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.
Banks are not only fleeing from the Net-Zero Bankers club, now they are abandoning their own Net Zero targets too, and in dumping them, we find out they never meant a damn thing anyway. It’s the complete disassembly of a plastic onion, every layer just a fake as the layer before.
Banks are not only fleeing from the Net-Zero Bankers club, now they are abandoning their own Net Zero targets too, and in dumping them, we find out they never meant a damn thing anyway. It’s the complete disassembly of a plastic onion, every layer just a fake as the layer before.
But none of these news or investor outlets is even asking the right questions — why did anyone think banks wanted to save the world? How did it ever make sense to pretend that banking institutions were going to turn themselves into Global Angels, fixing the weather, harassing their clients to switch to paper bags, and turning down loans for coal miners?
It’s all unravelling now: Wells Fargo is the first major US bank to abandon its own Net Zero Target for both 2030 and 2050. And why would they do that? Probably because Tennessee and 17 other Republican States were investigating them for fiduciary duty and cartel type behaviour. Wells Fargo abandoned its targets a few weeks ago, and today The US Republican state consortium abandoned their investigation” of Wells Fargo. They’re still investigating other bankers.
“Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee said in a statement on Thursday that he commended Well Fargo’s decision to step away from “utopian” policymaking.” — Bloomberg
The Responsible Investor (poor thing) says Wells Fargo is the first major US bank to abandon its commitment to the uber fashionable Net Zero target. But Mika Morse laments, it was a big nothing-burger all along. The banks just assumed that they’d get to Net Zero because the whole economy would.
The bankers were just coming along for a free ride:
After each one, climate advocates, the press, and others will condemn their cowardice in the face of political headwinds.
But… Banks net-zero commitments were a mirage from the outset.
Despite what the greenhawk promoters would have you believe, banks with Net Zero targets didn’t change a thing:
Research from Europe suggests that banks with net-zero commitments do not make any meaningful changes in their lending or engagement with their borrowers to reduce emissions, compared to banks without net-zero commitments.
As JP Morgan says in their 2024 Climate Report — “We don’t boycott”, “We believe in free enterprise” and “We want to compete” — which means they’re not saying no to funding an oil rig if there is a profit in it, thank you.
The research report went on to say “. Net zero banks do not divest from polluting sectors (Figure 1), nor do they scale up project financing for renewable power projects (Figure 2).” The trend lines are the same for the green pretender banks as for the rest. (Click to enlarge).
It’s hard not to chuckle while reading Bloomberg’s opinion piece, “Years of Climate Action Are Being Demolished in Days by Trump.” One gets the sense that Mark Gongloff and Elaine He were typing furiously through a cascade of tears, their trembling hands barely able to clutch their reusable bamboo keyboards. Their anguish is palpable — and deeply entertaining.
It’s hard not to chuckle while reading Bloomberg’s opinion piece, “Years of Climate Action Are Being Demolished in Days by Trump.” One gets the sense that Mark Gongloff and Elaine He were typing furiously through a cascade of tears, their trembling hands barely able to clutch their reusable bamboo keyboards. Their anguish is palpable — and deeply entertaining.
According to the authors, “nothing could have prepared us for the breadth or intensity of the assault on climate action that Trump has unleashed.” Ah yes, the horror of returning to basic national sovereignty and energy affordability! Apparently, the unleashing of logic and cost-benefit analysis is too much for the climate-industrial complex to handle.
The article catalogs 82 actions across 20 government bodies in Trump’s first 52 days. Yes, 52 days. That’s one climate heresy every 15 hours. Magnificent. It’s almost poetic how efficiently bureaucratic bloat, pseudoscientific hand-waving, and fiscal recklessness were being scaled back. Bloomberg calls this a “climate onslaught”; most Americans would call it a long-overdue spring cleaning.
Here are a few gems that made the writers gasp in horror:
The Environmental Protection Agency began overturning its 2009 “endangerment finding” that declared CO₂ — the gas you’re exhaling as you read this — a “threat to public health.” Reassessing this laughable conclusion is now apparently akin to committing a war crime.
The Transportation Department ceased expanding the EV-charger network and halted congestion-pricing schemes. In other words, they stopped using tax dollars to subsidize cars for rich people and punishing working-class drivers.
The Energy Department resumed approving LNG export projects, aka promoting energy abundance and American jobs. Scandalous.
NOAA was told to halt international communications. Given NOAA’s track record of producing press releases about “record warm years” by tweaking data sets like they’re playing Jenga, this may be the most scientifically responsible act of the century.
The authors frame this as “abdicating America’s role as a global climate leader.” But let’s translate: Washington D.C. stopped spending billions to appease unelected foreign bureaucrats at climate conferences while saddling U.S. citizens with skyrocketing energy bills. Leadership, indeed.
We’re also treated to the classic Bloomberg refrain about “trillions in damages threatened by climate change.” Not projected — threatened. The assumption, as always, is that climate models, with their documented biases and missed predictions, are sacrosanct. Dissent is blasphemy. Ironically, these models continue to predict doom while observable data stubbornly refuses to cooperate.
And the best part? The fear. Gongloff and He declare that Trump’s actions “will deepen our climate crisis.” Oh no! Not the climate crisis! You know, the one that requires infinite subsidies, zero accountability, and science by press release.
Nowhere in this breathless obituary for climate bureaucracy do the authors mention the economic toll of Net Zero, the trillions spent for negligible climate benefit, or the consistent failure of international agreements to do anything measurable to global temperature or extreme weather trends. To question this is, of course, heresy.
This entire article is a monument to the worldview that believes government must centrally plan energy use, transportation choices, agricultural practices, and even your air conditioning settings — all in the name of an unverifiable catastrophe that always lies 10 years in the future. It’s not journalism. It’s therapy for the climate clergy.
So, to Trump’s team: bravo. In just 52 days, you’ve inspired more genuine reform, more reevaluation of flawed premises, and more public discussion than a decade of carbon tax conferences ever achieved. If the reactions from the climate alarmist media are this apocalyptic, it’s a clear sign you’re doing something right.
The scale and complexity of Trump’s onslaught — highlighted in the following table — may seem discouraging. Even the actions that courts have tried to overturn have still left chaos and uncertainty in their wake. But awareness is the first step to recovery. Our hopes of having a livable environment depend on it.
To the rest of us? Sit back, relax, and enjoy the sound of bureaucracies being defunded. It’s not just the hum of freedom — it’s the sound of common sense making a comeback.
For a good laugh, here’s a non-paywalled version, but finish your sip of coffee and put the cup down before reading. It’s got charts!
The scientific community and the media are focused almost exclusively by how greenhouse gas emissions affect the climate — from power plants to automobiles to your fireplace to your gas stove, and even cow farts. But what about that big ball of gas in the sky? Why does it get short shrift when it comes to the causes of climate change?
The scientific community and the media are focused almost exclusively by how greenhouse gas emissions affect the climate — from power plants to automobiles to your fireplace to your gas stove, and even cow farts. But what about that big ball of gas in the sky? Why does it get short shrift when it comes to the causes of climate change?
The Heartland Institute’s Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken, Jim Lakely will discuss this topic, asked for by many of the show’s fans, with one of the leading solar and climate experts in the world: Dr. Willie Soon. We will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including a global warming conference that got snowed in, how climate change is affecting your naps, a promise by the crazies in Just Stop Oil to cease all its childish “direct action” to save the planet, and a debunking of human-caused climate change causing cherry blossoms to bloom too early.
Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET for Episode 151 of The Climate Realism show, and we will answer your questions in the chat.
The trade body said a lack of subsidies for drivers contributed to the latest 11.6pc drop in monthly production, claiming the decline would only worsen after new taxes were introduced on EVs next month.
As the SMMT’s Mike Hawes gets it totally wrong. We need more taxpayer subsidies for EVs like we need a hole in the head.
When will he wake up to the fact that EVs are not fit for purpose for the majority of drivers. What the UK motor industry needs is the abolition of the punitive ZEV mandate and the dropping of the ban on petrol/diesels in 2030.
In its March 26, 2025, article titled “Heavier Rainfall Rates in U.S. Cities,” Climate Central (CC) claims that “Climate change is supercharging the water cycle, bringing heavier rainfall extremes and related flood risks across the U.S.” This conclusion is misleading at best, and scientifically irresponsible at worst. The evidence, when properly examined, points to alternative, well-known meteorological causes of localized rainfall increase.
In its March 26, 2025, article titled “Heavier Rainfall Rates in U.S. Cities,” Climate Central (CC) claims that “Climate change is supercharging the water cycle, bringing heavier rainfall extremes and related flood risks across the U.S.” This conclusion is misleading at best, and scientifically irresponsible at worst. The evidence, when properly examined, points to alternative, well-known meteorological causes of localized rainfall increase.
CC claims that, “as the atmosphere warms with climate change, it can hold more water vapor, leading to heavier downpours—especially in urban areas.” This is easily explained by local urban meteorological factors unrelated to climate change.
To start, the CC article commits a common logical fallacy in climate reporting: correlation mistaken for causation. Yes, some cities have recorded increases in intense rainfall over recent decades, but that’s not the smoking gun for anthropogenic-driven climate change as CC would have you believe. Rather,Climate at a Glance provides a far more comprehensive and nuanced assessment of precipitation trends, showing that nationwide rainfall in the U.S. has not increased in an alarming or unprecedented manner. In fact, the entry on U.S. Precipitation shows that while total precipitation has slightly increased over the last century, there’s no consistent trend of intensifying rainfall that matches the hysteria being promoted.
Worse, CC completely ignores the well-documented Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in their article. Cities are warmer than surrounding rural areas due to the heat-retaining properties of asphalt, concrete, and reduced vegetation—this is a basic principle of meteorology that’s been acknowledged for decades.
One of the leading higher rainfall cities CC mentions is Reno, NV., citing a 37% increase in rainfall since 1970 for the city. A simple experiment, done by Anthony Watts in 2008, conclusively demonstrated the strong UHI signature of the city, as seen below:
Warmer city surfaces create more localized convection, which can in turn drive more thunderstorm and precipitation activity over urban cores. Ironically, CC has an entire section of their website dedicated to UHI in U.S. cities, none of which appear in their article claiming climate change is “supercharging the water cycle” and rainfall for cities.
With CC ignoring the UHI factor in rainfall enhancement—in an article specifically focused on urban rainfall trends—is not just an oversight. It’s obvious journalistic and scientific malpractice.
There’s another major mechanism at play here that CC sidesteps entirely: urban air pollution. Cities are loaded with particulate matter from vehicles, industry, and heating systems. These particles serve as condensation nuclei—tiny seeds upon which water vapor condenses, forming clouds and enhancing precipitation. This isn’t new or controversial science. A 2004 study in Nature titled “Enhanced precipitation due to aerosol effects” documented how increased aerosols can enhance cloud formation and intensify rainfall, particularly in urban environments.
Moreover, the American Meteorological Society has long recognized this phenomenon. The AMS Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology published a paper in 2007 on “Urban Influences on Cloud and Precipitation”, highlighting how cities can create their own microclimates that influence local rainfall, both in amount and intensity. None of these well-established mechanisms rely on global climate change to explain city-specific rainfall trends.
Let’s also not forget the role of cloud seeding in weather modification—a practice that intentionally introduces particulates into the atmosphere to enhance rainfall. The fact that urban areas do this unintentionally through pollution suggests that rainfall trends in these areas are far from purely “natural” or “climate-change” induced.
CC’s flawed analysis ignores basic well-known urban meteorology. CC’s article is therefore a misguided narrative driven by model speculation. Their narrative—that climate change is making U.S. city rainstorms worse—is built on selective data, conveniently ignoring both the well-established Urban Heat Island effect and the rainfall-enhancing role of aerosols. It’s like blaming fever on the weather while ignoring the infection causing it. By omitting these critical factors, they present an oversimplified, alarmist view that serves political ends rather than scientific truth.
This kind of shoddy research for media consumption undermines public trust in climate science. CC claims to be an authority, yet their work shows a consistent pattern: cherry-pick data, ignore contradictory evidence, and blame everything on humans using fossil fuels causing climate change. Real science considers all variables, especially ones as obvious as localized urban heating and pollution. Until Climate Central acknowledges these fundamental factors, they’re not reporting science—they’re spinning a fake news narrative.
How we laughed when the Met Office declared a UK temperature record of 40.3°C at 3.12pm on July 19th 2022, halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby at a time when it later transpired three typhoon jets were coming into land. Mirth was unconfined when the ‘record’ that stood for 60 seconds as the temperature briefly spiked by 0.6°C was later declared by the Met Office to be a “milestone in UK climate history”. Now it appears that another nearby and busy RAF station in Lincolnshire is getting in on the ‘joke’ record business. It appears that RAF Waddington also declared a record high on the same day of 40.3°C and this has been entered into the archive run by the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA).
How we laughed when the Met Office declared a UK temperature record of 40.3°C at 3.12pm on July 19th 2022, halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby at a time when it later transpired three typhoon jets were coming into land. Mirth was unconfined when the ‘record’ that stood for 60 seconds as the temperature briefly spiked by 0.6°C was later declared by the Met Office to be a “milestone in UK climate history”. Now it appears that another nearby and busy RAF station in Lincolnshire is getting in on the ‘joke’ record business. It appears that RAF Waddington also declared a record high on the same day of 40.3°C and this has been entered into the archive run by the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA). This is despite the Met Office itself calling the Waddington reading ‘suspect’ due to an application of weedkiller. Quite why this should disqualify a temperature recording four feet from the ground when jet exhaust does not is unclear, and the excuse has a touch of the ‘dog ate my homework’ about it.
Weedkiller or not, the 40.3°C recording at Waddington has found its way into the Met Office Midas Open dataset. This is said to be one of CEDA’s most popular datasets, containing historical meteorological observations back from the present to the 18th century. Popular with future scientists no doubt who will be able to point to two 40.3°C records, happy to disregard any airport heat corruptions and the even more severe warmth that seems to emanate from an application of paraquat.
Shout out again to citizen super-sleuth Ray Sanders who is undertaking a forensic review of the Met Office’s UK temperature stations (existent and non-existent) along with an examination of the operation’s published readings and data. He recently queried the archived Waddington recording and was told that “at the time” the data point was suspect due to the weedkiller treatment. He notes that the Met Office is clearly in a quandary since it has claimed the reading is suspect, but the numbers passed into the archive can only have come from it. Any doubts about Coningsby can be hand-waved away with “‘peer-reviewed scientific’ data proving that such a high temperature was also ‘recorded’ elsewhere”, suggests Sanders.
The Met Office clearly owes the public and the scientific community a full explanation. Mistakes may be made with routine numbers, “but how likely with the alleged all-time UK high?” asks Sanders.
Regular readers will recall that Ray Sanders was behind the recent discovery that the Met Office had been inventing temperature averages at 103 non-existent sites. The Met Office even went so far as to supply coordinates, elevations and purposes of the imaginary sites. Following massive interest across social media and frequent reposting of a Daily Sceptic article, the Met Office discretely renamed its database as ‘location specific’ and removed station coordinates. A subsequent ‘fact check’ from Science Feedback that appeared to have been largely written by the Met Office claimed that average data from some stations was not “fabricated” but estimated using “well-correlated related neighbouring stations”. This is said to be a scientific method that is published in peer-reviewed literature. At the time, the Daily Sceptic highlighted the case of Cawood in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a pristine class 1 site with no unnatural heat corruptions and a record of excellent readings going back to 1959. Insert Cawood into the Met Office’s renamed ‘location specific’ database and no record of 30-year temperatures is available. Instead, there is a reference to four other estimated stations that no longer exist, and a fifth that is 27 miles away and at a higher elevation.
Sanders has now come up with an even worse example of these imaginary readings. Just when you thought things could not get worse, he investigates the location of Norwich. This is an area closely associated with some of the Met Office’s work, with connections to the University of East Anglia and past TV recordings from a local weather centre. There have been numerous temperature recordings in Norwich since 1873, but none are supplied under ‘location specific’ Norwich. Instead, the long-term average temperature for the cell area is provided from five closed stations inventing data, despite nearby open sites. Sanders is not inclined to be charitable, noting: “The facts are quite simple, the vast majority of all the Met Office’s supposedly Climate Average data is covertly concocted by a system only accepted by a tiny cabal of anonymous peer reviewers operating a witches brew of contrived data that is a closely guarded secret.”
Temperature measurements play a vital role in promoting the politicised Net Zero fantasy, so it is no accident that green activists in state-run weather operations such as the Met Office have weaponised the data. But the collecting systems were never designed to offer the precision claimed down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade. Almost the entire Met Office temperature network is blasted by unnatural heat, while rough estimates of data are widespread throughout the system. Under the World Meteorological Organisation classification system, almost 80% of the Met Offices sites are in junk classes 4 and 5 with ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C and 5°C respectively.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims that humans have caused most global warming over the last 100 years, but the UN body cannot know this, and it is actually unprovable. All of these anthropogenic scares that lead to mass science ignorance and psychosis are the product of computer models attempting to measure a chaotic and non-linear atmosphere. Many of the important influences on weather and long-term climate such as water vapour and clouds are little understood. It is impossible to measure the contribution of a greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide to any current warming (or cooling) and estimates for a doubled atmospheric amount vary widely from almost nothing in a ‘saturated’ environment to 10°C and over. An unreliable temperature record from both national and frequently upward-adjusted global datasets do little to improve what are just speculative forecasts. In the world of climate computer modelling, making small changes to data going in can lead to large changes in the forecasts going out.
But in the world of ‘settled’ climate science, possibly the most corrupted branch of science the world has ever seen – it’s Garbage in, Gospel out.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
S.L. Cressey’s No Son, There Won’t Be a Hydrogen Economy is a sharp, data-driven critique of the growing hype surrounding hydrogen as a future energy source. The central argument of the book is clear and unwavering: while hydrogen may have limited industrial and aerospace applications, the broader vision of a global “hydrogen economy” is fundamentally flawed—technically, economically, and especially environmentally.
“Scientists, engineers, and policymakers must reject symbolic solutions and focus on measurable, scalable, and scientifically robust strategies. Not all gases are equally dangerous, and not all solutions are equally wise.”
S.L. Cressey’s No Son, There Won’t Be a Hydrogen Economy is a sharp, data-driven critique of the growing hype surrounding hydrogen as a future energy source. The central argument of the book is clear and unwavering: while hydrogen may have limited industrial and aerospace applications, the broader vision of a global “hydrogen economy” is fundamentally flawed—technically, economically, and especially environmentally.
The hydrogen movement, in short, can be likened to “cargo cult science”—a term popularized by physicist Richard Feynman to describe efforts that mimic the appearance of scientific rigor without engaging with its foundational principles.
The book dispels the prospects of hydrogen as a miracle climate solution. While hydrogen combustion or fuel cell use does not emit carbon dioxide (CO₂), hydrogen itself is not a primary energy source but an energy carrier. It must be produced using other forms of energy, typically through steam methane reforming (SMR) or electrolysis. Both methods are energy-intensive and often powered by fossil fuels.
Fugitive Emissions
Electrolysis, even when powered by renewables or nuclear energy, demands large quantities of electricity and pure water, and suffers from inefficiencies that undermine its climate benefits. But the most critical flaw lies not in the production pathway—but in what happens when hydrogen escapes.
Technically, hydrogen is incredibly difficult to contain. As the smallest and lightest molecule in the universe, it effortlessly leaks through seals, valves, and pipelines. These “fugitive emissions” are not rare accidents—they are a systemic feature of large-scale hydrogen handling where hydrogen is lost across production, compression, storage, transport, and end use. And once in the atmosphere, leaked hydrogen does not remain inert or harmless—it becomes an invisible climate threat.
Environmentally, this is where hydrogen’s dangers are most under appreciated. Fugitive hydrogen emissions disrupt atmospheric chemistry in a way that amplifies global warming. Specifically, hydrogen reacts with hydroxyl radicals (OH) in the atmosphere—the same radicals responsible for breaking down methane, a potent greenhouse gas. When atmospheric OH is depleted by hydrogen, methane lingers longer, increasing its warming impact. Hydrogen also indirectly contributes to the formation of ground-level ozone and stratospheric water vapor, both of which are significant climate forcers.
Implications
Recent studies have shown that hydrogen can have a global warming potential (GWP) up to 33 times greater than CO₂ over a 20-year timeframe when accounting for these indirect effects. Thus No Son, There Won’t Be a Hydrogen Economy leads to a controversial but scientifically grounded point: carbon dioxide, despite its demonization, is far better understood and less disruptive than hydrogen in key respects. While excessive CO₂ contributes to long-term warming, it does not deplete hydroxyl radicals, and it does not unpredictably alter the lifetimes of more potent greenhouse gases.
This book also documents that atmospheric CO₂ has positive externalities. Increased CO₂ levels have been shown to enhance plant growth through the well-documented CO₂ fertilization effect. This can improve agricultural yields, promote reforestation, and expand the carbon sink capacity of the biosphere—particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. While these benefits do not necessarily justify unregulated emissions, they underscore the importance of weighing the net climatic and ecological impact of all gases—rather than simplifying climate policy into binary categories of “clean” and “dirty.”
By contrast, hydrogen offers no such ecological upside. Its fugitive emissions introduce non-linear, hard-to-model disturbances into atmospheric chemistry, contributing to warming via complex and poorly understood feedback loops. This makes the widespread use of hydrogen not just inefficient, but counterproductive.
Replacing one kilogram of natural gas with hydrogen—if it results in even modest leakage—can lead to higher net greenhouse emissions, not lower. Hydrogen’s environmental profile is especially dangerous because it escapes detection so easily and lacks regulatory oversight in many countries. Once released, it cannot be easily recaptured or offset, and its impact on the atmosphere can persist long after the initial emission.
Cressey devotes significant attention to the economic impracticalities as well. Green hydrogen currently costs between $4 and $7 per kilogram, far more than the gasoline-equivalent cost of natural gas. Transitioning existing infrastructure—homes, pipelines, industrial boilers, vehicles—to run on hydrogen would require trillions of dollars in retrofits and upgrades. He cites figures such as $4 trillion just to replace U.S. natural gas pipelines, and another $3 trillion to retrofit appliances. Despite these immense investments, hydrogen’s actual contribution to the energy mix remains negligible.
Real-world hydrogen demonstration projects—like China’s Kuqa facility, France’s Jupiter 1000, and the U.S. HECA plant—are examined with a critical lens. These cases often feature a pattern of high expectations followed by cost overruns, technical malfunctions, underperformance, and ultimately public subsidies to keep them afloat. Electrolyzers frequently cannot handle variable power inputs, fugitive leaks occur regularly, and promised carbon reductions fail to materialize. Cressey argues that the true climate benefit of these projects, once adjusted for leakage and inefficiencies, is negative or marginal at best.
Cressey’s overarching message is that hydrogen’s appeal is largely aesthetic and ideological. It has become a kind of symbolic fuel—clean at the point of use, futuristic in branding, and politically attractive. But when examined through the lens of chemistry and atmospheric science, it reveals itself to be deeply problematic. The hydrogen economy is not just an expensive detour—it may actively worsen the very problem it claims to solve.
Conclusion
There are other problems with hydrogen, including embrittling metals over time. Summed, the enthusiasm for hydrogen does not pass economic or environmental muster. The “clean fuel” narrative collapses under scrutiny—especially once fugitive emissions, atmospheric feedbacks, and the overlooked externalities of CO₂ are fully considered.
No Son, There Won’t Be a Hydrogen Economy calls on scientists, engineers, and policymakers to reject symbolic solutions and refocus on strategies grounded in measurable, scalable, and scientifically robust approaches. In doing so, the conversation goes from hype to hard evidence. Not all gases are equally dangerous, and not all solutions are equally wise.
If you thought climate litigation couldn’t get more farcical, let Bucks County prove you wrong. In what can only be described as a political theater piece disguised as legal action, the Democrat-controlled Bucks County Board of Commissioners has embarrassed itself with a lawsuit that is equal parts stealth, spectacle, and strategic cluelessness.
The spectacle began in March 2024, with Democrat commissioners Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie flanking token Republican Gene DiGirolamo (who quickly backed away like someone who smelled the nonsense a mile away). They announced a lawsuit against BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, and the American Petroleum Institute, accusing them of violating local “nuisance laws” and get this—failing to adequately warn Bucks County residents about the supposed dangers of climate change.
Yes, because nothing screams “legal clarity” like trying to treat a gallon of unleaded like secondhand smoke.
The cherry on top? These climate crusaders tried to sneak the whole thing past the public by embedding their lawsuit authorization under the vague term “environmental litigation” in a January 2024 consent agenda. This procedural magic trick was so flagrant that even Judge Stephen Corr, hardly a flamethrower by nature, called it out. Corr didn’t mince words: “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he snapped at the county solicitor. He then summarized the commissioners’ move for what it was—“a sneaky way of doing it.”
But wait—it gets better.
The lawyer for Chevron, Frederick Santarelli, called the maneuver “undemocratic” and lambasted the commissioners for violating Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act. Corr, who actually used to sit on a school board and knows how transparency is supposed to work, seemed genuinely appalled. “How can the public ask an intelligent question?” he asked. A fair point—assuming intelligent questions haven’t already been outlawed by the climate litigation crowd.
So what exactly is this lawsuit aiming to do? Oh, just fund public works projects like stormwater management and bridge repairs by extracting cash from oil companies. That’s right—Bucks County thinks it can pave its roads with climate hysteria and Chevron’s legal settlements.
Ted Boutrous, an attorney for Chevron, didn’t hold back either: “Virtually identical lawsuits have been dismissed by multiple federal and state courts across the country, including in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and California.” The precedent is clear: this kind of political performance art doesn’t belong in a county courtroom. As Boutrous rightly pointed out, “The claims are based on interstate and international emissions and, therefore, are precluded and preempted by federal law under clear U.S. Supreme Court precedent.”
Translation: This isn’t just bad policy. It’s legally incoherent.
Naturally, Bucks County’s legal team is spinning harder than a turbine in a wind farm. County lawyer Dan Flynn alleged oil companies ran a “disinformation campaign,” because apparently no one in 2024 understands that cars run on gas unless Big Oil spells it out in skywriting. Judge Corr wasn’t buying it. “What about me? I drive a car that burns gas,” he pointed out. Flynn responded with an artful dodge: “The court was not telling everybody to go burn gas. The defendants were.”
This, in a courtroom, is what passes for a compelling legal argument in 2025.
As for the real world—where grown-ups reside—Judge Corr reminded everyone that “we’re talking about emissions from all over the world.” A point so obvious it hurts to hear it repeated, and yet apparently not obvious enough for the commissioners who think Shell owes them new rain gutters.
The entire fiasco reeks of political opportunism cloaked in legal jargon. Bucks County isn’t trying to stop climate change—they’re chasing a payout. And they’re doing it with all the ethical grace of a Vegas conman.
Let’s recap: A climate activist nonprofit (Center for Climate Integrity) coordinated with Bucks officials via email prior to the lawsuit. The suit itself hides behind “environmental litigation” on a consent agenda. The commissioners talk about “transparency” while clearly avoiding it. And their legal strategy has already been tried—and laughed out of court—across half a dozen states.
Bucks County’s crusade is a microcosm of the broader climate litigation absurdity: legally bankrupt, ethically dubious, and politically motivated. This is not governance. This is green theater—badly acted and poorly reviewed.
Let’s hope Judge Corr’s written ruling delivers the final curtain call this performance deserves. Preferably with a laugh track.
ABC News ran a story this week reporting on the early bloom of the cherry blossom trees in Washington, D.C., attributing the early bloom to climate change. This is false. Although the cherry blossom bloom has arrived earlier in recent years, the cause is the population increase in D.C, and development that has caused a localized heat biases from the urban heat island (UHI) effect, causing fewer late season freezes and higher average nighttime temperatures in the area. The same is true for Tokyo.
ABC News ran a story this week reporting on the early bloom of the cherry blossom trees in Washington, D.C., attributing the early bloom to climate change. This is false. Although the cherry blossom bloom has arrived earlier in recent years, the cause is the population increase in D.C, and development that has caused a localized heat biases from the urban heat island (UHI) effect, causing fewer late season freezes and higher average nighttime temperatures in the area. The same is true for Tokyo.
The reporter in ABC News item, “Cherry blossoms blooming earlier due to climate change,” says that “Washington’s iconic cherry blossoms are approaching peak bloom, and it’s happening earlier due to human-amplified climate change.” This change, while not catastrophic is disrupting travel to see the blooms, causing travelers who come to D.C. to see the bloom annually to have to plan for earlier vacations.
Similar stories have run in past years around this time of year over the past decade, including in the Washington Post in 2023, and the BBC describing a similar situation in Tokyo in 2024.
It may be true that cherry blossoms are reaching peak bloom days earlier in recent years than they have in past decades, but if so, population growth and the associated UHI effect are to blame, not a modest rise in global average temperatures. The UHI effect is a well established phenomena in which as a location experiences population growth and densification, the development associated with comes with artificial sources of heat, such as, surfaces like concrete, asphalt, buildings, engines, furnaces, boilers, and air conditioner exhausts. These heat sources absorb sunlight and heat during the day only to release it slowly at night, which tends to raise the average temperatures for nighttime, biasing the overall average temperature for any location so effected.
Concerning Tokyo, as explained in the February 2024 Climate Fact check posted at Climate Realism, even as Tokyo’s unbiased average annual temperature has declined since 1997, the impact of the UHI effect there has been to artificially boost the average temperature there by 5.4℉ over the past century, far above the average rise measured for the island nation as a whole. This bias results in earlier spring like conditions with higher nighttime lows, resulting in the early bloom.
Research published in the peer reviewed journals Geophysical Research Letters and Environmental Pollution explain that UHI effect could shift blooming dates by several days to weeks in large metropolitan areas when compared to trees and flowering plants in nearby rural locations.
Another peer reviewed study published in the Journal Climate specifically discussed the UHI signature of Washington D.C. The figure below from that study shows maps of the UHI signature of Washington, D.C. in the morning, afternoon, and at night.
Washington, D.C. (A) aerial imagery with major waterbodies masked; (B) morning UHI; (C) afternoon UHI; (D) evening UHI.
Measured temperatures in Washington, D.C. have risen more than the nationwide average, largely as a result of population growth and the resultant UHI over the past century. Washington, D.C.’s population has grown by more than 331 percent since 1950, associated with a huge amount of development. The National Park Service has been tracking the peak cherry blossom bloom since the early 1920s and its data, displayed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, shows that the annual peak bloom has shifted earlier as population has grown there. (See the graph, below)
ABC News ignores the research and data which strongly suggests that the UHI is wholly responsible for earlier spring peak cherry blossom blooms, due to fewer late season frosts and warmer average nighttime temperatures. But, of course, this is in line with narrative that the mainstream media pushes concerning climate change, that it causes everything bad. The facts may not support this, but then the facts don’t inspire a compelling news story, which is all that ABC and other outlets seem to really care about — generating public interest, attention, clicks, and ad sales, rather than reporting the truth.
The climate crisis narrative ignores real issues like
poor infrastructure and overpopulation, pushing costly policies
that hurt economies while failing to improve resilience.
The climate crisis narrative ignores real issues like poor infrastructure and overpopulation, pushing costly policies that hurt economies while failing to improve resilience.
According to theUnited Nations, “Climate change is a global emergency that goes beyond national borders.” From theWorld Economic Forum, “Urgent global action must be taken to reduce emissions and safeguard human health from the multi-pronged negative impacts of climate change globally.”
From every multinational institution in the world, we hear the same message. From the World Bank, “The world is battling a perfect storm of climate, conflict, economic, and nature crises.” From the World Health Organization, “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat.”
A major problem with all this unanimity over this “emergency” is the fact that for at least half of all people living in Western nations in 2025, the UN, WEF, WHO, and World Bank have no credibility. We don’t want to “own nothing and be happy” as our middle class is crushed. We don’t want the only politically acceptable way to maintain national economic growth to rely on population replacement. And with only the slightest numeracy, we see apocalyptic proclamations as lacking substance.
For example, while 250,000 “additional deaths per year” is tragic, worldwide estimates of total deaths are not quite70 million per year.These “additional deaths” constitute a 0.36 percent increase over that baseline, just over one-third of one percent. Not even a rounding error.
Source NASA
Similarly, an alarmist prediction from NASA is that “Antarctica is losing ice mass (melting) at an average rate of about150 billion tons per year, and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year, adding to sea level rise.” Let’s unpack that a bit. A billion tons is a gigaton, equivalent in volume to one cubic kilometer. So Antarctica is losing 150 cubic kilometers of ice per year. But Antarctica has an estimated total ice mass of 30 million cubic kilometers. Which means Antarctica is losing about one twenty-thousandth of one percent of its total ice mass per year. That is well below the accuracy of measurement. It is an estimate, and the conclusion it suggests is of no significance.
One may wonder about Greenland, with “only” 2.9 million cubic kilometers of ice, melting at an estimated rate of 270 gigatons per year. But that still yields a rate of loss of less than one one-hundredth of one percent per year, which is almost certainly below the ability to actually gauge total ice mass and total annual ice loss.
What about sea level rise? Here again, basic math yields underwhelming conclusions. The total surface area of the world’s oceans is 361 million square kilometers. If you spread 420 gigatons over that surface (Greenland and Antarctica’s melting combined), you get a sea level rise of not quite 1.2 millimeters per year. This is, again, so insignificant that it is below the threshold of our ability to measure.
These fundamental facts will turn anyone willing to do even basic fact-checking into a cynic.
What’s really going on? We get at least a glimpse of truth from the above quotation from the World Bank, where they ascribe the challenges of humanity to several causes: “climate, conflict, economic, and nature crises.” There’s value in the distinctions they make. They list “nature crisis” as distinct from “climate,” and at least explicitly, “climate” is not cited as resulting from some anthropogenically generated trend of increasing temperatures and increasingly extreme weather. They just say “climate.”
Which brings us to the point: Conflict and economic crises are far bigger sources of human misery, and we face serious environmental challenges that have little to do with climate change and more to do with how we manage our industry, our wilderness, and our natural resources. And we are face “climate” challenges even when catastrophic climate events have nothing to do with any alleged “climate crisis.”
A perfect example of how the climate “crisis” narrative is falsely applied when, in fact, the climate-related catastrophe would have happened anyway is found in the disastrousfloods that devastated Pakistanin 2022. Despite the doomsday spin from PBS (etc.), these floods were not abnormal because of “climate change.” They were an abnormal catastrophe because in just 60 years, the population of that nation has grown from 45 million to 240 million people. They’vechannelized their rivers, built dense new settlementsonto what were once floodplains and other marginal land, they’ve denuded their forests, which took away the capacity to absorb runoff, and they’ve paved thousands of square miles, creating impervious surfaces where water can’t percolate. Of course, a big storm made a mess. The weather didn’t change. The nation changed.
The disaster story repeats everywhere. Contrary to the narrative, the primary cause is not “climate change.” Bigger tsunamis? Maybe it’s because coastalaquifers were overdrafted, which caused land subsidence, or because previously uninhabited tidelands were settled because the population quintupled in less than two generations, and because coastal mangrove forests were destroyed, which used to attenuate big waves. What about deforestation? Perhaps because these nations have been denied the ability to develop natural gas and hydroelectric power, they’re stripping away the forests for fuel to cook their food. In some cases, they’re burning their forests to make room for biofuel plantations, in a towering display of irony and corruption.
In California, our nation’s epicenter of climate crisis fearmongering and the subsequent commercial opportunism, the emphasis on crisis instead of resilience has led to absurd policies. Instead of bringing back the timber industry to thin the state’s overgrown forests, the governor mandates exclusive sales of EVs by 2035. Instead of responsibly drilling oil in California’s ample reserves of crude, California imports 75 percent of its oil, and its economy still relies on oil for half the energy that the state consumes.
Worldwide, these mistakes multiply. Biofuel plantations consume half a million square miles in order to replace a mere two percent of transportation fuel. A mad scramble across every continent to increase mining by an order of magnitude to meet the demand for raw materials to manufacture batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. Denial of funds for natural gas development in Africa, condemning over a billion people to ongoing energy poverty.
Simple truths are obscured by the climate crisis narrative. We need to rebuild our infrastructure for climate resilience because much of it is over a century old, at the same time as the US population has tripled. Floods and hurricanes cause more damage because there are more people, and more of them live in areas that have always been hit by floods and hurricanes.
The truths are as endless as they are repressed. We can’t possibly lift all of humanity into a middle-class lifestyle without at least doubling energy production worldwide, and we can’t possibly accomplish that while also reducing our use of coal, oil, and gas. Renewables aren’t renewable (here’s a must-read on that topic). Offshore wind is an environmental disaster, as is biofuel, as is the explosion of totally unregulated mining to feed the renewables industry. On the other hand, extreme environmental laws and regulations are harming economic growth, freedom, and, in no small irony, the innovation and investment that would give us the wealth we need to better protect the environment. And the prevailing economic, environmental, and cultural challenge in the world is not the climate but crashing birthrates among developing nations at the same time as the population of the world’s most undeveloped nations continues to explode exponentially.
We need climate resilience in order to properly protect a global population that has quadrupled to 8 billion in just the last century, spreading to every corner of the earth. That goal would be easier if once-trusted global institutions would allow for honest debate and practical infrastructure development. Instead, they continue to spew transparently misleading climate crisis propaganda, adhering to a mission that can only be described as repressive on all fronts—culturally, economically, and environmentally.
You must be logged in to post a comment.