By Jo Nova

If it was the end of a Big Green Bubble, it would look a lot like this…

Australia is still launching itself to Net Zero Land at the top of the Magic Faraway Tree. There was no election in Australia, and no change to the green policies. Yet, a month after the US banks quietly peeled themselves away from the Globalist Banker Blob, the first Australian bank starts backing away slowly too. They don’t explain why in any convincing fashion. Have they just lost the faith that renewables are going to work, or is this just the end of the subsidy train?

Kyle Robertson, Senior banking analyst, Australian Financial Review

This decision by Macquarie makes little sense, prioritising political expediency and short-term financial interests over the longer-term viability of its business and the economy.

Macquarie Bank has sent shockwaves around the world by quietly announcing it has quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) this week, taking the dubious honour of being the first major Australian financial institution to pull out of a global climate initiative.

The senior banking analyst is baffled after Macquarie spent years pumping up renewables:

It is hard to understand this sudden backslide after Macquarie spent years building up its reputation as a green bank. Macquarie chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake has been a feature of global climate conferences for years, promoting the need for large-scale public and private sector investment into renewable energy and climate adaptation initiatives.

The CEO was even recognized as “Time’s 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders in Business for 2023” ferrgoodnesssake!

Yet look at the power of bully bankers…

Robertson speaks in approving tones about the Australian bankers that are hobbling law abiding companies from providing a service consenting adults want to pay for.

ANZ and Westpac are still using corporate finance and bonds to finance companies expanding oil and gas. In contrast, the country’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank, has ended finance for oil and gas producers without a credible Paris-aligned transition plan. At its 2024 AGM, NAB chairman Philip Chronican indicated that by October this year, the bank would end finance for companies pursuing oil and gas field expansion.

Who voted for the bankers to set Australian energy policy anyway?

If fossil fuels are so awful Robertson (or the bankers) could always try persuading people not to use them. Until then Australians allow the bankers to hold banking licences and make squillions of dollars in profits. But in a free market, a new banker could turn up and offer loans to all the unfashionable fossil fuel companies that the precious banker club eschew. Instead, citizens pay for regulatory watchdogs and police that protect these smug banker bullies against newcomers and competition.

Shh — it’s just a moment of backsliding

The announcement was made in muted tones, probably printed in grey ink, and filled with soothing words about how boring and normal it was to adjust the settings. Since Macquarie is still a significant investor in renewables projects — it probably doesn’t want to crash renewable share prices, and the CEO and the board don’t want to actually rub salt into the wounds of Labor Party policies either. So unlike the fanfare when the bankers united, the dissolution of the same banker club will be dressed up to look as boring as possible.

Does anyone believe this rot? Net Zero is all sorted now so they can step back “like many others” have?

“The NZBA helped develop global frameworks and assisted member banks as they established their initial decarbonisation plans. With those building blocks now in place, like many peers Macquarie will no longer be a member of NZBA, as we focus on updating and delivering our plans and reporting in line with regulatory requirements,” Macquarie said in a statement. — The Australian

Only the occasional “shock” from a die hard believer giving away what a radical change in direction this is.

Macquarie said it would provide a further update on its net zero ambitions in May (probably right after the election).

PS:  Yet again we see how The US Government de facto sets the policies of so many other nations all around the world.

By Vijay Jayaraj

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) has been predominantly portrayed as the chief culprit driving global warming. For decades, this misconception has guided international policies, prompted ambitious targets for reducing CO₂ emissions and driven a shift from reliable and affordable energy resources like coal, oil, and natural gas toward problematic wind and solar sources.

However, this theory overlooks important factors that influence Earth’s climate system, including a critical variable in the climate system – the role of clouds, which remains woefully underestimated.

Recent work by physicists W. A. van Wijngaarden and William Happer challenges this prevailing paradigm: Their new paper, Radiation Transport in Clouds, suggest clouds affect atmospheric temperature more than CO₂ because they have a greater impact on the comparative amounts of solar energy entering Earth’s atmosphere and escaping to outer space.

The Overshadowed Influence of Clouds

Clouds simultaneously reflect incoming sunlight back to space (cooling the Earth) and trap outgoing heat (warming the Earth). This dual nature makes clouds both powerful and perplexing players in our climate system. The net effect of clouds on climate is a balance between these opposing influences, thus a central component of the Earth’s energy budget.

A recent study by van Wijngaarden and Happer, titled “Radiation Transport in Clouds,” delves into this complexity. The 2025 paper says the radiation effects of clouds can easily negate or amplify the impact of CO₂. The researchers highlight that clouds have a more pronounced effect on Earth’s radiation budget than greenhouse gases like CO₂.

For instance, their research reveals that a modest decrease in low cloud cover could significantly increase solar heating of the Earth’s surface. In comparison, a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations reduces radiation to space by a mere 1%: “Instantaneously doubling CO₂ concentrations, a 100% increase, only decreases radiation to space by about 1%. To increase solar heating of the Earth by a few percent, low cloud cover only needs to decrease by a few percent.”

This stark contrast highlights the disproportionate influence of cloud dynamics compared to CO₂ fluctuations. Most state-of-art climate models are still in their infancy. We need more accurate measurements of clouds’ properties and their influence on the electromagnetic components of solar radiation if they are to be useful inputs for climate models.

Implications for Energy Policy and Reliability

Current strategies assume a direct and dominant link between CO₂ emissions and global temperatures to justify aggressive “decarbonization” efforts and an increase in the use of solar and wind energy.

However, solar and wind are inherently intermittent, rendering them unreliable and very expensive as components of a power grid. The infrastructure required to support these technologies entails substantial upfront investments, higher operating costs and increasing utility bills for consumers.

Blackouts, energy shortages and price spikes are becoming increasingly common in regions that have prematurely decommissioned fossil fuel plants without adequate backup solutions. This trend disproportionately affects vulnerable populations, exacerbating energy poverty and hindering economic development.

The major justification for using solar and wind has been that they counter global warming by reducing CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels. If small variations in cloud cover actually overwhelm the effects of CO₂, then the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases is being significantly overestimated. This has profound implications for policy.

Attributing global warming predominantly to CO₂ emissions from the use of fossil fuels is a gross oversimplification. While CO₂ undoubtedly has a warming effect, it is relatively modest and beneficial, mainly moderating the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures. On the other hand, clouds, with their multifaceted interactions and feedbacks, represent a critical and underappreciated component of this puzzle.

The findings of van Wijngaarden and Happer highlight a broader issue within climate science: the tendency to oversimplify complex systems for the sake of political expediency. As the global energy landscape continues to evolve, it is imperative that decisions be based on sound science rather than political dogma.

The time has come to reassess our approach to both climate science and energy policy. The stakes are too high to continue down a path of destructive policies based on erroneous analyses. We must prioritize reliable, affordable energy sources and grid stability over useless reductions in emissions of a harmless gas.

Click here to access the entire Radiation Transport in Clouds paper.

This commentary was first published at BizPac Review on February 10, 2025.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.