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.
A Reuters column by energy columnist Ron Bousso (published November 12, 2026) argues that the push for faster global electrification at COP31 is colliding with Europe’s economic and political constraints.
The EU aims to lead as the world’s first “electro- continent.”
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A Reuters column by energy columnist Ron Bousso (published November 12, 2026) argues that the push for faster global electrification at COP31 is colliding with Europe’s economic and political constraints.
COP31, hosted by Turkiye in Antalya (with Australia leading negotiations), is promoting a flagship voluntary pledge to raise electricity’s share of global final energy consumption to 35% by 2035 from around 20% today.
The rationale is that shifting cars, heating, industry and other uses from direct fossil fuels to electricity is essential for cutting emissions, especially with rising demand from AI and other sources. Electrification is only as clean as the underlying power mix, however.
The EU aims to lead as the world’s first “electro- continent.”
In September it outlined plans to nearly double electricity’s share of its final energy use to about 46% by 2040, mainly via heat pumps, EVs, solar and wind.
Officials estimate this could slash the bloc’s fossil- fuel import bill by €260 billion a year by 2040.
Bousso highlights two major headwinds:
China dependence: China dominates supply chains for solar panels, batteries, EVs, magnets and rare earths (roughly 75% of global EVs and more than 80% of battery cells). It also supplies most of the EU’s imported solar modules and a large share of wind turbines. The EU’s trade deficit with China reached €359.9 billion in 2025 (up more than 20%), driven in part by Chinese EVs that threaten Europe’s auto industry. Brussels has imposed tariffs of up to 45% on Chinese EVs. Faster electrification therefore risks swapping fossil- fuel import dependence for reliance on a major industrial rival. Domestic manufacturing and critical- minerals efforts will take years.
US- Iran war and energy prices: Now in its ninth month, the conflict has disrupted Gulf oil and gas flows via the Strait of Hormuz, driving European diesel above $200 a barrel and $200 a barrel to multi- year highs. This has reinforced the energy- security case for electrification but also prompted short- term fossil- fuel prioritization. Some countries (Britain, Greece, Romania) have moved to boost domestic fossil production or ease phase- down policies. The EU delayed methane- reporting rules for importers by a year. Since March, governments including Germany, France, Spain and Britain have enacted more than €40 billion in tax cuts and subsidies to cushion energy costs (per Bruegel). Right- wing parties in several countries are campaigning against costly net- zero measures and in favor of fossil fuels.
Bousso concludes that extreme weather has made the climate case urgent, yet the economic and political room to deliver rapid clean electrification is shrinking.
Europe is squeezed between climate risks, trade and industrial competition with China, and immediate energy- security pressures.
The full column appears on Reuters Open Interest (paywalled for many readers) and is mirrored on sites such as BOE Report.
Related coverage notes debates at COP31 over whether the electrification goal should explicitly require clean (low- carbon) electricity versus any electricity, with some EU countries pushing for stronger clean- power language.
The study finds that rain boosts global ocean carbon dioxide (CO₂) uptake by about 13.6% relative to wind-driven gas exchange alone. Global carbon budgets may therefore underestimate the ocean’s carbon absorption by roughly 5– 15%, because they do not fully account for rain’s effects.
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Rain may increase ocean carbon uptake more than we thought, a November 11, 2026, article by Rebecca Fowler from Columbia University’s Climate School (State of the Planet and Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory).
It reports on a new Nature Geoscience study (led by Carson Witte of Lamont-Doherty, with coauthors Christopher Zappa of Lamont and Wade McGillis of the University of Notre Dame).
The study finds that rain boosts global ocean carbon dioxide (CO₂) uptake by about 13.6% relative to wind-driven gas exchange alone. Global carbon budgets may therefore underestimate the ocean’s carbon absorption by roughly 5– 15%, because they do not fully account for rain’s effects.
Rain acts in three main ways:
Dilution of surface seawater (the largest factor, ~8% of the relative increase): Fresh rainwater lowers salinity in a shallow surface layer (typically 1- 3 m deep). This alters carbonate chemistry and favors greater CO₂ absorption from the atmosphere. The freshened “lens” can persist for hours unless mixed downward by wind.
Wet deposition (~3.8%): Raindrops absorb CO₂ as they fall and deliver it directly into the ocean.
Turbulence: Raindrop impacts enhance gas exchange at the air- sea interface. Alone this contributes little, but it interacts with and amplifies the dilution effect.
The researchers used a model (RIM-3) that tracks how rainfall changes sea-surface salinity over time (validated against satellite salinity data).
They applied it to rainfall and wind data from the year 2000 for ocean areas between 60°S and 60°N. A simpler method on the same data gave a lower estimate (~8.4%), close to the upper end of a 2024 study that put the rain boost at 5- 7% (or +0.14- 0.19 PgC yr⁻¹).
The newer work suggests simpler approaches understate the dilution contribution. Rain’s cooling effect (not fully included in the main 13.6% figure) could add up to ~2 more percentage points.
Key implications and caveats
The relative effect is strongest in places like the tropical Indian Ocean (where wind- driven uptake is smaller). Across the tropics, rain can offset some ocean CO₂ outgassing.
Most existing ocean CO₂ measurements (e.g., ~95% in the SOCAT database) are taken at ~5 m depth, below the main rain- influenced layer, so they capture only about 30% of rain’s combined surface effects.
The 5– 15% underestimation range is a rough guide reflecting earlier work plus uncertainties (especially in quantifying dilution). Future shifts in rainfall patterns, winds, ocean CO₂, temperature, or salinity could change rain’s net contribution, though dilution itself should consistently favor greater uptake.
The authors note the need for better near- surface salinity and rainfall observations (especially in equatorial regions) and direct air- sea CO₂ flux measurements during and after rain events to refine these estimates.
This builds on earlier work (including Biosphere 2 experiments and regional studies) showing rain’s influence on gas exchange. The ocean already absorbs roughly a quarter of human CO₂ emissions; properly accounting for rain improves the accuracy of global carbon budgets.
Global carbon dioxide flux into the surface ocean intensified by rain- induced dilution
Rain affects air- sea CO₂ flux through three mechanisms:
Wet deposition (direct delivery of CO₂ dissolved in raindrops).
Turbulence enhancement from raindrop impacts.
Changes in temperature and salinity of the ocean’s top microlayer (primarily freshening and dilution).
Using the most realistic available model of rain- induced dilution (RIM- 3) applied to high- resolution satellite datasets, the study finds a total rain-induced increase in ocean carbon uptake of 13.6% relative to wind- driven exchange alone.
Dilution accounts for about two- thirds of the additional uptake via freshening-induced repartitioning of the carbonate system. This roughly doubles the previous upper- bound estimate (from a 2024 study).
Current observational coverage of surface- ocean carbon captures only ~30% of the dilution effect, and global carbon budget estimates are likely underestimating the ocean carbon sink by 10 ± 5% by omitting rain effects.
Key findings and methods
Model and data:RIM- 3 (Rain Impact Model 3) tracks the time evolution of shallow (1- 3 m), buoyant fresh layers that can persist for hours after rainfall. It was validated against Aquarius/SMAP satellite sea -surface salinity anomalies and forced with high- resolution precipitation (NOAA CMORPH), winds (ERA5), and other datasets for the year 2000 (primarily 60°S- 60°N).
Comparison with a simpler instantaneous dilution model (S20) and the 2024 Parc et al. analysis shows RIM- 3 roughly doubles the dilution contribution, making it the dominant rain effect.
Wet deposition contributes ~3.8%. Turbulence alone is small but amplifies the dilution effect when co- located.
Regional importance is highest in the tropics (especially the tropical Indian Ocean and Intertropical Convergence Zone), where high rainfall, low winds, and weak CO₂ gradients make rain effects relatively large. Rain generally shifts net flux toward greater ocean uptake (except in a small eastern tropical Pacific region).
Rain- induced cooling is discussed as an additional (secondary) contributor that could further increase uptake but was not fully included in the main 13.6% figure.
Existing surface- ocean CO₂ measurements (mostly taken at ≥5 m depth) miss much of the rain- affected surface layer, so budgets based on them under-represent the true sink.
The authors emphasize the need for better observations of near- surface salinity, temperature, and CO₂ during and after rain events, plus improved modeling of how these fresh layers evolve and mix.
This is the study referenced in the Columbia Climate School press release (“Rain May Increase Ocean Carbon Uptake More Than We Thought”).
Lead authors include researchers from Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory (Columbia) and collaborators (including Wade McGillis).
The paper is open access; the full PDF is available via the Nature link.
Rain impacts the flux of carbon dioxide (CO2) across the air–sea interface by three mechanisms: wet deposition, enhancement of surface gas exchange through turbulence and changes in the temperature and salinity of the ocean’s top microlayer. Understanding of these effects has progressed to enable improved estimations for the impact of rain on global ocean carbon uptake, but substantial epistemic uncertainty in estimates of rain-induced salinity dilution limits further constraint on the ocean carbon sink. Here we present a global analysis of rain effects on CO2 exchange employing the most realistic available model of rain-induced dilution for high-resolution satellite datasets, yielding a total rain-induced increase in ocean uptake of 13.6% relative to a wind-only effect. Dilution is found to be responsible for about two-thirds of the total additional uptake due to freshening-induced repartitioning of the carbonate system. This doubles the previously reported upper bound on rain-enhanced ocean carbon uptake, highlighting the importance of saltwater dilution by rain and the corresponding need to improve quantitative understanding of the surface ocean during and after rain. We estimate that observational coverage of carbon in the surface ocean implicitly captures 30% of the dilution effect and find that current global carbon budget estimates are probably underestimating the ocean carbon sink by 10 ± 5% due to their exclusion of rain effects.
Futurism, in a piece by Frank Landymore that MSN is now syndicating, has solved the mystery of the silent Rice Krispies. The headline reads “Climate Change Has Become So Bad That Rice Krispies Don’t Have Actual Rice in Them Anymore.”
Futurism, in a piece by Frank Landymore that MSN is now syndicating, has solved the mystery of the silent Rice Krispies. The headline reads “Climate Change Has Become So Bad That Rice Krispies Don’t Have Actual Rice in Them Anymore.” The argument behind it, once you strip away the adjectives, goes like this: the weather changed, a recipe changed, therefore climate change did it. That’s the whole case, and every paragraph of the article rests on two things happening at the same time.
Here is how Futurism gets there:
The classic puffed rice foodstuff now no longer contains actual rice grains, at least in UK and European markets, the manufacturer Kellogg’s recently admitted. It will now use rice flour and corn flour, which aside from gustatory concerns, will result in it being noticeably quieter than it used to be. Kellogg’s, in the face of complaints online, insists that retaining the original sound was a “huge focus.”
It’s yet another example of the corporate cost-cutting putrefaction we’ve come to expect — and the reason for it is grim: climate change.
I’d like readers to notice what just happened in that second paragraph. Mr. Landymore correctly identifies corporate cost-cutting, then decides in the same sentence that the cost-cutting was really caused by the climate. He doesn’t explain how. He doesn’t seem to think he needs to.
His evidence is one line from a Kellogg’s spokesperson:
A spokesperson told media outlets that the reformulation will help “maintain consistent quality at a time when changing weather conditions are affecting the quality and availability of some of the rice and grains used in our cereals.”
The company didn’t get into specifics, but the recipe change comes as a powerful” super El Niño” climate phenomenon has devastated agriculture in South and Southeast Asia, where more than half the world’s rice is grown.
“The company didn’t get into specifics, but” is the entire scientific method of this article. Kellogg’s offered a phrase, “changing weather conditions,” that a PR department could have used in any year since farming began. Futurism admits the company gave no specifics, then supplies its own: an El Niño, then climate change behind the El Niño, then a straight line from both to a box of cereal on a shelf in Tesco. “Comes as” is the giveaway. It means “happened around the same time.” That is a correlation, and a loose one, and the article treats it as proof.
If two things happening at the same time is all it takes, Futurism had plenty of other suspects to choose from, and every one of them has more going for it than the weather.
Start with the recipe itself. According to The Grocer, the UK trade paper that broke the story on November 3, the new Rice Krispies use rice flour instead of whole rice, Coco Pops use rice flour and corn flour, and both now contain wheat gluten, so people with a wheat allergy can no longer eat them. The rice didn’t vanish because of a drought, it was ground into flour, stretched with corn and held together with wheat gluten. A company that couldn’t get rice would not be making its cereal out of rice flour. A company that wanted to spend less on rice would do exactly this.
Then there are falling sales. ITV News reported that The Grocer’s Top Products Survey shows Rice Krispies sales down in both value and volume. A brand that is losing sales has a plain reason to cut what it costs to make.
Then there is the new owner. Mars completed its purchase of Kellanova, the maker of Kellogg’s cereals outside North America, on December 11, 2025. It was a $35.9 billion deal, and Mars paid for it with $26 billion in new bonds plus $4 billion in term loans. Eleven months after a company takes on that kind of debt, one of its brands gets a cheaper recipe. I can’t prove those are connected, but I can at least describe how one would lead to the other, which is more than Futurism did for the weather.
And then there is fertilizer. The trade site Sustainable Rice News reports that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz from late February pushed urea above US$850 a tonne in April, just as farmers across South and Southeast Asia were deciding how much to put on their fields. Expensive fertilizer means less fertilizer, and less fertilizer means smaller harvests. That’s a war, not the climate.
Each of these happened at the same time as the recipe change, just like the weather. The difference is that each of them comes with a mechanism you can actually explain. Futurism picked the one suspect it couldn’t connect to anything except by saying “comes as.”
Better still, there is a control group, and Futurism skipped right past it. Kellogg’s cereals in Canada and the U.S. belong to a separate company, WK Kellogg Co, which buys rice in the same world market and lives under the same weather. Its spokesperson told CBC News and Just Food:
“Our Rice Krispies cereals in the US and Canada (e.g., Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies, Kellogg’s Frosted Krispies) are made with real rice and will continue to be,” a spokesperson for WK Kellogg informed Just Food.
“There are no changes to their ingredients or recipes and consumers can continue to expect the same delicious Rice Krispies taste they know and love.”
Same planet, same El Niño, same rice market, and whole rice is still in the box in Toronto. If climate change took the rice out of British Rice Krispies, it somehow forgot to do the same thing in Canada. What differs between the two is the company, its owner and its finances, which is exactly where anyone with an interest in causes would look. This was all in the coverage Futurism was summarizing, and none of it made the article.
Now to the rice crop, which Futurism says has been “devastated”:
Asian rice prices have climbed to their highest in almost two years as El Niño has impacted rice production, Bloomberg reported, while the US Department of Agriculture is forecasting a decline in global rice production for the first time in over a decade.
The USDA does forecast a decline. Its October Rice Outlook puts the 2026/27 world crop at 533.1 million tonnes, down 12.6 million, or 2.3 per cent, from last year. Futurism neglected to say what last year was. It was the largest rice crop in history. Here is the USDA’s record of world rice production since 1960:
World rice production (milled), 1960/61 to 2026/27. 2026/27 is the October forecast. Chart from USDA Foreign Agricultural Service PSD data.
In the USDA’s production table, world output was 516.9 million tonnes in 2022/23, 523.6 in 2023/24, 542.2 in 2024/25 and 545.7 in 2025/26. The forecast for this year, 533.1, beats every crop ever grown before 2024.
The “devastated” harvest is the third-biggest rice crop in history.
World stocks are not short either. The same USDA table puts ending stocks at 198.5 million tonnes, which Sustainable Rice News notes would still be the second highest on record. India held 68.8 million tonnes in government stocks on May 1, up from 59.5 million a year earlier. The Asian benchmark, Thai 5 per cent broken rice, was US$465 to US$468 a tonne in early October, and Indian rice was about US$384, up just US$23 from a year before, according to the same report. “Highest in almost two years” means rice costs a bit more than it did when it was cheap.
Since Futurism wants correlation to stand in for causation, let’s give it a correlation worth having. The chart above runs from 1960 to today. Over that time the world warmed, and the world’s rice harvest grew from about 151 million tonnes to 546 million, more than three and a half times as much. If we use Futurism’s method, which is to line up the weather with whatever else changed and call it the cause, then warming has been the best thing that ever happened to rice. Nobody serious argues it that way, because more irrigation, better seed, more fertilizer and more land planted did most of that work. Those are causes with mechanisms, and they are the same kind of thing Futurism ignored when it came to the cereal.
One more problem is timing. A food company doesn’t reformulate two cereals, test them for taste and texture, change the allergen labelling and print new packaging for a continent in a few weeks. Just Food reports the new recipes are rolling out across European markets “in the coming weeks and months.” Work like that was underway well before anyone was forecasting this year’s harvest, which means the effect Futurism describes would have had to come before its cause.
Futurism closes with this:
In the grand scheme of things, a cereal reformulation sounds like a trivial casualty in the face of an unfolding climate crisis. But it’s just one of many more to come.
I’m sure it is. By this standard every product that gets cheaper, smaller or worse from now on will be a casualty of the climate crisis, as long as the weather changed somewhere in the same year, and it always does.
If changing weather conditions took the rice out of Rice Krispies, why is it still in the box in Canada and the United States?
Scientists from Monash University have, for the first time, identified and tracked “moisture modes” and related systems as discrete, trackable weather objects, showing that these less dramatic systems collectively contribute more to tropical rainfall than tropical cyclones.
The paper introduces a practical framework for defining and tracking synoptic-scale tropical weather systems (other than tropical cyclones).
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Scientists from Monash University have, for the first time, identified and tracked “moisture modes” and related systems as discrete, trackable weather objects, showing that these less dramatic systems collectively contribute more to tropical rainfall than tropical cyclones.
The study, published 6 November 2026 in Weather and Climate Dynamics (Respati, Singh & Jakob), uses more than three decades of satellite observations (1984- 2016). Researchers identified large areas of high, cold cloud linked to organised tropical convection and tracked them as individual objects, classifying them mainly by propagation speed:
Moisture modes: relatively slow- moving systems that organise thunderstorms and rainfall over several days; strongly coupled to moisture perturbations.
Inertio- gravity (IG) waves and gravity- wave systems: faster- moving systems with stronger temperature perturbations.
Mixed systems: intermediate speeds and characteristics.
This turns moisture modes from largely theoretical concepts into trackable objects analogous to tropical cyclones.
Key findings include:
Moisture modes are especially important near the northern and southern margins of the humid tropics (including areas near tropical Australia), where they are linked to 45- 75% of extreme three- hourly rainfall events in some regions.
Overall, the defined systems (including TCs) account for a large share of total tropical rainfall and an even larger share of heavy rainfall.
Mixed systems tend to matter more in equatorial regions such as the Pacific ITCZ; IG waves and TCs each contribute less due to lower frequency and spatial coverage.
Professor Christian Jakob noted: “Tropical cyclones are the divas of the tropics… But less dramatic systems occur much more frequently, and collectively they are very important for rainfall.”
Lead author Muhamad Reyhan Respati emphasised that defining moisture modes as objects allows them to be tracked like tropical cyclones. The approach helps fill a longstanding gap: mid- latitude weather is routinely described via discrete systems (fronts, highs, lows), while the tropics previously lacked a comparable framework between individual thunderstorms and planetary- scale waves.
Source press release: Monash University, 11 November 2026. Paper: “The moisture mode-to-gravity wave spectrum as a framework to define tropical weather systems,” Weather Clim. Dynam., 7, 2171- 2192, 2026.
The moisture mode- to- gravity wave spectrum as a framework to define tropical weather systems
The paper introduces a practical framework for defining and tracking synoptic-scale tropical weather systems (other than tropical cyclones).
It bridges two previous approaches:
Object tracking of mesoscale convective systems (MCSs)
Spectral analysis of planetary- scale waves (e.g., MJO, equatorial waves)
Using theory on the moisture mode- to- gravity wave spectrum, the authors classify convectively coupled systems by zonal phase speed:
Category
Phase speed (approx.)
Dominant physics
Moisture modes
Slow (≲ 9 m s⁻¹)
Strong moisture anomalies; weak temperature gradients
Mixed systems
Intermediate (~9- 27 m s⁻¹)
Hybrid moisture and buoyancy characteristics
Inertio- gravity (IG) waves
Fast (≳ 27 m s⁻¹)
Stronger temperature and buoyancy anomalies
Key findings
Consistent with theory, the ratio of low- level temperature to moisture anomalies increases with phase speed (moisture variations remain non-negligible even for IG waves).
Moisture modes and mixed systems show distinct dynamical structures near vs. off the equator; IG waves are less clearly differentiated.
Characteristics are broadly consistent across the tropics, with some regional variations.
Rainfall importance:
Moisture modes account for up to 75% of extreme rainfall events along climatological moist margins (including regions near tropical Australia).
Mixed systems dominate rainfall contributions in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).
Together with tropical cyclones, these systems explain a large fraction of total and especially heavy tropical rainfall.
Methods (high- level)
Satellite observations (primarily outgoing longwave radiation / high cold cloud areas associated with organised convection, 1984- 2016).
Lagrangian object tracking of cloud systems combined with spectral filtering by phase speed.
Composites of thermodynamic and dynamic fields from reanalysis (ERA5) and precipitation data (GPM- IMERG).
Significance
This framework treats moisture modes as discrete, trackable “weather objects” analogous to mid- latitude cyclones or fronts. It opens new possibilities for:
Improved understanding of day- to- day tropical rainfall organisation
Conditional forecasting of extremes
Attribution of rainfall changes under global warming (frequency vs. intensity of different system types)
Code and data: Linked on the article page (Zenodo for analysis code; ERA5 for atmospheric fields).
This is the scientific paper behind the recent Monash University press release about systems “more important than tropical cyclones” for tropical rainfall.
Paper:The moisture mode- to- gravity wave spectrum as a framework to define tropical weather systems
Journal:Weather and Climate Dynamics, 7, 2171- 2192, 2026
Open access: Full PDF and supplement available on the Copernicus site.
Authors: Muhamad Reyhan Respati, Martin S. Singh, and Christian Jakob
Abstract
While mid-latitude weather is commonly described in terms of discrete “weather systems”, such as cyclones and fronts, an equivalent framework is less established in the tropics due to the wide range of relevant scales. Instead, tropical weather is often analysed either in Lagrangian terms, through the tracking of mesoscale convective systems, or via spectral decomposition into planetary-scale wave-like disturbances. Here, we use both spectral analysis and Lagrangian object tracking to develop a novel framework for analysing tropical weather systems. We apply recent theoretical advances to classify convectively coupled tropical motions into three types based on their zonal phase speed: moisture modes, inertio-gravity waves, and mixed systems. We show that, consistent with theory, the observed ratio of low-level temperature to moisture anomalies increases with the system’s phase speed, although moisture variations may not be negligible for inertio-gravity waves. Moisture modes and mixed systems show distinct dynamical structures near and off the equator, while inertio-gravity waves are less clearly differentiated. These characteristics are broadly consistent across the tropics, with some regional variations. We find that moisture modes account for up to 75 % of extreme rainfall events along climatological moist margins, whereas mixed systems dominate in the intertropical convergence zone. Our tropical weather systems framework offers a new way to link large-scale tropical dynamics with precipitation.
Former U.S. Secretary of State and longtime climate change devotee John Kerry made a triumphant return to the UN COP climate summit on its second day with an Orwellian claim that American voters endorsed his climate change agenda.
The American people “made climate change and its exigencies a voting issue,” he said.
Former U.S. Secretary of State and longtime climate change devotee John Kerry made a triumphant return to the UN COP climate summit on its second day with an Orwellian claim that American voters endorsed his climate change agenda.
John Kerry hurriedly walks past the CFACT delegation as he departs COP31, Wed., Nov. 11.
The American people “made climate change and its exigencies a voting issue,” he said.
A short bus ride away from Kerry’s fantasy world, a panel of corporate business leaders described the challenges for the private sector to implement lower carbon emission targets to meet “climate goals”. The consensus among this panel was that governments must institute “collective action” by mandating such targets on all businesses.
With the Democratic Party roaring back to sizable majorities in both houses of Congress, which hold the power of the purse, Mr. Kerry is right to feel giddy, since one of his party’s agenda items — kept hidden during the election campaign — is to reinstate climate mandates on U.S. businesses and, invariably, U.S. consumers, many of whom voted last week in record numbers.
Well into his octogenarian years, yet still vigorous with a fulsome head of hair (likely fake), Mr. Kerry gaslighted his audience with the mendacious claim that “Americans did vote for clean, affordable energy,” deceitfully declaring they embraced the climate agenda, which is the opposite of affordable.
Mr. Kerry has never let facts, science, or practicality get in the way of his pursuit of climate nirvana on Earth, and no one in the building was going to challenge him, including the supine media.
Last week’s election outcomes were arguably a repudiation of climate policies long championed by Kerry, former Vice President Al Gore, and their fellow climate colleagues in the U.S. House and Senate.
Reputable post-election surveys found that the overwhelming concern of voters was the lack of affordability in the cost of living, which was the theme the Democrats used to defeat President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress and capture robust majorities in both houses. The affordability issue stemmed primarily from high gasoline and food prices, for which the major influences are the Iran war and tariffs.
Climate change did not register as a concern for American voters. Since climate policies necessarily lead to higher gasoline and oil prices to help make “renewable” energy more economically competitive, e.g., by canceling oil and natural gas development and imposing usage mandates on utility companies, it stands to reason that Americans voted against such policies that would mathematically exacerbate their affordability concerns.
Which brings us to the COP31 panel, Leading by Example: Corporate Best Practices for Climate Action, which comprised several private-sector business leaders who discussed ways to “accelerate implementation” of renewable energy to reduce “greenhouse gases … to achieve climate goals.”
This panel at first danced around the implications of achieving such climate goals before eventually acknowledging that reducing one’s carbon footprint with alternative energy sources is “not cost effective [and] no one would do this,” said Emre Kuzu, General Manager of Honeywell in Türkiye. Since cost-prohibitive climate goals cannot be achieved through the free marketplace, “[government] mandates are essential,” he said.
“Collective action is the name of the game here,” said one of the panel’s moderators, an assertion no one on the panel challenged, but all endorsed.
“Collective behavior is very important,” said Murat Tarakcioglu, the chairman of Cargill in Türkiye, the Middle East and Africa.
Agreeing among on climate goals and the need for “action” is free and easy to businesses and nations alike, which is basically what every COP summit celebrates. “Implementation” of climate policies to reduce carbon emissions is something else entirely because it imposes tangible cost increases to businesses, which are passed onto customers.
Addressing the affordability problem in the U.S. starts with lowering gasoline prices and removing tariffs, which will necessitate increasing global supply of oil and natural gas.
By contrast, “achieving climate goals” necessitates government mandates to impose “collective action” to use more expensive wind and solar energy and cut the supply and usage of oil and gas, which will raise their costs.
“Fighting climate change” through “implementation” of climate goals agreed upon at annual UN COP summits is costly and economically damaging, which is why so many nations balk at doing so, and why others (e.g., China, India and the U.S. under the Trump administration) refuse altogether to play along.
The new Democratic congressional majorities, if they echo John Kerry’s delusion to eagerly reinstate high-cost climate policies, do so at their political peril.
Similar changes in cloud cover can produce different climate effects primarily because of differences in the clouds’ initial reflectivity (how strongly they reflect sunlight).
It is a gold open- access article. Direct full- text retrieval is currently limited, but the University of Wyoming news release (based on the paper and interviews with the lead author) provides a clear summary of its main results.
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Similar changes in cloud cover can produce different climate effects primarily because of differences in the clouds’ initial reflectivity (how strongly they reflect sunlight).
A University of Wyoming led study (published October 18, 2026, in Geophysical Research Letters) examined this using 250 experimental configurations of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 3 (E3SMv3).
Researchers focused on marine low clouds (especially stratocumulus) over eastern subtropical oceans, which strongly cool Earth by reflecting sunlight.
How these clouds respond to warming is a major source of uncertainty in climate projections.
Key findings
Reflectivity matters more than coverage alone: The same reduction in cloud cover has a larger warming effect if the clouds were highly reflective to begin with (they blocked more incoming solar energy). Losing less- reflective clouds has a smaller impact. In short, both how much cloud cover changes and the clouds’ starting optical properties determine the net climate effect.
A major control on reflectivity in the model is the efficiency of converting cloud water into rain. When this process is less efficient, more liquid water stays in the clouds, making them brighter and more reflective and amplifying the climate impact of any given change in coverage.
The model generally captured the direction of observed cloud responses to meteorological and aerosol changes (compared with satellite data from ~2010- 2016) but often exaggerated their strength.
A consistent shortcoming: the model failed to reproduce the observed cloud response to surface temperature advection (winds transporting cooler air over warmer ocean regions). In reality, this tends to increase low- cloud cover and reflectivity via enhanced near- surface mixing, heat, and moisture; none of the 250 simulations recovered this relationship. Fixing it will require better representation of the underlying small- scale processes.
Lead author Timothy Myers (UW Department of Atmospheric Science) emphasized that evaluating models requires looking at both coverage changes and baseline reflectivity.
The work builds on the UW- led Nephele project, which systematically varies uncertain cloud, convection, and aerosol parameters. Collaborators included other UW researchers and Mark Zelinka of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Bottom line: Predicting future warming depends not only on whether cloud cover increases or decreases, but on the radiative properties of those clouds.
Highly reflective clouds that diminish allow more solar energy into the climate system than the same areal loss of dimmer clouds. Improving these processes in models should reduce uncertainty in cloud feedback and climate sensitivity estimates.
The scientific paper is “Cloud Controlling Factor Analysis Reveals E3SMv3 Structural Bias and Mean State Controls on Stratocumulus Radiative Sensitivity.”
Stratocumulus radiative sensitivity to controlling factors. Credit: Geophysical Research Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1029/2026gl125263
Cloud Controlling Factor Analysis Reveals E3SMv3 Structural Bias and Mean State Controls on Stratocumulus Radiative Sensitivity
It is a gold open- access article. Direct full- text retrieval is currently limited, but the University of Wyoming news release (based on the paper and interviews with the lead author) provides a clear summary of its main results.
Researchers used a large perturbed- parameter ensemble (250 configurations of E3SMv3, drawn from the UW- led Nephele project) to examine how marine stratocumulus, low clouds respond to changes in their environment (meteorological and aerosol “cloud- controlling factors”). They compared the simulations with satellite observations covering roughly 2010– 2016.
Key results include:
Similar changes in cloud cover can produce very different climate effects depending on the clouds’ baseline reflectivity (how strongly they reflect sunlight). Losing highly reflective clouds allows more solar energy into the climate system than losing the same area of less- reflective clouds. Both the change in coverage and the starting optical properties therefore matter for cloud feedback and future warming estimates.
The efficiency with which the model converts cloud liquid water into rain is a strong control on cloud reflectivity. When conversion is less efficient, more water remains in the clouds → higher reflectivity → larger climate impact from a given change in cover.
The model generally captures the direction of observed cloud responses to most meteorological and aerosol changes but frequently overestimates their magnitude.
A persistent structural bias exists none of the 250 simulations reproduced the observed cloud response to surface temperature advection (winds carrying cooler air over warmer ocean water). In observations this process tends to increase low- cloud cover and reflectivity; the model systematically misses it. Correcting this will require improvements to how the underlying boundary-layer and mixing processes are represented.
Authors (from the UW release): Timothy Myers (lead), Travis Aerenson, Jacqueline Nugent, Hunter Brown, and Daniel McCoy (University of Wyoming Department of Atmospheric Science), plus Mark Zelinka (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).
Implication: Accurate assessment of cloud feedback (and therefore climate sensitivity) requires evaluating both how cloud amount changes and the mean-state radiative properties of those clouds. The study identifies specific processes for model developers to target.
For the complete scientific details, methods, figures, and quantitative results, access the paper directly via the DOI link above (or through an institutional subscription and open- access route).
We investigate marine stratocumulus cloud radiative sensitivity to meteorological and aerosol controlling factors in a perturbed parameter ensemble of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 3 (E3SMv3). The ensemble perturbs 25 cloud, convection, and aerosol parameters, spanning diverse cloud behavior. The default simulation and many ensemble members capture observed responses to most controlling factors, but not to surface temperature advection, revealing a structural deficiency in processes linking stratocumulus to advection. Many members also overestimate cloud fraction and radiative responses to inversion strength, free-tropospheric humidity, and sulfate aerosol optical depth. Differences in mean cloud optical depth substantially modify the radiative impact of similar cloud fraction changes, showing that the mean cloud state strongly regulates stratocumulus radiative sensitivity. Across the ensemble, conversion of cloud water to rain controls mean optical depth, identifying autoconversion as a key microphysical control on stratocumulus radiative sensitivity.
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