Climate change: “The silence of these writers is dreadfully expressive”

Concluding his thorough and, to my mind, convincing argument against the findings of several researchers into the economics of climate change, David Barker writes: 

We are forced by this pattern of errors to consider the possibility that some of the body of research I have critiqued is less than honest. It appears to be the result of bias—implicit collaboration of authors, reviewers and editors to promote socially and politically acceptable ideas leading to conformity and suppression of alternative ideas. Additional evidence of bias in academia can be found in surveys of literature on the effect of climate change on the economy. Two recent surveys ... discuss hundreds of papers, including the papers I critiqued, but neither of them cite my critiques. In the 2020s, it is impossible that the authors of survey pieces like these would have been unaware of my work. The authors also knew that my critiques have not been answered. The irresponsibility of failing to provide a balanced review of the literature in these articles can only be explained by ideological bias. Reflection after five papers about climate change, David Barker, 'Econ Journal Watch', March 2025

I'm not sure which comes first: ideology or competition for funding or recognition. Either way, there are incentives in the academic world to be dishonest. When there's too much dishonesty or ideological bias (see here, for instance) then we see what we are experiencing now: a backlash against the entire scientific enterprise. 

My position on climate change doesn't rely on knowing whether it's actually happening or what's causing it. In that sense, it transcends ideology. We need to decide what aspects of the climate we want to target. Especially, we need to decide whether to focus its adverse impacts on human, animal and plant life, or to target such physical variables as area of sea ice, temperature, or some combination. Under a Climate Stability Bond regime, we could target an wide array of variables, each of which would have to fall within a stipulated range for a period of decades before the bonds would be redeemed. Investors in the bonds would have incentives to prioritise the efficiency with which research (along with all the other necessary steps) will help achieve our climate change goal, rather than the ideology or status of the relevant scientists, and to do so continually.

I've written copiously about climate change on this blog (here and here, for example) and there are links to my longer pieces on Climate Stability Bonds on my main website.