Open Thread

A place for discussion.

The climate data they don't want you to find — free, to your inbox.
Join readers who get 5–8 new articles daily — no algorithms, no shadow bans.
5 2 votes
Article Rating
119 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
February 22, 2026 2:19 am

No bringing coal back
The Last Stand for King Coal

Market dynamics – including cheaper natural gas, renewables, and battery storage – have eroded coal’s economic competitiveness.

Decades of plant retirements, shrinking workforce numbers, and global export competition make a sustained U.S. coal revival improbable.

China’s greening steel industry signals an economic reality check for Australia

David Wojick
Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 2:21 am

Reliability makes coal attractive.

Reply to  David Wojick
February 22, 2026 2:46 am

Less price volatility than natural gas, too, for riding through cold weather.

Reply to  David Wojick
February 22, 2026 2:00 pm

Especially to China and India, which together use over 60% of all coal in the world

strativarius
Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 3:21 am

Green steel means… electric arc furnaces and there’s no hope of doing anything other than recycling scrap with those.

So, how does China make virgin steel? Does it buy it in from abroad?

All these will have to go…

https://www.chinasteelmarket.com/prices.html

Gregory Woods
Reply to  strativarius
February 22, 2026 4:12 am

Coal: No batteries required.

Reply to  Gregory Woods
February 22, 2026 2:02 pm

No grid reinforcement and extension, and no back-up power plants required, and no 50% subsidies required.

1saveenergy
Reply to  strativarius
February 22, 2026 2:57 pm

“All these will have to go…
https://www.chinasteelmarket.com/prices.html

That list is what the UK used to make; now we can only recycle scrap.

Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 3:51 am

Record demand for coal: When the energy transition backfires

IEA predicts new all-time high in coal consumption – wind and hydropower are partly to blame.
Do you remember the forecasts? Coal was supposed to be on the decline, fossil fuels were to be displaced, and the energy transition was unstoppable. Now, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has to announce a remarkable piece of news: Global demand for coal will reach a historic high of 8.85 billion tons in 2025 – an increase of 0.5 percent compared to the previous year.

AleaJactaEst
Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 3:59 am

interesting how our resident Malthusian Warmunist psychopath hits the comments 1st?

Griffs Child?

careful you don’t tread in its droppings.

strativarius
Reply to  AleaJactaEst
February 22, 2026 4:17 am

I heard Griff retired to the Bahamas on the back of the profits of his green invention – the Griff Generator. A fixed bicycle with a dynamo fitted. Tagline: pedal furiously.

Reply to  strativarius
February 22, 2026 4:27 am

 the Grifft Generator

Rod Evans
Reply to  strativarius
February 22, 2026 7:28 am

Was that the Van de Griff generator we have heard so much about?
Capable of shocking results I am told….

George Thompson
Reply to  Rod Evans
February 22, 2026 12:30 pm

Ouch!

Reply to  Rod Evans
February 22, 2026 2:27 pm

Vd Graaf generator. Also a name of a band..

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  strativarius
February 22, 2026 6:09 pm

Or, in the case of every green scam, peddle furiously.

Michael C. Roberts
Reply to  AleaJactaEst
February 24, 2026 6:19 pm

Griff was the perpetual emotion machine. Sure do miss providing facts to counter ‘ol Griffy-poo’s blather.

Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 4:00 am

How many coal fired generating plants did China install last year?

That isn’t the real issue. I don’t think anyone here particularly advocates coal as fuel. I certainly don’t, its dirty and polluting in use, and dangerous and dirty to mine. The CO2 emissions from using it are not important, but it would be nice to get away from it for other reasons.

The real issue is that no matter what your judgment of the economic merits of coal, it beats wind and solar by a mile on cost every time you compare like with like in the outputs. To get dispatchable power to the point of use coal wins every time on cost. And gas even more so.

All the same, look at the share prices of coal miners, and they do not seem to indicate any vanishing of coal very soon. Nor do the China and India build out plans. So while your claim is irrelevant to the main issue even if true, I see no real evidence that it is.

Scissor
Reply to  michel
February 22, 2026 5:49 am

As a chemist, I like that coal can be used as a good source for chemicals and fuels, not just for generating thermal energy.

About 20 years ago I met Professor Meyer from Wyoming and learned about his work in the field. He’s an inspiration and still going strong.

https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a65575651/senior-games-runner-gerald-meyer-105-years-old/

Reply to  Scissor
February 22, 2026 12:59 pm

While coal isn’t the only source material for “activated carbon”, it is an important one.
Activated carbon is primarily used to purify things such as drinking water.

Michael C. Roberts
Reply to  Gunga Din
February 24, 2026 6:31 pm

Bone char is used primarily for filtration of drinking water, such as the recently installed PFOA/PFAS systems at military bases.

Reply to  michel
February 22, 2026 8:31 am

Coal doesn’t have to be dirty or dangerous:

https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/fracking-is-for-amateurs/

07 Apr 2015
Enormous Coal Reserves Found Under the North Sea

“Scientists have discovered vast deposits of coal lying under the North Sea, which could provide enough energy to power Britain for centuries.
Experts believe there is between 3 and 23 trillion tonnes of coal buried in the seabed starting from the northeast coast and stretching far out under the sea.
Data from seismic tests and boreholes shows that the seabed holds up to 20 layers of coal – much of which could be reached with the technology already used to extract oil and gas.

In comparison: so far the world extracted ‘merely’ 0.135 trillion ton of oil, a small fraction of the coal reserves located beneath the North-Sea.”

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/now-king-coal-set-rule-6923421

“A trillion tonnes of coal could be lying under the sea off Wales” – according to scientists who say the vast deposits would be enough to keep the lights on for hundreds of years. Scientists made the discovery after studying data from seismic tests and boreholes made for oil and gas exploration. Instead they used it to build up a picture of coal deposits. Dr Harry Bradbury is chief executive of Five Quarter, the firm behind the discovery. He said: “Off Wales as a whole, there is in all likelihood, more than one trillion tonnes of reserves as yet untouched. Not all of this would be usable or accessible, but it is still very large scale.”

Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 4:20 am

First again, eh, mate.

Are you sitting there poised by the keyboard to spout your usual nonsense that is all too easily debunked by fact?

You still haven’t answered my question here.

Since you’re clearly clueless about maritime matters, I’ll answer my question for you:

China has a total of 1 electric 700 TEU container ship currently sailing.

In total, China has almost 10,000 container vessels.

You really should stop spreading misinformation in every comment you make and do a little thinking of your own, mate.

I’ll even bet you thought China has 700 electric container ships 🤣🤣🤣

Reply to  Redge
February 22, 2026 1:34 pm

Probably a Chinese BOT farm.

Mr.
Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 4:53 am

This “conversation piece” is all speculation-
“ideally”, “could”, “should”, “might”, ,”believed” etc etc etc

paul courtney
Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 5:44 am

Mr. lametroll: If you didn’t get “clueless” tatooed on yer forehead, you wouldn’t have to lean into it soooooo hard.

Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 11:03 am

Why does China buy so much Australian coal?

Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
February 22, 2026 11:10 am

China Energy.. need a magnifying glass to find wind and solar.

It is totally impossible to power a massive industrial nation with intermittent energy supplies.

China-energy
Dave Andrews
Reply to  bnice2000
February 23, 2026 7:50 am

According to the CREA/Global Energy Monitor China Coal Power BIANNUAL REVIEW -H2 2025 (Feb 2026)

“2025 saw China’s current coal power build-out cycle reach a new high. Coal power capacity additions reached their highest level in a decade. “more than India’s net coal capacity increase over the ten years 2015-2024 despite India operating the world’s second largest coal fleet”

David Wojick
February 22, 2026 2:23 am

Winter storm about to hit mid-Atlantic:
https://www.weather.gov/lwx/winter
heavy snow possible

Reply to  David Wojick
February 22, 2026 2:43 am

I can’t wait until this winter ends, and La Niña with it. Why? La Niña has stolen the winter season here. Troughs of low pressure have been anchored in stone over the northeastern US and northern and central Europe. The Front Range has been largely baked in a nearly permanent ridge of high pressure.

https://kdvr.com/weather/wx-news/denver-breaks-nearly-50-year-old-record-for-most-60-degree-days-in-one-winter/#:~:text=by:%20Maddie%20Rhodes,weeks%20left%20in%20the%20winter.

Scissor
Reply to  johnesm
February 22, 2026 6:04 am

It’s interesting that these patterns repeat and have been “anchored” as you say.

I’m anticipating good mountain snow in March and April. Fingers crossed. I really don’t mind the 60 and 70F winter days around here although it’s been a few years since I’ve gotten the satisfaction to drive my Subie around all the struggling and dead EVs in the midst and after blizzard conditions.

Reply to  Scissor
February 22, 2026 7:36 am

If spring and summer turn up with good precipitation, then it improves the water and fire danger situation.

Reply to  johnesm
February 22, 2026 10:50 am

I concur ! Everybody is stealing our snow .
It’s been so dry & generally warm here in Teller County they’ve already had Red Flag Fire warnings and bans posted .

Unless we have a wet spring Summer could be very dangerous .

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  johnesm
February 22, 2026 6:13 pm

Apart from a week or so of frost, been pretty warm in the PNW west of the Cascades. Had to mow my lawn already.

February 22, 2026 2:24 am

The 2009 Endangerment Finding is now toast, thanks to Lee Zeldin at the EPA. But in the finalized rescission, EPA chose carefully not to assert authority to take a position on the competing scientific claims. Should the core attribution of reported warming to rising CO2 now be conceded by skeptics of climate alarm? No. It just means the work continues.
 
Recently I have been stating an additional point in my posts about energy conversion. It is that the modelers have known all along – way before the 2009 Endangerment Finding – that the influence of the minor static radiative effect of incremental CO2 is vanishingly weak in the context of dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation.

I refer to this web page and its linked pdf about ERA-40, a predecessor to the current ERA5 reanalysis model.  “Energy conversion” is listed in a table of vertical integrals on page 20 of that pdf. The equation and the units W/m^2 are given, as expected. The document is from 2007. This makes perfect sense, because the concept has been of meteorological interest in studies of the general circulation for more than a century.
  
https://www.ecmwf.int/en/elibrary/75291-era-40-archive-revised-october-2007

So I keep posting about the hourly values of the ERA5 “vertical integral of energy conversion” parameter to demonstrate that even the 2XCO2 “forcing” is massively overwhelmed. An explanation of energy conversion is added in text on this plot:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1knv0YdUyIgyR9Mwk3jGJwccIGHv38J33/view?usp=drive_link

Please also see the material in this Google Drive folder. There is a Readme document with references, a time-lapse video, and histograms of values at various latitudes.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PDJP3F3rteoP99lR53YKp2fzuaza7Niz?usp=drive_link

The modelers of the general circulation know how energy conversion works because the underlying physical theory from compressible flow must be represented mathematically in the computed motion. In the time-lapse video, considering the rapid changes in both directions and the huge dynamic range of values, it is readily apparent that the computed incremental IR absorbing power of rising pCO2 (or CH4, N2O, etc.) cannot be isolated for reliable attribution of a reported warming trend on land or in the oceans or in the overlying atmosphere itself. And in my view, there is no good physical reason remaining to have ever expected the vanishingly weak radiative influence to cause or to contribute perceptibly to “warming” or to any trend of climate variables.

This is why I say that the modelers know this and have known all along.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Reply to  David Dibbell
February 22, 2026 2:49 am

“. . .  the modelers know this and have known all along.”

They’ve known this too:

comment image

Anthony Banton
Reply to  Steve Case
February 22, 2026 4:24 am

The above is a schematic created by H H Lamb, an English climatologist in the 1960’s. It is therefore ~ 60 years old.

It is not a global representation – it’s for central England, using the CET series from 1659.
Even the CET series is not entirely based on direct, widespread outdoor thermometer readings. (see the below link)
Instead, Lamb used a multidisciplinary approach, combining:
Historical records of vineyards in southern/eastern England.
Accounts of farming, harvests, and weather.
Evidence of Viking settlements and glacier movements.

The CET seies was created by Gordon Manley in 1953, updated in 1974

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_England_temperature

strativarius
Reply to  Anthony Banton
February 22, 2026 4:30 am

It is therefore ~ 60 years old.

Gosh, not as old as relativity (1905/1915) then. Certainly not as old as universal gravitation (1687).

Reply to  Anthony Banton
February 22, 2026 5:57 am

I heard about the medieval warm period when I was a little kid in he ’50s.

bdgwx
Reply to  Steve Case
February 22, 2026 8:31 am

I heard about the medieval warm period when I was a little kid in he ’50s.

How?

I’m asking because the earliest reference I know of is from Hubert Lamb in the 1960’s. [Lamb 1965].

Note that Lamb used other prior works like [Britton 1937] for his data regarding the climate of Central England, but those prior works did not piece things together in manner in which temperature trends or graphs were produced. It was Lamb that completed this step.

Scissor
Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 9:25 am

It was first proposed in the early 20th century.

bdgwx
Reply to  Scissor
February 22, 2026 12:25 pm

It was first proposed in the early 20th century.

By who?

Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 9:46 am

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

George Thompson
Reply to  michel
February 22, 2026 12:44 pm

Yep, and nicely quoted and done.

Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 10:31 am

My older brother subscribed to “Scientific American” it wasn’t a liberal rag back then. Anyway back then he talked about the Little Ice Age too. He also knew about continental drift. I was ten years old in 1954.

Anyway here’s the link to that chart you don’t like:

IPCC FAR Chapter 7 Page 200 pdf 8 .

bdgwx
Reply to  Steve Case
February 22, 2026 12:24 pm

Anyway back then he talked about the Little Ice Age too. He also knew about continental drift.

The LIA was first referenced in the 1930’s. [Matthes 1939]. But I’m not talking about the LIA nor continental drift. I’m talking about the MWP…the period from 1150 to 1300 AD in which Central England experienced warmer conditions relative to before and after.

Anyway here’s the link to that chart you don’t like:

IPCC FAR Chapter 7 Page 200 pdf 8 .

That chart is from 1990.

Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 2:41 pm

Temperature is ALWAYS local. There is no such thing as ‘global mean temperature’. It is as statistically meaningless as the average temperature of the moon.
But you can define ‘local’ any way you like. Instead of stating an average temperature which to my mind is already a forced idea, one can derive a general picture of a warm period by looking at proxies like vineyards and treelines and compare them to other timeframes.
People seem obsessed with averages…but nobody lives there. It makes nice graphs though..

1saveenergy
Reply to  ballynally
February 22, 2026 3:03 pm

I have an average phone number … is that why nobody rings me ?? (:-))

George Thompson
Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 12:42 pm

We had thinking teachers…I also had a good science teacher who also spoke about the Climatic Optimum…early 1960s, as well as optimum classroom temperatures for learning . All this, and more. Amazing what free thinking can accomplish. The world has changed, and not for the better as regards education.

bdgwx
Reply to  George Thompson
February 22, 2026 2:15 pm

When you say “Climatic Optimum” do you mean the Holocene Climatic Optimum?

Reply to  Anthony Banton
February 22, 2026 7:07 am

The man who founded the CRU in England may have known what he was doing by reading first hand accounts of weather in various places over time.

bdgwx
Reply to  mkelly
February 22, 2026 8:35 am

I think most agree that Lamb’s work regarding the Medieval Warm Period has been corroborated. Note that Lamb has always said the MWP was isolated to the North Atlantic and especially Central England and that other parts of the world experienced cooling through the years 1150-1300 AD.

Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 11:38 am

There is plenty of data and proxies from all around the globe that shows that the MWP occurred globally.

MWP-map
Reply to  bnice2000
February 24, 2026 10:37 am

Thanks for that, I was looking for it.

Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 11:59 am

Even southern hemisphere shows distinct evidence of the MWP.

Here’s one from Chile.

Patagonia-MWP
bdgwx
Reply to  bnice2000
February 22, 2026 2:13 pm

Even southern hemisphere shows distinct evidence of the MWP.

First…that shows “Medieval Warming” from 950 to 1150 and “Little Ice age Cooling” from 1200 to 1450. Lamb defined the MWP as being from 1150 to 1300 in the North Atlantic region.

Second…that’s not even the Southern Hemisphere. It’s Patagonia.

Anyway if anything what the graph you posted shows is what Lamb said. That is while it was warm in the North Atlantic during the 1150-1300 period it will likely cooler in other parts of the world.

Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 3:01 pm

Patagonia 45S.. yes it is in the southern hemisphere.

How about the Antarctic.. is that in the southern hemisphere ??

Elephant-seal-remains-in-Ross-Sea-Antarctica-dating-to-2500-to-1000-yrs-ago-imply-sea-ice-free-waters-during-that-time-Wood-2025
Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 3:06 pm

Or how about the Indian Ocean just south of the equator??

Indian-Ocean-and-warmer-MWP-Yudawati-Cahyarini-2021
Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 3:09 pm

China Sea is not near UK or the Atlantic

So No, MWP was not just in the Atlantic.

China-Seas-MWP-warmer
bdgwx
Reply to  bnice2000
February 22, 2026 6:26 pm

That chart says Medieval Warning was around 900 AD.

Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 9:55 pm

Second…that’s not even the Southern Hemisphere. It’s Patagonia.

Lol.

Reply to  bdgwx
February 22, 2026 9:45 pm

I think most agree that Lamb’s work regarding the Medieval Warm Period has been corroborated.

Note that Lamb has always said the MWP was isolated to the North Atlantic

Why do we need to go through this again and again and again. The MWP WAS GLOBAL

New ZealandA prominent example is a tree-ring reconstruction from the South Island:

Cook et al. (2002) — “Evidence for a ‘Medieval Warm Period’ in a 1100 year tree-ring reconstruction of past austral summer temperatures in New Zealand” (published in Geophysical Research Letters). This 1,100-year record shows persistent above-average austral summer temperatures during the interval commonly assigned to the MWP, supporting its occurrence in the Southern Hemisphere.Other New Zealand proxies (e.g., oxygen isotopes, glacier evidence) align with warmth in parts of the period, though some coastal or southern sites show delayed warming.

South America / Andes / Patagonia

Lüning et al. (2019) — “The Medieval Climate Anomaly in South America” (Quaternary International). This review of 76 land and marine sites across the continent found the vast majority indicate a warm MCA, largely synchronous with the Northern Hemisphere and reaching comparable intensities in many areas.Additional proxies from Chile (lake sediments), Ecuador (Eastern Cordillera), northern Patagonia (tree rings showing warm-dry conditions in the 11th–13th centuries), and Andean regions support warmer phases preceding the Little Ice Age.Oceania / SE Australia / Broader Region

Lüning et al. (2020) — “The Medieval Climate Anomaly in Oceania” (Environmental Reviews). This expands on tree-ring and other proxies from SE Australia, New Zealand, and West Papua. Of 15 sites reviewed, 10 show a relatively warm MCA compared to the last 1,500 years, generally in the 900–1500 AD envelope (with some delays of 200–300 years in SE Australia and New Zealand’s west coast South Island). It attributes drivers to modes like the Southern Annular Mode, ENSO, and solar activity.Antarctica / Southern Ocean

Ice cores from the eastern Antarctic Peninsula show warmer temperatures during the MWP period.Some marine sediment records indicate lagged warmth in the Southern Ocean (by ~150 years relative to the North Atlantic).”Broader reviews (e.g., Soon and Baliunas, 2003) noted evidence in 21 of 22 Southern Hemisphere studies they examined, though modern syntheses emphasize regional variability and that the MWP was not globally synchronous or as warm as recent decades in many reconstructions.
For context, large-scale analyses (e.g., PAGES 2k Consortium) confirm the MWP/MCA was not a uniform global event, with some Southern Hemisphere warmth offset or delayed.
But site-specific studies above provide clear evidence of warmer conditions in parts of the Southern Hemisphere during medieval times.”

Dave Andrews
Reply to  mkelly
February 23, 2026 7:59 am

When Lamb left the Met Office to set up CRU at the University of East Anglia the Met agreed to match the sums he had already raised for the project from oil company Shell.

Reply to  Anthony Banton
February 22, 2026 11:28 am

CET was corrupted by the Met Office when it took full charge of it in.

Almost as though the climate zealots wanted to introduce some urban warming 😉

CETpage5_30046_image002
Anthony Banton
Reply to  bnice2000
February 23, 2026 12:12 am

And just where exactly did you take that from?

Do you suppose that just posting an anonymous opinion piece makes what you think true?
Natch.

Reply to  Anthony Banton
February 22, 2026 11:32 am

Up until around 2015 when Parker, who used Manley’s methodology, retired..

the only “warming” was in the colder months.

CET-clive-best
Reply to  bnice2000
February 22, 2026 2:57 pm

Oops, Parker retired in 1992.. Then the zealots at the Met Office took over completely, and CET temperatures went berserk…

Anthony Banton
Reply to  bnice2000
February 23, 2026 12:40 am

You still don’t get meteorology, do you?
Because you don’t want to, as it would blow you simplistic thinking as regards that everything that doesn’t show sig. warming as the “truth’.

The UK is a small island.
Surrounded by sea.
(this is a macro-scale version of your preferred choice of small islands or the likes of Valentia as showing “no UHI”, when they are actually showing contamination from being exposed to sea temps !).
That being the case the SST’s of the seas surrounding the UK modulate our temperatures greatly.
Summer temperatures are most affected, unless the prevailing wind is from the continent.
It rarely is for any length of time, but when it is we see our hottest weather.
Vis July 2022, when there was multiple 40C maxes reported (was just a 2 day blast of continental air).
On top of that ground heating is convected aloft largely in the summer months, and thus smears any additional heat at screen level through thousands of feet of atmosphere.
This is why you only appeal to your own ignorance here.
I leave you to come back with your usual conspiracies.

BTW: this is a better graph ….

comment image

Reply to  David Dibbell
February 22, 2026 5:17 am

Should the core attribution of reported warming to rising CO2 now be conceded by skeptics of climate alarm?”

No, we should not concede that current warming is connected to CO2 amounts.

There is no correlation between CO2 and temperature. There is, in fact, an anti-correlation between CO2 and temperatures during the period from the 1930’s to the 1970’s, when temperatures cooled by about 2.0C, while CO2 was increasing all during that time.

No, there is no evidence that CO2 is heating the atmosphere enough to measure. It could be a coincidence that temperatures are climbing while CO2 amounts climb. And nobody can prove otherwise.

Michael Flynn
Reply to  Tom Abbott
February 22, 2026 5:57 pm

Tom, it might have something to do with the fact that making CO2 from C and O2 generates heat!

strativarius
February 22, 2026 3:15 am

Mad Ed cannot answer a serious question. And he is eyeing up his chances post Gorton and Denton (by-election)

Reply to  strativarius
February 22, 2026 8:02 am

If he allows all the green spaces around Doncaster to be covered in solar panels his goose will be well and truly cooked at the next election.

February 22, 2026 3:33 am

The German energy transition – the figures turned over and examined

We have reported several times on the costs and benefits of Germany’s implemented “energy transition.” We showed  that since 2019, approximately €500 billion has been spent on this, yet CO2 reduction has amounted to only 1.5% per year. The negative trend is so slight that it is not statistically significant, meaning it is not sufficiently reflected in monthly fluctuations. Furthermore, we demonstrated  that  since 2017, the number of wind turbines has had virtually no impact (only 1%) on the amount of electricity they produce. In other words, the more than 6,600 turbines that have been newly installed or replaced older ones since then have had almost no effect on the overall result.  

Reply to  Krishna Gans
February 22, 2026 2:46 pm

So what? The warmunistas just say that ‘not enough has been done’. That seems to be a winning formula. Every bloody failed ( climate) policy.

strativarius
February 22, 2026 3:39 am

Climate and Chagos

A group of Chagossian people have returned to their homeland to resettle and the local judge has granted them an injunction against removal by the British state – they are not an obvious threat to national security.

Nigel Farage decided to support the islanders by taking supplies to them and then he was blocked from going there. Why?

A spokesman said: “Our primary concern at this point is to ensure the safe departure of a group of individuals from an island that is not fit for human habitation, and on which any health emergencies or extreme weather could pose a serious threat to life.” GBN

Indeed; Starmer’s political life.

“The British Government has made every effort to prevent me heading towards the Chagos Islands”, the Reform UK leader told The Telegraph.
“They have asked the Maldives government to stop me from leaving here and setting foot on the boat.
“This was information conveyed to me by a senior figure in the Maldives Government.
Mr Farage added: “I cannot believe such an attempt has been made to stop a British citizen from reaching British territory.

Of course, Farage is not just a citizen, he is an elected member of the House of Commons.

Reply to  strativarius
February 22, 2026 4:03 am

he was blocked from going there. Why?

Because he is clearly an amateur. The proper way to do it is just to get close, in a flimsy inflatable, taking on water, then phone the coastguard to come and bring you ashore.

strativarius
Reply to  worsethanfailure
February 22, 2026 6:06 am

Don’t give him ideas, he might hand the southern coast to the EU… oh wait.

Reply to  strativarius
February 22, 2026 2:51 pm

Too bad for Farage that the only sensible guy Reform had has now formed a new party (Restore) that will completely wipe them off the page.
The only non populist/clown with a based approach, unlike Farage. Watch this space..

E. Schaffer
February 22, 2026 3:40 am

Lindzen, Choi 2011 presented this scatter plot and calculated a regression slope of 1.9. The aspect ratio there is 1:13!

What if we get this straight with an aspect ratio of 1:1? Is 1.9 then still plausible? And what does it mean for climate sensitivity???

comment image

Bruce Cobb
February 22, 2026 5:22 am

With the Climate Scamapalooza now collapsing, we would be remiss if we did not at least try to figure out where the scamalamadingdongers went wrong, so that they don’t make the same mistakes next time. It’s only fair.
First off, they could have used more cowbell. A lot more. It shows how and why in this video:

Honestly, I think that about does it, but perhaps others can come up with more reasons.

sherro01
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
February 22, 2026 5:38 am

Bruce,
In Australia the video gets a black box with “The uploader has not made this video available in your country.”
Is there another link? Geoff S

Bruce Cobb
Reply to  sherro01
February 22, 2026 5:55 am

Here it is on Vimeo. Hope that helps:

strativarius
Reply to  sherro01
February 22, 2026 6:38 am

Same in UK

rhs
February 22, 2026 7:11 am

Imagine this, not every scientist feels the Pacific Plastic garbage should be cleaned up because it might cause more problems than it solves:
https://www.earth.com/news/surprise-study-some-scientists-want-to-stop-cleaning-plastic-from-earth-oceans/

rhs
Reply to  rhs
February 22, 2026 7:13 am
rhs
Reply to  rhs
February 22, 2026 7:14 am
Reply to  rhs
February 22, 2026 7:57 am

From that link:

According to the lawsuit, Global is accused of failing to properly dispose of turbines it was hired to dismantle, transport and recycle, resulting in what Paxton described as an illegal stockpile of more than 3,000 turbine blades and related materials.

The community is just now noticing?

rhs
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
February 22, 2026 8:43 am

Yeah, I have to question how long it took for notice and action as well.

John Hultquist
Reply to  rhs
February 22, 2026 9:27 am

It is hard to tell from the photos about the towers and the nacelle. These parts could be sold and that must be how the “bad guys” were making money. The towers are steel, I think, and the components in the nacelle include the generator, gearbox, drivetrain, and brake assembly. Lubricants, too, I guess.
Likely the money is gone. Citizen taxpayers will take the hit of the cleanup.

Reply to  rhs
February 22, 2026 8:49 am

This might be why, as George Carlin postulated, Gaia allowed us to evolve because she wanted plastic and didn’t know how to make it for herself..

February 22, 2026 7:37 am

Stand before a blazing campfire on a chilly mountain morning.
Lift up a blanket between.
Colder now or warmer?
Drop the blanket.
Colder now or warmer?

This effectively models the Earth, Sun and atmosphere/albedo. (OK, a mylar space blanket.)
The descriptive equation is: Q = 1/R A (Thot – Tcold) or (Tsurf – Ttoa)
More/less Q (less/more albedo) = more/less dT aka hotter/cooler
More/less R = hotter/colder Tsurf

R is the composite thermal resistance of the atmospheric components – all of them with their specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity.
Conduction + Convection + Advection + Latent + Radiation = 100%
Temperature is a function of the four kinetic modes, radiation is a function of temperature.
Increasing one decreases the others.

How to improve:
Conduction: heat transfer paste on CPU chip
Convection: spacious surroundings.
Advection: fan
Latent: water-cooled phones
Radiation: paint it black

Radiation = σ * ϵ * A * T^4
There are two emissivities.
Physical emissivity is the ratio between the energy leaving a system by radiation and all of the energy leaving. Per TFK_bams09: 63/160=39%. If you are doing an energy balance this is the one to use.
Black body emissivity is the ratio between the energy leaving a system by radiation and the radiant energy leaving were the system a black body at its temperature. 15 C or 288 K = 390 W/m^2, 16 C or 289 K = 396 W/m^2.
Per TFK_bams09: 63/396=16%

Why a BB emissivity?
IR instruments are designed and calibrated to report a referenced temperature assuming the target is a black body, i.e. all of the energy leaving is by radiation.
If the target is not BB the operator is advised to simulate it with black tape or paint or by inserting a known emissivity. (My Klein IR thermometer allows this.) There are tables in reference books for various surfaces and incoming IR.
IR instruments that measure surface OLR are calibrated to agree with other surface measurements and conform to the RGHE theory. Site instructions (USCRN & SURFRAD) say adjustments are needed when variation is more than 0.3 C.

The 396/333/63 GHE loop on TFK_bams09 and assorted clones is the raw, uncorrected, calculated, imaginary value. Arguing about the physics of these imaginary numbers is just silly.

Reply to  Nicholas Schroeder
February 22, 2026 4:42 pm

You have redefined emissivity, so now have gone beyond the imaginary…to maybe hallucinatory ?
TFK_bams09 ? WTH ? Maybe a better cut and paste special character table is in order….

Reply to  DMacKenzie
February 23, 2026 7:19 am

Merriam Webster

emissivity
noun
emis·​siv·​i·​ty ˌe-mə-ˈsi-və-tē ˌē-ˌmi-ˈsi-
plural emissivities

1 the relative power of a surface to emit heat by radiation

2 the ratio of the radiant energy emitted by a surface to that emitted by a blackbody at the same temperature

K-T diagram
“…the ratio of the radiant energy emitted by a surface…”
63 W/m^2 at 16 C or 289 K
“…to that emitted by a blackbody at the same temperature…”
396 W/m^2 at 16 C or 289 K aka the same temperature
63/396=0.16
Looks to me like it fits the definition like a glove. 

SURFRAD
“…the ratio of the radiant energy emitted by a surface…”
80.2 W/m^2 at 12.8 C or 285.8 K
“…to that emitted by a blackbody at the same temperature…”
A BB emits all the energy it absorbs.
378.4 W/m^2 at 12.8 C or 285.8 K aka the same temperature
80.2/378.4=0.21
Looks to me like it fits the definition just fine. 

February 22, 2026 7:51 am

A blizzard coming up the US east coast. I see many weather and news channels calling it a “blizzard bomb cyclone”. The word blizzard ain’t sufficient? Gotta make it sound like nothing we’ve ever seen before? It’s gonna suck- sure, but I don’t appreciate such an exaggeration. Maybe they like these new terms ’cause it fits in with the climate catastrophe cult.

John Hultquist
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
February 22, 2026 9:30 am

blizzard bomb cyclone. sounds so much more catastrophic than “it’s gonn’a snow”.

Fran
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
February 22, 2026 10:10 am

And, according to the Daily Mail, Mamdami is requiring 2 photo ID’s plus social security card to shovel snow!!
But no ID to vote.

George Thompson
Reply to  Fran
February 22, 2026 12:51 pm

Gotta let the illegals vote, and the Dem scammers function easily, doncha know?

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Fran
February 22, 2026 6:27 pm

Mamdani.

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
February 22, 2026 1:32 pm

“Maybe they like these new terms ’cause it fits in with the climate catastrophe cult.”

Maybe it will be a “warm” blizzard blizzard bomb cyclone?

Russell Cook
February 22, 2026 8:54 am

Story tip: The Carrboro v Duke Energy climate damages lawsuit was dismissed on Feb 12th. While other efforts by the big energy companies center around getting these state-level “ExxonKnew” lawsuits moved to Federal court, this dismissal at least made the small effort to point out that the accusation of Duke Energy ‘participating in a disinformation campaign’ in the neighboring state of Kentucky was without merit, but that’s all the further they went on that point. At my GelbspanFiles blog post, I detail how that was a “camel’s nose under the tent’ effort, and if the other big company defendants in these cases across the country try shoving that ‘camel’ completely into the tent, then every one of the lawsuits making that same basic accusation can be hit with Motions to Dismiss:

The Camel’s Nose (sorta) Under the Kentucky Tent

February 22, 2026 9:32 am

Winter Is Not Normal—It’s an Ice Age tell tale

For most people alive today, winter feels like part of Earth’s natural rhythm. The cold months arrive, snow falls, and the land sleeps until spring renews it. The rhythm seems timeless, as if it has always been this way. But that feeling of “normal” is an illusion carved by history. Winter—at least as we know it in the temperate zones—is a recent, deadly phenomenon that only exists because Earth is in an ice age.

Every human society has been shaped by cold. Our species evolved in Africa but spread outward into frost and snow tens of thousands of years ago. We learned to build shelters, store food, and make clothing from animal hides, fur and fiber. Generations of survival in chill landscapes trained us to see cold as part of life itself.

Yet this adaptation reflects Earth’s unusual state, not its norm. When we talk about “ice ages,” we often imagine something extreme, having nothing to do with us. But geologists define an ice age more precisely: it’s any long period when permanent ice sheets exist at both poles. By that measure, Earth has been in an ice age for about 34 million years—ever since Antarctica first froze over.

Before that, for tens of millions of years, Earth was in a “Greenhouse” condition. The climate was warm from pole to pole. Lush rainforests grew in regions that are now barren tundra. Crocodiles swam in what is now the Arctic Ocean, and palm trees grew in central Europe.

That changed when tectonic shifts isolated Antarctica and altered ocean currents. Over time, continental ice took hold. About 2.58 million years ago, conditions worsened: huge ice sheets began advancing and retreating across North America and Eurasia. This marks the start of the Pleistocene epoch, the height of the Ice Age that still continues. The last retreat, about 11,700 years ago, gave us the mild interval we live in now—the Holocene.

During warmer Greenhouse periods that have dominated most of the last 500 million years, the planet had no frigid winters. Seasonal changes came mostly from day length and rainfall, not from freezing temperatures. Ice and snow were confined to mountaintops and above the Arctic Circle. In that light, the snowdrifts and frozen lakes many of us live with today are not typical features of Earth’s climate—they’re signatures of an ice-bound planet.

We experience winter only because we inhabit temperate latitudes during a glacial regime. It is a yearly reminder of the current global state. When the abnormal cold eventually recedes for good, as it has many times before, winter itself will vanish—replaced by a more stable, equable world that would seem alien to us.

Every snowfall is a clue, a small echo of the massive ice sheets that once covered half the continents and will again. Winter is not the norm—it’s evidence. It tells us we live in an unusual, temporary phase of Earth’s history, shaped by shifting continents, and cosmic timing.

Humans take winter as normal because it’s all we’ve ever known. But geologically speaking, it’s the exception. The world we call home while beautiful in many ways is still, quite literally, frozen, leaving us with no knowledge of the warmer times; clouding our judgement about climate issues. 

February 22, 2026 10:22 am

I’m working on this month’s CoSy NewsLetter , NL202602 , which I want to mail before the eom , and my presentation at next Saturday’s Silicon Valley Forth Interest Group Zoom .
I’m following up recent comparisons of CoSy with the statistically oriented language R by going thru the computation of the equilibrium temperature of a gray ball in our orbit . It is far too poorly understood that a gray , flat spectrum , body , no matter how dark or light , come to the same temperature as a black , about 278.7K in our orbit , not the utter BS 255K constantly parroted .

I next plan to go into the calculation for a uniformly colored ball , and would love someone to point me to an absorptivity==emissivity , aka Schwarzschild , spectrum in tabular form they consider a good measure of the Earth’s ` color as seen from space .

Apologies : Little Shop of Horrors : Feedback me , Seymour

“story tip”

Michael Flynn
Reply to  Bob Armstrong
February 22, 2026 5:29 pm

Bob, given that the surface temperature without sunlight, based on measurements going back to Fourier’s time, would be around 35 K, then adding energy from the Sun, sufficient to raise a body from 0K to 255K, would produce a final temperature of around 290 K. Present “average” surface temperature of 288 K seems reasonable.

People seem to forget that less energy is required to achieve a certain temperature, if your starting point is closer to that temperature. And the Earth, being more than 90% glowing hot stuff, definitely has a surface temperature in the absence of external heat.

I am happy to stand corrected on my quick mental calculation of 35 K or so. The heat flux measurements are admittedly sparse.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Michael Flynn
February 22, 2026 6:29 pm

Hmm, in almost 64 years of life, I’ve never seen any “glowing hot stuff”, except for up in the sky and in fires and ovens. Where is it all?

Michael Flynn
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
February 22, 2026 7:02 pm

I’m sure I know why you’re pretending to be ignorant and gullible, but I may be wrong.

You might actually be ignorant and gullible!

Others might choose to agree with me, or they may not. In any case, you ask “Where is it all?”. Admit that you really don’t know, and have been unable to find out for yourself, and I’ll do my best to satisfy your acknowledged ignorance and incompetence.

What could be fairer?

hiskorr
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
February 22, 2026 7:09 pm

Well, you could look in Iceland, Hawaii, Yellowstone, Italy, Indonesia, etc. for occasional hot spots, but mostly it’s 10 or more miles straight down.

Reply to  Michael Flynn
February 23, 2026 7:07 am

Remove the Earth’s atmosphere or even just the GHGs and the Earth becomes much like the Moon, no water vapor or clouds, no ice or snow, no oceans, no vegetation, no 30% albedo becoming a barren rock ball, hot^3 (400 K) on the lit side, cold^3 (100 K) on the dark. At Earth’s distance from the Sun space is hot (394 K) not cold (5 K). 
That’s NOT what the RGHE theory says.

RGHE theory says “288 K (15 C) w – 255 K (-18 C) w/o = a 33 C colder ice ball Earth.” 255 K assumes w/o case keeps 30% albedo, an assumption akin to criminal fraud. Nobody agrees 288 K is GMST plus it was 15 C in 1896. 288 K is a physical surface measurement. 255 K is a S-B equilibrium calculation at ToA. Apples and potatoes.
Nikolov “Airless Celestial Bodies” 
Kramm “Moon as test bed for Earth”
UCLA Diviner lunar mission data
JWST solar shield (391.7 K)
Sky Lab golden awning
ISS HVAC design for lit side of 250 F. (ISS web site)
Astronaut backpack life support w/ AC and cool water tubing underwear. (Space Discovery Center)

Reply to  Nicholas Schroeder
February 23, 2026 2:19 pm

Nicholas ,
My main , and most crucial point , and which is useful to have Grok’s agreement and explanation , is that 255K value is utter nonscience Bull Shit . It is meaningless .
The only number from which to start calculating Earth’s radiative equilibrium is 278.7 +- 2.3 from peri- to ap- helion .

Then you have to consider the correlation of our ` color with that of the Sun’s power spectrum . ( The other 0.9999946 of space around us can be taken as a flat 0 . )

Incidentally , for any who don't know , the SB calculation is the integral of the Planck distribution .

Michael Flynn
Reply to  Nicholas Schroeder
February 23, 2026 3:02 pm

There is no “RGHE theory”, is there?

288 K (15 C) w – 255 K (-18 C) w/o = a 33 C colder ice ball Earth

is not a theory. It’s a statement equivalent 288 – 255 = 33.

You are obviously ignorant and gullible, and have no idea about the scientific method. If you don’t believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter, just man up and say so.

Then you can state the disprovable hypothesis you have formulated to explain why thermometers get hotter.

Reply to  Michael Flynn
February 24, 2026 7:24 am

You fail to understand the essential undergrad Physics .
As Grok agrees and explains , the 255K is utter nonscience BS , and I defy you to provide a spectrum for the planet which produces it .
Simply claiming a 30% albedo ( reflectivity ) says essentially nothing about what the equilibrium temperature is .

Reply to  Michael Flynn
February 23, 2026 9:55 am

“…without sunlight…”

If frogs had wings they would not bump their butts when they hopped.

Reply to  Michael Flynn
February 23, 2026 2:04 pm

Michael ,

The computation of the equilibrium temp of a gray body as a function of
 ( Fact SunSpecs ) Dv >T0> fmttbl|
 r    | 696000000.0000    
 Dist | 149597900000.0000 
 temp | 5778.0000         

, in the manner of classical quantitative physics , doesn’t try to go further than that . The computations , in 5 lines of CoSy are worked thru in NL202602 , ~ 278.7 +- 2.3 is the design temperature if you are putting a satellite around our orbit .
Next step is calculating the temperature of a uniformly colored ball in our orbit . I have never seen even that crucial step competently done . That’s why I’m soliciting a table of our Schwarzschild absorptivity==emissivity color spectrum as seen from outside . I'm currently working to be sure my Planck function in terms of wavelength ,
: Planckl *f [ h 2. _f *f c ^2f *f ]+ $ [ h c boltz %f *f ]+ $ %f expf f1. -f %f ;
( in development <strong><em>CoSy</em></strong> ) is correct . I'm not used to working with the range of orders of magnitude . Translating the ratio of dot products from the <a href="https://Kx.com" target="_blank">K</a> in slide appended is minor .

Then , we should have a good computed estimate of the radiative equilibrium temperature of the planet . That's still far from a pixel color map of the planet , but that's mainly an issue of structuring the data .

In any case , within that effective radiative surface , the Divergence Theorem implies the only source of thermal energy is the adiabatic tradeoff with gravitational potential , as required by Conservation of Energy , creating the gradient which extends to the core .

There is no great amount of heat radiating from the ground .

I defy anybody to show me a spectrum which produces a radiative equilibrium of 255K given the FACT that Grok confirms that a flat spectrum gray body comes to ~ 279K in orbit .
Thank you for your feedback ,

SpecralEquilibriumEq
Reply to  Bob Armstrong
February 23, 2026 8:36 pm

I wish I knew who gave this post a -1 , and why .
It’s simply the most basic undergrad , or even highschool AP level Physics .
If there are any disagreements they should be able to be unambiguously resolved , and experimentally demonstrated .

Michael Flynn
Reply to  Bob Armstrong
February 24, 2026 3:26 pm

I wish I knew who gave this post a -1 , and why .

I ignore post “votes”, unless they indicate agreement. If some anonymous nutter’s opinion differs from yours, why take any notice?

February 22, 2026 1:35 pm

POINT OF NO (return) SCIENCE
The recent TCD article by Daysia Tolentino warns of Earth nearing a “point of no return” due to warming from emissions, potentially triggering irreversible tipping points like ice sheet collapse. This framing overlooks the geological reality that we remain in the midst of a 34 million year old ice age that worsened 2.58-million-years ago, the Quaternary ice age, where current warming is a minor fluctuation within a dominant long-term cooling trend.

Earth entered the Quaternary glaciation 2.58 million years ago at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary, marked by global cooling, drying, and the expansion of permanent polar ice sheets, especially in Antarctica, largely as a result of tectonic plate movement. This period features ~100,000-year glacial cycles punctuated by brief ~10,000-15,000-year interglacials like our Holocene, with the Antarctic ice sheet persisting continuously. A Greenland ice sheet has existed for much of that time as well. Modern humans evolved amid these harsh cycles, including the Last Glacial Maximum just 20,000 years ago when vast ice covered North America and Europe.

The ice age intensified precisely 2.58 million years ago with the Mid-Pleistocene Transition around 1 million years ago, shifting cycles from 41,000 to 100,000 years due to orbital changes, amplifying glacials. Pliocene temperatures were ~3°C warmer globally with sea levels 30m higher and minimal Northern Hemisphere ice, yet cooling from ocean circulation shifts plunged us into deeper glacials. This “worsening” underscores ice age dominance, not a stable warm baseline disrupted by humans.

Current warming (~1.2-1.5°C since pre-industrial) pales against prior interglacials: the Eemian (125,000 years ago) saw polar regions 5-8°C warmer than today without ending the ice age, as ice sheets reformed. Orbital models predict the next glacial ~10,000-50,000 years from now, with Holocene already in natural decline. Even doubled CO2 yields only ~1°C rise. Tipping points like permafrost thaw ignore this: interglacials feature such feedbacks naturally without escaping ice house conditions.

Alarmist rhetoric exaggerates transient warmth as “unprecedented crisis” while ignoring our ice age prison, where projected warming may at most delay—not avert—the next inevitable freeze. More likely it is part of downward sloping temperature cycle.

Climate scientists view the 34-million-year Late Cenozoic Ice Age—kicking off with Antarctic glaciation around the Eocene-Oligocene boundary—as a persistent coldhouse regime driven by tectonic shifts and orbital wobbles, far from over despite alarmist narratives.

Purely natural forces, dominated by Milankovitch cycles (eccentricity ~100,000 years, obliquity ~41,000 years, precession ~26,000 years), sustain the Quaternary phase’s glacial-interglacial oscillations within this ice age, with no sign of full termination. Interglacials like our Holocene last just 10,000-15,000 years before inexorable cooling resumes, as orbital geometry dims Northern Hemisphere summers, rebuilding ice sheets. The current cooling trend, underway for ~6,000 years, points to glacial re-advance in 10,000-50,000 years under natural forcings alone.

Escaping to a true Greenhouse state—like the warm Pliocene or Eocene with no polar ice—demands massive, multi-million-year tectonic reconfiguration: uplift of the Himalayas/Tibet to enhance weathering, full closure of the Antarctic circumpolar current and Panama Isthmus reversal. Orbital models show no such alignment soon; even peak interglacials fall short of deglaciation thresholds, with Antarctic ice enduring continuously for 34 million years. Realistically, natural forces won’t dismantle this ice age for another 10-50 million years, if precedents like the Oligocene’s onset hold.

We’re locked in a frigid epoch, with brief thaws mere blips—geology’s long game dwarfs short-term scares. Humanity’s brief existence and short life span of individuals may be the reason thinking in geological time is difficult.

observa
February 22, 2026 4:51 pm

There’s nothing like reliable fossil fuelled refrigeration bug lovers-
This job kept towns alive – and destroyed the men who did it | Watch
It’s so much more egalitarian permitting the plebs to drive to the supermarket for their fresh meat. What more could any lefty want?