Dr. Wielicki explains at his blog Irrational Fear Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The most important climate decision in modern U.S. history is quietly being dismantled.
According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is moving to repeal the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding — the regulatory keystone that enabled fifteen years of climate rules, vehicle mandates, power-sector controls, and trillions of dollars in compliance costs.
And yet, remarkably, almost no one is talking about the science.
The public conversation is almost entirely about process: whether the repeal will survive legal challenges, whether agencies followed the correct procedures, whether industry benefits too much, and whether courts will intervene. What is missing, again, is a serious discussion of whether the Endangerment Finding was ever scientifically or legally justified in the first place.
That omission is not accidental. It is the defining feature of modern climate policy.
A Decision Made First, Justified Later
The EPA’s Endangerment Finding followed the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision, which merely allowed greenhouse gases to be considered under the Clean Air Act. It did not require the EPA to declare carbon dioxide a danger to public health or welfare. That judgment was left to the agency.
And the agency chose its answer early.
A recent investigation by the Government Accountability & Oversight Office confirms what many of us suspected at the time: the Endangerment Finding was built around a conclusion that had already been reached. The scientific process that followed was not designed to test whether CO₂ posed an endangerment, but to defend a regulatory outcome deemed politically necessary.
Oversight finding:
“…the Endangerment Finding was treated internally as a ‘decision ready to go,’ with scientific review structured around defending the outcome…”
To enlarge, open image in new tab.
This is the core argument I laid out in my earlier Irrational Fear piece, “Mr. Zeldin, Will You Rescue America From the EPA’s Climate Fraud?”, where I traced how a single bureaucratic determination metastasized into economy-wide control over energy and mobility. I expanded that case in “Climate Lawfare”, showing how courts later shielded massive climate spending programs rooted entirely in the Endangerment Finding’s authority.
None of this was hypothetical. It was documented.
It was observable. And it was ignored.
What the Endangerment Finding Never Confronted
A genuine scientific assessment of endangerment would have required confronting inconvenient facts. The 2009 finding did not.
It never seriously addressed the role of natural recovery from the Little Ice Age, a period of unusually cold global conditions that peaked well before industrial CO₂ emissions and from which the planet has been rebounding for more than a century. Treating all post-19th-century warming as unprecedented and dangerous required quietly discarding that context.
It also failed to grapple with the net benefits of modest warming to human societies. Cold is far deadlier than heat. Agricultural productivity improves with longer growing seasons. Energy access reduces vulnerability. These realities undermine the simplistic harm narrative embedded in the finding.
Most conspicuously, the EPA excluded the benefits of CO₂ fertilization, despite mounting observational evidence, now overwhelming, that higher CO₂ concentrations have increased global leaf area, improved plant water-use efficiency, and boosted crop yields. Satellite data did not support a story of planetary decline. They supported one of widespread greening.
The Absurdity of Calling 420 ppm “Unclean Air”
Perhaps the most fundamental flaw in the Endangerment Finding is conceptual.
For most of Earth’s history, atmospheric CO₂ levels were not 280 ppm or 420 ppm, but 1,000 to more than 4,000 ppm. Life did not collapse under those conditions. It flourished. Forests expanded. Biodiversity increased. Entire ecosystems thrived.
Against that backdrop, the claim that today’s atmosphere — at roughly 0.04% CO₂ — constitutes “unclean air” collapses under minimal scrutiny. Carbon dioxide is not mercury. It is not sulfur dioxide. It is not lead. It is an essential molecule for life.
The Relationship between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Global Temperature for the Last 425 Million Years (Davis 2017)
This figure shows estimates of the changes in carbon dioxide concentrations during the Phanerozoic. This is not an ideological statement. It is basic chemistry. The Endangerment Finding required redefining that chemistry to make regulation possible.
Years of Writing, One Conclusion
At Irrational Fear, I have spent years examining these issues from multiple angles: disaster statistics, sea-level records, hurricane data, climate costs, adaptation, and the repeated failure of model projections to match observations. I submitted those findings formally to the EPA in my public comment supporting reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding, drawing directly on hundreds of prior analyses.
The conclusion has remained consistent: the evidence never supported a finding of endangerment.
What has changed is not the data. What has changed is the legal and political tolerance for pretending otherwise.
in the video above, Ron Barmby joins Angela Wheeler to discuss Sunset on Net Zero and the why green energy schemes fail. He questions the scientific, economic, and engineering basis of global net-zero policies. Drawing on physics, real-world observations, and decades of experience, he argues that CO2’s warming effect is small and diminishing. He also challenges climate models that rely on unverified assumptions. Barmby warns that many green energy solutions are impractical and that net-zero policies disproportionately harm the poor.
For those preferring to read, I provide below a lightly edited transcript in italics with added images. AW refers to Angela Wheeler and RB to Ron Barmby. H/T Climate Change Dispatch.
I think [Net Zero] is insane. It is pointless to pursue it because it will make no difference to the climate or to climate change. The climate will change as it wants to change, no matter how much CO2 we put in the air. So it’s a pointless thing to do. It is unachievable. And in the end, as always, it’s the poorest among us that will pay the highest price proportionally.
AW: This is Climate Debrief, brought to you by the CO2 Coalition. I’m Angela Wheeler. There’s a recently published book, Sunset on Net Zero, a heretics guide to the futile CO2 target. You’re going to hear from the author, CO2 Coalition member Ron Barmby. Ron is a professional engineer with a master’s degree from the University of Alberta and a four-decade career that’s taken him to over 40 countries across five continents. Ron’s adventures have shown him firsthand how societies really are adaptable to shifting climates.
Thank you for taking the time, Ron. Thank you for having me, Angela. Part one of your recent book is titled How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Carbon Dioxide. Did you have a moment of clarity where this all made sense or did this happen over a period of time?
RB: It sort of happened over a period of time when the Al Gore movie came out. At first, I was impressed with it and I thought, well, this all makes sense. And then as other writers started pointing out the flaws in that movie, I decided I should look into this more too.
Al Gore with a version of the Hockey Stick graph in the 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth
And as an engineer, I have a background in physics and I realized that a lot of the physical characteristics that Al Gore was talking about simply aren’t true. So it developed over time. And as it developed over time, some of my friends said, Ron, you should write this down. And so I did. And that was my first book. The second book, the one that you just mentioned, is sort of an update of what’s happened since 2020 when the first book was published.
AW: What is your analysis of this global effort to reach net zero?
RB: Well, I think it’s insane. That’s what I think. It is pointless to pursue it because it will make no difference to the climate or to climate change.
I now declare the Paris Agreement for Climate Change open for signature. More than 170 countries signed the Paris Agreement. They are pledging to take steps to limit the rise of global temperatures to well below two degrees Celsius.
–Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General
The climate will change as it wants to change, no matter how much CO2 we put in the air. So it’s a pointless thing to do. The second part of it, it is unachievable.
And that’s where my engineering background comes in and many of the engineers that are part of the CO2 coalition. What they want to achieve simply can’t be done in a reasonable time frame at a reasonable cost, and it can’t be done globally. And the third thing about it is the whole thing is unfair because it punishes those that are trying to reduce CO2 emissions to the benefit of those who are only paying lip service to CO2 emissions. And in the end, as always, it’s the poorest among us that will pay the highest price proportionally.
AW: Your book sums it up well in stating that warming from future CO2 is too trivial and too gradual to justify drastic policy. Could you explain that?
RB: Well, there was a paper written in 2019 by two coalition members, Dr. Wijngaarden and Dr. Happer.
That paper explained from physicist to physicist how we can actually measure the amount of CO2 warming that has happened. And by measuring that amount, it confirmed the equations that would predict what would happen if we doubled the CO2 emissions again, or came to a complete doubling. And looking into that paper, I tried to explain in everyday terms how valid it is and what it means. And so in that investigation, I came to the conclusion that this is understandable by many, many people. And if we got the word out, that might help shift the view on the alarmism of carbon dioxide induced global warming.
“Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.”]
AW: Is it your position that the push for net zero stems from political exaggeration, followed by media amplification and not empirical science? Is that a fair assessment?
RB: I think that’s a fair assessment. And Margaret Thatcher is one person that I like to quote on that. Many people don’t realize that Margaret Thatcher was trained in Oxford as a chemist, as a research chemist. So she was one of the big people behind pushing for the Paris Agreement. And she wanted to reduce CO2 emissions because she was concerned. But she knew how the scientific method worked because she was trained in it. And when she saw the first reports come out, she changed her mind.
And she said, kind of paraphrasing Hamlet, that there isn’t method in their madness, there is actually madness in their method. And what Margaret Thatcher pointed out was that the desire to control CO2 emissions worldwide is something that would require a worldwide organization to organize and enforce. And so she saw it in that perspective, that it was a grand multinational global socialist effort to control the economy.
She was not far off. But I do think that on the other end of the spectrum, capitalists have found a way to exploit this energy transition and make money that they would otherwise not be able to make.
AW: Regarding net zero, your compelling argument cites the work of two other CO2 coalition members, our chairman, Dr. William Happer, and Dr. William Don Wingarden. Their work, as you mentioned, initially a series of academic papers by physicists for physicists, focuses on measuring thermal radiation transfer and had a truly profound effect because it undermines net zero. For one, they use real observations, not models. Can you please explain the difference and why is it worth noting?
RB: The scientific method is a way to make sure that we’re not fooling ourselves, that we think we understand something that we don’t really understand. And it was one thing that another CO2 member, Dr. Clauser, pointed out in his talk to Korean physicist students a couple of years ago. You have to go into science with an open mind and an unbiased mind. And you have to report faithfully what you observe. And it’s the observations of physical reality that is the link to truth in science.
So the computer models that the IPCC relies on aren’t based on observations that are linked to reality. They’re based on biases that the computer programmers put into their own models. And the brilliance behind the Van Wingarden and Happer study is that they found an existing public domain database that contained the observations needed to show that the effect of CO2 warming was very small and it’s diminishing rapidly. Another important thing to mention is that Dr. Happer and Dr. Van Wingarden’s math matches real world data from space. This follows the scientific method, observe, predict, test, repeat.
AW: What you’re saying, and especially in your book, that the scientific method is so important, do you feel it is being neglected and perhaps not followed at the university level today?
RB: Unfortunately, I think, Angela, it’s worse than that. It’s not followed, maybe not at the university level, but I think it’s the elementary, junior high, and high school level where it needs to be brought back into the curriculum and taught. It’s when 10 and 12 year old students come home and they’re convinced that CO2 is something to be afraid of. That’s where the problem starts. And I think that’s where the problem has to be fixed.
AW: Regarding the paper by Dr. Happer and Dr. Van Wingarden, they didn’t just claim CO2 impact is small. They measured it, verified it, and anyone can check their data. They replaced alarmist models with hard, observable facts. How can anyone argue that?
RB: Angela, I don’t think anyone has argued with that. I think the mainstream media and the IPCC have simply ignored it. They haven’t addressed it. Coming out in the United States is a presidential directive that all science backed by the federal government must meet the scientific method standards. And I think that’s going to be a huge change worldwide when organizations, both federal and international organizations, when they are held to the standard of the scientific method, I think their karmic alarmism is just going to melt away.
AW: As a former teacher and also as a mother and now a GG, I was gratified to see your chapter Stop Scaring the Children. What compelled you to write this chapter?
RB: I’m a grandfather, and my grandkids are very concerned about CO2. And so it takes me a long time to explain to them that there’s nothing to worry about. And unfortunately, in a more of a millennial generation, there’s been a lot of extreme anxiety among that generation about climate change. And unfortunately, there’s been some tragedies that have resulted because of that. So I think it’s important to stop scaring the children. If you want to deal with a scientific methodology or a proposition you want to promote, bring it forward to trained people who can discuss it intelligently with you. Don’t bring it into the classroom of an elementary school and scare children with it.
AW: Ron, the second part of your book is Engineering 101 is the doomsday book for net zero. Why is that?
RB: Well, because there are all of the green energy sources and the green machines that run on them, and many of them just simply fail when you try to build them. And I think I quote in my book, it was James Michener who said scientists dream of great things, but engineers build them. Well, you can have great dreams. You can dream of creating a solar guidance star like Dr. Hapur did, but it’s up to the engineers to build them. And everyone is crossing their fingers until the thing actually works.
And a lot of the propositions that are out in the mainstream media, how we can avoid or reduce our CO2 emissions are either uneconomic or they hurt the environment more than they help, or they simply don’t work. And that’s my engineering perspective coming into play.
AW: I see. And that makes me think of models, climate models. For example, you can create the model, but from an engineering standpoint, and with regard to net zero, is it impossible to come up with the conclusions that they do with models?
RB: In the case of climate, yes, it is. Now in engineering we use models for a number of things, because we have verified that the equations we’ve put into the model are correct, and they can predict what might happen. And you can see that in flight simulators.
In my own background, reservoir engineering models are based on the Darcy equation, and they’re quite good at predicting what will happen, because those equations stand up to the scientific method. And so when your equations can predict what happens in the future, and it actually happens, then you verified the equation, then you verified the model. The IPCC models, they have equations in there and assumptions that simply aren’t verified, and they don’t predict accurately.
One thing that came out of the Van Wintergaarden and Happer paper, and other papers that are associated with members of the CO2, is that the CO2 warming from the IPCC models has to be at least doubled, and some would claim quadrupled, in order to get the alarmist levels of warming that they predict. And so that factor of two or four just thrown in to cause more anxiety, that’s not science, that’s scare tactics. And it’s important to point out that the IPCC is a government organization, it’s not a science organization.
AW: And the other thing is, they say carbon dioxide is the control knob for temperature, and that’s not the case, correct?
RB: You’re absolutely correct. We run on an energy balance, and that energy balance coming from the sun has part to do with the climate on earth. And as Gregory Wrightstone pointed out in his book, 90% of the global warming effect of CO2 is already behind us. So the next 10% is going to be minimal. So the next 10% is not the control knob of temperature on earth. Now, if there was no CO2 on earth, as there is no CO2 on the moon, the first amounts of CO2 added would have a dramatic effect on temperature. But that’s way, way behind us.
AW: Well, in concluding our conversation, I would like to let our viewers and listeners know that they can get your new book, Sunset on Net Zero, A Heretic’s Guide to the Futile CO2 Target at Amazon. Ron, there are many excellent points in your book we didn’t get to. I hope you will join us again soon on Climate Debrief. I’d love to, Angela. Thank you very much.
Team in China finds that high renewable energy integration
could make power transformers age nearly a quarter faster
As US President Donald Trump continues to wage war against renewable energy, a new Chinese study revealing the strain that renewable integration places on power transformers could give him fresh technical ammunition.
The researchers discovered that high renewable energy integration could make power transformers, vital
components that regulate voltage in electricity grids, age faster than previously thought. High levels of wind and solar energy increased bidirectional power flow switching – the movement of electricity in both directions – causing additional stress that current standards did not account for, the Chongqing-based team found.
In a world grappling with transformer shortages and surging energy demand from electrification and the growth of artificial intelligence data centres, the findings suggest that renewables could place even greater strain on ageing grids, like those in the United States and Europe.
When testing their new proposed model, the team found that two-way flow caused transformers to age 23 per cent faster than accounted for by current standards, according to a paper published in the Chinese-language journal Power System Technology on January 16.
Aerial footage shows damage to burnt out power transformers near Heathrow
“This paper focuses, for the first time, on the impact of frequent bidirectional power flow switching caused by high‐penetration wind and solar integration on the operational characteristics and insulation lifespan of power transformers,” the team said.
The researchers, from the Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications and the State Grid Chongqing Electric Power Company, also built a “long-term lifetime loss accumulation calculation framework” – which could be used to assess the condition of transformers and guide operation and maintenance.
Speaking before the UN General Assembly in September, Trump said that renewable energy options were a “joke” and that wind turbines were “so pathetic and so bad” and expensive to operate. In January, in his address before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump said: “China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China. “They make them, they sell them for a fortune. They sell them to the stupid people that buy them.”
Hitachi Energy Chongqing Transformer Co. Ltd. is located in Chongqing City. As one of the largest transformer factories worldwide within Hitachi Energy, the company focuses on the design and manufacture of power transformer, shunt reactor and HVDC transformer (High Voltage Direct Current).
Traditional energy grids had a centralised, one-way flow of power from the producers to the consumers. This is shifting towards a two-way system where electricity can also flow back from solar, wind and energy storage sources into the grid.
Transformers are a basic and critical component of electric grids, adjusting the voltage of electricity so it can travel efficiently through the grid. They can either “step up” or increase the voltage so electricity can travel long distances through power lines without losing strength, or “step down” the voltage once it reaches its destination so it can be safely used by appliances.
Power transformers are large units which transmit high-voltage electricity over long distances, while distribution transformers are smaller units that help supply local areas.
As transformers age, their components can degrade, which can lead to higher maintenance demand, limit efficiency and reliability, and increase the risk of a major grid failure. The average age of power transformers in use worldwide is around 40 years, according to electrical equipment supplier Reinhausen.
In the US and Europe – home to the oldest power grids in the world – some transformers date back even further. Much of the US electric grid infrastructure was built 50 to 75 years ago, and nearly 70 per cent of power transformers in the country are over 25 years old, according to a report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison last May.
More than half of the transformers in this country are becoming too old to reliably function and can fail at any time. We not only need to build new transformers, but we also need to replace the ones that are ageing out. — US Department of Energy in 2024
But expanding and replacing transformer infrastructure is not only expensive, it could even be impossible in the short term due to long delivery times and a global shortage of power transformers, according to Reinhausen.
Average lead times for large power transformers had almost doubled since 2021, with securing transformers taking up to four years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report last February.
According to the IEA, the production of power transformers is technically complex and requires advanced facilities. China, South Korea, Turkey, and Italy accounted for 50 per cent of total global power transformer trade in 2023, it said, with China alone representing half that share.
Top 10 Power Transformer Manufacturers In The World
Both the US and Europe have more than doubled their import trade value for power transformers since 2018. The US primarily sources transformers from Mexico, Europe and South Korea, while China now accounts for over 60 per cent of the European Union’s imports, according to the IEA.
Imports account for an estimated 80 per cent of the US power transformer supply, and 50 per cent of the distribution transformer supply, according to a report by energy research and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie in August.
In the US, the supply shortage for power transformers hit 30 per cent in 2025,
while the shortage for distribution transformers hit 10 per cent, the report said.
“Imagine an argument so airtight about science so settled
over technology so reliable that you have to use censorship
to make sure nobody gives a dissenting opinion.” @ProctorZ
Finland has prided itself as a global leader in decarbonization, boasting the second-highest share of renewables in final energy consumption across the EU.
But the green utopia narrative has cracked under the strain of a brutal winter,
as cold weather has brought wind power generation to a near standstill.
Most of the country’s wind capacity is concentrated in western Finland, where temperatures are well below freezing, and these adverse weather conditions have led to dangerous ice buildup on turbine blades. According to Bloomberg, this forced the grid operator Fingrid Oyj to curtail wind power output.
Primary energy sources in Finland 2017. All fossil fuels should be replaced by clean energy sources.
“There are low fog clouds in Finland’s main wind power production area, roughly at the height of turbine blades, which are causing new ice to form,” Pia Isolähteenmäki, an adviser at industry consultant Kjeller Vindteknikk Oy, told the outlet.
Much of Finland’s wind fleet lacks blade-heating systems for extreme cold weather. How is that even possible, considering it’s a Nordic country? Even the thinnest ice buildup risks equipment damage and has led to shutdowns this week.
Bloomberg data show that Finnish wind output is expected to remain very low for the next two weeks. Meteorologists at MetDesk forecast that Nordic wind generation will remain as much as 20% below normal through at least the midpoint of the month.
The result of the green utopia pushed by Europe’s climate alarmists,
not based in reality whatsoever, is soaring power prices
that are crushing working poor households.
Wind tubine defrosting in Sweden
Helsinki Times wrote on Sunday:
“Electricity prices in Finland rise to the highest level of the winter on Monday, driven by severe cold, weak wind conditions and rising weekday demand,”
Finnish folks on X are questioning the government’s questionable decarbonization push:
Dana X post:
News from the “green garden”. In Finland, the blades of wind turbines froze. The electricity production of wind power stations in Finland fell from 9433 MW to about 430 MW. Thus, they produced no less than 5% of the nominal power. The culprit turned out to be Russian frosts, the possibility of which European energy companies did not take into account when implementing the “green” transition.
Zeaqi X post:
Finland literally has to use nuclear power to MELT frozen wind turbines and we live in darkness most of the year. How about focusing on reliable power like nuclear instead?
Mari Luukkainen X post:
Our electricity bill was 45 EUR yesterday alone.
Finland: nuclear power, hydroelectric, wind farms, one of the most technically advanced countries in the world.
Also Finland: people burning firewood because the electricity market is fucked. I am sitting next to the fireplace shitposting on LinkedIn (that’s why shitposting is very intense today). This is my energy strategy.
In the US, a historic cold snap in the eastern half of the country led to increased fossil-fuel power generation to prevent power grid collapse.
Across the West, years of grid mismanagement by climate alarmist policymakers have transformed what were once reliable grids into fragile messes where working poor households bear the brunt of some of the highest electricity costs in the world.
It is time to get back to basics and expand natural gas generators and nuclear power, the only proven large-scale source of clean and reliable electricity. And it is also time to hold accountable the climate alarmists whose policy decisions pushed power grids toward the edge of collapse while promising a green utopia that was never going to arrive. And one can only wonder whether the move to push power grids to the brink of collapse was intentional.
The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean. Each month and year exposes again the growing disconnect between the real world and the Zero Carbon zealots. It is as though the anti-hydrocarbon band wagon hopes to drown out the data contradicting their justification for the Great Energy Transition. Yes, there was warming from an El Nino buildup coincidental with North Atlantic warming, but no basis to blame it on CO2.
As an overview consider how recent rapid cooling completely overcame the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016). The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November 2021, and in February and June 2022 At year end 2022 and continuing into 2023 global temp anomaly matched or went lower than average since 1995, an ENSO neutral year. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020). Then there was an usual El Nino warming spike of uncertain cause, unrelated to steadily rising CO2, and now dropping steadily back toward normal values.
For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa. While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~66 ppm, an 18% increase.
Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.
The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby. These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event. The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4. This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C. Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C. Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.
Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate. On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. And in 2024 we saw an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now dropping well below its peak.
Chris Schoeneveld has produced a similar graph to the animation above, with a temperature series combining HadCRUT4 and UAH6. H/T WUWT
January 2026 UAH Temps: Tropical Cooling with Slight Warming Elsewhere
With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea. While you heard a lot about 2020-21 temperatures matching 2016 as the highest ever, that spin ignores how fast the cooling set in. The UAH data analyzed below shows that warming from the last El Nino had fully dissipated with chilly temperatures in all regions. After a warming blip in 2022, land and ocean temps dropped again with 2023 starting below the mean since 1995. Spring and Summer 2023 saw a series of warmings, continuing into 2024 peaking in April, then cooling off to the present.
UAH has updated their TLT (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for January 2026. Due to one satellite drifting more than can be corrected, the dataset has been recalibrated and retitled as version 6.1 Graphs here contain this updated 6.1 data. Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month are ahead the update from HadSST4 or OISST2.1. I posted recently on SSTs December 2025 All Ocean SSTs Cool to Mean. These posts have a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.
Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes. In July 2024 all oceans were unchanged except for Tropical warming, while all land regions rose slightly. In August we saw a warming leap in SH land, slight Land cooling elsewhere, a dip in Tropical Ocean temp and slightly elsewhere. September showed a dramatic drop in SH land, overcome by a greater NH land increase. 2025 has shown a sharp contrast between land and sea, first with ocean air temps falling in January recovering in February. Then in November and December SH land temps spiked while ocean temps showed litle change. January 2026 showed NH land warming 0.1C, SH less, while ocean temps changed little, except for Tropical cooling by 0.1C.
Note: UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 2021. v6.1 data was recalibrated also starting with 2021. In the charts below, the trends and fluctuations remain the same but the anomaly values changed with the baseline reference shift.
Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system. Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy. Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements. In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates. Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.
Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST. Thus cooling oceans portend cooling land air temperatures to follow. He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months. This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?
After a change in priorities, updates are now exclusive to HadSST4. For comparison we can also look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6.1 which are now posted for January 2026. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above. Recently there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the revised and current dataset.
The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI). The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean air temps since January 2015.
In 2021-22, SH and NH showed spikes up and down while the Tropics cooled dramatically, with some ups and downs, but hitting a new low in January 2023. At that point all regions were more or less in negative territory.
After sharp cooling everywhere in January 2023, there was a remarkable spiking of Tropical ocean temps from -0.5C up to + 1.2C in January 2024. The rise was matched by other regions in 2024, such that the Global anomaly peaked at 0.86C in April. Since then all regions have cooled down sharply to a low of 0.27C in January. In February 2025, SH rose from 0.1C to 0.4C pulling the Global ocean air anomaly up to 0.47C, where it stayed in March and April. In May drops in NH and Tropics pulled the air temps over oceans down despite an uptick in SH. At 0.43C, ocean air temps were similar to May 2020, albeit with higher SH anomalies. In November/December all regions are cooler, led by a sharp drop in SH bringing the Global ocean anomaly down to 0.02C. January saw continued Tropical cooling offset by NH warming.
Land Air Temperatures Tracking in Seesaw Pattern
We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly. The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground. UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps. The graph updated for January is below.
Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land. The seesaw pattern in Land temps is similar to ocean temps 2021-22, except that SH is the outlier, hitting bottom in January 2023. Then exceptionally SH goes from -0.6C up to 1.4C in September 2023 and 1.8C in August 2024, with a large drop in between. In November, SH and the Tropics pulled the Global Land anomaly further down despite a bump in NH land temps. February showed a sharp drop in NH land air temps from 1.07C down to 0.56C, pulling the Global land anomaly downward from 0.9C to 0.6C. Some ups and downs followed with returns close to February values in August. A remarkable spike in October was completely reversed in November/December, along with NH dropping sharply bringing the Global Land anomaly down to 0.52C, half of its peak value of 1.17C 09/2024. Now in January Global land rebounded up to 0.61C, led by NH warming s similar amount.
The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980
The chart shows monthly Global Land and Ocean anomalies starting 01/1980 to present. The average monthly anomaly is -0.02 for this period of more than four decades. The graph shows the 1998 El Nino after which the mean resumed, and again after the smaller 2010 event. The 2016 El Nino matched 1998 peak and in addition NH after effects lasted longer, followed by the NH warming 2019-20. An upward bump in 2021 was reversed with temps having returned close to the mean as of 2/2022. March and April brought warmer Global temps, later reversed
With the sharp drops in Nov., Dec. and January 2023 temps, there was no increase over 1980. Then in 2023 the buildup to the October/November peak exceeded the sharp April peak of the El Nino 1998 event. It also surpassed the February peak in 2016. In 2024 March and April took the Global anomaly to a new peak of 0.94C. The cool down started with May dropping to 0.9C, later months declined steadily until August Global Land and Ocean was down to 0.39C. then rose slightly to 0.53 in October. Now in January 2026 it is back down to 0.35C.
The graph reminds of another chart showing the abrupt ejection of humid air from Hunga Tonga eruption.
TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps. Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, nearly 1C lower than the 2016 peak. Since the ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity as the atmosphere, that cooling is a significant driving force. TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST4, but are now showing the same pattern. Despite the three El Ninos, their warming had not persisted prior to 2023, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995. Of course, the future has not yet been written.
The arctic ice extents are now fully reported for January 2026, showing refreezing rates fluctuating, likely due to a wavy polar vortex sending cold Arctic air to sub-arctic latitudes and replacing it with warmer southern air.
As seen in Figure iii (and also Figure 12) the PV has an elongated shape in appearance for much of the next two weeks in contrast to the more circular PV of early January. The PV has a “split” appearance this week and into next week, a character trait or signature of a more extreme stretched PV. I think the more extreme nature of the stretched PV is consistent with the model forecasts of extreme cold in the US and even potential snowstorms. But then at least in this animation there is a clear PV split with two distinct and independent PV centers.
Figure iii. Forecasted average 10 mb geopotential heights (dam; contours) and geopotential height anomalies (m; shading) across the Northern Hemisphere for 19 Jan 2026 and forecasted from 20 Jan 2026 to 03 Feb 2026. The forecasts are from the 00Z 19 Jan 2026 GFS model ensemble.
The chart below shows the 20-year averages for Arctic ice extents in January along with 2026 and 2025, as well as SII v.4.
Note MASIE 2025 started 5 to 600k km2 (or half a Wadham) below the 20 year average, but by day 12 cut the deficit to 151k km2, or a gap of 1%. Freezing rate went flat for a week before recovering and ending the month nearly 14M km2, 365k id deficit or 3%. SII v.4 tracked lower than MASIE throughout January, averaging ~200k km2 lower for the month. The chart below shows the distribution of ice extent across the Arctic regions at January 31, 2026.
Region
2026031
Average Day 31
2026-Ave.
2025031
2026-2025
(0) Northern_Hemisphere
13954044
14319064
-365020
13543739.54
410305
(1) Beaufort_Sea
1071070
1070419
651
1071000.73
69
(2) Chukchi_Sea
966006
965975
31
965989.12
17
(3) East_Siberian_Sea
1087137
1087067
70
1087137.23
0
(4) Laptev_Sea
897845
897825
20
897844.8
0
(5) Kara_Sea
923456
917599
5857
921519.96
1936
(6) Barents_Sea
582372
556751
25621
428814.24
153558
(7) Greenland_Sea
663996
613445
50551
614788.59
49207
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence
1027979
1315356
-287378
1080930.32
-52952
(9) Canadian_Archipelago
854931
853582
1349
854877.96
53
(10) Hudson_Bay
1260870
1260784
86
1260903.34
-33
(11) Central_Arctic
3202511
3210553
-8042
3211378.6
-8867
(12) Bering_Sea
670583
642788
27795
534452.21
136131
(13) Baltic_Sea
114996
61637
53359
39333.65
75663
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk
549996
809973
-259977
559692
-9696
The table shows that most regions are close to the 20-year average. Two major deficits are in Baffin Bay and Sea of Okhotsk, partly offset by several smaller surpluses.
When it comes to climate science, always keep eyes on the prize.
The Distorted Reporting of Global Average Temperature 2025 and its relevance to the Paris Agreement
The video by Philosophical Investigations uncovers some misleading claims by people who should know better. For those who prefer reading, below is a transcript with my bolds and added images.
With the end of year 2025, the crucial questions to be answered by climate scientists were:
♦ how much has global average temperature increased since the pre-industrial period 1850 to 1900, and ♦ how does this increase compare to the Paris Agreement overarching goals?
These goals being to hold the increase in the global average temperature less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Note the relevance of the term pre-industrial.
The IPCC uses the reference period 1850 to 1900 to represent pre-industrial temperature. The period 1850 to 1900 and the term pre-industrial are to a large extent interchangeable in the discussion that follows. We can now provide examples of how the global average temperature at year end 2025 was reported.
Berkeley Earth reported that in 2025 the global annual average temperature was estimated at 1.44 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The WMO reported that the global average surface temperature was 1.44 degrees Celsius above the 1850 to 1900 average. The UK Met Office reported that 2025 was 1.41 degrees Celsius above the 1850 to 1900 global average.
NOAA reported that 2025 exceeded the pre-industrial 1850 to 1900 average by 1.34 degrees Celsius. All these figures appear to measure the amount of global warming as being very close to the Paris Agreement lower limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Just to double check this channel calculated global warming using the standard IPCC methodology and the official published NOAA data, the global average temperature anomaly 1850 to 1900 equals minus 0.165 degrees Celsius.
The global average temperature anomaly for the 30 year period 1996 to 2025 equals plus 0.751 degrees Celsius. Therefore, the global average temperature has warmed by 0.916 degrees Celsius since1850 to 1900. This is a large discrepancy from the NOAA 2025 report of 1.34 degrees Celsius.
To be specific, it is a discrepancy of 46.28%. So, how did such a large discrepancy come about?
A brief background and analysis will reveal a somewhat disturbing answer. The 2016 Paris Agreement did not specify how to measure any increase in global average temperature, nor did it specify what precisely was meant by pre-industrial levels. To correct this lack of scientific clarity in the Paris Agreement, the IPCC walked its readers through the process of defining global warming.
First, it specified that the reference period 1850 to 1900 is to be used to represent pre-industrial temperature. Once scientists had defined pre-industrial, the next step is to calculate the amount of warming at any given time relative to that reference period. Warming is defined as the increase in the 30-year global average of combined air temperature over land and water temperature at the ocean surface relative to the 1850 to 1900 pre-industrial period.
[Note: One important reason that the period 1850-1900 serves as a useful baseline of climate utopia is that almost no one has any idea what the climate looked like back then, much less the climate impacts experienced. Most modern climate records start in the 20th century, and to the extent that the IPCC considers pre-20th climate it is in terms of physical quantities and not impacts or risks.
Estimated decadal deaths related to weather and climate for four decades: 1870s, 1920s, 1970s, and 2020s (estimated based on deaths over the past decade). These estimates are highly uncertain and 1870s and 1920s numbers are certainly underestimates. They should be interpreted as orders of magnitude and not as precise figures. Sources: Davis 2017, Our World in Data
The figure above shows estimated decadal deaths related to weather and climate extremes for four decades, each separated by a half-century, starting with the 1870s.]
Why 30 years? The 30-year time span accounts for the effect of natural variability, which can cause global temperatures to fluctuate from one year to the next. An earlier report had also emphasised that due to natural variability, trends based on short records that are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates, do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. That covers the necessary background.
Now, the analysis of the critical question.Why does the IPCC methodology give a calculation of 0.916°C but NOAA reports 1.34°,WMO reports 1.44°C, UK Met Office reports 1.41°C, Berkeley Earth reports 1.44°C? It is disturbing to highlight that the reason for the discrepancies involves a certain amount of guile leading to misinformation. On the one hand, it seems as if we are being informed of the increase in global average temperature since 1850-1900 as related to the Paris Agreement goals.
But in fact, we are merely being informed of a comparison of the global average temperature of the single year 2025 with the global average temperature of the 51-year period 1850-1900. A comparison which is absolutely irrelevant with respect to the Paris Agreement goals. And quite emphatically, does nothing to answer the questions how much has global average temperature increased since the pre-industrial period 1850-1900 and how does this increase compare to the Paris Agreement overarching goals?
This is because, instead of comparing a 30-year global average temperature
with the 51-year period 1850-1900, these organisations have
compared a single year 2025 with 1850-1900.
This is an invalid methodology that produces the exact results these organisations have duly reported. This can be demonstrated quite easily by again using NOAA data but substituting the 30-year period 1996-2025 with the 1-year period 2025-2025. The global average temperature anomaly 1850-1900 remains the same at minus 0.165 degrees celsius.
The global average temperature anomaly for this single year 2025 equals plus 1.17 degrees celsius. The global average temperature was therefore claimed to have warmed by 1.335 degrees celsius, which rounds up to 1.34 degrees celsius, exactly as reported by NOAA. All these organisations underlined and previously quoted are guilty of using this invalid methodology.
Why would these seemingly august and respected organisations do this when they knew, as stated by the UK Met Office, that a 30-year period is more relevant than the average for a single or small number of years when considering the agreement on climate change? Could it possibly be that the figure of 1.34 sounds more alarming and much closer to the Paris Agreement of 1.5 than does the valid figure of 0.916? And that is why these organisations have deviated from the standard methodology. It is difficult to believe but it is a possibility. Whatever the answer to this elusive question may be, we now provide definitive answers to the crucial questions that were to be answered by climate scientists at end of year 2025.
How much has global average temperature increased since the pre-industrial period 1850-1900? 0.916 degrees celsius. How does this increase compare to the Paris Agreement overarching goals? It is 0.584 degrees celsius below the lower limit of 1.5 degrees celsius. That concludes the main points of this video but we could not resist a two-minute post-script.
It may be argued that the statement 2025 exceeded the pre-industrial 1850-1900 average by 1.34 degrees celsius was merely intended to give the reader a feel for how much warmer it is now compared to the 1850-1900 period. There are two points to make in such a case. The first point is that 1850-1900 was an unusually cold period. It was in fact part of the Little Ice Age. The IPCC states that the Little Ice Age was characterised by multiple expansions of mountain glaciers worldwide. It was a roughly defined period but generally occurred between 1400 and 1900.
The second point is that it seems silly to compare the warm year 2025 to a cold average of 51 years.
Why not compare 2025 to some of the warmer years that took place during 1850-1900? For example 1878. In this case 2025 was 1.04 degrees celsius warmer than 1878. This difference is not close to the Paris Agreement 1.5 degrees celsius. Or take 1877. In this case 2025 was 1.05 degrees celsius warmer than 1877. Again not close to the Paris Agreement 1.5 degrees celsius.
It could be surmised that perhaps this is why the single year 2025 was instead compared to the 51-year average of an unusually cold period. It may be very difficult to believe but it is a possibility that was the reason. Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that all the organisations underlined and quoted have ignored the scientific methodology and advice of the IPCC that short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not, in general, reflect long-term climate trends.
Climate comedy turn Jim Dale continues to tour the Gaiety Halls of broadcast media, delighting audiences with his own word-salad English and his knack for getting most facts wrong. Fans were not disappointed by an extended performance, here, start around 2hr 38 mins, last week on Mark Dolan’s TalkTV show when he falsely claimed Costa Rica had reached Net Zero and the polar ozone hole had closed. Readers might be advised not to organise drinking parties around Jim’s much-cherished appearances. If a shot is taken every time the great entertainer gets a climate or Net Zero fact wrong, you’d be Brahms and Liszt quicker than you could say Julia Hartley-Brewer.
A number of countries are already at Net Zero carbon emissions, claimed Dale, and he gave Costa Rica as an example. Sorry Jim, treble Guaro Sours all round: Costa Rica is nowhere near Net Zero. In fact, the Carbon Action Tracker notes that the current government is sending “worrying signals that the full implementation of the climate policies and measures necessary to meet Costa Rica’s own targets could be deferred”. Key electric public transport projects have been paused or downscaled, while the current President has announced his opposition to an oil moratorium, along with an intention to explore Costa Rica’s hydrocarbon reserves. For some time, Costa Rica has presented itself as a poster country for eco-tourism and sustainability, but it was never near Net Zero. There comes a time when all the virtue signalling has to stop.
Hard reality seems to have bitten the territory, as it has every other country
taking a serious look at the stupidity of the Net Zero fantasy.
Put down the liquor bottle (just for a very short while): our climate clot got it partly right when he said two or three countries had hit Net Zero. One country often mentioned is Bhutan, a landlocked territory the size of Belgium in the eastern Himalayas. Mountains give Bhutan huge hydroelectric power, while 93% of the land is covered in carbon-dioxide-absorbing forest. Meanwhile, about half the population of 800,000 is involved in subsistence farming. As a future model for Net Zero, it leaves a lot to be desired.
Perhaps Jim could explain on his next much-awaited guest slot why Bhutan, a Net Zero country seemingly perfect in every respect, requires foreign aid of $13.7 billion over the next decade for “mitigation” costs to keep it on the straight and narrow Net Zero path. Sustaining its contribution and ambitions are said in its third Nationally Determined Contribution report to the UN to require “continued and predictable” international financial support.
Of course it does. Not a bad little earner for a country with an annual GNP of just over $3 billion. The cynical might be forgiven for reading into its words a threat along the lines of: cough up or the trees get it.
Time to refresh our glasses again, as our comedic clown then told Mark Dolan that the South Pole ozone hole had closed or, to put it in Jim’s word-salad English: “The ozone layer was a perfectly tenable thing that occurred and the hole closed because we got out of aerosols that managed that actually.” Alas, the hole has not closed, despite a 35-year ban on aerosol-using chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) gases. The thinning, rather than a hole, appears to be a largely natural event that changes thickness on an annual, seasonal basis.
A recently published science paper by three New Zealand-based scientists noted that the three years 2020–2023 witnessed the re-emergence of large, long-lived holes over Antarctica. The scientists observed that in the eight years to 2022, five showed similarly large temporary holes occurring in the spring months. In 2023, the European Space Agency said the hole was one of the biggest ever recorded, measuring 26 million sq kms. Perish the thought that banning CFCs didn’t make much difference – surely all those Nobel science prizes were not handed out in vain for a totemic environmental scare that proved such an inspiration for all the subsequent attempts to induce mass climate panic? Except when Jim unwisely brings it up, you don’t hear much about the ozone hole these days, with activists quietly extending its supposed disappearance to around 2060.
The ozone over Antarctica is recovering. Here, the four globes show monthly-averaged total ozone over Antarctica in October. The graph shows each year’s October average minimum (white dots) over Antarctica. The red curve represents a smoothed version of the white dots. NASA qzonewatch
Your correspondent has a few tips to offer if readers ever need to handle Jim in a public debate. The first task is to stop him constantly interrupting and shouting over you. This is best done by first listening to what he has to say and, at the first sign of trouble, demanding the same courtesy be extended when it is your turn to speak. Last May, I found myself with him on TalkTV with the excellent ringmaster Ian Collins – here, the entertainment starts at around 35m 30s. It worked reasonably well, despite the overwhelming temptation at one point to burst out laughing when Jim claimed the source of his climate information was NASA, “who send people to the Moon and Mars”. Extra fun can be inserted into the proceedings by noting that Dale is on record as wanting to jail climate ‘deniers’. At my prompting, Ian Collins asked him if this was true and the ensuing word-salad explanation was a pure delight. Only Jim can explain in his special language that it is not quite like that, while at the same time suggesting that it is precisely like that.
The market for data-free climate scares is starting to dry up across mainstream media. Gone are the days when the BBC’s Esme Stallard could give us her “climate change could make beer taste worse”. No more shall we see Georgina Rannard make the obvious mistake of putting a date on impending doom as she did in 2023 with a ‘scientists say’ article warning that the Gulf Stream warm currents “could collapse as early as 2025”.
Perish the thought, but soon only Jim Dale might be left to keep the nation
amused with his carry on climate catastrophising routine.
The “Doomsday Clock” which represents how near humanity is to catastrophe moved closer than ever to midnight on Tuesday as concerns grow over nuclear weapons, climate change and disinformation.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which set up the metaphorical clock at the start of the Cold War, moved its time to 85 seconds to midnight, four seconds closer than a year ago.
Wait a Minute! It already went past midnight and nothing happened.
Doomsday was predicted but failed to happen at midnight.
Twenty years ago “An Inconvenient Truth” received a standing ovation at the
Sundance Film Festival. Though it was full of predictions that never
came to pass, it was a key catalyst of the climate activist movement.
Twenty years ago Monday, former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received a standing ovation. The 2006 documentary was released to theaters the following May and went on to gross over $25 million worldwide.
Gore’s film was a primary catalyst for the climate activist movement, and it generated a lot of concern about global warming following its release. The movie left audiences with the impression that the human race was hurtling toward a dystopian future on a planet baking in unbearable temperatures where extreme weather caused frequent disasters.
Almost 13 years to the day after its release, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was telling people the world would end in 12 years – presumably five years from now – because of the burning of fossil fuels.
Matt Wielicki, who writes about climate and energy on his “Irrational Fear” Substack, was once an assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Alabama. In the early part of his academic career, he taught at a local college.
Al Gore with a version of the Hockey Stick graph in the 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth
He told Just the News that he showed “An Inconvenient Truth” to his students. Over time, he began to question the “gloom and doom” narratives Gore presents in his film, he said.
“People took that as a starting point, and they just kept running further and further with it,” Wielicki said.
Gore’s film, however, was full of numerous predictions that turned out to be wrong, and it’s likely that the world will not end in 2031, as Ocasio-Cortez predicted.
Stubborn ice
Among the predictions Gore made in the documentary is that Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro would have no more snow on it by 2016. In 2020, The Times reported that the snow on the 19,000-foot mountain remained, despite Gore’s predictions. But the documentary had caused some to rush to climb the mountain before the snow disappeared. Instead, the tourists are surprised to find glaciers still clinging to it.
Gore also predicted that Glacier National Park would be “the park formerly known as Glacier” after all the ice melted away in the blazing hot temperatures that were to descend upon the human race. The claim made a big mark, and federal agencies began looking closely at glaciers.
The U.S. Geological Survey predicted all the glaciers in the park would be gone by 2020. Signs were placed throughout the park warning visitors of the impending end of glaciers, which never happened. Instead, CNN reported, the signs had to be removed in 2020 when it was clear the glaciers remained.
Gore also connected Hurricane Katrina to global warming – later renamed climate change – and he predicted that these storms would become more frequent. The reality of human contributions to hurricane activity is far more nuanced and uncertain than Gore discusses in the documentary.
Integrated Storm Activity Annually over the Continental U.S. (ISAAC). Value is the Accumulated Cyclone Energy from all storms over land.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a section on its website dedicated to the topic. The page reads.
“In summary, it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human-caused increases in greenhouse gases have caused a change in past Atlantic basin hurricane activity that is outside the range of natural variability, although greenhouse gases are strongly linked to global warming,”
Uncertainty and nuance
Meteorologist Chris Martz said that climate science is full of the kind of uncertainty and nuance you see on the NOAA website, which “An Inconvenient Truth” dismisses entirely.
Since Gore’s film was released – which was given a sequel in 2017 – Gore has continued to make false predictions, the meteorologist said. In 2009, Gore stated that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer within five to seven years. As of today, the Arctic still has ice in summer.
“We look at the Arctic ice now and yes, it’s declined since 1979 when satellite records began … But over the last 18 to 20 years, there’s really been no trend. And this caught scientists off guard. The models never predicted this,” Martz told Just the News.
He also said there’s been multiple studies on Arctic ice, and while some predicted an ice-free Arctic, others find the ice extent in the region recedes or grows as a result of natural variability.
Predictions of cataclysm stemming from climate change regularly get reported in the media, but there’s little reporting when the predictions fail.In 2022, NBC News was one of many outlets reporting that California and the American West were in the midst of a “megadrought,” which was the worst the region had seen in over 1,000 years.
Earlier this month, NBC reported that California is drought free for the first time in 25 years. The article makes no mention of the previously predicted “megadrought,” nor does it mention climate change.
Martz said that many of his critics respond to these failed predictions by arguing they weren’t made by scientists in peer-reviewed articles published in journals. Instead, they’re made by politicians or scientists in interviews. But most people don’t get their information from scientific journals. They get it from the media, Martz said.
“That communication is what’s more important in terms of public perception of what science is,” he said.
Listening to the experts
Though it had no scientific basis, there was a widespread belief that global warming could cause the human race to go extinct.
My Mind is Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts. H/T Bjorn Lomborg, WUWT
People appear more likely to be influenced by Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez than the scientific data on deaths from climate-related natural disasters.
Her statement that the world would end in 12 years was actually a misreading of a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicted that the world would need to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 40-50% by 2030 and eliminate them entirely by 2050 to keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees celsius above levels they were at before humans began burning a lot of fossil fuels.
There’s nothing in the report that predicts disaster after crossing that threshold, and some experts are estimating that we have already done so. The report estimates that under the worst-case scenario, the global GDP loses about 2.6%, but it would still be about 10 times larger than it is today. But people didn’t read the report. They just heard Ocasio-Cortez warning of end times.
The report, or at least Ocasio-Cortez’s understanding of it, led her to introduce the ambitious Green New Deal plan, a suite of progressive policies justified as presenting global disaster. Itfailed to get a single vote when it was brought to the Senate floor for a procedural vote, which would mean, according to Ocasio-Cortez, the world has five years until it ends.
Larry Behrens, communications director for Power the Future, told Just the News that AOC likely spent the seven-year anniversary of her prediction doing exactly what she does any other day.
“Because she knows it was nonsense when she said it, and it’s nonsense now,” he said. “Make no mistake, she’ll join the rest of the eco-left in their convenient climate silence, hoping voters forget their green crusade delivered record energy prices and crushing inflation. On this anniversary, ‘climate’ is the last word AOC and her allies want to utter because midterms are coming, and voters remember exactly who made life more expensive.”
Science Matters 