The Week That Was: 2026-10-24 (October 24, 2026)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”— Max Planck
Number of the Week: 69% reduction by 2040
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW begins with a discussion of semantic tricks or traps from a health professional which also apply to climate science. TWTW continues with a discussion of tipping points by Willis Eschenbach. Then it discusses claims that Earth will overshoot the UN goal for keeping warming down, and the inability of the UN to fix a date for its next Assessment Report. TWTW discusses Kevin Kilty’s assertion that the costs of reserves need to be included when comparing utility systems. TWTW concludes with a correction to the last TWTW overgeneralizing Le Chatelier’s Principle.
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Semantic Traps: In “Out with ‘toxins,’ in with ‘inflammation’: Inside the wellness industry’s favorite semantic trick” on the website of the American Council on Science and Health, Doctor of Health Science Katie Suleta discusses a trick or trap used in the wellness industry. She writes:
“In the wellness world, ‘inflammation’ has become the ultimate scapegoat for everything that ails the human body. But while immunology treats inflammation as a complex, dynamic spectrum, often essential for survival, wellness influencers treat it as a simple villain to be cleansed. That gap between biological reality and semantic oversimplification is where fearmongering and profiteering thrive.”
Suleta gives the definitions of inflammation from the Cleveland Clinic, WebMD, and Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School. The definitions vary significantly. Then Suleta states:
“Recognizing how loosely the term is defined, especially in the wellness space, is your best shield against health exploitation. When someone offers you a simple remedy for a complex biological process that medical science is still decoding, remember they aren’t ahead of the science; they’re just profiting off your discomfort with the unknown.” [Boldface added here]
The same can be said about Earth’s climate change. Earth has multiple climates which are constantly changing. According to Wikipedia, the modified Köppen Climate Classification is primarily based on vegetation. It “divides Earth’s climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are A (tropical), B (arid), C (temperate), D (continental), and E (polar).” Further divisions include oceanic influence and semi-monsoonal influence.
Generally, climatologists take climate to be averages of many parameters over periods of at least 30 years. UN IPCC defines climate change as occurring over decades. However, the authors of its Assessment Reports frequently ignore the decades-long period to recognize change. The followers of the UN IPCC and the general media claim unusual events are examples of “climate change” creating a semantic trick or trap to fool the public. Other semantic tricks or traps include “planetary health,” “environmental justice,” “climate pollution,” and “tipping points.” Another semantic trap is calling the results of global climate modeling “science” when they are contradicted by physical evidence of atmospheric warming. The models may be an example of computer science, but the results are not physical science.
From IPCC’S Sixth Assessment Report (AR6):
“Climate change A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/ or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.”
Note that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as:
“a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”
The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction between climate change attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition and climate variability attributable to natural causes. See also Climate variability, Detection and attribution, Global warming and Ocean acidification (OA).
In other words, the UNFCCC laid the groundwork for “climate change” to become a widely used semantic trap.
See link under Health, Energy, and Climate, for link to UNFCCC definitions see https://unfccc.int/resource/ccsites/zimbab/conven/text/art01.htm, and for AR6 see https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_FullReport.pdf
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Semantic Tipping Points: Writing in WUWT, programming analyst Willis Eschenbach discusses an example of semantic tipping points in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Tipping points can be considered as thresholds when small changes lead to large changes. One example would be the beginning of a major Ice Age. Another example would be a Dansgaard–Oeschger Event (D-O Event) which occur about every 1500 years. Initially found in Greenland ice cores, D-O events are rapid warming events followed by gradual cooling and have been detected globally. We do not know whether the current warming is primarily a D-O Event with a minor influence from carbon dioxide.
As evidenced by the Younger Dryas, drastic changes have occurred naturally. But today they would be attributed to carbon dioxide. The UN IPCC considers tipping points as human caused and irreversible on human timescales. Thus, identify tipping points are goals for climate researchers. They may be a collapse of the major ice sheets, major changes in rainforests, or ocean circulation.
In “BREAKING: Models Model Modeled Tipping Point” Eschenbach discusses the paper “Tipping point forecasting in nonstationary dynamics on function spaces.” How one can forecast events that have not occurred in the past is not an issue to the authors. Eschenbach writes:
From the first section of the paper:
‘While most prior works predict tipping points in simpler systems, we demonstrate that our approach works on large-scale complex problems, including forecasting a climate tipping point in cloud cover and aerodynamic instability in airfoils.’
They can forecast ‘a climate tipping point in cloud cover’?, says I. Amazing if true!
And on page 3, we get this:
‘Our proposed method can also forecast real-world tipping points, such as the aforementioned cloud cover transition, using only partial knowledge of the underlying physics…’ [Boldface added]
That caught my eye. ‘Real-world tipping points’?, says I. Good stuff! How do they do it?
So, I read the paper and its thirty-eight pages of supplementary information, and I ended up with questions instead of answers.
Where were the real-world tests? Where were the cloud forecasts checked against measured atmospheric transitions? Or, for that matter, an airfoil in a wind tunnel?
Nowhere in the reported experiments.
Their claims of real-world forecasts turn out to be vaporware. In fact, they are using a computer program to predict what a different computer program will do. Which is not only a world away from predicting what the actual climate will do—it’s a real world away.
Now, I’m not saying this is useless. The authors’ method is clever enough to deserve an explanation.
They train a ‘recurrent neural operator,’ which I’ll call the AI to spare both of us some syllables. It learns how a simulated system behaves before a tipping point. The AI then predicts the system’s future evolution.”
Eschenbach discusses issues such as using model forecasts as physical evidence and the need for actual validation of models by testing them against physical evidence. Before going into some coding examples, he concludes with: [Boldface in original]
“And there is an even deeper problem.
We have very few examples of climate ‘tipping points,’ times when some threshold is exceeded that leads to an entirely new system. For example, the low-cloud ‘tipping point’ they investigate in this study has never been observed. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to even test such an AI method for predicting climate ‘tipping points’.
It’s true that laboratory systems and physical aerodynamic experiments offer opportunities to test the proposed method against some aspects of nature. But until such tests are done, the claims need to stay within the evidence.
Unfortunately, regarding the real climate, lab systems and aerodynamic experiments don’t help. We simply don’t have the examples we need to test the system.
To be clear, this work may prove useful. It may become a fast way to investigate transitions in expensive simulations. It may even eventually work with observations. The authors have supplied code, data, architectural comparisons, and a supplement that admits several limitations. All of that is welcome.
But ‘may eventually’ is doing work that ‘can forecast real-world tipping points’ has quietly dismissed.
They have taught one computer program to anticipate another computer program’s behavior.
Before we use that result to tell us what the actual climate will do, there’s one more participant we need to consult.
The real-world Earth.”
Unfortunately, we can expect more such papers where AI generated results are substituted for physical evidence. See links under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Overshoot: A press release from the UN Environmental Programme, one of the parent organizations of the IPCC states:
“UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return finds that the chance of holding global warming to below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels with no or limited overshoot is gone. The task now is to minimize the duration and magnitude of overshoot and return to 1.5°C by the end of the century. The report looks at a ‘lowest possible’ 1.5°C overshoot scenario, in which peak warming is limited to 1.7-1.8°C.”
Since there are very few thermometer records dating to 1850, the claim of knowledge to a tenth of a degree C is absurd. But the UN IPCC and its followers take these absurd claims seriously. We can expect to see an onslaught of propaganda claiming dire consequences from this warming, which may be largely natural. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s temperatures is virtually saturated – tiny. See links under Defending the Orthodoxy.
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IPCC Problems: In a recent article, reporters for Carbon Brief, a supporter of UN IPCC actions, state:
“Countries have failed – for the sixth time running – to agree on the timeline for publishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) next set of influential reports.
The IPCC’s 65th session (IPCC-65) was seen by many to be the final opportunity for countries to agree on a schedule where its seventh assessment report (AR7) would be published in time for the UN’s second ‘global stocktake’ of climate action.
Before last week’s meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, IPCC chair Prof Sir Jim Skea had warned that releasing the reports in time for the stocktake in 2028 would depend on a timeline being agreed by the end of 2026.
But the week-long meeting descended into fraught disagreements between governments, resulting in Skea ‘suspending’ the talks on Friday evening with no decision made.
Countries were also unable to agree on the IPCC’s budget for the rest of the AR7 cycle, leaving the body with a ‘serious funding crisis’.
The IPCC has pledged to reconvene the meeting at the ‘earliest opportunity;’ however, it has not yet given an indication of when this will be. “…
The article discusses at length details on the countries failing to reach agreement. One of the big problems is the lack of funding. The article states:
“Contributions in 2025 were 5.3m Swiss francs (£4.8m) lower than 2023, while costs have risen, the secretariat notes. As of the start of July, just 16 countries and organizations had contributed in 2026, totaling 2.8m Swiss francs (£2.6m).
These donors include the EU, UK, WMO, UNFCCC and UNEP, as well as Australia, Canada, Hungary, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and Trinidad and Tobago.
Despite being its largest donor historically, the US has not contributed financially to the IPCC since 2024 – before the second term of US president Donald Trump.”
After some discussion on past contributions and current budgets the article state:
“As a minimum, the IPCC needs 5.8m Swiss francs (£5.3m) per year in contributions to ‘enable the successful completion of the cycle’, the secretariat adds, although this would leave ‘no financial buffer for unforeseen circumstances’.”
Near the end of the article, after a long discussion of budget and its impact on the writing teams the article discusses “How might the IPCC use AI and enhance gender inclusivity?” It states:
“Separately, vice-chair Ürge-Vorsatz reported on the progress of the IPCC’s gender action team, explaining that the group had finalized the report of the IPCC expert meeting on gender, diversity, equity, and inclusivity.
The gender action team ‘aims to enhance gender equality in IPCC processes through monitoring, accounting for gender in decisions, including diversity in nominations and appointment,’ according to the IPCC website.”
See link under Problems in the Orthodoxy.
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Cost of Utility Reserves: Those claiming wind and solar power are low cost usually ignore the cost of back-up and reserves. In “Maintaining Reserves and Their Cost” Kevin Kilty writes:
“Traditionally utilities have sought to have something like a 20% reserve available for contingencies. Some, however, seek twice this reserve. Their experience has taught them about operations in their particular part of the grid and considering their particular vagaries of weather that requires a greater reserve. Others use a smaller reserve margin.
There was a time before some people began to learn better that wind/solar generation were counted into system reserves. However, as wind/solar generation has become a larger and larger portion of grid generation, it has become apparent that non-dispatchable sources can’t be counted as reliable reserves. Yet this hasn’t stopped utilities from shutting down coal- and gas-fired power plants over their marginal costs being above those of wind/solar.
The final important lesson in this illustrates why, when full system costs are included, solar and wind adoption is very expensive, indeed. Instead of the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) metric which has led many people, utility managers included, into believing that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of power. Figure 4 [not shown here] shows this. Robert Idel has proposed an alternative Full System Levelized Cost of Energy. This methodology estimates that full reliance on solar or wind in an environment like Texas, would lead to energy costs of $291 per MWhr if one tried to supply entirely using wind, or $413 per MWhr if attempted using only solar.”
Clearly the Levelized Cost of Energy is inadequate when comparing systems that include unreliable generation such as wind and solar. See link under Energy Issues – General.
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Additions and Corrections: Apparently there is no general agreement in the exact translation of the wording of Le Chatelier’s Principle. Reader Christopher Game corrected TWTW’s overgeneralization of Le Chatelier’s Principle in last week’s TWTW. Game wrote, in part:
“Le Chatelier’s principle is not about ‘dynamic equilibrium’ unqualified. It is about thermodynamic equilibrium, which is not ‘dynamic equilibrium’ unqualified. Thermodynamic equilibrium is a very special and important concept, and we should not play around with it. It is a common enough error to treat ‘entropy’ as if it were defined for states that are not of thermodynamic equilibrium, and that error is like that of applying ‘Le Chatelier’s principle’ to non-equilibrium scenarios. If you have any doubt about this, the clearest source is perhaps Prigogine & Defay 1953 translated by Everett, ‘Chemical Thermodynamics.’ They give clear examples of how Le Chatelier’s principle fails for non-equilibrium scenarios.”
TWTW stands corrected.
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Number of the Week: 69% reduction by 2040. The press release of the “Emissions Gap Report 2026: The point of return – Urgent emissions cuts needed to come back from overshoot of 1.5°C” gives estimates on the cut in emissions that would be required. It states:
“Achieving this requires slashing emissions by 18 per cent by the end of the decade, 45 per cent by 2035, and 69 per cent five years later, compared with 2025 levels.”
The reaction to higher oil and natural gas prices resulting from the conflict in the Persian Gulf has been extreme. China now produces more carbon dioxide emissions (mostly from coal) than the rest of the world combined. Does anyone think the UN can accomplish this goal, which may slightly moderate future warming?
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
BREAKING: Models Model Modeled Tipping Point
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, Oct 22, 2026
Link to paper: Tipping point forecasting in nonstationary dynamics on function spaces
By Miguel Liu-Schiaffini, et al., PNAS, Oct 15, 2026
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2600331123
Why You Should No Longer Fear Global Warming – Join Me in Calgary on November 16
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Oct 20, 2026
‘Trust me’ approach must end: climate scientists should release raw data to restore public trust
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 19, 2026
I [David Evans, Jo Nova’s husband] have little confidence in some climate datasets because:
- There are many after-the-fact adjustments, often multiple times, often decades later.
- The reasons for the adjustments are effectively secret, described only in vague terms.
- The datasets are not audited.
- The raw data and the pathways to the final datasets are not made public with complete documentation and software.
- There is a consistent tendency for revised datasets to better fit the carbon dioxide theory of global warming.
E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 21, 2026
Germany’s online FOCUS magazine has a commentary by Sebastian Viehmann on the fallacy of “Zero Emissions” and the EU’s misleading tailpipe measurements.
Viehmann argues that labeling electric vehicles (EVs) as completely “zero-emission” is misleading. While EVs do not have a tailpipe, their carbon footprint depends heavily on how the electricity used to charge them is generated—especially since fossil-fuel plants often supply power during high-demand nighttime and evening hours.
The FOCUS author concludes that eliminating EVs is not the solution, as they still significantly reduce emissions. However, the author calls for a more honest and open approach, suggesting that alternative non-fossil fuels (like e-fuels or HVO) should be promoted for combustion engines, and that EU climate targets for the transport sector may need to be adjusted to realistic levels to prevent the economic dismantling of the European automotive industry.
#Canary in a Climate World: Margaret Anna Alice on losing her religion
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
We began our series on #Canary in a Climate World Vol. 3 by looking at an essay by Professor Angus Dalgleish, an oncologist who went through a professional awakening during Covid when he saw forces of narrative control shut down scientific debate (all while demanding we “follow the science”) in order to ram through a social agenda based not on science but political correctness. And once he had seen the pattern up close in his own field of medicine, he realized it was also happening with climate change. And this week we conclude our series by turning to the chapter by Margaret Anna Alice, a psychological researcher, who also came to see the intellectual pattern connecting official/orthodox responses Covid, climate and many other issues. Which was difficult for her psychologically as well as intellectually as a lifelong, card-carrying progressive environmentalist.
Defending the Orthodoxy
UN climate report says world will fail 1.5-degree Paris goal but argues for keeping overshoot brief
By Suryatapa Chakraborty, The Hill, Oct 21, 2026
Link to press release: Global warming will breach 1.5°C – but deep, fast cuts can still bring it back
By Staff, UN News, Oct 21, 2026
Link to: Emissions Gap Report 2026: The point of return – Urgent emissions cuts needed to come back from overshoot of 1.5°C
By A Olhoff, et al., Emissions Report 2026, UNEP, Oct 13, 2026
From Press Release: It outlines a “lowest possible” overshoot scenario in which peak warming by roughly mid-century is limited to 1.7 to 1.8°C.
Climate Taskforce Will Protect Us From Weather!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 22, 2026
Link to press release: World-first taskforce to protect communities from climate change
Communities across the UK will be better protected against the growing threats of climate change and nature loss.
By Staff, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Oct 21, 2026
From Homewood: Why let a perfectly natural El Nino event go to waste!
I am sure the public will be reassured that they now have a Taskforce to protect them, not to mention a Minister for Climate Transition!!
Nothing to Crow About
A nest of gripers
By Mark Hodgson, Climate Scepticism, Oct 18, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to website: Building the political conditions for climate action.
By Staff, E3G, Accessed Oct 19, 2026
From E3G website: Governments need to be willing and able to take drastic action to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. Through analysis, diplomacy and coalition building, we work to build the political and diplomatic conditions underpinning delivery of global net zero by 2050, strengthen resilience in critical international systems, and help prepare for possible worst-case scenarios. [Boldface added]
China–Nepal border catastrophic floods: a planetary health alarm
By Mandira Lamichhane Dhimal, et al., The Lancet, Oct 16, 2026
Opening sentences: The Hindu Kush Himalayan region, also known as the Third Pole, is warming faster than the global average, with mountain environments experiencing particularly rapid climatic change and climatic extremes. The potential risks of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) have been documented for decades, with 47 glacial lakes at risk of expansion and causing GLOFs located in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, including 21 in Nepal.
[SEPP Comment: Planetary health is a semantic trap – the use of vague or misleading terms.]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
I feel the need, to (hurricane) seed
By Joe Bastardi, CFACT, Oct 16, 2026
The idea is that if you can disrupt the storm’s eye wall and focus energy away from the center, you can reduce wind intensity at the center. This is not dropping atomic bombs into the eye wall. It’s trying to force condensation in a way that spreads out the hurricane’s concentrated energy. We see practical examples of this where you have a strong hurricane that will hit land — the eyewall will fall apart and it will then get back out over the water, but it takes a long time to get back to where it was. In most cases, it never gets back to where it was. You should examine anything you can do to disrupt the processes that are causing the storm to intensify.
The Five Dimensions of a Simplistic Argument
Where climate scientists bring it upon themselves
By John Ridgway, Climate Scepticism, Oct 22, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Most Recycling Is a Waste
Metals and some plastics are worth separating, but the rest of it is costly and can hurt the environment.
By Bjorn Lomborg, WSJ, Not paywalled, Oct. 7, 2026
I recently finished an ice cream in Copenhagen and found myself stumped at the trash bins, wrapper in hand. Denmark sorts its garbage into 10 official categories, so that throwing something away becomes a small bureaucratic exam.
Official accounts ignore a cost every household pays: the time spent sorting. Peer-reviewed studies from Sweden and Finland find it takes 26 to 29 minutes a week per person. Value that time at half the minimum wage in each country and it comes to €43 billion to €47 billion a year across the EU, about as much as the entire cost of Europe’s municipal waste system. Across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s member states, it amounts to $111 billion to $123 billion.
Fire Down Below. Latest State of Wildfires Report Finds Global Burned Area 18% Below Average
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 17, 2026
Link to Report: State of Wildfires 2025–2026
By Chantelle Burton, et al., Earth System Science Data, Preprint, Aug 3, 2026
Climate Change Weekly # 594—Record Cold and Snow: the Rest of the Story
By Staff, The Heartland Institute, Oct 23, 2026
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Oct 16, 2026
The following YouTube video lists the climate predictions and public statements associated with alarmist German meteorologist and oceanographer Prof. Dr. Mojib Latif across the specified years—largely highlighted through media interviews.
[SEPP Comment: 4.5-minute video in German.]
Monarch Butterfly Populations Rebound as U.S. Honeybee Colony Counts Rise
“Two new reports from WWF-Mexico and its partners found that colonies covered 7.24 acres of forest in the 2025-2026 season. That’s an increase of 4.42 acres compared to last season.”
By Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, Oct 19, 2026
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation , a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon says, “In the 1990s, nearly 700 million monarchs made the epic flight each fall from the northern plains of the U.S. and Canada to sites in the oyamel fir forests north of Mexico City, and more than one million monarchs overwintered in forested groves on the California Coast.
Problems in the Orthodoxy
A Tenth of a Degree of Separation. AP Turns 0.1°C in 2100 into the Amazon, Greenland and $1.2 Trillion
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 21, 2026
Link to: Emissions Gap Report 2026
The point of return – Urgent emissions cuts needed to come back from overshoot of 1.5°C
By Olhoff, A, et al., United Nations Environment Programme, Oct 13, 2026
2026)
Q&A: Why a pivotal IPCC meeting in Ethiopia ended in ‘profound disappointment’
By: Cecilia Keating, Robert McSweeney, Ayesha Tandon, Carbon Brief, Oct 26, 2026
UN Climate Panic Rests on False Scenario and Buried Past
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Oct 19, 2026
Three years ago, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters that “the era of global boiling has arrived.” In September he repeated the alarm. Launching the U.N.’s first report on temperature “overshoot,” he declared, “Humanity is speeding past the limit to avoid climate catastrophe.”
After Paris!
IPCC Ethiopia Talks Collapse, Climatism On Life Support
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Oct 22, 2026
Link to post: The Climate Narrative is Collapsing
By Wim Röst, Clintel, Oct 20, 2026
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
The effect of extra CO2 on Littleleaf Rattany
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
From the CO2Science archive. Krameria erecta is found in the US Southwest and Mexico where it positively thrives on extreme heat and dryness. It likes short, mild winters and long hot summers so we aren’t going to see it in Ontario, which is sad because it is a very pretty little shrub.
Seeking a Common Ground
Washington Post on Natural Gas: No Plan = Best Plan (channeling F. A. Hayek)
By Robert Bradley Jr, Master Resource, Oct 22, 2026
In conclusion:
Politicians seem to be struggling to deliver on voters’ affordability concerns about housing, health care and more, but natural gas is doing just fine. Rather than trying to manage demand, squeeze trade or pace innovation, the U.S. has achieved natural gas affordability through abundant supply driven by technological progress. No single politician can take credit for this. Maybe that’s why it has worked.
Science, Policy, and Evidence
A Forgotten 30-year forestry experiment produced astonishing results
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 20, 2026
Link to paper: Alternative Silvicultural Systems Maintain Multiple Values in Tall Eucalypt Forest
By Kaitlyn L. Hammond, et al., Forest Science, July 1 2026
In a rare experiment that has lasted nearly 40 years, it turns out that thinning native forest heavily allowed some surviving trees to grow into giants quite quickly. These trees were so large this forest area had regained as much carbon as the untouched areas held. More surprisingly, the only areas where they couldn’t find any leadbeater possums were the unmanaged forests. It was a win-win-win all around. If the Greens cared at all about carbon “pollution” or the possums, they’d be phoning up the foresters asking if they could start thinning the native forests again.
Measurement Issues — Surface
Australia’s Historical Temperatures, Update Following Tom Berger Forensic Audit
By Jennifer Marohasy, Her Blog, Oct 19, 2026
The Bureau likes to suggest that there are issues with the early measurements, because they didn’t use standard equipment. In fact, the real issues begin in 1996 with the transition from mercury thermometer to probes hooked up to automatic weather stations (AWS).
These electronic probes can be recalibrated to whatever you want them to be.
A probe can be set to read hotter or colder than the mercury it replaced, and the adjustment can be applied without a clear public trail of what the original reading was. I have shown this for 15 years of parallel data that I obtained for Mildura back in 2017; when Josh Frydenberg was the Minister responsible for the Bureau. After Alan Jones instructed him to instruct the bureau to release this data to me. I subsequently transcribed all the handwritten records but have been unable to get the report that followed published.
Changing Weather
Important Milestone: The Current El Nino Has Hit Its Peak Early
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 20, 2026
The very strong El Nino appears to have hit its peak earlier than predicted a few months ago, suggesting a substantial weakening later this autumn and winter.
Claim: The “Super El Niño” is on Track to be the Wettest Ever
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 19, 2026
Obviously the “El Niño” still has a while to run, so things might turn dry in early 2027. But in a dry country like Australia, an El Niño which unexpectedly fills reservoirs rather than emptying them seems like a welcome reprieve.
‘Behemoth’ El Niño could be ‘off the charts,’ forecasters warn
By Addy Bink and Alix Martichoux, The Hill, Oct 22, 2026
The doom and gloom happy dance
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
As for El Niño, well, a bad one is bad. But not climate. In fact the worst of which we have any really credible record was in … 1877. And millions starved especially in India and China. Despite which Heatmap hollers climate:
“El Niño is a cyclical phenomenon, occurring when temperatures in a particular stretch of the Pacific Ocean rise half-a-degree Celsius above the average of the preceding 30 years. But there are signs these natural variations are happening less predictably because of climate change, and we know for sure that a warmer atmosphere makes the baseline for its impacts worse: king tides, Kelvin waves, and storm surge piggyback on top of rising sea levels to result in more severe coastal flooding and erosion. A warmer atmosphere also holds more water, which means more rain – perhaps 200% above normal – which, in turn, results in flooding and mudslides further inland, as well.”
So even if it’s not climate change it is, just as climate change is causing more hurricanes even if it’s not. (Oh, and that item resurrected “atmospheric rivers” just as we were starting to miss them.)
Flood Re
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 19, 2026
Much has been made about the increased claims in the last three years, which some have blamed on “increasing extreme weather”. The claim is frankly silly – the idea that climate change has made weather so much worse over the space of just five years is laughable.
The scheme was introduced after, and because of, the bad flooding in 2013/14 and 2015/16. Slot them into the graph and the trend disappears. We know that from the EA’s annual analysis of flooded properties.
Go back further, of course, and you will find the autumn floods in 2009 and floods and 2000.
Disappearing Hurricanes Leave Disappointed Scientists Without Fuel for Climate Alarm
Hurricanes in the North Atlantic have largely disappeared this year, leaving bitterly disappointed scientists without fuel for their climate alarm and having to admit the role of natural variation, says Chris Morrison.
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Oct 21, 2026
Farewell Isaias, we barely knew ye
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
Santa Ana-Driven Wildfires Rage as California’s Next Political Reckoning Nears
Strong winds are driving the spread of wildfires in Malibu and Camp Pendleton, just in time for voters to recall the Great Los Angeles Wildfire of 2025 as they filling out November ballots.
By Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, Oct 17, 2026
How Unusual Has Been the Temperature and Precipitation this Fall?
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 22, 2026
This year’s precipitation is low, but many years were lower
Interestingly, precipitation increased over the period, so you can’t blame climate change!
The average temperature for the entire (Sept 1-Oct 21) period was very close to normal (this year was the 25th warmest year out of 50 years).
However, this is evidence of long-term warming, with about a 2°F warming over the past 50 years, very consistent with warming found in many studies.
[SEPP Comment: The key question is: How much of the warming is due to an increase in CO2 and how much is natural?]
Changing Earth
Miami-Dade skyline is sinking unevenly, new research finds
By Denise Hruby, Miami Herald, Oct 19, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article317490794.ht
[SEPP Comment: A real problem when building high-rises on East Coast barrier islands.]
Changing Seas
El Nino, Sea Level, and Kelvin Waves
By Cliff Mass, Weather Blog, Oct 18, 2026
Lowering Standards
BOMs Scientific Scandal: the Raw Data is Not Raw
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 17, 2026
In science, the raw data is sacrosanct, but a new type of analysis shows hundreds of anomalies and oddities in BOM Raw data, and whole months of supposedly raw records have been cut and pasted, in one instance as far as 40 years earlier.
After all the high minded purity of BOM claims that they provide all their raw unadjusted data to critics, an audit by Geoff Sherrington and Tom Berger has found that “almost all CDO* [Climate Data Online] data sets that we have studied, about 150 stations, show some past adjustments.” In one case duplicated patterns were found separated by 82 years.^ And then there are hundreds of repeated structured patterns called “the broken seam” where there is a pattern of repeats, with one or two different values in the middle of the sequence. In the longer stretches, two weeks is copied, then two days are different, and then another two weeks is copied.
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Finally, a Net Zero sceptic on the BBC
A crack in the wall of the pretend “consensus”
By JIT, Climate Scepticism, Oct 23, 2026
No, Climate Change Is Not ‘Gentrifying’ Seafood, New York Times
By Linnea Lueke, Climate Realism, Oct 15, 2026
The most frustrating thing about articles like this, is the mixing of truth with exaggeration, where the New York Times and other outlets like it will choose to amplify the role of warming while downplaying factors that are much more immediate and powerful. What is implied by this framing, is that YOUR use of fossil fuels and their byproducts is making it so that it is harder for people to afford their favorite foods.
[SEPP Comment: Are professional-class fish pricing working-class fish out of the neighborhood?]
Wrong, TIME, Climate Change Is Not ‘Accelerating Faster Than We Can Respond’
By Anthony Watts, Climate Realism, Oct 16, 2026
The climate is changing slowly. Humanity is adapting rapidly. The world is not coming to an end. The only thing accelerating uncontrollably in TIME’s article is the rhetoric.
Storm Austen
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 23, 2026
The media have gone into full hysteria mode over “two storms in two days”, as if there was anything unusual about two depressions coming in quick succession.
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
Climate Death Toll: Batteries Not Included
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, Oct 23, 2026
Link to study: Heat-related urban mortality attributable to human-induced climate change in Europe in summer 2026
By Clair Barnes, et al., Preprint, No date
From Eschenbach: Their study of summer 2026 estimates 50,391 heat-related deaths across 854 European cities, with 32,619 attributed to human-caused warming. An impressive degree of precision. Not 50,000, mind you. Fifty thousand, three hundred and ninety-one.
The catch?
The calculation does not use the actual daily deaths recorded in those cities during that summer. Not one scrap of real data was used. No facts were harmed in the production of this study.
Instead, the study estimates the number of deaths from historical temperature–mortality relationships, recent temperatures, and population inputs.
Let’s see how the sausage gets simulated.
- Fit statistical relationships between temperature and mortality using historical data from 232 cities.
- Extend those relationships to 622 other cities without their own training records.
- Estimate how much humans have warmed each city using observational analyses and climate models.
- Subtract that warming to manufacture a cooler summer.
- Run both summers through the mortality models.
- Then subtract the answers.
Pages 2k Greenland Proxy Temperatures
By Andy May, WUWT, Oct 23, 2026
[SEPP Comment: The Pages 2k consortium produced a hockey-stick graph for the 2000 years prior to the year 2000 AD. Steven McIntyre showed that it relied on “cherry-picking.” Only those places that supported its claims were used and they ignored the bulk of the physical evidence. The common practice of “cherry picking” is contrary to the scientific method of including all the physical evidence.]
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
It’s Still the Economy Stupid. Pew Finds Climate Policy Splits Voters by 51 Points as Energy Price Worries Hit 74%
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 21, 2026
RCEnergy Poll: Majority Wants Less Red Tape To Cut Energy Costs
By Jonathan Draeger, WUWT, Oct 17, 2026
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Climate Fear Sells: The Telegraph Discovers the ‘Uninsurable’ Home
By Tilak Doshi, Tilak’s Substack, Oct 19, 2026
There is no surer way to unsettle a reader than to tell him that his home, almost always a family’s largest asset, is about to become worthless. That is precisely the point. For 15 years the climate story has been sold as “the science” that threatens the reader’s own front door: your house will burn (‘global warming’), your street will flood (‘rising sea levels’), your foundations will crack with land subsidence. In May 2013 Barack Obama’s Twitter account told its 31 million followers that 97% of scientists agreed climate change was “real, man-made and dangerous”. The study behind the tweet said nothing about danger; that word was added by Obama’s team. “Real, man-made and dangerous” has nonetheless been the house style of the legacy media ever since, and the uninsurable home is simply its latest product li
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
BBC Bitesize and Climate Change
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 21, 2026
No wonder children are so brainwashed these days!
BC Bitesize Climate Propaganda for Kids
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 20, 2026
Bear in mind this course is aimed at 11-year-olds.
This is not just oversimplified propaganda aimed at impressionable young minds, it is not even factual.
BBC Bitesize Accused of ‘Brainwashing’ Schoolchildren with Left-Wing Views on Migration and Net Zero
By Richard Eldred, The Daily Sceptic, Oct 18, 2026
Communicating Better to the Public – Protest
The Yellow Vest Participants show the French Riots are About Climate Policy
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 18, 2026
[SEPP Comment: And other issues.]
Questioning European Green
New book lays out evidence that Net Zero lunacy is unscientific and destructive
By Rhoda Wilson, The Expose, Oct 19, 2026
Chris Morrison’s new book, ‘Implausible: How Scientists, Activist Politicians and Journalists Invented a Climate Crisis’, demonstrates that the global climate crisis narrative is a manufactured political construct rather than a scientific reality.
When Green Agenda Bureaucrats Decide Where Energy Capital Flows, Hidden Costs Mount and The West Loses
By Brenda Shaffer, The Bureau, Oct 23, 2026 [H/t S.J. Cvrk]
Fossil fuels provide 86 percent of global energy consumption, higher than in 1973, when the world started to seek alternative energy, and there is no scalable alternative available yet. Wind and solar are intermittent and geographically restricted; they provide 2–3 percent of global energy needs, and they depend on fossil fuels to deliver reliable power. Chopping away at our primary energy sources with no viable replacement is dangerously bad policy.
The West’s disinvestment in fossil fuels has had ruinous costs.
Questioning Green Elsewhere
Taking Stock: 5 Reasons to Resist the GreenMageddon, Part 5
By Ron Clutz, Science Matters, Oct 21, 2026
Link to: David Stockman on the GreenMageddon… Part 5
By David Stockman, International Man, Accessed Oct 22, 2026
From Clutz: Summary of 5 Reasons to Resist GreenMaggedon
- During the past 600 million years, the earth has rarely been as cool as at present, and almost never has it had as low CO2 concentrations as the 420 ppm level that today’s climate howlers decry.
- During our Holocene epoch, for the past 11.6 thousand years, earth’s climate has changed often with multiple periods, both warmer and and cooler than the present. The modern warming period since 1850 was preceded by the Medieval, the Roman, and the Minoan warming periods–each was cooler than the previous, and all of them warmer than the present. The last 1.5C of warming has been a boon to human agriculture and civilization, and the next 1.5C is likely to also be beneficial.
- Climatists weaponize natural events to gain social control for a global agenda. It’s About Power, Not Truth or Humanity.
- Zero Carbon is suicidal because it requires cutting off essential energy supplies with nothing to replace them. Renewables can not keep pace with increasing electrical demand, let alone replace any baseload thermal power plants with wind or solar generation. Nor will hydro or nuclear power cover the losses from shuttering thermal power plants.
- GreenMageddon is no hyperbole. It’s is the virtually certain outcome of attempting to purge CO2 emissions from a modern energy system and economy that literally breathes and exhales fossilized carbon.
The Political Games Continue
Go fish go figure
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Closure of US tax credit transition window to reshape wind and solar outlook, says GlobalData
Press Release by Global Data, Via WUWT, Oct 23, 2026
EPA and other Regulators on the March
U.S. EPA’s Energy Exceptionalism (CO2 freedom)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 19, 2026
Link to: Greenhouse Gas Standards and Guidelines for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants
Final Rule: Partial Repeal of the Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units
By Staff, EPA, Sep 14, 2026
Energy Issues – General
Maintaining Reserves and Their Cost
By Kevin Kilty, WUWT, Oct 23, 2026
When Ignorant Ideologues Take Control Of Major Economic Decisions
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Oct 18, 2026
Well, here in New York we have politicians who know nothing about how an electrical grid works ordering that the existing functional generation system shall be replaced within a few years by a new system based on intermittent generation from wind and sun. And it’s not just New York. Places like California, much of Europe, and Australia are in the grip of the same fantasies.
Donald Trump, climate warrior
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
But of course, it’s because most activists don’t understand this basic point that they wanted higher prices and thought they wouldn’t hurt. Although contradictorily they wanted them to cause people to be able to afford less fuel. Apparently, they thought we didn’t need fuel. Which brings us back to Roger Pielke Jr.
As he further observes in the piece we started with, Trump had run into what he called “the iron law of climate policy” a decade and a half ago:
“The iron law of climate policy is immutable. It means that substantially increasing the costs of energy, which supports every aspect of modern life, is off the table as a policy option for achieving deep decarbonization. That goes for formal pricing instruments as well as so-called ‘shadow’ instruments such as efforts to limit supply of energy resources in hopes of driving up prices.”
Energy Issues – Europe
Grid Disruptions Cause Further Concern
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 23, 2026
Link to post: NESO [National Energy System Operator] admits constraints breached and large forecast errors in interim grid security report.
By Kathryn Porter, Watt-Logic, Oct 20 2026
From Homewood: A few things stand out:
- We were not only reliant on France for baseload, we also needed them to help manage short term frequency issues.
- The variability and unpredictable of wind power is becoming a greater problem. NESO themselves admitted as much on the 9th October.
- Regional grid imbalances are also becoming a much greater problem.
- Grid frequency is increasingly becoming erratic.
Kathryn’s conclusions are hardly encouraging:
Despite all of these extra-ordinary actions, the de-rated margin and loss of load probability for the week were both perfectly fine. The margin was healthy at all times and the LOLP was always zero. So, in a well supplied market, NESO struggled to keep the frequency inside the operational limit and repeatedly breached intraday interconnector trading limits.
This is not evidence of a system operating securely. It’s evidence of a system that’s being held together with expensive last-minute actions. Yes, the lights stayed on, but conditions were really benign. I’m not sure we can be confident of the same outcome when demand is higher later in winter. [Boldface added]
Neso Officials Said the Grid is Safe. Neso Engineers…Not So Much
By Charles Rotter, WUWT, Oct 19, 2026
Jackdaw Gets Go-Ahead
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 22, 2026
From Homewood: Jackdaw has got the long delayed go-ahead, but does it represent a genuine change in energy policy, or is it a public relations stunt?
The Jackdaw field itself is pretty tiny. It has very little oil and not much more gas.
Much bigger is the Rosebank oilfield, which, according to the Guardian, the new Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, is “minded to reject”.
In addition, he should use the Budget to radically cut taxes on North Sea oil and gas and announce new incentives to encourage investment and new drilling.
Currently the Government takes 78% of profits, which has driven a lot of new investment away. [Boldface added]
Energy Issues – Australia
The EU deal with Climate Shackles is not a Free Trade Agreement
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 22, 2026
Just because the EU calls it a free trade deal doesn’t mean it is one.
Energy Issues – Elsewhere non-US
Europe Cooks With Gas; Africa Breathes Smoke
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Oct 19, 2026
Standing between life and death is the European Investment Bank (EIB), the lending arm of the European Union that ended financing for fossil-fuel projects at the end of 2021. The World Bank runs a similar playbook. Last December, it issued a $200 million Clean Cooking Outcome Bond whose Ghana projects cover 245,000 electric cookers and 170,000 improved biomass stoves but not one LPG cylinder.
Did a single European family wait for a foreign lender’s blessing before trading coal stoves for gas burners in the last century? Of course not. Gas lifted Europe’s women out of soot-filled kitchens, and they have never looked back.
Energy Issues — US
Energy Isn’t That Complicated
By David S. Cohen, Real Clear Energy, Oct 20, 2026
[SEPP Comment: The politics are.]
Proposed Natural Gas Pipeline Expansion Forecast to Lower Energy Bills in Massachusetts
By Kevin Mooney, WUWT, Oct 17, 2026
Link to study: Project Beacon: Estimated Savings for Massachusetts Ratepayers
By Staff, Fiscal Alliance Foundation Study, September 2026
Massachusetts’s geological lack of natural gas reserves, a cold winter climate, and insufficient pipeline infrastructure all conspire to raise natural gas prices beyond the national average.
This report seeks to estimate the potential economic effects of additional natural gas pipeline capacity on Massachusetts ratepayers, including reductions in natural gas and power prices and the quantity of fuel oil displaced.
AI Issues
The AI policy debate suffers from a dangerous plague of vagueness
By David Wojick, CFACT, Oct 20, 2026
Absent a clear specification of what we mean, any rules passed are likely to simply create destructive paralysis and confusion.
For example, people are talking about a pause in AI development. Which AI development? For that matter, what counts as AI development? This is another empty concept.
Washington’s Control of Energy
The Breakout – Permitting Reform Bill Aims to Break the Logjam for Energy Infrastructure Projects
By Jason Lindquist, RBN Energy, Oct 19, 2026
In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at the major themes of the permitting reform bill being considered by Congress, how it would change the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and how it could make it easier to build or expand oil and gas pipelines.
Permitting Reform Could Be a Victory for the Environment
By Tobias Russell, Real Clear Energy, Oct 20, 2026
Currently, federal permitting burdens can delay domestic resource production for decades—or prevent it altogether—as found by a recent suite of research from Pacific Legal Foundation.
Permitting Reform Is the Ultimate Test of American Mineral Security
By Rich Nolan, Real Clear Energy, Oct 22, 2026
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act gives Congress the opportunity to deliver. We are undeniably in the minerals age. From semiconductors and batteries to cutting-edge defense systems, minerals – and an increasingly wide array of them – have never been more important to our economic and national security. As demand surges for these irreplaceable materials, our ability to supply them must catch up to their mounting importance.
Rich Nolan is president and CEO of the National Mining Association.
The Permitting Reform Deal’s Quiet Endorsement
By Danielle Franz, Real Clear Energy, Oct 19, 2026
Congress is closer to reaching a deal on permitting reform than it has been in years. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA) has robust support from within Congress, the White House, and outside groups.
Yet, 222 organizations made their opposition public when they signed a letter urging the Senate and House minority leaders to stop the bill.
The Sierra Club and Earthjustice are absent from the list of names. Other major environmentalists missing include NRDC, the Sunrise Movement, and the League of Conservation Voters. With signatories present like CBD, Defenders, and Greenpeace, their absence stands out.
The New Alaska Gold Rush
By Duggan Flanakin, Real Clear Energy, Oct 20, 2026
Decades of suppression of Alaska oil exploration and development have played a role in the decline in oil production from 2 million barrels per day in the late 1980s to just 420,000 barrels per day today. Alaska natural gas production, however, has remained in the range of 29 to 32 billion cubic feet per year over the past 20 years.
Trump administration will let companies bid to mine the deep ocean off American Samoa’s coast
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Oct 19, 2026
The Trump administration is officially moving ahead with a decision to lease ocean tracts off the coast of American Samoa for deep-sea mining.
American Samoa is a U.S. territory made up of islands in the South Pacific Ocean.
Nuclear Energy and Fears
American Nuclear Runs Through Anti-Nuke, Anti-AI Roadblocks
By Duggan Flanakin, Cornwall Alliance, Oct 19, 2026
As the late Julian Simon said, “The ultimate resource is people… who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, and so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well.”
Tech Companies Drive Nuclear Power Plant Expansions, More Electricity
By Paul Steidler, Real Clear Energy, Oct 19, 2026
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
Cost blowouts on cost blowouts: the Snowy Hydro Renewable Bandaid doubles again
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Oct 23, 2026
The real problem is they didn’t do enough drill holes before they pressed “Go” on the fire hose of money. According to the FGJV (the head contractor) the main reason for the cost increases was because they hit “additional adverse geological and hydrogeological conditions…” Which might not have happened had they drilled enough holes in the feasibility study. Snowy hydro 2.0 were about to start excavating 37 kilometers of tunnels and dig a cavern big enough to put a power station in and they didn’t understand the territory. Somehow in the greatest hard rock mining nation on Earth, we couldn’t find a good geologist? Apparently the 16-kilometer main headshaft crossed nine fault zones but we only drilled 22 holes along the path instead of drilling about 160, which would have been the norm. Someone saved $50 million dollars and wasted $50 billion?
Carbon Schemes
‘The Future of CCS Can No Longer Be Assumed’ (a supporter rethinks …)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Oct 20, 2026
“Today, global operating nameplate capture capacity is approximately 60 million tonnes a year. If fully utilised, 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
California’s Bullet Train Boondoggle
The state’s high-speed rail project sunk more than $677 million on environmental paperwork, benefiting well-connected contractors.
By Christopher F. Rufo and Kenneth Schrupp, Christopher F. Rufo.com, Oct 21, 2026
Eighteen years and more than $15 billion later, not a single mile of high-speed track has been laid. The state hasn’t even laid track on the rump Merced-Bakersfield line that it wants to open in the 2030s. In a recently resurfaced video from his time as lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom said the full project was unlikely to “materialize in our lifetime.”
The bullet train, like almost every effort to build things in California, was killed by environmental regulations
Ringside: Save Our Lawns, Reform AB 1572
There’s no water shortage in California… there never was
By Edward Ring, California Globe, Oct 21, 2026
Californians are within months, if not weeks, of getting what could be the most thorough statewide drenching in decades, as a “super” El Nino grows in the Pacific. Expect hundreds (plural) of millions of acre feet of water to dump onto watersheds across the state this winter, as California experiences its fifth year in a row with above average rainfall.
There’s no water shortage in California. There never was. The solution to water scarcity is, and has always been, figuring out how to save enough water during wet winters to still easily supply all our needs during droughts. And even in drought years, around 100 million acre feet falls onto the state.
Health, Energy, and Climate
Out with “toxins,” in with “inflammation”: Inside the wellness industry’s favorite semantic trick
By Katie Suleta, DHSc, MPH, ACSH, Oct 20, 2026
Climate Alarmism, Not Climate, Is What Threatens Europe’s Brains
By Stephen Heins, The Word Merchant, Vis WUWT, Oct 17, 2026
Euronews ran a piece this week declaring that “climate change is putting Europe’s brain health at risk.” Neurologist Ulf Kallweit, co-chair of an environmental task force at the European Academy of Neurology, warned that rising temperatures will drive more strokes, disrupt sleep, expand infectious diseases, and worsen dementia and Parkinson’s.
The most vulnerable, he noted, are those who cannot afford air conditioning. The framing is familiar: climate as the new overarching threat, with policy the only real remedy.
Other News that May Be of Interest
Reflect Orbital Demos Turning Night Into Day. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, Oct 19, 2026
There is another practical limitation that deserves attention. Reflect Orbital’s proposed Eärendil-1 satellite would operate at an altitude of approximately 625 kilometers. At that altitude, an individual satellite could illuminate a particular target for only about five minutes during a suitable pass.
Five minutes?
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
The Minister for Climate Transition Will Protect Us From Weather
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Oct 23, 2026
Cartoon
Latest Aussie MET Excuse for Weather Report Errors: Wrong Kind of Moths
By Eric Worrall WUWT, Oct 22, 2026
By ABC meteorologist Tom Saunders
But the equipment is not malfunctioning, and this is not a giant UFO.
Instead, the radars are detecting the millions of bogong moths currently migrating south to the Australian Alps for summer, and the swarm appears on radar as widespread rain.
Widely Acclaimed 1960 Scientific Paper Predicted Doomsday November 13 2026
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 22, 2026
[SEPP Comment: From Pogo: Does that mean that too many people is bad for humanity? Or too much humanity is bad for people?]
Dead penguins pooped away my Antarctica
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
We read in Phys.org that “Penguin poop is melting Antarctic snow by keeping algae green”. And of course we ask: Haven’t penguins lived there for millions of years? Answer: yes. Penguins evolved some 60 million years ago but Antarctica has only had significant ice coverage for 34 million. Yet they never kept it green, or turned it green, despite their predilection for dramatic defecation, until we invented climate. A story that caught our eye not just for the notion that a long-standing natural process could suddenly transform a continent but because we’d just also been told by National Geographic that climate change is driving penguins to extinction. But climate science is not like other kinds.
Cruising for a bruising
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Oct 21, 2026
Yes. You as in filmmakers who created this movie disaster. And as George Orwell said long ago, “ALL ART is propaganda but not all propaganda is art.”
Guardian: “Tom Cruise’s Digger is a commercial flop – but also the perfect climate film for our time”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Oct 21, 2026
ARTICLES
1. More Oil Is Now Coming Out of the Persian Gulf Than Before the Iran War
Experience and big paydays have created a more resilient tanker fleet. Oil traders worry it isn’t sustainable.
By Benoit Faucon, Georgi Kantchev and Rebecca Feng, WSJ, Oct. 20, 2026
TWTW Summary: The article begins with:
“Persian Gulf oil exports have surpassed prewar levels, as an improvised shipping system under U.S. protection is helping tankers move oil through one of Iran’s fiercest waves of attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.
Middle East oil flows, including shipments through Hormuz and alternative routes across the region, averaged more than 24 million barrels a day in the week through Oct. 18, surpassing prewar levels of 23.3 million, according to ship tracker Kpler.
Preliminary figures show Hormuz oil flows, including offshore transfers in the Gulf of Oman, came to around 14 million barrels a day on average for the same period, or 82% of prewar levels.
Oil prices remain high, and benchmark Brent crude has risen in recent days to around $108 a barrel Tuesday. Traders are concerned the improvement in Hormuz might not be sustainable, particularly if fighting breaks out again. Thinning global inventories leave little margin for error. The operation is also expensive, costs that ultimately flow through to consumers at the pump.
Still, the resilience of oil flows marks a shift in the battle over the world’s most important energy chokepoint. Iran can still make shipments dangerous and expensive. But its ability to deter transits has faded, weakening Tehran’s leverage with the U.S.
‘The big picture is that the system for shipping through a dangerous Strait of Hormuz is now well-established and the risk appetite of those involved in exporting oil has risen,’ said Hamad Hussain, a senior commodities economist at Capital Economics.
Pipelines across Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are also moving oil along different routes. In September, about 40% of the non-Iranian crude shipped out of the Gulf bypassed the strait, compared with 17% before the war, Kpler estimated.
The success contrasts with the chokehold on Iran, whose own oil exports have been bottled up by a U.S. maritime blockade. The risk is Iran could try to re-establish its influence by striking harder and potentially drawing the U.S. into another confrontation before the U.S. midterm elections in two weeks.”
The article continues with the increased cost of moving the oil including insurance and speculates about the future.
