Climate Politics

The Superclass and Technocrats Busy Designing Our Future (Jacob Nordangård)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The plans and intentions are exposed in a Clintel article From the Polycrisis to a World Government. Climate Alarmism is part of a much bigger agenda driven by the UN, says Swedish scientist, author, and musician Jacob Nordangård. What is the real plan behind all this? The Swiss news outlet Transition News spoke with Nordangård. Excerpts below with my bolds and added images.

Transition News: Some believe that the recent crises and the associated profiteering are pure coincidence and that capitalism simply works this way: one thing leads to another, no one is planning a world government. However, in your book “The Digital World Control”, which has just been published in an updated and expanded German and English edition, you clearly demonstrate that some are following a specific plan, with the United Nations at its center. On what sources do you base your research?

Nordangård: I use original sources from the United Nations and all those organizations that prepared the UN’s Pact for the Future. This means, my research is primarily based on the statements of these institutions themselves. I also consult other sources, for example, the World Economic Forum (WEF), which has entered into a partnership with the United Nations.

The official signing of the agreement took place in June 2019, attended by former WEF CEO Klaus Schwab, then-WEF President Børge Brende, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, and UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed. However, the UN and the WEF had already been cooperating prior to this. Mohammed, for example, served on the board of the Young Global Leaders program. This means that the United Nations and the WEF had been closely linked for about a decade before the official partnership.

When I wrote the Swedish edition of this book, I was focused on the UN’s Our Common Agenda. It was only with the release of the Epstein files that I realized how Epstein was deeply involved with some of the key figures of this UN agenda, such as Brende. Jeffrey Epstein was a member of the Trilateral Commission, which was established by David Rockefeller in 1973. Rockefeller brought Epstein into this group and also into the Council on Foreign Relations, another important think tank that primarily shapes American foreign policy.

Currently, the focus is primarily on sex trafficking and the minors involved. But Epstein was important for connecting people. For example, he befriended Brende, the former president of the World Economic Forum, and they discussed how the WEF could take on the role of the United Nations. He was therefore a key figure in these influential networks.

The modern concept of scientific dictatorship can be traced back to H. G. Wells. But Julian Huxley, a friend of Wells, and the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin also held similar views on technological change and a technological society, a kind of techno-utopia.

The twelve proposals of the United Nations contained in Our Common Agenda was published in 2021 to establish commitments for implementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These commitments include, among other things: leave no one behind, build trust, and listen to young people. It all sounds quite reasonable. What does this have to do with a scientific dictatorship or a techno-utopia?

Such plans are always packaged in fine words. But we need to see the plans behind these well chosen words. Let’s take the slogan “Leave no one behind” and look at what the UN’s Our Common Agenda and Pact for the Future actually intend:

It’s about the digitization of more or less everything on this planet,
everything that can be recorded and monitored.

It is a perfectly ordered and controlled system. No one is to be left behind, as everyone must be part of the system. As a precaution, everyone is monitored.

And when “we” say they want to listen to people, according to “our shared agenda”, it’s about learning what people do and think. Not about giving citizens a real say. “We” have a vision and a pact for the future. And “our” plans are to be implemented, so “we” want to know how people react.

Pseudoscience as Religion

But everything is based on “their” science. I consider this to be pseudoscience. It’s not real science, but a political vision sold as science. I taught and researched at the university for many years—science means questioning everything in order to constantly improve. But here, “science”, which is largely based on model calculations and computer simulations, is being instrumentalized as a religion: If people follow “our” path, it leads to paradise; if not, it leads to hell. “We” must therefore convince people to choose the path “we” discuss at the United Nations. “We” have this one great goal.

Our Common Agenda and The Pact for the Future are
based on behavioral design and behavioral science.

This behaviorism is used to steer people in the right direction. This corresponds to totalitarian thinking. It is not a particularly empathetic way of dealing with people, but rather turns them into objects that can be programmed to better conform to the visions of those behind these plans.

And when they say: “We want to listen to young people and work with them,” it basically means that young people are to be steered in a certain direction.

Young people can’t simply express their opinions freely. They are asked: “What do you think of climate policy? Should it be stricter or more lenient?” “I don’t believe in it” is not an acceptable answer. These “facts” must not be questioned. Questionnaires and focus groups serve only to justify the implemented measures.

Why is there such a focus on the year 2030? Because these 15-year plans exist. From 2000 onwards, there was this test run with the Millennium Development Goals until 2015 – few have heard of it or remember it – and the goals were not met. But this time, for the year 2030, everything has gained enormous importance and has been used for propaganda purposes since 2015. However, I suspect that the United Nations will no longer be able to successfully implement the Sustainable Development Goals as they are presented to the public by 2030.

So there will be new goals for 2045 – a crucial milestone. In future scenarios, the project is described as The Great Transition – the aim is to establish a world government by the UN’s 100th anniversary. The period leading up to it is a transitional phase, and we are currently in the first stage of this transformation. 2030 is simply a pivotal year on the path to achieving this goal.

Cyber-biological Systems

How does artificial intelligence (AI) contribute to implementing this one world government? I believe the elites of this world view AI as a perfect system because they previously relied on other people to carry out their orders – that is why totalitarian systems can never last in the long run.

If they use this AI-driven system instead, no one stands in the elites’ way: no one can destroy it from within. They can set rules and regulations and tell the autonomous AI system, the world’s control system, what they want to achieve, and it will be implemented.

From where does this idea that humanity could unite with machines and the financial system actually stem? This too is an old idea and closely linked to transhumanism. Eugenics, with its aim of changing and improving humanity, is part of this. Transhumanism has taken this to a new level by using technology to modify us, integrate us into the system, and digitize us.

This development took place at the beginning of the computer age, especially from the 1990s onward. Like many others, I simply considered it the pipe dreams of a few tech enthusiasts at the time. But now it’s ubiquitous and serves as the foundation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. These transhumanist ideas found particularly fertile ground at the World Economic Forum.

And in 2019, the United Nations and the WEF entered into this very partnership, enabling the World Economic Forum to support the UN in implementing the 2030 Agenda. This is being achieved using the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, more precisely, cyber-biological systems. In this process, humans, machines, and the financial system are merging. This is a crucial aspect, as it leads to a complete transformation of the old, dying system. We will, therefore, integrate ourselves into the financial system.

From the WEF to an UN 2.0

In 2020, the member states of the United Nations adopted a resolution calling on Secretary-General Guterres to produce a document addressing the following question: How can we create a better, more effective UN that can respond to crises such as a pandemic?

Negotiations then took place, and eleven strategy papers were published. Parts of these were incorporated and supplemented in Our Common Agenda. This agenda is rather concise and only describes the desired goals. In addition, there were policy briefs that are considerably more comprehensive, discussing all topics in detail and developing concrete proposals for achieving the desired goals.

The member states then met to discuss these recommendations and thus develop a document that would serve as a Pact for the Future. There were therefore three successive phases. All states were required to agree to the UN’s Pact for the Future in advance in order to implement it more efficiently.

In 2024 the pact was agreed upon by all member states and adopted by the United Nations and the member states. Russia has stated that it will not implement all points. They intend to follow the points they consider sensible, particularly the digitalization agenda.

A multipolar system with regions is now being prepared. An organization called the Stimson Center has been significantly involved in drafting the recommendations for the UN Pact on the Future and repeatedly emphasizes this future world order with regions.

The geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller and served for a time as Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor. In his book “The Grand Chessboard”, he developed proposals for how the American empire should function. His goal was to prepare for and shape a new world in which the United States would no longer be the dominant force, but rather the UN would assume this role: The world’s regions would cooperate under the umbrella of the United Nations—a modernized, effective organization capable of operating efficiently on a global scale and no longer merely an informal circle.

We only need to look back three decades to see that much has already been achieved – people are very adaptable. Here in Sweden, cash is hardly used anymore. Thirty years ago, everyone paid in cash; card payments were uncommon. The so-called pandemic or even wars serve to change systems without much fanfare because people are thinking about other things.

Wars are also being fought locally, like here in Sweden, in my hometown: We have bombings, shootings, and crime. At the same time, this agenda is being implemented: Surveillance cameras have been permitted in public streets for two years now, and they are now installed everywhere.

Two sides of the same coin.

Trump and the Polycrisis of the Superclass

In this context, what purpose do crises such as Covid-19, the energy and food crisis – the polycrisis – serve? These crises serve as a trigger. Because in 2024 something very important was not achieved with the UN’s Pact for the Future: the creation of a so-called emergency platform. Instead, we now find ourselves in this permanent crisis situation, which shows the world that we are unprepared and unable to solve these problems.

These events were considered necessary to introduce
new political measures and gain public approval.

And also the actions of US President Donald Trump are creating even more problems. This, too, is about gaining approval for the new world system in order to push through the emergency platform and a UN 2.0. The current multi-crisis will ultimately help those who developed these plans for modernizing the United Nations to obtain the necessary approval for their implementation.

I call him “Wreck-It Trump” because he’s razing the old structure to the ground. He’s destroying the existing system. The United Nations isn’t functioning as it should, and he’s paving the way for something new. Trump is the perfect candidate for it. Nothing will be left of the old system.

And when he’s finished and his time is up, they can simply take over with this new system. Everyone will then say: “Finally, reason prevails. A new system that will make the world safer again.” It’s not about reforms. It’s about power.

Who are these few who want to control the lives of billions of people? They belong to the superclass, as David Rothkopf calls them in his book. These are oligarchs who control the global financial world and the economy. They can be found, for example, in the World Economic Forum and in philanthropic organizations. I wrote about one of these families, and I show how the climate protection agenda came about and what lies behind it.

Here in Sweden, a family named Wallenberg is very powerful. Like the Rockefellers, they belong to the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. These are extremely influential networks that shaped the old order and now want to gain control of the new one.

They also bring in people from other regions, such as multi-billionaires from India, South Africa, China, and Japan. This elite seems to think they are the chosen ones. Those who have the potential to be successful, to reach the highest positions of power, and to run successful companies consider themselves better than others.

The superclass comprises several thousand individuals worldwide. And among them, of course, there are hierarchies. Some are higher up. But who really knows who’s at the top?

One of the key players driving this agenda is Johan Rockström, who advised Greta Thunberg. Who is this man? Johan Rockström is an agronomist. He was selected by Bert Bolin for a position at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Bolin, in turn, was the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Rockström succeeded him. He is a key figure in climate policy and now heads the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) outside Berlin.

Previously, Rockström headed the Stockholm Resilience Centre. This center was founded with the goal of developing a system for “planetary boundaries”. This explanatory model is crucial for the worldview of the elites and their control system. Rockström and his network of scientists use it to define what we as human beings are even capable of doing on this planet.

He speaks regularly at the World Economic Forum. Furthermore, he is connected to several highly influential networks that advise not only the wealthy and powerful, but also governments worldwide. These include the Climate Governance Commission (CGC), which recommended, even before the 2024 Summit on the Future of Europe, that the UN General Assembly declare a climate emergency because humanity is exceeding planetary boundaries – of which there are nine.

The emergency platform is intended to serve as a means
of implementing the super-class’ plans worldwide.

Rockström belongs to the elite group of scientists who define our limits and determine how many resources we are allowed to use or what we can eat. He is also a member of the organization EAT which advocates for a transformation of the global food system.

This man is very influential, but he’s just one player. Before him, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber headed the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). He advised Angela Merkel, the European Commission, and even the Pope on climate issues. People like Rockström or Schellnhuber work on this topic until they retire, and then there’s a successor. They certainly play an important role in achieving the goals, but the real power brokers are the philanthropists, the super-rich.

What is Sweden’s role when it comes to creating a world government? Sweden acts, in a sense, as a mouthpiece for these influential forces, including the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderberg Group. My home country assumed this role quite early, in the 1950s, and expanded it in the context of climate research and environmental protection.

Sweden hosted the first UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, and numerous key players driving this agenda originate from there. However, they are more or less merely proxies for these influential networks. As previously mentioned, the Wallenberg family largely holds the reins in Sweden and controls many large companies; they are very closely connected to the super-class. They have always had influence over the Swedish government—regardless of whether the Social Democrats or the Moderates are in power.

Furthermore, according to futurologist Graham Molitor, innovations are implemented particularly quickly in Sweden. We seem to simply adopt new technologies without questioning them because we are so progressive .

On the other hand, the Green Party in Sweden achieves about six percent of the vote. But that doesn’t matter. Because, if you look more closely at the climate and environmental agenda, you’ll find that it’s not genuine green policy, but rather digital policy. It doesn’t matter whether the country is governed by right or left leaning parties. When it comes to this global agenda, everyone agrees. The Greens are only the activist arm.

I have examined how these environmental organizations are financed and organized by elite networks to popularize these activists and their actions – ultimately, it’s about controlling the entire population, every single individual. That’s why we need these opposition parties and movements.

I also have a history with the Greens; I experienced all of this firsthand. Therefore, it was quite a shock for me when my research revealed that oil barons like the Rockefellers were behind the environmental movement. They were involved in developing precisely the kind of policies that we as Greens supported.

Via Berlin and Kyiv to Technocracy

What purpose does the climate agenda serve, if oil companies exploit this narrative? The Rockefellers and their philanthropists clearly dictate what “we” want to achieve. The climate agenda originated at a meeting with eugenicists in the 1950s. In 1952, John D. Rockefeller III and Detlev Bronk, then head of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), met to discuss a population control plan. This led to the formation of the Population Council. Roger Revelle also attended the same meeting.

In the 1950s, Revelle made global warming a central concern and an important area of research. He also played a crucial role as an advisor to US President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. At that time, there was a project called the Special Studies Project with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in turn, was managed by the sons or grandsons of John D. Rockefeller. We have David and John D. III, and Lawrence and Winthrop. These brothers received money from the Standard Oil Corporation – oil money – and considered how they wanted to change the world. They came to the conclusion that science was a good way to transform society, given the scientific collaborations between countries. They themselves had established these collaborations, for example, through the Rockefeller Foundation, by providing funding to universities around the world.

The basic idea was that such problems cannot be solved by any one nation alone. They must be solved, more or less, by an international body. So, on the one hand, we have population control, and on the other hand, the idea of a kind of world authority that has to assume control. The other scientific problems were pandemics and the associated global health problems.

Diseases were recognized as a global lever as early as the 1950s. Everything happens quite openly. Why do so few people engage with this topic? Questioning these things comes at a price. After I uncovered these networks, it was very difficult to keep my job as a university lecturer.

When I defended my doctoral thesis – “Ordo ab Chao: The Political History of Biofuels in the European Union. Actors, Networks and Strategies” – in 2012, my opponent said right at the beginning: “You know, my institution has just received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.” The chairman of the Club of Rome also tried to prevent my dissertation from being accepted at all.

But what surprised me most was this: I came from the environmental movement myself, but when I tried to warn my fellow activists that these oil companies were involved, some of them got really angry. The more we talked about sustainable development, the more cars and technologies were introduced. Nobody wanted to question that. Universities and environmental organizations alike receive funding from these foundations. In the end, it’s all about the money.

But I continued working as a lecturer after that, first for a few years at Linköping University and then at Stockholm University. But it became increasingly difficult. Because many, especially junior researchers, discovered that I don’t really subscribe to the climate dogma. And that makes you less trustworthy. We don’t want to tolerate such a “climate denier” at “our” institution.

Apparently, it was just one student who googled me and found out I had written a critical paper on climate change; he probably complained to the head of the institute. For me, this was no longer a pleasant working environment.

But after I wrote the book “The Global Coup-Etat” in the first year of the “pandemic” it became unbearable. Mainstream medicine and the Covid-19 mandates could not be criticized. That was morally unacceptable. The fraudulent scheme was more or less evident by March 2020.

In April 2019, I published my book about the Rockefeller family, describing how their plans for the world were to be achieved through the Fourth Industrial Revolution. While researching climate change, I also came across information related to the health sector. So, it was quite easy for me to put these pieces of the puzzle together.

The mainstream media reacted to my publication about the coup by simply considering it extremist at the time. Sweden was, of course, the better place to live during the “pandemic.” But the media stated, “anyone who doubts that is an idiot.” Alternative media outlets reported on my book, which was published in December 2020, and it quickly sold out.

In 2024, the WEF opened the Global Government Technology Center in Berlin. The goal is to build new systems for governance. These will not be controlled by humans, but by an agent AI. Stanley Milgram coined the term “agentic state” – a state in which someone simply follows the wishes and instructions of the authorities.

A white paper from the Global Government Technology Center bears precisely this title: “The Agentic State”. The agentic AI will be the authoritative body, issuing commands and carrying everything out efficiently, and is intended for use in the UN emergency response platform – without humans who could say: “No, I won’t do that.”

Another Global Government Technology Center is located in Kyiv, where these systems can be tested – this is easier to accomplish in a country at war. That’s why many WEF representatives are working with Ukraine.

How should humanity best respond to this technocratic threat? This attempt by the superclass to rebuild the Babylonian Tower will fail. As soon as the last piece of the puzzle is in place, everything will begin to crumble and collapse. Those building this system use lies and every possible manipulation technique to bring people under their total control. And while the truth lags behind, it is catching up. People see through this. The truth will come to light and wash everything away. So they are trying an impossible undertaking.

At the same time, I think such projects are inevitable. There have always been, and always will be, people who strive for power. When this tower collapses, someone will try to rebuild it. But perhaps we have some time in between to better prepare the world for these psychopaths.

Beware Govt. Agencies Invoking the Science Charade

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Aaron L. Nielson writes at Civitas Outlook regarding a possilble outbreak of scientifc chicanery by regulatory agencies in the wake of SCOTUS dismissing the Chevron deference to such bureaucrats.
The “Science Charade” After ‘Chevron’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The Court’s decision to overrule Chevron deference may have
the unintended effect of strengthening the
temptation to rely on the science charade.

 

What happens after the U.S. Supreme Court makes it harder for agencies to regulate? There are at least a couple of possibilities. Option One: an agency might just stop trying to regulate under that policy. Or Option Two: an agency might seek another path to achieve the same thing. The danger of Option Two may be one of the most important—but underappreciated—of the Court’s decision in Loper Bright, which overruled Chevron deference. My fear is that agencies will not simply give up but instead will lean into what Professor Wendy Wagner has dubbed “the Science Charade.”

Let’s start with some basics. Under Chevron, courts would defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutory language. The idea was that because agencies are more politically accountable than courts and have a better technical grasp of how complex statutory schemes work, when a statute administered by an agency is ambiguous, courts should get out of the way and let the agency act so long as the agency’s resolution of the ambiguity is reasonable. Chevron presented legal and conceptual problems (including why ambiguity should favor the agency rather than regulated parties, who may be punished—sometimes even criminally—for violating the agency’s view of the statute), but also a practical one that goes to the heart of administrative incentives. Because agencies could expand their power by finding ambiguities, agency officials, often responding to political demands, would unsurprisingly stretch to find them so they could pursue aggressive policies that Congress never authorized.

In Loper Bright, the Court essentially said “enough.” Under our Constitution, the legislature makes the law, and courts ensure that the executive stays within the law as written by Congress. After Loper Bright, courts decide the meaning of statutes, even statutes with some ambiguity. As Justice Clarence Thomas has, Article III’s vesting of the “judicial power” in the judiciary “calls for that exercise of independent judgment,” but “Chevron deference precludes judges from exercising that judgment,” thereby “wrest[ing] from Courts the ultimate interpretative authority to ‘say what the law is,’  and hand[ing] it over to the Executive.”

Loper Bright thus should be a welcome development for purposes of respecting the separation of powers, especially if agencies accept the limits of their authority. But there is a danger: What if they don’t? What if the same political dynamic that prompted agencies to stretch statutes in the first place may also prompt agencies to find alternatives to Chevron? 

I have recently penned an article about one such alternative: the science charade. Wagner coined the term decades ago to explain an important dynamic within administrative law. As she observed, because judges often defer to agencies on questions of science, “the courts offer agencies strong and virtually inescapable incentives to conceal policy choices under the cover of scientific judgments and citations.” Rather than justifying the agency’s policy choice as a policy choice, agencies instead may dress-up their decisions as compelled by science.

To be sure, there are limits to the science charade. Agencies must engage in reasoned decision-making and justify their conclusions as not arbitrary or capricious. So if agencies push too hard, reviewing courts will sometimes catch on that a regulator’s policy choice has outrun its science. For example, I once worked on a where the National Marine Fishery Service used a “model [that] assumed that salmonids would be exposed to lethal levels of the pesticides continuously for a 96-hour period,” but never explained “why the 96-hour exposure assumption accurately reflected real-world conditions.” The appellate court didn’t buy it—but the district court did. This illustrates how difficult it can be to persuade a court to second-guess an agency’s invocation of science. (I often wonder what would have happened had the Environmental Protection Agency itself not criticized the National Marine Fishery Service’s “unreasonable” assumption.)

The intuition driving Wagner’s theory, thus, is impossible to brush aside. To be clear, I do not claim that agencies do this all the time. When we discuss the administrative state, we often focus on unusual occurrences rather than on an agency’s more banal, bread-and-butter operations. But that does not mean we should not worry about incentives or ignore the risk that unthinkable behavior may become more thinkable if bad incentives are not curbed. Agencies are filled with people who want certain policies. Human nature being what it is, people sometimes respond to incentives. So if the best way to get a policy through is to drape a policy decision in as much science as an agency can credibly muster, shouldn’t we expect regulators sometimes to succumb to the science charade’s temptation?

And that brings me to my thesis: Because agencies can no longer use Chevron to pursue policies that Congress has not allowed, their incentive to use the “science charade” should increase, again, at least at the margins.

As I explain in my article, suppose Congress has authorized an agency to “regulate Chemical X if it harms the public health.” Suppose further that agency officials want to restrict Chemical X because it harms birds, but it is unclear whether it has negative health effects on people. Under Chevron, the agency might have argued that the statute is ambiguous as to whether its authority is limited to protecting human health, so it can use the statute to protect birds, too. Of course, such a strained reading may have worked even before Loper Bright, but now agencies know that this interpretation won’t fly. So instead, the agency may lean into the science charade. Because generalist judges may be more comfortable deferring to scientific analysis than to overt policymaking, agencies may deduce that they should not say “we care about birds,” but instead should overstate what the science says about the effects of Chemical X on human health.

Using the science charade as a substitute for Chevron, may thus
allow them to protect birds under the guise of protecting human health.

This increased incentive to rely on faux science should be alarming for at least two reasons. One, the statute books overflow with delegations that are triggered when certain facts about the world exist—facts that require scientific or technical (e.g., economics) judgments beyond the ordinary experience of judges. Agencies may thus stop scouring the U.S. Code for ambiguities and instead scour it for delegations that kick in if certain scientific findings are made. And two, there is a “boy who called wolf” danger.

Good policy needs good science, but if agencies cannot be trusted,
skeptical courts may erroneously reject agency conclusions
that, in reality, are supported by good science.   

Unfortunately, there is no great solution to the science charade. The reason why the charade can work is that judges are not scientists, and even if they have some scientific or other technical training, no one can know everything about everything. Generalist judges are simply not equipped to understand all the technical issues the administrative state presents. Although there are downsides, the best answer might be greater procedural formality in the regulatory process—complete with more extensive cross-examination of agency experts to create a record that may be more understandable to judges. (Of course, the dynamic effect of that prospect may be to dissuade bad science from the get-go.) As I have explained elsewhere, increasing procedural rigor is not costless, which is one reason the administrative state has largely moved away from procedural devices such as cross-examination. But for certain categories of regulatory action, it might make sense to head off bad incentives. Of course, some may argue (presumably, Wagner herself) that such costs are not worth it. But especially given the heightened incentive caused by Chevron’s demise, I’m not so sanguine.

Like most complex systems, the administrative state resists easy answers. It is important to think through incentives and unintended consequences. The Court’s decision to overrule Chevron deference addresses one incentive—the enticement to hunt for statutory language that agencies can claim is ambiguous. But it may have the unintended effect of strengthening the temptation to rely on the science charade. There is no silver-bullet solution; it is important to recognize why agencies act as they do and to create systems to best maximize the benefits of agency expertise while preventing its abuse.

Footnote: A Blast from the past warning about this very issue

From The Hartwell Paper (2010) A new direction for climate policy after the crash of 2009

On the subject, ‘How to get climate policy back on course’ ,   A panel of British professors included this observation:

“Climate change was brought to the attention of policy-makers by scientists. From the outset, these scientists also brought their preferred solutions to the table in US Congressional hearings and other policy forums, all bundled. The proposition that ‘science’ somehow dictated particular policy responses, encouraged –indeed instructed – those who found those particular strategies unattractive to argue about the science.

So, a distinctive characteristic of the climate change debate has been of scientists claiming with the authority of their position that their results dictated particular policies; of policy makers claiming that their preferred choices were dictated by science, and both acting as if ‘science’ and ‘policy’ were simply and rigidly linked as if it were a matter of escaping from the path of an oncoming tornado.

In the case of climate modelling, which has been prominent in the public debate, the many and varied ‘projective’ scenarios (that is, explorations of plausible futures using computer models conditioned on a large number of assumptions and simplifications) are sufficient to undergird just about any view of the future that one prefers. But the ‘projective’ models they produce have frequently been conflated implicitly and sometimes wilfully with what politicians really want, namely ‘predictive’ scenarios: that is, precise forecasts of the future.”

Norway Leads Europe Back to Energy Sanity

Posted on by Ron Clutz

An article at Liberty Beacon spills the beans, or IOW, explains how they are letting the oil and gas cat out of the bag: ‘We are talking about energy security for Europe’: Norway doubles down on oil and gas production.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Norway, an energy superpower, which gives it its massive sovereign wealth fund,
is stepping up for itself and Europe. Sensible. Everybody wins.
Meanwhile, the Left and the UK look like idiots.

In case of any doubt about Norway’s commitment to maintain – and expand – its production of gas and oil offshore, the energy minister,

“We will develop, not dismantle, activity on our continental shelf.”

This week, to the alarm of environmental campaigners, he announced that three gasfields off the country’s southern coast would reopen by the end of 2028 – nearly three decades after they closed – to meet a shortfall caused by the impact of the war in Ukraine and disruption to supplies from the Middle East.

The decision will help keep gas and oil production at about the 2025 level – which has been stable for almost 20 years – and stay broadly the same for the rest of this decade. Norway has 97 offshore oilfields, three of which came on stream last year, and its Norwegian Offshore Directorate expects “100 and beyond” within the next two years, still producing at least the present level of 2m barrels of oil daily.

The Barents Sea, in the high north, is the new gas and oil frontier – with the prospect of mining for seabed minerals between northern Norway and Greenland, a more distant prospect after initial surveys by the Norwegian Offshore Directorate – an agency of Aasland’s department – showed potential.

“Norwegian offshore production plays an important role in ensuring energy security in Europe,” says Aasland.

“The world, and Europe, will have a need for oil and gas for decades to come and it is crucial that Norway continues to develop its continental shelf to remain a reliable and long-term supplier … and (with) a high level of exploration activity.”

The sector generates vast wealth for Norway, but the decision this week to reopen the Albuskjell, Vest Ekofisk and Tommeliten Gamma gasfields in the North Sea, which were closed in 1998, has received heavy criticism in some quarters.  It goes against the advice of the country’s environment agency, and the Socialist Left party accused the government of “greenwashing”.

North Sea oil rigs | Source: GETTY © GB News

Matt Gibson provides additional details at MSN Norway reopens three North Sea gas fields to power millions of homes while UK stalls.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images

Norway plans to revive three mothballed North Sea gas fields as demand in Europe soars.  As the UK stalls on developing its side of the basin, with new licences banned and work on two fields frozen because of climate challenges, the Norwegian fields will be opened for the first time in 30 years.

They are believed to contain enough fuel to heat millions of homes and the country says it is vital for European energy security.  The gas will be sent by pipeline to Germany with light oil sent to the UK.

The Norwegian government has also said that it is keen to further exploit its resources in the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. It plans to access 70 blocks identified on the seabed.  Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said: “Norway’s oil and gas industry is vital to Norway and to Europe.” Energy minister Terje Aasland said: “Norwegian production of oil and gas is an important contribution to energy security in Europe.

“Developing new gas fields allows Norway to maintain high supply levels over the long term. This has become all the more crucial since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.”

The three fields are run by ConocoPhillips. The company’s European president, Steinar Våge, said: “By utilising existing infrastructure, we can produce substantial resources at low cost, and strengthen gas exports to Europe.”

The UK spent £20b buying oil and gas from Norway last year.
Meanwhile, its domestic output continues to fall. 

Offshore operators have complained that it is becoming difficult to work under the current political regime. Drilling at both Rosebank, Britain’s largest untapped oil field, and Jackdaw, a gas field, has been halted after a legal challenge on climate grounds.  The decision on whether work can restart rests with energy secretary, Ed Miliband.

The Norwegian fields were closed in 1998. However, thanks to new technology, they have become accessible.  They are set to reopen in 2028 and are predicted to be in operation for 20 years. Energy experts suggested that the UK’s offshore industry was being held back by policy.

A spokesman for Offshore Energies UK told the Telegraph:

“The discrepancy in success in the two different regions of the North Sea is not dictated by geology. “It is entirely determined by how respective governments treat oil and gas resources through policy, regulation and taxation.”

Shadow energy minister Claire Coutinho said:

“Norway just announced 70 new blocks of oil and gas exploration, including in the North Sea. “Meanwhile, just over the border on the British side of the North Sea, our Energy Secretary tells us we’ve got nothing left so he has to ban new licences.

“Same basin. Same geology. The difference is political will.”

Apologies to anyone offended by an oilman’s vocabulary.

How Past EPA Funded Activists, Wasteful Green Schemes

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Bradley Jaye explains the news in Climate Change Dispatch article EPA Head Details How Tax Dollars Funded Activists, Wasteful Green Schemes.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Zeldin explains how EPA grants cycled through multiple groups,
each taking a cut, before funding more activist groups.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin revealed how federal dollars spent on “environmental justice” often perpetuate a wasteful yet lucrative cycle of environmental activism. [some emphasis, links added]

Zeldin explained on The Alex Marlow Show how his agency has stopped the scamming by slashing wasteful spending, creating savings far beyond the EPA’s annual budget.

“It’s the principle that there needs to be a zero tolerance policy for any waste and abuse,” Zeldin told host Alex Marlow. “It’s also the principle of being able to do more with less, and we proved over the course of our first 15 months here that we can achieve extraordinary savings here at the agency.”

EPA’s annual operating budget at the time of Zeldin’s arrival was “about $10 billion,” yet he said, “Over the first year that I was in this position, we saved $30 billion.”

“In 2024, this agency obligated and spent over $60 billion, and we were able to cancel grants and contracts. We did real estate consolidation [and] staff efficiencies with an agency-wide reorganization,” he explained. “We closed an EPA museum that nobody knew about or almost no one even visited.”

Zeldin pointed to an exchange with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in a congressional hearing regarding wasteful solar grants that the self-proclaimed climate change champion supported.

“We had examples where the grant was going through up to four different pass-throughs, where each pass-through entity was getting at least 15% to administer their part of the pass-through,” Zeldin said. “I mean, a lot of this is just inexcusable.”

“The money that gets appropriated in the name of environmental justice to remediate an environmental issue, but then the dollar goes to an activist group to train other activist groups to come to D.C. and advocate for the next dollar to go to them to go out and be activists, like, wait, I thought we were spending this dollar to remediate an environmental issue,” he explained further.

“So yeah, it’s about doing more with less, and we have found extraordinary ways to save the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.”

See Also

How Wasteful is Green Energy? Count the Ways

 

 

Earth Day News: The planet is still doing great. It’s the climate cult that’s broken

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jason Isaac and Steve Milloy bring tidings of great joy in 2026 in their Washington Examiner article with the title as above.

Every April, like clockwork, a predictable ritual unfolds. Earth Day rolls around with the same tired apocalyptic sermon from the climate catastrophe cult.

The routine never changes: The planet is dying, humans are to blame, and only surrendering your freedom, your car, and your paycheck to the green elites will save it. Fifty-six years later, they’re still wrong.

The planet is fine. It’s the climate cult that’s cracked.

You’d think after all the busted prophecies, they’d tone it down. Instead, they double down.

Remember when the “experts” said the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013? The ice is still there, just as thick and stubborn as ever.

We were told hurricanes would grow “more frequent and more powerful.” Instead, there were near-normal seasons in 2023 and 2024.

So now they move the goalposts: Every weather event, hot or cold, wet or dry, is “caused by climate change.” It’s not science. It’s superstition plotted on graphs. They said snow would vanish from ski resorts — remember that “End of Snow” panic? Instead, skiers in the Northeast this year were digging out from record blizzards.

The 2023-2024 warming spike was caused by a natural El Nino. When the El Nino ended, the spike ended. February 2026 was cooler, in fact, than February 1998 despite a trillion tons of emissions.

Time after time, the “experts” predict apocalypse. And year after year, Mother Nature refuses to corroborate their stories.

Cleaner Air Than Ever Before

Air Quality – National Summary EPA

Meanwhile, the actual data tell a different story. U.S. air quality today is the cleanest it’s been in 50 years.

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

Global deaths from natural disasters have plummeted over 90% since the early 20th century. Crop yields worldwide keep hitting records.

Humans are safer, wealthier, and more energy-secure than at any time in history.
The planet isn’t gasping for breath — it’s very healthy.

That’s exactly what George Carlin was getting at in his legendary bit, “The Planet Is Fine.” Over three decades ago, long before “climate anxiety” was a diagnosis, Carlin, perhaps the most famous comedian of his time, saw through the sanctimony.

The planet’s been through ice ages, asteroid strikes, and supervolcanoes — and it’s still spinning. Yet today’s enviroactivists think your SUV is going to do what Mount Tambora couldn’t? Please. Their arrogance is nauseating.

The self-appointed saviors of Earth don’t really care about the planet.
They care about control.

Earth Day has turned into a political holiday — a green May Day for those who want to remake society in their image. Their “solutions” invariably mean more regulation, higher taxes, and fewer choices.

Shut down the power plants, outlaw gas stoves, ban plastic straws while flying private jets to elitist conclaves dressed up as ‘‘climate conferences.”

It’s not about saving Earth. It’s about saving face.

When the predictions fail, the excuse shifts. Sea levels were supposed to swallow Manhattan, but the only thing underwater now is former Vice President Al Gore’s credibility.

Polar bears were “going extinct” until the population hit record highs. Every “climate emergency” gets debunked, but the headlines roll on because fear sells.

Carlin joked that people crave bad news. The legacy media just industrialized it.

And the public is getting wise. Net-zero mandates
are collapsing under their own absurdity.

Europe ran headfirst into the wall of “green reality” and came crawling back to coal and nuclear. Even California’s self-inflicted energy shortages have people asking whether energy policy should be based on cockamamie models or common sense.

The answer should be obvious: If your plan can’t keep the lights on, it’s not saving the planet — it’s sabotaging it.

“Follow the science” is their mantra. Fine.
The science says carbon dioxide is plant food.

The science says climate models have blown past reality for decades. The science says mankind thrives in warmer eras.

None of this fits the narrative, so it gets buried under the next climate scare of the month. The apocalypse never arrives — but the grant money does.

Here’s the part Earth Day activists really hate: The planet isn’t fragile — we are.

Nature doesn’t need our policies, our pledges, or our petitions. It will outlast every last panel discussion in Davos, Switzerland.

So instead of groveling over our collective “climate guilt,” maybe they should celebrate what we’ve actually accomplished: clean air, longer lives, record food production, and energy that works at the flick of a switch.

The planet doesn’t care about your compost bin or your latest electric car mandate. It’s been around for 4.5 billion years, and cooling for the last 485 million years, and it will still be here when the last climate model is rotting on an obsolete hard drive.

It’s humans who need perspective. As Carlin famously said, “The planet is doing great.” The hysterical people who keep screaming that it isn’t are the problem.

Insider Exposes Corrupt Climatism (Anika Sweetland)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

At the World Prosperity Forum in Zurich—held alongside the World Economic Forum in Davos—climate scientist Anika Sweetland delivers a provocative and deeply personal address that challenges the foundations of modern climate orthodoxy.

Drawing on her own education and professional experience, Sweetland recounts how climate science training fostered fear, despair, and unquestioned consensus rather than open scientific inquiry. She argues that generations of students have been indoctrinated with alarmist narratives that distort climate history, suppress debate, and justify sweeping political and economic control.

In this speech, Sweetland examines:

♦  The psychological impact of climate alarmism on children and students
♦  Media-driven climate narratives and shifting doomsday predictions
♦  Historical climate cycles, ocean dynamics, and orbital forces
♦  The role of international institutions and the concentration of power
♦  Why carbon dioxide is portrayed as a villain—and why she disputes that claim
♦  How climate policy, finance, and governance have become tightly intertwined

Presented as a counterpoint to the centralized, collectivist worldview promoted at Davos, this talk embodies the mission of the World Prosperity Forum: to challenge prevailing narratives, defend sovereignty, and restore open debate on climate, energy, and economic policy. For those who prefer reading, below is a transcription with my bolds and added images.

My name is Annika Sweetland and I trained as a climate scientist and during my time in what was meant to be a world-class education, I learned the world was a fragile system on the brink of collapse and that we were practically doomed. What sets me apart from most climate scientists is this, I’ve realized I was indoctrinated. Going through my old lecture notes now, I see lie after lie after lie, painting a picture that does not and will not ever exist. I was that girl that ticked the box when booking a plane ticket to say yes, I’m willing to pay a higher price to make this an environmentally friendly transaction and offset my carbon emissions.

Airlines saving polar bears, sign me up. But of course the
consensus was always the same, there was nothing
I could really do to solve the climate crisis.

So let me take you through my journey from being a scientist in complete and utter despair to standing here before you today armed with the truth.  Today I’m going to be telling you about the realities of climate education, so let’s start at the beginning of the climate merry-go-round, the indoctrination of school children. Do you realize the alleged consequences from climate change are actually similar to those of war? The child’s world is inherently unstable, after all due to extreme sea level rise and extreme weather events, their lives are at risk. But this is what we’re teaching our kids, that the world they live in is no longer a safe and stable environment, that ecosystems are collapsing and their world is on fire.  This is an outrage, they promised this is the truth and if they question that narrative the school will write to their parents, no debate allowed. I have been told my whole life that there is impending doom in the form of climate change. It was in the news every day, my teachers schooled me on it, my friends were talking about it, there were even degrees in it.

I can be forgiven for believing it. Why wouldn’t you believe what your teachers are telling you? They’re the ultimate authority at a young age. But the most significant point is this, it is the effect it has on our children.

They are scaring our children with these ghastly stories, they are shaping them to feel powerless because they can’t do anything about it and they are moulding them to be disillusioned and angry because the so-called people in charge don’t appear to be doing anything about it either. This is how you get the Greta Thunbergs of the world, that girl honestly believes her world is burning. Imagine for a second what it truly feels like to believe that.

I was at school in 1999 and this new emergency of global warming made me feel anxious and at that time three percent of school-aged children were diagnosed with anxiety. By 2023 this had escalated to more than 20 percent of school-aged children being diagnosed with anxiety. This is not a coincidence, the psychological impact of this story is crippling children’s mental health and it is simply unacceptable.

It is wrong, it is socially irresponsible and the minute they try and peddle that story on my child, well let me just make this clear, hell will have no fury like a mother who knows the truth and who is also a climate expert. Hell will not have enough fury and this is why I’m angry because I’ve seen the system from within and what I found at university wasn’t a debate, it was a script. So when I call climate change a narrative, I’m not being edgy, I’m being precise.

If you want a quick test for whether something is solid science or nonsense, just look for consistency and this consistency is exactly what’s missing. Firstly, the story keeps on changing. If it were a real story I guess the general facts surrounding it would probably remain the same but in the 60s and 70s the majority of scientists were predicting global warming but if you looked in the newspaper you’d think we’re heading straight into an ice age.

In 1974, Radio Times ran the headline, the ice age cometh. American media followed suit. Every cold weather event was sold as proof that there was an ice age approaching. Sound familiar? It should. It’s how the media still works today. A flood, a heat wave, a storm, completely normal weather, splash it across the front page, call it unprecedented and blame climate change. Everyday weather is rebranded as existential crisis. My point is this, it was never scientists telling the world an ice age was coming, it was the media with their use of selected experts. But why? Let’s dig deeper.

Newsweek warned governments were unprepared for climate driven food shortages and that planners were ignoring climatic uncertainty and that delay would make the coming crisis impossible to manage. This wasn’t just weather reporting, it was a script to create panic about hunger, global instability, they pull the lever for sympathy, for suffering in poorer countries and even today we see images of flooded villages, failed crops, desperate families, all offered up as proof of climate catastrophe and as justification for sweeping political action, urgent action with no time to consider the consequences.

In 1988, there was a rebranding exercise. The New York Times headline read, global warming has begun, expert tells Senate. I read this article, the evidence rests on five months of slightly warm weather and in climate sciences, a trend takes 30 years to establish, not just a season and worse still was the baseline they chose, 1950 to 1980. This is the very cooling period they had just used to scream ice age.

This is a classic case of data manipulation, you take a cold reference point and everything after that is going to look unusually warm. This was never ever science, there was never ever a global warming trend, it was data manipulated to tell a story. The ice age never came, first wrong prediction, but the story of the ice age, that did its job.

The media succeeded in creating a generation of fearful believers. In a speech to the Royal Society in 1988, Margaret Thatcher talked about the fear that people were feeling, the fear that humans were creating a global heat trap that could lead to climatic instability. This fear was gaslit by an NGO, the National Academy of Sciences, who promised the warming would cause a sea level rise of several feet over the next century.

The following year, another NGO, the UN, went on the record and promised entire nations will be wiped off the face of the earth due to climate change induced sea level rise by 2020. Well, we’re still here aren’t we? Second false prediction, none of this sea level rise has eventuated and it’s exactly the same story they preach today. Extreme sea level rise and climate change refugees are nothing but a myth designed to scare people into whatever policy response is waiting in the wings.

This is the first reason that the man-made climate change story is nothing more than a doomsday tale that has been evolving for the last 60 years. Think about it. These were arguably two of the world’s most powerful organisations. They’d had access to satellite data for 25 years, the best scientists, the most comprehensive data analysis in the world, plus the mainstream media at their fingertips. Was it really a coincidence that their story never came true? We now know that they would have known via satellites that the sea level was always rising steadily at 1.2 inches per decade, just like it does today. Plus, this sea rise actually brings sediment with it and increases the land mass at the same time, therefore rendering it impossible for islands to sink due to sea level rise.

However, because it was never a real story, they were never interested in the real data. They could clearly see that there was no unusual sea level rise, but they intentionally chose to mislead the public and put their fraudulent plan into action. They advised the World Meteorological Organisation, another NGO, to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Now, here’s where it gets juicy. The IPCC is structurally identical to the single world government model I was presented with during my studies as a prescriptive solution to climate change. My professors in global governance assured me that a global problem requires a single world government to fix it, and I admit it. I believed them. I respected my professors. Most of them were published authors in respected journals, and I was promised a world-class education.

But the tragedy is this. They were never training scientists.
They were training socialists to enact their agenda.

And it’s been clear to me for a time now that there’s never been a problem with our climate system, just a smoke screen to establish power and create control. Welcome to the only crisis where their solution is always the same. More control, more taxes, and less debate.

Let me make it clear how the IPCC benefits from maintaining and creating generations of climate change believers. To start with, they sit at the very top of the climate change establishment, and when I say establishment, I simply mean a stable network of institutions that fund, credential, and publish the urgency of man-made global warming. Climate finance reached a record-breaking $1.9 trillion in 2023, and last year saw a record $2.2 trillion in clean energy investment.

That’s more than $4 trillion in a couple of years. Think about who are the main winners here. They’re the unelected officials that sit atop the IPCC hierarchy. These are the people selling, building, financing, and certifying the global transition to clean energy. They are making billions.

The financial victims, the United Kingdom is a victim.

Our economy is on the verge of recession after 30 years of big signatory to international climate agreements. What do we have to show for it? Not only are our energy bills the highest in the developed world, but the economy outside of London is closer to that of Bulgaria’s than Germany’s. Today, 18 to 30-year-olds are the first generation to earn less than their parents. We are getting poorer, both relatively and absolutely. My fellow countrymen are suffering, and this also makes me angry. Because of climate policy, because the IPCC says so, we’re not allowed to drill our own gas fields, which will make us completely reliant for others’ gas in the future.

We have the best quality gas in the world, and its exploration has just been made illegal. For existing projects, for every dollar made, the company is taxed upwards of 78 cents due to unnecessary climate taxation. Let’s take a really good look at just how much power the IPCC have created for themselves. They act as a global risk allocation engine. They determine which technologies reduce subsidies, which activities become legally constrained, which investments are encouraged or stranded.

In the UK, we only have four oil refineries left. These are the basic building blocks of the modern industrial economy, but any company that comes in will not make a profit because the taxes are too high. The IPCC is making us poorer, both as nations and as individuals. Recent blackouts across Europe are just a glimpse into the dystopian future which awaits us.

As long as they continue to make us believe that man-made climate change is going to end life as we know it, we will keep filtering trillions of dollars throughout their organisation without questioning a thing. So what can we do? Firstly, I believe that the average person is more than capable of seeing a situation for what it really is. So please, tune in carefully as I seek to disprove the myth of man-made climate change once and for all.

I’ve got you on tenderhooks now, that’s a good thing. You’re still with me. Let’s bust the first myth. More carbon dioxide causes a warmer planet. Here’s the truth. A recent study by arguably two of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists, both Professor Emeritus, one from MIT, one from Princeton, I mean, these guys are not messing around. They have shown that there is a limit to the amount of heat that is able to be trapped by carbon dioxide and they call this the saturation point. We are at 99% of the saturation point. Relatively speaking, no matter how much carbon dioxide we pump into the air, it will not increase our global temperature. It is but a fallacy. Joe Rogan recently had those authors on his podcast, Dr. Linzen and Dr. Happer. Joe Rogan also wants people to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

Now let’s bust the second myth, that carbon dioxide is bad for the planet. Guess what? Carbon dioxide is actually good for the planet. That’s right, I said it, the truth. Satellite data shows that plant growth has increased significantly over the last 35 years due to increased carbon dioxide. NASA measured a 10% greening of the earth between 2000 and 2020 alone. Meanwhile, at university, I was taught that trees would starve due to climate change.

They intentionally used the word starve to elicit an emotional response. What actually happens is that when there’s more carbon dioxide available, not only do plants grow faster, but they use less water. We know this because commercial greenhouses pump carbon dioxide to 1400 parts per million because it grows the best plants. It’s called carbon dioxide enrichment. Come on. Carbon dioxide enriches the earth.

And the third myth, carbon dioxide has a direct relationship with temperature. Al Gore was the person responsible for demonizing carbon dioxide, and he said carbon dioxide is the highest it’s ever been. It’s just another lie. It’s actually the lowest it’s been in the last 320 million years. Not only that, but some of the highest levels of carbon dioxide occurred during an ice age 340 million years ago, which just proves that carbon dioxide and temperature have no direct link whatsoever.

Of course, in my training, carbon dioxide and its rise or fall could explain everything that happened in our climatic history through some sort of feedback loop or time lag mechanism. And this is the whole basis of their argument. That more carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, the more the temperature will increase. The most important takeaway from this today is that is a lie. The truth is, the earth is just getting greener, and we are simply uneducated as to why the climate actually changes. Indeed, all of us are completely brainwashed to never question it.

So why do the IPCC have a conflict of interest with the truth? Let’s understand exactly how much power this unelected, undemocratic, unaccountable, non-governmental organization are protecting with their lies. The IPCC produce assessments that 195 governments around the world use as an authoritative reference for climate policy. They use IPCC scenarios to set emissions targets, justify carbon budgets. If countries argue for compensation or climate aid, they cite IPCC risk assessments.

The IPCC projections define which regions are at risk and therefore where the money flows. And what they really don’t want you to know is that the most powerful leverage is in financial markets. IPCC scenarios are used in ESG scoring frameworks, climate stress testing for banks, insurance risk models, central bank climate risk assessments, and investment screening criteria. In practice, this means that a company’s ability to access capital increasingly depends on whether its business model is aligned with IPCC-derived pathways.

They have a monopoly not only on the success of entire countries but on individual business interests. In effect, their projections now sit upstream of policy, regulation, infrastructure, and economic structure. And this here, this is why they carry so much power. This isn’t just undemocratic, it’s anti-democratic. I never voted for them to make these decisions. These are people that cannot be held to account by the electorate and that is an unacceptable structure. It is a socialist, globalist agenda that has been carried out right beneath our noses. And it is the spitting image of the one world government framework that was prescribed in my training.

So, with the whole world relying on their projections, with trillions of dollars on the line, you would think that their utmost priority should be the accuracy of those projections. It’s why the believers say, look at the data, you can’t ignore the data. Well, spoiler alert, the data is doctored, just like it’s always been, just like my textbooks were, just like my lecture notes were, this whole thing is indoctrination.

And here is the proof. Hackers leaked emails from IPCC assessment report authors which exposed them freely discussing their efforts in deleting and manipulating the real data because it didn’t quite fit with their doomsday story.

And I quote, I’ll maybe cut the last few points of the filtered curve as that’s trending down. They needed it to be trending upward to fit with their past projections. Another email says, I’ve just completed Mike’s nature trick to hide the decline. These are real emails between the authors of the IPCC report. There are more than 2000 emails like this showing corrupt behavior and they are still the lead authors today. They are unelected, corrupt and have a conflict of interest with the truth. Trillions of dollars of spending rests on fabricated nonsense.

In the UK, if we don’t allocate our national budget to their satisfaction, we’re taken to court. Most recently, we were taken to the European Court of Human Rights because of failure to adequately prepare for extreme heat and flooding. And this, they say, violates fundamental human rights because we are not protecting people against man-made climate change. It is an outrage. So what can we do? It’s time to reclaim our sovereignty.

And we do this by formally leaving all agreements governed by the climate establishment, repeal the Climate Change Act, withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, withdraw from the UNFCC, leave the Paris Agreement. America withdrew from all United Nations architecture this month. It’s time for the rest of the world to follow suit.

I can already hear the objections, but if we don’t act, aren’t we doomed? As a climate scientist, let me reassure you. The climate is meant to change and it’s meant to change drastically. It is just its natural state and this is very much like the earth. We are in a natural period of warming called the Holocene. We’re still coming out of the Little Ice Age, which was between 1400 and 1900. Our earth’s climate gets warmer and cooler in 1500 year cycles. There is also an ocean pattern called El Nino Southern Oscillation, (ENSO) which drives huge temperature changes. Most global warming is in fact driven by changes in the ocean currents. Other changes are driven by orbital forcings called milankovitch cycles. These cycles change the position of our planet relative to the sun and historically produce an ice age every 100,000 years. There’s nothing man-made about it. There is only natural climate change.

But training experts that the world will listen to and who will enact their agenda is a crucial part of the IPCC’s strategy to retain control. Well, I’m a climate scientist. I’m an expert. So, listen to me. All man-made climate education in schools has to stop. It is not science. It is consensus which is very different to objective scientific fact.

Teach them natural climate change. Teach them about milankovitch cycles, the El Nino. Do not teach them lies that I have just proven wrong. I don’t want my child to gain an ideology. I want him to gain an education. The next generation must be clever. And for this to happen, they need to be learning factual information.

For anyone out there that has ever felt guilty or afraid due to climate change, I want to reassure you, you are not the problem. We have been brainwashed every day by the media. We are being lied to every day. And if we question it, we’re told we’re crazy. We are told we’re in denial because the climate establishment is afraid.

They will tell you that I’m the extreme one because I don’t believe the world is on fire. They will do everything they can to make us fearful. The world as we know it is ending, burning, boiling, to maintain control, constrain us in regulatory burden, and have us accountable to their courts if we spend our taxpayers money the wrong way.

The climate establishment targeted intelligent people who genuinely loved the environment. They taught us the earth was dying and on the brink of collapse. And I believed it. That is not stupidity. That is programming. Because my university lecturers who I respected and the institution of the university itself assured me this was the latest cutting edge research.

I mean I’m thinking I want my money back at this point. They told you it’s settled. They told you it’s urgent. They told you to comply. Well, I’ve told you what they haven’t. The climate is meant to change. The man couldn’t affect the climate system even if he wanted to. Carbon dioxide is good for the planet and will not increase the temperature any. And both children and university students are being brainwashed to blindly perform and enact their agenda.

Well, I am no puppet. For me, once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The choice of what to believe is now yours. But the establishment should be afraid because I am a climate scientist who knows the truth. Thank you. Thank you so much. I also just want to thank the Heartland Institute so much for having me speak at the inaugural World Prosperity Forum here in Zurich.

Unfounded IPCC Claims about Rising Ocean Heat Content

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Alex Newman reports at Liberty Sentinel New Climate Study Debunks Key UN IPCC Dogma. Excerpts in italics with my added bolds and images. Discussion of the Study itself follows later below.

Breaking research reveals the key metric behind so-called global warming
is based on “physically meaningless” calculations. If true,
it could upend decades of climate science and policy.

Lead author Jonathan Cohler, a physicist, who worked with top scientists around the world including Dr. Willie Soon, explained that even though the U.S. government is leaving the IPCC under Trump, the UN continues to march on with its climate agenda. However, with more and more evidence and scientific papers dismantling the core “science,” the UN’s agenda appears to be on thin ice.

“The public has been told that the ocean is ‘warming’ and absorbing over 90% of ‘excess’ planetary heat,” explained Cohler. “But when we examined how these numbers are actually calculated, we found they represent computational artifacts rather than measurements of real physical energy rendering the entire process a category error.”

The analysis focuses on data from the international Argo float program, a network of approximately 4,000 autonomous floats that drift through the ocean measuring temperature and other data. These measurements form the backbone of modern climate assessments, including those by the IPCC. Even leaving aside the fundamental category error, for the sake of argument, this research nonetheless reveals multiple fundamental problems with how this data is processed, Cohler said.

Fig. 1. (left) Global mean OHC (Cheng et al. 2024a) for 0–2000 m relative to a base period 1981–2010 (ZJ). The 95% confidence intervals are shown (sampling and instrumental uncertainties). (right) Trend from 2000 to 2023 in OHC for 0–2000 m (W m−2). The stippled areas show places where the trend is not significant at the 5% level. Source: Distinctive Pattern of Global Warming in Ocean Heat Content by Trenberth et al (2025).

[Note:  The graph showing zettajoules can be misleading.  Ocean heat graphs labelled in Zettajoules make it look scary, but the actual temperature changes involved are microscopic, and impossible to measure to such accuracy in pre-ARGO days. And as this post shows, ARGO measurements are also unreliable.]

Since 2004, for instance, ARGO data shows an increase of about two hundredths of a degree.

Cohler et al. (2029) is IPCC’s Earth Energy Imbalance Assessment is Based on Physically Invalid Argo-Float-Based Estimates of Global Ocean Heat Content. 

Abstract
Global ocean heat content (OHC) anomalies and derived Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) estimates, central to contemporary climate assessments including IPCC AR6, are constructed through processes that violate the scientific method. These metrics rely almost exclusively on temperature data from the Argo profiling float array. Their validity and reliability hinge on several critical but herein refuted assumptions about measurement representativeness, interpolation/extrapolation methods, the physical meaning of anomalies, and integration conventions.

Core Argo and Biogeochemical Argo floats deliver discrete, point measurements of intensive properties like temperature along irregular, untracked three-dimensional trajectories during ascent from 2000 m to the surface. This samples only the upper ocean, excluding roughly 50% of total ocean volume and thermal energy. Horizontal positions are recorded only at surface intervals ~10 days apart, leaving subsurface locations entirely unknown. All data from each ascent are arbitrarily assigned to the surfacing position, introducing unknown horizontal offsets (up to 50 km) and temporal offsets (up to 10 hours) for the deepest measurements.

Anomalies are computed by subtracting values from statistically derived reference climatologies based on sparse historical data over arbitrary baseline periods. Measured temperatures are then interpolated onto global 3D grids using prescribed covariance functions. These anomalies represent numerical differences without physical meaning as temperature deviations, because temperature, an intensive property, is not additive across non-equilibrium spatial or temporal domains (Essex et al., 2007; Essex & Andresen, 2018).

IPCC AR6 Earth Energy Budget fig. 7.2

The integrated OHC scalar depends heavily on arbitrary averaging and interpolation rules, producing computational artifacts rather than measures of actual ocean energy uptake or planetary radiative imbalance. Derived EEI values, such as the 0.7 ± 0.2 W m⁻² in IPCC AR6 Figure 7.2, inherit these biases and stem from circular methodology: CERES satellite top-of-atmosphere radiative flux measurements (absolute uncertainties ± 3–5 W m⁻² or higher) are adjusted via least squares to match Argo OHC-derived estimates, rather than offering independent validation.

We rigorously quantify major uncertainty sources, including unresolved mesoscale variability (± 0.9 W m⁻²), deep ocean ignorance bounds (± 0.35 W m⁻² from sparse Deep Argo), polar undersampling (± 0.1 W m⁻²), Nyquist-Shannon aliasing in sparse deep ocean and polar sampling, sealevel budget closure discrepancy between satellite altimetry/gravimetry and Argo OHC (±0.33 Wm-2), arbitrary baseline choices (± 0.2 W m⁻²), Eulerian-Lagrangian discrepancies (± 0.25 W m⁻²), and untracked trajectories and positional assignments.

Although the concepts of OHC and EEI are thermodynamically well-defined physical quantities, the numerical values produced by current Argo-based methodologies are physically meaningless computational constructs that do not validly represent those quantities. We conclude that EEI uncertainties reach >± 1 W m⁻² at 95% confidence, roughly an order of magnitude larger than the uncertainty that IPCC AR6 reports, rendering current OHC change and EEI estimates statistically indistinguishable from zero.

Conclusions

EEI estimates that depend on Argo-derived global OHC lack physical validity and reliability as measures of ocean thermal energy change or planetary radiative imbalance. The final OHC scalar is a computational artifact produced by assigning sparse intensive temperature measurements to arbitrary positions, subtracting them from a non-physical climatological reference, and integrating interpolated values that dominate the unsampled ocean volume. These operations destroy thermodynamic interpretability, rendering the resulting scalar sensitive to methodological choices rather than to any conserved physical quantity.

The widely cited claim that ~90–93% of the observed planetary heat gain is stored in the ocean, and that ~85–93% of oceanic uptake resides in the upper 2000 m (as adopted in Forster et al., 2021, Chapter 7, based on von Schuckmann et al., 2020, 2023), rests on this invalid calculation and is non-compliant with the scientific method. The claimed vertical partitioning is not empirically robust; given the structural uncertainties quantified herein, alternative distributions including a physically plausible 50-50 split between upper and deep ocean remain consistent with the flawed observational constraints and cannot be scientifically excluded.

The fundamental thermodynamic invalidity of averaging intensive temperature measurements across non-equilibrium spatial and temporal domains (as detailed in Section 1.2; Essex et al., 2007; Essex & Andresen, 2018; Cohler, 2025) renders global temperature metrics physically meaningless numerical abstractions. Without a physically meaningful, thermodynamically valid global metric for ocean energy change or planetary imbalance, current assessments of anthropogenic climate forcing and future projections lack an empirical foundation (see also Cohler et al.,2025, for independent evidence that the anthropogenic CO₂-global warming hypothesis lacks empirical substantiation due to natural dominance and model failures).

 

SCOTUS to Hear Colorado Climate Case, What’s at Stake

Posted on by Ron Clutz

An excellent overview is an article at Energy in Depth (EID) by Kyle Kohli A Turning Point for Litigation Campaign: SCOTUS Takes Up Boulder Climate Lawsuit.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

On February 23, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in the City and County of Boulder’s climate lawsuit against two major energy companies. This offers the first real opportunity to rein in the nationally-coordinated climate litigation campaign that has sought to force policy outcomes through the courts that elected officials and voters have repeatedly rejected.

What is the Boulder climate lawsuit?  

In 2018, the City and County of Boulder and San Miguel County filed a public nuisance climate lawsuit against Exxon Mobil and Suncor, seeking financial damages to pay for the costs of climate change. From the outset, the case raised serious questions about whether local governments should be allowed to use state tort law to extract damages for global phenomena driven by worldwide greenhouse gas emissions that have occurred across decades, across borders, and with the full knowledge and legal sanction of federal and state governments.

Woman on a ducking stool. Historical punishment for ‘common scold’ – woman considered a public nuisance. (Welsh/English heritage)

After San Miguel’s case was separated from Boulder’s in 2021, Boulder spent five years fighting jurisdictional battles – all the way to SCOTUS and back – before finally getting a May 2025 Colorado Supreme Court ruling allowing the case to proceed towards discovery and trial.

The companies appealed, and in February 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.

What questions will the Supreme Court consider and what do they mean?

The Court will hear arguments on two separate questions –
one that goes to the heart of the entire campaign,
and one that could let the justices sidestep it.

The big one: can state law be used to sue energy companies for the effects of international greenhouse gas emissions on global climate change? This is what the climate litigation campaign has always really been about: using tort law as a backdoor emissions regulator, extracting damages that function as a de facto carbon tax that Congress never voted for and voters never approved.

The companies argue that federal law forecloses exactly this kind of state-law end-run, and that issues of greenhouse gas emissions, interstate commerce, national energy policy, and foreign affairs belong at the federal level — not in a patchwork of state courtrooms where judges can impose wildly inconsistent liability on American energy producers.

The second question – added by the Court at Boulder’s urging – asks whether SCOTUS even has jurisdiction to hear the case right now. If the justices rule narrowly on procedure, the broader preemption question stays unresolved and Boulder’s case will continue in state court.

When will the court hear arguments?

Arguments are expected during the October 2026 term, with a decision anticipated in winter 2026 or spring 2027.

What is the likely impact?

This case has nearly three dozen copycats waiting in the wings. Defendants in similar lawsuits across the country are already moving to pause proceedings – several cases, including a homeowner class action in Washington, have been stayed pending SCOTUS’s decision. Others, in Chicago and Washington state have filed similar motions.

If the Court rules broadly for the energy companies — holding that state law cannot be used to impose liability for global and interstate emissions — it would deal a major blow to the entire national climate litigation campaign, as plaintiffs across the country have sought to use state tort law and to have their cases heard in state court.

That would be an appropriate outcome. Allowing dozens of state and municipal governments to impose state-court liability for inherently global phenomena would fragment national energy policy, chill domestic energy production, and circumvent the democratic process by substituting courtroom judgments for legislative ones.

If the justices punt using the jurisdictional question, Boulder’s case would return to state court, but the underlying legal vulnerabilities of the case would remain.

Where do Colorado leaders stand on the case?

The response to the filing of the [Boulder] lawsuit was met immediately with strong opposition from Colorado state leaders, including the Denver Post editorial board and former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, who also served as Colorado’s Attorney General.

Then-governor John Hickenlooper and one his top administration officials warned that litigation was not the best way to pursue an environmental agenda. Hickenlooper’s predecessor, current Governor Jared Polis, also didn’t support the case and remained silent on the issue throughout his entire time in office.

Conservation Colorado, a leading environmental group in the state, also declined to publicly support the lawsuit and The Denver Post editorial board delivered a sharp rebuke to the lawsuit, writing:

“Without fossil fuels, transportation would stagger to a halt, agricultural productivity would plummet, millions would suffer from cold, heat and hunger, and untold legions would suffer premature death. That’s why any comparison between fossil fuel companies and the tobacco industry, whose product is a health disaster with no redeeming economic value, is so wide of the mark…”

Who did Boulder hire as outside counsel?

Boulder’s attorneys have admitted that their true goals for the litigation aren’t financial damages, but rather achieving preferred public policy outcomes.

A lead attorney for EarthRights International, a nonprofit representing Boulder, said that a key goal of the lawsuit is “to raise the price of the products” like oil and gas to shift the behaviors of companies and consumers. Another attorney long involved with the case, David Bookbinder, was even more direct last year, calling the lawsuit an “indirect carbon tax.”

Officials with the Boulder City Council also undercut their own legal arguments by publicly stating their true goal was achieving political and public policy objectives. In 2021, a memo prepared for a study session outlined the goal of “systems-level change”:

“Boulder has also been a national leader in exploring the use of the legal system in pushing for larger systems-level change. Both through its active participation in multi-jurisdiction efforts — like the Clean Power Plan Plaintiffs group — or its climate liability lawsuit with Boulder and San Miguel Counties against ExxonMobil and Suncor, Boulder has demonstrated that there are a range of different levers cities can take hold of to drive more fundamental systems change.” (emphasis added)

Why did the Supreme Court agree to hear the case this time?

Earlier petitions in similar cases, including Honolulu, never made it past the cert stage. This time, several things changed:

The biggest: the Department of Justice proactively weighed in to explain why the Court should take the case – a reversal from the Honolulu petition, whether the Solicitor General argued against review.

Beyond that, the legal landscape has shifted. Since the Honolulu petition was rejected, ten other cases have been thrown out or withdrawn, while two cases have been allowed to proceed – widening the split among state courts that warrants Supreme Court resolution.

Add in the fact that the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling constitutes a final decision, the companies argue, giving the Supreme Court jurisdictional footing to review it.

Does the EPA’s ruling on the Endangerment Finding impact climate lawsuits?

The EPA has maintained the Clean Air Act will continue to preempt state common law claims and statues that try to regulate out-of-state emissions.

As West Virginia’s Solicitor General, Michael Williams, explained:

“Before the Clean Air Act was a twinkle in Nixon’s eye, there was this whole existing body of federal common law that said interstate emissions issues really are issues for the federal government…Ultimately, I think that if you pull the Clean Air Act back, you’re still left with that original preexisting body of federal common law. It’s going to have the same preemptive force that it did before the Clean Air Act ever came to be.”

Some legal observers have noted that revoking the Endangerment Finding could actually help companies in these climate lawsuits. In the case of Boulder, the Colorado Supreme Court rejected defendants’ argument in part because of the Clean Air Act, there’s no federal common law and no preemptions. Without the endangerment finding, there’s a possibility that federal common law could be used in the defendants’ preemption argument.

However, the Endangerment Finding will not go into effect until April 20, 2026 and could change pending legal challenges.

Energy Realists Saved the US Grid (Alex Epstein)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Alex Epstein explains how legacy media is mixing up the good guys and bad guys in a recent message Politicians Who Cut Solar and Wind Subsidies Saved Our Grid.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Last year, America was already in a serious electricity reliability crisis. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation—the body charged with assessing grid reliability—found that over half the country is facing the risk of power shortfalls over the next decade.¹

That crisis is far from over. But now, for the first time in years, the economics of building reliable power plants are turning around. And we owe this to a handful of politicians who led the charge to cut solar and wind subsidies in the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Solar and wind subsidies were defunding reliable power plants

To understand what these politicians accomplished by cutting solar and wind subsidies, you have to understand the condition of the grid as of last year.

For decades, the federal government paid massive subsidies—the “Investment Tax Credit” and “Production Tax Credit”—to solar and wind projects. These subsidies didn’t just take hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. They systematically destroyed the economics of the reliable power plants that keep our grid running.

When subsidized solar and wind flood the grid with cheap electricity every time the sun shines or the wind blows, they take away operating time and therefore revenue from reliable power plants.

Thanks to subsidies many reliable plants had no choice but to shut down prematurely, while investors were deterred from investing in building new reliable plants whose revenue under subsidies and unfair market rules would be taken by unreliable generation.

Subsidies were a big reason why as electricity demand increased over the past decade, America saw a decline in reliable capacity.

The IRA accelerated the catastrophic effects of solar and wind subsidies

Then came the “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022. The IRA increased solar/wind subsidies, and it also extended them for over a decade. These subsidies were projected to cost taxpayers over $1 trillion over that decade.²

But the damage to the grid would have been incomparably greater than the tax bill. The biggest cost by far was the defunding and disincentivizing of reliable power plants.

By 2024, solar and wind “capacity,” which as we saw during a recent winter storm can’t be relied on at all³, represented 70% of all new electricity additions in the US.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright was not exaggerating when he said solar and wind subsidies are “a big mistake,” which “result in higher costs and less reliable electricity.”⁴

A handful of energy freedom fighters cut solar/wind subsidies in the “Big Beautiful Bill”

When the “Big Beautiful Bill” budget negotiations began early last year, the solar/wind subsidy lobby descended on Washington in full force. The expected outcome was that Republicans, despite running on a promise to dismantle the IRA, would keep most of the solar and wind subsidies.

That’s not what happened. Instead, a handful of energy freedom advocates
fought relentlessly to cut the IRA’s solar and wind subsidies—and won.

The initial draft of the budget bill produced by the House Ways and Means Committee included a long “phase-out” of the subsidies that would have allowed new solar and wind projects to continue receiving 10-year subsidies well into the 2030s and even 2040s.⁵

When this bill came to the House Budget Committee for review, Representatives Chip Roy, Ralph Norman, Josh Brecheen, and Andrew Clyde withheld their support (voting “no” or “present”). Because the Republican majority on the committee is very slim, their votes were crucial. This stalled the bill, and they were able to work through the weekend to significantly limit subsidy eligibility to projects that were “placed in service,” i.e., operational, by 2028.

Solar and wind lobbyists threw a fit, claiming that cutting subsidies would raise electricity prices and destroy the grid. But Roy, Norman, Brecheen, and Clyde didn’t back down. And in later stages of the process, they were joined by more energy freedom politicians, including Rep. Scott Perry on the House side, and Senators Mike Lee, Rick Scott, and Ron Johnson on the Senate side.

Unfortunately, a last-second change by the Senate (sneaked in by the solar/wind lobby) weakened the House’s solar and wind subsidy cuts by allowing projects to collect subsidies if they are technically “in construction” (an easy threshold to meet) by July 4, 2026, at which point they have 4 years to be “placed in service.”⁶

Nevertheless, the final “Big Beautiful Bill,” significantly cuts solar and wind subsidies for projects. The upshot: Starting July 5, 2026, virtually no new subsidy-collecting solar/wind projects can be initiated. (They can only collect subsidies if they are actually “placed in service” by the end of 2027, a standard most new subsidy-seeking projects won’t be able to meet.)

Politicians who cut subsidies are wrongly being blamed for rising electricity prices

As soon as the “Big Beautiful Bill” was passed, the solar-and-wind lobby began blaming the politicians who cut solar/wind subsidies for depriving our grid of power and causing electricity prices to rise.

Not only is the timeframe of this claim absurd—the subsidy cuts would not even go into effect for another year—it gets the relationship between subsidies and price increases exactly backwards.

Solar and wind subsidies have contributed to the electricity price increases we’ve seen so far—by forcing the premature shutdown of the reliable power plants our grid needs to function. (And we’re also paying for the subsidies through taxes and inflation.) Cutting these subsidies was necessary to stop price increases going forward.

The energy freedom fighters who cut solar/wind subsidies did not deprive the grid of power; they did more than anyone to ensure that the grid had electricity when it needed it most. They set up a market where new reliable plants can be profitable. And they did not increase electricity prices, they created the necessary conditions for electricity prices to decrease.

In fact, that’s exactly what we’re seeing already.

The solar/wind subsidy cuts in the “Big Beautiful Bill” are already saving our grid

After the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, investors looked at the electricity market and saw that building reliable power would soon become much more profitable than if the solar/wind subsidies had continued. At the same time, they became more and more aware that they need ultra-reliable power to power AI data centers.

The US nearly tripled its gas-fired capacity in development in 2025, reaching 252 GW—more than any other country⁷. Developers plan to add 18.7 GW of combined-cycle natural gas capacity by 2028⁸. Major utilities are announcing record capital plans to build reliable generation.

This is what happens when you stop paying people to build an inferior product. Capital flows to what actually works: power plants that can run when you need them, in the quantity you need them, regardless of the weather.

The AI data center boom makes the timing of the solar/wind subsidy cuts even more crucial. Data centers need power that is available 24/7, 365 days a year. The subsidy cuts arrived just in time to help redirect investment toward the reliable generation that America’s growing digital economy urgently needs.

The lesson: Energy freedom works

Any energy source that is genuinely cost-effective will thrive without subsidies. The path to affordable, reliable electricity isn’t subsidies for some politicians’ and lobbyists’ preferred energy sources—it’s the freedom to produce and invest in the energy sources that actually work.

A year ago, NERC was warning that more than half the country faced electricity shortfalls. Today, the market is responding to restored price signals by building reliable power at a pace we haven’t seen in decades.

The politicians who cut solar and wind subsidies didn’t just save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. They saved our grid.

CO2 Facts Net Zero Zealots are Hiding from You

Posted on by Ron Clutz

After a recent squabble with a pack of Net Zero zealots, I realized that interested people should have access to a number of CO2 science facts that are hidden from public view, and certainly won’t appear in the AI bots programmed to repeat IPCC slogans. Below is a compendium of important contemporary findings everyone needs to know, not to be duped by the climatists. The titles are links to published research papers along with brief highlights of their importance and some pertinent graphics. There are many more skeptical findings, but these show the different analyses revealing numerous holes in IPCC swiss cheese “consensus science.”

World Atmospheric CO2, Its 14C Specific Activity, Non-fossil Component, Anthropogenic Fossil Component, and Emissions (1750–2018)

World Atmospheric CO2, Its 14C Specific Activity, Non-fossil Component, Anthropogenic Fossil Component, and Emissions (1750–2018)— Health Physics, 2022; Skrable et al.

We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO2 represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO2 due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming. [My snyopsis: On CO2 Sources and Isotopes]

The graph above is produced from Skrable et al. dataset Table 2. World atmospheric CO2, its C‐14 specific activity, anthropogenic‐fossil component, non fossil component, and emissions (1750 ‐ 2018). The purple line shows reported annual concentrations of atmospheric CO2 from Energy Information Administration (EIA) The starting value in 1750 is 276 ppm and the final value in this study is 406 ppm in 2018, a gain of 130 ppm.

The red line is based on EIA estimates of human fossil fuel CO2 emissions starting from zero in 1750 and the sum slowly accumulating over the first 200 years. The estimate of annual CO2 emitted from FF increases from 0.75 ppm in 1950 up to 4.69 ppm in 2018. The sum of all these annual emissions rises from 29.3 ppm in 1950 (from the previous 200 years) up to 204.9 ppm (from 268 years). These are estimates of historical FF CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, not the amount of FF CO2 found in the air.

Atmospheric CO2 is constantly in two-way fluxes between multiple natural sinks/sources, principally the ocean, soil and biosphere. The annual dilution of carbon 14 proportion is used to calculate the fractions of atmospheric FF CO2 and Natural CO2 remaining in a given year. The blue line shows the FF CO2 fraction rising from 4.03 ppm in 1950 to 46.84 ppm in 2018. The cyan line shows Natural CO2 fraction rising from 307.51 in 1950 to 358.56 in 2018.

Despite an estimated 205 ppm of FF CO2 emitted since 1750, only 46.84 ppm (23%) of FF CO2 remains, while the other 77% is distributed into natural sinks/sources. As of 2018 atmospheric CO2 was 405, of which 12% (47 ppm) originated from FF. And the other 88% (358 ppm) came from natural sources: 276 prior to 1750, and 82 ppm since. Natural CO2 sources/sinks continue to drive rising atmospheric CO2, presently at a rate of 2 to 1 over FF CO2.

Residence Time vs. Adjustment Time of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere

Residence Time vs. Adjustment Time of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere — Entropy, 2023; Peter Stallinga

We study the concepts of residence time vs. adjustment time time for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The system is analyzed with a two-box first-order model. Using this model, we reach three important conclusions: (1) The adjustment time is never larger than the residence time and can, thus, not be longer than about 5 years. (2) The idea of the atmosphere being stable at 280 ppm in pre-industrial times is untenable. (3) Nearly 90% of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide has already been removed from the atmosphere. [My synopsis: CO2 Fluxes Not What IPCC Telling You]

Figure 3. (a) Yearly global CO 2 emissions from fossil fuels. (b) Cumulative emissions (integral of left plot). The yellow curve is the remainder of the anthropogenic CO 2 in the atmosphere if we assume a residence time in the sink much longer than the 5-year residence time in the atmosphere; in this case τs=50τa was used. (Source of data: Our World In Data [8]).

In these years, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from 280 ppm (2268 Gt) to 420 ppm (3403 Gt), an increment of 1135 Gt. Of these, 202.3 Gt (17.8%) would be attributable to humans and the rest, 932.7 Gt (82.2%), must be from natural sources.

In view of this, curbing carbon emissions seems rather fruitless; even if we destroy the fossil-fuel-based economy (and human wealth with it), we would only delay the inevitable natural scenario by a couple of years.

The Scientific Case Against Net Zero: Falsifying the Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis

The scientific case against net zero: falsifying the greenhouse gas hypothesis — Journal of Sustainable Development, 2024; Michael Simpson

There is a suggestion (IPCC) that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is different for anthropogenic CO2 and naturally occurring CO2. This breaks a fundamental scientific principle, the Principle of Equivalence. That is: if there is equivalence between two things, they have the same use, function, size, or value (Collins English Dictionary, online). Thus, CO2 is CO2 no matter where it comes from, and each molecule will behave physically and react chemically in the same way.

The results imply that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be sufficiently strong to cause systematic changes in the pattern of the temperature fluctuations. In other words, our analysis indicates that with the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2. Dagsvik et al. 2024

It is well-known that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is approximately 5 years (Boehmer-Christiansen, 2007: 1124; 1137; Kikuchi, 2010). Skrable et al., (2022), show that accumulated human CO2 is 11% of CO2 in air or ~46.84ppmv based on modelling studies. Berry (2020, 2021) uses the Principle of  Equivalence (which the IPCC violates by assuming different timescales for the uptake of natural and human CO2) and agrees with Harde (2017a) that human CO2 adds about 18ppmv to the concentration in air. These are physically extremely small concentrations of CO2 which suggest most CO2 arises from natural sources. It can be concluded that the IPCC models are wrong and human CO2 will have little effect on the temperature. [My synopsis: Straight Talk on Climate Science and Net Zero]

Better calculations of the human contribution to atmospheric CO2 concentrations are available and it is small ~18ppmv (Skrable et al., 2022; Berry, 2020; Harde 2017a & 2017b; Harde, 2019; Harde 2014). The phase relation between temperature and CO2 concentration changes are now clearly understood; temperature increases are followed by increases in CO2 likely from outgassing from the ocean and increased biological activity (Davis , 2017; Hodzic and Kennedy, 2019; Humlum, 2013; Salby, 2012; Koutsoyiannis et al, 2023 & 2024).

Decoupling CO2 from Climate Change

Decoupling CO2 from Climate Change— International Journal of Geosciences, 2024; Nelson & Nelson

Historical data were reviewed from three different time periods spanning 500 million years. It showed that the curves and trends were too dissimilar to establish a connection. Observations from CO2/temp ratios showed that the CO2 and the temperature moved in opposite directions 42% of the time. Many ratios displayed zero or near zero values, reflecting a lack of response. As much as 87% of the ratios revealed negative or near zero values, which strongly negate a correlation.

The fact that the curves were wildly divergent suggests there were major factors in play that were not considered. Excluding water vapor from the analysis may be one reason, as explained in sections 4 and 5. The list of other contributing factors is extensive. For example, changes in the orbital paths of the sun and planets, as suggested by the Milankovitch Cycles, may have had an effect. Changes in the sun’s radiation intensity may play a role. The Earth’s volcanism, nuclear fission at its core, radioactive decay, or changes in the magnetic fields may have an effect over millions of years. These are only a few possibilities not considered in the hypothesis.

Figure 10. This graph is the cloud fraction and is set forth on the left vertical axis. The temperature is on the right vertical axis and the horizontal axis represents the observation year. The information was extrapolated from figures prepared by Hans-Rolf Dubal and Fritz Vahrenholt [37].

Studies have reported that the rise in the CO2 concentration lagged behind temperature increases by 400 to 1000 years [6]. In 2007 the IPCC stated at page 105 [7] “However, it now appears that the initial climatic change preceded the change in CO2 but was enhanced by it (Section 6.4)” But there was no proof provided in section 6.4 supporting the enhancement theory. They stated on page 442 “it may be the result of increased ocean heat transports due to either an enhanced thermohaline circulation” (citations) “or increased flow of surface ocean currents.” A lagging CO2 concentration after the temperature changes contradicts the Greenhouse-CO2 hypothesis, i.e. a rise in CO2 concentration results in warming.

The Relationship between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Global Temperature for the Last 425 Million Years

The Relationship between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration and Global Temperature for the Last 425 Million Years — Climate, 2017; Davis

“Assessing human impacts on climate and biodiversity requires an understanding of the relationship between the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere and global temperature (T). Here I explore this relationship empirically using comprehensive, recently-compiled databases of stable-isotope proxies from the Phanerozoic Eon (~540 to 0 years before the present) and through complementary modeling using the atmospheric absorption/transmittance code MODTRAN. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is correlated weakly but negatively with linearly-detrended T proxies over the last 425 million years. … This study demonstrates that changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not cause temperature change in the ancient climate.”

Figure 5. Temperature (T) and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration proxies during the Phanerozoic Eon. Davis (2017)

Reconstruction of Atmospheric CO2 Background Levels since 1826 from Direct Measurements near Ground 

Reconstruction of Atmospheric CO2 Background Levels since 1826 from Direct Measurements near Ground Ernst-Georg Beck—Science of Climate Change Ernst-Georg Beck (2022)

The data also suggest higher levels in the first half of the 19th century than reconstructed from commonly used ice cores. Using modern MLO CO2 data, we can calculate a centennial average for the 20th century 1901–2000 of 331.38 ppm and of a MBL [Marine Boundary Level samples]in the 19th century (1826–1900) of 322.67. This is a growth rate of +2.6 % in contrast to about 30 % as derived from ice cores and therefore within measurement variability. Analysing the new series of directly measured CO2 MBL levels from 1926 to 2010 suggests a possible cyclic behaviour. The CO2 MBL levels since 1826 to 2008 show a good correlation to the global SST (Kaplan, KNMI; see Figure 26) with a CO2 lag of 1 year after SST from cross correlation (Figure 26a). Kuo et al. (1990) had derived 5 months lag from MLO data alone.

Stomata data confirm the CO2 MBL reconstruction as well as the raw data showing high CO2-levels in the 1930s and 40s at higher temperatures. This is the pre-condition for the inverse stomata/CO2 relation.

About Historical CO2-Data since 1826: Explanation of the Peak around 1940 Hermann Harde

About Historical CO2-Data since 1826: Explanation of the Peak around 1940–Science of Climate Change Hermann Harde, 2023

An extensive compilation of almost 100.000 historical data about CO2 concentration measurements between 1826 and 1960 has been published as post mortem memorial edition of the late Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2022). Different to the widely used interpretation of proxy data, Beck’s compilation contains direct measurements of chemically analysed air samples with much higher accuracy and time resolution than available from ice core or tree ring data.

Beck already found a high correlation of the CO2 level data to the global Sea Surface Temperature (SST) series of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (Kaplan, KNMI). Supported by different observations of CO2 enriched air at the coast (North Sea, Barents Sea, Northern Atlantic) he suggested that warmer ocean currents over the Northern Atlantic are the sources of the enhanced CO2-levels.

Figure 26. Annual atmospheric CO2 background level 1856–2008 compared to SST (Kaplan, KNMI); red ine: CO2 MBL reconstruction 1826–1959 (Beck), 1960–2008 (MLO); blue line: Annual SST (Kaplan) 1856 –2003; a) cross correlation of SST and CO2 MBL showing correlation of r=0.668 and a lag of 1 year for CO2 after global SST. Beck 2010

In this contribution we compare the temperature sensitivity of oceanic and land emissions and their expected contributions to the atmospheric CO2 mixing ratio. Our simulations with a land-air temperature series (Soon et al. 2015) alone, or in combination with sea surface data (HadSST4, Kennedy et al. 2019) can well reproduce the increased mixing ratio over the 30s to 40s, the consecutive decline over the 50s and the additional rise up to 2010. This stronger variation cannot be explained only by fossil fuel emissions, which show a monotonic increase over the Industrial Era.

Atmospheric CO2: Exploring the Role of Sea Surface Temperatures and the Influence of Anthropogenic CO2 Bernard Robbins

Atmospheric CO2: Exploring the Role of Sea Surface Temperatures and the Influence of Anthropogenic CO2 — Science of Climate Change, 2025; Robbins

“ Using SST and Mauna Loa datasets, three methods of analysis are presented that seek to identify and estimate the anthropogenic and, by default, natural components of recent increases in atmospheric CO2, an assumption being that changes in SSTs coincide with changes in nature’s influence, as a whole, on atmospheric CO2 levels.

Figure 16: Atmospheric CO2 measurements, shown in Blue (chemical measurements to 1960 and Mauna Loa measurements from 1960) and global SSTs (shown in Violet). The error margins and confidence intervals are as supplied with the chemical CO2 and SST datasets.

The findings of the analyses suggest that an anthropogenic component is likely to be around 20 %, or less, of the total increase since the start of the industrial revolution. The inference is that around 80 % or more of those increases are of natural origin, and indeed the findings suggest that nature is continually working to maintain an atmospheric/surface CO2 balance, which is itself dependent on temperature.”

Multivariate Analysis Rejects the Theory of Human-caused Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Increase: The Sea Surface Temperature Rules

Multivariate Analysis Rejects the Theory of Human-caused Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Increase: The Sea Surface Temperature Rules–Science of Climate Change Dai Ato 2024

“The main factor governing the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is the SST [sea surface temperature] rather than human emissions.” – Ato, 2024

Another day, another new scientific paper has been published reporting efforts to curb anthropogenic CO2 emissions are “meaningless.” In this study multiple linear regression analysis was performed comparing SST versus anthropogenic CO2 emissions as explanatory factors and the annual changes in atmospheric CO2 as the objective variable over the period 1959-2022.

The model using the SSTs (NASA, NOAA, UAH) best explained the annual CO2 change (regression coefficient B = 2.406, P = <0.0002), whereas human emissions were not shown to be an explanatory factor at all in annual CO2 changes (regression coefficient B = 0.0027, P = 0.863).  Most impressively, the predicted atmospheric CO2 concentration using the regression equation derived from 1960-2022 SSTs had an extremely high correlation coefficient of r = 0.9995.

Thus, not only is the paradigm that says humans drive atmospheric CO2 changes wrong, but “the theory that global warming and climate change are caused by human-emitted CO2 is also wrong.”

“SST has been the determinant of the annual changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and […] anthropogenic emissions have been irrelevant in this process, by head-to-head comparison.”

Revisiting the greenhouse effect – a hydrological perspective

Revisiting the greenhouse effect—a hydrological perspective — Hydrological Sciences Journal, 2023; Koutsoyiannis & Vournas

“As the formulae used for the greenhouse effect quantification were introduced 50-90 years ago, we examine whether these are still representative or not, based on eight sets of observations, distributed in time across a century. We conclude that the observed increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration has not altered, in a discernible manner, the greenhouse effect, which remains dominated by the quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere, and that the original formulae used in hydrological practice remain valid. Hence, there is no need for adaptation due to increased CO2 concentration.”

Net Isotopic Signature of Atmospheric CO2 Sources and Sinks: No Change since the Little Ice Age

Net Isotopic Signature of Atmospheric CO2 Sources and Sinks: No Change since the Little Ice Age — Sci, 2024; Demetris Koutsoyiannis

This is a follow-on to the paper above, which received more than 1,000 comments on Judith Curry’s blog. He revisits the calculations and claims that the CO2 in  the atmosphere today, and the rise during the last 100 years or so, is natural and there is no “signature” from humans.

Figure 1. Typical ranges of isotopic signatures δ13C for each of the pools interacting with atmospheric CO2, and related exchange processes.

The results of the analyses in this paper provide negative answers to the research questions posed in the Introduction. Specifically:
♦  From modern instrumental carbon isotopic data of the last 40 years, no signs of human (fossil fuel) CO2 emissions can be discerned;
♦  Proxy data since the Little Ice Age suggest that the modern period of instrumental data does not differ, in terms of the net isotopic signature of atmospheric CO2 sources and sinks, from earlier centuries.

Comment and Declaration on the SEC’s Proposed Rule “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors”

Comment and Declaration on the SEC’s Proposed Rule— Happer and LIndzen, 

The Logarithmic Forcing from CO2 Means that Its Contributions to Global Warming is Heavily Saturated, Instantaneously Doubling CO2 Concentrations from 400 ppm to 800 ppm, a 100% Increase, Would Only Diminish the Thermal Radiation to Space by About 1.1%, and therefore tiny changes of Earth’s surface temperature, on the order of 1° C (about 2° F). Thus Confirming There is No Reliable Scientific Evidence Supporting the Proposed Rule.

This means that from now on our emissions from burning fossil fuels could have little impact on global warming. There is no climate emergency. No threat at all. We could emit as much CO2 as we like, with little warming effect.

Saturation also explains why temperatures were not catastrophically high over the hundreds of millions of years when CO2 levels were 10-20 times higher than they are today.

Further, saturation also provides another reason why reducing the use of fossil fuels to“net zero” by 2050 would have a trivial impact on climate, contradicting the theory there is a climate related risk from fossil fuel and CO2 emissions.

Laws of Physics Define the Insignificant Warming of Earth by CO2

Laws of Physics Define the Insignificant Warming of Earth — Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 2023; Lightfoot and Ratzer

The authors use real-world data (not models or simulations) to determine that at the tropics, water vapor does virtually all the work of the greenhouse effect, and at the poles, where it is very dry, carbon dioxide plays no measurable role. They show that almost three-quarters of the atmosphere’s water molecules are in the Tropics, which is where the greenhouse effect takes place. They don’t say this, but the CO2 at the poles can’t cause any heating simply because there is no greenhouse effect at the poles. In fact, CO2 at the poles causes cooling.

Calculating the increase in the heat content of the atmosphere caused by increased CO2 is the method for determining the rise in Earth’s temperature. An increase from 311 ppm to 418 ppm causes a maximum rise of 0.006oC from McMurdo to Taoudenni, Mali, in the Sahara Desert. This value indicates the temperature increase is too small to measure, i.e., negligible [15].

This study is a significant step forward in the science of the Earth’s atmosphere. It provides robust quantitative evidence that the overall warming by CO2 is insignificant, and water vapor is the most significant greenhouse gas.

Footnote: Clashing CO2 Paradigms

For insight into the two conflicting viewpoints regarding CO2 and temperatures, see:

CO2 Fluxes Are Not Like Cash Flows