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.
NSW police have arrested 141 people who attempted to block the shipping channel in Newcastle Harbour during Rising Tide protests, which began on Thursday.
Three people suspended themselves from a bulk carrier and unfurled a banner on Sunday morning.
What’s next?
Protesters will remain at a campsite at Foreshore Park until Tuesday.
One of the largest shipping ports on Australia’s east coast cancelled all shipping movements for three hours on Sunday following an on-water climate change protest.
Rising Tide said its demonstration has been successful after its paddle-outs forced two bulk carriers to turn around and not enter the port.
The Port of Newcastle confirmed the Ragna coal ship was turned back on Sunday afternoon.
Words fail me. If the protestors made an effort to avoid using the fossil fuel products they are complaining about, I’d have some respect. But this protest, protestors making full use of the products of the industry they claim to oppose, is just a demonstration of how badly Australia’s education system is failing young people.
La Niña, associated with cool water over the tropical Pacific, has a significant impact on Northwest weather, influencing temperature, precipitation, and snowfall.
La Niña, associated with cool water over the tropical Pacific, has a significant impact on Northwest weather, influencing temperature, precipitation, and snowfall.
As described below, La Niña has strengthened recently, and some decidedly La Niña weather is now in the forecasts.
As noted in previous blogs, La Niña is associated with cooler-than-normal ocean temperatures over the central tropical Pacific, known as the Nino 3.4 area (see below)
According to the latest observations, we are about to transition from a weak to a moderate La Niña (see figure below). This figure shows the difference from normal of the temperatures in the Nino 3.4 area, with blue colors indicating below-normal temperatures. A moderate La Nina is associated with a cool temperature anomaly larger than .9C.
We are now crossing this threshold to moderate La Niña conditions (see below).
The recent NOAA El Nino/La Niña forecast indicates continued La Niña conditions into mid-winter. If anything, it’s erring on the warm side.
La Niña winters tend to be associated with an upper-level ridge of high pressure over the Gulf of Alaska and associated cold northerly flow over the Northwest (see below). La Niña winters tend to be cooler than normal over the Northwest, generally with more snow than typical.
Occasionally, the jet stream breaks through underneath the ridge with a strong cyclone/wind event.
Now, let’s look ahead over the next week or so, considering forecast models’ predictions.
The forecast of the upper level (500 hPa, about 18,000 ft) heights/pressures for Saturday afternoon shows a big ridge offshore and northwesterly flow over Washington. Classic La Niña pattern.
Tuesday morning? Very similar. La Niña upper air pattern
With a La Niña pattern with northerly flow from Alaska in place, temperatures should be a bit colder than normal over the Northwest, as illustrated by the forecast temperatures at SeaTac over the next few days. Normal is around 50F…. predicted temperatures are several degrees cooler.
The forecast surface (2-m above the ground) temperatures on Sunday at 7 AM indicate that much of the state will be below freezing, with most of the Cascades and eastern Washington in the 20s. (see below)
Below-freezing temperatures will also occur over the eastern part of Puget Sound country. Keep in mind that temperatures could be even cooler at the surface.
So be ready for the first frost of the season!
The latest forecast of temperature (actually the difference of temperature from normal) from the highly skillful European Center extended forecasting system through January 13th, suggests colder than normal temperatures for the next month and a half.
And the latest NOAA seasonal outlook is for cooler-than-normal conditions over Washington State.
The 30th UN Climate Summit has come and gone, and the many private jets have returned from Brazil having accomplished nothing new. What we saw for two weeks of COP30 was the same, old, doomsday prophecies. “World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds,” blared one headline from The Guardian, while another declared “Missing 1.5C climate target is a moral failure, UN chief tells Cop30 summit.”
The 30th UN Climate Summit has come and gone, and the many private jets have returned from Brazil having accomplished nothing new. What we saw for two weeks of COP30 was the same, old, doomsday prophecies. “World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds,” blared one headline from The Guardian, while another declared “Missing 1.5C climate target is a moral failure, UN chief tells Cop30 summit.”
With three decades of fearmongering, there is value to look at some highlights.
A 2004 article from The Guardian excoriated the Bush Administration for trying to bury a scientific climate study. The breathless article did not want for climate hyperbole: “Major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020.”
Sitting here above water in 2025, it doesn’t require an advanced degree in climatology to know that report is off.
Yet a search for a follow up to that report was less fruitful. There is no revisiting the work 20 plus years later to determine wherein lied the error. Of course, scientists make mistakes, and that is precisely why declaring “the science is settled” is deeply unscientific. New information, new data, new findings arise altering the body of evidence and drawing new conclusions.
In climate science, one can cry wolf incorrectly for decades and there simply are no repercussions.
Keep calm, and climate on. For 30 years, even.
Buckingham Palace’s social media team released another blast from the incorrect climate past: a 1994 video of King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, predicting catastrophe. Featuring appearances from A-list actors like Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, the video is completely wrong. His speech is so old that Charles was still married to Diana.
“As our planet’s life support system begins to fail,” declares Hollywood icon Glenn Close, echoing the royal words ,“and our very survival as a species is brought into question…” One can only marvel at the complete lack of self-awareness.
Our planet’s life support has never “failed” or even begun to fail. The only ones questioning our very survival as a species are the COP summit fools, and they have been doing so for decades now.
Every climate crusader paints a doomsday scenario. Greta Thunberg, while she was still a climate activist and not part of the more en vogue “death to Israel” crowd, suggested climate change “will wipe out all humanity.” In 2009, former Biden Climate Czar John Kerry predicted the, “Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013.” Former Vice President Al Gore was rebuked by a British high court judge for a litany of errors in his 20-year-old climate film “An Inconvenient Truth.”
In 2023, His Majesty launched a “countdown clock” ticking down to 2030 as “a visual reminder of the urgency of the climate crisis.”
Throughout it all, the common threads of these messages were willful and deliberate hyperbole without any after action, explanation or showing of the work.
Keep calm and climate on.
More than 55,000 people attended this year’s climate summit, and apparently, none of them have Zoom or Teams. Could not the entire thing be virtual to reduce the carbon footprint? Who is paying for all of this? Prince William attended, and we presume the British taxpayers footed his bill. In fact, the UK sent over 200 people to COP30 racking up over 2.3million total miles with delegates staying a hotel costing £1,250 a night. The UK’s Climate Change Minister’s Ed Miliband didn’t just make the 12,000 mile trip once, but twice.
Remarkable luxury for a crisis, repeated year after year, resort after resort, demanding we “act now” and “achieve net zero.” The same boring predictions, the same silly prophesizing, the same doom and gloom meant to scare us into submission. We are all sick of it.
COP30 accomplished nothing. The agenda, the language, the hand-wringing has gone from alarmist to laughable. Some 30 years of it is now exhausting.
There is one bright spot at COP30. This naysaying crowd which looks at the future with panic and fear has one thing on the horizon which can assuage their fears and give them hope: COP31!
See you next year.
Daniel Turner is the founder and executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at daniel@powerthefuture.com and follow him on Twitter @DanielTurnerPTF
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) states that the global surface temperature has risen markedly since the pre-industrial era. This warming has led to more frequent and intense extreme heat events over most continents. In summer 2010, western Russia was hit by a record-breaking heatwave, with the region experiencing the warmest summer since at least 1880 and numerous cities recording all-time high temperatures.
Via Eurekalert: Scientists quantitatively identify main causes of Russian once-in-a-century heatwave
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) states that the global surface temperature has risen markedly since the pre-industrial era. This warming has led to more frequent and intense extreme heat events over most continents. In summer 2010, western Russia was hit by a record-breaking heatwave, with the region experiencing the warmest summer since at least 1880 and numerous cities recording all-time high temperatures. Furthermore, in the context of global warming, future midlatitude heatwaves analogous to the 2010 event will become even more extreme, with the heatwave intensity increasing by about 8.4°C in western Russia. Thus, unraveling the physical processes involved in the 2010 western Russian heatwave is a matter of considerable concern within the scientific community.
Previous studies have elucidated that this extraordinary event in 2010 mainly resulted from internal natural variability, which includes but is not limited to the processes associated with El Niño to La Niña transition, the intensified Arctic dipole mode, the enhanced moisture–temperature coupling strength, high-latitude land warming, and increased aerosol concentrations. However, there is still some debate regarding the respective roles of dynamical and radiative processes in driving the 2010 western Russian heatwave.
A new study published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters by a research team led by Professor Song Yang at Sun Yat-sen University, China, reveals that surface dynamics and aerosol processes were the key drivers behind the extraordinary 2010 heatwave. This study provides a new quantitative perspective on the record-breaking western Russian heatwave.
“To date, attribution studies have relied primarily on sensitivity experiments conducted with climate models, which often lead to large uncertainties in quantitative results due to considerable model biases. The coupled atmosphere–surface climate feedback response analysis method with the effects of aerosols incorporated (CFRAM-A) is an efficient, model-free approach for quantitative attributions of extreme temperature events. We applied this method to break down the surface warming in western Russia in 2010 into contributions from individual radiative and dynamical processes,” says the first author, Dr. Lianlian Xu.
“Understanding the physical and dynamical origin of regional climate extremes remains a major challenge in our effort to anticipate the occurrences and mitigate the adverse impacts of these extremes,” adds the corresponding author, Prof. Song Yang.
According to this study, the surface warming over western Russia in 2010 can be primarily attributed to the effects of surface dynamics (95%), followed by atmospheric dynamics (49%), clouds (19%), and water vapor (6%), which are partially counterbalanced by aerosol-induced cooling (−64%). Further analysis revealed that the total aerosol cooling was predominantly governed by organic carbon (78%), black carbon (36%), and sulfate (−21%).
This research offers a new perspective for understanding the mechanisms of heatwaves globally and is crucial for improving the predictive capability of such extreme events. The framework presented in this paper not only advances understanding of extreme weather event mechanisms but also underscores the complex interplay between dynamical and radiative factors in driving record-breaking heatwaves.
Already some US ‘grassroots’ organizations are having an existential crisis. Actually, the Sierra Club has been struggling for three years, but no one wanted to mention that.
Emergency Exit Vent On Shuttle Bus in a national park
The phase change in the Climate Apocalypse Trade rolls on, and the U.S. leads the way.
Already some US ‘grassroots’ organizations are having an existential crisis. Actually, the Sierra Club has been struggling for three years, but no one wanted to mention that.
Francis Menton at the Manhattan Contrarian points out the extraordinary collapse of the largest US environmental group, the Sierra Club:
The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country.” But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration. The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit. . . . [T]his year, as the Trump administration returned better organized and better prepared than in its first term, the Sierra Club was the opposite. While Mr. Trump boosted coal power, canceled wind farms and rolled back pollution limits, the club was consumed by internal chaos, culminating when the board fired its executive director, Ben Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.
No doubt some of the pain is due to Donald Trump, and the DOGE effect, but a lot of this was an inside job with help from the cheer-squad-media. The Sierra Club forgot it was supposed to care about the environment and jumped into all the crazy lefty bandwagons they could find. As they ran off the road, the media cheered them on and censored anyone who tried to tell them how the real world works. Thus, and verily, they went double or nothing over Lemming cliff.
Proving even the Green left can “Go Woke, Get Broke”:
By David A. Fahrenthold and Claire Brown, The New York Times
During Mr. Trump’s first term, when the Sierra Club was flush with donations, its leaders sought to expand far beyond environmentalism, embracing other progressive causes. Those included racial justice, labor rights, gay rights, immigrant rights, and more. They stand by that shift today.
By 2022, the club had exhausted its finances and splintered its coalition.
It drove away longtime volunteers who loved the club’s single-minded defense of the environment, by asking them to fully embrace its pivot to the left. Some even felt they were investigated by the club for failing to go along. Many hard-core supporters felt the Sierra Club was casting aside the key to its success: It was an eclectic group of activists who had one, and sometimes only one, cause in common.
The club hired Mr. Jealous, its first Black executive director, that year to stop that slide, but his tenure accelerated it as accusations of sexual harassment, bullying, and overspending piled up.
Another casualty is 350.org which has lost revenue and suspended operations
And then there is 350.org. This organization is the baby of uber-climate-activist Bill McKibben, with the “350” supposedly designating some limit of ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere that must never be exceeded, or else . . . something may happen that they think is really, really scary. (The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is approximately 424 ppm.). On November 13, even as COP30 was going on, 350.org “suspended operations.” From Politico, November 13:
Environmental group 350.org, which spearheaded the movement to block the Keystone XL oil pipeline, will “temporarily suspend programming” in the U.S. and other countries amid funding woes, according to a letter obtained on Thursday by POLITICO. . . . The letter to outside organizations from Executive Director Anne Jellema said 350.org had suffered a 25 percent drop in income for its 2025 and 2026 fiscal years, compelling it to halt operations. The group will keep three U.S. staff members in hopes of reviving operations in the future.
In the US, the giant UN climate event in Brazil wasn’t even on the news.
“…were you even aware that this year’s COP 30 happened? In a piece today for the Civitas Institute, Steven Hayward notes that not one of the American television networks sent reporters to this year’s event. Coverage in the American print and online media was also dramatically reduced. Hayward writes, “A few reporters at the conference filed stories wondering whether this would be the last COP meeting.”
It appears that since Donald Trump didn’t go, the U.S. TV networks didn’t bother sending camera teams.
I can’t remember a COP meeting ever, where anyone discussed how it might be the last…
A prize-winning science graduate in molecular biology. She has given keynotes about the medical revolution, gene technology and aging at conferences. She hosted a children’s TV series on Channel Nine, and has done over 200 radio interviews, many on the Australian ABC. She was formerly an associate lecturer in Science Communication at the ANU. She’s author of The Skeptics Handbook which has been translated into 15 languages. Each day 5,000 people read joannenova.com.au
The University of Copenhagen press release claiming that “over half of global coastal settlements are retreating inland due to intensifying climate risks” sounds like the sort of headline crafted to feed an increasingly popular narrative: coasts are becoming uninhabitable battlegrounds of climate doom, and people are fleeing for safety.
The University of Copenhagen press release claiming that “over half of global coastal settlements are retreating inland due to intensifying climate risks” sounds like the sort of headline crafted to feed an increasingly popular narrative: coasts are becoming uninhabitable battlegrounds of climate doom, and people are fleeing for safety.
Like many such claims, it rests on a selective look at data, a sweeping interpretation of human motives, and an assumption that climate hazards dominate decision-making for developers and residents. In reality, economics—not climate fear—drives coastal development, and has for centuries. The study’s reliance on nighttime light data as a proxy for population movement adds yet another layer of uncertainty—particularly in developing regions where electrification is uneven.
The study itself if paywalled at Nature Communications, and I’m not going to throw good money at bad science. Fortunately, the press release itself provides enough clues to see the cracks in the narrative.
(All quotations below come directly from the press release.)
1. Developers Don’t Use “Climate Risk Models” to Choose Where to Build — They Follow Money, Not Models
The press release repeatedly frames changes in settlement patterns as “responses to intensifying climate risks.” But nowhere does it present evidence that actual developers, property investors, or residents are citing climate risk as their primary rationale for new construction.
That is because, almost without exception:
Developers build where buyers want to buy. Buyers choose based on economic opportunity, amenities, and cost—not abstract climate projections.
A few points worth emphasizing:
Coastal real estate in the U.S., Europe, and Asia continues to command premium prices, rising faster than inland regions in many markets.
Major insurers still willingly underwrite billions in coastal property—usually at higher premiums, but still entirely viable.
Municipalities encourage coastal development because it boosts tax revenue.
New flood defenses, sea walls, and drainage upgrades are being built all over the world—not as signs of retreat, but evidence of investment in staying put.
In short: if a region truly believed climate risks were rendering their coasts unlivable, the cost of coastal land would collapse. It hasn’t.
The study authors assume causation: “retreat” must mean fear of climate hazards. But unless they interviewed developers, tracked planning documents, or reviewed permit applications (they did none of these), the causal claim is pure inference, not evidence.
2. The “Nightlights = Retreat” Assumption Is a Giant Leap — Especially Where Electrification Is Uneven
The entire study hinges on a questionable premise: that satellite-detected nighttime light intensity is a reliable indicator of population movement toward or away from the coast.
Even the authors admit the weaknesses:
“Night-time light data may not tell the whole story, as economic activity and settlements extent are not necessarily linked to luminous activity in regions with limited electrification.”
This applies not just to Africa but to large parts of Asia and South America as well. If electrification improves inland faster than along the coast—because of grid expansion, economic development, industrial siting, or government investment—the “retreat” the study claims to detect might simply be the movement of electricity, not people.
In wealthy regions, the situation is reversed: coastal areas often have higher light saturation due to tourism, port operations, and commercial zoning. A modest shift in where industrial lighting is concentrated could dramatically skew the appearance of “retreat” or “advance.”
Nightlights are a useful tool, but only when paired with direct measurements of actual population counts—census data, property tax rolls, verified construction records. The press release makes clear the study did not do this.
Without validating the light data against real-world settlement patterns, the resulting conclusions are, at best, speculative.
3. Coastal Population Trends Historically Show Growth, Not Retreat — Especially Relative to Inland Growth
To understand whether coastal communities are truly “retreating,” a simple question must be asked:
Are coastal populations shrinking relative to national population growth? Or are they growing, but at a slightly slower rate than in some inland regions?
There is a major difference between:
People abandoning the coast, and
Inland development simply growing faster (e.g., suburban sprawl, new industrial zones, tech corridors).
Historically, coastlines have grown faster than inland regions for centuries:
In the U.S., coastal county populations have increased steadily since at least 1900.
In Europe, major coastal cities—from Copenhagen to Rotterdam to Barcelona—continue expanding.
Southeast Asia, despite frequent typhoons, has seen explosive growth in coastal megacities.
The press release itself hints at the real driver:
“For centuries, coastlines have attracted dense human settlement and economic activity.”
That hasn’t changed. Economic opportunities still cluster along the sea.
Before claiming a “retreat,” the authors should demonstrate:
That actual population numbers in coastal zones have decreased, not just shifted slightly inland.
That growth inland is not simply outpacing coastal growth because of cheaper land or new infrastructure, not climate fear.
The press release presents no such evidence.
4. Middle-Income Regions “Retreating” May Simply Be Developing New Land — Not Fleeing Climate Risks
A key claim:
“Middle-income countries… possess enough institutional capacity and financial resources to support relocation.”
Or—more plausibly—they possess the resources to expand infrastructure inland:
New highways
New industrial parks
New housing blocks
New suburban developments
When you pave a new ring road 5–15 km inland, suddenly the lights there brighten, and the satellite interprets this as “retreat,” even if the coastal population remains stable or grows.
Economic development ≠ climate retreat.
Urban sprawl ≠ climate retreat.
Electrification ≠ climate retreat.
Unless the authors can show that coastal property is being abandoned—and not replaced by new development—the narrative of retreat is unsupported.
5. The Press Release Claims Retreat Is Driven by “Vulnerability” — But Vulnerability Is Itself a Social, Not Climatic, Metric
From the authors:
“Coastal retreat mostly happens in places where communities don’t have the means to protect themselves… not necessarily because of more hazards.”
This is a revealing admission.
If retreat occurs not because hazards are increasing, but because:
infrastructure is lacking,
governments are limited in capacity,
economies are weak,
…then the phenomenon is, by their own acknowledgment, a development issue, not a climate one.
In fact, this is exactly what historical settlement patterns show:
Wealthier nations invest in sea walls, surge barriers, and coastal defenses.
Poorer nations lack these resources and develop unevenly.
Some regions urbanize inland because it is simply cheaper and less congested.
None of this indicates an accelerating climate-driven retreat.
6. The Claim That “56% of Regions Retreated” Requires Context the Study Doesn’t Provide
The press release claims:
“56% of coastal regions have retreated from the coast from 1992 to 2019.”
This is statistically meaningless without answers to the following:
1. What is the magnitude of the retreat?
A shift of 200 meters inland shows up in satellite light data, but is irrelevant to real-world settlement patterns.
2. What is the baseline distance?
If a region’s bright zone expanded inland due to suburbanization, but coastal density remained stable, that is not retreat.
3. Were coastal lights dimming, or inland lights brightening?
Uneven electrification alone can explain large portions of the “retreat.”
4. Are coastal populations declining?
The press release provides no evidence of shrinking populations—just shifts in illumination.
Without these details, the 56% figure tells us nothing about actual human movement.
7. Copenhagen “Moving Toward the Coast” Undermines the Claim That Hazards Are Increasing
The press release unintentionally highlights a contradiction:
“Denmark… is amongst the minority of regions moving closer to the coast these past decades.”
Denmark—a country with allegedly “accelerating sea-level rise”—is building closer to the water. So are the Netherlands, Singapore, Dubai, Tokyo, Miami, and New York.
When wealthier nations with access to the best data refuse to retreat from the coast, it reveals something important:
Their actions contradict the narrative of imminent climate-driven coastal uninhabitability.
People vote with their feet—and their mortgages.
8. The Real Drivers of Settlement Patterns Are Economics and Infrastructure, Not Climate Fear
Let’s spell out the well-known, empirically supported factors that drive modern settlement shifts:
1. Suburban expansion
As cities globalize, growth typically moves outward, not inward.
2. Rising coastal land prices
As wealthy areas densify, lower-income residents move slightly inland.
3. New transportation corridors
Roads, railways, and airports often spur inland development.
4. Industrial relocation
Factories and logistics hubs often move inland to cheaper land.
5. Electrification and grid expansion
Satellite sensors detect light, not humans.
None of these are climate phenomena. All are consistent with ordinary economic development.
Until the authors can demonstrate that humans are abandoning coastal areas because of climate fears—and not simply developing new land inland—the claimed “climate retreat” remains an assumption.
Conclusion: The Study’s Narrative Outpaces Its Evidence
The press release frames global settlement shifts as a climate adaptation story, but the underlying evidence appears far too thin to support that narrative.
To summarize the core problems:
Developers don’t base decisions on climate risk—they base them on profit.
Nightlight data is an unreliable proxy for population movement, especially across countries with uneven electrification.
Historical population data shows long-term growth on coastlines.
Economic expansion inland is not the same as retreat from the coast.
The study itself admits that vulnerability—not hazard increase—is the key driver.
Wealthy nations continue to build aggressively on coastlines, contradicting claims of climate-driven retreat.
The real story appears to be one of development patterns, not climate exodus.
The press release presents an alarming climate-driven narrative, but the evidence it cites actually points to something else entirely:
People are not fleeing coasts—coasts are evolving, developing, and in many places, thriving.
And until studies like this validate their satellite interpretations with real-world population and development data, claims of global “retreat” should be viewed with healthy skepticism.
Sensational new scientific findings have blown holes in the climate hoax opinion that humans need to give up eating meat to save the planet. The effect of methane (CH4), a minor ‘greenhouse’ gas, have been grossly exaggerated to suggest that animal farming poses a significant threat to the global climate.
Sensational new scientific findings have blown holes in the climate hoax opinion that humans need to give up eating meat to save the planet. The effect of methane (CH4), a minor ‘greenhouse’ gas, have been grossly exaggerated to suggest that animal farming poses a significant threat to the global climate. But the invented threat relies on multiplying by around ten the length of time that CH4 stays in the atmosphere – an invention under Global Warming Potential 100 know as GWP100 that is in widespread use in activist circles, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. At current emission levels, five Italian scientists predict 54% less warming than under GWP100, while small decreasing emissions, possible with some changes in animal diets, produce only tiny amounts of claimed warming.
Load the vital protein-stuffed steaks on the barbie and celebrate the removal of another key plank in the climate hoax backing the ultimate luxury fantasy of Net Zero. You can go grubbing around the tropics for ‘superfood’ berries and grains, but meat is the core component of the evolved human diet. So much so that one fears the natural Darwinian process will in future start to reduce the numbers of weedy and increasingly feeble-minded individuals trying to get by on only ‘vegan’ sustenance.
Despite its obvious flaw, meat haters have persisted in using GWP100 to throw fuel on the climate crisis fire. But the fakery is exposed by the Italian scientists’ work, which accounts for methane’s short time in the atmosphere and shows large reductions in claimed warming at current levels, and even some cooling with relatively modest reductions.
Nevertheless, the Italian scientists break from the ‘consensus’ pack only up to a point, since they term all the greenhouses gases as climate ‘pollutants’ rather than trace atmospheric gases essential for all life on Earth. A rising methane emission pathway is presented showing little change from the proposed warming under GWP100, but the scenario depends on agricultural emissions rising an improbable three times faster than recent growth would suggest. Methane emissions may rise in future, but, if the need is felt, they can be controlled by a number of natural means. The cow produces protein rich natural food for humans by eating inedible grasses and vegetation that leads to enteric fermentation in its stomach. Reductions in the resulting gases between 10–30% have been achieved by non-chemical means such as rotating diet optimisation, selective breeding with animals with lower emissions and changes in husbandry techniques.
In essence, the new science paper shows that GWP100 gets it hopelessly wrong when it is used to promote the climate crisis hoax. Anti-meat eating has long been a fad of extreme environmentalism but, under cover of the command-and-control Net Zero project, it has been introduced into the mainstream. The new science findings suggest that wiping out methane emissions from livestock farming is unnecessary. If CH4 is your thing and you fear the addition of tiny amounts of cow burps and farts into the atmosphere, you need do little more than keep meat consumption at its current level. However, that might not be that relevant anyway since most methane emissions arise from a variety of sources and are subject to large natural variations.
In fact, there is considerable scientific observations and evidence that suggest the entire alarm over atmospheric trace gases is a giant con. Trace gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide only warm within narrow bands of the infrared spectrum. In addition, their effects are often mitigated by overlapping water vapour, a much more powerful greenhouse gas that is plentiful across the atmosphere. Observations and measurements suggest that the trace gases ‘saturate’ and produce only logarithmic diminishing warming returns. This simple, and many argue highly plausible, hypothesis has the immense advantage of explaining the climate past going back 600 million years. Over time, trace gases were often at much higher levels, producing comfortable conditions for abundant plant and animal life to thrive. Two well-known exponents of ‘saturation’ are Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen. They are of the opinion that methane and nitrous oxide “are too small to have any significant effect on the environment”. Any warming effect is said to be negligible compared to natural variability.
Politicised Net Zero scares also surround nitrous oxide emissions, which are a by-product of applying artificial fertiliser to crops. No green activist, at least to your correspondent’s knowledge, has been able to reply to the suggestion that removing hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser will cut world crop supply by half, causing global starvation and the likely death in time of billions of people. What better way to keep a con job in play than to declare your position settled and refuse to talk about it to so-called deniers?
Much of the proffered data used to back up the absurdities of Net Zero is little more than fiddled guesses designed to promote a hard-Left agenda. Always there is the suspicion that many of the scares such as those around meat eating and fertiliser use arise from a political mindset that feels there are already too many people on the planet. Millions sacrificed to save the planet for a better and centrally controlled future is ‘Great Leap Forward’ thinking that has backed numerous failed socialist experiments in the past.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
Had the Great Smith-Carney Pipelines and Climate Pact of 2025 emerged say, five years ago, it would have been considered squarely within the realm of Liberal environmentalism. Instead, because former prime minister Justin Trudeau brought in several anti-business policies, the current prime minister is being feted/scorned as being pro-energy industry by disappointed Liberals and relieved conservatives alike. While Mark Carney deserves credit for negotiating this deal with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and bringing a rival onside, we’re skeptical at the chances a pipeline ever gets built.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, right, signs an MOU with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in Calgary, Alta., Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Had the Great Smith-Carney Pipelines and Climate Pact of 2025 emerged say, five years ago, it would have been considered squarely within the realm of Liberal environmentalism. Instead, because former prime minister Justin Trudeau brought in several anti-business policies, the current prime minister is being feted/scorned as being pro-energy industry by disappointed Liberals and relieved conservatives alike. While Mark Carney deserves credit for negotiating this deal with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and bringing a rival onside, we’re skeptical at the chances a pipeline ever gets built.
There are definitely some positives in the deal that Smith can present at the UCP annual general meeting this weekend in an attempt to quell the separatist uprising within her governing party. Ottawa has officially committed to “Increasing production of Alberta oil and gas”and to the approval and construction of “one or more private sector constructed and financed pipelines.”The Liberals promise they “will not implement the Oil and Gas Emissions Cap” and will exempt Alberta from the government’s clean energy regulations. They would also consider a temporary exemption to the west coast tanker ban.
All of these regulations have been points of contention for Alberta, so it is to Smith’s credit that she was able to persuade Carney to budge. But it’s possible this will not accomplish much more than to remove extra layers of regulation, which were unnecessary even by environmental standards. Under the Trudeau Liberals, there was to be a consumer carbon tax, industrial carbon tax, as well as the clean energy regulations and emissions cap. And it did not end there, as the Impact Assessment Act, also brought in under Trudeau, mandates onerous environmental and social review, including the consideration of “Indigenous knowledge” alongside scientific assessment, as well as considering the “intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors.”
If Carney is at all serious about kickstarting investment in Canada, he should at minimum be willing to clear away some of these extra rules.
Ultimately, it seems that environmental policies and expectations are merely being shifted around. Because what is being asked of Alberta would appear to provide only the narrowest of paths for the construction of a new pipeline to the West coast. Under the memorandum of understanding between Smith and Carney, the province would have to raise its industrial carbon tax from $95/tonne to a minimum of $130/tonne, and reduce methane emissions, produced by the energy industry and farmers, to 75 per cent below 2014 levels. And in addition to the duty to consult Indigenous communities, any pipeline must have Indigenous co-ownership.
Further to that, the construction of a pipeline is entirely contingent on the simultaneous construction of a massive carbon capture project, presumably so Carney can claim the new pipeline is moving only “low emission” barrels of bitumen. Finally, while the MOU does not explicitly give B.C. a veto, that province is to be included “immediately” in a “trilateral discussion” on the project. B.C. Premier David Eby is opposed to a pipeline and was highly critical of the deal, claiming it would take priority away from other projects, specifically B.C. projects Eby supports. [
April 30, 2024 (IEEFA) – More than CAD1 billion were spent retrofitting the Boundary Dam 3 (BD3) coal plant in Saskatchewan to add carbon capture technology. After nine years, the project has a consistent history of capturing far less than the 90 per cent promised when the project was built—and all the carbon dioxide (CO2) captured at the plant is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that injects captured CO2 into the ground to extract more oil..Carbon capture at Boundary Dam 3 still an underperforming failure
And the roadblocks to a new pipeline don’t end there. While it would be approved through the Major Projects Office, it isn’t at all clear what purpose that will serve. Carney’s Liberals gave themselves the authority to suspend regulatory review to expedite projects in the national interest. However, the office is electing not to use this power so far, stating on its website that “Projects will continue to be subject to all regulatory review processes.”
So being approved through the MPO may give the pipeline certainty that it will be approved — eventually. That means every investment killing process under the Impact Assessment Act will have to be passed.
What the Smith-Carney deal does accomplish is to buy both of them time to each satisfy their base.For Smith that is conservatives flirting with separatism, and for Carney, it is environmentalist Liberals, some of whom see this deal as a betrayal, such as former environment minister Steven Guilbeault who quit cabinet in protest. We applaud genuine attempts from Ottawa to work with, as opposed to against, Alberta, but we’re not confident this plan will deliver what is promised.
We’re told, endlessly, that science is a self-correcting machine. A pristine engine of truth where bad ideas are discarded, and good ones rise to the top like cream. We are told to “Trust The Science™“ because it has passed the magical, mystical trial known as Peer Review.
We’re told, endlessly, that science is a self-correcting machine. A pristine engine of truth where bad ideas are discarded, and good ones rise to the top like cream. We are told to “Trust The Science™“ because it has passed the magical, mystical trial known as Peer Review.
Bad news. The machine is broken, the cream is curdled milk, and the gatekeepers are asleep at the switch—or worse, they’re selling tickets to the vandals.
A new study out of Northwestern University, entitled Organized scientific fraud is growing at an alarming rate, study uncovers, has just pulled back the curtain on what many have said for years. It turns out that “organized scientific fraud” isn’t just a few rogue grad students fudging a data point. No. It is a global, industrial-scale operation.
According to the study, we are now dealing with “sophisticated global networks” that function essentially as criminal organizations. They aren’t just faking results; they are manufacturing entire fake scientific careers. They sell authorship slots on bogus papers like they’re selling condos in Florida.
You want to be a “First Author” on a groundbreaking physics paper? That’ll be $5,000. You want to be a co-author? We have a discount on aisle three.
The study notes that this fraud is “outpacing the growth rate of legitimate scientific publications.” Think about that. The cancer is growing faster than the host.
YIKES!
And the peer-review system, that vaunted shield that is supposed to protect us from error? It’s acting less like a shield and more like a sieve.
But wait. Before we blame this all on shadowy “criminal networks” and nameless paper mills overseas, let’s look a little closer to home. Because the rot isn’t just coming from outside the house. It’s coming from the basement.
I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve lived it.
Years ago, I wrote about my peer-review experiences with Dr. Michael Mann, author of the infamous “Hockey Stick.” I called him a “Smooth Operator“, and I meant it. In the climate world, “peer review” has too often morphed into “pal review.” It’s a cozy club where friends rubber-stamp friends’ papers and, more importantly, block the publication of a study from anyone like me who dares to question the “Consensus.”
And as I detailed in “Freedom of Information, My Okole“, I’ve spent years asking for the data and code behind these taxpayer-funded studies. And what do I get? Stonewalling. Refusals. As Phil Jones told Warwick Hughes, “Why should I show you my data when you only want to find something wrong with it?”
That is not science. That is a priesthood protecting its dogma.
The current peer-review system is a black box. An editor sends a paper to two or three anonymous reviewers. If those reviewers are the author’s pals, the paper gets a pass. If the author is an outsider, or a skeptic, the reviewers can kill the paper in secret, with no accountability, for reasons that have nothing to do with the science and everything to do with protecting their turf.
Of course, only an extremely rare, perfectly honest reviewer is going to allow the publication of any study that demolishes the very foundations of the work that he’s spent his life building and expounding. As Upton Sinclair famously explained, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”. I call that the “Sinclair Trap”, and it’s far too easy to fall into.
Unfortunately, the Sinclair Trap is even worse for scientists because it’s not just money. I’ve said before that “Science is a blood sport”. What I meant was that any new scientific discovery or understanding has the possibility of being very costly, not just to the salary, but to the prized professional reputation of the holders of the previous view.
It doesn’t have to be costly if the scientist whose prior work is discredited is honest, open about it, and willing to move forward and embrace and further the new understanding.
But that’s not every scientist.
And now, we see the result. A system so opaque and unaccountable that it can be gamed by criminal syndicates on one end and ideological gatekeepers on the other.
So, what do we do? Do we just throw up our hands and say “Science is hard”?
No. Just no.
We need a total overhaul. A complete tear-down of the secrecy that allows this problem to thrive in the dark.
I’ve proposed a solution before, and I’ll propose it again. I call it Peer Review Plus.
Here’s how it works. It’s simple, it’s cheap, and it would solve 90% of these problems overnight.
First, you keep the traditional peer review. But here is the kicker: You publish everything.
When a paper is published, you don’t just publish the paper. You publish the entire correspondence between the authors and the reviewers. You publish the reviewers’ and editors’ names. You publish their objections, and the authors’ rebuttals.
Let the world see how the sausage was made. If a reviewer gave a paper a pass because they’re pals, it will be obvious. If a reviewer blocked a paper because they didn’t like the conclusion, that will be obvious too.
But I’d go further.
We should also publish any valuable rejected papers.
Science proceeds by falsification. When a paper is rejected, it’s usually because a reviewer claims to have found a flaw. That falsification, valid or not, is a valuable piece of scientific data. But right now, it’s thrown in the trash bin of history.
If a reviewer rejects my paper, I want that rejection—and my answer to it—on the public record. Let the community decide if the rejection was valid or if it was just gatekeeping.
We also need an “Open Review” system where publishing the data and code are mandatory. As my friend Mosh used to say “No code, no data, no science”. This should result in “No publication”. Period.
And then, once it’s published, open the floor. Allow moderated, non-anonymous comments on the web from the larger scientific community and the public. The truth is that this public peer review by the larger world is the only truly valuable review.
The Northwestern study says we need to “police ourselves better.” They’re half right. We don’t need more police. We need more lights and more transparency. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Right now, the scientific establishment is operating in a windowless room, and the mold is taking over.
We need to stop treating “Peer Reviewed” as a stamp of divine truth and start treating it for what it is: a fallible, human, and currently deeply corruptible process.
Until we pry the doors open and let the public see who is paying whom, who is reviewing whom, what the objections to the study were, and where the data actually is, this fraud will continue. The paper mills will keep churning, the pals will keep reviewing, and the public trust in science will continue its long, slow slide into the gutter.
Both the public and the scientists deserve better.
w.
PS—After writing the above, I thought I’d use perplexity to educate me on the history of peer-review. As always, there’s more for me to learn. This is a good question for AI, since the history is not a highly debated subject. I asked:
What is the history of the peer-review process in scientific publication? Who pushed for it? Who objected to it?
I included my standard instructions about not guessing, using primary sources, and the like. Here’s the response:
===
Peer review in scientific publishing developed gradually from informal editorial consultation in the seventeenth century to standardized external refereeing after the Second World War, with strong institutional support from major learned societies and leading journals, and persistent criticism from scientists and methodologists who argued that it is conservative, biased, and often unreliable. No single individual “invented” modern peer review, and surviving historical documentation does not support attributing it to one specific person; rather, it emerged through incremental practices at journals such as Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and later formal policies at journals such as Nature. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Early editorial review (17th–18th centuries)
• In 1665, Henry Oldenburg began editing Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and sought advice from knowledgeable colleagues to decide which submissions to print, which historians regard as a precursor to formal refereeing, although it was not systematic external peer review in the modern sense. [2] [8] [7]
• In the eighteenth century, the Royal Society created a Committee of Papers that could accept, postpone, reject, or refer manuscripts to designated members for expert evaluation, embedding internal scientific judgment into the journal’s constitution but still without standardized, anonymous external review. [3] [8] [7]
Nineteenth‑century institutionalization
• During the nineteenth century, Philosophical Transactions and other society journals increasingly used written reports from selected referees, often Fellows of the society, to guide publication decisions, making the process more formal and collective than Oldenburg’s largely personal editorial control. [7] [3]
• Historians of science emphasize that practices varied widely among journals and disciplines, and that even where referee reports existed, they were not yet a universal or uniform requirement for all scientific papers. [4] [2]
Twentieth‑century “modern” peer review
• After the Second World War, rapid growth in the number of manuscripts, expansion of specialized fields, and rising journal prestige led many journals to adopt routine external refereeing by domain experts, which is often identified as the birth of “modern” peer review. [9] [1] [4]
• By the late 1960s and early 1970s, leading journals such as Nature had formal peer review systems, and the term “peer review” itself came into widespread use, supported by citation-tracking infrastructures that rewarded publication in peer‑reviewed venues. [10] [4] [9]
Who pushed for peer review?
• Documentary evidence shows that officers and councils of learned societies, particularly the Royal Society of London and similar bodies in Europe and North America, pushed for more systematic expert evaluation to protect scientific reputation, manage limited printing budgets, and filter the growing volume of submissions. [2] [3] [7]
• Editors and publishers of major journals in medicine and the natural sciences in the mid‑twentieth century promoted external peer review as a quality‑control and gatekeeping mechanism, and later governmental and funding agencies reinforced its use by tying research assessment and career advancement to publication in peer‑reviewed outlets. [6] [1] [4]
Who objected to peer review?
• Historical and contemporary analyses document objections from prominent scientists, including Albert Einstein, who was notably resistant when one of his papers was subjected to anonymous external review, as well as from later critics who argue that peer review can suppress innovative or unconventional work. [5] [11]
• Methodological critiques in the biomedical and social‑science literature have highlighted problems such as low inter‑reviewer agreement, bias, conservative preference for established paradigms, and limited ability to detect errors or fraud, and some scholars have called for major reforms or even abolition of traditional pre‑publication peer review in favor of alternative models. [12] [13] [1] [6]
Limitations: The surviving primary records (editorial minutes, correspondence, referee reports) are incomplete and uneven across journals, so attributions of “first use” and lists of specific individuals who pushed or objected are necessarily partial, and no primary source provides a complete, definitive chronology for all disciplines. [14] [7] [2]
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