Day: May 4, 2026

‘Republican’ Green energy fantasies and casualties

President Trump has it dead right. Recently, he signed five executive orders using the Defense Production Act to accelerate domestic fossil fuel development and electrical grid infrastructure. America needs no-holds-barred development of oil, natural gas, coal, critical minerals, metals, a nuclear renaissance, and manufacturing of the technologies that keep our economy humming and our nation secure.

From CFACT

By Craig Rucker

President Trump has it dead right. Recently, he signed five executive orders using the Defense Production Act to accelerate domestic fossil fuel development and electrical grid infrastructure. America needs no-holds-barred development of oil, natural gas, coal, critical minerals, metals, a nuclear renaissance, and manufacturing of the technologies that keep our economy humming and our nation secure.

It’s good to see a president who has zero patience for wind, solar, and giant battery schemes because he understands one simple truth: We must have reliable, affordable, dispatchable energy — not power that goes belly up when the wind dies, clouds roll in, or the sun sets.

Naturally, Democrats oppose any such logic … if for no other reason than Trump supports it. They want to bulldoze any notion of using fossil fuels while hypocritically fighting nuclear power and even reliable hydroelectric dams. Their green zealotry knows no bounds.

While that’s no surprise, what’s far more alarming (and bizarre) is that some Republicans are pushing a similar watered-down “low-carb net-zero” fantasy, just like the Democrats. They don’t call it the “Green New Deal.” That would be too much.

Instead, they brand it as embracing an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy — one that gives a nod and a wink to nuclear and hydro, but undermines fossil fuels and keeps the mandates, subsidies, and tax credits flowing to wind, solar, and batteries.

Why the heck would they do this, especially since “conservatives” typically don’t stay up late at night fretting about climate change and are suspicious of taxpayer dollars flowing to seedy companies and special interests?

These folks worry about losing suburban “green” votes. They don’t want to be called “climate deniers” or enemies of “clean” energy. Some actually believe renewables are net job creators. Others envision easy money from wind and solar to fill coffers in their states.

You’ll find them among governors like Kim Reynolds of Iowa and Mark Gordon of Wyoming, senators like John Curtis (R-UT) and Lisa Murkowski R-AK), and RINO groups like the American Conservation Coalition, the Conservative Energy Network, and Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions.

They call themselves “free-market conservatives,” grounded in less regulation and sound science. Nice branding. Too bad their preferred “solutions” are loaded with massive, rarely discussed downsides, especially when it comes to the environment.

Look at the land grab. The SunZia Wind Project is a poster child for net-zero madness: 916 enormous turbines sprawling across hundreds of thousands of acres in New Mexico. At 3.5-gigawatt nameplate capacity and an $11 billion cost, paired with a 550-mile transmission line to California, it’s the largest onshore industrial wind subsidy-grabber in the Western Hemisphere.

Solar? California’s Bellefield project will carpet about 8,000 acres with 1.2 million panels in the Mojave, while Indiana’s Mammoth Solar will swallow 20 square miles where winter sun is pathetic.

These projects are industrial-scale devastation on ranchland and wildlife habitat.

These aren’t empty wastelands. They are prime croplands, ranchlands, and fragile desert and mountain ecosystems getting paved over.

Wildlife carnage is brutal. Turbine blade tips whip at speeds up to 200 mph, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of birds and over a million bats every year in the U.S. alone. Estimates give rates of 4-11 birds and 12-19 bats killed per megawatt. Eagles, hawks, migratory birds, and songbirds all pay the price. Scale this up for net-zero dreams, and the body count explodes.

They’re resource hogs. These projects demand insane amounts of steel, copper, concrete, rare earths, and hundreds of miles of transmission lines. Wind and solar require far more raw materials per unit of actual electricity delivered than nuclear, gas, or coal plants. That means more global mining and pollution, at levels people and planet have never seen before. China owns the supply chain. Beijing dominates 80-90 percent of solar manufacturing, major shares of wind components, 80 percent or more of batteries, and 80-95 percent of critical mineral processing like rare earths. Many systems come with remote “maintenance” backdoors that could let adversaries mess with our grid. This isn’t energy independence. It’s a strategic surrender.

Real conservatives, not “all-of-the-above” pretenders, understand the importance of not only slashing the red tape strangling real energy projects, but also cutting back on the ecologically destructive, subsidy-sucking renewable energy industry.

They understand that even if America went full net-zero at trillions in costs, wrecked industries, lost jobs, and lower living standards, it wouldn’t matter for emissions or the climate.

China pumps out over 13 billion tons of CO2 yearly, about one-third of the global total. India adds over 3 billion. The two countries dwarf U.S. emissions (4.6 billion) and Europe’s emissions (3.1 billion) combined. Our enormous sacrifices would be pointless symbolism.

Republicans who court an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy must drop their green virtue-signaling and get on board with the Trump administration and Secretary Wright’s train to prosperity and security. Unleash American energy — oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and domestic mining — and kill the mandates and subsidies that distort markets and enrich adversaries.

This article originally appeared at Townhall

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Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.

UAE’s OPEC Exit: Pragmatic Oil Policy, Not ‘Stranded Assets’ Panic

The United Arab Emirates’ announcement on Tuesday that it will leave OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1st sent shockwaves through the energy world. As the cartel’s third-largest oil producer, with a production capacity approaching five million barrels per day and ambitions to push higher, the UAE was no peripheral player. Abu Dhabi joined OPEC back in 1967 — before the UAE federation existed in its modern form — and the unified UAE carried that legacy for nearly six decades.

From Tilak`s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

The United Arab Emirates’ announcement on Tuesday that it will leave OPEC and OPEC+ effective May 1st sent shockwaves through the energy world. As the cartel’s third-largest oil producer, with a production capacity approaching five million barrels per day and ambitions to push higher, the UAE was no peripheral player. Abu Dhabi joined OPEC back in 1967 — before the UAE federation existed in its modern form — and the unified UAE carried that legacy for nearly six decades.

The exit decision was framed by Emirati officials as a “policy-driven evolution” in pursuit of “long-term strategic and economic vision”. Within hours, a familiar trope emerged among media commentators: the UAE, fearing the inexorable global march towards Net Zero, is racing to avoid ‘stranded assets’. Oil will be left in the ground, you see, because electric vehicles in China and Europe’s Green Deal will soon render the black stuff obsolete.

Watch out for stranded assets!

The stranded assets narrative is the climate alarmists’ weapon of choice. In behavioural economics, the tenet of loss aversion suggests that the fear of a tangible loss is far more effective than hope for putative gains in shaping actions. For over two decades, climate activists and financial pundits have argued that fossil fuels — coal mines, oil and gas fields, pipelines, refineries — would soon suffer the fate of the buggy whip on the eve of the automobile age. The energy transition, they insisted, would ‘strand’ trillions of dollars in hydrocarbon assets as the world turns away from carbon-intensive fuels.

Climate activists have long claimed that technological progress in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies combined with climate policies pursued by governments around the world will lead to substantial falls in demand for fossil fuels. A Financial Times column in 2020, for instance, claimed that the pursuit of climate change policies would “evaporate” a third of the current value of the big oil and gas companies. If countries met their Paris Agreement commitments and kept to the “no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels” target, 50% of all coal, oil and gas resources would be “stranded” and, by definition, have zero value. If the stricter 1.5°C maximum is aimed for, then 80% of the world’s fossil fuels would be stranded.

Citing ‘consensus science’ (an oxymoron), climate change models purportedly linking carbon dioxide emissions with ‘climate risk’ are used to calculate the necessary cuts in oil, gas and coal production. Hence BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and an early purveyor of the ESG movement, warned over a decade ago that “the majority of fossil fuel reserves will need to be left in the ground” if global warming is not to exceed 2°C. Along the same lines, consultants for the OECD asserted that “vast quantities of resource reserves will need to remain underground in order to stabilise the climate”.

Turning to UAE’s decision to exit OPEC this week, an Oxford don in “energy systems” captured the climate-focused zeitgeist in a commentary published on Wednesday. He argued that as China electrifies transport, demand for oil will “plateau”, and the UAE — already ahead of the Saudis with its 2050 Net Zero target versus Riyadh’s 2060 — is wisely sidestepping the risk of unsellable reserves. This, we are told, explains why the Gulf heavyweight is ditching the cartel’s quotas for production flexibility. The UAE can then, in this narrative, produce oil as rapidly as possible before it goes out of fashion.

A Middle East expert from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston commented in Channel News Asia on Thursday that the UAE’s decision to exit “reflects a desire to monetise its reserves and move the oil to market to avoid the risk of stranded assets should global demand fall in any future transition away from fossil fuels. Shorn of the constraints of OPEC quotas… officials in Abu Dhabi will be able to increase production should it wish to do so once the impasse with Iran is broken and the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens.”

To more conventional oil analysts, the “stranded assets” theme is worn and threadbare. Fatih Birol, Chief Executive of the IEA, published the astonishing Net Zero “roadmap” with much fanfare in May 2021, calling for a global stop to all new investments in fossil fuels since they were going to be “stranded” anyway. It duly attracted its share of derision from Gulf oil producers with skin in the game, as in the case of the Saudi oil minister who called the report a sequel to “La La Land”. There is perhaps no player as big as Saudi Arabia that can claim ‘skin in the game’.

Barclays PLC dropped a bombshell white paper in February titled ‘Transition Realism: A Stranded Asset Perspective on the Energy Transition’. The report pulls no punches. After years of being lectured that fossil fuels are the quintessential stranded assets — trillions in oil, gas and coal reserves doomed to remain unused underground as the world races to Net Zero – we now learn that the real risks now lurk in the renewable sector. “Stranded-asset risk is becoming system wide. … Historically, stranding meant coal plants. Today, renewables facing multi-year interconnection queues, curtailment and congestion risks are increasingly likely to be impaired.”

The question of national interest

The UAE has chafed for years under OPEC quotas that capped its output at around 3.4 million barrels per day while its sustainable capacity sits at 4.8 million and climbing. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has invested heavily to expand, only to be restrained by OPEC quotas under Saudi-led discipline.

The Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have compounded the frustration. UAE exports able to bypass the Hormuz chokepoint via the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline have a capacity to transport 1.5-1.8 million barrels of oil per day. By exiting OPEC, the UAE gains the freedom to ramp up on its own terms, redirect capital to secure export routes and align more closely with the US whose shale revolution has already done more to erode cartel power than any UN climate conference ever could. But in the short run, the UAE is constrained by the pipeline capacity until the Strait of Hormuz is released from blockades.

Climate zealots cannot see a sovereign nation’s rational self-interest without projecting their own apocalyptic fantasies onto it. The UAE is not some farsighted convert to the renewables revolution, nor is Saudi Arabia the dim-witted Arab cousin stubbornly clinging to a dying fossil fuels industry. Both are hard-nosed pragmatists operating in a world where oil demand remains robust, geopolitics trumps virtue-signalling and government promises of distant Net Zero targets are worth about as much as the paper they’re printed on.

The real story, buried beneath the stranded-assets hysteria, is one of production quotas, regional rivalries, wars and blocked maritime chokepoints for oil and gas trade, and the enduring power of market realities over green ideology. US fracking — 13.2 million barrels per day in January 2026, up from 5.4 million in 2010 — has achieved what decades of diplomatic arm-twisting could not. OPEC’s 2014 attempt to flood the market and crush American oil and gas producers backfired spectacularly, forcing US shale to become profitable at $50-$60 per barrel.

This is well below the fiscal break-even oil price for most OPEC members, that is, the price that helps balance government budgets. IMF projections indicate that Saudi Arabia requires roughly $95 per barrel to balance its 2025 budget, while the UAE maintains a lower breakeven around $50 per barrel.

And yet the stranded-assets mantra persists. Even as physical Brent crude spikes above $110 amid the Hormuz disruptions — reminding everyone that energy security is not a luxury but a necessity — the Oxford academic and his ilk insist the UAE is acting on long-term demand decline. Never mind that China’s electrification is built on a coal-fired grid that shows no sign of rapid decarbonisation. Government pledges 25 or 30 years out are worth less than used Tesla batteries.

The UAE, sitting atop some of the world’s lowest-cost oil reserves, is hardly about to abandon that absolute advantage on the altar of UN target ‘commitments’ for carbon mitigation. Saudi Arabia’s continued commitment to oil is no act of denialism either. Both Gulf powers understand what Western elites refuse to: global fossil fuel demand is not plateauing. The UAE’s exit is about flexibility — production policy, export security, and foreign policy autonomy — not a sudden conversion to the Church of Climate.

The UAE has distanced itself from cartel constraints while deepening US ties, a move accelerated by the Iran war which exposed the limited nature of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council solidarity. UAE Presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said the Gulf states supported each other logistically in the crisis, but he lambasted their political and military response: “The GCC’s stance was the weakest historically, considering the nature of the attack and the threat it posed to everyone.” Riyadh, for its part, retains the swing-producer role and the fiscal buffers to weather volatility. Neither are ‘unenlightened’; both are playing the long game in a multi-polar energy market where US shale, not solar panels, has humbled OPEC+.

Climate delusions vs petrostate statecraft

The broader lesson is one of persistent delusion. Anti-fossil fuel advocates have spent years portraying every market signal — OPEC cuts, price spikes, producer exits — as proof of their eschatology. Qatar left in 2019 for gas focus; Angola in 2024 over quota disputes; Ecuador and others before them. These were pragmatic adjustments, not harbingers of stranded reserves.

The UAE’s departure, the largest and most consequential since the cartel’s founding, weakens OPEC+ materially and reputationally, but it does so because of internal rifts, US supply abundance and regional conflict — not because Abu Dhabi’s planners have swallowed the IEA’s Net Zero Kool-Aid.

As the Hormuz crisis underscores, the world still runs on oil. Brent’s surge to over $110 after UAE’s exit notice was not a panicked farewell to fossil fuels but a reminder of supply vulnerability. The UAE will produce more, invest in bypass infrastructure and contribute to stability “in a measured and responsible manner”, as its statement noted. It appreciates OPEC’s past efforts while moving on. That is statesmanship, not surrender to the green transition fairy tale.

The climate establishment’s inability to see this reveals more about the ideology of its adherents than about Gulf energy strategy. They project their own wishful thinking — EU Net Zero by 2050, China’s miraculous pivot to renewables, an early plateau to global fossil fuel demand — onto rational actors who understand that energy abundance underpins prosperity and security.

Stranded assets? The only things truly at risk of stranding are the trillions squandered on intermittent renewables that cannot replace hydrocarbons at scale without massive economic losses. The UAE knows this. So does Saudi Arabia. It is high time the West’s virtue-signalling policymakers stopped lecturing them.

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.

How the Free Market Cancelled BP’s Renewable Energy Push

BP scaled back its aggressive renewable energy push primarily due to poor financial returns, shareholder pressure, and activist investors enforcing capital discipline through market mechanisms—not government mandates or ideology.

BP scaled back its aggressive renewable energy push primarily due to poor financial returns, shareholder pressure, and activist investors enforcing capital discipline through market mechanisms—not government mandates or ideology.

Around 2020, under CEO Bernard Looney, BP rebranded toward an “integrated energy company” with ambitious net-zero goals. It aimed to cut oil and gas production by ~40% by 2030 (later revised to 25%) and ramp up renewables investment heavily, targeting significant growth in wind, solar, biofuels, EV charging, and other low-carbon areas. This aligned with political and ESG pressures at the time.

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From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Adam Smith’s invisible hand vs the Renewable Energy Movement.

BP’s Pivot Back to Oil and Gas: Strategy, Results and Risks

BY MUFLIH HIDAYATON MAY 3, 2026

The Capital Discipline Reckoning: Why the World’s Biggest Energy Companies Are Returning to Their Roots

Across the global energy industry, a quiet but consequential correction has been underway. The post-pandemic era briefly convinced investors, policymakers, and corporate boardrooms that the energy majors could simultaneously fund large-scale renewable transitions while sustaining the upstream productivity that built their balance sheets over decades. That experiment, for several of the world’s largest oil and gas producers, has not delivered the returns that justified the capital deployed. The result is a generational recalibration of investment priorities, and no company illustrates this more starkly than BP.

The BP pivot back to oil and gas is not simply a story about one company changing direction. It is a window into the structural tension at the heart of the global energy transition: the gap between long-term decarbonisation ambitions and the near-term financial realities that govern trillion-dollar enterprises.

…

… BP’s renewable investments consistently generated returns that lagged behind its upstream hydrocarbon operations. As capital flowed toward lower-yielding clean energy assets, the company’s financial performance deteriorated relative to peers who had maintained tighter discipline over capital allocation. BP’s share price from the start of 2022 to early 2025 was essentially flat, while Shell’s shares rose approximately 72% over the same period, according to reporting by City A.M.

The underperformance created an opening for activist investors. Elliott Management, one of the world’s most aggressive hedge funds, acquired approximately a 5% stake in BP valued at around $3.8 billion, and used that position to intensify pressure on the board to simplify the business and refocus on fossil fuel value creation. The arrival of Elliott shifted the governance dynamic decisively, accelerating a strategic reset that was already quietly underway under Looney’s successor, Murray Auchincloss.

…

The results that BP reported for the first quarter of 2026 validated the strategic repositioning in the most direct way possible: through financial performance that far exceeded expectations.

…Read more: https://discoveryalert.com.au/bp-pivot-oil-gas-capital-discipline-turnaround-2026/

The whole article is well worth a read.

Despite immense political pressure and incentives, and deliberate regulatory obstacles to BP’s oil and gas business model, and despite top management getting on board with renewables, they still couldn’t make renewable energy profitable enough to compete with oil and gas.

As a result of BP’s misallocation of resources into renewables, their share price underperformed. This created an opportunity for activist hedge fund Elliot Investment Management swoop in, seize a controlling stake in the underperforming company, and halt the unprofitable diversion of resources into renewables. Even better, the activist investors made a heap of money doing so – the capitalist’s reward for removing road blocks to prosperity.

Both BP and Shell are sadly still investing some money in renewables, but BP’s dramatic share price stagnation and activist investor rescue is a warning to all oil and gas companies not to dive too deeply into unprofitable or marginally profitable activities like renewable energy, regardless of political incentives or other inducements. Government incentives can always be cancelled. Spain cancelled all renewable subsidies without warning when the government ran out of money in 2015. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, which has surged in popularity in recent years, has warned renewable investors they will immediately terminate all renewable subsidies if they win government, regardless of the terms of the contracts renewable investors have signed with the current administration.

What can I say? This touching story of the free market correcting renewable insanity makes me feel like joining a tea party rally and holding up my “Who is John Galt” sign. This story is a beautiful affirmation of the resilience of free markets in the face of regulatory adversity, that the power of money can defeat expert delusions even in today’s troubled world of clumsy political interventions and conceited politicians and academics who think they are smarter than the free market.

Kikai Caldera Refilling: Fresh Melt Re-Injecting into Giant Magma Reservoir 7,300 Years After Massive Eruption

A March 2026 study by Kobe University researchers (published in Communications Earth & Environment) confirms that a large magma reservoir beneath Japan’s Kikai Caldera is refilling with new magma.

The Kikai-Akahoya (K-Ah) eruption was a massive caldera-forming event ~7,300 years ago (around 5,300–5,250 BCE or 7,165–7,303 calibrated years BP) from the mostly submarine Kikai Caldera, located south of Kyushu Island in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands.

It ranks as one of the largest Holocene eruptions (post-Ice Age, last ~11,700 years), with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 7 (ultra-Plinian). It is often cited as the largest confirmed in this period.

The eruption produced widespread K-Ah tephra (ash and pumice fallout) and the Koya ignimbrite (from pyroclastic flows).

It is one of only a handful of confirmed VEI 7+ Holocene eruptions, alongside events like Tambora (1815), Samalas (~1257), and others. It is not classified as a full “supervolcano” eruption (typically VEI 8), but it approached that scale.

The K-Ah layer remains a cornerstone for understanding Holocene volcanism, climate impacts (though short-term global cooling was likely modest compared to larger events), and human prehistory in East Asia.

A March 2026 study by Kobe University researchers (published in Communications Earth & Environment) confirms that a large magma reservoir beneath Japan’s Kikai Caldera is refilling with new magma.

The Kikai Caldera is a mostly submerged supervolcano south of Kyushu in the Ryukyu Islands. About 7,300 years ago, it produced the Kikai-Akahoya (K-Ah) eruption, likely the largest Holocene eruption (Dense Rock Equivalent volume estimated at 133–183 km³).

Using seismic refraction surveys (air gun arrays and ocean bottom seismometers), researchers imaged a low-velocity anomaly indicating a significant magma-rich zone at shallow depths (roughly 2.5–6 km) directly beneath the caldera. The reservoir’s shape is roughly trapezoidal in cross-section, spanning at least the width of the inner caldera.

The Melt fraction is estimated at 3–6% (up to ~10% at most), consistent with a large but partially molten reservoir.

This appears to be the same reservoir that fed the giant ancient eruption, based on its location and extent.

A central lava dome has been forming in the caldera for the past ~3,900 years. Chemical analyses show recent volcanic materials differ from those of the K-Ah eruption, indicating fresh magma injection rather than leftover melt from 7,300 years ago.

The study proposes a general “melt re-injection” model for giant calderas: after a massive eruption empties much of the system, new magma from deeper sources gradually recharges a shallow reservoir beneath the caldera. This aligns with observations at places like Yellowstone and Toba.

The process is slow — estimates suggest accumulation on the order of several cubic kilometers per thousand years. There’s no indication of an imminent super-eruption.

Kikai remains active with occasional smaller eruptions (e.g., from Iodake Crater on Satsuma-Iwojima). As of early 2026, the Japan Meteorological Agency kept alert levels low for routine activity.

This improves monitoring potential and our understanding of caldera cycles, though predicting exact future behavior (especially for a submarine system) is still challenging.

This is a scientifically noteworthy finding about long-term volcanic processes, but it doesn’t signal immediate danger. Supervolcano recharge happens over millennia, and current activity levels are typical for the volcano.

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Melt re-injection into large magma reservoir after giant caldera eruption at Kikai Caldera Volcano

Kikai Caldera (south of Kyushu, Japan) experienced the Kikai-Akahoya (K-Ah) eruption ~7,300 years ago — likely the largest Holocene eruption, with a dense rock equivalent (DRE) volume of 133–183 km³. This giant event emptied much of the shallow magma system, forming the caldera.

Post-eruption, a large central lava dome (>32 km³) has built up inside the inner caldera over the past ~3,900 years. Petrological and chemical evidence shows this dome and recent activity involve magma of different composition from the K-Ah eruption materials, indicating fresh injections rather than just leftover melt.

Researchers from Kobe University and collaborators conducted a seismic refraction survey using an airgun array and ocean bottom seismometers along a 175 km line crossing the caldera.

A prominent low-velocity anomaly (P-wave velocity reduction up to 22%) at shallow depths of ~2.5–6 km (starting below ~2 km to avoid near-surface effects) directly beneath the caldera.

The anomaly appears trapezoidal in the 2D cross-section, with a width at least matching the inner caldera.

Interpreted as a large magma reservoir (magma-rich zone) at the same location as the one that fed the ancient super-eruption.

Melt fraction estimates: 3–6% on average, up to a maximum of ~10%. This is lower than some estimates for Yellowstone or Toba but still indicates significant melt presence.

Temperature and melt fraction were derived from velocity anomalies, assuming reductions below the solidus are due to temperature and above it primarily to melt.

After a giant caldera-forming eruption largely empties the shallow reservoir:

  1. New melt from deeper sources is re-injected into the same (or a reactivated) shallow reservoir beneath the caldera.
  2. This recharge occurs gradually over millennia.
  3. The reservoir can grow large enough again to potentially feed future large eruptions.

This explains the presence of a substantial shallow magma body today, fed by new material (evidenced by the differing chemistry of post-caldera lavas). It aligns with observations at other systems like Yellowstone (large shallow reservoir post-631 ka eruption) and Toba.

The model contrasts with scenarios where only remnant melt lingers or where entirely new, separate reservoirs form. Here, the spatial match and ongoing activity point to recharge of the original system.

The full open-access paper provides detailed velocity models, figures, and methods. This is a significant advance in caldera volcanology, combining seismic imaging with petrological constraints for a quantitative view of post-giant-eruption recharge.

Journal information: Communications Earth & Environment

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group

DOI: DOI: 10.1038/s43247-026-03347-9

Provided: Kobe University

Authors: Akihiro Nagaya, 
Nobukazu Seama, 
Gou Fujie, 
Satoru Tanaka, 
Hiroko Sugioka & 
Shuichi Kodaira 

Abstract

Melt re-injection after a giant caldera eruption was quantitatively investigated for the Kikai Caldera Volcano in Japan, which erupted 7300 years ago (Kikai-Akahoya eruption). Our seismic refraction survey revealed a low-velocity anomaly directly beneath the Kikai Caldera Volcano, indicating the existence of a large magma reservoir at a shallow depth of 2.5–6 km. The reservoir can be approximated by a trapezoidal shape in this 2D section, with its width being at least the same as the width of the inner caldera, and its melt fraction was estimated as 3–6%, but could be limited to 10% at most. We propose a melt re-injection model in which new melt is re-injected into this large magma reservoir at the shallow depth just beneath the caldera, which is the same magma reservoir for the Kikai-Akahoya eruption. This model may demonstrate a common feature of volcanoes that have experienced a giant caldera eruption.

New Approaches Uncover Epigenetic Rules of Homeostasis and Cellular Robustness Across Mammal Species

Camels (especially dromedaries) have exceptional heat tolerance, surviving desert temperatures often exceeding 40–50°C (104–122°F) with minimal water. While whole-body adaptations like fat-storing humps, thick fur for insulation/shade, low sweating, and heterothermy (allowing body temperature to fluctuate daily, e.g., up to 41–42°C) are well-known, recent research highlights cellular and molecular mechanisms.

Camels (especially dromedaries) have exceptional heat tolerance, surviving desert temperatures often exceeding 40–50°C (104–122°F) with minimal water. While whole-body adaptations like fat-storing humps, thick fur for insulation/shade, low sweating, and heterothermy (allowing body temperature to fluctuate daily, e.g., up to 41–42°C) are well-known, recent research highlights cellular and molecular mechanisms.

A 2026 study in BMC Genomics compared skin fibroblasts (connective tissue cells) from humans and one-humped camels under different temperatures. Researchers developed a new analytical framework focusing on gene expression variability and consistency across individuals (rather than just up/down regulation), enabling insights even with smaller datasets.

Mammalian cells use a three-part genetic system for heat response:

  1. Stable genes — Anchor and control the overall response.
  2. Heat-responsive genes — Activate specifically during temperature shifts.
  3. Erratic genes — Reflect system stress and variability.

Camel cells show greater resilience and a more flexible, coordinated response, maintaining cellular “well-being” and homeostasis better at both normal body temperature (98.6°F/37°C) and elevated heat (105.8°F/41°C). Human cells respond more rigidly, making them less adaptable under stress.

This flexibility helps camel cells stay balanced despite disruptions, contributing to overall thermotolerance.

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a highly conserved family of molecular chaperones produced by cells in response to stressors like heat, helping maintain protein homeostasis (proteostasis). They prevent misfolding/aggregation of proteins, assist in refolding damaged ones, and promote cell survival under stress.

HSPs are classified by molecular weight (e.g., HSP70, HSP90, HSP60, small HSPs like HSP27).

Under normal conditions, many HSPs are constitutively expressed at low levels. Heat (or other stresses) triggers rapid transcriptional activation via heat shock factors (HSFs), leading to massive HSP accumulation. This is part of the broader heat shock response (HSR), which temporarily halts most protein synthesis to prioritize stress protection.

In desert-adapted mammals like camels, HSPs are crucial for thermotolerance, enabling survival at high body temperatures (up to ~41–42°C) with minimal water loss.

HSP induction is energy-intensive and not a complete solution—prolonged extreme stress can still overwhelm it, leading to apoptosis. In camels, HSPs integrate with other adaptations (e.g., resilient RBCs, efficient water conservation, flexible gene regulatory networks) for superior overall resilience.

HSP research in camels (e.g., reviews by Hoter et al., studies on somatic cells by Saadeldin et al.) positions them as models for understanding thermotolerance, with potential applications in livestock breeding and human heat-related diseases. For the newest gene-network insights tying into HSPs, see the 2026 BMC Genomics paper.

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New approaches to discovering epigenetic rules of homeostasis in diverse mammal species

Traditional differential expression analysis (identifying genes that go significantly up or down) often fails with small sample sizes (few biological replicates), which is common in studies of non-model or large mammals like camels.

The authors (led by Jorge Gonzalez, with collaborators from FAU, Broad Institute, and others) introduce a new framework focused on epigenetic/homeostatic rules:

They emphasize inter-individual variability in gene expression. Genes that preserve or reduce variability under stress (e.g., temperature change) are interpreted as contributing to homeostasis-preserving mechanisms for that species. This is a key novel idea, usable even with limited replicates via simple non-statistical criteria.

Data came from skin fibroblast cell cultures (homogeneous cells) exposed to different temperatures, comparing species like humans (tight thermoregulation) vs. dromedary camels (wide daily body temperature swings).

Mammalian cells respond to temperature perturbations via three main gene groups that function like a simple organizing system:

Stable genes — Act as anchors, maintaining overall control and homeostasis.

Heat-responsive genes — Activate or change specifically during temperature shifts.

Erratic genes — Show increased variability, reflecting system stress or disruption.

They identify four extreme subgroups of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) based on expression changes and variability, then build an intuitive neural network architecture that best interpolates the data and models the principal response “rules” for each species.

Camels consistently rank higher than humans in cellular well-being under both normal (32°C) and heat-stress (41°C) conditions. Camel cells show more flexible, coordinated, and resilient responses, better maintaining balance despite disruptions. Human cells are more rigid.

Published: BMC Genomics (2026) open access

DOI: 10.1186/s12864-026-12823-7

Authors: Jorge Gonzalez, 
Diane P. Genereux, 
Kristin Crouse, 
Bradley Frishman, 
Allyson G. Hindle, 
Elinor Karlsson, 
Carla B. Madelaire, 
Lucas Moreira & 
Valery Forbes 

Abstract
Background: While the cells of some mammals, such as humans, maintain their internal
temperature within tightly controlled ranges, the cells of others, such as dromedary camels,
experience wide ranges of temperature variation. In order to understand these differences, it
is critical to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and their interactions; however,
the data available are often insufficient to obtain statistically significant results.
Results: We develop an explanatory model to understand the mechanisms of response of
mammalian species to environmental perturbation on the basis of empirical gene expression
data. Our approach is motivated by the novel idea that approximately preserved or reduced
inter-individual variability of expression levels upon environmental change is an indicator
that a given gene contributes to a homeostasis-preserving mechanism for the species. To
identify such genes, we use a simple non-statistical criterion that is suitable even when the
number of replicates is limited. We then identify four extreme subgroups of the DEGs,
and from these construct an intuitive neural network architecture that best interpolates
the data and describes the principal response rules of the considered species. Finally, we
propose measures of the robustness of homeostasis (well-being) from these networks based
on perturbation analysis and entropy computations. The data used to develop the model
were collected from homogeneous cell cultures of skin fibroblasts.
Conclusions: Even with data available for just a few individuals, our model identi
f
ies extreme response sets of genes, using inter-individual variability to provide a faithful
representation of the response of the species to environmental perturbations. Sets of genes
identified as relevant in individual species are useful for comparing responses across species.
All the measures of cellular well-being introduced in this work rank camels higher than
humans for both the 32° and 41° treatments.
Keywords: inter-individual variability of genes, differential expression, stress response
model

The paper combines empirical RNA-seq data, novel analytical criteria, network modeling, and robustness metrics into a practical pipeline for comparative mammalian physiology and epigenetics. For the full details (methods, specific gene sets, math appendices, supplementary figures), read the open-access article directly.

There Is No Drought Emergency in Washington State

There is an official statewide drought emergency declaration in Washington State, issued on April 8, 2026, by the Department of Ecology.

There is an official statewide drought emergency declaration in Washington State, issued on April 8, 2026, by the Department of Ecology.

This is the fourth consecutive year with at least a partial declaration, and the fourth statewide one since 2015. It applies to all watersheds due to projected water supplies falling below 75% of normal (the state’s legal threshold), combined with risks of hardship for water users, agriculture, fish, and the environment.

The U.S. Drought Monitor (as of late April 2026) indicates ~40% of the state in moderate drought (D1) or worse, with the rest abnormally dry or normal — not “exceptional” statewide.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

From The Cliff Mass Weather Blog

By CliffMass

On April 8, Washington State declared a DROUGHT EMERGENCY for Washington State. 

 In fact, this is the fourth year in a row that the Washington State Department of Ecology has done so.

As described below, these drought emergency declarations are unwarranted and are contradictory to meteorological facts and the actual impacts.

Let me remind you about the definitions of emergency and drought.

An emergency must be sudden and unexpected, requiring immediate action to prevent imminent danger.  It is a crisis.   As I will prove below, this does not characterize what has happened in Washington this year or the past few years.

The term “drought” means both MUCH drier than normal conditions and significant negative impacts of the dryness.

Half the years have below-normal precipitation.  Half the years have below-normal snowpack.  All these below-normal years are not drought years.

Let us consider the water situation this year.

The major reservoirs of our state are full or WAY above normal in water storage. Some examples”

Seattle:  much above normal.

Everett: much above normal

The critically important Yakima River reservoir system: FULL and much above normal.

The Columbia River water levels are above normal, and predictions are for plenty of water for both irrigation and power. The Columbia is the most important source of irrigation water in eastern Washington.  It irrigates TEN TIMES the number of acres as the Yakima River. 

River levels in the state are all close to normal.

Precipitation over the State for the water year (October 1 to now)?

Above normal for most of the state,  and MUCH above normal in the mountains (that is why all the reservoirs are so full!)

Soil moisture? Above normal!

Crop moisture? Above normal in much of the state, nowhere below normal.

Current status of crops? They are in excellent shape with extremely high yields for winter wheat. Apples look good as well

So with all this good water news, why is the Washington State Department of Ecology calling a drought emergency?

They claim it is because the state snowpack is below normal:  about half of average (see below).  This snowpack normally melts in May and June, helping to top off the reservoirs and support streamflow during the early to mid-summer.

Don’t get me wrong.  It would be better if the snowpack were normal.  But there really is no water problem this summer with the current snowpack and certainly no drought.

First, 50% snowpack is not zero, and there will be substantial snowmelt water available during the next few months.   

Second, reservoir managers were very wise and used the above-normal precipitation of the past winter to fill all the reservoirs.  Better weather prediction supports this, since they can fill the reservoirs, knowing they would have time to partially drain them if a major storm approaches.

Third, and this is not advertised by the water fear mongers, Washington State gets much more precipitation (including snow water) than it needs, and much of the snowmelt moves down the rivers into the sea.

Fourth, Washington State agriculture can do quite well with below normal precipitation.   This is true of the Yakima basin farmers when they don’t get their full allotment.  

What happened during the 2025 Drought Emergency?

The Washington State Department of Ecology is undermining its credibility with these inflammatory and unscientific drought emergencies.   

They would be wise to read some classical literature, such as The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Chicken Little (The Sky Is Falling).    One loses credibility when exaggerating threats.  Eventually, others don’t take you seriously.

The Sky is Falling!