Day: March 29, 2025

The Paris Climate Agreement was doomed from the start

The Paris Climate Agreement was flawed; doomed to fail from its inception. It is long past time for all parties to it and the media to acknowledge this fact.

From The American Thinker

By H. Sterling Burnett

The Paris Climate Agreement was flawed; doomed to fail from its inception. It is long past time for all parties to it and the media to acknowledge this fact.

The mainstream media have bemoaned the Paris Agreement’s fate since Donald Trump’s reelection. Trump took the United States out of the Paris Agreement during his first term and vowed to do so again after President Biden put America back into the agreement. While Trump withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement was a visible and public rebuke of the pact, undermining its “effectiveness,” in point of fact, the agreement was dead even before the ink of the last signature on it was dry.

Physics, economic, and social realities on the ground, and the structure of the treaty itself ensured that the Paris Agreement would be ineffective in preventing greenhouse gas emissions from rising.

As I noted shortly after the time of its completion in 2015, even those who developed the agreement at the time quietly acknowledged that emission reduction pledges made by the signatory countries would be insufficient to keep temperatures below the 2.0℃ threshold. By their accounting at the time, if every party to the agreement actually cut emissions by the amount they agreed to, it would result in less than half the greenhouse gas cuts required to halt temperatures at the upper limit of 2.0 degrees. By 2017, the UN reported that even if every country abides by its Paris commitments, a dubious proposition at best, temperatures would still rise by 3 degrees C by 2100.

Also dooming the Paris Agreement is the fact, as reported by the BBC, that a number of countries are openly discussing not keeping their commitments. Mind you, those same countries have failed to keep their commitments so far, but now they are openly conversing about it. Argentina, Indonesia (a top 10 global CO2 emitter), South Africa (Africa’s largest emitter), and South Korea, among other countries supposedly committed to reining in fossil fuel use and cutting their emissions, are now openly saying they will increase production of coal, natural gas, and oil. Moreover, they hope to import those products from the United States.

They are blaming Trump for their decision, but the data show that every single country now saying they want more fossil fuels was, in fact, increasing its use of fossil fuels long before Trump was reelected and pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement. In fact, no country that set specific targets for emission reductions in the first Paris commitment period has made significant progress toward meeting its goals.

Further evidence the Paris Agreement is dead has been reported by Yahoonews.com. Of the nearly 200 countries that signed the Paris agreement, only 10 submitted their updated carbon reduction commitments by the deadline. That makes 190 scofflaws. Also, even those 10 have failed to meet their previous carbon reduction commitments.

It also bears noting that two of the three biggest carbon dioxide emitters in the world, China and India, have no firm commitments under the Paris Agreement. Rather than promising to cut emissions, they vaguely said that they expect at some point in the future to see their emissions peak. If CO2 emissions are driving climate change, China’s emissions trajectory — which has grown steadily since 2015 — would ensure more atmospheric CO2 in 2030 and 2050, regardless of what the rest of the world did or did not do.

Another compelling reason that the Paris Agreement was bound to fail was aptly described by philosopher Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan: “Covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.” That describes each and every climate agreement developed thus far, in a nutshell.

The Paris Agreement was never a binding treaty. Under its terms, the nearly 200 nations that signed were supposed to set individualized targets to reduce or cap carbon dioxide emissions. However, none of those goals, or even the commitment to set such goals, was enforceable internationally. Unless and until the individual countries actually enact the targets through domestic law, they aren’t even binding within the legal system of any individual country.

In the end, the Paris Agreement requires sacrifice, sustained and deep sacrifice, for no discernable gain. Politicians want to stay in power and are loathe to stay a policy course that visibly harms their constituents for payoffs decades after they are out of office. That is the main, realpolitik reason the Paris Climate Agreement was doomed from day one. Now is the time to speak its eulogy, without regret. The trillions of dollars wasted to date on it are sunk costs, but at least we can now cease throwing good money after bad.

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., (hsburnett@heartland.org) is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Image: Pexels

Claim: Renewables are Cheaper Because of Fuel Volatility

When questioned about affordability, New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) proponents have claimed that renewable energy development can reduce costs.  This article responds to their argument that reduced fuel price volatility will make renewables cheaper.

From Watts Up With That?

By Roger Caiazza

When questioned about affordability, New York Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act (Climate Act) proponents have claimed that renewable energy development can reduce costs.  This article responds to their argument that reduced fuel price volatility will make renewables cheaper.

The December 18, 2024, New York Assembly Committee on Energy public hearing enabled legislators to question New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and New York State Department of Public Service (DPS) staff about Climate Act progress. Jessica Waldorf, Chief of Staff & Director of Policy Implementation, DPS was asked what impact Climate Act GHG emission reductions would have given that New York emissions are smaller than the observed annual increases in global GHG emissions. Waldorf said that there are other reasons “to build renewable energy resources in New York that are not just related to emissions.”  She gave two reasons: energy security and price volatility. 

The other thing I would say about energy security is price volatility.  Customers are beholden to the whims of the fossil fuel industry and the up and down markets that we see from fossil fuels.  Localizing our energy production and renewables allows us for price stability.  That is definitely a benefit of building resources here. 

The claim was also made at an New York State Energy Plan Planning Board on March 3, 2025 to adopt the scope for the state energy plan the claim was mentioned.  The presentation by Jeff Freedman from the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, University at Albany, Albany, New York included the following slide that makes the claim that renewable energy can reduce costs.

One characteristic of the NYSERDA documentation is lack of detail, so it is not surprising that the justification for the claim is not readily available. Table 6-1 was in New York State Climate Impacts Assessment Chapter 06: Energy.  That chapter does not address renewable energy costs specifically.  I searched for references for costs in the chapter and found only one relevant reference on page 370:

Energy costs: Fossil fuel prices are increasingly volatile, largely because they are traded on global markets. In contrast, a power sector composed of large volumes of renewable resources that have no fuel costs could lead to less volatile energy bills due to the elimination of this driver of variability in energy costs. The presence of distributed resources amplifies this effect. Whether the costs of a clean power sector are lower than, comparable to, or higher than the status quo, they will be more predictable and less likely to create indirect costs that arise from unexpected price changes.

The presumption in this article is that the basis of these claims that renewable energy will be cheaper and less volatile is that a renewable energy dependent electric system will have less unstable fuel costs resulting in cheaper and more secure energy.  This in turn is based on two presumptions: fuel prices are volatile because of global markets and renewables would eliminate this cost driver.

Fuel Volatility

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) noted in June 2024 that fossil fuel price volatility has shown significant changes over time, with recent years experiencing particularly high levels of volatility: “In 2022, natural gas price volatility reached extreme levels, with historical volatility peaking at 171% in February 2022, the highest since at least 1994.”  Note that EIA is only discussing natural gas volatility which has become a much larger electric generating fuel source in recent years.  In my opinion, the increasing reliance on a single fuel could be the fundamental reason for the observed increase in volatility.

In any case, the New York agency global market argument picks just one driver for fuel price volatility.  The EIA  gave other reasons for natural gas variability in August 2022:

Increased uncertainty about market conditions that affect natural gas supply and demand can result in high price volatility. Events that have contributed to changing market conditions include:

  • Production freeze-offs
  • Storms
  • Unplanned pipeline maintenance and outages
  • Significant departures from normal weather
  • Changes in inventory levels
  • Availability of substitute fuels
  • Changes in imports or exports
  • Other sudden changes in demand

U.S. natural gas prices are typically more volatile during the first quarter of a year because of the fluctuating demand for natural gas for space heating as weather changes. Factors that contributed to heightened volatility in the first three months of this year include:

Of the eight events that contribute to changing market conditions and fuel volatility is the only one is related to global market conditions.

There is one other aspect of volatility.  In today’s electric system prices spike when load peaks during the hottest and coldest annual events.  When the electric grid becomes dependent upon weather dependent wind and solar resources, prices will also spike when there are resource lulls.  That effect will be exacerbated when the two coincide.  I believe that this volatility will be more frequent, just as severe, but for shorter periods than any fuel price volatility caused by global events.

European Experience

However, if the fuel volatility claim is true then proponents should be able to point to jurisdictions where wind, solar, and energy storage have made electric prices cheaper.  The best example of the claim that renewable energy is cheaper because it reduces fuel volatility should be Germany.  Oil, coal and gas prices spiked in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have been volatile ever since. Germany’s Energiewende is the country’s planned transition to a low-carbon, nuclear-free economy and is often cited as an example of what New York should do. Enerdata reports that “According to the German Federal Network Agency, the installed renewable power capacity in Germany increased by nearly 20 GW (+12%) to nearly 190 GW in 2024.” If the proponent’s claim is true, then prices should be trending down.  However, since 2000, electricity prices for German households have risen by 116%, from 13.94 to 30.43 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2019.  As of April 1, 2024, households with basic supplier contracts were paying around 46 cents per kilowatt-hour, making it “the most expensive option compared to other providers or special contracts”.

Another way to look at the claim is to compare electricity prices within the European Union.  I highly recommend the Nemeth Report for its coverage of European energy issues. The post EU Action Plan for Affordable Energy includes just such a comparison.  It quotes Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, as saying: “We’re driving energy prices down and competitiveness up. We have already significantly reduced energy prices in Europe by doubling down on renewables. “

However, the data in the following figure do not support her claim. 

The analysis states that:

Note that the household price average shows a large difference between EU countries that use coal, nuclear, and gas vs those that have focused on wind and solar. For example, as shown in the chart above, according to Statista, using 2023 data, Hungary’s electricity price was 9.68 Eurocents/kwh (50% of their electricity is from nuclear, 38% coal & gas) and Bulgaria which relies mostly on coal and nuclear was around 11 Eurocents/kwh, whereas Germany, which has “doubled down on renewables” (and closed down its nuclear), was the highest at 44.97 Eurocents/kwh and Denmark which has a small population and a whole lot of windmills was at 39.44 Eurocents/kwh! 

Data sources and the year of the data matters. Eurostat uses numbers from the first quarter of 2024 which reorder some of the countries but the overall argument, that countries that “doubled down on renewables” and made other poor choices of shutting down nuclear power plants and/or coal experienced higher prices, remains supported. 

Discussion

Roger Pielke, Jr recently posted an article about the politicization of expertise that is relevant here.  He argues that society needs to depend on the expertise of specialists in many fields – “Nobody knows enough to run the government”.  As a result, society needs all of us.  He explains that “We do not have to agree on everything, but we do have to work together”.  Then he points out that “In recent years, credential expertise—like many things—has become pathologically politicized.” 

Such is the case shown by the politicization of the Climate Act implementation led by NYSERDA.   The presenters at the meeting were carefully chosen to further the Hochul Administration’s narrative that all is well with the Climate Act.  Consider, for example, the presentation by Jeff Freedman to the Planning Board.  His main research focus is on “renewable energy and atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) processes” so his bias is towards renewable energy virtues.  He has no energy sector experience that qualifies him to claim that “renewable energy can reduce costs” He was a spokesman because of his adherence to the narrative.

New York agencies are required to take shareholder comments into account for regulatory actions.  Unfortunately, they only go through the motions.  Rather than using the process as an opportunity to improve the product it is treated as an obligation.   My problem with this is that if anyone provides specific comments or raises specific issues with their work, there is no documentation that the submittal was addressed, and nothing included to respond to the issue raised.  For example, the claim that renewable energy can reduce costs was undocumented in Freedman’s presentation.  I have no doubts that NYSERDA will continue the charade that renewable energy can reduce costs and that costs of inaction are worse than the costs of action.  They have never responded to related issues raised and will continue to do so as long as they can get away with it.  In my opinion this is another instance of pathologically politicized expertise by NYSERDA because they are so arrogant that they don’t see any need to respond to stakeholder comments.

Conclusion

The biggest barrier to any net-zero transition away from fossil fuels is the inevitable extraordinary cost of implementation.  In New York, the Hochul Administration has ducked the issue since the Climate Act was passed.  They can only hide reality for so long.  The question is whether the issues associated with the net-zero transition will be addressed before New York’s economy is severely compromised.

In the meantime, if you ever hear anyone say renewable energy can reduce costs, please ask them why German electric prices are so high or to cite an example of any jurisdiction that is transitioning their electric system that has reduced ratepayer bill costs when using the renewable strategy to rely on wind, solar, and energy storage resources to power the electric grid.

Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York.  He has been a practicing meteorologist for nearly 50 years, was a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, and has B.S. and M.S. degrees in meteorology.  The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of his previous employers or any other organization he has been associated with.

Fast Track to Poverty: Green Energy

A leaked government analysis has found that Net Zero could crash the economy, reducing GDP by a massive 10% by 2030. Yet the spectacular thing about this analysis is that it expects this to happen not if Net Zero fails—but if it succeeds. In effect, it is saying that if the government really does force us to give up petrol cars, gas boilers, foreign holidays, and beef, then there would be perfectly workable things left idle, such as cars, boilers, planes, and cows. Idling—or stranding—your assets in this way is an expensive economic disaster.

Hand with dollars on the background of solar panels.. Solar panel cost, solar powered business. The cost of green electricity, the energy of the future

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

At his blog, Matt Ridley explains How the Green Energy Transition Makes You Poorer.
Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Crony capitalism at work

A leaked government analysis has found that Net Zero could crash the economy, reducing GDP by a massive 10% by 2030. Yet the spectacular thing about this analysis is that it expects this to happen not if Net Zero fails—but if it succeeds. In effect, it is saying that if the government really does force us to give up petrol cars, gas boilers, foreign holidays, and beef, then there would be perfectly workable things left idle, such as cars, boilers, planes, and cows. Idling—or stranding—your assets in this way is an expensive economic disaster.

Even more intriguing was the government’s economically illiterate response to the leak. A spokesman said: “Net zero is the economic opportunity of the twenty-first century, and will deliver good jobs, economic growth and energy security as part of our Plan for Change.”

Do they really think that economic growth is the same thing
as spending money? Because it isn’t.

Imagine the government saying that it is going to require the entire population to throw out all their socks and buy new ones by next Thursday. Under the logic it espouses for Net Zero, this would result in a tremendous burst of economic growth. Think of all the jobs created in the sock industry and the shops! They would be better off. Ah, but you, the consumer, would be poorer. You would have as many socks as before but less money. This is the broken window fallacy, explained by Frédéric Bastiat nearly 200 years ago: going around breaking windows makes work for glaziers but does not create growth.

Net Zero is a project to replace an existing set of technologies with another set of technologies: power stations with wind farms, petrol cars with electric cars, gas boilers with heat pumps, plane trips in the sun with caravan trips in the rain, cows with lentils. The output from these technologies is intended to be the same: electricity, transport, holidays, food.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that these new technologies and activities require exactly as much money to build and run as the old ones. What have you gained? Less than nothing because you have retired existing devices early, losing the latter half of their lives. It would be like replacing all the socks in your drawers long before they needed replacing but with identical socks. Does that make you richer? No, poorer.

If the new technologies are more efficient than the old ones, fine. LED light bulbs use about 90% less electricity than incandescent bulbs did. So yes, it does make sense to throw out your old bulbs before they expire, stranding those assets, to save electricity and money. Is the same true of a wind farm or a heat pump? No, they are demonstrably more expensive and less reliable at producing the same electricity than the devices they are replacing. They are worse, not better.

That’s why they need subsidies. We have spent £100 billion so far subsidising “green” energy in the past few decades, money we could have spent on something else: tax cuts, for example. So, the green energy transition has made us poorer, not richer. It has given us the most expensive electricity in the entire developed world.

It has made some people richer, for sure. Dale Vince, an eco-tycoon, has made a fortune out of building unreliable energy. So have lots of fat cats in the City of London, lots of big landowners in the Highlands of Scotland, and lots of manufacturers in China. I have lost count of the number of times wealthy people have told me I am wrong to criticise the unreliable energy industry because “my son Torquil’s fund has done rather well.”

Net Zero crony capitalism is efficient at one thing:
transferring money from poor people to rich people.

This government has forgotten that its job is not to champion the interests of producers, but consumers. So did the last government, though Kemi Badenoch’s speech on Tuesday showed a welcome return to thinking about consumers. Electricity is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end, an essential input allowing us to do the one and only thing that does, really does, represent growth—achieving more output with less input.

Right now, the Net Zero transition is doing the very opposite.

OOPS —UPFs are Not Addictive

Dr. Kevin Hall, at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), has recently been conducting “randomized clinical trials to study how diets high in ultra-processed food may cause obesity and other chronic diseases”, and was the lead author of a study, Hall et al. (2019) titled “Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake”.

Guest Essay by Kip Hansen

Dr. Kevin Hall, at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), has  recently been conducting “randomized clinical trials to study how diets high in ultra-processed food may cause obesity and other chronic diseases”, and was the lead author of a study,  Hall et al. (2019)  titled “Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake”.

That study is almost always cited in other studies about Ultra-processed Foods (UPFs) as being “…the first and only to show us how ultra-processed diets drive people to consume about 500 extra calories per day, without even realizing it.”   As published in Cell Metabolism the results of the study were summarized as:

“Highlights

•  20 inpatient adults received ultra-processed and unprocessed diets for 14 days each

•  Diets were matched for presented calories, sugar, fat, fiber, and macronutrients

•  Ad libitum intake was ∼500 kcal/day more on the ultra-processed versus unprocessed diet

•  Body weight changes were highly correlated with diet differences in energy intake”

This was a very small study – 20 participants – and it showed that over a two-week period participant, who were restricted to the hospital, those eating the so-called UPF diet gained an average of about 2 lbs (1 kg) in the first six days, then their weight held steady (no further increase).  Those on the unprocessed menu immediately began to lose weight and continued to do so throughout the 2-week period. (Photographs of the foods actually served are included in the full study report supplement – pdf download here. )

The papers title is false.  “Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake” – ‘Ultra-processed diets’ are not a cause in and of themselves – so this is mis-stated at best.  It does appear that the participants preferred the UPF offerings and ate a bit more of them taking in “extra” calories but notice that the weight gain halted after day six after which their weights remained level.  However, for the unprocessed diet, weight loss continued in a linear fashion.

I emailed Dr. Hall and asked him if he thought this weight loss was a problem.  Most hospitalists (the doctors generally responsible for patients in a hospital) would be concerned by continued weight loss of their patients.  Dr. Hall replied: “Body weight loss on the minimally processed diet was not a concern, especially given that the average body mass index of the study participants was 27 kg/m^2 which is in the overweight range.” 

I have issues with the study conclusions – but we will let that go for now.  The point being that Dr. Kevin Hall is an anti-UPF advocate.  So much so, that he decided to prove that UPFs were addictive.

That meme – “UPFs are addictive” – is ubiquitous in the literature on so-called UPFs.  So much so that there are published studies claiming that “14% of adults and 15% of youths” are addicted to UPFs.  The mechanism suggested for this “addiction” is:  “UPFs triggers addiction-like biological (e.g., dopaminergic sensitization) and behavioral (e.g., withdrawal, use despite consequences) responses”

Dr. Kevin Hall and a group at the National Institutes of Health set out to prove that addictiveness of UPFs by showing that feeding subjects a UPF would produce a dopamine spike, just like additive drugs do.

The study is “Brain dopamine responses to ultra-processed milkshakes are highly variable and not significantly related to adiposity in humans”.  Dr. Hall is the lead contact for the paper.

For this study, the journal Cell Metabolism again summarizes:

“Highlights

•  PET scans found no significant mean dopamine response to ultra-processed milkshakes

•  Individual brain dopamine responses were not significantly related to adiposity

•  Greater brain dopamine responses were correlated with fasting hunger levels

•  Ad libitum cookie intake was correlated with brain dopamine responses”

Try not to be confused by the reference to “Ad libitum cookie intake”, I’ll explain later.

The study abstract states this more clearly:

“Surprisingly, milkshake consumption did not result in significant postingestive dopamine response in the striatum (p=0.62) nor any striatal subregion (p>0.33) and the highly variable interindividual responses were not significantly related to adiposity (BMI: r=0.076, p=0.51; %body fat: r=0.16, p=0.28). Thus, postingestive striatal dopamine responses to an ultra-processed milkshake were likely substantially smaller than many addictive drugs and below the limits of detection using standard PET methods.”

As an image:

Let’s see if we can put this a little more bluntly:

Paraphrasing editorially: “Dang, our super-duper, purpose-made exemplar of a UPF didn’t produce any dopamine response that we could see. “

But, afterwards, when subjects were offered snacks as part of their post-study lunch, the subjects whose test showed those that liked sweets ate a few more delicious  Chips Ahoy! chocolate chip cookies.

In a more detailed discussion later in the paper, the authors say:

“In other words, despite expecting the high fat and sugar formulation of the ultra-processed milkshake to produce a synergistic effect on striatal dopaminergic activity (DiFeliceantonio, Coppin et al. 2018, McDougle, de Araujo et al. 2024), our data suggest that any extracellular dopamine responses following milkshake consumption were smaller than those following ingestion of drugs of abuse. Thus, the narrative that ultra-processed foods high in fat and sugar can be as addictive as drugs of abuse based on their potential to elicit an outsized dopamine response in brain reward regions was not supported by our data.”

Bottom Line:

UPFs are not addictive — they do not produce dopamine spikes that consumers seek to repeat as seen with addictive drugs.

(but they may be delicious!)

# # # # #

Author’s Comment:

Kudos to Dr. Hall and his group for publishing a “negative result” paper.  They expected and desired to show the UPFs were just addictive as opioids and other drugs of abuse but found that they were not.  In fact, they did not produce measurable amounts of dopamine.

I extend these kudos even if the paper was published as a matter of policy – registered NIH studies completed must be written up and published – I’m pretty sure of this (not positive).

I suspect that the War on Food will not end now despite that fact that the battle against “addictive UPFs produced by nasty evil international corporations” has been dealt a death blow by real science.

This is not to say that some foods are not “habit forming” – humans like pleasant experiences – they like things that taste good and can form unhealthy repetitive eating habits.    Think of those eating giant bags of chips, guzzling orange soda, while binge watching years of old Star Trek episodes. (No, I don’t mean you.)

Thanks for reading.

# # # # #

Wrong, Daily Mail, Global Warming is Not Spiraling Out of Control

A recent article by the Daily Mail, titled “Global warming is spiralling out of control: Earth could warm by a whopping 7°C by 2200, scientists predict – leading to flooding, famine, and catastrophic heatwaves,” presents this alarming claim based on a computer model. The scientists who developed the model as well as the Daily Mail are guilty of overstating the model’s predictions, its use, and burying the lede that this alarming outcome is very unlikely even in the modelled universe.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent article by the Daily Mail, titled “Global warming is spiralling out of control: Earth could warm by a whopping 7°C by 2200, scientists predict – leading to flooding, famine, and catastrophic heatwaves,” presents this alarming claim based on a computer model. The scientists who developed the model as well as the Daily Mail are guilty of overstating the model’s predictions, its use, and burying the lede that this alarming outcome is very unlikely even in the modelled universe.

The study was conducted by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) – which due to the track record of the organization having a propensity for predicting dire but improbable climate scenarios, already indicates that the outcome of the model study is hardly unbiased. The Daily Mail reports the study says the planet “could warm by a whopping 7°C (12.6°F) by 2200 even if CO2 emissions are moderate[.]”

The scientists “used their own newly developed computer model, called CLIMBER-X, to simulate future global warming scenarios,” which involves “key” earth processes, and incorporates “carbon cycle feedback loops’ – where one change to the climate amplifies another,” which Daily Mail says are “being overlooked.”

It is nonsense that so-called feedback loops are being overlooked. They aren’t even being overlooked in climate modelling; Climate Realism has responded to plenty of mainstream media articles commenting on the same types of claims from climate scientists, here, here, and here, for instance.

In the first link above, meteorologist Anthony Watts discusses the exact feedbacks the Daily Mail article highlights in 2023, and he notes that even then, these were not new claims. Watts explained:

The list of claimed climate feedback loops include many which have been shown to be non-problems, such ocean circulation, which science can’t even decide whether it is increasing or decreasing in any given decade. Another is sea level rise, which despite wild claims of acceleration, is actually unchanged and steady since 1850. Acceleration is disproved by actual data, and nothing more than an artifact of measurements from different satellite data being combined. The authors also ignore existing data on wildfires to claim that climate change is causing them to be more frequent or severe. The available data clearly refutes this claim.

Most of the article presents the model’s outputs as though they are likely, but buried further down is the admission that their less alarming scenarios show “there’s a 10 per cent chance that Earth will still warm by 3°C (5.4°F) by 2200 even if emissions begin to decline now.” Ten percent is not likely, yet it is framed by Daily Mail as though it is alarming and deserving of immediate civilization-level changes.

Climate modelling itself has continued to run into major problems as the models increase in complexity. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2022, covered by H. Sterling Burnett at Climate Realism, as models have become more complex, and as the PIK scientists hail as an achievement in their own model, they have actually become less accurate at predicting global temperature change. This may sound counterintuitive, but when one considers the fact that more elements in the model means more assumptions that could be incorrect or incomplete, it begins to make sense. Scientists simply do not have a good enough understanding of how different systems interact in the atmospheric environment to be able to accurately model how they will behave – especially at a global scale over long timelines– in the future.

One should always be suspicious when an extreme climate claim is presented using computer modelling, especially when it is presented as if it were empirical evidence of a problem, and importantly, when the supposed dire results are set to occur long after the period of time where the scientists making these irresponsible claims can be held to account for fearmongering. The Daily Mail is sensationalizing the PIK scientists’ study, but apparently so are the scientists, who should know better. Both are attempting to mislead and frighten the public into accepting their preferred government action on climate.

‘Just Stop Oil’ … Stops

No more throwing soup (Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”), breaking glass (the Magna Carta), and spraying orange Paint (Stonehenge)?

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“Little doubt that civil disobedience makes the perpetrator feel virtuous. But the anti-CO2, anti-industrialization movement is at war with society, reality, and itself. This fringe is urged to question a false cause with study and reflection … Real environmentalism please!”

No more throwing soup (Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”), breaking glass (the Magna Carta), and spraying orange Paint (Stonehenge)? The Guardian reported yesterday:

Just Stop Oil to ‘hang up the hi-vis’ after three years of climate action …. Final gathering in April will mark end of street protests although campaign to continue ‘in courts and prisons’ ….

Dozens of protesters have been jailed. Last summer, five supporters of Just Stop Oil were given multi-year sentences for planning road-block protests on the M25. Even after their terms were reduced on appeal this month, they remain the longest ever handed down for non-violent civil disobedience.

Meanwhile, new groups have emerged that have eschewed the previous commitments of some climate activists to be accountable for their actions, instead acting clandestinely to target organisations they regard as responsible for contributing to climate breakdown.

The major course correction was due to ineffectiveness, idiocy, and jail time. But not to the guilty. Climate activist Verel Rodrigues [1] reported yesterday on social media:

After three years of disruption, defiance and deep courage, Just Stop Oil are ending their protests. And honestly… it feels kinda emotional.

Just Stop Oil didn’t just shake things up – they changed the political conversation in the UK and around the world. What began in 2022 with bold, disruptive action, slow marches, and orange paint quickly became one of the most recognisable and influential climate campaigns in modern history….

Of course, it hasn’t been easy. The repression has been brutal. Laws were weaponised. Protesters jailed for years. But JSO held the line. And that defiance – that courage – shifted the Overton window. Three years ago, talking about a full stop to new fossil fuel projects was fringe. Now it’s policy.

And the UK economy is in decline and the commoners are burdened with high energy bills–for no effect on global climate (the country is responsible for 1 percent of global CO2 emissions) ….

Continuing:

…. yes, Just Stop Oil hanging up the hi-vis feels emotional. But it also feels like a baton being passed. As they’ve said: the campaign doesn’t die – it evolves. Into the courts, into the prisons, and maybe even into something new, bolder, and even more global. Disruption works. Resistance matters. And movements can win

Or lose. Just Stop Oil would not stop if it was winning. Just the opposite.

Little doubt that civil disobedience makes the perpetrator feel virtuous. But the anti-CO2, anti-industrialization movement is at war with society, reality, and itself. This fringe is urged to question a false cause with study and reflection and turn their ire (without violating property rights or inconveniencing the general public) to wind and solar industrialization on land and in the waters. Real environmentalism please!

—————————————–

[1] He describes himself as follows:

I’m Verel – a climate activist, environmental campaigner, and engineer driven by a simple truth: we cannot solve the climate crisis with business as usual. My mission is to challenge the status quo, inspire action, and empower individuals to leverage their skills and knowledge in the fight for a livable planet….

Since joining the climate movement in 2019, I’ve worked with groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, spearheading local initiatives, crafting high-impact campaigns, and refining media strategies to amplify the urgency of climate action….

Science Magazine Unfairly Attacks the Journal of the Academy of Public Health

Only two days after the Journal of the Academy of Public Health‘s official launch, Science Magazine criticised it in a news item. A scientist I had recommended as a member of our Academy wrote to me that the fact that Science feared our new journal suggested that we were on the right track.

Side view of female lab worker in wheelchair experimenting with fluids in flasks

From Watts Up With That?

By Peter C. Gøtzsche

Only two days after the Journal of the Academy of Public Health‘s official launch, Science Magazine criticised it in a news item. A scientist I had recommended as a member of our Academy wrote to me that the fact that Science feared our new journal suggested that we were on the right track.

Indeed. Science scored an own goal by illustrating so clearly what is wrong with the legacy media and traditional scientific journals. It started out with denigrating remarks about the journal being the brainchild of President Donald Trump’s pick to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff “who became known for his opposition to lockdowns, child vaccination, and other public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its editorial board also includes Trump’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration, Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty [wrongly spelled as Martin] Makary, who also opposed vaccine mandates.”

Why did Science mention that Trump picked Jay and Marty? This is irrelevant for any scientific judgments about these people. And what was wrong with their positions during the pandemic? Nothing. 

Sweden did not lock down and yet had one of the lowest mortalities in the world. To vaccinate children against COVID-19 down to 6 months of age as in USA is highly likely harmful, and we have not recommended this in Europe. Many people, me included, have argued against vaccine mandates and it was never a requirement in Denmark to become vaccinated against COVID-19. Such mandates are ethically and scientifically indefensible and can increase vaccine hesitancy for vaccines in general.  

Science’s denigration continued: “The journal, which has already published eight articles on topics including COVID-19 vaccine trials and mask mandates, eschews several aspects of traditional publishing. It lacks a subscription paywall.” 

“Lacks” a paywall? This is a negative statement, although it is positive not to have a paywall like Science has. And mask mandates? There is no need to mandate whole populations to dress as bank robbers given masking’s tenuous – and potentially nonexistent – benefits on a population level. 

Since only members of the Academy of Public Health can submit articles, Science is worried that the journal will be used “to sow doubt about scientific consensus on matters such as vaccine efficacy and safety.”

Scientific consensus is rare, and even when it exists, it has often been proven wrong by later research. Science is the opposite of consensus. The status quo should be challenged, and free scientific debate – that so many traditional journals have suppressed – moves science forward. There are many good reasons why some top scientists have abandoned publishing in top scientific journals, and they include censorship, and financial and other conflicts of interest among anonymous peer reviewers, editors and journal owners.

All my life, I have produced numerous scientific results that went against the so-called scientific consensus, and when my opponents had no valid counterarguments, they called me controversial. I realised that this denigrating term always meant that my results threatened financial or other conflicts of interest, not least guild interests. When my statistician and I had demonstrated in 1999 that mammography screening might do more harm than good, which I have confirmed many times ever since, a journalist wrote that there is nothing that hurts like the truth about healthcare.

It is not enough for Science to cast doubt about our new journal by referring to Trump: “JAPH is a nonprofit subsidiary of the Real Clear Foundation, itself a donor-financed nonprofit that has attracted support from major funders of conservative causes, according to The New York Times. Kulldorff and many other members of the 21-person editorial board have attracted criticism for their views and research during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Ah well, I am one of these 21 people, and I know many of the others. We are anything but conservative. We try to keep an open mind and are not easily fooled by fraudsters. In 2023, I explained that the origin of COVID-19 is the biggest cover up in medical history. And on 31 January 2025, I tweeted: “The CIA said Saturday that it’s more likely a lab leak caused the Covid-19 pandemic than an infected animal that spread the virus to people. They are very slow at the CIA. I have known this for five years and have written a lot about it incl a whole book.” 

Science lamented that Jay, Martin and Sunetra Gupta, also an editorial board member, authored the Great Barrington Declaration that opposed lockdowns. But yet again, they were right and Science and most other journals were wrong.

Science said that Jay and John Ioannidis, the most cited medical scientist and another board member, “drew fire in 2020 for a study that claimed SARS-CoV-2 had infected far more people than currently thought, and was therefore far less dangerous than assumed.” This was totally misleading. Jay has explained how they were exposed to inappropriate attacks and censorship from Stanford where they worked. Their initial results, that the infection fatality rate was only 0.2%, were reproduced in other studies. 

They first published their results as a preprint, in April 2020. If their results had been accepted at the time, instead of being roundly condemned, also in the media, the draconian lockdowns could have been avoided, as they showed that the virus spread very rapidly. 

Science and the COVID-19 pandemic

Since Science criticised us so heavily for our COVID research and views, even though we were correct, we should look at what Science’s own role has been. It claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines are 100% effective against severe disease, which wasn’t even correct when Science made the claim because we knew that respiratory viruses mutate fast.  

I wrote in my book, The Chinese virus, that Beijing’s useful idiots included Science, which was overly friendly with Peter Daszak – whose EcoHealth Alliance channelled an NIH grant to Wuhan to fund the highly dangerous gain-of-function research, which he denied. 

In February 2020, Science reported that scientists “strongly condemn” rumours and conspiracy theories about the origin of the pandemic. If you have no arguments, you raise your voice. This sentence does not belong in a scientific journal but in a tabloid, and it cannot be a conspiracy theory to suggest that the virus escaped from a lab and was likely manufactured there. In the same article, Daszak said that “We’re in the midst of the social media misinformation age,” but forgot to say he was the main driver of it. 

In 2020, researchers sent a modelling study to Science arguing that herd immunity would be achieved earlier than the usual estimates of an infection rate of 60-80% of the population. Science admitted that the paper was rejected for political reasons: “Given the implications for public health, it is appropriate to hold claims around the herd immunity threshold to a very high evidence bar, as these would be interpreted to justify relaxation of interventions, potentially placing people at risk.” Science was concerned that opponents of lockdown would use the paper to undermine the policy. The lead author said she might leave the field because every paper she had written on this issue had been rejected with the claim that it was not useful or new.

In November 2021, Science published an almost 5,000-word article about Daszak that told nothing new. A reporter had spent seven hours with Daszak to put a nice gloss on him. A photo of Daszak appeared on Science’s front page with the title of the article: Prophet in purgatory: Peter Daszak is fighting accusations that his work on the pandemic prevention helped spark COVID-19.

Science published this when the death toll was about 6 million and depicted Daszak as a hero who works on preventing pandemics when it is extremely likely that he and “the bat lady,” Shi Zhengli in Wuhan, created one, which he had covered up for in two years.

Science didn’t care much about conflicts of interest either. When NIH’s David Morens praised Daszak, they didn’t tell the readers that he was Daszak’s funder, colleague and co-author. Science mentioned that Freedom of Information Act requests by the US Right to Know and others had uncovered inconvenient truths, but it used Angela Rasmussen to dismiss this as “weaponized FOIA requests.” She was the one who, in Nature Medicine, called it a world-wide conspiracy when people discussed a possible lab leak. It is still the case that there is not a thread of good evidence that the virus has a natural origin but a lot that tells us it was produced in a laboratory in Wuhan.

Wait and see

In the Science article, Kulldorff said that people had a right to be worried about what might happen and added that our journal should be judged on its output a year or more from now, once it’s more established. I agree. I am very enthusiastic about the journal. And this is not because I cannot publish in traditional journals. I am the only Dane that has over 100 publications in “the big five” (BMJ, The Lancet, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, and Annals of Internal Medicine).  

Disclosures, Funding & Conflicts of Interest

None. 

Affiliations:

Peter C Gøtzsche, Professor emeritus, Institute for Scientific Freedom, Copenhagen, DK 

This article was originally published by RealClearScience and made available via RealClearWire.

Net Zero Will Make Air Travel the Preserve of the Privileged, Airline Boss Admits

Air travel will soon be the preserve of the privileged, an airline boss has admitted, as Net Zero makes low-cost air travel a thing of the past. The truth the Net Zero is making us poorer is slowly leaking out, says Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Will Jones

Air travel will soon be the preserve of the privileged, an airline boss has admitted, as Net Zero makes low-cost air travel a thing of the past. The truth the Net Zero is making us poorer is slowly leaking out, says Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt.

It would drive a new industrial revolution. It would create lots of ‘well-paid, green jobs’. And the wealth it would generate would lower prices, raise living standards and spark innovations that would transform whole industries.

For most of the last decade, corporate leaders have insisted that the transition to a carbon-neutral economy was win-win.

We would save the planet and get richer at the same time. But hold on. The Australian airline Qantas has just broken ranks, admitting that flying may soon be the preserve of only the privileged, while a wealth of research is making it clear that environmental goals have hammered the economy.

In reality, bosses are starting to admit what has been obvious for some time. Net Zero is making us poorer – and that means we have to rethink the way we go about reducing carbon emissions.

If you thought that summer flight to Malaga or Crete with the family was already looking eye-wateringly expensive, you have not seen anything yet. According to the data company Mabrian, budget – and the word “budget” is looking increasingly out of place for the no-frills aviation industry – flights to Spain will cost 26% more this year than last and those kinds of price rises are becoming the norm for many destinations.

But it will get a lot worse very soon. Vanessa Hudson, the Chief Executive of Qantas, admitted this week that flying may well become “so expensive that it’s something only for the privileged”.

It doesn’t stop there.

Chris Wright, Trump’s Energy Secretary, delivered some blunt truths on UK policy last month when he argued that our roll-out of wind farms and solar panels “had not delivered any benefits”. In fact, he said that British politicians were impoverishing citizens “in the delusion that this was somehow going to make the world a better place”.

Likewise, earlier this month, an analysis by Peel Hunt showed that the steep decline in electricity supply since the early 2000s had coincided with a sharp fall in the growth of living standards and that the two were inextricably linked.

There is no point in kidding ourselves anymore. The Net Zero drive is making us poorer.

Let’s take aviation, for example. Vanessa Hudson’s point was that sustainable aviation fuel, which will soon be mandatory for at least 10% of an airline’s consumption, is far more expensive than the traditional fossil variety.

It can cost up to five times as much as kerosene and that increase means fares will have to rise prohibitively if airlines are to stay in business. We have only seen the start of the rise in ticket prices and there will be a lot more to come over the next few years. Very soon, only the wealthy will be able to fly and the rest of us will have to stay at home.

The trouble is, this is completely crazy.

Lynn goes on to explain how numerous industries, including tourism, exports and conferences, rely on affordable air travel. And manufacturing of course is already being hammered by high and rising energy costs.

“At least Qantas is being honest,” he says”. “So are a handful of other corporate leaders, even if the majority are still living in the la-la-land where there is no trade-off between hitting our environmental goals and maintaining our standards of living.”

Worth reading in full.

Taxpayers To Foot the Bill If Risky Carbon Capture Projects Go Tits Up

Ed Miliband has been forced to set aside £8 billion to cover the risk of a carbon capture disaster as the costs of net zero stack up.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t idau

Miliband spaffs yet more taxpayer money down the drain:

From MSN:

Ed Miliband has been forced to set aside £8 billion to cover the risk of a carbon capture disaster as the costs of net zero stack up.

The Energy Secretary’s department has taken the charge to compensate companies in case the technology fails. It will in effect act as an insurance policy for risks ranging from CO2 leaks to simply not making enough money.

The £8 billion is thought to be in addition to the £22 billion of funding and subsidies already pledged by the Government to support the nascent industry.

Details were buried in Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement, which listed the colossal sums simply as “contingent liabilities” without giving any explanation.

Contingent liabilities is the term for money set aside to cover unpredictable future events with potentially disastrous costs.

The Treasury has since confirmed that the money is specifically to support companies involved in building the carbon capture and storage industry.

Executives have told ministers that although the technology could open the way to a net zero future, it is also fraught with potentially expensive risks.

Carbon capture involves stripping CO2 from the emissions produced by industries like power stations, cement factories and refineries. The CO2 would then be compressed into a liquid and transported via a network of pipelines, eventually being buried deep in the rocks beneath the seabed.

However, the industry fears CO2 could leak from the pipelines or from underground storage sites. Such an escape on land could be not only disastrously expensive but also dangerous. Plugging a leak in a repository deep under the sea would meanwhile be both difficult and expensive.

Sarah Jones, a junior energy minister, previously announced plans to indemnify the industry in the Commons but without giving costs.

She said: “Carbon capture usage and storage is the only feasible method for decarbonising many hard-to-abate sectors such as cement production, and is currently the most cost-effective method of decarbonising others, such as dispatchable power.

“While there is growing interest worldwide, a programme of this nature is first of a kind and consequently there are multiple market barriers which inhibit the development of a carbon capture usage and storage market in the UK.

“Government support is necessary to address these challenges and enable carbon capture usage and storage deployment at scale.

“The Government is reducing investor risk in these technologies by bearing some of the initial risk inherent in developing a carbon capture usage and storage market, as well as the cross-chain risk existing across the participants in the network.”

Mr Miliband launched the UK’s first so-called carbon capture clusters last autumn with funding for two initial sites in Teesside and Merseyside and more to follow. The Energy Secretary predicted then that the industry would eventually generate 50,000 jobs by the 2030s.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/miliband-forced-to-set-aside-8bn-over-risky-net-zero-plan/ar-AA1BMuui

In simple terms, DESNZ is not only paying subsidies to cover the cost of carbon capture to companies like BP, they are also providing insurance to pick up the bill if things go wrong.

For BP, it is a win-win. For taxpayers, it is a lose-lose.

Am I the only one to think that Ed Miliband believes he has a God given right to spend our money however he sees fit?

FOOTNOTE

I don’t know whether DESNZ are naive or utterly mendacious:

“A spokesperson for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero said it was “misleading” to argue that household bills would increase by £255 a year because the costs were also borne by businesses.”

What do they think businesses will do when hit with these extra costs? They will either put up prices, cut wages or slash jobs. Whichever, it is the public who will end up paying one way or another, just as we will be with Rachel from Accounts’ jobs tax.