In the video speech yesterday, Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre brings the receipts damning PM Carney for Canada sliding into economic recession. Transcript below with my bolds and added images.
The Carney Liberal recession
He’s the only leader in the G7 to have plunged his economy into recession. He’s been Prime Minister for four quarters now. The economy has shrunk in three of those quarters. He’s the only G7 leader who can say that. The economy is smaller today than when Mark Carney became Prime Minister a year ago. He’s the only G7 leader who can say that.
Mark Carney will like to make excuses today, but let me ask him a question. But before I do, I’m going to actually quote back to him something he said to one of you. Mark Carney said to one of the journalists, Rosie, look inside yourself. Well, I’m going to ask Mark Carney to look inside himself, and I’ll ask him directly.
Mr. Carney, if it really is global factors and tariffs that have given Canada the only recession in the G7, why have France, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all avoided a recession? They all have the same tariffs and the same global factors, yet none of them, not one, is in recession. Only Mark Carney has the distinction of leading his country into a recession.
Now we know that there will be a lot of excuses today, but excuses will not put food on the dinner table of the 2.2 million people relying on food banks. Excuses will not get the jobs back for the 120,000 people who’ve lost them, as Canada has the second highest unemployment in the G7. Excuses will not allow a young couple to buy a home, as Mark Carney has given Canada the worst housing costs in the G7.
Excuses will not help the mother who is tossing and turning in bed at night wondering how she will make her mortgage payment, as Mark Carney has given Canada the most indebted households anywhere in the G7. By the way, Mark Carney will claim that this is just technical. There’s nothing technical about having an empty stomach because you can’t afford paying the worst food inflation in the G7.
There’s nothing technical about coming home from work and telling your kids that you no longer have a job and that they’re going to have to sell the house because Canada has the second highest unemployment in the G7. That is not technical. It is real. This is a full-blown liberal recession. And it’s not just one or two little data points that cause this, my friends. It is one of many data points that we see today.
For example, in the last few weeks alone, we have fact after fact showing that the liberal economy is collapsing. I’m going to quote from Equifax. Insolvency volumes have increased to levels not seen since 2009, up 19% year over year. Delinquency rates climbed 32% year over year. In the first quarter of this year, insolvency volumes hit a 17-year high, partly due to escalating financial strain on mortgage holders. And one in 1.5 million Canadians missed a minimum debt payment in the first three months of this year alone.
Then there’s the investment numbers, which came out just yesterday. They show that in the first four quarters under this Liberal Prime Minister, Canada saw $1.9 billion of investment flee. That’s $20 billion more than entered our country. That’s a net $20 billion leaving our country to build pipelines, mines, homes, bridges, technology, and other countries for foreign businesses and foreign workers.
Again, we cannot blame foreign factors for that, because the other countries to which that investment fled are facing the same foreign factors. So no more excuses, please. We actually need results. Furthermore, we know that the Prime Minister is fond of doing illusions of action, but here is the core reality. After a year in office, what has really changed in our economic policy? Every anti-development law remains in place, C-69, C-48.
He’s increased the industrial carbon tax six times higher than it was when Justin Trudeau was in office. Home building has actually dropped, and in many provinces the GST still applies to that home building. He’s renamed, not eliminated, renamed the consumer carbon tax, and there are 500 economic projects waiting, some of them for years, just to get through the Liberal bureaucracy permitting system.
Now, we know what won’t fix this. Dazzling speeches at the World Economic Forum, clever-sounding corporate buzzwords, signing fake and unenforceable MOUs in grand halls with stately backdrops, none of these things will reduce costs or boost growth. Announcing projects that were approved many years earlier or making pie-in-the-sky promises like he’s going to double electricity production 25 years from now with no details on how, all of these things are illusions.
They give the impression of action, but in reality, all of the policies of Justin Trudeau remain the same, or they have gotten worse. The deficit has doubled, spending is higher, the only spending that has not gone up is capital spending, precisely the opposite of what Mr. Carney promised. The only way out of this Liberal recession is to reverse the policies that caused it in the first place.
And that is why we are calling for the Prime Minister to get back in the House of Commons next week and introduce a bill to reverse all of the economic policies his party has introduced over the last decade. We don’t need more photo ops, more signing ceremonies, more discussion papers. We need to reverse the Liberal policies that have given Canada the only recession anywhere in the G7.
Conservatives have put forward positive plans to unleash our growth, including a real plan to incentivize the Americans to sign on to tariff-free trade, eliminating capital gains tax on reinvestments in Canada, ending the industrial carbon tax, in fact, cutting taxes on work, energy, home building, and investment, making Canada the fastest place anywhere on earth to get a permit, the freest economy in which to trade, work, invest, and get a return.
Let’s restore the promises of this country where anybody who gets out of bed in the morning can find a terrific job, a job that gives them a great paycheck, that buys affordable food and homes, where our young people can afford to start a family, where our parents can afford to give their children the best start, where our seniors retire in peace and tranquility, and where our economy is truly independent, self-reliant, standing on its own two feet.
That is the mission. Now, let’s turn it into action. Thank you very much. Thank you.
We’ll now take questions from reporters. Please identify yourself and your outlet. One question each.
I can start. Yes, hello, Mr. Poilievre.Laurence Martin from Radio-Canada. It’s an article that just came out this morning. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration wants vehicles covered by the CIO, so with low or exempt tariffs, to have at least 50% of American content.Is that an acceptable request in your opinion?
No, I have already proposed a positive plan to eliminate all tariffs on cars, which will force manufacturers to produce one car in the United States for each of their customers in the United States, and one in Canada for each of their customers in Canada. That way, we will be able to increase the production of cars in our two countries, massively, to reverse the commercial deficits that both countries have now. So that’s the only way we can eliminate tariffs between Canada and the United States.
Mr. Carney has given up, and he hasn’t done anything. He’s not at the negotiating table when Mexico is there. And because Mr. Carney is absent, now we’re seeing more dangerous threats compared to our automotive sector. There is no future for our automotive sector without direct and non-tariff access to the United States. That’s why I presented a plan about three months ago to save the automotive sector and to reverse the decline that we’ve seen in Canada for 10 years.
Mr. Carney has done absolutely nothing since then, except make big contradictions. Yesterday, he said that he wants to, and I quote, make America, in his words, great again, after saying that he wanted a break with the United States. So that’s another big failure for Mark Carney, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why Canada has the only recession among the G7 countries. Yes, well over three months ago, I presented a plan for tariff-free auto trade with the United States, bring back the 1965 auto pact, which would massively increase production in both Canada and the United States, and actually achieve the stated goals of both countries.
Since that time, Mark Carney has been nowhere and done nothing. While the Mexicans are at the negotiating table eating our lunch on auto negotiations, Mark Carney has not shown up for one negotiation so far. The result is that our auto sector is hemorrhaging jobs under his leadership.
In the last 10 years, we’ve lost half of our auto production,
and now we’re losing even more.
But because Mark Carney has done literally nothing to fight for tariff-free trade on autos over the last decade, we’ve lost even more auto jobs, and one of the facts that Statistics Canada reported that led to us being the only country in the G7 in recession is the decline in the auto sector. Yesterday, Mark Carney gave a baffling, confusing, and contradictory speech in which he simultaneously said we need a rupture with the United States, and that we need to make America, in his words, great again. So, his elbows are up and down so fast, he’s doing a rhetorical chicken dance while we lose our auto sector.
Rahim Ahmed from the National Post. Mr. Paliyev, you said that you’ll be campaigning across Alberta for a united Canada. Can you give us an update on any visits that you have scheduled back home in the next few weeks? And are you open to debating folks like Keith Wilson and some of the other prominent Alberta separatists?
We will be back in my home province of Alberta to campaign for a united country, and our message is that all of Canada needs to wrap its arms around Alberta. Let’s ensure that every Albertan knows that Canada loves Alberta, that Canada is Alberta, Alberta is Canada, we need to have a strong united nation right across this country.
And that will mean a stronger province of Alberta, but getting out of the way and off the backs of our energy sector, getting rid of the gun grab, locking up criminals to bring safety to our streets, allowing young Albertans to start families with affordable homes, decentralizing control in the country so that Albertans have more direct decision-making power within their provincial boundaries, that is a positive, optimistic, unifying vision that I will be presenting to all Albertans in all corners of the province.
Mr. Poliev, the Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs is in town today. He said this morning to Anita Anand, the Canadian minister, that if the momentum continues, trade could increase by more than 100% in five years, and that the Chinese market would remain open to Canada, and that it would soon become the largest market in the world. How do you think that will be received in the United States, and what is the risk to Canada?
First of all, Mr. Carney is directly in a conflict of interest. He went to China to receive a loan of $200 million from a bank controlled by the Chinese government a few months before he took office. He still has investments in Brookfield that he wants to expand his business in China. He has already allowed Brookfield to be at the table of discussions and talks by representing Canada. It has never happened that a prime minister sends his company to make talks.
We want a prime minister who defends Canada’s interests and not his company. Obviously, to say that we can replace the United States with China is not realistic when we sell 20 times more to the United States than we sell to China. Perhaps one of the reasons why Canada is the only country in recession among the G7 countries is our bad calculation of Mark Carney, a man who has been wrong on all economic issues for a decade.
He was wrong on the carbon tax, on the plans to keep all oil on the ground, his opposition to pipelines, his support for monetary pressure. He has been wrong on all economic issues for a decade, and we see that he is still wrong on global issues. Do you think China will do anything to make Beijing unhappy? Of course not. He won’t do anything to make Beijing unhappy.
A year after Mark Carney said that China was the single biggest risk to Canada, he claimed that we were going to have a full rupture with the United States in favour of a strategic partnership for a new world order with the dictatorship in Beijing. Of course, Mr. Carney is in a terrible conflict of interest.
He went and got a $200 million loan for his company from a state-backed Chinese bank while he was the economic advisor to Justin Trudeau. That loan is still owed, my understanding is, by Brookfield, which the Prime Minister continues to be invested in. He allowed Brookfield to be at the table for discussions.
Mr. Carney has got to be clear that he should represent Canada’s interests, not his corporation’s interests. Maybe one of the reasons why Canada is the only G7 country in recession right now is because he is miscalculating on trade, just like everything else. He has been wrong on every economic question over the last decade, and Canadians are paying the price.
He was wrong on carbon taxes, wrong on keeping half our oil in the ground, wrong to oppose a pipeline to the Pacific, wrong to support money-printing inflation, and now he is wrong in his trade priorities. We sell 20 times more to the United States than we sell to China. That is just a mathematical fact, and Mark Carney’s Brookfield interests in China will not change that.
We need a Prime Minister who is fighting for our workers in this country. We should have the best economy in the G7, not the worst. In Q3 2025, the economy grew at an annualized rate by 2.6%. We have economists saying that today’s numbers are so nominal that they could be forecasted away and revised away.
Aren’t you jumping the gun a little bit and calling this a full-blown recession? I know that there are a lot of excuses being made for Mark Carney today, and I am not surprised. By the way, which outlet are you with? The Hilltop. Is 2.6% economic growth an excuse, or is that just the numbers? There is no 2.6% economic growth. You are having to go back? How many quarters are you having to go back now? Two quarters. You are having to go back. Let’s get this straight.
There have been four quarters since Mark Carney became Prime Minister. The economy shrunk in three of those four quarters. Canada is the only G7 country for which that is the case. There has now been an entire year of Mark Carney that is recorded in economic data, and the GDP is smaller today than when he took office. That is only true of Canada among G7 countries.
Now there are two back-to-back quarters where the economy shrunk,
which is the literal definition of a recession.
By the way, it is not just that our economy is shrinking quarter after quarter. It is that we have the second highest unemployment in the G7. You think that the 120,000 people that lost their jobs since the beginning of this year call this just a technical recession? No. They call this real job loss. Then you have the delinquency rate that is up 32% year over year at 17-year highs. We have the highest household debt of any country in the G7, the worst housing costs of any country in the G7, and for most of the last year, the worst food price inflation of any country in the G7.
So yes, you are making excuses and trying to hide from the reality that Mark Carney has given Canada the worst economy in the G7. It is time to stop making excuses, not for political reasons. It is time to stop making those excuses because this is people’s lives.Behind these statistics are empty stomachs, empty fridges, and empty bank accounts. Behind these numbers are 120,000 people who have come home to their kids saying, we cannot have you registered for hockey this year. We have to sell our home. I do not know what we are going to do. That is the reality of Mark Carney’s economy, and it is trying to stop covering it up with illusions.
Good afternoon, Pierre. So, Pierre, on national defence, Pierre. I will get your question, but I just have to get this. On national defence, yesterday, CanSec, the conference, concluded, and both of your former colleagues in Aeronautical and Peter McKay sang praise of the government’s shift of national defence policy under Mark Carney’s leadership. What do you make of the shift of that national defence strategy and procurement specifically? And also, do you believe you are losing ground to Mark Carney in an issue like national defence to the progressive conservative flank of your party?
No. What we have seen is a lot of illusions from Mark Carney, a lot of spending on bureaucracy, on procurement, and on consultants. A lot of big corporations will get very rich. The problem is that the money is not reaching the equipment in the hands of the soldiers. We 100% support more military spending, but we want to turn that spending into better equipment and better results for our soldiers, not more expensive bureaucracy, more confusing procurement, and more profits for multinational defence contractors.
So, Pierre, your final validation is that there is influence of Mark Carney’s leadership into the media.
Who can even ask questions? I think it is very troubling. The question for those who could not hear is that Mr. Carney has decided to protect the minister from Beijing by not allowing media to enter the room and only to release state photography of the meeting. That is how things are done in Beijing, and now Mark Carney is importing those methods here. Even one liberal commentator on CBC, Althea Raj, said that Mark Carney has an authoritarian streak.
I would remind him that he is supposed to work for Canadians, not for Beijing, not for Brookfield and its Chinese investments. He should open up and actually take questions from the media, like I am doing here today. By the way, he should actually show up in the House of Commons and answer questions there. We see that Mark Carney cannot take difficult questions because his illusion shatters under any scrutiny, but that is not how Canada works.
We are a free and open democracy, not an authoritarian state. Yes, I find it very disturbing that Mr. Carney forbids the media to take pictures and ask questions. He is trying to import protocols from the regime in Beijing, here in Canada. It is not democratic. There are certain CBC commentators who have noticed that he has an authoritarian streak, and now he is using it to promote Beijing’s dictatorship. I remind Mr. Carney that we are a democracy in Canada.
We work for the Canadian people and not for Beijing’s leaders. We should be willing to talk and trade with China. It is a brilliant civilization with hard-working, decent people, but we have to do so with our eyes open. This is a dictatorship that Mr. Carney himself acknowledged was the biggest threat to Canada only a year ago. Our interests in Canada are in being sovereign, self-reliant, and standing on our own two feet, ensuring that we have full control over our technology, our economy, and our minerals. Never will we be vulnerable to the aggressive instincts of a foreign dictatorship.
We have not proposed that. We think that the government should focus on reducing the cost of government spending. It should unleash free enterprise so that our small businesses, our workers, and our investors can make Canada the richest and most affordable country anywhere on Earth.
First of all, we should allow the savings that come as a result of AI to be passed on to consumers. They should not be inflated away through more money printing. Second of all, we cannot allow the government to use high-tech companies as a surveillance arm of the state. That is why we are fighting against the changes proposed in C-22.
We are very worried about excessive government power for surveillance and for control of the population. We need to have a free and open society where Canadians can use the tools that AI offers to make their lives affordable, empowered, make their paycheques bigger, and their lives less complicated. At the same time, we need to make sure that the government does not abuse that technology for its own control. Thank you very much.
The prevailing climate change narrative took a big hit in recent days, as scientists who comprise the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are backing away from more outlandish climate predictions for the 21st century.
Extreme forecasts of rising temperatures of 4 to 5 degrees, the scientists wrote in the journal Geoscientific Model Development, “have become implausible.” That means predictions of rapidly growing carbon emissions and higher temperatures, supposedly leading to fast-rising sea levels, floods, crop failures, and even human extinction scenarios, are finally being jettisoned.
This long-standing climate change narrative, always a house of cards designed to scare societies into submission, is collapsing — first gradually, now suddenly, to borrow a phrase from Ernest Hemingway.
Turns out even climate scientists on the U.N. dole have a modicum of self-respect such that they can no longer defend such lunatic predictions that were never plausible from the start.
“For the 21st century, this range [of future climate scenarios] will be smaller than assessed before,” they wrote. As a way of saving face, their scaling back of climate change doom comes from “[lower] costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy, and recent emission trends.”
In fact, these scientists, in long-winded, technical jargon, are eating crow. Do they, or anyone else, really believe a few windmills and solar panelsscattered about like a handful of microscopic specks on the planet’s landmass — which itself is only 30% of the globe — affected anything?
These longtime scare tactics from the IPCC and its echo chamber of universities, NGOs, and government bureaucracies certainly had their effect, especially on young people. It reminds me of an encounter 18 months ago while attending the U.N. COP29 Climate Summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, as part of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow delegation.
CFACT President Craig Rucker and I took some time to visit the Old City. At this tourist enclave of Baku, we met three American college students from North Carolina who were also attending the conference. We struck up a conversation about climate change.
There was no arguing or acrimony, just a pleasant back-and-forth. Craig explained to them in his affable but thorough manner that the impact of climate change is emphatically not what the U.N. or the outgoing Biden administrationclaimed. It’s not an “existential threat,” climate doomsday predictions going back nearly 40 years have never panned out, it’s OK to have children, and so on.
Among the three students, one (the male) was not buying it, a second (female) had an unsure, quizzical expression, while the third (female) had a palpable countenance of relief, like the weight of the world was lifted from her. All three had been bamboozled on climate issues for their entire lives, perhaps starting with Saturday morning cartoons, to hypocritical Hollywood actors, corporate grifters seeking government contracts, and charlatan college professors drinking the same Kool-Aid.
With this latest from these IPCC scientists, the prevailing narrative from all these institutions should be coming unglued, as it can no longer withstand the scientific, planetary, and human realities before us.
The North Pole and Antarctica still have massive ice buildup in their respective winters. The Atlantic Ocean will not subsume Miami or the Obamas third (or fourth?) home on the shoreline of Martha’s Vineyard. New technologies like artificial intelligence and military hardware cannot operate now or ever on wind and solar power. Liquefied natural gas is abundant and spreading widely across the globe, courtesy of growing U.S. exports, and carbon-free (assuming it matters) nuclear energy is slowly but inexorably making a comeback.
The higher price of gas due to America’s war with Iran is also a tell. Americans detest gasoline at $4.50 per gallon, Californians hate it even more at $6-plus. This war has an end date, hopefully sooner rather than later, after which global oil markets will flow and gasoline prices will drop. But climate policies for so-called green energy can only survive and expand in a high-priced world of oil and gas, which is where the climate lobby wants it to stay indefinitely.
Except for the most craven, gullible politicians, most of the remaining elected officials are not going to tolerate — and risk blame for — permanently skyrocketing energy prices from imposing climate change energy policies, knowing their current unpopularity with the public.
Of course, the climate change industrial complex, spearheaded by the IPCC, is not going to disappear nor admit they were peddling climate nonsense. The beat will go on, but their credibility and decades of scaremongering under the false flag of “science” should never again be taken seriously.
Regarding that college student from North Carolina who felt enormous relief that climate change was not a threat to her future, I hope millions more will feel likewise as this colossal lie of climate change Armageddon continues to collapse under its own weight.
As the stool above shows, the climate change package sits on three premises. The first is the science bit, consisting of an unproven claim that observed warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels. The second part rests on impact studies from billions of research dollars spent uncovering any and all possible negatives from warming. And the third leg is climate policies showing how governments can “fight climate change.”
It is refreshing to see more and more articles by people reasoning about climate change/global warming and expressing rational positions. Increasingly, analysts are unbundling the package and questioning not only the science, but also pointing out positives from CO2 and warming. And as this post shows, essays are challenging the policy proposals advanced by climate activists. David R. Henderson and John H. Cochrane published at WSJ on July 30, 2017 Climate Change Isn’t the End of the World Even if world temperatures rise, the appropriate policy response is still an open question. Complete text below (my Bolds and added images)
Climate change is often misunderstood as a package deal: If global warming is “real,” both sides of the debate seem to assume, the climate lobby’s policy agenda follows inexorably.
It does not. Climate policy advocates need to do a much better job of quantitatively analyzing economic costs and the actual, rather than symbolic, benefits of their policies. Skeptics would also do well to focus more attention on economic and policy analysis.
To arrive at a wise policy response, we first need to consider how much economic damage climate change will do. Current models struggle to come up with economic costs consummate with apocalyptic political rhetoric. Typical costs are well below 10% of gross domestic product in the year 2100 and beyond.
That’s a lot of money—but it’s a lot of years, too. Even 10% less GDP in 100 years corresponds to 0.1 percentage point less annual GDP growth. Climate change therefore does not justify policies that cost more than 0.1 percentage point of growth. If the goal is 10% more GDP in 100 years, pro-growth tax, regulatory and entitlement reforms would be far more effective.
Yes, the costs are not evenly spread. Some places will do better and some will do worse. The American South might be a worse place to grow wheat; Southern Canada might be a better one. In a century, Miami might find itself in approximately the same situation as the Dutch city of Rotterdam today.
Rotterdam–Ninety years thriving behind dikes and dams.
But spread over a century, the costs of moving and adapting are not as imposing as they seem. Rotterdam’s dikes are expensive, but not prohibitively so. Most buildings are rebuilt about every 50 years. If we simply stopped building in flood-prone areas and started building on higher ground, even the costs of moving cities would be bearable. Migration is costly. But much of the world’s population moved from farms to cities in the 20th century. Allowing people to move to better climates in the 21st will be equally possible. Such investments in climate adaptation are small compared with the investments we will regularly make in houses, businesses, infrastructure and education.
And economics is the central question—unlike with other environmental problems such as chemical pollution. Carbon dioxide hurts nobody’s health. It’s good for plants. Climate change need not endanger anyone. If it did—and you do hear such claims—then living in hot Arizona rather than cool Maine, or living with Louisiana’s frequent floods, would be considered a health catastrophe today.
Global warming is not the only risk our society faces. Even if science tells us that climate change is real and man-made, it does not tell us, as President Obama asserted, that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity. Really? Greater than nuclear explosions, a world war, global pandemics, crop failures and civil chaos?
No. Healthy societies do not fall apart over slow, widely predicted, relatively small economic adjustments of the sort painted by climate analysis. Societies do fall apart from war, disease or chaos. Climate policy must compete with other long-term threats for always-scarce resources.
Facing this reality, some advocate that we buy some “insurance.” Sure, they argue, the projected economic cost seems small, but it could turn out to be a lot worse. But the same argument applies to any possible risk. If you buy overpriced insurance against every potential danger, you soon run out of money. You can sensibly insure only when the premium is in line with the risk—which brings us back where we started, to the need for quantifying probabilities, costs, benefits and alternatives. And uncertainty goes both ways. Nobody forecast fracking, or that it would make the U.S. the world’s carbon-reduction leader. Strategic waiting is a rational response to a slow-moving uncertain peril with fast-changing technology.
Global warming is not even the obvious top environmental threat. Dirty water, dirty air and insect-borne diseases are a far greater problem today for most people world-wide. Habitat loss and human predation are a far greater problem for most animals. Elephants won’t make it to see a warmer climate. Ask them how they would prefer to spend $1 trillion—subsidizing high-speed trains or a human-free park the size of Montana.
Then, we need to know what effect proposed policies have and at what cost. Scientific, quantifiable or even vaguely plausible cause-and-effect thinking are missing from much advocacy for policies to reduce carbon emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “scientific” recommendations, for example, include “reduced gender inequality & marginalization in other forms,” “provisioning of adequate housing,” “cash transfers” and “awareness raising & integrating into education.” Even if some of these are worthy goals, they are not scientifically valid, cost-benefit-tested policies to cool the planet.
Climate policy advocates’ apocalyptic vision demands serious analysis,
and mushy thinking undermines their case.
If carbon emissions pose the greatest threat to humanity, it follows that the costs of nuclear power—waste disposal and the occasional meltdown—might be bearable. It follows that the costs of genetically modified foods and modern pesticides, which can feed us with less land and lower carbon emissions, might be bearable. It follows that if the future of civilization is really at stake, adaptation or geo-engineering should not be unmentionable. And it follows that symbolic, ineffective, political grab-bag policies should be intolerable.
Climate science, impacts and policies also appear as a house of cards.
Mr. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and an economics professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. Mr. Cochrane is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute.
More about Climate Policy Failures
The exhibit above shows the scope and complexity of the analysis. But the bottom line is that 96% of the effort and trillions of $$$ were spent to no avail. It is estimated that on the order of 1.2 Billion tonnes of CO2 were prevented over the last 20 years, with an additional 23 Billion tonnes to be erased by 2030. Any enterprise with that performance would be liquidated. That is an epic failure in fact.
Real observations show a slight decrease of global temperature in 2025 compared with the previous ten years. Some stations in the Arctic show warming, but most are fairly stable. The Arctic Ocean is cooling to considerable depth, while the tropical and Antarctic oceans have a slight surface warming. The sea level trend is not changing as IPCC model data indicate. The Arctic September sea ice varies but its area has the last 4 years been much larger than modelled by the IPCC. The average snow cover on the Northern Hemisphere is fairly constant during the last 50 years. The number of tropical cyclones varies, but with no clear trend. The integrated cyclonic energy shows some periodic variations, but no trend. Global precipitation has almost zero trend. The global cloud cover decreased from 64 % to 61 % from 1985 to 2020. At the same time the global temperature increased 0.7 °C, suggesting a possible relation. The observed sequence: first warming the of the sea surface, then the deeper sea, atmosphere and land suggests that the Sun is the source of warming, modulated by clouds, and there is no manmade climate catastrophe in the foreseeable future.
1. Introduction
The United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres on July 27, 2023, declared: The era of global boiling has arrived. We have a huge climate crisis. There is a good reason to study the available climate data to see if that is true. In the following we will compare data for 2025 with previous years and look for trends of this claimed extreme warming and accompanying weather extremes. We found no sign of a coming climate crisis.
Before I started this survey, I asked my helpful AI to make some images illustrating a) Changing
Climate, b) Natural climate change, and c) Good climate change and d) Man made climate change.
The pictures are shown on the next page.
They give a good idea of what the public is told about climate and climate change and that mankind is destroying it, as stated by the UN Secretary General. In this extended abstract I present a short status for the atmospheric and ocean temperatures, sea level, sea ice, sea level, snow, wind and storms, precipitation and global cloud cover.
Figure 2: The average temperature of the year 2025 versus last 10 years
The average change is -0.24 °C and is more a sign of cooling than warming. A warning: The use of just one number, the average change in global temperature, hides the fact that our planet has various temperature regions which may show a different change than the average. In 2025 we observe that the Southern Africa has cooled 3.4°C, while Greenland and Northeast Canada have warmed 3.0 °C. The use of averages tends to hide important details.
3. Ocean temperatures
The general impression of the global sea temperatures is that they follow the radiation pattern of the Sun, with a maximum surface temperature in Equator regions and colder water towards the poles. At the deep bottom of both Polar Oceans we find, to our surprise, permafrost regions.
If we look at data for the Argo Ocean temperature surveys for the oceans from 0 to 1900 m depth, from 2004 to 2021, we find that the average temperature of the global oceans has increased from 6.42 to 6.47 °C. However, if we look at different oceans: the Circum-Arctic oceans are cooling, while the Circum-Equator oceans are warming – but only near the surface level. The CircumAntarctic oceans show warming down to 500 m. This is illustrated in Figure 4.
Much is still to be learned about the oceans! We should focus on local and regional values instead
of global averages and should not overinterpret published values.
4. Sea level
The satellite observations refer to a global model of the sea surface of the oceans. It is far more relevant to study the traditional sea level observations in coastal areas where people live. An important measuring station is Korsør in Denmark, which is in a geologically very stable area with no uplift or sinking. Measurements since 1897 in Figure 5, shows a linear trend of +0.83 mm/year. This means an estimated sea level rise of about 10 cm in 2150.
Figure 5: Sea level measurements in Korsør, Denmark. A geologically stable location.
5. Sea iceThe future of the Arctic Sea ice is rather serious according to the last IPCC report. Some scenarios
predict practically ice-free conditions in September from 2050 as shown in Figure 7. But observations show that for the last 4 years the sea ice area has been considerably higher than forecasted
by the models.
Figure 7: Arctic minimum sea ice (September) from last IPCC report (2021) with observed areas for 2022- 2025 (blue circles).
[Note: See the linked paper for Humlum’s point on Snow, Wind and Storms, and Global Precipitation, all of which show unalarming trends.]
8. Cloud cover – and a few reflections
If all clouds were suddenly removed, then our planet would gain about 17 W/m2 in solar radiation
and become warmer. In the period 1982-2019 we have observed a decrease in cloud cover from 64 % to 61 %. This means that the Earth has received significantly more solar radiation. This may
well be the main explanation for the observed temperature increase of about 0.7 °C during this
period, as shown in Figure 11.
Figure 11: Global cloud cover and global temperature in the period 1982 – 2019.
Climate scientists admit that they cannot model the cloud cover in a reliable way. It is simply not possible to trustworthy model small scale phenomena as evaporation and condensation, for use in global climate models.
There are many additional parameters that may act on the cloud cover. For instance, if we study the changes in the Earth’s rotation, which we measure as the length of the day, we find that it was 2 milliseconds longer in 1980 than it is today. The faster rotation mirror decreasing cloud cover and decreasing humidity. Thus, it is therefore entirely possible that these parameters in some ways are related. Much is still to be learned about global cloud cover.
8.1 Some reflections
The principal question was this: Are we currently in a climate crisis?
1. The observed average global air temperature change during the last 40+ years is about +0.16°C per decade. If unchanged, the additional average global air temperature increase
by year 2100 will be about +1.15°C. However, part of the temperature increase reported may be caused by administrative changes, and the real future increase may therefore be smaller.
2. Tide gauges along coasts indicate a typical global sea level increase of about 1-2 mm/yr.
Coastal sea level change rate last 100 year has essential been stable, but with periodic variations. If unchanged, global sea level at coasts will typically increase 8-16 cm by year 2100, although many locations in regions affected by glaciation 20,000 years ago, will experience a relative sea level drop.
3. Since 2004 the global oceans above 1900 m depth have on average warmed about 0.037°C
(do not overinterpret). The maximum warming (about 0.2 °C, 0-100 m depth) mainly affects oceans near Equator, where incoming solar radiation is at maximum.
If we look at the Earth’s climate on geological time scales of millions of years, it is surprisingly stable. In most periods it is stable and warm – about 25 oC on average, and in some periods, it is
about 10 degrees colder, as we observe now. It seems that the planet has a thermostat that keeps
the climate between these limiting temperatures. Today, our planet is well situated in between these limits, and there is no reason to think that we are in a climate crisis.
8.2 Nature provides us with simple answers
In a simple way, observed data shows us what really controls the global air temperature. We just need to use our common sense and examine the sequence of temperature changes. Measurements (Figure 12) tell us that the global temperature signal originates at the ocean surface. Two weeks later the signal is recorded by satellites in the lower atmosphere. The land surface air temperature also follows the ocean surface temperature with a delay of two months, and 20 months later the signal is recorded in the ocean at 200 m depth. This sequence was first described by Humlum et al. (2012) and demonstrates the key role for ocean surface temperature in controlling atmospheric temperatures.
Figure 12:The sequence of global climate signal from the sea surface (SST) to the deep ocean.
The hypothetical CO2 temperature signaloriginates in the upper troposphere, and – if dominant –
we would see the signal in the satellite data from the lower atmosphere, before we see the signal
arriving at the ocean surface. Measurements show that the opposite is the case (Figure 12). To the
degree CO2 influences atmospheric temperatures, its effect is clearly subordinate in relation to
other influences.
9. Climate Change: importance of oceans
I have two overall conclusions and one suggestion for what should be the future main climate
research focus:
1. Observed data do not support the notion of a climate crisis but reveals many and partly recurrent natural variations. 2. Ocean surface temperature controls the atmospheric temperature.
The principal climate research question therefore is this: What controls the ocean surface temperature? Presumably, the Sun is the key answer, modulated by the global cloud cover.
Bryan Leyland explains the basic mistake threatening society’s energy platform in his article at Climate Depot. Electricity Markets & Engineering Realities. Text in italics with my bolds and added images.
‘It is telling that while [solar & wind] developers routinely claim their energy is now the cheapest available, they never argue that subsidies are therefore no longer needed’
The prime objective of any modern power system is to deliver a reliable and economic supply over the long term, whereas the prime objective of any market system is to maximize profit. For electricity markets to work, their rules must reward those who best provide reliable, affordable power.
Many electricity systems are managed by markets that focus on minimizing day-to-day prices, operating on the blind assumption that low prices today will guarantee a reliable supply tomorrow. This assumption is wrong. A power system is a complex, interconnected machine that forms the lifeblood of a modern economy. It must deliver stable power at the lowest cost, not just today, but decades into the future. Systems governed by short-term markets have repeatedly failed to do this.
The fundamental error is treating electricity as a commodity
like any other. It is not.
Electricity must be generated at a rate that exactly matches demand, second by second, while keeping frequency and voltage within tight limits. The system must survive major disturbances — generator failures, transmission faults, and the rapid fluctuations inherent in wind and solar output. When it cannot, catastrophic cascading collapse becomes inevitable, as Spain recently demonstrated.
TSO data shows the point just after 12:30 on Monday 28 April when Spain’s electricity grid collapsed. When the collapse occurred, the Spanish electrical grid had almost 80% renewable generation, 11% nuclear, and only 3% natural gas. There was practically no base generation or physical inertia to absorb the shock that was generated. Source: Red Eléctrica
Any system that subjects its customers to price spikes, blackouts, and unstable supply is
incompatible with a functioning modern economy.
Current plans for future power supply increasingly rely on “demand side management” — a phrase that amounts to an admission that, when generating capacity falls short, consumers will be forced to reduce consumption. This ignores hard lessons from unreliable systems elsewhere: when electricity is scarce, many businesses don’t curtail operations — they shut up shop or buy diesel generators. The latter results in higher costs and higher emissions, the opposite of what was intended.
An ideal power system is built around reliability, security, stability,
and long-term least-cost design for the system as a whole.
These qualities can only be achieved through rigorous engineering — careful long-term planning, comprehensive analysis of worst-case conditions, and the kind of disciplined foresight that experienced power engineers bring. When a system works well, success is invisible: the lights stay on, business operates efficiently, and everyone’s expectations are quietly met. Failure, by contrast, is expensive and political dynamite.
Other factors — profit, market share, political targets, public perception — are legitimate considerations, but they are secondary. When they dominate over providing a reliable and economical supply, problems follow.
Short-term electricity markets are structured to optimize generation based on prices set by generators – the organizations that also control the supply. When there is surplus capacity, prices crash to zero. When there is a shortage, prices spike. As two departing New Zealand electricity executives openly acknowledged, the way to make money in the local market is to keep the system on the edge of shortage. This creates a perverse incentive: underinvestment in capacity becomes a profit strategy. High prices and forced demand reductions become routine features rather than emergency exceptions.
Short-term markets place little value on long-term resilience,
adequate reserve capacity, energy storage, or system stability.
The result is chronic underinvestment in precisely the assets that keep systems secure. The growing concentration on intermittent wind and solar compounds this problem, which is exacerbated by the fact that intermittent generation gets paid at the same rate as reliable generation. While wind and solar generation is often cheap at the station gate, the full system cost — backup capacity, storage, grid reinforcement — is borne by consumers, not by the owners of intermittent plant.
Multiple independent analyses confirm the pattern: the higher the share of wind and solar on a system, the higher the ultimate cost to consumers. This fact has escaped many industry leaders in New Zealand.
Wind and solar development in most countries is driven heavily by political incentives and substantial subsidies. It is telling that while developers routinely claim their energy is now the cheapest available, they never argue that subsidies are therefore no longer needed. Without those subsidies, intermittent renewables would play a modest role in large-scale power generation.
When providing a reliable and economic supply is no longer treated as
prime requirements, the risks don’t disappear — they are simply deferred.
Language shifts to conceal the retreat: “reliability” becomes “acceptable risk”; shortages become “price signals”; engineering constraints become “obstacles to be managed.” The system drifts, steadily and quietly, away from everything that underpins it.
The solution is not to abandon markets, but to redesign them around what the power system and the economy actually need.Long-term system performance — not short-term price — must guide both investment and operation. Engineers must be empowered to speak plainly about risks ahead, and their warnings must be taken seriously before failures occur rather than after.
If we want a reliable and affordable power system, we must make that a non-negotiable requirement. Markets should be the enabler of that goal, not the driver that overrides it. Ignore this reality, and high prices and shortages are not a risk — they are a certainty.
Bryan Leyland MSc, DistFEngNZ, FIMechE, FIEE(rtd) is a power systems engineer with 65 years experience in New Zealand and in many overseas countries.
Many headlines proclaiming lots of warming with the current La Nina ending. Some examples from the usual suspects:
El Niño is coming, chances rising it will be historically strong,CNN
What Makes This Year’s Super El Niño the Strongest in 140 Years?, Science Times
Weather experts warn of ‘super’ El Niño. Here’s what could happen,. USA Today
Here’s What The Super El Niño Means In Your State, Weather.com
After all, warmists need warming to justify their narrative, and people attending outdoor sporting events in NH are noticing how cool it is presently. So hope abounds for a great reversal in coming months, while leaving unstated that oceanic cycles are a natural climate driver unaffected by CO2 emissions.
Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate. On the contrary, the graph above shows all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief El Nino events associated with oceanic cycles. And in 2024 we saw an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now dropping well below its peak.
Is a Super El Nino Coming? Yes and No.
The certainty in the headlines is speculative and exaggerated. The Climate Prediction Center is more circumspect and unbiased. The forecast is here: ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Watch Synopsis in italics with my bolds and added images.
El Niño is likely to emerge soon (82% chance in May-July 2026)
and continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27
(96% chance in December 2026-February 2027).
In the past month, ENSO-neutral conditions continued, as indicated by near-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean [Fig. 1].
The latest weekly Niño-3.4 index value was +0.4°C, with the westernmost (Niño-4) and easternmost (Niño-1+2) indices at +0.5°C and +1.0°C, respectively [Fig. 2]. The equatorial subsurface temperature index (average from 180°-100°W) increased for the sixth consecutive month [Fig. 3], with widespread, significantly above-average subsurface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific [Fig. 4]. Westerly wind anomalies were observed over the western equatorial Pacific at low levels and were evident over the central and east-central Pacific at upper levels. Convection was near average on the equator near the Date Line and was suppressed around Indonesia [Fig. 5]. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system reflected ENSO-neutral conditions.
The North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) average, including the NCEP CFSv2 [Fig. 6], favors El Niño to form by next month and persist through Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27.
While confidence in the occurrence of El Niño has increased since last month, there is still substantial uncertainty in the peak strength of El Niño, with no strength categorization exceeding a 37% chance [Figs. 7 & 8].
The strongest El Niño events in the historical record are characterized by significant ocean-atmosphere coupling through the summer, and it remains to be seen whether this occurs in 2026.Stronger El Niño events do not ensure strong impacts; they can only make certain impacts more likely (see CPC outlooks for probabilities of seasonal anomalies). In summary, El Niño is likely to emerge soon (82% chance in May-July 2026) and continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27 (96% chance in December 2026-February 2027).
Warming in Nino 3.4 index in 2026.
This discussion is a consolidated effort of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOAA’s National Weather Service, and their funded institutions. Oceanic and atmospheric conditions are updated weekly on the Climate Prediction Center web site (El Niño/La Niña Current Conditions and Expert Discussions). A probabilistic strength forecast is available here. The next ENSO Diagnostics Discussion is scheduled for 11 June 2026.
The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:
The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.
Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated. This February report is based on HadSST 4, but with a twist. The data is slightly different in the new version, 4.2.0.0 replacing 4.1.1.0. Product page is here.
The Current Context
The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST 4.2 starting in 2015 through February 2026. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016, followed by rising temperatures in 2023 and 2024 and cooling in 2025, now with a steady mild rising in 2026.
Note that in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes. That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period. A small warming was driven by NH summer peaks in 2021-22, but offset by cooling in SH and the tropics, By January 2023 the global anomaly was again below the mean.
Then in 2023-24 came an event resembling 2015-16 with a Tropical spike and two NH spikes alongside, all higher than 2015-16. There was also a coinciding rise in SH, and the Global anomaly was pulled up to 1.1°C in 2023, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak. Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. During 2 years of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by Tropics cooling from its 1.3°C peak 2024/01, down to 0.5C in November 2025. That same month, the Global anomaly exactly matched the mean for this period, with all regions converging on that value, lincluding a 5 month drop in NH. Now in 2026, due to a six-month rise in SH and Tropice, plus NH the last three months, the Global anomaly in April is matching the value 2 years ago, 04/2024.
Comment:
The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof their Zero Carbon agenda is needed, without addressing how impossible it would be for CO2 warming the air to raise ocean temperatures. It is the ocean that warms the air, not the other way around. Recently Steven Koonin had this to say about the phonomenon confirmed in the graph above:
El Nino is a phenomenon in the climate system that happens once every four or five years. Heat builds up in the equatorial Pacific to the west of Indonesia and so on. Then when enough of it builds up it surges across the Pacific and changes the currents and the winds. As it surges toward South America it was discovered and named in the 19th century It iswell understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.
Now people talk about changes in that phenomena as a result of CO2 but it’s there in the climate system already and when it happens it influences weather all over the world. We feel it when it gets rainier in Southern California for example. So for the last 3 years we have been in the opposite of an El Nino, a La Nina, part of the reason people think the West Coast has been in drought.
It has now shifted in the last months to an El Nino condition that warms the globe and is thought to contribute to this Spike we have seen. But there are other contributions as well. One of the most surprising ones is that back in January of 2022 an enormous underwater volcano went off in Tonga and it put up a lot of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. It increased the upper atmosphere of water vapor by about 10 percent, and that’s a warming effect, and it may be that is contributing to why the spike is so high.
A longer view of SSTs
To enlarge, open image in new tab.
The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations. Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015. This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since. The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies. Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July. 1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.
The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 was dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2.
SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8, a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12. Again SSTs are average 2013-14.
Now a different pattern appears. The Tropics cooled sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off. But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average. In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16. NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.
The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH were offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.) Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021. In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.
Then in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH produced a summer peak extending into September higher than any previous year. Despite El Nino driving the Tropics January 2024 anomaly higher than 1998 and 2016 peaks, following months cooled in all regions, and the Tropics continued cooling in April, May and June along with SH dropping. After July and August NH warming again pulled the global anomaly higher, September through January 2025 resumed cooling in all regions, continuing February through April 2025, with little change in May,June and July despite upward bumps in NH. Now temps in all regions have cooled from August through November 2025, followed by a rebound of mild warming in 2026 appears in all regions through April.
What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH. The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before. After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.
Contemporary AMO Observations
Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future. So I find that ERSSTv5 AMO dataset has current data. It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic. “ERSST5 AMO follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.” So the values represent SST anomaly differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.
The chart above confirms what Kaplan also showed. As August is the hottest month for the N. Atlantic, its variability, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin. Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Then in 2023 the peak reached 1.4C before declining to 0.9 August 2026. An annual chart below is informative:
Note the difference between blue/green years, beige/brown, and purple/red years. 2010, 2021, 2022 all peaked strongly in August or September. 1998 and 2007 were mildly warm. 2016 and 2018 were matching or cooler than the global average. 2023 started out slightly warm, then rose steadily to an extraordinary peak in July. August to October were only slightly lower, but by December cooled by ~0.4C.
Then in 2024 the AMO anomaly started higher than any previous year, then leveled off for two months declining slightly into April. Remarkably, May showed an upward leap putting this on a higher track than 2023, and rising slightly higher in June. In July, August and September 2024 the anomaly declined, and despite a small rise in October, ended close to where it began. Note 2025 started much lower than the previous year and headed sharply downward, well below the previous two years, then since April through September aligning with 2010. In October there was an unusual upward spike, now reversed down to match 2022 and 2016. The orange 2026 line continues downward and is visible on top of 2016 purple line, well below the peak years of 2023 and 2024.
The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.
The rose line is the average anomaly 1982-1996 inclusive, value 0.18. The orange line the average 1982-2025, value 0.41 also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2015-2025, value 0.74. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.
The oceans are driving the warming this century. SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.” The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect. The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? And is the sun adding forcing to this process?
USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean
Tom Segalstad wrote this paper pointing out major holes in the CO2 Warming belief. You can scroll through the text in the embedded document above, or download the pdf by clicking on the Download button. Below is my excerpted synopsis with my bolds and added images.
1. Introduction
It has recently been created a belief among people that an apparent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is caused by anthropogenic burning of fossil carbon in petroleum, coal, and natural gas. The extra atmospheric CO has been claimed tocause global climatic change with a significant atmospheric temperature rise, of 1.5 to 4.5°C in the next decennium (Houghton et al., 1990). This postulate is here discussed and rejected on energetic and geochemical grounds.
2. Heat energy and temperatures
Our relatively high global atmospheric temperature near the surface of the Earth, with an average of 14 to 15°C, is caused by heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere, mainly H2O vapor. Without the Earth’s atmosphere the surface temperature would be approximately -18°C.
All human activities have been claimed to contribute about 1.3% of this (approx. 2 W/m2 ), while a hypothetic doubling of the atmospheric CO concentration would contribute about 2.6% (approx. 4 W/m2 ) to the present “Greenhouse Effect”. 150 years-long time series of temperature measurements are covering too short time spans to be useful for climate prediction, in order to be used as “evidence” for anthropogenic heating (or cooling). The global mean temperature has risen and fallen several times over the last 400 years, with no evidence of anthropogenic causes, although strong explosive volcanic eruptions have caused periodically colder climates.
It should also be noted that clouds can reflect up to approx. 50 W/m2 and can absorb up to approx. 30 W/m2 of the solar radiation, making the Earth’s average “Greenhouse Effect” vary naturally within approx. 96 and 176 W/m2 . Hence the anticipated anthropogenic atmospheric CO heat absorption is much smaller than the natural variation of the Earth’s “Greenhouse Effect”.
The oceans act as a huge heat energy buffer; the global climate is primarily governed by the enormous amount of heat stored in the oceans (total mass approx. 1.4 x 10^24 g), rather than the minute amount of heat withheld in the heat-absorbing part of the atmosphere (total mass approx. 1.4 x 10^18 g), a mass difference of one million times. Most of the atmospheric heat absorption occurs in water vapor (total mass approx. 1.3 x 10^19 g), which is equivalent to a uniform layer of only 2.5 cm of liquid water covering the globe, with a residence time of about 9 days.
The total internal energy of the whole ocean is more than 1.6 x 10^27 Joules, about 2000 times larger than the total internal energy 9.4 x 10^23 Joules of the whole atmosphere. Furthermore the cryosphere (ice sheets, sea ice, permafrost, and glaciers; total mass of the continental ice is approx. 3.3 x 10^22 g) plays a central role in the Earth’sclimate as an effective heat sink for the atmosphere and oceans. With a large latent heat of melting on the order of 9.3 x 10^24 Joules, that hypothetic energy is equivalent tocooling the entire oceans by about 2°C (5.8 x 10^24 J/°C). For comparison, the energy needed to warm the entire atmosphere by 1°C is only 5.1 x 10^21 Joules.
Hence it will be impossible to melt the Earth’s ice caps and thereby increase the sea level just by increasing the heat energy of the atmosphere through a few percent by added heat absorption of anthropogenic CO2 in the lower atmosphere.
3. CO2 measurements in atmosphere and ice cores
Houghton et al. (1990) claim in their section 1.2.5 three evidences that the contemporary atmospheric CO2 increase is anthropogenic: First, CO2 measurements from ice cores show a 21% rise from 280 to 353 ppmv (parts per million by volume) since pre-industrial times; second, the atmospheric CO2 increase closely parallels (sic!) the accumulated emission trends from fossil fuel combustion and from land use changes, although the annual increase has been smaller each year than the fossil CO2 input [some 50% deviation]; third, the isotopic trends of C13 and C14 agree qualitatively (sic!) with those expected due to the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and the biosphere.
Figure 1. Concentration of CO2 in air bubbles from the pre-industrial ice from Siple, Antarctica (open squares), and in the 1958-1986 atmosphere at Mauna Loa, Hawaii (solid line): (A) original Siple data without assuming an 83 year younger age of air than the age of the enclosing ice, and (B) the same data after arbitrary “correction” of age of air (Neftel et al., 1985; Friedli et al., 1986; and IPCC 1990).
Jaworowski et al. (1992 a) have presented a number of criticisms regarding the methodology of atmospheric CO2 measurements, including spectroscopic instrumental peak overlap errors (from N2O, CH4 , and CFCs in the air). They also pointed out that the CO2 measurements at current CO2 observatories use a procedure involving a subjective editing (Keeling et al., 1976) of measured data, only representative of a few tenths of percent of the total data. There are also fundamental problems connected with the use of stable carbon isotopes ( C13/ C14) in tree rings for model calculations of earlier atmospheres’ CO2 concentration, a method which now seems to have been abandoned.. The third evidence, based on carbon isotopes, will be discussed below in Section 5.
4. Chemical laws for distribution of CO2 in nature
Statistically it has been found that the atmospheric CO2 concentration rises after temperature rises (Kuo et al., 1990), and it has been suggested that the reason is that cold water dissolves more CO2 (e.g. Segalstad, 1990). Hence, if the water temperature increases, the water cannot keep as much CO2 in solution, resulting in CO2 degassing from the water to the atmosphere. According to Takahashi (1961) heating of sea water by 1°C will increase the partial pressure of atmospheric CO by 12.5 ppmv during upwelling of deep water. For example 12°C warming of the Benguela Current should increase the atmospheric CO2 concentration by 150 ppmv.
From a geochemical consideration of sedimentary rocks deposited throughout the Earth’s history, and the chemical composition of the ocean and atmosphere, Holland (1984) showed that degassing from the Earth’s interior has given us chloride in the ocean; and nitrogen, CO2 , and noble gases in the atmosphere. Mineral equilibria have established concentrations of major cations and H in the ocean, and the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, through different chemical buffer reactions. Biological reactions have given us sulphate in the ocean and oxygen in the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide is an equally important requisite for life on Earth as oxygen. Plants. need CO2 for their living (the photo synthesis), and humans and animals breath out CO2 from their respiration. In addition to this biogeochemical balance, there is also an important geochemical balance. CO2 in the atmosphere is in equilibriumwith carbonic acid dissolved in the ocean, which in term is close to CaCO saturation and in equilibrium with carbonate shells of organisms and lime (calcium carbonate; limestone) in the ocean through the a series pf reactions.
If the temperature changes, the chemical equilibrium constant will change, and move the equilibrium to the left or right. The result is that the partial pressure of CO (g) will increase or decrease. The equilibrium will mainly be governed by Henry’s Law: the partial pressure of CO2 in the air will be proportional to the concentration of CO2 dissolved in water. The proportional constant is the Henry’s Law Constant, which is strongly temperature dependent, and lesser dependent on total pressure and salinity.
5. Carbon isotopes in atmospheric CO2
Houghton et al. (1990) assumed for the IPCC model 21% of our present-day atmospheric CO2 has been contributed from burning of fossil fuel. This has been made possible by CO2 having a “rough indication” (sic!) lifetime of 50 – 200 years. It is possible to test this assumption by inspecting the stable C13/ C12 isotope ratio (expressed as δ13Cpdb ) of atmospheric CO2 . It is important to note that this value is the net value of mixing all different CO2 components, and would show the results of all natural and non-natural (i.e. anthropogenic) processes involving CO2.
Segalstad (1992, 1993) has by isotope mass balance considerations calculated the atmospheric CO2 lifetime and the amount of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere. The December 1988 atmospheric CO2 composition was computed for its 748 GT C total mass and δ13C = -7.807‰ for 3 components: (1) natural fraction remaining from the pre-industrial atmosphere; (2) cumulative fraction remaining from all annual fossil-fuel CO emissions (from production data); (3) carbon isotope mass-balanced natural fraction. The masses of the components were computed for different atmospheric lifetimes of CO2 .
Source: Skrable et al. (2022) Despite an estimated 205 ppm of FF CO2 emitted since 1750, only 46.84 ppm (23%) of FF CO2 remains, while the other 77% is distributed into natural sinks/sources. As of 2018 atmospheric CO2 was 405, of which 12% (47 ppm) originated from FF. And the other 88% (358 ppm) came from natural sources: 276 prior to 1750, and 82 ppm since. Natural CO2 sources/sinks continue to drive rising atmospheric CO2, presently at a rate of 2 to 1 over FF CO2. [My snyopsis: On CO2 Sources and Isotopes]
The calculations show how the IPCC’s (Houghton et al., 1990) atmospheric CO2 lifetime of 50-200 years only accounts for half the mass of atmospheric CO2 . However, the unique result fits an atmospheric CO2 lifetime of -5 (5.4) years, in agreement with numerous C14 studies compiled by Sundquist (1985) and chemical kinetics (Stumm & Morgan, 1970). The mass of all past fossil-fuel and biogenic emissions remaining in the current atmosphere was in December 1988 calculated to be -30 GT C or less, i.e. a maximum -4%, corresponding to an atmospheric CO concentration of -14 ppmv. This small amount of anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 probably contributes less than half a Watt/m2 of the 146 W/m “Greenhouse Effect” of a cloudless atmosphere, contributing to less than half a degree C of radiative heating of the lower atmosphere.
The isotopic mass balance calculations show that at least 96% of the current atmospheric CO2 is isotopically indistinguishable from non-fossil-fuel sources, i.e. natural marine and juvenile sources from the Earth’s interior. Hence, for the atmospheric CO2 budget, marine equilibration and degassing, and juvenile degassing from e.g. volcanic sources, must be much more important, and burning of fossil-fuel and biogenic materials much less important, than assumed by the authors of the IPCC model (Houghton et al., 1990)
6. Conclusions
Water vapor is the most important “greenhouse gas”. Man’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels is small, maximum 4% found by carbon isotope mass balance calculations. The “Greenhouse Effect” of this contribution is small and well within natural climatic variability. The amount of fossil fuel carbon is minute compared to the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. The atmospheric CO2 lifetime is about 5 years. The ocean will be able toabsorb the larger part of the CO2 that Man can produce through burning of fossil fuels. The IPCC CO2 global warming model is not supported by the scientific data. Based on geochemical knowledge there should be no reason to fear a climatic catastrophe because of Man’s release of the life-governing CO2 gas.
The global climate is primarily governed by the enormous heat energy stored in the oceans and the latent heat of melting of the ice caps, not by the small amount of heat that can be absorbed inatmospheric CO2 ; hence legislation of “CO2 taxes” to be paid by the public cannot influence on the sea level and the global climate.
2025 ended with a steadily declining rate of rising CO2 in the atmosphere following a 20 month cooling since April 2024, peak of an unusual and unexplained warming spike. That rate declined further in the first four months of 2026. Historical records show that around 1875 was the coldest time in the last 10,000 years. That was the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA), and since then temperatures have warmed at an average rate of about 0.5C per century. The recovery of the biosphere and ocean warming resulted in rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, founder of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute reported on this pattern in 2009.
At times, there are warming spikes, in the 1930s and 40s for example, and the rate of rising CO2 goes up. At other times, such as 1950s and 60s, temperatures cool, and rising CO2 slows down. More recently, in 2023 and 24, we saw temperatures spike up before falling back down in 2025 and now in 2026. [Note: A study of ocean biochemistry processes confirms that since the end of the LIA rising temperatures have been accompanied by rising CO2 at a rate of ~2 ppm per year. [ See: Slam Dunk: Δtemp Drives Δco2, Ocean Biochemistry at Work ]
Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.
Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate. On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. And in 2024 we saw an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now dropping well below its peak.
Previously I have demonstrated that changes in atmospheric CO2 levels follow changes in Global Mean Temperatures (GMT) as shown by satellite measurements from University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). A link to that background post is provided later below.
This post updates the analysis with the most current observations, testing the premise that temperature changes are predictive of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The chart at the top shows the two monthly datasets: CO2 levels in blue reported at Mauna Loa, and Global temperature anomalies in purple reported by UAHv6.1, both through April 2026. Would such a sharp increase in temperature be reflected in rising CO2 levels, according to the successful mathematical forecasting model? Would CO2 levels decline as temperatures dropped following the peak?
The answer is yes: that temperature spike resulted
in a corresponding CO2 spike as expected.
And lower CO2 levels followed the temperature decline.
Above are UAH temperature anomalies compared to CO2 monthly changes year over year.
Changes in monthly CO2 synchronize with temperature fluctuations, which for UAH are anomalies referenced to the 1991-2020 period. CO2 differentials are calculated for the present month by subtracting the value for the same month in the previous year (for example April 2026 minus April 2025). Temp anomalies are calculated by comparing the present month with the baseline month. Note the recent CO2 upward spike and drop following the temperature spike and drop.
The table below shows clearly the pattern of observed temperatures declining along with declining rates of rising observed CO2. The CO2 rate peaked at 4.41 ppm, then declined over the next 25 months to 1.48 ppm, nearly the baseline rate since the LIA. There are fluctuations in the CO2 monthly response since the differential is influenced by the previous year as well as current year. By 2026/4, the rate of 1.48 ppm was one-third of the peak rate of 4.41 ppm.
Month
temperature anomaly
co2 Diff. from previous year
2024\1
0.79
3.32
2024\2
0.86
4.23
2024\3
0.87
4.41
2024\4
0.94
3.14
2024\5
0.78
2.87
2024\6
0.7
3.25
2024\7
0.74
3.72
2024\8
0.75
3.31
2024\9
0.8
3.53
2024\10
0.73
3.56
2024\11
0.64
3.39
2024\12
0.62
3.54
2025\1
0.46
3.85
2025\2
0.5
2.54
2025\3
0.58
2.77
2025\4
0.61
3.13
2025\5
0.5
3.61
2025\6
0.48
2.70
2025\7
0.36
2.32
2025\8
0.39
2.49
2025\9
0.53
2.34
2025\10
0.53
2.49
2025\11
0.43
2.61
2025\12
0.3
2.09
2026\1
0.35
1.97
2026\2
0.39
2.26
2026\3
0.38
2.01
2026\4
0.39
1.48
The final proof that CO2 follows temperature due to stimulation of natural CO2 reservoirs is demonstrated by the ability to calculate CO2 levels since 1979 with a simple mathematical formula:
For each subsequent year, the CO2 level for each month was generated
CO2 this month this year = a + b × Temp this month this year + CO2 this month last year
The values for a and b are constants applied to all monthly temps, and are chosen to scale the forecasted CO2 level for comparison with the observed value. Here is the result of those calculations.
In the chart calculated CO2 levels correlate with observed CO2 levels at 0.9988 out of 1.0000. This mathematical generation of CO2 atmospheric levels is only possible if they are driven by temperature-dependent natural sources, and not by human emissions which are small in comparison, rise steadily and monotonically. For a more detailed look at the recent fluxes, here are the results since 2015, an ENSO neutral year.
For this recent period, the calculated CO2 values match well the annual highs, while some annual generated values of CO2 are slightly higher or lower than observed at other months of the year. Still the correlation for this period is 0.9946.
Key Point
Changes in CO2 follow changes in global temperatures on all time scales, from last month’s observations to ice core datasets spanning millennia. Since CO2 is the lagging variable, it cannot logically be the cause of temperature, the leading variable. It is folly to imagine that by reducing human emissions of CO2, we can change global temperatures, which are obviously driven by other factors.
I received today an email from Dr. Bernd Fleischmann acknowledging my effort to present an english version of his recent presentation. In order to have a more accurate and complete communication he sent me the set of english slides in a pdf embedded below. Along with several additional exhibits, this makes a much more powerful and accessible statement of his points regarding the notion of a Climate Crisis. You can either scroll through the exhibits embedded on this page, or download the pdf file by hitting the download button at the bottom.
I thank Dr. Fleischmann for his research and organized critique of this issue and for speaking truth to the powers that be, many of whom are still entranced by a false narrative.
In the video speech yesterday, Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre brings the receipts damning PM Carney for Canada sliding into economic recession. Transcript below with my bolds and added images.
The latest weekly Niño-3.4 index value was +0.4°C, with the westernmost (Niño-4) and easternmost (Niño-1+2) indices at +0.5°C and +1.0°C, respectively [Fig. 2]. The equatorial subsurface temperature index (average from 180°-100°W) increased for the sixth consecutive month [Fig. 3], with widespread, significantly above-average subsurface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific [Fig. 4]. Westerly wind anomalies were observed over the western equatorial Pacific at low levels and were evident over the central and east-central Pacific at upper levels. Convection was near average on the equator near the Date Line and was suppressed around Indonesia [Fig. 5]. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system reflected ENSO-neutral conditions.
The strongest El Niño events in the historical record are characterized by significant ocean-atmosphere coupling through the summer, and it remains to be seen whether this occurs in 2026. Stronger El Niño events do not ensure strong impacts; they can only make certain impacts more likely (see CPC outlooks for probabilities of seasonal anomalies). In summary, El Niño is likely to emerge soon (82% chance in May-July 2026) and continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27 (96% chance in December 2026-February 2027).
The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:
Science Matters 