By Robert Bradley Jr.
“There is no renewables ‘transition’ – ONLY addition.” (below)
The much-hyped “energy transition” has predictably failed. Grant Lukies presented the chart below and reported on social media:
For those of you paying attention – still no ‘transition’ evident whatsoever (to August 2025). 33 years of IPCC stewardship and panic and $billions spent and absolutely zero downward trend in slope of the curve.
THIS is THE failed KPI of alarmist catastrophism writ large. There is no renewables ‘transition’ – ONLY addition.
Is this bad news? Hardly. The plants rejoice as CO2 enrichment continues. A greener Planet Earth is surely better than wind, solar, and battery industrialization from all points of view.
Remember what Daniel Yergin concluded in The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (2020), p. 422:
As they grow, wind and solar and EVs will need ‘big shovels’ to meet their increasing call on mined minerals and land itself. It is estimated that an onshore wind turbine requires fifteen hundred tons of iron, twenty-five hundred tons of concrete, and forty-five tons of plastic. About half a million pounds of raw materials have to be mined and processed to make a battery for an electric car.
And more recently (2025):
[In 2020] when the [New Map] came out, there was still this kind of magical thinking almost about energy transition…. We’ve heard the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer say that, “Sorry to tell you all this, but oil and gas is going to be around for a long time in the mix.”
And James Hansen, father of the climate alarm, who stated:
The notion that renewable energies and batteries alone will provide all needed energy is fantastical. It is also a grotesque idea….
and another observation:
Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
And as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said this week at the G20 Meeting in Houston, the energy capital of the world:
It wasn’t true, the idea that somehow there was an energy transition going on in the world, and the energy transition was the highest priority. We’re not talking about energy transition because the transition was actually energy subtraction.
Enough said.
“NUT” Zero.
Gaia loves the CO2
Gaia doesn’t love squat. Attributing consciousness to Gaia is dumb, period, and just plays into their game.
I don’t think he meant it literally- but you assumed that as a child might. 🙂
Fair enough, but how many people out there accept what they are told (appeal to authority) as a child naturally does?
That’s my point — describing it as “Gaia loves …” concedes their point that the planet feels pain, can be healthy or unhealthy. etc.
I got that.
And your point goes well beyond Gaia loves….
It’s amazing looking at the smoothness of the co2 graph. There is no sign of the 2008 recession or covid in 2020.
It’s almost as if humanity’s activities are having absolutely zero effect on atmospheric CO2 level.
Just like a bit of basic arithmetic shows.
Yes, they have wasted Trillions of dollars on reducing CO2 to no effect.
Climate alarmist efforts have had no effect. Now they want to double-down.
Here’s a Carbon balance
Humanity has produced enough CO2 over a century to raise the rather low level in the atmosphere, a small portion of the oceans for example…But it is pretty hard to imagine that the huge levels of photosynthesis and respiration will not adjust over the lifetime of a boreal forest or two, or a couple of recirculations of the ocean basins…while the finding cost of petroleum will eventually limit mankind to primarily nuclear power.
What? No “positive feedback?” No “tipping points?”
How dare you present a valid study.
😉
I’m sorry, but that graph is real data, not a model. Everyone knows models override real data every time!
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
But irony shouldn’t be.
I always try to get my Recommended Daily Allowance of irony.
Unfortunately, for those lacking critical thinking skills, irony is a difficult concept as everything must, by training, be taken literally.
The COVID shutdowns only reduced economic activity by a few percent for a few months. Not enough to show up in a chart like this.
Check your data, Mark. I may be wrong, but I do not think so.
It was small, but not so small it would not show up.
On the other hand, the ML curve is a specific site and could well have been immune to changes elsewhere in the globe.
What is more interesting is that once the shutdowns were ended, not only did the reductions cease, but the trendline was fully restored as if somewhere there was a boost above normal emission levels.
CO2 is not a climate control knob.
CO2 does not cause global warming.
Control knob?
STORY TIP ?
\
https://joannenova.com.au/2026/09/looks-like-solar-activity-can-change-the-pacific-ocean/
ENSO connection?
The most consequential green house gas based on concentration and its broad IR absorption is not CO2, it’s H2O.
There is no such thing as a greenhouse gas except in an actual greenhouse. The earth is an open system, not a greenhouse.
Agreed. H2O has more influence on weather and CO2 barely rates as a bit player.
It did not “show up”. The 2020 CO2 variation was well within natural variation.
My Scripps Oceanography CO2 weekly data anomaly curve varied so very little in 2020 the smoothed curve for 2020 was mostly perfectly flat at zero anomaly.
After 2020, CO2 anomalies entered a multi-year dip due to the deepening La Niña.
After the record-setting 2023-25 CO2 positive anomaly period, CO2 anomalies are still negative during this present El Niño build-up, typically lagging the tropics.
I did not book mark them at the time. I did see graphs that showed a minor disturbance in the “force.” (a play on Star Wars).
Jonathan Cohler: “Fossil fuel combustion drove essentially none of the atmospheric CO2 growth”
https://rumble.com/v7f6f50-jonathan-cohler-fossil-fuel-combustion-drove-essentially-none-of-the-atmosp.html?e9s=src_v1_cbl%2Csrc_v1_ucp_a
(Tom Nelson podcast)
Another study that should essentially kill off the climate alarmist narrative if the study’s conclusion is correct. The Nutcase Zero campaign is totally and completely unnecessary and has cost western countries countless billions of taxpayer $$$$ with little or nothing constructive to show for it.
Think, A Few Good Men.
The Truth! You can’t handle the Truth.
(The “you” is any Trans-Reality Alarmist).
The denial of those activists is extreme.
If it does not fit their ideology, the refuse to accept it as even possible.
Sad.
The planet has been warming for several centuries since the end of the LIA. CO2 levels are increasing as the earth warms. This is consistent with ice core data. The climate warms and then CO2 increases. Al Gore got it backwards.
Al Gore was on a mission. Power. Influence. Celebrity Status. Wealth.
Given his objectives, he got his story right. Does not align with reality.
Actually, there is a subtle plateau about 1993-94 in both the seasonal extremes, and an obvious anomaly in the 1999 seasonal low. Neither event has received any press, and more importantly, a viable explanation.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/11/contribution-of-anthropogenic-co2-emissions-to-changes-in-atmospheric-concentrations/
T-shirt idea: A picture of a sheaf of wheat on the front, and the slogan “I love CO2”.
You mean something like this? 🙂
Oops! I wondered if it had already been done. I should get a couple.
I finally looked, and no such t-shirt exists, apparently. Lots of i “heart” CO2. Ick! Then I noticed one on the other side saying “Make love, not CO2”. The mind boggles at the idiocy.
How about “Make Love AND CO2”?
The heavy breathing only lasts a short time.
Done by ChatGPT. 🙂
After careful study I have determined a correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and white dudes with beards.
Not only wheat!
Looking at that graph reminds me of the famous Dire Straits song “Money For Nothing”. How about a graph showing where this wasted money now mostly resides?
Money is still being thrown away on windmills, solar and batteries.
Elon Musk says solar is the future. Is he suggesting we cover the entire Earth with solar panels? Maybe solar panels located in orbit?
Question: Which ‘future’ will be realized first – solar or nuclear fusion?
Just like real farts, if only ~1 in 10 brain farts has real potency for recognition as a harbinger of other effects, and attribution, we’re scoring pretty well..
Solar panels in orbit is a 50-yeaqr old concept.
The technical hurdle was how to safely beam the energy to the surface.
Another technical hurdle was the cost of maintenance and repair.
Those small annoying meteoroids wreak havok on solar arrays of that scale.
Actually, Heinlein described it way over fifty years ago (I think it was him, he was so right about so much). Microwave receivers would be established in farmland, a wire grid elevated on 150′ pylons and distributed much like the turbines of today, but silent and motionless. (And skinnier)
The main issue wasn’t technical feasibility, it was cost-to-orbit.
I remember those stories.
However, that was Science Fiction.
A great source for ideas, of course.
I was specifically referring to serious technical and engineering discussions.
The main issue was how to bean high powered microwave to earth without endangering wild life, aircraft, and people, give the orbits are never perfect and the planet rotation has variatioons.
Cost to orbit is valid and I addressed that elsewhere.
Along with the charged particle fluxes degrading solar cells.
Valid point. Indirectly covered in the maintenance and repair sentence.
To date, repair and maintenance of space PV power systems has been to remove and replace the entire PV array.
At the Mauna Loa Obs. in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is currently 427 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has mass of 1,290 kgs and contains a mere 0.84 g of CO2. The claims since 1988 by the corrupt IPCC and the unscrupulous collaborating scientists that this trace amount of CO2 in the atmosphere causes “global warming” and is the “control knob of climate change” are deliberate fabrications and lies, the purpose of which is to provide the justifications for continued maintenance and generous funding of this UN organization whose headquarters are in Bern. This organization should be shut down and disbanded.
This small amount of CO2 in the air cannot absorb enough out-going long wavelength IR light to warmup such a large mass of air. In winter CO2 hibernates.
There will never be any transition away from fossil fuels by the heavy industries, the heavy transportation systems, agriculture, and food preparation and distribution industries. In many countries with long cold and snowy winters, fossil fuels keep billions of people and their pets from freezing to death in winter.
If the goal is humanity flourishing, you are correct.
If the goal, and this has been stated, is to reduce the global human population to 100M and turn earth into an untended park, then the ending of transportation and industry and civilization will occur with only the few select elite living the good life with a global feudal system managing the deplorables, erm, serfs.
The interesting thing is that, in my judgement, the people who have wealth don’t usually have survival skills that they can call on to repair or replace technology that fails. Their primary skill set is to gather in money from the capitalistic economy as it currently exists. They are used to hiring someone for repair work. Once they have a catastrophic failure, their enclave will cease to function and they will be on their own. A gated community will last only as long as the machinery lasts. Paper money will be worthless in the absence of demand. Once the population crashes, the demand for consumer goods will crash with it and those with lots of ‘money’ on paper will find it has lost its liquidity.
I think the UN should not be shut down.
My proposal is that the UN, lock, stock, and barrel, be moved to sub-Saharan Africa and employed as Rainmakers or, possibly, dung collectors.
That would, for the first time in its history, make the UN bureaucrats truly productive. The EU bureaucrats should join them.
100%!!!
Look at the Mauna Loa chart.
What happened to the “truth” that CO2 was “well mixed” in the atmosphere and that it had xx years residency staying power?
I am aware of the explanation for the variations around the trend line. I do not believe the explanation is the complete answer.
Also, I continue to find it fascinating that CO2 measurements are made atop an active volcano some 15 miles from an active vent.
“atop an active volcano”
Go to the Mauna Loa site and read what is done. Specifically, if the vent is venting the source for measurement is changed to Maunakea. Also, they state their number may “not be the same as the globally averaged CO2 concentration at the surface”. Also, link to “Observing Networks” to learn of the collaboration with other dispersed sites.
I have read all of it.
The technology for those precision measurements. All fascinating.
The precautions, etc. Well thought out, but not necessarily complete.
Yes, the observatory was moved.
I also have carefully review other sites.
Perfection, of course, is unobtainium.
However, in the context of “well mixed” which was one of the points raised and long life residency, another point raised, the vents contributed before eruptions and the move.
It is another one of the lies that is rarely questioned. CO2 is well-mixed regionally, but not globally:
Regionally needs a concise definition.
In an urban setting, CO2 is different than 5 miles away in a rural setting.
If one looks at NASA data, one sees streams and swirls of CO2. Hardly what one envisions with the words “well mixed.”
The distinction I was trying to make is that clearly CO2 is not well-mixed on a global scale (as shown in the NOAA graph), and it is also not well-mixed on a local scale such as along a commute corridor in an urban area or down-wind of a large fossil-fuel power plant. The intermediate scale, what I referred to as “regional,” may vary with the type of source(s) and the weather.
Noted both in the article (although very conservative) and comments about the $B – and more accurately, $T – that climate hoaxsters have cost the global economy. Does anyone know of, or how to, estimate the OPPORTUNITY cost of the squandered $$?
My not-very-extensive search found only studies (i.e., more models) that tried to analyze the cost in CARBON emissions, not what the rest of economies paid to allow all that investment to be put into carbon capture, decarbonization, reduced- or carbon-free manufacturing and processing, etc. In other words, the approach has been to ignore what wasn’t done due to the (as shown in this article) pointless pocket-lining for all the grant farmers, as well as the damage done by all the acres of solar panels, the waste generation due to production and disposal of
unreliable“renewable” energy generators, etc. It was also noted in at least a couple of the ‘studies’ that their estimates of impact had error bars equal to or greater than the numbers they quoted as results.Last century, my engineering professors had a term for results like that: GUESSES.
In my estimates, aka guesses, had the money been directed to the areas needed it most (no corruption or greed or other nefarious losses), The entire continent of Africa could have been provided with reliable electricity to all of its denizens.
Given less funding, the entire population could have received the tools, training, and resources to build it for themselves, which would have been the better plan.
Your guesstimate is almost exactly what my WAG (a similar concept) was. I particularly liked the latter one, since it left a legacy that could grow. However, your condition in the first sentence would mean it’d have to done thru the agency of a corporation or competent charity, since little of the resources would survive passage thru the gastrointestinal system of a government agency. One of the first aphorisms I learned about government programs was NEVER underestimate the ‘toll for the troll’ who lives under every government bridge in existence.
I shall endeavor to remember the troll metaphor. 🙂
We often use SWAG which is Silly WAG.
Which leads to the obvious question, “What incontrovertible evidence do we have that instead of the meme of CO2 causing warming, the inverse is not true? Namely, that increasing temperature drives the growth of vegetation and out-gassing from the oceans, and the biogenic decomposition of the increased vegetative mass results in increased CO2 that encourages further growth of plants?”.
Another interesting prospect is that increased foliage shades the ground.
This means during sunlight hours, the ground receives and stores less energy.
This means nights are cooler &/or cool faster.
So in essence, more CO2 has a natural cooling effect on areas of the planet.
Wind and solar can’t sustain the grid everybody knows that. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators, build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators, remove all wind and solar from the grid.