ICWA Weekly News 4-2-25
HB 1296 gets amended; BOH Meeting Apr 9; Washington Dems Continue to put down Medical Freedom; Will HHS Misinfo Cuts Hit WA? DOH Care-a-Vans Run out of Gas; King County Judge gives win to One Health
In this jam-packed issue: Notable changes made to HB 1296 – are they for real?; BOH Meeting Set for April 9; Washington Democrats Continue to Fight Against Medical Freedom; We help HHS look for Misinformation Programs to cut in Washington, but they already found the DOH Care-a-Van Program which has now run out of gas; One Health gets a victory in WA Court.
March 29, 2025 Episode of Informed Life Radio - - notes and links
Health Hour: Measles Media Misinformation (and on CHD-WA and CHD.TV)
Guest Karl Kanthak, data cruncher extraordinaire, entertains and motivates by exposing the data manipulation and media misinformation surrounding measles.
What "Vaccine Hesitancy"? 98.8% Compliance – Karl Kanthak on Substack
MUST READ: Karl Kanthak's Note on Substack with background info on Marcella’s analysis of 2015 measles death.
Liberty Hour: Defending Parental Rights & Title IX
Guest David Spring, founder of Washington Parents Network, provides updates on his complaint to the Seattle Branch of the Office of Civil Rights and a Resolution to Comply with Title IX, which parents can share with their local school boards and ask them to adopt.
https://washingtonparentsnetwork.com/
Significant Amendments Made to HB 1296
On Thursday March 27 at around 11:08 am, the Senate Education Committee met and adopted a revised version of HB 1296 (TVW Link) approved three notable changes to the contentious House Bill 1296 Safe and Supportive Schools – one change being very favorable:
The Parent's Rights section 301 that ICWA has mainly been tracking no longer removes the provision for parents to access their child’s health information.
Absorbed Senate Bill 5179: complaint process if School Boards or Schools don’t follow OSPI policies or state law.
Absorbed Senate Bill 5637: Student Civics class and media literacy
“I am not sure how all these big amendments were agreed to,” ICWA Director Bob Runnells says. “But it looks like we've won the battle to keep health records available to parents—in this bill and for the time being.” At the time of publication, the legislative website doesn’t incorporate the above changes into an engrossed substitute version of the bill language, so we’re waiting to see a new version before the Ways and Means committee hearing at 1:30 on April 4th. You can see the agreed bill language on the Committee Documents page as Amendment F by C. Wilson.
and Washington lists HB 1296 as one of nine bills on which Washington residents can register their positions this week.“ESHB 1296 -Removing access for parents of public school students to critical education/health records. Repealing I-2081 aka ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights.’ Sign in CON by 12:30PM on 4/4/25.”
Just click on the above button, click “con” on the “position” drop-down box:
Then just fill out the rest of the information and click “I’m not a robot.”
The Ways and Means committee will be consdiering the financial aspects of HB 1296, which is asking for $100,000 for compliance review efforts.
Next Board of Health Meeting Set for April 9
The next Washington Board of Health (BOH) meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 9, 2025 from 9:00 a.m. 8:30 a.m. (thanks for the update from an astute reader!) to 4:45 p.m. at Cedarbrook Lodge (Cedar I and II Rooms) at18525 36th Avenue South in SeaTac.
The bulk of the meeting is a three-hour afternoon joint session with the School Rules Project (SRP) Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and the Board of Health.
At 10:00 a.m. the Department of Health (DOH) will be giving another update. As with the draft agenda for the last BOH meeting, Chief Science Officer Tao Kwan-Gett is the only one listed from the DOH to provide an update. But in the final agenda for the last meeting, Jessica Todorovich and Amy Ferris were late additions and provided plenty of financial woes facing the DOH.
It got to the point in which Todorovich said, “It’s been a really hard time.”
Given how the many public health agencies are going through change, we expect to hear more about budgetary woes – even though the DOH budgets have increased dramatically over the last six years with Foundational Public Health and pandemic funds.
Conspicuously missing from the April 9 meeting agenda is any discussion of water fluoridation policy. At the January 8 board meeting, Lauren Jenks laid out a timeline in which “March of 2025 is for the governmental health system to listen to one another and to be able to describe what the science says.” She then added, “We then plan to bring that back to the board. This way, we’ll have a better idea of what a science-based policy would look like.”
On March 12, the water fluoridation science review was not on the agenda, but public commenters made sure fluoridation policy was brought up. Bill Osmunson, the retired dentist with a Master’s of Public Health degree who has been lobbying the board for fourteen years to address this water fluoridation issue, reminded everyone that the board gave the fluoridation panel members until the upcoming April 9th meeting, "or soon thereafter” to provide the science on water fluoridation. He added that the science that was gathered would then need to be consolidated and interpreted for the board, which would take additional time. “Remember, the Court and National Toxicology Program took eight and ten years for their report and findings,” Bill said before emphasizing, “The fluoridation lobby is merciless and have strong vested interests to protect their reputations and profits.”
The following is Bill’s latest interpretation of what the state’s task is, and what his task is:
The charge to the Department of Health's fluoridation panel is to consider "all relevant science." Some panel members support fluoridation under the assumption of benefit. However, I do not find any Washington State laws authorizing the Board or department to determine the efficacy of ingesting fluoride or fluoridation. Drug efficacy is the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration, and the Board was told by the FDA in 2010 that if the Board tried to gain FDA approval, fluoridation would be banned. The FDA found the evidence of efficacy to be "incomplete." RCW is specific, the Board is to "assure safe water." Weighing benefits vs risks is not in any RCW that I can find.
The task for my presentation at the last meeting will attempt to get members to focus on safety. RCW 43.20.050 (2)(a) charges the Board to "Adopt rules necessary to assure safe drinking water." The dictionary defines the word "assure" as "positively or confidently to dispel any doubts." Presentations to date have raised significant doubt of fluoridation's safety for the brain, but safety for the brain is only one risk.
My task will be to explain current and historical science which does not report fluoride ingestion is safe. For example, Chauhan (2025) https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-77247-4_5 reported:"Fluoride toxicity: oxidative stress, upregulates hormonal mechanisms, causing hormonal disruption. . . bone deformity . . . dental fluorosis, Skeletal fluorosis . . . bone and joint abnormalities. . . hampers ATP formation . . . alters metabolic and reproductive hormones, . . . impaired spermatogenesis, . . . reduced sperm quality, and infertility. . . liver damage. . . genetic damage to DNA, IQ deficits, and increased risk of developmental abnormalities. Neurological impacts involve structural changes in the brain, memory issues, and neuronal loss. . . affects cellular organelles, inducing oxidative stress, apoptosis, and disrupting hormonal balance . . .transcription factors, and protein synthesis. It alters different genes implicated in bone metabolism, hormone signaling, and immune function, which leads to harmful impacts of fluoride on human health."
The FDA, CDC, EPA, and three of the largest fluoride raw product manufacturers were asked under oath if they had a single study on the safety of fluoride for the developing brain. They did not and neither does the Board or Department.
The panel must assure the public, dispelling doubt, that fluoridation is safe for everyone; fetus, infant on formula made with fluoridated water, children, adults, seniors, ethnicities, genders, health status, total exposure, and synergistic toxins, regardless of the amount of water ingested or other sources of fluoride. No reasonable scientist or person can review the science and assure themselves or the public fluoridation is safe.
Just before publication, Bill sent along his expectations of the upcoming activities related to the public’s input on fluoridation:
On April 8, the final DOH-requested presentations will be given, most likely in favor of fluoridation, and Bill will be presenting on the lack of fluoridation's safety and lack of benefit.
The Board of Health may receive an update on these presentations on April, but he wasn’t certain.
Bill has asked that our members register and give comments on public water fluoridation on April 9th.
BOH Joining instructions:
Individuals may give verbal public comments at the meeting, in-person or virtually, during the public comment period.
The amount of time allotted to each person will depend on the number of speakers present (typically 1 to 3 minutes per person). We will first call on those who have signed up in advance.
Sign up by 12:00 Noon the day before a meeting to participate in the public comment period:
Email the Board wsboh@sboh.wa.gov, or
Register through the Zoom webinar link. https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4-Q-Qo-XQf2OSvcxKh7xkQ
If you are attending the meeting in person and did not sign up in advance, you may write your name on the sign-in sheet to provide comments if time allows.
You can also dial-in using your phone for listen-only mode: Call in: +1 (253) 215-8782 (not toll-free) Webinar ID: 829 4960 2827 Passcode: 682856
Washington Democrats Continue to Fight Against Medical Freedom
In his March 26 article, “Do Democrats and Corporations Really Hate a Healthy America?” Dr. Robert Malone reported that when the Senate confirmed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on March 25 to be the next Director of the NIH, not a single Democrat voted for his confirmation. “The rot in the Democrat Party has festered to the point where they can no longer vote on qualifications—only along party lines,” Malone said. “Shame on them.”
This especially holds true here in Washington for our Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.
Malone also reported that when Dr. Marty Makary was confirmed on March 25, 2025 to be the director of the FDA, only three Democratic senators voted in favor of his confirmation. They were Dick Durbin from Illinois, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen from New Hampshire. Notice that Washington Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell are missing from this list.
Here at the state level, it perhaps gets even worse with Washington State House Bill 1531, verbosely titled “Relating to preserving the ability of public officials to address communicable diseases using scientifically proven measures to control the spread of such diseases.”
We’ve covered this bill quite often, and sent out calls-to-action to comment, but here’s a summary again if you haven’t been tracking with us:
, founder of and of Washington says of HB 1531: “This is a very, very bad, no good bill.” A look at the details shows how correct she is.For starters, the bill uses an emergency clause in which two things would happen if passed:
It takes effect immediately when signed into law by the governor.
It makes it so that citizens cannot run a referendum against the bill to try to repeal it.
“Anytime I see an emergency clause, I consider that a cause for concern,” Julie says.
The bill adds a new section to RCW 70.54, stating that public health responses must be guided by the best available science on disease control measures, including vaccinations.
And so, when you hear trust the science, that doesn’t really give us a lot of comfort. In fact, you might be like me when you hear trust the science, the alarm bells start going off.
The bill further says that “state and local health officials must implement and promote evidence based, appropriate measures to control communicable diseases including vaccines.”
Yep, they specifically mention vaccines as one of the measures they want everyone to follow because they don’t work unless everyone takes them. And does this mean they haven’t been following evidence-based or appropriate measures before this?
Perhaps most significantly, it prohibits the state and its political subdivisions from enacting any statutes, ordinances, rules, or policies that would “prohibit the implementation and promotion of these measures.” In other words, the bill potentially would make the Cowlitz County Medical Freedom Resolution, as well as the Franklin County Resolution of advising against administration of gene therapy vaccines, especially for children, null and void.
The bill was sponsored in the house by fifteen Democrats, no Republicans.
Three of the bill’s sponsors received a nice chunk of change from vaccine manufacturer Pfizer for their 2022 elections campaigns:
Dan Bronoske, 28th District, received $1,000 from Pfizer
Nicole Macri, 43rd District, received $2,000 from Pfizer
Tarra Simmons, 23rd District, received $1,000 from Pfizer
Here are the rest of the sponsors for HB 1531 – again all Democrats.
Alex Ramel from the 40th legislative district (LD)
Liz Berry from the 36th
Beth Doglio from the 22nd
Julia Reed from the 36th
Davinna Duerr from the 1st
Shelley Kloba from the 1st
Nicole Macri from the 43rd
Lisa Parshley from the 32nd
Strom Peterson from the 21st
Timm Ormsby from the 3rd
Gerry Pollet from the 46th
Shaun Scott from the 43rd
Natasha Hill from the 3rd
On Tuesday, March 25, HB 1531 passed out of the Senate Health committee [TVW clip; 26 seconds], even though the public was against it by a ratio of eight to one. All Senate Democrats voted for the bill: Annette Cleveland (chair), Tina Orwall (vice chair), Jessica Bateman, Mike Chapman, Marcus Riccelli, June Robinson, and Vandana Slatter. Notably, Paul Harris was the lone Republican who voted for the bill. We thank the Republicans who voted against the bill: Jeff Holy, Leonard Christian, and Ron Muzzall.
Will HHS Misinformation Cuts Come To Washington?
Last Thursday, Fierce Healthcare reported that they obtained a message to HHS employees on the morning of March 26, telling employees to urgently identify contracts that may have led to censorship or cause someone to hold value certain ideas more than others. This is an effort by HHS to claw back funds from inappropriate programs; one of the largest identified was an $877 million dollar program in Texas.
“In other words, and for example, just one small slice canceled all studies on vaccine hesitancy, and similar sorts of thought control,” Jeff Childers wrote the day after the report. “Put simply, the government spent billions making sure we thought the “right” thoughts about masking, vaccines, and school closures. Now the spanking robot is cleaning HHS’s house.”
Examples given included COVID-19 vaccine usage, masking and education and outreach advertisements, bringing to mind some of the vaccination marketing practices that cropped up in Washington during the pandemic.
The HHS message also said contracts or grants aimed at fighting misinformation or disinformation should be pinpointed, telling workers to scan for keywords including lockdown, media literacy, social media and more. The contents of this message were first reported by STAT News.
Last October, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, (Congressional District 5 and Spokane), led a House Energy and Commerce Committee report, exposing many of the significant public health missteps, fibs, and cover-ups from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its subagency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Dr. Robert Malone, Representative Rodgers’s report received no coverage by the corporate media except for the New York Post on Oct 23. The Post quickly points out that the HHS shelled out $911,174,285 to a behavior change research and strategy firm Fors Marsh (FMG) for a multimedia advertising campaign between August 2020 and June 2023. Nearly a billion dollars!
Representative Rodgers’s findings emphasized the breadth of the FMG contract used to psychologically manipulate the public.
Utilizing protocols and practices from prior FDA and CDC-led public health campaigns for tobacco prevention and control, FMG and its partners created ads and designed outreach strategies that specifically targeted different demographic groups and population segments. In short, FMG planned to use CDC guidance, recommendations, and internal scientific research to create advertising material to convince the American people that COVID-19 posed a sufficient threat to them or their loved ones and that they should follow the government’s recommendations and mandates. To be credible, the underlying HHS and CDC scientific recommendations and guidance needed to be effective at reducing the risk of COVID-19. Moreover, HHS and CDC needed to themselves remain credible communicators to the public.
Jeff Childers also wrote about FMG:
FMG’s plan wasn’t innovative. It wasn’t cutting edge. A child could have done it. They’re morons. They just lied, and they leaned on Americans’ trust in government to sell their simplistic lies. And the bureaucrats running the health agencies and the country’s liberal health professionals all compliantly went right along with it all, facilitating the lies at every step.
As for the message to HHS employees to pinpoint contracts or grants aimed at fighting misinformation or disinformation, it will be interesting to see what they find here in Washington from our past reporting.
The most obvious one to look at is the Center for an Informed Public (CIP) at the University of Washington which we covered on August 8 and should be reviewed if using government funds. On July 28, 2023, The Exposé, a UK-based news agency, ranked UW twenty-first out of the top fifty organizations that act as a Global Censorship Cartel. Notice in the following write-up from The Exposé, that the CIP received a $3 million grant in August 2021 from the National Science Foundation “to apply collaborative, rapid-response research to mitigate online disinformation.”
Type: An academic “multidisciplinary research center” with the mission to “resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society and strengthen democratic discourse.”
You may have read about them when: CIP co-founded the Virality Project, along with the Stanford Internet Observatory, NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics and Tandon School of Engineering, Graphika, DFRLabs, and the National Conference on Citizenship. The Virality Project “worked with social media platforms to flag and suppress commentary on Covid vaccines, science, and policy that contradicted public health officials’ stances, even when that commentary was true.” The Virality Project also described opposition to Vaccine Passports as anti-vaccine behavior, and would describe as disinformation “events” like a news story that "increased distrust in Fauci’s expert guidance.” CIP also participated in The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) along with the Stanford Internet Observatory, Graphika, and DFRLabs. The EIP, a proponent of aggressive social media censorship, partnered with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2020 and released a report on misinformation during the 2020 election.
What we know about funding: In 2019 The University of Washington was awarded $5 million in funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to establish the CIP. In June 2021, the CIP announced a “$1 million gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies to support the multidisciplinary research center’s rapid-response research of election-related mis- and disinformation.” August 2021: The CIP announced a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation “to apply collaborative, rapid-response research to mitigate online disinformation” in partnership with the Stanford Internet Observatory. The CIP received $2.25 million from that grant. Other funders include Microsoft and the University of Washington’s iSchool, Technology & Social Change Group, and Population Health Initiative.
What they do/What they are selling: CIP has undertaken projects that research misinformation and projects that look into how fact-checking can be scaled and sustained online without compromising quality. CIP researchers have written about ways to combat misinformation online, and CIP holds workshops for high schoolers on how to spot misleading information, debunk data, and improve reasoning skills.
Another one here in Washington worth looking at is the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR). Devin Burghart is its executive director and coordinates a Seattle office as we covered in the ICWA Weekly News 6-26-24.
A little less than a year ago, he provided a top ten list of “toxic sources” of COVID-19 misinformation at a webinar sponsored by Immunize Colorado. Before the webinar, Burghart had created a major stir in the medical freedom movement with a thirteen-chapter report titled “Facebook and COVID Denial.” He ranked his top ten list from highest to lowest budgets. ICWA affiliate Children’s Health Defense was listed number one in their write-up:
Children’s Health Defense: “A disinformation hub during COVID in which twenty-three state level groups have formed.”
DOH Care-a-Van Program Runs out of Gas
Reporting/Opinion by Bob Runnells
Did someone say HHS was cancelling programs? The DOH Care-a-Van’s tires budget got slashed after being notified of program termination on March 24.
The Department of Health has been operating a Care-a-Van since 2021, bringing ‘equitable access’ to underserved communities, albeit with risky, ineffective vaccinations – thank you very much. As MyNorthwest.com reported on June 2, 2021, “Think bookmobile or ice cream truck, but full of Pfizer shots.”
On March 24th, the DOH announced that program funding had been terminated after receiving a DOGE-like notice from the CDC. The DOH said this was an ‘unexpected decision’ and they had to cancel more than 104 upcoming clinics, including 35 school-based clinics where they hoped to jab 800 kids.
ICWA members may have wondered why the program was ever funded in the first place after our harsh expose of their “Take Your Shot” campaign at the WNBA Seattle Storm game. No matter the location, the vans visibly and aggressively promoted common products that can literally be found every time someone runs errands – grocery stores, pharmacies and doctor offices.
This couldn’t have been a huge surprise for DOH employees. Funding for the vans had run into a ditch in Olympia. This 2024 DOH budget proposal asks for 40 employees to staff and operate four medically equipped ice-cream trucks vans, with a burn-rate cost of more than $17,000,000 a year. With the CDC termination announcement, we can surmise that pandemic-era funding must have come to an end, and that the state didn’t come to the rescue since the vans didn’t show up on the 2024 DOH budget items list.
Let’s look at some numbers. As the DOH web site states, Care-a-Vans have administered more than 3,900 Flu, 6,800 COVID, and 5,700 childhood vaccines since July 2024. That’s about a nine-month period. Nine months of an annual $17 million is approximately $12.75 million to administer those 16,400 shots.
That averages to $777 per shot administered. Seem a little high?
Apparently, it was too much for the CDC, which is undergoing an efficiency review like so many other government departments and agencies.
Keep in mind that the vans also provided other essential services that you can’t get just anywhere, like blood pressure readings and naloxone overdose kits, so the $777 per vaccine dose might not be a fair measure. (sarcasm intended)
Followers of the DOH account on X were not too heartbroken.
The comments below their X announcement are worth reading. We capture just a few in the following screenshot.
“Good because not 1 person has ever heard of it. 🎯🙌🇺🇸”
“Thank God. You have been poisoning people for years.”
And perhaps the most noteworthy:
“Good - this program was DEI based. Here is the email address that is used to contact the bureaucrats at WA DOH for the Care A Van program: equity@doh.wa.gov. Glad to see this Jab Van shut down”
So, not only was Care-a-Van over-promoting vaccines, marketing them as safe as ice cream, they were also espousing DEI values like those being unraveled at the federal level. With this kind of crossfire, these vans definitely needed a recall.
But, couldn’t the vans easily come back with help from the legislature or Governor? On Facebook, they say their services are ‘suspended.’ Maybe Bill Gates will see an opportunity. But we don’t think they can justify all four vehicles.
Just throwing it out there: we hope the surplus vans can be purchased by an enterprising Seahawk fan who can retrofit them into a tailgate machine. Imagine how fast a six-pack could be cooled in those mRNA freezers!
One Health Gets a Victory in King County Court
The May 8, 2023 article in The Defender covered how the World Health Organization (WHO) defines “One Health,” as “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems,” as they are “closely linked and interdependent” — a concept that on the surface appears to promote noble goals interlinking human and environmental health.
As noble as those goals seem to be, experts who spoke with The Defender in that article raised questions about other aspects of the One Health concept, including a biosecurity agenda, a global surveillance system, vaccine passports and restrictions on human behavior. Arguing that the concept has been “hijacked,” they question the intent of those involved with the development and global rollout of the concept — including the WHO, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Bank.
As for the green-shaded “environment” presented in the above diagram, at the last Washington One Health Conference, held on August 16, 2023, in Ellensburg, the prominent theme from the speakers was on facing a climate change crisis. Beth Lipton, a veterinarian at the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) and currently working on health impacts of climate change as well as emergency preparedness and response, best summed up the sentiments of the meeting when she said, “The need to align climate change approaches with One Health approaches was very clear today, and that really resonated a lot with me as well.”
Well, One Health gained a victory in this regard when last week King County Superior Court’s Judge Sandra Widlan ruled that Initiative 2066 violated the Washington state constitution and initiative process rules.
Washington voters passed Initiative 2066 in the last November election to stop the state from dismantling the infrastructure that delivers natural gas to homes and businesses. Yet on March 21, Judge Widlan struck down I-2066 as misleading, deceptive, and unconstitutional. so this dismantling will continue.
The Washington Conservation Action voters claimed that 1-2066 was a “far-right” ballot measure.
“Initiative 2066 was designed to rob people of their choice to access cleaner, more efficient energy. We’re already seeing the consequences—programs that would help families afford high-efficiency electric appliances have been blocked by 2066,” said Christina Wong, Vice President of Programs at Washington Conservation Action.
Ben Avery, Washington Chapter Director of the Sierra Club said, “Washington voters have made it clear that they support bold climate action and a transition to clean, renewable energy, and we applaud the court for throwing out this illegal initiative.”
But Future 42 said of the ruling, “King County Superior Court Judge Sandra Widlan halted the law, siding with special interests and climate activists instead of the people.”
According to Future 42, this decision means one can expect the following:
❌ The state can keep moving forward with its ban on natural gas hookups.
💸 Higher energy bills are coming as Washington forces you toward expensive alternatives.
⚖️ A single judge overruled the will of nearly 2 million voters last fall.
Going into the argument for a moment, is a ban on natural gas really necessary? Dr. Robert Malone ran a story on March 22 about a peer-reviewed study published on March 21, 2025, in the journal Science of Climate Change. The ground-breaking study used AI (Grok-3) to debunk the man-made climate crisis narrative. The paper was titled, “A Critical Reassessment of the Anthropogenic CO2-Global Warming Hypothesis.”
This peer-reviewed study and literature review not only reassessed man's role in the climate change narrative, but it also revealed a general trend to exaggerate global warming.
It used unadjusted records to argue human CO2—only 4% of the annual carbon cycle—vanishes into oceans and forests within 3 to 4 years, not centuries as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims. During the 2020 COVID lockdowns, a 7% emissions drop (2.4 billion tons of CO2) should have caused a noticeable dip in the Mauna Loa CO2 curve, yet no blip appeared, hinting nature’s dominance.
Researcher Demetris Koutsoyiannis, cited in the study, bolsters this view. His isotopic analysis (δ¹³C) found no lasting human CO2 signature in the atmosphere over centuries, challenging its impact. His statistical work added a twist: temperature drives CO2 levels—not vice versa—with heat leading CO2 shifts by 6 to 12 months in modern data and 800 years in ice cores. “It’s like thunder before lightning,” said Willie Soon. “Warming pulls CO2 from oceans.”
The study also faults IPCC models for exaggerating warming. Models predict up to 0.5°C per decade, but satellite and ground data show just 0.1 to 0.13°C. Arctic sea ice, expected to shrink sharply, has stabilized since 2007. “These models overplay CO2’s role,” said David Legates. “They don’t fit reality.”
A thorough understanding of the IPCC’s faulty modeling can be found in Judith Curry’s book Climate Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking Our Response.
The following passage in her book explains the IPCC’s ignorance by way of oversimplification:
How has the IPCC dealt with the challenge of uncertainty and assigning confidence levels to its conclusions? Prior to 2000, uncertainty was dealt with by the IPCC in an ad hoc manner. The Uncertainty Guidance paper published in 2000 recommended steps for assessing uncertainty in the IPCC Assessment Reports [footnote 20]. It recommended a common vocabulary to express quantitative levels of confidence based on the amount of evidence and the degree of agreement (consensus) among experts.
The actual implementation of this guidance in the IPCC Reports has focused more on communicating uncertainty rather than on actually characterizing it [footnote 22] or acknowledging areas of incomplete knowledge or ignorance. Defenders of the IPCC uncertainty characterization argue that subjective consensus expressed using simple terms is more easily understood by policy makers. While adhering (mostly) to the principles set forth in the “Uncertainty Guidance” paper, the IPCC oversimplifies the characterization of uncertainty by substituting expert judgment for a thorough understanding of uncertainty. They look at “evidence for” and “evidence against” (but somehow neglect a lot of the evidence against), and completely neglect to acknowledge ignorance.
Curry then also refers to the journal Science of Climate Change:
In 2011, the journal Climatic Change published Special Issue: Guidance for Characterizing and Communicating Uncertainty and Confidence in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[22] A total of 15 papers were invited for this Special Issue, including one that I authored. The point was made in several papers (including mine) that the greatest need was to acknowledge areas of ignorance and disagreement, particularly with regard to potentially high impact outcomes.[23] Overconfidence is an inevitable result of neglecting ignorance. There were also several substantive critiques of the consensus-seeking expert judgment process used by the IPCC.24
The IPCC faces a daunting challenge in characterizing uncertainty because unquantifiable uncertainties and ignorance dominate the quantifiable uncertainties. However, this challenge does not justify the IPCC’s oversimplification of characterizing uncertainty in the climate system (monster simplification), which has led to misleading overconfidence and has fueled public distrust. More significantly, overconfidence can lead to poor policy decisions and outcomes.
We leave you by noting the parallel between the climate change debate and the COVID vaccine programs - where agencies fuel public distrust by pushing their one solution.
Thanks to our attentive reader, Derek, for pointing out that BOH has moved its meeting start time Wednesday to 8:30 AM and increased public comment time.