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.
Martin Jagger, a climate activist specializing in carbon capture & storage, recently wrote a sobering post on the progress of this technology in addressing the assumed- to- be climate crisis. This problematic approach is another example of the tears- in-the- ocean choices of climate mitigation policy.
“Today, global operating nameplate capture capacity is approximately 60 million tonnes a year. If fully utilised, that would represent gross capture equivalent to roughly 14-15 hours of annual global energy and industrial emissions. Actual verified net storage is lower.” (- Martin Jagger, below)
Martin Jagger, a climate activist specializing in carbon capture & storage, recently wrote a sobering post on the progress of this technology in addressing the assumed-to-be climate crisis. This problematic approach is another example of the tears-in-the-ocean choices of climate mitigation policy.
“For twenty years,” he begins, “I have argued that CCS has an important role to play in managing emissions from industries where practical alternatives remain limited.” The progress to date has been small, and the effect on global emissions minuscule. He explains:
Today, global operating nameplate capture capacity is approximately 60 million tonnes a year. If fully utilised, that would represent gross capture equivalent to roughly 14-15 hours of annual global energy and industrial emissions. Actual verified net storage is lower…. Closing even the gap between today’s operating capacity and the announced [EIA estimated] 2030 pipeline would require an extraordinary acceleration in permitting, financing, construction, commissioning and sustained operating performance.
The interest and potential investment are there, he believes, but “delivery” is small and problematic.
… announcements are not delivery, storage resources are not injection capacity, and nameplate capacity is not independently verified climate impact. The next phase of CCS must therefore be more demanding than the last. By 2030, success should no longer be measured primarily by the number of projects announced, memoranda signed, licences awarded or billions committed. It should be measured by verified net tonnes securely stored, year after year. That requires a tougher delivery model.
He alludes to the problem of getting from hyperbole to practice.
We have largely solved the problem of attracting interest and announcing investment. We have not yet solved the delivery problem. That distinction matters because CCS cannot indefinitely be judged by its potential. Nor should every delay be explained by saying that the industry simply needs more policy support or more public money. After two decades, the burden of proof must begin to shift.
Continuing:
That shift also requires greater honesty about how progress is reported. Too many of the institutions responsible for advocacy and industry leadership still present CCS largely as a good-news story. New projects, funding awards and headline capacity are publicised; delays, cancellations, operating shortfalls and the absence of verified storage receive much less attention.
Final Comment
Government incentives for carbon capture and storage, formalized in the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 (Section 45Q tax credit), should be terminated to please the free-market community and many environmentalists. [2] The whole initiative is inconsequential to global or regional climate, and projects have been opposed by local residents in the U.S. and elsewhere. [3]
I am an Executive Consultant in Energy Transition Strategy and Decarbonisation Delivery with a track record of bringing operator discipline to CCS policy and projects. I established Shell’s Carbon Capture and Storage Centre of Excellence in 2007 and helped shape international frameworks for long-term CO₂ storage that informed UNFCCC CDM mechanisms and regulatory guidance.
I currently advise sovereigns, regulators and innovators on areas where policy realism, technical feasibility and capital must align. My work tests the credibility of targets, the true scaling pathways for CCS and low-carbon fuels, and the structural barriers that stall momentum – especially FID drag, subsidy distortion, infrastructure mis-sequencing and the policy-performance gap.
[2] The tax credits since 2022 are $85 per ton of CO₂ stored for dedicated geologic storage projects and $60 per ton for CO₂ utilization projects with associated storage, increased subsidies from $50 and $35 (2018) and $20 and $10 (2008). A summary of federal largess from Taxpayers for Common Sense reads:
For decades, the federal government has provided billions of dollars in both direct and indirect subsidies to support CCS technology and projects. These subsidies have included research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) funding, loan guarantees, and tax credits.
Over the past few decades some of these subsidies have gone to projects that have been repeatedly started and stopped, only to eventually collapse due to various economic issues and controversies (e.g., FutureGen, Kemper). Additionally, the 45Q tax credit, which has grown significantly in both size and scope, has been mired in fraud and waste. To date, the federal government has spent tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on CCS through research and development funding and tax credits, yet the technology is still struggling with widescale deployment issues due to high costs….
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congress provided roughly $9 billion (in nominal dollars) in annual appropriations for DOE’s FECM from FY2010 to FY2023, with over $2.8 billion specifically directed towards CCS line items…. Congress appropriated $12 billion more to the technology through the infrastructure law (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, P.L. 117-58) and greatly expanded the already lucrative tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act (Public Law 117-169).
[3] There are currently 15 operating CCS facilities in the U.S. and another 120 projects under development. The top ten projects are (verbatim):
1. Stratos Direct Air Capture (DAC) Project
Companies: Occidental Petroleum (through its subsidiary 1 Point Five) and Origis Energy Capacity: 500, 000 metric tons of CO₂ annually Application: Direct Air Capture powered by a dedicated solar portfolio Source: Origis Energy Commissions 500 MWdc Swift Air Solar Projects in …
2.CF Industries Donaldsonville CCS Facility
Companies: Calpine Corporation and Exxon Mobil Capacity: Approximately 2 million metric tons of CO₂ annually Application: Low-carbon power generation from a new natural gas plant Source: Calpine, Exxon Mobil sign CO 2 transportation and storage …
3. Calpine Baytown Energy Center CCS Project
Companies: CF Industries and Exxon Mobil Capacity: A key component of Exxon Mobil’s contracted ~9 million metric tons per annum (MTA) portfolio Application: Decarbonization of ammonia production Source: Here’s How XOM Is Scaling Up Its CCS Footprint to Reduce Emissions
Companies: Frontier Infrastructure and Baker Hughes Capacity: Positioned to be one of the largest U.S. CO₂ sequestration assets (specific tonnage not provided) Application: Multi-user CO₂ sequestration hub for industrial emitters Source: Baker Hughes, Frontier Infrastructure Partner on Carbon Capture …
7. ADM Decatur CCS Facility
Company: Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) Capacity: Averages nearly 0.5 Mtpa (based on 4.5 million metric tons sequestered over a decade) Application: Long-term industrial CCS for ethanol production Source: ADM and Carbon Capture and Storage
8. Lake Charles Power Station Integrated CO₂ Capture Project
Company: Project supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Capacity: Not specified; large-scale pilot Application: Advancing capture technologies for power generation Source: [XLS] Sheet 1 – Climate Program Portal
Company: Climeworks Capacity: Over 5, 000 tons of CO₂ annually Application: Direct Air Capture, noted as the largest operational DAC in the U.S. as of October 2025 Source: Facilities – CO 2 RE – Global CCS Institute
Researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) developed a method using “bomb carbon” (elevated radiocarbon- 14 from 1960s atmospheric nuclear tests, preserved in tree rings) in wood shavings to track how stable biochar is when added to soil.
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Researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) developed a method using “bomb carbon” (elevated radiocarbon- 14 from 1960s atmospheric nuclear tests, preserved in tree rings) in wood shavings to track how stable biochar is when added to soil.
Biochar is a charcoal- like material produced by heating biomass (here, wood) in low- oxygen conditions (pyrolysis). It is of interest for improving soil properties and as a potential long-t erm carbon sink to help mitigate climate change, with global estimates suggesting it could sequester carbon equivalent to roughly 6- 16% of annual anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. A key uncertainty has been how quickly biochar mineralizes (breaks down into CO₂) in soil versus remaining stable for decades or centuries, and how to distinguish its contribution from native soil organic matter.
The method
Atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s- 1960s roughly doubled atmospheric ¹⁴C levels, peaking around the mid-1960s. Tree rings from 1964-1967 therefore contain elevated “bomb” ¹⁴C. SLU researchers selected mature Norway spruce and Scots pine trunks from a Swedish clear- cut, identified the relevant rings, and used a professional woodturner to carefully remove outer wood and collect the thin, high-¹⁴C layers as shavings. These were pyrolyzed into biochar (tested at highest treatment temperatures of ~400°C and 650°C).
The resulting biochar had enough ¹⁴C enrichment (on average ~61.7 percent modern carbon higher than bulk soil organic matter in one report) to serve as a natural tracer. In a one-year laboratory incubation, they mixed it into soil (at 2% by dry mass), trapped emitted CO₂, and measured its ¹⁴C signature via accelerator mass spectrometry. This allowed them to quantify the share of CO₂ coming from the biochar versus the soil.
Key findings
CO₂ from biochar- amended soil showed up to about 10% higher ¹⁴C than controls, confirming a small but measurable contribution from the biochar.
Roughly 0.35% of the added biochar carbon converted to CO₂ over one year.
This implies high stability: at least half of the buried biochar is projected to remain in the soil after ~200 years (under the study conditions).
The method works with mature wood feedstock that resembles commercial biochars, offers higher precision than some natural- abundance ¹³C approaches, and avoids the need for expensive artificial isotopic labeling.
The work was published in Radiocarbon (Li et al., 2026: “Bomb ¹⁴C for tracing biochar mineralization in soil”). It was funded in part by Sweden’s Bio+ program (Swedish Energy Agency). Follow- up research is planned to examine biochar stability under climate- change scenarios in collaboration with researchers in Germany.
This approach provides a practical way to study biochar persistence, its interactions with soil organic matter, and its viability for carbon sequestration without relying solely on short- term incubations or complex lab labeling.
To obtain wood formed during the years 1964–1967, the researchers engaged professional woodturner and wood artist Åke Landström from Glanshammar. Credit: Harald Cederlund
Bomb 14C for tracing biochar mineralization in soil
This is the open- access research article “Bomb ¹⁴C for tracing biochar mineralization in soil” by Haichao Li, Harald Cederlund, Elias S. Azzi, Cecilia Sundberg, and Erik Karltun (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), published online 23 September 2026 in Radiocarbon (Volume 68, Issue 5, pp. 1146- 1154).
It is freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC- BY) licence.
Core contribution
The authors introduce and validate a practical isotopic- tracing method that uses naturally elevated “bomb” radiocarbon (¹⁴C) preserved in tree rings formed during the atmospheric nuclear- test peak (1964- 1967). Biochar made from this wood carries a clear ¹⁴C signature that can be distinguished from soil organic matter (SOM), allowing precise quantification of how much of the CO₂ released from soil comes from the biochar itself.
Methods (summary)
Mature Norway spruce and Scots pine trunks (≥70 years old) were collected from a clear- cut near Uppsala, Sweden.
Annual rings from 1964- 1967 were identified by counting and carefully isolated by professional woodturning (producing shavings).
Biochar was produced by pyrolysis under N₂ at highest treatment temperatures of 400 °C (BC400) and 650 °C (BC650). The feedstock with the highest ¹⁴C enrichment (~172.9 pMC) was selected.
Biochars were acid- washed to remove carbonates, ground (<2 mm), and mixed into a loamy- sand agricultural soil (Cambisol, 1.4 % SOC) at a 2 % (w/w) application rate.
Soils were incubated for 365 days at ~20.7 °C and 60 % water- holding capacity. Emitted CO₂ was trapped in NaOH and analysed for total C and ¹⁴C (AMS) at multiple time points.
An isotope-mixing model calculated the biochar- derived fraction of respired CO₂. Priming effects on native SOC were also quantified.
Key results
Biochar was on average 61.7 pMC higher in ¹⁴C than bulk soil organic matter, providing a clear tracer signal.
¹⁴CO₂ from biochar- amended soils was consistently and significantly higher than from controls (p < 0.0001).
Early in the incubation (first 2 weeks) 8.3- 11.4 % of mineralized CO₂- C came from biochar; later this fell to 2.3- 7.5 %.
After one year, only 0.32 ± 0.02 % (BC400) and 0.35 ± 0.01 % (BC650) of the added biochar carbon had been mineralized. The two pyrolysis temperatures did not differ significantly.
BC650 produced a measurable negative priming effect on native soil organic carbon (–129 ± 20 mg CO₂-C kg⁻¹, or ~14.8 % relative to the control); BC400 showed essentially none.
Advantages claimed over other isotopic approaches
Higher precision than the natural- abundance ¹³C (C₃/C₄) method for detecting small biochar contributions.
Works with mature wood feedstock that closely resembles commercial biochars (unlike many laboratory pulse- labelled materials derived from young seedlings).
Relatively low cost and does not require specialised isotope-labelling facilities.
Uniform ¹⁴C enrichment because the trees grew continuously under elevated atmospheric ¹⁴C.
Conclusions
The bomb-¹⁴C method is shown to be effective for quantifying biochar mineralisation and its interactions with soil organic matter. It opens practical possibilities for longer- term studies of biochar persistence and carbon-sequestration potential under realistic conditions.
The paper includes supplementary material with additional figures on priming and sensitivity analyses. Funding came in part from the Swedish Energy Agency’s Bio+ programme.
Log with younger wood turned away. The wood with the highest content of ‘bomb carbon’ is found in the growth rings between the red circles. Credit: Harald Cederlund
Journal:Radiocarbon (Volume 68, Issue 5, pp. 1146–1154)
Improving our understanding of biochar carbon (C) stability in soil is crucial given its potential for soil C sequestration. However, challenges with isotopic labeling of biochar restrict our ability to determine its fate in soil. Atmospheric nuclear bomb tests in the 1960s resulted in a 14C spike in tree rings, providing an opportunity to address this challenge. Here, we present a method that utilizes the elevated levels of 14C in wood from tree rings formed between 1964 and 1967 as a tracer to determine the proportion of biochar C in mineralized soil. Biochar was produced using wood from the 14C enriched tree rings as feedstock and thereafter used in a mineralization experiment capturing the emitted CO2. We demonstrate that the bomb 14C-enrichment in the biochar is high enough to differentiate between CO2 originating from either biochar or soil organic matter mineralization. The method can be used to address questions on biochar persistence, its interactions with soil organic matter and research that is needed to explore the potential to use biochar for C sequestration in soils.
Guterres’ hysteria rests on three weak legs: a worst-case scenario that its own authors have now abandoned, a “pre-industrial” baseline drawn from one of the coldest centuries in 2,000 years, and almost total silence about warm periods that preceded multi-megawatt power plants and SUVs by hundreds and thousands of years.
For more than a decade, projections of flooded coasts and failed harvests were driven by RCP8.5 and its successor SSP5-8.5. The article says they assumed 12 billion people by 2100 and a near tenfold rise in coal use.
Three years ago, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters that “the era of global boiling has arrived.” In September he repeated the alarm. Launching the U.N.’s first report on temperature “overshoot,” he declared, “Humanity is speeding past the limit to avoid climate catastrophe.”
Guterres’ hysteria rests on three weak legs: a worst-case scenario that its own authors have now abandoned, a “pre-industrial” baseline drawn from one of the coldest centuries in 2,000 years, and almost total silence about warm periods that preceded multi-megawatt power plants and SUVs by hundreds and thousands of years.
Start with the scenario. For more than a decade, a computer-based hypothetical case called RCP8.5 and its successor SSP5-8.5 drove the most frightening projections of flooded coasts and failed harvests. They assumed a world of 12 billion people by 2100 and a near tenfold rise in coal use, a future predicted by no energy market.
This April, the modelers who design scenarios for the next generation of climate simulations conceded the point. Their projections of high levels of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) had become “implausible,” and their update showed about 0.9 degrees Celsius less warming by century’s end. In August, the U.S. government proposed amending its Fifth National Climate Assessment so that results based on earlier projections can no longer be labeled “expected” or “business-as-usual.”
Now examine the yardstick. Every headline about crossing a 1.5-degree threshold measures warming from an 1850-1900 average. Those decades sit at the end of the Little Ice Age, an era when “livestock died, harvests failed, and humans suffered.” Choose the bottom of a cold trough as zero and every degree of recovery reads like a fever.
The most serious misdirection is what the panic merchants leave out. Earth’s climate swung widely long before anyone burned coal. A 2013 reconstruction in Science found that in comparison to today, intermediate Pacific waters were 2.1 degrees warmer during the Holocene Thermal Maximum 8,000 years ago and about 0.65 degrees warmer during the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago. Tree rings from Finnish Lapland show that earlier estimates of warmth were too low.
Alaska’s retreating Mendenhall Glacier has exposed upright spruce and hemlock stumps more than 1,000 years old, a forest that grew where ice later advanced. At the Schnidejoch pass, more than 8,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps, melting ice has yielded more than 300 artifacts left by Neolithic, Bronze Age, Roman, and medieval travelers who crossed the mountains when the route was open. Certainly, temperatures warmer than today had prevailed.
Forecasts of heat-induced doom overlook the benefits of today’s elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. A NASA-led study found that a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated land grew significantly greener over a 35-year period, with CO2 fertilization explaining 70% of the gain. The year after the world supposedly crossed the threshold of 1.5 degrees, the world’s farmers brought in a record cereal harvest, according to FAO data.
Humans have always faced weather hazards. Floods, droughts, storms, heat waves, crop failures, and changing rainfall existed before the industrial age. They will exist whether a theoretical global average temperature is 1.8 degrees Celsius or 2.8 degrees above an arbitrary baseline. The question is not whether risk exists, but how people respond to it.
And this is where having energy supplies that are reliable, affordable, and abundant helps people manage nature’s challenges. Economies that become more prosperous, maintain reliable systems, strengthen infrastructure, and reduce vulnerabilities will do more to protect human beings from climatic hazards even if they do not satisfy U.N. emission targets.
The future trajectory of CO2 emissions will be influenced overwhelmingly by the growth of energy demand in Asia and Latin America. There can be no justification for telling developing societies there that they must remain poor so that wealthy nations can preserve a global temperature target that has no scientific basis.
The U.N. fabricated an emergency, using a scenario its own modelers now call implausible, employing a baseline estimated rather than observed, and erasing warm eras that ancient farmers, traders, and travelers lived through. That is not science, but stagecraft performed for power and self-enrichment as it made the rest of the world poorer.
Originally published at Town Hall, October 19th, 2026.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at theCO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.
New research suggests that climate- driven changes are amplifying seasonal CO₂ exchange patterns in parts of the Indian Ocean, which could influence its role as a climate buffer, though this does not automatically mean greater overall carbon absorption.
The Indian Ocean plays a significant but regionally complex role in the global carbon cycle.
It acts as a modest net sink for atmospheric CO₂ overall, absorbing a portion of human- caused emissions and helping buffer climate change, though its behavior differs sharply between northern and southern regions and is strongly modulated by the monsoon system, ocean circulation, temperature, biology, and climate variability.
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New research suggests that climate- driven changes are amplifying seasonal CO₂ exchange patterns in parts of the Indian Ocean, which could influence its role as a climate buffer, though this does not automatically mean greater overall carbon absorption.
Published on Phys.org on October 18, 2026, and written by Hannah Bird, the article covers a study in Geophysical Research Letters (Joshi et al., 2026; DOI: 10.1029/2026GL123472) led by Dr. Apurva Padamanbh Joshi of the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services. It analyzes data from 1980- 2019 on how seasonal air- sea CO₂ exchange has evolved across Indian Ocean regions.
Key findings
Seasonal variation in CO₂ exchange increased by 48% in the equatorial Indian Ocean and 23% in the southern Indian Ocean (greater contrast between seasonal highs and lows).
It decreased by 14% in the Arabian Sea and rose modestly (~7%) in the Bay of Bengal.
Average CO₂ release to the atmosphere decreased in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and equatorial Indian Ocean, while absorption increased in the southern Indian Ocean. Larger seasonal swings do not necessarily equal higher net carbon uptake.
Drivers
In the equatorial and southern Indian Ocean, changes in the CO₂ partial- pressure difference between surface water and the atmosphere were key.
In the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, shifts in wind speed (which affect gas transfer across the air-sea interface) played a larger role.
Similar seasonal amplification has been noted in parts of the Pacific and Atlantic, indicating broader ocean responses.
Context and implications
Oceans absorbed roughly 26% of human- caused CO₂ emissions from 2014- 2023 (per the Global Carbon Budget 2024), but capacity growth has slowed since around 2016 amid rising climate variability.
Temperature, winds, circulation, and existing dissolved CO₂ levels all influence the exchange: cooler water tends to absorb more, while warming can favor release, modulated by currents and other factors.
The study focuses on historical changes rather than future projections. It highlights that seasonal processes are being reshaped regionally, which matters for accurate carbon- budget estimates (annual averages can miss timing shifts) and for marine ecosystems.
Greater CO₂ absorption increases ocean acidification, reducing carbonate ions needed by corals and shell-forming organisms; repeated seasonal extremes could stress recovery and affect biodiversity and productivity.
Overall, the findings provide a finer picture of the Indian Ocean’s evolving contribution to the global carbon cycle and its buffering of atmospheric CO₂. Further work is needed to determine long- term effects on storage capacity as warming continues.
Diagrammatic representation of the global carbon cycle. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ PD-USGov-NASA.
The Indian Ocean plays a significant but regionally complex role in the global carbon cycle.
It acts as a modest net sink for atmospheric CO₂ overall, absorbing a portion of human- caused emissions and helping buffer climate change, though its behavior differs sharply between northern and southern regions and is strongly modulated by the monsoon system, ocean circulation, temperature, biology, and climate variability.
Overview of the Ocean Carbon Cycle (Relevant to the Indian Ocean)
Oceans exchange CO₂ continuously with the atmosphere. When the partial pressure of CO₂ in surface seawater (pCO₂) is lower than in the air, the ocean absorbs CO₂ (a sink); when higher, it releases CO₂ (a source).
Key controls include:
Solubility pump: Cooler water holds more CO₂. Warming reduces solubility and can promote outgassing.
Biological pump: Phytoplankton take up CO₂ via photosynthesis; some organic carbon sinks to deeper waters, sequestering it.
Physical factors: Winds enhance gas transfer across the air-sea interface; upwelling brings CO₂-rich deep water to the surface; currents and stratification redistribute carbon; freshwater inputs (e.g., rivers) affect alkalinity and pCO₂.
Anthropogenic influence: Rising atmospheric CO₂ drives net ocean uptake, but also causes ocean acidification (lower pH) as CO₂ forms carbonic acid.
Globally, oceans absorb roughly 25- 28% of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions. The Indian Ocean contributes a share of this, estimated at a net uptake of about −0.07 to −0.19 PgC/yr (petagrams of carbon per year; negative = sink) north of ~37.5°S for recent decades.
Regional Patterns in the Indian Ocean
The basin is not uniform:
Northern Indian Ocean (north of ~15–18°S): Generally a net source of CO₂ to the atmosphere.
Arabian Sea (northwestern): Strong perennial source, especially due to intense upwelling during the Southwest Monsoon that brings carbon-rich deep waters to the surface.
Bay of Bengal (northeastern): Often a moderate net sink, influenced by large freshwater inputs from rivers that lower salinity and can suppress pCO₂.
Southern Indian Ocean (south of ~15- 18°S, especially 15- 50°S): A significant sink. Cooler temperatures, subduction of surface waters, and biological activity favor CO₂ absorption. This region helps make the overall Indian Ocean a weak net sink.
The equatorial Indian Ocean is closer to neutral (neither strong source nor sink) due to relatively deep thermocline and weaker upwelling compared to the equatorial Pacific.
Seasonal and Interannual Variability
The Indian Ocean’s carbon cycle is strongly seasonal because of the reversing monsoon winds and currents:
Large seasonal swings in pCO₂ and air- sea CO₂ flux are linked to monsoon- driven changes in temperature, winds, upwelling, and biological production.
Recent research (1980- 2019 data) shows these seasonal variations have amplified: +48% in the equatorial Indian Ocean and +23% in the southern Indian Ocean, with a decrease (−14%) in the Arabian Sea and a modest increase (~7%) in the Bay of Bengal. Drivers include changes in the air-sea pCO₂ difference (especially equatorial and southern regions) and wind speeds (Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal). Average outgassing has decreased in northern and equatorial areas while southern uptake has increased.
Interannual variability is strongly influenced by the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and its interactions with El Niño- Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Positive IOD events can enhance outgassing in parts of the southeastern tropical Indian Ocean via upwelling and changes in dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and alkalinity. Circulation changes (e.g., Indonesian Throughflow, Southern Ocean inflows) can also cause large interior carbon accumulation anomalies.
Biological and Other Processes
Primary production (photosynthesis) is substantial, with satellite- based estimates around 8 Gt C/yr for the basin.
Respiration in deeper (aphotic) layers recycles carbon, influencing DIC distributions.
Dust and iron deposition from the atmosphere can stimulate biological uptake in some areas, though effects vary north- south.
The Indian Ocean is relatively undersampled compared to other basins, leading to greater uncertainty in flux estimates
Climate Change Impacts and Buffering Role
Warming, changing monsoons, and rising atmospheric CO₂ are altering the cycle. Amplifying seasonal CO₂ exchange does not automatically increase the net annual sink, but it reshapes when and how strongly exchange occurs.
This matters for accurate carbon budgets (annual averages can miss timing shifts) and for marine ecosystems: greater CO₂ uptake increases acidification, which reduces carbonate availability for corals, shellfish, and other calcifiers. Extreme seasonal conditions may hinder ecosystem recovery.
Overall, the Indian Ocean continues to act as a climate buffer by taking up anthropogenic CO₂, with evidence of a strengthening sink in some analyses (~0.02 PgC/yr per decade in certain periods).
However, its capacity and reliability depend on ongoing physical and biological changes. Continued observations and modeling are essential, especially given data sparsity in parts of the basin.
The Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean both act as net sinks for atmospheric CO₂ and contribute meaningfully to the global ocean carbon sink, but they differ substantially in magnitude, regional patterns, drivers, seasonal behavior, and efficiency of carbon storage.
Net CO₂ Flux (Air-Sea Exchange)
Indian Ocean: A relatively modest net sink, typically estimated at about −0.07 to −0.19 PgC/yr (north of ~37.5°S) for recent multi- decadal periods (e.g., 1985- 2018). Northern areas (especially the Arabian Sea) are sources, while the southern subtropical region is a stronger sink. One reconstruction puts the full Indian Ocean sink near −0.30 PgC/yr.
Atlantic Ocean: A stronger net sink overall, with basin- wide estimates around −0.36 to −0.47 PgC/yr (1985- 2018, including the Mediterranean in some assessments). The North Atlantic (particularly subpolar regions) is an intense sink; the tropical Atlantic is a moderate source due to upwelling. The North Atlantic alone (a small fraction of global ocean area) can account for a disproportionately large share of global uptake.
In relative terms, the Atlantic often contributes a larger share of the global ocean sink relative to its size than the Indian Ocean. Both basins show evidence of a strengthening sink over recent decades in response to rising atmospheric CO₂, though interannual variability (e.g., linked to ENSO and IOD in the Indian Ocean or AMOC changes in the Atlantic) can modulate this.
Regional Contrasts
Indian Ocean: Strong north- south contrast driven by the monsoon. The northwestern Arabian Sea is a perennial source (strong summer upwelling brings CO₂- rich deep water to the surface). The Bay of Bengal is closer to neutral or a mild sink (influenced by large river freshwater inputs that lower salinity and pCO₂). The equatorial region is near neutral. The southern Indian Ocean (south of ~15- 18°S) is the main sink region.
Atlantic Ocean: Stronger high- latitude sink in the North Atlantic due to cooling of poleward- flowing waters (increasing solubility) and biological drawdown, combined with deep convection and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The tropical Atlantic is a source (upwelling), while the South Atlantic is a sink. Coastal and open-ocean differences exist, but the North Atlantic’s efficiency is notable.
Unlike the equatorial Pacific (a major source) or equatorial Atlantic (a source), the equatorial Indian Ocean is closer to neutral because of its unique wind patterns and deeper thermocline.
Drivers and Physical Processes
Indian Ocean: Dominated by seasonal monsoon wind reversal, upwelling (especially Arabian Sea), riverine freshwater inputs (Bay of Bengal), and connections via the Indonesian Throughflow and Southern Ocean inflows. Both solubility and biological pumps matter, with solubility more influential in the north and both important in the south. Climate modes like the Indian Ocean Dipole strongly affect interannual flux variability.
Atlantic Ocean: Strongly influenced by the AMOC, which ventilates deep waters and efficiently transfers anthropogenic carbon (Cₐₙₜ) into the interior. The North Atlantic is a key entry point for Cₐₙₜ into the deep ocean. Heat loss, biological export, and western boundary currents (e.g., Gulf Stream cooling) enhance uptake. A significant fraction of Atlantic Cₐₙₜ accumulation comes from lateral transport from the Southern Ocean.
The Atlantic stores a large share of global oceanic anthropogenic carbon relative to its area (historically ~23% despite covering ~15% of the ocean), thanks to deep ventilation. The Indian Ocean stores less efficiently in its northern (landlocked) portion but receives carbon via throughflow and Southern Ocean connections.
Seasonal Variability
Both oceans show pronounced seasonal cycles in CO₂ exchange, with cooler seasons favoring stronger sinks.
In the Indian Ocean, monsoon-driven changes produce large seasonal swings in pCO₂ and flux; recent studies show these seasonal amplitudes have increased substantially in equatorial and southern regions (e.g., +48% equatorial, +23% southern from 1980- 2019).
In the Atlantic, seasonal amplitude is also significant (especially subtropics and high latitudes), with winter cooling and biological activity enhancing uptake. Amplification of seasonal pCO₂ cycles due to anthropogenic carbon accumulation is a broader ocean phenomenon observed in both basins.
Climate Change and Buffering Role
Both basins help buffer atmospheric CO₂ rise and are experiencing acidification.
The Atlantic’s deep ventilation makes it particularly important for long- term sequestration of anthropogenic carbon.
The Indian Ocean’s role is more surface- and intermediate- depth oriented in many areas, with greater sensitivity to monsoon and IOD changes.
Warming reduces solubility in both, but circulation changes (e.g., potential AMOC weakening vs. monsoon shifts) will affect future uptake differently. The Indian Ocean remains more undersampled than the Atlantic in many datasets (e.g., SOCAT), adding uncertainty to its estimates.
In summary:The Atlantic is generally a more efficient and stronger net CO₂ sink per unit area (especially in the North Atlantic), with superior deep- ocean carbon storage via overturning circulation.
The Indian Ocean is a weaker overall sink with sharper regional contrasts (northern sources vs. southern sink) tightly coupled to monsoon dynamics.
Both are critical components of the global ocean carbon cycle, and ongoing changes in their seasonal and interannual behavior will influence how reliably they continue to act as climate buffers.
The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean basin and plays a dual role in the global carbon cycle: it is the world’s biggest oceanic source of CO₂ in its equatorial region, yet overall, it functions as a net sink of comparable magnitude to the Atlantic (and larger than the Indian Ocean in absolute terms), thanks to strong uptake in its subtropical and higher- latitude zones.
Net CO₂ Flux (Air- Sea Exchange)
Pacific: Basin- wide net uptake is typically estimated at roughly −0.4 to −0.5 PgC/yr (e.g., −0.41 ± 0.12 PgC/yr from observation- based pCO₂ products and −0.51 ± 0.16 PgC/yr from models for (−0.7 PgC/yr), offsetting substantial natural outgassing. The net sink has been strengthening at rates around −0.08 to −0.09 PgC/yr per decade.
Comparison: This places the Pacific’s net sink in a similar range to the Atlantic (−0.36 to −0.47 PgC/yr) and larger in absolute terms than the Indian Ocean (−0.07 to −0.30 PgC/yr depending on the exact domain). Despite covering nearly half the global ocean area, the Pacific’s net contribution is moderated by its powerful equatorial source. In some climatologies, the three basins contribute roughly similarly to global open- ocean uptake when coastal zones are included (Pacific and Atlantic each ~25%, Indian ~20%).
Regional Patterns
Equatorial Pacific: The dominant global oceanic CO₂ source. Strong upwelling of carbon-rich deep water (especially in the eastern “cold tongue”) releases ~0.4- 0.7 PgC/yr or more on average, often accounting for a large fraction of total oceanic outgassing. This far exceeds the tropical Atlantic source and the more localized northern Indian Ocean sources (e.g., Arabian Sea). The western equatorial Pacific is closer to neutral or occasionally a weak sink.
Subtropical Pacific: Strong sinks, particularly in the North Pacific subtropical gyre, driven by cooling of waters and biological activity. These help offset equatorial outgassing.
Higher latitudes: Uptake occurs in subpolar regions, though less intense per unit area than the North Atlantic’s deep-convection zones. The North Pacific lacks the Atlantic’s vigorous deep-water formation, so anthropogenic carbon (Cₐₙₜ) penetration is shallower (mainly intermediate depths).
In contrast:
The Atlantic has intense high- latitude (especially North Atlantic) sinks and efficient deep ventilation via the AMOC.
The Indian Ocean shows a clear north– south divide (northern sources vs. southern sink) tightly tied to the monsoon, without a single dominant equatorial source like the Pacific’s.
Drivers and Variability
Pacific: Dominated by the El Niño- Southern Oscillation (ENSO). During El Niño, equatorial upwelling weakens and outgassing decreases sharply (sometimes nearly shutting off the source); during La Niña, outgassing intensifies. This makes the tropical Pacific the largest contributor to interannual variability in the global ocean carbon sink. Subtropical and higher -latitude uptake is influenced by gyre circulation, seasonal temperature changes, and biology.
Seasonal cycles: Present but often secondary to interannual ENSO- driven swings in the tropics. Seasonal amplification of pCO₂ cycles (linked to anthropogenic carbon accumulation) occurs, similar to other basins.
Comparison: The Indian Ocean’s variability is more monsoon- and IOD- driven with strong seasonal signals that have recently amplified. The Atlantic has notable seasonal cycles (especially high latitudes) and is influenced by AMOC strength and North Atlantic Oscillation variability but lacks the Pacific’s extreme interannual equatorial swings.
Anthropogenic Carbon Storage and Efficiency
The Pacific stores a large absolute amount of Cₐₙₜ due to its size, but less efficiently per unit area than the Atlantic. The North Atlantic’s deep convection allows deeper and more rapid sequestration. Pacific Cₐₙₜ is mostly confined to intermediate depths via mode and intermediate water subduction. The Southern Ocean (shared influence) is a major entry point for all basins, with subsequent redistribution.
Climate Change Context
All three basins are experiencing rising uptake of anthropogenic CO₂, ocean acidification, and changes in seasonal and interannual patterns. The Pacific’s equatorial source region is particularly sensitive to ENSO changes and warming (which can affect upwelling and solubility). Its large area means even modest per-area changes have global impact. Data coverage in the Pacific is generally better than in the Indian Ocean but still sparse in some southern regions.
Summary comparison:
Pacific: Largest source region (equatorial) and large subtropical sinks → moderate- to- strong net sink; high interannual variability (ENSO).
Atlantic: Strongest high latitude sinks and efficient deep storage (AMOC) → strong net sink relative to size.
Indian: Modest net sink with sharp monsoon- driven north– south contrast and growing seasonal amplitude.
Together, the three major ocean basins (plus the Southern Ocean) form the backbone of the oceanic carbon sink that absorbs roughly a quarter of human CO₂ emissions each year.
The Pacific’s unique combination of a massive natural source and extensive sink regions makes its behavior especially important for understanding global carbon- cycle variability.
Changes in surface CO₂ levels and the factors driving them across four Indian Ocean regions—the Arabian Sea (AS), Bay of Bengal (BoB), Equatorial Indian Ocean (EIO) and Southern Indian Ocean (SIO)—during the 1980s and 2010s. Black lines show CO₂ changes, while red and blue lines represent the effects of temperature and non-temperature related factors, respectively. Dashed lines represent the 1980s and solid lines the 2010s. Credit: Joshi et al, 2026.
Climate Change Induced Seasonal Amplification of the Indian Ocean CO2 Sink
Key findings from the paper (based on available summaries)
The study analyzed air- sea CO₂ exchange across the Indian Ocean from 1980 to 2019, focusing on changes in seasonal variability:
Seasonal amplitude increased by:
48% in the equatorial Indian Ocean
23% in the southern Indian Ocean
~7% in the Bay of Bengal
It decreased by 14% in the Arabian Sea
Mean CO₂ release to the atmosphere decreased in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, and equatorial Indian Ocean.
CO₂ absorption increased in the southern Indian Ocean.
Drivers differed by region:
Equatorial and southern Indian Ocean → mainly changes in the air-sea difference in CO₂ partial pressure (ΔpCO₂).
Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal → primarily changes in wind speed (affecting gas-transfer velocity).
Important caveat emphasized in the work: Larger seasonal swings do not automatically mean a stronger net annual carbon sink. The amplification reshapes the timing and intensity of exchange within the year rather than necessarily increasing total uptake.
The paper frames these changes as a response to climate change (warming, altered circulation and monsoon patterns, and rising atmospheric CO₂) and notes implications for marine ecosystems (via acidification) and for carbon- budget estimates that rely only on annual averages.
Context
This is one of the more detailed observational analyses of seasonal CO₂ flux changes specifically in the Indian Ocean. It complements broader findings that seasonal pCO₂ amplitudes are increasing across much of the global ocean due to anthropogenic carbon accumulation (which reduces the ocean’s buffer capacity and makes pCO₂ more sensitive to temperature and biology).
This study investigates changes in the mean and seasonal states of oceanic carbon uptake across the Indian Ocean (IO) using an improved, high-resolution, observationally constrained long-term (1980–2019) surface ocean pCO2 data product. The Arabian Sea shows a ∼14% decline in CO2 flux amplitude along with reduced mean source strength. In contrast, the Equatorial IO exhibits the largest increase in seasonal amplitude (∼48%), followed by the Southern IO (∼23%), while the Bay of Bengal shows only a modest change (∼7%). Despite these differences, mean source strength decreases in both the Bay of Bengal and Equatorial IO, whereas the Southern IO shows an enhanced carbon sink. Amplitude changes in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal are driven by shifts in flux sensitivity to wind speed and evolving seasonality of the ocean-atmosphere pCO2 gradient, whereas in the Equatorial and Southern regions, they are primarily controlled by the evolving pCO2 gradient alone.
It’s that slime at the heart of the ocean carbon pump.
Marine snow, the constant rain of mucus, poop, dead plankton, silt and other detritus from the shallows, carries more than 10 gigatons of carbon away from the surface every year, but only about 2 gigatons make it deep enough to be stored for centuries to millennia.
A new study published Oct 8 in Science says why so much is lost: viscosity.
Marine snow is exactly what it sounds like — it’s snowing in the ocean, 24/7.
Not frozen water. It’s a shower of tiny, fluffy clumps falling from the sunlit surface to the deep seafloor. The term was coined by divers seeing it like snowflakes in a headlamp beam.
AI generated by Meta
It’s that slime at the heart of the ocean carbon pump.
Marine snow, the constant rain of mucus, poop, dead plankton, silt and other detritus from the shallows, carries more than 10 gigatons of carbon away from the surface every year, but only about 2 gigatons make it deep enough to be stored for centuries to millennia.
A new study published Oct 8 in Science says why so much is lost: viscosity.
What they found
Scientists at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Lincoln, led by Bryce Inman, discovered that the gooier, more viscous, a particle is, the better it transports carbon.
Bacteria get stuck on the outside: Less viscous areas near the surface of a particle are easy for bacteria to colonize. The more viscous interior is tough to penetrate. “Think of it like a worm in an apple: The flesh is easy to penetrate, but the core is tough to chew through,” Inman said.
Takes longer to break down: Lab experiments showed viscous snow resists bacterial degradation and fragmentation much longer.
Sinks deeper: Computer simulations showed that extra resistance time lets it sink further. The team estimates high- viscosity marine snow can shuttle more than six times as much carbon to the deep ocean as low-viscosity particles.
“How far marine snow can sink is a surprisingly complicated problem, and we have added another, very gooey, piece to the puzzle,” said Inman.
How they saw it
This is the first time anyone has watched live bacteria interacting with the physical structure of marine snow, or any mucus.
Starting in 2021, Inman spent 4 years trying to visualize what he calls “the mucoscape”.
In 2025 it worked: using 3D confocal microscopy plus specialized fluorescent molecules called molecular rotors, they mapped the “physical terrain”, bulges, crevasses, viscous pockets, of individual clumps at a scale smaller than bacteria.
The imaging method is detailed in a companion paper in Nature Communications.
Why it matters beyond carbon
The findings help refine climate models for the ocean carbon sink, but Inman says the technique also matters for any system where bacteria live in mucus, coral reefs, kelp forests, plant roots, and animal and human digestive tracts.
AI generated by Meta
Marine snow is exactly what it sounds like — it’s snowing in the ocean, 24/7.
What it is
Not frozen water. It’s a shower of tiny, fluffy clumps falling from the sunlit surface to the deep seafloor. The term was coined by divers seeing it like snowflakes in a headlamp beam.
Leftovers: dead phytoplankton and zooplankton, fecal pellets, shed exoskeletons
Mineral ballast: silt, calcium carbonate shells, silica
Living passengers: bacteria (orange in that image you saw), microalgae, protozoa hitching a ride
Size ranges from a few micrometers to centimeters. A big aggregate looks like a dirty snowball with mucus parachutes.
How it forms
Phytoplankton bloom in the surface and excrete sticky sugars
Stickiness makes everything collide and clump, think dust bunnies under the bed
Bacteria colonize it immediately and start excreting enzymes to dissolve it
If it survives long enough, it sinks, typically 10 to 100 and more meters per day, some much faster if ballasted
Why we care: the biological carbon pump
This is one of Earth’s main carbon sinks:
Surface phytoplankton fix CO2 into organic carbon
When they die or get eaten, that carbon is packaged into marine snow
As it sinks, it takes tons of carbon with it. Scientists estimate >10 gigatons per year leave the surface this way, but only ∼2 gigatons sink deep enough to be stored for 100s- 1000s of years
Everything else gets eaten or respired on the way down by bacteria and zooplankton, turning back into CO2 in the upper ocean.
That’s why this new Science paper matters — it shows viscosity is a regulator. The gooier interior acts like a hard apple core that bacteria can’t chew through easily, so gooey flakes resist degradation, sink deeper, and shuttle >6 times more carbon to the deep.
There’s also a recent twist from 2024- 2025 work: sometimes marine snow makes parachute- like mucus structures that actually slow sinking and keep it in the top 100m longer, giving microbes more time to break it down, stalling carbon storage.
So, it’s a tug- of- war at the microscale: ballast and gooeyness help it sink and store carbon; fragmentation, grazing by zooplankton, and slime parachutes keep it up and recycle carbon.
Without marine snow, the Earth would be much hotter. It’s essentially dead stuff at the bottom of the ocean slowing climate change, and it’s also the base food delivery service for most deep- sea life that never sees sunlight.
Marine snow viscosity regulates microbial degradation and the ocean carbon sink
Editor’s summary and Abstract in plain language
The paper asks: when marine snow sinks, will its carbon be released in the upper ocean or sequestered at depth? That depends on sinking speed vs degradation rate.
Using molecular rotors to measure the nanoscale viscosity field of natural aggregates, they show:
aggregates are highly structured microhabitats with less-viscous regions that are accessible for colonization and more- viscous regions that correlate to a barrier to bacterial infiltration
More- viscous aggregates take longer to degrade, sink farther, and contribute more to carbon sequestration, illustrating another way that the physical structure of marine snow can affect the global ocean carbon pump
So it’s not just size, ballast minerals, or density, viscosity itself is a microscale physical constraint on the pump.
What they actually measured
Viscosity mapping: The companion Nature Communications paper describes the method, molecular rotors that fluoresce differently depending on local viscosity and 3D confocal microscopy. This let them see the “mucoscape” inside a single particle for the first time.
Bacterial colonization is patchy: Bacteria latch onto low- viscosity zones near the surface easily but can’t infiltrate high- viscosity cores until they enzymatically break it down.
Degradation rate = function of viscosity: Quantifying the “viscosity degradation rate”, they found high- viscosity snow resists fragmentation. In lab and modeling, that translates to deeper sinking and >6 times more carbon reaching deep water vs low- viscosity counterparts, the number Phys.org highlighted.
The paper frames marine snow not as a uniform clump of detritus, but as a structured habitat with accessible vs protected carbon, where gooeyness acts like a physical defense against microbial recycling in the upper 100- 200m.
Bacterial degradation of marine snow aggregates is a major component of global carbon cycling. Whether aggregate carbon is released in the upper ocean or is sequestered at depth depends on its sinking speed and degradation rate. However, little is known about the physical constraints of bacterial colonization and degradation of individual aggregates. Using molecular rotors to measure the nanoscale viscosity field of natural aggregates, we show that aggregates are highly structured microhabitats with less-viscous regions that are accessible for colonization and more-viscous regions that correlate to a barrier to bacterial infiltration. By quantifying the viscosity degradation rate, we demonstrate that more viscous aggregates take longer to degrade, sink farther, and contribute more to carbon sequestration, revealing a microscale physical constraint of the global ocean carbon pump.
Most of the Western world is obsessed with reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This sentiment typically translates into an obsession with cutting back on industry which produces CO2, such as fossil-fuelled power stations, steel foundries, and so on. So, it does not immediately strike one as a good idea to aim to cut down CO2 emissions by building coal-fired power stations in Africa. But it definitely would curtail CO2 emissions a great deal.
A while ago I met a Swiss extreme-green who was in South Africa as part of a group of greens who travelled here to ‘teach Africans how to be responsible citizens of the planet.’
Electrician Workers Shaking Hands Near High Voltage Circuit Line Tower
Most of the Western world is obsessed with reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This sentiment typically translates into an obsession with cutting back on industry which produces CO2, such as fossil-fuelled power stations, steel foundries, and so on. So, it does not immediately strike one as a good idea to aim to cut down CO2 emissions by building coal-fired power stations in Africa. But it definitely would curtail CO2 emissions a great deal.
Right now, there are 600 million people in Africa who do not have access to electricity. But these people still cook meals for the family and need to keep warm in winter. How do they complete these very human tasks? They light fires. What do they use for fuel? They collect fuel from the immediate surroundings. That fuel consists of materials such as wood and dung. The dung they collect from their cattle, or maybe they get some from wild animals in the neighbourhood. The wood they get from the natural environment. They go out into the surrounding bush and collect dead trees and branches. They also chop trees down. This is hard work, I know that from personal experience because I have collected bush-wood a number of times. On camping trips and day excursions out in the bush, us South Africans quite frequently collect the natural dry dead wood to make a fire to cook lunch or dinner. It is a favourite pastime to do a BBQ, or as we call it, a braai.
For tribal people living deep in a rural area, not connected to electricity, having a braai lunch or dinner is not fun, but rather survival. Collecting the wood is considered women’s work, and it is not unusual to see African women walking long distances with large collections of wood on their heads. It is amazing the loads that they can carry balanced on their heads.
Burning wood and dung creates smoke, plus the gases emanating from all the impurities in the wood and dung, plus loads of CO2. So just imagine millions of fires burning every day. Imagine also how quickly one could cut the CO2 emissions, if all these people were connected to electricity. That would be great. It has to happen in due course. The electricity could be produced using coal-fired power stations, burning coal cleanly with great modern efficiency. Such power stations are known as HELE technology. The HELE is; High Efficiency Low Emissions.
As illogical as it may sound, the construction of HELE coal-fired power stations would be good for the environment and for human health, if built in large numbers in Africa.
But the no-coal zealots would never hear of such a thing. They are not interested in doing the right thing for the environment, they are interested in their will being the dominant force. They are playing a political game.
A while ago I met a Swiss extreme-green who was in South Africa as part of a group of greens who travelled here to ‘teach Africans how to be responsible citizens of the planet.’ During a coffee break discussion with him he said that Switzerland should cut its electricity consumption by 20%, because Swiss people could afford to live a less extravagant lifestyle. He was also of the opinion that Africa should be limited to a 10% increase in electricity consumption. By 10% he meant ever, not per annum. He then produced pictures and waxed lyrical about how Africans should be an example to the world, on how to live ‘in harmony with nature.’ The pictures he produced showed an African woman walking from the river with a bucket of water on her head. Another showed an African subsistence farmer ploughing with a wooden plough, drawn by one ox. The Swiss greenie enthusiastically explained to me how they were living in harmony with nature, leaving a small footprint behind… as if the concept were new to me. I replied that I would rather see the farmer get a tractor and a steel plough. The greenie just about had a fit, and pointed out that not only does a tractor produce CO2 it would also lead to leaks of oil and fuel into the ground…bad for ants, worms, etc. Furthermore, the tractor would cause fuel tankers to have to deliver fuel, he earnestly explained, leading to more CO2 emissions, etc. I also got the lecture on how bad it would be to pump water to the village… that would require pumps and lubricants.
I marvelled at the mentality of the Swiss fellow who really seemed to think that he could convince me that it would be helping mankind and the planet by blocking electricity and fuel into African countries.
Of course, I don’t for one moment expect the large-scale building of HELE coal-fired power stations in African countries to actually take place, even if the countries had coal, which they don’t. But certainly, what can be done is the large-scale electrification of African countries by using nuclear power, particularly Small Modular Reactors. From an environmental conservation point of view, SMRs not only have a very small physical land area footprint, but they also use so little fuel that there’s no large-scale fuel delivery footprint. An SMR can have fuel deliveries three or four times a year, using a truck modified to carry the fuel. There’s no need for a fuel conveyor belt or railway, as required to deliver fossil fuel continuously.
When advocating environmental solutions for the world, it really is necessary to think carefully about the real circumstances of the various people concerned.
Here in Africa it does not go down at all well when people from European countries arrive and sanctimoniously preach to us on how we should be ‘saving the planet’ their way because they say so.
On Saturday, President Trump announced that he had approved new vehicle fuel economy standards, and on Monday the Transportation Department made the final rule official. Within hours, the legacy media covered the rollback of Biden’s vehicle mandates with shrill criticisms. The New York Times told readers that the administration was gutting a signature federal effort to speed the shift to electric vehicles.
Start with an irony that the NYT buries in its own reporting. The paper conceded that Congress had already scrapped the fines for automakers that miss the mileage targets, leaving Monday’s rollback more symbolic than substantive. That penalty repeal, part of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, is what mattered.
On Saturday, President Trump announced that he had approved new vehicle fuel economy standards, and on Monday the Transportation Department made the final rule official. Within hours, the legacy media covered the rollback of Biden’s vehicle mandates with shrill criticisms. The New York Times told readers that the administration was gutting a signature federal effort to speed the shift to electric vehicles. Politico judged the revision “one more nail in the coffin” for Biden-era EV policy. Bloomberg’s headline announced that the US “guts” auto mileage rules, while the Washington Post ran its own story under the banner “Analysts are doubtful”, reporting that “experts” scoffed at the administration’s claim of a $1,300 cut in new-car prices.
The final rule requires a fleetwide average of 34.9 miles per gallon by model year 2031, in place of the roughly 50 mpg demanded by Biden’s standards. To the assembled commentariat, this is climate vandalism, a betrayal of drivers and a gift to Beijing. Every one of these claims is false or badly misleading. And the missing context – what the Biden mandates cost, who paid, and what they actually bought – is the story the legacy press coverage never reveals.
A funeral for a rule already dead
Start with an irony that the NYT buries in its own reporting. The paper conceded that Congress had already scrapped the fines for automakers that miss the mileage targets, leaving Monday’s rollback more symbolic than substantive. That penalty repeal, part of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, is what mattered. Politico’s own expert, Joshua Linn of the University of Maryland, explained that without penalties CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) had become little more than a polite request: Detroit is asked nicely to add technology, with no consequence for declining. Neither outlet drew the obvious conclusion. If the standards were toothless, the handwringing over their formal retirement is theatre. If they still bit, they were a mandate – precisely what the Times insists Trump falsely accuses Biden of imposing. The coverage wants it both ways.
As for the Post’s doubtful analysts, Stephanie Brinley of Mobility Global and Jessica Caldwell of Edmunds argue that savings will not reach buyers when the average new vehicle already costs around $50,000, and that any saving would first be absorbed by tariffs. In fact, NHTSA itself cautions that its estimated $1,289 reduction in average vehicle cost by model year 2031 materialises only if manufacturers pass it on. But whether a cost saving shows up at the dealership is irrelevant to what the vehicle efficiency mandates cost in the first place, and who paid.
The hidden tax on every showroom floor
The answer is not hard to find, though it requires reading beyond the Beltway press. The Heritage Foundation’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Andrew Weiss showed that Biden-level CAFE targets exceeded what gasoline-powered cars can plausibly achieve, converting fuel economy regulation into a backdoor EV mandate. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis argues that this ran afoul of the statute’s own limits.
To comply, legacy manufacturers had to raise the EV share of their fleets, selling the extra EVs at a loss, and then recoup the loss by charging more for gasoline models or by buying regulatory credits from Tesla – a compliance tax according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The gasoline-car buyer subsidised the EV buyer, one sticker price at a time.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation and the American Energy Institute quantified this cross-subsidy in 2025. On its estimates, each model-year 2023 EV imposes between $94,121 and $152,695 in hidden 10-year social costs, borne by gasoline-car buyers, taxpayers and electricity ratepayers, while CAFE, EPA greenhouse-gas and state ZEV credits can be worth $46,000 to $115,000 per EV to the manufacturer.
The academic literature points the same way. UC San Diego’s Mark Jacobsen, cited in a January public comment by the American Consumer Institute, finds CAFE three to four times costlier than an equivalent gas tax, with each additional mile per gallon costing consumers $11.2 billion in the first year and $24.1 billion after 10. Cato Institute’s Peter Van Doren puts CAFE’s cost at no less than six times that of a carbon tax, and the Mackinac Center cites Jacobsen’s figure of $222 per ton of CO2 abated. CEI reckons the reset spares buyers about $900 on the average new car. These studies measure different things, but they converge on one conclusion: the mandate was expensive, and the expense was hidden.
The bill came due in Detroit. Ford took a $19.5 billion write-down in December as it cancelled EV programmes, including the electric F-150 Lightning, and GM followed in January with a $6 billion charge. These are the balance sheets of firms that built what regulators demanded rather than what buyers wanted. The Times frets that the rollback may encourage bigger pickups and SUVs, yet Van Doren’s point is that footprint-based standards already penalise small, cheap cars and subsidise big trucks and SUVs.
CAFE doesn’t set one mileage target for every car. The target for each vehicle depends on its ‘footprint’, which is approximately the area between its four wheels. The larger the footprint, the lower (easier) the mpg target. A small hatchback must hit a demanding number, while a full-size pickup gets a lenient one.
Reuters reports that under the Trump rollback, lifetime fuel costs rise by more than $1,600 per vehicle higher through 2050 than under the Biden rules. The Biden rules added roughly $1,289 efficiency technology costs to a car’s price in exchange for that $1,600 in fuel savings. But if a buyer could recoup $1,600 at the pump for $1,289 of technology, why would a mandate be needed in the first place?
Non sequitursand the China bogeyman
Critics offer three further objections. The first is that tariffs and dearer fuel – gasoline at $4.48 a gallon since the US-Israeli attacks on Iran began in February – will swamp any regulatory saving. True, and irrelevant. Tariffs and Gulf-driven pump prices exist whether or not CAFE mandates are loosened. Keeping the mandate would not abolish them; it would merely stack another cost on top. To argue that because one burden is heavy, one should insist on carrying a second, is a non sequitur.
A second criticism in the mainstream media coverage is that the rest of the world is ‘racing toward EVs’ and America will be left behind. Dan Becker of the Center for Biological Diversity warns that Detroit is being told it may be competed into oblivion by Chinese EV exports. But the evidence suggests that EV sales are disappointing everywhere outside China.
In March 2024, CNBC published a widely cited article entitled ‘EV euphoria is dead. Automakers are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans’. The outlet’s automotive industry reporter Michael Wayland wrote:
For years, the automotive industry has been in a state of EV euphoria. Automakers trotted out optimistic sales forecasts for electric models and announced ambitious targets for EV growth… Now the hype is dwindling, and companies are again cheering consumer choice. Automakers from Ford Motor and General Motors to Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin are scaling back or delaying their electric vehicle plans.
NPR reported that EVs have held 5-6% of new US car sales into 2026, and even the second quarter ‘rebound’ left sales down 20.5% on a year earlier. Detroit is not failing for want of a mandate, it is writing off billions on EVs that it cannot sell.
I wrote in these pages last year on the false promise of EVs. The EV story is overwhelmingly a China-focused one. Europe bought 1.6 million more electric cars in in the first half of 2025 relative to the same period last year, or 27% more. North Americans bought only 0.7 million more, or 3%. The ‘rest of the world’ bought 0.6 million more EVs or 36% from a very small base. China alone accounted for 4.4 million new EV units, logging a growth of 33%. To call what is essentially a China-dominated story a global EV success story is a sleight of hand.
News reports in China are opaque and dominated by CCP interests, like so much else of life in that country. There have been reports of vast ‘graveyards’ of unsold EVs in various cities. A Bloombergarticle in 2023 reported that “a subsidy-fuelled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered cars”.
The third criticism of the Trump CAFE rollback is that this is ceding EV and battery leadership to China. That also rests on a false premise. Chinese dominance is built on coal-fired power and on control of the dirty, energy-intensive global upstream supply chain of mining, refining and processing of rare earths and minerals. Western consumers who believe their EVs are ‘clean’ never see the dirty secrets of EVs. China commissioned 78 gigawatts of new coal power in 2025, the most in a decade, and accounting for four-fifths of all coal capacity brought online worldwide, while developers submitted a record 161 gigawatts of new or reactivated proposals. Celebrating China’s EV penetration while ignoring its coal build-out is like admiring the showroom and ignoring the boiler room out of sight behind.
Tailpipes, power stations and philosopher kings
The final refuge is pollution and climate. The NYTreminds readers that transportation is the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases, and the Sierra Club, which has promised to challenge the rule in court, says families will be handed the bill at the pump and with their health. But cutting tailpipe emissions is not cutting emissions. It relocates them to power stations, mines and smelters, out of sight of the showroom. And on the pollutants that actually damage health, the internal combustion engine has an extraordinary record that the coverage never mentions. The EPA says new cars, SUVs and pickups are roughly 99% cleaner than 1970 models for hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates, and that total emissions of the six principal air pollutants fell 79% between 1970 and 2024 even as vehicle miles travelled rose 195%.
Fuel economy mandates were never about those pollutants. They were about carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant at all. As the physicist William Happer of the CO2 Coalition has testified, the real pollutants are fly ash, carbon monoxide, oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds, while CO2 and water vapour, the dominant products of combustion, are not among them.
The larger context is the belief that bureaucrats know better than households how to spend money on energy. In Plato’s Republic the philosopher king rules and the plebs obey; if energy efficiency were the bargain its promoters claim, we would not need experts at the IEA, the EPA or McKinsey to tell us so. Households and businesses, and motorists for that matter, do not need to be told how to save money that energy efficiency would bring. One Mercatus study found that much efficiency policy analysis assumes people never make sound choices. Mandated standards are the philosopher king’s favourite tool precisely because, unlike explicit subsidies, they conceal their costs, which land first on manufacturers and reach consumers untraced. If buyers are poorly informed, the remedy is better information, not a mandate.
The Sierra Club will see Trump in court, and the litigation will be dutifully chronicled. But the real news of the week is not that Washington retired a rule it had already defanged. It is that a mandate born of the 1975 oil embargo has been recognised, at last, as an expensive way of making people buy what they were reluctant to buy. In the same fortnight that New York hosted its annual climate circus, the American car buyer got something rarer than another pledge: a little of his own freedom back.
The strangulation of the regulatory state is to be welcomed, and one should never mourn the end of intrusive mandates – for motorists as for others – designed by bureaucrats and know-it-all philosopher kings. As Friedrich von Hayek taught us many years ago, “the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design”.
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.
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.
Here in New York, our very-light-weight Governor Kathy Hochul is running for re-election. To her slight credit, she has noticed that New York is a high-cost state, not the least for cost of energy, and that New Yorkers are upset about that.
Here in New York, our very-light-weight Governor Kathy Hochul is running for re-election. To her slight credit, she has noticed that New York is a high-cost state, not the least for cost of energy, and that New Yorkers are upset about that.
New Yorkers are right to be upset about the cost of energy. According to this chart from the federal EIA containing most recent data for July 2026, the average price of electricity to the ultimate consumer in New York for that month was 29.9¢/kWh, compared to a national average of 18.31¢/kWh; and New York’s cost had increased more than 14% from 26.22¢/kWh in July 2025, versus a 4.9% increase in the national average over last year’s 17.45¢/kWh. New Yorkers are also right to be upset because the premium they pay for electricity is mostly to entirely the consequence of intentional government policies that drive up the cost.
What’s crazy is that Governor Hochul has decided to make “energy affordability” a theme of her campaign. The reason that is crazy is that at the same time that Hochul claims she favors more “affordability,” she also brags about maintaining and expanding the very policies that have caused the excess costs. The person most responsible for New York’s high energy cost is Kathy Hochul. But hey, this “energy affordability” theme seems to have worked in somewhat comparable circumstances for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, running respectively in Virginia and New Jersey last year. If the Virginia and New Jersey voters fell for it, maybe the New York voters will too.
On September 15, Hochul launched her latest “energy affordability” initiative with a big press release and a press conference. This latest initiative seeks to mask a portion of New York’s higher costs by distributing checks and discounts to the populace. From Hochul’s press release:
“As Washington Republicans keep driving up the cost of energy, gas and groceries, I’ll never stop working to help New Yorkers keep more money in their pockets,” Governor Hochul said. “That’s why I expanded access to our Energy Affordability Program – a move that will save residents across the state up to $500 annually on their energy bills. Right now, 2.5 million eligible New Yorkers are leaving money on the table and I’m on a mission to help keep the lights on and costs down by launching an all-of-government push to get them enrolled in this money saving program.”
As is usual for New York politicians, the playbook only extends as far as trying to bribe the people with some portion of their own money. So this becomes an IQ test for New Yorkers: Can we calculate whether ratepayers come out ahead or behind under Hochul’s proposal?
Again from the EIA, the average New York household uses about 8000 kWh of electricity per year. There is a difference of 11.59¢/kWh between the average New York electricity rate and the average rate in the rest of the country. That means the average New York household pays more than $900 per year for electricity in excess of what it would pay if our rates were equal to the national average. Now our very generous Governor comes along offering a discount of “up to” $500, to 2.5 million households (out of about 8 million households). Let’s see, have we come out ahead or behind? (Which is larger, $900 for each of 8 million households, or “up to” $500 for each of 2.5 million households?)
And then there is the issue of how New York’s rates came to be so much higher than the rates in other states. It can’t be geography — as an example, bordering Pennsylvania’s average rate for July was 21.72¢/kWh, fully 27% lower than our average rate. If you look at the EIA’s chart of average electricity rates by state, there is a remarkable (although not perfect) correlation between Republican-led states on the one hand (low rates) and Democrat-led states on the other (high rates).
And then consider some of the major New York energy policies that drive up rates. First there is the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (CLCPA). Provisions of this statute drive up consumer costs in multiple ways. First, the statute imposes a mandate that by 2030 70% of electricity must come from renewable sources. That provision makes it impossible to build new and more efficient natural gas power plants, or to re-power existing inefficient natural gas plants to use far less fuel to produce the same amount of electricity. Second, substantial amounts of new wind and solar generation have been built to try to comply with the 70% mandate, but since those only operate intermittently, all of the old natural gas plants must be retained, and we end up paying for two redundant generation systems instead of one. Third, the new wind and solar generators are also sited in remote locations, requiring substantial additional and expensive transmission, all of which gets paid for in electricity rates.
And then there’s the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or “RGGI.” RGGI is a compact among eleven Northeastern states to force greenhouse gas emitters (i.e., electric power plants) to purchase allowances for every ton of CO2 that they emit. The quantity of allowances shrinks every year, thus forcing the auction price to increase. The auction clearing price has gone from $2.53/ton in 2017 to $37.65/ton in the most recent auction this month. And the cost of the allowances ultimately gets added into the electricity rates. In short, this is a program whose main purpose is intentionally to drive up electricity rates.
The number of these “allowances” for FY 2026-27 is set at 25,356,513. At $37.65 each, that means that the State adds close to $1 billion per year to end-user electricity bills. Divide by the number of households, and it’s about $120/year each, which represents about 5% of the aggregate of consumer electric bills. And, unless the RGGI structure gets changed, this figure is almost certain to rise.
On August 5, two New York State agencies, the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Energy Research & Development Authority, finalized regulations relating to implementation of the RGGI compact in New York. In a press release of that date, the agencies claimed that New York had received $2 billion cumulatively from the auction receipts built into RGGI program to that time, but they said they were using the money to make “investments” that would return $12 billion, or six times as much:
The updated cap trajectory is designed to achieve affordable emissions reductions more quickly, while ensuring long-term availability of allowances under the program. Net savings are expected to reach nearly $12 billion (PDF) over the lifetime of the investments, providing a nearly 6-to-1 benefit based on investment of about $2 billion to date.
Note that the $2 billion of receipts and $12 billion of “benefits” are only as to receipts to date. Receipts going forward are projected to increase dramatically, to a cumulative total of $4.7 billion by FY 28/29.
So where do they come up with this $12 billion of supposed “benefits,” not now, but supposedly over the lifetime of the programs funded by the $2 billion spent so far. There is no real information available on that. In a document called the “New York’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Operating Plan Amendment for 2026,” the agencies have provided a long list of entities and programs that either have or will be getting large cash handouts from the program. (To access that document, go to my colleague Roger Caiazza’s blog here, and follow the link for “Operating Plan Amendment” in the first line of that post.) There are dozens of recipients and programs listed, many getting funding of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars cumulatively over multi-year periods. Here are some examples of larger items listed: “Green Jobs Green New York (Fund)” — $517 million; “Clean Transportation” — $450 million; “UPA Efficiency and RE” — $389 million; “Retrofit Challenges” — $464 million; “Clean Energy Communities” — $144 million. And these are just a few examples of some of the larger allocations. So what exact entities are getting these vast sums, and what exactly are they going to do with the money to provide the claimed benefits? There are no details offered beyond the brief descriptions quoted.
In other words, these have the total appearance of being enormous slush funds passed out to friendly but unnamed NGOs. The idea that there will be $12 billion of benefits to the ratepayers from the $2 billion disbursed so far is pure speculation with no backup of any kind. Are there any actual “green jobs” emerging from the $500+ million handed out to the “green jobs fund”? Go ahead and try to find any of them. What is the “clean transportation” that we are supposedly getting for $450 million? If anyone knows they are not saying.
Do New Yorkers have sufficient IQ to figure out that they are getting scammed with this “energy affordability” mantra from Governor Hochul. I guess we will find out in the upcoming election. But let’s face it — New York voters are very likely to fail this test.
The annual report, authored by more than 60 scientists, assesses the nine Planetary Boundaries, interconnected Earth system processes that need to stay within safe limits for planetary stability and resilience.
The Planetary Boundaries framework defines a “safe operating space for humanity” based on nine critical biophysical processes that regulate the stability, resilience, and life-support functions of the Earth system.
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The annual report, authored by more than 60 scientists, assesses the nine Planetary Boundaries, interconnected Earth system processes that need to stay within safe limits for planetary stability and resilience.
Key findings
Seven of the nine boundaries are transgressed, all at their highest recorded levels of breach:
Climate change
Biosphere integrity
Land- system change
Freshwater change
Biogeochemical flows (e.g., nitrogen and phosphorus)
Ocean acidification (the most recent to cross its boundary, in 2025)
The two that have improved over the past decade are stratospheric ozone depletion and atmospheric aerosol loading. Authors note that global aerosol improvements may still hide unsafe regional levels.
Lead author Boris Sakschewski stated: “The diagnosis is unambiguous. Pressure is rising across every Planetary Boundary already outside the safe operating space. It means that the risk of large- scale, persistent and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking.”
Johan Rockström (PIK director and co- author) emphasized that solutions exist, and accelerated action is needed to return to the safe operating space.
Context of recent extremes
The report follows a period of widespread extremes, including:
Pakistan’s 2025 monsoon floods (affecting >6.9 million people)
Record global ocean heat content in 2025, linked to rapid intensification of Hurricane Melissa (Category 5) striking Jamaica
The largest observed global coral bleaching event (bleaching- level heat stress on ~84.4% of reef area from January 2023- September 2025)
Record heat and drought in Western Europe (hottest June- July 2026), wildfires in Europe and Canada, and extreme heat in Japan, South Korea, and parts of the Middle East
Additional concerns
Natural carbon sinks (vegetation and soils) are under pressure from heat, drought, fire, and degradation. The report questions whether models may overestimate the resilience of the land carbon sink, noting that a functioning sink is essential for net- zero pathways.
The full report is available at planetaryhealthcheck.org. Similar coverage appears in outlets such as Scientific American and Mongabay.
The Planetary Boundaries framework defines a “safe operating space for humanity” based on nine critical biophysical processes that regulate the stability, resilience, and life-support functions of the Earth system.
It was first proposed in 2009 by a group of Earth system scientists led by Johan Rockström (then at the Stockholm Resilience Centre) and Will Steffen. The core idea is that the relatively stable Holocene epoch (the last ~11,700 years), during which human civilizations developed, provides the reference state for a habitable planet. Human activities in the Anthropocene are now the dominant force pushing the Earth system away from that state.
Transgressing these boundaries increases the risk of large- scale, abrupt, or irreversible environmental changes (including tipping points and cascading effects). The boundaries are interconnected, actions affecting one influence the others, so they must be considered together.
The nine Planetary Boundaries
Each is tracked with one or more control variables (quantifiable indicators). Boundaries are typically set with a “safe” level, a zone of increasing risk, and a high- risk zone. Climate change and biosphere integrity are often described as “core” boundaries because of their overarching influence.
Here is an overview (drawing on the 2009, 2015, and 2023 scientific updates, plus the annual Planetary Health Check assessments through 2026):
Climate change Control variables: Atmospheric CO₂ concentration and radiative forcing. Boundary example: ~350 ppm CO₂ (pre-industrial ~ 280 ppm). Current levels far exceed this (e.g., >420 ppm in recent assessments). Drivers: Greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from fossil fuels.
Change in biosphere integrity (formerly biodiversity loss) Control variables: Genetic diversity (extinction rate, e.g., extinctions per million species-years) and functional integrity (e.g., Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production / HANPP). Reflects both species loss and disruption of ecosystem functions that support the Earth system.
Land- system change Control variable: Typically, the area of remaining intact forests (or cropland conversion of ice- free land). Focuses on deforestation, habitat conversion, and related changes that alter energy, water, and carbon cycles.
Freshwater change Control variables:“Blue water” (surface and groundwater flows) and “green water” (soil moisture available to plants), measured by the extent of human- induced deviations from pre-industrial patterns. Captures both overuse and disruption of the water cycle.
Biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus cycles) Control variables: Industrial and agricultural nitrogen fixation and phosphorus flows to oceans and soils (often with global and regional components). Driven largely by fertilizer use, leading to eutrophication and dead zones.
Ocean acidification Control variable: Surface Ocean aragonite saturation state (a measure of carbonate ion availability critical for shell- forming organisms). Caused by CO₂ absorption by the oceans; crossed into the transgressed zone around 2025.
Introduction of novel entities Control variable: Often the percentage of synthetic chemicals released without adequate safety testing, or the overall load of human- made substances (plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals, radioactive materials, etc.). Reflects pollution by substances that did not exist (or existed at negligible levels) in the Holocene.
Atmospheric aerosol loading Control variable: Interhemispheric difference in aerosol optical depth (or related measures of particulate pollution). Affects climate, monsoon systems, and health. Currently assessed as within the safe operating space globally (with regional concerns).
Stratospheric ozone depletion Control variable: Stratospheric ozone concentration (in Dobson units). Successfully addressed by the Montreal Protocol; remains within (or recovering toward) safe levels.
Evolution and current status
2009: Framework introduced; three boundaries assessed as transgressed.
2015: Update; four transgressed; climate change and biosphere integrity identified as core.
2023: First full quantification of all nine; six transgressed.
2025- 2026 (Planetary Health Check by the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at PIK): Seven transgressed (ocean acidification newly crossed in 2025), with pressures rising on all seven. Only aerosol loading and ozone depletion remain within the safe space (though aerosols show regional issues).
The annual Planetary Health Check (produced since ~2023 and 2024 by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research’s Planetary Boundaries Science Lab, involving dozens of scientists) provides ongoing monitoring and updates, often visualized as a “blood test” or radar/spider diagram of Earth’s vital signs.
Influence and applications
The framework has moved beyond academia into policy (e.g., informing EU strategies and national assessments), business (e.g., World Business Council for Sustainable Development), and related concepts such as Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth), planetary health, and Earth system boundaries (which add a justice dimension). It emphasizes that sustainable development requires operating within these biophysical limits while addressing equity.
Key sources for deeper exploration:
Original papers: Rockström et al. (2009, Nature / Ecology and Society); Steffen et al. (2015, Science); Richardson et al. (2023, Science Advances).
Reviews: Rockström et al. (2024) in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
The framework is not a set of absolute “do not cross” lines with guaranteed catastrophe on the other side, but rather science- based guardrails that quantify rising risk as human pressures intensify. Returning processes toward the safe operating space is presented as essential for long- term planetary stability and human prosperity.
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