The Week That Was: 2026-09-19 (September 19, 2026)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.” — Richard Feynman
Number of the Week: 579 million or 655 million
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW begins with a discussion of John Christy’s contribution to the book Canary In a Climate World which was based on testimony Christy gave to the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space & Technology in 2017. TWTW discusses the partial repeal of the “carbon pollution” standards for power plants and the views of Francis Menton. TWTW concludes with a discussion of two studies identifying possible benefits of global greening.
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Modeling Failure: In his description of John Christy’s chapter in Canary in a Climate World Vol. 3, John Robson notes that Christy, like Richard Lindzen and William Happer, insists that science is not a thing or a collection of facts, it is a process of evaluating evidence following a systematic method – the scientific method. Robson writes:
“It’s a method, a way of getting at the truth, both the facts and their meaning. And key to the method is testing theories, testing them against evidence not against their own predictions disguised as outputs by being run through computers to generate unreal-world data. Climate models, and hence their outputs of projected future data and of reconstructed present or past data, embed theories, or rather theory-driven guesses, about how the atmosphere will respond to rising CO2 levels.
They all predict warming, especially in the troposphere over the tropics, because it’s what the theory says will happen, indeed must. But you can also feed into climate models the actual observed changes over the past 40 years in greenhouse gases, solar energy, ozone and other climate influences, then compare the predicted warming response to the measured warming as shown by the different measurement systems. And as Christy has shown both to academics and policymakers, the predicted warming isn’t showing up. A little warming is happening, but nowhere near what models predict.
So, the models are defective. Unless you’re the kind of person who reacts to a mismatch between models and data by declaring the data defective and going and getting new and better data. If, say, you’re Michael Mann. But we’re not and neither is Christy.
So, he points out that the IPCC included a chart in the 5th Assessment Report admitting the models were wrong. The format of the chart made it hard to understand what it was showing, and for good measure they interred it in an online appendix without referring to it in the main text. But Christy had served as a reviewer and knew where that particular body was buried. In his chapter he shows the figure and explains that it shows that the only models capable of reproducing the past 40 years of slow tropospheric warming are the ones that assume CO2 has no effect. So, you see why they hid the corpse of their theory.”
What Christy submitted was his testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space & Technology on March 29, 2017. Although the testimony is almost 10 years old, it is still very applicable today. In the Summary Christy wrote:
“‘Science’ is not a set of facts but a process or method that sets out a way for us to discover information and which attempts to determine the level of confidence we might have in that information. In the method, a ‘claim’ or ‘hypothesis’ is stated such that rigorous tests might be employed to test the claim to determine its credibility. If the claim fails a test, the claim is rejected or modified then tested again. When the ‘scientific method’ is applied to the output from climate models of the IPCC AR5, specifically the bulk atmospheric temperature trends since 1979 (a key variable with a strong and obvious theoretical response to increasing GHGs in this period), I demonstrate that the consensus of the models fails the test to match the real-world observations by a significant margin. As such, the average of the models is considered to be untruthful in representing the recent decades of climate variation and change, and thus would be inappropriate for use in predicting future changes in the climate or for related policy decisions.
The IPCC inadvertently provided information that supports this conclusion by (a) showing that the tropical trends of climate models with extra greenhouse gases failed to match actual trends and (b) showing that climate models without extra greenhouse gases agreed with actual trends. A report of which I was a co-author demonstrates that a statistical model that uses only natural influences on the climate also explains the variations and trends since 1979 without the need of extra greenhouse gases. While such a model (or any climate model) cannot ‘prove’ the causes of variations, the fact that its result is not rejected by the scientific method indicates it should be considered when trying to understand why the climate does what it does. Deliberate consideration of the major influences by natural variability on the climate has been conspicuously absent in the current explanations of climate change by the well-funded climate science industry.
One way to aid congress in understanding more of the climate issue than what is produced by biased ‘official’ panels of the climate establishment is to organize and fund credible ‘Red Teams’ that look at issues such as natural variability, the failure of climate models and the huge benefits to society from affordable energy, carbon-based and otherwise. I would expect such a team would offer to congress some very different conclusions regarding the human impacts on climate.”
Although appropriate, the entire testimony is too long to reproduce in TWTW and only a few highlights are given below. Further, a red team analysis was performed by a team assembled by the current Energy Secretary Chris Wright and found great uncertainties in the science that is often declared settled. Unfortunately, the team may have been improperly formed and operated without transparency, so the analysis is ignored by those who falsely claim the science is settled.
After stating his qualifications, the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science (now retired) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville states:
“My research area might be best described as building datasets from scratch to advance our understanding of what the climate is doing and why – an activity I began as a teenager over 50 years ago. I have used traditional surface observations as well as measurements from balloons and satellites to document the climate story. Many of our UAH datasets, generated by myself and UAH colleagues Drs. Roy Spencer and W. Daniel Braswell, are used to test hypotheses of climate variability and change.”
Section 1 “Applying the scientific method to climate models from the IPCC AR5” includes a chart of the IPCC “distinct human fingerprint” a pronounced warming over the tropics especially between an atmospheric pressure of 400 mb to 150 mb (23,000 ft to 50,000 ft) for the period 1979-2016 calculated from the Canadian Climate Model.
Section 2 “Observational data used to test climate models” describes the data used to test the models. It begins with:
“Recall that the results from climate models are simply hypotheses (claims) about how the climate should have evolved in the past. The claim here is, ‘The bulk atmospheric temperature trend since 1979 of the consensus of the IPCC AR5 climate models represents the actual trend since 1979.’… The first type of observational datatset is built from satellites that directly measure the bulk atmospheric temperature through the intensity of microwave emissions. These data are essentially global in coverage and monitor the Earth every day. There are three sources, UAH (University of Alabama in Huntsville), RSS (Remote Sensing Systems, San Rafael CA) and NOAA.
The second type of measurement is produced from the ascent of balloons which carry various instruments including thermistors (which monitor the air temperature) as the balloon rises through this layer. From these measurements a value equivalent to the satellite TMT [Temperature Mid Troposphere] profile is calculated.”
The concluding paragraph of the section begins with:
“Finally, major weather centers around the world generate atmospheric conditions every six hours or so of the entire Earth at many vertical levels, called Reanalyses. These products use many sources of data, including satellites and balloons, and merge the observations with a continuously running general circulation model. From the information at the vertical levels the TMT quantity is generated for an apples-to-apples comparison with models, satellites, and balloons.”
Section 3 “Testing the claim – applying the scientific method” states in part:
In Figure 2 we show the evolution of the tropical TMT temperature since 1979 for the 102 climate model runs grouped in 32 curves by institution. Some institutions contributed a single simulation, others as many as 18. Multiple runs from a single institution’s model category were averaged into a single time series here. The curves show the temperature evolution of the atmosphere in the tropical box shown in Fig. 1. [The tropical hot spot]
“Here we have climate model results (i.e., ‘claims’ or ‘hypotheses’) to compare with observational datasets in a test to check whether the model average agrees with the observed data (i.e., the ‘claim’ or ‘hypothesis’.) We test the model average because it represents the consensus of the theoretical models and is used to develop policy which is embodied in policy-related products such as the Social Cost of Carbon, the National Climate Assessment and the EPA Endangerment Finding.”
Christy states that econometrician Ross McKitrick applied the Vogelsang-Franses F-Test method to these data to determine if the different datasets are equivalent or significantly different. After showing that the observational data sets are distinctly different from the model generated datasets, Christy asserts:
“The scientific conclusion here, if one follows the scientific method, is that the average model trend fails to represent the actual trend of the past 38 years by a highly significant amount. As a result, applying the traditional scientific method, one would accept this failure and not promote the model trends as something truthful about the recent past or the future. Rather, the scientist would return to the project and seek to understand why the failure occurred. The most obvious answer is that the models are simply too sensitive to the extra GHGs that are being added to both the model and the real world.”
Christy concludes this section by stating that since the models are tuned with surface temperature observations, they cannot be tested by using surface temperature observations. It is like giving students answers to a test ahead of time.
In section 4 “The IPCC AR5 (2013) displayed a similar result – the models failed” Christy points out that the Supplementary Material of Chapter 10 of AR5 contains a chart that shows the models fail. However, the charts are difficult to understand. Christy writes: [Boldface in original]
“I have taken the same information in Fig. 4 (IPCC AR5 Fig. 10.SM.1) and simplified the presentation so as to be clearer in Fig. 5 below. The trends here represent trends at different levels of the tropical atmosphere from the surface up to 50,000 ft. The gray lines are the bounds for the range of observations, the blue for the range of IPCC model results without extra GHGs and the red for IPCC model results with extra GHGs.”
“What is immediately evident is that the model trends in which extra GHGs are included lie completely outside of the range of the observational trends, indicating again that the models, as hypotheses, failed a simple “scientific-method” test applied to this fundamental, climate-change variable. That this information was not clearly and openly presented in the IPCC is evidence of a political process that was not representative of the dispassionate examination of evidence as required by the scientific method. Further, (and this took guts) the IPCC then claimed high confidence in knowing why the climate evolved as it did over the past few decades (humans as the main cause) ignoring the fact the models on which that claim was based had failed an obvious and rather easy-to perform validation test. Incredibly, what Fig. 5 shows is that the bulk tropical atmospheric temperature change is modeled best when no extra GHGs are included – a direct contradiction to the IPCC conclusion that observed changes could only be modeled if extra GHGs were included.”
The sections ending Christy’s testimony are: “(5) A simple statistical model that passed the same ‘scientific method’ test;” and “(6) Red Teams needed because Consensus Science is not Science.” Christy concludes with the Summary given above and a bio.
TWTW has found no improvement in the climate modeling used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its followers. No matter how the IPCC may change its scenarios, the modeling failure is paramount. The results of the massive work involved in forecasting future climate (highly questionable) would be better if the influence of additional greenhouse gases were dropped altogether.
Richard Lindzen and William Happer have shown based on laboratory experiments the first 20 parts per million in volume (ppmv) of atmospheric CO2 results in a warming of 3.08 °C (5.54°F) the second 20 ppmv results in a warming of only 0.53°C (0.95°F). The increase in CO2 from 1750 to today (from 280 ppmv to 420 ppmv) results in a warming of only 0.054°C (0.097°F). An increase from today’s 420 ppmv to 600 ppmv would result in a of 0.038°C (0.068°F). Such increases are absurdly insignificant.
Christy’s testimony demonstrated that global climate models with greenhouse gases are contradicted by observations but if the models include no greenhouse gases they are consistent with observations. Physical observations of what is occurring in the atmosphere is consistent with laboratory experiments. There is no justification for the regulation of carbon dioxide, which is essential for photosynthesis, the building block of food for all complex life.
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and for TWTW’s August 8 presentation of the calculations by Lindzen and Happer who assert “CO2 Has Had Virtually No Warming Power Since 1750 and the Other EPA GHGs Are Too Small to Matter” see https://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2026/TWTW%20August%208%202026.pdf
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Partial Repeal: Attorney Francis Menton discusses the Partial Repeal of the Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units. The summary of the action in the Federal Register states in part:
“Specifically, the EPA is repealing the emission guidelines for existing fossil fuel-fired steam generating units, the carbon capture and sequestration/storage (CCS)- based standards for coal-fired steam generating units undertaking a large modification, and the CCS-based standards for new base load stationary combustion turbines (i.e., Phase 2 standards).”
Menton asserts:
“Today’s action is ludicrously complex in its efforts to clear away some of the convoluted regulatory thicket erected by the previous administration. (It was 195 pages long in the standard double-spaced typed format issued a few days ago, in advance of the official Federal Register publication.). The complexity of the rescission is a function of the complexity of the prior actions that it seeks to unwind. Today I’ll try to provide a comprehensible summary of the background, and how the latest action fits into the mix.”
When announcing the 2009 finding that six greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, and be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare, EPA claimed three distinct lines of evidence to support its conclusion: 1. Basic physical understanding of greenhouse gas effects; 2. Historical climate records; and 3. Computer‑based climate models.
In his testimony, above, John Christy produced physical evidence that the first and third lines of evidence are inconsistent with observations. The July 15, 2023, TWTW discussed 67 million years of evidence that contradict EPA’s claim of historic climate record. The EPA should totally clean the slate in its efforts to regulate its identified greenhouse gases and acknowledge its efforts as a complete folly. The dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor, is not regulated.
The EPA press release stated:
“Additionally, the targeted emissions are global in nature, and any potential public health harms are too uncertain, conjectural, remote, and convoluted to tie specifically to the U.S. power sector. Therefore, the agency is proposing it is out of its scope to regulate. If finalized, American businesses will be given certainty for the future, empowering them to unleash the full potential of American energy and provide it at an affordable price for families.
Baseload power is essential to the great American story, powering generations of manufacturing, good-paying jobs, and communities. Together, the coal and natural gas industries support hundreds of thousands of jobs and add tens of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy each year. The nation’s power plants provide reliable, affordable energy essential to national security, heating homes, and keeping schools lit. But for nearly two decades, the Obama and Biden administrations worked to destroy coal and natural gas, threatening our energy security and driving up costs for everyday Americans. In contrast, the Trump EPA has delivered billions in cost savings for baseload power.”
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy and Washington’s Control of Energy, for the July 15, 2023, TWTW see: https://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2023/TWTW%207-15-23.pdf
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Greenest Year? John Robson discusses a study in Nature Reviews, Earth & Environment that in its summary asserts:
“Global mean vegetation greenness reached a record high in the year 2025, extending the multi-decadal upward trend. A total of 68.2% of vegetated land surfaces experienced greening, particularly in grasslands and croplands in the Southern Hemisphere and in northern mid-latitudes.”
A study published by Science Advances asserts in it abstract in part:
“Individual satellite products converge on overall similar trends, providing the strongest evidence to date that the planet has become less dusty in the early 21st century. This decline in atmospheric dust has exerted a positive effective radiative forcing of +0.02 ± 0.05 watts per square meter over 2003–2023, implying that declining atmospheric dust might have modestly contributed to the rapid warming of the past two decades.”
Among the possible causes the paper asserts:
“A range of mechanisms has been proposed to explain post-2010 declines in dust in various regions, including weaker near-surface winds partially driven by a decreased meridional temperature gradient, land-surface changes (greening and increased soil moisture), and circulation changes that alter emission and transport efficiency, with additional modulation by region-specific hydroclimate variability and land management…. However, robust attribution remains challenging because observational constraints on the dust cycle are still incomplete and, in some regions, inconsistent across sources, transport corridors, and sinks.” [Boldface added]
The benefits of adding CO2 to the atmosphere may be wider than global greening alone. See links under Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide.
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Number of the Week: 579 million or 655 million. Vijay Jayaraj of the CO2 Coalition links to the Global Multinational Poverty Index, 2024, by the United Nations Development Programme and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.
The report states: “Around half of all poor people lack electricity (579 million).” A June 2026 report by International Energy Agency estimated the number without electricity to be 655 million. For the UN to promote a program opposing the generation of electricity from abundant, reliable fossil fuels while about 600 million people are living without electricity is reprehensible. See links under Questioning the Orthodoxy.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?
Looks like solar activity can change the Pacific ocean
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 17, 2026
Link to paper: Solar-Cycle Modulation of Subsurface Ocean Memory via the North Pacific Eastern Subtropical Mode Water
By Jianing Wang, et al., Geophysical Research Letters, July 23, 2026
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
https://www.heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-II/CCR-II-Full.pdf
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
https://wvanwijngaarden.info.yorku.ca/files/2020/12/WThermal-Radiationf.pdf?x45936
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
https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-2025-vWijngaarden-Happer.pdf
Challenging the Orthodoxy
#Canary in a Climate World: John Christy on testing the climate hypothesis
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
U.S. House Committee on Science, Space & Technology
Testimony of John R. Christy. Professor of Atmospheric Science, Alabama State Climatologist, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Mar 29, 2017
Another Big Step In The Removal Of Destructive “Climate” Regulations
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Sep 17, 2026
Link to: Partial Repeal of the Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units
EPA, Federal Register, Sep 17, 2026
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-09-17/pdf/2026-19071.pdf
Defending the Orthodoxy
UN Climate Chief: “the climate crisis is now a continent-wide economic security emergency”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 12, 2026
[SEPP Comment: The post gives a transcript of a speech delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell at the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday 10 September 2026.]
Taking Us for Fools
How a turnkey method attributes any trend to climate change
By Roger Pielke Jr., The Honest Broker, Sep 17, 2026
Consider the recent report of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on extreme event attribution (which is problematic for many reasons). The table below shows who the report cites the most. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Bezos Earth Fund underwrites both WWA [World Weather Attribution] and the committee that wrote the NAS report. Small world.
Similarly, the IPCC AR7 chapter on extreme events includes two people from WWA among the 20 co-authors — with 9 members of the writing team specializing in EEA [extreme event attribution]. Friederike Otto is a chapter co-lead.
[SEPP Comment: Bezos’s Amazon is building a 7 GW natural gas power plant for a data center in Texas. See link under Energy Issues – US.]
Climate change made deadly Nepal glacier and rock collapse more likely, according to analysis
By Sibi Arasu, AP, The Hill, Sep 16, 2026
Link to report: Rapid Warming in the Himalaya Exacerbates Geohazard Cascades Beyond Adaptation Limits
By Staff, World Weather Attribution, Sep 17, 2026
From report: When analysing how these conditions were different in a 1.4°C cooler preindustrial climate, using the standard WWA attribution framework that compares possible weather in today’s climate with possible weather in a 1.4°C cooler preindustrial climate using climate models and statistical models based on weather observations. We find in all datasets a significant increase in the likelihood and intensity of the very warm July-August temperatures at the gridcell nearest to the slope failure as well as in the wider region with an increase in temperature attributable to human-caused climate change during July and August of about 1.5°C, comparable to the level of global warming. Annually, the attributable increase is larger than global warming, at about 2°C. In individual winter months, the observed increase is as high as 3°C. [Boldface added]
[SEPP Comment: How have they tested the accuracy of their models?]
Brussels is Building a Climate Protection Racket in the Name of ‘Climate Insurance’
By Tilak Doshi, Tilak’s Substack, Sep 17, 2026
Both proposals share the same unstated premise that ordinary weather insurance has failed, and that only a new instrument bearing the word ‘climate’, underwritten by Brussels, can keep Europe insurable. That premise is a category error. It has been made before – by central bankers reaching for ‘climate stress tests’, by ESG fund managers pricing transition risk that never materialized, and now by insurance regulators. Each time, we see the same conflation of routine, priceable risk with manufactured systemic crisis. Each time, the same remedy: more Brussels, less market.
National Emergency Briefing
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 15, 2026
The People’s Emergency Briefing film has been shown around the country [Great Britain] this year:
Tessa Khan, who presented the Energy Transition segment, is not an energy or economics expert. She has no qualifications or experience whatsoever in the subject.
She is an Environmental Lawyer and is Executive Director at Uplift, an advocacy organization, set up to to create a rapid and fair transition away from oil and gas production in the UK.
Uplift is funded by the usual Green Blob, notably the European Climate Foundation, which lies at the heart of the hydra.
It is one thing academics lecturing our leaders. It is quite another to give an official platform to an activist with a political agenda.
How Environmental Activists Plan to Preserve Biden’s Climate Agenda
By Tyler O’Neil, The Woketopus, Sep 15, 2026
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Wildfire smoke and health: current evidence, mechanisms, and future challenges
By Gongbo Chen, et al., The Lancet, Sep 19, 2026
From summary: In the era of climate change, numerous regions worldwide are facing a surge in both the frequency and unprecedented scale of wildfires. Exposure to wildfire smoke poses substantial risks to health, especially for vulnerable populations. Although previous studies have shed light on health effects of wildfire smoke, crucial research gaps persist, including long-term health effects, interactions with pre-existing health conditions, and health disparities.
[SEPP Comment: The frequency and scale of wildfires has not increased since the 1800s.]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Climate Doomsters Undone by Geology
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Sep 17, 2026
At American Greatness, Leslie Matthews reviews a new book by geologist Gregory Wrightstone: A Very Convenient Warming.
Circular logic all the way down
By Mike Jones, WUWT, Sep 13, 2026
In other fields of science, the normal attitude to unknowns is that the relevant factors are not yet understood, not that they are deterministic chaos. It seems reasonable to take a similar approach in the field of weather and climate.
Fantasy Climate Models Effectively Denied Energy to the Poor: The White House Just Set the Stage for Change
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Sep 17, 2026
Link to: Global Multinational Poverty Index, 2024
By Staff, United Nations Development Programme and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, 2024
Link to: 655 million people still living without electricity underscore urgent need to deliver on universal energy access target
Press Release, International Energy Agency, June 24, 2026
The effect of climate hyperbole extended to international trade. The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism entered a definitive phase in January, attaching costs to imported steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizer, hydrogen, and electricity.
India objected 29 times at the World Trade Organization between 2020 and 2024, arguing that the measure violated non-discrimination rules. Iron and steel make up 90% of Indian exports exposed to the EU tax.
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
(Plus as Michelle mentions, a key poll supporting this new claim found that many participants had never heard of climate change before, so their commitment after being given a one-sentence summary wasn’t exactly deep.)
The Northwest Wildfire Season Was Dominated by Grass and Range Fires. That Has Implications.
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Sep 15, 2026
In terms of acreage, 2026 has been one of the most prolific wildfire years of the past decades.
Importantly, grass and range fires have little to do with global warming and climate change.
Al Gore’s Global Warming Movement Has Officially FAILED! ‘Global Fossil Fuel Use Keeps Increasing’ – ‘Fossil fuels supplied 81% of world energy in 2024 – A 163% increase since 1971
By Admin, Climate Depot, Sep 13, 2026
Energy & Environmental Review: September 14, 2026
By John Droz, Jr., Master Resource, Sep 14, 2026
Problems in the Orthodoxy
90% of French Wildfires Caused by Humans
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 15, 2026
From The Guardian: That means fully one-third of wildfires in France each year are set deliberately, with the intention of doing harm.
After Paris!
The BRICS Coalition Meets In India
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Sep 14, 2026
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
A global decline in atmospheric dust during the 21st century
By Ashok Kumar Gupta, et al., Science Advances, Sep 16, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aef5691
Greenest year ever
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
Link to paper: Vegetation greenness in 2025
By Nazhakaiti Anniwaer,, et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, Apr 1, 2026
The effect of additional CO2 on the Joshua Tree
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
From the CO2Science.org archive.
Seeking a Common Ground
The Effects of Changing Temperatures on the Medicare Population
By Staff, Congressional Budget Office, September 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-09/62555-Temperatures-Medicare.pdf
In this slide deck, the Congressional Budget Office examines how changing temperatures affect people who are enrolled in Medicare.
When AI Agents Started Working Together
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, Sep 12, 2026
I’m FAR more frightened of Bernie’s [Sen. Sanders] new proposed extension of government regulation on the AI industry than I am of the AI industry. Do these fools think that the Russians and Chinese are going to sit on their hands and wait for us to catch up?
My solution? For every action involving agentic AI, require that the company specify someone who is responsible if the agents do harm. It’s not enough to fine a billion-dollar company. Somebody has to put their name on the line and take personal responsibility.
What is the Best Human-Centric Climatic Baseline?
By Andy May, WUWT, Sep 18, 2026
Measurement Issues — Surface
ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
By Staff, Climate Prediction Center / NCEP, NOAA, Sep 14, 2026
During September-November through November-January 2026-27, there is a greater than 90% chance of a very strong El Niño. During the October-December 2026 season, there is a 75% chance of a historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950.
Wrong, USA Today, “Hottest Summer Ever” Claim Ignores the Most Important Temperature Record
By Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, Sep 14, 2026
In a recent USA Today story “Hottest summer ever? US breaks longstanding record,” the writer claims that the United States just experienced its hottest summer ever based on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) latest temperature analysis. That claim is misleading, based on an incomplete causal analysis. The best available evidence suggests that much of the reported “record” depends on adjusted temperature datasets and weather stations increasingly affected by urban development, while the nation’s highest-quality climate network tells a very different story.
Meteorologist Chris Martz carefully examined NOAA’s data and found that the reported record was driven largely by higher than normal overnight minimum temperatures rather than record daytime highs. Using average daytime maximum temperatures, 2026 ranks behind several past summers, including the legendary Dust Bowl summer of 1936.
Changing Weather
New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Sep 17, 2026
Link to paper: Global drought shows no detectable recent acceleration under climate warming
By Jiameng Xu, et al., Nature, Communications Earth & Environment, Sep 11, 2026
From abstract: We find no significant acceleration of drought trends across ~99% of quasi-global land area under either PET [instrument] type. This finding remains robust across centennial timescales (1901– or 1950–2024). Reported drought acceleration therefore largely reflects unconstrained PET methods and imprecise analytical frameworks, rather than a true ecohydrological response to warming, with important implications for climate risk assessment and adaptation planning.
August 2026 ENSO Spikes SSTs Warming
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Sep 15, 2026
Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?
The news about our current solar cycle 25 is that the solar activity is hitting peak numbers now and higher than expected 1-2 years in the future. As LiveScience put it: Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun’s chaotic peak be? Some charts from SpaceWeatherLive look familiar to these sea surface temperature charts.
Zero Hurricanes Formed By Peak 2026 Season. A Former Climate Reporter Says That’s Why You Haven’t Heard About It.
By Paris Apodaca, Daily Caller, Sep 17, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Hurricanes Are A Thing Of The Past
I & I Editorial Board, Sep 17, 2026
Meanwhile, we wait for the Atlantic Ocean to spin up its next hurricane. We also wait for the climate alarmists to stop predicting imminent doom. It’s unfortunate, but the former will almost certainly happen before the latter because fanatics always reach a point at which they can no longer act rationally.
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Greenland’s Ice Cap Grew in 2026/26
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 15, 2026
I am always suspicious when “scientists” present trends since the 1970s, a time when the Earth had gone through three decades of cooling and there were genuine fears among both scientists and world leaders about the return of the Little Ice Age. I am even more suspicious when I discover that official data about the Greenland icesheet is publicly available back to 1840!
6 Gt is of course a tiny amount, given the massive uncertainty in how these things are calculated. There is no way to directly measure ice cap changes; instead, the numbers are calculated from computer models, fed with data such as precipitation and temperature. The experts accept that they can often be wrong by as much as 100 Gt.
Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that Greenland’s icecap is doing just fine. It is still much larger than it has been for most of the last 10,000 years and if it is shrinking at all, it is doing so no faster than a century ago.
Satellites show Earth lost more than 12 trillion tons of ice from Greenland, Antarctica in 47 years
By Seth Borenstein, AP, Sep 16, 2026
Link to paper: Mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets from the 1970s to 2023
By Inès N. Otosaka, et al., Scientific Data, Sep 16, 2026
From the abstract: We then use regional climate models to partition the total mass balance into contributions associated with surface mass balance and ice dynamical imbalance.
From the article: “An inch may not sound like much, but for every third of an inch (or centimeter) of sea level rise, another 2 to 3 million people get flooded at least once a year, said lead study author Ines Otosaka, an ice scientist at Northumbria University in England.”
“The ‘wild cards’ of Antarctic mass loss continue to pose a challenge for human management of the planet — a clear and present danger, but many decades in the future,” said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos, who wasn’t part of the study. “We are now as a society smart enough to know the future, but not prudent enough to act upon the knowledge.”
[SEPP Comment: Were the models rigorously tested against all available data? How does the increase in sea level compare with increases over the past 20,000 years? How does Mr Scambos plan to manage Nature, such as solar output?]
Arctic Ice Aplenty at Annual Dip September 2026
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Sep 18, 2026
Changing Seas
The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Sep 14, 2026
Link to paper: Coral-based reconstruction of interannual and decadal SST variability in the northern South China Sea during the mid-Holocene
By Zhiheng Wu, et al., Geo-Marine Letters, May 21, 2026
From abstract: Phase analysis suggests that El Niño events occurred more frequently during positive PDO-like phases, whereas La Niña events were more common during negative PDO-like phases. These results indicate that ENSO and PDO influences, as well as their interaction, were likely already active in the northern South China Sea during the mid-Holocene.
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Climate Change Weekly # 590—Ag Cabal’s Dairy Net Zero Restrictions Harm Producers, Report Shows
By Staff, The Heartland Institute, Sep 11, 2026
Washington State Agriculture is Doing Well in 2026
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Sep 17, 2026
For much of this year, some in the media and online have warned about drought and heat, predicting serious negative consequences for Washington State agriculture. [Boldface original]
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Climate Fact-Check August 2026
By Staff, The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and others, Sep 11, 2026
Editor’s note: This compilation serves as a fact check on the most widespread false claims made about climate change by the media in August 2026.
Prince William Is Wrong, The Independent, Sweeping Climate Action Will Only Harm People
By Linnea Lueken, Climate Realism, Sep 16, 2026
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
El Ranto
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
Climate alarmists put high hopes on the 2026 El Niño to deliver catastrophes. And if not those, then at least excuses: the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today chain, asks plaintively “Florida’s peak hurricane season is here, so why is the Atlantic silent?” And then it explains, doom looming as always, that “A key culprit in this year’s hurricane drought is the deepening El Niño climate pattern, which is sending a firehose of wind shear through the Caribbean to kill embryonic systems and hobble those that do find a fleeting purchase.” Culprit? Who searches for a culprit when a horrible storm doesn’t destroy your house and kill your neighbour and their cat? Climate alarmists, that’s who. And they must, since if they keep warning that the weather is getting more and more horrible and then it fails to deliver, it must be due to horrible weather with bad motives.
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Climate Alarmists Are Making False Claims to Derail Approval of Jackdaw and Rosebank
By David Turver, The Daily sceptic, Sep 13, 2026
This “research article” is clearly propaganda designed to derail the approval of Jackdaw and Rosebank. Hatton uses astronomical estimates of the social cost of carbon that do not hold up to even cursory scrutiny. The flaws in the report have not stopped the Guardian drawing attention to it.
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
From the Ministry of Truth
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
Thus, for instance, the Canadian government actually spent $100,000, peanuts to them but not to those who paid it in taxes from the sweat of their brow, to ask us how we got fresh air into the home. Apparently they needed to be told the answer, which was… yes, you guessed it. “Open a window.” D’oh.
Communicating Better to the Public – Go Personal.
Claim: Capitalists and their “Intellectual Enablers” are Responsible for the Climate Crisis
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 17, 2026
List of ‘Weak Links’ Accusers for the “Crooked Skeptic Climate Scientists” Accusation — Summary for Policymakers
By Russell Cook, GelbspanFiles.com, Sep 14, 2026
Why ‘Feel Good’ Climate Activism?
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Sep 17, 2026
Sam Belfied in his essay, “Climate Activism: ‘It Made Me Feel Like a Good Person’” (August 19, 2026), has a number of interesting insights on the motivations of climate campaigners given the intellectual case that their cause is both futile and wasteful. And ecologically damaging (think wind and solar industrialization). Excerpts follow verbatim; footnotes can be found in the original.
[SEPP Comment: Long post.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Protest
Teachers Demand Legal Right to Down Tools When Classrooms Exceed 26°C
By Richard Eldred, The Daily Sceptic, Sep 13, 2026
78.8°F
Expanding the Orthodoxy
UN Tries to Insert itself into Calls for AI Regulation
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 15, 2026
Link to article: Countries must increase AI regulation to avoid ‘existential risks’: Türk
By Isaiah Steinberg, UN News Global perspective Human stories, Sep 14, 2026
Voluntary self-regulation by companies developing frontier artificial intelligence (AI) is “nowhere near sufficient” to address existing harms and prevent advanced autonomous AI models from circumventing human safeguards, UN human rights chief Volker Türk wrote on Monday.
Questioning European Green
Energy Security: Blowing in the Wind
Sir Richard Dearlove delivers the 2026 Annual GWPF Lecture, Sep 18, 2026
By Staff, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, Sep 188, 2026
Pdf: https://thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2026/09/Energy-Security-Blowing-in-the-Wind.pdf
Video: https://thegwpf.org/publications/energy-security-blowing-in-the-wind/
He also argued that deindustrialization had created a deeper strategic problem. Britain had lost not only industrial production but also much of the ability to rebuild its own energy infrastructure in an emergency:
Britain on ‘energy cliff’ after woke Net Zero drive left us exposed to Russia and China, ex-MI6 chief warns
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 17, 2026
From Homewood: I would go much farther than Sir Richard.
Net Zero needs to scrapped immediately, not simply fiddled around with.
A National Emergency must be declared in order to implement the Grand Strategy he proposes.
We could start with retrospectively cancelling all subsidies for renewable energy – what’s good for Reform donors is also good for the renewable sharks who are bleeding us dry.
Questioning Green Elsewhere
BHP says each Battery Truck will cost 1,000 hours in productivity — it will keep diesel and delay Net Zero
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 18, 2026
The largest company in Australia has just announced they are delaying their Net Zero plans. They will still reach the mythical land of Net Zero sometime, but it will just take longer. Their emissions nine years from now will be about 33 per cent higher than what they had been aiming for.
Litigation Issues
Permitting Reform Should Be on Congress’ September “To Do” List
By Thomas Aiello, Real Clear Energy, Sep 14, 2026
Speaking of courts, Congress must also finally end “lawfare,” a tactic employed by anti-energy radicals to gum up the permitting process. Currently lawsuits challenging NEPA reviews can be filed up to six years after a permit approval. This leaves agencies and developers uncertain long after the review has been completed and a permit issued. Consider the Dakota Access Pipeline which until recently was stuck in limbo for almost a decade due to unserious legal challenges. It’s a similar story for SunZia, the largest renewable project in the country.
Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxes
Charge families £600 more to put them off flying, says climate quango
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 16, 2026
Nigel Topping [Chairman of the Climate Change Committee (CCC)] has clearly lost contact with the real world if he thinks flying is the preserve of the rich. Does he think the hoi polloi still go to Southend for their annual week in the sun, wear hankies over the head, roll their trousers up to their knees and eat jellied eels?
Topping is paid £1000 a day for his work at the CCC, so will no doubt be able to afford business class travel to wherever his heart desires.
As for the rest of us – shut up and eat those eels!
Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Sep 16, 2026
Energy Issues – General
Global Coal Demand Defies Doomers As Consumption Hits Record High, IEA Says
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 17, 2026
Link to article: Global Coal Demand Defies Doomers As Consumption Hits Record High, IEA Says
High natural gas prices and Middle East turmoil are pushing major economies back toward dependable coal power.
By Simon Kent, Climate Change Dispatch, Sep 16, 2026
From Kent: For its part, China’s coal use leads the world and is rising as it produces chemical products, driven by high oil prices and a shift away from solar- and wind-generated “clean energy” sources.
The Anti-Nuclear Playbook Comes for Data Centers
By Duggan Flanakin, Real Clear Energy, Sep 14, 2026
Half a century ago, raw emotion drove an anti-nuclear energy campaign that still stifles clean energy development in the U.S. Today, that same fear-driven playbook is being deployed in a campaign to shut down data center
Small modular reactors were first tested decades ago and could already be powering data centers had anti-nuclear fearmongering not stopped the Integral Fast Reactor program in 1994.
Many Americans today are rightly riled up about data centers robbing communities of precious drinking water resources and raising their electric bills. Others ask whether data centers are part of a vast secret conspiracy to take away their jobs, their freedom, and perhaps even their lives.
Norway is siting data centers near cold-water rivers and fjords, and in cold climates outside air can also keep servers running smoothly. Elon Musk is moving data centers into orbit, connecting them via satellite and Starlink, and requiring no cooling waters. SpaceX and Nvidia are planning to launch the first orbiting data center by 2028.
Energy Issues – Europe
Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Sep 12, 2026
Experts are warning that Germany is heading into the heating season with dangerously low natural gas reserve fill levels. Currently, Germany’s gas reserve fill level stands at only 55%!
Normal for this time of year is 90%.
Heat Pump Installations Fall Even Further
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 16, 2026
From Homewood: 20,895! At this rate, it will take 675 years to get them into every house in the country.
Energy Issues – Australia
The drone attack on the Saudi Pipeline exposes how the US is self-sufficient and Australia is hung out like a shag on a rock.
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 15, 2026
Energy Issues – Elsewhere non-US
Handouts under every bush
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
When the Liberal administration of Mark Carney suspended the federal excise tax on gasoline until next year, Canada’s socialist NDP was outraged. Leader Avi Lewis, a parody of an undergraduate radical from the 1980s, bellowed: “People are getting gouged at the pumps, but another costly handout of public money to oil and gas companies is no solution.” Eh? Costly handout of public money? Yeah, see apparently not taxing something is a handout to the seller. That’s socialist economics in a nutshell.
Global Disputes Are Just Another Layer to High Gas Prices in Canada
By Caleb Jasso, Real Clear Power, Sep 15, 2026
Unfortunately, even once the disruption of oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz and trade negotiations with the U.S. are resolved, Canadians are unlikely to escape high gas prices without drastic change in Ottawa, as the federal fuel tax pause is a mere bandage on a long-term problem.
Energy Issues — US
Slaying the Bureaucratic Blob: Trump expected to tell US power plants to emit as much CO2 as they want
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 15, 2026
Energy Future: CO2 Enrichment Ahead (de-decarbonization)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Sep 16, 2026
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 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.”
PRESS RELEASE: Heartland Institute Experts Applaud EPA’s Repeal of Strict Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rule for Power Plants
By H. Sterling Burnett, Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, Climate Realism, Sep 18, 2026
A Nation Divided by Natural Gas
Red states are planning nearly 12 times more natural gas capacity than Blue states
By Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling, Energy Bad Boys, Sep 12, 2026
Link to Press Release: Why Do Blue States Have High Rates?
By Alexander Stevens, et al., Always On Energy Research and Institute for Energy Research, December 2025
Link to Report: Blue States High Rates
By Alexander Stevens, et al., Always On Energy Research and Institute for Energy Research, December 2025
https://www.bluestateshighrates.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Blue-States-High-Rates.pdf
Energy Reality Forces Tech to Ditch Climate Virtue Signaling
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Sep 14, 2026
In Pecos County, Texas, crews are clearing scrubland for a power plant that will burn natural gas and answer to no one but Amazon. With 35 turbines and a generating capacity of more than 7 gigawatts, the plant will be able to produce more electricity than the Grand Coulee Dam. A state permit allows the facility to emit 33 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, roughly double what comes from an Alabama coal-fired generator that has topped America’s emissions tables for years.
Now recall who founded the company building the gas behemoth. That would be Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who just 5 years ago told delegates at a U.N. climate summit that a rocket ride had shown him a planet that was finite and fragile, prompting a pledge of $2 billion to “restore” nature. The applause was warm. The carbon-intensive private jet that carried Bezos to the Scotland meeting was noted by critics and forgotten by everyone else.
[SEPP Comment: Is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos a hypocrite? He funds the Bezos Earth Fund that is promoting the so-called climate crisis.]
Electricity Demand Surges as Grid Rules Cut Power
By Aswin Prabhakar, Real Clear Energy, Sep 16, 2026
Acadia Center’s RGGI Fact Sheet Cannot Hide the Problems
By Roger Caiazza, WUWT, Sep 16, 2026
Until that accounting exists, a multi-year 4-to-1 ratio measured against one year of narrowly scoped cost isn’t setting the record straight. It’s the same move New York regulators made with a bigger number, dressed up for a different region. Given the energy affordability crisis in the RGGI states it is long past time to set the record straight and hold politicians supporting the program accountable for the costs of the program.
Michigan’s 10th District: Affordable, Reliable Power or Higher Bills?
Editorial, Real Clear Energy, Sep 17, 2026
Data centers require reliable, dispatchable, around-the-clock electricity, which the state’s nuclear and fossil fuel-powered plants provide. Instead, the state is sticking with aggressive energy mandates that require 100% of the state’s electricity to come from “clean” energy sources, like wind and solar, by 2040.
Natural Gas Is Cheap – Why Is Your Bill So High?
By Oliver Lee Bateman, WUWT, Sep 17, 2026
Gas bills are expected to jump in Pennsylvania and other states because ratepayers cover the costs when utilities build new power plants and install pipes and other equipment, according to Arif Gasilov, who leads the energy regulatory practice at Gasilov Group.
[SEPP Comment: In November 2025, Pennsylvania exited the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) which reduces CO2 emissions by taxing emissions in ever increasing amounts.]
Washington’s Control of Energy
U.S. EPA’s Energy Exceptionalism (CO2 freedom)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Sep 18, 2026
Link to press release: EPA Finalizes Repeal of 2024 Power Plant Regulations, Delivering $300+ Billion in Savings, Proposes Repeal of All Remaining Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Power Plants
By Press Office, EPA, Sep 14, 2026
6 takeaways as Trump takes sledgehammer to power plant climate regs
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Sep 14, 2026
Link to: Regulatory Impact Analysis for the Proposed Repeal of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units
By Staff, EPA, June 2025
file:///C:/Users/Ken%20Haapala/Downloads/EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124-0063_content.pdf
gas
Trump guts climate rules for coal and gas power plants
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Sep 14, 2026
The EPA’s action repeals most of a Biden-era rule that would have required existing coal plants and new gas plants to prevent 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
US on Track for Record Oil Output in 2026
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 15, 2026
Link to report: United States on track for record crude oil production in 2026
By Staff, Today in Energy, EIA, Sep 10, 2026
Reality fracks
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
As a result, something that ought to be simple is incredibly complicated:
“Natural gas could be a big financial boon for the province, via royalties. Geologists estimate that the province has about 70 trillion cubic feet, mostly in the Frederick Brook shale between Sussex and Elgin. ‘What is the best way to tackle what we know is a pending energy shortage due to rising demand from New Brunswickers, from New Brunswick businesses, and from our neighbours over the next few years?’ Holt asked in her opening remarks.”
Well, duh. But as the news story added:
“While the [2024 Liberal] platform was silent on fracking, it did contain this passage: ‘We are at a turning point. With the increased frequency of extreme weather events and hotter summers, not enough is being done to protect people and our environment.’”
So you stagger in circles holding your head and engaging in temporizing measures that please nobody… including you.
Return of King Coal?
Ranked: Who Uses the World’s Coal? – Visual Capitalist
By Jeff Desjardins, Energy Now Media, April 27, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Oil Spills, Gas Leaks & Consequences
Big Tech Can Cut Methane Cheaply
By Paul Bledsoe, Real Clear Energy, Sep 18, 2026
Indeed, a number of gas-fired power plants are now being built with carbon capture technologies to reduce their emissions even further, with Exxon Mobil just gaining approval last week from Texas state regulators to build the world’s largest, 900 mile network of pipelines to inject CO2 underground.
President Trump in his second term has delayed rules to limit methane emissions that many oil and gas companies wanted to keep since major companies realize methane abatement is crucial to the future of gas. But if consumers push tech to act directly, markets can bypass politics and cut emissions now.
Nuclear Energy and Fears
Unlocking America’s nuclear gold mine: The promise of spent fuel
By Ronald Stein, Energy Literacy, Accessed Sept 15, 2026
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
What Price Solar?
It’s not so cheap as they would have you believe
By Mark Hodgson, Climate Scepticism, Sep 18, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
And while the BBC tells us that it is claimed that Botley West will power “the equivalent of 330,000 homes” (whatever that means, in the context of an energy source that is regularly unavailable at times of greatest need – early morning; late evening; winter), we are also told that East Pye, despite its greater projected cost and landscape coverage, will only “generate enough power for 115,000 homes.”. Botley West, by the way, is planned to cover 2,471 acres.
Wind Energy and the Extinction of Eagles
By Aynsley Kellow, Quadrant, Sep 15, 2026
On July 8, Dr Bob Brown, former leader of the Greens and defender of the Franklin River, spoke out against a proposed wind farm on Robbins Island on the north coast of Tasmania. I say “on”, rather than “off” because it can be walked to at low tide, and the landowners’ Wagyu beef cattle do just that.
Foremost among Dr Brown’s concerns was the potential impact of 163 wind turbines on birds, especially the endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax fleayi) and the white-bellied sea-eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster).
There were reportedly 1300 raptors killed annually, including seventy federally protected golden eagles in a total of 4700 birds killed annually. Since Altamont was built there has been a reported 80 per cent decline in golden eagles in Northern California, with none nesting near the facility, despite it being a prime habitat (see the video below).
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
Heatmap’s European Vacation
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 16, 2026
California Dreaming
The Energy and Water Footprint of AI
By Edward Ring, Maven’s Notebook, Sep 17, 2026 https://mavensnotebook.com/2026/09/17/edward-ring-the-energy-and-water-footprint-of-ai/
Here in California, data centers present an opportunity analogous to the regulatory situation facing our in-state oil and gas industry. We can enact smart regulations that empower the industry to thrive and set a positive example to the world, or we can drive it away to more welcoming states and nations.
Health, Energy, and Climate
Global warming will result in 2.5 million fewer elderly deaths over the next 50 years in US
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 18, 2026
Link to study: The Effects of Changing Temperatures on the Medicare Population
By Staff, CBO, September 2026
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-09/62555-Temperatures-Medicare.pdf
Thanks, Study Finds, For Publicizing Health Study Confirming Cold Temperatures Kill More than Hot Temperatures
By H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Realism, Sep 17, 2026
Link to paper: Meteorological associations with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: A national population-based time-series analysis.
By Ádám Pál-Jakab, et al., Public Health, March 2026
Methods: We conducted a population-based time-series analysis using the Hungarian National Ambulance Service registry from November 2018 to December 2023. After excluding COVID-19 disruption period, 114830 OHCA cases across 1584 days were analysed. Meteorological parameters included temperature, wind speed, atmospheric pressure, humidity, and air quality. Associations were assessed using negative binomial regression models with temporal lag structures (0–3 days). We used a rolling 30-day z-score to detect outlier days with high OHCA cases and identified their unique weather conditions. Machine learning validation was performed with XGBoost and SHAP interpretation. [Boldface added]
Other Scientific News
PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap Hanekamp
By William Briggs, Science Is Not The Answer, Sep
This originally appeared at Jaap’s blog, and is presented lightly edited here. He and I have looked at several of the “forever chemical” papers and, so far anyway, have found them wanting. Here’s his particular analysis of two consequences of chemical fears. –Briggs
Regulators thus train the public to detect ‘danger’ in starch, toys and mothers’ milk, while the capability to distinguish real risks (fungal toxins!) from homeopathic ones quietly withers.
OpenAI Claims Breakthrough in Navier-Stokes Equation, but NYU Mathematician Alleges His Work Was Copied
Mathematician Tristan Buckmaster asserts OpenAI cribbed the work he and a collaborator had done, which included significant progress toward solving the equation in August. OpenAI announced its team had solved the equation this week.
By Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, Sep 12, 2026
Other News that May Be of Interest
U.S. Military Confirms Deployment of Weapons in Space
The U.S. Space Force Comes of Age as America Deploys Orbital Deterrence
By Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, Sep 16, 2026
Trump Completely Rejects AI “Experts” Push to ‘Pace the Frontier’
“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins.”
By Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, Sep 14, 2026
AI designs new viruses (and in theory, bioweapons). The AI arms race is existential.
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 11, 2026
Abbott orders penalties for Texas data centers that fail to report water use
By Madison Myers, The Hill, Sep 16, 2026
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Intimate partner violence in sub-Saharan Africa under climate change and socioeconomic scenarios
By Jonas Peisker, et al., Global Environmental Change, December 2026 [H/t Carbon Brief]
Aberdeen hydrogen bus fleet sold for just 6% of original public investment
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 18, 2026
From Aberdeen’s Press and Journal:
The P&J has obtained details of Aberdeen City Council’s fire sale of the 25 H-powered buses, stashed away at the First depot on King Street.
A Freedom of Information probe by STV in April revealed the combined cost of bringing the fleet of world-first hydrogen double-deckers to the north-east was £13.9m
From Homewood: Last year, I reported how all of these buses had been mothballed because of a lack of hydrogen supply in Aberdeen.
Claim: African Rain Summoning Sorcerers are being Murdered because of Climate Change
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 16, 2026
In Africa, if someone claims to have magical abilities and takes your money, then the magic doesn’t work, things can get serious.
We beat climate change
Hurricanes are a thing of the past, right?
By Don Surber, Substack, Sep 15, 2026
ARTICLES
1. EPA to Roll Back Power-Plant Emission Rules
The move would unwind Biden-era policies to crack down on pollution from coal and newly built natural-gas-fired power plants.
By Jennifer Hiller, WSJ, Updated Sept. 14, 2026
TWTW Summary: The key section states:
“The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that it would repeal some carbon dioxide emission rules for power plants, part of a broader effort to curtail the agency’s role in regulating climate change.
The move would unwind two key policies of the Obama and Biden eras around carbon emissions.
The first would reverse Biden-era policies to crack down on pollution from coal plants and newly built natural-gas-fired power plants. The other concerns the EPA’s broader authority to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act, which could prevent future administrations from regulating power-plant emissions.” [Boldface added]
[TWTW Comment: Is breathing climate pollution? Does the EPA regulate natural climate change? Precisely, what is “climate pollution?”]