The EPA’s revocation of the 2009 endangerment finding shifts the burden of proof from federal agencies to state capitals. Governors who declared climate emergencies must now demonstrate with regional data that rising carbon dioxide (CO2) endangers their residents. Wisconsin cannot meet that burden.
In 2019, Wisconsin declared climate change a crisis requiring the state’s electricity to be carbon-free by 2050, citing worsening extreme weather as justification. Since then, the state has spent $6 billion on renewable infrastructure while residents pay 15% more for electricity than the Midwest average.
A new report by the Weiss Energy Policy Institute analyzed 130 years of Wisconsin climate data and found that as atmospheric CO2 rose 45%, Wisconsin experienced 63% fewer days over 90°F,heatwaves 71% shorter in duration, powerful tornadoes down 70%, and significant drought decline since 1894.
This isn’t just absence of evidence, it’s negative correlation.
As CO2increased, climate extremes decreased.
In addition to the improving climate, the report also notably found that rural Wisconsin’s average temperature has not changed since 1894. Urban areas, on the other hand, have warmed about 2.2°F since the late nineteenth century. The report finds that this urban warming is nearly entirely due to the Urban Heat Island effect from concrete and development, not CO2. In many measurable ways, Wisconsin’s climate has become more conducive to human flourishing over the past century.
Even if CO2 were causing harm, Wisconsin’s ability to adapt
to climate change far surpasses its ability to influence it.
The Badger State’s 2023 carbon emissions were 22% below its peak of 110 million metric tons in 2005. Despite its reduction, annual global emissions have increased by over 100 times Wisconsin’s entire annual emissions over the same period. In fact, in 2023, Wisconsin’s carbon emissions made up less than 0.25% of the global total.
While CO2 has not endangered residents of Wisconsin,
the climate-based policies have.
Residential electricity prices continue climbing even as household consumption falls. In fact, Xcel Energy and Alliant Energy have requested cumulative rate hikes approaching 19% over the next two years. Some in Waukesha County are already facing “dramatically higher” energy bills, double from just months earlier. Under Wisconsin’s current policies, this is sure to continue. In fact, Wisconsin is hurtling toward an energy crisis. The latest long term reliability assessment projects the state will enter “high-risk” territory for blackouts by 2028.
This economic burden stems from poor energy policies. Current leadership has forced coal plants into early retirement, blocked critical natural gas infrastructure, mandated carbon targets over grid reliability, vetoed consumer protections against appliance bans, and weaponized the permitting process to strangle traditional energy development.
For example, the state’s climate policies prevented a gas-fired plant that would have brought $1 million in annual tax revenue and 350 construction jobs to northern Wisconsin last year. Its initial permits expired while waiting for more permits.
In the face of unprecedented new energy demand, Wisconsin’s grid might have been able to absorb the new data centers and industrial growth if it weren’t already stressed by climate policy. But solar cannot replace coal megawatt-for-megawatt. In order to replace reliable coal with solar, while maintaining the same reliability, nearly twenty times the capacity must be installed. That means ratepayers pay to build and maintain thousands of acres of solar panels and pay to keep backup plants on standby for when those panels underperform.
Even overturning the carbon mandate won’t be enough to save the grid, because the current regulatory system was not built to accommodate surging industrial demand without punishing ratepayers. Wisconsin lawmakers need to save residents from footing the bill for data center infrastructure by utilizing free markets and private capital rather than heavy-handed subsidies.
This market-oriented solution for Wisconsin is called Consumer-Regulated Electricity (CRE). It allows privately financed utilities to generate and sell power directly to large customers through voluntary contracts, operating independent of the regulated grid. This creates a parallel pathway for new industrial demand, protecting residential ratepayers while giving Wisconsin a competitive advantage over other Midwest states. It attracts industrial capital without subsidies or forcing costs onto families.
The revoked endangerment finding forces a reckoning: will Wisconsin continue its expensive and dangerous energy transition, or will it examine the actual data? New evidence suggests the state should:
♦ rescind its zero-carbon mandate, ♦ restore reliable baseload power to the legacy grid, and ♦ pass Consumer-Regulated Electricity legislation to let private capital serve new industrial demand without burdening ratepayers.
Combined with removing carbon mandates from the legacy grid,
these reforms position Wisconsin a bright energy future.
In the 21st century, affordable and reliable power separates flourishing societies from struggling ones. Wisconsin cannot prove CO2 harms, but its climate policies are already bringing on an energy crisis. Other states that built climate mandates on the endangerment finding should audit their climate data. The burden of proof has shifted to state capitals, and the evidence may not support the mandates.
“Imagine an argument so airtight about science so settled
over technology so reliable that you have to use censorship
to make sure nobody gives a dissenting opinion.” @ProctorZ
Germany is the political engine of the Green Deal, yet it continues to fall short of its own CO₂ reduction targets. Now Germany’s Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig has ordered the federal government totighten its climate targets by the end of March. The ruling follows a lawsuit filed by the German Environmental Aid (Deutsche Umwelthilfe), aimed explicitly at increasing political pressure. Germany is tightening the screws on its own catastrophe.
Germany in 2026: the economy has entered its eighth consecutive year of industrial decline. Companies are shutting down, and hundreds of thousands of jobs have already been lost in the core sectors of the country’s former prosperity—chemicals, mechanical engineering, and above all the automotive industry.
Climate change has struck—or rather, the ideologically skewed and socially unprecedented self-destructive frenzy of German politics has begun
to shred any remaining hope of a return to normal economic conditions.
The attempt to free the country from conventional energy sources such as oil, gas, and coal through a rapid transition to CO₂-free energy—politically and psychologically inflated into a moral crusade to “save the planet”—has failed.
Given the devastating competitive position of the German economy, which now pays energy prices roughly three times higher than competitors in reference locations such as France or the United States, any rational observer would urgently recommend consigning the entire transformation agenda to the dustbin of failed political hubris and collective delusion.
What remains is damage control:
♦ a rapid return to a market-based energy system, ♦ an end to destructive environmental and social experiments, and ♦ an unavoidable restructuring of the welfare state to reflect new economic realities.
Germany is getting poorer, productivity is falling, and GDP per capita
is declining—realities that even the federal government’s massive
debt-financed spending programs can no longer conceal.
Yet Germany in 2026 is no ordinary country. Its political elite, supported by an affirming media ecosystem, has entrenched itself in a self-referential system of emissions-centered economic control—a system now reinforced by judicial authority.
In its ruling, the court mandated that the government sharpen its environmental targets. Under current conditions, a gap of at least 200 million tons of CO₂ would remain by 2045, which must now be eliminated across Germany’s entire economic structure.
Judges who effectively substitute political objectives for democratic
deliberation are now setting the framework for Germany’s continued decline.
The lawsuit was brought by the German Environmental Aid—an organization already known for launching the first serious legal assault on Germany’s automotive industry during earlier battles over particulate emissions in city centers. The pressure on Germany is now coming from within: from a taxpayer-funded NGO complex that appears determined to politically delegitimize key industries, with the state apparatus firmly on its side.
According to Deutschlandfunk, a leaked draft from the SPD-led Environment Ministry outlines a new climate program aimed at achieving climate neutrality by 2045. Spanning more than 330 pages, it appears the government anticipated judicial escalation and preemptively prepared the groundwork for a revised climate law. Political conflict has been outsourced to the courts, to the relief of Berlin’s climate hardliners amid worsening economic conditions.
Among the core measures is the intensified “heat transition” in the building sector. The ministry proposes increasing subsidies for low-income households—up to 40 percent of costs—for heating replacements and heat pump installations. A generous solution for the climate-policy establishment, conveniently rolled out during an election season.
The leaked strategy signals a general increase in transformation pressure. No fundamentally new instruments are introduced; instead, property owners are placed under tighter time constraints to replace heating systems.
Climate policy and financial affordability are colliding ever more sharply. Amid a prolonged recession, the government is deliberately provoking social conflict while attempting to pacify it through ever-expanding subsidies.
Germany’s public debt, at roughly 65 percent of GDP, still appears moderate by European standards. In Berlin, this is interpreted as ample room to finance the transformation through rising debt while simultaneously increasing pressure on the private sector.
Environment Minister Carsten Schneider speaks optimistically of new “climate jobs.” The overall picture, however, increasingly resembles political farce. A state that secures public consent for its transformation agenda through debt, subsidies, and higher taxes acts obscenely and invites long-term economic damage.
Plans even include methane measurement programs for livestock, modeled after New Zealand—yet another blow to farmers. German emissions policy is entering a manic phase, blurring the line between real policy and political satire.
The subsidy machine continues to spin. The government plans to support 800,000 electric vehicles in the coming years. Credit resources remain abundant after Chancellor Friedrich Merz effectively neutralized the constitutional debt brake with the previous parliament. By 2040, electric vehicles are supposed to account for 70 percent of Germany’s car fleet—despite the absence of any credible plan for supplying the required electricity.
Artificial, technocratic necessity has replaced political debate. From the outset, it was clear that the supposed softening of the combustion-engine ban was mere political theater—a sedative for citizens gradually awakening to the scale of the green ideological disaster.
The energy sector faces further tightening. Dozens of reserve gas power plants are to be added, while existing plants are to be converted to hydrogen capability. Offshore wind projects abroad are being accelerated. These measures amount to desperate rescue attempts for a failed energy transition—an assessment implicitly acknowledged even by the Environment Ministry itself. Model-driven hope has replaced rational judgment.
Technocrats Deliver Catastrophes
Germany’s climate policy, entangled in a feedback loop with Brussels, has ossified into an auto-referential system marked by a narrow temporal vision and growing argumentative poverty. Looming over it all is the threat of further litigation by the German Environmental Aid should the final legislation fail to meet its standards.
Germany now finds itself in the grip of green ideologues who have subordinated all parties behind an ideological firewall. The environmental lobby’s greatest success came when it elevated the Net Zero target to constitutional status.
How much greater must the economic pressure become before a majority forms
—even in front of this firewall—to dismantle this manifest political folly?
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.
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 activistBill 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.
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.
Some thoughts from my browser AI. My Question: What are the legal matters, such as major questions requiring congressional action, that favor ending EPA CO2 Endangerment Finding?
Search Assistant Reply:
The legal matters surrounding the repeal of the EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding involve the major questions doctrine, which suggests that significant regulatory authority should not be assumed by agencies without clear congressional authorization. This doctrine has been reinforced by recent Supreme Court rulings, indicating that the EPA may need explicit legislative backing to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, thus favoring the argument for ending the Endangerment Finding.
Legal Matters Surrounding the EPA CO2 Endangerment Finding
Major Questions Doctrine
The major questions doctrine is a legal principle that limits the authority of executive agencies, like the EPA, to make significant regulatory decisions without clear congressional authorization. This doctrine has been increasingly applied by the Supreme Court to ensure that major political or economic issues are addressed by Congress rather than delegated to agencies.
Definition: The doctrine asserts that agencies must have explicit congressional authorization to regulate matters of significant economic or political importance.
Recent Cases: The Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA (2022) emphasized that agencies must point to clear congressional authorization for their regulatory actions, particularly when those actions have broad implications.
Implications for the Endangerment Finding
The repeal of the EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding could be supported by arguments based on the major questions doctrine:
Lack of Clear Authorization: Opponents of the Endangerment Finding may argue that the Clean Air Act does not provide the EPA with the authority to regulate greenhouse gases based on global climate change concerns, as these gases are not traditional air pollutants.
Historical Context: The Endangerment Finding was established following the Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) ruling, which recognized greenhouse gases as pollutants. However, the current administration may argue that the regulatory framework established under this finding lacks explicit congressional backing for such extensive regulatory power. [Note: AI got this wrong. Mass v. EPA only ruled EPA could itself decide GHGs are pollutants subject to its regulation. That judgment by EPA regarding auto emissions in 2009 is now rescinded by EPA in 2026.]
Potential Legal Challenges
Court Challenges: Environmental groups are likely to challenge the repeal in court, arguing that the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases is well-supported by the Clean Air Act and previous Supreme Court rulings.
Future Regulations: If the Endangerment Finding is repealed, it could undermine existing regulations on vehicle emissions and other sources of greenhouse gases, leading to further legal disputes over the EPA’s regulatory scope.
The intersection of the major questions doctrine and the Endangerment Finding highlights the ongoing legal debates regarding the EPA’s authority and the role of Congress in environmental regulation.
From SCOTUS Blog June 30, 2022
The Supreme Court on Thursday truncated the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gases. The ruling may hamper President Joe Biden’s plan to fight climate change and could limit the authority of federal agencies across the executive branch.
By a vote of 6-3, the court agreed with Republican-led states and coal companies that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was wrong when it interpreted the Clean Air Act to give the EPA expansive power over carbon emissions. The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, was handed down on the final opinion day of the 2021-22 term.
Turning to the merits of the case, Roberts wrote that the EPA’s effort to regulate greenhouse gases by making industry-wide changes violated the “major-questions” doctrine – the idea that if Congress wants to give an administrative agency the power to make “decisions of vast economic and political significance,” it must say so clearly.
Section 7411 of the Clean Air Act, Roberts reasoned, had been “designed as a gap filler and had rarely been used in the preceding decades.” But with the CPP, Roberts observed, the EPA sought to rely on Section 7411 to exercise “unprecedented power over American industry.” “There is little reason to think Congress assigned such decisions to” the EPA, Roberts concluded, especially when Congress had previously rejected efforts to enact the kind of program that the EPA wanted to implement with the CPP.
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’” Roberts wrote. But only Congress, or an agency with express authority from Congress, can adopt a “decision of such magnitude and consequence.”
Roberts’ full-throated embrace of the major-questions doctrine – a judicially created approach to statutory interpretation in challenges to agency authority – likely will have ripple effects far beyond the EPA. His reasoning applies to any major policymaking effort by federal agencies.
In a concurring opinion that was joined by Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Neil Gorsuch emphasized that the dispute before the court involved “basic questions about self-government, equality, fair notice, federalism, and the separation of powers.” The major-questions doctrine, Gorsuch wrote, “seeks to protect against ‘unintentional, oblique, or otherwise unlikely’ intrusions on these interests” by requiring federal agencies to have “clear congressional authorization” when they address important issues. Whether coal- and gas-fired power plants “should be allowed to operate is a question on which people today may disagree, but it is a question everyone can agree is vitally important.”
In this Net Zero Watch video, Colin Brazier takes us on a journey through Britain’s energy transformation as he looks at how energy abundance spawned the modern world. For those who prefer reading, below is a transcript with my bolds and added images. H/T Not a Lot of People Know That.
How did Britain get to where it did? How did this damp little corner of northwestern Europe become the economic superpower of the Victorian age? A lot of people point to our temperament, our system of government, our heritage, our scientific tradition. But I’d offer a rival explanation. It’s because of this.
This battery, like coal before it, represents energy and Britain’s story is a story of energy, a story of how people climbed out of the cold and darkness and built a girdle around the earth. And it’s a story which began here.
This is Ironbridge Gorge, the Silicon Valley of the 18th century, where coke was first smelted with iron and where the industrial age really began.
For centuries, life was fragile. Families lived by candlelight, worked the land, subject to storm and famine. In this truly organic green economy, energy was provided by muscle, by wind, water and wood. And life was constantly on the brink of collapse.
Then came something extraordinary, coal. Dense, powerful, reliable. Unlike wood or wind, coal delivered more power, more consistently and with a surplus. That surplus transformed Britain. It wasn’t just fuel, it was freedom.
One of the early steam engine locomotives.
Coal powered factories, cities and ships. It broke the stranglehold of the aristocracy because land was no longer the source of all wealth. Energy abundance spread prosperity, dignity and opportunity far beyond the manor house.
Life expectancy rose, death rates fell, cities grew. Children left fields, found trades, found schools, found new futures. Coal wasn’t just about energy. It was the very beginning of the modern world. Energy abundance spread opportunity, dignity and choice. Energy is the fuel of civilisation.
Freedom requires means, the ability to travel, to act, to think, to choose. All of it depends on energy. Energy is not just another input to the economy. It is the foundation of every input. It’s the key to every human action. This was the way up.
But from the late 20th century onwards, something changed. A new philosophy took hold. Instead of celebrating energy as the lifeblood of prosperity, it was recast as the villain. Coal was demonised. Oil and gas became suspect.
Energy abundance, once a mark of progress,
was rebranded as a threat to the planet.
Net zero requires us to make big changes today. “Net zero is our best chance for a sustainable future.” The logic of net zero spreads into almost every aspect of daily life. What cars we drive, what we eat, how we heat our homes, even how many children we are encouraged to have. Petrol and diesel cars banned. Gas boilers ripped out. Smart meters to ration our use of power. Meat consumption cut. Families told to fly less, to travel less, to live with less.
This is not abundance. This is managed decline. Think about it. Not power when you need it, but when the state sees fit. That’s not freedom. That’s rationing. Net zero isn’t about emissions. It’s about control. It is central planning extended into every aspect of life.
The state tells you what you can and what you can’t eat, how to travel, when to use power. They call it green, but to me it feels like a command economy. And like all command economies across the world, it ends up in the same way, in poverty and in misery.
We cannot let it happen here. Claire Coutinhowas Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and retains the brief in opposition. She knows just what effect such a policy will have on the country. Claire, what does net zero mean for growth overall?
The problem with net zero is it’s making us all poorer. Every time a business leaves this country for another country with more polluting energy regime, we are losing jobs, we are losing growth. And for what? So we can become more reliant on other countries for the products that we used to make here.That means fewer jobs here, but higher carbon emissions. It simply doesn’t make sense. And if we carry on down the route that we’re currently travelling, what does the future from a pessimistic position begin to look like? Higher energy bills, fewer jobs. I mean, it simply is not the right path for this country.
Sometimes this whole conversation can be so steeped in declinism. What is the positive vision if we change direction on net zero?
Look, for the last 200 years, Britain has been at the forefront of every industrial revolution. And we can do that again, whether it’s AI, whether it’s robotics, whether it’s space. There are so many things that this country could do if we have access to cheaper energy. Britain is there. We can do this. But we need ministers and governments to focus on providing that cheap energy the country needs.
And here is the twist. Britain gets to make the sacrifice while others get to race ahead. Our emissions in the global scheme of things are negligible. China’s annual increase alone dwarfs our entire output. We get to pay the cost. They get to enjoy the growth. What we’re left with is the worst of both worlds. Economic decline at home. No meaningful effect on the climate abroad.
And yet we’re told this is virtuous. That living with less is noble. That accepting decline is moral. But ask yourself, is poverty moral? Is coldness in winter moral? Is telling working families they cannot afford to travel or eat moral? This is not morality. This is coercion dressed up as compassion.
And this is the way down. But decline is not inevitable. We can choose the way up again. Britain has the resources, the ingenuity and the history of leading the world in energy innovation. Coal, oil, gas, nuclear. These are not enemies. They are the foundation stones of modern life. And yes, new technologies can play a part. But they must serve freedom and prosperity, not restrict them.
We need energy abundance, not energy rationing.
Competition, not central planning.
Innovation, not authoritarian diktats.
Britain’s national story really is a story all about energy. Abundance built our freedom. Scarcity may well yet destroy it. We now face a choice. Energy prosperity the way up, or energy poverty the way down. Which future will we choose?
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.
“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.
Team in China finds that high renewable energy integration
could make power transformers age nearly a quarter faster
As US President Donald Trump continues to wage war against renewable energy, a new Chinese study revealing the strain that renewable integration places on power transformers could give him fresh technical ammunition.
The researchers discovered that high renewable energy integration could make power transformers, vital
components that regulate voltage in electricity grids, age faster than previously thought. High levels of wind and solar energy increased bidirectional power flow switching – the movement of electricity in both directions – causing additional stress that current standards did not account for, the Chongqing-based team found.
In a world grappling with transformer shortages and surging energy demand from electrification and the growth of artificial intelligence data centres, the findings suggest that renewables could place even greater strain on ageing grids, like those in the United States and Europe.
When testing their new proposed model, the team found that two-way flow caused transformers to age 23 per cent faster than accounted for by current standards, according to a paper published in the Chinese-language journal Power System Technology on January 16.
Aerial footage shows damage to burnt out power transformers near Heathrow
“This paper focuses, for the first time, on the impact of frequent bidirectional power flow switching caused by high‐penetration wind and solar integration on the operational characteristics and insulation lifespan of power transformers,” the team said.
The researchers, from the Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications and the State Grid Chongqing Electric Power Company, also built a “long-term lifetime loss accumulation calculation framework” – which could be used to assess the condition of transformers and guide operation and maintenance.
Speaking before the UN General Assembly in September, Trump said that renewable energy options were a “joke” and that wind turbines were “so pathetic and so bad” and expensive to operate. In January, in his address before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump said: “China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China. “They make them, they sell them for a fortune. They sell them to the stupid people that buy them.”
Hitachi Energy Chongqing Transformer Co. Ltd. is located in Chongqing City. As one of the largest transformer factories worldwide within Hitachi Energy, the company focuses on the design and manufacture of power transformer, shunt reactor and HVDC transformer (High Voltage Direct Current).
Traditional energy grids had a centralised, one-way flow of power from the producers to the consumers. This is shifting towards a two-way system where electricity can also flow back from solar, wind and energy storage sources into the grid.
Transformers are a basic and critical component of electric grids, adjusting the voltage of electricity so it can travel efficiently through the grid. They can either “step up” or increase the voltage so electricity can travel long distances through power lines without losing strength, or “step down” the voltage once it reaches its destination so it can be safely used by appliances.
Power transformers are large units which transmit high-voltage electricity over long distances, while distribution transformers are smaller units that help supply local areas.
As transformers age, their components can degrade, which can lead to higher maintenance demand, limit efficiency and reliability, and increase the risk of a major grid failure. The average age of power transformers in use worldwide is around 40 years, according to electrical equipment supplier Reinhausen.
In the US and Europe – home to the oldest power grids in the world – some transformers date back even further. Much of the US electric grid infrastructure was built 50 to 75 years ago, and nearly 70 per cent of power transformers in the country are over 25 years old, according to a report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison last May.
More than half of the transformers in this country are becoming too old to reliably function and can fail at any time. We not only need to build new transformers, but we also need to replace the ones that are ageing out. — US Department of Energy in 2024
But expanding and replacing transformer infrastructure is not only expensive, it could even be impossible in the short term due to long delivery times and a global shortage of power transformers, according to Reinhausen.
Average lead times for large power transformers had almost doubled since 2021, with securing transformers taking up to four years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report last February.
According to the IEA, the production of power transformers is technically complex and requires advanced facilities. China, South Korea, Turkey, and Italy accounted for 50 per cent of total global power transformer trade in 2023, it said, with China alone representing half that share.
Top 10 Power Transformer Manufacturers In The World
Both the US and Europe have more than doubled their import trade value for power transformers since 2018. The US primarily sources transformers from Mexico, Europe and South Korea, while China now accounts for over 60 per cent of the European Union’s imports, according to the IEA.
Imports account for an estimated 80 per cent of the US power transformer supply, and 50 per cent of the distribution transformer supply, according to a report by energy research and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie in August.
In the US, the supply shortage for power transformers hit 30 per cent in 2025,
while the shortage for distribution transformers hit 10 per cent, the report said.
“Imagine an argument so airtight about science so settled
over technology so reliable that you have to use censorship
to make sure nobody gives a dissenting opinion.” @ProctorZ
Finland has prided itself as a global leader in decarbonization, boasting the second-highest share of renewables in final energy consumption across the EU.
But the green utopia narrative has cracked under the strain of a brutal winter,
as cold weather has brought wind power generation to a near standstill.
Most of the country’s wind capacity is concentrated in western Finland, where temperatures are well below freezing, and these adverse weather conditions have led to dangerous ice buildup on turbine blades. According to Bloomberg, this forced the grid operator Fingrid Oyj to curtail wind power output.
Primary energy sources in Finland 2017. All fossil fuels should be replaced by clean energy sources.
“There are low fog clouds in Finland’s main wind power production area, roughly at the height of turbine blades, which are causing new ice to form,” Pia Isolähteenmäki, an adviser at industry consultant Kjeller Vindteknikk Oy, told the outlet.
Much of Finland’s wind fleet lacks blade-heating systems for extreme cold weather. How is that even possible, considering it’s a Nordic country? Even the thinnest ice buildup risks equipment damage and has led to shutdowns this week.
Bloomberg data show that Finnish wind output is expected to remain very low for the next two weeks. Meteorologists at MetDesk forecast that Nordic wind generation will remain as much as 20% below normal through at least the midpoint of the month.
The result of the green utopia pushed by Europe’s climate alarmists,
not based in reality whatsoever, is soaring power prices
that are crushing working poor households.
Wind tubine defrosting in Sweden
Helsinki Times wrote on Sunday:
“Electricity prices in Finland rise to the highest level of the winter on Monday, driven by severe cold, weak wind conditions and rising weekday demand,”
Finnish folks on X are questioning the government’s questionable decarbonization push:
Dana X post:
News from the “green garden”. In Finland, the blades of wind turbines froze. The electricity production of wind power stations in Finland fell from 9433 MW to about 430 MW. Thus, they produced no less than 5% of the nominal power. The culprit turned out to be Russian frosts, the possibility of which European energy companies did not take into account when implementing the “green” transition.
Zeaqi X post:
Finland literally has to use nuclear power to MELT frozen wind turbines and we live in darkness most of the year. How about focusing on reliable power like nuclear instead?
Mari Luukkainen X post:
Our electricity bill was 45 EUR yesterday alone.
Finland: nuclear power, hydroelectric, wind farms, one of the most technically advanced countries in the world.
Also Finland: people burning firewood because the electricity market is fucked. I am sitting next to the fireplace shitposting on LinkedIn (that’s why shitposting is very intense today). This is my energy strategy.
In the US, a historic cold snap in the eastern half of the country led to increased fossil-fuel power generation to prevent power grid collapse.
Across the West, years of grid mismanagement by climate alarmist policymakers have transformed what were once reliable grids into fragile messes where working poor households bear the brunt of some of the highest electricity costs in the world.
It is time to get back to basics and expand natural gas generators and nuclear power, the only proven large-scale source of clean and reliable electricity. And it is also time to hold accountable the climate alarmists whose policy decisions pushed power grids toward the edge of collapse while promising a green utopia that was never going to arrive. And one can only wonder whether the move to push power grids to the brink of collapse was intentional.
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.
The curtain is falling on the world’s most expensive soap opera. For decades, a cast of unelected bureaucrats and subsidized academics fought to keep the production alive, but the audience has finally walked out. The climate-crisis clown show is over.
In early January, President Donald Trump formally withdrew the United States from the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and severed ties with over 60 associated UN organizations. By ending support for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the self-anointed arbiter of planetary truth – the U.S. stopped bankrolling the institutions that have long conspired to dismantle the economic sovereignty of nations.
Mainstream commentators are scrambling to frame this as a retreat into isolationism. But this represents a rational, economic calculation rooted in evidence rather than the hysteria of doomsday cults.
What deserves attention, however, is that Trump is merely doing openly
what Asia’s energy superpowers have been doing quietly for years.
Beijing long ago stopped pretending to care about the sensibilities of European climate activists. The Chinese Communist Party understands that power – both electrical and geopolitical – comes from hydrocarbons. China is outpacing the rest of the world in building coal-fired power plants at an unprecedented pace.
China is also securing energy lifelines beyond its borders. China National Chemical Engineering signed construction contracts worth $20 billion for the Ogidigbon Gas Revolution Industrial Park in Nigeria. Beijing-based Sinopec committed $3.7 billion to construct an oil refinery in Sri Lanka. Chinese financial institutions have lent$52 billion to Africa’s energy sector, with about half going to fossil fuel projects since the early 2000s.
China’s construction of the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port and Special Economic Zone in Myanmar serves as another telling indicator. Valued at approximately $7.3 billion for the port itself and $1.3 billion for an adjacent economic zone, this project will be a strategic bypass around the congested Malacca Strait – a chokepoint through which over 70 percent of China’s oil and gas trade passes.
The signal is unmistakable: China is not preparing for a post-hydrocarbon
world. It is ensuring reliable, diversified supply chains
for energy resources, especially oil and natural gas.
India, too, has quietly ended its flirtation with Western green agendas. Indian consumption of petrochemicals is set to grow by 6-7 percent annually. To meet this demand, India is aggressively expanding oil and gas exploration and refining capacity. In November alone, Indian processing of crude oil grew to 22.3 million metric tons, a 2.3 percent increase from the previous year.
Late last year, the Indian government auctioned blocks of coal with combined geological reserves of over 3 billion metric tons. India’s planning documents ignore natural gas as a “bridge fuel” and identify coal as the nation’s mainstay fuel.
Worldwide, there are 460 coal plants under construction. Another 500 have been permitted or are about to be, with an additional 260 new plants expected to be announced. The vast majority of all this activity is in China and India.
These nations are not “transitioning” from coal; they are cementing its dominance. Even Indonesia, which was once the poster child for the West’s “Just Energy Transition Partnerships,” has faced reality as it canceled the early retirement of the massive Cirebon coal-fired plant.
Trump’s withdrawal from the UN’s climate tyranny and the parallel actions of Asian energy giants are a recalibration of global priorities. Governments and businesses are investing billions in extracting and transporting hydrocarbons. Ports, pipelines, and refineries designed to function for decades are being built..
Nations are reasserting the right to pursue policies rooted in their own
economic interests rather than follow “international” edicts of a favored few.
The Trump administration has simply ended American participation in a system that was already irrelevant to the actual decisions being made by the world’s major energy consumers.
In part, the narrative of an “energy transition” survived by being presented as inevitable. That sham has been exposed. A transition will likely occur someday, but only when new technologies prove to be affordable and reliable.
In the meantime, expect more exits, more quiet defiance, more recalibration.
Climate rhetoric will continue to diminish as investments in hydrocarbons accelerate.
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Science Matters 