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.
Apparently, New Zealand’s climate defiance could bring down the Jenga Tower of international law.
NZ’s rejection of emission targets fuels risk of international law breach
Published: December 5, 2025 10.19am AEDT Karen Scott Professor in Law, University of Canterbury
The New Zealand government’s decision this week to reject all of the Climate Change Commission’s emission target recommendations was just the latest in a string of policy statements that weaken the country’s action on climate.
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Does a failure to comply with those obligations undermine New Zealand’s commitment to the international rules-based order? Yes.
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More generally, however, New Zealand risks undermining the international rules-based order it relies on by framing those obligations as being merely about making “best efforts”.
The rules-based order is like a game of Jenga. The rules, including obligations to address climate change, are the building blocks. While some states are overtly taking a wrecking ball to the tower, others are undermining it by ignoring those rules, essentially removing individual blocks.
But small states need that tower to remain intact. Supporting the international rules-based order by complying with its climate obligations would allow New Zealand to show leadership when it is most needed.
Perhaps things have changed since 2023. New Zealand is currently suffering a catastrophic brain drain, as young and ambitious New Zealanders desert a homeland which is struggling to offer hope to its young people. Maybe a dose of green economic collapse is finally bringing New Zealand’s out of touch establishment to its senses.
Today I spent the day with my excellent collaborator Richard Ellenbogen cross-examining witnesses at the New York Public Service Commission’s hearing on whether the pending rate increase request of our utility Con Edison should be approved. We had a lot of fun. Although the hearing was theoretically open to the public, they had no live video feed, and you had to register in advance to attend in person. It looked like everybody there was an interested party.
Today I spent the day with my excellent collaborator Richard Ellenbogen cross-examining witnesses at the New York Public Service Commission’s hearing on whether the pending rate increase request of our utility Con Edison should be approved. We had a lot of fun. Although the hearing was theoretically open to the public, they had no live video feed, and you had to register in advance to attend in person. It looked like everybody there was an interested party.
At the close of the hearing, we were invited (along with everybody else) to file a post-hearing brief by next Friday, December 12. The hearing provided us with lots of good material, and we will be putting together a good scathing screed as our contribution. You can look forward to a post on the subject next Friday or Saturday.
But meanwhile, the short version is that the witnesses put up by Con Edison and the Department of Public Service to support their settlement proposal claimed to know absolutely nothing about our objection. Don’t feel bad for us. That’s actually a damning admission, because the proponents of the rate increase need to establish a rational basis for it. If instead it is deemed “arbitrary and capricious,” it will fail. Our position is that the rate increase is arbitrary and capricious because it provides ratepayer funding for mandates that have been admitted by the state to be “infeasible,” and that will not happen during the period of the rate increase.
As the single most striking example (among several), we had cited and quoted in our Statement of Opposition to the rate increase a 6 page letter submitted in August 2025 by the state Attorney General on behalf of the state government in a court proceeding, asserting that the goals of the 2019 Climate Act for emissions reductions by 2030 were “infeasible” and would impose “extraordinary and damaging” costs on New Yorkers. We had asked for witnesses to address the issues raised in our Statement, and particularly how much ratepayer money was getting approved to then be wasted on infeasible goals that would not be met. Con Edison and Department of Public Service each put up about ten witnesses to answer our questions. But when asked, not one of them would admit familiarity with the state letter or that they had read it. Not one of them would answer whether the rate increase proposal contained ratepayer funding to support goals that the state itself had conceded were “infeasible,” or would agree to quantify how much ratepayer funding was to be wasted on chasing infeasible goals. And then it went on downhill from there.
But meanwhile, there has been other news on the New York Climate Act front. On November 25 a Washington think tank called the Progressive Policy Institute put out a Report with the title “NEW YORK’S CLIMATE CROSSROADS: ASSURING AFFORDABLE ENERGY.”The Report takes serious note that New York’s “climate” regime is in big trouble.
I am not greatly familiar with PPI. Although they do not appear to be from the lunatic fringe, they are definitely a left-wing group, and from reviewing their website, they clearly share the fundamental belief of the Left that the government can, and therefore must, solve all human problems. And with the word “progressive” is in their name, they are not seeking to avoid association with the crazy wing of the Democratic Party.
And yet PPI has definitely taken a step outside the reservation here. With the orthodoxy enforcement that has been pervasive in the left-side climate space for two decades or more, there has been almost no criticism from that perspective of any or all efforts to achieve a forced march to climate net zero utopia. So it is no small event that PPI has now gone on record telling New York that its grand climate plans are crumbling.
OK, they don’t use exactly those words. But they also are not scrupulously avoiding reality in the way of, say, the New York Times.
I’ll give you a few choice excerpts. Here is the opening line:
New York has established some of the nation’s most ambitious decarbonization targets, positioning itself as a leader in climate policy. However, the immense economic burden and practical challenges of implementing these mandates threaten their political viability. As the costs of this transition fall heavily on ratepayers and working families, a critical tension emerges between state-level climate objectives and the everyday financial realities faced by New Yorkers.
Just yesterday the official party line was that the “renewables” wind and solar were cheaper than hydrocarbon fuels for generating electricity, and therefore if your bills were going up it could only be because of nefarious deeds of some combination of evil actors, like the utilities or the oil companies, or maybe Donald Trump. So that opening statement from PPI represents a very significant shift toward reality.
On the 2019 New York Climate Act:
An assessment of New York’s progress against the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act), using the state’s own metrics, reveals a clear and undeniable pattern of failure across its most critical mandates. . . . New York is not on track to meet its targets. Progress on offshore wind and energy storage, two cornerstones of the state’s grid transformation strategy, is severely behind schedule. This poor performance is not an anomaly but a symptom of deeper, systemic pressures that are converging on the state’s energy system.
And then PPI goes so far as to describe the current situation as a “looming crisis” of both grid stability and and affordability, brought about by the state’s own poorly-conceived policies and mandates:
The Looming Crisis: A Collision of Supply, Demand and Cost: New York is not on track to meet its targets. Progress on offshore wind and energy storage, two cornerstones of the state’s grid transformation strategy, is severely behind schedule. This poor performance is not an anomaly but a symptom of deeper, systemic pressures that are converging on the state’s energy system.
Well, guys, welcome to the right side of history. Now that we have this crack in the dyke of left-wing unanimity for strict net zero mandates, perhaps the flood will begin.
Klima e Scienza reports on how the Greenland PETERMANN GLACIER has GROWN BY MORE THAN 30 KILOMETRES SINCE 2012, back when the MEDIA hysterically announced the glacier’s imminent disappearance.
Klima e Scienza reports on how the Greenland PETERMANN GLACIER has GROWN BY MORE THAN 30 KILOMETRES SINCE 2012, back when the MEDIA hysterically announced the glacier’s imminent disappearance.
In 2012:
In 2024:
The media doesn’t talk about this anymore. Klima e Scienza credits the Association des Climato-Realistes.
The reality defies the alarmist claims made by scientists, media and policymakers.
Arctic sea ice extent has plateaued and not shrunk over the past 15 years, let alone disappeared in the summertime.
A large green hydrogen project being developed in Spain by EDP is in line for subsidies via the European Hydrogen Bank. But Hydrogen Insight has learned that the Portuguese energy firm is considering an exit from the process, amid a lack of clarity for potential off takers around regulations to drive demand.
A large green hydrogen project being developed in Spain by EDP is in line for subsidies via the European Hydrogen Bank. But Hydrogen Insight has learned that the Portuguese energy firm is considering an exit from the process, amid a lack of clarity for potential off takers around regulations to drive demand.
This goes to the heart of why investors are reluctant to build hydrogen and carbon capture projects, in spite of the obscene subsidies on offer.
We have of course already seen BP pull the plug on their Teesside Hydrogen/CCS plant and the collapse of the Acorn carbon capture scheme in Scotland.
The concern of all three projects is whether there will be sufficient demand for their products. Hydrogen, is of course, ridiculously expensive compared to gas, even without carbon capture. So who on earth would want to swap gas for hydrogen?
Similarly, why would businesses pay to pipe their CO2 away?
In theory, companies will have no other choice, as natural gas will either be banned or priced out of the market by punitive carbon taxes.
But all these taxes will do is force businesses to pack up and move abroad. So, what then for EDP’s hydrogen plant or BP’s hydrogen power station?
Worse still, for these investors, is the risk that future governments will abolish Net Zero completely, or at the very least keep carbon taxes low. In that event, their business model is completely shot.
A widely referenced 2024 study that predicted massive global economic damages due to climate change has now been retracted, The New York Times (NYT) reported on Wednesday.
A widely referenced 2024 study that predicted massive global economic damages due to climate change has now been retracted, The New York Times (NYT) reported on Wednesday.
Nature, widely considered to be a prestigious scientific journal, published an article titled “The economic commitment of climate change” in April 2024, which detailed how global gross domestic product (GDP) could be roughly 62% lower by 2100 due to climate change. The journal’s decision to retract the study on Wednesday came after some economists’ discovery that data issues in one country, Uzbekistan, had heavily distorted the results, according to the NYT.
When the team of economists recalculated the results excluding Uzbekistan, the projected climate change damages were similar to previous research, and showed that instead of a projected 62% decrease in global economic output by 2100 due to continuing carbon emissions, global GDP would actually have a 23% reduction, the NYT reported.
When reached for comment, Nature referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to its retraction notice from Wednesday.
Last year, the media breathlessly reported on a study published by Nature that climate change damage could cost $38 trillion per year by 2050.
Nature just retracted the study.
Warning to reporters: If you report on a study published by Nature, there is a good chance it's BS. pic.twitter.com/eOZ4hY8SK1
A variety of news outlets previously reported on Nature’s now-retracted study. As of Wednesday, the study has notably been accessed more than 300,000 times, as well as being cited 226 times, according to its article metrics on Nature’s website.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also mentioned the study in a December 2024 report highlighting the “risks” of climate change to the U.S.
Moreover, the study has also been previously cited by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and was listed in the top 5% of journal articles tracked by Altmetric, a tool that tracks the attention that research outputs, the NYT reported. Similarly, the U.K.-based climate outlet Carbon Brief reported in January that the original study was the second most referenced climate paper in 2024.
Additionally, Americans in major cities no longer view climate change as a top issue, according to an American Communities Project/Ipsos poll released in November.
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Main backer to sell stake in North Sea green energy scheme following review
Scotland’s flagship carbon capture project is at risk of collapse after its main backer announced plans to exit the scheme.
The Acorn project, based in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, is being built to capture CO2 from heavy industry and then bury it under the North Sea.
But the driving force behind the project, energy group Storegga, said on Thursday it planned to sell its stake in the scheme, delivering a major blow to the net zero push spearheaded by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary.
Storegga said it would sell its Acorn stake following a “strategic review of its business, capital requirements and future structure”.
It said: “As part of this, we are progressing a structured sales process for our portfolio of assets, including the sale of our interest in the Acorn CCS project.
“With Acorn approaching a more capital-intensive phase, and with both the UK and Scottish Governments signalling the importance of its timely delivery, we have concluded that a new long-term owner would be better placed to take the project forward.”
TRANSLATION – It is all too risky, and we don’t think we can make money out of it.
In particular, there is a concern that there may not be enough CO2 emitted by power plants and chemical works, such as Grangemouth, to make it worthwhile.
I would not be surprised if the idiot Miliband throws GB Energy (ie taxpayer) money at the project, as the SNP are demanding.
This all comes hot on the heels of BP cancelling their Teesside Hydrogen/CCS project.
The Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ended on November 30, was quieter than normal, with five hurricanes compared with a long-term average of 7.2.
The Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ended on November 30, was quieter than normal, with five hurricanes compared with a long-term average of 7.2.
By far the most complete and robust data we have for hurricanes is for those which have hit the US coast. The US Hurricane Research Division, which is part of the Federal agency NOAA, has data going back as far as 1851. According to the figures, hurricane data is pretty reliable since the 1880s when the coastline became settled.
No Atlantic hurricanes at all have hit the US this year. The graphs below offer the strongest evidence of all that there are no long-term trends either in the frequency of hurricanes or their intensity. (Major hurricanes are Cat 3 and stronger – these show no increase either.)
This is in marked contrast to the myth regularly peddled by the BBC and others that hurricanes are getting more powerful. It is worth pointing out in this respect that the strongest hurricane on record to hit the US was the Labor Day hurricane in 1935. The second most powerful was Camille in 1969 and the third was Andrew in 1992.
As far as the Atlantic basin is concerned, we have had reliable data only since comprehensive satellite coverage began in the 1980s. It was even later than this that hurricane-hunter aircraft became robust enough to fly into the middle of the strongest hurricanes for hours on end.
The hurricane maps for this year and 1925 show just why you cannot compare today’s data with the past. Whereas most of this year’s hurricanes meandered around in mid-Atlantic, the only ones recorded a hundred years ago were all close to land. There were, of course, plenty of hurricanes in 1925 which never got close to shore. We simply did not have the ability to spot them.
Even when hurricane-hunter aircraft started to be deployed in the 1940s, they were unable to fly into the most powerful hurricanes, for obvious reasons. One study in 2012 by leading hurricane scientists reviewed the ten most recent Cat 5 Atlantic hurricanes, the strongest hurricanes of all. They concluded that using technology available in the 1940s, only two would have been classified as Cat 5. (It is worth noting that two of this year’s Cat 5s peaked in the middle of the Atlantic, Erin and Humberto; both hit those wind speeds for only a few hours. Neither would have been classed as Cat 5s more than a few years ago. Nor would they have even been spotted before the 1950s).
When we look at the reliable data we do have, it is clear that there are no increasing trends in frequency or intensity. This supports the findings from US hurricanes.
So, what do the actual hurricane experts in the US say?
In their annual review of Atlantic hurricanes published earlier this year, NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stated:
‘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.
‘We conclude that the historical Atlantic hurricane data at this stage do not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced century-scale increase in: frequency of tropical storms, hurricanes, or major hurricanes, or in the proportion of hurricanes that become major hurricanes.’
CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves has announced that energy bills will be £150 a year lower as a direct result of her Budget.
Don’t be fooled!
Two thirds of the so-called saving will be funded by switching about £6billion of renewable subsidies from energy bills on to general taxation. The total cost of what are known as Renewables Obligation subsidies is over £8billion a year. One way or another, we will still all have to pay for these subsidies, whether through bills or taxes.
The rest of the saving comes from the scrapping of the Energy Company Obligation, which funds insulation and other energy saving measures. However, this saving has already been wiped out by the Warm Homes Discount, announced a few weeks ago. This is a £150 rebate to poorer households on benefits such as Pension Credit and Universal Credit. Everybody else, of course, has to pay more on their bills to fund this.
But what the Chancellor did not mention is that our energy bills will be nearly £7billion a year higher by the end of this Parliament, because of Ed Miliband’s crazy Net Zero. This is equivalent to £260 for every home in the country.
These figures come from the Office for Budget Responsibility. According to their projections, the cost of Environmental Levies and the Renewable Heat Incentive will rise to £19.9billion in 2030/31.
Most of this is paid out as direct subsidies to wind farms, solar farms and tree-burning power stations such as Drax. Although Renewables Obligation subsidies are set to decline, due to older wind farms shutting down, the cost of the Contracts for Difference scheme is expected to balloon, with new offshore wind farms now being offered twice the market price.
This market price is normally set by gas generation. Official projections expect gas prices to fall in the next few years, meaning that the 20-year, index-linked, guaranteed prices offered by Miliband for wind and solar power will lock us in to permanently higher prices. It all gives the lie to claims that renewables are cheaper, which the Net Zero lobby, including the Government and BBC, still peddle.
Capacity Market levies will also increase substantially – these cover the cost of providing standby capacity, for when the wind stops blowing.
There are other Net Zero costs which get loaded on to our energy bills, but which are not separately listed by the OBR.
The cost of balancing the grid, for instance, has risen from a couple of hundred million to £3billion now; costs include storage, constraint payments (paying wind farms to switch off when there is too much wind), voltage control and rapid-response generation. According to the National Energy System Operator, NESO, these costs could increase to over £10billion by 2030, as increasing reliance on intermittent wind and solar makes the grid more and more unstable.
Carbon taxes also add billions to bills. Moreover, somebody will eventually have to pay the estimated £80billion cost of upgrading the electricity grid, which is needed only for Net Zero purposes.
Add that lot up and the cost will come to well over £30billion a year. Miliband will, of course, be long gone by the time the full impact of his mad policies is felt.
The global warming craze is dying out, says Matt Ridley in the Spectator, as banks, billionaires and politicians bail out of the Net Zero agenda. Well thank goodness for that. Here’s an excerpt:
The other factor that kept the climate scare alive was that emissions reduction proved impossibly difficult. This was a feature, not a bug: if it had been easy, the green gravy train would have ground to a halt. Reducing sulphur emissions to stop acid rain proved fairly easy, as did banning chlorofluorocarbons to protect the ozone layer. But decade after decade, carbon dioxide emissions just kept on rising no matter how much money and research was thrown at the problem. Cheers!
Switching to renewable energy made no difference – literally. Here’s the data: the world added 9,000 terawatt-hours of energy consumption from wind and solar in the past decade, but 13,000 from fossil fuels. Not that wind and solar save much carbon dioxide anyway, their machinery being made with coal and their intermittency being backed up by fossil fuels.
Despite trillions of dollars in subsidies, these two ‘unreliables’ still provide just 6 per cent of the world’s energy. Their low-density, high-cost, intermittent power output is of no use to data centres or electric grids, let alone transport and heating, and effectively poisons the economics of building and running new nuclear and gas generation by preventing continuous operation. Quite why it became mandatory among those concerned about climate change to support these unreliables so obsessively is hard to fathom. Subsidy addiction has a lot to do with it, combined with a general ignorance of thermodynamics.
Now the climate scare is fading, a scramble for the exits is beginning among the big environmental groups. Donations are drying up. Some will switch seamlessly to trying to panic us about artificial intelligence; others will follow Gates and insist that they never said it was the end of the world, just a problem to be solved; a few will even try declaring victory, claiming unconvincingly that promises made at the Paris conference a decade ago have slowed down emissions enough to save the climate.
Of course, Al Gore, the former US vice-president who did more than anybody else to alarm the world about climate change and made a $300 million fortune from it, has been at the recent conference in the Brazilian jungle – the one where they felled a forest to build the access road. As he railed against Gates last month for abandoning the cause and accused him of being bullied by Donald Trump, he sounded like one of those Japanese soldiers emerging from the jungle who did not know the second world war was over.
Perhaps Gore might now regret his exaggerated preachings of hellfire and damnation. In his 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, for which he shared a Nobel prize, he predicted a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet “in the near future” – out by around 19 feet and nine inches. In 2009 he said there was a 75 per cent chance all the ice in the Arctic Ocean would disappear by 2014. In that year there were five million square kilometres of the stuff at its lowest point – about the same as in 2009. This year there were 4.7 million square kilometres. At the film’s showing at the Sundance Festival, Gore said that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases were taken within ten years, the world would reach a point of no return. Yet here we are 19 years later.
Gore is correct that fear of retribution from the Trump administration drives some of the corporate retreats. President Trump has already cancelled $300 billion of green infrastructure funding and purged government websites of climate rhetoric. But even if the Republicans lose the White House in 2028, it will be hard to reflate the climate balloon. The proportion of Americans greatly worried about climate change is dropping. If Trump takes America out of the 1992 treaty that set up the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change it would require an unlikely two-thirds vote of the Senate to rejoin.
Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish economist who is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and has fought a lonely battle against climate exaggeration for decades, recently explained the shift in public opinion: “The shrillness of climate doom also wears down voters. While climate change is a real and man-made problem, constant end-of-the-world proclamations from media and campaigners massively overstate the situation.”
A key figure in the collapse of the climatocracy is Chris Wright, the pioneer of extracting shale gas by hydraulic fracturing who was appointed by Trump as energy secretary this year. Wright commissioned a review of climate science by five distinguished academics that set out just how non-frightening the facts of climate change are: slowly rising temperatures, mainly at night in winter and in the north, correspondingly less in daytime in summer and in the tropics where most people live, accompanied by a very slow rise in sea level showing no definite acceleration, minimal if any measurable change in the average frequency and ferocity of storms, droughts and floods – and record low levels of deaths from such causes. Plus a general increase in green vegetation, caused by the extra carbon dioxide.
In the 21st century, there is one thing that all countries and their governments, regardless of ideology, have in common: The standard of living in that country is directly a function of the availability of electricity.
In the 21st century, there is one thing that all countries and their governments, regardless of ideology, have in common: The standard of living in that country is directly a function of the availability of electricity.
Without the availability of reliable, continuous, uninterruptible, abundant electricity to power factory machinery and keep homes, offices, hospitals, and schools warm and bright, that society will suffer in its productivity and its aspirations.
In this country, the demand for electricity is expected to increase by 25% in the next 25 years. This increase is a function of the demands of an expanding economy and a growing population. And that 25% does not account for artificial intelligence or electric vehicle battery charging demands, which might add an additional 60% increase.
Besides being reliable and abundant, there are other traits that are desired in the sources of electricity.
Available on demand 24/7
Safe for both the public and the electrical plant workers
Relatively inexpensive
Environmentally benign with minimal footprint requirements and zero emissions
Recently, the concern for the environment has resulted in the promotion of so-called renewables, such as solar panels and wind turbines. Thus, a look at the traits of solar panels and wind turbines.
Without government subsidies, wind and solar sources of electricity cannot compete with other sources.
Of the more than 400,000 wind turbines installed worldwide, virtually NONE has been financed solely with private investment money.
They are 100% dependent on favorable weather conditions; thus, their electricity is NOT available on demand 24/7.
Wind and solar, like hydro, coal, natural gas, and nuclear, are ALL built with the products, components, and equipment that are made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, thus all electricity comes AFTER oil.
Massive Land Use Requirements: Wind and solar power require up to 10 times more land per unit of electricity than coal or natural gas.
Wildlife and Habitat Impacts: Wind turbines are linked to habitat fragmentation and harm to bird, bat, and potentially whale populations, while solar farms displace wildlife and disrupt migratory patterns.
Material and Mining Concerns: Solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries depend heavily on critical minerals often mined in countries with poor environmental and labor standards.
Limited Lifespan and Recycling Challenges: Wind and solar infrastructure have shorter lifespans (20–25 years) than natural gas (40 years) or nuclear plants (40–80 years).
Perhaps the most damming aspect of wind and solar as a source of electricity is their unreliability. A so-called “dunkelflaute” in Germany reduces the installed wind and solar capacities of 174 GW to only one GW, and this can last for several days.
Unlike nuclear plants, neither wind nor solar is required to pay for its disposition or clean-up upfront. Decommissioned materials are rarely recycled and often end up in landfills. Ratepayers will have to pick up that bill after their useful life.
The merits of nuclear power to produce electricity overshadow government-subsidized electricity generation from wind and solar.
Nuclear production of electricity is environmentally benign, reliable, affordable, land-efficient, and generates zero emissions.
Nuclear power is energy-dense by comparison to other sources of electricity. One fuel pellet, the size of a finger to its first bend (approximately one inch long and a little more than a quarter inch in diameter), equals 120 gallons of oil, one ton of coal, or seventeen thousand cubic feet of natural gas.
Nuclear power has no detrimental impact on the environment, with no hazardous discharges.
A major trait of nuclear-generated electricity is that it is safe.
The U.S. Navy has a 70-year record with ALL its aircraft carriers and submarines being powered by nuclear, with no fatalities or accidents.
No American citizen has ever been harmed by nuclear, something no other energy source can say.
The operators, engineers, maintenance personnel, and others at the nuclear plants are the most tightly screened and monitored workforce anywhere.
They are highly trained and value safety and quality over production, schedule, and cost.
They practice what is called a Safety Conscious Work Environment (SCWE), where any employee can bring up any issue without fear of retribution and with confidence that the concern or suggestion will be evaluated on only its merit.
The plant design and work practices at Chernobyl would not be licensed or permitted in the United States.
The Institute for Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), created after Three Mile Island, has promoted the sharing of best practices and lessons learned between the nuclear utilities.
INPO provides second oversight in addition to scrutiny of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Additionally, all nuclear power plants must pass reviews by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) proving they can respond and mitigate a highly unlikely nuclear accident.
A key advantage of nuclear power plants is their long life. Roughly three times longer than wind or solar. The wind turbines max out at ten years of life.
That so-called nuclear waste, commonly referred to as Slightly Used Nuclear Fuel (SUNF), is a non-issue since there is very little of it produced during power operation. The spent fuel is presently being safely stored on various nuclear plant sites.
The nuclear fuel assemblies are removed from the reactor with approximately 95% of their uranium load still available. This is done based on very conservative calculations of irradiation stress of the zirconium rods that house the fuel pellets. The fuel assemblies are removed before they can experience stress cracking and leak fission fragments to the primary coolant. (Even if that were to happen, there are still two more barriers between the primary system and atmosphere.)
When we finally start to recycle and reprocess the spent fuel assemblies (SUNF) using fast-reactor technology, most of the uranium and actinides will be converted to power and very valuable, short-lived fission products. Fast-reactor recycling of SUNF will extend our fuel supplies for several centuries. When adding the stockpiled, depleted uranium as fast-reactor fuel, power production could be extended almost indefinitely.
The next generation of reactors, usually referred to as GEN IV reactors, provides additional safety considerations over the present GEN III reactor designs. Passive shutdown characteristics, much lower operating pressures, and even the use of eutectic primary cooling should make these reactors much less expensive due to less robust containments and fewer redundant safety systems. Applications to Small Modular Reactor (SMR), factory construction and assembly, underground construction, and other considerations should lower costs considerably. Reducing the time to operation will increase the realization of the revenue stream.
There are several challenges, including enhancing enrichment capabilities, domestic uranium mining, revitalizing the supply chain, and ensuring quality assurance, that would be solved if we were to just go to a free enterprise system. Additionally, streamlining regulations, augmenting the workforce, and educating the public about the benefits and safety of nuclear power would be beneficial.
The one thing that is needed is a cogent, consistent, coherent national electricity strategy, a plan that bridges regime changes and has bipartisan support. Our leaders need to recognize the importance of an electricity strategy that supports a robust, stable, and resilient electrical grid and electricity supply to our overall well-being and security. Nuclear-generated electricity, which is fundamental to a secure future and an increasing standard of living for America, is by far the best choice, but the biggest detriment (other than the NRC) is government involvement.
Thank You, Mr. President!
Trump’s masterclasses move not to send U.S. delegation, blamed (credited) for the failure of UN climate summit COP30! POLITICO reported that the ‘U.S. absence allowed’ BRICS nations “to team up with petrostates, isolating the more green-oriented European Union and refusing to countenance even a reiteration of past deals to end fossil fuels.”
Trump’s masterclasses move not to send U.S. delegation, blamed (credited) for the failure of UN climate summit COP30! POLITICO reported that the ‘U.S. absence allowed’ BRICS nations “to team up with petrostates, isolating the more green-oriented European Union and refusing to countenance even a reiteration of past deals to end fossil fuels.”
The UN COP30 failure was so spectacular that even the mainstream media could not paper over it. POLITICO cited a European government official asking: ‘What the f*ck are we even doing here?’ A great question indeed.
I have attended in-person 21 out of the past 23 international UN climate/environmental summits. I can declare that after spending a week in Brazil at COP30, it was the biggest UN climate sh*t-shows ever! President Trump chose not to send an official U.S. delegation to the UN climate summit for the first time in its history.
COP30 morphed into Clear-Cut30 as tens of thousands of acres of Amazon rainforest were cleared for the summit’s climate highway. Massive energy-intensive cruise ships served as temporary hotels for delegates, while hamburgers, chicken, and other beef products were sold out at the UN food court (why were there no insects on the menu?!), and the venue suffered from leaking and crumbling infrastructure.
The conference morphed into CRAP30 when the toilets failed, with world leaders going hours without access to bathrooms, and eventually leading to long lines with no toilet paper allowed in the conference center toilets. The conference then morphed into Combustion30 as it succumbed to a massive fire that shut down the entire summit. A blaze spread through the hastily built temporary venue, which felt like a windowless circus tent inside.
With any U.S. delegation absent from the meeting, China reveled in playing the role of “climate hero” in order to suck up all of the gullible countries that are deluded enough to empower China further. China sent the second largest delegation to the UN climate Summit in Brazil and had a massive pavillion complete with Chinese flags, books by Xi Jinping and standing room only media events — thus proving accurate the 2012 tweet by Trump warning that ‘global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.’
Bill Gates’ newfound climate skepticism also loomed over the summit. Gates declared just days before COP30, that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” and rejected a “doomsday outlook. This angred Al Gore, who showed up in Brazil to call Gates ‘silly’ and declared Gates a bully victim of President Trump.
Despite the entire UN climate agenda warning about the evils and the huge carbon footprint of air-conditioning, Bloomberg News quoted a top UN official screaming for colder air-conditioning at the summit. You would think that the UN, which is trying to manage energy economies centuries into the future, would’ve been able to plan a climate summit that included adequate air-conditioning, functioning toilets, and insects on the menu.
UN climate agenda flushed ‘down the toilet’
President Trump has seemingly left the global climate movement in shambles. The NY Times in September 2025, revealed that the “‘old climate-activism playbook no longer works” and that under Trump, the climate movement has entered “a uniquely bleak time…the future is cloudier than ever.”
Longtime environmental activist Denis Hayes lamented: “Everything that I’ve worked on in my entire professional life has gone down the toilet in the last six months.”
But, as we celebrate a failing UN climate process, we must also recognize that it may come back, just like Jason in any Friday the 13th film. President Trump needs to finish off the UN climate agenda with one more bold action: Withdraw from the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or the Rio Earth Summit Treaty signed by then-GOP President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Vacating this treaty would give permanence to Trump’s agenda and free America from this 33-year-old UN climate terror campaign.
As POLITICO reported on May 14, 2025:“During his first term, Trump declined to exit the UNFCCC, which the Democratic-led Senate had ratified during George H.W. Bush’s presidency following the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro.”
“If Trump does pull the country out of the framework, it could be difficult for a new president to undo. Joining a treaty requires a two-thirds Senate vote — a high hurdle even in less polarized times,” Politico reported.
Trump 2.0’s climate legacy could become permanent, making it very difficult for a future President, AOC, or Gavin Newsom to get the U.S. back into the UN climate fiasco.
Mr. President, tear up this treaty!
Trump 2.0 is poised to strike a fatal blow to the climate hold that has been oppressing America these past 33 years.
While the teeth knashing over the COP FLOP continues, we must never forget: Failure of a UN climate summit is great news for humanity!
Marc Morano is Publisher of CFACT’s Climate Depot and Former Senior Staff U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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