The Boston Globe posted an article titled “Climate change is bringing creepy — and dangerous — bacteria, bugs, and viruses to New England,” claiming that global warming is “fueling an increase in bacteria and disease” in New England. The headline and the attached story are highly misleading. For things like mosquito-borne illness, mosquitos carrying diseases previously thrived even in New England in previous centuries, with 20th century human intervention wiping them out, not temperature changes. Also, bacteria in waterways are a seasonal phenomenon which has always existed.
The Real New England Crisis is Green Agenda Attack on Electricity Supply
Fall is here, the leaves are changing, the temperature is dropping and sadly New England families know the routine.
Every month, the electric bill arrives, and it’s larger than the month before. The region pays more for electricity than almost anyone else in America—higher than the national average and, outside of Alaska and Hawaii, higher than anywhere else in the country. This is not a coincidence. It is the inevitable result of politicians who pushed the risky and unreliable green agenda while forcing reliable power plants off the grid.
Here’s an inconvenient history lesson. When Joe Biden took office, electricity in New England cost 20.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. By the time he left, it was more than 28.2 cents. That’s a staggering spike of more than 36% in just four years. Hundreds of dollars gone from family budgets and small businesses every single year. For working households already feeling the squeeze of Biden’s inflation, it can mean the difference between savings and debt, between heating a home and keeping it uncomfortably cold.
October 2022 generation in New England, by fuel source
And the blame is clear. The forced closure of coal, oil, and natural gas plants in the name of “climate progress” is why rates are climbing. In 2022, Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey traveled to Somerset to celebrate the shutdown of traditional energy plants. They smiled for the cameras, congratulated themselves on a “victory,” and then went back to Washington while families were left to pay the tab.
First came the celebration, but now we see the deflection. Four Democratic senators, including Warren and Markey, recently wrote a letter to the Trump administration suddenly pretending to care about rising electricity bills. It is political theater and nothing more. They didn’t care when they cheered the closures in 2022, and they don’t care now. New England’s families are stuck with the consequences of the green agenda they applauded; they just want to escape the blame.
Project abandoned in 2017 after New York blocked planning and permit processes.
Let’s be clear: This cascade of closures started when Joe Biden was vice president and accelerated under his presidency. Nearly 400 fossil fuel plants have been shuttered across the country since 2010, including almost 300 coal plants. In the Northeast alone, names like Indian Point in New York, Eagle Point in New Jersey, Schiller Station in New Hampshire, and Canal Station in Massachusetts have been crossed off the map. Each closure meant fewer megawatts of reliable power and higher bills for families.
Project abandoned in April 2016
The problem is not complicated. Shutting down affordable, always-on power and replacing it with expensive, intermittent sources like wind and solar leads to higher prices. Add the surge in demand from artificial intelligence data centers, which analysts say could double electricity consumption by 2030, and the consequences are obvious: higher costs, weaker reliability, and a grid at the breaking point.
There is a way out of this crisis, but it requires real action, not pointless blaming. My organization, Power The Future, lays out the steps in our recent report.
♦ First, use the Defense Production Act to treat grid reliability as the national security issue it is, and direct resources to keep critical plants online. ♦ Second, build new fossil fuel plants—modern natural gas and coal facilities that can deliver decades of dependable, affordable power. ♦ Third, halt premature closures until replacement capacity is running, not just promised on paper. And fourth, expand the capacity of existing coal plants, many of which are running below potential thanks to political limits, to quickly add thousands of megawatts back to the grid.
These are not radical ideas. They are common sense. They put working families, not political slogans, at the center of energy policy. They recognize that you cannot run a 21st-century economy on wishful thinking, photo-ops, and subsidies for technology that fails when the wind doesn’t blow, or the sun doesn’t shine.
Too many of New England’s “leaders” in Washington have turned their states into punchlines of America’s power prices. Working families deserve leaders who care more about their constituents’ bills than their standing with environmental activists. They deserve an energy policy grounded in reality, not ideology.
If you want to know who killed affordable power in New England, it wasn’t President Trump and it wasn’t the utility companies. All you need to do is just look at who popped the champagne when the plants closed.
There have been three climate lawsuits in Montana from Our children’s Trust:
Barhaugh v Montana in 2011.
Held v Montana in 2022-2023.
Lighthiser v Trump in 2025.
There has been little change in the wording of these climate lawsuits. HvM still has AG Bullock’s name in it even though Montana elected him Governor as of 2012. The science argument in these three climate lawsuits has not changed.
They all claim the government is damaging the physical and mental health of children by allowing human CO2 emissions to continue.
But the schools and parents are damaging their children’s mental and health brainwashing them to believe human carbon emissions are destroying the planet.
The fundamental science issue in all climate lawsuits is whether these unstated hypotheses are true or false:
(1) Human CO2 causes all the CO2 increase above 280 ppm.
(2) This CO2 increase causes global warming.
(3) This global warming causes the plaintiffs claimed damages.
The plaintiffs assume these three hypotheses are true, and they will admit it in court. Otherwise, they would have no basis for their claims.
To prevail, the defense needs to prove only one of these hypotheses is false. In fact, it is easy to prove all three hypotheses are false in a court of law.
Here’s a critical point that few people understand:
The scientific method says it is impossible to prove a hypothesis is true so the alarmists cannot prove these hypotheses are true. The plaintiffs have the burden of proof.
However, we can prove these hypotheses are false by showing they make one false prediction or contradiction with data. This is the key to science.
This is what parents and teachers and media should be teaching the kids.
1. Barhaugh v. Montana
Barhaugh v. Montana: Petition for Original Jurisdiction, Montana Supreme Court, 2011, was the first climate lawsuit in Montana.
To justify its petition to the Montana Supreme Court, BvM says on page 5:
“Through the normal litigation and appeals process, this issue would likely take a minimum of two to three years just to reach this Court, in contrast to the average 60 days needed to resolve original proceedings.
“Considering the scientific evidence cited by the Respondent, there is not enough time to effectively arrest the effect of human-caused climate change unless immediate action is taken.”
“Climatological “tipping points” lie directly ahead and drive the urgency of taking action:
“The further we look into the future, the worse the costs of inaction will become. The longer we do nothing, the greater the risks of an irreversible climate catastrophe, such as a massive rise in sea levels, which could make the world unable to support anything like the current levels of population and economic activity. The costs and risks of inaction are overwhelmingly worse than the moderate and manageable costs of an immediate effort to reduce carbon emissions.”
Barhaugh v. Montana justified its petition to the Montana Supreme Court by predicting an irreversible climatological “tipping point” would occur in the next three years.
The Petition is based upon its assumption that the three unstated climate hypotheses are true. Assuming these hypotheses are true, the plaintiffs claimed certain damages. But all their claims are based on their assumption that their three hypotheses above are true.
The Intervention led by Dr. Edwin X Berry of Bigfork, Montana, prevented the Montana Supreme Court from ruling in favor of the Petition.
Berry’s Intervenors presented evidence that contradicted the Petition’s assumptions.
Their evidence constrained Montana Attorney General Bullock’s reply to the Court because he could not go on record disputing the Intervenors’ evidence that the Petitioners’ claims about climate science may not be true.
Montana AG Bullock wrote:
This disputed record is just one example of the factual determinations this Court would need to make to rule for Petitioners.
In addition, it would need to address, among other issues, the current state of climate change science; the role of Montana in the global problem of climate change; how emissions created in Montana ultimately affect Montana’s climate; whether the benefits of energy production must be balanced against the potential harm of climate change; and the concrete limits, if any, of the alleged “affirmative duty.”
The Montana Supreme Court ruled:
As the State points out, the petition incorporates factual claims such as that the State “has been prevented by the Legislature from taking any action to regulate [greenhouse gas] emissions.”
The State posits that the relief requested by Petitioners would require numerous other factual determinations, such as the role of Montana in the global problem of climate change and how emissions created in Montana ultimately affect Montana’s climate.
This Court is ill-equipped to resolve the factual assertions presented by Petitioners. We further conclude that Petitioners have not established urgency or emergency factors that would preclude litigation in a trial court followed by the normal appeal process.
The court could not determine whether the Petitioners or the Intervenors were correct about climate because, in the court’s view, there is no scientific consensus that is sufficiently well-settled to decide the case as a matter of law.
The Court rejected the Barhaugh v. Montana Petition.
Quentin Rhoades, Attorney for the Intervenors, wrote that the Montana Supreme Court ruled against the Petitioners because,
“There is no scientific consensus that is sufficiently well-settled to allow a court to decide the case purely as a matter of law.
Rhoades concluded,
“This establishes once and for all, at least as far as Montana law is concerned, climate science is decidedly not settled.
“And not only is it the highest court of a sovereign state, but it ruled that there is no scientific consensus that is sufficiently well-settled to allow for them to decide the case purely as a matter of law.”
2. Held v Montana
Montana AG Knudsen should have dismissed Held v Montana based on the now-proven-false climate prediction of Barhaugh v. Montana and the Montana Supreme Court ruling.
The Montana Supreme Court ruled in 2011,
“There is no scientific consensus that is sufficiently well-settled to allow a court to decide the case purely as a matter of law.”
Consensus has no bearing on scientific truth. Montana’s AG Knudsen should have known this because all trial lawyers learn it.
Republican AG Knudson should have argued that consensus proves nothing in science. The only relevant proof in science is proof that a hypothesis is false.
Yet AG Knudsen stipulated “consensus” was valid at the beginning of the HvM trial:
“for the purposes of trial, there is a scientific consensus that earth is warming as a direct result of human GHG emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels.”
AG Knudsen’s “consensus” stipulation contradicted the Montana Supreme Court.
AG Knudsen’s climate stipulation put him to the left of former Democrat AG Bullock.
On 9/16/2025, Matthew Brown, of the lying Associated Press, wrote about HvM:
Young climate activists and their attorneys who won a landmark global warming trial against the state of Montana are trying to convince a federal judge to block President Donald Trump’s executive orders promoting fossil fuels.
No, they did not “win.” Montana AG Knudsen purposely LOST Held v Montana as Montana WEF man ordered him to do.
Knudsen produced NO defense, NO relevant expert witness, and NO challenge to the plaintiffs’ expert witness claims. He laid on the grass and let the opposition trample on Montana.
Knudsen’s purposeful loss of HvM is the worst betrayal by an elected official of the people who voted for him that I have ever witnessed.
3. Lighthiser v Trump
Lighthiser v. Trump uses the same bad science as Barhaugh v. Montana and Held v Montana.
On September 17, 2025, I traveled to Missoula and sat in on part of the Lighthiser v Trump trial. In my view, Trump’s attorney made good arguments to dismiss LvT. Now, we wait for the judge to decide whether to dismiss LvT.
If LvT continues, I encourage Trump’s attorney to use the arguments that I describe in my other articles to prove hypotheses (1), (2), and (3) are false. They are easy proofs to make in court.
If the LvT trial continues, Trump’s attorney should plan to prove hypotheses (1) and (2) are false and as a bonus prove that (3) is also false. This defeat would remove the influence of the climate fraud on politics.
Comment:
September 17 and 18, 2025, was a two-day injunction hearing in the case of Lighthiser v. Trump, in the Federal District of Montana Butte Division. While federal Judge Dana Christensen listened to a few more of the plaintiffs’ witnesses and closing arguments, he was mulling over a few difficult legal questions regarding the plaintiffs’ injunction request. [Source: Missoula Current]
“In your motion, it says you want a preliminary injunction from me prohibiting the defendants from implementing these three orders. What exactly does that look like? I enjoin them, and what else do I do?” Christensen asked plaintiffs’ attorney Julia Olson during her closing statement. “Let’s assume these defendants elect to continue to implement policy favoring fossil fuels regardless of what I say. What will I do then?”
Olson said the defense attorneys hadn’t contested the statement that the central purpose of the executive orders is unleashing fossil fuels. But in his closing statement for the defense, DOJ attorney Michael Sawyer said that wasn’t the only thing the plaintiffs had to show. They have to prove they have standing by showing how they’re harmed by the executive orders and how that harm might be relieved by an injunction and eventually a ruling. That last part, known as redressability, was perplexing Christensen, and Sawyer weighed in, saying such an “unprecedented” injunction would be too difficult to police.
“If there were to be a preliminary injunction, there would be numerous requests back here. Every time an agency action is issued that plaintiffs didn’t like, that they thought was too friendly to fossil fuels, they’d be back here again,” Sawyer said. “What we have here is hundreds of lawsuits packed into one.”
The Defendants Brief in Opposition to Plantiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction is here.
In addition to the AG Montana and US DOJ, the submission was joined by AGs from:
Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Guam
in this video, John Robson deconstructs the recent attempt to indict hydrocarbon fuel producers and deprive the world of 80% of the primary energy it needs. The transcript is in italics with my bolds and added images.
This just in. Canadian companies convicted of burning up planet after show trial. Hydrocarbon bureaucrats sentenced to economic death. As you see, this breaking news caught me on the road here in this hotel. But somebody has to say something. So for the climate discussion nexus, I’m John Robson, and this is our quick reaction response to the pseudoscientific claim that Canadian companies are destroying the earth a bit.
And that response is that this court has no legitimacy at all. What it’s doing is no more science than what Lysenko did. It’s politics in a wig and ugly politics at that. According to a media friendly study in Nature, complete with its own lurid press release, sorry, news article:
The weather attribution wizards have nailed not just human CO2, but yes, individual firms for causing bad weather, and they shall be sued into extinction. After all, this new weather attribution was invented to bypass the tedious necessity of detecting trends in weather before explaining them, for the very purpose not to facilitate understanding, but to facilitate lawsuits.
As Roger Pielke Jr. recently growled while examining a hatchet job on the US Department of Energy skeptical red team climate report, he said, quote, “In my areas of expertise, he had found numerous statements that were simply false. among them that world weather attribution was not created with litigation in mind.”And how does he know that that claim is false? Because he did actual research, including finding a quotation from WWA’s chief scientist, Fredericke Otto:
Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.”
Of course, it was. And here we go. As the Nature propaganda said:
Legal experts say it’s a line of evidence that could feed into climate litigation that focuses on specific events such as the 2021 heatwave that hammered the US Pacific Northwest in 2021. Already, a county government in Oregon has filed a 52 billion US civil lawsuit against fossil fuel companies for contributing to that event.
So, it’s revealing, and not in a good way, that the Nature Study itself credits upfront “approaches promoted by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative and other Methods.”
Alarmists don’t love Weather Attribution because it conducts fair trials. They love it because it convicts everybody with roughly the subtlety of Andrey Vyshinsky or Lavrentiy Beria. But it is not science. As Patrick Brown pointed out this January, their tricks for stacking the jury box include, in this case, in order to attribute droughts to human evil and folly, they overwhelmingly studied places where drought had increased, even though globally there were more places where it decreased. You know, just in case their models let them down, but they’re not likely to. [See Beware Claims Attributing Extreme Events to Hydrocarbons]
As we noted in June, dizzy with success, the fellow travelers at CNN touted a study where:
“Using a combination of scientific theory, modern observations, and multiple sophisticated computer models, researchers found a clear signal of human-caused climate change was likely discernable with high confidence as early as 1885.”
That is before the invention of the internal combustion automobile. Now, the obvious implication here, and the correct one, is that these models would find such a signal anywhere because we’re told that in 1885, atmospheric CO2 was around 293 parts per million, just a whisker above the 280 parts per million that alarmists wrongly believe was constant in pre-industrial times. That very small change couldn’t possibly have measurably affected the weather. Such a fluctuation is very obviously noise, not signal. Especially when it’s coming from ice cores whose bubbles take decades or even centuries to seal.
Yet the source here tells us that in 1885 it was 293.3 parts per million. And this mathiness looks impressive, but it’s actually another key warning sign that something that is not science is lurching about in a stolen lab code. Real science deals in uncertainties. It shows error bars. Fake science bludgeons the public with spurious decimal places. According to the CBC’s credulous take:
“I was surprised that even the smallest carbon majors were actually very substantially contributing to the probability of the heat waves, said Yan Quilkai, a climate scientist at ETHZurich, who led the study.”
Oh, come now. Surely you suspected your rigged models would convict the defendant of a serious crime. After all, it’s what they’re for. And here we go. The study allegedly found that major oil companies alone caused more than half the supposed 1.3° C warming since pre-industrial times. And that of that share, Canadian companies caused 0.01°C.
I mean, one might retort, De minimis non curat lex ( The law does not concern itself about trifles.) if not educated in a government school, but instead in Latin or in sound constitutional and legal principles. Or you might say, get the heck out of my lab if you’ve been educated in science because there is no way, no way at all that 0.01 out of 1.30 is signal and not noise here.
Now to his credit or that of the shattered remains of his conscience, nature’s Jeff Tollefson does admit that:
“despite the eyepopping estimates for responsibilities allocated to individual carbon majors, the uncertainties remain high in many instances in large part because the most extreme heat waves are statistically rare.”
Yeah, indeed they’re so rare that there’s no statistically sound way of determining how likely they are. As we pointed out in our turning down the heat waves fact check video with regard to that 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome that the alarmists so love:
“The heatwave could be viewed as virtually impossible without global warming. But it was virtually impossible with it as well. Sometimes weird things happen.”
What’s more, World Weather Attribution’s gleeful attribution of it to humans and our carbon original sin was eventually submitted to a serious journal and so rubbished by one of the reviewers that they had to add a bunch of disclaimers saying that of course they couldn’t really know. But did it dent their popularity or their self-confidence? Hooha. This study in Nature says, “The median estimate indicates that climate change has also increased the probability of heat waves by more than 10,000.” 10,000 what? we ask. Percent? Times?
But it gets worse because this kind of talk suggests that they know how common and intense heat waves were around 1850, and how common and intense they are now. But they don’t. They have no idea. There weren’t systematic measurements of daily temperature in most of the world even into the mid 20th century. And the proxies when you go further back certainly give no idea how common or intense they were even a century ago, let alone 500 years.
So they’re making it up, then hiding it with decimals, saying in a spreadsheet attached to the study that, for instance, Cenovus Energy alone increased the probability of an early 2009 heatwave in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania’s northern provinces by 1.01% and its intensity by, get this, 0.0003°C. Four decimal places. As the Duke of Wellington once said, “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.”
It’s also anti-scientific to claim to give a change in global temperature to two decimal places over the last 175 years when nobody knows the temperature anywhere to within one decimal place a century ago. And another thing we actually do know that during the Holocene era the earth has cycled regularly between warmer and cooler periods including down from the medieval warm period into the little ice age and back up after 1850.
So at least some of the warming since must by any logical standard have been natural. In which case they’re blaming oil companies alone for more than the entire human contribution. But the attributors duck this absurdity by absurdly assuming that it’s basically all on us. The chutzpah here is astounding. But it’s exactly the kind of thing they do.
And if you use the same warped modeling to assess the shares of some other human activity, you’d dependably get a searing indictment. And in fact, if you used it on all of them, I’ll bet you you’d get over a 100% of that 1.3 degrees C, never mind if whatever smaller share actually wasn’t natural. But they don’t run that kind of test because what they’re doing isn’t science. They’re not seeking truth and testing theories ruthlessly. They’re zealots shrieking about enemies of the people.
They also write:
“with reference to 1850 to 1900, climate change has increased the median intensity of heat waves by 1.36°C over 2000 to 2009, of which 0.44°C is traced back to the 14 top carbon majors and 0.22°C to the 166 others. These contributions correspond respectively to 32% and 16% of the overall effect of climate change.”
And again, it sounds precise, all right, but climate change is a statistical description of changes in long-term weather. It isn’t a causal force. So, they don’t even know what climate change is. And all those double decimals swirling around trying to hypnotize you are a dead giveaway that they’re in over their heads or worse. And it is worse because they also don’t know what science is. They don’t do counterfactuals and consider what extreme events might have been prevented by warming as well as caused by it.
And they’re certainly not comparing known extreme events today with known extreme events in the past.Instead, they take what did happen and sometimes what didn’t, match it against invented scenarios to prove that we caused bad weather. And then they say, “Gotcha.” when the computer Julie says, “Yes, we caused bad weather.” And then they speed dial their lawyer.
That CBC item included the usual guff from the usual suspects, including Naomi Oreskes. It said,
“referring to previous research from her and other experts showing major oil companies knew about the impacts of carbon emissions and the dangers of global warming decades before countries started enacting climate policies.”
Right? Trotsky was a conscious agent of fascism and imperial oil has been trying to incinerate the earth for half a century and now it’s been proved to two decimal places to the satisfaction of people in the media who barely survived grade 10 math. So, while speaking of people not doing science when it is their job, let us also mention people not doing journalism when it is their job.
CTV, for instance, pounced on the supposed study and shrieked, “These Canadian companies among humanity’s biggest carbon emitters study says.” But the study says nothing of the kind. And in fact, nor really does the story, which includes this bit:
“The 14 largest carbon emitters were led by fossil fuel and coal producers from the former Soviet Union and China, followed by oil companies Saudi Aramco, Gasprom, and Exxon Mobile. Together, they made the same contribution to climate change as the remaining 166 entities, according to the study.”
So, Canada’s eight enemies of humanity actually ranked between 70th and 163rd. And together, they supposedly warmed the planet by 0.01°C over nearly two centuries. Which means if they kept at it for another 1750 years, they might warm the place by 0.1° C. And anyone who tells you they can calculate the impact on the weather of such a trivial change is a charlatan and a rogue. And journalists who parrot such claims without any attempt to do basic math, let alone probe how the authors think they know these things, or what other views exist, belong at Pravda, not in free world newspapers.
Now, before concluding, your honor, we wish to say one thing directly to the prisoners currently slumped in the dock or on the lam. The CBC reported that it: “reached out to several carbon majors mentioned in the story, but they either declined to comment or didn’t respond by publication time.” Likewise: “Nature also reached out to the following companies for comment on the study’s findings, but did not receive a response. BP, Shell, Chevron, National Iranian Oil Company, and Coal India.”
And what indeed could they say? The hydrocarbon energy companies have for too long and with too few exceptions followed a strategy of appeasement, confessing on the science and groveling on the policy, endorsing net zero in the hope of being the last one shot. But since everybody gets shot, it was always a terrible plan. And with the execution fast approaching, it’s time to abandon it.
Of course, if you honestly believe that your product is destroying the Earth, you should say so and get the heck out of that line of work. But if you don’t believe it, stand up for yourselves and not just by saying that the other companies are worse. Because these climate fanatics are not going to stop. They plan to destroy you using pseudoscience to win lawfare. They intend to sue you into oblivion. You, the companies that the rest of us rely on to avoid starving and freezing, and then they’re going to wonder why it got dark all of a sudden. And darkness at noon in the lab definitely has something to do with it.
So, please don’t just stand there. Say something.
Plead not guilty because you’re not and they are.
For the climate discussion nexus, I’m John Robson and that’s our quick response to this Nature study indicting oil companies for setting the planet on fire.
As expected, climatists were aghast at content in the DOE Climate Review, and the usual suspects complained to the court (Massachusetts, no surprise) on a technicality. The legal maneuvers are twisted, also usual when deployed by wealthy obstructionist pros like EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) and UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists). After some digging, I found the documentary trail with excerpts highlighted below and links in red to official docs for those interested. Source: Court Listener Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. Wright (1:25-cv-12249)
The Climate Working Group worked in secret for months to produce a report for DOE and EPA that would provide justification for their predetermined goal of rescinding the Endangerment Finding. In May, unbeknownst to the public, the group transmitted its report to EPA, and EPA then relied extensively on the report in preparing its proposal to rescind the Endangerment Finding.
It was not until the same day that EPA released that proposal, July 29, that the existence and work of the group was made public. Secrecy was so important to Defendants that when the New York Times asked one of the group’s members in early July about his role at DOE, the member obscured his work for the group and simply said that he is an “unpaid person who’s available to them if they need it.”
But federal law does not permit agencies to create or rely on such secret, unaccountable groups when engaged in policymaking. In the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), Congress mandated transparency in the establishment and operation of any federal advisory committee, including by requiring that the group’s formation be promptly disclosed and that its meetings, emails, and other records be open to the public. Here, Defendants did not disclose the Climate Working Group’s existence until months after it began working, and not a single meeting or record has been made public other than the group’s report. Defendants also violated FACA’s prohibition on stacking an advisory committee with adherents of only one point of view; the Climate Working Group’s members were all chosen for their skepticism of climate science, and the group does not have a single member that agrees with the consensus of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community on the effects of climate change.
The Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists bring this action to enjoin Defendants’ flagrant violations of FACA, to bring transparency to the Climate Working Group’s work to date as the law requires, and to compel Defendants to follow the law if they wish to rely on outside scientific advisors to justify their actions going forward. If DOE and EPA wish to establish an advisory committee for the enormously consequential purposes for which they have put the Climate Working Group to use, they must comply with the rules that Congress has prescribed.
Plaintiffs invoke the Federal Advisory Committee Act (“FACA”), and contend that the Department of Energy (“DOE”) and Secretary Christopher Wright violated its requirements in establishing the now-dissolved DOE Climate Working Group (“CWG”). But the true goal of their lawsuit is not promoting openness and transparency in public decision-making. While Plaintiffs complain that they only recently learned of the CWG’s existence, DOE released its Report publicly weeks ago, and the Government provided opportunities for public comment on the CWG’s work. Instead, as the introduction to their Complaint makes clear, Plaintiffs’ objective is to delay and prematurely undermine a contemplated future policy decision by a different agency: namely, EPA’s proposed reconsideration of its 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding. Their sole hook for that relief is that EPA cited the CWG report—among numerous other sources—in a notice of proposed rulemaking (“NPRM”). That gambit fails at every level. Plaintiffs’ requested relief is foreclosed by Article III, the scope of FACA, and equitable principles.
More broadly, Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction or, in the Alternative, For Summary Judgment or Consolidation Under Rule 65(a)(2), ECF Nos. 15-16, fails for at least three different reasons. First, Plaintiffs fail to establish that they are likely to succeed on the merits, because the CWG is not an entity covered by FACA; the statutory requirements are inapplicable to groups assembled to exchange facts or information with federal officials. In all events, most of Plaintiffs’ claims are now moot due to the CWG’s dissolution.
Second, Plaintiffs have identified no imminent irreparable harm requiring judicial intervention at this early juncture. They face no harm (irreparable or otherwise) from the prospect of ongoing work performed by the CWG because the group has already been dissolved. And EPA’s upcoming September 22, 2025, deadline for public comment on its NPRM poses no harm, because Plaintiffs are free to raise their concerns about the CWG report via public comment. Nor would any alleged harm stemming from an inability to comment be irreparable. Plaintiffs request that this Court ultimately issue declaratory relief finding the CWG unlawful and an injunction preventing Defendants from relying on its work. Either remedy would fully repair any injury suffered by Plaintiffs from the FACA violations they allege if they ultimately prevail on the merits, rendering a preliminary injunction unnecessary.
Third, Plaintiffs have not shown that the balance of the equities or the public interest weighs in their favor. These factors favor allowing the Government to use the information provided by the scientists of the CWG, promoting dialogue based on honest scrutiny and scientific transparency in the public sphere, and not prematurely pretermitting an ongoing rulemaking process. Even if the Court were inclined to grant some relief, the remedies sought by Plaintiffs are overbroad. Even when a FACA violation is proven on the merits, injunctions preventing the use of committee work are a highly disfavored remedy, as declaratory relief can fully remedy all injuries alleged. Plaintiffs have certainly shown no entitlement to such an extraordinary remedy at the preliminary injunction stage. And because the CWG has been dissolved, no practical purpose is served by an order compelling it to comply with FACA’s procedural requirements going forward. Nor is extension of the comment period on EPA’s NPRM warranted or proper. Plaintiffs cannot circumvent the Clean Air Act or APA finality requirements by alleging a FACA violation in order to indefinitely delay a pending rulemaking with which they disagree.
For months, Defendants brazenly violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act. They constituted the Climate Working Group (CWG) in secret, had it meet in secret to produce a report with advice and recommendations for policymakers, and then provided the report to EPA in secret for use in a proposal to rescind EPA’s Endangerment Finding. Defendants present no serious argument that they did not violate FACA in taking all of these actions. Instead, when these actions were challenged in court, Defendants purported to dissolve the CWG the day before their opposition was due, and in their filing the next day, they argued that the dissolution mooted the case and left the Court powerless to provide relief for their many legal violations.
But the rule of law is not a game of catch me if you can. DOE, EPA, and the CWG violated FACA with every action they took producing and utilizing the CWG Report, and those unlawful actions continue to harm Plaintiffs in myriad ways. Indeed, Defendants do not dispute that the CWG lacked fairly balanced views—including views representative of those held by Plaintiffs—and was subject to inappropriate influence from Secretary Wright. The continued existence and use of the CWG Report produced with these legal infirmities significantly harms Plaintiffs, and there are multiple forms of declaratory, injunctive and Administrative Procedure Act relief that this Court may enter to redress these injuries.
Amicus writes to explain why censoring the CWG Report in EPA’s ongoing rulemaking is inappropriate and beyond the power of this Court. The extraordinary request for censorship here should fail for multiple reasons, but AmFree covers five.
First, Plaintiffs lack standing to seek relief against EPA because censoring the study would not redress any cognizable Article III harm. See Nat. Res. Def. Council v. Peña, 147 F.3d 1012, 1020–23 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (so holding). Second, the Clean Air Act strips district courts of power to enjoin EPA’s actions in ongoing Clean Air Act rulemaking proceedings or to control the agency’s rulemaking docket, making courts of appeals (in this case, the D.C. Circuit) the “sole forum” for these disputes. See 42 U.S.C. § 7607(b), (d)(8). Third, censorship remedies are not available under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) or through a writ of mandamus, because such an order does not compel a discrete action required by FACA. Fourth, censoring the government’s use of the CWG Report is punishment that exceeds this Court’s remedial equity jurisdiction. Fifth, Plaintiffs cannot show irreparable harm because they have adequate avenues for judicial relief namely, challenging EPA’s rulemaking record in the D.C. Circuit, after a final rule.
Plaintiffs “are champing at the bit to challenge EPA’s anticipated rule [repealing] carbon dioxide emission[]” standards for new motor vehicles. In re Murray Energy Corp., 788 F.3d 330, 333 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (Kavanaugh, J.). “But courts have never reviewed proposed rules, notwithstanding the costs that parties may routinely incur in preparing for anticipated final rules.” Id. at 335. This Court should not do so here.
Our report is the first from Washington in years that deviates from the narrative of a climate headed for catastrophe. That these findings surprised many speaks to a governmental failure to communicate climate science accurately to the public.
Reports like ours may draw a lot of anger, but our work accurately portrays important aspects of climate science.
Our work has attracted strong criticism, despite its grounding in established science. Almost 60,000 comments were submitted to the Federal Register during the month after its publication, and the Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit to prevent the Energy Department or Environmental Protection Agency from using the report in decision-making.
Though scientists supporting the so-called consensus on climate change have organized several serious critiques, these at most add detail and nuance to our findings, without negating the report’s central points.
They still merit a response, which will form the next round in an overdue public debate on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate policies must balance the risks of climate change against a response’s costs, efficacy, and collateral effects.
Reports like ours may draw a lot of anger, but our work accurately portrays important aspects of climate science. Acknowledging the facts is essential for informed policy decisions.
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.
Full text in pdf format is available in English at link below:
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).
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘The diagnosis and likely treatment for it is highly relevant,’
doctor tells Free Beacon
A first-of-its-kind lawsuitaccusing some of the nation’s largest oil companies of causing global warmingand 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.
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
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).
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 Biasesthat 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 warmingdecreases 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.
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 isvia changes in atmospheric wind shear and humidity.
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.
“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.
Linnea Lueken explains the false alarm in her Climate Realism article Climate Change Is Not Causing New England’s ‘Creepy’ Bacteria and Bugs, Boston Globe. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
Science Matters 
