Francis Collins’s new book, The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust, includes a section on the climate change debate. I can say without reservation that Collins’s treatment exemplifies everything that is wrong with the public discourse on this topic today. Early on, he states that his goal is to “present and explain the objective facts about climate change, without any overlay of either denial or catastrophism. As you will see, the evidence is clear.” But Collins is not at all moderate in his take. He pitches his tent well within the ranks of the catastrophist (or, better, “alarmist”) camp. The first evidence of his blind bias is his frequent use of the word “denial” or “denier” as a label for skeptical climate scientists, which not so subtly implies association with Holocaust deniers.

Collins dismisses skeptical viewpoints as primarily politically or economically motivated, insinuating guilt by association when discussing climate skeptics and tobacco industry connections, and relying heavily on claims of absurdly high consensus percentages (“between 98.7 and 100 percent”) among climate scientists. If Collins really thinks that the science is settled and the evidence is so clear, then why resort to bogus arguments?

Name Those Experts

Never once does Collins give the name of a skeptical climate scientist, as if doing so would contradict his narrative that there aren’t any who aren’t bought and paid for by the oil industry. I can name a few: John Christy, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, Willie Soon, David Legates, William Happer (physicist), Ronan Connolly, Patrick Michaels (deceased), and Judith Curry. Curry is especially interesting. She is a convert from the alarmist camp. I wrote about her story here. As Curry notes, climate activism has a gatekeeping effect that stifles debate. Collins seems to be cheerleading for such efforts.

Roy Spencer relates how the current climate among climate alarmists has directly impacted his research (from a blog where he writes about his approaching retirement):

The main issue with me continuing employment past his [John Christy’s] retirement date is the lack of funding from the federal government. We had a Department of Energy contract, but it is ending and we have very few friends in Washington since we remain on the ‘wrong side’ of the science. The peer review process (which determines what proposals the government will fund) has been stacked against us for many years making it almost impossible to get funded to investigate the issues we believe are important to the climate debate.

It’s a little ironic that even though both John [Christy] and I are ‘lukewarmers’ that’s just not alarmist enough for us to be allowed to play in the climate sandbox with the big dogs (sorry for the mixed metaphor).

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I am often asked if there are new, young researchers who can take our place. The problem is that their careers depend upon getting those same federal contracts we depended upon. Unfortunately, any projects that smell like climate skepticism are generally not funded, and young researchers will likely hurt their careers if they are considered to be replacements for John or me. 

What Evidence Does Collins Cite? 

Right out of the gate, he quotes a large number of heat-related deaths in Europe in the summer of 2022. Never mind that this is most likely an exaggeration, the bigger concern is that Collins is being misleading by giving only one side of the story. Never does he hint at the fact that far more deaths result from cold than from heat (by up to a factor of nearly 20. In a warming world, more heat-related deaths occur, but they are outnumbered by the decline in cold-related deaths. The increasing global average temperature is more the result of increasing winter temperatures than summer temperatures. One gets the impression that Collins is trying to scare the reader into joining his cause. 

Here’s another whopper, “While it is not clear that hurricanes have become more frequent than in the past, it is abundantly clear that Category 4 and 5 hurricanes have doubled in frequency.” The first part of his statement is true, though I would say the data show they have not increased since reliable records began in the mid 19th century. The second claim is false. In fact, if we switch the topic from hurricanes to tornadoes, the opposite is the case from what Collins claims — the frequency of strong tornadoes has decreased since reliable records began in 1954; the frequency of weak tornadoes declined as well if we take proper account of improvements in our ability to detect weak tornadoes.

A Lone Figure

Collins presents only one figure in this section of his book. It is a plot of the global surface temperature from 1850 to the present from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 Working Group I. It shows two plots. One is the observed trend, and the other is the natural drivers only. It gives the impression that the observed global temperature has clearly diverged from the natural variations and is now driven almost entirely by human greenhouse gas emissions. 

He dismisses criticisms of the observed temperature rise, absurdly describing skeptics as arguing that “warming isn’t really happening, and the reported increases in global temperatures are all wrong because measurements are only taken in urban heat islands. This is simply untrue. Temperature is measured at multiple sites across the globe, not just in cities.” Except that none of the climate skeptics actually make that claim! What they do demonstrate in the scientific literature is that the urban heat island effect is real and it biases temperatures to higher values. Here is a recent example of a study that uses statistical methods to quantify the contribution of the urbanization bias.

In introducing the global temperature plots Collins states, “The thermometer is an objective and nonpartisan instrument, and its measurements over time have been recorded and assessed.” This statement evinces a profound naïveté about the science of temperature measurements. Besides the urbanization biases, there are various types of corrections that are made to “homogenize” the temperature readings from multiple locations and over multiple decades: differences among weather stations, station additions, drops (for example with the fall of the Soviet Union) and moves, and station aging. There is nothing simple about it.

Future climate projections are only as good as the models. How good are they? Well, the models overestimate the temperatures of recent decades (see Figure 1 here). In addition, ongoing research still surprises us with how much we don’t understand about Earth’s climate (two studies, here and here, published in the past month show that plants and oceans absorb substantially more carbon dioxide than previously assumed in the models. 

Reasons for Optimism

However, there are some statistics that are well established, and they give us reason to be optimistic. Over the last century, climate-related deaths have declined by over 99 percent! This, in spite of the fact that the population has grown dramatically in the last century, and more people live in areas vulnerable to severe storms. Nearly all this decline can be attributed to our improved ability to adapt to climate change from advancements in technology (earlier warning, air conditioning, medical treatments, cheap and reliable energy, etc.). History has shown that adaptation to climate change works, while climate change mitigation (Collins’s unnamed approach) is yet unproven but proving to be very expensive. 

To defend their multi-trillion-dollar mitigation strategies, alarmists must argue that rising carbon dioxide brings no benefits and only does harm. Collins is no exception. He mentions just one beneficial aspect of rising carbon dioxide, only to critique it: “The Heartland Institute has produced a school curriculum arguing that more CO₂ is good for plants because they can use it to grow. That would of course be true for plants that are able to survive the increase in global temperature and disturbance in the availability of water.” By framing it in this way Collins is implying that this argument is just a political ploy invented to brainwash young people about CO₂. The facts are otherwise. Many studies published in journals have shown that plants and trees have benefited greatly from the rising CO₂ and the modest warming over the last few decades, including important agricultural crops. One NASA study produced a “greening Earth” image showing how the Earth has literally turned greener since 1982. Not only do plants grow faster with elevated CO₂, but they also handle dry conditions better. This CO₂ fertilization effect is even leading to the greening of the sub-Saharan desert.

Design in the Earth System

Not surprisingly, Collins advocates eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (Net-Zero) — an utterly unworkable scheme. And, as I hope I made clear above — an utterly unnecessary one. Collins identifies as a Christian, but he seems to have missed a glaring instance of design in the Earth system. The fossil fuels so abundant in Earth’s crust and so easily accessible to us and so necessary for high technology and human flourishing have resulted in a greener Earth, benefiting the entire biosphere.

The real mystery is how someone as intelligent and highly educated in a scientific discipline as Francis Collins can be so wrong about matters of science. I will not attempt an answer.