The Week That Was: 2025 02-22 (February 22, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “Nobody’s honest. Scientists are not honest. And people usually believe that they are. That makes it worse. By honest I don’t mean that you only tell what’s true. But you make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is required for somebody else who is intelligent to make up their mind” — Richard Feynman “The Unscientific Age”, The Meaning of It All (1998)
Number of the Week: 29,000
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: TWTW will continue with questioning whether climate science is a physical science. TWTW begins with a discussion of omitting physical evidence by the UN IPCC. Then it discusses the importance of the Greenhouse Effect. TWTW discusses a report that Earth’s albedo is changing. Then it discusses a report by Ross McKitrick that some advocates of the so-called social cost of carbon omitted key evidence. A controversy at the Royal Society is discussed, followed by an essay by David Legates explaining why the vaunted Hydrogen Economy is not materializing. TWTW concludes with a discussion on the failure of the green energy transition. *********************
Is It Science? For years, organizations have used the term science to sanctify their political actions. Some of these organizations even have the term science in their names, others are government organizations funded with the intent for providing physical evidence for certain concerns, such as weather.
Most researchers are no doubt scrupulous, but some, such as James Hansen, may deceive themselves. Others seek funding for advancement and to profit from it. But in physical science the ultimate and final judge, nature, is impartial. All ideas and theories must be tested against what nature reveals to us, physical evidence from observation and experiment. To SEPP this is what is meant by applying the scientific method. And those ideas and theories which fail to meet the test must be discarded.
Unfortunately, a common practice among researchers who are less than scrupulous is omitting data (physical evidence) that contradicts the desired conclusion. As Stephen McIntyre has demonstrated repeatedly, this practice was common to the so-called hockey-stick. It was featured in the reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [particularly the Third Assessment Report (AR3 or TAR, 2001)]. [The cover of the TAR Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers has been altered in recent versions, however the hockey-stick style shape (of roughly stable temperatures between the year 1000 to 1900 then sharply increasing temperatures and projections thereafter to 2100) can be seen in Figure SPM-10b: Variations of the Earth’s surface temperature: years 1000 to 2100.]
To call such reports “science” is misleading. It is not physical science and some of the findings are contradicted by physical evidence. The contradicting physical evidence is omitted in such reports. However, it is common practice in the political game called “science” to label such reports as “science” — without mentioning the omitted physical evidence. This game is commonly practiced in the US and Europe. The integrity of all of physical science is tarnished by such efforts.
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Importance of the Greenhouse Effect: The UN IPCC and its collaborators have condemned carbon dioxide by speculating about possible harmful effects of increasing carbon dioxide and its greenhouse effect. Their publications seldom mention the benefits of the primary greenhouse gas, water vapor, without which we probably would not have life on Earth. Nor do they mention the benefits of the secondary greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, which is essential for providing carbohydrates, the food source for all complex plants and animals. Their publications omit any benefits of the greenhouse effect itself.
Starting with experiments in 1859, John Tyndall was the first to produce evidence that what he called greenhouse gases are critical for life on Earth. Without them the land masses of Earth would become too cold at night to support life as we know it. Growing plants would freeze every night. To understand the importance of the greenhouse effect for life, one needs only to compare the temperatures on Mars with those on Earth.
Mars is about 1.5 times farther from the Sun than Earth. Thus, the solar radiant energy hitting it is less intense. But Earth has an albedo (reflective power) of about 30% reflecting solar radiation back to space, primarily from clouds and ice. Mars has an average albedo of around 16% primarily from dust and the composition of its surface. The daily rotation of Mars is about 24 hours and 37 minutes, a little less than 40 minutes longer than that of Earth. But it is the temperature range at the equator that is interesting.
At the equator on Earth, the average daytime temperature is about 31°C (88°F). The average nighttime temperature is about 23°C (73°F). Thus, the average temperature range between daytime and nighttime is about 8°C (15°F). [Note there are other estimates that tend to give a smaller range.]
At the equator on Mars daytime temperatures are around 20°C (70°F); the average nighttime temperature is about minus 70 °C (-94°F). Obviously, such cold on Earth would kill growing plants. Furthermore, although the atmosphere on Mars is thin, it is about 95% carbon dioxide. So, the runaway greenhouse effect is not occurring. https://www.space.com/16907-what-is-the-temperature-of-mars.html
Some researchers such Carl Sagan falsely assumed such an effect is occurring on Venus. The overwhelming amount of the atmosphere on Venus is greenhouse gases, and the atmospheric pressure is about 92 times that on earth. If we had Venus’s quantity of greenhouse gases, they would amount to: CO2, 89,000,000 ppm (in other words 89 times our atmosphere in-toto; sulfur dioxide (SO2), 13,800 ppm; H2O, 1840 ppm, carbon monoxide (CO) 1560 ppm; hydrogen chloride (HCl), 30 ppm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
The Greenhouse Effect is vital for life on Earth; without it the planet would be too cold to support life. Further, the two significant greenhouse gases, water vapor and carbon dioxide along with sunlight for photosynthesis provide carbohydrates (simple sugars), the food source for all complex plants and animals. Thanks to modern technology, we are measuring the greenhouse effect in the laboratory and in the atmosphere. Calculations of the greenhouse effect by van Wijngaarden and Happer using the HITRAN database agree well with measurements at various latitudes made by satellites. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer
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Earth’s Changing Albedo? In August, Geomatics published a paper by Ned Nikolov and Karl F. Zeller titled “Roles of Earth’s Albedo Variations and Top-of-the-Atmosphere Energy Imbalance in Recent Warming: New Insights from Satellite and Surface Observations.” The abstract states:
“Past studies have reported a decreasing planetary albedo and an increasing absorption of solar radiation by Earth since the early 1980s, and especially since 2000. This should have contributed to the observed surface warming. However, the magnitude of such solar contribution is presently unknown, and the question of whether or not an enhanced uptake of shortwave energy by the planet represents positive feedback to an initial warming induced by rising greenhouse-gas concentrations has not conclusively been answered. The IPCC 6th Assessment Report also did not properly assess this issue. Here, we quantify the effect of the observed albedo decrease on Earth’s Global Surface Air Temperature (GSAT) since 2000 using measurements by the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) project and a novel climate-sensitivity model derived from independent NASA planetary data by employing objective rules of calculus. Our analysis revealed that the observed decrease of planetary albedo along with reported variations of the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) explain 100% of the global warming trend and 83% of the GSAT interannual variability as documented by six satellite- and ground-based monitoring systems over the past 24 years. Changes in Earth’s cloud albedo emerged as the dominant driver of GSAT, while TSI only played a marginal role. The new climate sensitivity model also helped us analyze the physical nature of the Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) calculated as a difference between absorbed shortwave and outgoing longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere. Observations and model calculations revealed that EEI results from a quasi-adiabatic attenuation of surface energy fluxes traveling through a field of decreasing air pressure with altitude. In other words, the adiabatic dissipation of thermal kinetic energy in ascending air parcels gives rise to an apparent EEI, which does not represent “heat trapping” by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases as currently assumed. We provide numerical evidence that the observed EEI has been misinterpreted as a source of energy gain by the Earth system on multidecadal time scales.” [Boldface added]
In other words, the increase in warming that has occurred since 2000 may be from a small decrease in cloudiness, not from an increase in CO2. The CERES project, designed to measure the earth’s energy imbalance by measuring solar intensity, albedo, and outgoing IR, concluded that the “Large ASR [Absorbed Solar Radiation] trend [is] primarily driven by reductions in low and middle clouds.
(https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2023-05/15_Loeb Contributed_Science_Presentation_2023.pdf)
As explained by AMO physicists William van Wijngaarden and William Happer, a 1% decrease in cloudiness can cause a warming equal to that of a doubling in CO2.
Further, John Robson discusses a paper by Swiss scientists suggesting sunlight hitting the earth is increasing, first from a reduction in Soviet era pollution, then from an overall decrease in cloudiness. [Robson did not link to the paper.] See links under Science: Is the Sun Rising? and Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?
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More Omissions: During the Biden Administration a group of economists decided to increase the mythical Social Cost of Carbon (Dioxide) (SCC). Econometrician Ross McKitrick examined their work and wrote a paper “Extended crop yield meta-analysis data do not support upward SCC revision” published by Nature, Scientific Reports. The abstract states:
“The Biden Administration raised its Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimate about fivefold based in part on global crop yield decline projections estimated on a meta-analysis data base first published in 2014. The data set contains 1722 records, but half were missing at least one variable (usually the change in CO2) so only 862 were available for multivariate regression modeling. By re-examining the underlying sources, I was able to recover 360 records and increase the sample size to 1222. Reanalysis on the larger data set yields very different results. While the original smaller data set implies yield declines of all crop types even at low levels of warming, on the full data set global average yield changes are zero or positive even out to 5 °C warming.” [Boldface added]
Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. had a post by McKitrick which explains his work in some detail. The background sections states:
“In 2023 a team of economists working for the Biden Administration concluded the SCC needed to be increased by a considerable amount. The higher the SCC, the costlier the regulatory burden that can be justified by the agency. This not only affected US regulations but Canada’s as well since our own environment ministry adopted the new US values when justifying a sweeping set of new greenhouse gas regulations. I wrote an op-ed about the SCC change in May 2023 in which I drew attention to the important role played by a revision to projected agricultural yield damages. While it is difficult to trace where, precisely, all the changes came from, I estimate about $50 of an approximately $100 increase in the 2030 value of the SCC (holding the discount rate constant) was attributable to the revised agricultural yield damage estimates.
These revisions were attributed to estimates of crop yield losses from a 2017 paper published in Nature Communications by Frances Moore et al. called “New science of climate change impacts on agriculture implies higher social cost of carbon.” I’ll call that paper M17. I was familiar with this paper because Kevin Dayaratna and I had studied it while preparing a response to a comment by Philip Meyer on a paper of ours on the SCC. I knew, for instance, that M17 used a data set originally developed for a 2014 paper published in Nature Climate Change by Andy Challinor et al. called “A meta-analysis of crop yield under climate change and adaptation.” I’ll refer to that one as C14. But C14 and M17 had different implications about the impact of CO2-induced warming on crop yields. In the C14 model CO2 fertilization offsets the damage from warming, whereas in M17 the combined effect is negative for most crops across most warming paths. So why the difference?
It was not possible to tell simply by reading the papers. Neither one provided a detailed explanation of its regression analysis. M17, in particular, did not report its regression results nor was its model directly comparable to C14. So, in 2023 I decided to get the data and try to replicate both sets of findings. While both papers said the data was available online at a website called http://www.ag-impacts.org no such site currently exists, and the Wayback machine entries did not include any data. I emailed Moore to ask for her data, but she was at that time working for the Biden Administration and her university email was inactive. I then reached out to Challinor who replied promptly and sent me his data set.”
McKitrick explains the misleading dataset he terms as C14. He then explains the slow review process in which his paper was rejected by Nature Climate Change and the slow review by Nature Scientific Reports. The paper was finally published by Nature Scientific Reports on February 15, after the new US administration took office. McKitrick states:
“Of course, the topic has now been rendered somewhat moot by the Trump Administration’s January 20 Executive Order suspending the SCC on the grounds that it is “marked by logical deficiencies, a poor basis in empirical science, politicization, and the absence of a foundation in legislation.” The EPA has until mid-March to issue guidance on how to address these problems including possibly scraping the use of the SCC altogether. I have had no contact with people working on that undertaking but if any of them were to ask me I would tell them the following.
Measuring the SCC is not a scientific procedure akin to measuring the weight of an atom or the speed of light. The SCC is based on so-called Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that contain countless assumptions and yield complicated “if-then” statements. If the following assumptions are true, then a ton of CO2 emissions will cause $X worth of damage to the world. Whoever gets to pick the “If” statements determine what the “then” statement will be. And you can pick studies that guarantee any SCC value you like, although some are more plausible than others. Ultimately the SCC is determined by the political and social process of choosing who gets to write the report. The Biden-era SCC report was written by people whose antennae were up for any reasons whatsoever to boost the SCC estimate, and who ignored evidence pointing in the other direction. The report even warns the reader that they probably overlooked many reasons why the SCC is even higher than they have estimated because surely there are many other damages associated with CO2 that they have not yet thought of. (They claimed to have taken account of the benefits associated with CO2 fertilization in one of their two IAMs, but they did so based on the M17 analysis. Which means, in effect, they didn’t take it into account.)
From an economic perspective, the dirty little secret of climate policy is that CO2 emission reductions are so costly, even if the US government accepted the Biden SCC estimate very few climate policies would survive a cost-benefit test, and if the SCC were lowered to something more reasonable none of them would. So, in that sense climate activists will get no joy from hanging onto the SCC.
But beyond the question of what the magic SCC number should be, the bigger question is how you convince a bureaucracy not to rig the report-writing process. The 2013 Interagency Working Group SCC report boasted of consulting 11 separate government agencies, and the 2023 report additionally boasted of input from the National Academies of Science and outside expert reviewers. Yawn. The more agencies involved the less scrutiny a report gets. It is all but certain that no one checked any underlying data or undertook any replication work. And I know from experience in the IPCC and other bureaucratic processes that review comments going against a chapter author’s biases are ignored or argued away, while comments confirming an author’s biases are welcomed at face value. The scientific establishment has resisted all attempts to fix climate assessment processes because they always got to pick the authors. But now a very different team is going to do the picking. If the establishment grandees suddenly decide they don’t like the process, they should have said something sooner.”[Boldface added]
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy
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Which Science? Episodes such as the one experienced by McKitrick prompt one to ask: when organizations speak of science, what type of science are they referring to: Is it the science of using the scientific method to test all ideas against nature, or the science of omitting key physical evidence that contradicts the proposed idea or theory?
The Royal Society is the oldest science society in the world. Elon Musk is a fellow. Jo Nova links to an article in the journal Nature which states;
“The Royal Society in London has called a meeting to discuss the behavior of fellows after a growing campaign by scientists over the membership of Elon Musk. The meeting, scheduled for 3 March, comes after more than 1,300 scientists signed an open letter expressing “deep concerns” about the conduct of billionaire Musk, who is a fellow.
Musk is working closely with US President Donald Trump on sweeping government reforms that threaten flagship US research programs and are causing havoc for scientists in the United States and globally. He is also accused of spreading misinformation on the social-media site X, which he owns.
Two Royal Society fellows have resigned over the institution’s perceived lack of action over Musk’s behavior in recent months.
‘It is tarnishing their reputation and to some degree devalues the honor of awarding fellowships. Does one want to be associated to a society that does not stand up for its values?’ says Stephen Curry, a retired structural biologist at Imperial College London, who wrote the letter and published it on his blog on 11 February.”
The Imperial College London harbors World Weather Attribution (WWA) which without physical evidence attributes severe weather events to increasing carbon dioxide. Further, Musk and his team are exposing significant funding of highly questionable political organizations in the name of science.
The question is, which type of science are these members defending: the science that tests all ideas against physical evidence? or the “science” that omits key physical evidence to make a political assertion? Nova writes:
“The Royal Society acts every day more and more like a trade union for approved priests of science.
They reveal their small mindedness in so many ways. They accuse Musk of ‘attacking public sciences’ which begs the question of what a public science is? Is that different to real science? Or has the Royal Society totally forgotten that science is a process and not a government institution?
The original full name of the Society was ‘The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge’ and no one on Earth is doing more to improve natural knowledge than Elon Musk is. And the reason he can do so much, so fast, is surely because he is funding it all himself, not waiting for government approval, appeasing bureaucrats, or cringing before ‘science’ committees with magical fashionable keywords like diversity.
Musk should quit the Royal Society because it has forgotten what science is
The Royal Society doesn’t know it, but they desperately need Elon Musk. The Royal Society has become nothing more than a workers’ union for government funded technicians dressed in lab coats, and he’s the greatest private scientist in the world today. He is the antidote to government funded paralysis in science (and in so many ways). Consensus ‘scientists’ are just a paid marketing wing of Big Government — captured by the monopolistic funding.
The Royal Society needs Elon much more than Elon needs the Royal Society. He should quit now, before they hold their sanctimonious meeting.
*UPDATE: Quitting? Nah. It only makes the Thought Police happy. Unless he has the time to excoriate them properly on the way out, it’s so much better to let them dig their own hole in public, then come crawling back when he gets to Mars. Besides, Elon has 218 million followers on X – If he wanted to set up a Society of Scientists — ones who care about the scientific method, he could do it tomorrow.”
See links under Lowering Standards and Funding Issues.
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Failed Magic Fuel: SEPP director David Legates, and member of the Cornwall Alliance, has an essay on Master Resource “Hydrogen Energy: Not Clean, Green, Cheap.” He clearly explains the major problems involved in attempting to use hydrogen as a fuel. First, on Earth it is not a fuel. There are no hydrogen mines or fields that can be drilled. It must be extracted from H2O, natural gas (primarily CH4,) or other hydrogen compounds, at considerable cost in energy. There is significant energy loss involved in production. Second it is difficult to store because it turns most metals brittle. Third, it is difficult to transport. Fourth, it is difficult to use, it is extremely explosive. Legates concludes with:
“Not Cheap
Finally, the fourth hurdle should now be obvious. The use of hydrogen as a fuel source is expensive—in terms of production cost, expensive storage, and energy required to produce. Hydrogen as a fuel source will allow virtue signalers to claim they have developed and are using a ‘clean and green’ fuel source that is ‘saving the planet from the evils of fossil fuels.’ But in reality, it is only going to make energy more expensive and send a larger proportion of the planet back below the poverty line.
As we have often stated here at the Cornwall Alliance, inexpensive energy has been the solution to raising billions of people above the poverty line and increasing their standard of living. Hydrogen energy will cease to become viable when the subsidies provided to it by governments of the world dry up. Hopefully, the new Administration will recognize that hydrogen embrittlement applies not just to metals, but to our economy as well.”
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and Article #1 for the bankruptcy of the electric and hydrogen truck manufacturer Nikola.
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An Unraveling: Planning Engineer Russ Schussler has an essay in Climate Etc. which takes apart the erroneous thinking behind the failing green energy transition. He writes:
“The purpose of this article is to summarize and debunk many of the issues in the narrative surrounding the proposed green energy transition as applies to the electric grid. The issues are so numerous that this piece is at once both too long and too short. A full unraveling deserves a book or series of books. This posting, however, challenges the narrative through summary comments with links to previous posts and articles which can be read for a more detailed explanation or for greater depth.
The Narrative
Efforts to hasten a ‘green transition’ find support in a powerful and compelling narrative. The following statements are widely believed, embraced and supported by various ‘experts’, a large part of the public and far too many policy makers:
- Renewable Energy can meet the electric demand of the United States and World
- Renewable Energy is economic
- Renewable Energy sources can provide reliable electric service to consumers and support the grid
- Renewable energy sources are inexhaustible and widely available
- Clean Energy resources don’t produce carbon and are environmentally neutral
- Renewable Energy Costs are decreasing over time
- It will become easier to add renewables as we become more familiar with the technologies
- The intermittency problems associated with wind and solar can be addressed through batteries.
- Inverter based generation from wind, solar and batteries can be made to perform like conventional rotating generator technology
- Battery improvements will enable the green transition
- We are at a tipping point for renewables
- Wind, Solar, and Battery technologies collectively contribute to a cleaner environment, economic growth, energy security, and a sustainable future
- The world is facing severe consequences from increased CO2 emissions.
- There will be an inevitable and necessary transition to clean economic renewables
- Green Energy will allow independence from world energy markets
- The clean grid will facilitate clean buses, trucks, tanks, planes
- The third world will bypass fossil fuels and promote global equity
- Replacing fossil fuels with green energy will have huge health benefits
- It’s all about Urgency and Action”
Schussler then debunks these claims. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Number of the Week: 29,000
According to the German newspaper DW translated into English:
Germany has expanded wind and solar energy but failed to cut back on fossil fuel use in the transport sector. Environmental issues did not feature prominently in the election campaign — unlike the last time around.
The head of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz — who, according to the polls, is most likely to become the next German chancellor — has often said that Germany’s approximately 29,000 electricity-generating wind turbines are a thorn in his side.
In November 2024, Merz told public broadcaster ZDF, “I even believe that if we do things right, we can one day dismantle the wind turbines again — because they are ugly.”
When a high-pressure system settles over Northern Europe in the winter, producing cold, still nights; 29,000 turbines produce little electricity for Germany. When will the German public realize this? See link under The Political Games Continue.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Science: Is the Sun Rising?
Roles of Earth’s Albedo Variations and Top-of-the-Atmosphere Energy Imbalance in Recent Warming: New Insights from Satellite and Surface Observations
By Ned Nikolov and Karl F. Zeller, Geomatics, Aug 20, 2024
Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?
Bright times in the EU
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Feb 19, 2025
But we certainly can already say that there is yet more evidence that the sun and clouds together are having a warming influence on climate that simple climate models don’t take account…
Solar Activity Linked to Ocean Cycles
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Feb 20, 2025
Link to paper: Did Schwabe cycles 19–24 influence the ENSO events, PDO, and AMO indexes in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans?
By Franklin Isaac Ormaza-González, et al., Global and Planetary Change, October 2022
Challenging the Orthodoxy — NIPCC
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2013
Summary: https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/CCR/CCR-II/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts
Idso, Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2014
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/climate-change-reconsidered-ii-biological-impacts/
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels
By Multiple Authors, Bezdek, Idso, Legates, and Singer eds., Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, April 2019
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/climate-change-reconsidered-ii-fossil-fuels/
Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming
The NIPCC Report on the Scientific Consensus
By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), Nov 23, 2015
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/why-scientists-disagree-about-global-warming/
Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate
S. Fred Singer, Editor, NIPCC, 2008
http://www.sepp.org/publications/nipcc_final.pdf
Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer
The Role of Greenhouse Gases in Energy Transfer in the Earth’s Atmosphere
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Preprint, Mar 3, 2023
Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Preprint, December 22, 2020
Radiation Transport in Clouds
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Klimarealistene, Science of Climate Change, January 2025
Challenging the Orthodoxy
Hydrogen Energy: Not Clean, Green, Cheap
By David R. Legates, Master Resource, Feb 18, 2025
Debunking the 2023 hike in the Social Cost of Carbon
By Ross McKitrick, Climate Etc., Feb 21, 2025
Link to: Extended crop yield meta-analysis data do not support upward SCC revision
By Ross McKitrick, Nature, Scientific Reports Feb 15, 2025
A Biased Anti-Warming, Anti-CO2 Model Fails To Account For Profoundly Positive Effects Of Rising CO2
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Feb 18, 2025
See links immediately above.
Unraveling the Narrative Supporting a Green Energy Transition
By Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler), Climate Etc. Feb 19, 2025
Recommendations for Reform of the U.S. National Climate Assessment
By Patrick Brown, The Breakthrough Institute, Feb 19, 2025 [H/t Charles Rotter]
5. Conclusion
The NCA can reform its current image as a political tool by presenting the total picture—considering both threats and opportunities, incorporating exposure and vulnerability into disaster cost analyses, leveraging systematic review methods, and communicating findings in an objective, data-centric manner. These reforms would not only make the report more useful but also allow it to be more robust to pendulum swings between administrations.
[SEPP Comment: Under the current structure, it is doubtful that the United States Global Change Research Program’s (USGCRP) National Climate Assessment (NCA) is worth saving. Recent severe weather events probably have nothing to do with climate change. It is better to start again with a new organization.]
USCRN Data Throws a Curveball: Second Biggest Month-to-Month Temperature Drop Since 2009
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Feb 20, 2025
January USHCN, one of the coldest for US, lessons to be learned
By Joseph D’Aleo, ICECAP, Feb 21, 2025
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/january_ushcn_one_of_the_coldest_for_us/
Cloud cover decline may be driving Earth’s record temperatures
By Carole Tanzer Miller, Phys.org, Feb 19, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Defending the Orthodoxy
Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers
By Multiple Authors, Edited by Hoesung Lee, IPCC, 2023
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Science settles again
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Feb 19, 2025
Link to one referenced paper: A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature
By Emily J. Judd, et al., AAAS Science, Sep 20, 2024
In the spirit of the minister who read the Bible and the New York Times each day so that he’d know what both sides were thinking, we’re happy to share with you a new review paper by the famous James Hansen and 17 others you never heard of that tells us again that it’s all completely settled and worse than anyone predicted.
USDA, Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities
By Staff, Accessed Feb 21, 2025 [H/t Tony Heller]
How to find climate data and science the Trump administration doesn’t want you to see
By Eric Nost and Alejandro Paz, The Conversation, Feb 14, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Information on the internet might seem like it’s there forever, but it’s only as permanent as people choose to make it.
That’s apparent as the second Trump administration “floods the zone” with efforts to dismantle science agencies and the data and websites they use to communicate with the public. The targets range from public health and demographics to climate science.
The Endangerment Finding Is in Danger. Will EPA’s Zeldin Uphold Climate Science?
By Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director with the Climate and Energy program, Union of Concerned Scientists, Feb 18, 2025
If Lee Zeldin is looking for a recent authoritative assessment of the science, he should turn to the 2023 Fifth US National Climate Assessment, produced under the direction of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates that the USGCRP—which collaborates across 15 federal agencies—deliver a report to Congress and the President at least every four years.
Another valuable source is the IPCC sixth assessment report, which reflects the work of thousands of scientists around the world—including many from the United States—in assessing the latest climate science, impacts, and opportunities to cut heat-trapping emissions and adapt to climate change.
Questioning the Orthodoxy
NOAA Is Critically Needed But Requires Reform
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Feb 18, 2024
With strong leadership, a reorganized NOAA would provide the nation with the best environmental guidance in the world.
[SEPP Comment: NOAA should get out of the climate forecasting business, which it does poorly, and focus on improving weather forecasting.]
Are Climate Scientists Lying About Their Work to Secure US Research Grants?
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Feb 21, 2025
#LookItUp: Global fatalities from weather disasters
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Feb 19, 2025
But we don’t know if these are deaths from extreme heat or cold. (Or indeed better or more tendentious counting.) But if it’s real, whether it’s heat or cold, the solution is better heating and air conditioning, which requires inexpensive energy. And the solution to scary sloganeering is to #LookitUp.
US Wildfires Much More Extensive In Past, Says New Study
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 15, 2025
Link to article: A fire deficit persists across diverse North American forests despite recent increases in area burned
By Sean Parks, et al., Nature Communications, Feb 10, 2025
From Homewood: Forestry experts have long known that wildfire burn in the US was much more extensive pre-European settlement.
Now a new study has attempted to quantify the changes:
Energy & Environmental Review: February 17, 2025
By John Droz, Jr., Master Resource, Feb 17, 2025
After Paris!
US Pull Out Of IPCC Meeting
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 21, 2025
Link to article: Scoop: U.S. to pull delegation from UN climate science meeting
By Maria Curi and Andrew Freedman, Axios, Feb 20, 205
From Axios article: Why it matters: A U.S. absence from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Hangzhou, China, would leave the country out of conversations for the group’s next influential reports.
[SEPP Comment: According to the article in Axios: A stark new U.N. climate change report warns that humanity stands at the precipice of a more dangerous world, but says it has the tools needed to pull back from the brink. The referenced report is The Synthesis Report of AR6 linked under Defending the Orthodoxy.]
Urgent climate action can secure a livable future for all
IPCC Press Release, Mar 20, 2023
See links immediately above
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
Dry weight biomass response of sweet cherry to increased atmospheric CO2
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Feb 19, 2025
From the CO2Science archive:
Problems in the Orthodoxy
All for nought and nought for all
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Feb 19, 2025
And people reasonably conclude that if they [government policies] got the economics this badly wrong, including the relevant evidence, they might well be scientifically equally muddled.
Trump Policy Will Embolden Developing World to Reject Climate Agenda
By Vijay Jayaraj, Real Clear Energy, Feb 20, 2025
Fossil fuels still account for over 80% of the world’s primary energy consumption, with countries like China, India and Indonesia expanding their infrastructures to produce, import and use hydrocarbons despite pledges to meet impossible climate goals.
With Trump’s bold move, these nations will no longer feel the need to hide behind the veneer of climate appeasement.
Seeking a Common Ground
Counting Materials
By Iddo Wernick, Roger Pielke’s Blog, Feb 19, 2025
Link to paper: Is America dematerializing? Trends and tradeoffs in historic demand for one hundred commodities in the United States
By Iddo K. Wernick, Resources Policy, February 2025
[SEPP Comment: Years ago, Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, commented how light the US GDP was getting. Few commentators understood what he meant.]
Changing Weather
Recent Decline in Global Ocean Evaporation Due To Wind Stilling
By Ning Ma, Yongqiang Zhang, Yuting Yang, Geophysical Research Letters, Feb 19, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
[SEPP Comment: Other issues affecting water vapor, a greenhouse gas.]
Heavy Rain Coming This Weekend
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Feb 20, 2025
Several plumes of moisture… popularly known as atmospheric rivers–will make landfall on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
“experts warn”
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Feb 17, 2025
“Great Lakes continuing to lose ice coverage, experts warn” — February 6, 2025
Changing Seas
Oceans Rapidly Cooling UAH January 2025
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Feb 18, 2025
Climate change is coming for coastlines, from ancient cities to modern California: Study
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, Feb 21, 2025
Link to paper: Soaring Building Collapses in Southern Mediterranean Coasts: Hydroclimatic Drivers & Adaptive Landscape Mitigations
By Sara S. Fouad, et al., Earth’s Future, Feb 12, 2025
From abstract: We explore the interconnectivity between shoreline retreat, ground subsidence, and building collapses. Our results suggest that collapses are correlated with severe coastal erosion driven by sediment imbalances resulting from decades of inefficient landscape management and urban expansion along the city’s waterfront.
[SEPP Comment: Sea levels have been rising since the last glacial maximum. Is the ending of the last Ice Age harmful climate change?]
Lowering Standards
Cancel Elon? The Royal Society only cares about The Money, not the Science
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 19, 2025
Link to article: Royal Society will meet amid campaign to revoke Elon Musk’s fellowship
More than 1,300 scientists have signed a letter calling on the world’s oldest science society to reassess the billionaire’s membership after cuts to US science.
By Holly Else, Nature, Feb 13, 2025
American Association for the Advancement of Science “Trump Tracker”
By David Middleton, WUWT, Feb 19, 2025
[SEPP Comment: In climate research AAAS abandoned physical science years ago.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Feb 19, 2025
Heatmap offers “One Weird Trick for Getting More Data Centers on the Grid” which consists, evidently, of them just switching off the machines briefly during peak demand hours. So, the solution to a government-mandated power shortage is darkness; in the same way the solution to collective farming creating food shortages is to eat less. And be happy. It’s so simple. Why didn’t we think of it?
Telegraph Discover Renewable Subsidies Make Bills Higher!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 19, 2025
End Of Snow Update
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Feb 17, 2025
Christmas 2023 was warm in Omaha, so the New York Times announced the end of snow. Now there is record snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere and Omaha is under an extreme cold watch.
NPR Climate Experts
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Feb 21, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Making Up Fake Numbers At CBS News
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Feb 19, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
More BBC Wind Shenanigans
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 21, 2025
The switching from average speeds to gusts, which is done without any labelling, is clearly intended to deceive.
Questioning European Green
How can we get back to cheap electricity?
By Andrew Montford, Net Zero Watch, Feb 18, 2025
Expensive electricity is usually caused by one or both of two things:
- A high proportion of renewables in the grid
- High gas prices
[SEPP Comment: And banning clean coal power plants. The US is experiencing problems due to the replacement of reliable energy with unreliable solar and wind.]
Paul Marshall lays out a scathing analysis of UK and European energy policies
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 19, 2025
Video
BP set to scale back green investments
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 15, 2025
Five years ago, there were still obscene subsidies available for renewable energy.
Now those subsidies have dried up and, despite what AEP would tell you, there is no profit to be had.
Funding Issues
The Blob outflanked by hi-tech science nerds
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 18, 2025
“DOGE can’t be stopped because it’s a very technical team.”
Revenge of the geniuses
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 15, 2025
Let Them Eat Solar Panels (And Efficiency)
Carbon colonialists run the World Bank. Why is the US giving it billions of dollars?
By Robert Bryce, His Blog, Feb 18, 2025
In 2013, the World Bank declared it would stop funding coal projects and would only “in rare circumstances” provide financial support for new coal plants. It also said it would “scale up efforts to improve energy efficiency and increase renewable energy.” Rather than support coal projects, the bank said it would “scale up its work helping countries develop national and regional markets for natural gas, the fossil fuel with the lowest carbon intensity.” But two years later, the bank backtracked on natural gas and said it would stop all lending for oil and gas projects “except under exceptional circumstances.”
Since then, the bank, which claims its “role is to reduce poverty by lending money to the governments of its poorer members to improve their economies and to improve the standard of living of their people,” has lost its collective mind.
Not a government but a giant money laundering racket
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Feb 21, 2025
Just another $20 billion dollars for the Climate Swamp
USAID’s Troubling Ties to the Woke Nonprofits That Called the Shots in the Biden Administration
By Tyler O’Neil, The Daily Signal, Feb 16, 2025
USAID – AusAID: Same playbook different actors
By Alan Moran, His Blog, Feb 18, 2025
The Clintons are estimated to be worth between $120 million and $240 million having been in debt by $16 million when Bill left office in January 2001.
The Political Games Continue
German election: Climate and environment take a back seat
By Jens Thurau, DW News, Feb 17, 2025
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Letter To Shetland Times
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 17, 2025
“Energy regulator Ofgem oversees UK energy supply arrangements. The Scottish wind farm constraint payments scandal is one of its many failures.
The inadequacy of cross-border grid connections was well known however Ofgem blithely sanctioned ever more Scottish wind farms.”
Renewable Subsidies Set To Top £12 Billion In 2024 [For UK]
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 21, 2025
Since 2010, the combined cost has exceeded £90 billion.
Laughably, OFGEM’s logo says they are making a positive difference for energy consumers.
You can say that again!!
EPA and other Regulators on the March
Due This Week: EPA Plan for GHG Endangerment Finding
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Feb 17, 2025
Energy Issues – Non-US
AI Data Centres To Rapidly Expand In London
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 16, 2025
They miss the point, however. Having a PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) is purely a financial arrangement, where the Data Centre agrees to buy the output of, say, a solar farm. But the electricity it actually uses still comes from the grid.
[SEPP Comment: Misleading coverups.]
DESNZ Refuse To Release Information On Grid Backup Capacity
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 19, 2025
Department of Energy and Net Zero
U.S. and India Revamp Bilateral Energy, Trade Pacts
By Duggan Flanakin, Real Clear Energy, Feb 19, 2025
While the Biden Administration’s outreach to India heavily focused on the European-led mandates for renewable energy and “clean” technology, the Trump outreach stretched across all sectors to focus on India’s immediate needs for affordable, reliable energy, increased trade and security, and turning tomorrow’s technologies into profit centers for both nations.
Energy Issues — US
DOE Secretary Wright: Coal is Critical to Meeting Energy Demand
By Staff, Institute for Energy Research (IER), Feb 18, 2025
Energy Secretary Chris Wright is pointing out that it makes no sense to be closing coal plants in the United States — a country with the world’s largest coal resources.
Nuclear Energy and Fears
NRC Proposes Deep Fee Cuts for Advanced Nuclear
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Feb 20, 2025
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Space-Based Solar Power: The Future of 24/7 Clean Energy Generation
By Aaron Larson, Power Mag, Feb 18, 2025
“Cal Tech has had a small endowment in this area and has been doing a lot of research. They did a very, very small-scale [demonstration] of actual power beaming from orbit down to the surface a couple years ago. And what we’re actually seeing right now is that in the next five years, we’re going to have the first on-orbit power-beaming demonstrations, again, focusing on lasers, because that’s where a lot of the DOD interest is right now, and that’s where the actual funding is. But we’re going to see that you’ll have those initial demonstrators, and if you start having a market, especially for space-to-space power beaming, that could happen a lot sooner than people think, because you don’t need to have very large systems for that. Just having several kilowatts would be really helpful for certain types of applications.”
[SEPP Comment: A possible source of power that may prove to be very practical in areas with few clouds, but a bit impractical perhaps for planes or birds passing through the intense beams. In the 60s (?) the idea was to beam down microwaves at about 200 W/m2, roughly 5% of that of a microwave oven, and covering large areas where the microwaves would be efficiently absorbed by “rectennas.”]
Solar Energy Is Not Competitive with Fossil Fuels
By Norman Rogers, Real Clear Energy, Feb 18, 2025
The size of power plants is often expressed by the maximum number of megawatts of power they are capable of delivering, called the nameplate rating. The average power delivery is less. For a natural gas plant, it is possible to generate an average power of near 100 percent of the nameplate. The plant can run continuously except for maintenance pauses. But for a solar plant the maximum capacity factor is about 25 percent in sunny areas. The low-capacity factor of solar plants, that mainly work in the middle of the day, is the reason solar is so expensive.
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Waking Up To Harsh Reality: Airbus Abandon’s Hydrogen Powered Airplanes
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Feb 16, 2025
The major reason for the halt is reported to be the lack of necessary hydrogen infrastructure. In short: planners realized that it isn’t financially feasible and it isn’t going to work.
The Devastation Left By Drax
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 17, 2025
“It’s eerily reminiscent of photographs of No Man’s Land at the Battle of the Somme – only with the addition of several large piles of logs that the men who harvested the lumber from this remote north-eastern corner of North Carolina in November 2023 couldn’t even be bothered to take with them and left to rot.
It speaks forcefully about man’s thoughtless and greedy destruction of natural resources and yet the company behind this ‘clearcut’ – as areas where every tree is removed are known – claims it is actually providing clean, green energy to the world. And to Britain in particular.”
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
Battery Storage Fire In Essex
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 21, 2025
California Dreaming
Rehydrating the Los Angeles Heat Island
By Edward Ring, What’s Current, Accessed Feb 20, 2025
A water agency executive once told me they were trying to get some UC researchers to evaluate the heat island impact on climate in the Los Angeles region. Despite repeated requests, nobody even called them back. That’s too bad. We might learn that logging, grazing, burning, and thinning, along with rehydrating our cities with more water, would lower the temperature and the vapor pressure deficit. It’s worth considering.
[SEPP Comment: In the climate blame game, colorful language gets more attention and funding than practical research.]
Your Tax Dollars At Work
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Feb 19, 2025
$86 million to reduce cow burps in California.
[SEPP Comment: From USASPENDING.gov, USDA (Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities) to California Dairy Research Foundation.]
Environmental Industry
Sealed with a lack of kiss
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Feb 19, 2025
Anyone who spends much time in public policy of any sort soon realizes that radicals and revolutionaries tend to share a malevolent hostility to the normal enjoyment of life. They see every day benign sources of happiness as dangerous, if not overtly wicked, from the traditional family to private enterprise to celebrating holidays, and they can’t resist taking every special occasion as an opportunity for grim polemics
Other Scientific News
‘City killer’ asteroid now has 3.1% chance of hitting Earth: NASA
By Issam Ahmed with Daniel Lawler, (AFP) Feb 18, 2025
An asteroid that could level a city now has a 3.1-percent chance of striking Earth in 2032, according to NASA data released Tuesday — making it the most threatening space rock ever recorded by modern forecasting.
NASA’s 2022 DART mission proved that spacecraft can successfully alter an asteroid’s path, and scientists have theorized other methods, such as using lasers to create thrust by vaporizing part of the surface, pulling it off course with a spacecraft’s gravity, or even using nuclear explosions as a last resort.
[SEPP Comment: On what basis are the probabilities calculated?]
Other News that May Be of Interest
Africans Are Regaining Control Over Their Mineral Wealth
By Duggan Flanakin, Cornwall Alliance, Feb 13, 2025
Iran’s 46 Years of Environmental Degradation
By Struan Stevenson, Real Clear Energy, Feb 19, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Plus, power shortages and blackouts in an oil- and gas-rich country.
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
£62 Million From Taxpayers For Wooden Bottles
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Feb 20, 2025
“Britain’s National Wealth Fund, which is fully owned by the Treasury, on Wednesday announced a £43.5m investment into Cambridgeshire-based start-up Pulpex, which makes recyclable water bottles out of wood pulp.”
[SEPP Comment: Is the glue non-toxic? Where does the wood come from?]
Dr. Frankenlove, call your office
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Feb 19, 2025
Which they might try. And something called the “Climate Portal” at MIT enthuses about it that:
“Enhanced rock weathering is a strategy to help address climate change by taking carbon out of the air and storing it in rocks. It is one of several “carbon removal” techniques that target carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important climate-warming greenhouse gas humans have been adding to the atmosphere.”
Consensus Science With Remarkable Precision
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Feb 16, 2025
“The question as to whether or not there is intelligent life on Mars has now been a mooted one with astronomers for years, the consensus of opinion being now distinctly in favor of it. At the head of the believers stands Professor Percival Lowell, who has made a study of the planet for years at his own observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, where, in an atmosphere peculiarly adapted for careful observation, he has one of the finest telescopes in the world. He regards the Martian canals as evidence of a scientific method of irrigation worked out with remarkable precision. – Dec 26, 1909”
ARTICLES
1. Nikola’s EV Truck Dream Goes Bust
Another green industrial-policy project enters Chapter 11.
By The Editorial Board, WSJ, Feb. 19, 2025
TWTW Summary: The editorial begins with:
“Another green-energy unicorn died Wednesday as Nikola Corp., the electric-truck startup, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Its spectacular market crash is another warning about the perils of industrial policy and chasing government subsidies.
The 11-year-old EV maker aspired to be the Tesla of trucks. Nikola went public in June 2020 through a blank-check merger amid the euphoric pandemic stock-market recovery and Democratic promises of a Green New Deal. It fetched a $27 billion market valuation that at the time was greater than Ford’s even though Nikola had sold no vehicles.
Supposedly sophisticated investors were taken in by its marketing hype. General Motors announced on Sept. 8, 2020, that it was taking an 11% stake in Nikola, which CEO Mary Barra hailed as an “industry leading disrupter.” It was disruptive in a different way.
In January 2018 Nikola posted a video on Twitter of its model truck appearing to power effortlessly down a flat road with the caption: “The Nikola Hydrogen Electric trucks will take on any semi-truck and outperform them in every category; weight, acceleration, stopping, safety and features—all with 500-1,000-mile range!” That would be a revolutionary—if true.
It wasn’t. According to a 2021 federal fraud indictment of founder Trevor Milton, an inoperable prototype was towed to the top of a hill. Then Nikola employees released the brakes so it looked like it was cruising along. All the while the door was taped shut to keep it from falling off, and its batteries were removed to prevent the truck from catching fire.
After taking investors for a ride, Mr. Milton was convicted in 2022. Nikola’s marketing deceptions and problems spooked investors. Nikola in 2023 recalled 209 battery-electric trucks owing to fires. As of last October, it had sold fewer than 500 trucks—and at a heavy loss. Nikola reportedly had sold hydrogen trucks for $351,000 — about half what it cost to produce them, though its sales price was still about twice as much as an internal-combustion-engine semi. This was financially unsustainable, especially amid higher interest rates.
California regulators and the Biden Administration tried to boost the electric-truck market with mandates and subsidies. The Inflation Reduction Act includes a $40,000 tax credit for buyers of electric trucks. An Environmental Protection Agency rule last spring requires that electric models make up 25% of long-haul tractor sales by 2032.
But the government still couldn’t induce truckers to buy them. “Like other companies in the electric vehicle industry, we have faced various market and macroeconomic factors that have impacted our ability to operate,” Nikola CEO Stephen Girsky said on Wednesday. Translation: High costs and technological limitations make EVs impractical for long-distance trucking operations.”
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“Nobody’s honest”
And some are doing a very fast u-turn
“you can imagine my surprise when I heard that Ms Sarkar now thinks identity politics is a bit iffy. She’s doing the rounds promoting her new book, Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War. Apparently, she thinks ‘woke is dead’ and the left is ‘destroying itself’ with a politics that’s all about ‘I, me, subjective experience, lived experience’. She says the left was driven potty by identity and ‘at no point has anyone gone, “Get a grip”’. Eh? Yes we did. We all said ‘Get a grip’. And we were called bigots, transphobes and racists for doing so. Ash can write a book if she likes, but she can’t rewrite history.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/23/we-must-never-forget-the-cruelty-of-wokeness/
But in climate la la land things haven’t changed much. Despite the tanking of the economy by divers means, mainly taxation, some are still prepared to engage in blatant doublethink. Recently Guido had this:
“Rachel Reeves has been warned she must “urgently” boost the economy after her tax hikes triggered the sharpest collapse in business output and profits since the pandemic. A damning report from the CBI predicts another significant fall in private sector activity over the next three months (-23%), with the “pessimism widespread”
https://order-order.com/2025/01/27/british-businesses-sees-biggest-hit-to-profit-and-output-since-covid/
That same CBI says…
“Britain’s net zero economy is booming, CBI says
Green sector growing at triple the rate of the UK economy, providing high-wage jobs and increasing energy security
…
The analysis showed economic growth and climate action go together, said the report’s authors, and improve lives and livelihoods.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/24/britain-net-zero-economy-booming-cbi-green-sector-jobs-energy-security
On the one hand an economy going into needless recession and on the other a boom in green…
To quote Rachel from Accounts: “There is no tradeoff between economic growth and net zero. Quite the opposite. Net zero is the industrial opportunity of the 21st century”
And to quote John Lennon: “Just gimme some truth”.
“Most researchers are no doubt scrupulous”
I’m not this is true (any more). At every level they are encouraged to be less than truthful. This starts with funding proposals, in which they feel compelled to exaggerate, often wildly, the significance and impact of what they propose. The buzzwords change constantly, eg “paradigm shifting” becomes so yesterday and is replaced by “transformative” or some other vacuous term.
The publication process has become a game. It is not to be taken seriously. It’s difficult to get informed, balanced, intelligent reviews any more in most journals, especially the interdisciplinary journals. Reviewers are often antagonistic for no reason, frequently ignorant of the techniques employed, and unable to judge the merits or spot fundamental flaws.
This makes the process somewhat of a lottery, with of course some biases. Editors don’t by and large make editorial decisions any longer. They hide behind reviewers without bothering to make sense of comments and responses themselves.
With the right recipe in terms of topic, techniques and writing style, it’s perfectly possible to get papers into top journals often by simply bamboozling reviewers with technical jargon and exaggerated claims. Just keep submitting and some will slip through.
If you look more closely, you will find most papers suffer from outright fakery or data manipulation, or lies by omission.
For example, there are countless papers in so called top journals like Nature using machine learning, especially deep learning, in which it is obvious that the authors don’t understand the techniques, have applied them to ill suited problems, and have misinterpreted or manipulated the results. This sort of thing would be resoundingly mocked by a specialist journal as an example of what not to do.
Do the authors know what they’re doing? Of course they do. The PhDs, postdocs and supervisors are all aware that they shouldn’t be using techniques they don’t fully understand, but they do it anyway to ride the the latest fashion.
By the way, I don’t blame the junior ones too much, this is the culture in which they’ve been trained and come of age .
This is the sort of dishonesty that is most common, and it is rife. The more serious dishonesty (plagiarism, fake data) is much rarer.
The entire academic system from the focus on funding over scholarship to the corruption of journals and scientific bodies will not be easily fixed. I don’t see how it can be.
Academia has attracted and awarded the wrong sort of person in the past 20 years or more. The non scholar, a natural manager rather than a researcher. These types are in charge of universities, journals editorial boards and scientific panels and bodies.
These people got to where they are by focusing on the things universities value (money), moving in the right circles, timing their bandwagon jumping to perfection and by exploiting the talents of others.
They have redifined what it is to be a scientist to some degree. Doing research yourself has become anathema, a waste of your valuable time, which ought to be spent polishing the funding proposal written by your postdoc.
I find endeavours like retractionwatch a bit laughable. They focus on one symptom of the disease, ignoring the root cause, and manage to catch a few small fry Indians and Chinese who are playing the game devised by people operating in a different stratosphere, occasionally catching out some big names
Moreover, they engage in the same sort of censorship of views that don’t fit within the consensus. At heart, they are just another parasitic organisation set up to get whatever riches they can extract can from modern day ‘science’
Vert astute observations Abbas. 🙂
When did university media departments start acting as the critical influence on research projects, results and publication?
It seems to me that media releases are orchestrated even before the print on abstracts is dry these days.
I don’t think that happens to be honest. They are reactive, any good news will be exploited for maximum publicity, but they play no part in the publication process.
A lot of it is self promotion, driven by the academics themselves, especially on social media. Horribly narcissistic
Self promotion and marketing yourself can be key to fast promotion. This is the modern way. You don’t say as a young academic I want to solve X and Y outstanding problems in my area. You pick a fashionable topic, put some spin on it to make it sound novel then aggressively market yourself internally and externally as some world leader in this thing
This transparently shameless tactic can get you known by senior management – they just love this kind of thing. Combine this with good funding success and you’re on your way to fast promotion before you’ve even learned to tie your shoelaces as far as the actual research is concerned.
These days it’s not good enough to be good at research and well respected in your field. It’s not easy for senior management to see that. You need a ‘vision’. Visions are things I have in my sleep, or if I were to hallucinate on acid. Real research is not needed when you have a vision.
The idea goes like this. First pick the journals in which you want to publish. Then pick suitable topics and techniques. Then find some idea and keep polishing it until your turd looks like gold, and you make sure to keep repeating that it’s gold, a new kind of special gold never before discovered, more golden and shiny than conventional gold. Submit. Get all your PhDs doing this. Let them learn from each other
In the old days we picked the challenges we wanted to work on, rather than the journals we wanted to publish in. People tended to publish in more specialised journals. You couldn’t bs, couldn’t bamboozle. The reviewers were experts and you couldn’t fool them all.
Yes, people made claims to big up their research, but this was done in a measured way. Nobody was claiming to have revolutionised anything, unless they really did
“Starting with experiments in 1859, John Tyndall was the first to produce evidence that what he called greenhouse gases are critical for life on Earth.”
I’m willing to bet you can’t quote Tyndall referring to “greenhouse gases” – because he didn’t.
Tyndall pointed out that without an atmosphere, plant life (and hence human life) would not be able to survive the low nighttime temperatures which would occur. Conversely, daytime maximum surface temperatures would exceed the boiling point of water. Just like the Moon!
Tyndall was never silly enough to claim that increasing the amount of CO2 in air would increase the temperature. I suggest anyone who thinks I am wrong, to read “Heat – a mode of motion”, which Tyndall continuously revised after each addition, as his knowledge increased.
I continue to be surprised at some of the ideas attributed to John Tyndall which are contradicted by what he wrote. But hey, others know what Tyndall thought, better than his thoughts expressed in his written work. I only know what he wrote. That’s enough for me.
I’ve asked this before but I think it warrants repeating. Am I missing something with regard to the use of hydrogen as a fuel/ As I understand it, the by-product of burning hydrogen is water vapour, which apparently is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. if that’s the case (and you believe that greenhouse gasses are responsible for global warming), then what is the rationale for burning hydrogen in the first place?
Alan, you’re right of course:
But the UN agenda is to control the energy so to direct societies toward “progressive” ends. So it’s all about accounting for reductions in CO2 and CH4.
It’s worse. Steam reformation I believe is still the only way to produce hydrogen at scale. 27% CO2 or something.
The puny bits of so called green hydrogen, eg from concentrated solar, are probably not worth the effort when taking into account the whole process involved in production and transportation.
Do not try to make sense of it, this would be a mistake. For goodness sake we now even have a war on nitrogen
The primary source of atmospheric water vapor is evaporation from surface water which covers more than 70% of the earth’s surface. Any added contribution from human activity is trivial. Since water vapor continually condenses and evaporates at rates controlled by temperature and pressure to try and maintain a local quasi-equilibrium, the effect of any added water vapor on atmospheric concentration is not predictable.
As explained by AMO physicists William van Wijngaarden and William Happer, a 1% decrease in cloudiness can cause a warming equal to that of a doubling in CO2.
You don’t say?
Scientists discover unexpected decline in global ocean evaporation amid rising sea temperatures
While the decreasing trend in ocean evaporation may seem counterintuitive in the context of global warming, it highlights the complexity of Earth’s climate system and the intricate feedback mechanisms that govern the planet’s hydrological processes.
It sure does sound counterintuitive with the global boiling narrative but it depends on the Fruitloops giving the feedback and blowing wind up my ass that they’ve got a handle on all that settled science.