Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #660 – Watts Up With That?

The Week That Was: 2025-10-04 (October 4, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.”— Max Planck

Number of the Week: 1% or 0.5Hz in UK; as small as 0.06% in US.

THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)

Scope: This TWTW begins with comments on how Solar activity changes high energy cosmic rays hitting Earth’s atmosphere and how these rays change cloudiness on Earth. TWTW briefly discusses the importance of the water cycle, then discusses the difficult balancing act in maintaining grid stability. TWTW presents a video by Kathryn Porter on how the UK government is covering up the enormous expense of going Net Zero. TWTW concludes with the vague plans of New York State to provide electricity in the future and the false health claims supporting this expensive transition.

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The Sun and Cosmic Rays: Hannes Sarv of Freedom Research.org. produced an understandable interview of Danish astrophysicist Henrick Svensmark, the primary advocated of the hypothesis that solar activity such as changing solar wind influence the intensity of high energy cosmic rays hitting Earth’s atmosphere. The changing intensity of cosmic rays in turn change the cloudiness of Earth. The changing cloudiness in Earth’s atmosphere has a far greater influence on climate fluctuations than changing carbon dioxide. The hypothesis has stood experimental testing by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research which has the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Ron Clutz provides a lightly edited transcript of the interview. Below are some of the key parts. Clutz’s emphasis and illustrations are removed here. FR stands for the questions asked by Sarv, HS for replies by Svensmark. The temperature changes are in Celsius, or 9/5 ºF (1.8ºF)

How Sun and Cosmic Rays Make Our Climate Change

In the introduction Sarv states he is not scientifically knowledgeable and asks about the claimed “climate crisis.” Svensmark responds that claiming that the modest warming experienced over the last 100 years is a crisis is foolish. Cold is a greater foe of humanity than heat. Then, Svensmark starts his explanation of his hypothesis.

“FR: Okay. And so, if there are more clouds and reflect the sunlight back to space, I’m just gonna ask, I’m a lay person, not a scientist. Maybe I’m not, you know, a bit stupid question in that sense. But if it reflects more sunlight out, then well, logically, we get the cooler climate, right?

HS: Yes, exactly. Observations are one of the ways we can verify that it works. So, on relatively rare occasions, there are some explosions at the sun. They’re called coronal mass ejections. It’s when the magnetic field lines sort of open up and the sun is throwing out a large magnetic plasma. And this magnetic plasma works more or less like an umbrella or a shield against the cosmic rays. So, within a week, the cosmic rays are dropping, and they can drop maybe up to 30% or something like that. And that is like a natural experiment with the whole Earth.

And so, you can actually then see if anything is happening with the Earth’s cloud cover. And this is something that we have investigated. So, for instance, we can also look at the aerosols that are produced after these events, and we can see that there is a big drop in the aerosols. And then we see a drop in the clouds following these events. And it’s not just the cloud fraction, it’s also the optical properties of clouds. So, we can actually see changes in the cloud’s microphysics under these events.

So, in some sense, we see the whole chain from the explosive events and the sun to changes in the cosmic rays to changes in the aerosols and then changes in the clouds. And there is a slight delay on a few days in the reaction. That’s simply because it takes about five days for the small aerosols to grow to become cloud condensation nuclei. So, everything seems to be fitting very beautifully with respect to this idea.

FR: Okay. But, well, how frequently does it happen, what’s the correlation here? I mean, how frequently it happens to change the climate in that sense?

HS: I talked about this event with the explosions at the sun, which is something that happens during a week. So, it’s too much too short to affect climate. But the solar activity modulates the cosmic rays. And that’s simply because the solar activity translates into changes in the solar wind. And the solar wind is covering the whole solar system and all the planets. That works like it’s a magnetic shield that screens against the cosmic rays.

So, when the solar activity is high, you can say that it’s screening better against the cosmic rays. That means you get fewer cosmic rays into the atmosphere. So solar activity can regulate the amount of cosmic rays that comes into the atmosphere. So that regulates in the cloud cover. And we can then estimate, I mean, how much it changes the cloud cover during an 11-year cycle.

TWTW Comment: Here Svensmark appears to give false precision to his general hypothesis. Detecting the 11-year cycles by solar activity is the holy grail of sun-climate connections. It has not been done. The 2021 paper by Ronan Connolly et al., in Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics demonstrates that the IPCC has chosen the weakest link between changes in solar activity and Earth’s temperatures among 16 separate studies.

From here on, except when discussing physical evidence, it appears much of the argument is conjecture. It provides an alternative explanation to carbon dioxide for the recent warming. But given an understanding of molecular spectroscopy and radiative transfer that is not needed. However, Nir Shaviv has made a case that over the long haul, the temperature of the planet depends on the cosmic ray flux, which is affected by the motion of the solar system into and out of the arms of the Milky Way. As stated below, Roland Connolly, et al. have asserted that solar output does vary. Could its magnetic field and/or the solar wind also vary with the same periodicity?

FR: Okay. But how does it fit this idea? How does it fit the historical records?

HS: Well, if you look at solar activity going back in time, we talked about the Little Ice Age, which is from around 1300 to 1850. And then you had the medieval warm period for 900 until maybe 1200. that these changes, they fit very beautifully with changes in cosmic rays. So, when it’s cold, you have more cosmic rays coming in. And when it’s warm, you have less cosmic rays entering into the atmosphere. And we know these changes in cosmic rays because when cosmic rays enter the atmosphere, They are actually producing new elements like carbon-14, which is a radioactive form of carbon. It’s slightly heavier than carbon-12.

I guess many people know that you can use carbon-14 for dating things. But this carbon becomes CO2, the heavy form from carbon, and it goes into trees. And then you can look at the annual rings of the tree rings and measure how much carbon-14 you have relative to carbon-12.  And you can then measure that for all the tree rings going back in time and you can actually reproduce solar activity almost 20,000 years back in time. And if you look at these changes and you compare with how climate has been changing over that period, there is beautiful correlations again.

So, it is near certain that there is a connection between solar activity and climate. And you can also quantify some of these changes and they are relatively big, and it seems as if that, you know, changes in clouds are a very good candidate for explaining this. And when we look about the last 10,000 years, then the modulation of the cosmic rays, it’s caused by solar activity.”

TWTW Comment: SEPP founder Fred Singer was very impressed by the extremely tight correlation between solar activity (Carbon 14) and climate (Oxygen 18) as seen in stalagmites from Oman and elsewhere. The climate of Oman is influenced by both the Intertropical Convergence Zone and Southwest/Northeast Monsoon Drift.

“FR: Okay. Let me just ask you about those cosmic rays again. You did say, but again, I’m not that bright in your field. You did say it comes from Milky Way. Okay. Why does it come from there? Or what is it? What sends it here?

HS: Cosmic rays are very energetic particles. It’s mainly atomic nuclei, 90% is protons. So that’s the core of the hydrogen atom. So, the energetic particles that we are interested in are mainly produced in what we call supernova. And a supernova, the case that we are interested in, is when you have a massive star that is maybe eight times or more massive than the sun. It only lives a relatively short period of time, you know, from maybe three million years to 40 million years.

So, it’s a large star and it’s very heavy, and then in the process of burning, it burns so fast, and it ends its life in a very, very violent explosion, which is called a supernova. And this supernova, when it explodes, it produces a shock front that is moving out from where the star was located. And this shock front, it works as, you can call it, a cosmic accelerator.

So, it accelerates particles that move back and forth over this shock front and move them to extremely high energies. And the energies that you can obtain by this process is much higher than we can produce in any accelerator here on Earth artificially. And these particles, they are then moving in the interstellar space in the Milky Way.

And they are moving in the magnetic fields that are in between stars. So, they are sort of moving like what we call diffusion. They are sort of randomly moving around, being bent by the magnetic fields. And then some of them will be outside, you know, arrive outside our solar system.

We have the heliosphere and then they move in, and they feel the magnetic field from the sun. And some of them will then enter into the top of the atmosphere. And then you have maybe one proton that comes in with extremely high energy. And then it works a little bit like billiard ball where you have one particle hitting the molecules or the atoms in the atmosphere and it makes a shower, sort of a cascade of particles that goes down through the atmosphere. And these particles are called secondary particles. And so, you can have one particle coming in that becomes millions and even billions of particles that move down through the atmosphere.

These particles are completely invisible to our naked eye.  While we are sitting here, we are penetrated by these secondary particles that go through my body and your body all the time. And so, every 24 hours, maybe 20 million particles will go through your body, and you don’t really experience this.  This is something that has happened since the formation of our galaxy. And of course, here on Earth, we have been showered with these particles for four and a half billion years.

FR: Well, since you can explain past events with solar activity and how many cosmic rays are coming towards Earth, probably you can basically model what will happen as well, right? So, I mean, the question is, where are we now in terms of changing climate? Because I’ve also talked, for example, to Professor Zharkova. She said to me that we are entering another ice age soon.

HS: There’s no doubt that we will get an ice age. We have had a number of ice ages back in time. I don’t know if you’re talking about a real ice age or you’re talking about a little ice age, which is just a colder period.

The discussion brings up the Little Ice Age and the failure to understand brief warming and cooling periods. Then goes into the failure of global climate models, such as ignoring changes in cloudiness, then adjusting the parameters of the models to fit the data. Such actions demonstrate that the models are useless for prediction of future climate. The discission covers the unwillingness of scientists to go against the prevailing political interpretation and ugly demonstrations against Svensmark speaking in Germany. Svensmark then discusses long term climate changes and how traveling through the cosmic rays produced by supernovas may have caused Earth’s extreme ice ages (snowball Earth during the Precambrian period (720 to 635 million years ago)).

The discussion continues with how traveling through supernovas may have changed the composition of life on Earth and concludes with asserting that the correlation between CO2 and temperatures is poor.

See link under Science: Is the Sun Rising?, for the Connolly paper see link under Commentary: Is the Sun Rising?, and for the discussion on the cave in Oman see NIPCC 2008 (pp, 11-13) under Challenging the Orthodoxy – NIPCC.

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The Water Cycle: Meteorologist Anthony Sadar has a short essay exposing the failure of the models used by the IPCC and the uncertainties involved in Earth’s hydraulic (water) cycle. Water vapor and clouds account for most of the greenhouse effect. He does not discuss the importance of Radiation Transfer, which is not part of traditional meteorology. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

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The Balancing Act: Paul Homewood links to an informative 18-minute video by energy consultant Kathryn Porter discussing the difficulty that electricity grid authorities have in continuously matching electricity generated (supply) with use (demand) across the grid. Porter discusses it using the UK as an example, which has alternating current at 50 cycles per second, Hertz (Hz). The US has alternating current at 60 cycles per second, Hz. But the issues are the same. On the traditional grid, generation was largely stable but major problems could occur with sudden increases or drops in demand.

Today, politicians have interceded and demanded unreliable, unstable, generation from wind and solar be added. So, we have a second major source of instability. What could possibly go wrong? See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

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The Big Crunch, UK? Paul Homewood links to another, long video by energy consultant Kathryn Porter discussing the high energy prices in the UK, and that the pursuit of Net Zero CO2 emissions will lead to ever higher prices in the UK. There will be no net savings in energy prices from Net Zero. The lack of clarity for government-mandated pricing is stunning. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.

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The Big Crunch, New York? The New York State Energy Planning Board just issued a draft plan and encouraged New Yorkers to review the Draft Plan and to provide their input by October 6, 2025, through written comments or at public hearings.

In his blog, Manhattan Contrarian, Francis Menton writes:

“[T]he so-called ‘Energy Plan’ is not an energy plan at all.  It would more accurately be described as random musings and wishful thinking by some completely incompetent people who have no idea what they are doing.  The so-called ‘Plan’ envisions a future of a fully transformed energy system within the next 15-25 years.  Yet it contains no meaningful feasibility analysis, nor any meaningful cost analysis. . . .  It’s time to start over, with some people in charge who know what they are doing.”

In Watts Up With That, energy commentator Roger Caiazza writes:

“The New York Draft State Energy Plan prepared by the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) is currently out for comments. There is absolutely no indication the New York State is treating the stakeholder comment period as anything but an obligation so I had no plans to invest time and effort developing technical comments that would be ignored. Then I read the Health Impacts Analysis chapter. It is so bad that I had to document this embarrassing scientific travesty for the record.

Alberto Brandolini has stated that: ‘The amount of energy necessary to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.’ To fully document the problems would require an overly large post so this will reference articles at my blog addressing the different components. Nonetheless I show that the NYSERDA analysis chose its health impact goals and then contrived an analysis to support those claims.

Health Benefits Claims

In a recent article Doreen M. Harris who serves as President and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and Chair of the New York State Energy Planning Board summarized the health benefit message in the Draft Energy Plan. She said: ‘Additional analysis shows that continued implementation of the State’s energy policies would provide substantial public health benefits throughout the State in all communities, with the greatest benefits realized in disadvantaged community areas.’  She made some specific claims: ‘This includes reduced emissions and cleaner air resulting in avoided hospitalizations, work loss days and emergency room visits due to asthma.’

The relationship between inhalable particulate matter and emergency room visits due to asthma is frequently cited as proof of air quality impacts. In my analysis I only looked at those parameters because of the frequent references and because I found historical data for both parameters.

Before continuing I should note that asthma health impact claims related to air quality is a shaky proposition from the get-go. I used Perplexity AI to generate a summary of the confounding factors affecting asthma related emergency room visits. There are environmental, socio-economic, healthcare access, clinical, comorbidity, behavioral, clinical management and psychosocial confounder factors affecting asthma. Claiming that any one of the factors affecting emergency room visits is agenda-driven science.”

The EPA’s invalidated Linear No Threshold (LNT) model infects energy planning in New York. See links under Energy Issues – US.

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Number of the Week: 1% or 0.5Hz in UK; as small as 0.06% in US: Kathryn Porter states that in the UK, electricity balancing authorities must keep supply and demand balanced within 1% of 50 Hz. Deviations beyond 1% may lead to significant equipment damage and blackouts. In the US, deviations a little as 0.036 Hz can trigger automatic response. “

“Equal to or more negative than its Frequency Response Obligation when Frequency varies from 60 Hz by more than +/- 0.036 Hz.”