Climate cultists think that anyone who disagrees with their creed must be on the payroll of Big Oil. Rather than taking the time to address the actual arguments being made, alarmists dismiss critics by insisting that skeptics' work has a conflict of interest.

This talking point goes hard if you're inbred, but it has little actual merit. While a few scientists (and think tanks / NGOs) used to receive funding from oil majors like ExxonMobil prior to the late 2000s, to the best of my knowledge, that is no longer happening because the vast majority of these Fortune 500 companies have decided to "go green.” Why? I'll raise you two big reasons: (1) oil companies receive tax breaks for doing so and (2) they can increase profits by dipping their fingers into multiple energy sectors. Why should they put all of their eggs in one basket?

The real COIs these days on the environmental front come from activists employed at NGOs (e.g., Climate Central and World Weather Attribution) that receive funding from environmental groups such as the Bezos Earth Fund, Grantham Foundation, and the 11th Hour Project. These outlets intentionally push doomerism and cherry-pick data (e.g., start analyses in the 1970s) to portray alarming trends where the full data record show a very different story. Another COI is that many federal employees employed as "research scientists” (e.g., series 1340, 1360, etc.) are under the thumb of the federal government to adhere to a very specific message. The same goes for academics whose career success (that is, climbing the ladder to tenure at a university, collecting accolades, and getting published in prestigious journals like Nature, Science Magazine, or PNAS) are contingent on being awarded taxpayer-funded grants.

If climate academics and bureaucrats were to admit today that "We were wrong, there is no climate crisis,” then their funding would dry up quickly and they'd be out of a job because Congress will only appropriate that money and create large science budgets to study "problems” whose findings will advance whatever policy goals politicians have. Academics know what they have to say in order to get funding and to get their work published. Grants also typically have a specific set of strict guidelines that recipients must adhere to.

Now, if skeptic scientists are openly advocating for increased fossil fuel consumption, you could indeed argue that they have a conflict of interest. I will toss the alarmists a bone there. But that applies in equal measure to scientists who advocate for renewables and denigrate the O&G industry on the regular (I'm talking to you Michael Mann and Stefan Rahmstorf). If you are openly anti-fossil fuel industry, you cannot call yourself a dispassionate scientist. The anti-fossil fuel rhetoric stems from the left's [increasingly] anti-capitalist sentiment. Left-wingers envy individuals who are financially more successful than they are, so they want Big Daddy Government to step in and shake the rich down for cash to redistribute wealth as if it's a fixed pot of money.

That is precisely why I avoid giving preference to any specific energy sector (though I'm a nuclear fanboy). I am indifferent to fossil fuels. They're the backbone of our modern economy, but should better and more affordable alternatives come along through technological innovation, then that's great. Remove all subsidies (O&G included, though most of theirs are tax breaks, which isn't a direct subsidy), let the free market decide, and keep the government out of it (i.e., remove mandates). But I'm not going to demonize the very energy source that keeps me alive. That'd make me quite a hypocrite, wouldn't it?

Alarmists like to claim that I am a fossil fuel shill, but when I press them to show the receipts, they come up empty every time. That's because I have never once advocated for increased fossil fuel use (except natural gas as an on-demand backup and coal alternative for nuclear when energy demand spikes) and I have never advised lawmakers to subsidize the coal industry or O&G companies.

Climate activists' accusations of shilling and political motivation are, as far as I can tell, projection to avoid having a serious and honest discussion