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.
“… trace toxic metals like lead and cadmium can pollute soil and water if mishandled …”
India’s solar boom faces a hidden waste problem
Nikita Yadav
India’s rapid solar energy expansion is widely hailed as a success. But without a plan to manage the waste it will generate, how clean is the transition?
…
Solar growth has cut India’s reliance on coal. Though thermal and other non-renewables still supply over half of installed capacity, solar now contributes more than 20%. Yet the achievement carries a challenge: while clean in use, solar panels can pose environmental risks if not properly managed.
Solar panels are mostly recyclable, made of glass, aluminium, silver, and polymers – but trace toxic metals like lead and cadmium can pollute soil and water if mishandled.
…
A new study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) estimates that India could generate more than 11 million tonnes of solar waste by 2047. Managing this would require almost 300 dedicated recycling facilities and an investment of $478 (£362m) over the next two decades.
…
Damaged or discarded panels often end up in landfills or with unauthorised recyclers, where unsafe methods can release toxic materials. The BBC has contacted India’s renewable energy ministry for comment.
How insane is this? Three decades after lead was banned in gasoline, renewables have re-introduced the risk of lead contamination back into the environment through the challenge of disposing of millions of tons of e-waste.
Given illegal dumping is more likely to occur in rural areas, a disproportionate amount of that solar panel heavy metal contamination could end up in the human food chain.
Of course you don’t have to dump the panels in the countryside. In cities there is another cheap and nasty way to dispose of solar panels. Non-recyclable solar panel silicon, which contains much of the heavy metal contamination, can be burned in an industrial incinerator providing the incinerator temperature is above 750F. The ash from solar panels would look like high quality construction sand – the heavy metal contamination would not be obvious. I can easily imagine such contaminated sand being deviously inserted into the construction industry as cut price building material, ending up in play ground sand pits or being used to build homes and schools.
Surely it is time to review this ghastly new threat to our children’s health, before we end up with 10s of millions of tons of contaminated solar panel waste poisoning our kids.
As the year draws to a close, the guardians of climate orthodoxy have once again unleashed their ritualistic howls of indignation at the actions of the Trump administration. Last week’s op-ed in The Guardian, Bob Ward and Michael Mann—attack dogs of the alarmist establishment—likened the US government’s decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to tyranny, “paid for” by fossil fuel interests. Their op-ed opens with the astonishing claim that the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin “would have understood and even appreciated” Trump’s actions.
As the year draws to a close, the guardians of climate orthodoxy have once again unleashed their ritualistic howls of indignation at the actions of the Trump administration. Last week’s op-ed in The Guardian, Bob Ward and Michael Mann—attack dogs of the alarmist establishment—likened the US government’s decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to tyranny, “paid for” by fossil fuel interests. Their op-ed opens with the astonishing claim that the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin “would have understood and even appreciated” Trump’s actions.
They accuse President Trump of suppressing climate science, evoking the spectre of Lysenkoism, that infamous episode where ideology trumped empirical inquiry under Stalin’s regime. The irony is exquisite even if lost on its progenitors. Here are two figures who have spent their careers calling for the cancelling of dissenters, now projecting their own sins onto a political leader intent on liberating science from ideological captivity.
An Orwellian Malignancy
This latest salvo is no aberration but a symptom of a deeper malaise. The climate alarmist narrative, much like its twin in the COVID-19 hysteria, relies on a censorship complex that brands any deviation as “misinformation.” Ward, a fixture in the environmental NGO circuit, has long specialized in ad hominem attacks on respected academics like Richard Lindzen and Richard Tol, dismissing their peer-reviewed critiques as heresy. Mann, infamous for his “hockey stick” graph that conveniently erased historical climate variability to fabricate a crisis, has faced courtroom rebukes for his litigious zeal. In his defamation suits, judges have accused him and his legal team of misleading tactics, underscoring the fraudulence of his claims. Yet, in the pages of The Guardian—that reliable echo chamber for green ideologues—the pair inverts reality, portraying Trump’s defunding of activist institutions as censorship, when it is precisely the opposite.
Consider the economic and institutional realities underpinning this charade. NCAR, after over five decades, has devolved into a taxpayer-funded propaganda mill, churning out models that predict apocalyptic futures while ignoring the stubborn facts of atmospheric physics and human adaptation. The Trump administration’s move to shutter it aligns with a broader push to restore scientific integrity, as outlined in the president’s “Gold Standard Science “executive order. This directive mandates transparency in federally funded research, ensuring that models and data are replicable and free from the biases that plague alarmist projections. Far from Stalinist suppression, this is a reclamation of science from the clutches of unelected bureaucrats and their NGO allies, who funnel billions into “climate education” grants that invariably promote one-sided advocacy. NOAA, for instance, routinely awarded multimillion-dollar sums to nonprofits peddling green dogma, all under the guise of environmental stewardship.
The parallels with the COVID-19 debacle are striking, revealing how the misinformation label serves as a blunt instrument for silencing debate across scientific domains. Just as climate skeptics are tarred as “deniers,” COVID dissenters were branded spreaders of falsehoods. Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya, a leading epidemiologist, recently highlighted this hubris in a post on X: the notion that a cabal of bureaucrats and activist scientists can infallibly discern truth from error on complex matters is not just arrogant—it’s delusional. Bhattacharya himself endured censorship orchestrated by Anthony Fauci who among others in the medical establishment pressured social media platforms to throttle views challenging lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
Across the Atlantic, the European Union’s censorship regime under European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen exemplifies this technocratic overreach. The unelected Eurocrat boasts of safeguarding free speech against “harmful and illegal activities” online with its Digital Services Act. It aims to restrict media platforms which host “disinformation” and critical views on mass immigration, the Ukraine conflict, or the ruinous costs of the green agenda in Europe.
In a rant that would impress Orwell, Ms. Von der Leyen speaks about how “pre-bunking” is preferable to “de-bunking” alleged untruths and where alleged “misinformation” is a virus:
“…we need to build up societal immunity around information manipulation, because research has shown that pre-bunking is much more successful than debunking. Pre-bunking is basically the opposite of debunking. In short, prevention is preferable to cure. Perhaps if you think of information manipulation as a virus—instead of treating an infection once it has taken hold, that is debunking—it’s much better to vaccinate so that the body is inoculated.”
Where have we heard that vaccination/inoculation story before? Perhaps we should not digress into Ms. Von der Leyen’s missing SMS phone messages which sealed the EU’s deal for 1.8 billion doses of corona “vaccine” costing €35 billion negotiated with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
In New Zealand, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern went further, declaring government sources the sole arbiters of COVID truth, effectively criminalizing legitimate critiques from sceptical doctors and scientists upholding their Hippocratic oath. This Orwellian stance—where state-approved narratives are sacrosanct—mirrors the climate arena, where questioning net-zero fantasies invites professional ruin.
The Trumpian Pushback
The EU’s Digital Services Act plans to coerce social media giants into suppressing content that challenges Brussels’ orthodoxies, leading to a chilling effect on open discourse throughout the world. Earlier in the month, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s X $140 million for “failing to comply” with regulations. But it is now a Trumpian world which frustrates Eurocrats to no end. America’s commitment to First Amendment principles clashes with Europe’s slide into regulatory authoritarianism. The US house judiciary committee describes the digital regulations as censorship which is “largely one-sided, almost uniformly targeting political conservatives.”
The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio shot back last week:
“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship. Today, @StateDept will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”
The U.S. state department’s sanctions on NGO leaders and a former EU official involved in these efforts underscore the geopolitical rift. Under Secretary Sarah Rogers detailed the individuals and the reasons why they have been barred. On the US state ban list are Imran Ahmed (Centre for Countering Digital Hate), Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg (HateAid), Thierry Breton (former EU Commissioner) as well as Clare Melford (Global Disinformation Index).
Let’s go through each of these censors. Thierry Breton was a key architect of the Digital Services Act. In August 2024, as European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Digital Services, he issued a letter to threaten Elon Musk ahead of his live stream interview with candidate Trump who was campaigning for his second term. The hubris of an EU functionary to warn Mr. Musk that his platform could be charged for amplifying harmful content in the EU can only be described as bizarre.
Undersecretary Rogers accused the UK citizen ImranAhmed of collaborating “with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens” in a social media post on December 23rd, writing that his organization published the “infamous ‘disinformation dozen’ report” that spurred a campaign to de-platform those questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines including the current Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. . “Leaked documents from CCDH show the organization listed ‘kill Musk’s Twitter,’ and ’trigger EU and UK regulatory action’ as priorities…The organization supports the UK’s Online Safety Act and EU’s Digital Services Act to expand censorship in Europe and around the world.” It is interesting and not coincidental that Imran Ahmed’s CCDH was founded by Morgan Sweeny, Kier Starmer’s chief adviser. Clare Melford is the founder of the Global Disinformation Index, another British NGO that vigorously pursues anti-“hate-speech” activism, in fact hunting down anyone who has views different from the official dogma on climate change or so-called anti-vaxxers
Anna Lena von Hodenberg is the leader and founder of Hate Aid, a German NGO founded after the 2017 German federal elections to counter conservative groups such as the AfD. Ms. Anna and her NGO is an official “trusted flagger” under the EU’s digital services act. Clare Melford. Ahmed is the CEO of The Center for Countering Digital Hate, and Melford is the founder of the Global Disinformation Index, both two entities extremely active in anti-“hate-speech” activism, in fact hunting down anyone who has views different from the official dogma on climate change or so-called anti-vaxxers,
Morally Bankruptcy of the Eurocrats
Von der Leyen’s pronouncements on “inoculated information” ring hollow amid Europe’s deindustrialization, where energy policies driven by climate ideology have shuttered factories, spiked power prices, and eroded competitiveness. Germany’s Energiewende, once hailed as a model, now stands as a cautionary tale of economic self-harm, with manufacturing output shares plummeting and GDP growth stagnating.
At the heart of this EU-led censorship complex lies a modern Lysenkoism, where ideology masquerades as science. Today’s climate Lysenkoists similarly dismiss empirical inconveniences: satellite data showing no acceleration in sea-level rise, historical records of globally warmer periods like the Medieval Warm Period, or the economic models demonstrating that net-zero targets would cost trillions while yielding negligible climate benefits. But Eurocrats will condemn as “misinformation” self-evident arguments that cheap, reliable energy is the bedrock of human welfare. Witness Asia’s ascent, where coal, oil and gas have fueled GDP growth rates averaging 7% over decades, slashing poverty from 60% to under 5% in regions like East Asia.
The institutional incentives behind climate alarmism are pernicious. Multilateral agencies like the IMF and World Bank, alongside green lobbies, perpetuate myths of “fossil fuel subsidies“ that distort markets, penalizing hydrocarbons while subsidizing intermittent renewables to the tune of $1.3 trillion annually globally. In Africa, the push for “renewable leapfrogging“ ignores the continent’s dire need for baseload power, condemning millions to energy poverty under the banner of climate justice. Western elites, insulated from the consequences, preach degrowth while developing nations in BRICS+ reject such masochism, opting for pragmatic energy mixes that prioritize growth over virtue-signaling.
The contradictions of the censors of “misinformation” are glaring: alarmists decry “misinformation” while propagating doomsday scenarios that fail to materialize—recall the 50 years of apocalyptic predictions. Europe’s precipitous industrial decline exposes the folly of subordinating energy policies to ideology. In the U.S., the virtue signalling ESG investment drive — pushed by BlackRock’s Larry Fink among others — which funnelled trillions into underperforming green assets, is unravelling as returns lag and lawsuits mount over fiduciary breaches.
A New Year’s Gift
Yet, there is cause for optimism in this twilight of technocratic hubris. President Trump’s re-election signals a pivot toward evidence-based policy, unshackling science from the misinformation inquisition. By defunding activist enclaves like NCAR and enforcing transparency via executive order, the administration paves the way for genuine inquiry. Imagine a world where debates on climate sensitivity, the role of solar cycles, or the costs of adaptation are conducted openly, without fear of cancellation.
As Jay Bhattarcharya reminds us, free speech and replication as the standard of truth are necessary conditions for science to flourish. We need rational argument and data, not the censorship of state-defined “misinformation”. The US state department censoring the censors is good news as the New Year beckons.
A PRIVATE Members’ Bill is currently wending its way through Parliament. Called the Climate and Nature Bill (CAN), it threatens to wreck the UK economy, damage lives and undermine democracy.
We continue our year ending tradition of publishing our top ten most read articles of the year. At number three is TCW’s wonderful regular climate sceptic correspondent Paul Homewood and his most popular post of the year. This article was first published on January 10, 2025.
A PRIVATE Members’ Bill is currently wending its way through Parliament. Called the Climate and Nature Bill (CAN), it threatens to wreck the UK economy, damage lives and undermine democracy.
And that’s just for starters! It makes Theresa May’s Net Zero legislation look like a walk in the park.
Private Members’ Bills rarely turn into law, but worryingly this one already has the public support of 192 MPs – you can check the list here. And as we know, Theresa May’s Net Zero legislation passed with barely a murmur, despite having no democratic mandate.
Originally the brainchild of the then Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, the Bill is due for its Second Reading on January 24. It is based on the premise that the current legislation mandating Net Zero by 2050 is inadequate. It calls for UK emissions to be rapidly cut ‘in line with the 1.5C target’. In effect, this means cutting emissions by about 90 per cent in the next ten years.
If passed, it would oblige the Energy Secretary to create a new climate change strategy and present it to Parliament within a year. The Government would be required by law to ‘limit the UK’s total CO2 emissions to no more than its proportionate share of the IPCC’s remaining global carbon budget, for a 67 per cent chance of limiting heating to 1.5 deg C’.
Worse still, it lays down that imported emissions are accounted for as well, not just territorial ones, ie those that occur within our geographical borders, as at present. When all emissions are counted, including shipping and aviation, UK emissions have fallen by only about 23 per cent since 1990, the Bill’s proponents say. This is much less than the 48 per cent claimed for territorial under the current system.
Given that territorial emissions are little more than half total emissions, such a target physically could not be achieved without radical changes to the UK economy, energy system and people’s lives. We would have to do without most of what we currently import, for example.
To meet the Bill’s demands, total emissions, including imports, would need to be cut by two thirds by 2030, and virtually eliminated in ten years’ time.
It does not seem to have occurred to the Bill’s supporters that if we eliminated UK emissions tomorrow it would not have the slightest effect, given that the rest of the world is still increasing emissions year-on-year. Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, for instance, world emissions of CO2 have increased by 7 per cent, while ours have fallen.
The Bill would make it law that both the production and import of fossil fuels must end ‘as rapidly as possible’. Imports of food would have to be virtually eliminated as well since food emissions account for a third of our total, and we import half our food.
Given that the UK would also have to shut down most of its meat farming, it is not clear exactly where we would get our food from. Apparently, the Bill’s proponents believe we can live on ‘low carbon fruit, veg, nuts, pulses and grains’ instead!
One of the most insidious parts of the Bill lays down a legally enforceable role for a ‘Climate and Nature Assembly’, a body similar to the Climate Assembly set up in 2019. This body is supposed to reflect the views of the public. In reality, the 2019 version took a handful of ordinary citizens, brainwashed them with the help of ‘experts’ and then presented their conclusions as ‘public opinion’.
We already have a system which gives the public the chance to offer their views – it is called elections. But this new Bill would go further. The Assemblies would not just be advisory. The Bill states: ‘The Secretary of State must include in the strategy all recommendations of the Assembly that have the support of 66 per cent of its members, where those recommendations are also jointly proposed by . . . the Climate Change Committee.’
Such a proposal would severely undermine democracy by taking away the rights of voters to make these choices and tie the hands of future Parliaments.
As the Bill also states: ‘If the Government fails to deliver a strategy that meets the Bill’s objectives and fundamental principles, the Government can be challenged in the High Court through judicial review’. Therein lies the real threat. If this Bill becomes law, it will be activist judges who will be making decisions, not elected politicians.
If all of this was not bad enough, the Bill not only wants to lay down laws about climate change, it also proposes exactly the same for ‘Nature’. In its own words, it prioritises ‘nature’ in decision-making and calls to restore and expand natural eco-systems. Any development or activity that threatens nature must prioritise the protection of nature.
And we must also address the UK’s entire ecological footprint at home and overseasby accounting for the ‘destruction of nature’.
The Bill’s supporters say that the UK’s ‘environmental footprint’ must be reduced by three-quarters by 2030.
Reducing something tangible like emissions is one thing. But how on Earth do you measure an environmental footprint (whatever that is)? It opens the door for any crackpot green outfit to sue the Government, and any left-wing judge to make whatever crazy decisions he wants.
Nobody voted for this lunacy, yet 192 MPs plan to vote for the Bill, and no doubt many more will join them. Even if this Bill fails, the policies it contains will surely find their way into public policy sooner or later.
Net Zero is already doing great harm, but if this Bill becomes law, the country will be unrecognisable in ten years’ time. There will be energy and food shortages, industry will be decimated, private transport and foreign holidays a thing of the past. What we take for granted today will be unaffordable for most.
And there will be nothing we can do about it.
Zero Hour, the campaign group for the Climate and Nature Bill, have more detail of what is in store for us here.
We have been fortunate to witness the largest climate event to occur on the planet since the advent of global satellite records, and possibly the largest event since the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. It is clearly a naturally occurring, externally forced climate event. However, mainstream climate scientists are not treating it appropriately. This is because climate science does not function like other sciences and is subject to strong confirmation bias. The first step to learning from the 2023 event is accepting its exceptional nature, which many fail to do.
We have been fortunate to witness the largest climate event to occur on the planet since the advent of global satellite records, and possibly the largest event since the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. It is clearly a naturally occurring, externally forced climate event. However, mainstream climate scientists are not treating it appropriately. This is because climate science does not function like other sciences and is subject to strong confirmation bias. The first step to learning from the 2023 event is accepting its exceptional nature, which many fail to do.
An externally forced extraordinary event
If you are still not convinced of the extremely anomalous nature of the climatic event of 2023, let’s review some of the events of 2023-24. Taken together, they make it clear. The following list is incomplete and comes from my notes:
Extraordinary ocean warming that models can’t explain.[1]
31 atmospheric river events in the western US from November 2022 to March 2023. Nine made landfall in California marking the record in the 70-year database.[4]
The snowiest season in 71 years occurred in California after a 1-in-54-year event.[5]
NYC had the least snowy season on record, breaking a 50-year record on latest first snow.[6]
Cyclone Freddy in the Indian Ocean was the longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever.[7]
ITCZ displacement and unusual rains in the Sahara in 2024.[8]
The first half of the 2024 hurricane season was surprisingly quiet, and models can’t explain it.[9]
In 2023, 42% of the globe experienced heat exceeding two standard deviations. Louisiana, for example, had its hottest summer in 129 years of records.[10]
2023 was the warmest year on record, and 2024 was even warmer.
In October 2024, the North Polar Vortex was the weakest in 40 years. The three sudden stratospheric warming events that occurred in the same season are a one-in-250-year event according to models.[11]
The biggest global low cloud cover anomaly ever recorded occurred in 2023.[12]
Figure 1. ERA5 Zonal-mean anomaly in low cloud cover suggests that 2023 planetary albedo may have been the lowest since at least 1940.12
No one seems to be connecting the dots indicating that a series of extraordinary atmospheric events took place in 2023–24. These events suggest that an external factor significantly impacted atmospheric circulation. Climate science focuses heavily on a relatively uninformative and uncertain parameter called surface temperature anomaly, which is the variation in the average of the daily maximum and minimum temperatures across widely disparate areas. Nevertheless, even this inadequate parameter reflects the unusual nature of the 2023 event.
Figure 2. The 2023 climate event can be seen most clearly in the global sea surface temperature anomaly (NOAA, 60°N–60°S, baseline 2021). It began in December 2022. By November 2025, 90% of the warming from the 2023 event has disappeared.
Many 2023 temperatures were not only record temperatures, but they also broke the previous records by the largest margin in the datasets, as I pointed in the article, I wrote for Climate Etc. in July 2024 “Hunga Tonga volcano: impact on record warming”. Rantanen and Laaksonen (2024) selected September 2023 in ERA5 reanalysis as the 2023 record warming month by the largest margin and, using the CMIP6 ensemble for the likely transient climate response, as recommended, found only a 0.2 % probability that it could be due to the unforced internal variability and the forced greenhouse gas-induced trend.10 They conclude that an external forcing is required and point to the Hunga Tonga eruption and the removal of sulfur pollution from ships as possibilities.
Rounding up the usual suspects in an unusual crime
One might think that the lack of precedents for such an unusual event would make scientists skeptical of the factors affecting the climate over the last hundred years, since nothing similar appears in the records. However, to publish another paper, scientists must explain what happened, and the models are incapable of providing explanations outside their programming. This programming obviously does not include extraordinary events of which we had no prior knowledge.
Therefore, it has been argued that El Niño in 2023 may have been one of the main causes. However, in my article of 2024 I presented two compelling reasons why the 2023 El Niño cannot be held responsible. First, the warming of the globe oceans occurred simultaneously with El Niño, rather than subsequently, as was the case in previous Niños. Second, unlike all other Niños except the one caused by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1992, the PDO was in a negative state during the 2023 El Niño.
Despite supporting ENSO’s involvement in what happened, Minobe et al. (2025) provide further arguments.[13] First, they demonstrate that the extraordinary warming event of 2023 started in the Southern Ocean in November 2022, which was four months prior to the tropical Pacific’s warming and the onset of El Niño. A consequence cannot precede its cause. Second, they demonstrate that the Earth’s energy imbalance anomaly between 2022 and 2023 was over 75% larger than during the onset of similar recent El Niño events. This unprecedented event first impacted the top of the atmosphere and began in 2022. Furthermore, the set of atmospheric and oceanic indicators included in the multivariate El Niño index (MEI) suggests that the 2023 El Niño event was not particularly intense. An El Niño event like many others cannot cause an unprecedented event.
Figure 3. a) Global top of the atmosphere anomalies of shortwave (downward) and longwave (downward) radiation and Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI). A strong increase in shortwave radiation started in 2022. Global warming caused a strong increase in upward longwave radiation in 2023 in advance of an average intensity El Niño. b) Monthly anomaly time series of sea surface temperature in selected regions of the Southern Ocean and the Tropical Pacific. The anomaly started around November 2022 in the Southern Ocean, about 4 months before El Niño started in the Pacific.13
Those who believe ENSO played a significant role in the 2023 event point to the three years of La Niña preceding it. They claim this overloaded the heat system, causing it to explode with the 2023 El Niño event. However, there are precedents for three consecutive Niñas in the records, in 1974-1976 and 1999-2001, yet nothing like the 2023 event occurred. While explanations can be sought as to why the three Niñas produced such a different result this time, given that things never repeat exactly the same way, these explanations are still ad hoc with no evidence to back them up.
More surprising is the argument that the event was caused by anthropogenic factors. Anthropogenic forcing is small and constant, and can only produce noticeable changes over long periods of time, decades or centuries. Interannual changes, by definition, are due to natural factors or internal variability. As an example, after 50 years of global warming, it is still unclear what changes we can expect in the ENSO system if the warming continues for another 50 years.
One exception to this long-term anthropogenic forcing is the reduction in sulfur emissions due to the maritime fuel regulations that came into force in 2020, and was therefore abrupt. However, we can rule this out as a cause of the 2023 event because the reduction is permanent, whereas the ocean warming that occurred in 2023 was essentially reversed in 2024 and 2025 (see Figure 2).
Most scientists are ignoring the cooling that has taken place since the 2023 event.
The truth is that climate scientists have much more difficulty explaining cooling than warming when CO2 levels increase. This inherent bias embedded in the models probably indicates that there are fundamental aspects of the climate that are not well understood. This may explain why the 2023 warming generated a multitude of headlines and articles, while the 2024 and 2025 cooling is characterized by scientists’ silence in the face of something equally spectacular.
For example, the annual scientific reports titled “10 New Insights in Climate Science” by the Future Earth organization, publisher of the journal Anthropocene, are worth highlighting.[14] Two of the ten insights in each of the 2023, 2024, and 2025 reports refer to abrupt warming. However, despite cooling beginning in early 2024, no article refers to it.
It is difficult to find any mention of ocean cooling. In 2024, New Scientist magazine reported that a part of the Atlantic Ocean was cooling at a record speed:
“Over the past three months, temperatures in that part of the Atlantic cooled off more rapidly than at any time in records extending back to 1982. This sudden shift is perplexing because the strong trade winds that normally drive such cooling have not developed, says Franz Philip Tuchen at the University of Miami in Florida. ‘We’ve gone through the list of possible mechanisms, and nothing checks the box so far.’”[15]
We can add ocean cooling as another anomaly that remains unexplained in terms of its magnitude, speed, and cause.
When an El Niño event transitions to a La Niña event, the equatorial Pacific usually cools rapidly. However, the cooling in 2024 was global. Although La Niña conditions occurred in the winter of 2024–2025, they were not intense enough and long enough to qualify as an actual La Niña event. In other words, the tremendous cooling of the planet’s oceans has included the equatorial Pacific, but the equatorial Pacific has not induced it.
The only known extraordinary factor is the eruption of Hunga Tonga.
According to Occam’s razor, a climatic event of unparalleled magnitude in modern records requires an exceptional cause. The factors responsible for normal climate variability are insufficient. The only extraordinary factor preceding the 2023 event was the explosion of the Hunga Tonga underwater volcano. The 150 megatons of water vapor that it released into the stratosphere are without precedent in our records. We do not know all the effects this may have had on the climate. Eruptions that reach the stratosphere have radiative, chemical, and dynamic effects. However, only the first two are well known.
There are several aspects of the Tambora eruption in April 1815 that scientists have not yet explained satisfactorily. First, the effects were delayed, as the anomalies that led to the year without a summer in 1816 did not begin until 15 months after the eruption. The usual explanation is that atmospheric dynamics delayed the radiative effects in the Northern Hemisphere. However, this explanation conflicts with the second unexplained aspect: the climatic effect on the Northern Hemisphere was much greater than on the Southern Hemisphere. The cause of this inequality between the hemispheres is unknown since volcanic aerosols and their radiative effects are distributed across both hemispheres in a tropical eruption.
Figure 4. The inability of models to reproduce the climatic effects of large volcanic eruptions calls into question the reliability of their diagnosis that the Hunga Tonga eruption had little effect on the surface climate. a) All models reproduce a cooling effect in the southern hemisphere as a result of the 1815 Tambora eruption, but this effect is not supported by evidence.[16]b) The models greatly exaggerate the cooling of sea temperatures that occurred as a result of the 1815 Tambora eruption and a previous one in 1809. The observations (in black) show a much smaller cooling.[17]
Climate models do not adequately reproduce the effects of the 1815 Tambora eruption, suggesting that dynamic atmospheric changes caused by stratospheric eruptions or other factors have a much greater impact on climate than previously thought. It is striking that the evolution of the ocean temperature anomaly generally coincides with the evolution of water vapor anomalies in extratropical middle-stratospheric latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere but not in the entire stratosphere.
Figure 5. The global sea surface temperature anomaly (NOAA, 60°N–60°S, baseline 2021) is shown in red over a background image of the water vapor anomaly in the stratosphere at 45°N.
Because models cannot adequately incorporate the effects of stratospheric eruptions on atmospheric circulation dynamics, the conclusion that the Hunga Tonga eruption had minimal effects on the surface climate is not convincing.[18] This conclusion is based primarily on knowledge of the radiative properties of water vapor. Studies support a relationship between these eruptions and changes in global atmospheric circulation, the polar vortex, El Niño–Southern Oscillation, evaporation, and cloud cover.
Without a doubt, we know that the climatic event of 2023 was caused by a drastic decrease in global cloud cover, the largest in at least 40 years (see Figure 1). This reduction caused the planet to absorb more solar energy and warm up. However, we do not know what controls changes in clouds. It’s astonishing that we claim to understand the cause of recent climate change yet remain ignorant of such a fundamental aspect.
Clouds cannot form without evaporation. In their recent work, Fajber et al. (2023) present compelling evidence that the evaporation gradient between the tropics and the poles controls the amount of heat transported through the atmosphere.[19] However, they made the common mistake of assuming that evaporation is controlled by temperature via the Clausius–Clapeyron relation. This error stems from the assumption that wind is constant at the global level. The Clausius–Clapeyron relation is accurate at the microscopic level, at the interface between water and air. However, at the macroscopic level, wind speed has a greater impact on evaporation than temperature or humidity. In a cold, humid environment, clothes hung out to dry will dry if there is enough wind. However, few climate scientists have experience hanging clothes out to dry in the wind. Furthermore, wind speed is not constant; rather, it exhibits significant changes and opposing trends over oceans and land. These changes lead to important changes in evaporation, cloud formation, and their transport and distribution.[20]
If changes in the clouds caused the temperature changes, then we cannot use the temperature changes as the cause of the cloud changes. The most likely cause is the change in atmospheric circulation, which occurred due to the atmospheric anomalies that have taken place since the end of 2022, as discussed in Section 1.
For anyone who is not committed to the explanation of climate change due to the radiative properties of greenhouse gases, the Hunga Tonga eruption is currently the best explanation for the 2023 climate event. In July 2025, I analyzed that “if Hunga Tonga is responsible for the 2023-24 warming event, a clear prediction is that we should observe most of this warming disappear in 3-5 years.“[21] This projection does not arise from any of the other considered causes. By December 2025, four years after the eruption, this prediction had come true: the ocean temperature anomaly in November was only 0.05°C higher than in November 2021, before the eruption. 90 % of the ocean warming from the 2023 climate event has disappeared.
The greatest failure of climate science
Climate science has failed the test of an externally forced natural climate event. Most scientists who have published studies on the 2023 climate event have not recognized its nature. Any climatological manifestations of the event that do not align with the dominant consensus have been treated as either natural variability or rare events whose probability has increased due to anthropogenic climate change. No studies have addressed the climatic event in all its manifestations or analyzed its possible causes without relying on models clearly not designed to shed light on something we did not know was possible.
Rather than trying to determine the causes of the event, scientists have attempted to fit it into the dominant theory using models. In light of evidence of major natural climate change, this approach reveals its greatest flaw: the theory relies on an excessive focus on greenhouse gases and aerosols as the cause and temperature changes as the effect.
Personal note:
2026 will mark the tenth anniversary of my first post on Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog. Believe it or not, I began researching climate change in 2015 because I was concerned about its potential impact on our society. As a scientist from a different field entirely, I trusted my fellow scientists, learned societies, and scientific journal editors to evaluate the risk. As an avid reader of scientific literature from many disciplines, I immersed myself in hundreds and then thousands of papers, convinced that evidence of dramatic human-caused climate change was there. However, I came away empty-handed and profoundly skeptical of everything I had been told without ever being shown the evidence. I realized natural climate change is greatly misunderstood and insufficient effort is being done to correct that. Over these past 10 years, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to straighten out the science of climate, and I will spend 10 more years doing so if necessary. If you would like to hear more often from me, you can find me on 𝕏 @JVinos_Climate
The Green-on-Green civil war is heating up in Australia.
Experts say climate change bigger threat to biodiversity than renewable energy projects
…
As aging coal-fired power stations along Australia’s east coast reach the end of their lives, the country is looking to transition to renewable energy to secure our energy sources into the future in the face of climate change.
But what happens when these developments have the potential to hurt sensitive ecosystems or biodiversity?
Is some environmental damage an unfortunate — but unavoidable — casualty in the battle against climate change?
…
The proposed wind farm is adjacent to an internationally significant Ramsar-listed wetland and a number of national parks, sparking concerns it could pose a risk to a number of endangered birds, including the Australasian bittern, orange-bellied parrot and south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo.
…
Australian National University professor of environmental and climate change economics Frank Jotzo said renewable energy projects have a “minimal” impact on the environment, and while that’s unfortunate, they are for the greater good.
“Whatever we do, there will be some undesirable effects,” Professor Jotzo said.
“In the big picture, there’s no omelette you can make without breaking any eggs.
“Climate change is the far bigger threat to biodiversity, to our environment, agricultural systems and economy.”
There is no way to prevent mass bird deaths around wind farms. During my time as a pilot, I saw first hand how insensitive to aerial threats some birds are. Raptors are especially vulnerable. Small prey species of birds will dive for cover, but millions of years of evolution have taught large raptors they are the lords of the sky. That is why in the tragic video below the eagle doesn’t even try to get out of the way of the turbine blade, they are incapable of visualising the turbine blade is a threat. As a pilot of a light aircraft I could take evasive action, because I knew the large raptor wasn’t going to evade. Wind turbines not so much.
Here’s a thought Victoria – if you want zero carbon energy, instead of decimating sensitive wetlands, why don’t you build a few nuclear reactors?
The problem of nuclear safety has long since been solved. Even if there was a Chernobyl style accident in a modern nuclear plant, we don’t have to be stupid like the Soviets were. If Victoria followed the modern US practice of building the sarcophagus around the plant BEFORE the accident, rather than trying to cobble something together afterwards, no matter what happens to the core the radiation would be contained.
So long as Australia rejects such an obvious solution this green-on-green conflict will continue. Green energy advocates who claim you have to bulldoze nature to protect the environment vs old style environmentalists who actually care about endangered species, who after 30 years of shameful silence in the face of large-scale destruction of sensitive wilderness areas are finally finding their voices.
Anti-oil and gas advocates across the country have pursued litigation in recent years attempting to force the fossil fuel industry to pay for decades of financial damages the advocates claim were caused by climate change.
Anti-oil and gas advocates across the country have pursued litigation in recent years attempting to force the fossil fuel industry to pay for decades of financial damages the advocates claim were caused by climate change.
Several cases have been dismissed while others advanced through court systems, with some being considered before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2026. Critics of the litigation call it “woke lawfare” and an attempt to force progressive political policies via the judicial system.
Critics also argue the lawsuits threaten U.S. energy independence and, depending on outcomes, will have sweeping impacts on every American.
Here are some of those cases.
Chevron USA Inc. v. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana
On Jan. 12, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, vs. Chevron USA Inc. The case questions to what extent a state court can litigate against an oil company for its production of oil even if it obtained federal permits to produce the oil.
The litigation challenges activities of the oil companies dating back to World War II in some cases. Chevron argued the lawsuit was flawed, claiming that the activities in question were permitted, legal, and often conducted under federal direction – particularly those tied to national security during World War II.
A Plaquemines Parish jury in April ordered Chevron to pay $744 million in damages for its role in the degradation of the state’s coastal wetlands. Environmental activists celebrated the verdict. It was the first of 42 lawsuits filed since 2013 by parishes across coastal Louisiana to go to trial.
The Trump administration’s Justice Department stepped in on Chevron’s side, urging the Supreme Court to move the case from state court to federal court.
Business groups and energy advocates warned the verdict will drive jobs and investment out of Louisiana. The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry called the decision “shortsighted,” saying it would “brand Louisiana as a state that will extort the most recognizable companies on earth for billions of dollars, decades later.”
O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, told the Center Square the case seeks to score large settlements from the energy industry and stop oil production.
“The case arises from a broader campaign of woke lawfare in which activists and municipal governments seek to use courtrooms to determine what companies are allowed to produce and what consumers can buy,” Skinner said.
Suncor Energy Inc. v. Boulder
The nation’s highest court is still deciding whether it will hear arguments in Suncor Energy Inc. v. Boulder; a case to decide whether state and local governments can use nuisance laws to sue energy companies for activities that may cause climate change.
The case, originating in Colorado, centers around a City of Boulder and Boulder County lawsuit in state court against Suncor Energy claiming it misled the public in its activities that the local governments claim led to climate change effects.
Lawyers for Suncor Energy argue that allowing a case like this one to play out goes against protections in the Clean Air Act that prevent lawsuits from occurring against emitters from across state lines.
“Public nuisance can’t be used for global problems. It can be used for local problems,” Skinner told The Center Square. “That’s what it’s supposed to be used for.”
However, Skinner said many organizations that are pursuing climate change litigation are seeking to bankrupt energy companies with large monetary settlements. He said litigants will likely attempt to drain energy companies of their resources and use the funds to advocate certain ideological causes.
“These are highly ideological dark-money-funded, multi-faceted legal campaigns to bankrupt an entire industry and confiscate it for ideological reasons,” Skinner said.
City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco
Similarly, in 2020, City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco was one of the first examples of public nuisance lawsuits pursued in a state court. The city and county of Honolulu filed a lawsuit in 2020 accusing oil and gas companies, including Sunoco, Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and Shell, of misleading the public for decades about the dangers of climate change induced by burning fossil fuels.
The companies asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the case, but the court, without ruling on the merits, declined to do so in January.
While the case is based in Hawaii, Skinner said litigants there hope it will have far-reaching effects across the country.
“They’re not trying to stop behavior just in those states,” Skinner said. ”The thing that really freaks me out is how people in regular, everyday, real America are going to potentially be affected.”
The People of the State of California v. Exxon Mobil Corporation
Going a step further than Boulder and Honolulu, California Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a complaint against ExxonMobil in 2024 for what he says are its contributions to “the deluge of plastic pollution” affecting the state.
Exxon countersued, alleging “Bonta and the US Proxies – the former for political gain and the latter pawns for the Foreign Interests – have engaged in a deliberate smear campaign against ExxonMobil, falsely claiming that ExxonMobil’s effective and innovative advanced recycling technology is a ‘false promise’ and ‘not based on truth.,” American Tort Reform Foundation reported.
One of the foreign interests is IEJF, an Australian nonprofit that’s connected to an Australian mining conmpany “that competes with ExxonMobil in the low carbon solutions and energy transition markets, ATRF reported.
Skinner said the litigants in this case are attempting to significantly reduce plastic use throughout the state of California and potentially beyond.
“That’ll make your average person’s life dramatically harder, and it’ll make a lot of things a lot more expensive, and it’ll make having kids, like, brutal,” Skinner said.
Leon v. Exxon Mobil Corp.
Aside from monetary settlements, petitioners in this case also are seeking wrongful death claims against energy companies for their contributions to climate change. The case stems from a woman in Washington state who said her mother died from heat-related illness due to the exacerbated effects of climate change.
She is suing energy companies for their alleged creation of conditions over a period of decades that led to increased temperatures on the day her mother died.
Skinner told The Center Square this case is one of the more blatant examples of ideology affecting the way a litigant pursues cases.
“I think they care because a death is worth a lot of money,” Skinner said. “The climate homicide cases are one of the more far-fetched legal theories I’ve ever seen, because you’re leveling this incredibly staggering charge.”
Climate cases will continue to move through the court system, with one to be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2026.
Skinner is urging the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts to rule in favor of energy companies across the country.
“We want the energy companies to win, not because they are perfect actors, but because the alternative is that our lives are governed day in and day out by woke trial lawyers, woke [nongovernmental organizations] and local governments,” Skinner said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.