The Week That Was: 2026-09-26 (September 26, 2026)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “There are none but temporary Truth-Seekers; a permanent one is a human impossibility; as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him.”— Mark Twain, What Is Man? (1906)
Number of the Week: 5.86% in 2024
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW begins with a discussion of astrophysicist Willie Soon’s presentation to the German group EIKE. TWTW discusses a booklet by Stephen Einhorn reviewing the EPA Endangerment Finding. TWTW continues with a discussion of William Kininmonth’s chapter in Canary In a Climate World and follows with an explanation on how the UN IPCC is stacking the deck to produce extreme warming projections. TWTW concludes with an explanation by astrophysicist Gordon Fulks on the certainty of glacial periods, but the next one may be delayed.
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Not a Demon, But Simply Dinner: Astrophysicist Willie Soon, a CERES Science co-founder and SEPP board member, gave a forceful lecture at the 17th International Climate and Energy Conference (IKEK-17 / EIKE-17) in Halle (Saale), Germany on June 27, 2026 — “Plants Don’t Call CO2 a Pollutant — They Call It Dinner.” The description of the talk states:
“Many scientists and policymakers treat rising CO2 as a harmful air pollutant driven almost entirely by human industrial activity. Dr. Soon takes a polemical approach, systematically examining the main arguments and suggesting that the evidence may point in the opposite direction. You may not agree with every point, but the case he presents is worth hearing and considering on its scientific merits.
Dr. Soon starts with the U.S. Supreme Court’s classification of CO2 as an “air pollutant,” then walks through the evidence the official narrative usually skips:
- Cheap, dense fossil energy lifted more than a billion people out of extreme poverty – and “richer is cleaner.”
- Every real energy transition in history went toward higher energy density, not back to diffuse, weather-dependent power.
- U.S., German, Chinese and global human CO2 emissions have fallen or flattened — yet atmospheric CO2 keeps rising.
- The atmosphere turns over its carbon inventory about every four years; natural ocean/biosphere fluxes dwarf the human 1% perturbation.
- The seasonal CO2 cycle and declining δ¹³C [ratio of the isotope Carbon 13 to isotope Carbon 12] are consistent with a living biosphere, not a unique fossil-fuel “fingerprint.”
- New CERES work (with Jonathan Cohler) estimates the land biosphere gained ~55 Gt of carbon from 1961–2023.
- Stomata and forgotten ice-core intervals show CO2 was never a flat Holocene 280 ppm.
- Charles David Keeling himself rejected the idea that greenhouse forcing explains all of the warming.
- A transparent seasonal calculation for Germany implies well under 1°C for a CO2 doubling — not 3°C or “global boiling.”
- Satellite greening, higher crop yields, bigger Amazon trees, greener polar oceans — plus documented medical uses of CO2.”
The talk was dedicated to the memory of CERES-Science cofounder Dr. Michael Connolly.
Other key points in the talk include the following.”
We narrowly escaped CO2 starvation. And the engine that did it is cheap, reliable energy from coal, oil, and natural gas.
The open secret of Energy Sources: Energy Density
“The beginning of the transition from wood to coal in the Elizabethan era allowed us to escape from the photosynthetic limit of diffuse biomass. This was followed much later by oil, methane (natural gas) and now uranium. Each new fuel has a higher energy density and a lower carbon intensity than the last, with methane releasing about half as much carbon dioxide as coal per unit of energy produced and nuclear essentially carbon-free. …An energy transition that leads to more expensive, less efficient energy production is more a regression than a revolution. – Professor Colin Robert McInnes”
Net Zero is a return to the Energy Dark Ages: The world has been successfully running from “renewable” intermittent and unreliable energy for 200+ years. — 100% renewables are a regression, a return to the energy dark ages.
We forget that renewables led to the almost extinction of Atlantic whales in the 1800s; the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 – In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day. The Times of London predicted that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried under 9 feet of manure, or to three meters or so. The internal combustion engine, fossil fuels, saved the city.
Soon illustrated the problem of Net Zero with the divergence between development of industrial production in Germany and Switzerland from 1999 to 2024. Since 1999 Switzerland has had an economic growth of over 90%; Germany has had a growth of about 15%. Germany shut down its reliable nuclear plants and went into renewables backed up by coal. Switzerland has cheaper, more reliable, and lower emission electricity.
To Soon, climate policy is no longer about climate. It is about taxation and control. “Politicians are throwing money that they do not have at a problem that does not exist in order to finance a solution that makes no difference.” — Professor Michael Hart of Canada. That is the climate policy of the Western World in a single sentence.
US emissions are down 20% since 2005, with no carbon tax, etc. Natural gas is replacing coal and produces electricity more efficiently. Germany in 2024 contributed less CO2 to the world than Germany did in 1792. Yet German citizens are told they must stop emission because they are destroying the planet. For the past ten years human emissions have been flat but total CO2 has been rising.
[TWTW Comment: Our World in Data (2024) asserts: “We see that while emissions from fossil fuels have increased, emissions from land use change have declined slightly in recent years. Overall, this means total emissions have roughly stabilized over the past decade.” https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions.]
Soon states that the system turns over 20% of CO2 each year and the modern carbon cycle is dominated by natural cycles. He cites a study that shows a spike in CO2 about 130,000 years ago to 350 parts per million in volume (ppmv)) – higher than the IPCC base line of 280 ppmv).
Soon assets that at its current levels, a doubling of CO2 will produce a warming of less than 1 degree C, maybe less than one-half a degree. CO2 is not a major contributor to warming today. However, the increase in CO2 has made plants more drought tolerant. For example, China’s Loess plateau (made of wind-blown silt from the Gobi Desert) is greening, one of the more barren places on Earth. The greening is a combination of restoration projects and CO2 fertilization.
Soon gave physical evidence that increasing CO2 is causing plant life to flourish including ocean life. Yet, some of the Greens are claiming greening of Earth is a crisis. For humans, medical research is finding that increasing CO2 around wounds is resulting in more rapid healing.
For Soon, the rise in CO2 is dominated by natural variation, not human emissions. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Seeking a Solution: The CO2 Coalition published an easily read booklet by member Stephen Einhorn reviewing the EPA Endangerment Finding and whether it poses a threat to human health and welfare. The booklet is titled “The Non-Endangerment Finding: What the Climate Activists Don’t Know or Don’t Want You to Know.” The introduction states:
“This is a booklet about the Endangerment Finding (EF) which is the decision made by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2009 that carbon dioxide (CO₂) endangers public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated.
Almost half of all Americans believe that it is the continual increase in atmospheric CO₂ which is causing global warming, climate change and more extreme climate events.
Today, virtually all of the professors in the Climate Departments at liberal universities teach that atmospheric CO₂ causes significant climate change for which all of us are guilty contributors. Many think that a climate catastrophe is imminent. As a result, many Americans believe the atmosphere is already destructive, and that huge numbers of Americans die each year from heat, hurricanes or tornadoes; or are moving to higher land because of the rapid sea-level rise.
Actually, since the Clean Air Act (CAA) was passed, there are 80% less toxic gases and particles in our atmosphere, and such a small number of Americans are dying from weather events that humanity has a much larger chance of being struck by lightning than Americans dying from a weather event.
That fact will come as a surprise for many readers, so let me provide some details: Yearly, around the world, about 24,000 people are killed from lightning strikes, but fewer than 800 Americans are killed by weather events, which is equal to two in one million. This is why the Endangerment Finding which claims in its Technical Support Document (TSD) that CO₂ causes “Increased heat stroke and cardiovascular stress” with “Higher mortality among elderly and vulnerable populations” and more “Extreme weather” is mostly nonsense.
Certainly, heart disease which kills 700,000 Americans and cancer which kills 900,000 Americans each year should be of far greater concern than the two people out of a million who die yearly from weather events in the U.S. In total, the U.S Government spends in total about $50 billion yearly on heart disease and cancer. Yet the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) commits the U.S. Government to spend over $1 Trillion on climate change. Of this 98% was scheduled to address atmospheric CO₂. [Boldface added]
This $1 Trillion spent on climate change will not reduce temperatures by 1/10 of one degree by 2050. This misallocation of resources is a major reason why the Endangerment Finding which justified this large, misallocated spending should be rescinded.
To a great extent, the Endangerment Finding is a scientific claim, and the author has concentrated on scientific evidence, most of which comes from studies by the U.S. Government and has tried to avoid the political aspects of this issue.
The purpose of this booklet is to explain how faulty science, misinterpretations of the U.S. Constitution and confusing and contradictory legal decisions resulted in an attack on atmospheric CO2. The Endangerment Finding significantly increased our costs of living, reduced our purchasing flexibilities, and interfered with our liberties.”
See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Misrepresentations: John Robson of Climate Discussion Nexus discusses the chapter by meteorologist and former head of the Australian Climate Centre William Kininmonth “Misrepresentations of Climate Science” in Canary In a Climate World. Robson states:
“He’s [Kininmonth] not as well-known as some of the luminaries in this series up to now, but his credentials are impeccable and, like all real experts, he makes his points with elegant simplicity. Yes, everyone has seen the upward-sloping graph of global average temperature. But look past the average at the details and some odd features emerge. Most of the warming is in the polar regions, and most of that is in the winter months. Neither the tropics nor the southern ocean regions are showing much warming. But CO2 doesn’t explain this pattern. Also, the annual swing in average temperature is far too large to be explained by CO2. So, what’s going on, since it’s clearly not what orthodoxy claims?
Kininmonth argues that contrary to the standard IPCC model, the Earth has never been in radiative equilibrium. The system didn’t go out of balance when industrial greenhouse gas emissions started because it’s never been in balance. And rising CO2 just isn’t enough of a forcing agent to explain the observed trends and variations in the data. Kininmonth points instead to the tropical oceans as the world’s climate driver.
Those oceans, as Kininmonth points out, have a massive heat capacity compared to the atmosphere, and statistical analysis shows the air above the oceans warms in response to changes in water temperature, not the other way around. Heat from the tropical oceans that gets injected to the atmosphere must be transported to the polar regions to be radiated to space, and due to wind patterns this happens mostly in winter, thus explaining the warming pattern.
So why are the tropical oceans warming? Again, basic calculations show that CO2 can’t be the culprit because the change in absorption of outgoing infrared radiation due to that gas is just too small. Instead, Kininmonth argues, the tropical oceans are warming due to natural changes in ocean circulation patterns that have been underway since the 19th century. This cause, he argues, explains the detailed temperature data better than the naive CO2 model.”
The opening paragraphs of Kininmonth’ s chapter state:
“Science is described as the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world and is based on observation and experiment. That is, any hypothesis must be derived from sound observations and reproducible experiments.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses global and annual average temperature as an index for describing climate change. However, this index is misleading because it hides and does not account for the regional and seasonal differences in the rates of warming that have been observed. The human-caused global warming hypothesis, to be valid must also explain these regional and seasonal variations.”
Then Kininmonth discusses Earth’s Changing Climate highlighting the satellite observations and near surface (2 meters) observations for 1979 to 2023. The data show different warming rates: the polar regions are warming faster than other regions. “By contrast, across the Southern Ocean there is almost no warming trend.” Further rates of warming of the polar regions are greater in the winter than in the summer. “Any explanation for the recent warming trend must be able to explain why these regional and seasonal differences occur.”
Kininmonth discusses the warming of the tropical oceans and states:
“The likely explanation for recent warming of the tropical oceans is a reduction in poleward transport of heat by the oceans. Indeed, there is evidence that the Gulf Stream of the North Atlantic Ocean, a primary component of ocean heat transport, is slowing and has been slowing since the early 19th century. Wind and temperature contrasts drive the ocean currents, and it is expected that ocean currents will naturally fluctuate over a range of timescales to vary the climate.” [Boldface added]
In conclusion Kininmonth writes:
“The hypothesis and computer modelling that suggest human activities and the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide are the cause of the recent warming cannot be sustained.
There was never a balance between absorbed solar radiation and long wave radiation emitted to space. Earth’s radiation to space changes with the seasonally varying temperatures of the surface and atmosphere; this is according to well understood physicals. The radiation forcing scheme that is the basis for including carbon dioxide in computer modelling leads to false outcomes.
The index of global and annual average temperature used by the IPCC is crude and hides the important regional and seasonal differences in the rate of warming as experienced over the recent 44 years. It is these regional and seasonal differences, together with well understood meteorological science, which point to slow variations of the ocean circulations being the cause of recent warming.
The recent warming is consistent with natural cyclical variations of the climate system. Attempts to halt the current warming by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will certainly fail. Government policies that are based on the alarming, but erroneous IPCC temperature projections are fraught.”
See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Stacking the Deck: Roger Pielke discusses that in preparing the UN IPCC’s 7th Assessment Report, the abandonment of the extremely high carbon dioxide emissions scenario of RCP8.5 means little. The IPCC is just increased the timeframe of its projections out 50 years to achieve the same results as before. The real issues are not the scenarios, but the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to increasing CO2, which is far less than what the IPCC claims. In today’s atmosphere the temperature increase from modest increases in CO2 are not detectable except in a laboratory. Further the relationship between CO2 and temperature is logarithmic, not linear. It is well into diminishing returns. The organization has no scientific integrity. See link under Defending the Orthodoxy.
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Earth’s Changing Orbit? CO2 Coalition’s Vijay Jayaraj had an essay on uncertainty of using Earth’s past climate to predict the future. CO2 Coalition’s Gordon Fulks, an astrophysicist,. wrote:
“While this article has lots of good information, it is incorrect to say that our climate is ‘too complex to allow for meaningful forecasts.’ It is too complex for reasonable weather forecasts beyond a week. It is too complex for reasonable seasonal forecasts beyond about two seasons.
But it is NOT too complex to forecast Ice Ages out tens of thousands of years. These follow very regular changes in the Earth’s orbit, caused by the planet Jupiter, the Sun, and the Moon.
We know with substantial certainty that Interglacials such as the Holocene Climate Optimum last only about 10,000 years. Some a little longer, some a little less. But over at least a million years, we can see in the ice cores a very regular pattern of about 100,000 years of ice age followed by 10,000 years of reprieve, and so on.
We can also see Milankovitch Cycle structure within both the Ice Ages and Interglacials. We can see the Earth’s temperature rise and fall with each Milankovitch Great Summer and Great Winter, as the Equinoxes precess [precession of the equinoxes] over about 25,000 years. And especially, we can see the gradual decline of the average global temperature over the last 8,000 years as we approach the next Ice Age.
Both James Hanson and I have pointed this out. Roger Cohen disagreed, but Fred Singer thought that we should be ready with an awful lot of carbon black should ice persist across Canada from winter to summer.
Interestingly, we may not fall into the next Ice Age for 40,000 years this time, because the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit about the Sun is near zero now, meaning that the orbit is nearly circular. Hence, we are not quite cold enough during the depths of the current Winter/Great Winter to permit Northern Hemisphere continental glaciers to form and survive past next summer.
In any case, we have far greater predictive powers than Vijay is willing to admit. We may not be able to predict the outcome of the latest Nor’easter about to hit the US East Coast. But we can say for sure that Canada will need something other than a Maple Leaf on its flag in 40,000 years.”
See Links under Questioning the Orthodoxy.
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Number of the Week: 5.86% in 2024. The Department of Energy report on Hydropower states:
“Hydropower is one of the oldest and largest sources of renewable energy. In 2024, it accounted for 27% of total U.S. utility-scale renewable electricity generation and 5.86% of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation.”
In 2025, the percentage shares of total U.S. utility-scale electricity-generation capacity by primary energy source were: Natural gas 40.0%; Renewable 31.5% (25.3% non-hydro 6.2% hydro); Coal 13.3%; Nuclear 7.7%; Petroleum 5.8%; and Other 5.4%. [Boldface added]
However, “In 2025, about 58% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation was produced from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum), about 18% was from nuclear energy, about 19% was from nonhydroelectric renewables, and about 24% was from renewable energy sources.” [Boldface added]
We see the big difference between actual production and capacity. Actual production from wind and solar are far less than their capacity. Going through the actual numbers presented, TWTW calculates that the percentages by source are: Coal 16.6%; Natural Gas 40.8%; Nuclear 17.7%’ Renewables (including hydro) 24.1%; and Petroleum and others 0.7%.
In terms of actual generation, not capacity, coal remains almost as important as nonhydroelectric renewables. Further, coal is reliable, weather-dependent renewables are not and must be fully backed up.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?
The CME Risk to American Infrastructure
By R. Richard Geddes, Sol Gruner, Real Clear Energy, Sep 24, 2026
There have been smaller but still destructive CMEs [Coronal Mass Ejection] since the 1859 Carrington event. In March of 1989 a geomagnetic storm caused the Hydro-Quebec electrical grid to collapse within 2 minutes. It also blew out electrical transmission equipment as far south as the Salem, New Jersey, nuclear reactor complex. Another geomagnetic storm in October 2003 damaged electrical grid equipment in North America, Northern Europe, and South Africa. Other examples could be cited.
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
Dr. Willie Soon: “Plants Don’t Call CO2 a Pollutant — They Call It Dinner” | EIKE-17
By Willie Soon, CERES Science, June 26-27, 2026
From Demon to Dinner: The Scientific Case for CO2 and Fossil Fuels
#Canary In A Climate World: William Kininmonth on some climate basics
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 23, 2026
The Non-Endangerment Finding: What the Climate Activists Don’t Know or Don’t Want You to Know
By Stephen Einhorn, CO2 Coalition, Sep 15, 2026, Press release
Booklet: https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Non-Endangerment-Finding-Einhorn-Final.pdf
Short Summary of Observations Until August 2026
By Ole Humlum, Climate4you, Accessed Sep 15, 2026
An Early Documented Late-Spring Heatwave in Iberia Under Pre-Industrial Climatic Conditions
By Maite deCastro, et al., Climate, Aug 26, 2026
From Abstract:. The analysis reveals an extraordinary warm episode in late May 1795, characterized by sustained positive temperature anomalies that stand out clearly against the surrounding days. Comparison with the modern climate indicates that the event was exceptional even by present-day standards, with mean temperatures approximately 2 °C above the current 95th percentile. To assess the spatial extent of the heatwave, we compared the Ferrol data with contemporaneous instrumental records from Madrid, Barcelona, and Cádiz. All three locations exhibit synchronous, pronounced positive anomalies, demonstrating that the 1795 event was a large-scale phenomenon affecting most of the Iberian Peninsula. This study highlights the critical value of historical data rescue for contextualizing modern climate extremes and extending our understanding of regional climate variability. [Boldface added]
CO2 Video (educational)
By Tilak Doshi, Tilak’s Substack, Sep 22, 2026
8 minute video from the CO2 Coalition
Defending the Orthodoxy
Al Gore: “The day is coming when our [Renewable Energy] momentum will overtake the resistance. We’re getting very close now”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 25, 2026
Fool Us Once
A Trojan Horse effort to place RCP8.5 back at the center of climate science and policy
By Roger Pielke Jr., The Honest Broker, Sep 23, 2026
For all practical purposes, HIGH-2150 is RCP8.5.
[SEPP Comment: Surprise! Surprise! The UN IPCC figured out a way to get the alarm they want.]
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Guardian: The “Planetary Guardians” Warn our Global Life Support Boundaries have been Breached
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 22, 2026
Link to Who We Are?
An independent collective elevating the science to make the Planetary Boundaries a measurement framework for the world.
By Staff, Planetary Guardians, Accessed Sep 23, 2026
Biting The Hand That Feeds: Nepal Demands Climate Cash While Blaming Us For It’s Disaster
By Angela Wheeler, CO2 Coalition, Sep 22, 2026
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Climate’s Past Performance Uncertain Predictor of Future
By Vijay Jayaraj, Real Clear Energy, Sep 24, 2026
Link to one paper: Seasonal origin of the thermal maxima at the Holocene and the last interglacial
By Samantha Bova, et al., Nature, Jan 27, 2021
Link to second paper: Holocene variability in sea ice cover, primary production, and Pacific-Water inflow and climate change in the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas (Arctic Ocean)
By Ruediger Stein, et al., Journal of Quaternary Science, Feb 27, 2017
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jqs.2929
The relatively benign Holocene of nearly 12 millennia has been punctuated by intermittent temperature changes, including 10 warming periods, counting our current one. The most recent era of cold was the Little Ice Age from about 1250 to 1850.
Climate alarmists treat the “preindustrial” era before 1850 as their starting point for measuring modern temperature, without noting that the period falls within the last gasp of the Little Ice Age.
New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Sep 23, 2026
Link to paper: Stochastic Foundations of Atmospheric Thermodynamics: Deriving the Laws from Maximum Entropy and Implications for Earth’s Climate
By Demetris Koutsoyiannis, Geosciences, Sep 14, 2026
From Abstract: Radiatively active gases, through interactions with shortwave and longwave radiation, sustain non-equilibrium vertical profiles of the atmospheric variables. Combined with the Stefan–Boltzmann law, these mechanisms provide a simple, parsimonious, and coherent explanation of observed atmospheric behaviors and the climatic system. The framework highlights thermodynamics as emergent from stochastics, offering new insights into molecular uncertainty, emergence of macroscopic structures, and radiation in shaping Earth’s climate. It also suggests a broader stochastic view of nature and atmospheric processes.
From Richard: Proponents of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative necessarily believe (1) CO2 is the Earth’s temperature “control knob,” (2) longwave (LW) radiation from greenhouse gases like CO2 and water vapor is what keeps the Earth’s surface ~33 K warmer than it would otherwise be in an imaginary world with no CO2 or water vapor.
This thought-experiment-based position relies on the presumption that LW radiation is the main heat transfer mechanism in the Earth’s lower atmosphere, or troposphere. It is not.
Convection, not radiation, dominates heat transfer near the surface. And convection sets the lapse rate, which means that as the density of the atmosphere falls the temperature drops 6.5°C for every km of altitude above the surface. This is why the snow-covered summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro is, for example, about -29°C colder than its base.
[SEPP Comment: Although Convection is the main form of heat transfer in Earth’s atmosphere, the greenhouse effect is not a thought experiment. It is based on decades of laboratory experiments starting in 1859 and validated by observations of the atmosphere. Venus is hot due to its roughly 60-km deep atmosphere with very high atmospheric pressure of greenhouse gases: 88.8 bars (97500 Pa, 1283 psi) of CO2 (compared to 0.0004 bars of CO2 on Earth); 0.014 bars of SO2 (vs.0.0000000015 bars on Earth);0/0018 bars of H20 (vs 0.037 bars on Earth); and 0.0016 bars of CO (vs 0.0000001 bars on Earth). Little sunlight reaches its surface.]
This Year’s Climate Week NYC Will Be a Hot Party for All the Wrong Reasons
By Paul H. Tice, Real Clear Energy, Sep 22, 2026
But rather than checking its premises, the UN’s public relations strategy has instead focused on conflating climate with weather, citing every extreme (and not-so-extreme) weather event as a sign of man-made climate change to play on people’s emotions, and shouting down any opposing or contradictory view from “climate deniers.”
High decibels over tiny decimals
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 23, 2026
Hence Psuedoscientific American says “The world’s oceans hit 21.10 degrees Celsius last Saturday, breaking a record set in 2024”. And by how much? Why, 0.01 of a degree, which they inexplicably say is 0.02˚F (it’s 0.018). And who knows the temperature of every drop of ocean water to two decimal places and can assure us that the average of each and every last bit of it was 21.10C on August 22? Nobody. In fact if you read the fine print it’s just meant to be the sea surface temperature so never mind the briny deep. But 361 million square kilometers of rippling, surging, evaporating, descending, wind-blown spume, sea ice and lagoons, and you know it to that degree or rather hundredth of a degree? Like a clock striking 13, this assertion calls into question all that has gone before and all that is to follow.
More Truth About The Climate Lies
I & I Editorial Board, Sep 24, 2026
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 23, 2026
Just the News Is Right: A Warmer Climate Is A Safer Climate
By Linnea Lueken, Climate Realism, Sep 22, 2026
AI demands for regulation are just like Big Pharma’s: it’s about protecting them, not you
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 19, 2026
Crabby climate cult
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 23, 2026
Problems in the Orthodoxy
Is Climate Activism Dead? We Went Looking for It in New York City
By Christina Norman, CFACT, Sep 24, 2026
Climate Week NYC promised more than 1,000 events and 100,000 participants. On the streets of Manhattan, the world’s largest climate gathering was almost nowhere to be found.
[SEPP Comment: Did the threat of an old-fashioned Nor’easter keep the activists away?]
2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Sep 20, 2026
Link to: RETRACTED ARTICLE: Warming accelerates global drought severity
Solomon H. Gebrechorkos, et al., Nature, June 4, 2025
This article was retracted on 02 September 2026
Bill McKibben Pins his Climate Hopes on Bernie Sanders and the United Nations
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 24, 2026
After Paris!
UN Panic: What if President Trump Vetoes all the Globalist Climate Warrior Secretary General Candidates?
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 21, 2026
The US Energy Humanism of 2026: Capital Formation is Greener Than Green
By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, WUWT, Sep 25, 2026
The European Union is still married to its Climate Law and Green Deal: 55 percent cuts by 2030, talk of 90 percent by 2040, neutrality by 2050. The Paris framework continues for those who remain in it. The United States withdrew, effective January 2026.
The bill is not theoretical. EU firms still pay two to three times the U.S. industrial electricity rate and several times the U.S. gas price. German energy-intensive production is down sharply from 2022. Employment in those sectors has followed. Berlin is now writing an industrial power-price subsidy because the ideology priced the factory out of the country. Von der Leyen herself has had to admit that Hormuz added tens of billions to Europe’s fossil-import bill without adding a single extra molecule of security.
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
The effect of additional CO2 on Rush [a plant]
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 23, 2026
From the CO2Science.org archive.
Seeking a Common Ground
Taking Us For Fools–Roger Pielke
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 19, 2026
Link to: Taking Us for Fools
How a turnkey method attributes any trend to climate change
By Roger Pielke Jr., the Honest Broker, Sep 17, 2026
Link to paper: A protocol for probabilistic extreme event attribution analyses
By Sjoukje Philip, et al., Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography, Nov 10, 2020
From Pielke: Today’s post does three things:
- I show that the A in WWA should not be attribution, but assumption. The headline findings across all WWA press releases result from assuming attribution;
- Further, under the WWA methodology any time series with a trend, up or down, — and in any context — can be “attributed to climate change.” Applying WWA methods, I’ll show how the record 6,776 home runs in MLB in 2019 would have been impossible without “climate change.”
- I’ll also show how any variable with an increasing trend can be used to explain how a particular weather event was made worse. Applying WWA methods, I’ll show how the global increase in patent applications — patent change? — made the rainfall from a Japanese typhoon in 2019 four times worse that it would have been in the 1980s, with fewer patent applications.
From Homewood: Roger has replicated 96 WWA studies and concludes:
“WWA, reporters on the climate beat, climate advocates are playing us all for fools and in the process causing great harm to the science of climate change, which is too important to be reduced to propaganda in support of a political campaign.”
Win the AI Race. Then Face What Comes Next.
By Stephen D. Cook, WUWT, Sep 19, 2026
We must operate on two distinct timelines. In the short term, the United States must awaken to the geopolitical reality of the AI arms race and resist the domestic urge to regulate ourselves out of the competition.
In the long term, we should not let the fear of human obsolescence deter our pursuit of technological supremacy.
Changing Weather
Real-World Data Do Not Show Droughts Getting Worse Globally. Scientists Invented A “Rubbish” Measure That Does
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 25, 2026
Tens of Thousands Have Lost Power as a Strong Cyclone Makes Landfall
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Sep 25, 2026
As the models predicted, a strong storm with powerful winds is moving across our region, and nearly 100,000 customers are without power as I write this blog.
The radar imagery has been stunning. At 7:30 AM, a well-defined low center (red arrow) was on the coast near the Columbia River.
Peak Bird Migration Reveals Gaps In Northwest Weather Radar
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Sep 21, 2026
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Arctic Scare Stories Melt Away
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 22, 2026
For instance, the Arctic underwent a warming phase in the 1920s and 30s. According to a US Weather Bureau report in 2022 [sic. 1922].
Changing Seas
Meridionally consistent decline in the observed western boundary contribution to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
By Qianjiang Xing, et al., Science Advances, Apr 8, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz7738
From discussion: Climate models predict that the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) should decrease with increasing greenhouse gas forcing. Model-based estimates and proxy reconstructions suggest that the AMOC is already in decline and could be at or near a critical tipping point, potentially leading to its collapse or shutdown. Continuous direct observations of the AMOC indicate a reduced state in recent years.
[SEPP Comment: As William Kininmonth states above, the AMOC (particularly the Gulf Stream) has been slowing since the 19th Century and unrelated to human CO2 emissions.]
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
No, Climate Change is Not ‘Squeezing’ the World’s Vineyards
By Tilak Doshi, The Climate Skeptic, Sep 20, 2026
[SEPP Comment: The world is awash with quality wine while for some reason sales have been going down. As a result, prices are generally falling.]
Lowering Standards
“Implausible” Met Office UK Climate Projections Still Whipping up Unjustified Net Zero-Convenient Fear
Five months after the IPCC ruled that the infamous RCP8.5 doomsday climate scenario was “implausible”, the Met Office is still whipping up unjustified Net-Zero convenient fear, says Chris Morrison.
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Sep 25, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Not an achievement
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 23, 2026
The Toronto Star misinforms readers that “In a strategic retreat in the fight against climate change, the United Nations has acknowledged that Earth has lost its chance to prevent some of the worst of global warming’s harms. So now the world must figure out how to get temperatures below the danger zone and back to safety, officials say.”
Wrong, Guardian, If Humanity Can No Longer ‘Flourish,’ Someone Forgot to Tell Humanity
By Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, Sep 23,2026
NYT: Al Gore Is Still Sounding the Climate Alarm & the ‘Moral Case’ of Fighting It – Warns of ‘the Immorality of Inaction’ & Concedes Trump has Ushered in ‘Dark Times’ for activists
By Admin, Climate Depot, Sep 18, 2026
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Scary MIT Study: Climate Change Inflates Household Costs
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Sep 21, 2026
Link to press release: Why climate change is costing U.S. households hundreds of dollars a year
From insurance premiums to energy bills, a new study from MIT Sloan School of Management shows how Americans are already paying the price of climate change, and climate inaction, driven by extreme weather.
By Christopher Knittel and Catherine Wolfram, MIT Sloan School of Management, Apr 7, 2026
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Super-strong El Niño could lead to 450K deaths. Map shows the states hit hardest
By Alix Martichoux, The Hill, Sep 23, 2026
Link to press release: 451,000 at Risk
Where Action Can Save Lives During the Super El Niño
By Michael Greenstone, et al., Climate Impact Lab, University of Chicago, Accessed Sep 23, 2026
Source: Climate Impact Lab: Total estimated additional heat-related deaths for the next 6 months (September 2026-February 2027) of the current El Niño event compared to an average year.
Scientists project that global land temperatures will be 1.2°C/2.1° F above normal in the coming months due in large part to the current “Super El Niño” that began in June and is expected to last through Northern Hemisphere spring. These anomalously warm conditions will resemble the higher temperatures that climate change is projected to deliver 20 years in the future (figure below) and will lead to 44% more extremely hot days than we would expect in a normal year. El Niño is effectively pushing us into the future – exposing us to temperatures that won’t be the norm for another two decades – before we have time to adapt and protect ourselves.
DESNZ Heat Network Disinformation
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 24, 2026
[SEPP Comment: DESNZ is the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. The DESNZ has an inherent conflict of interest.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Climate Collapse! Four Billion to Perish?
By Robert Bradley Jr, Master Resource, Sep 21, 2026
“The doom industry is alive and well despite a litany of failed predictions along the way….”
Miliband Lies In New York
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 22, 2026
What an embarrassment this man is for our great country!
His three claims, which I have highlighted, are simply fake news:
The Politics of Persuasion
Why pre-bunking sucks
By John Ridgway, Climate Scepticism, Sep 23, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
The internet is a fine place to read things. However, you can’t believe everything you read, and the conclusions you might draw are likely to be the result of sophisticated, targeted manipulation. For that reason, the guardians of truth and democracy have come up with a highly effective countermeasure. Unfortunately, the main reason why it’s highly effective is because it works through sophisticated, targeted manipulation. The countermeasure is called pre-bunking, and before you complain that it is using methods that are just as underhand as those used by its targets, you have to remember one thing: The pre-bunker is honest and enlightened, and so is allowed to be manipulative – it’s just called education. In contrast, the target is a dishonest trickster who peddles falsehoods. And how do I know this? It’s because the pre-bunkers have told me so. But how does this idea bear up under close inspection?
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Children for Propaganda
Britain Teaching Kids They have to Save the World from Climate Change
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Sep 19, 2026
Communicating Better to the Public – Protest
Environmental activists show their true color is red, not green
By Devin Mooney, CFACT, Sep 22, 2026
Suspend the Climate Act Petition
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 25, 2026
Created by Shane Oxer
We call on the Government to temporarily suspend the legal duties to meet the UK’s statutory carbon budgets and 2050 Net Zero target under the Climate Change Act 2008 until Parliament has considered an independent national assessment of their full costs and impacts.
Questioning European Green
Why the Renewable Energy Transition is Doomed to Fail
Politicians make many grand claims for renewable energy. But simple arithmetic shows the ‘energy transition’ is doomed to fail, says Richard Lyon, whose new book, The Energy Trap, is out today.
By Richard Lyon, The Daily Sceptic, Sep 24, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
In 2023 the Royal Society, the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence and nobody’s idea of a den of deniers, asked what it would take to run Britain on wind and sun. It modelled 37 years of real British weather against projected demand, and found that wind output can sit persistently below its long-run median for two to three consecutive years. Not merely a windless week over Christmas. Years.
To carry the country through such a wind drought, the Royal Society found Britain would need 60,000 to 100,000 gigawatt-hours of stored electricity. How much does Britain have? About 37 gigawatt-hours — every pumped-hydro reservoir and every grid battery combined. Not even one part in 1,600 of what is needed.
Questioning Green Elsewhere
Backing away from Net Zero
Even the moderate Liberals know Net Zero is over…
By Alan Moran, Spectator Australia, Sep 22, 2026
Funding Issues
How much Climate Change™ angst is propped up by China or is even a Cold War weapon of statecraft?
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 25, 2026
Litigation Issues
Rescission Of Carbon Emissions Standards For Power Plants: The Litigation Begins
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Sep 20, 2026
The questions of feasibility and cost of CCS systems for fossil fuel power plants are things where expert testimony is inherently unsatisfactory. If this technology is feasible and economical, then build it and prove it.
Unfortunately, the Petitioners in this case have little to no interest in maintaining a functioning electricity system.
The Epistemic Court: Why Deleting ‘Climate Science’ Protects Judicial Legitimacy
By Jeffrey Depp, Real Clear Energy, Sep 24, 2026
It is against this backdrop of waning legitimacy that we must evaluate the Federal Judicial Center’s (FJC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) deciding this year (the FJC in February and NAESM in August) to excise the “Climate Change” chapter from its respective versions of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence for Judges.
“Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026”
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Sep 25, 2026
This legislation is in response to climate activism in 11 states, two of which (Vermont and New York) have enacted “climate superfund” laws. The other nine states looking seeking judicial payouts are California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
Brief Of Amici Curiae, Brulle .. Oreskes .. & Supran Redux 6 — the Supreme Court version
By Russell Cook, GelbspanFiles.com, Sep 22, 2026
Imagine how this outlier brief of hers might capture Justice Clarence Thomas’ attention enough that he sets aside all those other briefs, and instead dispatches his court clerks to figure out who Dr Soon is and whether there’s any veracity to Boulder’s accusation about a ‘$1.2 million Exxon bribe.’ Imagine if he then tasks his clerks to find out more about not only Naomi Oreskes, but also her 18 times-cited “Climate Files” source.
[SEPP Comment: Explaining the support in the lawsuit against Suncor Energy, et al., by the County of Commissioners of Boulder County, et al.]
EPA and other Regulators on the March
Trump’s EPA Ends America’s War on CO2
By Tilak Doshi, Tilak’s Substack, Sep 19, 2026
What Monday’s action represents, then, is not simply a rollback but a long-overdue correction. It is a recognition, 17 years late, that carbon dioxide was never the pollutant the 2009 Endangerment Finding pretended it to be. An economy built on affordable, reliable fossil-fuelled power is not a problem to be regulated away but the foundation on which American prosperity and the world’s energy security still rest. The gas of life has, for now, won a favourable hearing in Washington.
Energy Issues – General
War Is a Warning: Energy Security Requires Investment
By Neil Atkinson, Real Clear Energy, Sep 23, 2026
For years, energy policymakers and investors were told that oil and natural gas were sunset industries. The International Energy Agency’s 2021 net-zero roadmap called for an immediate end to new oil and gas projects, warning that additional investment could create stranded assets.
That advice was not merely a forecasting error. It risked becoming an investment signal—one that discouraged the very capital needed to maintain energy supplies.
China’s Newest Power Plant Swaps Steam for Supercritical CO2
By Haley Zaremba, Oil Price.com, Sep 23, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to: China breaks ground on the world’s first supercritical CO2 and molten salt energy plant
Ruitan demonstration project in Shandong aims to reduce energy waste and stabilise grid electricity supply
By Victoria Bela, South China Morning Post, Sep 22, 2026
From Oil Price.com: China just broke ground on a revolutionary new hybridized energy production and storage facility. The power plant will store excess energy in the form of molten salt, and then produce electricity during peak demand times through a supercritical carbon dioxide system. The goal of the project is to limit energy waste while also stabilizing the local power grid.
Between the years 2019 and 2025, China outspent the rest of the world combined on energy investing, contributing more than half of the $1.1 trillion invested globally. By comparison, the United States, the world’s largest economy, saw a relatively paltry $236 billion in clean energy investing. This has given China unprecedented reach and leverage in global clean energy markets.
[SEPP Comment: The new “clean energy” plant is coal-fired.]
Energy Issues – Europe
Sir Dieter Brings Home Truths to Scottish MSPs
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 25, 2026
If you just wish to watch his presentation, it lasts about 18 minutes, before the question session.
But the best bit is the first question at 18 mins!
I’ve watched it through to the end and it is an eye-opener to see just how shocked those MSPs after listening to Sir Dieter home truths.
Energy Issues – Australia
Coalition updates their climate policy, and it’s good …but not good enough
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 23, 2026
Energy Issues – Elsewhere non-US
China Wants More Coal
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 21, 2026
The simple truth is that China will remain heavily dependent on coal for many years to come. Ignore the misinformation about a “weakening coal power sector” – last year it dropped from 5836 to 5755 TWh, a drop in the ocean. Coal power still supplies 54% of China’s electricity.
The Chinese know that they cannot run their power grid on intermittent renewables alone, so coal will remain the major player.
Through red-coloured lenses
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 23, 2026
In a story that seems to have received no attention outside the French-language Quebec media, and not much even there, Hydro-Québec, amid various difficulties connected to the alleged green energy transition, is subsidizing the purchase and installation of “onduleurs solaires” from Communist China that are banned even in Europe, never mind the US due to security risks associated with surreptitious communications technology built into them. And it’s the usual story: they are suspected of including backdoor access to critical systems for the Chinese military, or to be technical the Communist Party of China military since the “People’s Liberation Army” is a branch not of the government but of the Party.
Energy Issues — US
Enjoy the Lack of Blackouts, Jack
EPA repeals Biden Blackout Rules and the fight to make sure they never come back.
By Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling, Energy Bad Boys, Sep 19, 2026
Energy Department will spend $2 billion to squeeze more electricity from the aging power grid
By AP, The Hill, Sep 24, 2026
Ohio Senate Bill 294, To enact section 4906.011 of the Revised Code to declare the state’s energy siting policy.
By State Senator George Lang, et al. 136th General Assembly, Ohio Legislature, Accessed Sep 25, 2026 [H/t Alan Davis]
(3) “Reliable energy source” means an energy resource that meets both of the following criteria:
(a) Is readily available at all times to meet energy demands with minimal interruptions during high-usage periods;
(b) When used for power generation, the resource demonstrates all of the following:
(i) A site-combined minimum capacity factor of fifty per cent;
(ii) Electricity output that is capable of being dispatchable at all times in times of need and with the capability to ramp up or down electricity generation within one hour to stabilize the electrical grid;
(iii) The ability to complement and provide backup to renewable energy resources during periods of low availability.
(4)(a) “Clean energy source” means any energy generated by utilizing those sources listed in 42 U.S.C. 15852(b) or hydrocarbons, which, when combusted for the purpose of electricity generation, meet the national ambient air quality standards set by the United States environmental protection agency under the authority of the “Clean Air Act,”…
(b) “Clean energy source” includes:
(i) Energy generated by nuclear reaction;
(ii) Energy generated using natural gas.
Your Electric Bill Is a Permitting Problem
By Toby Z. Rice, Real Clear Energy, Sep 22, 2026
Residential electricity prices climbed roughly 30% between 2020 and 2025, while the AI buildout was still mostly slides in a pitch deck. Tomorrow’s consumption doesn’t drive today’s bills, but what you can blame is electricity prices lagging behind demand. Since 2015 this country has retired more than 100 gigawatts of dispatchable generation faster than we replaced it.
The Left’s climate crusade fuels the affordability crisis they claim to fight
By Daniel Turner, Washington Examiner, Sep 23, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Renewable Energy and the Period of Lowest Electricity Demand of the Year
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Sep 19, 2026
One thing is very, very clear. If we want to have the energy needed for growth, electric cars. and server farms, wind energy and solar are inadequate to be the solution for the Northwest. We need nuclear power.
Some States Prevent Utilities From Generating Power, and it’s Hurting Consumers
By Ross Marchand, Real Clear Energy, Sep 22, 2026
Michigan Hydro Politics (a flat renewable without ‘green’ friends)
By Kennedy Maize, Master Resource, Sep 24, 2026
Ed. Note: Hydropower (“white coal”) was once the lone alternative to coal for electrical generation, supplying about one-third of U.S. supply in 1950. Today, hydro supplies around six percent of national power (and falling). The post below speaks to the political imbroglio of this energy source with the example of Michigan.
AI’s Invisible Power Problem
By Oded Gour-Lavie, Real Clear Energy, Sep 23, 2026
Bringing generation is not quick either. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reported in June that the median generating project reaching commercial operation last year had spent more than five years waiting for transmission interconnection. That dataset covers generation seeking the transmission grid and excludes behind-the-meter and distribution-connected projects entirely, the category to which a site-scale power solution belongs. Nobody publishes good numbers on how long those take, because nobody collects them.
The result is a shortage that will be unusually hard to see. When a billion-dollar campus is delayed or canceled, it makes headlines and enters the statistics. When a 25-megawatt project never gets built because power in that city would take years to secure, there is no announcement, no cancellation notice, and no entry in any national database. The demand does not vanish. It simply fails to become infrastructure.
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
El Paso – Enbridge’s Proposed West Texas Express Would Move Natural Gas to El Paso and Beyond
By Lisa Shidler, RBN Energy, Sep 18, 2026
If WTX is ultimately built, Enbridge’s Permian gas portfolio could provide more than 11 Bcf/d of long-haul takeaway capacity, including operating systems and proposed expansions. Still, important questions remain, including the project’s permitting and construction path, the scale and timing of prospective data-center load, and the extent to which that load will require incremental natural gas supply. Data centers often express considerable optimism, but not every proposed project moves forward on schedule or at its originally announced scale.
Nuclear Energy and Fears
Nuclear radiation and falling out of bed
By Kelvin Kemm, CFACT, Sep 18, 2026
Thankfully President Trump has issued Executive Order 143000 under which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is undergoing restructuring and is reviewing the use of the Linear No-threshold (LNT) model. The Executive Order stated that the LNT model is flawed, and it instructs reviewers to use science-based measures.
[SEPP Comment: It is past time that government entities stop using the LNT model, one of the most ignorant “scientific” models ever devised.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Big Oil Backs Mazama’s $135 Million Bet On Superhot Geothermal
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Sep 20, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Mazama Energy announced $135 million in new capital with an oversubscribed Series B that included ConocoPhillips and Shell Ventures. With Devon Energy initially backing Fervo in 2023, a pattern is emerging with oil and gas veterans placing their bets in the geothermal industry.
[SEPP Comment: Small bets.]
A new process turns plastic waste into gasoline and diesel fuel
Press Release, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sep 21, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to paper: Polyethylene Upcycling to Liquid Alkanes in Molten Salts under Neat and External Hydrogen Source-Free Conditions
By Liqi Qiu, et al., Journal American Chemical Society May 14, 2025
From abstract: . Herein, highly efficient and selective polyethylene-to-gasoline oil (branched C6–C12 alkanes) conversion was achieved under mild conditions (<170 °C) using commercially available AlCl3-containing molten salts as reaction media and to provide catalytic sites (no extra solvents, additives, or hydrogen feeding).
[SEPP Comment: No cost estimates.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
BESS Is Still a Science Project
By Richard Ellenbogen, WUWT, Sep 25, 2026
Link to article: Moss Landing battery storage fire flares up again, raising new safety fears in California
By Rachel Becker and Alejandra Reys-Velarde, CalMatters, Sep 18, 2026
The September 18, 2026, fire at Vistra’s Moss Landing battery-energy-storage facility—reported as a 300-MW, 1,200-MWh installation and once described as the world’s largest battery-storage project—should force policymakers to reconsider the assumption that utility-scale lithium-ion storage is ready for dense urban deployment. This is not an argument against all energy storage. It is an argument against treating a technology with unresolved fire-suppression, contamination, and grid-performance issues as a universal substitute for dependable generation.
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
EVs: Just a Government Play
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Sep 23, 2026
With government neutral, “deep decarbonization” dies on the vine. The major retreat of U.S. automakers after losses estimated at $50 billion, led by Stellantis (Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, et al.) and Ford, [deep decarbonization] was a monumental mistake. So much for Net Zero on the transportation front.
About Those Electric Buses
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Sep 23, 2026
Carbon Schemes
‘The Future of CCS Can No Longer Be Assumed’ (a supporter rethinks …)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Sep 22, 2026
“Today, global operating nameplate capture capacity is approximately 60 million tonnes a year. If fully utilized, that would represent gross capture equivalent to roughly 14-15 hours of annual global energy and industrial emissions. Actual verified net storage is lower.” (- Martin Jagger, below)
California Dreaming
El Nino Planning Must Include Dredging
By Edward Ring, California Policy Center, Sep 23, 2026
The main stem of the San Joaquin River, as well as most channels in the southern delta, are dangerously clogged with sediment. If the predicted super El Nino brings extreme rains, flood waters will overwhelm the levees. The disastrous floods that hit when the San Joaquin overflowed in 1997 mostly inundated open space, but today much of that area has new homes.
The Great Valley Farm Water Partnership, a coalition that has united farmers throughout the San Joaquin Valley, has patiently advocated dredging for several years. It was once routine. For over a century, ever since the levees were built, the government and private landowners conducted ongoing dredging operations. Up until the 1970s, deep delta channels were maintained and, notably, the fish thrived. But since then, with the exception of shipping channels, dredging has ceased for the most part. This is due to extremely high costs for environmental permits, combined with dramatic reductions in the time permitted for dredging operations.
Environmental Industry
Green Movement’s Selective Outrage Over ESA Reforms
By Vijay Jayaraj, Cornwall Alliance, Sep 15, 2026
Other Scientific News
PFAS hysteria continues to spread
By Susan Goldhaber, SCSH, Sep 17, 2026
Link to: United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Perfluorooctanoic Acid, Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid, and Related Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances 2024 Drinking Water Maximum Contaminant Level: Part 2 – Fifteen Misconceptions About the Health Hazards
By Dennis Paustenbach, Critical Reviews in Toxicology, May 20, 2025
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2024.2446453
Other News that May Be of Interest
The Great Recycling Swindle
By Tilak Doshi, Tilak’s Substack, Sep 24, 2026
On Thursday I found a parcel waiting at the front door of my Wandsworth flat: a ‘free’ food waste caddy, a starter roll of compostable liners and a note from the council that deserves a place in the annals of municipal self-congratulation. Recycling my food waste, it explained, could save me “as much as £720 every year”. My leftovers would become “a sustainable power source and liquid fertiliser”. And because it is “much cheaper” for the council to recycle scraps than to bin them with the rubbish, the whole exercise “helps keep your Council Tax low”. Each of these claims turns out to be false, an evasion or a subsidy in disguise.
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
If You Were Born Before 1980, The Left Has Killed You With Climate Change At Least 17 Times!
By Mike Borowski, American Free News Network, Sep 21, 2026 [H/t C.J. Cvrk]
Building nothing faster
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Sep 23, 2026
As columnist Brian Lilley wrote:
“…Verster had been a managing director at ScotRail in Glasgow from May 2015 until February 2017. During his tenure with the Scottish rail company, there were problems with punctuality, reliability, overcrowded trains, and a deterioration in labour relations. At one point, to deal with late trains, ScotRail solved the problem by having trains skip stations rather than stopping to pick up and drop off passengers.”
Labour’s Net Zero Scheme to Ship Hot Water to Homes by Barge
By Will Jones, The Daily Sceptic, Sep 23, 2026
Labour has launched a Net Zero scheme to transport hot water on barges on the River Thames to heat London homes instead of each home having a gas boiler. The Telegraph has the story.
It’s time to ask if we can convert Snowy 2.0 to an adventure park
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Sep 22, 2026
Snowy 2.0 could be one hell of a water slide…Florence, the infamous borer, only made it 150m into the 15 km tunnel before she was stuck in a hole for 11 months. Now she’s stalled again, underground while they fix the minor issue of “major cracking” in something called the drill head. It appears she’s been motionless since May and while the word is that she may get going by November, The Australian has heard from some sources that it may not be running until February….Just before she broke down, the team at Snowy Hydro said she was ‘approaching the half way mark’. They didn’t mention that the second half contains the really bad geology.
Sky News Tea Scare Is Fake News
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Sep 25, 2026
ARTICLES
1. How to Stop the Shadow Regulators
It’s time to start counting regulations disguised as ‘guidance.’
By The Editorial Board, WSJ, Sept. 24, 2026
TWTW Summary: The editorial begins with:
“Legislating is out of fashion in Washington, but the current Congress does have opportunities left to do some good before riding off into the midterm sunset. A big win would be reining in out-of-control shadow regulations.
A bill in the Senate would require executive agencies to publish regulatory guidance to a single, searchable portal. The aim is to introduce more transparency to this practice as a prelude to reforming it. The measure, known as the GOOD Act, has passed the House and a Senate committee and awaits a floor vote.
Agencies already must publish draft regulations to the Federal Register. “Guidance” is different. The term refers to the letters, advisories, online FAQs, interpretations and other administrative flotsam and jetsam that agencies generate to explain how they will interpret laws and rules.
Guidance has become Washington’s preferred alternative to legislating or formal rule-making because it can be done with next to zero formal accountability. The letters and the rest are merely supposed to explain how agencies will use their discretion and aren’t meant to carry the force of law. But in practice few businesses or individuals are willing to challenge government guidance even when it exceeds statutory authority.”
The editorial discusses how the Obama and Biden administrations use “guidance” as a form of regulation and concludes with:
“The Senate Guidance Out of Darkness Act would take a first step to control this runaway regulation by creating a central portal where agencies would have to register regulatory guidance. That would tee up future deregulation because you can’t reform a mess like this until you measure it. That makes this a win for Republicans if they want one.”
************
2. The Amazing Things AI Is Already Doing for Humanity
In medicine, it saves lives. In business, it makes us more productive. And it hasn’t killed many jobs.
By Vitor Melo, WSJ, Sept. 24,
TWTW Summary: After discussing breakthroughs such as in medicine, the author concludes with:
“Job counts were never the right way to measure progress. In 1900, 41% of American workers farmed; by 2000, fewer than 2% did, and the population was richer and better nourished and lived longer. Economists call this creative destruction: Innovations displace old products and technologies, so a job that disappears can also a result in a new one. Counting only potential displacement is like reviewing just one side of the coin.
A worker who spent 20 years mastering a craft isn’t wrong to feel concerned. Every transformative technology has brought unease with it, but has also left people better off. The difference this time is that we don’t have to wait for the benefits. AI tools are already yielding breakthroughs in clinics, pharmacies and classrooms, and we are only at the beginning.
Asking the right question is crucial for better policy outcomes. Rather than legislating against an AI job apocalypse not seen in the data, lawmakers should ask whether the technology is reaching the people who stand to gain most, and clear any barriers in the way.
Human flourishing has never been measured in job titles. It is determined in suffering avoided, time returned, and problems solved that once seemed intractable. Ask whether AI will take our jobs, and the honest answer is: not yet. But ask whether it is helping people prosper, and the answer is an easy yes.”
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3. The Rich World’s Climate Distraction
The World Bank and other institutions lose their focus on the best ways to help the poor.
By Indermit Gill and Bjorn Lomborg, WSJ, Sep 1, 2026
TWTW Summary: The authors state:
“The past 75 years have brought the greatest improvement of human welfare in history. But over the past decade, much of that progress has stalled. This happened at the same time that the rich world shifted its attention to climate change. This isn’t a coincidence, and it has to change.
Most of humanity is still poor. For them, we should spend billions on tackling urgent, cheaply solved problems before spending trillions to nudge the thermometer in a century. Tellingly, Africans ranked climate change 31st among 34 priorities in a recent Afrobarometer survey. We must rediscover the smart, focused development solutions that transformed the world in the past 75 years—and put the best development policies first.”