This report will examine the scientific basis for claims of harmful effects from climate change in Texas. Assertions have been made that many areas around the world are experiencing negative impacts from unusual and unprecedented warming driven by increasing human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Texas is no different. Promotion of the need to achieve “net zero” emissions is predicated on fear of existing and future devastating calamities resulting from CO2-enhanced warming.
The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) report (USGCRP, 2023) says that climate change is “putting us at risk from climate hazards that degrade our lands and waters, quality of life, health and well-being, and cultural interconnectedness.” The NCA5 report lists “warmer temperatures, more erratic precipitation, and sea level rise,” as well as “drier conditions” and “extreme heat and high humidity,” as the “climate hazards” affecting the Southern Great Plains, which encompasses the State of Texas (Figure 1).
In addition, Texas A&M University has published a Texas-specific report, Future Trends of Extreme Weather in Texas (Nielsen-Gammon et al., 2024), which warns of future harm to the citizens of Texas from man-made climate change. Predicted effects include increasing temperature, precipitation, drought, floods, storms, sea-level rise and wildfires.
Within this report, we analyze scientific data from various sources, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and reports published in peer-reviewed journals.
Based on these data, we arrived at the following key findings:
The temperature in Texas has shown no unprecedented or unusual warming, despite increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Recent temperatures in Texas are similar to those found more than 100 years ago.
The annual number of 100 °F days in Texas has an overall decreasing trend.
Texas has had a modest increase of 0.0245 inches per year of precipitation during 1850– 2023, which means that Texas is in no immediate danger of becoming drier.
Droughts in Texas are not becoming more severe or numerous.
Tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods are not becoming more frequent in Texas.
Sea-level rise and coastal subsidence are not threatening or inundating the Texan coast.
Wildfires are not becoming more frequent or severe in the United States.
Air quality in the United States is generally good and getting better.
Agriculture in Texas is thriving.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential and beneficial for life on Earth, as CO2 greens the Earth and more CO2 allows plants to grow bigger, produce more food and better resist drought.
The evidence presented here is clear: there is no climate crisis in Texas. Not only is CO2 beneficial, but it is essential for life on Earth. Therefore, any measures for combating a purported climate crisis and for reducing CO2 emissions are not only unnecessary and costly but would also cause considerable harm to agriculture with no benefit.
When it comes to the recent DOE Climate Review, legacy media coverage is lop-sided and limited to declarations of disgust and dismissal from climate insiders. Andrew Bolt in Australia is an exception, interested as he is in why climatists find the study so annoying. So his interview with one of the authors explores the controversy and why the media is averting their attention.
For those preferring to read, below is a transcript from the closed captions in italics wtih my bolds and added images. AB refers to Bolt and SK to Koonin
AB: I’m amazed how little attention the media has given to a new report on global warming I mentioned last week. I’m not that surprised to be honest. I mean, I’ve seen how the media ignores proof that the warming scare is grossly exaggerated, but I think you deserve to know more about this report.
In the United States, Chris Wright is the brilliant gas tycoon who now leads the US Department of Energy. He hired five very prominent climate experts to report back to the government on what the climate was really doing and whether we could trust predictions by the most popular climate models that we’re facing dangerous warming of at least 3 degrees this century and we’re already copying all sorts of climate disasters.
Well, the authors’ conclusion was that the climate models are actually unreliable. They’re all over the shop. They predict probably one degree more warming than is likely and we aren’t getting many of the predicted climate disasters. Plus, global warming also has benefits that are often ignored, especially a big increase in trees and crops that we’ve been seeing, a greening of the planet.
And in this report, the authors sum it all up like this. models, the climate models and experience suggests that carbon dioxide induced warming may be less damaging economically than commonly believed and excessively aggressive mitigation policies, you might include our own net zero schemes, could prove more detrimental than beneficial. [See DOE Climate Team: Twelve Keys in Assessing Climate Change]
So, you can understand why the authors have since been absolutely trashed for daring to doubt the climate scare and upsetting the climate industry. They’ve been called all sorts of names painted as fools, frauds, Donald Trump Toadies, even Stalinists, would you believe? But don’t be fooled by the abuse because the five authors are in fact very prominent experts. Professor emeritus Judith Curry has published 192 peer-reviewed papers on the climate. Dr. Roy Spencer, NASA senior scientist runs probably the most accurate measure of world temperature. Professor Ross McKitrick is an expert reviewer of the last three reports of the IPCC (intergovernmental panel on climate change). And distinguished professor John Christie, is a former lead author of an IPCC report. I mean, these are very serious people.
Plus Steven Koonin. He’s a physicist and former under secretary of science for President Barack Obama, a Democrat. And I am joined by Steven, Steve thank you so much for your time. Why did you and the other four experts behind this report actually agree to do it when you must have known the climate industry and the media would really go after you?
SK: Indeed. But you know, all five of us scientists have long felt that the science was misrepresented to the public and the decision makers, and we wanted to do our best to set the record straight.
AB: Well, on many points your report agrees with what I’ll call the consensus, the alarmist position, perhaps the position of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. You say, “Yes, global warming is real. Yes, it’s a problem. Yes, it’s caused in part by humans.” Now, tell us where you disagree with this consensus.
SK: Well, you know, people have said 95% of our report agrees with or is taken right out of the IPCC. It’s just that there are aspects of what the consensus says that do not find their way to the public. For example:
♦ There are no detectable trends in the great majority of extreme weather types.
♦ The models that we use to project climates into the future are demonstrably deficient. They’re in many ways all over the place in terms of their projections. And,
♦ The projected impacts of future climate change, even using those deficient models, are minimal.
These are very important central points that are there in the report
but do not make their way into the public discussion.
AB: You actually point out that the models tend to run hot, as in predict more warming than we’ve had. They’re unreliable. A number of basing false assumptions of how much emissions we’re going to get. You actually predict almost one degree less warming over the century than the IPCC model consensus. How important is that?
SK: Well, to be clear, we don’t predict. We simply cite and assess the work of others. But certainly, if the warming is a degree less than what the IPCC consensus says, that’s a big deal.
AB: And what about the climate disasters? I mean, every time like we’ve got it right now, you know, we’ve got some algae blooming off the South Australian coast. Global warming. We get heavy rain, global warming. We get a drought, global warming. How much influence has man-made warming really had from the work that you’ve done in this report? How much has it really influenced the natural disasters we tend to see?
SK: Yeah, you know, people have a very short memory for weather disasters. There’s a lovely example that turned up at the beginning of July, having to do with the floods in Texas that we that were a terrible tragedy. But if you look back in the records, you can find the same kind of event happening in the same place in 1900. And of course, human influences on the climate were much smaller in 1900. And so you have a very hard time to logically attributing the recent disaster to carbon dioxide.
The same is true for many other severe weather phenomena.
They happened in the past. They’re just relatively rare. And so
we get surprised when we see them happen in the present day.
AB: Yeah. I noticed for instance in your report you say the number of heat waves in America actually peaked nearly 100 years ago.
SK: The number of heat waves that were striking America at the time, and what we see now is much less, you know. The damning thing about the heat waves is that we really don’t understand why the 30s were so much warmer than it has been in many subsequent decades. And that speaks to our rather poor understanding of the ways in which the climate varies.
AB: I think the real thing about your report that’s annoying so many people in the climate industry is this. You say the warming will be less than what most people are claiming. You say the disasters from the warming we’ve seen are basically exaggerated. They’re not that many that you can point to. And the the attempts we make to stop all this are very expensive. And well, do they really work? Isn’ it the takeaway here, that it might not actually be worth trying to stop what isn’t the the climate disaster that many claim.
SK: Absolutely. You know, in deciding what to do, we have to balance the hazards, the certainties and uncertainties in the changing climate against other considerations. Like the world needs more and more energy, and in deciding what to do you have to look at the costs. Are they going to be effective? What about equity between generations, between countries, and so on. It’s not simply that, oh my god, we’ve broken the climate and we’ve got to fix it. And I do think some people get annoyed when we start to expose those nuances of the situation.
AB: Oh yes. So you’ve really offended in the church of climate. And of course you also stress what’s undeniably true. The greening of the planet is actually a benefit of extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. More trees, more plants, more food.
SK:Agricultural yields have in fact doubled over the last 60 years or so. And a good fraction of that, NASA says 75% is attributable to higher carbon dioxide levels. You know, if you look inside a hot house, we put the carbon dioxide levels typically up to about 1,200 parts per million, which is just about three times what you find in the atmosphere even now.
AB: Now, you’ve come under massive attack, of course, Steve Koonin. I mean, environmental groups are even suing to censor the report. You’ve got media outlets of the left demonizing you, running so-called fact checks. I’ve had a look at a few, and they’re not persuasive. Some climate scientists are abusing you, claiming, you know, the group of you are just handpicked skeptics, even though you used to be with the Obama administration. Have there been any criticisms of your report that you think, “Yep, that’s fairenough. we’ve goofed here or we haven’t taken this into consideration. Any criticism you think you can you should take on the chin?
SK: Well, we’ve seen one already that we basically made a a typographical error in one of the footnotes. We have acknowledged that to the person who pointed it out and of course we will fix it. But you know, we’re refraining right now from looking in detail at the criticisms till they come in over the next couple weeks through the public portal. Then as we have promised, we will deal with every serious criticism seriously and like good scientists we will modify the report as might be warranted from those criticisms.
AB: Steve Koonin, you’ve been fighting the alarmism for some time now. I think this is your your weightiest blow against the scaremongering. So congratulations and thank you so much for your time.
The above interview was conducted by NTD news with CO2 Coalition founder William Happer (WH) and Executive Director Gregory Wrightstone (GW). For those preferring to read, below is a transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images.
NTD: The Environmental Protection Agency’s Lee Z eldin announced a proposal earlier this week to overturn a 16-year-old scientific finding from the Obama administration. It allowed three administrations to regulate greenhouse gas emissions like CO2. If successful, this would roll back climate rules on cars, undo $1 trillion in regulatory costs, and save over $54 billion each year. With the public comment period now open, here to break down what all of this means are two guests. William Happer, professor emeritus at Princeton University department of physics, and Gregory Wrightstone, geologist and executive director of the CO2 coalition. Thank you both so much for being here.
Now, first, how big of a deal would this be, repealing the 2009 endangerment finding? Who has benefited under it so far?
WH: Well, I’m not sure who you asked this question, but I will answer it and Greg can add to what I say. This is something that was long overdue. I mean, it was a ridiculous regulation that purported that carbon dioxide, which all of us breathe out, is a pollutant. I mean, I can’t think of anything dumber than that, but that’s what it was. And so finally there’s been an administration with the courage to tell the truth, that it isn’t a pollutant at all and it’s actually good for the earth to have more carbon dioxide.
NTD: What is the likely legal process of repealing this? And Gregory, this finding was the legal prerequisite used by the Obama and Biden administrations to regulate new car and engine emissions. What is the likely legal process of repealing this now?
GW: Well, this right now is just dealing with cars and light trucks and vehicles, but it’s sure to extend into the other things. Your viewers have had their freedom systematically eroded using the endangerment finding. With this endangerment finding, they’ve been able to tell you what car kind of car to drive. Look at the ceiling fan over your head, regulate that. All these electrical devices, your washer, dryer, dishwasher. the only ones you can buy today are government approved devices because of the endangerment finding. So what this does is to actually liberate Americans for freedom to choose what kind of appliances they want. If they want to buy a dishwasher that’s very efficient in terms of washing dishes, not in terms of how much electricity you use. That should be my choice and your choice and all of your viewers’ choices. So, this is really liberation day for America and restoring a lot of the freedoms that were lost based on this failed endangerment finding.
NTD: Expanding on that, William, what about the science needed to decide whether or not this will get repealed? Besides the legal angle, break down for us the science that’s needed to decide whether or not this will get repealed.
GW: Well, the science is quite clear. Understand what they did in 2009, they excluded any contrary science. By contrary science, anything that indicated that CO2 was not a pollutant. But the Supreme Court rulings in 2024 now say you have to consider all of the science. And there’s just a huge amount of of science right now that that disputes endangerment, that actually confirms carbon dioxide has hugely beneficial aspects. Greening the earth, vegetation growth, crop production is exploding. And Dr. Happer can perhaps talk about how the the greenhouse gas warming potential is not at all what they say it is.
NTD:Will CO2 cause dangerous warming? On that note, will you break down that aspect for us ?
WH: Well, as Greg said, the accusation against CO2 is that it would cause dangerous warming of the earth. And as usual there’s a grain of truth that CO2 will cause some warming, but the warming will be trivial. It will almost certainly be beneficial to most of the earth. The reason it warms is CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It lets sunlight come through and warm the surface of the earth. But it retards the cooling of the earth by infrared radiation to space. And it’s the balance of those two that determines the earth’s temperature.
But it’s a very inefficient greenhouse gas. It doesn’t much matter if you double CO2. You only change the cooling radiation into space by 1%, a tiny effect. And so, it’s amazing they’ve managed to blow up this molehill into this mountainous threat. It’s not a threat at all. It’s a benefit.
NTD: On that note, Gregory, in terms of how we got to the endangerment finding, was contradictory science a factor in that decision?
Well, actually, no. There was no contradictory science. And again, now bear in mind things are different today than they were even just two years ago. with two Supreme Court rulings last year. In Ohio vs. state farm case the US Supreme Court ruled that these regulatory agencies like the DOE, EPA, DOT, all of these alphabet soup regulatory bodies need to consider all significant science that affects their judgment which EPA in the endangerment finding did not do.
And the evidence we say is is entirely overwhelming. We see by almost every metric you look at, we find that Earth’s ecosystems are thriving and prospering, and the human conditions are improving because of increases in CO2. It’s really the greatest untold story of the 21st century, that of a thriving earth and the benefits to humanity. It’s a feel-good story, but they’ve turned this into fear-mongering where children can’t sleep at night because they’re being lied to by this the promoters we call the climate industrial complex.
Let’s get back to true science, the scientific method. Enough of this consensus science and group think. We support the scientific method and critical thinking which has been removed from many of these government agencies for 30 years or longer.
Climate models
NTD: And William, on that note, there is a big focus on climate change or climate alarm as some might say. Talk to us about some of the climate models that are used. What did these models get wrong?
WH: Well, I think the main thing the models get wrong is that they they know perfectly well that the direct effects of carbon dioxide will cause a very small warming of the earth if there are no other effects. If you double CO2 100% increase, which would take more than a century by the way, that would only warm the earth by a little less than one degree centigrade. It’s a trivial amount and we may never double it anyway.
So here’s what they’ve done. They’ve taken this trivial warming is agreed by most people who understand how this works, and they’ve multiplied it by factors three, four, five and saying that there’s these enormous positive feedbacks on the direct warming. That’s completely crazy because most feedbacks in nature are negative. With most other systems in nature, the first thing you calculate is usually too big, not too small. It’s even got a fancy name. It’s called Chatelier’s principle.
And so everything they’ve done violates Chatelier’s principle that works for everything else in nature, but it apparently doesn’t work for climate alarmists.
China
NTD: And staying with you, William, we often hear the US and Europe talking about cutting emissions, whether that’s in cars or cows even. But at the same time, the carbon brief notes that China is the world’s largest annual greenhouse gas emitter and leads in coal use. How should we look at this if the argument is global warming and not regional?
WH: Well, of course, China has built lots of very efficient new coal plants in the last 10 years. they’re ultra supercritical plants many of them. They’re really good plants and so they’ve raised the standard of living there. Part of their policy is is quite okay and the CO2 they’re emitting is good for the earth you know.
I’m not supporting any of the political things that they do but I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with releasing carbon dioxide. More power to them for that.
CO2 Coalition
NTD: On that note, Gregory, you’re the executive director of the CO2 coalition. Give us a sense of what this coalition does and how this fits in with environmental discussions.
GW: We’re 10 years old now. It was founded in 2015 by Dr. William Happer, our chair that was just on here. And we’re some 200 of the top experts and scientists in the world that don’t buy into the company line on climate change. We don’t believe that increases in human emissions of CO2 are leading to harmful warming. Rather just the opposite, we see huge benefits. Crop growth records are being broken year after year and they attribute 70% of that to increasing CO2. Crop growth and crop productivity is outpacing population growth. That’s a good thing, a really good thing.
We are in a warming trend. Yes, we are. It’s been warming for more than 300 years. But you know what that does? That means since 1900, our growing seasons in the continental United States have increased by more than two weeks. That’s a really good thing for agriculture. Your farmers will tell you they love that. So at the CO2 Coalition, our unofficial motto is: We love CO2 and so should you.
After a sub-par March maximum, by end of May 2025 Arctic ice closed the gap with the 19-year average. Then in June the gap reopened and in July the melting pace matched the average, abeit four days in advance of average. Now mid-August MASIE shows the Arctic ice extent matching the 19-year average.
During this period the average year loses ~2.4M km2 of ice extent. MASIE on day 197 was 287k km2 down, and the gap increased to 460k km2 by July 27 (day 208). In August 2025 the melt rate slowed, erasing the deficit to average the last 3 days. Note 2007 and 2024 were ~200k km2 below average mid-August. Meanwhile SII v.4 is showing much lower ice extents than previously, ranging from -200k km2 to -550k km2 below MASIE extents.
The regional distribution of ice extents is shown in the table below. (Bering and Okhotsk seas are excluded since both are now virtually open water.)
Region
2025227
Day 227
2025-Ave.
2020227
2025-2020
(0) Northern_Hemisphere
5881998
5894299
-12301
5162062
719936
(1) Beaufort_Sea
932422
706128
226294
838854
93568
(2) Chukchi_Sea
527504
438457
89047
410757
116747
(3) East_Siberian_Sea
622184
563120
59064
276845
345339
(4) Laptev_Sea
252320
243841
8479
24033
228287
(5) Kara_Sea
10947
94167
-83220
22002
-11055
(6) Barents_Sea
0
22056
-22056
3285
-3285
(7) Greenland_Sea
115125
223328
-108202
265814
-150688
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence
75407
56928
18479
12720
62688
(9) Canadian_Archipelago
392776
404096
-11320
366453
26323
(10) Hudson_Bay
25381
65298
-39917
53142
-27761
(11) Central_Arctic
2927007
3075808
-148801
2887486.48
39520
The table shows large surpluses in Eurasian basins Beaufort, Chukchi and E. Siberian, offset by deficits in Central Arctic, Kara and Greenland seas. Hudson Bay is mostly open water at this time of year. 2025 exceeds the ice extents in 2020 by 720k km2.
Why is this important? All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels. The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post SH Drives UAH Temps Cooler July 2025.
Ted Nordhaus writes at The EcoModernist Why I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist, And why so many climate pragmatists can’t quit catastrophism. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
In the book Break Through, Michael Shellenberger and I argued that if the world kept burning fossil fuels at current rates, catastrophe was virtually assured. I no longer believe this hyperbole. Yes, the world will continue to warm as long as we keep burning fossil fuels. And sea levels will rise. About 9 inches over the last century, perhaps another 2 or 3 feet over the course of the rest of this century. But the rest of it? Not so much.
There is little reason to think that the Amazon is at risk of collapsing over the next 50 years. Agricultural yield and output will almost certainly continue to rise, if not necessarily at the same rate as it has over the last 50 years. There has been no observable increase in meteorological drought globally that might trigger the resource wars that the Pentagon was scenario planning back then.
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).
At the time that we published Break Through, I, along with most climate scientists and advocates, believed that business as usual emissions would lead to around five degrees of warming by the end of this century. As Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters,Roger Pielke Jr, and Justin Richie have demonstrated over the last decade or so, that assumption was never plausible. The class of scenarios upon which it was based assumed very high population growth, very high economic growth, and slow technological change. None of these trends individually track at all with actual long term global trends.
Fertility rates have been falling, global economic growth slowing,
and the global economy decarbonizing for decades.
As a result of these dynamics, most estimates of worst case warming by the end of the century now suggest 3 degrees or less. But as consensus around these estimates has shifted, the reaction to this good news among much of the climate science and advocacy community has not been to become less catastrophic. Rather, it has been to simply shift the locus of catastrophe from five to three degrees of warming. Climate advocates have arguably become more catastrophic about climate change in recent years, not less.
When Is Weather Climate Change?
For me, the cognitive dissonance began as I became familiar with Roger Pielke Jr’s work on normalized hurricane losses, in the late 2000s. This was around the time that a lot of messaging from the climate advocacy community had started to focus on extreme weather events, not just as harbingers for the storms of our grandchildren, to borrow the title of James Hansen’s 2009 book, but as being fueled by climate change in the present.
If you want to know why Pielke has been so demonized over the last
15 years by climate activists and activist climate scientists,
it’s because he got in the way of this new narrative.
Integrated Storm Activity Annually over the Continental U.S. (ISAAC)
Pielke’s work, going back to the mid-1990s showed, again and again, that the normalized economic costs of climate related disasters weren’t increasing, despite the documented warming of the climate. And unlike a lot of researchers who sometimes produce studies that cut against the climate movement’s chosen narratives, he wasn’t willing to be quiet about it. Pielke got in the way of the advocacy community at the moment that it was determined to argue that present day disasters were driven by climate change and got run over.
Put these two factors together—the outsized influence that exposure and vulnerability have on the cost of extreme climate and weather phenomena, and the very modest intensification that climate change contributes to these events, when it plays any role at all—and what should be clear is that climate change is contributing very little to present day disasters. It is a relatively small factor in the frequency and intensity of climate hazards that are experienced by human societies, which in turn play a small role in the human and economic costs of climate related disasters compared to non-climate factors.
This also means that the scale of anthropogenic climate change that would be necessary to very dramatically intensify those hazards, such that they overwhelm the non-climate factors in determining the consequences of future climate related events, is implausibly large.
A Sting in the Tail?
For a long time, even after I had come to terms with the fundamental disconnect between what climate advocates were saying about extreme events and the role that climate change could conceivably be playing, I held on to the possibility of catastrophic climate futures based upon uncertainty. The sting, as they say, is in the tail, meaning so-called fat tails in the climate risk distribution. These are tipping points or similar low probability, high consequence scenarios that aren’t factored into central estimates. The ice sheets could collapse much faster than we understand or the gulf stream might shut down, bringing frigid temperatures to western Europe, or permafrost and methane hydrates frozen in the sea floor might rapidly melt, accelerating warming.
But like the supposed collapse of the Amazon, once you look more closely at these risks they don’t add up to catastrophic outcomes for humanity. While sensationalist news stories frequently refer to the collapse of the gulf stream, what they are really referring to is the slowing of the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation (AMOC). AMOC helps transport warm water to the North Atlantic and moderates winter temperatures across western Europe. But its collapse, much less its slowing, would not result in a hard freeze across all of Europe. Indeed, under plausible conditions in which it might significantly slow, it would act as a negative feedback, counterbalancing warming, which is happening faster across the European continent than almost any place else in the world.
Permafrost and methane hydrate thawing, meanwhile, are slow processes not fast ones. Even irreversible melting would occur over millennial timescales, fast in geological terms but very slow in human terms. The same is true of accelerated melting of ice caps. Even under very high warming scenarios, broadly acknowledged today as improbable, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets contribute around a meter of sea level rise by the end of this century. Those processes would continue far into the future. But even very accelerated scenarios for rapid disintegration of ice sheets unfold over many centuries, not decades.
Moreover, the problem with grounding strong precautionary claims in these known unknowns is that doing so demands strong remedies in the present in response to future risks that are both unquantifiable and unfalsifiable, a problem made even worse by the fact that “fat tail” proponents generally then proceed to ignore the fact that the unknown, unquantifiable, and unfalsifiable risks they are referring to are incredibly low probability and instead set about centering them in the climate discourse.
Clean Energy Without Catastrophism
Why do so many smart people, most trained as scientists, engineers, lawyers, or public policy experts, and all who will tell you, and I say this not ironically, that they “believe in science,” get the science of climate risk so badly wrong?
There are, in my view, several reasons. The first is that highly educated people with high levels of science literacy are no less likely to get basic scientific issues wrong than anyone else when the facts conflict with their social identities and ideological commitments. Yale Law Professor Dan Kahan has shown that people who are highly concerned about climate change actually have less accurate views about climate change overall than climate skeptics and that this remains true even among partisans with high levels of education and general science literacy. Elsewhere, Kahan and others have demonstrated that on many issues, highly educated people are often more likely to stubbornly hold onto erroneous beliefs because they are more expert at defending their political views and ideological commitments.
The second reason is that there are strong social, political, and professional incentives if you make a living doing left of center climate and energy policy to get climate risk wrong. The capture of Democratic and progressive politics by environmentalism over the last generation has been close to total. There is little tolerance on the Left for any expression of materialist politics that challenge foundational claims of the environmental movement. Meanwhile the climate movement has effectively conflated consensus science about the reality and anthropogenic origins of climate change with catastrophist claims about climate risk for which there is no consensus whatsoever.
Whether you are an academic researcher, a think tank policy wonk, a program officer at an environmental or liberal philanthropy, or a Democratic Congressional staffer, there is simply no benefit and plenty of downside to questioning, much less challenging, the central notion that climate change is an existential threat to the human future. It’s a good way to lose friends or even your job. It won’t help you get your next job or your next grant. And so everyone, mostly falls in line. Better to go along to get along.
Finally, there is a widespread belief that one can’t make a strong case for clean energy and technological innovation absent the catastrophic specter of climate change. “Why bother with nuclear power or clean energy if climate change is not a catastrophic risk,” is a frequent response. And this view simply ignores the entire history of modern energy innovation. Over the last two centuries, the world has moved inexorably from dirtier and more carbon intensive technologies to cleaner ones. Burning coal, despite its significant environmental impacts, is cleaner than burning wood and dung. Burning gas is cleaner than coal. And obviously producing energy with wind, solar, and nuclear is cleaner than doing so with fossil fuels.
There is a view among most climate and clean energy advocates that the risk of climate change both demands and is necessary to justify a much faster transition toward cleaner energy technologies. But as a practical matter, there is no evidence whatsoever that 35 years of increasingly dire rhetoric and claims about climate change have had any impact on the rate at which the global energy system has decarbonized and by some measure, the world decarbonized faster over the 35 years prior to climate change emerging as a global concern than it did in the 35 years since.
Despite some tonal, tactical, and strategic differences, this basic view of climate risk, and corresponding demand for a rapid transformation of the global energy economy is broadly shared by the climate activists and the pragmatists. The impulse is millenarian, not meliorist.
Underneath the real politik, technocratic wonkery, and appeals
to scientific authority is a desire to remake the world.
For all its worldly and learned affect, what that has resulted in is the creation of an insular climate discourse on the Left that may be cleverer by half than right wing dismissals of climate change but is no less prone to making misleading claims about the subject, ignoring countervailing evidence, and demonizing dissent. And it has produced a politics that is simultaneously grandiose and maximalist and, increasingly, deeply out of touch with popular sentiment.
“… the Court concludes that, although Plaintiff’s claims purport to be about deception, they are premised on, and seek redress for, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.”
A Slippery Slope
One of Judge Young’s most striking points was a clear warning about the “boundless” nature of the liability Charleston’s claims could create. If allowed to proceed, the city’s theory would open the floodgates for nearly limitless litigation – not just against energy producers, but a wide range of industries, including airlines, automakers, and agriculture:
“Under Plaintiff’s theory, any emitters of or contributors to greenhouse gas emissions — such as airlines, automotive manufacturers, power companies, and agricultural companies—could be liable for contributing to global climate change… … As with the list of plaintiffs, the list of potential defendants thus appears boundless.” (emphasis added)
Similarly, Judge Young emphasized that allowing such lawsuits would create a precedent where every weather event would potentially trigger legal action:
“Already, scores of states, counties, and municipalities have sued a hodgepodge of oil-and-gas companies for the alleged weather-related effects of climate change. If these lawsuits were successful, municipalities, companies, and individuals across the country could bring suits for injuries after every weather event.”
Time-Barred and Fundamentally Flawed
Even Charleston’s claim under South Carolina’s Unfair Trade Practices Act did not survive – barred by the state’s three-year statute of limitations. Judge Young noted that public awareness of climate change and its connection to fossil fuel usehas existed for decades, undercutting any claim of recent discovery:
“Plaintiff’s Complaint is time-barred under South Carolina’s three-year statute of limitations because Plaintiff has long been on notice of the potential dangers of climate change and its connection to fossil-fuel use.”
The ruling also referenced constitutional limits and recent federal actions opposing these types of suits, specifically referencing President Trump’s April Executive Order targeting anti-energy lawfare.
Notably, Judge Young flatly rejected comparisons to tobacco and opioid litigation, stating Charleston’s claims fundamentally differ because the alleged harm depends on cumulative, global emissions – not direct, localized actions:
“A plaintiff smoking tobacco in South Carolina causes direct adverse health effects to that plaintiff in South Carolina. The City’s claims, by contrast, depend on interstate and international emissions allegedly causing global climate change, ultimately resulting in alleged in-state injuries caused by, for example, the weather. Because any alleged injury under Plaintiff’s claims necessarily relies on the cumulative effect of interstate and international emissions from global consumers, the claims are readily distinguishable from these other mass-tort cases and are uniquely precluded and preempted by federal law.”
BOTTOM LINE: This ruling sends a clear message: the courtroom is not the place to set national climate policy. As more judges reject these unfounded claims, the climate litigation campaign is losing both momentum and credibility.
Footnote from the ruling by Judge Roger Young
“This Court thus joins the “growing chorus of state and federal courts across the United States, singing from the same hymnal, in concluding that the claims raised by [climate-change plaintiffs] are not judiciable by any state court” and that “our federal structure does not allow . . . any State’s law[] to address [these types of climate-change] claims.”
The case was CITY OF CHARLESTON, Plaintiff, v.
BRABHAM OIL COMPANY, INC.; COLONIAL GROUP, INC.; ENMARK STATIONS, INC.; COLONIAL PIPELINE COMPANY; PIEDMONT PETROLEUM CORP.; EXXON MOBIL CORPORATION; EXXONMOBIL OIL CORPORATION; ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC; SHELL OIL COMPANY; SHELL OIL PRODUCTS COMPANY LLC; CHEVRON CORPORATION; CHEVRON U.S.A. INC.; BP P.L.C.; BP AMERICA INC.; MARATHON PETROLEUM CORPORATION; MARATHON PETROLEUM COMPANY LP; SPEEDWAY LLC; MURPHY OIL CORPORATION; MURPHY OIL USA, INC.; HESS CORPORATION; CONOCOPHILLIPS; CONOCOPHILLIPS COMPANY; PHILLIPS 66; and PHILLIPS 66 COMPANY,
Defendants.
Last week Ben Shapiro interviewed Chris Wright concerning the latest moves by realists against the climatists and what’s at stake in this power struggle over humankind’s energy platform, not only for U.S but for the world. For those who prefer reading, I provide a transcript lightly edited from the closed captions, text in italics with my bolds and added images.
Ben: One of the biggest moves that has been made in modern history in the regulatory state has happened this week. The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal, declared liberation day from Climate Imperialism by moving to repeal the 2009 so-called endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions. So basically, the Clean Air Act, which was put into place in the 1970s, authorized the EPA to regulate pollutants like ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and others that might reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.
Well, the EPA suggested under Barack Obama that you could use the Clean Air Act in order to regulate carbon emissions, which is insane. That’s totally crazy. The kinds of stuff the Clean Air Act was meant to stop was again particulate matter. It was meant to stop ozone that was breaking down the ozone layer. It was not meant to deal with carbon and particularly carbon dioxide which is a thing that you know is a natural byproduct, for example breathing. Carbon dioxide in the environment is not a danger to human beings.
You may not like what it does in terms of global climate change, but the idea that the EPA has authority under the Clean Air Act is wrong. If Congress wants to give the EPA that authority, then it certainly could, but it never did. The Supreme Court found in 2007 that greenhouse gases could qualify as pollutants under an extraordinarily broad misreading of the law.
But now the EPA is walking that back. And the EPA is suggesting that this is not correct. The Supreme Court and the EPA under their 2009 ruling said, “There is some evidence that elevated carbon dioxide concentrations and climate changes can lead to changes in aeroallergens that could increase the potential for allergenic illnesses.” Well, the Energy Department has now walked that back. They published a comprehensive analysis of climate science and its uncertainties by five outside scientists. One of those is Steven Koonin, who served in the Obama administration.
The crucial point is that CO2 is different from the pollutants Congress expressly authorized the EPA to regulate. Those pollutants are “subject to regulatory control because they cause local problems depending on concentrations including nuisances, damages to plants, and at high enough exposure levels, toxic effects on humans. In contrast, CO2 is odorless, does not affect visibility, and it has no toxicological effects at ambient levels. So, you’re not going to get sick from CO2 in the air.
And so, the EPA administrator Lee Zeldin and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are taking this on. They have said in our interpretation the Clean Air Act no longer applies to greenhouse gases. Well, what does that mean? It means something extraordinary for the American economy, among other things, which is under a massive deregulatory environment.
The alleged cost of regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act amounts to something like 54 billion per year. So if you multiply that out over the course of the last decade and a half, you’re talking about a cost of in excess of $800 billion based again on a regulatory agency radically exceeding its boundaries.
Well, joining us online to discuss this massive move by the Trump administration is the energy secretary Chris Wright. Secretary, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Ben.
Ben: So, first of all, why don’t we discuss what the EPA just did, what that actually means, how’s the energy department involved, and and what does it mean for sort of the future of things like energy developments in the United States?
The Poisonous Tree: Massachusetts v. EPA and the 2009 endangerment finding
Chris: Well, the endangerment finding, 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts and a bunch of environmental groups sued the EPA and said, “You must regulate greenhouse gas emissions.” Climate activists, basically. Unfortunately the Supreme Court decided five to four in 2007 that greenhouse gases could become endangerments, and if they were the EPA had the option but not the compulsion to regulate greenhouse gases. In 2009, as soon as the Obama administration came in, they did a tortured kind of process to say greenhouse gases endanger the lives of Americans. And that gave the regulatory state, the EPA, the ability to regulate greenhouse gases that the Obama administration and others had failed to pass through Congress. If you pass a law through the House and the Senate and the president signs it, then you can do that. But they just made it up. They just did it through a regulatory backdoor.
And now those those regulations just infuse everything we do, maybe most famously automobiles, the EV mandates, the continual increasing of fuel economy standards that brought us the SUV and everyone buying trucks because they don’t want to buy small cars. But it’s regulating your appliances and power plants and your and home hair dryers and outdoor heaters. So, it’s just been a huge entanglement into American life.
Big brother climate regulations from the government. They don’t do anything meaningful for global greenhouse gas emissions. They don’t change any health outcomes for Americans, but they massively grow the government. They increase costs and they grow the reach of the government. So, Administrator Lee Zeldin is reviewing that and saying, ” We don’t believe that greenhouse gases are a significant endangerment to the American public and they shouldn’t be regulated by the EPA. The EPA does not have authority to regulate them because Congress never passed such a law.
At the Department of Energy, sorry for the long answer, what we did was to reach out to five prestigious climate scientists that are real scientists in my mind; meaning they follow the data wherever it leads, not only if it aligns with their politics or their views otherwise. And we published a long critical overview of climate science and its impact on Americans. And that was released yesterday on the DOE website. I highly recommend everyone to give it a read in synopsis since it’s a big report obviously.
Ben: What are the biggest findings from that report that you commissioned at the Department of Energy with regard to this stuff?
Chris: Maybe the single biggest one that everyone should be aware of is: The ceaseless repeating that climate change is making storms more frequent and more severe and more dangerous is just nonsense. That’s never been in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. It’s just not true.But media and politicians and activists just keep repeating it. And in fact, I saw The Hill had a piece right away when when our press release went out yesterday morning:
Despite decades of data and scientific consensus that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms, the EPA has reversed the endangerment finding.
Even the headlines are just wrong. One of my goals for 20 years, Ben, is for people to be just a little more knowledgeable of what is actually true with climate change, and what actually are the tradeoffs between trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by top- down government actions and what does that mean for the energy system?
We’ve driven up the price of energy, reduced choice to American consumers,
without meaningfully moving global greenhouse gas emissions at all.
And when I talk to activists or politicians about it, they’re not even that concerned about it. They don’t act as if their real goal is to incrementally reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Their real goal is for the government and them, you know, a small number of people to decide what’s appropriate behavior for all Americans.
Just creepy, top-down control sold in the name of protecting the future of the planet. If it was really about that, they’d know a little bit more about climate change, but they almost never do.
Ben: Well, this is the part that’s always astonishing to me. I get in a room with with climate scientists from places like MIT or Caltech, and we’ll discuss what exactly is going on. These are people who believe that there is anthropogenic climate change, that human activity is causing some sort of market impact on the climate. But when you discuss with them, okay, so what are the solutions? The solutions that that are proposed are never in line with the the kind of risk that they seek to prevent. I mean, the Nobel Prize winning economist William Nordhaus has made the point that there are certain things you could do economically that would totally destroy your economy and might save you an incremental amount of climate change on the other end. And then there are the things that we actually could do that are practical–things like building seawalls, things like hardening an infrastructure, moving toward nuclear energy would be a big one.
And to me, the litmus test of whether somebody is serious or not about climate change is what their feelings are about nuclear energy. If they’re anti-uclear energy, but somehow want to curb climate change, then you know, one of those things is false. It cannot be that you wish to oppose nuclear energy development, also your chief goal is to lower carbon emissions. That’s just a lie.
Chris: Exactly. I mean the biggest driver of reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the US by far has been natural gas displacing coal in the power sector. It’s about 60% of all the US reduction in emissions. But they hate natural gas, you know, because again they’re against hydrocarbons in order to move toward a society that somehow they think is better.
It is helping that more on the left become pro-nuclear. So, I’ll view that as one of the positive side effects of the climate movement and probably is going to help nuclear energy start going again. Of course, there are plenty that are anti-nuclear and climate crazies. So, there’s plenty of them still left. But, as you just mentioned, Nordhaus said in his lecture we should do the things where the benefits are greater than the cost. Sort of common sense. And in his proposed optimal scenario, you know, we reduce the warming through this century by about 20%. Not net zero, because that means you spend hundred trillion dollars and maybe you get $10 trillion of benefits. You know, that’s not good, and then people tell me, well, it’s an admirable goal. It’s aspirational. I’m saying, turning dollars into dimes is not aspirational. It’s human impoverishing.
And we can look over to the United Kingdom. They very proudly announced that they have the largest percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 40%. They don’t tell you they’ve had an almost 30% reduction in energy consumption in the United Kingdom. So their dominant mechanism to drive down their greenhouse gas emissions is simply to consume less energy in England. That comes from two factors. The biggest one is their energy intensive industry is shut down in the country and all those jobs have gone overseas.
That stuff is now made in China, loaded on a diesel-powered ship,
shipped back to the United Kingdom, and they call that green.
And the other mechanism is they made energy so expensive that people don’t heat their houses as warm in the winter. They don’t travel as much. They don’t cool their houses as much in the hot summer days. They’ve impoverished their people so they can’t afford needed energy. This isn’t victory and this isn’t changing the global future of the world. We just need back some common sense around energy and climate change.
That’s where the Trump administration is headed across the administration, not just administer Zeldin and myself, but everyone in the administration. We just want Americans to have a government that follows basic common sense.
Ben: Now, Secretary Wright, we were discussing a little bit earlier on in the show this this excellent second quarter GDP number, some of which is being driven certainly by mass investment in technologies like AI. If you talk to folks who are in the capital intensive arenas, pretty much all the money right now is going into AI. That’s a race the United States must win. And one of the huge components there is the energy that is going to be necessary in order to pursue the sorts of processing that AI is going to require. The gigantic data centers that are now being built are going to require inordinate amounts of energy. Everybody knows and acknowledges this. China is producing energy at a rate that far outstrips the United States at this point. So if we wish to actually win the AI race, we have to unleash an all of the above strategy with regard to energy production. That’s obviously something you’re very focused on. And if we don’t win the AI race, in all likelihood China becomes the dominant economic power on planet Earth. So how important is AI to this? And what does it mean for the energy sector?
Chris: It’s massively important. As you just said, it’s what I called it Manhattan Project 2.0. Because in the Manhattan project when we developed an atomic bomb in World War II, we could not have come in second. If Nazi Germany had developed an atomic weapon before us, we would live in a different world now. It’s a similar risk here if China gets a meaningful lead on the US in artificial intelligence.
Because it’s not just economics and science, it’s national defense, it’s the military. Now we are under serious threat from China and we go into a very different world. We must lead in this area. We have the leading scientists. We have businesses. We have the ability to invest these huge amounts of capital again from private markets and private businesses, which a free market capitalist like myself loves.
The biggest limiter as you set up is electricity. The highest form and most expensive type of energy there is turning primary energy into electricity. And as you just said, China’s been growing their electricity production massively. Ours has barely grown in the last 20 years. In fact, it grew like two or 3% in the Obama years, but then during the Biden years, they got prices up over 25%. You could say they helped elect President Trump by just doing everything wrong on energy. And they certainly weren’t into all of the above. They were all about wind, solar, and batteries. And congratulations, they got them to about 3% of total US energy at the end of the Biden years.
The graph shows that global Primary Energy (PE) consumption from all sources has grown continuously over nearly 6 decades. Since 1965 oil, gas and coal (FF, sometimes termed “Thermal”) averaged 88% of PE consumed, ranging from 93% in 1965 to 81% in 2024. Source: Energy Institute
Hydrocarbons went from 82% in 2019, when Biden promised and guaranteed he would end fossil fuels, to 82% his last year in office. Zero change in market share. So they just believe and cling to too many silly things about energy. So today in the United States, the biggest source of electricity by far is natural gas. That will be the dominant growth that will enable us to build all these tens of gigawatts of data centers. It’s abundant, it’s affordable, and it works all the time. I’ve never been an all of the above guy because subsidizing wind and solar is problematic. You know, globally, a few trillions of dollars have gone into it, and if you get high penetration, the main result is expensive electricity and a less stable grid.
That’s not good. The crazy amount of money the United States government spent on wind and solar hasn’t grown our electricity production because they’re not there at peak demand time. Texas has the biggest penetration of wind and second biggest penetration of solar, 35% of the capacity on the Texas grid. But at peak demand with these cold or warm high-pressure systems the wind is gone. Peak demand time is after the sun goes down and you get almost nothing from wind and solar.
Parasites is what they really are. Just in the middle of the day when demand is low, and all the power plants that are needed to supply at peak demand just all have to turn down. And then the sun goes behind a cloud and they got to turn up again. And then when peak demand comes, when it’s very cold at in the evening, all the existing thermal capacity and nuclear capacity has to run and drive the grid.
So if you don’t add to reliable production at peak demand time,
you’re not adding to the capacity of the grid. You’re
just adding to the complexity and cost of the grid.
I mean, if Harris had won the election, we would not only have no chance to win the AI race against China. We would have increasing blackouts and brownouts today, let alone with the the extra demand, some extra demand that would have come from AI, even if they had won the race. But because President Trump won, common sense came back in spades, and we’re allowing American businesses to invest and lead in AI, we’re in a very different trajectory.
Ben: A very different trajectory. Well, that’s US Energy Secretary Chris Wright doing a fantastic job over there. One of the big reasons that the Trump economy continues to churn along. Secretary Wright, really appreciate the time and the insight. Thanks so much for having me, Ben. Appreciate all you do.
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 ~65 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.
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 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
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 July 2025. 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 behind the update from HadSST4. I posted recently on SSTs June 2025 Ocean SSTs: NH Warms, SH Cools.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 land air temps, especially NH, dropped in February and recovered in March. Now in July SH ocean dropped markedly, pulling down the Global ocean anomaly despite a rise in the Tropics. SH land also cooled by half, driving Global land temps down despite Tropics land warming.
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 July 2025. 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. Now in July Global temps are down to 0.32C due to SH dropping from 0.48C to 0.21C.
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 July 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. In March that drop reversed with both NH and Global land back to January values, holding there in April. In May sharp drops in NH and Tropics land air temps pulled the Global land air temps back down close to February value. In July SH land dropped sharply, down from 0.47C to 0.23C, and NH land also cooled by 0.08C pulling Global land air down as well.
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 -0.03, 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, and in June a further decline to 0.8C. October went down to 0.7C, November and December dropped to 0.6C. Now in July Global Land and Ocean is down to 0.36C
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.
NSDIC acknowledged my query regarding the SII (Sea Ice Index) dataset, which is described below. While awaiting an explanation I have investigated further. My last download of the SII Daily Arctic Ice Extents was on July 30, meaning that the most recent data in that file was day 210, July 29. The header on that file was Sea_Ice_Index_Daily_Extent_G02135_v3. Then on August 1, the downloaded file had the heading Sea_Ice_Index_Daily_Extent_G02135_v4. So it appears that these are now the values from a new version of SII. As I wrote in my query, since March 14 all of the values for Arctic Ice Extents are lower in this new record. The graph below shows the implications for July as an example.
You can see how v.4 in red is lower than v.3 in orange throughout the month. It may be that v.3 values will no longer be reported in the future, though that has not been confirmed to me. It should also be noted that v.3 values for 2024 and prior years have also been altered in v.4 and I intend to look into that impact.
Note: After comparisons of monthly averages, results from the two versions appear comparable for previous years. The change started in January 2025 and will be the basis for future reporting. The logic for this is presented in this document: Sea Ice Index Version 4 Analysis
In June 2025, NSIDC was informed that access to data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) onboard the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites would end on July 31 (NSIDC, 2025). To prepare for this, we rapidly developed version 4 of the Sea Ice Index. This new version transitions from using sea ice concentration fields derived from SSMIS data as input to using fields derived from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) sensor onboard the Global Change Observation Mission – W1 (GCOM-W1) satellite. On 29 July 2025, we learned that the Defense Department decision to terminate access to DMSP data had been reversed and that data will continue to be available until September 2026. We are publishing Version 4, however, for these reasons:
• The SSMIS instruments are well past their designed lifespan and a transition to AMSR2 is inevitable. Unless the sensors fail earlier, the DoD will formally end the program in September 2026. • Although access of SSMIS will continue through September 2026, the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC), where SSMIS data from the DMSP satellite are downloaded, made an announcement that “Support will be on a best effort basis and should be considered data of opportunity.” This means that SSMIS data will likely contain data gaps. • We have developer time to make this transition now and may not in the future. • We are confident that Version 4 data are commensurate in accuracy to those provided by Version 3.
Overview
Before presenting the MASIE and SII results for July, a note about a strange thing in today’s Sea Ice Index report. I have sent a note to them requesting an explanation for why the values have been altered from those in the dataset just two days ago. When attempting to add into my spreadsheets the final two July days, I noticed that all the previous values were now different. Exploring further, going back to beginning of 2024 all values had changed, some showing larger extents and many showing smaller ice extents than previous recorded.
For 2024 the new values added ice extents with the average day gaining slightly (47k km2). But in 2025 so far, the average day lost (-57k km2) compared to the values two days ago. Curiously, since March 14, 2025 all days had lower values at a daily rate of -75k km2. In sum, the altered values in 2025 removed ~11M km2 of ice extents so far, and 10M km2 of that since March 14. In the report below, I excluded the altered SII values awaiting news from NSIDC.
After a sub-par March maximum, by end of May 2025 Arctic ice closed the gap with the 19-year average. Then in June the gap reopened and in July the melting pace matched the average, abeit four days in advance of average. The chart shows the July Arctic ice extents on average decline from 9.7M to 6.9M km2. MASIE started July ~5M km2 in deficit to average and ended the month ~4M km2 down, continuing to melt about four days in advance of the average decline. SII matched MASIE the first half of July, then tracked slightly lower the second half.
The regional distribution of ice extents is shown in the table below. (Bering and Okhotsk seas are excluded since both are now virtually open water.)
Region
2025212
Day 212
2025-Ave.
2020212
2025-2020
(0) Northern_Hemisphere
6555733
6941055
-385322
5880746
674988
(1) Beaufort_Sea
944231
793206
151025
875454
68777
(2) Chukchi_Sea
621236
555019
66217
533748
87488
(3) East_Siberian_Sea
683122
751512
-68390
329453
353669
(4) Laptev_Sea
329581
370847
-41266
61979
267602
(5) Kara_Sea
32436
166826
-134390
95539
-63103
(6) Barents_Sea
1131
29555
-28424
23940
-22808
(7) Greenland_Sea
228078
296681
-68603
282403
-54325
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence
117170
150751
-33581
35368
81801
(9) Canadian_Archipelago
460908
547942
-87034
515499
-54592
(10) Hudson_Bay
73633
139798
-66165
92861
-19228
(11) Central_Arctic
3062678
3137162
-74483
3033706.07
28972
The table shows most regions in deficit with Kara the largest, and Canadian Archipelago and Central Arctic also sizable. Hudson Bay and Greenland Sea will lose the rest of their ice in upcoming weeks. Surpluses in Beaufort and Chukchi offset about 220k km2 of losses elsewhere.
Why is this important? All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels. The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post NH and Tropics Lead UAH Temps Lower May 2025.
Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents and NH snow cover.
Before presenting the MASIE and SII results for July, a note about a strange thing in today’s Sea Ice Index report. I have sent a note to them requesting an explanation for why the values have been altered from those in the dataset just two days ago. When attempting to add into my spreadsheets the final two July days, I noticed that all the previous values were now different. Exploring further, going back to beginning of 2024 all values had changed, some showing larger extents and many showing smaller ice extents than previous recorded.
For 2024 the new values added ice extents with the average day gaining slightly (47k km2). But in 2025 so far, the average day lost (-57k km2) compared to the values two days ago. Curiously, since March 14, 2025 all days had lower values at a daily rate of -75k km2. In sum, the altered values in 2025 removed ~11M km2 of ice extents so far, and 10M km2 of that since March 14. In the report below, I excluded the altered SII values awaiting news from NSIDC.
After a sub-par March maximum, by end of May 2025 Arctic ice closed the gap with the 19-year average. Then in June the gap reopened and in July the melting pace matched the average, abeit four days in advance of average. The chart shows the July Arctic ice extents on average decline from 9.7M to 6.9M km2. MASIE started July ~5M km2 in deficit to average and ended the month ~4M km2 down, continuing to melt about four days in advance of the average decline. SII matched MASIE the first half of July, then tracked slightly lower the second half.
The regional distribution of ice extents is shown in the table below. (Bering and Okhotsk seas are excluded since both are now virtually open water.)
Region
2025212
Day 212
2025-Ave.
2020212
2025-2020
(0) Northern_Hemisphere
6555733
6941055
-385322
5880746
674988
(1) Beaufort_Sea
944231
793206
151025
875454
68777
(2) Chukchi_Sea
621236
555019
66217
533748
87488
(3) East_Siberian_Sea
683122
751512
-68390
329453
353669
(4) Laptev_Sea
329581
370847
-41266
61979
267602
(5) Kara_Sea
32436
166826
-134390
95539
-63103
(6) Barents_Sea
1131
29555
-28424
23940
-22808
(7) Greenland_Sea
228078
296681
-68603
282403
-54325
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence
117170
150751
-33581
35368
81801
(9) Canadian_Archipelago
460908
547942
-87034
515499
-54592
(10) Hudson_Bay
73633
139798
-66165
92861
-19228
(11) Central_Arctic
3062678
3137162
-74483
3033706.07
28972
The table shows most regions in deficit with Kara the largest, and Canadian Archipelago and Central Arctic also sizable. Hudson Bay and Greenland Sea will lose the rest of their ice in upcoming weeks. Surpluses in Beaufort and Chukchi offset about 220k km2 of losses elsewhere.
Why is this important? All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels. The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post NH and Tropics Lead UAH Temps Lower May 2025.
Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents and NH snow cover.
Science Matters 