Archives de catégorie : climate-debate

climate-debate

“But you said the ice was going to disappear in 10 years!”

by Gavin, Sep é&, 2025 in RealClimate

Almost two decades ago, some scientists predicted that Arctic summer sea ice would ‘soon’ disappear. These predictions were mentioned by Al Gore and got a lot of press. However, they did not gain wide acceptance in the scientific community, and were swiftly disproven. Unsurprisingly, this still comes up a lot. Time for a deeper dive into what happened and why…

It is unsurprising that climate contrarians bring up past ‘failed predictions’ to bolster their case that nothing need be done about climate change. [It is equally unsurprising that they don’t bother to mention the predictions that were skillful, but let’s not dwell on that!]. For a long time, their favorite supposed ‘failed prediction’ was that there was a consensus about the imminence of a new ice age in the 1970s (a topic we have covered many times), but more recently it has turned to the supposed prediction of Al Gore that “Arctic summer sea ice would disappear” in a short number of years. This has everything – the ‘But Al Gore!’ knee-jerk, a conflation of Al Gore with the scientific community, it’s sounds suitably apocalyptic and, of course, Arctic summer sea ice has not disappeared (it’s only down 40% or so):

Arctic summer sea ice extent anomalies from NSIDC, with the exceptional years of 2007 and 2012 highlighted (data through July 2025).

What did Al Gore actually say?

If we go back to Dec 2007, in the immediate aftermath of the shocking decrease in sea ice that summer, Gore gave his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize he’d received jointly with the IPCC. In it he said:

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

What was he reporting on?

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Lomborg: Environmental Doomsday Predictions Collapse As World Becomes Richer And Greener

by B. Lomborg, Sep 16, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

Fearmongering climate change forecasts keep falling apart.

Climate protest
Over the past half-century, environmentalists have predicted countless calamities. Their extreme predictions were typically wrong, their draconian countermeasures turned out to be mostly misguided, and we should be grateful we didn’t follow their harmful advice. [emphasis, links added]

We need to keep this history in mind as we are inundated with stories of climate Armageddon.

This summer, headlines about the Great Barrier Reef painted a dire picture of climate-driven devastation, with environmental journalists claiming the reef was on the brink of collapse.

In reality, data shows the reef has its fourth-highest coral cover since records began in 1986, revealing these alarmist narratives to be vastly misleading.

Truth and Scares

Sensible, life-improving environmental policies over recent decades were rarely sold with fearmongering. Rich countries have dramatically reduced air and water pollution through technological advances and then through regulation.

Poorer countries are starting to do the same thing, as they emerge from poverty and can afford to be more environmentally concerned. Forests have expanded globally, with this growth clear in rich countries and increasingly across the world.

This isn’t the scary future environmentalists promised us.

A recent peer-reviewed study counts almost a hundred environmental doomsday predictions that environmentalists have made over the past half-century.

Two-thirds of them predicted doom before August 2025, and all of these have turned out to be false.

…

climate-debate

Koonin: DOE Climate Report Finally Brings Clarity, Challenges Alarmist Narrative

by S.E. Koonin, Sept 09, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

Empirical data shows CO2 boosts growth, extreme weather events are overblown, and policy costs outweigh any benefits.

Protest on a dead planet
A recent Energy Department report challenged the widespread belief that greenhouse-gas emissions pose a serious threat to the nation. It likely soothed Americans irked by forced energy transitions, but you would be wrong to assume it reassured many alarmed by hypothetical climate catastrophes. [emphasis, links added]

There is a disconnect between public perceptions of climate change and climate science—and between past government reports and the science itself.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright understands this. It’s why he commissioned an independent assessment by a team of five senior scientists, including me, to provide clearer insights into what’s known and not about the changing climate.

Collectively, our team brought to the task more than 200 years of research experience, almost all directly relevant to climate studies.

The resulting peer-reviewed report is entirely our work, free from political influence—a departure from previous assessments.

It draws from United Nations and U.S. climate reports, peer-reviewed research, and primary observations to focus on important aspects of climate science that have been misrepresented to nonexperts.

Among the report’s key findings:

■ Elevated carbon dioxide levels enhance plant growth, contributing to global greening and increased agricultural productivity.

■ Complex climate models provide limited guidance on the climate’s response to rising carbon dioxide levels. Overly sensitive models, often using extreme scenarios, have exaggerated future warming projections and consequences.

■ Data aggregated over the continental U.S. show no significant long-term trends in most extreme weather events. Claims of more frequent or intense hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and dryness in America aren’t supported by historical records.

■ While global sea levels have risen about eight inches since 1900, aggregate U.S. tide-gauge data don’t show the long-term acceleration expected from a warming globe.

■ Natural climate variability, data limitations, and model deficiencies complicate efforts to attribute specific climate changes or extreme events to human CO2 emissions.

■ The use of the words “existential,” “crisis,” and “emergency” to describe the projected effects of human-caused warming on the U.S. economy finds scant support in the data.

■ Overly aggressive policies aimed at reducing emissions could do more harm than good by hiking the cost of energy and degrading its reliability. Even the most ambitious reductions in U.S. emissions would have little direct effect on global emissions and an even smaller effect on climate trends.

Our report is the first from Washington in years that deviates from the narrative of a climate headed for catastrophe. That these findings surprised many speaks to a governmental failure to communicate climate science accurately to the public.

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

UK Poll Shows Rising Climate Skepticism, Opposition to Net-Zero Policies

by O. Wright et al., Sept 12, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

New research finds a sharp rise in climate change skepticism as Brits reject net-zero policies

Ed Miliband's wind farm fantasy
The number of Britons who think the dangers of global warming have been exaggerated has jumped by more than 50 percent in the past four years, new research for The Times reveals today. [emphasis, links added]

One in four voters now believes that concerns over climate change are not as real as scientists have said, amid growing public concern about the cost of the government’s net-zero policies.

Less than a third of the public (30 percent) are in favor of banning new petrol and diesel cars — down from 51 percent in 2021.


Only 16 percent of voters said they would be prepared to pay higher gas bills to encourage the switch to electricity.

Experts said the findings showed that growing climate skepticism within mainstream politics in both Britain and the US was cutting through with voters, as the broad consensus on climate action breaks down.

“Climate change is being politicised [in the UK] in the same way that has been done in the United States,” said Professor Wouter Poortinga, an environmental psychologist at the University of Cardiff.

…

climate-debate

New Study: ‘CO2 Does Not Precede Temperature, Nor Does It Control Temperature’

by K. Richard, Sept 5, 2025 in NoTricksZone 

More evidence is unleashed undermining the CO2-drives-climate narrative.

A comprehensive correlation analysis (Grabyan, 2025) utilizing the last 2000 years of temperature and CO2 data affirms CO2 changes lag temperature changes by ~150 years throughout the 1 to 1850 C.E. era.

This Common Era (C.E.) lead-lag sequencing – with temperature changes leading and CO2 changes lagging by centuries to millennia – is wholly consistent with the paleo CO2 and temperature proxy (ice core, stomata, borehole, etc.) record spanning the last 20,000 years (Demezhko and Gornostaeva, 2014), 400,000 years (Fischer et al., 1999, Mudelsee et al., 2001, Monnin et al., 2001, Uemura et al., 2018), 66 million years (Frank, 2024), and 420 million years (Koutsoyiannis, 2024).

It is notable that the CO2 changes can be shown to be driven by temperature changes over not only the long-term (centuries), but over short-term periods (months, years) as well (Koutsoyiannis et al., 2023, Humlum et al., 2013).

…

climate-debate

Graph of the Week – Temperature of ocean air-sheltered stations

by A. Watts, Aug 26, 2025 in WUWT

I somehow missed this, but I find it very interesting. From the 2018 paper: “Temperature trends with reduced impact of ocean air temperature” by Frank Lansner*, Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen

Abstract

Temperature data 1900–2010 from meteorological stations across the world have been analyzed and it has been found that all land areas generally have two different valid temperature trends. Coastal stations and hill stations facing ocean winds are normally more warm-trended than the valley stations that are sheltered from dominant oceans winds.

Thus, we found that in any area with variation in the topography, we can divide the stations into the more warm trended ocean air-affected stations, and the more cold-trended ocean air-sheltered stations. We find that the distinction between ocean air-affected and ocean air-sheltered stations can be used to identify the influence of the oceans on land surface. We can then use this knowledge as a tool to better study climate variability on the land surface without the moderating effects of the ocean.

We find a lack of warming in the ocean air sheltered temperature data – with less impact of ocean temperature trends – after 1950. The lack of warming in the ocean air sheltered temperature trends after 1950 should be considered when evaluating the climatic effects of changes in the Earth’s atmospheric trace amounts of greenhouse gasses as well as variations in solar conditions.

…

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Another New Study Suggests Most – 80% – Of The Modern CO2 Increase Has Been Natural

by K. Richard, Aug 29, 2025 in NoTricksZone 

An independent researcher (Robbins, 2025) has reviewed recent research that suggests at least “80% or more of the [modern CO2] increase is of natural origin.”

This is because “changes in atmospheric temperature are an ‘effect’ of changes in SSTs and not a ’cause’ as some might advocate.”

…

…

Similar conclusions are found in a paper published in the same peer-reviewed journal last year (Ato, 2024).

“SST [sea surface temperature] has been the determinant of the annual changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and […] anthropogenic emissions have been irrelevant in this process…”

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Media Falsely Claim Antarctica On Brink Of Climate Doom, Ignore Contrary Data

by A. Watts, Aug 29, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

Why abrupt Antarctic ‘climate shifts’ aren’t new or necessarily catastrophic.

 

Emperor Penguins
A recent CBS News article, “Abrupt Antarctic climate shifts could lead to ‘catastrophic consequences for generations,’ experts warn,” claims that Antarctica is on the brink of irreversible collapse due to climate change, warning that sea levels could rise by meters and that “catastrophic consequences for generations” are looming. [emphasis, links added]

This is false or, at best, deeply misleading.

The actual data and history of Antarctic ice show that “abrupt changes” are neither unprecedented nor a reason to panic. Natural variability and cyclical shifts are being ignored in favor of sensational headlines pushing the increasingly untenable climate crisis narrative.

CBS was not alone in pushing the Antarctic climate crisis narrative.

On August 21, 2025, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) joined the chorus of media outlets with alarming headlines warning of a pending ice collapse, publishing a report claiming Antarctica is undergoing “rapid, self-perpetuating changes” that are “potentially irreversible.”

Each of the reports cited a new Nature review led by Professor Nerilie Abram as the source of the information for their alarming articles.

ABC’s article presents Antarctica as being in a state of runaway decline, with imminent threats to emperor penguins and global sea levels, parroting language from the Abram paper as if it were an observed fact, rather than the speculative synthesis of research papers that the Nature study cites.

CBS, ABC, and other media outlets are covering this story as if a tipping point is upon us—but a closer look at the evidence reveals otherwise.

…

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

NYT Falsely Blames Climate Change For Hurricane Erin Despite No Evidence

by L. Lueken, Aug 28, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Rapid intensification of Hurricane Erin isn’t unusual, and attribution studies don’t prove climate change caused it.

The New York Times (NYT) published an article titled “How Climate Change Affects Hurricanes Like Erin,” in which they rely on rapid attribution analysis to claim that climate change is making rapidly intensifying hurricanes more likely, implying that the storm was worsened by global warming. This is false. [emphasis, links added]

Attribution studies are generally not based on solid scientific evidence and, therefore, not provable. Plus, there is a lack of evidence to support the notion that rapid intensification is becoming more common.

At the outset, the NYT claimed that hurricane Erin’s effects, such as they are, “are made worse by global warming,” even though the storm stayed offshore. The storm intensified quickly from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane, and NYT claims that “[a]s the planet warms, scientists say that rapidly intensifying hurricanes are becoming ever more likely.”

First, it is important to note that just because a storm is among the most rapidly intensifying on record, it does not mean that there were not similar storms that went unrecorded.

As mentioned in a previous Climate Realism post about hurricane Erin, hurricane measurement technology is far advanced today than it was even a few decades ago.

Before the widespread use of Hurricane Hunter flights starting in the 70s where offshore storms were first closely monitored and directly measured throughout their lifespan, other rapidly intensifying storms would not have made the record.

So there is uncertainty about the record there.

Beyond that, attribution researchers and the NYT would like to blame hurricane intensification all on warm sea surface temperatures, but rapid intensification occurs in response to a variety of factors lining up just right.

Similar claims were made two years ago concerning Hurricane Otis. That storm also intensified rapidly over a single day, turning into a Category 5 before hitting the west coast of Mexico.

Otis did not intensify under expected conditions; thunderstorm bursts that forecasters were unable to predict are now believed to have been responsible for its rapid intensification.

Just as some scientists say more intense storms are more likely with warming, other scientists say that they will become less likely to form or less likely to strike land.

The NYT neglected to mention these perspectives, focusing its story on the scarier opinions that support the narrative that climate change is responsible for worsening extreme weather events.

In fact, as Climate at A Glance: Hurricanes details, there is no data suggesting hurricanes are becoming more frequent or more intense.

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Study Finds Extreme Weather Database Exaggerates Global Disaster Trends

by Climate Discussion Nexus, Aug 28, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

Disasters don’t count if you don’t count them.

City flood aftermath
According to its publishers, a dataset called EM-DAT, which stands for Emergency Events Database, so it’s not even an acronym, lists “data on the occurrence and impacts of over 26,000 mass disasters worldwide from 1900 to the present day.” [emphasis, links added]

Which makes it perfect for studying long-term trends. And what’s even better, for the climate change crowd anyway, is that, as the authors of a 2024 study noted, “There are very strong upward trends in the number of reported disasters.”

But as the same authors noted in the very next sentence, “However, we show that these trends are strongly biased by progressively improving reporting.” Simply put, before 2000, reporting of small disasters that caused fewer than 100 deaths was hit-and-miss.

So, historically, the record of giant disasters that killed hundreds or more persons is reasonably complete, but not the record of small ones.

And the authors of the recent study argue that once they adjust for the effect of underreporting, the trends in disaster-related mortality go away.

The paper, “Incompleteness of natural disaster data and its implications on the interpretation of trends,” by a group of scientists in Sweden, began by noting that they are not the first to point out the problem.

The weird thing is that many authors who have pointed out this massive flaw have then gone ahead and used the data anyway, as though it did not exist, or at least they had not noticed it:

“Various authors (Field et al., 2012; Gall et al., 2009; Hoeppe, 2016; Pielke, 2021) have noted that there are reporting deficiencies in the EM-DAT data that may affect trends then proceeded to present trend analyses based on it without correction. Even the EM-DAT operators themselves discourage using EM-DAT data from before 2000 for trend analysis (Guha-Sapir (2023)). Yet recently, Jones et al. (2022) investigated the 20 most cited empirical studies utilising EM-DAT as the primary or secondary data source, and found that with only one exception the mention of data incompleteness was limited to a couple of sentences, if mentioned at all.”

Having made that point, their study then digs into the records and shows that in the post-2000 period, there is a steady pattern relating the frequency of events to the number of fatalities (F) per event.

It follows something that statisticians call “power-law behaviour” in which the more extreme an outcome, the rarer it is, not in a straight line but in an inverse exponential relationship, where extreme things, [like] large numbers of fatalities in a disaster, are a lot rarer than small numbers on a logarithmic curve. (For instance, in boating accidents, there are tens of thousands of individuals falling out and drowning for every Titanic.)

Hydrological, meteorological, and geophysical disasters all follow power-law behaviour in recent decades. But in earlier decades, the relationship doesn’t appear to hold because of a deficiency of low-fatality disasters in the data, rather than because it wasn’t still true then..

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Finally, an Unbiased and Objective Climate Science Report

by T. Gallaudet, Aug 26, 2025 in TheEpochTimes

The recent report released by Energy Secretary Chris Wright on the climate impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S. has caused quite a stir in the climate science arena. “Outrage,” “pushback,” and “criticized” are the words used in many of the headlines about it.
To better gauge the overall opinion of the report, two journalists from the Associated Press asked members of the climate science committee if they believed that it accurately portrayed the current “mainstream view of climate science.”
…
…
climate-debate

A warming pulse in the Antarctic continent changed the landscape during the Middle Ages

by E. Forte et al., Apr 11, 2025 in Nature (OPEN ACCESS)

Abstract

The Antarctic landscape is one of the most stable environments on the Earth, at least since approximately 14 million years ago when most glaciers in continental Antarctica changed from temperate to cold-based, and previous extensive fluvial activity disappeared. Here, we detected a large landscape change on a coastal glacier in continental Antarctica (Boulder Clay Glacier) that occurred in the Medieval Warm Period. Such change consists in a glacial unconformity marked by a continuous sediment layer and an erosion channel on the past glacier surface. This channel, more than 4 kilometers long, represents a local deepening of a glacial unconformity that cuts the underlying glacial strata and was clearly imaged and mapped by Ground Penetrating Radar data. Four boreholes were allowed to calibrate the sediment layer so identified because it was observed in all boreholes at depths between 1.85 and 3.07 m. Moreover, the occurrence at a depth of 11.11 meters of mosses suitable for the dating through radiocarbon dating provided the age of 1050 calibrated years before the present, implying that the erosion event occurred during the Medieval Warm Period between 900 and 989 before the present.

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Trump Unsettles Supposedly Settled Climate Science

by H.S. Burnett, Aug 26, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

DOE climate report shows rising CO2 has limited impact on temperatures and isn’t catastrophic as alarmists claim.

 

Donald Trump’s presidency has seemingly unsettled the supposedly settled science of climate change, disrupting 40 years of “climate change is killing us” dogma in seven short months. [emphasis, links added]

For nearly four decades, scientists with a reputational and financial stake in the game, and compliant, uninquisitive mainstream media, have told the public one thing consistently concerning climate change: there is a consensus, there is no debate, human greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous climate change. The end, roll credits, The Science is settled.

The Consensus Climate Cabal (CCC) of scientists, activists, and politicians attempted to enforce the settled climate science orthodoxy because they profited from it in one way or another, in part by shutting down continued debate and discussion about the causes and consequences of climate change.

For example, the Climategate emails showed scientists suppressing or lying about inconvenient data, undermining climate concerns, having open-minded journal editors removed from their positions or reined in by journal publishers (nefarious activity that continues to this day, unfortunately).

In Climategate’s aftermath, climate skeptics were increasingly shut out of the peer review process, and papers openly skeptical of the anthropogenic climate disaster narrative were nearly impossible to get published in top journals.

The mainstream media then piled on. It began to shut dissenting voices out of climate change stories.

The media concluded that since “the science was settled,” the debate was over, and publishing the views of climate skeptics/climate realists was tantamount to allowing Holocaust deniers a voice in stories about Nazi death camps.

Those not in the consensus group were labeled as climate deniers and disenfranchised in polite company.

…

…

A recent article in Nature acknowledged that the DOE’s report has at least a modicum of validity.

“Predictions of global warming are uncertain,” writes Tim Plamer, D.Phil., in a recent article in Nature. “That’s why we need to keep finding out how the climate system works.”

Palmer admits, for example, that climate change is not catastrophic, and “its authors are correct in one respect: the most important uncertainty in our ability to predict how much global temperatures will increase as carbon emissions continue is related to how cloud coverage will change over time.”

The response of global temperatures to rising CO2 is the most critical question in the climate debate. If that question is unsettled, then we can’t really know how the climate will respond to rising temperatures and whether it endangers humans or the environment. Score one for the DOE report.

The science is not “settled,” after all. It never was!

better to know...?, climate-debate

INTERVIEW. Dr. Judith Curry on Global Warming: Where Is the Danger?

by Clintel Foundation, Aug 24, 2025

“People used to call the warm periods the optimums, the climate optimums, because ecosystems and people thrived in these warmer climate optimums,” says Dr. Judith Curry, professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “We talk about two degrees of warming, things like that, but the part that they don’t tell you is that the baseline is the period between 1850 and 1900. Since that period, we’ve already seen 1.3 degrees of warming,” she says. And each of us can see for ourselves if human life on planet Earth has gotten better or worse during that time, while the population has been increasing along with agricultural productivity. “The lives lost per 100,000 people from weather and climate extremes have dropped by two orders of magnitude. So, you know, we’ve managed to do quite well during the first 1.3 degrees of warming. So if we were to see another 1.3 degrees of warming, which is the current best estimate from the UN climate negotiators by 2100, is there any reason to think that would be any worse than the first 1.3 degrees of warming?” Curry asks a simple question.

Many widely held beliefs, such as the notion that a climate crisis or global warming is causing more extreme weather, are simply false. The sea level rise is insignificant. “So where is the danger?” Curry asks.

Curry also points out that until we better understand natural climate variability, we can’t be very confident about stating how much of the warming is human-caused. According to her we don’t have a good enough understanding of a number of issues, e.g. how big is the Sun’s influence on climate, or what is the effect of ocean circulations etc. Therefore the widely used narrative of 97% of scientists agreeing that we are facing a man-made climate crisis is, according to Curry, simply a joke. “Scientists do not agree on the most consequential issues,” she explains.

There is a popular claim. It is still alive, pretty much. I think that there is a scientific consensus that 97% of scientists agree that human-caused climate change exists. Many interpret this to mean there’s no room for any discussion. But where does this claim actually come from?

Well, where it comes from is that there was an activist scientist who had a blog, and he had some of his blogger buddies do a search of scientific abstracts, and they classified the abstracts as either for or against human-caused global warming. Most of them didn’t directly confront the issue. And they counted papers that included cook stove technology being used in India, for example. And they counted that as in favor of the global warming narrative. So, it’s actually a big joke.

What climate scientists actually agree on is very little. Everyone agrees that it’s been warming since about the middle 19th century. Everyone agrees that we’re adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And everyone agrees that carbon dioxide has an infrared emission spectra that, all other things being equal, acts to warm the planet.

But scientists do not agree on the most consequential issues, such as how much of the recent warming has been caused by humans. How much warming can we expect for the remainder of the 21st century? Is warming dangerous? Will humanity and human welfare overall be improved by a rapid transition away from fossil fuels? There’s a huge debate, scientific and political debate on these issues, and pretending that we shouldn’t have this debate and pretending that there’s some sort of agreement by all scientists on these issues where there’s a lot of disagreement is not only bad for science, but it misleads policymakers. So it’s not good for anybody other than for the activist scientists who want attention, fame, fortune, whatever – who knows what drives them.

In your book Climate Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking Our Response (2023), you write that in 2017, you resigned from your faculty position at the Georgia Institute of Technology because academia increasingly felt like “wrong trousers” due to climate consensus enforcement and free speech issues. Could you please elaborate on this? What did you mean?

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Pielke Jr. –A Takeover of the IPCC

by C. Rotter, Aug 24, 2025 in WUWT

Roger Pielke Jr.’s “A Takeover of the IPCC” offers a timely post-mortem on what’s left of scientific rigor in the world’s most influential climate assessment body, of which Pielke Jr. has long been a supporter. The article chronicles not just a change in personnel at the IPCC, but a seismic shift in methodology and purpose—a transformation best described as a hostile takeover by advocates of “Extreme Event Attribution” (EEA). The implications for public policy, scientific integrity, and even the basic credibility of climate science are staggering, and long overdue for public scrutiny.

…

…

Pielke’s article, in short, is a wakeup call. The so-called “settled science” is more unsettled than ever, and the very structures meant to provide honest assessment are being repurposed for advocacy. The cost, inevitably, will be paid in public trust, misallocated resources, and a continued failure to address the real drivers of disaster risk.

There’s an old saying in science: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The new IPCC, sadly, seems content to settle for extraordinary press releases. The public deserves better. It’s time to ask, loudly, whose interests are really being served by this shift—and to demand a return to genuine scientific skepticism before the last shreds of credibility are gone for good.

better to know...?, climate-debate

Another Study Affirms Anthropogenic CO2 Does Not Drive Climate Change

by K. Richard, Aug 22, 2025 in NoTricksZone 

Utilizing AI’s evidence-streamlining capabilities, a new study (with “Grok” literally positioned as the lead author) summarizes a few of the key counterpoints undermining the CO2-drives-climate narrative.

For example, consider that humans contribute just 10 GtC per year to the carbon cycle, whereas nature’s sources (ocean outgassing and soil respiration, primarily) contribute 220 GtC annually. The combined total (230 GtC/year) does not distinguish between sources, and thus natural sinks that remove carbon from the atmosphere proportionately absorb human as well as natural emissions, with the human percentage (4%) insignificant and the natural predominant (96%).

But even if the last century of rising CO2 was 100% anthropogenic, the empirical data indicate the residence time for atmospheric CO2 is just 3-7 years. This necessarily precludes the possibility for anthropogenic CO2 in particular to be the driver of presumed radiation imbalances, or radiative forcing. This is because the tiny anthropogenic component is too quickly removed from the cycle to have more than a negligible impact. Nearly 90% of CO2 derived from human emissions sources since 1750 has already been removed, absolving humans of the alleged responsibility for (allegedly CO2-induced) climate change.

The atmospheric CO2 residence time would need to last centuries for the presumed effects of anthropogenic CO2 to have the dominant impact the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims it has. So what has the IPCC decided to do? Of course, the IPCC (and those hoping to blame humans for climate change) rely on modeled assumptions that the atmospheric CO2 residence time is, yes, over 100 years. There is no empirical basis validating these assumptions. To put it crudely, the IPCC’s 100-year CO2 residence time model is made up. Fake.

The study also addresses the causality problem that the CO2-drives-temperature narrative has, as there are many studies affirming CO2 changes follow, rather than lead, temperature changes. This T→CO2 directionality is not only observed in the short-term (months), but in paleoclimate studies (an 800-year CO2 lag) as well.

In sum, there is ample evidence available to support the conclusion anthropogenic CO2 does not drive climate change.

…

climate-debate

Dramatic slowdown in melting of Arctic sea ice surprises scientists

by D. Carrington, Aug 20, 2025 in TheGuardian

climate-debate

Are surface temperature records reliable?

by Sue Bin Park, Aug 22, 2025 in SkepticalScience

Surface temperature records are consistent and have been confirmed by multiple independent analyses.

Measurements come from over 30,000 stations worldwide, with around 7,000 having long, continuous monthly records. Scientists adjust for known local anomalies such as urban heat islands by comparing urban and rural trends and accounting for differences.

Allegations in 2009 that poorly located U.S. stations skewed data were tested by NOAA, which found those sites actually read slightly cooler on average.

The independent Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study, led by a former climate skeptic, merged global datasets and concluded that the warming trend is unaffected by stations’ local conditions and nearly identical to NASA and NOAA records.

Temperature measurements are corroborated by satellites, ocean data, melting ice, and shifting ecosystems, all showing the same warming trend. No credible analysis has found that site issues or adjustments undermine the global record.

Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact

This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.

Sources

Skeptical Science Understanding adjustments to temperature data

NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (v4)

Geoscience Data Journal The international surface temperature initiative global land surface databank: monthly temperature data release description and methods

Skeptical Science Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study: “The effect of urban heatingon the global trends is nearly negligible”

NOAA On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record

Carbon Brief Explainer: How data adjustments affect global temperature records

…

climate-debate

New Study: Corals Thrived In Warmer-Than-Today Temps And When Sea Levels Were Meters Higher

by K. Richard, Aug 19, 2025 in NoTricksZone 

hen the ocean was warmer than today, coral reef growth was rapid, averaging ~6 mm per year.

Sea levels rose rapidly from the Early to Mid Holocene in this region, as they were up to 2 m higher than today 6000 years ago. The higher sea levels meant there was more room for coral reef growth.

As the ocean cooled and sea levels fell ~2 meters from the Mid-Holocene highstand, coral growth slowed to ~2-3 mm per year.

Today corals are only growing at rates of ~1 mm per year, as the water depths are too low to accommodate reef expansion. In fact, coral coverage “has declined on the flats over the last few decades,” as the “accommodation space is less than a meter at points.”

…

…

Research from the Great Barrier Reef region (e.g., Leonard et al., 2020) also indicates coral growth experienced “turn-off” periods during cold centuries (such as the Little Ice Age) with falling sea levels. When the ocean was “~1-2°C warmer than present” and sea levels were “~1.0 m higher than present,” this “allowed reefs to accrete uninhibited.”

better to know...?, climate-debate

The New York Times Publishes False Energy and Climate Information and Refuses to Correct Its Errors

by H. Greuenspecht, Aug 22, 2025 in WUWT

les addressing energy and climate topics in The New York Times (NYT) increasingly include Inaccurate data and false information. The problem is compounded by the paper’s failure to follow its own corrections policy when errors are called to its attention.

Readers look to the NYT to deliver well-reasoned and fact-checked information and analysis in areas where they are not themselves experts. However, based on my professional focus on data and analysis of energy and related environmental issues over the past 45 years, which includes White House and Department of Energy senior positions in the Carter, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, and Trump 45 administrations as well as work at leading universities and think tanks, NYT coverage of these subjects too often fails to live up to its own standards for accuracy and journalistic integrity.

As a lifetime reader of the NYT, the frequency of errors and a refusal to fix them raises doubts regarding the accuracy of information presented on other topics. Whether or not the problem extends beyond energy and climate, the NYT readership clearly deserves better.

Three recent NYT articles illustrate the problem: a July 22 article by Max Bearak, ostensibly reporting on remarks by UN Secretary-General Guterres’ on renewable energy; a May 26 article by Ivan Penn on competition between electric vehicles (EVs) and vehicles powered by internal combustion engine (ICEVs); and an April 23 column by David Wallace-Wells on the loss of cultural and political momentum for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These are considered in turn below, followed by some summary conclusions.

  1. Max Bearak’s July 22 2025 article “U.S. Is Missing the Century’s ‘Greatest Economic Opportunity,’ U.N. Chief Says” (July 23 print edition).
  2. …
climate-debate

“Wake-Up Call” For Europe… German Professor, Fritz Vahrenholt, On U.S. Climate Report

by F. Vahrenholt, Aug 20, 2025 in NoTricksZone

A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, commissioned by the Trump administration and authored by five scientists, is making waves.

German energy expert Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt has weighed in, suggesting its findings could be a crucial “wake-up call” for Europe, especially Germany, to rethink its current climate policies.

The report, titled “A Critical Review on Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate” challenges a core assumption of mainstream climate science. It argues that the negative impacts of CO2 have been exaggerated, while its benefits are often overlooked.

According to Vahrenholt, the report highlights that CO2 isn’t just a pollutant; it’s essential for life and photosynthesis. It’s a key ingredient for a “greener earth” and has contributed to a reported 15% increase in global crop yields for staples like rice and wheat. This perspective directly contradicts the idea of CO2 as solely a harmful substance.

Another major point raised by Vahrenholt is the report’s finding that climate models “run too hot.”

The report suggests these models primarily focus on CO2 as the sole driver of warming, neglecting other significant natural factors. Vahrenholt points to measurements that show a substantial portion of recent warming can be attributed to cloud thinning and increased solar radiation, a topic he and Nobel laureate John Clauser have researched.

…

climate-debate

Media Championed Study Overstating Climate Damages, Went Radio Silent As Major Flaws Emerged

by K. Killough, Aug 20, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Typhoon flooding aftermath
When a study published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Nature found that climate change would cost the globe $38 trillion per year by 2050 — ultimately reducing GDP by 19% over the next 24 years — many media outlets were quick to jump on it. [emphasis, links added]

“Climate change will make you poorer,” CNN warned. The Guardian reported on the study under the headline, “Climate crisis: average world incomes to diminish by nearly a fifth by 2050.”

Reuters and Forbes also carried articles on the study, and the Associated Press reported that “New study calculates climate change’s economic bite will hit about $38 trillion a year by 2049.”

According to the activist publication Carbon Brief, only one other study received more mentions in the media in 2024.

However, the study — referred to as “the Potsdam study” — has since been found to have serious flaws.

When these are corrected, according to the researchers who uncovered the problems, it reduces the study’s estimate of climate “damages” through 2100 by two-thirds. This means the estimates aren’t statistically different from zero.

The study has been cited by organizations influencing policy across the globe, including the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., cited the study last yearand again in July — both times entering the study into the Congressional Record.

While The Washington Post reported on the errors, none of the other outlets have so far revisited the story.

Flaws called “devastating” to the paper’s conclusions

…

 

better to know...?, climate-debate

The DOE climate report: a scientific milestone that Europe does not want to see

by Clintel Foundation, Aug 13, 2025

In July, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published a groundbreaking document: A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. At the request of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, five leading scientists provided a clear and well-founded overview of climate science, finally paying explicit attention to uncertainties, alternative insights, and factual observations. The authors are not bloggers or activists, but internationally recognized researchers with decades of expertise in climate science, meteorology, economics, and physics. [See the box at the bottom of this article for their credentials].

Sober, well-founded, and without alarmism

Energy Secretary Chris Wright gave the researchers complete freedom in writing this report: “I exerted no control over their conclusions.” The report stands out for its clarity, objectivity, and scientific integrity.

Some key points of the report are:

  • CO₂ should no longer be seen as ‘pollution’: the report advocates a scientific review of this US position (since 2009), including recognition of the positive effect of CO₂ on crop growth.
  • Global greening: satellite images show greening of the Earth due to higher CO₂ levels.
  • Models vs. observations: the discrepancies between model results and actual observations are shown. There is also more emphasis on natural climate variability.
  • Weather extremes: there is no alarming increase in extreme weather conditions in the US.
  • Economic consequences: interventions on CO₂ emissions have little climate impact in the short term, but can entail high economic costs.

Reactions from Europe

The report has certainly been noticed within the US. Among others, researcher Roger Pielke Jr. devoted a widely read article to it on his Substack channels. Pielke describes the DOE report as a serious scientific text that has carefully processed sources.

This report should also have shaken Europe awake, but what happened? Complete silence. No news bulletins, no parliamentary questions, no editorial commentary. While alarmist reports are spreading like wildfire across Europe, this report is being ignored. This is not only remarkable, it is downright shocking. It casts a shadow over the intellectual honesty of the European climate debate.

Two articles on the Dutch blog Klimaatgek.nl endorse this. On August 8, DoE report and media silence (in the Netherlands) was published, noting that the report was widely discussed in US circles, but remained unseen in the Netherlands, despite its importance for the automotive, energy, and agricultural sectors, among others. Earlier, on July 30, Klimaatgek headlined: Breakthrough: revision of CO₂ vision in the US. The report is called a potential turning point in the American climate vision, something that Europe cannot ignore.

Why this is so essential for Europe

Europe is guided by a single narrative: the climate crisis is urgent and catastrophic. Those who think differently are ignored or denounced. This report does the opposite: it acknowledges human influence, puts it in context, highlights uncertainties, identifies the benefits of CO2, and advocates for balanced policy considerations. As mentioned, the European silence is distressing. It is not only journalistically inappropriate; it is a democratic and scientific shortcoming. The consequences are:

  • A limited public debate – the public only hears one side.
  • Democratic deficit – policy-making based on incomplete information.
  • Scientific impoverishment – essential uncertainties and alternatives disappear from view.

Time to wake up

The DOE report deserves open debate, not silence. Europe should be proud of space for scientific diversity. Anyone who truly trusts science cannot ignore this report. Clintel remains committed to increasing the visibility of this and similar contributions – not to prove itself right, but to make the conversation complete. Only with all the facts, uncertainties, and perspectives can sensible choices be made.

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

The Weather Stations We Never Had

by Dr M. Wielicki, Aug 11, 2025 in Clintel

A central pillar of the climate-crisis narrative is simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker… today is the hottest in human history. That line only works if you accept, without question, that we have reliable, global temperature data before satellites. We do not. What we have is a patchwork of land stations concentrated in a few developed regions, a lot of ocean guesses from ship tracks, and then, later, generous statistical infilling.

Everyone agrees the 1930s were brutally hot across the United States… the Dust Bowl was a humanitarian and ecological disaster. Crops failed, soils blew away, and heat waves killed thousands. NOAA’s own retrospectives still call out 1936 as a benchmark summer, and July 1936 remains a singular month in the U.S. record.

https://www.weather.gov/arx/heat_jul36?utm

…

The global map we never measured

Before 1950, most thermometers were in the United States, Europe, and parts of the British Commonwealth. Large parts of Africa, South America, the Arctic, and the Southern Ocean had little to no routine coverage. Even the NOAA-led overview of GHCN-Daily notes how the core database is a collage of many sources with varying periods of record… that is the raw material modern analyses inherit.

Now the uncomfortable part. When there are no thermometers, you either leave grid boxes blank, or you paint numbers in from far away. HadCRUT historically left many boxes blank, explicitly avoiding interpolation, which means the “global” mean depends on where you have observations. NASA’s GISTEMP goes the other direction and spreads anomalies up to twelve hundred kilometers from a station, filling the gaps with 1200 km smoothing. Those are not trivial choices, they are the ballgame.

If you overlay the 1930s anomaly map with the station density maps, you see something obvious… warm where the thermometers were numerous, cool or neutral where coverage was threadbare. A compilation of historical station distribution between 1921 and 1950 makes the same basic point… the network was sparse and badly unbalanced.

…

climate-debate

Meteorologist Debunks False Stories On Climate Change Fueling Western Washington Megafires

by C. Mass, Aug 14, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

NY Times and Seattle Times falsely claim Western Washington megafires are rising; history shows only one since 1902.

Western Washington State fire
[Last week], The New York Times ran a blatantly false story, with The Seattle Times featuring it as well. [some emphasis, links added]

The claim: that Western Washington will experience more “megafires” due to human-caused global warming (climate change).

Unfortunately, the writer of this story (a Washington State stringer for the NY Times) failed to examine the historical record or the best science, getting the essential facts wrong.

How do I know the writer got it wrong?

Because for the past two years, I have researched this very issue and just published a paper on this topic in the peer-reviewed literature (here). I have read every paper and report on this issue.

So exactly what did the NY Times (and the Seattle Times) get wrong?

The article defines megafires as ones that involve hundreds of thousands of acres.

How many such fires have occurred since 1900 in western Washington?

…