The Week That Was: 2026-04-11 (April 11, 2026)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea.” — Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist (1998)
Number of the Week: Twice as fast as elsewhere
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW focuses on a letter to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts by Physicists Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and Steven Koonin asserting that even with the removal of the chapter on climate change, the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition is an advocacy document, not a neutral description of scientific practice. The 16th International Conference on Climate Change will be discussed next week.
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The Mire: On December 31, 2025, the US Federal Judicial Center and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) published the 1,682-page Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition. Physicists Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and Steven Koonin wrote an open letter to Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court John Roberts expressing their views on the chapter titled “How Science Works.” The open letter was published by the CO2 Coalition. The body of the letter of the letter bears quoting [footnotes at end here].
BEGIN QUOTE
The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence has long been valued by the federal and state judiciary for its neutrality, clarity, and restraint. It is used by more than 3,000 federal judges, many state judges, and has been cited in over 1,700 judicial opinions. Its purpose has always been to assist courts in evaluating scientific evidence—not to advance particular scientific, political, or policy agendas.
We write to express serious concerns about the Fourth Edition of the Manual, released a few months ago. Several chapters depart sharply from the Manual’s longstanding tradition of neutrality.
1. The Removed Climate Science Chapter Revealed Structural Problems
The most striking example was the “Reference Guide on Climate Science,” which was withdrawn after a letter from 28 state Attorneys General documented profound conflicts of interest and numerous unsupported claims presented as settled fact.
As career physicists with decades of experience in atmospheric dynamics, radiative transfer, and modeling complex systems like climate—and with more than 600 peer-reviewed publications among us—we were particularly concerned by that chapter’s scientific and procedural deficiencies. (Our curricula vitae are attached.)
2. The Remaining Chapter, “How Science Works,” Suffers from Similar Defects
Although the climate chapter has been removed, the chapter that undergirded it — “How Science Works”—remains. This chapter, 65 pages long, replaces the much shorter and widely respected 18-page version written for earlier editions by David Goodstein, former Vice Provost of Caltech. The new chapter does not acknowledge the prior version, nor does it resemble it in substance or tone.
The lead author of the new chapter, Professor Michael Weisberg, is a philosopher who also serves as a climate diplomat and advisor to several national delegations at the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) negotiations. His public biography highlights his work developing strategies to secure climate-related financial transfers for small island states. These roles do not inherently disqualify him. But they do create a clear appearance of conflict when writing a chapter intended to guide judges on what constitutes legitimate scientific evidence—particularly in litigation where trillions of dollars may be at stake.
3. The New Chapter Adopts an Advocacy Framework, Not a Scientific One
The very first paragraph asserts that “public relations campaigns have misled the public about the true state of scientific consensus,” citing Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s Merchants of Doubt. That book—and the film based on it—explicitly argues that there is “zero argument among actual scientists” about catastrophic climate change.
This framing is inappropriate for a judicial reference text. It presents contested claims as settled fact, and it implies that dissenting scientists—including thousands of credentialed researchers—are not “actual scientists.” That is not a neutral description of scientific practice; it is an advocacy position.
4. The Gold Standard of Science Is Prediction Tested Against Reality
As scientists, we completely agree with the Supreme Court in the Daubert case that scientific knowledge must be derived by the scientific method:
“[I]n order to qualify as ‘scientific knowledge,’ an inference or assertion must be derived by the scientific method. *** ‘Scientific methodology today is based on generating hypotheses and testing them …this methodology is what distinguishes science from other fields of human inquiry.’” Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 590, 593 (1993) (citations omitted).
Prof. Richard Feynman, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, succinctly explained the scientific method as follows:
“[W]e compare the result of [a theory’s] computation to nature, … compare it directly with observations, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.” The Character of Physical Law (1965), p. 150.
For centuries, scientific progress has been grounded in the ability to make risky predictions—predictions that could easily be proven wrong—and then to test them against experiment or observation. This empirical cycle is the gold standard of scientific understanding. It is what enabled humanity to uncover the laws of motion, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, genetics, and countless other pillars of modern knowledge.
Historically, the scientific method was a new method of thinking that unleashed the Scientific Revolution. It differs from other common methods of thinking by testing theory with observations, with the facts controlling:
The scientific method “is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in ‘irreducible and stubborn facts;’ all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalization which forms the novelty in our present society.” Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925).
The new chapter ignores the scientific method explained by the Supreme Court above and erroneously asserts it is a “Myth” there is a single scientific method and states instead that it is an incomprehensible process:
“Myth: There is a single scientific method that all scientists follow.
“Fact: The process of science is nonlinear and dynamic.” Id. 102.
As detailed above, the new “How Science Works” chapter’s assertion that it is a “myth” there is a single scientific method is fundamentally incorrect science. The scientific method has been the foundation of modern science since the Scientific Revolution.
In contrast to the new chapter, Prof. David Goodstein’s “How Science Works” chapter in earlier editions of the Reference Manual explained that scientific knowledge is derived by the scientific method:
“In short, the essence of science is the scientific method.” 3rd Edition Reference Manual 39.
He explained the scientific method essentially the same way the Supreme Court and Prof. Feynman did:
“What’s required of a theory in science is that it make new predictions that can be tested by new experiments or observations and falsified or verified.” Id. 51.
He emphasized that “data are the coin of the realm in science, and they are always treated with reverence.” Id. 47.
Quoting Galileo, he observed, “In matters of science, the authority of thousands is not worth the humble reasoning of one single person.” Id. 47. That is, consensus is not the test in science.
He also observed that the scientific method and legal method are basically the same, which should be helpful and reassuring to judges and lawyers who are not trained in science:
“[S]cience and the law share, at the deepest possible level, the same aspirations and many of the same methods … using empirical evidence, to arrive at rational conclusions.” Id. 52.
5. Consensus Is Not the Foundation of Science
The new chapter repeatedly emphasizes “scientific consensus” and “widespread acceptance” as a defining feature of scientific validity. In a section titled “Achieving Scientific Consensus,” it presents “Figure 3. Indicators of scientific consensus, a spectrum from “low” to “high” of the “likelihood that consensus on a hypothesis has been reached.” Id. 97.
It then asserts that “the highest level of certainty science has to offer” is when a theory has “achieved widespread acceptance.” Id. 97. It also asserts, “widespread acceptance provides a strong indicator of the reliability of scientifically acquired knowledge.” Id. 96.
But consensus is a sociological phenomenon, not the scientific method. As Michael Crichton observed in a well-known lecture:1
“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus.”
Consensus is an inferior and inherently fragile substitute for the gold-standard of science: testable predictions confronted with data. It is invoked primarily in fields where controlled experiments are difficult or impossible and where predictions cannot be decisively tested. It is vulnerable to groupthink, funding lock-in, and the natural human reluctance to acknowledge error.
Scientific progress—from Galileo to Curie to Einstein—has often required breaking with consensus, and history offers many examples in which a prevailing consensus was later overturned, including Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, the long resistance to plate tectonics, and the brief mid-20th-century consensus about imminent global cooling. Even though consensus can be overturned by a single experiment or observation, it can persist long after contrary evidence has accumulated precisely because it is maintained socially rather than empirically.
This social maintenance of consensus also makes it important to not dismiss a priori the opinions of credentialed experts from other fields, as they need not be constrained by consensus thinking or rewards.
The new chapter cites the Antarctic ozone hole as an illustration of consensus functioning properly. Yet even here, the scientific picture is more complex than the chapter suggests. The springtime ozone hole over Antarctica has appeared every year since its discovery in 1979, when global satellite mapping began. Despite substantial declines in stratospheric halogen concentrations following the Montreal Protocol, the size and depth of the ozone hole have shown little systematic change. There remain scientifically credible reasons to question whether human-emitted halogens are the dominant cause of the phenomenon. As an example of “consensus science,” the ozone hole is far from straightforward.
If the chapter sought a clear illustration of how science should inform public policy, the causal link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer would have been far more appropriate. That relationship rests on converging lines of evidence, strong statistical associations, mechanistic understanding, and predictions repeatedly confirmed by observation. It exemplifies the empirical rigor that should guide judicial evaluation of scientific claims.
In summary, the new “How Science Works” chapter statement that “widespread acceptance” and “scientific consensus” is “the highest level of certainty science has to offer” and “provides a strong indicator of the reliability of scientifically acquired knowledge” is an egregious misstatement of what science has been since the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s – a discipline based on the scientific method.
Simply stated, if it’s consensus, it is not science.
6. The Chapter Mischaracterizes Science as a Community-Governed Enterprise
Section headings such as “Science is Carried Out by a Community that Holds Members to Norms” and “Science as a Human and Community Endeavor” describe something closer to a political party or a religious order than to the scientific method. Science is indeed a human activity, but its authority derives from reproducible results, not from community norms or majority agreement.
The earlier Goodstein chapter captured this distinction clearly and succinctly. The new version obscures it.
7. Recommendations
We applaud the Federal Judicial Center’s removal of the “Reference Guide on Climate Science” chapter from the new Reference Manual because it is not the neutral and dispassionate statement of science the Manual is famous for2.
Because the “How Science Works” chapter was written in large part to support the now-withdrawn climate chapter—and because it departs so dramatically from the Manual’s tradition of neutrality—we respectfully recommend that it also be withdrawn before federal and state judges are mistakenly led to use it to admit or exclude scientific evidence, and its false science contaminates what we understand is more than 1,000 climate-related cases in state and federal courts.
We also respectfully recommend that it be replaced by the earlier Goodstein version that remains a concise, accurate, and non-ideological explanation of scientific reasoning appropriate for judicial use.
Further, Center Director Judge Rosenberg advised John McCuskey, the Attorney General of West Virginia, in a February 24th letter that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will not remove the “Reference Guide on Climate Science” chapter from its version of the Reference Manual: “The Academies will include asterisked language in its web and printed versions of the RMSE indicating that the FJC has omitted the chapter from its version of the manual.” We respectfully recommend the Center direct NAS to remove both the “How Science Works” and the “Reference Guide on Climate Science” chapters from their version of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: 4th Edition.
Footnotes:
1. Michael Crichton, Aliens Cause Global Warming, Caltech Michelin Lecture, Jan. 17, 2003.
2 Its fundamental scientific flaws are detailed in Profs. Lindzen’s and Happer’s paper “Physics Demonstrates That Increasing Greenhouse Gases Cannot Cause Dangerous Warming, Extreme Weather or Any Harm” and in Prof. Koonin’s book Unsettled (2d. ed. 2024).”
END QUOTE
The letter is signed by each author and includes their curricula vitae.
The mention of Merchants of Doubt is noteworthy. It is an ad hominen attack unsupported by physical evidence but repeated in the popular press. Now the Federal Judicial Center and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) consider that the popular press determines science, not physical evidence from observation and experiment. The National Academies are up to their necks in the mire of the Washington swamp. They are political organizations that have abandoned scientific integrity and the scientific method in favor of political popularity. The scientific method came to fruition during the great controversy of whether Earth was the center of the universe or a planet orbiting the Sun. The National Academies are using the arguments of an Earth-centered universe that was the consensus at that time.
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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SEPP’S APRIL FOOLS AWARD
THE JACKSON
SEPP is conducting its annual vote for the recipient of the coveted trophy, The Jackson, a lump of coal. Readers are asked to nominate and vote for who they think is most deserving, following these criteria:
- The nominee has advanced, or proposes to advance, significant expansion of governmental power, regulation, or control over the public or significant sections of the general economy.
- The nominee does so by declaring such measures are necessary to protect public health, welfare, or the environment.
- The nominee declares that physical science supports such measures.
- The physical science supporting the measures is flimsy at best, and possibly non-existent.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. Past recipients are not eligible. See list at https://www.sepp.org/april-fools-award.cfm
The committee that makes the selection prefers a candidate with a national or international presence. The voting will close on July 31. Please send your nominee and a brief reason why the person is qualified for the honor to Ken@SEPP.org.
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Number of the Week: Twice as fast as elsewhere.
Often articles, including scientific papers, claim that region X is warming twice as fast as elsewhere. The question is: Where is elsewhere? In reporting the UAH atmospheric temperature trends Roy Spencer wrote:
“The Version 6.1 global area-averaged linear temperature trend (January 1979 through March 2026) remains at +0.16 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).”
Since the regions that are warming fast are land based, “elsewhere” can be the oceans. Spencer also noted that March 2026 was the hottest March for the lower 48. However, the map in the Global Temperature Report shows that for March, western US was unusually warm; and most of Canada was unusually cold. See links under Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science and Measurement Issues – Atmosphere.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
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
Open Letter to Federal Judicial Center Chair, Chief Justice John Roberts
By Richard Lindzen, Ph. D. Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus Professor of Physics Massachusetts Institute of Technology William Happer, Ph. D. Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University Steven Koonin, Ph. D. Edward Teller Senior Fellow Hoover Institution, Stanford University. CO2 Coalition, Apr 1, 2026
Link to: Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition
By Elena Kagan, et al., Federal Judicial Center, Accessed April 11, 2026
[SEPP Comment: The Federal Judicial Center website has the statement: “This website is produced and published at U.S. taxpayer expense.”]
At The Heartland Climate Conference: “What Is The Proof?”, Extreme Weather Events Edition
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Apr 10, 2026
Why weather prediction got brilliant – but not climate predictions
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 3, 2026
Eleven-minute Video of Peter Ridd
#DoEDeepDive: Climate impact drivers
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
In chapter 8.5 of last summer’s US Department of Energy contrarian Red Team climate report they look at a bit of IPCC jargon, namely “Climate Impact Drivers”. Admittedly those three words constitute a phrase that gets our hackles up when jammed together like that. “Climate” is a slow-moving background state of the world or, indeed, various parts of it including small ones. (One can, for instance, legitimately speak of the climate in suburban Boston.) Yes it changes, but to say it has “impacts” conjures up pictures of extreme weather, and as we all know, weather and climate are not the same thing, except when it suits alarmists to fudge the distinction.
#DoEDeepDive: Declining planetary albedo
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
Overall, they highlight that the topic is extremely important, but it will take time to find solid answers to the major questions they raise rather than settling:
“In summary, the decline in planetary albedo and the concurrent decline in cloudiness have emphasized the importance of clouds and their variations to global climate variability and change. A change of 1- 2 percent in global cloud cover has a greater radiative impact on the climate than the direct radiative effect of doubling CO2. While it is difficult to untangle causes of the recent trend, the competing explanations for the cause of the declining cloud cover have substantial implications for assessing the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity and for the attribution of the recent warming.”
Zeldin gives keynote address at climate skeptic conference
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Apr 8, 2026
Defending the Orthodoxy
Understanding the fragility of our planetary home: The legacy of Paul Ehrlich
By Michael E. Mann, Peter Gleick, John P. Holdren , Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mar 31, 2026
The latest scientific assessments of those threats to planetary health—climate change, water shortages, toxic substances, shrinking biodiversity, and more—all tell us humanity is in great. peril
[SEPP Comment: Planetary health is an imaginary concept. It can be whatever you wish it to be. If modern civilization is putting humanity in great peril why was life expectancy under 30 in 1800 and almost 80 today? Comparatively, extreme poverty and mass starvation are extremely low today. When the Population Bomb was published, the birth rates in most developed countries were falling.]
“Leading Scientists” Urge Abandonment of North Sea Oil
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 9, 2026
Link to article: The ‘Leading UK Scientists’ Letter Urging Abandonment of North Sea is Ideology Masquerading as Science (Paywalled)
By Tilak Doshi, The Daily Sceptic, Apr 8, 2026
Their assessment of the economics of North Sea oil could have been written by Ed Miliband and ignores the reality that importing oil and gas is fundamentally more expensive. Nor do they address the simple fact that the UK will still be using oil and gas for decades to come.
All we are left with is the meaningless Paris goal, which the rest of the world has been ignoring ever since. Nothing we do as a country will make the slightest difference, so why is the FT publishing this propaganda?
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Figueres to Lead Lancet Commission
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 8, 2026
From National Today:
Christiana Figueres, a former UN climate chief and key negotiator for the 2016 Paris agreement, has been appointed as the co-chair of a new Lancet Commission dedicated to investigating the intersection of sea-level rise, public health, and social inequality. The commission aims to analyze how the advancing waterline is altering daily life for hundreds of millions of people and the specific ways it creates escalating threats to wellbeing.
From Homewood: Could this be the same Figueres who “has linked these health crises to a global dependence on fossil fuels, which she claims is driving both geopolitical instability and the environmental changes causing sea-level rise. She has described the health impacts of climate change as the mother of all injustices and warned that countries are being held hostage by their reliance on these fuels.”
And what on earth does this hard left woman think will happen to all these poor people when the fossil fuel tap is switched off?
Sadly, the Lancet lost all credibility for honest science when it sold its soul to the climate zealots many years ago.
Thermal justice: New report examines threat of extreme heat, suggests culturally informed policies
By Mary-Lou Watkinson, Vanderbilt University, Phys.org, Apr 4, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to report: “Beyond Temperature: A Cultural Contexts Approach to Heat and Health.”
By Edward Fischer, et al., Vanderbilt Cultural Contexts of Health and Wellbeing Initiative
Opening sentence of abstract: Extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related health hazard of the twenty-first century.
[SEPP Comment: Where is the evidence that extreme heat kills more people than extreme cold? What’s the thermal justice in deaths from cold?]
Ignoring Central Asia’s Environmental Crisis Is a Strategic Mistake
By Zulfiya Suleimenova, Real Clear Energy, Apr 9, 2026
Link to: Global Warming in Asia: Region is Heating Twice as Fast
A new World Meteorological Organization report shows Asia is warming about twice the global average, with 2024 ranking among the warmest on record and widespread heat across the region.
By Sara Siddeeq, Climate Impacts Tracker Asia, Sep 8, 2025
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Some runaway feedback
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
What we actually know about Earth’s climate is that it changes constantly, making alarmists like Al Gore the real “deniers”. But while it does strange stuff, and often does it at speeds that make recent decades and even centuries look unusually stable, what it doesn’t do is run away. The point is so obvious it hardly needs stating, but state it we must.
Warming and wealth save lives
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
“Renewables” are not Renewable
The fossil fuel foundation of wind, solar, and batteries
By Roger Pielke Jr., His Blog, Mar 25, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Matt Ridley thinks the Climate Parrot is almost dead
In his recent ICSF/Clintel lecture, Matt Ridley argued that public and political momentum behind the “climate emergency” narrative is weakening, and he explored the reasons for this shift as well as its implications.
By Peter Baeten, Clintel, Apr 7, 2026
Why Climate Alarm is Fading (Matt Ridley)
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Apr 8, 2026
Text of presentation by Matt Ridley at Clintel and the Irish Climate Science Forum
See link immediately above.
So you admit it
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
Our trip to the Arctic confirmed for us that hydrocarbon energy is essential to our modern way of life. In places we visited from Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife to Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, it was those giant storage tanks of gasoline, diesel and natural gas that made the difference, literally, between life and death.
German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Mar 29, 2026
[SEPP Comment: How many tipping points does a sine curve have?]
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
The story headline was “Ottawa’s big bet on world’s largest cricket farm ran into a simple problem: the ‘yuck factor’“. Thus, blaming us for the debacle, not the failure to have a viable business plan. And the real punchline is that “crickets aren’t cheap. A 454-gram bag of cricket powder can retail for $49.99 – more than even premium cuts of beef on a per-pound basis.”
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
Why Does Met Office Need A Chief AI Officer?
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 29, 2026
No doubt the Met Office relied heavily on AI to concoct the fake claim about record rainfall in Worcestershire!
As for that extreme weather you are warbling about, maybe you should return to Planet Earth from your AI cloud, which is the only place this imaginary “extreme weather” is going on!
Problems in the Orthodoxy
Google — the former green giant — shifts back to fossil fuels in the AI race
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Apr 4, 2026
Google are still pushing for Net Zero (they say) but don’t ask them any hard questions:
Asked by Axios last week at an energy conference in Houston about how natural gas jibes [agrees] with the company’s clean energy goals and overall strategy, Google’s head of advanced energy, Michael Terrell, said: “We don’t have anything to say on that.”
After Paris!
Fake green economy
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
According to the article, in case you weren’t independently aware of it:
“This year was supposed to be a turning point for carbon markets, with the United Nations’ long-delayed country-to-country trading system coming into force and airlines preparing to enter a mandatory program to offset their emissions.”
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
The effect of increased CO2 on Red Algae
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
From the CO2Science archive.
The effect of additional CO2 on Cockatoo Grass
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
From the CO2Science archive.
Seeking a Common Ground
Proposed Theory of Historical Global Cloud Cover.
By Charles Blaisdell, WUWT, Apr 8, 2026
‘Stick and Jab’ (In Defense of Climate Change – Episode 2)
By Bryce Nickels, Science From The Fringe, Mar 31, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
In the second episode of In Defense of Climate Change, Bryce Nickels speaks with climate policy scholar Roger Pielke Jr. about his recent review of Science Under Siege (SUS), a book by Michael Mann and Peter Hotez (a.k.a. ‘Stick and Jab’) arguing that an “anti-science movement” threatens society.
Measurement Issues — Surface
A hot time in the new trend
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
And that we know very little about such events except in the very recent past. On this point Chris Martz posted:
“Weather records were made to be broken. We have at best 150 years of instrumental data, maybe only 50 with good quality over a large area, on a planet that is 4.5 billion years old.”
Which is not, or should not be, to say that it is impossible to detect trends. Rather, it is possible iff, as the mathematicians say (“if and only if”), you have sufficiently long and precise temperature records that you can pick signal out of noise, and they must be long and precise indeed if you’re working with things are inherently variable.
Measurement Issues — Atmosphere
UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for March 2026: +0.38 deg. C
By Roy Spencer, His Blog, Apr 3, 2026
Global Temperature Report
By Staff: The Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Apr 3, 2026
[Includes map and graph]
Changing Weather
Major Global Cooling of the Past Two Years and the Big U.S. Heatwave Last Month. Climate Change?
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Apr 5, 2026
Let me end with the Golden Rule of Climate Change.
The more extreme the anomaly from climatology (the average climate), the LESS likely it is that human-forced global warming is the cause. This was true of the warming in 2023 and is true for last month’s warm event over the western U.S.
Human-caused global warming is real, but it is slow and modest in magnitude, and global in scope.
ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
By Staff, NOAA Climate Prediction Center, Apr 6, 2026
A transition from La Niña to ENSO-neutral is expected in the next month, with ENSO-neutral favored through May-July 2026 (55% chance). In June-August 2026, El Niño is likely to emerge (62% chance) and persist through at least the end of 2026.
Is a Super El Nino Coming?
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Apr 9, 2026
Why do we care about the surface temperatures of the central tropical Pacific?
Because it reveals the state of an important natural atmospheric/ocean oscillation: ENSO, the El Niño Southern Oscillation, in which warm ocean surface water sloshed back and forth over 4–7-year periods.
The warm water enhances cumulus and thunderstorm activity above, which in turn influences the weather of the entire planet,
Predicting El Niño is important because it has a significant impact on the meteorology of the U.S. West Coast and offers the only reliable source of forecasting skill for extended period predictions. [Boldface added]
[SEPP Comment: But we cannot skillfully predict it!]
US Heatwaves Much Worse In Past
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 2, 2026
So, about that drought
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
Changing Climate
An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Apr 5, 2026
In 2014, a massive Swiss stone pine (Zirbe) log weighing 1.7 tons was found in the retreat area of the Pasterze glacier at an altitude of 2,060 meters. The tree from which the log originates is dated to be 6,000 years old.
Dr. Steiner points out that no trees of this size can grow at that altitude today because it is currently just too cold, suggesting that 6,000 years ago, temperatures in the Alps were significantly warmer than now. That’s evidence that climate alarmists would prefer to censor.
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
James Weddell’s Ice-Free Sea
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 9, 2026
[SEPP Comment: Sailing the Antarctic Ocean in 1823 where no man can sail today.]
New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Apr 4, 2026
Link to paper: Elevation change of the Greenland Ice Sheet and its peripheral glaciers: 1992–2023
By Johan Nilsson and Alex S. Gardner, Earth System Science Data, Mar 5, 2026
From the abstract: . The dataset covers the years 1992–2023 and is publicly available …Our analysis reveals significant patterns of mass loss across the GrIS. We find that the ice sheet and peripheral glaciers experienced average mass losses of −160 ± 17 and −23 ± 5 Gt a−1 , respectively, over the 1992–2023 period, with notable temporal variations. Specifically, the early years of the record exhibit a positive mass balance, likely driven by anomalously positive surface mass balance. However, this trend reverses in later years, with a pronounced increase in mass-loss rates that highlights the accelerating impact of climate change on ice-sheet dynamics and surface mass balance.
Changing Earth
Breakthrough Exposes Volcanic Corruption of Global Temperature Data for 50 Years
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Apr 1, 2026
Changing Seas
Reefing claims of settled science
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
According to ABC, the Australian one not the American one, “Coral colony discovered by mother and daughter citizen scientists could be world’s largest”. How cool is that? Not just that it’s a big coral colony, or that it was found by “citizen scientists”, but that amateurs found “what is thought to be the largest coral colony on the Great Barrier Reef and possibly in the world” right under the noses of the cocksure climate establishment.
Lowering Standards
Climate Industry Intersectionality
By Staff, Climate Litigation Watch, GAO, Apr 7, 2026
UW Prof. Kristie Ebi was recruited by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to serve on the outside-reviewer team of NASEM’s “expedited” and (as GAO pointed out in comments) activist-laden (“inherently conflicted to the point of absurdity”) NASEM advocacy effort to keep in place the climatistas’ domestic Holy Grail. That is the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which we all now know was pre-cooked by activists who were then set loose in government to advance an agenda.
UW’s unbiased, chin-stroking searcher-of-truths was concurrently working with members of the climate-plaintiffs’ team—from the group known as the “lawyers advising Rockefeller family fund” to activist/expert witnesses paraded in front of judges recruited to swanky locales to hear (and be swayed by) the plaintiffs’ side (and only the plaintiffs’ side) of things,.
Researcher Finds Proof The Met Office is Inflating UK Maximum Temperature Records
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Mar 29, 2026
The Scandal of the Scottish Met Office Station Still Providing Temperature Figures Six Decades After it Closed
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Apr 1, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
A subsequent Science Feedback ‘fact-check’ that seemed to have been largely written by the Met Office said the average data for the closed stations was not “fabricated” but estimated using “well-correlated neighboring stations”. It’s an explanation for the inventions but as we can see in the case of Lephinmore, the lack of nearby stations, well-correlated or otherwise, draws yet more questions.
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Seattle Times Provides Deceptive and False Information on Washington State Drought
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Apr 1, 2026
WESA Is Wrong, Sneezing and Watering Eyes Aren’t Climate Change Indicators
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Apr 7, 2026
Trump’s ‘God Squad’ exempts Gulf oil drilling from Endangered Species Act requirements
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Mar 31, 2026
The exemption process was created by a 1978 amendment to the Endangered Species Act, but it has only been used a handful of times.
The last time it was used was in 1992, when the commission voted to exempt 13 timber sales despite concerns over the northern spotted owl. However, in 1993, amid litigation, the Bureau of Land Management withdrew its request for the exemption.
[SEPP Comment: The “threat” to the northern spotted owl from timber harvesting was a fake. The real threat was and is the invasive barred owl.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Voila! – Part 2
The “cost of carbon” is just a made-up number
By Mark Hodgson, Climate Scepticism, Mar 28, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
That was fast
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
And we hate to intrude with calm rational inquiry when they’re having so much fun stampeding in circles screaming and shouting. But what does “out of balance” mean in this context? What does the climate look like when it’s “in balance” and how often is it, and when it’s out of balance does it fall over? Also, what is “historical precedent” or “recorded history”? Do they stop before the Little Ice Age (apparently less controversial than Michael Mann once had it) with its rapid descent into the coldest conditions since the last glaciation and documented fluctuations both up and down within that broad band? Or is it all a bunch of hooey?
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Climate Change Impacts
By Staff, Just Facts Daily, Apr 11, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
The Age of Unreason – Part 2
More kettle logic?
By Mark Hodgson, Climate Scepticism, Apr 3, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
There is a common theme running through these articles. Basically, it’s that there’s hardly any oil and gas left in our North Sea reserves, and anyway it’ll be sold abroad and/or international markets mean that any oil and gas thereby produced wouldn’t bring prices down.
Expanding the Orthodoxy
The Carbon Bureaucracy Nobody Voted For
By Aiden Buzzetti, Real Clear Energy, Apr 9, 2026
Most Americans have never heard of the International Organization for Standardization.
That is exactly how its architects prefer it. While Washington debates energy policy in public, a quieter project is underway in Geneva, one that could reshape how American companies produce energy and what it costs them to do it, without a single public vote being cast, a single hearing being held, or a single elected official being consulted.
Questioning European Green
Curtain Opens on the Dress Rehearsal for the Net Zero Calamity as Hormuz Threats Cut Hydrocarbon Supply by a Quarter
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Via WUWT, Apr 7, 2026
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a missile on course to blow the neo-Malthusian death cult of Net Zero to smithereens. The reduction of up to 25% in the global supply of hydrocarbons is a serious dress rehearsal for the full Net Zero calamity.
The Strait of Hormuz’s Bitter Lesson for the European Union
By Dr. Samuel Furfari, CO2 Coalition, Mar 31, 2026
The EU must recognize that the world has entered a new era of energy geopolitics, shaped by the abundance of fossil fuels, the determination of new players asserting themselves in this evolving landscape, and, above all, the resolve of emerging countries to secure their future through abundant and affordable energy. This is the true lesson of the Strait of Hormuz.
Questioning Green Elsewhere
A lot of zeroes
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
Speaking of economic ignorance, Heatmap does try to express some sympathy for New York governor Kathy Hochul’s urgent efforts to weaken her state’s climate laws to mitigate the affordability crisis they have played a major role in causing. They’re not happy, of course, that “If she gets her way, New York would be the first state to renege on its climate goals.” And they’re right that there’s some serious jiggery-pokery in play: …
Energy Crisis? Just Wait for Net Zero!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 3, 2026
Video, Sky News AU, Fertilizer shortage, Yet AU has an abundance of methane needed for fertilizer.
For Minnesota, Climate Obsession Is Just Another Fiscal Disaster
By Daniel Turner, WUWT, Apr 8, 2026
Funding Issues
The impact of corporate decisions on energy reliability
Xcel learned the hard lesson that if you feed the crocodiles, do not be surprised when they bite you.
By Bill Ponton, American Thinker, Mar 27, 2026 [Bernie Kepshire]
Starving Coal of Capital Puts the Power Grid at Risk
By Wayne Winegarden, Real Clear Energy, Apr 7, 2026
Litigation Issues
The Climate Litigation Swindle
If judgments against Big Oil are allowed to stand, they will set precedents for wider assaults on private enterprise and the rule of law.
By Heather Mac Donald, Daily Wire, Apr 2, 2026
The Western concept of impersonal causation once undergirded both experimental science and Anglo-American tort law. The belief that causation was regular and measurable enabled the rational control of nature. The legal requirement that a defendant’s unreasonable act actually caused a plaintiff’s injury restrained the human impulse toward vengeance. In the 20th century, however, tort law increasingly shifted from assigning liability for fault to extracting wealth for redistribution by loosening traditional causation standards and weakening the idea of personal responsibility.
When Deep Pockets Become the Default Defendant
Why coastal erosion lawsuits and wildfire liability cases follow the same flawed logic.
By Paul Griffin, Real Clear Energy, Mar 31, 2026
When large-scale disasters strike, why does legal responsibility so often collapse onto a single, familiar target? Why, in cases involving complex systems and decades of public policy decisions, do courts increasingly zero in on the actor with the deepest pockets rather than the full set of causes?
Those questions sit at the center of two seemingly unrelated legal battles: Louisiana’s coastal erosion lawsuits against oil and gas companies and wildfire liability cases against electric utilities across the American West. One involves disappearing wetlands, the other catastrophic fires. Yet the logic driving both is strikingly similar—and troubling.
Environmentalists are fighting our living standards in court
By Craig Rucker, CFACT, Apr 4, 2026
Rooftop Solar Litigation: Find a Lawyer
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Apr 10, 2026
Social media is home to a number of legal solicitations regarding rooftop solar contracts where homeowners are tied into long-term solar contracts with bankrupt companies. Lawyers win; everyone else loses.
Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxes
Quibbling Over Carbon Metrics: Senator Cramer’s Ill-Advised, Unauthorized Carbon Tax Trojan Horse
By Marlo Lewis, Real Clear Energy, Mar 30, 2026
The U.S. may stumble into a carbon taxed future due to a provision furtively inserted into the House committee report accompanying the energy and water appropriations bill that was part of the “minibus,” enacted in late January. The provision, for which Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) claims credit, directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to estimate the average carbon emission intensities of US- and foreign-made goods. That may seem harmless, but it is potentially a seed of considerable mischief.
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Solar Adds 43 GW in 2025; Fifth Straight Year as Top New Generation Source
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Mar 10, 2026
Link to: Solar Market Insight Report
By Staff, Solar Energy Industries Association, March 10, 2026
From key figures of the report: The utility-scale segment installed 34.7 GWdc in 2025, a 16% decline compared to 2024. Nearly the same amount of capacity came online through the first three quarters of the year as did in 2024. But substantially fewer projects that were originally slated to come online in Q4 were energized. Due to the changes in tax credit deadlines, developers delayed commercial operation dates and focused on safe harboring their pipeline.
From Introduction: Like the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) altered the trajectory of the US solar industry in 2025.
[SEPP Comment: The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was a deliberately misnamed. A more correct name would have been Inflation Promotion Act.]
UPRISE: More Federal Nuclear Subsidization
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Apr 9, 2026
EPA and other Regulators on the March
Trump EPA Ends Exorbitant Pay-Outs to Litigious Environmental Nonprofits
By Staff, Open The Books, Apr 1, 2026 [H/t S.J. Cvrk]
Energy Issues – Europe
Anatomy of a Blackout: Findings from the Spain-Portugal Grid Collapse Final Report
By Aaron Larson, Power Mag, Mar 23, 2026
The Broader Warning
The report’s concluding observations carry a warning that extends well beyond the Iberian Peninsula. Europe’s electricity system is undergoing a profound transformation: growing shares of inverter-based renewable generation, declining synchronous machine capacity, deeper market integration, and broader electrification. These trends place the system under increasingly challenging operational conditions. [Boldface added]
The Coverup: warnings months before the Spanish Blackout, “Today was really bad” and “we’re going to crash”
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Apr 10, 2026
Engineers were warning the grid was close to crashing due to excess solar.
North Sea Mythbuster: Why the Seven Arguments Against Drilling Are All Wrong
By Francis Holburne, The Daily Sceptic, Mar 31, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Energy policy debates benefit from clear thinking, which requires distinguishing between arguments that are partially correct, arguments that are misleading and arguments that are downright false. The claims above fall variously into each of those categories.
The picture that emerges from a systematic overview of these claims is of a country that imports roughly half its gas, holds almost no strategic storage, faces burdensome taxes on the profits of its domestic producers and refuses to promote policy to arrest the decline in production of its most competitively priced supply. Meanwhile, large oil and gas producers such as Norway, Saudi Arabia and the United States will continue extracting, exporting and profiting from global energy demand regardless of what Britain decides.
North Sea gas ‘saves Britain billions a year’
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 9, 2026
The North Sea is still the UK’s biggest gas source, accounting for around 45pc [percent] of its supplies. The other 35pc comes from piped gas from Norway, while 20pc is LNG imports.
[SEPP Comment: Only government policy prevents the UK from producing more of the gas it consumes at lower costs than imports.]
The lost gas fields that could power Britain for decades
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 5, 2026
From the Telegraph:
Far out under rough Atlantic waters lies the Glendronach gas field.
Discovered eight years ago off the coast of Shetland, the reservoir has the potential to start pumping gas into the system within two to three years, heating homes and supporting industry.
However, the reality is radically different.
Despite being one of the largest unexploited energy assets in UK waters, Glendronach’s fate is far from secure.
The gas is there, as is the technology to extract it.
But Britain’s politicians have pushed Glendronach and others like it into a limbo that could prove permanent.
Activists fear long term shift to coal, as Italy, Germany talk of keeping coal plants open for years now
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Mar 31, 2026
Miliband’s clean power drive fueled by imported gas and coal power
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Mar 30, 2026
Looming Aviation Fuel Shortages
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 2, 2026
Just over a decade ago, the UK was producing half of its aviation fuel. Today that proportion has dipped to a quarter. Worse still, we now rely on the Middle East for two thirds of our imports.
Miliband blamed as OpenAI pulls out of £31bn investment plans over high energy costs in huge blow to Labour’s bid to make Britain an ‘AI superpower’
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 10, 2026
From the Mail:
The California-based firm pointed to high energy costs and regulatory uncertainty for its decision to pause its Stargate UK project.
Stargate UK was announced in September last year as part of a combined £31billion investment in Britain by US tech firms.
Energy Issues – Australia
Australia wakes up to brown coal bonanza — 1,000 years of energy (if only we didn’t hate it?!)
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Apr 3, 2026
What a difference an oil war makes…
Five weeks after it started, suddenly Australians are noticing the bonanza under our feet all along.
Brown coal is the cheapest fuel there is for reliable electricity, bar none, but even more importantly, it can be turned into liquid fuels, which Australia desperately needs for trucks, tractors, and mining gear. We need to be able to pour our energy into a tank at room temperature and pressure, and in five minutes flat.
Renewables finally powers Coober Pedy for … *five days straight!*
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Apr 7, 2026
This is the feasibility study for the whole country that the government could have done…
So, the State Government spent about $100m in subsidies that it didn’t need to spend in order to save $5m in fuel costs spread over the next two decades. But the good news is we know our national renewables grid isn’t worth doing. The bad news: we’ve already wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, and we didn’t need to.
The Coober Pedy hybrid system has a capacity of 9.25MW of which 1 MW is solar, 4MW is wind, and 4.15MW is diesel power.
Other information is available at the Coober Pedy EDL including a live generation report. (Where solar power appeared to be contributing 0.3KW at from 3am to 4.30am in SA)
Energy Issues – Elsewhere non-US
Canada’s Energy Scarcity Self-inflicted
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Apr 6, 2026
Text on video by Heather Exner-Pirot, Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a Special Advisor to the Business Council of Canada, and a Research Advisor to the Indigenous Resource Network. Images added.
Fossil Fuels Shine Light of Hope in Africa
By Vijay Jayaraj, Real Clear Energy, Apr 7, 2026
Energy Issues — US
9 Takeaways from the JP Morgan Chase Energy Study You Won’t Want to Miss
We read it so you don’t have to
Energy Bad Boys and Mitch Rolling, Energy Bad Boys, Mar 28, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to report: Fighting Words: 16th Annual Energy Paper
By Michael Cembalest, et al., J.P. Morgan, Mar 3, 2026
From article: Nameplate Capacity is Not Always Reliable Capacity
As Cembalest notes:
As shown in the second chart, new US power capacity looks like it’s surging but is a lot more gradual after adjusting for reliability and intermittency (i.e., derating of solar and wind). In other words, not all megawatts are created equal.
We described the same trend in a recent piece, Watt, Me Worry?, where we add-on the fact that not only are reliable generators making up less of the share of new capacity additions, but that these additions aren’t keeping up with retirements. The result is that “the U.S. is now at pre-2005 levels of firm capacity on the grid at a time when electricity demand is projected to have the largest increases in over a decade due to data center and AI growth and electrification efforts.”
[SEPP Comment: The report states the PJM (Mid east coast to Chicago) capacity prices are soaring.]
The Frog Is Dead: North America’s Power Grid Faces Its Biggest Reckoning in a Generation
By Aaron Larson, Power Mag, Mar 16, 2026
[SEPP Comment: A major problem is that governments demanded premature closing of nuclear and coal-fired power plants.]
Artificial Intelligence (AI): Economic Transformation, Politics Brewing
By Steve Goreham, Master Resource, Apr 2, 2026
AI, datacenters, ignorant politicians: The coming electricity crisis!
By Ronald Stein P.E., Olivia Vaughan, Steve Curtis, America Outloud News, Mar 30, 2026
New York’s Climate Activists Not Backing Off
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Apr 7, 2026
[SEPP Comment: The budget deadline is being delayed.]
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
India Helps US Repair ‘Green’ Wreckage
By Vijay Jayaraj, WUWT, Apr 7, 2026
To understand why America needs an Indian conglomerate to build its first refinery in 50 years, you must look at the crippled state of Western infrastructure.
The United States manages about 132 operating refineries capable of processing 18 million barrels per day. The problem lies in their design. Engineers built these facilities decades ago to digest heavy, sour crude imported from places like Venezuela or Canada. They are entirely unsuited for the massive volumes of light, sweet crude currently exploding from American shale formations.
Return of King Coal?
American Coal as a Strategic Imperative
Coal: a friend in need is a friend indeed.
By The Editors, Real Clear Energy, Mar 31, 2026
Explaining why the Trump administration is issuing emergency orders to keep coal plants online, multiple factors favor coal deployment during times of storm:
- Fuel security: on-site coal stockpiles eliminate more precarious pipeline dependency (~95% of coal plants keep enough for 60+ days).
- Price stability: coal costs remain relatively stable, even during gas price spikes (where coal gets retired, we see higher prices and oil burned).
- Quick activation: within hours, coal plants can ramp up to support grid fluctuations.
- Resilient to weather: coal is reliable for generation during the harshest conditions, which are becoming more frequent with climate change.
Coal, The Fuel We Ignore But Cannot Replace
By Lars Schernikau, Via WUWT, Apr 6, 2026
South Korean Groups Backing New 1.25-GW Coal-Fired Power Plant in Alaska
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Mar 19, 2026
Officials said the deal marks the first order of utility-scale boilers for a U.S.-based coal-fired power plant since 2006. The Terra Energy Center is reportedly being developed by Flatlands Energy.
The most recent new coal-fired power plant project completed in the U.S. is the 932-MW Sandy Creek station in Texas, which entered service in 2013. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator in that state, last year said Sandy Creek—located near Waco—would be offline until at least March 2027 due to what officials called an equipment failure.
Nuclear Energy and Fears
Ursula-la-land
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
Ever the avatar of what passes for cutting-edge thinking among the Davoisie, she now says that it was a “strategic mistake” for European countries to turn away from atomic energy, the one reliable baseload form of low-carbon affordable energy humanity possesses, which provided a third of Europe’s electricity three decades ago and under a sixth today. But naturally she voted for it.
[SEPP Comment: Revering to Ursula von der Leyen, the 2025 recipient of SEPP’s April Fools Award.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
“… as fossil fuel use declines….” Magical energy Thinking in Print
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Apr 6, 2026
The stranded assets are not fossil fuels, which are consumer-driven with inherent advantages of energy density (the sun’s work over the ages, not a dilute, intermittent flow). The real “stranded assets” in evidence today are:
- Offshore wind power (“U.S. Offshore Wind: Politics Giveth, Taketh“)
- Rooftop solar (“Solar Bust: PosiGen Joins SunPower, Sunnova, Mosaic Solar“)
- EVs (“These 18 EV Automakers are Walking Away from EV Plans“)
- EV batteries (“Leading EV Battery Company Joins the Bust“)
Wyoming wind farms are ecological death traps for eagles
By David Wojick, CFACT, Apr 6, 2026
Wind power does more than kill the eagles that happen by; it repeatedly draws them in, then kills them.
Wind Ecology Pushback (biodiversity loss joins the list)
By Robert Bradley Jr. Master Resource, Apr 8, 2026
I am amazed that the “green” intelligentsia and lobby do not stop to consider what coating the living space with highly inefficient energy machines are doing to the environment. But the guilty are blinded by “climate change” and are too emotionally and professionally involved to break away. Can that change in the years ahead?
Eco-Friendly’ Energy Slaughtering Wildlife
By Vijay Jayaraj, WUWT, Apr 8, 2026
Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Apr 2, 2026
Link to article, Tornado Devastates Indiana Solar Farm, Spares Nearby Coal Plant
A billion-dollar solar facility was reduced to toxic debris, raising concerns about the vulnerability of green infrastructure.
By Staff, National Today, Apr 3, 2026
Tornado Devastates Indiana Solar Farm, Spares Nearby Coal Plant – Wheatfield Today
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
EV Charging Sites Face Surging Energy Bills
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 9, 2026
From the Telegraph:
Electric vehicle (EV) charging companies have warned that they could be forced to raise prices as they battle 38,000pc increases to their energy bills.
Homewood: The cost of grid connection to these charging sites is considerable, whether any electricity flows or not. Why should everybody else have to pay the cost?
Carbon Schemes
Plugging into potential of ocean carbon sinks
By Staff, China Daily, Mar 29, 2026 [H/t S.J. Cvrk]
Editor’s note: The Ocean Negative Carbon Emissions program, or ONCE, which was initiated by Chinese scientists, aims to increase the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
[SEPP Comment: Will green groups scream ocean acidification?]
California Dreaming
Federal Options for Large Scale Seawater Desalination
By Edward Ring, California Policy Center, Apr 1, 2026
Without devoting the paragraphs necessary merely to cite the names of every state and local agency that can veto a desalination plant, it is sufficient to note that the contractor seeking approval for a desalination plant in Huntington Beach spent over 20 years and over $100 million submitting designs and permit applications, only to be shot down while attempting to clear the final hurdle. In May 2022, after all that work, the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to deny approval, and the project died.
But when it comes to California’s massive coastal cities, home to more than 25 million people and precariously dependent on imported water, seawater desalination is the third leg of the stool, with the other two legs being runoff harvesting and wastewater recycling. Add to that large scale desalination, and our whole state has a much better chance to permanently tip the scales, from chronic water scarcity to enduring water abundance.
[SEPP Comment: Desalination works so the California Coastal Commission forbids it.]
Health, Energy, and Climate
1504 Died From Heat Last Summer, Say UKHSA
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Apr 9, 2026
Link to press release: New UKHSA data shows 1,504 heat-related deaths during summer of 2025
By UK Health Security Agency, Apr 2, 2026
From Homewood: In short, people, who were already close to death, died a few days earlier than they would otherwise have. It was not the heat that killed them, but their underlying disease. As the UKHSA admit, the recorded cause of death in these cases was typically circulatory disease, cancer and dementia. The heatwave did not kill them any more than an April shower or a cold winter’s day could have done.
To make matters worse, the UKHSA methodology doubles down on their estimating, because they are comparing against the following 14 days, when death rates are LOWER than normal.
Far from people dying because of heat, far fewer die in summer than at any other time of the year.
It is cold that kills, not heat. According to the ONS, excess deaths between October and March range from 25,000 to 50,000 in some years:
Environmental Industry
Paul Ehrlich and his media fans
By Tony Thomas, Climate Scepticism, Mar 30, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Ehrlich was not the only crazed alarmist whom Williams has brown-nosed and lionised on his “Science” show. Step forward Harvard’s Professor Naomi Oreskes, acclaimed author of denialist-smiting Merchants of Doubt (2010) and a slim but dense tome The Collapse of Western Civilization, a View from the Future (2014). That book forecast climate heat so searing that by now the entire Australian population has perished.
Like Ehrlich, Oreskes has been showered with honors for her corpus (should that be ‘corpse’?) of science writings, including Caltech’s Francis Bacon Award in the History and Philosophy of Science and the British Academy Medal, 2019. The ABC search box gives her 61 mentions, and three guest platformings by Williams “Science” show (2011, 2014 and 2025). In their 2014 chinwag the pair enthuse about her book predicting the heat deaths of Western households’ pups, kittens, and goldfish.
The Paul Ehrlich Bomb Part I
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 1, 2026
Didn’t he read his own books? Because a lot of people did, and they had disastrous consequences from policy to mental health. And what’s remarkable isn’t just that Ehrlich was as popular as he was wrong, especially with the chattering classes. It’s that the same kinds of people, and often the same people, who believed Ehrlich in their naïve youths believe in climate alarmism in their supposedly wiser years. And that although the supposed problems are wildly different, the supposed solutions are extraordinarily similar, and all involve commoners giving up just about everything they like including freedom to direct their own lives.
The Paul Ehrlich bomb Part II
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Apr 8, 2026
The Legacy of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” 20 Years Later
Gore to climate scientists: “Start getting involved in politics.” Boy, did they listen.
By Roger Pielke Jr., His Blog, Apr 6, 2026
An Inconvenient Truth and its aftermath provided a lesson yet to be fully appreciated: Political exhortation grounded in “science” will not drive the technological change required for global transformation. Technology and politics must evolve together, with “science” playing a supporting but not central role. Efforts to leverage science as the basis for motivating political transformation will compromise the integrity of scientific institutions rather than transform global politics. When that happens, we all suffer.
When the climate science community chose to organize itself as a political movement behind a charismatic preacher, that helped turn many institutions of climate science into what Barkun described as part of the “New Apocalypticism” — a secular eschatology, in which science exists not to advance understandings in all of their complexities, but instead to confirm Manichean belief.
The cost of that choice — in public trust and in the scientific community’s capacity to self-correct — is still being paid.
[SEPP Comment: Gore’s book was not grounded in physical science. It was strongly contradicted by physical evidence.]
Other Scientific News
The Genesis Revitalizing U.S. Scientific Research
By Duggan Flanakin, Real Clear Energy, Apr 8, 2026
Other News that May Be of Interest
How China Dominates the World’s Critical Minerals Production
By Kyle McCollum, WUWT, Apr 6, 2026
He Radicalized the Sierra Cub. Now He’s Preaching Markets.
By Chris Johnson, Real Clear Energy, Mar 30, 2026
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Claim: Green Nations are Poised to Become a New Superpower
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 10, 2026
Choc Horror, Cocoa loco
By Mark Hodgson, Climate Scepticism, Apr 6, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
It turns out that there’s an 18-month time lag in prices feeding through from global wholesale prices to local retail prices. And those wholesale prices are already coming down rapidly:
“Today the price of cocoa is about £2,500 a tonne, but in 2024 it peaked at nearly £9,000.”
Claim: The Climate Crisis Has Already Caused Society to Collapse
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 9, 2026
The hilarious part is by defining the collapse of society as imperceptible, the claims made by this climate prepper movement become unfalsifiable.
[SEPP Comment: The Occasional Paper “Deep Adaption: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy” was released by the Institute of Leadership and Sustainability in 2018.]
Claim: Climate Change is Killing all the Amazon Dung Beetles
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Apr 8, 2026
That stink at the Belém Climate Conference was climate change, not overloaded toilets.
The Real Hockey Stick Graph
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Mar 31, 2026
[SEPP Comment: The hockey stick is the last 18 months of gas prices. Extending it to 48 months produces a broken U.]
The National Security Case for U.S. Leadership in SRM Technology
By George David Banks, American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research, February 2026 [H/t Clare Goldsberry]
Solar Radiation Management (SRM) – a suite of geoengineering techniques to reflect sunlight and cool the planet – presents a double-edged sword: a potential tool to mitigate increases in global temperatures, yet a profound risk for national security, economic stability, and global order.
Global governance remains fragmented, with voluntary principles lacking teeth amid rogue actors and unilateral risks.
[SEPP Comment: Global governance to manage solar radiation hitting Earth? A distasteful concept, but an action that may be demanded to warm the planet when the next ice age glaciation forms.]
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