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.
The town of Nantucket, Massachusetts looks set to use one of the green left’s go-to legal strategies against a massive offshore wind farm supported by liberal environmentalists.
The town of Nantucket, Massachusetts looks set to use one of the green left’s go-to legal strategies against a massive offshore wind farm supported by liberal environmentalists.
Environmental groups have used “sue and settle” tactics — wherein plaintiffs sue an aligned administration to kill a disfavored project, which the aligned administration effectively does via settlement — for decades to impede infrastructure projects they oppose. Now, Nantucket is suing the Trump administration and alleging that key procedural laws were not followed in Biden-era approvals for the massive SouthCoast wind farm off the island’s coast, teeing up a potential “sue and settle” situation that could derail a major project supported by the green left.
Nantucket’s lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) as defendants, even though the Trump administration was not in power when the government approved SouthCoast Wind’s paperwork. If completed, the SouthCoast project will feature up to 147 massive wind turbine generators across a 199-square mile lease area located about 20 miles south of Nantucket.(RELATED: ‘David And Goliath’: Offshore Wind Opponents Ecstatic With Trump’s Day One Assault Against Industry)
The small island community argues that the Biden administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act on its way to greenlighting the development. Contrary to the Biden administration, the Trump administration is no friend of the offshore wind industry: President Donald Trump railed against offshore wind on the campaign trail, and some of his first acts upon taking office in January included temporarily withdrawing offshore wind lease areas and initiating a review of federal permitting for offshore wind.
“In a perfect world, of course there would be no ‘sue and settle.’ But we don’t live in a perfect world,” Steve Milloy, a senior policy fellow with the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Unfortunately, the left has put us in this war-like situation where extreme, extra-Constitutional means need to be used. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I think it’s excellent.”
Craig Rucker, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), told the DCNF that lawsuits like the one in Nantucket will provide the Trump administration easy opportunities t0 implement its anti-offshore wind agenda. CFACT is engaged in its own similar lawsuit against the government to try to stop the massive Dominion Energy offshore wind development off the Virginia coast.
“Clearly, it’s a real opportunity for the Trump administration to take advantage of citizen outrage over offshore wind. From our perspective, it would be welcomed if the Trump administration will settle with these people out of court and put an end to that project,” Rucker told the DCNF. “From our perspective, the Trump administration settling with these people in Massachusetts would be a good precedent, and we’d like to see the same thing happen in Virginia.”
Nantucket’s suit alleges specifically that the Biden BOEM “bypassed or shortchanged numerous required steps, shirked its responsibility to the public, and allowed corporate energy developers to dictate the terms of permitting.” Notably, Amanda Lefton — who ran BOEM for the Biden administration from February 2021 to February 2023 — went to work for a major offshore wind company several months after leaving the federal government.
Nantucket became a hotbed of anti-offshore wind activism after a turbine created by a different project in the region, Vineyard Wind, malfunctioned and shed debris into the surrounding waters. Some of that pollution later washed up on Nantucket’s beaches, forcing closures and enraging many locals.
Despite the environmental damage caused by supposedly green technology, many environmental groups subsequently defended the industry. More generally, many green groups support offshore wind as a means to fight climate change, even though many critics are concerned that offshore wind development may be responsible for the surge in whaledeaths observed along the East Coast in recent years.
SouthCoast Wind did not respond to a request for comment.
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We report here from time to time about Simone Peter. The former party leader of the Greens is now a lobbyist for renewable energies.
In this role, she writes a lot on social media and there also on X (formerly Twitter).
Attentive readers of this blog will certainly remember. We report here from time to time about Simone Peter. The former party leader of the Greens is now a lobbyist for renewable energies. In this role, she writes a lot on social media and there also on X (formerly Twitter).
With every catastrophe and every natural event, you can be clear that it puts it in a context with climate change (she doesn’t use the word, it’s always at least the climate crisis).
High temperatures in summer in Siberia, fires in Siberia or in Los Angeles, rainfall of any kind, storm surges on the North Sea, it is always the “man-made climate crisis”, other reasons are completely ruled out for her. So, Peter uses such events for PR, which is supposed to help the members of the association she leads, because the solution is always the same: Germany must build more wind turbines and more solar, this is the only way to prevent natural disasters all over the world, because according to their logic, they all depend on our behavior in Germany.
Scientists are certainly not happy about their latest statements, because Peter actually manages to put the earthquake in Southeast Asia into context with the climate.
Peter apparently refers to an article that the taz once published. She quickly followed up when some X users virtually showed her a bird.
When this load begins to melt noticeably, the continent begins to rise like a cork in water. The reason: The rock of the continents is less dense than that of the Earth’s mantle. And because fault zones run through the Earth’s crust, such load changes can also trigger earthquakes. “These load changes can increase the stresses in the Earth just as much as years of tectonic movements, and ultimately they can trigger earthquakes,” says Freymueller.
Actually, an old rush is being told here. Decreasing pressure can lead to uplifts of the earth’s crust. Very easy to see in Scandinavia. There the land rises. But we are talking about ice masses that had covered almost the entire area of Scandinavia and besides, these are processes that extended over long periods of time. The last ice age was 10,000 years ago, the ice layer in Scandinavia was up to 3,500 meters high.
But what Peter completely misses here: They are theses, and the scientists therefore use the words “may”, “could” or “seem” and “seems”.
Already in the beginning of the article the uncertainty is addressed by formulating it as a question.
I think we all agree that climate change plays a role in earthquake events,” says Niels Hovius, geomorphologist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam. “The only question is which aspect is really important.
For Peter, however, all this is settled, she cleverly puts the scientists’ thesis in a context to the recent earthquake, which is already very perfidious, because it has to do PR for her association, because it has the solution to all the problems of this world.
The causes of the current quake are named by the same institute to which the taz referred, and they are clearly named. They are also understandable. There is nothing about climate or melting glaciers. It is plate tectonics.
According to the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam, the earthquake occurred in the Sagaing Fault. Here, the Indian continental plate and the Eurasian plate are moving past each other at a speed of about 18 millimeters per year. Tensions are building up that are repeatedly discharged – as is now the case after a calmer phase that had lasted for almost 70 years, the German Research Centre for Geosciences explained. Its experts currently assume a fracture length of more than 200 kilometers.
It wouldn’t be so bad if Peter didn’t also have a scientific education behind him. It was biology, but it should actually know the difference between scientific and non-scientific. Why she still makes such strange postings remains absolutely mysterious. Your association is doing splendidly, the subsidies are pouring into billions and there is no danger in sight that this will change. So there is no reason to make connections that do not exist. But we can also assume in 2025 that no matter what natural disaster occurs, the lobbyist will make a connection with the climate and also know the solution right away. More wind power and solar in Germany.
In this post I examine the proxies used to compare CO2 to temperature from 66 million years ago (Ma) until today and comment on the quality of the comparison. In addition, we look at the Cenozoic plate tectonic events that affected global climate. Figure 1 compares Westerhold et al.’s deep-sea d18O (the Oxygen-18 isotope anomaly, a temperature proxy) to the d13C (the Carbon-13 isotope anomaly), both measurements are from the same fossils, so they can be directly compared. One of the problems with many temperature/CO2 plots is often they are from different sources and locations and due to dating errors and differing temporal resolutions, they are not directly comparable. While d13C is not a direct CO2 estimate, it is related to the CO2 concentration in the deep ocean. Atmospheric and ocean CO2 concentration estimates are compared to d13C in figure 2.
Figure 1. Deep-sea d18O temperature in blue compared to d13C proxies in orange for the Cenozoic. Both temperature and d13C increase upward. Data from (Westerhold, et al., 2020).
Major plate tectonic events are noted in figure 1 and a conversion from d18O to deep sea temperature is given in blue on the left. The highest temperatures in the Cenozoic are from the early Eocene (~56-48 Ma) when deep sea temperature exceeded 12°C higher than today. This was accompanied by a dramatic drop in deep-sea CO2. As already mentioned, d13C is not an estimate of CO2 concentration, but related to it. Proxy estimates of CO2 from Rae, et al. are compared to Westerhold’s d13C estimates in figure 2.
Figure 2. Westerhold’s d13C compared to Rae’s CO2 concentration for the Cenozoic. The d13C data are from (Westerhold, et al., 2020) and the CO2 proxy data are from (Rae, et al., 2021). The two values measure different things and are independent.
The match in figure 2 is not great and both datasets have problems, but the similarities in trends are obvious. The estimates of CO2 concentration reported by Rae, et al. are discontinuous and from a variety of proxies that are dated by many different authors with many different techniques. It is clear from the scatter that the assumption that CO2 is evenly distributed globally is not applicable at this compressed time scale. Notice the PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) carbon isotope excursion (CIE) event at ~56 Ma shows up dramatically in both records. This large divergence in the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 is a prominent global rock-record phenomenon and a reliable geological time marker that occurred between 55.6 and 55.4 Ma. Possible reasons for the CIE and the PETM are discussed here. This geological event and the following warm period comprise the most dramatic climatic event in the Cenozoic.
One important event at the beginning of the PETM, between 56 and 55.6 Ma, was the North Atlantic Igneous Province or “NAIP” volcanism. This was a huge series of volcanic eruptions that accompanied the opening of the North Atlantic and placed over 5 km of lava between Greenland and northern Europe (Stokke, et al., 2020). It nearly turned the North Sea into a lake. But, regardless of the reasons for the PETM and the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO, ~56-48 Ma) period, they are very noticeable in the rock record and easily identifiable in geological sections all over the world.
After the EECO, deep-sea temperatures begin a long decline. At first CO2 increases, but at the beginning of the Oligocene it begins to decline, with the decline becoming more dramatic in the Middle Miocene.
Major Plate Tectonic Events in the Cenozoic
During the PETM and in the warm period that followed it, the continents were configured as shown in figure 3.
Figure 3. The configuration of the continents 56 Ma. Source: Christopher Scotese, 2019. The white line shows the low-latitude connection between all the oceans and the text at the top was added by the author.
Notice that all the oceans are connected by a seaway in the lower and middle northern latitudes, it is marked with a white line. India is moving through the Indian Ocean and on its way to collide with Asia. The Arctic is probably isolated by land and the Southern Ocean is blocked by land masses connecting South America and Australia to Antarctica. This is the warmest planetary configuration and the EECO, is classified as a “hothouse” climate by both Christopher Scotese (Scotese, Song, Mills, & Meer, 2021) and Westerhold, et al. Hothouse climates have global average temperatures (land and ocean) above 20°C and there is no year-round ice on either pole.
The next major event is when India collides with Asia, this occurs between 46 and 44 Ma as shown in figure 4. The collision began as early as 59 Ma, but marine fossils in Himalayan sediments don’t disappear until 45 Ma (Hu, et al., 2016).
Figure 4. India collides with Asia. Source Chris Scotese, 2019. Circle and text added by the author.
Coincident with this collision is some modest cooling and an increase in CO2. As the Himalayas grow after this collision, they begin to cause planetary waves (more specifically orographic gravity waves) that can dramatically affect Northern Hemispheric weather (Trenberth & Chen, 1988) and (Kuchar, et al., 2022). Planetary waves impact the northern polar vortex, which is a major determinant of Northern Hemispheric winter weather.
The next major event is the opening of the Drake Passage which connects the Southern Ocean all around Antarctica. This event is very gradual, but appears to be complete by 34 Ma, as shown in figure 5. Like most ocean passage openings or closings, it is hard to pin down and estimates of when it opened vary from 49 to 17 Ma. Antarctic ice began to grow about 44 Ma, and by 34 Ma the ice cap is complete. This coincides with a dramatic decline in global temperature and a drop in CO2.
Figure 5. Drake Passage opens and connects all the Southern Ocean. Source Chistopher Scotese, 2019b.
The next major event occurs around 31 Ma when the eastern Mediterranean is cut off from the Indian Ocean as shown in figure 6. The timing of the separation of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean is often debated and could have happened as late as 14 Ma, we prefer an earlier closing, sometime between 31 and 24 Ma. Sedimentology suggests the latest possible closure date was 24 Ma.
Figure 6. The closing of the eastern Mediterranean. Source Chris Scotese, 2019.
Next, around 17 Ma, the North Atlantic fully opens and connects to the Arctic. Panama probably begins to close at this time restricting the connection between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the western Mediterranean closes at Spain. The western Mediterranean might have closed as late as 6 Ma, but certainly it was severely restricted by 17 Ma. These events coincide with a dramatic drop in global temperatures and deep-sea CO2. The events are circled in figure 7. The North Atlantic opening is completed by about 13 Ma, the full and permanent closing of Panama is not complete until around 3 Ma.
Figure 7. The North Atlantic begins to open, Panama begins to close, and Spain connects to Morocco. Chris Scotese, 2019.
These very dramatic events coincide with a steep drop in temperature and CO2 that ends the Middle-Miocene Climatic Optimum. The closing of the Isthmus of Panama takes a long time, and exactly when it finally closed is the subject of much debate (Coates & Stallard, 2013), but the closure is certainly complete by 3 Ma as shown in figure 8.
Figure 8. Panama closes. Source Chistopher Scotese, 2019b. The final closure of the Panama seaway is coincident with a dramatic drop in global temperature as we descend into the Pleistocene ice age.
Conclusions
Long-term climate changes have many causes, but one of the major factors is plate tectonics and continental drift. When the continents and oceans are oriented north-south as they are today, which restricts west-east (zonal) air flow and encourages north-south (meridional) air flow, the world is colder. The opposite is the case when west-east flow is encouraged by open ocean connections in the mid- to low-latitudes as shown in figure 3.
Another major influence on long-term climate change are the Milankovitch cycles (also see here). The influence of plate tectonics on climate change is very long-term, on the order of tens of millions of years, whereas the Milankovitch cycles work on the order of hundreds of thousands of years. Shorter periods of change are normally related to changes in the Sun itself, these work on periods shorter than a few thousand years.
In the Westerhold study where the excellent data plotted in figure 1 came from, the authors noticed a strong correlation between the astronomical Milankovitch cycles of 21, 41, 100, and 405 thousand years (kyr) length and patterns in their global deep-sea d18O and d13C data. Because the repeating Milankovitch astronomical cycles are computable and more reliable and accurate than any other dating technique, they used them to sequence and date the data plotted in figure 1. Their description of how this worked is in section 5 (“Astrochronology”) of their supplementary materials. For records older than 20 Ma only the longer eccentricity cycles could be used. The most prominent and stable cycle was the 405 kyr eccentricity cycle.
Westerhold, et al. conclude that their chronology is accurate to ±100 kyrs for the Pleistocene and Eocene, ±50 kyrs for the Oligocene, ±10 kyrs for the Miocene and Pleistocene. This sort of accuracy is remarkable if true, and it seems reasonable given their technique.
Comparing the known Cenozoic climate changes with Scotese’s plate tectonic reconstruction shows a coincidence of major climate changes with large geological events on a scale of many millions of years. Thus, it is easy, and logical, to conclude that the geological events caused the longer-term changes. I found it very encouraging that Westerhold, et al. could “see” the Milankovitch astronomical cycles in their deep-sea fossil records so clearly that they could be used for dating them. One of the biggest problems with comparing CO2 records to temperature records is that the CO2 records are made using different samples that must be dated separately from the temperature proxy samples. This gives me a lot more confidence in the d13C data in figures 1 and 2 than in the Rae, et al. data shown in figure 2. Further the prominent gaps in the Rae et al. CO2 data leaves too much to the imagination.
Westerhold’s deep-sea d13C proxy is not a direct CO2 proxy, but it can be paired directly with the d18O temperature proxy, and it is continuous. These characteristics make it superior to other CO2 proxies in my opinion.
I should note that the exact timing of the major plate tectonic events discussed in this post is the subject of furious debate in the geological community (Hu, et al., 2016; Torfstein & Steinberg, 2020, Coates & Stallard, 2013). The precise dates when India collided with Asia, the Isthmus of Panama closed, or the North Atlantic opened to the Arctic are not known. They occured over millions of years and different geological studies can reasonably provide different dates depending upon the data used. Thus, the dates given in this study are just based on my best judgement and are open for debate.
Maritime bosses warn ‘nonsensical’ measures could sink the British fishing industry overnight.
Tax deduction planning concept. Businessman calculating business balance prepare tax reduction. taxes paid by individuals and corporations such as VAT, income tax and property tax.
Now the Net Zero lunatics are coming for your boats!
The Telegraph report:
Labour is implementing stricter net zero measures on fishing boats, canal barges and pleasure craft, The Telegraph can reveal.
Under the maritime decarbonisation strategy, boat owners will be forced to swap out diesel engines, petrol generators and wood-fired stoves for electric motors, batteries and extra shore power hookups.
Richard Gregson, the owner of Worcester-based Classic Yacht Brokerage, said: “It’s complete nonsense to have net zero on yachts.
“The technology for electric engines on small boats isn’t really there. The amount of diesel a yacht burns in a year is negligible, and even if the diesel engines were replaced it would be offset by the making of electric batteries.”
For most, barges, yachts and pleasure boats are hobbies. Where on earth does the Government think ordinary people, who have skimped and scraped to renovate and maintain them, will get the money from to replace engines, batteries and the rest of the nonsense?
As for fisherman, this mad crusade will end up destroying their livelihoods.
Domestic energy policy blunders from politicians on all sides are killing Australia’s manufacturing industry.
‘The big lie’: Why governments can’t deliver cheaper power
Political leaders have been promising lower power bills for two decades. But with the energy transition in full swing, it’s high time they came clean about its true costs.
Ryan Cropp Energy and climate reporter Mar 27, 2025 – 5.00am
Since the early 2010s, when Australia’s climate wars began in earnest, practically every federal political leader has at some point in the electoral cycle pledged to do something about power prices. Very rarely have they followed through.
The Albanese government is the latest to walk into the trap. On Tuesday night, Treasurer Jim Chalmers offered up a third round of electricity rebates, in part to cover its tracks after its ill-fated 2022 election promise to reduce bills by $275 was overtaken by events – albeit largely beyond their control.
Not to be deterred, though, the Coalition is heading into the federal election selling an equally ill-advised counterclaim that its policy to replace Australia’s coal power stations with seven government-owned nuclear power stations will lower power bills by 44 per cent.
…
But whichever way you slice it, Australia’s energy system is at a crossroads. It is reliant upon an ageing and increasingly unreliable fleet of coal-fired power stations that will eventually need to be replaced. Whether governments choose to do that with renewables, nuclear or something else entirely, it’s going to cost a lot of money.
Australia’s energy infrastructure is not “at a crossroads”, it is on the verge of falling apart. Decrepit power systems have been maintained well beyond their expected end of life, because decades of hostile regulatory policies have deterred investment in new generators.
Labor’s 2021 Powering Australia Plan, released prior to the last federal election, promised that Australians would save $275 on their residential electricity bills by 2025 and $379 by 2030.
…
Last week, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) announced that electricity bills will rise by up to 9% from 1 July. The largest jump will be seen in NSW (up to 9%), whereas QLD will see prices rise by up to 6%.
…
Incitec Pivot has downsized its fertiliser production because of high energy costs. It closed its Gibson facility in Queensland in 2022, impacting 170 jobs. Incitec’s Geelong fertiliser business also closed last year, costing 40 jobs.
…
Last year, Australia’s last major plastics manufacturer, Qenos, closed due to high energy costs, making Australia wholly reliant on imported plastics from China.
Australia’s only architectural glass manufacturer, Oceania Glass, closed last week after 169 years of operation.
The article blames gas exports for high prices, but why are gas companies prioritising exports over domestic consumption? Sometimes at a lower paper profit?
The answer is obvious – the export market is safer and more predictable. Exporters know when they sign those contracts that they will make money.
While in theory the export market is just as vulnerable to government tinkering as the domestic market, in practice the integrity of the gas export market is protected by angry foreigners who threaten massive economic retaliation whenever Aussie politicians try to interfere.
There have also been hints gas giants will play the “Atlas Shrugged” card if the Aussie Government gets too interventionist. Argentina in particular is attracting attention as an alternative to Australia, they have vast, underexploited gas reserves. Pro-business President Milei, often described as the Argentina’s answer to President Trump, is pushing hard for businesses to invest in the vast Vaca Muerta shale gas field (estimated reserve 308 trillion cubic feet). While Argentina is not currently a serious player in the gas export market, and faces onto the Atlantic rather than the Pacific, it won’t take long for solutions to be found if there is sufficient demand. In a few years, Asia will no longer need to look to Australia for gas.
In the face of this threat of imminent demand destruction, why is Australia being such a troublesome gas export partner?
The reason for all this political foolishness is no mainstream Australian political leader is focussed on prosperity. With a few honourable exceptions, politicians on all sides of the Australian political spectrum are obsessed with tinkering with energy policy, trying to create an energy policy with offends the least number of voters, instead of an energy policy which works.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Australia could easily have the best of both worlds, by using cheap coal for domestic industrial energy, especially brown coal, which is immune to international price changes because nobody else wants it and letting international trading partners have all the gas they want. Japan, which desperately needs gas, might be persuaded to stick with Australia instead of diverting development resources to places like Argentina. They might even be persuaded to build some new high efficiency coal power plants at rock bottom prices, in return for better long-term access to Australian gas – if Australia acts quickly enough.
The mainstream opposition plan for a government funded nuclear programme is a step up from the incoherent renewable energy plans of the incumbents, but crisis hit Aussie manufacturing needs a solution which delivers now, not in 20 years. Nuclear will do nothing in the short term to alleviate the pain of Australian energy prices.
The long-term benefits of nuclear are dubious for a nation like Australia. Nuclear is a viable technology, but Australia has lots of coal. The upfront capital costs of nuclear power are much greater than coal. With the opposition proposed government funded nuclear programme, all the capital cost of building nuclear power plants will pile onto Australia’s national debt, just as baby boom demographics are starting to bite. Even if the nuclear plants are completed, the cost of energy produced by nuclear plants will be significantly higher than coal – especially in a nation which is sitting on a mountain of accessible, shovel ready coal resources.
Don’t get me wrong, there are places in Australia where nuclear makes sense, where remoteness and a lack of local fossil fuel energy resources tips the balance firmly in favour of nuclear. Advances in nuclear energy could alter this balance further. But where coal is available, Australia needs a solution which delivers today, not 20 years from now, otherwise there will be no manufacturing industry to rescue.
Even if you think I am wrong about nuclear, we need something to tide us over while the nuclear plants are being built. Nuclear power plant construction is not something which should be rushed, especially in a nation as inexperienced as Australia.
The next Aussie federal election is 3rd May 2025. But whichever mainstream party wins, Australian manufacturers will lose. This Aussie federal election provides no prospect for relief for what is left of Australia’s manufacturing industry.
Peter and Anne Watts made headlines when they became one of around four British households to have an air-source heat pump fitted in 2008.
That Mr and Mrs Watts, 88 and 82 respectively, had installed a heat pump a decade before the likes of Boris Johnson seized upon them as the future of home heating was highly unusual
“Peter and Anne Watts made headlines when they became one of around four British households to have an air-source heat pump fitted in 2008.
That Mr and Mrs Watts, 88 and 82 respectively, had installed a heat pump a decade before the likes of Boris Johnson seized upon them as the future of home heating was highly unusual.
“We had a reporter up from the local paper asking us about our solar panels and our heat pump,” recalls Mr Watts.“In the days afterwards, we got a call from the BBC – I thought it was a prank call from the neighbours.”
Yet 17 years on, the pump is nearing the end of its lifespan – and the price tag for a replacement is £17,000, around £10,000 more than they paid for their original.”
“There’s a link between the climate crisis and earthquakes,” former German Green Party leader suggests.
Image generated by Grok AI
Germany’s online Apollo News here reports on what Germany’s former Green Party leader, Simone Peter, suggests a cause of the huge earthquake in Southeast Asia: climate change.
And Europeans better worry about that, she adds!
According to Apollo, Ms. Peter bases her claim on an article that once appeared in the German leftist TAZ newspaper, which reported how a geologist speculated that melting of glaciers could possibly trigger earthquakes.
Ms. Peter reacted to the earthquake: “Wow, the massive quake in Myanmar and Thailand was also measurable in Europe.” … ‘“We know that earthquakes will continue to increase with the climate crisis, this is worrying for many parts of the world.”
“Geologists are increasingly in agreement that there is a link between the climate crisis and earthquakes,” she continued.
If Peter’s claims haven’t convinced you by now that the “climate crisis” is a hoax perpetrated by greens and leftists, then nothing will. Consider yourself scientifically hopeless.
By choosing the “best” models and estimates of CO2 fluxes (those which best explain year-to-year changes in atmospheric CO2 content as measured at Mauna Loa, HI) for the period 1959-2023 as provided by the Global Carbon Project, a multiple linear regression of yearly Mauna Loa CO2 changes against those “best” estimates of sources and sinks leads to the following alterations to the “official ” Global Carbon Project estimates of the sources and sinks leading to the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.
By choosing the “best” models and estimates of CO2 fluxes (those which best explain year-to-year changes in atmospheric CO2 content as measured at Mauna Loa, HI) for the period 1959-2023 as provided by the Global Carbon Project, a multiple linear regression of yearly Mauna Loa CO2 changes against those “best” estimates of sources and sinks leads to the following alterations to the “official ” Global Carbon Project estimates of the sources and sinks leading to the observed rise in atmospheric CO2. (NOTE: being a statistical exercise, this does not constitute “proof” … these are just some areas that carbon budget modelers might want to look into when tweaking their models):
Global anthropogenic CO2 emissions appear to be 30% larger than reported (I find this hard to believe… again, statistics are not necessarily proof).
The Land Sink of CO2 has been underestimated by an average of about 25%
The Ocean Sink of CO2 has been overestimated by about 20% (I don’t know whether they include CO2 outgassing).
The Land Use source of CO2 (primarily biomass burning) has been overestimated by about a factor of 2 (very uncertain)
The cement carbonation sink has been underestimated by about a factor of 7 (very uncertain)
There is a remaining unknown CO2 sink that has averaged 0.2 ppm/yr during 1959-2023 (this could just be a residual of other statistical errors).
Background
Many researchers have spent their careers trying to estimate the various global sources and sinks of atmospheric CO2. The main net sources are anthropogenic emissions (including cement production) and land use (mainly biomass burning). The main CO2 sinks are land (vegetation and soil storage), the ocean (mixing the “excess” atmospheric CO2 downward… biological uptake remains largely unknown), and cement carbonation (old cement absorbs atmospheric CO2).
The Global Carbon Project (GCP) periodically summarizes various estimates of these sources and sinks and produces easily accessible spreadsheets of the data. I suppose for political expediency (don’t insult your peers), the GCP (like the IPCC does for climate models) just takes virtually all of the estimates of CO2 fluxes and averages them together to produce a single “best” estimate of specific fluxes on a yearly basis. For example, they average 20 (!) different land models result for yearly net CO2 fluxes into the land surface (I say “into” because the current atmospheric “excess” of CO2, around 50% above pre-Industrial levels, causes the land and ocean to be net sinks of CO2).
What I Did
But since I am not part of the global carbon budget research community, I can pick and choose which models and data-based estimates I use. Some of these models are better than others at explaining the yearly increase in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and here I will provide an analysis using only the best estimates.
(Now, some researchers believe that an average of all estimates will be better than any individual estimates. I don’t believe that… and neither should you. As a simple example, you can’t make a better estimate of something by averaging a good estimate with a bad estimate.)
So, what I did was to examine how well each individual model estimate (or sometimes an observational estimate) helped to explain the yearly CO2 increases at Mauna Loa. I then chose the best ones and averaged them together. Then I regress the yearly CO2 changes at Mauna Loa against these averages. As Fig. 1 shows, this produces a much better estimate of the Mauna Loa CO2 record than the GCP estimates of CO2 fluxes based upon all available estimates from various sources.
Now, to be fair, part of this better agreement comes from the statistical regression. The GCP estimates (quite admirably) use all of the available estimates based upon physics and parameterizations and then sees how well the results match the Mauna Loa record. And they even include the yearly “residual” in their spreadsheet to show how well (or how poorly) the models fit the data. Kudos.
But I used the best models and estimates, and then use multiple linear regression, to see how closely the data can be fit to the Mauna Loa observations. Again, the year-to-year changes in observed CO2 concentrations are statistically related to the sources and sinks of CO2 which come from (1) anthropogenic emissions, (2) land use emissions, (3) land vegetative and soil uptake, (4) ocean uptake, and (5) cement carbonation (old cement removes CO2 from the atmosphere).
The results give a total regression model explained variance of 81%. The regression coefficients tell us whether the individual CO2 budget terms (sources and sinks of CO2) have been underestimated or overestimated. If the terms equal +1 (for sources) or -1 (for sinks), then the model estimates of the yearly CO2 sources and sinks are (on average) unbiased in their explanation of yearly CO2 changes at Mauna Loa.
Again I emphasize that such statistical results can be misleading. Errors in one term’s regression coefficient can cause errors in other terms’ coefficients. But regression analysis can also sometimes can reveal insights into what physics might be missing. I have seen both in my 40 years of doing such calculations.
Here are the results:
Global Anthropogenic Emissions: Coefficient = 1.3 (+/-0.22) This suggests anthropogenic emissions have been underestimated by about 30%. I find this hard to believe. Energy use is pretty well known. Maybe the cement production source has been underestimated?
Global Land Use: Coefficient = 0.43 (+/-0.45) This suggests land use emissions have been overestimated (but the coefficient uncertainty is large). Also, if there is little skill in a term, a lower coefficient will result due to the “regression to the mean” effect. This result suggests to me that yearly land use as a source of CO2 remains very uncertain.
Global Land Sink: Coefficient = -1.26 (+/-0.16). This suggests the land (mainly vegetation) sink has been underestimated by maybe 25%. The error is the coefficient is pretty small, so I think this result is significant.
Global Ocean Sink: Coefficient = -0.80 (+/- 0.49) This suggests the ocean sink has been overestimated (but with rather large uncertainty) by about 20%. I haven’t looked at whether these ocean models include CO2 outgassing as the temperature rises (a small effect). I’m not convinced that this coefficient is significantly different than 1.0, which would be the case if the models are unbiased in their estimates of the ocean sink.
Cement Carbonation Sink: (-7.3 +/-4.9) This suggests the CO2 uptake by old cement has been greatly underestimated (but with large uncertainty). This is a surprisingly large number, and I don’t know what to make of it.
I’m not convinced of most of these conclusions, except maybe the vegetation sink of CO2 being underestimated by the models. There have been recent papers published finding some vegetation uptake processes have been underestimated by the models.
The global anthropogenic emissions source being underestimated is also intriguing. Being greater than 1, the 1.3 coefficient is the opposite of what we would get from regression if the yearly anthropogenic emissions estimates were poor. So, I’m inclined to believe this is real.
Anyway, this was an quick-and-dirty exercise. Maybe 4 hours of my time. You can access the GCP data spreadsheet here.
P.S. I’m sure someone will ask about adding various natural factors: for example, global surface temperature (land and/or ocean). Yes, that can be done.
With 1.4 billion energy-hungry citizens, India stands at the epicenter of the geopolitics of energy and climate policy. As the world’s third-largest energy consumer and projected to have the fastest growth in demand over the next two decades, the subcontinent’s choices reverberate far beyond its borders.
With 1.4 billion energy-hungry citizens, India stands at the epicenter of the geopolitics of energy and climate policy. As the world’s third-largest energy consumer and projected to have the fastest growth in demand over the next two decades, the subcontinent’s choices reverberate far beyond its borders.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that India will account for a staggering 25% of growth in global energy demand by 2040, driven by rapid industrialization, urbanization, and an expanding middle class.
By 2050, India’s electricity demand alone could represent a major chunk of the world’s total, while its appetite for oil and natural gas is set to soar, the former potentially adding many million barrels per day to global oil consumption. Not to forget, the nation’s ambitions for technological development — particularly of data centers — promise to push the requirement for energy to stratospheric levels.
With the reemergence of a hydrocarbon-friendly administration in Donald Trump’s second term, India sees a golden opportunity to bolster its energy security. Trump’s revival of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports and his ethos of “drill, baby, drill” align perfectly with India’s unapologetic pursuit of reliable, affordable energy.
Far from bending to the green agenda peddled at United Nations summits, India is now betting big on U.S. hydrocarbons — LNG, West Texas Intermediate crude, and more — to fuel its economic ascent.
India’s Reacts to Trump’s LNG Revival
The Trump administration’s decision to lift the Biden-era ban on LNG export permits has opened opportunities for India. “Their (Washington’s) decision to lift the ban will improve LNG supply, and we will revive our plans to either buy a stake or buy U.S. LNG under long-term deals,” declared the chairman of GAIL, Ltd., India’s state-owned gas utility.
Already the world’s fourth-largest LNG importer, India aims to boost natural gas’s share in its energy mix from less than 7% to 15% by 2030 — a target that demands a doubling of LNG imports to roughly 65 billion cubic meters annually, according to the IEA. Domestic production being unable to keep pace with demand, U.S. LNG is poised to fill the gap.
With respect to crude oil, India’s strategic calculus is equally evident. To mitigate trade imbalances and foster stronger bilateral ties, New Delhi is contemplating a fixed quota for importing U.S. crude, specifically Western Texas Intermediate product.
India imports 88% of its crude oil, a dependency that exposes it to global price volatility and geopolitical whims. In 2023-24, imports of crude from the U.S. were ranked fifth, trailing Russia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Sourced primarily from Texas’s Permian Basin, American oil could displace one of the top four, which would count as a score for Trump’s “America First” agenda.
Why U.S. Over Venezuela, Iran and Russia?
India’s pivot to U.S. hydrocarbons is not only about seizing opportunity but also about dodging risk. Three traditional suppliers — Venezuela, Iran and Russia — pose headaches that American energy sidesteps.
Take Venezuela: Once a significant supplier to India, its shipments have dwindled under U.S. sanctions since 2019. Hopes of a revival were in the cards as imports surged to a four-year peak in 2024. However, Trump is now planning to impose a 25% tariff on exports from any nation buying Venezuelan oil.
Instability of Iranian supplies is equally unappealing. With Middle East tensions simmering, India can ill afford an entanglement in American-led “maximum pressure” campaigns against the Iranian nuclear program.
Russia, meanwhile, is a complex equation for India. Moscow has been a lifeline since 2022, supplying 40% of India’s crude at steep discounts after imposition of Western sanctions over Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Imports hit 1.91 million barrels per day in the first half of India’s 2024-25 fiscal year.
But geopolitical tensions and supply chain risks loom large. A Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Kropotkinskaya pumping station in February disrupted flows via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, cutting global supply from Russia by up to 380,000 barrels daily.
The U.S., by contrast, offers stability. No sanctions, no drone strikes — just a flood of oil and gas from a partner eager to sell.
For a nation where 800 million still use biomass such as wood and animal dung for cooking and per capita electricity consumption is a third of the global average, energy security is non-negotiable while “climate guilt” is a foolish distraction. Energy poverty kills more than does an imaginary climate crisis.
Meanwhile, Trump’s vision for development of American energy offers India a supercharger for its economy — exactly opposite the hollow promises of climate politics.
This commentary was first published at American Thinker on March 27, 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.
At their February public meeting, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a Section 206 petition, which argued that the PJM tariff is unjust or unreasonable (or both, I suppose) because it doesn’t include rules that allow for locating generation sources near or at data centers.
At their February public meeting, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a Section 206 petition, which argued that the PJM tariff is unjust or unreasonable (or both, I suppose) because it doesn’t include rules that allow for locating generation sources near or at data centers.
Let me commend FERC for finally engaging on the crucial issue of how we might be able to power the data centers which will be essential to the United States’ efforts to win the artificial intelligence race. Welcome to the fray.
Let me also commend FERC for issuing the equivalent of a vote of no confidence in an organized market. I’m not sure it is the first such vote, but it is definitely the first time that FERC has acknowledged that an organized market may be able to meet the challenge posed by an absolute requirement for the construction of more power and more reliable power in a prompt manner.
The Section 206 issued to PJM is an acknowledgment that the current regulatory model is unlikely to produce the results that the nation needs in this moment; that PJM, as currently configured, is not likely to lead to the building of enough generation in time.
What makes it worse for PJM is that the Commission is not the only one who has lost confidence. In January, in the wake of last Summer’s auction where prices jumped 800%, Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania decided that PJM needed more generation. Mr. Shapiro warned in a January open letter to PJM that price escalation “threatens to undermine public confidence in PJM as an institution.”
In response to his letter, PJM wrote that it had long warned about potential supply shortfalls during periods of high demand, blaming “state and federal policy decisions that are pushing generators to retire prematurely” and “unprecedented and rapidly growing data center construction.” In short, the problem was that customers were actually starting to ask for generation from generators.
PJM ultimately energetically argued that that the “market” would take care of the problem. Just kidding. What really happened is that PJM quickly folded and set a price cap for its next two capacity auctions.
The Section 206 petition filed by the Commission is a bit more comprehensive than the back and forth between Governor Shapiro and the hopelessly outmatched PJM. For those of you who think it is liable to be fixed quickly, the Commission’s petition wrapped up with 6 single-spaced pages of questions (39 questions in total) to the world. They varied in complexity from simple questions that can’t be answered (“Please explain whether the existing Tariff rules are sufficient to ensure resource adequacy if increasing numbers of large existing generators choose to co-locate with load.”) to complicated questions that won’t be answered (“Please explain whether or not it would be appropriate to establish an interconnection study outside of PJM’s interconnection queue process for newly interconnecting co-location arrangements . . . “).
We’ve been at this question of data center demand for more than a year now and are just getting around to asking questions that get near the core of the problem, which is, of course, that many places generally, and PJM specifically, appear to have given up completely on building generation, no matter how loud the message from the capacity market gets.
The original sin is, as always, that no one seems to be responsible for reliability. Generators aren’t, otherwise, they would be building powerplants. The people who run PJM aren’t; they weren’t elected or appointed by anyone and therefore are not accountable to anyone in particular. The capacity markets are obviously not getting the job done either.
The demand driven by data centers – and the urgency to win the artificial intelligence race now – has exposed the flaws in the slow, sclerotic, self-absorbed system. FERC and its progeny in Valley Forge are completely happy to live in their co-dependent relationship, tossing pieces of paper back and forth to one another.
For the rest of us, though, winning the race to the commanding economic and national security heights of the next three generations is too important to be left to organizations that can’t even decide who might be in charge of system reliability, and whose sense of urgency and clarity results in six pages worth of questions, the answers to which will spawn even more questions and the inevitable litigation.
The system is broken. It is not going to be fixed by pretending that FERC orders get powerplants built.
What we need – and are not likely to get from a FERC-driven process – is some sort of variance or off-ramp to our current approaches that allow builders and their customers to build generation (and buy power) without having to wander through the maze of rules, customs, and folkways embedded in some organized markets.
Until we get something that looks like that, we will continue to struggle with reliability, with costs, and with concerns about our national competitiveness.
Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies, advises utilities, merchant generators, and transmission companies. He was deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs under President Trump.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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