The Week That Was: 2026-10-17 (October 17, 2026)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”— Albert Einstein [H/t Tony Heller]
Number of the Week: From -50°C (-58°F) to more than 40°C (104°F) or a 90C° (162F°) degree range.
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW begins with a discussion that a sophisticated statistical analysis technique demonstrated that global climate models overestimate atmospheric warming, possibly by overestimating amplification by atmospheric water vapor. TWTW examines an effort to defend the missing distinct human fingerprint, with the effort citing many studies that support the idea. TWTW discusses that Joe Bastardi uses the ACE index to demonstrate that cyclones are decreasing in severity, not increasing as many scientists assert. Then TWTW discusses a newly discovered method for corals to recover from bleaching and closes with an unfortunate misunderstanding in how energy markets work when freed from government interference.
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Hot Spot Theory: On his website, Ross McKitrick discusses a new paper published in Nature, Scientific Reports that was co-written by Timothy Vogelsang, John Christy, and Roy Spencer. Christy, Spencer, and McKitrick are recipients of SEPP’s Frederick Seitz Memorial Award. In 2025 with Steven Koonin and Judith Curry, they participated in the Department of Energy’s independent panel (Climate Working Group) reviewing the scientific uncertainty embodied in UN IPCC reports and the uncertainty of global climate modeling. Under threat of litigation because there was a question as to whether the group was improperly formed, the group was disbanded.
The lead author of the new paper, Timothy Vogelsang, is the Frederick S. Addy Distinguished Chair in Economics at Michigan State University. According to his brief bio under Honored Faculty at Michigan State, his areas of expertise include econometrics and time series analysis. The bio states in part:
“In the area of time series econometrics, Vogelsang has published numerous articles in top economics and econometrics journals. He is best known for his work on hypothesis testing that is robust to dependence in the data. While the statistical tools developed by Vogelsang are designed with economic data in mind, the tools are directly applicable to temperature data. He has published several papers in top climate journals analyzing trends in global temperature data.”
The abstract of the new paper states:
“Ratios of linear trends are used to measure amplification ratios for warming and cooling rates in atmospheric layers relative to the surface. This metric is informative as it reveals a fundamental characteristic of the model physics. Excess amplification in CMIP5 model low-latitude regions has previously been noted in the context of excess warming in the tropical troposphere. Determining the statistical significance of the differences in amplification rates is a nontrivial problem. Vogelsang and Nawaz derived confidence intervals for a single trend ratio robust to general forms of autocorrelation and Vogelsang generalized it to the multivariate case. We apply the method to the CMIP6 model archive to test whether amplification rates over 1958–2024 hindcasts are significantly different from observations over the tropics. The results show that CMIP6 models continue to overestimate the warming amplification rate vertically through the 850–100 hPa range. [1.6 -1.8km to 16 -17km (5,000 feet to about 55,000 feet)] Trend ratios match better in the lower stratosphere. We discuss possible explanations, including potential excess moistening rates under upper atmospheric warming in models.” (Boldface added).
The summary of the work by McKitrick provides a more understandable explanation of the work. McKitrick writes:
“The issue concerns the rate at which surface warming is amplified with altitude in the tropics. This is the so-called ‘hot spot’ question. Climate models all predict amplified warming with altitude through the lower and mid-troposphere layers in the tropics in response to surface warming which, in climate model simulations, is mainly caused by rising CO2. The fact that observed tropospheric warming is much lower than models predict has long been noted including by the IPCC and raises questions about model quality. One counterargument has been that maybe the amplification with altitude is accurate, the only problem is the models warm too much at the surface. Here we look at the amplification ratios themselves. Testing for different ratios of trends is a non-trivial econometric problem and our paper draws on Tim’s [Timothy J. Vogelsang] recent improvements in available methodology. We find that the ratios themselves are significantly different between observations and models. We explore why that may be the case. It’s not simply a matter of excess climate sensitivity, instead we argue that it points to excess moistening of the tropical atmosphere in warming scenarios.” [Boldface added]
TWTW notes that the global climate modelers assert that a warming caused by carbon dioxide will be equally amplified by warming caused by water vapor. This is another study that demonstrates that the evidence of water vapor amplification cannot be found. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Shifting Fingerprints? Proponents of the “hot spot” theory of a distinct human fingerprint include Benjamin Santer and Susan Solomon. To contradict the 2025 DOE report which found great uncertainty they and three others had a paper published in Earth’s Future titled “Fingerprint Evidence for Human Effects on Climate: Advances After the 2009 Endangerment Finding.” The Plan Language Summary states:
“This is a brief review of the history of climate fingerprinting, and of the scientific progress in this field since 2009. Fingerprint studies rely on information about the patterns and timing of climate change to identify human and natural signals in observations. A July 2025 report of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) questioned the credibility of fingerprint evidence and challenged the scientific basis for the 2009 Endangerment Finding—the legal determination that human-caused climate change poses a clear and present danger to the health and welfare of U.S. citizens. We demonstrate that the evidence for large, human-caused climate change signals was already compelling in 2009 and has strengthened significantly since then. The DOE report fails to reflect either the weight of this evidence or the progress since 2009. Human influence is now identifiable throughout Earth’s climate system, and is increasingly affecting the ability of societies and ecosystems to thrive. The need and scientific rationale for the Endangerment Finding is now greater than ever.” [Boldface added]
In their introduction the authors state:
“In July 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposal to rescind the EPA’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding”—the finding that greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles endanger public health and welfare in the United States (Waldman, 2025). The EPA proposal relied in part on a July 2025 assessment of climate science by the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE, 2025). The DOE report’s findings were at odds with decades of peer-reviewed findings of human fingerprints on global climate (Bindoff et al., 2013; Charney et al., 1979; Eyring et al., 2021; Hegerl et al., 2007; Mitchell & Karoly, 2001; Santer, Wigley, et al., 1995), presenting outdated arguments that have been repeatedly rebutted in the scientific literature. Despite the fact that the 2025 DOE report violated official rules of procedure (Waldman, 2026) and contained serious scientific errors (Dessler & Kopp, 2025; Piecuch, 2025; Santer et al., 2026), it has not been retracted and is still being referenced in efforts to shape policy (McCuskey, 2026).
In August 2025, in response to the EPA’s request for public comment on the proposed recission of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) launched a fast-track review of the science linking anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases to public health and welfare in the United States. The NASEM review requested external input on post-2009 scientific developments in climate science. The following is an updated version of the input we provided to the NASEM review.
The focus of our NASEM input was on progress in the area of “climate fingerprinting.” Summarizing post-2009 developments in this area is timely in the specific context of ongoing discussions regarding the scientific justification for the Endangerment Finding and the use of sound scientific information in formulating public policy. Our review is also useful in a broader context—it advances understanding of the history and current state of the science of climate fingerprinting in the Earth Sciences community.”
The 1979 Charney et al. report was probably the first which embodied the claim by climate modelers that a modest warming from a large increase in carbon dioxide will be amplified by an equal warming by an increase in water vapor. This positive feedback was used to justify other positive feedbacks. The effect of increased CO2 is simply an increase in heat retained by Earth. The positive feedback presumed by the models is that the retained heat causes more heat to be retained. But that extra retained heat should, by the same logic, retain more heat, and so on. More retained heat causes more retained heat without limit. In other words, any increase in retained heat from any cause whatsoever should lead to temperature increase without limit.
These positive feedbacks are contrary to Le Chatelier’s Principle which describes how a system at dynamic equilibrium if disturbed by a change in concentration (temperature, pressure, or volume) of a component tends to react against the change. The equilibrium will shift in the direction of the change but not to the extent that is expected.
In the Charney report the global climate modelers failed to produce the physical evidence to justify the extent of their claimed amplification. They have continued to fail to produce the evidence needed. Also, in claiming a distinct human fingerprint, Santer, et al. cite Allen & Tett (1999) who claimed their statistical work met the conditions of the Gauss-Markov Theorem which is a foundational part of regression analysis. About 20 years later, Ross McKitrick showed that the Allen & Tett paper did not meet these conditions, and other papers cited by Santer et al. rely on the Allen & Tett paper.
The Santer et al. paper reveals the extent to which the global warming movement has infected the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). Part of its conclusion states: [Boldface was italics in original]
“As noted in the introduction, our summary of post-2009 advances in climate fingerprinting were prepared as input to the September 2025 fast-track study of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). The NASEM report reached the following conclusion: ‘Multiple lines of evidence show that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the primary driver of the observed long-term warming trend. No known natural drivers, such as incoming solar radiation or volcanic emissions, can explain observed changes’ (National Academies of Sciences et al., 2025).
The NASEM fast-track report is now under Congressional investigation. Accusations of ‘potential conflicts of interest’ are being leveled at the U.S. National Academies for producing the fast-track report (Gross, 2026). Such accusations are baseless. They arise because the findings of the fast-track report are politically inconvenient for the fossil-fuel intensive energy use policies of the Trump Administration, and because the findings of the fast-track study do not comport with the assessment results of the deeply flawed July 2025 DOE report (Dessler & Kopp, 2025; Piecuch, 2025).
The NASEM fast-track report findings are in accord with the results of all other credible assessments of climate science (Bindoff et al., 2013; Charney et al., 1979; Eyring et al., 2021; Hegerl et al., 2007; Jay et al., 2023; Mitchell & Karoly, 2001; National Research Council, 2020; Santer, Wigley, et al., 1995). The investigation of the fast-track report by the Republican-led Congress reflects a repudiation of decades of fingerprint research, peer-reviewed research papers, and assessment reports led by the climate science community (see Figure 1). This rejection of mature scientific understanding endangers the health of Earth’s climate system, and imperils the well-being of all inhabitants of this tiny oasis in the desert of space.”
The September 2025 fast-track study by NASEM was followed by “Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts, 2026.” The summary states:
“Decades of data and research indicate that human-caused climate change is altering the frequency and intensity of several types of extreme events, such as heat waves and extreme rainfall events. Even as those trends become clearer, extreme event attribution (EEA) seeks to assess the degree to which climate change contributed to any specific event. EEA studies provide information that can be useful for public understanding, planning and risk management, policy and legal contexts, and scientific research. This report evaluates the state of EEA science, updating a National Academies report published in 2016. The report also assesses the emerging field of extreme event impact attribution (EEIA).
The number of EEA studies has grown substantially over the past decade as scientific tools, observational datasets, and methodologies have advanced, enabling attribution studies to be completed within days of an event. However, challenges remain, including limited model capabilities for small-scale regional events, representation of key atmospheric processes, and attribution of compounding, cascading, and record-breaking events. The report examines these advances and remaining challenges and provides recommendations for strengthening attribution science, improving collaboration with local experts and stakeholders, and advancing research, data, and modeling capabilities worldwide.”
The Santer et al. paper states: “The arc of scientific evidence in the six IPCC assessment reports.” The quotes from the reports go from “The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more” (1990) to “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land” (2021). [Emphasis in original]
In fact, the UN IPCC, NASEM, and Santer et al. ignore climate history, atmospheric temperature change, the fact that the relationship between carbon dioxide and its influence on Earth’s temperature is logarithmic, the principles of radiative transfer, and over 150 years of research on the greenhouse effect validated by decades of atmospheric observations from weather balloons and satellites.
There is no issue that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will cause some warming. There is no evidence that the warming will be more than what Earth experienced in the last 10,000 years, much less than what it experienced in the last 67 million years. What these organizations ignore is that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is causing life to flourish, by enhancing photosynthesis and resulting in plants using less water. For the report by the Climate Working Group see link under Challenging the Orthodoxy. For the Santer et al. paper and two recent NASEM reports see links under Defending the Orthodoxy.
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ACE: The ACE index is short for Accumulated Cyclone Energy. It is a standardized measure of the total wind energy of tropical cyclones over a given period, combining both storm strength and duration. It is an offshoot of Hurricane Destruction Potential created by William Gray and his associates. As adopted by NOAA in 1999, it includes all tropical storms with windspeeds of at least 64 knots (119 km/hr. or 74 mph). It is the best single measure we have for extreme weather events in the tropics.
In “ACE Index reveals a DECREASE, not increase, in Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclones,” Meteorologist Joe Bastardi brings up a difficulty for those organizations that blame extreme weather events on warming from increasing carbon dioxide. In his discussion Bastardi begins with:
“If we are going to talk about the global climate, then we must look at tropical cyclones globally. That sounds intuitive, right? Well, you haven’t heard what’s been going on in the western Pacific (except from me, because I rant about it), which should be common knowledge when the Atlantic goes wild. If you know what is going on, you can see why the pattern can produce a year like this in the Atlantic. The ACE index is one of the lowest on record. As a percentage, it’s in the bottom 10%. But in ACE units, the western Pacific is almost 90 units below the 6-year average ACE of 301.
[In other words], the average over the last 6 years out there [in the Pacific Basin] has been as feeble as our Atlantic Basin is this year in total ACE. This is because a large-scale event is reducing, not increasing, tropical activity and intensity in the Northern Hemisphere, the opposite of what you are being told.”
After presenting details Bastardi concludes with:
“Bottom line: The idea that tropical cyclones are becoming more numerous and more intense is the opposite of what has been happening as the Earth warms. And it points to the fact that the way it’s warming promotes a more stable climate overall. More stable lapse rates and less zonal available potential energy are the opposite of what is needed for the anarchy that man-made global warming pushers want to brainwash people into believing (which they have in many cases, with the aid of media with a lack of integrity to actually look at the total picture). Tropical cyclones are yet another example of this.”
See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Symbiont Transfer: Modern reef building corals evolved about 245-235 million years ago when Earth was considerable warmer than today, perhaps by 8°C (14°F) in the tropics. Earth has both warmed and cooled since then and modern corals survived. Today we are in a brief moderate period during Icehouse Earth. Cooling should be more deadly to corals than warming. Thus, it is strange when a coral bleaching event occurs and some scientists claim that warming may cause more coral bleaching events, killing off the coral reefs.
Over the past hundreds of millions of years, corals must have developed mechanisms where survivors replenish dead parts of a coral reef. Jo Nova reports a paper by Daniel S. Collin, et al. “Rapid coral bleaching recovery via symbiont transfer from healthy corals.” The abstract states in part:
“Here, we demonstrate coral bleaching recovery through contact-mediated transfer of symbionts from healthy corals using small coral fragments. We show that symbiont transfer is rapid, occurring over days to weeks, and highly efficient, with only brief physical contact with healthy corals required. A single week of contact, and in some cases as few as 3 days, provides sufficient symbionts to initiate sustained and full self-recovery. By 1 week, symbiont population doubling time is approximately 4 days, up to an order of magnitude faster than most recovery times for corals in the field. We identify tissue fusion as the mechanism enabling directional symbiont transfer from healthy to bleached coral tissue. As a result, contact-dependent recovery is restricted to corals of the same genet, whereas heterologous genet pairings trigger antagonistic interactions. However, symbiont transfer via polyp uptake occurs immediately upon contact in both same-genet and mixed-genet pairings, revealing an additional, slower pathway for symbiont transfer that is insufficient on its own to support colony recovery.”
See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Peak Oil: British electrical and petroleum engineer Richard Lyon, who has made astute comments on Britain’s energy situation in the Daily Sceptic, may have fallen into a “peak oil” trap. The review of Lyon’s new book The Energy Trap states:
“One of humanity’s greatest modern threats involves an area of life we thought we had mastered: energy. For the last century our energy system has delivered rising prosperity, increased lifespans and largely eliminated famine. Now it is being dismantled – with confidence, with public money and with almost no scrutiny.
In this short, sharp book, Richard Lyon – electrical engineer, petroleum engineer and energy economist – strips the energy debate back to the physics. What he finds is alarming: fossil fuels are running out, the proposed replacements can’t do the job and the people in charge don’t understand the science well enough to realize, much less pursue, solutions.
The consequences could be severe, but they are not yet inevitable. In a series of lucid chapters, The Energy Trap sets out the problem and proposes a way forward – provided we are willing to stop wasting our remaining resources on energy systems that can’t work and get on with building one that can.”
In “Peak Oil By Any Other Name” market economist Tilak Doshi who is the Energy Editor for the same Daily Sceptic praises the book for some sections but takes exception to the claim that we are about to run out of oil and gas. Doshi writes in part:
On nuclear power, Lyon rightly urges Western governments to strip out regulatory accretions – “multi-year licensing iterations for each new reactor design, dose limits set far below natural background radiation, public inquiries that can outlast a project’s planning consent” – while keeping “the genuinely load-bearing safety standards”. The prize is large. South Korea builds reactors for around $2,200 per kilowatt of capacity, against close to $10,000 for Vogtle in Georgia and more still for Britain’s Hinkley Point C. Hinkley’s cost is now put at up to £35 billion. This amounts to a gap of roughly four to six times in construction cost per kilowatt. Lost construction experience and non-standard designs matter, but regulatory burdens explain a large part of the difference. [Boldface added]
After further praise of Lyon’s work, Doshi explains that Lyon does not understand how the market system free of government interference works. He writes, in part:
“Thomas Malthus argued that population growth would outrun increases in food production. The Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth (1972) used computer models whose results were driven by similar assumptions of finite resources and exponential growth. The Hubbert curve, which the author treats as proven and already in effect for conventional oil, takes the recoverable resource as fixed in quantity, and so does not anticipate improving technology.
The alternative tradition is that of Julian Simon, author of The Ultimate Resource. The relevant question is not how much oil lies underground, but what human ingenuity can discover, develop and substitute, given prices and institutions. Simon famously won his wager with Paul Ehrlich over the prices of five metals between 1980 and 1990. This is not to argue that we can never run out of any particular resource; that is a misreading of his thesis. The Simon Abundance Index (SAI) of Gale Pooley and Marian Tupy extends his logic, using hours of work as the common measuring rod of scarcity rather than real or nominal prices, which do not capture rising incomes. The index scales the result for population growth. Measured in hours of work – the relevant measure of scarcity in terms of human welfare – the average time price of 50 basic commodities, crude oil, coal and natural gas among them, fell by 70.9% between 1980 and 2025, even as world population rose by 85%. On the index’s methodology, an hour of work bought 244% more of the basket in 2025 than in 1980.
Julian Simon’s insights are consistent with the approach of Friedrich Hayek, whose essay ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’ explained why free-market prices, rather than planners, convey the dispersed information about scarcity on which sound decisions depend. Human flourishing has come not from technocratic control over consumption but from the freedom to produce, innovate, invest and exchange in voluntary contracts with other individuals.
In the blurbs on the back cover, Matt Ridley – author of the bestseller The Rational Optimist – calls it ‘The best book on energy you will ever read. Superbly written, thrillingly argued and utterly terrifying.’ It is indeed written in succinct, accessible prose, guiding readers to think about energy economics and the physical requirements of modern civilization. The ‘utterly terrifying’ aspect of the book comes from treating present constraints as fixed limits rather than as problems that markets, technology and human creativity have repeatedly transformed for the better. In that phrase, the ghost of Malthus rises once more.” [Boldface added here]
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Number of the Week: From -50°C (-58°F) to more than 40°C (104°F) or a 90C° (162F°) degree range. Jo Nova writes: Humans live in towns that vary from -50°C (-58°F) in Siberia to more than 40°C (104°F) hot in Ethiopia, that’s a whopping 90 (162F°) degree range. Who knew we were only another half a degree away from a mass neurological meltdown?
There are places with higher recordings than the one Nova used in Ethiopia. One place is Basra, Iraq, with a population of about 1,500,000. Its summer temperatures regularly exceed 50°C (122 °F). On July 22, 2016, Basra reached 53.9 °C (129.0 °F). A port city, Basra has high humidity as well. So, the temperature range in which humans live (without special conditions such as at an Antarctic weather station) can be as much as 104C° or 187F°. See link under Below the Bottom Line and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basra
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Challenging the Orthodoxy — NIPCC
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2013
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
Biased trend amplification ratios in CMIP6 models
By Timothy J. Vogelsang, Ross McKitrick, John Christy & Roy Spencer, Nature Scientific Reports, Sep 29, 2026
Press Release: Biased trend amplification ratios in CMIP6 models
By Ross McKitrick, His Blog, Oct 12, 2026
A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate
By the Climate Working Group, United States Department of Energy, July 23, 2025
ACE Index reveals a DECREASE, not increase, in Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclones.
By Joe Bastardi, CFACT, Oct 13, 2026
Theo Wolters at EIKE Conference: “Nobody knows how the climate works”
By Theo Wolters, Clintel, Oct 9, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Dutch engineer, entrepreneur and climate researcher Theo Wolters used his presentation at the EIKE Conference to challenge one of the central assumptions underlying current climate policy: that science has conclusively established that human CO2 emissions are responsible for the recent global warming and that this warming is potentially catastrophic.
Scientists discover bleached corals can fix themselves in days
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 16, 2026
Link to paper: Rapid coral bleaching recovery via symbiont transfer from healthy corals
By Daniel S. Collin, et al., Science Advances, Oct 14, 2026
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeh1580
Short Summary of Observations Until September 2026
By Ole Humlum, Climae4you, Accessed Oct 16, 2026
#Canary in a Climate World: Andrew Roman on the intellectual fallacy behind climate litigation
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
So, the claim (as one Ontario case put it) that the plaintiffs’ human rights are violated because Ontario’s emission targets aren’t strict enough “assumes that there is an invisible dome above Ontario, keeping Ontario’s emissions within provincial boundaries; and similarly keeping the rest of the world’s emissions out. If there is no glass dome over that jurisdiction to prevent emissions from moving in or out, and if a court cannot control GHG from outside the jurisdiction, the litigation is useless.” [Boldface added]
Defending the Orthodoxy
Fingerprint Evidence for Human Effects on Climate: Advances After the 2009 Endangerment Finding
By Benjamin D. Santer, Susan Solomon, et al., Earth’s Future, Oct 12, 2026
Link to: Effects of Human-Caused Greenhouse Gas Emissions on U.S. Climate, Health, and Welfare, 2025
By Staff, Consensus Study Report, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025
Link to: Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts, 2026
By Staff, Consensus Study Report, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2026
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
“National Emergency Briefing” Demand UK Government Deliver a Prime Time Climate Emergency Broadcast
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 10, 2026
Pippa Neill Environment reporter
The British government must be honest about the scale of the threat posed by climate and nature breakdown, researchers have said, after nine out of 10 people surveyed after watching a briefing on the issue felt more motivated to act.
[SEPP Comment: Will climate and nature breakdown when the next Ice Age arrives?]
The unbearable uncertainty of certainty
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
These questions, as so often in climate “journalism”, go unanswered because they go unasked. Instead, we’re told of massive uncertainty that is secretly certainty, followed by:
“That is why an £81 million plan is now afoot to build an early warning system that could alert humanity if AMOC is nearing a dangerous tipping point. Data now being collected by the Attenborough research ship is core to that plan. ‘We might be committed to centuries of change without knowing it,’ said ocean scientist Paul Holland at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) as he prepared to set sail from the port of Harwich, UK, some weeks earlier. ‘We might be passing these tipping points without realizing.’”
In case you care, according to that story when the panic-mongers, (sorry researchers in question) at the “Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany” had:
“published the first Planetary Health Check in 2023, they found that human actions, from fossil fuel burning to excess fertilizer use, had pushed Earth past six of the nine boundaries. Last year we breached a seventh – ocean acidification.”
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Exclusive Extracts from Chris Morrison’s New Book Implausible: How Scientists, Activist Politicians and Journalists Invented a Climate Crisis
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Oct 12, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
The Corruption of the BBC and Met Office: Further Exclusive Extracts From Chris Morrison’s New Book on the Invented ‘Climate Crisis’
Further exclusive extracts from Chris Morrison’s new book on the invented ‘climate crisis’ are published today on the Daily Sceptic. Read about the role of the BBC and Met Office in driving the hysteria.
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Oct 13, 2026
[SEPP Comment: See link immediately above.]
School daze
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
If the obsession with climate change were merely harmless in its effects it would still be a bad thing because it costs a lot of money. But it’s a lot worse because of how bad many of its effects actually are. Even in wealthy countries the war on oil and gas causes poverty, unemployment and even unrest. In poor countries it causes misery and starvation.
We must embrace AI and data centers, not pause them
By Paul Driessen, WUWT, Oct 14, 2026
My Presentation on Disasters to the Financial Stability Board
By Roger Pielke Jr., The Honest Broker, Oct 12, 2026
One of the most common errors I come across in interpretation of trends in economic losses from extreme weather events is the misuse of economic loss data to infer trends in weather and climate events. Such errors are endemic.
For instance, the authors of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) opened their report by claiming that NOAA’s “billion-dollar disasters” tabulation showed an increase due to asset changes and changes in climate — without decomposing the role of each — explaining that in the 1980s the United States experienced one such disaster every four months, and today it experiences one every three weeks. The clear implication was that changes in climate were driving loss trends. That was simply false.
Global Warming: Here’s Where We Are
By I & I Editorial Board, Oct 15, 2026
Leaders Like Mark Carney Sold the West a Renewable Energy Story. China Is Cashing In.
OPED: By choking off investment in oil and gas while betting on wind and solar, Western governments have traded a diverse energy system for one built on Chinese supply chains.
By Brenda Shaffer, The Bureau, Oct 16, 2026 [H/t C.J.Cvrk]
Climate Change Weekly # 593— 2026 Science Review: Stories Casual Readers May Have Missed
By H. Sterling Burnett, The Heartland Institute, Oct 9, 2026
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
Energy & Environmental Review: October 12, 2026
By John Droz, Jr., Master Resource, Oct 12, 2026
After Paris!
Claim: Fiji Pre-COP Climate Conference was Not a Flop because Participants Agreed to Demand More Money
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 15, 2026
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
The effect of additional CO2 on Curlytop Knotweed
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
From the CO2science.org archive.
Seeking a Common Ground
A Report from the Netherlands
Why engagement matters to me
By Roger Pielke Jr. The Honest Broker, Oct 15, 2026
In the Q&A following my talk, I offered Clintel some unsolicited advice:
The debate over a “climate emergency” is over. Just look at how policy makers are acting all over the world; [Boldface added]
I recommend a new and positive framing for their core view, something like: the world (and the Netherlands) needs abundant energy that is affordable, accessible, secure, and clean;
To argue against something is easy (just ask self-described climate activists), but arguing for something practical is much more productive.
[SEPP Comment: Do those who push net zero emissions know that there is no climate emergency?]
Is Climate Science Politicized? An Exchange
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 14, 2026
Measurement Issues — Surface
First Frost of the Season is Revealing
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 12, 2026
Keep in mind that “surface” air temperatures reported at airports and other locations are NOT at ground level but taken at 2 meters (about 6 feet) above the surface.
On cold nights, the temperature at the surface is usually colder than at 2 meters, often by 2-5 degrees F.
Changing Weather
No Evidence Extreme Weather Events Are Becoming More Frequent or Intense: (5) Tornadoes
In a series of articles physicist Ralph B. Alexander examines whether weather extremes are becoming more frequent or intense. Following his previous article on hurricanes, this installment focuses on tornadoes.
By Ralph Alexander, Clintel, Oct 13, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
By Staff, Climate Prediction Center / NCEP, NOAA, Oct 13, 2026
Summary:
ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Advisory
El Niño is present.
Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are above average across the east central and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The atmospheric circulation anomalies over the equatorial Pacific Ocean are consistent with El Niño.
El Niño continues to strengthen, with a strong-to-very strong El Niño likely through January-March 2027 (remaining greater than an 83% chance).
CPC Official ENSO Outlook, Updated Oct 8, 2026
Chances remain high for a historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950 (+2.5°C or more for 3-month RONI value [Relative Oceanic Niño Index]): the chance is 54% for September-November, 83% for October December, and 70% for November-January.
Just the Numbers, Ma’am. Chris Martz on Isaias and Gulf Sea Surface Temperatures
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 12, 2026
From Martz: However, SST anomalies represent departures from climatological averages rather than absolute SSTs. That means below-average SSTs can still support an intense hurricane. In fact, the Gulf of Mexico (or Gulf of America; call it whatever you want) is warm enough during late August, September, and early October every year to support a hurricane of category four or five strength. That has always been the case and it always will be.
Hurricane Isaiah
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 14, 2026
Having briefly reached Cat 3 hours before landfall, the storm weakened considerably by the time it reached the coast. NWS claim sustained winds of 105 mph, but there is no evidence for this. Surface wind measurements put the highest wind gusts at 118 mph, but sustained winds are always much lower.
Gusts at Santa Rosa, for instance, peaked at 116 mph, but NWS confirm sustained winds of 91 mph, which would mean it was only a Cat 1 hurricane at landfall:
Super Inversion
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 16, 2026
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Believe It or Not. NASA Study Finds the Arctic Melt Season Stopped Lengthening in 2010
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 13, 2026
Link to paper: A recent stabilization in the lengthening of the Arctic sea ice melt season into a highly variable regime.
By Linette Boisvert, et al., Nature Communications Earth & Environment, Apr 23, 2026
From Rotter: If less clouds under a positive Arctic Dipole drove the 2000s lengthening, where does anthropogenic forcing enter the calculation?
Why is the 2010–2023 stall internal variability while the 2000–2009 jump is a new background state?
The Great Arctic Ice Meltdown That Wasn’t: Comical Calamity of Climate Prophecy
By John O’Sullivan, Principia Scientific International (PSI), Oct 6, 2026
New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Oct 14,2026
Link to paper: The recent zonal asymmetry of temperature change in the Antarctic circumpolar current
By XuBin Ni, et al., Climate Dynamics, March 2026
Changing Seas
Analysing NASA Sea Level Data with different starting dates
By Dr. Alan Welch FBIS FRAS, WUWT, Oct 14, 2026
Whilst rejecting that the sea level rise is accelerating, except for a low value around 0.01mm/year, commensurate with the long-term tidal gauges, using calculated “acceleration” values using a quadratic fit has proved very useful in following trends and showing that the concept of high accelerations is unsustainable.
Agriculture Issues & Fear of Famine
Claim: The French Drought Crisis Should be Addressed by Cutting Pesticide and Switching to Organic Farming
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 11, 2026
The last thing Europe needs is greens adding to the pressure on supply chains and agricultural production with their organic farming and fertilizer / pesticide obsessions.
No More Cash Cow: USDA Cuts Off Dairy-Funded ESG Projects
Dairy-checkoff dollars are going back where they belong: Promoting milk, not underwriting ESG and the climate-industrial complex.
By Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, Oct 15, 2026
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Next financial crisis ‘to be triggered by uninsurable homes’
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 14, 2026
If this was a genuine issue, surely these “experts” would have published a proper analysis, backed up with verifiable data. Instead, they slink in the shadows, relying on the Telegraph to give them credibility.
What We’ve Got Here Is Failure to Air Condition. Futurism Blames Climate Change for Hot Prisons
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 14, 2026
Wrong, Media: Penguins Thriving or Dying, Climate Change Gets Blamed Either Way
By Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, Oct 12, 2026
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
8 Million Properties at Risk of Flooding by Mid-Century –Environment Agency
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 12, 2026
According to the Environment Agency [EA], 8 million homes in England will be at risk of flooding from rivers and the sea or surface water by mid-century, due to climate change.
The EA website offers the opportunity to check the flood risk at individual locations.
I live at about 500ft above sea level and about 100ft above the valley bottom. Their tool informs me I have a very low risk of flooding, <0.1%. Other than rain coming in through a leaky window seal or broken roof tile, there is pretty much zero chance of my home flooding or anybody else’s on our estate. Nevertheless, we are all included in the EA’s “8 million at risk”.
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
CNN’s scary plastics report should be tossed into the recycling bin
By Josh Bloom, ACSH, Oct 09, 2026
Link to article: Over 90% of common household items contain hazardous plastic chemicals
By Sandee LaMotte, CNN, Sep 30, 2026
Link to report: Poison Plastics: How chemicals in everyday plastics are harming your health
By Staff, Environmental Justice Foundation, Sep 30, 2026
Canadian wildfires: worst year ever update
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
In fact, the above chart, which compares the 2026 season (blue bars) to the 10-year average (gold line), shows that 2026 got off to a very slow start, had a brief one-month surge, and has since settled into a lower-than average total. The number of fires is also a bust. Thus far this year there have been 5,466 compared to the 10-year average of 5,577, the 15-year average of 5,411 and the 25-year average of 6,011.
Communicating Better to the Public – Protest
Why MAHA Is Asking Trump to Rethink Coal
By Zen Honeycutt, Real Clear Energy, Oct 15, 2026
Questioning European Green
France Is The Future Of The Progressive Project
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Oct 15, 2026
Brivael Le Pogam is a French AI entrepreneur who has just written a long post on X on this subject that has apparently gone viral.
… In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream. Here’s what it looks like from the inside. . . .
Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them. The promise was protection. The result is stagnation. The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. . . . Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe. . . . Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
There’s a Reason Ulez is So Hated
As Kevin Rees jailed for 15 years for blowing up a Ulez camera with a homemade bomb, we see why London’s anti-motorist money-making ‘clean air’ scheme is so widely hated.
By Tilak Doshi, Tilak’s Substack, Oct 12, 2026
But a target that recedes as one approaches it is not a target but a treadmill.
Driving the treadmill is the linear no-threshold assumption that harm falls in proportion to exposure all the way down to zero. Thus, only when exposure is zero can we know that harms are fully avoided. Hence the Labour Assembly Member declaration that “no level of air pollution is safe”. It is a doctrine no policy can ever satisfy, since any residual exposure is by definition a residual harm; cost-benefit analysis is replaced by a liturgy of pristineness. Paracelsus knew better: the dose makes the poison. So, London’s own fine-particle levels, halved since the early 2000s, still remain a problem by this standard.
The human toll is then expressed in deaths. Public Health England put the figure at around 4,000 premature deaths a year in London, and City Hall’s latest Imperial study claims attributable deaths fell by roughly 40% between 2019 and 2024. These are not bodies counted in a morgue with coroners’ reports but outputs of a model. These models multiply estimated exposure by a “concentration-response coefficient” and, under the no-threshold assumption, finds victims wherever there is a pollutant. Nor is it obvious how much credit the zone deserves.
Questioning Green Elsewhere
America’s Net Zero Near Miss
By Rupert Darwall, the American Mind, Oct 15, 2026
Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky described environmentalism’s ideological ascendancy as co-option followed conquest. What was missing was confrontation. No Western political leader dared challenge the environmental movement—until Donald Trump.
Costly is cheap and cheap is costly
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
As Wikipedia put it, after tracing uses of the term back to 2007:
“The 2019 United States congressional resolution ‘Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal’ introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey advocated a ‘just transition’, counteracting previous systemic injustices that had disproportionally hurt vulnerable communities. A ‘just transition’ relies on increasing social and economic equity and access to opportunity which are crucial components of the Green New Deal and principles of environmental and social justice.”
The Political Games Continue
Climate Alliance’s anti-affordability platform raises big election issues
By David Wojick, CFACT, Oct 10, 2026
Here the worst anti-affordability case is net-zero which is impossibly expensive. The Alliance says 16 of its member states already have “net-zero GHG goals” and more are wanted. In addition, 20 members have “economy-wide GHG goals” and all have “State climate action plans.”
Shh: CEO’s and Labor don’t want to talk about climate change anymore
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 14, 2026
Litigation Issues
Behind the (Revolving) Green Door
By Staff, Government Accountability & Oversight, Oct 16, 2026
EPA’s revolving door has delivered at least two senior agency lawyers to environmental groups regularly suing the Agency—sometimes with more of a ‘sweetheart’ tinge to the suits than other times. Two who are now active on the other side of the greens-vs-EPA litigation leviathan are Ryland Shengzhi Li, who left in the first year of the second Trump term for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and Abirami Vijayan who left for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) the same year. Both worked on major Clean Air Act programs, often very closely with the green-group complex. Both now challenge their former agency in those same fields on behalf of those groups.
Climate Lawsuits Fail Constitutional and Scientific Review
By Angela Wheeler, CO2 Coalition, Oct 9, 2026
West Virginia Is Suing Pennsylvania to Lower Electric Bills
By Joshua Schubert, Real Clear Energy, Oct 14, 2026
Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards (AEPS)… is expensive. In 2025 alone, it cost about $700 million, or $4.11 a month for a household using 800 kWh. AEPS requires Pennsylvania utilities and competitive suppliers to buy credits for about 18% of the electricity they sell. These credits subsidize an eclectic mix of “alternative energy sources.” Each megawatt-hour from a qualifying plant creates one credit.
Honolulu’s 6/12/26 subpoena to the American Petroleum Institute
By Russell Cook, GelspanFiles.com, Oct 9, 2026
Energy Issues – General
Peak Oil By Any Other Name
A review of “The Energy Trap: Why the Renewable Energy Transition Can’t Work – and What Can” by Richard Lyon (Swift Press, 2026)
By Tilak Doshi, Tilak’s Substack, Oct 14, 2026
The Energy Trap
By Richard Lyon, Swift Press, Sep 24, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
[SEPP Comment: See link immediately above. Fossil fuels have been “running out” for over 50 years.]
Energy Issues – Europe
Britain is Heading Towards Blackouts
Britain is heading towards blackouts because of its overreliance on renewables, says energy expert Richard Lyon, who explains how Britain’s power grid works and why Net Zero is making it vulnerable to severe outages.
By Richard Lyon, The Daily Sceptic, Oct 9, 2026
Defenders of the detransition say all this is solvable. Fuel-less spinning machines and newer inverters that imitate a flywheel can do much of the work, and NESO is already buying them.
But solvable is not solved, and it is not free. None of these costs appears in the wholesale price quoted to show that renewables are cheap. They are bought piecemeal, after the plant that once provided the functions rolled in has closed, while margins are trimmed to keep the bill down.
Nor has it been done before. No large grid anywhere has yet run mostly on wind, solar and batteries with so little spinning plant behind it. NESO’s Chief Executive calls its stability program “world-first“, and means it as praise. Britain is running a colossal experiment on a system that cannot be allowed to fail.
Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 11, 2026
Despite months of rescue efforts and political backing, the combination of soaring energy bills and a sluggish market has brought a 182-year legacy to a close.
Porcelain manufacturing relies on massive amounts of energy to run kilns at temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius. In recent months, Kahla faced monthly gas bills ranging between €150,000 and €180,000, totaling up to €2.16 million annually.
Energy Issues – Australia
Carbon Credits to turn into general communist fiat currency to stop storms, help indigenous people, jobs, frogs, picnic spots whatever
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 13, 2026
Energy Issues – Elsewhere non-US
The unbearable slowness of speed
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
The Canadian government’s tendency to treat words as deeds is not unique. But it is certainly well-developed. Thus when you read “Atlantic Canadian companies tap into Europe’s growing wind energy market” you might well think someone had sold somebody something. But no. It’s just more wind of the oratorical sort:
“Atlantic Canada has long been an exporter of energy products. As the world shifts toward renewable sources, demand is growing not only for clean power, but also for the expertise behind it. From wind and marine energy to the technologies that support them, the region’s companies are developing innovative products and services for both domestic projects and export markets around the world. Today, the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, announced that nine Atlantic Canadian companies and energy sector organizations are taking part in WindEnergy Hamburg 2026. Participants include Waterford Energy Services Inc., which supports the construction, operation and maintenance of energy projects, and Eskasoni First Nation, a partner in the Truro Heights Community Wind Project.”
Energy Issues — US
Cooking With Gas
My mother taught women how to cook with natural gas. She was also a pioneer of Oklahoma television.
By Robert Bryce, His Substack, Oct 13, 2026
Before I get to my mom’s story, it’s important to understand how women cooked before electricity and natural gas were widely available. The answer, of course, is that they largely relied on wood and coal.
[SEPP Comment: And kerosene.]
You Pay Each Month for Closing Coal Power
By Frank Clemente and Fred Palmer, WUWT, Oct 11, 2026
[SEPP Comment: Coal power took the US off wood and muscle power, and provided the first electrical power. During the “energy crisis” of the 1970s President Carter considered it the fuel of the future. The US has massive supplies. Is it now obsolete?]
Free Market Electricity: BYOP Update
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 16, 2026
Glen Lyons and Travis Fisher have expanded the public policy debate regarding electricity with Advocates for Consumer Regulated Electricity (CRE). Their advocacy program, Bring Your Own Power (BYOP), proposes privately funded, “islanded” off-grid utilities that bypass public-utility regulation. CRE’s last quarterly report focused on the practical case for reform; the latest report (below) goes from “concept to campaign.”
Permits Shouldn’t Expire on Election Day
By Jeffrey Kupfer, Real Clear Energy, Oct 12, 2026
Link to paper: Powering America Through Endangered Species Act Reform
By Staff, ConservAmerica.org., January 2026
https://conservamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ConservAmerica.PoweringAmerica.pdf
From summary: Over the past two decades, a clear and costly pattern has emerged at the intersection of American energy development and environmental law. Major fossil fuel and energy infrastructure projects, representing tens of billions of dollars in capital investment have been systematically delayed, fundamentally reshaped, or canceled outright because of litigation under the nation’s bedrock environmental statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); the Clean Water Act (CWA); and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). It is essential that Congress and the administration address the unwarranted weaponization of all of these statutes.
Washington’s Control of Energy
Energy regulators speed up approvals for gas export facility expansions
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Oct 16, 2026
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) proposed Thursday to limit notice and protest periods to either 60 or 90 days for requested expansions to liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals.
Nuclear Energy and Fears
How to Fulfill the Great Potential of Nuclear Energy. Affordable, Clean, Perpetual Power
By Brian Gitt, Real Clear Energy, Oct 14, 2026
Advanced nuclear fuel differs from traditional fuel, which is typically enriched less than 5% and shaped into small oxide pellets. Advanced fuel has a higher enrichment level or a different form factor. It is more energy dense and efficient, but its supply chain is just beginning to grow.
Nuclear Power at ‘Warp Speed’: Magical Thinking Meets Statism
By Robert Bradley Jr, Master Resource, Oct 13, 2026
In general, a free market approach to nuclear would entail:
Ending governmental research and development in the field. Abolishing public grants and tax preferences for the industry. Halting foreign-loan guarantees. Repealing the Price-Anderson Act in order to privatize safety and insurance regulation. Lifting all antitrust constraints on industry collaboration. Making waste storage the responsibility of waste owners. Removing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Department of Energy from civilian nuclear policy.
[SEPP Comment: Government-funded R & D may be important. It helped to develop horizontal drilling. There are many high-tech spin-offs from other government R & D such as GPS, the internet (ARPA), etc. The real problems with US nuclear power are over-promise and expensive overregulation. Now we have lost our construction experts.]
Seoul Power. A $200 Billion Korea Deal Puts Eight Reactors on the U.S. Table
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 16, 2026
Link to: Outlines of a Korean Nuclear Deal Take Shape
And Nuclear Engineering Degrees Are Hot
By Matthew L. Wald and Spencer Toohill, Nuclear Notes, Oct 15, 2026
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
In-State Solar Mandates are Bananas
Are they the dumbest energy policies in America?
By Isaac Orr, Mitch Rolling, and Sarah Montalbano, Energy Bad Boys, Oct 10, 2026
Link to report: How In-State Renewable Energy Mandates Raise Electricity Costs for Everyone
By Isaac Orr and Sarah Montalbano, Always On Energy Research, September 2026
Imagine the brilliant lawmakers in your state passed a law requiring that 4 percent of the groceries in your cart on every trip to the store had to be bananas. Now imagine those same very smart lawmakers also required those bananas to be grown in a local greenhouse at up to 177 times the price of imported bananas, turning what should be a $2 bunch into a massive $354 banana bill.
As unbelievable as it may seem, this is effectively what the lawmakers in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. have done with their electricity supplies by requiring portions of their Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) to be met with in-state solar generation, or, in Pennsylvania’s case, mandating the use of in-state waste coal facilities.
This week, Always On Energy Research released a new report, creatively titled “How In-State Renewable Energy Mandates Raise Electricity Costs for Everyone,” that details how these in-state solar mandates are causing families and businesses to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in extra costs. They also produce zero additional environmental benefits compared to out-of-state RECs.
Conclusion [of article]
It would be difficult to conceive of a more punitive and expensive policy for electricity customers than requiring in-state solar production in some of the least sunny places in America. These mandates cost hundreds of millions of dollars per year and may actually increase emissions relative to purchasing RECs from other states with higher emissions profiles.
Google Knew? Google Management Finally Admits Renewables Don’t Work for Powering Data Centers
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 14, 2026
My question – which state or organization will be the first to sue big tech for continuing to push green fantasies, when their own research people told them back in 2014 that renewables don’t work? How much taxpayer money has been squandered because ordinary people and politicians trusted Google search to provide unbiased search results?
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
‘We can’t keep up with your electric vehicle targets’–Renault Boss
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 12, 2026
Carmakers are now paying the cost for their failure to stand up for themselves years ago. Instead they kowtowed to the Net Zero bandwagon and forgot about the most important thing – their customers.
California Dreaming
California’s energy crisis could bring the West Coast to its knees
By Ronald Stein, Energy Literacy, Oct 12, 2026
Other News that May Be of Interest
Mining Is Not a Supply Chain
By Viktor Kiss & Michael Roberts, WUWT, Oct 13, 2026
China’s dominance of rare earths is usually described as a mining problem when it’s actually a refining one. Although China controls roughly 60% of global rare-earth mining, it controls more than 91% of global refining and nearly 94% of permanent-magnet production.
In the dark in a good way
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 14, 2026
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Climate Change is attacking our brains (Time to buy Emergency Solar panels to stop dementia?)
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 15, 2026
Humans live in towns that vary from -50°C (-58°F) in Siberia to more than 40°C (104°F) hot in Ethiopia, that’s a whopping 90 (162F°) degree range. Who knew we were only another half a degree away from a mass neurological meltdown?
Emily Atkin (Heated): Inside the Climate Fringe
By Robert Bradley Jr, Master Resource, Oct 15, 2026
And also, dogs exist. My goal this year is to get my first dog. I have to fight for a better planet for my dog.
ARTICLES
1. We Blame Global Warming
California politicians certainly aren’t going to blame themselves.
By James Freeman, WSJ, Oct. 15, 2026
TWTW Summary: In keeping with the spirit of blaming everything on global warming, Mr. Freeman writes:
“…your current columnist will now go out on a limb and make the safest political prediction of the year. If the people of California suffer because Golden State officials have neglected the state’s water infrastructure, the relevant officials will not go on social media to blame themselves. They also will probably not get very far trying to pin the blame on a weather pattern that has existed since long before the invention of the internal combustion engine. That leaves global warming as the most politically convenient landing spot for accountability avoidance.
Rachel Becker of CalMatters reports in a story distributed by the Associated Press:
- With an El Niño winter threatening heavy rain, the State Auditor warns that California’s aging dams ‘continue to pose a risk to public safety,’ especially in the Bay Area, San Diego, and Los Angeles areas…
- An audit released Monday found 57 dams in poor or unsatisfactory condition as of May, up from previous counts. That number is likely to keep rising, as state water officials reevaluate aging dams.
- The 40 riskiest dams — rated high or extremely high hazard — are located throughout the state, but cluster near densely populated coastal cities.
- Should these dams fail, the auditor reported, ‘they could collectively endanger as many as 1.5 million people and cause more than $265 billion in economic damage.’
The dams are owned by agencies in various levels of government and in some cases by private entities such as heavily regulated utilities. Regardless of whether it’s a public or private institution that controls the infrastructure, state officials have significant ability to force needed improvements. But they don’t. Ms. Becker reports:
Almost a decade ago, lawmakers strengthened the California Department of Water Resources’ authority to impose penalties such as reservoir restrictions, property liens, and fines when dam owners violate state safety laws and other requirements.
State engineers have referred owners of 44 dams for enforcement as of April. But, the auditor wrote, the water resources department ‘has never taken punitive enforcement actions against dam owners that fail to remedy their violations.’
Let’s hope that there is never another dam disaster in California. Unfortunately there is a sad history of Golden State politicians failing to prioritize water infrastructure and pretending that catastrophes are due to factors outside their control. They like to talk about infrastructure and spend money on it more than they like to build it and repair it.
Here’s a radical idea: why not take prudent steps to maintain the dams and avoid a failure rather than scheming to blame others after one occurs?”
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