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.
A series of reports have come out recently demonstrating that Washington State is NUMBER ONE in the number of reports per person of UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects).
A series of reports have come out recently demonstrating that Washington State is NUMBER ONE in the number of reports per person of UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects).
Below is the data. During the past year, there was one sighting for every 1021 people in Washington.
In contrast, in Louisiana UFOs are observed less than a third as often, something perhaps explained by the greater interest in Mardi Gras, alligators, and spicy gumbo.
Certain Washington (and Oregon) locations are favored for extraterritorial visitation, particularly east of the Cascade Crest and over the Olympics (see below, darker green indicates more events),
There are three reasons why Washington State could have more UFO sighting reports:
(1) UFOs really are more frequent here.
Perhaps extraterrestrials like our salmon or are interested in Boeing. Perhaps they think Washingtonians are particularly interesting. I would doubt it.
(2) Washington State has a mental health issue.
Some political commentators might agree with this. Perhaps folks in this state are so worried about the future of the world and the current administration that they yearn for intergalactic intervention.
(3) Our meteorology often produces features in the sky that look like UFOs.
This is the one I would put my money on.
It all started here.
Did you know that the UFO craze started HERE in 1947, when a pilot of a small plane (Kennith Arnold), flying between Chehalis and Yakima, spotted a group of “saucer-like” objects over Mount Rainier?
A faculty member in my department analyzed the situation and demonstrated that Arnold actually saw lenticular clouds forced by Mount Rainier.
Such clouds form when relatively moist air is forced over a mountain barrier and then oscillates up and down, with upward motion producing the lens-shaped cloud (see schematic below).
As an aside, during a presidential debate on October 20, 2017, presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich admitted to seeing a UFO while staying at actress Shirley Maclaine’s home near……. Mount Rainier.
Dennis Kuckinch
The Pacific Northwest, and particularly Washington State, is probably the best place in the US to see lenticular/mountain wave clouds.
You can see them here on many, many days–either by viewing the sky or on satellite imagery.
Why so frequent here?
We have big mountain barriers of sufficient height.
We have strong winds approaching the mountains.
We have air that is sufficiently moist to produce clouds.
Cloud like this:
Or this
Or this
So consider the meteorological explanation of our first rank in UFO sightings.
On Episode #181 of The Climate Realism Show, we’ll drill into that. The Heartland Institute’s Jim Lakely, Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including giving up your pets to save the climate, whether we should be concerned about the “fastest glacier retreat in Antarctica in modern history,” and noticing that the EU has weakened its “climate target” just as the world flies to Brazil for the United Nations’ climate confab, COP30.
Both Democrats and President Trump wanted to make Tuesday’s off-year elections the “Energy Election.” And it was not a good night for Republicans. Left-wing climate media say this is proof voters oppose Trump’s roll-back of “green” energy mandates and subsidies. Is there any truth to that?
On Episode #181 of The Climate Realism Show, we’ll drill into that. The Heartland Institute’s Jim Lakely, Anthony Watts, Sterling Burnett, and Linnea Lueken will also cover some of the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including giving up your pets to save the climate, whether we should be concerned about the “fastest glacier retreat in Antarctica in modern history,” and noticing that the EU has weakened its “climate target” just as the world flies to Brazil for the United Nations’ climate confab, COP30.
In Part 1 we looked at 25 examples in the last couple of years or so of how the BBC is misinforming the public about climate change and climate-related policies. In Part 2 we will look at another 25 items:
In Part 1 we looked at 25 examples in the last couple of years or so of how the BBC is misinforming the public about climate change and climate-related policies. In Part 2 we will look at another 25 items:
A BBC report in April 2024 claimed that “coral around the world is turning white and even dying as recent record ocean heat takes a devastating toll”.
Bleaching is a perfectly natural and common event which occurs for all sorts of reasons, including when the water gets too cold. It does not mean the coral is dying. Bleaching occurs naturally when coral expels algae to switch to a type better suited to new conditions. Far from coral dying out around the world, coral scientists say that it is doing fine.
The BBC spent most of the summer of 2023 blamingclimate change for the severity of wildfires around the Mediterranean. When the EU finally published wildfire data for last year, it emerged that the area burnt was close to average. Since the 1980s, area burnt has been declining.
A long BBC article in May 2024 stated that “aircraft turbulence is worsening with climate change”.
However, a recent detailed study by the US National Transportation Safety Board examined flight records between 1989 and 2018. It concluded that there has been no increase in incidents of severe flight turbulence, measured as a proportion of flight hours.
BBC Verify, the organisation’s unit of supposed disinformation experts, decided to waste money writing a long hit piece on a young Kenyan farmer who had dared to campaign for Africa to be given full access to fossil fuels. This apparently made him a “climate denier”. Quite why the BBC saw him as such a threat is a total mystery.
During June 2024’s election coverage, BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt stated that new solar or wind projects generate power at a lower cost than new gas generators. He was commenting on Reform party policies. At the time of the election, the contract price for offshore wind was double the cost of gas power. This is still true now.
In the summer of 2024, the BBC reported on what it described as an unprecedented heatwave in Delhi, even though temperatures at the time were normal for the time of year.
The next day, it claimed climate change made the late May/early June US Southwest heatwave 35 times more likely.
Again, the claim was absurd, as the temperatures recorded were perfectly normal for the time of year. In Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, temperatures hit 113°F, well below the record of 122°F for June which was set in 1990
A BBC report on polar bears informed us “the species is in decline, and scientists attribute it to the loss of sea ice caused by global warming”.
Polar bears are frequently used by the BBC to push climate propaganda. But scientists say the opposite – that the world population of polar bears has nearly tripled since the 1960s and that numbers are now stable, a fact since admitted by the BBC Executive Complaints Unit.
The BBC reported a projection of potential global changes if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapses, which it suggests could happen as early as 2050.
Icy winds howl across a frozen Thames, ice floes block shipping in the Mersey docks and crops fail across the UK. Meanwhile, the US east coast has been inundated by rising seas and there’s ecological chaos in the Amazon as the wet and dry season have switched around.
Contrary to BBC claims, data show that the AMOC has been remarkably stable for the last 40 years.
A BBC Sounds broadcast last autumn stated that extreme weather, caused by climate change, is making farming impossible in many parts of Bangladesh. This, so we were told, has increased the risk of more girls being pushed into child marriage.
But far from farming becoming ‘impossible’, agricultural output, particularly of cereals, has rocketed in recent years in the country and now stands at record levels. The same is true of the area harvested, according to official UN data.
Moreover, the share of the population living in extreme poverty in the country is now at record lows
According to the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, Somalia recently experienced its worst drought for 40 years – an event scientists estimate was made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.
The BBC report omitted data indicating that Somalia has become wetter since the mid-20th century, with more severe droughts occurring in earlier periods.
According to a BBC report three years ago, “for decades [India’s} monsoons have been drying up”.
The opposite is true. Severe droughts in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were catastrophic in India. Since the turn of the century, rainfall has been above average.
Another tenet of faith for the BBC is that global warming is making hurricanes more powerful. As regular as clockwork, the end of the Atlantic hurricane season in November last year brought forth the usual BBC propaganda that a higher proportion of hurricanes are now turning into major hurricanes, meaning they reach the highest wind speeds.
This false claim, however, is strongly contradicted by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Its latest review of hurricanes could not be clearer, stating:
There is no strong evidence of century-scale increasing trends in US landfalling hurricanes or major hurricanes. Similarly for Atlantic basin-wide hurricane frequency (after adjusting for changing observing capabilities over time), there is not strong evidence for an increase since the late 1800s in hurricanes, major hurricanes or the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane intensity.
Even more deceitfully, the BBC included an infographic plotting major Atlantic hurricane activity since 1920 which showed the numbers ballooning in recent years. But NOAA notes that many mid-ocean hurricanes went undetected before satellites existed. The BBC is comparing chalk and cheese.
Why let a tragedy go to waste, when you can use it for propaganda?
The tragic flooding in Valencia last autumn brought the standard BBC kneejerk response that extreme rainfall events like this one are getting more common.
However, the daily rainfall data for Valencia, which goes back to 1937, show no such trends.
A few days later, however, the BBC’s Science Correspondent informed us that the winds from Storm Darragh were made 5% stronger by climate change. His so-called proof of this came from weather attribution computer models.
Maybe next time he should report the actual data instead, which, according to the Met Office, clearly show that windstorms in the UK were much more powerful in the 1980s and 90s than anything seen since.
In their end of year report, the BBC told us that billions had been challenged by extreme weather brought by climate change. The claims were based on what are known as ‘Weather Attribution Computer Models’, rather than on actual data.
The article listed a few random weather events, droughts, floods, hurricanes and heatwaves, with no attempt to show that they are either becoming more frequent or extreme, or that they were not simply run of the mill occurrences that happen every year.
Indeed, subsequent analysis demonstrated that there was nothing unusual at all about any of the examples used.
The Los Angeles fires at the start of this year were quickly blamed on “climate change charged droughts” by the BBC.
When it was pointed out that the weather in that part of California had been no drier than many other years in the months leading up to the wildfires, the BBC then said that a period of unusually wet weather had increased the growth of flammable grass earlier in 2024, which was followed by very dry conditions – what it called “whiplash conditions”, which climate models said were getting worse because of global warming.
Once again however, the computer models were thoroughly contradicted by the actual data, which show no such trends either in wet or dry weather.
The BBC have spent years pushing renewable energy, frequently peddling the myth that it is cheaper than fossil fuels. They were at it again earlier this year, with a report by BBC Verify titled ‘If the UK has more renewable energy, why aren’t bills coming down?’
Nowhere does their report mention the £15 billion worth of subsidies, direct and indirect, for renewable energy which is added to electricity bills this year.
Renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuels, not less so. That is why the UK has some of the highest electricity prices in the world.
The BBC always loves to use human tragedy stories to fuel its climate propaganda.
Recent summers have seen continuing apocalyptic coverage by the BBC of Mediterranean wildfires, often accompanied by claims that they have been made worse by climate change.
At the end of the year, official data from the EU showed that wildfire activity was below average last year, and only slightly above in 2023.
You may have noted in some of the earlier items the BBC’s reliance on ‘Weather Attribution’ to back up claims that climate change is making weather worse. Dressed up as ‘science’, weather attribution is merely computer modelling which can be programmed to come up with whatever daft conclusions you want.
Often, they are contradicted by real world data. Unsurprisingly, they have been rubbished by many proper scientists, dismissed as “weather alchemy” designed to generate quick headlines.
Following a complaint, the BBC Executive Complaints Unit was forced to publish a correction that the claims should not have been presented as fact and that the article failed to meet the requirements for due accuracy.
Another example of the BBC’s bias towards renewable energy took place in a World at One interview in April between the BBC’s Sarah Montague and Adam Berman of the renewable lobby group Energy UK
The topic was why UK electricity prices are so high. Berman went on at great length to put the blame on the high price of gas, while claiming that renewables were cheaper, without any challenge from the interviewer.
During the interview, the significant direct expense involved in subsidising renewable energy was never brought up.
When these subsidies are taken into consideration, electricity generated from wind, solar, and biomass facilities continues to be significantly more costly than that produced by gas power stations.
This little episode underlines the repeated failure of the BBC to get a broad range of opinions on topics like these. An independent energy expert would quickly have dismantled the false claims of the industry lobbyist.
Yes, just like clockwork, the BBC wheeled it out again in August, following an incident on a Singapore flight, in which some poor chap died. Flight turbulence is getting more frequent and severe because of global warming, shrieked the BBC.
The US National Transportation Safety Board has thoroughly examined turbulence. Having examined flight logs for all US flights between 1989 and 2018, it concluded that there are no increasing trends in the frequency of severe turbulence.
Yes, another story wheeled out each year! According to the BBC:
Parts of the Great Barrier Reef have suffered the largest annual decline in coral cover since records began nearly 40 years ago. AIMS warns the habitat may reach a tipping point where coral cannot recover fast enough between catastrophic events and faces a “volatile” future.
What the BBC failed to report was that coral cover on the GBR was at a record high last year. Even after losses this year, it still stands as the fourth highest on record.
I must apologise for cheating here, because this final BBC report comes from 2004. But it was too good to resist!
It told us that the Maldives would soon be underwater.
Since then, 12 new airports have been opened on the Maldives, plus a new passenger terminal at the Velana International Airport.
Tourist numbers have tripled to more than two million last year. Tourism now drives 28% of GDP, supported by more than 170 resorts. Last year alone, another seven new resorts were opened.
Far from disappearing beneath the waves, the Maldives seem to be thriving!
Electric vehicle (EV) drivers will be hit with a new pay-per-mile tax in the Budget, The Telegraph can reveal.
Under current plans, to be announced by the Chancellor on Nov 26, drivers of electric cars will be charged 3p per mile on top of other road taxes.
The scheme, set to kick in from 2028 after a consultation, will mean the average driver faces paying an extra £250 a year.
The Treasury will make the move amid falling fuel duty revenue as people move from petrol to electric cars. Up to six million people are set to be driving EVs by the time the tax comes in.
The enforced transition to EVs will eventually leave a £30 billion black hole. My guess is that the charge will have to rise to at least 10p to cover that shortfall.
The Telegraph explain how the system will work:
While the specifics are still discussed, The Telegraph can reveal that the scheme would be aligned to the annual payment of vehicle excise duty (VED), which affects all UK motorists. EV drivers have had to pay the charge since April.
The new element is being described as “VED+” and being framed as a way to get drivers of green cars to pay more each year.
EV drivers will be asked to estimate the number of miles they will drive in the year ahead and pay a fee, set in the current plan at 3p per mile.
If the owner does not drive that amount, some of the money carries over into the next year. If they drive more miles than estimated, they would top up their payment.
Presumably the driver would have to send a snapshot of his milometer each year when he renews his VED.
There are the inevitable howls of rage from the EV lobby, who thought they could sponge off the rest of us forever. And there are rightful concerns that governments will ratchet up the charge year after year, much in the way they used to do with ciggies – all in our own interest, of course!
Climate orthodoxy insists that the poorest nations, home to billions who still live in energy poverty, must power their rise from the edge of subsistence using expensive and unreliable solar and wind energy.
Climate orthodoxy insists that the poorest nations, home to billions who still live in energy poverty, must power their rise from the edge of subsistence using expensive and unreliable solar and wind energy.
But a country desperately trying to build up industry, jobs and infrastructure, had best bet on power sources that can reliably deliver affordable and abundant electricity. Growth of power supply must match increase in demand. Factories, small enterprises, digital infrastructure – and more – need power that cannot be provided by so-called green sources. Reliance on wind turbines and solar panels only delays the economic development so badly needed by people struggling to get by.
Being dependent on weather and the time of day, wind and solar cannot produce electricity on demand. They require massive backup systems — either batteries or alternative generation, the last usually being fossil‑fuel based. Even at industrial scale, batteries can store electricity only for limited durations, making them insufficient to cover nighttime demand or prolonged periods of low wind or cloudy skies.
Growth should not be rationed through blackout management or load‑shedding calendars. Coal and natural gas remain the primary energy backbone of the modern world because of their abundance and reliability. Countries that achieved economic prosperity — among them the United States, Germany, China, Japan, and South Korea — did so on the back of stable hydrocarbon-generated power. That formula remains valid today.
Modern coal power bears no resemblance to the soot‑belching plants of a century ago. Ultra‑supercritical systems operating at high pressures and temperatures throughout Asia achieve thermal efficiencies near 45% and slash local pollutants through advanced filtration. Clean‑tech coal has particulate capture, sulfur scrubbing and wastewater treatment — all proven technologies. Gas turbines, meanwhile, are quickly installed and provide flexible dispatch at competitive costs.
For developing nations, such power sources sustain economic momentum and environmental protection. Reliable electricity supports industrial processes, mechanized agriculture, the information age’s data management and the refrigeration, air conditioning and technologies that ensure comfort and good health. The fixation on “green” energy disregards these imperatives of modern society.
There is no place for climate ideologues when preparing for tens of millions of new electricity consumers, emerging industries and urbanization. Realism and practicality are necessary.
Even the citizens of high‑income nations have become disillusioned. In Spain, consumers face the prospect of constrained power and sky‑high prices. Commentators now question whether Spain’s reliance on weather‑based generation has left the grid dangerously exposed.
The BBC reported that Dutch households are being instructed to curb electricity use at peak hours because “the network is overloaded by the rush to wind and solar power.” Despite being one of Europe’s wealthiest countries with world‑class engineers, the Netherlands faces grid instability.
The Dutch case should be a warning to poorer nations, especially those with urban expansion rates far higher than Europe’s. If a country of 18 million people cannot sustain an energy system dominated by renewables without decades of additional spending, the challenge for nations like Nigeria, Pakistan, or Bangladesh — each with over 200 million inhabitants — becomes practically insurmountable.
The “green” agenda is based on the fallacious hypothesis that emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially CO₂ from power generation, are driving global warming and must be eliminated. This is pseudoscience that is being challenged more widely with every passing year.
Physicists William Happer and Richard Lindzen recently shared their contrarian views on a Joe Rogan podcast that drew more than a million views on YouTube alone.
They describe the popular assertion that CO2 controls Earth’s climate as “outdated radiative theories of CO₂ warming.” Their 2024 paper, “Net Zero Averted Temperature Increase,” concludes that elimination of fossil fuel use would alter global temperature by less than 0.2 °C — a margin within natural variability. Another analysis debunks the core claim that industrial CO₂ emissions can catastrophically heat the planet.
In other words, developing nations are being asked to cripple their economies to avert a crisis that credible science shows to be vastly overstated. The CO₂ Coalition’s summary report, Effects of Net Zero by 2050, underscores that such policies inflict serious human costs — job losses, inflation and stunted industrialization.
According to the World Bank, 675 million people still lack electricity and another 450 million suffer from unreliable power grids. None of them can be lifted from poverty without abundant, dispatchable electricity generation.
Developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America must stop giving into the “green” madness. They must reject lectures from Western climate scolds who climbed to heights of unprecedented wealth on stairs made of hydrocarbons and now seek to “kick away the ladder” from everyone else.
This commentary was first published by American Greatness on November 4, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
For decades growth strategies in poorer countries of the Global South – Asia, Africa and South America – leaned heavily on energy-intensive industries powered by fossil fuels and, in a handful of cases, by nuclear power. Cities grew, factories rose, exports surged, poverty declined.
For decades growth strategies in poorer countries of the Global South – Asia, Africa and South America – leaned heavily on energy-intensive industries powered by fossil fuels and, in a handful of cases, by nuclear power. Cities grew, factories rose, exports surged, poverty declined.
This growth slowed under the weight of decarbonization dogma and financial restrictions. However, just as the region faces the choice of either asserting its energy sovereignty or resigning itself to stagnation, an unexpected force from the U.S. has risen to potentially beat back the climate cult.
In the early 2000s, nations like China and India doubled down on coal to industrialize, achieving annual growth of over 7%. Sub-Saharan Africa followed suit, with oil and gas exports funding infrastructure.
But decarbonization agendas, driven by wealthier nations through bodies like the United Nations, imposed restrictions on this model. International financial institutions and donor nations increasingly attached conditions on financing arrangements – among them bans or limits on fossil fuel development while expressing an aversion to nuclear power.
These measures sought to force a shift to intermittent wind and solar energy, which fail to provide the scale and reliability needed for round-the-clock factories. Result? Growth forecasts dipped, and the World Bank lowered growth projection to less than 4% for many African economies.
Africans currently dependent on subsistence agriculture and raw material exports need manufacturing to create wealth and raise living standards. Industrialization requires electricity measured in megawatts and gigawatts, not the trickle of electrons that solar panels and wind turbines provide.They need energy prices low enough to compete with manufacturers in China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, all of which prioritize energy affordability over “green” purity.
Natural resource-rich nations that should be climbing the value chain by developing processing and manufacturing facilities find themselves stuck as exporters of raw material. They ship iron ore to China where it is turned into steel and soybeans to Europe where they are transformed to processed foods. The value addition happens elsewhere because the energy infrastructure needed for manufacturing faces persistent opposition from climate activists and their allies in government.
Every dollar wasted by the developing world on impractical “green energy” projects is a dollar not spent on the natural gas pipelines, power plants and high-voltage transmission lines that would enable long-term economic progress.
The recent shift in U.S. energy policy offers a glimmer of hope. For the first time in years, a major Western power has acknowledged that imposing “green” energy preferences on developing nations is economic sabotage.
The Trump administration has signaled that it will no longer support bans on financing of fossil fuel projects. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been particularly forthright in stating that developing nations should have the freedom to use their own resources to power their growth.
Vijaya Ramachandran, a respected voice on the economics of African energy, captured the importance of this policy shift. She notes that the message from the current U.S. administration represents a fundamental break from previous approaches. Rather than dictating energy choices to sub-Saharan Africa, Washington now recognizes that African nations must exploit their hydrocarbon reserves to meet industrial needs.
The continent’s manufacturing sector cannot develop without reliable power for factories and private enterprises. Large-scale industrialization, which has yet to occur across much of Africa, requires exactly the kind of infrastructure that previous U.S. leadership discouraged.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, over 600 million people still lack access to reliable electricity. Every child who grows up without electricity, every worker denied a factory job, every family trapped in poverty because industrial development was blocked represents lost opportunity for better lives.
The Global South is not asking for a handout but for a level playing field. It is asking for the same opportunity that the West has had for centuries – the chance to use its own resources to build a bright future for its people.
This commentary was first published byCalifornia Globeon October 17, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean. Each month and year exposes again the growing disconnect between the real world and the Zero Carbon zealots. It is as though the anti-hydrocarbon band wagon hopes to drown out the data contradicting their justification for the Great Energy Transition. Yes, there was warming from an El Nino buildup coincidental with North Atlantic warming, but no basis to blame it on CO2.
The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean. Each month and year exposes again the growing disconnect between the real world and the Zero Carbon zealots. It is as though the anti-hydrocarbon band wagon hopes to drown out the data contradicting their justification for the Great Energy Transition. Yes, there was warming from an El Nino buildup coincidental with North Atlantic warming, but no basis to blame it on CO2.
As an overview consider how recent rapid cooling completely overcame the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016). The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November 2021, and in February and June 2022. At year end 2022 and continuing into 2023 global temp anomaly matched or went lower than average since 1995, an ENSO neutral year. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020). Then there was an usual El Nino warming spike of uncertain cause, unrelated to steadily rising CO2, and now dropping steadily back toward normal values.
For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa. While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~65 ppm, an 18% increase.
Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.
The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby. These graphs use Hadcrut4 and include the 2016 El Nino warming event. The exhibit shows since 1947 GMT warmed by 0.8 C, from 13.9 to 14.7, as estimated by Hadcrut4. This resulted from three natural warming events involving ocean cycles. The most recent rise 2013-16 lifted temperatures by 0.2C. Previously the 1997-98 El Nino produced a plateau increase of 0.4C. Before that, a rise from 1977-81 added 0.2C to start the warming since 1947.
Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate. On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. And in 2024 we saw an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now dropping well below its peak.
Chris Schoeneveld has produced a similar graph to the animation above, with a temperature series combining HadCRUT4 and UAH6. H/T WUWT
With apologies to Paul Revere, this post is on the lookout for cooler weather with an eye on both the Land and the Sea. While you heard a lot about 2020-21 temperatures matching 2016 as the highest ever, that spin ignores how fast the cooling set in. The UAH data analyzed below shows that warming from the last El Nino had fully dissipated with chilly temperatures in all regions. After a warming blip in 2022, land and ocean temps dropped again with 2023 starting below the mean since 1995. Spring and Summer 2023 saw a series of warmings, continuing into 2024 peaking in April, then cooling off to the present.
UAH has updated their TLT (temperatures in lower troposphere) dataset for October 2025. Due to one satellite drifting more than can be corrected, the dataset has been recalibrated and retitled as version 6.1 Graphs here contain this updated 6.1 data. Posts on their reading of ocean air temps this month are ahead the update from HadSST4 or OISST2.1. I posted recently on SSTs September 2025 Ocean SST CoolingThese posts have a separate graph of land air temps because the comparisons and contrasts are interesting as we contemplate possible cooling in coming months and years.
Sometimes air temps over land diverge from ocean air changes. In July 2024 all oceans were unchanged except for Tropical warming, while all land regions rose slightly. In August we saw a warming leap in SH land, slight Land cooling elsewhere, a dip in Tropical Ocean temp and slightly elsewhere. September showed a dramatic drop in SH land, overcome by a greater NH land increase. 2025 has shown a sharp contrast between land and sea, first with ocean air temps falling in January recovering in February. Now in September and October SH land temps have spiked while ocean temps showed litle change. As a result of larger ocean surface, Global temps remained cool.
Note: UAH has shifted their baseline from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020 beginning with January 2021. v6.1 data was recalibrated also starting with 2021. In the charts below, the trends and fluctuations remain the same, but the anomaly values changed with the baseline reference shift.
Presently sea surface temperatures (SST) are the best available indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system. Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy. Measuring water temperature directly avoids distorted impressions from air measurements. In addition, ocean covers 71% of the planet surface and thus dominates surface temperature estimates. Eventually we will likely have reliable means of recording water temperatures at depth.
Recently, Dr. Ole Humlum reported from his research that air temperatures lag 2-3 months behind changes in SST. Thus cooling oceans portend cooling land air temperatures to follow. He also observed that changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations lag behind SST by 11-12 months. This latter point is addressed in a previous post Who to Blame for Rising CO2?
After a change in priorities, updates are now exclusive to HadSST4. For comparison we can also look at lower troposphere temperatures (TLT) from UAHv6.1 which are now posted for October 2025. The temperature record is derived from microwave sounding units (MSU) on board satellites like the one pictured above. Recently there was a change in UAH processing of satellite drift corrections, including dropping one platform which can no longer be corrected. The graphs below are taken from the revised and current dataset.
The UAH dataset includes temperature results for air above the oceans and thus should be most comparable to the SSTs. There is the additional feature that ocean air temps avoid Urban Heat Islands (UHI). The graph below shows monthly anomalies for ocean air temps since January 2015.
In 2021-22, SH and NH showed spikes up and down while the Tropics cooled dramatically, with some ups and downs, but hitting a new low in January 2023. At that point all regions were more or less in negative territory.
After sharp cooling everywhere in January 2023, there was a remarkable spiking of Tropical ocean temps from -0.5C up to + 1.2C in January 2024. The rise was matched by other regions in 2024, such that the Global anomaly peaked at 0.86C in April. Since then all regions have cooled down sharply to a low of 0.27C in January. In February 2025, SH rose from 0.1C to 0.4C pulling the Global ocean air anomaly up to 0.47C, where it stayed in March and April. In May drops in NH and Tropics pulled the air temps over oceans down despite an uptick in SH. At 0.43C, ocean air temps were similar to May 2020, albeit with higher SH anomalies. Now in September/October Global ocean temps are little changed with Tropics dropping again along with NH declining slightly..
Land Air Temperatures Tracking in Seesaw Pattern
We sometimes overlook that in climate temperature records, while the oceans are measured directly with SSTs, land temps are measured only indirectly. The land temperature records at surface stations sample air temps at 2 meters above ground. UAH gives tlt anomalies for air over land separately from ocean air temps. The graph updated for October is below.
Here we have fresh evidence of the greater volatility of the Land temperatures, along with extraordinary departures by SH land. The seesaw pattern in Land temps is similar to ocean temps 2021-22, except that SH is the outlier, hitting bottom in January 2023. Then exceptionally SH goes from -0.6C up to 1.4C in September 2023 and 1.8C in August 2024, with a large drop in between. In November, SH and the Tropics pulled the Global Land anomaly further down despite a bump in NH land temps. February showed a sharp drop in NH land air temps from 1.07C down to 0.56C, pulling the Global land anomaly downward from 0.9C to 0.6C. Some ups and downs followed with returns close to February values in August. Now in October we see a remarkable spike in SH land temps, supported by NH and Tropics in September.
The Bigger Picture UAH Global Since 1980
The chart shows monthly Global Land and Ocean anomalies starting 01/1980 to present. The average monthly anomaly is -0.0, 2for this period of more than four decades. The graph shows the 1998 El Nino after which the mean resumed, and again after the smaller 2010 event. The 2016 El Nino matched 1998 peak and in addition NH after effects lasted longer, followed by the NH warming 2019-20. An upward bump in 2021 was reversed with temps having returned close to the mean as of 2/2022. March and April brought warmer Global temps, later reversed
With the sharp drops in Nov., Dec. and January 2023 temps, there was no increase over 1980. Then in 2023 the buildup to the October/November peak exceeded the sharp April peak of the El Nino 1998 event. It also surpassed the February peak in 2016. In 2024 March and April took the Global anomaly to a new peak of 0.94C. The cool down started with May dropping to 0.9C, and in June a further decline to 0.8C. October went down to 0.7C, November and December dropped to 0.6C.In August Global Land and Ocean went down to 0.39C, then rose slightly to 0.53 in October.
The graph reminds of another chart showing the abrupt ejection of humid air from Hunga Tonga eruption.
TLTs include mixing above the oceans and probably some influence from nearby more volatile land temps. Clearly NH and Global land temps have been dropping in a seesaw pattern, nearly 1C lower than the 2016 peak. Since the ocean has 1000 times the heat capacity as the atmosphere, that cooling is a significant driving force. TLT measures started the recent cooling later than SSTs from HadSST4, but are now showing the same pattern. Despite the three El Ninos, their warming had not persisted prior to 2023, and without them it would probably have cooled since 1995. Of course, the future has not yet been written.
Doomism is alive and well at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, despite Michael Mann’s advice to the contrary. It exists in the person of Joe Romm, Mann’s colleague. Maybe the two need to meet to figure out how to alarm but not be alarming….
“Bill Gates has been rightly slammed for his anti-scientific memo calling for shifting our focus away from ‘near-term’ emissions cuts. Tragically, that shift could cause the very doomsday scenario he dismisses.” (Joe Romm, below)
Doomism is alive and well at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, despite Michael Mann’s advice to the contrary. It exists in the person of Joe Romm, Mann’s colleague. Maybe the two need to meet to figure out how to alarm but not be alarming….
“Gates is wrong,” Joe Romm reports. “Global warming could well ‘decimate civilization’, but his ‘strategic pivot’ would make catastrophic warming far more likely.” Doomster Romm continues:
Bill Gates has been rightly slammed for his anti-scientific memo calling for shifting our focus away from “near-term” emissions cuts. Tragically, that shift could cause the very doomsday scenario he dismisses.
Gates: “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.” But scientists are much better at foreseeing the future, so we know that taking his advice will sharply boost chances for catastrophe.
Yet, it was never off the table. We just fooled ourselves into thinking that lofty goals of 1.5°C or “well below 2°C,” repeated like mantras—coupled with a clean energy revolution—were enough to avoid the worst. Even Gates was fooled.
The predicament is our fault by our “inaction” (as if the suite of government mitigation policies were not tried and failed). Romm continues:
But despite pledges of “net zero” emissions by midcentury by every major nation, none of the top 10 emitters has policies and actions in place that would keep warming by 2100 below 3°C.
The world’s top scientists found in their 2023 IPCC assessment: “The continuation of policies implemented by the end of 2020 leads to global warming of 3.2°C by 2100.” In June 2025, Climate Interactive modelers projected 3.3°C (6°F) warming based on existing policies. And these are business-as-usual projections—NOT worst-case scenarios—although the UN called such warming “catastrophic.”
Yet there’s a good chance the climate is much more sensitive to CO2 than people expect. The 2023 report found, “The likely range of equilibrium climate sensitivity has been narrowed to 2.5°C to 4.0°C (with a best estimate of 3.0°C) based on multiple lines of evidence.”
So, most use 3°C—but the distribution is skewed. “Likely” means a two-thirds chance. So, 4°C or higher is very plausible. Indeed, the IPCC can’t “rule out … values above 5°C.”
But surely, we can do better than existing policies? We can—but we choose not to. And Gates’ pivot would ensure we don’t. We’ve dawdled through 30 COPs, and emissions are 50% higher than when we began. We have the real solutions, but—overwhelmed by misinformation, false promises, bad actors & bad decisions—they’re not growing nearly fast enough.
Romm concludes:
Gates doesn’t even realize he needs the very rapid emissions cuts he dismisses to claim warming will stay well below 3°C. But if we follow his advice, a catastrophic fate for humanity becomes a very real possibility.
You must be logged in to post a comment.