Ron Clutz

EU Climatists Backpedaling

Thomas Kolbe explains the turnabout against European climatists, weakening their power over the EU agenda. His American Thinker article is Climate Policy Turning Point. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

While former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock calls for a fight against climate-driven global apocalypse at COP30, Brussels is being forced into political restraint by pressure from the U.S. and Qatar. On the horizon, the end of the EU’s grand climate machinations is becoming visible.

““This is a new form of multilateralism — let us join forces,” said Annalena Baerbock, President of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Photo: Rafa Pereira/COP30

November 13, 2025, could mark a turning point in European Union history. We may have witnessed the beginning of the end of European climate socialism. Media coverage of the day in Parliament downplayed its significance, focusing instead on the reform of the supply chain law, while fundamental changes unfolded at a different level.

Lawmakers in the European Parliament agreed today, Nov. 13, 2025, to dramatic cuts to the EU’s sustainability reporting and due diligence laws, including significant reductions in the number of companies to be covered by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and the elimination of the obligation for companies to prepare climate transition plans. The vote, was 382 MEPs in favor and 249 opposed,

Politically, the event cannot be overstated; perhaps it should even be called a singularity in recent EU policy: The European Parliament paved the way for a dramatic dilution of corporate reporting obligations under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the so-called due diligence rules (CSDDD). The unstoppable march toward a climate dictatorship has been abruptly halted.

The End of the ESG Machine

Advocates of the ESG doctrine — under which private industry is forced by lawmakers to integrate party-circulated environmental and social standards into corporate governance — suffered their first major setback. Reporting and due diligence obligations for companies have been so weakened that previously required climate-aligned transition plans at the corporate level are now eliminated. Responsibility for violations of the remaining rules now rests with national authorities, not Brussels, freeing multinational supply chains from massive oversight.

The economy can, to some extent, escape the regulators’ grip — good news.

Rough Seas for Captains of Industry

For companies in the fossil energy sector, new market incentives emerge: exports to Europe can be conducted more easily, as regulatory hurdles are lowered and bureaucratic reporting requirements drastically reduced. Overall, the adjustment allows companies greater flexibility in supply chains, reduces the compulsion to invest in renewable or CO2-neutral projects, and makes European markets more attractive to fossil energy exporters.

Reality Check

The EU Commission has recently faced mounting pressure from both Washington and the key LNG supplier, Qatar. U.S. trade secretary Howard Lutnick had months earlier called on U.S. companies to simply ignore Europe’s ESG framework if it significantly impeded operations — a direct affront to Ursula von der Leyen, who likes to portray herself as the morally superior, untouchable guardian of EU trade.

Together, these forces launched an offensive to bring Brussels’ climate defense to its knees, where cognitive dissonance had taken hold and the undeniable drift of geopolitical power was being ignored.

We have clearly entered the era of resource dominance. Europe imports roughly 60% of its required energy. Its irrational war on baseload energy sources such as nuclear and coal has only deepened dependence.

In Brussels and EU branch capitals, the lesson is now unavoidable: being a resource-poor trading partner in negotiations reveals how Europe’s capital base has been massively weakened by EU policy. Europe has lost its historic dominant position. President Trump, during negotiations with the EU, merely displayed what behind closed doors was already clear to everyone.

Fear Wins in the End

Ultimately, Brussels’ capitulation to Washington was a logical consequence of this dependence. The post-colonial extraction era — when France accessed uranium cheaply or Europe leveraged its Middle East dominance — is definitively over. Resource-rich regions now set the rules. Europe must comply, seek alliances, and become economically more robust if it wants a role in the future. Its path into eco-socialism was an illusion that has now burst. Germany’s crisis, its accelerated deindustrialization, is only the beginning — a snapshot of the global economic realignment.

In the end, political fear of street unrest prevailed. A Europe facing regular blackouts would simply be ungovernable, with chaos in the streets, lawlessness, and near-civil war conditions, reminiscent of recurring riots in French banlieues.

Baerbock Plays Climate Theater

While reality has long arrived in Brussels and officials are forced to make initial concessions, former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock — now UN General Assembly President — continues to play the unshakable lead role in the disillusioned climate theater.

On Saturday in Belém, Brazil, at COP30, Baerbock performed with maximum emphasis, trying to give legs to a footsore, limp climate club. She proclaimed that “the climate crisis is the greatest threat of our time,” and that “3.6 billion people — almost half of the global population — are currently highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.” Droughts, floods, extreme heat, and resulting supply insecurity deepen the “vicious cycle of hunger, poverty, displacement, instability, and conflict.”

A bit of Thunberg-style climate apocalypse, performed for a select audience — climate profiteers among themselves. The theater now smells of a support group, struggling to maintain mutual rhetoric reinforcement. Of the purported 3.6 billion sufferers, few are likely interested in the climate club unless they are tied to its subsidy mechanism.

No one doubts that drastic climate changes throughout history caused massive upheavals — migrations, famine, misery. Yet it is high time to end the current CO2 circus, a carousel revolving around an artificially constructed world with vanishing relevance to everyday life.

The climate business was designed as a classic insider-outsider model. Profiteers of the climate subsidy machine tolerate the occasionally bizarre, childlike savior attitude of Baerbock and other symbolic figures — or even actively side with them. In this sense, Baerbock could indeed be considered a UN ambassador — of those shaping the global climate extraction economy. They pursue policies knowingly destabilizing societies.

The Double Standard of Green Extraction Politics

Perhaps Baerbock can explain to indigenous participants at COP30, protesting deforestation, why Europe’s green lobby cuts entire forests to install uneconomic wind turbines.

She could also offer an economic seminar on how systematic taxation of productive society members — leading only to poverty and relocation of production — supposedly lowers global temperatures. Historical indulgences offer a handy argumentative analogy.

Baerbock’s moral punch has likely suffered due to Brussels’ gradual retreat
from climate orthodoxy. No coercion for Qatar, none for Washington
— but the small corner bakery is milked with climate levies until closure.

Internally, pressure; externally, bowing. That is the new EU strategy. For those still not seeing it: this fight is not about saving the world’s climate. It is about legislatively sanctioned, corporately executed extraction of wealth — and the U.S. has repeatedly shown the red card.

In Baerbock’s words: the U.S. forces the EU into a 360-degree climate volte-face.

How the Kooky Climate Crisis Crumbles

Posted on November 22 by Ron Clutz

Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains the collapse of climate hysteria in his Daily Signal video AI is Challenging Climate Orthodoxy:

For those who prefer reading, below is a lightly edited transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the daily signal. For most of my life, at least for the last 35 years, we have accepted the climate change orthodoxy. We used to be global warming and then when things were not always warming but they were cooling. They changed the name to climate change to suggest whatever the temperature extreme was it was all due to carbon emissions caused in general by humans, but in particular westerners who were polluting the planet with heat.

That was the dominant narrative. I didn’t think in my lifetime that I would see an end to that dominance, even though there were inconsistencies. The planet is 4 billion years old and man has only been here for 300,000 years. And we only have accurate record keeping of temperature fluctuations for the last 150 years. And even within that period, we have cyclical changes between decades of abnormal temperatures, whether too hot or too cold. And before the industrial revolution in some cases by tree rings and ice sampling in the Arctic.

So there was always debate but the dominant narrative said:
No we have to radically change our economy and move away from
fossil fuels to renewable and that was usually wind and solar.

And then something’s happened lately. King Gustaf the16th the hereditary monarch of Sweden, is a symbolic figure not an actual person in power. He’s known as a rabid environmentalist, but kind of mused openly the other day, saying essentially: Why are we ruining the economy of Europe by having exorbitant power cost, electricity cost, when we only contribute to 6% of global warming worldwide? Then Bill Gates shocked the world when said he never he no longer believes that there is an impending climate change crisis. This was followed by a lot of other people who said let’s take a different look at this.

And of course the second tenure of Donald Trump has people in energy, interior, treasury who are saying, you know, we’re not going to subsidize this anymore. And this is collated with disasters that were caused by worries over climate change worries or global Armageddon. There was the highspeed rail program in California that was supposed to replace automobiles, $15 billion, $20 billion, not one foot of track laid. And the solar plant down in the desert of California that is being dismantled or the battery storage in Moss Landing near Monterey that has caught fire twice.

Moss Landing on fire 02/2025

I could go on. So there was a lot of skepticism both by individuals who were influential and by the general public for good cause. So what is causing this? Well, in reference to Bill Gates the first thing is artificial intelligence. It’s going to require a unprecedented level of electrical generation. It takes huge amounts of electricity. We don’t have it and we will not get it by subsidizing wind turbines and solar panels.

There are 1000 Gigawatts in 1 Terrawatt.

Sam Altman, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence said, If the United States wants to achieve preeminence in the field, and this seems to be the greatest technological breakthrough since the industrial revolution, we’re going to have to build plants producing AI of one gigawatt a week. That’s the size of a large nuclear reactor, one thousand megawatts. We’re going to have to build, he says, a 100 per year or the equivalent of clean coal or natural gas. So that influenced Bill Gates, that shook him up. That’s not compatible with his prior green idea that we’re going to supplant fossil fuels.

MW refer to 1,000,000 watts of power, rate of energy generated or consumed in an instant by a system, mechanical, thermal, etc. MWe refers specifically to Megawatts of electricity.

Another reason is geostrategic. People are starting to become aware that Russia is a bad actor and Iran is a bad actor. Since they depend on oil exports, therefore the high price of oil to fuel their military ambitions. When the United States became the largest producer of fossil fuels during the first Trump administration, then Biden for all of his green rhetoric, pivoted in his third and fourth year so he could win the election and began pumping oil again. Donald Trump took that 12 to 13 million barrels and has increased it to 14 million. And the price of world oil is going down, and that hurts Iran and hurts Russia. That benefits our allies like Europe and Japan that would like more liquefied national natural gas shipped from the United States.

And so there were geostrategic reasons. Let’s be frank. Everybody has sort of seen what China is doing. It’s playing the West. It talks a great game about global warming. You guys, we all have to reduce our emissions. And then what does it do? Two things. It subsidizes cheap export of solar panels and wind turbines below the cost of production to bankrupt competing industries in Europe, the United States, to get the West hooked on solar and wind even though it is a very expensive andunreliable source of electricity. Meanwhile, as we get hooked on Chinese exports, they build two to three coal or nuclear plants per month. Affordable energy that will give them a competitive hedge over the west.

Then there’s the third world that has been telling us for the last 20 years that we are culpable for global warming even though the two greatest heat emission areas in the world are China and India. Nonetheless, governments in Latin America, Africa, and Asia say, “You people owe us because you started the industrial revolution in the mid-19th century, and you’ve been polluting the planet ever since. And you create all of your industries and your affluent lifestyles by burning fossil fuels. And therefore, you should pay us, not we pay you.” And we don’t have to cut back. We’re late to the game.

We should say to them, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We burned more fossil fuels in the past because we created the industrial revolution and we do today. We provide you the cars. We provide you the industrial plants. We provide you the plastics. If you want us to stop, we won’t export it to you and then maybe we’ll pay reparations and you can do your own industrialization. So then, don’t take stuff from us requiring fossil fuels, stuff that’s essential to your economies, and then tell us that we have to pay an added tax on it because we’re warming up the planet, as if it’s only for our purposes as well as yours.

Then there’s the hypocrisy, I guess we would call it. The people who have been the avatars of climate change never suffer the consequences of their own ideology. Barack Obama said the planet would be inundated pretty soon if we didn’t address global climate change. Why would he buy a seaside estate at Martha’s Vineyard or one on the beach of Hawaii, if he really did believe that the oceans would rise and flood his multi-million dollar investment? Why would John Kerry fly all over the world on a private plane and then tell the rest of us that we’re flying too much commercial, when his carbon imprint was a thousand times more than the individual Americans? Why would people on the California coast say we have to have wind and solar and we have to get electricity up to 40 cents a kilowatt because we want to use less fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the temperature from La Jolla to Berkeley is between what, 65 and 75F year round, where here in Bakersfield or Fresno or Sacramento it can be 105 and poor people can’t afford to run their air conditioners.

Add it all up, the inconsistency of the global warming narrative, the self-interest in the people who promote it, and the logic that they have presented no convincing empirical evidence that we have to radically transform our economies on the wishes of a few elites that do not have the evidence, but do have a lot of hypocrisy in the process.

Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

Alimonte Strikes Down Climate Alarms (Again)

Posted on November 20 by Ron Clutz

Gianluca Alimonti, MS Physics, professor and senior researcher, University of Milan

Chris Morrison reports at Daily Sceptic Retracted by Nature, Traduced by Michael Mann – Gianluca Alimonti is Back and He’s Taking No Prisoners. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

I’m calling it the ‘Revenge of Alimonti’. In 2023 a group of activists including ‘hockey stick’ inventor Michael Mann, Attribution Queen Frederike Otto and Marlowe Hood and Graham Readfearn from AFP and the Guardian respectively managed to get a paper led by Professor Gianluca Alimonti retracted by Nature because it had spoken the obvious truth that there was little scientific evidence that extreme weather events were getting worse.

It was the high point of ‘settled’ science, a time when it was acceptable
to trash the cherished free speech principles of the scientific process.

But as the Net Zero fantasy starts to collapse and most of the shonky science backing it is facing increasing ridicule, Alimonti 2 is back, bigger and better. In his latest paper on the non-existent climate ‘crisis’, he shows there has been no statistically worsening trends of climate impacts. Indeed there have been many improvements in humans adapting to whatever nature has thrown at them

The publication of the paper is well timed. It should be pinned on the wall of every climate reporting room in mainstream media, starting with the hopelessly biased BBC. Perhaps not the Guardian though, sadly a lost cause beyond redemption. In considerable but easily understood detail, the paper debunks many of the extreme weather claims that remain the mainstay of grossly misleading climate science reporting.

The new Alimonti blockbuster shows it is not difficult to find all the relevant climate data, while the education needed to understand it relies mainly on an ability to read words and comprehend numbers. This climate paper is not breaking new barriers of scientific understanding, rather it is a work of investigation and compilation from freely available sources, many of them to be found in the published output of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Most extreme weather events are not getting worse, with or without human involvement, whatever alarmists from the climate comedy turn Jim ‘jail the deniers’ Dale to the BBC say. Inconveniently, the IPCC says more or less the same thing.

There is of course no climate ‘crisis’ or ‘emergency’, or at least not one that is evident from current scientific observations. Compared to recent historical experience, the current climate is relatively benign. Slightly warmer, more carbon dioxide leading to higher biomass and no increase in most types of bad weather. The fear of some sort of ‘crisis’, usually prophesised for an ulterior purpose, is ubiquitous in human history. Hysteria rises and falls dramatically, sometimes over long sustained periods, and in the case of climate this is displayed by an interesting graph compiled by Alimonti.

Google searches for climate ‘crisis’ and ‘emergency’ reveal two recent hysteria peaks, namely at the time of the Al Gore agitprop film An Inconvenient Truth featuring the infamous Michael Mann temperature hockey stick, and the Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion-led lunacy at the turn of the current decade.

Professor Alimonti proposes a data-focused toolkit to cut through the hype around a ‘climate crisis’. Instead of the alarmism, it is suggested that clear trackable metrics such as economic damages and health effects are tied to the key climate trends and events. Analysing these metrics shows no strong worsening trends. Any adaption plans for a changing climate should be based on real evidence, not one-size-fits-all panic.

The Article is Quantifying the climate crisis: a data-driven framework using response indicators for evidence-based adaptation policies. Synopsis below from excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Defining the Concept of ‘Climate Crisis’ Through Measurable Indicators

The paper proposes an analytical approach to the concept of climate crisis through a set of objective, measurable Response Indicators (RINDs), such as environmental anomalies, socio-economic and health impacts, driven by Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs) defined in IPCC AR6. By shifting the focus from subjective interpretations to a quantifiable metrics, this approach provides a critical framework for assessing the situation in an analytical manner. Policymakers can use these indicators to design targeted interventions that address specific environmental changes, ensuring that actions are data-driven and aligned with scientific evidence. This definition avoids alarmism while promoting practical, evidence-based solutions.

Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs)

Climate Impact Drivers (CIDs) are physical climate system conditions (e.g. means, events, extremes) that affect an element of society or ecosystems and are thus a priority for climate information provision. Depending on system tolerance, CIDs and their changes can be detrimental, beneficial, neutral or a mixture of each across interacting system elements, regions and society sectors. Each sector is affected by multiple CIDs and each CID affects multiple sectors. A CID can be measured by indices to represent related tolerance thresholds. (IPCC-AR6-WG1, Citation2021, p. 1770)

The latest IPCC AR6 process led to the development of 7 CID types (heat and cold, wet and dry, wind, snow and ice, coastal, open ocean, and other) and 33 distinct CID categories (CID, Citation2022): they are summarised in Table 12.12 (IPCC-AR6-WG1, Citation2021, p. 1856) which also presents CID emergence in different time periods based on multiple methods as provided by recent literature.

Table 12.1 | Overview of the main climatic impact-driver (CID) types and related CID categories with a short description and their link to other chapters where the underlying climatic phenomenon and its associated essential climate variables are assessed and described. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-12/#12.2

As shown in Table 12.12, most of the CIDs do not exhibit significant changes before the end of the XXI century even in the most pessimistic RCP8.5 scenario. It is important to note that the RCP8.5 scenario does not represent a typical ‘business-as-usual’ projection but serves instead as a high-end, high-risk scenario while the RCP4.5 scenario is approximately in line with the upper end of aggregate NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) emissions levels (Hausfather & Peters, Citation2020; IPCC-AR6-WG1, Citation2021, p. 250; IPCC-AR6-WG3, Citation2022, p. 317) as also confirmed by a recent JRC report (Keramidas et al., Citation2025): our analysis will thus focus on the observation of CIDs time series and not on future scenarios.

Examples of CIDs

Floods

Hurricanes

Response indicators (RINDs)

The number of natural disasters caused by weather-related events (e.g. hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, wet mass movements, storms) can be used as a preliminary climate response indicator.

The number of recorded Meteo-Hydro-Climate disaster events and related deaths since 2000 is shown in figure 6 and no clear trend is found by the MK trend analysis, as reported in Table 1.

Natural Disaster Deaths

Diseases and Injuries

Disasters from Temperatures, Droughts, Wildfires

Discussion

An analytical approach to the ‘climate crisis’ concept based on CIDs and RINDs has been proposed enhancing the IPCC CID-based framework (CID, Citation2022). This approach is still provisional and reliant on some statistical scientific indicators. The initiative aims to move beyond the qualitative use of the term ‘climate crisis’ by establishing a broad, shared, and quantitative methodology. The final goal is to provide a robust, data-driven assessment through updated time series and standardised statistical analysis, supported by interdisciplinary collaboration.

To this end, we emphasise the importance of:

– periodic (at least annual) series updates by operational organisations such as FAO, WHO or other international entities that collect and manage time series useful for this purpose;
– an alarm criterion based on predefined statistical methodologies (e.g. exceeding specific thresholds, significant trend variations, etc.);
– multiscale analysis (global, national, regional). All systems on our planet – from the climate system to ecological and socio-economic systems – can be effectively approached from the global scale down to the microscale. While our work has been developed at a global scale with some exceptions, the analysis can be extended to smaller scales (United Nations Statistics Division, Citation2024).

We must emphasise that impact indicator time series often bear
the signature of adaptation, and that other human factors
tend to outweigh climate factors.

For instance, the influence of climate on conflicts is considered minor compared to dominant conflict drivers (IPCC-AR6-WG2, Citation2022, p. 2428; Mach, Citation2019). Similarly, the human footprint on vector-borne diseases may be more significant than climate change, as evidenced in the twentieth century by the decline in malaria endemicity and mortality despite rising global temperatures (Carballar-Lejarazú et al., Citation2023; Climate Adapt, Citation2022; Rossati et al., Citation2016). The reduction in deaths caused by extreme weather events can partly be attributed to improvements in civil protection systems. These examples demonstrate that adaptation often proves more effective than mitigation.

Another example of anthropogenic influence unrelated to climate concerns wildfires: many studies report increases in burned areas linked to a warming climate over recent decades across much of North America. However, the rate of burning sites in the USA in recent decades has been much lower than historical rates across most of the continent, a disparity attributed to aggressive fire suppression and disruption of traditional burning practices (Parks et al., Citation2025). Furthermore, global deforestation trends fit within complex land use patterns where climate plays a secondary role; more specifically, remote sensing data reveal an increase in forest areas at mid-to-high latitudes in the northern hemisphere, while deforestation driven by the expansion of intensive agriculture is observed in subtropical regions (FAO, Citation2022; Pendrill et al., Citation2022; Song et al., Citation2021; Winkler et al., Citation2021).

Most of the time series in Table 1 do not show signs of deterioration. This is important to highlight, as it suggests we still have sufficient time to develop effective and sustainable adaptation policies aimed at enhancing the resilience of socio-economic and environmental systems. For example, in the case of droughts, the use of dry farming techniques, which optimise the exploitation of water resources during periods of scarcity, and the creation of water reservoirs, which can also contribute to renewable energy production and flood mitigation and prevention, can be envisaged. Regarding forest fires, key adaptation measures include the rational management of forest litter, the establishment of firebreaks to prevent the spread of fire, and the maintenance of adequate firefighting services.

Since the observed emergence of most of the CIDs presented in IPCC Table 12.12, and confirmed by the analysed updated time series, as well as most of the RINDs in Table 1 do not exhibit worsening trends, our overall view is that the ‘climate crisis’, as portrayed by many media sources today, is not evident yet.

Nevertheless, it remains extremely important to improve
and standardise monitoring activities and to develop
adaptation strategies based on high-quality data.

Kids Getting Dumber and Fearful

Posted on November 18 by Ron Clutz

Even Harvard University is suffering from the scourge of grade inflation, according to a recent report. Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images

Chris Selley points to evidence of our youngsters dumbing down in his National Post article Who will stop our kids from getting dumber? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. Later on is a post regarding the descent of youth into climate insecurity and fanaticism.

It really feels like we could be at a tipping point. We risk creating generations
of people who don’t know how to think critically, laterally, or at all.

Not-so-surprising news arrived recently from the University of California at San Diego: Academically, the kids are not all right. Not even close. “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of freshmen whose math placement exam results indicate they do not meet middle school standards grew nearly thirtyfold,” a report from the university’s senate finds. “A similarly large share of students must take additional writing courses to reach the level expected of high school graduates.”

The university launched a remedial math course in 2016, designed for “a very small number of first-year students (less than 100 students a year or around one per cent of the incoming class) who were not prepared to start in our standard precalculus courses.” As of this autumn, there were 665 students in that course, representing 8.5 per cent of the freshman class.

UCSD is no slouch in the college rankings: U.S. News and World Report pegs it as the sixth-best public university in the country, in the lofty company of Berkeley, UCLA, the University of North Carolina, and Michigan. It picks students from relatively high up the tree. And a fair few of them can’t do middle-school math.

The report tags dead-obvious suspects in this crime: Against its own board of regents’ advice, the University of California system no longer uses the SAT or ACT as part of the admissions process, because standardized tests are supposedly “racist.” That means the associated colleges (including Berkeley, UCLA and UCSD) have to rely more heavily on high-school grades. But high-school grades have inflated so much in recent years that they’re largely meaningless.

And with significant numbers of kids effectively ChatGPT-ing their way
through K-12, the writing problem especially is only bound to get worse.

I’m generally not an alarmist on such matters, but it really feels like we could be at a tipping point. We risk creating generations of people who don’t know how to think critically, laterally, or at all — and couldn’t successfully articulate what they think in a work email, let alone an essay, if they had to. The most frustrating thing is how easily this all could have been avoided, and how simply it could all be solved, if only the education bureaucracy could get its act together.

The solution to the AI crisis is in-class exams, which is what 49-year-old geezers like me used to know as “exams.” Just do it, for God’s sake. The solution to the standardized-testing issue is standardized testing.

We need to permanently marginalize the well-lettered
and influential voices who see it as a form of violence.

Grade inflation is a tougher nut to crack, perhaps. It’s much easier to inflate than deflate, and the problem goes well beyond high school. Harvard University’s Office of Undergraduate Education released a report this month assailing the scourge of grade inflation at Harvard. This revelation melted some students — the cream of America’s crop, we are led to believe — into a puddle of tears, the Harvard Crimson reports.

“The whole entire day, I was crying,” one undergrad told the student newspaper of the day the report dropped. “I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best.”

Here in Canada, the University of Waterloo was a pioneer in keeping a list of the worst grade-inflation offenders among Ontario’s high schools — a perfectly defensible practice, though Waterloo seemed almost ashamed of it. It actually went to court to prevent releasing the contents of that list under a freedom-of-information request from Global News, citing dubious concerns about privacy. Yet the people who should be most interested in such lists are students at the most grade-inflated schools and their parents; a mighty shock awaits them the first day they show up for university.

The educational damage caused by pandemic-era school closures and often-slipshod remote learning is, alas, impossible to remedy. “This year’s high-school seniors (graduating 2026) began remote learning in spring of their 6th Grade year, often one of the most critical in student development for math skills,” the UCSD report notes.

In California, as in Canada, absenteeism rates soared during the pandemic and haven’t recovered. That deficit is baked into an entire cohort of students for life, now. And in California, as in Canada, it’s the least advantaged students who took it hardest on the chin.

If there’s nothing we can do about that, we can at least make the people who cheered it on feel bad, and ensure we never again treat school closures and half-assed online learning so casually. Of all the cockamamie arguments flying around during COVID, “kids will be fine” was one of the weirdest. And “we must keep schools closed to protect our children,” who weren’t at any significant risk at all, was one of the most disreputable.

To be fair, we were flying blind in a crisis none of us had lived through before. We can’t say that about grade inflation, or cheating, or standardized testing. Those are longstanding problems that solving simply requires some grownups with an ounce or two of principle and courage to spare.

Activists participate in a youth climate demonstration during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Friday, Nov. 14, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. Joshua A. Bickel – AP

Nate Myers reports from COP30: The kids are not alright: COP30’s youth-led “climate crisis” struggle. Sadly, youth lacking in critical intelligence are at risk of activists exploiting them for an agenda. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

With climate anxiety now affecting an estimated half of young people worldwide, COP30 arrived in Belém, Brazil, promising to “elevate youth voices.” What I witnessed instead, by attending some of the side events, was a well-funded pipeline of fear, guilt, and political indoctrination aimed squarely at children and teenagers who have been convinced the world is ending.

And that was in 2019!

Over several days, I sat through hours of youth-led and youth-themed panels — panels that were supposedly about empowering the next generation but in reality offered little more than emotionally charged rhetoric, self-congratulatory monologues, and wild ideological claims completely detached from scientific or historical context.

By the end, one thing was very clear: The kids are not alright,
and the adults running these sessions know exactly what they’re doing.

Inside the COP30 Youth-Centric Panels:

One of the first sessions I attended was titled “A Legacy for Children and Youth in Climate Policies.” The premise sounded harmless enough — encouraging young people to engage in politics and science. But the execution was anything but.

Representatives from Our Kids Climate, ChildFund Alliance, Child Rights International Network, and Plant-for-the-Planet took turns celebrating how many children their organizations have managed to bring into the movement and how there’s always more work to be done to make the conversation “more inclusive” to “marginalized groups.”

What they didn’t talk about were scientific principles,
energy systems, or practical solutions.

Instead, panelists repeated the talking point that “children are the most affected by climate change” — a phrase that now functions as a moral shield to deflect scrutiny. The adults paneling the discussion pontificated endlessly about “youth inclusion in climate justice,” never once explaining what “climate justice” actually means or how any of their lofty goals would be achieved. Their message was simple: get more children involved as early as possible.

The moderator even closed with an open call to bring more kids to future COPs. She wasn’t subtle about it. The aim is to expose children to the climate-justice worldview before they have the emotional maturity, economic literacy, or scientific grounding to question it — or even properly understand the conversation.

Youth-Led Climate Forum

The flagship youth session at COP30, the “Youth-Led Climate Forum,” made the earlier panels look calm by comparison. Held over the course of the week in four separate installments that felt more like struggle sessions than intellectual debate and conversation, students repeated sweeping, dramatic lines like:

“We’re just trying to save the world,” followed by, “It’s our responsibility to fix this.”

Someone has convinced these kids that the world is ending — and that they are personally responsible for preventing it. That kind of psychological burden would crush an adult, let alone a teenager.

One young woman even described how her entry into the movement began after watching the apocalyptic thriller “2012.” Sometime later, she experienced a perfectly normal flood — an event that has occurred throughout human history — and interpreted it as confirmation that the “climate crisis” was accelerating.

It was the perfect microcosm of what’s happening to young people worldwide:
propaganda scares them into believing natural disasters are unprecedented,
and any routine weather event becomes proof that doom is approaching.

A representative from World Youth for Climate Justice took it a step further, declaring:

“Countries authorizing new oil leases should be held criminally responsible.”

The entire forum was drenched in ideological buzzwords. “Solidarity” and “intersectional” were used dozens of times. References to Indigenous communities, women, and LGBTQ groups were thrown around like confetti, to the point of unintended comedy.

Yet amid all the emotional rhetoric, no one offered scientific nuance, historical context, or even a basic acknowledgment of natural climate cycles. In fact, no one cited or discussed a single statistic, figure, or model. It was all emotion, no wisdom. All fear, no facts. And these are the voices COP30 proudly elevates as the “leaders of tomorrow” — leading us to what, I wonder?

And Then Came the Demands…

To top it all off, the Child Rights International Network (CRIN) proudly released a global letter of demands allegedly “developed by young people at COP30.” They issued these demands to every nation on Earth.

Among the most extreme:

- End all fossil fuel leasing and extraction.
- Replace global energy systems with “justice-based alternatives.”
- Mandate climate reparations across nations and generations.
- Create youth committees with power to oversee national climate policy.

The adults behind these groups know exactly what they’re doing. No child wrote this without intense indoctrination and adult influence. The youth participants are being used — emotionally and politically — to advance an agenda they don’t fully understand.

After countless hours of youth programming at COP30, the conclusion was unavoidable:

These are scared children seeking comfort and direction — yet they’re being fed panic, ideology, and guilt. The same groups that claim to “empower” young people are the ones frightening them into the movement in the first place. That’s not stewardship. That’s emotional exploitation.

The Cooling Also Not Our Fault 2025

Posted on November 17 by Ron Clutz

With the lack of global warming and the steep decline of SSTs the last 2 years, climatists are pivoting to the notion invented by the infamous M. Mann, AKA Mr. Hockey Stick (aiming to erase the Medieval warming period). The reasoning is convoluted, as you might expect given the intent to blame cold weather on global warming. The claim is that burning fossil fuels causes the North Atlantic Current to slow down and bring cold temperatures to the Northern Hemisphere. The video below is an excellent PR piece promoting this science fiction as though it were fact.

Science Facts to Counter Science Fiction

Natural variability has dominated Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation since 1900
Mojib Latif et al. published April 2022 Nature Climate Change. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Abstract

There is debate about slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key component of the global climate system. Some focus is on the sea surface temperature (SST) slightly cooling in parts of the subpolar North Atlantic despite widespread ocean warming. Atlantic SST is influenced by the AMOC, especially on decadal timescales and beyond. The local cooling could thus reflect AMOC slowing and diminishing heat transport, consistent with climate model responses to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Here we show from Atlantic SST the prevalence of natural AMOC variability since 1900. This is consistent with historical climate model simulations for 1900–2014 predicting on average AMOC slowing of about 1 Sv at 30° N after 1980, which is within the range of internal multidecadal variability derived from the models’ preindustrial control runs. These results highlight the importance of systematic and sustained in-situ monitoring systems that can detect and attribute with high confidence an anthropogenic AMOC signal.

Main

Global surface warming (global warming hereafter) since the beginning of the twentieth century is unequivocal, and humans are the main cause through the emission of vast amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially carbon dioxide (CO2)1,2,3. The oceans have stored more than 90% of the heat trapped in the climate system caused by the accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere, thereby contributing to sea-level rise and leading to more frequent and longer lasting marine heat waves4. Moreover, the oceans have taken up about one third of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions since the start of industrialization, causing ocean acidification5. Both ocean warming and acidification already have adverse consequences for marine ecosystems6. Some of the global warming impacts, however, unfold slowly in the ocean due to its large thermal and dynamical inertia. Examples are sea-level rise and the response of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a three-dimensional system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean with global climatic relevance7,8,9,10.

[Comment: The paragraph above is the obligatory statement of fidelity to the Climatist Creed. All the foundational claims are affirmed with references to prove the authors above reproach, and not to be dismissed as denialists. As further evidence of their embrace of IPCC consensus science, consider the diagrams below.

a, The NAWH SST index (°C), defined as the annual SST anomalies averaged over the region 46° N–62° N and 46° W–20° W. Observations for 1900–2019 from ERSSTv.5 (orange) and Kaplan SST v.2 (yellow), and ensemble-mean SST for 1900–2014 (dark blue line) from the historical simulations with the CMIP6 models and the individual historical simulations (thin grey lines) are shown. b, Same as a but for the NA-SST index (°C), defined as the annual SST anomalies averaged over the region 40° N–60° N and 80° W–0° E. c, Same as a but for the AMO/V (°C) index, defined as the 11-year running mean of the annual SST anomalies averaged over the region 0° N–65° N and 80° W–0° E. The SST indices in a–c are calculated as area-weighted means. d, NAO index (dimensionless) for 1900–2019 (red), defined as the difference in the normalized winter (December–March) sea-level pressure between Lisbon (Portugal) and Stykkisholmur/Reykjavik (Iceland). The blue curve indicates the equivalent CO2 radiative forcing (W m−2) for 1900–2019, which is taken from the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) SSP5-8.5 after 2014.

Chart d shows the NAO fluxes compared to a CO2 forcing curve based upon the much criticized RCP 8.5 scenario, which is not “business-as-usual” but rather “business-impossible.” Using it shows the authors bending over backwards to give every chance for confirming the alarming slowdown narrative. The next paragraph gives the entire game away]

Climate models predict substantial AMOC slowing if atmospheric GHG concentrations continue to rise unabatedly1,11,12,13,14. Substantial AMOC slowing would drive major climatic impacts such as shifting rainfall patterns on land15, accelerating regional sea-level rise16,17 and reducing oceanic CO2 uptake. However, it is still unclear as to whether sustained AMOC slowing is underway18,19,20,21,22. Direct ocean-circulation observation in the North Atlantic (NA) is limited9,23,24,25,26,27. Inferences drawn about the AMOC’s history from proxy data28 or indices derived from other variables, which may provide information about the circulation’s variability (for example, sea surface temperature (SST)21,29,30, salinity31 or Labrador Sea convection32), are subject to large uncertainties.

Discussion

Observed SSTs and a large ensemble of historical simulations with state-of-the-art climate models suggest the prevalence of internal AMOC variability since the beginning of the twentieth century. Observations and individual model runs show comparable SST variability in the NAWH region. However, the models’ ensemble-mean signal is much smaller, indicative of the prevalence of internal variability. Further, most of the SST cooling in the subpolar NA, which has been attributed to anthropogenic AMOC slowing21, occurred during 1930–1970, when the radiative forcing did not exhibit a major upward trend. We conclude that the anthropogenic signal in the AMOC cannot be reliably estimated from observed SST. A linear and direct relationship between radiative forcing and AMOC may not exist. Further, the relevant physical processes could be shared across EOF modes, or a mode could represent more than one process.

A relatively stable AMOC and associated northward heat transport during the past decades is also supported by ocean syntheses combining ocean general circulation models and data76,77, hindcasts with ocean general circulation models forced by observed atmospheric boundary conditions78 and instrumental measurements of key AMOC components9,22,79,80,81.

Neither of these datasets suggest major AMOC slowing since 1980, and neither of the AMOC indices from Rahmstorf et al.20 or Caesar et al.21 show an overall AMOC decline since 1980.

Contextual Background

From the Energy MIx Changes in Atlantic Current May Fall Within Natural Variability.

In the February, 2022, edition of the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science urged more detailed study of the notoriously complex Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Now, oceanographer Mojib Latif and his team from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany are repeating that call in a paper just published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The latest study describes the AMOC as a “three-dimensional system of current in the Atlantic Ocean with global climatic relevance.”

The February study responded to an August 2021 warning from the Potsdam Institute
that the AMOC has become wildly unstable and dangerously weak
due to global warming caused by human activity.

The authors of the latest study affirm that the Earth’s oceans have taken up more than 90% of the accumulated heat and roughly a third of all CO2 emissions since the dawn of the industrial age, leading to clearly measurable and devastating impacts like marine heat waves, sea level rise, and ocean acidification.

But it isn’t easy to confirm that the Atlantic circulation is actually slowing, partly because the ocean possesses such “large thermal and dynamical inertia.”

It is also extremely difficult to directly observe ocean circulation patterns in the North Atlantic, and proxies like sea surface temperature are “subject to large uncertainties,” the scientists say. Based on the available data, the GEOMAR study attributes localized sea surface cooling in the North Atlantic since 1900 to natural AMOC variability—not, as had been hypothesized, to a global heating-induced breakdown in the AMOC’s capacity to transfer heat.

Footnote:

OISST Updates: Ocean SST Cooling Confirmed

Posted on November 17 by Ron Clutz

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.

Recently I posted on SST data from HadSST4 since the US shutdown stopped other SST sources. Now OISST is back online, so this report is based on data from OISST2.1. This dataset uses the same in situ sources as HadSST along with satellite indicators. Importantly, it produces daily anomalies from baseline period 1991-2020. The data is available at Climate Reanalyzer (here). Product guide is (here). The charts and analysis below is produced from the current data.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in OISST2.1 starting in 2015 through October 2025. 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.

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 0.6°C in 2023, ~0.2° higher than the 2015 peak. Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. During nearly 2 years of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by Tropics cooling the last 22 months from its 0.9°C peak 2024/01 down to 0.26C in October this year. SH and NH also cooled Sept./Oct. pulling the Global anomaly down to 0.42C, just 0.1C above the average for this decadal period.

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 is 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. The descending sawtooth in all regions continued through Sept./Oct.

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 last month. 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, with an upward bump in October 2025.

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 -0.25. The orange line the average 1982-2025, value -0.014 also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2015-2025, value 0.32. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

The news about our current solar cycle 25 is that the solar activity is hitting peak numbers now and higher than expected 1-2 years in the future. As livescience put it: Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun’s chaotic peak be? Some charts from spaceweatherlive look familar to these sea surface temperature charts.

Summary

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

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

Glaciermania Strikes Again–2025 International Year of Glaciers

Posted on November 16 by Ron Clutz

UN is sounding alarms about glaciers, and media is amplifying as usual.

Climate emergency: 2025 declared international year of glaciers, UN News

Climate change is shrinking glaciers faster than ever, AP

Glaciers Are Melting Twice as Fast as Predicted and We’re Not Ready, Science News Today

1st glacier declared dead from climate change seen in before and after images, Live Science

Nearly 40% of the world’s glaciers are already doomed, CNN

Nearly Half of Earth’s Glaciers Are Already Doomed, Even Without Future Warming, SciTechDaily

World’s Melting Glaciers Threaten Food and Water Supply for 2 Billion People, Carbon Brief

Glaciers on the Brink: UN Calls for Bold Action, Climate Fact Checks

This short video puts this alarm into perspective. Additional detail is provided by Dr. John Happs in his article Glaciers And Ice Sheets: Here Today And Here Tomorrow. Dr. Happs comments on many glaciers around the world, this post has only some excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

How often do the climate alarmists tell us that few glaciers still exist because of (imaginary) global warming and those that remain are rapidly melting away? Not surprisingly, the alarmists, particularly those from the media and vested interest groups, always point to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) computer model projections, referring to one in particular–the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5.)

Even the political/ideological IPCC has sensibly branded RCP8.5 as “Highly Unlikely”

So, what are the glacier numbers?

There are more than 200,000 alpine/valley (land-based) glaciers and many others stemming from the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.

Glaciers have advanced, retreated and halted many times over the last 400,000 years being influenced not only by temperature but also by other factors, such as wind, precipitation, altitude, latitude, aspect, topography and slope angle.

Global temperature is often promoted, usually by naïve climate alarmists, as the only important input into glacier formation, growth and retreat yet, in very dry parts of Antarctica, where low temperatures are seemingly ideal for glacier growth, the small amount of net annual precipitation results in glaciers growing very slowly, or even diminishing in size.

Glaciers can also be influenced by sublimation or the transition of a substance directly from the solid to the gas phase. Glaciers can experience this process resulting in the “evaporation” of ice, exacerbated by wind action. Sublimation can be seen in the way that ice cubes left in the freezer will shrink over time.

More than 18,000 glaciers have been identified across 50 World Heritage sites but this represents less than 10% of the Earth’s glaciated area. The media, climate activists and vested interest groups like to argue that all glaciers are receding because global temperature is increasing. Not surprisingly, many glaciers have been retreating since we emerged from the Little Ice Age (1250-1850), a time when many farms and houses across Scandinavia were destroyed by advancing glaciers between the 14^th and 19^th centuries.

We might expect that glaciers and ice sheets would recede after the Little Ice Age yet we know that glaciers in many parts of the world are advancing, with glaciers growing in the Alps, North America, Patagonia, Antarctica, Alaska, the Himalayas, China, Iceland, Greenland, New Zealand, Norway, Antarctica and Greenland.

Where glaciers reach the sea, the media, and some tour guides, like to promote the dramatic calving-glacier image as pointing to (imaginary) global warming but fail to point out (perhaps they don’t know) that a calving glacier is the sign of an advancing inland glacier and certainly not one that is about to disappear.

In his silly, but influential, 2005 movie “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore said:

“Within the decade, there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Mount Kilimanjaro is still covered in snow. See False Alarm over the Retreat of the Himalayan Glaciers

“The speed and consequences of Himalayan glacial retreat have been grossly exaggerated by the media and environmental activists.”

A significant proportion of Himalayan glaciers are advancing. In fact, 58% of glaciers examined in the westerly Karakoram range, a chain of snowy peaks along the border of India, Pakistan and China, were stable or advancing with annual snowfall increasing. A study of Himalayan glaciers, published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate reported that cooler summers are failing to melt winter snows, which are themselves becoming more frequent, resulting in advancing glaciers. Source: Live Science

GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS IN ANTARCTICA

The Antarctic ice sheet is the world’s largest mass of ice covering around 14 million sq. km.

Ice sheets can be described as glaciers that cover very large areas and the most obvious examples are found in Greenland and Antarctica where around two-thirds of the Earth’s fresh water is stored.

Alarming reports that the Antarctic ice sheet is rapidly melting misrepresent the science of a very complex situation. Antarctica has been ice-covered for at least 30 million years. The ice sheet holds over 26 million gigatonnes of water (a gigatonne is a billion metric tons). If it were to melt completely, sea levels would rise 60 metres. Such a change is many millennia in the future, if it happens at all, although climate alarmists will always claim that such a response is just around the corner because of (imaginary) global warming.

Modest ice loss is normal in Antarctica. Each year in summer, more than 2,000 gigatonnes of ice is discharged in the form of melt and icebergs, while snowfall additions keep the ice mass in equilibrium.

Summary

So it is a familiar story. A complex naturally fluctuating situation, in this case glaciers, is abused by activists to claim support for their agenda. I have a lot of respect for glaciologists; it is a deep, complex subject, and the field work is incredibly challenging. And since “glacial” describes any process where any movement is imperceptible, I can understand their excitement over something happening all of a sudden.

But I do not applaud those pandering to the global warming/climate change crowd. They seem not to realize they debase their own field of study by making exaggerated claims and by “jumping the shark.”
Meanwhile real scientists are doing the heavy lifting and showing restraint and wisdom about the limitations of their knowledge.

Resources:

Redressing Antarctic Glacier Porn

Greenland Ice Varies, Don’t Panic 2023 Update

Climatists’ Childish Reading of Polar Ice

Figure 1. A comparison of presentations of satellite data capturing Greenland’s ice mass loss. The image on the right shows changes in Greenland’s ice mass relative to Greenland’s total ice mass. Sources: The data plotted in these graphs are from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise, a joint exercise by NASA and the European Space Agency.4 Graphs originally by Willis Eschenbach. Adapted and annotated by Anthony Watts.

Good News, COP30: Cooling Temperatures Reducing CO2 Rise

Posted on November 14 by Ron Clutz

Just in time for COP30 in Belem, Brazil, we have fresh confirmation that cooling temperatures are resulting in lower than expected levels of atmospheric CO2. 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, 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. 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.

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). That background post is reprinted later below.

My curiosity was piqued by the remarkable GMT spike starting in January 2023 and rising to a peak in April 2024. GMT has declined steadily, and now 18 months later, the anomaly is 0.53C down from 0.94C. I also became aware that UAH has recalibrated their dataset due to a satellite drift that can no longer be corrected. The values since 2020 have shifted slightly in version 6.1, as shown in my recent report UAH Ocean Stays Cool, SH Land Warms, October 2025, The data here comes from UAH record of temperatures measured in the lower troposphere (TLT).

In this post, I test the premise that temperature changes are predictive of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The chart above 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 October 2025. 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 October 2025 minus October 2024). 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 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 0.9941.

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.

Background Post Temperature Changes Cause CO2 Changes, Not the Reverse

This post is about proving that CO2 changes in response to temperature changes, not the other way around, as is often claimed. In order to do that we need two datasets: one for measurements of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over time and one for estimates of Global Mean Temperature changes over time.

Climate science is unsettling because past data are not fixed, but change later on. I ran into this previously in 2021 and 2022 when I set out to update an analysis done in 2014 by Jeremy Shiers (discussed in a previous post reprinted at the end). Jeremy provided a spreadsheet in his essay Murray Salby Showed CO2 Follows Temperature Now You Can Too posted in January 2014. I downloaded his spreadsheet intending to bring the analysis up to the present to see if the results hold up. The two sources of data were:

Temperature anomalies from RSS here: http://www.remss.com/missions/amsu

CO2 monthly levels from NOAA (Mauna Loa): https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/data.html

Changes in CO2 (ΔCO2)

Uploading the CO2 dataset showed that many numbers had changed (why?).

The blue line shows annual observed differences in monthly values year over year, e.g. June 2020 minus June 2019 etc. The first 12 months (1979) provide the observed starting values from which differentials are calculated. The orange line shows those CO2 values changed slightly in the 2020 dataset vs. the 2014 dataset, on average +0.035 ppm. But there is no pattern or trend added, and deviations vary randomly between + and -. So last year I took the 2020 dataset to replace the older one for updating the analysis.

Now I find the NOAA dataset starting in 2021 has almost completely new values due to a method shift in February 2021, requiring a recalibration of all previous measurements. The new picture of ΔCO2 is graphed below.

The method shift is reported at a NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory webpage, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) WMO Scale, with a justification for the difference between X2007 results and the new results from X2019 now in force. The orange line shows that the shift has resulted in higher values, especially early on and a general slightly increasing trend over time. However, these are small variations at the decimal level on values 340 and above. Further, the graph shows that yearly differentials month by month are virtually the same as before. Thus I redid the analysis with the new values.

Global Temperature Anomalies (ΔTemp)

The other time series was the record of global temperature anomalies according to RSS. The current RSS dataset is not at all the same as the past.

Here we see some seriously unsettling science at work. The purple line is RSS in 2014, and the blue is RSS as of 2020. Some further increases appear in the gold 2022 rss dataset. The red line shows alterations from the old to the new. There is a slight cooling of the data in the beginning years, then the three versions mostly match until 1997, when systematic warming enters the record. From 1997/5 to 2003/12 the average anomaly increases by 0.04C. After 2004/1 to 2012/8 the average increase is 0.15C. At the end from 2012/9 to 2013/12, the average anomaly was higher by 0.21. The 2022 version added slight warming over 2020 values.

RSS continues that accelerated warming to the present, but it cannot be trusted. And who knows what the numbers will be a few years down the line? As Dr. Ole Humlum said some years ago (regarding Gistemp): “It should however be noted, that a temperature record which keeps on changing the past hardly can qualify as being correct.”

Given the above manipulations, I went instead to the other satellite dataset UAH version 6. UAH has also made a shift by changing its baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020. This resulted in systematically reducing the anomaly values, but did not alter the pattern of variation over time. For comparison, here are the two records with measurements through December 2023.

Comparing UAH temperature anomalies to NOAA CO2 changes.

Here 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 now referenced to the 1991-2020 period. As stated above, CO2 differentials are calculated for the present month by subtracting the value for the same month in the previous year (for example June 2022 minus June 2021). Temp anomalies are calculated by comparing the present month with the baseline month.

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}

Jeremy used Python to estimate a and b, but I used his spreadsheet to guess values that place for comparison the observed and calculated CO2 levels on top of each other.

In the chart calculated CO2 levels correlate with observed CO2 levels at 0.9986 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.

Comment: UAH dataset reported a sharp warming spike starting mid year, with causes speculated but not proven. In any case, that surprising peak has not yet driven CO2 higher, though it might, but only if it persists despite the likely cooling already under way.

Previous Post: What Causes Rising Atmospheric CO2?

nasa_carbon_cycle_2008-1

This post is prompted by a recent exchange with those reasserting the “consensus” view attributing all additional atmospheric CO2 to humans burning fossil fuels.

The IPCC doctrine which has long been promoted goes as follows. We have a number over here for monthly fossil fuel CO2 emissions, and a number over there for monthly atmospheric CO2. We don’t have good numbers for the rest of it-oceans, soils, biosphere–though rough estimates are orders of magnitude higher, dwarfing human CO2. So we ignore nature and assume it is always a sink, explaining the difference between the two numbers we do have. Easy peasy, science settled.

What about the fact that nature continues to absorb about half of human emissions, even while FF CO2 increased by 60% over the last 2 decades? What about the fact that in 2020 FF CO2 declined significantly with no discernable impact on rising atmospheric CO2?

These and other issues are raised by Murray Salby and others who conclude that it is not that simple, and the science is not settled. And so these dissenters must be cancelled lest the narrative be weakened.

The non-IPCC paradigm is that atmospheric CO2 levels are a function of two very different fluxes. FF CO2 changes rapidly and increases steadily, while Natural CO2 changes slowly over time, and fluctuates up and down from temperature changes. The implications are that human CO2 is a simple addition, while natural CO2 comes from the integral of previous fluctuations. Jeremy Shiers has a series of posts at his blog clarifying this paradigm. See Increasing CO2 Raises Global Temperature Or Does Increasing Temperature Raise CO2 Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The following graph which shows the change in CO2 levels (rather than the levels directly) makes this much clearer.

Note the vertical scale refers to the first differential of the CO2 level not the level itself. The graph depicts that change rate in ppm per year.

There are big swings in the amount of CO2 emitted. Taking the mean as 1.6 ppmv/year (at a guess) there are +/- swings of around 1.2 nearly +/- 100%.

And, surprise surprise, the change in net emissions of CO2 is very strongly correlated with changes in global temperature.

This clearly indicates the net amount of CO2 emitted in any one year is directly linked to global mean temperature in that year.

For any given year the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be the sum of

all the net annual emissions of CO2
in all previous years.

For each year the net annual emission of CO2 is proportional to the annual global mean temperature.

This means the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be related to the sum of temperatures in previous years.

So CO2 levels are not directly related to the current temperature but the integral of temperature over previous years.

The following graph again shows observed levels of CO2 and global temperatures but also has calculated levels of CO2 based on sum of previous years temperatures (dotted blue line).

Summary:

The massive fluxes from natural sources dominate the flow of CO2 through the atmosphere. Human CO2 from burning fossil fuels is around 4% of the annual addition from all sources. Even if rising CO2 could cause rising temperatures (no evidence, only claims), reducing our emissions would have little impact.

Atmospheric CO2 Math

Ins: 4% human, 96% natural
Outs: 0% human, 98% natural.
Atmospheric storage difference: +2%
(so that: Ins = Outs + Atmospheric storage difference)

Balance = Atmospheric storage difference: 2%, of which,
Humans: 2% X 4% = 0.08%
Nature: 2% X 96 % = 1.92%

Ratio Natural : Human =1.92% : 0.08% = 24 : 1

Resources

For a possible explanation of natural warming and CO2 emissions see Little Ice Age Warming Recovery May be Over

Resources:

CO2 Fluxes, Sources and Sinks

Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

Fearless Physics from Dr. Salby

October 2025 Ocean SST Cools to Mean

Posted on November 12 by Ron Clutz

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. I’ve grown weary of waiting each month for HadSST4 updates, so the July and August reports were based on data from OISST2.1. This dataset uses the same in situ sources as HadSST along with satellite indicators. Now however, the US government is shut down and updates to climate datasets are likely to be delayed. Reminds of what hospitals do when their budgets are slashed: They close the Maternity Ward to get public attention.

So this October report is based again 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 October 2025. 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.

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 0.6C in September this year. Note the smaller peak in NH in July 2025 now declining along with SH and the Global anomaly cooler as well. In October the Global anomaly nearly matched the mean for this period

Comment:

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

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 are cooling August and September 2025.

Contemporary AMO Observations

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 0.40 also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2015-2025, value 0.68. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

Summary

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

UN Sinking Itself

Posted on November 11 by Ron Clutz

As if the circus at the UN COP in Belem were not enough, Rafael Pinto Borges of Portugal unsparingly exposes the decline of the UN into hypocracy and irrelevance. His article at European Conservative is The Sad Suicide of the UN. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

More than 80 people were arrested during operation against the Red Command in Rio de Janeiro. Reuters.

The United Nations weighed in once more—and, once more, the world rolled its eyes. Immediately after a police raid in Rio de Janeiro that claimed the lives of over one hundred, the UN’s Human Rights Office vehemently denounced Rio de Janeiro’s conservative governor, Cláudio Castro, for what it called a “deadly operation” of “extreme, lethal consequences”. What it left out is that all of the victims were policemen or narcoterrorists. There were no civilian casualties. Not one.

It didn’t make any difference. This is an institution that has long lost its taste for facts. What drives it now is theatre—ritual condemnation on the altar of human rights, the last moral capital of a useless and toothless bureaucratic colossus with very little discernible use. The UN has its preferential villains: strong states asserting their sovereignty, governments that boldly police their own streets, and leaders that still believe law and order are the lifeblood of civilisation. The Brazilian federal government of left-wing President Lula da Silva, of course, had nothing to do with it; the raid was wholly the brainchild of Rio de Janeiro’s conservative leadership. And that is why, like Hungary when it strives to defend its borders or Poland under the previous PiS government when it tried to shield its sovereignty from wanton, undue EU interference, so too was Rio de Janeiro immediately badmouthed by these faux harbingers of virtue. One hopes that Castro will ignore the UN’s calls to surrender his city to criminal gangs and, instead, continue to hit them hard.

This latest, shameful episode comes to confirm, once again, the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations. The UN has—deservedly—become what it was meant not to become: a pulpit. It is now an international moral church of sorts whose priests sit in Geneva and New York and whose scripture is dictated by the bien-pensant Left. It makes a charade of the very notion of impartiality.

Indeed, in Brazil’s case, it barely seems to notice that Rio’s drug barons are able to control entire slums as feudal fiefdoms; it doesn’t pity the hundreds of thousands of ordinary, innocent people who live under the bloodthirsty tyranny of organised crime. It doesn’t care that this malignant tumour spreads its evil internationally, with the operatives entrenching themselves as a powerful presence in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe as well as poisoning increasing numbers of Europeans with their drugs. More than any other global institution, the UN has now degenerated into an international of wokery: Its nonsense on ‘systemic violence’ and ‘structural racism’ has replaced analysis or common sense.

Moral theatre has done away with moral clarity.

This charade isn’t even hypocritical anymore. Hypocrisy, after all, involves some perception of right and wrong—it might be ugly, but it is not oblivious. The UN, meanwhile, does not even pretend to be a servant of a moral order rooted in law anymore. It serves only the balance of its own internal politics. The bureaucracy survives by condemning only those who it is safe to condemn.

The irony is that the UN was established specifically to avoid this fate. It was meant as a forum for sovereign countries, not as an ultra-politicised court. But sovereignty has become a meaningless word for the UN, captured as it has been by latte-sipping liberal globalists. Those who currently populate the institution speak in the banal Esperanto of Western left-wing midwitery. They seldom have any meaningful political experience. They are alien to reality, and reality is alien to them.

The UN’s condemnation of Brazil is a perfect example of this pernicious catechism. The real Marx, whatever his faults, would have stood up to applaud the destruction of the vile lumpenproletarian hellholes of the Brazilian favela; he would have cheered for the liberation of working-class communities from the iron rule of the drug lords. Engels, similarly, would have condoned Hungary for protecting its working people from the incoming hordes of cheap, socially disruptive labour with which Merkel and those before and after have systematically asphyxiated Europe. The UN’s current mainstream sensitivity is not even classically left-wing; it betrays a mindset that is specifically and unequivocally drawn from modern bourgeois-bohème Western leftism.

Meanwhile, genuine atrocities—the mass slaughter of Christians in Nigeria or Syria, the abominable massacres in Sudan, the rampant gang rule and cannibalism in Haiti, with the UN still failing to fund the mission approved in 2023—continue unabated. They are referred to, if at all, as asterisks to reports written in the language of cowardice. The UN moral vocabulary has become utterly risible.

The price of all this corruption is irrelevance. No serious power finds the UN credible anymore. The Security Council is an opera of vetoes; its resolutions carry no weight at all. Peacekeeping missions fail, humanitarian aid organisations rot in corruption scandals, and the lofty words of the Charter are heard echoing through empty chambers.

If the UN is to survive the coming decades, it will not be through reform but through restoration. It must return to its founding principle: that of an assembly of equal, sovereign states bargaining over their mutual interests and concerns, not as a platform for empty virtue signaling. And if it can’t, it will wither away—perhaps not with a bang, but with a yawn of irrelevance.

And maybe, in the end, that would be the most ethical thing it could do.

	Ron Clutz on The Hottest Year Shell Ga…
	Ron Clutz on The Hottest Year Shell Ga…
	David A on What is Global Temperature? Is…
	David A on The Hottest Year Shell Ga…
	The Hottest Year She… on The Hottest Year Shell Ga…