“Climate Change” as a project of foundations
Jacob Nordangård on climate change as a steering instrument in universities
by Dr Peter F. Mayer*
(23 October 2026) (CH-S) Eugenics, health or climate – over the decades, internationally active foundations have been gaining ever greater influence over day-to-day politics in individual states. The Swedish researcher Jacob Nordangård is investigating their influence on global climate policy.
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On 10 and 11 October 2026, the Swedish researcher Jacob Nordangård delivered his lecture “The Capture of Academia – The Case of Climate Change” at the fourth “Omniwar Symposium”.1
Nordangård, who holds a PhD in the history of science and technology (Linköping University) and is the author of “Rockefeller – Controlling the Game”,2 traces the institutional and financial genealogy of the anthropogenic climate change thesis – not merely as a history of science, but as a history of the deliberate channelling of academic attention and resources.
The paradigm shift of 1988
In 1988, the UN General Assembly declared anthropogenic climate change to be a “common concern of mankind”. In the same year, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) founded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Nordangård describes this as the transition from the Cold War to the “Warm War”. From that point onwards, researchers who confirmed the theory of human-induced climate change were provided with enormous resources, whilst those who emphasised natural climate fluctuations or put the scale of human influence into perspective were largely marginalised and branded as “climate deniers” – often with reference to alleged funding from the oil industry.
The question Nordangård poses is not primarily one of the physical mechanisms, but rather: how did this massive shift in resources and the establishment of a moral hierarchy within academia come about?
Roots in eugenics and technocracy
The lecture traces the roots of the theory of anthropogenic climate change back to the 1950s and links it to eugenic and technocratic traditions of population and resource management.
In 1952, John D. Rockefeller III founded the Population Council. The oceanographer Roger Revelle from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography also took part in the founding conference. Revelle, who had close ties to Detlev Bronk (then President of the National Academy of Sciences and involved with Rockefeller foundations), became one of the key figures in CO₂ and climate research in the years that followed. Under his leadership at Scripps, Charles David Keeling began the famous measurements that later became the Keeling curve.3
At the same time, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund launched the Special Studies Project under the leadership of Henry Kissinger. Within this framework, climate change was identified as early as the late 1950s as a transnational problem well-suited to internationalist ambitions.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Brothers Fund specifically funded institutes and researchers who promoted the anthropogenic hypothesis – including the Scripps Institution and the International Meteorological Institute (IMI) at Stockholm University, which had been founded in 1955 on the initiative of Carl-Gustaf Rossby. Swedish meteorologists such as Bert Bolin (later the first IPCC Chair) were part of this network.
Nordangård emphasises the close interconnection with population control: the very same philanthropic infrastructure that drove eugenic and population policy projects also funded and legitimised climate research. A global, cross-border problem – be it population or climate – legitimises global institutions and governance.
The systematic steering of universities
From the 1950s onwards, the Rockefeller Foundations worked methodically to influence the direction of academic research. Those who confirmed the thesis were funded; those who questioned it received less funding and were sidelined.
The result was not a purely scientific consensus, but a hierarchy shaped by funding and career incentives. Nordangård documents this using annual reports, funding documents and institutional links – material that is presented in detail in his books “Rockefeller – Controlling the Game”4 (English edition 2024) and the preceding Swedish version jacobnordangard.se.5
The 2005 “Annual Review” of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund openly articulates the strategic dimension: “Global warming is […] a global problem that affects every conceivable aspect of human society. Therein lies our opportunity.”6
The aim, according to Nordangård, was and remains the establishment of a global digital climate protection system – a control mechanism that coordinates data, models and measures on a global scale.
From academia to political reality
For Nordangård, the co-opting of academia is not a side effect, but a prerequisite. Science provides the legitimacy; politics provides the implementation. The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (with Maurice Strong playing a central role, himself closely linked to Rockefeller networks) marked a further milestone.
Subsequent developments – IPCC reports, climate agreements, the link to the World Economic Forum and the vision of a digital “Agentic State” [AI-supported governance] – appear, in this interpretation, as a logical continuation.
Nordangård himself, as a lecturer at Swedish universities, experienced pressure when he deviated from the consensus. His lecture at the Omniwar Symposium7 forms part of a critical assessment: academia has largely abandoned its role as a countervailing force. Instead, it produces the scientific underpinnings for technocratic governance.
Sources rather than narratives
What Nordangård presents is an analysis of institutional history, based on the foundations’ own documents, UN resolutions and the history of key research institutes. The slides from the lecture and the underlying sources are publicly available.
Whether or not one agrees with his conclusion – that climate change is ultimately an instrument of global social, political and economic control – the systematic promotion of a particular line of research by private foundations with geopolitical ambitions is well documented. At a time when dissenting views are being further marginalised, examining the primary sources remains the most sensible course of action.
| * Dr Peter F. Mayer is a science and technology journalist. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of “tkp – Der Blog für Science&Politik” and can be contacted at home@tkp.at. |
Source: https://tkp.at/2026/10/12/jacob-nordangard-ueber-klimawandel-als-steuerungsinstrument-der-universitaeten/, 12 October 2026
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)
1 Jacob Nordangård is a Swedish researcher, author and scholar Ph.D. for technology and social change at the University of Linköping. He is the founder of the foundation Stiftung-Pharos and CEO of Pharos Media Productions. The recording, the abstract and the comprehensive slides (PDF, over 80 MB) for the talk are available via David A. Hughes’ Substack (https://dhughes.substack.com/ p/jacob-nordangard-the-capture-of-academia) and the symposium website (https://www.omniwar.org/talks/climate-change/). (Presentation: https://videopress.com/v/dKwO5gmx)
2 https://www.kopp-verlag.de/a/rockefeller-das-spiel-kontrollieren
3 https://www.cleanthinking.de/keeling-kurve-einfach-erklaert/
4 https://www.kopp-verlag.de/a/rockefeller-das-spiel-kontrollieren
5 https://jacobnordangard.se/en/