The Week That Was: 2025-08-23 (August 23, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” — John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859) [H/t John Robson]
Number of the Week: About 7,000 ppmv
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: TWTW begins with a second discussion of key issues in the report by the Climate Working Group to the Secretary of Energy. Then, it presents a request for information from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. TWTW concludes with a discussion of the reasons why grid level storage batteries are impractical for a modern grid.
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Review of the Climate Working Group Report (Part 2): Last week, TWTW began discussing the main body of a report to the Secretary of Energy from five independent scientists (John Christy, Ph.D. Judith Curry, Ph.D. Steven Koonin, Ph.D. Ross McKitrick, Ph.D., and Roy Spencer, Ph.D.) “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.” The report is well written in clear English with no specialized jargon or mathematics. It is not a report typical of Washington bureaucracies. This week, TWTW will cover key sections of Part II: Climate Response to CO2 Emissions including Discrepancies Between Models and Instrumental Observations.
Part II Climate Response to CO2 Emissions begins with Chapter 4, Climate Sensitivity to CO2 Forcing. The Chapter Summary States:
“There is growing recognition that climate models are not fit for the purpose of determining the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of the climate to increasing CO2. The IPCC has turned to data driven approaches including historical data and paleoclimate reconstructions, but their reliability is diminished by data inadequacies.
Data-driven ECS estimates tend to be lower than climate model-generated values. The IPCC AR6 upper bound for the likely range of ECS is 4.0°C, lower than the AR5 value of 4.5°C. This lowering of the upper bound seems well justified by paleoclimatic data. The AR6 lower bound for the likely range of ECS is 2.5°C, substantially higher than the AR5 value of 1.5°C. This raising of the lower bound is less justified; evidence since AR6 finds the lower bound of the likely range to be around 1.8°C.”
TWTW Comment: Organizations have committed considerable resources in the pursuit of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) which TWTW considers to be a folly. As discussed in the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system, Earth has multiple climates, and they are constantly changing. It has never had an equilibrium climate. Calculating an ECS is like calculating an ideal global temperature. If one is above it or below it, so what? The issue is temperature extremes.
Further, the typical calculations rely on positive climate feedbacks to a slight warming. Positive feedbacks contradict La Chatelier’s Principle that if a system in equilibrium is subject to change it tends to counteract the change in order to establish a new equilibrium. Even though in the era of Icehouse Earth there are great oscillations from the relationship between Earth and the Sun, Earth’s climate appears to fit La Chatelier’s Principle, otherwise minor disturbances would become major one. This appears to be what climate modelers appear to be stressing, minor disturbances will become a major one.
Given the belief in models by many organizations, it is important that the report address these unfortunate beliefs. In its introduction to chapter 4 states:
“The magnitude of the climate’s response to increasing concentrations of CO2 is central to the scientific debate on anthropogenic climate change, and so also to the public debate on ‘climate action.’ The simplest measure of that response is the rise in the global average surface temperature, quantified by the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS). ECS is defined as the amount of warming expected in response to a doubling of CO2 from its pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm, after all climate components have had time to adjust. Some components, like temperatures in the lower atmosphere (troposphere), adjust rapidly, while others such as the deep ocean and cryosphere might take as long as centuries. A related measure, the Transient Climate Response (TCR), better describes the shorter time scales; it is defined as the amount of warming when the CO2 concentration is doubled by rising one percent annually for 70 years.
The 1979 Charney Report for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (National Research Council 1979) proposed that the most likely ECS was 3.0 ± 1.5°C. The IPCC repeatedly reaffirmed that range with only minor variations until its most recent AR6. AR5 termed 1.5–4.5°C as the likely range (66 percent probability) and stated that ECS is extremely unlikely (95 percent probability) to be below 1.0°C and very unlikely (90 percent probability) to exceed 6.5°C.
The uncertainty in ECS has remained stubbornly wide, despite many individual studies that claimed to narrow it (Hausfather 2023). Most recently, AR6 narrowed the likely range to 2.5–4.0°C and deemed the very likely range to be 2.0–5.0°C. This narrowing on the low end is disputed, as will be discussed below.
Uncertainties in ECS are highly consequential for policy making. As will be discussed in Chapter 11, economic models use ECS values to project the costs of CO2 emissions. The traditional value (3.0 °C) has typically yielded modest global social costs of CO2 emissions, sufficient to justify some policy actions, but mostly deferred to later in this century. If ECS is very high (above 4.5°C) immediate aggressive emission controls become more imperative, whereas no CO2 emission controls are economically justifiable for ECS below 2.0°C (Dayaratna et al. 2017, 2020). Obtaining a precise estimate is impossible, so policy making needs to account for the uncertainty.
By itself, the equilibrium warming effect of a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is slightly more than 1°C (Soden and Held 2006). Larger values of ECS arise from positive feedbacks that amplifies the CO2 warming. Water vapor feedback is positive: a warmer atmosphere might have more water vapor, which itself is a powerful greenhouse gas. Warmer temperatures also result in less snow and sea ice cover, allowing the Earth to absorb more of the sun’s radiation. Some simple estimates of these feedbacks increase the ECS to around 2°C (Sherwood et al., 2020). Larger values of ECS are associated with positive cloud feedbacks. Climate scientists use multiple lines of evidence to determine the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity:
• Climate model simulations
• Historical observations
• Paleoclimatic reconstructions
• Process understanding of feedbacks”
TWTW Comment: Here we see the importance of the 1979 Charney Report which TWTW has mentioned frequently. The conclusions of the report were heavily influenced by numerical weather modelers who assumed that the influence of CO2 on temperatures will be doubled by in increase in water vapor. The increase in water vapor needed to double the CO2’s influence on temperature has not been observed. Further, the Charney Report came as Edward Lorenz and others were developing Chaos Theory where there are underlying patterns to apparently chaotic complex systems. This issue is understanding these other chaotic complex systems which those who focus on CO2 apparently ignore.
In modern numerical weather forecasting, forecasts are updated frequently, say 4 times every 24 hours. Yet forecasts are not good for more than 10 to 14 days. In chaos theory, if you know data somewhat well, you can predict the immediate future, but predicting further into the future requires more and more precise knowledge of present data. Forecasts break down because the patterns of the underlying systems are not understood. Yet in modern numerical climate forecasting (global climate models) which is built on numerical weather forecasting techniques we routinely see forecasts of 50, 75, or even 200 hundred years. The need for updating is ignored. Further, climate modelers ignore the need to understand the underlying patterns of the chaotic climate system.
The next section 4.2 Model-based estimates of climate sensitivity states:
“The ECS ranges given in IPCC AR4 and AR5 were obtained primarily by examining the behavior of large-scale climate models, also called General Circulation Models (GCMs). However, the IPCC changed course in its AR6 when it turned to a more direct data-driven methodology. Here we discuss some of the pitfalls of using GCMs to try to determine the Earth’s climate sensitivity.
ECS can be determined from climate model simulations by doubling the concentration of CO2 and allowing several centuries for the warming to equilibrate. To avoid the need for such long simulations, “effective climate sensitivity” is commonly evaluated from a 150-year simulation in response to a sudden quadrupling of CO2.
In principle, ECS is an emergent property of GCMs—that is, it is not directly parameterized or tuned but rather emerges in the results of the simulation. Otherwise, plausible GCMs and parameter selections have been discarded because of perceived conflict with an expected warming rate, or aversion to a model’s climate sensitivity being outside an accepted range (Mauritsen et al. 2012). This practice was commonplace for the models used in AR4; modelers have moved away from this practice with time. However, even in a CMIP6 model, Mauritsen and Roeckner (2020) state the following regarding their Max Planck Institute (MPI) climate model (emphasis added):
‘We have documented how we tuned the MPI-ESM1.2 global climate model to match the instrumental record of warming; an endeavor which has clearly been successful. Due to the historical order of events, the choice was to do this practically by targeting an ECS of about 3 K using cloud feedbacks, as opposed to tuning the aerosol forcing.’
In other words, the MPI modelers chose an ECS value of 3°C and then tuned the cloud parameterizations to match their intended result.
As noted, direct warming from CO2 doubling is only about 1°C (Soden and Held 2006); further warming arises from climate feedbacks that are not explicitly resolved by the GCM but rely on parameterizations of physical processes. Higher values of ECS arise primarily from positive cloud feedbacks, whereas the magnitude and even the sign of the feedbacks are very uncertain. Elements of cloud feedback include changes in the latitudinal distribution of clouds, changes in the distribution of cloud height (changes in low versus high clouds), changes to the phase of clouds (ice versus liquid), changes in cloud particle size (associated with changes in concentration and/or composition of aerosol particles), changes in the precipitation efficiency of clouds, and even changes in how clouds are distributed over the daily solar cycle (Curry and Webster, 1999). It is difficult for GCMs to simulate any of these processes correctly owing to their small scale, let alone predict how they will change in the future. Further, cloud processes modulate the magnitudes of the water vapor, lapse rate, and the surface albedo feedbacks.”
Figure 4.1 is a graph showing the wide range of Equilibrium Climate Sensitives for 37 models from the CMIP6 ensemble is given. The lowest ECS is 1.83C, the highest is 5.67C. The section concludes with:
“The spread of ECS values from the CMIP5 ensemble of climate models used in AR5 was 2.0–4.7°C; that range increased for the CMIP6 models used in AR6 to between 1.8 and 5.7°C (Chen et al., 2021, Scaffeta 2021, see Figure 4.1). Far from resolving the model-based climate sensitivity the range appears to be growing. The main cause of the overall upward shift in ECS in CMIP6 relative to CMIP5 is a larger positive cloud feedback, driven by changes to the cloud parameterizations in many CMIP6 models (Zelinka
et al., 2020)
Because of concerns about model tuning and the high sensitivity to cloud parameterizations, AR6 (2021) did not rely on climate model simulations in their assessment of climate sensitivity, relying instead on data-driven methods.” [Boldface added]
TWTW Comment: So currently, the IPCC has abandoned global climate modeling and is emphasizing data. Section 4.3 “Data-driven estimates of climate sensitivity” and Section 4.4 of the report state:
“Climate sensitivity can also be estimated from instrumental records of surface temperatures and ocean heat content, combined with estimates of how climate forcings (e.g., greenhouse gases, solar, volcanoes, aerosols) have changed in the past (Otto et al., 2013). Using this information, a simple empirical Energy Balance Model can be employed. It requires estimating a feedback parameter whose uncertainties are highly amplified in the resulting ECS (Roe and Baker, 2007).
The accuracy of the data-driven methods depends on the quality of the input data. Assumptions are needed about ocean heat storage, and good data has only been available for recent decades. The greatest source of uncertainty is the amount and composition of aerosol particles and their interactions with cloud radiative properties (the so-called aerosol indirect effect; see Figures 3.1.1, 3.1.2). Climate models exhibit warming in response to GHGs but cooling in response to aerosols (Schwartz et al., 2007). Observed 20th century warming can be shown to be consistent either with low ECS and low aerosol cooling, or high ECS and high aerosol cooling. Since fossil fuel use adds both GHGs and aerosols to the atmosphere, both effects need to be estimated to isolate the warming effect of CO2.
Paleoclimate proxies are also used to evaluate the sensitivity of past climates by comparing paleoclimate changes in the Earth’s temperatures to estimates of changes in forcings. The two most informative periods are the last glacial maximum (around 20,000 years ago), which was about 3–7°C colder than today, and a mid-Pliocene period (roughly three million years ago), which was 1–3°C warmer than today. The limits on cooling during the last glacial maximum give the best single evidence that high values of climate sensitivity are unlikely. However, paleoclimate estimates are associated with very large uncertainties in the estimated temperatures and forcings. Further, estimates of climate sensitivity based on past climate states might not be applicable to the current state of the climate system.
A recurring theme in the climate literature is that ECS estimates based on historical data are smaller than ECS estimates inferred from climate models (Sherwood and Forest 2024). About 15 estimates based on historical data appeared in the peer-reviewed literature between 2012 and 2024 yielding ECS best estimates between 1.0°C and 2.5°C, although critics have questioned some of the methods and the data quality. For AR6, the IPCC placed primary weight on the results of Sherwood et al. (2020) that combined historical data and paleoclimate proxies with the process-based approach and yielded a best estimate of 3.1°C with a likely range of 2.6-3.9°C. Lewis (2022) raised a number of concerns about this result, including methodological errors, outdated input values, and use of subjective Bayesian priors in the analysis. Lewis’ analysis found that climate sensitivity is estimated to be much lower and better constrained than in the Sherwood et al. analysis – median 2.2°C (1.8–2.7°C in the 17–83 percent likely range, and 1.6–3.2°C in the 5–95 percent very likely range). The IPCC AR6 estimated only a 5 percent probability that ECS was below 2.3°C, whereas Lewis estimated it to be over 50 percent. The most recent publications on the debate between Sherwood et al. and Lewis further defend their respective positions: Sherwood and Foster (2024) and Lewis (2025).
An argument emphasized in AR6 is that data-driven ECS estimates might understate the future warming response to GHGs because of a so-called ‘pattern effect’ (Forster et al., 2021). The tropical Pacific is believed to strongly influence the overall efficiency with which the Earth radiates heat to space, but some regions remove heat more efficiently than others. If the west-to-east temperature gradient in the tropical Pacific is weakened in a warming climate, warming would concentrate where heat is less efficiently removed, raising ECS.
Most climate models simulate that rising GHGs will weaken the west-east temperature gradient, which led the IPCC in AR6 to conclude that data-driven ECS estimates understated the future ECS value. However, Seager et al. (2019) pointed out that, contrary to models, the west-east temperature gradient has been strengthening over time. They further argued that the mechanism predicting otherwise in climate models was based on a faulty characterization of oceanic dynamics and there is no reason to expect the gradient to weaken. A similar argument was recently made by Lee et al. (2024), who concluded that ‘the trajectory of the observed trend reflects the response to increasing GHG loading in the atmosphere’; in other words, GHG warming should lead to a future strengthening rather than a weakening of the temperature gradient. Increased efficiency of atmospheric cooling implies, if anything, that the future ECS in a warming climate might be lower than current estimates.
4.4 Transient Climate Response
The Transient Climate Response (TCR) provides a more useful observational constraint on climate sensitivity. TCR is the global temperature increase that results when CO2 is increased at an annual rate of 1 percent over a period of 70 years (i.e., doubled gradually). Relative to the ECS, observationally determined values of TCR avoid the problems of uncertainties in ocean heat uptake and the fuzzy boundary in defining equilibrium arising from a range of timescales for the longer-term feedback processes (e.g., ice sheets). TCR is better constrained by historical warming, than ECS. AR6 judged the very likely range of TCR to be 1.2–2.4°C. In contrast to ECS, the upper bound of TCR is more tightly constrained. For comparison, the TCR values determined by Lewis (2023) are 1.25 to 2.0°C, showing much better agreement with AR6 values than was seen in a comparison of the ECS values.” [Boldface added]
TWTW Comment: It will be interesting to see if the IPCC continues with its data-driven approach or it will return to a modeling approach? Also, it will be interesting to see what IPCC collaborators will do. Another issue is will the IPCC use carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa Observatory and elsewhere or will it speculate on these concentrations? The warming effects of methane and nitrous oxide (from artificial fertilizers) are claimed to cause significant warming using laboratory experiments based on dry air. Yet water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, and it significantly diminishes the influence of both methane and nitrous oxide.
The Transient Climate Response controversy presents its own set of issues. CO2 increasing at an annual rate of 1% is modest but may not be sustainable. The work of van Wijngaarden and Happer shows a logarithmic relationship. If the CO2 concentration rises exponentially with time and the warming effect is logarithmic with CO2 concentration (as shown by Happer and van Wijngaarden) the rise in temperature may or may not be linear with time.
Next week, TWTW will continue to discuss “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate” emphasizing Chapter 5: Discrepancies Between Models and Instrumental Observations.” For links to the report and comments see links under Challenging the Orthodoxy, for links to the reports by van Wijngaarden and Happer see links under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer, and for climate zones see https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/global/climate-zones.
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Request for Information: The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are soliciting information on Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases and US Climate. The deadline is August 27, at 11:59 PM ET. The announcement states:
“The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine invites input to inform the work of the Committee on Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases and US Climate: Evidence and Impacts.
Committee’s charge: This fast-track study will review evidence for whether anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere are reasonably anticipated to endanger public health and welfare in the United States. The study will focus on updates since the Environmental Protection Agency finalized the Endangerment Finding in 2009, examine how current understanding compares to the 2009 Endangerment Finding, and provide explanation for any changes. The study will develop conclusions that describe supporting evidence, the level of confidence, and areas of disagreement or unknowns.
We encourage you to submit peer-reviewed articles, white papers, technical reports, or other comments relevant to the committee’s charge. If you are uploading attachments, please include a brief comment on their significance for committee consideration in the box provided on the next page. Submissions to this Request for Information will be considered by the committee in preparing its report, however the committee will not provide responses to individual comments. All submissions will be accessible as part of the public record for this project.”
SEPP plans to submit short, terse, easy to read comments requesting that the National Academies clarify major issues relating to the incompatibility of considering CO2 a pollutant that endangers human life and welfare and considerable inconsistent physical evidence. For example, cyanobacteria evolved over 2 billion years ago with a process of using energy from the sun to break down water and carbon dioxide and recombine the atoms into carbohydrates and oxygen, photosynthesis. Subsequently, all plant and animal life evolved depending directly or indirectly on carbohydrates and oxygen (animal life) from photosynthesis for which carbon dioxide is essential.
Other issues include subjects such as geology and the fact that we are currently in a brief warm Epoch during Quaternary Period also called Icehouse Earth that features intense cold periods known as Ice Ages.
For this request and others and timelines for comments on the report to the Secretary of Energy see links under Seeking a Common Ground.
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Battery Storage Delusion: German energy economist Lars Schernikau discusses that the Levelized Cost of Electricity may be a reasonable index when comparing equally reliable sources; but, since wind and solar are not reliable day to day, these should not be compared with reliable thermal sources such as coal, gas, and nuclear using Levelized Cost of Electricity. His essay on “Pros and Cons of Utility-Scale Battery Storage” should give pause to all but the most dedicated promoters of wind and solar. The essay discusses: Utility-scale batteries – state of affairs; Lifetime, efficiency, and battery chemistry/technology; Battery costs; Raw materials and embedded energy; Energy density; and Environmental and security risks. The Summary states:
“In May 2025 alone, China deployed about 11 GWh utility-scale batteries [16] plus over 55 GWh of EV batteries. For the production of just these grid-scale batteries (without for EVs), China needed to “invest” about 8 million tons of raw materials (ores) and about 5 TWh of energy. Let me tell you a secret… those 5 TWh did NOT come from wind or solar but probably mostly from coal and some hydro power.
In comparison to China, Germany’s entire installed battery storage capacity reached 20 GWh around mid-June 2025, of which less than 4 GWh were utility-scale, the rest is largely residential. At 60 GW, the 4 GWh last a whole 4 minutes.
Utility-scale battery systems serve the grid in many ways, but what is not often discussed are the realities or externalities surrounding them. Therefore, let’s condense and list those realities in 10 points:
Point 1: Most utility-scale batteries are ONLY required because of the ever-increasing installed capacity of intermittent, weather dependent wind and solar power, which are largely useless without extensive and complex network integration, backup, and storage systems.
Point 2: Utility-scale batteries are ONLY short duration energy storage systems, they provide backup storage for a few hours at best, not for days or weeks. Thus, “solar + batteries” does NOT provide dispatchable 24/7/365 power.
Point 3: Utility-scale batteries deteriorate at a rate of 3-7 % p.a. and batteries should neither be fully discharged nor charged to 100%, as this degrades their lifespan. In practice, the recommended range is 20% to 80%, meaning only around 60% of the nameplate capacity is actually usable on a daily basis.
Point 4: Utility-scale batteries are expected to last on average 10-13 years. Real life round-trip efficiency (RTE) of utility-scale batteries is around 70-80% realistically.
Point 5: In real life a 4-hour Lithium-Ion LFP utility-scale battery system all-in costs, not necessarily price quoted, in 2024 to 2025 range from ~150-250 USD/kWh.
Point 6: Raw material or commodity prices, excluding gold, are at historically low levels in comparison to equities… something will have to give, my take is that commodity prices will rise impacting long-term battery costs.
Point 7: 1 GWh of utility scale lithium-ion batteries require ~0,7 million tons of raw materials (ores) to be mined, upgraded, transported, processed, and manufactured into utility scale batteries. Details in Appendix. China controls ~90% of battery cell component manufacturing (anodes, cathodes), ~80+% of battery cell manufacturing, and majority of raw material processing for batteries.
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Point 8: 1 GWh of utility scale lithium-ion batteries require ~450 GWh of energy (Table 3) before the battery can be charged for the first time. A standard Gigafactory, with an annual battery production capacity of about 50 GWh, would require over ~20 TWh of energy annually, including the embedded energy of the metals and materials consumed p.a. This compares to the city of Berlin in Germany consuming 12 TWh electricity annually.
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Point 9: 100 Wh/kg energy density for utility-scale batteries at system level (not cell-level) is very aggressive and generous. Today’s reality lies more around 50 Wh/kg, which is confirmed by various data points, and would then double the tonnage and energy estimates mentioned.
The 1-ton battery, when charged, contains the same amount of energy as 40kg of coal, already accounting for 40% power plant efficiency.
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Point 10: A 1 GWh utility-scale lithium-ion battery system is equivalent to nearly 900 tons of TNT, with potential for large explosions, fires, and clouds of toxic gas. Recycling low value LFP batteries without cobalt and nickel, is uneconomical, and we can expect illegal “exports” and dumping.”
See Links under Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy – Storage
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Number of the Week: About 7,000 ppmv: Today, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere varies significantly by season but in July 2025 at Mauna Loa it was measured at 428 parts per million by volume (ppmv). Jane Lubchenco was administrator of NOAA from 2009 to 2013. Lubchenco repeatedly railed about the dangers of ocean acidification from increasing carbon dioxide. A number of papers appeared, giving support for her ideas by claiming that shells on mollusks and other creatures are becoming thinner.
Those specializing in paleogeology cannot give precise numbers for past concentrations of CO2 but can approximate it by using proxies such as plant stomata, microscopic pores on leaves, stems and other surfaces that facilitate gas exchange. Stomata open and close with changing humidity and CO2 levels. The period beginning 540 million years ago is known as the Cambrian explosion. Marine life greatly diversified and shell-bearing creatures such as mollusks and crustations appeared. Yet estimates of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the Cambrian era vary from about 4000 to 9000 ppmv, about 10 to 20 times that of today. It appears the mollusks and crustaceans will be quite safe with CO2 concentrations foreseeable today. See links under Ocean Acidification and https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/
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
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
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels
By Multiple Authors, Bezdek, Idso, Legates, and Singer eds., Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, April 2019
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
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
Radiation Transport in Clouds
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Klimarealistene, Science of Climate Change, January 2025
Challenging the Orthodoxy
A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate
By Climate Working Group, United States Department of Energy, July 23, 2025 https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/DOE_Critical_Review_of_Impacts_of_GHG_Emissions_on_the_US_Climate_July_2025.pdf
Seeing Red Team
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
Indeed, a central point about the climate debate, or lack of it, is that it is not a matter of dueling certainties. On the contrary, it’s between one side so arrogantly certain of their position that they brush critics aside with a tarry brush and one side that, in the humble spirit of true science, realizes there is much we do not know and is keen to talk about what we think we know, how we think we know it, and the limits of our knowledge.
Happer & Wrightstone: Get Real and Stop Blaming CO2
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Aug 17, 2025
The above interview was conducted by NTD news with CO2 Coalition founder William Happer (WH) and Executive Director Gregory Wrightstone (GW). For those preferring to read, below is a transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images.
We are in a warming trend. Yes, we are. It’s been warming for more than 300 years. But you know what that does? That means since 1900, our growing seasons in the continental United States have increased by more than two weeks. That’s a really good thing for agriculture. Your farmers will tell you they love that. So at the CO2 Coalition, our unofficial motto is: We love CO2 and so should you.
INTERVIEW. Dr. Judith Curry on Global Warming: Where Is the Danger?
Renowned climatologist Dr. Judith Curry says it is very tough to make the case that warming is becoming dangerous.
By Hannes Sarv, Freedom Research, Freedom Research, Aug 20, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://www.freedom-research.org/p/interview-dr-judith-curry-on-global
“People used to call the warm periods the optimums, the climate optimums, because ecosystems and people thrived in these warmer climate optimums,” says Dr. Judith Curry, professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We talk about two degrees of warming, things like that, but the part that they don’t tell you is that the baseline is the period between 1850 and 1900.
[SEPP Comment: Long interview]
About That Annoying DOE Climate Review
Transcript of Interview of Steven Koonin by Andrew Bolt, via Ron Clutz, His Blog, Aug 18, 2025
Koonin: Well, you know, people have said 95% of our report agrees with or is taken right out of the IPCC. It’s just that there are aspects of what the consensus says that do not find their way to the public. For example:
- There are no detectable trends in the great majority of extreme weather types.
- The models that we use to project climates into the future are demonstrably deficient. They’re in many ways all over the place in terms of their projections. And,
- The projected impacts of future climate change, even using those deficient models, are minimal.
These are very important central points that are in the report but do not make their way into the public discussion.
Finally, an Unbiased and Objective Climate Science Report
By Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D., U.S. Navy (Ret.), Real Clear Science, Aug 16, 2025
https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2025/08/16/finally_an_unbiased_and_objective_climate_science_report_1129196.html
To better gauge the overall opinion of the report, two journalists from the Associated Press asked members of the climate science committee if they believed that it accurately portrayed the current “mainstream view of climate science.”
Another Study Affirms Anthropogenic CO2 Does Not Drive Climate Change
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Aug 22, 2025
Link to paper: A Critical Reassessment of the Anthropogenic CO₂-Global Warming Hypothesis: Empirical Evidence Contradicts IPCC Models and Solar Forcing Assumptions
By Grok 3 beta, Jonathan Cohler, David Legates, Franklin Soon, Willie Soon, Science of Climate Change, 2025
[SEPP Comment: The Grok 3 paper was covered in a previous TWTW.]
How CO2 both Warms and Cools our Atmosphere
By Jim Steele, WUWT, Aug 21, 2025
Defending the Orthodoxy – Bandwagon Science
Evaluating IPCC Projections of Global Sea-Level Change From the Pre-Satellite Era
By Torbjörn E. Törnqvist, et al., Earth’s Future, Aug 22, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025EF006533
From abstract: With an acceleration of global sea-level rise during the satellite altimetry era (since 1993) firmly established, it is now appropriate to examine sea-level projections made around the onset of this time period. Here we show that the mid-range projection from the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC (1995/1996) was strikingly close to what transpired over the next 30 years, with the magnitude of sea-level rise underestimated by only ∼1 cm..
[SEPP Comment: Testing projections against projections. The article fails to test projections against physical evidence from geologically stable tidal gauges.]
Climate forcing due to future ozone changes: an intercomparison of metrics and methods
By William J. Collins, et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Aug 21, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/25/9031/2025
In the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 3-7.0 (SSP3-7.0) we find robust increases in ozone due to future increases in ozone precursors and decreases in ODSs, leading to a radiative forcing increase from 2015 to 2050 of 0.268 ± 0.084 W m−2 ERF, 0.244 ± 0.057 W m−2 SARF and 0.288 ± 0.101 W m−2 IRF. This increase makes ozone the second largest contributor to future warming by 2050 in this scenario, approximately half of which is due to stratospheric ozone recovery and half due to tropospheric ozone precursors.
[SEPP Comment: Building on models that fail basic testing.]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
Good questions can stop bad projects
By David Wojick, CFACT, Aug 19, 2025
https://www.cfact.org/2025/08/19/good-questions-can-stop-bad-projects
If you want to speak out against a bad project at a public meeting, consider asking a hard question instead of stating an objection. Objections call for no immediate action except perhaps a cursory “thank you, we will think about that.”
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
Please remember the “Gell-Mann Amnesia” effect referenced by Steven Koonin in Unsettled: when you read a news story about a subject you know well and it’s a mess, don’t forget it as soon as you turn to a story on which you’re not an expert. It’s almost certainly a mess too.
And if you don’t know that…
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
There’s a remarkable tendency nowadays for climate alarmists, a category that includes much of the press, to regard climate change as so conclusively settled that checking actual facts is for losers.
Seventeen Years Of Fun
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Aug 17, 2025
Energy & Environmental Review: August 18, 2025
By John Droz, Jr., Master Resource, Aug 18, 2025
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
The effect of elevated CO2 on Indian goosegrass
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
From the CO2Science archive.
Problems in the Orthodoxy
Canada pivots but doesn’t
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
And apparently what they’re [Canada’s government] trying to do is change course while holding steady and speed up project approvals by erecting even more barriers because they’re unable to prevail in the fight against their most dangerous foe: their own ideas.
Seeking a Common Ground
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION — Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases and US Climate: Evidence and Impacts
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine invites input to inform the work of the Committee on Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases and US Climate: Evidence and Impacts.
Deadline: August 27 at 11:59 PM ET
https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8416653/Request-for-Information-Anthropogenic-Greenhouse-Gases-and-US-Climate-Evidence-and-Impacts
Notice of Availability: A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate
By Staff, Department of Energy, Federal Register, Ending Date Sep 2, 2025
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/01/2025-14519/notice-of-availability-a-critical-review-of-impacts-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-on-the-us-climate
Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards; Extension of Comment Period
By Staff, Environmental Protection Energy, Federal Register, Ending Date Sep 22, 2025
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/15/2025-15512/reconsideration-of-2009-endangerment-finding-and-greenhouse-gas-vehicle-standards-extension-of
Science, Policy, and Evidence
Don’t Let Copper Become the New Rare Earths
U.S. leaders have fallen into China’s rare earths trap, but they still have time to avoid a copper supply chain crisis.
By Thomas J. Madison Jr., Real Clear Energy, Aug 18, 2025
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2025/08/18/dont_let_copper_become_the_new_rare_earths_1129183.html
Although considered a base metal, copper’s many valuable properties, particularly malleability, conductivity, ductility, and abundance, make it a very highly desirable and useful resource.
The Truth Behind Britain’s Wildfires
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 21, 2025
There’s a lot to unpack here.
[SEPP Comment: The failure of policies restricting vegetation management.]
Model Issues
Minimal Arctic Sea Ice Loss in the Last 20 Years, Consistent With Internal Climate Variability
By M. R. England, et al., Geophysical Research Letters, Aug 5, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL116175
From abstract: Overall, this observed pause in Arctic sea ice decline is consistent with simulated internal variability superimposed on the long-term trend according to the bulk of the climate modeling evidence. [Boldface added]
[SEPP Comment: Climate modeling is evidence?? Perhaps evidence of incompetence?]
Impact of Increasing Greenhouse Gases on the Ionosphere and Thermosphere Response to a May 2024-Like Geomagnetic Superstorm
By Nicholas M. Pedatella, et al., Geophysical Research Letters, June 14, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL116445
From the abstract: The Community Earth System Model (CESM) Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with thermosphere-ionosphere eXtension (WACCM-X) is used to investigate how the ionosphere-thermosphere response to a May 2024-like geomagnetic storm changes with increasing greenhouse gases. Coupled CESM(WACCM-X) simulations are first performed following the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 5–8.5 from 2000 to 2090. The May 2024 geomagnetic superstorm is then simulated in 2016, 2040, 2061, and 2084, corresponding to surface CO2 levels of 403, 500, 652, and 918 ppmv, respectively.
[SEPP Comment: Why stop at 918 ppmv? Why not go to the Cambrian explosion of aquatic animal life about 540 million years ago with CO2 levels about 7,000 ppmv?]
While MSM Screamed “Climate Crisis”, Arctic Ice Loss Actually Slowed
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Aug 21, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/while-msm-screamed-climate-crisis-arctic-ice-loss-actually-slowed
Changing Weather
Hurricane Erin
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 19, 2025
It is now commonplace for hurricane hunter aircraft to spend hours flying inside hurricanes, even far from Florida as Erin was on Saturday. Consequently, they are much more likely to spot a short-lived spike in just one small area of the eyewall.
Planes are now much more robust with longer range and can stay in the air longer. The WP-3D Orion, for example, has a range of about 3,800 nautical miles and can fly up to 10-12 hours, sufficient for most hurricane missions. The Gulfstream IV-SP has an even longer range of 4200 nautical miles.
People adapt to extreme heat
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
Link to paper: Outpacing climate change: adaptation to heatwaves in Europe
By Marcin Piotr Walkowiak, et al., International Journal of Biometeorology, Feb 19, 2025
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00484-025-02872-0#
Robson: The bottom line is people are clever and can adapt to changing circumstances, including warmer weather, as long as governments don’t get in the way by assuming they’re stupid and making the necessary adaptations costlier while wasting money on strategies that don’t do any good. Since governments so often take precisely that approach, it’s a wonder the authors found as much evidence of adaptation as they did.
Changing Climate – Cultures & Civilizations
The Mayan climate extremes and megadroughts of the Medieval era
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Aug 20, 2025
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/08/the-mayan-climate-extremes-and-megadroughts-of-the-medieval-era
Link to paper: Classic Maya response to multiyear seasonal droughts in Northwest Yucatán, Mexico
By Daniel H. James, et al., AAAS Science Advances, Aug 13, 2025
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adw7661
From abstract: We present a subannual rainfall record from northwest Yucatán, Mexico, derived from an annually laminated stalagmite spanning 871 to 1021 CE, with ±6-year age uncertainty. Interpretation of the stalagmite oxygen isotope record is supported by modern rain and drip water monitoring.
Changing Seas
New Study: Corals Thrived In Warmer-Than-Today Temps And When Sea Levels Were Meters Higher
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, Aug 19, 2025
Link to paper: Impact of Holocene relative sea-level changes on patch reef-island development in the Spermonde Archipelago, South Sulawesi, Indonesia
By Michael G Hynes, et al., The Holocene, 2025
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09596836251313628
From abstract: Here, we present data of 16 cores from two islands of different reef zones from the Spermonde Archipelago, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Cores were taken from the reef flat and slope, with recovered length varying from 0.41 to 3.53m, providing a history of each reef after radiocarbon dating. From 7200 to 5500 YBP, sea level rise rapidly increased and these reef complexes accreted at rates able to match this. This is in part driven by a higher occurrence of massive and foliose corals. After this point and toward the present day, sea level declined, causing sub-aerial exposure of these sand cays and the slope now sustaining the growth.
Antarctic phytoplankton trends reveal sea ice retreat impact; Ecosystem engineering in the oceans
By Erica Marchand, Paris, France (SPX), Aug 15, 2025
https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Antarctic_phytoplankton_trends_reveal_sea_ice_retreat_impact_999.html
Link to paper: Antarctic phytoplankton communities restructure under shifting sea-ice regimes
By Alexander Hayward, et al., Nature Climate Change, July 25, 2025
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02379-x
From Abstract: Here, using a machine learning framework and combining pigment samples and environmental samples from austral summertime 1997–2023, we show declines in diatoms and increases in haptophytes and cryptophytes across much of Antarctica’s continental shelf. These trends—which are linked to sea ice increases—reversed after 2016, with a rebound in diatoms and a large increase in cryptophytes, coinciding with the loss of sea ice.
The long-term shifts in phytoplankton assemblages could reduce the dominance of the krill-centric food web and diminish the biologically mediated export of carbon to depth, with implications for the global-ocean carbon sink.
Changing Cryosphere – Land / Sea Ice
Regime change for Arctic sea ice
By David Whitehouse, Net Zero Watch, Aug 22, 2025
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/regime-change-for-arctic-sea-ice
Arctic Ice Returns to Mean Mid-August 2025
By Ron Clutz, His Blog, Aug 16, 2025
Acidic Waters
Drivers and Variability of Intensified Subsurface Ocean Acidification Trends at Station ALOHA
By Lucie A. C. M. Knor, et al., JGR Oceans, June 27, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JC022251
From Key Points: Enhanced subsurface trends of all ocean acidification indicators are observed in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre over 35 years.
From opening paragraph in text: The ocean has absorbed a large fraction (around 26% during the last decade) of the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, land use changes, and other human activities (Friedlingstein et al., 2023; Gruber et al., 2023).
[SEPP Comment: Yet the measured pH at all levels remains above 7.4, alkaline.]
Lowering Standards
The New York Times Publishes False Energy and Climate Information and Refuses to Correct Its Errors
By Howard Gruenspecht, Real Clear Energy, Aug 20, 2025
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2025/08/20/the_new_york_times_publishes_false_energy_and_climate_information_and_refuses_to_correct_its_errors_1130046.html
The stated NYT correction policy that “when we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction” is sound, but its current implementation is atrocious. The so-called Grey Lady of journalism should be blushing in shame. The paper quickly corrects errors that are of minor importance to most readers, such as misspelled names, incorrect job titles, or inaccurate event dates. However, when substantive factual errors are identified and reported to the paper, as in the examples discussed above, its response is to either stonewall, as in the case of the Bearak article, or to obfuscate and evade, as in its correction of the comparison of renewable and fossil fuel generation levels in the Wallace-Wells article.
BBC Withdraw Fake Storm Henk Claim
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 22, 2025
Storm Henk was in June 2024, so it only took the BBC seventeen months to issue a correction!
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
AEP U Turns On Net Zero
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 22, 2025
Quite where he gets the idea that oil and gas are being subsidised, I have no idea. Such a silly statement shows just muddled his thinking is!
Nowhere does AEP explain that our high electricity prices are the direct consequence of reliance on heavily subsidized renewables.
[SEPP Comment: Journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard]
NBC News’ Claim of Climate Driven Rapid Hurricane Intensification is False
Heartland Institute
By Anthony Watts and H. Sterling Burnett. Climate Realism, Aug 20, 2025
Before satellite monitoring in the late 1970s, we had only the vaguest idea about the inner workings of tropical cyclones, especially those that stayed at sea. Prior to that, storm intensification was gauged largely by ship reports, land-based observations, and post-storm forensics. How many storms rapidly intensified in the pre-satellite era? The honest answer is: we’ll never know because the data isn’t there.
Wrong Again, Grist, Climate Change Is Not Causing Higher Coffee Prices
By H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Realism, Aug 21, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Increasing global human exposure to wildland fires despite declining burned area
By Seyd Teymoor Seydi, et al., AAAS Science, Aug 21, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu6408
From editor’s summary: Almost all of the increase in exposure was in Africa, which accounted for more than 85% of all people directly exposed to wildland fires over the study period.
Industry managed forests more likely to fuel megafires
By Lisa Potter for UT News, Salt Lake City UT (SPX) Aug 21, 2025
https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Industry_managed_forests_more_likely_to_fuel_megafires_999.html
Link to paper: Extreme Weather Magnifies the Effects of Forest Structure on Wildfire, Driving Increased Severity in Industrial Forests
By Jacob I. Levine, et al., Global Change Biology, Aug 20, 2025
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.70400
From abstract: To investigate the effects of extreme weather and forest management on fire severity, we used light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data to characterize pre-fire forest structure across five large wildfires which burned 460,000 ha in the northern Sierra Nevada, California, USA. We found that the odds of high severity fire occurrence in these fires were 1.45 times higher on private industrial land than in publicly owned forests, an effect equivalent to a three standard deviation decrease in fuel moisture.
[SEPP Comment: How does laser 3D mapping after the fire reveal the structure of an area before the fire?]
Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.
US oil and gas air pollution is causing unequal health impacts: Study
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, Aug 22, 2025
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5466139-oil-gas-pollution-health-impacts-study
Link to paper: The health burden and racial-ethnic disparities of air pollution from the major oil and gas lifecycle stages in the United States
By Karn Vohr, et al., AAAS Science Advances, Aug 22, 2025
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu2241
From abstract: We estimate lifecycle annual burdens of 91,000 premature deaths attributable to fine particles (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and ozone, 10,350 PM2.5-attributable preterm births, 216,000 incidences of NO2-attributable childhood-onset asthma, and 1610 lifetime cancers attributable to hazardous air pollutants (HAPs)
[SEPP Comment: Where is the physical evidence that PM2.5 causes death?]
Wildfires could be raising local death rates by two-thirds: Study
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, Aug 22, 2025
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/5464193-wildfires-raise-local-deaths
Link to paper: All-cause excess mortality associated with the Lāhainā, Maui fires
By Michelle Nakatsuka, et al., Frontiers in Climate, Aug 21, 2025
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.3389/fclim.2025.1611198/full
From paper: Methods: Excess mortality was estimated using seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average models trained on data from August 2018–July 2023. Projections were generated via 5,000 bootstrapped simulations, with a sensitivity analysis excluding COVID-19-attributed deaths.
From The Hill: About 80 percent of these [excess] deaths did not occur in a medical context — 12 percent more than in other months — which the authors said could suggest that some people never reached health care facilities. [Boldface added]
Short-Term Heatwaves in Britain Weaponized by Met Office Using Junk 60-Second Heat Spikes to Push Net Zero Fantasy
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Aug 15, 2025
Net Zero madness has left the Met Office between a rock and a hard place. An alternative to disbanding its nationwide network is to accept that the current higgledy-piggledy operation is unsuitable to be weaponized to promote the Net Zero fantasy. It is what it is; that is a rough-and-ready guide to local temperature conditions in very small specific locations. At airports such as Heathrow, it is a useful micro aid for hundreds of planes taking off and landing. It is not a cherished guide to climate Armageddon.
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
People often miscalculate climate choices, a study says. One surprise is owning a dog
By Caleigh Wells, AP, Aug 13, 2025
https://apnews.com/article/climate-choices-impact-decisions-recycling-flying-meat-a85ef43fc63c666e16f29e8ca1e43beb
Link to: Climate action literacy interventions increase commitments to more effective mitigation behaviors
By Danielle Goldwert, et al., PNAS Nexus, June 6, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/6/pgaf191/8159053?login=false
The top three individual actions that help the climate, including avoiding plane flights, choosing not to get a dog and using renewable electricity, were also the three that participants underestimated the most. Meanwhile, the lowest-impact actions were changing to more efficient appliances and swapping out light bulbs, recycling, and using less energy on washing clothes. Those were three of the top four overestimated actions in the report.
[SEPP Comment: So much for government regulation of appliances for energy use. Just ban dogs.]
No, WCAX 3, Owning a Dog Is NOT a “Wrong Climate Choice”
By Linnea Lueken, Climate Realism, Aug 22, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Scientists Warn About Scientists’ Warnings
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, Aug 19, 2025
Link to paper: The progression of basaltic–rhyolitic melt storage at Yellowstone Caldera
By N. Bennington, et al., Nature, Jan 1, 2025
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08286-z
The dead giveaway? “Scientists Warn.” Whenever you see those two words sandwiched together above the fold, you know you’re about to step into a wonderland of wild extrapolation, qualified maybes, and models run so far into the future they boomerang back with “robots take over” as the y-axis.
Stung by a bait and switch
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
Fourth, “climate change” doesn’t cause things to happen; it is a statistical description of changes in long-term weather conditions. Oh, and then there’s the bit where Alaska is warming faster than the average like everywhere else:
Guardian: “A climate of unparalleled malevolence”: are we on our way to the sixth major mass extinction?
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Aug 19, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
Taken for a Ride
By Tony Thomas, from Quadrant, Via WUWT, Aug 20, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Protest
The Highlands are revolting!
By Helen McDade, Net Zero Watch, Aug 19, 2025
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/the-highlands-are-revolting
Over 50 community councils from across the Scottish Highlands and Islands have launched a campaign calling for a moratorium on renewable infrastructure throughout the region. At a packed meeting last week, the rage and despair were palpable.
Expanding the Orthodoxy
The Experts who got everything wrong about Antarctica want you to sign UN documents to help penguins (and bankers)
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Aug 22, 2025
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/08/the-experts-who-got-everything-wrong-about-antarctica-want-you-to-sign-un-documents-to-help-penguins-and-bankers
Something big is going on around Antarctica, but climate experts have no idea what’s causing it.
Nothing says global warming like a trend of 0.03°C per decade.
For decades they told us that Antarctica would warm twice as fast as most of the world. What happened to that? Nothing.
To put it bluntly, it was warmer in Antarctica a thousand years ago, and two thousand years ago the penguins survived just fine. In fact, The Penguin Optimum (they really call it that) was three or four thousand years ago when it was even warmer still. (Hall et al 2023). It was the horrible cold of the Little Ice Age that wiped out thousands of penguins. Lord forbid, that animals that manage to survive in the coldest place on Earth would want it to be even colder. [Boldface added]
Questioning European Green
“Wake-Up Call” For Europe… German Professor, Fritz Vahrenholt, On U.S. Climate Report
By P Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, Aug 20, 2025
A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, commissioned by the Trump administration and authored by five scientists, is making waves.
Questioning Green Elsewhere
Stossel On The Green Industrial Complex: Power, Panic, And Profits
The media portrays environmental groups as the underdog. In reality, they’re the big guys feeding on your fears.
By John Stossel, Climate Change Dispatch, Aug 18, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Time to Stop Endangerment of Developing Economies With CO2 Regulation
By Vijay Jayaraj, CO2 Coalition, Aug 18, 2025
https://co2coalition.org/2025/08/18/https-townhall-com-columnists-vijayjayaraj-2025-08-16-time-to-stop-endangerment-of-developing-economies-with-co2-regulation-n2661899/
Green energy vehicles – like the Paris Agreement and net zero targets – have been promoted in the name of climate virtue but have sabotaged growth, stalled industrial progress and punished the poor. From the reckless scuttling of projects for developing fossil fuel supplies to the puppet-like behavior of lawmakers reciting policies scripted by the United Nations and World Economic Forum, the fingerprints of the green agenda are everywhere.
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
UN: Renewables are So Cheap They Need Lots of Subsidies
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Aug 21, 2025
Link to UN Report: Seizing the moment of opportunity: Supercharging the new energy era of renewables, efficiency, and electrification
By the Climate Action Team in the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General. Ploy Achakulwisut served as the lead author. UN, 2025
EPA and other Regulators on the March
Rescinding the Endangerment Finding Was Overdue. But Where Do We Turn for Justice?
By Gary Abernathy, Real Clear Energy, Aug 20, 2025
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2025/08/20/rescinding_the_endangerment_finding_was_overdue_but_where_do_we_turn_for_justice_1129847.html
Energy Issues – Non-US
Natural Gas Price Trends [UK]
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 22, 2025
It is a general consensus nowadays that gas prices are “high” and this is why electricity prices are also “high”.
But exactly how “high” are natural gas prices?
Energy Issues – Australia
Energy Crisis in Australia: Costs are 3 or 4 times higher than the US, manufacturing is at a ‘tipping point’
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Aug 21, 2025
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/08/energy-crisis-in-australia-costs-are-3-or-4-times-higher-than-the-us-manufacturing-is-at-a-tipping-point
Just so everyone can appreciate the historic inanity of our situation — this graph below is the state of the top five players in the global LNG export market.
Australia is sending off ships full of LNG only to pay someone else to turn them around and send them back.
Alternately we could just dig up more brown coal, more black coal, some uranium, or we could explore for more gas, but we don’t because we dream of being a better global weather controller.
Australian wind plants only working at 27% of full capacity and the long-term trend is down
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Aug 21, 2025
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/08/australian-wind-plants-only-working-at-27-of-full-capacity-and-the-long-term-trend-is-down
We need to know ‘the mileage’
The latest GenCost report uses the term “capacity factor” literally 100 times (I counted), so obviously it’s central in calculating the value of a generator, yet it is that which shall-not-be-named in public discussions. And when they do say it, it’s often worse than they say, and that bad number is also shrinking.
In 2019 the CSIRO Blob Experts bravely assumed that the modeled average capacity factor of onshore wind would be 44.4%. Years later, in the latest GenCOST report they assume, like an addict, that it would between 29% “and 48%” — still fantasizing that a miracle is about to come. So, their modeled prediction of the cost of onshore wind power is ridiculously generous. Even after reality doggedly stayed around 30% for six years, a google search shows the NSW government “fact sheet” says it’s around 35% and the Google AI overview says it’s 30% “to 45%.”
Fossil Fuel Fightback: The gears shift on the Renewable Crash Test Dummy — Eraring coal lives, wind and solar slump
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, Aug 16, 2025
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/08/fossil-fuel-fightback-the-gears-shift-on-the-renewable-crash-test-dummy-eraring-coal-lives-wind-and-solar-slump
Think of the irony of putting the nation’s biggest battery next to the nation’s biggest coal plant, as if it needed back up:
Energy Issues — US
Green Energy Wall Coming Into Focus In New York?
By Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian, Aug 17, 2025
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-8-17-green-energy-wall-coming-into-focus-in-new-york
Supposedly, under a statute known as the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019, we are faced with a 2030 deadline to get some 70% of our electricity from “renewables.” Currently the percent of our electricity that we get from these “renewables” is around 44%, and almost half of that comes from the gigantic waterfall known as Niagara Falls. Without another Niagara Falls on the horizon, theoretically we should be building vast fields of wind turbines and solar panels to meet the statutory mandates; but that effort has stalled out, and the costs of wind and solar generation, and of backup to make the grid run all the time, have barely started to show up in consumer bills. Nor have various big new long-distance transmission projects yet come into consumer bills.
Electricity Bills Too High? Bad Energy Policies Are to Blame.
By Megan Martin, Real Clear Energy, Aug 18, 2025
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2025/08/18/electricity_bills_too_high_bad_energy_policies_are_to_blame_1128997.html
Washington’s Control of Energy
Trump Administration Further Restricts Tax Credits for Solar and Wind Energy
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Aug 15, 2025
https://www.powermag.com/trump-administration-further-restricts-tax-credits-for-solar-and-wind-energy/?utm_source=omeda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pwrrenewable+eletter&oly_enc_id=7809H6412578J0B
Link to guidance: Beginning of Construction Requirements for Purposes of the Termination of Clean Electricity Production Credits and Clean Electricity Investment Credits for Applicable Wind and Solar Facilities
By Staff, Treasury Department Notice 2025-42, Aug 15, 2025
From article: The guidance is expected to stall or halt “hundreds” of planned wind and solar projects, according to some industry analysts, though others such as Ozkan said it could whittle out projects that likely would not have been built regardless of tax credits. Adrian Deveny, founder and president of Climate Vision, a policy advisory firm, in comments to POLITICO, cautioned the new guidance would “pull the rug out from under the entire pipeline of wind and solar projects that are in development.” Deveny previously served as a policy director for New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and worked on the clean energy credits included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. [Boldface added]
Trump Prompts $19 Billion Worth of Wind and Solar Projects Cancellations
By Irina Slav, Oil Price.com, Aug 22, 2025
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Trump-Prompts-19-Billion-Worth-of-Wind-and-Solar-Projects-Cancellations.html
Meanwhile, energy transition proponents are warning that this course of action may compromise energy supply security for data centers.
Wind and solar, however, cannot generate electricity around the clock, which is another key part of the equation that most pro-transition analysts consistently ignore.
[SEPP Comment: How many dollars in tax credits will be restored to the Federal Treasury?]
EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Kills Massive Offshore Wind Project
By Audrey Streb, Daily Caller, Aug 22, 2025
https://dailycaller.com/2025/08/22/exclusive-trump-admin-kills-massive-offshore-wind-project
Trump administration halts offshore wind project in Rhode Island
By Amalia Huot-Marchand, The Hill, Aug 22, 2025
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5467000-trump-halts-rhode-island-wind-energy-project
The Trump administration on Friday issued an order stopping all activities of a wind energy project in Rhode Island that could have supplied electricity to 350,000 homes.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in a letter sent to Ørsted, the Danish company operating the project, said the stop work order seeks “to address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States and prevention of interference with reasonable uses of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and the territorial seas.”
[SEPP Comment: The article ignores that wind power is part time; when is unknown.]
USDA limits funding for solar, wind on farmland
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Aug 19, 2025
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5459631-usda-restricts-wind-solar-farms
Trump administration launches national security investigation into wind turbine imports
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, Aug 21, 2025
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5464364-wind-turbine-imports-tariffs
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
Norway makes one of biggest North Sea discoveries in a decade
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 22, 2025
Nuclear Energy and Fears
TVA Inks First U.S. Utility PPA for Gen IV Nuclear Power [Molten Salt] in Landmark Three-Way Deal with Google, Kairos
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Aug 18, 2025
https://www.powermag.com/tva-inks-first-u-s-utility-ppa-for-gen-iv-nuclear-power-in-landmark-three-way-deal-with-google-kairos/?utm_source=omeda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pwrnews+eletter&oly_enc_id=7809H6412578J0B
While Google revealed that it purchased more than 8 GW of renewable energy in 2024, it says it recognizes that to operate on a near 100% hourly carbon-free energy basis every hour, every day, in every grid region by 2030, dispatchable clean energy solutions beyond intermittent wind and solar will be required.
[SEPP Comment: In deals with green groups, Google would lend its name as a purchaser of solar and wind power yet knew it would have to rely on the consumer supported grid.]
Vattenfall Narrows SMR Field to Two Finalists: GE Vernova’s BWRX-300 and Rolls-Royce SMR
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, Aug 21, 2025
https://www.powermag.com/vattenfall-narrows-smr-field-to-two-finalists-ge-vernovas-bwrx-300-and-rolls-royce-smr/?utm_source=omeda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pwrnews+eletter&oly_enc_id=7809H6412578J0B
Yes, the U.S. Should Put a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Be first or let China and Russia rule the lunar frontier.
By Iulia Lupse, Real Clear Energy, Aug 21, 2025
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2025/08/21/yes_the_us_should_put_a_nuclear_reactor_on_the_moon_1130279.html
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Solar Bankruptcies: The New Normal
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Aug 20, 2025
Solar Farm Will Power Meta Data Center in South Carolina
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, Aug 19, 2025
https://www.powermag.com/solar-farm-will-power-meta-data-center-in-south-carolina/?utm_source=omeda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pwrrenewable+eletter&oly_enc_id=7809H6412578J0B
[SEPP Comment: No discussion of who pays to keep the power on 24/7.]
Wind turbines and solar panels ONLY generate electricity
By Ronald Stein and Yoshihiro Muronaka, America Outloud News, Aug 19, 2025
https://www.americaoutloud.news/wind-turbines-and-solar-panels-only-generate-electricity
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Other
Energy company makes game-changing discovery with potential to bring limitless power to national grid: ‘A major breakthrough’
“We’re excited to be part of this strong, multi-national consortium.”
By Nicole Westhoff, The Cool Down (TCD) Aug 14, 2025
The pilot will focus on a closed-loop system that circulates fluid through sealed pipes in deep rock formations, eliminating the need for naturally porous rock or groundwater. That makes it safer, more flexible, and easier to deploy in places where conventional geothermal doesn’t work.
[SEPP Comment: Assumes that the geothermal source does not cool as heat is extracted from it.]
Why green aviation fuel failed to take of
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 18, 2025
If SAF was so cheap and easy to make, our airplanes would have been running on the stuff years ago.
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
The Battery Storage Delusion.. what 35 million tons of industrial effort buys you
By Lars Schernikau: Energy Economist, WUWT, Aug 20, 2025
Link to blog: Pros and Cons of Utility-Scale Battery Storage
By Dr. Lars Schernikau, The Unpopular Blog, July 25, 2025
National Grid connects UK’s largest battery storage facility at Tilbury substation
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 19, 2025
The grid needs about 45000 MWh every hour at peak periods in winter. That means the 600 MWh from Thurrock will keep the grid doing for 48 seconds! Not even that, in fact, because the battery will never be fully drained.
According to Statera, the battery storage secured debt financing of £144 million, all of which will of course have to be paid back via our electricity bills:
California Dreaming
California Can’t Stop Owning Itself In Ongoing Wind And Solar Debacle
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Aug 18, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/california-cant-stop-owning-itself-ongoing-wind-and-solar-debacle
Newsom Begs Oil Producers not to Abandon California
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, Aug 19, 2025
Don’t they realize $8 / gallon pump price in California could torpedo Newsom’s presidential ambitions?
What is reasonable?
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
Health, Energy, and Climate
Medical Activists Try to Put Net Zero Considerations at the Heart of Cardiovascular Surgery
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, Aug 20, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to paper: Carbon emission analysis of aortic valve replacement: the environmental footprint of transcatheter vs. surgical procedures
By David Blitzer, European Heart Journal, July 2, 2025
https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf379/8181057?login=false#google_vignette
Background and Aims
The impact of climate change is increasingly recognized as a major public health determinant. A life cycle assessment to determine the carbon emissions associated with open surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) and transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in the operating room (OR), and the cath lab (CATH) was performed.
[SEPP Comment: The central premise is false; CO2 is an overblown bit player in climate change.]
Oh Mann!
Angry Michael Mann Isolates Himself (climate exaggeration backfires)
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, Aug 21, 2025
“And yes, there is empirical, peer-reviewed support for the conclusion that climate deniers, in general, are truly awful human beings.” (Michael Mann, below)
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
“Brown: ’50 days to save world’”
By Tony Heller, His Blog, Aug 18, 2025
“Negotiators have 50 days to save the world from global warming”
PM Gordon Brown 19 October 2009
#HaveItBothWays: Earth’s rotation
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 20, 2025
Yes, global warming will cause the Earth’s rotation to slow down and the days to get longer. Not by much, mind you, about 1 microsecond per year. As in a millionth of a second. Which is, in fact, too small a change to measure unless it holds up for a century or so.
Stock Up On Bakewell Tarts!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, Aug 20, 2025
“Climate change could kill off the authentic Bakewell tart, a manufacturer has warned.
The cherry-topped Derbyshire pudding is now being produced without almonds by some makers because of supply chain problems to global warming.”
ARTICLES
1. End of a Green Delusion
Flummoxed as always, environmentalists may yet get a carbon tax thanks to Trump.
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., WSJ, Aug. 19, 2025
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/end-of-a-green-delusion-environmental-policy-52c8fbcb
TWTW Summary: The article begins with:
“Get out your notepads, social scientists. A ‘preference falsification’ bubble is about to go pop in the realm of climate policy.
The term comes from Duke University’s Timur Kuran, for when people feel pressured to adopt and exhibit ideas they don’t believe in. One such bubble was born under near-laboratory conditions in December 2008. The incoming Obama administration decided, with Republicans vacating the White House, the ‘existential’ threat of climate change no longer merited unpopular energy taxes. Subsidies to its green-energy cronies would suffice.
In haste, the climate movement prostrated itself before this idea, as did the mainstream press, though it was nonsense.
This year Donald Trump has done the world a favor by defunding the green-energy elite and its policy substrate. In the strange way of events, greens now can free themselves from false fealty to a nonsolution. But it’s going to take a long unwinding, especially the morass of electric vehicle subsidies.
A lagging indicator is the Princeton University-related Repeat Project, previously mocked here for its hard sell of Joe Biden’s worthless Inflation Reduction Act. Today its principal, Jesse Jenkins, and colleagues are making the rounds keening over the death of Mr. Biden’s handiwork. In a New York Times podcast, they rattle on in the usual way: Green energy is good. Therefore, subsidies for green energy are good. As in Soviet economics, inputs are rejoiced in—more windmills, more solar farms. Outputs are ignored—rising emissions, artificially goosed energy consumption.
Though it does nothing for the climate given the shrinking global significance of U.S. emissions, U.S. ‘net zero’ is still a ‘moral imperative’—never mind that U.S. net zero would be achieved mainly by shifting U.S. emissions overseas.”
The author discusses in 2022 net zero mandate was inhibiting those seeking a carbon tax and then concludes with:
“A carbon tax isn’t undoable in the U.S. context, I’ve long argued; it’s been forcibly kept off the agenda by Democrats who can smell but refuse to pursue the obvious deal with Republicans in return for income-tax cuts.
A carbon tax is a consumption tax. So are Mr. Trump’s import tariffs. Already the blogosphere has been lighting up over how Mr. Trump’s chaotic start might be repurposed for a pro-growth, pro-debt reduction tax reform.
You didn’t have to look far for the truth. It was everywhere except the mainstream media, the New York Times being the worst. I’ve pointed frequently to the 2013 National Science Foundation report funded by congressional Democrats themselves. Richard York of the University of Oregon, no apologist for capitalism or fossil fuels, has also shown why green energy doesn’t displace fossil fuels. French energy historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s previous book decried the anthropocene—i.e., humanity’s effect on the planet. His new best-seller explains the fraudulence of the so-called energy transition.
Last year the prestigious journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science should have closed the verdict on this faulty experiment. It found virtually all the world’s climate policies to be failing. Why? They mistook concessionary funding of green energy for cutting emissions.
In Foreign Affairs, Obama brain-truster Peter Orszag delivers the coup de grace: ‘Rather than replacing conventional energy sources, the growth of renewables is coming on top of that of conventional sources.’
No kidding. A world-historical boondoggle might have been avoided long ago. It needed only a media that did its job of holding a mirror up to reality rather than pathetically flailing after consumers who’ll pay to have their self-images confirmed.
For some greens the wake-up call will never come. They’re little more than shills for industries that know they won’t be favored under a carbon tax. Their survival depends on direct government support for fake solutions to a climate problem that itself remains inescapably, in some sense, theoretical.
The damage to other things Americans care about, such as jobs and economic dynamism, has been incalculable. On the eve of the Obama preference-falsification election, this column said the only live question was how much the U.S would spend on climate change to have no effect on climate change. The answer will be in the trillions.”
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