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.
In early February 2026 a bald eagle was killed by a wind turbine at the University of Minnesota’s Eolos Wind Energy Research Field Station in Dakota County, Minnesota. The eagle was struck by the turbine blade, resulting in a gruesome dismemberment into three pieces. he U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (under the Department of the Interior) issued a violation notice to the university for killing the bald eagle without an “incidental take permit” under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
In early February 2026 a bald eagle was killed by a wind turbine at the University of Minnesota’s Eolos Wind Energy Research Field Station in Dakota County, Minnesota.
The eagle was struck by the turbine blade, resulting in a gruesome dismemberment into three pieces.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (under the Department of the Interior) issued a violation notice to the university for killing the bald eagle without an “incidental take permit” under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
Legal Insurrection has previously reported on the growing record of eagle deaths at wind facilities nationwide, where spinning blades have been tied to dozens of documented bald and golden eagle fatalities and multimillion‑ dollar settlements with major wind operators.
Now an Obama- era University of Minnesota wind‑ energy research project is under fire after a campus turbine struck and killed a bald eagle, leaving the national symbol gruesomely dismembered beneath the tower.
The University of Minnesota is facing a proposed penalty of over $14,000 after it was discovered that a green energy initiative funded by a grant from the Obama administration was responsible for the gruesome death of an American bald eagle.
The incident occurred at the University of Minnesota’s Eolos Wind Energy Research Field Station in Dakota County, Minnesota.
Photos obtained by Fox News Digital show the moment a University of Minnesota wind turbine struck the bald eagle, dismembering it into three pieces and leaving a bloodied carcass on the floor below.
The violation notice says the university violated the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act by killing the eagles without what is called an “incidental take permit.”
According to a Department of the Interior violation notice reviewed by Fox News Digital, the university was aware that bird collisions were a danger and was in the process of testing its collision detection sensors when the incident occurred.
The eagle’s remains were discovered in pieces. The lower torso and tail were found by technicians first, while the head and wings were not found until over a month later.
Following the incident, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent the university a letter, urging the institution to reassess the turbine’s danger to eagles and to consider applying for a long-term permit for incidental take of eagles. However, the January notice of violation issued by the DOI does not indicate that the university has since obtained any such permit.
The Minnesota turbine is a part of the university’s Eolos Wind Energy Research Consortium, a wind-energy research collaboration. The construction of the turbine was funded by a $7.9 million grant from the Obama Department of Energy awarded in 2010, according to local outlet the Minnesota Daily.
One of former President Barack Obama’s first major legislative achievements was the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which according to a report by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, appropriated an “unprecedented $90 billion to ‘lay the foundation for a clean energy economy of the future,’ of which the U.S. Department of Energy received $35.2 billion.”
The Minnesota incident is not the only such killing to have occurred in recent years.
In November, Fox News Digital reported on FWS proposing hefty fines on renewable energy company Ørsted Onshore North America for two bald eagle kills by wind turbines in Nebraska and Illinois. In January, FWS issued notice of finalized fines of a total of $32,340 for the two eagles killed by Ørsted turbines.
Wind power may be branded as “clean,” but that label rings hollow when turbines are shredding apex raptors that anchor entire ecosystems. A truly sustainable energy policy must account for the full environmental cost, including the silent toll on bald and golden eagles that regulate prey populations and signal the health of the landscapes we claim to be saving.
Until regulators and policymakers confront the reality that these projects are wiping out key predators in the natural food chain, it is dishonest to market this form of power as environmentally benign.
On January 29, a coalition of state Attorneys General from red states, led by the AG of West Virginia (JB McCuskey), had sent a letter to Judge Robin Rosenberg, the Director of the Center, asking for immediate withdrawal of the offending chapter.
Here at Manhattan Contrarian, we get results. After my last three posts harshly critiquing the Federal Judicial Center’s newly revised Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, and particularly its chapter on Climate Science, suddenly on Friday the Center’s Director sent a letter stating that the Center has now “omitted” that chapter!
Well, OK, I was not the only one objecting.
On January 29, a coalition of state Attorneys General from red states, led by the AG of West Virginia (JB McCuskey), had sent a letter to Judge Robin Rosenberg, the Director of the Center, asking for immediate withdrawal of the offending chapter.
Here is a link to the AGs’ letter. McCuskey had rounded up signatures of AGs of some 26 other states in support of the demand for withdrawal.
Judge Rosenberg addressed her letter disclosing the withdrawal to McCuskey.
No surprise that this kind of thing would get issued at or about the close of business on a Friday. Charles Rotter of Watts Up With That put up a post about the withdrawal on Saturday.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board posted an editorial on the subject late this afternoon, and presumably that editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition. So far, I can find no mention of this embarrassing incident in the MSM.
Judge Rosenberg is the only signatory to her letter, and the letter is a one-liner that gives no explanation for the withdrawal:
In response to your letter dated January 29, 2026, I write to inform you that the Federal Judicial Center has omitted the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition (RMSE).
However, you have to think that Judge Rosenberg did not just do this on her own authority. McCuskey had copied the full Board of the FJC on the AGs’ letter.
The Chair of that Board is Chief Justice John Roberts. It is hard to imagine that Roberts was not involved in the decision to pull this chapter, let alone other members of the Board, all of whom are federal judges.
And then there’s Justice Elena Kagan, who is not a member of the FJC Board, but had put her name on a Foreword to the new Manual. It would not surprise me if all of the justices of the Supreme Court had a role.
Although Judge Rosenberg’s letter leaves us guessing at the rationale for the withdrawal, I would like to think that my posts made some contribution.
The AGs’ letter is a good one, but the rationale put forth for the withdrawal is a limited one. Basically, the position taken by the AGs is that the Climate Science chapter went beyond the mission of the Manual of giving neutral advice to the judiciary and veered into taking a substantive position on one of the most contested litigation issues of recent times. Here is an excerpt from the AGs’ letter:
[T]he Fourth Edition [of the Reference Manual] places the judiciary firmly on one side of some of the most hotly disputed questions in current litigation: climate-related science and “attribution.”
Such work undermines the judiciary’s impartiality and places a thumb on one side of the scale.
It does so even as these issues are pending before the Supreme Court and other parts of the federal judiciary.
We ask that the Center immediately withdraw the inappropriate “Reference Manual on Climate Science” included in the Fourth Edition.
Judges should resolve these issues through the ordinary processes of litigation—not by way of a judicially driven, committee-led, quasi-amicus brief. . . . [T]he authors offer unsolicited, ex parte expert opinions on matters that they recognize are directly at issue in ongoing suits.
That’s good as far as it goes; but they never quite get to saying explicitly that the “attribution” studies endorsed by the chapter are logically incorrect pseudoscience.
The studies are pseudoscience because they talk around in circles to evade ever being subject to a test of falsifiability. The Federal Judiciary just came within a hair of endorsing what Richard Feynman famously called “cargo cult science.”
As a great illustration of the problem of non- falsifiability of attribution of weather events to fossil-fuel driven climate change, a reader sends along to me screenshots of two articles from the New York Times, one from two years ago and the other from yesterday.
Over at the New York Times, they don’t have anybody smart enough to realize that this sort of evasion of the principle of falsifiability undermines the whole game of “attribution.” But maybe some of the people who count in the federal judiciary have figured it out.
Now let’s see if we can get some results on the Endangerment Finding.
GMT operates a small fleet of five battery-electric buses manufactured by New Flyer, which were acquired in early 2025 using approximately $8 million in mostly federal grants (each bus costing over $1.5 million). These were intended to replace older diesel models as part of broader efforts to reduce emissions in public transit.
GMT operates a small fleet of five battery-electric buses manufactured by New Flyer, which were acquired in early 2025 using approximately $8 million in mostly federal grants (each bus costing over $1.5 million).
These were intended to replace older diesel models as part of broader efforts to reduce emissions in public transit.
These buses functioned adequately until November 2025, when a battery recall was issued due to a fire hazard risk.
Electric buses are proving unreliable this winter for Vermont’s Green Mountain Transit, as it needs to be over 41 degrees for the buses to charge, but due to a battery recall the buses are a fire hazard and can’t be charged in a garage.
Spokesman for energy workers advocacy group Power the Future Larry Behrens told The Center Square: “Taxpayers were sold an $8 million ‘solution’ that can’t operate in cold weather when the home for these buses is in New England.”
“We’re beyond the point where this looks like incompetence and starts to smell like fraud,” Behrens said.
“When government rushes money out the door to satisfy green mandates, basic questions about performance, safety, and value for taxpayers are always pushed aside,” Behrens said. “Americans deserve to know who approved this purchase and why the red flags were ignored.”
General manager at Green Mountain Transit (GMT) Clayton Clark told The Center Square that “the federal government provides public transit agencies with new buses through a competitive grant application process, and success is not a given.”
“From 2020-2024, the [Federal Transit Administration’s] priority for grants had been low or no emission vehicles, with grant requests for diesel buses often not awarded,” Clark said.
“This was part of a concerted effort of the previous administration to accelerate public transits’ migration to replace diesel buses,” Clark said.
“To be competitive for a grant, GMT…saw electric battery buses as the pathway to get the newest buses,” Clark said. “Green Mountain Transit’s priority is new buses, regardless of the type.”
Clark informed The Center Square that GMT’s “electric battery buses are 90% paid for by federal and Volkswagen settlement funds.”
GMT received five New Flyer SE40 city buses in spring 2025, these buses being a part of “a three-year grant cycle for 19 total electric battery buses,” Clark said.
“In September 2025 we ordered 7 additional buses with a 2027 delivery date (but will be delivered with different batteries [than the recalled ones]), and 7 more slated for delivery in 2028,” Clark said. “This is the primary source of new buses for the next three years, as we have only 3 diesel buses anticipated.”
“Canceling the federal grant for electric bus purchases would result in us losing the grant funds,” Clark said. “It would not give us an opportunity to use the funds differently.”
“We will work with FTA to see if the grant can be modified for year 3 since those buses haven’t yet been ordered,” Clark said.
Clark also explained that the five electric buses were “operating well” until November 2025 when the batteries “were recalled for fire hazard.”
The recall prompted a software update from New Flyer to “decrease the likelihood for fire” that “included only allowing the bus to charge to 75% and to not allow charging when the battery is below 41 degrees,” Clark explained.
“Previously we could charge in any temperature to 100%,” Clark said.
As GMT’s bus garage “does not have suitable fire mitigation equipment to store or charge an electric bus indoors at this time,” the transportation system is unable to use its electric buses when temperatures hit below 41.
“Since the barrier to charging under 41 degrees is simply a software update, the manufacturer could find a technical solution that could resolve the problem this week,” Clark said. “We are seeking a financial remedy from New Flyer that could lead to litigation if not resolved.”
“New Flyer has indicated that replacement batteries will be installed within 18-24 months,” Clark said.
Clark also noted GMT is working on improving its fire mitigation equipment via a “pending federal grant.”
Policy analyst at the Institute for Energy Research William Rampe told The Center Square that: “The failure of Green Mountain Transit’s EV buses further highlights the problems with investing in electric vehicle fleets without considering the conditions and infrastructure they need to operate.”
“In Vermont’s case, the cold temperatures of the winter months, alongside the risk of EV batteries catching on fire, make their new bus fleet unusable, putting the level of service GMT provides at risk,” Rampe said.
“This failure adds costs to taxpayers, either by requiring GMT to invest in adequate replacements or by forcing its riders to find alternate means of transportation, which could be especially difficult for low-income riders,” Rampe said.
Rampe told The Center Square that he and those at the Institute for Energy Research “do not believe EVs are reliable in most situations, as the failure of these buses shows.”
“EVs may work fine for drivers who have easy access to charging infrastructure and don’t drive long distances, but for most Americans, limited charging infrastructure, high costs, faster rates of depreciation, and limited range make them an inferior product compared to gas-powered vehicles,” Rampe said.
Rampe also noted that the idea that electric buses are “sustainable” is a failing point “because EVs’ heavier weight and faster acceleration increase particulate emissions from tire wear.”
Senator Bernie Sanders’ media relations have not yet responded to The Center Square’s two requests for comment.
The peer-reviewed science confirms that shrinking the size of Stevenson Screens increased average temperatures across a year by 0.54°C and, on hot summer days, it can increase the maximum temperature by 1.7°C.
Many of you may recall that I got my start in climate skepticism back in 2006 when I started looking at the paint on Stevenson Screens – because there was a change from the original lime-whitewash paint in the 1890s to modern latex paint.
I figured there was a bias, and latex paint made the shelter warmer due its different IR signature.
Temperature sensor tests over a month proved I was right. But in looking at temperature shelters in my area, I discovered an even bigger problem – most were sited near heat sources and heat sinks, in contradiction to NOAA’s own published siting standards.
This started my journey to uncover just how bad the temperature observing network actually was. Comprehensive reports I made in 2009 and again in 2022 showed that surface measurements were a huge warm biased mess.This paper is over 10 years old, but I somehow missed it. I’m correcting that oversight.
Now, to add to that mess, comes this revelation – the Australian Bureau of Meteorology changed the size of Stevenson Screens to something that had just ~ 25% of the volume of the original, and did not run parallel tests to see if the conversion mattered. – Anthony
Craig Kelly of the AFEE in Australia writes on X.com
The peer-reviewed science confirms that shrinking the size of Stevenson Screens increased average temperatures across a year by 0.54°C and, on hot summer days, it can increase the maximum temperature by 1.7°C.
Yet the BOM denies the existence of this peer-reviewed science, pretends that it doesn’t exist, and claims that shrinking the screens by 74% had no effect on the recorded temperatures.
The peer-reviewed science confirms that shrinking the size of Stevenson Screens increased average temperatures across a year by 0.54°C and, on hot summer days, it can increase the maximum temperature by 1.7°C.https://t.co/TtOPMEa3Z7
Furthermore, at every weather station where the BOM replaced the traditional “large” Stevenson Screens with smaller ones, they ripped out the large ones and replaced them with the small ones on the very same day. This is contrary to long-established practices, which require that when you change measuring equipment, you keep parallel data from both setups to determine whether the equipment change may have introduced a warming or cooling bias into the record.
If you wanted to artificially inflate temperatures and create new “record hot days” to generate propaganda for the climate cult, you’d do exactly what the BOM did: shrink the size of the Stevenson Screens. And if you wanted to cover up your malfeasance and fraud, you’d rip out the large screens and replace them with the small ones on the very same day so there would be no parallel data — exactly what the BOM did.
Attached is a photograph from the Sydney Observatory from 1947 showing the thermometers that officially recorded Sydney’s temperatures housed inside a traditional ‘large’ Stevenson Screen – with an internal volume of approximately 0.23m3. The BOM has shrunk the size of the Stevenson Screens, reducing the internal volume to just 0.06m3 – a 74% reduction. By shrinking the Stevenson Screens in such a manner, how much hotter will the recorded temperatures be inside the smaller screen on a hot and windless day?
Figure 1. Internal view of the large Stevenson screen at Sydney Observatory in 1947 (Top above, black and white image) and the small screen at Wagga Wagga airport in June 2016 (lower above, colour image). While thermometers in the 230-litre screen are exposed on the same plane, the electronic probe at Wagga Wagga is placed behind the frame about 2 cm closer to the rear of the screen, which faces north to the sun. According to metadata, the 60-litre screen at Wagga Wagga was installed on 10 January 2001 and although thermometers were removed on 28 April 2016 inter-comparative data is unavailable. Source: BoMWatch.
From the paper:
he main findings of this research are summarized as follows:
An overheating of air temperature inside the medium- sized Stevenson screen was detected in comparison to the large-sized Stevenson screen throughout the year. This bias affected daily maximum air temperature records, especially during the warm season (May to October) and at 1300 UTC.
The weather conditions enhancing this overheating bias (not statistically significant) are associated with clear skies, high solar radiation rates, weak winds and low relative humidity values.
Comparison to nearby station have revealed that the different size of the naturally ventilated wooden Stevenson screens have an impact on mean, maximum and daily air temperature range. These kinds of investigations are crucial for removing inhomogeneities and accurately assessing the spatio -temporal variability and long-term trends of near-surface air temperature measurements.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the dataset since 1960 bears no resemblance at all to what went before. No matter how much you homogenise, no matter what sophisticated computer models you run, rainfall trends since 1960 cannot be compared with those before. The station mix is completely different.
I published this graph the other day. It showed that January 2026 was nowhere near as wet as a lot of other months in Northern Ireland, despite the BBC’s claim otherwise.
But the graph also indicated that wet months have become more common since the 1960s. It is a step change, and I am always deeply suspicious of step changes.
It turns out that before 1960, there were just six weather stations which are still in use in Northern Ireland, ones that are used for climate purposes. Then came a splurge:
It is not an exaggeration to say that the dataset since 1960 bears no resemblance at all to what went before. No matter how much you homogenise, no matter what sophisticated computer models you run, rainfall trends since 1960 cannot be compared with those before. The station mix is completely different.
The four oldest stations, Armagh (1836), Edenfel (1865), Aldergrove (1926) and Hillsborough (1930) are all still in use and offer good, long term rainfall data. So why not simply use these for long term trends?
The Met Office is obsessed with calculating the “average” temperature or rainfall for an entire country. In reality, there is no such thing. It is a mirage, a chimera. And in doing so, they introduce all sorts of anomalies, arising from station changes, UHI, poor siting and simply comparing sites that are radically different.
Ballypatrick, for instance, was opened in 1961. It is a high altitude, coastal site, prone to heavy rain, which often features at the top of rainfall lists, as does Katesbridge, opened in 1983, which is near the coast.
How can sites like these be compared with the older sites, which are in much different geographical, often drier locations?
So, let’s look at the wettest months at Armagh, and compare with our Northern Ireland graph at the top:
You will see straightaway that Armagh plots months with 140mm or more, rather than 190mm. This is deliberate – rainfall last month in Armagh was 140mm, compared to the national total of 195.6mm. This should tell us that many of the newer sites are intrinsically wetter than Armagh, which of course should automatically invalidate long term trends.
But the Armagh graph also shows no evidence of that step change in the 1970s, which appears to be simply an artifact of changing station mix.
So, let’s finish by looking at the annual rainfall trends:
There is no comparison!
According to the Met Office, rainfall in Northern Ireland has been steadily increasing throughout the record. Yet the Armagh Observatory data confirms there is no long-term trend whatsoever.
We know that the Met Office’s long term temperature record is massively corrupted by poor siting and UHI. It seems that their rainfall datasets are also equally corrupted and worthless.
A recent study by researchers in Chongqing, China, published in the journal Power System Technology on January 16, 2026, highlights how high levels of renewable energy integration could accelerate the aging of power transformers- particularly relevant to the United States, where much of the grid infrastructure is already outdated.
A recent study by researchers in Chongqing, China, published in the journal Power System Technology on January 16, 2026, highlights how high levels of renewable energy integration could accelerate the aging of power transformers- particularly relevant to the United States, where much of the grid infrastructure is already outdated.
The team modeled the effects of increased wind and solar penetration on transformer lifespan.
Traditional grid standards assume mostly unidirectional power flow (from centralized plants to consumers).
High renewables introduce more bidirectional power flows- excess generation from distributed sources (e.g., rooftop solar or wind farms) flows backward through transformers.
This frequent direction switching adds thermal cycling, mechanical stress, and insulation wear not fully captured in current aging models.
Team in China finds that high renewable energy integration could make power transformers age nearly a quarter faster
As US President Donald Trump continues to wage war against renewable energy, a new Chinese study revealing the strain that renewable integration places on power transformers could give him fresh technical ammunition.
The researchers discovered that high renewable energy integration could make power transformers, vital
components that regulate voltage in electricity grids, age faster than previously thought. High levels of wind and solar energy increased bidirectional power flow switching – the movement of electricity in both directions – causing additional stress that current standards did not account for, the Chongqing-based team found.
In a world grappling with transformer shortages and surging energy demand from electrification and the growth of artificial intelligence data centres, the findings suggest that renewables could place even greater strain on ageing grids, like those in the United States and Europe.
When testing their new proposed model, the team found that two-way flow caused transformers to age 23 per cent faster than accounted for by current standards, according to a paper published in the Chinese-language journal Power System Technology on January 16.
Aerial footage shows damage to burnt out power transformers near Heathrow
“This paper focuses, for the first time, on the impact of frequent bidirectional power flow switching caused by high‐penetration wind and solar integration on the operational characteristics and insulation lifespan of power transformers,” the team said.
The researchers, from the Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications and the State Grid Chongqing Electric Power Company, also built a “long-term lifetime loss accumulation calculation framework” – which could be used to assess the condition of transformers and guide operation and maintenance.
Speaking before the UN General Assembly in September, Trump said that renewable energy options were a “joke” and that wind turbines were “so pathetic and so bad” and expensive to operate. In January, in his address before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump said: “China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China. “They make them, they sell them for a fortune. They sell them to the stupid people that buy them.”
Hitachi Energy Chongqing Transformer Co. Ltd. is located in Chongqing City. As one of the largest transformer factories worldwide within Hitachi Energy, the company focuses on the design and manufacture of power transformer, shunt reactor and HVDC transformer (High Voltage Direct Current).
Traditional energy grids had a centralised, one-way flow of power from the producers to the consumers. This is shifting towards a two-way system where electricity can also flow back from solar, wind and energy storage sources into the grid.
Transformers are a basic and critical component of electric grids, adjusting the voltage of electricity so it can travel efficiently through the grid. They can either “step up” or increase the voltage so electricity can travel long distances through power lines without losing strength, or “step down” the voltage once it reaches its destination so it can be safely used by appliances.
Power transformers are large units which transmit high-voltage electricity over long distances, while distribution transformers are smaller units that help supply local areas.
As transformers age, their components can degrade, which can lead to higher maintenance demand, limit efficiency and reliability, and increase the risk of a major grid failure. The average age of power transformers in use worldwide is around 40 years, according to electrical equipment supplier Reinhausen.
In the US and Europe – home to the oldest power grids in the world – some transformers date back even further. Much of the US electric grid infrastructure was built 50 to 75 years ago, and nearly 70 per cent of power transformers in the country are over 25 years old, according to a report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison last May.
More than half of the transformers in this country are becoming too old to reliably function and can fail at any time. We not only need to build new transformers, but we also need to replace the ones that are ageing out. — US Department of Energy in 2024
But expanding and replacing transformer infrastructure is not only expensive, but it could also even be impossible in the short term due to long delivery times and a global shortage of power transformers, according to Reinhausen.
Average lead times for large power transformers had almost doubled since 2021, with securing transformers taking up to four years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report last February.
According to the IEA, the production of power transformers is technically complex and requires advanced facilities. China, South Korea, Turkey, and Italy accounted for 50 per cent of total global power transformer trade in 2023, it said, with China alone representing half that share.
Top 10 Power Transformer Manufacturers In The World
Both the US and Europe have more than doubled their import trade value for power transformers since 2018. The US primarily sources transformers from Mexico, Europe and South Korea, while China now accounts for over 60 per cent of the European Union’s imports, according to the IEA.
Imports account for an estimated 80 per cent of the US power transformer supply, and 50 per cent of the distribution transformer supply, according to a report by energy research and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie in August.
In the US, the supply shortage for power transformers hit 30 per cent in 2025, while the shortage for distribution transformers hit 10 per cent, the report said.
The Federal Judicial Center (FJC), the research and education arm of the U.S. federal judiciary, has removed a chapter on climate science from the fourth edition of its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.
The Federal Judicial Center (FJC), the research and education arm of the U.S. federal judiciary, has removed a chapter on climate science from the fourth edition of its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.
This manual serves as a key resource for federal judges (and often state judges) when evaluating scientific evidence in litigation, including under standards like Daubert for admissibility of expert testimony.
The fourth edition was released in December 2025, marking the first time it included a dedicated section on climate science, authored by Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton (affiliated with Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and related institutions).
The chapter aimed to help judges assess expert testimony and evidence related to climate science, including attribution (linking emissions to specific impacts).
Every so often, an institution pauses, looks at what it has just done, and quietly backs away from the edge. That appears to be what has happened at the Federal Judicial Center (FJC), and it is worth marking the moment.
As confirmed in a February 6, 2026, letter from FJC Director Judge Robin L. Rosenberg to West Virginia Attorney General John B. McCuskey, the Federal Judicial Center has removed the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition. That single administrative act- “has omitted the climate science chapter”- represents a rare and welcome course correction.
The Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual is no ordinary publication. Courts have cited earlier editions more than a thousand times. Judges rely on it not to tell them what to think, but to help them understand how to evaluate expert claims without becoming surrogate scientists. Its authority flows precisely from its reputation for restraint.
The now-removed climate chapter threatened that reputation.
The problem was never that climate science exists or that climate changes. The problem was that the chapter treated deeply disputed questions—especially climate attribution—as if they were settled background facts. In doing so, it blurred the line between education and advocacy, effectively supplying judges with a pre-framed lens through which ongoing and future climate litigation could be viewed.
West Virginia led the charge calling for the Federal Judicial Center to immediately withdraw an inappropriate new addition to the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence that deals with “climate science.” We have just received notice that, because of our efforts, the chapter is… pic.twitter.com/kx2YxNyZUU
That did not go unnoticed. In late January, a coalition of state attorneys general, led by West Virginia, formally objected. Their letter argued that the chapter “places the judiciary firmly on one side” of unresolved scientific and legal disputes and risks turning the Manual into something resembling a quasi–amicus brief for climate plaintiffs. That is strong language, but the underlying concern was straightforward: courts are supposed to test claims, not absorb them prepackaged.
The timing made the issue even more sensitive. Climate litigation increasingly hinges on attribution—attempts to link specific storms, floods, or heatwaves to global emissions, and then to particular companies or states. These are not minor technical questions. They sit at the intersection of complex models, sparse data, and cascading assumptions. If attribution were genuinely settled science, there would be little need for protracted expert battles in court. The fact that those battles dominate climate cases tells its own story.
Against that backdrop, a judiciary-support institution publishing what looks like an endorsed framework for attribution is not neutral. It risks tilting the playing field before a single expert is sworn in.
Congress had already begun asking uncomfortable questions about climate-focused judicial education and whether advocacy organizations were exerting undue influence through “training” and “guidance.” The FJC’s climate chapter landed squarely in that line of fire. Faced with mounting scrutiny from both state officials and Congress, the Center chose not to defend the chapter but to remove it.
That decision deserves cautious applause.
This was not a scientific retraction in the journal sense. No datasets were withdrawn. No equations corrected. What was retracted was something more important in this context: institutional overconfidence. The FJC implicitly acknowledged that publishing a climate chapter in its Reference Manual carried risks that outweighed any supposed benefits.
In doing so, it reaffirmed a basic but increasingly neglected principle: disputed scientific claims belong in court, subjected to cross-examination, competing experts, and explicit discussion of uncertainty. They do not belong embedded in an “authoritative” guide that lawyers can cite as if it were a neutral referee.
A genuinely skeptical climate guide for judges would be relentlessly unglamorous. It would dwell on uncertainty, model sensitivity, data limitations, and the difference between scenario exploration and causal proof. It would emphasize how little global averages say about local outcomes and how fragile attribution chains can be. Most of all, it would warn judges against mistaking institutional consensus for empirical certainty.
The removed chapter appears to have done the opposite. And when that became impossible to ignore, the FJC stepped back.
That is the encouraging part. Institutions rarely retreat unless pushed, and rarer still is a retreat that restores proper boundaries rather than inventing new justifications. For a brief moment, process triumphed over presumption.
This does not mean the issue is settled. The incentives that produced the chapter remain. Climate litigation remains attractive precisely because it bypasses legislatures and voters. Efforts to “educate” judges toward preferred narratives will continue, likely in subtler forms. Chapters can be rewritten. Language can be softened. Pressure can be reapplied.
But for now, the judiciary’s support arm remembered what it is not supposed to be: a vehicle for resolving contested policy questions by administrative suggestion.
That is not a victory for any particular scientific theory. It is a victory for skepticism in its proper sense—for restraint, for adversarial testing, and for the idea that courts should decide cases based on evidence presented in court, not conclusions embedded in advance.
Sometimes progress looks dramatic. Sometimes it looks like a chapter quietly disappearing from a manual.
The Net Zero Reality Coalition has published my research report on the looming devastation from New York’s Climate Act. It is here.
The full title is:
“Severe Climate Act Impacts Threaten New York State
Massive price hikes and fuel shortages will hit unless the law is changed”
Here is the Executive Summary:
“The threat is stark. The Climate Act requires the administration to promulgate regulations that ‘ensure’ that the 2030 emissions reduction target is met. Governor Hochul has said her administration does not want to do so because the regulations are infeasible and ruinously expensive for New Yorkers. The court has ruled that either the law must be changed or the regulations must be issued. The ruling has been appealed, but the threat remains.
Clearly, the legislature must act on this threat. Our brief report outlines some of the most pressing issues lawmakers should consider. First and foremost is the fact that the regulatory mechanism includes rationing fuel use for transportation and heating. Such rationing is likely to create unacceptable shortages, including the possibility of homes running out of heat during winter months.
The so-called ‘cap and invest’ regulations also include taxing the rations. In practice, this means raising the cost of fuel so high that its use is sharply curtailed. This severe cost impact is also unacceptable.
The situation is unfortunately complicated by the fact that Governor Hochul has failed to disclose the proposed regulations and their detailed costs. As a result, neither the legislature nor the people of New York State have access to the basic facts needed to evaluate the policy. This, too, is unacceptable.”
The report then looks at several specific issues and analyzes some of the likely worst cases. By way of introduction, here is the table of contents:
“New York’s climate law must be changed to prevent near term severe impacts
The 2030 climate target is incredibly infeasible
There is no plan for electric power
Climate Act infeasibility is shown in the 2025 New York Energy Plan
New York’s climate law will ration fossil fuels and tax the rations
Motor fuel rationing chaos looms
Governor Hochul must disclose the “ruinous cost” of the Climate Act
Conclusions“
To date, the New York legislature has shown no public interest in this incredibly threatening issue.
There is, however, some major non-legislative action regarding another infeasible part of the Climate Act. The New York State Public Service Commission is taking comments on a petition to suspend or modify the 2030 renewable energy target. This also infeasible target is 70% of instate electricity production from renewables and New York produces about 90% of its electricity.
Commenting is an arcane process. Here are the instructions from the PSC announcement:
“Comments provided in response to this notice should reference “Case 15-E-0302.” Comments should be submitted electronically by going to http://www.dps.ny.gov, clicking on “File Search” (located under the heading “Commission Files”), entering “15-E-0302” in the “Search by Case Number” field, and then clicking on the “Post Comments” box located at the top of the page.”
As of this writing, there are almost 24,000 comments, and commenting is open until March 31. Clearly this is a big fight, perhaps a model for legislative action on the absurd 40% emissions reduction target that my report assesses.
Note that some of the report content previously appeared as interim CFACT research articles. This content has been significantly revised and augmented in the final report.
The New York State Climate Act situation is the nastiest policy mess I have ever seen. Stay tuned to CFACT as the New York climate fiasco plays out.
In a report published last week by the National Center for Energy Analytics (NCEA), two seasoned veterans of the global energy forecasting establishment delivered what can only be described as a sober and consequential verdict on the state of international energy realism. Neil Atkinson, former head of the oil markets division at the International Energy Agency (IEA), and Adam Sieminski, previously administrator of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), examined the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2025 and concluded that something important, if overdue, had shifted.
In a report published last week by the National Center for Energy Analytics (NCEA), two seasoned veterans of the global energy forecasting establishment delivered what can only be described as a sober and consequential verdict on the state of international energy realism. Neil Atkinson, former head of the oil markets division at the International Energy Agency (IEA), and Adam Sieminski, previously administrator of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), examined the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2025 and concluded that something important, if overdue, had shifted.
On the surface, this looks like a technical adjustment, a reshuffling of scenario tables in a familiar annual report. In reality, it is a tacit admission that years of advocacy-driven forecasting have collided with political, economic and physical realities that cannot be wished away. Elections, as the cliché has it, have consequences. And under the altered circumstances of a second Trump administration committed unapologetically to energy dominance, the IEA has been dragged, kicking and screaming, back towards something resembling its original objective advisory mission.
Perhaps, like Bill Gates, who changed his tune on climate alarmism under the altered circumstances of the Trump administration and its ‘energy dominance’ agenda, Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA since September 1st, 2015, has also come around to singing from a different hymn sheet.
From Energy Analyst to Net Zero Evangelist
The reintroduction of the CPS matters precisely because it restores a baseline grounded in what governments are actually doing, not what climate activists hope they might do someday. Since 2019, the IEA had dropped this scenario as it leaned ever more heavily into aspirational constructs designed to flatter the ambitions of the climate industrial complex. It was a capitulation to heavy lobbying from environmental groups, European governments and US Democrats and ‘RINO’ allies obsessed with aligning every forecast to the Paris Agreement’s Net Zero ambitions.
Instead of neutral projections, the IEA began churning out scenarios predicated on varying degrees of “climate action”, assumptions that inflated the uptake of renewables, electric vehicles (EVs) and other green technologies far beyond what real-world data supported. In the process, it alienated not only producing nations but also consuming countries whose energy security depends on realistic assessments of oil and gas demand and supply.
The NCEA report is explicit. Under the reinstated CPS in World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2025, global oil demand does not peak before 2050. Even under the IEA’s Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS), which assumes governments actually implement announced measures, oil demand peaks later and at higher levels than claimed in WEO 2024. These are not marginal adjustments; they represent a quiet retreat from the agency’s most aggressive narratives of rapid fossil fuel obsolescence.
To understand how significant this retreat is, one must recall how far the IEA had strayed from its founding mandate. Created after the oil shocks of the 1970s, the agency’s purpose was to provide sober, technically grounded advice on global energy supply, demand and security. For decades, it did precisely that. The annual World Energy Outlook reports provided a reasonably objective view for global energy markets and were the go-to source of intelligence on investment requirements in the energy resources sector for the world’s leading energy companies.
That credibility began to erode as climate politics intensified. By the late 2010s, the IEA’s modelling increasingly blurred the line between analysis and prescription. This drift culminated in the agency’s astonishing 2021 manifesto, ‘Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector’, which declared that no new investment in oil, gas or coal was compatible with climate goals. Fatih Birol declared unambiguously that “there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal” from that year onward.
This was not analysis; it was ideology with spreadsheets attached. It ignored the IEA’s own historical data on decline rates in existing fields, population growth and energy demand growth across Asia and the Global South. As Rupert Darwall observed in his critique of the agency’s transformation, the IEA had allowed itself to become a cheerleader for radical Net Zero policies, misleading policymakers while endangering Western energy security.
Trump, Energy Dominance and Institutional Fear
The backlash was inevitable. OPEC dismissed the IEA’s “peak oil” timelines as fantasy, with the Saudi oil minister calling the report a “la-la-land” scenario. Industry analysts warned that capital starvation in upstream oil and gas, driven by regulatory hostility and ESG pressure, was colliding with resilient global demand. The result was not an orderly ‘energy transition’ but tighter markets, higher prices and a dramatic transfer of geopolitical leverage to producers outside the Western alliance.
Today, with global energy demand surging in Asia and Africa, such shortfalls could ignite price volatility, inflation and geopolitical tensions. The collapse of the Net Zero Banking Alliance in late 2025, amid political backlash and market realities, is a harbinger of what is to come if realism does not prevail. In a broader sense, the IEA’s saga illustrates the perils of institutional capture by climate ideologies. What began as a guardian of energy security morphed into a mouthpiece for aspirational green targets over the hard truths of physics, economics and human development. Fossil fuels are not just energy sources; they are the backbone of modern civilisation, enabling everything from fertilisers to pharmaceuticals. Dismissing them prematurely risks condemning billions in the developing world to energy poverty while enriching adversaries such as Russia and Iran through higher prices.
The Trump administration’s intervention offers a glimmer of hope. By demanding evidence-based forecasting, it reminds the IEA of its roots: advising on real trends, not prescribing utopian visions. But vigilance is essential. As the NCEA report warns, methodological issues persist, and the agency’s European leanings could tempt backsliding. Policymakers must now scrutinise World Energy Outlooks with a critical eye, cross-referencing against EIA and OPEC projections. In the end, the IEA’s reluctant embrace of the CPS is a victory for sanity in energy discourse. But the damage, from misguided investments to eroded trust, has been done. It will take sustained pressure to ensure the agency does not revert to form. After all, in the high-stakes game of global energy, realism is not optional; it is imperative.
From the outset, the Trump administration made clear that energy policy would be subordinated to national interest rather than climate virtue-signalling. “Energy dominance” was not rhetorical flourish but strategic doctrine, encompassing expanded domestic production, regulatory rollback and a blunt reassessment of international institutions whose climate agendas conflicted with US economic and security priorities. Under this administration, the US has exited and defunded 66 international organisations deemed inimical to American interests, including climate-related bodies inside and outside the UN system. The message to remaining institutions was unmistakable: reform or lose American participation. It was in this context that US Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued a stark warning to the IEA: abandon advocacy and return to energy security analysis, or risk a US exit.
For an organisation whose authority depends heavily on American engagement, the threat was existential. The shift in tone was immediate. At CERAWeek 2025 in Houston, Birol conceded what would have been heresy just a few years earlier: “There is a need for oil and gas upstream investments, full stop.” One could almost hear the ideological gears grinding as institutional self-preservation asserted itself.
A Partial Return to Reality, and a Warning
None of this should be mistaken for a full return to analytical sobriety. As the NCEA report rightly emphasises, WEO 2025 remains riddled with heroic assumptions. Electric vehicle adoption is projected to accelerate even as subsidies are rolled back, consumer demand weakens and grid constraints multiply. Mineral bottlenecks – lithium, cobalt, nickel – are acknowledged only glancingly, despite their central role in any electrification fantasy.
The CPS may be back, but the ideological impulse remains. The IEA continues with aspirational modelling that flatters policymakers rather than confronting them with the hard trade-offs imposed by physics, capital stock and political economy. Still, symbolism matters. Restoring the CPS is an implicit admission that the world does not run on scenarios dreamed up in Paris conference rooms. Energy systems evolve slowly. They cannot be bullied into submission by press releases, nor re-engineered on activist timetables.
The deeper lesson is an old one. Institutions are not immune to political pressure, but neither can they defy reality indefinitely. For a time, the IEA mistook moral fervour for analytical authority. It took a change of government in Washington, and the credible threat of irrelevance through defunding, to remind it of its founding purpose. Elections, as they say, have consequences. Under the altered geopolitical landscape ushered in by the Trump administration’s unapologetic “energy dominance” agenda, the IEA appears to have been dragged, kicking and screaming, back towards a semblance of objectivity. As Atkinson and Sieminski note in their report, the CPS’s reinstatement “has gone a long way toward answering that its scenarios are divorced from reality”.
Institutions rarely change course voluntarily. What shifted between the IEA’s 2021 peak zealotry and its more subdued tone in WEO 2025 was not new climate science or technological breakthroughs, but politics, specifically the return of Donald Trump to the White House. No longer can the Paris-based agency indulge in its role as a cheerleader for radical Net Zero policies without facing the threat of defunding or outright US withdrawal.
Whether this fragile return to realism endures remains uncertain. A future US electoral swing could easily revive the fantasy that oil demand can be legislated out of existence. But for now, the message is unmistakable: even the most ideologically captured institutions eventually rediscover reality, when survival depends on it.
Energy realism has returned to the IEA not because the facts have changed, but because power has.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
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