Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
In a recent paper published in Nature here, German researchers Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, Gisela-Müller Plath and Sebastian Lüning analyzed changes in sunshine duration by using modern statistical methods for a total of seven monthly time series of sunshine durations going back 122 to a maximum of 145 years.
The aim of the study was to identify possible correlations of sunshine duration with climate drivers.
Powerful climate-changing oceanic cycles
Among the most important cyclical drivers are ocean cycles. For example, El Niño in the Pacific, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). These influence the weather developments in Europe and impact temperatures, precipitation and other weather or climate parameters over large distances.
AMO drives sunshine duration over Europe
The authors found that in the case of Europe’s sunshine duration, the AMO (defined as the mean sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic) is a decisive driving force of Central European sunshine duration. The authors analyzed seven measuring stations of sunshine duration, located in a north to south order, in Copenhagen, Potsdam, De Bilt, Krakow, Vienna, on the Zugspitze in Bavaria and in Trento. All seven sunshine time series saw an “unusually significant” correlation between AMO and sunshine duration.
“Despite the strong annual fluctuations in sunshine duration, the correlation between sunshine duration and AMO is clearly recognizable,” reports Klimanachrichten. “The known stability of the AMO going back at least 8000 years has been known for some time. This and the highly significant correlations of all seven sunshine duration series with the AMO therefore allow a robust prediction of future sunshine duration trends.”
The correlation would allow making sunshine duration projections into the future, which would be important and useful for agriculture and solar energy production, for example. But the authors found that there are “strong fluctuations from one year to the next”. This is shown in Figure 4 of the paper with the blue dashed continuation of the AMO over time.
The overall synchronicity, however, allows relatively reliable sunshine duration forecasts for Central Europe. Currently the AMO is at a peak and is projected to drop over the next 30 years, meaning sunshine duration should fall to around 1600 hours annually by 2050 – from about 1850 hours today.
“As far as the intensity of the decrease in sunshine over the next few decades is concerned, the seven sunshine durations show a clear north-south trend. In the next 30 years, sunshine duration in Copenhagen will have decreased by 16% compared to today,” reports Klimnachrichten. “For Trieste and Vienna in the south, on the other hand, it will only be 9%. The electricity yield from photovoltaic systems will therefore decrease significantly in Germany over the next three decades, somewhat more in the north than in the south.”
The daily temperature observations from many Australian weather stations have now been routinely updated by the Bureau of Meteorology, BOM, to the end of year 2024.
Year 2024 has been publicized GLOBALLY as the “hottest year evah!” so it is time to examine how Australia fared. Here, heatwaves are the medium used.
The daily temperature observations from many Australian weather stations have now been routinely updated by the Bureau of Meteorology, BOM, to the end of year 2024.
Year 2024 has been publicized GLOBALLY as the “hottest year evah!” so it is time to examine how Australia fared. Here, heatwaves are the medium used.
The frequent, accepted chant is that globally, heatwaves are becoming “hotter, longer and more frequent”. This chant is not supported by the following heatwave analysis which examines 10 Australian weather stations with lengthy historic observations. This study has generated 160 graphs that are linked by weather station/city that is the main part of this article for readers to examine.
Here is a snapshot of Adelaide, using only 3-day heatwave examples, 4 graphs out of a possible 16 for Adelaide.
RAW DATA
ADJUSTED DATA
In short summary, you can read almost any answer you seek into these 4 graphs and also for the whole set of160 graphs.
Dr Roger Pielke Jr expressed a similar complication in a recent article –
“In his classic paper on “How Science Makes Environmental Controversies Worse,” science policy scholar Dan Sarewitz referred to such circumstances as an “excess of objectivity,” which he characterized as:
. . . not a lack of scientific knowledge so much as the contrary—a huge body of knowledge whose components can be legitimately assembled and interpreted in different ways to yield competing views of the “problem” and of how society should respond. Put simply, for a given value-based position in an environmental controversy, it is often possible to compile a supporting set of scientifically legitimated facts.²
The latest on this list concerns a heatwave in S-W West Australia (including Perth and Cape Leeuwin) in November 2023. It contains these messages in its 26 pages:
“In November 2023, south-west Western Australia, including Perth, experienced a heatwave exceptional for the time of the year.
Climate factors contributing to the heatwave conditions included record warm global sea surface temperatures, El Niño in the Pacific Ocean, a positive Indian Ocean Dipole and a positive Southern Annular Mode.
Heatwave conditions can be challenging for vulnerable people, including very young children, older people, people with disability and those with medical conditions. (Elsewhere are these BOM words: “Severe and extreme heatwaves have claimed more lives than any other natural hazard in Australia.”)
The likelihood of the record warm spring 2023 in Western Australia exceeding the previous record in the current climate compared to a world without climate change was at least 50 times greater.”
Do you see the point that Dr Pielke was making? Year 2023 does not even make the Top 40 3-day heatwave summary for Cape Leeuwin, below; nor for Perth; nor the 1-Day, 5-Day or 10-Day heatwave Top 40 list for both stations.
METHODOLOGY.
The observations reported here are of two types, both from the official Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). First, there is “raw” temperature data under the shorthand “CDO” for Climate Data Online.
I have calculated and presented heatwave graphs over time, for both the full set of years available and the shortened “Top 40” of each of these hottest heatwave years. I have not covered stations that host 2 or more hot heatwaves in a year. Only each year and its hottest heatwave are reported here, with a choice of all recorded years or the hottest 40 heatwave years.
The heatwaves shown here are of four durations. These are 1, 3, 5 and 10 consecutive days, averaged. The hottest average for that station in that year is selected.
In simple factorial form, we have 8 weather stations, with all years and Top 40 options, with Raw and Adjusted, with 4 levels of duration, to give 10 * 2 * 2 * 4 for 160 combinations, hence 160 graphs.
The 10 weather stations were chosen from a short list of Australian stations with earliest historic start dates and least missing data. The chosen stations are the 6 State Capitals plus Darwin and Alice Springs, the latter two to give better geographic coverage of the map of Australia, plus Longreach and Cape Leeuwin for minimal Urban Heat Island influence.
The eight examined CDO weather stations are:
Adelaide, # 23000 West Terrace start 1889, until # 23090 Kent Town starting 1979.
Alice Springs, # 15540 Regional Office start 1879, until # 15590 Airport starting 1942.
Brisbane, # 40214 Regional Office start 1879, next # 40223 starting 1986, until # 40842 Airport starting 1995.
Cape Leeuwin, # 9518 Lighthouse station start 1907, until present day.
Darwin, # 14019 Post Office start 1885, until # 04015 Airport starting 1942.
Hobart # 94029, Ellerslie Rd starting 1918, until now.
Sydney, # 66062 Observatory start 1859, until # 66214 new Observatory starting 2018.
NOTE 1: Many of these stations underwent a site shift, many in the middle of the study period, typically from a Post Office to an Airport. This has affected the distribution over time of these hottest heatwaves. There is no reliable method to adjust this by a single step change because the magnitude of such a step is not now knowable.
Note 2: Many Australian weather station temperature results (not heatwaves) have been examined in detail by colleague Dr Bill Johnston and reported on his Bomwatch blog. By correcting for a physics-based influence of rainfall, he has deduced that most Australian stations show essentially no warming over the whole period of their observations. It should follow that heatwaves likewise have not shown increases or decreases.
The same 10 CDO stations were used for ACORN-SAT analysis. A major difference between CDO and ACORN_SAT is the start date of the latter, all being 1910 or later (Brisbane starts in 1950).
….
An Excel spreadsheet of one of the stations (Longreach, a short one) is found here to show the methodology in more detail It is a 24 MB file, please allow time.
A day of missing data can lead to large damage to the calculations, because that 1 day affects 9 other days in the 10-DAY analysis. Therefore, all missing values were infilled, either by a subjective guess in the ballpark of surrounding values, or with the overall average Tmax value for the station. The shortest duration station, Brisbane, has some 50,400 days analyzed, with a few hundred missing values, so the odds of induced error are small. They can be traced.
I have made the Excel commands as simple as possible. No knowledge of macros, programming or even Pivot tables is needed. The invitation is open for you to replicate the methodology for your own locations.
I have not cherry picked the weather stations. Together, these 10 cities/locations house more than 70% of Australian population. This has meaning when planning for heatwaves, such as where to build hospitals and how large to make them.
The chosen cities probably suffer from the temperature distortion of Urban Heat Island effect. There have been transect studies showing UHI in excess of a couple of degrees at times in both Sydney and Melbourne. I have now included two stations unlikely to have been affected by UHI, Cape Leeuwin and Longreach.
Rebuttal of the misunderstanding that heatwaves are becoming “hotter, longer and more frequent” lacks credibility if actual data are used such s here, for 10 stations in far off Australia. It is hard to maintain that misunderstanding when simple graphs of real data are shown to those who make such claims. I am writing a more detailed analysis of these 160 graphs, should WUWT accept it.
You are encouraged to make similar graphs for regions elsewhere. For heatwaves, they are hard to refute, in contrast with official/IPCC type studies, which usually commence after 1950 and which rely upon arcane definitions of heatwave to arrive at conclusions.
In short, the whole World Weather Attribution report is a scam, fabricated to push their agenda, as Dr Friederike Otto, co-lead of World Weather Attribution and senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, made clear
TOPSHOT – Residents flee their home as flames from the Sand Fire close in on July 23 2016 near Santa Clarita, California.
Fueled by temperatures reaching about 108 degrees fahrenheit, the wildfire began yesterday has grown to 11,000 acres. / AFP PHOTO / DAVID MCNEWDAVID MCNEW/AFP/Getty Images ** OUTS – ELSENT, FPG, CM – OUTS * NM, PH, VA if sourced by CT, LA or MoD **
Climate change made devastating LA fires more likely, scientists say
.
That’s the headline that has been doing the rounds this week.
The reporting across the media is suspiciously similar across the media, proof that the message has been carefully choreographed by the climate establishment. You can, for instance, read the articles from The Independent and The Standard here and here.
The headline claim, you will not be surprised to learn, has come from World Weather Attribution, who say that the hot and dry conditions that drove the recent fires were about 35 percent more likely due to warming caused primarily by the burning of oil, gas and coal that releases atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases. The fact that they can calculate the odds so exactly shows how fraudulent the whole exercise is.
This time they have focussed specifically on October to December rainfall,saying that “low rainfall between the months of October and December is now about 2.4 times more likely compared to the preindustrial climate.
Although it was very dry in Los Angeles between October and December 2024, there have been many other years just as dry, notably in the 1950s.
There is clearly no evidence that such droughts are becoming more likely, as the WWA falsely claim. Nor were temperatures in that part of California particularly high.
In short, the whole World Weather Attribution report is a scam, fabricated to push their agenda, as Dr Friederike Otto, co-lead of World Weather Attribution and senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, made clear:
“In 2025, the choices facing world leaders remain the same – to drill and continue to burn oil, gas and coal and experience ever more dangerous weather, or transition to renewable energy for a safer and fairer world”
The coral that now form our modern reefs evolved 240 million years ago during the Age of Dinosaurs when coral formed a marvelously fluid symbiotic relationship with symbiodinium algae. The new algae symbionts absorbed CO2 and produced sugars via photosynthesis for the coral. In turn coral respiration produced CO2 that supported the algae’s photosynthetic production. This symbiotic relationship evolved when CO2 was 4 times above today’s concentrations and global temperatures were several degrees higher.
The coral that now form our modern reefs evolved 240 million years ago during the Age of Dinosaurs when coral formed a marvelously fluid symbiotic relationship with symbiodinium algae. The new algae symbionts absorbed CO2 and produced sugars via photosynthesis for the coral. In turn coral respiration produced CO2 that supported the algae’s photosynthetic production. This symbiotic relationship evolved when CO2 was 4 times above today’s concentrations and global temperatures were several degrees higher. Takashima (2006) reports the mid-Cretaceous earth “surface temperatures were more than 14°C higher than today,” a time when dinosaurs roamed Antarctica. Atlantic warm pool sea surface temperatures reached a maximum of 42°C (107°F).
That evolutionary history explains why shallow-water coral are now restricted to the warmest ocean waters. Graphic A shows the location of today’s coral. Graphic B shows the oceans regional temperatures. Corals are most abundant in the warmest waters of the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific Warm Pool, also known as the Coral Triangle. There, sea surface temperatures (SST) reach 28-30°C (82-86°F), sometime a little higher.
In contrast, the eastern tropical Pacific, experiences cooler SSTs due to upwelling typically in the range of 20°C (68°F). With the eastern tropical Pacific 8-10°C (14-18°F) cooler than the tropical western Pacific, there coral reefs are scarce and restricted to much smaller Atlantic and eastern Pacific warm pool regions. So why are today’s warm temperatures blamed for coral bleaching? Why does CNN report bleaching as catastrophic?
o survive 240 million years of extreme environmental change that required a fluid symbiosis. More recently during glacial maximums sea levels fell by 120 meters, killing all the shallow water coral reefs. As the ice melted, sea levels then rose 10 times faster than sea level rise today. Such rapid sea level changes greatly altered the sunlight reaching the surviving coral and the amount of nourishment the algae could produce.
Increased sunlight produces excessive dangerous Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) like hydrogen peroxide and superoxides during the light reactions of photosynthesis that produce highly charge electrons and singlet oxygen by splitting water. Normally algae have several methods of neutralizing those dangerous ROS molecules but a rapid increase in sunlight, and thus ROS, sometimes overwhelms their protective systems. Thus, many corals threatened by increasing ROS, have adopted the survival strategy of ejecting their mal-adapted algae (i.e. bleaching). Coral can re-absorb those algae later when the extreme light conditions subside or absorb new symbiodinium algae adapted to the higher light conditions.
Today the major factor affecting solar insolation is changing cloud cover associated El Nino-La Nina oscillations. As seen in graphic C, during La Nina-like conditions heavy cloud cover reduces solar insolation over the coral triangle. During an El Nino, that heavy cloud cover shifts eastward causing greater solar heating around the Great Barrier Reef. The El Niño events of 1982-83, 1998, 2010, and 2015-2016 are all associated with massive coral bleaching.
Great Barrier Reef bleaching can also happen during a La Nina, but only when a high-pressure weather system sits over the reef and locally reduces cloud cover. Either way, reduced cloud cover both increases surface temperatures and overwhelms the algae’s photosystems by increasing ROS production. That prompted some scientists to argue that surface warming alone, greater than 1°C degree, will cause bleaching and that fit their climate crisis narratives. Alarmists like Fred Pearce on Yale 360 fear mongered global warming threatens coral writing, “The coral reefs of the tropics have looked doomed” … “Some experts say they will be gone by mid-century, the first great ecosystem casualty of the climate emergency.”
However, the science of coral bleaching now reports it is changes in the sun’s insolation that primarily drives bleaching by increasing ROS production during photosynthesis along with solar heating.
If global warming alone is causing coral bleaching and rising coral deaths, we would expect a steady decline in coral cover as CO2 rises. However, changes in coral cover have oscillated as we would expect from the El Nino oscillation. After recent El Nino-related massive bleaching events impacted nearly 90% of Australia’s corals, in 2022 the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) reported the highest levels of coral cover across two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in over 36 years (graphic D).
Sleep well! Corals are not threatened by rising CO2.
Who would have thought that the Audubon Society, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club — would be silent on whale mortality and bird Mortalities? Donald Trump is turning out to be the greatest environmental hero of the 21st century. And I don’t mean — about endangered species in terms of Offshore wind and whales, but even for those worried about global warming.
Trump is turning out to be the ‘greatest environmental hero’ of the 21st century: Marc Morano –
ClimateDepot.com executive editor Marc Morano examines President Donald Trump’s executive order on wind energy projects on ‘Fox & Friends Weekend.’
Rough Transcript:
Marc Morano: Who would have thought that the Audubon Society, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club — would be silent on whale mortality and bird Mortalities? Donald Trump is turning out to be the greatest environmental hero of the 21st century. And I don’t mean — about endangered species in terms of Offshore wind and whales, but even for those worried about global warming. Trump’s a climate champion because he’s bringing in more fossil fuels from the Western world, where we have the highest environmental standards, the highest technological advances, and the cleanest way to make energy. We’re relying less on China, the Middle East, Venezuela, and Russia. This is how it’s done. The climate activists should be embracing Trump.
And you have to ask, where are The Volvo-driving the 1970s save-the-whale liberals? The artist formerly known as the bad Orange man — Donald Trump, is now their champion. It is amazing.
When it comes to wind power, there is not there. Globally, wind and solar combined make up less than 14% of electricity despite trillions in subsidies and mandates. It’s not happening. Donald Trump is just saying the emperor has no clothes when it comes to wind and solar.
Morano: Wind power is a recyclable mess; green energy is not green. They dig the earth in a deep, in deep way, not in a 1970s, groovy, Brady Bunch way, they dig it in a literal I way. Donald Trump is ending this nonsense. There’s nothing green about energy that digs the earth and makes us rely on China.
The money is leaving the room. Australian pension funds manage assets of around $4.1 trillion, and until last week, many of them had Net Zero Targets. Certainly, there were none that tried to appeal to climate skeptics even though 70% of Australians didn’t want to even spend $1 a week on “Net Zero” plans.
The money is leaving the room. Australian pension funds manage assets of around $4.1 trillion, and until last week, many of them had Net Zero Targets. Certainly, there were none that tried to appeal to climate skeptics even though 70% of Australians didn’t want to even spend $1 a week on “Net Zero” plans.
This week, many of them are backing away slowly, speaking about a corporate and political backlash, like it’s a force of nature.
They won’t say the subsidies have dried up, they made the wrong bet, wasted billions of your dollars and hope they don’t get sued for a lack of fiduciary duty. They won’t say that pension funds are supposed to make money for their clients, not change rainfall patterns.
Last year, they were saying “Climate change poses a grave risk to the health, wellbeing and finances of all Australians, including retirees”. Three years ago, the The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) was campaigning for national net-zero policies saying “, the superannuation industry stands to lose billions of dollars in investment returns on behalf of their members,”. Pension funds were even supposed to hassle green businesses to “support them” on their journey of mitigation — like climate cops paid to hassle companies to follow laws laid out by global bankers, instead of elected governments.
Look how soft the headline is:
Super funds preparing to walk back their commitment to climate targets
By Cliona O’Dowd, The Australian
Australia’s most powerful super funds appear to be laying the groundwork to potentially walk back their climate targets amid a growing political and corporate backlash against ESG.
As funds come to terms with the shift in sentiment and a four-year term of the Trump presidency, the industry is now voicing its concerns on meeting climate pledges made at a time when pushback against an environmental, social and governance focus was on the fringes.
Speaking to The Australian on Tuesday, Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia chief executive Mary Delahunty said funds’ climate goals could be hampered by the anti-ESG movement, with engagement potentially less effective as corporates backtrack on the green agenda.
Get out of HESTA:
HESTA CEO Debby Blakey appeared to be the outlier, saying the healthcare industry super fund was committed to its climate targets. These include a 50 per cent reduction in portfolio emissions by 2030 and for the fund’s portfolio to be net zero by 2050.
US elections make more difference to Australian policy than Australian elections do.
I guess even climate activists like Sigourney Weaver aren’t safe from the green mob.
WATCH: Climate Doomers Fire Confetti Cannon at Sigourney Weaver London Play
London (AFP) – Two climate activists disrupted a London stage performance of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, starring Hollywood actress Sigourney Weaver, on Monday.
The protesters climbed onto the stage at London’s Theatre Royal, launching a confetti cannon and holding a sign which read “Over 1.5 Degrees is a Global Shipwreck”.
The bourgeois leftists of Just Stop Oil have interrupted a theatre performance by Hollywood actress Sigourney Weaver, managing to upset a much larger bunch of bourgeois leftists 🤡https://t.co/Nt1pPQnUMP
It is difficult to imagine a more dedicated Hollywood supporter of the green movement than Sigourney Weaver. Here is Sigourney Weaver speaking at the 2016 DNC in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.
What can I say? Radicals always eat their own. Or maybe JSO are just pig ignorant, and didn’t know Sigourney Weaver is a green. UK greens have never been the sharpest tools in the box.
Sheffield City Council are blaming climate change for a £5m tree maintenance bill, saying the increased regularity of storms has caused costs to balloon.
Sheffield City Council are blaming climate change for a £5m tree maintenance bill, saying the increased regularity of storms has caused costs to balloon.
Interestingly the Telegraph quotes two scientists who say observations do not back up Sheffield’s claim, but another, Hayley Fowler, who says her modelling showed that climate change is making storms like Eowyn “more frequent, with more intense wind speeds and much higher rainfall amounts”.
Maybe Hayley should start looking at real world data and ignore her fictitious models, because the Met Office maintain she is talking out of her backside!
Hayley Fowler appears to have spent her whole academic career modelling the climate. It is a sad state affair for climate science that modelling takes precedence over proper science and actual data.
“Under the proposed deregulation plan, data centers would not need to worry about grid reliability to keep their business running. The two parties can make their own reliability arrangements, involving engineering (underground connections, backup generation, storage or through contract provisions).”
“Under the proposed deregulation plan, data centers would not need to worry about grid reliability to keep their business running. The two parties can make their own reliability arrangements, involving engineering (underground connections, backup generation, storage or through contract provisions).”
Data center madness due to artificial intelligence (AI) struck the U.S. Last week. President Donald Trump kicked it off with a strange White House session January 21, as AI gurus announced a $500 billion plan (scaled up from an initial $100 billion bet) to use private money for a veritable plethora of data centers across the entire U.S. The moniker was “Stargate,” not to be confused with “Watergate.”
Joining Trump at the White House meet-and-greet were Open AI founder Sam Altman, Oracle founder Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayosh Son. They would find the money, not ask the government for it.
Would it come from Saudi Arab? Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (aka “Mohammad bone saw”) reportedly told Trump in a phone call last week that his kingdom was looking to invest $600 billion in the U.S. in the next four years.
What’s the U.S. role? Prior to the meeting, Trump repealed a 2023 Biden executive order aimed at preventing some of the AI’s possible downsides, including infringements on civil liberties and privacy and threats to national security.
AI Promise … and Electricity
AI may have enormous promise. It may be able to solve intractable scientific and engineering problems or cure cancer and the heartbreak of psoriasis. So far, it’s chief ability appears to be providing effortless term papers for high schoolers and undergraduates.
Business interests that make profits when their costs increase — regulated electric utility companies — love AI, because of the need for power-sucking data centers. Demand for electricity has been slow or declining for decades. Many more electric intensive data centers – already being constructed to serve cryptocurrency “mining” — could reverse that long-term trend.
The irrational exuberance for data centers raises important questions. The fragile U.S. electric grid is at risk. A sea of data centers could crash the grid. Adding electric demand might increase consumer electric rates across the board. What’s to prevent overbuilding, leaving consumers paying the bills? What impact will quantum computing have on data centers? As the always clear-headed Dan Yurman, proprietor of Neutron News, observes, “A question is whether the AI revolution in the US will really have the customer base to justify this level of investment.”
Who will regulate the data center surge? State utility regulators? The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission? So far, both are involved. A divided FERC in November rejected a plan by independent generator Talen Energy to snuggle up next to an existing nuclear power plant to build a data center. The plan crashed. FERC concluded it couldn’t understand how it would impact the PJM transmission grid.
In Virginia, a data center wonderland pleasuring the incumbent monopoly utility Virginia Electric and Power Co. (aka Dominion Energy), a backlash is occurring. In the Old Dominion, a swath of installations in Loudoun County not far from D.C. has developed. In June, residents of Loudoun, the state’s second largest political jurisdiction, ousted the top elected official after she led the board of supervisors to approve a 2,000-acre farmland rezoning to house more data centers.
More recently, the 2025 session of the Virginia General Assembly faces a series of bipartisan bills looking at energy and water consumption, land use and location, among other issues. Lame duck Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, once a data center enthusiast, is waffling. He’s suggesting the issues should be up to local authorities.
Consumer Regulated Electricity (CRE)
What to do? A grizzled ExxonMobil veteran and a young D.C.-area Cato Institute economist with experience at the Department of Energy and FERC are proposing a common-sense, free-market solution to data center madness. It’s simple: get the data centers off the grid and out from under state and federal monopoly energy regulation. They recently discussed their idea with The Quad Report.
Glen Lyons was ExxonMobile’s leader for electricity policy and regulatory advocacy when he retired. The company is a major cogenerator. He also served on the board of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s autarkic high-voltage electric grid, during 2021’s devastating Winter Storm Uri.
Travis Fisher was lead author of the Department of Energy’s 2017 Staff Report to the Secretary on Electricity Markets and Reliability. He then was a staffer for Republican FERC Commissioner Bernard McNamee before becoming Cato’s director of energy and environmental policy studies.
Together, Lyons and Fisher have established an advocacy organization they call “Consumer Regulated Electricity” or CRE, pushing this somewhat revolutionary idea: “What if we simply allow large, sophisticated buyers like data center companies to enter unregulated electricity utility arrangements with the suppliers of their choice? Why do we need a regulator to protect large businesses from their decisions, provided their decisions don’t impact the existing regulated grid?”
This amounts to treating data centers as normal business enterprises that can meet their needs as most business enterprises do — by finding contractors and suppliers in conventional transactions. Normal commercial arrangements and rules — land use, zoning, etc. — would apply. This avoids expensive, time-consuming and fraught wrangles with energy regulators. As Lyons and Fisher note — something all who have interactions with federal and state electric regulators understand all too well — “Regulators are risk averse, and the sector’s big players (i.e., regulated utilities) are the grand masters of the rules.”
Data centers would not need to worry about grid reliability to keep their business running. The two parties can make their own reliability arrangements, involving engineering (underground connections, backup generation, storage or through contract provisions).
No regulatory quagmires enriching lawyers, consultants, and special interest groups. No threats to the grid. Overbuilding penalizes the parties to the contracts, not the public. No meaningless White House gabfests and empty posturing.
CER may be catching on. Shortly after the White House’s anodyne photo op with the AI broligarchs, the Wall Street Journalreported that Exxon and Chevron are looking into the data center business:
Major oil companies have plenty of experience in building and operating natural-gas-fired power plants to support their own energy-intensive operations, such as refining, natural-gas liquefaction and petrochemicals. Exxon said in its latest corporate update that it has developed 5.5 GW worth of power projects since 2001.
Ah, California lawmakers are at it again, pushing the boundaries of legal absurdity with a bill that would allow victims of natural disasters to sue oil companies for damages. Yes, you read that correctly—wildfire victims could now take ExxonMobil to court as if hurricanes and forest fires suddenly started appearing the moment someone filled up their SUV.
Ah, California lawmakers are at it again, pushing the boundaries of legal absurdity with a bill that would allow victims of natural disasters to sue oil companies for damages. Yes, you read that correctly—wildfire victims could now take ExxonMobil to court as if hurricanes and forest fires suddenly started appearing the moment someone filled up their SUV.
The bill, introduced by two Democratic legislators, is based on the idea that oil and gas companies have been deceptively hiding the risks of climate change while, presumably, twirling their mustaches and laughing maniacally. The argument is that fossil fuel use has “intensified storms and wildfires,” costing Californians billions of dollars and even sending the state’s insurance market into turmoil.
There’s just one problem: this entire premise has already been tried—and laughed out of court. Sher Edling, the law firm spearheading climate litigation, has been slapping lawsuits on oil companies for years using this exact strategy, and guess what? It has failed over and over again. Courts have rejected these cases, recognizing that pinning every natural disaster on Big Oil is about as scientifically rigorous as blaming your morning coffee for rush hour traffic.
Sher Edling: The Lawsuit Factory
Sher Edling has been on a mission to sue oil companies into oblivion, using the same flimsy arguments that courts have repeatedly rejected. Their entire playbook is based on two thoroughly discredited document sets:
The proposal claims that the oil industry intentionally deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels on climate change that now have intensified storms and wildfires and caused billions of dollars in damage in California. Such disasters have also driven the state insurance market to a crisis where companies are raising rates, limiting coverage or pulling out completely from regions susceptible to wildfires and other natural disasters, supporters of the bill said.
Yet, despite their track record of failure, they keep finding new ways to push this nonsense. Now, instead of arguing in federal courts (where they’ve been shut down repeatedly), they’re shifting their strategy to state-level litigation, hoping that activist judges in California will give them a sympathetic ear.
Scapegoating Oil Companies While Ignoring the Real Culprits
One of the most ridiculous aspects of this proposal is that it conveniently ignores other major contributors to California’s wildfire crisis. For example:
Arson: A significant portion of wildfires are caused by human activity, including arson. But sure, let’s blame oil companies instead.
Forest Mismanagement: California’s refusal to conduct controlled burns and proper land management has turned its forests into literal tinderboxes. But again, let’s blame Shell for that.
Utility Companies: The bill ironically acknowledges that utilities are already held liable when their equipment sparks fires—but instead of focusing on better grid management, legislators want to widen the blame net to oil companies.
The Ultimate Goal: Legalized Extortion
This entire effort is just another attempt to shake down energy companies for cash. If the courts won’t force oil firms to pay, maybe political pressure and activist lawsuits can do the trick. Sher Edling isn’t in this fight because they care about climate change—they’re in it because climate lawsuits are big business.
But here’s the real kicker: Even if these lawsuits succeed, who do you think will pay for it? Oil companies aren’t charities—they’ll pass these costs directly to consumers. That means you, the everyday driver, will end up paying even more at the pump because of a lawsuit based on junk science and legal gymnastics.
If approved, California would be the first state in the U.S. to allow for such lawsuits, according to the bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener.
“We are all paying for these disasters, but there is one stakeholder that is not paying: the fossil fuel industry, which makes the product that is fueling the climate change,” Wiener said at a Monday news conference.
California legislators are once again proving that they would rather chase after boogeymen than address the real causes of natural disasters. Instead of focusing on practical solutions like forest management, infrastructure improvements, or even investigating why their own policies have driven insurance companies out of the state, they’re opting for another round of performative legal theater.
But hey, why deal with reality when you can just sue Exxon instead?
You must be logged in to post a comment.