Kerry’s Climate Czar Office Abolished

Posted on by Ron Clutz

John Kerry speaking in Dublin June 11, 2019: “World leaders are lying to the public about the climate crisis and dismissing scientific evidence.” The climate activist failed to recognize his own speculative and exaggerated statements.

Thomas Catenacci reports at Washington Free Beacon:  Trump Admin Axes Biden-Era Climate Office John Kerry Used To Assault Fossil Fuels.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

State Department official says climate office was ‘captured by ideology’

The State Department is formally removing the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, the office former president Joe Biden created and appointed John Kerry to lead as part of his aggressive agenda to combat global warming, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Overall, the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
was given an annual budget of nearly $17 million and
a staff of about 30 officials during the Biden administration.

In a statement to the Free Beacon, a senior State Department official confirmed the office has been shuttered, noting that its mission did not align with the Trump administration’s agenda. Webpages for both Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and the State Department’s initiatives relating to the environment were recently deleted.

“This climate office has long been captured by ideology instead of common sense policy. The new chapter of the State Department will not include this office,” the official told the Free Beacon. “This is part of a broader effort to empower regional bureaus and embassies to effectively carry out diplomacy.”

The action is part of a broader effort the sprawling agency announced Tuesday morning to streamline its operations, save taxpayers money, and ensure it is capable of delivering on President Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda. “In its current form, the department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, adding that the agency has become “beholden to radical political ideology.”

And it signals the Trump administration’s continued departure from the Biden-era approach to foreign policy that made climate change a centerpiece of its engagements with foreign nations. In one of his first actions leading the State Department, for example, Rubio initiated the immediate withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which he said undercut the nation’s intention to become the world’s most dominant energy producer.

“The Trump Administration is focused on reducing the everyday cost of living for the American worker, not apologizing to foreign governments for unleashing America’s energy dominance,” a senior White House official told the Free Beacon.

In naming Kerry the first-ever special presidential envoy for climate, Biden gave him a seat on both the White House cabinet and National Security Council, and empowered him to spearhead international negotiations, engage directly with foreign heads of state, and lead American delegations at numerous global climate conferences.

Kerry—who served in the role for three years between January 2021 and early 2024—used the position to wage an all-out assault on fossil fuels and aggressively push a transition to green alternatives like solar panels. Kerry also targeted the agricultural industry for its carbon footprint, leading to calls from dozens of lawmakers for Biden and then-agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack to disavow the comments.

The Free Beacon previously reported that Kerry’s office regularly consulted with far-left environmental organizations as he pursued his green agenda.

Kerry also faced criticism from Republican lawmakers and energy experts for lambasting fossil fuel reliance in the West, but seemingly looking the other way as China rapidly expanded its reliance on coal power to sustain its growing manufacturing sector. The House Oversight Committee opened a probe into Kerry’s talks with his Chinese counterparts in 2023 and later threatened to subpoena him after his office failed to hand over requested documents.

Despite its high-level role in American foreign policy, the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Office remained tight-lipped about its staff and operations throughout the Biden administration.

The Free Press first reported Rubio’s actions to streamline the State Department’s structure. The outlet cited internal documents showing the agency’s plans to close 132 offices, including those launched to further human rights, counter extremism, and prevent war crimes.

Kerry was also accused of hypocrisy—the climate conferences he attended were often hosted at upscale resorts and he racked up tens of thousands of flight miles on gas-guzzling jets. Kerry’s family also owned its own private jet for much of his tenure as special presidential envoy for climate.

Footnote:  Yes, Prime Minister foresaw this saga.

A humorous look at why the global warming campaign and the triumphal Paris COP make sense. Yes Minister explains it all in an episode from 2013. (The final episode of the TV series was The Climate Czar) Transcription from captions is here: Yes PM Pokes Fun at Climatism

 

 

March 2025 Oceans Cooling Persists

Posted on 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.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source. Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated.  HadSST4 is the same as v.3, except that the older data from ship water intake was re-estimated to be generally lower temperatures than shown in v.3.  The effect is that v.4 has lower average anomalies for the baseline period 1961-1990, thereby showing higher current anomalies than v.3. This analysis concerns more recent time periods and depends on very similar differentials as those from v.3 despite higher absolute anomaly values in v.4.  More on what distinguishes HadSST3 and 4 from other SST products at the end. The user guide for the current version HadSST4.1.1.0 is here.   The charts and analysis below is produced from the current data.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through February 2025. 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.

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 last year, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak.  Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. After 12 months of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by NH cooling the last 8 months from its 1.3C peak in August, down to 0.8C in March. With some recent warming in the Tropics and SH, all regions are now close together nearly at the global anomaly, about 0.1C higher than the average for this period.

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

The graph below  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.

To enlarge image, open 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 is 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, with a slight upward bump in February-March 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 was holding at 1.4C before declining.  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.  Now 2025 started much lower than the previous year and is headed sharply downward.

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

The purple line is the average anomaly 1980-1996 inclusive, value 0.17.  The orange line the average 1980-2024, value 0.38, also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2013-2024, value 0.67. 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?

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

HadSST is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST4 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

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

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

 

Abolishing the Climate Politico-Legal-Media Complex

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Linnea Lueken describes the nullification in her Town Hall article The Savaging of the Climate Politico-Legal-Media Complex.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on waste and harmful
policies has given so-called “green” politics a rude awakening. 

The administration is savaging the climate complex of lobbyists and NGOs, politically connected profiteering companies, and virtue signaling politicians bent on ending fossil fuel use. The greens are on the defensive and have yet been unable to form a cohesive response. For the good of humanity and the planet, let’s hope the disarray continues.

I almost hesitate to talk about this, lest the climate grifters in the media suddenly realize they are spending too much time focusing on tariffs and immigration and are forgetting one of the pillars of the globalist secular religion: climate alarmism. They still seem to be reeling, and it is amazing to see.

Note: The $$$ in the diagram are in 2010 $, not including consultancies and a plethora of NGOs. Likely it is today a multi-trillion dollar industry.

The Trump administration has been systematically ripping apart the politico-legal elements of what Michael Crichton once dubbed the climate “politico-legal-media” complex. This climate-focused approach to environmental extremism was meticulously constructed over the course of decades by previous Republican and Democrat administrations alike. No one else has taken the green scam to task the way Trump is.

Trump immediately rescinded Biden’s EV targets, as well as mandates for solar and wind and heat pumps. He removed the USDA’s website pages dedicated to climate change. He took an axe to Department of Energy (DOE) funding of climate-focused university research, which is still being battled in the courts (maybe this will end the apparent trend of scientists tying everything to climate just to get those grants).

Trump also got rid of the mandated use of paper straws in federal buildings, which is pretty funny.

While the climate-obsessed media were busy bleating about those insults to climate orthodoxy, DOGE tackled the climate slush fund known as USAID. USAID, it turns out, was sending billions of dollars for climate pet projects. Who knows how much of that went to overhead and graft with nothing to show in terms of mitigating climate change.

Interestingly, the extremist group Just Stop Oil closed shop shortly after cuts to USAID began. They claim it is because they have been victorious in keeping UK oil in the ground, but it is likely no coincidence that climate activists and protestors are increasingly finding themselves behind bars as the public tires of disruption and destruction and funding is drying up from governments, sometimes funneled through NGOs.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced that the administration is considering eliminating the greenhouse gas reporting requirements for power plants, and then hit the greens with another major blow. He reiterated to Breitbart News that he intends to look at the carbon dioxide Endangerment Finding – which has been used to craft regulations based on the idea that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses represent a significant threat to human health… despite the fact that they are necessary for life on Earth. This comes after Trump signed an executive order asking the EPA to review the finding. Eliminating it would undercut the basis for all climate related regulations, from restrictions on power plants, to vehicle restrictions and mandates, to appliance restrictions, and beyond.

The end of the Endangerment Finding would be a big blow against
climate alarmism and an even bigger win for freedom.

I could almost feel bad for the greens, except that they have done nothing but suck up our hard-earned cash and increase human misery in the United States and abroad by pushing suicidal and stagnating policies. They fund programs aimed at stopping poorer countries from developing their own resources. They attack farming and endorse restrictions on the kind of appliances and cars average people can buy. They push policies limiting what one can eat and how food is grown, and restrictions on electric power production, all in the name of changing future weather.

This is not to say the Trump administration is anti-environment; to the contrary, under his first term, the EPA focused heavily on streamlining the clean-up of superfund sites. Zeldin is already putting cleanups of superfunds on an accelerated timeline. Trump and his team have reiterated that they are interested in maintaining clean air and water, and preventing wildfires that Democrat policies have worsened.

Time will tell if these attacks on the climate cult will prove fatal,
but thus far it has been incredible to witness.

Oh yeah; Happy Earth Day.

 

 

 

Time to Axe the Climate-Industrial Complex

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Kevin Mooney makes the urgency case in his Real Clear Energy article Celebrating American Independence With an All-Out Assault on Anti-Constitutional Climate Measures.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Now is the time to double down against the “Climate-Industrial Complex” with accelerated regulatory reforms that will hopefully endure beyond Donald Trump’s second term. Since day one of his new administration, the president has moved quickly to keep his promise to unleash American energy.

This means unraveling climate policies based on specious, unscientific findings that reached an apex with whatever leftist committee was in charge of the Biden White House. The American Energy Alliance, a Washington-based free market advocacy group, has put together a list of 50 Actions the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have taken to maximize America’s energy potential.

Some of the more significant items include EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s decision to revisit the phony 2009 Endangerment Finding that identified CO2 as a pollutant. The finding came about in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v EPA where the high court determined that the agency had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The ruling opened the way for the Obama and Biden administrations to lock in a long list of regulations restricting American energy.

The term “Climate-Industrial Complex” is an apt description some commentators have affixed to the vast network of activist groups and unelected administrative agents who have erected an extra-constitutional fourth branch of government all in the name of climate. Only by attacking the very premise of the climate lobby’s regulatory schemes can Team Trump achieve lasting change. Overturning the Endangerment Finding is a big part of that process since it would mean yanking out the edifice of regulations that raise energy prices for consumers and limit their choices. The CO2 Coalition, which includes scientists and researchers from across the globe, has a long list of “Climate Facts” highlighting the benefits of CO2, and it’s role in sustaining life on Earth, while debunking exaggerated claims about global warming. The attack on CO2 is an attack on humanity itself.

Another component of the Trump agenda included in the AEA list is the president’s abrupt move to once again withdraw from the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement and to revoke any financial commitments to the U.S. under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

Under the agreement, participating countries pledge to reduce their CO2 emissions through “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs for the ostensible purpose of reducing “global warming.” Trump has long maintained that the international climate agreement “handicaps the U.S. economy” without producing any benefits for the climate or the environment. Right from the beginning, the agreement was crafted with an eye toward constraining America’s economic and military power while giving adversaries like China a free pass. Trump instinctively knew this was case. In his first term, Trump made the critical point that he was “elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” There’s an undeniable link between Trump’s restoration of an “America First” energy policy and the concept of “No Taxation Without Representation.” Why should U.N. bureaucrats be permitted to raise energy costs on the American people without a straight up and down vote in Congress?

Other notable actions on the AEA list include efforts to eliminate taxpayer funded subsidies for unworkable green energy, and the resumption of export permit applications for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects.

Tom Pyle, the AEA president, sums the early days of the Trump’s second term of very nicely in a press statement:

“President Trump has wasted no time fulfilling his promise to unleash our country’s vast resources and undo the reckless policies of his predecessor, beginning with a flurry of executive orders and spending reductions. More recently, his agencies – especially the EPA – have formalized the process of rewriting or eliminating a host of harmful regulations. Congress has also acted with haste by nullifying a host of rules using the Congressional Review Act and has begun the process of eliminating the wasteful Inflation Reduction Act subsidies through the budget and reconciliation process.”

That part about the Congressional Review Act (CRA) deserves some extra attention since the climate lobby is just as potent here domestically in California as it is within the United Nations. In fact, the CRA may be the most viable tool available to prevent Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, and likely presidential candidate, from superimposing his climate policy goals on the rest of the country. The CRA is a law passed in the 1990s that enables Congress to overturn final rules issued by federal agencies. Members have 60 days to introduce a joint resolution disapproving of the rule after an agency’s rule is reported to Congress. On the House side, Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-CA, has taken the critical step of introducing a CRA resolution of disapproval to repeal the Biden EPA’s 11th hour move to grant California a waiver for its Advanced Clean Cars II program, which would prohibit the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.

Under a provision of the Clean Air Act, the EPA is authorized to establish emission standards for new motor vehicles. The agency also has latitude to grant California a special waiver to impose even more onerous regulations. That’s where the assault on consumer choice comes into play.

Other states are permitted to adopt the California standards and put gas powered cars on the path to extinction. This process is already well underway with 11 states and Washington D.C. adopting the California standards. The CRA could and should be used as a tool to reverse what is essentially a nationwide electrical vehicle mandate compliments of California. But there’s a problem.

Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, has joined with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), to make the case that the CRA should not be used to overturn the waiver because it is their view that it is an adjudicatory order, not a rule.

Pyle cuts through the legal gibberish.

“Despite misleading reports, the Congressional Review Act is crystal clear: once an agency action is submitted to Congress, it is Congress—and Congress alone—that holds the unassailable power to approve or disapprove that action,” Pyle said in a release:

“The GAO’s role is purely advisory, with no legal authority to block Congress from exercising its constitutional duty. The California waiver, which seeks to impose a nationwide electric vehicle mandate, is a prime example of why the CRA exists: to ensure that Congress retains control over regulatory actions that significantly affect the American public. It is time for Congress to step in and put a stop to California’s electric vehicle mandate. Doing so will protect consumer choice and prevent unelected agencies from dictating the future of American transportation.”

With the 250th anniversary of American independence fast approaching, there is no better way to mark that occasion than by caging the climate lobby’s administrative beast, uprooting California mandates, and restoring Congress to its proper station as a lawmaking body.

Arctic Ice Normal Mid-April 2025

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The animation shows end of March Arctic ice extents on day 91 over the last 19 years (length of MASIE dataset). Of course central Arctic basins are frozen solid, and the fluctuations are visible on the marginal basins both the Atlantic side (right) and the Pacific (left). Note the higher extents in 2012, followed by lesser ice, then overcome by 2024.

After a sub-par March maximum, now in mid-April, 2025 Arctic ice has mostly closed the gap with the 19-year average.

Day 75 is mid-March, typically near the highest daily extents of the year.  At that time 2025 was ~500k km2 below average, or Half a Wadham in deficit. By end of March this year the gap below average reached 600k km2.  However, note that over these 30 days MASIE shows an average ice extent loss of 781k km2, while 2025 lost almost no ice in April, hanging around the 14M km2 mark.  Both MASIE and SII showed the same resilience pattern in April 2025, well above 2021 and especially 2007.  The regional distribution of ice extents is particularly revealing.

Region 2025105 Day 105 Ave. 2025-Ave. 2007105 2025-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 13927695 14126275 -198580 13588722 338973
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 1071001 1069881 1119 1068692 2309
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 965989 964751 1238 961638 4352
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 1087137 1085653 1484 1078666 8471
 (4) Laptev_Sea 897845 893756 4089 843501 54344
 (5) Kara_Sea 921800 923592 -1792 890594 31206
 (6) Barents_Sea 517245 621900 -104655 439904 77341
 (7) Greenland_Sea 710333 661040 49293 673585 36749
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 1306106 1274576 31530 1215526 90580
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 854878 853052 1826 848812 6066
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1248738 1246317 2422 1208588 40150
 (11) Central_Arctic 3246240 3234033 12206 3235648.34 10591
 (12) Bering_Sea 657229 646796 10433 600281.22 56948
 (13) Baltic_Sea 13278 43789 -30511 23534.37 -10256
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk 427895 601889 -173994 491121 -63226

The table shows only two significant deficits to average; Okhotsk alone is -174k km2, nearly matching the overall total of -199k km2, which is 1.4% below average.  The other deficit in Barents is mostly offset by surpluses in nearly every other Arctic basin with the exception of Baltic Sea. Clearly the core Arctic ocean is solidly frozen, with a few fringe seas going to open water slightly ahead of schedule.

Why is this important?  All the claims of global climate emergency depend on dangerously higher temperatures, lower sea ice, and rising sea levels.  The lack of additional warming prior to 2023 El Nino is documented in a post Ocean Warms, Land Cools UAH February 2025.

The lack of acceleration in sea levels along coastlines has been discussed also.  See Observed vs. Imagined Sea Levels 2023 Update

Also, a longer term perspective is informative:

post-glacial_sea_level

Why Must Repeal Biden’s IRA

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Frank Lasee explains why Republicans Must End Democrats’ IRA Caused Inflation.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Democrats passed the Orwellian named inflation Reduction Act (IRA) without a single Republican vote. They told us that it would be a $369 billion spending package. In fact, it could cost nearly $5 trillion adding to our debt.

The United States now has a $36.5 trillion national debt,
with a trillion dollars in annual interest payments.

The money for the IRA is all borrowed money. It causes more unnecessary energy spending, driving up electric rates and increasing inflation. This overspending is unsustainable and harmful to the United States; inflation is putting pressure on families’ budgets.

The subsidies in the IRA are incredible. Wind and solar get a 50 percent tax credit to build and a 30 percent subsidy for the electricity they produce. Trump and Congress need to end these subsidies. Not only for wind and solar, but for all the other supposedly green initiatives, like battery factories, electric vehicle manufacturing components, and hydrogen. We simply can’t afford it. 

This “green” borrowing is driving up our electric rates. Because wind and solar power are part-time and intermittent, they cannot provide full-time, keep the lights on all the time electricity generation. They do not replace any natural gas, coal, or nuclear power they just add costs.

It is like a household that has two on demand gas cars that serve their needs. They think they can save money with another car. Because of the 50 percent tax subsidies and propaganda they buy a solar car. 

They find that the solar car doesn’t work the first and last hour of the day, or when it is raining, or cloudy and not at night. The sun isn’t powerful enough. They learn they cannot replace any of their gas cars with the solar car.

So, they buy a wind car that only works the 30 percent of the time the wind blows. They find they can’t get home from their kids’ soccer game or from work because the wind stopped blowing.

Capacity shortfall events – or blackouts – in Southwest Power Pool (SPP) when we modeled EPA’s proposal for carbon mandates, stemming from the agency’s use of 80% or higher capacity values for solar energy.

They are now paying for four cars instead of two. This is exactly what is happening to our electric grid. We are paying for a full-time and part-time electricity production. 

To make matters worse, the way that regional transmission organizations (RTOs) pay for our electricity doesn’t allow us to realize any savings from the heavily subsidized wind and solar generation. 

The industry calls it take and pay. The most expensive form of electricity the RTO purchases is what they pay all electricity providers. This means that there is no savings from wind and solar for electric consumers, only increased costs.

Projected Business Electricity Expenses in California based on increasing commercial rates.

No other industry pays the highest bid price to all suppliers, regardless of what they bid. But that’s what they do in the electric world. We are paying higher electricity rates because of this practice.

This begs for state legislative action to correct this expensive payment scheme. 

Wind and solar further drive up the price of electricity because they require many miles of expensive transmission wires and displace full-time electric generation. Forcing it to run less than it would if they were not on the electric grid.

As natural gas and coal power plants run more part-time, every electron they sell must have a higher price to cover their costs. Their maintenance costs will only increase, too, because they were never designed to run intermittently.

Trump understands that wind and solar drive up the cost of our electricity, particularly offshore wind, which costs five times more than natural gas electricity, and are built in hurricane alley. What could go wrong? The simple answer is to stop subsidizing all electric generation with our borrowed inflation causing tax dollars. And states should end favorable regulations that require the purchase of wind and solar first. 

There are 21 House Republicans that have signed a letter saying they don’t want to repeal the IRA, even though they didn’t vote for it. Because it is fostering wasteful pretend “green” spending in their districts. Clever Democrats have the bulk of the spending going into these Republican districts in order to preserve this green slush fund.

President Trump needs to use his considerable persuasion and political muscle to end this Democrat boondoggle, which adds to our $36.5 trillion national debt.

Frank Lasee is a former Wisconsin state senator and former member of Governor Scott Walker’s administration. The district he represented had two nuclear power plants, a biomass plant and numerous wind towers. He has experience with energy, the environment, and the climate. You can read more energy and climate information at www.truthinenergyandclimate.com which Frank leads.

No, Stanford, Decarbonized Energy is Not More Secure

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Suddenly, climate media activists are proclaiming that doing away with hydrocarbon fuels will increase energy security for most nations.  Headlines like these abound:

Decarbonization improves energy security for most countries, study finds,  Phys.org

Ditching fossil fuels would improve energy security for most countries, new research finds, Euronews (English)

Decarbonization improves energy security for most countries, Science Daily

Decarbonization improves energy security for most countries, study finds, Stanford Report

The last one comes from Stanford, the source of the study being Stanford professor Steve Davis. The paper is Trade risks to energy security in net-zero emissions energy scenarios.  The overview is:

Researchers analyzed trade-related risks to energy security across 1,092 scenarios for cutting carbon emissions by 2060. They found that shifting from dependence on imported fossil fuels to increased dependence on critical minerals for clean energy can improve security for most nations – including the U.S., if it cultivates new trade partners.

From Stanford Report:

As a first step, lead author Jing Cheng, a postdoctoral scholar in Davis’s Sustainable Solutions Lab at Stanford, built a database of countries with reserves of oil, gas, coal, uranium, biofuels, and any of 16 materials that are critical for clean energy technologies, along with the trade flows of these resources between countries.

The researchers calculated how much of these resources would be required to meet energy demand in each of 236 countries in 1,092 different scenarios for reaching net-zero carbon emissions globally by 2060. Modeled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the scenarios span a broad range of possible changes to the energy mix across the globe and within individual countries. Some are more dependent on nuclear energy, for example, while others incorporate more solar or wind power.

For the thousands of combinations of trade relationships and resource needs, the team estimated the level of risk in each country’s transportation and electricity sectors, and overall energy system. They quantified these risks using a new “trade risk index” based on the availability of domestic reserves, the share of demand for a given fuel or material met by imports, the economic value of the imports, and a measure of market concentration widely used to quantify energy security.

The researchers found that if all countries maintain their current networks, trade-related risks to energy security would decline on average by 19% in net-zero scenarios. If countries expand their networks and trade with all resource owners, then trade risks on average would fall by half.

Reducing the need for imported virgin materials – whether by making technologies last longer, ramping up recycling, or developing less material-intensive designs – is another way for mineral-poor countries to minimize trade risks while eliminating fossil fuels. According to the study, trade risks fall on average by 17% – and by more than 50% for the U.S. – with a quadrupling of today’s meager recycling rates for critical minerals such as lithium, nickel, and indium.

“Most people are focused on the new stuff that could be a problem, and not really considering the security benefits of moving away from fossil fuels.”  Steve Davis, Professor of Earth System Science

A Look at the Realities that Refute the Imagined Security Benefits

1.  Hydrocarbon fuels are available through a long established world-wide production and supply network.  Renewables are dependent on critical minerals from a few sources, dominated by China.

Metal demand per technology

There are various technologies available for the production of electricity through wind and solar. Each technology requires different amounts of critical metals. This figure shows the metal demand for the five most common technologies.

Metal demand for Dutch renewable electricity production

This chart shows the average annual metal demand (for 22 metals) required for the installation of new solar panels and wind turbines. This assumes a linear installation of capacity.

The annual metal demand is compared to the annual global production of these specific metals, resulting in an indicator for the share of Dutch demands for renewables in global production.

Origin of critical metals

This diagram shows the origin of the metals required for meeting the 2030 goals. The left side of the diagram shows the origin, based on today’s global production of metals. The right side shows the cumulative metal demand for wind and solar technologies until 2030.

And there is another precious resource required for wind and solar power plants:  Land in proximity to human settlements

Land required for wind turbines to power London UK.

2.  Renewable Energy from Wind and Solar is Intermittent and Expensive

The high price of wind and solar deployed at society-scale illustrates an important cost of supply principle. Because everyone needs reliable energy—whether electricity, gasoline, or heating fuel—the higher the overall costs, the more damaging it is proportionally for those who can least afford it. High-cost energy policies are what economists call regressive. Ironically, some of the most “progressive” energy policies—i.e., incentivising and mandating solar, wind, and batteries, and forcing fossil fuels from the market—result in regressive economic impacts. Governments can subsidise such costs for the most disadvantaged, but such subsidies are unsustainable at society scales. A diverse portfolio of energy options, including primary use of conventional generation, is much healthier to meet the range and scales of demands. (Source: The Choices We Face | Energy for the 21st Century: A Declaration of Guiding Principles.)

3.  What about all the other essentials we get from hydrocarbons, not from renewables?

See Also: World of Hurt from Climate Policies (four-part series)

World of Hurt from Climate Policies-Part 1

This is a beginning post toward infographics exposing the damaging effects of Climate Policies upon the lives of ordinary people. And all of the pain is for naught in fighting against global warming/climate change, as shown clearly in the image above. This post presents graphics to illustrate the first of four themes:

  • Zero Carbon Means Killing Real Jobs with Promises of Green Jobs
  • Reducing Carbon Emissions Means High Cost Energy Imports and Social Degradation
  • 100% Renewable Energy Means Sourcing Rare Metals Off-Planet
  • Leave it in the Ground Means Perpetual Poverty

Trump EO Puts Federal Budgeting on a Zero Base

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB) is a particular approach to managing organizational resources which I have known from previous consulting experience. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (although Doge has at least one of them) to know that branches of a bureaucracy grow like topsy driven by internal incentives. The game is played by finding a new territory to regulate and add it to the mission scope to justify the added people, dollars and facilities. Managers increase their power, prestige and salaries by adding staff and resources, the bigger the agency budget the better.  As one Doge leader put it, government only ratchets upward, nothing is ever taken away.

Now that the US is the nation with world’s largest debt, there is no option other than to ratchet downward by streamlining and rightsizing focusing on the essentials, and discarding the rest.

What is ZBB method for meeting the desperate need to trim the US federal government. (Source: Investopedia)

How Zero-Based Budgeting (ZBB) Works

ZBB allows top-level strategic goals to be implemented into the budgeting process by tying them to specific functional areas of the organization. Costs can then be first grouped and then measured against previous results and current expectations.

Zero-Based Budgeting vs. Traditional Budgeting
Traditional budgeting calls for incremental increases over previous budgets such as a 2% increase in spending. Zero-based budgeting requires a justification of both old and new expenses.

Traditional budgeting also only analyzes new expenditures. ZBB starts from zero and calls for a justification of old, recurring expenses in addition to new expenditures. Zero-based budgeting aims to put the onus on managers to justify expenses. It drives value for an organization by optimizing costs, not just revenue.

What Are the Advantages of Zero-Based Budgeting?

Zero-based budgeting starts from scratch, analyzing each granular need of the company instead of using the incremental budgeting increases found in traditional budgeting. This essentially allows for a strategic, top-down approach to analyze the performance of a given project

Zero-based budgeting offers several advantages, including focused operations, lower costs, budget flexibility, and strategic execution. The highest revenue-generating operations come into greater focus when managers think about how each dollar is spent. Lowered costs may result because zero-based budgeting may prevent the misallocation of resources that can happen over time when a budget grows incrementally.

The way forward is explained in the Executive Order issued April 9, 2025, with this intent:

Section 1. Purpose

In our country, laws are supposed to provide the certainty and order necessary to foster liberty and innovation. Instead, our vast regulatory structure often serves to constrict ordered liberty, not promote it. The United States Code itself is more than 60,000 pages. But unelected agency officials write most of the complex, legally binding rules on top of that, often stretching these statutory provisions beyond what the Congress enacted.

In particular, the previous administration added more pages to the Federal Register than any other in history, with the result that the Code of Federal Regulations now approaches a staggering 200,000 pages. These regulations linger in such volume that serious reexamination seldom occurs.  This regime of governance-by-regulator has imposed particularly severe costs on energy production, where innovation is critical. The net result is an energy landscape perpetually trapped in the 1970s. By rescinding outdated regulations that serve as a drag on progress, we can stimulate innovation and deliver prosperity to everyday Americans.

This order directs certain agencies to incorporate a sunset provision into their regulations governing energy production to the extent permitted by law, thus compelling those agencies to reexamine their regulations periodically to ensure that those rules serve the public good.

How Trump Tariffs Make Economic Sense

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Van A. Mobley explains in his Federalist article Why Comparing Trump’s Tariffs To The Smoot-Hawley Act Is Dishonest.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Trump’s tariffs will work — but they’ll work
even better with the Federal Reserve’s help.

Trump’s tariffs are not designed to encourage Americans to borrow money and maximize their consumption. Nor are they designed to encourage participation in speculative stock market or real estate bubbles. America’s free trade policies encouraged such excesses after the end of the Cold War, and we can’t stand a repeat of the folly. While his critics wrongly invoke the Smoot-Hawley tariff failures of 1930, Trump’s emerging tariff policies, particularly if combined with the appropriate monetary policy, will have much better results and Make America Great Again. 

As Trump’s tariffs are implemented, they will generate revenue for the federal government and encourage investment in atrophied as well as cutting-edge sectors of the American economy. In addition, they will increase the quantity and quality of jobs available for Americans as a whole, will persuade (and are already persuading) our trading partners to adopt fairer and less predatory trading regimes, will arrest a possible slide into recession, and will get our economy moving toward our long-term growth potential of 3 percent (or more) GDP growth per year.

President Trump says “tariff” is one of his favorite words, and historical evidence indicates tariffs work. They worked for the Chinese this century, they worked for the Japanese after World War II, and they worked for the U.S. and Germany in the late 19th century. Back then, American and German growth rates and economic vibrancy radically outstripped the growth rates and economic vibrancy of a free-trading Britain, which, after abandoning its early 19th-century tariffs, adopted the free trade nostrums of David Ricardo and slipped into decline. 

 

One of the few instances when tariffs failed was during the Smoot-Hawley tariff episode at the beginning of the Great Depression. But there are special circumstances surrounding the imposition of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that the free-traders hesitate to mention. When the United States raised the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, the U.S. was the world’s greatest creditor, and by raising the tariffs, we prevented others from selling us things so they could make money and pay us back. When they didn’t pay us back, it collapsed the global financial system and helped usher in the Great Depression.

Obviously, today the circumstances are reversed. The United States is now the world’s largest debtor. If we can’t pay back our debts, the global financial system will collapse, which would be disastrous for the entire world. 

Trump’s tariff medicine will put us on a diet, help us produce more,
diminish inflation, and position us to manage and decrease our debt.

Thus, Trump’s tariffs are not only good for Americans, but they are also good for everybody else across the world. While the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were bad, Trump’s tariffs are good because the relative financial position of the U.S. vis-à-vis the rest of the world is now reversed. This fact must not be overlooked when assessing the wisdom of Trump’s tariffs versus the folly of Smoot-Hawley. 

Furthermore, as Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, taught us, at root, it was not the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that sparked the Great Depression. It was a monstrous policy misstep on the part of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee. On the eve of the Great Depression, the Fed raised rates and pursued a contractionary monetary policy when it should have cut rates and pursued an expansionary monetary policy. 

Trump’s trade policies are necessary and on target.
The uncertainty lies with the Fed.

How long until Jerome Powell and his companions stop gazing in the rearview mirror and look through the windshield instead? When they do, they will see that inflationary pressures are subsiding and that circumstances call for rate cuts and other expansionary monetary policies. They will cease fighting the last economic war and join the fray in fighting the current one. 

With Trump’s tariffs, America’s future is bright. Realistically, the path forward will be more pleasant if the Fed cuts rates sooner rather than later. 

Van Mobley is a professor at Concordia University Wisconsin.