05/21/2026 – Climate- Science.press

Ice Cores Pin Precise Date to Ancient Oregon Eruption: Ash from 686 CE Newberry Blast Reached Greenland, Illuminating 7th-Century Volcanism

Researchers analyzed Greenland ice cores and identified ash particles (cryptotephra) from the Newberry Pumice eruption of Newberry Volcano in Oregon, USA. By matching the geochemical “fingerprint” (chemical composition) of tiny ash fragments (~0.02 mm) in the ice to deposits near the volcano, they precisely dated the eruption to around 686 ± 2 CE (narrowed from a previous ~140-year window).

The Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) was a prolonged period of Northern Hemisphere cooling from roughly 536 to 660 CE, marking one of the coldest multi-century intervals in the last 2,000+ years.

It followed the warmer Roman Warm Period and occurred during Late Antiquity, overlapping with major societal transformations including the Plague of Justinian, migrations, the decline/transformation of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, shifts in Persia, Slavic expansions, and political changes in China and Central Asia.

The LALIA core was mid-6th century, but cooling and volcanic activity extended into the 7th century. The Newberry Pumice eruption (~686 ± 2 CE), precisely dated via cryptotephra in Greenland ice cores, falls toward the later phase or tail end of the LALIA window.

This moderate VEI 4 event, with far-traveled ash, exemplifies ongoing Northern Hemisphere volcanism that likely helped sustain cooler conditions and aerosol loading. Studies use such anchors (cryptotephra + sulfur isotopes) to better resolve multiple 7th-century signals, distinguishing sources and cumulative climate forcing amid overlapping eruptions.

Ice cores, tree rings, and historical accounts together paint a picture of repeated volcanic forcing rather than a single event.

The LALIA is distinct from the later “Little Ice Age” (~1300–1850 CE) but shares volcanic and feedback mechanisms. It highlights how clusters of eruptions can trigger decadal-to-centennial cooling, with outsized human impacts in pre-industrial societies. Modern studies integrate tree rings, ice cores (sulfates, cryptotephra), lake sediments, and historical texts for high-resolution reconstructions.

Researchers analyzed Greenland ice cores and identified ash particles (cryptotephra) from the Newberry Pumice eruption of Newberry Volcano in Oregon, USA. By matching the geochemical “fingerprint” (chemical composition) of tiny ash fragments (~0.02 mm) in the ice to deposits near the volcano, they precisely dated the eruption to around 686 ± 2 CE (narrowed from a previous ~140-year window).

The surprise was the long-distance ash transport despite the moderate size. Strong winds at the time likely helped carry fine ash particles far across the Northern Hemisphere.

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Precise dating of the 686 ± 2 CE Newberry Pumice eruption and insights into 7th century volcanism from cryptotephra and sulfur isotopes in Greenland ice

The paper is titled “Precise dating of the 686 ± 2 CE Newberry Pumice eruption and insights into 7th century volcanism from cryptotephra and sulfur isotopes in Greenland ice,” published in Quaternary Science Reviews (2026), DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2026.110036.

Lead author: Dr. Helen Innes (University of St Andrews), with co-authors including researchers like Andrea Burke and William Hutchison.

Ice cores preserve layered records of sulfate aerosols (causing short-term cooling) and cryptotephra for source attribution. This work builds on prior cryptotephra research that links distant eruptions to ice-core signals, improving chronologies and hazard models.

The core innovation is cryptotephra analysis — microscopic volcanic glass shards (~20 micrometers) extracted from a Greenland ice core (likely one with high-resolution annual-layer counting, such as those from NEEM, TUNU, or similar projects).

Researchers performed major- and trace-element geochemical analysis on these shards and achieved an exact match to the proximal Newberry Pumice deposits (the “Big Obsidian” eruptive phase) from Newberry Volcano’s caldera in central Oregon.

Previous uncertainty: Radiocarbon and other terrestrial dating gave a ~140-year window around the late 6th–early 7th century CE.

New precision: The ice-core layer is dated to 686 ± 2 CE using the established Greenland ice-core chronology (GICC or updated equivalents with annual resolution via multiple proxies like seasonal chemistry cycles).

This is one of the farthest-traveled confirmed cryptotephra matches for a moderate eruption: >5,000 km from Oregon across North America and the North Atlantic. Proximal deposits show an eastward lobe due to strong westerly winds, which evidently lofted fine ash high enough for long-range transport.

The study doesn’t just date one eruption — it uses the cryptotephra as an anchor to examine sulfate (volcanic aerosol) signals in the ice around 680–690 CE and applies sulfur isotope ratios (δ³⁴S) for source discrimination and process insights.

Sulfate peaks in ice cores record stratospheric/tropospheric aerosols that cause short-term global/regional cooling by reflecting sunlight. However, multiple eruptions can overlap, and distinguishing sources is hard without tephra.

Sulfur isotopes help: Different volcanic sources and eruption styles (e.g., tropospheric vs. stratospheric injection, magma composition, interaction with seawater/ crust) produce distinct δ³⁴S signatures. Combined with cryptotephra, this allows better attribution.

Around 682–687 CE window: The paper discusses other volcanic signals in this narrow interval, including a possible 682 CE event, and uses the Newberry anchor (~686–687 CE) plus isotopes to characterize multiple Northern Hemisphere extratropical eruptions. This refines understanding of aerosol loading, plume heights, and cumulative climate forcing in the mid-7th century.

Broader 7th-century context:

The 6th–7th centuries saw clusters of volcanic activity (e.g., the 536–540 “volcanic winter” events and follow-ons), contributing to climatic downturns, societal stresses, and the Late Antique Little Ice Age. This work adds high-precision data points, helping disentangle individual contributions vs. cumulative effects. It also improves ice-core chronologies by providing a firm terrestrial tie-point.

Cryptotephra fingerprinting is a key technique in tephrochronology, the use of volcanic ash layers (tephra) as precise time markers (isochrons) across distant sites. Cryptotephra refers to invisible or microscopic volcanic glass shards and minerals (typically <100–150 μm, often ~10–20 μm or smaller) dispersed far from the source.

It revolutionizes correlation and dating in ice cores, lake/peat sediments, marine records, and more by linking distal deposits to specific eruptions via unique geochemical “fingerprints.”

Published: Quaternary Science Reviews

DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2026.110036

Provided: University of St Andrews

Authors: Helen M. Innes,
William Hutchison, Helen M. Innes, William Hutchison, Michael Sigl, Joseph R. McConnell, Nathan J. Chellman, Britta J.L. Jensen, Jakub T. Sliwinski, Andrea Burke

Abstract

Greenland ice core sulfate records reveal several large-magnitude volcanic events during the 7th Century of the Common Era (CE).

The largest eruptions, in 626 and 682 CE, coincide with negative tree ring growth anomalies and documented evidence of climate cooling and societal crises.

However, their volcanic sources remain unidentified, leaving major uncertainties about eruption latitude, sulfur injection height and climate forcing potential.

Here, we analyse sulfur isotopes of deposited sulfate aerosol and cryptotephra geochemistry in Greenland ice core Tunu2013 to better constrain eruptive sources for the 626 and 682 CE eruptions, and additionally, a sulfate peak at 698 CE and a tephra deposit at 686.

We present the first identification of the Newberry Pumice tephra in Greenland ice (686 ± 2 CE), extending the known spatial distribution of this North American tephrostratigraphic marker.

Sulfur isotope data indicates this Newberry eruption injected sulfur primarily into the troposphere, consistent with previous studies.

Isotopic evidence confirms that the 626 and 682 CE eruptions had stratospheric plume heights and were from extratropical Northern Hemisphere and tropical sources, respectively.

The 698 CE sulfate peak is revised from an assumed tropical eruption to a tropospheric, extratropical Northern Hemisphere eruption.

Although cryptotephra geochemistry does not conclusively match known volcanic events, shards coincident with the 626 CE peak suggest an unidentified North Pacific arc source.

Recurrent rhyolitic tephra throughout our sample set may reflect pulses of Southern Mono Craters activity, multiple unrelated volcanic events, or secondary remobilisation and deposition.

These results demonstrate the value of integrating sulfur isotope and tephra analyses to refine reconstructions of volcanic–climate linkages.

April 2026, Cooling Temperatures Lead to CO2 Rate Decline

2025 ended with a steadily declining rate of rising CO2 in the atmosphere following a 20 month cooling since April 2024, peak of an unusual and unexplained warming spike. That rate declined further in the first four months of 2026.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

2025 ended with a steadily declining rate of rising CO2 in the atmosphere following a 20-month cooling since April 2024, peak of an unusual and unexplained warming spike. That rate declined further in the first four months of 2026. Historical records show that around 1875 was the coldest time in the last 10,000 years. That was the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA), and since then temperatures have warmed at an average rate of about 0.5C per century. The recovery of the biosphere and ocean warming resulted in rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

**Syun-Ichi Akasofu, founder of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute reported on this pattern in 2009.**

At times, there are warming spikes, in the 1930s and 40s for example, and the rate of rising CO2 goes up. At other times, such as 1950s and 60s, temperatures cool, and rising CO2 slows down. More recently, in 2023 and 24, we saw temperatures spike up before falling back down in 2025 and now in 2026. [Note: A study of ocean biochemistry processes confirms that since the end of the LIA rising temperatures have been accompanied by rising CO2 at a rate of ~2 ppm per year.

[ See: Slam Dunk: Δtemp Drives Δco2, Ocean Biochemistry at Work ]

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

Importantly, the theory of human-caused global warming asserts that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere changes the baseline and causes systemic warming in our climate. On the contrary, all of the warming since 1947 was episodic, coming from three brief events associated with oceanic cycles. And in 2024 we saw an amazing episode with a temperature spike driven by ocean air warming in all regions, along with rising NH land temperatures, now dropping well below its peak.

Previously I have demonstrated that changes in atmospheric CO2 levels follow changes in Global Mean Temperatures (GMT) as shown by satellite measurements from University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). A link to that background post is provided later below.

This post updates the analysis with the most current observations, testing the premise that temperature changes are predictive of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The chart at the top shows the two monthly datasets: CO2 levels in blue reported at Mauna Loa, and Global temperature anomalies in purple reported by UAHv6.1, both through April 2026. Would such a sharp increase in temperature be reflected in rising CO2 levels, according to the successful mathematical forecasting model? Would CO2 levels decline as temperatures dropped following the peak?

The answer is yes: that temperature spike resulted
in a corresponding CO2 spike as expected.
And lower CO2 levels followed the temperature decline.

Above are UAH temperature anomalies compared to CO2 monthly changes year over year.

Changes in monthly CO2 synchronize with temperature fluctuations, which for UAH are anomalies referenced to the 1991-2020 period. CO2 differentials are calculated for the present month by subtracting the value for the same month in the previous year (for example April 2026 minus April 2025). Temp anomalies are calculated by comparing the present month with the baseline month. Note the recent CO2 upward spike and drop following the temperature spike and drop.

The table below shows clearly the pattern of observed temperatures declining along with declining rates of rising observed CO2. The CO2 rate peaked at 4.41 ppm, then declined over the next 25 months to 1.48 ppm, nearly the baseline rate since the LIA. There are fluctuations in the CO2 monthly response since the differential is influenced by the previous year as well as current year. By 2026/4, the rate of 1.48 ppm was one-third of the peak rate of 4.41 ppm.

Month	temperature anomaly	co2 Diff. from previous year
20241	0.79	3.32
20242	0.86	4.23
20243	0.87	4.41
20244	0.94	3.14
20245	0.78	2.87
20246	0.7	3.25
20247	0.74	3.72
20248	0.75	3.31
20249	0.8	3.53
202410	0.73	3.56
202411	0.64	3.39
202412	0.62	3.54
20251	0.46	3.85
20252	0.5	2.54
20253	0.58	2.77
20254	0.61	3.13
20255	0.5	3.61
20256	0.48	2.70
20257	0.36	2.32
20258	0.39	2.49
20259	0.53	2.34
202510	0.53	2.49
202511	0.43	2.61
202512	0.3	2.09
20261	0.35	1.97
20262	0.39	2.26
20263	0.38	2.01
20264	0.39	1.48

The final proof that CO2 follows temperature due to stimulation of natural CO2 reservoirs is demonstrated by the ability to calculate CO2 levels since 1979 with a simple mathematical formula:

For each subsequent year, the CO2 level for each month was generated

CO2 _{this month this year} = a + b × Temp _{this month this year} + CO2 _{this month last year}

The values for a and b are constants applied to all monthly temps, and are chosen to scale the forecasted CO2 level for comparison with the observed value. Here is the result of those calculations.

In the chart calculated CO2 levels correlate with observed CO2 levels at 0.9988 out of 1.0000. This mathematical generation of CO2 atmospheric levels is only possible if they are driven by temperature-dependent natural sources, and not by human emissions which are small in comparison, rise steadily and monotonically. For a more detailed look at the recent fluxes, here are the results since 2015, an ENSO neutral year.

For this recent period, the calculated CO2 values match well the annual highs, while some annual generated values of CO2 are slightly higher or lower than observed at other months of the year. Still the correlation for this period is 0.9946.

Key Point

Changes in CO2 follow changes in global temperatures on all time scales, from last month’s observations to ice core datasets spanning millennia. Since CO2 is the lagging variable, it cannot logically be the cause of temperature, the leading variable. It is folly to imagine that by reducing human emissions of CO2, we can change global temperatures, which are obviously driven by other factors.

Background on Analytics and Methodology

Temps Cause CO2 Changes, Not the Reverse. 2024 Update

Arctic Mammals Endured Polar Nights and Freezing Winters — New Fossils Reveal How

Three new species of small, rodent-like mammals (multituberculates) from ~73 million-year-old fossils in Alaska’s Prince Creek Formation shed light on how life thrived in the ancient Arctic’s extreme conditions.

The Late Cretaceous Arctic (roughly 100–66 million years ago) hosted vibrant, high-latitude ecosystems unlike today’s tundra, supporting dinosaurs, birds, mammals, fish, and diverse vegetation despite extreme seasonality.

During the Late Cretaceous, northern Alaska (including the Prince Creek Formation, ~73 million years old, Campanian-Maastrichtian) sat at paleolatitudes of ~80–85°N. Earth was in a greenhouse state with higher sea levels and no permanent polar ice caps, but high latitudes still experienced:

Polar nights: Up to ~4 months (around 120 days) of continuous winter darkness.
Temperatures: Mean annual ~5–6°C (41–43°F), with warm-month means ~10–14.5°C and cold-month means near or slightly below freezing (~–2°C). Snowfall and freezing conditions occurred, but no year-round ground ice.
Precipitation: Relatively high and humid, supporting lush vegetation on a low-gradient coastal/alluvial plain with rivers, floodplains, lakes, ponds, swamps, and tidal influences.

This created a polar forest/woodland environment—deciduous and coniferous trees, angiosperms (flowering plants), ferns, mosses, herbs, and shrubs—more akin to a cool-temperate or riparian forest than modern Arctic barrenness.

The Prince Creek Formation (and related sites) yields the northernmost known Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrate assemblage, often called the Paanaqtat Province, with many endemic species.

Dinosaurs (many juveniles and bonebeds indicate year-round residency and breeding):

Hadrosaurs (e.g., Edmontosaurus relatives) — preferred wetter lowland/deltaic habitats.
Ceratopsians (e.g., Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum) — more upland/coastal plain.
Tyrannosaurs (e.g., Nanuqsaurus).
Smaller theropods (troodontids, dromaeosaurids).
Others: Thescelosaurids, etc.

Evidence suggests physiological adaptations (possibly endothermy or homeothermy) and behaviors like overwintering or torpor allowed survival through dark, cold winters.

Birds (Avialans): Diverse assemblage including hesperornithines (diving birds), ichthyornithines, and early crown birds. Abundant perinatal (baby) fossils provide the oldest direct evidence of polar bird nesting/breeding, dating back ~73 million years—birds have used high-latitude breeding strategies for nearly half their evolutionary history.

Mammals: Small-bodied, including the recently described multituberculates (Camurodon borealis, Qayaqgruk peregrinus, Kaniqsiqcosmodon polaris). These rodent-like animals showed dietary niche partitioning (herbivorous to omnivorous) in a resource-variable environment. Other groups: metatherians (marsupial-like).

Fish and Others: Teleosts (including early salmonids and esocids adapted to high latitudes), paddlefish, rare sharks. Aquatic ecosystems mixed freshwater and estuarine influences.

A new paper published May 2026 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Sarah L. Shelley and colleagues analyzes fossils from Alaska’s Prince Creek Formation (~73 million years old, Campanian-Maastrichtian). It describes three new multituberculate species and uses phylogenetic/biogeographic analyses to show that high-latitude ecosystems actively shaped mammal evolution.

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Newly discovered species in ancient Arctic reveal how animals might have survived extremes

The Arctic served as both a corridor for intercontinental dispersal and a cradle for mammalian evolutionary innovation during the Late Cretaceous, well before the K-Pg mass extinction ~66 million years ago.

This 2026 PNAS paper by Sarah L. Shelley and colleagues (including Jaelyn J. Eberle, Gregory M. Erickson, and Patrick S. Druckenmiller) fundamentally reframes high-latitude regions not as evolutionary “backwaters” or marginal habitats, but as dynamic arenas for biotic interchange (dispersal corridors) and in situ innovation (cradles of diversification). It draws on the northernmost Mesozoic mammal fossils from the ~73 Ma (Campanian-Maastrichtian) Prince Creek Formation, Alaska (paleolatitude ~80–85°N).

Multituberculates were a highly successful, long-lived (Jurassic to Oligocene) clade of small, rodent-like mammals known for complex, multi-cusped teeth adapted for varied diets. The Prince Creek specimens are isolated teeth (examined via morphology and micro-CT), revealing:

Camurodon borealis (“northern curved-tooth”): Northernmost record of Cimolomyidae. Tooth morphology indicates primarily herbivorous habits.

Qayaqgruk peregrinus (“the little wandering hero”): Allied with Asian (Mongolian) Djadochtatherioidea. Omnivorous (insects + plants). Name honors Inuit legendary hero; “peregrinus” nods to its wandering/dispersal.

Kaniqsiqcosmodon polaris (“polar frost ornamented tooth”): Oldest known Microcosmodontidae. Omnivorous but likely plant-dominant. Suggests high-latitude origin for a lineage that later diversified in North America post-K-Pg.

Pronounced dental variation among these co-occurring species points to ecological niche partitioning — critical in a highly seasonal polar environment with limited resources, months of polar night, freezing temperatures, snowfall, and a cool mean annual temperature (~6°C/42°F) supporting polar forests rather than modern tundra.

This adaptability likely contributed to multituberculates’ resilience, including survival of the K-Pg extinction (unlike non-avian dinosaurs).

The authors integrated comparative dental morphology with phylogenetic analyses (using existing matrices, TNT/MrBayes etc.) and biogeographic modeling:

Dispersal (Corridor Role): Q. peregrinus provides the earliest direct evidence (~91.82 Ma) of multituberculate movement from Asia to North America via a terrestrial Beringian corridor. This predates many other documented exchanges and shows the Arctic was a viable highway for mammals during the Cretaceous, not just the Pleistocene.

Diversification & Endemism (Cradle Role): K. polaris implies a high-latitude origin for Microcosmodontidae, a derived North American group that radiated in the Paleocene. C. borealis extends the range of Cimolomyidae northward. The Arctic thus fostered both immigrant success and local evolutionary novelty.

These findings build on prior Prince Creek work (dinosaurs, birds, other mammals like metatherians and eutherians) and challenge “out-of-the-tropics” models that downplay high latitudes in deep-time innovation.

The Prince Creek Formation records a vibrant, dinosaur-bearing polar ecosystem with evidence of overwintering strategies in vertebrates (e.g., nesting at high latitudes). For small mammals:

Seasonal extremes selected for dietary flexibility (herbivory to omnivory).
Connectivity via Beringia allowed gene flow and range expansion.
Pre-adaptation hypothesis: Traits honed in polar seasonality (e.g., resource opportunism) may have aided some lineages through the K-Pg crisis and into the Paleogene recovery.

Broader Implications and Caveats

Challenges traditional views: Polar regions were active contributors to mammalian dynamics, not just sinks or filters.

Relevance to modern change: Highlights mammalian resilience to climatic extremes and the role of connectivity in diversification — pertinent amid current Arctic warming and habitat shifts.

Data quality: Relies on teeth (common for microfossils); future jaw/skull finds could refine phylogenies. Sample size is small but significant given the rarity of high-latitude Mesozoic mammals.

Timing: Dispersal estimate (~91.82 Ma) comes from calibrated phylogenetic/biogeographic models; uncertainties in fossil ages and rates exist but are standard in the field.

In summary, this work elevates the Cretaceous Arctic from a peripheral curiosity to a key evolutionary theater. It underscores how extreme, connected environments can drive dispersal, niche differentiation, and origination — patterns that helped shape mammalian history across the K-Pg boundary. The full open-access paper (with extensive supplements, 3D models, code, and matrices) is available on PNAS for those wanting primary details.

Published: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Peer-Reviewed

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2601794123

Authors: Sarah L. Shelley, Jaelyn J. Eberle , Gregory M. Erickson and Patrick S. Druckenmiller

Abstract

High-latitude terrestrial ecosystems are commonly viewed as marginal environments to deep-time evolutionary innovation, yet their role in shaping biotic dispersal, diversification, and survivorship remains poorly understood.

The Upper Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation of northern Alaska (paleolatitude ~80–85°N) yields the most northerly known Mesozoic mammals and provides a rare opportunity to examine the ecological and biogeographic roles of polar terrestrial ecosystems.

Here, we describe three multituberculate species, Camurodon borealis, Qayaqgruk peregrinus, and Kaniqsiqcosmodon polaris, and integrate comparative morphology with phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses to evaluate patterns and timing of dispersal and diversification across a high-latitude Asian–American terrestrial corridor.

Qayaqgruk peregrinus is recovered within the Mongolian Djadochtatherioidea, representing the earliest direct evidence for multituberculate dispersal from Asia into North America.

Kaniqsiqcosmodon polaris constitutes the oldest known member of the Microcosmodontidae, suggesting a high-latitude origin for a derived North American lineage that later diversified during the Paleocene following the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction.

Camurodon borealis represents the northernmost occurrence of the Cimolomyidae.

Pronounced variation in dental morphology among the Prince Creek multituberculates indicates ecological differentiation and niche partitioning within an extreme, highly seasonal polar environment.

Our findings indicate that Late Cretaceous Arctic ecosystems supported both sustained intercontinental exchanges as early as 91.82 Ma and endemism.

Our results challenge interpretations of polar regions as evolutionary peripheries and instead identify them as important contributors to mammalian evolutionary dynamics prior to the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction.

Driving Up The Cost Of Energy While Claiming To Promote “Affordability”

From Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

A fair criticism of politicians is that they all lie, at least to the extent of engaging in extreme levels of spin and/or exaggeration to put the best face on their proposals and programs. But some political lies are worse than others, in that they go far beyond mere spin or exaggeration and get into the blatantly counter-factual. In that category are the claims of many of the governors of the Northeastern states that they are promoting energy “affordability.” These lies are particularly consequential in that they involve very large economic effects and vast waste of resources.

In late 2025, the talking point of energy “affordability” became a major theme of the successful candidacies of Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill for the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. Elsewhere in the region, the governors’ offices were not up for election in the off year, but the sitting governors have equally been talking up their energy “affordability” agendas. See for example, Governor Maura Healey of Massachusetts here on March 16 (“Governor Maura Healey today is setting strong new targets for bringing more energy into Massachusetts and lowering energy bills.”); and Governor Kathy Hochul of New York here on May 7 (“[Governor Hochul] Tackles Energy Costs With Sweeping Affordability Package.”).

And yet somehow, it’s hard not to notice that the electricity rates in the Northeastern states are among the highest in the country. The federal government’s Energy Information Administration puts out regular reports of state-by-state comparisons of “Average Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers.” The latest such chart has data from February 2026. The national average rate for residential customers for that month (shown at the bottom of the chart) was 17.65 cents/kWh. Look through the list of average rates by state for residential customers, and it is readily apparent that the rates in the Northeastern states are uniformly above the national average, with many close to double: New York (29.99 cents/kWh); Connecticut (30.77 cents/kWh); Massachusetts (30.46 cents/kWh); Rhode Island (29.45 cents/kWh). Outside the Northeast, only a few outliers (California, Alaska, Hawaii) break the 25 cents/kWh level. Alaska and Hawaii have the excuse of being geographically remote. The Northeastern states and California do not have that excuse.

So what is the secret sauce of the Northeastern states that drives up their electricity rates even as their governors claim to be pursuing “affordability”? There are multiple factors, and I don’t mean to underemphasize the effects of the fantasy pursuit of the intermittent “renewables,” wind and solar. But there is a factor unique to the Northeast that stands out as being completely incompatible and irreconcilable with any claim of pursuing energy “affordability.” That factor is participation in something called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI.

Have you heard of RGGI? Here is a link to their website. RGGI describes itself on the site as follows:

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cooperative effort among the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont to cap and reduce power sector CO2 emissions. . . . RGGI is the first market-based, cap-and-invest regional initiative in the United States. Within the RGGI states, fossil-fuel-fired electric power generators with a capacity of 25 megawatts1 or greater (“regulated sources”) are required to hold allowances equal to their CO2 emissions over a three-year control period.

Although the website has apparently not been updated to reflect it, Virginia just (April 2026) re-joined RGGI under new Governor Spanberger, after previous Republican Governor Glen Youngkin had withdrawn. Thus every state along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Virginia, with the sole exception of Pennsylvania, is now a member of this compact. Pennsylvania had been a member, but recently withdrew in late 2025 as a part of a budget deal pushed by the Republican-controlled legislature over the opposition of the Democratic Governor.

As the RGGI website frankly admits, the whole idea is to drive up the cost of electricity produced by fossil-fuel power plants. The fossil fuel power plants “are required to hold allowances equal to their CO2 emissions.” RGGI sets the amount of the allowances, and then they are auctioned off to the utilities (and others). Over time, the amount of allowances available intentionally decreases. The price that the utilities pay for the allowances then gets added into the consumer electricity bills.

Virginia’s rejoining the compact — under a new Governor supposedly promising “affordability” — has set off a market frenzy, apparently driven by the facts that the amount of CO2 allowances is limited, but Virginia is a main location for a large wave of new power-hungry data centers. From OPIS Insights, May 7 (OPIS is an affiliate of the WSJ):

Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon prices have rocketed to fresh record highs, as traders scramble to reassess compressed supply in the wake of Virginia’s decision to rejoin the program. During the week of April 27-May 4, V26 RGGI allowances for December 2026 delivery traded on ICE repeatedly above $40/short ton, with transactions reaching $58.50/st by midday Monday, May 4. On May 4, OPIS assessed RGGI V25/V26 December 2026 at $52.875/st. . . . By May 4, the OPIS RGGI V25/V26 December 2026 price had gained a total $24.115/st, or 83.85%, from an assessment of $28.876/st on Apr. 13.

So how much does the requirement to purchase RGGI CO2 allowances drive up the price of electricity for a residential consumer? Even though the whole idea is to drive the price up in order to force a decrease in consumption, the mechanism by which the additional cost gets included in your electric bill is structured to be as opaque as possible. You will not find a line item on your bill to tell you how much of what you must pay is attributable to the artificial added cost from RGGI. However, multiple people have done analyses to get a rough quantification of the cost impact at recent or current levels of price for RGGI allowances. Here is one done by my friend Roger Caiazza (the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York) with the assistance of Perplexity AI. That analysis goes as recently as the RGGI auction of March 2025, at which point the allowance price was $19.76 per short ton.

Roger’s conclusion at that time was that the RGGI auctions were adding about $8-11/MWh to the wholesale cost of electricity, for electricity produced by natural gas. That would mean an addition of about 1 cent/kWh on a consumer’s bill. A penny may not seem like much, except when you realize that the average price in the country is less than 18 cents/kWh, so the penny is about 6%. And now the allowance price has gone from about $20/st to over $50/st, which means that the effect on a consumer’s bill goes from about a penny/kWh to more like 2.5 cents. Now we are talking about an intentional 10-15%+ increase in consumer electricity prices.

And remember that the structure of the program is that the amount of allowances goes down every year and the price is intentionally driven up. And data centers are going in all over the place. And the Northeastern states have refused to build new power plants for a couple of decades now in the midst of the climate hysteria. So the 10-15% extra cost being experienced now is only the beginning of much worse to come.

The worst part of the RGGI “cap and invest” scheme is that the consumers get absolutely nothing for the increased cost. It is just a gratuitously inflicted injury brought about by completely artificial scarcity.

Keep this in mid when you hear a politician from an RGGI state talking about how they care about energy “affordability.”

Analysis: China-backed litigators crippling Louisiana energy

The Energy Foundation China (EFC), a U.S.-registered nonprofit with primary operations in Beijing, heads up one of the major conduits for this progressive lawfare effort. EFC has teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a New York City-based nonprofit serving as one of the primary litigators. In an interview, Melissa Landry, director of the Pelican Center for Energy at the Pelican Institute for Public Policy in New Orleans, described how China, the EDF, and other key influencers from inside and outside the U.S. have zeroed in on her state.

From CFACT

By Kevin Mooney

“The Energy Foundation China is led by individuals with prior roles in China’s state policy climate apparatus and operates within China’s broader policy ecosystem,” Landry said. “It has received tens of millions of dollars from foreign foundations and distributes funding to organizations working to influence U.S. energy and climate policy.”

The EFC was previously an affiliate of the Energy Foundation, a San Francisco based left-of-center grant making institution. In 2019, the two entities separated into independent nonprofits. Although EFC technically maintains a presence in San Francisco, most of its operations appear concentrated in Beijing. That’s one reason why the group has come under congressional scrutiny. In June 2025, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, held a hearing titled “Enter the Dragon — China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance.” The hearing focused attention on the EFC and the U.S.-based green groups it finances. In addition to the EFC, these include the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York, The Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, The World Resources Institute in Washington D.C., and others.

Foreign and Domestic Lawfare Against American Energy

Regarding Louisiana, Landry sees the EDF, and by extension China, leading the charge with abusive litigation practices deliberately designed to hamstring American energy companies. Public filings show that between 2016 and 2023 EDF received grants totaling more than $2.7 million from the Energy Foundation China and the U.S. Energy Foundation.

But China is not going it alone overseas.

Grant data shows the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in the United Kingdom and the Oak Foundation in Switzerland have provided the EDF with almost $20 million. Here in the U.S., the EDF also receives funding from some of the most potent institutional philanthropies in the U.S. environmental advocacy ecosystem. These U.S.-based outfits include Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Moore Foundation, and the Packard Foundation.

“These funding streams support a coordinated national strategy that combines research, litigation, and regulatory advocacy, and this strategy is increasingly visible in Louisiana,” Landry said. “EDF has backed aggressive lawsuits targeting oil and gas production and has intervened in litigation challenging federal environmental rules, including the state’s challenge to EPA toxic air standards.”

Landry is particularly concerned with an amicus brief EDF filed supporting the federal government in Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish, a case she says has “far-reaching implications for coastal litigation and energy liability.”

The Role of Dark Money

The Energy Foundation spinoff operates as an indirect funding source for the groups like the EDF willing to do Beijing’s bidding. The goal, Landry explained, is to channel resources into litigation, regulatory advocacy, and public campaigns all aimed at reducing or restricting domestic fossil fuel production. Other examples of intermediary funding sources include the ClimateWorks Foundation based in San Francisco and the New Venture Fund, which is part of the dark money Arabella Advisors network based in Washington D.C. ClimateWorks contributed more than $1 million to EDF since 2016, while EDF recognizes the New Venture Fund among its long list of radically progressive benefactors that have contributed $100,000 or more.

EDF has developed into one of the largest environmental advocacy groups in the world since its formation in 1967. Back then the group operated with a $3 million budget. But EDF’s latest 990 tax form shows the group’s net assets standing at almost $300 million as of 2024. The environmental activist group has received grants from more than 30 organizations, according to Influence Watch.

EDF also operates a PAC known as the Environmental Defense Action Fund (EDFA)—another beneficiary of Arabella Advisors. The dark money network’s Sixteen Thirty Fund has contributed over $3 million to EDFA since 2020.

The Pelican Institute’s just released report titled: “Barriers to Louisiana Energy Dominance” goes into some additional details about anti-energy activism. The think tank estimates that at least $115.5 million in out-of-state funding—primarily from California, Washington D.C., and New York—flows into Louisiana-based groups working to take down the state’s energy sector.

Top donors of this effort include Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Bezos Earth Fund, Waverley Street Foundation, the Windward Fund, also part of the Arabella network, and the Tides Foundation. The Pelican Institute report also highlights the relationship between the Energy Foundation China and Earthjustice, a San Francisco-based public interest law firm that litigates on behalf of left-of-center climate and environmental causes. In 1995, Earthjustice registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to satisfy the legal requirements of the work it has done on behalf of foreign actors. The registration expired in 2021.

Possible Solutions

The Pelican Institute has produced what it calls a “six-pillar framework” designed to enable Louisiana to achieve its full energy potential with litigation and regulatory reform figuring prominently into this plan.

The six pillars:

Streamline Permitting and Environmental Reviews Responsibly

Reduce Litigation Risk and Regulatory Uncertainty

Advance Sensible Tax Policy

Enhance Market Competition

Expand Consumer Choice in Electric Power

Remove Unnecessary Government Barriers

At the national level, Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, has introduced the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026 to insulate the American energy industry.

“Energy security is national security, and we will not self-sabotage our critical industries with a cascade of costly lawsuits and extreme penalties that jeopardize American drilling,” Rep. Hageman said in a press release. “America’s energy producers should be protected from the dangerous legal precedent that would be set by the retroactive punishment of lawful activity.”

Stricter enforcement of the FARA law and its transparency requirements could also act as a deterrent against green pressure groups in league with China and other hostile foreign actors. Until then, states can play a valuable role in filling the void. Earlier this year, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas enacted “Baby FARA,” laws calling on individuals and entities operating in league with foreign governments to disclose these relationships.

These steps at the state and federal level will go a long way toward shutting off the limitless funding spigot that force multiplies the influence of radical nonprofits and the Chinese Communist Party, which has progressively increased its attempt to undermine America’s global dominance.

This accident originally appeared at Restoration News

Researchers Find Rapid Global Warming Phase At End Of Last Ice Age (Ca.18,000 Years Ago)

Glacial oceans had stronger stratification with saltier, denser deep waters helping sequester CO₂. Deglaciation disrupted this, leading to mixing that brought both heat and salt (and CO₂) upward. The “salty blob” in the deep Indian Ocean acted as a reservoir that influenced surface properties when ventilation increased.

From NoTrickZone

By P Gosselin

The Germany-based European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) has posted its latest Klimaschau video, titled “Prähistorische Ozeanschichten als möglicher Faktor der Erwärmung (Prehistoric Ocean Layers as a Possible Factor in Warming):

The new video highlights a study from Rutgers University published in Nature Geoscience.

Researchers found that the rapid global warming phase at the end of the last ice age (around 18,000 years ago) coincided with the release of highly saline water—a “salt blob”—that had previously been trapped in the deep ocean.

Scientists have long suspected a link between deep ocean salinity and atmospheric CO2 levels during ice age cycles. Colder water holds more dissolved CO2. When marine organisms die, their carbon-rich remains sink into the deep sea. Variations in salinity act as a barrier, trapping this carbon in the deep ocean layers and preventing it from easily escaping back into the atmosphere.

Ocean currents and shifting layers can transport these deep, carbon-rich waters back to the surface. Once there, they oxidize and release large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, rapidly triggering a warming phase.

The Asymptotic Nature of Greenhouse Gases

The video notes that climate alarmists might equate this prehistoric CO2 release to modern industrial emissions. However, it argues this is oversimplified, asserting that greenhouse gases (like CO2 and methane) absorb radiation asymptotically—meaning their warming effect peaks at a certain limit rather than increasing indefinitely.

Historical Context (“Snowball Earth”)

It touches on the “Snowball Earth” phenomenon from 580 million years ago, when low atmospheric CO2 levels likely caused a super ice age.

The video concludes that because Earth’s current CO2 levels are historically low compared to the last half-billion years, even a slight drop can trigger cooling phases, whereas sudden releases of trapped ocean gases can quickly reverse this and instigate warm periods.

Watch the entire video (in German) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NIx28vEstQ.

Greenpeace Legal End Run to Avoid US Court is Ruled Out of Bounds

The North Dakota Supreme Court just drew a bright line for the rule of law, U.S. sovereignty and the energy infrastructure that keeps our country running. On May 7, the court ruled four to one that Greenpeace International cannot use a Dutch court to nullify what a unanimous American jury already decided.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Jason Isaac report at The Hill Greenpeace’s attempt to swindle US courts just got harpooned. Excerpts in italics wtih my bolds and added images.

The North Dakota Supreme Court just drew a bright line for the rule of law, U.S. sovereignty and the energy infrastructure that keeps our country running. On May 7, the court ruled four to one that Greenpeace International cannot use a Dutch court to nullify what a unanimous American jury already decided.

It is a welcome victory, but the fight against eco-lawfare is far from over.

The case began in 2019, when Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace and other activist groups over the coordinated, sometimes violent campaign waged against the Dakota Access Pipeline. After six years of litigation and a three-week trial, twelve North Dakota jurors unanimously found Greenpeace liable for conspiracy, defamation, defamation per se and tortious interference. The damages exceeded $666 million across the three Greenpeace defendants, with more than $130 million tagged to Greenpeace International alone. The jury heard the evidence and reached its verdict.

That should have been the end of it. It was not.

Two weeks before the North Dakota trial began, after six years of fighting in American courts, Greenpeace International filed a new lawsuit in Amsterdam. The plan was straightforward: ask a Dutch court to declare the North Dakota case “manifestly unfounded and abusive” under a new European Union anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) directive, then use that foreign declaration to erase the verdict and seize Energy Transfer’s assets wherever they could find them. It was a calculated end-run around our judiciary, dressed up in the polite language of European jurisprudence.

The North Dakota Supreme Court saw through it. Justice Jerod Tufte, writing for the majority this month, made the principle clear:

Substance matters, not labels. A claim that requires a foreign court to find an American jury wrong is a collateral attack on that jury, no matter what name the lawyers attach to it.

The court ordered the trial judge to issue a narrowly tailored injunction
blocking Greenpeace from pursuing the parts of its Dutch action
that depend on relitigating what North Dakotans already decided.

The opinion is worth quoting on the point that matters most, The court wrote,:

“ Comity expires when the strong public policies of the forum
are vitiated by the foreign act.”

In plain English, foreign courts get respect when they earn it. A party that races to Amsterdam on the eve of an American trial to undermine the anticipated verdict cannot then demand that American courts politely defer to the foreign proceeding it manufactured.

This is the right ruling. It is also a narrow one.

The injunction applies to one party in one state. Unfortunately, that means Greenpeace can still pursue the parts of its Dutch action that do not require erasing the North Dakota verdict.

Federal courts have not yet weighed in on whether American courts can block foreign collateral attacks on American judgments. And the federal circuits are split on how heavily international comity should weigh against such injunctions. Other state supreme courts have not taken up the question. The next activist group with a domestic loss and a foreign sympathetic forum will try the same play, just with better lawyers and a cleaner record.

And they have plenty of reasons to keep trying. The European Union’s 2024 anti-SLAPP directive was sold as a shield for journalists and dissidents in countries with weak speech protections. In practice, however, it is becoming a sword aimed at American energy companies that win in court. The directive’s “manifestly unfounded” standard invites foreign judges to second-guess the merits of American court verdicts. Article 17 invites damages claims for the offense of having sued. The architecture is custom-built for the exact tactic Greenpeace attempted.

The deeper problem is that the activist legal industry has discovered something useful. When the protests fail, when the defamation campaigns get punished, when the juries refuse to play along, there is always another forum, another court, another friendly jurisdiction willing to entertain the argument that American energy infrastructure is itself a kind of crime.

The point is not to win on the merits. The point is to make building anything in this country so legally treacherous that capital flees and projects die. This strategy will work in proportion to how seriously American courts take it.

The North Dakota Supreme Court took it seriously. Other courts must follow. Congress should pay attention too. American companies operating under American law, sued in American courts and vindicated by American juries should not have to fight the same case all over again in Amsterdam, Brussels, or anywhere else.

A federal statute clarifying the authority of American courts to block foreign collateral attacks on domestic judgments would put the matter beyond doubt. The Trump administration’s commitment to energy dominance demands nothing less.

The stakes are not abstract. Every data center humming with artificial intelligence, every factory bringing jobs back from overseas, every home heated through a North Dakota winter depends on the ability of American companies to build, operate, and defend the infrastructure that delivers reliable energy. Strip away the certainty that an American verdict actually means something, and that infrastructure becomes a much riskier bet. Risk premiums rise. Capital gets scarcer. Projects do not get built.

Greenpeace lost in North Dakota. It lost again on May 7. This is all good. But the rest of the country needs to make sure those losses stick and continue, because the next case is already being drafted somewhere, and the activists who brought us a six-year siege of the Dakota Access Pipeline are not going to take this defeat as a final answer. Neither should we.

Labour to Make Working ‘Too Hot’ Illegal – Siesta Britain Incoming

There is a legal requirement for a “reasonable” indoor temperature, with guidance suggesting a minimum of 16°C (or 13°C for strenuous physical work). There is no legal maximum temperature. Employers must manage heat risks under general health and safety duties, but workers can be required to work in high heat if the employer deems it “reasonable.”

The Telegraph and other outlets reported that the Labour government is considering introducing legal maximum workplace temperatures (making it effectively illegal to require work above certain thresholds without protections).

There is a legal requirement for a “reasonable” indoor temperature, with guidance suggesting a minimum of 16°C (or 13°C for strenuous physical work). There is no legal maximum temperature. Employers must manage heat risks under general health and safety duties, but workers can be required to work in high heat if the employer deems it “reasonable.”

It stems from the independent Climate Change Committee‘s report “A Well-Adapted UK”. The CCC highlights extreme heat as a growing risk (projecting rising heat-related deaths) and recommends statutory maximum working temperatures. This would encourage businesses to install cooling measures like air conditioning or heat pumps. They cite examples like Spain (e.g., 27°C for sedentary indoor work, 25°C for light physical tasks).

Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds indicated the government would “carefully consider” the idea. It’s framed as worker protection and adaptation to climate change, not directly as a net-zero emission cut (though cooling tech has energy implications). Unions like the TUC and GMB have long pushed for limits around 30°C (or 27°C for strenuous work).

This fits into wider debates on climate adaptation. The CCC emphasizes preparing infrastructure (schools, hospitals, homes) for heat alongside other risks like flooding. Similar ideas have circulated for years from unions, but this gives them fresh momentum under Labour.

Whether it becomes law, and at what thresholds, remains to be seen.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Labour considers making it illegal to work when it is ‘too hot’

Influential climate committee recommends measures that would allow people to down tools during heatwaves

Labour is considering making it illegal to work when it is too hot as part of the drive for net zero. The Telegraph has the story.

Emma Reynolds, the Environment Secretary, has said she will “carefully consider” proposals including a maximum working temperature that would force firms to let workers down tools during heatwaves.

The measure, recommended by the influential climate change committee (CCC), would aim to “incentivise” businesses to protect workers by keeping their workplaces cool.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the workplace regulator, is developing plans for extra protection during hot weather, but is expected to stop short of setting a specific legal maximum.

The controversial recommendation for an upper limit is set out in a new report from the CCC advising ministers on the risks posed by climate change in the UK and how best to manage them.

It calls for a raft of measures to protect people against worsening heat, floods and droughts, including the rollout of air conditioning in hospitals, care homes, schools and prisons.

In a list of key proposals to help the UK adapt to more intense heat, the CCC urged the Government to “set maximum temperature regulations for workplaces”.

The report said: “Maximum working temperature regulations would address the increasing risks that high temperatures pose to workers’ safety and incentivise the deployment of the necessary cooling. Businesses are largely responsible for investing in their own adaptations but must ensure that workplaces and working practices are safe for employees, including for those working outside.”

It pointed to examples in Spain, which sets maximum legal indoor temperatures of 27°C for sedentary work and 25°C for light physical work, and other countries that enforce upper limits for outdoor labour.

The committee noted that Spanish employers are responsible for meeting the requirements and staff can report them to labour inspections or unions if they fail to comply.

In response to the CCC’s report, Reynolds said: “We are acting to protect people and places from the impacts of climate change that are already being felt across the UK – from flooding to extreme heat and drought.

“Robust, independent science is essential and we will carefully consider the climate change committee’s latest recommendations to drive further action.”

Read the full story here.

The Clouds of Uncertainty That Render All Climate Models Useless

From The Daily Sceptic

By Patrick Frank

This is the second in a series of 12 articles challenging climate change orthodoxy commissioned by Professor Gwythian Prins. We will be publishing the articles at a rate of one a week over the next 12 weeks (read the first article here). The hope is that they can be collected into a book for Sixth Formers and university students.

Since 1990, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released six Assessment Reports (AR), averaging one every five years four months. The IPCC ARs contain the latest representations of climate science applied to human impacts on the terrestrial climate. Over the intervening 35 years, expressions of concern about human-produced emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other so-called greenhouse gases have evolved from speculative warnings that they may change the climate for the worse to dead certainties of having done so.

IPCC certainties notwithstanding, the climate itself has shown no manifestations of a great change. As ably conveyed by the Oxford-trained physicist Ralph Alexander, extremes of climate have not increased. Like fusion power, year by year human-caused climate disaster seems to be always 20 years in the future.

A word about temperature extremes. The climate has been warming since the Little Ice Age – the 1300-1850 cold period. Widespread monitoring of air temperature did not begin until about 1850, just as the modern warming trend began. Starting with measurements from a cold period, a warming climate will necessarily produce a series of ever-new ‘record temperatures’ of no particular significance.

My own journey into this wilderness began with the IPCC third Assessment Report. The media din of accusatory polemics was exhausting. As a means of retaining sanity, I decided to discover for myself whether there was a need to worry about CO₂ emissions and climate.

After two years study, I learned that climate models make huge mistakes when modelling the climate. This was a Damascus moment. Large errors meant the IPCC could not possibly know what it claimed to know.

Examining climate modelling papers with a new clarity, I saw that these modelling mistakes never conditioned the published analyses or conclusions. Claiming that climate models can resolve an effect of our CO₂ emissions on the climate is rather like claiming one can use a jeweller’s loupe to resolve the outlines of an atom.

A further discovery followed: IPCC air temperature projections are simplistic. The modelled climate is made to warm passively in response to increased CO₂ as though nothing else changed.

Attempts to publish this work in peer-reviewed scientific journals led to a further discovery. Namely, that climate scientists, apart from research meteorologists, are evidently untrained in determining the physical integrity of climatological data.

My reviewers showed no ability to distinguish between statistical uncertainty and physical error. Likewise, propagation of uncertainty seemed a foreign language to them. Such a shocking lack of training in how to evaluate the integrity of one’s own data is to be expected only in a naïf who had never taken even a high school physical science course. Climate modellers are apparently unprepared to evaluate the physical reliability of their own models.

As a personal aside, my impression was that some reviewers read the title, ‘Propagation of Error and the Reliability of Global Air Temperature Projections’, and merely inferred the content before writing a review. I did not realise the title would sow such confusion. In point of fact, uncertainty is propagated therein rather than physical error. They are very different. But one must read the paper to discover this. “Propagation of error” is the name by which I learned the method and I defaulted to that rendering. I should have been more explicit and titled the paper, “Propagation of Uncertainty and…”.

Publication finally came after six years, 13 journal submissions and 30 reviews. The reviewers for Frontiers in Earth Science: Atmospheres provided the knowledgeable and constructive reviews one expects in the physical sciences. I have continued to receive misconstrued criticisms which I rebut in specific detail, forming a now lengthy commentary alongside the 2019 original.

Analysis of the simplistic climate modelling approach to air temperature projections and the confounding simulation errors they made revealed that nothing can presently be known about the effect of CO₂ emissions on air temperature. Climate models are far too coarse to resolve the very small impacts of increased CO₂, or even to inform us whether our CO₂ emissions produce a discernible effect at all. The story is summarised in the Figure.

Figure. Left panel: (D), projected surface air temperature resulting from the emissions of Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 370; average of 68 CMIP6-generation climate models. The line is an emulation using a simple equation with total forcing (greenhouse gases plus volcanic) as the only variable.

Right panel: the same as the left, but now with uncertainty bounds originating from poor thermal resolution due to model errors in cloud cover. The uncertainty range does not indicate possible future air temperature. Rather, that the correct future air temperature is lost in the uncertainty. It is not knowable. The air temperature projection itself is thereby meaningless.

To understand the Figure, it is necessary to understand uncertainty as it is used in the physical sciences. First, uncertainty is not error. Error is the difference between a calculated result and the physically true value. Uncertainty is a measure of our ignorance concerning the physical truth-value of a result. It conveys how much confidence one should have in that result. Errors can be seen. Uncertainty is a judgement (which can often be made quantitative).

One cannot observe the air temperatures of the future. They are not knowable. Therefore, one can never know the error of an air temperature projection. This is a major impediment to judging reliability.

However, one can know the uncertainty of the projection. One gets a handle on uncertainty by calibrating the climate models by how well they reproduce the salient observables of the past climate.

Climate models are adjusted to reproduce the air temperatures of the past hundred years. However, they have considerable trouble reproducing the global cloud cover of the recently past climate. This deficiency is known because global cloud cover has been directly observable since 1979, the beginning of the satellite era.

Clouds are a prime controller of the heat energy of the lower atmosphere. The intensity of atmospheric heat energy determines the air temperature. If the adjusted climate models get the past air temperature right, but get the cloud cover wrong, a deep problem is revealed. Wrongly simulated cloud cover should not produce rightly simulated air temperatures. This problem is the case.

The known deficiency in reproducing global cloud cover means that when climate models simulate the future climate, the simulated future cloud cover will be wrong. How wrong, no one knows.

But if simulated future cloud cover is wrong, then the heat energy of the simulated future atmosphere will be wrong, and the projected future air temperature will be wrong. How wrong, no one knows.

It is not controversial that climate models cannot be adjusted to reproduce unknown future cloud cover. However, calibration of climate models against the past climate reveals how wrongly they simulate past cloud cover. We thus know how wrongly they simulate atmospheric heat energy. This, in turn, bears on how poorly climate models are likely able to simulate future air temperature.

Suppose you are using a climate model in a super computer to simulate the future of climate and air temperature. You enter everything you know about the present climate, and then add an estimate for how levels of atmospheric CO₂ might change in the future. You hit ‘return’ and off it goes.

Initially, within the computer, the simulated future climate will be similar to the present climate, because the initial change in CO₂ is small. Atmospheric heat energy and global cloud cover will not have yet changed much. But with the step-by-step simulation, computed CO₂ increases (say), and global cloud cover, atmospheric heat energy and thus projected air temperatures are all simulated incorrectly. How incorrectly, we don’t know.

If CO₂ increased the same way in the physically real world as in the computed world, the physically real climate would respond in whatever way the climate responds. But with each new simulation step, our knowledge of the difference between the simulated future climate and the analogous physically real future climate, diminishes.

With every step that simulates cloud cover, heat energy and air temperature all wrongly we have less and less knowledge of this difference. We know there is a difference. How different, we don’t know.

But we can calculate our level of ignorance because calibration of the climate model told us how wrong each simulation step is likely to be. Not how wrong it is, just how wrong it is likely to be.

This is the meaning of the spread of uncertainty around the projection in the figure after 2000. Our ignorance of how far removed the simulated future air temperature is from the physically true but unknown future air temperature has increased with each step of the simulation.

By 2100, the uncertainty is so wide (our ignorance is so great) that the projected future air temperature conveys no physical knowledge at all. In point of fact, none of the projected future air temperatures convey any real information. The projection has no reliability at all.

This ignorance provides an explanation for how it is we’ve gotten into such a mess over climate.

Reiterating the result of this study: climate model air temperature projections have no predictive value. Nor have they any prescriptive value. Projections of future air temperature are physically meaningless. They literally reveal nothing whatever about the level of future air temperature. Not for next year, not for 2050, not for 2100, nor for any other future year.

Since publishing on the physical vacuity attending the climate modelling of future air temperature, I have further investigated and published upon the reliability of the historical air temperature record, and the relation of temperature and CO₂ across the 66 million years of the Cenozoic.

There is insufficient space to discuss these works. However, the story remains the same.

The accuracy of measured historical air temperatures is impacted by the local environment. Insufficient wind speed or intensity of direct and reflected sunlight put significant errors into the measured air temperature of even perfectly good, naturally ventilated temperature sensors.

These errors, of unknown size or sign, are permanent in the historical record. They are not reduced by increasing the number of measurements. Those compiling the historical air temperature record do not take these inaccuracies into account and seem to care nothing for instrumental field calibration. Other problems also abound.

The historical and neglected inaccuracies infest past measurements and are forever cryptic. They cannot be accounted or removed from the record. The conclusion stemming therefrom is that neither the rate nor the magnitude of atmospheric warming since 1850 is knowable.

Lastly, over the prior 66 million years, nearly the entire level of atmospheric CO₂ can be explained by the temperature of the upper ocean – the part that is in direct communication with the atmosphere. Evidently, for the past 66 million years, atmospheric CO₂ was not a driver of climate warmth. Rather, the warmth of the climate drove the level of atmospheric CO₂.

The inevitable conclusion is that neither the IPCC nor climate modellers, nor the Royal Society or the US National Academies, nor any government agency or environmental NGO, can possibly know what it asserts about the impact of human CO₂ emissions on global air temperature.

At this juncture, what we do know for a certainty is that all the repetition about the ‘settled science’ of CO₂ – let alone anthropogenic CO₂ – as an unequivocal primary driver of climate change with harmful effect does not make it true. The same deep uncertainty surrounds catastrophic climate change. The truth remains enveloped in clouds of uncertainty which the models simply cannot pierce.

Dr Patrick Frank is a research physical methods experimental chemist, now Scientific Staff Emeritus of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, USA.

Day: May 21, 2026

Ice Cores Pin Precise Date to Ancient Oregon Eruption: Ash from 686 CE Newberry Blast Reached Greenland, Illuminating 7th-Century Volcanism

Abstract

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April 2026, Cooling Temperatures Lead to CO2 Rate Decline

Key Point

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Arctic Mammals Endured Polar Nights and Freezing Winters — New Fossils Reveal How

Abstract

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Driving Up The Cost Of Energy While Claiming To Promote “Affordability”

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Analysis: China-backed litigators crippling Louisiana energy

Foreign and Domestic Lawfare Against American Energy

The Role of Dark Money

Possible Solutions

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Researchers Find Rapid Global Warming Phase At End Of Last Ice Age (Ca.18,000 Years Ago)

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Greenpeace Legal End Run to Avoid US Court is Ruled Out of Bounds

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Labour to Make Working ‘Too Hot’ Illegal – Siesta Britain Incoming

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The Clouds of Uncertainty That Render All Climate Models Useless

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