03/09/2025 – Climate- Science.press

Cyclone Alfred: Climate Disaster or Inadequate Flood Control?

Cyclone Alfred, Australia’s big East Coast cyclone was until recently hyped as a symptom of the climate apocalypse. But doomsayers are facing another disappointment from nature.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Cyclone Alfred, Australia’s big East Coast cyclone was until recently hyped as a symptom of the climate apocalypse. But doomsayers are facing another disappointment from nature.

Is climate change supercharging Tropical Cyclone Alfred as it powers towards Australia?

Cyclone Alfred formed in the Coral Sea towards the end of February when sea surface temperatures were almost 1C hotter than usual

Tropical Cyclone Alfred is due to hit south-east Queensland some time on Saturday morning, bringing the risk of destructive winds, extreme flooding and storm surges to millions of people around Brisbane, the Gold Coast and northern New South Wales.

After last year was recorded as the hottest on record around the world, and the hottest for Australia’s oceans, what role could the climate crisis be playing in Tropical Cyclone Alfred and its impacts?

…Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/06/is-climate-change-supercharging-tropical-cyclone-alfred-as-it-powers-towards-australia

Fortunately Cyclone Alfred is turning into a fizzle. A powerful storm which will bring lots of rain and flooding, but no longer a catastrophic cyclone.

AS IT HAPPENED: Cyclone Alfred downgraded as it nears coast, expected to cross between Maroochydore and Brisbane; Albanese scraps plan for April election; ‘Dangerous times ahead’ as wind, rain hammer millions

By Adam Vidler Daniel Jeffrey Emily Bennett Yashee Sharma 12:30am Mar 8, 2025

Tropical Cyclone Alfred downgraded

By Karishma Sarkari07 Mar 2025 23:25

Cyclone Alfred has been downgraded to a category 1 storm in the latest advice issued by the Bureau of Meteorology.

The system is moving north-west at 9km/h, pushing back the timing it’s forecast to cross the coast.

Alfred is still on track to cross over the Moreton Bay Islands early on Saturday morning before crossing the mainland coast between Brisband and Maroochydore later in the day.

The cyclone is forecast to weaken as it moves inland late Saturday and Sunday.

While damaging wind gusts up to 120km/h and heavy to intense rainfall is still forecast, bringing the possibility of life-threatening flash flooding, the weather bureau says destructive wind gusts are no longer expected.

…Read more:

https://www.9news.com.au/national/tropical-cyclone-alfred-live-updates-tracker-queensland-power-outages-evacuations-latest-news-headlines/13081401-e614-459c-b757-a972f4037c5d#post=6854bfed-e01d-443d-b2c2-874df6f99ceb

Are Aussie cyclones becoming more frequent?

The following is a rather confused statement from the Australian CSIRO, Australia’s peak scientific body. Cyclone frequency is declining, but their broken theories suggest cyclone frequency should be rising.

3. Has the frequency of tropical cyclones changed?

Research has shown a statistically-significant downward trend in the annual number of tropical cyclones in the Australian region over the period extending from 1981/82 to 2017/18, during the period of satellite images. The reasons for this downward trend are still being determined but are likely to be due to a combination of both natural variability and longer-term climate change. Additional non-satellite observations suggest there has also been a longer-term reduction in the number of tropical cyclones since 1900.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s satellite record is relatively short and there have been changes in the historical methods of analysis. Combined with the high variability in tropical cyclone numbers and influences of natural variability such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, it makes it difficult to attribute trends to any single factor.

However, it is clear that sea surface temperatures off the northern Australian coast have increased – part of a significant warming of the oceans that has been observed in the past 50 years due to increases in greenhouse gases. Warmer oceans tend to increase the amount of moisture that gets transported from the ocean to the atmosphere, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and so there is a greater potential for intense rainfall events with tropical cyclones.

…Read more:

https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2025/March/things-to-know-about-tropical-cyclones

Obviously, the risk of damaging floods is still a serious concern, and the remnants of the cyclone may dump a lot of water into Brisbane’s rivers or other low laying areas. But there may be another explanation for why that flood risk in Brisbane is so severe.

From a few days ago;

…

‘Anxiously watching’: Huge Cyclone call made

Even though South East Queensland’s dams are almost full, not a single litre of water will be released until Alfred’s predicted 600mm of rain starts to fall.

“We don’t always know when and where rain will fall,” a Seqwater spokesperson told The Courier-Mail.

“Our 24/7 Flood Operations Centre is mobilised and – pending rainfall – is prepared to make controlled, gated releases later this week if required.”

…Read more:

https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/technology/environment/no-south-east-queensland-dam-releases-until-rain-from-cyclone-alfred-begins/news-story/be556f1df0aaa66a41bbd3fac8549fda

Why are dam operators being ordered to cling on to every drop of water until the last possible moment? The reason of course, is not enough dam capacity. As Brisbane and other Queensland city populations have boomed, there has been little interest in providing water resources to match the growing population. The result is dam operators have to hang on to every drop of water, and only release that water when they are certain incoming storms will hit their catchment area – even when the incoming storm is a cyclone.

SEQ does not have enough drinking water for booming population

By Felicity Caldwell
August 19, 2021 — 8.00pm

South-east Queensland will not have enough drinking water to support its rapidly growing population amid fears the region’s dams will struggle to supply millions of extra residents.

The revelation comes as residents could be forced to endure mandatory water restrictions in less than four months.

A stark warning about the need for new water sources – such as a dam or desalination plant – was emailed to Water Minister Glenn Butcher’s office in December, with a report revealing demand for water would increase as the south-east Queensland population grew by more than two million people over the next 25 years.

…Read more:

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/seq-does-not-have-enough-drinking-water-for-booming-population-20210818-p58jqd.html

If the dams had greater capacity, there would be much less risk of flooding – dam operators could confidently run their dams down in the face of rainfall threats, without fear of water shortages if the rain misses. The spare dam capacity could be used to soak up floodwater in the catchment area which feeds the dam.

The picture at the top of the article shows the potential consequences of failing to release dam water until the last minute.

In 2013 Brisbane was impacted by Cyclone Oswald, and suffered a severe rainfall and flooding event.

Then as now, dam operators were ordered to delay release until the last moment. The result was catastrophic – when 3ft+ of rain abruptly dumped into the catchment area of the Wivenhoe Dam, dam operators were forced to open the floodgates to save the dam, raising the Brisbane River well above normal height. The torrential dam outflow collided with the cyclonic low pressure storm surge rushing in from the sea in Brisbane’s most expensive business and residential district.

Colleges Crossing, pictured at the top of this article, is the main outflow of the Wivenhoe Dam, the water reservoir which supplies the state capital Brisbane. The water which passes through Colleges Crossing feeds into the Brisbane River, which in 2013 was a major contributor to inner city flooding. My home at the time became an island as spillway water flooded across the lowlands, cutting all the roads, and bringing misery to riverside property owners downstream of the dam.

My point is flood disasters in Brisbane have nothing to do with climate change. I doubt flood risk could ever be completely eliminated in a subtropical location like Brisbane, but floods could be mitigated by better flood control, including enlarging existing dams or building new dams. Larger dam capacity would give dam operators the confidence to run down water levels in the face of a dangerous rainfall event, even if they were not sure if the rain would hit the dam catchment, instead of clinging on to water until the last minute, then flooding the city of Brisbane with an emergency release to save the dam from catastrophic failure.

Update (EW): Brisbane might get lucky this time, the heaviest rain appears to be slightly to the South East of the Wivenhoe catchment, though since this rain is expected to last a few days there may still be a risk. It is likely just the rain over Brisbane could create at least minor flooding.

Rain in Brisbane 8am local time 09 March 2025. Source Australian BOM

Update (EW): h/t Rick Will – Wivenhoe has a webcam – https://widget.coastalcoms.com/video/ccef2b42-a849-435e-8dbd-6fef8731c6b9

Update (EW): Looks like Brisbane is having problems with flash flooding.

No, Yahoo News, “Extreme Heat” Isn’t Accelerating Aging—And It’s Not Getting Worse

Among other media outlets, Yahoo News recently posted an article, “Extreme heat may speed up aging in older adults, USC study says,” published as a video story at CBS News Boston, claiming that “extreme heat may speed aging and increase the risk of disease.” This is false and misleading. While prolonged exposure to harsh environmental conditions can affect health, the claim that “extreme heat” is an increasing and worsening threat due to climate change is not supported by historical data.

Heatwave over a city, bright sun, global warming, urban heat island. Generative AI

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

The story is based on a University of Southern California (USC) press release titled; Study: Extreme Heat May Speed Up Aging in Older Adults

In the press release, the author states, “Scientists are growing increasingly concerned about the long-term health effects of climate change, with new research suggesting extreme heat could speed up aging and lead to a host of other medical issues.” This type of speculative language is common in climate alarmist narratives—using vague phrases like “growing concern” and “could” rather than providing solid, demonstrable evidence.

In the published study at Science Advances, the study authors claim to be able to detect age enhancing DNA changes from blood tests done on older populations. The basis of their study is this:

The researchers used mathematical tools called epigenetic clocks to analyze methylation patterns and estimate biological ages at each time point. They then compared participants’ changes in biological age to their location’s heat index history and number of heat days reported by the National Weather Service from 2010 to 2016.

They provide this map of the United States showing areas of heat risk days above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

*Figure 1: Neat index history and number of heat days reported by the National Weather Service from 2010 to 2016. Source: National Weather Service.*

Unsurprisingly, that map looks like a normal high temperature distribution for summer in the United States, with southern latitudes having the highest number of days above 90°F. That’s not news.

However, data from Climate at a Glance shows that heat waves in the U.S. were far more severe in the 1930s, particularly during the Dust Bowl years, than anything we see today. NOAA’s temperature records confirm that the highest recorded temperatures and longest-lasting heat waves occurred nearly a century ago. If “extreme heat” were truly an escalating crisis, we would see a consistent upward trend in heat wave frequency and intensity, but that is simply not the case.

The story and the study completely ignore this and other factors, such as the Urban Heat Island effect, which has grown over the last several decades as city populations increase. Note the similarity of the Figure 1 map above with the Figure 2 map below.

*Figure 2: Urban Heat Island Map of the United States. Source: Examples from our New UAH Urban Heat Island Dataset, November 7th, 2023 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.*

Note that much of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Arizona, and Southern California have cities with strong UHI signatures, matching the same areas of the map provided by the study. UHI is not a product of climate change, but rather a propensity for increasing infrastructure to retain heat, and contribute to higher temperatures.

Furthermore, the study wrongly assumes that increased temperatures are the only reason for these aging changes in the DNA of people they studied. It is well known that several environmental and personal factors contribute to accelerating aging, including exposure to pollutants, UV radiation, diet, physical activity, poor sleep quality, poor air quality, and lifestyle-related stressors such as drinking alcohol, obesity, and smoking. The study doesn’t take any of these into account, leading to a conclusion that cannot be verified as being only temperature related.

Finally, the study only used data from 2010 to 2016. That short period data does not even come close to the 30 year requirement for a climate data set, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. Thus, short-term influences can be at work here rather than long-term climate change. For example, a strong El Niño event in 2015 and 2016 significantly increased temperatures in the United States. The El Niño of 2015-16 was among the strongest El Niño events observed since 1950, and thus added to the higher temperatures people experienced in the United States. In 2015, More than 4,000 daily record highs were set across the country, and in 2016 The U.S. experienced 5,350 daily record high temperatures according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A search of the study shows the authors completely ignore the El Niño event in 2015 and 2016 and the effect it had on high temperatures, wrongly attributing it to climate change. That is simply shoddy science by the researchers that enabled their false conclusion.

While researchers and media outlets like to focus on heat-related health risks, they consistently ignore the well-documented dangers of cold weather. A study published in The Lancet found that cold-related deaths vastly outnumber heat-related deaths worldwide, by nearly a 10-to-1 margin. Cold temperatures exacerbate cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, leading to significantly higher mortality rates in winter than during heat waves. In the U.S., extreme cold events, winter storms, and power outages caused by “green” energy policies restricting reliable fossil fuels pose a greater risk to public health than summer heat. But instead of addressing the real danger—how restrictive climate policies make heating more expensive—media outlets continue their fixation on “extreme heat” as an existential threat.

This type of reporting is not about science; it’s about pushing a climate crisis narrative. Instead of examining long-term historical data and other factors, the media selectively highlights flawed short-term studies and worst-case scenarios to create climate alarm. This article is just another example of that trend—promoting fear without looking at the full picture. If the media were truly concerned about public health, they would focus on the deadly impact of cold weather and the policies that make energy more expensive, rather than pushing dubious claims about heat waves “accelerating aging.”

The Coal Fleet Can Underpin the Energy Abundance Agenda

The U.S. needs more dispatchable electricity—and we need it immediately. Power demand is exploding across the country at the very moment the nation’s grid reliability is teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

From Watts Up With That?

By Rich Nolan

The reshoring of heavy industry and the unprecedented AI-driven data center boom have collided the with the Biden administration’s effort to wipe out the coal fleet and make it impossible to build new baseload coal and natural gas plants.

President Trump is already tackling this crisis. On his first day in office, he declared an energy emergency, issued an “Unleashing American Energy” executive order and has since established the National Energy Dominance Council to refocus the nation’s energy policy. Reliability and affordability have once again taken center stage.

But the challenge facing the administration is enormous. U.S. electricity demand is projected to fully double by 2050 with a remarkable jump in demand already underway. A recent forecast sees demand rising 128 gigawatts (GW) over just the next five years—equivalent to adding 80 million homes to our already overstretched and under-supplied grid.

As the administration looks for reliable, immediately available generating capacity, the underutilized coal fleet is the answer hiding in plain sight.

Battered by an unrelenting regulatory agenda and unfair competition from heavily subsidized power sources, the coal fleet’s capacity factor – a measure of how often it’s providing power to the grid – rests at just 40%. The fleet is capable of much more. It is our strategic electricity reserve waiting for its moment. And that moment is now.

How much more power can the fleet provide? Consider its performance in critical, high-demand weeks and months. The coal fleet regularly ramps up generation, often reaching capacity factors above 60%. As recently as 2021, there were several months when the fleet had a capacity factor above 65%.

With months of fuel on site and the world’s largest coal reserves, the coal fleet is the nation’s ace in the hole to underpin reliability and dispatchable fuel diversity.

As power demand growth laps efforts to build new generating capacity and energy infrastructure, driving up electricity prices and threatening the economy, greater utilization of what we already have in place is the clear answer.

The Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) – representing manufacturers with over 12,000 facilities nationwide and more than 1.9 million employees – have already warned “the manufacturing sector’s economic growth has never before faced such a growing crisis as we are faced with today, due to inadequate natural gas pipeline capacity.”

IECA told Congress gas supply on the East Coast is already so constrained it’s all but impossible for manufacturers to consider expansion of existing operations or investment in new facilities.

Semiconductor and battery plants, and even data centers with the energy needs of cities, simply won’t be built if they can’t find affordable energy, leaving untold jobs and tax revenue just sitting on the table.

While reducing barriers and timelines to adding new energy infrastructure is an important piece of the answer, IECA has asked for one critical, difference-making action: “to not prematurely shut down coal-fired electric generating units.”

Utilities are already answering the call, cancelling planned coal plant retirements across the country from Georgia to Indiana to Utah and Wyoming. But federal action to not only preserve the fleet but make greater use of it is what is needed in this energy emergency.

Energy abundance is the key to winning today’s global industrial arms race. The world is using more coal than ever before. It is past time the U.S. recognizes its coal fleet and coal mining industry not as problems to solve but as answers to today’s most pressing challenges. The coal fleet can and should underpin the administration’s energy abundance agenda.

Rich Nolan is President and CEO of the National Mining Association

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire

Energy Imbalance Part II – An Addendum

First, there was some question about what a radiometer would see if pointed down at the surface. Figure 1 is educational in several ways. It is from the SURFRAD site at Desert Rock, Nevada on June 22, 2024. The four curves correspond to total downward solar radiation, total upward solar radiation, Upward and downward directed LWIR.

From Watts Up With That?

Kevin Kilty

The original essay from February 24 to which this addendum applies had several opportunities for discussion items that could be expanded.

Figure 1. A description of the site’s 10m tower where many of these instruments are mounted, and a photo of the area, is available here.

Sunrise is around 6am local time (1300UTC; Local PDT=UTC-7hr). Almost immediately after the sun peeks over the horizon the surface begins to warm and the pyrgeometer detects a rise in upward directed LWIR. Downward directed LWIR rises with about an hour’s delay from the heating of the surface but well before surface convection begins to heat the atmosphere which is quite apparent on the wind speed chart starting at around 10-11 am. The peak of upward directed LWIR occurs a half an hour or so past noon at a value of 658W/m². With an assumed surface emissivity of 0.97 this suggests a surface temperature of 137F – far above the peak temperature at 10m elevation of 100F which occurs late in the day. There is a super adiabatic layer of heated air near the surface. The situation is exactly as I described it, using two atmospheric soundings at Albuquerque, Nex Mexico from August 3, 1993 in this addendum. This also, perhaps, explains why GEOS Band 16 images taken around Winter Solstice sometimes show northern Chile to be 60^oC.

Downward directed LWIR curve, the Greenhouse effect, begins its rise almost coincident with both the rise in upward directed LWIR and the rise in 10m temperature, but reaches its peak value well after the peak in upward LWIR but long before the peak in 10m temperature. The Greenhouse effect results from rising air temperature, but this, in turn, results both from bulk transport from the surface and from absorption and re-emission of LWIR from the surface. It is not exclusively a function of air temperature as was claimed.

That upward directed LWIR remains 80W/m² above the greenhouse effect throughout the night demonstrates how it is that natives in elevated and dry places have traditionally made ice overnight even when temperatures remain far above freezing (20F above) [1] and something I observed while camping overnight at Joshua Tree Monument on March 6 of 1982.

Violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

An idea that arises, it seems, in every post about the Greenhouse effect, is that energy cannot flow from the cold atmosphere to the warmer ground without violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This argument will simply not go away.

Simply put, molecules and atoms do not have temperature – they have energy. Temperature is assigned by the distribution of kinetic energy in an ensemble of molecules and atoms, as in the Boltzmann distribution, where temperature is the only assignable parameter. Individual atoms and molecules are not guided by a temperature gradient in any way, but what net heat transport they accomplish is statistically in the direction from hot to cold.

Tom Shula provided a darned good reference to Harde (2013) that states…

“…any back radiation from colder and higher atmospheric layers can be absorbed by the lower and warmer layers, and this back radiation can also be absorbed by a warmer surface of the earth without violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics.”

I might mention that careless application of the Stefan-Boltzmann formula is almost guaranteed to end up with a violation of the Second Law.[2]

Is the radiation field isotropic?

There was some discussion about the radiation field being isotropic, in fact, about the necessity of it being so. The radiation field, meaning the distribution of emitted radiant energy in the atmosphere, cannot be isotropic when there are temperature gradients involved. At each point in space (we call this the field point) there is an emitted field originating at that point. This emitted field is isotropic.[3]

In addition there is also a contribution originating at other points in the domain of the problem and passing through the field point. This field component is not isotropic as it is reflective of whatever is emitted by all objects and material within view of the field point. The total field is a vector integration of the two. A truly isotropic total field could only occur inside a cavity at uniform temperature, which would be an instance of thermal equilibrium, of a true blackbody, and without net heat transfer in any direction. When heat is transported, the field doing so is not isotropic.

Collision rates being far greater than emission rates

There was a discussion about why the emitted power from a molecule like CO2 is so intense when collisions de-energize the CO2 15u line at a rate of “29,000” times the emission rate. The fact that this collision rate, which redistributes kinetic energy locally and continually, occurs with far greater speed than the emission or absorption rate is responsible for maintaining local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE).[4] It allows us to use atmospheric temperature in conjunction with the Planck function to calculate emission. It is what connects radiation to local atmospheric temperature.

Radiation annihilated?

Someone made a claim to the effect that “… The surface field is completely annihilated and converted into sensible heat. The thermal atmospheric field is produced exclusively by collisional excitation and exists throughout the atmosphere all the way down to the surface….”

For this to be so, radiation leaving the surface would have to be completely absorbed and through collisions converted completely to kinetic energy. Moreover, once converted completely to kinetic energy, would collisions be effective or not at raising IR active gasses from their ground state to a higher energy state?

The present radiational cooling of Earth involves different transport behavior at different wavelengths. In places the atmosphere is quite transparent, and transport is ballistic, in other areas the emission is created locally through collisions. Just to drive this point a bit further, Figure 2 shows an LWIR spectrum measured from satellite over the polar ice cap from the publication by Harde (2013).

Red arrows point to segments of the spectrum from within the atmospheric window where there is little IR active gas to absorb radiation. The spectrum nicely follows a blackbody spectrum (dashed curves) just below the 268K ice surface temperature. There is nothing nearer the satellite with this temperature than the ice cap itself. Meanwhile, blue arrows point to other portions of the spectrum which suggest much lower temperature. These occur over wavelengths where IR active water vapor and CO2 hide the surface from direct view and emit radiation from lower temperature higher in the polar atmosphere.

Even if Earth’s atmosphere were more opaque than it presently is (greater optical depth), radiation from the surface would still make its way skyward. Photons would “diffuse” through a very opaque atmosphere much like thermal conduction except with a “thermal conductivity” proportional to temperature cubed (the Rosselund approximation).

References:

[1]-My handwritten notes from 45 years ago are not entirely clear, but the report of natives of Bengal making ice overnight is probably: S. Tamara, Monthly Weather Rev., 33; 55, 1905.

[2]-A good example is Q=σ(A₁T₁⁴-A₂T₂⁴), where sigma is the Stefan constant. Just using areas for different radiators can lead to a large cold radiator delivering heat to a small hot one. Generally I don’t make reference to my own work, but this link will bring up a lecture I produced as a guest for a nearby community college nearly a quarter century ago that shows how little a person can accomplish with only the Stefan-Boltzmann formula and what little else is needed to make it useful.

[3]-Any radiation can be considered scattered. A phase function describes how the scattering takes place. For example, the “scattering” phase function of isotropic radiation is 1.0, unlike the phase function of, say, Rayleigh scattering which is 0.5(1+cos²Θ), where the scattering angle is measured from the line connecting the Sun and the scattering object or volume. It explains why the blue of the sky is not uniformly blue.

[4]-LTE is simply a state of being close enough to thermal equilibrium to make reasonable use of results from true thermal equilibrium.

If António Guterres Can’t Get Basic Facts Right, Why Should We Believe the UN on Anything?

The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Last year the UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited the Pacific Island of Samoa and was filmed by a deserted house that he claimed had been abandoned due to climate change-related sea level rises and increasing storms. It was a porkie that quickly put its hat on and travelled around the world. The journalist Ola Sandstig reporting on Swedish public radio recently tracked down the owner of the house and found the dwelling was abandoned due to the 2009 earthquake and tsunami. Sadly, Samoa is still experiencing sea level rises about six times higher than previous levels, but scientists explain it is due to the after effects of the earthquake. There has been no increase in tropical storms in the area and earthquakes and tsunamis are not caused by humans.

Guterres stood by the house and stated that “if we are not able to stop what is happening with climate change, the problem that we see in Samoa will not stay in Samoa”. The arrogance on display here is astonishing. Most Pacific islands have been inconveniently increasing in size of late due to natural forces such as sand and coral accretion along with land movement. The unfortunate case of Samoa was obviously chosen for maximum psychotic effect. This despite clear evidence that has been presented by the distinguished geophysicist Professor Shan-Chan Han that showed land subsidence in the wake of the 2009 earthquake was causing sea levels to rise up to six times faster. Sadly, this effect is “likely to continue for decades” leading to “regular nuisance flooding”.

This arrogance, common to many climate activists, might be summed up by the attitude: “Come and check us, we don’t care, what are you going to do about it?” It was on display at a recent World Economic Forum ‘disinformation’ seminar when the UN’s chief publicity flak Melissa Fleming stated: “We are becoming more proactive, we own the science and the world should know it.” The science writer Roger Pielke Jr. was unimpressed with Guterres’s Samoa stunt, stating that his photo op and press release “can only be described as an intentional effect to mislead”.

Another misleading UN stat that has been doing the rounds for decades is the claim that women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die in a climate disaster. Needless to say, the claim has been a favourite staple of activists for years. Last May, the alarmist echo chamber the Conversation headlined the 14 times claim and stated: “A growing body of evidence demonstrates women and gender-diverse people are disproportionately vulnerable to the changing climate and the consequences it brings.” Roger Pielke reports that the claim, which can still be found on the UN main website, along with the internet sites of many linked operations, has been debunked by Professor Henrik Urdal of the Peace Institute in Oslo, who called the 14 times figure a “mythical number”. In 2014, he traced the claim back to a 2013 Save the Children report, which in turn cited a 2013 Plan International report, which quoted an article published in Natural Hazards Observer in 1997. This article turned out to be two-page opinion piece authored by Pastor Kristina Peterson of the US-based Church World Service.

The sleuthing Sandstig from Sveriges Radio tracked down Pastor Peterson in Louisiana, who expressed surprise that her unsourced opinion was being touted as scientific fact in 2024 by the UN as well as other mainstream organisations. The journalist is reported to have asked for a comment from the UN, but none was forthcoming, possibly because Ms Fleming was busy elsewhere claiming ownership of all the politically correct facts.

Finally, Sandstig investigated Guterres’s claim in 2022 that the number of weather, climate and water-related disasters had increased by a factor of five over the last 50 years. This was covered by the Daily Sceptic at the time where the graph below up to 2022 was published.

As the graph shows, there is no evidence that the number of major disasters going back to the turn of the century is becoming more frequent. In fact, the evidence presented suggests that recent disasters are around 10% less frequent than those recorded in the 2000s. In reality, the increase in disasters recorded by CRED EM-DAT from 1970 to 2000 was due to vastly improved reporting procedures. Deborati Guha-Sapir, who oversaw the widely consulted database for decades, told Swedish Radio that you can argue that climate disasters or natural disasters have not actually substantially increased but the reporting has been “much, much” easier, better and quicker.

Antonio ‘boiling’ Guterres’s constant hysterical pronouncements are risible. But he is still the head of the UN – the parent-organisation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – and Roger Pielke worries about the effect of all the false claims and bad science. “The climate science community should care that the UN has been systematically misrepresenting climate science, because it could affect how the IPCC is viewed, fairly or unfairly,” he noted. As reported by the Daily Sceptic in 2022, Pielke noted that he had seen “a concerted and successful” effort by climate advocates to create and spread disinformation about disasters, “knowing full well that virtually all journalists and scientists will stay silent and allow false information to spread unchecked – and sometimes will even help to amplify it”.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

The AI Age Begins: Texas ERCOT Slammed with 99GW of New Energy Demand

It’s not just Texas. Across the world, new nuclear and fossil fuel capacity is being frantically constructed, by companies and governments who are frightened of falling behind.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

First published JoNova; I wonder how many fossil fuel plants and nuclear reactors are required to service 99GW of new energy demand?

Texas Needs Equivalent of 30 Reactors to Meet Data Center Power Demand

Demand on the Texas power grid is expected to expand so immensely that it would take the equivalent of adding 30 nuclear plants’ worth of electricity by 2030 to meet the needs.

Author of the article:
Bloomberg News
Naureen S. Malik

…

The data centers “present a reliability risk to the Ercot system,” said Springer, who spoke on a panel at Infocast’s ERCOT Market Summit in Austin this week.

“We’ve never existed in a place where large industrial loads can really impact the reliability of the grid, and now we are stepping into that world.”

Risk of Grid Stress

Ercot said it’s gotten requests equal to 99 gigawatts for new connections to the grid from big power users, including data centers, bitcoin miners and hydrogen producers, according to an internal grid presentation Thursday. That’s up from 40.8 gigawatts last March.

…Read more:

https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/texas-needs-equivalent-of-30-reactors-to-meet-data-center-power-demand

It’s not just Texas. Across the world, new nuclear and fossil fuel capacity is being frantically constructed, by companies and governments who are frightened of falling behind.

“The Energy Transition Won’t Happen”: Big Tech Embraces Energy Guzzling AI

No state is immune to this pressure. My prediction, even über green states like California will shortly cave and permit providing the gigawatts of cheap, dispatchable energy big tech requires to stay in the game, from any source available – fossil fuel, nuclear, imported, whatever they can get their hands on.

The USA isn’t the only player in town. China is going all in on artificial intelligence. Their disadvantage of being subject to sanctions is more than balanced by their enormous low cost computer chip industry and their energy surplus.

China announces high-tech fund to grow AI, emerging industries

By Nectar Gan and Juliana Liu, CNN
Published 4:30 AM EST, Thu March 6, 2025

Hong KongCNN —

Fresh off the global success of DeepSeek’s latest artificial intelligence reasoning model, China’s top economic officials have vowed to set up a state-backed fund to support technological innovation.

The “state venture capital guidance fund” will focus on cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology and hydrogen energy storage, Zheng Shanjie, head of China’s state economic planner, told reporters Thursday on the sidelines of the annual gatherings of China’s rubber-stamp national legislature and advisory body.

The fund is expected to attract nearly 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) in capital over 20 years from local governments and the private sector, added Zheng, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.

…Read more:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/06/tech/china-state-venture-capital-guidance-fund-intl-hnk/index.html

India is also going big on AI;

India’s US$1.25 billion push to power AI

National funding to enhance computing infrastructure, deep-tech startups and data platform

Sahana Ghosh

India is ramping up its artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem with a US$1.25 billion (Rs 10,372 crore) investment to expand its computing infrastructure and develop an accessible data repository.

Through public-private partnerships, IndiaAI Mission plans to set up a computing capacity or ‘compute’ of 10,000 or more Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Over the next five years, it will build a platform stacked with non-personal data, such as environmental data, for Indian startups and researchers.

…

India’s AI market, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 25-35% is expected to touch $US17 billion by 2027, fuelled by a growing AI workforce and an increase in generative AI investments.

…Read more:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-024-00035-5

Europe is showing a flicker of interest, though they are so far behind in the cheap energy game, it is doubtful if they will ever catch up. France is the only European nation which appears to be taking AI seriously.

France tempts AI firms with its nuclear electricity

Tuesday, 11 February 2025

UK-based AI cloud provider Fluidstack has signed a memorandum of understanding with the French government to construct one of the world’s largest decarbonised AI supercomputers in France. Meanwhile, utility EDF has identified four sites on its own land that it will offer for data centres.

Announced at the AI Action Summit in Paris, under the leadership of President Emmanuel Macron, the memorandum of understanding was signed by the French Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, Eric Lombard, the French Minister for Industry and Energy, Marc Feracci, and Fluidstack co-founder and President, César Maklary.

…Read more:

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/france-tempts-ai-firms-with-its-nuclear-electricity

If you are interested in why AI requires so much energy, this article provides some answers – and you get to play with a real artificial intelligence.

China announces high-tech fund to grow AI, emerging industries

By Nectar Gan and Juliana Liu, CNN
Published 4:30 AM EST, Thu March 6, 2025

Hong KongCNN —

Fresh off the global success of DeepSeek’s latest artificial intelligence reasoning model, China’s top economic officials have vowed to set up a state-backed fund to support technological innovation.

The “state venture capital guidance fund” will focus on cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology and hydrogen energy storage, Zheng Shanjie, head of China’s state economic planner, told reporters Thursday on the sidelines of the annual gatherings of China’s rubber-stamp national legislature and advisory body.

The fund is expected to attract nearly 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) in capital over 20 years from local governments and the private sector, added Zheng, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.

…Read more:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/06/tech/china-state-venture-capital-guidance-fund-intl-hnk/index.html

India is also going big on AI.

India’s US$1.25 billion push to power AI

National funding to enhance computing infrastructure, deep-tech startups and data platform

Sahana Ghosh

India is ramping up its artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem with a US$1.25 billion (Rs 10,372 crore) investment to expand its computing infrastructure and develop an accessible data repository.

Through public-private partnerships, IndiaAI Mission plans to set up a computing capacity or ‘compute’ of 10,000 or more Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Over the next five years, it will build a platform stacked with non-personal data, such as environmental data, for Indian startups and researchers.

…

India’s AI market, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 25-35% is expected to touch $US17 billion by 2027, fuelled by a growing AI workforce and an increase in generative AI investments.

…Read more:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-024-00035-5

France tempts AI firms with its nuclear electricity

Tuesday, 11 February 2025

UK-based AI cloud provider Fluidstack has signed a memorandum of understanding with the French government to construct one of the world’s largest decarbonised AI supercomputers in France. Meanwhile, utility EDF has identified four sites on its own land that it will offer for data centres.

Announced at the AI Action Summit in Paris, under the leadership of President Emmanuel Macron, the memorandum of understanding was signed by the French Minister of Economy, Finance, and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, Eric Lombard, the French Minister for Industry and Energy, Marc Feracci, and Fluidstack co-founder and President, César Maklary.

…Read more:

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/france-tempts-ai-firms-with-its-nuclear-electricity

If you are interested in why AI requires so much energy, this article provides some answers – and you get to play with a real artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence: A Working Demonstration, and Why Big Tech Ditched Big Green

There is no chance the AI push will fizzle. Certainly the current wave contains a lot of hype, in the next few years we shall see the usual bankruptcies as companies riding the wave but with nothing substantial to offer run out of shareholder’s cash. But the underlying technology is sound. Companies are already making enormous profits using artificial intelligence to perform accelerated drug discovery and repurposing, intelligence analysis, semantic analysis and collation of news and events, and bringing greater than human capabilities to forward planning, strategy and scientific research.

At least one political leader gets it.

Drill, baby, Drill: Trump Raises $12 Million in Silicon Valley, by Promising Cheap Energy to Power the AI Revolution

In this race, there is no prize for second place.

CEI urges Congress to end the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies at the heart of the Green New Deal

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was badly mistitled, and intentionally so. The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress took advantage of Americans’ desire for a response to high and rising prices for food, fuel, and other basic consumer goods. The people of the United States wanted federal leadership to take step to alleviate inflation. Instead, they were lied to and got a bill that led to more inflation, along the way imposing unwanted mandates, limiting or directing peoples’ choices, in part by providing hundreds of billions in spending on President Joe Biden’s all of government approach to fighting climate change. Democrats had been unable to sell the Green New Deal scam to the public, so they repackaged it as Inflation Reduction, and brought it up for a vote. It passed without a single Republican vote.

From ClimateRealism

Editor’s Note: The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was badly mistitled, and intentionally so. The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress took advantage of Americans’ desire for a response to high and rising prices for food, fuel, and other basic consumer goods. The people of the United States wanted federal leadership to take step to alleviate inflation. Instead, they were lied to and got a bill that led to more inflation, along the way imposing unwanted mandates, limiting or directing peoples’ choices, in part by providing hundreds of billions in spending on President Joe Biden’s all of government approach to fighting climate change. Democrats had been unable to sell the Green New Deal scam to the public, so they repackaged it as Inflation Reduction, and brought it up for a vote. It passed without a single Republican vote.

The law resulted in billions of dollars being wasted on various green boondoggles, including companies given huge infusions of taxpayer dollars in IRA spending, only to still go bankrupt due to poor technology and lack of consumer demand. Billions more taxpayer dollars have been shipped, without accountability or transparency, to environmental startups with no track history, but with strong connections to Biden, Biden administration bureaucrats, and powerful Democratic Congress swamp creatures.

More than a year after the IRA’s passage, when confronted with the fact that the IRA wasn’t doing anything to curb inflation, Biden finally stated out loud at a fundraiser that the IRA, “has nothing to do with inflation; it has to do with … $368 billion, the single-largest investment in climate change anywhere in the world — no one has ever, ever spent that.” The IRA spending itself was, in fact, inflationary, meaning the law had just the opposite of its stated effect. That’s what Republicans and other critics of the law said at the time of its passage, but the mainstream media chose to ignore this fact.

A new study by The Heartland Institute’s Tim Benson, “The High Costs of Climate Scams: Assessing the Green Giveaways in the Inflation Reduction Act,” discusses the Biden administration’s gross understatement of the IRA’s costs. Benson then details the various estimates of its true costs that are billions of dollars higher than the Biden administrations initial estimates. After breaking down the different types of tax credits, subsidies, “loans,” and direct spending, both directed and discretionary, contained in IRA, Benson notes the range of estimates, go from lowball estimate of $570 billion to as high as $1.7 trillion. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office updated its own estimate and concluded, “the IRA would increase budget deficits by $825 billion from 2025 to 2035, far above the original $270 billion estimate from 2022 to 2031.”

President Donald Trump and his appointees are well aware of the IRA scam, its detrimental interference in consumer choice, its skewing of capital investment, and its undermining of sound energy policy. Trump directed his agencies to look for unspent IRA funds, to block new spending, and claw back what they could. With that charge in hand, Lee Zeldin, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency director, has already identified more than $20 billion dollars held in a private bank to be shipped to Biden/Democrat crony Non-governmental organizations and has directed the bank not to disperse the fund and is working on getting the money returned to the government. But administrative action is not enough. The law was approved, narrowly, by Congress. As a result some of the green spending can only be blocked or clawed back if Congress acts to rescind it.

With this in mind, a coalition of groups, led by our allies, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, sent a letter to the Republican Congress requesting that they stand by their earlier stance on the IRA and get back as much of the money as legally possible. The letter signed by 53 leaders of research institutes and state-based think tanks across the country, including James Taylor, president of The Heartland Institute and Cameron Sholty, executive director of Heartland Impact,

urge[s] all legislators, regardless of party, to make it a priority to get rid of the IRA’s Green New Deal provisions. Many conservative policymakers have made undoing the Green New Deal a priority. This is impossible without undoing the IRA “green” subsidies, which are the heart of the Green New Deal.

The letter is worth reading in its entirety and is presented below as a guest post.

Dear Members of Congress:

In 2022, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats pushed through one of the most extreme pieces of legislation in recent memory: the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Not a single Republican in either the House or Senate supported this bill.

The IRA was a reconciliation bill that helped the political left advance its Green New Deal. Now, because Republicans have control of both chambers of Congress, they can now use the reconciliation process and other means to dismantle the “green” subsidies contained in the IRA.

The undersigned organizations strongly urge all legislators, regardless of party, to make it a priority to get rid of the IRA’s Green New Deal provisions. Many conservative policymakers have made undoing the Green New Deal a priority. This is impossible without undoing the IRA “green” subsidies, which are the heart of the Green New Deal.

The spotlight will be on Republicans and more specifically on whether they can come through for the American people by getting rid of these IRA subsidies. If the subsidies are not repealed in reconciliation, this will be a devastating result. It will be characterized as a major failure and an ominous sign for the 119th Congress, as well as a failure to advance President Donald Trump’s Unleashing American Energy agenda. Those characterizations would be fair.

This is a critical moment that will require Republicans and other legislators to overcome far left efforts to maintain the IRA and the Biden administration’s harmful anti-energy legacy. There have been recent reports of some Republicans wavering in their opposition to the IRA subsides. IRA boosters cynically predicted Republicans would change their tune on the IRA once money started flowing into their districts. It appears that may be happening. That is unacceptable and ignores the harm subsidies will cause to Americans, including those living in all congressional districts.

The IRA is filled with numerous subsidies that were designed to shift our country away from reliable electricity generation (coal and natural gas) to unreliable electricity sources (e.g. wind and solar). This comes at a time of concern about the reliability of the nation’s electricity grid, in large part because of misguided corporate welfare policies that undermine reliable baseload generation.

There are also IRA subsidies that work in conjunction with other policies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s de facto electric vehicle mandate, to kill off gas-powered vehicles – undermining the freedom of Americans to choose their cars.

These examples capture just some of the problems with the IRA “green” subsidies. In general, the subsidies will drive up prices, diminish grid reliability, compromise mobility, and disproportionately impact the poor. Not to mention, the subsidies are expected to cost over $1 trillion, and this may be a low-ball estimate.

There is another excuse for maintaining IRA subsidies that was predicted after the law’s passage. Some big businesses claim they made decisions relying on those subsidies. Any business that bet on the IRA subsidies continuing, especially given the wide opposition to the IRA, is a poorly led business. Congress needs to put the interests of the American people over the interests of wealthy special interests who are trying to keep their handouts flowing at the expense of taxpayers.

All IRA “green” subsidies should be in the sights of policymakers. They work together as a central plan to achieve a radical and harmful shift in how our country produces and uses electricity, among other things. Given that they work together to achieve this Green New Deal, they should be eliminated together to restore freedom and ensure our country can reliably and affordably meet its energy needs.

Our organizations believe that this is a pivotal moment for our country. Will we go down the path of the Green New Deal, as pushed by Biden and the far left, or will Republicans and common- sense legislators get our country back on course to meeting our energy needs now and in the future? This is what is at stake.

Therefore, our organizations again urge you to eliminate the IRA’s “green” subsidies. We are available to work with you to ensure that when Congress passes reconciliation legislation this year, these harmful subsidies are repealed. If there is such an outcome, then this would be a major victory for conservatives, and more importantly, for the nation.

Sincerely,

Daren Bakst
Director, Center for Energy and
Environment
Competitive Enterprise Institute

James L. Martin
Founder/Chairman
60 Plus Association

Paul Teller
Executive Vice President
Advancing American Freedom

John Droz
Founder and Physicist
Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions

Amy O. Cooke
President, Board Chairman
Always On Energy Research

Saulius “Saul” Anuzis
President
American Association of Senior Citizens

Phil Kerpen
President
American Commitment

Thomas Pyle
President
American Energy Alliance

Hon. Jason Isaac
CEO
American Energy Institute

Myron Ebell
Chairman
American Lands Council

Margaret Byfield
Executive Director
American Stewards of Liberty

Richard Manning
President
Americans for Limited Government

Faith Burns
Energy Policy Fellow
Americans for Prosperity

Rea S. Hederman Jr.
Vice President of Policy
The Buckeye Institute

David T. Stevenson
Director, Center for Energy & Environment
Caesar Rodney Institute

Ryan Ellis
President
Center for a Free Economy

Daniel J. Mitchell
President
Center for Freedom and Prosperity

Jeffrey Mazzella
President
Center for Individual Freedom

John Hinderaker
President
Center of the American Experiment

Craig Rucker
President
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
(CFACT)

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.
President
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of
Creation

Kristen A. Ullman
President
Eagle Forum

Craig Richardson
President
Energy & Environment Legal Institute
(E&E Legal)

Malon Wilkus
President
The Foundation Supporting Climate
Science

George Landrith
President
Frontiers of Freedom

Mark Krebs
Principal
Gas Analytics & Advocacy Services LLC
(GAAS)

Larry Hart
President
Hartco Strategies

Cameron Sholty
Executive Director
Heartland Impact

James Taylor
President
The Heartland Institute

Ryan Walker
Executive Vice President
Heritage Action for America

Mario H. Lopez
President
Hispanic Leadership Fund

Gabriella Hoffman
Director, Center for Energy & Conservation
Independent Women’s Voice

Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech.)
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition
(ICSC)

Annette Olson
Chief Executive Officer
The John K. MacIver Institute for Public
Policy, Inc.

Jon Sanders
Director of the Center for Food, Power, and
Life
John Locke Foundation

Seton Motley
President
Less Government

Charles Moran
President
Log Cabin Republicans

Jason Hayes
Director of Energy and Environmental
Policy
Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Paul Craney
Executive Director
Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance

Brandon Arnold
Executive Vice President
National Taxpayers Union

Daniel C. Turner
Founder and Executive Director
Power the Future

Tim Barton
President
ProFamily Legislative Network by
Wallbuilders

Donna Jackson
Director of Membership Development
Project 21 Black Leadership Network

Paul Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation

James E. Enstrom, PhD, MPH
President
Scientific Integrity Institute

David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Jenny Beth Martin
Honorary Chairman
Tea Party Patriots Action

Greg Sindelar
Chief Executive Officer
Texas Public Policy Foundation

Derrick Max
President and CEO
Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy

Frank Lasee
President
Truth in Energy and Climate

Todd Myers
Vice President for Research
Washington Policy Center

Carol Platt Liebau
President
Yankee Institute

Benjamin Zycher
Senior Fellow
American Enterprise Institute (affiliation for
identification purposes only)

Outstanding BBC Complaints

If the BBC have trouble answering complaints, it appears they just ignore them!

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

If the BBC have trouble answering complaints, it appears they just ignore them!

I currently have three complaints outstanding, one of which goes back to last September:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62rr5qe602o

My Complaint:

The headline states “Climate change is turbo-charging Somalia’s problems”, and the article goes on to claim that “In 2022 the country experienced its worst drought for 40 years – an event scientists estimate was made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.”
The claim about droughts is false and absurd. According to the official World Bank Climate Portal data, the 2022 drought was not unusually severe, and many previous droughts in the 20thC were much worse.
The data can be see here:
https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/somalia/climate-data-historical
And the annual rainfall graph is here:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/09/22/75480/
Far from droughts getting worse in Somalia, rainfall trends have been increasing since the 1980s due to global warming.
In particular the catastrophic droughts of the 1970s and 80s were part of the Great Sahel drought, which killed 100,000s in sub Saharan Africa. Scientists at the time found that the drought was the result of global cooling. For instance, NOAA published an article in 1974 “Climate: Key to the World’s Food Supply”, which stated:
“In the Sahelian zone of Africa …. are enduring a drought that in some areas has been going on for more than six years now, following 40 years of abundant monsoon rainfall. And the drought is spreading into Ethiopia and Somalia. Many climatologists have associated this drought with a global cooling trend.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20171006183045/http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/journals/noaa/QC851U461974oct.pdf#page=5
A proper climate journalist would have been aware of this, unlike Rowlatt who is merely an activist with no climate qualifications whatsoever.
His claim that the drought was 100 times more likely due to climate change is based on worthless computer modelling, which clearly disproved by the actual data that Rowlatt should have reported instead

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42251921

My Complaint

You claim:
“But it is “likely” that a higher proportion of tropical cyclones across the globe are reaching category three or above, meaning they reach the highest wind speeds, according to the UN’s climate body, the IPCC”
But this is what the IPCC actually say:
“There is low confidence in most reported long-term (multi-decadal to centennial)
trends in TC frequency- or intensity-based metrics”
They do go on to say “It is likely that the global proportion of Category 3–5 tropical cyclone instances and the frequency of rapid intensification events have increased globally
over the past 40 years.”
However, NOAA clearly state that such short-term trends are meaningless:
“A number of measures of Atlantic hurricane activity have increased since 1980, but in the of case of metrics where much longer records are available, trends since 1980 are not representative of longer (e.g., century-scale) trends. “
NOAA also say:
“There is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in U.S. landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes. Similarly for Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency (after adjusting for changing observing capabilities over time), there is not strong evidence for an increase since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes, or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity.”
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
Your report also includes a grossly misleading chart, labelled “Major Atlantic hurricanes over last century”. This shows a large rise in the number in recent years. However, this increase is due to the fact that satellites can now spot these hurricanes in mid-ocean. In years prior to the 1990s, many major hurricanes occurred but were never actually spotted.
It is also a fact that until recent years hurricane hunter aircraft were unable to enter the strongest hurricanes as they were not robust or powerful enough. Again, therefore meteorologists in those days were unable to measure wind speeds.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg8dg3ke40o

My Complaint

You claim climate change has brought extreme weather from hurricanes to month-long droughts.
You then list a few random weather events but fail to provide evidence that these are anything other than natural events. Nor that such events have been getting more frequent or extreme over time.
The report highlights typhoons, stating climate change may be increasing intensity. Yet last year the number of global Tropical Cyclones and the strongest ones were both below average. Nor does the official data show them becoming more powerful over time. (Fig 1).
There is a section on heatwaves in Asia, which again fails to offer evidence they were in any way unusual. There is a reference to a heatwave in Delhi last May & June, yet the official temperature record from the Indian Met Office for those months last year shows temperatures were not unusually high there. (Fig 2)
Another section of your report addresses the drought in the Amazon, but the World Bank Climate Portal states that rainfall there has increased by 5% in the last 30 years: (Fig 3) https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country-profiles
Whatever the cause of last year’s drought, it is not part of any longer-term trend and therefore cannot be “climate-related”.
Finally, you highlight floods in Nigeria, Chad and Sudan. It is true the climate in these countries is now wetter than 40 years ago, but the 1970s and 80s marked the Great Sahel Drought across this swathe of Africa. Since then, rainfall has returned to levels seen before 1970. The wetter climate has nothing to do with global warming, as implied. (Fig 4)
Throughout your report, you base your claims on Weather Attribution Models. However, computer models are not evidence of anything and can be manipulated to provide whatever results are desired. That is why they are widely derided by the wider scientific community.
The Figures referenced are here:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/01/02/bbc-extreme-weather-complaint/

I have contacted the ECU to ask why these complaints have not been dealt with.

When I had the same problem last year, they apologised and said they had a backlog because some of their staff were working at home!

I suspect the real reason is that they cannot disprove my complaints.

Biden’s last-minute $20 billion in handouts to green groups

The uncovering of an elaborate money laundering scheme that quietly funneled $20 billion in taxpayer funds to well-connected environmental groups as the curtain fell on the Biden administration provides fresh justification for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to root out widespread waste and corruption in the federal bureaucracy.

From CFACT

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

An audit conducted by DOGE whiz kids and a team overseen by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin found that $20 billion in Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants earmarked for climate and environmental justice groups had been deposited with Citibank, where it would presumably be shielded from the prying eyes of the Trump administration.

After being parked at Citibank, the money was to be transferred to eight “green banks,” defined on the EPA’s website as “public, quasi-public, or nonprofit financing entities that leverage public and private capital to pursue goals for clean energy projects that reduce emissions.” In practice, green banks serve as pass-throughs where federal funds can be funneled to political allies on the outside. Green banks also have a network of subcontractors that gleefully participate in the taxpayer largesse.

As widely reported, one of the green banks receiving the Biden EPA loot is Power Forward Communities, a coalition of climate groups linked to two-time losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Ms. Abrams’s outfit was awarded $2 billion in August, even though it was less than one year old and, thus, had no record of performance to justify such a generous grant. Indeed, its revenue for 2023 amounted to $100.

Other green banks pocketing EPA money included United Climate ($6.97 billion) and Justice Climate Fund ($940 million). Mr. Zeldin canceled another $50 million earmarked for the Climate Justice Alliance after it was revealed that one of the group’s slogans is “Climate justice begins with a Free Palestine.”

The $1 trillion 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized the creation of green banks, made such vast sums set aside for the Biden administration’s political allies possible. By commingling climate policies with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives under “environmental justice,” the previous administration sought to serve its green and minority constituencies.

Minority and low-income communities stand to lose because of the green policies pushed by EPA grant recipients. Power Forward Communities, the green bank affiliated with Ms. Abrams, said in a press release that it will use the funds to outfit homes with heat pumps, heat pump water heaters and induction stoves.

These electric appliances are more expensive to purchase and operate than their natural-gas-powered counterparts, placing a financial burden on a segment that can least afford it. What the group says is “securing our climate future” turns out to be a highly regressive way to benefit politically favored, if otherwise uncompetitive, household appliances.

It was politically favored until Jan. 20, when President Trump began aggressively rolling back green mandates, including those that would replace gas household appliances with electric appliances. In that spirit, Mr. Zeldin has vowed to claw back the money that outgoing Biden officials were so eager to lavish on carefully selected recipients.

“This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight,” he said. Citing a video on the internet showing a Biden political appointee at the EPA talking about “tossing gold bars off the Titanic,” Mr. Zeldin added, “The gold bars were tax dollars, and tossing them off the Titanic meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it.”

The FBI has launched an investigation, and three green banks acknowledge they have been unable to draw money from their accounts with Citibank since mid-February, suggesting the accounts may have been frozen. The Washington Post reported that EPA acting inspector general Nicole N. Murley testified on Feb. 27 before a House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee that her office was reviewing concerns over the proper vetting of grant recipients, proposed projects and the monitoring of funds.

A misbegotten EPA grant from over a quarter-century ago may give Mr. Zeldin and the FBI legal guidance. In the late 1990s, the EPA — under Clinton-appointed Administrator Carol Browner — awarded a noncompetitive cooperative agreement (a type of grant) to the Mayland-based nonprofit Center for Chesapeake Communities. After questions arose about the grant’s alleged irregularities, including how the fledging nonprofit was selected to receive the funds, the EPA’s inspector general for the mid-Atlantic division launched an investigation. In an audit report dated March 31, 1999, the EPA’s inspector general concluded: “EPA awarded a noncompetitive cooperative agreement to the CCC without adequate justification. Awarding the cooperative agreement noncompetitively, without adequate justification, created an appearance of preferential treatment that compromises the integrity of the Chesapeake Bay Program.”

The audit recommended terminating the cooperative agreement with the Center for Chesapeake Communities, and the nonprofit later returned the funds. Though the two cases are far apart in time and the amount of money at stake, each involved questionable EPA behavior in awarding the grants.

DOGE eager beavers will no doubt find more “gold bars” thrown overboard by other agencies just before the Biden administration descended to the bottom.

This article originally appeared at The Washington Times

Europe’s Carbon Market: A Tax on Survival Disguised as Climate Policy

The European Union is marching ahead with a sweeping expansion of its carbon market, a move that will push home heating and transportation costs to punishing new heights. Under the guise of “cutting emissions,” EU policymakers are implementing a system that will make energy unaffordable for millions—especially those who can least afford it.

From Watts Up With That?

From Charles Rotter

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/eu-s-new-carbon-market-is-set-to-slash-co2-with-soaring-prices-for-home-heating

According to an analysis by BloombergNEF, the new emissions trading system, set to take effect in 2027, could push the price of carbon dioxide to €149 per metric ton by 2029—more than double current levels. The direct consequence? Heating bills may rise by as much as 41%, and transportation costs could jump 27%. This isn’t just a minor inconvenience; it’s a financial wrecking ball aimed squarely at households and small businesses across Europe.

For years, politicians and activists have insisted that draconian carbon policies will help “save the planet.” What they fail to acknowledge is who actually pays the price.

Heating Costs: Millions of Europeans already struggle to afford winter heating. The EU’s new carbon market will ensure that staying warm becomes a luxury rather than a necessity.
Transportation Costs: Higher fuel prices won’t just hit personal drivers—they’ll ripple through the entire economy, raising the cost of goods and services.
Small Businesses Punished: Large corporations can offset costs or lobby for exemptions, but small businesses will have no choice but to absorb price hikes—or shut down.

And what does the EU offer as a solution? “Green alternatives.” Heat pumps, electric cars, and home renovations—all of which require substantial upfront investments that the average citizen cannot afford.

Even some EU lawmakers are now realizing the scale of the disaster they’ve created, with calls to delay the rollout of this new carbon tax. But as history has shown, once bureaucracy sets a policy in motion, reversing course is nearly impossible.

Rather than learning from past failures—such as Germany’s disastrous energy transition, which led to record-high electricity prices—EU leaders are doubling down on policies that make daily life harder for ordinary Europeans.

If this policy isn’t helping citizens, who is it helping? The answer is the same as always:

Corporate interests and investors profiting from government-mandated purchases of EVs, heat pumps, and inefficient “green” tech.
Bureaucrats and policymakers who secure their careers by pushing unworkable climate targets.
The elite class who can afford to “go green” while lecturing everyone else about their carbon footprint.

At its core, this is not about saving the planet—it’s about control. The EU’s carbon market expansion is a stealth tax on survival, designed to force people into financial hardship under the pretext of climate action.

For millions of Europeans, the coming years will bring a harsh choice: pay up or freeze.

H/T Steve Milloy

Day: March 9, 2025

Cyclone Alfred: Climate Disaster or Inadequate Flood Control?

Like this:

No, Yahoo News, “Extreme Heat” Isn’t Accelerating Aging—And It’s Not Getting Worse

Like this:

The Coal Fleet Can Underpin the Energy Abundance Agenda

Like this:

Energy Imbalance Part II – An Addendum

Like this:

If António Guterres Can’t Get Basic Facts Right, Why Should We Believe the UN on Anything?

Like this:

The AI Age Begins: Texas ERCOT Slammed with 99GW of New Energy Demand

Like this:

CEI urges Congress to end the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies at the heart of the Green New Deal

Like this:

Outstanding BBC Complaints

Like this:

Biden’s last-minute $20 billion in handouts to green groups

Like this:

Europe’s Carbon Market: A Tax on Survival Disguised as Climate Policy

Like this: