IPCC Global Warming Claims Not Only Wrong, But Impossible

Posted on by Ron Clutz

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

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

Abstract

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

Estimating our climate’s thermal capacity CCL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ocean Heat Content increase

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

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

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

ERBE measurements of radiative imbalance.

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

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

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

Summary and conclusions

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

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

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

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

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

See Also: 

Our Atmospheric Heat Engine

 

 

 

 

Texans, Don’t Mess With Emissions Reductions

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Gregory Wrightstone writes at Lone Star Standard; Texans should stop spending on fake climate crisis.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Boasting that Texas “has built more wind power than any state and is a top contender for the most solar power,” a Texas Tribune article bemoans a decline in federal subsidies for such energy sources and a potential loss of “billions in investments and thousands of jobs.”

Interestingly, the writers focus on business interests of the climate industrial complex and ignore the stated reason for subsidies – to avoid supposed catastrophic global warming. Planetary health – purported to be threatened by industrial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) – was not even an afterthought in the handwringing over wind and solar financial fortunes.

Regardless, Texans face no such peril and the billions already spent on “green” obsessions in the Lone Star State are for naught. “There is no evidence of a climate crisis in Texas and none can be reasonably expected,” says a report, “Texas and Climate Change,” recently published by the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia.

Both the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) and a Texas A&M University report predict harm to Texans from human-induced warming. Climate change is “putting us at risk from climate hazards that degrade our lands and waters, quality of life, health and well-being, and cultural interconnectedness,” according to NCA5.

In contradicting those findings, the CO2 Coalition analyzed data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NASA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, reports published in peer-reviewed journals and others.

“The temperature in Texas has shown no unprecedented or unusual warming, despite increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide,” says the CO2 Coalition report. “Recent temperatures in Texas are similar to those found more than 100 years ago.”

In fact, the annual number of 100-degree days in Texas has an overall decreasing trend.

While some have claimed a connection between climate change and July’s tragic flooding in central Texas, no scientific basis for such a link exists. Though extreme, the flooding was not a first.

According to Harris County meteorologist Jeff Lindner, the July 4th flood of the Guadalupe River at Kerrville peaked at 34.29 feet, making it the third-highest flood on record for the city. The 2025 flood crest trails the 39.0-foot flood crest from 1932 and the 37.72-foot flood crest from in 1987.

“Over the last 28 years, flash floods, while varying greatly from year to year, have actually been in slight decline,” the CO2 Coalition report found.

Precipitation data from the U.S. Historical Climatology Network indicate that Texas has experienced a very slight increase (1 to 2 inches annually) in precipitation since 1895, which is contrary to the predictions of significant increases in rainfall from climate alarmists. If anything, the modest increase in Texas precipitation should have beneficial effects on the state’s agricultural yields.

As for drought – the primary scourge of crops throughout the world – government data show no discernable trend in the severity of arid spells in Texas, which is a direct contradiction to claims of increasing drought by both the Texas A&M report and NCA5.

Similarly rebutting the fearmongering of alarmists, the CO2 Coalition report found no increasing trends for wildfires, hurricanes and tornadoes.

With respect to tornadoes, the U.S., including Texas, has seen a decades-long decline in the most violent of twisters. The likely reason is a warming Earth – a natural phenomenon following the end of the Little Ice Age – reduces the temperature differentials between regions inside and outside equatorial regions that drive storms.

Like the rest of the world, Texas has experienced record-breaking growth in crop production over the last several decades. This is no coincidence, as research shows every increase of 1 part per million (ppm) in CO2 concentration boosts yields of corn and wheat by 0.4% and 1%, respectively. Based on these metrics, the 140-ppm increase in CO2 since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution has led to increases of 56%, 84% and 140% in corn, soybeans and wheat, respectively.

CO2 is necessary for life on Earth, and reducing emissions of the gas would be harmful to vegetation, including forests, grasslands and agricultural crops.

Even if Texas could stop emitting CO2, the amount of atmospheric warming averted would be only 0.0093 degrees and 0.0237 degrees by 2050 and 2100, respectively. These changes are negligible and cannot be felt or measured.

If the reason for spending on Texas climate policy were to enrich wind and solar developers, then, yes, lamentations over the demise of subsidies are understandable. However, there is no basis for spending a cent on a fake crisis – and certainly not on technologies that offer no benefit.

Anti-Tornado Tech Better Than Mitigation?

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Va.; author of “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “A Very Convenient Warming: How modest warming and more CO2 are benefiting humanity.”

CO2 Coalition Texas Report is here.  My snyopsis is :

No Climate Crisis in Texas

September 2025 Ocean SST Cooling

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.

Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated. I’ve grown weary of waiting each month for HadSST4 updates, so the July and August reports were based on data from OISST2.1.  This dataset uses the same in situ sources as HadSST along with satellite indicators. Now however, the US government is shut down and updates to climate datasets are likely to be delayed.  Reminds of what hospitals do when their budgets are slashed: They close the Maternity Ward to get public attention.

So this September report is based again on HadSST 4, but with a twist. The data is slightly different in the new version, 4.2.0.0 replacing 4.1.1.0. Product page is here.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST 4.2 starting in 2015 through September 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 and cooling in 2025.

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

Then in 2023-24 came an event resembling 2015-16 with a Tropical spike and two NH spikes alongside, all higher than 2015-16. There was also a coinciding rise in SH, and the Global anomaly was pulled up to 1.1°C in 2023, ~0.3° higher than the 2015 peak.  Then NH started down autumn 2023, followed by Tropics and SH descending 2024 to the present. During 2 years of cooling in SH and the Tropics, the Global anomaly came back down, led by Tropics cooling from its 1.3°C peak 2024/01, down to 0.6C in September this year. Note the smaller peak in NH in July 2025 now declining along with SH and the Global anomaly cooler as well. Presently the Global anomaly is only slightly above the mean 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

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

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

The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 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, continuing February through April 2025, with little change in May,June and July despite upward bumps in NH. Now temps in all regions are cooling August and September 2025.

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

Contemporary AMO Observations

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

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

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

Then in 2024 the AMO anomaly started higher than any previous year, then leveled off for two months declining slightly into April.  Remarkably, May showed an upward leap putting this on a higher track than 2023, and rising slightly higher in June.  In July, August and September 2024 the anomaly declined, and despite a small rise in October, ended close to where it began.  Note 2025 started much lower than the previous year and headed sharply downward, well below the previous two years, then since April through September aligning with 2010.

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

The rose line is the average anomaly 1982-1996 inclusive, value 0.18.  The orange line the average 1982-2025, value 0.41 also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2015-2025, value 0.69. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity:  Solar Coincidence?

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

Summary

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

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

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

How Badly Climatists Attack Meat

Posted on by Ron Clutz

For those who prefer to read, below is a lightly edited transcript from the closed captions with my bolds and added images.

This is a short story about how the BBC and the UK Parliament turned the opinions of just ten people into the single voice of 66 million. At the centre of this story is our favourite food. Meat production has long bothered the environmental movement and climate campaigners, because it is at the centre of culture, and family and social life.

And this is where green ideology longs to be. Consequently, greens have urged us to give up meat, telling us of the harm done to nature by our diets. They have urged us to cut down, to become vegetarian or vegan. Or to switch to other forms of protein. No thanks! Green attempts to control our diets have been met with resistance.

But UK politicians have now decided to tackle the problem of the public’s lack of interest in the green agenda.
“Dear resident. Dear resident. Dear resident.
You could be one of over 100 people selected to take part in the UK-wide Citizens’ Assembly on how should the UK tackle climate change.” They believe that they can change our behaviour by focusing their interventions on the things which the public will find least unacceptable. Parliament believes that by convening a Climate Assembly, the government, politicians, and civil servants can find out what level of regulation of their lifestyles the wider public will accept.

“The UK government has legally committed to reach Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To help inform how we’re going to reach Net Zero, 108 members of the public were brought together by the UK parliament in our first ever Citizens’ Assembly on climate change. They discussed the impact of what we eat and how we used the land.”

But what recommendations did the Climate Assembly make? Reduce our meat and dairy consumption by 20-40%, but with no bans or taxes.” The Climate Assembly provided Parliament with this information and it has now been used as the basis for policies. “The fact that you’ve given up time to come here and take this seriously is of the greatest importance.” But what really happened in the Climate Assembly? Did it really recommend that the government should find ways to make us eat less meat?

The findings of the Climate Assembly, which met over six weekends, were published in a 500-page report. The reduction of meat and dairy consumption does appear in the key recommendations of the report, in a section on “what we eat and how we use the land”. But this was not the view of the whole Assembly.

On the weekend during which the Assembly discussed this question, it was divided into three groups, only one of which was tasked with a discussion on “what we eat and how we use the land”. Just 35 Assembly members, out of 108, were in this group. They heard from just one academic’s views on meat, Rosie Green:

“We know that red and processed meat is associated with a number of health conditions. So it’s linked to heart disease, it’s linked to strokes, it’s linked to particular types of cancer, like bowel cancer, and it’s also linked to diabetes.Whereas on the other hand, eating fruit and vegetables is linked to prevention of all those conditions. So if you eat the more fruit and vegetables you eat, there’s less likely you are to suffer from those diseases.”

There was no debate or criticism of these questionable scientific claims made by an academic, who has manifestly strayed into political activism. “Meat will never ever be banned. It will never be banned.” “I don’t like the idea of controlling things at all.”

But the Climate Assembly were not fools. When they were asked to vote on what they believed the government should prioritize from a list of eight options available to them, just 29 per cent chose reducing meat as a priority. It was the second least popular option prioritized by the group. And 29% of 35 just people is ten people.

Nonetheless, the report claimed that ‘assembly members tended to express support for” the idea. On the available evidence, that claim simply isn’t true. The report emphasizes reducing meat and dairy in our diets, despite this underwhelming support for it, because the report was not written by the Assembly itself. It was written by the academic activists and green campaigning organizations that ran the event.

The claim has now been used by politicians and civil servants designing the UK’s climate policies, to meet the Net Zero target. They had already decided that changing people’s diets will be part of the Net Zero agenda. In 2019, The Climate Change Committee produced a report on Net Zero, which proposed interventions to produce behaviour change, including the reduction of meat and dairy consumption.

In their new Net Zero policy report launched last week, the Committee claim that they have incorporated the Climate Assembly’s recommendations in their analysis, including the reduction of meat and dairy consumption.

“The Climate Assembly said they would be happy with a 20 to 40 per cent reduction in meat consumption. We’ve looked really carefully at the Climate Assembly’s recommendations, and actually we were quite engaged in the process as well.  If you take the time to guide people through this, to explain why the changes are needed, to explain the sorts of things that need to happen, they’re really supportive of action. And actually we were surprised how supportive they were of lots of the things that we were thinking of already. What we’ve done is we’ve taken their advice, and we’ve constructed our scenarios to align to it.”

But though these civil servants seem to have enthusiastically embraced what the public think, as represented by what the Climate Assembly seemed to tell them, they have forgotten that the recommendation came from just ten people. The views of these ten people is now at the centre of the Climate Change Committee’s advice to Parliament, which they are almost certain to adopt.

From the Sixth Carbon Budget–The UK’s path to Net Zero

But what the authors of the Climate Assembly report could not ignore, was the Assembly’s insistence that changes to diets should be voluntary, not compulsory. How will the government legislate for voluntary behavioral change? It has turned to the UK’s defacto state broadcaster, the BBC.

The BBC presents itself as a news broadcaster, but this BBC video on meat consumption and climate change shows that it has a role engineering the social values and behavioral changes that government policy requires.

“The average Brit eats meat twice a day. And we’re eating much more protein than we need. Would more of us change our diet, if we knew it was also better for the planet?”

Rather than investigating the claims seemingly produced by the Climate Assembly, but which were just the views of ten of its members, the BBC uncritically reports them. It shows the views of one Assembly member’s concerns about his own meat consumption, and its damaging effect on the environment: a seventeen-year-old boy, who has decided to give up meat.

“After the second weekend of the Assembly I became pescatarian. When I was able to see right there on the graph that beef had a big proportion of higher CO2 emissions than fish, I knew that if I carried on eating beef then I know I’d be making the wrong sort of choice for the environment”.“So Max decided to give up his beloved beef steak…”

And rather than challenging a young person about how he formed such a view of the world, and asking questions about the ideology and one-sided view that was presented to the Climate Assembly, the BBC uses him, to encourage its audience to change their diets and behaviour.

In this way, the BBC, turns ten into 66 million. It forgets the views that many of us may have about politicians’ and civil servants’ designs for our lives and lifestyles for the next decades. The public has once again been excluded from debates about climate policy.

Just in:  Beyond Meat stock tanks to $1 after debt swap deal dilutes company shares

Beyond Meat’s stock collapsed to near $1 a share on Tuesday after the embattled plant-based meat maker finalized a debt exchange deal that handed bondholders hundreds of millions of new shares — effectively wiping out most existing investors.  In the summer of 2019, the stock neared $240 a share — its peak price. Since then, the stock has lost more than 99% of its value.

 

 

An Insider’s Story How Climatism Subverted Reason

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mark Keenan explains in his American Thinker article The Climate Creed: How Fear Replaced Science.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

For decades, politicians and pundits have told us that “the science is settled.” Those four words have become a shield for power and a sword against dissent. But real science thrives on inquiry and investigation; not the suppression of it. What has emerged instead is not science at all, but a kind of secular faith — one that demands belief in man-made CO2-induced climate catastrophe and punishes heresy. Yet, many scientists, including scientists that have worked within the climate bureaucracy, know how fragile the claim that “climate change is caused by CO2” really is.

As a former scientist with the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change and later a technical expert for United Nations Environment, I saw firsthand how the modern climate narrative was shaped — not by evidence, but by politics. Uncertainty wasn’t treated as a question to investigate; it was treated as a threat to suppress. Entire careers and institutions came to depend on preserving a preordained conclusion: that carbon dioxide, the same gas that feeds plant life, is destroying the planet.

What began as environmental concern has hardened into climate orthodoxy — a moral creed enforced by bureaucrats, bankers, and media alike. It is a belief system that demands faith rather than understanding, obedience rather than inquiry. None of this means the climate isn’t changing. It means that the conversation about why and how has been systematically narrowed — not by discovery, but by decree.

The Rise of Climate Bureaucracy

By the 1990s, climate science had morphed from an academic discipline into a vast global bureaucracy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), founded in 1988, became the central authority — linking governments, corporations, and NGOs under a single mission: to define and manage “the problem.”

But the IPCC’s reports were never neutral. The “Summary for Policymakers” — the only section most journalists ever read — was often written before the science was finalized. Conclusions drove the evidence, not the other way around. Scientists who emphasized natural climate drivers such as solar cycles or ocean oscillations were quietly pushed aside. The institution that once claimed to study the climate became invested in proving a single narrative.

The Other Consensus

While the UN promotes its “consensus,” thousands of scientists disagree. In 2019, more than 2,000 experts signed the Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) Declaration, stating bluntly:

“There is no [CO₂-induced] climate emergency. The geological record shows Earth’s climate has always varied naturally.”

CO2 is not pollution — it is plant food, essential for life and photosynthesis. Yet the UN’s focus on carbon rather than true pollutants such as heavy metals or industrial toxins has diverted environmentalism from its original mission into politics.

I witnessed this distortion firsthand while working within the UN system. My role involved servicing the Pollution Release and Transfer Register Protocol — a multinational agreement that monitors pollutants to air, land, and water. Real pollution exists, and it’s severe. But CO2 is not the problem. Confusing the two has served political and financial ends, not ecological ones.

When Science Becomes Statecraft

The line between scientific advice and political advocacy blurred long ago. Governments needed crisis to justify regulation and taxation. NGOs needed fear to justify funding. And so “consensus science” — a contradiction in terms — entered the lexicon and became the new norm.

Real science advances through dissent and enquiry; consensus is a political construct. But once the term took hold, it became a weapon. Questioning it marked one as a heretic. The language of faith — belief, denial, salvation — replaced the language of analysis. What began as environmental concern hardened into a kind of secular theology: the carbon creed.

Complexity was the enemy. Climate models that showed alarming forecasts were amplified, while those showing uncertainty were ignored. What followed was the moralization of data. The language of faith replaced the language of evidence: belief, denial, salvation, catastrophe. Dissenters weren’t debated — they were denounced. What began as environmental concern hardened into an ideology — one that rewards fear over reason.

Scientists Who Broke Ranks

Many respected scientists have spoken out. Professor John R. Christy, Director of Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, University of Alabama, stated: “The established global warming theory significantly misrepresents the impact of extra greenhouse gases.” MIT’s Richard Lindzen observed, “In Earth’s long history, there’s been almost no correlation between climate and CO₂.” Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, once with the IPCC, called the carbon narrative “a wonderful way to control taxation and people.” Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore declared the crisis “fake science” hijacked by ideology.

Such voices are rarely heard in mainstream media, not because their credentials lack merit, but because they challenge the most politically valuable story of the century.

The Money Behind the Mandate

Follow the money, and the picture becomes clearer. The financialization of carbon—
through emissions trading, carbon credits, and “green investment” funds
— transformed moral urgency into a trillion-dollar industry.

Governments pour billions into renewable subsidies, enriching banks and corporations far more than benefiting the planet. If the climate crisis were truly existential, would its management really be entrusted to those who profit from it?

In my book Climate CO₂ Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Environmental Movement, I detail how the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio marked the turning point — when financial elites effectively captured global environmental policy. Reports and whistleblower accounts later suggested that key policies adopted at the summit were drafted without open debate — policies that subordinated national sovereignty to global ‘sustainability’ goals.”

Net Zero: The Mirage of Green Energy

The world’s economies are being restructured around “net zero,” but the irony is glaring. Building the infrastructure for so-called “green energy” — from solar panels to EV batteries — requires massive fossil-fuel use and destructive rare-earth mining.

Electric cars rely on lithium and cobalt extracted through environmentally devastating processes. The energy required to mine and refine these materials often exceeds what the vehicles save over their lifetimes.

In Germany, the green energy transition has turned a once-stable, low-cost energy grid into one of the most expensive in the industrial world. In Ireland, plans to close the coal-fired Moneypoint power station were reversed in 2022 as the government quietly converted it to burn oil instead — an unspoken admission that “renewables” can’t power modern economies.

Silencing Dissent

In this new orthodoxy, questioning the narrative is treated as blasphemy. Scientists who deviate from the CO2 script face censorship, ostracism, and blacklisting. The term “denier” — borrowed from the lexicon of moral condemnation — equates disagreement with depravity, and scepticism with sin

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado revealed how the IPCC relies on the RCP 8.5 model — one he described as “fantasy land,” completely detached from real-world data. Yet it remains the foundation of global policy and countless policy papers and media headlines.

When truth becomes heresy, science itself collapses.

The Moralization of Carbon

CO2 has been transformed from a molecule into a moral symbol — the embodiment of human guilt. Citizens are told to measure their “carbon footprint” as if it were a sin ledger, redeemable only through “green” consumption. Yet many of these same products — from electric cars to solar infrastructure — depend on the same industrial extraction that environmentalism once opposed.

This framing serves a purpose. Instead of questioning the powerful institutions that profit from pollution and its supposed cure, individuals are encouraged to internalize blame. The message: You are the problem — not the system. It’s an old strategy of control — rule through guilt rather than force.

The Politics of Fear

No ideology survives without fear. Apocalyptic imagery — burning forests, flooded cities, “ticking clocks” — has replaced empirical evidence as the main instrument of persuasion. Yet forest fires and floods are as old as the Earth itself.

Children now grow up believing the planet will collapse before they reach adulthood. Politicians invoke “existential threat” rhetoric to justify sweeping economic and social controls. What was once a challenge to power has become a tool of it.

The New Creed

Modern climate orthodoxy is not science but ideology — a sociopolitical construct — a fusion of fear, money, and power that rewards conformity and punishes doubt. Science must never serve politics. When data becomes dogma, truth dies — and with it, freedom. If we truly wish to “save the planet,” we must first save science itself.

Mark Keenan is a former scientist at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change and a former Environmental Affairs Officer with United Nations Environment. 

About Sea Surface Temperatures

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Background from NOAA Climate.gov

Q:  What’s the temperature of water at the ocean’s surface?
A:  Colors on the map show the temperature of water right at the ocean’s surface. The darkest blue shows the coldest water: floating sea ice is usually present in these areas. Lighter shades of blue show temperatures of up to 80°F. White and orange areas show where surface temperatures are higher than 80°F, warm enough to fuel tropical cyclones or hurricanes.

Q:  Where do these measurements come from?
A:  Satellite instruments measure sea surface temperature—often abbreviated as SST—by checking how much energy comes off the ocean at different wavelengths. Computer programs merge sea surface temperatures from ships and buoys with the satellite data, and incorporate information from maps of sea ice. To produce the daily maps, programs invoke mathematical filters to combine and smooth data from all three sources.

Q:  Why do these data matter?
A:  While heat energy is stored and mixed throughout the depth of the ocean, the temperature of water right at the sea’s surface—where the ocean is in direct contact with the atmosphere—plays a significant role in weather and short-term climate. Where sea surface temperatures are high, relatively large amounts of heat energy and moisture enter the atmosphere, sometimes producing powerful, drenching storms downwind. Conversely, lower sea surface temperatures mean less evaporation. Global patterns of sea surface temperatures are an important factor for weather forecasts and climate outlooks.

Q:  How did you produce these snapshots?
A:  Data Snapshots are derivatives of existing data products: to meet the needs of a broad audience, we present the source data in a simplified visual style. NOAA’s Climate Data Records Program produces the Opitimum Interpolated Sea Surface Temperature files. To produce our images, we run a set of scripts that access the source files, re-project them into desired projections at various sizes, and output them with a custom color bar.

With the federal government shutdown, dataset updates are uncertain, but OISST is current and shows how presently the ocean is cooling down from it’s 2024 high temperatures.

Note: Daily SST Ocean Temperature Graphic, 1982-2025

Use the options below to generate graphics of daily sea surface temperatures since 1982 using data from NOAA’s Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) v2.1 dataset. [The chart above defines Global as 60°N to 60°S.]  These graphics will update daily, or as data becomes available on the Climate Reanalyzer website. Note the most recent two weeks of data are considered preliminary. Specific information about the data can be found here.

My Comment:

The chart shows how 2025 is tracking ~half a degree F cooler than 2024. That may not seem significant, except that the ocean covers 71% of the Earth’s surface, and any SST warming is reported in numbers of zettajoules.  This is explained at the EPA website Climate Change Indicators: Ocean Heat:

The top 700 meters of the ocean contain 63% of the ocean’s heat content. The data shows that ocean layer has warmed about a zettajoule (1×10^22 joules) yearly since 1990.

For reference, an increase of 1 unit on this graph (1 × 10^22 joules) is equal to approximately 17 times the total amount of energy used by all the people on Earth in a year (based on a total global energy supply of 606 exajoules in the year 2019, which equates to 6.06 × 10^20 joules).

It appears that presently we may be about to lose that amount of energy through oceanic cooling.  And  the sun could be to blame:

Climate Lawfare Circus Update

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

What are the most notable climate activists litigation defeats in 2025? Response from perplexity.ai

In 2025, climate activists experienced several major litigation defeats in the United States, especially in their attempts to challenge President Trump’s climate and energy policies at the federal level and to anchor climate protection as a constitutional right.

Key Litigation Defeats

♦  Young climate activists and their legal team from Our Children’s Trust faced a significant setback in federal court in Montana while seeking to block three of President Trump’s executive orders promoting fossil fuels. Despite a previous win at the state level, legal experts indicated that the lack of explicit environmental protections in the U.S. Constitution made success in federal court extremely unlikely, with Judge Dana Christensen leaning toward dismissal of the lawsuit known as Lighthiser v. Trump.​

♦  The Supreme Court declined to hear Juliana v. United States, a long-running youth-led climate lawsuit, ending the federal court battle after a decade. This rejection marked the conclusion of a pivotal effort to make climate protection a constitutional right in the United States, moving activists to seek remedies through international legal bodies instead.​

♦  Multiple states and the federal attorneys argued in Montana that overturning Trump’s orders would undermine the democratic process and risk national energy security. The lack of constitutional language guaranteeing a right to a “clean and healthful environment” at the federal level proved a decisive barrier to the activists’ arguments.​

♦  With federal options closed, activists petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging U.S. violations of international law for climate harm, but outcomes remain pending and U.S. jurisdiction over international tribunals is limited.​

Landmark Litigation Losses and Developments

Courts have started recognizing corporate responsibilities regarding emissions but continue to hesitate imposing mandatory emission reduction targets, reflecting ongoing legal and evidentiary hurdles for plaintiffs. Notable cases from 2025, such as Milieudefensie v. Shell and Lliuya v. RWE, ultimately resulted in losses for claimants but set significant legal precedents confirming that corporations can, in principle, be held liable for climate harm.​

Climate-washing litigation targeting misleading corporate environmental claims saw a high success rate—over 60% of such cases resulted in court victories for plaintiffs in 2024, according to recent reports summarized in 2025. However, the number of these cases dropped sharply compared to the previous year.​

In the governmental context, landmark litigation sought to enforce national and international climate commitments, referencing human rights and environmental standards. A recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion concluded that states ignoring fossil fuel regulation are committing internationally wrongful acts. While not binding, this opinion is expected to empower future climate litigation and enhance compensation claims for vulnerable nations.​

Procedural and jurisdictional challenges remain. For example, in People v. JBS USA Food Co., a New York court dismissed a case on jurisdictional grounds, highlighting ongoing obstacles to holding companies accountable for generic net-zero marketing claims without robust, actionable plans.​

In high-profile U.S. litigation, a court denied Tyson Foods’ motion to dismiss a greenwashing case, stating that future-looking net-zero claims must be backed by solid evidence and current technology—not just promises of technological advancement.​

What are the key legal reasons defeating climate lawsuits?

The primary legal reasons defeating climate lawsuits include statutory displacement, lack of standing, the political question doctrine, difficulty proving causation, preemption by federal law, and inadequate legal remedies. Courts often find that existing statutes like the Clean Air Act preempt common law claims, making it impossible for plaintiffs to address climate issues through federal court-made legal principles if a federal statute already covers the matter—even if the statute does not offer a complete solution. Additionally, lawsuits face defeat when courts decide that climate policy decisions should be made legislatively rather than judicially, treating them as ‘political questions’ beyond the judiciary’s purview.​

Statutory Displacement
Courts frequently rule that federal environmental statutes, such as the Clean Air Act, preempt or displace claims brought under federal common law. This means plaintiffs cannot use nuisance or other tort claims to address climate harm when statutes exist, limiting the options for federal climate lawsuits.​

Standing and Causation
Many lawsuits are dismissed due to lack of standing, meaning plaintiffs cannot sufficiently show a direct, personal injury caused by the defendant’s actions. Additionally, climate change causation is global and diffuse, making it challenging for plaintiffs to link their harm to a specific company or government action and demonstrate that a court-ordered remedy would meaningfully address the injury.​

Political Question Doctrine
Some courts view wide-scale climate regulation, emission reductions, and related damages as issues that require policy choices reserved for legislative or executive branches, not judicial intervention. This doctrine precludes courts from adjudicating matters they see as inherently political in nature.​

Preemption by Federal Law and Removal to Federal Courts
Efforts by energy companies to move cases from state to federal courts—where precedent is often less favorable to climate plaintiffs—also contribute to the defeat of many lawsuits. The U.S. Supreme Court has expanded the grounds for companies to fight climate lawsuits, making it easier for them to have cases dismissed at the federal level.​

Inadequate Legal Remedies
Courts can find that litigation is not the proper tool for addressing climate change, as tackling global warming requires international cooperation and extensive policy changes—beyond what a court order can achieve. This challenge is reflected in rulings that climate harm is not redressable through the available legal frameworks.​

 

Litigation Updates from Sabin Center

Federal Court Said Puerto Rican Municipalities’ Climate Claims Against Fossil Fuel Industry Were Time-Barred

The court found that there was “overwhelming evidence of public knowledge of articles, reports, and cases making the connection between Defendants and Plaintiffs’ claims” so that by September 2021, four years after the 2017 hurricanes, the plaintiffs knew or should have known both that they suffered injury and also whom to sue.

Maine Federal Court Remanded State’s Climate Case Against Fossil Fuel Defendants to State Court and Granted State’s Motion for Costs and Fees

The court found that the defendants failed to satisfy the requirement for federal officer removal that any action by the defendants under a federal officer’s authority have a sufficient “nexus” to the conduct charged in Maine’s complaint—i.e., the defendants’ acts of “deceiving consumers and the public about climate change.”

Eighth Circuit Said Department of Energy Exceeded Authority with Rule Intended to Incentivize Electric Vehicle Production

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2024 final U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) rule that changed the methodology for determining the equivalent petroleum-based fuel economy values for electric vehicles (EVs). The rule preserved and then gradually phased out a “fuel content factor” that “artificially inflates” EVs’ fuel economy to increase adoption of EVs.

Wisconsin Federal Court Said Environmental Review Considered Climate Consequences of Land Exchange for Completed Transmission Line

The court concluded that even though the transmission line project had been completed and placed in service in September 2024, on the merits the court rejected arguments that the exchange violated the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Massachusetts Federal Court Said Climate Working Group Did Not Qualify as Exception to Federal Advisory Committee Act but Found that Environmental Groups Did Not Establish Irreparable Harm Warranting Preliminary Injunction

The court denied the environmental group plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction requiring the defendants to provide them with the Climate Working Group records; the court found the plaintiffs’ inability to draw on the records in comments on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rescission of the 2009 Clean Air Act endangerment finding regarding greenhouse gas emissions did not constitute an irreparable informational injury.

Charleston Elected Not to Appeal Dismissal of Climate Case

August 2025 dismissal of its lawsuit seeking to hold fossil fuel industry defendants liable for the harmful effects of climate change.

The Exception, a wrong and morally hazardous ruling in Montana

Montana Trial Court Awarded Held v. State Youth Plaintiffs Attorney Fees and Costs

The Montana District Court awarded the youth plaintiffs who prevailed on climate change-based Montana Constitution claims against the State of Montana and other State defendants more than $2.8 million in attorney fees and almost $100,000 in additional costs.

See Also:

No Right to Stable Climate in Our Holocene Epoch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scare du jour Marine Heat Waves

Posted on by Ron Clutz

If you watch legacy media, you must also be wondering after seeing all the current headlines about Marine Heat Waves raising the ocean to its boiling point.

Ocean heatwaves are breaking Earth’s hidden climate engine, Science Daily

The Pacific Ocean is overheated, making fall feel like summer, CBC

The ‘blob’ is back — except this time it stretches across the entire north Pacific, CNN

Record marine heatwaves may signal a permanent shift in the oceans, New Scientist

Global warming drives a threefold increase in persistence and 1 °C rise in intensity of marine heatwaves, PNAS

Etc., etc. etc.

The last one is the paper driving this recent clamor over Ocean SSTs Marcos et al. 2025 From the abstract:

We determine that global warming is responsible for nearly half of these extreme events and that, on a global average, it has led to a three-fold increase in the number of days per year that the oceans experience extreme surface heat conditions. We also show that global warming is responsible for an increase of 1 °C in the maximum intensity of the events. Our findings highlight the detrimental role that human-induced global warming plays on marine heatwaves. This study supports the need for mitigation and adaptation strategies to address these threats to marine ecosystems.

The coordinated media reports are exposed by all of them containing virtually the same claim:

As climate change causes our planet to warm, marine heatwaves are
becoming more frequent, more intense, and longer lasting. 

Animation shows locations of moderate to severe MHWs mid-month 2025 January to October. A marine heatwave is defined as one where the measured temperature is within 10% of the maximum values observed (i.e., above the Threshold (90th quantile) , for at least 5 consecutive days. For this, the intensity is compared to the difference between the climatological mean and the 90th percentile value (threshold). A marine heatwave intensity between 1 and 2 times this difference corresponds to a heatwave of moderate category; between 2 and 3 times, to a strong category; between 3 and 4 times, to a severe category; and a difference greater than 4 times corresponds to an extreme category.

First some background context on the phenomena (in italics with my bolds).

Background from perplexity.ai How Do Warm and Cool Ocean Blobs Circulate?

Warm and cool ocean blobs circulate through distinct oceanic and atmospheric processes, often linked to major currents and atmospheric patterns.

Warm ocean blobs, such as the “warm blob” in the northeast Pacific, form due to atmospheric circulation changes triggered by factors like Arctic warming. This leads to a high-pressure system over the region, weakening westerly winds and reducing ocean heat loss, causing surface waters to warm and creating persistent warm anomalies. The formation of these warm blobs involves a feedback loop between weakened winds, reduced ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, and ocean circulation, which retains heat in the mixed layer of the ocean.

Cool ocean blobs, like the North Atlantic “cold blob,” are influenced by weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This circulation moves warm, salty water northward, which cools, sinks, and then the cooler deep water travels southward in a conveyor-belt style flow. The cold blob forms when excess freshwater from ice melt dilutes the salty water, reducing its density and sinking ability, weakening this circulation and causing cooler surface water to persist. This cooling also affects the atmosphere by reducing water vapor, which decreases greenhouse effect locally and amplifies the cold anomaly, creating a coupled ocean-atmosphere feedback loop.

In summary, warm and cool ocean blobs circulate through a combination of ocean current dynamics and atmospheric interactions. Warm blobs form where atmospheric changes reduce ocean heat loss and circulation shifts retain heat, while cool blobs occur where circulation weakens, allowing cooler, less dense waters to persist and affect atmospheric conditions as well.

Then a summary of the issues undermining the alarmists’ claim.

From perplexity.ai What are reasons to doubt climate change is increasing marine heatwaves?

There are several reasons to doubt that climate change is definitively increasing the frequency, intensity, duration, and spatial extent of marine heatwaves, based on some ongoing scientific debates and uncertainties.

Natural Variability and Other Factors

♦  Marine heatwaves are influenced by natural climate variability, such as El Niño, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and other oceanic and atmospheric processes. These phenomena can cause fluctuations in sea surface temperatures independent of long-term climate change, leading to periods of warmer ocean conditions that may be mistaken for climate-driven trends.

♦  Some studies emphasize the role of internal ocean variability, which can cause significant short-term temperature anomalies without requiring a direct link to anthropogenic climate change.

Complexity of Attribution

♦  The attribution of marine heatwave trends specifically to climate change involves complex modeling and statistical analysis, which can have uncertainties. Certain models suggest that long-term temperature increases are the primary driver, but the contribution of natural variability remains significant and sometimes difficult to separate clearly from climate signals.

♦  Regional differences and localized oceanic processes can obscure the global patterns, leading some scientists to argue that not all observed phenomena are directly attributable to climate change, particularly in areas with strong natural variability.

Limitations of Climate Models

♦  Climate models predicting future marine heatwave conditions depend heavily on assumptions about greenhouse gas emissions and other factors. These models often have limitations in resolution and in capturing small-scale processes, which could lead to overestimations or underestimations of climate change impacts.

Data Gaps and Uncertainties

♦  Although current observations show increasing trends in marine heatwaves, data gaps exist, especially in remote or deep-sea regions, making comprehensive global assessments challenging. These gaps contribute to uncertainty regarding the full extent and causality of observed changes.

♦  The precise long-term ecological impacts and possible adaptation or resilience mechanisms of marine ecosystems also remain uncertain, complicating the understanding of climate change’s role versus natural variability.

Summary

While a considerable body of evidence supports the role of climate change in increasing marine heatwaves, skepticism persists due to the influence of natural variability, model limitations, regional differences, and data gaps. These factors suggest that attribution is complex, and ongoing research continues to refine our understanding of the relative contributions of human influences and natural climate fluctuations.

Finally, a discussion of a specific example revealing flawed methods supposedly connecting CO2 emissions to marine heatwaves.

Much Ado About Marine Heat Waves

The promotion of this scare was published in 2022 at Nature by Barkhordarian et al. Recent marine heatwaves in the North Pacific warming pool can be attributed to rising atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases.  This post will unpack the reasons to distrust this paper and its claims.  First the Abstract of the subject and their declared findings in italics with my bolds.

Abstract

Over the last decade, the northeast Pacific experienced marine heatwaves that caused devastating marine ecological impacts with socioeconomic implications. Here we use two different attribution methods and show that forcing by elevated greenhouse gases levels has virtually certainly caused the multi-year persistent 2019–2021 marine heatwave. There is less than 1% chance that the 2019–2021 event with ~3 years duration and 1.6 ∘C intensity could have happened in the absence of greenhouse gases forcing. We further discover that the recent marine heatwaves are co-located with a systematically-forced outstanding warming pool, which we attribute to forcing by elevated greenhouse gases levels and the recent industrial aerosol-load decrease. The here-detected Pacific long-term warming pool is associated with a strengthening ridge of high-pressure system, which has recently emerged from the natural variability of climate system, indicating that they will provide favorable conditions over the northeast Pacific for even more severe marine heatwave events in the future.

Background on Ocean Warm Pools

Wang and Enfield study is The Tropical Western Hemisphere Warm Pool Abstract in italics with my bolds.

Abstract

The Western Hemisphere warm pool (WHWP) of water warmer than 28.5°C extends from the eastern North Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and at its peak, overlaps with the tropical North Atlantic. It has a large seasonal cycle and its interannual fluctuations of area and intensity are significant. Surface heat fluxes warm the WHWP through the boreal spring to an annual maximum of SST and areal extent in the late summer/early fall, associated with eastern North Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activities and rainfall from northern South America to the southern tier of the United States. SST and area anomalies occur at high temperatures where small changes can have a large impact on tropical convection. Observations suggest that a positive ocean-atmosphere feedback operating through longwave radiation and associated cloudiness is responsible for the WHWP SST anomalies. Associated with an increase in SST anomalies is a decrease in atmospheric sea level pressure.

Chou and Chou published On the Regulation of the Pacific Warm Pool Temperature:

Abstract

Analyses of data on clouds, winds, and surface heat fluxes show that the transient behavior of basin-wide large-scale circulation has a significant influence on the warm pool sea surface temperature (SST). Trade winds converge to regions of the highest SST in the equatorial western Pacific. The reduced evaporative cooling due to weakened winds exceeds the reduced solar heating due to enhanced cloudiness. The result is a maximum surface heating in the strong convective and high SST regions. The maximum surface heating in strong convective regions is interrupted by transient atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Regions of high SST and low-level convergence follow the Sun. As the Sun moves away from a convective region, the strong trade winds set in, and the evaporative cooling enhances, resulting in a net cooling of the surface. We conclude that the evaporative cooling associated with the seasonal and interannual variations of trade winds is one of the major factors that modulate the SST distribution of the Pacific warm pool.

Comment:

So these are but two examples of oceanographic studies describing natural factors driving the rise and fall of Pacific warm pools.  Yet the Nature paper claims rising CO2 from fossil fuels is the causal factor, waving away natural processes.  Skeptical responses were already lodged upon the first incidence of the North Pacific marine heat wave, the “Blob” much discussed by west coast US meteorologists.  One of the most outspoken against the global warming attributionists has been Cliff Mass of Seattle and University of Washington.  Writing in 2014 and 2015, he observed the rise and fall of the warming blob and then posted a critique of attribution attempts at his blog.  For example, Media Miscommunication about the Blob.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Blob Media Misinformation

One of the most depressing things for scientists is to see the media misinform the public about an important issue.

During the past few days, an unfortunate example occurred regarding the warm water pool that formed over a year ago in the middle of the north Pacific, a.k.a., the blob. Let me show how this communication failure occurred, with various media outlets messed things up in various ways.

The stimulant for the nationwide coverage of the Blob was a very nice paper published by Nick Bond (UW scientist and State Climatologist), Meghan Cronin, Howard Freeland, and Nathan Mantua in Geophysical Research Letters.

This publication described the origin of the Blob, showing that it was the result of persistent ridging (high pressure) over the Pacific. The high pressure, and associated light winds, resulted in less vertical mixing of the upper layer of the ocean; with less mixing of subsurface cold water to the surface. Furthermore, the high pressure reduced horizontal movement of colder water from the north. Straightforward and convincing work.

The inaccurate press release then led to a media frenzy, with the story going viral. And unfortunately, many of the media got it wrong.

There were two failure modes. In one, the headline was wrong, but the internal story was correct. . . In the second failure mode, the story itself was essentially flawed, with most claiming that the Blob off of western North America was the cause of the anomalous circulation (big ridge over West Coast, trough over the eastern U.S.). (The truth: the Blob was the RESULT of the anomalous circulations.) That the Blob CAUSED the California drought or the cold wave in the eastern U.S. These deceptive stories were found in major outlets around the country, including the Washington Post, NBC News, and others.

Blob Returns,  Attribution Misinformation

When the Blob returned 2020-2021, Cliff Mass had cause to again lament how the public is misled.  This time misdirection instigated by activist scientists using flawed methods.  His post Miscommunication in Recent Climate Attribution Studies.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

This attribution report, and most media stories that covered it, suggested a central role for global warming for the heatwave. As demonstrated in my previous blog, their narrative simply does not hold up to careful examination.

This blog will explain why their basic framing and approach is problematic, leading readers (and most of the media) to incorrect conclusions.

For the heatwave, the attribution folks only examine the statistics of temperatures hitting the record highs (108F in Seattle), but avoid looking at the statistics of temperature exceeding 100F, or even the record highs (like 103F in Seattle). There is a reason they don’t do that. It would tell a dramatically different (and less persuasive) story.

In the attribution studies, the main technology for determining changed odds of extreme weather is to use global climate models. First, they run the models with greenhouse gas forcing (which produces more extreme precipitation and temperature), and then they run the models again without increased greenhouse gases concentrations. By comparing the statistics of the two sets of simulations, they attempt to determine how the odds of extreme precipitation or temperature change.

Unfortunately, there are serious flaws in their approach: climate models fail to produce sufficient natural variability (they underplay the black swans) and their global climate models don’t have enough resolution to correctly simulate critical intense, local precipitation features (from mountain enhancement to thunderstorms). On top of that, they generally use unrealistic greenhouse gas emissions in their models (too much, often using the RCP8.5 extreme emissions scenario) And there is more, but you get the message. ( I am weather/climate modeler, by the way, and know the model deficiencies intimately.)

Vaunted Fingerprinting Attribution Is Statistically Unsound

From Barkhordarian et al.

Unlike previous studies which have focused on linking the SST patterns in the North Pacific to changes in the oceanic circulation and the extratropical/tropical teleconnections2,12,17,18,20,24,26, we here perform two different statistical attribution methodologies in order to identify the human fingerprint in Northeast Pacific SST changes both on multidecadal timescale (changes of mean SST) and on extreme SST events on daily timescale (Marine Heatwaves). Evidence that anthropogenic forcing has altered the base state (long-term changes of mean SST) over the northeast Pacific, which is characterized by strong low-frequency SST fluctuations, would increase confidence in the attribution of MHWs27, since rising mean SST is the dominant driver of increasing MHW frequency and intensity, outweighing changes due to temperature variability1,2.

In this study, we provide a quantitative assessment of whether GHG forcing, the main component of anthropogenic forcings, was necessary for the North Pacific high-impact MHWs (the Blob-like SST anomalies) to occur, and whether it is a sufficient cause for such events to continue to repeatedly occur in the future. With these purposes, we use two high-resolution observed SST datasets, along with harnessing two initial-condition large ensembles of coupled general circulation models (CESM1-LE28,29 with 35 members, and MPI-GE30 with 100 members). These large ensembles can provide better estimates of an individual model’s internal variability and response to external forcing31,32, and facilitate the explicit consideration of stochastic uncertainty in attribution results33. We also use multiple single-forcing experiments from the Detection and Attribution Model Intercomparision Project (DAMIP34) component of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP635).

From Barkhordarian et al. References

 

The IPCC’s attribution methodology is fundamentally flawed

The central paper underpinning the attribution analysis was assessed and found unreliable by statistician Ross McKitrick’s published evaluation. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

One day after the IPCC released the AR6 I published a paper in Climate Dynamics showing that their “Optimal Fingerprinting” methodology on which they have long relied for attributing climate change to greenhouse gases is seriously flawed and its results are unreliable and largely meaningless. Some of the errors would be obvious to anyone trained in regression analysis, and the fact that they went unnoticed for 20 years despite the method being so heavily used does not reflect well on climatology as an empirical discipline.

My paper is a critique of “Checking for model consistency in optimal fingerprinting” by Myles Allen and Simon Tett, which was published in Climate Dynamics in 1999 and to which I refer as AT99. Their attribution methodology was instantly embraced and promoted by the IPCC in the 2001 Third Assessment Report (coincident with their embrace and promotion of the Mann hockey stick). The IPCC promotion continues today: see AR6 Section 3.2.1. It has been used in dozens and possibly hundreds of studies over the years. Wherever you begin in the Optimal Fingerprinting literature (example), all paths lead back to AT99, often via Allen and Stott (2003). So its errors and deficiencies matter acutely.

Abstract

Allen and Tett (1999, herein AT99) introduced a Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression methodology for decomposing patterns of climate change for attribution purposes and proposed the “Residual Consistency Test” (RCT) to check the GLS specification. Their methodology has been widely used and highly influential ever since, in part because subsequent authors have relied upon their claim that their GLS model satisfies the conditions of the Gauss-Markov (GM) Theorem, thereby yielding unbiased and efficient estimators.

But AT99:

  • stated the GM Theorem incorrectly, omitting a critical condition altogether,
  • their GLS method cannot satisfy the GM conditions, and
  • their variance estimator is inconsistent by construction.
  • Additionally, they did not formally state the null hypothesis of the RCT nor
  • identify which of the GM conditions it tests, nor
  • did they prove its distribution and critical values, rendering it uninformative as a specification test.

The continuing influence of AT99 two decades later means these issues should be corrected. I identify 6 conditions needing to be shown for the AT99 method to be valid.”

In Conclusion,  McKitrick:

One point I make is that the assumption that an estimator of C provides a valid estimate of the error covariances means the AT99 method cannot be used to test a null hypothesis that greenhouse gases have no effect on the climate. Why not? Because an elementary principle of hypothesis testing is that the distribution of a test statistic under the assumption that the null hypothesis is true cannot be conditional on the null hypothesis being false. The use of a climate model to generate the homoscedasticity weights requires the researcher to assume the weights are a true representation of climate processes and dynamics.

The climate model embeds the assumption that
greenhouse gases have a significant climate impact.

Or, equivalently, that natural processes alone cannot generate a large class of observed events in the climate, whereas greenhouse gases can. It is therefore not possible to use the climate model-generated weights to construct a test of the assumption that natural processes alone could generate the class of observed events in the climate.

October Arctic Ice Grows After Pope’s Blessing

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Last Wednesday Pope Leo spoke before a slowly melting chunk of glacial ice in Vatican City in his first address on climate change.  The pontiff addressed a crowd of roughly 1,000 attendees and called on people all over the world to demand action on climate from their governments. This post presents evidence the Arctic is already heeding his call, growing by leaps and bounds. /sarc

The graph above shows Sept./Oct. daily ice extents for 2025 compared to 19 year averages, and some years of note. Day 260 has been the lowest daily ice extent on average for the last 19 years. Note how in just the last five days, Arctic ice extent has grown by half a wadham or ~0.5M km2!

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, which is now receding, is documented in a post Tropics UAH Temps Cooler August 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_levelThe table below shows the distribution of Sea Ice on day 260 across the Arctic Regions, on average, this year and 2007. At this point in the year, Bering and Okhotsk seas are open water and thus dropped from the table. The has grown to 5.64M km2 from 5.14 and the overall surplus to average is 447k km2, ( 9 %). The 2025 ice extent exceeds 2007 by a full wadham.

Region 2025278 Day 278 ave. 2025-Ave. 2007278 2025-2007
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 5643927 5196640 447286 4560836 1083091
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 781758 582635 199123 590267 191490
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 474277 232765 241512 25934 448343
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 558888 329424 229465 311 558577
 (4) Laptev_Sea 299904 208865 91039 305220 -5316
 (5) Kara_Sea 1026 45918 -44892 22717 -21691
 (6) Barents_Sea 0 17669 -17669 3580 -3580
 (7) Greenland_Sea 175128 271377 -96248 404376 -229248
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 81997 63374 18623 72162 9835
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 355462 410626 -55164 349687 5775
 (10) Hudson_Bay 1172 2333 -1161 1936 -764
 (11) Central_Arctic 2912747 3030507 -117760 2783370 129376

bathymetric_map_arctic_ocean

Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring ice and snow extents.

Javier Vinos Finds Missing Climate Puzzle Pieces

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tom Nelson interviews independent researcher Javier Vinos reporting his discoveries of facts and evidence ignored or forgotten in the rush to judgement against humanity for burning hydrocarbon fuels. When these factors are acknowledged they can be integrated into a more wholistic view of Earth’s climate activity.  For those who prefer reading, below is an excerpted transcript with my bolds along with some images and key exhibits included. TN refers to Tom Nelson and JV to Javer Vinos.

JV: For the past ten years I’ve been studying climate quite in depth with a basic focus on natural climate change, on how the climate changes naturally. I did this because I had a science blog and one day I decided I was going to talk about the science of climate and when I started to read the articles and looking for the information I became very surprised because I do molecular biology and Neuroscience that is experimental science. And climate science is not an experimental science and I was very surprised because they were claiming the evidence was there and it was not.

So I began researching it more and more until I became so involved I started writing books and telling other people what I was finding about climate.

The Scientific Method and Climate Science

One of the elementary principles of the scientific method is that establishing a theory before examining all the evidence leads to error and confirmation bias makes us stick to it.  Has the scientific method been forgotten in the postmodern age?  It seems so, at least in climate science.  Climatology is not an experimental science which is a major handicap.  It is also a very young science compared to the mainstream Sciences of physics, chemistry, geology and biology.  The consensus was reached in 1988 almost without data and wholly based on the Greenhouse Effect and The Coincidence of temperature and CO2 during the Pleistocene in Antarctic Ice cores.

Understanding Albedo and Heat Transport

There are two absolutely essential processes in determining climate that are largely unknown.  The first is albedo or the amount of sunlight reflected back into space.  It’s crucial because it determines the amount of energy the Earth receives.  We ignore why it has the value it has, why it varies so little from year to year, why it varies so much from month to month, why both hemispheres have the same albedo and how the albedo has changed in the past.

As a result of our ignorance, models are unable to adequately reproduce the Earth albedo failing to show its small inter-annual variability, its large seasonal variability and its symmetry between the two hemispheres.   Nevertheless many scientists believe that the models are capable of predicting changes in albedo otherwise they will have to admit that the models cannot predict future climates. Small changes in albedo can produce large climate changes of natural origin and this is the basis of several alternative hypotheses to CO2.

ERBE measurements of radiative imbalance.

I have focused my research on a second essential process and this is what my book is about.  The transport of heat from the equator to the poles also known as meridional heat transport because it runs in the direction of the meridians.  There is much evidence that this is the primary cause of natural climate change.  Heat transport is also an enormously neglected process, we do not know how it works and there is no established Theory to explain it.  We also do not know how it is distributed between the atmosphere and the ocean, how it is divided among the different types of ocean currents, how it changes with the seasons, how it changes from year to year, why Antarctica receives less heat than the Arctic although it should receive more or why heat is transported from the colder hemisphere to the warmer hemisphere.

The models do not understand heat transport because no one understands it,
and that is where the evidence for most natural climate change lies.

In fact we can’t even measure it properly and if we don’t know how heat transport works, it’s obvious that the models don’t either.  They fail miserably at reproducing the amount of heat being transported and reflecting transport changes in the atmosphere and ocean, they do not even correctly reproduce the distribution line, the climatic equator where the trade winds from both hemispheres converge.  Nor do they reproduce seasonal changes since the amount of heat entering and leaving the ocean throughout the year is not known.

If no one understands heat transport, then models cannot understand it either. because they are just a product of our minds with no physical connection to reality.  Even if there are other secondary causes of climate change, including increased CO2, the evidence points to changes in heat transport as the primary way in which the climate changes.  In the end it’s like the joke about the drunk who looks under a street lamp for his lost keys because the light is better there than where he thinks he lost them.

Climatologists look for the answer where the knowledge is better in the greenhouse effect. the culprits are certain gases that together make up 1% of the atmosphere.  In this graph we can see the profile of the gases that make up the atmosphere in different colors showing their abundance on the lower axis with respect to altitude on the vertical axis the gases in the squares do not absorb in the infrared.  Note that water vapor with a blue dotted line is very abundant near the surface but a thousand times less abundant in the stratosphere.  The opposite is true for ozone with a purple dust line which is almost entirely in the stratospheric ozone layer.  The thick black line is the temperature profile which in the troposphere has a positive lapse rate, that is the higher we go the colder it gets. This is fundamental to the greenhouse effect.

The Greenhouse Effect and CO2

What is the greenhouse effect?  In order to return all the energy is received from the Sun and maintain stability, the Earth must keep at a temperature of 23 degrees C below zero.

The Greenhouse Effect

Without greenhouse gases this would be the average surface temperature instead of the current 14.5 degrees. The black line in this graph represents the temperature profile of the troposphere and the lapse rate is the slope of that line in the absence of greenhouse gases.  Infrared radiation will be emitted from the surface but greenhouse gases make the atmosphere opaque to infrared radiation, so this radiation is emitted from higher altitudes as shown by The Black Arrow.  Although in reality there is emission from all Heights including the surface the average height of emission is about 6 kilometers. The emission temperature at this height is 23° below zero but the lapse rate of about 6° per kilometer makes the surface about 37° warmer.  If we were to double the CO2 as shown in red, and everything else remains the same, the average emission height would increase by about 150 meters.   As the atmosphere becomes more opaque so the temperature at that height would be 1° cooler it would be necessary for the surface and atmosphere to warm by that degree in order for the earth to return the energy it receives from the sun which is absolutely necessary.

But in the climate system everything is interconnected and when something changes everything changes and nobody knows how much the temperature would change.  So when they tell us that we have to reduce our emissions by a certain amount to avoid some amount of warming they are lying to us because nobody knows that these gases cause the greenhouse effect.  Only the first three are really important. They are trace gases but that does not diminish their importance.  Ozone is a thousand times less abundant than CO2, but its contribution to the greenhouse effect is only five times less.

Greenhouse effect is not uniform across the planet.

Look at water vapor in yellow.  Together with the clouds it forms, it is responsible for 3/4 of the greenhouse effect but it’s abundance varies greatly because it depends on temperature.  When the temperature drops it condenses and falls as water or snow.  Because of this the greenhouse effect is highly variable on the planet.  At the poles there is practically no water vapor or clouds in Winter. These are the places on Earth with the driest atmosphere and a much weaker greenhouse effect.  Not much attention is given to this, but it is very important, and I point out in the book it’s one of the pieces that must be used to solve the puzzle.

Every year has two winters, and heat transport
to the pole in winter is greater

Having such a weak greenhouse effect makes it very easy for heat to escape from the earth through the poles.  The climate works like the internal combustion engine of a car; only instead of one cooling system it has two, one at each pole.  The engine block is the tropics, the hottest part because that is where most of the sun’s energy arrives.  The tropics lose heat by radiation but not enough.  The excess must be transported to the radiators to be radiated to the outside.  And this is done by a fan which is equivalent to the atmosphere and a circuit with a cooling liquid, which is equivalent to the ocean.

Climatologists do not see it this way, but the other way around.  For them heat transport does not change the temperature of the planet but only warms the poles.  But because of this erroneous view they encounter paradoxes that they cannot resolve. in the early Eocene, at the beginning of the age of mammals, the poles were so temperate that palm trees grew in the Arctic and frogs lived in Antarctica, indicating that the average temperature of the coldest mouth was above freezing. Climatologists do not understand how this was possible because the smaller temperature difference made the heat transport much smaller which prevented the poles from warming.

Like all paradoxes it is solved by changing the frame of reference.  It was possible because the smaller heat transport made the planet lose less heat and get warmer, which warmed the poles along with the rest. When it is winter in one hemisphere, the atmosphere transports more heat to that hemisphere.  But the atmosphere also carries angular momentum or rotational inertia since it is a conserved property.  Any change in the angular momentum of the atmosphere must be compensated for by a change in the spin rate of the earth.  Just as ice skaters increases their spin rate rate by bringing their arms closer to the body,  similar to the skater the Earth’s spin rate increases by about 1 millisecond per day as atmospheric circulation and heat transport increase in Winter.  Since 1962 it has been possible to measure this to an accuracy of one microsecond.  Thanks to the invention of the atomic clock and radio astronomy, it is possible to know the exact orientation of the Earth in space, it has been well known since the 1970s.

The Earth spins faster in winter.

The Influence of Solar Activity on Climate

That solar activity affects the Earth’s rotation has been published many times.  The phenomenon is particularly pronounced during the Boreal winter as we can see in the graph above for 2015 a year of high solar activity and 2018 with low activity.  And it is measured by the variation in milliseconds of day length.  In the lower graph we can see the solar activity represented by the sunspot cycle with a red dash line.  The black solid line shows the changes in the Earth’s rotation caused by the Boreal winter.  It shows the same cycle as the sun although the Earth’s rotation is also affected by equatorial stratospheric winds and the El Nino phenomenon.  The dotted line is from a paper published in 2014.

Everyone ignores this phenomenon especially the IPCC which says that the sun does not affect climate.  But if the sun can change the Earth’s rotation speed then it can change the climate.  My research has been like that of Sherlock Holmes looking for clues that have been missed, ignored and forgotten. Studies show the effect of the sun on the rotation of the Earth has been known for 50 years but very few people in the world know about it.

What I have learned about climate science is because I have stood on the shoulder of giants giants like the Canadian atmospheric physicist Colin Hines who explained in a 1974 paper that the sun’s effect on climate could be due to planetary waves.  It was ignored and his theory was forgotten.  Art lovers will recognize the Great Wave print by Hokusai.  Atmospheric waves are like ocean waves except that they move in three directions,  planetary waves are the largest.  Many of you will remember the tsunami that occurred in Indonesia at Christmas 2014.  It reached the coast of Africa 6,000 km away in 8 hours traveling at the speed of an airplane.  Obviously water does not travel, energy travels, and when it is released upon reaching the coast it still causes damage.

Planetary waves are atmospheric tsunamis that hit the wind walls of the polar vortex and weaken them. It worries us when cold air escapes from the interior because it produces very cold waves and storms.  But the climate is more affected by the heat that is exchanged with that cold, because the planet loses it and cannot compensate for it.  Another Giant on Whose shoulders I stood is Karin Labitzke who in 1987 found a correlation between the temperature of the Polar Stratosphere in Winter and the solar cycle. it is an extraordinary finding because in Winter the sun does not shine on the pole, it is a relationship in the dark not based on solar energy.  It is also extraordinary because it is the first proof of a solar effect on the climate after 190 years of a search began in 1800 by William Herschel the discoverer of Uranus and infrared radiation. Instead of giving her the Nobel Prize she deserved for such a fantastic discovery, her finding was ignored and she’s not even mentioned in climate books.

First evidence of the Sun’s effect on climate

Here I show only the data for years of low solar activity 30 Hectopascals is about 20 km in the stratosphere when the tropical Wind Blows from the West as shown by the blue circles.  The polar stratosphere is very cold, but when it blows from the East as shown by the red circles, the polar Stratosphere warms by about 15°.  In years of high solar activity the effect is reversed as I show in the book The El Nino phenomenon also strongly influences this effect.

For many scientists a solar effect that occurs in the dark, reverses depending on equatorial winds and depend on other phenomena is too complicated to understand and they prefer to ignore it.  But not to me because I have studied Hines.  The propagation of planetary waves into the stratosphere depends on several factors that affect the Dynamics of stratospheric circulation.

How does the Sun influence these Dynamics?

We know that solar activity affects the Earth’s rotation, heat transport and Atmospheric circulation. We also know from Labitzke for the last 35 years that it affects the temperature of the Polar Stratosphere.  And it does so as Hines said 50 years ago by affecting the propagation of planetary waves into the stratosphere.  These waves strike the polar vortex.  This is a gigantic tornado that circles the polar regions in winter with sustained wind speeds of 180 km/ hour.

Planetary waves affect climate through the Polar Vortex

Since heat is carried by the wind, the Warm Winds from the South have a hard time getting through this wall of wind creating a strong temperature gradient as shown in the second image. The black line in the graph shows the profile of this gradient which is a real wall that creates a 30° difference between its two sides as shown by the red dash line.  By weakening the vortex planetary waves allow heat to enter and cold to leave, changing the temperature of the polar region.  As we saw at the beginning, the greenhouse effect inside the vortex is very weak causing the planet to lose unrecoverable energy.

This is how the Sun affects the climate as explained by Hines and Labitzke and I am not just alone saying this, It has been shown.  The study of planetary waves in the stratosphere is extremely difficult because they are invisible and the stratosphere is little known but there is already a study based on measurements that proves it. And the intensity of the planetary waves depends on the solar cycle as its authors defend. The sawtooth appearance of the amplitude of the planetary waves is due to the effect of the tropical winds which change direction every one or two years and to the El Nino effect.

Intensity of planetary waves depends on the solar cycle

My contribution to these studies is to put all the pieces together:  the low polar greenhouse effect, and the effect of the sun on the Earth’s rotation heat transport atmospheric circulation, polar temperatures and planetary waves, and to show the effect that all this has not only on climate but also on climate change.

When solar activity is low, the Arctic warms

When there is low solar activity the Arctic warms as is shown in Blue by the temperature of the central Arctic according to data from the Danish meteorological Institute.  Today global warming and Arctic warming are linked in our minds.  We have forgotten that between 1976 and 1997, despite intense global warming, the Arctic not only did not warm but actually experienced a slight Cooling in its central zone.  Just as we have forgotten that the Arctic warmed in a similar way 100 years ago. It was reported at the time and there are scientific studies that support Antarctic warming a century ago similar to today’s in its effect on Greenland’s melting.

When solar activity is high, the rest of the planet warms

Why did this happen.  It is because solar activity has a cycle of about 100 years this graph shows the level of activity of each solar cycle relative to the average and we can appreciate the Centennial solar cycle shortly after 1700 1800 1900 and 2000 solar activity was below average and the Arctic warmed.  When solar activity is high the opposite happens and the Arctic cools but the rest of the planet warms because it becomes more efficient at conserving energy.

Glaciers and proxies show modern warming before CO2 emissions

The IPCC acknowledges that solar activity in the 20th century was in the top 10% of the last 9,000 years.  In the graph we can see the trend line indicating that solar activity has been increasing for the past 300 years and global warming is 200 years old.  we can see it in the behavior of glaciers which began to shrink worldwide in 1820 as shown by the line in the graph. The photos are from the Rome Glacier in Switzerland which melted enormously between 1850 and 1900.  People didn’t care, on the contrary they built hotels for tourists where the glacier used to be.

Climate proxies show the same thing.  The green line is from tree rings and the orange line is from other proxies, both showing a 30-year oscillation on a long-term warming trend.  In stark contrast, our emissions in Gray were nonexistent until 1900 and low until 1950,  the curves clearly do not match.  A much better match is obtained for solar activity shown in annual data with a thin line and a decade long smoothing that shows in red when it was above average and in blue when it was below average.

Global Warming is largely due to the Modern Solar Maximum

The modern solar maximum is the long 70-year period in the 20th century when it was above average, something that has happened only 10% of the time in the last 9,000 years.  We can therefore conclude that a reduction in the transport of heat to the polls during most of the 20th century is responsible for the planet conserving more energy and warming up contributing greatly to global warming.

And as Sherlock Holmes would say the IPCC has made a capital mistake by establishing a consensus Theory without properly examining all the evidence.  A this and much more is explained in my latest book solving the climate puzzle I want to thank three other scientists for reading my book before its publication and providing positive feedback.  They are William Happer professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University who also wrote the forward to the book,  Judith Curry professor emerita of atmospheric physics at Georgia Institute of Technology and Willie Soon research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian center for astrophysics.  I also want to thank Andy May, a writer I have collaborated with on many climate science web articles over the years.  The book has been written at several reading levels and divided into a large number of short chapters to make it more accessible to a general audience despite the inherent complexity of the subject.  It has been translated into five languages of which two have been published and three are in the process of being published.  There are plans to publish it in three more languages including Greta Thunberg’s.

My main interest for the past nine years has been to find out why and how the climate changes on our planet.  It is clear from the evidence that we are missing some essential processes because we don’t understand the majority of past climate changes. There are more scientists who agree on this than is usually acknowledge.  Several new theories have been developed including mine and they should be seriously considered by the IPCC because the CO2 Theory lacks sufficient evidence.  I defend my theory as having more support from evidence than the consensus one, but what is important to everybody is that on top of the IPCC’s Capital mistake of reaching a premature consensus, we don’t make the capital mistake of embarking the global economy on a planned experiment of unforeseeable consequences.

TN: You argue that climate change is largely due to natural causes and in particular you attribute a key role to high solar activity in the 20th century.  How does your theory differ from others who also argue for such a role?

JV: Well the mechanism is different. There is a lot of debate about the role of the sun in climate and over the last 30 years there has been a lot of advances in understanding how solar variability affects the stratosphere and how this effect is transmitted to the surface.  What I add is how these effects change the energy content of the climate system and thus produce climate change.  In my book I present evidence that climate is changing due to changes in the amount of heat that is being transported to the poles and the amount of solar energy that changes is not that important.  So in essence I refute the IPCC’s arguments that dismisses a solar effect on climate based on small changes in solar energy and in the trends in solar activity not being the same as temperature Trends

TN: Okay so how does your work fit with other theories like there’s the role of geothermal heat by Viterito and Kamis and the role of cosmic rays by Svensmark and Shaviv.

JV: It is good that there are all these theories because in science we should always discuss several explanations.  The important point is that the climate is always changing and it is a very complex process, so there is not a single cause for for climate change.  Many of these processes may be contributing to climate change including the the increase in CO2 and it is important to determine which ones are the most important in driving climate change.

We should continue researching and debating these processes.  Any viable Theory should provide a mechanism for changing the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere because this is what changes the energy content of the climate system.  And it should be supported by the more evidence the better.  The theory that I propose meets both requirements, while the theory that it is all due to CO2 lacks evidence.

The Role of Water Vapor and Volcanic Eruptions

TN: What do you think of Joe Bastardi’s views about the importance of water vapor in the climate?

JV: I think it is fundamental because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas and what really defines the Earth is that it is a planet that has a lot of water in its three states,  And I believe that the role of water is to provide stability to The Climate system through its thermal inertia.  This is what explains that for the last 540 million years when everything has happened the temperature of planet has remain compatible with Life.  So I think none of the IPCC’s predictions is going to come true because I think the role of the water is misunderstood and it doesn’t behave the way it is expected to.  I don’t think water increases climate change,  I think it actually decreases it

TN: What do you think about the eruption of the hunga Tonga volcano in 2022.  Is that a major reason for the recent temperature Spike?

JV: I think it is very likely.  The volcanic eruption of 2022 was very unusual in that it was underwater so it placed 146,000 tons of water vapor into the stratosphere and the stratosphere is very dry so in a single day the water vapor in the stratosphere increased by 10% and the greenhouse effect is very sensitive to changes in the stratosphere  because it is a lot less opaque to infrared radiation than the troposphere.  So the expected effect from this change as was published in January in natural climate change is a substantial increase in the warming rate so and this is what has been observed. The fact that the onset of this warming has such a delay is normal for volcanic eruptions for example the eruption of the Mount Tambora in April of 1815 produced the year without the summer more than a year later in 1816.   If this explanation is correct we should expect over the next months the warming rate should decrease substantially,  and this increased warming should disappear over the course of four to five years as the extra water vapor leaves the stratosphere.

Concluding Remarks and Future Implications

TN: So if your theory is correct what are the economic implications?

JV: Well if humans are are not primarily responsible for climate change this will have huge implications for the global economy.  We should question the energy transition in the form of urgency that is being made because it is not exempt of risk.  Even if the theory is correct, we should be aware that a lot of people will not be willing to accept it regardless of the evidence.

TN: Other than the economic implications, what are the other consequences if your theory is right?

JV: Well I think people should be very calm.  We are very lucky to be living through a warming period because cooling periods are much worse, usually accompanied by famine and epidemics. Being in a warming period is a lot better. So we should not fear climate and only be concerned when the warming period turns into a cooling period.   That will happen eventually, but we don’t expect it during the 21st century.   So essentially I think we are uh very lucky with respect to climate and as long as the cooling period doesn’t doesn’t start I think the climate is our Ally not our Enemy.