New research from Indonesia indicates that from about 10,000 to 6000 years ago, when the ocean was warmer than today, coral reef growth was rapid, averaging ~6 mm per year.
Sea levels rose rapidly from the Early to Mid Holocene in this region, as they were up to 2 m higher than today 6000 years ago. The higher sea levels meant there was more room for coral reef growth.
As the ocean cooled and sea levels fell ~2 meters from the Mid-Holocene highstand, coral growth slowed to ~2-3 mm per year.
Today corals are only growing at rates of ~1 mm per year, as the water depths are too low to accommodate reef expansion. In fact, coral coverage “has declined on the flats over the last few decades,” as the “accommodation space is less than a meter at points.”
Research from the Great Barrier Reef region (e.g., Leonard et al., 2020) also indicates coral growth experienced “turn-off” periods during cold centuries (such as the Little Ice Age) with falling sea levels. When the ocean was “~1-2°C warmer than present” and sea levels were “~1.0 m higher than present,” this “allowed reefs to accrete uninhibited.”
The United Nations adjourned its plastics summit in Geneva, Switzerland, with no version of a global treaty coming close to reaching “consensus.”
This is great news for the global economy, as radical proposals sought to place taxes and controls on every phase of plastic production and use.
The UN plastics summit tried to follow the climate conference script, where launching into late-night overtime is standard. Bleary eyes, however, induced no parties to alter their positions.
Developing nations and the EU were unable to convince manufacturing and petroleum-producing nations to agree on a draft.
The anti-plastics nations attempted to kill production via a death by a thousand cuts strategy, by calling for the elimination of important chemicals used in plastics production. The pro-plastics nations saw through the ploy and blocked it.
Plastics have been a crucial factor in enabling people at every economic level to afford high-quality manufactured goods. They are essential to societal abundance.
The ideal solution is to keep plastic in our economies, but to do a great job at managing recycling and waste. Nations with advanced economies have already made huge strides. The vast majority of plastic pollution in the oceans comes from fishing gear and a few rivers in Asia and Africa. Forbidding the use of plastic straws in Paris or Peoria achieves nothing meaningful to combat this waste.
As CFACT President Craig Rucker recently wrote, “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.”
A new UN regime of taxation, mandates, and bans is not the way to deal with the issues surrounding plastics (or pretty much anything else). Working with developing nations to up their recycling and waste management is the way to go.
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“… data confirms no new project commitments in the first half of 2025, and following a week when the country’s three biggest utilities showed no interest in buying, building or contracting new capacity. …”
Wind industry in crisis as utilities and corporate buyers go on investment strike
Australia’s wind energy industry is facing a crisis as new data confirms no new project commitments in the first half of 2025, and following a week when the country’s three biggest utilities showed no interest in buying, building or contracting new capacity.
They are all investing billions in battery storage, largely because the flexibility and dispatchability of big batteries ensures that the big three retain their market power over wholesale electricity prices.
But they show little interest in new wind and solar. Origin Energy, for instance, has won grid access for the biggest wind project in Australia, the 1.45 GW Yanco Delta wind project in south-west NSW, but will not make a financial commitment on that project for another 18 months.
…
The wind industry is facing multiple issues. Turbine costs have not fallen much from the spike of a couple of years ago, and the likes of the CSIRO have increased their most recent cost estimates, largely because of the need for workers accommodation in remote areas and the rise in civil construction costs.
Wind also requires transmission, and this has been slow and costly to roll out, and the technology has run into planning issues.
The article above mentions solar is also in a slump.
The one bright spot for renewables mentioned in the article above is battery investment, but this appears to be more about gaming peak electricity prices than a genuine interest in the renewable revolution.
Predictably this collapse in the economics of subsidised green energy has triggered a call for more climate communism;
The abundance agenda brainworm has infected Labor’s climate change reform
The Productivity Commission wants us to focus on the ‘costs’ of climate action, neutralising an urgent safety issue into a bland optimisation and efficiency project, and in doing so, ridding it of any social criticality.
A real project to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels from Australia’s power grid would entail far greater state ownership of power, the deprioritisation of profit, along with widespread community benefit and profit-sharing schemes. The Roosevelt Centre’s “progressive permitting reform” centres equity and environment but also aims to streamline processes and eliminate replication. These ideas are virtually non-existent in Australia’s energy and planning discourse.
In America, we’re seeing what happens when you plug the abundance agenda into a fascist wall socket rather than a centrist technocrat one. Klein and Thompson’s language has been used to justify the right-wing fantasy of unregulated data centres and fossil fuel expansion, while the Trump administration actively implements new regulations to block clean energy and transmission lines. …
Other issues might be helping to drive this slump. The Aussie government is worried about declining productivity, and has been talking up Australia’s participation in the AI revolution as a means to unlock productivity growth.
Address to Generation P: Unlocking productivity for Australia’s future, Future Forward Australia
Unlocking Gen P
It’s great to be speaking to Gen P. A generation with enough optimism to believe we can boost productivity and fix housing anddecarbonise the economy – all before lunch. I like your ambition.
Let’s talk about productivity. Not in the abstract, economic‑model kind of way – but as the thing that quietly shapes your lives, your wages, your choices, your future.
Productivity growth is how we produce more value with the same effort. It’s what allows wages to rise, governments to invest in public services and societies to lift living standards without just working harder or longer.
But right now, Australia has a productivity challenge.
AI forms a central part of their productivity growth thinking, though I get the impression they don’t really know what it is;
Enable AI’s productivity potential
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform our economy and improve our living standards.
The AI models that have emerged in recent years apply advanced machine learning to increasingly sophisticated uses, including natural language processing, image recognition, personalised search and social media. AI technologies are increasingly undertaking complex tasks that are outside the scope of previous waves of automation.
Increased use of AI-based systems in Australia could create significant productivity benefits. But malicious or reckless use of these systems poses risks, which has led to calls for regulation.
In the USA, the AI revolution has caused green tech giants to fall over themselves revising their green energy pledges. AI requires high quality low cost rock steady power which renewables simply can’t deliver.
Energy companies can likely see the writing on the wall, it is obvious events currently happening in the USA and Asia will soon be replicated in Australia. The AI revolution is rapidly turning wind and solar into stranded assets, or at best bit players in a much bigger game, a trend which is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
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Some New York Democrats are sounding the alarm over the state’s climate goals, arguing that New York should delay implementing some of its stringent green energy mandates.
Donna DeCarolis and Dennis Elsenbeck — appointed members of New York’s Climate Action Council — wrote to the state’s Public Service Commission requesting a hearing to consider delaying the state’s climate goals, including its 2030 70% green energy mandate and its 2040 zero-emissions grid goal on July 29. New York has some of the most aggressive climate goals in the U.S. and higher-than-average energy costs, with state officials recently admitting that the state may miss its green energy targets on the current timeline due in part to the costs that would hit consumers.
“I was intent on becoming known as a strong environmental governor,” Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in early August, according to local news outlet Spectrum News. “I also cannot ignore the fact that the disruptions in our economy that have occurred since the laws went into place, but also since we even supported this, that need to be examined in terms of what is happening to people’s pocketbooks right now. … I also have to moderate and make sure that I’m not doing something that’s going to drive up costs for consumers, and the data shows at this time it would.” (RELATED: Dems Finally Realizing Most Americans Don’t Want Enormous Climate Agenda Imposed On Them)
Energy sector experts have previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that New York’s reliance on intermittent green energy has undermined the stability of its power grid. Policy analysts also explained to the DCNF that the broader trend of Democrats signaling retreat from hardline climate policy is not substantive given that many aggressive policies remain in place, despite corporate media narratives suggesting otherwise.
New York has developed and is still building several offshore wind farms, and Hochul recently kept the state’s massive Empire Wind project alive after President Donald Trump moved to pause the project in April. Though the Trump administration reportedly made a deal with Hochul allowing the development to continue in exchange for the advancement of two natural gas pipelines, Hochul’s office has denied making any official deal.
Several New York Democrat lawmakers reportedly wrote to Hochul requesting the state delay work on the pipelines on Tuesday, according to the Washington Examiner.
Hochul’s office did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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Iowa Climate Science Education 