1st Response to Dr. Will Tuttle

8:56 PM Monday.

My comment on Dr Will Tuttle | Freeing Ourselves from the Climate Change Narrative:

Greetings, Will. I was born in 1972. I've been vegan since 2005, the same year that I got my MSW from UAlbany here in upstate New York. I interacted with Sailesh Rao by email for a while back in 2013 when I was researching the impact of insolation-dependent methane oxidation on temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the century, 1K and 10K-year scales in the paleoclimatological ice core record. I've continued with independent research on both sides of the political and scientific aisle since then. 

Your presentation is extremely provocative, so much so that I still find it shocking some eight days later. I initially thought that you were guilty of epistemic irresponsibility, speaking outside your area of expertise and causing harm to the faith-based vegan climate science community. But who am I to judge? Am I not your epistemic inferior in the vegan arena? Then I thought you might be a hired "merchant of doubt" disinformation gun. But that is obviously a paranoid conspiracy theory (completely ungrounded in evidence) which I am committed to avoiding. So, now that I am settled down enough to trust in your fundamental sincerity, I feel duty-bound to offer myself up to you as a public dialogue partner in a debate that could take a while to resolve.

Picking up from your comment immediately above, I agree that we all need to develop discernment in order to better defend ourselves against disinformation. Especially for vegans, it can look like the mainstream media are complicit in an anti-vegan conspiracy. Why not assume they are lying about climate change, too? I think that's a very fair point, Will. But it can also be taken much too far. It can become completely debilitating. Are you suggesting that we need to doubt all mainstream scientific narratives (like the heliocentric model of the solar system, the R-value of housing insulation, or the basics of three greenhouse gas effect as these are taught in high school) in order to be epistemically responsible? Is there any role in your epistemic approach for trust in scientific institutions? Is it that you don't trust any expertise except your own, and you can see for yourself that the IPCC is wrong? Or is it more the case that you trust Dr. Clauser and the dissenting minority at Clintel over the IPCC majority, even though Dr. Clauser's self-regulating cloud cover hypothesis has never been peer-reviewed?

I am willing to work with you through your presentation point by point. You started by citing Clintel's World Climate Declaration as evidence that you are not alone in your view, and Dr. Clauser is a Nobel laureate in physics, so this seems like the appropriate place to start.

End 9:00 PM.

Addendum 9:18 PM 27 December 2025. Will Tuttle sent me an email. I responded with a follow-up YouTube comment:

Hi again, Will. I am so sorry to hear that you are unwilling and/or unable to participate in a logical point-by-point conversation with me about your presentation. You began your slideshow by citing Clintel's World Climate Declaration as evidence that you are not alone in your view, but a cursory investigation shows that Clintel is not a credible climate science organization and that Clintel ambassador Dr. Clauser's self-regulating cloud cover hypothesis has never been published in a peer-reviewed climate science journal. On the contrary, Clauser's hypothesis has instead been dismissed as "pure garbage" and "pseudoscience" by experts and professors in atmospheric sciences, such as Michael Mann and Andrew Dessler. A logical, point-by-point conversation with me would require you to proceed by defending your citation of Clintel and Dr. Clauser - or by admitting that these are untenable sources. There is no reason to jump to other aspects of the problem. One step through your presentation at a time.

  

If you choose not to validate understandable audience shock when climate-conscientious vegans hear your extremist conspiracy theory, and if you choose not to defend or discontinue your reliance on Clintel and Clauser in light of evidence and reason, how can climate-conscientious vegans avoid concluding that you are willfully responsible for grave harm to the faith-based vegan science community?

End 9:19 PM.

Addendum 3:43 PM 10 January 2026. I responded to Will Tuttle an additional time on the morning of 28 December 2025 as follows:

One last afterthought for you, Will.

It's nearing dawn as I write, and I don't think God wants to end on a down note.

Thank you so much for your many contributions to the vegan community and to the larger cause of peace worldwide. You have certainly earned some impressive karma!

(Let's not throw any of it away with an inadequately peer-reviewed vegan climate science conspiracy theory).

I am especially grateful for the PDF of "Food for Freedom" (a brilliant title which I wholeheartedly endorse, along with the concept of freedom from false and debilitating climate narratives) and the follow-up links for further study, all of which I will do my best to engage with, as time allows given my other irons in the fire.

As shocking as your ideas are - which is not to say that I don't agree with you on some points - I trust that God has a plan for me in your teaching. 

You've already pushed me to grow in some important ways.

God bless you, and keep up the great vegan environmental education and peace work.

End 3:45 PM.