The Week That Was: 2025-07-19 (July 19, 2025)
Brought to You by SEPP (www.SEPP.org)
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
Quote of the Week: “”It would be illegitimate and would rob our calculation of its basis if unsuccessful results were not all brought into the account.” ― Ronald Fisher (1890-1962) UK mathematician, statistician, biologist, and geneticist, called the founder of modern statistics.
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Number of the Week: LD50 of 1 nanogram per kilogram.
THIS WEEK:
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: TWTW begins a discussion of the recipient of the 2024 Frederick Seitz Memorial Award continues with a long introduction to a paper by Howard Hayden on the difference between “climate science” and understanding the greenhouse effect. TWTW then discusses how cherry-picking continues in papers claiming that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change for the past 540 million years. Then TWTW concluded with brief discussions of the Hunga Eruption, the Iberian Blackout, and the recipient of the 2025 SEPP April Fools Award.
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Frederick Seitz Memorial Award: Each year SEPP gives the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award recognizing an individual or a team that contributed significantly in preserving the scientific method in physical science. The scientific method requires that all theories, hypotheses, ideas, etc. be tested against all physical evidence before being accepted. If the theory, etc. is contradict by such physical evidence from observation or experiment it is wrong. Mathematical models are not physical evidence.
On July 5 at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP) annual meeting, members of the SEPP board, Tom Sheahen, Chairman, Ken Haapala, President, Willie Soon, David Legates, and Howard “Cork” Hayden, announced that the 2024 recipient of the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award was William van Wijngaarden, a full professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Toronto Canada. https://wvanwijngaarden.info.yorku.ca/bio/
In recent years Professor van Wijngaarden has worked closely with Professor William Happer in developing a method of determining the greenhouse effect in today’s atmosphere. The method uses the high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database (HITRAN). HITRAN is a compilation of spectroscopic parameters that a variety of computer codes use to predict and simulate the transmission and emission of light in the atmosphere. The database is updated frequently. https://hitran.org/
The method does not require costly super-computers, because it can be run on a laptop. The feasibility of the method was demonstrated by satellite observations over Guam, in the tropical Pacific (Nimbus 1970). After van Wijngaarden and Happer fleshed out the method it has been tested over the Sahara (desert); the Mediterranean (temperate region); and over Antarctica (polar region).
The method applies to clear skies only. There is no adequate theory for the formation and dissipation of clouds, which van Wijngaarden and Happer are working on. Since clouds generally cool the earth, the calculations using this method can confirm laboratory tests that by far water vapor has the dominant greenhouse effect (about 75%), carbon dioxide is secondary (less than 25%), and other human-released gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are insignificant. The calculations and observations confirm that the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperatures is logarithmic, having diminishing returns.
Further, the calculations and observations confirm that a fundamental assumption in global climate models is wrong. A one degree warming by carbon dioxide, or any other means, will not have a positive feedback (response) of increasing water vapor to increase the warming by another one degree. There is no threat of “runaway” greenhouse effect.
Unfortunately, prior commitments in Europe prevented Professor van Wijngaarden from attending the conference and delivering a lecture. The small $10,000 award and a trophy symbolizing the award are being sent to him in Toronto. For examples of his work see links under Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer.
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A Few Notes: Last week, TWTW focused on lectures by astrophysicist Willie Soon and 2022 Noble Laureate in Physics John Clauser at the 42nd annual DDP meeting. Soon emphasized that the calculation of Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its collaborators is based on global climate models, not physical evidence. Thus, it is an imaginary construct used to condemn the use of fossil fuels that produce carbon dioxide, the villain in an imaginary earth. Soon emphasized that one error in the EEI calculations occurs when the error brackets in the large numbers used are greater than the results of the calculations. Thus, the calculations are inconclusive.
John Clauser emphasized the physical failings of global climate models, making them unsuitable for predicting anything, much less the conditions on Earth 75 to 175 years from now. The biggest failing is the failure to develop a realistic theory on the formation and dispersion of clouds. Clauser asserts that clouds are a thermostat for Earth’s temperature, stabilizing temperature changes from wild swings.
Climate history shows how remarkably stable Earth’s climate is, despite severe glaciations, ice ages. The onset and ending of these events are generally gradual, with few exceptions such as the Younger Dryas and Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) Events which no one can explain. The Younger Dryas was marked by a sudden cooling, followed by about 800 years of low temperatures followed by a sudden warming. DO Events are marked by an abrupt warming followed by a gradual cooling and occur approximately every 1500 years. It is the cooling events which humanity has to fear, not warming.
SEPP Director, Professor of Physics Howard “Cork” Hayden has authored an easy-to-understand paper of the problems of Climate Science and the UN IPCC’s interpretation of the physical science, “A Few Notes about Climate and the Greenhouse Effect.” The paper is posted on the SEPP website under Scientific Papers. Although easy-to-understand with little math, the paper is quite long and will be discussed in TWTW in three parts. The part discussed in this TWTW lays the foundation for the next two parts. The following are key parts Hayden’s paper: Hayden begins [emphasis in original]:
“Go back to 1980 and find a scientist who knows something about climate—a historical climatologist, a meteorologist, a geologist, a paleoclimatologist, a paleobotanist, an oceanographer, a limnologist, an economist knowledgeable about crop abundances and failures in ancient times, a glaciologist, and so forth—and every single one would agree that the climate changes, as it always has and always will.
It’s hard to assign a date to when climate was no longer just a field of study but a thing to be controlled lest it get out of hand….
The term climate change, as understood by practically anybody in 1980, would simply mean a change of climate, such as the warming that allowed Vikings to settle southern Greenland. To say, “Climate change is real” would be akin to saying “Water is wet.” However, UNFCCC gave the term a highly prejudicial definition:
‘Climate change’ means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere, and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. [Emphasis added.]
According to UNFCCC’s definition, for the half-billion years of life on Earth, there was no such thing as climate change until about 1850. (Similarly, if we define music to be a song sung by Barbra Streisand, then Beethoven never wrote any music.) … Confusion reigns. Perhaps that was the idea.
By contrast, the IPCC defines climate change this way:
A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions, and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.
In any case, science is not about what things are called; science is about what happens.
To explain the relationship between climate and greenhouse gases, we will present brief overviews of these topics.
• Weather and Climate
• The quantities that affect the overall heat balance of the planet
• The 33ºC argument
•Compressional Heating
• The lapse rate
• IR to space: Quantity and Spectra
• Atoms, molecules, and energy steps
• Climate science and the greenhouse effect
• Carbon dioxide
• Laboratory Measurements of GHG properties
• Atmospheric CO2
• Dynamics of molecular collisions
• Absorbers & Radiators
• Surface IR emission
• IR properties of GHGs
• The Greenhouse Effect in watts per square meter
• IPCC scenarios
• Measured Heat Balance
• Conclusions
• References
Weather and Climate
We are all familiar with snowfall, rain, windstorms, and blue skies. The television weathercaster tells us what will very likely happen during the next day, what is likely to happen the day after that, and what might happen in ten days.
Climate, however, involves long-term averages, usually over at least 30 years. If you have lived in one small region of the planet and kept records for 30 years, you can calculate the average of (say) the temperature and you’ll have one local climate temperature data point. You could do the same for one climate data point of precipitation, snowfall, or wind speed.
Worldwide climate involves such local climate data points averaged around the globe. However, depending on the expertise of the speaker or writer, the term “the climate” may refer to worldwide climate, worldwide long-term temperature average, worldwide short-term temperature average, local short-term temperature average, or some weather phenomenon somewhere. Caveat emptor!
The quantities that affect the overall heat balance of the planet
Simply put, there are three—and only three—quantities that affect the heat balance of the earth. They are:
- The solar flux at orbit
- The flux (or alternatively, the fraction called albedo) of sunlight reflected back into space, and
- The flux of infrared radiation (IR) radiated to space.
The fluxes are in units of radiative power per unit area, watts per square meter, (W/m2), averaged over the spherical shape of the planet. Of course, we must use year-around averages for all these numbers because the distance to the sun varies as the earth traverses its elliptical orbit.”
In short, climate and climate change are complex subjects which are beyond what Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry called “simple physics.” TWTW skips over major sections of the paper such as IR to space: Quantity and Spectra, and Atoms, molecules, and energy steps and jumps to:
“Climate science and the greenhouse effect:
The greenhouse effect involves the interaction (on a wavelength-by-wavelength basis) between infrared and molecules that interact with IR. The discipline is called molecular spectroscopy, and it involves measurements of IR absorption cross-sections, calculations of IR emission probabilities, pressure and temperature broadening of spectral lines, quantum mechanics and (for atmospheric interactions) statistical mechanics. The latter subject discusses the temperature- and pressure-dependent behavior of molecular/IR interactions, populations of excited states, collision dynamics, and so forth.
That is, detailed wavelength-by-wavelength calculations of interactions between IR and GHGs enable scientists to calculate the whole spectrum of IR emitted to space from laboratory measurements of those GHGs, and the (varying) temperature and pressure of the atmosphere.
Students of meteorology, climatology, or climate science learn a terrific amount about how thermal energy moves about, driven by pressure and temperature gradients. They learn about weather balloons, Stevenson screens, evaporation, condensation, rainfall, snowfall, cyclonic storms, the Coriolis effect on moving air, tornadoes, temperature measurements, atmospheric pressure measurements, sunlight intensity, and ocean currents. They learn about determining past temperatures from the measured ratios of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 and determining past solar intensity from beryllium-10 concentrations. On and on it goes.
Look up the curricula taught at college and university departments dealing with climate, and you will not find courses in quantum mechanics, molecular spectroscopy, and statistical mechanics, the courses they need to understand the interaction between IR and GHGs. That is, climate science—as taught in colleges and universities—is not about the greenhouse effect.
When we read that a ‘consensus of climate scientists’ agrees that the greenhouse effect from our CO2 emissions is doing damage, why should we believe them?”
In short, the greenhouse effect is not taught in climate science programs in colleges and universities, which focus on weather modeling. The major problem is that understanding the greenhouse effect goes beyond expanded weather modeling (climate modeling). It requires an understanding of quantum mechanics and molecular spectroscopy, specialized fields in physics that go beyond classical physics.
In subsequent weeks TWTW will further discuss Hayden’s paper and bring up key points that those who claim that carbon dioxide is a major driver of climate change do not understand. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
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Continuing Confusion: Cherry-picking is a common trait of those who claim carbon dioxide is a major driver of climate change. It involves selecting certain data points and ignoring contradictory data or physical evidence. A classic example was the Westerhold et al. paper “An astronomically dated record of Earth’s climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years” published by AAAS Science in 2020.
As discussed in previous TWTWs, the authors presented excellent data showing Earth went from Warmhouse, to Hothouse, to Warmhouse, to Coolhouse, and to Icehouse with ice caps on both poles as current. The data were collected from deep sea sediments slowly compiled from marine snow, dead organisms that once lived at or near the surface of the oceans. However, the data was presented in clumps where a great deal of data was compressed over time. Using these clumps, Westerhold et al. claimed that the changes in temperatures were driven by changes in carbon dioxide.
Willis Eschenbach patiently unraveled the data showing that for periods of millions of years the temperatures were relatively stable, while atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations fluctuated dramatically. Geoscientist Tom Gallagher used the Eschenbach presentation to explain how continental drift changed ocean currents significantly, causing a slow but dramatic change in global temperatures. Oceans are capable of storing vast amounts of heat. Gallagher emphasized that the gradual closing of the Equatorial current resulted in cooling because the main ocean flows gradually moved from East-West to North-South. The last significant redirection of ocean current was the closing of the Caribbean Seaway from the Atlantic to the Pacific with the creation of the Isthmus of Panama.
Unfortunately, other researchers expanded on the false claims of Westerhold et al. such as a paper by Judd et al., “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature” also published by AAAS Science (2024) cherry-picking all the way. A direct criticism of the Judd et al. paper will be presented in an upcoming TWTW discussing the paper by Hayden discussed above.
Now, Willie Soon sent to TWTW another paper using the Judd et al. paper and the Westerhold et al. papers titled “Phanerozoic orbital-scale glacio-eustatic variability” by Douwe G. van der Meer, et al., in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The paper claims “The study uses a high-resolution Cenozoic climate model and long-term Phanerozoic ice volumes to estimate orbital-scale sea level variability over the past 540 million years.” Without going into the questionable claim of long-term Phanerozoic ice volumes, the paper can be dismissed because the “high-resolution Cenozoic climate model” covers the last 66 million years, the period covered by the cherry-picked Westerhold et al. paper which has been contradicted by examining all the physical evidence. See link under Defending the Orthodoxy and for TWTW comments see the July 15, 2023, issue https://www.sepp.org/twtwfiles/2023/TWTW%207-15-23.pdf. *********************
Hunga Eruption: Published in JGR Atmospheres, Simchan Yook et al. authored “The Impact of 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (Hunga) Eruption on Stratospheric Circulation and Climate.” The paper states:
“Simulated climate responses to the Hunga eruption based on specified-chemistry runs show good agreement with previous coupled-chemistry runs.
Ozone, water vapor, and aerosol from the Hunga eruption each contributed to the circulation and temperature anomalies in the stratosphere.
The simulated springtime ozone anomalies contributed to the temperature anomalies in the Southern Hemisphere lower stratosphere during winter 2022.”
Briefly, it appears that even though the event was dramatic and caused minor disruptions to Earth’s climate, the overall disruption was small. This is unlike the Tambora eruption (1815) followed by 1816 as “the year without a summer” in the Northern Hemisphere. See link under Changing Earth.
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Iberian Blackout: The Spanish systems operator issued a report on the blackout covering the Iberian Peninsula and part of France on April 28. UK energy consultant Kathryn Porter analyzed the report. According to the report and analysis, the blackout was caused by a failure of a faulty solar inverter in the region of Granada, Spain, which cascaded through the Peninsula and into France. According to Porter:
“The Iberian blackout demonstrated the importance of voltage control and reactive power, and how a weak grid, with poor controls, was brought down by a single faulty solar inverter.”
Inverters are used in industrial solar to convert DC power to AC and have no inertia, which is needed to smooth out hiccups in the system, which occur frequently. Rather than a small region experiencing a blackout, two countries and a part of a third country experience it. See links under Energy Issues – Non-US.
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April Fool for 2025: The winner of SEPP’s 2025 April Fools Award was announced that the annual DDP meeting. She is none other than Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, a German politician serving as president of the European Commission since 2019. She seems utterly committed to Net Zero carbon dioxide emissions no matter the costs to which she seems oblivious to. Under her leadership the EU has continued to fall behind the economic growth of the US, despite many faulty US policies.
She bases her commitment on a science that is as clear as the symbolic award – a lump of coal. For an article on the economic growth difference between the EU and the US see Article # 1.
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Number of the Week: LD50 of 1 nanogram per kilogram. Dr. Frederic Grannis writes in the ACSH website:
“While EBM [evidence-based medicine] demands empirical evidence before diagnostic or therapeutic interventions are accepted into clinical practice guidelines, this article [criticized] fails to cite any empirical evidence of low-dose radiation carcinogenesis in adults, offering only modeling based upon the controversial linear, non-threshold theory.
Even deadly poisons can have a limited or even beneficial effect at low dosage. Botulinum toxin is among the most toxic substances, with an LD50 of 1 nanogram per kilogram, i.e., 70 billionths of a gram will kill 50% of those exposed. Despite such astonishing toxicity, commercial pharmacological sales of “Botox” exceed five billion dollars annually.” [Boldface added]
So much for the EPA’s vaunted Linear No Threshold models which are used to predict massive numbers of deaths that are not occurring for PM 2.5 and other minor threats to health.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
Challenging the Orthodoxy — NIPCC
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2013
Summary: https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/CCR/CCR-II/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts
Idso, Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2014
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/climate-change-reconsidered-ii-biological-impacts/
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels
By Multiple Authors, Bezdek, Idso, Legates, and Singer eds., Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, April 2019
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/climate-change-reconsidered-ii-fossil-fuels/
Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming
The NIPCC Report on the Scientific Consensus
By Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), Nov 23, 2015
http://climatechangereconsidered.org/why-scientists-disagree-about-global-warming/
Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate
S. Fred Singer, Editor, NIPCC, 2008
http://www.sepp.org/publications/nipcc_final.pdf
Challenging the Orthodoxy – Radiation Transfer
The Role of Greenhouse Gases in Energy Transfer in the Earth’s Atmosphere
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Preprint, Mar 3, 2023
Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Preprint, December 22, 2020
Radiation Transport in Clouds
By W.A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer, Klimarealistene, Science of Climate Change, January 2025
Challenging the Orthodoxy
A Few Notes about Climate and the Greenhouse Effect
By Howard “Cork” Hayden, SEPP, July 15, 2025
http://www.sepp.org/science_papers/A%20Few%20Notes%20about%20Climate.pdf
Is climate science in crisis?
By David Whitehouse, Net Zero Watch, July 15, 2025
Link to paper: The other climate crisis
By Tiffany A. Shaw & Bjorn Stevens, Nature, March 26, 2025
Met Office report does not justify futile Net Zero policies
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, July 14, 2025
“Resilience means preparing for the impacts we can’t avoid – with serious investment in flood defenses and infrastructure. Reliability means building an energy system that works in all conditions – not one that fails when the wind doesn’t blow. And realism means accepting that Britain cannot fix global emissions through domestic sacrifice alone.”
#HaveItBothWays: Bird migration distances
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
This week we start a new series on the tendency of climate science to have it both ways. You might have noticed the pattern: a team of scientists publishes a report that says climate change is causing X. Then a while later another team publishes a report saying climate change is causing the opposite of X. That means, no matter what happens, climate activists get to say the science predicted it (and that it’s bad). But it also means the theory is not science, because it can’t be falsified through testing because it can’t be tested. If your scientific theory says a magic potion will cure baldness and also that the potion will make your hair fall out, your theory is as useless as your potion.
Low-Dose Radiation Carcinogenesis: Are CT Scans Causing 103,000 Excess Cancers Annually?
By Frederic W. Grannis, Jr., M.D, ACSH, Jul 08, 2025
While EBM [evidence-based medicine] demands empirical evidence before diagnostic or therapeutic interventions are accepted into clinical practice guidelines, this article [criticized] fails to cite any empirical evidence of low-dose radiation carcinogenesis in adults, offering only modeling based upon the controversial linear, non-threshold theory.
Even deadly poisons can have a limited or even beneficial effect at low dosage. Botulinum toxin is among the most toxic substances, with an LD50 of 1 nanogram per kilogram, i.e., 70 billionths of a gram will kill 50% of those exposed. Despite such astonishing toxicity, commercial pharmacological sales of “Botox” exceed five billion dollars annually.
Defending the Orthodoxy
Phanerozoic orbital-scale glacio-eustatic variability
By Douwe G. van der Meer, et al., Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Oct 1, 2025
4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment
In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.
By Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, July 9, 2025 [H/t John McClaughry]
This is drawn from “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.”
[SEPP Comment: Typical McKibben, glorify the favorable and ignore the failures. Humans have been harnessing the power of the sun for thousands of years, blue-green bacteria for over two billion years; yet, one persistent problem continues, it goes out every night. For an electrical grid the issue is the total cost of depending on part-time solar power, not its marginal costs when it works. The total costs include the cost of other forms of power generation, and the costs of grid failure as seen in the Iberian blackout because solar is not synchronized with the grid. It provides no inertia to smooth out hiccups that often occur. Although there have been a couple of experiments in small communities which failed, our full-time civilization requires full-time power. Part-time power doesn’t cut it.]
Out of Sync: The Infrastructure Misalignment Undermining the U.S. Grid
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, June 11, 2025
NERC has consistently highlighted the growing operational risk (Figure 7) posed by the rising reliance on gas-fired generation, especially in regions where pipeline constraints, wellhead freeze-offs, and electricity-dependent gas infrastructure can challenge deliverability during extreme weather.
Despite unprecedented federal support through the IIJA [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] and IRA [Inflation Reduction Act], the U.S. still lacks a coherent financing model for long-term grid infrastructure.
[SEPP Comment: The IRA increased financing of unreliable electricity generation, exactly what the grid does not need. This, coupled with inane state laws such as the Texas law that required natural gas production facilities to obtain electrical power from the grid, rather than self-generate power, increase the likelihood of brownouts or blackouts from otherwise minor disruptions. The author is objecting to the results of policies she has promoted.]
Removing aging dams could help strengthen communities facing extreme weather: Report
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, July 16, 2025
Link to: Barrier Removal Is a Strategy for Climate Resilience
By Sarah Null, et al., Utah State University, July 2025
Prepared for Resources Legacy Fund and American Rivers
First of Key Findings: Nature-based solutions, including removal of dams and stream barriers, help strengthen resilience to increasingly volatile weather by allowing natural processes to adjust to and recover from extreme weather events.
[SEPP Comment: Apparently the authors did not consider the China floods of 1887, 1931, 1938, and 1954. Free flowing rivers are not the solution to flooding.]
Questioning the Orthodoxy
State of the UK Climate Report 2024
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 17, 2025
The UK Met Office has just published its annual State of the UK Climate report for last year. It reads more like a political pamphlet than a scientific one.
They say the most noticeable change has been the rise in temperatures, which amounts to about a degree in the last 100 years. There are many possible reasons for this:
a) Natural recovery from Little Ice Age lows
b) Urbanization
c) Poor siting [of surface instruments]
d) Cleaner air, resulting from Clean Air Acts
e) Greenhouse gases
But taking the Met Office data at face value, a rise of one degree is much less than the official Met Office projection of a five degree rise by 2100.
In recent years, the NAO has been strongly positive, just as it was in those equally wet years in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Green Lobby’s Dishonest Crusade for Solar and Wind
By Vijay Jayaraj, Real Clear Markets, July 7, 2025
Link to paper: Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity
By Robert Idel, Energy, Nov 22, 2022
From abstract: Different electricity generating technologies are often compared using the Levelized Costs of Electricity (LCOE), which summarize different ratios of fixed to variable costs into a single cost metric. They have been criticized for ignoring the effects of intermittency and non-dispatchability. … The paper calculates LFSCOE for several technologies using data from two different markets. It then discusses some refinements, including the LFSCOE-95 metric that require each technology to supply only 95% of total demand.
A Net Zero parable: The widget factory in the village
By Dr Tilak Doshi, The Conservative Woman, UK, July 13, 2025
A village survives not on the fashion of the age, but on the reliability of the things that keep it warm, fed, and alive.
And they all lived, if not forever, at least wisely and warmly and freely, ever after.
Social Benefits of Carbon Dioxide
Percent dry weight (biomass) increase in Eastern Flowering Dogwood with 300 ppm extra CO2
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
From the CO2Science Archive:
Problems in the Orthodoxy
“China is Building the [Renewable] Future … building coal-fired power stations, … because it has to …”
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, July 14, 2025
Seeking a Common Ground
Temperature – a driver of the carbon cycle
By Joachim Dengler, Climate Etc., July 16, 2025
One purpose of this article is to explain the recent rise in concentration growth as a consequence of rising sea surface temperatures instead of a hypothetical unobserved decline in absorption by oceans or plants. While the rise in concentration growth is real, the cause is not a failure of sinks but a larger rise in temperature beyond the trend that corresponds to the CO2 level rise.
Toward a Deterministic Model of Cloud Development over Ocean Warm Pools
By Richard Willoughby, WUWT, July 17, 2025
Matthew Wielicki on CO2 isotopes
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
Science, Policy, and Evidence
Miliband’s Lower Bills Lie Continues To Unravel
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 15, 2025
As you can see, he was being economical with the truth, because it was only wholesale costs which would supposedly fall. This would be more than offset by other costs.
What Pennsylvania Can Learn From Louisiana About Energy Policy
By Elizabeth Stelle, Real Clear Energy, July 15, 2025
Models v. Observations
Moving, But Not In A Straight Line
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, July 12, 2025
Link to previous post: Testing A Constructal Climate Model
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, Oct 10, 2023
[SEPP Comment: The post gives links that promote: The Constructal Law, as applied to climate, says that natural climate systems, such as atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns, evolve and organize in a way that maximizes the efficiency of heat and energy flow on Earth. This principle emphasizes that climate systems, like other flow systems, tend to develop structures and patterns that reduce flow resistance and promote the transfer of heat and energy.]
Measurement Issues — Atmosphere
China’s success in cleaning up air pollution may have accelerated global warming: Study
By Sharon Udasin, The Hill, July 14, 2025
Link to paper: East Asian aerosol cleanup has likely contributed to the recent acceleration in global warming
By Bjørn H. Samset, et al., Nature, Communications, Earth & Environment, July 14, 2025
From abstract: We find a rapidly evolving global, annual mean warming of 0.07 ± 0.05 °C, sufficient to be a main driver of the uptick in global warming rate since 2010. We also find North-Pacific warming and a top-of-atmosphere radiative imbalance that are qualitatively consistent with recent observations. East Asian aerosol cleanup is thus likely a key contributor to recent global warming acceleration and to Pacific warming trends.
Cold-air outbreaks in the continental US: Connections with stratospheric variations
By Laurie Agel, et al., AAAS Science Advances, July 11, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
From abstract: In this study, we analyze both the upper and lower polar stratosphere for links to extreme winter cold and snow in the continental US, finding two SPV variations of interest. The first features an upper-level vortex displaced toward western Canada and linked to northwestern US severe winter weather. The second features a weakened upper-level vortex displaced toward the North Atlantic and linked to central-eastern US severe winter weather. Both variations feature lower-level stretched vortices and stratospheric wave reflection.
Changing Weather
It Was Hot In 1911 As Well, Mr Miliband!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 18, 2025
With Miliband [Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change of the United Kingdom] wanting to weaponize a few days of sunshine, with stupid claims that “our way of life is under threat”, we might care to look back at the summer of 1911!
Which Summer Has Been Hotter? 1976 or 2025? [UK]
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 17, 2025
Texas ‘economic miracle’ crashes into new reality of extreme weather
By Saul Elbein, The Hill, July 18, 2025
Driving this dynamic is, above all, a planet heated up by the uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels, which has created a hotter, thirstier atmosphere that sucks moisture from the land, and increasingly replaces soaking rains — which replenish soil and aquifers — with torrential storms that run right off them.
The state’s towns and cities, [Rice Environmental Law Professor] Collins said, should think about water not in terms of something to be mined and ultimately depleted — like copper or oil — but in terms of a shifting, balanced portfolio of supplies.
The gold standard for this approach, he argued, is the city of San Antonio, which combines aquifer pumping, underground storage, desalination and the state’s largest recycling program.
[SEPP Comment: San Antonio has a practical solution to a constant problem in a semi-arid region. The climate commentary is nonsense.]
Send more ghouls
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
Link to: Climate Change Indicators: Heavy Precipitation
This indicator tracks the frequency of heavy precipitation events in the United States.
Figure 1. Extreme One-Day Precipitation Events in the Contiguous 48 States, 1910–2023
By Staff, EPA, June 2025
From Robson: (For some reason the independent minds at “Scientific Alarmism” also interviewed… Daniel Swain.) But there is a problem with the EPA item the Times cited Swain citing, apart from the lack of connection to floods. It’s that the EPA chart actually shows a flatline from 1910 to 1990, then a jump upward to another flatline. Almost as if better measurement were creating an artefact. As a matter of fact, if you started in 1995, after the jump, you’d think there was a downward trend, and quite a sharp one since [2007, 2017].
Changing Seas
Climate Oscillations 8: The NPI and PDO
By Andy May, WUWT, July 13, 2025
The North Pacific Index (NPI) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
Climate Oscillations 9: Arctic & North Atlantic Oscillations
By Andy May, WUWT, July 18, 2025
New Study: The North Atlantic Has Not Been Cooperating With The Global Warming Narrative
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, July 18, 2025
Link to paper: Decadal Swing in NAO Variability and Summertime Heat Extremes in South Korea Over Recent Decades
By Jung-Hee Ryu & Song-Lak Kang, Weather and Climate Extremes, July 10, 2025
From abstract: To understand this decadal variation despite ongoing global warming, we examined the link between heatwaves in South Korea and decadal shifts in North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) variability. Planetary-scale waves originating from Greenland in response to the NAO influence atmospheric circulation across Europe, Northeast Asia (including the Korean Peninsula), and North America, primarily on interannual scales. Specifically, positive NAO phases enhance anticyclonic circulations over the Korean Peninsula, increasing surface temperatures and heatwave frequency.
New Study: Africa’s Atlantic Coast Sea Levels Were Still 1 Meter Higher Than Today 2000 Years Ago
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, July 14, 2025
Link to paper: Sea level since the Last Glacial Maximum from the Atlantic coast of Africa
By Matteo Vacchi, et al., Nature Communications, Feb 10, 2025
Monster Nature 8x faster: The sea near Africa rose 10 to 25mm a year in huge meltwater pulses 12,000 years ago
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, July 18, 2025
Changing Earth
The Impact of 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (Hunga) Eruption on Stratospheric Circulation and Climate
By Simchan Yook, Susan Solomon, & Xinyue Wang, JGR Atmospheres, Mar 17, 2025 [H/t Gordon Fulks]
Lowering Standards
The Met Office–Where Science Went To Die
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 13, 2025
The Met Office continues to use junk sites, which may be overstating true temperatures by as much as five degrees, for climate propaganda purposes.
Both Cardiff and Ross are Class 5s, totally unsuitable for climatological work.
Simple FOI Requests for Data Said to Back Non-existent Temperature Stations Refused on “Vexatious” Grounds by UK Met Office
By Chris Morrison, The Daily Sceptic, July 14, 2025
A comment by Homewood: With the Met Office now no more than a propaganda outfit for Net Zero, why should they be bothered about actual data?
Up Is Down, And Renewables Are Cheaper–It’s Jackanory Time At The BBC
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 18, 2025
It’s official! Renewable energy is definitely cheaper than fossil fuels and the tens of billions we pay out to subsidies reduce your electricity bills!
It must be true – the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit says so!
Ray Sanders On The Corbett Report
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 16, 2025
Links to video: The Met Office is Scared of Ray Sanders
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Yellow (Green) Journalism?
Soar point
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
Yahoo! News passed on a piece from The Independent comparing Britain’s current heatwave to the “record-breaking summer of 1976” the gist of which was that this one is less severe than the one 50 years ago before there was climate change, and that the latter was “the hottest in over 350 years and the driest in 200.” How they knew what it was like in 1625 was not explained.
Scorch watch
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
If we made a drinking game based on media using the word “scorch” to describe warm weather we’d be under the table by now. Or under the weather. For instance, DW.com’s “Europe: Scorching heat grips the continent”. And “vast swathes of Europe continue to reel under scorching summer temperatures”.
Especially with “The numbers don’t lie – our planet’s oceans are scorching hot.” You literally cannot scorch water.
Something is charred and disintegrating. But it’s your reputations.
Yellow Warnings Out!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 17, 2025
They think we are children who can be scared about the bogeyman in the cupboard!
Communicating Better to the Public – Exaggerate, or be Vague?
Future Energy Scenarios 2025
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 16, 2025
It’s time for this year’s FES, which is the same fanciful nonsense as usual:
Communicating Better to the Public – Do a Poll?
Turns Out Americans Really Don’t Care About Climate Change After All
By Nicole Silverio, Daily Caller, July 10, 2025
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda
Misattribution science
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
Link to paper: People were wrecking the climate 140 years ago — we just lacked the tech to spot it
Models suggest that human-caused global warming would have been detectable in the nineteenth century with today’s know-how.
By Davide Castelvecchi, Nature, June 16, 2025
From Robson: 1.3 degrees. So on a day when the mercury reached 33°C, the number of deaths tripled compared to if it had only reached 31.7°C. Got it.
[SEPP Comment: We need to return to the Little Ice Age when people died of famine and strange deceases because crops did not ripen?]
Pinchbeck’s Soviet solution
By Andrew Montford, Net Zero Watch, July 15, 2025
In some ways I pity Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, who, on the latest edition of their “The Rest is Politics” podcast, have put themselves through an hour of Net Zero word soup from the new Climate Change Committee CEO Emma Pinchbeck.
Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda on Children
Gen Z Is Getting Realistic About Energy
By Sam Raus, Real Clear Energy, July 16, 2025
The kids are growing out of their Greta Thunberg era.
Questioning European Green
Dissonance In The Green Valhalla: German Workers Break The Climate Silence
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, July 14,, 2025 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
These aren’t populists or corporate shills. These are works councils, long considered integrated into Germany’s consensus-driven labor model. By issuing a public letter, they’re committing open defiance. They’re aiming straight at the Green Deal—the administrative metastasis that has paralyzed Europe’s economic lifeblood.
Most Energy Predictions Are Wrong – Not This One
Most energy predictions are wrong. Here’s one you can count on.
By Gary Abernathy, Real Clear Energy, July 17, 2025
Net Zero Watch: Clean Power 2030 projects risk becoming stranded assets
Press Release, Net Zero Watch, July 17, 2025
“But the real problem with renewables is not political risk but nature itself: the fundamentals of physics and economics, which make wind and solar inherently uneconomic. The industry has been constructed on subsidy, not on market fundamentals. After decades of windfarm handouts, consumers can no longer afford to foot the bill. Politicians can’t override physics or economics – no matter how much they subsidise failure.”
“Absurd And RIDICULOUS!” Critics Slam £800 Billion Net Zero Plan Due To Climate Warnings
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 15, 2025
Links to video questioning: “Extreme weather is now UK’s new normal.]
Ed Miliband to unleash new gas plants to back up patchy wind and solar
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 16, 2025
Green Jobs
Why Republicans voted for the megabill despite threats to local green jobs
By Rachel Frazin and Julia Mueller, The Hill, July 17, 2025
Link to report: Businesses Cancel $1.4 Billion In New Factories, Energy Projects in May as Congress Pushes Forward on Tax Increases
By Staff, E2, June 23, 2025
E2, a group that supports and tracks low-carbon energy jobs, found that through the end of May, some $15.5 billion in investments in climate friendly projects had already been canceled, amounting to 12,000 jobs lost.
[SEPP Comment: Does E2 consider energy jobs that require continued taxpayer subsidies as sustainable, and energy jobs that don’t require taxpayer subsidies as unsustainable?]
China won’t be buying our Green Steel unless we are the suckers who buy it back off them as *Green* fridges or cars.
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, July 15, 2025
The only market for Green Steel in China is the one we make, sorry, we fake here at home, with government decrees, forced carbon markets, subsidies, and Soviet rules.
Funding Issues
More Evidence of a Global Offshore Wind Project Collapse
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, July 18, 2025
Link to: Inflation Reduction Act set to allocate billions to Australia’s energy sector
By Staff, Innovation News Network, June 24, 2023
From 2023 news report: Australian mining and energy companies are set to access billions of dollars in funding as part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – this could significantly contribute to the clean energy transition.
This allowance follows deals to grant special status to the country’s defense manufacturing and critical minerals industries under the IRA.
The plans were announced at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, where Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met up with Biden. The summit welcomed members of leading industrial economies to discuss Chinese economic coercion and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Australia is set to become a domestic source for critical sectors
Biden explained that under the Inflation Reduction Act, Australia would become a domestic powerhouse for sectors deemed critical, such as defense, critical minerals, and clean energy.
Global Warming
Forget Climate Spending, Buy Air Conditioners Instead
I & I Editorial Board, July 18, 2025
Link to: Annual finance for climate action surpasses USD 1 trillion, but far from levels needed to avoid devastating future losses
By Staff, Climate Policy Initiative, Nov 2, 2023
House Republicans pitch 23 percent cut to EPA
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, July 15, 2025
PPL, Blackstone Launch Major Gas-Fired Generation Venture Targeting Data Center Surge in Pennsylvania
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, July 17, 2025
The Political Games Continue
Democrat Senator claims fossil fuel industry is undercutting weather forecasting
By Ian Hanchett, Via David Middleton, WUWT, July 13, 2025
“In July 2016, two months after the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands sent a subpoena demanding private internal research records, communications, and donor information to libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Whitehouse led a group of 19 U.S. Senate Democrats in a two-day series of floor speeches denouncing CEI and many other free-market think tanks, with Whitehouse saying the research organizations were part of a ‘filthy thing in our democracy.’”
Litigation Issues
EXPOSED: From Climategate to Courtroom – How Climate Activists Tip the Scales of Justice
By Anthony Watts, WUWT, July 18, 2025
Link to: Climate Judiciary Project
By Staff, Environmental Law Institute, (ELI) Accessed July 18, 2025
Link to article: Unearthed chat sheds light on cozy ties between judges, climate activists, raising ethical concerns
Sen. Cruz condemns environmental group’s efforts as ‘judicial capture’ to undermine American energy dominance
By Emma Colton, Breanne Deppisch, Fox News, July 17, 2025
From the website on Judicial Education Program: Judges play an essential role in democracy and rule of law on environmental and related justice matters. Since 1990, ELI has provided training and resources on environmental law to more than 3000 judges across 28 countries.
From Watts: The secretive networking exposed by Fox News is not an isolated slip-up; it’s a feature, not a bug, of the activist playbook. When the same group of climate partisans can train the judges, coordinate the lawsuits, and then claim neutrality all the while, we have gone far beyond the realm of legitimate policy debate. This is judicial capture by stealth.
Judge rules against climate case, but makes prophecies about weather and science, in shameless advert for The Blob
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, July 17, 2025
“The Australian government has no duty of care over the people or the islands of the Torres Strait with regard to climate change, even though there is a “real risk” the land could disappear entirely, the Federal Court of Australia has found.
I’ve accepted the scientific evidence … concerning the devastating impacts that human-induced climate change has had, and continues to have, on the Torres Strait Islands and on the traditional inhabitants … their culture and way of life,” Justice Wigney said.
Their case is being supported by the Grata Fund, an Australian “strategic litigation funder” and the Urgenda Foundation, a Dutch group that uses lawfare to “help” the renewables transition.
20 states sue Trump administration over disaster prevention funding
By Ella Lee, The Hill, July 16, 2025
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, contends that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) unlawfully eliminated its Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities (BRIC) program earlier this year, stepping on Congress’s powers.
Subsidies and Mandates Forever
Making PJM all wind and solar would cost over $2.4 trillion in battery backup
By David Wojick, CFACT, July 12, 2025
That battery backup cannot make wind and solar powered grids possible is obvious given these incredible numbers. The electric power industry must know this, but their silence is deafening.
[SEPP Comment: Perhaps the industry is using a strategy similar to General Westmoreland used on President Johnson on Vietnam: Yes Sir, I can do that just send me more troops; or in this case, more money?]
Sunnova’s Enronish Ending
By Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, July 16, 2025
“Weeks after the gathering, Sunnova warned that it may not be able to operate as a going concern. By June, the company had filed for chapter 11, leaving its 175 dealers collectively owed around $347 million.”
Pumping the Brakes on Alternative Energy
Guaranteeing reliable energy is crucial. Ending subsidies, credits for ‘alternatives’ is just as important.
By Gary Abernathy, Real Clear Energy, July 16, 2025
EPA and other Regulators on the March
NASA drops plans to publish scrubbed climate change report on its site
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, July 15, 2025
In a reversal, NASA no longer plans to publish a major climate report whose previous website was scrubbed by the Trump administration.
The report in question, known as the National Climate Assessment, was previously housed on globalchange.gov.
After the LA Wildfires: Lithium Batteries, Ash, and a Messy Rebuild
By Susan Goldhaber, MPH, ACSH, July 14, 2025
In my previous article, I described how the EPA was responsible for the first phase of the cleanup, which involved removing hazardous waste, and the US Army Corps of Engineers is currently carrying out the second phase, debris removal.
I previously wrote that the removal of hazardous waste would be a central test demonstrating that the EPA can produce tangible, timely results. The EPA appears to have met this test.
President Trump’s Executive Order called for the EPA to “expedite the bulk removal of contaminated and general debris” from the areas affected by the Los Angeles fires, interpreted to mean that the initial cleanup of hazardous waste had to be completed by February 25th. On February 26th, the EPA announced that it had completed its Phase 1 removal of hazardous waste in record time, under 30 days.
EPA to nix Office of Research and Development, firing some staffers
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, July 18, 2025
Energy Issues – Non-US
Kathryn Porter On The Spanish Blackouts
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 18, 2025
Link to Report: Blackout in Spanish Peninsular Electrical System the 28th of April 2025
By System Operator Division Red Electrica, June 18, 2025
Link to analysis of report: Voltage, inertia and the Iberian blackout part 2: faulty PV inverter crashed the grid
By Kathryn Porter, Watt-Logic, July 17, 2025
One billion Africans being harmed by cooking pollution
By Nathalie Alonso, Paris (AFP) July 18, 2025
Alternative solutions are well known: electricity from solar panels, renewable gas and especially liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a fossil fuel, which, while not ideal, is preferable than the loss of carbon sinks due to tree felling, [IEA head] Birol said.
[SEPP Comment: Why not a diesel or LPG generator to provide electricity for cooking and light at night?]
£80 Billion Needed For Grid Upgrades In Next Five Years
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 13, 2025
OFGEM have just announced the first tranche of investment in Britain’s grid upgrades needed to hit 2030 renewable targets.
In true Orwellian double speak, OFGEM’s Jonathan Brearley tells us that spending £100 billion of your money will make you better off!
Energy Issues — US
“Oil/gas professionals are NOT energy transition experts”… Really?
By David Middleton, WUWT, July 15, 2025
[SEPP Comment: What the US needs is energy producers, not energy transition promoters.]
Summer heat is no joke. Neither is grid reliability
By Staff, The Empowerment Alliance, July 14, 2025
First U.S. Rare Earth Mine In 70 Years Opens In Wyoming
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was in Ranchester, Wyoming, on Friday for the ribbon cutting to open the first U.S. rare earth mine in 70 years. He said the Brook Mine and Wyoming are critical to breaking China’s stranglehold on rare earth processing.
By David Madison, Cowboy State Daily, July 11, 2025
Google Signs Deal with Brookfield for 3 GW of Hydropower Capacity
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, July 15, 2025
Google and Brookfield said the initial focus of the deal would be in the PJM Interconnection and Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regions, with the contracts expected to bring more than $3 billion in revenue.
[SEPP Comment: Will Google and Brookfield later pull the power from the grid, when they no longer need the grid?]
Powering Progress: Why American Energy Must Meet the AI Moment
By Ann Bluntzer Pullin, Real Clear Energy, July 11, 2025
Virginia green energy mandates—an ‘impending train wreck’
By Kevin Mooney, CFACT, July 13, 2025
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican incumbent in Virginia, warns that the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) will drastically raise utility rates due to its overreliance on “green energy.”
Stephen D. Haner, a senior fellow for environment and energy policy at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, expects an almost 50% increase for Virginia ratepayers within the next two years. Haner bases this forecast on an analysis of the rate increase applications Dominion Energy—the Virginia public utility—submitted earlier this year to the State Corporation Commission, the regulatory authority overseeing utilities.
Washington’s Control of Energy
Trump exempts more than 100 polluters from environmental standards
By Rachel Frazin, The Hill, July 17, 2025
The Trump administration is exempting dozens of chemical manufacturers, oil refineries, coal plants, medical device sterilizers and other polluters from Clean Air Act rules.
On Thursday, the White House announced it would exempt more than 100 plants from pollution limits established by the Biden administration.
[SEPP Comment: Did the Biden administration use any dose-response studies to establish its standards?]
Trump Announces Massive Investments To Steer America Closer To Energy, Tech Dominance
By Audrey Streb, Daily Caller, July 15, 2025
The Solution to America’s Energy Security Lives in Canada
How Trump can cut Beijing’s stranglehold on our critical minerals
By Michael Yurkovich, Real Clear Energy, July 17, 2025
Oil and Natural Gas – the Future or the Past?
Natural Gas Is America’s Strategic Advantage Fueling the AI Race
By Karen Harbert, Real Clear Energy, July 15, 2025
Return of King Coal?
Eaton, TVA Turning Retired Bull Run Coal Plant into Critical Grid Asset
Press release by Eaton, Via Power Mag, June 25, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Reliable coal-fired power generation is good as long as it supports unreliable wind and solar? Coal-fired power plants cannot react quickly.]
Nuclear Energy and Fears
The Fusion Race Heats Up
By Duggan Flanakin, Real Clear Energy, July 14, 2025
Google Signs Deal to Buy Fusion Energy from Future Virginia Plant
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, June 30, 2025
[SEPP Comment: Another “feel good” press release? No estimate of timeline or costs given.]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Solar and Wind
Too Much = Too Little
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 13, 2025
At 12.50, solar peaked at 13.5GW, supplying nearly half of Britain’s power. Twelve hours later, of course, there would have been blackouts without the 10GW supplied by CCGT plants.
How Decreasing Inertia Is Affecting Power Grids and What to Do About It
By Aaron Larson, Power Mag, June 11, 2025
People in the power industry understand inertia and its importance to grid stability. As large thermal power plants and other inertia-providing units are replaced with renewable resources that provide no inertia, grid stability is at risk. Cost-effective solutions are available today, however, to maintain and even enhance grid operations.
[SEPP Comment: Such “cost effective solutions” are not needed for reliable electricity generation, only unreliable generation. The unstated assumption is that an energy transition to unreliable wind and solar is desirable, but is it?]
Telegraph Discovers Wind Farms Don’t Work When The Wind Does Not Blow!
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 13, 2025
‘Is that what net zero should be about?’ Farmland falls to solar gold-rush
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 14, 2025
A Transformative Dawn: South Fork Wind Leads America’s Offshore Reboot
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, July 1, 2025
Winning POWER’s highest honor, South Fork Wind—the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in U.S. federal waters—stands as a beacon for the power sector’s ambition to forge new industries in the face of adversity.
Winning Attributes include: 132 MW of capacity under a 20-year power purchase agreement with the Long Island Power Authority; achieved a 56% capacity factor in its first winter – matching baseload reliability.
[SEPP Comment: Power Mag’s Power Plant of the Year. Simply because it matched baseload reliability, it does not mean that it is useful for baseload or is reliable for part-time load such as peaking plants. Part-time power for a full-time civilization! A leech on reliable, affordable power!]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Energy — Storage
Missouri Utility Plans New 800-MW Gas-Fired Plant, Will Include Energy Storage
By Darrell Proctor, Power Mag, July 5, 2025
The planned 400-MW battery storage is a fast-acting asset, ready in moments to support customers’ energy needs. Fully charged, the entire array could power thousands of homes for hours and help overall grid reliability, especially during times of peak energy needs.” Ameren Missouri recently announced it would accelerate the utililty’s battery energy storage capacity, with a total of 1,000 MW planned by 2030, and a total of 1,800 MW by 2042.
[SEPP Comment: How many MWh?]
Alternative, Green (“Clean”) Vehicles
PSC Greenlights Georgia Power Plan to Expand Coal, Gas, Nuclear, and Grid Infrastructure
By Sonal Patel, Power Mag, July 17, 2025
Major strategic transmission projects, particularly those aimed at supporting load shifts from South to North Georgia and enhancing grid reliability, will also receive ongoing support and oversight.
That demand is “largely driven by the anticipated growth from only one customer class for which there is a lack of historic information,” the agreement notes, referring to the utility’s 22.8-GW pipeline of commercial and industrial projects outlined in its IRP. Georgia Power cited around-the-clock energy use from new large loads—including Hyundai’s EV Metaplant and the SK Battery facility—as key drivers behind a 7% annual load growth rate through 2031.
[SEPP Comment: EV and battery plants need reliable electricity. Is it a surprise?]
Govt To Subsidize EVs Again
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 15, 2025
Yet more taxpayer money to be thrown at the cars nobody wants to buy!
Leasing Giant Blames Massive Losses On Used EV Prices
By Paul Homewood, Not a Lot of People Know That, July 18, 2025
California Dreaming
The Grand Bargain of Desalination
By Edward Ring, National Review, July 15, 2025
The dream of hyper-abundant water can come true, soon.
[SEPP Comment: Another realistic possibility that the government will squash. Adding salt water with a higher concentration of salt to the ocean will pollute it.]
Newsom: Clean energy fuels two-thirds of California power grid
By Elizabeth Crisp, The Hill, July 14, 2025
Link to press release: In historic first, California powered by two-thirds clean energy – becoming largest economy in the world to achieve milestone
Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, July 14, 2025
Link to data: Estimated Annual Clean Energy
By Staff, California Energy Commission, Accessed July 16, 2025
What you need to know: Clean energy reliably powered California to levels never seen before – 67% in 2023 – as renewable energy and clean resources continue to advance the state’s world-leading energy transition while fueling the nation’s largest clean energy workforce, more than a half-million strong
[SEPP Comment: According to the data, “non-renewable” Large Hydro provided 28,175 GWh (12% of the 67%), Nuclear 26,538 GWh (12%). Both sources are opposed by California entities. Except for isolated Hawaii, California has the highest consumer electricity prices in the nation.]
White Lies, Damn Lies, and California Lies
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, July 16, 2025
And why isn’t large hydro counted as renewable?
Because if they counted large hydro, on day one of the renewable mandates, we’d already have surpassed the required percentage of electricity sales coming from renewables.
[SEPP Comment: See links immediately above.]
California continues to devastate its economy for a net-zero dream world
By Ronald Stein and Michael Mische, America Outloud News, July 14, 2025
One Way to Avoid Gasoline Lines in 2026
By Edward Ring, What’s Current, Accessed July 16, 2025
Californians pay the highest prices in the nation for almost everything that is essential to household prosperity – gasoline, electricity, and homes. While there are environmental motivations for some of these premiums imposed by state regulations, many do not take into account new technologies or the disastrous impact they can have on working families. Perhaps California’s unique gasoline reformulation requirement is something for which the need has come and gone.
Health, Energy, and Climate
Weaponizing Lawsuits: RFK Jr. Targets Vaccines
By Barbara Pfeffer Billauer, ACSH, Jul7 10, 2025
Sec. Kennedy’s latest maneuver seeks to expand vaccine injury lawsuits, echoing a precarious time in U.S. history when litigation nearly shut down vaccine production, creating dangerous shortages. Behind his lofty rhetoric lies a legal strategy that could enrich lawyers, endanger public health, inflame misinformation rhetoric, and possibly benefit the Secretary himself.
Other Scientific News
Skimming the Sun, probe sheds light on space weather threats
By Issam Ahmed, Washington (AFP) July 16, 2025
Other News that May Be of Interest
Learning With The Dumbest Genius Librarian
By Willis Eschenbach, WUWT, July 14, 2025
I wrote about using perplexity.ai before.
[SEPP Comment: Long post.]
Underappreciated threat of nanoplastic pollution revealed in Atlantic Ocean study
By Robert Schreiber, Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jul 14, 2025
Link to paper: Nanoplastic concentrations across the North Atlantic
By Sophie ten Hietbrink, et al., Nature, July 9, 2025
From article: The team sampled seawater at 12 locations along a transect from the European continental shelf to the North Atlantic subtropical gyre. Sampling occurred at depths of 10 m, 1,000 m, and 30 m above the seabed to examine both vertical and horizontal nanoplastic distribution.
Lead author Dr Dusan Materic and colleagues used a thermal desorption proton transfer reaction mass spectrometer (TD-PTR-MS) to detect nanoplastics. This method combusts particles to release identifiable trace gases, enabling accurate measurement of plastic types and concentrations based on their chemical fingerprints.
UN’s ‘plastics treaty’ sports a junk science wrapper
By Craig Rucker, CFACT, July 15, 2025
The real tragedy isn’t plastic itself, but the mismanagement of plastic waste—and the regulatory stranglehold that blocks better solutions. In many countries, recycling is a government-run monopoly with little incentive to innovate. Meanwhile, private-sector entrepreneurs working on advanced recycling, biodegradable materials, and AI-powered sorting systems face burdensome red tape and market distortion.
BELOW THE BOTTOM LINE
Microsoft wants to use human poop to lower its vast carbon footprint
By Isabel Keane, Independent, July 17, 2025
Lost for 11 days in the wilderness: she almost died because she didn’t know the winter sun was far to the north [in Australia]
By Jo Nova, Her Blog, July 16, 2025
Despite the media frenzy here, no one seems to have noticed that the lost tourist, [26-year-old] Carolina Wilga, was walking for 11 days in the wrong direction. She said she “followed” the sun, and thought she was going west, but she was actually going north-west, away from help.
Climate Jihadi Allegedly Skyjacks Plane After Declaring Global Warming Will Turn ‘Earth Into Venus’
By Audrey Streb, Daily Caller, July 17, 2025
Joker And Midnight Toker
By Tony Heller, His Blog, July 17, 2025
Oh No – We Might Need a 3ft Sea Wall to Stop the Doomsday Glacier from Wrecking Cities
By Eric Worrall, WUWT, July 16, 2025
Net zero fun
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
There’s a very Canadian joke about going to a fight and having a hockey game break out. But these days go to a soccer game and a climate conference breaks out. It’s not the same.
Tidbits
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 16, 2025
From the “nothing to see here, folks” file, Bloomberg emails “Climate leaders to watch” and profiles four people you never heard of and we dare say never will, including a “top methane diplomat”. Oh no. Wait. That’s the next item and he died. But you never heard of him or that job in which he allegedly played a pivotal role in something else you never heard of.
ARTICLES
1. Al Gore Helped the U.S. Surpass Europe
Americans didn’t buy into his economy-destroying climate-change nonsense.
By Andy Kessler, WSJ, July 13, 2025
TWTW Summary: The article begins with:
In the spirit of Bastille Day on July 14, it’s a good time to ask: What’s wrong with Europe? In 1790, France’s Marquis de Lafayette gave George Washington the key to the Bastille prison—still displayed at Mt. Vernon—symbolizing a ‘token of victory by Liberty over Despotism.’ Europe needs the key back.
In 2008, the U.S. and Eurozone economies were about the same size. Since 2010, Europe’s per capita gross domestic product has basically flatlined. Today, the U.S. nominal GDP per capita is almost twice as large as Europe’s. Why? Recently, this paper ran side-by-side headlines: ‘EU Moves to Extend Climate Goals’ and ‘Eurozone Joblessness Reached 6.3% in May.’ (It’s 4.1% in the U.S.) As the Romans used to say: Causae et effectus.
I never thought I’d write these words, but Al Gore is responsible for America’s success in leaving Europe in our dust. He spewed climate-change rhetoric based on flawed models, and Europeans believed him. The German Renewable Energy Sources Act pushed solar panels in not-always-sunny Düsseldorf and elsewhere. High-cost renewables are 55% of the Germans’ energy generation—a burdensome tax on citizens. And Russian natural gas is their backup strategy!
Spain (56% renewables) has so much wind and solar power that fluctuations caused a massive blackout in April, taking parts of Portugal down with it. Central planning kills. The U.S. uses 21% renewables.
Jay Clayton, the first Trump administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, told me that when he met with European central bankers, ‘they often only wanted to talk about one thing, reducing carbon emissions.’ One way to do that is to limit economic growth. Mission accomplished. They should have been encouraging a digital economy instead.
After giving other examples, the article concludes with:
“It gets worse. European North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries have promised the Trump administration they’ll spend 5% of GDP on defense. Will the money come out of welfare state spending? Doubtful. It’s more likely to come from higher taxes, stealing more capital away from entrepreneurs. The Trump administration announced Saturday that 30% EU tariffs begin Aug. 1. Let’s also add Europe’s dysfunctional immigration policy led by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the recipe for flatlining.
Despite self-inflicted wounds like last week’s copper tariffs and our on-again, off-again going goo-goo for greens, the U.S. is a relative free-market paradise. Whatever the Europeans did on their road to stagnation, let’s make sure we don’t. The ingredients include large government, socialized medicine, limited-hour workforce, anti-innovation Luddite policies, rabid regulatory mandarins, unaccountable plutocrats and antirisk capital markets controlled by large banks.
Shedding central planning’s jackboot works. Ask Poland, which instituted market reforms and a digital focus. Its nominal GDP per capita has grown approximately eightfold since the last Soviet troops left in 1993. It is Europe’s sixth-largest country by GDP and the EU’s fastest-growing large country.
In April, in a discussion about currencies, Larry Summers said, ‘Europe’s a museum in some ways, Japan’s a nursing home, China’s a jail and Bitcoin’s an experiment.’ Sadly, I think Europe is the jail—at least its economy is stuck in a Bastille-like prison, ruled by climate despotism. Where is the key to unlock Europe’s economy?”
TWTW Comment: The article fails to note that before the UK withdrew from the EU on January 31, 2020, the EU GDP was $15.8T (US$) in 2019, it was $15.5T in 2020 and $17.5T in 2021. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/euu/european-union/gdp-gross-domestic-product
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July 21, 2025 at 04:04AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 