From CFACT

By David Wojick

I have the honor and pleasure of co-signing a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, asking him to terminate a half billion dollar grant made by the Biden administration to the West Coast wind industry. The short story is the grant was illegal.

The longer story is interesting because it takes us into the strange world of floating wind power, a technology still looking to prove itself. The idea is to put a huge offshore wind tower on a float that is so big that the tower does not blow over in a hurricane. Whether this can actually be done remains to be seen.

The Biden folks decided to charge ahead on this stuff, way ahead, to say the least. France just commissioned a 24 MW test facility, while Biden’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management sold leases for an incredible 5,000 MW of floating wind off California.

The fly in the floating wind ointment is the “floater.” This is the huge contraption that holds the tower. There are over 100 floater designs that have been announced, some patented but none proven, which just measures the immaturity of the technology. Some are steel, weighing up to 5,000 tons. Some are concrete, tipping the theoretical scale at 20,000 tons.

The problem is that before you can build a floating wind power generation facility, you first have to build the factory that makes the floaters, which has to be nearby on shore. With fixed wind, there is just a single standard monopile holding the tower and these are made by several companies for use everywhere. It is the custom made floater and factory that make floating wind cost an estimated three times what fixed offshore wind costs.

In order to kick-start floating wind, the Biden Transportation Department decided to inject just under half a billion dollars to build a floater factory at Humboldt Bay in Northern California. But Congress never appropriated the money to do this, so DOT raided their INFRA program. which is supposed to fund improvements in the U.S. freight system.

Hence our letter begins as follows:

“Call for rescission of INFRA Grant for The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District Grant Dated January 23, 2024, and a return of unspent disbursed funds (see article 13.5 of attached INFRA grant terms and conditions) connected with misappropriation of said INFRA Grant Funds.

The undersigned organizations call for the return to the U.S. Department of Transportation any unspent disbursed INFRA funds awarded to the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District in the amount of $426,719,810 on January 23, 2024 and to terminate the awarded grant as a misappropriation of federal funds.

Our requests are legally justified based on DOT internal mandates associated with the INFRA grant structuring. According to the INFRA Grant eligibility guidelines grant projects must be “projects of national or regional significance to improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of the movement of freight and people in and across rural and urban areas.” Additionally, “To be eligible under INFRA, a project within the boundaries of a freight rail, water (including ports), or intermodal facility must be a surface transportation infrastructure project necessary to facilitate direct intermodal interchange, transfer, or access into or out of the facility and must significantly improve freight movement on the (National Highway Freight Network) NHFN.”

Further, Humboldt Bay is not a designated national multimodal freight network facility and is as such ineligible for any INFRA Grant funds. The Humboldt Grant is clearly designed to accommodate a non-existent floating offshore wind industry, and is defined as a heavy lift terminal capable of assembling and handling wind turbine components. Obviously the project meets none of the INFRA guidelines for grant approval.”

The signing organizations are CFACT and the REACT Alliance. I and several other individuals also signed. This all fits in with the President’s executive order calling for agencies to assess deficiencies in prior actions related to offshore wind. This grant is a huge deficiency.

It remains to be seen what Secretary Duffy does. Stay tuned to CFACT to find out.

Last week, we highlighted the coming spectacle of Indivisible’s climate-themed dramatics in Theater of the Absurd: Indivisible’s Storm Show Rolls into Red Florida. As predicted, the show did go on—and it flopped harder than a soggy protest sign in a rainstorm.

If a protest flops in the middle of Miami and nobody’s there to hear it, does it still make a soundbite? Thanks to CBS Miami, we now know the answer: yes—but just barely.

This past Sunday, the fear-mongering roadshow known as Riders on the Storm rolled into Maurice A. Ferré Park with all the thunder of a wet match. Indivisible staged what they called a rally against NOAA budget cuts. It was the political equivalent of shouting into an empty parking lot. Less than a dozen attendees managed to assemble—a turnout so small, one might wonder whether even the protestors believed their own hype.

The only media coverage of this exercise in dramatic futility came from CBS Miami, which generously pointed its cameras at what looked more like a PTA gathering than a movement. In what can only be described as an editorial mercy mission, the network squeezed together the few scattered individuals holding signs in an attempt to simulate a crowd. Spoiler: it didn’t work.

The CBS segment, delivered in hushed tones befitting a eulogy, centered on two former NOAA employees turned political stage props: Andy Hazelton and John Cortinas. Hazelton, who joined NOAA in October 2024 and was let go by February 2025, solemnly declared, “It’s not political”—a statement immediately followed by political slogans, chants, and appeals for more federal money. Cortinas, meanwhile, announced he had retired rather than participate in what he ominously described as a “direction” he didn’t like. Brave.

Both men emphasized how NOAA’s work “pays for itself,” a classic bureaucratic euphemism which, when translated, means “we’re entitled to your money indefinitely and without scrutiny.” The network dutifully repeated claims that NOAA’s budget cuts—part of a federal workforce streamlining effort—could make people “more vulnerable” during hurricane season. Apparently, decentralizing disaster preparedness to states like Florida, which actually has a robust emergency response system, is now seen as reckless endangerment.

Meanwhile, National Hurricane Center Director Mike Brennan calmly reminded the audience that, despite all this melodrama, the agency remains “fully operational” and will issue forecasts “as they always do”. So much for the “No Forecast. No Warning. No Escape!” tagline plastered on Indivisible’s flyers.

And then there’s the capstone quote from Miami Indivisible’s Raquel Pacheco, who decried the budget adjustments as “an attack on science,” claiming they jeopardize “life-saving” research for millions along Florida’s coastline. Again, this protest took place in Florida—home of arguably the most prepared state-level emergency management agency in the country. The irony is not just rich, it’s downright decadent.

Let’s not forget the visuals. The CBS video, as well as screenshots captured from the park, show more palm trees than people. No tidal wave of outrage. No energized grassroots uprising. Just a sad assembly of taxpayer-funded sign-wavers, lamenting the loss of their federal sinecures.

This entire performance smacks of the usual pattern: create a false crisis, blame a political opponent, demand more centralized control. In this case, the script wore thin. The “storm” Indivisible hoped to ride into Miami turned out to be little more than a fart in a breeze—audible only because the media leaned in close and turned up the mic.

This wasn’t a rally. It was a requiem—for credibility, for momentum, and for the illusion that anyone outside of activist circles actually believes these protest theatrics represent public opinion.

So here’s to Riders on the Storm, the sequel nobody asked for and even fewer attended. Next time, they may want to try a new strategy—like renting an audience.

H/T again to Mumbles McGuirck

Essay by Eric Worrall

Coral cover is breaking records, real world data proves ocean life loves CO2, but none of this impedes a never ending drip feed of ocean acidification scares.

‘Ticking time bomb’: Ocean acidity crosses vital threshold, study finds

BY SAUL ELBEIN – 06/09/25 11:24 AM ET

The deep oceans have crossed a crucial boundary that threatens their ability to provide the surface with food and oxygen, a new study finds.

Nearly two-thirds of the ocean below 200 meters, or 656 feet, as well as nearly half of that above, have breached “safe” levels of acidity, according to findings published on Monday in Global Change Biology.

The fall in ocean pH is “a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies,” Steve Widdicombe, director of science at the United Kingdom’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), said in a statement.

The study was funded in part by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that has been targeted for steep cuts by the Trump White House, in large part because of its role in investigating climate change.

…

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/5340239-ocean-acidity-study-climate-change-carbon/

The referenced study;

Ocean Acidification: Another Planetary Boundary Crossed

Helen S. Findlay, Richard A. Feely, Li-Qing Jiang, Greg Pelletier, Nina Bednaršek

First published: 09 June 2025

Funding: This work was supported by European Space Agency, AO/1-10757/21/I-DT. Natural Environment Research Council, NE/X006271/1. NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing and Ocean Acidification Programs, GOMO Fund Reference Number 100018302 and OAP NRDD. Slovene Research Agency, N1-0359. Climate Program Office, NA19NES4320002, NA210AR4310251.

ABSTRACT

Ocean acidification has been identified in the Planetary Boundary Framework as a planetary process approaching a boundary that could lead to unacceptable environmental change. Using revised estimates of pre-industrial aragonite saturation state, state-of-the-art data-model products, including uncertainties and assessing impact on ecological indicators, we improve upon the ocean acidification planetary boundary assessment and demonstrate that by 2020, the average global ocean conditions had already crossed into the uncertainty range of the ocean acidification boundary. This analysis was further extended to the subsurface ocean, revealing that up to 60% of the global subsurface ocean (down to 200 m) had crossed that boundary, compared to over 40% of the global surface ocean. These changes result in significant declines in suitable habitats for important calcifying species, including 43% reduction in habitat for tropical and subtropical coral reefs, up to 61% for polar pteropods, and 13% for coastal bivalves. By including these additional considerations, we suggest a revised boundary of 10% reduction from pre-industrial conditions more adequately prevents risk to marine ecosystems and their services; a benchmark which was surpassed by year 2000 across the entire surface ocean.

Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.70238

The ocean acidification “boundary” is based on Aragonite saturation. Aragonite is a form of calcium carbonate. Marine animals use Calcium Carbonate to form shells and coral structures. The theory is if Aragonite saturate drops below one (biased towards dissolution), shellfish and corals will find it difficult to build the calcium carbonate structures they depend on for survival.

Of course, determining habitable Argonite saturation levels is complicated by substantial natural variability.

… Ocean Ω conditions vary significantly across the globe, with levels in tropical regions being more than twice as high as those in polar regions (Feely et al. 2023; Jiang et al. 2015). These regional and seasonal gradients exists due to temperature-driven CO₂ solubility, enabling colder high-latitude waters to store more CO₂, along with other factors including circulation of carbon away from the surface into deeper waters, mineral inputs from land and freshwater dilution (Jiang et al. 2019; Orr et al. 2005). Marine life is exposed to such regionally varying gradients to which it has evolutionarily adapted (Vargas et al. 2022), resulting in a wide variability of observed responses to OA found in laboratory experiments. However, the envelope of the overall conditions experienced by organisms is also changing due to OA, which can make scaling up from single-species experiments to ecosystem predictions more complicated. This is particularly true when we consider the other challenges of scaling, including incubation effects, lack of natural variability and lack of adaptation and/or acclimation.

…

Aragonite saturation state (Ω_Arag) has emerged as a key indicator for OA, reflecting the precipitation/dissolution tendencies of CaCO₃, as well as its association with marine calcifiers. Consequently, the global mean surface Ω_Arag was chosen as the OA indicator in the planetary boundary assessments (Rockström et al. 2009). The boundary was set at 80% of the pre-industrial Ω_Arag value, that is, a 20% reduction from the pre-industrial surface ocean average. This level was chosen based on two criteria: first to keep high-latitude surface waters above Ω_Arag undersaturation; and second, to ensure adequate conditions for most warm-water coral reef systems (Rockström et al. 2009). …

Read more: same link as above

Given the immense natural variability, and high genetic mobility of shellfish and corals, many of which reproduce by emitting vast numbers of microscopic larvae, setting the boundary condition at 80% of pre-industrial looks suspiciously like a guess.

Is there a way can we test this 80% boundary?

The solution of course, is to look at how fish and shelled creatures living in extreme environments cope with acidification. And there are few places more extreme than “champagne reefs”, patches of ocean where a constant source of volcanic gas keeps sea water supersaturated with CO2, well beyond anything we could ever achieve with anthropogenic emissions.

Evidence trumps guesswork. Given proof that fish and shelled organisms can thrive in the most extraordinary ocean CO2 levels, and the likelihood many of those organisms have genetically compatible relatives which live outside natural CO2 saturated regions, perhaps it is time to revise that 80% boundary.