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.
We have kept you, dear readers, very promptly informed about AMOC conjectures.
Recently, we also informed you about a new study that found a stable Atlantic overturning circulation since the 1960s. It is not the only one in the recent past.
We have kept you, dear readers, very promptly informed about AMOC conjectures.
Recently, we also informed you about a new study that found a stable Atlantic overturning circulation since the 1960s. It is not the only one in the recent past.
However, Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is a great advocate of the “The Day after Tomorrow” scenario of a collapsing oceanic current. As recently as June 2024, he noted on X (formerly Twitter) that the AMOC mitigation saga “is even more dramatic than it ever was”.
He himself had been responsible for a whole series of papers as author or co-author, which also contributed to the scenario, and he initiated an “open letter” in the fall of 2024 that dramatically addressed politicians. We also reported on this.
Of course, the new findings could not couldn’t pass him by without comment. Under the headline “The AMOC is slowing down, is stable, yes, no, no, yes…” he commented on it on the blog “Real Climate”, which is run by scientists, including himself, Gavin Schmidt from NASA, and others.
What he has to say there can be stated in a nutshell: He defends his approaches and lists the problems of the more recent studies. That was to be expected. For example, he emphasizes that the new climate models (CMIP 6) hardly show any connection between “his fingerprint”, the sea surface temperatures of the “warming hole” in the North Atlantic (see the article here from 17 January 2025) and the actual current, but that the approximately 4 years older ones called CMIP5 do. He also questions whether the new ones are really more reliable in this respect than the older ones. However, the effort for the former was considerable.
He summarized:
I don’t believe that the newer methods are more reliable than the old ones (his, the author). … However, since we don’t have measurements going back far enough, there is still some uncertainty in this respect…“
And that’s the crux of the matter! He “doesn’t believe” in all honor, but knowledge in science would probably be more adequate! And yes, everything is uncertain and “nothing precise is known”.
This is also stated by the well-known oceanologist Carl Wunsch in a paper published in August 2022:
In the coming decades, continuous monitoring of the entire coupled ocean-atmosphere system will be necessary to assess the true risks of AMOC collapse, but to date there is no evidence of imminent or overwhelming danger.“
There are many assumptions, a lot of back and forth in science and, when viewed in the light of day, a lot of “belief” or “non-belief”, i.e. the unmistakable indication of a lack of knowledge.
So when you, dear reader, are once again told by a trained psychologist in a news magazine that there is “an imminent danger in a few decades if things go badly” (see here) or here: “Europe’s heating is weakening”: be careful, people are pretending a ‘certainty’ that simply does not exist. As I said, it’s not seldom about assumptions and belief or non-belief.
Also Prof. Rahmstorf rushed to say: “The Gulf Stream system is failing”, and not “The Gulf Stream system” could “somehow, somewhere, sometime” stall, the northern branch, the AMOC is perhaps stable or no, or yes (according to his own blog headline).
Image: generated with the KNMI Climate Explorer.
The AMOC is still in excellent health today, as the measurements from 2004 onwards show; these are the actual “hard facts”.
We should finally stop scaring people in the Atlantic, it doesn’t work with enlightened citizens like you, dear readers.
My question – if warmer temperatures cause more rats, why aren’t the tropics permanently overrun with vermin?
If the study authors had bothered to include a few more warm climate cities, they might have discovered how with minimal effort rat populations can easily be managed.
My question – if warmer temperatures cause more rats, why aren’t the tropics permanently overrun with vermin?
Rats worldwide are enjoying the perks of climate change
A new study has linked increasing temperatures to growing rat populations. By Dr. Christopher Wachuku February 1, 2025, 7:23 AM
Climate change is contributing to a global rise in urban rat infestations, according to a new Science Advances study.
As temperatures increase, rats are better able to thrive — even in inclement weather that would typically deter the population’s growth, the article explained.
…
“So we imagine it probably increases their survival over the winter. And we’re pretty sure that that increased food intake also will lead to more reproductive bouts for these rats, which can accelerate population growth,” Jonathan Richmond, the study’s lead author and professor of biology at University of Richmond, told ABC news.
…
In Washington, D.C., for example, the rat population is growing 1.5 times faster than it is in New York City, because the more northerly city has taken notable steps to keep rodents in check. In New Orleans and Tokyo – two cities with robust rodent response teams and good citizen reporting systems – the rat populations appear to be shrinking.
Richardson said that cities experiencing declines might be outliers, rather than part of a broader trend, though he did note that in Tokyo, residents seem willing to post rat sightings on social media in a “name and shame” approach to getting businesses to clean up their act.
Urban rats are commensal pests that thrive in cities by exploiting the resources accompanying large human populations. Identifying long-term trends in rat numbers and how they are shaped by environmental changes is critical for understanding their ecology, and projecting future vulnerabilities and mitigation needs. Here, we use public complaint and inspection data from 16 cities around the world to estimate trends in rat populations. Eleven of 16 cities (69%) had significant increasing trends in rat numbers, including Washington D.C., New York, and Amsterdam. Just three cities experienced declines. Cities experiencing greater temperature increases over time saw larger increases in rats. Cities with more dense human populations and more urbanization also saw larger increases in rats. Warming temperatures and more people living in cities may be expanding the seasonal activity periods and food availability for urban rats. Cities will have to integrate the biological impacts of these variables into future management strategies.Read more: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads6782
Reading the study, the only subtropical location studied, New Orleans, is an exception to the rule that warmer temperatures have caused a rise in rat numbers. The study doesn’t attempt to explain why New Orleans is flowing counter to the claimed trend, other than mentioning New Orleans’ proactive rat control measures, and stating “… Insights from nontemperate cities nearer to the equator will be important to fully understand the latitudinal climate links to rat population dynamics. …”
If the study authors had bothered to include a few more warm climate cities, they might have discovered how with minimal effort rat populations can easily be managed.
In my subtropical home town, rats are taken seriously, but they are not a significant nuisance, except on rare occasions when a wet year in the desert followed by a drought drives a temporary surge in numbers.
So why isn’t my subtropical home town full of rats?
Probably for the same reason as New Orleans. The same conditions which provide better survival conditions for rats also provide better survival conditions for creatures which hunt rats.
Trash in my hometown is stored in sturdy plastic bins. Lots of householders in my area own dogs and cats, the sky is full of crows and eagles, and at night normally timid snakes and large lizards gorge themselves on anything small and unwary enough to venture within striking distance.
An even more interesting example of rat control is practiced in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
Residents of Istanbul practice an ancient rat management tradition, they encourage feral cats. The cats don’t live in homes, they live outside, they take care of their own living arrangements, though locals provide boxes and other spaces which cats can use as dens. Locals leave food for cats, and even sometimes take them to the vet, but they aren’t pets. Cats live alongside humans, but are not part of the family.
The cats are feral, they can’t be domesticated. They accept friendly contact from humans, but only on their own terms. My friends in Istanbul once tried to domesticate one of the friendlier cats, but it didn’t want to stay. The cat wasn’t happy until they let it return to the streets.
It took me a while to figure out a possible explanation. Centuries ago, Istanbul, or Constantinople as it was once known, was hit harder than most Eurasian cities by the Plague. Istanbul suffered repeated devastations, a repeating cycle of pain which started many centuries before the Plague reached Western Europe.
Although airborne transmission is possible, the Plague is mostly transmitted by contact with rat fleas. Cats are susceptible to the Plague, and can transmit the illness to humans, so close contact with cats was dangerous. But you need cats to control rats. Not only do cats hunt rats, the very presence of a cat can deter rats from settling in the area.
So out of this period of horror and death, the survivors of Istanbul’s repeated devastations developed a tradition of keeping cats close, but not too close – a tradition which has survived into modern times.
The west also has a tradition which involves cats, but sadly our ancestors may have been a little slower on the uptake than the hard pressed residents of plague stricken Istanbul / Constantinople. “Witches” who spread plague in Western tradition were frequently associated with cats. It is easy to imagine that elderly cat lady who stayed healthy while fit young people were dropping in the streets, to the ignorant such unnatural good health could obviously only be explained by magic. And of course, if one of the old lady’s cats got sick, that just proved the old witch was using her devil familiar cats to spread disease.
Note there is significant historical disagreement about the evolution of attitudes towards cats, in both the West and the East, and the evidence in some cases is sparse, so it is possible my analysis about the history of cats is completely wrong. For example, there is a persistent rumour that Pope Gregory IX ordered the death of cats in medieval Western Europe in the 13th century, but there appears to be no solid historical evidence he ever did such a thing, which leads to the intriguing possibility that medieval people killed cats because they falsely believed that Pope Gregory had instructed that cats were the agents of the devil. Or perhaps stories of medieval killing of cats for religious reasons are themselves revisionist falsehoods.
As the great Terry Pratchett once said, In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find. That applies with a vengeance to figuring out how our ancestors treated cats, and the relationship between possible cat purges and plague outbreaks.
One thing we know for sure, places where cats are common don’t have a rat problem. If you don’t want to be overrun by rats and rats borne diseases, forget about trying to control the weather, the right solution is to provide space in your community for animals which hunt rats. Allow cats to do some rat control, either by owning a cat, or by embracing the Istanbul solution – treating feral cats as welcome co-habitants of our urban spaces.
“In light of various alleged legal deficiencies underlying the federal government’s leasing and permitting of onshore and offshore wind projects, the consequences of which may lead to grave harm…” is the conclusion that guided President Trump’s Executive Order suspending wind project permitting.
“In light of various alleged legal deficiencies underlying the federal government’s leasing and permitting of onshore and offshore wind projects, the consequences of which may lead to grave harm…” is the conclusion that guided President Trump’s Executive Order suspending wind project permitting.
CFACT has already criticized several offshore wind permitting cases for being inadequate due to the omission of important issues, making them incomplete. Some of the worst cases are listed below. Although Dominion was not the subject of all of these criticisms, they are undoubtedly affected by them. Plus Dominion permits were the focus of many of these criticisms going back more than two years.
These characteristics apply to every instance of a permit deficiency. A substantial approval is supported by a formal document. These include the authorized COP, the Final NEPA EIS, the ESA Biological Opinion, and the MMPA Incidental Take Authorization. In each case a critical issue is overlooked in one or more of these permitting documents, making them incomplete.
The relevant federal agency disregarded these deficiencies in each instance. However, the Trump administration is currently looking at the history and procedure of offshore wind permits. In each of the circumstances stated below, if the investigation is done correctly, they should discover incomplete approval paperwork, halt the approval until it is finished, and then reissue it.
The following are some of the worst permitting flaws that CFACT has found so far:
1. The NMFS Incidental Take Authorization has no EIS
The absence of an EIS for the NMFS harassment-taking permission is arguably the most obvious shortcoming. For Dominion, this is a huge takeover. Just about 60,000 mammal takings are permitted due to noise harassment during the Dominion project.
According to the authorization document, this authorization action requires an EIS in accordance with NEPA. The permission document then makes it clear that the harassment EIS is included in the Dominion project EIS as a whole. However, the taking is never mentioned in the project EIS. Therefore, until the necessary EIS is finished, we shouldn’t start construction. The authorization paperwork that is currently in place is lacking.
2. The impact of harassment is not considered in the Biological Opinion
The same argument—albeit one that is more complex—applies in the Biological Opinion. The BiOp gave the harassment authority a small section 3.8, but the project EIS does not even address it. The BiOp only lists the number of endangered whale species that are being harassed and claim to have prepared every feasible mitigation strategy.
There is no evaluation of the detrimental impacts of harassment, which is the problem of whale death. The BiOp does not state that such impacts exist, but other NMFS assessments do. This important problem of harassment-induced death is never discussed in the permit documentation.
Although it is now known that harassment kills whales, CFACT warned NMFS of this possibility long ago, especially for the Dominion project.
It is important to carefully assess the potentially fatal consequences of harassment.
3. The turbine installation ship is not authorized to harass
Another instance of harassment is the deployment of several thrusters to maintain position by the pile driving ship Orion, which has been laying Dominion’s monopile foundations.
The thruster noise is above the harassment level, according to Rand Acoustics’ measurements. However, such noise has not been approved because it was not mentioned in the harassment application. It appears that Orion is unable to lawfully work on the project. This will probably apply to tower, turbine, and blade installations as well as any monopile installation ship.
Before construction can continue, the Dominion project harassment authorization must be updated to account for all anticipated installation vessel noise.
4. The use of suction caissons rather than pile driving is not considered
One solution for wind turbine foundations that does away with the requirement for those tremendously noisy gigantic monopiles is the suction caisson. Monopiles pose the greatest damage to whales from offshore wind, but suction caissons pose minimal harm. For many years, offshore oil rigs have been anchored using the suction caisson technology. Although it is relatively new, offshore wind is obviously viable at the size of US offshore projects, as seen by the 900 MW project currently under construction off Taiwan by Ørsted, the largest developer in the world.
In terms of minor mitigation measures to lessen the threat of construction to endangered whales, the Dominion COP, the BOEM EIS, and the NMFS harassment permission all go to considerable lengths. The use of suction caissons as an alternative to pile driving, which may greatly lessen the hazard to endangered whales, is not considered by any of them, though.
These three permission documents need to be revised to account for suction caissons instead of pile driving.
5. Breaking the “small numbers” requirement of the MMPA
Only a limited number of each species of protected mammal are eligible for incidental take authorizations under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. More than 50,000 dolphins are covered by Dominion’s acoustic harassment permission, which is obviously a significant amount.
Also 5% of the whole population of the critically endangered right whale is legally taken, which is by no means a tiny number. The overall quantity of taking would be many times the population if every leased project permitted this level of taking per MW.
The Dominion COP must be redesigned in order to adhere to the MMPA small numbers requirement.
6. Sediment plumes from ocean currents passing across wind facilities are not considered
The notion that ocean current flow via a standing wind array will produce a continuing sediment plume, which could have a serious environmental impact, is now the subject of a substantial body of scientific literature. Only the temporary sediment plumes produced by cable trenching are considered in the Dominion Biological Opinion. The operational sediment plume, which can persist for as long as the project is in the ocean, is not taken into account. Here, the Clean Water Act might be relevant.
7. Failure to take into account the project’s contribution to the overall effects of several projects
Compared to the simpler aggregate of the individual initiatives, the cumulative impact can be far larger. Avoiding project combinations, for example, can greatly lengthen the amount of time spent in regions with a lot of ship activity or fishing. The right whale’s migratory path will be doubled by Dominion’s proposed second CVOW project.
Cumulative impact should be covered in all the key Dominion project evaluation documents, but none are.
8. Operating noise is not considered
According to several studies, the massive turbine array’s operating noise will be higher than the acoustic harassment threshold. This noise is not covered by the Dominion harassment authority. The project cannot move further with the current construction and operation permit if it achieves this noise level. This impact must be included in the project assessment. Another potential problem is infrasound.
9. Physical presence-based harassment is not considered
Only acoustic harassment is covered by the Dominion harassment authorization. Harassment is defined by the MMPA as altering behavior. Avoiding the 150 square mile array of turbines is a significant behavioral shift that could have negative effects. As a result, the project’s physical presence—which is unapproved and has to be properly evaluated—is harassment.
President Trump’s first week marked a significant shift in U.S. climate and energy policy. His administration prioritized energy independence, rolled back burdensome regulations, and withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, citing disproportionate costs to the American economy. Among his most consequential moves was rolling back Obama-era climate policies that were rooted in the EPA’s Endangerment Finding. Trump’s executive actions highlighted the urgent need to revisit and rescind that Endangerment Finding.
President Trump’s first week marked a significant shift in U.S. climate and energy policy. His administration prioritized energy independence, rolled back burdensome regulations, and withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, citing disproportionate costs to the American economy. Among his most consequential moves was rolling back Obama-era climate policies that were rooted in the EPA’s Endangerment Finding. Trump’s executive actions highlighted the urgent need to revisit and rescind that Endangerment Finding. This 2009 EPA edict underpins much of the federal government’s sweeping climate agenda, driving regulations that increase costs for consumers, harm industries, and expand government overreach into nearly every aspect of life.
The Endangerment Finding, classified carbon dioxide (CO₂) and five other greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. This allowed the EPA to regulate these gases despite the fact that the Clean Air Act was originally intended to address harmful pollutants like smog, soot, and sulfur dioxide—substances with direct and immediate health impacts.
Carbon dioxide, however, is neither toxic nor harmful at current atmospheric levels. It is a naturally occurring gas, essential to life on Earth, and plays a vital role in plant growth and food production. By declaring CO₂ a pollutant, the EPA dramatically expanded its regulatory reach. This finding set the stage for far-reaching mandates on power plants, vehicles, appliances, and more, giving the federal government a license to micromanage industries and individual choices alike.
CO₂ has been unjustly vilified in the political and media narrative surrounding climate change. While it is true that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, its role in the climate system is far from simple or all-encompassing. For instance, water vapor is the most significant greenhouse gas in terms of its warming potential, accounting for roughly half of it due to its abundance in the atmosphere compared to other greenhouse gases, yet it is rarely discussed because it is beyond the scope of regulation.
The Endangerment Finding has triggered a cascade of regulations with far-reaching and often harmful consequences for industries, consumers, and the broader economy.
Energy Costs and Reliability: Regulations targeting coal and natural gas power plants have forced many reliable energy sources offline, driving up electricity costs for consumers. Affordable, dependable energy is a cornerstone of economic growth, yet these regulations undermine it.
Transportation: Vehicle emissions standards linked to the finding have raised car prices and accelerated the push for electric vehicles (EVs). Consumers are left with fewer choices and higher costs, all in the name of reducing CO₂ emissions.
Housing and Appliances: Energy efficiency mandates stemming from the finding have increased costs for home construction and everyday appliances like refrigerators, water heaters, and air conditioners. These mandates often result in products that are less effective or less durable, burdening households with higher costs for questionable benefits.
Agriculture and Food Prices: Farmers are now under pressure to reduce emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, two other greenhouse gases identified in the Endangerment Finding. These regulations drive up farming costs, which are inevitably passed on to consumers. This has serious implications for food security and affordability.
Erosion of Individual Freedoms: The Endangerment Finding enables the federal government to intrude into everyday decisions, from the kind of car you drive to the appliances you use to how you heat your home. What were once personal choices are increasingly dictated by federal mandates, all justified by the need to reduce emissions.
The unintended consequences of this EPA overreach hurts average Americans.
One of the greatest flaws of the Endangerment Finding is its tunnel vision. By focusing almost exclusively on CO₂, it ignores the broader environmental picture.
Similarly, the push for renewable energy has downsides that are often overlooked. Wind and solar energy require vast amounts of land, disrupt ecosystems, and rely on mining rare materials that cause significant environmental damage. Meanwhile, the policies driven by the Endangerment Finding disproportionately harm low-income households, who are least able to absorb rising energy and food costs.
The Endangerment Finding must be rescinded – it’s out of step with American values.
President Trump’s rollback of climate policies highlighted the dangers of the Endangerment Finding but did not go far enough. To truly safeguard America’s energy independence, economic growth, and individual freedoms, the Endangerment Finding must be rescinded. Its foundation is shaky built on exaggerated claims about CO₂ and a misinterpretation of climate science. Eliminating it would free industries from burdensome regulations, lower costs for consumers, and restore balance to environmental policymaking.
Rescinding the finding would not mean abandoning environmental stewardship. Instead, it would allow for a more rational approach to climate and energy policy—one that respects scientific complexity, avoids alarmism, and considers the real-world consequences of overreach. A balanced policy would prioritize innovation, voluntary efforts, and adaptation over heavy-handed mandates.
The EPA’s Endangerment Finding, better understood as the “Carbon Scare Framework,” represents a gross overreach of regulatory authority. By declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant, the federal government has imposed costly and far-reaching rules that affect every aspect of life, often to the detriment of the economy, individual freedoms, and even the environment itself.
The path forward begins with rescinding the Endangerment Finding and reevaluating the role of CO₂ in climate policy. America needs a balanced, evidence-based approach—one that prioritizes innovation, economic freedom, and environmental stewardship without succumbing to alarmism or ideological agendas. If policymakers are serious about addressing real challenges, it’s time to step away from the carbon scare narrative and toward rational, practical solutions.
Arctic ice recovered more slowly than usual in December and January, likely due to polar vortex pulling freezing air from the Arctic down into lower latitudes, replaced by warmer southern air. A post at Severe Weather Europe is February 2025 Forecast, describing the dynamics this winter.
Arctic ice recovered more slowly than usual in December and January, likely due to polar vortex pulling freezing air from the Arctic down into lower latitudes, replaced by warmer southern air. A post at Severe Weather Europe is February 2025 Forecast, describing the dynamics this winter.
After a mild start, a new Polar Express is looming for the United States and Canada mid-month.
As January is slowly ending, we can look at preliminary surface temperature data for the month so far. Below is the CDAS analysis, and you can see that January was colder than normal across the entire United States, apart from California and parts of Nevada. But these anomalies do not show the full picture of just how cold some days in the month were, breaking records for several years and even decades in the past.
On the other hand, we can see that Canada had warmer than normal temperatures. This is an expected pattern, as while the colder air was transported further south into the United States, it was replaced by high-pressure and a warmer-than-normal airmass.
The movement of the pressure systems drives these temperature patterns and weather changes. Pairs of pressure systems are also known as Rossby Waves. You can see an example of Rossby waves in the image below by NOAA and how they are all connected and function with the jet stream.
The purple line connecting these pressure systems is called the jet stream. This rapid stream of air is found around 9 to 14 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) above sea level.
In late January, the average temperatures in the northern United States and southern Canada are still around or below freezing, so even a strong positive anomaly does not actually mean warm temperatures in that region. But, it is interesting to see the rapid shift in temperature anomalies as the pressure systems reposition.
February 2025 is about to start, with the latest weather forecasts indicating a very dynamic month over the United States and Canada. After the power struggle between the cold and warmth at the start of the month, another Polar Vortex lobe looms for the United States around mid-month.
Below is the surface temperature anomaly, averaged for next week. You can see the large supply of colder air over the northern United States and western Canada. Another cooler area is forecast for eastern Canada and the northeastern United States.
But most of the central and southern half of the United States is forecast to have above-normal temperatures. We often see such a division in the weather patterns, where the colder and warmer air separate along the jet stream.
Going into the weather trend for the second half of February, we will use the extended-range ensemble forecasts. These forecasts serve as trends that show the prevailing idea of where the pressure systems are positioned and how the airmass is expected to move.
The continuous low-pressure systems over Canada helped to initiate large-scale cold air transport from the Arctic into the United States and Canada, also powered by the Polar Vortex in the stratosphere.
We continue to see the presence of the low-pressure area over Canada in the forecast for February. But the forecast now indicates an interesting core movement of the Polar Vortex in the stratosphere, likely to initiate another deep cold event around mid-month over the United States and Canada.
Impact on Arctic Ice Extents
The 19-year average for January shows Arctic ice extents started at 13.13M km2 and ended the month at 14.36M km2. 2024 started somewhat higher and matched average at the end. Other recent years have been lower, and 2025 started 540k km2 in deficit and 818k km2 below average at month end. The gap had closed to 400k km2 before losing extents at the end. SII and MASIE tracked closely this month.
The table below shows year-end ice extents in the various Arctic basins compared to the 19-year averages and some recent years. 2007 seven was close to the average, so 2018 is shown for comparison.
Region
2025031
Ave Day 031
2025-Ave.
2018031
2025-2018
(0) Northern_Hemisphere
13543740
14362137
-818398
13792271
-248532
(1) Beaufort_Sea
1071001
1070386
614
1070445
556
(2) Chukchi_Sea
965989
965974
15
965971
18
(3) East_Siberian_Sea
1087137
1087063
74
1087120
18
(4) Laptev_Sea
897845
897824
21
897845
0
(5) Kara_Sea
921520
917381
4139
895363
26157
(6) Barents_Sea
428814
563859
-135044
481947
-53133
(7) Greenland_Sea
614789
613370
1418
501411
113378
(8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence
1080930
1328380
-247450
1406903
-325972
(9) Canadian_Archipelago
854878
853510
1368
853109
1769
(10) Hudson_Bay
1260903
1260778
125
1260838
66
(11) Central_Arctic
3211379
3210507
872
3184817
26562
(12) Bering_Sea
534452
648807
-114354
382206
152245
(13) Baltic_Sea
39334
62876
-23542
41713.99
-2380
(14) Sea_of_Okhotsk
559692
823877
-264185
704398
-144707
This year’s ice extent is 818k km2 or 5.7% below average. About half of the deficit comes from the Pacific basins of Bering and Okhotsk Sea. The other two major losses are in Barents Sea and Baffin Bay. With the annual maximum typically occurring mid-March, it is likely the ice then will also be lower than usual.
Illustration by Eleanor Lutz shows Earth’s seasonal climate changes. If played in full screen, the four corners present views from top, bottom and sides. It is a visual representation of scientific datasets measuring Arctic ice extents and NH snow cover.
In late November of last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York indicted Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani, founder of one of India’s biggest companies, on securities and wire fraud charges concerning the sale of certain bonds. The alleged “fraud” was related to the failure to disclose an alleged scheme to bribe regional government officials in India—a scheme that has virtually nothing to do with the United States. There are no victims of the alleged fraud. All investors have been fully paid on their investments to date.
In late November of last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York indicted Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani, founder of one of India’s biggest companies, on securities and wire fraud charges concerning the sale of certain bonds. The alleged “fraud” was related to the failure to disclose an alleged scheme to bribe regional government officials in India—a scheme that has virtually nothing to do with the United States. There are no victims of the alleged fraud. All investors have been fully paid on their investments to date.
In addition to potential damage to Adani and the Adani Group, the 11th-hour indictment harms relations between the U.S. and India at a time when the U.S. needs India as a counter-balance to China. It sends exactly the wrong signal to the international companies that invest billions of dollars in the U.S. and employ tens of thousands of Americans. It also has the potential to cripple the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s global reserve currency. The indictment has the hallmarks of “lawfare” – a case that is brought against an individual or entity that is meant to intimidate or hinder.
Adani, who is fighting what he calls the “baseless” charges, rose from a modest mercantile family to become one of Asia’s richest people. He founded the Adani Group in 1988 as a commodities-trading firm. It has grown to become a $200 billion conglomerate that includes ten publicly traded companies specializing in ports, airports, power generation and transmission and green energy. The Adani Group is the de facto infrastructure builder of India.
The DOJ case against the Adani Group comes at a critical time in the U.S.-India relationship. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Trump built a warm relationship during Trump’s first administration, and Modi is likely to come to the U.S. soon. As China’s adversarial relationship with the U.S. continues, and Beijing’s increasing gravitation toward Moscow escalates, the U.S. needs India as a friend in the region.
During his first term, Trump revived the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) with India, Japan and Australia to counter China militarily and diplomatically through the Indo-Pacific. Trump wants and needs to expand strong relations with Delhi – this is crucial to American national security.
India is also key to American economic security. Indian companies have invested more than $40 billion in the U.S. and employ more than 425,000 workers here, according to a 2023 Confederation of Indian Industry report. Indian companies invest in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
But now, former President Biden’s DOJ has handed the Trump administration a criminal case involving one of the most important companies in a country that is critical to the Indo-Pacific’s stability and prosperity. The indictment was announced two weeks after Trump’s re-election. It’s awkward to say the least; politically damaging to bilateral relations, at the worst.
There is another point about this case that should not be overlooked: Potential peril to the dollar’s global dominance. The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency for a reason – it is backed by the strongest, richest country in the history of the world. But it’s not invulnerable. China and Russia are leading BRICS nations in de-dollarization efforts. Brazil and China abandoned the dollar as an intermediary and now trade in each other’s currencies. If the only requirement for U.S. law enforcement officials to extend their long arms around the globe is that a transaction is conducted in dollars, or has some technical, tenuous connection to the U.S., it will disincentivize every party – including law-abiding ones – from using the dollar.
Because of the Adani Group’s size and reach, it has become a target of rivals inside and outside of India. In 2023, U.S. short seller Hindenburg Research questioned the Adani Group’s financial footing, prompting a large sell-off of company shares. The company fought back with an extensive response, and called the report a “malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations.” Investors agreed, as company shares quickly recovered.
The Indian government questioned Hindenburg’s motives. In July of last year, India’s securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, alleged that Hindenburg gave an asset manager client access to a Hindenburg report on the Adani Group before it was made public, to set up a short bet against the Group. One Indian lawmaker called on the government to probe whether Chinese interests were behind the attacks on Adani, as the conglomerate outbid Chinese rivals to win the Port of Haifa in Israel in early 2023, several months before the Hindenburg report. More recently, Hindenburg itself has gone out of business.
Adani investors responded to the DOJ allegations as they did to the Hindenburg report. Shares of Adani Green Energy, the company at the heart of the DOJ case, rallied 20 percent in the days following the company’s refutation of the indictment.
The Eastern District of New York has a history of exhibiting prosecutorial zeal while trying to police the world. It notably failed in 2019, when a jury took only five hours to acquit a defendant who suffered nine months of imprisonment before a six-week trial that called into question the extraterritorial reach of statutes related to financial crimes.
It should not take a lengthy trial and months of reputational damage for a similar outcome to be reached for Gautam Adani. The case against him is a case against the American national interest.
This week came the news that permission for the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields was unlawful, owing to a failure to take into account the effect of downstream emissions, i.e. the combustion of the extracted products.
This week came the news that permission for the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields was unlawful, owing to a failure to take into account the effect of downstream emissions, i.e. the combustion of the extracted products.
It may seem curious that this matters; everyone knew at the outset what the purpose of the permission was, and that a large chunk of what came up from the deeps would ultimately go up in smoke. But some people saw the chance to put a stop to these new fields after the case of Horse Hill went to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that downstream emissions must be taken account of when deciding permission.
In my view, this position is nonsensical. At the moment, our civilisation depends on the products that Rosebank and Jackdaw would have provided. It provides the grinning idiots who successfully brought the new case with the means to do so. Without oil, civilisation collapses, and successes at the Supreme Court count for naught. Rather than engaging in learned debate, by that point, we’re fighting over the last bag of Bonios – and they ain’t for our pooches. Thus, it seems particularly self-defeating to attempt to block new oil fields. As a wealthy country, we are partly insulated against such stupidity thanks to our ability to buy oil from other countries. For anyone to think that blocking Rosebank and Jackdaw is good for our country is Baldrick-level stupidity. It is like the child who thinks he becomes invisible when he closes his eyes. We will import the needed oil from further away, and who knows, maybe part of it will come from dictatorships, and perhaps the environmental protections where it is ultimately drawn from will be weaker. Then, it has to be transported here. You cannot ban this substance until you no longer need it.
Rather than argue the toss about whether downstream emissions ought to have been considered by the planning authority, the court could simply have asked what effect those downstream emissions might have – to see whether they were even worth considering. Both sides could have produced a stubby pencil and calculated the influence of these new fields on the Earth’s climate. Then, if there was a gap between them, they could have argued the toss about that, until their estimates drew closer.
But they didn’t.
So, in the spirit of trying to find out the facts, I offer this calculation to estimate the effect on climate of the Rosebank field. It cost me only time, a cup of coffee, and a few electrons. I wonder how much the green lawfare has cost so far?
Gathering numbers
In Into the Unknown, I laid out some basic facts about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The interested reader can find there: the mass of the atmosphere; the mass of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the mass of carbon dioxide representing 1 ppm in concentration; and the basic equation to calculate the temperature change caused by a change in CO2 concentration, given what I considered to be generous (to the cause of alarm) parameters. There, I noted that Wiki states that 57% of emissions of CO2 are absorbed by the biosphere; I called it 50%, again to favour the cause of alarm.
What about Rosebank and oil? According to the BBC, Rosebank holds 300-500 million barrels of oil. Let’s say 500 mil are extracted, to favour the cause of alarm. The internet says that a barrel of oil has a mass of 136 kg. Radovic gives the mass proportion of oil that is carbon as ~85%.
With these numbers, we are ready to make our calculation.
The Calculation
Parameter
Value
Temp change from baseline (280 ppm)
Present atmospheric concentration CO2 ppm (2024)
424
1.19727
K
Mass of CO2 in atmosphere kg
3.136E+015
Mass of CO2 for 1 ppm kg
7.83E+012
Mass of 1 barrel of oil kg
136
[internet]
Barrels of oil in Rosebank
500,000,000
[BBC]
Mass of oil in Rosebank kg
68,000,000,000
Mass of C in Rosebank kg
57,800,000,000
the C:H ratio from Radovic PSU
When combusted, half of this is absorbed, leaving
28,900,000,000
Convert to CO2 kg
106,000,000,000
[*44/12]
PPM rise
0.0135
PPM new
424.0135
1.19736
K
Temperature change caused by Rosebank
0.000092
K
Combustion of all of the higher estimate of Rosebank’s oil would lead to an atmospheric temperature rise of ~ 1/10,000 of a kelvin. The calculation is made with parameters favouring the cause of alarm. It does not account for the fact that not all oil is burnt. Some is sent to the petrochemical industry, or used as lubricants, or ends up being spread on roads, etc. However, since 0.000092 K is not a significant temperature increase, indeed it will not be measurable, there is no case to prevent Rosebank from being permitted.
The folks that oppose this prefer other metrics to temperature change when they are critical of projects. Millions of tonnes of CO2 sounds far more frightening that a ten-thousandth of a degree. On another thread, Jaime gives the number of 10.5 million tonnes of CO2 as the downstream emissions of Horse Hill, which was enough to stifle that project. What temperature rise might that be? Well, I’ll tell you. Using similar reasoning to that given above, it’s 1/200,000 of a degree kelvin – again, given alarm-favouring parameters.
And this is why the metric of tonnes of CO2 is the preferred one: translated into temperature change, the numbers are trivial. They are theoretical – far too small to be detected.
It’s time these jokers stopped posing triumphantly on the steps of the Courts, chests puffed out like Washington crossing the Delaware. They need to recognise that their lives, and the lives of those they love, rely on the very thing they just gave a kicking.
As a former utility regulator, I understand the desire by public officials to do everything they can to keep water, gas and electric bills as low as possible. All Americans know that the cost of living in this country is going up too fast, putting many families under severe economic strain.
As a former utility regulator, I understand the desire by public officials to do everything they can to keep water, gas and electric bills as low as possible. All Americans know that the cost of living in this country is going up too fast, putting many families under severe economic strain.
But Connecticut’s utilities are in the news lately. At the end of 2024, credit rating agencies downgraded several utilities that serve Connecticut. For example, S&P Global reduced Eversource’s credit rating from A- to BBB+. Four other utilities in the state, including water and natural gas companies, were also downgraded by S&P. Following suit, another credit rating agency, Moody’s, also downgrading utilities in Connecticut.
Credit downgrades are typically in response to poor performance or bad business decisions made by corporate leadership. But in this case, things are a little different. Here is a quote from an analyst at Moody’s about the downgraded utilities. “The rate outcome is evidence of a challenged regulatory environment, where the disparity between filed rate requests and ultimate rate orders has become considerable. Absent a return to more constructive political and regulatory decisions, both utilities could see further credit deterioration over the next two years.”
In other words, these credit downgrades are in response to a challenging regulatory environment with the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Agency.
What do these credit downgrades mean for the average person in Connecticut who relies on water, electricity, and natural gas? Ultimately it will mean higher utility bills for customers in Connecticut. This is because the credit downgrade means the cost for the utilities to borrow money from investors will increase because these ratings agencies see more risk in Connecticut. Worse, this will hamper investment in Connecticut’s critical infrastructure and the electric grid.
All of this is deeply concerning to me, because Connecticut is not immune to severe weather like winter storms and tropical systems, and the state should be making more investments in its critical infrastructure to make communities more resilient to challenging weather. As a former Florida regulatory commissioner, I learned first-hand that investing in these critical infrastructure projects before severe weather strikes is vital to reducing the time between when the storm strikes and services being fully restored. Thanks to the investments Florida has made into our critical infrastructure, we can weather a massive storm and have power, and many essential services restored in just a few days for most customers.
Another challenge for Connecticut, is that as the state’s electric needs go up – due to data centers, Artificial Intelligence and people plugging in their electric vehicles – the state is going to need investments in grid infrastructure to connect new sources of power like wind and solar. Those enhancements cost money, and now they are going to cost more money because borrowing costs just went up for two of the largest electric utilities operating in Connecticut.
Because those borrowing costs are rising for these electric companies, the utilities must make tough decisions about which critical infrastructure improvements to make, and which to hold off on because they now cost too much. A less reliable electric grid exposes people and business in Connecticut to more and longer blackouts.
Finally, Florida’s electric grid and utilities are resilient today, because our regulators worked with the state’s utilities to carefully balance their needs while ensuring Florida’s utility customers have fair bills and resilient services. My hope is that things can improve in Connecticut for the sake of customers and the state’s economy.
Ron Brisé is a former Chair of the Florida Public Service Commission and is an electricity regulatory expert.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
First, they came for your cars, then your gas boilers, travel, food and farms. Now the Net Zero nutters, using their preposterous and invented climate emergency scare, have medicines, anaesthetics and painkillers in their crosshairs. Moves are afoot to reduce the use of popular, cheap, safe and effective nitrous oxide in the UK and replace it with substitutes such as methoxyflurane, a gas long banned in the United States following concerns about kidney and liver damage.
First, they came for your cars, then your gas boilers, travel, food and farms. Now the Net Zero nutters, using their preposterous and invented climate emergency scare, have medicines, anaesthetics and painkillers in their crosshairs. Moves are afoot to reduce the use of popular, cheap, safe and effective nitrous oxide in the UK and replace it with substitutes such as methoxyflurane, a gas long banned in the United States following concerns about kidney and liver damage. Of course, any science that disputes climate Armageddon is of little intertest to political activists, but the rest of us might be interested to note recent findings that found any ‘global warming’ caused by gases used by anaesthetists was “negligible and cannot be measured or felt”.
Nitrous oxide, sometimes known as laughing gas, is in common use in dentistry and maternity wards. It is carried on ambulances and is considered a very safe and effective analgesic medicine. But the UK National Health Service (NHS) has made a very silly pledge to be carbon Net Zero by 2040. According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), the use of anaesthetics, which also include isoflurane, desflurane and sevoflurane, has been identified as a “carbon hotspot“. The NHS Long Term Plan is said to highlight these gases “as an area for action” and the RCEM says consideration should be given to the use of alternatives “where feasible and safe to do so”. The Royal College of Anaesthetists recently reported that many practitioners had moved away from routine nitrous oxide use in general anaesthesia, including in previous “high usage” areas.
Methoxyflurane is marketed under the brand name Penthrox and has had a chequered medical past. Common in hospitals from the 1960s, it fell out of favour after the concerns about kidney and liver damage were raised. A number of other worries mean that it is best used only on patients who are in reasonable health. It remains banned in the United States, but is available in New Zealand, Australia, Ireland and the UK.
Pressure to use alternatives such as Penthrox is undoubtedly being applied across the NHS with the use of a ‘Global Warming Potential’ metric used to claim that anaesthetic gases are hundreds to thousands of times more warming than carbon dioxide. However, this metric is controversial even within the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In a short recent paper titled ‘Emissions of Anaesthetic Causes Negligible Warming‘ and published by the CO2 Coalition, three scientists note the opinion of the IPCC that: “It must be stressed that there is no universally accepted methodology for combing all the relevant factors into a single global warming potential for greenhouse gas emissions.” The NHS tells patients that using nitrous oxide “significantly increases the environmental effect of your anaesthetic”, with every hour equivalent to driving a small car 106 km. Perhaps slightly more reassuring for a women giving birth or a patient undergoing root canal surgery is the view of the CO2 Coalition scientists that the global warming potential is a “nearly irrelevant parameter for assessing whether the warming from anaesthetic gases will be damaging or not”.
In the table below the scientists detail the temperature increases that might be expected from the heat-trapping influences caused by the most important medical gases. The authors note that any warming will be in the order of a hundredth of a degree centigrade – too small to feel or measure. Those interested in learning more about the physics and quantitative details of atmospheric warming are invited to read the discussion that is included in the paper.
Lest it be said that fears about the removal of common anaesthetic gases is a minority sceptical interest, a letter in the Guardian in 2021 will be of considerable interest. Dame Julia Slingo, former Met Office Chief Scientist, and Dr Mary Slingo, Senior Registrar in Anaesthetics at Southampton General Hospital, wrote that any impact of the gases’ tiny emissions and radiative forcing on the climate “will, quite frankly, be ‘lost in translation’”. The effect is “vanishingly small” and invoking climate change as a reason for abandoning their use “does not hold up scientifically”.
Concerns about anaesthetic gases are of course just another one of the never-ending scares designed to enforce the Net Zero fantasy. Removing all hydrocarbons from an industrial society means reducing living conditions to a brutal primitivism. Try the removal of many medicines, try also little food or heat. Despite this, around 200 MPs expressed support for the recent Climate and Nature Bill that sought to outlaw 90% of all hydrocarbon use in the United Kingdom within a decade. A four-hour long clown show featuring almost every debunked climate scare imaginable tried to force the bill to an important second reading, advancing a law that would, if implemented, have led to the almost certain collapse of British society. Thankfully this appalling bill, supported by all 72 Lib Dems and 80 Labour MPs, failed to pass.
When it comes to making unsubstantiated claims to harm human health, it appears that laughing gas and hot air remain in plentiful supply.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
Amanda Lefton, the former director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), went to work for a major offshore wind company after the agency boosted the industry and worked to limit offshore fossil fuel development on her watch.
Amanda Lefton, the former director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), went to work for a major offshore wind company after the agency boosted the industry and worked to limit offshore fossil fuel development on her watch.
Lefton spearheaded the Biden administration’s effort to build out 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity along America’s coasts by 2030 in her capacity as the leader of BOEM, playing a key role in the administration’s all-of-government offshore wind push from February 2021 to February 2023, according to her LinkedIn profile. She then went to work on green energy-related issues for Foley Hoag LLC — a major D.C. law firm — for approximately six months and then joined RWE, a major player in the offshore wind space, as the head of development for the east coast in July 2023.
This is hardly surprising given the incestuous relations between the Biden BOEM and the wind industry. On Ms. Lefton’s watch the agency helped rush the so-far disastrous Vineyard Wind project through. BOEM even waived the financial assurance requirements intended to protect the taxpayers from the costs of decommissioning the project when complete (while, in the Gulf, it was modifying those same requirements in an attempt to drive small oil and gas companies out of business),” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Former Deputy Secretary of the Interior Tommy Beaudreau, her boss during most of her tenure at BOEM, had previously represented Vineyard Wind. This revolving door has been spinning everywhere the Biden administration and the climate sector meet. The players remain the same, the only thing that changes is who signs the paychecks.” (RELATED: Revolving Door: It Took CNN Less Than 48 Hours To Hire Comey’s Assistant)
Dem Senator Who Decried ‘Revolving Door’ Poses With Lobbyists Who Donated To Her Campaignhttps://t.co/ZuJkFb601w
RWE is headquartered in Germany, but it has offices in New York City and other American cities. The company became the largest offshore wind leaseholder in the New York Bight lease area in 2022, the same year it won a lease for floating offshore wind development off the coast of Northern California.
“RWE abides by all conflict-of-interest laws and regulations,” a RWE spokesperson told the DCNF when reached for comment on behalf of Lefton. The company did not address questions about Lefton’s compensation or whether her intimate knowledge of BOEM played any role in the firm’s decision to hire her.
Sam Eaton, the CEO of RWE Offshore Holdings, praised Lefton’s “know-how navigating all levels of government” that helped lead to approvals for two major offshore wind farms in her tenure at BOEM in a statement addressing her hiring.
As Chamberlain noted in his statement, Lefton ran BOEM when the agency greenlit the massive Vineyard Wind development off the coast of Nantucket in May 2021. Lefton said at the time that the Vineyard Wind approval “represents the power of a government-wide approach to offshore wind permitting, taking stakeholder ideas and concerns into consideration every step of the way.”
However, Vineyard Wind later became the subject of controversy when one of the development’s turbine blades malfunctioned, fractured and fell into the Atlantic. The resulting debris floated its way to nearby beaches, forcing their closure as workers cleared the pollution and enraging locals.
Moreover, BOEM finalized the most restrictive five-year schedule for oil and gas leasing in modern U.S history in December 2023. While Lefton was no longer running the agency at that point in time, BOEM published the schedule approximately 500 days late, meaning that the agency was dragging its feet on the oil and gas leasing schedule while Lefton was in charge of BOEM.
Lefton is also an on-the-record opponent of the continued long-term use of fossil fuels, telling E&E News in May 2022 that “we have to transition to clean renewable energy in order to fight climate change” and that she favors policies like incorporating climate costs into oil and gas leasing analyses and making use of the social cost of carbon metric. The outlet later reported on Jan. 24 that Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is considering nominating Lefton to run the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
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