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.
What does it take to properly cross one of these tipping points?
Overshoot: The World Is Hitting Point of No Return on Climate
With warming set to pass the critical 1.5-degree limit, scientists are warning that the world is on course to trigger tipping points that would lead to cascading consequences — from the melting of ice sheets to the death of the Amazon rainforest — that could not be reversed.
The world is poised to overshoot the goal of limiting average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as for the first time, a three-year period, ending in 2025, has breached the threshold. And climate scientists are predicting devastating consequences, just as the world’s governments appear to have lost their appetite for tackling the emissions that are causing the warming.
…
“We are rapidly approaching multiple Earth system tipping points that could transform our world with devastating consequences for people and nature,” says British global-systems researcher Tim Lenton, of the University of Exeter. If he and other scientists are right, then hopes currently being expressed of a temperature reset by reducing emissions after overshoot may be fanciful. Before we know it, there may be no way back.
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A three-year breach of 1.5 degrees does not mean we have broken the Paris limit, which is framed as a long-term average. Conventionally, scientists measure this over 20 years, to smooth out year-on-year aberrations caused by natural cycles such as the El Niño oscillation. Using this method, it will be several more years before researchers can say for certain if warming has reached 1.5 degrees. But according to two studies published last year, the world has likely already surpassed this critical threshold.
Without an abrupt change of course, the warming will only accelerate. James Hansen, the Columbia University climatologist who first put climate change on the world’s front pages during testimony to Senate hearings in 1988, believes we could hit 2 degrees C as soon as 2045, a forecast based on several climate models under a high-emissions scenario.
I have a theory about 1.5C. Climate scientists appeared to be building up to a big dramatic tipping point crossed media frenzy, then the world spoiled the media campaign by abruptly jumping above their doomsday limit, likely due to the Hunga Tonga eruption.
Hunga Tonga was an unusual eruption, because rather than blasting vast quantities of sulphur into the atmosphere, which would have temporarily cooled the planet, it blasted vast quantities of water vapour into the atmosphere, which has a strong warming effect.
The impact on climate scientists of blowing up their 1.5C limit was just as devastating as the impact of the eruption on Hunga Tonga on anyone nearby. I mean, here they were building up to a carefully orchestrated 1.5C climate disaster, then nature goes and spoils everything by shoving the world past their doomsday limit before they were ready.
The distinct lack of any noticeable doom hasn’t helped matters.
Now climate scientists seem to be flailing about, trying to figure out how to put their climate doomsday campaign back on track.
For a while there was an attempt to quietly memory hole the 1.5C limit, by pushing the new 2C limit, as if 1.5C wasn’t that important anyway.
But the attempt to switch to 2.0C didn’t really gain traction. Everyone knew the 1.5C red line, so it was just too embarrassing to backflip the narrative by claiming it never really mattered.
So, climate scientists were forced to try to rescue their 1.5C narrative.
Passing a red line, that has some psychological impact. But passing a deadline then waiting years for anything interesting to happen, that’s just boring.
Obviously, these struggling climate scientists need our help to try to think up a new way to engage the public, to get past the embarrassment of their flopped 1.5C red line. What do you suggest?
Update (EW): Added “on anyone nearby” to clarify what I meant by the impact of the eruption of Hunga Tonga.
“Thanks to President Trump, the U.S. has officially escaped from the Paris Climate Agreement which undermined American values and priorities, wasted hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and stifled economic growth. This is another commonsense America First victory for the American people!”
“Thanks to President Trump, the U.S. has officially escaped from the Paris Climate Agreement which undermined American values and priorities, wasted hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and stifled economic growth. This is another commonsense America First victory for the American people!” (– Taylor Rogers, White House spokesperson. Quoted in Politico, below)
Effective yesterday, the United States is removed from the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement, dated November 4, 2016. [1] Read about it: “So long, Paris: US officially leaves landmark climate pact” (Politico: January 27, 2026).
Even better, Trump II has started the withdrawal process for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) that was responsible for the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
Trump Statement
The rationale for the U.S. withdrawal was given by Trump in his first administration. His statement (2,250 words) of June 1, 2017, is reproduced verbatim for its continued relevancy.
THE PRESIDENT: One by one, we are keeping the promises I made to the American people during my campaign for President …. I am fighting every day for the great people of this country. Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord — but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris Accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers. So, we’re getting out. But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.
As President, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens. The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries, leaving American workers — who I love — and taxpayers to absorb the cost in terms of lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.
Thus, as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country. This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.
Compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 according to the National Economic Research Associates. This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs — not what we need — believe me, this is not what we need — including automobile jobs, and the further decimation of vital American industries on which countless communities rely. They rely for so much, and we would be giving them so little.
According to this same study, by 2040, compliance with the commitments put into place by the previous administration would cut production for the following sectors: paper down 12 percent; cement down 23 percent; iron and steel down 38 percent; coal — and I happen to love the coal miners — down 86 percent; natural gas down 31 percent. The cost to the economy at this time would be close to $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million industrial jobs, while households would have $7,000 less income and, in many cases, much worse than that.
Not only does this deal subject our citizens to harsh economic restrictions, but it also fails to live up to our environmental ideals. As someone who cares deeply about the environment, which I do, I cannot in good conscience support a deal that punishes the United States — which is what it does -– the world’s leader in environmental protection, while imposing no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters.
For example, under the agreement, China will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years — 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us. India makes its participation contingent on receiving billions and billions and billions of dollars in foreign aid from developed countries. There are many other examples. But the bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.
Further, while the current agreement effectively blocks the development of clean coal in America — which it does, and the mines are starting to open up. We’re having a big opening in two weeks. Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, so many places. A big opening of a brand-new mine. It’s unheard of. For many, many years, that hasn’t happened. They asked me if I’d go. I’m going to try.
China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020. Think of it: India can double their coal production. We’re supposed to get rid of ours. Even Europe is allowed to continue construction of coal plants.
In short, the agreement doesn’t eliminate coal jobs, it just transfers those jobs out of America and the United States and ships them to foreign countries.
This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States. The rest of the world applauded when we signed the Paris Agreement — they went wild; they were so happy — for the simple reason that it put our country, the United States of America, which we all love, at a very, very big economic disadvantage. A cynic would say the obvious reason for economic competitors and their wish to see us remain in the agreement is so that we continue to suffer this self-inflicted major economic wound. We would find it very hard to compete with other countries from other parts of the world.
We have among the most abundant energy reserves on the planet, sufficient to lift millions of America’s poorest workers out of poverty. Yet, under this agreement, we are effectively putting these reserves under lock and key, taking away the great wealth of our nation — it’s great wealth, it’s phenomenal wealth; not so long ago, we had no idea we had such wealth — and leaving millions and millions of families trapped in poverty and joblessness.
The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries. At 1 percent growth, renewable sources of energy can meet some of our domestic demand, but at 3 or 4 percent growth, which I expect, we need all forms of available American energy, or our country will be at grave risk of brownouts and blackouts, our businesses will come to a halt in many cases, and the American family will suffer the consequences in the form of lost jobs and a very diminished quality of life.
Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree — think of that; this much — Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100. Tiny, tiny amount. In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from America — and this is an incredible statistic — would totally wipe out the gains from America’s expected reductions in the year 2030, after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars, lost jobs, closed factories, and suffered much higher energy costs for our businesses and for our homes.
As the Wall Street Journal wrote this morning: “The reality is that withdrawing is in America’s economic interest and won’t matter much to the climate.” The United States, under the Trump administration, will continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on Earth. We’ll be the cleanest. We’re going to have the cleanest air. We’re going to have the cleanest water. We will be environmentally friendly, but we’re not going to put our businesses out of work and we’re not going to lose our jobs. We’re going to grow; we’re going to grow rapidly.
And I think you just read — it just came out minutes ago, the small business report — small businesses as of just now are booming, hiring people. One of the best reports they’ve seen in many years.
I’m willing to immediately work with Democratic leaders to either negotiate our way back into Paris, under the terms that are fair to the United States and its workers, or to negotiate a new deal that protects our country and its taxpayers.
So if the obstructionists want to get together with me, let’s make them non-obstructionists. We will all sit down, and we will get back into the deal. And we’ll make it good, and we won’t be closing up our factories, and we won’t be losing our jobs. And we’ll sit down with the Democrats and all of the people that represent either the Paris Accord or something that we can do that’s much better than the Paris Accord. And I think the people of our country will be thrilled, and I think then the people of the world will be thrilled. But until we do that, we’re out of the agreement.
I will work to ensure that America remains the world’s leader on environmental issues, but under a framework that is fair and where the burdens and responsibilities are equally shared among the many nations all around the world.
No responsible leader can put the workers — and the people — of their country at this debilitating and tremendous disadvantage. The fact that the Paris deal hamstrings the United States, while empowering some of the world’s top polluting countries, should dispel any doubt as to the real reason why foreign lobbyists wish to keep our magnificent country tied up and bound down by this agreement: It’s to give their country an economic edge over the United States. That’s not going to happen while I’m President. I’m sorry.
My job as President is to do everything within my power to give America a level playing field and to create the economic, regulatory and tax structures that make America the most prosperous and productive country on Earth, and with the highest standard of living and the highest standard of environmental protection….
The Paris Agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense. They don’t put America first. I do, and I always will.
The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and, in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance. You see what’s happening. It’s pretty obvious to those that want to keep an open mind.
At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? We want fair treatment for its citizens, and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers. We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be. They won’t be.
I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris. (Applause.) I promised I would exit or renegotiate any deal which fails to serve America’s interests. Many trade deals will soon be under renegotiation. Very rarely do we have a deal that works for this country, but they’ll soon be under renegotiation. The process has begun from day one. But now we’re down to business.
Beyond the severe energy restrictions inflicted by the Paris Accord, it includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund — nice name — which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments. So, we’re going to be paying billions and billions and billions of dollars, and we’re already way ahead of anybody else. Many of the other countries haven’t spent anything, and many of them will never pay one dime.
The Green Fund would likely obligate the United States to commit potentially tens of billions of dollars of which the United States has already handed over $1 billion — nobody else is even close; most of them haven’t even paid anything — including funds raided out of America’s budget for the war against terrorism. That’s where they came. Believe me, they didn’t come from me. They came just before I came into office. Not good. And not good the way they took the money.
In 2015, the United Nation’s departing top climate officials reportedly described the $100 billion per year as “peanuts,” and stated that “the $100 billion is the tail that wags the dog.” In 2015, the Green Climate Fund’s executive director reportedly stated that estimated funding needed would increase to $450 billion per year after 2020. And nobody even knows where the money is going to. Nobody has been able to say, where is it going to?
Of course, the world’s top polluters have no affirmative obligations under the Green Fund, which we terminated. America is $20 trillion in debt. Cash-strapped cities cannot hire enough police officers or fix vital infrastructure. Millions of our citizens are out of work. And yet, under the Paris Accord, billions of dollars that ought to be invested right here in America will be sent to the very countries that have taken our factories and our jobs away from us. So, think of that.
There are serious legal and constitutional issues as well. Foreign leaders in Europe, Asia, and across the world should not have more to say with respect to the U.S. economy than our own citizens and their elected representatives. Thus, our withdrawal from the agreement represents a reassertion of America’s sovereignty. (Applause.) Our Constitution is unique among all the nations of the world, and it is my highest obligation and greatest honor to protect it. And I will.
Staying in the agreement could also pose serious obstacles for the United States as we begin the process of unlocking the restrictions on America’s abundant energy reserves, which we have started very strongly. It would once have been unthinkable that an international agreement could prevent the United States from conducting its own domestic economic affairs, but this is the new reality we face if we do not leave the agreement or if we do not negotiate a far better deal.
The risks grow as historically these agreements only tend to become more and more ambitious over time. In other words, the Paris framework is a starting point — as bad as it is — not an end point. And exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States’ sovereignty and massive future legal liability. Believe me, we have massive legal liability if we stay in.
As President, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people. The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world. It is time to exit the Paris Accord — (applause) — and time to pursue a new deal that protects the environment, our companies, our citizens, and our country.
It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — along with many, many other locations within our great country — before Paris, France. It is time to make America great again. Thank you very much.
———————–
[1] “The Secretary-General of the United Nations, acting in his capacity as depositary, communicates the following:
The above action was affected on 27 January 2025.
The action shall take effect for the United States of America on 27 January 2026 in accordance with paragraphs 1 and 2 of article 28 of the Agreement which read as follows:
“1. At any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Agreement by giving written notification to the Depositary.
Any such withdrawal shall take effect upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt by the Depositary of the notification of withdrawal, or on such later date as may be specified in the notification of withdrawal.”
Scientists expected the opposite, but polar bears in the Norwegian Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard have become fatter and healthier since the early 1990s, all while sea ice has steadily declined due to climate change.
Polar bears rely on sea ice as a platform from which to hunt the seals that they rely on for blubber-rich meals. The bears’ fat reserves provide energy and insulation and allow mothers to produce rich milk for cubs.The BBC has the story.
Researchers weighed and measured 770 adults in Svalbard between 1992 and 2019 and found that bears had become significantly fatter.
They think that Svalbard bears have adapted to recent ice loss by eating more land-based prey, including reindeer and walruses.
The discovery, published in Scientific Reports, was particularly puzzling because of the impact of climate change in Svalbard.
During the same period that this research was carried out, global temperature rise has reduced the number of ice-free days per year in the region by almost 100 – at a rate of about four days each year.
“The fatter a bear is the better it is,” explained lead researcher Dr Jon Aars from the Norwegian Polar Institute.
“And I would have expected to see a decline in body condition when the loss of sea ice has been so profound.”
“And I would have expected to see a decline in body condition when the loss of sea ice has been so profound.”
Walruses have been officially protected in Norway since the 1950s, after they were hunted to near extinction. That protection has boosted their numbers and apparently provided a new source of fatty food for polar bears.
As global corporations and governments increasingly shed ideologically driven policies that raise energy prices and undermine supply, governors in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic cling to counterproductive agendas of contradiction and equivocation.
As global corporations and governments increasingly shed ideologically driven policies that raise energy prices and undermine supply, governors in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic cling to counterproductive agendas of contradiction and equivocation.
Programs that prioritize dubious environmental goals over economic growth and basic human needs have been losing support. In the U.S., the Trump administration promotes fossil fuels and nuclear power over so-called “green” energy, suspending leases for five offshore wind projects Christmas week while offering loan guarantees to nuclear operators and promoting coal as a “clean” stocking stuffer.
Half a globe away, Japan has ended its financial support for large-scale solar projects. Meanwhile, the island nation plans to restart the world’s largest nuclear power plant, which was shuttered a decade ago as an overreaction to a tsunami-induced disaster at another plant.
Private enterprises that had invested billions of dollars into green energy initiatives are returning their focus to core businesses.
“The trend toward a carbon-neutral society appears to be slowing,” says Tomohide Miyata, the CEO of Eneos. The Japanese refiner abandoned plans to produce hydrogen (an overhyped “alternative” energy source that still relies on fossil fuels) to expand its liquefied natural gas business.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro is unaware—or uncaring—that his confused policies stymie the development of affordable energy in the most densely populated region of the United States.
Oil and Gas
The Pennsylvania governor’s record has been, at best, mercurial.
Shapiro recently surprised many when he agreed to withdraw Pennsylvania from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the multistate compact that imposes carbon taxes on member states. But just months earlier, Shapiro sued to stay in RGGI. The reversal drew positive reactions from Republican lawmakers and labor union leaders, who predicted increased investments in the state’s natural gas and coal industries with the abandonment of RGGI’s tax on fossil fuels.
“ The war’s over,” said Shawn Steffee of Pittsburgh Boilermakers Local 154, who had been among those blaming RGGI for discouraging fossil fuel projects in Pennsylvania since the commonwealth flirted with joining in 2019. “It is time to … rebuild right here in Pennsylvania.”
However, within weeks, the Environmental Quality Board (EQB) of Shapiro’s Department of Environmental Protection recommended increasing setbacks for natural gas wells by as much as tenfold. The restrictions—up to a mile in distance—would shut down gas drilling and increase energy prices, according to industry sources.
Jim Welty, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, calls the setbacks “a ban on future natural gas development” that “is extremely concerning, especially considering that [the Shapiro administration] claims they’re doing everything possible to protect Pennsylvania consumers from rising electricity prices.”
Exceeding its “legal authority,” the EQB sent “a chilling message to consumers, landowners, and economic investors by threatening access to Pennsylvania’s reliable and affordable energy resources,” said Welty.
In addition to the EQB recommendation, Pennsylvania’s Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is considering its own setback restrictions. “Make no mistake, this proposal is a de facto ban on natural gas development in Pennsylvania,” said Stephanie Catarino Wissman of the American Petroleum Institute (API). Numerous regulations already govern the industry, notes API.
So, Pennsylvania has at least two propositions to kill natural gas development, in addition to Shapiro’s own proposals to reduce fossil fuel generation and increase wind and solar energy use. The governor’s programs would double household electricity bills, but Shapiro blames the power grid’s market policies for already elevated costs.
However, Republican state Sen. Gene Yaw disputes the blame shifting, saying grid operators do not drive energy costs. “The real reason electricity prices are rising is because we’re not producing enough of it,” says Yaw. “Over the past decade, aggressive renewable mandates have forced the premature retirement of dependable baseload generation without replacing it with sufficient new baseload generation capacity. … That’s a policy failure.”
Other governors in the region exhibit Governor Shapiro’s pattern of awkwardly balancing between championing of energy costs and backing more costly policies.
Seeking reelection this year, Hochul has become concerned about “the need to govern in reality,” as she continues a ban on natural gas drilling that keeps billions of dollars from upstate New York. The state’s drilling ban “has unjustly denied New York landowners their property rights and lucrative natural gas royalties and has been for purely political reasons,” says the Institute for Energy Research.
Both Hochul’s and Shapiro’s lapses into commonsense have drawn the ire of the environmental Left, which may explain the caution of 2025 gubernatorial candidates.
In New Jersey and Virginia, incoming governors campaigned for lower energy prices while remaining loyal to costly green policies. The Garden State’s membership in RGGI is included in the energy policy of incoming Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill. In Old Dominion, Democratic Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger has said she will reverse Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s withdrawal from RGGI.
Although supporters of largely Democratic environmental policies claim that their favored green technologies lower energy prices, the evidence says otherwise. An Institute for Energy Research study reports that “86% of states with electricity prices above the national average in the continental U.S. are reliably blue.” Those states include New England and most of the Mid-Atlantic, including New York, New Jersey, and “purple” Pennsylvania.
Vijay Jayaraj, a science and research associate who regularly comments on Asia’s growing use of coal to reverse generational poverty, sees a global split emerging between the practical and the ideological.
“Very likely, there will be a bifurcation,” he writes. “On the one hand, western bureaucracies, particularly in Europe, continuing an economic decline under mandates and taxes, and on the other, pragmatic governments, many of them in Asia, pursuing prosperity with fuels and technologies that work.”
But this divide appears to be happening even within the United States, with blue states on one side and red states on the other. And considering the rising cost of electricity, states like Pennsylvania and its neighbors may want to prioritize energy affordability and reliability—free of ideological baggage.
Originally published in Daily Signalon January 27, 2026.
Gordon Tomb is Senior Advisor at the CO2 Coalition and senior fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania free-market think tank.
Hundreds of millions of Americans are presently besieged by a massive arctic blast and winter storm. Luckily for them, it will only be temporary. That wasn’t the case 20,000 years ago…
Hundreds of millions of Americans are presently besieged by a massive arctic blast and winter storm. Luckily for them, it will only be temporary. That wasn’t the case 20,000 years ago…
Between 26,500 to around 19,000 years ago, gargantuan glaciers covered around a quarter of Earth’s land area year-round. Their frigid reach extended to the areas that are now Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston. The average global temperature was then about 46 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius), 11 degrees F (6 degrees C) cooler than the global annual average today. It was a chilly time to be alive.
And make no mistake, humans were alive. Though much of our species sheltered around the equator at the time, some did live in cooler regions such as central Europe, not far from the glaciers’ icy reach. Clothing, constructed dwellings, fire, and omnivory all helped our ancestors outlast the cold.
When that great freeze ended and the ice retreated about 11,700 years ago, then humanity really started to thrive. Buoyed by the warmth of the current “interglacial” period, humans have been able to propagate pretty much everywhere on the surface of Earth.
But what if this period of relative warmth we’ve enjoyed were to come to an end? What if Earth entered another “ice age”?
First off, Earth is technically in an ice age right now, defined as a time when both of the planet’s poles are covered with ice. What people actually mean when they talk about an “ice age” is a “glacial period.” This is when the ice at the pole’s creeps toward the equator. These glaciers reflect the sun’s rays back into space, making the Earth colder, which allows the glaciers to spread further, which chills the Earth even more – a positive feedback loop.
Glacial periods are initially triggered by subtle changes in Earth’s orbit as well as its tilt and wobble. These factors collectively affect how much solar radiation the Earth receives. Such changes are cyclic and predictable, which means that we have the ability to gauge when another glacial period is on the way. So, when will that be?
Current estimates suggest that we have at least 10,000 more years of relative warmth, and perhaps as many as 200,000. Why the wide range? Because we are ourselves drastically altering the climate by burning fossil fuels. The more we burn, the longer we delay the next glacial period.
In a study published in December, a team of researchers estimated that under current conditions, the next ice age is expected 50,000 years into the future. If we emit twice as much carbon as we have so far, which we’re on pace to do in the next five decades, the next ice age will begin in 100,000 years. The researchers say we could delay glaciation by up to 200,000 years from present, but by then an ice age is likely unavoidable.
Professor Andreas Born at the University of Bergen’s Department of Earth Science isn’t so sure.
“If a new ice age were to come, cities like Oslo, Stockholm, and Chicago would be covered by several thousand metres of ice. In that case, it’s probably highly unlikely that humans would allow this to happen again, as long as there’s a society,” he told ScienceNorway. “That could mean that the last ice age was actually the last ice age.”
Over the next tens of thousands of years, it’s reasonable to assume that humanity will have pioneered numerous ways to geoengineer the planet’s climate on rapid timescales, so another ice age could very well be preventable. But if not, humans will likely have hundreds or even thousands of years to adapt as polar ice returns to claim the land at lower latitudes. It won’t appear as suddenly as America’s current cold snap.
This article was originally published by RealClearScience and made available via RealClearWire.
With Winter Storm Fern wreaking havoc across the country, New England women are worried about energy affordability. Yet many do not connect rising energy costs to the state policy decisions that invited them.
Standing woman wearing striped top glancing back on beach, floating environmental icons, copy space. Sustainability, renewable, ecofriendly, innovation, climate, conservation, energy
With Winter Storm Fern wreaking havoc across the country, New England women are worried about energy affordability. Yet many do not connect rising energy costs to the state policy decisions that invited them.
According to new polling from Independent Women, 82% of New England women say they’re paying more for their electricity bills, compared with five years ago. This is the first comprehensive poll exclusively asking women—who primarily handle their household electricity bills—their attitudes on energy issues.
New England has enacted the nation’s most aggressive climate policies to phase out oil, gas, and coal and achieve a 100% renewable energy target by 2050. While it’s easy to blame utility companies and the federal government for exacerbating the electricity crisis, state policies—namely, New England’s decarbonization plans—bear more responsibility for inviting energy insecurity and associated higher costs.
Congress gave states near-exclusive power, under the Federal Power Act, to create electricity generation portfolios, determine electricity prices, and establish mandates for renewable energy generators. In the past 20 years, New England states adopted radical climate mandates to force a transition to 100% renewable energy, ban gas-powered cars, and adopt energy efficiency standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
In the last five years, costs have skyrocketed across all six New England states. Between 2019 and 2024, electricity prices across the region soared 29%—the highest regional rates in the Lower-48. The average household paid $250.82 per month in utility bills as of last November—up 50.5% from 2024, when the average regional bill was only $166.48 per month. New England rates are 67% higher compared to the national average.
New England states were early adopters of aggressive green mandates like renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). States with RPS report higher electricity rates compared to non-RPS states. All six New England states belong to RGGI, a cap-and-trade program that has a negligible impact on carbon emissions reductions. It’s no wonder that 53% of poll respondents admitted they feel misled by state politicians about the cost and effectiveness of 100% renewable energy policies.
Independent Women’s poll also found that New England women support reliable energy sources. A plurality of New England women (42%) support an electric grid powered by both conventional and renewable energy sources.
An overwhelming majority support expanding geothermal energy (68%) and natural gas (61%), a clean-burning fuel, in the region. Support for natural gas is encouraging, despite decades’ long regional policies that discouraged or blocked new natural gas infrastructure projects.
Natural gas is a reliable, clean-burning fuel that supplies the majority of net-electricity generation in the U.S., and in New England. The recently revived Constitution Pipeline, first approved in 2014 and cancelled in 2020, is expected to deliver natural gas to New England states by 2027. A new report warned that a lack of new natural gas capacity will stress New England’s energy infrastructure and could invite “electricity reliability challenges” ahead of Winter Storm Fern.
Despite its strict green mandates, New England is still heavily reliant on natural gas, nuclear energy, and electricity imports from Canada (9%)—not renewables (12%).
Last fall, the CEO of ISO New England, the regional transmission organization overseeing the region’s electric grid and transmission, warned that wind and solar aren’t dependable sources during winter, remarking: “We cannot operate the system in the wintertime without a dependable energy source that can balance the system when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.”
By continuing down its decarbonization path, New England, save for New Hampshire, would see energy costs spike $815 billion through 2050 over the cost of operating the current grid. But there’s a solution to the region’s self-inflicted energy crisis. A new report by Always On Energy Research and a coalition of Northeastern think tanks, “Alternatives to New England’s Energy Affordability Crisis,”argues that building natural gas and nuclear power, rather than costly, unreliable offshore wind and solar projects, will save New Englanders upwards of $700 billion in energy costs.
New England women overwhelmingly respond positively to affordable, reliable, and scalable messaging. But the poll also finds they currently trust elected Democrats on affordability issues. Democrats know they have to deliver, which is why they’re disavowing the same climate pledges that they previously championed. Conservatives, however, are uniquely positioned to appeal to women on energy issues, if they get this moment right.
Due to deregulation and abundance policies, energy inflation is down nationally. For electricity prices to decrease in New England, states must repeal expensive policies that solely push wind and solar at the expense of reliable, affordable energy sources.
Modern climate science is constructed on a foundation of belief.
Svante Arrhenius is known as the “godfather” of the CO2 greenhouse effect. Today’s climate models are still based on his 1896 thought- experiment calculations of CO2’s imagined capacity to warm Earth’s surface (71% water) out of a frozen solid state by tens of degrees.
His one-dimensional model “assumed a state of equilibrium” for all other climate factors except CO2. In other words, the model does not account for changes in albedo, insolation, cloud cover, or relative humidity (Anderson et al., 2016). Instead, these climate parameters remain perpetually constant.
“The calculations involved balancing the radiative heat budget (thereby assuming a state of equilibrium), namely solar radiation arriving at the Earth’s surface (including the effect of albedo from clouds and the Earth’s surface) …”
“He assumed constant relative humidity within the atmosphere…”
“The cloud fraction remained fixed, as did the relative contributions of land, sea, ice, and cloud to overall albedo.”
Thus, the Arrhenius conceptualization is rooted in an assumed “state of equilibrium” that does not exist in reality. An imaginary world.
Even those who rigorously defend and extol Arrhenius’s work admit his model is so primitive it cannot even represent heat transfer processes.
“The simplicity of the model meant that there was no possibility of representing changes in heat transport…”
Arrhenius even claimed moon temperatures are almost equal to Earth temperatures in his 1896 paper.
“Now the temperature of the moon is nearly the same as that of the Earth.”
He also claimed doubling CO2 levels (300 to 600 ppm) warms the ocean 5-6°C, and tripling CO2 results in an 8-9°C warmer ocean surface. There is no real-world observation supporting an assertion that doubling or tripling the CO2 in the air above a body of water results in these temperature changes.
To top it off, the “godfather” of modern climate science surmised it would take 3,000 years to double the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
“Arrhenius remarked that a doubling of CO2 would occur three-thousand years hence.”
Imaginary-world models are untestable and thus unfalsifiable. The unfalsifiability of a claim necessitates it is no more than a belief.
When President Trump last May signed an executive order calling for deployment of 300 gigawatts (GW) of net new nuclear capacity by 2050, it had to come as a shock to those who just a few years earlier were plotting a very different energy future – one built on wind turbines and solar arrays, the abolition of coal and natural gas, and maybe a wink and a nod toward what was perceived to be unaffordable nuclear.
When President Trump last May signed an executive order calling for deployment of 300 gigawatts (GW) of net new nuclear capacity by 2050, it had to come as a shock to those who just a few years earlier were plotting a very different energy future – one built on wind turbines and solar arrays, the abolition of coal and natural gas, and maybe a wink and a nod toward what was perceived to be unaffordable nuclear.
Back in 2011, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology report on the future of the electric grid stated that “One of the most important emerging challenges facing the grid is the need to incorporate more renewable generation in response to policy initiatives at both state and federal levels.”
Signaling their own skepticism at this strategy, the authors added that “Much of this capacity will rely on either solar or wind power and will accordingly produce output that is variable over time and imperfectly predictable, making it harder for system operators to match generation and load at every instant.”
Nevertheless, solar energy has grown from 891 gigawatt-hours in 2009 to 218,538 GWh by 2024, while wind energy rose from 73,890 GWh in 2009 to 453,450 GWh in 2024. Combined, these two sources in 2024 generated less than the 782,000 to 816,000 GWh from the nation’s 94 nuclear power plants, which unlike wind and solar, operate round the clock at consistent outputs.
The push toward intermittent wind and solar has continued during the first year of President Trump’s second term. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reported that of the 15+ GW of new electricity generation resources added in the first five months of 2025, 11.5 GW was solar, 2.3 GW was wind, and 1.3 GW was natural gas – with no new nuclear at all.
That trend has continued despite Trump Administration efforts against offshore wind and ongoing opposition to new wind and solar farms. FERC listed 136 GW of “high probability additions” through August 2028, with solar and wind accounting for nearly 84% of that projected new capacity.
While battery storage has been hailed as the “solution” to the intermittent nature of wind and solar energy generation, Francis Menton reported in 2024 that battery storage facilities might not be a safe bet – or safe at all. They are subject to large and dangerous fires on a regular basis.
Menton recently atated that, in January 2025, the 300 MW facility at Moss Landing south of San Francisco, which held about 100,000 lithium-ion batteries, saw about 55% of those batteries damaged by a fire – the third at the facility in a 4-year period. He also said there were at least three major battery storage facility fires in New York State in 2023, followed by a major fire in Warwick, New York, last December.
Imagine the damage, he said, from a fire at the planned 315 MW battery storage facility in Queens, just across the East River from the Upper East Side and adjacent to the nation’s largest public housing project.
Despite the popularity of wind and solar with power companies today (as evidenced by their orders), large data processing centers, healthcare facilities, high-tech artificial intelligence, and national security operations cannot rely on intermittent power. The Trump White House, taking note of the concerns of those entities, prefers to invest in nuclear.
Trump’s goal of quadrupling U.S. electricity generation parallels the vision of economist Timothy Taylor, who in a September 2023 article stated that, to supply the massive increase in planned electricity generation “there will also need to be a dramatic expansion (maybe a tripling or quadrupling) in electricity lines to distribute the electricity where needed.”
But, he added, that is the rub.
While ratepayers crave cheaper electric bills, noted Taylor, “Shareholders are not likely to want the company to make major increases in the electric grid.” Many registered utility companies are owned by shareholders, and taking on new debt does not improve shareholder returns, largely because of government regulation of their pricing and investment plans.
On January 15, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas [ERCOT], which operates the Texas power grid, announced a new process for evaluating multiple large-load interconnection requests simultaneously. Texas is not generating enough electricity to supply every desired project immediately. Built for a large-load queue of 40 to 50 projects, the state’s queue is being overwhelmed by the 225 new interconnection requests submitted to ERCOT in 2025.
But who’s kidding whom? There has to be another solution to the problem of more demand than supply for grid electricity. Corporate giants like Google, Meta, CenterPoint, Amazon, and OpenAI cannot wait forever.
As the growing power crunch threatens President Trump’s (and private industry’s) plans for rapid growth of the U.S. economy, neither the Texas nor the national grid is ready for the explosive growth of power-hungry artificial intelligence and other high-volume users. The solution, said Jacob DeWitte, CEO of nuclear startup OKLO, is for large energy users to add grid power through private investment.
To that end, OKLO and Meta entered into a new partnership in which OKLO will build small modular reactors to power Meta facilities and sell any excess electricity to the grid. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is recommending such partnership for power, in line with President’ Trump’s December 2025 statement that every AI plant built in the U.S. must be self-sustaining with its own electricity.
On January 15, President Trump announced that the National Energy Dominance Council and the governors of several northeastern states served by the PJM Interconnection had agreed to push for an emergency wholesale electricity auction that will compel technology companies to effectively fund new power plants. That action was aimed at capping residential electricity rates that have been soaring as demand from hyperscalers and data centers has soared past supply.
The goal is to urge PJM to build more than $15 billion of reliable baseload power generation and to accelerate development by providing a 15-year revenue certainty for new power plants. The plan requires data centers to pay for any new generation built on their behalf and protect ratepayers by limiting the amount existing power plants can be paid in the PJM capacity market. It also opens the door for large users to build dedicated facilities.
Today, PJM is one of the eight (out of 13 total) regional power markets already below critical spare capacity levels. Peak demand across its system is expected to increase by another 17% by 2030. Without active intervention, brownouts could become a frequent irritation.
Based on his own statements, Trump hopes that much of this new electric generation capacity will come from new nuclear power plants (of all sizes). The OKLO-Meta deal is but one of many in some stages of negotiation. And the PJM challenge is likely to spread nationwide.
While growing user demand and competing potential sources of supply are tempered by trepidations about the ability of intermittent electric generation sources to satisfy these high-end users, Trump knows that the cost of nuclear energy (hence the cost of building new nuclear capacity) must come down.
That said, his bottom line is simple: “I never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers.”
Another excellent discussion of the topic is in this TPPF report by Michael Reed and Brent Bennet. Reed and Bennett estimate that modifying the Texas grid to handle wind and solar output variability cost Texas electricity consumers $2.3 billion in 2023.
There have been many attempts to compare wind and solar power generation to generation with natural gas and other fossil fuels. I have summarized and criticized these attempts before, see here and here.
Another excellent discussion of the topic is in this TPPF report by Michael Reed and Brent Bennet. Reed and Bennett estimate that modifying the Texas grid to handle wind and solar output variability cost Texas electricity consumers $2.3 billion in 2023.
The purpose of this post is not to cover the whole issue, as Reed and Bennett do, but only discuss how to account for the natural gas swing generation used to backup wind and solar when these sources are unavailable, like on windless nights. The power one can produce using wind turbines and solar panels varies a lot from place to place and from time to time. Figure 1 shows the mix in Texas on 27 January 2026 at 12:21PM.
Figure 1. ERCOT electricity production mix at 12:21 PM 27 January 2026. Source: ERCOT (right) and Wikimedia (left), both public domain. The image of the solar panels and wind turbines was taken by Molgreen 2 October 2013. Texas, as a state, ranks #1 in wind generated power, #2 in
Texas, as a state, ranks #1 in wind generated power, #2 in solar, and #1 in net annual overall electricity generation. As you can see in figure 1, sometimes, on a clear day, with sufficient wind, solar and wind power supply much of the electricity used in Texas.
Texas generates over 500 TWh (terawatt-hours) of electricity (588 TWh in 2025). According to ERCOT natural gas accounts for about 41% of Texas electricity production and most of that is from natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) generators. Wind is about 24%, solar 14%, and nearly all the rest is from coal (13%) or nuclear (9%).
Wind and solar are intermittent sources and can fall to zero production without warning. Coal and nuclear are only adjustable within certain limits, neither can change their electrical output quickly or by very much. Coal and nuclear can ramp up or down by as much as 1-3% per minute or so with care, but they are not well suited to rapid response.
Only natural gas generators and batteries can change output quickly and by large amounts, they are the swing generators. Natural gas plants can start up in minutes and ramp at 20% to 50% per minute.
Battery storage systems have exploded within ERCOT, and they provide the fastest response, on the order of milliseconds. As a result, they act as ultra-fast swing resources. However, for sustained emergencies (more than 1-2 hours) natural gas plants dominate.
They are also the only generators that do not require outside backup, since they are their own backup. If they run at 80% of capacity, they can ramp up and down with demand. They are an ideal partner for coal and nuclear.
Who pays for backup reserve power?
Given that NGCC can provide their own backup power, their backup costs are logically zero. Battery storage (or “BESS”) systems are only for backup and cannot provide base load as their effective time on the grid is very short, less than two hours for most systems.
Their advantage is they can provide emergency power almost instantaneously. But they must be recharged and kept fully charged, so they do have a fuel cost. Table 1 compares all these commonly used systems and provides a total cost for each per megawatt-hour (MWh) of produced electricity.
Table 1. Texas electrical total cost comparison. Texas is close to ideal for wind and solar power generation, so the table compares them to natural gas combined cycle and storage batteries (BESS) in terms of costs. Click on the table to see at a higher resolution.
Lifetime capital cost at 7%
As you can see in Table 1, I compute the installation cost in dollars per MWh (Megawatt-hours) of electricity produced. It includes equipment and installation costs amortized at a 7% annual annuity rate, over the expected lifetime of the installation. The numbers given are for Texas in the 2023 to 2025 years and they are in the range of those reported by NREL, Lazard, and EIA. The range of costs per MWh for wind and solar are extremely variable since they change a lot by location and by production per year assumed.
Texas wind generation has a cumulative capital investment of $55.6B, a 40.7GW generation capacity, with a 33.6% capacity factor, and a 25-year lifetime, so using a 7% annuity discount yields a $39.80/MWh discounted cost, not counting subsidies, which are about $10 per MWh. The full range of costs in the sources cited above is from $20 to $86 per MWh, which is so large as to be meaningless. One of the reasons I chose to focus on Texas is it narrows the range.
In Texas, a very sunny state, I derived a value of $40 per MWh for solar. Again, the values from NREL, Lazard, and EIA are all over the place and range from around $25-$45 per MWh. We used an installed capacity of 16 GW, a 23.5% capacity factor, an equipment cost of $21.5B, and a 27-year lifetime to get $40/MWh.
Most of the Texas fleet of natural gas generators are the efficient combined-cycle type (NGCC). These high efficiency, fast spin up generators use a natural gas burner to spin a gas turbine and then use the excess generated heat to spin a steam turbine for extra electricity output.
They are the most flexible and efficient electricity generators, and they provide their own backup because they can be throttled down quickly when demand is lower and then quickly spun up when demand rises. Their only downtime is for maintenance, which can be planned for. Texas also has some conventional natural gas generators which are normally offline and are used as “peakers” to supply extra power at peak demand or on windless and cloudy days or at night.
NGCC plants are often throttled back to use wind and solar power on good days, because once installed and operating their fuel is free. This causes NGCC plants to have an artificially low utilization rate. But comparing actual NGCC utilization to solar and wind capacity factors is misleading, since the NGCC low utilization is a choice, and not forced by weather.
An NGCC utilization rate of 80%, absent solar and wind is reasonable because this rate allows for maintenance time and can provide a backup spinning resource for emergencies. Thus, rather than using the actual utilization rate for our comparison I used 80% and a 27-year lifetime. This lowers the cost/MWh significantly from other published amounts and results in $25.30/MWh.
Subsidies
Texas doesn’t have any significant electrical plant subsidies, although some local communities may offer tax abatements to attract a facility, these are offered to all types of energy plants, so we will ignore them. The federal subsidies are specific as to the type of energy produced.
For wind we use $9.95/MWh, which aligns reasonably well with the TPPF and EIA estimates. Our solar estimate of $25/MWh is a little high, since the national estimate by TPPF is $18-$20, but various LCOE sources (see Lazard here, page 9) suggest the number is $25-$40, thus $25 falls in the middle. Solar subsidies are higher than for wind in absolute terms and made higher per MWh because solar has a lower capacity factor than wind.
NGCC electrical power receives almost no subsidies in the U.S., the range in the literature is between $0.50 and $1/MWh, and we use one dollar. These are not direct subsidies, like wind and solar receive but upstream tax preferences that some call subsidies, I didn’t want to get into that debate here but have discussed the issue previously.
Operation and maintenance costs (O&M)
All electricity production facilities require ongoing maintenance, repairs, insurance, and must lease or buy the land they stand on.
These costs are not as complex as those discussed previously and we use standard numbers here, $15.29/MWh for wind (published range ~13-17), $9.50/MWh for solar (published range ~7-12), and $6.60/MWh (published range $3-$5, ours is higher due to higher utilization (80%) for NGCC. NGCC gets a break on O&M because the land it uses is very small and the facility is enclosed so the equipment is not exposed to the elements.
Backup costs
The backup costs for intermittency (sometimes called renewable integration costs, grid balancing costs, or grid firming costs) are from TPPF and EIA. Failures of solar and wind generation that require backup are windless days, nighttime, and cloudy days. The backup costs are not paid for by the solar and wind facilities but spread out across the whole grid as increased charges to consumers.
In a 2025 TPPF analysis, the use of wind and solar caused the extra procurement of $788 million of power in 2023, which is roughly $6.30/MWh. The broader impact was in grid improvements to accommodate wind and solar generation, these cost $2.3B in 2023 or $18.40/MWh. Overall, according to TPPF (Bennet & Piracci, 2026), after adjusting for inflation and increasing electricity demand, ERCOT has paid 57% more in electricity transmission charges than in 2010.
This is over one billion dollars per year to support solar and wind generation. Thus, the charges are not just for the electricity purchased to backup solar and wind facilities in unfavorable weather conditions ($6.30), but also the required changes to the transmission grid ($18.40). These values total $24.70 and are the total required for both wind and solar. Wind has a capacity factor of 33.6% and solar 23.5%, thus dividing by this ratio seems reasonable. It results in a wind backup cost of $7.42/MWh and a solar cost of $17.27/MWh.
Fuel
Fuel is free for wind and solar once installed and operational. The fuel for natural gas combined cycle is about $30/MWh. Assuming a battery round trip efficiency of 85-90% for the battery electricity (or energy) storage system (BESS) units and that they are charged with natural gas power, the fuel cost for the battery units is about $31/MWh. This is really the only fair way to compare the battery backup units, since they would not be needed if solar and wind were not in the mix.
BESS
The battery energy storage systems put into place in ERCOT and elsewhere in the country are useful short-term backup systems because they can supply electricity in milliseconds as needed. However, for longer blackouts, longer than about two hours, they will not work. However, as noted above, if it were not for solar and wind, they would not be needed. NGCC and regular natural gas generators can provide their own backup by throttling them back and allowing their output to go up and down with demand. Coal and nuclear are best as baseload producers.
Discussion
Adding federal subsidies to the discounted capital cost and the operational cost we reach the estimated full cost of the power source. This is $65.04/MWh for wind, $74.50 for solar, $32.90 for NGCC, and $79.00 for battery backup. Once the backup costs and fuel are added, we have a total cost of $72.46 for wind, $91.78 for solar, $62.90 for NGCC and $110.00 for battery backup.
Using this methodology, natural gas is the cheapest electricity, batteries are the most expensive, and solar is the second most expensive. In a sense this is misleading since if it were not for solar and wind, batteries would not be needed except for users that cannot stand an outage of a few minutes. Those customers could supply their own battery backup. Natural gas generators can ramp up to cover problems in a few minutes at most.
This sort of analysis is subjective in part and is always very controversial and open to debate, but it seems clear to this observer that wind and solar are not a net addition to the Texas grid, but a burden on it. Clearly the most efficient way to supply energy is with a coal and nuclear base power system with NGCC as a swing element to handle changes in demand and emergencies. Batteries will be needed by some customers but let them buy their own systems.
The Cool Down (TCD) claimed in a recent article, “Supply of popular fruit plummets as severe storms devastate crops: ‘On course for its worst season,’” that Argentine cherry crops are being devastated by severe rain and hailstorms due to climate change. This is mostly false. While it’s true that a recent season of cherries was ruined by bad weather, there is no evidence that a single year of bad weather is a sign of climate change. There is no long-term trend of worsening weather in Argentina and cherry production there over the past three decades has risen considerably.
While it’s true that a recent season of cherries was ruined by bad weather, there is no evidence that a single year of bad weather is a sign of climate change. There is no long-term trend of worsening weather in Argentina and cherry production there over the past three decades has risen considerably.
TCD claimed that cherry growers in Argentina are having a bad season, “with severe rain and hailstorms” that TCD classifies as a “change in climate.”
Of course, a single season of bad weather is not climate change. Climate is measured over a long period of time, so one year of severe storms and hail cannot be indicative alone of effects from climate change.
TCD says that “frequent extreme weather events, which have been increasing, damage agricultural yields.”
There is no easily accessible data about severe downpours in Argentina and their trends, which are likely different depending on the region of the country. It’s important to note that Argentina has everything from ice and penguins to tropical rainforest to mountain deserts, and natural climate change will impact regions differently.
But the World Bank does collect average annual rainfall data for Argentina, which show that precipitation varies from year to year, and rose gradually through the 1970s and early 2000s, before beginning to decline again afterwards. (See figure below)
The World Bank says that annual fluctuations in rainfall in Argentina are driven largely by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which is a natural phenomenon. During the 2025 growing season, there were El Niño conditions present, which generally cause an increase in heavy rainfall in most parts of Argentina, especially in the spring.
So, existing data undercuts TCD’s assertion that weather extremes are increasing in Argentina.
However, the next best data to look at to determine whether climate change is destroying Argentina’s cherry industry is cherry production yields.
According to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Argentina has seen a fairly steady increase in cherry production over nearly the entire period of human-caused climate change is said to have occurred. As evidence, from 1990 to 2024, the last year for which the FAO reports data, Argentine cherry production increased by approximately 37 percent. (See figure below)
Argentina’s all-time production high was set in 2010, with the 2024 coming in second for the highest cherry production on record.
The Cool Down doesn’t seem to understand what farmers throughout time have known: weather is fickle, with floods and droughts all too common. Nothing has changed in this regard.
A single bad harvest is not evidence of climate change, only a long-term trend in worsening weather and falling production might indicate climate change is causing harm, but such trends don’t exist.
The Cool Down is an environmental advocacy website, billing itself as “America’s mainstream climate brand.” Thus, it should come as no surprise that every bad weather story is being used to prop up a climate alarmist perspective.
There is no evidence that climate change is harming Argentina’s cherry industry; that’s an inconvenient truth that The Cool Down evidently can’t handle.
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