and even harmful philosophy?

Because if safety were truly first, then nothing could ever get done because, to quote, “there’s a particle of risk in everything.” The only way to avoid risk is to avoid activity. And even that doesn’t work, because something bad can always happen to you wherever you are.

If airlines put safety first, they’d never fly, because crashes are always possible. So they cannot mean it when they say “safety first.” They lie. Anybody who uses this phrase lies.

What they mean instead, or should mean, is that they take safety seriously, which is nearly as empty of meaning in a culture where words have no fixed definitions. But at least it’s not logically self-refuting like “Safety First!”

There is risk in everything, to varying degree, which means there are always, as in always, trade-offs. Yet we are constantly being sold on ideas as if they have no costs, no downsides. Which is just another form of propaganda.

5. Do you believe the West has lost the civilizational confidence needed to resist the kind of mass migration envisioned in The Camp of the Saints, and if so, what are the cultural and philosophical roots of this crisis of confidence?

In a way. It’s not so much we lost confidence, though there is that, but that we lost the idea that we are a people. We falsely believe all peoples are the same, so we cheer the inrush, or at least don’t regret it. There’s that Equality wreaking its damage again. Of course, there are lunatics who want the invasion to continue because they believe we have it too good, the invaders don’t, and to be “fair” all should be...Equal again. Because the invaders can’t be lifted up in their homes, we have to be cut down in ours. Until we reach blessed Equity.

But it’s a paradox, because if all peoples really were Equal, as they claim, then there would be no reason to support open “immigration”, because how could you know the difference between who’s here and who’s not? We’re all Equal! The left does not, and cannot, think consistently.

6. A major theme in your work is the importance of understanding the philosophy of science. Why do you think it's a problem that scientists can get PhDs without studying any philosophy? What key philosophical principles are critical for good science?

Partly cultural. The great majority of scientists still look askance at philosophy. Not entirely without good reason. Peek into a random academic philosophy journal and you, too, will say “Bugger this, just let me get on with my work.”

But this leads to the idea that philosophy isn’t needed at all. Which, of course, is false. You need a philosophy of cause, another of probability, another on what math and theory mean, and so on. You can wing it, and sometimes get away with it. But look at the bad things that can happen. Take quantum mechanics. Much bad philosophy, and a failure to examine viable alternatives because scientists have never heard of, say, hylomorphism. Stalled the field since the late 1970s, and now we’re onto unprovable conjectures accepted because they are pleasing mathematically. Who said God designed the universe to be mathematically pleasing?

I’ve seen other scientists use weird forms of falsifiability to justify forms of many worlds multiverses, arguing that the internal strength of theory is a good reason for eschewing empirical verification of empirical statements. No. That is absurd. Because it would apply to any theory, and not just those in favor by academics. This is why philosophy is needed.

7. Climate attribution, or the attempt to link extreme weather events to human-caused climate change, is an issue you've written about extensively. Why are you skeptical of the methods used in attribution studies? What are the major flaws you see?

This one’s easy. To work, climate models have to be perfect. They aren’t: they do not predict the future at all well. Here’s what I mean.

An attribution study makes a statement (prediction) for the distribution of some thing. Call it number of hurricanes. Whatever. The model says next year there will be 1 with this chance, 2 with that, and so on. Then a second model is run using a pretend atmosphere, one which they believe would be in place if it were not for so much carbon dioxide in the air (which is anyway a minuscule amount). That second model will say there will be 1 hurricane with this other chance, 2 with that other, and so on.

Problem is, there is no way to ever know the model of a pretend atmosphere is right or wrong. It’s just assumed right. And the model of the actual atmosphere is known to exaggerate heating. Which, when put together, means the attributions will be too bold, or just plain wrong.

What climatologists need to do is start showing multi-year, or decadal, predictions have skill; i.e. that they can out-perform just guessing that next year, or next decade, will look like this one. They have not yet done this. And they might not be able to at the scales where decision making is important. (At the scale of the entire planet, they can skillfully predict that, say, the atmosphere will be above 0 C. But that’s a useless scale to know when to, say, plant crops.)

8. In discussing climate change, you argue that "science has scarcely anything to do with The Science today." Can you unpack that distinction further? How has climate science been corrupted in your view?

There are psychologists running around claiming their specialty is climate anxiety or some such nonsense. When it is good for the propaganda, these people are called “climate scientists”. Activists are “climate scientists.” Politicians, too. Anybody who supports whatever the narrative is and has some kind of official or credential or “degree” is a “climate scientist”, when they need to be. Anybody who can tie their work in with “climate change” is a “climate scientist.”

All of them added together far outweigh the guys who do thermodynamics, radiative transfer, dynamics, and the like. Among these few, there is of course a range of belief about how doomed we are because of “climate change”. Some do not see it as especially worrisome, or indeed even worth worrying about, and some true believers think we only have five years left. We always only have five years left. There is genuine skepticism to be found in the United Nation’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Or at least caution. But you never hear of it, unless you search very very hard.

We knew something had gone wrong when they changed the name from “global warming”, which expressed the theory, to “climate change”, which doesn’t mean a thing. Or, rather, it means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. It’s a fluid, flexible term, and therefore over-prone to propaganda. The climate on earth has never been static, and never will. It is therefore impossible to “stop” “climate change”. Hence the rich propaganda possibilities for the term. Much of what passes for science in “climate change” is lousy work or raw advocacy.

There isn’t much real science because too few, and in some areas none, who slow down and check the results of their predictions. To prove this to yourself, I ask people to go to scholar.google.com. Enter any key word you like with “climate change” in quotes. Like “Music ‘climate change’”. I did this right now. First paper was “Indigenous music sustainability during climate change.” You will discover “climate change” causes or exacerbates every bad thing. Which is impossible, but scientists believe it.

9. The reaction to your paper arguing that global warming from CO2 would be mild was extremely hostile, despite it being peer-reviewed. What does that episode reveal about the state of climate science and our broader scientific institutions?

Peer review doesn’t mean squat. Whatever purpose it may have had, and it’s hard to think of much, is long gone. Even in this case, when a paper is “passed”, it doesn’t mean anything. Mob review will always be with us. When a field is dominated by politics, like “climate change” is (and there are many others), negative thoughts can’t be heard unless peers agree. Which they won’t, because it’s not politically viable. Only trivial disagreements (which grant basic premises) get a hearing.

Scientists are no different than anyone else when their beloved beliefs are questioned. They react with hostility, weeping, anger, incredulousness. Just like anybody else. Only scientists aren’t as used to disappointment as others, given the perpetual praise and lavish funding science has received over the last century, so they tend to be more petulant.

Now when that paper came out (“Why Models Are Hot” in January 2015), Congress flipped out, as did activists and other nitwits. A big investigation was launched. My site was hacked. There were four of us on the paper, Christopher Monckton, Willie Soon, David Legates, and me. They tried to find dirt on us, by FOIAing emails and the like. Problem for them was none of us took any kind of payment to do the work, though Soon’s employer, which was Harvard’s Smithsonian institute, did take money in various forms of grants from oil companies for other of his work over the years. They likely still do. That was seen as pure evil, and used to dismiss our arguments. But these same screeching scientists never apply the same method to themselves. They take money galore from very interested sources; namely, the government, which is selling “climate change” “solutions.” Yet we’re supposed to trust them?

The whole thing was strange. Here we were bringing great news! We predicted that, yes, temperatures would rise a bit because of CO2 and so forth, but it wouldn’t be much, maybe a degree or so, and that therefore there was little to worry about. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that terrific? Shouldn’t there have been celebrations in the street? After all, here was evidence all those horror stories we hear continuously might be in error! Sure, we might be wrong, as any scientist might be wrong. But shouldn’t there be at least a little happiness?

Alas, no. Activists and politicians in particular squealed like Ned Beatty against a tree. Here was the real end of the world. To them. Because if we were right, and a decade later we don’t seem to be far off, then the activists’ occupation is gone. And so is the politicians’ excuse to sell the “green” technology their friends are selling.

The whole episode proved that “climate change” had very little, and often nothing, to do with science, and was instead pure politics.

10. Modern society seems to put enormous faith in scientific experts and institutions. You call this "scientism" and "scidolatry." What's wrong with scientism in your view? Where should we draw the line in trusting scientific authority?

Science cannot tell right from wrong, good from bad, ethical from unethical, moral from immoral. Anybody passing off a “solution” as “scientific” is therefore committing a fallacy, and substituting his own desires or morality as it if were science. Science is nothing but trying to understand how the world works, and putting measures of uncertainty on how things might or might not work.

During the covid panic we continuously heard “Follow the science!” Take lock downs. Now even if there was good evidence that these could help slow the spread of respiratory disease, and they hadn’t just pulled the idea out of their keisters, as we were screaming at the time, it still does not follow that this is the best thing to do. There are costs, trade-offs. Were these worth the price?

Nobody bothered to even ask. Because we had science to follow! This was pure scientism. Married to idiot science. Because we had always known deaths from all causes peak every winter when all people go inside to share their bugs. The Science “solution” to covid was what normally killed people. Panic weakens minds.

Science can never determine what is best or worst because science isn’t about morals. For instance, whichever scientists did the work of creating the covid bug, which when it escaped killed many and sent the world into chaos for three years, did an excellent job. Good science! They scientifically set out to use science to create a bug which had “gain of function”, by which they mean “gain of lethality.” And they succeeded! You have to call that good science.

But it never should have been done. These manufactured bugs don’t appear in nature, so the argument that they need to be created so we can study how to cure them is asinine. Circular. Scientism leads to hubris.

Not just there, but in “climate change”, too. And now “gender theory.” Scientism says we let “doctors” tell us the best way to cut a man up to best resemble a woman. Philosophy tells us a man can never be a woman.

11. You point out that global temperatures were as warm or warmer than today during several past periods, long before human CO2 emissions. Doesn't this undermine the whole notion of a "climate crisis" driven by CO2?

Not only that, but there’s lots of time where it appears temperatures first warmed and then CO2 increased.

Look, every real scientist (and not some activist or other hanger-on) knows CO2 increasing, by itself, will barely tweak average climate conditions. So they have to build in all kinds of feedback with clouds and other things, hoping that they have guessed right about these highly sensitive processes. The only way to know that is to make models that make good (skillful) predictions. Not just one year ahead, but many.

We have been promised since the late 1980s that global warming was coming, that it was going to get bad fast. It hasn’t. That’s about forty years of failed predictions so far. How long do we continue before we admit we were wrong? Ten more years? Twenty?

12. Activists often say that even if the science of climate change is uncertain, we should still cut emissions as a precaution. You've called this "Pascal's Wager for global warming." Why is that reasoning flawed in your opinion?

You’ll find it instructive to ask “climate change” activists just what evidence would convince them they were wrong about global warming. They can never think of any. To them it just is true, by definition. At least they are operating not from scientism, but from a philosophy. One that says man is a “cancer” on the planet. This is a philosophical belief that cannot be answered by pointing to graphs of CO2 or whatever. It has to be answered with theology and philosophy.

Which they know. So they have this idea of a precautionary principle. There are various forms, but the one they enjoy is to say “Let’s act in case the worst is true.” Those acts have costs, though, which is always forgotten. There’s a group of half wits who want to eliminate oil to “save the planet”. Eliminate oil! This a precautionary thing to do, they say, even if we’re wrong about oil, because oil might wreak havoc. The damage done to science by the words might and could is incalculable.

Anyway, the problem is the precautionary principle works both ways. They use it. But we can use it, too. We can’t act, we say, because there’s a chance the “solution” could destroy us all. The precautionary principle says so! It also says to act now. And it says don’t act. It says whatever you want it to say.

The precautionary principle is yet another way to sneak preference in using science, thus it’s another form of scientism. Any action has costs, so we must always go through the labor of discovering if the solution will cost more than it saves.

13. How have you seen the pressures of political correctness, "wokeness" and left-wing ideology corrupt the scientific process in general? Is it getting harder for scientists to challenge orthodox views?

Oh, sure. In fact, we saw Nature a week or two back come out with a series of articles begging scientists to still tell the truth about sex, about how, say, men and women are different. Really pathetic pleading. Work that confirms, or quantifies, the ancient and colossal observational evidence that the sexes or peoples are not Equal is quashed. The Woke cannot bear to be reminded that Equality is pure theory, and never seen in nature. So they insist we DIE---Diversity, Equity, Inclusiveness---to bring blessed Equality to life. Even though the Supreme Court ruled against official open DIE policies for admission to schools, they still do it.

I saw a recent article where an academic said “I would be hard-pressed to name a single tenured professor in the social sciences and humanities who is openly right of center in any reasonable understanding of the term.” He also said the philosophical imbalance is growing more disparate with every year, especially as older professors retire. We now see students demand to be taught woke ideas. Professors, with far too many being cowards, accede.

The most frightening example is med schools. They insist on DIE policies for admission, and then in their STEP tests (which have to be passed to continue in med school), and then later still in staffing fellowships. Like I tell everybody, do not get sick.

14. Despite the attacks on you, you've continued to speak out and question the scientific consensus on climate change. What keeps you going? Why is it important to have vocal dissenters like yourself in science?

What keeps me going is the inability to shut up, mostly. My dad always told me Never pass up an opportunity to keep your mouth shut. I have been unable to follow this excellent advice. But neither does he. We both cannot pass up the chance for a bad joke. And science provides a continuous stream of straight lines.

Funny thing about dissent in science. We’re all brought up as young scientists reading about brave dissidents who stood up to the mighty but venal Consensuses of the Day. These are moral stories, and we are meant to imitate the protagonists. We read these and tell ourselves, “I would never have fought against hand washing! I would have accepted evidence against my beliefs, because science is self-correcting and I am a good person!” Every scientist imagines himself to be courageous and believes he never would have folded.

Alas, folding was, is, and will always be the default. Cowardice is routine. Stubbornness characteristic. Hubris unbiquitous.

It was always thus: it is rational to suppose it will always be thus.

15. To wrap up, what research and writing projects are you focused on currently? Where can people go to keep up with your latest work and ideas?

I’m writing a book on scientism and why you should not love it. You can find me at:

William M. Briggs – Statistician to the Stars! (wmbriggs.com)

Science Is Not The Answer | William M Briggs | Substack

Twitter @FamedCelebrity

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