[Editor’s note. This is last week’s Climate and Energy Roundup, which wasn’t posted during the failed attempt at a website update]
The Week That Was: 2025-08-30 (August 30, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels…If it is consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus.”— Michael Crichton, Aliens Cause Global Warming, Caltech Michelin Lecture (Jan. 17, 2003) [H/t Richard Lindzen and William Happer]
Number of the Week: Minus 112°F (-80°C)
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: TWTW begins with a third discussion of key issues in the report by the Climate Working Group to the Secretary of Energy. Then, it presents comments from physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. TWTW concludes with a comment that the committee on the Endangerment Finding of the National Academies might be biased.
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Review of the Climate Working Group Report (Part 3): In previous weeks TWTW has discussed a report to the Secretary of Energy from five independent scientists (John Christy, Ph.D. Judith Curry, Ph.D. Steven Koonin, Ph.D. Ross McKitrick, Ph.D., and Roy Spencer, Ph.D.) “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” TWTW has covered the Secretary’s Forward, the Executive Summary, the Preface, Part I: Direct Human Influence on Ecosystems and the Climate and Chapter 4 of Part II: Climate Response to CO2 Emissions. This TWTW will cover Chapter 5 Discrepancies Between Models and Instrumental Observations and Chapter 6 Extreme Weather.
The Summary and the Introduction for Chapter 5 Discrepancies Between Models and Instrumental Observations state [Boldface added, Figures are not shown here]:
“Climate models show warming biases in many aspects of their reproduction of the past several decades. In response to estimated changes in forcing they produce too much warming at the surface (except in the models with lowest ECS), too much warming in the lower-and mid-troposphere and too much amplification of warming aloft.
Climate models also produce too much recent stratospheric cooling, invalid hemispheric albedos, too much snow loss, and too much warming in the Corn Belt. The IPCC has acknowledged some of these issues but not all.
5.1 Introduction
Climate models are the primary tool used to project future climate changes in response to increasing atmospheric levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. To assess the fitness of climate models for this purpose, it is reasonable to ask how well they reproduce the current climate and its variations over the past century. The box “Climate modeling” gives some detail on how climate models work.
Of great concern is the fact that, after several decades of the climate modeling enterprise involving approximately three dozen models operated by research centers around the world, the range of future warming they produce in response to a hypothetical doubling of atmospheric CO2 extends over a factor of three, as we discussed in the previous chapter. This range of disagreement among models has not decreased for decades.
Problems with climate models are not just in their disagreement over the future, but also in their ability to replicate the recent past. Here we review some of the most important metrics of climate model accuracy: ability to reproduce historical surface, tropospheric and stratospheric temperature trends; ability to reproduce the vertical warming profile; and ability to reproduce other climate features such as snowfall. In all cases a persistent finding is that models on average err on the side of too much warming in response to estimated historical forcing.”
In a special Box the authors discuss climate and the results of climate models. The Box states [Boldface added]:
“BOX: Climate modeling
All but the simplest climate models represent Earth’s land surface using a grid of squares some 100 km [62 miles] wide. To simulate the atmosphere, typically 30 or more grid boxes are stacked above these squares. The ocean is modeled using a similar but finer grid, resulting in tens of millions of grid boxes for the atmosphere and oceans.
The computer models, based on physical laws, calculate how air, water, and energy move between grid boxes over time. The time step can be as small as 10 minutes, and repeating this process millions of times allows the simulation of climate over centuries. Running these models, even on the most powerful supercomputers, can take months. Comparing simulation results with historical climate data helps assess the accuracy of a model, while projections into the future estimate climate changes under assumed human and natural influences.
Despite sounding straightforward, climate modeling is highly complex. Many critical processes occur at scales smaller than the grid size. For instance, the flows of sunlight and heat in the atmosphere depend strongly on cloud cover. Since tracking individual clouds is impractical, researchers must make “subgrid” assumptions about the distribution of clouds in each grid box. Snow and ice cover, which affects how much sunlight is reflected or absorbed by the surface, is another subgrid factor.
Each subgrid assumption requires numerical parameters, which must be carefully set. Modelers initially estimate these parameters based on physics and observed climate patterns, then run the model. Because early results often diverge significantly from real-world observations, they “tune” these parameters to better match observed climate features. Different modeling teams use distinct assumptions and tuning strategies, leading to varied outcomes. Tuning is a necessary but delicate aspect of climate modeling, as it is for any complex system. Poor tuning can result in inaccurate simulations, while excessive tuning risks artificially steering results toward predetermined conclusions.
The spread of model representations of the current climate is very wide. One of the most basic indicators— Earth’s average surface temperature—varies by about 3ºC across CMIP6 models prior to 1880 (Figure 5.1), narrows slightly until 2040 then diverges to over 4 °C. For comparison 20th century warming was only about 1.0°C. This variation suggests substantial differences among models’ physical processes.”
Figure 5.1 shows the CMIP6 Average surface temperature range across 33 models and standard deviation using SSP5-85 scenario. Data from KNMI Climate Explorer website run by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) at https://climexp.knmi.nl/start.cgi. In degrees C, the range of the model results runs from 2.0C [3.6F] to almost 4.0C [7.2F] and the standard deviations range from slightly above 0.5 C to above 1 C. Note that all the models considered project a future warming rate above that of the 20th century. The Box concludes with:
“Beyond the models’ ability to reproduce features of today’s climate, the critical issue for society is how well they predict responses to subtle human influences, such as greenhouse gas emissions, aerosol cooling, and land use changes. The most crucial aspect that models must capture correctly is ‘feedbacks.’ These occur when climate changes either amplify or suppress further warming. In general, the modeled net effect of all feedbacks doubles or triples the direct warming impact of CO2.” [Boldface added]
The report discusses the Surface Warming, and it presents three groups of four graphs from Scaffetta (2023) showing the difference between:
- CMIP6 models with a low Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of 1.5 to 3.0 degrees C;
- CMIP6 models with a medium Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of 3.0 to 4.5 degrees C;
- CMIP6 models with a high Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of 4.5 to 6.0 degrees C
- all plotted with estimates of surface temperatures from HadCrut5, NOAA5, and GISTEM4. The model predictions were shown with the mean and a standard deviation of plus or minus 1.
The results show that the models with Medium and High ECS over predicted the surface temperatures. Only the models with Low ECS gave satisfactory results when compared to surface temperatures since 1979. None of the models gave satisfactory results when compared with the lower troposphere temperature variation since 1979 calculated by UAHV6.
The report gives additional evidence that, in general, the models overestimate both the calculated surface-air warming and the global and tropical lower and mid-troposphere warming. The report quotes from AR6 showing that the IPCC recognized a warming bias, yet:
“Notably, despite the accumulation of evidence of excess model warming the IPCC assigns only medium confidence to the existence of a warming bias.” [Emphasis in original]
The report then discussed the vertical temperature profile mismatch using a graph showing how much the models overestimate the warming of the Tropics from 1979 to 2010 as reported in AR5. A similar graph was prepared for the report including data through 2024 and CMIP6 model outputs. All the models consistently overestimate the warming over the tropics. The reports states [Boldface added]:
“This discrepancy has been the source of much controversy, with some arguing that even if there is very little observed warming aloft in the tropics, a “hotspot” still exists in the sense that the warming aloft is greater than at the surface (Santer et al. 2008). But there is good evidence that models also exaggerate the amplification rate. Klotzbach et al. (2009), showed that models project greater amplification with altitude than is observed. This result was subsequently confirmed by detailed time series analysis (Vogelsang and Nawaz 2016) which found that the model-observational difference is statistically significant.
The atmosphere’s temperature profile is a case where models are not merely uncertain but also show a common warming bias relative to observations. This suggests that they misrepresent certain fundamental feedback processes.
The IPCC AR6 did not assess this issue.”
The report discusses stratospheric cooling. It states:
“An important element of the expected general ‘fingerprint’ of anthropogenic climate change is simultaneous warming of the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere. The latter feature is also influenced by ozone depletion and recovery. AR6 acknowledged that cooling had been observed but only until the year 2000. The stratosphere has shown some warming since, contrary to model projections.”
After presenting various comments from others including AR6, the section concludes with:
“A combination of tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling is a commonly cited ‘fingerprint’ of anthropogenic climate change. Stratospheric warming since 2000 coincides with continued surface and tropospheric warming, a pattern that is not found in climate model simulations and is not apparently consistent with the anthropogenic fingerprint.
The report then compares the claim of disappearing snow cover with a graph of “Winter Northern Hemisphere Snow Extent prepared with data from Rutgers University Snow Lab showing a slight increase since 1967.
The report discusses Hemispheric symmetry of the planetary albedo. It states [Boldface added]:
“The planetary albedo is the fraction of incoming solar radiation reflected by the Earth back to space. It is an important element of the radiative energy balance and influences whether the planet will warm or cool over time. The planetary albedo is typically estimated at around 0.30; variations on the scale of 0.01 correspond to changes in solar forcing of about 3 W/m2, an amount larger than current anthropogenic forcing. It has long been noted that models disagree with each other and with observations on the value of the global planetary albedo (Stephens et al. 2015).
An intriguing property of the Earth’s albedo is that, on average, the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH) have had nearly the same albedo, at least throughout the fifty-year satellite record (Stephens et al., 2015). This symmetry is surprising because the SH has much more ocean than land. Since ocean is less reflective than land, the NH should have higher albedo. Clouds (which are highly reflective) are more common in the NH and so compensate the surface albedo imbalances of the two hemispheres. Datseris and Stephens (2021) show that this cloud compensation comes from the extratropical storm tracks of the SH, which are cloudier than those of the NH. While the mechanism for this hemispheric symmetry is unclear, it likely operates on large temporal and spatial scales.
The hemispheric symmetry of the albedo is a simple gross metric for climate models. Rugenstein and Hakuba (2023) defined that metric as the difference between the NH and SH annual mean albedos, expressed as Wm−2 of the reflected sunlight, and compiled it for the CMIP6 climate models, as shown in Figure 5.8. Most of the CMIP6 models do not reproduce the small observed asymmetry (about 0.1 Wm-2) and even disagree as to which hemisphere is more reflective. Moreover, the magnitude of the asymmetry ranges up to 5 Wm-2 in some models, twice as large as the current anthropogenic forcing (about 2.7 Wm-2).
The significance of unphysical albedo asymmetries in the climate models is not yet fully known. However, other model studies suggest that interhemispheric changes in albedo can alter poleward heat fluxes, meridional temperature gradients, storminess, and differences in hemispheric ocean heat storage. The discrepancy between models and observations further raises issues regarding cloud feedback processes and so more generally diminishes confidence in model projections of the future climate.”
TWTW Comment: As Nobel Laureate John Clauser has stated: Cloudiness is a big issue that needs to be resolved. Van Wijngaarden and Happer have shown we can calculate the influence of changing greenhouse gases on temperatures, but these calculations apply to clear skies. They are working on a theory describing the formation and dissipation of clouds that can be validated.
The section then shows that the modeled warming trends of the US Corn Belt greatly exceed the observed from 1973 to 2022, for one model about 8 times. The fear of global warming wiping out US corn production is not substantiated. The chapter concludes with:
“To summarize:
- Climate models show warming biases in many aspects of their reproduction of the past few decades.
- They produce too much warming at the surface (except in the models with lowest ECS), too much warming in the lower-and mid-troposphere and too much amplification of warming aloft.
- They also produce too much stratospheric cooling, too much snow loss, and too much warming in the U.S. Corn Belt.
- The hemispheric albedo difference in individual climate models ranges widely in sign and magnitude compared to observations. The range in W/m2 is three times larger than the direct anthropogenic forcing of CO2.
- The IPCC has acknowledged some of these issues but not others.”
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Chapter 6 Extreme Weather
“Chapter Summary
Most types of extreme weather exhibit no statistically significant long-term trends over the available historical record. While there has been an increase in hot days in the U.S. since the 1950s, a point emphasized by AR6, numbers are still low relative to the 1920s and 1930s. Extreme convective storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts exhibit considerable natural variability, but long-term increases are not detected. Some increases in extreme precipitation events can be detected in some regions over short intervals but the trends do not persist over long periods and at the regional scale. Wildfires are not more common in the U.S. than they were in the 1980s. Burned area increased from the 1960s to the early 2000’s, however it is low compared to the estimated natural baseline level. U.S. wildfire activity is strongly affected by forest management practices.”
To assert that extreme weather has always been a characteristic of Earth’s weather, the report gives an eight-century-long record of the annual minimum height of the Nile River observed in Cairo from 622 to about 1480 AD. There are some brief missing records which have been filled in. The data shows wide variation over the years with both increasing and decreasing trends.
The report discusses Hurricanes and Tropical Cyclones, Temperature Extremes (US becoming more moderate), Extreme Precipitation, Tornadoes, Flooding, Droughts, and Wildfires using actual data rather than excited reporting of a singular event. There is no evidence of weather becoming more unbalanced.
For this report based on data not speculation, see link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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The Scientific Method: The June 7 TWTW discussed a report by Richard Lindzen Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus Massachusetts Institute of Technology and William Happer Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University, on how scientific knowledge is determined titled “Gold Standard Science.” The report describes the scientific method asserting that “Scientific Knowledge is Determined by the Scientific Method.”
Professors Lindzen and Happer have submitted comments to National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Committee on Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases and US Climate:
Evidence and Impacts. The comments begin with:
“We appreciate the opportunity to submit science related to the Committee’s charge, including its ‘focus on evidence gathered by the scientific community since 2009.’
We are career physicists with a special expertise in radiation physics, which describes how carbon dioxide and other GHGs affect heat flow in Earth’s atmosphere, and in the dynamics of atmospheric transport of energy and momentum on our rotating planet Earth. We are both members of the National Academy of Sciences, and our CVs are attached. In our scientific opinion, the Endangerment Finding (‘EF’), is not based on science for four separate reasons:
- It is based on unscientific evidence.
- It failed to consider the physics that demonstrates that increasing carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases (‘GHGs’) and fossil fuel use will have a trivial effect on temperature and cannot and will not cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.
- It failed to consider the essential benefits of carbon dioxide to life on Earth, including that doubling carbon dioxide from today’s 420 parts per million to 840 ppm will increase the world’s food supply by 40%.
- It failed to consider the science that eliminating carbon dioxide and fossil fuels will have disastrous effects for Americans, America, the poor and people worldwide.
Therefore, for these four reasons separately and together, science demonstrates that human emissions of carbon dioxide and other GHGs and the use of fossil fuels cannot endanger public health and welfare in the U.S. and instead provide benefits to public health and welfare. Thus, the Endangerment Finding should be repealed ASAP. Scientific details follow and in our attached June 7, 2025, paper, ‘Physics Demonstrates that Increasing Greenhouse Gases Cannot Cause Dangerous Warming, Extreme Weather or Any Harm.’”
The first section states:
“I. WHAT IS, AND IS NOT, SCIENCE
Our analysis starts with fundamentals: what is, and is not, science. See our attached paper for details.
- What Is Science?
The Supreme Court explained, and we agree: ‘scientific knowledge’ … must be derived by the scientific method.’
The scientific method is simply and profoundly: validating theoretical predictions with
observations and rejecting theories when they do not work. Nobel physicist Richard Feynman elaborated:
‘[W]e compare the result of [a theory’s] computation to nature, … compare it directly with observations, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.’ The Character of Physical Law (1965), p. 150.
- What Is Not Science?
Unscientific sources include:
Government Opinion. Richard Feynman also stated a fundamental principle of science:
‘No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles.’
The importance of this scientific principle is tragically underscored by what happened when Stalin made Trofim Lysenko the czar of Russian biology and agriculture. Lysenko’s government imposed biological theories, which rejected well-established genetic science, resulted in millions of Russians dying.
Other unscientific evidence includes:
- Consensus
- 97% of Scientists’ Opinion
- Theoretical Models That Do Not Work
- Cherry picked, Fabricated and Falsified Data
- Peer-Review. Scientists consider peer reviewed literature all the time, but it does not determine scientific truth. A small fraction is correct and useful. Moreover, climate science journals have had their editorial boards hijacked so that research papers with scientific findings contrary to the dogma of climate calamity are rejected and editors know they will be fired if they publish them. [Boldface added]
Next, we demonstrate that the Endangerment Finding is based on fatally flawed science: (1) unscientific evidence and (2) failing to consider contradictory science.
The blunt reality is that EPÁ’s Endangerment Finding is a classic example of what Peter Drucker described as government subordinating science to “value-judgments that are the reverse of, and largely incompatible with, any criteria one could possibly call scientific.”
Further, scientific reality requires urgent action to repeal the Endangerment Finding and other government actions based on it because we are confronted with policies that destroy western economies, impoverish the working middle class, condemn billions of the world’s poorest to continued poverty and increased starvation, leave our children despairing over the alleged absence of a future, and will enrich the enemies of the West who are enjoying the spectacle of our suicide march.”
The Comments presents evidence that the Endangerment Finding is based on fatally flawed science and asserts that the Endangerment Finding is Arbitrary, Capricious, and thus Invalid under the Supreme Court’s State Farm Decision. The Conclusion states:
“Accordingly, as demonstrated above and in our attached paper, the Endangerment Finding: is.
- based on unscientific evidence.
- failed to consider the physics that demonstrates that increasing carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases (“GHGs”) and fossil fuel use will have a trivial effect on temperature and cannot and will not cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.
- failed to consider the essential benefits of carbon dioxide to life on Earth, including that doubling carbon dioxide from today’s 420 parts per million to 840 ppm will increase the world’s food supply by 40%.
- failed to consider the science that eliminating carbon dioxide and fossil fuels will have disastrous effects for Americans, America, the poor and people worldwide.
Therefore, for these four reasons separately and together, the Endangerment Finding is not based on science and is arbitrary and capricious and should be repealed ASAP.
Finally, it is important to repeat scientific reality requires urgent action to repeal the Endangerment Finding and other government actions based on it because we are confronted with policies that destroy western economies, impoverish the working middle class, condemn billions of the world’s poorest to continued poverty and increased starvation, leave our children despairing over the alleged absence of a future, and will enrich the enemies of the West who are enjoying the spectacle of our suicide march.”
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Stacked Bias? Gregory Wrightsone, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition, posted the backgrounds of thirteen of the proposed members of the National Academies committee who appear to be ignorant of climate science. This is not surprising because it is a common practice in Washington and the physics needed to describe the greenhouse effect, AMO physics, is not taught in courses on Climate Science. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Number of the Week: Minus 112°F (-80°C) “Real Feel” temperatures are calculated to reflect how hot or cold conditions feel on the exposed human body. Unfortunately, to alarm the public they are frequently emphasized, particularly in the summer. As Anthony Watts states, they have become a joke. On August 26, Ken Haapala noted that the “Real Feel” reported for Vostok Station, Antarctica, was Minus 112°F (-80°C). He did not note the time. It is doubtful that an exposed human would be feeling that temperature for long. See link under Below the Bottom Line.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?
Change in Reflected Solar Electro-Magnetic Radiation During CERES Era
By Richard Willoughby, WUWT, Aug 24, 2025
Summary
This article examines the seasonal variation in Earth’s reflectivity through the CERES era. Changes in solar forcing over the same period are examined with the objective of identifying possible linkages to the measured change in reflectivity.
The primary driver of the changes in solar forcing over the 15-year observational interval is identified then assessed to show why there will be a reversal of this particular change by 2037.
Censorship
Climate Inquisition Silenced a Generation of Scientists
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Aug 28, 2025
[Judith] Curry describes this transformation: “It’s not science anymore. It’s become a pseudoscience. You know, the hardcore, physics-based climate dynamics, such as what we had in the 1980s, that’s just a small sliver of what we now define as climate science.”
Manufacturers have been silenced
By Anonymous, Net Zero Watch, Aug 26, 2025
UK business – particularly manufacturers are suffering badly, but surprisingly they not only remain silent about what is happening but continue to parrot the mantra of Net Zero.
Why?
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
A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate
By Climate Working Group, United States Department of Energy, July 23, 2025 https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/DOE_Critical_Review_of_Impacts_of_GHG_Emissions_on_the_US_Climate_July_2025.pdf
Lindzen-Happer Statement to National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
By Richard Lindzen and William Happer, CO2 Coalition, Aug 26, 2025
National Academy of Sciences Committee Bias: An Unscientific Rigging of a Scientific Review
By Gregory Wrightstone, CO2 Coalition, Aug 25, 2025
Basic Climate Science
By David Legates, Cornwall Alliance, June 5, 2025
[SEPP Comment: For Children.]
Defending the Orthodoxy
WHO Warns Global Warming is Causing Dangerous Heat Stress
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Aug 23, 2025
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
US, Canada had highest air pollution surge worldwide in 2023: Report
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, Aug 28, 2025
Link to report: How much longer would you live if you breathed clean air?
University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index Project, Aug 18, 2025
In 2023 the average person in the world would have gained 1 year and 10 months of life expectancy if fine particle pollution were reduced to meet the WHO guidelines – or a combined 15.0B life-years saved.
Particulate pollution is the greatest external risk to human health globally
[SEPP Comment: What is the actual physical evidence basis for these dubious claims?]
Climate Attribution In Greece
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Aug 28, 2025
Link to claim: Weather conditions leading to deadly wildfires in Türkiye, Cyprus and Greece made 10 times more likely due to climate change
By Staff, World Weather Attribution, Aug 28, 2025
[SEPP Comment: WWA ignores that Greek police arrested about 300 people for arson thus far this year.]
Why winter rains keep skipping the Southwest
Human-caused climate change from burning fossil fuels may be involved in a persistent tilt toward dry patterns.
By Bob Henson, Yale Climate Connections, Aug 13, 2025 [H/t Chuck Wiese]
Link to paper: Human emissions drive recent trends in North Pacific climate variations
By Jeremy M. Klavans, et al. Nature, Aug 13, 2025
[SEPP Comment: The evidence shown indicates the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) is in a cold phase. How does global warming cause cold phases in the PDO?]
Experts warn US should prepare for disasters more intense than all hurricanes on record: ‘Extreme rapid intensification’
Hurricane Erin became one of only a dozen Atlantic hurricanes since recordkeeping began.
By Timothy McGill, The Cool Down (TCD). Aug 27, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
[SEPP Comment: Another expert airhead. Not until the satellite era could we track hurricanes. And now we have superior, long-range airplanes to fly to take measurements inside of hurricanes. The author does not understand that increasing the number of storms measured is not an increase in number or intensity of storms.]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
UN abandons science and hires climate change zealots who damn the facts
By Roger Pielke Jr., New York Post, Aug. 22, 2025 [H/t Paul Homewood]
As an expert who has published widely on extreme weather, I have for many years praised the IPCC for its commitment to getting the science right, despite enormous pressures from climate activists who routinely argue that action on energy policy can reduce extreme weather and its impacts.
However, based on the IPCC’s list of authors for its chapter on extreme weather, that commitment to scientific rigor may be over.
[SEPP Comment: Do not share Pielke’s view that previous IPCC reports were scientifically competent.. The incompetence had not gotten down to extreme weather previously.]
A Takeover of the IPCC–Roger Pielke
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 23, 2025
Another New Study Suggests Most – 80% – Of The Modern CO2 Increase Has Been Natural
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Aug 29, 2025
Link to paper: Atmospheric CO2: Exploring the Role of Sea Surface Temperatures and the Influence of Anthropogenic CO2
By Bernard Robbins – Independent Researcher, Science of Climate Change, July 3, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Does not answer the question why CO2 levels are so much higher now than during the last interglacial, the Eemian.]
2025 Update: Pushing for Climate Diversity
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Aug 27, 2025
Despite all the clamor about global warming (or recently global cooling since the hiatus), it all depends on where you are. Recognizing the diversity of local and regional climates is the sort of climate justice I can support.
Disasters don’t count if you don’t count them
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 27, 2025
Link to paper: Incompleteness of natural disaster data and its implications on the interpretation of trends
By Joshi Niranjan, Roland Roberts & Ari Tryggvason, Environmental Hazards, July 18, 2024
Robson: And what’s even better, for the climate change crowd anyway, is that, as the authors of a 2024 study noted, “There are very strong upward trends in the number of reported disasters.” But as the same authors noted in the very next sentence, “However, we show that these trends are strongly biased by progressively improving reporting.” Simply put, prior to 2000 reporting of small disasters that caused fewer than 100 deaths was hit-and-miss.
Hot/Dry Summer and Minimal Wildfire over Washington State. WHY?
Wildfire acreage has been running far below normal over Washington State— in fact, over the whole Pacific Northwest.
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Aug 25, 2025
The bottom line is that the idea of warmer and drier means more wildfire acreage is simplistic. Other factors can be equally or more important.
[SEPP Comment: Mass gives four reasons.]
#HaveItBothWays: Global warming and Great Lakes snowfall
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 27, 2025
Thus, notwithstanding the models, there was no long-term reduction in “ordinary” snowfall and a long-term increase in lake effect snowfall. And climate science being what it is, the authors of the lake effect study said that, actually, global warming could very well cause more lake effect snow in the future.
Except if it causes less. Because in climate science you can always #haveitbothways.
Hypocrite of the week of the month
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 27, 2025
After Paris!
Fussing and Troubles in COP Land
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Aug 27, 2025
Net Zero is impractical, wasteful, and, as U.S. Department of Energy head Chris Wright stated, sinister and evil. Electricity rates and the UK economy have been compromised enough by the anti-industrial policies. It is time for private property and voluntary exchange with government demoted.
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
The effect of extra CO2 on Wallaby grass
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 27, 2025
From the CO2Science Archive:
Science, Policy, and Evidence
STEVE MILLOY: Rescinding Key Obama EPA Finding May Prove Tougher Than Trump Admin Thought
By Steve Milloy, Daily Caller, Aug 24, 2025
There is no way the NAS will have its report completed and submitted to EPA by the comment deadline of Sept. 22. The period for public comment on the proposed membership of the NAS committee doesn’t close until Sept. 2, and the public comment period for submitting material to the committee is even earlier, Aug. 27. All this is highly unusual to say the least.
[SEPP Comment: Perhaps the NAS report is already prepared?]
Trump’s policies on FEMA face scrutiny 20 years after Katrina
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Aug 29, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Will the scrutiny include the failure of the Mayor to declare an emergency evacuation, particularly of the below sea level districts? Will it include the long-term divergence of Federal funds for flood barriers to political interests for which the mayor was convicted? Will it include the success of environmental groups using NEPA to stop a flood-gate system similar to the one protecting London?]
Oregon’s Microgrid Legislation and Its Impact on National Clean Energy Strategy
By Sara Sayles , Ken Pearson, Real Clear Energy, Aug 26, 2025
Oregon is breaking new ground with the passage of House Bill (HB) 2065 and HB 2066. Although 692 microgrids are currently operating in seven U.S. states—Alaska, California, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas—Oregon’s new laws are the first to establish a regulatory framework for microgrids.
[SEPP Comment: What will the costs of reliable electricity be to the consumer?]
Measurement Issues — Surface
Graph of the Week – Temperature of ocean air-sheltered stations
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Aug 26, 2025
Link to paper: Temperature trends with reduced impact of ocean air temperature
By Frank Lansner, Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, Energy & Environment, 2018
Temperature trends with reduced impact of ocean air temperature – Welcome to DTU Research Database
From abstract: We find a lack of warming in the ocean air sheltered temperature data – with less impact of ocean temperature trends – after 1950. The lack of warming in the ocean air sheltered temperature trends after 1950 should be considered when evaluating the climatic effects of changes in the Earth’s atmospheric trace amounts of greenhouse gasses as well as variations in solar conditions.
Changing Weather
What Climate Crisis? Weather Channel Reports “Record-Breaking Cold” For August
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Aug 26, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Haboob slams Phoenix with dust wall, darkening skies and knocking out power
By Sarah Fortinsky, The Hill, Aug 26, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Any deaths from PM2.5?]
Berlin’s Public Pools Lack Visitors…Predicted “Hell Summer Of Heat And Drought” Ends Up Rainy, Cool
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Aug 27, 2025
Changing Seas
From the atmosphere to the abyss: Iron’s role in Earth’s climate history
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Aug 26, 2025
Link to paper: Evolution of the South Pacific’s Iron Cycle Over the Cenozoic
By Logan A. Tegler, et al., Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, July 3, 2025
Plain language summary: Iron (Fe) in the ocean is important for marine life and affects carbon removal from the atmosphere. We studied three deep-sea sediment cores far from the continents to track where the Fe came from over the past 93 million years. By analyzing the sediments’ chemistry and Fe isotopes, we identified five main Fe sources to the South Pacific: dust, distal background, two types of hydrothermal inputs, and volcanic ash. Initially, hydrothermal fluids were the main source, but dust slowly came to dominance around 30 Ma. Today, the South Pacific Ocean gets more dust than it has in the past 93 million years. This study helps frame iron’s role in Earth’s climate history.
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
600b tons of carbon emissions and Arctic sea ice stays the same for 20 years
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Aug 23, 2025
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Climate Change Weekly # 552 — What I Said on World Salon about Agriculture and Climate Change
By H. Sterling Burnett, The Heartland Institute, Aug 15, 2025
Lowering Standards
IPCC Succumb To Weather Alchemy
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 25, 2025
With Net Zero policies dying on the vine all around the world and the public beginning to wake up to the crippling costs imposed on them as a result, the IPCC now appear to have lost patience with the well-established scientific practice of collecting and analyzing data. Instead, they will rely on dodgy computer models, which can be programmed to come up with whatever results they want.
Hottest Summer? Met Office Take The Piss!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 25, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Very annoying!]
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Media touted paper that climate change will make world poorer, but kept silent as flaws are revealed
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 23, 2025
Link to: Media touted paper that climate change will make world poorer, but kept silent as flaws are revealed
Multiple media outlets reported on a study concluding that climate change would reduce GDP by 19% over the next 24 years, compared to what it would have been without global warming. Now multiple analyses have found the influential study flawed, and most aren’t reporting on the scandal.
By Kevin Killough, Just the News, Aug 20, 2025
Link to paper: Data anomalies and the economic commitment of climate change
By Tom Bearpark, Dylan Hogan & Solomon Hsiang, Nature, Aug 6, 2025
“A Promise to be Biased for Houston” (Houston Chronicle deflects its Left Progressivism)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Aug 28, 2025
Evan Mintz, the new editor of opinion at the Houston Chronicle, opined on his bias last month (July 27, 2025). “As the Chronicle’s new opinion editor, I promise to be biased,” he declared.
“As I step into my new role as the Houston Chronicle’s editor of opinion and community engagement, I’ve written an opening column to set the tone — and yes, it’s biased.”
A blow to their credibility
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 27, 2025
So British weather might become iffy. Who ever heard of that?
Let Them Eat Chemical Slurry Cake
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 23, 2025
“Highly Processed News and Highly Processed Food, all in one fake, cherry-topped package.”
Latest Stories Freezing The Climate Crisis Hysteria
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Aug 28, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
No, BBC–Droughts Are Not Getting Worse In Scotland
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 26, 2025
Climate scientists are increasingly becoming lie the old Soviets – they are so immersed in their own propaganda and outright lies, that they end up believing it all themselves.
Wrong, New York Times, Climate Change Isn’t Causing a Surge in Mosquito-Borne Diseases
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Aug 26, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
“An Extraordinary Scandal” Met Office ACCUSED Of ‘Fake’ Weather Data
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 28, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Video that provides evidence.]
Science Shock: ‘Smoking Gun’ Evidence Emerges That the Met Office is Inventing Temperature Data
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Aug 27, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
There are no stations to the east of Lowestoft, for the simply reason it is the most easterly point of the UK. Neither are there any in the UK directly north and south, notes Sanders. The nearest open site to Lowestoft is Lingwood Strumpshaw Hill, a Class 5 with possible errors up to 5°C. Comparing this woodland site 14 miles from the coastal location at Lowestoft with only 18 months’ temperature overlap is not realistic. Next up is Neatishead with no overlap and 20-mile distance.
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
Poll shows 83% of Australians don’t want higher emissions targets
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Aug 27, 2025
The point of most political polls is not to find out what the voters want, it’s to tell the voters what to think.
This loaded poll is there to set up Australians to think the Labor Government are raising the target because voters want them to do that. But even the Labor party knows this isn’t true. If they believed Australians wanted higher targets, they would have taken it to the election.
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Can PR Rehabilitate Big Tech’s Dirty AI Carbon Splurge?
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Aug 25, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
All at Sea in the Parkville Asylum
By Tony Thomas, Quadrant, Aug 27, 2025
Today’s “Climate Futures” has spawned Climate Kids. It’s a five-video portfolio launched in February to let small fry know – in the kindest possible way – that the climate emergency is upon them. Unless they do school strikes, reject consumerism, avoid plastic, and nag their parents into electric cars, the planet will see hot-house Armageddon in next to no time.
Questioning European Green
‘Green’ Europe’s Industrial Masochism
By Samuele Furfari, WUWT, Aug 26, 2025
Dr. Samuele Furfari is a professor of energy geopolitics in Brussels and London, a former senior official with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy and a member of the CO2 Coalition.
Questioning Green Elsewhere
Canada Provinces Defy Climatists, Opt for Energy Freedom
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Aug 25, 2025
10-minute video with transcript and comments
It turns out people didn’t want to spend twice as much on fake meat to fix the weather
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Aug 26, 2025
As Jason Andrew points out it was doomed from the start. Since 2009 it has never had a single year in profit, and in 2019 at the peak, it was IPO’d at a glorious 40X revenue multiple, eclipsing even Facebook which launched at 28 X.
These ratios might have worked for a silicon chip company or a tech giant, but was “ridiculous” for a food company competing on high costs and thin margins.
Governor Murphy’s Green New Deal Exacerbates NJ Energy Crisis
By Gabriella Hoffman, Real Clear Energy, Aug 26, 2025
Green Jobs
Green Jobs Make Us Poorer
By David Jurver, The Daily Sceptic, Aug 24, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Calculates the green jobs in the non-charity, non-consulting private sector and the subsides for wind and solar.]
Green Energy Companies Going Down the Drain
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Aug 26, 2025
Businesses canceled, closed, and scaled back more than $22 billion worth of new factories and clean energy projects in the first half of 2025 after cancelling another $6.7 billion in June alone, according to E2’s latest monthly analysis of clean energy projects tracked by E2 and the Clean Economy Tracker.
Funding Issues
Net-Zero Banking Alliance Halts Activities
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 28, 2025
The Political Games Continue
U.S. Offshore Wind: Politics Giveth, Taketh
By Allen Brooks, Master Resource, Aug 25, 2025
Fact 1: The fact we know about the Empire Wind stop-work order is that, in response to a freedom of information request, the DOI released a 36-page study related to its stop-work decision. The report was titled “Screening Analysis: A Summary of the Record for the Empire Wind Project-NMFS Fisheries Resources.” Twenty-seven of the pages were entirely redacted, a privilege due to the deliberative nature of the report and its role in the review process underway at the time. The public has learned that government agencies are entitled to protect internal studies from public release until final reviews are completed.
Litigation Issues
Donor/Trial Lawyer Talking Points Resurface for Fight Over Restoring Scientific Norms
By Staff, Government Accountability & Oversight, Aug 26, 2025
Further, the premise behind most alarmist slurs, of the “tobacco scientist” variety and the ritual claims of “ties” to “big oil” or “industry,” is that a scientist’s convictions and those of other dissenters are for sale. Yet it is illogical to assume that dissenters can be bought but alarmists cannot. Looking at the balance sheets on both sides, their logic would conclude that the greatest amount of corruption occurs on the alarmist side.
The UN’s Krazy Kangaroo Klimate Kourt
By Paul Driessen, WUWT, Aug 24, 2025
Killer Climate Lawsuit on Shaky Ground
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Aug 29, 2025
Leon died on June 28, 2021, during an extreme heat wave, which ultimately claimed the lives of 100 people in Washington, state data show. According to the wrongful death lawsuit, Leon died in her car after the vehicle’s air conditioning system broke and as outside temperature exceeded 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Her internal temperature rose to 110 degrees Fahrenheit right before she died.
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Duffy pulls $679M in funding from offshore wind projects
By Ashleigh Fields, The Hill, Aug 29, 2025
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he pulled $679 million in funding for offshore wind projects Friday, suggesting investments be made elsewhere.
[SEPP Comment: Why was the Transportation Department funding offshore wind?]
Energy Issues – Non-US
The price of energy and the system costs of renewables [UK]
By Dieter Helm, His Blog, Aug 26, 2025
Why is the price of electricity so high? It’s a puzzle, because successive politicians (Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson and now Starmer and Miliband) and lots of lobbyists have told us we should have expected quite the opposite: cheap energy, to be achieved by getting out of fossil fuels. First exit coal, then bear down on gas, and a new era of cheap wind and solar would give the UK low absolute and relative electricity prices.
So far, it has turned out very differently. The UK has amongst the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world, and far from energy-intensive industries flocking to the UK, they are leaving. Gone is the fertiliser industry, almost gone are petrochemicals, steel and aluminium, and the car industry is back to its output of the 1950s.
Wholesale Electricity Price Trends
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 26, 2025
About £16 billion is being added this year to your electricity bills to pay for subsidies to renewable energy. To that we can add another £3 billion to pay for grid balancing needed because of the intermittency of wind and solar.
Ten years ago, renewable subsidies ran at £3 billion a year.
It’s hardly rocket science, is it?
The cost-of-Miliband crisis is driving up energy bills
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, Aug 27, 2025
Rocketing Carbon Prices Push Up Energy Bills
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 26, 2025
Energy Issues — US
Federal Grid Interventions Enter a Second Phase as DOE Extends Emergency Orders
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Aug 28, 2025
The 1,560-MW J.H. Campbell plant, built between 1962 and 1980, is located on a 2,000-acre site along Lake Michigan, has operated since 1962 and was slated to go “cold and dark” by June 2025 as part of Consumers Energy’s plan to end coal use and transition to renewables.
On July 25, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s filed a petition of review with the U.S. Court of Appeals, characterizing the DOE’s Campbell order as “arbitrary and illegal,” and outright calling it a “pretense of a fabricated energy emergency.” Meanwhile, a coalition of nine environmental groups led by the Sierra Club has mounted parallel legal challenges at the D.C. Circuit.
American Industry Needs Low-Cost Energy and an Expanded Power Grid
By Karen Onaran, Real Clear Energy, Aug 25, 2025
To keep costs down for all customers in the longer term, state regulators, regional grid planners, and utilities can work together to plan efficient, high-voltage regional lines. Large-scale regional lines help keep costs down by transporting the lowest-cost electrons from power plants across the region and are often more cost-effective than local upgrades.
How America Can Power the AI Revolution
To build the energy systems needed to fuel growth, the U.S. will need to weigh choices and tradeoffs.
By Mark P. Mills, City Journal, Aug 27, 2025
When Washington Gets Out of the Way – Energy Workers Deliver Results
By Larry Behrens, Rela Clear Energy, August 28, 2025
Utility Monopolies Are Driving Up Your Electric Bill
By Chris Cavey, Real Clear Energy, Aug 27, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Are regulated monopolies the best way to deliver reliable, affordable electricity? If so, then regulators and legislators who impose mandates and subsidies share the blame for increasing electricity costs.]
Washington’s Control of Energy
Revolution Wind Stop Order: Remember Keystone XL (Obama) and LNG Exports (Biden)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Aug 26, 2025
Return of King Coal?
Jakarta Post: Coal Plants Need to Stop Outcompeting Renewables
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Aug 24, 2025
While Indonesian coal reserves are substantial, the USA is the real king of coal, with the largest proven coal reserves of any nation – enough to supply at least a hundred years of US energy needs, likely a lot longer. Despite this abundance, only 16% of US energy currently comes from coal.
Nuclear Energy and Fears
Fueling the Nuclear Future
By Duggan Flanakin, Real Clear Energy, Aug 25, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Discussing some of the advancements in fission.]
Constellation Outlines Nuclear Expansion Plans at Clinton Site as Meta Partnership Strengthens
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Aug 27, 2025
Constellation’s PPA with Meta, announced on June 3, 2025, guarantees Meta’s offtake of the entire 1,121 MW of near-constant, emissions-free electricity produced by the Clinton Nuclear Power Plant starting in June 2027. The 20-year agreement includes a 30-MW uprate at Clinton, which Constellation expects to be fully complete in 2029 and to qualify for the federal technology-neutral 45Y clean electricity production tax credit preserved under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Palisades Nuclear Plant [in Michigan] Moved to Operations Status, Ready to Receive Fuel
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Aug 26, 2025
Holtec International said the Palisades Power Plant, which was closed in 2022 and set for decommissioning, is now the first U.S. nuclear power plant to officially return to operations status.
Fusion Reactors Are Melting Diamonds, and It Could Hold Back Fusion Power
By Graham Templeton, Yahoo/Tech, Aug 27, 2025
Link to paper: Direct observation of plastic deformation in diamond under extreme loading
By Boya Li et al., Matter, July 18, 2025
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Factcheck: 16 misleading myths about solar
By Josh Gabbatiss and Molly Lempriere. Carbon Brief, Aug 27, 2025
FALSE 1: Solar power is an ‘unreliable source of energy’
“Solar only produce[s] power when the sun is shining,” as the prominent climate-sceptic commentator Bjorn Lomborg wrote in a 2024 article in Canada’s Financial Post.
Solar power is already providing the “cheapest electricity in history” and is expected to play a pivotal role in the global transition away from fossil fuels.
The first thing to note is that, despite this negative messaging, solar power is a hugely successful technology that is widely expected to dominate the global electricity system in the coming years.
Global solar capacity is already at least 40-times larger than it was in 2010. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects it to be the world’s largest power source by 2033, as the chart below shows. (Notably, the IEA has consistently underestimated the growth of solar.).
[SEPP Comment: Since solar is “a hugely successful technology” there is no justification for mandates and subsidies such as tax credits that pass on the costs to others. The success of subsidized solar power does not relate to its reliability.]
Dorenell Highlights Everything That Is Wrong With Wind Power
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 29, 2025
Scottish First Minister, John Swinney, has criticised Labour for the latest energy price cap increase, arguing that “Scotland could deliver a different path by capitalising on low-cost renewable resources to bring down bills.”
The story of Dorenell Wind Farm in picturesque Morayshire exposes the vacuity of his rhetoric.
Dorenell is currently paid £116.70/MWh through its CfD. But that is not the whole story!
[SEPP Comment: The Contract for Difference (CfD), The CfD provides developers with price certainty by guaranteeing a “strike price” for their electricity, paying them the difference if the market price is lower, while they pay back the difference if the market price is higher, which protects consumers from volatile electricity costs and ensures long-term investment in low-carbon technologies like wind and solar.]
Bats flying through a Y-maze are visually attracted to wind turbine surfaces
By Kristin A. Jonasson, et al., Biology Letters, The Royal Society, Aug 13, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
From the abstract: Wind energy’s rapid expansion has led to unintended consequences for wildlife, with migratory bats among the species most at risk. The behavioral mechanisms underlying collisions remain poorly understood, but one hypothesis is that bats are attracted to wind turbine structures. Vision is important to bat orientation and obstacle avoidance, yet it has been relatively understudied in the context of bat–turbine interactions. We hypothesize that light reflected off turbine surfaces could attract bats, acting as a sensory pollutant that may increase collision risk.
Orsted Pull The Plug On AR7
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 25, 2025
As we know, Orsted, Denmark’s world leading offshore wind developer, pulled out of its Contract for Difference to build a giant 2400 MW Hornsea 4 wind farm in May. The contract had only been signed last year, with a guaranteed index-linked price on the table of £84.97/MWh. But they could make no money out of that.
As the Telegraph report, Orsted’s days of milking billions out of US taxpayers to build their whale killing monstrosities off the coast of New York and New England are over, with Trump insisting on value for money and proper environmental protection.
Offshore Wind’s Epic Fail
Feds Pull Plug on Revolution Wind Amid Security Fears
By Matthew Wielicki, His Blog, Aug 26, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
[SEPP Comment: Key data is paywalled.]
Mitsubishi Can’t Make Money Out Of Offshore Wind Even At £151/MWh
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 28, 2025
Dragon Lady Gaga
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 27, 2025
The strange affinity of the Western mainstream media for enemies of the free societies is not new. The New York Times among others was infamously blind to Stalin’s atrocities when it mattered, in the 1930s. (So was the Guardian which now shamelessly boasts of its coverage by Malcolm Muggeridge that, at the time, was so shamelessly censored to favour the regime that Muggeridge quit in protest.) And now the Times regularly peddles stories like:
“As U.S. Retreats on Climate, China and Europe Pledge to Go Green Together/ A joint statement promised new efforts to cut emissions at a time when China is positioning itself as the world’s one-stop shop for clean energy technologies.”
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Drax Faces FCA Action Over Greenwashing Claims
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 28, 2025
The owner of Britain’s biggest renewable power station is being investigated by the City watchdog following claims of greenwashing.
The investigation will examine “certain historical statements regarding Drax’s biomass sourcing” made between January 2022 and March 2024, as well as its annual reports for 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Porsche axes plans to build electric car batteries as demand collapses
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 27, 2025
Carbon Schemes
Better than wood
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 27, 2025
“The federal government is providing over $100 million to help return unproductive Alberta farmland to its original forested state. Corey Hogan, parliamentary secretary to Canada’s natural resources minister, says the cash is part of the $3.2 billion 2 Billion Trees program and the reforestation will help capture carbon and reduce greenhouse gases. The goal is to support provinces, territories and third-party organizations in planting two billion trees across Canada by 2031. Hogan says cleared farmland will be turned back into thriving forests, providing employment to Indigenous women and youth, and providing economic benefits.”
Robson: …the best entity for planting trees is not the bloated modern state but another tree.
Britain’s Quixotic Carbon Capture Crusade
By Tilak Doshi, Via WUWT, Aug 24, 2025
Environmental Industry
Global warming zealots keep the crusade going strong
By Jack Hellner, American Thinker, Aug 26, 2025
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
New Scientist: “We could get most metals for clean energy without opening new mines”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Aug 25, 2025
This seems a strange claim, or at least an odd take on the issue. Most mining engineers I’ve met could recite from memory exactly what is in the waste product of the last mine they worked on. And reprocessing waste from past mining operations is big business, in cases where the waste is valuable.
New England grid operator warns Trump’s pause on wind farm risks system’s reliability
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Aug 25, 20225
“Delaying the project will increase risks to reliability,” said grid operator ISO New England in a Monday statement.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called the move “market manipulation.”
“Wind power is one of the fastest, cheapest ways to meet rising electricity demand — discouraging clean energy will raise energy prices and worsen the looming climate crisis — but payback to fossil fuel donors comes first. This is what corruption looks like,” he wrote on X.
[SEPP Comment: Stopping high cost, unreliable wind increases unreliability? Does Mr. Whitehouse power his homes and offices with wind power only?]
The silence of the majority
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 27, 2025
If you like mathiness, you’ll love “6/ Educating Girls — 59.6 Gigatons of CO2 Averted”. Not 59. Not 60. Not even 59.5. 59.6. Experts say.
Sharks may be losing deadly teeth to ocean acidification
By Staff, Phys.org, Aug 27, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to paper: Simulated ocean acidification affects shark tooth morphology
By Maximilian Baum, et al., Frontiers in Marine Science, Aug 26, 2025
From the abstract: Here, we investigated the corrosive effects from acidification on the morphology of isolated shark teeth in an eight-week incubation at a pH of 7.3, the expected seawater pH in the year 2300.
[SEPP Comment: Beware of sweet corn that has a pH of 7.3 – alkaline!]
‘Real feel’ temps are a real joke — don’t trust sensational heat-index claims
By Anthony Watts, New York Post, Aug 17, 2025
ARTICLES
1. How to Beat the High Cost of Cooling
Biden climate rules made air-conditioning more expensive. Trump and Congress can reverse them.
By Ben Lieberman, WSJ, Aug. 24, 2025
TWTW Summary: The author begins with:
“President Trump doesn’t hide his dislike of federal appliance regulations, from water-stingy shower heads that he says make it difficult ‘to take care of my beautiful hair’ to new energy-efficient lightbulbs that make him ‘look orange.’ His administration has initiated steps to dial back many such rules. His next priority should be one of the most overregulated appliances—residential central air-conditioning systems.
Home air conditioners fall under the jurisdiction of two hyperaggressive federal agencies, the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. The Energy Department’s latest efficiency standard for these systems took effect in 2023 and knocked the most affordable models off the market.
Not to be outdone, the Biden EPA issued a rule requiring that systems manufactured after Jan. 1, 2025, use refrigerants that meet new climate-change requirements. This mandate has increased costs by $1,500 per system on average, says Martin Hoover, president of Atlanta-based Empire Heating & Air Conditioning. Mr. Hoover says the higher price is due to both increased equipment prices—systems had to be redesigned for the new refrigerants—and higher labor costs, since these refrigerants are more flammable and require additional precautions during installation. To make matters worse, an EPA-compliant green refrigerant that many equipment makers use, R-454B, is in short supply, and prices have risen substantially.
These and other regulations, combined with nonregulatory factors such as higher materials costs and rising wages for service technicians, have dramatically increased the cost of buying and installing a new system. A homeowner replacing a 15-year-old system that likely cost around $5,000 at the time of installation now faces a price tag ‘in the $13,000 to $14,000 range,’ Mr. Hoover says.
The good news is that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin plans to reconsider this rule. Rolling it back won’t be easy, however, as manufacturers in this sector now enjoy a captive market for their costlier but supposedly planet-saving systems. Indeed, many manufacturers took the same side as climate-change activists in petitioning the Biden EPA for this rule. To champion the cause of beleaguered homeowners, the Trump administration will have to stand firm against manufacturers’ challenges.
Reversing the Energy Department rule will also be difficult, as the underlying statutory provisions generally preclude a new efficiency regulation less stringent than the one it replaces.”
The author concludes that changing these regulations requires time and political effort.
*******************
2. The Government Kills Owls to Save Owls
Millions of animals a year die for misguided wildlife-management schemes.
By Liam Gray, WSJ, Aug. 25, 2025
TWTW Summary: The founder and executive director of The Wilberforce Institute begins with”
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to save owls by killing owls. The government’s plan is to kill up to 450,000 barred owls across millions of acres over the next 30 years. The justification is that barred owls, which are aggressive and adaptable, are edging endangered spotted owls out of their range. To save one species, the government is executing the other.
The ‘barred owl solution’ is one of many lethal interventions run by the nation’s wildlife-management complex. Under the banner of ‘wildlife services,’ federal and state agencies spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars killing animals. The most notorious of these agencies is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, which kills millions of animals a year, often at the request of large ranching operations.
Agencies have different rationales for killing—protecting livestock, propping up game herds, favoring one species over another. But the animating idea is the same: that complex ecosystems should be engineered into balance by government employees with shotguns and spreadsheets.
Using bureaucracy to try to tame nature has the same flaws as every other attempt at central planning. Friedrich Hayek described the futility of trying to direct an economy. No central planner has the concentrated or integrated knowledge to construct a rational economic order, he explained; instead, it is ‘the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess’ that create a functioning economy.
Hayek’s warning can be applied to forests as well as factories. A planner in Washington can’t possibly know how countless variables will interact across millions of acres. Pretending otherwise produces the same failure as when bureaucrats try to run the economy.
Yet the killing continues. In theory, it’s about balance. But in practice, it’s often about corporate welfare for agricultural businesses and timber interests, with taxpayers footing the bill. Culling programs have the same characteristics as all unchecked government programs: subsidies, entrenched agencies and a conviction that government belongs in the driver’s seat.”
TWTW Comment: Some readers may recall that when the environmental industry went to close the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest, it claimed that a nesting pair of Northern Spotted Owls need thousands of acres of old growth forest. Those pointing that the real threat was invasive barred owls were dismissed as being paid off by the logging industry.
Miliband
Seems to be somewhat immune to parlous state of his party and government, given he is driving the effective de-industrialisation of the economy and nation. And all while claiming to bring energy prices down by £300. They’ve actually gone up > £600. How Orwellian is that?
“How Ed Miliband cost Britain one billion barrels of North Sea oil
Energy Secretary’s ‘hostile’ drilling policies risk leaving the UK more reliant on imports – Daily Telegraph
Even this bad news is put well in the shade by the shenanigans in Labour…
Downing Street is in survival mode this morning as Labour MPs at all levels sound the alarm over Starmer’s shambolic handling of the Mandelson debacle. – Guido Fawkes
Some say gone by Christmas, others say gone by May 2026. Either way mad Ed is getting a free pass to bugger everything up.
When people speak of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Death, Famine, War, and Conquest), most don’t realize a fifth rider joined them in the modern world here to aid Conquest — incompetent government.
I was a Manufacturing Engineering faculty member at WSU, Vancouver campus for two years in 2002-2004, and an adjunct faculty member for several years before that. Ed Brooks, who is now the Director of the COLDEX group at Oregon State University in Corvalis was in the Earth Sciences group at WSU for a time. Very nice fellow, although he graduated as a Grizzly from UM and I had been a ‘Cat from MSU. Anyway, at WSU He had a refrigerator in which he kept drill cores from glaciers. That was some refrigerator — it stayed around -100C.
One rule was that a person could not enter that environment alone. On one occasion Ed was going in to cut some sample and there was no one else around, so he got me to go in with him. I had to put on a parka and gloves, but no additional cold gear ’cause we’d be in there for only a few minutes.
When I tell people this they often exclaim that it must have felt really, really cold. In fact, I had no impression other than it was cold. Could easily have been a mere -50C. A person really has no direct sensory indication of such cold.