Nobel-prize-winning physicist John F. Clauser has had his speech cancelled by the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Clauser, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2022, along with two other scientists for his pioneering work on quantum information science, was scheduled to present a seminar to the IMF about climate models on July 25th.
“According to an email he received last evening, the Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund, Pablo Moreno, had read the flyer for John’s July 25 zoom talk and summarily and immediately cancelled the talk. Technically, it was ‘postponed’,” the Co2 Coalition said in a statement on July 21st.
According to its website, the Co2 Coalition was founded in 2015 “to engage in an informed and dispassionate discussion of climate change, humans’ role in the climate system, the limitations of climate models, and the consequences of mandated reductions in CO2 emissions.” Its members are accomplished scientists from a variety of fields who have worked for prestigious organisations including NASA. Clauser joined the board of the non-profit in May 2023.
The research for which Clauser won the Nobel Prize showed that quantum entanglement allowed particles such as photons to interact at great distances, seemingly to require communication exceeding the speed of light. He conducted the research in the 1970s early in his career, and it was so groundbreaking that many of Clauser’s peers were sceptical of his findings. As recognised by the Nobel Foundation, the research was a paradigm-shifting advance that paved the way for the development of new technologies, namely, quantum computing and communication.
Among other applications, this same quantum computing—which Clauser helped put in place—is used in the climate models scientists have developed to predict changes in the climate. Nevertheless, Clauser found these models lacking, and developed his own climate model to account for factors other models leave out, particularly cumulus cloud cover, which is always widely present.
The Co2 Coalition provided Newsweek with a portion of the email Clauser sent to the organisation after learning that he wouldn’t be speaking, Newsweek reports. According to the news outlet, in the email, Clauser wrote that he was informed that Moreno cancelled his speech because he “feared that I might say technical things that were over his head and that he couldn’t understand.”
The Co2 Coalition told Newsweek in a statement that it is a disgrace that Clauser has been silenced.
The talk Clauser prepared for the IMF was titled “Let’s talk—How much can we trust IPCC climate predictions?” The IPCC is the UN body on climate change research—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Coalition noted that Clauser is also an outspoken climate-change sceptic. He openly criticised current climate models and the public policies derived from them, particularly energy policy, which he said has “unnecessarily exacerbated” both the energy crisis and global poverty.
The IMF is a key organisation in promoting global development to lift people out of poverty.
“Clauser had previously criticized the awarding of the 2021 Nobel Prize for work in the development of computer models predicting global warming and told President Biden that he disagreed with his climate policies,” the Co2 foundation also said in the statement about the cancellation of the physicist’s talk.
Most recently, at the end of June, Clauser participated in the Quantum Korea 2023 conference in Seoul, South Korea. The international conference centres on the global trends in quantum ecosystem innovations in the academic, government, and private sectors. During the event, he gave a speech challenging the mainstream theories on climate change.
“I don’t believe there is a climate crisis,” Clauser said, adding that “key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times.”
“The world we live in today is filled with misinformation. It is up to each of you to serve as judges, distinguishing truth from falsehood based on accurate observations of phenomena,” he also told his fellow physicists.
Clauser is one of several Nobel laureates who question climate change orthodoxy. A growing body of environmental activists and scientists are also questioning the transition away from fossil fuels to so-called renewable energies, such as wind and solar power, both on grounds of feasibility and their negative environmental impacts.
