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.
Much has been made of the fact that last month was hotter than June 1976, at least according to Met Office figures. Attempts to compare the two months are misleading, and frankly dishonest when used to pretend the actual weather was hotter this year. In short, we are comparing apples and pears.
Much has been made of the fact that last month was hotter than June 1976, at least according to Met Office figures. Attempts to compare the two months are misleading, and frankly dishonest when used to pretend the actual weather was hotter this year. In short, we are comparing apples and pears.
It is often forgotten that the heatwave in 1976 never really got going until the last week of the month, despite a couple of hot days two weeks before.
When it did get going, it produced scorching heat well into the middle of July, and at levels above anything seen this year.
Brighton beach
In contrast, we only had four really hot days last month, none of which reached 30C. In 1976, every single day but one between 28th June and 7th July topped 30C.
To understand the extraordinary heatwave in 1976, you need to look at the whole picture across both June and July. So far this summer, there has been nothing that comes anywhere near that earlier heatwave.
In a recent interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Joe Rogan touched on the issue of climate change, a favorite talking point for Sanders.
Predictably, Sanders insisted that climate change is not a “hoax.” To this, Rogan raised some of the problems with the common media and political narratives surrounding claims of a climate crisis. The exchange reminded me, though, that despite how silly and absurd climate alarmists look to most of us, the way they have structured the climate debate is pretty smart.
How frustrating is it when they say things like “climate change is real,” or, as Sanders told Rogan, “climate change isn’t a hoax,” with such gravity?
Yes, climate change is real. This beautiful planet we are blessed to call home has multiple types of climate regions and they all constantly change in one way or another, both subtly and sometimes dramatically, over time. Stasis has never existed on Earth. Change is the natural order. An unchanging planet is a dead rock — deader than dead, because even other lifeless planets in our solar system experience seasons and long-term changes. Thus, climate change is not a hoax.
But that’s not what alarmists mean when they say, “climate change.”
When President Trump says climate change is a hoax, he is obviously not saying that natural climate change does not happen, he may not even be asserting that humans have no impact.
Climate change, in the way activists, the media, politicians, and many scientists commonly use it, comes loaded with a presupposition that it is an unnatural change. Specifically, that most of the warming of the past century or so is anthropogenic — originating from human activities like farming and driving cars — and that such change is an existential threat. In short, one can accept the fact that climate change is a natural phenomenon and still be called a climate denierif you don’t agree with people like Sanders, who declare that windmills, solar panels, electric vehicles, and global socialism are the only proper responses to the changing climate.
To those who value truth and precision, this is aggravating because it is incomplete, vague, and for all intents and purposes, false.
This is by design, and I think it is mostly tied to the utility of the “denier” label.
It allows interested parties to dismiss people who don’t take a very narrow view of the subject and ostracize scientists who disagree even marginally from the dominant narrative. The truth of the matter is that the science is not settled. Every single element of the anthropogenic climate change theory is up for debate, with varying degrees of disagreement.
It is also dangerous. For example, people in positions of power, like former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI),have expressed interest in prosecuting “climate deniers.” They want to intimidate freethinkers who “follow the science,” while ignoring the fact that we live in a constitutional republic, not a scientific dictatorship.
The facts and data don’t dictate a particular course of action. How to respond to the information, if we even need to, is a decision for individuals and sometimes the political realm. This should be based on our values and an understanding of the trade-offs and risks and benefits of courses of action — scientists have no particularly valuable expertise or insights above the rest of us when making such decisions.
Because the term “climate change” is so nebulous and ubiquitous, anything connected to persecuting or suppressing critics of policy surrounding “climate change” can also be shifted as easily as the alarmists want.
It is smart and tactical, and easy to weaponize. It is easy to smear scientists who are skeptical of the dominant narrative by even mere degrees, silence dissent, and possibly worse, without ever needing to clarify the fullness of the alarmist position or defend the often very extreme political policies that come tied to it.
We need to see realist or skeptical politicians and media figures put the alarmists on their back feet by demanding they define exactly what they mean by “climate change” when the term is used. If Joe Rogan had asked Sanders to define the term “climate change” in addition to the other good points Rogan made, we may have been able to see Sanders forced to solidify the term and have his positions questioned in a more direct and devastating way.
We also need to force alarmists to defend the policy fixes they endorse.
They need to admit their effects on liberty and economic prosperity, their impacts on people in poorer countries, and they must explain exactly how (or if) those policies will change the climate and weather for the better. They need to prove it on time scales where they can actually be held accountable. They need to tell us how much temperature and sea level rise will be prevented, how many lives saved, etc., rather than accepting their ambiguous assurances that if we end fossil fuel use, the world will magically be a better place.
Dr. Matthew Wielicki’s article, “The $7 Trillion Lie,” is a scathing exposé of what may be one of the most brazen accounting tricks in the climate policy playbook. For years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its ideological allies have floated the claim that fossil fuels receive a jaw-dropping $7 trillion per year in global subsidies. But as Wielicki makes abundantly clear, this figure is not just inflated—it’s fabricated, repackaged propaganda masquerading as economic analysis.
Dr. Matthew Wielicki’s article, “The $7 Trillion Lie,” is a scathing exposé of what may be one of the most brazen accounting tricks in the climate policy playbook. For years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its ideological allies have floated the claim that fossil fuels receive a jaw-dropping $7 trillion per year in global subsidies. But as Wielicki makes abundantly clear, this figure is not just inflated—it’s fabricated, repackaged propaganda masquerading as economic analysis.
“It is one of the most effective talking points in the climate activist arsenal… and one of the most dishonest,”
Wielicki states plainly. And he’s right. This dubious figure is the linchpin for green energy slush funds, carbon taxes, and regulatory overreach worldwide. It’s the rhetorical battering ram used to justify some of the most sweeping—and costly—interventions in modern economic history.
To understand the sleight of hand at play, Wielicki unpacks how this $7 trillion myth was born. Only a fraction of that amount—less than one-fifth—is actual government spending. “The rest? That’s where the con begins. It’s a clever sleight of hand…” he writes. Indeed, the majority of the number is built on “implicit subsidies”—a bureaucratic fiction concocted by economists to represent hypothetical costs, like the so-called “social cost of carbon.” These are not checks written to ExxonMobil; they are estimates loaded with assumptions and guesswork.
If you want real numbers, Wielicki points readers to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Their data shows that actual fossil fuel subsidies—the kind you can trace in a budget—amount to $500 to $700 billion per year, and mostly occur in developing nations like Venezuela, Iran, and Indonesia. In these places, fuel subsidies are a matter of economic stability, not environmental sin.
In contrast, Western nations have been pouring taxpayer money into the black hole of green energy. As Wielicki highlights with stark clarity, “solar received 205 times more [federal subsidies] than oil and gas between 2010 and 2019” on a per-unit-of-electricity basis. The graph on page 5 makes this discrepancy obvious, showing that solar receives $70 per MWh, while oil and gas limp along with $0.39 per MWh.
What’s more, the Inflation Reduction Act alone is responsible for over $70 billion in direct subsidies to renewables. This isn’t investment—it’s dependence. As Wielicki quips, “The moment the handouts stop, the industry collapses.” Offshore wind contracts are being scrapped across the East Coast. Siemens and Vestas are hemorrhaging billions. Battery storage is underperforming. Yet the subsidies continue to flow—because the myth of fossil fuel welfare must be sustained.
And herein lies the true motivation for this deception. As Wielicki notes, “Because the $7 trillion claim gives climate bureaucrats and green lobbyists the cover they need. If you can convince the public that fossil fuels are rigging the system with trillions in subsidies, then handing another $100 billion to solar farms that stop working at sundown feels like justice”.
But the reality is far less noble. Fossil fuels, which still supply over 80% of global energy—as the chart on page 6 shows—receive less support per unit of energy than any other sector. They keep the lights on, the hospitals running, and the supply chains moving. And they do it while being demonized by elites who jet to climate conferences to scold the rest of us for driving to work.
What Wielicki delivers here is more than a critique—it’s a forensic audit of ideological corruption masquerading as environmental concern. He methodically dismantles the flimsy scaffolding that supports the $7 trillion narrative and exposes it for what it is: a financial fairy tale designed to redistribute wealth under the guise of planetary salvation.
And the punchline?
“Because the only thing more dangerous than a bad idea… is when you’re forced to fund it”.
This is precisely the kind of myth-busting that’s needed to unmask the technocratic overreach powering the green energy grift. Wielicki’s article doesn’t merely challenge a statistic—it challenges an entire worldview built on manipulating fear and fudging numbers to engineer social and economic transformation.
Let this article be Exhibit A in the case against climate policy by fiat. And remember: when someone tells you fossil fuels are living off your tax dollars, ask them to show the receipts. Odds are, they’re pointing to a spreadsheet full of make-believe.
Continuing instability in the Middle East makes it imperative that America protects its domestic energy suppliers.
Under President Donald Trump, US energy companies that were nationalized or had assets seized by Venezuela’s government now have a chance for restitution – unless European bondholders get priority.
Continuing instability in the Middle East makes it imperative that America protects its domestic energy suppliers.
Under President Donald Trump, US energy companies that were nationalized or had assets seized by Venezuela’s government now have a chance for restitution – unless European bondholders get priority.
One such company is Houston-based Citgo Petroleum, the seventh-largest refiner in the United States. The company is actually owned through subsidiaries by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), which is essentially an arm of President Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorial regime.
Citgo is currently embroiled in a court-ordered auction. It’s being sold to repay debts incurred by Maduro and previous dictator Hugo Chavez, both of whom expropriated American companies and assets.
Until now, victims of these dictators’ thefts – more than a dozen companies – were unable to recoup their losses because the Biden administration protected the company from being sold as part of a strategy to prop up Venezuela’s opposition. That could change now.
The auction has been scheduled, and various companies, including some that lost assets, have submitted bids. The fly in the ointment is that European bondholders are trying to jump the line – and claim proceeds from the auction ahead of American companies that the regime robbed.
In 2020, those PDVSA bondholders helped bail out the collapsing Maduro dictatorship, betting that they would reap big payouts under a contract that collateralized their bonds with 50.1% of Citgo shares.
By late August 2023, the bonds had already surged 160% and “investors that scooped up one oil company’s bonds appear to be headed for a massive payout,” Bloomberg Linea reported.
The bondholders had to know they were dealing with a corrupt government and that Venezuela’s National Assembly had announced publicly that it never approved the Citgo bond, as required by the Venezuelan Constitution. That could make the collateralized contract for Citgo invalid.
But the bondholders were pretty obviously trying to profit from a nation in crisis. They had to have been betting they would profit from selling the collateral if Venezuela defaulted. In the meantime, their money helped Maduro cling to power, suppress dissent, and delay the economic reckoning that Maduro’s own policies ensured.
Now, those bondholders want to acquire Citgo as payment, thereby cashing in on the misery they helped prolong. (The PDVSA bondholders are not private citizens but large corporations, including London-based Ashmore Group PLC, Madrid-based Auriga Global Investors, and UK- and Morocco-based Altana Credit Opportunities Fund.) The question is whether they should take priority over the actual victims of Maduro’s expropriations.
Thankfully, under President Trump, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has already refrained from issuing licenses to take over Citgo through December 20, thereby denying acquisition by the bondholders that helped prolong Maduro’s regime.
However, OFAC must go further – and clarify that it will never permit speculating bondholders to profit before defrauded American companies are repaid.
This clarification is sorely needed, and just this week, one of the defrauded companies filed an emergency request with the Delaware District Court that is overseeing the Citgo auction. Citgo’s lawyers asked the court to seek guidance from the OFAC as to whether the Office will continue to prevent the bondholders from taking over Citgo past the deadline for the auction.
This uncertainty – whether a new owner is purchasing an asset or incurring a liability – must be resolved, hopefully with the result that swindled American companies can recoup some of their losses.
With the final auction deadline set for July 2, OFAC has a short window in which to act.
By issuing this clarification, OFAC can score another win for President Trump’s impressive record of championing American justice and putting American companies first.
Why do we have to pay the BBC licence fee for this nonsense?
A tiny, obscure animal often sold as aquarium food has been quietly protecting our planet from global warming by undertaking an epic migration, according to new research.
These “unsung heroes” called zooplankton gorge themselves and grow fat in spring before sinking hundreds of metres into the deep ocean in Antarctica where they burn the fat.
This locks away as much planet-warming carbon as the annual emissions of roughly 55 million petrol cars, stopping it from further warming our atmosphere, according to researchers.
This is much more than scientists expected. But just as researchers uncover this service to our planet, threats to the zooplankton are growing.
If anyone has heard of them, it’s probably as a type of fish food available to buy online.
But their life cycle is odd and fascinating. Take the copepod, a type of zooplankton that is a distant relative of crabs and lobsters.
Just 1-10mm in size, they spend most of their lives asleep between 500m to 2km deep in the ocean.
In pictures taken under a microscope, you can see long sausages of fat inside their bodies, and fat bubbles in their heads, explains Prof Daniel Mayor who photographed them in Antarctica.
Without them, our planet’s atmosphere would be significantly warmer.
Globally the oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat humans have created by burning fossil fuels. Of that figure, the Southern Ocean is responsible for about 40%, and a lot of that is down to zooplankton.
Scientists were already aware that the zooplankton contributed to carbon storage in a daily process when the animals carbon-rich waste sinks to the deep ocean.
But what happened when the animals migrate in the Southern Ocean had not been quantified.
The latest research focussed on copepods, as well as other types of zooplankton called krill, and salps.
The creatures eat phytoplankton on the ocean surface which grow by transforming carbon dioxide into living matter through photosynthesis. This turns into fat in the zooplankton.
“Their fat is like a battery pack. When they spend the winter deep in the ocean, they just sit and slowly burn off this fat or carbon,” explains Prof Daniel Mayor at University of Exeter, who was not part of the study.
“Protecting us from global warming”? These creatures have been around for millions of years and have always been just a part of the cycle of life on the planet.
They have not suddenly arrived to save us from anything.
But silly Georgina gives the game away when she writes:
The research team calculated that this process transports 65 million tonnes of carbon annually to at least 500m below the ocean surface.
65 million tonnes is a drop in the ocean – about half a day’s worth of man-made emissions.
As part of local re-election outreach Governor Hochul turned up at a western New York restaurant to discuss affordability issues. Buffalo TV Station WRGZ 2 On You Side asked (suggested that a “slow down” on the Climate Act was needed and costs are an issue:
We asked: “On affordability, you mentioned utility bills. Heard you say it, governor. Isn’t it true that ratepayers are paying for that because of the climate change law. We do know the the Public Service Commission (in February 2023) actually allowed for increased rates to be able to pay for some of that, connecting various …”
The Governor responded, “This law goes back a number of years.”
At the end of her long response on utility rates and energy strategy, there was this summation from Hochul: “You’re absolutely right. Utility costs are a huge burden of families, and I’ll do whatever I can to alleviate that.”
It was inevitable that the impact of the Climate Act on energy affordability would become a political liability. The Governor’s suggestion that a “slow down” on implantation of the Climate Act was needed suggests that implementation has been on schedule. That is not true. Implementing regulations, proceedings, and legislation are all lagging behind schedule.
I used Perplexity (https://www.perplexity.ai/) to generate summaries and references related to the implementation status and impact on rates for this response. In one example, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) failed to meet the January 1, 2024, deadline for promulgating emissions reduction regulations. That prompted a lawsuit by environmental groups demanding action.
As a result of delays interim Climate Act targets are in danger. According to the Climate Act Dashboard , New York has achieved only a 9% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels, representing just 23% progress toward the 2030 target of 40% reduction.
WGRZ-TV confronted Hochul about the implementation status and she said: “I had to take a closer look and realize we cannot reach those objectives there were, back before I became governor, in a time frame that’s going to not hurt ratepayers, so we’re slowing things down. I want to make sure people know that.” My cynical take is that this statement is pure political theater.
The reality is that there is a Public Service Commission mandate to provide an annual update of implementation status and ratepayer cost impacts. The first Informational Report was released in July 2023 but there hasn’t been an update since. I believe that the decision to delay the release was at the behest of the Governor’s office. There is no more direct and immediate impact of Climate Act implementation to New Yorkers than utility bills and that reality is becoming too large to hide.
The Perplexity reference analysis noted that the first and only Informational Report provided detailed breakdowns of climate-related costs passed through to customers. For residential electric customers, CLCPA-related costs represented 3.7% to 9.8% of total monthly bills, with some utilities showing higher percentages. For non-residential customers with 2,000 kW and 720,000 kWh usage, CLCPA costs represented 4.6% to 11.8% of total monthly bills. This evaluation was for 2022 when implementation efforts were just getting started. The most recent rate cases request double digit increases – National Grid’s Niagara Mohawk case is asking for 20% increase in electric delivery revenues.
It is no wonder that Governor Hochul has realized that she cannot simultaneously complain about the greedy utility rate increase requests and continue to support the inevitable costs associated with the net-zero transition.
There is another apparent realization by the Hochul Administration. They have figured out that wind and solar cannot be the backbone of the electric system and have come out in favor of developing new nuclear resources. The WGRZ-TV article noted:
“We need all of the above for energy,” she said. “We’re going to have to do more than just rely upon wind and solar and thermal. We have a large percentage of our state powered by hydro power. We’re blessed to have that, but I want to lean into nuclear power. Build it.”
Of course, the usual suspects are not happy.
Cornell Professor Robert W. Howarth, who is a biogeochemist and environmental scientist, told us: “The New York Climate Law is one of the most progressive pieces out there when we passed it in 2019. It was held up as a model to the rest of the world as to how we should move ahead. We’re behind in reaching those targets, and I’m disappointed that the governor doesn’t see the urgency in pushing ahead to meet those targets. We really should be doing that.”
Regarding nuclear power, Howarth said: “Nuclear power is extremely expensive technology, extremely slow to deploy. The resources are just much better put into renewable technology and the heat pump technologies.”
Professor Howarth also pointed out that the higher cost of electricity could also be tied to the higher cost of natural gas, which, again, is a significant part of the current power production mix for the state power grid.
I disagree with everything he said. Howarth has not had a stellar record for academic rigor. Nonetheless he has always had an outsized influence on the Climate Act and the Scoping Plan implementation process. Reality is catching up to him too.
Where does New York go from here? The Climate Act has always been about emotional arguments to cater to climate activist constituents and supporting crony capitalists feeding at the trough. I have spent the last couple of months trying to intervene in utility rate cases arguing that the State has not defined what they mean by affordability and reliability making continued investments risky. I believe that the Hochul Administration could use previously unacknowledged safety value provisions to argue that it is inappropriate to implement the Climate Act. The political approach could be to simply acknowledge that without Federal tax breaks and incentives that may all be gone with the recent passage of Trump’s Big, Beautiful, Bill that the net-zero transition is impossible. She already threw previous Governor Cuomo under the bus when she suggested that “we cannot reach those objectives” that were put in place before she became governor. The strategy where a Progressive Democrat blames others for the failure of her own misguided initiatives seems most likely to me.
I do not care how the madness ends if it stops.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
British solar farms have been paid to switch off for the first time as sunny days prompt a surge of clean power that could overwhelm the grid.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso), which manages the UK’s power grids and is overseen by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, has issued switch-off orders to solar facilities this year, new research reveals.
Operators are paid to switch off when these orders are issued, with the extra cost added to consumer and business energy bills.
The solar operators claiming compensation are understood to include some of the UK’s biggest energy suppliers, such as EDF Renewables and Octopus Energy.
Such “constraint payments” are already common with wind farms because so many have been built in areas such as northern Scotland or offshore, areas without grid capacity to carry the power they generate.
So far this year, constraint payments have cost consumers £650m, according to the Wasted Wind website. The cost is added to energy bills.
Overall “balancing payments” could hit £8bn a year by 2030 without massive grid upgrades, according to Neso estimates. Such upgrades would also be extremely costly, with consumers liable.
This is of course the tip of the iceberg. The real problems will start when we have three times as much wind and solar capacity.
As I noted here, there will be many occasions during the year when we will be throwing a third of the electricity we produce, when demand is low and wind and solar power are high.
The only way to have enough renewable capacity at times of stress during winter is to build large surpluses in.
What this latest news shows though is that there are already regional imbalances appearing, with too much solar power in local areas.
NESO’s own projections for 2030 show that these surpluses will add £15/MWh to electricity costs. Even that is optimistic, because it assumes we will be able to export some of it, which may not be the case. It also assumes grid expansions.
Even at £15/MWh, that works out at £5 billion a year.
Once again, the red herring of zonal pricing is mentioned in the Telegraph report:
Octopus has been campaigning for Britain’s energy market to be broken up into regions that set their own prices based on supply and demand. This reform, known as zonal pricing, would theoretically reduce or even eliminate constraint payments by encouraging developers to build infrastructure in areas where prices were highest, meaning there would be sufficient cabling.
The basic idea is that new generation will be attracted to areas with high demand, and consumers attracted to the areas where supply exceeds demand, with price differentials the driver.
But most new generation will be paid via CfDs, so will be unaffected by whatever the market price happens to be. Moreover, most will be offshore wind, and therefore not embedded regionally.
As for the idea that people and industry are suddenly going to relocate to the Scottish Highlands is ridiculous. Or that people are going to switch all their electrical appliances on when it is windy, just because prices come down,
Zonal pricing will no doubt be a good way for Octopus to charge higher prices. But the real solution is not to rearrange the deckchairs. It is to stop building wind and solar farms that cannot reliably meet demand when and where it is needed.
Supporters claim the crash in sales is all part of the plan.
The full promo video.
Jaguar is, or was, a significant British luxury vehicle brand. I owned a Jaguar “S” type for a few years, and to be fair it was a terrific driving experience. However, maintenance was a nightmare – the suspension needed a rebuild every two years, and the low ground clearance made navigating some of Britain’s less well maintained roads a challenge. My vehicle finally died when the Jaguar engine sucked in a bit of water after going through a puddle, which led to the vehicle catching fire.
Jaguar sales dropped over 97 percent in Europe after production was halted.
Despite the sharp decline, this outcome was planned as part of the company’s rebrand.
Insights from Jaguar’s latest investor day provide cautious reasons for optimism.
It’s not just your imagination. If you’ve stopped by a Jaguar dealership recently, you probably noticed the lot looking unusually bare. In fact, most local Jaguar dealers have fewer than 10 new cars available for sale, and some don’t have any at all. This slowdown has contributed to a dramatic 97.5 percent drop in Jaguar’s sales across Europe.
At first glance, that figure seems catastrophic, and it’s already fueled headlines pointing to a collapse linked to Jaguar’s high-stakes rebrand and its pivot toward electric vehicles. But those interpretations miss a crucial piece of context. Jaguar intentionally stopped producing cars at the end of 2024, a move that stretched into early 2025 in some regions, as part of a planned transition to becoming an EV-only brand.
They have certainly attracted attention with this advertising campaign.
What can I say? Despite having fun with my “S” type, I can’t imagine ever owning a Jaguar again. The mechanical challenges I experienced owning a gasoline powered Jaguar all those years ago, and Jaguar’s indifference to problems experienced by at least one of their customers inspires a lack of confidence in how Jaguar will handle the challenge of building safe, high quality EVs.
But maybe I am being unfair, my Jaguar experience was a vehicle which was built over 25 years ago. Perhaps they have fixed their mechanical issues and customer service.
What do you think? Would you purchase a Jaguar EV?
In what some have deemed an illegal move, President Trump last week abruptly fired Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Christopher Hanson, whom he had appointed back in 2020 and whom President Biden had named as chairman and reappointed just last year. To date there is no nominee to fill the now-empty position, which may be the subject of litigation.
In what some have deemed an illegal move, President Trump last week abruptly fired Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Christopher Hanson, whom he had appointed back in 2020 and whom President Biden had named as chairman and reappointed just last year. To date there is no nominee to fill the now-empty position, which may be the subject of litigation.
Speculation is that Hanson and Trump had a conflict of vision about the independent agency’s mission. White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly explained that “all organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction. President Trump,” she added, “reserves the right to remove employees within his own executive branch who exert his executive authority.”
Predictably, the anti-nuclear Union of Concerned Scientists issued a statement from Edwin Lyman, its director of nuclear power safety, that Hanson’s firing and other Trump actions “could have serious implications for nuclear safety.” He bluntly added that the NRC should (over) protect health and safety “without regard for the financial health of the nuclear industry.” [Or, as the UCS would say: Not On Planet Earth.]
An irate Hanson threatened legal action, claiming his firing violated federal law and longstanding precedent. He justified his work at the NRC, stating his mission had involved “preserving the independence, integrity, and bipartisan nature of the world’s gold standard nuclear safety institution.” Speculation is that, despite glowing speeches about the increased NRC workload emerging from the nation’s nuclear revival, he was not a happy warrior.
Did Commissioner Hanson object to President Trump’s May 23 executive order directing the NRC to fast-track the permitting of new reactor designs and to review and replace its unreasonable (below ambient) safety limits for radiation exposure with science-based limits? Or did he object to the NRC establishing fixed deadlines for evaluating and approving licenses of 18 months for constructing and operating new reactors and 12 months for renewing existing licenses?
A more likely reason is President Trump’s directive for the NRC to reform its culture and procedures to promote nuclear energy while ensuring reactor safety. The order requires the NRC to “consider the benefits of nuclear power to our economic and national security in addition to traditional concerns regarding safety, health, and environmental factors.”
Hanson, who has a bachelor’s degree in religious studies and master’s degrees from Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, stated upon his firing that, “My focus over the last five years has been to prepare the agency for anticipated change in the energy sector, while preserving the independence, integrity, and bipartisan nature of the world’s gold standard nuclear safety institution.”
For a deeper dive into Hanson’s philosophy of nuclear energy management, consider a speech he gave in March 2024 at the NRC’s 36th annual regulatory information conference.
Noting that the NRC “is laying the groundwork for things like technology-inclusive licensing, regulation of fusion energy, and microreactors,” Hanson boasted that the NRC and other regulators worldwide “will have more work to do than we have had in a while” [literally its entire 50-year history]. One reason was the increased desire for nuclear energy to power gigantic data centers, artificial intelligence, and other emerging high-energy-using technologies.
Hanson bragged that the “sustained, strong safety performance” of America’s operating nuclear reactors that has bolstered nuclear energy’s credibility and provided the foundation for its near-certain coming expansion. While just five years ago (at the end of President Trump’s first term), “projected shutdowns and decommissioning [were] becoming a regular part of the discussion,” for the first time in history, the NRC was evaluating a request to reactivate a shut-down reactor.
Is that not evidence that these reforms are so urgently needed?
Hanson went on to tell the assembled bureaucrats that “we need to be ready for emerging needs and seek opportunities for process improvements” at a time when the NRC’s workload projections are increasing rapidly. [During 50 years of saying “no,” their jobs were simpler?]
Yet, even with the 2024 election nine months away, Congress and the Biden White House were promising to increase U.S. nuclear power generation. “We are projecting an influx of new power uprate applications – muscles we haven’t exercised in over a decade,” Hanson told the gathering. Those “sore muscles” were amazingly able to shrink approval timelines for risk-informed programs at operating reactors and even get through “more complex reviews.”
Perhaps Trump’s knock on Hanson was that he appeared to speak more as a gatekeeper for regulatory control than as a partner in building a nuclear future for America. For 50 years, the NRC had acted as “Dr. NOPE,” thwarting efforts by determined scientists and engineers eager to supply the nation with abundant, reliable nuclear energy.
Even though he had spent 25 years in the private sector, Hanson seemingly was, in the President’s view, prouder of the NRC’s 50-year history of stifling the development of nuclear energy in the U.S. than of its opportunity to partner with scientists, engineers, and others to redesign its regulatory framework to facilitate rapid growth of safe and affordable nuclear energy for America’s future.
What President Trump says he needs is a referee, not an opposing head coach.
From all the news of ‘raging wildfires’ / ‘melting glaciers / ‘increasingly extreme weather’ / ‘hottest month ever recorded,’ it’s no surprise how that morphs into news of ‘climate anxiety’ affecting youths ranging from children to young college students. Supposedly well-intentioned journalists then add articles to their repertoire about ‘coping with the climate crisis.’ On top of that, the Christian community is implored to act on the ‘religious moral imperative to save the planet’ from an evil, profit-seeking. planet-destroying fossil fuel industry.
From all the news of ‘raging wildfires’ / ‘melting glaciers / ‘increasingly extreme weather’ / ‘hottest month ever recorded,’ it’s no surprise how that morphs into news of ‘climate anxiety’ affecting youths ranging from children to young college students. Supposedly well-intentioned journalists then add articles to their repertoire about ‘coping with the climate crisis.’ On top of that, the Christian community is implored to act on the ‘religious moral imperative to save the planet’ from an evil, profit-seeking. planet-destroying fossil fuel industry.
Legacy news media reporters never question any of this, including clarion calls from environmentalists that the public must be educated about fossil fuel usage perilously heating the planet. That call is in the demands of the latest “ExxonKnew” lawsuit, where Big Oil is being sued for causing the heat wave which supposedly killed a woman. The woman’s daughter not only demands a damages award, but also for “a public education campaign to rectify Defendants’ decades of misinformation.”
Regarding the need for public education, I agree completely . . . but entirely in the opposite direction.
I’ll set up my point using an amusing scene from the 1997 science fiction film “Men in Black,” where the aggressive MIB agent fires explosive blasts at a fleeing space alien on the belief that this particular creature must be stopped at all costs. His supervisor admonishes him,
“There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they do not know about it!!“
Ignorance is bliss there. Back in the real world, the public could get on with their happy lives after being fully informed of all facts of the climate issue. People suffer from ‘climate anxiety’ because they do not know about science-based assessments from skeptic climate scientists!
Consider how the PBS NewsHour news outlet has completely excluded skeptic climate scientists from its program to rebut any assessments from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Cornwall Alliance’s Director of Research and Education, PhD climate scientist Dr David Legates could authoritatively rebut and potentially embarrass IPCC / NASA / NOAA scientist guests on the NewsHour. It’s why scientists like him are shunned there.
An especially ridiculous news media assertion I’ve heard for years is that the public isn’t more alarmed about the ‘climate crisis’ because reporters have adhered to the ‘equal balance’ tenet of journalism – giving too much balance to skeptic scientists. But when was the last time anyone has seen that kind of treatment for skeptic scientists or other expert speakers on the topic? The PBS NewsHour has violated their own guideline on balanced reporting for over 25 years.
Therein lies the actual crisis in the climate issue. It’s not the runaway climate itself. It’s the legacy news media’s malfeasance on the issue from not reporting all of the facts.
High school / college students could polled nationwide, asking how many have heard of the 1970s global cooling craze, and then asking how many have never heard anything in depth about it before hearing the first poll question. They could be asked for their reaction to a 2016 Fox News video clip of ClimateDepot.com’s Marc Morano, who brought in an armadillo to illustrate how that animal was reported in the ’70s to be fleeing south from global cooling.
The critical question for anyone to ask is how how on Earth could “Exxon Know” as far back as the ’50s / ’60s / ’70s that their products caused catastrophic warming, in the face of all the news headlines speaking of impending cooling.
Among all the news reports about “ExxonKnew” lawsuits being filed, no reporter ever poses that hardball question. It’s a sure bet that the PBS NewsHour would never allow Marc Morano onto their program to reveal how legions of pre-1980s reports about the global cooling crisis were so widespread that it even was featured in a 1977 episode of the “Barney Miller” sitcom.
That’s only one of the major faults with the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits. These claim the industry not only ‘knew’ about the harm of global warming from the use of petroleum, the accusation continues by saying the industry then duped the public into believing there was no harm via deceptive public relations campaigns designed to undercut the ‘scientific consensus’ about the certainty of fossil fuels driving global warming.
That’s one of the more insidious angles of the climate issue — how enviro-activists try to exploit the goodness of Christians by portraying the climate issue as ‘a moral imperative to save the planet from evil Big Oil Execs and their ‘liars-for-hire’ skeptic scientists.’ The critical question right there is elemental:
Which is the bigger sin, failing to take action to stop global warming, an issue increasingly being exposed as being based on dicey science pronouncements . . . . . or breaking the commandment against bearing false witness concerning particular people who point out the problems with those dicey pronouncements?
The climate issue is still alive today because the legacy news media long ago abdicated from their responsibility to tell the public all of the facts about it. The issue can die of a death of a thousand cuts when the public fully comprehends how they have the opportunity to pose tough questions to the authorities they encounter — teachers, journalists, policymakers. I’m old enough to remember when the bad guys used to flee from reporters asking them questions, they could not answer. The public needs to flip that same image against the legacy news media.
You must be logged in to post a comment.