Science Matters

ICJ Opinion and UN Resolution Turbocharge Climate Litigation

Activists hoping the opinion from the ICJ’s judges will have far-reaching legal consequences in the fight against climate change Image: Peter Dejong/AP Photo/picture alliance

The biased Advisory Opinion came down from ICJ a year ago. At the time I posted of how narrow-minded was the decision process. For example, this from perplexity.ai:

Question: How did the ICJ address scientists disputing IPCC reports like Clintel in its climate advice?

Answer: The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its advisory proceedings on climate change, did not address or give consideration to scientists or groups—such as Clintel—who dispute the findings of the IPCC. Instead, the ICJ relied heavily and explicitly on the IPCC as the authoritative source on climate science throughout the process.

Key points from the available evidence:

The ICJ held a private meeting with IPCC scientists just before hearings began, reflecting the Court’s view of the IPCC as the “scientific pillar” of the climate change regime1.
This meeting was not part of the formal, public hearings and did not include scientists who dissent from the IPCC—states and organizations participating in the advisory proceedings had no opportunity to question or respond to IPCC scientists1.
The process was criticized for lacking transparency and procedural fairness precisely because it favored a single scientific perspective (the IPCC’s), with no indication that alternative scientific viewpoints were admitted or reviewed1.
The UN General Assembly’s request for the advisory opinion itself referenced the “utmost concern [for] the scientific consensus expressed” in the IPCC reports, reinforcing the Court’s mandate to treat the IPCC’s findings as the foundation for its analysis13.
Available commentaries and summaries of the ICJ process do not mention any engagement with scientists or organizations disputing IPCC conclusions, nor do they report that groups like Clintel were referenced or invited as experts13.
While the ICJ has, in rare past cases, consulted technical experts informally, in this climate case it only announced consultation with IPCC figures, reinforcing the exclusion of dissident scientific voices19.

In summary, the ICJ’s approach gave exclusive scientific authority to the IPCC and provided no forum, reference, or weight to scientists disputing its reports, such as those from Clintel13. The Court did not discuss or acknowledge the existence of such scientific disagreement in its process, instead treating the IPCC’s consensus as fact. This approach has been criticized for its lack of transparency and its failure to incorporate procedural safeguards for alternative scientific views19.

Neverthless, the ICJ AO prompted headlines like these:

Top UN court says countries can sue each other over climate change, BBC

Legal experts say International Court of Justice ruling provides ‘a clear blueprint to hold major emitters accountable’ The Indiependent

Opened the door for countries to sue each other over impacts of climate change, phys.org

Nations Can Sue Each Other Over Climate Inaction Under International Law, Daily Guardian

Etc., Etc. Etc.

Now on May 20, 2026 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution affirming the ICJ and suggesting implementation.

UN General Assembly ADOPTS resolution welcoming the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the obligations of States in respect of climate change

RESULT
In favor: 141
Against: 8
Abstain: 28

Activists gloss over the fact that neither the ICJ Opinion nor the UN Resolution are binding, even though it’s expected for them to be referenced in all the climate warfare going on now, and soon to explode. Thus it is important to look into the vote and the implications from those who opposed, abstained, or were absent

The table below lists the Authors, those Against, Abstained, Absent and Notables Voting for:

Authors (62)	Against (8)	Abstained (28)	Absent (15)	For (79 + 62)
Andorra	Belarus	Algeria	Azerbaijan	Notables
Angola	Iran	Argentina	Benin	Australia
Antigua and Barbuda	Israel	Bahrain	Bolivia	Austria
Armenia	Liberia	Brunei	Central African rep	Belgium
Bahamas (The)	Russia	Czechia	Dem Rep Korea	Brazil
Bhutan	Saudi Arabia	Quatorial NG	Dominica	Canada
Bosnia and Herzegovina	United States	Eritrea	Eswatini	China
Bulgaria	Yemen	Ethiopia	Kiribati	Denmark
Burkina Faso		Gambie	Madagascar	Egypt
Cabo Verde		India	Nicaragua	Hungary
Chile		Iraq	Serbia	Indonesia
Colombia		Kazakhstan	Trinidad Tobago	Ireland
Congo		Kuwait	Turkmenistan	Italy
Costa Rica		Lesotho	Uzbekistan	Japan
Croatia		Libya	Venezuela	Malaysia
Cyprus		Namibia		Mexico
Czechia		Nigeria		New Zealand
Djibouti		Oman		Norway
Dominican Republic		Pakistan		Poland
Ecuador		Paraguay		Singapore
Equatorial Guinea		Qatar		Sri Lanka
Fiji		South Africa		Somalia
Finland		Sudan		Sweden
France		Syria		Thailand
Georgia		Tunisia		Uganda
Germany		Turkiye		UAE
Greece		Tanzania		UK
Guatemala		Zimbabwe		Viet Nam
Honduras
Jordan
Kenya
Latvia
Lebanon
Luxembourg
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Micronesia Fed States
Monaco
Montenegro
Morocco
Netherlands
Nigeria
North Macedonia
Palau
Panama
Peru
Portugal
Qatar
Republic of Korea
Romania
Samoa
Senegal
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Switzerland
Togo
Ukraine
Uruguay
Vanuatu

Those who voted against or abstained are likely to refuse recognizing the authority of ICJ and UN in this matter. In addition some of those absent are also “makers” of hydrocarbon fuels and will oppose the many nations wanting to be “takers” benefiting from the legal circus coming to town. Many of the Notables voting for are likely to be defendants in this lawfare, especially if they were stupid enough to legislate emissions reduction targets.

Background Post

ICJ Issues Biased Advice on Climate Change

July Update: Pacific El Niño and Atlantic Niña

Posted on 1 Day Ago by Ron Clutz

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, showing a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa. © NOAA Office of Satellite and Product Operations, arrow added using Canva

There’s been much ado about a strong El Niño, but less is heard about the appearance of a sister anomaly Atlantic Niña. What happens to summer storm activity when both are on stage? Ben Cost does a good job of pulling together the implications in his NY Post article El Niño’s sister La Niña has arrived in the Atlantic — here’s what that means for summer weather. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Update with latest Ocean SST from OISST v.2

As described in more detail below, currently we are seeing an unusual mixed signal in the ocean patterns: a surging El Nino in the Pacific and at the same time an Atlantic Nina. Here are the latest data from OISST v.2 regarding this phenomenon.

The extremely strong El Niño brewing in the South Pacific isn’t the only unusual weather pattern on the horizon. Meteorological experts warn that the oceanic anomaly’s sister — Atlantic Niña — could be rearing its head in the tropical part of The Pond, potentially helping curtail the number of storms we’ll see this season, according to Severe Weather Europe.

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, shows a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa.

This climate pattern is similar to La Niña — the cold phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) — in that both cause temperature plunges below average. The difference is that this big chill affects the eastern equatorial Atlantic Ocean instead of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, potentially altering wind and rainfall across the tropics, per Climate.org.

These two anomalies appear to work on opposite poles (warm vs. cold), but they are actually perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact.

Should surface temps on the Atlantic Ocean hover at 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit below average for at least two overlapping seasons, this could mark just the sixth Atlantic Niña in the last four decades.

The sibling anomaly El Niño, meanwhile, causes preternaturally warm temperatures on the Pacific Ocean’s surface with forecasters predicting that this particular version could be up to 6.5 degrees warmer than average, potentially making it the strongest El Niño on record.

Despite being polar opposites on the thermometer, these temp-affecting twins are “perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact,” long-range forecaster Andrej Flis wrote for Severe Weather Europe.

This means that both will help curb hurricanes — but in different ways. El Niño produces high wind shear and sinking dry conditions over the Atlantic and Caribbean — where wind shear is already the second highest on record for July — potentially nipping the storm systems in the bud, according to Weather.com.

This prophylactic effect is evident in the dramatic reduction in the number of forecasted storms, which currently totals just nine, according to Colorado State University’s tropical meteorology project team.

Of these, only four are projected to become hurricanes, while just one will attain Category 3 status or stronger, marking five fewer storms and three fewer hurricanes than an average season.

El Niño’s sister system, meanwhile, literally throws cold water on cyclones. Cooler ocean temps in the Atlantic prevent the heat and moisture buildup required for thunderstorm buildup, according to The Conversation.

It will be interesting if these sibling systems have double the preventive impact come hurricane season.

Despite the forecast covering the August-January period, we are already observing this in July. If we look at the seasonal forecast, the latest data clearly shows a large area of below-normal tropical activity across the MDR and the Atlantic region. At the same time, we see enhanced activity in the Pacific, aided by the low pressure and rising air associated with El Niño.

So far, Tropical Storm Arthur was the only named storm to form in the Atlantic Basin before July 17 — one fewer than during and average year, Gizmodo reported.

And while it caused flash flooding and tornadoes to lash the south, this so-called superstorm fizzled before long. Meanwhile, there are no signs of an Atlantic hurricane; the first one usually forms by August 11.

To enlarge, open in new tab.

Climate Impacts, Ocean Climate Science, Temperature Trend Analysis

Oceans Make Climate in Steps

Link | Posted on 2 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

As noted in previous posts, warming during the satellite era appears in stair steps starting in the ocean which covers 71% of the earth surface, Oceans drive temperatures directly by providing the majority of gridded measurements, and also indirectly by evaporating more H20. The chart above is from OISST which serves as the database for all SST reports.

I identified the changepoints beginning with 1982/01 to 1997/01 to 2013/01 to 2023/01 to the endpoint 2026/03. The means for each period are as follows:

Period	Average ºC
1982-1997	18.0
1997-2014	18.2
2014-2023	18.5
2023-2025/03	18.7

This compares with similar patterns in global land and ocean datasets. For example HadCRUT4, going back to 1900.

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. In 2023-2024 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.

Finally, there is also the UAH lower troposphere global land and ocean dataset since 1980 showing these steps:

The yellow line is a mean of -0.25C up to 1997/01. Orange line is the overall mean of -0.02C and also the mean for 1997 to 2014. Purple line is mean of 0.20C for 2014 to 2023. Green line is 0.54C for 2023 to 2025/06.

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 has been episodic, coming from brief events associated with oceanic cycles.

Unreliables Made US Power Grid Fragile

Posted on 4 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

Kite and Key explain how and why US and Canada electricity is on the brink of blacking out when needed. For those prefering to read, below is a transcript with my bolds and some added images.

Five seconds. That’s about how long you’ve been watching this video. And in 2025, it was also the amount of time it took for 60 percent of the electricity supply in Spain … to vanish from the country’s grid. Which led to 10 hours of darkness — in parts of four countries. It’s a nightmarish scenario — and there’s a good chance that it’s coming to America soon.

Electricity. It’s the backbone of our entire world.

Your house. Your town. Your … excessive enthusiasm for Christmas. We build our lives around the assumption that when we flip a switch, it’ll be there for whatever we need — whether it’s controlling the climate in our homes, refrigerating our food, or just making sure the neighbors can see you’ve portrayed Santa committing a class B felony.

And, when you consider the history, you can see just how quickly we’ve gotten used to this. When Thomas Edison opened America’s first commercial power plant in 1882, it served 59 customers in lower Manhattan.ⁱⁱ By the time another 40 years or so had passed, America’s electricity consumption looked like this:ⁱⁱⁱ

By 1929, the U.S. was generating more power than the rest of the world combined.^iv And in the century since, our appetite has only grown. In 2025, the government’s Energy Information Administration reported that the country consumed 14 times more electricity than it had in 1950.^v

All of which sounds like a standard story of progress: As the decades pass, and technology evolves, things that once seemed miraculous become so commonplace that we can take them for granted.

But here’s the thing: We should definitely not be taking them for granted. Because the days of assuming we know what’s going to happen when we flip the switch … may be coming to an end.

In 2023, members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — the government body that regulates electricity transmission — appeared before a Senate committee with a series of dire warnings.

One of them testified that “We face unprecedented challenges to the reliability of our nation’s electric system.”^vi

Another said that “The United States is heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability.”^vii

And then he added “This problem is coming. It’s coming quickly. The red lights are flashing.”^viii

And while we don’t like to editorialize here at Kite & Key … that sounds bad.

The data shows that these concerns aren’t exaggerated.

In 2026, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — the body charged with making sure that the power grid is dependable — warned that nearly half of America’s population was going to be at high risk of rolling blackouts in the next few years.^ix

In fact, by the end of the decade every single region of the U.S. and Canada is projected to be at least elevated risk … with the single exception of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan^x — which makes sense because Saskatchewan literally has more cows than people.^xi

So, if there’s a blackout there … well, you know what happened.

But all of this leads to an obvious question: How does this happen? It’s been almost 150 years since Thomas Edison got the ball rolling and somehow we’re getting worse at this? What’s going on here?

To unravel this mystery, go back to those officials testifying before Congress.

One of them summed up the problem in four words: “The math doesn’t work.”^xii

Here’s what he meant by that: In many cases we’re actually losing power — as in, we’ll have less of it in a few years than we do now.

Take, for example, the PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest power grid operator, which serves 65 million customers^xiii in 13 states.^xiv

In 2023, PJM issued a report estimating that it might lose about 40 gigawatts of electricity — more than 20 percent of its capacity — by the year 2030, thanks to power plant retirements.^xv

Which isn’t the end of the world, right? You just bring on new power sources! Which is what they’re doing!

Here’s the problem: The high-end estimate of those new sources … is a little over 30 gigawatts.

In other words, they’re replacing 40 … with 30.

Also known as: “The math doesn’t work.”

And similar situations are happening all over the country.

Why? Well to understand that, we have to understand how the economics of electricity works.

And you might be thinking “But, Kite & Key, that sounds excruciatingly boring.” And it is, dear viewer!

Or at least it would be if you hadn’t chosen the one channel that understands it’s so boring that you have to explain it with the assistance of adorable puppies dressed as economists.

Here’s the way this all goes down: In any given part of the country, you might have lots of potential sources of electricity — natural gas, solar, coal, wind, nuclear. And at any given moment all those sources are selling power at different prices.

Now, the decision as to which one to use is not made by you, the customer. It’s made by the people responsible for coordinating the system, who take bids from electricity producers — sometimes as often as every five minutes — and buy whatever options are cheapest at the time until they’ve got enough power to meet demand. None of which seems crazy — adequate energy at low prices is pretty much what everyone wants.

But here’s where this gets complicated: In some cases … cheap electricity comes with unintended consequences.

Here’s what we mean.

Not all energy sources are created equal.

Map of Diminishing Capacity Values for Major RTOs (Regional Transmission Operators)

Some of them like nuclear and most coal plants are what’s referred to as “baseload power” — they can essentially run all the time.

Others like natural gas plants are “dispatchable,” meaning you can quickly turn them on or off depending on demand.

Then there are sources like wind and solar which are “intermittent” — in other words, you only get power from them when the weather is cooperating.^xvi

And this is where the problem creeps in.

In 2024, the government reported that wind, on average, only produces energy about 1/3 of the time.^xvii For solar, it was less than 1/4 of the time.^xviii By contrast natural gas was around 60 percent and nuclear was at 90 percent.^xix

But when wind and solar are working they can be incredibly cheap. In fact, because they’re heavily subsidized by the government, their prices can actually go negative — they can pay the grid to take their power^xx — and still stay in business.

Needless to say, all the other electricity producers … can’t do that.

Which makes them less profitable.

Which leads an increasing number of them to close.

Which leads to a world where we’re increasingly dependent on
electricity sources that literally don’t produce any energy most of the time.

Those 40 gigawatts PJM may lose? Almost all coal or natural gas. The up to 30 gigawatts that will partially replace it? Mostly wind and solar.^xxi

Which is the kind of thing that leads otherwise boring bureaucrats from places like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to yell “the red lights are flashing!” at members of Congress.

Because by privileging the energy sources that work the best some of the time
… we’re gutting the energy sources that work the best all of the time
— the ones that actually determine whether you’ll have power.

There’s no doubt that wind and solar are going to be important parts of America’s energy future. But imagining that they can carry the burden of the entire system today is risking disaster.

When wind and solar can’t produce, we rely on sources like nuclear, natural gas, and even coal to keep the lights on.^xxii But if we cut out that part of the equation — if we don’t build to ensure resiliency — we’re placing our standard of living on a knife’s edge. And if we get that balance even slightly wrong, well…

Update: My Tom Nelson Podcast with Slides Download

Posted on 6 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

The podcast is available on Youtube Ron Clutz Part 1: “Highlights from 3400 Climate Blog Posts” #414

I won’t do a transcript of the video, since many will recognize text and images from reading various postings here. Content at this blog is arranged into categories relating to the themes discussed. See Guide to Science Matters

There will be a part 2 discussion in August on two additional themes relating to global warming/climate change.

Update: Below are downloads of Slides from Part 1 Podcast

1. CC Overview Slides

2. Climate Reductionism

3. Global Temperature

4. Flawed Climate Models, Flawed Temperature Results

5. GHG Theory and Tests It Fails

6. Temps Lead CO2 Follows

7. Sun’s Role in Climate Change

8. Oceans Make Climate

Note: Clicking on a red link above will download a pptx presentation file which can be opened in powerpoint or compatible application. Once opened, select the slide show menu and then “from current slide”, which will be the first one. The slides will then be full screen, and some with gif images will display the animations.

My Podcast with Tom Nelson Is Now Live

Posted on 6 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

The podcast is available on Youtube Ron Clutz Part 1: “Highlights from 3400 Climate Blog Posts” #414

There will be a part 2 discussion in August on two additional themes relating to global warming/climate change.

No, WSJ: 9 Reasons Why “Green Energy” Makes Even LESS Sense Today

Posted on 8 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

Green Energy is a mirage that retreats as you approach.

Terigi Ciccone wrote an Open Letter to Ed Ballard Re: “Why Green Energy Makes More Sense With Each Price Shock” (WSJ, April 9, 2026). Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Open Letter to Ed Ballard
Re: “Why Green Energy Makes More Sense With Each Price Shock” (WSJ, April 9, 2026)

Dear Mr. Ballard,

I have sent you several detailed emails over the past few years outlining the engineering and economic realities of integrating variable renewable energy (VRE). You have never replied. Your latest column—celebrating the Iran/Hormuz crisis as yet another “proof” that solar-plus-battery is now the rational choice—is the latest example of journalistic cheerleading that substitutes press-release optimism for rigorous system-level analysis. As a power-plant design engineer with decades of hands-on experience specifying dispatchable generation, I write this open letter to correct the record, not in theory, but in the hard language of capital costs, ancillary services, capacity factors, and ecological externalities that your piece airbrushes away.

Your star exhibit is the Philippines’ MTerra Solar project: 3.5 GW solar + 4.5 GWh battery storage, fast-tracked amid LNG shortages, now supposedly delivering 13 hours of power “marginally below” LNG cost. You quote Actis investor Rahul Agrawal: “This is not theory. This is actually happening on the ground now.” Indeed, it is—but the ground truth is far uglier than your narrative admits.

1. Intermittency is not a rounding error; it is the dominant cost driver. Even with batteries, MTerra is engineered for ~12–13 hours of mid-merit output. The remaining 11–12 hours (and any multi-day typhoon-induced lull) still require dispatchable backup. My own peer-reviewed analysis of ancillary-service burdens shows that adding solar and wind to a reliable grid inflates total system costs by 135–235 % once frequency regulation, inertia, voltage support, and ramping are properly valued. The raw LCOE of ~$40/MWh becomes a delivered cost of ~$500/MWh.
See: Terigi Ciccone, “A Narrow Lens on Ancillary Services: Overlooking the Full Costs and Ecological Damage of Solar and Wind Integration”

2. The “phenomenal” price drop in Chinese panels and batteries is a geopolitical trap, not progress. You correctly note falling panel costs, but you fail to mention that China controls ~85% of solar manufacturing and ~80% of the battery supply chain. Swapping Middle-East oil dependence for Beijing’s critical-mineral monopoly and state-subsidized overcapacity is not energy security; it is energy servitude. When those subsidies or export policies shift, the “cheap” becomes expensive overnight.

3. Full-system costing reveals multipliers your LCOE ignores. Economist Bjørn Lomborg has repeatedly documented the same reality using Value-Adjusted LCOE (VALCOE). A peer-reviewed study he cites shows that once reliability and backup are included, wind power becomes 11–12× and solar up to 38–42× more expensive than combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT).
Bjørn Lomborg, “Why solar and wind power aren’t winning,” Financial Post, 17 April 2024
(Identical findings appear in Lomborg’s “The True Cost of Wind and Solar Energy,” NH Journal, 20 May 2024.)

Figure 4 – International Domestic Electricity Prices (p per kWh). UK has the highest domestic electricity prices in the IEA.

My own comparison of 1 GW reliable output at 99.9 % uptime reaches the same conclusion: onshore wind requires 5.6× and offshore wind 7.2× the capital investment of a CCGT, once overbuild, storage, transmission, and peaker plants are added.
See: Terigi Ciccone, “The Well Hidden and Distorted Costs of Renewables: A Comprehensive Comparison of Wind Power and Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Plant”

Typically as wind and solar power share of supply increases, distribution and transmission costs rise sharply.

4. Academic “System LCOE” literature confirms the same directional truth— Falko Ueckerdt, Lion Hirth, and colleagues introduced System LCOE precisely because standard LCOE is misleading at high VRE penetrations. Their 2013 analysis (and subsequent updates) shows integration/profile costs can equal or exceed generation costs themselves once wind shares exceed ~20 %. At the levels now being forced, those costs become an economic barrier.
Ueckerdt et al., “System LCOE: What are the costs of variable renewables?” Energy 63 (2013) 61–75

5. Ecological and material externalities are catastrophic. Your column is silent on land use (10× that of nuclear or gas for equivalent firm power), avian/bat mortality, 78 million tons of non-recyclable solar waste projected by 2050, and the concrete-steel-copper footprint of batteries that must be replaced every 8–12 years. My third paper tallies these hidden costs in full.
See: Terigi Ciccone, “Revised: Let’s Make Electricity Affordable Again”

Moreover, the raw-material demands are staggering. Utility-scale solar and wind installations consume vastly greater quantities of concrete, steel, copper, silver, rare-earth elements, and other minerals per unit of firm, reliable electricity than any dispatchable source. This triggers massive mining operations with severe habitat destruction, water contamination, and toxic tailings. Manufacturing these components remains overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels for the energy-intensive processes of silicon purification, steel smelting, and mineral extraction. In full life-cycle terms, many VRE systems may never recover the total primary energy invested in their construction, installation, maintenance, and eventual replacement—rendering the entire enterprise an energy and cost sink rather than a net contributor.

Drone footage shows hundreds of solar panels ripped apart and scattered across farmland after a powerful tornado tore through Wheatfield overnight. Homes in the area also suffered heavy damage as the violent storm carved a path of destruction. Photo credit Joemar Sombero

6. Real-world stress tests expose the fantasy. Philippine typhoons shred solar farms; Florida hurricanes do the same. After every major storm, we see acres of twisted panels and batteries that cannot survive Category 4 winds. Yet the same voices warning about climate risk keep prescribing an energy system that collapses precisely when the weather turns ugly.

7. Ultimately, we are inflicting these enormous costs for no good reason. The entire policy edifice rests on the assumption that anthropogenic CO₂ is the primary driver of dangerous warming. In reality, CO₂’s greenhouse effect is already near saturation in its principal absorption bands; additional emissions yield only minuscule marginal forcing. The true temperature powerhouses on Earth are gravitational auto-compression (the dry adiabatic lapse rate driven by atmospheric mass and pressure) and the dominant water-vapor/latent-heat cycle, which together govern the vast majority of Earth’s energy balance.

We are dismantling reliable, dispatchable power systems, subsidizing
foreign supply chains, and covering productive land in fragile panels
—all to chase a trace-gas tail that cannot wag the climatic dog.

8. Increased atmospheric CO₂ is demonstrably greening the planet. NASA satellite data confirm that rising CO₂ has driven substantial global greening over recent decades. The increase in leaf area is equivalent to twice the size of the continental United States, with CO₂ fertilization responsible for approximately 70 % of this greening across 25–50 % of vegetated lands. Far from harming the biosphere, higher CO₂ levels are enhancing vegetation growth, boosting agricultural yields, and expanding natural habitats worldwide.

9. Humans are not the sole source of rising atmospheric CO₂. As I document in detail in “Revised: Let’s Make Electricity Affordable Again,” natural sources—including volcanic activity, oceanic degassing, and other geological processes—play a far more significant role in the global carbon cycle than the prevailing narrative acknowledges. Attributing nearly all recent increases to human emissions oversimplifies complex geophysical realities and ignores the “Volcanic Vibes” that have shaped atmospheric CO₂ long before industrial civilization.

Mr. Ballard, energy crises do not “hammer home” the virtues of green energy. They expose its fatal engineering defects: zero inertia, negative correlation with demand, dependence on foreign supply chains, and an energy return that fails even basic life-cycle scrutiny. The rational response is an all-of-the-above portfolio anchored by dispatchable, high-capacity-factor sources—modern CCGT, nuclear (including SMRs), and geothermal—with targeted renewables only where they demonstrably lower system cost without compromising reliability.

Your repeated refusal to engage with the peer-reviewed literature or
practicing engineers suggests a commitment to narrative over evidence.

I invite you, once again, to reply—publicly or privately—and defend your claim that solar-plus-battery “makes more sense with each price shock” once full system costs, ecological and material realities, geopolitical risks, and the actual physics and benefits of atmospheric CO₂ are included. Until then, this open letter stands as the record of your April 9 column that you omitted. Let’s bury the narrative. 🔥

Respectfully but firmly,
Terigi Ciccone Ret. Gas Turbine Engineer for power generation and aviation, an independent researcher on climate, Sarasota, Florida, USA

Outlook: Pacific El Niño and Atlantic Niña

Posted on 10 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

A map of global sea surface temperature anomalies on July 15, 2026, shows a significant region of below-average sea surface temperatures off the western coast of Africa.

These two anomalies appear to work on opposite poles (warm vs. cold), but they are actually perfectly aligned in their atmospheric impact.

Of these, only four are projected to become hurricanes, while just one will attain Category 3 status or stronger, marking five fewer storms and three fewer hurricanes than an average season.

It will be interesting if these sibling systems have double the preventive impact come hurricane season.

So far, Tropical Storm Arthur was the only named storm to form in the Atlantic Basin before July 17 — one fewer than during and average year, Gizmodo reported.

To enlarge, open in new tab.

2026 Mid-July Arctic Ice Extents Tracking Average

Posted on 11 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

Russian Nuclear Icebreakers on the Northern Sea Route, March 2025

The arctic ice extents are now reported through mid-July 2026, and as noted previously the wavy polar vortex has hampered ice formation with incursions of warmer southern air into the Arctic circle. This factor receded in May and June, with extents closing the gap with the averages. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) goes through the Russian shelf seas of Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas on the way to Bering Strait in Beaufort Sea.

As the image from July 15 shows, despite the melting on the margins, the Arctic Ocean core is solid, expecially along the Eurasian NSR seen on the left vertical side. Some open water is appearing in Laptev (top left) and East Siberian sea (mid Left), but still extensive land fast ice. As usual mid July, Hudson Bay (bottom right) is mostly open water, as is Baffin Bay (middle right). Canadain Archipelago remains largely ice covered.

The chart below shows the 20-year mid July averages for Arctic ice extents, along with 2026, 2025 and 2007 as well as SII v.4. Note that on average during this period 2.4M km2 of ice extent is lost. By comparison SII v.4 lost 2.6M and MASIE lost 2.2M. In other words, MASIE 2026 ice melt is just one day ahead of average.

Note the deficit to average mid-June was ~400k km2 but since then 2026 extents tracked close to average before ending down 110k km2. SII tracked close to MASIE last half of June, but as we have seen in previous months SII v.4 lost a lot of ice in the last two weeks ending 338k km2 lower than MASIE, or 1/3 of a Wadham.

The table below shows the distibution of ice extents on day 196 across regions of the Arctic ocean.

Region	2026196	Day 196 Average	2026-Ave.	2007196	2026-2007
(0) Northern_Hemisphere	8230702	8340811	-110110	8354527	-123825
(1) Beaufort_Sea	1044469	874320	170149	845938	198531
(2) Chukchi_Sea	781718	647606	134112	576079	205639
(3) East_Siberian_Sea	908640	924076	-15436	788128	120513
(4) Laptev_Sea	719818	563593	156224	575520	144298
(5) Kara_Sea	245022	350290	-105268	483785	-238762
(6) Barents_Sea	36	53993	-53957	75731	-75695
(7) Greenland_Sea	321463	401993	-80531	472890	-151428
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence	267821	309518	-41696	342503	-74682
(9) Canadian_Archipelago	719994	707260	12734	730894	-10900
(10) Hudson_Bay	184771	339584	-154813	248785	-64014
(11) Central_Arctic	3034736	3164687	-129951	3211275	-176539

The table shows that many regions are close to or above the 20-year average. The Eurasian shelf seas of Laptev, Chukchi and Beaufort are in surplus. The majority of the 1.3% overall deficit is from Hudson Bay, Central Arctic, Kara and Greenland seas. Excepting Central Arctic, those regions will be ice-free end of summer. Bering and Okhotsk seas are left off the list since they are open water now as usual.

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring ice and snow extents.

Now You Can Say It: Climatists are Brazen Deniers!

Posted on 13 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

An article at substack EnvironMental blows the whistle on the alarmists now deserving the label they long applied to climate realists and skeptics. The New Deniers.

It’s about time the climate cabal was forced to wear their own pejorative.

“The Church of Carbon” is a term Doomberg coined several years ago to describe the cabal of scientists, legacy media, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs, aka non-profits), activists, celebrities and others who denominate every issue through the lens of CO2 emissions and “climate change.” Members have a variety of terms to describe anyone who challenges the prevailing view that “climate change” is a catastrophic problem for earth and humanity, and “flat earther” is not even close to the most derogatory.

More than twenty years ago, the Church’s most ardent and vocal priests
and apostles began to paint heretics with the term global warming “denier.”
The not-so-subtle term is an effort to shut down those who would dare question their religion.

The choice of term is not accidental. It attempts to liken climate religion heretics and apostates to those who deny that the Holocaust – the WWII stain on the history of humanity that killed six million Jews in the 1940s – ever occurred.

The deranged “logic” goes something like this: paint those who question what “the science” says with a term so ugly that they are simply beneath inclusion in any rational, civil debate over matters of such importance. “The opinions of people who deny things like “climate change” or the Holocaust are not worthy of consideration in the public discourse over policy,” or so it goes.

The now two-decade pattern of using the term “denier” in this matter is worse than ugly. It shamefully denigrates the death and suffering of millions, and with the subtle wink of an eye attempts to conflate the act of asking legitimate scientific questions with human atrocities.

Educated scientists, politicians and legacy media who should have known better than to believe using the term “denier” would allow them to avoid directly answering hard questions. The strategy was never going to succeed in the long run, and the history of science is replete with examples of its laughable failure. See the Catholic Church, Copernicus and Galileo and the earth-centric view of the universe, for starters.

Last month we published the news that the most apocalyptic scenarios of future GHG emissions used by the world’s climate scientists and research organizations have officially been tossed in the trash heap, deemed by the very cabal that created them as “implausible.”

Near the close of Implausible Deniability we posed a few questions (emphasis added):

…will the scientific community admit their errors and change course? Tens of thousands of research papers have relied on the now discredited high emissions BAU scenarios, including RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5, across all six emissions scenario frameworks. Will politically motivated climate scientists continue to push for their relevance as “reference” scenarios?

What about the legacy media? Having published tens of thousands and to possibly over a hundred thousand articles depicting these cremated scenarios as the “business as usual” trajectory the world was on, with every adverse weather event held as evidence of the forthcoming climate Armageddon, and fear their cheapest and easiest sell, will they admit that the truth was not what they chose to present?

It only took a bit more than a month after the news first broke before the answer became clear. What is the Church of Carbon and its priests, apostles and book publishers saying? How are the “implausible” scenarios being portrayed and even defended? Grab your giant soup spoon. It’s time to give some very deserving folks a dose of their own medicine.

The sky-is-falling scenarios were implausible from their conception because
they were grounded in unrealistic assumptions about energy, economics,
or demography (population/birth rates). And despite these clear errors,
the people who built them and are now defending them know it.

But based on the reactions from most of the scientific establishment, explainer media, and climate‑policy world, you’d think the only reason the apocalyptic emissions scenarios known as RCP8.5 and SSP5‑8.5 are now “implausible” is because heroic climate policies and “cheap renewables” saved earth and humanity in the nick of time. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Global carbon intensity peaked in 1960 and has been steadily falling ever since, with no discernible change in the rate since any of these measures. If “climate policies and cheap renewables” have made a material impact, it cannot be seen in the graph above.

[In the last 25 years world energy consumption from oil, coal and natural gas has fallen a whopping three percentage points from 86.1% of total to 83.2%. That is why no changes in the trend of carbon intensity can be seen in the first graph above. Also bear in mind that in 2025 the light green Renewables energy is only 60% wind and solar, the rest mainly biomass.]

The message that “we saved ourselves from the worst case” is politically convenient even as it is scientifically laughable. It’s a two-step dance the very climate research community that portrayed the very same scenarios as “business as usual” might have gotten away with but for the tireless work of researchers like Justin Ritchie, Hadi Dowlatabadi, and Substack publisher Roger Pielke, Jr.

Put simply: Climate policy and “renewable” energy didn’t retroactively
make the high emissions scenarios RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 unrealistic.
They were never realistic from their conception.

This is the history the new “implausible thanks to renewables and policy” narrative is trying to omit. But it is the storyline put forth in most explainers that were rushed out to cover the high GHG emissions scenarios’ implosion. [ The article provides several examples of dismissive media stories, including a Michael Mann tweet, Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate Science, Marshall Shepherd at Forbes, and coverups at NY Times, Washington Post and AFP, all of which failed in the same way.]

Absent from all of their pieces was a candid reckoning with the fact that the “business as usual” path required energy, economic and demographic contortions that were never remotely likely, even without climate treaties or “renewable energy” subsidies.

The ENGO’s fared no better. The Center for Progressive Reform – apparently tipped off to the upcoming van Vuuren et al paper announcing the new ScenarioMIP group’s dropping of the high emissions scenarios – said RCP8.5 (and by extension is successor, SSP5-8.5) “remains not only legitimate, but crucial..”

CPR argued that scientists using the high emissions scenarios “are not out to shock or deceive; they are simply following the best science.” Even if the pathway is implausible, the authors insist, using it “is not misleading.” This is a distraction from the reality that the implausible scenario was the basis “business as usual” rhetoric that scared the public into believing 4–6 °C of warming by 2100 was what happens if we don’t pass the next climate bill. And the one after that.

Carbon Brief also looked the other way. John Cook and Ken Rice at SKS accused critics of “bad faith” absent any admission that the assumptions embedded in RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5 years earlier were erroneous.

If these actors were actually interested in doing so, they should explicitly acknowledge that RCP8.5/ SSP5‑8.5 were erroneous by specification – not just rendered implausible by virtuous policy. They would stop treating as bad‑faith actors legitimate critics who specified very precise plausibility concerns a decade ago (that turned out to be correct). And they would revise impact assessments, “Social Cost of Carbon” estimates, and financial sector stress‑test designs that were built on what the scenario designers themselves now call implausible futures.

We close by pointing out the delicious and unavoidable irony. For nearly two decades, all of these scientists, legacy media “journalists” and editors, and ENGOs have been screaming “denier” at anyone who challenges the prevailing narrative. Yet here we stand, with the UN’s own scenario development function deeming “implausible” the exceedingly high GHG emissions scenarios on which these people and institutions based their endless use of the pejorative term denier.

Consider the second and third order consequences of scaring the world with the always- farfetched, high GHG emissions scenario projections: Young people are declining to have children based on misplaced fears their kids will have no future. $5 trillion (and counting) has been spent on “solutions” that could not possibly fix an apocalyptic crisis that does not exist. Soaring electricity costs and two lost decades refusing the one electricity generation technology in the advanced world (nuclear) that is GHG emissions free while subsidizing “renewable energy” technologies instead.

The New Deniers™ are the actors that enabled all of these outcomes, are still pretending that RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 are important, valuable, or relevant. In actuality, they were never anything more than climate porn and fear mongering, and that is as much anathema to the scientific method as the idea of scientific “consensus.”

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