The prediction that wind and solar assets will become “stranded” is fundamentally different, and fundamentally sounder, than the comparable prediction for fossil fuel assets. That is because wind and solar generators are entirely a creation of taxpayer subsidies. Without the subsidies they are uneconomic, and they will be worthless the minute the subsidies are withdrawn.
via Watts Up With That?
July 19, 2025 at 12:07PM
H/T Mark Krebs, who commented: This 5-minute by the great John Stossel packs a punch. Like me, he’s a recovering environmentalist who is still a conservationist but has become sick and tired of the manner in which huge elitist tax-exempt NGOs have used the cause to empower and enrich themselves.
For those who prefer reading, below in italics is the transcript from closed captions with my bolds and added images.
Climate change. We are seeing the impacts more and more each day.
So, what are you doing about it? Our future is on the line.
You can help save the world, say these environmental groups, just donate!The first thing that comes up on their websites is donate. Donate.
Why is it so important to donate to this fundraiser for Greenpeace?
Because it’s too hot, because it’s too cold, because it rains, because it doesn’t.
So, give us money. Money.
Your gift will help NRDC come to the defense of polar bears.
To get more money they lie. They are facing extinction in this century.
They say polar bears are disappearing. They aren’t.
They claim bees are dying off. Greenpeace set itself a challenge to put a stop to the deaths of thousands of bees. But bees are doing fine.
Environmental groups claim nuclear energy is dirty and dangerous, when it’s better than alternatives.
They call climate change an existential threat. It’s a problem, but not existential. These scares drive donations.
Science writer Jon Entine.
They always feel that the only way they can talk about environmental issues is to frame it with hysteria, crisis. But they’re not trying to trick people. They believe it.
Sometimes they believe it. But they also recognize that hysteria generates donations and the oxygen for these organizations is money donated by people who think they’re doing good.
So, you give billions to these groups. Insufficient attention has been made to following the money.
Physicist Mark Mills.
The environmental industrial complex actually has more money in the PR game, in the lobbying game, than the real industry. The media portray the activists as plucky underdogs, the little guy. But they’re not.
Greenpeace pulls in more than $400 million a year and they want more.
Our fundraisers are doing street or door fundraising. They pay young people to accost you.
Even if it’s only two or three people each day, knowing that they’re gonna be giving to Greenpeace for a hell of a long time.
Some of your millions in donations to the World Wildlife Fund help pay for its 250,000 sq foot headquarters with, as they proudly put it, a “stunning eight-story, sky-lit atrium.” They call this, “wise use of donated funds.” Support WWF’s global conservation work. That’s just 40 cents a day.
The Natural Resources Defense Council spends some of your millions on galas with fashion brands and celebrities, who also make ads for them. This is our moment! Give to the Sierra Club and you can attend their lavish ball here.
The so-called environmentalists are now the big guys, rolling in money. It’s bad enough that they lie to us and get paid. Worse is the damage they do. They block progress. They have billions of dollars to not build a thing, but just to oppose building things.
There’s a rich sense of irony there. Irony because while they say they’ll save the bees. Ultimately that donation goes to a lawyer suing someone, preventing you from using gasoline.
Some of your money does go to people cleaning parks or rivers, but groups like the NRDC and Sierra Club spend millions more on lawsuits.
In the past year our legal team has stopped thousands of miles of fossil fuel pipelines and dozens of large power plants.
We have the Sierra Club active in every state, actively suing. A natural gas pipeline that was supposed to span 3 states has been cancelled. Environmentalists sued to stop it.
They sue to stop nuclear power. They even oppose solar projects and wind farms.
It’s that apparatus that’s keeping us from building.
It used to be NIMBY, not in my backyard. Now it’s BANANA.
Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.
And unfortunately, what that means is we don’t get the lifestyle that we want.
If you wanted to build a new house, for example, what kind of permits do you have to get?
Who do you have to talk to? Is the Sierra Club gonna sue you for building the wrong thing?
I’m ashamed that I once fell for their scams. Years ago my TV station ran ads promoting my alarmist environmental reporting. Now I realize that what today’s big environmental groups mostly do is stop progress and make lawyers richer.
We invited the groups to come here and explain to me why I’m wrong. Defend your work.
Not one would agree.
I still want to ask them how they justify making it so hard for people to build anything.
It’s a shame because really when I think about what America could be, what we could be building, we could be so prosperous, so much more prosperous than we are.
via Science Matters
July 19, 2025 at 10:14AM
There has been a “marked cooling trend” across the North Atlantic in recent decades (Ryu and Kang, 2025).
via Watts Up With That?
July 19, 2025 at 08:03AM
In my previous report on Whitesands I posed the question “What are the Met Office’s real motives?” Further information is now available that I feel provides the answers.
When I originally reviewed Whitesands there were no recorded temperature readings for the site nor any up to date Google StreetView images, both of which are now available. These are very enlightening.
Firstly the observations record. This site is yet again an amateur site that has been accepted into the Met Office Climate Reporting Network and is recorded as below:
As an amatur/personal/enthusiast/whatever “other” type site in its first year of observations, it would be expected to have a keenly well kept record – it most certainly does not. Starting from the 12th May 2024 there should have been 233 daily readings for 2024 but, in reality, only 163 attempts were actually made. That is very poor indeed but it then gets worse, of those recorded 163 attempts a further 29 failed to secure adequate readings to form a daily average. So barely over half of the readings required were actually taken – if it starts this bad it is only likely to worsen. This is a typical extract from the file with columns I and J being maximum and minimum temperature readings. Also worth noting the frequent gaps in the date column.
If the effort of taking readings is so “hit and miss” what confidence can be given to the accuracy of those actually taken?
Whilst observational frequency can be improved what about the actual siting now that it can be viewed in detail? Imagine you are a highly trained and qualified meteorologist such as a Met Office employee. You are fully aware of all the siting requirements for a reliable weather station. Even ignoring the WMO requirements, (jointly established with the International Standards Organisation) you will definitely know your own organisation’s requirements.
So how does this work? The screen is on the corner of a roadway where slow moving vehicles (such as motorhomes or SUV’s towing caravans et alia) are moving around the corner and tripping the PRT into a reading spike.
But that is only the part of the story, remember the Met Office directive above? “No trees” is very specific so why plant them right in front of the screen? The image is from November 2024 and those swirly plastic covers known as “tree guards” are to protect the newly planted saplings from animals. Just like Culzean Castle and many others, hedging just centimetres from the screen has been planted. This hedge is to the northern plus eastern and seaward elevation of the screen which will shield it from cooling offshore nighttime breezes but retain daytime warmer onshore breezes to ultimately over record – almost by intent? Was this all invisible to the Met Office inspectors? Did they not know about the requirements?
A new 2024 site installed alongside a fence , where slow moving motorised vehicles will pass within 3.5 metres, in an unrepresentative area and has just had hedging planted under 1.5 metres away is supposed to meet acceptable standards. This appears to be a deliberate attempt to produce artificially elevated readings both now and ever increasingly in the future.
So going back to the motives, why are the Met Office withholding the details of all those
“well correlated” sites they claim are being used to compile “climate averages” data for long closed sites? A disinterested party might suggest from impartial evidence presented to them that…….the Met Office are using data of dubious accuracy from recently installed very low grade sites with known artificially elevated readings to produce evidence on temperature increases over time.
I again challenge any meteorologist to defend the assertion of many that the Met Office’s actions in deploying such poor sites even now (and they will continue to do so) and to prove wrong that these are intended to be used to corrupt the ongoing historic climate record.
This, the reality:
Versus this, the public portrayal:
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
July 19, 2025 at 05:08AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 