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.
The New York Times article, “Under Trump, U.S. Adds Fuel to a Heating Planet,” claims that President Donald Trump’s policies and actions will result in higher carbon dioxide emissions, causing more droughts, floods, hurricanes, and other extreme weather.
Editor’s Note: The New York Times article, “Under Trump, U.S. Adds Fuel to a Heating Planet,” claims that President Donald Trump’s policies and actions will result in higher carbon dioxide emissions, causing more droughts, floods, hurricanes, and other extreme weather.
While Trump’s policies may result in increases of CO2 emissions, hundreds of Climate Realism posts and dozens of Climate at a Glance articles have clearly demonstrated that emissions have not and are not changing the weather for the worse.
Weather has not become more extreme as emissions have increased. The NYT is making a connection that science in no way supports – specifically that President Donald Trump and his administration wield power over the atmosphere and climate. This is false.
In recent days his administration has slammed the door on every possible avenue of global cooperation on the environment. At the same time, it is sending the message that it wants the world to be awash in fossil fuels sold by America, no matter the consequences.
Under President Trump, the United States has become the only nation to renege on a pledge to try to keep warming to 1.5 degrees. Its actions will make the global fight harder, scientists said.
“Emissions will be higher,” warned Justin S. Mankin, an associate professor at Dartmouth College who researches climate variability. “Trump’s greenhouse gas emissions will cause Trump’s heat waves, Trump’s droughts, Trump’s floods, and Trump’s wildfires.”
“The science is clear that every action matters and every ton of carbon matters,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and professor at Texas Tech. “There’s a price to pay for every ton of carbon we produce, and that price is being added to our global debt.”
The Aztecs had one advantage over our climate experts- they realized the sun was responsible for global warming
A University of Cincinnati professor blamed the rise of Hitler on global warming. Princeton Professor Emeritus of Physics William Happer in 2017 drew parallels to today’s man-made climate change claims. “I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the consensus on climate change and the consensus on witches. At the witch trials in Salem the judges were educated at Harvard. This was supposedly 100 per cent science. The one or two people who said there were no witches were immediately hung. Not much has changed,” Happer quipped. [Note: According to The Salem Witch Trial judges: “Five of the nine judges had attended Harvard, though only William Stoughton, Samuel Sewall and Nathaniel Saltonstall had graduated.” – On 27 May 1692, Sir William Phips, the newly appointed royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, appointed nine of the colony’s leading magistrates to serve as judges for the newly created Court of Oyer and Terminer. When Phips sailed into Boston from London on 14 May, there were already 38 people in jail for witchcraft, and the accusations and arrests were growing daily. One of the governor’s first official acts was to create this special court to deal with the growing crisis…Governor Phips carefully chose men he described as “persons of the best prudence.” … All nine were members of the Governor’s Council, and most of them had served as judges for many years. Many had even been on panels that had heard previous witchcraft cases.]
In Episode 537 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses how renewables have gone dark in many of the areas impacted by Winter Storm Fern, how state policymaking invites unstable grids, the need for new pipelines in the Northeast, and why energy abundance policies will catch on in the states. Tune in to learn more!
“The weekend’s arctic blast has put much of the U.S. grid through a stress test and served as another alert about the growing risks to electric-power reliability. Americans can be grateful the Biden crowd didn’t succeed in forcing all coal plants to shut down.” – WSJ
In Episode 537 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses how renewables have gone dark in many of the areas impacted by Winter Storm Fern, how state policymaking invites unstable grids, the need for new pipelines in the Northeast, and why energy abundance policies will catch on in the states. Tune in to learn 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
Britain’s energy industry faces collapse thanks to Labour’s “chaotic and needless” rundown of the oil and gas sector, one of its biggest union backers has warned.
Government on collision course with GMB union over job insecurity and excessive taxation
Britain’s energy industry faces collapse thanks to Labour’s “chaotic and needless” rundown of the oil and gas sector, one of its biggest union backers has warned. The Telegraph has the story.
Louise Gilmour, Scotland secretary of the GMB union, says “delusional” net zero policies championed by Ed Miliband are causing “arguably the most destructive industrial calamity in our nation’s history”.
She has backed a new report that says Britain will permanently lose its energy independence unless there is a major shift in Government policy.
It puts Labour on a collision course with its third-biggest union backer, which donates £1m a year to the party. The GMB has previously warned that Mr Miliband’s rush to net zero is costing jobs, but this is the most scathing attack to date on the Government by the union, which has 560,000 members.
The report by the Jobs Foundation, titled Cliff Edge, says 200 jobs per week are being lost because of Labour’s ban on North Sea exploration and taxes that are swallowing up companies’ entire profits.
In some cases, oil and gas firms are paying 120 per cent tax on their profits because of the Government’s energy profits levy (EPL).
‘Onrushing disaster’
It says investors are considering putting their money into Nigeria’s energy sector instead of Britain’s, saying the African country is a “more stable regime”.
Ms Gilmour writes in a foreword to the report: “Our governments [in Westminster and Holyrood] seem stricken, almost delusional, in the face of onrushing disaster, insisting we must ignore today’s reality and believe in tomorrow’s dreams.”
Rising CO2 levels have indeed contributed to a phenomenon known as “global greening,” where satellite observations show increased vegetation cover and plant growth across much of the planet. This is often referred to as the CO2 fertilization effect, where higher atmospheric carbon dioxide enhances photosynthesis in many plants (particularly C3 plants like trees, wheat, and rice), allowing them to grow faster, produce more leaves, and use water more efficiently.
Rising CO2 levels have indeed contributed to a phenomenon known as “global greening,” where satellite observations show increased vegetation cover and plant growth across much of the planet.
This is often referred to as the CO2 fertilization effect, where higher atmospheric carbon dioxide enhances photosynthesis in many plants (particularly C3 plants like trees, wheat, and rice), allowing them to grow faster, produce more leaves, and use water more efficiently.
NASA-led studies, based on satellite data from instruments like MODIS and AVHRR, have documented this trend since the 1980s.
Decades of satellite data confirm the globe has been substantially greening – as defined by rising Leaf Area Index (LAI) values – since the 1980s.
The CO2 fertilization effect (CFE) enhances plant productivity via improved light use efficiency and water use efficiency. In other words, with elevated CO2, photosynthesis rates are not as hampered as they would be when sunlight and water availability are limited.
A new study indicates India is the second largest contributor to global greening, and that CFE has driven a “substantial expansion of global green cover over the last two decades.”
The authors found the CFE has “nearly doubled” the trend values in net primary production [NPP] across India relative to the trend values when the CFE is not considered.
Interestingly, despite the elevated CO2, much of India has been cooling since 2000. While the southern peninsula and parts of eastern India have been warming this century, “central and northwestern regions experienced a cooling trend.”
It should be noted that India’s annual mean non-warming trend has been ongoing since 1950 (as shown in Sanjay et al., 2020).
The current cold snap (“where is global warming when you need it?”) makes timely a review of the Texas electricity debacle of February 2021. This post by Robert Bradley, “Wind, Solar, and the Great Texas Blackout: Guilty as Charged,” was originally published by the Institute for Energy Research. As of 5 pm yesterday, natural gas and coal supplied about 75 percent of Texas’s electricity (ERCOT scoreboard) and wind/solar 17 percent (versus 50 percent of rated capacity).
Ed. note: The current cold snap (“where is global warming when you need it?”) makes timely a review of the Texas electricity debacle of February 2021. This post by Robert Bradley, “Wind, Solar, and the Great Texas Blackout: Guilty as Charged,” was originally published by the Institute for Energy Research. As of 5 pm yesterday, natural gas and coal supplied about 75 percent of Texas’s electricity (ERCOT scoreboard) and wind/solar 17 percent (versus 50 percent of rated capacity).
“Central planning for a forced energy transformation produced the debacle of debacles two years ago in Texas. It is time for a new era for U.S. electricity policy premised on market entrepreneurship.”
The authors want to let wind and solar continue to “saturate” the market and regulate (via “smart meters”) usage in your home and business to save the grid. But this is a recipe for intrusion, inconvenience, hassle, and conflict. And it neglects the logical alternative of denationalizing (privatizing) the state’s power grid to create the right incentives for the provision of reliable, affordable electricity.
“As energy researchers based in Texas, we have spent much of the past two years analyzing why the state was so unprepared for this event and how it can do better,” the study begins. Michael Webber et al. continue:
A common knee-jerk reaction to disasters that cause widespread power outages is to call for building more “firm” power plants – those that use fuels like coal or natural gas and are designed to deliver power at any time of day or night. But coal and gas plants, and their fuel supplies, can fail spectacularly.
Thus:
We think it is important to think beyond just building more power plants. Our findings spotlight other solutions that can be cleaner, cheaper and faster to put in place.
The “cleaner, cheaper and faster” policy is ultra-prescriptive, inside-the-walls demand-side management programs (to be determined). Something is amiss in this engineering world where humans, as Adam Smith warned centuries ago, are just “different pieces upon a chess- board.”
The authors claim that the to-be-accommodated political energies—dilute, intermittent, and thus noncompetitive—are somehow cheaper: “Rapid growth in wind and solar generation in Texas has saved the state’s consumers billions of dollars while making a lot of money for rural landowners and local governments.” But U.S. taxpayers are paying part of the wind/solar bill, and all state residents pay a monthly fee to cover the cost of the $7 billion CREZ transmission system built for renewables. Then there are local and state tax favors.
It is back to the soft energy path of Amory Lovins of the 1970s. Replace reliable, consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral electricity with weather-dependent ones. Tighten the usage screws to cover up for supply-side gaps and unreliability.
Renewables Were the Culprit
The politically correct interpretation dodges the hard questions and avoids the analysis needed to get to the underlying causes of the worse electricity disruption in history. The central error is concentrating on the data without understanding the “why.” What happened in February 2021 was a long predicted “perfect storm.” It had precedents in the winters of 1989 and 2011 and should have been anticipated and overcome.
The statement “coal and gas plants, and their fuel supplies, can fail spectacularly” ignores incentives and opportunity cost, Economics 101.
Here is the reason and the answer, with quite different policy implications: the unreliables caused the underperformance of the reliables. As I explained nearly two years ago in “Renewables ‘Market-Failed’ Natural Gas in Texas”:
Renewables, representing more than one-fourth of Texas’s generating capacity, all but disappeared at the peak. But there is a very important second part of the story: the tax-break-driven pricing of wind severely compromised the economics of existing and new natural gas and coal plants.
I cited a Houston Chronicle story, “High Risk, Low Reward Drives Shift from Power Generation” (March 14, 2021). That story asked: “How did Texas get to the point where more than half its electricity generation got knocked offline?” What those in the industry knew (but outside “experts” do not seem to want to know) was unveiled in this one simple article:
The failure of so many power plants during the brutal winter weather that swept through Texas last month was perhaps years in the making, the result of a merchant power industry that has struggled to earn profits, satisfy Wall Street and keep the confidence of lenders and investors.
And why did the reliable plants become unreliable?
Lenders and investors have agreed. A major new power plant — excluding wind and solar installations — has not been built in Texas since 2017, when the Chicago company Exelon completed two 1,100-megawatt gas-fired power plants, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid manager. One reason: financing for projects that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars has become increasingly hard to get.
Continuing:
“There is a lot of uncertainty about how much profit gas plants can make year to year,” said Travis Miller, an energy and utilities equity strategist at Morningstar Securities Research. “Investors typically don’t want to finance projects when they don’t have confidence the project can produce steady cash flows.”
The sum result:
The companies, meanwhile, have not just slowed or stopped investing in generation. They have sold off and shut down power plants to refocus on businesses with higher profit margins, such as retail electricity.
Phantom capacity- early retired gas and coal plants and would-have- been new capacity- was missed at a most crucial time. Poorly maintained capacity was another consequence from ruined margins from government-enabled, low- marginal-cost wind and solar. There were other reasons (here and here)- pointing toward government, not free markets.
Conclusion
Unreliable capacity that never should have been built crowded out the reliables- as intended by “magical thinking” policymakers. Storm Uri was not the straw that broke the camel’s back, it was the moment that showed the animal’s back was badly broken.
The way forward is the opposite of what the UT- Austin authors recommend. Wind, solar, and batteries should no longer receive government advantage. The wholesale power grid now run by ERCOT should be denationalized and mandatory transmission rules rescinded. Third, franchise protection and other “public utility” regulation should be removed for the denationalized grid, a program outlined elsewhere.
Central planning for a forced energy transformation produced the debacle of debacles two years ago in Texas. It is time for a new era for U.S. electricity policy premised on market entrepreneurship.
Europe is sacrificing industry to Net Zero ideology, the Chairman of Siemens Energy has warned, with strict emission targets crippling manufacturing in Germany.
Europe is sacrificing industry to Net Zero ideology, the Chairman of Siemens Energy has warned, with strict emission targets crippling manufacturing in Germany. The Telegraph has more.
Joe Kaeser said strict zero-emission targets had crippled manufacturing and heavy industry in Germany and beyond. He called on the German Government to work on a more “economically feasible plan” for the country to decarbonise.
“The critics have a point when they say you risk your economic power [and] society’s wellbeing by being ideological about Net Zero,” he said.
His comments will raise questions about Britain’s approach to Net Zero, which official forecasts show will add hundreds of billions of pounds to government spending over the next few decades.
As well as questions about cost, the UK and Europe face increasing pressure from the US to dial back plans which Trump administration officials claim are making countries “subservient” to Beijing.
Sir Keir Starmer will fly to China this week in the first visit by a British Prime Minister since 2018, with energy likely to be among the topics discussed.
Kaeser, who previously ran German industrial giant Siemens before becoming Chairman of its energy division, warned that European companies were becoming uncompetitive because of green energy policies.
He criticised the Government in Berlin for forcing zero emission targets on carmakers and demanding that businesses prove the products they sell have no connection to deforestation.
The German businessman also criticised officials for sacrificing reliable, cheap energy by ditching fossil fuels.
Kaeser said: “They became ideologists on renewables. That’s a bad idea. If you are an industrial country and cannot provide a sustainable, affordable and reliable source of energy, you have a problem.”
Germany’s share of global emissions is currently less than 2% – much lower than other industrialised countries including Brazil and India – and Kaeser said even halving this figure would make little difference to the global picture.
By comparison, China now accounts for a third of global carbon emissions while the UK’s share is less than 1%.
“Why would you risk your industrial competitiveness by maybe being a rounding error in the global discussion?” Kaeser said.
Germany has a goal of hitting zero carbon emissions by 2045, a more aggressive target than Britain’s legally enshrined 2050 deadline.
Kaeser, who is also the Chairman of Daimler trucks, attacked the EU’s approach of reaching Net Zero by regulation. He said Brussels spent too much time drawing up rules for manufacturers without considering how they could kill demand.
Stop Press: Britain’s energy industry faces collapse thanks to Labour’s “chaotic and needless” rundown of the oil and gas sector, one of its biggest union backers has warned. Louise Gilmour, Scotland Secretary of the GMB union, says “delusional” Net Zero policies championed by Ed Miliband are causing “arguably the most destructive industrial calamity in our nation’s history”, the Telegraph reports.
In the 24 January 2026 (Saturday) issue of the National Post, veteran journalist Barbara Kay highlights my latest novel about wolves really-gone-rogue around Tofino on Vancouver Island and the wolf conservation issues it raises.
In the 24 January 2026 (Saturday) issue of the National Post, veteran journalist Barbara Kay highlights my latest novel about wolves really-gone-rogue around Tofino on Vancouver Island and the wolf conservation issues it raises.
Recent incidents of open dog-stalking suggest the problem might be coming to a tragic head.
That is certainly the view of zoologist Susan Crockford, a longtime Vancouver Island resident with academic specialization in wolf evolution. Crockford is also a lively storyteller. Her latest just-published novel is titled Don’t Run, as in, if you encounter a lone wolf, stand your ground and scare him away if you can. When wolves stare at you, they aren’t seeking friendship, they’re sizing you up as potential prey. It’s a slightly futuristic fiction, based largely in fact: a fascinating primer on wolf behaviour, but also a dramatized exhortation to privilege reason over emotion in wild-animal conservation policy.
Don’t Run is set in the Tofino-Ucluelet Pacific Rim corridor in the winter of 2029. Driven by hunger, “superpacks” of wolves, 30-40 instead of the usual six or seven, have been attacking dogs, decimating livestock and even killing and eating people. The novel’s protagonist is a RCMP safety specialist sent to investigate the escalating wolf aggression. The stakeholders he encounters – lifetime residents, livestock owners, Indigenous people, tourist parents of victims, Parks Canada reps – represent a realistic spectrum of regional attitudes to wolves. It’s a pacey, plausible read that subliminally asks the reader to take a policy stand.
…
The” villain” in Don’t Run is the PRNPR, whose no-kill wolf policy in their jurisdiction is central to their “reconciliation” mandate. A (real) paper about their “Wild About Wolves” 2018-launched project explains that “wildlife management is as much a socio-political endeavour as a biological one.” Thus, responsibility for solutions must be ceded to “the right people,” in this case the Nuu-chah-nulth nation, “rights-holders within their unceded territories.” They see the wolf is a sacrosanct “cultural keystone species,” for some elders equivalent to kinsmen. Consequently, PRNPR’s public safety ceiling is “preventative action.” Which so far has resulted in an emollient Parks Canadabulletin, advising visitors to “keep children close,” carry bear spray, “stay alert” and the like. Hmm.
The no-kill attitude of the wolf romantics is foolish and risk-enabling, while the all-kill attitude of the eradicationalists is repugnant. What is wanted is study of countries with centuries of wolf behaviour literature, such as Russia, for example, conducted through a secular, scientific and pragmatic lens, with a bias toward public safety claims, but respecting legitimate claims for animal welfare. Policies should emerge that ensure conditions separating the two species remain optimal for both. They certainly shouldn’t be based solely on fiction or cultural myth.
It’s ironic, really.
In the 1960s, biologist Farley Mowat wrote a fictionalized account of a wilderness study that portrayed North American wolves as harmless cousins of the domestic dog. I read that book as a kid when it first came out.
More than 60 years later, I turned that format around and wrote a science-based novel that realistically portrays the modern wild wolf in a landscape dominated by humans. My latest thriller was inspried by the fact that over the last 25 years, the true nature of wolves has come home to roost on Canada’s west coast.
As Barbara Kay stated, on the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island, authorities have been having problems with aggressive wolves challenging hikers and campers since the turn of the 21st century and I’ve been aware of these issues since they first began.
Map of the Pacific Rim Park Reserve on western Vancouver Island (from Doney et al. 2023).
By the late 1990s, I was considered the world’s leading expert in dog domestication and wolf/dog hybridization. As a consequence, in 2002 I was contacted by fellow biologist Val Geist, who’d recently retired to the Alberni Valley on central Vancouver Island.
Val told me all about the problems he and his neighbour were having with a predatory wolf pack, who’d not only attacked dogs and livestock but aggressively challenged people on both farms (Geist 2008). Shortly afterwards, in 2003, I was called on the phone by a Parks Canada employee asking for help developing an education program after hikers traversing the infamous West Coast Trail reported frightening encounters with aggressive wolves.
Since then, Parks Canada has been having recurring problems with aggressive wolves in the Long Beach Unit of the Reserve, which lies between Tofino and Ucluelet.
For example, in 2017, two area wolves were euthanized after 55 incidents of aggressive behaviour. In 2025 (see warning below), the number of frightening wolf encounters on Long Beach escalated to 40+ but no wolf control efforts were taken (Hansen 2018; MacKinnon 2017; O’Malley 2025).
From Hansen 2018
These incidents provided the inspiration for my shocking wolf attack thriller. The story is terrifying precisely because it’s no longer a secret that wolves will kill and eat dogs and livestock, and that on occasion, they will kill and eat people.
References
Doney, E.D., Frank, B., Khan, Z., et al. (2023). Wild about wolves: Using collaboration and innovation to bridge parks, people, and predators. Conservation Science and Practice, e12949. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12949
After four years of Republican Executive Branch rule, Democrats again control Virginia’s Executive Branch and its Senate and House of Delegates. What can Virginians expect?
After four years of Republican Executive Branch rule, Democrats again control Virginia’s Executive Branch and its Senate and House of Delegates. What can Virginians expect?
Governor Abigail Spanberger campaigned as a moderate and said energyefficiency and affordability would be central to her first legislative session. Democratic strategist Ben Tribbett expected “a measured approach” from her, instead of “radical change.” Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said, “Voters put [Democrats] in charge to focus on affordability and bring some rationality and stability” to the fore.
Republicans feared Democrats would push high-tax, big-spending, heavy-regulation policies that would reduce energy affordability, stall economic growth, hurt small businesses and families, and impair school choice, voting and, safety. They worried that the energized, aggressive leftist base that helped Democrats win the 2025 elections would drive radical changes on multiple fronts.
While I follow other issues, I focus on whether energy, climate change, and environmental policies meet sound scientific and economic standards, and how they affect health, jobs, and living standards. At this stage in the process, multiple Democrat policies, actions, and bills are so radical and costly that voters and energy consumers, governor and state legislators, and agency heads need to revamp or trash them.
* The governor’s plan to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative will ensure that Team Spanberger hears only “progressive” perspectives on climate and weather dangers, renewable energy benefits, and whether a few US states can alter major global trends. Efficiency and affordability will suffer, with billions in new costs passed on to consumers.
Earth’s climate has changed frequently throughout history, and the Ice Ages, Medieval Warm Period, and Little Ice Age dwarf anything happening today. Average global temperatures and sea levels have increased only slightly in 100 years. Hurricane frequency and intensity show little change since 1865, no Category 3-5 hurricanes struck the USA from 10/2005 to 08/2017 (a record), and tornado frequency and intensity have declined since 1950.
China emits one-third of the world’s greenhouse gases, more than all historically developed nations combined. India and Indonesia account for another tenth. They’re building coal-fired power plants at a one-per-week clip. Even if all RGGI states eliminated their fossil fuel use and GHG emissions, there’d be no global reduction.
Renewable energy involves mining, pollution, and child labor at unprecedented levels; results in huge installations across croplands, scenic areas, and wildlife habitats; kills 1,000,000 birds and bats annually nationwide; and impairs electricity reliability and affordability. Poor families get slammed hardest.
* Governor Spanberger and many legislators support expanded wind and solar electricity generation, including photovoltaic panels on homes, solar canopies in parking lots, and industrial installations on hundreds or thousands of acres. These systems will certainly generate power, but only 25-30% of the year – 7-8 hours per average day – at unpredictable times, for unpredictable lengths of time.
When stacked or stored for long times outdoors or in warehouses or damaged by weather, panels often crack – letting in water and seeping out toxics that can pollute soils, streams, and groundwater. Leakage can also result in reduced electricity generation and even fires. Converters (to turn DC into AC current) can also pose fire hazards; so can home backup power batteries.
* House Bill 214 would support local flood resiliency grants. But it’s largely based on assumptions that “recurrent” flooding results from climate-driven rising sea levels and increasing rainfall. However, NOAA data showing a doubling in the rate of sea level rise in recent decades puts the new rise at one-eighth inch per year – and a total of just 9 inches since 1880!
Moreover, perceived sea level rise is often due to land subsidence in Norfolk, Virginia, and elsewhere.
* To account for intermittent power generation due to unpredictable wind and sunshine, HB 895 would revise the Virginia Clean Economy Act to increase utility grid-scale battery storage requirements.
Now Appalachian Power and Dominion Energy must construct or procure some 135 Gigawatt-hours (135,000 Megawatt-hours) of short, medium, and long-duration grid-scale storage capacity. (Virginia homes, businesses, hospitals, data centers, and other users currently consume over 270 GW-h per average day; much more during extreme heat or cold.)
The mandated totals depend on how many batteries are 4-hour or 10-hour or still nonexistent 24-hour, and whether they export their full nameplate storage value – or only a more realistic 80 percent.
What storage would be required for the predicted January 24-26 weekend snow and ice storms and near-zero cold, with no solar and zero to minimal wind? Blackouts could be widespread and long-term. Families could literally freeze to death in the dark – if Virginia lacks adequate coal, gas and nuclear.
* The governor also supports giving the State Corporation Commission more authority to review grid efficiency and limit unnecessary transmission line construction. But how can it limit transmission line construction while installing all the proposed and mandated wind, solar and battery equipment? Far better to build gas and nuclear power plants close to power-hungry data centers and cities.
The 13-state (including Virginia) PJM Interconnection already faces serious energy security threats: significant shortfalls in critically needed dispatchable electricity, soaring prices, and Pennsylvania losing new generation to neighboring states with clearer, faster approval rules. Virginia government take note.
* Renewable energy promoters claim wind and solar power costs (and thus consumer prices) are now on par with or lower than coal, gas or nuclear electricity.
These claims focus on initial costs of installing turbines and panels. They leave out the enormous costs of constructing, maintaining and operating duplicative coal- and gas-fired backup power plants that must operate 24/7 on idle and be ready to go full-throttle every time wind and sunshine are insufficient.
Backup batteries are even more costly. HB 895 directs Dominion to have 64,000 MW-h of 4-hour batteries, which would cost around $33 billion. Sufficient additional batteries would multiply that 5-10x.
Lobbyists and legislators likewise gloss over subsidies via taxes and hidden charges on electric bills – and payments to utilities for not producing electricity when they must shut down because of high winds or because overall generation exceeds supply or grid capacity.
They don’t mention the exorbitant cost of replacing Atlantic Ocean wind turbines every 10-20 years, due to salt spray and storms; replacing huge solar panel installations destroyed by hailstorms; or building hundred-mile-long transmission lines at $1-8 million per mile.
Virginia’s governor, legislators, and regulators need to pause their stampede of laws, rules, regulations, and spending – including nearly 2,400 legislative bills so far. But like too many other Democrats, they seem incapable of – or opposed to – thoughtful analysis and debate, common sense, moderation, attention to energy, ecological, and economic reality … and genuine concern for the poor.
Way back in 2012, climate “scientist” Michael Mann, then at Penn State University, sued four defendants for defamation. The four were commentators Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, who had written blog posts about Mann, and National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, entities which had respectively hosted the Steyn and Simberg posts. The occasion for the Steyn and Simberg posts was that independent investigator Louis Freeh had issued a Report that had castigated Penn State President Graham Spanier for having whitewashed the conduct of the university’s assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, in a sex abuse scandal.
Way back in 2012, climate “scientist” Michael Mann, then at Penn State University, sued four defendants for defamation. The four were commentators Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, who had written blog posts about Mann, and National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, entities which had respectively hosted the Steyn and Simberg posts.
The occasion for the Steyn and Simberg posts was that independent investigator Louis Freeh had issued a Report that had castigated Penn State President Graham Spanier for having whitewashed the conduct of the university’s assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, in a sex abuse scandal.
Steyn and Simberg had compared Spanier’s exoneration of Sandusky to his exoneration two years previously of the university’s star climate science professor, Mann, after the so-called “ClimateGate” emails had shown Mann deeply involved in data manipulation schemes to support the narrative of climate apocalypse.
Here we are now in 2026, more than 13 years later. The Mann v. Steyn case has gone through a truly incredible procedural history, including multiple motions to dismiss, two appeals to the D.C. Court of Appeals (different from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals), a certiorari petition to the Supreme Court, a jury trial after remand (in 2024), and a bevy of post-trial motions.
I have previously had numerous posts covering this case, including the trial and subsequent developments. My most recent post was this one from March 2025, covering decisions by the trial judge (Alfred Irving of the D.C. Superior Court) on most of the post-trial motions.
A few days ago, on January 22, the Judge Irving finally issued a decision that appears to resolve the last of the post-trial motions. Most notably, the judge has now put numbers on the amounts that Mann will be required to pay to Steyn and Simberg for having presented false evidence at trial and thus having put those two through the effort of disproving the false evidence.
However, the amounts are quite modest in the context of the vast resources that have gone into fighting this battle: Mann is ordered to pay $11,404.80 to Steyn, and $16,762.82 to Simberg.
As I reported in my March 2025 post, the high point of the case for Mann came in February 2024, when the jury returned its verdict. Although the jury awarded Mann only one dollar of “nominal” damages against each of Steyn and Simberg, it awarded $1 million of punitive damages against Steyn, and $1,000 of punitive damages against Simberg. (National Review and CEI had previously been dismissed from the case on motions.). Mann and his media acolytes immediately took to gloating on social media about his great victory.
But before long the “victory” turned to dust. In January 2025 Judge Irving awarded National Review some $540,820.21 in fees and costs from Mann, under a D.C. statute that entitles prevailing defendants in defamation cases to recover their fees. On March 4, 2025, in his decision on post-trial motions, the judge reduced the punitive damages award as against Steyn from $1 million to $5000.
And then on March 12, 2025, Judge Irving issued another order on a motion for sanctions against Mann, in which he lit into Mann for having presented to the jury false evidence of his supposed damages. The March 12, 2025, Order invited Steyn and Simberg to submit evidence as to how much Mann’s bad faith conduct had cost them in incremental fees and costs.
Now in his January 22 Order, Judge Irving not only puts numbers on the award of sanctions but also provides a new summary of the misconduct that led him to award sanctions against Mann. A piece of that summary is worth quoting here:
Dr. Mann throughout this litigation complained that he suffered lost grant funding directly stemming from the defamatory statements of Messrs.
Simberg and Steyn, while providing very little in the way of specifics about the dollar amounts of his losses directly attributable to the statements (such as corroborating testimony from percipient witnesses), all while promising to illuminate the Court at trial.
At trial, Dr. Mann elected through his attorneys to present to the jury a blown-up demonstrative, without redaction or explanation, a demonstrative intentionally prepared for its use at trial, which included a budget (loss) amount of $9,713,924.00, when the correct amount, previously corrected during a third round of discovery, was $112,000. . .
While Plaintiff and his attorneys find nothing wrong with such practice, the Court simply cannot condone such bad faith litigation tactics.
It’s fair to say that Mann’s bad faith trial tactics got Judge Irving very, very angry.
As far as I can tell, this Order resolves the last remaining issues in this case at the trial court level. At Steyn’s website, the comment is “Next stop in Mann vs Steyn? The Court of Appeals.”
Meanwhile, some other things have changed during the passing years. In October 2025 National Review put up a piece headlined “Michael Mann finally goes away,” in which they report that “Mann has finally dropped any claims against us.”
The brief piece contains no information as to any payment of money from one side to the other, or what happened to the $500,000+ award of sanctions that NR had recovered against Mann.
It is possible that there was a payment of some sort that the parties agreed to keep confidential, but my inference would be that NR walked away from the sanctions award in order to avoid further years’ worth of appeals. After all, Mann’s efforts appear to be funded by wealthy backers with essentially infinite deep pockets.
Also while this case has been endlessly going on, in 2022 Mann moved his base of operations from Penn State to the University of Pennsylvania.
There he flaunts the ridiculous title of “Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and founding director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media.” Well, University of Pennsylvania, you now have a “Presidential Distinguished Professor” who has been adjudicated to have lied under oath to fabricate a damages case, and to have engaged in “bad faith litigation tactics.”
And yet they continue to support him as some kind of hero, I guess because he is on the right team. Other Penn professors who are actually serious scholars but find themselves not on the right team (e.g., Stanley Goldfarb, Amy Wax) get completely different treatment.
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