Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
In a letter dated around September 25 (seen by POLITICO and other outlets), Jørgensen wrote that “in the context of constrained global supply and high price volatility, demand reduction can be an effective tool to contain prices.”
Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen sent a letter to national energy ministers shortly before the informal meeting of EU Energy Ministers (Informal Energy Council) held in Dublin on 28- 29 September 2026, under Ireland’s EU Presidency and chaired by Irish Minister Darragh O’Brien.
Current level (gas day 27 September 2026): Approximately 57.6- 57.9% full (most precise reported figures center on 57.63%).
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The European Commission (via Energy and Housing Commissioner Dan Jørgensen) has urged EU member states to implement or continue targeted measures to reduce gas and electricity demand in the coming months, primarily to help contain high and volatile prices amid constrained global supply.
In a letter dated around September 25 (seen by POLITICO and other outlets), Jørgensen wrote that “in the context of constrained global supply and high price volatility, demand reduction can be an effective tool to contain prices.”
He invited ministers to take measures reducing demand for gas and electricity “for as long as necessary.” He described the situation as challenging but stated there are “currently no immediate risks to security of supply.”
Drivers: Gas storage levels in the EU are exceptionally and historically low (reports cite around 68- 70% of capacity, well below typical levels for the period and roughly 12 percentage points under the prior year). Contributing factors include disruptions from conflict involving Iran and Middle East affecting global gas and LNG flows, competition for LNG from Asia, high prices making storage refills costly, and an exceptionally hot and dry summer that increased electricity demand (and thus gas use for power generation).
Storage targets: The usual EU target is 90% fill by early November, but flexibility allows aiming for around 80% this year to avoid panic buying and ease price pressure.
Nature of the call: It emphasizes voluntary, well- planned measures drawing lessons from the 2022 energy crisis (post- Ukraine invasion). It is not a mandatory “lockdown,” rationing order, or new binding EU-wide quota. Suggested examples include limiting temperatures in public buildings, restricting outdoor heating, switching off unnecessary public lighting at night, reducing electricity use in peak hours (which can cut gas burn at marginal power plants), greater use of smart meters/demand flexibility, and preparing contingency tools if needed. Price- support measures should be well- targeted and temporary to avoid boosting demand.
Multiple European outlets (Euronews, national papers, etc.) corroborated the letter’s content in the days after POLITICO’s report.
The framing as an “energy lockdown” appears in some commentary or headlines but overstates the Commission’s language, which stresses preparation, voluntary action, and price containment rather than enforced austerity or supply cuts. Europe is described as better prepared than in 2021- 22 thanks to more LNG capacity, renewables, and prior demand reductions, though still exposed due to fossil fuel import dependence.
This reflects ongoing efforts to manage winter risks without declaring an emergency. Developments could shift with weather, LNG availability, or further geopolitical changes.
Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen sent a letter to national energy ministers shortly before the informal meeting of EU Energy Ministers (Informal Energy Council) held in Dublin on 28- 29 September 2026, under Ireland’s EU Presidency and chaired by Irish Minister Darragh O’Brien.
In the letter, he described EU gas storage levels as “exceptionally low” for the time of year and the overall situation as remaining difficult. He reiterated that there are “currently no immediate risks to security of supply,” while urging ministers to examine (or continue) measures that can reduce gas and electricity consumption and support storage injections “for as long as necessary.” This aligns with the broader call for voluntary, targeted demand-reduction steps to help contain high and volatile prices amid constrained global supply.
Multiple reports and data sources place EU gas storage at around 70% (range of roughly 68- 71% depending on the exact snapshot and source, such as Gas Infrastructure Europe, AGSI and others) toward the end of September 2026. This is approximately 12 percentage points below the level at the same point the previous year and well below the five- year seasonal average (often cited in the mid- to- high 80s percent range for late September).
Fill levels vary significantly by country (e.g., higher in France and Italy, lower in Germany and some others). The Commission has already granted flexibility on the usual 90% fill target by early November, allowing countries to aim closer to 80% (or lower under difficult conditions) to avoid driving prices higher through simultaneous buying.
The Dublin informal meeting focused on energy affordability, innovation/market issues, and energy security and cooperation (including with partner countries).
It was not expected to produce binding decisions but to coordinate approaches ahead of the formal Energy Council later in the autumn. Jørgensen has publicly noted the approaching tough winter on prices while emphasizing longer- term direction toward more clean domestic energy, efficiency, interconnections, and electrification.
Germany’s natural gas storage (as of late September 2026)
Current level (gas day 27 September 2026): Approximately 57.6- 57.9% full (most precise reported figures center on 57.63%).
This corresponds to roughly 142- 143 TWh of working gas in storage (out of a total working capacity of about 247 TWh). Data come from the AGSI and platform of Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE), as published by the Bundesnetzagentur and tracking sites.
Levels have been rising slowly during the injection season (net daily gains of around +0.2- 0.3 percentage points recently) but remain well below typical seasonal norms.
Comparison: 2025 vs 2026 (same period in late September)
Year
Fill level (late September)
Difference vs 2026
2026
~57.6–57.9%
—
2025
~76.6%
~19 percentage points higher
On the equivalent gas day in 2025, German storage stood at approximately 76.6%.
2026 is therefore about 19 percentage points lower.
For additional context:
September 2024 levels were much higher (around 95- 96%).
Germany’s current fill rate is also significantly below the EU average (~71%) and historical multi-year averages for late September (often in the mid- to- high 80s percent range).
These low levels reflect a combination of a colder previous winter (deeper drawdowns), high gas prices limiting injections, and market/geopolitical factors affecting LNG and pipeline supplies. German authorities and industry (e.g., VNG) have stated that supply security is still viewed as stable due to diversified imports and LNG capacity, though the buffer heading into winter is thinner than in recent years. Figures update daily via AGSI and other, Bundesnetzagentur.
Global warming is projected to substantially weaken the South Asian summer monsoon’s remote influence on Mediterranean summer climate, according to a study by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Atmospheric Physics.
The South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) and Mediterranean summer climate are linked by a well-established large- scale atmospheric teleconnection known as the “monsoon- desert mechanism.”
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Global warming is projected to substantially weaken the South Asian summer monsoon’s remote influence on Mediterranean summer climate, according to a study by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Atmospheric Physics.
The paper, “Reduced Asian monsoon influence on Mediterranean summers in a warmer climate” (Nature Geoscience, published around 23 September 2026), was led by Hanzhao Yu, with corresponding author Tianjun Zhou and co-author Zhun Guo.
The Mediterranean’s hot, dry summers are strongly shaped by large- scale atmospheric subsidence (descending air) linked to the South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) via a well- known monsoon, desert teleconnection. Stronger monsoon heating tends to enhance this subsidence, suppressing clouds and rainfall over the Mediterranean.
Main findings (from large- ensemble simulations under a high- emission scenario)
The interannual correlation between SASM heating and Mediterranean summer mid- level circulation/subsidence drops from an ensemble- mean value of about 0.41 (statistically significant, P < 0.001) in the late 20th- century climate to near zero by the end of the 21st century.
The monsoon’s contribution to Mediterranean summer precipitation variability falls from ~14.2% explained variance to ~5.1%.
In one large CESM1 ensemble (40 members), 39 members (~97.5%) showed weakened monsoon influence on Mediterranean subsidence, with explained variance of subsidence variability dropping from ~22% to under 3%.
Mechanisms
Two main dynamical changes drive the weakening:
Elevated monsoon convection (linked to increased tropospheric stability and a rising tropopause under warming) causes the monsoon- induced mid- tropospheric warm anomaly and zonal thermal structure to expand westward. This flattens isentropic surfaces and weakens the adiabatic descent over the Mediterranean.
Local dynamical feedbacks reduce the meridional wind anomalies that help transmit the monsoon signal westward.
The interannual coupling between SASM strength and Mediterranean summer circulation and rainfall is expected to largely disappear. This has consequences for predicting Mediterranean summer heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires, as monsoon conditions will become a much weaker precursor. Mediterranean precipitation variability will be controlled by other factors in a warmer climate.
The results come from large- ensemble climate model simulations, reanalysis data, CMIP6 models, and supporting theoretical and numerical experiments. They highlight how changing atmospheric dynamics under global warming can reshape major climate teleconnections.
Projected changes in SASM-related mid-level circulation over the CEM. Credit: Nature Geoscience (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-026-02091-1
The South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) and Mediterranean summer climate are linked by a well-established large- scale atmospheric teleconnection known as the “monsoon- desert mechanism.”
Intense convective rainfall and associated diabatic (latent heat) heating over South Asia and the Tibetan Plateau during the SASM (roughly June- September) generate westward- propagating Rossby waves (often described as a Gill- type response). These waves interact with the mid- latitude westerlies and produce:
Large- scale subsidence (descending air) over the eastern and central Mediterranean (and parts of the Middle East and North Africa).
Strengthened mid- tropospheric anticyclonic circulation and the northerly Etesian winds.
Suppression of clouds and rainfall, reinforcing the region’s characteristically hot, dry summers.
Stronger SASM years tend to enhance this subsidence, leading to drier and sometimes hotter conditions over parts of the Mediterranean. Weaker monsoon years have the opposite effect. This link operates on interannual timescales and contributes meaningfully to Mediterranean summer climate variability (including precipitation, circulation, evaporation, heatwave and drought risk).
Classic foundational work includes Rodwell & Hoskins (1996, 2001). Later observational and modeling studies (e.g., Tyrlis et al., Cherchi et al. 2014, Rizou et al. 2015) have confirmed and refined the mechanism using reanalyses and CMIP models.
Large- ensemble simulations (e.g., CESM1) show an ensemble-mean correlation of ~0.41 between SASM heating and Mediterranean summer mid- level circulation/subsidence (P < 0.001). The monsoon explains roughly 14% of Mediterranean summer land precipitation variability (and higher fractions, ~22%, of subsidence variability in some ensembles).
A 2026 Nature Geoscience study (Yu, Zhou & Guo, Chinese Academy of Sciences) using CESM1 large ensembles, CMIP6 models, reanalyses, and linear baroclinic model experiments under a high- emission scenario finds that this teleconnection weakens substantially:
Correlation between SASM and Mediterranean summer circulation drops from ~0.41 to near zero by the late 21st century.
Explained variance of Mediterranean summer precipitation falls from ~14.2% to ~5.1%.
Nearly all ensemble members (e.g., 39/40 in CESM1) show the weakening.
Broader implications
Mediterranean summer heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires are already a major climate-change hotspot. Loss of the monsoon teleconnection means year- to- year predictability that currently draws on SASM conditions will diminish; other drivers (local factors, mid- latitude teleconnections such as the summer North Atlantic Oscillation, etc.) will become relatively more important.
Mean-state changes (e.g., overall drying or circulation shifts) may still occur, but the interannual coupling itself is projected to fade.
The finding underscores how warming can reshape remote climate teleconnections through changes in atmospheric dynamics and vertical structure, not only through thermodynamic effects.
In short, the SASM currently exerts a remote “steering” influence that helps maintain and modulate the dry Mediterranean summer. Under strong warming this influence is expected to largely disappear, altering both the variability and the predictability of the region’s summer climate.
Reduced Asian monsoon influence on Mediterranean summers in a warmer climate
The Mediterranean’s summer climate is strongly influenced by large-scale subsidence linked to the South Asian summer monsoon (SASM). Using large- ensemble simulations under a high- emission scenario, the study shows that this teleconnection weakens substantially under global warming:
Ensemble- mean correlation between SASM and Mediterranean summer circulation falls from 0.41 (P < 0.001) to near zero.
Mechanism: westward expansion of the monsoon- induced zonal thermal structure (tied to elevated monsoon convection) and reduction in meridional wind anomalies via local dynamical feedback.
Result: monsoon-related Mediterranean summer precipitation variability drops (explained variance from 14.2% to 5.1%).
Global warming is projected to weaken the interannual coupling between the SASM and Mediterranean summer climate by altering atmospheric dynamics.
Main figures (titles)
Projected changes in SASM- related mid- level circulation over the Central- Eastern Mediterranean (CEM).
Future change of SASM- related CCF (cross- equatorial flow / circulation component) and its decomposition.
Westward expansion of zonal thermal structure and the role of the monsoon heating profile.
Reduction in SASM- related meridional wind and underlying mechanism.
Weakened control of SASM on Mediterranean summer land precipitation.
Data and code availability
ERA5 reanalysis (single- level and pressure- level).
CESM1 Large Ensemble simulations.
CMIP6 models.
LBM experiment output, analysis and visualization scripts (NCL 6.6.2 and Python 3.11.6): available on Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21500988. Source data are provided with the paper.
The paper includes extensive supporting analyses validating the diabatic heating index for SASM strength, observed relationships in ERA5, temporal evolution of the response, consistency across CMIP6 models, roles of elevated heating and thermal structure, LBM sensitivity experiments to heat- source height, and links between circulation and precipitation changes.
Note: The full article text is behind a paywall and subscription. The above is drawn from the publicly available abstract, author information, figure captions, data/code statements, and extended- data descriptions on the Nature page. For the complete methods, results, and discussion, institutional access or purchase is required.
Journal information:Nature Geoscience (2026), published 23 September 2026
Contributions: T.Z. conceived and designed the study (with support from H.Y.). H.Y. performed the analysis, drafted the paper, and ran the linear baroclinic model (LBM) simulations. T.Z. and Z.G. provided comments and revisions. All authors contributed to interpretation.
Funding: National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 42588201, 42575166, 42175164).
Abstract
The Mediterranean is highly vulnerable to summer heatwaves and wildfires, with its climate strongly influenced by large-scale subsidence linked to the South Asian summer monsoon. However, how this Mediterranean–monsoon teleconnection will respond to global warming remains poorly understood. Here we investigate the future evolution of the South Asian summer monsoon’s remote influence on Mediterranean summer climate under global warming using large ensemble simulations under a high-emission scenario. The monsoon influence on Mediterranean summer circulation weakens substantially under global warming, with the ensemble mean of correlation coefficient decreasing from 0.41 (P < 0.001) to near zero. This weakening results from the westward expansion of the monsoon-induced zonal thermal structure associated with elevated monsoon convection and a reduction in meridional wind anomalies through local dynamical feedbacks. The weakened monsoon-induced subsidence response further reduces the monsoon-related Mediterranean summer precipitation variability, with explained variance decreasing from 14.2% to 5.1%. Our results suggest that global warming will weaken the interannual coupling between the South Asian summer monsoon and Mediterranean summer climate, emphasizing the role of changing atmospheric dynamics in reshaping large-scale climate teleconnections.
A recent interview from NPR affiliate WAMC Northeast Public Radio’s “Northeast Notebook” titled “Apple growers confront climate change, fuel challenges for 2026 harvest,” blames low apple production in New York on “increasingly unpredictable” weather. This story is promoting a factually inaccurate narrative. If climate change was harming New York apple production, there would be evidence of this in apple production and yields over the long term, but this is not the case.
A recent interview from NPR affiliate WAMC Northeast Public Radio’s “Northeast Notebook” titled “Apple growers confront climate change, fuel challenges for 2026 harvest,” blames low apple production in New York on “increasingly unpredictable” weather. This story is promoting a factually inaccurate narrative. If climate change was harming New York apple production, there would be evidence of this in apple production and yields over the long term, but this is not the case.
WAMC published a transcript of an interview style report conducted with Hudson Valley apple growers, who WAMC says “encountered a late April frost, skyrocketing diesel prices, and a federal crackdown on foreign labor in 2026,” which have created “uncertain economic conditions.”
Sam Dingman, reporter for the WAMC’s Northeast Notebook, claimed that apple farmers need to guard themselves “against unexpected losses from increasingly unpredictable spring weather,” ultimately blaming climate change for allegedly worsening growing conditions for apple farmers in New York.
Although it is true that a late spring frost can damage yields for a season, this is normal weather variability, not climate change. Also, the good news is that late spring frosts are becoming less frequent. One need only look at the April minimum temperature data in New York to see that cold snaps are not becoming more extreme or unpredictable during apple bloom season. In fact, previous decades saw larger variation between April lows than recent years. (See figure below)
Farmers have have had to deal with bad weather every season, some worse than others, throughout history. The fact that spring blooming seasons are slightly longer today than they were a hundred-plus years ago, does not indicate trouble for crops, rather the opposite.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that apple production and yields in New York have risen 35 percent from just 1980 to 2025, with 2025 having seen an all-time record for production. (See figure below)
If long term climate change was damaging apple production, one would expect long-term damage to be indicated by the data, but it is not.
Previous Climate Realism articles have covered similar claims about apple production from the U.S. at large, and even Kashmir, and in both of those cases the data showed the same thing: apple production and yields have increased across the United States and the world amid the modest climate change of the past century. That is despite the fact that in the United States at least, the acreage devoted to growing apples has declined in the past few decades.
Of course apple growers in New York and elsewhere may be experiencing difficulties, like higher costs due to skyrocketing diesel prices and a federal crackdown on foreign labor, and that might have made a compelling story, but those factors have nothing to do with the story’s lede, “Climate Change.”
NPR’s affiliate station in New York is promoting a lot of nonsense in this story, in line with standard climate alarmist propaganda. One bad season for apples on certain farms can’t be blamed on climate change, that’s the truth the data shows and nothing but.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have determined that the Ames impact structure in Oklahoma formed about 370 million years ago (Late Devonian), nearly 100 million years later than the previous estimate of around 467 million years ago (Ordovician).
The Frasnian- Famennian (F- F) mass extinction, also known as the Upper Kellwasser event (or part of the broader Kellwasser Crisis), was one of the “Big Five” Phanerozoic mass extinctions. It occurred at the boundary between the Frasnian and Famennian stages of the Late Devonian Period, approximately 372 million years ago.
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Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have determined that the Ames impact structure in Oklahoma formed about 370 million years ago (Late Devonian), nearly 100 million years later than the previous estimate of around 467 million years ago (Ordovician).
The buried crater (roughly 14- 16 km in diameter) lies beneath the small town of Ames in northwest Oklahoma (Major County). It is a significant oil and gas reservoir because the impact fractured the rock, creating traps for hydrocarbons.
It was previously linked to the Ordovician Meteor Event (a proposed cluster of impacts around 467- 468 million years ago, possibly related to a fragmented L- chondrite asteroid and even a temporary debris ring around Earth).
That age rested mainly on biostratigraphy:conodont teeth (from ancient eel- like creatures) found in the crater fill that date to the Ordovician. Researchers now conclude those fossils were likely already millions of years old and were simply reworked and preserved during the impact.
The new age comes from U- Pb dating of zircon crystals in impact- affected granites/granodiorite from the site. Multiple techniques (secondary ion mass spectrometry and laser ablation: ICP -MS) consistently yielded a youngest weighted mean age of about 369.7 ± 5.9 Ma.
Imaging (cathodoluminescence and electron backscattered diffraction, including work with NASA) confirmed impact- related textures in some zircons, such as recrystallization features from shock. The host rock itself is much older (Mesoproterozoic, ~1.4 billion years). Argon dating of plagioclase reflected later thermal overprinting tied to burial and hydrocarbon maturation rather than the impact itself.
The revised timing places the Ames impact near the Frasnian- Famennian (Upper Kellwasser) mass extinction boundary(~372 million years ago), a major marine extinction event.
This removes it from the Ordovician Meteor Event and raises questions about whether impacts contributed to the Late Devonian die- off (alongside other potential drivers such as volcanism or environmental changes).
Lead author Elizabeth Catlos (UT Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences) noted that accurate timelines help distinguish extraterrestrial vs. terrestrial causes of major events. Co- author Danny Stockli (Jackson School dean) highlighted zircon’s value for both precise dating and recording impact shock.
The peer- reviewed study by Catlos and colleagues appeared in Meteoritics & Planetary Science (published online around July/September 2026). It builds on earlier sample collection and analysis by the late graduate student Andrew Parisi, with additional contributions from other UT researchers.
In short, improved radiometric dating of impact- shocked zircons has shifted a key North American crater’s place in geologic history and its potential links to mass extinctions.
A geological map noting the types of rock that make up the Ames impact structure. The locations of oil and gas wells are noted with arrows. Credit: Catlos et al
The Ordovician Meteor Event (OME), also called the Ordovician meteorite event or Great Ordovician Meteorite Shower, was a prolonged period of dramatically elevated meteorite influx to Earth during the Middle Ordovician, beginning around 467.5 ± 0.28 million years ago (or ~465.8- 468 Ma in some calibrations) and lasting roughly 40 million years.
It is widely attributed to the catastrophic breakup of a large L- chondrite parent body (roughly 100- 150 km in diameter) in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. This collision scattered fragments into Earth-crossing orbits.
Supporting evidence includes:
Shock ages in many modern L- chondrite meteorites (about one- third of meteorites that fall to Earth today are L chondrites linked to this event).
Abundant fossil L-chondrite meteorites (up to ~20 cm across) preserved in Middle Ordovician limestone, notably at Thorsberg Quarry (Kinnekulle), Sweden.
Elevated concentrations of ordinary chondritic chromite grains in sedimentary rocks of this age across multiple continents (Sweden, Russia, China, etc.).
A 2024 study noted that many associated craters formed within ~30° of the paleo- equator. This distribution is inconsistent with a random asteroid- belt source and has led to the hypothesis that a large asteroid may have passed within Earth’s Roche limit, broken apart, and temporarily formed a debris ring; material from the ring then deorbited and produced the observed impacts. Ring shading has even been speculated as a possible contributor to later Ordovician cooling (Hirnantian glaciation), though this remains debated.
The flux of dust, micrometeorites, and larger meteorites was estimated at ~100 times higher than today, with a corresponding increase in the rate of larger impacts.
This is recorded in:
Fossil meteorites and chromite spikes in marine sediments.
An excess of impact craters dated to roughly 470- 440 Ma (an order- of- magnitude higher density than expected in well- preserved regions such as parts of North America and Scandinavia).
Several structures have been linked (with varying confidence) to the OME, including:
Decorah (Iowa, USA)
Rock Elm (Wisconsin, USA)
Slate Islands (Ontario, Canada)
Crooked Creek (Missouri, USA)
Others in North America, Europe, and elsewhere
(Note: The Ames structure in Oklahoma was previously included on biostratigraphic grounds but was recently redated to ~370 Ma and removed from the OME.)
Some researchers have proposed that the influx of dust and impacts may have contributed to cooling that helped trigger or coincide with the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), a major radiation of marine life. However, high- resolution dating studies have questioned a direct causal link, showing that the main meteorite bombardment post- dates the onset of cooling and the start of diversification in some records. The event is not associated with a major mass extinction.
In summary, the Ordovician Meteor Event represents the largest documented asteroid disruption and subsequent Earth- impact shower of the past ~3 billion years, leaving a clear geochemical, sedimentological, and cratering signature in the Middle- Late Ordovician record.
A map of upper North America shows the approximate area and location of impact structures from about 486-360 million years ago. Credit: Catlos et al
The Frasnian- Famennian (F- F) mass extinction, also known as the Upper Kellwasser event (or part of the broader Kellwasser Crisis), was one of the “Big Five” Phanerozoic mass extinctions. It occurred at the boundary between the Frasnian and Famennian stages of the Late Devonian Period, approximately 372 million years ago.
Precise numerical ages place the F- F boundary around 371.87 ± 0.11 Ma (or constrained to roughly 371.8-372.4 Ma in various high- resolution studies), based on U- Pb dating of bentonite ash beds combined with cyclostratigraphy.
The crisis consists of two distinct pulses of environmental stress and extinction, recorded as widespread organic- rich black shales and limestones (the Kellwasser horizons, named after exposures in the Harz Mountains, Germany):
Lower Kellwasser Event (late Frasnian, early Late rhenana Zone): lasting roughly 90 kyr.
Upper Kellwasser Event (latest Frasnian, Late linguiformis Zone, coinciding with the F- F boundary): lasting roughly 110 kyr and generally more severe and widespread.
These were separated by a few hundred thousand years (estimates ~350- 800 kyr). The Upper Kellwasser is the main extinction pulse associated with the stage boundary.
Key features include:
Widespread marine anoxia/euxinia (oxygen- depleted to sulfide- rich bottom waters), expanding even into shallow- water and reef settings during the Upper Kellwasser.
Positive carbon- isotope (δ¹³C) excursions reflecting changes in the global carbon cycle.
Sea-level fluctuations (often transgressive pulses followed by regression).
Possible short- term climatic cooling or warming pulses, with evidence for elevated CO₂ in some records and glacio- eustatic sea- level falls in others.
No single cause is universally accepted; the crisis was likely multi- factorial and stepwise. Leading hypotheses include:
Oceanic anoxia driven by eutrophication, climate change, or changes in ocean circulation (widely supported by the black- shale record).
Volcanism, particularly activity linked to large igneous provinces (e.g., Viluy Traps) or other magmatic pulses, evidenced by mercury anomalies.
Climate shifts (cooling or greenhouse spikes related to forest expansion, weathering, or volcanism).
Possible contributions from sea- level change, nutrient runoff from expanding terrestrial vegetation, or tectonic factors.
Extraterrestrial impacts have been suggested (e.g., Siljan crater), but high- precision dating generally shows they do not precisely coincide with the main extinction pulses and are not considered primary drivers.
The Upper Kellwasser anoxia appears more of an epicontinental (shallow- sea) phenomenon in many regions rather than a fully open- ocean event.
Recovery was slow in many ecosystems, especially reefs. A second major Devonian crisis (the Hangenberg event) occurred ~13 million years later near the Devonian- Carboniferous boundary.
In the context of recent research (such as the redating of the Ames impact structure in Oklahoma to ~370 Ma), the F- F extinction timing has prompted renewed discussion of whether impacts played any supporting role alongside terrestrial drivers, though anoxia and climate remain the dominant explanations.
The Ames impact structure, Oklahoma: New radioisotopic constraints and implications for North American impact chronology
The Ames impact structure in Oklahoma was long thought to have formed during the Ordovician Meteor Event, based on conodont biostratigraphy of its crater fill.
New U- Pb zircon dates from the impact-melt portion (using secondary ion mass spectrometry and laser ablation, inductively coupled plasma, mass spectrometry; n = 37 spots) yield:
A Mesoproterozoic emplacement age for the impacted granodiorite of 1401.2 ± 8.1 Ma (±2σ, upper Concordia intercept).
A weighted mean age from the youngest zircon dates of 369.7 ± 5.9 Ma (n = 10/11; MSWD = 0.71; p(χ²) = 0.7).
Cathodoluminescence and electron backscattered diffraction imaging show that most zircons (including the youngest Devonian- age grains) retain primary oscillatory zoning and lack deformation.
Two grains, however, display impact- related textures: regions of low- angle grain boundaries within microcracks and discrete arrays of granular zircon that crosscut oscillatory growth zoning.
Plagioclase ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar analyses (n = 6 samples) give Late Carboniferous (~310.5 Ma) and Permian (~250.5 Ma) approximate total- fusion dates. These overlap the timing of heating and hydrocarbon maturation in the crater, indicating the argon system records post-impact thermal overprinting rather than the impact itself.
Based on the youngest zircon dates, the Ames structure is interpreted as Late Devonian and potentially linked to activity near the Frasnian- Famennian boundary, contemporaneous with other North American impacts.
Main conclusions from the paper
Biostratigraphic (conodont) evidence previously suggested a late Ordovician (Chatfieldian) age tied to the Ordovician Meteor Event. The new zircon data instead support a minimum age of ~370 Ma.
This places Ames near the Frasnian- Famennian (Upper Kellwasser) mass extinction (~372 Ma), raising the possibility of a contribution from bolide impacts to that event.
The discrepancy between radioisotopic and biostratigraphic ages illustrates ongoing challenges in impact geochronology. The authors emphasize the need for additional material suitable for modern techniques and openness to alternative age hypotheses.
Supporting data (geochronology and microstructural datasets) are available via the Texas Data Repository (DOI: 10.18738/T8/G5UENJ).
The full text is behind a Wiley paywall, but the abstract and extensive excerpts (including tables of zircon dates, petrographic descriptions, and discussion of microstructures such as planar deformation features) are publicly summarized in the sources above. The UT Austin Jackson School press release provides additional accessible context on the broader implications.
Published: Meteoritics & Planetary Science (first published 7 July 2026)
The Ames impact structure (Oklahoma) is thought to have formed during the Ordovician Meteor Event, based on conodont biostratigraphy of its crater fill. Here, U–Pb zircon dates from its impact-melt portion, conducted using secondary ion mass spectrometry and laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (n = 37 spots), yield a Mesoproterozoic emplacement age for the impacted granodiorite (1401.2 ± 8.1 Ma, ±2σ, upper Concordia intercept). However, the youngest zircon dates define a weighted mean age of 369.7 ± 5.9 Ma (n = 10/11), with MSWD = 0.71 and p(χ2) = 0.7. Cathodoluminescence and electron backscattered diffraction images reveal that most zircons, including the youngest Devonian-age grains, show primary oscillatory zoning and lack deformation. However, two have impact-related textures, including regions of low-angle grain boundaries within microcracks and discrete arrays of granular zircon crosscutting oscillatory growth zoning. Plagioclase (n = 6 samples, 40Ar/39Ar) yields Late Carboniferous (~310.5 Ma) and Permian (~250.5 Ma) approximate total fusion dates that overlap the timing of heating and hydrocarbon maturation in the crater, suggesting the argon system records postimpact thermal overprinting. Based on the youngest zircon dates, the Ames impact structure may record activity near the Frasnian–Famennian boundary, contemporaneous with other North American impacts.
Every September the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level week coincides with what its promoters modestly call the world’s largest climate event – Climate Week NYC. The organisers insist the timing is no accident.
The 81st UNGA’s General Debate ran from September 22nd to 26th; Secretary-General António Guterres convened his “High-Level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition” in the middle of it, on September 23rd; and Climate Week NYC filled the gaps around it from September 20th to 27th.
Every September the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level week coincides with what its promoters modestly call the world’s largest climate event – Climate Week NYC. The organisers insist the timing is no accident. With heads of state, ministers, bankers and the assembled apparatus of the climate-industrial complex already gathered for the General Assembly, running a parallel, thousand-event climate jamboree spares everyone a second transatlantic flight. This year the pattern held precisely to form.
The 81st UNGA’s General Debate ran from September 22nd to 26th; Secretary-General António Guterres convened his “High-Level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition” in the middle of it, on September 23rd; and Climate Week NYC filled the gaps around it from September 20th to 27th. Research outfits such as Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy duly received star billing in the proceedings, as I noted last year when reviewing this event’s visible decline into irrelevance.
The two events are formally distinct – the General Assembly is the UN’s own sovereign-state machinery, while Climate Week is run by a private non-profit, the Climate Group, with no UN mandate at all – but the distinction is academic. The whole point of scheduling one alongside the other is that presidents, prime ministers, central bankers and NGO grandees are already in Manhattan for the diplomatic circuit, so a parallel programme of corporate pledges, academic research institutions and philanthropic panels can be organised at minimal extra travel cost. The result, year after year, is the same choreography: a sober-sounding UN track running alongside a carnival of announcements timed for maximum media pickup, with the same cast of characters drifting between the two rooms.
The Sermon from Turtle Bay
On September 23rd, Mr Guterres delivered his now-familiar green liturgy to the General Assembly: the world, he intoned, is crying out for “climate justice”; there is, naturally, “not a moment to lose”; and renewables, he assured delegates, are “the cheapest, fastest and most secure source of new electricity almost everywhere”, with clean energy having gone “from alternative to unstoppable”. As with every liturgy, doom is swiftly followed by salvation. He reassured the UN General Assembly that “fortunately, we have a way out”. It is the standard two-step of climate rhetoric: warn of Armageddon, then offer redemption.
The trouble is that the “cheapest electricity” claim collapses the moment it is measured honestly. The levelised-cost comparisons habitually cited strip out the cost of the backup capacity, transmission and storage that intermittent wind and solar require to keep a modern grid running. These are costs that, once included, erase the supposed savings of renewables. Nor did the Secretary-General pause to mention that electricity accounts for only around one-fifth of global final energy consumption. The other four-fifths – heating, transport, heavy industry – still runs overwhelmingly on hydrocarbons.
Compare the Secretary-General’s triumphalism with the observation by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright when he said that roughly $10 trillion in cumulative global spending on wind, solar and batteries over the past two decades has still not lifted their combined share of global primary energy past about 3%. Twenty years and 10 trillion dollars for a 3% penetration level in global energy use is not “unstoppable” growth of renewable energy. It is a tiny increase at spectacular cost.
None of this stops the UN statisticians from producing ever more flattering numbers. The technical reports that accompany these annual UN set pieces routinely cite figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency. IRENA claims solar costs falling by roughly 40% and offshore wind by over 50% relative to fossil generation, and “trillions of dollars a year” now flow into “clean energy investment” worldwide. No mention is made of the fact that these “trillions of dollars” are not private sector investments made with the prospect of profits. Rather, they are made up overwhelmingly of taxpayer-financed subsidies imposed by government policies.
Energy deprivation in the Empire State
The irony is that all this UN and Climate Week NYC triumphalism is staged in a state where energy reliability is failing. New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s climate policies – gas pipeline bans, ballooning offshore-wind cost overruns and a self-inflicted capacity crunch – have made New York a case study in engineered energy scarcity. Her policies leave households and businesses paying among the highest electricity prices in the country for a supposedly cheaper fuel mix.
As Francis Menton, writing in his Manhattan Contrarian blog, has documented exhaustively, New York state’s energy policy under Governor Kathy Hochul is anything but rational. Ms Hochul’s administration continues to pass the costs of its energy fantasies on to households and businesses least able to absorb them. New Yorkers, in short, are living the counter-experiment to Mr Guterres’s UNGA sermon in real time – only a few subway stops from where he delivered it. It is important to note just how perverse this juxtaposition is. The state that hosts the world’s premier climate jamboree is simultaneously demonstrating, in its own utility bills, precisely why the premise of that jamboree is utterly false.
Berlin’s fossil-fuelled sermon and UK’s ‘Mad Ed’ joins the choir
Not to be outdone, Germany’s Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider travelled to New York for Climate Week and the General Assembly to unveil his country’s “roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels”. This is the same Germany that, having shuttered its nuclear and coal fleet on ideological grounds, now pays among the highest household electricity and gas prices in Europe. It has been leaning ever more heavily on coal-fired power to keep its lights on. A German minister telling the UN that the world should leave fossil fuels, while his own system still leans on lignite, hard coal and gas every time the wind drops, is not merely ironic. It is the defining genre of this entire New York season – grand declarations issued in Manhattan, detached from the burden of electricity bills paid by working households.
Great Britain, of course, is on the same track as deindustrialising Germany. Ed Miliband – for four years the face of the UK’s own Net Zero crusade as Energy Secretary, and now, following a summer reshuffle, Foreign Secretary – addressed New York Climate Week’s opening ceremony on September 21st. He struck the now-mandatory note of triumphalism, boasting that 2026 would see $2.2 trillion flow into clean energy worldwide against $1.2 trillion into fossil fuels. He said that “I think that deserves a round of applause.”
Money spent on intermittent, weather-dependent renewables is not the same as actual energy delivered in kilowatt hours and undoes Mr Guterres’s arithmetic. Jaime Jessop has thoroughly dissected the Guardian‘s credulous amplification of Mr Miliband’s numbers. The Net Zero enthusiasms of “Mad Ed” have coincided with the UK recording the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world – 27% above Germany’s, and a multiple of America’s and China’s. Whitehall’s energy policy is not merely in the same fantasy land as Berlin’s; on the actual electricity bill, it is worse.
Money that does not exist
On climate finance, Mr Guterres called on developed countries to mobilise at least $300 billion a year for developing nations, rising to $1,300 billion a year by 2035. These figures are not new – they are the headline outputs of the New Collective Quantified Goal thrashed out at COP29 in Baku, later dressed up as the Baku to Belém Roadmap ahead of COP30 – but reciting them again at the UNGA does nothing to make them real. The unreality is glaring. The EU is running historic deficits, several member states are flirting with fiscal crisis and European governments are simultaneously being pressed to fund ever-larger military budgets in their campaign against Russia. And the UN chief Guterres himself has warned that the world body faces “imminent financial collapse” due to non-payment of dues by member nations.
Conjuring another trillion-plus dollars a year for “climate finance” out of treasuries that cannot balance their own books is merely wishful accounting. Developing countries were promised similarly grand sums before, most notably the still-unmet $100 billion pledge dating back to 2009. Every year the target grows larger and the political and fiscal capacity to meet it shrinks further. That gap between rhetoric and treasury encapsulates the entire story of the UN’s climate diplomacy since the UN Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.
The New York City setting of the September climate jamborees reveals the farce. This is a city carrying colossal municipal debt, some of the country’s heaviest taxation, an acute affordability and housing crisis and rising rents. It is now governed by socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He took office on January 1st 2026 pledging to entrench the city’s sanctuary-city status and pursue rent freezes for the roughly two million New Yorkers living in rent-stabilised apartments. Add to that a surge in concern over antisemitism, strained public services, collapsing institutional trust and a political class seemingly convinced that weather-dependent wind, solar and batteries can run a modern metropolis, and one has the full backdrop against which the visiting dignitaries assure each other that the “just transition” and “climate justice” march on. The gap between what the elites gathered at Turtle Bay believe about energy and how ordinary city residents actually live is, for some reason, not evident to the luminaries assembled at the September climate fest.
The road to nowhere, via Ankara
This year’s proceedings are also a warm-up act for COP31, due to be held in Turkey. Readers who followed my assessments of previous UN climate summits (here and here) will recognise the pattern: grand communiqués, promises of “energy transition” and no discernible dent in the world’s actual fuel mix and carbon emissions. The developing world is, in fact, moving in precisely the opposite direction from the one prescribed in Manhattan. China and India – together home to nearly three billion people – are doubling down on coal-fired power generation, partly as insurance against the energy-security shock triggered by the Strait of Hormuz blockade earlier this year.
The most sober forecasting available is the recently published S&P Global’s Multidimensional Global Energy Pathways report, authored with the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, with a foreword by Daniel Yergin. It offers an analytically robust view of where fossil fuels are headed through 2060 without preaching the green narrative. Fossil fuels remain dominant and are still growing in absolute terms across large parts of Asia, whatever the UNGA choir may sing about “unstoppable” transitions. There is little reason to expect that COP31 in Turkey will produce anything different from COP28, COP29 or COP30 before it: another communiqué, another finance pledge, another round of applause for phrases such as “accelerate climate action” and “just transition” – whose vacuousness is obvious to any sceptical reader on first inspection – and another year in which the world’s actual energy mix moves only marginally, if at all, in the direction the UN insists is inevitable.
The circus moves on
What New York hosts every September is not serious, fact-based analysis or credible environmental and economic argument. It is a travelling circus that returns, on schedule, to a city groaning under precisely the kind of self-inflicted energy costs its visiting luminaries insist are cheap.
The largest energy consumers in Asia – China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam – are choosing coal over green communiqués. They understand energy security and the wellbeing of their citizens, unlike the assembled dignitaries and their academic advisors gathered in New York City this week. Energy reality does not bend to a General Assembly speech, however loudly it is applauded. Reliable, affordable energy is not a rhetorical achievement to be announced from a podium; it is an engineering and economic problem that has to be solved on the ground, one grid, one household bill and one industrial customer at a time.
Until the annual September pageant in New York grapples realistically with energy policy, the gap between the green liturgy and affordable, secure energy supply will keep widening. The clown show, sadly, will be back again next September in New York City.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO₂ Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
The key Arctic section asserts that sea ice “has rebounded sharply from its summer minimum, with late-September extent now running near the top of the entire post- 2007 range” and is “close to the highest late-September level of the past 20 years,” citing a Sept 27 value near 5.7 million km².
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Arctic sea ice reached its likely annual minimum of 4.60 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles) on September 12, 2026. This ties with 2008, 2010, and 2025 for tenth- lowest in the nearly 48- year satellite record (starting 1979). It sits well below the 1981- 2010 average minimum (by about 1.62 million km², roughly the size of Alaska) and is consistent with the post- 2007 pattern of persistently low extents.
AI generated by Grok
The key Arctic section asserts that sea ice “has rebounded sharply from its summer minimum, with late-September extent now running near the top of the entire post- 2007 range” and is “close to the highest late-September level of the past 20 years,” citing a Sept 27 value near 5.7 million km².
It contrasts this with Al Gore- era warnings and notes the 2026 minimum (4.60 million km²) was higher than 2007 and 2012.
What the actual data show
NSIDC (primary satellite record): The 2026 daily minimum was 4.60 million km² on Sept 12, tied for 10th- lowest in the nearly 48- year record (with 2008, 2010, and 2025). The last 20 years (2007- 2026) are the lowest 20 September minima on record. It remains ~1.62 million km² below the 1981-2010 average.
There has been little net decline in the September minimum since ~2007 (a well- documented plateau amid natural variability), but every year in that period is still far lower than pre- 2007 values. Calling late- September levels a “near 20-year high” within a period that itself contains only the lowest extents is rhetorical sleight- of- hand.
Seasonal freeze- up after the mid-September minimum is normal. Rapid early freeze does not erase the low starting point or the long-term loss of multi-year ice. Independent trackers (e.g., Zack Labe/JAXA) place late- September 2026 extent in the lower part of the recent distribution (roughly 13th-16th lowest for the date), still hundreds of thousands of km² below the 2000s mean and well below earlier decades.
Alternative products (OSI SAF, MASIE) can show modestly higher numbers due to different sensors or and processing, but they do not change the ranking relative to the modern low baseline.
This NASA Blue Marble image shows Arctic sea ice on September 12, 2026, when sea ice likely reached its minimum extent for the year. Sea ice extent for September 12 was 4.60 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles)—ranked tenth lowest with 2008, 2010, and 2025 in the satellite record.— Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center/ NASA Earth Observatory
Arctic sea ice extent in late September 2026 is among the lowest in the satellite record (tied for ~10th lowest minimum), not near a 20- year high.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Arctic sea ice reached its likely annual minimum of 4.60 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles) on September 12, 2026. This ties with 2008, 2010, and 2025 for tenth- lowest in the nearly 48- year satellite record (starting 1979). It sits well below the 1981- 2010 average minimum (by about 1.62 million km², roughly the size of Alaska) and is consistent with the post- 2007 pattern of persistently low extents.
Key points from NSIDC and related analyses:
The 20 lowest September minima in the satellite record all occurred in the last 20 years (2007- 2026).
The long- term trend (1979- 2026) shows a decline of about 11.8% per decade relative to the 1981-2010 average, or roughly 73,200 km² lost per year, though the September minimum has shown little net decline (a “plateau”) since around 2007 amid year- to- year variability.
This year’s value is still far lower than any pre- 2007 minimum and remains well below 1980s, early 2000s levels. Scientists note it reflects a fundamentally changed Arctic with thinner, younger ice, even if weather (e.g., cooler conditions or cloud cover in parts of recent summers) limited further losses this year.
Slight differences appear across datasets due to sensors, processing, and definitions (e.g., concentration thresholds or multi- day averaging).
The Met Office/OSI SAF index reported a minimum around 5.06 million km² (14th lowest), and some products like MASIE have shown modestly higher daily values in recent weeks, but these still rank low historically and do not approach mid- 2000s or earlier levels for the seasonal minimum period. By late September (after the minimum), ice is typically beginning its seasonal regrowth, but current extents remain in the low recent range.
Claims of a “near 20- year high” do not align with the primary observational records.
Authoritative sources such as NSIDC, NASA, and supporting analyses consistently describe 2026 as another low year in a long- term downward trend, with the recent period dominated by the lowest extents on record. Full monthly analyses are typically released in early October.
The last 20 years (2007- 2026) hold the 20 lowest Arctic September sea ice minima in the satellite record (since 1979), not the highest.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC Sea Ice Index), the 2026 daily minimum (5-day average) was 4.60 million km² on September 12, tying with 2008, 2010, and 2025 for 10th- lowest overall. All post- 2006 years remain lower than every pre- 2007 year. There has been little net trend (a “plateau”) in the September minimum since ~2007 amid year- to- year variability, but the levels stay far below those of the 1980s, early 2000s.
Lowest September daily minima (NSIDC, million km²)
Approximate values from NSIDC rankings and analyses (5-day averages; values within ~0.04 million km² are treated as tied):
Rank (lowest)
Year(s)
Minimum extent (million km²)
Approximate date
1
2012
3.39
Sept. 17
2
2020
3.82
Sept. 16
3- 5
2007, 2016, 2019
4.16- 4.19
Mid-to-late Sept.
6- 7
2024, 2023
4.25- 4.26
Mid-to-late Sept.
8
2011
4.34
Sept. 11
9
2015
4.43
Sept. 9
10- 13
2008, 2025, 2026, 2010
4.59- 4.62
Mid- to- late Sept.
The remaining years in 2007- 2026 (e.g., 2009, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022) fill out the rest of the lowest 20, generally in the ~4.6- 5.3 million km² range for their daily minima (still well below pre- 2007 values). September monthly average extents are typically a bit higher than the single-day (or 5- day) minimum.
For context:
1981- 2010 average September minimum ≈ 6.22 million km².
Pre- 2007 minima were consistently higher (often 5.5- 7 and more million km²).
Long- term linear decline (1979- 2026): ~11.8% per decade relative to the 1981- 2010 average, or roughly 73,000 km² per year.
Data come primarily from NSIDC’s passive- microwave satellite record (Sea Ice Index). Minor differences exist across products (e.g., OSI SAF, JAXA, MASIE) due to sensors and processing, but the ranking of the last 20 years as the lowest is consistent.
Full monthly summaries and final confirmation of the 2026 minimum are typically released by NSIDC in early October. Interactive graphs and downloadable tables are available on the NSIDC Sea Ice Today / Charctic tools.
On September 21st, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) released its 2026 Planetary Health Check, an annual report now authored, we are told, by more than 60 scientists.
The seven transgressed boundaries, PIK tells us, are climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, novel entities and ocean acidification. Only stratospheric ozone and atmospheric aerosol loading remain, for now, within bounds.
The “planetary boundaries” framework, first proposed in 2009, holds that nine interlinked Earth-system processes must remain within defined “safe limits” to preserve planetary stability.
On September 21st, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) released its 2026Planetary Health Check, an annual report now authored, we are told, by more than 60 scientists. The Guardian duly reported, as it always does, the verdict with the gravity the occasion apparently demanded: the planetary life-support systems on which humanity depends have deteriorated to their worst levels ever recorded, and seven of nine “planetary boundaries” are now breached at their “highest ever levels of transgression”.
The seven transgressed boundaries, PIK tells us, are climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, novel entities and ocean acidification. Only stratospheric ozone and atmospheric aerosol loading remain, for now, within bounds. Having delivered this verdict, PIK’s sixty co-authors extend the traditional mercy of the apocalyptic genre: salvation remains possible, if only humanity accelerates action to “return to the safe operating space” and thereby secures “shared future prosperity”. It is a formula as old as the genre itself — diagnose civilisational catastrophe, then offer just enough hope to keep the reader turning the page, or better still, funding the institute.
These cycles of doom repeat themselves regularly (remember the Club of Rome’s 1972 report Limits to Growth anyone?) The PIK report is simply the latest instalment. It deserves to be read carefully, not because its science is compelling, but because its rhetorical machinery — the appeal to consensus, the confusion of value judgement with measurement and the use of pseudo-scientific “tipping points” is now so deeply embedded in Western policy discourse that it has driven trillions of dollars in investment and regulation.
Nine boundaries, one big assumption
The “planetary boundaries” framework, first proposed in 2009, holds that nine interlinked Earth-system processes must remain within defined “safe limits” to preserve planetary stability. It is a seductive idea: a single dashboard, nine dials, and a simple readout of humanity’s report card. The trouble is that these ‘dials’ have no scientific content. As the Breakthrough Institute noted in its detailed review of the concept’s scientific foundations, the great majority of the nine boundaries — land-system change, biosphere integrity, nitrogen and phosphorus flows, freshwater use, aerosol loading and novel entities — have no identified global biophysical “tipping point” at all.
Climate change and ocean acidification are nominally the exceptions, in that both have genuinely global physical drivers — but a global driver is not the same thing as a well-quantified, catastrophic one. MIT’s Richard Lindzen has long argued that the roughly one degree Celsius of warming observed since the pre-industrial era is consistent with a climate sensitivity to doubled CO2. This is well below the range built into the models PIK and the IPCC rely on and sits comfortably within the bounds of natural climate variability.
Ocean acidification fares no better under scrutiny: the ocean’s average surface pH, still solidly alkaline at around 8.1, has fallen by roughly 0.1 units since industrialisation — a shift that, as shown by field studies of natural pH variability documented by Matt Ridley, is dwarfed by the swings that reef and open-ocean sites already experience within a single day or season. Neither of PIK’s two supposedly rigorous, globally-driven boundaries survives contact with the underlying data appreciably better than the other seven.
A single global number for a process that operates locally is not a scientific measurement. It is an arbitrary value judgement presented with the authority of a measured threshold. The entire framework, moreover, treats the Holocene — the roughly 12,000-year climatic interval since the last ice age — as the one true “safe operating space” for humanity, as though any departure from Holocene baselines were self-evidently catastrophic. Yet, as critics of the concept have long pointed out, many of the very changes PIK now labels “transgressions” — expanded fertiliser use, land conversion for agriculture, freshwater withdrawal, higher atmospheric CO2 — are precisely what enabled large-scale agriculture, mass nutrition and the extraordinary rise in human welfare over the past two centuries. There is remarkably little evidence that crossing any of PIK’s chosen numbers produces a sudden, planet-wide collapse in habitability.
Consider the report’s headline climate metric: the 350 parts-per-million CO2 boundary. This figure did not emerge from an IPCC consensus process. It originated with James Hansen’s 2008 paper, adopted wholesale into the planetary-boundaries architecture. What the “breach” framing omits is the geological record: for most of the past 500 million years, atmospheric CO2 has run at several multiples of today’s level, and life did not merely survive those eras but flourished in them.
NASA’s own satellite data confirm as much now: a landmark NASA-funded study attributes the bulk of the global greening observed since the 1980s — new leaf cover equivalent to twice the area of the continental United States — directly to rising CO2 fertilising plant growth. Princeton physicist William Happer, in written testimony to Germany’sBundestag, has gone further, arguing that CO2 concentrations have in fact been dangerously low across most of the recent geological past, and that additional CO2 is a net benefit to agriculture, forestry and photosynthetic life generally. None of this fits the “massive and dangerous breach” framing.
TheLimits to Growth, redux
None of this is new. PIK’s “planetary health check” stands squarely in the tradition of the Club of Rome’s 1972 report The Limits to Growth, which ran a computer model of five interacting global variables — population, agriculture, resources, industrial output, and pollution — and concluded that unchecked growth would collide with natural resource limits within a matter of decades. The model’s arbitrary assumptions produced arbitrary conclusions, dressed in the borrowed authority of systems science and computer modelling. Economists at the time savaged the exercise as an elaborate apparatus concealing unfalsifiable claims.
Malthusian gloom, in other words, never really goes out of fashion; it merely changes its wardrobe. Where the Club of Rome had mainframe computers and system dynamics diagrams, PIK has Earth-system modelling and a “Planetary Health Check” branded website. The underlying choice on offer, then as now, is the same: either humanity abandons industrial civilisation or it faces Armageddon. I have written before about how this framing has resurfaced in the contemporary ‘degrowth’ movement, which dresses the same anti-growth instinct in the more marketable language of ‘wellbeing economics’ and planetary limits. PIK’s report is simply the scientific-sounding scaffolding on which that political project is built.
Sixty scientists, zero falsifiability
There is an old, likely apocryphal, story about Albert Einstein. Confronted with a pamphlet titled 100 Authors Against Einstein which denounced the theory of relativity, he is said to have remarked that if he were wrong, one scientist with proof would have been enough. The anecdote endures because it captures something true about science: authority by headcount is not evidence. Sixty PIK co-authors signing a report is a demonstration of institutional consensus, not of a tested and falsifiable hypothesis. Science, as Karl Popper argued, proceeds by proposing hypotheses that can in principle be proven wrong and then rigorously trying to prove them wrong — not by assembling ever-larger committees of agreement. A plurality of scientists agreeing has, historically, been wrong before; the early 20th century’s favourable view of eugenics was also, in its day, a consensus position among credentialed experts.
Judged by that Popperian standard, PIK’s “planetary health check” fails at the very first hurdle. Its “tipping points” — the supposed thresholds beyond which Earth systems flip irreversibly into a new and debilitated state — are treated throughout as settled fact rather than contested hypothesis. Yet large, complex equilibrium systems generally do the opposite of what catastrophist framing assumes: when perturbed, they tend back towards equilibrium, as described by Le Chatelier’s principle. The “tipping point” is a scare quote with no scientific content.
The German science blog Klimanachrichten has made precisely this case against PIK directly, in an analysis summarised and translated by No Tricks Zone. Its central argument is that PIK researchers routinely interpret ordinary statistical noise in climate data — natural, historically unremarkable fluctuations — as evidence of a permanent, accelerating catastrophe. On this reading, the “accelerations” PIK reports are not statistically distinguishable from background variability. “Tipping points,” the critique continues, function for PIK less as a proven physical mechanism than as a psychological instrument: a way of instilling fear and shaping policy that borrows the vocabulary, but not the evidentiary discipline, of science.
This is hardly a new complaint against the doom-forecasting industry. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has catalogued more than 50 years of confidently declared environmental deadlines — mass starvation, resource exhaustion, the ‘end of oil’, ice-free summers by dates now long past — that have come and gone without incident. The predictions fail; the institutions and the Al Gores issuing them rarely pay a reputational price, and the doom-forecasting business simply issues an updated deadline. PIK’s 2026 report reads as this year’s instalment of a genre that has been wrong, repeatedly and specifically, for half a century, without noticeably updating its priors.
What is it about the Germans?
Ideology has a near-miraculous capacity to reshape how intellectual elites misperceive objective reality and impose their views by compliant mass media which amplify the ideology into received wisdom. Germany’s climate politics offer a case study. There is a peculiar metaphysical puzzle at the heart of all this well captured by Rupert Darwall’s book on the totalitarian roots of the climate industrial complex that deserves more attention than it gets. PIK is a German institution, and Germany today presents one of the odder spectacles in the industrialised world. Sixty German scientists confidently inform the world that industrial civilisation must be reined in after the country dismantled its own nuclear and coal capacity in moralistic fervour – deindustrialising its own economy, felling millennia-old Teutonic forest for wind turbines that cause habitat loss and kill birds of prey, and exporting, through institutions like PIK, an ‘end of the world’ mania to the rest of Europe and beyond. It is an industrial civilisation that appears, in its official climate discourse, to have turned against itself, sacrificing the welfare of its citizens at the altar of Gaia.
Adaptation, not apocalypse
The question that PIK-style reports systematically avoid is the William Nordhaus question: given real but modest and manageable warming, what is the economically optimal, gradual path of adaptation and carbon pricing, as opposed to the demand for immediate, sweeping transformation justified by worst-case unscientific “tipping-point” scenarios? Even the Nordhaus question is overstated. As William Happer and W. A. van Wijngaarden show, CO₂’s strong absorption bands are already largely saturated, so each extra increment of the gas traps far less heat than the last in a logarithmic function. The “planetary-boundaries” framework, dressed up annually as a “health check”, presents an essentially political judgement. The planet is not a medical patient, and it has no need for doctors prescribing a modern version of bloodletting as a cure.
A patient’s chart is only as good as the thresholds written on it. When those thresholds are arbitrary, unfalsifiable and renewed every September with the same verdict — worse than ever, but redeemable if only we act right now — readers would do well to ask not whether the planet is sick, but whether the diagnosis was ever really about the planet at all.
The 60 doctors at PIK are fake and doom-mongering never goes out of fashion; it only changes its letterhead.
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO₂ Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
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