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.
The mainstream press run-up to COP 30 is the most subdued I have ever seen, and I have seen them all. No grand global plans or calls for astronomical sums of cash. Likely a Trump effect โ but as a scientist with no hard evidence, I will not claim that, just point out the possibility).
The mainstream press run-up to COP 30 is the most subdued I have ever seen, and I have seen them all. No grand global plans or calls for astronomical sums of cash. Likely a Trump effect โ but as a scientist with no hard evidence, I will not claim that, just point out the possibility).
The big thing missing is easy to see. This is the strident call for trillions of dollars in โfinancial flowsโ from developed to developing countries via various UN funds.
If payments are mentioned at all, they now tend to be in hundreds of billions a year, not trillions. Mind you, a few hundred billion is still ridiculous, but it is way less than trillions, definitely a new low profile.
President Trump has done several big things to contribute to this lack of financial grandeur. He is pulling America out of the Paris Accord, effective this January. He denounced climate alarmism as a colossal scam to the UN General Assembly, in their face as it were.
On the financial side, he has terminated the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was throwing billions of dollars a year around the world in climate money. Many other US agencies have also terminated climate spending.
Thus, it is perfectly clear that no climate change โfinancial flowsโ will be coming from America for at least the next few years. The other developed countries, some of which are still rabid on climate, are in no position to make up for the loss of America.
Moreover, and this may be another reason for the somber COP, these other developed countries are experiencing serious economic problems. Ironically, some of these are energy cost crunches brought on by ill-conceived climate policies. This is certainly true for the EU and UK.
Mind you, the monster-dollar โfinancial flowsโ rhetoric was mostly motivational. It had little to do with the actual work program of the COP, so that will still proceed, albeit cautiously, when it comes to costly national commitments.
Perhaps the best example of this newfound caution is the program that promised to be the biggest of all financially. This is the so-called loss and damage program, whereby the developed countries would pay the developing countries for all the bad weather they were hurt by. That plus non-weather events like wildfires and sea-level rise.
Because all this damage is claimed to be due to climate change. In fact, they have coined nonsensical language to codify this claim. Every big bit of bad weather is now termed a โclimate event.โ The green press constantly uses this ridiculous terminology.
Of course, the potential losses and claims are in the untold trillions of dollars, because there are billions of people in developing countries and a lot of bad weather. In previous COPs, these trillions were often flaunted in order to motivate creation of a โFund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD),โ which finally happened at COP 28.
This year, the FRLD is instead very low-key. To begin with, they have no money, as the financial flows have failed to flow. They have something like $250 million, which is as nothing.
They are going to issue a call for proposed projects so they can begin to work out who gets funded for what kind of losses, but these will obviously be small. And of course, they will spend a lot of time loudly wishing they had a lot more money.
The other UN Climate Funds and Programs are in pretty much the same sinking boat. America has pulled out, and nobody else has any money. The green press will have to work hard to find something interesting to write about. Human-interest stories could be it.
I, on the other hand, will be happy to chronicle the sadness of COP 30. Stay tuned to CFACT for more good news from this angle. COP 30 is going nowhere.
Ofcom has received 1,221 complaints related to the climate crisis since January 2020, when its searchable database began. None resulted in a ruling that the broadcasting code had been breached. In fact, only two such breaches have been found since 2007.
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In contrast, the French regulator Arcom has found four broadcasting code breaches related to the climate crisis in the last two years. In one, the rightwing channel CNews was fined โฌ20,000 (ยฃ17,000) for a segment in which a speaker said climate change was โa lie, a scamโ.
Ofcomโs broadcasting code requires that factual programmes โmust not materially mislead the audienceโ and that โnews, in whatever form, must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartialityโ. The code further requires that โalternative viewpoints must be adequately representedโ when programme presenters express their own views on matters of political controversy or public policy. Guidance notes for the code add that: โAn example of an issue which Ofcom considered to be broadly settled is the scientific principles behind the theory of anthropogenic global warming.โ
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Eva Morel, at QuotaClimat, the French campaign group that filed the climate complaints to Arcom, said: โIt is perfectly OK to have different opinions on climate change. What becomes problematic is when a society can no longer agree on facts, because facts are the foundation of trust, which in turn underpins law, and ultimately, democracy.โ
She added: โWhen the media blur the line between facts and opinions, it doesnโt lead people to trust in alternative truths; it leads them to trust in nothing at all. Sowing doubt about climate science serves to obstruct climate action and it endangers lives.โ
Is Britain planning forced Veganism? I believe it is reasonable to think so. In 2024 the government backed Climate Change Committee claimed in a letter to the government that Britons must switch to a more plant based diet. There is plenty of talk about the need to reduce agricultural emissions by reducing meat consumption. Whether that forced veganism is achieved by simply pricing meat out of ordinary peopleโs reach, or an actual law which bans meat consumption, the result is the same.
What about climate activist Eva Morelโs demand that we all agree a common set of facts?
The problem with the kind of enforced agreement on the โfactsโ climate activist Eva Morel demands is in science, there is no such thing as a fact which cannot be challenged.
Nobel Prize winner Barry Marshall overturned decades of consensus that peptic ulcers are a metabolic imbalance, by proving peptic ulcers are actually an infection caused by a difficult to culture bacteria, Helicobacter pylori.
Albert Einstein overturned centuries of consensus that space and time are absolute and unchanging, by proving the only way to explain unexplained phenomena such as a the fact the speed of light stays the same, regardless of the velocity of the source, is if different observers can disagree about the flow of time and measured distances.
But Einstein himself came under challenge โ he spent decades trying to challenge the fundamental weirdness of Quantum Physics, or as Einstein disparagingly described it, โspooky action at a distanceโ โ and failed. The computer Iโm using to write this article, the billions of transistors contained in its integrated circuits, were all designed using principles of that Quantum Physics which Einstein struggled to accept.
Yet we know there is something wrong with Quantum Physics โ because even though Quantum Physics grew directly out of Einsteinโs research, Quantum Physics and Einsteinโs General Relativity fundamentally contradict each other. Both theories appear to pass every test which has been thrown at them โ but they canโt both be right. Some of the more terrifying experiments with large particle accelerators are conducted by scientists who want to create a small black hole, so they can observe the nexus between Quantum Physics and Relativity up close. Letโs hope if they ever succeed, the Quantum Physics prediction the black hole will immediately evaporate in a shower of exotic particles prevails over the General Relativity prediction that the black hole will grow exponentially and consume the entire Earth.
What about really fundamental facts about the universe, like the โfactโ that we live in a universe with three spatial dimensions and one time dimension? Even this everyday understanding of the nature of reality is constantly being challenged on a number of fronts, ranging from proponents of the Holographic Principle, who point out that the universe in important and fundamental ways behaves as if there are only two spatial dimensions, that our three dimensional experience may be an illusion which masks a deeper reality, to higher dimensional string theory proponents, some of whom think the universe might have as many as 26 spatial dimensions. It might seem crazy to challenge something as tangible as the number of spatial dimensions in our reality, but the scientists exploring these ideas have serious reasons for doing so. The universe may be a much stranger place than our everyday experience leads us to believe.
Do climate models produce โfactsโ which are beyond challenge?
The following are the words of the late great Freeman Dyson giving his views on climate models;
โฆ My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests.ย
They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.ย โฆ
Was Dyson right about climate models struggling to describe the real world? We have some corroboration for Dysonโs criticism, from the climate modelling community. Some climate scientists admit their inability to model clouds is a problem.
There is a serious hypothesis, Lindzenโsย Iris Effect, which suggests changes in cloudiness and precipitation may largely counteract anthropogenic warming.
Understanding precipitation is vitally important to understanding the future of climate change, because big storms especially in principle have the capacity to completely counteract all anthropogenic global warming. Storms push vast amounts of heat up to the edge of space, acting as a natural air conditioner, punching a hole straight through most of the Earthโs greenhouse blanket. But the reality is nobody knows how clouds, precipitation and storms will behave as CO2 levels rise, or even if CO2 levels will continue to rise.ย Todayโs climate models just arenโt good enough to capture this kind of effect.
My point is, to declare some facts are beyond challenge, especially โfactsโ produced by artefacts as flimsy as climate models, is to strike at the foundations of freedom of expression and scientific inquiry. Forcing broadcasters to embrace a uniform, government approved version of unassailable facts, then claiming they still somehow have freedom of expression, is utter nonsense.
In a damning indictment published in Wednesdayโsย Daily Mail, researchers from the University of Birmingham have laid bare the futility of London Mayor Sadiq Khanโs Ultra-Low Emission Zone (Ulez) expansion, concluding that the scheme has delivered zero tangible benefits to Londonโs ambient air quality.
In a damning indictment published in Wednesdayโsย Daily Mail, researchers from the University of Birmingham have laid bare the futility of London Mayor Sadiq Khanโs Ultra-Low Emission Zone (Ulez) expansion, concluding that the scheme has delivered zero tangible benefits to Londonโs ambient air quality.
Analysing data pre- and post the August 2023 Ulez rollout, which blanketed Greater London with a ยฃ12.50 daily levy on older vehicles, the study found no statistically significant dips in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) or particulate matter (PM2.5) levels. This revelation strips away the veneer of environmental virtue from Khanโs project, exposing it as yet another assault on ordinary motorists. Ulez epitomises the corruption of science in service of predatory revenue extraction and class war.
The Ulez Expansion: A Timeline of Overreach
Ulezโs origins trace back to 2019, when Khan started the scheme in central London, ostensibly to curb emissions from diesel and petrol cars and trucks to alleviate respiratory health. By 2021, it sprawled to the North and South Circular roads, ensnaring 3.8 million residents. The 2023 mega-expansion to all of Greater London where pollution was even less of a problem โ spanning 1,500 square kilometres and nine million people โ ignited fury, manifesting in protests and sabotage.
This wasnโt mere policy tweak; it was the punitive imposition of burdensome taxes and fines on the car-dependent masses.
Londonโs โBlade Runnersโโa nod to the dystopian film โ emerged as folk heroes in this resistance. These activists armed with tools from angle grinders to filling foam have vandalised over 4,500 Ulez enforcement cameras since March 2023. Videos on X show them toppling poles in daylight, while passive resisters rack up fines they refuse to pay โ a backlog now nearing half a billion pounds, with only one in five drivers settling on time.
This revolt echoes broader European pushback against green mandates, from farmer uprisings to voter revolts against eco-zealotry. Mayor Khan peddles Ulez as a lifeline against โtoxic airโ, claiming 46% reductions in NO2 and 41% in PM2.5 since inception. But these figures stem from dubious counterfactual modelling, i.e., hypothetical conjectures as to what โwould have occurredโ if there were no Ulez in operation, not real-world evidence.
The Birmingham study echoes earlier Imperial College findings: post-2019, PM2.5 barely budged, and NO2 fell by a paltry 3% โ hardly the salvation promised.
Londonโs air has improved dramatically over decades, thanks to a combination of deindustrialisation, cleaner fuels and better internal combustion engines โ not Khanโs cash-grab. DEFRA data shows pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, PM10 and PM2.5 since 1970 plunging, rendering Ulezโs marginal impact invisible amid given trends.
The Dodgy Foundations of โNo Linear Thresholdโ Science
At Ulezโs core lies the โno linear thresholdโ (NLT) model โ borrowed from radiation risk and applied to air pollution. This assumes that every bit of pollutant, down to almost zero, inflicts harm. This extreme metric has fuelled WHO guidelines that deem even trace PM2.5 deadly.
Such an approach to โsafetyโ has more to do with belief in a misanthropic deep ecology where manโs presence can only detract from a pristine unsullied nature.
The Ulez scheme is scientific sleight of hand, metastasising into pseudoscience that threatens economies and livelihoods. Nobel laureate John Clauser calls it a โdangerous corruptionโ, echoing the climate and Covid hysterias โ both instilling fear to justify centralised state control.
WHO assessments, far from rigorous, rely on arbitrary thresholds unsupported by robust epidemiology. Studies tout thousands of premature deaths from pollution but ignore confounders like poverty or lifestyle choices involved in those deaths they count. Real toxicological evidence suggests the potential of hormesis โ low doses may even benefit health โ yet the NLT standard persists, propping up policies like Ulez.
Khanโs team cites it to claim โsocial justiceโ, arguing the poor suffer most from dirty air. But as Ross Clark noted in the Spectator, the data donโt stack up; Tube stations like Hampstead which are deep underground harbour air 30 times worse than roads yet escape scrutiny.
Worse, the Mayorโs office funds its own research by commissioning Imperial College reports that conveniently affirm Ulezโs virtues. Emails obtained by the Conservative Party under the Freedom of Information Act showed Professor Frank Kelly of Imperial College London and Shirley Rodrigues, Deputy Mayor for the Environment, apparently working together to โfight backโ against other research published by the same university that was not supportive of Ulez. The Conservatives accused Professor Kelly and Mr Khanโs office of having โan alarmingly cosy relationshipโ.
The pay-to-play dynamic reeks of bias. When the policymaker bankrolls the โscienceโ, objectivity evaporates. Independent probes, like the University of Birminghamโs, reveal the emperorโs nakedness: no air quality wins, just economic pain.
Revenue Racket: The True Driver Behind Ulez
If not health, then what? Follow the money. Ulez has hauled in over ยฃ70 million in penalties alone since it was introduced in 2019, according to FOI-requested data, despite Khanโs protestation that itโs โnot about making moneyโ. Transport for London (TfL) faces a ยฃ15 billion shortfall, and Ulez helps fill it by fining the vulnerable. In its first year post-expansion it netted ยฃ450 million, much from the ยฃ180 non-payment fines hitting low-income drivers hardest.
Tradesmen โ plumbers, electricians โ face ruinous costs for non-compliant vans; mothers shuttling kids as well as the elderly and disabled are stranded without affordable transport. Outer Londonโs sparse public transport amplifies the harshness. While Ulez conducts war on the poor with its highly regressive taxes, elites in their electric Teslas or high-end cars see no problem in maintaining their luxury beliefs.
Khan, Co-Chair of C40 Cities, preaches โclimate justiceโ for the Global South while squeezing Londonโs working and middle classes. C40 is focused, in its own words, on โfighting the climate crisis and driving urban action that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and climate risksโ. Khanโs 2024 book Breathe: How to Win a Greener World sounds as sanctimonious as most of the Mayorโs other utterances on things โgreenโ. But the Mayorโs sanctimony crumbles under scrutiny of his lifestyle. While Londoners fork over for an aged diesel car, Khan enjoys a birthday bash on a ยฃ268 million superyacht โ a gas-guzzling behemoth with a carbon footprint rivalling fleets of cars โ owned by his billionaire tycoon friend.
How does one champion โsocial justiceโ from onboard a superyacht deck? Itโs a stark reminder: rules for thee, but not for me. Ulez dovetails with the whole repertoire of actions in the war against Britainโs motorists: low-traffic neighbourhoods, bike-lane encroachments, high costs of parking, 20 mph speed limits, the putting up of bollards and planters to restrict car traffic altogether and experimenting with zoning restrictions for 15-minute cities โ all curtailing freedom under green pretexts.
Londonโs traffic crawls at 8-20 mph, comparable to the speed of Roman chariots in the streets of Londinium, a regression over two millennia blamed on climate alarmism. Khanโs plans for London align with the World Economic Forum vision of slashing the global car fleet by 75% by 2050. In this coming neo-feudalism dreamt up by WEF technocrats, the 25% of remaining cars will be the preserve of the ruling philosopher kings and their apparatchiks.
The Human Toll
Over the years as more stringent environmental regulations for motor vehicles come into operation, millions of perfectly good functioning cars, vans and trucks are forced on to the scrapheap and owners who are already struggling find they need a new bank loan to buy another vehicle just to get to work to pay the bank back for the last one. Ulezโs regressive bite is profound: gig workers, small businesses and families teeter on financial edge while meeting bills made astronomical by ever higher energy costs brought on by subsidies and green policy costs.
A 2017 study, untainted by green ideology and focused on health impacts, gave an estimate of the social costs of air pollution from cars in the UK. โSocial costsโ here refer to costs which include the damage on human health caused by car pollution. It found that it amounted to ยฃ25 a year or less for each car. In other words, just two entry fees for the Central London ULEZ would cover the social cost of this pollution for a whole year.
This mirrors Covid-era follies: low-fatality risks hyped to sow fear and erode liberties. Climate โscienceโ follows suit, with the โno linear thresholdโ model as the new pseudo-scientific dogma. But as global air quality trends over the past half century show โ smog cleared in Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York City in the 1970s โ that hysteria is unwarranted. Lifespans lengthen and health improves absent green meddling.
Ulez isnโt salvation for respiratory disease; itโs a revenue ruse cloaked in corrupted science, waging a punitive assault on motorists. As Londonโs Blade Runners symbolise, resistance grows. While Khan gambols in his buddyโs superyacht, Londonโs average motorist chokes on fines. Itโs time to dismantle Londonโs Ulez edifice. The Daily Mail exposรฉ, amplifying longstanding critiques by sceptics, demands accountability.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is theย Daily Scepticโs Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2ย Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him onย Substackย andย X.
Each year, the Norwegian company DNV (Det Norske Veritas โ The Norwegian Truth in English) publishes a global Energy Transition Outlook (ETO). I appreciate the DNV Outlook not because I always agree with it, but because they are transparent in their methods and update their work annually, identifying how assumptions and projections have changed over the past year.
Each year, the Norwegian company DNV (Det Norske Veritas โ The Norwegian Truth in English) publishes a global Energy Transition Outlook (ETO). I appreciate the DNV Outlook not because I always agree with it, but because they are transparent in their methods and update their work annually, identifying how assumptions and projections have changed over the past year.
The DNV also publishes a projection that they believe to be the โmost likelyโ future trajectory based on what we know today, rather than relying on conditional scenarios. They explain:
The ETO is a simulation-based forecast that reflects how the energy system behaves under a most-likely scenario. It is not a best-case pathway or a cost- optimized solution.
There are strengths and weakness to both system and scenario approaches for projecting the future. DNV is fairly unique in its use of a systems approach to produce a โmost likelyโ projection.
The DNV acknowledges that a lot has changed since its 2024 report, but maintain that the global energy systems is on the brink of irreversible change:
Faced with these developments, a casual observer might conclude that the energy transition is stalled or in reverse. That is most definitely not the case. The energy transition is rolling on.
Today I share 10 of the figures of their just-released 2025 ETO that I find particularly interesting. There is much more in the full report, which I encourage any energy nerd to read closely.
Before getting to the figures, it is important to understand how DNV characterizes its approach:
Producing a best estimate of the energy future, which differs in many ways from the future we want to see unfold
Publishing a single โmost likelyโ forecast, and not a range of scenarios, which often serve to confuse rather than inform
Emphasizing and exploring long-term dynamics rather than short-term imbalances
Focusing on proven technologies and excluding unproven or future potentially โbreakthroughโ technologies
Incorporating main policy trends; treating untested policy commitments with caution
Modelling effects of behavioural changes โ e.g. in relation to energy efficiency.
On to the ten figures . . .
Little Global Impact of the US 2024 Election
The ETO explains:
This year, we project an energy transition that is marginally slower than the transition we forecast last year, both in terms of emissions and fossilโs share of primary energy.
In the US, fossil fuel promotion and the reversal of clean energy support policies markedly slow that nationโs transition. Emission reductions are delayed by about five years (Highlight 1) and through to 2050 annual CO2 emissions are reset 500 to 1000 Mt higher than we predicted one year ago.
Future GDP Growth Estimates are Lower
The ETO explains:
In our counterfactual analysis, the revised GDP pathway results in 6.3% lower emissions in 2050 compared with a pure SSP2 case (Figure 1.2). Slower convergence between rich and poor regions also means energy demand, along with emissions, grows more slowly in low-income countries. The revision therefore carries a double message: the energy system may face less pressure from demand growth, but the social challenge of uneven development becomes sharper.
This projection is consistent with recent work of my colleague Matt Burgess and is discussed in depth here at THB.
Note also that DNV projects a 2100 global population of 9.9 billion, which is only marginally less than the U.N. 2024 medium population projection. The low fertility projection drops to about 7 billion, so there is lots of room for future downward revisions to the DNV GDP projections โ which I expect to see in future iterations of the outlook, based on my reading of recent demographics literature.
In 2026 Fossil Energy and CO2 Emissions Start a Slow and Protracted Decline
DNV explains:
The most critical aspect of the global energy transition is the replacement of fossil energy by non-fossil energy. That is easier said than done; fossil energy currently represents 80% of all energy use, and has done so for more than 60 years. One could therefore conclude that the global energy transition has not yet started.
However, we believe that the transition has started, but the change is gradual and almost imperceptible at a global level. Global energy-related emissions are most likely peaking in 2025 and will start to fall from 2026 onwards. . .
We forecast that the fossil fuel share of primary energy will reduce by more than 1% per year, from 80% today to 36% in 2060. By historical standards, that pace of change is unprecedented. However, the transition is not fast enough to reach Paris Agreement climate targets. The transition is likely to leave most stakeholders dissatisfied: far too slow to prevent dangerous climate change as the IPCC defines it and fast enough to disrupt the vast fossil fuel industry and bring turmoil to fossil fuel exporting countries that have enjoyed decades of profit and power.
However slow it may be, the transition is inevitable. No policy reversals, budgetary deficits, or geopolitical crisis will stop it. Solar PV, onshore wind, and batteries โ the three most important technologies needed for the transition โ are now so inexpensive that they outcompete fossil energy in a constantly growing number of areas. While the direction of the transition is set, the pace of the transition is not a given.
AI Electricity Demands are Potentially Massive and Highly Uncertain
The ETO explains:
A review of over 50 publications with recent estimates (Kamia and Coroamฤ, 2025), shows a vast range in global data centre energy demand for 2030 (210-7,900 TWh) (Figure 3.5). Our forecast lies on the lower end of the base case estimates. Towards 2040 and beyond, there are limited sources to compare with and likely much higher uncertainties. Our forecast necessarily reflects assumptions based on existing technology developments, the persistence of which is itself highly uncertain. For example, we assume that AI will not be wholly immune to the productivity paradox that has characterized information technology investments to date โ famously summarized in Robert Solowโs quip that, โYou can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statisticsโ (Solow, 1987).
We are also sympathetic to the view advanced by the OECD in micro-to-macro modelling of AIโs contribution to labour-productivity which suggests that aggregate gains from real-world AI deployment will likely align with mainstream productivity ranges rather than with a step-changes. Yet, how that unfolds over time is uncertain because technological breakthroughs will inevitably occur (e.g. AI evolving to learn from the real world and not static data sets).
Buh-Bye Coal
The ETO pulls no punches here:
Despite the present highs, coal demand is on the brink of a cliff.
Iโve long argued that coal retirements and replacements with lower (or zero) carbon alternatives offer the lowest hanging fruit for fast and deep emissions reductions. Read more on coal:
CO2 Emissions Peak in 2025 and Global Temperatures Top Out at +2.2C in 2100
DNV explains:
We forecast the 1.5ยฐC carbon budget threshold will exhaust by 2029 and the 2.0ยฐC budget by 2052. Extending the forecast pathway to 2100 with modest removals implies net zero CO2 in the early-2090s, resulting in 2.2ยฐC warming by the end of the century.
The DNV projection is almost identical to the scenario our recent analysis found to be most consistent with observations and near-term energy system projections.
Since then, Iโd hypothesize that the envelope of plausible scenarios has dropped even further.
Twenty years ago, net zero by 2093 and a 2.2C temperature increase would have been considered by climate experts to be both fantastically optimistic and an incredibly successful outcome of climate policy.
The Path to Net Zero Will be Long and Slow
Anyone hoping for a rapid energy transition should reset their expectations. DNV concludes that net zero by 2050 is simply off the table, but all is not lost:
Our forecast is that by 2050, energy and process-related CO2 emissions will be at 22 Gt, a reduction of only 43% from today. The gap between our forecast of the โmost likelyโ energy future to 2050 and net zero by then is huge. Considering current societal priorities, we believe this gap cannot, in any feasible way, be closed through technological advances and/or political will by 2050. Therefore, this year we now state that we find net-zero CO2 emissions in 2050 beyond reach.
The natural question is then: when are we likely to reach net-zero emissions?
We expect global net-zero CO2 emissions in the early 2090s. After that, further emissions will shrink and the uptake of negative emissions technology to continue, turning emissions effectively net negative. As a result, the global temperature will stabilize around that time at 2.2ยฐC above pre-industrial temperatures.
DNV further explains:
Using these AR6 budgets and our cumulative CO2 pathway, we estimate that the 1.5ยฐC budget is exhausted in 2029 and the 2.0ยฐC budget is exhausted in 2052. . . .
Emissions decline steeply by 2060, supported by increasing CCS. The decline in emissions, combined with negative emission technologies and land-use changes, achieves net zero by 2093, with the potential for net-negative emissions thereafter. . .
Using AR6 climate-response parameters and evaluating our pathway against the 67%-probability 2.0ยฐC budget, the resulting overshoot of 345 GtCO2 implies end-century warming of approximately 2.2ยฐC above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
China, India, and the Middle East and Africa Have Mountains to Climb
The ETO explains:
Emission paths diverge across regions. Greater China peaks in 2030 and then declines to 85% of 2024 levels by 2060. Emissions in the Indian Subcontinent rise rapidly to the 2030s, plateau, and then decline from 2040 to end 38% lower 2050 2060 Buildings Energy sector Other than today in 2060. Sub-Saharan Africaโs emissions increase 42%. Other regions reduce with Europe reaching net zero, OECD Pacific (92% reduction), and North America (85% reduction) by 2060. On a per-capita basis in 2060, North East Eurasia has the highest emissions at 4.5 tCO2/yr, followed by the Middle East and North Africa (2.7 tCO2/yr) and North America (1.9 tCO2/yr).
Comments, questions, debate, discussion all welcomed!
What follows is an article in my mini-series about fake climate change stories from the Guardian and the BBC about sundry locations around the world. Earlier episodes in the series includedย The Gambia Gambit,ย Niger Negatives,ย Volte-Faceย ,ย The Cancun Con,ย Japanese Bearsย andย Malawian Mystery. This one was triggered by the headline (โSouth Koreaโs fishermen keep dying. Is climate change to blame?โ) toย a recent articleย on the BBC website.
What follows is an article in my mini-series about fake climate change stories from the Guardian and the BBC about sundry locations around the world. Earlier episodes in the series included The Gambia Gambit, Niger Negatives, Volte-Face , The Cancun Con, Japanese Bears and Malawian Mystery. This one was triggered by the headline (โSouth Koreaโs fishermen keep dying. Is climate change to blame?โ) to a recent article on the BBC website.
The gist of the article is that 75% more people in South Korea were killed or went missing in accidents in the surrounding seas in 2024 than in 2023. According to the BBC, most were fishermen whose boats were sunk or capsized. Happily, for the BBCโs narrative, it managed to find a couple of people to say what it wanted to hear. Mr Hong, who chairs the Jeju Fishing Boat Owners Association, duly obliged:
The weather has changed, itโs getting windier every yearโฆWhirlwinds pop up suddenly. We fisherman are convinced it is down to climate change.
In addition:
โฆThis year, the head of the taskforce [set up by the South Korean government to investigate the accidents] pinpointed climate change as one of the major causesโฆ
However, he did (as, in fairness, the BBC reports) also highlight other problems โ the countryโs aging fishing workforce, a growing reliance on migrant workers, and poor safety training.
We are then told that the seas around South Korea have warmed between 1968 and 2024 at twice the global average, that warming waters contribute to extreme weather at sea as well as causing some fish species to migrate.
The BBC may have been mildly disappointed that while Professor Kim Baek-min, a climate scientist at South Koreaโs Pukyong National University, said that climate change was creating the conditions to make strong, sudden wind gusts more likely, he qualified that statement by adding that a clear trend had not yet been established. For that, he said, more research and long-term data is needed.
Further undermining the BBCโs climate change narrative, the article also mentioned that increasingly, elderly captains must rely on help from migrant workers from Vietnam and Indonesia. Often these workers do not receive sufficient safety training, and language barriers mean they cannot communicate with the captains โ further compounding the dangers.
The daughter of a fisherman who died when his trawler capsized in February this year says it has become too easy for boat owners to blame climate change for accidents. Even in cases where bad weather plays a role, she believes it is still the ownersโ responsibility to assess the risks and keep their crew safe. โUltimately it is their call when to go out,โ she said.
Finally, as regards aspects of the BBC article undermining its climate change narrative, we are also told that the governmentโs taskforce is recommending that boats be fitted with safety ladders, fisherman be required to wear life jackets, and that safety training be mandatory for all foreign crew. It also wants to improve search and rescue operations, and for fisherman to have access to more localised and real-time weather updates.
So much for the BBC article. Itโs worth noting that the data can be presented rather differently. For instance, we learn from the Baird Maritime website that while the number of casualties tragically increased by around 75% from 2023 to 2024, the number of incidents increased by only 5.3 per cent over the same time period. Moreover, of these cases, collisions accounted for more than 34 per cent, and other accidents that have been identified include safety-related cases (26.2 per cent) and fires and explosions (19.8 per cent). In other words, around 80% of the accidents donโt appear to be weather-related.
As reported by Reuters, one of the most tragic fishing boat accidents from 2024 had nothing to do with weather or climate. One of the rescued sailors told the Yonhap news agency that the boat capsized when they were hauling up fishing nets to transfer the catch to another vessel.
While the main thrust of the BBC article was to the effect that climate change was making the weather more dangerous for South Korean fisherman, the other strand of its case was to the effect that warming waters caused by climate change was causing fish stocks to relocate, with the result that South Korean fishermen are being forced to travel further from shore, and to more dangerous waters, in a desperate attempt to find fish:
โฆThey [warming waters] are also causing some fish species around South Korea to migrate, according to the countryโs National Institute of Fisheries Science, forcing fisherman to travel further and take greater risks to catch enough to make a livingโฆ.
โฆA few years ago, Mr Kim began to notice that the popular silvery hairtail fish he relied on were disappearing from local waters, and his earnings plunged by half.
Now his crews have to journey into deeper, more perilous waters to find them, sometimes sailing as far south as Taiwan.
โSince weโre operating farther away, itโs not always possible to return quickly when thereโs a storm warning,โ he said. โIf we stayed closer to shore it would be safer, but to make a living we have to go farther out.โโฆ
โฆBecause the problem will likely worsen. The UNโs Food and Agricultural Organisationforecasts that total fish catches in South Korea will decline by almost a third by the end of this century, if carbon emissions and global warming continue on their current trajectories.
There you have it, in a nutshell. Itโs all the fault of climate change, driving the fish stocks away and making the seas more dangerous. But could there be another explanation for the declining fish stocks?
One doesnโt have to look far to discover that the elephant in the room is over-fishing by the Chinese. Needless to say, the BBC doesnโt mention it. A serious article (perhaps one that involved BBC Verify, who never seem to mark the BBCโs homework) would have talked about over-fishing, but that would have undermined the opportunity for yet another headline implying more global horrors due to climate change.
The Global Fishing Watch website tells a different story. It notes that while squid provides a vital source of income for fishers in Japan and South Korea, since 2003, squid populations in the two countries had plummeted by around 80 percent. Both countries introduced measures to reduce fishing pressure, but the trend remained the same. Then they asked: what was taking place throughout the waters of neighboring North Korea? Large numbers of industrial vessels were seen heading towards North Korea from China, despite U.N. sanctions banning foreign fleets from fishing in the waters of the rogue state. And there was another tragic trend: hundreds of small fishing boats from North Korea were washing up along the coast of Russiaโtheir crews missing, starving or dead.
โฆThey found more than 900 large vessels of Chinese origin fishing in North Korean waters, in violation of U.N. sanctions. Estimates suggest they caught nearly half a billion dollarโs worth of Pacific flying squid from 2017-2018, measuring more than 160,000 metric tons, or as much as Japan and South Koreaโs catch combined.
โฆThe scale of the fleet involved in this illegal fishing is about one-third the size of Chinaโs entire distant water fishing fleet. It is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by vessels originating from one country operating in another nationโs waters. By synthesizing data from multiple satellite sensors, we created an unprecedented, robust picture of fishing activity in a notoriously opaque region.โฆ
The Oceana website made the point equally as forcefully as recently as June this year. In an article discussing the waters of the Yellow Sea, shared between South Korea and China, it observed that China is disregarding, on a massive scale, the bilateral fisheries agreement signed by the two countries in 2001. This established a co-managed area called the Provisional Measures Zone (PMZ) within the contested area, where both countries have fishing rights. Within this zone, both Chinese and South Korean vessels are permitted to fish. Surrounding the PMZ, there are โtransitional zonesโ designated for each country, with an agreement to gradually reduce fishing in each otherโs transitional zones and eventually return control of these zones back to their respective country.
Oceanaโs work revealed the following:
Despite the shared nature of the PMZ, and despite the recent agreements to reduce fishing, China continues to dominate the fishing activity in these areas. In the three-year period between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024, South Korean vessels appeared to fish for just 66,267 hours in the jointly managed PMZ. Meanwhile, Chinese vessels appeared to fish for over 8 million hours โ over 100 times more than South Korea. This is enabled by Chinaโs massive fishing fleet, the largest of any country in the world. In the PMZ, China operated over 30 times as many fishing vessels as South Korea. Even in South Koreaโs โtransitional zoneโ where China should be scaling back its fishing, China outpaced South Koreaโs apparent fishing hours by 36%, with over twice as many active vessels.
Is it any wonder that fish stocks are disappearing from the waters around South Korea, and that South Korean fishermen are having to travel further from home in their aging fishing vessels, in search of fish? One might have thought the BBC article would have touched on this fundamental issue. One might have though that, but one would be wrong.
But what the hell? Letโs just blame climate change.
Whether Chinaโs threat to restrict export of rare earth minerals materializes or is resolved through trade negotiations, the episode underscores the fragility of U.S. supply chains and the importance ofย developing domestic sources.
Whether Chinaโs threat to restrict export of rare earth minerals materializes or is resolved through trade negotiations, the episode underscores the fragility of U.S. supply chains and the importance of developing domestic sources.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the energy sector, where climate policies have made dozens of countries more reliant on imports than ever before. Adherence to climate orthodoxy has repeatedly exposed countries to avoidable risks, each instance demonstrating the cost of subordinating real-world utility to the pseudoscience of theoretical models and the grifting of special interests.
The reshuffling of the global flow of oil and coal after 2022 exposed the foolishness of the anti-fossil fuel agenda. European nations, led by Germany and the United Kingdom, embarked on aggressive phaseouts of fossil fuels, dismantling coal plants and shrinking domestic natural gas output in favor of wind and solar. Domestic production of hydrocarbons collapsed, and reliance on imported energy spiked, particularly for the Germans and British.
As Europe turned away from Russian coal, it rushed to buy that fuel from the U.S., Qatar, and Africa, often at much higher prices. Coal that Germany once imported from Russia was replaced with fuel shipped from more distant locations, undermining the supposed โcarbon savingsโ of its climate policy. When Russiaโs gas pipeline became a casualty of war, Europe found itself reliant on liquefied natural gas shipments from the U.S. at double the cost.
Bureaucratic obstacles to restarting coal- and gas-fired power plants further magnified shortages, driving up costs for manufacturing and household heating. Energy-intensive sectorsโsteel, aluminum, fertilizersโeither shut down or relocated to countries with more reliable and affordable electricity, among them the U.S. and India.
In the United States, federal climate-centered policies presented new bottlenecks. The Biden administrationโs Inflation Reduction Act poured billions into โrenewablesโ and imposed restrictions on offshore drilling and pipeline construction. Supply chain resilience was undermined by the ideological sidelining of cheap, abundant fuels.
Why does a nation willingly trade resilient domestic energy for unreliable sources that are bound to fall short of its citizensโ daily needs and fail disastrously during a crisis? How can policymakers justify burdening entire industries with inflated energy costs to satisfy โnet zeroโ policies based on wishful thinking and vacuous rhetoric? For some, the answer is ideological purity and muddled thinking, and for others, a cynical grab for power and money.
Every megawatt of domestic energy production mothballed in pursuit of climate targets is a future vulnerability that materializes not in white papers but in tangible hardships for people.
Countries with rigid โgreenโ energy mandates fared worst during disruptions; those with diversified, fossil-based power grids bounced back faster.
Countries that continued investing in fossil fuelsโsuch as India and Indonesiaโdid far better. As Europe suffered under the high cost of electricity, India accelerated coal production, expanded refinery capacity, and signed long-term liquefied natural gas deals. Indonesia leveraged its coal and oil resources to stabilize domestic power and shield consumers from global volatility.
These are examples proving energy pragmatism, not ideology, safeguards national interests. The failure of the โnet zeroโ experiment lies in its detachment from physical reality. Fossil fuels remain the foundation of modern civilizationโpowering transport, agriculture, defense, manufacturing, digital technology, and more.
Governments must repeal the labyrinth of regulations that stifle domestic oil and gas exploration and coal mining. They must fast-track the approval of pipelines, refineries, and liquefied natural gas export terminals. They must end the colossal subsidies that prop up unreliable technologies and allow energy sources to compete on cost and reliability.
Investment should be directed toward developing advanced fossil fuel technologies, such as high-efficiency, low-emission coal plants, which can provide clean power without sacrificing reliability. Simultaneously, irrational regulation of nuclear power must be replaced with a clear-eyed view of that technologyโs enormous benefits and manageable risks.
Ultimately, energy independence is not merely an economic issue; it is the bedrock of national sovereignty. A nation that cannot power its homes, fuel its industries, and move its military is not independent. It is a nation at the mercy of others. In an era of escalating great-power competition, outsourcing energy security is an act of unilateral disarmament.
This commentary was first published atย The Daily Signalย October 22.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
Vijay Jayaraj is a science and research associate at the CO2 Coalition. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelorโs in engineering from Anna University in India.
Several major outlets, including NPR, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, recently reported the discovery of three mosquitoes in Iceland as proof that global warming has arrived in the North Atlantic. According to the coverage, the presence of the species Culiseta annulata โshows how climate change is making Iceland more hospitable for insects.โ
Several major outlets, including NPR, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, recently reported the discovery of three mosquitoes in Iceland as proof that global warming has arrived in the North Atlantic. According to the coverage, the presence of the species Culiseta annulata โshows how climate change is making Iceland more hospitable for insects.โ
Each story followed the same template: a small event, inflated into a global narrative. But a closer look at the facts โ and the research on Arctic mosquito ecology โ suggests a much simpler, less dramatic explanation.
The insects identified were Culiseta annulata, a species long established throughout northern Europe and the British Isles. As the Natural Science Institute of Iceland itself explained, these mosquitoes can โlive in cold weather, usually finding shelter in outbuildings and basements.โ Thatโs an adaptation, not a symptom of climate change.
The Institute also noted that the mosquitoes likely arrived by freight or air transport โ not by natural migration. Iceland is separated from other landmasses by hundreds of miles of open ocean, and mosquitoes do not travel across the Atlantic under their own power. The explanation โarrived by freightโ is found directly in the NPR story โ a line that would normally end any speculation about climate causation.
If temperature and latitude alone determined mosquito presence, then Alaska, Canada, and Svalbard would be insect-free. Instead, these regions are known for their intense summer mosquito swarms.
Peer-reviewed work in the Ecological Society of Americaโs journal Ecosphere (โSpatial heterogeneity in the abundance and fecundity of Arctic mosquitoes,โ Culler et al., 2018) documented large populations of Arctic mosquitoes thriving at average summer temperatures of only 4โ10ยฐC. Figure 1 in that study shows mosquito emergence occurring at temperatures barely above freezing.
A second paper, โSpatial and temporal patterns in Arctic mosquito abundanceโ (Coulson et al., 2022), found densities exceeding 1,000 individuals per square kilometer in Svalbard โ one of the coldest inhabited areas on Earth. If mosquitoes prosper north of 78ยฐ latitude, Icelandโs isolated incident tells us little about โwarming.โ
Shipping, Not Shifting Climate
Even the scientists quoted in the news stories hinted at this. In the Washington Post, Australian entomologist Philip Weinstein observed that โeven for a cold-adapted species, the harsh conditions of Iceland would make it more challenging for it to survive and establish itself locally.โ He added that the species is โextremely unlikely to act as a disease transmitter.โ That suggests a transient occurrence, not the dawn of a new ecosystem.
Transport and trade are far more credible vectors than temperature. As global shipping and air travel expand, so does the incidental movement of insects. This pattern has been well-documented in biological literature as โanthropogenic introductionโ โ species traveling with humans, not with the climate.
Field studies in Alaska and Svalbard reveal that mosquito abundance depends mostly on snowmelt timing and water persistence, not gradual warming. Culler et al. (2018) demonstrated (Fig. 2) that mosquito emergence peaks when surface ponds persist into late July, regardless of mean temperature. Coulson et al. (2022) found that population density correlated more strongly with standing-water duration (Rยฒ = 0.73) than with air temperature (Rยฒ = 0.12). In short: mosquitoes need puddles, not a specific climate.
Each article used nearly identical framing. The Guardian declared that โglobal heating makes the country more hospitable for insects.โ The Post called it โa development potentially linked to global warming.โ And NPR assured readers that โthe Arctic region is warming at more than double the rate of the global average.โ
Yet all three also admitted that cargo and human activity probably brought the insects there. That contradiction โ attributing the event to both transport and temperature โ highlights the problem with treating every biological observation as a climate signal.
The Arctic already hosts thriving mosquito populations. The species Aedes nigripes and Aedes impiger have adapted to subfreezing winters and extremely short summers. Alaskans have joked for decades that โthe mosquito is the state bird.โ Thatโs not new โ itโs natural history.
Icelandโs isolation, lack of wetlands, and oceanic climate have prevented these species from establishing there, not because of cold per se, but because of geography and ecology. One freight container or airplane with a few stowaway insects does not change that fundamental limitation.
Conclusion
Three mosquitoes do not constitute a climate trend. They constitute a data point in the story of global trade and species dispersal. Attributing every such event to climate change risks trivializing both science and journalism.
Real ecological studies from Alaska, Canada, and Svalbard demonstrate that mosquitoes can thrive in Arctic conditions that make Iceland seem mild by comparison. Their success depends on water availability, not climate change.
So when the next headline declares that โclimate change has come to Iceland โ and itโs biting,โ it might be worth remembering: sometimes a mosquito is just a mosquito, and sometimes, the story got there by cargo plane.
A GREAT global food transformation! Nothing less will address the issues of climate change, sustainability and social justice, according to a report published by the Lancet. It demands โconcerted global action and unprecedented levels of transformative changeโ.
A GREAT global food transformation! Nothing less will address the issues of climate change, sustainability and social justice, according to a report published by theย Lancet.ย It demands โconcerted global action and unprecedented levels of transformative changeโ.
Meat production must be drastically cut, to be replaced by fruit and vegetables. Agricultural land must be reduced by a third, handed over to reforestation and rewilding. Fertiliser use must be halved along with water used for irrigation.
The report proposes a โplanetary health dietโ or PHD, to which we must all adhere whether we live in rich or poor countries; the authors say it is the cornerstone of their recommendations and a framework for what must be done.
A typical PHD would limit your red meat ration to one chipolata a day; you would be allowed half a glass of milk or a small piece of cheese, virtually no sugar and definitely no sweets. No mention is made of alcohol, but knowing the busybodies at the Lancet, this will be banned outright โ all in our best interests, of course.
But rest assured โ there will be plenty of bread, fruit and vegetables to fill you up! Quite how the world will be fed on an almost wholly plant-based diet remains to be seen, given that arable production will be hit hard by any ban on fertilisers.
Ostensibly this is all supposed to be about climate, sustainability and biodiversity. But delve into the report and it is clear that the real agenda is โsocial justiceโ. According to the Lancet, a proper diet is a human right. The reportโs authors complain that half the world struggles to access a healthy diet. They talk about a โfair distribution of resources, such as the rights to foodโ and object that the richest 30 per cent contribute to 70 per cent of the environmental pressures from food systems. Translation: we in the West are eating too much. In short, under their global food transformation, everyone in the world will have the same amount to eat.
The big question, of course, is how all of this will be enforced. The British public are not going to accept willingly what amounts to something even worse than wartime rationing. Even if the government shut down all beef and lamb farming in the country tomorrow, we would simply resort to importing it instead, along with all the other foods denied to us.
Nor are peasant farmers in Africa going to give up the few cows and goats they rely on for their living.
The only way to enforce such a system would be world communism, a Soviet-style collectivisation of farms and a state-run rationing system. Somehow food production and distribution would have to be co-ordinated globally. Rich countries would have to subsidise food for the poorer ones. And what about those countries whose agricultural land is unsuited to growing crops?
The Lancet says this transformation will save lives. Yes, many of us are too fat, but at least we can eat less if we choose. The Lancetโs cure would be worse than the disease.
And while, in theory, people in poorer countries might be better fed, the facts of life suggest the opposite would result. Most people in the world are much better fed than ever before; the exception is usually in war-torn and terrorist-affected regions; a planetary health diet will not make the slightest difference there.
Farmers in third world countries are benefiting from higher crop yields thanks to mechanisation, fertilisers and irrigation. So much so that they are no longer tied down to subsistence farming and can sell crops for cash. Take away these modern benefits and the incentive to work and food production will plummet, just as it did in Soviet Russia.
Far from saving 15million lives, hundreds of millions could end up dying if the Lancetโs plans come to fruition.
It is easy to see the hand of Bill Gates and his chums behind this. How long will it be before we are all eating his industrial sludge, fake meat and insect burgers?
It all sounds like fantasy โ except that cities such as London have already signed up to achieving the PHD for all by 2030.
Still, at least when we have given up our freedoms and our money, when we are nibbling our locust burger in the cold and dark, we can take comfort from the fact that the rest of the world is just as badly off as ourselves!
Below, by the way, is what the diet gestapo will allow you to eat:
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