Climate Initiatives

Expectations Belém COP30 Nov. 2025

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

From November 10-21, 2025, Brazil will host COP30 in the Amazonian city of Belém, with tens of thousands of delegates, journalists, civil society, and industry representatives expected to attend the summit. The COP meeting serves as the main decision-making platform for the parties to the UNFCCC and convenes annually, unless determined otherwise. These conferences are designed to assess how well countries are meeting their climate goals and to track each party’s progress toward the overarching objectives of the Convention.  Source: COP30: What to Expect from Fiker Institute, based in Dubai.

What’s On the Agenda

COP30 must do the difficult job of restoring confidence in the process following the disappointment of COP29. In preparation for COP30, the summit’s President, Brazilian Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, released a fourth open letter addressed to all delegates, laying out the Action Agenda for Brazil’s hosting of the conference. Rather than introducing new frameworks or making fresh promises, the Brazilian presidency has signaled a desire to focus on delivering on existing commitments, which amount to approximately 400 pledges made over the last few COPs. The letter identifies six thematic priorities:

♦  accelerating the transition in energy and transport systems;
♦  safeguarding biodiversity;
♦  overhauling agri-food systems;
♦  building climate-resilient cities;
♦  advancing human development; and
♦  unlocking finance and technology.  

What Does perplexity.ai Expect from COP30?

Q: About the IPCC COP30, what failures are likely to occur?

A: The most likely failures at IPCC COP30 will include insufficient financial commitments, lack of ambitious national climate targets, deadlocks in negotiations, and ineffective enforcement of agreed actions.

Persistent Finance Shortfalls

    • Developed countries have repeatedly failed to meet climate finance pledges, particularly the $100 billion per year commitment for developing nations.
    • Weak enforcement means finance promises often remain symbolic, undermining support for vulnerable nations.

Lack of Ambitious Climate Targets

    • Many countries are expected to delay or avoid submitting stronger climate plans (NDCs), threatening global efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.
    • Negotiation deadlocks, such as disagreements on monitoring national progress, may stop meaningful advances.

Fragmented and Inadequate Adaptation

    • Adaptation efforts are often incremental, poorly funded, and not well-integrated into broader policy plans, leaving communities at risk.
    • Planning is prioritized over actual implementation, causing delays in urgent climate action.

Continued Fossil Fuel Dependence

    • Global fossil fuel use remains high, with little meaningful reduction, despite decades of negotiations.
    • Major emitting countries may continue to obstruct ambitious global decarbonization agreements.

Weak Enforcement and Accountability

    • With insufficient accountability or sanctions for non-compliance, many countries may not deliver on their climate promises, resulting in fragmented progress.

Inadequate Response to Deforestation and Food Systems

    • COPs have failed to effectively address tropical deforestation and emissions from food systems, both critical for climate adaptation and mitigation.
    • Lack of binding, global treaties against deforestation and food-system emissions is a major gap.

In summary, the most likely failures at COP30 will center on inadequate funding, weak and delayed national commitments, governance gaps, continued reliance on fossil fuels, and the lack of implementation for both mitigation and adaptation pledges.

Q: How could finance pledges fail again at COP30?

A: Finance pledges at COP30 could fail again due to several recurring issues: vague commitments, lack of accountability, limited transparency, under-developed reporting mechanisms, geopolitical tensions, and insufficient mobilization of private capital.

Vague and Non-Binding Commitments

    • Previous COP promises (like the $100 billion annual goal) were not legally enforceable, allowing donor nations to fall short without consequence.
    • Language in COP30 agreements may again lack concrete deadlines, binding obligations, or penalty mechanisms.

Ineffective Accountability and Transparency

    • Tracking finance flows—especially from private sources or indirect support—is technically complex and prone to inconsistent or optimistic reporting.
    • Transparency protocols, such as biennial reports, will not come into effect until 2028, meaning interim pledges may remain unverifiable or inflated.

Geopolitical and Economic Constraints

    • High debt burdens and tough capital markets in both donor and developing countries could limit new investments or redirect funds away from climate action.
    • International tensions, recession fears, or shifts in political priorities may reduce the willingness of major economies to contribute robustly.

Inadequate Mobilization of Private Sector Capital

    • COP30’s ambitious $1.3 trillion annual finance goal relies on mobilizing private investment, but there is chronic uncertainty in how private money will be counted, standardized, and guaranteed for climate impact.
    • Public sector funding alone is insufficient, and incentives for private sector participation remain weak or poorly designed.

Delayed Implementation of New Strategies

    • Key reports and strategies for unlocking climate finance (such as the “Baku to Belém Roadmap”) may not translate into immediate action, leading to a gap between pledges and real monetary flows.
    • Developing countries face challenges in preparing robust project pipelines, which delays the actual disbursement of pledged funds.

In summary, finance pledges at COP30 are at high risk of failing due to weak enforcement, slow implementation of transparency tools, geopolitical uncertainty, untested reliance on private investment, and past tendencies to over-promise and under-deliver.

Background COP Briefing Post

Nine years ago French Mathematicians spoke out prior to COP21 in Paris, and their words provide a rational briefing for COP30 beginning Belém this November. In a nutshell:

Fighting Global Warming is Absurd, Costly and Pointless.
  • Absurd because of no reliable evidence that anything unusual is happening in our climate.
  • Costly because trillions of dollars are wasted on immature, inefficient technologies that serve only to make cheap, reliable energy expensive and intermittent.
  • Pointless because we do not control the weather anyway.

The prestigious Société de Calcul Mathématique (Society for Mathematical Calculation) issued a detailed 195-page White Paper that presents a blistering point-by-point critique of the key dogmas of global warming. The synopsis is blunt and extremely well documented.  Here are extracts from the opening statements of the first three chapters of the SCM White Paper with my bolds and images.

Sisyphus at work.

Chapter 1: The crusade is absurd
There is not a single fact, figure or observation that leads us to conclude that the world‘s climate is in any way ‘disturbed.’ It is variable, as it has always been, but rather less so now than during certain periods or geological eras. Modern methods are far from being able to accurately measure the planet‘s global temperature even today, so measurements made 50 or 100 years ago are even less reliable. Concentrations of CO2 vary, as they always have done; the figures that are being released are biased and dishonest. Rising sea levels are a normal phenomenon linked to upthrust buoyancy; they are nothing to do with so-called global warming. As for extreme weather events — they are no more frequent now than they have been in the past. We ourselves have processed the raw data on hurricanes….

Chapter 2: The crusade is costly
Direct aid for industries that are completely unviable (such as photovoltaics and wind turbines) but presented as ‘virtuous’ runs into billions of euros, according to recent reports published by the Cour des Comptes (French Audit Office) in 2013. But the highest cost lies in the principle of ‘energy saving,’ which is presented as especially virtuous. Since no civilization can develop when it is saving energy, ours has stopped developing: France now has more than three million people unemployed — it is the price we have to pay for our virtue….

Chapter 3: The crusade is pointless
Human beings cannot, in any event, change the climate. If we in France were to stop all industrial activity (let’s not talk about our intellectual activity, which ceased long ago), if we were to eradicate all trace of animal life, the composition of the atmosphere would not alter in any measurable, perceptible way. To explain this, let us make a comparison with the rotation of the planet: it is slowing down. To address that, we might be tempted to ask the entire population of China to run in an easterly direction. But, no matter how big China and its population are, this would have no measurable impact on the Earth‘s rotation.

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Full text in pdf format is available in English at link below:

The battle against global warming: an absurd, costly and pointless crusade
White Paper drawn up by the Société de Calcul Mathématique SA
(Mathematical Modelling Company, Corp.)

societe-de-calcul-mathematique-logo-485x174-1

A Second report was published in 2016 entitled: Global Warming and Employment, which analyzes in depth the economic destruction from ill-advised climate change policies.

The two principal themes are that jobs are disappearing and that the destructive forces are embedded in our societies.

Jobs are Disappearing discusses issues such as:

The State is incapable of devising and implementing an industrial policy.

The fundamental absurdity of the concept of sustainable development

Biofuels an especially absurd policy leading to ridiculous taxes and job losses.

EU policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% drives jobs elsewhere while being pointless: the planet has never asked for it, is completely unaware of it, and will never notice it!

The War against the Car and Road Maintenance undercuts economic mobility while destroying transportation sector jobs.

Solar and wind energy are weak, diffuse, and inconsistent, inadequate to power modern civilization.

Food production activities are attacked as being “bad for the planet.”

So-called Green jobs are entirely financed by subsidies.

The Brutalizing Whip discusses the damages to public finances and to social wealth and well-being, including these topics:

Taxes have never been so high

The Government is borrowing more and more

Dilapidated infrastructure

Instead of job creation, Relocations and Losses

The wastefulness associated with the new forms of energy

Return to the economy of an underdeveloped country

What is our predicament?
Four Horsemen are bringing down our societies:

  • The Ministry of Ecology (climate and environment);
  • Journalists;
  • Scientists;
  • Corporation Environmentalist Departments.

Steps required to recover from this demise:

  • Go back to the basic rules of research.
  • Go back to the basic rules of law
  • Do not trust international organizations
  • Leave the planet alone
  • Beware of any premature optimism
Conclusion

Climate lemmings

The real question is this: how have policymakers managed to make such absurd decisions, to blinker themselves to such a degree, when so many means of scientific investigation are available? The answer is simple: as soon as something is seen as being green, as being good for the planet, all discussion comes to an end and any scientific analysis becomes pointless or counterproductive. The policymakers will not listen to anyone or anything; they take all sorts of hasty, contradictory, damaging and absurd decisions. When will they finally be held to account?

 

Footnote:

The above cartoon image of climate talks includes water rising over politicians’ feet.  But actual observations made in Fiji (presiding over 2017 talks in Bonn) show sea levels are stable (link below).

Fear Not For Fiji

In 2016 SCM issued a report Global Temperatures Available data and critical analysis

It is a valuable description of the temperature metrics and issues regarding climate analysis.   They conclude:

None of the information on global temperatures is of any scientific value, and it should not
be used as a basis for any policy decisions. It is perfectly clear that:

  • there are far too few temperature sensors to give us a picture of the planet’s temperature;
  • we do not know what such a temperature might mean because nobody has given it
    any specific physical significance;
  • the data have been subject to much dissimulation and manipulation. There is a
    clear will not to mention anything that might be reassuring, and to highlight things
    that are presented as worrying;
  • despite all this, direct use of the available figures does not indicate any genuine
    trend towards global warming!

Why Fossil Fuels Still Rule

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Kite & Key explain in their video, transcript in italics with my bolds and added images.

Tech executives.  Heads of state.  Brilliant scientists and engineers.

They’re some of the most talented and respected individuals in the world — and, in recent years, they’ve all come together behind a common purpose.

They’ve marshaled their talents — and trillions of dollars in cash — to move the world beyond the era of fossil fuels.

What can you accomplish when you have that much talent working towards a single goal?

Would you believe … almost nothing?

In recent years, the world has gone to extraordinary lengths to break its dependence on fossil fuels.

We’ve signed international treaties.

We’ve started enormous government programs.

We’ve launched corporate sustainability initiatives.

We’ve vandalized Stonehenge.

Not sure why that last one was necessary. Druids are about as low-carbon as they come.

Now, what do we have to show for all of these efforts to move beyond fossil fuels?

Well, it’s not nothing. But if you squint even just a little … it looks like nothing.

Here’s what we mean. Between 2015 and 2023, the world invested over $12 trillion in alternative energy. By the end of that period, we were investing nearly double as much in alternatives as we were in fossil fuels.i

And the consequences of all that effort?

Well, according to the International Energy Agency, in the decade from 2013 to 2023 the percentage of global energy derived from fossil fuels declined from 82 percent … to 80 percent.ii

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

Now, none of this is to make fun of these efforts. The people behind these initiatives are often very, very smart. Which ought to make us even more curious about why they’re still not able to move the needle much.

Why, despite all their efforts, do fossil fuels continue to be the world’s primary energy sources?

Well, here’s the thing: It’s not because of a lack of money or initiative.
It’s because of the way energy actually works.

Because basically our entire existence — lighting and heating our homes, traveling to work, getting food onto the shelves of your grocery store — is dependent on energy, we need our power sources to be reliable, affordable, and abundant.  And on that front … fossil fuels have proven hard to beat.

There are a lot of reasons for that, but here are three of the biggest ones.

First: efficiency. Fossil fuels allow you to get a lot of energy out of very little material.

For example, to generate as much energy as you get from just one oil well in the Permian Basin of West Texas you’d need to build 10 windmills, each about 330 feet high.iii And because demand is only going up — the world uses 40 percent more energy now than it did just 20 years agoiv — we’re deeply dependent on whichever sources can give us the most bang for our buck.

To replace the electricity from now closed Indian Point nuclear plant would require covering Albany County with wind turbines.

Second: reliability. Energy buffs like to talk about something called the capacity factor, which in plain English means the amount of time a power source can generate its maximum amount of power. For solar, it’s less than 25 percent of the time. For wind, it’s about 34 percent. By contrast, coal is at over 42 percent and natural gas is at essentially 60 percent.v

Third: storage. Fossil fuels are easy and cheap to store, which is necessary to make sure you’ve got enough supply to know the lights will stay on.

How cheap? The costs of storing a barrel of oil or the equivalent amount of natural gas is about $1 a month. For coal, it’s even cheaper.vi To store the same amount of energy from wind or solar — which would require a lithium battery — costs 30 times as much.vii

All of which is to say that when you look at the physics and the economics
— you can start to see why America still gets more than
80 percent of its energy from fossil fuels.viii

Which, by the way, is pretty standard for wealthy countries: They talk a lot about renewables, but when it comes right down to it?

The U.K. gets about 75 percent of its energy from fossil fuels. As does Germany. In Japan it’s over 83 percent. In Australia it’s 85 percent.ix Not because they aren’t trying to move away from fossil fuels, but because they’re coming up against the reality that fossil fuels are the only sources that can give them as much power as their countries need.

There is, however, at least one noteworthy counterexample: France, which, as of 2023, relies on fossil fuels for less than 50 percent of its energy needs.x How do they do that? Well, here’s the catch: It’s not because of things like wind and solar. France gets over 1/3 of its power from nuclear, a carbon-free energy source that can run at full power over 92 percent of the time.xi

Which is an interesting idea … that the world’s wealthy democracies are largely ignoring. In fact, of the 61 new nuclear reactors currently being built around the world, 29 of them are in China.xii And many of the rest are in places like Bangladesh, Turkey, and Egypt.

But there’s one other factor we have to take into consideration when we think about why fossil fuels have endured — and it’s a big one. When we talk about energy, many of us think in terms of electricity. But in reality, America’s single largest use of energy is for transportation. And nearly 90 percent of that energy comes from oil.xiii

Why? Well, for a clarifying example, think about the journey of a package that you buy online. Maybe it comes from overseas on a cargo ship or, if you’re really fancy, a plane. It gets sent to a warehouse, loaded onto a truck, sent off to a series of processing centers, and then arrives seamlessly … on your neighbor’s porch, for some reason.

Now, this process is invisible to most of us, but if we tried to dramatically change the fuel sources involved … well, let’s just say we’d notice.

Want that package to come on an electric plane? Given the current limits of the technology, it could travel a distance of about 30 miles.xiv

Want it to cross the ocean on a battery-powered cargo ship? The journeys those vessels take can run anywhere from 15 to 50 days.xv The biggest battery available could get you … one day of power.xvi Which would ensure your package was speedily delivered to the bottom of the Western Pacific.

Want an electric big rig to move your package across the country? Because they can travel less than half as far as a normal truck before they have to recharge, are three times as expensive to buy, and would require trucking companies to roughly double their number of both drivers and vehicles, your package would arrive much later and be way more expensive.xvii

In fact, it’s estimated that moving to all-electric trucking would be so costly that on its own it’d create a one percent increase in inflation for the entire country.xviii

Bottom line: The decisions as to which energy sources we rely on aren’t arbitrary.
The world as we know it is powered by reliable fuel sources like
natural gas, oil, and — when we’ll allow it — nuclear.

Plenty of people would like to move beyond those sources in theory. But when they experienced what the world actually looks like without them — higher prices, slower travel, less reliable electricity — chances are there’d be a lot fewer takers.

Except the Druids. These dudes would be fine.

See Also

Why Dislike Solar Power

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Post on X by Chris Martz. In italics with my bolds and added images.

Why do I dislike solar so much? Because solar farms are a giant waste of land and natural resources. Let’s do some math.

To replace now closed Indian Point nuclear power plant would
require covering Albany county with solar panels.

A single 1,000-megawatt (MWe) nuclear reactor occupies ~1 mi² (640 acres) of land. Nuclear also has a capacity factor of 0.923, meaning a reactor will generate ~92.3% of the maximum theoretical amount of electrical energy in a year that it could have.

https://energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity Thus, a 1,000-MWe reactor will produce ~8.08 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, enough to power over 770,000 homes throughout the course of a year (assuming Americans purchase an average of 10.5 MWh per household per year).

🏠💡= [1,000 MW × (24 hours / day) × (365 days / year) × 0.923] / 10.5 MWh ≈ 770,046 homes On the contrary, a solar photovoltaic (PV) farm requires 5-10 acres per MW (we’ll assume an average of 7.5) Solar PV has a capacity factor of 0.234. Thus, a 1,000-MWe solar farm occupies ~7,500 acres of land, but it would only power ~195,223 homes assuming, once again, Americans purchase 10.5 MWh of electricity per year, on average.

🏠💡= [1,000 MW × (24 hours / day) × (365 days / year) × 0.234] / 10.5 MWh ≈ 195,223 homes So, you’d need ~4,000 MWe of installed solar capacity to power the same number of homes as a single 1,000 MWe nuclear power station, and ~46.2× the land area, not including the land required for enough battery storage. But, it gets even worse if you factor the battery storage required. Solar PV’s average output is 234 MW.

🔅= 1,000 MW × 0.234 = 234 MW per hour OR 5,616 MWh per day OR 39,312 MWh per week For a week’s worth of battery backup, it would require an additional 23,587.2 acres of land (assuming battery storage requires 0.6 acres /

Rooftop solar is fine. Installing it on the roofs of homes, stores, warehouses, etc. can be useful. But, doing this is not.

Snow covered solar panels at University of MIchigan.

See Also

Southwestern Solar: Bright Shining Disappointment

Noble Climate Cause Corruption: PIK exemplar

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Thomas Kolbe explains the sordid history in his American Thinker article Potsdam climate researchers under fire. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Critics of climate policy have long pointed to the problematic dominance of politics in climate science. A recent study from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), which systematically exaggerated the economic consequences of climate change, has reignited the debate over scientific standards and political manipulation in the field.

On April 17, 2024, the science journal Nature published a study by PIK researchers Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann, and Leonie Wenz. They calculated that global GDP would shrink by 19% by 2050 due to climate change, regardless whether future emissions were reduced. This projection corresponds to an annual output loss of around $38 trillion — an economic apocalypse, given that no society has the resilience to absorb such a dramatic collapse.

A Solution Delivered Alongside the Doom

The authors also provided a ready-made “solution”: according to their math, the costs of climate damage would be at least six times higher than the expenses required to keep global warming below 2°C. The implication is clear:

This was less a scientific exercise than a political directive for policymakers
to accelerate the fight against alleged man-made climate change.

A year later, the material was “corrected” and republished with slightly toned-down results. The timing was not coincidental: peer review — the scientific quality control process — loomed in the background and threatened to spark controversy.

Peer Review Delivers a Devastating Blow

That controversy soon arrived. Three U.S.-based scientists who reviewed the PIK paper identified serious methodological flaws and faulty data — problems that had been known for over a year. According to their report, PIK’s methodology had no scientific foundation. One reviewer wrote: “I have major concerns about the uncertainty and validity of the empirical model they built and used for the forecasts. It would help this study not to follow the often-exaggerated claims found in the literature.” From the Abstract of paper  by Bearpark et al (link in red above):

Kotz, Levermann and Wenz1 (henceforth, KLW) analysed how subnational gross domestic product (GDP) growth responds to year-to-year changes in temperature and precipitation. They reported that if historical relationships continue to hold, global GDP would be lowered by roughly 62% (central estimate) in 2100 under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 ‘high emissions’ scenario, an impact roughly 3 times larger than similar previous estimates,2,3. Here we show that (1) data anomalies arising from one country in KLW’s underlying GDP dataset, Uzbekistan, substantially bias their predicted impacts of climate change, (2) KLW underestimate statistical uncertainty in their future projections of climate impacts, and (3) additional data-quality concerns in KLW’s subnational GDP data warrant further investigation. When Uzbekistan’s data are removed and statistical uncertainty is corrected to account for spatial correlations, KLW’s central estimate aligns closely with previous literature and their results are no longer statistically distinguishable from mitigation costs at any time this century.

Such devastating words cast doubt not just on PIK’s work, but on the broader foundations of climate science itself. Yet papers like this are routinely used to justify green transformation policies, with their web of subsidies, NGOs, regulations, and deep intrusions into economic life.

Finance Dragged Into the Climate Matrix

The significance of this critique lies not only in the study’s flaws but also in the murky financing behind it. These alarmist reports are not just shaping public opinion; they are the cornerstone of a new “climate economy.” The goal is to channel capital flows so that state funds and private wealth are merged into politically favored projects — a carefully orchestrated fusion of financial power and ideology.

International organizations and political institutions amplify these narratives, embedding them into economic governance. The “Network for Greening the Financial System” (NGFS) — closely tied to PIK and consisting of central banks and regulators — projects future climate costs and uses them as a basis for political and financial decisions. The European Central Bank relies on such scenarios for stress tests on banks, forcing higher capital buffers and restricting lending — with direct consequences for growth.

Networks, Obfuscation, and Propaganda

Additional funding flows through organizations like Climate Works, which bankrolls both NGFS and PIK while paying for the calculation of key scenarios. This blurring of lines between sponsor and reviewer, between science and political agenda, opens the door to propaganda. Genuine public debate becomes nearly impossible under such conditions of institutionalized opacity.

The end result is soulless landscapes scarred by wind turbines, the shutdown of modern power plants, and intrusive state regulation extending into private households. The energy sector is sacrificed, home ownership turned into an ideological experiment — all justified by the apocalyptic narrative of man-made climate collapse.

The Origins of CO2 Politics

The roots of this orthodoxy can be traced back to 2009, when the Obama administration declared CO2 a “dangerous pollutant” via the EPA’s Endangerment Finding. This politically-driven decision, made without congressional approval, laid the groundwork for carbon pricing, emissions trading, and sweeping regulatory interventions.

Europe embraced the same model, perhaps even spearheaded it. As an energy-poor continent, the EU saw an opportunity: by making fossil fuels expensive and heavily regulated, it could level the playing field and prevent resource-rich competitors from exploiting their natural energy advantages.

Donald Trump briefly broke with this orthodoxy, scrapping central EPA rules, declassifying CO2 as an existential threat, and freeing coal, gas, and oil. It was a signal to the world: growth and sovereignty take precedence over panic-driven climate politics.

Politicized Science

The PIK case highlights the dangers of academia’s fusion with state agendas. The old saying applies: “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.” It was only a matter of time before such politically tailored studies surfaced.

Just as with government-influenced modeling during the COVID crisis, climate research now faces the urgent task of disentangling politics from science. On the back of the man-made climate narrative, an entire apparatus of subsidies, NGOs, and Brussels bureaucracy has entrenched itself. Untangling this nexus is no longer just a scientific issue — it is a historic necessity.

Footnote On the Failings of PIK GDP Study

Climate study from Potsdam – how questionable forecasts misled politics and business

A controversial climate study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is one of the biggest scientific scandals of recent years. Media outlets like “Tagesschau” and “Spiegel” made it headlines in 2024. “Scientifically completely invalid,” economist Richard Rosen declared. However, politicians and the financial world made far-reaching decisions based on the PIK study. The alleged annual economic damage of $38 trillion shaped global debates. (welt: 25.08.25)

The publication of the PIK study by “Nature” lent its brilliance. But internal documents show that all four reviewers reported serious deficiencies. One expert wrote: “The statistical methodology … [has] no scientific basis whatsoever.” Another emphasized that the forecasts seemed “unintuitively large.”

Roger Pielke Jr. calls it a scandal. Incorrect figures have been known for over a year, yet they continue to shape climate policy and financial decisions. Weinkle criticizes that “Nature” has “turned into a doormat.” This is how science loses credibility.

Just a few weeks after publication, Christof Schötz of the Technical University of Munich presented a detailed critique. He made it clear that the results “do not provide the robust empirical evidence required for climate policy.” Nevertheless, Nature suppressed the analysis for months.

Other researchers from Princeton and the Bank Policy Institute responded. Gregory Hopper describes his unsuccessful attempts to submit comments. Rosen described the PIK study as “completely scientifically invalid.” It has since become clear that while the criticism was suppressed, the NGFS continued to use the data. This resulted in massive economic and political damage.

Under pressure, the PIK researchers published a new version. In this “preprint,” they claimed their core findings remained intact. However, they had to swap methods to produce similar results. For Pielke, this is “a tacit admission… that the original analysis is no longer valid.”

Hopper is even more critical of the new version. “The revised climate damage model is even more flawed,” he explains. The statistical problems persist. This demonstrates that science is serving politics here rather than providing objective results.

Killer Climate Lawsuit on Shaky Ground

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Washington Free Beacon reports on shaky case to make climate change a killer First-Of-Its-Kind Lawsuit Blaming Oil Companies for Woman’s Heat-Wave Death Failed to Mention Her Heart Disease. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

‘The diagnosis and likely treatment for it is highly relevant,’
doctor tells Free Beacon

A first-of-its-kind lawsuit accusing some of the nation’s largest oil companies of causing global warming and therefore causing a Washington woman’s 2021 heat-wave death left out one critical detail: she had been diagnosed with heart disease.

Juliana Leon’s death certificate, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, shows she had been diagnosed with hypertensive cardiovascular disease, a condition that stems from unmanaged high blood pressure and increases the risks of heart failure and sudden cardiac death. The medical examiner for King County, Wash., determined that the condition contributed to her death, meaning it wasn’t the direct cause of death, but made her more vulnerable to it.

The wrongful death lawsuit Leon’s daughter filed earlier this year against oil companies, however, failed to make a single mention of her underlying condition. It instead focused entirely on the direct cause of death: hyperthermia.

The revelation, which has not been reported until now, is relevant because it could explain why Leon succumbed to the high temperatures that hit the Pacific Northwest in June 2021, according to doctors interviewed by the Free Beacon. And it is important too because of the lawsuit’s potentially wide-reaching impact. If successful, the lawsuit could lead to dozens of similar wrongful death suits and even future criminal homicide prosecutions against the oil industry.

The lawsuit—the first instance of a case attempting to put oil companies on the hook for heat-related wrongful death—is part of a coordinated effort nationwide to use the courts to cripple the oil industry and usher in a green energy transition. Activists say such litigation will hold the industry accountable, while critics say it is designed to bankrupt the industry, something that would have devastating economic impacts.

“The main reasons for hyperthermia under these conditions include medications or skin conditions impairing the ability to sweat. People with hypertensive cardiovascular disease are likely to be taking such medicines,” said Jane Orient, the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and a clinical lecturer at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

“I think the diagnosis and likely treatment for it are highly relevant,” she continued. “A body temperature as high as 110 is extremely unlikely without impairment in the body’s temperature-regulating mechanism, at least under the circumstances here. Most people will have dehydration, but not heat stroke, during a heat wave. This lady likely had both.”

Jeffrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the founder of a private surgical practice in Arizona, agreed that the diagnosis could be relevant.  Singer told the Free Beacon:

“Having hypertension and its cardiovascular stigmata, depending on severity, might affect a person’s risk of succumbing to hyperthermia. But it’s the hyperthermia that kills,”

Lawyers representing Leon’s estate and daughter did not respond to requests for comment.

Leon died on June 28, 2021, during an extreme heat wave, which ultimately claimed the lives of 100 people in Washington, state data show. According to the wrongful death lawsuit, Leon died in her car after the vehicle’s air conditioning system broke and as outside temperature exceeded 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Her internal temperature rose to 110 degrees Fahrenheit right before she died.

Two weeks earlier, Leon had undergone bariatric surgery, a weight-loss surgery that helps reduce the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. As a result, she had been on a liquid diet in the two weeks leading up to her death. In fact, Leon died in her car on her drive home from the doctor’s office where she was informed that morning that she may begin to eat soft foods again.

Still, the lawsuit blames seven oil companies for her death, arguing that they knew their products caused global warming decades ago, but continued selling them anyway. The lawsuit states that the 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest wouldn’t have occurred without human-caused global warming.

A study published in the American Meteorological Society’s journal Weather and Forecasting last year found that there is “little evidence” greenhouse gases amplified the heat wave and emphasized that weather forecasts for the event were “highly accurate.” “Global warming may have made a small contribution, but an extreme heat wave, driven by natural variability, would have occurred in any case,” it concluded.  Singer told the Free Beacon:

“You don’t need climate change to have a heat wave. Humans have been experiencing heat spells since the beginning of recorded history,”

The Free Beacon reported last week that an environmental group funded by the powerful Rockefeller Family Fund is quietly steering the wrongful death suit. According to legal filings, Leon’s daughter quietly appointed a climate activist to serve as the agent for her deceased mother’s estate. Those documents were authored by lawyers at the Rockefeller-backed Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit leading the coordinated, nationwide plan to “drive divestment” from and “delegitimize” the oil industry through litigation.

Beware Claims Attributing Extreme Events to Hydrocarbons

Posted on by Ron Clutz

RIP. You did good science and for that we are grateful.

Roger Pielke Jr. alerts us to a dangerous development in the IPCC effort claiming loss and damage from using hydrocarbons.  His blog article is A Takeover of the IPCC.

The IPCC’s longstanding framework for detection and attribution looks DOA in AR7

Pielke:  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released the names of its authors for its seventh assessment report (AR7). The author list for its Chapter 3 — Changes in regional climate and extremes, and their causes — suggests strongly that the IPCC will be shifting from its longstanding focus on detection and attribution (D&A) of extreme events to a focus on “extreme event attribution” (EEA).

The IPCC AR6 was decidedly lukewarm to freezing cold on the notion of EEA, and emphasized the traditional D&A framework. Those days may now be over.  World Weather Attribution (WWA) co-founder Frederika Otto has been put in charge of the chapter, along with another academic who focuses on extreme event attribution.

Pielke has a series of articles taking exception to EEA methods and claims.  This post is a synopsis of work by Patrick Brown on the same issue, which is likely to be featured by climatists in the days and months ahead.

How Climate Attribution Studies Become Devious and Untrustworthy

Patrick Brown raises the question Do Climate Attribution Studies Tell the Full Story? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images, his analysis concluding thusly:

How a cascade of selection effects bias
the collective output of extreme event attribution studies.

Weather and climate extremes—such as high temperatures, floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, and severe thunderstorms—have always threatened both human and natural systems. Given their significant impacts, there is considerable interest in how human-caused climate change influences these extremes. This is the focus of the relatively new discipline of Extreme Event Attribution (EEA).

Over the past couple of decades, there has been an explosion in EEA studies focusing on (or, “triggered by”) some prior notable weather or climate extreme. Non-peer-reviewed reports from World Weather Attribution (e.g., here, here, and here) represent some of the most notable examples of these kinds of analyses, and many similar studies also populate the peer-reviewed literature. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s “Explaining Extreme Events From a Climate Perspective” annual series compiles such studies, as does the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, and they are also synthesized in reports like those from the IPCC (IPCC WG1 AR6 Chapter 11.2.3) and the United States National Climate Assessment.

The collective output of these kinds of studies certainly gives the impression that human-caused climate change is drastically changing the frequency and intensity of all kinds of weather extremes. Indeed, Carbon Brief recently published an extensive summary of the science of EEA studies, which begins with the proclamation, “As global temperatures rise, extreme weather events are becoming more intense and more frequent all around the world.”

However, these numbers cannot be taken as an accurate quantification of the influence of climate change on extreme weather because they are heavily influenced by a cascade of selection biases originating from the physical climate system, as well as researcher and media incentives. Identifying and understanding these biases is a prerequisite for properly interpreting the collective output of EEA studies and, thus, what implications they hold for general scientific understanding, as well as political and legal questions.

The large apparent discrepancy between the size of the influence of human-caused climate change on extreme weather reported in EEA studies (like those compiled by Carbon Brief) compared to more comprehensive systematic analyses (like those compiled by the IPCC) can, in large part, be attributed to the many layers of Selection Biases that influence the EEA literature’s collective output.

Selection Bias is a broad term that refers to any bias that arises from a process that selects data for analysis in a way that fails to ensure that data is representative of the broader population that the study wishes to describe.

Selection biases in the context of EEA studies include those associated with the physical climate system itself, those concerning proclivities and incentives facing researchers/journals, and those concerning the proclivities and incentives facing the media. They include

Occurrence Bias is a bias introduced by the physical climate system. Since EEA studies tend to be triggered by extreme events that have actually occurred, there is reason to believe that these studies will disproportionately sample events that are more likely than average to be exacerbated by climate change because the events occurred in the first place. Essentially, extreme events that are more likely to occur under climate change—and thus more likely to be observed—are going to be overrepresented in EEA studies, and extreme events that are less likely to occur under climate change—and thus less likely to be observed—are going to be underrepresented in EEA studies.

The map below illustrates this phenomenon. It shows changes in the magnitude of extreme drought under climate change. Specifically, it shows the fractional change in the intensity of once-per-50-year droughts (as quantified by monthly soil moisture) between a preindustrial and 21st-century run (SSP2-4.5 emissions) of the highly-regarded NCAR CESM2 Climate Model. Blue areas represent locations where the model simulates that extreme droughts become less frequent and intense with enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations, and red areas represent locations where the model simulates that extreme droughts become more frequent and intense with enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations. It is notable that overall, this model simulates that warming decreases the frequency and intensity of extreme drought in more locations than it increases it (consistent with soil moistening under warming simulated by other models).

Now, here’s the kicker: The black dots show locations where once-per-50-year droughts actually occurred in the 21st-century simulation and thus represent events that would plausibly trigger EEA studies.

What do you notice about where the dots are compared to where the red is? That’s right; the simulated EEA studies overwhelmingly sample areas where droughts are getting more intense and more frequent by the very nature that those are the types of droughts that are more likely to occur in the warming climate. The result is that the EEA sample is majorly biased: warming decreased the intensity of once-per-50-year droughts by about 1% overall, but it increased their intensity within the EEA sample by 18%!

Thus, if you just relied on the EEA sample, you would come away with an
incorrect impression not only on the magnitude of change in extreme droughts
but also on the sign of the direction of change!

Choice Bias arises when researchers use prior knowledge to choose events for EEA studies that are more likely to have been made more severe by climate change. A clear example of Choice Bias pervading the Carbon Brief database is there have been 3.6 times more studies on extreme heat than there have been on extreme winter weather (205 vs. 57). Another example would be the dearth of EEA studies on extratropical cyclones (the kinds of low-pressure systems with cold and warm fronts that are responsible for most of the dramatic weather outside of the tropics). The IPCC states that the number of extratropical cyclones associated with intense surface wind speeds is expected to decrease strongly in the Northern Hemisphere with warming. Yet, it is relatively rare for EEA attribution studies to be done on these types of systems, which results in an exclusion of this good news from the EEA literature.

Publication Bias could be playing a role, too, where researchers are more likely to submit, and journals are likely to publish studies that report significant effects on salient events compared to studies that find null effects.

From Clark et al., 2023

Finally, the climate reporting media ecosystem is characterized by actors whose explicit mission is to raise awareness of the negative impacts of climate change, and thus, there will be a natural Media Coverage Bias with a tendency to selectively highlight EEA studies where climate change is found to be a larger driver than EEA studies that do not reach such a conclusion. These selection biases are apparent at the aggregate level, but there is also strong evidence of their presence in individual studies.

A more recent specific example suggestive of many of these dynamics is a study, Gilford et al. (2024), titled “Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes”. This study was conducted by three researchers at Climate Central, which summarizes the study’s findings with the following infographic:

From Climate Central press release on Gilford et al. (2024).

Essentially, they claim that climate change is enhancing the intensity of all hurricanes and that the enhancement is quite large: Storms today are calculated to be an entire Category stronger than they would have been in a preindustrial climate.

This is a huge effect, and thus, if it were real, it is reasonable to expect to see clear long-term trends in metrics of tropical cyclone (hurricane) intensity like the accumulated number of major (Category 3+) hurricane days or the accumulated cyclone energy from all tropical cyclones (which is proportional to the square of hurricane windspeed accumulated over their lifetimes). However, any long-term trends in such metrics are subtle at best, both globally and over the North Atlantic.

From Colorado State University Department of Atmospheric Science Tropical Meteorology Project.

So, this is a microcosm of the aforementioned apparent discrepancy between more broad quantifications of changes in extremes and their associated EEA counterparts, and again, I’d argue there are several selection biases at play affecting the production and dissemination of the EEA study.

Let’s start with Choice Bias on methodology. Human-caused warming changes the environment in some ways that work to enhance hurricanes and in other ways that diminish them. The main way that hurricanes are enhanced is via the increase in sea surface temperatures (which provides the fundamental fuel for hurricanes), and the main way that hurricanes are diminished is via changes in atmospheric wind shear and humidity.

The net result of these countervailing factors pulling in opposite directions is that we expect fewer hurricanes overall, but when hurricanes are able to form, they can be stronger than they would otherwise. These factors, though, are small relative to natural random variability, and thus, they are difficult to detect in observations.

However, the Climate Central researchers made the methodological choice
to largely exclude the influence of factors that diminish
hurricane development from the study.

Are these Choice Biases in event type and methodology an accident? There are many reasons to believe they are not.

The research paper itself spells out that the motivation of the study is to “connect the dots” between climate change and hurricanes because “landfalling hurricanes with high intensities—can act as ‘focusing events’ that draw public attention” and that “Increased attention during and in wake of storms creates opportunities for public and private discourse around climate and disaster preparedness.”

Then, there is the extensive media coverage of this study. It was picked up by 134 news outlets and ranked in the 99.95th percentile of research articles (across all journals) of similar age in terms of online attention. Further, it was immediately incorporated into seven Wikipedia articles (likely having high leverage on AI queries, which would make its findings indistinguishable from scientific “fact”). This is affected by the aforementioned Media Coverage Bias, but it is also undoubtedly directly influenced by the efforts of Climate Central, which is explicitly an advocacy organization whose self-described specialty is media placement and dissemination. 

The above sheds light on the reasons for certain choice biases in a particular study, but there is plenty of evidence that these selection biases are pervasive in the EEA field. After all, Dr. Myles Allen essentially founded the field with the motivation of answering the question, “Will it ever be possible to sue anyone for damaging the climate?”. This same motivation seems to animate many of the most high-profile scientists in the field today, like Allen’s protege, Dr. Friederike Otto (co-founder and leader of World Weather Attribution). She and her organization are frequently cited as bringing the necessary intellectual authority to credibly sue fossil fuel companies. She states the motivation of her work explicitly:

“Attributing extreme weather events to climate change, as I do
through my work as a climatologist, means we can hold
countries and companies to account for their inaction.”

Given the explicitly stated motivation of those in the EEA field, it is quite reasonable to suppose that there are major selection biases at play, and thus, it is not at all surprising that the collective output of the EEA field would look so different from more broad comprehensive assessments.

Green Energy Companies Going Down the Drain

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Three reports provide data on hollowing out the alternative energy (non-hydrocarbon) sector.  Firstly an update from E2 $22 Billion in Clean Energy Projects Cancelled in First Half of 2025; $6.7 Billion Cancelled in June.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Clean Economy Works | total projects cancelled, closed,
downsized by sector Aug. 2022-June 2025

*totals will not match overall figures as some projects are categorized into multiple sectors

Businesses canceled, closed, and scaled back more than $22 billion worth of new factories and clean energy projects in the first half of 2025 after cancelling another $6.7 billion in June alone, according to E2’s latest monthly analysis of clean energy projects tracked by E2 and the Clean Economy Tracker.

The latest wave of cancellations — affecting five battery, storage, and electric vehicle factories in Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, New York, and Oregon — follows growing uncertainty among businesses as Congress was making the final push to effectively end federal clean energy tax credits. More than 5,000 jobs were lost to the cancellations and scales backs in June, bringing the total number of jobs lost to abandoned projects in 2025 to 16,500.

June’s cancellations were led by major automakers scaling back electric vehicle production investments. General Motors cancelled a $4.3 billion plan to expand its Orion plant in Michigan to build new electric pickups and instead shift its investments there to build 8-cylinder gas vehicles. Additionally, Toyota scaled back a $2.2 billion plan to retool a manufacturing plant in Indiana that was going to build a new three-row electric SUV, consolidating production to its Georgetown, Kentucky plant instead.

Cancellations, Closures, Downsizes

This tracking includes all projects, plants, operations, or expansions that were cancelled or closed since passage of the IRA in August 2022. This does not include announced layoffs that are not associated with a project downsizing unless there is a stated decease in production output. This list also does not include the transfer of project ownership, if production will continue under the new ownership, power purchasing agreements, or other similar type of announcements. Project delays or idling of facilities are not included unless there in an announced decrease in production or investment or unless the project will need to be restarted to proceed in the future.

A second report is from Big Green Machine  CLEAN ENERGY MANUFACTURING: TRUMP 47+ 7 MONTHS.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

What has happened to investment in US clean energy manufacturing and supply chains since Trump took office on January 20, 2025?  Our Trump + 7 month tracker below was updated on August 20, 2025. You can also read our 6-month report below or download the report.

The Big Green Machine: Trump + 6 months report (released on July 29, 2025, based on data through July 20, 2025).

Since Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2025, newly announced investments in clean energy manufacturing projects have slowed dramatically, while the number of projects that have been paused, canceled, or closed has skyrocketed. Projects are being paused, cancelled, and closed at a rate 6 times more than during the same period in 2024 and 30 times more than during the same period in 2023.

The Big Green Machine tracks investments in the supply chain, from mine to factory, in the wind, solar, batteries, and electric vehicle industries. Over the past six months, 26 projects, totaling $27.6 billion in capital investment and creating 18,849 jobs, have been paused, canceled, or closed. During the same period, 29 new projects were announced, adding up to $3.0 billion in capital investment and 8,334 jobs.

This marks a dramatic reversal from the first six months of 2024. During that period, 54 new projects adding up to $15.9 billion in capital investment and 25,942 new jobs were announced. In comparison, 8 projects adding up to $4.1 billion in capital investment and 3,820 jobs were paused, canceled, or closed during the first six months of 2024.

That does not mean all activity in the clean energy sector has stopped. Since Trump took office, many previously announced projects have broken ground, started pilot production, or moved into full production. By our count, 39 projects adding up to $21.1 billion in capital investment and 25,269 jobs have advanced in the past six months. But the projects that are advancing are, on average, smaller in size than the projects that are slowing.

Other patterns are emerging with respect to which projects are advancing or slowing. Not surprisingly, projects counting on federal support in the form of loans and grants are more likely to be slowing. In addition, our tracking shows that projects located in communities with lower median household incomes and communities classified as disadvantaged are seeing a higher proportion of slowed projects, meaning that communities in need of opportunity are losing out.

Unlike the two above reports focusing on 2025 contractions, the third report from Canary media details the green energy bloodbath last year The cleantech companies that didn’t make it through 2024. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

From carbon removal startups to solar icons, the climate world saw a number of corporate flameouts this year. Here are some takeaways and lessons learned.

Examples included (among many others)

Solar sunsets

Arguably the most shocking cleantech corporate demise of 2024 was that of SunPower, a solar industry icon that grew from humble startup roots to a valuation in the billions, only to file for bankruptcy in August. Even as solar installations smash records in the U.S. and the federal government channels capital into onshoring solar panel production, SunPower found itself undone by China’s industrial policy might and its own boardroom missteps. High interest rates and other policy headwinds, like California’s NEM 3.0, didn’t help.  Also Ubiquitous Energy, Toledo Solar

Solar installer bloodbath

High interest rates and rooftop solar incentive shifts in leading states rippled through the long tail of residential solar installers and led to scores of bankruptcies in the past two years, an unprecedented collapse.

Here are a few of the larger casualties from this year: Sunworks, a residential and commercial solar installer, filed for bankruptcy in February. Founded in 2002, Sunworks had developed 224 megawatts of solar projects across 15 states and employed 640 people. Titan Solar operated in 16 states and abruptly shut down its operations in June. Utah-based residential solar company Lumio filed for bankruptcy in September.

Energy storage setbacks 

Armed with billions in investor capital, scores of storage startups have been aiming to dethrone energy stalwarts like lithium-ion and diesel generators — but in the words of The Wire’s Omar Little, ​“If you come at the king, you best not miss.”

These companies missed.  Sweden’s Northvolt, once valued by investors at almost $12 billion, filed for bankruptcy in November in the year’s biggest battery bust.  Ambri, an energy storage aspirant with technology based on the research of MIT professor Donald Sadoway, declared bankruptcy in May.  Richmond, California–based Moxion Power laid off 101 workers in June and shuttered its doors, following a wave of hype for its 75-kilowatt portable lithium-ion batteries that it hoped would replace diesel generators.  Two other notable failures in the storage sector:  Ionic Materials, a 40-person MIT spin-out developing battery materials, Australian flow battery firm Redflow.

Removing carbon one VC dollar at a time 

Running Tide was the largest marine carbon-removal startup and the first to sell ocean carbon credits. Its initial plan of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the ocean by growing and sinking kelp morphed into sinking wood chips coated with lime-kiln dust. Running Tide announced that it was folding in June after raising more than $54 million.

Unsustainable aviation

Chasing a clean fuels breakthrough, Fulcrum BioEnergy promised to transform municipal waste into sustainable aviation fuel through a low-emissions gasification process. Instead, the company incinerated hundreds of millions in funding from BP, United Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and Japan Airlines — and hundreds of millions more in municipal bonds. The firm ceased operations in May.  Also Universal Hydrogen 

Charger bankruptcy

Tritium, a major provider of high-speed EV chargers, went bust in April but found a buyer for its insolvent business in India-based Exicom, which claims it will keep Tritium’s U.S. factory in business. Tritium has sold roughly 13,000 chargers in 47 countries and claimed a 30 percent U.S. market share for direct-current fast chargers in 2023.

Zero to 60 and back to zero with EVs

Luxury EV maker Fisker went bankrupt again; electric-van maker Arrival went bankrupt and sold its assets to another struggling EV maker, Canoo, which is currently furloughing employees; Cake, a Swedish e-motorcycle startup, sold 6,000 bikes but filed for bankruptcy in February after raising more than $75 million.

Arcimoto, Faraday Future, Mullen Automotive, and Workhorse Group are publicly traded EV companies but are facing delisting warnings, paltry revenue, and valuations that are rapidly approaching zero. Nikola stock is down by 90 percent year to date.

Comment

These reports are from green energy enthusiasts and promoters, expressing concerns without questioning the so-called transition to zero carbon.  They really do want to pave farmland over with solar and wind installations.  The rest of us understand that the whole green economy notion is delusional and needs dismantling ASAP.  The creative destruction of these misbegotten enterprises is a step in the right direction.

Canada Provinces Defy Climatists, Opt for Energy Freedom

Posted on by Ron Clutz

BREAKING! Alberta DROPS BOMBSHELL After Canada REJECTS U.S. Pipeline Deal!  The video explains how ordinary Canadians are taking action to reject climatism ideology in favor of energy realism and freedom. The transcript is below in italics with my bolds and added images.

What happens when a single province challenges an entire nation? Alberta just dropped a political bombshell after Ottawa rejected its 10 billion US dollar pipeline deals.

“Today marks an important step forward in uniting our country as Saskatchewan jumps on board with Alberta and Ontario to pursue our shared goals of economic growth, opportunity, and prosperity.” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith

But Premier Danielle Smith isn’t backing down. She’s fighting back with her crossborder energy corridor, striking partnerships with US states and challenging the decision and power of Ottawa.

“Today, we’re signing a memorandum of understanding that makes Saskatchewan an official signatory and partner as we work together on building oil and gas pipelines and expanding trade corridors to global markets.”

This fight isn’t about a single pipeline anymore. It’s a full-blown showdown over the economic soul of Canada. Who really controls the future? Federal climate crusaders in Ottawa or the oil-driven defiance in Alberta? It started quietly. For months Alberta had been negotiating with US refiners and private investors on a bold plan, a new pipeline corridor linking the oil sands to refineries in Montana, North Dakota, and ultimately to the Gulf Coast.

This wasn’t a revival of Keystone XL, but the logic was the same: move more bitumen and synthetic crude, cut rail dependency, and deliver secure Canadian energy to the hungry markets in America. The numbers told the story. This agreement will see our three provinces advance pipelines and pathways to boost exports of homegrown energy, potash, critical minerals, and agricultural products to markets across Canada and across the world.

The proposed cost was between 8 and 10 billion, almost entirely financed by private industry. There were no bailouts and no federal funding. All Alberta asked from Ottawa was a green light on crossborder approval. For Premier Danielle Smith, this wasn’t just about energy. It was about survival.

And if Prime Minister Mark Carney doesn’t want to work with us, it’s not just myself and Scott Moe he’ll have to worry about. He’ll also have to contend with Premier Doug Ford, who has said many times he’ll be all over him like an 800lb gorilla.

So, it’s time to get rid of the bad laws that have harmed Canada’s ability to grow the energy sector and other industries such as mining and manufacturing. The economy of Alberta is built on oil exports. But without enough pipeline capacity, producers were forced to rely on rail. Rail is slower, more expensive, and more dangerous. The delay of one day meant millions lost. Thousands of jobs at risk, and the Albertan communities paying the price.

Industry leaders were optimistic. US refiners in the Midwest and Gulf were eager for Canadian heavy crude, a more stable and cleaner alternative compared to politically volatile suppliers abroad. The environmental analysts even argued the project would cut per barrel emissions by replacing rail transport with efficient modern pipelines. Everything was lined up perfectly.

But then Ottawa said no. The Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the deal outright. He made it clear no new crossborder pipelines would be approved. But why? The answer was climate. Carney and his government had pledged to lead Canada into a net zero future. New pipelines, federal ministers argued, would lock in emissions, heavy oil production for decades. That was incompatible with the climate commitments and international reputation of Canada.

Behind the scenes, politics also played a role. Quebec and large parts of Ontario, crucial bases of support for federal liberals and centrists, have long opposed the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. The approval of pipeline in Alberta risked urban climate conscious voters in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa.

Rejecting it sent a signal the energy future of Canada will be hydrogen,
renewables, and critical minerals, not the oil sands in Alberta.

For Alberta, the message was brutal. It wasn’t just a policy decision. It was a blockade. But Danielle Smith didn’t wait. Within 48 hours, she called an emergency press conference. Standing beside industry leaders and ministers, she declared Alberta would move ahead with or without Ottawa. Smith announced a bold new plan, a provincially backed pipeline corridor fast-tracked under Albertan jurisdiction, financed by private investors, and supported by 1.2 $2 billion in provincial loan guarantees. The construction preparation is expected to begin within 12 months.

Danielle Smith revealed exploratory agreements with the governors of Montana and North Dakota to coordinate crossborder energy projects, trade facilitation, and infrastructure planning. In short, if Ottawa won’t help, Alberta will work directly with the states in the United States. The message was clear. Alberta wasn’t asking anymore. It was acting.

The stakes are enormous. Albertian oil sands directly support over 140,000 jobs and billions of dollars in export earnings. Without pipelines, producers such as Suncor, Cenovis, and Meg Energy face rising transportation costs, reduced competitiveness, and shrinking investment. For workers, the uncertainty is devastating. Thousands of pipe fitters, welders, truck drivers, and construction crews were counting on jobs tied to the $10 billion project. The communities along potential routes were preparing for growth. Now they’re caught between the rejection of Ottawa and Albertan defiance.

But the ripple effects don’t stop in Canada. Smith framed it bluntly. This wasn’t ideology. It was survival. Alberta wasn’t going to stand by while Ottawa, in her words, choked our future. Once she doubled down by raising the stakes even higher. Alberta would consider tapping the Alberta pension plan to finance its energy infrastructure. The logic? If Ottawa won’t support their priorities, then Albertans’ money should.

The bombshell ignited fury across the West. Saskatchewan and Ontario quickly signed memorandums of understanding with Alberta, pledging to expand pipelines, rail exports, and energy trade. Wexit groups, which had been dormant for a long time, roared back online. Conservative premiers in Saskatchewan and BC echoed the defiance of Smith, accusing Ottawa of sabotaging resource provinces. The Ottawan response was predictable. Federal ministers doubled down on climate goals. So, no more pipelines and no more fossil expansion, only renewables, critical minerals, and electrification. The Canadian government painted Albertan response as reckless and accused Smith of manufacturing a crisis for political gain.

But here’s the truth. This isn’t just a policy dispute anymore. It’s a battle for the Canadian economic soul. The question is, how far will this go? Because what happens next could reshape Canada forever. The fallout is already shaking the political map of Canada. In Western Canada, calls for autonomy are louder than ever. Saskatchewan’s premier joined Smith in declaring that energy independence is no longer optional. It’s survival. Even Ontario, often aligned with Ottawa, signed agreements to boost pipeline and mineral trade with Alberta.

For many, this is more than economics. It’s about fairness. Albertans see the wealth of their province generated from oil exports funding national programs while Ottawa refuses to support the very industry that creates that wealth. The rejection crystallized a long-standing grievance that the federal government takes from Alberta but never gives back.

The tension is spilling into Parliament. Conservative MPs accused Carney of abandoning Canadian workers to please foreign investors and climate lobbyists. They warned that the stance of Ottawa weakens national unity and strengthens separatist sentiment. Meanwhile, Block Quebecois MPs cheered the rejection, saying Alberta should stop holding Canada hostage with oil. The divide is sharper than ever.

South of the border, the reaction is more pragmatic. Governors in Montana and North Dakota see opportunity. By partnering directly with Alberta, they can secure stable energy supplies and create jobs in pipeline construction, refining, and logistics. Quietly, US officials are already signaling support.

But this puts Ottawa in a bind. If Alberta succeeds in striking crossborder deals without federal blessing, it challenges the very structure of Canadian federalism. The energy and trade are constitutionally shared powers. But what happens if a province pushes ahead anyway? The legal challenges are inevitable. Ottawa may try to block Alberta in court, but that could trigger an even deeper political backlash.

So, for now, Ottawa is betting on a green future. Alberta is betting on oil. Both sides are digging in. If Alberta pulls this off, it could change the balance of power in Canada forever. If it fails, the province risks isolation, lost investment, and a deeper rift with Ottawa.

Why Climate Doomsters Can’t Recant

Posted on by Ron Clutz

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.

Shifting Climate Discourse

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Fun fact: Mentions of “climate crisis” in corporate media have all but imploded. Why? Because the PR propaganda campaigns aren’t needed when Democrats and their dark-money-funded NGOs aren’t pushing “green” bills or fundraising. H/T Tyler Durden

The climate crisis was merely the Democrat Party’s PR operation to siphon money from taxpayers.

Postscript on Story Counts

I don’t know the source and parameters behind the chart in Tyler Durden’s post.  Below is a chart I produced from Media Cloud based on U.S. National Online News sources.