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.
Along the Brazilian coast, vermetid shell radiocarbon ages indicate the relative sea level (RSL) was “more than 2 m above present” between 6000 and 7000 years ago. (The charts shown in the study suggest RSL was 3 to 3.5 m higher than today during this period.)
Across the globe, vermetid gastropods (shelled snails, or molluscs) are a “critical paleo-sea level indicator” for ancient coastline reconstructions (Angulo et al., 2026).
Along the Brazilian coast, vermetid shell radiocarbon ages indicate the relative sea level (RSL) was “more than 2 m above present” between 6000 and 7000 years ago. (The charts shown in the study suggest RSL was 3 to 3.5 m higher than today during this period.)
Today’s latitudinal warmth threshold for living vermetid gastropod colonies along the coasts of Brazil is 22-23°S. This is over 5° (550-600 km) north of this species’ warmth threshold (28-29°S) throughout the period when there were “warmer waters during the Holocene climatic optimum.”
Since it is well established that sea surface temperatures decrease by approximately 0.5°C to 1°C for every degree of latitude moving poleward from the tropics, carbon-dated vermetid gastropod presence informs us that this region’s sea surface temperatures were about 3-4°C warmer than today throughout this Early- to Mid-Holocene period.
A recent article at Climate Change News discussing this week’s 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland worries that climate change is no longer a high priority for the attending global elites, while also attempting to reassure readers that the topic hasn’t disappeared entirely. It is true that climate change is dropping on the list of elites’ concerns, but it is not a bad thing.
A recent article at Climate Change News discussing this week’s 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland worries that climate change is no longer a high priority for the attending global elites, while also attempting to reassure readers that the topic hasn’t disappeared entirely. It is true that climate change is dropping on the list of elites’ concerns, but it is not a bad thing. The attendees’ concerns are still wildly out of step with the concerns of average people who are impacted the most by the policies discussed and pushed at Davos.
The article, titled “Ahead of Davos, climate drops down global elite’s list of pressing concerns,” was written before the Davos event kicked off Monday, January 19, and focuses on a survey conducted by the WEF’s Global Risks Perception Survey of “experts” and leaders in advance of the meeting. This year, the survey found that for the first time in years, “climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss have dropped down an international ranking of short-term concerns for high-profile business leaders, academics, and politicians,” as priorities shifted towards more concern over “economic risks like geoeconomic confrontation, economic downturn, inflation, and asset bubbles bursting.” (See the graph, below, from the WEF).
Considering the organization is the World Economic Forum, this shift should never have been necessary in the first place, as economic troubles should have always remained a top priority for these elites. Economics are consistently a concern for everyday people, whereas climate change ranks very low.
Polling in the United States and Europe show that climate policies that would impact economic opportunity, like carbon taxes, banning combustion engine vehicles, among others, are broadly unpopular, and that other concerns rank higher.
Ipsos, a market research company the WEF frequently uses, reports in their annual “What Worries the World?” survey that climate change barely makes the top 10 issues most people in the world are concerned about. (see the graph, below)
Crime and violence is number one, and even immigration ranks above climate change. By contrast, neither of those issues, nor others average folks said they were more concerned about than climate change, made the top 10 concerns in the Davos survey, unless you count the nebulous “social polarization” category:
In surveys specifically about environmental issues, pollution is one of the top environmental concerns for the average person, yet it ranks lowest for Davos attendees, while climate related issues are the elites’ top concern, an exact reversal of the common man’s priorities.
The director of the climate alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Johan Rockström, assured readers that “priorities shift but it doesn’t mean that they’re not interconnected,” and that “to reduce inequality also means providing energy in the cheapest way possible – and that’s with renewables.”
This is false, but a common claim from renewables peddlers and climate alarmists. If renewables like wind and solar are cheap, they would not need to be propped up by government subsidies and special aid from global banks. In addition, if they were so cheap, energy prices in places that have invested in renewables the heaviest would not be higher, and rising faster, than in states and countries that still rely primarily on traditional sources of electric power, like coal, hydropower, natural gas, and nuclear. Rockström may be talking about biomass, which is often classified as a renewable, but burning wood and animal dung for cooking fuel and energy is not a positive in most of the world.
In fact, data show that fossil fuels are the most affordable energy sources even with government subsidies giving wind and solar a leg up. Cheapest of all is natural gas, and these resources are also the most reliable, able to work in conditions where wind and solar fail.
This article and the poll underlying it reinforces the fact that global elites really are disconnected from the concerns of the rest of us, and reality. Scientific data show that climate change is not an existential threat, not to humanity and not to the planet, which even fellow-elite Bill Gates recently affirmed.
Climate Change News and the WEF should get with the program and realize that their concerns do not reflect the needs of the people they are supposed to represent. These business leaders and politicians have an outsized power over the rest of us, and it is worrying that their priorities have long been and remain so out of step with the needs and priorities of the vast bulk of the human population.
The reanalysis models assimilate surface measurements and satellite data in addition to radiosonde data and blend the measurements together into a global or regional grid using a general circulation atmospheric model.
My new paper (May, 2025) emphasizes that while many of the underlying observations used to build weather reanalysis datasets, such as ERA5 (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts or ECMWF Reanalysis v5) (Soci et al., 2024) or MERRA-2 (Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2) (Gelaro et al., 2017), are from radiosondes, weather reanalysis models are still models and have the same problems that other models have.
Thus, they are not observations or measurements, like those in radiosonde data repositories such as IGRA2, and should not be treated as such. The reanalysis models assimilate surface measurements and satellite data in addition to radiosonde data and blend the measurements together into a global or regional grid using a general circulation atmospheric model.
Weather reanalysis models produce reasonably consistent, physics-based periodic (usually every 6 to 12 hours) estimates of the global atmospheric state (Bloom et al., 1996), but they are not observations.
Dr. Hans Hersbach of ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) provides us with figure 1 below which is an illustration of the data assimilation process in ERA5.
Figure 1. Data assimilation process for ERA5. Illustration by Dr. Hans Hersbach of ECMWF, public domain image.
Although like climate models in their structure, weather reanalysis models deal with shorter time periods, and they are constantly being updated with new data. This is good in that each new data item assimilated forces the model to be more realistic. However, data does not come into the model evenly, it arrives in uneven batches. There are several ways of dealing with this problem, but the most common is called incremental analysis updating or “IAU” (Bloom et al., 1996). IAU introduces new data to the model in a gradual manner.
There are numerous problems with adding new data to a model, one of the main problems is the new data will almost always differ from the computed model state at the time of the measurement to some degree. This causes “data shock” where the model must make a sudden, and non-physical, adjustment to accommodate the new data. Because the shock is unphysical and it doesn’t match the physics programmed into the model, the model can wander into an unstable state that takes time to recover from. MERRA-2 uses an IAU system to add new data (Gelaro et al., 2017).
ERA5 uses incremental “4D-Var” data assimilation (Lavers et al., 2024) to minimize new data shock. At each analysis point, usually every 12 hours, 4D-Var simulates both forward and backward in time to find the central 12-hour analysis state that minimizes total error. It inserts all the new data at once and at each data item’s precise measurement time and not gradually like the IAU process. It uses the model physics to choose the appropriate 12-hour analysis, thus the model physical state suffers less than it does with IAU, although it still has some spin-up data shock (Bernsen et al., 2008) to recover from after each 12-hour analysis just like all models do. In short, neither ERA5 nor MERRA-2 exactly honor all the measurements, but no model approximation can.
Conservation of Mass and Energy
Due primarily to the data assimilation processes, model approximations (or parameterizations), and finite resolution, reanalysis models do not perfectly conserve global or domain-wide energy and mass over long integrations. Model parameterizations are algorithms that estimate average critical climate quantities for the grid cells that cannot be modeled at the scale required, like cloud cover. ERA5 has a grid cell size of about 31 km and MERRA-2 about 50 km. The parameterized quantities, like cloud cover, require a much smaller scale (millimeters or less) to model using first principles.
As a result, over long periods of time these reanalysis climate models do not “close.” Closure refers to the degree to which the integrated budgets (sum of mass and energy fluxes, storage changes, and divergences) balance over time, ensuring the initial totals match the final totals after a long simulation run, after accounting for external forcings and inputs. Perfect closure is theoretically required to honor mass and energy conservation laws but never achieved in practice.
The error in atmospheric mass from the beginning of simulation runs to the end can be measured in terms of mm of water because the total dry mass of the atmosphere does not change with time, only the water content. Early models sometimes lost or gained dry atmospheric mass, but ERA5 and MERRA-2 are constrained so that dry mass is conserved (Gelaro et al., 2017), (Mayer et al., 2021), and (Wild & Bosilovich, 2024).
ERA5 generally exhibits tighter closure globally due to its higher resolution and advanced assimilation, while MERRA-2 shows improvements over its predecessor (MERRA) but larger residuals in some cases, particularly from cloud and aerosol effects.
Most modern studies of the troposphere rely mostly on weather reanalysis grids, thus any weaknesses in the weather reanalysis models carry over into these studies. Weather reanalysis models do not capture precipitation, radiation in and out of the climate system, cloud cover, wind speed, cyclones, extreme temperatures, or the double tropopause frequency very well, among other problems. For a summary of the problems with ERA5 and MERRA-2 compiled by Grok, download this report. Yet, even with all these problems, most published studies use weather reanalysis models because they are spatially and temporally continuous and they incorporate global quality-controlled radiosonde data (Xian & Homeyer, 2019).
ERA5 Imbalances
The ERA5 global TOA mean radiative energy imbalance from 2000-2020 is 0.68 ± 0.6 Wm-2, versus the CERES EBAF satellite observations, after they have been corrected to match the ocean heat content changes, of 0.73 ± 0.7 Wm-2 (Loeb et al., 2022). Positive values are a net input of energy into the climate system and negative values are net outgoing (cooling). The agreement between the two global numbers is better than the regional agreement, CERES and ERA5 differ substantially in the eastern Pacific off North America.
The ERA5 model does a good job with the total global water vapor balance and loses almost none over the period (2001-2014). It does less well with precipitation, it overestimates total precipitation by 0.1 to 0.2 mm and most of the error is in the tropics (Lavers et al., 2024). Reanalysis models often have a precipitation “wet bias” that is most pronounced in the tropics. Lavers, et al. mention that the precipitation match has been improved in the latest versions of ERA5.
MERRA2 Imbalances
MERRA-2 is produced by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). It is a global atmospheric reanalysis spanning 1980 to the present at ~50 km horizontal resolution with 72 vertical levels. MERRA-2 enforces a global dry atmospheric mass constraint, ensuring near-perfect dry mass conservation (~0.01% error per cycle), but its energy budget does not balance well.
MERRA-2’s all-sky reflected shortwave flux is ~7 Wm-2 higher than CERES EBAF’s, resulting in a net TOA flux imbalance of -4 Wm-2 for 2001-2015 (Hinkelman, 2019). This is a substantial bias, after all the entire human impact on climate from 1750-2019 is estimated to be only 2.72 Wm-2 (IPCC, 2021, p. 959). While MERRA-2 performs better on trends and variability, this absolute difference should worry everyone.
At the surface, high clear-sky downward shortwave fluxes indicate that the MERRA-2 atmosphere is too transmissive. MERRA-2’s all-sky shortwave radiation down and longwave radiation up energy flux terms agree reasonably well with CERES EBAF, but its net flux agreement is poor (-4.7 Wm-2) mainly because it overestimates cloud reflectivity. Analysis by region and surface type gives mixed outcomes. Clouds are overrepresented over the tropical oceans in MERRA-2, and somewhat underrepresented in marine stratocumulus areas. MERRA-2 also overestimates cloudiness in the Southern Ocean. The model also has problems in the polar regions, where the effects of snow and ice cover are important (Hinkelman, 2019).
Discussion
In general, ERA5 is a better weather reanalysis model than MERRA-2, but both have problems. Generally, ERA5 has a better resolution and a better methodology of integrating new data, but neither model has the resolution required to model clouds properly and, as a result, they do not estimate either cloudiness or precipitation well in key areas, like the tropics. Both models are poor at modeling tropical cyclones due to their large grid sizes, but ERA5 is a bit better at this than MERRA-2. Temperature prediction is very poor in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
Weather reanalysis model products are very useful, but they cannot be considered data or observations, or used as such, as they often are, for example in AR6 figure TS.2 (IPCC, 2021, p. 50). There are places in AR6 that concede weather reanalysis model products are not observations, but some parts of the report treat them as observations. There is poor agreement between various models of radiosonde data in tropospheric temperature trends as shown in figure 2, from AR6 figure 2.12.
Figure 2. ERA5 temperature trend profiles (blue dashed line) compared to various other estimates of decadal temperature trends in the troposphere. Source: (IPCC, 2021, p. 328).
Figure 2 shows the tropospheric warming trend by altitude from radio occultation, using data from the infrared satellite instrument AIRS (Qian et al., 2025), and corrected and homogenized radiosonde data (RICH and RAOBCORE). All the measurements in figure 2 are from models, there are no direct measurements in the plot, although RICH and RAOBCORE (Haimberger et al., 2012) are the least removed from the actual radiosonde measurements (Haimberger et al., 2012). As figure 2 makes clear, the models match one another fairly well below about 10 km, but above 10 km there is little agreement and the match in the tropics from 10-17 km is poor.
Figure 3 compares the CMIP6 climate models to ERA5 and the RICH and RAOBCORE homogenized radiosonde results in the tropics (20°S to 20°N). The model results are in red, with the mean and the model spread indicated. Model runs with the actual sea surface temperature (SST) forced are in blue. The black and grey are the ERA5, RICH, and RAOBCORE model results.
Figure 3. CMIP6 climate models compared to RICH, RAOBCORE, and ERA5 model results. Source: (IPCC, 2021, p. 444).
Figure 3 demonstrates that not only is the match between ERA5 and the CMIP6 climate models poor, it is getting worse with time, since the post 1998 match is worse than the other time periods shown. The difference between forcing the SSTs (blue) and not forcing them (red) suggests that the models are not doing a very good job over the oceans, which cover 71% of Earth’s surface.
The greenhouse effect is strongest in the tropics due to the higher humidity in this region. Some researchers have suggested that the CMIP6 climate models have overestimated the climate sensitivity to CO2 and greenhouses in general, and this is the cause of the mismatch in figure 3 in the tropical middle and upper troposphere (Mauritsen & Stevens, 2015), (McKitrick & Christy, 2020), and (Po-Chedley et al., 2022). McKitrick and Christy present evidence that the most straightforward way to reduce the mismatch in tropospheric warming rates in figure 3 is to lower the climate sensitivity to CO2 in the climate models.
We would also suggest that a necessary validation step would be to select the best radiosonde data and check the nearest climate model grid cells against the actual radiosonde data, rather than the RICH, RAOBCORE, and ERA5 models. Just as the best way to compare the present to that past is to compare modern data to well selected proxies, the best way to compare radiosonde measurements to climate models is to find the best radiosonde data and compare the models to it, at the location of the radiosonde data.
Works Cited
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Dee, D. P., Balmaseda, M., Balsamo, G., Engelen, R., Simmons, A. J., & Thépaut, J.-N. (2014). Toward a Consistent Reanalysis of the Climate System. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 95(8). https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00043.1
Gelaro, R., McCarty, W., Suárez, M. J., Todling, R., Molod, A., Takacs, L., & Randles, C. A. (2017). The Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2). Journal of Climate, 30(14), 5419 – 5454. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0758.1
Haimberger, L., Tavolato, C., & Sperka, S. (2012). Homogenization of the Global Radiosonde Temperature Dataset through Combined Comparison with Reanalysis Background Series and Neighboring Stations. Journal of Climate, 8108-8131. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00668.1
Hersbach, H., Bell, B., Berrisford, P., Hirahara, S., Horányi, A., & Muñoz-Sabater, J. (2020). The ERA5 global reanalysis. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 146(730), 1999-2049. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3803
Hinkelman, L. M. (2019). The Global Radiative Energy Budget in MERRA and MERRA-2: Evaluation with Respect to CERES EBAF Data. Journal of Climate, 32(6), 1973 – 1994. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0445.1
IPCC. (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. In V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, . . . B. Zhou (Ed.)., WG1. Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
Lavers, D. A., Hersbach, H., Rodwell, M. J., & Simmons, A. (2024). An improved estimate of daily precipitation from the ERA5 reanalysis. Atmospheric Science Letters, 25(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/asl.1200
Loeb, N. G., Mayer, M., Kato, S., Fasullo, J. T., Zuo, H., Senan, R., . . . Balmaseda, M. (2022). Evaluating twenty-year trends in Earth’s energy flows from observations and reanalyses. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 127. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JD036686
Mauritsen, T., & Stevens, B. (2015). Missing iris effect as a possible cause of muted hydrological change and high climate sensitivity in models. Nature Geoscience, 8, 346-351. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2414
Mayer, J., Mayer, M., & Haimberger, L. (2021). Consistency and Homogeneity of Atmospheric Energy, Moisture, and Mass Budgets in ERA5. Journal of Climate, 34(10), 3955 – 3974. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0676.1
McKitrick, R., & Christy, J. (2020). Pervasive Warming Bias in CMIP6 Tropospheric Layers. Earth and Space Science, 7. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EA001281
Po-Chedley, S., Fasullo, J., Siler, N., Labe, Z., Barnes, E., Bonfils, C., & Santer, B. (2022). Internal variability and forcing influence model–satellite differences in the rate of tropical tropospheric warming. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 119(47). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2209431119
Qian, W., Wen, Y., Gao, S., Li, Z., Kisembe, J., & Jing, H. (2025). Evaluation of Near-Surface Specific Humidity and Air Temperature From Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) Over Oceans. Earth and Space Science, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EA003856
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For years, climate change “deniers” have been attacked and ridiculed because we don’t believe in the “science” of the left. Yet, invented “science” isn’t science, and too many scientists have cowed to it, incentivized by money or fear of being cancelled, and have climbed on the bandwagon. More and more people, however, are realizing the scam that’s been perpetrated and are speaking out.
For years, climate change “deniers” have been attacked and ridiculed because we don’t believe in the “science” of the left. Yet, invented “science” isn’t science, and too many scientists have cowed to it, incentivized by money or fear of being cancelled, and have climbed on the bandwagon. More and more people, however, are realizing the scam that’s been perpetrated and are speaking out.
And now, those who defend climate change caused by humans are furious and alarmed. To discourage dissenters to the progressive narrative, the UN stepped up to stop the “disinformation”, intending to ramp up the war against climate change “deniers”:
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), held in Brazil in November 2025, several states endorsed the UN’s ‘Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, an initiative recognizing and trying to combat the rise in climate disinformation in media and politics.’
The UN Declaration is professedly a pledge to ‘fight false information’ about climate change.
At first glance, the Declaration seems fairly innocuous. But if you read it carefully, it clearly condemns those who don’t agree with the UN agenda, demanding censorship of the opposition, largely through the media. Here is one of the listed commitments:
Promote and support the sustainability of a diverse and resilient media ecosystem through adequate policies to enable and ensure accurate and reliable coverage, specially, within this context, on climate and environmental issues, as well as policies on advertising transparency and accountability….
It is not the place of the UN to determine a limitation on discussion of climate change, or create a media network to censor opposing viewpoints or findings. And yet they persist in pursuing this agenda and insist that everyone fall in line. Desiree Fixler, an expert in sustainable finance and investment banking and a former member of the WEF’s Global Future Council on Responsible Investing turned whistleblower, identified the climate change crisis as a hoax:
Fixler, a whistleblower, used to work as a sustainability officer for Deutsche Bank, until she exposed their ‘greenwashing’ and was fired for it. Since then, she has been exposing the climate change narrative and the ‘net zero’ agenda as a scam. In a recent podcast, she explained how the UN and WEF agendas of net zero emissions and ‘stakeholder capitalism’ – a WEF concept – are means to gain control and implement socialism. ‘They’re lying to the public,’ Fixler recently said on the Winston Marshall podcast.
‘They’ve manufactured a climate crisis. There is climate change, but there is no climate crisis… asset managers, consultants, and governments… they’re all in on it because they all profit from it.’
Last year, Stanford University reported on a “rise” in new organizations pushing back against the left’s “climate change crisis” claims:
New Stanford-led research in PLOS One reveals a growing constellation of think tanks, research institutes, trade associations, foundations, and other groups actively working to oppose climate science and policy. The number of countries with at least one such ‘counter climate change organization’ has more than doubled over the past 35 years.
The researchers, in a roundabout way, recognize the aggressiveness of the left’s climate change policies in action to be a major factor for the pushback:
According to the Jan. 22 study, the two factors most closely linked to the formation of at least one counter climate change organization are the strength of a country’s commitment to protecting the natural environment and the level of formal organization in its social sector.
(As it turns out, people are less concerned with some unobservable boogeyman than they are with their utility bills and whether or not they can afford a car.)
An especially frustrating part of this story is that climate change adherents mischaracterize the position of the “deniers” who don’t deny that the climate is changing, but that there is inadequate scientific evidence to suggest that human beings are the source of those changes. This is a critical issue: How can we consider stopping climate change when we don’t have scientific data about what causes it?
Well-known scientists are finally speaking out against the UN censorship initiative:
Prominent voices, including Bjorn Lomborg, have criticized the UN’s stance, insisting that taxpayer-funded climate policies warrant thorough scrutiny, not censorship.
Lomborg contends that the UN’s agenda is not only misguided but runs the risk of economically damaging the very countries it claims to help, as evidenced by countries like Germany facing high energy costs amid aggressive climate goals.
We must take seriously the efforts of the UN to censor scientific debate, because the consequences could be dire:
The implications of this censorship extend far beyond the realm of energy policy, as it threatens foundational principles of democracy and free expression, calling into question the very nature of scientific and academic inquiry.
Europeans who complained about a lack of snow a few weeks ago might be regretting getting what they wished for.
Vienna deploys historic icebreaker to clear frozen Danube harbors [VIDEO]
14.01.2026
Vienna has deployed its historic icebreaker, the MS Eisvogel, to clear ice from Albern Harbor and other port basins on the Danube as a severe cold snap grips parts of Europe.
The operation marks the vessel’s first significant ice-clearing mission since 2017, when the harbor waters last froze over. Harbor officials said breaking the ice is essential to protect docked ships and keep navigation channels open for incoming traffic.
The Eisvogel is currently operating in Vienna’s three major port areas, Freudenau, Albern and Lobau, with crews working about every two days to manage ice buildup.
Higher temperatures and a lack of snow are forcing Europe’s ski resorts to rethink their business model.
With only a few weeks to go until the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina on 6 February, the slopes around the ‘pearl of the Dolomites’ are covered in snow. But tourists and skiers aren’t always lucky enough to experience this.
With the climate warming up, snow is often limited to the slopes. Even there, it is only guaranteed by artificial snowmaking, with associated economic and environmental costs that often trickle down into ski pass prices. For many Europeans, this is pushing snow sports increasingly out of reach.
In Episode 536 of District of Conservation, Gabriella interviews Lucy Biggers, head of social media at The Free Press.
Lucy has used social media to discuss her journey from AOC supporter, NowThis contributor, and climate alarmist to realist. Lucy discusses her day-to-day at The Free Press, her evolution, debunking climate talking points, how society treats climate skepticism as heresy, why the world is souring on net-zero climate politics, why environmentalism isn’t at odds with human progress, how to fight climate anxiety, and much more.
“I almost felt like I had two personalities, where I had an outward facing personality that pushed the climate narrative. Then I had a lot of internal questions, to the point where in 2020 I read Michael Shellenberger’s book Apocalypse Never when it came out. I was still at my old job hosting a climate series, but I felt I was questioning enough that I wanted to seek that out because the doomsday scenario of climate and the nihilism was really weighing me down. I kind of sought that out for my own mental health, of, like, what else is out there and the questioning, but I think there’s not, I don’t have, like, one moment. It was a lot of questioning. But I was so entrenched in the group think of the group of the climate movement, of being very far on the left, that that switch of sort of, say, I’m no longer a climate activist, took a long time to kind of get out of almost had to do a little bit of a like a deprogramming.” — Lucy Biggers, former climate influencer and current Free Press Head of Social Media
In Episode 536 of District of Conservation, Gabriella interviews Lucy Biggers, head of social media at The Free Press.
Lucy has used social media to discuss her journey from AOC supporter, NowThis contributor, and climate alarmist to realist. Lucy discusses her day-to-day at The Free Press, her evolution, debunking climate talking points, how society treats climate skepticism as heresy, why the world is souring on net-zero climate politics, why environmentalism isn’t at odds with human progress, how to fight climate anxiety, and much more.
In Episode 579 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses the permitting reform bill – aka BAAJA – that is gaining traction in Congress now. The Senate will hold a cloture vote starting at 3:30pm ET in a motion to proceed. Gabriella discusses the status quo without permitting reform, how BAAJA is good for the environment and affordability. Tune in!SHOW NOTESBipartisan Policy Center: BAAJA ExplainerEstimating the US Energy System Impacts of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act
Your correspondent has a confession. I need to get up at least two hours earlier to keep abreast of all the current madness that is Net Zero. The un-walked dog will have to go back to resuming her slumbers on the best seat in the house while I digest the latest reports piling trillions of pounds onto the realistic cost of the Net Zero fantasy.
Your correspondent has a confession. I need to get up at least two hours earlier to keep abreast of all the current madness that is Net Zero. The un-walked dog will have to go back to resuming her slumbers on the best seat in the house while I digest the latest reports piling trillions of pounds onto the realistic cost of the Net Zero fantasy. Long hours must be spent trying to work out how the sinister Miliband plans to make household energy cheaper by giving billions to useless, unreliable wind and solar, and then sticking the horrendous costs straight onto consumer bills. “Cheaper than gas!” this still-at-large lunatic is apparently still howling. Then I would have time for a good laugh with the really dumb stuff. And none dafter than the recent suggestion from the Green Blob-funded Conservative Environment Network (CEN) to blanket inland water areas with solar panels, killing local aquatic life and tricking diving birds into crashing into them.
If they were bats mistaking floating solar panels for water, hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of pounds would need to be spent constructing elaborate protecting tunnels (okay, I know the Sun will not be able to shine on the panels, but it doesn’t much anyway in the winter, and I am just making it all up, like everyone else in the Net Zero business). The last Conservative government allowed spending of £120 million to protect a few rare bats by building a 1,000-metre tunnel on the new high-speed railway from London to Birmingham. But then perhaps such magic money-tree largesse would not be available for water bird-whacking solar panels – ‘green’ technology is good and different rules apply. Bats are killed in their millions worldwide by giant wind turbines, but nobody gives a flying squeak about that.
The CEN wants the UK Government to cut red tape to “unleash” solar farm developments on “man-made bodies of water” and to help projects selling power to the electricity grid. It is claimed that red tape has put a straitjacket on private investment in the UK floating solar industry. Man-made water areas are said to include disused docks and quarries along with on-farm reservoirs. CEN wants to encourage water companies to build solar farms on the 570 reservoirs that exist in the UK, potentially generating 2.7 terawatt-hours of electricity.
Waiving local planning rules for unreliable energy projects is much in fashion with the national political parties, particularly Labour and the Conservatives, who face forthcoming local election humiliation at the hands of the surging anti-Net Zero Reform Party.
Many long-standing pools of freshwater, whether originally man-made or not, become vibrant centres of aquatic and avian life. Dumping huge solar panels on the surface is a considerable nature killer. A paper published last month in Environmental Science and Technology examined the interaction of birds and floating solar panels and concluded that their industrial structure could pose “significant risk” to certain bird species, especially those with limited visual acuity and flight manoeuvrability adapted to aquatic habitats. Birds most at risk were said to be waterfowl, shorebirds and gulls.
The big danger for birds is one of fatal collision with solar panels that replicate the surface of water. It can affect birds diving for food but is a particular problem for aquatic species that land harder and faster on water. The panels also present problems for birds that require a ‘runway’ to take off. Overall, the survey suggests fatalities of around 11.61 birds per megawatt generated per year. Needless to say, there are other ecological concerns that will need to be ignored by Net Zero fanatics. With even limited panel coverage there will be changes in shading, dissolved oxygen levels and water temperature. These create altered microclimates and disrupt food chains.
The CEN looks forward to generating 2.7 terawatts from panelling over the ponds, a power source that, due to its appalling unreliability, will further destabilise Britain’s already creaking grid. It is the latest quack scheme produced by an operation supported by 49 Conservative MPs that remains dedicated to the Net Zero lunacy. This caucus, which represents a significant 41% of the current parliamentary party, is a substantial roadblock to attempts by the party’s leadership to move away from all the Net Zero hysteria that has engulfed the Conservatives over the last two decades. Attempts last year by the leader Kemi Badenoch to ditch the 2050 Net Zero commitment were met by the CEN director Sam Hall complaining to the Guardian that the move “undermines the significant environment legacy of successive Conservative governments”.
But politics is a fluid business in the modern Conservative party. The CEN parliamentary group includes Simon Hoare and Sir Roger Gale, the two midwit buffers who intended to vote last year for a society-destroying private bill that would have cut all hydrocarbon use in the UK to 10% within 10 years. On the other hand, it also counts Esther McVey, who recently informed Talk Radio that Net Zero was a “dud”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
Has President Trump’s withdrawal of Biden era renewable subsidies killed the Chinese economy?
Chinese PV Industry Brief: Major solar manufacturers report steep full-year losses
JA Solar, TCL Zhonghuan, JinkoSolar, Trina Solar and Daqo each announced significant losses for full fiscal year 2025 amid continued price declines and overcapacity.
JA Solar forecast a full-year net loss attributable to shareholders of CNY 4.5–4.8 billion ($619–660 million) for 2025, … It attributed the loss mainly to supply-demand imbalance …
TCL Zhonghuan said it expects a 2025 net loss of CNY 8.2-9.6 billion ($1.13–1.32 billion), versus a CNY 9.818 billion loss a year earlier. …
JinkoSolar released a notice indicating it also expects a full-year loss for 2025, without providing a range. …
Trina Solar likewise said it expects to remain in the red for 2025; …
Polysilicon producer Daqo New Energy said it anticipates another full-year loss in 2025 …
Berk Kutay Gokmen |16.01.2026 – Update : 16.01.2026
China suffered direct economic losses of 241.6 billion yuan ($34.7 billion) from natural disasters in 2025, which also caused 763 deaths or missing persons, the Ministry of Emergency Management said on Friday.
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Besides floods and geological disasters, the ministry noted that droughts, low-temperature freezing and snowstorms, sandstorms, forest and grassland fires, marine disasters, and biological disasters also occurred to varying degrees across the country.
But there are deeper issues with the Chinese economy – a lot of private Chinese companies appear to be borrowing unsustainable amounts of money to cover losses, in an apparent effort to maintain market share at any cost.
China debt overhang leads to rising share of ‘zombie’ firms
J. Scott Davis and Brendan Kelly December 23, 2025
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There is mounting evidence of “zombie lending” in China, banks rolling over bad loans to unprofitable firms and allowing the status quo to continue rather than recognize losses.
In many ways the current experience in China mirrors that of Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. Rapid growth in private sector debt—also fueled by domestic savings—was followed by the appearance of zombie lending. In Japan, that zombie lending led to the inefficient allocation of capital and decreased productivity, especially in sectors shielded from foreign competition.
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There is a downside to the reduced risk that comes from domestically financed debt. Chinese capital controls mean savings are largely captive. Notably, Chinese authorities aggressively tightened capital outflow controls in 2016 when the country faced significant balance-of-payments stress.
Captive savings mean state-owned banks face little funding pressure. As loans come due, banks can easily roll over loans to unprofitable and otherwise insolvent companies to avoid recognizing loan losses on their balance sheets.
Such zombie lending was observed in Japan in the 1990s. Like China in the years after the Global Financial Crisis, Japan experienced massive growth in private sector credit in the 1980s.
China appears to have a cultural problem with managing bad debts. While there are ongoing government attempts to strengthen bankruptcy processes, Chinese culture appears to encourage collaboration rather than adversarial style Western bankruptcies.
Excessive avoidance of bankruptcy procedures appears to be causing capital stagnation and heavy losses. Instead of forced selling assets of bankrupt companies, liberating their assets and workers for more profitable economic activities, insolvencies in some cases are allowed to linger far longer than would likely be tolerated in Western countries.
Of course it is difficult to obtain accurate information about the extent of such practices – parties involved in a bad debt coverups don’t exactly advertise what they are doing.
Did President Trump kill the Chinese economy by cancelling Biden era renewable subsidies?
My theory based on evidence like the quotes above is the Chinese economy was already sick before President Trump 2024. I believe a large chunk of the Chinese economy, likely including the EV and renewable sectors, is being propped up by banks rolling over and concealing bad debts. Even Chinese human rights abuses like allegations of widespread use of slave labor have failed to restore profits.
I believe Chinese banks are concealing massive capital losses, by enabling insolvent private companies to roll over unpaid debts, and allowing those companies to maintain a facade of solvency, while those insolvent businesses quietly haemorrhage cash on every sale.
There is an old saying, “If you owe the bank $100, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $1,000,000, the bank has a problem”. Having committed to propping up insolvent companies, the banks themselves are likely just as insolvent as the companies they are propping up.
Where is the cash coming from to continue this charade? The only plausible source of the money being used to prop up this large scale fraud is plundering the savings accounts of ordinary Chinese people.
So to answer my question, Trump did not kill the Chinese economy. The Chinese economy was already on Ponzi scheme life support well before Trump 2024. Even if every penny of Biden’s deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act had been poured into the hands of Chinese renewable manufacturers, the green subsidy money would have disappeared into the black hole of China’s still largely concealed debt and solvency crisis, without any noticeable impact on China’s economic problems.
It’s true that global warming was invented in the early 1980s, a pet discovery of environmental activists. But it was 1986 when green campaigners really caught on to the prospect of a world-ending threat to rival Aids, which was considered at the time to be about to kill us all. It began to attract attention from major newspapers and TV companies. The following year BBC reporters were measuring the rapid sinking of tropical islands.
A NEGLECTED anniversary: 2026, by my reckoning, is 40 years since the birth of the global warming scare.
It’s true that global warming was invented in the early 1980s, a pet discovery of environmental activists. But it was 1986 when green campaigners really caught on to the prospect of a world-ending threat to rival Aids, which was considered at the time to be about to kill us all. It began to attract attention from major newspapers and TV companies. The following year BBC reporters were measuring the rapid sinking of tropical islands.
By 1990 we had world climate conferences and large-scale spending by governments on climate research, conducted by scientists who never found reasons to doubt the global warming idea. Global warming – and it was warming, no messing about with ‘climate change’ – became the established orthodoxy.
There were standouts. I remember talking in 1990 to a deeply sceptical Sir Richard Doll, who didn’t think global warming was up to much in terms of science. Doll was the man who in the 1950s found smoking was linked to lung cancer. But no one who counted was listening. We were definitely all going to fry.
So how has it been going?
At the beginning of this year the Met Office reported that 2025 was the warmest year on record in Britain. It was 0.06C degrees warmer than the previous record year, 2022. However, since four out of five Met Office measuring stations are unreliable to within two degrees, there are some cussed deniers who find this implausible. Some of them even seem to think that in reality it’s getting colder.
What about the effect on the actual weather?
In December the Met Office warned that the outlook for Scottish ski resorts was ‘concerning’. Alex Priestley of the Met Office told the BBC: ‘With temperatures going up and up, the cold extremes are going to be less cold and the warm extremes are going to be warmer.
‘Unfortunately, for those of us who love snow we’re going to see a lot less of it. There will probably be winters by the 2080s or so when we see none at all, even in the Scottish mountains.’
Then there’s the clear-eyed Dale Vince, green energy tycoon and major donor to the Labour Party. Mr Vince posted on X on December 23: ‘If you’re dreaming of a White Christmas – dream on.
‘Snow is fast becoming a thing of the past in Britain. The fact that it’s hard wired into our culture through massive events like xmas and into our memories – is really interesting. Because it’ll be harder and harder to ignore the fact we don’t get snow anymore, and the reason why – climate change. Obvs.’
These assertions might now be regarded as premature, since Scotland has been knee-deep in snow since soon after New Year, and there has been plenty to go round in England.
Of course, these days we know better than simple global warming, Since the planet has heated insufficiently fast for the green lobby, it’s now extreme weather we must fear.
So, when Storm Goretti approached, there were apocalyptic warnings of the terror to come. Simon King of the BBC said: ‘This sort of warning is only issued in the most extreme circumstances.’
In the event some trees came down in Cornwall and the Channel Islands. An unfortunate individual was killed by one. A number of homes were left without power. But ‘the most extreme circumstances’? Not really.
This week milder weather is forecast. We will surely be told by the BBC and others that temperatures are above average and therefore sinister.
It is time to wonder how long major broadcasters, academic institutions and governments can cling to the climate change idea. Pretty much everything that has ever been claimed about it has been wrong. In four decades of supposedly accelerating climate change, the world hasn’t baked, ice caps haven’t melted and nor have glaciers, the sea hasn’t risen, islands haven’t sunk, crops haven’t withered, storms and hurricanes haven’t become more frequent or more intense, and neither have forest fires. New deserts have failed to appear. There are no more floods than there always have been. All that lovely coral in the sea off Australia is still there.
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