Author: Ron Clutz

Arctic Ice Recovering 2025 Yearend

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The Arctic ice extents are now fully reported for 2025, ending the year below average despite a higher rate of growth through December.

Note MASIE 2025 started 1M km2 (or 1 Wadham) below the 19 year average, but cut the deficit to 428k km2, or a gap of 3%. SII v.4 tracked lower than MASIE during December, drawing closer the last week. The chart below shows the distribution of ice extent across the Arctic regions at yearend 2025.

Region 2025365 Day 365 Average 2025-Ave. 2024365 2025-2024
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 12611676 13039302 -427626 12435177 176499
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1071070 1070458 612 1071001 69
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 964771 1235 965989 17
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087133 4 1087137 0
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897841 4 897845 0
 (5) Kara_Sea 867623 887208 -19585 876527 -8904
 (6) Barents_Sea 254882 423978 -169096 345715 -90832
 (7) Greenland_Sea 668550 595658 72891 574537 94013
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 768306 982649 -214343 982716 -214409
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854931 853618 1313 854878 53
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1256284 1215695 40589 922416 333868
 (11) Central_Arctic 3174354 3206560 -32206 3207164.49 -32811
 (12) Bering_Sea 350519 403002 -52483 325489.93 25029
 (13) Baltic_Sea 14031 31873 -17843 15271.77 -1241
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 366812 393742 -26929 302941 63871

The major deficits are in Barents Sea and Baffin Bay (Atlantic basins), along with smaller losses in Bering and Okhotsk (Pacific basins).

Background from Previous Post Updated to Year-End 2025

Some years ago reading a thread on global warming at WUWT, I was struck by one person’s comment: “I’m an actuary with limited knowledge of climate metrics, but it seems to me if you want to understand temperature changes, you should analyze the changes, not the temperatures.” That rang bells for me, and I applied that insight in a series of Temperature Trend Analysis studies of surface station temperature records. Those posts are available under this heading. Climate Compilation Part I Temperatures

This post seeks to understand Arctic Sea Ice fluctuations using a similar approach: Focusing on the rates of extent changes rather than the usual study of the ice extents themselves. Fortunately, Sea Ice Index (SII) from NOAA provides a suitable dataset for this project. As many know, SII relies on satellite passive microwave sensors to produce charts of Arctic Ice extents with complete coverages going back to 1989.  Version 3 was more closely aligned than Version 4 with MASIE, the modern form of Naval ice charting in support of Arctic navigation. The SII User Guide is here.

There are statistical analyses available, and the one of interest (table below) is called Sea Ice Index Rates of Change (here). As indicated by the title, this spreadsheet consists not of monthly extents, but changes of extents from the previous month. Specifically, a monthly value is calculated by subtracting the average of the last five days of the previous month from this month’s average of final five days. So the value presents the amount of ice gained or lost during the present month.

These monthly rates of change have been compiled into a baseline for the period 1980 to 2010, which shows the fluctuations of Arctic ice extents over the course of a calendar year. Below is a graph of those averages of monthly changes up to and including this year. Those familiar with Arctic Ice studies will not be surprised at the sine wave form. December end is a relatively neutral point in the cycle, midway between the September Minimum and March Maximum.

The graph makes evident the six spring/summer months of melting and the six autumn/winter months of freezing.  Note that June-August produce the bulk of losses, while October-December show the bulk of gains. Also the peak and valley months of March and September show very little change in extent from beginning to end.

The table of monthly data reveals the variability of ice extents over the last 4 decades, with gains in blue cells and losses in red cells.

The values in January show changes from the end of the previous December, and by summing twelve consecutive months we can calculate an annual rate of change for the years 1980 to 2025.

As many know, there has been a decline of Arctic ice extent over these 40 years, averaging 70k km2 per year. But year over year, the changes shift constantly between gains and losses, ranging up to +/- 500k km2, (2024 being exceptional). Since 1989 the average yearend gain/loss is nearly zero, -0.049k km2 to be exact.

Moreover, it seems random as to which months are determinative for a given year. For example, much ado was printed about 2023 losing more ice than usual June through September. But then the final 3 months of 2023 more than made up for those summer losses, resulting in a sizeable gain for the year.

As it happens in this dataset, October has the highest rate of adding ice. The table below shows the variety of monthly rates in the record as anomalies from the 1980-2010 baseline. In this exhibit a red cell is a negative anomaly (less than baseline for that month) and blue is positive (higher than baseline).

Note that the  +/ –  rate anomalies are distributed all across the grid, sequences of different months in different years, with gains and losses offsetting one another.  As noted earlier,  in 2023 the outlier negative months were June through September where unusual amounts of ice were lost.  Then unusally strong gains in October to December resulted in a large annual gain, compared to the baseline. The bottom line presents the average anomalies for each month over the period 1979-2025.  Note the rates of gains and losses mostly offset, and the average of all months in the bottom right cell is virtually zero.

A final observation: The graph below shows the Yearend Arctic Ice Extents for the last 35 years.

Year-end Arctic ice extents (last 5 days of December) show three distinct regimes: 1989-1998, 1998-2010, 2010-2025. The average year-end extent 1989-2010 is 13.4M km2. In the last decade, 2011 was 13.0M km2, and six years later, 2017 was 12.3M km2. 2021 rose back to 13.0  2024 slipped back to 12.2M, and 2025 is back up to 12.4M. So for all the the fluctuations, the net is virually zero, or a loss of one tenth of a Wadham (0.1M) from 2010. Talk of an Arctic ice death spiral is fanciful.

These data show a noisy, highly variable natural phenomenon. Clearly, unpredictable factors are in play, principally water structure and circulation, atmospheric circulation regimes, and also incursions and storms. And in the longer view, today’s extents are not unusual.

 

 

 

 

Six Impossible Climate Things to Believe

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Image created with ChatGPT.

Javier Vinós provides the list in his yearend Clintel post Six Impossible Things to Believe.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Like Alice’s White Queen, European and Spanish authorities
want us to believe six impossible things about
climate change and the energy transition.

In Alice Through the Looking-Glass, a character by Lewis Carroll says, “One can’t believe impossible things,” to which the White Queen replies, “When I was your age, I sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Like Alice’s White Queen, European and Spanish authorities want us to believe six impossible things about climate change and the energy transition, before and after breakfast. These six impossible things to believe — and yet many people, like the White Queen, do believe them — are as follows:

The first is believing that humans have — or could have in the near future — some degree of control over the climate and the weather, and that through our actions we can reduce the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, floods, droughts, or sea-level rise. Anyone who believes this is capable of believing anything.

The second is believing that the climate, in its extraordinary complexity with hundreds — perhaps thousands — of variables, is controlled by just one: changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases. The theory and models that propose this are based on a good understanding of the properties of CO₂, but a poor understanding of the other climatic variables. And the fact that no solid evidence for this theory has emerged, despite decades of intensive searching, makes it very difficult to believe.

The third is believing that an energy transition is taking place or will take place. There are no examples of energy transitions. We use more biomass, coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium than at any other time in history, and we are simply adding the so-called renewable energies, which are installed, maintained, and replaced thanks to hydrocarbon fuels. Our energy use is growing faster than our capacity to install renewable energy. The transition is a myth, and anyone who claims to believe in it is either lying or poorly informed.

The fourth is believing that the use of hydrocarbon fuels is going to be .abandoned At the recent climate conference in Brazil, a group of countries, including Spain, pushed for the agreement to include a roadmap for abandoning those fuels. They were forced to back down, and hydrocarbon fuels are not even mentioned in the final agreement. Eighty-three governments supported that roadmap, but together they represent only 13.6% of the world’s population. The remaining 86.4% shows no intention of abandoning the source from which the human species obtains 85% of its external energy.

It is impossible to believe that such an abandonment will take place because, 33 years after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and 10 years after the Paris Agreement, support among nations for abandoning hydrocarbon fuels has decreased rather than increased.

The fifth is believing that a reduction in global CO₂ emissions will occur. These emissions are linked to human development and population growth. Many regions of the planet remain underdeveloped, and the world’s population will continue to grow in the coming decades.

Since the first climate conference in Berlin in 1995, where strict emission-reduction commitments were adopted — but only for “developed” nations — global CO₂ emissions have increased by 70%. These 30 years should be enough to convince anyone that they are not going to stop rising.

The Fantasy

The sixth is believing that energy can be decarbonized. Only 23% of the EU’s final energy consumption is electricity, and only 70% of that electricity comes from carbon-free sources. One third of it comes from nuclear energy, which Spain rejects and which was installed in the last century. So far this century, the EU has managed to decarbonize less than 10% of the energy it uses. Most of the planet is not even trying.

These six things are impossible to believe, but if we refuse to believe even just one of them, the entire climate and energy strategy of the European Union and the Spanish government is revealed as a tragic farce. Based on these impossibilities, our national and European governments have committed themselves to a transition whose consequences we are already suffering:

♦  more expensive energy,
♦  declining industrial production and competitiveness,
♦  increased risk to the power grid,
♦  environmental policies with tragic consequences,
♦  greater indebtedness, and, ultimately,
♦  an accelerated decline of Europe relative to the rest of the world.

 

Slam Dunk: Δtemp Drives Δco2, Ocean Biochemistry at Work

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Peter Smith explains in his Quadrant article Shunned by Sanctitudinous Science.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  Synopsis of Ivan Kennedy paper follows later.

When coffeeing with a group of conservative friends as I do on Fridays, one of our number, Professor Emeritus Ivan Kennedy, said something to the effect that there were no scientific alternative theories to the IPCC’s explanation of global warming except for his.

I was taken aback. Surely, even within my limited knowledge, William Happer (Princeton) and Richard Lindzen (MIT) hypothesise that the effect of CO2 on warming progressively declines. Nobel Prize winner Dr John Clauser hypothesises that reflective cumulus clouds created by water vapour, engendered by modest warming, act as a thermostat to keep global temperatures down. You can read about it here if you wish. So what is going on?

Let me start by dismissing the canard that global warming is an invention. Sure, maybe the so-called ‘homogenisation’ of past land and sea temperature data has artificially steepened the warming record since the 1940s. But, for all that, the NOAA satellite data since the end of 1979 shows that the temperature in the sub-troposphere has trended up by about 0.7⁰C between December 1979 and December 2024. As this data has been compiled by Roy Spencer and John Christy (sceptical scientists) at the University of Alamba in Huntsville, we can safely assume it is trustworthy.

So the climate has warmed. Now should come the scientific fun.
Competing theories jostling to best explain the data. No such fun.
Blaming exploitative Western man has proved to be a sacrosanct hypothesis.

Sacrosanctity and science don’t mix. Many past theories propounded by scientific giants have eventually failed the test: Ptolemy’s geocentric theory of the solar system; Aristotle’s theory of gravity, even Newton’s. Yet a tenuous theory of the climate concocted by relative mediocrities, which hasn’t come close to accurately predicting global temperatures, is holy writ. Risible, except that political and celebrity buy-in is undoing progress wherever it results in the replacement of reliable with unreliable energy. Think of Australia as a quintessential case study.

Happily, despite powerful and well-funded forces out to cancel dissenters, maverick scientists keep on stirring the pot. Which brings me back to Prof. Kennedy and his collaborators. Their hypothesis can be found here. In lay terms it goes like this:

The increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere since the 1960s has been caused by warming not the reverse. Other things equal, emissions by mankind of CO2 are all absorbed by the land (hence the greening) and by the oceans. Thus, on this account, there is no material net increase of CO2 in the atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions. Ergo, such emissions cannot be the cause of warming. It is true that warming has occurred, and that atmospheric CO2 has risen. The underlying chain of events is as follows.

Warming, perhaps through solar activity, promotes the precipitation of calcium carbonate (limestone) in surface sea water, absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere in the process. In turn, the absorbed CO2, magnified by calcium carbonate precipitation, acidifies surface sea water. The acidification then results in the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere in autumn and winter. This emission of CO2 is greater than the absorption, precisely because of the continuing acidification in the warming water.

In the end we see increased atmospheric CO2 and warming.
It is easy to draw the wrong conclusion. Indeed, the IPCC has done so.

I see the point about Kennedy’s hypothesis being singularly different from other alternative hypotheses. Lindzen’s and Happer’s hypothesis, and Clauser’s, embrace the foundational proposition of the received theory, albeit in muted form. Namely, that man-made CO2 is adding to atmospheric CO2, thereby having a greenhouse effect. Kennedy’s hypothesis does not embrace that proposition.

Whether Kennedy is right (or Lindzen and Happer or Clauser) is by the way. Alternative hypotheses are in the skeptical scientific tradition of searching for theories which better explain the facts than does the received theory. That is particularly important in this case. The received theory is upending life as we know it, while being shielded from rival theories by money, politics and pseudo-religiosity.

The paper by Ivan Kennedy et al. is A Thermal Acid Calcification Cause for Seasonal Oscillations in the Increasing Keeling Curve . Synopsis below with excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Abstract:

Why do atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise and fall seasonally measured on Mauna Loa? This study explores the thermal acid-calcification (TAC) hypothesis, suggesting that seasonal temperature shifts in surface seawater trigger acid pH-driven CO₂ emissions caused by calcification. Using oceanographic data, we modeled how temperature affects dissolved inorganic carbon including CO₂, bicarbonate, and carbonate.

Our findings reveal that warming waters absorb atmospheric CO2 by promoting calcium carbonate formation, acidifying seawater and boosting CO₂ release to the atmosphere in late autumn and winter, when atmospheric CO₂ becomes highest. The model predicts a net annual CO₂ rise of 2 ppmv, driven by calcification rather than land-based processes. Seasonal pH swings of 0.04 units corroborate this mechanism. The TAC hypothesis indicates that continued ocean warming, not just fossil fuels, contribute to rising CO₂ levels, calling for deeper investigation into marine carbon dynamics.

The Keeling Curve for atmospheric pCO2 in parts per million by volume

Fig. 1. The Keeling curve of atmospheric CO2 partial pressure at 3200 m on Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Data from Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL and Dr.Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.CC BY-SA

The very stuff of plant life on Earth in photosynthesis as well as in the structural basis of all living creatures, we are told by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2) that the continuing rise of CO2 in the Keeling curve shown in Figure 1 now threatens global catastrophe from global warming. Such a paradoxical contrast for good and bad lacks credibility, given the longevity of life on Earth.

Transfers of CO2 out of the ocean surface in winter versus that entering in summer

We propose that a quasi-equilibrium exists between a falling pH value in surface water, favoring CO2 emisssion. Falling pH values in the surface water of the oceans have been an enigma, invisible to scientific view until recently after the year 2000. Our logic is supported in our articles (3, 4) where we describe the basis for the thermal acid-calcification (TAC) hypothesis, also using data cited from others. Acidic calcification is thermodynamically favored in warming surface seawater, particularly in northern oceans in spring and summer with shallow mixing zones and higher temperature ranges. This raises the fugacity or potential pressure of CO2 in seawater to its peak value in summer when the pCO2 in air is minimal, causing its forceful emission into air in the next autumn reaching a maximum pCO2 in late winter (Fig. 1, seasonal variation insert). 

Fig. 2. Thermal acid-calcification model for seasonal and longer-term generation of the Keeling curve. The Thermal model (3), showed calcification is favored by increase in temperature giving decreasing pH values in summer, reversing in cooler conditions to more alkaline pH in winter. Note that precipitation of CaCO3 in spring to summer removes CO32- that is replaced from HCO3 – with more acidity, provided by absorption of CO2 from air up to October. However, as the pH falls the steady state concentration of [CO2} increases favoring photosynthesis.

Acid calcification is essential for phytoplankton

Any process of strong acidification of surface seawater will raise the concentration of carbon dioxide as [CO2] available to phytoplankton for photosynthesis. Bicarbonate cannot be a direct substrate for photosynthesis although the presence of the enzyme carbonic anhydrase speeds up its interconversion with CO2. Our published modeling analysis confirmed that CaCO3 precipitation is strongly favored by warmer temperatures (Table 1). Indeed, all the reaction equilibria in seawater are displaced to the right in Figure 2 acidifying the water, although the equilibrium between CO2 concentration and pCO2 in air favors a lower concentration [CO2} in water in summer, compared to winter, when it is greatest. Our results even confirmed that the formation of CaCO3 as calcite is predicted to increase in summer as water becomes warmer (Table 1b).

Thus, we can expect more limestone formation in summer if the carbonate concentration reaches a sufficient level, favored by added warming. The decline in average pH values in surface seawater to about 8.05 from pH 8.20 could explain the increased pCO2 in the atmosphere of 140 ppmv since 1800 as a matter of dynamic equilibrium. Caused by calcification, this would require a simultaneous equivalent deposition of limestone as sediment, though only an increase of about 10 μmoles per kg of surface seawater, or a net 1 mg per kg each year. This is a key prediction for experimental testing of the TAC hypothesis.

This fully reversible calcification equation moves towards acidification in summer and reverses to alkalinization in winter. The psi factor is a variable function of the range of seasonal changes in temperature. However, the greatest thermodynamic potential to emit CO2 in seawater by acidification of bicarbonate (HCO3-) is when the pH value is lowest, the conversion of bicarbonate to CO2 generating the greatest difference between CO2 fugacity in seawater and that in air in midsummer in northern hemisphere waters. The seasonal variation near Mauna Loa in atmospheric pCO2 is about 6 ppmv whereas the long term increase in the Keeling curve year by year is one third of this, about 2 ppmv suggesting that in spring and summer the CO2 absorbed in about 2 ppmv, less than that emitted in autumn and winter.

Fig. 5. Rates per square meter in global carbon cycling between land water, the atmosphere, and the ocean, illustrating the pH-acidification hypothesis. Emissions and absorptions shown are average moles per square meter of the Earth, for a mixing ratio of 420 ppmv in 2021 shown in the central column bridging land and ocean. The land acidification values are derived elsewhere (11), assuming photosynthesis is equal to respiration. The terrestrial area of Earth is 1.48×1014 m-2 , the ocean’s area is 3.62×1014 m2 , 5.101 x1014 m2 in total., represented as a mean value in the central air column.

Discussion

Limestone as a product of calcification is regarded as a biogeochemical product, given that phytoplankton and other marine organisms enhance its rate of production, if nutrients are available (3). In particular, the extracellular carbonic anhydrase apparently speeds the reversible dehydration of CO2, forming bicarbonate and hydrated hydrogen ions (H+) controlling pH. This article emphasizes that the reversible dehydration of CO2 in surface seawater allowing transfer between aqueous and gaseous phases is most rate limiting of all, that carbonic anhydrase may even assist in autumn and winter, transferring CO2 to the atmosphere.

More significantly for managing climate change, if fossil fuel emissions are being largely absorbed by sequestration into the ocean surface and by ‘greening’ photosynthesis on land and in the ocean (11), the implications of this aspect of the TAC hypothesis for carbon-zero policies and renewable energy are profound.

The thermal acid-calcification hypothesis predicts that global warming
acidifies the ocean surface by increasing calcification causing
pCO2 to increase, independently of fossil emissions.

Furthermore, this represents a striking illustration of the Le Chatelier principle, the carbon cycle on Earth responding intelligently to changing climate. The hope that carbon dioxide removal as sequestration (14), either biologically, chemically or geologically, by burial after capture, will prove futile. 

The uncertainty of the current IPCC paradigm regarding climate change and the role of fossil emissions of CO2 in warming is large, lacking scientific evidence. A plausible alternative hypothesis offered here as the true cause of the increasing Keeling curve needs to be investigated urgently. This new model would still give predictively increasing emissions from the ocean in the complete absence of fossil fuel emissions because the acidification from calcification is purely a function of surface warming, from whatever cause.

See Also

Yearend 2025, Cooling Temperatures Reducing CO2 Rise

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.

Tide Turns Against Climatists’ Agenda

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Richard Miller points to growing distrust of climate ideology and to receding support for impractical energy and social policies aimed at fighting global warming/climate change, but serving only to inflict energy poverty  His article is The Tide Turns Against the Climate Change Agenda: A Long-Overdue Reckoning.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

For nearly two decades, Britain’s climate lobby has held an iron grip on policy, discourse, and public imagination, promising a utopian future of cheap energy, green jobs, and global leadership. From Westminster’s corridors to the BBC’s airwaves, the mantra was clear: Net Zero would make us richer, healthier, and safer, all while saving the planet. But the cracks in this narrative are now gaping wounds. Soaring energy bills, crumbling industries, and a public fed up with unfulfilled promises signal a seismic shift. The tide is turning against the climate change agenda, and it’s about time.

The climate establishment’s dominance rested on a seductive pitch: green policies would deliver prosperity without pain. Wind turbines and solar panels would slash energy costs, insulate us from petrostates, and create a jobs bonanza. As Maurice Cousins noted in his August 2025 Artillery Row piece, this vision transformed environmentalism from a middle-class indulgence into a technocratic consensus, backed by state funding, Big Philanthropy, and celebrity endorsements.

Yet, the reality is starkly different. Britain now faces some of the highest industrial energy costs in the developed world, with electricity prices for businesses nearly double those in the U.S. Heavy industry is in retreat, steelworks and manufacturing plants are shuttering, while the UK’s reliance on energy imports has surged, exposing vulnerabilities during crises like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The public isn’t blind to this failure. Polls reflect a growing backlash. While abstract support for Net Zero lingers, a 2025 YouGov survey found 47% of Britons want climate policies scaled back when faced with their costs, high bills, job losses, and lifestyle constraints. Reform UK voters, with 32% endorsing reduced green measures, are leading the charge, but even mainstream figures like Tony Blair and trade unions like Unite are breaking ranks, questioning the feasibility of the green agenda. This isn’t just scepticism; it’s a revolt against a narrative that promised abundance but delivered austerity.

The climate lobby’s response? Double down and deflect. Take the recent video by Simon Clark and Carbon Brief’s Dr. Simon Evans, which Cousins critiques as a desperate attempt to “manage” dissent rather than engage with it. Acknowledging rising bills and Britain’s mere 1% of global emissions, it dismisses public concerns as misinformation fuelled by fossil-fuel propaganda. This patronising tone, epitomised by praising the “independent” Climate Change Committee, a body of unelected technocrats, only deepens distrust. It’s a tired playbook, seen in Brexit and migration debates: label critics as ignorant, pathologise their concerns, and cling to elite authority.

But the public’s lived experience, bills they can’t pay, industries they’ve lost,
trumps rhetorical window-dressing.

The folly of the climate agenda lies in its defiance of economic and physical realities. Low-density, intermittent renewables like wind and solar cannot power a modern industrial economy without massive subsidies and grid instability. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that Net Zero’s costs, projected at £1.4 trillion by 2050, far outstrip promised savings. Meanwhile, global competitors like China and India, responsible for over 40% of emissions, continue burning coal with little regard for Western virtue-signalling. Britain’s “lead by example” approach is not just naïve, it’s self-destructive, hamstringing its economy while others race ahead.

This reckoning is long overdue. The climate lobby’s promises were always more faith than fact, rooted in a utopian vision that ignored trade-offs. Green jobs? The UK’s renewable sector employs fewer than 75,000 people, a fraction of the 500,000 jobs lost in manufacturing since 2000. Cheaper energy? Households face bills 60% higher than a decade ago. Energy independence? The UK imports 40% of its electricity on peak days, often from fossil-heavy grids abroad.

The climate agenda’s failures are not a messaging problem,
they’re a policy disaster, colliding with
the hard limits of physics and economics.

The tide is turning because the public sees through the façade. From factory workers to suburban families, people feel the squeeze of policies that prioritise ideology over reality. The green backlash isn’t just about cost, it’s about trust. When elites lecture about “saving the planet” while ordinary citizens struggle to heat their homes, resentment festers. Reform UK’s rise and the growing chorus of mainstream dissent signal a broader awakening: the climate agenda, as it stands, is unsustainable.

It’s time to pivot. Instead of doubling down on unworkable targets, Britain needs pragmatic policies, investment in nuclear energy, which provides reliable, low-carbon power; deregulation to revive industry; and a frank acknowledgment that global emissions won’t bend to Western sacrifices alone. The climate lobby’s grip is slipping, and no amount of technocratic spin can stop the public’s demand for change. The reckoning is here, and it’s about time we embraced it.

 

Biomass Energy Exorbitant, Destructive and Pointless

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Biomass Energy Process

Shaye Wolf writes at CalMatters Biomass is a money pit that won’t solve California’s energy or wildfire problems  Shaye Wolf is the climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

California’s most expensive electricity source is finally poised to lose a government handout that props up its high costs and harmful pollution. In an era of clean, cheap solar and wind energy, policymakers are rightly beginning to treat biomass energy like the boondoggle it is.

Biomass energy — electricity made by burning or gasifying trees —
is an expensive, dirty relic that relies on industry misinformation and taxpayer money. 

In a vote later this month, the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to end the BioMAT subsidy program, which requires electric utilities to buy biomass power at exorbitant costs — four times the average. Californians get hit with those extra costs in our power bills, along with pollution that harms our health and climate. 

Utilities and environmental groups support ending this costly subsidy.   But the biomass industry is fighting back with misleading claims that its projects are made clean by “new” technology or that they’re needed for wildfire safety. Don’t be fooled.

Burning trees to make electricity harms the climate. In fact, biomass power is more climate-polluting at the smokestack than coal.

Biomass energy releases toxic air pollutants that endanger health, increasing the risk of premature death and illnesses like asthma. The facilities often are located in low-income communities and communities of color that have long fought to shut them down.

It is telling that the biomass industry is rebranding.  It claims it will use “clean” methods to gasify trees instead of burning them. But gasification — which also involves heating organic material — releases large amounts of climate-harming air pollution.

State regulators in May denied a costly biomass gasification project
that couldn’t show it would reduce emissions as promised.

The industry also promotes carbon capture and storage, claiming this technology will suck up carbon dioxide from biomass smokestacks and store it underground forever. But carbon capture and storage is a costly, decades-old technology with a long history of failure and serious health and safety risks.

Finally, the industry claims biomass energy projects will help pay for forest thinning, which it says will protect communities during wildfires. That means cutting trees, often large trees, which threatens wildlife and depletes forests, which naturally store carbon and fight climate change.

Thinning isn’t a good way to keep communities safe. Most of the community destruction is caused by wind-driven fires during extreme fire weather, made worse by climate change. The fastest-moving 3% of wind-driven fires is responsible for 88% of the damage to homes. [Note: no proof wildfires are worse now than in the past]

No amount of forest thinning can stop that. In fact, thinning makes cool, moist forests hotter, drier and more wind-prone, which can make fires burn faster and more intensely.

Most of California’s destructive wildfires — like the Los Angeles area fires in January — have burned in shrublands and grasslands, not forests, making thinning irrelevant in those cases.

Instead, the best investment for protecting communities during wildfires is hardening homes, so they’re less likely to catch fire, and stopping new development in fire-prone areas. Yet the state has earmarked only 1% of its wildfire funding for home hardening. Most goes to thinning.

Where thinning occurs, it’s most cost-effective to scatter the wood in the forest to create wildlife habitat, retain vital nutrients, and enhance natural carbon storage. If wood must be removed, it can be turned into mulch and shavings. The worst choice is subsidizing biomass companies to make dirty energy.

Any way you look at it, biomass energy is a polluting money pit
that won’t solve our climate or wildfire safety problems.

See also: 

Green Electrical Shocks in 2024

 

Trees converted into pellets by means of petroleum powered machinery.

Two Hot Spots Slow Arctic Ice Recovery November 2025

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Figure 12. (a) Predicted 10 mb geopotential heights (dam; contours) and temperature anomalies (°C; shading) across the Northern Hemisphere averaged for 25 Nov to 29 Nov 2025. (b) Same as (a) except forecasted averaged from 05 Dec to 09 Dec 2025. The forecasts are from the 00Z 24 November 2025 GFS model ensemble.

The polar vortex is pronounced this year, resulting in warmer temperature over the Arctic ocean, and slowing the normal sea ice recovery.  Dr. Judah Cohen at AER Arctic Oscillation blog provides information like the chart above.

After a pattern of solidly growing sea ice extent in October, a slowdown occurred in November, coincidental with the warm spots shown above.  The graph below shows 2025 compared to the 19 year average (2006 to 2024 inclusive), to SII (Sea Ice Index) and some notable years.

According to MASIE. the average November adds ~2.5M km2 of sea ice extent, which is matched also by 2007.  2024 started below average, but gained steadily to close the gap.  2025 started at the same level, but the refreezing slowed down, ending November in deficit by 1.1M km2.  SII shows even lower ice extents (the last two days not yet reported.)

The table below shows the distribution of ice in the Arctic Ocean basins, suggesting two places where ice recovery is lagging.

Region 2025334 Day 334 Ave. 2025-Ave. 2007334 2025-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 9784037 10880420 -1096383 11009948 -1225911
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1071070 1069623 1447 1058872 12198
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 879082 791207 87875 687829 191253
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1083943 3194 1082015 5122
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897824 21 897613 232
 (5) Kara_Sea 565299 792107 -226808 826319 -261020
 (6) Barents_Sea 28050 242740 -214690 216525 -188474
 (7) Greenland_Sea 550413 539687 10726 618844 -68431
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 412284 664437 -252153 708497 -296212
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854931 853431 1500 850249 4682
 (10) Hudson_Bay 188797 543322 -354525 751382 -562585
 (11) Central_Arctic 3037637 3193296 -155659 3183072.72 -145436
 (12) Bering_Sea 145331 138776 6555 72644.62 72687
 (13) Baltic_Sea 4226 4452 -225 0 4226
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 58288 61277 -2989 53052 5236

Overall ice extent was 1.1M km2 below average or 10%.  About half the deficit comes from the European Atlantic basins, Kara and Barents seas.  The other half is mostly from N. America’s Hudson and Baffin bays. Ice in these regions operate on the LIFO principle, last in and first out.

At this point in the year, Arctic ice has grown back to 65% of last March maximum with 2.5 months to catch up.   AER  suggests that things may shift again in December:

Figure 9. Forecasted surface temperature anomalies (°C; shading) from 05 Dec to 09 Dec 2025. The forecasts are from the 00Z 24 Nov 2025 GFS ensemble.

Figure 10. Forecasted snowfall (mm/day; shading) from 05 Dec to 09 Dec 2025. The forecasts are from the 00Z 24 Nov 2025 GFS ensemble.

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring ice and snow extents.

 

 

Carney Directs Canada Pipeline Charade

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Q: Do Leopards Change Their Spots? A: No,
because it’s chamouflage concealing their real motives.

This National Post editorial gives the game away: The Carney-Smith pipeline of uncertainty.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

MOU adds as many roadblocks as it clears away

Prime Minister Mark Carney, right, signs an MOU with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in Calgary, Alta., Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Had the Great Smith-Carney Pipelines and Climate Pact of 2025 emerged say, five years ago, it would have been considered squarely within the realm of Liberal environmentalism. Instead, because former prime minister Justin Trudeau brought in several anti-business policies, the current prime minister is being feted/scorned as being pro-energy industry by disappointed Liberals and relieved conservatives alike. While Mark Carney deserves credit for negotiating this deal with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and bringing a rival onside, we’re skeptical at the chances a pipeline ever gets built.

All of these regulations have been points of contention for Alberta, so it is to Smith’s credit that she was able to persuade Carney to budge.  But it’s possible this will not accomplish much more than to remove extra layers of regulation, which were unnecessary even by environmental standards. Under the Trudeau Liberals, there was to be a consumer carbon tax, industrial carbon tax, as well as the clean energy regulations and emissions cap. And it did not end there, as the Impact Assessment Act, also brought in under Trudeau, mandates onerous environmental and social review, including the consideration of “Indigenous knowledge” alongside scientific assessment, as well as considering the “intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors.”

If Carney is at all serious about kickstarting investment in Canada,
he should at minimum be willing to clear away some of these extra rules.

Further to that, the construction of a pipeline is entirely contingent on the simultaneous construction of a massive carbon capture project, presumably so Carney can claim the new pipeline is moving only “low emission” barrels of bitumen. Finally, while the MOU does not explicitly give B.C. a veto, that province is to be included “immediately” in a “trilateral discussion” on the project. B.C. Premier David Eby is opposed to a pipeline and was highly critical of the deal, claiming it would take priority away from other projects, specifically B.C. projects Eby supports. [

April 30, 2024 (IEEFA) – More than CAD1 billion were spent retrofitting the Boundary Dam 3 (BD3) coal plant in Saskatchewan to add carbon capture technology. After nine years, the project has a consistent history of capturing far less than the 90 per cent promised when the project was built—and all the carbon dioxide (CO2) captured at the plant is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that injects captured CO2 into the ground to extract more oil..Carbon capture at Boundary Dam 3 still an underperforming failure

And the roadblocks to a new pipeline don’t end there. While it would be approved through the Major Projects Office, it isn’t at all clear what purpose that will serve. Carney’s Liberals gave themselves the authority to suspend regulatory review to expedite projects in the national interest. However, the office is electing not to use this power so far, stating on its website that “Projects will continue to be subject to all regulatory review processes.”

So being approved through the MPO may give the pipeline certainty that
it will be approved — eventually. That means every investment killing
process under the Impact Assessment Act will have to be passed.

What the Smith-Carney deal does accomplish is to buy both of them time to each satisfy their base. For Smith that is conservatives flirting with separatism, and for Carney, it is environmentalist Liberals, some of whom see this deal as a betrayal, such as former environment minister Steven Guilbeault who quit cabinet in protest. We applaud genuine attempts from Ottawa to work with, as opposed to against, Alberta, but we’re not confident this plan will deliver what is promised.

See Also:

Canada PM Carney Floats Imaginary “Decarbonized Oil” Pipeline

On Energy, Carney the Wrong Man at the Worst Time

Be Grateful for the Warming We Have

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A reminder that we are presently in the icy end of the Holocene epoch comes in a CBC story Canada’s High Arctic was once a lush forest where unexpected animals roamed.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Camels and beavers that evolved in ancient forests in the Far North
were perfectly adapted for our world today

Modern camels descend from giant High Arctic camels that lived in Canada’s North before the Ice Age. (Global Mechanic/Courtesy of Handful of Films)

By Niobe Thompson, director of Frozen in Time

When you think of the Canadian High Arctic today, visions of frozen tundra, icefields and polar bears probably come to mind. But rewind the clock a little over two million years to before the last ice age, and that Northern tundra was a lush and vibrant forest paradise. It was also home to some surprising animal life, including one large mammal we now associate with scorching deserts: camels.

In Frozen in Time, a documentary from The Nature of Things, paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski describes how a head injury in 2011 changed the way she had to live. It also gave her time to think about many fossils she and her team at the Canadian Museum of Nature have uncovered of the animals that once roamed the Far North.

A remarkable discovery

The Pliocene Epoch, spanning from 2.5 to 5 million years ago, was the warm period before the last ice age began. The Pliocene was the last time Earth’s atmosphere contained the same concentration of carbon dioxide that we see today: over 400 parts per million.

At the time, temperatures in the High Arctic were also about 22 C higher than today, Rybczynski says in the documentary — a climate much like we see in modern boreal forest in Canada. As a result, the Arctic was covered in birch, larch, pine and even cedar trees, blanketing the landscape all the way to the northern shores of Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

These dense forests were home to many of the animals we now associate with the Pliocene, such as mammoths and mastodons, but also those found in modern boreal habitats: beavers, bears, geese, horses and caribou.

From 2006 to 2009, a research team led by the Canadian Museum of Nature discovered 30 camel fragments on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut. Scientists dated the remains to 3.5 million years, the mid-Pliocene Epoch, a global warm phase when the region was cloaked in boreal forest. Collagen fingerprinting, a cutting-edge science pioneered at the University of Manchester in England, confirmed that the bones belonged to a camelid.

And in 2013, a team of scientists led by Rybczynski announced a remarkable discovery. At the site of an ancient Pliocene river on Ellesmere Island called Fyles Leaf Beds, they uncovered fragments of a leg bone belonging to a 3.5-million-year-old camel. The find made headlines around the world and suggested that modern camels descended from a High Arctic ancestor.

Evolved in the Arctic, perfect for the desert

High Arctic camels were giant versions of modern camels, and they evolved in a forest world unlike any we know today. Because they lived close to the North Pole, the sun would disappear for nearly half the year, before shining down for nearly 24 hours a day during the polar summer.

Many of the features of the camel that help them survive in deserts today may have originated as adaptations to this punishing environment, Rybczynski says in Frozen in Time.

Their hump — a specialized fat deposit — would have helped them through long, cold winters. Camels have excellent night vision, handy when it is dark for almost half the year. And their wide feet that work so well in sand today would have been perfect in snow 3.5 million years ago.

The desert camel, the habits of beavers, bear hibernation, fall colours — all features of the natural world today that may have evolved in the weird Arctic forest world that came to an end with the encroaching glaciers of the last ice age.

“For me, it’s hard to stop imagining all those natural features of our environment, all passed down from a hotter past when forests could grow in the Arctic,” Rybczynski says in the documentary.

“In so many ways, the lost forests of the High Arctic were kind of like a Garden of Eden — the cradle of our boreal forest ecosystem today.”

See Also

No Right to Stable Climate in Our Holocene Epoch

 

How Wasteful is Green Energy? Count the Ways

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Waste #1:  Money Spent, Projects Unknown

“Oxfam finds that for World Bank projects, many things can change during implementation. On average, actual expenditures on the Bank’s projects differ from budgeted amounts by 26–43% above or below the claimed climate finance. Across the entire climate finance portfolio, between 2017 and 2023, this difference amounts to US$24.28–US$41.32 billion,” the report states.

“No information is available about what new climate actions were supported and which planned actions were cut. Now that the Bank has touted its focus on understanding and reporting on the impacts of its climate finance, it is critical to stress that without a full understanding of how much of what the Bank claims as climate finance at the project approval stage becomes actual expenditure, it is impossible to track and measure the impacts of the Bank’s climate co-benefits in practice.”

“Oxfam’s report doesn’t suggest funds are missing but points to a transparency issue that makes it difficult to know precisely what the Bank is delivering in terms of climate finance: where it’s going and what it’s supporting.”

Thus, “contrary to claims online,” it’s not missing. It’s just not accounted for! At this point, I’m not sure which is the bigger racket: dubious national or supranational funding of projects that fall loosely under the aegis of purported climate change mitigation, or fact-checking. At least this can be said about fact-checking: It costs a hell of a lot less.

Waste #2:  Money Spent, Projects Dicey

For an idea of how much money is being gambled on Green Energy or “CleanTech” projects here is a chart for North America from The Big Green Machine:

How Risky are these projects? An article at Mish Talk explores the question: How Many More Ridiculous Green Energy Projects Will Fail? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The answer is all of them, in due time. Here are the latest spectacular failures.

Birds Fry Every Two Minutes

It took 10 years, and hundreds-of-thousands of dead birds, before
the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California would meet its fate.

Now finally here in 2025 it seems the reckoning has begun. The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes in an editorial that “a major California utility —  Pacific Gas & Electric — announced that it will no longer buy power from the Ivanpah solar plant off Interstate 15 near the Nevada-California border. As a result, two of the plant’s three towers will shut down next year — and the third will probably follow.”

Performance has proven so poor that PG&E has exercised its right to terminate the contract, about which negotiations have been completed; there is no doubt that towers 1 and 3 will cease operations within roughly a year. And it appears to be the case that Edison too wants out: “the utility is in ‘ongoing discussions’ with the project’s owners and the federal government over ending the utility’s contract.”

New Jersey Reaps the Wind, Again

It’s not just solar. Also note that Shell just backed out of a wind-energy project despite huge subsidies.

Another offshore wind development stalled this week off the Jersey shore, making it the latest of three such projects to fail despite generous terms from the state. Energy giant Shell wrote off its 50% stake in Atlantic Shores, choosing to take a $1 billion impairment instead of complete the 2,800 megawatt wind farm. New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities canceled its request for a wind-energy provider, leaving the unfinished project with no prospective customer.

Ratepayers can rejoice. Atlantic Shores would have charged about three times the market price for the power it generated, according to a review by Whitestrand Consulting. That would have raised electricity rates by 11% for residents and 13% to 15% for businesses, forcing them to overpay by $48 billion over the wind farm’s lifetime.

Waste # 3 A Mountain of Unrecyclable Waste

The Institute for Energy Research notes Broken Windmill Blade Closes Nantucket Beaches

A massive wind turbine blade shattered offshore Massachusetts causing extensive debris, which shut down beaches on Nantucket Island and caused serious concern to fishermen, who worried that the debris could damage their boats. The failure of the massive blade and the resulting debris caused the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to suspend operations at Vineyard Wind until it could be determined whether the “blade failure” impacts other turbine blades on the development of the offshore wind farm. Power production has been suspended and installation of new wind turbine construction is on hold. And as more green energy trash washes ashore the local town is considering litigation. The facility’s massive wind turbines began sending electricity to the grid this past winter.

Thousands of Old Wind Turbine Blades Pile Up in West Texas Officials in Sweetwater say an out-of-state company has made their town a dump for the seldom-seen trash created by renewable energy.

Wind turbine blades are made from fiberglass, or fiber reinforced plastic, and cannot be recycled. The Biden-Harris administration has not indicated what or who it expects to deal with the mountain of waste that will result when thousands of turbine blades reach the end of their useful lives in 20 to 25 years, or in many cases less. In fact, wind blades are piling up in Texas and Iowa without proper disposal. Massive wind graveyards, for example, have popped up on the outskirts of Sweetwater, Texas. The pile of wind blades covers more than thirty acres, in stacks rising as high as basketball backboards.

Waste #4 Money Spent, Operational Failures

Economic Reality

Let’s return to economic reality.  None of these projects are profitable, even with subsidies. That’s why they fail.  Meanwhile, consumers face monstrous hikes in energy bills to pay for these boondoggles as mounds of unrecyclable garbage piles up in massive wind graveyards.

The Green Machine provides the project categories in colors denoting Batteries, EVs, Solar and Wind.

The BESS Failure Incident Database provides a record of costly problems with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)

Figure 1. A breakdown of the stationary energy storage failure events from the above table.

EV Boosters reports EV Business Failures Abound

The Chinese electric vehicle (EV) boom has turned into a dramatic shakeout. Around 2018, China had more than 500 EV startups registered. These included everything from serious automotive disruptors to local government-backed ventures that never made it past the prototype phase. What do we mean by “EV startup”? In this context, it includes any newly registered Chinese company involved in the design, development, or production of new energy vehicles (NEVs) — including electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen cars. Many were speculative projects, created quickly to benefit from generous state subsidies, often with minimal automotive expertise. While a few had serious ambitions and advanced prototypes, the vast majority never got a vehicle on the road. By 2025, only around 100 of these brands remain active. Analysts from McKinsey predict that by 2030, fewer than 50 Chinese EV companies will survive. This is not just a story of collapse, but also of market maturation, consolidation, and strategic realignment.

SolarInsure Lists the Many Solar Business Failures

Major Solar Bankruptcies as of September 2025 Include:

Waste #5 Green Hydrogen Projects–Absurd, Exorbitant and Pointless

The map above from IEA shows more than 2200 hydrogen fuel projects around the world, intending to replace hydrocarbon fuels to save the planet.  They dream of being operational by 2030 claiming that real world obstacles will be overcome if enough taxpayer dollars are thrown at the problems.  The whole notion is fantastic (in the literal sense) for reasons detailed in a previous post.

Inside the Hydrogen Fuel Project Bubbles

An update on project cancellations comes from Hydrogen Newsletter The Green Hydrogen Reckoning: An Analysis of Project Cancellations

Project Name / Identifier Lead Company / Developer(s) Location  Announced Capacity / Scale Project Status Date of Announcement / Status Change
Arizona Hydrogen Project Fortescue Arizona, USA 80 MW electrolyzer, 11,000 t/yr H2 Cancelled (Post-FID) Jul-25
PEM50 Project Fortescue Gladstone, Australia 50 MW PEM electrolyzer Cancelled (Post-FID) Jul-25
H2OK Project Woodside Energy Oklahoma, USA 60 t/d liquid H2 Cancelled Jul-25
Massena Green Hydrogen Plant Air Products Massena, New York, USA $500M, 35 t/d liquid H2 Cancelled Feb-25
Mississippi Clean Hydrogen Hub Hy Stor Energy Mississippi, USA >1 GW electrolyzer capacity reservation Cancelled Sep/Oct 2024
HyGreen Teesside Project BP Teesside, UK 500 MW green hydrogen Cancelled Mar-25
Australian Renewable Energy Hub BP Australia $36 billion green hydrogen facility Exited Jul-25
Low-Carbon Hydrogen Plant Shell West Coast, Norway Not specified Cancelled Sep-24
Clean Hydrogen to Europe Equinor / Shell Norway to Germany 10 GW blue hydrogen export Scrapped Sep-24
German Steel Plant Conversion ArcelorMittal Germany Two plants, €2.5 billion plan Shelved Jun-25
Global Green Hydrogen Target Iberdrola Global 350,000 tons/yr target Scaled Back Mar-24
Green Hydrogen Production Target Repsol Spain 2.5 GW target Scaled Back Feb-25
Green Energy Hub LEAG Eastern Germany “One of Europe’s largest” Postponed Indefinitely Jun-25
Porvoo Renewable Hydrogen Neste Porvoo, Finland Not specified Withdrew from investment Oct-24
Port Pirie Green Hydrogen Plant Trafigura South Australia, Australia A$750 million Abandoned Mar-25
Queensland Liquefied H2 Plant QLD Gov’t, Kansai Electric, Iwatani Queensland, Australia A$12.5 billion, 200 t/d Funding Pulled 2025
Project Coyote Fortescue British Columbia, Canada $2 billion H2/ammonia facility Cancelled Sep-24

The above table provides a non-exhaustive but representative catalogue of the major green hydrogen projects that have been cancelled, postponed, or significantly scaled back between 2023 and mid-2025, illustrating the global scale of this market recalibration.