Full-time professor at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium
apreat@gmail.com
apreat@ulb.ac.be
• Department of Earth Sciences and Environment
Res. Grp. - Biogeochemistry & Modeling of the Earth System
Sedimentology & Basin Analysis
• Alumnus, Collège des Alumni, Académie Royale de Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux Arts de Belgique (mars 2013). http://www.academieroyale.be/cgi?usr=2a8crwkksq&lg=fr&pag=858&rec=0&frm=0&par=aybabtu&id=4471&flux=8365323
• Prof. Invited, Université de Mons-Hainaut (2010-present-day)
• Prof. Coordinator and invited to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium (Belgian College) (2009-
present day)
• Prof. partim to the DEA (third cycle) led by the University of Lille (9 universities from 1999 to 2004) - Prof. partim at the University of Paris-Sud/Orsay, European-Socrates Agreement (1995-1998)
• Prof. partim at the University of Louvain, Convention ULB-UCL (1993-2000)
• Since 2015 : Member of Comité éditorial de la Revue Géologie de la France http://geolfrance.brgm.fr
• Since 2014 : Regular author of texts for ‘la Revue Science et Pseudosciences’ http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/
• Many field works (several weeks to 2 months) (Meso- and Paleozoic carbonates, Paleo- to Neoproterozoic carbonates) in Europe, USA (Nevada), Papouasia (Holocene), North Africa (Algeria, Morrocco, Tunisia), West Africa (Gabon, DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, South Africa, Angola), Iraq... Recently : field works (3 to 5 weeks) Congo- Brazzaville 2012, 2015, 2016 (carbonate Neoproterozoic).
Degree in geological sciences at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in 1974, I went to Algeria for two years teaching mining geology at the University of Constantine. Back in Belgium I worked for two years as an expert for the EEC (European Commission), first on the prospecting of Pb and Zn in carbonate environments, then the uranium exploration in Belgium. Then Assistant at ULB, Department of Geology I got the degree of Doctor of Sciences (Geology) in 1985. My thesis, devoted to the study of the Devonian carbonate sedimentology of northern France and southern Belgium, comprised a significant portion of field work whose interpretation and synthesis conducted to the establishment of model of carbonate platforms and ramps with reefal constructions.
I then worked for Petrofina SA and shared a little more than two years in Angola as Director of the Research Laboratory of this oil company. The lab included 22 people (micropaleontology, sedimentology, petrophysics). My main activity was to interpret facies reservoirs from drillings in the Cretaceous, sometimes in the Tertiary. I carried out many studies for oil companies operating in this country.
I returned to the ULB in 1988 as First Assistant and was appointed Professor in 1990. I carried out various missions for mining companies in Belgium and oil companies abroad and continued research, particularly through projects of the Scientific Research National Funds (FNRS).
My research still concerns sedimentology, geochemistry and diagenesis of carbonate rocks which leads me to travel many countries in Europe or outside Europe, North Africa, Papua New Guinea and the USA, to conduct field missions.
Since the late 90's, I expanded my field of research in addressing the problem of mass extinctions of organisms from the Upper Devonian series across Euramerica (from North America to Poland) and I also specialized in microbiological and geochemical analyses of ancient carbonate series developing a sustained collaboration with biologists of my university. We are at the origin of a paleoecological model based on the presence of iron-bacterial microfossils, which led me to travel many countries in Europe and North Africa. This model accounts for the red pigmentation of many marble and ornamental stones used in the world. This research also has implications on the emergence of Life from the earliest stages of formation of Earth, as well as in the field of exobiology or extraterrestrial life ...
More recently I invested in the study from the Precambrian series of Gabon and Congo. These works with colleagues from BRGM (Orléans) are as much about the academic side (consequences of the appearance of oxygen in the Paleoproterozoic and study of Neoproterozoic glaciations) that the potential applications in reservoir rocks and source rocks of oil (in collaboration with oil companies).
Finally I recently established a close collaboration with the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium to study the susceptibility magnetic signal from various European Paleozoic series. All these works allowed me to gain a thorough understanding of carbonate rocks (petrology, micropaleontology, geobiology, geochemistry, sequence stratigraphy, diagenesis) as well in Precambrian (2.2 Ga and 0.6 Ga), Paleozoic (from Silurian to Carboniferous) and Mesozoic (Jurassic and Cretaceous) rocks. Recently (2010) I have established a collaboration with Iraqi Kurdistan as part of a government program to boost scientific research in this country.
My research led me to publish about 180 papers in international and national journals and presented more than 170 conference papers. I am a holder of eight courses at the ULB (5 mandatory and 3 optional), excursions and field stages, I taught at the third cycle in several French universities and led or co-managed a score of 20 Doctoral (PhD) and Post-doctoral theses and has been the promotor of more than 50 Masters theses.
Holocene (11,700 to 8,200 years ago) Arctic (Svalbard) temperatures “were up to 9°C higher than today” according to the authors of a newNature journal study. At that time CO2 was thought to only hover around 260 ppm.
Svalbard then cooled as CO2 rose for the next 8,000 years – a negative correlation that wholly contradicts the rising-CO2-drives-Arctic-warmth narrative.
Nonetheless, climate models are predicated on the assumption rising human CO2 emissions (RCP 8.5) will lead to a warming of ~8°C by 2100.
ery so often, the climate media machine spits out a headline so breathless you’d think the laws of physics had just been accidentally repealed by a badly-worded executive order. Case in point: bne IntelliNews in Germany recently told us that a “major ocean current in the Southern Hemisphere has reversed direction for the first time in recorded history,” and that climatologists are calling it a“catastrophic” tipping point. It also quotes a climatologist as saying “The stunning reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere confirms the global climate system has entered a catastrophic phase.”
The implication: pack your bags, the climate apocalypse is here, and don’t forget your floaties.
But as is so often the case, the devil isn’t just in the details—it’s in the words they didn’t mention. The article, like a magician with something up both sleeves, never links to the actual scientific study.
And when I got to the study, what do you know? The study doesn’t mention “tipping point,” “collapse,” “current reversal,” “Southern Ocean current” or even “overturning circulation.” The only “reversal” in the paper refers to satellites detecting a reversal in surface salinity trends from decreasing to increasing, not a reversal in the the direction of the Southern ocean’s most complex circulation shown above.
So what did the study actually say? Here’s the paper’s abstract:
“For decades, the surface of the polar Southern Ocean (south of 50°S) has been freshening—an expected response to a warming climate. This freshening enhanced upper-ocean stratification, reducing the upward transport of subsurface heat and possibly contributing to sea ice expansion. It also limited the formation of open-ocean polynyas. Using satellite observations, we reveal a marked increase in surface salinity across the circumpolar Southern Ocean since 2015. This shift has weakened upper-ocean stratification, coinciding with a dramatic decline in Antarctic sea ice coverage. Additionally, rising salinity facilitated the reemergence of the Maud Rise polynya in the Weddell Sea, a phenomenon last observed in the mid-1970s. Crucially, we demonstrate that satellites can now monitor these changes in real time, providing essential evidence of the Southern Ocean’s potential transition toward persistently reduced sea ice coverage.”
The Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June, 2025 was +0.48 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, down slightly from the May, 2025 anomaly of +0.50 deg. C.
The Version 6.1 global area-averaged linear temperature trend (January 1979 through June 2025) now stands at +0.16 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).
The following table lists various regional Version 6.1 LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 18 months (record highs are in red).
YEAR
MO
GLOBE
NHEM.
SHEM.
TROPIC
USA48
ARCTIC
AUST
2024
Jan
+0.80
+1.02
+0.58
+1.20
-0.19
+0.40
+1.12
2024
Feb
+0.88
+0.95
+0.81
+1.17
+1.31
+0.86
+1.16
2024
Mar
+0.88
+0.96
+0.80
+1.26
+0.22
+1.05
+1.34
2024
Apr
+0.94
+1.12
+0.76
+1.15
+0.86
+0.88
+0.54
2024
May
+0.78
+0.77
+0.78
+1.20
+0.05
+0.20
+0.53
2024
June
+0.69
+0.78
+0.60
+0.85
+1.37
+0.64
+0.91
2024
July
+0.74
+0.86
+0.61
+0.97
+0.44
+0.56
-0.07
2024
Aug
+0.76
+0.82
+0.69
+0.74
+0.40
+0.88
+1.75
2024
Sep
+0.81
+1.04
+0.58
+0.82
+1.31
+1.48
+0.98
2024
Oct
+0.75
+0.89
+0.60
+0.63
+1.90
+0.81
+1.09
2024
Nov
+0.64
+0.87
+0.41
+0.53
+1.12
+0.79
+1.00
2024
Dec
+0.62
+0.76
+0.48
+0.52
+1.42
+1.12
+1.54
2025
Jan
+0.45
+0.70
+0.21
+0.24
-1.06
+0.74
+0.48
2025
Feb
+0.50
+0.55
+0.45
+0.26
+1.04
+2.10
+0.87
2025
Mar
+0.57
+0.74
+0.41
+0.40
+1.24
+1.23
+1.20
2025
Apr
+0.61
+0.77
+0.46
+0.37
+0.82
+0.85
+1.21
2025
May
+0.50
+0.45
+0.55
+0.30
+0.15
+0.75
+0.99
2025
June
+0.48
+0.48
+0.47
+0.30
+0.81
+0.05
+0.39
The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for June, 2025, and a more detailed analysis by John Christy, should be available within the next several days here.
The monthly anomalies for various regions for the four deep layers we monitor from satellites will be available in the next several days at the following locations:
The U.K.’s The Guardian ran an article claiming that the world’s oceans have surpassed a critical tipping point in acidity threatening sea life. This is false. The pH content of the world’s oceans varies by time and place throughout the day, rising and falling modestly, but the average pH content remains far from acidic and there is no evidence crustaceans or other types of shellfish are being threatened by the sea water becoming acidic.
The world’s oceans are in worse health than realized, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are “running out of time” to protect marine ecosystems.
Ocean acidification, often called the “evil twin” of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.
Bachelor’s story is based upon a study which claims that ocean acidity has breached a “planetary boundary,” the seventh of nine such milestones or boundaries to be breached, threatening to cause permanent damage to the planet’s health.
The study looked at ice core records and studies of marine life, run through algorithms of complex computer models to assess the past 150 years, concluding the ocean acidification boundary had been breached, with the world facing a “ticking timebomb,” of sea life destruction.
This study’s findings are driven by woefully flawed computer models,a limited time horizon and understanding of long-term history, and lack a basis in real world data. As such it and The Guardian’s dire warnings based on it, are unjustified.
Model outputs are only as good as the assumptions, data, and our understandings of the feedbacks and systems built into them. Even as our knowledge improves, our understanding of the oceans and the interactions of its various currents, systems, inputs, and outputs remain limited, thus the assumptions built into the models are weak and uncertain. As discussed at Climate Realism, here, here, and here, for example, the climate model outputs fail to match reality.
One of my favorite statistics about climate change
…is that apparently, 60% of Americans reckon that climate change has become like a religion, quote, “used to control people.”
…
…
Climate change elephant — You’ll be surprised to know that climate change is a significant threat to elephants.
Climate change kangaroo — Climate change is impacting kangaroos in various ways, including changing their habitat, food availability, and overall health. They didn’t mention whether the kangaroo’s mental health is affected, but I’m pretty sure it is.
Climate change giraffe — Raid your house in Kenya for extinction because of poaching and climate change.
Climate change albatross — Climate crisis pushes albatross divorce rates higher. Albatrosses form monogamous relationships. But apparently… and this is in the Royal Society for goodness’ sake. You know—Isaac Newton.
I can barely believe this. Right?
Apparently, albatrosses are splitting up more often.
Climate change gorilla — Yep. Climate change is making endangered mountain gorillas more thirsty.
Researchers have studied things like pebble layers, shell fragments, and coral rubble in Fiji to find out what has happened there in the past. Yanan Li and others drilled cores to find debris pushed 120m into the mangroves by the worst of the worst tropical cyclones. Handily, they also had two bad storms recorded in the last century to calibrate what they found. Awkwardly, the big storms were more common in the Little Ice Age.
According to a new study, abrupt (±1-2°C per century) shifts in North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) have occurred routinely over the last 9000 years. These decadal- to centennial-scale climate changes were “induced by Holocene summer insolation and atmosphere-ocean internal variability.”
The average SST throughout the 8.2 ka fluctuation was 10.0°C. The average 4.2 ka SST was 8.1°C. And during the Little Ice Age (LIA, 1600-1900 CE) the North Atlantic SSTs averaged 7.5°C.
Since 1900, SSTs have been stable to declining, suggesting the modern period is the coldest of the Holocene.
by I. Slav, June 26, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The United States is the largest oil and gas producer in the world. It is also experiencing a slowdown in its oil production for a number of reasons, including natural depletion. [emphasis, links added]
The U.S. Geological Survey, however, has just published a study stating that there are almost 30 billion new barrels of untapped oil—under federal lands, no less.
Oil and gas drilling was a contentious topic during the Biden administration. The administration decidedly did not like it and put a serious effort into curbing this drilling as much as the law allowed.
Now, the U.S. Geological Survey has thrown its weight behind the American energy dominance idea, reportingan estimated undiscovered oil reserves of 29.4 billion barrels across the country, with the leader being Alaska, with 14.46 billion barrels of untapped oil under federal lands.
New Mexico is next, with 8.925 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, followed by Nevada, with 1.4 billion barrels. Untapped gas reserves on federal lands were estimated at over 391.55 trillion cu ft.
Now, the only question is when these hitherto untapped resources will be tapped.
USGS reports 29.4 billion barrels of untapped oil under U.S. federal lands. Map: USGS
The number of drilling rigs in the U.S. oil patch has been on a steady decline recently, reflecting an extended weakness in international prices. This has now changed, of course, after Israel attacked Iran on June 13, but the industry is in no rush to reverse course for the time being.
The industry is playing it safe, not least because cheap drilling sites are running out—or maybe not, if the USGS assessment of untapped resources is correct.
For years now, the biggest production growth driver of U.S. oil has been the Permian Basin, spanning Texas and New Mexico. The Permian has single-handedly offset declines in several other shale plays and has largely uneventful day-to-day business in conventional fields.
Yahoo News recently posted an article from the environmental website The Cool Down claiming that the native residents of the very small Panamanian island, Gardí Sugdub (also known as Cartí Sugdupu), are being forced to flee due to fast rising sea levels swamping the land as a result of climate change. This is false. Sea levels at Gardi Sugdub aren’t rising unusually fast, and the best evidence is that most of the island’s residents are voluntarily abandoning it with government help due to overcrowding and insufficient services and infrastructure on the small island.
Rising sea levels are splitting communities apart in Gardí Sugdub and leaving people behind, possibly in danger.
. . .
One year ago, around 1,200 Indigenous Guna people were transported to the mainland by the Panama government for their safety as ocean waters encroached upon their community.
Climate Realismdebunked an earlier article from the BBC making the same claims in February of this year; nothing has changed in the four months since then.
A few days ago I published another analysis of mine, called pHony Alarmism. Take a moment to read that if you haven’t, because this is a sequel. Both are about a new study in Science Magazine yclept “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature”, paywalled, of course.
A short digression. One of the ways I truly benefit from publishing the results of my scientific investigations on the web and interacting with the commenters is that my mistakes don’t last long. When I go off the rails, and notice I didn’t say “if” I go, my mistakes rarely last more than a day before they’re pointed out and I can consider and correct them.
But that’s only one of the ways that it’s beneficial to write for the web and then stick around. Perhaps more importantly, it lets people ask me interesting questions and point out overlooked avenues to investigate.
Here’s an example. In a reply to my post yesterday, I got this …
Jeff Alberts, June 25, 2025 4:26 pm
No graph with the co2 and pH together?
To which I answered …
They’re sampled at different times. I could interpolate both ways. Thought about it, then decided that was enough for one post. Hang on … we know pH is proportional in some sense to the log of the CO2. Give me a minute …
In a bit I came back to say:
…well, of course it takes more than a minute but most interesting.
Looks like that will be the subject of my next post. Stay tuned.
w.
This is that next post. End of digression.
One of the reasons that I didn’t look at graphing pH versus CO2 was that I was given to understand that the procedure for calculating the pH was very complex. The paper says (or at least the Supplementary Information (PDF) says, the paper is paywalled:
4.3 Estimating the temporal variability of pHsw [pH of saltwater]
Possibly one of the dumbest and most scientifically illiterate climate scare stories ever written has been published by the fast-fading UK Sky News. Climate reporter Victoria Seabrook notes that the sea ice on the Arctic “continent” is melting at 12% every decade but she backs it up by publishing a graph clearly showing it has been stable since 2007. She goes on to claim that the Arctic melt will push up sea levels around Britain and fuel worse coastal flooding, seemingly unaware that melting ice in liquid does not raise its level (suggested educational tip, check out ice in a gin and tonic glass). Just for good measure, her silly story throws in the wobbling jet stream and a “shocking” prediction that global temperature could rise by nearly 1°C in just five years.
This story is a classic of its kind – late climate psychosis folderol to back up the collapsing Net Zero fantasy. After decades of relentless mainstream gaslighting, mass audiences are still vaguely concerned that the climate is in some kind of ‘emergency’. Net Zero is retreating around the world, partly because it is increasingly understood that human civilisation cannot abolish the use of hydrocarbons without returning to the dark ages, and partly because nobody is prepared to pay for it when given a choice. But the great climate science con that is the foundation of the collectivist Net Zero lunacy continues, and, if Seabrook’s latest work is an example, it is getting more desperate by the day.
So she publishes the graph below with the misleading 12% decline every decade heading.
by P. Gosselin, June 03, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The German blog site lokalgeschichte examines the German summer of 1911, which was exceptionally hot, dry, and sunny. It disproves the previously widespread idea that Central Europe’s heat waves are something new and caused by more CO2 in the atmosphere. [emphasis, links added]
Although temperatures in the summer of 1911 were very high in places (up to 40°C [104°F] in Chemnitz), no new records were broken. The year 1892 had similar or even higher values (41.5°C [106.7°F] in Reichenhall).
The most remarkable feature of the summer of 1911 was not the absolute maximum temperature, but the duration of the hot spell and the persistent tendency towards dry and warm high-pressure weather, which lasted from spring until well into September.
In 1911, Germany saw extreme drought, particularly in western and central Germany. In Berlin, for example, only about half of the normal precipitation fell between April and July, and only a seventh in August.
by K. Richard, May 28, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch
A new evidence-based study provides compelling evidence that for decades, the IPCC has been engaged in “advocacy research,” or the “antiscientific practice of undertaking research designed to support a given hypothesis.” [emphasis, links added]
[It is] so fraught with errors that even a stripped-down benchmark model that merely projects future temperatures will not deviate from the historical average, overwhelmingly outperforming the IPCC’s modeling.
“The IPCC’s models of anthropogenic climate change lack predictive validity. The IPCC models’ forecast errors were greater for most estimation samples – often many times greater – than those from a benchmark model that simply predicts that future years’ temperatures will be the same as the historical median.”
The IPCC’s Anthro models, which hypothesize that (primarily) CO2 will foment dangerous global warming over the coming decades, woefully overestimated the warming from 1970-2019 by anywhere from 1.8°C [3.2°F] to 2.5°C [4.5°F].
“The errors of forecasts from the anthropogenic models for the era of concern over man-made global warming, starting in 1970, were 1.8°C (AVL), 1.7°C (AVSL), 2.3°C (AVR), and 2.5°C (AVSR) warmer than the measured temperatures.”
Over the 2000 to 2019 period, the Anthro models’ forecast errors were a staggering 16 times greater than the simple benchmark model’s errors.
“…forecasts for the years 2000 to 2019 from models estimated with 50 observations of historical data (1850 to 1899) have MdAEs [median absolute errors] of around 17°C or 1,600 percent greater than the 1°C MdAE of forecasts from the naïve benchmark model.”
China accounts for 26% of all global emissions, while the U.S. is responsible for another 11.5%.
This was equivalent to 12.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide for China and 5.6 billion tCO2e for the U.S. in 2022.
Most of the top 10 emitters are also the world’s most populous countries, barring Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Canada.
Developing Countries Are Driving Emissions Growth
There’s a pattern as to why middle-income countries are seeing emissions growth.
They are prioritizing economic development and have larger populations, driving an overall increase in energy consumption.
Most emissions-heavy industries have moved from high-income countries to middle- and low-income ones.
Thus, high-income countries are able to sustain their consumption levels while the emissions from producing the goods they consume are accounted for elsewhere.
Climate scientists say the Arctic is warming four times faster than anywhere else. This impacts ecosystems, wildlife and local populations
In reality temperatures in the Arctic have been stable for the last two decade. The Arctic is not “warming” at all.
Looking further back, temperatures were at similar levels to now in the 1930s and 40s. In between that era and now, there was a plunge in temperatures, followed by a recovery:
A recent CNN article by Laura Paddison, titled “A crucial system of ocean currents is slowing. It’s already supercharging sea level rise in the US,” references new research on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) to claim the current is slowing down leading to rising seas and costly, deadly coastal flooding. This false claim is based solely on a single, as yet unpublished and unverified, study which used a single climate model’s projections. Evidence, such as other studies and historical reporting on AMOC trends demonstrate that there is no consensus on the status of the AMOC. Rather, scientists’ predictions and the media’s reporting on the AMOC have been flip-flopping for nearly two decades—unable to decide whether AMOC is speeding up, slowing down, or staying steady.
Figure1. A simplified illustration of the global “conveyor belt” of ocean currents that transport heat around Earth. Red shows surface currents, and blue shows deep currents. Deep water forms where the sea surface is the densest. The background color shows sea-surface density. The AMOC is the currents in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of the US. Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.…
AfricaNews (AN), in collaboration with the Associated Press, recently posted an article claiming that recent drought in Nigeria is due to climate change. This is unlikely to be the full story. Although data is sparse for the region, human activities are just as likely to be contributing to desertification as cycles of drought are.
The article, “Nigerian farmers struggle as climate change dries up water sources,” claims that climate change is the cause of recent drought in Nigeria, leading to crop declines. Surface water is becoming scarce during the dry seasons, so some farmers are forced to dig wells to irrigate their crops. AN writes that “[r]iverbeds have started to run dry,” and so the blame “is pointed firmly at climate change, with conservationists warning that food could become scarce if measures are not urgently put in place to help the farmers irrigate their land.”
While it is true that Nigeria has been suffering from extended drought, particularly in the northern part of the country, it is not clear that this is all or even mostly because of any human-caused climate change due to changing temperatures. Natural drought, combined with human error in land and water management, seems to be the more likely culprit.
According to the article, over 80 percent of Nigeria’s farmers are smallholder farmers, and they make up 90 percent of the nation’s crop production. The article points at maize (corn) as a sample crop that is suffering due to the water shortage, it “saw a decline in cultivated land from 6.2 million hectares in 2021 to 5.8 million hectares in 2022.”
Crop production data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that Nigeria’s corn production has been increasing over time. It actually shot upwards the most in recent decades, after remaining relatively flat through the 1980s. Between just 1990 and 2023, Nigerian corn production increased 91 percent, while yields increased 71 percent. (See figure below)
A new study from the University of Alabama in Huntsville addresses the question of how much the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is responsible for the higher temperatures at weather stations across the world. Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy have spent several years developing a novel method that quantifies, for the first time, the average UHI warming effects related to population density. Their finding: no less than 65% of “runaway global warming” is not caused by our emissions of carbon dioxide, but by the urbanization of the world.
Dr. Spencer will join us to go over his findings. We’ll also cover the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including an absurd new bit of unscientific propaganda from the U.S. Climate Reference Network at NOAA, wonder if the sun is setting on wide-scale solar energy, and discuss how alarmists refuse to see that we live in a climactic “golden age”—and more.
Join Heartland’s Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, H. Sterling Burnett, Jim Lakely, and Dr. Roy Spencer LIVE at 1 p.m. ET for Episode #157 of The Climate Realism Show. We’ll be answering questions in the chat for us, and for Dr. Spencer, on the show.
by N. Chatterjee, May 12, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch
American energy sector is on the cusp of a tectonic transformation.
This week, members of the House Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony on the vast potential of geothermal energy as “a new era of American energy — built with American innovation, American technology and American workers,” as one witness put it. [emphasis, links added]
Chris Wright, President Donald Trump’s new energy secretary, has fervently endorsed geothermal as a way to “energize our country,” and a March study found that geothermal could meet roughly two-thirds of the voracious energy demands of AI datacenters by the early 2030s.
Geothermal has the potential to be the Holy Grail of energy: unlimited and right under our feet.
But there’s a problem. Geothermal is expensive because it’s difficult to access … until now.
Today, American innovators are supercharging the geothermal energy revolution with directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the same technologies that delivered the miracle of American shale.
One would think that James Hansen—once lionized as the father of modern climate alarmism—might bask in the limelight after a fresh round of histrionics about Earth hurtling toward a “point of no return.” Instead, we find him on the pages of his latest blog-style polemic, “Large Cloud Feedback Confirms High Climate Sensitivity”, complaining that he’s being ostracized by the very media and institutions he helped train to bark on command every time the CO2 concentration ticks up another ppm.
“A strange phenomenon occurred… almost uniformly, these reports dismissed our conclusions as a fringe opinion… Are there important repercussions for the public… indeed, for the future of all people? The answer… is ‘yes.’”
One might suggest that after decades of theatrics, people have simply stopped buying tickets to the same show.
But let’s not be hasty. His newest round of publications deserves scrutiny, not for its recycled gloom, but for the increasingly acrobatic logic and interpretive liberties embedded within.
The ‘Big FXcking Deal’ and the Cloud Feedback Feedback
At the heart of Hansen’s thesis is the observed decrease in Earth’s albedo—the fraction of sunlight reflected back into space. Hansen pegs this decline at 0.5% over the last two decades, translating to a 1.7 W/m² increase in absorbed solar radiation. This, he insists, proves that cloud feedback must be large and positive, confirming an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 4.5°C ± 0.5°C for doubled CO2.
“Earth’s albedo… has decreased about 0.5%… we described this change as a BFD… because it has staggering implications.”
by K&K Media, May 14 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch
These days, stories of extreme weather are everywhere you look. But a crucial detail often goes overlooked: We’re safer from the consequences of that weather than ever before. [emphasis, links added]
In the last 85 years, however, there have only been three such events that took over 1,000 lives: Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria, and a 1980 heatwave.
…
There’s a reason for that.
The most important factor in determining a natural disaster’s destructiveness isn’t its intensity, but how well people in its path are protected. And on that front, things have improved … a lot.
Better building codes have prevented about $1.6 billion in damage a year since 2000. Advances in hurricane forecasts and early-warning systems have given people more time to prepare.
If you look at the climate website of the Helmholtz Association with the ambitious name “Climate Facts” under Antarctica, you will read the following: “The important mainland ice of Antarctica is disappearing, and at an increasing rate”. According to the Helmholtz Association, this is of great significance for rising sea levels. And indeed, the rising sea level caused by the melting Antarctic ice is one of the central arguments of climate policy that has worried people.
This makes the result of a recently published study, according to which the picture has changed since 2021, all the more surprising: Antarctica’s continental ice is increasing again.
Chinese researchers from Tongji University led by Prof. Shen and Dr. Wang found that Antarctic ice masses have increased significantly since 2021. The data evaluated by NASA’s GRACE satellite showed an annual loss of 74 billion tons per year from 2002 to 2010. From 2011 to 2020, the amount even doubled. Now the ice has increased by around 108 billion tons year on year.
Source: Science China Press)
As the melting of the Antarctic glaciers contributed around 20% to sea level rise, a slowdown in the rise has been observed since 2021. Wouldn’t this good news be worth reporting on the news? Not so far.
by A. Préat, May 16, 2025 inScience, Climat, Energie
Vaclav Smil is little known to the general public. Yet he is an internationally renowned expert on energy issues. The title of his latest book (2024) is unambiguous: 2050. Why a carbon-free world is almost impossible.
The stated aim, following the Paris Agreements (COP, 2015), is a totally carbon-free world by2050, given the potential danger posed to the planet by atmospheric CO2. As with my recent text on the Green Pact, the role of this gas is not discussed here and therefore is not thesubject of this article. Let’s look at the objective set by the EU, Net-Zero 2050 (carbon neutrality) and see whether it is achievable. The answer is clearly no for Vaclav Smil.
Recently, a number of new studies and analyses have been published indicating what readers of CCW have long known: recent climate conditions are not historically unusual. An examination of long-term wildfire trends, plus research comparing past climate conditions to current conditions in central Africa and Germany, show current conditions are well below extremes experienced historically.
A relatively new Substack platform, “Grok Thinks,” publishes analyses of scientific and technological developments and research by the AI tool/assistant Grok3beta. A post in its first week of operation examined claims by geographer Elizabeth Hoy, Ph.D., a senior support scientist with NASA’s Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Office Goddard Space Flight Center. Grok’s analysis used hard data to show Hoy makes at least 10 false claims about wildfire history and trends on NASA’s “Wildfire and Climate Change” webpage.
Grok writes, in introducing the analysis,
On its “Wildfires and Climate Change” page, and in the accompanying video on YouTube, NASA—through Physical Geographer Elizabeth Hoy—paints a stark picture: climate change, fueled by human activity, is making wildfires longer, more frequent, and more destructive. It’s a compelling story, one that resonates with our instinct to connect dramatic events to a larger cause. But when you peel back the layers, something unsettling emerges: NASA’s claims don’t match the evidence.
This isn’t a minor quibble over data points. NASA’s narrative, endorsed by Hoy, is riddled with exaggerations, omissions, and outright fabrications. Over ten key claims, they twist regional trends into global crises, ignore contradictory evidence, and sidestep the messy reality of wildfire dynamics. Using global datasets, historical records, and peer-reviewed studies—including a groundbreaking paper I co-authored, A Critical Reassessment of the Anthropogenic CO₂-Global Warming Hypothesis—this article dismantles their story piece by piece. The stakes are high—when a trusted institution misleads, it doesn’t just confuse us; it undermines our ability to tackle wildfires effectively.
The paper Grok refers to was published in Science of Climate Change and coauthored with an international group of scientists from the United States and Hungary. Among the lies that NASA tells about wildfires which Grok AI refutes, data ignored or suppressed by NASA, are that the world is experiencing longer wildfire seasons and is experiencing a surge of wildfire activity, both of which are resulting in growing wildfire-related carbon dioxide emissions.
Each of these three claims is refuted by hard data, some of which comes from NASA itself. Grok reports:
by P. Homewood, May 09, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch
The UK’s Climate Change Committee has warned the government that the country is heading for disaster unless it quickly ramps up efforts to tackle what it calls ‘climate risks’. [emphasis, links added]
‘The increasing impacts of climate change are clear, both globally and in the UK. Adaptation is needed now to ensure that the UK is prepared for today’s extreme weather as well as the rapidly increasing severity of future risks. The costs of these impacts are already being felt, and the risks will continue to grow even if international targets to limit global warming are met. Action is needed now whilst we still have the opportunity to address these risks in a way that is both cost-effective and timely.’
They say that by 2050:
•Over half of England’s prime farmland, one in four homes, and half of roads and rail lines will be at risk of flooding;
