Climate Impacts

States Claiming Climate Crisis Can’t Prove It

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Andrew Weiss explains the cascading effects upon climate obsessed politicians in his Real Clear Energy article After the Endangerment Finding, States Must Prove CO2 Harms. Wisconsin Can’t..  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The EPA’s revocation of the 2009 endangerment finding shifts the burden of proof from federal agencies to state capitals. Governors who declared climate emergencies must now demonstrate with regional data that rising carbon dioxide (CO2) endangers their residents. Wisconsin cannot meet that burden.

In 2019, Wisconsin declared climate change a crisis requiring the state’s electricity to be carbon-free by 2050, citing worsening extreme weather as justification. Since then, the state has spent $6 billion on renewable infrastructure while residents pay 15% more for electricity than the Midwest average.

A new report by the Weiss Energy Policy Institute analyzed 130 years of Wisconsin climate data and found that as atmospheric CO2 rose 45%, Wisconsin experienced 63% fewer days over 90°F, heatwaves 71% shorter in duration, powerful tornadoes down 70%, and significant drought decline since 1894.

This isn’t just absence of evidence, it’s negative correlation.
As CO2 increased, climate extremes decreased.

In addition to the improving climate, the report also notably found that rural Wisconsin’s average temperature has not changed since 1894. Urban areas, on the other hand, have warmed about 2.2°F since the late nineteenth century. The report finds that this urban warming is nearly entirely due to the Urban Heat Island effect from concrete and development, not CO2. In many measurable ways, Wisconsin’s climate has become more conducive to human flourishing over the past century.

Even if CO2 were causing harm, Wisconsin’s ability to adapt
to climate change far surpasses its ability to influence it.

The Badger State’s 2023 carbon emissions were 22% below its peak of 110 million metric tons in 2005. Despite its reduction, annual global emissions have increased by over 100 times Wisconsin’s entire annual emissions over the same period. In fact, in 2023, Wisconsin’s carbon emissions made up less than 0.25% of the global total.

While CO2 has not endangered residents of Wisconsin,
the climate-based policies have.

Residential electricity prices continue climbing even as household consumption falls. In fact, Xcel Energy and Alliant Energy have requested cumulative rate hikes approaching 19% over the next two years. Some in Waukesha County are already facing “dramatically higher” energy bills, double from just months earlier. Under Wisconsin’s current policies, this is sure to continue. In fact, Wisconsin is hurtling toward an energy crisis. The latest long term reliability assessment projects the state will enter “high-risk” territory for blackouts by 2028.

This economic burden stems from poor energy policies. Current leadership has forced coal plants into early retirement, blocked critical natural gas infrastructure, mandated carbon targets over grid reliability, vetoed consumer protections against appliance bans, and weaponized the permitting process to strangle traditional energy development.

For example, the state’s climate policies prevented a gas-fired plant that would have brought $1 million in annual tax revenue and 350 construction jobs to northern Wisconsin last year. Its initial permits expired while waiting for more permits.

In the face of unprecedented new energy demand, Wisconsin’s grid might have been able to absorb the new data centers and industrial growth if it weren’t already stressed by climate policy. But solar cannot replace coal megawatt-for-megawatt. In order to replace reliable coal with solar, while maintaining the same reliability, nearly  twenty times the capacity must be installed. That means ratepayers pay to build and maintain thousands of acres of solar panels and pay to keep backup plants on standby for when those panels underperform.

Even overturning the carbon mandate won’t be enough to save the grid, because the current regulatory system was not built to accommodate surging industrial demand without punishing ratepayers. Wisconsin lawmakers need to save residents from footing the bill for data center infrastructure by utilizing free markets and private capital rather than heavy-handed subsidies.

This market-oriented solution for Wisconsin is called Consumer-Regulated Electricity (CRE). It allows privately financed utilities to generate and sell power directly to large customers through voluntary contracts, operating independent of the regulated grid. This creates a parallel pathway for new industrial demand, protecting residential ratepayers while giving Wisconsin a competitive advantage over other Midwest states. It attracts industrial capital without subsidies or forcing costs onto families.

The revoked endangerment finding forces a reckoning: will Wisconsin continue its expensive and dangerous energy transition, or will it examine the actual data? New evidence suggests the state should:

♦  rescind its zero-carbon mandate,
♦  restore reliable baseload power to the legacy grid, and
♦  pass Consumer-Regulated Electricity legislation to let private capital serve new industrial demand without burdening ratepayers.

Combined with removing carbon mandates from the legacy grid,
these reforms position Wisconsin a bright energy future.

In the 21st century, affordable and reliable power separates flourishing societies from struggling ones. Wisconsin cannot prove CO2 harms, but its climate policies are already bringing on an energy crisis. Other states that built climate mandates on the endangerment finding should audit their climate data. The burden of proof has shifted to state capitals, and the evidence may not support the mandates.

See also:

No Climate Crisis in Texas

World of Hurt from Climate Policies-Part 1

 

Lawfare Begins Against Repealing Endangerment Finding–Legalities Outlook

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The expected blowback from invested climatists is underway, as reported by legacy media whose bias is with the alarmists.  Examples:

EPA faces lawsuit over scrapping the ‘endangerment finding,’ a pillar of climate regulation, Scientific American

E.P.A. Faces First Lawsuit Over Its Killing of Major Climate Rule, NY Times

Lawsuit: EPA revoking greenhouse gas finding risks “thousands of avoidable deaths”, arstechnica

Public health and green groups sue EPA over repeal of rule supporting climate protections, AP News

The legal battle over EPA finding is underway, Axios

U.S. environment agency sued over scrapping scientific rule behind climate protections, CBC

Etc., Etc.

Outlook for the legal proceedings is provided by David Wojick in his CFACT article EPA’s elegant arguments for endangerment repeal.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.  H/T Climate- Science.press

EPA’s arguments for repealing the Obama endangerment finding are simple, clear, and strong. So, they have a likely chance of winning in the Supreme Court (SCOTUS), which is where the final decision will be made.

I am working from the lengthy EPA press release which contains what amounts to a summary legal brief of the arguments.

The primary argument is legal and aimed directly at SCOTUS. The release even cites several relevant prior decisions. The gist of these decisions is that agencies cannot find new meaning in old statutes that suddenly gives them enormous new regulatory powers. Such recklessness is called regulatory overreach.

EPA’s argument is that massive overreach is precisely what the endangerment finding did, and it sure looks that way. It was not mission creep, more like mission explosion.

Gas stoves only the thin edge of the wedge.

The statute in question is Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act which lets
EPA regulate harmful tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles.
The Obama endangerment finding is entirely based on this narrow rule.

Here is how EPA puts it:

“The agency concludes that Section 202(a) of the CAA does not provide statutory authority for EPA to prescribe motor vehicle and engine emission standards in the manner previously utilized, including for the purpose of addressing global climate change, and therefore has no legal basis for the Endangerment Finding and resulting regulations. EPA firmly believes the 2009 Endangerment Finding made by the Obama Administration exceeded the agency’s authority to combat “air pollution” that harms public health and welfare, and that a policy decision of this magnitude, which carries sweeping economic and policy consequences, lies solely with Congress. Unlike our predecessors, the Trump EPA is committed to following the law exactly as it is written and as Congress intended—not as others might wish it to be.”

This is just the sort of statutory issue the Supreme Court usually deals with.

There is an element of the endangerment finding that is so blatantly wrong that it is hilarious. I would start with it because it certainly makes EPA’s case for repeal, at least in part. EPA mentions it in passing saying this:

“In an unprecedented move, the Obama EPA found that carbon dioxide emissions emitted from automobiles – in combination with five other gases, some of which vehicles don’t even emit – contribute an unknown amount to greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere….”

So they used the tailpipe statute to assess (and then regulate)
gases that tailpipes do not emit. There is clearly no
statutory basis for these endangerment findings.

These are not scientific issues, and SCOTUS does not normally adjudicate science. There are, however, one and a half scientific arguments in case the science comes up. That is, one argument is fully stated in the release while the other is merely alluded to.

Here is the fully stated argument:

“Using the same types of models utilized by the previous administrations and climate change zealots, EPA now finds that even if the U.S. were to eliminate all GHG emissions from all vehicles, there would be no material impact on global climate indicators through 2100.”

This is actually an endangerment finding, namely that there is none.

Here is the alluded to argument:

“….the Obama EPA found that carbon dioxide emissions emitted from automobiles – in combination with five other gases, some of which vehicles don’t even emit – contribute an unknown amount to greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere that, in turn, play a role through varied causal chains that may endanger human health and welfare.”

Lancet: A 2015 study by 22 scientists from around the world found that cold kills over 17 times more people than heat.

The several scientific issues here are the reality of the “varied causal chains” claimed in the Obama endangerment finding. These causal issues include a great deal of alarmism.

As science, the endangerment finding is a complex attribution claim, and these are highly speculative and contentious. These causal chain issues may be elaborated in the technical support documents for the repeal. But if they are at least mentioned, as in the release, it creates a placeholder for them, in case they come up during the SCOTUS arguments.

Since 1920, deaths each year from natural disasters have decreased by over 90 percent, not only as the planet has warmed, but as world population has quadrupled.

EPA has mounted some elegant arguments for repeal of the endangerment finding. Stay tuned to CFACT as this drama unfolds.

Footnote on Bjorn Lomborg’s estimates of Climate impact from reducing GHG emissions 

Governments have publicly outlined their post-2020 climate commitments in the build-up to the December’s meeting. These promises are known as “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs).

♦  The climate impact of all Paris INDC promises is minuscule: if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.

♦  Even if we assume that these promises would be extended for another 70 years, there is still little impact: if every nation fulfills every promise by 2030, and continues to fulfill these promises faithfully until the end of the century, and there is no ‘CO₂ leakage’ to non-committed nations, the entirety of the Paris promises will reduce temperature rises by just 0.17°C (0.306°F) by 2100.

♦  US climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.031°C (0.057°F) by 2100.

♦  EU climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.053°C (0.096°F) by 2100.

♦  China climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.

♦  The rest of the world’s climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.036°C (0.064°F) by 2100.

Overview in Celsius and Fahrenheit by the year 2100

January 2026 Ocean SSTs Warm Slightly

Posted on 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.  This January report is based on HadSST 4, but with a twist. The data is slightly different in the new version, 4.2.0.0 replacing 4.1.1.0. Product page is here.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST 4.2 starting in 2015 through January 2026. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016, followed by rising temperatures in 2023 and 2024 and cooling in 2025, now with a small bump upward.

Note that in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes.  That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period.  A small warming was driven by NH summer peaks in 2021-22, but offset by cooling in SH and the tropics, By January 2023 the global anomaly was again below the mean.

Then in 2023-24 came an event resembling 2015-16 with a Tropical spike and two NH spikes alongside, all higher than 2015-16. There was also a coinciding rise in SH, and the Global anomaly was pulled up to 1.1°C in 2023, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak.  Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. During 2 years of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by Tropics cooling from its 1.3°C peak 2024/01, down to 0.6C 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 December the Global anomaly exactly matched the mean for this period, with all regions converging on that value, led by a 6 month drop in NH.  Essentially, all the warming since 2015 was gone, with a slight warming starting 2026.

Comment:

The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof their Zero Carbon agenda is needed, without addressing how impossible it would be for CO2 warming the air to raise ocean temperatures.  It is the ocean that warms the air, not the other way around.  Recently Steven Koonin had this to say about the phonomenon confirmed in the graph above:

El Nino is a phenomenon in the climate system that happens once every four or five years.  Heat builds up in the equatorial Pacific to the west of Indonesia and so on.  Then when enough of it builds up it surges across the Pacific and changes the currents and the winds.  As it surges toward South America it was discovered and named in the 19th century  It iswell understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.

Now people talk about changes in that phenomena as a result of CO2 but it’s there in the climate system already and when it happens it influences weather all over the world.   We feel it when it gets rainier in Southern California for example.  So for the last 3 years we have been in the opposite of an El Nino, a La Nina, part of the reason people think the West Coast has been in drought.

It has now shifted in the last months to an El Nino condition that warms the globe and is thought to contribute to this Spike we have seen. But there are other contributions as well.  One of the most surprising ones is that back in January of 2022 an enormous underwater volcano went off in Tonga and it put up a lot of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. It increased the upper atmosphere of water vapor by about 10 percent, and that’s a warming effect, and it may be that is contributing to why the spike is so high.

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations.  Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015.  This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since.  The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies.  Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July. 1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.

The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 was dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2.

SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8,  a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12.  Again SSTs are average 2013-14.

Now a different pattern appears.  The Tropics cooled sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off.  But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average.  In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16.  NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH were offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.)  Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021.  In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.

Then in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH produced a summer peak extending into September higher than any previous year.  Despite El Nino driving the Tropics January 2024 anomaly higher than 1998 and 2016 peaks, following months cooled in all regions, and the Tropics continued cooling in April, May and June along with SH dropping.  After July and August NH warming again pulled the global anomaly higher, September through January 2025 resumed cooling in all regions, continuing February through April 2025, with little change in May,June and July despite upward bumps in NH. Now temps in all regions have cooled led by NH from August through December 2025.

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. In October there was an unusual upward spike, now reversed down to match 2022 and 2016.  An orange dot on the left axis represents the value of 0.71C for January 2026

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

The rose line is the average anomaly 1982-1996 inclusive, value 0.18.  The orange line the average 1982-2025, value 0.41 also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2015-2025, value 0.74. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

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

Why Rethinking Climate Change–Nicola Scafetta

Posted on by Ron Clutz

[Top] Comparison of the harmonic empirical global climate model under the SSP2-4.5 scenario with the HadCRUT4.6 record (1850–2021) alongside the burning ember diagrams representing the five primary global Reasons for Concern (RFCs) under low-to-no adaptation scenarios, as reported by the IPCC (2023) AR6. [Bottom] Summary and analysis of the projected impacts and risks of global warming for the 2080–2100 period compared to the climate “thermometer” projections from Climate Action Tracker (2024). Credit: Gondwana Research (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.gr.2025.05.001

Nicola Scafetta writes at  phys.org (site not known for skeptical thinking) Rethinking climate change: Natural variability, solar forcing, model uncertainties, and policy implications.  Exceprts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Current global climate models (GCMs) support with high confidence the view that rising greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic forcings account for nearly all observed global surface warming—slightly above 1 °C—since the pre-industrial period (1850–1900). This is the conclusion presented in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) published in 2021.

Figure 3: CMIP6 GCM ensemble mean simulations spanning from 1850 to 2100, employing historical effective radiative forcing functions from 1850 to 2014 (see Figure 1C) and the forcing functions based on the SSP scenarios 1-2.6, 2-4.5, 3-7.0, and 5-8.5. Curve colors are scaled according to the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) of the models. The right panels depict the risks and impacts of climate change in relation to various global Reasons for Concern (RFCs) (IPCC, 2023). (Adapted from Scafetta, 2024).

Moreover, the GCM projections for the 21st century, produced under different socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), underpin estimates of future climate impacts and guide net-zero mitigation strategies worldwide.

The prevailing interpretation is that only net-zero climate policies can keep future climate change-related damages within acceptable limits. Yet such policies carry extremely high economic and societal costs, making it essential to assess whether these certain and immediate costs are fully justified by the current state of climate science.

On the other hand, a closer examination of observational datasets, paleoclimate evidence, and model performance reveals a more intricate picture—one that merits open discussion among students, researchers, and anyone interested in how climate science is evolving.

My study “Detection, attribution, and modeling of climate change: Key open issues,” published in Gondwana Research, examines several unresolved questions in climate detection, attribution, and modeling. These issues concern the foundations of how past climate changes are interpreted and how future ones are projected, and they matter because climate projections influence decisions that will shape economies and societies for decades. [My synopsis: Scafetta: Climate Models Have Issues. ]

A central theme is natural climate variability. Across the Holocene—the last 11,700 years—the climate system exhibited a Climate Optimum (6,000–8,000 years ago) and repeated oscillations: multidecadal cycles, centennial fluctuations, and millennial-scale reorganizations.

Some longer cycles are well known, such as the quasi-millennial Eddy cycle, associated with the Medieval and Roman warm periods, and the 2,000–2,500-year Hallstatt–Bray cycle. These patterns appear in ice cores, marine sediments, tree rings, historical documents, and in both climate and solar proxy records.

Current GCMs, however, struggle to reproduce the Holocene Optimum and these rhythms. They generate internal variability, but not with the correct timing, amplitude, or persistence. When a model cannot capture the natural “heartbeat” of the climate system, distinguishing human-driven warming from background variability becomes challenging. This is particularly relevant for interpreting the warming observed since 1850–1900, because both the Eddy and Hallstatt–Bray cycles have been in rising phases since roughly the 1600s.

Figure 1. Anthropgenic and natural contributions. (a) Locked scaling factors, weak Pre Industrial Climate Anomalies (PCA). (b) Free scaling, strong PCA Source: Larminat, P. de (2023)

A portion of the post-industrial warming could therefore stem from these long natural oscillations, which are expected to peak in the 21st century and in the second half of the third millennium, respectively.

Another key issue concerns the global surface temperature datasets that serve as the backbone of global warming assessment. These datasets are essential but not perfect.

Urbanization, land-use changes, station relocations, and instrumentation shifts can introduce non-climatic biases. Many corrections exist, yet uncertainties persist. Even small unresolved biases can influence long-term trends.

The study highlights well-known discrepancies: satellite-based estimates of lower-troposphere temperatures since 1980 show about 20–30% less warming than surface-based records, particularly over Northern Hemisphere land areas.

Recent reconstructions based on confirmed rural stations also show significantly weaker secular warming. These differences underscore the need for continued scrutiny of observational records.

Solar and astronomical influences represent another area where science is still evolving. The sun varies in ways not fully captured by the simplified irradiance reconstructions used in many models. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the climate system responds not only to total solar irradiance but also to spectral variations, magnetic modulation, and indirect effects on atmospheric circulation.

These mechanisms are still under investigation, and their representation in models remains incomplete, even though empirical evidence suggests that they may play a dominant role—potentially more influential than the simple total-solar-irradiance forcing currently implemented.

Moreover, despite ongoing controversy surrounding long-term solar variability, current GCMs are typically forced with solar reconstructions that exhibit extremely low secular variability. This helps explain why these models attribute nearly 0 °C of the observed post 1850–1900 warming to solar changes and simultaneously fail to reproduce the millennial-scale oscillations evident in paleoclimate records.

Direct comparisons between GCM global surface temperature simulations and observations also show that the models do not reproduce the quasi-60-year climatic oscillation associated with the 1940s warming period, and they tend to overestimate the warming observed since 1980. This “hot model” problem has been documented in several studies and appears to affect a substantial fraction of current GCMs.

All of this connects to a key parameter in climate science: equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). The canonical estimate—around 3 °C for a doubling of CO₂, with a likely range of 2.5–4.0 °C according to the IPCC—derives largely from model-based assessments.

Empirical studies, including those that account more explicitly for natural variability, often suggest lower values, sometimes around 2.2 ± 0.5 °C, or even as low as 1.1 ± 0.4 °C if long-term solar luminosity varies significantly and if additional solar-related mechanisms influence the climate system—mechanisms not included in current models. If ECS is lower than commonly assumed, projected 21st-century warming would be substantially reduced under all SSP scenarios.

These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event. The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4. This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C. Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C. Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.

The interplay between natural and anthropogenic factors is definitely more nuanced than often portrayed. When empirical models that include natural oscillations are used to project future temperatures, the result is typically moderate future warming rather than extreme trajectories. This raises important questions about the scientific basis for the most aggressive mitigation pathways.

The figure compares the warming expected from GCMs, as assessed by the IPCC, with the associated relative risks, alongside the expectations derived from the empirical modeling proposed in the paper. While net-zero pathways such as SSP1 are considered necessary to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to below 2 °C by 2100, empirical considerations suggest that the same target could also be achieved under the far more moderate SSP2 scenario.

This distinction has major global economic implications, because the
prevailing climate-crisis narrative does not appear to be fully supported
by the evidence, and far less costly adaptation strategies could be
more appropriate than highly aggressive mitigation policies.

The study stresses the importance of addressing the key open questions of climate science. Climate policy should be informed by the full spectrum of scientific evidence, including uncertainties and alternative interpretations.

 

Arctic Ice Nearly Average mid-February 2026

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The arctic ice extents are now reported through mid-February 2026, showing rising refreezing rates bringing Arctic ice extents within 200k km2 of the 20-year average.  Remarkably, the last two days virtually matched the 2025 annual extent maximum of 14.48M km2 on day 80 of that year, compared to 14.44 on day 43 in 2026.

The chart below shows the 20-year averages for Arctic ice extents mid-Febrauary along with 2026 and 2025, as well as SII v.4.

As stated previously, likely due to a wavy polar vortex, MASIE 2026  refroze slowly in January reaching a deficit of 622k km2 on day 26.  Since then ice grew at a higher rate, ending this period 176k km2 below average, or 1% down. Note that compared to day 44 last year, 2026 ice is more than half a Wadham greater, 656k km2.  And as mentioned above, 2025 will not match yesterday until day 80. Note SII v.4 tracks lower than MASIE throughout, on average in deficit by 242K km2.

Region 2026044 Average day 44 2026-Ave. 2025044 2026-2025
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 14427481 14603337 -175856 13771518.64 655962
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1071070 1070384 686 1071000.73 69
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 965785 222 965989.12 17
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087132 5 1087137.23 0
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897838 7 897844.8 0
 (5) Kara_Sea 935023 909437 25586 911762.37 23261
 (6) Barents_Sea 649606 566421 83185 434920.5 214686
 (7) Greenland_Sea 772110 625671 146439 635758.41 136351
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1040295 1429059 -388764 1335264.28 -294969
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854931 853531 1399 854877.96 53
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260870 1260595 276 1260903.34 -33
 (11) Central_Arctic 3235930 3204874 31056 3195022.33 40907
 (12) Bering_Sea 689769 671512 18256 333643.58 356125
 (13) Baltic_Sea 155657 88990 66666 35593.84 120063
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 742439 914421 -171982 720462 21977

The table shows that most regions are close to or above the 20-year average.  Two major deficits are in Baffin Bay and Sea of Okhotsk, partly offset by several smaller surpluses, mostly in Greenland Sea, Barents and Bering seas.

 

 

 

 

UAH Stays Cool January 2026

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean. Each month and year exposes again the growing disconnect between the real world and the Zero Carbon zealots.  It is as though the anti-hydrocarbon band wagon hopes to drown out the data contradicting their justification for the Great Energy Transition.  Yes, there was warming from an El Nino buildup coincidental with North Atlantic warming, but no basis to blame it on CO2.

As an overview consider how recent rapid cooling  completely overcame the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016).  The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November 2021, and in February and June 2022  At year end 2022 and continuing into 2023 global temp anomaly matched or went lower than average since 1995, an ENSO neutral year. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020). Then there was an usual El Nino warming spike of uncertain cause, unrelated to steadily rising CO2, and now dropping steadily back toward normal values.

For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa.  While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~66 ppm, an 18% increase.

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

gmt-warming-events

The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event.  The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4.  This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C.  Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C.  Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.

Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate.  On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. And in 2024 we saw an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now dropping well below its peak.

Chris Schoeneveld has produced a similar graph to the animation above, with a temperature series combining HadCRUT4 and UAH6. H/T WUWT

image-8

See Also Worst Threat: Greenhouse Gas or Quiet Sun?

January 2026 UAH Temps: Tropical Cooling with Slight Warming Elsewhere  banner-blog

With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea.  While you heard a lot about 2020-21 temperatures matching 2016 as the highest ever, that spin ignores how fast the cooling set in.  The UAH data analyzed below shows that warming from the last El Nino had fully dissipated with chilly temperatures in all regions. After a warming blip in 2022, land and ocean temps dropped again with 2023 starting below the mean since 1995.  Spring and Summer 2023 saw a series of warmings, continuing into 2024 peaking in April, then cooling off to the present.

UAH has updated their TLT (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for January 2026. Due to one satellite drifting more than can be corrected, the dataset has been recalibrated and retitled as version 6.1 Graphs here contain this updated 6.1 data.  Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month are ahead the update from HadSST4 or OISST2.1.  I posted recently on SSTs  December 2025 All Ocean SSTs Cool to Mean. These posts have a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.

Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes. In July 2024 all oceans were unchanged except for Tropical warming, while all land regions rose slightly. In August we saw a warming leap in SH land, slight Land cooling elsewhere, a dip in Tropical Ocean temp and slightly elsewhere.  September showed a dramatic drop in SH land, overcome by a greater NH land increase. 2025 has shown a sharp contrast between land and sea, first with ocean air temps falling in January recovering in February.  Then in November and December SH land temps spiked while ocean temps showed litle change.  January 2026 showed NH land warming 0.1C, SH less, while ocean temps changed little, except for Tropical cooling by 0.1C.

Note:  UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 2021.   v6.1 data was recalibrated also starting with 2021. In the charts below, the trends and fluctuations remain the same but the anomaly values changed with the baseline reference shift.

Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system.  Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy.  Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements.  In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates.  Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.

Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST.  Thus cooling oceans portend cooling land air temperatures to follow.  He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months.  This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

After a change in priorities, updates are now exclusive to HadSST4.  For comparison we can also look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6.1 which are now posted for January 2026.  The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above. Recently there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the revised and current dataset.

The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans, and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI).  The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean air temps since January 2015.

 In 2021-22, SH and NH showed spikes up and down while the Tropics cooled dramatically, with some ups and downs, but hitting a new low in January 2023. At that point all regions were more or less in negative territory.

After sharp cooling everywhere in January 2023, there was a remarkable spiking of Tropical ocean temps from -0.5C up to + 1.2C in January 2024.  The rise was matched by other regions in 2024, such that the Global anomaly peaked at 0.86C in April. Since then all regions have cooled down sharply to a low of 0.27C in January.  In February 2025, SH rose from 0.1C to 0.4C pulling the Global ocean air anomaly up to 0.47C, where it stayed in March and April. In May drops in NH and Tropics pulled the air temps over oceans down despite an uptick in SH. At 0.43C, ocean air temps were similar to May 2020, albeit with higher SH anomalies. In November/December all regions are cooler, led by a sharp drop in SH bringing the Global ocean anomaly down to 0.02C. January saw continued Tropical cooling offset by NH warming.

Land Air Temperatures Tracking in Seesaw Pattern

We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly.  The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground.  UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps.  The graph updated for January is below.

 Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land.  The seesaw pattern in Land temps is similar to ocean temps 2021-22, except that SH is the outlier, hitting bottom in January 2023. Then exceptionally SH goes from -0.6C up to 1.4C in September 2023 and 1.8C in  August 2024, with a large drop in between.  In November, SH and the Tropics pulled the Global Land anomaly further down despite a bump in NH land temps. February showed a sharp drop in NH land air temps from 1.07C down to 0.56C, pulling the Global land anomaly downward from 0.9C to 0.6C. Some ups and downs followed with returns close to February values in August.  A remarkable spike in October was completely reversed in November/December, along with NH dropping sharply bringing the Global Land anomaly down to 0.52C, half of its peak value of 1.17C 09/2024. Now in January Global land rebounded up to 0.61C, led by NH warming s similar amount.

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

 The chart shows monthly Global Land and Ocean anomalies starting 01/1980 to present.  The average monthly anomaly is -0.02 for this period of more than four decades.  The graph shows the 1998 El Nino after which the mean resumed, and again after the smaller 2010 event. The 2016 El Nino matched 1998 peak and in addition NH after effects lasted longer, followed by the NH warming 2019-20.   An upward bump in 2021 was reversed with temps having returned close to the mean as of 2/2022.  March and April brought warmer Global temps, later reversed

With the sharp drops in Nov., Dec. and January 2023 temps, there was no increase over 1980. Then in 2023 the buildup to the October/November peak exceeded the sharp April peak of the El Nino 1998 event. It also surpassed the February peak in 2016. In 2024 March and April took the Global anomaly to a new peak of 0.94C.  The cool down started with May dropping to 0.9C, later months declined steadily until  August Global Land and Ocean was down to 0.39C. then rose slightly to 0.53 in October. Now in January 2026 it is back down to 0.35C.

The graph reminds of another chart showing the abrupt ejection of humid air from Hunga Tonga eruption.

TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps.  Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, nearly 1C lower than the 2016 peak.  Since the ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity as the atmosphere, that cooling is a significant driving force.  TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST4, but are now showing the same pattern. Despite the three El Ninos, their warming had not persisted prior to 2023, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995.  Of course, the future has not yet been written.

Arctic Ice Recovering January 2026 Despite Vortex

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The arctic ice extents are now fully reported for January 2026, showing refreezing rates fluctuating, likely due to a wavy polar vortex sending cold Arctic air to sub-arctic latitudes and replacing it with warmer southern air.

From AER Polar Vortex blog:

As seen in Figure iii (and also Figure 12) the PV has an elongated shape in appearance for much of the next two weeks in contrast to the more circular PV of early January. The PV has a “split” appearance this week and into next week, a character trait or signature of a more extreme stretched PV. I think the more extreme nature of the stretched PV is consistent with the model forecasts of extreme cold in the US and even potential snowstorms. But then at least in this animation there is a clear PV split with two distinct and independent PV centers.

Figure iii. Forecasted average 10 mb geopotential heights (dam; contours) and geopotential height anomalies (m; shading) across the Northern Hemisphere for 19 Jan 2026 and forecasted from 20 Jan 2026 to 03 Feb 2026. The forecasts are from the 00Z 19 Jan 2026 GFS model ensemble.

The chart below shows the 20-year averages for Arctic ice extents in January along with 2026 and 2025, as well as SII v.4.

Note MASIE 2025 started 5 to 600k km2 (or half a Wadham) below the 20 year average, but by day 12 cut the deficit to 151k km2, or a gap of 1%. Freezing rate went flat for a week before recovering and ending the month nearly 14M km2, 365k id deficit or 3%.  SII v.4 tracked lower than MASIE throughout January, averaging ~200k km2 lower for the month. The chart below shows the distribution of ice extent across the Arctic regions at January 31, 2026.

Region 2026031 Average Day 31 2026-Ave. 2025031 2026-2025
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 13954044 14319064 -365020 13543739.54 410305
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1071070 1070419 651 1071000.73 69
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 966006 965975 31 965989.12 17
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1087067 70 1087137.23 0
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 897825 20 897844.8 0
 (5) Kara_Sea 923456 917599 5857 921519.96 1936
 (6) Barents_Sea 582372 556751 25621 428814.24 153558
 (7) Greenland_Sea 663996 613445 50551 614788.59 49207
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1027979 1315356 -287378 1080930.32 -52952
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854931 853582 1349 854877.96 53
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1260870 1260784 86 1260903.34 -33
 (11) Central_Arctic 3202511 3210553 -8042 3211378.6 -8867
 (12) Bering_Sea 670583 642788 27795 534452.21 136131
 (13) Baltic_Sea 114996 61637 53359 39333.65 75663
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 549996 809973 -259977 559692 -9696

The table shows that most regions are close to the 20-year average.  Two major deficits are in Baffin Bay and Sea of Okhotsk, partly offset by several smaller surpluses.

 

 

 

The Hottest Year Shell Game

Posted on by Ron Clutz

When it comes to climate science, always keep eyes on the prize.

The Distorted Reporting of Global Average Temperature 2025 and its relevance to the Paris Agreement

The video by Philosophical Investigations uncovers some misleading claims by people who should know better. For those who prefer reading, below is a transcript with my bolds and added images.

With the end of year 2025, the crucial questions to be answered by climate scientists were:

♦  how much has global average temperature increased since the pre-industrial period 1850 to 1900, and
♦  how does this increase compare to the Paris Agreement overarching goals?

These goals being to hold the increase in the global average temperature less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Note the relevance of the term pre-industrial.

The IPCC uses the reference period 1850 to 1900 to represent pre-industrial temperature. The period 1850 to 1900 and the term pre-industrial are to a large extent interchangeable in the discussion that follows. We can now provide examples of how the global average temperature at year end 2025 was reported.

Berkeley Earth reported that in 2025 the global annual average temperature was estimated at 1.44 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The WMO reported that the global average surface temperature was 1.44 degrees Celsius above the 1850 to 1900 average. The UK Met Office reported that 2025 was 1.41 degrees Celsius above the 1850 to 1900 global average.

NOAA reported that 2025 exceeded the pre-industrial 1850 to 1900 average by 1.34 degrees Celsius. All these figures appear to measure the amount of global warming as being very close to the Paris Agreement lower limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Just to double check this channel calculated global warming using the standard IPCC methodology and the official published NOAA data, the global average temperature anomaly 1850 to 1900 equals minus 0.165 degrees Celsius.

The global average temperature anomaly for the 30 year period 1996 to 2025 equals plus 0.751 degrees Celsius. Therefore, the global average temperature has warmed by 0.916 degrees Celsius since 1850 to 1900. This is a large discrepancy from the NOAA 2025 report of 1.34 degrees Celsius.

To be specific, it is a discrepancy of 46.28%. So, how did such a large discrepancy come about?

A brief background and analysis will reveal a somewhat disturbing answer. The 2016 Paris Agreement did not specify how to measure any increase in global average temperature, nor did it specify what precisely was meant by pre-industrial levels. To correct this lack of scientific clarity in the Paris Agreement, the IPCC walked its readers through the process of defining global warming.

First, it specified that the reference period 1850 to 1900 is to be used to represent pre-industrial temperature. Once scientists had defined pre-industrial, the next step is to calculate the amount of warming at any given time relative to that reference period. Warming is defined as the increase in the 30-year global average of combined air temperature over land and water temperature at the ocean surface relative to the 1850 to 1900 pre-industrial period.

[Note:  One important reason that the period 1850-1900 serves as a useful baseline of climate utopia is that almost no one has any idea what the climate looked like back then, much less the climate impacts experienced. Most modern climate records start in the 20th century, and to the extent that the IPCC considers pre-20th climate it is in terms of physical quantities and not impacts or risks. 

Estimated decadal deaths related to weather and climate for four decades: 1870s, 1920s, 1970s, and 2020s (estimated based on deaths over the past decade). These estimates are highly uncertain and 1870s and 1920s numbers are certainly underestimates. They should be interpreted as orders of magnitude and not as precise figures. Sources: Davis 2017, Our World in Data

The figure above shows estimated decadal deaths related to weather and climate extremes for four decades, each separated by a half-century, starting with the 1870s.]

Why 30 years? The 30-year time span accounts for the effect of natural variability, which can cause global temperatures to fluctuate from one year to the next. An earlier report had also emphasised that due to natural variability, trends based on short records that are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates, do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. That covers the necessary background.

Now, the analysis of the critical question. Why does the IPCC methodology give a calculation of 0.916°C but NOAA reports 1.34°, WMO reports 1.44°C, UK Met Office reports 1.41°C, Berkeley Earth reports 1.44°C? It is disturbing to highlight that the reason for the discrepancies involves a certain amount of guile leading to misinformation. On the one hand, it seems as if we are being informed of the increase in global average temperature since 1850-1900 as related to the Paris Agreement goals.

But in fact, we are merely being informed of a comparison of the global average temperature of the single year 2025 with the global average temperature of the 51-year period 1850-1900. A comparison which is absolutely irrelevant with respect to the Paris Agreement goals. And quite emphatically, does nothing to answer the questions how much has global average temperature increased since the pre-industrial period 1850-1900 and how does this increase compare to the Paris Agreement overarching goals?

This is because, instead of comparing a 30-year global average temperature
with the 51-year period 1850-1900, these organisations have
compared a single year 2025 with 1850-1900.

This is an invalid methodology that produces the exact results these organisations have duly reported. This can be demonstrated quite easily by again using NOAA data but substituting the 30-year period 1996-2025 with the 1-year period 2025-2025. The global average temperature anomaly 1850-1900 remains the same at minus 0.165 degrees celsius.

The global average temperature anomaly for this single year 2025 equals plus 1.17 degrees celsius. The global average temperature was therefore claimed to have warmed by 1.335 degrees celsius, which rounds up to 1.34 degrees celsius, exactly as reported by NOAA. All these organisations underlined and previously quoted are guilty of using this invalid methodology.

Why would these seemingly august and respected organisations do this when they knew, as stated by the UK Met Office, that a 30-year period is more relevant than the average for a single or small number of years when considering the agreement on climate change? Could it possibly be that the figure of 1.34 sounds more alarming and much closer to the Paris Agreement of 1.5 than does the valid figure of 0.916? And that is why these organisations have deviated from the standard methodology. It is difficult to believe but it is a possibility. Whatever the answer to this elusive question may be, we now provide definitive answers to the crucial questions that were to be answered by climate scientists at end of year 2025.

How much has global average temperature increased since the pre-industrial period 1850-1900? 0.916 degrees celsius. How does this increase compare to the Paris Agreement overarching goals? It is 0.584 degrees celsius below the lower limit of 1.5 degrees celsius. That concludes the main points of this video but we could not resist a two-minute post-script.

It may be argued that the statement 2025 exceeded the pre-industrial 1850-1900 average by 1.34 degrees celsius was merely intended to give the reader a feel for how much warmer it is now compared to the 1850-1900 period. There are two points to make in such a case. The first point is that 1850-1900 was an unusually cold period.  It was in fact part of the Little Ice Age. The IPCC states that the Little Ice Age was characterised by multiple expansions of mountain glaciers worldwide. It was a roughly defined period but generally occurred between 1400 and 1900.

The second point is that it seems silly to compare the warm year 2025 to a cold average of 51 years.

Why not compare 2025 to some of the warmer years that took place during 1850-1900? For example 1878. In this case 2025 was 1.04 degrees celsius warmer than 1878. This difference is not close to the Paris Agreement 1.5 degrees celsius.  Or take 1877. In this case 2025 was 1.05 degrees celsius warmer than 1877. Again not close to the Paris Agreement 1.5 degrees celsius.

It could be surmised that perhaps this is why the single year 2025 was instead compared to the 51-year average of an unusually cold period. It may be very difficult to believe but it is a possibility that was the reason. Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that all the organisations underlined and quoted have ignored the scientific methodology and advice of the IPCC that short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not, in general, reflect long-term climate trends.

See Also:

1875 was coldest in 10,000 years, Warming A Good Thing

 

 

Shortage of Climate Comedians

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Chris Morrison provides examples of malarky from alarmist Jim Dale in his Daily Sceptic article Treasure Climate Comedian Jim Dale While You Can: We May Never See His Like Again.  Exerpts in italics with my bolds.  H/T Climate-science.press.

Climate comedy turn Jim Dale continues to tour the Gaiety Halls of broadcast media, delighting audiences with his own word-salad English and his knack for getting most facts wrong. Fans were not disappointed by an extended performance, here, start around 2hr 38 mins, last week on Mark Dolan’s TalkTV show when he falsely claimed Costa Rica had reached Net Zero and the polar ozone hole had closed. Readers might be advised not to organise drinking parties around Jim’s much-cherished appearances. If a shot is taken every time the great entertainer gets a climate or Net Zero fact wrong, you’d be Brahms and Liszt quicker than you could say Julia Hartley-Brewer.

A number of countries are already at Net Zero carbon emissions, claimed Dale, and he gave Costa Rica as an example. Sorry Jim, treble Guaro Sours all round: Costa Rica is nowhere near Net Zero. In fact, the Carbon Action Tracker notes that the current government is sending “worrying signals that the full implementation of the climate policies and measures necessary to meet Costa Rica’s own targets could be deferred”. Key electric public transport projects have been paused or downscaled, while the current President has announced his opposition to an oil moratorium, along with an intention to explore Costa Rica’s hydrocarbon reserves. For some time, Costa Rica has presented itself as a poster country for eco-tourism and sustainability, but it was never near Net Zero. There comes a time when all the virtue signalling has to stop.

Hard reality seems to have bitten the territory, as it has every other country
taking a serious look at the stupidity of the Net Zero fantasy.

Put down the liquor bottle (just for a very short while): our climate clot got it partly right when he said two or three countries had hit Net Zero. One country often mentioned is Bhutan, a landlocked territory the size of Belgium in the eastern Himalayas. Mountains give Bhutan huge hydroelectric power, while 93% of the land is covered in carbon-dioxide-absorbing forest. Meanwhile, about half the population of 800,000 is involved in subsistence farming. As a future model for Net Zero, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Perhaps Jim could explain on his next much-awaited guest slot why Bhutan, a Net Zero country seemingly perfect in every respect, requires foreign aid of $13.7 billion over the next decade for “mitigation” costs to keep it on the straight and narrow Net Zero path. Sustaining its contribution and ambitions are said in its third Nationally Determined Contribution report to the UN to require “continued and predictable” international financial support.

Of course it does. Not a bad little earner for a country with an annual GNP of just over $3 billion. The cynical might be forgiven for reading into its words a threat along the lines of: cough up or the trees get it.

Time to refresh our glasses again, as our comedic clown then told Mark Dolan that the South Pole ozone hole had closed or, to put it in Jim’s word-salad English: “The ozone layer was a perfectly tenable thing that occurred and the hole closed because we got out of aerosols that managed that actually.” Alas, the hole has not closed, despite a 35-year ban on aerosol-using chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) gases. The thinning, rather than a hole, appears to be a largely natural event that changes thickness on an annual, seasonal basis.

A recently published science paper by three New Zealand-based scientists noted that the three years 2020–2023 witnessed the re-emergence of large, long-lived holes over Antarctica. The scientists observed that in the eight years to 2022, five showed similarly large temporary holes occurring in the spring months. In 2023, the European Space Agency said the hole was one of the biggest ever recorded, measuring 26 million sq kms. Perish the thought that banning CFCs didn’t make much difference – surely all those Nobel science prizes were not handed out in vain for a totemic environmental scare that proved such an inspiration for all the subsequent attempts to induce mass climate panic? Except when Jim unwisely brings it up, you don’t hear much about the ozone hole these days, with activists quietly extending its supposed disappearance to around 2060.

The ozone over Antarctica is recovering. Here, the four globes show monthly-averaged total ozone over Antarctica in October. The graph shows each year’s October average minimum (white dots) over Antarctica. The red curve represents a smoothed version of the white dots. NASA qzonewatch

Your correspondent has a few tips to offer if readers ever need to handle Jim in a public debate. The first task is to stop him constantly interrupting and shouting over you. This is best done by first listening to what he has to say and, at the first sign of trouble, demanding the same courtesy be extended when it is your turn to speak. Last May, I found myself with him on TalkTV with the excellent ringmaster Ian Collins – here, the entertainment starts at around 35m 30s. It worked reasonably well, despite the overwhelming temptation at one point to burst out laughing when Jim claimed the source of his climate information was NASA, “who send people to the Moon and Mars”. Extra fun can be inserted into the proceedings by noting that Dale is on record as wanting to jail climate ‘deniers’. At my prompting, Ian Collins asked him if this was true and the ensuing word-salad explanation was a pure delight. Only Jim can explain in his special language that it is not quite like that, while at the same time suggesting that it is precisely like that.

The market for data-free climate scares is starting to dry up across mainstream media. Gone are the days when the BBC’s Esme Stallard could give us her “climate change could make beer taste worse”. No more shall we see Georgina Rannard make the obvious mistake of putting a date on impending doom as she did in 2023 with a ‘scientists say’ article warning that the Gulf Stream warm currents “could collapse as early as 2025”.

Perish the thought, but soon only Jim Dale might be left to keep the nation
amused with his carry on climate catastrophising routine.

Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” Decrepit at Age 20

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Kevin Killough describes the decay of Gore’s signature movie in his Just the News article Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ turns 20, and critics say biggest disaster is its failed predictions.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Twenty years ago “An Inconvenient Truth” received a standing ovation at the
Sundance Film Festival. Though it was full of predictions that never
came to pass, it was a key catalyst of the climate activist movement.

Twenty years ago Monday, former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,”  premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received a standing ovation. The 2006 documentary was released to theaters the following May and went on to gross over $25 million worldwide.

Gore’s film was a primary catalyst for the climate activist movement, and it generated a lot of concern about global warming following its release. The movie left audiences with the impression that the human race was hurtling toward a dystopian future on a planet baking in unbearable temperatures where extreme weather caused frequent disasters.

Almost 13 years to the day after its release, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was telling people the world would end in 12 years – presumably five years from now – because of the burning of fossil fuels.

Matt Wielicki, who writes about climate and energy on his “Irrational Fear” Substack, was once an assistant professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Alabama. In the early part of his academic career, he taught at a local college.

Al Gore with a version of the Hockey Stick graph in the 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth

He told Just the News that he showed “An Inconvenient Truth” to his students. Over time, he began to question the “gloom and doom” narratives Gore presents in his film, he said.

“People took that as a starting point, and they just kept running further and further with it,” Wielicki said.

Gore’s film, however, was full of numerous predictions that turned out to be wrong, and it’s likely that the world will not end in 2031, as Ocasio-Cortez predicted. 

Stubborn ice

Among the predictions Gore made in the documentary is that Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro would have no more snow on it by 2016. In 2020, The Times reported that the snow on the 19,000-foot mountain remained, despite Gore’s predictions. But the documentary had caused some to rush to climb the mountain before the snow disappeared. Instead, the tourists are surprised to find glaciers still clinging to it.

Gore also predicted that Glacier National Park would be “the park formerly known as Glacier” after all the ice melted away in the blazing hot temperatures that were to descend upon the human race. The claim made a big mark, and federal agencies began looking closely at glaciers.

The U.S. Geological Survey predicted all the glaciers in the park would be gone by 2020. Signs were placed throughout the park warning visitors of the impending end of glaciers, which never happened. Instead, CNN reported, the signs had to be removed in 2020 when it was clear the glaciers remained.

Gore also connected Hurricane Katrina to global warming – later renamed climate change – and he predicted that these storms would become more frequent. The reality of human contributions to hurricane activity is far more nuanced and uncertain than Gore discusses in the documentary.

Integrated Storm Activity Annually over the Continental U.S. (ISAAC). Value is the Accumulated Cyclone Energy from all storms over land.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a section on its website dedicated to the topic. The page reads.

“In summary, it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human-caused increases in greenhouse gases have caused a change in past Atlantic basin hurricane activity that is outside the range of natural variability, although greenhouse gases are strongly linked to global warming,”

Uncertainty and nuance

Meteorologist Chris Martz said that climate science is full of the kind of uncertainty and nuance you see on the NOAA website, which “An Inconvenient Truth” dismisses entirely. 

Since Gore’s film was released – which was given a sequel in 2017 – Gore has continued to make false predictions, the meteorologist said. In 2009, Gore stated that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer within five to seven years. As of today, the Arctic still has ice in summer.

“We look at the Arctic ice now and yes, it’s declined since 1979 when satellite records began … But over the last 18 to 20 years, there’s really been no trend. And this caught scientists off guard. The models never predicted this,” Martz told Just the News.

He also said there’s been multiple studies on Arctic ice, and while some predicted an ice-free Arctic, others find the ice extent in the region recedes or grows as a result of natural variability. 

Predictions of cataclysm stemming from climate change regularly get reported in the media, but there’s little reporting when the predictions fail. In 2022, NBC News was one of many outlets reporting that California and the American West were in the midst of a “megadrought,” which was the worst the region had seen in over 1,000 years.

Earlier this month, NBC reported that California is drought free for the first time in 25 years. The article makes no mention of the previously predicted “megadrought,” nor does it mention climate change.

Martz said that many of his critics respond to these failed predictions by arguing they weren’t made by scientists in peer-reviewed articles published in journals. Instead, they’re made by politicians or scientists in interviews. But most people don’t get their information from scientific journals. They get it from the media, Martz said.

“That communication is what’s more important in terms of public perception of what science is,” he said.

Listening to the experts

Though it had no scientific basis, there was a widespread belief that global warming could cause the human race to go extinct. 

A 2017 survey found that 40% of Americans believed there is a 50% chance of that happening. In fact, the number of people killed by natural disasters has never been lower, a fact largely ignored by the media.

My Mind is Made Up, Don’t Confuse Me with the Facts. H/T Bjorn Lomborg, WUWT

People appear more likely to be influenced by Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez than the scientific data on deaths from climate-related natural disasters.

Her statement that the world would end in 12 years was actually a misreading of a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicted that the world would need to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 40-50% by 2030 and eliminate them entirely by 2050 to keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees celsius above levels they were at before humans began burning a lot of fossil fuels.

There’s nothing in the report that predicts disaster after crossing that threshold, and some experts are estimating that we have already done so. The report estimates that under the worst-case scenario, the global GDP loses about 2.6%, but it would still be about 10 times larger than it is today. But people didn’t read the report. They just heard Ocasio-Cortez warning of end times.

The report, or at least Ocasio-Cortez’s understanding of it, led her to introduce the ambitious Green New Deal plan, a suite of progressive policies justified as presenting global disaster. It failed to get a single vote when it was brought to the Senate floor for a procedural vote, which would mean, according to Ocasio-Cortez, the world has five years until it ends.

Larry Behrens, communications director for Power the Future, told Just the News that AOC likely spent the seven-year anniversary of her prediction doing exactly what she does any other day.

“Because she knows it was nonsense when she said it, and it’s nonsense now,” he said. “Make no mistake, she’ll join the rest of the eco-left in their convenient climate silence, hoping voters forget their green crusade delivered record energy prices and crushing inflation. On this anniversary, ‘climate’ is the last word AOC and her allies want to utter because midterms are coming, and voters remember exactly who made life more expensive.”