The Week That Was: 2025-11-22 (November 22, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature” — Max Planck
Number of the Week: ~4.5 mm/year v. 1-2 mm/year
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW begins with an essay by SEPP director David Legates rebutting a claim that today’s complex global climate models accurately forecast climate. TWTW discusses a version of uncertainty proposed by John Ridgway. TWTW discusses Ross McKitrick’s paper of a statistically acceptable way of climate fingerprinting. Then, TWTW discusses an essay and a speech by two commentators on UK energy policy. TWTW closes with an effort by the UNFCCC to impose censorship.
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General Patterns v. Specific Details: NOAA research scientist Nadir Jeevanjee claims that today’s complex global climate models accurately forecast climate. As evidence, he offers five forecasts for which the early simple models in a lab of the U.S. Weather Bureau were accurate. The laboratory became the NOAA-financed Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton. Jeevanjee claims that the report by five independent scientists (John Christy, Ph.D., Judith Curry, Ph.D., Steven Koonin, Ph.D., Ross McKitrick, Ph.D., Roy Spencer, Ph.D.) published by the Department of Energy in July 2025 claimed that the complexity of current global climate models as the primary reason why the models cannot be trusted. Jeevanjee gave five major examples why current models can be trusted.
Writing for the Cornwall Alliance, climatologist David Legates rebutted each example. As posted in WUWT, Legates states [the graph is not shown here but is in the text, boldface added]:
Okay, let’s revisit history—because those who can’t remember history correctly are destined to get it wrong.
First, we need to get one fact correct. The recent Department of Energy report did not simply cite the complexity of climate models as the primary reason they cannot be trusted. It goes into detail as to why current climate models cannot be trusted: namely, they cannot reproduce current conditions.
For example, models are not capable of determining the equilibrium climate sensitivity to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. As shown in this graph from the DOE report, they tend to ‘run hot,’ or overstate surface warming. [graph not shown here]
They also overstate warming of the tropical troposphere, and their simulation of stratospheric cooling is inconsistent.
With regards to the tropical troposphere, the excessive warming was noted as a problem in the first United States National Climate Assessment and has been noted in every Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report since. This problem has become more extreme over time—i.e., simulations from later models, despite decades of ‘improvements’ costing billions of dollars, deviate farther from observations than earlier models—and its spatial extent now encompasses the entire globe.
But the article asserts that early climate model forecasts about global warming were correct decades before the forecasts could be evaluated. It concludes, ‘it is this track record of success that gives us confidence in interpreting the changes we’re seeing now, as well as predicting changes to come.’ It then lists five forecasts the early models made that underscore how well even those early models could reproduce Earth’s climate.
Now, let’s give credit where credit is due, but let’s not reward models for getting the basics of climate correct. In other words, models should not be praised for figuring out that the Poles are cold and the Equator is warm. They should not be given credit for simulating the Hadley Cell circulation or demonstrating that oceans have a moderating effect on climate, for examples. These basic premises of climate are obvious and must have been a product of the simulation; otherwise, the models would have been discarded before they were even published.
So, let’s test the article’s evaluation of the models.
Forecast number 1: early models correctly simulated surface global warming from increased carbon dioxide. Yes, but this was obvious long before the first models were created. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and thus the more of it added to the atmosphere, the higher surface temperature should rise. Way back in 1896, Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927) showed that an increase in carbon dioxide would increase global temperatures.
The question always has been, and still is, how much should the temperature rise from, say, a doubling of carbon dioxide?
Early models argued that the temperature rise would be between 2.0 and 3.5 degrees Celsius. These numbers are actually closer to reality than estimates provided by later model simulations, but they are still higher than data-driven estimates using historical and paleoclimate data.
Verdict? Early models would have been discarded if they had simulated cooling or had no effect. That they simulated warming from increased greenhouse gases is no proof of their reliability.
Forecast number 2: the models predicted stratospheric cooling from adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This should also have been relatively obvious. If outgoing terrestrial radiation is being intercepted by more carbon dioxide at the surface, and some of it is radiated back to the surface, then less will reach the stratosphere and, consequently, the stratosphere should cool. Again, the question that demands an answer is, ‘How much cooling?’—and even current climate models cannot simulate this correctly or consistently.
Forecast number 3: Arctic amplification. The Conversation suggests that it was surprising that the early models accurately predicted that rising carbon dioxide concentrations would warm the Arctic more than the Tropics. But that was no surprise at all. Given a warming planet, the Arctic will warm faster than the Equator due to six factors.
- Colder air warms more than warmer air from the same amount of energy input due to the derivative of the Stefan-Boltzmann Radiation Law.
- Moist tropical air has a higher specific heat than dry polar air. (Specific heat is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of a substance by one degree Celsius.) This is because water vapor has a higher specific heat than dry air and warm, tropical air has more moisture than cold, polar air.
- The change in albedo—or surface reflectance—is greater in the Arctic because of the melting of highly reflective ice and snow, uncovering darker soils and tundra.
- Sea ice provides a layer of insulation between the unfrozen water beneath and the potentially much colder air above. Warming reduces the sea-ice coverage, which allows energy in the relatively warmer water to warm the air above it.
- The lack of convection at the Poles keeps the warming closer to the surface. Unlike the tropics, where the atmosphere becomes unstable due to surface heating and rising air, the polar regions are not heated sufficiently to create rising air motions, and the creation of the Polar High inhibits vertical motion. Thus, the warmer air stays near the ground.
- Finally, the evaporation of water stores energy as latent heat—that is, energy in the phase transition of water from liquid to gas—which then is transported poleward by global circulation. This latent energy is stored in equatorial regions and released as condensation occurs in higher latitudes, thereby transporting energy polewards.
Therefore, a greater warming of the Arctic was obvious to climatologists even before the first climate model was created. That models simulate it is no big feat.
Forecast number 4: land-ocean contrast. The article notes that the coupled atmosphere-ocean model ‘led to a slew of insights, including the observation that land generally warms more than ocean, by a factor of about 1.5.’ While this may sound impressive to the uninitiated, climatologists have long known the moderating effect of the oceans, again due to their high specific heat.
Consider San Diego and Dallas, at about the same latitude of 33 degrees north. The annual temperature range in San Diego is about 8 degrees Celsius, while that in Dallas is about 22 degrees—a factor of almost three. Extending any transect to both coasts indicates that the annual temperature range—and the diurnal temperature range, for that matter—increases with distance from the coast.
To anyone who understands the Earth’s climate, the central Plains have a much greater temperature range than either coast, for example. So, why would this have been a novel finding back in 1979? Any competent climatologist would have known this, so it must have been a basic component of any climate model worth its salt at the time.
Forecast number 5: delayed warming of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. This issue arises from the supposedly novel fact that the Arctic has a greater warming signal than that of the Southern Ocean.
But why is that surprising? The change in albedo is not as great in Antarctica, since there is little land area exposed by melting snow and ice, while there is much in the Arctic. Sea ice dynamics differ considerably in the Southern Hemisphere, and the loss of sea ice isn’t as dramatic to warming Antarctica. Moreover, the Southern Ocean is bounded by a hemisphere of ocean, which has a moderating effect on the climate as mentioned earlier. Thus, important contributions to Arctic warming are not present in the Southern Ocean, and so we would have expected the Southern Ocean to be different from the Arctic.
The take-home message? If early climate models missed any of these supposed climate novelties, climate modeling wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. What early climate modeling showed was that the basics of climate could be replicated with simple mathematical approximations. But that’s the basics. The details are that climate is still very complex, and while the general patterns can be simulated accurately, specific details as to how climate varies spatially and how it is likely to change under various scenarios are still a far-off challenge.
The article concludes: ‘Climate models have their limitations, of course. For instance, they cannot predict regional climate change as well as people would like. But the fact that climate science, like any field, has significant unknowns should not blind us to what we do know.’
I agree, but I would also note that we were not blind to these facts before the advent of climate models. Syukuro Manabe deserves credit for demonstrating that the basics of climate can be reproduced with a rudimentary computer program run on early computers. But the fact remains that current model simulations still deviate significantly from real-world observations. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that early climatologists understood quite a bit about how the Earth’s climate works. Yes, there were climatologists before the climate modelers, and they knew an awful lot about the Earth’s climate.
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Uncertainty: As David Legates writes above, the global climate models are highly inconsistent and generally greatly overestimate the warming of the atmosphere. Modelers often dismiss criticism of the inconsistency and the overestimate as the result of “initial conditions.” If the initial conditions are accurate, part of the inconsistency in modeling results can be attributed to initial conditions, but the overestimates may be from the use of the wrong data to detect the greenhouse effect.
In two essays posted on Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. and one in Climate Scepticism (English spelling) John Ridgway addresses the issues of uncertainty. In the second essay posted in Climate Etc. “Natural Selection of Bad Science. Part II,” Ridgway discusses “Distinguishing Two Dimensions of Uncertainty” by Craig Fox and Gülden Ülkümen. The issues arise from the fact that modeling is not measurement and the efforts to attach probability estimates on a range of modeling results are without any foundation in classical probability and statistics. For example, if modelers state the results are a of range of 1.5 – 4.5°C, they don’t have a sound statistical basis for attaching probabilities to these estimates.
In a long post on Curry’s website, Ridgway address this issue and efforts to minimize it. He states:
“…the problem didn’t go away, and we now live in a world where it is common practice for climate scientists to confuse epistemic and aleatory uncertainty by trying to treat the spread of model outputs as if dealing with a measurement problem that can be characterized using probability distributions. It’s possible that some climate scientists are simply unaware of the issue, but many others deliberately ignore it because they recognize the expedience of pretending that the epistemic uncertainties involved can be analyzed as if they were aleatory.” [Boldface added.]
Here Ridgway introduces terms that may be from philosophy: “epistemic uncertainties” and “aleatory uncertainties.” Epistemic uncertainty arises for a lack of knowledge (incomplete understanding in a model) and possibly could be resolved by gathering more data or better data. Aleatoric uncertainty arises because of the unpredictable, random nature of the physical system (randomness and noise). This uncertainty cannot be resolved by more and better data.
The distinction is useful because it may be helpful to address issues that arise when global climate modelers dismiss criticisms of the inconsistency of their work as resulting from “initial conditions.” For example, turbulence is a vexing problem in fluid dynamics that no one has solved. Turbulence can be considered an aleatory uncertainty, it is random. In climate modeling, turbulence will produce different results with different initial conditions.
However, the use of surface-air temperature data for modeling is not an aleatory uncertainty. It is the wrong data to use if one is forecasting the influence of greenhouse gases that exist in the atmosphere. Further, surface-air data is subject to many other human influences that have no relationship with greenhouse gases, such as the urban heat island effect, roadways, runways, landscape changes, etc. The variation between surface-air temperature trends and atmospheric temperature trends cannot be dismissed as aleatory uncertainty, random. The differences are epistemic, lacking appropriate knowledge. Yet the appropriate knowledge exists but is ignored by the global climate modeling community. There is no justification for saying the difference is the result of initial conditions.
Under Problem number 1: The converted meteorologist in “More on the Uncertainty Monster” Ridgway writes:
“’Internal variability, part of the natural variability of the climate system, can be estimated from high-resolution simulators, but it is only a tiny part of total uncertainty. Over centurial scales, it is negligible compared to our combined uncertainty of the behavior of the icesheets, and the marine and terrestrial biosphere.’
As a consequence, the road to improved forecasting is markedly different for the two challenges. For meteorology, improvement is traditionally gained by using simulations of greater fidelity and granularity, powered by extra computer and physical perturbation ensembles of increasing size. For climate science, the solution lies more in gaining a greater understanding of the complexities and feedbacks involved and how they operate in the long term. The distinction is essentially that which exists between variability and incertitude, and hence between the aleatory and epistemic approaches. However, there is always a danger that an individual steeped in the traditions of the former may not be able to fully adjust when engaged in the latter. If Monte Carlo simulations and similar stochastic sampling techniques have proved immensely effective within their realm, the temptation might be to believe that the realm of the epistemic could be similarly tamed.
One individual who may fit this description is Professor Tim Palmer, an academic who has done as much as anyone in pioneering and finessing the techniques that underpin modern-day weather forecasting. In his book, The Primacy of Doubt, these successes are described in chapters such as ‘Chaos, Chaos Everywhere,’ ‘The Geometry of Chaos,’ ‘Noisy, Million-Dollar Butterflies’ and ‘The Two Roads to Monte Carlo.’ However, in the chapter ‘Climate Change,’ he states the following when discussing climate change multi-model ensembles:
‘This provides a natural ‘ensemble of opportunity’ to study climate change. It is an example of the so-called multi-model ensemble mentioned in Chapter 5. Each model differs from the others in the precise computational techniques used to solve the Navier-Stokes equation, and, more importantly, in the parameterization formulae for unresolved processes.’
There is nothing in the above to suggest that the aleatory sampling techniques he had described in Chapter 5 (Monte Carlo simulation) are anything other than fully applicable to the ensembles he now describes. And yet, Chapter 5 was predominantly about the modelling of variability, whereas now we have moved on to matters of incertitude, as characterized by models of varied structure. Just to reinforce the suspicion that Palmer sees nothing wrong with the adoption of aleatory methods to treat such epistemic uncertainty, on page 121 he reproduces a histogram showing the various estimates of climate sensitivity resulting from an ensemble of differently structured models. Over this he fits a probability distribution curve, seemingly unconcerned that this takes no account of the histogram’s decidedly non-stochastic representation of the space of possible model structures. This is precisely the normative practice to which I have referred above, and yet there is no hint in his book that he sees it as a pragmatic (albeit sub-optimal) expedient, or as a probabilistic treatment adopted only for the benefit of the policymakers. Indeed, he goes on to justify its legitimacy by reference to the concept of the ‘wisdom of the crowds.’ But this is a concept that only applies when the crowd acts entirely independently and is statistically representative. Of course, neither of these conditions apply to the currently available ‘crowd’ of climate models.”
Ridgway identifies a major problem with the ensemble method advocated by Tim Palmer and widely used today – the method mixes different types of uncertainties some of which can be resolved with better data while others cannot. Additionally, Palmer writes some ideas of what his technique can resolve that are farfetched. Ridgway writes:
“Armed with an ensemble of such models, Palmer sees great potential in tackling the epistemic uncertainties appertaining to our shared future:
‘Of course, such a digital ensemble twin would not only be able to tackle the socioeconomic problems of climate geoengineering, it should be able to provide credible estimates of future migration, future conflict, future health risks, future food supplies, the future health of the oceans and so on.’
Of course? It is far from obvious to me that a reliable ‘model of global society’ can be created by extending a stochastic model designed to forecast the outcome of a system’s variability.”
Under “Problem number 2: The denial of subjectivity” Ridgway writes about “Personalist” interpretation of uncertainty that has no bearing in physical science. Physical science deals with verifiable, objective properties independent from one’s individual beliefs.
The essays are useful in identifying types of uncertainties, some of which may reduce with more data or the use of appropriate data. Other uncertainties, such as turbulence, probably cannot be reduced even with better and faster computers. The knowledge does not exist. Additionally, our understanding of the formation and dissipation of clouds is lacking.
For Ridgway’s essays, see links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and for aleatoric uncertainty see https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/aleatoric-uncertainty
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Climate Fingerprinting: Ridgway discusses Extreme Event Attribution (EEA) where probabilities are assigned that increasing carbon dioxide (global warming) increases the probability of a particular event (usually a natural disaster) occurring. Earlier, Allen and Tett (1999) claimed that the work satisfied the conditions of the Gauss-Markov theorem and the estimates are BLUE, [the Best (minimum variance), Linear, Unbiased, Estimator] for the calculation of the coefficient of the desired variable. Writing in the same Journal, Climate Dynamics, Ross McKitrick (2022) showed that the method did not produce BLUE results; the results were not unbiased and consistent estimates of the desired coefficient. A major problem is the lack of consistency of the error term, heteroscedasticity.
In discussing Ross McKitrick’s latest work, John Robson writes:
“A lot of observers including us have long suspected that the IPCC’s knack for always finding CO2 responsible for everything was probably an artifact of dodgy statistical practice rather than real-world effects. [Ross] McKitrick’s new analysis confirms our suspicions and adds to the evidence that in the real world outside climate models CO2 is not the control knob on global climate and natural variability matters a lot more than we’ve been told.
And confirms our suspicions that far from being ‘settled,’ rigorous and, oh yeah, ‘simple,’ climate science neglects basic tools of the trade from the statistical to the testing of hypotheses to try to disprove them not to confirm them at all costs.’
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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In the Mire: In “Fixing the electricity system” Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch addressed a main problem in the UK – the high and increasing cost of electricity to consumers and industry. His essay begins with [boldface added]:
“The UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, despite paying only average prices for gas. Independent research shows that years of high energy costs have made the cost-of-living voters’ top concern, fueling public anger and political polarization.
Yet even sceptics of the renewables agenda often misunderstand the core problem. Cutting subsidies alone will not lower prices. As Octopus Energy and E.ON told Parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, even if gas prices halved or fell to zero, electricity bills would still rise. But why?
The reason lies in so-called ‘non-commodity costs’ – the cost of managing a grid rather than of generating the power. Because renewables are weather-dependent, spatially diffuse, and often located far from where power is needed, and moreover because they undermine the economics of the gas-fired fleet – vital for when the wind is not blowing – these costs are soaring. Energy experts, including Professors Dieter Helm and Gordon Hughes, have argued that such system costs are now the main driver of bills and – unlike with thermal power systems – will keep rising as more renewables are added. Cancelling subsidies might bring short-term relief, but, as long as intermittent generation grows, balancing and capacity market costs will escalate.
Britain cannot reduce the cost of living, revive productivity, or restore economic growth without fixing its electricity system. To do this, UK politicians must confront not only subsidies, but the physical and contractual structures that make energy permanently expensive.”
Energy consultant Kathryn Porter had a similar, grim question “How do we keep the lights on with 12 GW net firm capacity at risk of retirement by 2030?” in a speech to the Institution of Power Engineers. Paul Homewood summarizes key points with:
“A total of 56 GW, facing peak winter demand of 48 GW. That capacity cannot be guaranteed 24/7, so 50 GW is more realistic. Moreover that 7 GW of batteries, plus 2.7 GW of pumped storage can only supply for an hour or so – enough to meet peak demand, but worthless for longer periods.
As a result, we are already totally dependent on imported power at the times when wind power cannot meet demand.
But the real value of Kathryn’s analysis is that she has identified how much gas power capacity we could potentially lose in the next few years. Not only is 12 GW at risk of closure by 2030, but another 6 GW could go by 2035.”
See links under Questioning European Green.
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Literacy Through Censorship: The 30th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) concluded November 21, a new threat has emerged to modern civilization – UN censorship. Jo Nova links to a November 12 UN press release that states:
“The Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change today launched the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change at COP30, establishing shared international commitments to address climate disinformation and promote accurate, evidence-based information on climate issues.
The Declaration commits signatories to promote the integrity of information related to climate change at international, national, and local levels, in line with international human rights law and the principles of the Paris Agreement.
Drafted in collaboration with civil society members of the Global Initiative Advisory Group, the Declaration has been endorsed by ten countries so far – Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Uruguay.
‘Climate change is no longer a threat of the future; it is a tragedy of the present,’ said President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Belém. ‘We live in an era in which obscurantists reject scientific evidence and attack institutions. It is time to deliver yet another defeat to denialism.’”
Charles Rotter has additional views on the subsequent: “Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change.”
See links under Censorship.
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Number of the Week: ~4.5 mm/year v. 1-2 mm/year. A paper in Nature Communications, Earth & Environment states:
Over the past three decades, satellites have provided continuous, accurate measurements of sea level on near-global scales. Here, we show that since satellites began observing sea surface heights in 1993 until the end of 2023, global mean sea level has risen by 111 mm. In addition, the rate of global mean sea level rise over those three decades has increased from ~2.1 mm/year in 1993 to ~4.5 mm/year in 2023. If this trajectory of sea level rise continues over the next three decades, sea levels will increase by an additional 169 mm globally, comparable to mid-range sea level projections from the IPCC AR6.
The reported satellite estimates are inconsistent with tidal gauge measurements taken at geological stable locations. Ole Humlum reports:
“Tide gauges along coasts indicate a typical global sea level increase of about 1-2 mm/yr. Coastal sea level change rate last 100 year has essentially been stable, but with periodic variations.”
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Censorship
UN makes “landmark” deal on information integrity to shut up annoying denialists
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Nov 18, 2025
Link to: Countries seal landmark declaration at COP30—marking first time information integrity is prioritized at UN Climate Conference
Press Release, UN Climate Change, Nov 12, 2025
Freedom Melts Faster Than Glaciers: COP30’s Declaration on ‘Information Integrity
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Nov 20, 2025
Link to: Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change
By Steering Committee of the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, No Date
From Rotter: Perhaps the most infuriating part of this whole charade is its paternalism. The Declaration calls on governments to:
“Promote campaigns on climate change and support initiatives that promote literacy and the public’s right to access reliable information on the matter.”
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
Net Zero Averted Temperature Increase
By Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and William A. van Wijngaarden, CO2 Coalition, June 2024
Radiation Transport in Clouds
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Klimarealistene, Science of Climate Change, January 2025
Challenging the Orthodoxy
The Matthew Effect, Mono-cultures, and the Natural Selection of Bad Science
By John Ridgway, Climate Etc. Sep 8, 2025
[SEPP Comment: How the scientific method can be compromised.]
Natural Selection of Bad Science. Part II
By John Ridgway, Climate Etc., Sep 23, 2025
Link to: Distinguishing Two Dimensions of Uncertainty
By Craig Fox and Gülden Ülkümen in Essays in Judgment and Decision Making, Brun, W., Kirkebøen, G. and Montgomery, H., eds. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
More on the Uncertainty Monster
It’s still under the bed
By John Ridgway, Climate Scepticism, Nov 16, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Just How Good Were the Early Climate Models?
By David Legates, Cornwall Alliance, Via WUWT, Nov 19, 2025
Link to article: 5 forecasts early climate models got right – the evidence is all around you
By Nadir Jeevanjee, Research Physical Scientist, NOAA, Sep 3, 2025
Modeling Manufactured Vulnerability: Why the Maldives Refuse To Sink Despite the Headlines
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Nov 17, 2025
Link to press release: Study provides new forecasts of remote islands’ vulnerability to sea level rise
Research by the University of Plymouth and Deltares found a rare flooding event in the Maldives in July 2022 could become a far more common occurrence in the future
By Staff, University of Plymouth, Nov 13, 2025
Link to paper: Numerical modelling of the 1 July 2022 flooding event, Southwest Huvadhoo Atoll, Maldives: Implications for the future,
By Gerd Masselink, et al., Cambridge University Press, Oct 13, 2025
From Watts: What goes largely unmentioned is the inconvenient fact that the peer-reviewed literature overwhelmingly shows that reef islands—including those in the Maldives—have been stable or growing for decades, and that their natural geomorphic processes often make them more resilient in the face of rising seas, not less.
Five Harsh Realities Shatter The ‘Climate Change’ Orthodoxy
Reality caught up to ‘climate change’. The results weren’t pretty.
By Victor Davis Hanson, Climate Change Dispatch, Nov 19, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Climate fingerprinting done right
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
Link to paper: Consistent climate fingerprinting
By Ross McKitrick, Climate Dynamics, Sep 10, 2025
Top MIT scientist blasts ‘climate hysteria,’ says global warming fears are driven by money… not evidence
By Chris Melore, Daily Mail, Nov 16, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshrie]
Lindzen claimed that the chief motivating factor for lawmakers supporting climate change initiatives is the control it gives politicians over the energy industry
Retracted by Nature, Traduced by Michael Mann – Gianluca Alimonti is Back and He’s Taking No Prisoners
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Nov 19, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to paper: Quantifying the climate crisis: a data-driven framework using response indicators for evidence-based adaptation policies
By Gianluca Alimonti & Luigi Mariani, Environmental Hazards, Oct 22, 2025
Short Summary of Observations Until October 2025
By Ole Humlum, Climate4you, Accessed Nov 22, 2025
Challenging the Orthodoxy – RIP
RIP Viv Forbes: Climate Warrior, Engineer, and Thorn in the Side of the Aussie Green Revolution
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Nov 20, 2025
Defending the Orthodoxy
Climate Change on Trial
By Michael Kile, WUWT, Nov 16, 2025
Link to: Climate Obstruction – A Global Assessment
Edited by J. Timmons Roberts, et al., Oxford University Press, Oct 14, 2025
How climate finance to help poor countries became a global shell game – donors have counted fossil fuel projects, airports and even ice cream shop
By Shannon Gibson, The Conversation, Nov 19, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Developed countries that grew wealthy from burning fossil fuels, the leading driver of climate change, have pledged billions of dollars a year to help ecologically vulnerable nations like Jamaica, Cuba and the Philippines, recently hit by a typhoon, adapt to rising seas and stronger storms and rebuild after disasters worsened by climate change. [Boldface added]
[SEPP Comment: Did use of fossil fuels end the last Ice Age?]
Can the world quit coal?
By Stacy D. VanDeveer, Professor of Global Governance & Human Security, The Conversation, Nov 14, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
The world has affordable renewable energy technologies with which to replace coal-fired electricity generation. Shifting to renewable energy also has added benefits: It’s much less harmful to the health of those who live and work nearby than mining and burning coal is.
[SEPP Comment: Mining cobalt and lithium is clean and healthy?]
Biden EPA Official: Trump’s EPA Is Knee-Capping U.S. Energy Dominance
By Cynthia Giles, Real Clear Energy, Nov 19, 2025
Importing countries want oil and gas that hit three key benchmarks: reduced emissions from production and distribution, a robust system to curtail super-emitters – which are responsible for as much as 50% of emissions – and reliable monitoring and reporting so emission claims can be verified. That’s what EU rules require, and what other big importing countries are quickly moving toward. [Boldface added]
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Sea level rise threatens thousands of hazardous sites: Study
By Ryan Mancini, The Hill, Nov 20, 2025
Link to paper: Sea level rise and flooding of hazardous sites in marginalized communities across the United States
By Lara J. Cushing, et al., Nature Communications, Nov 20, 2025
Link to cited paper: The rate of global sea level rise doubled during the past three decades
By B. D. Hamlington, et al., Nature Communications Earth & Environment, Oct 17, 2024
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Global Atmospheric CO2 Lags Temperature by 150 yr between 1 and 1850 AD
By Ronald Grabyan, Accepted Science of Climate Change, Aug 20, 2025
Meet The New Ice Age, Same As The Old Ice Age
By I & I Editorial Board, Nov 18, 2025
Link to paper: Instability in the geological regulation of Earth’s climate
By Dominik Hülse and Andy Ridgwell, AAAS Science, Sep 25, 2025
Captain Scott’s 1912 Antarctic tragedy
By Mila Zinkova, Climate Etc., Nov 21, 2025
Reassessing The Coldest March by Susan Solomon
But here’s the problem: the science doesn’t agree. Not modern satellite imagery, not historical data, not even the meteorological literature available before the book was published.
If anyone still doubts how easily Solomon’s interpretation can be disproved, consider this: a single infrared satellite image is enough to show why her core assumption—that Corner Camp and Scott’s Last Camp always experience storms together—is scientifically untenable. Below is one example (April 15, 2018) [Image in text.]
[SEPP Comment: Solomon is author of Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again (2024). According to Amazon books: “We solved planet-threatening problems before, Susan Solomon argues, and we can do it again. Solomon knows firsthand what those solutions entail. She first gained international fame as the leader of an expedition to Antarctica in 1986, making discoveries that were key to healing the damaged ozone layer.”]
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
There goes Carbon Carney again, off to the UAE and then South Africa “to strengthen partnerships, attract and expand investments, and create new opportunities for Canadians.”
New Study Suggests Ice Cores Are Wrong….CO2 Levels Were High In Early Holocene
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Nov 16, 2025
Link to article: Why ice cores lie: High CO2 levels shaped the early period
By Heinz Steiner, Report 24, Nov 16, 2025
Link to paper: Historical CO₂ levels in periods of global greening
By Frans J. Schrijver, Science of Climate Change, 2025
[SEPP Comment: The paper underlying the posts was discussed in last week’s TWTW. It was warmer during the Holocene Climate Optimum than today. But the paper gives no physical evidence that CO2 levels 9,000 years ago were as high as today’s 400 parts per million by volume.]
After Paris!
COP30 Demands $1.3 Trillion / Year, $3.2 Trillion by 2035
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Nov 18, 2025
COP-30 Insanity Vs the Global Tide of Climate and Energy Reality
By Paul Driessen, WUWT, Nov 17, 2025
Paris Agreement: Dead at Ten (James Hansen was right)
By Robert Bradley Jr, Master Resource, Nov 17, 2025
Trump’s Eisenhower Moment: COP30 and the End of Europe’s Green Agenda
By Tilak Doshi, Via WUWT, Nov 18, 2025
The EU’s Green Deal, once hailed as “Europe’s man on the moon moment”, has become a fiscal and political quagmire.
An unhealthy dose of unreality
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
Not just a new plan, a new model. Or a plan to come up with a model. Not that they don’t have a bunch of words hovering in the shape of a plan:
“the GFI [Green Finance Institute] is proposing a new model of so-called structured coordination that it’s dubbed “transactions to transitions.”
COP30 is the world’s biggest trade show
By David Wojick, CFACT, Nov 17, 2025
On the funny side, a few COPs ago, the UN started asking registrants about their ties to oil and gas companies. There turned out to be well over a thousand per COP, which is as many, or more than, the number of negotiators. I am sure a lot of oil and gas deals get started here. In fact, at COP28, the COP president, himself an oil executive, got yelled at for talking about making such deals.
On that Flood of Fossil Fuel Lobbyists at COP30
How dare they!
By Jit, Climate Scepticism, Nov 22, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Probably, if you screwed your eyes up tightly, you could make out about half of the 1600 as having more than the most tenuous connection to fossil fuels. Generously, 1 in 50 of the total delegates are fossil fools.
Opposition drops Net Zero and suddenly Labor are not so keen on hosting a $2b Climate Conference?
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Nov 19, 2025
Aussie Climate Minister on Abandoning COP31 Bid: Defaulting to Germany would cause “A lack of leadership”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Nov 21, 2025
COP30 Shakedown On The Table Again
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 20, 2025
The whole show will be back on the road again next winter in Turkey, where we will be treated to exactly the same circus.
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
The effect of additional CO2 on Myrtle Spurge
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
From the CO2Science archive.
Problems in the Orthodoxy
Are climate-obsessed elites losing their grip over global politics?
Bill Gates appears to be spearheading a new push towards a Malthusian ‘One Health’ agenda instead of global temperature concerns amid a sudden shift in the climate change narrative.
By James Corbett, Lifesite, Nov 18, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Overheating no longer cool
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
Zeke Hausfather was until recently a reliable media go-to for doom-and-gloom climate quotations who posted stuff like “This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas”, and wrote stuff like: “the further we push the climate beyond where it has been for the past few million years, the greater and more unpredictable the risks become.” But now he sneers at such flimflam…
Warmists Feel a Growing Chill
By Tony Thomas, Climate Scepticism, Nov 19, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
The modelers’ outputs “run hot”, with forecasts well exceeding actual warming for the past two decades. And the long-term scenarios to which models’ forecasts are tailored are also fanciful, though that doesn’t stop them being extolled by tens of thousands of academic researchers.
Models v. Observations
New satellite study reveals a widespread transition zone in the sky, challenging climate models
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Nov 18, 2025
Link to paper: Global Assessment of the Cloud-Aerosol Transition Zone Using CALIPSO
By Jaume Ruiz de Morales, et al., Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Nov 17, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Discussed in last week’s TWTW, Anthony Sadar brought up that climate models fail to capture divergence of the layers in the atmosphere.]
Changing Weather
Heatwaves in a net zero World
By Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, et al., Environmental Research, Nov 17, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
From the abstract: We address this by examining heatwave projections from millennial-scale simulations run with the Australian Earth System Model, ACCESS-ESM1-5. Each simulation branches off the SSP5-8.5 scenario at 5-year intervals between 2030–2060, from which point anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are set to net zero
[SEPP Comment: Why were there heat waves in the US before global warming caused by CO2?]
Wet California
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Nov 20, 2025
Wow. [Last month] Some parts of southern California have gotten 800% of normal precipitation! The entire state is considerably wetter than normal.
Torrential rains return to Southern California, prompting flash flood warnings before moving east
By AP, The Hill, Nov 21, 2025
Is Rainfall In Wales More Extreme?
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 18, 2025
See two links immediately below
Monmouth Floods–Then & Now
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 21, 2025
[SEPP Comment: A history of flooding, alleviated by dredging.]
Storm Claudia
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 21, 2025
Monmouth (Wales) has always been particularly vulnerable to flooding, because it sits at the confluence of three rivers, the Wye, Monnow, and Trothy. Its history is littered with floods every bit as bad as this week’s.
It might seem a daft place to build a town, but the Normans built the castle and town specifically because of those three rivers, allowing them to exert control over the river crossings. Since then, it continued to thrive because of its communication links.
#HaveItBothWays: Drought in the UK
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
Whether the UK gets wetter or drier in the future, you can rest assured that climate science predicted it and you’re to blame either way.
A Remarkable Mini Atmospheric River Hits Western Washington
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Nov 15, 2025
Changing Climate
The Deep Ocean May Be Colder Today Than Any Time In The Last 4.5 Million Years
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Nov 20, 2025
Link to paper: Mean ocean temperature change and decomposition of the benthic δ 18O record over the past 4.5 million years
By Peter U. Clark, et al., Climate of the Past, June 3, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Consistent with previous data such as presented by Westerhold, et al. (2020) from deep ocean sediments.]
Changing Seas
OISST Updates: Ocean SST Cooling Confirmed
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Nov 17, 2025
The Cooling Also Not Our Fault 2025
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Nov 17, 2025
The claim is that burning fossil fuels causes the North Atlantic Current to slow down and bring cold temperatures to the Northern Hemisphere. The video below [not shown here but in post] is an excellent PR piece promoting this science fiction as though it were fact.
Is The Gulf Stream Really Collapsing? Debunking Another Climate Doomsday Claim
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Nov 21, 2025
Deep Arctic Ocean warming enhanced by heat transferred from deep Atlantic
By Ruizhe Song, et al., AAAS Science Advances, Nov 19, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshie]
From the abstract: Our study demonstrates that during the recent decades, the Arctic Ocean deep water is warming at 0.020°C/decade in the Eurasian Basin between 2000 and 2600 m, exceeding what can be explained by geothermal heating.
Lowering Standards
The BBC: My Part In Its Downfall
By Iain Macwhirter, The Daily Sceptic, Nov 14, 2025
As critical friends like the former BBC politics presenter Andrew Marr and the former defence correspondent Mark Urban have pointed out, there is now a generation of activist-minded graduates running BBC programs who think that they should, like broadcasters in wartime, be taking sides. They think the BBC should be promoting social justice, opposing environmental catastrophe and depriving anti-immigrant populists of the oxygen of publicity. Only they cannot do this and still be the BBC proper.
Iain Macwhirter, a former BBC political correspondent and TV presenter, is a columnist for the Times and the author of Disunited Kingdom.
Oh heh heh that transition
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
The International Energy Agency [IEA], which does seem to have become the International Anti-Energy Agency recently, has the good grace to admit that zealotry had overwhelmed judgement. Well, they didn’t put it that way.
EXCLUSIVE: New Freedom of Information Request and the UK Met Office has to Rewrite its Temperature Explanations Again
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Nov 16, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
The UK Met Office’s excuses for its invented temperature data from non-existent stations get more fanciful by the day. Explanation after explanation fails to live up to rigorous examination, with statutory Freedom of Information (FOI) requests leading to frequent rewriting and new things to believe before breakfast.
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Drought Misinformation
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Nov 18, 2025
They took a picture of one of the lake flanks, which is always dry during this season—even during a normal year.
This is not honest journalism.
Stratospheric Warming Sparks Goldman Warning Of Looming U.S. Polar Vortex
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Nov 21, 2025
Luxembourg Times: “Climate change scepticism isn’t real”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Nov 15, 2025
BBC Promote Eco-Nutters Rally
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 21, 2025
El País Lies When Claiming That Climate Change “Threatens the Future of Food,” It Doesn’t
By Linnea Lueken, Climate Realism, Nov 17, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Reduced air pollution is making clouds reflect less sunlight
By Knut von Salzen, The Conversation, Nov 17, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to paper: Reduced aerosol pollution diminished cloud reflectivity over the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific
By Knut von Salzen, et al., Nature Communications, Nov 5, 2025
From article: Addressing the paradox of cleaner air uncovering hidden warming demands integrating air-quality and climate policy and accelerating the reduction of greenhouse gases — the only lasting way to cool the planet.
[SEPP Comment: Why does the professor use satellite data for clouds but ignore satellite data for temperatures?]
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Nature Claims Their Circulation Is Decreasing
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, Nov 15, 2025
Link to paper: Equatorial Atlantic mid-depth warming indicates Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown
By Qiuping Ren, et al., Nature Communications Earth & Environment, Oct 17, 2025
From the abstract: Here we identify a distinctive temperature fingerprint in the equatorial Atlantic that signals the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation change through numerical ocean model experiments.
From Eschenbach: If you want to monitor the AMOC, measure it directly. Don’t use proxy tea leaves from a noisy, complex region, filtered through biased models, and call it a “superior fingerprint.”
Climate Scientists Claim That Global Warming Is Going To Cause A New Ice Age?
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Nov 18, 2025 [H/t S.J. Cvrk]
One thing that is true is that global cooling would be more dangerous to the Earth than global warming. The most recent Ice Age was a devastating event that is projected to have killed up to 150,000 non-microbe species. On a grand scale of Earth-time, we have barely exited that disaster which ended 11,000 years ago.
When Climate Modeling Becomes Climate Mythmaking: “Sea-Level Rise Causes More Cold Snaps”
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Nov 15, 2025
Link to paper: Intensification of extreme cold events in East Asia in response to global mean sea-level rise
By Caoyi Dong, Nature Communications, Sep 30, 2025
From Rotter: The paper reveals that each simulation is run for 2200 model years:
“All experiments were run for 2200 model years, with analyses focusing on the last 200 years of the model output.”
One can appreciate the computational commitment, but the physical justification is less clear.
Ocean Rises, Science Sinks
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, Nov 17, 2025
Link to paper: Intensification of extreme cold events in East Asia in response to global mean sea-level rise
By Caoyi Dong, et al., Nature Communications, Sep 30, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
Half Believe We Can [Run] On 100% Renewable Energy
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 15, 2025
It is frankly frightening that half the public actually believe it is possible to run the energy system on 100% renewables.
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Eco-anxiety and Solastaglia
They are with us, says the UK Health Scare Agency
By Tom Jefferson, His Blog, Nov 19, 2025
The UK Health Scare Agency (UKHSA) is at it again: Britons risk being overwhelmed by ‘eco-fear, eco-anger and eco-grief, and their mental wellbeing affected by ‘difficult climate emotions
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
Climate change fears could fuel drug use
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 17, 2025
It’s come to a sorry state when young people get stressed out by the weather.
Kids Getting Dumber and Fearful
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Nov 18, 2025
Questioning European Green
Fixing the electricity system
By Andrew Montford. Net Zero Watch, Nov 17, 2025
How Do We Keep The Lights On? Kathryn Porter’s Speech
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 15, 2025
Link to: How do we keep the lights on with 12 GW net firm capacity at risk of retirement by 2030? Speech to the Institution of Power Engineers, 13 November 2025
By Kathryn Porter, Her Blog, Nov 14, 2025
Questioning Green Elsewhere
New York At The Green Energy Wall — What Is The Exit Strategy?
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Nov 15, 2025
So, they have actually calculated that the attempt to reach “net zero” emissions on the statutorily-mandated schedule will cost consumers an extra $42 billion per year by 2040. They don’t give us numbers for other years, but presumably other years would be comparable. So, figure, $42 billion per year. Let’s say that that is slightly different from wind and solar being “cheaper” than our existing fossil fuel infrastructure.
The true source of civilization’s future is energy wisdom
By Ronald Stein, Armando Cavanha, & Yoshihiro Muronaka, America Out Loud News, Nov 17, 2025
For an engineer, the distinction between efficiency and saving is fundamental.
Efficiency is a design challenge: achieving a task with the minimum input through better engineering.
Saving, on the other hand, is often a behavioral practice: using less through habit or restraint.
Non-Green Jobs
Wirtschaftlicher Selbstmord [Economic Suicide]
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, Nov 20, 2025
Adjusted for population size, that’s as if in six months every single factory worker in North Carolina lost their job.
The Germans thought they could run a post-industrial society on hope, regulations, and a few clouds of solar panels—but you can’t repeal the laws of economics, any more than you can run a steel mill on good intentions. Now the bill is coming due.
Funding Issues
An unhealthy fixation
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
It is to some people, apparently. The same ones who think it’s all fun and games for some otherwise undistinguished politician to redo the Industrial Revolution and get it better this time… until someone loses a pension fund.
The Political Games Continue
A momentary outbreak of sensibleness in Australia
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Nov 21, 2025
A new day dawns Downunder
For the first time in years, the Opposition doesn’t sound like a schoolgirl (well, not all the time). And, suddenly the government has realized they shouldn’t go burning $2 billion on a COP31 All of this pain has achieved nothing. When the Coalition left office, emissions were 28 per cent below 2005 levels. Today they are just 28.7 per cent below 2005 levels. Labor talks tough on climate but has delivered virtually no emissions reductions and higher costs. This is abject policy failure.
Aussie Green Senators Grill News Corp Boss about the Great Climate Denial Conspiracy
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Nov 16, 2025
Labour’s Callous Betrayal of The ‘Environmentally Responsible’ and Their Gravy Train
By Sallust, The Daily Sceptic, Nov 19, 2025
As far as Mr Moore is concerned, being “environmentally sound” should go hand in hand with a lifetime of being exempt from road tax and fuel excise duty. Anything else is sheer betrayal:
Litigation Issues
A Lawsuit That Risks Undercutting America’s Energy Strength
By Heidi Heitkamp, Real Clear Energy, Nov 20, 2025
Last year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with eleven other states, filed an antitrust lawsuit against three large asset managers: BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. In May, the Trump Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission filed a statement of interest in the case.
EPA and other Regulators on the March
Duffy announces $2 billion intended to deliver 2,400 buses nationwide
By Surina Venkat, The Hill, Nov 21, 2025
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the Trump administration will invest more than $2 billion in transportation projects across 45 states and Washington, D.C., that will support more than 2,400 buses nationwide.
[SEPP Comment: Doubt any will be EVs made in China.]
Trump proposes to narrow where Clean Water Act applies
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Nov 17, 2025
The Trump administration is proposing to narrow which bodies of water qualify for Clean Water Act protections.
[SEPP Comment: Regulators have labeled isolated land (no running water) with a perched water table (a layer of saturated soil that forms above the main water table due to an impermeable layer) as “Navigable Waters of the United States.”]
Trump proposes to narrow Endangered Species Act protections
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Nov 19, 2025
“If these rules had been in place back in the 1970s, the bald eagle, the gray whale might not be around today, and if they go into effect now, they will drive animals extinct, and that means a lonelier world,” said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity.
[SEPP Comment: The comment is bunk. In the 1970s there were plenty of bald eagles in British Columbia and Alaska.]
Energy Issues – Non-US
American-Japanese Pact Signals Ascent of Energy Realism
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Nov 18, 2025
Britain faces threat of blackouts from ‘nuclear planning paralysis’
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 21, 2025
It’s a bit late to panic now!
There is only one answer to the problem of looming blackouts – begin immediately on a large-scale rollout of new CCGT power stations. If we do that, of course, there is no economic value in building any further wind and solar capacity, so AR7 and future CfD rounds need to be cancelled.
Labour net zero levies now main driver of rising energy bills
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 18, 2025
It’s Official–Mad Miliband’s Plan Will Push Up Electricity Prices By £265 A Year
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 20, 2025
Energy Issues – Australia
The $16B Quest for a Spine
By Alan Moran, Quadrant, Nov 15, 2025
UN tells Australia (but not China) that digging up our own gas might be a breach of “international law”
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Nov 15, 2025
The UN, which we fund for some reason, is telling us we can’t drill for gas on our land and are being very naughty. They’ve sent a Special Rapporteur, Astrid Puentes Riano, to join three cases in Federal Courts in an amicus curiae role. She is here to cast a spell and see if she gets lucky and scores some shake-down-money in reparations.
It was only a few months ago the International Court of Climate Justice (ICJ) declared that nice weather was a “human right”, thus supposedly allowing the whole world to sue everyone else, ad infinitum for bad weather.
Energy Issues — US
Rising Electricity Prices: The Missing Link
By Jonathan Lesser, Real Clear Energy, Nov 20, 2025
The reality is that many factors are contributing to rising electricity rates, especially the rapid increases that households and businesses have experienced over the last five years. But the various studies have overlooked a key factor: the changing mix of generating resources, as traditional fossil fuel and nuclear plants have been replaced by wind and solar ones.
When Energy Is Done Right, a Rising Tide Will Lift All Boats
By Gary Abernathy, Real Clear Energy, Nov 18, 2025
As China launches an AI Manhattan Project, US AI Support is buckling under High Energy Prices
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Nov 21, 2025
Developing the technology alone is not enough. The USA didn’t start the current AI push. The University of Toronto developed the critical breakthrough which made the current AI revolution possible in 2012. But aside from some Canadian islands of research excellence, Canada is not a serious player in the AI race. Canada’s obsession with green energy and moribund economy gave the USA the edge – an edge the USA is now in danger of losing to China.
Amping Up Datacenter Demagoguery re: Rising Electricity Costs
By Paul Steidler, Real Clear Energy, Nov 17, 2025
Energy Department reorganizes, a move it says will help it align with Trump priorities
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Nov 20, 2025
Link to old organizational chart: Department of Energy
By Staff, DOE, Sep 3, 2022
Link to new organizational chart: Department of Energy
By Staff, DOE, Nov 20, 2025
An organizational chart released to the public no longer lists the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. According to the department, this office will be renamed as the newly established Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation.
Legalize Natural Gas! (New York Gov. Hochul gets a message)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Nov 19, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Who knows? Someday New York politicians may decide it is time to use the vast quantities of natural gas under their feet in the Marcellus shale in western New York?]
At The New York Krazy Klimate Konference, 2025 Edition
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Nov 20, 2025
Washington’s Control of Energy
Trump proposes to open up new drilling off California coast and in eastern Gulf
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Nov 20, 2025
President Trump’s proposal greatly expands offshore drilling plans in general, proposing to hold as many as 34 offshore oil and gas lease sales between the years 2026 and 2031.
It would replace a Biden administration-era plan that proposed just three offshore lease sales, all in the Gulf of Mexico, between the years 2024 and 2029.
Nuclear Energy and Fears
A Nuclear Resurgence, But Major Obstacles Remain
By Steve Goreham, Master Resource, Nov 20, 2025
Artificial intelligence needs 24-hour, 7-day, always-on power, which intermittent wind and solar can’t provide. Companies that have committed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions view nuclear as a zero-emissions source to power AI.
Today, natural gas is the preferred onsite electricity source for new data centers in the US. Over 200 gas-fired power plants are in planning or under construction nationwide, including more than 100 new gas plants in Texas alone.
Trump administration issuing $1B loan to bolster Three Mile Island restart
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Nov 18, 2025
Fusion Energy Is Happening Now: The Global Race to Commercialization
By Brian Babin, Real Clear Energy, Nov 17, 2025
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Brian Babin.
[SEPP Comment: Where is fusion energy being consistently generated?]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Research Group: U.S. Exits Coal by 2040 as Solar, Nuclear, Natural Gas Surge
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Nov 18, 2025
Link to: Energy in Focus 2025 Outlook Report
Your free guide to navigating the North American and international energy landscape in 2025.
By Dane Gregoris, et al., Enverus Intelligence® Research, 2025
From report: 2025 Will Be the Year of DAC, EVS and Advanced Nuclear Reactors
From Proctor: EIR said installed U.S. power capacity is forecast to grow 57% by 2050, with the next quarter-century defined by three eras: rapid solar energy growth (2025–2035), coal replacement (2035–2040), and steady nuclear expansion (2040–2050).
[SEPP Comment: Appears to be a promo piece. Question continuation of “rapid solar energy growth” and DAC (direct air capture of carbon dioxide and subsequent storage).]
Solar’s Next Chapter: Beyond Incentives
By Fox Swim, Power Mag, Nov 16, 2025
The ITC [Investment Tax Credit] may be coming to an end, but the momentum it created endures. The future of solar now depends on innovation, transparency, and adaptability to thrive no matter what policies are put in our way.
Renewable energy is cheaper and healthier – so why isn’t it replacing fossil fuels faster?
By Jay Gulledge, The Conversation, Nov 17, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
A decade ago, the cheapest way to meet growing demand for electricity was to build more coal or natural gas power plants. Not anymore. Solar and wind power aren’t just better for the climate; they’re also less expensive today than fossil fuels at utility scale, and they’re less harmful to people’s health.
Yet renewable energy projects face headwinds, including in the world’s fast-growing developing countries. I study energy and climate solutions and their impact on society, and I see ways to overcome those challenges and expand renewable energy – but it will require international cooperation.
[SEPP Comment: Another professor who does not understand the importance of reliability in modern society.]
Sunnova: Autopsy of a ‘Green’ Failure
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Nov 18, 2025
Led by the toothy Enron-ex John Berger (who made millions of dollars at the expense of just about everyone else, including taxpayers), Sunnova is yet another case study of business failure under political capitalism (versus free-market capitalism).
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Ever Diminishing Vehicles
We’re winning so hard, it hurts
By JIT, Climate Scepticism, Nov 18, 2025 [Bernie Kepshire]
The final figure shows the total car production in the UK, as reported by the SMMT, whether for domestic supply or export, by month. I think I see a trend there. If you put a line through the data since the ZEV [Zero-Emissions Vehicle mandate] began, the slope is -6500 cars per month per year. That puts the UK car industry as extinct by 2035.
Health, Energy, and Climate
Counting the Dead: Media Drama Warps Reality
By Chuck Dinerstein, MD,, ACSH, Nov 14, 2025
Link to article: Does the news reflect what we die from?
What do Americans die from, and what do the New York Times, Washington Post, and Fox News report on?
By Hannah Ritchie, Tuna Acisu, and Edouard Mathieu, Our World in Data, Oct 6, 2025
From Dinerstein: The data exposes a sobering truth: the media landscape no longer reflects the statistical reality of the world but the emotional reality of what captures attention. Headlines reflect not the greatest dangers to our lives, but the strongest reactions of our hearts When the media amplifies the rare and sensational, it warps our collective sense of risk, steering fear and policy toward the exceptional instead of the everyday.
From Hype to Evidence: Rethinking Microplastic Pollution in Our Foods
By Chuck Dinerstein, MD, ACSH, Nov 17, 2025
Public concern about microplastics has grown rapidly—often outpacing the evidence. The European Food Safety Agency’s comprehensive review shows that while microplastics can indeed be released from food contact materials, the quantities are far lower than many early studies suggested, and most data on nanoplastics are still unreliable or missing altogether. Much of the apparent risk has been amplified by inconsistent testing methods, contamination, and the misidentification of non-plastic residues as plastic particles.
This does not mean we should dismiss the issue. It means we should keep it in proportion. The science to date tells us that microplastic release from everyday packaging is a real but limited phenomenon, not a looming public health crisis.
A healthy dose of reality
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Nov 19, 2025
Like those at the Globe & Mail who just wrote “For the health of Canadians, the health care sector must decarbonize now”. Right, that’s the priority. Millions of Canadians have no family doctor, and the population faces some of the world’s longest waits for essential surgeries.
Other News that May Be of Interest
The Congressional Minerals Mandate
By Rich Nolan, Real Clear Energy, Nov 17, 2025
Why the chemtrail conspiracy theory lingers and grows – and why Tucker Carlson is talking about it
By Calum Lister Matheson, The Conversation, Nov 14, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Conspiracies are dramatic and exciting, with clear lines of good and evil, whereas real life is boring and sometimes scary. The chemtrail theory is ultimately prideful. It’s a way for theorists to feel powerful and smart when they face things beyond their comprehension and control. Conspiracy theories come and go but responding to them in the long-term means finding better ways to embrace uncertainty, ambiguity and our own limits alongside a new embrace of the tools we do have; logic, evidence and even humility.
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Satellite-Borne Mirrors Would Light Up the Skies at Night to Boost Solar Power
By Bonner Russell Cohen, Real Clear Energy, Nov 19, 2025
The orbital dynamics of rapidly moving satellites — orbiting the Earth at a speed of 4.7 miles per second — further undermine the efficiency of “sunlight on demand.” “To a static location on the ground, as computed by astronomers Michael J. I. Brown and Matt Kenworthy, that means each satellite will be within 1000 km [621 miles] of a given location on the ground for no more than 210 seconds (or 3.5 minutes) per orbit,” Siegel adds. “And you’d need thousands of them, all reflecting sunlight to the same location on the ground, to generate any power at all.”
COP30 On Fire!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Nov 20, 2025
Video
Doctors dance at COP30 to demand a fossil fuel phase-out
Video from AP, Via WUWT, Nov 19, 2025
A group of Canadian doctors danced to hip-hop at the U.N. climate talks in Brazil, calling for a global phase-out of fossil fuels. They say clean energy isn’t just a climate issue, it’s a public health one.
Friday Funny: COPs 1-30 – A perfect record of failure
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Nov 21, 2025
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“Yes, but this was obvious long before the first models were created. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and thus the more of it added to the atmosphere, the higher surface temperature should rise.”
Conclusion by inference. About as basic a violation of the scientific method as is possible,
Sorry David, but in Immediately conceding the central ground of the dispute, the plot has been lost
Some here may not forgive me the analogy, but what was done here is as though an atheist in a dispute began with, ‘yeah, the bible is true, but …’
One should study David Dibbell’s video showing the ERA5 Reanalysis Energy Conversion in the Atmosphere, to gain the critical view of increased carbon dioxide.
Spoiler alert: the energetic impact of all emitted CO2 is about 10% of the width of the zero-tick, in a energy-dynamic traversing (+/-)10,000 W/m^2.
The climatological effect of CO2 is revealed to be indistinguishable from zero.
And climate model uncertainty? The physical theory deployed in climate models is critically deficient. A model tuned to speciously reproduce a warming trend will successfully extrapolate the future trend so long as the trend continues.
Empirical extrapolations are not predictions in any scientific sense.
As Chris Essex long ago noted, tuned parameters are ad hoc conservation laws that have no basis in physics. They impose climate stasis. Ad hoc laws and deficient theory make both simulations of future climate and air temperature projections themselves physically meaningless, no matter model statistical skill in extrapolation. The models are utterly unreliable – a fact already known.
Pace David, but in hard ball, one doesn’t concede a home run.
Thanks, Pat – I had the exact same issue with Dave’s analysis of ‘Forecast number 1’ last week:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/11/19/just-how-good-were-the-early-climate-models/#comment-4133138
Thanks right back, Frank. So far as I can see, your view is dead-on.
That is much like claiming that a Volkswagen has an acceleration identical to a Ferrari. It is a qualitative assessment recognizing that both can gain speed over time, but purposely ignores that the quantitative increases over time are very dissimilar. Qualitatively, they share a positive slope; however, quantitatively the accelerations are very different. Alarmists commonly wave their arms around to attract attention, but then fail to provide measurements to support their claims. It is said that mathematics is the language of science. Innumerate claims supported only by poorly-defined ‘lawyer words’ demonstrate that the claims are not supported by science.
Something cannot be right and wrong at the same time. One or the other must be right, not both at the same time. The defining characteristic of a change like warming is the rate of change of the temperature with respect to time, which is the instantaneous change defined as the slope or the tangent to the temperature function at a particular time. I would submit that “early climate model forecasts” were not correct. Some were so wrong quantitatively as to be absurd. To claim that they all were correct suggests that those making such a claim never took a calculus class. The collection of early forecasts, all being quite different, serves to prove that nobody knew what they were talking about, even as late as 1988 when Hansen produced several different scenarios, all giving different results based on different assumptions. The only conclusion justified by the qualitative claims is that Earth has been warming for about 20,000 years and will probably continue to for at least a similar length of time. However, quantitatively, warming 1 degree C over the next century is not the same as warming 10 or 20 degrees in the same amount of time. It is sophistry to suggest that they are the same. Xeno’s Paradox has similarly been proven to be illogical by calculus.