Day: February 2, 2026

Expert Study Shows Sanity Returning to Global Oil Forecasts, But Damage Has Been

It can be hard to explain to a general audience how important the release of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) is to policymakers, energy companies and investors who make hundreds of billions of dollars in investment decisions worldwide each year.

An offshore oil rig standing in the ocean during sunset, silhouetted against a colorful sky.

From Watts Up With That?

By William Murray

A person holding a red gas pump nozzle while refueling a vehicle at a gas station.

It can be hard to explain to a general audience how important the release of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) is to policymakers, energy companies and investors who make hundreds of billions of dollars in investment decisions worldwide each year.

The Outlook is published yearly by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), one of the world’s most preeminent authorities on energy data. The IEA was formed in 1974 by many of the world’s most developed countries to provide better information on oil and gas demand forecasts in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the Outlook included a Current Policies Scenario (CPS) that forecast future oil and natural gas demand over the coming decades based on current laws and government energy policies. This scenario was then used by banks and companies to extrapolate how many billions of dollars they must invest to satisfy coming energy demand. 

The IEA’s all-star reputation made the CPS the benchmark for global energy supply and demand forecasts for decades – until recently. 

In 2020, under its long-time Executive Director Fatih Birol, the IEA decided to abandon the CPS, “in part due to pressure from European nations and green campaigners,” according to Bloomberg energy analyst Javier Blas. Most of these green campaigners were interested in using climate policies to permanently displace oil and coal production.

To do this, IEA inserted new scenarios that considered policy ambitions and aspirations that had not yet become law. This analytical misdirection allowed Paris Accord-era net-zero emission goals to become a concrete forecasting reality. As a result, these forecasts showed peak global oil demand only an additional 3 million to 106 million barrels a day by 2030 before permanently declining.

Riding on IEA’s reputation, these forecasts helped the Davos crowd churn elite public opinion toward the Net-zero and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework in the early 2020s, which played a role in the ultimate suppression of billions of dollars in investment in carbon and hydrocarbon resources.

The IEA reinstated the Current Policies Scenario for 2025 after pressure from the Trump administration, while confirming that no peak in global oil demand should be expected until at least 2050. This is a welcome decision, but not before much damage was done, according to a recent report published by the National Center for Energy Analytics (NCEA). 

The report, written by Neil Atkinson, a NCEA Visiting Fellow and the former head of the IEA’s Oil Industry and Markets division, and Adam Sieminski, former administrator for the U.S. Energy Information Administration, found that while reinstatement of the CPS in the 2025 WEO “has gone a long way toward answering that its scenarios are divorced from reality,” the IEA must still do more to reverse past mistakes.

The latest critique found that the IEA is still making a series of unsupportable market assumptions, including:

Electric Vehicles: Forecasts of electric vehicle adoption remain overly optimistic, leading to overestimates of oil demand destruction for light-duty vehicles.

Aviation: A forecast for even a small reduction in aviation fuel use remains overly aggressive.

Marine shipping: The IEA continues to present overly aggressive forecasts of a significant decline in crude oil use for global oceangoing shipping.

Even if the IEA fixes its methodological problems and appoints a new Executive Director, damage from the five-year absence of the Current Policies Scenario could last for a long time. Sieminski and Atkinson estimate that as much as $1.5 trillion of underinvestment in oil and natural gas exploration is expected over the next decade. Underinvestment in the oil patch leads to supply shortfalls, which inevitably brings about a spike in energy prices and a new, much higher price plateau.

By projecting a 2030 demand peak for oil, the IEA sacrificed its credibility, giving succor and elite air cover to organizations like the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, an UN-backed group whose members topped out at 140 banks with trillions of dollars in assets, pledging to align their portfolios with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

It is unknown exactly how much international investment banks withdrew from funding Arctic oil and coal resources, but many went on the record saying they did. The collapse of the Banking Alliance in the fall of 2025, driven by a combination of political pressure and market realities, will not make up for the consequences of a self-inflicted, years-long supply-demand lag.

The report’s authors do not go so far as to directly accuse the IEA of sneakily undermining the investment climate enough to create future recession-causing price spikes, but energy experts know that similar production shortfalls in the past have done exactly that. 

In the 1970s, a barrel of oil went from $4 to a new plateau of about $32 a barrel by 1981, a seven-fold rise in the nominal price that crashed many national economies. In the super-spike era between 2004 and 2013, long-term oil prices roughly tripled while playing an underappreciated supporting role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. 

If another major upward price correction arrives in the coming years, don’t forget to include the IEA’s willful errors when making a list of perpetrators. All government institutions are political, no matter how much structure is insulated from direct influence. Let’s hope the IEA has learned a lesson or two about the costs of believing there is a “right side of history” to be on.

William Murray is a former chief speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the past editor of RealClearEnergy from 2015-2017, and has covered energy and environmental policy in Washington D.C., as a journalist and analyst for the past two decades.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Is Canada Really Warming?

Is Canada really warming at double the global average rate, as the Canadian government says it is?

A woman in a red jacket and winter boots stands in an icy cave, surrounded by towering blue ice formations and icicles, gazing upwards.

From The American Thinker

By Tom Harris

Is Canada really warming at double the global average rate, as the Canadian government says it is?

Is Canada really warming at double the global average rate, as the Canadian government says it is? A new report says no, because the data Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) uses are apparently corrupted by fundamental mistakes, mistakes so severe that when corrected, all the supposed warming of the past six or seven decades vanishes.

Given that Canada represents a large fraction of global land surface area, one naturally wonders if the world is warming at anything like we are told it is.

This discovery should have generated mainstream media headlines across Canada. After all, the mistakes in the Canadian temperature data were discovered over four years ago by Dr. Joseph Hickey, a highly qualified Canadian data scientist, and the group I lead, the International Climate Science Coalition – Canada, has been publicizing the story for the past month.

But don’t expect mainstream media in the Great White North to say anything about this. Most of Canada’s press are heavily subsidized by the federal and provincial governments, which would probably not appreciate the story being covered. Dr. Dave Snow, Associate professor in political science at the University of Guelph, writes:

“Canada has created a bevy of policies, ranging from subsidies to tax breaks to mandated contributions from foreign tech companies, that undoubtedly constitute a major portion of news outlets’ revenue and journalists’ salaries — potentially upwards of 50 percent.”

Publicly questioning government narratives on something as significant as climate change is a risky proposition for any editor when doing so leaves their paymasters with egg on their faces.

Here’s what governments in Canada — and the media outlets reliant on their largess — would rather you never heard. On December 23, the report “Artificial stepwise increases in homogenized surface air temperature data invalidate published climate warming claims for Canada” was released by Dr. Joseph Hickey, a data scientist with a PhD in Physics. The report was published by CORRELATION Research in the Public Interest regarding a significant error in Canada’s temperature data.

Using the data from ECCC for hundreds of stations across the country, scientists had previously calculated that the surface air temperature has increased 1-2 degrees Celsius over the past six to seven decades in Canada. Yet in 1998, the exact year in which 72 Canadian reference climatological stations were first added to the Global Climate Observing System, a sudden stepwise increase of approximately 1 degree Celsius occurred at most stations across the country.

Numerous studies in scientific literature assert that sudden temperature jumps like this are not due to real climactic change but instead are caused by temperature measurement artifacts corrupting the data. They contend that this data should therefore be removed from the record. Even though one of the studies explaining this was authored by Dr. Lucie A. Vincent, the senior Environment Canada Research Climatologist, the temperature jump was left in ECCC’s data and is still there to this day. Hickey concludes, “The reported climate warming of Canada appears to be entirely from a temperature measurement artifact.”

Hickey first discovered this in 2021 when he was as an analyst for the Bank of Canada and so was barred from sharing his findings with the public. After leaving the bank, he secured his communications with Environment Canada via an access to information, which is why we know what happened next.

In that year Hickey alerted Environment Canada to the problem and explained in detail to Vincent that the sharpness of the temperature increase, and its magnitude, indicate that it is not due to real climactic change. He also laid out a thorough analysis of potential sources of the artifact, which could include land use changes and instrumentation changes. Both of these could easily cause a one-degree shift in the temperature data. Moreover, he explained, “there are no other similar large and geographically widespread discontinuities in the AHCCD dataset [Environment Canada’s flagship temperature dataset] at other years.” This increase could be responsible for almost all the claimed warming calculated for Canada over the past six or seven decades.

Vincent essentially brushed him off, did not provide an explanation for the step increase, and said that the shift “is probably due to climate variability only.”

So, Canada is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fight climate change largely based on data that the government scientist most involved in its generation can only say is “probably” indicative of warming.

Hickey was not the only Bank of Canada employee to find fault with ECCC’s temperature data. In his December report, he writes:

“On December 7, 2020, Bank of Canada Economist Julien McDonald-Guimond sent an email to Environment Canada researchers with an inquiry about the …daily temperature records, noting he had found some cases in which the daily minimum temperature was greater than the daily maximum temperature for the same day and for the same AHCCD station.”

In fact, there were more than 10,000 instances of days for which the daily minimum temperature was greater than the daily maximum temperature.

Environment Canada Climate Data Analyst Megan Hartwell replied to McDonald-Guimon, saying that “We were quite surprised by the frequency of the issue you reported, and have taken some time to go through the data carefully.”

That ECCC were surprised by McDonald-Guimond’s finding is cause enough to worry. But the fact that they now “have taken some time to go through the data carefully” begs the question: didn’t they go through the data carefully before releasing it the first time?

Environment and Climate Change Canada have yet to respond to Hickey’s December report. They have some explaining to do.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of International Climate Science Coalition – Canada.

20 Years After ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

Jan. 24 marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Al Gore’s alarmist global warming movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore has surfed the movie and climate alarmism to a net worth estimated at $300 million and a Nobel Peace Prize.

A man in a black suit standing on ice in the Arctic, with the text 'The Arctic will be Ice Free 2013' displayed above.

From The Daily Caller

Logo of the Daily Caller News Foundation featuring bold text and colored accents.

Steve Milloy

Contributor

A speaker presenting on climate change at a podium, with images of glaciers, a sun, and volcanic activity displayed in the background.

Jan. 24 marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Al Gore’s alarmist global warming movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore has surfed the movie and climate alarmism to a net worth estimated at $300 million and a Nobel Peace Prize.

But the rest of us have been saddled with: (1) a hoax that has debased the field of science; (2) an energy scam that has cost the world more than $10-20 trillion dollars and threatens our national security; and (3) a political power grab that has reduced our freedoms. 

(RELATED: Howard Lutnick Heckled By Al Gore At High-Profile Globalist Soirée)

Gore’s movie was junk from the get-go. I attended a meeting in early January 2006 where Gore presented the slide show that was the basis for the movie to a group of conservatives at a weekly meeting sponsored by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. After the presentation, I approached Gore and asked if he was interested in participating in some sort of debate about his claims. Although he said he was interested, his staff later declined.

The movie premiered weeks later at the Sundance Film Festival, and the rest is history. And here’s what that history is.

The “documentary” was initially a hit, grossing $50 million in theaters. Problematically, though, the film soon became part of many secondary school curriculums. Its credibility took a major hit in 2007 when a British court ruled that the movie could not be shown to school children with a warning label about its factual errors.

As I noted in a FOX news column at the time, the judge ruled that Gore’s claims about global warming drying up Lake Chad, causing polar bears to drown while being forced to swim farther for food; and shutting down the Gulf Stream were false and/or impossible. Based on the judge’s ruling, I estimated that “the footage that ought to be excised adds up to about 25 minutes or so out of the 98-minute film. What’s left is largely Gore personal drama and cinematic fluff that has nothing to do with the science of climate change.”

Despite the embarrassing ruling, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that December. His acceptance speech doubled down on the movie claims and added a few more. None of his predictions came true.

His most well-known prediction was that the Arctic might be ice-free during the summer of 2014. But at its 2025 summer minimum, the Arctic still had more than 5 million square kilometers of sea ice — about the same as in 2007. His lesser known but equally erroneous predictions relate to global temperature, drought and glaciers, agriculture, wildfires, hurricanes, deforestation, and species extinction.

Al Gore inspired former-Marxist-turned-normal-person film director Martin Durkin to produce a counter to “An Inconvenient Truth” called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” that I also reviewed in a FOX News column. Though Gore dodged my debate challenge, I was able to make him “debate” by splicing together clips from Gore’s movie with opposing experts from Durkin’s film. Though now blocked for copyright claims, this “debate” can still be found on YouTube.

After all these years, the one thing Gore has been partially correct about is this: At the beginning of the United Nation’s COP-27 meeting in Egypt in 2022, Gore said “We have a credibility problem, all of us: We’re talking and we’re starting to act, but we’re not doing enough.” He’s correct about his credibility problem. It’s never gone away.

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @JunkScience.com

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

A man in business attire gestures towards a projected slide displaying various images and text about climate change deniers, emphasizing the challenges in debating climate issues.

Trump Admin Uses Equity Stakes, New Mines to Secure Critical Minerals Supply Chain

The Trump administration announced a major $1.6 billion funding package for USA Rare Earth (NASDAQ: USAR) on January 26, 2026. This deal, structured through a non- binding Letter of Intent (LOI) with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Program, aims to accelerate domestic production of rare earth elements, processing, metal- making, and permanent magnet manufacturing- key steps to reduce U.S. reliance on China, which dominates global supply (especially for heavy rare earths used in defense, EVs, semiconductors, wind turbines, and other high-tech applications).

An image featuring the flags of the United States and China, with a background of mineral rocks in the foreground.

The Trump administration announced a major $1.6 billion funding package for USA Rare Earth (NASDAQ: USAR) on January 26, 2026. This deal, structured through a non- binding Letter of Intent (LOI) with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Program, aims to accelerate domestic production of rare earth elements, processing, metal- making, and permanent magnet manufacturing- key steps to reduce U.S. reliance on China, which dominates global supply (especially for heavy rare earths used in defense, EVs, semiconductors, wind turbines, and other high-tech applications).

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A hand holding several mineral samples with blue electric sparks, viewed through a magnifying glass, alongside a modern battery production line featuring solar panels, batteries, and electronic components.

Watts Up With That?

Trump administration announced a $1.6 billion deal with USA Rare Earth for development of mines, magnet production, and enhanced rare earths processing techniques.

Posted by Leslie Eastman 

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, the administration has been aggressively pursuing the development of new mines for critical minerals and rare earths, wherever they can be found (and, in particular, if the source is American or a relatively trusted ally).

This move is directly tied to China’s efforts to weaponize its supply chain through tariffs and export controls.

Thes new or returning operations include those of the Mountain Pass mine in California, which is funded via a public‑private partnership with the Department of Defense that has $400 million equity stake. There are other operations in Utah that have received federal approval, and a new mining road in Alaska is now permitted to enable the successful extraction of resources for American use.

Significant progress has been made in building an American supply chain our nation can rely on to produce equipment for defense, communications, and other high-tech applications. For example, we now have the start of a USA- made supply chain for lithium batteries.

The Trump administration isn’t slowing down, either. It hassigned a non‑binding agreement to support USA Rare Earth Inc. (USAR) with up to $277 million in direct federal funding and up to $1.3 billion in loans, aimed at building a domestic “mine‑to‑magnet” rare earths and permanent magnet supply chain in this country.

The deal adds to the administration’s growing portfolio of equity stakes in private companies, and it would help expand domestic production of a critical input for cars, robots, semiconductors, drones and other products. China, which dominates the production of rare earth minerals and magnets, began clamping down on its export last year, and companies have struggled to find other sources of supply.

The Commerce Department, which arranged the financing through a semiconductor investment program set up during the Biden administration, said it had signed a nonbinding letter of intent to provide the funding, subject to further due diligence and approvals. The deal will give the Commerce Department approximately 16 million shares in the company, as well as a warrant to acquire another 17.6 million shares, the department said.

Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, said in a statement that the company’s project was essential to “restoring U.S. critical mineral independence.” The investment “ensures our supply chains are resilient and no longer reliant on foreign nations,” he said.

This investment has a different focus from the Mountain Pass Mine in California. The Texas deposits being eyed contain heavier rare-earth elements used in magnets.

USAR doesn’t produce much yet either, but it’s on the cusp of doing so. Its Round Top rare earths mining and processing project in West Texas is slated to open by the end of 2028- two years earlier than prior projections- and its high-powered magnet manufacturing plant in Stillwater, Okla., is slated to open by the end of this spring.

Last year, USAR bought U.K.-based Less Common Metals, giving the company a processing and metal- making hub in the U.K. with a new facility beginning construction soon in France.

The goal for USAR is to become the only domestic mine-to-magnet manufacturer specializing in the rarer heavy rare earths, especially the dysprosium and terbium metals that are key to high-powered magnets. While rare earths are not, in fact, rare, it is harder to find them in high enough concentrations to economically mine and process them. The heavier rare earths are even more difficult to extract in large enough amounts.

MP Materials is currently the nation’s only mine-to-magnet manufacturer, but MP specializes in mining the lighter rare earths at its Mountain Pass hub in California.

The funding for this venture is also being directed toward developing American magnet production capabilities at a facility in Oklahoma and to research to enhance processing techniques at a laboratory in Colorado.

Commerce said USAR’s mine in Round Top, Texas, will extract 40,000 metric tons per day of rare earth and critical mineral feedstock. It is expected to begin commercial production in 2028.

USAR’s advanced manufacturing project in Stillwater, Okla., will increase its production capacity of NdFeB magnets to 10,000 metric tons per annum – doubling the previously planned capacity.

In addition to the proposed funding, the Commerce Department said it will receive about 16.1 million USAR shares and a warrant for another 17.6 million shares.

Separately, the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory also signed an LOI to collaborate with USAR to advance heavy rare earth element separation technologies. That work will take place at USAR’s Wheat Ridge, Colo., lab and its Round Top deposit, and it will leverage digital twin technology.

Beijing believed it could choke off America’s future by squeezing our rare earth supply chain. Instead, it lit a fire under a Trump, who has a history of building things…. this time, the construction being related to mines and supply chains. In the years ahead, as Chinese exports shrink and their leverage evaporates, it won’t be Washington begging for materials; it will be Chinese officials regretting that they weaponized them against their former best customer.

An artistic representation featuring the flags of China and the United States, divided by a jagged line, with silhouettes of iconic landmarks from both countries in the foreground.

The New Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: All the Smartest People Get Hoodwinked by the Climate Charlatans

It is truly remarkable how easy it is to fool the smartest people. And especially when you tell them they are helping to save the world.

So, something called the Federal Judicial Center has just come out with a new edition, the 4th, of something called the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The publication date appears to be December 31, 2025.

A courtroom scene featuring two men seated at a witness stand, with a large book titled 'The New Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence' prominently displayed. The book includes icons related to law and science, such as a gavel, scales, and graphs, suggesting a discussion about scientific evidence in a legal context.

From Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

Book titled 'The New Federal Reference Manual On Scientific Evidence' with a gavel, DNA strand, and upward graph graphic, surrounded by legal documents.

It is truly remarkable how easy it is to fool the smartest people. And especially when you tell them they are helping to save the world.

So, something called the Federal Judicial Center has just come out with a new edition, the 4th, of something called the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The publication date appears to be December 31, 2025.

The idea that the federal government, and in particular the judiciary, needs a reference manual on scientific evidence seems to date from the 1990s.

The courts, then as now, were facing an increasing volume of cases involving complex scientific evidence; and meanwhile almost none of the judges are trained in science. Best to provide them with a good grounding in the basics.

Fortunately, back in the 60s Congress had established something called the Federal Judicial Center as a “research and education agency” of the judicial branch. Here was the perfect opportunity for that bureaucracy to expand their mission and budget.

In this latest version of the Reference Manual, the FJC has totally lost its way. Somehow, it got captured by a clique of climate charlatans who have inserted a lengthy section that is anti-science and based on logical fallacy. And many dozens of seemingly smart people who were supposedly reviewing this have gotten hoodwinked.

From the outset this Reference Manual thing was not a small project. For the First Edition of the Manual in 1994, the FJC partnered with the Carnegie Corporation, rounded up 19 authors and 98 peer reviewers, and produced a document of some 637 pages.

But they were only getting started. For the Second Edition (2000), Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer got involved, and the list of contributors had grown substantially.

By the Third Edition (2011), the National Research Council (part of the “National Academies”) had joined the project, and the addition of multiple new topics had caused the Manual to expand to 1034 pages.

And now we are up to the Fourth Edition. It runs to 1682 pages.

The National Academies have become heavily involved, along with lots of judges. Seven pages preceding the Foreword are taken up listing the dozens of highly distinguished members of various committees and peer review panels who had some role in producing the document. Justice Elena Kagan has written the Foreword.

Many topics have been added. One of those is a section running from page 1561 to 1652 called “Reference Guide on Climate Science.”

This is a transparent advocacy piece inserted to further the goals of various “climate” litigations brought in the court system. At the core of this section is a fundamental logical fallacy. How all the distinguished pooh-bahs who signed on to this Manual allowed this chapter to pass through is beyond me.

Now I’m not saying that everything in the Manual is wrong. I guess that a fundamental problem with 1600-page documents is that there is going to be a lot that is wrong and nobody intelligent is ever going to have the time to root all out all the fallacies.

Among sections of the Manual that aren’t too terrible is a section running from pages 47 to 112 titled “How Science Works.” The authors are Michael Weisberg and Anastasia Thanukos. T

his section contains basic information on the logic of the scientific method, along with many examples of applications.

The section is by no means written the way I would have written it (it is way longer than it needs to be, and the most important points are buried), but still, I can subscribe to its general approach. At page 62 begins a sub-section titled “Science Investigates Testable Hypotheses.” I think the word “falsifiable” is better than “testable,” but this is close enough. Here is an excerpt from that sub-section:

Communities engaged in scientific endeavors work with testable hypotheses.

For a hypothesis to be testable, it must, by itself or in conjunction with other hypotheses, generate specific predictions—­ a set of observations that one could expect to make if the hypothesis ­were true and/or a set of observations that would be inconsistent with the idea and lead one to believe that it is not true.

If an explanation is equally compatible with all pos­si­ble observations, then it is not testable and hence, not within the reach of science.

Yes! I would add after Weisberg/Thanukos’s first sentence that if a community refuses to articulate testable hypotheses that can be associated with specific predictions, then that community cannot claim to be scientists.

This is precisely the fundamental problem with the community of people who call themselves “climate scientists”: they scrupulously avoid ever articulating any proposition that can be associated with specific quantitative predictions, and which thus can be tested and potentially falsified.

For example, is global warming from human CO2 emissions causing an increase in extreme weather events, like hurricanes and tornadoes?

You would think that that proposition could be easily articulated as a testable hypothesis, perhaps associated with some known published index like the ACE (“accumulated cyclone energy”) index.

For example: “We predict that for each increase of 50 ppm in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, the ACE index will increase by 20 units.” I’m not saying that that is the only possible testable hypothesis for the association of CO2 emissions with extreme weather, but that is how articulation of a testable hypothesis is done.

Under this prediction, if the atmospheric CO2 concentration goes up by 50 units and the ACE index follows by going up 20 units or more, the prediction is looking good. To the contrary, if the atmospheric CO2 concentration goes up 50 ppm and the ACE index follows by going down, the hypothesis has been contradicted.

By the way, here is NOAA’s graph of the ACE index annually since 1851.

Bar graph showing the Accumulated Cyclone Energy of North Atlantic hurricanes from 1851 to 2022, highlighting fluctuations over the years.

(During the time at least since 1950, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has been steadily rising. In other words, you would think from the evidence of this publicly available graph that any association of atmospheric CO2 with the level of hurricane energy has been definitively refuted.)

With that background, take a look at the section in the new Manual titled “Reference Guide on Climate Science,” beginning at page 1561. The lead author is one Jessica Wentz of Columbia Law School. She is a well-known climate alarm advocate and has served as an expert witness for plaintiffs in litigations seeking to pin climate damage on fossil fuel use.

After lengthy background, we come to the core of this section, beginning at page 1585, with a sub-section titled “Climate Change Detection, Attribution, and Projections.” The very unsubtle idea here is to give support to litigation seeking to blame disasters of various sorts on emitters of CO2 (fossil fuel producers) by “attributing” the disasters to increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

There is a legitimate method to attempt use the scientific method to attribute various events to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. That method is to articulate a testable hypothesis and then subject it to test. That is the last thing that these “climate scientists” would ever allow to be done. Instead, they think they have better ideas. Here is how the authors of this “climate science” section describe how attribution is done in “climate science” (from page 1588-89). Get ready for a torrent of meaningless verbiage:

[A]ttribution involves sifting through a range of possi­ble causative ­ factors to determine the role of one or more ­ drivers with re­spect to the detected change. This is typically accomplished by using physical understanding, as well as climate models and/or statistical analy­sis, to compare how the variable responds when certain ­drivers are changed or eliminated entirely.

The goal of such studies is to determine ­whether, how, and to what extent anthropogenic drivers have contributed to the observed change. Many attribution studies use a probabilistic approach—­ i.e., researchers ­will seek to quantify the probability of a par­tic­u­lar outcome (e.g., how likely is the occurrence of three inches of rainfall in a day at a given locale) occurring with and without anthropogenic influence on climate.

However, researchers can also use a mechanistic approach to attribution, whereby they seek to examine how climate change has influenced one or more physical characteristics of an event or ­ process.86 Mechanistic studies can provide insights on, for example, the change in magnitude or severity of an extreme event that can be attributed to climate change.

In the rainfall example above, a mechanistic approach might look at the weather system that produced the heavy rain and describe how one part of climate change that we understand well—­ e.g., the warming of the atmosphere and its resulting increase in the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold —­ contributed to the event.

Mechanistic and probabilistic analyses can be combined in order to develop a more complete picture of whether and to what extent climate change is influencing vari­ous pro­cesses and events.

It goes on and on — and on and on and on — from there, burying you in meaningless doubletalk and bafflegab. How about articulating a testable hypothesis and testing it?

They will never, ever, ever do that. It could prove the whole enterprise to be wrong!

Well, the entire NAS (or maybe it’s now the NASEM) has been taken in. (Or maybe they are in on the scam as a way to keep their funds flowing.) Lots of top federal judges are listed on the boards and committees that signed off on this. Once again, all the smartest people prove that they are not very smart.

Left using ignorance and deceit on natural cold to push climate narrative

What gets me is how much of a no-brainer this is. When we get to Feb 14, the period from Jan 15-Feb 14 will be a top 10 cold period in my lifetime for the eastern U.S. Included in that is the chance that NYC breaks the 16-day streak of freezing or below-freezing temperatures set in the legendary winter of 60-61. How legendary? Well, RFK Jr. once commented on how he remembers sledding in DC in the winters when his dad was there.

A close-up of an orange knit beanie resting on a frozen railing, covered with ice and snow, in a winter landscape.
A close-up of a textured, orange-yellow knitted beanie covered with a layer of white snow and clear, dripping icicles. The fabric is ribbed and the ice is crystalline.

From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

What gets me is how much of a no-brainer this is.

When we get to Feb 14, the period from Jan 15-Feb 14 will be a top 10 cold period in my lifetime for the eastern U.S.

Included in that is the chance that NYC breaks the 16-day streak of freezing or below-freezing temperatures set in the legendary winter of 60-61.

How legendary?

Well, RFK Jr. once commented on how he remembers sledding in DC in the winters when his dad was there. With good reason. Look at that period in 1961:

Map illustrating surface air temperature anomalies (in Kelvin) across North America from January 15 to February 14, 1961, using data from 1991-2020 climatology.

and in 1963:

Map showing the surface air temperature anomaly in Kelvin across North America from January 15 to February 14, 1963, based on data from 1991 to 2020. Color gradient indicates varying temperature anomalies, with areas of purple representing significant low temperatures.

Throw in 1966, and you can see why he was so impressed as a kid, and so even he succumbed to the man-made climate missive (let’s remember in 2014, which btw looked like this during that time:

Heat map showing surface air temperature anomalies in degrees Kelvin across the contiguous United States from January 15 to February 14, 2014, compared to the 1991-2020 average.

He wanted guys like me thrown in jail for climate denialism).

In any case, what I did was go back to 1960 for the coldest Jan 15-Feb 14 periods.

We had 15 samples.

Guess what the stratosphere over the pole looked like in January?

Look at all that global warming (sarc), all the way back to 1960. How about that?

Geopotential height anomaly map at 50mb for the period 1991-2020, showing temperature variations with a color gradient from red (high) to blue (low), indicating atmospheric patterns over North America and parts of the Pacific.

Guess what it looks like this year:

Geopotential height anomaly at 50mb over the Northern Hemisphere, depicting variations in atmospheric pressure from 1991 to 2020, represented through a color gradient.

So, how is it that this year we have these phony climate warriors coming out and saying this is because of man-made influences, while we have samples going back to 1960 about evenly distributed?

Of course, it’s natural, but they either don’t know about this, or they do and lie.

I set a trap for these people with the 1985 example:

https://www.cfact.org/2026/01/27/trap-set-over-a-month-ago-on-the-cold-for-man-made-climate-propagandists

But you have to understand. THEY DON’T CARE. And your media types that parrot them, you are simply buying ignorance or deceit.

Since Jan 15, we have looked like this:

Color-coded map showing the 15-day temperature anomaly (°F) across the United States, with warmer areas indicated in orange and cooler areas in blue and green.

The next 10 days like this:

Temperature anomaly map of the United States for early February 2026, showing variations in temperature with areas of red indicating warmer temperatures in the west and blue indicating cooler temperatures in the east.

Which would mean we will have another example of what has happened before, a known and predictable phenomenon, and has nothing to do with man pumping CO2 into the air.

Much more likely given last winter and this one, it’s a reaction to all the water vapor pumped into the atmosphere by Hunga and the El Niño in 23, and the predictable attempt by nature to simply counter it.

Unless, of course, they try to claim underwater volcanoes and El Niño events are products of man-made input.

Don’t put it past them.

More extreme than actual weather is their ability to use deceit, deception, and delusion, the 3 main weapons of a phony climate war agenda meant to destroy our way of life.

Sadly, people swallow it, but the facts show otherwise.

Far be it from anyone pushing that to want to deal with the obvious, like what I have shown you here.

Wood Vaulting – Dumbest Climate Geo-engineering Idea Ever?

Imagine harvesting millions, billions of tons of wood, and not even burning it, let alone using it for construction.

A fishing boat unloading logs in a snowy landscape, with a mother polar bear and her two cubs observing the scene curiously.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

A fishing ship is dropping logs into icy water, causing a splash. Three polar bears, a mother and two cubs, look on curiously with question marks above their heads.

Imagine harvesting millions, billions of tons of wood, and not even burning it, let alone using it for construction.

Scientists Think We Could Slow Climate Change by Sinking Trees in the Arctic Ocean

Purposefully sinking boreal trees could help lock away carbon for millennia or longer, but the audacious plan comes with risks of its own.

BY DARREN ORF PUBLISHED: JAN 28, 2026, 8:30 AM EST

…

“There is now a forest that is sequestering lots of carbon, but now the next thing is how to store it in a way that won’t get burned,” Ulf Büntgen, the lead author of the study from the University of Cambridge, told New Scientist.

This is the basic idea behind a well-known carbon removal technique known as “wood vaulting,” which involves burying woody biomass in anaerobic (clay-rich) pits that essentially lock carbon underground. The authors note that while this method might be effective in theory, it’d likely rely on a 25 percent increase in logging and could negatively impact soil quality, mycorrhizal networks, and biodiversity loss—not to mention the increased emissions from deforestation, transportation, excavation, and vault construction. So, the authors looked for other, readily available anoxic environments with lower environmental impacts.

Last year, Büntgen took part in a study that found wood survived without rotting for 8,000 years in low-oxygen Alpine lakes, and the idea of similarly vaulting wood in the Arctic does come with a few advantages. For one, afforestation is reducing albedo. And for another, these forests can be far removed from human-occupied spaces, but close to major river systems for easy transportation. The authors highlight the Ob, Yenisey, Lena, Yukon, and Mackenzie rivers in Russia, Alaska, and Canada as having the potential to be boreal timber waterways for vaulting logs in the Arctic Ocean. According to New Scientist, if 30,000 square kilometers could be logged along these rivers each year and then replanted, one billion tonnes of CO2 could be stored. 

…Read more: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a70098782/sinking-1-billion-trees/

The abstract of the study;

No Long-Term Decay in α-Cellulose of Living and Relict Trees From the European Alps Over the Past 8,000 years

Tito Arosio, Ulf Büntgen, Matthias Saurer, Tatiana Bebchuk, Kurt Nicolussi, Agata Buchwal, Valentina Vitali, Markus Leuenberger

First published: 26 September 2025

https://doi.org/10.1029/2025PA005170Digital Object Identifier (DOI) VIEW METRICS

Abstract

Tree-ring α-cellulose stable isotopes of living trees and dead woods are increasingly used for high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions spanning centuries to millennia. However, the potential effects of wood decay on α-cellulose content (CC) and the composition of tree-ring stable isotopes remain largely unexplored. Here, we present α-cellulose content measurements from relict and living trees in the European Alps spanning the past 8,000 years. This study addresses whether preservation context alters the isotopic integrity of α-cellulose. We assess the temporal stability of CC, its dependence on tree species, preservation conditions and wood type (subfossil, dry dead, living), as well as its relationship with α-cellulose stable carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen isotopes (δ13C, δ18O, δ2H). Our results show that α-cellulose remains stable over millennia under alpine conditions. Our results not only confirm the suitability of relict wood for tree-ring stable isotopic analysis and paleoclimate reconstructions but also provide insights for the improvement of global carbon cycle models.

Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025PA005170

Given emissions of around 35-40 gigatons of CO2 per year, 30,000 square kilometers x 40 = 1.2 million square kilometres of boreal forest would have to be harvested each year and sunk in the Arctic ocean.

Given the total area of Arctic boreal forest is only around 15-17 million square kilometers, and given boreal forests are not exactly fast growing, cancelling emissions would deplete all available boreal forest within 20 years.

Nutrient depletion in boreal regions from all the removed wood over time would turn the former forests into true ice deserts.

Of course, once they ran out of boreal forests, I mean you can’t shut down a green programme just because it wrecked the environment. They would then come for other forests.

Here’s a thought, instead of spending billions, maybe trillions of dollars per year chopping down the worlds’s forests, then pointlessly dumping all the trees in the Arctic Ocean, how about we just let the CO2 pile up in the atmosphere so it can fertilise our crops, and help keep our planet verdant and healthy?

Global Greening From Higher CO2 Hits “Striking” New Heights – but the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You About It

This idea just affirms my theory of geo-engineering. No matter how crazy the latest geo-engineering proposal, there will always be someone who will come up with something even more nonsensical.

Arctic Ice Recovering January 2026 Despite Vortex

The arctic ice extents are now fully reported for January 2026, showing refreezing rates fluctuating, likely due to a wavy polar vortex sending cold Arctic air to sub-arctic latitudes and replacing it with warmer southern air.

An aerial view of an icebreaker ship navigating through a vast expanse of sea ice in bright daylight.

From The Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Cartoon polar bears celebrating the year 2025 with colorful party hats and festive accessories against a light blue background.

The arctic ice extents are now fully reported for January 2026, showing refreezing rates fluctuating, likely due to a wavy polar vortex sending cold Arctic air to sub-arctic latitudes and replacing it with warmer southern air.

From AER Polar Vortex blog:

As seen in Figure iii (and also Figure 12) the PV has an elongated shape in appearance for much of the next two weeks in contrast to the more circular PV of early January. The PV has a “split” appearance this week and into next week, a character trait or signature of a more extreme stretched PV. I think the more extreme nature of the stretched PV is consistent with the model forecasts of extreme cold in the US and even potential snowstorms. But then at least in this animation there is a clear PV split with two distinct and independent PV centers.

Figure iii. Forecasted average 10 mb geopotential heights (dam; contours) and geopotential height anomalies (m; shading) across the Northern Hemisphere for 19 Jan 2026 and forecasted from 20 Jan 2026 to 03 Feb 2026. The forecasts are from the 00Z 19 Jan 2026 GFS model ensemble.

The chart below shows the 20-year averages for Arctic ice extents in January along with 2026 and 2025, as well as SII v.4.

Line graph depicting January Arctic ice extents in million square kilometers over 31 days, comparing 20-year average (black line), and the years 2026 (cyan), 2025 (blue), 2018 (pink), and SII v4 (yellow).

Note MASIE 2025 started 5 to 600k km2 (or half a Wadham) below the 20-year average, but by day 12 cut the deficit to 151k km2, or a gap of 1%. Freezing rate went flat for a week before recovering and ending the month nearly 14M km2, 365k id deficit or 3%.  SII v.4 tracked lower than MASIE throughout January, averaging ~200k km2 lower for the month. The chart below shows the distribution of ice extent across the Arctic regions on January 31, 2026.

Region2026031Average Day 312026-Ave.20250312026-2025
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere1395404414319064-36502013543739.54410305
 (1) Beaufort_Sea107107010704196511071000.7369
 (2) Chukchi_Sea96600696597531965989.1217
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea10871371087067701087137.230
 (4) Laptev_Sea89784589782520897844.80
 (5) Kara_Sea9234569175995857921519.961936
 (6) Barents_Sea58237255675125621428814.24153558
 (7) Greenland_Sea66399661344550551614788.5949207
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence10279791315356-2873781080930.32-52952
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago8549318535821349854877.9653
 (10) Hudson_Bay12608701260784861260903.34-33
 (11) Central_Arctic32025113210553-80423211378.6-8867
 (12) Bering_Sea67058364278827795534452.21136131
 (13) Baltic_Sea114996616375335939333.6575663
 (14) Sea_of_Okhotsk549996809973-259977559692-9696

The table shows that most regions are close to the 20-year average.  Two major deficits are in Baffin Bay and Sea of Okhotsk, partly offset by several smaller surpluses.

Topographic map of the Arctic region, highlighting underwater features such as basins, ridges, and seas with labeled geological formations.
A cartoon depicting a polar bear in front of an ice dispenser labeled 'Arctic Ice' marked 'Out of Order,' while expressing amusement. A person bundled in winter clothing nearby holds a sign reading 'The Earth has a Fever!'
A parody movie poster titled 'Polar Vortex', featuring polar bears in a snowy landscape, a banner stating 'Minnesotans for Global Warming', and notable figures like Chris Turney, Al Sharpton, Michael Mann, and Al Gore.

Unions Turn on Ed Miliband and Labour Over Net Zero as the Tragedy of Aberdeen Unfolds

The recent Jobs Foundation ‘Cliff Edge’ report is a disturbing insight into the wilful economic and societal destruction of Britain’s oil capital Aberdeen. The standout quote comes from Louise Gilmour, the Scottish Secretary of the GMB union, who described the Labour Government’s “stricken, almost delusional” rush to Net Zero as, “arguably the most destructive industrial calamity in our nation’s history – a disaster risking untold jobs, communities, even higher bills and our energy security”.

Desolate urban landscape with destroyed buildings and debris, overlaid with the text 'NET ZERO 2050' in bold letters.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

A woman with blonde hair stands confidently on a balcony, wearing a black quilted jacket. She poses with her arms crossed, overlooking a skyline of buildings and trees in the background under a partly cloudy sky.

The recent Jobs Foundation ‘Cliff Edge’ report is a disturbing insight into the wilful economic and societal destruction of Britain’s oil capital Aberdeen. The standout quote comes from Louise Gilmour, the Scottish Secretary of the GMB union, who described the Labour Government’s “stricken, almost delusional” rush to Net Zero as, “arguably the most destructive industrial calamity in our nation’s history – a disaster risking untold jobs, communities, even higher bills and our energy security”.

But the report is flawed – or rather much of the thinking revealed in its excellent local reporting is a delusional halfway mish mash. It is the pace of Net Zero that is often seen as problematic, rather than the actual need for the neo-Malthusian command-and-control fantasy. It reads in parts like the cry of the sinner down the ages: “Oh Lord, make me holy, but not just yet.”

In many parts of the world, the gig for the Net Zero plan is up. Now the industrial brothers and sisters of the Labour party affiliated trade unions are starting to call a halt that even dunderhead political elites in England and Scotland cannot fail to note. The idea that workers will seamlessly find new jobs harnessing the power of the wind, sun and sea is a “lovely thought”, said Gilmour, “but bears little resemblance to the chaotic reality of a rushed and needless rundown of our oil and gas sector”.

But Gilmour also writes in a foreword in the report of a requirement to continue to build renewable capacity “and the need for measured progress towards Net Zero”.

The report quotes approvingly of the Extinction Rebellion funder and subsidised onshore wind operator Dale Vince (Lord, truly help us) who suggests a managed decline for North Sea Oil. Vince is not stupid and he has worked out that his weather-dependent, aging, onshore wind turbines require hydrocarbon backup for often lengthy periods when the wind does not blow.

He understands that a week-long winter wind drought will not be rescued by a couple of hours of battery stored energy. Like the decades-long promises of climate ‘tipping point’ scares, all the grand plans for storing so-called ‘green’ electricity have amounted to the square root of sod all.

The report argues that thousands of jobs are on the line if the transition from oil and gas to renewables “is not handled much better in the UK than it is currently”. But the jury has long given its verdict on Net Zero. The number of countries like the UK ignoring its damning verdict is rapidly falling. Hydrocarbons are everywhere, from plastics to medicines to fertiliser. Sure, and certain economic death awaits any developed country that tries to do without them. For their part, renewables are useless for powering a modern country. They screw up grid frequency, leading to blackout risks, they are intermittent and rely on eye-watering subsidies, they drive bills up and scare away manufacturing and service industries, while their environmental track record is truly shocking. Supporters of these horror shows need to turn a blind eye to massive wildlife disruption and slaughter.

All of this is supported by some of the flimsiest science imaginable. The climate ‘crisis’ is invented by activists, and the opinions surrounding human-caused computer-modelled climate change are so poor that proponents are reduced to refusing to debate the matter due to its ‘settled’ status.

The extra carbon dioxide produced by humans burning hydrocarbons has beneficially lifted atmospheric levels from past denuded and dangerously low amounts and started to ‘green’ the planet.

Lies about extreme weather getting worse are debunked by simply looking at past data, while the role of natural climate variation is almost completely ignored. The idea that ‘carbon’ is a pollutant is risible given that it is the key structural element in all organic molecules and makes up nearly 20% of the human body weight. Every day, every human being on the planet breathes out over two pounds of CO2.

Back to Aberdeen, and we can observe the damage all this climate crisis and Net Zero lying has caused. Nowhere is the oil slump more obvious than at the port where business development manager Kieran Morton refers to a “cliff edge”. Partly driven by a ban on new drilling licences and the continuing windfall tax on oil companies, Morton notes a 20% drop over the last six months in platform supply vessels. You can tell by that alone, he notes, “there’s a lot less work going on”. While he also hangs onto the view that wind power will be an important source of energy for Britain in future, he suggests that most of the claimed new jobs will be in short-term employment such as building infrastructure.

Assembling wind kits built in China might be more accurate. In her foreword, Louise Gilmour said she would not hold her breath over Ed Miliband’s recently increased claim that 400,000 renewable jobs would be created in the UK.

Even as he spoke, she continued, the first eight – out of 54 – 2,300-tonne monopile foundations for the Inch Cape wind farm were arriving in Leith after being ferried 9,000 miles from Qinzhou in China. “It would have been almost funny if not so absolutely dismal,” she observed.

Again, back in the real world, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistic show that there are currently twice the number of jobs in environmental agitprop ‘charities’ than in the wind power generating business. Jobs, of course, taken by posh people polishing their parasitical halos rather than horny-handed sons of toil.

The report whose full title is ‘Cliff Edge: Jobs in Aberdeen, the epicentre of the UK’s energy transition’ highlights the growth of the city from a fishing port in the 1960s to the oil capital of Europe following the discovery of hydrocarbon abundance in the North Sea.

There is still plenty of oil and gas out there, as the example of neighbouring Norway continues to show. But under the Net Zero hegemony, tens of thousands of well-paid jobs have been lost, with the effects cascading through the local economy.

House prices in the area fell by a provisional 6.2% in the year to September 2025, compared with a rise in the same period across Scotland of 5.3%. Meanwhile, the oil companies and many of the engineering operations supporting them are shutting up shop and moving elsewhere. There is plenty of oil and gas to be produced elsewhere in the world.

There is a need to be realistic about the causes of the catastrophe. Once a champion of the wealth that flowed from ‘Scotland’s Oil’, the Scottish National Party (SNP) has been in power in Holyrood for nearly two decades.

During this period, the pride in the oil has been replaced by leaders like the late Alex Salmond boasting that the country would become the “Saudi Arabia of renewable energy”.

Currently, nine members of the ruling SNP come from the north-east Scotland roll that includes the Aberdeen area. All presumably are committed to Net Zero and the final destruction of the oil business.

The area even has one Green MSP called Maggie Chapman. Last year, she expressed support for the sinister private member’s bill in the British Parliament that would have outlawed the use of almost all hydrocarbons in the UK, seemingly in whatever imported or exported form, in under a decade.

Future elections around the UK, particularly in the last remaining industrial areas, may well see posters spring up along the lines that turkeys do not vote for Christmas.

The unfolding tragedy of Aberdeen is not a signal to go easy on Net Zero, rather it is a clear message to cancel it as soon as possible.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.