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.
President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement. Cue the leftwing meltdown. Though everyone knew the withdrawal was coming, the left and the “international community” are still decrying America’s alleged abdication of leadership on climate.
President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement. Cue the leftwing meltdown. Though everyone knew the withdrawal was coming, the left and the “international community” are still decrying America’s alleged abdication of leadership on climate.
But toothless agreements window dressed with international summits and photo ops are not the same as leadership.
The truth is America has led the world in reducing emissions for years not because of the Paris Agreement, but because innovation and the free market facilitate the deployment of cheaper and cleaner energy. Let’s review the record.
In recent decades, America has achieved unprecedented — and unexpected — energy production thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling. Since the early 2000s when these twin technologies began to be deployed much more expansively, U.S. natural gas production has more than doubled. By 2016, hydraulically fractured gas wells accessed through horizontal drilling accounted fornearly 70% of all oil and natural gas wells.
While the left may clutch its pearls at the increased production of a fossil fuel like natural gas, this clean energy source has been a main driver of U.S. emissions reductions. Over the past 15 years when America has massively increased natural gas output, the U.S. reduced carbon emissions more than any other country. We can see this year by year.
For example, from 2022 to 2023, America offset dirtier coal energy generation with natural gas. As coal declined by 121.9 terawatt hours of electric generation over that time, natural gas increased by 118.9 terawatt hours. At the same time, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions declined 1.9%. Notably, 80% of the U.S. carbon emissions reductions were driven by the electric power sector — precisely where natural gas has an outsized impact.
Notice what didn’t cause those emissions reductions? The Paris Agreement.
The American energy sector — powered by innovation and good-old-fashioned free market economics — has been driving down carbon emissions cheaply and effectively before the Paris Agreement was a twinkle in climate activists’ eyes. And it will continue to reduce carbon emissions long after President Trump’s decision to withdraw.
The Paris Agreement is far from the panacea some activists claim it is. It isn’t even a particularly effective tool to rally nations toward greater climate success.
In the middle of the allegedly climate-conscious Biden administration, none of the world’s biggest emitters — America included — had reduced their emissions in accordance with the Paris goals. Apparently, the $1 trillion regulatory and subsidy regime erected by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act had little bang for the buck.
What Agreement supporters forget is that no number of high-profile international accords can make command-control tactics work — or instill other nations with the ambition to fulfill their empty promises.
Yes, those are trillions of dollars they are projecting to spend.
The Paris Agreement is the definition of bureaucratic failure, conflating meetings, busyness, and lofty goals as success. Its only achievement is to make climate ideologues and green jetsetters feel good about themselves as they fly to international conferences.
It’s no wonder President Trump withdrew. Talk is cheap. What matters is success. On that metric, the Trump administration is set to actually achieve what Paris Agreement signatories only write on paper.
Trump entered office promising to deregulate the fossil fuel industry, increase permitting for natural gas extraction, approve the construction of energy facilities like natural gas export terminals, and re-establish American energy dominance.
By leaning into America’s carbon advantage and exporting clean American energy abroad, he will boost the U.S. economy, supplant dirty energy from nations like Russia and Venezuela with a clean American alternative, and lower emissions both at home and abroad, all without the jaw-dropping price tag of the failed Biden-era green agenda. We should combine these steps with efforts to actually hold the biggest polluters accountable (which are being discussed by President Trump’s cabinet). This approach would be the antithesis of the Paris Accords’ America-last strategy.
Of course, some are urging President Trump to go further and not just withdraw from the Paris Agreement but also back out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This may seem like an easy choice, seeing as the UNFCCC, like so many UN bodies, acts contrary to American interests. But that’s exactly why America must remain in the UNFCCC.
Climate treaties will be formed whether or not the U.S. is involved, and the UNFCCC will continue to operate as a forum for those negotiations. Staying in the UNFCCC costs America nothing while allowing Trump and his appointees to keep a seat at the table, hold the UN accountable, and counter any deal that would put America at a disadvantage. While the UNFCCC can be harmful, it’s only the Paris Agreement that’s impotent.
The breathless alarm over the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is overwrought. When President Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord during his first administration, America went on to cut carbon emissions to the lowest level in 25 years. Re-embracing the power of natural gas in his second term, he’ll do it again.
So instead of the UN and international climate activists judging the U.S., we should remind everyone that if you want to put climate first, you should actually put America first.
Chris Johnson is a GOP strategist who organizes the next generation of conservative leaders. He also serves as a senior advisor to the National Federation of College Republicans, focusing on energy issues.
It’s another day, another green energy disaster in the making—this time featuring the very people who demand Net Zero, now backpedaling furiously to avoid living next to the technology that’s supposed to save the planet. Welcome to New York, where residents are suddenly realizing that lithium battery storage facilities are just a tad more dangerous than the windmills and solar panels, they imagined would lead them to climate utopia.
It’s another day, another green energy disaster in the making—this time featuring the very people who demand Net Zero, now backpedaling furiously to avoid living next to the technology that’s supposed to save the planet. Welcome to New York, where residents are suddenly realizing that lithium battery storage facilities are just a tad more dangerous than the windmills and solar panels, they imagined would lead them to climate utopia.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s ambitious plan to turn New York into a renewable energy powerhouse is colliding with reality as towns and cities push back against massive Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) facilities. These behemoth battery plants are necessary to store the sporadic energy generated by wind and solar—because, surprise, the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow.
But here’s the catch: These lithium-ion storage facilities have a nasty little habit of catching fire, spewing toxic fumes, and being nearly impossible to extinguish. As Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella put it,
“They are being placed literally right next door to people’s homes, and even next to a gas station”
“The city is playing with fire by allowing this type of reckless policy to continue”.
It seems that even the climate policy elite don’t want to live next to their own grand ideas.
Now, let’s talk about irony. Remember the Indian Point nuclear plant? It was shut down in 2020 because environmentalists claimed it was a safety risk. Fast forward to 2025, and the same activists are now screaming about the dangers of the giant lithium battery facility set to replace it.
“Indian Point was the safest thing since apple pie,”
said Roland Ciafone, a former maintenance supervisor at the plant. Who could’ve guessed that a nuclear plant designed with multiple safety redundancies might be safer than a lithium-ion fire trap?
The pushback in New York isn’t just some isolated NIMBYism. A similar lithium battery storage plant in Monterey County, California, recently erupted in flames, leading to the evacuation of 1,500 residents. Scientists later discovered high concentrations of heavy metals in the soil around the site. Glenn Church, a Monterey County official, described the fire as “the Three Mile Island event for this industry”. In other words, the green energy revolution is starting to resemble a bad rerun of history.
According to Church,
“This technology is ahead of government’s ability to regulate it and industry’s ability to control it”.
Translation: We are guinea pigs in an experiment where nobody actually knows what they’re doing.
Yet, despite mounting evidence of the dangers, New York continues pushing its 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which aims to cut emissions by 40% by 2030 and achieve 100% “zero-carbon” electricity by 2040. But without stable nuclear power and with communities rejecting battery storage, it’s unclear how exactly this miracle is supposed to happen. Magic, perhaps?
For years, environmentalists have insisted that wind and solar—propped up by giant lithium-ion batteries—are the only way forward. Now, as these battery facilities start going up in smoke (literally), even the most die-hard climate warriors are having second thoughts. When climate policy meets cold, hard reality, the results are often spectacularly disastrous.
New York residents who once chanted for Green New Deal policies are quickly learning that “going green” comes with a very real, very flammable downside. The only question left is: How many more battery fires will it take before policymakers admit that their grand plan is a spectacular failure?
“… weather stations were not set-up to measure trend and change, but to monitor local weather …”
Note [1], [2], etc refer to references at the bottom of this page.
As a retired scientist and former weather observer with a keen interest in data, I have been researching Australian weather station datasets for almost two decades. I am disillusioned by the quality of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) network; suspicious of data they rely on to monitor Australia’s climate (the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature: ACORN-SAT), and mightily concerned about constant adjustments to datasets that universally seem to result in on-going warming.
The main problem for ACORN-SAT and its precursor high-quality datasets [1, 2], is that weather stations were not set-up to measure trend and change, but to monitor local weather, compare climates, and provide day-to-day information relevant to commerce.
While agriculture was an early beneficiary – crops to sow and limits to farming for instance, weather maps and short-term predictions were important to shipping and trade, and later for aircraft flying major air routes. Using data telegraphed by post and telegraph offices, Australia’s first weather map was published by NSW Astronomer Henry Chamberlain Russell in The Sydney Morning Herald on 5th February 1877.
The bolt-on experiment that became ACORN-SAT commenced around the time the IPCC was preparing the 1990 First Assessment Report. Chapter 8 of the Scientific Assessment lamented the lack of terrestrial temperature data and recommended “setting up a climate change detection panel to coordinate model experiments and data collection efforts” [3]. Consequently, Australian scientists got busy stitching data together and applying adjustments to iron-out resulting kinks – they homogenised the data.
Homogenisation refers to the process of adjusting for non-climate effects, while resulting homogenised data are assumed to solely reflect the long-term climate.
All Australian weather station sites have moved and changed in ways that impact data. Consequently, trends in raw data are as fraught as poorly adjusted data. Thus, the overarching question for any long-term temperature record is whether methods used to adjust for non-climate impacts are appropriate and unbiased. Appropriate requires that adjustments directly align with significant changepoints in data, while unbiased requires they are directly proportional to the effect.
Bare ground in the vicinity of the screen at Amberley RAAF likely to exacerbate temperature extremes on warm days. The 60-litre screen is the louvered box within the fenced area on the left of the photo. (Photograph from the ACORN-SAT catalogue.)The 112 ACORN-SAT sites used to monitor Australia’s climate.
So, if independently of rainfall, mean maximum temperature (Tmax) at Victoria River Downs, Northern Territory (BoM ID 14825) stepped-up 1.12oC in 2013 (t56) =6.28, p=<0.001), an unbiased adjustment would result in a sign-reversed proportionate change of -1.12oC [4]. While missing observations was a problem (particularly in 1973, which was ignored in subsequent analysis), and data before 1993 lacked precision, Victoria River Downs is one of the 112 ACORN-SAT sites used to monitor warming in Australia.
The overall Tmax raw-data trend of 0.126oC/decade, which was weakly significant (p = 0.039, R2adj = 0.057), was spuriously related to the 2013 step-change, highlighting that unless underlying inhomogeneities are accounted for, naïve approaches to determining trend can be highly misleading.
The ACORN-SAT Catalogue [5] mentions that while the site moved 250 m northwest in August 1987 and an automatic weather station (AWS) was installed on 9 May 1997, surroundings were “watered up until around 2007” – perhaps sporadic watering continued until 2013, or a 60-litre screen was installed or something else. The step-change was detected as highly significant by two entirely different statistical tests and verified using categorical multiple regression. Additional tests confirmed that data consisted of two non-trending segments disrupted by the step-change, with no residual trend attributable to CO2, coal mining, electricity generation or anything else.
Meanwhile, ACORN-SAT V.1 homogenisation (AcV.1 – to 2017) adjusted for a change in 1976, which was not detectable or verifiable, and an alleged move that made no difference to the data in 1987, leaving the 2013 step-change intact. AcV2.0 (to 2018), ignored the change in 1976, adjusted for the move in 1987, and in addition, for no stated reason made an adjustment in 1996 while also leaving the 2013 step-change intact. AcV2.3 (to 2021) made adjustments in 1968 (screen), 1974 (statistical), and 2007 (vegetation), but still no adjustment in 2013. Similarly, for AcV2.4 to 2.5 (to 2024), which made adjustments only in 1987 (move) and 1996.
While not resulting in significant trends, ACORN-SAT adjustments were inconsistent in their timing, and don’t align with the step-change in 2013. Changes in data they aimed to correct could not be detected, while confirmatory and post hoc analysis (Section 4 in [4]) found changepoints adjusted by ACORN-SAT were inappropriate for the data.
Victoria River Downs is by no means a special case. Inappropriate and disproportionate adjustments are a common feature of the thus-far 19 ACORN-SAT sites investigated and reported-on at www.bomwatch.com.au, and sites reported earlier at https://joannenova.com.au (Bourke, Port Hedland, Canberra and Sydney Observatory). An additional 66 weather stations in total, that have been used to homogenise ACORN-SAT sites have also been investigated using the same robust protocols as applied to data for Victoria River Downs.
Prior to the development of BomWatch protocols [6, 7], statistically sound methods for assessing the quality of data for individual weather stations and those that had been homogenised, were seriously lacking, which led to conflicting outcomes [2]. Further, station metadata – data about the data used to identify changepoints could not be considered reliable.
For instance, aerial photographs and a file held by the National Archives of Australia (NAA) show coordinates of the original met-enclosure at Cairns airport (BoM ID 31011), which was adjacent to the 1939 Aeradio office [8], were incorrectly specified in site-summary metadata. Metadata also ignored that the site moved to a 30m-by-30m mound near the centre of the airport in 1965, and due to building a new taxiway, to another mound before September 1983. Another site apparently also established around that time to the northwest, near the location of the current automatic weather station.
Ignoring previous moves, the ACORN-SAT catalogue simply states “the site moved 1.5 km northwest (to the other side of the runway)” in December 1992, which is both wrong and incomplete.
The Garbutt Instrument file at NAA show BoM commenced negotiations with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) to move the site at Townsville airport in 1965, and that observations commenced at the new mounded site in 1970 [9]. Aerial photographs and RAAF airport plans showed the site had moved at least three times while on the eastern side of the runway, while subsequent to the 1970 move to the western side, it likely moved twice more before finally relocating to the current site in December 1994. Despite station files being in their possession and other material, including aerial photographs available in the public domain, the ACORN-SAT catalogue claims: “There are no documented moves until one of 200 m northeast on 8 December 1994, at which time an automatic weather station was installed”, which their own records would confirm is untrue.
A more subtle example of data corruption is that replacement of 230-litre Stevenson screens with 60-litre screens at individual sites is routinely ignored by site-summary metadata, including for the 66 comparator stations mentioned previously, each of which was studied in-depth. While it appears that temperature extremes have increased across the network over recent decades, much of the effect is due to the staged rollout of smaller screens, which respond more rapidly to changes in outside temperature, not to CO2 or a change in the climate.
Considering that datasets may be affected by multiple issues, development of a robust protocol required an objective, broad-brush approach.
Multiple attributes / year are derived from daily station datasets using the statistical program R, which is much faster than using a spreadsheet program such as Excel. Absolute extremes, data counts, means and medians, standard deviations, observations greater than 95th and less than 5th day-of-year percentiles, their Hi/Lo and log10 ratio, and indices of precision based on earlier work by Chris Gillham (www.waclimate.net). Frequency analysis of daily temperature and rainfall observations within classes, may provide additional insights.
As a reference frame, the First Law of thermodynamics predicts a linear relationship between mean maximum temperature (Tmax) and annual rainfall such that the drier it is the warmer it gets. Significance and goodness-of-fit – R2adj (adjusted for the number of terms and datapoints [10]) provide objective, comparable measures of data-fitness. Should relationships be not significant, or R2adj be less than 0.5 (<50% of variance in Tmax explained), something is wrong – data are no good (random to rainfall), or more typically relationships are contaminated by site moves or changes. For more detail, and what happens next see [11].
Commencing with Neville Nicholls and Simon Torok in 1990 with their HQ datasets [1], and most recently with Blair Trewin’s ACORN-SAT [12], aforementioned and recent www.bomwatch.au studies, and others that to date have not been reported, show unequivocally that BoM’s homogenisation methods create warming trends that are unrelated to the climate.
This is achieved by combinations of:
• Ignoring changes that happened; or alternatively, adjusting for site changes that made no difference to the data. Arbitrary application of changepoints and the lack of replicable, transparent and objective methods is the antithesis of the scientific method.
• Reliance on poor quality metadata, particularly with regard original locations of Stevenson screens, and when and where they moved to, without independent corroboration using aerial photographs.
• Adjusting for the presumed effect on daily maxima and minima of time of observation changes from 3 am to 9 am at airports and lighthouses; rounding differences due to metrication; and the rollout of 60-litre Stevenson screens, that are disproportionate to their effect at individual sites.
• Selected “neighbouring” sites, some of which are >1000 km away, whose first-differenced monthly values are highly correlated with those of the site to be homogenised likely embed parallel faults. Consequently, their use as reference series may reinforce rather than unbiasedly adjust faults in ACORN-SAT.
As the rollout of 60-litre screens is almost complete, and Google Earth Pro shows that transpiring vegetation at many unmanned sites has already been sprayed-out, graded around or scalped, data for individual weather stations are such that there is limited scope for instrument or methodology adjustments to continue to cool the past and warm current data in order to maintain the claimed trend. Thus the time is near when further adjustments would create grossly implausible data, which will be when the whole edifice must collapse. It is therefore surely time that in order to save reputations, and cease further damaging the science, the Bureau of Meteorology must abandon the ACORN-SAT project altogether.
[12]. Trewin, Blair (2012). Techniques involved in developing the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) dataset. (Technical Report: https://cawcr.gov.au/technical-reports/CTR_049.pdf )
Disclaimer
Unethical or poor-quality scientific practices including the manipulation of data to support political narratives undermines trust in science. While we are not accusing the persons mentioned of unethical conduct, we are gravely concerned about their approach to data processing, use of poor data or their portrayal of data in their cited and referenceable publications as representing facts that are unsubstantiated, statistically questionable or not true. The debate is therefore a scientific one, not a personal one.
Biography
Dr. Bill Johnston is a former senior research scientist with the NSW Department of Natural Resources (abolished in April 2007); which in previous iterations included the Soil Conservation Service of NSW. With colleagues he undertook weather observations for about a decade from August 1971.
Bill’s main fields of interest have been agronomy, soil science, hydrology (catchment processes) and descriptive climatology and he has maintained a keen interest in the history of weather stations and climate data.
Bill gained a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of New England in 1970, Master of Science from Macquarie University in 1985 and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Western Sydney in 2002 and he is a member of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS).
Bill receives no grants or financial support or incentives from any source.
Solar farms, coming soon to a field near you, are an ecological disaster turning productive land into a nature dead zone. Birds frequently fly into the panels mistaking them for water, while electrocution and incineration are common. Blanketing large areas once open to sunlight causes massive habitat disruption and reduced insect numbers. Like the heavily-shaded ground beneath the miles of often Chinese-made panels, all of this is hidden by a mainstream media and governing class that are desperate to keep the Net Zero kite flying high.
Solar farms, coming soon to a field near you, are an ecological disaster turning productive land into a nature dead zone. Birds frequently fly into the panels mistaking them for water, while electrocution and incineration are common. Blanketing large areas once open to sunlight causes massive habitat disruption and reduced insect numbers. Like the heavily-shaded ground beneath the miles of often Chinese-made panels, all of this is hidden by a mainstream media and governing class that are desperate to keep the Net Zero kite flying high.
“Bird mortality has become an unintended consequence of renewable energy development,” notes Hannah Vander Zanden, an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Florida. Little work has been done specifically on bird mortality at solar farms, although it is known that millions of bats and large birds of every kind are killed every year by giant wind turbines and their associated high power electricity lines. In recent work in California, Vander Zanden found that the birds killed at solar farms were often non-local, with peak kills during migratory periods in April and September. Britain, of course, is a haven for many migratory birds, large and small.
In 2023, the US Association of Avian Veterinarians published a “Conservation Note” titled ‘Solar Energy Production’s Toll on Wild Birds‘. It reported the estimate from the US Fish and Wildlife Services that yearly avian mortalities due to electrocution averaged 5.6 million and that some eight to 50 million bird mortalities may occur following collision with electrical lines. The construction of solar farms can lead to habitat destruction, the authors observe, and changes to plant composition and insect abundance, causing shifts in the diets of insectivorous birds.
The earliest scientific study of avian mortality at large scale utility solar plants was undertaken in 2016 by a group of scientists working for the US Government-funded Argonne National Laboratory. It was estimated that casualties at solar farms were similar to those found at wind turbine sites. Extrapolating from three large operations in southern California, the scientists suggested that between 37,800 and 138,600 birds died annually at solar parks across the US. These figures are of course nearly a decade old and appear on the low side. Whatever the true totals, there is evidence that between 2013 and 2022, US solar power generation rose 12-fold.
It might be pardonable to accept some wildlife destruction if solar farms were any good. They are not. In 2020, the World Bank published a detailed study examining the solar energy potential of locations around the world. Out of 230 countries, the UK was ranked second to last, just ahead of nearby Ireland. The Sun rarely has its hat on in a British winter and on the days it does appear it is long gone by 5pm peak electricity time. Despite life-threatening intermittency disadvantages, the British Government has announced plans to cover vast swathes of the countryside with solar panels in a desperate attempt to triple solar power that will not be available when it is most needed. Reporting on the move, the BBC published a truly dumb quote from a member of the public – “when it’s in a field, hidden behind a bush, you don’t even really see it”.
Out of sight, out of mind, might be the conclusion to be drawn from the attitude of the Net Zero campaigner, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). Consider the two quotes below and try to spot the difference between the first from a solar farm trade association and the second published by the RSPB.
“Solar farms can become havens for biodiversity, playing an important role in nature restoration across the country.”
“Solar farms provide an opportunity for the long-term existence of land in which wildlife can thrive, which could go a long way to help slow down the rate of decline of farmland birds.”
For its part, the RSPB is all in on the invented political climate crisis and wants to remove hydrocarbon use from modern industrial society within 20 years. As is becoming increasingly clear, this will lead to societal breakdown with food shortages that could be partially relieved in the short-term by slaughtering all the available wildlife! In the RSPB’s fantasy land it calls for an increase in solar, onshore and offshore wind. It appears to simply ignore the plight of millions of bats and large raptors such as eagles and hawks. They cannot escape the pull of giant skyscraper-high blades, which are also clearing the area of tonnes of insects. It was recently estimated that 1,200 tonnes of insects are wiped out every year during the plant growing season in Germany alone. The RSPB is also seemingly unaware of the disturbing rise in whale, dolphin and porpoise strandings on UK shores that appear to track the growth of offshore wind capacity. Deaths of these cetaceans have doubled since the turn of the century and are now running at over 1,000 a year.
In promoting collectivist political change, the wrong sort of ecological disasters are simply ignored, or clumsily explained away, by narrative-driven commentators of every kind.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
Signaling a sharp departure from Biden administration green-energy policies, President Donald Trump Jan. 20 signed an executive order temporarily halting offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and pausing the issuance of approvals, permits, and loans for both offshore and onshore wind projects.
Signaling a sharp departure from Biden administration green-energy policies, President Donald Trump Jan. 20 signed an executive order temporarily halting offshore wind lease sales in federal waters and pausing the issuance of approvals, permits, and loans for both offshore and onshore wind projects.
An outspoken critic of wind power, especially offshore wind projects, Trump plans to use the federal permitting process to tie up proposed wind installations in endless red tape and, in so doing, discourage investors from putting their money into capital-intensive wind projects.
Upending the hitherto prevailing narrative surrounding the importance of wind power in combatting climate change, the Trump executive order casts doubt on the economic and environmental legitimacy of offshore wind turbines. In putting offshore wind developers through the ringer of a rigorous review process, the Trump order cites “the need to foster an energy economy capable of meeting the country’s growing demand for reliable energy, the importance of marine life, impacts on ocean currents and wind patterns, effects on energy costs for all Americans – especially those who can least afford it – and to ensure that the United States is able to maintain a robust fishing industry for future generations and provide low-cost energy to its citizens.”
The Trump White House says that the federal government’s leasing and permitting of onshore and offshore wind projects could lead to “great harm,” with negative impacts on navigational safety, transportation, national security, commercial interests and marine mammals. Additionally, the Trump executive order calls for a multiagency assessment to “consider the economic costs associated with the intermittent generation of electricity and the effect of subsidies on the viability of the wind industry.”
In 2021, the Biden administration confidently set a goal of 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind power by 2030. The industry was boosted by generous federal subsidies and a permitting process in Washington primed to bring about swift approvals.
But things have not gone according to plan. Dreams that America’s coastline would soon be brimming with thousands of wind turbines shooting hundreds of feet into the air collided with stark economic, political and environmental realities.
Soaring materials costs, rising interest rates, supply chain bottlenecks and rising resistance by coastal communities led multiple offshore wind developers to cancel or seek to renegotiate power contracts. The offshore wind industry’s troubles were symbolized by a widely reported turbine blade failure at a wind installation off the coast of Massachusetts in 2024 that created a debris field of fiberglass that spread for miles and forced the closure of Nantucket beaches.
The incident reflects only one of the many environmental concerns surrounding offshore wind.
“Construction crews – housed in floating hotels – use giant equipment to piledrive anchors into the seabed,” Hakai Magazine reports. “Others lay heavy-duty submarine cables and build offshore substations. Once the turbines are running, maintenance crews sail out to keep the blades humming along with the ocean’s forceful winds. All of this creates opportunities for ship strikes, collisions with the turbines, and an onslaught of underwater noise.”
Concerns have long been raised that wind turbines along the East Coast could impede the migratory path of the endangered right whale. Coastal New Jersey has been targeted by wind power developers, but the waters off the Jersey Shore are also home to the right whale.
A month before Trump’s election, the Biden Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approved the Atlantic Shores South project to construct and operate up to 200 wind turbines, rising 1,000 feet above the ocean, 15 to 20 miles off the Garden State’s coast. After Trump’s action, the future of that project is now in doubt.
“We believe the executive order that was issued [Jan. 20] is only the first step in future administration executive actions to stop not just offshore wind, but the wind industry writ large in America,” Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, told the Washington Times.
That may be far more than just wishful thinking. Trump also ordered a temporary halt to the development of the Lava Ridge Wind Project, which is on federal land in Idaho and has faced growing local opposition. The president instructed the Department of Interior to conduct “a new and comprehensive analysis of the various interests implicated by the Lava Ridge Wind Project and the potential environmental impacts.”
Having now targeted the facility in Idaho, there is nothing to keep the Trump administration from setting its sights on other proposed onshore wind projects. Wind developers will have little choice but to challenge all of this in court, which will lead to further delays and higher costs for an industry already beset by diminishing expectations.
Pampered by subsidies and renewable-energy mandates, and driven by claims that it is a “solution” to climate change, wind power risks being brought low by its own shortcomings.
It is an intermittent, inefficient and environmentally destructive source of energy. And, like solar power, it cannot possibly meet the growing demand for electricity brought on by the trifecta energy-hungry AI, data centers and quantum computing.
Even worse, there was an administration in Washington that knew this.
DeSmog’s “Climate Disinformation Database” is so filled with quality and quantity that non-members are itching to join. The thousand or so should be doubled, tripled. Maybe a phone book will be necessary as the political winds shift from stale alarmism to CO2/fossil fuel optimism.
“The energy and climate dialog is fraught with so many challenges. Let’s not compound the problem by using destructively deceptive terms like climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy, and dirty energy. These terms are nonsense. Let’s just be honest.” (- Chris Wright, quoted below)
DeSmog’s “Climate Disinformation Database” is so filled with quality and quantity that non-members are itching to join. The thousand or so should be doubled, tripled. Maybe a phone book will be necessary as the political winds shift from stale alarmism to CO2/fossil fuel optimism.
The latest profile belongs to the new head of the U.S. Department of Energy, Chris Wright, who blew through his confirmation hearings and was confirmed in a bipartisan vote, 59 to 39.
Democrats, not only Republicans and independents, are excited. What a great person! And a great pick! But he needs to shut down and minimize the civilian side of DOE for consumers, taxpayers, and fiscal responsibility.
Here is DeSmog’s “exposé,” really a tribute.
According to Wright, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition.” He has also claimed that “any negative impacts from climate change were clearly overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing energy consumption.”8
Wright describedBjorn Lomborg, who downplays the climate crisis, as a “friend” and Lomborg’s book as “fantastic” in a 2020 interview.9
In an interview with DeSmog, CO2 coalition executive director Gregory Wright commented, “The main thing that he [Wright] and I and the CO2 Coalition agree on is that increasing CO2 is a net benefit, it’s not the demon molecule, it’s the miracle molecule.”12
PERC and PRI have long been US members of the Atlas Network, and the network still publishes its membership online.17DeSmog has reported on the Atlas Network’s behind-the-scenes influence on issues such as the vilification of climate activists.18
And these quotations:
““There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.“
“These five terms: climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy, and dirty energy are not only deceptive, but they are also in fact destructive deceptions. Destructive because they drive centrist politicians and regulators to oppose life-critical infrastructure like building pipelines and natural gas export terminals.”
“… any negative impacts from climate change were clearly overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing energy consumption.“
“We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or floods, despite endless fear-mongering of the media, politicians and activists. This is not my opinion. This is the facts, as contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.”
“Energy transition is another term that has been used to justify policies that deploy large government subsidies and mandates to enrich well-off and connected, while impoverishing everyone else. Yes, I am one of those needlessly enriched by these destructive policies, as increasing barriers to oil and gas production have predictably driven up prices and delivered record profitability in the oil and gas industry. “
“haven’t these trillions of dollars of subsidies over 20 or 30 years driven at least the start of a real energy transition? In short, no. World demand for oil, natural gas, and coal hit all-time records last year.”
“Carbon pollution is the most shameful marketing term that I’ve ever heard…. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a greenhouse gas. Confusing these two is frightening kids.”
““Clean energy and dirty energy are two other fact-free, shameless marketing labels…. It would be hard to call wind or solar clean or low environmental impact with a straight face.
“The energy and climate dialog is fraught with so many challenges. Let’s not compound the problem by using destructively deceptive terms like climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy, and dirty energy. These terms are nonsense. Let’s just be honest.”
In a region of the world where tide gauges are not compromised by land subsidence or uplift, sea levels have not been observed to be rising since measurements began in 1894.
In a region of the world where tide gauges are not compromised by land subsidence or uplift, sea levels have not been observed to be rising since measurements began in 1894.
According to a new study, when sea levels rise it usually has more to do with declining land movement (subsidence) or 20- to 60-year oscillations than it has to do with thermostatic sea level change.
“In Japan, there are many long-term trend tide gauges recording the sea levels since 1894. The tide gauges of Hosojima, Wajima, Tonoura, and Oshoro, not suffering from subsidence or isostasy, show multi-decadal fluctuations of periodicity quasi-20 and quasi-60 years, but not rising, nor accelerating, relative sea levels.”
Another study published earlier in the year by the same author (Boretti, 2024) indicates the sea level pattern around Japan is similarly occurring around the Polynesian island of Tuvalu.
Sea level changes are said to be influenced more by multi-decadal oscillations and land subsidence than by a global change in the amount of water stored in ocean basins.
“The significant increase in sea level observed at Tuvalu’s current tide gauge is attributed more to multidecadal oscillations, significantly affecting short-term records, and the subsidence of the tide gauge, rather than the global thermosteric contribution.”
“The suggested analysis aligns with prior research, reinforcing the perspective that the sea levels are gently rising, and the surfaced area of Pacific islands and atolls is not diminishing, contrary to inaccuracies found in selective studies that emphasize certain data while disregarding others.”
On a frigid January morning, the fruit of the U.K.’s overreliance on wind energy was reaped when its contribution to the national grid plummeted to a pitiful zero. Solar output, meanwhile, was a paltry 1% of power generation.
Wind turbines assembled at Stord, Norway, under preparation to be sailed to the floating windmill farm, Hywind Scotland Pilot Park, near Peterhead, Scotland.
On a frigid January morning, the fruit of the U.K.’s overreliance on wind energy was reaped when its contribution to the national grid plummeted to a pitiful zero. Solar output, meanwhile, was a paltry 1% of power generation.
This wasn’t just a fluke but rather a stark illustration of the dangers of building an energy system around inherently unreliable sources like wind and solar. The British government’s gamble on wind energy to meet aggressive and unattainable net-zero targets is leading toward an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions.
The Volatility of Wind Energy
Wind power’s appeal has always been its promise of environmentally clean, inexhaustible energy. But real-world experience shows the technology to be damaging to ecosystems and unreliable. Although Earth will always have wind, knowing when and how much is as impossible as the foolish pursuit of controlling the climate.
As the monthly production chart from GridWatch demonstrates, wind energy swings wildly from nearly 100% of the output to complete collapse within days or even hours. This winter, as a very cold high-pressure system settled over the U.K., wind turbines went idle just when demand for heating and electricity surged.
January’s failure forced the U.K. to rely heavily on gas-fired power plants and electricity imports from the continent. During these periods, the high cost of imported power inflates energy bills that are already among the highest in Europe.
British households, on average, pay nearly double the electricity rates of their mostly nuclear-powered French counterparts. This disparity is largely due to British policies that subsidize renewable energy while penalizing more reliable fossil fuel-based generation.
Paying to Stop the Wind
Adding insult to injury, the U.K.’s energy policies include a perverse mechanism: compensating wind turbine operators to switch off the machines during periods of high wind. On January 24, Storm Eowyn battered Ireland and Scotland with gusts exceeding 100 miles per hour. Such high winds require some turbines to be idled to prevent grid overload and mechanical damage.
“Consumers face a triple hit in constraint costs at times of high winds,” says Lee Moroney of U.K.’s Renewable Energy Forum. “Not only do they pay for electricity that wind farms predicted they would generate but were instructed not to because of grid congestion, but they also have to pay a bonus to the wind farms for the trouble of reducing output. And they must also pay for the costs of turning up conventional generation (such as gas-fired power stations] to make up the shortfall.”
The U.K.’s dwindling domestic gas production and reliance on imports mean that fluctuations in wholesale gas prices hit consumers hard. In 2024, energy bills skyrocketed by 80% compared to 2019 levels, a trend that shows no signs of abating. These costs are exacerbated by government-mandated levies to fund “renewable” energy projects and carbon offset schemes.
The branding of wind energy as a green solution is false advertising in the extreme:
Manufacturing turbines requires vast amounts of fossil fuels – from mining and processing rare earth minerals to producing the steel and concrete for their massive structures.
The amount of land required for a turbine to produce comparable amounts of energy is many times that of nuclear and fossil fuels.
Extraction of rare earths, essential for turbine magnets, is associated with severe environmental degradation and human rights abuses in mining regions.
Wind turbines kill wildlife, especially birds and bats, and are suspected to contribute to whale deaths in offshore locations.
Wind turbine blades become non-recyclable waste that often goes to landfills.
Citizens of the U.K. have missed serious power blackouts by a whisker. But recent events highlight the dangers of prioritizing ideology over practicality and serve as a warning to those who would allow climate dogma to guide energy policies.
This commentary was first published at American Thinkeron January 28, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
Thanks to the likes of Greenpeace, we are bringing up a generation of neurotic children:
Nearly four in five primary-aged children (78%) say they are worried about climate change while teachers say they face challenges in tackling eco-anxiety at school, a set of newly released surveys shows.
While climate anxiety is already well documented among older children, very little research has been done on younger age groups. Now a YouGov survey of over 600 children commissioned by Greenpeace UK shows worries about climate change are widespread among primary school children, with 78% saying they’re worried about it and over a quarter (27%) very worried.
A separate YouGov poll, also commissioned by Greenpeace UK, suggests that many teachers are finding it hard to deal with the emotional impact of this topic on children. 70% of primary teachers interviewed say they don’t have enough time in the school day to help students with concerns about climate change, and 82% say they would find lesson plans and resources to support students with these concerns useful.
To coincide with the findings and the start of Children’s Mental Health Week, Greenpeace UK has published new guides to help teachers and parents discuss the climate crisis with their pupils and children. Written by Caroline Hickman, a psychotherapist and leading researcher on eco-anxiety, the booklets provide simple advice on how to approach the subject in a way that’s both truthful and positive.
‘Everyone should have one’: This hack could save arguments at the charger
Story by Zane Dobie
Arguments about overstaying at an EV charger could soon be over with this Tesla owner’s invention.
Waiting to use an electric car charger when another vehicle occupying it has long finished topping up is a major bugbear for many owners – which is why Tesla has come up with a solution to fix it.
That fix, it seems, is as simple as a photo of a laminated piece of paper with an “estimated charging completion time” and the owner’s contact number on it. Who knew it was that easy?
Sharing a picture on the Tesla La Kopi Singapore Facebook group after discovering the sign at a public charger, a user wrote, “This is such a great idea! Hang a note on your car to inform anyone when you expect to be done with charging. Bravo to you!”.
The idea gained a lot of support in the comments section.
“Everyone should have one,” said one user.
“The car dealer should include this during car delivery,” said another.
…
Can you be fined for overstaying on an EV charger?
Over the past year, some charger suppliers have begun charging an ‘idle fee’ based on how long your car is left plugged in when it’s fully charged.
Telsa charges $0.50 per minute that you leave your car plugged in beyond your set charging parameters. This fee increases to $1 per minute when all other chargers are occupied.
I don’t know what to say to this. Putting a sign up doesn’t help you get your vehicle charged any faster.
Perhaps the problem they are trying to solve is preventing charger rage vandalism. Having a contact person to shout abuse at might reduce the risk of someone kicking dents into your expensive EV.
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