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.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican incumbent in Virginia, warns that the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) will drastically raise utility rates due to its overreliance on “green energy.” Unless the Virginia General Assembly steps in to lighten the regulatory load in the energy sector, an “impending train wreck” in the form of rising utility bills will remain in motion, according to a statement from the commonwealth’s energy director.
Youngkin offers up nuclear power as an innovative solution in the run-up to the November election
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican incumbent in Virginia, warns that the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) will drastically raise utility rates due to its overreliance on “green energy.” Unless the Virginia General Assembly steps in to lighten the regulatory load in the energy sector, an “impending train wreck” in the form of rising utility bills will remain in motion, according to a statement from the commonwealth’s energy director.
Youngkin points to the VCEA—enacted under his predecessor in 2020—as the primary culprit behind projected increases in utility bills. Known as the “Virginia Green New Deal,” the VCEA is laced with green energy mandates that are expected to become more costly in the absence of Youngkin’s veto pen.
The Virginia Power Grid Hangs in the Balance
But there’s still time for Virginia to cut a different path in line with Youngkin’s “all-of-the-above” approach to energy policy, which includes nuclear power. Glenn Davis, the Virginia Department of Energy director, points to the Commonwealth Fusion System’s (CFS) planned commercial fusion plant at the James River Industrial Park as a prime example of the kind of initiatives policymakers should pursue. The CFS plant is poised to become the first grid-scale commercial fusion power outfit of its kind anywhere in the world. In an exclusive statement to Restoration News, Davis said:
Virginia is leading the way in energy innovation, especially nuclear, as the home to the world’s first commercial fusion reactor. This plant is just one piece of a much larger energy plan to meet the 6.5% growth in demand Virginia is expecting as we continue to see a soaring increase in jobs and investment. Fusion has been talked about for generations and now is becoming a reality, right here in Virginia, with not only a plant but also an innovation hub. Under Governor Youngkin’s leadership, Virginia has embraced all-American, all-of-the-above power and is front and center in an energy and power renaissance that will power the Commonwealth with safe, secure, reliable, and affordable energy for years to come. Unfortunately, while the Youngkin administration has been working arduously to give Virginians relief on their energy bills, the Virginia Clean Economy Act is about to cause utility bills to skyrocket, with a projected compliance cost exceeding $5 billion over the next ten years, beginning with bill increases this September. For four years, Governor Youngkin has warned of this impending train wreck, but General Assembly Democrats have refused to address it.
The outcome of this year’s gubernatorial race will likely determine the trajectory of energy costs for Virginia residents. That’s because Abigail Spanberger has a history of supporting Green New Deal-type policies—that was evident during her time in Congress. Her voting record shows she supported extending a moratorium on drilling off Virginia’s coast. Spanberger also voted against prohibiting bans on gas stoves and gas-powered cars, and she opposed ordering the government to issue all federal permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which runs through Virginia.
As the Democratic candidate for governor, Spanberger has also expressed support for having Virginia rejoin a carbon tax scheme known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI. By contrast, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, her Republican opponent, supported Youngkin’s decision to withdraw from RGGI. Earle-Sears is also running on a platform of lowering living costs.
Stephen D. Haner, a senior fellow for environment and energy policy at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, expects an almost 50% increase for Virginia ratepayers within the next two years. Haner bases this forecast on an analysis of the rate increase applications Dominion Energy—the Virginia public utility—submitted earlier this year to the State Corporation Commission, the regulatory authority overseeing utilities.
The 1,000-kilowatt hour monthly bill was about $116 just before VCEA was implemented. Haner expects pending price increases to take this amount to about $170 in 2027, with VCEA compliance costs the biggest component of this increase.
From here, the news gets even worse as Haner envisions a scenario where Virginia experiences power blackouts. PJM, the regional trading entity, issued a statement in its “Summer Outlook 2025” document of particular concern to energy policy analysts. The current season marks the first time that available generation capacity may fall short of required reserves in an extreme planning scenario that would result in an all-time PJM peak load of more than 166,000 MW, according to the PJM statement. Put another way, the VCEA mandates on wind and solar could further strain a power grid that is already under stress.
Nuclear power could be part of the solution. Virginia already has the Surry Nuclear Power Station located in southeastern Virginia, on the south bank of the James River across from Jamestown, and the North Anna Power Station in Louisa County.
Youngkin is set to leave office in January, since the Virginia governor is limited to just one consecutive term under state law. He has been a consistent opponent of the VCEA and is pursuing court action to keep Virginia out of RGGI.
With the Democrat-controlled House of Delegates continuing to refuse to take action, the approaching gubernatorial race could decide the fate of the power grid in Virginia.
An excellent prediction of a major weather-related threat is unheeded, leading to massive destruction and loss of life.
We need to do better. We can do better.
This blog will discuss the problem and how it might be addressed.
There are numerous examples of this failure mode; let me provide just a few.
Hurricane Katrina, 2005
In 2005, the landfall of Hurricane Katrina near New Orleans resulted in 1400 deaths and $125 billion in damage. Excellent forecasts by the National Weather Service and weather models.
Local governments failed to take the forecasts seriously and did not evacuate vulnerable populations. Poorly designed levees failed.
LA Wildfires, 2025
The wildfires in LA led to 30 deaths and at least 100 billion in damage. Meteorological forecasts of strong, dry Santa Ana winds by the models were stunningly good and the National Weather Service put out an apocalyptic forecast (see below)
Power companies failed to de-energize powerlines, and local governments failed to pre-position fire-fighting capability and had emptied a critical reservoir, to name only a few of the mistakes made.
Maui Wildfire, 2023
Weather forecast models were emphatic that a major downslope windstorm would occur in the area around Lahaina. The National Weather Service had a red-flag warning for the lee sides of the islands, but did not identify the particular threat to Lahaina.
After the fire was started, the local response was very problematic, not staying with the fire when they thought it was out, blocking travel routes, and not facilitating an effective evaluation.
Hurricane Helene (2024)
Heavy precipitation and flooding from this storm resulted in 250 deaths and nearly 80 billion dollars in damage. Heavy rain reaching as much as 30 inches led to catastrophic flooding. NOAA/NWS forecast models did an excellent job in predicting the hurricane path and heavy rain (see below).
The National Weather Service put out very strong warnings (see below), but a lack of communication and critical evacuations from threatened areas led to major loss of life.
Texas Flooding (2025)
As documented in my earlier blog and many other sources, the National Weather Service provided timely warnings, but local communities lacked the warning capability to effectively remove individuals from harm’s way. In addition, vulnerable camp facilities were located on threatened floodplains.
I could easily provide many other cases of excellent forecasts, but a lack of proper response, leading to massive unnecessary deaths and economic loss.
Why are we in this failure mode? How can it be fixed?
First, it must be recognized that weather prediction has gotten immensely more skillful over the past 30 years.
The combination of much more skillful global models plus high-resolution prediction capabilities has resulted in meteorologists now being able to forecast dangerous conditions with great skill days in advance.
For example, huge improvements in hurricane track forecasts (see below)
Heavy rain skill by the NOAA/NWS Weather Prediction Center? Going up rapidly (see skill of 1-inch totals below)
Second, it needs to be recognized that our ability to observe what is happening in real-time is immensely better due to far more comprehensive observations.
Improved weather radars and massive new satellite assets provide meteorologists and others with extraordinary knowledge of what is happening…. abilities we did not possess 20-30 years ago (see a sample below).
With better observations and predictions, meteorologists, hydrologists, and others in NOAA and other government agencies are in a FAR better position to provide actionable guidance for saving lives and property.
Third, with this knowledge, local and state governments, in concert with the Federal government, must take responsibility for using the improved forecast capabilities to save lives and property.
This means better communications to the public, better warning systems, better planning for adverse conditions, and more.
We can radically reduce deaths and losses due to storms and adverse weather by recognizing the extraordinary potential of improved observations and forecasts, and then applying this information to warn and protect our communities.
What should we NOT do? Blame climate change or political parties you don’t like.
Climate change has only a very small impact on the intensity of extreme weather (there is very, very strong science to support this statement). Pushing climate as the origin of these extremes leads to inaction on the real problems. Even if climate change were important, adaptation can save most lives.
Both political parties have been in power as this situation has festered. This is a fully bipartisan problem. Name-calling and blame will lead to inaction and more deaths.
The Grain Belt Express was a $11 billion transmission line project designed to carry electricity from wind farms in Kansas across Missouri and Illinois to Indiana. “Energy demand is growing – our grid needs an upgrade,” the project’s website states, “No other project saves consumers more.”
The Grain Belt Express line faced investigation by Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office in early July. A press release from Bailey’s office stated that the investigation stemmed from “widespread concerns over misleading claims and a track record of dishonesty.”
“We will not allow a private corporation to trample property rights and mislead regulators for a bait and switch that serves out-of-state interests instead of Missourians,” Bailey said in the July 2 press release.
The investigation, a Civil Investigative Demand (CID), pointed out the dependence of the Grain Belt Express upon “speculative and possibly fraudulent assumptions,” including a made-up carbon tax that “was never enacted by Missouri or federal law and does not exist.”
The use of this fictitious “carbon tax” in projecting supposed benefits of the project “more than likely” inflated the value predicted for Missouri consumers, according to Bailey’s formal letter to the Chair of the Missouri Public Service Commission. The predicted benefits included $52 billion in energy cost savings over 15 years, according to the Grain Belt Express Website.
Hawley’s announcement follows several Trump administration cuts to expensive green energy projects since taking office.
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The industry is already familiar with “dunkelflautes” – the increasingly common spells of freezing windless winter weather when wind and solar farm output plummets. Now it is reporting a similar “hitzeflaute” phenomenon in summer, with longer spells of warm windless weather also becoming more prevalent with climate change.
Hitzeflaute comes from hitze – the German word for heat – and flaute, which means lull, reflecting the absence of strong winds in such spells.
It means Europe and the UK are becoming increasingly dependent on solar power during the day but, in the absence of wind, having to ramp up gas, coal and nuclear power stations in the evening.
The phenomenon also causes massive market swings with power prices often going negative in daytime when solar is peaking, but surging up to £200 or £300 per megawatt hour when the sun goes down, especially if wind output is low.
The UK faces just such a spell this weekend, with a high pressure weather system bringing clear skies, sunshine and low winds that will coincide with the Wimbledon tennis finals.
Of course, it’s all the fault of climate change, not the ludicrous obsession with wind farms that don’t generate enough half the time and generate too much the rest!
You wake up to an alarm, flick on the light, brew coffee, and drive to work. Every step requires energy – the stuff that shares the coin of physical reality with matter, the E in E = MC2. It keeps homes warm, food fresh and economies running.
You wake up to an alarm, flick on the light, brew coffee, and drive to work. Every step requires energy – the stuff that shares the coin of physical reality with matter, the E in E = MC2. It keeps homes warm, food fresh and economies running.
Supplying 80% of the world’s primary energy, coal, oil and natural gas make up the lifeblood of modern civilization. Yet, there continue to be calls for the abandonment of these fuels without any feasible, scalable replacement in sight.
It is dishonest for “green” lobbyists to claim that electricity from wind and solar can replace fossil fuels, when currently most of the energy used in the world is not even in the form of electricity.
Electricity represents only about 20% of global final energy consumption. That means four-fifths of the world’s energy use comes from fuels that power ships, planes, trucks and industrial furnaces. Oil fuels vehicles, natural gas provides heat for homes and industry, and coal is critically important for the manufacture of steel from iron.
Demand for hydrocarbons is expected to exceed that of electricity for many decades.
You’ve probably heard it before: “Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels.” This is a falsehood supported by a misleading metric – the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). When Mark Twain spoke of “lies, damn lies and statistics,” he had LCOE in mind.
LCOE purports to present an apples-to-apples comparison between various energy sources. However, the measure is meaningless because it ignores key costs such as those of providing backup power to compensate for the intermittency of solar and wind. Something must be available to step up when the wind and sun are not available for power generation.
While it may be true that sunshine and wind are “free,” converting them to a form of energy that works with modern power grids and integrating them into the 24-hour operation of electrical systems supplying millions of customers is difficult and expensive.
First, LCOE assumes constant output, but solar and wind produce only 20%-30% of their designed capacity, compared to 80%-90% for plants running on coal, natural gas or nuclear fuel.
This commentary was first published by RealClearMarkets on July 7, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ 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 bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
OFGEM have just announced the first tranche of investment in Britain’s grid upgrades needed to hit 2030 renewable targets.
Ofgem has today (1 July) given the provisional green light to an initial £24bn investment programme to enhance energy security while enabling the transmission of more clean energy from renewable sources.
Over £15bn will ensure the continued safe operation of Great Britain’s gas transmission and distribution networks, making sure they deliver safe and secure supplies of gas to households and businesses across the UK.
An initial £8.9bn investment is being committed to Britain’s high-voltage electricity network, with a further £1.3bn ready to go – to power the biggest expansion of the electricity grid since the 1960s. The draft settlement is the first step in an estimated £80bn investment programme boosting electricity network capacity, protecting UK households from the volatile international gas markets that caused the massive fluctuations in energy bills in recent years.
The investment in our grid, which will rise to around four times the current spending levels, will allow for 80 transmission projects and all associated works right across the country to be completed within five years. This will significantly increase the grid’s capacity, through new power lines, substations and other technologies, to handle the flow of electricity from new renewable sources.
These projects, which are also vital for driving growth, will upgrade over 4400km of overhead lines and deliver 3500km of new circuits, including investments offshore, doubling the total build in the last 10 years. It means up to 126 GW of clean power generation will be connected to the grid by 2030 alongside additional flexible storage and technologies, enough to power millions of households with clean, stable and secure energy.
Ofgem CEO Jonathan Brearley said:
“Britain’s reliance on imported gas has left us at the mercy of volatile international gas prices which during the energy crisis would have caused bills to rise as high as £4000 for an average household without government support. Even today the price cap can move up or down by hundreds of pounds with little we can do about it.
“This record investment will deliver a homegrown energy system that is better for Britain and better for customers. It will ensure the system has greater resilience against shocks from volatile gas prices we don’t control.
“These 80 projects are a long-term insurance policy against threats to Britain’s energy security and the instability of prices. By bringing online dozens of homegrown, renewable generation sites and modernising our energy system to the one we will need in the future we can boost growth and give ourselves more control over prices too.
“Doing nothing is not an option and will cost consumers more – this is critical national infrastructure. The sooner we build the network we need, and invest to strengthen our resilience, the lower the cost for bill payers will be in the future.
This critical investment covering upgrade and expansion of the electricity grid, maintenance and also gas depreciation in its entirety is estimated to increase network charges on bills by £104 by 2031. This includes £30 for the gas networks and £74 for the electricity grid.
Around half of this investment, including £30 on gas networks, is needed for the gas and electricity grids to maintain safety, resilience, and reliability.
The remainder, around £52, will be used to expand the capacity of the electricity grid to deal with the rising demands of a more electrified energy system, as we move away from gas.
This investment (£52) alone is expected to lead to around £80 of savings for consumers by 2031 compared to not investing by reducing constraint costs (money paid to wind farms to switch off because the grid is unable to transmit their power output) and making better use of our clean renewable energy so we are not having to pay for expensive gas plants to serve demand. So bills are expected to be around £30 lower than they would have been had this investment in upgrading and expanding the electricity network not been made.
Taken all together the net cost of these investments on bills amounts to around £24 a year, or less than 40p per week, by March 2031, although this does not take into account the overall benefits of reaching clean power that can reduce bills.
The £30 increase in gas network charges on bills by 2031 would be necessary in all scenarios in order to maintain safety, resilience, and reliability in our gas networks.
OFGEM say household electricity bills will rise by £74 a year, as a result of this £80 billion upgrade. That equated to £6.6 billion a year, given that non residential consumers use about 60% of total electricity. OFGEM say they are assuming return on capital of 6%, which implies depreciation costs of 2.5% over 40 years.
£6.6 billion works out at about £22/MWh, four times NESO’s projection of just £5/MWh, which also includes constraint costs.
But extraordinarily, the NESO Clean Power 2030 Report did not take grid upgrade costs into account. The report states:
Neither is there any costings for the upgrading of local distribution networks.
The figure it offer for “Grid expansion and constraint costs” only reflects the increase in constraint costs from £2.8 bn to £3.7 bn a year.
To the £80 billion mentioned, we can another £16 billion already spent or committed to by the National Grid between 2021 and 2026.
But the spending won’t stop in 2030. OFGEM note these current plans will cater for 126 GW of “clean” power, in line with NESO’s plans. But buildout of renewables will still need pursued rapidly.
The BBC reported a year ago that another £58bn is for work needed between 2030 and 2035.
Add the lot up and you are looking at £154 billion, which will add £13 billion to our bills each year. None of this expenditure would be needed without the expansion of renewable energy and the increased demand for electricity necessitated by Net Zero.
In true Orwellian double speak, OFGEM’s Jonathan Brearley tells us that spending £100 billions of your money will make you better off!
I guess what I resent most about the portrayal of extreme weather events is that, like snakes in the grass, the usual suspects hide until the event occurs. And when it occurs, they never even reference the entire picture. They simply use it to push whatever agenda they have, even though it has nothing to do with actually solving the major problem of a country that has expanding infrastructure and population, where normal occurrences (normal is different from averages, which are a product of all events, including extremes) or things that are expected to happen at some time are then portrayed as a justification for their agenda.
heavy rain on sky with clouds – beautiful weather backdrop – photo of nature
I guess what I resent most about the portrayal of extreme weather events is that, like snakes in the grass, the usual suspects hide until the event occurs. And when it occurs, they never even reference the entire picture. They simply use it to push whatever agenda they have, even though it has nothing to do with actually solving the major problem of a country that has expanding infrastructure and population, where normal occurrences (normal is different from averages, which are a product of all events, including extremes) or things that are expected to happen at some time are then portrayed as a justification for their agenda. It’s akin to bowling, but instead of 10 pins on the alley, there are 30. So, more get knocked over if you simply throw the same ball. There is more in the way, so more damage is going to be done. But that is their strategy in how they push these events. Particularly egregious here is that this summer’s US rain is occurring while global temperatures are returning to pre-Tonga and Niño levels, and there is no reference to the big picture.
I wrote this 2 years ago, showing why the jump in temperature could not be from a man made source:
The combination of the impacts of the Tonga eruption, a strong el Niño and its water vapor input wearing off, along with the rapid drop off of geothermal activity and the resulting cooling of the Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere to temperatures not seen in its mid-winter since 2004, is a far bigger story from a global climate perspective than the floods.
Which is exactly opposite the 10 year means:
Consider this: If you divide Earth’s land mass into 5-mile by 5-mile areas, there are 2,280,000 25-square-mile land “boxes” on the planet. In an average year, you could expect approximately 1,000 to 3,000 1-in-100-year floods and 100 to 300 1-in-1,000-year floods in those 5-by-5 areas.
Now, what if your 5-by-5 area is flood-prone in a given pattern? In other words, what if the global pattern favored heavy rain in one area? There would naturally be more floods in that area, with other areas compensating with less. The pattern across the US (as I have outlined previously, fooled me back in Texas) but certainly not east of there, where a wetter-than-normal summer was forecasted. But if it’s going to be wetter than average, then the odds of someone getting a 1-in-100- to 300-year flood and also a 1-in-1,000-year flood have to be higher. Since we know they have to occur in any given normal year—some as little as 100 a year, others as much as 300 a year—screaming it’s man-made climate change is complete nonsense, as it’s a normal occurrence to have bad flooding somewhere. There will be years when these areas are dry. Just like with the tropics, when one basin is down in activity, others are up.
We have major meteorological outlets that all simply try to echo the same stories. How is it that none of them dig into the big picture? If everyone simply says the same thing, why even look at it? Given the advances of AI, which is going to make media outlets on weather obsolete (they don’t even know they are building the roads they are riding to their death by constant man-made climate change emphasis), they have a chance to show value and separate themselves by actually digging in behind the scenes. After all, to paraphrase the Apostle Paul, those who know what they know don’t yet know what they ought to know.
The floods are devastating. But if you are in a rainy pattern, simply to balance out the entire planet and what is expected, such things are to be expected. And trying to make them, as bad as they are, more than they are to push a missive that is being proven false simply by looking at what the actual weather is doing globally, shows either ignorance of the total picture or deception to hide it. That is what we are seeing here with people with nefarious motives.
I’m reminded of this by what I see as a ludicrous claim—that regarding the climate, one of the more complex systems we’ve ever tried to analyze and understand, mainstream climate scientists say that there is a straight-line linear relationship between changes in the radiation balance at the top of the atmosphere and the surface temperature.
I must confess, I use WUWT as a lab notebook on steroids. It reflects my latest work, my latest calculations, my latest graphics, my latest theories. My thanks to all participants who make this possible: Anthony Watts, Charles The Moderator, anonymous moderators around the planet, as well as all the commentators and lurkers who keep me from going off the rails and suggest new avenues to explore. What a time to be alive!
Onwards. Here’s my latest.
I was watching a National Geographic documentary about the use of airborne lidar to look straight down and see through the trees of the Guatemalan jungle to expose Mayan ruins. The commenter said “If we see straight lines on the ground, it’s not natural. It’s something made by man.”
And it’s true—in general, nature doesn’t do straight lines. As the poet said:
“Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;”
I’m reminded of this by what I see as a ludicrous claim—that regarding the climate, one of the more complex systems we’ve ever tried to analyze and understand, mainstream climate scientists say that there is a straight-line linear relationship between changes in the radiation balance at the top of the atmosphere and the surface temperature. This is a central belief in their understanding of the climate:
∆T = λ * ∆F (Equation 1 And Only)
This says that the change (delta, “∆“) in global average surface temperature (“T“) is equal to the change (∆) in “forcing” (“F“) times a constant called lambda (“λ“) that is known as the “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS).
And what is forcing when it’s at home? Forcing is a term of art in climate science. Radiative forcing is defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as:
“The change in the net, downward minus upward, radiative flux (expressed in W/m²) due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the concentration of volcanic aerosols, or the output of the Sun.”
The “downward” radiation at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is the incoming sunshine. It’s all the radiation entering the system.
The “upward” radiation is the longwave thermal radiation heading to space. It’s the total of all the energy leaving the system.
Now, that claim of linearity makes absolutely no sense to me. Let me explain why.
First, the surface temperature can change without affecting the TOA radiation balance. The climate system is a giant heat engine. Heat comes in at the hot end of any heat engine: in this case it’s the tropics. Then it does work with some of the heat, and the rest of the heat is exhausted at the cold end of the heat engine: in this case, the poles.
Note that only part of this heat is converted into work. The rest is just passing through, carried by the ocean and the atmosphere from the tropics to the poles and back out to space. Any variation in the percentage of the total flow which is converted to work will change the surface temperature without any change in the TOA radiation balance.
Next, the climate system isn’t free to adopt any configuration. It is ruled by the Constructal Law, and like a river meandering to the sea, it doesn’t move in straight lines. Like all flow systems far from equilibrium, the river is maximizing flow, and thus the river picks the longest possible path to the sea.
Similaryly, as a constructally ruled system, the climate is always seeking to maximize the flow from the tropics to the poles. And as that flow speed changes, the surface temperature changes … without any corresponding linear change in the TOA radiation balance.
Finally, their Equation 1 equates a quantity that IS conserved (watts per square meter) with a quantity which is NOT conserved (temperature). I’m not clear how that is even possible.
However, for the purpose of this discussion, let’s assume that they are right about that particular relationship between TOA forcing and temperature. We’ll follow that path and see where it leads.
As a first step along that path, let me return to the idea that the climate doesn’t move in straight lines. For example, below is a graph of gridcell-by-gridcell total cloud cooling/warming, which is a combination of the clouds’ effects on longwave and shortwave radiation plus the evaporative cooling related to rainfall. I’ve compared it to gridcell surface temperatures in a scatterplot with contour lines.
Now, I started doing these scatterplots like in Figure 1 below, comparing two variables for every 1° latitude by 1° longitude gridcell of the planet, for a simple reason. They show the long-term relationship between the two variables. Each gridcell on the planet is in a long-term, general steady state regarding the various measurable factors, like say thunderstorm prevalence. Annual averages of these relationships vary little, and a 24-year average reveals the underlying long-term relationship of the variables.
And this lets us investigate things like the long-term value of the equilibrium climate sensitivity … but I get ahead of myself …
Figure 1. Scatterplot plus density contour lines and LOWESS smooth. Total cloud cooling versus surface temperature, entire planet.
Back to figure 1, there’s much of interest. First, in gridcells with average temperatures below about -20°C, which is Greenland and Antarctica, the clouds warm the surface. Then when the frozen ocean comes into play, from -20°C to where the gridcells average about freezing, there is cooling increasing with temperature.
Then the trend reverses, and cooling decreases with temperature up to the gridcells with an average temperature of 25°C or so. And above that, the cooling increases radically and almost vertically to the point where it is cooling those gridcells by -400 W/m2 or so.
In passing, note the peak around 25°C. If the temperature goes above that, the clouds increase their cooling, eventually to a radical extent. And when the temperature goes below ~ 25°C, the clouds decrease the amount of cooling. This is clear evidence of the thermoregulatory action of clouds, cooling more when it’s warmer and less when it’s cooler.
Finally, the predominant role of the ocean is evident in both the tighter grouping and the larger number of the blue oceanic dots compared to the brown dots showing land gridcells.
And to close the circle, the red/black line showing the change of cooling with temperature is kinda the definition of non-linear …
Now, these kinds of graphs are very useful for a simple reason. The slope of the red/black line at any point gives the average change in the y-axis variable for a 1°C change in the surface temperature. So for example, we can see that when it’s above say 25°C, the total cloud cooling increases extremely rapidly with each 1°C increase in temperature.
With all of that in mind, what can such graphs show us about the long-term relationship between temperature and forcing?
The mainstream theory goes like this:
Doubling the amount of CO2 intercepts more of the upwelling longwave radiation headed to space.
This leads to a top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative imbalance.
The Earth then warms up until the balance is restored.
So the question becomes … how much does the earth have to warm up to restore the 3.7 watts per square meter (W/m2) of TOA radiation imbalance that is said to result from a doubling of CO2 (2xCO2)?
This amount of warming required to rebalance the TOA radiation imbalance is called the “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS) to a doubling of CO2. It’s the “lambda” in the linear Equation 1 (and only) above.
To investigate the value of the ECS, here is the scatterplot of the TOA imbalance versus the surface temperature.
Figure 2. Scatterplot plus density contour lines and LOWESS smooth. Top of atmosphere radiative imbalance versus surface temperature, entire planet. The percentage (% area) numbers show the percentage of the surface area in each temperature interval.
Man, I love being surprised by my investigations. It’s the best part of my scientific education. I definitely did not expect the graph to look like that. But facts are facts.
At temperatures below -20°C, the brown dots show it’s just land— Greenland and Antarctica. And there, curiously, the TOA imbalance gets more negative for each 1°C of warming. Then, at around -15°C, the slope reverses as the frozen ocean comes into play. It increases, somewhat linearly, until about 20°C or so, after which the imbalance starts increasing at a faster rate.
We can visualize these changes in detail by calculating the slope at each point in the red/black line. Recall that the slope is the change in TOA radiation imbalance per degree of warming. Here is that result.
Figure 3. Slope of the red/black trend line shown in Figure 2 above. If you wonder why the area-averaged change is so high, look at the percentages of the global area with annual average temperatures in each temperature interval.
I’ve included the area-weighted average of the change in the TOA balance from a 1° increase in surface temperature. It’s 6.6 W/m2 per °C. This implies an equilibrium sensitivity (ECS) of 0.6°C per doubling of CO2
I’m gonna say that is a reasonable estimate for the ECS, for a couple of reasons.
First, this ECS estimate of 0.6°C is not outside the range of other observational estimates of CO2 sensitivity. In the Knutti dataset there are the results of 172 people’s calculations of the ECS, using different methods. My estimate is at the low end, but it isn’t the lowest.
Figure 5. Estimates of ECS from theory and reviews, observations, paleoclimate studies, climatology, and climate models. Note that in the last half century these estimates have grown more scattered, not less. And it’s particularly true for climate models (yellow dots).
The second reason I think that my ECS estimate of 0.6°C per 2xCO2 is valid is that it agrees with what I said about my previous estimate of the ECS, which was based on my implementation of Bejan’s Constructal climate model. The model is described in the post below.
I fear most folks don’t understand the importance of the model of the global climate system that Bejan created. As I showed, it does a very accurate job of calculating several critical parameters of the climate using one and only one tuned parameter, the conductance. Conductance in this context is how fast the climate system can move the heat from the hot zone to the cold zone. The agreement of the model with reality is shockingly good. Read the post.
Using that model, I was able to experimentally determine my best estimate of the climate sensitivity. From that previous analysis:
This constructal model points out some interesting things about climate sensitivity.
First, sensitivity is a function of changes in rho (albedo) and gamma (greenhouse fraction). But not a direct function. It is the result of physical processes that maximize “q” [the flow from the hot zone to the cold zone] given the constraints of rho and gamma.
Next, the sensitivity is slightly different depending on whether the changes in albedo and greenhouse fraction are occurring in the hot zone, the cold zone, or both.
Next, assuming that there is a uniform pole-to-pole increase of 3.7 W/m2 in downwelling radiation from changes in either albedo or greenhouse fraction, the constructal model shows a temperature increase of ~1.1°C. (3.7 W/m2 is the amount of radiation increase predicted to occur from a doubling of CO2.)
Finally, this 1.1°C equilibrium climate sensitivity is a maximum sensitivity which does not include the various emergent thermoregulatory mechanisms that tend to oppose any heating or cooling. This means the actual sensitivity is lower than ~1.1°C per 2xCO2.
And my latest estimate, 0.6°C per 2xCO2, is indeed lower than the upper bound of 1.1°C per 2xCO2 found in Bejan’s model, just as I’d predicted.
And thus endeth my disquisition about non-linearity and how it led me to my latest ECS estimate.
My warmest regards to everyone, as always.
w.
PS—When you comment, please quote the exact words you are referring to. I choose my words carefully so I can defend them. I cannot defend your restatement of my words, no matter how well-meaning.
If ever you have doubts that we are merely 3 genes away* from being mammoth hunting tribes of prophets and bone pointing shamen, look no further than modern captive science. These nice geochemists haven’t even published a paper yet, but five minutes after giving a speech at a conference, it’s already click-bait headlines and advertising for The Blob. Not that the captive researchers seem to mind (more’s the pity).
Don’t panic, but the unleashed fossil spirits from The Ford 150 are about to plague us with volcanoes
If only you bought your oranges locally, instead of flying them in from California, the lava would have behaved.
If ever you have doubts that we are merely 3 genes away* from being mammoth hunting tribes of prophets and bone pointing shamen, look no further than modern captive science. These nice geochemists haven’t even published a paper yet, but five minutes after giving a speech at a conference, it’s already click-bait headlines and advertising for The Blob. Not that the captive researchers seem to mind (more’s the pity).
We are about to enter the doom loop where climate change melts glaciers which trigger volcanoes, which melts more glaciers. The press release even says “explosive time bombs”.
Except, of course, this is really about the Great Ice Sheets melting from the last ice age, not about humans raising global temperatures by a thousandth of a degree. And we’ve known about this since 1992 when Sivaldason et al reported that a kilometer thick block of ice slowed down volcanic eruptions in Iceland during the depths of the ice-cold climate. The new team have just shown this happened in Chile too.
Scientists have discovered that melting glaciers could unleash powerful volcanic eruptions by removing the weight that keeps magma trapped deep underground. Antarctica may hold hundreds of these explosive time bombs. Melting glaciers may be silently setting the stage for more explosive and frequent volcanic eruptions in the future, according to research on six volcanoes in the Chilean Andes.
After the Patagonian ice sheets melted 12,000 years ago, volcanoes increased two to six fold they say…. as if increasing atmospheric CO2 by 0.01% somehow compares to removing a block of ice that was 1.5 to 2 km thick and weighed 540 trillion metric tons:
“A recent review by scientists found there had been relatively little study on how the climate crisis had been affecting volcanic activity. They said more research was “critically important” in order to be better prepared for the damage caused by volcanic eruptions to people and their livelihoods and for possible climate-volcano feedback loops that could amplify the climate crisis. For example, more extreme rainfall is also expected to increase violent explosive eruptions.”
Should we toss darts at Voodoo dolls?
The witchdoctors of modern science are one-variable thinkers, and every answer is “climate change”.
We don’t even know how many volcanoes there are on Earth. Most volcanoes are underwater and a couple of years ago we found another 19,000 of them that the experts didn’t know about. Sometimes we only find new seamounts when we run into them in a nuclear sub, like the USS San Francisco did in 2005.
We also don’t even know when underwater volcanoes erupt today, let alone whether they were more or less active in 21,000BC. It’s hard to believe, but we can see a volcano explode on Io, easier than we can see one in a deep sea trench. Eruptions under two kilometers of water can be somewhat muted.
The feedback doom loops suggested here are vicarious guesses. Who knows — when the great ice sheets squashed down volcanoes on land, the magma might just have been squeezed out of undersea trenches instead. And underwater eruptions rewrite all the rules. Sudden heating of water might divert ocean currents, it might unleash nutrients that feed vast phytoplankton blooms which in turn emit benzene and toluene aerosols that rise up and increase cloud cover, cooling the world.
*No disrespect intended. There probably weren’t many dumb mammoth hunters in the northern Tundra in an ice age.
I have noted on a few occasions that Americans’ trust in scientists has eroded. One reason for this is related to high-profile claims about weather and climate that have not materialized as predicted.
For example, there have been warnings of snowless winters, rapidly vanishing glaciers, and an ice-free Arctic.
Al Gore one of the great scholars of our time. Sea level rising but he buys a seaside mansion. Predicts no ice in arctic by 2013 pic.twitter.com/HFDlEosHHh
Additionally, the monsoon rains of the American Southwest are now being repackaged as yet another reason to attack fossil fuels in the name of man-made global warming — despite the fact that the region’s monsoon season has long been officially recognized as occurring between mid-June and late-September.
🌧️ Buckle up, New Mexico! The 2025 Monsoon Season is here, and it's already a wild ride. From scorching heat to epic thunderstorms, this summer's moisture surge is turning our desert into a dramatic spectacle. Here's the scoop:
However, the mainstream media’s constant doom-and-gloom reporting is not having the desired effect. CNN’s chief data analyst, Harry Enten, recently reported on a poll showing that Americans remain largely unmoved by the histrionics surrounding climate change.
Polling from Gallup found that 40% of Americans are “greatly worried about climate change” currently, which has decreased by six percentage points from 2020. These new numbers emerged as many liberals, including Democrat members of Congress, have attempted to blame climate change and President Donald Trump for the devastating flood in Central Texas.
“Are Americans concerned of climate change, and the answer is, Americans aren’t afraid of climate change,” Enten said. “Climate activists have not successfully made the case to the American people. I want you to take a look here. ‘Greatly worried about climate change.’
We have data going all the way back since 1989, and look at it then, it was 39%. In 2000, it was 40%. 2020, 46%. In 2025, 40%, which is the exact same percentage as in 2000, despite all of these horrible weather events. The percentage of Americans that are greatly worried about climate change has stayed pretty gosh darned consistent.”
The press is a little unhappy that its fearmongering isn’t working, so it’s clearly going to double down. For example, a piece published by NBC News pushes the narrative that people aren’t afraid enough of “extreme weather events” — as evidenced by an Associated Press article quoting preferred “experts” on the subject.
Climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and intense, according to climate scientists and government data. But people and governments are generally living in the past and haven’t embraced that extreme weather is now the norm, to say nothing about preparing for the nastier future that’s in store, experts in meteorology, disasters and health told The Associated Press.
“What happens with climate change is that what used to be extreme becomes average, typical, and what used to never occur in a human lifetime or maybe even in a thousand years becomes the new extreme,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. “We start to experience things that just basically never happened before.”
Meteorologist Chris Mertz points out what the “extreme weather event” narrative is in a recent interview.
Life expectancy has more than doubled since the mid-19th century. The number of deaths from weather-related natural disasters has decreased by over 96% since the 1920s. Also, if you look at the number of hurricanes, they are not increasing on a global scale. The number of tornadoes has remained about steady in the United States since real-time data collection began in 1954. Similarly, the number of floods and droughts is not increasing globally, and wildfires have gone down.
There is no “climate crisis.”
The rush to tie extreme weather events to climate change through dubious “event attribution” studies is the latest attempt to shakedown coal, oil and gas companies for billions of dollars.
The media minions constantly conflating severe weather with a climate apocalypse at the behest of climate cultists with policy agendas will continue to lose audience as those with more sensible and realistic perspectives, who are no longer silenced, are proven to be scientifically correct.
I am very grateful Americans recognize climate hysteria for what it is.
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