The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released the names of its authors for its seventh assessment report (AR7). The author list for its Chapter 3 — Changes in regional climate and extremes, and their causes — suggests strongly that the IPCC will be shifting from its longstanding focus on detection and attribution (D&A) of extreme events to a focus on “extreme event attribution” (EEA).
Let’s first briefly clarify how these concepts are different and why the difference matters.
The IPCC D&A framework follows from its definition of “climate change” as a change in the statistics of weather over long time periods, typically many decades. Detection refers to identifying such a change. Attribution refers to identifying causes of that change. For most extreme weather phenomena, the IPCC has not achieved detection or attribution with high confidence and does not expect to for most this century.
In part due to the IPCC’s failure to achieve D&A for most types of extreme events, the notion of EEA was invented to connect specific weather events with changes in climate and characterized as an effort to get into the media and support climate litigation. Most EEA work is published outside of the scientific literature, announced by press release, and is typically contrary to peer-reviewed research on extreme events.
The D&A framework is scientifically rigorous, consistent with the IPCC”s definition of climate change, and treats extreme events in the same manner as other phenomena, like global temperatures and sea level rise. The EEA approach is scientifically problematic, inconsistent with the IPCC’s findings on extreme weather, and is explicitly grounded in climate advocacy.
The IPCC AR6 was decidedly lukewarm to freezing cold on the notion of EEA, and emphasized the traditional D&A framework. Those days may now be over.
When a study published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Nature found that climate change would cost the globe $38 trillion per year by 2050 — ultimately reducing GDP by 19% over the next 24 years — many media outlets were quick to jump on it.
“Climate change will make you poorer,” CNN warned. The Guardian reported on the study under the headline, “Climate crisis: average world incomes to diminish by nearly a fifth by 2050.” Reuters and Forbes also carried articles on the study, and the Associated Press reported that “New study calculates climate change’s economic bite will hit about $38 trillion a year by 2049.” According to the activist publication Carbon Brief, only one other study received more mentions in the media in 2024.
However, the study — referred to as "the Potsdam study" — has since been found to have serious flaws. When these are corrected, according to the researchers who uncovered the problems, it reduces the study’s estimate of climate "damages" through 2100 by two-thirds. This means the estimates aren’t statistically different from zero.
UK energy production has declined by 67pc over the past two decades. That means we have gone from a position of being a net exporter of energy, creating jobs and tax in this country to importing around half of our energy.
British bill-payers are creating jobs and tax revenue in other countries instead.
Last year marked a record low for UK energy production – despite there being decades worth of oil and gas left in the country and the Government dishing out billions in subsidies to wind and solar developers.
The Daily Caller News Foundation learned on Friday that the Department of the Interior (DOI) is immediately halting all activity on a massive offshore wind project.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) under the DOI is halting activity on the “Revolution Wind” project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut in line with President Donald Trump’s energy goals to boost reliable energy resources and lower costs for Americans, the agency told the DCNF. The Trump administration has dealt a series of recent blows to the wind industry, with the DOI ending “preferential treatment” for what it considers to be foreign-controlled and unreliable energy sources and moving to terminate the massive Lava Ridge Wind Project in southern Idaho that the Biden administration approved just weeks before Trump’s return to office.
“Americans deserve energy that is affordable, reliable, and built to last — not experimental and expensive wind projects that are proven failures,” DOI deputy press secretary Aubrie Spady told the DCNF. “In line with President Donald Trump’s Energy Dominance Agenda, Interior is putting an immediate stop to these costly failures to deliver a stronger energy future and lower costs for American families. Like President Trump said, ‘the days of stupidity are over in the USA!’” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Unveils Massive Oil And Gas Lease Expansion Biden Tried To Squash)
The Biden administration approved the construction plan for Revolution Wind in 2023, which is located on the federally-owned Outer Continental Shelf. While former President Joe Biden pushed for wind and solar technology throughout his term by greenlighting billions in subsidies, loans and grants, the Trump administration has shifted its focus to conventional and reliable energy sources and taken action to crackdown on federal support for the green energy technology the Biden administration favored.
Trump signed an executive order directing the DOI to “revise any identified regulations, guidance, policies, and practices as appropriate and consistent with applicable law to eliminate any such preferences for wind and solar facilities” on July 7. Trump campaigned against Biden’s push for green energy and has continued to rail against Biden’s climate agenda, writing on Truth Social Wednesday that “any State that has built and relied on WINDMILLS and SOLAR for power are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS. THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY! We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar. The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!! MAGA.”
The agency introduced an additional permittingroadblock for green energy projects on public lands on Aug. 1., and a few days later, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote on X that wind projects “are known to kill eagles” and that his agency would enforce the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act to protect eagles. The Trump administration also pulled a permit for a massive pending New Jersey offshore wind project in March.
The wind industry has come under fire in recent years, as multiple beaches closed in 2024 after a broken wind turbine shed debris into the ocean off the coast of Nantucket and protests surged due to concerns about high-voltage cables running through neighborhoods in 2023. Environmentalists also raised concerns over the energy technology after dolphins washed up along the East Coast in 2023.
Some fishermen have also voiced opposition to offshore wind projects, arguing that their industry cannot survive alongside offshore wind farms.
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