Day: May 29, 2026

Megafire Killed a Million Joshua Trees, But Desert Microbes Refused to Die

In 2020, the lightning-caused Dome Fire burned ~43,000 acres in the Mojave Desert (Mojave National Preserve, California), killing around 1 million Eastern Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), turning dense stands into blackened skeletons.

In 2020, the lightning-caused Dome Fire burned ~43,000 acres in the Mojave Desert (Mojave National Preserve, California), killing around 1 million Eastern Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), turning dense stands into blackened skeletons.

Scientists expected the underground microbial community—especially mycorrhizal fungi that partner with Joshua tree roots to help absorb water and nutrients in harsh desert soil—to be devastated too. Instead:

  • Soil sampling (from just over two weeks post-fire through three years later) showed no major declines in fungal biomass, microbial richness, or overall bacteria/fungi abundance.
  • In some cases, mycorrhizal fungal and bacterial diversity even increased slightly.
  • The existing microbial community persisted, and some “fire-loving” (pyrophilous) specialists, like the bright orange Neurospora discreta that grew on charred tree bark, joined in. news.ucr.edu

Aboveground, tree death was slow: Many initially retained green leaves, but survival dropped to ~50% after one year and ~20% after three, likely due to compounded stresses like drought and rodents rather than immediate fire kill.

There is the full title of the open-access scientific paper published in Fire Ecology (2026) by lead author Arik Joukhajian and colleagues, including senior author Sydney Glassman from UC Riverside.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Mojave Desert microbial communities show high resistance and resilience over three years despite widespread plant mortality following the Dome Fire

The 2020 Dome Fire (lightning-caused) burned ~43,273 acres (~17,500 ha) in Mojave National Preserve, California, killing roughly 1 million Eastern Joshua trees (Yucca jaegeriana). Researchers set up 9 plots (6 burned, 3 unburned controls) and sampled soils and vegetation at 5 time points: from ~2 weeks to 3 years post-fire.

They analyzed:

  • Plant mortality and richness.
  • Soil chemistry (including ash depth as a burn severity proxy).
  • Microbial biomass (via qPCR).
  • Microbial diversity and composition (via Illumina MiSeq sequencing of bacterial 16S and fungal ITS2 regions).

Key Results

Aboveground (Plants):

  • ~80% mortality of Eastern Joshua trees in burned plots over three years.
  • Overall plant richness decreased, though annual herbs boomed around 1 year post-fire.
  • Many trees initially kept some green leaves, but survival dropped sharply (to ~50% at 1 year, ~20% at 3 years), likely due to compounded stresses like drought and herbivory.

Belowground (Microbes):

  • Extremely high diversity: 25,444 bacterial, 269 archaeal, and 6,683 fungal amplicon sequence variants (ASVs).
  • No significant declines in microbial biomass, overall bacterial/fungal abundance, or richness at any time point.
  • Microbial communities showed high resistance (little change) and resilience.
  • Small but significant shifts: Enrichment of “pyrophilous” (fire-loving) taxa, including bacteria like Tumebacillus, Massilia, and Noviherbaspirillum, and fungi like Pseudotricharina, Penicillium, Coniochaeta, and Naganishia.
  • Notably, mycorrhizal fungi (key partners for Joshua trees) were largely unaffected.

The bright orange Neurospora discreta (or similar) fungus prominently colonized charred Joshua tree bark post-fire.

The sparse vegetation in this Mojave Desert area (plants spaced far apart) meant the fire was relatively low-intensity in terms of soil heating compared to dense forests or shrublands. Heat didn’t penetrate deeply, protecting the underground microbiome—similar to responses seen in low-intensity grassland fires.

Implications

  • Soil fungi and microbes are not the missing link preventing Joshua tree recovery. Restoration efforts don’t need expensive mycorrhizal inoculations; the partners are still there if seedlings can establish.
  • Joshua tree regeneration remains difficult due to slow growth, seedling predation, drought, and climate trends increasing megafire risk.
  • This is one of the first detailed above- and below-ground studies of a major desert wildfire, including Archaea, Bacteria, and Fungi.

Restoration context for the Cima Dome area (post-Dome Fire) and broader Joshua tree efforts centers on active intervention by the National Park Service (NPS) at Mojave National Preserve, combined with research on barriers like drought, herbivory, invasive grasses, and slow natural recovery. The microbial resilience findings (mycorrhizal fungi largely intact) are encouraging but don’t solve the main bottlenecks.

Restoration is labor-intensive, costly, and has mixed short-term success due to climate pressures, but it’s viewed as essential to maintain seed sources and biodiversity in refugia like Cima Dome. The microbial paper is positive—it shifts focus from “missing partners underground” to aboveground and landscape-scale issues.

This study highlights desert microbiome toughness but doesn’t mean “no problem” for Joshua trees overall. The bottleneck remains aboveground establishment, not missing fungi.

Published: Springer Link

DOI: 10.1186/s42408-025-00435-7

Provided: University of California – Riverside

Preprint (bioRxiv): Available for earlier version.

Authors: Arik Joukhajian, 
M. Fabiola Pulido Barriga, 
Melanie J. Davis, 
Lynn C. Sweet & 
Sydney I. Glassman

Abstract

Background

High severity desert fires are uncommon but typically chart a new successional trajectory altering plant communities for at least 65 years.

These aboveground vegetation shifts can have large implications for belowground microbial communities that maintain soil structure and nutrient cycling.

High severity wildfires in forests or shrublands can severely reduce microbial species richness and biomass and alter microbiomes for decades but impacts on desert soil microbiomes are virtually unknown.

The 2020 Mojave Desert Dome Fire burned 43,273 acres of Eastern Joshua tree (Yucca jaegeriana) habitat, burning roughly 1 million trees. To track aboveground and belowground impacts of the Dome Fire, we established 9 plots (6 burned; 3 unburned) and sampled 4 subsamples per plot for 5 time points ranging from 2 weeks to 3 years post-fire.

We measured initial ash depth as a proxy of soil burn severity and assessed plant mortality, plant richness, soil chemical characteristics, estimated soil microbial biomass with qPCR, and microbial richness and composition with Illumina MiSeq of 16S and ITS2 amplicons.

The 1947 Heatwave, Which The Met Office Keeps Quiet About

We are told that these sort of temperatures are unheard of at this time of year and are only occurring because of climate change. Weather like this would have been impossible in the past, they infer. And it is an omen of what the future holds, as records successively get broken by a degree or more.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

UK weather: ‘Extraordinary’ heat health alerts in effect ahead of bank holiday heatwave – BBC Weather

We are told that these sort of temperatures are unheard of at this time of year and are only occurring because of climate change. Weather like this would have been  impossible in the past, they infer. And it is an omen of what the future holds, as records successively get broken by a degree or more.

But is any of this true? Have we never had equally hot weather at this time of year?

In 1947, another intense heatwave hit England at the end of May and the first three days of June. Temperatures peaked on the 3rd June, hitting 94F at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, as well as at two London sites, Camden Square and Kensington.

This compares to the record of 95F at Kew yesterday.

Bear in mind that RAF Waddington was little more than a grass field in 1947, flying Avro Lincolns, the successor to the Lancaster on which it was based. The aerodrome is in a perfect rural environment and would have had none of the artificial heat sources that affect modern airfields, such as Heathrow, Coningsby and Waddington itself now.

In contrast, 95F at Kew probably includes at least three degrees of UHI. It is certainly true that the UHI effect in London is much greater now than in 1947, so the temperatures at Camden and Kensington then are probably comparable to Kew.

The 1947 heatwave came from an easterly direction and it was widespread. As well as Waddington and the two London sites, six other locations registered 93F:

Norwich

Mildenhall

Santon Downham

Cambridge

Greenwich

Regents Park

Significantly only four sites were hotter than 93F on Monday:

Kew

Heathrow

Northolt

Teddington

The last three are all junk sites.

By all estimation, the June 1947 heatwave was every bit as intense as this week’s, arguably more so. Yes, it occurred three days after the end of May, so technically is counted as in June. But is there any climatological or meteorological significance to those three days?

Of course not. Average temperatures on Tuesday 3rd June would be no different to Saturday 31st May.

It is always difficult comparing one weather event with another, particularly eight decades apart, because they are all unique,. But the evidence from June 1947 does more than undermine Met Office claims that this week’s heatwave is evidence of climate change. It raises the question why they are not giving the public all of the relevant facts by telling them we have had similar weather in the past.

Let’s be clear.

This week’s heatwave is an exceptionally rare event for this time of year, but it is not unprecedented, even during the few brief years our temperature records date back.

It has happened before and will undoubtedly happen again.

It has nothing to do with climate change.

AI Revolution: Leaving Green Energy States Behind

The artificial intelligence revolution is leaving green electricity states behind. Network operators are choosing states with policies favorable for gas-fired power to support construction of new data centers. States that block data center construction or try to force firms to use wind and solar electricity will lose the economic benefits of the AI boom.

From Master Resource

By Steve Goreham 

The artificial intelligence revolution is leaving green electricity states behind. Network operators are choosing states with policies favorable for gas-fired power to support construction of new data centers. States that block data center construction or try to force firms to use wind and solar electricity will lose the economic benefits of the AI boom.

We are in the midst of an AI revolution on a scale that may exceed the internet revolution of twenty years ago. BNP Paribus estimates that AI will boost the US economy by more than 10% by 2034. Goldman Sachs forecasts that AI could raise the global GDP by 7% over the next decade, or about $7 trillion.

More than one thousand data centers are under construction all over the nation, filled with servers to run AI. More than 4,000 data centers are now operating, up 50% since June 2024. Data center construction spending now exceeds that for office building construction.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle, the five largest AI “hyperscalers,” will spend over $800 billion this year and over $1 trillion in 2027 on AI capital equipment and data centers. Total 2027 spending is projected to exceed US spending for national defense.

Data center installation can bring tremendous benefits to local communities. The $20 billion, 1.8 gigawatt, 795-acre, Joliet Technology Center was just approved in Joliet, Illinois. The project is a medium-sized center but will be the largest in Illinois to date, expected to provide 10,000 construction jobs and $2.1 billion in tax revenue over a 30-year period.

But Illinois wants to force data centers to source power from wind and solar generators. In 2021 the state passed the Climate & Equitable Jobs Act, which requires coal and gas power plants to close between 2030 and 2045. As a result, Hull Street Energy is shutting down two-thirds of its Elwood Energy gas-fired plant years before a 2030 deadline, putting it on flatbed trucks, and transporting it to Texas. The six gas turbines being moved can together generate up to 900 megawatts of power. The loss of most of the Elwood Energy plant and the demands of the new Joliet Technology Center mean a three-gigawatt reduction in the available power capacity in northern Illinois.

Operators strive to bring new data centers online in less than three years to meet rising AI demand. Nuclear plants typically need 10 years for startup. Wind and solar facilities cover wide areas of land, require two to three times as much transmission, and years for transmission approval and construction. Since on-site gas plants can be built quickly, gas has become the dominant power source for new data centers.

But because of the data center boom, gas turbines are now in short supply. Turbine orders doubled from 2024 to 2025, and prices increased by 50%. The lead time for turbines from the world’s top three suppliers, GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi, has stretched out to five years. Elwood Energy took advantage of this shortage by moving turbines to Texas.   

Gas power plant construction for data centers is exploding in Texas. According to the Global Energy Monitor, Texas has 11 gas power plants under construction, another 102 in preconstruction—acquiring land, permits, and contracts—and another 28 projects announced. The pipeline of gas power projects in Texas grew to 58 GW in 2025, more than the peak power demand in California. Texas is building more gas-fired power than the next seven states combined, most of these to power data centers.

But like Illinois, many renewable energy states continue to try to force data centers to use wind and solar sources. Currently, 24 states have net zero electricity targets by 2050.

Data from USA Data Centers for the last two years shows that, with some exceptions, states without net zero electricity mandates are building data centers at a much faster pace than states with mandates. Since June of 2024, construction in states without mandates has exploded. Examples are Georgia (130 new data centers, up 157% from the number of existing centers), Indiana (84 new centers, up 221%), Iowa (73 new centers, up 252%), Missouri (33 new centers, up 85%), Pennsylvania (59 new centers, up 88%), and Texas (206 new centers, up 81%).

Most states with net zero mandates are building data centers at a much slower pace over the last two years. Examples are California (20 new centers, up 8%), Colorado (1 new center, up 2%), New York (6 new centers, up 5%), and Massachusetts (zero new data centers). Electricity prices in California, Massachusetts, and New York are amongst the highest in the nation, an additional reason why operators prefer other states for center sites.

Two exception states with net zero power mandates are Illinois (63 new centers, up 43%), and Virginia (136 new centers, up 29%). Electricity prices in Illinois are just over the national average and Virginia prices are below the average, helping to attract developers.

In addition to energy mandates, several states are considering bans on data center construction. Ten states have introduced legislation for a moratorium on data center construction, including Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Passage of these bills failed in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and Maine governor Janet Mills recently vetoed a moratorium bill. No state has yet enacted such a ban.

Georgia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and South Dakota, states that do not have green electricity mandates, are also considering legislation to halt data center construction. Legislation requiring hyperscalers to build their own onsite power plants and to minimize water usage can be sensible policy. But outright bans will leave states behind.

Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the “Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act” in the Senate, intending to halt construction of data centers. Representative Ocasio-Cortez plans to introduce a companion bill in the House of Representatives. But these bills are unlikely to pass and, even if passed, are likely to be vetoed by President Trump.

If some states ban construction, hyperscalers will shift to states that will accept data centers and onsite gas power plants. Like Elwood Energy in Illinois, look for companies to close gas plants in green energy states and relocate them to other states with favorable policies. States should rescind their green electricity mandates or expect to be left out of the artificial intelligence revolution.

—————–

Steve Goreham is a speaker on artificial intelligence, energy, the environment, and public policy, and author of four books, including Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. His previous posts at MasterResource can be found here.

IPCC Admits Its Worst-Case Climate Predictions Were Always Implausible

In the ScenarioMIP design paper for CMIP7 (the modeling foundation for future IPCC AR7), lead authors (including Detlef van Vuuren) state that the high-end CMIP6 scenario SSP5-8.5 (successor to RCP8.5) “have become implausible” for the 21st century.

In the ScenarioMIP design paper for CMIP7 (the modeling foundation for future IPCC AR7), lead authors (including Detlef van Vuuren) state that the high-end CMIP6 scenario SSP5-8.5 (successor to RCP8.5) “have become implausible” for the 21st century.

Reasons cited: renewable cost trends, policy emergence, and recent emissions data. The new scenario range narrows on the high end; the replacement “High” scenario assumes policy rollback but stays below prior 8.5 W/m² forcing. Low-end scenarios have also shifted due to observed trends.

This echoes years of critiques from Roger Pielke Jr., Justin Ritchie, Glen Peters, Zeke Hausfather, and others: RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 assumed unrealistic coal resurgence (multiple times current levels, straining reserves), high population + slow tech progress, and was never ideal as a “business-as-usual” baseline. It was overused in thousands of papers, impact studies, and media for dramatic projections (often 4°C+ warming).

Gregory Wrightstone argues this validates long-standing critiques: extreme models were overstated, CO₂ is beneficial (plant food, not just a pollutant), modest warming has upsides, and there’s no existential crisis. He highlights record crop yields and ecosystem gains from CO₂ fertilization.

This fits broader data: satellite observations show significant planetary greening; global crop production has risen substantially with CO₂ and technology; deaths from extreme weather have plummeted due to wealth and adaptation.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Exclusive: Wrightstone on U.N. Climate Panel Admission Apocalyptic Predictions Were Always ‘Implausible’

The United Nations’ Climate Panel admitted its apocalyptic predictions were always “implausible,” geologist Gregory Wrightstone, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition and author of “A Very Convenient Warming: How Modest Warming And More CO2 Are Benefitting Humanity,” told Breitbart News Daily.

Wrightstone told listeners that he was happy to deliver “good news and the truth about what is actually happening to Earth’s ecosystems and to the human condition,” contrary to the fearmongering routinely espoused by the radical left. BREITBART has the story.

He touted “huge benefits” that are accumulating across “almost every ecological niche across the earth.”

“And humanity is benefiting from warming in more C02. We should welcome that. We should celebrate it instead,” he said, debunking the longtime narrative that C02 is a terrible, toxic pollutant and will inevitably lead to our demise. On the contrary, Wrightstone said it is not a pollutant at all.

“If we look at the science, the facts, and the data, number one: C02 is not a pollutant. It’s not toxic,” he said, explaining that if someone locked themselves in a room with only C02, they would die from lack of oxygen – not because C02 is toxic.

He continued, “Right now we’re a little bit over 400 parts per million ppm,” he said before referencing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which he is all too familiar with, serving as an “expert reviewer for that very same IPCC several years ago.”

“And they’ve been touting this, what’s called RCP 8.5,” he said, explaining this in layman’s terms.

“Representative Concentration Pathways. They predict that C02 levels will reach over 2,000 parts per million in the future. We’ve been pushing back. We, being the coalition experts, have been pushing back against that. And just last week, the IPCC came out, and get this. They said this, what we’ve been predicting for 15 years, they called it implausible,” he revealed, explaining that the IPCC admitted their own predictions were bunk.

“I would go further, I would call it impossible, and so all these models they’re using to predict warming from C02 that will be unusual and unprecedented, they’re all wrong, and this is just one part of it,” Wrightstone said, revealing that they also “amplify the supposed warming by increases in water vapor, which then increase temperatures even higher” – another falsehood.

“And again we find that’s just not true either,” he said, offering the biggest takeaway for Americans across the nation and individuals worldwide: The climate crisis does not exist.

“They should sleep well. There is no climate crisis, and they should sleep well because Earth and humanity are benefiting, not getting worse,” he added.

Read the full story here.

Pope Leo’s First Encyclical is a Warning about Artificial Intelligence

Has the Climate Crisis been downgraded in the wake of the RCP 8.5 cancellation?

From Watts Up With That?

By Eric Worrall

Has the Climate Crisis been downgraded in the wake of the RCP 8.5 cancellation?

From the Encyclical;

ENCYCLICAL LETTER
MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS
OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE LEO XIV
ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON
IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

INTRODUCTION

1. Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world. Whenever humanity is in danger of marring its true identity, we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, knowing that it is “only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.” [1] In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness.

…

5. It now falls to us to face the challenges of our time with clarity of thought and responsibility. It is necessary to establish adequate regulatory tools capable of upholding justice and curbing the distorting effects of technological power. Nevertheless, the issue is not limited to regulation. As Pope Francis warned, we must realistically ask ourselves who holds this power today and how they use it: “It must also be recognized that nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our own DNA, and many other abilities which we have acquired… have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world.” [7] In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation. Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments. Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.

…

10. We must, then, avoid the “[Tower of] Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. The risk of dehumanization — of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means — is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise. Instead, let us choose the “way of Nehemiah,” which highlights the importance of working together to make the City of God a safe place for returning exiles. Rebuilding today means recognizing that, precisely from the plurality of voices and visions which, even though they sometimes remind us of the confusion caused by the diversity of spoken languages, a bright possibility emerges. Indeed, this is the possibility of building together, of transforming diversity into a resource and of making listening and dialogue the common ground upon which to cultivate justice and fraternity. Within this shared task, Christians discover their unique role of guiding actions toward God so that, in his light, pluralism does not dissipate into disorder, but instead, through the practice of synodality, it becomes the space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end. In the Book of Revelation, John sees the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev 21:2) as a gift for all humanity. And this vision of grace is an invitation for us Christians to work together in order to foster a peaceful, just and dignified life in community within today’s “cities.”

…

[The word “Climate” doesn’t appear until 81, though  Laudato Si’ and the environment are mentioned earlier]

81. A litmus test for social justice today is the treatment of migrants, refugees and those forced to move due to poverty, violence, climate change and environmental disasters. The way a society treats them reveals whether its sense of justice is driven by fear or by the spirit of fraternity. Pope Francis urged us to see migrants not simply as a problem to be managed, but as a living image of the People of God on the move. [109] They are people with dignity, resources and dreams, who have the right to be treated with respect and to ask to become active members of the societies that welcome them. Social justice in this area entails at least two complementary commitments. On the one hand, this means protecting the rightful hopes of those forced to leave by ensuring safe and legal routes, dignified conditions for receiving them, and genuine pathways to integration. On the other hand, it means promoting the right to remain in one’s homeland in peace and security by addressing the root causes that force people to migrate, including those linked to economic injustices and the climate crisis. When these rights are respected, migration can become an opportunity for encounter and mutual enrichment among peoples.

…Read more: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

I predicted back in 2017 that artificial intelligence would be the next great scare, the replacement for the climate scare.

The Next Eco-Scare Story?

The United Nations has jumped on artificial intelligence, creating an AI IPCC. Democrats are increasingly embracing AI as a big issue to sway voters in the upcoming midterms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hilighted AI as a threat last November.

United Nations Launches New IPCC for Artificial Intelligence, Bernie Sanders Issues Dire Warnings

All we need is for leading climate figures like Michael Mann to re-invent themselves as artificial intelligence experts, and the transition to the new scare campaign will be complete – Mann has already started issuing warnings about AI.

…

Mann also highlighted the role of artificial intelligence, cautioning that we now face the risk of infinite disinformation, where misleading narratives can be endlessly generated, recycled, and amplified at unprecedented scale. He closed by emphasizing that urgency must be paired with agency. The most meaningful individual action, he said, is joining collective action that drives systemic change.

…Read more: https://www.climaterealityeurope.org/post/climate-misinformation-webinar-with-michael-e-mann-robin-millington-and-anna-siewiorek

The narrative might change, but the faces stay the same.

“Implausible” UK Health Security Agency Report Promoting Endemic Dengue Fever in London Must Be Withdrawn

In December 2023, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) captured mainstream headlines with claims that massive increases in temperatures could lead to tropical mosquito-borne diseases sweeping the nation, endemic dengue fever in London by 2060, and a 12-fold increase in heat mortality within 50 years. All nonsense, of course – and the UKHSA report relied heavily on the notorious 2018 Met Office Climate Projections report (UKCP18). This Net Zero-promoting exercise ran only one set of assumptions through its supercomputer model and highlighted the findings in bold type.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

In December 2023, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) captured mainstream headlines with claims that massive increases in temperatures could lead to tropical mosquito-borne diseases sweeping the nation, endemic dengue fever in London by 2060, and a 12-fold increase in heat mortality within 50 years. All nonsense, of course – and the UKHSA report relied heavily on the notorious 2018 Met Office Climate Projections report (UKCP18). This Net Zero-promoting exercise ran only one set of assumptions through its supercomputer model and highlighted the findings in bold type. Those assumptions, always far-fetched, have now been declared “implausible” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The UKHSA report was entitled Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK: State of the Evidence 2,023 (HECC). It relied on UKCP18 and appears to have standardised its findings around RCP8.5. The Met Office work seems to have been responsible for all the HECC scenario assumptions, hazard frequencies, temperature trajectories and rainfall intensification estimates. HECC claims that temperatures could rise by 4°C in under 80 years – evidence, or rather guesses, that exist only on the Met Office’s RCP8.5-fed computer. This hopelessly flawed work must be withdrawn immediately, preferably with an unreserved apology for presenting what was little more than health fear-mongering as ‘evidence’. But the reckoning must go much further. The UKCP18/RCP8.5 rot runs deep throughout the UKHSA’s climate health messaging. Many of its separate outputs – from projections of future heat-related ambulance demand to input into England’s National Adaptation Programme – are heavily influenced by the same now officially implausible assumptions.

It is no exaggeration to say that UKCP18, with its RCP8.5-only projections, has effectively become the standard UK climate source for adaptation planning. Again, immediate withdrawal is required to prevent further damage to the wider British economy.

The claim of endemic dengue fever is perhaps the most egregious element of the HECC report, given that it is tied directly to rising human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The culprit is the Asian tiger mosquito, which was confined to its tropical forest base during the last ice age but has been moving northwards throughout the current interglacial period. As larger areas have opened up for colonisation, the mosquito has become more tolerant of lower temperatures and – in common with many invasive species – has thrived as human mobility has increased. Through shipping and trade, the Asian tiger mosquito has already established itself across much of Europe. There have been reports of mild dengue fever cases in several European countries, but fatality rates are at or near zero.

Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, beginning its blood-meal

UKCP18 is described as ‘evidence’ by the UKHSA, and RCP8.5 as a “plausible worst-case scenario”. Both claims are untenable, for at least three reasons. First, RCP8.5 was always implausible: it fed assumptions about global population growth and coal consumption into computer models that no serious analyst should ever have considered credible. Second, the Met Office ran only RCP8.5 through its model, deriving other – and largely unpublicised – figures from those results. A clear case, one might suggest, of Garbage In, Garbage Out. Third, the model was programmed on the assumption that human combustion of hydrocarbons controls the climate thermostat by contributing roughly 4% of the carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere each year. None of this would survive a rigorous process of scientific debate and falsification – which is precisely why political activists have declared climate science ‘settled’ and closed to scrutiny. Garbage In, Gospel Out is the operating principle in the fantasy world of Net Zero advocacy.

Another way of looking at it: billions of pounds in subsidies, grants and salaries tends to purchase a great deal of the right kind of scientific wisdom.

And few outputs were more fanciful than those found in HECC 2,023. Who better to amplify them than the Guardian, which reported that the “climate crisis” could cause up to 10,000 extra deaths in the UK every year by the 2050s. An estimated 4.3°C rise in temperature, the paper claimed, would produce a 12-fold increase in heat-related deaths by 2,070, along with a surge in insect-borne tropical diseases. The BBC, needless to say, ran with it at full speed – repeating the RCP8.5 projections and adding a claim that there would be a “big impact on mental health and wellbeing of young people in particular”. There are, of course, those who suggest that the mental health of the young would be considerably improved if they stopped absorbing the relentless climate alarmism transmitted by a State broadcaster that levies a tax on their television sets.

Alarmism with an ulterior motive, as the BBC’s own reporting confirms. The UKHSA observes that many “potential problems” remain avoidable with swift action. “Steep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions could avert some of the worst consequences,” it adds.

New balls, please – these old ones have lost all their plausibility.

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

Pressure Causes Temperature? It’s Time to Climb Down from “Mount Stupid”

The whole ordeal makes me think of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is the tendency for people who start to understand a complex subject to overestimate their level of understanding. This then leads to a point of peak overconfidence (climbing “Mount Stupid”), which then gradually relaxes as more is learned and the person increasingly realizes that the subject is more complicated and nuanced than they originally thought.

May 28th, 2026 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

There was a recent weeks-long exchange of emails between many climate people — professional and amateur — regarding the idea that air pressure (in combination with absorbed solar energy) is what causes temperature. There were insults launched at those who refused to believe what a certain physics-trained person says should be a revolution in our understanding of planetary temperatures. That person even managed to get a paper published in a journal that (in my opinion) used reviewers who were in over their heads on the subject.

The whole ordeal makes me think of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is the tendency for people who start to understand a complex subject to overestimate their level of understanding. This then leads to a point of peak overconfidence (climbing “Mount Stupid”), which then gradually relaxes as more is learned and the person increasingly realizes that the subject is more complicated and nuanced than they originally thought.

I claim that the person in question who thinks [pressure + absorbed solar energy = temperature] is still stuck on Mount Stupid.

The reason I bring this up again (I’ve preached on it before) is that many have been misled into believing the “theory”. As a result, I have spent many years responding to questions from the public (including science-savvy citizens) regarding the issue. Many have been convinced by the “theory”, and have joined the proponent of the theory on Mount Stupid.

After lurking in the weeks-long email discussion, I finally responded with the following summary of the issue. I have removed the person’s name to protect the not-so-innocent.

SUBJECT: Where <NAME REDACTED> Is Right… and Where <PRONOUN REDACTED> Is Wrong

All:

After working in meteorology and then climate during my 40+ year career, I think I can offer some insight into the issues being discussed in these emails. Like <NAME REDACTED>, I have always been skeptical of what I have been told until I could fully understand an issue for myself.

I’m sure the following explanations will be of help to many of you. (I suspect <NAME REDACTED> is too invested in theories to change <PRONOUN REDACTED> mind.) Many of the concepts are not trivial, and I will admit it wasn’t until many years after all of my education (PhD Meteorology) that I finally understood a few of them, because they were not taught in school. Dick Lindzen helped me in this in the early climate research years.

Most of what follows is fundamental atmospheric thermodynamics, and I question whether <NAME REDACTED> really did take a university-level Atmospheric Thermodynamics course. If he did, I’d like to know where.

And if <PRONOUN REDACTED> shows me <PRONOUN REDACTED> grades, I’ll show <PRONOUN REDACTED> mine.

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

Imagine you could suddenly dump an extra 1 atmosphere of air on top of the existing atmosphere, what would happen to air temperature in the 1 ATM below? Just as <NAME REDACTED> would predict, the temperature of the original atmosphere below would increase greatly through adiabatic compression.

But what would happen NEXT?….

The high [hot] atmospheric temperatures in the lower atmosphere would then be far out of energy balance compared to what existed before. The result would be cooling of all of that air that was heated through adiabatic (or nearly so) compression (work done on the lower atmosphere) until a new state of energy equilibrium was reached. The energy loss would be through infrared radiation of the hotter air.

In fact is it always ENERGY BALANCE that determines temperature, through the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. A change in temperature is proportional to the rate of energy input minus the energy output (which includes any work done in the process).

In contrast, the Ideal Gas Law (PV=nRT) cannot tell you what the temperature “should be”. It only says how the variables P, V, and T are interrelated during the process of re-equilibration and in the final equilibrium state. What <NAME REDACTED> misses in <PRONOUN REDACTED> theory is the “n” part of the equation (the number of moles, or mass… which is in the density form of the equation, P = rho RT). In my hypothetical 2-atmosphere thought experiment, as the lower atmosphere cools to reach a new state of energy equilibrium with the solar input, the decreasing temperature causes an increase in the air density (“shrinkage”), and the pressure remains the same… even while the temperature is changing.

Specifically, following the 1st Law, the internal temperature of a volume of atmosphere exposed to an energy INPUT will increase until the temperature-dependent energy OUTPUT processes equal the rate of energy gain. This is true of every physical system… the atmosphere, a pot of water on the stove, a car’s engine, the human body, the interior of the sun, etc. That energy equilibrium is what determines the final temperature. (In the real atmosphere, there are constant energy imbalances and thus changes in temperature; Trenberth’s global-average energy balance diagram is only useful to gain a conceptual understanding of the relative role of the major energy flows in the global-average climate system.)

THE IDEAL GAS LAW

Again, the Ideal Gas Law equation (PV=nRT) cannot tell you what the temperature of a gas should be, only energy flows in and out can do that. The gas law just tells you how the P, n, and T are interrelated for a given volume (V) of air. Yes, <NAME REDACTED>, on short time scales, ascending air cools and descending air warms, but if all of that motion was to stop, energy flow processes would then determine what the final temperature would be… not what the air pressure is.

For a given surface air pressure, a huge range of temperatures is possible, and that huge range is all due to energy flow processes. Again, if the near-surface air temperature over the whole planet is much higher than local energy flow processes can support, the temperature falls, and the air’s volume shrinks (or density, rho, increases, according to the equivalent Ideal Gas Law equation, P=rhoRT). The surface air pressure remains the same because the total mass of the atmosphere is unchanged.

SO WHY MIGHT THERE BE A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DIFFERENT PLANET’S LOWER ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE AND PRESSURE?

I haven’t studied the atmospheres of other planets, because I don’t care. Even if those other planets did not exist, they are not necessary for understanding our own atmosphere. But if indeed <NAME REDACTED> is correct about a close statistical relationship between different planets’ surface air pressure and temperature, after adjusting for solar input, then I suspect it’s because the more atmosphere there is, the more greenhouse gases there are.

On the subject of GHGs, I’ve forgotten… does <NAME REDACTED> believe that air absorbs and emits IR energy? Because the greenhouse effect is a necessary consequence of that absorption/emission. Energetically, the GHE is a radiative insulator. It’s analogous to adding insulation to a heated building’s walls in winter. For a given energy input into the building, the air temperature inside will rise, and the outside of the walls will experience a temperature fall. This is exactly what the GHE does to the atmospheric temperature profile (in an energetic sense.. clearly involving radiation rather than conduction as a heat transfer mechanism).

If <NAME REDACTED> doesn’t believe air absorbs IR energy, how does <PRONOUN REDACTED> explain all of the thousands of spectroscopic measurements of CO2, water vapor, and methane as a function of temperature and pressure? And if <PRONOUN REDACTED> does believe the atmosphere absorbs and emits IR energy, then <PRONOUN REDACTED> must also believe in a greenhouse effect, because it is a necessary consequence…. the greenhouse effect in planetary atmospheres always causes warming of the lower atmosphere and cooling of the upper atmosphere.

(BTW, it is a common misconception that air which absorbs IR energy immediately loses that energy through emission of IR. Not true. Look up the “kinetic theory of gases” and related concepts. When CO2 or H2O vapor molecules absorb IR photons they extremely rapidly lose their extra energy to other air molecules through collisions. This happens much faster [by a factor of ~50,000] than the time it takes to re-emit energy through IR photons. This is how IR absorption immediately leads to “thermalization” [a term I hate].

Furthermore, it is crucial to understand that since IR absorption is largely independent of temperature, but IR loss is VERY dependent upon temperature, almost all air in the atmosphere is in a continual state of IR energy imbalance. Much of that imbalance is what [is balanced by] convective overturning.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE ADIABATIC LAPSE RATE?

The adiabatic lapse rate in the troposphere (9.8 deg C per km without moisture condensation) is the RESULT OF convective overturning. If condensation of moisture is involved in updrafts, then the lapse rate is lower. Like the Ideal Gas Law, it doesn’t tell you what the temperature “should” be. It just tells you how the temperature of an air parcel changes during ascent or descent, if there is no energy gain or loss (“a-diabatic”). [But there are energy gains and losses occurring everywhere, all the time, and those determine what the absolute temperature will be — not pressure.]

HOW DOES THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT PLAY INTO THE LAPSE RATE?

This is a very interesting subject. It is something that even many atmospheric scientists and climate researchers don’t really understand. The combination of solar heating of the surface and IR absorption and emission by the surface and atmosphere ALONE, WITHOUT ANY CONVECTIVE OVERTURNING would result in an extremely steep tropospheric lapse rate, with very high surface temperatures and exceedingly cold upper tropospheric temperatures. This was first demonstrated by Manabe & Strickler (1964), and it’s called the “pure radiative equilibrium” case. It is sort of what makes the term “greenhouse effect” technically correct; like a real greenhouse inhibiting convective heat loss [because it has a roof], the greenhouse effect is, by definition, what happens WITHOUT the resulting convective overturning.

But in the real world, convective overturning is the RESPONSE to this GHE destabilization! So, that 33 deg. GHE warming people talk about? That’s not the GHE. It’s the GHE + CONVECTION. Without convection, that 33 deg. C figure would be more like 65 or 75 deg. C. Which then leads to another fascinating question…

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE ATMOSPHERE DID NOT ABSORB AND EMIT IR ENERGY?

Imagine a cold planetary atmosphere with no energy input. Then, turn on the sun. Solar heating of the surface would warm the atmosphere through convective overturning. But the [deep] atmosphere would have no way to shed that energy to cool in the presence of all of that energy input. The temperature of the [deep] atmosphere would then continue to rise until it had the same temperature as the surface, through its entire depth. Long before that process finished convective overturning would have stopped, because the atmosphere would be too stable to support convection. The atmosphere would eventually become isothermal (or nearly so, since there might be some planetary scale overturning between the tropics and the poles, due to their different rates of solar input), with the same temperature as the surface. Interestingly, as a result all weather activity would cease. All clouds would probably disappear, resulting in higher temperatures. Any [remaining] circulation systems would have a planetary scale, because the horizontal scale of those systems are related to the lapse rate (through the “Rossby radius of deformation”), which is also why the stratosphere only has planetary-scale circulations.

-Roy

No, Climate Central, Summer Warming Isn’t Due to Climate Change

Climate Central claims in “Summer Warming (1970–2025) Driven By Climate Change” that summers have warmed in 97 percent of 243 U.S. cities and that human-caused climate change is the leading driver in 91 percent of them. This is misleading at best. The analysis relies on biased average temperature trends and model-based attribution while downplaying one of the most important and well-documented drivers of urban warming: the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

Climate Central claims in “Summer Warming (1970–2025) Driven By Climate Change” that summers have warmed in 97 percent of 243 U.S. cities and that human-caused climate change is the leading driver in 91 percent of them. This is misleading at best. The analysis relies on biased average temperature trends and model-based attribution while downplaying one of the most important and well-documented drivers of urban warming: the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.

Climate Central claims:

Summers have warmed since 1970 in 97% of 243 U.S. cities analyzed. A new Climate Central analysis shows that human-caused climate change is the leading driver of summer warming trends in 221 (91%) of these cities.

Digging deeper, we find that Climate Central’s findings are based on changes in average summer temperature, calculated from daily highs and lows. That matters. Because when you look at how UHI typically manifests, the strongest signal is not in daytime highs, it is in nighttime minimum temperatures.

The Urban Heat Island is not a fringe concept. It is a well-documented physical process, and it has been observed and mapped worldwide. Even the often-biased website Wikipedia gets it, saying, “[t]he urban heat island (UHI) effect is a meteorological and climatological phenomenon in which urban areas experience significantly warmer temperatures than surrounding rural areas. The temperature difference is usually larger at night than during the day.”

Figure: North American UHI in June 2023, map by Roy Spencer Ph.D.

Roy Spencer Ph.D., a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, has globally mapped UHI, including the United States and published a peer reviewed paper on the subject. Just one look at the U.S. UHI map produced from that paper is all you need to understand the concept.

You can clearly see the UHI in major cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

As summarized in Climate at a Glance: Urban Heat Islands, built-up city environments absorb solar energy during the day and release it slowly at night, suppressing natural nighttime cooling. The result is elevated overnight minimum temperatures, especially in cities with extensive pavement, buildings, and infrastructure.

This is precisely the pattern seen in the real-world measurement comparisons done by Climate Central.

In The Heartland Institute’s Global Open Atmospheric Temperature System project in Reno, Nevada, a properly sited reference station was installed just 1.1 miles from the official airport ASOS station. Both stations experienced the same regional weather. The only meaningful difference was microsite exposure. The official station sits amid runways and pavement. The GOATS station was placed over natural ground, more than 100 feet from artificial heat sources, consistent with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration guidance.

The results are telling.

Across two full years of side-by-side data, the official Reno station measured warmer than the reference station on the vast majority of days. The biggest difference was not in daytime highs. It was in nighttime lows. In 2024, the official station averaged nearly 3°F warmer in nighttime readings than the properly sited reference station. In 2025, the nighttime difference was still more than 2°F.

That is classic Urban Heat Island behavior.

It is also important to note that Urban Heat Island effects are most pronounced during summer, precisely when Climate Central is measuring its “summer warming” signal. UHI is fundamentally driven by solar insolation. Asphalt, concrete, rooftops, and infrastructure absorb the greatest amount of solar energy during the long, high-sun days of summer. That stored heat is then released slowly after sunset, elevating overnight minimum temperatures and suppressing natural cooling. The combination of peak solar loading and dense built environments means that summer is when UHI influence is strongest and most persistent. Therefore, analyzing summer averages in urban stations without fully isolating UHI amplification risks attributing a seasonally maximized urban signal to broader atmospheric change.

When Climate Central reports that summers have warmed by 2.6°F on average across 236 cities since 1970, and then attributes at least half of that warming to human-caused climate change in 91 percent of cities, it ignores entirely the UHI. It would be a safe bet to believe that most of those 236 cities fall within the cities on the UHI map produced by Spencer that have experience between 0.2 and 2.0 UHI measured warming. Also undercutting Climate Central’s claim is the fact that it uses a statistical attribution model that compares ERA5-based modeled climate with the built in assumption that human-emissions drive heating with counterfactual ERA5-based model with no anthropogenic forcing. In other words, it is model against model with a big dose of UHI thrown in. That’s not science, it’s pre-determining a result.

Although, the document admits that “secondary drivers” include natural climate variability and the urban heat island effect influence measured temperatures, it treats UHI, the prime factor in measured warming, as residual noise.

Using the daily average temperature as a metric amplifies this problem. Because the average is calculated as the mean of daily high temperature and nighttime low temperature, any systematic upward bias in nighttime lows directly inflates the average. The Reno case study demonstrates that station placement alone can introduce 1 to 3°F of warming into reported records, particularly via elevated overnight minimum temperatures. That is comparable to the multi-decade summer warming Climate Central is highlighting.

This is not a theoretical quibble, it is a measurement integrity issue.

Climate Central emphasizes that 22 more summer days are now “hotter-than-normal” compared to the early 1970s. But “normal” is defined relative to 1991–2020 baselines, and hotter-than-normal days are again based on average temperature metrics. Urban growth and densification has intensified around many of these stations over the past half century, thus part of what is being counted as climate signal is localized microsite warming or UHI.

This is especially relevant for airports, which host many official climate measurement stations. Airports are highly built-up environments dominated by concrete, asphalt, jet exhaust, and infrastructure. The Reno comparison is not an anomaly. It is a case study illustrating the systemic vulnerability in the U.S. surface temperature network as documented in the 2022 nationwide project, Corrupted Climate Stations.

None of this proves that all warming is artificial, the Reno report itself makes that clear. But it does demonstrate that before declaring that 91 percent of urban summer warming is primarily human-caused, one must rigorously quantify and account for station siting bias and UHI amplification of average temperatures. In fact, 91 percent or some similar number may be human caused, but caused by the UHI a result of human development and poor measuring site placement, not “global” climate change.

The Urban Heat Island is a primary factor in urban warming trends, not the footnote that Climate Central treats it as. Before attributing summer warming in 221 cities to human fossil fuel use, Climate Central should first ensure that what they are measuring is a long-term atmospheric temperature trend, not the bias from urban asphalt and artificial heat sources.