Daily News 6 Mar 2025

Solar Fury Unleashed: How the Latest X-Class Flare Disrupted Earth’s Tech – NASA Space News

One thing not covered by NASA’s article is that the occurrence of solar flares in 2024 was double or more that of any back to at least the mid-1990s. Opinions on this, including whether it’s due to better observation, can be found here. The peak came with the May 2024 solar storms, billed as ‘the most powerful to affect Earth since March 1989’. On the other hand it seems flares in solar cycle 23 generally had greater intensity than those of cycle 24, and 25 (so far).
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On February 23, 2025, our Sun once again demonstrated its raw and unpredictable power by unleashing an X2.0-class solar flare—one of the most intense solar events of the year so far, says NASA Space News.

This massive burst of energy erupted from Active Region 4001 on the Sun’s northwest limb, captivating scientists and space weather enthusiasts alike.

What Exactly Happened? Breaking Down the X2.0 Solar Flare
At approximately 19:27 UTC (2:27 PM EST), an intense solar flare erupted from Active Region 4001, one of the Sun’s most active and dynamic sunspot areas at the time. This particular flare fell into the X-class category—the most powerful class of solar flares.

To put it in perspective, the energy released by an X2.0 flare can be compared to millions of hydrogen bombs detonating simultaneously.

The event officially began at 19:22 UTC, peaked five minutes later, and concluded by 19:34 UTC. Despite the brevity of the event, the burst packed a punch strong enough to disrupt communication systems on Earth temporarily.

This flare is notable not only for its intensity but also because it was the strongest flare recorded so far in 2025. It surpassed earlier X-class solar flares recorded in January, which included an X1.2 flare on January 3 and both X1.1 and X1.8 flares on January 4.

The increasing frequency and power of these events are strong indicators that we are approaching the solar maximum of Solar Cycle 25. [Talkshop comment: solar cycles can have two time-separated maxima, one for north and one for south].
. . .
Immediate Impacts: A Short-Lived Blackout on Earth
Even though the CME wasn’t Earth-bound, the X2.0 flare still had a noticeable impact on our planet. The flare caused a short-lived R3 (Strong) radio blackout on Earth’s dayside. The most affected regions were over the Pacific Ocean and parts of the Americas, where high-frequency (HF) radio communications were significantly disrupted.
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The Science Behind Solar Flares: How Do They Happen?
At the heart of a solar flare lies a complex interaction of magnetic fields. Sunspots, where most flares originate, are regions of intense magnetic activity. These magnetic fields can become twisted and tangled due to the Sun’s rotation and convection processes.

When the magnetic field lines suddenly realign, a process called magnetic reconnection occurs. This releases enormous amounts of energy in the form of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum—X-rays, ultraviolet light, and visible light.

This energy release can travel across space at the speed of light, affecting Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere within minutes. Understanding this process is critical for scientists working to predict and mitigate the effects of solar flares.

Full article here.
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Image credit: spaceweatherlive.com

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March 6, 2025 at 03:42AM

Daily News 6 Mar 2025

Energy bills set to soar by £900 a year due to net zero push–GB News

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

It’s good to see that GB News have picked up on Gordon Hughes’ cost analysis of Net Zero:

The drive to Net Zero will see the average British household facing a £900 rise in energy bills by 2030, researchers say.

A major report conducted by Professor Gordon Hughes, a former energy advisor to the World Bank and Edinburgh University’s former head of economics, paints a grim picture of Britain’s energy future.

The study warns that the costs associated with producing electricity, maintaining the grid, and funding green subsidies will lead to dramatic bill increases by 2030.

Read the full story here.

The report goes on to say “Prof Hughes’s model predicts that constructing new wind and solar farms will cost around £150billion over the next five years, a figure far exceeding official Government estimates”.

This is borne out by NESO’s own calculations:

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March 6, 2025 at 03:36AM

Daily News 6 Mar 2025

Climate Annoying? Open the Mind Instead

“… talking to your friends and family [about climate change] … is a great place to start. You might be annoying. But you’ll be helping.” – Sammy Roth [1]

Sammy Roth, climate columnist at the Los Angeles Times, might need an intervention from a loved one. He wants us all, like him, to annoyingly talk about climate change. I doubt many will take him up on it, and his next family get-together might hang in the balance.

Roth states in Boiling Point: Want to fight climate change? Then talk about Climate Change (February 25, 2025):

When people ask me what they can do to support climate progress, one piece of advice I give again and again is to annoy their friends and family by talking about climate change constantly.

Here’s the thing: Large majorities of Americans understand that global warming is real, dangerous and caused by humans. Even so, it’s not a threat that most people prioritize in their daily lives.

Polls, polls. Ask the right questions to get the desired results. Roth continues:

For proof, see the latest edition of Climate Change in the American Mind, a twice-yearly poll from George Mason and Yale universities. Researchers talked with 1,013 adults, releasing the results this month. They found that 73% of Americans think global warming is happening. Sixty percent know it’s mostly human-caused.

Also illuminating: Nearly two-thirds of Americans are worried about climate change consequences. Between 61% and 77% think global warming is affecting problems such as electric outages, water pollution, reduced snowpack, air pollution, hurricanes, droughts, fires and extreme heat, the poll found. All that tracks with the science.

And then comes this statistic that Roth seizes upon:

Despite those concerns, 62% of Americans say they rarely or never discuss global warming with friends or family. Just 27% say they hear about it on social media at least once a month. Not even 1 in 3 consumers are, even occasionally, making purchasing decisions based on the steps companies have taken to reduce pollution.

He blames such passiveness with the myriad failures hitting the wind and solar industries:

It’s no wonder tech giants Microsoft and Meta are backing away from their renewable energy goals and rushing to build gas-fired plants to power artificial intelligence. If President Trump loves fossil fuels, and consumers don’t care, what’s the harm? Same goes for fossil fuel giant BP, which is planning to scrap its renewable energy goal.

Roth then conflates CO2 emissions with pollution, the latter being the criteria air pollutants, all declining with fossil fuels now being environmental products at the point of combustion.

It’s also no wonder the U.S. has made such slow political progress addressing oil and gas pollution. Polling has found that while voters know the climate crisis is real and dangerous, it’s relatively low on their priority list.

The grand consensus is unravelling. But Roth wants to reverse all this to the point of being a pest.

There’s no easy way to get more people to prioritize climate. Especially not when traditional media is less trusted than ever. Especially not when Trump and Elon Musk are working frantically to dismantle the federal government and undermine American democracy. It’s hard to pay attention to much of anything right now.

But talking to your friends and family? It’s a great place to start. Remind them that climate still matters. Send them articles and videos. Point out that even as democracy hangs in the balance, a planet ravaged by ever-deadlier heat waves, fires and storms isn’t a place any of us want to live.

He ends by all but refuting himself:

You might be annoying. But you’ll be helping.

Comment:

Climate alarmism is old, stale, and a turnoff. What if Sammy Roth had a family member or friend who set him straight with the economic and environmental case against climate exaggeration and forced energy transformation? Is his mind open? In California, he can easily get confirmation bias, but maybe even that state can get real and go free-market green.

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[1] Mr. Roth has been the energy reporter of the Los Angeles Times since 2018. His bio states:

Cover the business and politics of the energy transition, in a climate context; key storylines have included gas industry opposition to electrification, rooftop solar panels vs. big solar farms and environmental consequences of renewables
Write Boiling Point, a twice-weekly climate and environment newsletter
Launched Repowering the West, an ongoing series exploring how California’s demand for renewable energy is affecting rural towns and sensitive landscapes
Regularly appear on TV and radio, and moderate climate and energy panels
Became The Times’ first-ever climate columnist in September 2023

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March 6, 2025 at 01:06AM

Daily News 6 Mar 2025

False Pretense of Energy Transition: Long on Facts, Short on Truth

By Gordon Tomb

While listing many of the barriers to abandoning fossil fuels for “green” energy, three writers in Foreign Affairs magazine skip over an important truth: the once ballyhooed but now moribund “energy transition” was and remains unnecessary and undesirable.

Instead, the article’s title, “The Troubled Energy Transition: How to Find a Pragmatic Path Forward,” suggests (1) that the so-called transition has legitimacy and (2) that it still somehow should happen. Both are false.

The writers are distinguished men: Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning energy historian; Peter Orszag, Chairman and CEO of Lazard; and Atul Arya, Chief Energy Strategist at S&P Global. Their 5,000-word essay discusses issues extensively, but the language is less than direct and misses the heart of many matters.

For instance, the authors compare the shift to “green” energy from fossil fuels with coal replacing wood beginning in the 18th century and culminating in the 1900s and with oil overtaking coal as a dominant fuel in the 1960s. Energy sources being supplanted, they note, continued to be used well into the transitions just as fossil fuels have remained in use – even growing in quantity – during today’s introduction of alternatives.

However, the article gives short shrift to energy density, or how much work can be extracted from a unit of an energy source. In past transitions, succeeding sources were required in far smaller quantities than forms being replaced to do the same amount of work – coal better than wood, oil better than coal, and uranium beating the pants off everything.

Regarding the supposed transition of today, the article simply says that “improved functionality and lower costs … are not yet present across much of the entire energy system.”

What that really means is that wind, solar, green hydrogen and so on are utterly useless for supplying large populations with reliable, affordable energy and that physics and chemistry offer no credible evidence of their ability to ever fill that role. Wind and solar, for example, require many times the land and material to produce the same amount of electricity as do coal and nuclear plants. Which is why green energy is failing even with massive subsidies.

About the difficulty of financing green dreams, the writers say, “Part of the problem is sheer costs: many trillions of dollars, with great uncertainty as to who is to pay it.” There is a lack of incentives for private investment, government-imposed carbon taxes are problematic, and the populations of neither rich nor poor countries can afford to pay for any of it.

Not stated is that previous transitions were driven by inventors, investors, engineers, mechanics and tradesmen who employed new fuels to work more efficiently with new machines and processes. New energy sources were developed organically, following the laws of nature and economics rather than the diktats of the deluded drunk on power derived from government sponsorship.

Boneheaded “climate” policies of national governments have made a mess of things. Energy has become more expensive and less available in places like Germany and California, resulting in predictable economic destruction. That is a truth that needs to be said loudly, over and over by more smart people.

The writers’ most fundamental failing is their pretense that moving away from fossil fuels to achieve “net-zero emissions” is a worthy mission only in need of “a pragmatic path forward.” Exactly the opposite is true.

Mountains of geologic and historical evidence and modern research of atmospheric physics show that:

Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution have brought the gas to more optimum levels for plant growth. Crop production has improved, and global ecosystems have greened. We should be putting more CO₂ into the air, not less.
Modern warming is neither unusual nor unprecedented. Vikings grew grain on Greenland 1,000 years ago, and Romans raised citrus in northern England 2,000 years ago. Today, it’s too cold in both places to do either.
Fearmongering about the “greenhouse” effect is based on exaggerations of the warming potential of CO₂ and other gases and on flawed computer models that have been disproven repeatedly by real-world data. Because of a phenomenon of diminishing returns, even a doubling of CO₂ from the current concentration would result in only modest, beneficial warming.

We won’t guess why such credentialed writers would overlook these well-established facts while perpetuating the false premise of a decades-long disaster in public policy. But there is no “pragmatic path forward” for a sham energy transition, and the authors should know better.

This commentary was first published at Real Clear Energy, April 24, 2023.

Gordon Tomb is a senior advisor with the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia.