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.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin told reporters Tuesday that it is “very telling” that China would want to keep a “Biden EPA rule in place.”
WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin told reporters Tuesday that it is “very telling” that China would want to keep a “Biden EPA rule in place.”
China is purportedly seeking to shape American energy policy by submitting public comments advocating for harsher Obama and Biden-era rules on power plants in a move that has several energy sector experts concerned, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported. In response to a DCNF question on the issue, Zeldin told reporters Tuesday that his agency is proposing regulatory action that “makes America stronger” and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “weaker.”
“When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) provides a public comment regarding one of our proposed rules, my first thought is that we should do the opposite of whatever they want us to do,” Zeldin told reporters Tuesday. “It’s pretty striking that the Chinese Communist Party would want us to keep a Biden EPA rule in place. It’s very telling, and I would say it only provides me more clarity that we’re on the right track [and] that we’re proposing regulatory action that makes America stronger and the CCP weaker.”
The People’s Republic of China left at least threedifferentpublic comments on EPA rule proposals that would cut or reform some aggressive Biden-era regulations that energy policy experts have previously told the DCNF could devastate America’s power grid. Zeldin has proposed several deregulatory actions to boost American energy while safeguarding human health and the environment, including rules that drew China’s attention in August.
Specifically, China urged the EPA to preserve its emissions rules for coal- and oil-fired power plants, maintain existing greenhouse gas standards for fossil fuel plants and refrain from imposing restrictions on foreign renewable fuel imports. The EPA introduced the threeproposedrules to roll back strict Obama and Biden-era emissionsstandards and to update renewable fuel standards as part of “reducing reliance on foreign sources of oil,” according to the agency.
“This is the same regime that burns more coal than the rest of the world combined, without the pollution controls that have made America a world leader in clean air,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF previously. “Anyone opposing these reforms is, wittingly or not, aligning with China’s economic interests over America’s. Trump is right to put American energy first, and his critics should have to explain why they’re siding with the Chinese Communist Party over American energy and environmental excellence.”
“As a matter of principle, I’d like to emphasize that climate change concerns the survival and development of every country and every individual, and the future and destiny of mankind. All countries should make efforts to address this situation,” a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy told the DCNF. “China has been a staunch doer in green development. China is committed to green development that prioritizes eco-conservation, and will continue acting responsibly as an ‘enabler’ and working with the rest of the world to implement the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and build a clean, beautiful and sustainable world.”
China leads the world in pollution, emitting 30% of greenhouse gasses in 2022. Though some corporate media outlets have hailedChina as a leader in implementing green energy resources like wind and solar and recently setting an emissions goal, China has also continued to churn out new coal plants, according to multiplereports.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comment from the Chinese Embassy.
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A £52m road through the Amazon jungle is being built using British aid that is intended to help the climate, The Telegraph can reveal.
The road in Guyana goes nowhere other than a tiny village and has long been criticised by environmentalists, though it is celebrated by the oil industry. It is just one among hundreds of schemes funded by taxpayers through the International Climate Finance initiative (ICF).
Few will have heard of the ICF outside Westminster circles. It is the result of the Government’s determination to push a green agenda: devised under the Conservatives and continued by Ed Miliband, it was set up to funnel aid to climate projects in developing countries. It will be used to spend £11.6bn in foreign aid by the end of this financial year.
But The Telegraph can reveal that dozens of ICF projects have become mired in claims of corruption and waste – while many purportedly green programmes seemingly have nothing to do with the environment.
Projects funded by ICF money include a push to stop ocean plastic pollution in landlocked African countries, support for the Nigerian oil industry, and the distribution of free condoms in the Congo to try to stop deforestation by slowing population growth.
The revelations come days before the Cop30 climate summit, where Sir Keir Starmer will attempt to establish himself as a “world leader” on climate action and net zero.
The Telegraph undertook a seven-month investigation into ICF projects, sifting through thousands of pages of documents obtained through freedom of information requests.
Today, we detail the projects we uncovered – and expose how the political culture around climate change drives decisions on aid spending.
Other waste of taxpayers’ money includes rusting solar panels on schools in Zimbabwe which were not powerful enough to run a TV.
Another scheme, which received £69m in green cash, involved aid workers handing out condoms in the Congo basin to increase “access to contraception… to reduce demographic pressures on forests” and therefore slow the rate of deforestation.
All of this ridiculous expenditure counts towards our climate aid targets, which have been used to bribe the third world to get on the climate bandwagon.
In reality though, they are simply monies which have been reallocated from other areas of Overseas Aid, not new money.
Whatever you may think about foreign aid, taking money from projects which might genuinely help people in order to spend it on climate nonsense is the ultimate in depravity.
The Politico reporters claim the DOE report “cherry-picks mainstream research and omits context,” “relies on outdated studies,” “cites analyses that were not peer reviewed,” and “revives debunked arguments.”
Marlo Lewis, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Part 2: Allegations and responses
The Politico reporters claim the DOE report “cherry-picks mainstream research and omits context,” “relies on outdated studies,” “cites analyses that were not peer reviewed,” and “revives debunked arguments.”
The reporters cite three examples of alleged cherry picking. First, as described by the reporters, the DOE authors claim that during the past 100 years, “the U.S. saw its most intense heat in the 1930s—and that maximum temperatures have never been that hot again.” The reporters do not dispute the veracity of that statement. However, they consider it cherry picking because average temperatures across the US and globally have been “clearly rising” since the 1950s.
But the DOE authors do not hide or dispute that fact. Indeed, they quote the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report on that very point:
AR6: It is virtually certain that hot extremes (including heatwaves) have become more frequent and more intense across most land regions since the 1950s, while cold extremes (including cold waves) have become less frequent and less severe (SPM, A3.1).
The DOE report also quotes a relevant passage from the USGCRP’s Fourth National Climate Assessment:
NCA4: Since the mid-1960s, there has been only a very slight increase in the warmest daily temperature of the year (amidst large interannual variability). Heat waves (6-day periods with a maximum temperature above the 90th percentile for 1961–1990) increased in frequency until the mid-1930s, became considerably less common through the mid-1960s, and increased in frequency again thereafter. As with warm daily temperatures, heat wave magnitude reached a maximum in the 1930s (NCA4, Vol. 1, p. 191).
So, heat waves and maximum temperatures in recent decades are increasing, but both reached higher levels in the 1930s. Summarizing the entire instrumental record of US heat waves and daily maximum temperatures is not cherry picking. Nor is it cherry picking to point out which decade set the most US records for extreme heat events.
The Politico reporters suggest the 1930s warming is climatologically irrelevant because “most scientists say it was a statistical outlier that skewed heat trends for decades afterward.” But assessing climate extremes means looking at outliers. It is ludicrous to chop past episodes of extreme heat out of the record and then depict today’s heatwaves as unprecedented. Whatever caused the heatwaves of the 1920s and 1930s, it obviously wasn’t postwar greenhouse gases.
Another alleged cherry pick is the importance the DOE report places on the slow decadal warming rate in the US Corn Belt. The Politico reporters cry foul because “outside” of this “warming hole,” the nation is experiencing “increases in extreme summer heat.” But the DOE authors do not suggest the Corn Belt is typical of all regions or has more reliable temperature data than other regions. The Politico reporters claim the DOE report “omits context,” but that’s what they do here. The context is a discussion of how well climate models reproduce the warming of recent decades.
The DOE report shows that, for a critically important climatic region in the US, 36 climate models used in AR6 hindcast significantly more warming than observed, with 30 models projecting two to eight times more warming than occurred during 1973-2022.
The DOE report contains other examples of model failure. It is only common sense to doubt the validity of climate models that cannot “predict” what has already occurred.
The third alleged cherry pick is the DOE authors’ selection “of which model simulations and which observations they show.” But as explained in Part 1, the DOE authors focus on model simulations of tropospheric temperatures because those data are out of sample and therefore suitable for scientific model testing. The DOE authors’ choice of simulations and observations is sound experimental design, not cherry picking.
As for omitted context, the Politico reporters fault the DOE report for quoting one sentence in AR6 about hurricane intensity but not the next sentence. That omission is “clearly designed to mislead,” they contend. Not so.
Here’s the AR6 sentence quoted by the DOE report:
There is low confidence in most reported long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in tropical cyclone frequency- or intensity-based metrics due to changes in the best track data.
Here is the next AR6 sentence, which the DOE report allegedly hides:
This should not be interpreted as implying that no physical (real) trends exist, but rather as indicating that either the quality or the temporal length of the data is not adequate to provide robust trend detection statements, particularly in the presence of multi-decadal variability.
According to the Politico reporters, omitting the second sentence is misleading because it “specifically warns against making assumptions that no link exists between rising temperatures and stronger storms.” Two responses are in order.
First, the quoted sentence does not imply there is no link between rising temperatures and stronger storms, and the omitted sentence’s caution that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence adds nothing to the substantive discussion of why trend detection is not “robust.” Such admonitory verbiage is gratuitous except perhaps as political cover to mollify the climate thought police.
Second, the very next sentence of the DOE report quotes the following sentence from AR6: “It is likely that the global proportion of major (Category 3–5) tropical cyclone occurrence has increased over the last four decades …” Thus, the DOE report does not hide anything or mislead anyone. It quotes AR6’s conclusion that a hurricane strength-warming link is “likely.” The Politico reporters do not quote or mention that statement.
Thus, it is the Politico reporters who omit context by quoting only one of two consecutive sentences. They commit the very journalistic malpractice they falsely ascribe to the DOE authors.
The Politico reporters additionally fault the DOE report for not addressing evidence that hurricanes are becoming more destructive by “dropping more rain.” That is a “dead giveaway,” MIT hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel told them. Allow me to offer another conjecture of equal plausibility. Short data records and substantial natural variability continue to impede robust detection of the “increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones” two decades after Emanuel published his seminal paper on the topic. The recent emphasis on rainfall from slow-moving hurricanes is a “dead giveaway” some scientists need a new rationale for climate alarm.
Litigation alleging procedural violations unrelated to the substance of the report resulted in DOE dissolving the five-person team of authors. Had the authors been allowed to finalize their draft report based on the numerous substantive comments DOE received, they would likely have addressed the hurricane-water issue more fully, as the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s comments advised them to do.
The Politico reporters claim the DOE report “amplifies supposed conflicts among climate scientists—even when there isn’t any.” They continue: “For example, it is not true there is ‘substantial debate’ within climate science over whether the sun could be a primary driver of global warming.”
However, the DOE report does not say the sun “could be a primary driver.” It more modestly states that the “impact of solar variations on the climate is uncertain and subject to substantial debate.” That is a reasonable conclusion from Connolly et al. (2021), a study cited in the DOE report.
The Politico reporters describe the study as a “[Willie] Soon paper,” and claim the DOE authors cite it “to suggest it’s the sun, not the burning of fossil fuels, that has contributed to the global temperature rise.” That is sloppy reporting. The study’s lead author is Ronan Connolly, who is joined by Soon and 21 other co-authors. The study does not purport to assess the sun’s contribution to “global temperature rise” but its influence on “Northern Hemisphere temperature trends.”
The study examines 16 different estimates in the peer-reviewed literature of changes in total solar irradiance (TSI) going back to at least 1850 and reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere temperature trends using five largely independent estimation methods. Connelly et al. conclude: “For all five Northern Hemisphere temperature series, different TSI estimates suggest everything from no role for the Sun in recent decades (implying that recent global warming is mostly human caused) to most of the recent global warming being due to changes in solar activity (that is, that recent global warming is mostly natural).”
I challenge any fair-minded person to read the paper and conclude that a potentially significant solar contribution to Northern Hemisphere temperature trends has been “debunked” or that no “substantial debate” exists about the sun’s influence on those trends.
In any case, the DOE report does not “suggest that it’s the sun, not the burning of fossil fuels, that has contributed to the global temperature rise.” Moreover, although the so-called Soon paper reports evidence that the sun has a large role in global warming, it also reports evidence that the sun has no role. The Politico reporters hide half of the study’s conclusion. Not fair or balanced!
As for the DOE report citing analyses that “were not peer reviewed,” that is misleading. The DOE report presents analyses of temperatures and precipitation using official US government datasets and peer-reviewed methods. In many cases, the authors updated analyses of results published a few years ago to avoid any accusation of relying on outdated findings. Where they presented updates of previous analyses, they also referred to the underlying peer-reviewed papers and published the new data. Furthermore, the entire report went through anonymous peer review by DOE technical staff. The Politico reporters’ insinuation of research impropriety is baseless.
The Politico reporters also raise the specter of “hidden connections” between certain DOE authors and “conservative groups that oppose government efforts to address climate change,” including groups that have received fossil fuel industry funding.
Newsflash: The validity of a study does not depend on the researchers’ “connections.” Regardless, the affiliations of Ross McKitrick, Roy Spencer, and Steve Koonin with certain conservative think tanks are not hidden; they are open and avowed.
The reporters acknowledge the authors’ “academic and government experience” but provide almost no specifics. They do not mention Koonin’s position as Under Secretary for Science in the Obama administration Department of Energy, John Christy’s work as a Lead Author of the 3rd IPCC Assessment Report (2001), Ross McKitrick’s work as an expert reviewer for the last three IPCC Assessment Reports (Working Groups I and II), Roy Spencer’s work as a NASA Senior Scientist for Climate Studies, or Judith Curry’s service on several top-tier advisory panels such as the National Research Council’s Space Studies Board and Climate Research Council. Why are those “connections” considered less relevant than an association with a conservative think tank?
Finally, we come to the Politico reporters’ contention that the DOE report is “overtly political” rather than a bona fide “scientific exercise.” They ascribe that view to Massachusetts federal judge William Young. However, the judge does not use those phrases, and when the reporters do quote him, they take his words out of context.
Judge Young finds that the report’s final paragraph is “arranged” to provide “advice or recommendations for a renewed approach to climate policy.” The Politico reporters claim that means the DOE report is a “political plan.” But the judge is addressing an issue of administrative law, not of scientific integrity. His point is simply that the final paragraph’s “advice or recommendations” make the DOE authors an “advisory committee” and, thus, subject to the procedural requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
More recently, Politico reporter Scott Waldman touts “the revelation” that four of the DOE authors have a history of challenging the Endangerment Finding. That means the report is “colored by” the authors’ “past views,” which, according to him, is “further proof” the report is “little more than a political document.”
No, not even close. The Endangerment Finding expressly relies on “mainstream” climate science. So, it is a logical necessity for any scientist who finds serious flaws in such science to be critical of the Endangerment Finding as well. Only scientists who have produced substantial bodies of work critical of mainstream climate science could produce the wide-ranging literature reviews assembled in the DOE report. It is hardly news—much less a revelation—that four of the DOE authors had taken issue with the Endangerment Finding before they started working on the report.
So, in Waldman’s view, contrarian scientists who have the courage to publish their research and speak candidly on the record are, by that very fact, unfit to produce a climate science report at the invitation of a cabinet secretary.
That argument backfires. Every mainstream scientist the Politico team cites to trash the DOE report has spoken or written in support of mainstream climate science, the Endangerment Finding, or the ensuing GHG regulations, which means they too are “colored by past views.” Indeed, so is Waldman himself, who has made something of a career of bashing contrarian scientists and decrying climate policy rollbacks.
By his logic, all scientists and journalists who have taken a position on the Endangerment Finding—whether for or against—are politically tainted and unfit to write or review climate science reports for the US government.
Conclusion
The Politico team denies the need for a critical review of mainstream climate science because, quoting IPCC coordinating author Camille Parmesan, the claim that dissenting views are silenced is “at best preposterous and arrogant and at worst a deliberate ruse to undermine decades of rigorous science.” Sorry, that does not pass the laugh test.
Mainstream climate science is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise and almost wholly government-funded. Perceptions of a “climate crisis” are critical to the care and feeding of climate-focused agency budgets, climate-themed agency careers, and the self-transformation of environmental regulators into industrial policy czars. Consequently, agencies have a massive organizational interest in funding climate research that advances the crisis narrative.
Similarly, because university climate research programs heavily depend on federal funding, faculty chairs preferentially hire and promote researchers who toe the party line. Those same researchers supply most of the editors and peer reviewers of academic journals, who decide which papers to publish and which to reject. As the late climate scientist Patrick Michaels observed, reviewers whose careers depend on federal largesse need no external direction or backroom coordination to reject a study suggesting that “climate change is a bit overblown” or that “we can’t do much about it anyway.”
And let’s not forget the elephant in the room. Most of the nation’s climate research is conducted at prestige universities where political groupthink and viewpoint intolerance continually imperil freedom of speech and thought.
In 2019, Nature Communications published a study that says the quiet part out loud. The study advises researchers with “scientific authority” not to try refuting skeptics, as that would leave “the counterproductive impression that there is something substantial in contrarian arguments to be debated.” The article links to a list of 386 contrarians, so that “professional journalists and editors” can know whom not to interview or publish.
But such reflections are in a sense overkill. The Politico reporters are refuted by their own behavior. For what, pray tell, are they doing if not propagating the falsehood that the DOE authors have no arguments worth debating? And how is disqualifying a contrarian report because of its authors’ “past views” not an attempt to silence their voices in the public square?
Politico recently published an article by Benjamin Storrow, Chelsea Harvey, Scott Waldman, and Paula Friedrich titled “How a major DOE report hides the whole truth on climate change.” The reporters’ objective is obvious and their strategy simple. They aim to discredit the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to repeal the December 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding by discrediting a Department of Energy (DOE) draft report which is cited in the repeal proposal’s climate science discussion.
Marlo Lewis, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Politico recently published an article by Benjamin Storrow, Chelsea Harvey, Scott Waldman, and Paula Friedrich titled “How a major DOE report hides the whole truth on climate change.” The reporters’ objective is obvious and their strategy simple. They aim to discredit the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to repeal the December 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding by discrediting a Department of Energy (DOE) draft report which is cited in the repeal proposal’s climate science discussion.
From a statutory perspective, that strategy is not a winner. The EPA’s proposal to repeal the Endangerment Finding (plus motor vehicle emission standards adopted by the agency in April 2024) relies chiefly on legal arguments that do not presuppose specific climate change assessments.
However, the Politico article could sway the court of public opinion, which in turn could influence future litigation. Such influence would be undeserved. The article ignores foundational biases compromising the scientific basis of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. Further, its criticisms of the DOE report repeatedly misfire or backfire, and none comes close to refuting any of the report’s conclusions.
Background
The 2009 Endangerment Finding purported to determine that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The Finding was the impetus for the Obama administration EPA’s adoption, in 2010, of GHG emission standards for model year 2012-2016 motor vehicles. To one degree or another, the Finding undergirds all subsequent climate policy regulations proposed or promulgated by the Obama and Biden administrations.
DOE’s July 2025 draft report, A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, does not opine on the Endangerment Finding, which is a legal document. However, the report’s non-alarming assessment of climate change risks is heresy to legions of progressive policymakers, activists, academics, and journalists.
The Politico reporters accuse the DOE report’s authors—John Christy, Judith Curry, Steve Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer—of cherry picking, omitting context, relying on debunked or outmoded studies, and citing non-peer-reviewed analyses. They also contend the report is “overtly political” and therefore not a “scientific exercise.” As shown below, those allegations are false, misleading, or unsubstantiated.
This essay has two main parts. Part 1 summarizes the disqualifying cherry picks, omissions, and outmoded opinions fundamental to the “vast scientific consensus” the Politico reporters invoke. It also rebuts their critique of the DOE report’s discussion of climate models. Part 2 rebuts other objections they raise about the DOE report.
Part 1: Realist perspective, (part 2 tomorrow)
Mainstream climate research has a deep scientific integrity problem due to its reliance on a triply biased methodology. For decades, the usual practice has been to run overheated models with inflated emission scenarios and ignore or depreciate humanity’s remarkable capacity for adaptation. That approach is wired to exaggerate the physical impacts of GHG emissions and the harmfulness of such impacts.
All three biases compromise the major assessment reports informing the 2009 Endangerment Finding as well as subsequent assessments touted as updating and strengthening it. However, studies that exposed those biases mostly examined the later assessments. Accordingly, the following sections on unrealistic models and emissions scenarios present the information in somewhat reverse chronological order.
Warm-biased models
To project the physical impacts of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and other “mainstream” assessments use climate change projection models “forced” with various GHG emission scenarios. The IPCC works with climate modeling groups around the world to develop and evaluate their products. This exercise is called the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP).
There have been six CMIPs, the first one in 1996. The CMIP3 model ensemble was used in the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), the CMIP5 ensemble in the IPCC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) and USGCRP’s 2017 Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), and the CMIP6 ensemble in the IPCC’s 2021 Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and USGCRP’s 2023 Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5).
CMIP models make projections about the evolution of global annual average temperatures out to the year 2100 and beyond. There is no way to directly test the accuracy of those projections. However, the models can hindcast global temperature changes over recent decades, and those projections can be compared to observations. That is what atmospheric scientist John Christy and colleagues have done in a series of analyses since the early 2000s.
The chart below compares CMIP5 warming projections in the tropical bulk atmosphere (mid-troposphere) to observations in three empirical datasets: satellites, balloons, and re-analyses. On average, modeled warming exceeds observed warming by more than a factor of two during 1979-2016.
Source:John Christy (2017). Solid red line—average of all the CMIP5 climate models; thin colored lines—individual CMIP-5 models; solid figures—weather balloon, satellite, and reanalysis data for the tropical troposphere.
The next chart shows that only one CMIP5 model, the Russian INM-CM4, accurately tracks temperature change through the depth of the tropical troposphere.
Source: Updated fromChristy and McNider (2017). Tropical atmosphere temperature trends (1979-2018) from 25 CMIP5 models compared to four radiosonde (weather balloon) datasets.
The superior accuracy of INM-CM4 likely has something to do with its equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) estimate, which is the lowest of any CMIP5 model. ECS is customarily defined as the amount of warming that occurs after the climate system fully adjusts to a doubling of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas concentration. INM-CM4 has an ECS of 1.8°C. In contrast, GFDL-CM3, which has an ECS of 4.0°C (or higher), projects a warming trend that is literally off the chart.
Readers may wonder why the comparisons focus on the tropical troposphere. After all, nobody lives there!
As DOE report authors McKitrick and Christy explain in a peer-reviewed study published in Earth and Space Science, the tropical mid-troposphere is uniquely suited for testing the validity of climate models. That is because: (1) Nearly all models predict strong positive feedbacks (accelerated warming) in the tropical mid-troposphere; (2) the region is well-monitored by satellites and weather balloons; (3) the mid-troposphere is too distant from the surface to be influenced by land use changes; and (4) the models were not previously “tuned” to match the historical climatology in that region, hence are genuinely independent of the data used to test them.
That last point is the most critical. Modelers try to make their models realistic by adjusting climate parameters (such as climate sensitivity) until hindcasts match historical temperature changes. Typically, 20th century land and sea surface temperatures are used to “train” the models. However, hindcasting data already used to tune a model is like peeking at the answers before taking a quiz.
The only real way to test a climate model’s predictive skill (other than waiting 30+ years to see how things evolve) is to compare the model’s hindcasts to data that are “out of sample”—data not used to adjust model parameters. That is Christy’s procedure. The models are not trained to reproduce tropospheric data. The results speak for themselves. The models are not realistic. They run too hot.
One might suppose the new and improved CMIP6 models used in AR6 would be more accurate. Not so—instead, they are worse. In the tropical troposphere, all the models hindcast faster warming than observational average drawn from satellites, weather balloons, and re-analyses. Moreover, the CMIP6 models overshoot observed warming throughout the global troposphere, with projections rising about 2.3 times faster than observations.
A reasonable explanation for the persistent mismatch between models and observations is that the models overestimate climate sensitivity. The larger (global) mismatch in the CMIP6 ensemble is consistent with that explanation. A 2019 study by Zeke Hausfather found that 14 of 40 CMIP6 models have higher ECS estimates than the warmest CMIP5 model.
Source: Hausfather (2019). Yellow bars show CMIP6 models with higher sensitivity than any CMIP5 model. Blue bars show CMIP6 model sensitivities within the CMIP5 range.
But what about the 2009 Endangerment Finding—did it also have a “hot model” problem? Yes, as the next chart shows.
The IPCC’s 2007 AR4 was a key scientific basis for the Endangerment Finding. The most critical input to AR4 was the CMIP3 model ensemble. In the 2000s, it was still difficult to obtain tropospheric temperature projections from climate modelers. Christy, however, was able to obtain surface temperature projections from the models. He then compared those to the UK Climate Research Centre (HadCRUT) surface record and satellite data adjusted to match surface temperatures. In the chart below, temperature trends start in the year indicated on the X-axis and end in 2009. The observations (squares) all fall much below the AR4 model average (diamonds), usually about half the magnitude of the modeled trend.
Source: John Christy
Another question arises: Did the Endangerment Finding Technical Support Document (TSD) acknowledge the hot model problem? No, but the TSD makes a case for the models’ realism. In a nutshell, the models are realistic because they can reproduce 20th century global-scale changes in surface temperature, but only if the models are run with both natural variability and anthropogenic GHG emissions.
As the chart shows, AR4 is the source of the TSD’s assumption that models are realistic when run with both natural and anthropogenic “forcings” (perturbations that change the balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation).
The reasoning is circular, as it assumes all significant natural forcings that warm the planet are known and estimated correctly. If, instead, the models omit or underestimate such forcings, they might not track surface temperature trends unless forced with extra GHGs. The assumption of adequately known natural variability is problematic given the ongoing debate over the causes of early 20th century warming and evidence of a widespreadMedieval Warm Period.
Moreover, as noted, because climate impact models are trained to simulate 20th century land and ocean temperatures, a model’s ability to reproduce “in sample” data is no assurance of predictive skill.
Christy may have been the first to challenge AR4’s claim that model projections match observations when the models include both natural and anthropogenic forcings. However, he had to wait until the IPCC posted a hard-to-decipher chart in an online supplement to AR5 (Figure 10.8).
When enlarged and clarified, the AR5 chart reveals that model projections and observations almost entirely divergeunless the models are run with natural variability alone.
Source: John Christy, Annotated version of IPCC AR5 Figure 10.8(b), vertical warming pattern for tropics (20S to 20N). Horizontal axis: °C/decade. Draft DOE climate science report, p. 37.
According to the Politico reporters, the DOE report’s “assertions about the models’ track records are false.” Citing Hausfather et al. (2019), they contend that 1970s climate models “accurately predicted current global warming.” However, that is a red herring, because the early 1970s models did not inform either the Endangerment Finding or subsequent IPCC and USGCRP assessments.
As McKitrick pointed out on Judith Curry’s blog, Supporting Information published by Hausfather et al. (2019) reports the ECS estimates of eight early climate models. Those models and their ECS values are:
Each model’s ECS is lower than 3°C—the IPCC’s “best estimate” in AR4 and AR6 and “mid-range estimate” in AR5. The average ECS of the eight models is 2.1°C. Even if we exclude Rasool and Schneider as an outlier, the average ECS is 2.3°C. So, the apparent accuracy of early climate models in projecting current surface warming is not evidence the CMIP models are realistic. Rather, it is additional evidence the CMIP models are tuned too hot.
Indeed, as the DOE report points out, current low ESC models do a good job of replicating the warming rate of surface temperatures on which they were trained.
However, as explained above, comparing models to surface observations is not an independent scientific test. Using the deep atmosphere, where the joules of energy from rising GHG concentration are supposed to accumulate, is a far better metric. Even low ECS CMIP models don’t perform well there. The Politico reporters say nothing about this fundamental problem.
Inflated Emission Scenarios
Although the Shale Revolution began in 2007, many emission scenarios assumed until quite recently that learning-by-extraction and economies of scale would make coal the increasingly affordable backstop energy for the global economy. For example, some analysts assumed oil and gas would become increasingly costly to extract, creating sizeable markets for coal-to-liquid fuels and coal gasification.
The IPCC and USGCRP have been the main legitimizers of the two most influential scenarios used in recent climate impact assessments—RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5. RCP8.5 is the high-end emissions scenario in the AR5, NCA4, and the IPCC’s 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. SSP5-8.5 is the high-end emissions scenario in AR6 and NCA5.
For readers unfamiliar with those abbreviations, “RCP” stands for representative concentration pathway. An RCP plots a projected change in global annual GHG emissions and concentrations from 2000 to 2100 and beyond. Each RCP is numbered for the quantity of radiative forcing it adds to the pre-industrial climate by 2100. Radiative forcing is measured in watts per square meter. Thus, in RCP8.5, radiative forcing increases by 8.5W/m2. “SSP” stands for shared socioeconomic pathway. An SSP is a socioeconomic development scenario that results in much the same forcing as a corresponding RCP. Thus, in AR6 and NCA5, SSP5-8.5 is the development scenario that results in roughly the same global temperature increase as RCP8.5.
Although neither RCP8.5 nor SSP5-8.5 was designed to be the baseline or business-as-usual scenario, both have been widely misrepresented—including by the IPCC and USGCRP—as official forecasts of where 21st century emissions are headed absent strong measures to transform the US and other major economies.
RCP8.5 tacitly assumes global coal consumption increases almost tenfold during 2000-2100.
RCP8.5 is implausible, and not only because natural gas is increasingly abundant and affordable and governments have adopted or pledged numerous climate change mitigation policies. Coal producer prices more than doubled during 2000-2010 and are now about 3.5 times higher than in 2000.
In the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) “current policies” and “state policies” scenarios, global emissions at mid-century are projected to be only about half the quantities in RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5. As the chart below shows, the range of emissions projected by the IEA baseline scenarios “lie almost entirely outside” the IPCC “baseline” ranges.
In 2022, Resources for the Future (RFF) published updated baseline emission scenarios, informed by IEA and other market forecasts. In the RFF’s baseline projection, global CO2 emissions are about half those projected in SSP5-8.5 in 2050 and less than one-fifth those projected in 2100. The EPA adopted the RFF baselines as the best available for its November 2023 report on the social cost of greenhouse gases.
Source:Kevin Rennert et al. (2022). The solid black line is the RFF’s baseline projection. The dotted green line is SSP5-8.5. The dotted blue line is SSP2-4.5.
These shifts in baseline emission projections have significant implications for endangerment assessments. The new RFF baseline closely aligns with SSP2-4.5, which has the same radiative forcing as RCP4.5. In NCA4, RCP8.5 was the business-as-usual scenario and RCP4.5 was the climate policy mitigation scenario. Achieving RCP4.5 was estimated to reduce harmful climate change impacts on labor productivity, extreme heat mortality, and coastal property by 48 percent, 58 percent, and 22 percent respectively (NCA4, Ch. 29, p. 1359).
But wait, there’s more! Recent research by Roger Pielke, Jr. and colleagues suggests the most realistic emission scenario is not SSP2-4.5 but an even “cooler” scenario, SSP2-3.4. In other words, the current global emissions trajectory adds 3.4 W/m2 of warming pressure by 2100. Assuming 3°C climate sensitivity, SSP2-3.4 results in 2.0°C-2.4°C of warming by 2100. Keep in mind that lower ECS values between 1.5°C and 2.0°C “are quite plausible.”
It is difficult to overstate the distorting influence RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5 have had on climate research and public discourse. Google Scholar lists 51,900 papers on RCP8.5 and 15,500 on SSP5-8.5. Cursory sampling suggests that very few studies challenge the plausibility of those scenarios. Of the first 50 entries for both RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5, only one is critical. The other 99 studies use RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5 to project climate change impacts.
The climate fraternity’s decades-long embrace of extreme scenarios as business-as-usual is a scandal about which the Politico reporters say nothing.
Turning now to AR4 and the USGCRP reports informing the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, we find the same reliance on implausible emission scenarios.
Pielke, Jr. recently posted the relevant information on his blog. As he explains, the Endangerment Finding relied on two sets of scenarios to project future changes in climate and the associated risks: the six scenarios developed in the IPCC’s Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES, 2000) and three Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) scenarios developed by Clarke et al. (2007).
Pielke, Jr. presents two charts showing the nine scenarios and their radiative forcings in 2100:
The left panel shows the six SRES scenarios (plus three earlier IPCC scenarios, the IS92 scenarios); the right panel shows the three CCSP scenarios.
Here are the nine scenarios arranged from highest to lowest forcing:
A1FI-9.2 (SRES)
IGSM-8.6 (CCSP)
A2-8.1 (SRES)
MERGE-6.6 (CCSP)
MiniCAM-6.4 (CCSP)
A1B-6.1 (SRES)
B2-5.7 (SRES)
A1T-5.1 (SRES)
B1-4.2 (SRES)
Pielke, Jr. observes:
The nine scenarios “are heavily skewed to very high levels of 2100 radiative forcing, with two even more extreme than RCP8.5.”
Eight of the nine “project a central estimate” of 3.0°C above pre-industrial temperature by 2100, “a value today viewed to be unlikely.”
The average radiative forcing across all nine scenarios is 6.7 W/m2.
Of the nine scenarios, only B1-4.2 “is consistent with what today are called ‘current policy’ scenarios.”
The chart below shows the CCSP energy market projections. The purple segments depict the projected market shares of coal without carbon capture and storage (CCS). In each of the six panels, coal without CCS increases to become either the dominant component of the US and global energy mix or the largest single component. “No one believes that anymore,” Pielke, Jr. comments.
Like the later IPCC and USGCRP reports, the 2009 Endangerment Finding relied on unrealistic, warm-biased models and emission scenarios. The Politico reporters fail to engage the DOE report’s specific critique of the CMIP models. They avoid the issue of implausible emission scenarios entirely.
Depreciating adaptation
The Obama administration EPA’s decision to treat potential adaptation as “outside the scope” of an endangerment finding also distorted the analysis. The EPA argued it would be as inappropriate to consider potential adaptation to a changing climate as it would be to “consider the availability of asthma medication in determining whether criteria pollutants endanger public health.”
That argument is specious, because CO2-related health risks are not analogous to health risks associated with criteria pollutants. Criteria pollutants, toxic air pollutants, and radioactive substances endanger health or welfare via direct routes of exposure such as inhalation, dermal contact, or deposition and ingestion. For such pollutants, the only reasonable form of “adaptation” is mitigation—i.e. pollution control or prevention.
In contrast, CO2 is non-toxic to human and animal life at any concentration projected to result from fossil fuel combustion, and the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content has substantial agricultural and ecological benefits. Carbon dioxide-related risks arise not from exposure but from potential changes in weather and sea levels over periods of decades to centuries.
Consequently, adapting to a changing climate is fundamentally different from “adapting” to toxic exposures or associated illnesses. No one claims medications for pulmonary disease or radiation sickness—or the availability of hazmat suits—can make people better off than they would be if they were never exposed to dangerous pathogens. However, adaptation to changes in the weather and sea levels over periods of decades to centuries could very well make future generations better off than current generations.
More pertinently, adaptations driven by the pursuit of happiness, market dynamics, and prudent policies increasingly protect humanity from extreme weather. Globally, the decadal annual average number of deaths due to droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, and extreme temperatures declined from about 485,000 per year in the 1920s to about 14,000 per year in the past decade—a 96 percent reduction in climate-related mortality.
Factoring in the fourfold increase in global population since the 1920s, the average person’s risk of dying from extreme weather has decreased by 99.4 percent.
Taking an even longer view, global deaths from extreme weather are conservatively estimated at 50 million in the 1870s. That frightful toll declined to an estimated 5 million in the 1920s, 500,000 in the 1970s, and 50,000 in the 2020s. Global weather-related deaths in the first half of 2025 totaled about 2,200—very likely the lowest weather-related mortality of any six-month period in recorded history.
Globally, climate-related economic losses have increased as population and exposed wealth have increased. However, losses as a percentage of exposed wealth declined almost five-fold from 1980-1989 to 2007-2016, with most of that progress occurring in low-to-middle income countries.
Neither the Endangerment Finding nor the subsequent assessments that supposedly strengthen it spotlight this big picture of improving climate safety. The Politico reporters do not mention it.
But suppose climate sensitivity turns out to be 3.0°C or higher, and current energy market trends reverse—could adaptation continue to improve the quality of the human environment?
In his book False Alarm, Bjorn Lomborg reviews Hinkel et al. (2014), a sea-level rise study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study includes a scenario in which sea levels driven by an RCP8.5 warming of 5.0°C flood up to 4.6 percent of global population in 2100, with annual losses up to 9.3 percent of global GDP.
However, those extraordinary damages are projected to occur only if people do nothing more than maintain current sea walls. If “enhanced” adaptive measures are taken, so that coastal protections keep pace with sea-level rise, flood damages in 2100 are “2-3 orders of magnitude lower.” Yes, annual flood and dike costs increase by tens of billions of dollars. However, Lomborg calculates, the relative economic impact of coastal flooding declines sixfold from 0.05 percent of global GDP in 2000 to 0.008 percent in 2100. Moreover, the annual average number of flood victims declines by more than 99 percent—from 3.4 million in 2000 to 15,000 in 2100.
In short, even in a 5°C warming scenario, forward-looking adaptation could potentially make coastal flooding less disruptive and damaging than it is today. To exclude this type of analysis from an endangerment determination is unreasonable.
Overheated models, inflated emission scenarios, and lame adaptation assumptions compelled the conclusion that rising GHG concentration “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” Today’s EPA should seriously consider an alternative conclusion: Societies that protect economic liberty and welcome abundant energy may reasonably anticipate a future of increasing climate safety and diminishing relative impact of weather-related economic damage.
Part 2: Allegations and responses will run tomorrow.
A recent article in The Guardian, “Change course now: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head,” claims that the planet is in grave danger of passing climate “tipping points,” as it is now inevitable that 1.5°C warming will be breached. Although 1.5℃ of warming may be locked in if not already surpassed, the claim that it signifies a dangerous milestone is false. Not only is the tipping points narrative bunk, but there is no evidence that 1.5°C warming is any particular threat. The purported temperature threshold was chosen arbitrarily and for political reasons rather than scientific ones.
A recent article in The Guardian, “Change course now: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head,” claims that the planet is in grave danger of passing climate “tipping points,” as it is now inevitable that 1.5°C warming will be breached. Although 1.5℃ of warming may be locked in if not already surpassed, the claim that it signifies a dangerous milestone is false. Not only is the tipping points narrative bunk, but there is no evidence that 1.5°C warming is any particular threat. The purported temperature threshold was chosen arbitrarily and for political reasons rather than scientific ones.
The Guardian’s story focuses on comments made by United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, who in advance of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, warned that it is “inevitable” that 1.5°C of warming will be breached, and it will result in “devastating consequences” for the planet. The Guardian says Guterres “urged the leaders who will gather in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém to realize that the longer they delay cutting emissions, the greater the danger of passing catastrophic “tipping points” in the Amazon, the Arctic, and the oceans.”
There is no scientific basis for any so-called tipping points, and claiming otherwise is just fearmongering for political gain.
Beginning with the Amazon rainforest, the location of the next climate summit in November, Guterres reportedly warned that it could become a “savannah,” or a dry grassland. There is no evidence for this absurd claim. Like Guterres’ previous “boiling oceans” comment, it is purely fanciful hyperbole lacking any basis in fact. Guterres is referencing a period of drought suffered by parts of the Amazon basin in recent years, but that drought has not been historically unusual, and the recent localized areas of drought have not been more severe than previous drought periods. As discussed in the Climate Realism post “Media Outlets Continue Spreading False Amazon “Record Drought” Claims,” the Amazon has experienced periods of heavy rain and extended drought in the past that were worse than those we see now. Historic records do not show any worsening of drought in the Amazon. The threat that impacts tree cover is deforestation and clear cutting, not climate change.
The Arctic is also not approaching any dangerous tipping point. Should warming continue, ice extent will likely shrink, but it has not been happening at nearly as fast a rate as alarmists claim. Arctic sea ice extent has been stable since about 2010, indicating a new ice extent regime, and there is no telling how long that will last. If the past is any guide, sea ice might begin expanding again, as it has waxed and waned historically.
Finally, the ocean tipping point Guterres is referring to is the claim that coral reefs will die out as a result of ocean pH changes and higher temperatures, but again, science and paleo-history shows that corals are resilient to changes that are much more extreme than the modest warming of recent decades. As discussed repeatedly at Climate Realism, the world’s oceans are not at risk of becoming acidic and coral reefs are expanding their range and setting records for growth.
It is true that the “1.5°C threshold” is likely to be passed. But that does not mean anything, certainly nothing catastrophic. The 1.5°C warming limit was already passed in 2024 because of the El Niño conditions—with no cataclysm. This should not be of concern to anyone, because that limit is not a scientifically established value. The Guardian fearmongered about it in the past, which Climate Realism addressed here, and seems to have learned nothing. The 1.5°C number was arbitrary; established by an 11 member German political advisory board containing only one meteorologist. It is not a hard scientific threshold the way the boiling point of water is, though alarmists inappropriately treat it that way.
Guterres’ comments are not based on science, data, or even history. He is simply attempting to worry the public, with The Guardian’s complicity, in order to gain political leverage for negotiations at COP 30 even as a growing number of countries are downplaying climate concerns in the realistic assessment that other issues are more pressing and fossil fuels, for now, remain vital to prosperity.
Electricity prices are climbing, supply is tightening and residents are paying the price.
Now, Illinois lawmakers are considering a sprawling 800-page energy bill, SB 25, that aims to lift the nuclear moratorium. However, the bill makes other significant changes such as appropriating $85 million annually to the Electric Vehicle Charger fund.
Instead of pushing massive reforms and trying to do too much with energy in one fell swoop – without public comment or cost evaluation – lawmakers should start by simply lifting Illinois’ nearly 40-year moratorium on new, large-scale reactors.
Illinois: already generates more nuclear energy than any other state but still needs more; and the need has never been greater. Artificial intelligence, data centers and electrified infrastructure are zapping up energy which drives up electricity bills for Illinois residents. Residential rates jumped nearly 10% over the past year, with some families’ seeing their monthly bills double. The average Illinois ComEd bill has already risen $10 a month, and bills will skyrocket further if energy demand can’t increase.
Grid operator PJM blamed the spike on a growing imbalance between supply and demand — driven in large part by the explosion of new data centers powering AI technologies with not enough new energy creation.
Data centers now consume about 1.5% of the world’s electricity, but that could rise to up to 9% by 2030. These facilities could draw as much as 1,000 megawatts each — enough to power 800,000 homes. Each new AI query uses up to ten times the power of a standard internet search.
Illinois is becoming a hub for AI development and data storage, and that’s good news for jobs and innovation. Building data centers positions the state, and Chicago especially, as an attractive spot for new tech and business investments.
But it also means our grid needs massive, dependable power generation to support the future. Renewable sources such as wind and solar are good starts, but lack long-term storage capacity. We need to expand nuclear power to deliver the 24/7 baseload capacity a digital economy demands and to reach the state mandated carbon-free grid by 2050.
Bills introduced earlier this year to fully repeal Illinois’ nuclear ban stalled under pressure from environmental groups and hesitation from Gov. JB Pritzker. Now, Illinois has both an urgent need to expand the grid, and a great opportunity to attract new businesses and investments.
Private investment in nuclear energy is booming. Tech giants such as Meta, Google and Microsoft are signing long-term contracts to secure nuclear power for their operations. Meta’s 20-year deal with Constellation to support Illinois’ Clinton Clean Energy Center preserved more than 1,100 high-paying jobs and replaced taxpayer subsidies with private capital. That model could be replicated and expanded across the state.
New nuclear construction could also generate billions in revenue and stabilize power prices for households. Illinois is the nation’s fifth-largest electricity producer and typically sends about one-fifth of the power it generates to other states over the regional grid. More energy could alleviate consumers’ rising costs as well as the state’s financial woes.
Illinois’ not alone in the energy crisis. Other states face increased blackout risks without significant energy increase. That’s why New York, Wisconsin and Kentucky have all recently lifted their moratoriums, attracting new investment that will create thousands of jobs and new energy.
Lawmakers’ unwillingness to expand competition in the energy market leaves Illinoisans stuck with higher bills and fewer choices, year after year. Lifting the moratorium could open the door for new entrants to build reactors and sell power, breaking the ComEd-Exelon monopoly and lowering costs through competition.
Illinois families shouldn’t be forced to pay the price for AI usage or to protect the earnings of scandal-ridden providers. It’s clear AI isn’t going anywhere. Neither is the demand for power. The only question is whether Illinois will meet that demand with or fall behind.
If lawmakers want to protect consumers from runaway costs and potential blackouts, they must lift the ban and allow for the development of the next generation of clean, reliable power.
Yesterday, in his periodic letter to the world, Bill Gates shared three truths about climate change — and shook up the climate discussion. While the longer term implications of his letter are uncertain, early signs are that Gates has injected a welcome dose of climate realism into the discussion.
Here are his three truths (and I encourage everyone to read his whole letter):
Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization;
Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate;
Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.
For most THB readers, these truths will be well understood, even common sense, and will seem neither shocking nor scandalous.
But for some steeped in climate advocacy grounded in visions of “existential threat” or a looming apocalypse, Gates’ truths have rocked their world.
Activist climate scientists joined their fellow-traveling media critics, criticizing the substance of Gates’ letter or expressing concerns that their political enemies might welcome it — Here are a few examples:
Michael Mann: “This is horrifying . . . [climate change] represents an existential threat, exacerbating global security threats, threatening water and food supplies, leading to massive damage. . . it’s like a game of soft climate denial bingo”;
Jonathan Foley: “I stopped listening to Bill Gates years ago. You should stop too”;
Michael Oppenheimer: “{h]is words are bound to be misused by those who would like nothing more than to destroy efforts to deal with climate change.”
Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, there is President Donald Trump, who posted the following, which is just as over-the-top as the reactions from climate activists:
Just like the climate activists, President Trump is treating the letter as an ink blot for political messaging, rather than on its own merits.
I suspect the president does not agree with this statement by Gates:
“Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition.”
From my perspective, Gates’ letter is a welcome contribution to a growing chorus of climate realism and energy pragmatism.
I’ve been asked by several people if I think Gates reads THB or my work — I doubt it, or else he wouldn’t have made a big mistake in his letter suggesting that extreme climate scenarios are today implausible due to climate policy successes. They are implausible because they were always wrong about coal.
I’ve never met Gates, but Bill should definately read THB!
Yesterday, as I settled into my seat for the flight back from Florida (where I spoke at New College) I was invited on very short notice to write an op-ed for the NY Post on Gates letter. I wrote it on the plane and sent it in somewhere over Oklahoma.
I reproduce the op-ed in full below. You can read it at the NY Post site here.
Why Bill Gates turned on the alarmists, and decided climate change isn’t the apocalypse (NYP title)
Earlier this week, Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates dropped a truth bomb into the discussion of climate and energy policy. His missive sent the climate lobby into a tizzy as he joined a growing chorus of voices aligned with today’s science and policy consensus on climate.
Gates actually shared three truth bombs, and let’s take a look at each.
Truth #1: Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization
Here Gates recognizes that the most extreme projections of future climate change have been dialed back considerably over the past decade. Gates explains correctly, “the current consensus is that by 2100 the Earth’s average temperature will probably be between 2°C and 3°C higher than it was in 1850.”
This consensus has rapidly emerged not because the world has rapidly reduced emissions (as Gates incorrectly asserts), but rather because scientists have recognized that those extreme scenarios that have dominated climate research and policy were actually off target from the start.
Specifically, in work pioneered by my colleague Justin Ritchie of the University of British Columbia almost a decade ago, we now know that the previous generation of climate scenarios foresaw a world rushing headlong into coal energy to power the world.
Coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and a global energy system dominated by coal would indeed have had massive emissions with correspondingly largest effects on climate.
In reality, rather than in models, our research shows the world is not rushing into coal and the scenarios that projected as much as a six-fold increase in coal consumption are already implausible. The real world has already departed substantially from these projections.
In recent years, projected global temperature increases to 2100 have been successively revised downwards. Earlier this month the Norwegian group DNV issued its “most likely” projection for global temperatures this century to be a 2.2C increase and achievement of net-zero emissions by the 2090s.
These achievements would not hit the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement under the U.N Framework Convention on Climate Change, but they are far from a global existential threat, according to the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The new consensus is so robust that those taking Gates to task on this point might be considered today’s new climate deniers.
Truth #2: Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate
For many, Gates assertion would appear obvious. He explains, “the global temperature doesn’t tell us anything about the quality of people’s lives.”
Consider the remarkable progress made over the past 150 years with respect to the human impact of extreme weather events.
Way back in the 1870s — when global temperature were supposedly ideal — approximately 50 million people died globally related to extreme weather, particularly related to an extreme El Nino event of 1877-88.
The 1870s also saw the Great Midwest Wildfires of 1871 which killed as many as 2,400 people, the massive 1872 Baltic Sea flood, a 1875 midwestern locust swam of an estimated 12.5 trillion locusts, the 1878 China typhoon that killed as many as 100,000 people, and the U.S. experienced 6 landfalling major hurricanes in the 1870s, compared to just 3 in the 2010s.
It is not widely appreciated, but 2025 (still with two months to go), is currently on track for the lowest global death toll from extreme weather in all of human history. Part of that is good fortune to be sure — for instance, the Northern Hemisphere is well below average in terms of tropical cyclone activity.
However, 2025 fits a remarkable long-term trend of lives improving due to advance in the applications of science and technology in preparing for disasters, coupled with the consequences of sustained economic growth around the world.
Sustaining that track record will take concentrated effort, but there is no reason that the human condition cannot continue to dramatically improve this century even as temperatures warm another degree or so.
Truth #3: Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change
To understand this claim, there is no need to look at futures in computer models, one just needs to look at the world as it is today.
Think about it. Would you feel more protected against the vagaries of climate variability and change if you lived in one of the world’s poorest countries or one of its richest?
Now imagine if everyone around the world enjoyed the economic and technological advantages of the United States. Of course resiliency to changes in climate would be much greater if everyone around the world were as wealthy as those of us in the United States. As Gates observes: “Development doesn’t depend on helping people adapt to a warmer climate — development is adaptation.”
Gates includes what might have been a fourth truth, and one we should not forget: “Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition.”
Understanding the true nature of a problem is a key first step in effectively addressing it. Climate change is indeed real, but it is not the apocalypse.
Record-setting copper prices have sparked turmoil for wind and solar farm developers who face rising costs to build green energy projects.
Commodity analysts have warned that the cost of manufacturing renewable technologies – which rely heavily on copper – will surge after the industrial metal hit a record high on the London Metal Exchange.
The price rose as high as $11,200 (£8,500) a ton on Wednesday, extending its gains so far this year to more than 27pc. It is on track for its best year since 2017.
Although prices fell from their peak on Thursday – dipping to $11,183 a ton – they still remain elevated by historical standards.
Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at Swedish bank SEB, said: “It will add costs to all [things] connected to electricity and not the least all things connected to renewable energy, power systems, transformers, EVs (electric vehicles).”
He said many attendees at the bank’s copper conference last month admitted the surging price “does not support the development of major new greenfield projects”.
Wind farms, solar panels and electric vehicles all rely heavily on copper cabling to connect to the national grid. Wind farms, for example, use it for vital cables and transformers to transfer power.
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