Archives mensuelles : avril 2026

energy and fields

University of Utah announces new Institute for Critical and Strategic Minerals

by University of Utah, Apr 14, 2026 in EurekAlert/AAAS

New institute seeks to expand sustainable, domestic critical minerals supply chain through education, workforce development and cutting-edge research

As the U.S. reduces its reliance on foreign critical minerals, Utah is stepping up to rebuild the domestic supply chain—and the University of Utah is leveraging its expertise to drive that effort forward.

On Tuesday, April 14, the U’s Board of Trustees voted in favor of the proposed Institute for Critical and Strategic Minerals (ICSM). Through education, workforce development and cutting-edge research, the institute aims to expand sustainable, domestic sources and production of critical minerals and rare earth elements, the raw materials vital for advanced technologies.

The Utah legislature passed S.B. 254 and S.C.R. 9 to strengthen Utah’s mining industry during the 2026 session.

“With legislative support from state leaders, Utah is taking a decisive step to lead in critical minerals,” said Taylor Randall, president of the University of Utah. “Working with industry and governmental partners, the Institute for Critical and Strategic Minerals will position Utah as the nation’s hub for critical mineral production, processing and research—driving economic growth, strengthening supply chains and advancing discoveries that matter.”

ICSM supports the full lifecycle of critical mineral development—from geological discovery and responsible mining to processing and recycling—while addressing broader challenges, including community impact, market analysis and environmental regulation. ICSM’s leadership reflects its interdisciplinary mission, bringing together experts from the Colleges of Mines and Earth Sciences, Engineering, Law, Business and Social and Behavioral Science.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Continuing Slump in Global Media Climate Agitprop Bodes Ill for Future Net Zero Support

by C. Morrison,  Apr 13, 2026 in TheDailySceptic

Decades of careful grooming of incurious journalists designed to whip up a non-existent climate emergency have failed to halt a dramatic continuing collapse in mainstream media stories backing the Net Zero fantasy. Last year saw a 14% global slump in climate-related stories compared to 2024, which was already 38% down on peak Greta hysteria in 2021. Perhaps there is only so long that once trusting consumers are prepared to read, let alone pay for identical, narrative-driven drivel that is often so one-sided that it is an insult to the intelligence. Exhibit 1: the BBC’s October 2023 classic – Climate change could make beer taste worse.

The greatest declines over 2025 were found in Africa, the Middle East and North America. Interestingly, the failed Amazon COP30 meeting in November 2025 was followed the month after by coverage falling off a cliff in Latin America (-61%), Oceania (-52%) and the European Union (-41%). A period of private grief seems to have given  the long-suffering public a merciful break from the relentless cacophony of climate catastrophising.

News of the continuing falls in climate change and global warming coverage are contained in the latest annual report from the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) at the University of Colorado Boulder. To produce its latest findings, MeCCO tracked the volume of newspaper, wire services, radio and TV climate stories across 59 countries and seven regions. The work is said to have used a consistent methodology since 2004.The graph below shows clearly the spikes in the Greta hysteria around the start of the current decade, and the earlier Gore grift that followed the release of his ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ film.

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climate-debate

Engineers were warning the grid was close to crashing due to excess solar

by Jo Nova, April 10, 2026 in JoNova

Engineers were warning the grid was close to crashing due to excess solar

The mass blackouts in Spain and Portugal wrecked havoc on April 28 last year. At the time everyone accountable was feigning confusion, blaming it on a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” which might have set up mysterious oscillations in the line. They were bandying around terms like “ ‘induced atmospheric vibration’ and talking about extreme temperatures  (you know, like 23 degrees C).   But all along, the head honchos at Red Electrica knew it was due to an excess of solar power and a lack of reliable generation, because the technical staff had told them what was coming:

“Today was really bad, you all saw it”: new audio recordings confirm that Red Eléctrica knew three months before the blackout that the system was failing

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better to know...?, climate-debate

German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936

by P. Gosselin, Apr 11, 2026 in NoTricksZone 

Is a Warming of 1.1 Degrees C Unusual?

he cause of the high temperatures around March 20, 2026, was a heat dome, the likes of which occur in the Midwestern United States every few decades. Looking at the temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona, one finds:

    • The 105°F maximum temperature from March 19 to 21 is 5°F above previous maximums for this period, but only 1°F above the 104°F that occurred in early April 1989.

    • The highest temperature ever recorded in Phoenix was 122°F during the heat dome of late June 1990.

      For some days, the record highs are over 100 years old (Jan 18; June 11 and 12; July 2, 3, 6, and 23; Aug 6; Sept 8 and 23). The highest May temperatures were recorded in 1910.

    • The warmest year in Phoenix was 1934, the first year of the Dust Bowl era. Some of the temperature records for several states that still stand today originate from this year and the following two.

  • ….

Conclusion

A heat dome is a weather phenomenon that has led to record temperatures in the Western USA multiple times before. Record temperatures in many U.S. states still date back to the period between 1934 and 1936, even though the urban heat island effect has increased significantly since then and amounts to up to 5°C for Phoenix, Arizona, for example. Media reporting on the heat in March 2026 is alarmist because it fails to mention these facts.

climate-debate

Is a Super El Nino Coming?

by Cliff Mass Weather Blog, Apr 9, 2026

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ome terminology:
A weak El Niño has the Niño 3.4 area .5-1 °C above normal
A moderate El Niño has the Niño 3.4 area 1-1.5 °C above normal
A strong El Niño has the Niño 3.4 area 1.5-2 °C above normal
A super El Niño has the Niño 3.4 area exceeding 2°C above normal
Predicting El Niño is important because it has a significant impact on the meteorology of the U.S. West Coast and offers the only reliable source of forecasting skill for extended period predictions.
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The bottom line?
We are certainly moving towards El Niño conditions, but I would be careful about assuming that the Super El Niño prediction of the European Center is correct, due to the spring forecast barrier and the larger differences between other modeling system forecasts.
minerals and ores

Coal, The Fuel We Ignore But Cannot Replace

by Dr L. Schernikau,  April 7, 2026 in WUWT

Dr. Lars Schernikau: Energy Economist, Commodity Trader, Author (recent book “The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the Future of Energy”)

Details including the full Blog on coal “Coal keeps the lights on… are we experiencing a “new” renaissance of  coal?” are available at www.unpopular-truth.com

For years now, coal has been treated like a relic… a dirty word,  something we were told would quietly disappear during the “energy transition”.

But yet, here we are… global coal consumption has definitely not declined, quite the contrary, it has only grown from roughly 6 billion tons in 2008 (when I wrote my first book on coal “The Renaissance of Steam Coal”) to around 9 billion tons today. Not to mention the seaborne trade which almost doubled! So the question is not whether coal is disappearing as we were told, it’s whether we misunderstood this useful black rock in the first place.

Our material world runs on something we are avoiding…

We like to think we live in a “clean” digital world with all our devices, apps, AI and cloud storage, but our physical world has not gone anywhere and should also be considered in this equation.

Steel, cement, metals, fertilizers….so many elements needed to actually build our modern lives which still heavily depends, directly or indirectly, on coal.

Did you know that roughly one-third of all coal is used not for electricity, but for industry? In fact, when you include electricity used for industrial purposes, more than half of all coal globally is consumed by industries keeping our daily amenities running :

  • steel production,
  • cement manufacturing,
  • chemicals and fertilizers,
  • high-temperature industrial heat (also used to make silicone for those very popular solar panels ), and on and it goes.
  • …
minerals and ores

How China Dominates the World’s Critical Minerals Production

by K. McCollum, April 7, 2026 in WUWT

Critical minerals are mined all over the world but the majority of the supply ends up passing through China. For a broad range of key metals and minerals, China is either the largest miner, the dominant refiner, or both. This is true for rare earths, lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, and many other metals and minerals that are essential to defense, energy and high-tech applications. It is less about where ores are dug out of the ground and more about where they are turned into usable components. In other words, Chinese processing plants are essentially the gatekeepers of global supply.

Australia and South America host much of the world’s lithium, while Congo supplies the lion’s share of cobalt and copper. But the rocks themselves can’t become a battery or magnet without intensive downstream processing and refining. China built those downstream industries at scale over decades through state support and investment. The result is clear — China has effectively monopolized refining for most critical minerals while the rest of the world depends on it for much-needed supply. China is listed as the dominant refiner for 19 of 20 minerals analyzed by the IEA in their Global Critical Minerals Outlook for 2025, making up roughly 70% of the global processing capacity overall.

How dominant is dominant? The numbers illustrate the scale and variety of China’s concentration. Data from 2024 shows China as the leading producer or processor for roughly 99% of gallium, 95% of magnesium, 83% of tungsten, 79% of graphite and over 69% of all rare earths. For battery materials, Chinese firms account for an overwhelming share of manufacturing capacity, giving China control over the upper and middle parts of the battery supply chain, even though much of the raw materials are sourced elsewhere.

Put simply: control of smelters and refineries is the chokepoint. Analysis from the United States Geological Survey shows how China’s share rises dramatically from mining to processing. Many minerals that are mined in other countries are still processed into a refined product within China. That clear advantage lets Chinese policy shifts ripple quickly through global supply and pricing — a growing threat for the West.

In fact, China has already weaponized its stronghold on the industry in ways that have triggered both concern and action from the United States government. Over the past couple of years, Beijing has imposed a series of export restrictions on critical minerals that have sounded alarms in Washington. These controls immediately tightened global supply for various essential materials, including gallium, germanium, silver, graphite, and certain rare-earth processing technologies. This caused semiconductor and defense firms to scramble for alternatives while exposing how dangerously dependent manufacturers are on Chinese supply.

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climate-debate

An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago

by P. Gosselin, April 5, 2026 in NoTricksZone 

A recent video from the German language channel Report24news features Dr. Johannes Steiner, who discusses the discovery of ancient biological material (a large tree log) under retreating glaciers and its implications for the current climate narrative.

VIDEO

In 2014, a massive Swiss stone pine (Zirbe) log weighing 1.7 tons was found in the retreat area of the Pasterze glacier at an altitude of 2,060 meters [03:16]. The tree from which the log originates is dated to be 6,000 years old.

Dr. Steiner points out that no trees of this size can grow at that altitude today because it is currently just too cold [03:27], suggesting that 6,000 years ago, temperatures in the Alps were significantly warmer than now [07:07]. That’s evidence that climate alarmists would prefer to censor.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Data Centers, Hot Air, and the Reinvention of the Urban Heat Island

by A. Watts, April 5, 2026 in WUWT

If you have been following the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, you have probably seen the latest claims that data centers are now creating their own “heat islands” large enough to affect hundreds of millions of people. The narrative comes courtesy of a recent working paper, quickly picked up and amplified by Fortune in: Data centers are so hot their ‘heat island’ effect is raising temperatures up to 6 miles away, which presents the findings in a way that suggests a new and potentially significant environmental driver emerging from the digital economy.

According to the article, researchers examined more than 6,000 data centers worldwide and found that surrounding areas experienced an average land surface temperature increase of about 2°C over the period from 2004 to 2024, with some locations showing increases as high as 9°C. The reported influence extends outward roughly six miles from facilities, and when combined with population maps, the authors estimate that as many as 343 million people could be affected These are large numbers, and presented without context they give the impression of a widespread and growing climate signal tied directly to AI infrastructure.

The underlying paper, however, tells a more nuanced story. The key variable being analyzed is not air temperature in the meteorological sense, but land surface temperature derived from satellite observations. That distinction matters because land surface temperature is extremely sensitive to local surface characteristics. Replace vegetation with buildings, pavement, and industrial equipment, and the measured surface temperature will rise, regardless of whether the underlying atmospheric conditions have changed in any meaningful way.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

US Heatwaves Much Worse In Past

P. Homewood, Apr 2, 2026 in NotaLotofPeopleKnowThat

There were a few days of hot weather in the US a couple of weeks ago. Attribution “scientists” immediately jumped up and announced that the heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” without challenge.

It’s the same old, unsubstantiated claim that gets wheeled out every time it gets hot. And every time they ignore the lessons of history.

If heatwaves are caused by global warming, what caused them in the past? Not only have they always occurred, they were considerably more severe in the past in the US.

In 2017,  the US Global Change Research Program published the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a report mandated by Congress:

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Anthropogenic aerosols can shape the winter mid-latitude cyclone tracks

by Cao, D. et al., March 18, 2026 in Nature OPEN ACCESS

Abstract

Mid-latitude cyclones are “parent storms” of various weather hazards and contribute significantly to the moisture and heat intrusion into the Arctic. Anthropogenic aerosols are known to affect cyclone intensities and their associated precipitation, but their impacts on cyclone tracks remain largely unclear. Here, based on both observational data diagnosis and global climate model simulations, we show that anthropogenic aerosols over East Asia can lead to a significant poleward drift of mid-latitude cyclone tracks in winter over the North Pacific. By suppressing precipitation in the southeastern sector of cyclones and enhancing it in the northeastern sector, aerosols increase the positive potential vorticity tendency northeast of the cyclones, thereby driving their poleward drift. This might give rise to more cyclones migrating into the Arctic over the North Pacific, reducing the Arctic sea ice extent in recent decades. In the future, efforts to reduce aerosol emissions in East Asia could potentially mitigate the poleward migration of the storm track driven by global warming.

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climate-debate

A recent surge in global warming is not detectable yet

by Beaulieu et al., Oct 14, 2024 in Nature OPEN ACCESS

Abstract

The global mean surface temperature is widely studied to monitor climate change. A current debate centers around whether there has been a recent (post-1970s) surge/acceleration in the warming rate. Here we investigate whether an acceleration in the warming rate is detectable from a statistical perspective. We use changepoint models, which are statistical techniques specifically designed for identifying structural changes in time series. Four global mean surface temperature records over 1850–2023 are scrutinized within. Our results show limited evidence for a warming surge; in most surface temperature time series, no change in the warming rate beyond the 1970s is detected despite the breaking record temperatures observed in 2023. As such, we estimate the minimum changes in the warming trend required for a surge to be detectable. Across all datasets, an increase of at least 55% is needed for a warming surge to be detectable at the present time.

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better to know...?, climate-debate

Breakthrough Exposes Volcanic Corruption of Global Temperature Data for 50 Years

by C. Rotter, Apr 1, 2026 in WUWT

A persistent assumption underlies modern global temperature reconstructions: that individual station errors, even when large, are diluted through spatial averaging and homogenization. That assumption deserves closer inspection. Recent analysis of station-level data suggests that under certain conditions—specifically when extreme outliers evade quality control and are subsequently incorporated into homogenization routines—localized anomalies can propagate nonlinearly through the global record.

The present investigation began with a routine audit of tropical station residuals within the GHCN (Global Historical Climatology Network) dataset. The initial objective was unremarkable: quantify the distribution of post-homogenization adjustments across low-latitude stations. What emerged instead was a persistent and statistically anomalous signal centered on a single station in Costa Rica, hereafter designated CR-VOLC-EL-INFIERNO-01.

The anomaly first appears in the late 1970s, coinciding with documented volcanic activity in the Talamanca Range. At face value, elevated temperatures in proximity to geothermal activity are not unexpected. What is unexpected is the magnitude, persistence, and downstream influence of those readings once introduced into the global processing pipeline.

Raw observations from CR-VOLC-EL-INFIERNO-01 indicate sustained daily maximum temperatures exceeding 300°C over multiple reporting intervals. Such values would ordinarily trigger immediate exclusion under standard quality control thresholds. Yet archival flags associated with this station indicate no such exclusion occurred. Instead, the readings were retained and subjected to standard homogenization procedures.

To understand how such values could persist, it is necessary to examine the homogenization framework itself. Modern temperature datasets rely on relative homogenization techniques, wherein each station is adjusted based on comparisons with neighboring stations. The fundamental assumption is that neighboring stations share a common climate signal, allowing discontinuities (instrument changes, relocations) to be corrected through statistical alignment.

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