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.
There were no EF-5s at all. There have been none this year so far either. The most recent was the Moore tornado in May 2013. Given there have been forty-one in all since 1970, to go twelve years without is extraordinary and unprecedented.
Last year was a busy year for tornadoes by any standard. Excluding the small EF-0s, the number was the highest on record, slightly above even 1973 and 2011:
But what is equably notable is the relatively low number of strong tornadoes โ EF-3s and above:
Only forty-three developed into EF-3s, and a remarkably low number of four reached EF-4.
There were no EF-5s at all. There have been none this year so far either. The most recent was the Moore tornado in May 2013. Given there have been forty-one in all since 1970, to go twelve years without is extraordinary and unprecedented.
The evidence could not be clearer. While there is no obvious long-term trend in the number of tornadoes overall, the proportion reaching EF-3 and greater has fallen significantly since the 1970s.
Environmentalists, along with some politicians and their allies, argue that fossil fuel and nuclear power are being irreversibly replaced by wind and solar power. They refuse to acknowledge that mining, cropland and habitat destruction, toxic wastes, and other adverse effects make these electricity sources anything but clean, renewable, or sustainable โ or that wind and sunshine cannot provide raw materials for 6,000-plus essential products that come from petrochemicals: paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, clothing, and much more.
Environmentalists, along with some politicians and their allies, argue that fossil fuel and nuclear power are being irreversibly replaced by wind and solar power. They refuse to acknowledge that mining, cropland and habitat destruction, toxic wastes, and other adverse effects make these electricity sources anything but clean, renewable, or sustainable โ or that wind and sunshine cannot provide raw materials for 6,000-plus essential products that come from petrochemicals: paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, clothing, and much more.
Their claim that wind and solar power are cheaper than coal, gas, or nuclear power ignores that these electricity generators are weather-dependent and intermittent โ and must be backed up by coal, gas, and nuclear power, or by massive fire-prone battery installations.
Those multi-billion-dollar backup generators double or triple electricity costs, helping explain why British and German families pay three times what typical American families do.
Despite enormous subsidies, wind and solar companies and installations frequently fail. Sunnova Energy is the latest solar company to file for bankruptcy. Californiaโs Ivanpah solar plant is also going belly-up. Ivanpahโs $2.2 billion โconcentrated solar thermal power plantโ uses 347,000 75-square-foot mirrors on 3,500 acres to generate electricity when the sun shines. The stateโs Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant generates 20 times more electricity 24/7/365 from one-fifth the acreage.
Power outages are an equally serious problem.
A basic energy rule states that the more a state or country relies on unreliable wind and solar power, the more often it will experience blackouts. A corollary: the more voters elect politicians who focus on rare fish and climate cataclysms, the more they will be affected by blackouts.
On April 16, Spain briefly generated 100 percent of its electricity from wind, solar and hydropower. Twelve days later, a massive blackout sent Spain, Portugal, and parts of France and Belgium into chaos. Airports canceled flights; lights, computers, televisions, refrigerators, cell phones, traffic lights, trains, subways, and elevators stopped working.
All it took was a sudden midday loss of 60 percent of Spainโs electricity needs caused by problems in large solar installations. It triggered โa cascading failure across the entire grid.โ Other generating units automatically shut down for safety or to protect the grid and other infrastructure. If nuclear-powered France hadnโt closed its connection to Spain, most of Europe could have shut down.
A week later, another blackout hit Spainโs Canary Islands.
In the United States, a sudden power outage disrupted Memorial Day weekend celebrations for families across southeastern Louisiana as power demand surged during the hottest part of the day. The blackout resulted from a โload shedโ order from the regional grid reliability authority, which told utility companies to cut off electricity to customers โto prevent a more extensive, prolonged power outage that could severely affect the reliability of the power grid.โ
As the corollary rule suggests, the load shed was needed โ and will likely be necessary many times โ because Pelican State politicians pay more attention to fashionable issues than to vital, life-or-death matters.
They provide subsidies, loan guarantees, tax breaks, and fast-track permits for wind, solar and battery installations, while shutting down reliable power plants and refusing to build additional ones. Meanwhile, they force families and businesses to convert vehicles, heating systems, stoves, water heaters and lawnmowers from gasoline and natural gas to electricity. They drive up demand while reducing electricity generation and reliability, especially during peak demand periods driven by extreme heat and cold.
Repeated, prolonged, and rolling blackouts are the inevitable result.
This is happening nationwide, particularly in states with the most wind and solar electricity. California leads all states in generating solar electricity and is also a significant producer of wind energy. Texas is by far the top wind electricity generator and a major solar electricity producer. Florida is number three for solar but generates no wind power.
In 2022, California also accounted for 24 percent of all U.S. power outages, Texas for 14 percent. Over the last 20 years, Florida has had the most people per capita affected by power outages, primarily due to hurricanes, but lags well behind California, Texas, New York, and Michigan in the number of blackouts.
New Yorkโs obsession with climate change has left it open to a self-inflicted blackout disaster. The fundamental problems? Insufficient surplus (margin of safety) generation to account for equipment failures, human errors, and rising electricity demand for data centers, artificial intelligence, and mandated conversions to electricity, plus aging grid infrastructure that cannot cope with sudden surges and plunges in generation by large wind and solar installations and rooftop photovoltaic solar feeding into the grid.
Hacking and terrorism also pose major dangers. One attack on a strategically chosen power plant or transformer could shut down an entire region. And Americaโs heavy reliance on China for wind turbines and transformers, with backdoor entry ports for โmaintenanceโ and โsoftware updates,โ makes the country vulnerable to blackouts lasting days, weeks, or months.
Politicians and voters need to get a grip on the grid and on other critical quality-of-life issues and stop obsessing over fashionable, politicized mini-matters.
We are told cyclones and extreme storms will be more intense in a warmer world, will have stronger wind speeds, may retain their strength longer and do more damage, our homes will be uninsurable, and this is the new normal. But the evidence continues to grow that warm times are wonderful, and the last thing we want is a colder climate.
Cyclone Yasa, Fiji | Photo from Copernicus Sentinel-3 imagery
The worst 53 cyclones that hit Fiji in the last 2,000 years were more common in the coldest times, not the warmest ones.
We are told cyclones and extreme storms will be more intense in a warmer world, will have stronger wind speeds, may retain their strength longer and do more damage, our homes will be uninsurable, and this is the new normal. But the evidence continues to grow that warm times are wonderful, and the last thing we want is a colder climate.
There arenโt many long records of cyclones in the South Pacific, which hasnโt stopped climate experts blaming cars and burgers for horrible storms. But even though life on Earth depends upon understanding our climate, itโs only now, after 40 years of panic, that finally that researchers have studied things like pebble layers, shell fragments, and coral rubble in Fiji to find out what has happened there in the past. Yanan Li and others drilled cores to find debris pushed 120m into the mangroves by the worst of the worst tropical cyclones. Handily, they also had two bad storms recorded in the last century to calibrate what they found.
Awkwardly, the big storms were more common in the Little Ice Age. Basically, if we want fewer storms, we should pay people to burn oil and gas or at least give them a taxable discount for saving the world. *
All those layers of rocks and shells and whatnot have been sitting there in the mud flats the whole time that the UN has been trying to save the world from โclimate changeโ:
Fig 3: The course anomaly (%) means the percentage of coarse particles in that layer that are > 63 micrometer. The sediment core they dug is in protected mudflats in mangroves that are 120m above the current high tide line. Storms surges rarely go that far.ย โEventsโ means only major Cat 4-5 strength cyclones/hurricanes per century. Obviously only the biggest storms (and presumably near direct hits) would leave sediments there. Some of the particles they found were > 1cm.ย Fiji gets a few named cyclones every year. But these wonโt have the energy to overtop the reef, break through mangroves, and carry sand and shells 120m inland.
Instead of cyclones being driven by one kindergarten variable like sea-surface temperatures (or more stupidly, global temperatures), it turns out that wind shear, humidity, local weather patterns, and things like La Nina conditions are probably a lot more important. If climate modelers had even the faintest clue of what drives the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, we could pretend to reduce storms by reducing La Nina conditions.
Until then, any journalist claiming that extreme storms are the new-normal should be roasted for promoting misinformation, or just being a gormless mouthpiece for bankers, bureaucrats and The Blob.
In this paper, we present a sedimentary record from a coastal karst basin in Bay of Islands, Vanua Balavu, Fiji to provide insight into the regional intense TC activity over the past two millennia. A total of 53 intense storm events captured by this site are identified using coarse fraction (>63 ฮผm) anomalies in sediment core retrieved from the basin, yielding an overall average event frequency of 2.6 events/century. Multiple centennial-scale quiescent periods (from 200 to 300 CE and 1000 to 1150 CE) and active periods (namely from 350 to 750 CE, 900 to 1000 CE, 1150 to 1250 CE, 1400 to 1500 CE, and 1650 to 2017 CE) are found in the reconstruction, and the most active interval spans from 1650 to 1800 CE at 4.5 events/century.
Big storms appear to be less frequent in the medieval warm period too.
A comparison between existing paleostorm records and climate forcing indices suggests that the southward displacement of the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) during the Little Ice Age with more La Niรฑa events is responsible for the basin-wide increasing of tropical cyclone activity in the South Pacific. Decline of TC occurrence in the western SP during the Medieval Climate Anomaly is attributed to the northward movement of SPCZ.
*Obviously, we wouldnโt pay people much to emit CO2 because it wouldnโt save us from the next Little Ice Age anyhow, but it will make plants grow, and thatโs worth something.
REFERENCES
Yanan Li et al (2025) Intense tropical cyclone activity over the past 2000 years at Bay of Islands, Fiji, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 675, 1 October 2025, 113090, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2025.113090
Haig, J., Nott, J. and Reichart, G. (2014) Australian tropical cyclone activity lower than at any time over the past 550โ1,500 years, Nature 505, 667โ671 doi:10.1038/nature12882 [Abstract]
While Western leaders and climate activists obsess over the smokestacks of India and China, they ignore the quiet giant of Southeast Asia: Indonesia, the worldโs fourth most populous nation and an economic powerhouse, is making grand moves in securing sources for fossil fuels.
While Western leaders and climate activists obsess over the smokestacks of India and China, they ignore the quiet giant of Southeast Asia: Indonesia, the worldโs fourth most populous nation and an economic powerhouse, is making grand moves in securing sources for fossil fuels.
With an economy expected to expand annually by more than 5% and a population swelling to 300 million by 2030, energy demand is surging and Indonesia is relying largely on hydrocarbons to meet it. Suppliers of the energy will range from state-owned oil and gas giant Pertamina to major Western companies to new alliances with Russia and Malaysia.
A fragmented archipelago with limited โrenewableโ sources, Indonesia looks at fossil fuels not as a โbridgeโ in a contrived transition to a โgreenโ future but as the road to economic success. Coal accounts for more than 60% of electricity generation, while oil fuels transportation and supply chains.
Indonesiaโs road map is practical: build what works, scale whatโs reliable, and invest where returns are guaranteed. That means oil, gas, coal and the infrastructure to move them โ pipelines, refineries, tankers and export terminals.
When it comes to imports, the country is not shy about tapping geopolitically alienated sources. Following high-level visits, including one by President-elect Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia is exploring increased imports of Russian oil and gas.
The Indonesian government is also in advanced talks with Russian oil giant Rosneft for a massive investment for the Tuban oil refinery project in East Java, which is estimated to be valued at $24 billion.
In April, Indonesia awarded five new oil and gas blocks in the Gaea offshore exploration area to a consortium of global players: Britainโs Enquest, BP and Chinaโs CNOOC. The Gaea and Gaea II blocks in West Papua have a combined potential of 18 billion barrels of oil and as much as 107 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Chevronโs potential return to Indonesia marks another seismic shift. The American oil giant is scouting large gas reserves in East Kalimantan and has confirmed talks to reenter Indonesiaโs upstream sector, citing enormous untapped reserves in the Kutai Basin.
In June, TotalEnergies secured a share of almost 25% in the Bobara Block, off West Papua. This deal with Malaysian-owned Petronas marks the French companyโs reentry into Indonesiaโs upstream gas portfolio. Bobara represents a high-stakes, high-output deep-sea gas play.
Not solely reliant on foreign capital, Indonesia is empowering its own assets. Pertamina International Shipping, the maritime logistics arm of the state-owned giant, is undertaking a colossal $8 billion fleet expansion.
Pertaminaโs upstream arm, meanwhile, secured the Binaiya Block in Maluku, with estimated reserves of 6.7 billion barrels of oil and 15 trillion cubic feet of gas. Pertaminaโs refinery plans a capacity increase of 150% to reduce dependency on imports and foster energy sovereignty.
Indonesiaโs energy influence extends beyond Asia. A new partnership was forged between Italyโs Eni and Malaysiaโs Petronas, which will together manage combined assets in Indonesia and Malaysia and extract hydrocarbons for decades to come. Recently, Ghanaโs Petroleum Commission engaged with Indonesiaโs Honorary Consul to explore joint oil and gas ventures.
The countryโs influence also can be felt in the international climate policies. Indonesiaโs annual energy-related CO2 emissions, which totaled about 717 million metric tons in 2023, will rise by as much as 400 million metric tons within the next decade. This projected increase from Indonesia alone could neutralize up to 80% of the EUโs total planned reduction of emissions by 2030.
This is not a criticism of Indonesia. A country of 280 million people has every right to pursue a better life for its citizens. However, it is an illustration of the futility of policies seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the expense of economic growth and the well-being of people. The belief that the West can dictate global emission standards by deindustrializing its own economies is a dangerous delusion.
From London to Beijing, from Kuala Lumpur to Seoul, the energy market recognizes that Indonesia is open for business. The sheer scale of the countryโs initiatives promises a torrent of new oil and gas that will flow for a generation, contrary to โNet Zeroโ rhetoric and timelines.
The archipelagoโs embrace of hydrocarbons has it on the move, and those dawdling on the climate policy fence should take notice.
This commentary was first published at Real Clear Energy on June 30, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the COโ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelorโs in engineering from Anna University, India.
A little over three years ago, the Felicity Ace was carrying 3,965 vehicles when a fire broke out in one of the electric vehicles on board the transport ship. The fire quickly spread out of control, and the entire crew was evacuated before the ship sank into waters 10,000 feet deep. The vessel held 189 Bentleys, 1,110 Porsches, and the very last Lamborghini Aventadors; estimated losses for Japanโs Mitsui OSK Lines totaled at least $500 million.
A little over three years ago, the Felicity Ace was carrying 3,965 vehicles when a fire broke out in one of the electric vehicles on board the transport ship. The fire quickly spread out of control, and the entire crew was evacuated before the ship sank into waters 10,000 feet deep. The vessel held 189 Bentleys, 1,110 Porsches, and the very last Lamborghini Aventadors; estimated losses for Japanโs Mitsui OSK Lines totaled at least $500 million.
On June 3, it was โdรฉjร vu all over again,โ when the Morning Midas, which had been carrying nearly 3,000 vehicles โ including 78 fully electric and 680 hybrid vehicles โ from China to Mexico sank in the North Pacific Ocean in international waters off Alaskaโs Aleutian Islands chain. As had happened with the Felicity Ace, the Morning Midas was victimized by an electric vehicle fire that left the vessel some 5,000 meters below the surface.
The pro-EV bus website evfiresafe.com, as of January 2024, had identified at least 27 e-bus high-voltage battery fires since 2010 while noting that fires can break out in any vehicle. As these two nautical tragedies (thankfully, no one died) indicate, the difference is that electric vehicle fires are much more difficult to extinguish.
Jose Del Solar, assistant vice president at the professional services firm WSP, says that โelectric vehicle (EV) fires experience extremely high temperatures and explosive hazards within the battery cells. Gases in the batteries, such as hydrogen fluoride, can explode, and the resulting toxic fumes and smoke can cause breathing irritation.โ He added that there is a โ60 to 80 percent higher concentration of hydrogen fluoride in an EV vehicle fire than what is present in an internal combustion engine fire.โ
WSP further noted that fire codes created for diesel-fueled vehicles are inadequate to address battery-electric bus fires (or any electric vehicle fire). There are significant costs for upgrading fire protection wherever these vehicles are stored in both equipment and personnel training.
These statements suggest that cities and other purchasers of battery-electric fleets (as well as individuals who purchase an EV) should spend the money on fire protection and training before they commit to high-dollar purchases of these โzero-emissionโ vehicles that emit huge quantities of toxic emissions when they burn for hours.
The town of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, found this out the hard way back in January when four brand-new battery electric buses operated by the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative went up in smoke while charging. These buses, paid for with multiple taxpayer-funded grants, were so new they had not carried a single student to school.
Fortunately, this communityโs fire department had the training to contain and control (but not fully extinguish) the bus fires within three hours. But the fires still released harmful pollutants into the air and left behind a huge pile of refuse that was costly, and difficult, to clean up. Moreover, two school districts that had counted on these buses had to scrape and scrounge to find other ways to transport children to and from school.
As journalist John Goreham mused, the battery-electric vehicle advocacy community frequently points out that battery-powered vehicles are less likely to catch fire than conventionally powered vehicles. However, this does not make it any less tragic when such a huge amount of taxpayer money is converted to air pollution in an EV school bus fire. This small community had forked over about $375,000 (plus $20,000 for a charger) for each bus, or about $1.6 million.
Just last month, over 150 firefighters spent hours battling a massive fire at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) facility that investigators later found was caused by a faulty battery on a Proterra battery-electric bus.
More than 150 firefighters in Eastern Pennsylvania battled a massive blaze at a major Philadelphia transportation depot yard after dozens of buses went up in flames at the yard in the early hours of June 5.
The facility is in the cityโs Nicetown-Tioga neighborhood, about seven miles north of downtown.
Shortly before 6:30 a.m. ET, firefighters responded to the depot for a report of multiple buses on fire, SEPTA General Manager Scott Sauer told CBS News.
At the scene, SEPTA worked to pull out unaffected buses to facilitate better access for firefighters, PFD said.
Initially reported as a two-alarm fire at 6:30 a.m., the number of vehicles on fire, coupled with large plumes of black smoke, quickly escalated the situation to a three-alarm fire. Firefighters confirmed that they had the scene under control by 8:10 a.m.
What caused the Philadelphia bus fire?
The cause and origin of the fire are under investigation by the Fire Marshalโs Office.
SEPTA is a public transportation authority servicing five counties in and around Philadelphia.
It was created by the stateโs legislature in 1963 and is one of two transit authorities in the United States that operates all five major types of terrestrial transit vehicles: regional rail, buses, trolleys, subways, and a high-speed line.
According to its website, the authority connects to transit systems in New Jersey and Delaware.
Through ESG โ Environmental, Social and Governance โ mandates, the titans of global finance positioned themselves as the arbiters of corporate virtue. They pressured companies to divest from fossil fuels. They built an entire moral and financial architecture around the concept of decarbonization.
Through ESG โ Environmental, Social and Governance โ mandates, the titans of global finance positioned themselves as the arbiters of corporate virtue. They pressured companies to divest from fossil fuels. They built an entire moral and financial architecture around the concept of decarbonization.
But this June, two major events confirmed the slow demise of the great North American decarbonization experiment.
First, Nippon Steel finalized its historic acquisition of U.S. Steel, signaling a massive resurgence of energy-intensive manufacturing on American soil. Up North, the government of Saskatchewan announced its plan to keep coal-fired plants alive beyond 2030, openly defying federal regulations and international climate agreements.
They are not minor setbacks to the climate agenda but fundamental course corrections, powerful acknowledgments that the prosperity and security of nations depend on energy-dense resources and the industries they power.
Steel Deal That Shattered Green Illusions
On June 18, Nippon Steel acquired the legendary Pittsburgh-based company to reshape the global steel industry. The $14.9 billion transaction, one of the largest in recent industrial history, creates a powerhouse with a crude steel capacity of 86 million metric tons.
โTogether, Nippon Steel and U. S. Steel are moving forward as the โBest Steelmaker with World-Leading Capabilities,โโ says the press release. Massive capital will be unleashed across steelmaking facilities in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Arkansas, Minnesota and Alabama. The overall investment package is expected to protect 10,000 jobs and create 10,000 more in construction trades through the addition of a new electric arc furnace.
Steel production consumes enormous quantities of energy โ primarily from coal and natural gas. The blast furnaces, coke ovens and electric arc furnaces that make up the lifeblood of steel mills are not powered by solar panels or wind turbines. They are powered by carbon-based fuels. Period.
This acquisition alone smashes multiple climate illusions in one blow. One, that emissions-intensive sectors would be phased out in rich countries. Another, that ESG-aligned finance would avoid โdirtyโ industries. And a third, that international treaties would keep governments and corporations aligned toward decarbonization.
Look who helped push this deal through. Citibank served as the financial advisor to Nippon Steel. Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Evercore were among the advisors for U.S. Steel. These are the same firms that plaster their websites with ESG statements and Net Zero commitments.
The same firms that swore to โalign their lending portfolios with climate goalsโ and pressure companies to reduce carbon footprints. Yet here they are, actively greasing the wheels of a carbon-heavy industrial renaissance.
Saskatchewan Calls the Bluff on Coal Phaseouts
Then the same week, came another announcement, this time from the political frontier of Western Canada. The government of Saskatchewan made clear that it would extend the life of its coal plants beyond 2030, despite federal mandates to the contrary.
Energy Minister Dustin Duncan was unapologetic. โWeโre not going to let federal politicians in Ottawa tell us to turn off the lights,โ he said. Citing energy security and cost stability for residents, the province says it will keep coal-fired plants past the 2030 deadline imposed by Canadaโs federal Clean Electricity Regulations,
This open rebellion is framed as a strategic return to realism with no use of euphemisms such as โtransitionโ or โtemporary extension.โ
Collapse of the Climate Narrative
The Net Zero facade has collapsed massively, undeniably, irreversibly โ because no policy survives violations of the laws of physics and market demand. Despite trillions spent on โrenewables,โ their contribution to energy production has barely budged in two decades.
What weโre witnessing in North America is not an anomaly but rather the beginning of a new phase. In 2023, fossil fuels still accounted for over 80% of global primary energy use. Globally, energy-intensive industries are thriving. China, the worldโs largest coal consumer, approved 106 gigawatts of new coal power in 2024 alone.
The thud you hear is the sound of the decarbonization fantasy crashing to Earth. The sigh is one of relief as common sense returns to the public square.
There is no post-carbon future on the horizon, only a post-illusion present. And fossil fuels remain the lifeblood of progress.
This commentary was first published by RealClearMarkets on June 27, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the COโ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelorโs in engineering from Anna University, India.
But asking farmers if they have had poor harvests because of bad weather in recent years would have produced the same results at any stage in the last fifty years. Bad weather is not caused by climate change and there is no evidence weather in the last five years has been any worse than in the past.
Over 80% of farmers are concerned about the impact of climate change on their ability to make a living, as more than four fifths say extreme weather has hit their productivity.
New research [1] into farmerโs attitudes to climate change and extreme weather reveals the extent to which farmers have been affected by recent extreme weather events, many made worse by climate change. In the past five years, 86% of farmers have been hit by extreme rainfall, 78% by drought and over a half by the impacts of heatwaves. Only 2% have not experienced extreme weather in some form. The research follows several recent attribution studies that draw a clear causal link between the increasingly extreme weather affecting farmers and climate change [2]. The market research of 300 farmers [3] across the UK was commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) from Grounded Research [4], specialists in gathering insights into questions about food and farming. When asked what impact recent extreme weather has had on their farms, 87% cited reduced productivity, 84% have witnessed a reduction in crop yields or livestock output.
The ECIU, which is no more than a climate lobbyist outfit, has not published the survey results, presumably because they donโt want people to see the actual questions.
But asking farmers if they have had poor harvests because of bad weather in recent years would have produced the same results at any stage in the last fifty years. Bad weather is not caused by climate change and there is no evidence weather in the last five years has been any worse than in the past.
I doubt too that farmers were not even asked about โclimate changeโ, not that any of them would be qualified to answer them.
But what about the actual farm data?
We know that wheat harvests were hit last year by the wet autumn in the previous year. (We also know that autumn was a long way from being the wettest on record).
But bad years come along every so often and over the last two decades cereal yields are up and down, but have changed little over all.
A lot has been made of the fact that cereal output is lower now than in the 1980s. This however is because of a sharp drop in the area harvested during the 1990s.
This was due to a number of factors, including:
EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Reforms, which shifted support from production-based subsidies to direct payments and introduced set-aside schemes
As the record shows, there have always been bad harvests because of bad weather โ too much rain, not enough rain, too cold, too hot, poor summers, poor autumns, poor springs. Indeed, it is very rare that farmers get a perfect year of weather.
Waste-to-Energy reduces landfilling, increases recycling, powers society and avoids blackouts
Paul Driessen
After years of opposing them, but facing constituents increasingly angry about rising electricity prices, New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently gave grudging support for two new Williams Companies natural gas pipelines.
Assuming they clear new hurdles, the Constitution Pipeline will transport gas 100+ miles from northeastern Pennsylvania fracking fields toward Albany. The 23-mile Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline will connect New York to the New Jersey segment of the Transco Pipeline, Americaโs largest-volume natural gas pipeline system, and carry enough gas to heat 2.3 million homes.
Hochul, other state Democrats and environmental activists have long stymied the projects, using exaggerated and fabricated water quality and climate change arguments โ and fanciful expectations that heavily subsidized solar panels and onshore and offshore wind turbines can provide enough affordable electricity, enough of the time, to meet steadily increasing New York City and State power demands.
In exchange, the Trump Administration will let them continue installing gigantic offshore wind turbines that will generate 9,000 MW of electricity (less than one-third of what the state needs on hot summer days) perhaps 30-40% of the year โฆ and be supported by fire-prone grid-scale batteries that would provide statewide backup power for about 45 minutes.
New gas turbines would help avoid blackouts, ensure that poor families freeze less often in winter and swelter less in summer, and help the state meet power needs that are soaring because of data centers, artificial intelligence, and legislatively mandated conversions from gasoline and gas to electric vehicles, stoves, and home and water heating.
They could also help reduce the need to import electricity from Canada and other states: some 36,000 gigawatt-hours (11% of statewide electricity) annually.
But legislators want to put another hurdle in the way. New legislation would force homes and businesses to pay $10,000 or more to connect to natural gas lines. If Gov. Hochul signs the bill, or the legislature overrides a veto, few or no new customers would take advantage of the new gas.
Itโs a kill switch, reflecting the stateโs determination to impose โclimate leadershipโ and โprotect communitiesโ from alleged dangers from fossil fuels.
Itโs also hypocritical and irresponsible. New York doesnโt just import electricity; it also exports garbage.
New York City generates nearly eight million tons of waste annually. Its last municipal incinerator closed in 1990; its last municipal landfill in 2001. City trash is now mostly sent on barges, trucks and trains to landfills (80%) and incinerators (20%) in New Jersey, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina! NY State exports 30% of its garbage.
The city and state could address both garbage and electricity challenges by using natural gas to power waste-to-energy (WTE) generating plants that burn trash, thereby reducing the need to landfill or export garbage, while increasing recycling, producing reliable, affordable, much-needed electricity, and reducing blackout risks that are climbing every year.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, a WTE or resource recovery facility operated by Reworld Waste burns home, business, industrial and other garbage that doesnโt go straight into recycling programs and would typically be landfilled, including myriad extraneous plastics. The trash is dumped in a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials like rocks, mixed thoroughly, and burned with natural gas in a chamber at 2000 degrees F for up to two hours, until itโs totally combusted to ash.
The heat converts water to steam, which is super-heated in tubes to drive turbines that generate electricity: 80 megawatts 24/7, enough for about 52,000 homes. Depending on its composition, a ton of waste generates 550-700 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Since opening in 1990, the plantโs trash has replaced the equivalent of burning 2,000,000 barrels of oil for electricity every year.
Glass from lightbulbs and other nonrecyclable sources becomes part of the ash stream, from which ferrous and nonferrous metals are recovered. Most of the remaining ash is used as a substitute for sand and aggregates in road and building construction, cement and cinder block production, and manufacturing other building materials.
Unsold ash is landfilled but, by the time the metals are removed, only about 10% of the original trash bulk and 25% of its original weight is left.
Even staples, paper clips, bottle caps, metal light bulb bases, aluminum foil, and wires from spiral notebooks and furnace filters can be โrecycledโ this way. In fact, enough iron, steel, aluminum, copper and other metals are recovered from the resultant ash at the Fairfax facility to build 20,000 automobiles annually.
However, plastic-metal-glass waste (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, microwaves), broken pots and pans, household appliances and other larger refuse should go to special โwhite goodsโ and metal recycling centers.
Lime neutralizes acids in the airstream, activated carbon controls heavy metals, and fabric filter bags remove particulates, keeping air emissions below EPA standards. The scrubber waste (fly ash) is then dewatered and chemically stabilized, before being landfilled or used in construction materials.
Process steam condenses back into water and is reused. Water from the wastes and scrubbers is recovered, treated and used to cool the facility and equipment.
Two other trash-to-energy facilities serve the Washington, DC area; 75 across the USA generate over 2,500 MW of electricity. However, more WTE plants could help solve garbage, energy, landfill and pollution problems in metropolitan areas across the country (and worldwide), including:
* Philadelphia, PA โ 1,300,000 tons per year of municipal solid waste (MSW), but only one WTE;
* Chicago, IL โ 3,100,000 tpy, but just one WTE plant (other proposed facilities were rejected);
* Houston, TX โ 4,200,000 tpy, with one WTE facility;
* Phoenix, AZ โ 1,000,000 tpy, and one WTE facility;
* Los Angeles, CA โ 4,000,000 tpy, but again only one WTE facility.
New York and other jurisdictions that have rejected natural gas and waste-to-energy/resource-recovery facilities are missing enormous opportunities to address challenges that will only become worse. Theyโre also dumping their own local responsibilities into their neighborsโ backyards.
These facilities ensure secure, affordable electricity generation close by, without the need for expensive backup power and multi-hundred-mile transmission lines to part-time wind and solar power.
They utilize fuels that America still has in abundance: gas and trash. And they reduce the need for resources that are in increasingly short supply: landfill space, cropland and wildlife habitats impacted, and bird, bat and other wildlife lost due to wind, solar and transmission installations.
From my perch, these clear and significant benefits clearly offset the cost and subsidy concerns that some have raised about WTE facilities.
Metro areas and states should apply pragmatism, reality and these benefits when reconsidering climate and โrenewableโ energy ideologies that have dominated public policies for far too long.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental protection and human rights.
The Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June 2025 was +0.48 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, down slightly from the May, 2025 anomaly of +0.50 deg. C.
The Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June 2025 was +0.48 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, down slightly from the May 2025 anomaly of +0.50 deg. C.
The Version 6.1 global area-averaged linear temperature trend (January 1979 through June 2025) now stands at +0.16 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).
The following table lists various regional Version 6.1 LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for the last 18 months (record highs are in red).
YEAR
MO
GLOBE
NHEM.
SHEM.
TROPIC
USA48
ARCTIC
AUST
2024
Jan
+0.80
+1.02
+0.58
+1.20
-0.19
+0.40
+1.12
2024
Feb
+0.88
+0.95
+0.81
+1.17
+1.31
+0.86
+1.16
2024
Mar
+0.88
+0.96
+0.80
+1.26
+0.22
+1.05
+1.34
2024
Apr
+0.94
+1.12
+0.76
+1.15
+0.86
+0.88
+0.54
2024
May
+0.78
+0.77
+0.78
+1.20
+0.05
+0.20
+0.53
2024
June
+0.69
+0.78
+0.60
+0.85
+1.37
+0.64
+0.91
2024
July
+0.74
+0.86
+0.61
+0.97
+0.44
+0.56
-0.07
2024
Aug
+0.76
+0.82
+0.69
+0.74
+0.40
+0.88
+1.75
2024
Sep
+0.81
+1.04
+0.58
+0.82
+1.31
+1.48
+0.98
2024
Oct
+0.75
+0.89
+0.60
+0.63
+1.90
+0.81
+1.09
2024
Nov
+0.64
+0.87
+0.41
+0.53
+1.12
+0.79
+1.00
2024
Dec
+0.62
+0.76
+0.48
+0.52
+1.42
+1.12
+1.54
2025
Jan
+0.45
+0.70
+0.21
+0.24
-1.06
+0.74
+0.48
2025
Feb
+0.50
+0.55
+0.45
+0.26
+1.04
+2.10
+0.87
2025
Mar
+0.57
+0.74
+0.41
+0.40
+1.24
+1.23
+1.20
2025
Apr
+0.61
+0.77
+0.46
+0.37
+0.82
+0.85
+1.21
2025
May
+0.50
+0.45
+0.55
+0.30
+0.15
+0.75
+0.99
2025
June
+0.48
+0.48
+0.47
+0.30
+0.81
+0.05
+0.39
The full UAH Global Temperature Report, along with the LT global gridpoint anomaly image for June, 2025, and a more detailed analysis by John Christy, should be available within the next several days here.
The monthly anomalies for various regions for the four deep layers we monitor from satellites will be available in the next several days at the following locations:
The Campei Flagrei volcano complex includes the volcano which wiped out the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.
Fear in Campi Flegrei: earthquake of magnitude 4,6. Punta Pennata ridge collapses โ video
The mayor of Pozzuoli: โAt the moment there are no damagesโ
30th June 2025
An earthquake of magnitude 4,6 occurred today at 12:47 in the Campi Flegrei area at a depth of almost five kilometers. The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) reported, showing the epicenter as the Gulf of Bacoli. And it was in Bacoli that the partial collapse of a ridge at Punta Pennata occurred. There were many reports on social media about the shock that lasted several seconds. It would be the second strongest recorded in the last 40 years. At 12:51 a second earthquake of magnitude 2,2 was recorded.
โฆ
โI am following the situation at Campi Flegrei with the utmost attention. After the violent earthquake this morning, one of the strongest ever recorded, I am in constant contact with Rfi, Anas and the Campania Public Works Department who are carrying out checks on the infrastructure and transport systemโ said the Campania MP of Forza Italia and Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Transport, Tullio Ferrante.
Campi Flegrei doesnโt qualify as a supervolcano according to the strict definition, there are no known VEI8 eruptions associated with this system โ though it is still a large and scary volcanic field. The complex last suffered a VEI 7 eruption 37,000 years ago, though there have been many lesser eruptions, including a substantial eruption in 1538 which created a 433ft hill Monte Nuevo.
But unlike Yellowstone, Campi Flegrei is in the middle of a heavily populated region of Europe. If Campi Flegrei were to really let go, much of Europe and possibly Northern Africa would receive a dump of volcanic ash. Renewables could be especially vulnerable โ volcanic ash is a super fine hard mineral abrasive which gets in everywhere, a real threat to fragile outdoor equipment.
There could be thousands of casualties in the immediate vicinity of the eruption, unless Italian authorities were proactive about evacuating Southern Italy at the first sign of serious trouble. The city of Naples, population just under a million people, is the same distance from Mount Vesuvius as the ancient city of Pompeii was. It is also likely a VEI 7 eruption or worse in the middle of Europeโs breadbasket region would have a substantial impact on food availability in Europe and beyond, at least during the year of the eruption.
Iโve seen Mount Vesuvius in person, a brooding ugly volcanic cone. I donโt think it has finished doing damage. According to the Wikipedia entry, 600,000 people live in the danger zone, and would be at risk of pyroclastic flows in the event of another major eruption. And Vesuvius is only one part of the much larger Campi Flegrei volcanic field, which contains 24 known volcanic craters.
A genuine low probability high impact risk like this kind of puts the anthropogenic climate scare into perspective.
CORRECTION (EW) โ Second strongest in 40 years, not Strongest.
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