Climate Science | Science Matters

UAH Stays Cool Except NH Land Warms February 2026

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

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

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

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

gmt-warming-events

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

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

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

February 2026 UAH Temps: NH Land Spikes with Cooling Elsewhere

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

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

Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes. In July 2024 all oceans were unchanged except for Tropical warming, while all land regions rose slightly. In August we saw a warming leap in SH land, slight Land cooling elsewhere, a dip in Tropical Ocean temp and slightly elsewhere. September showed a dramatic drop in SH land, overcome by a greater NH land increase. 2025 has shown a sharp contrast between land and sea, first with ocean air temps falling in January recovering in February. Then in November and December SH land temps spiked while ocean temps showed litle change. Now in February 2026 NH land temps doubled, from Dec. 0.53C up to 1.14C last month. Despite SH land changing little, and Tropical land cooling, the Global land anomaly jumped up from 0.53 to 0.93C. Meanwhile ocean air temps dropped markedly in NH, and changed little elsewhere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Land Air Temperatures Tracking in Seesaw Pattern

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

Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land. The seesaw pattern in Land temps is similar to ocean temps 2021-22, except that SH is the outlier, hitting bottom in January 2023. Then exceptionally SH goes from -0.6C up to 1.4C in September 2023 and 1.8C in August 2024, with a large drop in between. In November, SH and the Tropics pulled the Global Land anomaly further down despite a bump in NH land temps. February showed a sharp drop in NH land air temps from 1.07C down to 0.56C, pulling the Global land anomaly downward from 0.9C to 0.6C. Some ups and downs followed with returns close to February values in August. A remarkable spike in October was completely reversed in November/December, along with NH dropping sharply bringing the Global Land anomaly down to 0.52C, half of its peak value of 1.17C 09/2024. Now in January and February Global land rebounded up to 1.14C, led by a NH warming spike.

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

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

With the sharp drops in Nov., Dec. and January 2023 temps, there was no increase over 1980. Then in 2023 the buildup to the October/November peak exceeded the sharp April peak of the El Nino 1998 event. It also surpassed the February peak in 2016. In 2024 March and April took the Global anomaly to a new peak of 0.94C. The cool down started with May dropping to 0.9C, later months declined steadily until August Global Land and Ocean was down to 0.39C. then rose slightly to 0.53 in October, before dropping to 0.3C in December, and slightly higher now in February 2026.

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

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

2026 IPCC Global Warming Claims Not Only Wrong, But Impossible

Posted on 6 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

Climate as heat engine. A heat engine produces mechanical energy in the form of work W by absorbing an amount of heat Qin from a hot reservoir (the source) and depositing a smaller amount Qout into a cold reservoir (the sink). (a) An ideal Carnot heat engine does the job with the maximum possible efficiency. (b) Real heat engines are irreversible, and some work is lost via irreversible entropy production TδS. (c) For the climate system, the ultimate source is the Sun, with outer space acting as the sink. The work is performed internally and produces winds and ocean currents. As a result, Qin = Qout.

Update 2026

Kevin Mooney writes at Real Clear Energy Trump Is Right: Science Demands That We Overturn the ‘Endangerment Finding’ Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Taking on the climate establishment with research that debunks the media narrative.

Science is on the side of the Trump administration’s efforts to unwind the U.S. from costly climate regulations—much to the consternation of major media platforms that peddle unfounded, politically motivated assertions.

That’s why fresh research and updated findings into the impact of carbon dioxide emissions should figure more prominently into an otherwise laudatory and audacious White House strategy to repeal the 2009 endangerment finding. In my new book, Climate Porn: How and Why Anti-Population Zealots Fabricate Science, while Targeting American Capitalism, Freedom, and Independence, I review the science and common sense that reiterates CO2 is a naturally occurring, highly beneficial compound. Indeed, it is critical to life on Earth. And yet, the Obama administration saw fit to declare CO2 a “pollutant” in its endangerment finding, which found that CO2 poses a threat to public health and welfare. This enabled the EPA to unleash a wave of costly climate regulations.

Trump, Zeldin, Wright, and crew should not just rely on legal arguments, but rather double down on the science as they take on the endangerment finding. Posterity will thank them.

Recent Research Discredits Climatists’ Fearful Claims

In light of the above context, I am posting a recent and significant rebuttal of the IPCC “consensus” science that is full of holes like swiss cheese. Ad Huijser recently published a paper explaining why IPCC claims about global warming are contradicted by observations of our Earth thermal system including a number of internal and external subsytems. The title Global Warming and the “impossible” Radiation Imbalance links to the pdf. This post is a synopsis to present the elements of his research findings, based on the rich detail, math and references found in the document. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. H/T Kenneth Richard and No Tricks Zone.

Abstract

Any perturbation in the radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) that induces a net energy flux into- or out of Earth’s thermal system will result in a surface temperature response until a new equilibrium is reached. According to the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis which attributes global warming solely to rising concentrations of Greenhouse gases (GHGs), the observed increase in Earth’s radiative imbalance is entirely driven by anthropogenic GHG-emissions.

However, a comparison of the observed TOA radiation imbalance with the assumed GHG forcing trend reveals that the latter is insufficient to account for the former. This discrepancy persists even when using the relatively high radiative forcing values for CO2 adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), thereby challenging the validity of attributing recent global warming exclusively to human-caused GHG emissions.

In this paper, Earth’s climate system is analyzed as a subsystem of the broader Earth Thermal System, allowing for the application of a “virtual balance” approach to distinguish between anthropogenic and other, natural contributions to global warming. Satellite-based TOA radiation data from the CERES program (since 2000), in conjunction with Ocean Heat Content (OHC) data from the ARGO float program (since 2004), indicate that natural forcings must also play a significant role. Specifically, the observed warming aligns with the net increase in incoming shortwave solar radiation (SWIN), likely due to changes in cloud cover and surface albedo. Arguments suggesting that the SWIN trend is merely a feedback response to GHG-induced warming are shown to be quantitatively insufficient.

This analysis concludes that approximately two-thirds of the observed global warming must be attributed to natural factors that increase incoming solar radiation, with only one-third attributable to rising GHG-concentrations. Taken together, these findings imply a much lower climate sensitivity than suggested by IPCC-endorsed Global Circulation Models (GCMs).

Introduction

On a global scale and over longer periods of time, the average surface temperature of our climate system reacts similarly to that of a thermal system such as a pot of water on a stove: when the incoming heat is steady and below boiling, the system stabilizes when the heat loss (via radiation and convection) equals the input. Analogously, Earth’s surface-atmosphere interface is the main absorber and emitter of heat. Reducing the “flame” (solar input) leads to cooling, regardless of the total heat already stored in the system. The system’s average temperature will drop as well, as soon as the heating stops. So, no sign of any “warming in the pipeline” for such a simple system.

The two transport mechanisms, air and ocean, operate on different timescales. Air has a low specific heat capacity, but high wind speeds make it a fast medium for heat transfer. Oceans, by contrast, have a high specific heat capacity but move more slowly. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) with the well-known Gulf Stream carrying warm water from south to north, can reach speeds up to about 3 m/s. But its warm current remains largely confined to surface layers due to limited solar radiation penetration and gravity-induced stratification. With a path-lengths of up to 8,000 km and an average speed of 1.5 m/s, ocean heat takes approximately 2 months to travel from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic. This is comparable to the 1 to 2 months delay between solar input and temperature response in the annual cycle, suggesting that oceanic heat transport is part of the climate system’s normal operation. Climate adaptation times from anthropogenic influences are estimated at 3 to 5 years. If “warming in the pipeline” exists, it must be buried in the much colder, deeper ocean layers.

ARGO float data since 2004 show substantial annual increases in Ocean Heat Content (OHC), sometimes expressed in mind-boggling terms such as 10²² joules per year (see Fig.1). While this may sound alarming [1,2], when converted to flux, it represents less than 1 W/m², a mere 0.6% of the average 160 W/m² of absorbed solar energy at the surface. All the rest is via evaporation, convection and ultimately by radiation sent back to space after globally being redistributed by wind and currents.

Fig. 1. Ocean Heat Content (OHC) anomaly from 0–2000 meters over time, shown as 3-month and annual moving averages (CMAA), along with their time derivatives. Notable are the relatively large variations, likely reflecting the influence of El Niño events. The average radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), estimated at 0.85 W/m², corresponds approximately to the midpoint of the time series (around 2015). Data: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/global-ocean-heat-content/basin_heat_data.html [7].

This raises the question: Why would extra GHGs that have only a limited effect on the 99.4% of the outgoing flux, have affected this 0.6% residue during a couple of decennia in such a way that we should be scared about all that “warming in the pipeline” as Hansen et al. [2] are warning us for? In the following sections, we examine data showing that observed trends in the radiation imbalance and OHC are better explained by the internal dynamics of the Earth’s thermal system and natural forcings such as from increasing solar radiation, rather than solely by GHG emissions.

Estimating our climate’s thermal capacity CCL

The rather fast responses of our climate indicates that the thermal capacity of our climate must be much less than the capacity of the entire Earth thermal system. This climate heat capacity CCL depends on how sunlight is being absorbed, how that heat is transferred to the atmosphere and which part of it is being stored in either land or ocean.

At continental land-area, sunlight is absorbed only at the very surface where the generated heat is also in direct contact with the atmosphere. Seasonal temperature variations don’t penetrate more than 1 to 2 meters deep in average and as a consequence, storage of heat is relatively small. Sunlight can penetrate pure water to several hundred meters deep, but in practice, penetration in the oceans is limited by scattering and absorption of organic and inorganic material. A good indication is the depth of the euphotic zone where algae and phytoplankton live, which need light to grow. In clear tropical waters where most of the sunlight hits our planet, this zone is 80 to 100 m deep [12].

Another important factor in our climate’s heat capacity is how this ocean layer of absorbed heat is in contact with the atmosphere. Tides, wind, waves and convection continuously mix the top layer of our oceans, by which heat is easily exchanged with the atmosphere. This mixed-layer is typically in the order of 25 – 100 m, dependent on season, latitude and on the definition of “well mixed” [13]. Below this ~100 m thick top-layer, where hardly any light is being absorbed and the mixing process has stopped, ocean temperatures drop quickly with depth. As the oceans’ vertical temperature gradient at that depth doesn’t support conductive nor convective heat flows going upward, climate processes at the surface will thus become isolated from the rest of the Earth’ thermal system.

Figure 4 with the Change in Ocean Heat Content vs. Depth over the period 2004 – 2020 obtained via the ARGO-floats [6,14], offers a good indication for the average climate capacity CCL. It shows the top layer with a high surface temperature change according to the observed global warming rate of about 0.015 K/year, and a steep cut off at about 100 m depth in line with the explanation above. Below the top layer, temperature effects are small and difficult to interpret, probably due to averaging over all kinds of temperature/depth profiles in the various oceans ranging from Tropical- to Polar regions.

In case of a “perfect” equilibrium (N = 0, dTS/dt = 0), all of the absorbed sunlight up to about 100 m deep, has to leave on the ocean-atmosphere interface again. However, deep oceans are still very cold with a stable, negative temperature gradient towards the bottom. This gradient will anyhow push some of the absorbed heat downwards. Therefore, even at a climate equilibrium with dTS/dt= 0, we will observe N > 0. With the large heat capacity of the total ocean volume, that situation will not change easily, as it takes about 500 years with today’s N ≈ +1 W/m2 to raise its average temperature just 1°C.

The Earth’s climate system can thus be regarded as a subset of the total Earth’s thermal system (ETS) responding to different relaxation times. The climate relaxes to a new equilibrium within 3–5 years, while the deeper oceans operate on multidecadal or even longer timescales, related to their respective thermal capacities C for the ETS, and CCL for the climate system.

The (near) “steady state” character of current climate change

Despite the ongoing changes in climate, the current state can be considered a “near” steady-state. The GHG forcing trend has been pretty constant for decades. Other forcings, primarily in the SW channel, are also likely to change slowly and can be approximated as having constant trends over decadal timescales. Similarly, despite yearly fluctuations, the surface temperature trend has remained fairly stable since 2000.

This analysis strengthens the conclusion that the increase in both N(t) and N0(t) are not a direct consequence of greenhouse gas emissions, but rather of enhanced forcing in the SW-channel.

The preceding analysis highlights how the IPCC’s assumptions diverge significantly from observed reality. While the IPCC model components may collectively reproduce the observed warming trend, they fail to individually align with key observational data, in particular the Ocean Heat Content.

Figure 6 also illustrates that changes in cloudiness are more pronounced on the Northern Hemisphere, especially at mid-latitudes and over Western Europe. For example, the Dutch KNMI weather-station at Cabauw (51.87°N, 4.93oE), where all ground-level radiation components are monitored every 10 minutes, recorded an increase in solar radiation of almost +0.5 W/m²/year since 2000 [26]. Applying the 0.43 net-CRE factor (conservative for this latitude), we estimate a local forcing trend dFSW/dt ≈ 0.2 W/m²/year. This is an order of magnitude larger than the GHG forcing (0.019–0.037 W/m²/year). Even with the IPCC values, GHGs can just account for about 16% of the warming at this station. The average temperature trend for this rural station located in a polder largely covered by grassland, is with ~ +0.043 K/year almost 3x the global average. This, nor the other trends mentioned above can be adequately explained by the IPCC’s GHG-only model.

The IPCC places strong emphasis on the role of climate feedbacks in amplifying the warming effect of greenhouse gases (GHGs) [8]. These feedbacks are considered secondary consequences of Anthropogenic Global Warming, driven by the initial temperature increase from GHGs. Among them, Water-Vapor feedback is the most significant. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor (approximately +7%/K) and since water vapor is a potent GHG, even a small warming from CO2 can amplify itself through enhanced evaporation.

Other feedbacks recognized by the IPCC include Lapse Rate, Surface Albedo, and Cloud feedbacks [8], all of which are inherently tied to the presence and behavior of water in its various phases. Therefore, these feedbacks are natural responses to temperature changes, regardless of the original cause of warming, be it GHGs, incoming solar variability, or internal effects. They are not additive components to natural climate sensitivity, as treated by the IPCC, but rather integral parts of it [4].

This analysis reinforces a fundamental point: climate feedbacks are not external modifiers of climate sensitivity; rather, they are inherent to the system. Their combined effect is already embedded in the climate response function. The IPCC’s treatment of feedbacks as additive components used to “explain” high sensitivities in GCMs is conceptually flawed. Physically, Earth’s climate is governed by the mass balance of water in all its phases: ice, snow, liquid, vapor, and clouds. The dynamics between these phases are temperature-sensitive, and they constitute the feedback processes. Feedbacks aren’t just add-ons to the climate system, they are our climate.

Ocean Heat Content increase

In the introduction, the “heat in the pipeline” concept: the idea that heat stored in the deep, cold ocean layers could later resurface to significantly influence surface temperatures, was challenged. Without a substantial decrease in surface temperatures to reverse ocean stratification, this seems highly unlikely. Large and rapid temperature fluctuations during the pre-industrial era with rates up to plus, but also minus 0.05 K/year over several decennia as recorded in the Central England Temperature (CET) series [27], more than three times the rate observed today, further undermine the notion of a slow-release heat mechanism dominating surface temperature trends.

Ocean Heat Content must be related to solar energy. It is the prime source of energy heating the Earth thermal system. Almost 1 W/m2 of that 240 W/m2 solar flux that is in average entering the system, is presently remaining in the oceans. This is an order of magnitude larger than the estimated 0.1 W/m2 of geothermal heat upwelling from the Earth inner core [11]. Extra greenhouse gasses don’t add energy to the system, but just obstruct cooling. As shown in Section 5.3, this accounts for a radiation imbalance offset τ dFGHG/dt, or equivalent to a contribution to dOHC/dt of only about 0.08 W/m2.
.
As redistribution of “heat in the pipeline” will not change the total OHC, roughly 3/4 of the observed positive trend in OHC must at least be attributed to rising solar input. The oceans act in this way as our climate system’s thermal buffer. It will mitigate warming during periods of increased solar input and dampen cooling when solar input declines, underscoring its critical role in Earth’s climate stability.

The strong downwards slope in the OHC before 1970 confirms the observation in Section 5.4 and expressed by (12) that around the turning point t = ζ, the forcing trend in the SW-channel had to be negative. Moreover, the rather slowly increasing 700-2000m OHC data in Fig.7 indicate that most of the fluctuations have occurred relatively close to the surface. Heat from e.g. seafloor volcanism as “warming from below”, is expected to show up more pronounced in this 700-2000m OHC-profile. Although we cannot rule out geothermal influences [29], this observation makes them less likely.

ERBE measurements of radiative imbalance.

As the OHC seems to be primarily coupled to SWIN, the most plausible cause would involve rapid changes in SW-forcing. A sudden drop in cloud-cover might explain such changes, but no convincing observations could be found for the 1960-1980 period. Alternatively, changes in the latitudinal distribution of cloud-cover as illustrated by Fig.6, can result in similar radiative impacts due to the stark contrast between a positive radiation imbalance in the Tropics and a very negative imbalance at the Poles. The ENSO-oscillations in the Pacific Ocean around the equator are a typical example for such influences, as also illustrated in Fig.3 [10]. Shifts in cloud distribution are linked to changes in wind patterns and/or ocean currents, reinforcing the idea as indicated in Section 1, that even minor disruptions in horizontal heat transport can trigger major shifts in our climate’s equilibrium [29, 30]. Sharp shifts in Earth’s radiation imbalance like the one around 1970 as inferred from Fig.7, may even represent one of those alleged tipping points. But in this case, certainly not one triggered by GHGs. Ironically, some climate scientists in the early 1970s predicted an impending (Little) Ice Age [31].

While additional data (e.g. radiation measurements) are needed to draw firm conclusions, the available evidence already challenges the prevailing GHG-centric narrative again. GHG emissions, with their near constant forcing rate, cannot account for the timing nor the magnitude of historical OHC trends, as NOAA explicitly suggests [32]. Similarly, claims by KNMI that “accelerations” in radiation imbalance trends are GHG-driven [1], are not supported by data. And finally, the alarms around “heat in the pipeline” must be exaggerated if not totally misplaced. Given the similarities in radiation imbalance and GHG forcing rates around 1970 with today’s situation, we must conclude that this assumed heat manifested itself at that time apparently as “cooling in the pipeline”.

However, warnings for continued warming even if we immediately stop now with emitting GHGs are nevertheless, absolutely justified. Only, it isn’t warming then from that heat in the pipeline due to historical emissions that will boost our temperatures. Warming will continue to go on as long as natural forcings will be acting. These are already today’s dominant drivers behind global temperature trends. And unfortunately, they will not be affected by the illusion of stopping global warming as created by implementing Net-Zero policies.

Summary and conclusions

This analysis demonstrates that a global warming scenario driven solely by greenhouse gases (GHGs) is inconsistent with more than 20 years of observations from space and of Ocean Heat Content. The standard anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis, which attributes all observed warming to rising GHG concentrations, particularly CO2, cannot explain the observed trends. Instead, natural factors, especially long-term increase in incoming solar radiation, appear to play a significant and likely dominant role in global warming since the mid-1970s.

The observed increase in incoming solar radiation cannot be accounted for by the possible anthropogenic side effects of Albedo- and Cloud-feedback. All evidence points to the conclusion that this “natural” forcing with a trend of about 0.035 W/m2/year is equal to, or even exceeds the greenhouse gas related forcing of about 0.019 W/m2/year. Based on these values, only 1/3rd of the observed temperature trend can be of anthropogenic origin. The remaining 2/3rd must stem from natural changes in our climate system, or more broadly, in our entire Earth’ thermal system.

Moreover, the observed increase in Earth’s radiation imbalance appears to be largely unrelated to GHGs. Instead, it correlates strongly with natural processes driving increased incoming solar radiation. Claims of “acceleration” in the radiation imbalance due to GHG emissions are not supported by the trend in accurately measured GHG concentrations. If any acceleration in global warming is occurring, it is almost certainly driven by the increasing flux of solar energy—an inherently natural phenomenon not induced by greenhouse gases.

In summary, this analysis challenges the notion that GHGs are the primary drivers of recent climate change. It underscores the importance of accounting for natural variability, especially in solar input, when interpreting warming trends and evaluating climate models.

Note: Dr. Ad Huijser, physicist and former CTO of Philips and director of the Philips Laboratories, describes himself as “amateur climatologist”. However his approach to climate physics is quite professional, I think.

See Also:

Our Atmospheric Heat Engine

January 2026 Ocean SSTs Warm Slightly

Posted on 15 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated. This January report is based on HadSST 4, but with a twist. The data is slightly different in the new version, 4.2.0.0 replacing 4.1.1.0. Product page is here.

The Current Context

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

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

Then in 2023-24 came an event resembling 2015-16 with a Tropical spike and two NH spikes alongside, all higher than 2015-16. There was also a coinciding rise in SH, and the Global anomaly was pulled up to 1.1°C in 2023, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak. Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. During 2 years of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by Tropics cooling from its 1.3°C peak 2024/01, down to 0.6C in September this year. Note the smaller peak in NH in July 2025 now declining along with SH and the Global anomaly cooler as well. In December the Global anomaly exactly matched the mean for this period, with all regions converging on that value, led by a 6 month drop in NH. Essentially, all the warming since 2015 was gone, with a slight warming starting 2026.

Comment:

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

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

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

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

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH. The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before. After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

Contemporary AMO Observations

Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future. So I find that ERSSTv5 AMO dataset has current data. It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic. “ERSST5 AMO follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.” So the values represent SST anomaly differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

The chart above confirms what Kaplan also showed. As August is the hottest month for the N. Atlantic, its variability, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin. Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Then in 2023 the peak reached 1.4C before declining to 0.9 last month. An annual chart below is informative:

Note the difference between blue/green years, beige/brown, and purple/red years. 2010, 2021, 2022 all peaked strongly in August or September. 1998 and 2007 were mildly warm. 2016 and 2018 were matching or cooler than the global average. 2023 started out slightly warm, then rose steadily to an extraordinary peak in July. August to October were only slightly lower, but by December cooled by ~0.4C.

Then in 2024 the AMO anomaly started higher than any previous year, then leveled off for two months declining slightly into April. Remarkably, May showed an upward leap putting this on a higher track than 2023, and rising slightly higher in June. In July, August and September 2024 the anomaly declined, and despite a small rise in October, ended close to where it began. Note 2025 started much lower than the previous year and headed sharply downward, well below the previous two years, then since April through September aligning with 2010. In October there was an unusual upward spike, now reversed down to match 2022 and 2016. An orange dot on the left axis represents the value of 0.71C for January 2026

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

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

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

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

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century. SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.” The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect. The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? And is the sun adding forcing to this process?

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

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

World is Better Off Dispelling Al Gore Climate Fears

Posted on 19 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

Miranda Devine reports in NY Post article Trump debunking Al Gore’s climate fears has made the world a better place. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Ding dong, the climate hoax is dead.

Twenty years after Al Gore’s apocalyptic movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Trump administration has put the final nail in the coffin of the lie that scared a generation into believing the planet was about to explode in flames if they kept using fossil fuels.

In what the White House calls “the largest deregulatory action in American history,” the EPA on Thursday will repeal an Obama-era proclamation that has mandated greenhouse-gas regulations for 17 years,

The 2009 “endangerment finding” has been the primary climate handbrake on American industry, forming the legal justification for increasingly punitive greenhouse-gas regulations.

Rescinding it would “save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week, with the EPA projecting an average saving of $2,400 per vehicle and further savings on farm machinery, soon to be freed from the complex extra circuitry required to restrict emissions.

It will also end Joe Biden’s enforced transition to electric vehicles by 2030.

Yay! It’s about time that common sense returned to energy policy.

During the recent bone-chilling winter storm that hit 200 million Americans across more than 35 states, it wasn’t wind and solar that kept the lights on but fossil fuels.

Fueling US prosperity

According to the Florida Municipal Power Agency, 90% of power generation in the country at the height of the storm was natural gas, coal, nuclear or oil.

Cheap, abundant energy fueled America’s prosperity, but charlatans citing pseudoscience have conspired to send us back to the dark ages with hyperbolic predictions that keep falling apart.

As we keep sailing past the various doomsday deadlines set by climate shucksters from Gore to Greta Thunberg, the public has been waking up to the hoax.

A Gallup poll found in 2024 only 2 percent of Americans cite climate change or the environment as their main concern.

It’s telling that green activists have been relatively silent in the face of a full-scale assault by Trump and his Cabinet on climate shibboleths the past year. He lauded EPA administrator Lee Zeldin and his rapid fire deregulation moves as the administration’s “secret weapon” in his war against the “war on coal.”

“Biden and the radical left wanted to abolish coal,” Trump told the assembled group of coal miners in hard hats and hi-vis vests in the East Room.

“They did everything they could . . . but on Day 1 of this administration I ended the war on coal. We terminated the green new scam and we withdrew from the unfair, one-sided Paris climate deal.”

He also boasted that he has saved 74 coal fired power plants from extinction and announced that the Tennessee Valley Authority has just taken two coal plants off the chopping board.

Meanwhile, buoyed by falling electricity prices, the first American aluminum smelter in 50 years is now slated to be built in Oklahoma.

Net-zero policies adopted by in Europe, Canada and Australia, with their blind reliance on wind and solar, have failed. Add the huge new demand for power by data processing centers underpinning artificial intelligence, and the climate fiction has become impossible to sustain.

Now, policymakers and powerful influencers are hoping they can sidle away from the disastrous decisions they forced on us with false pretenses.

Climate activism out

Billionaire activist Bill Gates has renounced climate alarm, declaring quietly last October that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” and “the global temperature doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of people’s lives.”

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Maybe there are more pressing problems in the world that we could more usefully spend his money to solve.

What Worries the World – January 2026

On Wall Street, ESG (environment, social and government) stocks have fallen out of favor.

Public disillusionment is happening as the underpinnings of the climate hoax have collapsed.

In congressional testimony last week Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed to the “monumental retraction” of Nature magazine’s infamous paper on “The Economic Commitment of Climate Change” which claimed the cost of global warming would be $38 trillion per year by 2049. It was retracted two months ago because, Nature admitted, the errors were “too substantial for a correction.”

Bessent declared that the repudiation of the influential economic modeling “laid bare the radical left’s apocalyptic hyperbole on climate change . . .

“This fatally fraught paper, with errors far too substantial for correction, has been frequently used and abused to justify bad policymaking around the world, undermining both energy abundance and better living standards.”

These days, when Energy Secretary Chris Wright meets his European and Australian counterparts behind closed doors, they confide to him that he “may be right on the data,” but the public still “feels” climate alarm is real.

As he points out, that’s because they’ve been lied to for a quarter of a century.
The truth hurts, but it’s better than the alternative.

Why Rethinking Climate Change–Nicola Scafetta

Posted on 20 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Net Zero Fails Science, Math and People

Posted on 24 Days Ago by Ron Clutz

in the video above, Ron Barmby joins Angela Wheeler to discuss Sunset on Net Zero and the why green energy schemes fail. He questions the scientific, economic, and engineering basis of global net-zero policies. Drawing on physics, real-world observations, and decades of experience, he argues that CO2’s warming effect is small and diminishing. He also challenges climate models that rely on unverified assumptions. Barmby warns that many green energy solutions are impractical and that net-zero policies disproportionately harm the poor.

For those preferring to read, I provide below a lightly edited transcript in italics with added images. AW refers to Angela Wheeler and RB to Ron Barmby. H/T Climate Change Dispatch.

I think [Net Zero] is insane. It is pointless to pursue it because it will make no difference to the climate or to climate change. The climate will change as it wants to change, no matter how much CO2 we put in the air. So it’s a pointless thing to do. It is unachievable. And in the end, as always, it’s the poorest among us that will pay the highest price proportionally.

AW: This is Climate Debrief, brought to you by the CO2 Coalition. I’m Angela Wheeler. There’s a recently published book, Sunset on Net Zero, a heretics guide to the futile CO2 target. You’re going to hear from the author, CO2 Coalition member Ron Barmby. Ron is a professional engineer with a master’s degree from the University of Alberta and a four-decade career that’s taken him to over 40 countries across five continents. Ron’s adventures have shown him firsthand how societies really are adaptable to shifting climates.

Thank you for taking the time, Ron. Thank you for having me, Angela. Part one of your recent book is titled How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Carbon Dioxide. Did you have a moment of clarity where this all made sense or did this happen over a period of time?

RB: It sort of happened over a period of time when the Al Gore movie came out. At first, I was impressed with it and I thought, well, this all makes sense. And then as other writers started pointing out the flaws in that movie, I decided I should look into this more too.

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

And as an engineer, I have a background in physics and I realized that a lot of the physical characteristics that Al Gore was talking about simply aren’t true. So it developed over time. And as it developed over time, some of my friends said, Ron, you should write this down. And so I did. And that was my first book. The second book, the one that you just mentioned, is sort of an update of what’s happened since 2020 when the first book was published.

AW: What is your analysis of this global effort to reach net zero?

RB: Well, I think it’s insane. That’s what I think. It is pointless to pursue it because it will make no difference to the climate or to climate change.

I now declare the Paris Agreement for Climate Change open for signature. More than 170 countries signed the Paris Agreement. They are pledging to take steps to limit the rise of global temperatures to well below two degrees Celsius.
–Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General

The climate will change as it wants to change, no matter how much CO2 we put in the air. So it’s a pointless thing to do. The second part of it, it is unachievable.

And that’s where my engineering background comes in and many of the engineers that are part of the CO2 coalition. What they want to achieve simply can’t be done in a reasonable time frame at a reasonable cost, and it can’t be done globally. And the third thing about it is the whole thing is unfair because it punishes those that are trying to reduce CO2 emissions to the benefit of those who are only paying lip service to CO2 emissions. And in the end, as always, it’s the poorest among us that will pay the highest price proportionally.

AW: Your book sums it up well in stating that warming from future CO2 is too trivial and too gradual to justify drastic policy. Could you explain that?

RB: Well, there was a paper written in 2019 by two coalition members, Dr. Wijngaarden and Dr. Happer.
That paper explained from physicist to physicist how we can actually measure the amount of CO2 warming that has happened. And by measuring that amount, it confirmed the equations that would predict what would happen if we doubled the CO2 emissions again, or came to a complete doubling. And looking into that paper, I tried to explain in everyday terms how valid it is and what it means. And so in that investigation, I came to the conclusion that this is understandable by many, many people. And if we got the word out, that might help shift the view on the alarmism of carbon dioxide induced global warming.

[From Wijngaarden and Happer study: My synopsis is Climate Change and CO2 Not a Problem

“Right in the middle of these curves, you can see a gap in spectrum. The gap is caused by CO2 absorbing radiation that would otherwise cool the Earth. If you double the amount of CO2, you don’t double the size of that gap. You just go from the black curve to the red curve, and you can barely see the difference. The gap hardly changes.”]

AW: Is it your position that the push for net zero stems from political exaggeration, followed by media amplification and not empirical science? Is that a fair assessment?

RB: I think that’s a fair assessment. And Margaret Thatcher is one person that I like to quote on that. Many people don’t realize that Margaret Thatcher was trained in Oxford as a chemist, as a research chemist. So she was one of the big people behind pushing for the Paris Agreement. And she wanted to reduce CO2 emissions because she was concerned. But she knew how the scientific method worked because she was trained in it. And when she saw the first reports come out, she changed her mind.

And she said, kind of paraphrasing Hamlet, that there isn’t method in their madness, there is actually madness in their method. And what Margaret Thatcher pointed out was that the desire to control CO2 emissions worldwide is something that would require a worldwide organization to organize and enforce. And so she saw it in that perspective, that it was a grand multinational global socialist effort to control the economy.

She was not far off. But I do think that on the other end of the spectrum, capitalists have found a way to exploit this energy transition and make money that they would otherwise not be able to make.

AW: Regarding net zero, your compelling argument cites the work of two other CO2 coalition members, our chairman, Dr. William Happer, and Dr. William Don Wingarden. Their work, as you mentioned, initially a series of academic papers by physicists for physicists, focuses on measuring thermal radiation transfer and had a truly profound effect because it undermines net zero. For one, they use real observations, not models. Can you please explain the difference and why is it worth noting?

RB: The scientific method is a way to make sure that we’re not fooling ourselves, that we think we understand something that we don’t really understand. And it was one thing that another CO2 member, Dr. Clauser, pointed out in his talk to Korean physicist students a couple of years ago. You have to go into science with an open mind and an unbiased mind. And you have to report faithfully what you observe. And it’s the observations of physical reality that is the link to truth in science.

So the computer models that the IPCC relies on aren’t based on observations that are linked to reality. They’re based on biases that the computer programmers put into their own models. And the brilliance behind the Van Wingarden and Happer study is that they found an existing public domain database that contained the observations needed to show that the effect of CO2 warming was very small and it’s diminishing rapidly. Another important thing to mention is that Dr. Happer and Dr. Van Wingarden’s math matches real world data from space. This follows the scientific method, observe, predict, test, repeat.

AW: What you’re saying, and especially in your book, that the scientific method is so important, do you feel it is being neglected and perhaps not followed at the university level today?

RB: Unfortunately, I think, Angela, it’s worse than that. It’s not followed, maybe not at the university level, but I think it’s the elementary, junior high, and high school level where it needs to be brought back into the curriculum and taught. It’s when 10 and 12 year old students come home and they’re convinced that CO2 is something to be afraid of. That’s where the problem starts. And I think that’s where the problem has to be fixed.

AW: Regarding the paper by Dr. Happer and Dr. Van Wingarden, they didn’t just claim CO2 impact is small. They measured it, verified it, and anyone can check their data. They replaced alarmist models with hard, observable facts. How can anyone argue that?

RB: Angela, I don’t think anyone has argued with that. I think the mainstream media and the IPCC have simply ignored it. They haven’t addressed it. Coming out in the United States is a presidential directive that all science backed by the federal government must meet the scientific method standards. And I think that’s going to be a huge change worldwide when organizations, both federal and international organizations, when they are held to the standard of the scientific method, I think their karmic alarmism is just going to melt away.

AW: As a former teacher and also as a mother and now a GG, I was gratified to see your chapter Stop Scaring the Children. What compelled you to write this chapter?

RB: I’m a grandfather, and my grandkids are very concerned about CO2. And so it takes me a long time to explain to them that there’s nothing to worry about. And unfortunately, in a more of a millennial generation, there’s been a lot of extreme anxiety among that generation about climate change. And unfortunately, there’s been some tragedies that have resulted because of that. So I think it’s important to stop scaring the children. If you want to deal with a scientific methodology or a proposition you want to promote, bring it forward to trained people who can discuss it intelligently with you. Don’t bring it into the classroom of an elementary school and scare children with it.

AW: Ron, the second part of your book is Engineering 101 is the doomsday book for net zero. Why is that?

RB: Well, because there are all of the green energy sources and the green machines that run on them, and many of them just simply fail when you try to build them. And I think I quote in my book, it was James Michener who said scientists dream of great things, but engineers build them. Well, you can have great dreams. You can dream of creating a solar guidance star like Dr. Hapur did, but it’s up to the engineers to build them. And everyone is crossing their fingers until the thing actually works.

And a lot of the propositions that are out in the mainstream media, how we can avoid or reduce our CO2 emissions are either uneconomic or they hurt the environment more than they help, or they simply don’t work. And that’s my engineering perspective coming into play.

AW: I see. And that makes me think of models, climate models. For example, you can create the model, but from an engineering standpoint, and with regard to net zero, is it impossible to come up with the conclusions that they do with models?

RB: In the case of climate, yes, it is. Now in engineering we use models for a number of things, because we have verified that the equations we’ve put into the model are correct, and they can predict what might happen. And you can see that in flight simulators.

In my own background, reservoir engineering models are based on the Darcy equation, and they’re quite good at predicting what will happen, because those equations stand up to the scientific method. And so when your equations can predict what happens in the future, and it actually happens, then you verified the equation, then you verified the model. The IPCC models, they have equations in there and assumptions that simply aren’t verified, and they don’t predict accurately.

One thing that came out of the Van Wintergaarden and Happer paper, and other papers that are associated with members of the CO2, is that the CO2 warming from the IPCC models has to be at least doubled, and some would claim quadrupled, in order to get the alarmist levels of warming that they predict. And so that factor of two or four just thrown in to cause more anxiety, that’s not science, that’s scare tactics. And it’s important to point out that the IPCC is a government organization, it’s not a science organization.

AW: And the other thing is, they say carbon dioxide is the control knob for temperature, and that’s not the case, correct?

RB: You’re absolutely correct. We run on an energy balance, and that energy balance coming from the sun has part to do with the climate on earth. And as Gregory Wrightstone pointed out in his book, 90% of the global warming effect of CO2 is already behind us. So the next 10% is going to be minimal. So the next 10% is not the control knob of temperature on earth. Now, if there was no CO2 on earth, as there is no CO2 on the moon, the first amounts of CO2 added would have a dramatic effect on temperature. But that’s way, way behind us.

AW: Well, in concluding our conversation, I would like to let our viewers and listeners know that they can get your new book, Sunset on Net Zero, A Heretic’s Guide to the Futile CO2 Target at Amazon. Ron, there are many excellent points in your book we didn’t get to. I hope you will join us again soon on Climate Debrief. I’d love to, Angela. Thank you very much.

UAH Stays Cool Except NH Land Warms February 2026

Posted on February 4 by Ron Clutz

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

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

gmt-warming-events

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

February 2026 UAH Temps: NH Land Spikes with Cooling Elsewhere

Land Air Temperatures Tracking in Seesaw Pattern

The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980

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

The Hottest Year Shell Game

Posted on January 29 by Ron Clutz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shortage of Climate Comedians

Posted on January 28 by Ron Clutz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on January 27 by Ron Clutz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stubborn ice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uncertainty and nuance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listening to the experts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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