Day: July 19, 2025

EXPOSED: From Climategate to Courtroom – How Climate Activists Tip the Scales of Justice

Let’s not mince words: What’s been unearthed in this Fox News exposé “Unearthed chat sheds light on cozy ties between judges, climate activists, raising ethical concerns” is nothing less than a blueprint for how climate activists have sought to quietly “capture” the American judiciary, in a style remarkably reminiscent of the infamous Climategate affair of 2009, which we first broke here on this very website.

From Watts Up With That?

By Anthony Watts

Let’s not mince words: What’s been unearthed in this Fox News exposé “Unearthed chat sheds light on cozy ties between judges, climate activists, raising ethical concerns” is nothing less than a blueprint for how climate activists have sought to quietly “capture” the American judiciary, in a style remarkably reminiscent of the infamous Climategate affair of 2009, which we first broke here on this very website. If Climategate was the exposure of insular groupthink, manipulation, and data gatekeeping in the scientific community, what we’re seeing here is the systematic application of those tactics—this time, targeting the judges who ultimately decide climate-related lawsuits.

At the center of this latest scandal is the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP), an initiative launched in 2018 by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI)—itself a left-wing nonprofit flush with activist funding, some of it allegedly traceable to China. CJP’s mission? To provide what it calls “authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.” What this means in practice is quietly coaching judges on the “consensus” climate narrative, prepping them to be more sympathetic to creative activist litigation—then, lo and behold, those very same funders bankroll the lawsuits that land before these freshly-indoctrinated judges.

As Senator Ted Cruz aptly put it: “This is like paying the players to play and paying the umpire to call the shots the way you want”.

The article lays out the mechanics: in September 2022, CJP launched a “listserv”—an email group with direct, ongoing communication between CJP leaders and judges nationwide. By July 2024, there were 29 members, including at least five sitting judges. The forum, innocuously called “Judicial Leaders in Climate Science,” included private sharing of climate lawsuits, congratulatory messages for activist wins, and guidance for other judges on how to run similar programs in their states.

One Delaware judge even posted a private YouTube link to a presentation giddily predicting climate lawsuits could one day bankrupt the fuel industry, with the explicit warning: “Please do not forward or use without checking with me. I suspect that goes without saying, but the powers that be will be happier that I said it.” The closed-door, chummy dynamic is obvious—and telling.

This is nothing more than indoctrination masquerading as education. CJP and its defenders, of course, insist their purpose is purely educational and objective. They claim their curriculum is “fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process”. But let’s be real: what’s passed off as neutral “climate education” is heavily slanted to reinforce a specific worldview, presenting worst-case climate scenarios as settled science, and framing any dissent or nuance as heresy. The program even encouraged judges to go through CJP’s prepackaged “Climate Science 101” and “Climate Litigation 101” courses, and send feedback to help make them even more effective.

There’s a distinctly unseemly aspect here: the very people training the judges are often also involved in crafting and arguing the lawsuits that appear before those same judges. The ELI and CJP’s “experts” include university professors and lawyers who have filed numerous amicus briefs in climate litigation. The potential for bias isn’t just present—it’s the entire point.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: what we’re witnessing is an effort to purchase not just favorable coverage in the press or within academia, but to buy the rulebook and the referees themselves. In the wake of Climategate, we saw how a tight circle of activists could warp the scientific process by excluding dissenting voices and manufacturing consensus. Now, the same techniques—gatekeeping, narrative control, the selective sharing of “evidence”—are being applied in a backdoor campaign to ensure judges are only exposed to the “right” sort of climate science and litigation logic.

It’s a method that could be described as “judicial capture,” and Senator Cruz was absolutely correct to raise alarm bells. The CJP’s program, far from being an innocuous continuing education effort, is a systematic campaign to get judges to “set aside the rule of law, and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative”.

The parallels to Climategate are striking:

  • Secrecy: Both scandals relied on private communication channels—email servers, listservs, or “chats” out of public view.
  • Consensus Enforcement: Dissenting voices are shunned, and only the party line is reinforced.
  • Manipulation of Process: In Climategate, it was peer review and grant allocation; here, it’s the judicial training process.
  • Downplaying of Bias: In both cases, organizers insist their motives are objective, but the outcomes and incentives are plainly not.

The article highlights that even some judges expressed unease at the ethical implications. Back in 2019, a federal judge who hit “reply all” to an ELI climate seminar invite was chastised by colleagues, some of whom considered it an ethics violation. Others, predictably, said there was nothing to see here. But as Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Zack Smith points out, the trend of “educating” judges on hot-button issues they will later preside over is, in itself, an invitation to bias and a violation of impartiality.

And this isn’t happening in a vacuum. The surge in climate litigation over the past several years—including multimillion-dollar lawsuits against oil companies and federal agencies—has coincided with the CJP’s ramped-up training and networking among judges. The timing is no coincidence.

The CJP claims its curriculum is developed with “robust peer review” and “meets the highest scholarly standards.” Where have we heard this before? The same line of bullshit was used to defend the emails and manipulations unearthed in Climategate—right up until it became clear that the process was anything but open and objective.

The reality is that so-called “consensus science” on climate change is precisely what is being weaponized here. The CJP’s material leans heavily on government reports that emphasize “impacts of climate change are being felt throughout all regions of the United States, and these impacts are expected to worsen with every fraction of a degree of additional warming”—ignoring the massive uncertainties, the role of natural variability, and the checkered history of failed predictions.

Why does this matter? Because, just as with Climategate, when process is corrupted and objectivity is lost, the damage ripples far beyond a single forum or group chat. Judicial decisions informed by activist “training” can result in massive financial penalties, policy overreach, and the further erosion of public trust in both science and the courts. And it’s always done under the guise of saving the planet—no matter the economic or human cost.

The secretive networking exposed by Fox News is not an isolated slip-up; it’s a feature, not a bug, of the activist playbook. When the same group of climate partisans can train the judges, coordinate the lawsuits, and then claim neutrality all the while, we have gone far beyond the realm of legitimate policy debate. This is judicial capture by stealth.

If Climategate taught us anything, it’s that sunlight remains the best disinfectant. Only by exposing these networks and demanding transparency can we hope to restore some semblance of integrity to both climate science and the courts.

Let’s call it what it is: not education, but indoctrination—an attempt to buy the judiciary, one closed-door “training” at a time.

It Was Hot In 1911 As Well, Mr Miliband!

With Miliband wanting to weaponize a few days of sunshine, with stupid claims that “our way of life is under threat”, we might care to look back at the summer of 1911!

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

With Miliband wanting to weaponize a few days of sunshine, with stupid claims that “our way of life is under threat”, we might care to look back at the summer of 1911!

CET daily maxes show that the heatwave did not get going until July in 1911, unlike this year’s. But it then dominated British weather until late August.

We’ll have to see whether this year does the same. But the cause of the hot weather in 1911 was exactly the same in 1911 as it is this year – the sun. When the sun shines brightly in summer, and for days on end, the weather tends to be hot!

Unless Miliband has a plan to stop the sun from shining, he should go back to his sixth-form politics, where he can do no more damage.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html

Storm Chasing with Michael Mann: How to Stay in the Climate Spotlight

It’s hard not to notice when Michael Mann’s name appears in the author list of a climate paper—after all, he’s about as synonymous with climate alarm as Al Gore is with PowerPoint slides. One could say spotting his name in a paper about “intensification of the strongest nor’easters” is like finding Waldo in a crowd where everyone’s wearing a red-and-white striped shirt—inevitable, but somehow still amusing.

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2510029122

It’s hard not to notice when Michael Mann’s name appears in the author list of a climate paper—after all, he’s about as synonymous with climate alarm as Al Gore is with PowerPoint slides. One could say spotting his name in a paper about “intensification of the strongest nor’easters” is like finding Waldo in a crowd where everyone’s wearing a red-and-white striped shirt—inevitable, but somehow still amusing.

To the meat of the matter: this paper by Chen et al., published in PNAS in July 2025, claims that the strongest nor’easters affecting the U.S. East Coast are not only getting stronger in terms of maximum wind speed, but also producing more precipitation over time, especially since 1940. Naturally, this finding is attributed to—you guessed it— “a warming world,” though, as is tradition, the underlying uncertainties and methodological sleights-of-hand are tucked away in the statistical shadows.

The paper leans heavily on reanalysis data (ERA5, 1940–2025) and cyclone tracking algorithms to cobble together a historical record, touting its “homogeneity” and “comprehensiveness.” Yet, buried within the technical details, there is acknowledgment that models and data sources are patchy at best, especially in the pre-satellite era—a recurring Achilles’ heel in this field. Indeed, the authors admit:

“The precise significance levels vary depending on the choice of statistical test, time interval, and effective storm radius… Of specific potential concern is the sensitivity of the trend to changes in input data sources during the transition from traditional surface and radiosonde observations in the early part of the record to multisensor observations in later years. However, we find that the trends of interest are even greater in magnitude… if confined entirely to the satellite era (1979–2025)…”

In other words: the “clear finding” that nor’easters are becoming more intense is more “clear” the shorter and more satellite-heavy the dataset. It’s a bit like insisting your cooking skills are improving because you swapped out a foggy bathroom mirror for an Instagram filter—suddenly everything looks better, but is it really you that changed, or the tool?

The authors do recognize the ambiguity and the wobbly ground their conclusions stand on. Previous studies, as they admit, have reached everything from “no significant change in median cyclone intensity,” to a decrease, or an increase.

“There is, as a result of these confounding factors, considerable divergence in future projections of ETC intensity in past studies, with findings ranging from no significant change in median cyclone intensity, to a decrease, or an increase.”

This is climate science in a nutshell: if you don’t like the answer, wait for another model run.

Quantile regression, the paper’s statistical hammer of choice, is used to hunt for trends in the upper tail of nor’easter intensity. The median shows no significant trend—no surprise—but the “upper quantiles” (think: the rare, nasty storms) show a “statistically significant” upward blip. Here, “significant” is a term of art, stretched nearly to the breaking point. As the authors write:

“Trends… become statistically significant at P < 0.10 for quantiles above 0.66. A similarly pronounced increasing trend at higher quantiles is also evident when applying the Mann–Kendall trend analysis… the results overall lead to a clear finding: the strongest nor’easters are becoming stronger.”

A P-value of 0.10, in case anyone’s forgotten, means there’s a 10% chance the result is due to random noise. For comparison, most scientific disciplines would require P < 0.05 (or even lower). Here, we’re invited to hang public policy on a confidence threshold that wouldn’t pass muster in most reputable poker games.

Then there’s the matter of reanalysis data, which the authors themselves acknowledge is a stitched-together Frankenstein’s monster of models and sparse measurements, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. If this is the bedrock for billion-dollar policy decisions, it’s no wonder taxpayers feel seasick.

The study’s discussion pivots to a familiar script, predicting more damage, more floods, and (curiously) “the counterintuitive possibility of increased winter cold air outbreaks in regions neighboring the U.S. East Coast.” It seems global warming, much like a Las Vegas magician, can pull any outcome from its hat—hotter, colder, drier, wetter, all roads lead to Rome.

And let’s not overlook the obligatory economic scare numbers:

“The total economic loss from [the Ash Wednesday storm, 1962] was estimated at approximately $3 billion (1962 USD). When adjusted for inflation, a storm of similar magnitude striking today would result in losses exceeding $21 billion (2010 USD)… Accounting for inflation, that would be equivalent to $31 billion, which is in proportion to the typical cost of a major landfalling hurricane.”

One almost expects the next sentence to warn of a biblical plague of frogs, with losses adjusted for inflation.

Now, about Michael Mann: his presence on this author list is not just a punchline, it’s a calling card. Mann, famous for the “hockey stick” graph that gave Al Gore a PowerPoint and generations of schoolchildren nightmares, has become something of a celebrity meteorologist—equal parts scientist, activist, and legal enthusiast. If his name’s on it, you can bet the conclusion will be that weather is getting worse, and humanity is to blame. It’s less a finding than a branding strategy.

Yet, let’s give credit where due. The authors stop short of outright libel or slander against skeptics, which is more than can be said for certain climate “debates” on social media. Instead, the rhetorical force is channeled into statistical acrobatics and economic extrapolations. The real comedy here is not in the intent to deceive, but in the perennial hope that just one more regression, one more reanalysis, will finally clinch the case for “unprecedented” danger.

In summary, this paper offers a case study in climate science as performance art. There’s an obligatory nod to uncertainty, a parade of statistical significance at thresholds so generous even carnival barkers might blush, and a supporting cast led by Michael Mann, the maestro of the climate anxiety industrial complex. For policymakers and the public, the lesson is simple: always read the fine print—and if the numbers look scary, check who’s holding the calculator.

HT/rhs

New Study: The North Atlantic Has Not Been Cooperating With The Global Warming Narrative

There has been a “marked cooling trend” across the North Atlantic in recent decades (Ryu and Kang, 2025).

From NoTrickZone

By Kenneth Richard 

There has been a “marked cooling trend” across the North Atlantic in recent decades (Ryu and Kang, 2025).

This includes ocean heat content decline (OHC) since the 2000s, and cooling sea surface temperatures (SST) since the mid-1990s.

Image Source: Ryu and Kang, 2025

State of the UK Climate Report 2024

The UK Met Office has just published its annual State of the UK Climate report for last year. It reads more like a political pamphlet than a scientific one.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The UK Met Office has just published its annual State of the UK Climate report for last year. It reads more like a political pamphlet than a scientific one.

The Press Release sets the tone at the very start:

“Record breaking and extreme weather has become increasingly commonplace in the UK as our climate has changed over the last few decades.

The latest assessment of the UK’s climate shows how baselines are shifting, records are becoming more frequent, and that temperature and rainfall extremes are becoming the norm.”

Most people think of extreme weather as events like the winter of 1963, the Great North Sea Flood, the 1987 Storm or the heavy snowfalls and floods in 1948, not a mild February or sunny day in April.

They say the most noticeable change has been the rise in temperatures, which amounts to about a degree in the last 100 years. There are many possible reasons for this:

a) Natural recovery from Little Ice Age lows

b) Urbanisation

c) Poor siting

d) Cleaner air, resulting from Clean Air Acts

e) Greenhouse gases

But taking the Met Office data at face value, a rise of one degree is much less than the official Met Office projection of a five degree rise by 2100.

It is the latter that is the basis for the whole Net Zero agenda. Who would be prepared to spend a trillion and wreck the economy just to avoid a half a degree temperature rise in the next 50 years?

To put it into perspective, Oxford is about one degree warmer than Birmingham on average. Does that make Oxford’s climate more extreme? Of course not, the whole idea is as absurd as it is unscientific.

The Met Office claims that there has been an increasing frequency and intensity of daily temperature extremes. This is nonsense – while extremely hot days may be more common, these are offset by fewer extremely cold ones. Overall, the frequency of temperature extremes has not changed.

Rainfall

The Met Office also claim that “the UK’s climate has become steadily wetter since the 1980”. However, the 1970s and 80s were unusually dry decades.

Although the UK is currently in a run of wet years, there have been similarly wet periods in the past – the 1870s, 1910s and 1920s, for example.

Similarly, the Met Office claim that rainfall has become more extreme since the 1960s. But the full datasets show no such long-term trends.

Sea Levels

According to the Met Office report, sea level rise around the UK is accelerating, though no actual data is provided to support this claim.

The UK has three long running tidal gauge records – Aberdeen, North Shields and Newlyn. All three show the same pattern – sea levels have been rising no faster in recent years than in the first half of the 20th century.

A period followed where sea level rise slowed, before returning back to earlier rates. For instance, North Shields:

Storms

Despite the hyping of winter storms by giving them all names, the Met Office report admits:

For the UK overall there are no storms in recent years which compare in severity with exceptional storms in the observations such as the ‘Burns’ Day Storm’ of 25 January 1990, the ‘Boxing Day Storm’ of 26 December 1998 and the ‘Great Storm’ of 16th October 1987.

Weather v Climate

Throughout the report, the Met Office confuse WEATHER and CLIMATE. Individual weather events are presented as evidence of a changing climate.

A good example is winter rainfall, which is said to have been increasing in the last decade or two.

The report includes a section on the North Atlantic Oscillation index (NAO), which is explained as follows:

This index is a measure of the large-scale surface pressure gradient in the North Atlantic between Gibraltar and Iceland, which determines the strength of westerly winds across the Atlantic, and is the principal mode of spatial variability of atmospheric patterns in this region. When the pressure difference is large, the WNAO is positive and westerly winds dominate with stronger and more frequent storms. When the pressure difference is small, the WNAO is negative with an increased tendency for blocked weather patterns, reducing the influence of Atlantic weather systems. The WNAO index is therefore associated with winters which are either mild and wet or cold and dry.

In recent years, the NAO has been strongly positive, just as it was in those equally wet years in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The NAO is a natural meteorological phenomenon, and clearly its switching to positive mode in the last decade must explain much of the recent increase in winter rainfall. Yet the Met Office ignore this fact and instead put the blame on climate change.

The whole report is 68 pages long, which I doubt anybody will bother to read.

The real intention was to publish a Press Release with scary, apocalyptic soundbites for the media to propagate.

Pumping the Brakes on Alternative Energy

The Trump administration’s impressive efforts to reboot traditional, reliable energy in the U.S. are a godsend not only for Americans but for people around the world. Whether reversing Biden-era prohibitions against offshore drilling or fast-tracking permits for natural gas exploration and extraction, President Trump’s devotion to utilizing the most abundant and affordable energy sources on earth will keep Americans prosperous, healthy and free.

From Watts Up With That?

By Gary Abernathy

This article was originally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permisson. 

The Trump administration’s impressive efforts to reboot traditional, reliable energy in the U.S. are a godsend not only for Americans but for people around the world. Whether reversing Biden-era prohibitions against offshore drilling or fast-tracking permits for natural gas exploration and extraction, President Trump’s devotion to utilizing the most abundant and affordable energy sources on earth will keep Americans prosperous, healthy and free.

But breathing new life into tried-and-true energy resources is only half the battle. Just as important is putting the brakes on the disastrous expansion of so-called renewables like wind and solar when their existence depends on subsidies and other life-support measures. The vaunted “all of the above” approach to energy is reasonable only when “all” are able to compete on a level playing field and demonstrate they are reliable and profitable.

To be sure, there are instances where alternative energy is effective and economically sustainable – particularly at the micro level. Many homeowners have chosen to install rooftop solar panels to assist in their household power needs. Micro wind turbines are being utilized in limited capacity to perform such tasks as pumping water or charging batteries. In both cases, the technology is cost-effective for the intended limited purposes.

But the large-scale wind and solar farms that have sprouted up across the country are almost wholly supported by government subsidies and tax credits. As noted in January by the Institute for Energy Research, “Treasury Department figures show that subsidies for wind and solar dwarf all other energy-related provisions in the tax code, costing $31.4 billion in 2024, and are expected to cost taxpayers $421 billion more between 2025 and 2034 based on the subsidies in the Biden-Harris climate bill.”

The report added, “Federal tax expenditures for the investment tax credit (ITC) and production tax credit (PTC), which are the primary drivers behind the deployment of wind and solar energy, are, by far, the most expensive energy-related provisions in the federal tax code. Between 2025 and 2034, the ITC and PTC will account for more than half of all energy-related tax provisions.”

Those ballooning subsidies and credits are at odds with a government dedicated to shrinking the size of the federal bureaucracy, and they create an unbalanced and non-competitive energy marketplace. To that end, Trump presented a budget outline in early May that slashed subsidies for alternatives and cut billions from “climate change” programs favored by his predecessor.

According to Reuters, in addition to ending most subsidies, the energy budget proposal “cancels more than $15 billion in carbon capture and renewable energy funding” from President Biden’s misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act of 2021. Also ended would be about $1.3 billion in grants issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for “climate-dominated research.”

The story added, “The plan reorients Energy Department funding toward research and development of technologies that could produce an abundance of oil, gas, coal and critical minerals, nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear fuels, the White House said without further details.”

As of this writing, a battle is raging in Congress about the alternative energy cuts included in Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill. Some Senate Republicans want to extend the length of time before energy credits sunset. As reported by The Hill, the Senate version allows solar and wind farms that begin this year to receive the full credits.

“Before, when the bill was in the House, it demanded that those projects start only 60 days after the bill passed, essentially leaving no time for new clean energy investments,” The Hill reported. “The Senate is also allowing projects that begin construction in 2026 to receive 60% of the credit, in 2027 to receive 20% and in 2028 to receive no credits.”

Trump’s reaction to the more lenient Senate provisions has been unequivocable. “I HATE ‘GREEN TAX CREDITS’ IN THE GREAT, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL. They are largely a giant SCAM,” he posted on social media. “Windmills, and the rest of this ‘JUNK’ are the most expensive and inefficient energy in the world, is destroying the beauty of the environment, and is 10 times more costly than any other energy. None of it works without massive government subsidy (energy should NOT NEED SUBSIDY!). Also, it is almost exclusively made in China!!! It is time to break away, finally, from this craziness!!!”

Trump’s bombastic style aside, it’s hard to argue with his main points. Still, political realities – lawmakers worrying about curtailing jobs in their states already underway or in the pipeline – mean a final bill will probably include more subsidies for more years than Trump would prefer.

But even if it’s not ideal, the bill that comes out of the current Congress will still represent a comparative about-face from the draconian mandates, subsidies and credits for alternatives foisted upon us by the Biden administration. However imperfect the coming budget bill might be, our energy future will indeed be big and beautiful compared to what could have been.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. Abernathy’s “TEA Takes” column will be published every Wednesday and delivered to your inbox!

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

Monster Nature 8x faster: The sea near Africa rose 10 to 25mm a year in huge meltwater pulses 12,000 years ago

It’s another totally solid, non-controversial paper that will never be mentioned in the media or by 50 shades of climate experts.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Twelve thousand years ago sea levels around Africa rose much faster than today

It’s another totally solid, non-controversial paper that will never be mentioned in the media or by 50 shades of climate experts.

In extraordinary detail, Vecchi et al look at 347 datapoints up and down the west coast of Africa and find that, like everywhere else, sea levels were a blockbuster 125m lower at the depths of the ice age 25,000 years ago. Then seas rose in rapid bursts as the vast Laurentide and Eurasian ice sheets melted, until they finally stopped rising 8,000 years ago. It must have been twelve thousand years of mayhem for corals, mangroves and beach-side cave-dwellers.

In the northern Gulf of Guinea seas were recorded as rising at up to 25 mm per year about 12,000 years ago — eight times faster than anything we see today. And given the difficulty of knowing sea levels 15,000 years ago, there were probably many short episodes of faster shifts that got washed away, never to be recorded.

All our panic about the current crisis of a pitiful 3mm-a-year rise allegedly “due to man-made CO2” pales to nothing compared to what Monster Nature does. This study and hundreds like it, are like a stake through the heart of the vampire. For if the children understood the seismic shifts of the past, they would know that they were being sold a lie that the world had a stable and perfect climate or that current beaches have some sacred right to exist in perpetuity. Obviously, as commenters* pointed out, the Torres Strait Islanders ought to have a cultural memory of massive inundation, reefs shifting and the beaches being washed away. Like everywhere else in the world, Australian sea levels have been falling for 7000 years.

Thanks to Kenneth Richard at NoTricksZone who wrote that Africa’s Atlantic Coast Sea Levels Were Still 1 Meter Higher Than Today 2000 Years Ago.

Click to enlarge  | Nature  | NB: The authors must be left-handers and run their graphs right to left — so in graph C, the present is on the left.

And if natural rises can be eight times faster than what we see today, then how do we know the current rise is not partially or wholly natural? All we have are climate simulations…

Sea levels have fallen by 1 to 4 meters in last 5,000 years

Imagine the amount of work to collect all these data points from so many locations?

There were some sharp falls in sea level in the last 2,000 years.

Click to enlarge. The timeline reads backwards. The distant past is on the right hand side.

From the paper:

These data represent the first Atlantic Ocean evidence of the sea-level lowering trend during the LGM [Last Glacial Maximum]. Previously, the Barbados record, was the single LGM dataset available for the Atlantic Ocean2,8,10 but its accuracy in defining the timing and magnitude of the LGM was debated for possible tectonic influence8 as well as for the potential presence of allochthonous dated material from downslope transportation of the coral sea-level indicators29. …

Rates of sea-level rise during the main phase of deglaciation

A major phase of deglaciation and consequent increase in global mean sea level occurred between ∼16.5 ka and ∼7.0 ka BP24 from a reduction of land-based ice volume of ∼45 × 106 km3.

From the Abstract:

From ~15 ka to ~7.5 ka BP, RSL shows phases of major accelerations up to ~25 mm a−1 and a significant RSL deceleration by ~8 ka BP. In the mid to late Holocene, data indicate the emergence of a sea-level highstand, which varied in magnitude (0.8 ± 0.8 m to 4.0 ± 2.4 m above present mean sea level) and timing (5.0 ± 1.0 to 1.7 ± 1.0 ka BP).

The Results

In the northern Gulf of Guinea, RSL was stable at −61.6 ± 3.0 m between 14.0 ka and 13.0 ka BP (Fig. 3c). RSL rose to −44.9 ± 4.0 m at 12.0 ± 0.2 ka BP and to −37.2 ± 3.0 m at 11 ± 0.2 ka BP. Younger SLIPs indicate RSL rose to −6.1 ± 0.2 m at 8.0 ± 0.2 ka BP and finally to −1.6 ± 0.7 m at 7.0 ± 0.2 ka BP. The 9 SLIPs indicate two phases of major acceleration with rates of rise up to 25.2 ± 11 mm a−1 between 12.6 ka and 12.1 ka BP and up to 11.6 ± 11 mm a−1 between 10.0 ka and 8.0 ka BP (Fig. 3d). After 8.0 ka BP, RSL rates were <7.0 ± 2 mm a−1 at 7.5 ka BP.

In Congo, RSL rose from −70.7 ± 3.9 m to −24.7 ± 1.7 m between 13.3 ± 0.2 ka and 10.0 ± 0.2 ka BP (Fig. 3e). Younger SLIPs indicate RSL rose to −4.3 ± 2.0 m at 8.0 ± 0.2 ka BP and reached present sea-level at 7.0 ka BP. The 9 SLIPs show sea-level rose at rates from 13.4 ± 3.4 mm a−1 at 13.0 ka BP to 14.8 ± 1.8 mm a−1 at 11.4 ± 0.2 ka BP (Fig. 3). This was followed by progressive decrease in rising rates from 10.3 ± 1.4 mm a−1 after 9.0 ka BP to 6.0 ± 1.0 mm a−1 after 8.0 ka BP, respectively (Fig. 3f).

Sea levels were higher in the Holocene, all over the world

Like giant oysters that used to live in the streets of Taiwan 7,000 years ago. Hundreds of Pacific Islands appeared out of the sea in the last 5,000 years as the seas receded, and these islands didn’t exist during the Holocene peak. 50 million years ago New Zealand was as big as India, then the ocean swallowed Zealandia. (So careless, they lost a whole continent.)

The fact is, according to 1000 tide gauges, spread all over the globe, sea levels are rising slowly at around 1 sole mm a year. And a nerd-level intense study of 60 beaches in Northern Europe showed a similar rise. By a strange coincidence the Topex/Poseidon satellite sea-level data set also showed the same tiny rates of sea level change in the 1990s — right up until they tortured the data to fit climate models. (We hear they calibrated the satellites to one sinking  gauge in Hong Kong).

Other posts on Sea Levels

h/t El Gordo, NoTricksZone

*Ice age cultural remarks by David Maddison, MrGrimNasty, Jethro Bodeen, TdeF. 

REFERENCES

Vacchi, M., Shaw, T.A., Anthony, E.J. et al (2025) . Sea level since the Last Glacial Maximum from the Atlantic coast of Africa. Nat Commun 16, 1486 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56721-0

World’s Poor in for Hard Time as Pope Leo Backs Green Agenda and Net Zero

On matters of Catholic dogma, the Popes claim to be infallible. But on the science around climate change and the political Net Zero lunacy they frequently talk out of their pontifical posteriors. Who can forget the late Pope Francis’s claim that humans are causing earthquakes, a suggestion that only the whackiest of climate alarmists can utter. Alas, the new Bishop of Rome is also capable of ruminating out of his rear end with Pope Leo XIV recently giving us his ‘world is burning’ sermon.

The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

On matters of Catholic dogma, the Popes claim to be infallible. But on the science around climate change and the political Net Zero lunacy they frequently talk out of their pontifical posteriors. Who can forget the late Pope Francis’s claim that humans are causing earthquakes, a suggestion that only the whackiest of climate alarmists can utter. Alas, the new Bishop of Rome is also capable of ruminating out of his rear end with Pope Leo XIV recently giving us his ‘world is burning’ sermon. At a recent ‘green’ mass at his summer estate in Castel Gandolfo, he added: “We must pray for the conversion of so many people inside and outside of the church, who still don’t recognise the urgency of caring for our common home.”

As a ‘lapsed’ Catholic, your correspondent has been the beneficiary of many such ‘conversion’ prayers. Fear works well if you are a schoolboy sitting at the feet of Sister Agnes, headmistress of St Anselm’s primary school in Dartford, with the fires of hell promised for missing mass on Sunday and the numerous Holy Days of Obligation. Papal fears of a world burning due to excessive holidays in Benidorm are a bit tame. After all, it has been done to the far limits of stupidity by the UN activist-in-chief Antonio Guterres. Come on Leo, I can’t help thinking, you can do better than that.

Needless to say, the new Green Pope is all-in on the fake science of weather attribution. “We see so many natural disasters in the world, nearly every day and in so many countries, that are in part caused by the excesses of being human, with our lifestyle.” One can only pray that the new Pontiff gets around to reading the latest scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where little or no human involvement is observed in almost all natural weather events, now and forward to 2100. He might care to consider that deaths from natural disasters have plunged by 95% over the last 100 years, while the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to a remarkable 15-20% ‘greening’ of the planet.

Wearing green vestments for his special mass in the new ecological education centre at the summer residence, Pope Leo urged the world to recognise what he called the urgency of the climate crisis, and “hear the cry of the  poor”. But the poor are not crying, at least not for the rich Western elite fantasy of Net Zero. Many in the developing world see hydrocarbon use as the key to lifting them out of grinding poverty. They are aware of the enormous increase in staple crops that has occurred over the last 60 years due to the use of hydrocarbon-enabled fertilisers. They can feel the extra food in their bellies – to deprive them of the natural stored energy of the Earth at this stage in their development would, in Sister Agnes’s often spoken words, be wicked.

Pope Leo’s Green Mass was reported by the Associated Press, which takes support for religious coverage from the Conversation, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. Its report, presumably officially sanctioned by the Vatican, notes that Leo is a long-time missionary and Bishop in Peru, where he is said to have experienced first-hand “the effects of climate change on vulnerable communities”. Peru has a varied climate, and bad weather can upset communities living on the margin. But if we look at climate, rather than relying on the pseudoscientific nonsense of short-term weather attribution, it can be seen from the World Bank Climate Portal that the seasonal mean temperature in the country has risen by just 0.36°C over the last 100 years. In this period there was a tad less rain, although a reduction of 9.9mm to 1610.34mm was unnoticeable. If you want to proselytise climate breakdown, Peru is perhaps not the best place to start, whatever your own personal truth, belief or lived experience.

Pope Leo might also be cautioned to lay off the ‘burning world’ stuff when he next visits his native America. Wildfires are all the rage in alarmist circles, although recent enthusiasm has been dampened by findings published in Nature Communications that show conflagrations are running at just 23% of the level expected from an examination of records going back to the 17th century. One peer reviewer saw a clear danger of the paper “being used by deniers of climate change impacts”. In other words, less facts, more emotion. Again we can but offer prayers that the myth of cleansing holy smoke sweeping all before it can be resurrected with salvation only possible with the blessings conferred by Net Zero.

Popes are generally settled science kinda guys – it took the Vatican about 100 years to accept the Earth went around the Sun. Both Francis and now Leo have attempted to link extreme environmentalism with concern for the poor and something they call climate justice. They are not generally scientists and like most modern Net Zero hard Left politicians they have little understanding of science and the scientific process. They appear clueless on the role of natural climate variation and misunderstand how hydrocarbons have lifted billions out of poverty in the last 100 years. Their elite ex cathedra views lead to incumbents like Francis waffling in familiar biblical terms that the world is “collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point”. Francis thought CO2 was “highly polluting” even though he breathed out about two pounds of it every day of his life. The new chap is already ranting about the world on fire – expect more hellfire and damnation to follow.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

Toward a Deterministic Model of Cloud Development over Ocean Warm Pools

This article begins with observations of top of atmosphere radiation balance over a moored buoy located in the middle of the Bay of Bengal in conjunction with surface data from the moored buoy for the same time.  It progresses into more recent observations of daily OLR emission from above all ice free ocean surface to establish that the average effective emission temperature for every location across the global oceans is below the freezing temperature for water.

From Watts Up With That?

Richard Willoughby

Summary

This article begins with observations of top of atmosphere radiation balance over a moored buoy located in the middle of the Bay of Bengal in conjunction with surface data from the moored buoy for the same time.  It progresses into more recent observations of daily OLR emission from above all ice free ocean surface to establish that the average effective emission temperature for every location across the global oceans is below the freezing temperature for water.

A model for broad spectrum transmission of OLR to space through the atmosphere over a warm pool is explained and sequenced through a series of time intervals to appreciate how ice forms as a consequence of long wave radiation heat loss at altitude.

The article concludes by making the case for convective overshooting playing a key role in the observed SST regulating process.

Introduction

The Bay of Bengal is one of the best locations across the oceans to observe the development of convective instability.  The solar intensity at 15N exceeds 425W/m² from the time the solar zenith moves north of the Equator in March to the time the zenith moves south of the Equator in September.  That means there is sufficient solar intensity to reach and maintain the ocean surface temperature (SST) at its sustainable limit of 30C for almost 6 months.  Chart 1 provides monthly data from CERES top of atmosphere (ToA) observations available from NASA NEO showing the radiation balance at 15N and 90E for 2017.

Chart 2 provides surface based data collected from the moored buoy at 15N, 90E at daily time resolution from the same location as Chart 1 for the same period.

The SST is observed to rise from day 16 to day 100 when a cyclone passed over the moored buoy then again increases to overshoot the sustainable temperature of 30C till cyclic instability sets in with associated rainfall from day 150.  By day 300, the solar zenith moves south of the Equator and the solar intensity at 15N is insufficient to maintain the cyclic instability and the temperature declines. 

Combining observation displayed in Charts 1 and 2 enables the conclusion that the regulating process has moisture convergence from surrounding ocean to the vicinity of the moored buoy because the Net radiation averages 100W/m² while the SST tracks between 28.5 and 30C.  So despite the net heat flux to the atmosphere, there is no corresponding increase in surface temperature.  The additional heat input is the result of local precipitation exceeding evaporation.

Chart 3 combines daily surface and ToA data for July 2017 to improve the time resolution over Chart 1.

An important observation of Chart 3 occurs on 21st July.  Here there is intense rain indicative of convective instability centred in the vicinity of the moored buoy but it coincides with low reflected short wave (SWR) and high outgoing long wave radiation (OLR).  This indicates that the cumulonimbus anvil associated with monsoonal rain does not contribute significantly to daily short-wave reflection.  It also indicates that the OLR is emitting from higher temperature during and immediately after the instability than during the development of convective potential.

Here it is worth plotting the correlations between SWR and OLR and surface sunlight to OLR per Chart 4.

The result that the SWR is negatively correlated to OLR with a coefficient greater than unity demonstrates the cloud effect over warm pools produces radiation cooling rather than heating.

The Role of Ice in the Atmosphere

Chart 5 expands the observation of OLR to all ice-free ocean surface and comes forward in time to 20 March 2025 when the solar zenith is over the Equator.

The effective radiating temperature for OLR emissions over oceans for 31,800 grid cells is shown in Chart 6.

The effective emission temperature over oceans ranges from 216K to 272.6K.  Given that molecules capable of emitting OLR will be losing heat, the H₂O molecules in the atmosphere with temperature below 273K will be solidifying to ice.  Accordingly the vast majority of OLR emissions above ocean surface will be from ice.  The ice will be at high altitude over warm pools at 303K.

OLR Emissions above Ocean Warm Pools at 303K

Ocean warm pools exhibit cyclic convective instability over a period of a few days.  Chart 3 above exhibits 5 to 6 cycles in a month or averages a cycle every 5 to 6 days.  In the location where the instability is initiated, the convective plume transports heat from low altitude to high altitude resulting in intense rainfall as the expanding air cools at altitude.  After instability there is an initial period of clear sky with close to saturated conditions.  In reality, the column will rarely be fully balanced but ranges from water deficit to super-saturated.  Chart 7 shows the atmospheric profile for water vapour and temperature under perfectly saturated conditions over 303K surface.

For the purpose of this analysis, the modelled column has 200 layers of 100m thickness.  This results in the bottom layer having a total of 3mm of water.  There is very little water above 15,000m and negligible emissive power above 18,000m so the temperature is almost constant; just below 200K.  Water dominates the OLR emissive power of the column so when there is little to no water, the emissive power is negligible.

Chart 8 examines the broad spectrum OLR absorption up the column based on a water vapour OLR absorption constant of 10% per mm.  The OLR fraction transmitted to space is based on working down the column applying Beer’s Law.

It becomes apparent that nearly all OLR emitted below 3000m is reabsorbed while OLR to space progressively increases above 5,000m to reach its maximum above 15,000m

Having established the OLR absorption and transmission profile for the saturated column, it is now possible to determine the OLR transmitting power of the column and the rate of heat loss at altitude per Chart 9.

These calculations apply Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation with the simplifying assumption of bulk absorption for the OLR spectrum such that there is just one value for absorption or emissivity at each layer.  This then enables using the Stefan Boltzmann equation for OLR transmission up the column and to space, which is assumed to be at 0K.  The resulting radiating power is 275W/m², which corresponds to an effective radiating temperature of 263K.  However, it is clear that there is heat being lost from the column below freezing and noteworthy that there is OLR radiation heating below 2,400m.

The loss of heat at altitude results in ice and condensate production over time as shown in Chart 10.

A time step of 2500 seconds has been chosen to simplify the mass flow of ice cascading down the column with time.  The terminal velocity of sub 100 micron ice particles is taken as 4cm/s so they will fall 100m (one layer) in 2500 seconds.   Chart 11 shows the transmitting power and rate of heat loss at 2500 seconds after saturated state taking the absorption coefficient for water condensate as 50% per mm and ice at 90% per mm.

The transmitting power has reduced slightly to 271W/m² but there is not much change in the altitude or amount of heat loss.  After seven iterations, the development of the ice and its influence becomes clearer as shown in Chart 12.

After 17,500 seconds, the transmitting power is down to 253W/m² and it is now apparent that the heat loss is occurring at higher altitude while less heat is being lost below the 273K altitude.  Also, the altitude of radiation heat gain has increased to 2,900m.

This simple model is only valid for overnight analysis or 19 iterations: shown in Chart 13.  It is not valid for sunlit atmosphere where short wave absorption plays a significant role in the development and dissipation of the ice along with other complicating factors.

So after 13 hours of overnight heat loss following late afternoon convective storm over 303k ocean, the OLR transmission is down to 226W/m² and heat loss is centred around 11,000m with very little heat loss from water condensate or water vapour.  There is now long wave heat gain up to 3,800.  The ice accumulation at various time iterations is shown in Chart 14.

After 13 hours without sunlight, there is a total of 2.8kg of ice per square metre and it dominates both the OLR transmission and solar EMR thermalisation.  A sunlit model results in greater complexity and a story too long for this article.

Discussion

This overnight example gives insight into the initial ice development.  Through the daylight, solar EMR is absorbed by the ice and some sublimates during the peak daylight but there is insufficient heat input to induce upward mass flow.  Over a few nights and days of cycling heat loss and heat gain, the ice becomes layered but with continual descent of ice or associated water vapour.  The column becomes increasingly unstable as the ice and water condensate descends and the region above the level of free convection (LFC) deflates to increases in density while the region below the LFC gains energy with reducing density. 

The water condensate that falls below the LFC is vaporised by the heat gain from absorbed solar EMR and OLR from lower altitudes.  The column also gains water vapour from the surface insolation.  It takes upward of five days to reach the maximum convective potential.  A column above 303K SST with maximum convective potential is devoid of cloud so there is usually clear skies ahead of instability occurring.  The SWR is high immediately after instability then gradually reduces as the high altitude ice develops.  SWR is usually low before instability occurs.

The full sunlit ice development model, reasonably tuned to observations, achieves a balance in heat gain below the LFC equal to the loss of heat above the LFC.  This only occurs when the SST is at 303K.  When the SST is lower, there is not enough energy below the LFC to fully saturate the region above the LFC during instability.  If the SST was able to exceed 303K and the region below the column was in equilibrium with the surface, then instability will cause convective overshooting with very high-altitude ice that remains persistent due to its small size having very low terminal velocity.  Going back to Chart 2 it is apparent that convective overshooting occurred at the onset of the instability when the temperature dropped from above 31C to below 30C in two days.  The OLR for the 1st June averaged 147W/m² (225K), which is only possible starting from convective overshoot.

In looking at convective overshooting, it is regularly observed above tropical cyclones where daily OLR can be less than 100W/m² (204K).  One of the more unusual places that experiences convective overshooting is Missouri.  Here it is associated with similar atmospheric instability but the instability is caused by the mixing of high altitude dry air stream and moist mid altitude air stream to produce tornados.

Conclusions

Efforts to understand the inherent stability of Earth’s climate and the basis of climate trends without a deep understanding of ice accumulation and loss from land; sea ice growth and all ice melt on oceans and ice nucleation, sublimation and terminal velocity in the atmosphere are doomed to fail.  Ice dominates Earth’s radiation balance by orders of magnitude over any gas including water vapour.

I, and others long before me, recognised that ocean atmospheres exhibit an SST regulating process that prevents temperature sustaining more than 30C (303K).  Prior to this analysis I had mentally pictured the regulating process as a fuel regulating governor with fine control that progressively reduced the fuel (surface sunlight) until 30C was reached.  The analogy is now changed to one where the engine can be flooded and sputters when the throttle is opened too fast.  It is possible to overfuel the engine with more heat below the LFC than needed to rebalance the heat loss above the LFC. 

Earth’s atmosphere over tropical oceans can be viewed as a finally tuned engine reaching peak performance, in terms of heat uptake when SST is at 303K.  Convective instability is similar to ignition in the Carnot cycle.  If the engine fails to fire at the right time and the surface temperature overshoots then any ensuing convective instability will overshoot and the surface will cool below 303K before it reaches instability again.

As a consequence of this analysis, I have elevated the significance of convective overshooting on my list of climate control factors.

The Author

Richard Willoughby is a retired electrical engineer having worked in the Australian mining and mineral processing industry for 30 years with roles in large scale operations, corporate R&D and mine development.  A further ten years was spent in the global insurance industry as an engineering risk consultant where he developed an enduring interest in natural catastrophes and changing climate.