By Andy May

Well, it is official, Marty Rowland PhD has been fired from his position as Special Issue Editor at the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES). The reason he was given for being fired was his publication of our paper, Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems. The paper has been cited 23 times according to google scholar. It was first published online May 29, 2024, and is already in the top 1% of all 29 million papers followed by Wiley’s Altmetric tracker. It is the #2 paper published in the 83-year history of the AJES.

Challenges (there are many from the climate mafia) to May & Crok are responded to here, see the bottom of the post for the full list and links to all peer-reviewed and informal challenges and our responses. Dr. Rowland calls his firing “Orwellian,” and we totally agree. The challenge by Tinus Pulles in an article somewhat offensively titled “Climate Denialism” cites two articles that directly compare “climate deniers” to holocaust deniers, see here for our critique of this paper. May & Crok has withstood all scrutiny to date.

The offensive and wildly inaccurate Tinus Pulles critique is the one cited by AJES board most when they explain why they fired Dr. Rowland. In addition, other board members were pressured by Wiley to write critiques of our paper, these are Cobb, 2024 and Gwartney & Lough. Both papers make the same argument that the “consensus” says climate change is dangerous so it must be so.

Pulles’ critique relies on flawed climate models (also see here and here) projections of the future. Models are not evidence:

As to so-called modeling “evidence,” it is the models that we are testing; the model results should not be confused with evidence. (Lindzen, 2012)

May & Crok focusses on the lack of any real evidence that climate change (whether man-made or natural) is dangerous, as summarized in Table 12.12 in the IPCC AR6 WGI report in Chapter 12, page 1856. Pulles admits there are no visible current dangers, but claims models predict that there will be at some unspecified point in the future. Speculation, even using models, does not counter facts and measurements.

The more formal reviews of our paper, by David Wojick, Kenneth Richard, and Sterling Burnett are all positive. In short there was no legitimate reason to fire Dr. Rowland for publishing our fully peer-reviewed, and well received, paper. The peer reviewers all had comments on our paper and every single suggestion they sent us was incorporated into the final submitted version which can be downloaded here.

It appears that firing Dr. Rowland was a purely political act and not based on any legitimate problem with our paper, which is solid as far as anyone knows at this time. His firing for publishing a skeptical article is reminiscent of Wolfgang Wagner resigning over a perfectly reasonable, but counter to the “consensus” paper, by Roy Spencer and William Braswell in 2011, the paper is here and the story is here. As in this case, Spencer and Braswell presented solid observations and facts, and their critics presented model results. If you have trouble downloading the editor’s reasons for resigning from Roy Spencer’s blog, here is another link to his explanation.

The debate between the two sides is complex, and mostly is over the sign and magnitude of feedbacks to greenhouse gas (mainly CO₂) warming. This is how science is supposed to work. When an editor proclaims from on high that one well supported opinion is wrong and the other is correct, without proper discussion and debate, it is politics not science.

Willie Soon and Dick Lindzen report that two editors were fired for publishing two of Lindzen’s papers. The first, published in 1990, lays out Lindzen’s objections to the idea that a man-made enhanced greenhouse effect could be the dominant reason behind current warming, the paper is quite reasonable and certainly not a reason to fire anyone. The paper warns, as we do in ours, that more definitive evidence of the potential dangers of man-made global warming must be found before drastic actions, like eliminating fossil fuels, are taken. Model results are not evidence.

The second is Lindzen’s landmark first paper on the Iris Effect. Now, more than 20 years later, the Iris Effect is widely accepted and when incorporated in models it moves model results closer to observations. Certainly, accepting such a landmark paper is no reason to fire anyone. Journalist Tilak Doshi was fired from Forbes for defending J. D. Vance’s views on the dangers of climate change. Dr. Rowland’s firing is not unique by any means.

One must remember that Albert Einstein’s PhD thesis was originally rejected until he submitted his work to Max Planck at the Annalen der Physik. Planck published most of the thesis as four papers, without formal peer-review and Einstein’s reputation was made. Max Planck said that publishing risky papers is important, it is far worse to reject a possibly groundbreaking work. The peer-review process can, and often does, suppress truly innovative work, simply because it is novel and opposed to the “consensus” opinion.

Dr. Rowland invited me to explain the scientific basis for the “denier” (or skeptical) view that man-made climate change and carbon dioxide emissions are not dangerous. It was incorporated into a special issue of AJES that covers all the views on climate change to help the public understand the full range of views on man-made climate change. This laudable attempt to examine man-made climate change from all sides in one issue of AJES is what got him fired.

Wiley, which is the publishing and printing company that AJES contracts with, objected to May & Crok and, according to Gwartney and Lough, “forced” the AJES board to “intervene” after May & Crok was already published online. Who appointed Wiley to be the judge of “truth” in science? Aren’t scientific hypotheses, such as the consensus hypothesis that man-made climate change is dangerous, supposed to be debated among scientists until all objections and contradictions are explained and all agree? Fortunately, the board, quite properly, rejected Wiley’s request to retract our paper from the issue. Science is based on free speech and debate and if only one side of an issue gets published, there can be no debate and science dies.

I asked Marcel Crok to help me write the paper because he has thoroughly researched the impacts of climate change presented in AR6 WG2. Our paper supports the skeptical view that fossil fuel CO₂ emissions and climate change are not dangerous. Thus, it is both an opinion piece and a literature review paper. We avoided all speculation and deliberately used no models or model results in the paper, only accepted peer-reviewed literature and observations. The elements Wiley and AJES require to retract a paper have not been met, as a result the AJES board quite correctly rejected the Wiley request. However, they volunteered to publish Pulles, Gwartney & Lough, and Cobb’s critical papers. But, as noted above, the critiques are all based on “consensus” opinions and model results, so they are very weak.

When Dr. Rowland inquired about why he was being fired for simply publishing the full range of views on the scientific topic of dangerous man-made climate change, he was told there was only one legitimate view of climate change, that it is dangerous. When Dr. Rowland correctly pointed out that the climate establishment and the IPCC have not identified any current climate change dangers, he was told that the IPCC is withholding conclusive evidence of the dangers from the public. That they have secret data showing that it is dangerous. Dr. Rowland asked why they are keeping such important data secret and received no answer. My view is if anyone believes that is true, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I will happily sell to you. One is reminded of John Stuart Mill’s words:

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

Besides his now terminated position of special issues editor for AJES, Dr. Rowland is a lecturer at the Henry George School of Social Science, a New York City Parks environmental engineer, and on the Board of Trustees for the Henry George School of Social Science. Losing this job is not a crisis for Dr. Rowland, as much as it is a crisis for science and the freedoms of speech and the press.

Science is never only one opinion, science is never settled, and science dies when all views are not aired in the open and freely discussed and debated. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Dr. Rowland’s idea to publish all well-documented views on climate change in one issue is a good one, that is real science. Firing him for doing this is unscientific in the extreme and a crime against free expression everywhere.

The original purpose of the AJES, when it was created 83 years ago, was to offer a “periodic, systematic synthesis of investigation of social issues” according to Dr. Rowland. This is exactly what he was trying to do since modern “climate science” no longer has much to do with science, it is now a social and political issue. The fact that Dr Rowland was fired for publishing our paper simply underscores that point.

For more on censorship and suppression of proper science, see here.

Bibliography

Cobb, C. W. (2024). The politics of climate denialism and the secondary denialism of economics. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. doi:10.1111/ajes.12606

Gwartney, T., & Lough, A. (2025). AJES Board Response to an Internal Controversy About Climate-Change Denial. Am J Econ Sociol, 84. doi:10.1111/ajes.12609

Lindzen, R. (1990, March). Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 71(3). Retrieved from https://ift.tt/tFOQdW2

Lindzen, R., Chou, M.-D., & Hou, A. (2001, March). Does the Earth have an Adaptive Iris. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 82(3). Retrieved from https://ift.tt/Kg71Ivu

May, A., & Crok, M. (2024, May 29). Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1-15. doi:10.1111/ajes.12579

Pulles, T. (2025). Climate Denialism. AJES, 84. doi:10.1111/ajes.12611

Spencer, R., & Braswell, W. (2011). On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance. Remote Sensing, 3(8). doi:10.3390/rs3081603

From Doomworld and American Meteorological Society comes yet another climate report press release. Someone should remind the AMS that weather is not climate. See the map.

According to the 35th annual State of the Climate report, greenhouse gas concentrations, the global temperature across land and oceans, global sea level, and ocean heat content all reached record highs in 2024, and glaciers lost the most ice of any year on record.

The international review of the world’s climate, published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), is based this year on contributions from 589 scientists in 58 countries. For decades, the State of the Climate has provided the most comprehensive annual update on Earth’s climate⁠ — illuminating not only key indicators like global CO2 but also notable weather events, regional phenomena, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, and ice, as well as in space.

“The State of the Climate report is an annual scientific landmark,” says American Meteorological Society President David J. Stensrud. “It is a truly global effort, in which hundreds of researchers from universities, government agencies, and more come together to provide a careful, rigorously peer-reviewed report on our planet’s climate. High-quality observations and findings from all over the world are incorporated, underscoring the vital importance of observations to monitor, and climate science to understand, our environment. The results affirm the reality of our changing climate, with 2024 global temperatures reaching record highs.”  

Notable findings from the international report include:

• Earth’s greenhouse gas concentrations were the highest on record. Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide ⁠— Earth’s major atmospheric greenhouse gases⁠ — once again reached record-high concentrations in 2024. The globally averaged CO2 level reached 422.8±0.1 parts per million, a 52% increase from the pre-industrial level of ~278 ppm. Annual growth in global mean CO2 has increased from 0.6±0.1 ppm yr−1 in the early 1960s to an average of 2.4 ppm yr−1 during 2011–20. The growth from 2023 to 2024 was 3.4 ppm, equal with 2015/16 as the highest in the record since the 1960s.
• Record temperatures were notable across the globe. A new annual global surface temperature record was set for the second year in a row, with records dating back as far as the mid-1800s. A range of scientific analyses indicate that the annual global surface temperature was 1.13 to 1.30 degrees F (0.63 to 0.72 degrees C) above the 1991–2020 average. A strong El Niño that began in mid-2023 and ended in boreal spring 2024 contributed to the record warmth. The last time two consecutive years reached a new global surface temperature record was in 2015 and 2016, when a strong El Niño developed during the latter half of 2015 and dissipated by May 2016. All six major global temperature datasets used for analysis in the report agree that the last 10 years (2015–24) were the 10 warmest on record. 
• The water cycle continued to intensify. Higher global temperatures impacted the water cycle. Water evaporation from land in the Northern Hemisphere reached one of the highest annual values on record. The global atmosphere contained the largest amount of water vapor on record, with over one-fifth of the globe recording their highest values in 2024. This far exceeded 2023, where only one-tenth of the globe experienced record-high values of total column water vapor. Precipitation was globally high; 2024 was the third-wettest year since records began in 1983. Extreme rainfall, as characterized by the annual maximum daily rainfall over land, was the wettest on record. In April, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates recorded 9.8 in (250 mm) of rain in 24 hours — nearly three times its annual average.
• El Niño conditions contributed to record-high sea surface temperatures. Strong El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that emerged by the end of 2023 continued into early 2024, with neutral conditions returning in boreal spring. Daily globally averaged sea surface temperatures were at record-high levels from the beginning of 2024 until late June. The mean annual global sea surface temperature in 2024 was a record high, surpassing the previous record of 2023 by 0.11 of a degree F (0.06 of a degree C). Approximately 91% of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine heatwave in 2023, which is defined as sea surface temperatures in the warmest 10% of all recorded data in a particular location for at least five days. Only 26% of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine cold spell. The ocean experienced a record-high global average of 100 marine heatwave days and a new record low of nine marine cold spell days.
• Ocean heat and global sea level were the highest on record. Over the past half-century, the oceans have stored more than 90% of the excess energy trapped in Earth’s system by greenhouse gases and other factors. The global ocean heat content, measured from the ocean’s surface to a depth of 2000 m (approximately 6561 ft), continued to increase, and reached new record highs in 2024. Global mean sea level was a record high for the 13th consecutive year, reaching about 4.0 in (105.8 mm) above the average for 1993 when satellite altimetry measurements began. Warming oceans have contributed an average of 1.5±0.3 mm to the rise per year since 2005, while melt from ice sheets and glaciers have contributed an average of 2.1±0.4 mm during that same period.
• The Arctic saw near-record warmth. The Arctic had its second-warmest year in the 125-year record, with autumn (October to December) having been record warm. During the summer, an intense August heatwave brought all-time record-high temperatures to parts of the northwest North American Arctic, and record-high August monthly mean temperatures at Svalbard Airport reached more than 52°F (11°C). In September, temperatures above 86°F (30°C) were observed in Norway, marking the latest time of the year in the observational record that such high temperatures have occurred there. During the 2023/24 snow season, there were large differences in how long snow remained on the ground, from the shortest to date in the twenty-first century over parts of Canada to at or near the longest in this century in parts of the Nordic and Asian Arctic. The Arctic maximum sea ice extent in 2024 was the second smallest in the 46-year satellite record, while the minimum sea ice extent was the sixth smallest. 
• Antarctica saw continued low sea ice. Following record lows in 2023, net sea ice extent was larger than last year but continued to be well below average during much of 2024. The Antarctic daily minimum and maximum sea ice extents for the year were each the second lowest on record behind 2023, marking a continuation of low and record-low sea ice extent since 2016.
• Glaciers around the world continued to melt. For the second consecutive year, all 58 global reference glaciers across five continents lost mass in 2024, resulting in the greatest average ice loss in the 55-year record. In South America, Venezuela became the first Andes country to register the loss of all glaciers. In Colombia, the Conejeras Glacier was declared extinct, joining the list of glaciers that have disappeared in recent years. 
• Tropical cyclone activity was below average, but storms still set records around the globe. A total of 82 named tropical cyclones were observed during the Northern and Southern Hemispheres’ storm seasons, below the 1991–2020 average of 87 and equal to the number recorded in 2023. Many storms made landfall and some caused major damage. Hurricane Helene brought destruction from Florida to the southern Appalachian Mountains. The storm caused devastating record flooding that contributed to over 200 deaths, the most in the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Hurricane Milton impacted Florida’s Gulf Coast just 12 days after Helene affected the region, marking the shortest time between major (Category 3 or higher) hurricane landfalls in Florida. In the northwest Pacific basin, Super Typhoon Yagi became one of the most destructive storms to affect China and Vietnam in recent years, causing more than 800 fatalities.

The State of the Climate report is a peer-reviewed series published annually as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The American Meteorological Society makes the full report openly available online.