Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will be in Indianapolis today (29 July 2025) to announce major climate regulation changes…so, stay tuned!
via Roy Spencer, PhD.
July 29, 2025 at 05:44AM
Category: Daily News
A boom in artificial intelligence (AI) investments now drives the United States electricity market.
via CFACT
July 29, 2025 at 05:23AM
How quickly things change.
It was barely more than a year ago that climate activists and federal bureaucrats thought they had maneuvered the internal combustion engine (ICE) automobile to the brink of extinction. ICE vehicles had become like dinosaurs, inferior to their new competitors the EVs, and therefore headed for the scrap heap of history. Customers were flocking to the trendy new EVs, which were seeing rapidly rising sales.
And the all-powerful federal bureaucracy was going to give the final push to put ICE vehicles out of their misery. On June 7, 2024 President Biden’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had issued a final rule (“Corporate Average Fuel Economy [CAFE] Standards for Passenger Cars and Light Trucks for Model Years 2027 and Beyond and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Heavy-Duty Pickup Trucks and Vans for Model Years 2030 and Beyond”) jacking up mandatory average vehicle mileage to 50+ [mpg] as of 2031, with further increases to follow from there. Since no ICE vehicles bigger than a baby carriage could achieve that mileage, the only path forward for vehicle manufacturers would be rapid conversion to making only EVs. NHTSA’s mileage rule had also quickly followed an equally draconian mandate from EPA, finalized on April 18, 2024 (“Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles”) setting strict and declining limits for CO2 emissions that no ICE vehicles would be able to meet by the early 2030s. And meanwhile, 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act had extended a $7500 tax credit to buyers of new EVs through December 31, 2032.
So all the pieces were in place. By some time in the early 2030s, it would be effectively illegal to sell new ICE cars, and they would be rapidly disappearing from the roads.
Well, not so fast. Suddenly, the rapid advance of the EV may have stalled out completely. The federal regulators have reversed their direction. And customer preferences seemingly favorable to EVs may turn out to evaporate as soon as federal tax benefits end, an event now just a couple of months away.
NHTSA’s CAFE standards just got eviscerated by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act. Although the standards themselves have not yet been rescinded, the OBBB re-set the enforcement mechanism to have a maximum penalty of zero. This is from a July 8, 2025 memo from the law firm Sidley & Austin:
In one of its many changes, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on July 4, 2025, eliminated civil penalties for noncompliance with federal fuel economy standards. Specifically, Section 40006 of the Act amends the language of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) statute to reset the maximum civil penalty to $0.00. Although the statute and its implementing regulations otherwise remain in place, this amendment removes any civil penalties for producing passenger cars and light trucks that do not meet fuel economy requirements.
As to the EPA-mandated CO2 emissions limits for vehicles, EPA announced on March 12, 2025 that it was beginning a process of reconsidering the vehicle greenhouse gas emissions rule that had just been adopted less than a year before. Excerpt:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will reconsider the Model Year 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles regulation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles. In addition to imposing over $700 billion in regulatory and compliance costs, these rules provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate that takes away Americans’ ability to choose a safe and affordable car for their family and increases the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver.
That one may be in the regulatory grinder for many months, but with little doubt as to what the final result will be, namely full rescission.
And the $7500 per new vehicle tax credit? After just having been extended to 2032 by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the credit has now been modified by the OBBBA to end as of September 30, 2025. From Kiplinger, July 12:
With the passage of President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax reform, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) the federal EV tax credit will expire for vehicles purchased or leased after September 30, 2025. As a result, buyers have only a short window left to take advantage of these federal savings.
All of a sudden, EVs and ICE vehicles are set to compete on a completely level playing field, with no mandates or tax credits propping up the EV side of the competition. How will that turn out? It remains to be seen, but data from the first half of the year indicate that the previous rapid increase in EV sales may already be stalling out. In a reversal for a previously rapidly-growing market segment, sales of EVs in the second quarter of 2025 declined significantly from the same period the prior year. From Cox Automotive, July 14, 2025:
[S]ales of new electric vehicles (EVs) in the second quarter of 2025 were lower year over year by 6.3%, in line with the Cox Automotive forecast. A total of 310,839 new EVs were sold in the U.S, down from 331,853 in the same period a year earlier. Sales in Q2 were higher than in Q1 by 4.9%, and total EV sales through the first half of 2025 set a record at 607,089, representing a 1.5% year-over-year increase.
Cox continues to predict a spike in EV sales in the third quarter of 2025, in the run-up to the expiration of the tax credit on September 30. However, after that, it is entirely likely that there will be a significant decline. Without the government mandates and subsidies, it’s hard to see EVs expanding much beyond being a niche product used as a second (or third) vehicle by affluent buyers.
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via Watts Up With That?
July 29, 2025 at 04:01AM
56.04804 -4.56724 Met Office CIMO Assessed Class 5 Archived temperature records from 1/6/1993
Portnellan Farm weather station sits at the southern end of Lough Lomond and ranks as one of the most picturesque sites the Met Office has. The site owner is clearly a dedicated meteorologist with the observation record being excellent. The equipment maintenance is of such a high standard that even the site owner’s photographs online show the Stevenson Screen being cleaned. Unfortunately no amount of good equipment maintenance can make up for poor siteing, and this site is exceptionally poorly sited. This review studies those site shortcomings but also uncovers some interesting features of instrumentation changes.
The screen is located alongside the driveway to a holiday let and is next to the car parking area. Cars can have their engines running to warm up on cold days or cool down via air- con on hot ones within a few feet of the screen. Such possibilities are the principal reason that weather stations should be in their own access restricted enclosure rather than these low grade, almost anything goes sites.
If this seems an extreme view, then consider this image below from the site owners own facebook page. The screen is to the rear of the car’s exhaust just above the cow in the image.
Leaving aside the motorised vehicles, the slope down to the Loch is clearly shown as are all the surrounding trees and shrubbery. The Met Office assesses the site as meeting no regulatory standards jointly set by the World Meteorological Organisation and International Standards Organisation at all, and it is not hard to see why. Despite nice views, diligent observations and well kept equipment it is still a very poor site that is only ever going to supply unrepresentative readings. Some (but not many) meteorologists may feel these sites are acceptable but I doubt the general public realises how almost primitive the Met Office’s data collection points actually are. An almost archaic and unregulated cottage industry seems to be the standard of modern climate science – good enough to declare a “climate emergency”?
However, in researching this manual reporting site I discovered a partial answer to a question of mine the Met Office had refused to answer – when was each manual site converted from a traditional Liquid in Glass Thermometer (LIGT) to a Platinum Resistance Thermometer (PRT)? I had been told this was not retained information by individual sites – i.e. a deflection from the actual question I had asked. Every thermometer has to be originally calibrated and rechecked at preset intervals. For the Met Office to claim this was not “retained information” was clearly untrue, but, of course they simply claimed such a “list” that I had requested was not available which probably was true. Re-asking the question slightly differently to avoid them playing their silly avoidance games ended up hitting their “vexatious” defence and refusing to answer any more questions. It would appear that the dates of instrumentation change are a matter of “National Security” and obviously “Top Secret”. Pity they did not let their manual station operators into the need for such secrecy.
One thing I had noted about manual stations was that around 2017 there seemed to be a major transition programme from LIGT to PRT. Curiously sites daily maximum temperature readings inexplicably stopped for a lengthy period despite all other readings (including daily minimum temperature readings) continuing to be taken. I made an educated guess this was the changeover period but could not explain this maximum reading shutdown for several weeks, even months. Then Portnellan Farm publicised their system change which was far more comprehensive than I realised.
The image below is from a “Facebook” post dated 8/12/2017 showing the not only the installation of the PRT but also the entire change of the screen and all instrumentation. Clearly the ground debris indicates removal of much overgrown vegetation.
Note the old redundant screen now on the ground. Below is what the old wooden (thus painted) screen looked like with its white painted INSIDE, wooden (teak?) instrument mounts, traditional alcohol filled thermometers but importantly no inlet holes to the base (floor) of the unit.
Contrast that aged wooden model with the BLACK powder coated inner louvres to the similarly powder coated metal casing and white mounting instrument racks – and those holes in the base. A significant set of changes by any measure.
The 2017 temperature archives show maximum readings stopping 5th October and only resuming on the Facebook indicated switchover date of 8th December.
This seems remarkably strange. The changeover took just one day yet there are 64 days maxima not taken. This absence of readings must have been either under instruction not to take them in some way or they were taken but not recorded – why?
Dave Woolcock offers great assistance to the Surface Stations Project in analysing numbers. At an early stage he was able to point out to me (from his looking at Met Office data) when stations were converted from manual to automatic reporting. In these circumstances the two differing sets of instruments (from LIGT to PRT) run simultaneously with an overlap period seemingly to confirm correlation between the different instrumentation types and reporting media. Dave identified the phenomenon of recording “Treblications” where single 24 hour former manual readings were mixed with twice daily 12 hourly automatic readings for the same days. He also noted discrepancies in the transition phase which often seemed to extend this period. I also noted this very extended transition at sites like Shirburn Model Farm extending into years.
This former historical correlation process above contrasts starkly with the more recent instrumental changes at manual stations which apart from being deliberately covert seem to almost avoid any possible comparisons. The old LIGT was visible on changeover but no data for the previous two monthss from it exist.
Further explanation of the manual station reading process is given by this youtube clip made by the observer at the Floors Castle Weather station.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1893457610801591
It is worth noting several important points regarding these instrument changes at manual sites. Firstly, there are no electronic transmission benefits as these sites remain manually reporting. Secondly, there are no real accuracy improvements – both systems, LIGT and PRT, report to the 1st decimal place. Thirdly, only the maximum readings are affected with minima continuing (for the time being) to be taken by slower reacting liquid thermal expansion/contraction rather than rapid reacting electrical conductivity changes driven by temperature change.
In my follow up parts to the Reification of Averages report I will further highlight how siting, siting changes and structured instrumentation changes can significantly affect meteorological averaging in “Playing the System”
In summary Portnellan it is a well maintained and observed site but one of unacceptable siting standard that has experienced questionable instrumentation change practises in common with most other manual recording sites.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
July 29, 2025 at 02:51AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 