Tag: climate agenda

They’re back. The mullahs of meteorology and climate

You can’t win with zealots unless you take away the reason for the zealotry. And since it’s not really about climate and weather, but control, they were not going away. Now look at what we are seeing. The recent shift in Congress and the Senate has emboldened that extremity, so people are going to be targets.

What is strange is watching the change in academia?

The times are changing, but not for the better.

Colorful educational illustration of Earth surrounded by weather symbols, planets, rockets, hot air balloons, and scientists studying climate data
Earth planet with business people on background. Elements of this image furnished by NASA

From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

I really wanted to be involved in the hierarchy that would help figure out how to address the climate agenda. I felt that, as someone who has been forecasting for over 50 years and relies on climate and past weather data, I could offer a different kind of input, one from the guy digging the ditch who has to deal with the fact that being wrong actually costs you something.

I have always felt that the crucible of capitalism and competition will yield the best results. And certainly, in a private sector that has to compete for a shrinking dollar, you cannot simply dismiss anything that may impact the forecast.

And the other thing: everyone in the administration’s hierarchy is smarter than me.

I have no illusions about that. My dad used to say, “Never let on that someone might be smarter or stronger than you.” And certainly that was a driving factor before. But I like surrounding myself with people who are maxing out their strengths. Not that I want to be them, but I want to see what they are doing to make use of what they were given.

That’s inspiring to me. I know that no one loves the weather more than I do, and no one will outwork me.

There may be people who love it as much, or work as hard, but not more. That same father, a meteorologist who taught me a lot, once told me it was sad when I told him I didn’t think I could go a day without looking at weather maps. From the other side, my son said, “Dad, I love the weather, but you are ridiculous.”

I guess I think it’s the only thing God gave me that I had until He took me. My parents are gone, people have come and gone, but the weather is always there.

So, I have gratitude for that. But I would love to have been a part of a group where I could listen to the reasoning behind ideas. How much of it is political, for instance. Or how much is strictly driven by a desire for the right answer.

How much is because of economic realities. In the end, to me, the weather and climate have to be stand- alone, and the other items are a response to them, not the reason for an answer.

But now I am glad I am not involved and that is a horrible thing to say, because of the reason. It has to do with what I was warning my colleagues about at the climate conference back in April.

You can’t win with zealots unless you take away the reason for the zealotry. And since it’s not really about climate and weather, but control, they were not going away. Now look at what we are seeing. The recent shift in Congress and the Senate has emboldened that extremity, so people are going to be targets.

Some of those people may be held “accountable” for actions they took because they believed it was the best course of action. Of course, it’s not only people in the administration involved with climate and weather; it’s across the board.

I have always had a variety of clients. If a client happens to be an oil company that needs a forecast (for instance, we have a colder December forecast than the standard, a strong El nino analog), even though December may not be cold compared to many others, it should be colder than the standard strong El nino. Here is the example

Strong El Nino analog:

United States map showing temperature departures versus the 1991–2020 long-term average, with warmer-than-average conditions in orange and red across the central and eastern states and cooler conditions in green across parts of the West.

Our idea relative to analogs:

Color-coded map of the United States showing regional data from 2009, 2002, and 2018, with green in the West, yellow and orange across the Midwest and Northeast, and white in parts of the South.

You start computing the difference in energy costs even though, by no means, it’s a frigid December we have, just not as warm, and it’s a big deal.

But that’s seen as taking money from an oil company. Yet wind and solar are huge items we forecast for also. So, does that put me in their pocket?

Of course not. But it does to them. I found that out when I was making the Bill Nye movie as the villain. I was asked how much money I was getting from the Koch brothers because someone said they were paying me to say what I was saying.

I have no idea who told them that, but I pointed to my 2007 Pontiac Firebird with a hole in the bumper and said, “How does a man getting rich off the Koch brothers drive that?”

The fact is, if you did eliminate all non- wind and solar energy sources, that’s awesome for business. They need not only a seasonal forecast, but hour- by-hour forecasts. For instance, what does a 20- degree drop in a thunderstorm in Dallas do to demand?

Or what if there is a prolonged heat wave in a big city, but the wind turbine source has light winds and is not producing?

They need a forecast not only for an extended time period, but every day and every hour. Heck, why not just push wind and solar all the time if you are a forecaster?

Now isn’t that an interesting question, as far as motivation goes?

Mine is to look for trouble and forecast it, no matter who or what you are. I don’t care what your politics are. But think about this: some people say you should care what someone’s politics are and question their profit motive. I suspect they are seeing in others what they know about themselves. In addition, there won’t be much of a profit motive anymore if the kind of draconian policies we see being touted come to pass. (Another leftist motivation.)

But in climate and weather under Trump, it’s very educated people who decided to serve their country when called upon, and they may now wish they hadn’t. Or a ditch- digging forecaster (me, it’s okay, as Judge Smails said in Caddyshack, the world needs ditch- diggers too) thanking God he is not in that group.

I have always felt about the weather the way Larry Holmes felt about Joe Louis. I was once in the Commodore Inn, owned by Larry Holmes, and there were portraits of all the heavyweight champs. All of them had their names on the portraits, except one: Joe Louis.

I asked the guy at the desk why he didn’t have a name on his. The guy responded, “Larry says Joe Louis doesn’t need an introduction.” Well, that’s the weather.

It is so majestic it doesn’t need to be hyped and dragged into a political sewer, which is where this has gone. So much so that the hammer and sickle of intimidation is now something that has to be dealt with. Walking headfirst into a machine gun nest is not brave; it’s stupid. And that is what the whole political sewer has made this.

What is strange is watching the change in academia?

When I was in college, almost all the profs were Democrats, as I was, but I never had a meteo prof who did not like to be challenged and argue a point. In Dr. Joel Myers’ class, he liked to compete so much that he set up a forecasting contest, and if you beat him, you would be offered a job at AccuWeather. But think about that. There he is, a PhD, acknowledged even then as doing something no one else would even try, and he is telling students to bring it on.

I once got hurt in wrestling practice and was laid up in bed for two days (back). One of my profs called me and asked, “Where the hell have you been?” (Those of you who went to PSU in the ’70s in meteo probably know who that was.) I said, “I was hurt and couldn’t get out of bed.” He says, “Well, you have to call me if you are out, because I have to think about the lesson plan because I need to know that no one is going to argue with me.” As I said, it was bring it on.

Many years later, I heard in one of the classes at PSU that you had to email questions in a day before. But that is a symptom of what is most scary. A large part of the climate agenda is academics who seek to eliminate discussion, not enhance it.

They believe that counterarguments to their ideas are destructive to the overall mission. If the overall mission is truly to find the right answer, that is not the truth. If it’s to push a set political agenda, of course it would be.

Free speech is dangerous to a top-down control agenda. But what a flip. We go from teachers saying “Bring it on” to people determined to “shut it down.”

Planck once famously said:

“Science advances one funeral at a time”.

This is because, in his day, entrenched viewpoints were replaced only when those with the viewpoint died. And it was paraphrased by Bill Nye

Bill Nye on Climate Deniers: “There’s an old saying , ‘science proceeds one funeral at a time’, … but it’s not happening fast enough.”

Bill actually got a couple of things wrong here.

1) No one denies climate; it’s just him demeaning those who dare question attribution

2) This is not about science; it’s about a top-down control agenda

3) As for it not happening fast enough, well, it isnt for his political motivation

But think about what “Not happening fast enough” means. I asked the AI

Me: “But not happening fast enough.” Could that not be something that a fanatic would use as motivation to kill a so-called climate denier?

AI: Yes, a fanatic or extremist could interpret and use that phrasing as motivation or rationalization for violence.

Far-fetched? It used to be, but look at some of the things you see today. There is a well-known man-made global warming catastrophe pusher who said he had to quit his job over threats. I had to smile thinking about my late mother calling me up, crying, because she was worried about what might happen to me because of what she was reading on the internet.

BTW, I don’t think Bill himself was threatening anyone. I think he was stating a fact because of what he believes. But again, a guy like Bill Nye is a science hero many of the current generation of man – made climate catastrophe pushers grew up watching.

People ask me about him, and I say, well, obviously I disagree with him on the issue of the attribution of man-made climate change, but the total picture of what he did, bringing science to the forefront, is immense.

He has an immense following; some of them are willing to destroy paintings worth more than what people think a human life is worth in the name of saving the planet (ironic, destroying evidence of humanity’s advancement on the planet in an effort to save it). But “not happening fast enough”? Given what we are seeing today? Interesting.

But it’s scary that this is what it’s come to. That when you write or say something, instead of laying out a pathway to an answer, you are thinking about people wishing that funerals of people like me would happen fast enough.

Effectively, the way to kill the debate is to destroy the people who dare debate with you.

All in the name of saving the planet and democracy. They have adopted the Marxist mantra of ” You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

The mullahs of meteorology and climate did not go away. They won’t go away.

And now they are coming back, and they are mad. And the very party that, when I went to school, advocated a way that I believed in and adopted now wishes to destroy it. Not with something that will advance mankind, but instead to send it into the abyss of curtailed freedom.

The times are changing, but not for the better.

“Green Machine” targets plastics at consumer expense

Your casserole went stale and your mayo turned bad, along with a few pastries. But that’s okay since you’re taking one for the team and doing your part to save the planet! Those nasty plastics will bring about death and destruction.
Or so you’ve been told.

Woman using food film for food storage on a white table. Roll of transparent polyethylene food film.

From CFACT

By Kevin Mooney

Anti-trust investigations team up with pressure groups to target producers.

Your casserole went stale and your mayo turned bad, along with a few pastries. But that’s okay since you’re taking one for the team and doing your part to save the planet! Those nasty plastics will bring about death and destruction.

Or so you’ve been told.

In reality, green activists operating in the name of “sustainability” have joined forces with corporate interests to increase consumer prices and coerce inferior products into the marketplace. All in the name of combatting plastics — and the motivations are not difficult to understand. Green activists who have lost ground on their climate agenda under President Donald Trump have repackaged that same agenda under a different name. As to the corporations, they are only too pleased to limit competition and charge consumers more, while giving off the appearance of being concerned about the environment.

Here’s the deal

Pressure groups including the U.S. Plastics Pact, the Consumer Goods Forum, and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, have joined with heavy hitters like Coca-Cola, Target, Unilever, Mondelez, and Nestle to impose burdensome environmental targets. These include: arbitrary recycled-content quotas and directives to redesign everyday packaging — just to make certain products are as expensive as possible.

Fortunately, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has entered the fray to take on the “sustainability agenda.” Earlier this month, he initiated an anti-trust investigation and issued Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to the plastics trade groups and the corporations complicit with their agenda.

In a statement Uthmeier said, “Environmental groups are pressuring corporations to abandon free market principles and raise prices on consumers for products they don’t want.”

Contrary to what green activists would like the public to believe, plastics come with significant benefits as a direct result human innovation. They keep food fresh, alleviate waste, make products lighter and therefore more affordable. They also contribute to life-saving medical devices.

If environmental activists turned government bureaucrats were genuinely interested in environmental improvements, they would focus on more efficient waste management, enhanced recycling infrastructure, and biodegradable innovations. But none of those solutions are on the table. Instead, the radicals push a top-down policy approach that suffocates the free market.

Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, took down the concept of “sustainable development” in an interview with Restoration News, saying:

What needs to be understood about ‘sustainable development’ is that what is being peddled is itself unsustainable. Absent government mandates, industry collusion, and interminable lawsuits, the alternatives to plastics could not stand on their own two feet. The marketplace, which reflects consumer preferences, is the best place to separate the sheep from the goats. Just as the PC vanquished the electric typewriter, and internet transmissions quashed the fax machine, superior products prevail over inferior ones. But this is an arena the anti-plastics lobby does not dare to enter. They know they will lose. Florida’s attorney general sees this game for what it is, and is to be applauded for taking appropriate action. May other state AGs follow his example.

“Sustainability” is an invention of the United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held as part of the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. The agenda aimed to spur action at the international, national, regional and local levels with the common goal of achieving “sustainable development,” which the U.N. defines as an approach to growth and development that satisfies contemporary needs without undermining the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

At a time when the climate agenda is running up against scientific facts and economic realities; let’s not give that agenda new life under a different name.

Time to face facts. The war on plastics amounts to nothing more than a war on modern conveniences made possible by the innovations inherent in the free market. The green cultists would prefer humanity return to a time when casseroles and mayonnaise spoil in hours instead of days, and cell phones use inferior materials and fall apart in months.

Thankfully, Florida AG James Uthmeier has initiated anti-trust investigations to put an end to this nonsense in the corporate world, and to put a stake through the heart of “sustainability.”

This article originally appeared at Restoration News

Stop Protecting Insurance Profiteers, San Francisco Chronicle, Climate Change Is Not Responsible for California’s High Cost of Living

The San Francisco Chronicle claims that California is suffering from the impacts of climate change, and oil companies should “pick up the tab” instead of taxpayers because they are supposedly the cause.
“California isn’t expensive because of climate change.
It’s expensive because of climate policies.”

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

The San Francisco Chronicle claims that California is suffering from the impacts of climate change, and oil companies should “pick up the tab” instead of taxpayers because they are supposedly the cause. This is nonsense. Wildfires are not getting worse in California due to climate change, and it makes no sense for California to sue local “big oil” companies when they are not responsible for more than a drop in the bucket of global carbon dioxide emissions, even if one accepts the alarmist positions on anthropogenic climate change.

The op-ed, “Climate change is hitting Californians hard. The state should make Big Oil pick up the tab,” is written by Dave Jones, a former insurance commissioner and “director of Climate Risk Initiative at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.”

Jones claims that a changing climate is driving “higher taxes, electricity costs, and insurance premiums,” while “oil companies whose products are driving the climate crisis continue to profit while making it worse.”

In his op-ed, Jones complains that a report by the California Earthquake Authority does not point a finger at oil companies for climate change induced damages. He argues oil companies should pay for damages because he claims those companies are “substantially responsible for the warming climate driving California’s wildfires, but not paying a cent of the financial costs.” Jones specifically blamed the Palisades fire on climate change. But that is flat out false; the Palisades fire was not caused by climate change.

Wildfires are natural for California, and while it is true that conditions were “unusually” dry in the immediate leadup to the fire outbreak, it was not part of any long-term trend that can be associated with global climate change. The particular conditions that led to the fires —hot, dry winds—are so common for Los Angeles that they have a nickname: Santa Ana winds. As discussed in previous Climate Realism posts on the subject, they aren’t new, aren’t impacted by climate change, and are certainly not unprecedented.

The fire was set by an arsonist, and spread by those dry conditions and strong winds perfect for aiding devastating fires by drying out existing brush and grasses. It also didn’t help that California had failed to keep up with the clearing of brush that fuels large fires, in the name of environmentalism. Incredibly, firefighters on the scene were prevented by state officials from completely extinguishing areas on state land that were still smoldering out of concern for the environment! The fire flared up from the areas that the firefighters were prevented from fully putting out. It’s all on tape.

How does Jones prove the fire was climate-driven while data and evidence does not? He points at an attribution study that claimed “fossil fuel-driven climate change made the disaster 35% more likely.” Here, Jones is not relying on actual science, but rather the distinctly unscientific method of single-event attribution, which Climate Realism has taken to task on many occasions. Attribution studies are not evidence because they compare two counterfactual scenarios; one where humans never emitted fossil fuels and one where we have but it’s assumed our emissions impact the weather in certain ways. Both of those scenarios have assumptions built in, neither of them accurately model weather systems.

But attribution models are convenient when real world data does not support alarmists’ assertions. In fact, global wildfire data show that wildfires are becoming less severe over time, even as modest warming has occurred. The United Nations IPCC likewise confirms that fire weather is not becoming more common. (See figure below)

Even without data contradicting Jones’ claims, trying to pin oil companies with the cost of damages is absurd. For one thing, downstream emissions from the oil and gas produced by a handful of American oil majors cannot possibly be connected to any given severe weather event, the accounting of such a thing would be ridiculous. Also, its not the oil companies, but rather consumers that cause the emissions. Try suing every single California driver, including state and local government agencies like the police and hospital emergency crews. Carbon dioxide emissions, which Jones fallaciously asserts are ultimately behind California’s wildfires, do not just come from the use of oil from the oil companies California has the ability to sue.

One need only look at Asia to see that U.S.-related emissions are swamped by other countries, even if one argues that U.S. oil companies sell their product abroad. The largest single oil company by production is Saudi Aramco. The largest producer and user of coal is China.

California is not expensive because of climate change; it is expensive in part because of the climate and energy policies that the state has imposed on its residents. High electricity costs are due to the state trying to phase out fossil fuels, relying more and more on expensive and unreliable wind and solar. California has the highest gas prices in the country on purpose, higher than Hawaii, due to taxes and environmental program costs, which were levied in order to stop people from using gasoline. Refineries and gas stations have closed or left the state.

Climate Realism has discussed the true causes of California’s recent wildfires and rising insurance costs, while putting them in historical context, on dozens of occasions.

Inflation and rising property values and also the higher cost of repairs (due in part to California’s environmentally focused building codes and policies) have also led to higher insurance costs. It costs money to process claims, especially when that process is backed up during a major natural disaster or when states have certain consumer protection laws, all of which Jones knows—he must know, as a former insurance commissioner—but for some reason chose to downplay for this article.

Blaming climate change is an easy out for insurance profiteers and their enablers, and it’s even better if the costs of weather damage can be passed off onto oil companies that have nothing to do with the weather. This entire San Francisco Chronicle piece reads far more like a cynical attempt to offload responsibility from the state and insurance companies, on to oil majors, than it does a piece reflecting a realistic understanding of climate issues. Wildfires are not increasing or more severe than they have been in history and they aren’t being caused by oil companies, or by people using their products – except in those cases where arsonists use gasoline to start a fire, and that’s not the fault of oil companies either.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

“California isn’t expensive because of climate change.
It’s expensive because of climate policies.”

California’s elevated cost of living, particularly in energy, stems significantly from deliberate state policies aimed at reducing fossil fuel use, rather than from physical climate impacts alone. These policies include aggressive renewable mandates, carbon pricing, and fuel standards that raise costs while reducing in-state supply reliability.

As of early 2026, California’s average residential electricity rate stands at approximately 30.29 cents per kWh, compared to the U.S. national average of 17.45 cents per kWh—roughly 70-80% higher depending on the exact monthly data. Some reports and utility filings place effective rates even higher (approaching 33-36 cents/kWh in certain areas or with additional charges), making California second only to Hawaii among states.

Key drivers tied to policy:

  • Renewable portfolio standards and the push to phase out fossil fuels and nuclear (via once-through cooling rules and other mandates) have led to reliance on intermittent wind and solar. This requires expensive grid upgrades, battery storage for balancing, and backup capacity.
  • Wildfire-related costs (liability, vegetation management, insurance) have surged and are socialized into rates, but these interact with policies that accelerated the shift away from dispatchable power.
  • Rooftop solar subsidies and net metering shifts costs onto non-solar customers.
  • Early retirement of plants and regulatory compliance create “stranded asset” expenses passed to ratepayers.

Rates have risen sharply—e.g., 39% bill increases over six years in some analyses, or 80-121% for major utilities since 2014—far outpacing inflation and national trends. While some community choice aggregators or recent adjustments have trimmed generation charges modestly, delivery and other fees (tied to state mandates) keep overall bills elevated. High electricity prices hinder the state’s own electrification goals (EVs, heat pumps), as they make switching less attractive without heavy subsidies.

California routinely posts the highest or near-highest regular gasoline prices in the country. In spring 2026 data, averages hovered around $5.50–$5.89 per gallon (with spikes higher in some regions), compared to the national average near $3.50–$3.80. This gap persists even as global crude fluctuates.

California’s climate agenda—renewable mandates since the early 2000s, cap-and-trade, LCFS—has demonstrably contributed to these premiums.

Official reports (e.g., Legislative Analyst’s Office) acknowledge ambitious GHG policies as a factor in rate growth, alongside wildfire costs and utility structures. Defenders argue long-term benefits and credits (e.g., climate rebates on bills) offset some pain, but empirical outcomes show persistently higher prices and supply strains compared to states with more balanced mixes (natural gas, hydro, etc.).

This isn’t “climate change” as a weather phenomenon driving costs; its policy choices prioritizing rapid decarbonization over affordability and reliability.

Inverted Food Pyramid: Real Food Wins, Climate Activists Lose

The new U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025–2030, released January 7, 2026, by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, flip the script—literally—with an inverted food pyramid that puts protein (red meat, poultry, eggs, seafood), full-fat dairy, healthy fats, vegetables, and fruits front and center at the wide top. Whole grains shrink to the narrow bottom. The core message: “Eat real food.” Prioritize nutrient-dense whole foods. Slash ultra-processed junk, added sugars, and refined carbs.

The new U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025–2030, released January 7, 2026, by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, flip the script—literally—with an inverted food pyramid that puts protein (red meat, poultry, eggs, seafood), full-fat dairy, healthy fats, vegetables, and fruits front and center at the wide top. Whole grains shrink to the narrow bottom.

The core message: “Eat real food.” Prioritize nutrient-dense whole foods. Slash ultra-processed junk, added sugars, and refined carbs.

This is the most significant reset in decades. It rejects decades of carb-heavy, low-fat dogma that coincided with skyrocketing obesity and metabolic disease. Instead, it aligns with basic biology: humans thrive on satiating protein and fats that stabilize blood sugar, support muscle, hormones, and brain health.

Outlets aligned with climate activism (NYT, Civil Eats, Mother Jones, Guardian, Earth.org) are apoplectic. They call it a “climate disaster,” “gift to Big Meat,” and a “land hog” that will spike methane emissions, drive deforestation, and demand vast new farmland. Why? Because the pyramid visually elevates beef, butter, whole milk, and other animal foods that activists insist must be curtailed for the planet.

Their critique boils down to this: food policy must serve net-zero targets first, with human health and enjoyment as afterthoughts. The new guidelines invert that hierarchy. They center what actually nourishes people—bioavailable protein, fats for satiety, micronutrients—over treating dinner as a carbon-offset ritual.

Nutrition Reality Check:

Protein isn’t the enemy: Most Americans aren’t protein-deficient, but higher-quality animal sources deliver complete amino acids, heme iron, B12, zinc, and creatine far more efficiently than plants. The guidelines push 1.2–1.6 g/kg body weight—practical for muscle maintenance, aging, and feeling full (which curbs overeating carbs). Full-fat dairy stays in without sugar. Saturated fat is still capped at <10% of calories, but real-food sources like butter or beef tallow are now options, not villains.

Satiety and real-world results: Low-fat, grain-heavy advice from past pyramids helped fuel the obesity epidemic. This update bets on what people actually stick to and enjoy—steak, eggs, cheese, veggies—over processed “plant-based” substitutes that often fail nutritionally or on taste.

Environmental Nuance:

Livestock is a real emissions source (methane, land use), but U.S. production has grown far more efficient over decades. Regenerative grazing sequesters carbon and restores soil. Global horror stories (tropical deforestation) don’t map directly to American beef or dairy. Meanwhile, the pyramid still loads up on vegetables and fruits, and whole grains aren’t banned—just de-emphasized. Claims of “another California-sized land grab” assume zero innovation in yields, feed additives, genetics, or alternative proteins.

Plant staples (grains, soy) also use land, water, fertilizers, and pesticides. Monoculture impacts matter too. The guidelines don’t pretend food systems have zero footprint—they simply refuse to make personal steak consumption the moral scapegoat for global emissions while ignoring tech and agronomic progress.

For years, international reports (EAT-Lancet) and activists have tried to weaponize dietary guidelines as stealth climate policy—pushing “planetary health” diets heavy on plants and light on meat. This update says no. Nutrition policy is for human health, not symbolic emission cuts or behavioral engineering. People can voluntarily eat less meat if they want; the government shouldn’t guilt-trip or invert the food pyramid to enforce it.

Chronic disease (obesity, diabetes) is the immediate public-health emergency. “Make America Healthy Again” prioritizes fixing that over distant climate models with debatable sensitivity and policy leverage. If emissions are the concern, better levers exist: methane tech, waste reduction, yield gains—not scolding families about cheese.

This pyramid isn’t “anti-environment.” It’s pro-human.

Real food first.

The activist meltdown proves the point: when nutrition science stops subordinating itself to the climate agenda, the agenda throws a tantrum.

The new inverted food pyramid and the broader “Make America Healthy Again” push expose a fundamental mismatch: consumers voting with their wallets and taste buds for real, satiating food versus the top-down agenda of the Climate Industrial Complex that wants to re-engineer diets for emission targets.

Beyond Meat (BYND) trading around $0.70–$0.83 per share in April 2026—down roughly 99% from its 2019 peak and hovering in penny-stock territory—tells the story. The company has seen repeated double-digit revenue declines (e.g., ~15–20% drops in recent quarters), with plant-based meat analogs broadly facing sales slowdowns or outright drops in both retail and foodservice channels. Broader category data shows U.S. plant-based meat sales falling sharply from pandemic-era highs, with many consumers citing high prices, heavy processing, and inferior taste/texture as reasons for switching back to conventional meat and dairy.

Why the “Eco-Busybodies” Face a Profound Political Problem

Consumer sovereignty wins: People aren’t irrational. Real steak, eggs, butter, and full-fat dairy deliver superior satiety, nutrient density (bioavailable protein, heme iron, B12, creatine), and enjoyment. Highly processed pea-protein patties with long ingredient lists often fail on flavor, mouthfeel, and value. When given a genuine choice in a free market—without heavy subsidies, mandates, or guilt campaigns—most opt for the real thing. The new dietary guidelines simply reflect that biological and cultural reality instead of fighting it.

The climate agenda’s overreach: For years, parts of the environmental movement (via reports like EAT-Lancet or activist pressure on guidelines) treated food policy as a stealth tool for “planetary health”—pushing drastic meat reductions to hit net-zero checkboxes. Livestock methane and land-use arguments were amplified, sometimes with models that gloss over U.S. efficiency gains, regenerative practices, or the full lifecycle of plant monocultures (fertilizer, water, pesticides). The inverted pyramid rejects subordinating nutrition to that framework. It prioritizes fixing chronic disease (obesity, diabetes) over distant emission models.

Market signal ignored: The fake-meat hype cycle—massive valuations, celebrity endorsements, fast-food tie-ins—collapsed under basic economics. Consumers tried it, many rejected it, and sales data reflects reversion to animal products. This isn’t “failure of education”; it’s revealed preference. Forcing the issue via policy (school lunches, procurement rules, carbon labeling, or guilt-tripping guidelines) runs into the same wall: people resist when it tastes worse and costs more for inferior nutrition.

The deeper issue for climate activists and aligned policymakers is legitimacy. When public health authorities finally center “eat real food” over processed substitutes and emission scolding, it undermines the narrative that personal consumption must be sacrificed at the altar of climate urgency. The meltdown over the new pyramid—accusations of ignoring “environmental dimensions” despite food systems’ complexities—reveals the hierarchy: agenda first, human biology and preferences second.

Free economies expose this through voluntary choices: declining fake-meat sales, rising demand for nutrient-dense animal foods, and political backlash against top-down dietary engineering. Technological improvements in agriculture (methane inhibitors, better grazing, yields) and innovation offer lower-emission paths without mandating austerity or inferior replacements. But that requires accepting limits on behavioral control.

The new guidelines aren’t anti-environment; they’re pro-human flourishing. When consumers consistently choose the latter, the “profound political problem” for eco-busybodies is that coercion becomes the only remaining lever—and that’s a losing long-term strategy in an open society.

Real food is winning because it works for actual people, not abstract models.

Climate Activists seek to impose COVID-style energy lockdowns

Marc Morano criticizes IEA’s fuel consumption reduction guidance as ‘climate agenda’ –

ClimateDepot.com executive editor Marc Morano discusses the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) new guidance on reducing fuel consumption amid the war in the Middle East on ‘The Bottom Line.’

From CFACT

WATCH NOW

“The Bottom Line” – Fox Business Network – Broadcast March 31, 2026 

Marc Morano criticizes IEA’s fuel consumption reduction guidance as ‘climate agenda’ –

ClimateDepot.com executive editor Marc Morano discusses the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) new guidance on reducing fuel consumption amid the war in the Middle East on ‘The Bottom Line.’

Because maybe I got this wrong. But I was looking at that, IEA stuff. These guidelines, and there might have been guidelines for individuals, but it looked like they were also putting out guidance for governments to consider, is where your concern is.

Marc Morano: To paraphrase the words of Al Pacino, just when you think we’re out of the climate agenda, they pull us back in.

You have not only the IEA, which is, by the way, the International Energy Agency, but it has been hijacked by climate alarmists — for years, they’ve been all in on net zero — promoting this, you have also a Reuters news analysis, and climate activists. They are treating the Iran war as though it’s a version of the Green New Deal. They’re excited. Every time Iran blows up someone’s energy infrastructure, they look at this as an opportunity to literally do the exact same things they were proposing for the green new deal for net zero and COVID, with stay-at-home orders.

What’s happening here is they’re using the same tactics of fear, their fearmongering about an energy crisis that hasn’t even happened yet. And they’re turning that into, ‘we have to proactively turn our whole economy toward net zero like we’ve been saying for decades with the climate agenda.’

All these activists are rooting for Iran to do more destruction to energy infrastructure and keep the Strait blocked so that we can go after fossil fuels. To be clear, Reuters said the Iran war was a ‘fossil fuel killer’, and that we can now use this to move off of fossil fuels. They’re just that excited about this whole war for that reason. …

Higher energy prices are not a bug of the climate agenda; they are a feature. So any hike in energy prices is exactly what they always wanted. So you can see why they’re giddy at the moment.

Donald Trump has destroyed — and I mean, obliterated the green agenda in a little over a year. They are now just regrouping and trying to use the Iran war to resurrect themselves.

When Winter Bites Back: What Real Data Says About Climate Hype

The recent harsh winter weather across much of North America (especially the eastern and central U.S. and Canada) in late January through mid-February 2026 has brought record cold, heavy snow, ice storms, and dangerous wind chills.

The recent harsh winter weather across much of North America (especially the eastern and central U.S. and Canada) in late January through mid-February 2026 has brought record cold, heavy snow, ice storms, and dangerous wind chills.

Fernando del Pino Calvo- Sotelo’s article “Cold, rain, snow: climate change?” (originally published in Spanish as “Frío, lluvia, nieve: ¿cambio climático?” on February 9, 2026, on his blog fpcs.es) directly tackles the very question: what do episodes of cold, rain, and snow actually reveal about climate change claims?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

From Independence, Freedom and Truth

By Fernando del Pino Calvo Sotelo

Climate propagandists are worried. Indeed, the preferred weather conditions for climate propaganda are heat and drought, and since the end of December we have had cold weather and huge amounts of rain. In fact, in mainland Spain, January has been the rainiest in the last 25 years, and many reservoirs have ended the month at 100% capacity. We have definitely left the drought behind, the beginning and end of which, incidentally, the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) was unable to predict.

We should learn three lessons from this fact. The first is the unreliability of weather forecasts beyond a time horizon of a few days. A well-kept secret is that science is still in its infancy in its understanding of the climate, a nonlinear, complex, and chaotic system. Therefore, meteorologists have no way of knowing with any degree of certainty what will happen this coming spring, or next year, let alone in 2100. They operate in an environment of enormous uncertainty and base their seasonal forecasts on factors that are only partially explanatory, such as ENSO.

Once again, the AEMET

Hence the probabilistic approximations obtained after laborious calculations—that is, by eye—such as that made by the AEMET when it predicted that there was a 60% chance of a warmer-than-normal winter. Such prediction has earned much criticism, tempered by the fierce defense of the Agency systematically carried out by fact-checkers and the left-wing media (almost all), not surprisingly, since AEMET is the main authority for promoting the climate agenda.

In reality, AEMET’s huge mistake lies in not having been able to predict the enormous volume of rainfall recorded in January. In fact, criticism of its temperature forecast distracts attention from this point and is also premature (and certainly naïf, since AEMET holds the monopoly in calculating Spain’s temperature). Indeed, the average temperature for the meteorological winter in Spain is 6.6ºC, so for it to be a “warmer than normal” winter, it would only need to be a few tenths of a degree above that temperature. If we accept that January temperatures were normal, as the AEMET seems to have suggested, for its winter prediction to be wrong February will have to be colder than normal (below the 40th percentile), which is statistically less likely than the opposite scenario. Hence, the Agency is relying on February’s temperature measurements to restore its reputation, or rather, on the statistical estimates that temperature calculations have become, since, following its recent methodological change, most of the data points do not come from direct thermometer measurements, but from interpolations on small grids using multiple regression models[1].

The second lesson we must remember is that the great climate threat that should concern us is the extreme cold typical of Ice Ages, not the milder temperatures caused by the slight warming we have fortunately been experiencing since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th century. Heat is synonymous with life, and cold is synonymous with death. That is why birds migrate to warmer areas in winter, and citizens of central and northern Europe come on vacation to Spain, and not the other way around.

The final lesson to be learned is that we must be on guard against the relentless, Soviet-style, climate propaganda bombardment. Indeed, if this early winter had been warm and dry instead of freezing and rainy, climate propaganda would have immediately blamed it on climate change. Well, it is just as ridiculous and unscientific to extrapolate a cold, rainy, and snowy month and link it to supposed global cooling as it is to link every heat wave, every drought, or every particularly warm season to global warming. Please remember this the next time climate activists—starting with the AEMET—turn mere local, temporary, and irrelevant weather phenomena into irrefutable evidence of global climate change.

Prophets of doom

For the prophets of climate doom, the bad news keeps piling up, as Bill Gates now claims that “although climate change will have serious consequences (…), people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future”[2]. After writing a book a few years ago with the alarming title How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, his change of tone (or opportunistic shift) has coincided with the erosion of apocalyptic projections—discredited time and again by observed data—and, above all, with the political change that has taken place in the US, a country that has decided to abandon, and therefore stop funding, all kinds of environmental organizations, including the UN’s IPCC[3].

We must be aware that effective climate propaganda blames climate change for all kinds of phenomena, even those of an opposite nature.

That is precisely why “global warming” came to be called “climate change,” a less restrictive concept that admits everything under its umbrella. This is why those who make a living from the climate narrative try to explain that global warming is to blame for the heat, but also for the cold; for torrential rain, but also for drought; for total calm, but also for gale-force winds. However, although atmospheric physics is sometimes counterintuitive, I trust that common sense tells you, dear reader, that it is usually difficult for the same factor to cause completely opposite results. If not, be careful the next time you put ice in your drink, lest it heat up, or take an antipyretic, lest it raise your fever instead of lowering it.

Contrary to what the propaganda claims, global warming has not yet caused any increase in climate instability or in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events, as the IPCC itself acknowledges[4]. But let’s imagine for a moment that it did, as its propagandists claim: should we then conclude that global cooling would bring great climate stability? This does not seem to be the case. In fact, the Little Ice Age (13th-19th centuries) was a period of “great climatic instability” that led to severe grain crop failures and, consequently, famines[5]. On the contrary, increased CO2 and milder temperatures favor plant growth. Thus, cereal crop yields (measured in tons per cultivated hectare) have only grown in recent decades and are now double what they were 60 years ago, which is great news for feeding a growing world population[6]. Bless CO2.

Global drop in temperatures

January’s cold, rain, and snow have not been limited to Spain, but have been a global phenomenon in the northern hemisphere. Anecdotally, it is worth mentioning that on the night of Epiphany, 30 cm of snow fell on the beaches of the French Atlantic coast[7], that in the US the cold and snow storm at the end of January rivaled the record set the previous winter[8], and that on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in the far east of Russia, there was unprecedented snowfall[9].

But beyond the anecdotal nature of experiencing a cold, rainy, and snowy month, the fact is that global temperatures have been falling for two years, which means that the unusual peak observed in 2023-2025—clearly exogenous and circumstantial in nature, due to its extreme and sudden nature—is subsiding in a typical example of reversion to the mean. Do not forget that in 2023, 42% of the planet’s surface experienced temperatures two standard deviations above average. In this regard, the contrast between the countless news reports publicizing the sudden warming of those years and the deathly silence that has accompanied the subsequent cooling, just as sudden but not fitting into the official narrative, is quite telling.

As I wrote at the time, no serious scientist suggested the sudden rise in temperatures in 2023-2025 was due to anthropogenic forcing (unlike the AEMET). Some linked it to a strong El Niño phenomenon; others to a completely unexplained very low global cloud cover, as science still struggles with moist convection and therefore does not know the factors that control the planet’s cloudiness (how could climate models not fail?). Finally, other scientists pointed to the massive eruption of the Hunga-Tonga underwater volcano, which was one of the largest geological phenomena of the last century, releasing 150 Mt of water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere at once[10].

Therefore, it is possible that the recent and sudden cooling of the Earth has been associated with La Niña, a phenomenon which, like so many others, is impossible to predict in duration and intensity except with comfortable probability ranges that do not usually stray far from equiprobability (to protect the forecaster’s reputation). But it is also possible that the main factor explaining the recent cooling has been the gradual disappearance of the temporary greenhouse effect caused by the Hunga-Tonga eruption[11]. Who knows?

As you can see in the graph below, since 1979—a particularly cold year, but the first in which there were satellites in space to measure temperature—it is estimated that the average temperature of the planet has increased at an imperceptible rate of 0.15°C per decade (yes, 15 hundredths of a degree per decade)[12]. You will agree with me that it takes a lot of fine-tuning to detect this centesimal increase in the temperature of an entire planet:

You will also notice that the planet’s temperature barely increased in the period 1980-1995 and remained very constant from 1998 to 2015, approximately, despite the constant increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. This latter episode was called “the hiatus”, although climate propaganda would later deny that such a term had ever been used. Really? In 2013, Nature magazine published an article entitled “The recent hiatus in global warming”[13], and the IPCC itself cited “the hiatus” 53 times in its Fifth Assessment Report (2013) and devoted a special chapter entitled “Climate models and the hiatus in global warming over the last 15 years”[14].

Long graphs

The above graph of satellite data is a very short graph, as climate change is usually measured in centuries or millennia. That is why I like to introduce the long graph that the IPCC included in its First Report, which shows the reconstruction of global temperatures over the last 10,000 and 1,000 years. In it, you can see that temperatures at the end of the 20th century were lower than or similar to those in the days when Fred Flintstone drove his log car, that is, when there was no industrialization or anthropogenic CO2[15]:

Good news

On the other hand, some of my Canadian friends who are concerned about climate change will have been reassured by the recent publication of their country’s summer temperature series since 1900, which shows a gentle cyclicality with no clear trend, equating temperatures at the beginning of the 21st century with those experienced 100 years ago, when CO2 levels were supposedly “normal” (according to climate propaganda nomenclature)[16]:

They will also be reassured to know that poor Greta’s tearful denunciation at the UN of a supposed mass extinction of species because of climate change was the result of hysteria rather than science. In fact, a recent study published by the Royal Society concludes that the rate of species extinction—irrelevant in any case from a relative point of view—has decreased over the last 100 years[17]. Yes, you read that right: there are fewer species extinctions, which means that the biosphere (the system that encompasses all living beings on the planet) is doing wonderfully well with slightly warmer temperatures and a little more CO2, a source of life and food par excellence for plants.

We also have reassuring data regarding rising sea levels. A study published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering has compared the increases predicted for 2020 by the IPCC for a multitude of coastal locations around the globe with the actual measurements obtained at those locations. Its conclusion is categorical: “Approximately 95% of locations show no statistically significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. Our research suggests that in the remaining 5% of locations, local non-climate phenomena are the plausible cause of accelerated sea level rise.” It concludes: “On average, the IPCC’s projected rate of rise is biased upward by approximately 2 mm per year compared to the observed rate”[18]. Given that the latest IPCC report projects a 4 mm/year increase until 2100 in its most plausible scenario, this means that its flawed models double the actual rise in sea levels. Don’t rush to sell your beach apartment.

Consensus or censorship?

Climate propaganda claims that there is almost complete consensus among the scientific community regarding the anthropogenic origin of global warming and the apocalyptic consequences attributed to it. This is patently false: what has happened is an asymmetrical media treatment of both sides of the debate and an aggressive communist or Orwellian-style censorship that has actively silenced the multitude of scientists who are skeptical and outraged by the political hijacking of science.

Such is the case of an editor of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, who allowed the publication of an article that would soon become the second most read article in the publication’s 83-year history. The article criticized the IPCC’s alarmism, never corroborated by empirical evidence, that is, it dared to commit blasphemy against the prevailing dogma with commendable clarity. Well, the editor was fired[19]. Please read the conclusions of this article carefully:

“The IPCC claims that extreme weather events are now worse than in the past, but observations do not support this claim. Some extreme weather events, such as the land area affected by extreme droughts, are decreasing rather than increasing (Lomborg, 2020). Globally, the incidence of hurricanes shows no significant trend (IPCC, 2013, p. 216; Lomborg, 2020). Observations also show no increase in damage or danger to humanity today due to extreme weather or global warming (Crok and May, 2023, pp. 140-161; Scafetta, 2024). Therefore, given that the current climate is possibly better than the pre-industrial climate and that we have not observed any increase in mortality from extreme weather events, we conclude that we can plan for adaptation to any future changes. Until a danger is identified, there is no need to eliminate the use of fossil fuels”[20].

Amen.

[1] For a more detailed explanation: HEAT WAVES 2024 – Fernando del Pino Calvo-Sotelo
[2] A new approach for the world’s climate strategy | Bill Gates
[3] Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States – The White House
[4] IPCC AR5, WG 1, Chapter 2.6, p.214-220 and IPCC AR6, WG 1, Chapter 12, p. 1770-1856
[5] A climate of conflict: How the little ice age sparked rebellions and revolutions across Europe – ScienceDirect
[6] Crop yields have increased dramatically in recent decades, but crops like maize would have improved more without climate change – Our World in Data
[7] Snowfall: the Atlantic coast under a white blanket, a rare event that calls for caution
[8] Dangerous winter storm, extreme cold on the way for large portion of U.S | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
[9] Weather tracker: Record snowfall in eastern Russia leaves people stranded | Russia | The Guardian
[10] Failed predictions – Fernando del Pino Calvo-Sotelo
[11] The 2023 climate event revealed the greatest failure of climate science – Climate Etc.
[12] Latest Global Temps « Roy Spencer, PhD
[13] Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling | Nature
[14] IPCC, AR5, WG 1, p. 61.
[15] IPCC, AR1, The IPCC Scientific Assessment, fig. 7.1, p. 202.
[16] Canada Summer Daily High Temperature Trends, 1900-2023 « Roy Spencer, PhD
[17] Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals | Proceedings B | The Royal Society
[18] A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes
[19] Orwellian Sacking of Editor for Allowing Debate Over Climate Change – The Daily Sceptic
[20] Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems – May – 2025 – The American Journal of Economics and Sociology – Wiley Online Library

Germany’s Chemical Reckoning: How Europe is Dismantling its Industrial Core

“The Agonising Decline of One of Europe’s Core Industries,” describes Germany’s chemical sector crisis as a symptom of broader self-inflicted industrial decline in Europe.

Energy and environment policy analyst Tilak Doshi argues that Germany’s once-dominant chemical industry- home to giants like BASF and a cornerstone of “Made in Germany” manufacturing- is undergoing an irreversible collapse.

Aerial view of a BASF chemical plant with large industrial structures and smokestacks, featuring a prominent BASF logo and the slogan 'We create chemistry' on a storage tank.

“The Agonising Decline of One of Europe’s Core Industries,” describes Germany’s chemical sector crisis as a symptom of broader self-inflicted industrial decline in Europe.

Energy and environment policy analyst Tilak Doshi argues that Germany’s once-dominant chemical industry- home to giants like BASF and a cornerstone of “Made in Germany” manufacturing- is undergoing an irreversible collapse.

German chemical plants operated at around 70% capacity in 2025—the lowest since 2002 (or even 1991 in some metrics)—well below the ~80-82% needed for profitability.

Production volumes (excluding pharmaceuticals) fell ~2.5% in 2025, with sales down ~3%; forecasts for 2026 show further declines (e.g., volumes -3.5%, prices -2.5%).

Overall EU chemical output remains 6-10% below pre-crisis (2014-2019) levels, with Germany seeing steeper drops (up to 15% in some periods).

Cumulative closures: Europe lost ~37 million tons of capacity from 2022-2025; petrochemicals hit hardest (14% of capacity shuttered).

Major players like BASF have permanently scaled back in Germany (e.g., closing fertilizer/ammonia plants in Ludwigshafen, shifting to Belgium/US/Asia), with thousands of job cuts (BASF alone announced 2,600+ in recent years).

Broader trends: Investments fleeing Europe (three-quarters of German energy-intensive firms shifting abroad), weak demand from autos/construction, and import surges from China.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

From Tilak´s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

Aerial view of a 19th-century industrial cityscape featuring factories, chimneys, and a river with boats.
BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, 1881 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BASF_Werk_Ludwigshafen_1881.JPG?uselang=en#Licensing

In its ‘Climate & Energy’ newsletter on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal’s report on Germany’s chemicals industry headlined ‘The Agonising Decline of One of Europe’s Core Industries’ reads less like an industry report than a forensic examination of an industrial autopsy. Once Europe’s formidable manufacturing powerhouse, Germany is now presiding over the steady dismantling of one of its most foundational industries – chemicals – under the combined weight of self-inflicted energy scarcity, climate moralism and geopolitical miscalculation.

In Politico’s view, the auto sector has already assumed the role of Exhibit A in Germany’s economic self-harm. But chemicals – the industry that quite literally underpins modern industrial civilisation – now stands exposed as Exhibit B. The collapse of chemicals manufacturing in Germany will be unsalvageable: when energy costs explode, feedstocks disappear and plants shut, financial investments and physical capital relocate not easily but in an irreversible rupture with previous arrangements.

The Industry That Built Modern Germany and the World

As Vaclav Smil authoritatively established, the four foundational materials of human civilisation are steel, cement, plastics and ammonia. But ammonia is the most fundamental because it sits upstream of life itself rather than merely infrastructure. Through synthetic nitrogen fertilisers enabled by the Haber–Bosch process, ammonia underwrites modern agriculture and thus the food supply for roughly half the world’s population, without which steel mills, concrete cities and plastic goods would be socially meaningless luxuries. A civilisation can endure with less concrete or fewer polymers, but it cannot survive the loss of fixed nitrogen – making ammonia not just an industrial input, but the metabolic backbone of modern human existence.

Germany’s rise as an industrial nation was inseparable from chemistry. Long before automobiles or machine tools defined its export prowess, German scientists and firms were pioneering breakthroughs in dyes, pharmaceuticals, fertilisers and industrial processes that transformed global production. The synthesis of ammonia via the Haber–Bosch process – enabling nitrogen fixation at scale – stands as one of the most consequential technological innovations in human history. It fed billions, powered agricultural productivity and anchored Germany’s early chemical supremacy.

From roughly 1870 to the First World War, the global chemicals industry was overwhelmingly dominated by Germany, with Britain a distant and increasingly worried second and the United States very much a latecomer. In the long arc of industrial capitalism, BASF and Imperial Chemical Industries stand as two of the defining titans of the chemicals revolution that reshaped Europe from the late 19th Century onward.

BASF was founded in 1865 on the banks of the Rhine at Ludwigshafen. Apart from BASF, Germany produced a remarkable constellation of world-leading chemical companies that, together, made the country the unquestioned global centre of industrial chemistry from the late 19th Century through much of the 20th. Founded in 1863, Bayer rose to prominence through synthetic dyes, then pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Its most famous early product, aspirin, symbolised the shift from chemistry as craft to chemistry as science-driven mass production. Hoechst (founded 1863) was BASF’s and Bayer’s great peer, excelling in dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals. Britain’s answer to German chemical supremacy arrived later and more defensively. Imperial Chemical Industries was formed in 1926 through the merger of four major British firms, explicitly to counter German dominance in chemicals that had become glaring during the First World War.

Germany’s rise as an industrial power with chemicals as the most important arrow in its quiver was not merely a national success; it was civilisational. Chemistry, more than textiles or steel, became the silent engine of modernity – transforming agriculture, medicine, warfare and manufacturing itself. This was not accidental. German chemical firms amassed deep intellectual property portfolios, established world-leading research laboratories and – somewhat ironically, with the hindsight brought about by the experience of Energiewende (energy transition) – benefited from an abundant supply of domestic sources of coal. For much of the 20th Century, chemicals were not merely another sector; they were the backbone of Germany’s export economy and technological prestige.

Europe as a whole followed a similar trajectory. From fertilisers to pharmaceuticals, polymers to speciality chemicals, the continent built an industrial base that assumed – as a matter of physical necessity – reliable access to low-cost energy. That assumption has now been abandoned. Once coal was displaced by abundant natural gas – first from the North Sea and later, far more decisively, from Russian pipelines – Europe’s energy-intensive chemicals industry achieved its modern scale and global competitiveness, with Germany at its centre. Russian pipeline gas, delivered reliably and at low marginal cost, became the keystone input that allowed European chemical producers to outcompete rivals despite higher labour and regulatory costs.

The rupture came not merely from “market volatility” but from the abrupt loss of that gas – following the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines and the wider sanctions regime – which boomeranged as a structural surge in gas and food prices. That energy shock did not wound German chemicals temporarily; it removed the economic foundation on which the industry had been built, turning decline from a cyclical downturn into a permanent de-industrialisation process.

Chemical manufacturing is among the most energy-intensive activities known to modern economies. Natural gas is not merely a fuel; it is a feedstock, a reagent and an irreplaceable input in the production of ammonia, methanol and countless downstream products. To imagine a competitive chemicals sector without abundant, affordable gas is to imagine steelmaking without iron ore.

Yet Germany’s energy policy has done precisely that. The decision to dismantle nuclear power, throttle domestic fossil fuel production and sanction Russian gas – without credible substitutes – was undertaken as a moral crusade. Energy realism was sacrificed at the altar of climate virtue. The consequences were inevitable.

Energy prices surged far above those faced by competitors in the United States and the Middle East. Margin compression became chronic. Production cuts turned into permanent closures. Once massive chemical plants shut, they do not reopen. Capital is mobile; sunk costs are not. In chemistry, as elsewhere in the natural world, thermodynamics always wins. You cannot legislate away input costs.

Sanctions, Self-Harm and the Fertiliser Exception

The geopolitical dimension of Germany’s predicament only deepens the absurdity. Europe’s sanctions regime against Russia was implemented with moral fervour but economic naivety. Natural gas flows were severed without a replacement strategy that acknowledged scale, reliability or price. In the event, US LNG imports, at least three to four times more expensive than Russian piped gas, proved to be an expensive and partial substitute.

Even Brussels recognised the limits of ideological purity. Despite the sanctions, the EU remains a significant customer for Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), having imported approximately €7.2 billion worth in 2025 despite plans to ban such imports by 2027. Russian fertiliser exports were quietly exempted from sanctions – an implicit admission that agricultural collapse is not a price voters will tolerate. Fertilisers are not optional; they are existential. The exemption stands as a tacit confession that Europe’s energy and industrial strategy is riddled with contradictions.

If fertilisers cannot be sanctioned because crops would fail, why was the upstream gas supply so casually sacrificed? The answer, of course, lies not in economics but in political symbolism. Fertiliser scarcity would have directly produced visible hunger. Chemical plant closures produce quieter decay – job losses, hollowed regions and de-industrialised supply chains.

Markets, unlike governments, respond to incentives rather than narratives. Faced with punitive energy costs and regulatory hostility, Europe’s chemical giants have begun relocating capital abroad. The United States, with its shale gas abundance and comparatively pragmatic industrial policy, has emerged as a prime destination. So too have parts of the Middle East, where feedstock costs reflect geological reality rather than moral aspiration.

The symbolism of Europe’s flagship chemical firms investing billions overseas while shuttering domestic plants should not be underestimated. This is not offshoring in search of marginal gains. It is capital flight from a policy environment that has rendered large-scale chemical production uneconomic. The Oxford Economics analysis cited in industry reports is blunt: chemicals are a keystone sector. Their decline cascades through pharmaceuticals, construction materials, agriculture and consumer goods.

Between 2019 and 2025 Q2, the European chemical sector’s output declined significantly. It has contracted by 30% in the UK, 18% in Germany, 12% in France and 7% in Belgium. Output levels have been hit by reduced price competitiveness due to higher gas and electricity prices than elsewhere, higher environmental and other regulatory costs and excess global capacity, largely driven by China.

Europe’s climate agenda increasingly functions as industrial policy in reverse. Carbon pricing, emissions trading and regulatory constraints are imposed domestically with little regard for global competitiveness. Production migrates to jurisdictions with lower costs and weaker constraints, often resulting in higher global emissions – the very outcome climate policy claims to oppose.

This is not merely a technical flaw. It is a conceptual failure. Policymakers conflate decarbonisation targets with economic strategy, assuming that “green” innovation will materialise on command and that intermittent renewables can substitute for dense, dispatchable energy at industrial scale. Chemistry exposes this fantasy mercilessly.

Europe’s Silent Unravelling

Germany’s predicament is not accidental. It is the logical outcome of deliberate choices. Nuclear phase-out, gas dependency without diversification, sanctions without contingency and climate regulation without competitiveness safeguards together constitute a blueprint for de-industrialisation. The tragedy is that this is unfolding in a country that once understood industrial ecosystems intimately. Germany knew that manufacturing excellence rested on ready access to energy resources, technical skill and export competitiveness. Today, it lectures the world on sustainability while dismantling the very industries that made its prosperity possible.

Europe more broadly is following the same path. High-energy industries are labelled “hard to abate” – bureaucratic shorthand for “politically inconvenient”. Instead of confronting physical realities, policymakers outsource production and import finished goods, congratulating themselves on territorial emissions reductions while global emissions rise.

The most sobering aspect of chemical industry decline is its irreversibility. Blast furnaces can sometimes be relit; vast chemical complexes rarely are. The specialised workforce disperses. Supply chains fracture. Intellectual capital migrates. Skilled communities hollow out. This is why industry warnings carry such urgency. Once Europe relinquishes large-scale chemical manufacturing, it forfeits strategic autonomy across medicine, food, defence materials and related advanced materials technologies. Dependence replaces resilience.

The WSJ’s reporting captures only the surface of this unravelling. Beneath it lies a deeper malaise: Europe has lost faith in its own industrial vocation. It prefers to regulate rather than produce, to moralise rather than compete. Yet the world does not pause for European introspection. The United States under the Trump administration is focused on re-industrialising with its energy dominance agenda along with tariff policy. Asia and the Middle East continue to expand capacity.

Europe alone seems determined to prove that prosperity can survive without production. It cannot.

Germany’s chemical reckoning is therefore not a sectoral story but a civilisational one. It illustrates what happens when political elites elevate symbolic virtue over material competence, when policy is shaped by narratives rather than real constraints and when energy is treated as an ethical problem rather than an economic necessity. The country’s chemical industry once symbolised the triumph of science, industry and energy harnessed in service of human progress. Its current decline symbolises something else entirely: the delusional triumph of ideology over physics and economics among policy elites. And, as ever, the twin disciplines will have the final word. As will chemistry.

This article was first published in the Daily Sceptic https://dailysceptic.org/2026/02/02/germanys-chemical-reckoning-how-europe-is-dismantling-its-industrial-core/

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.

A group of men in formal attire stands solemnly in front of an industrial landscape, featuring tall smoke stacks and parked cars, under overcast skies.

NOAA deploys a new generation of AI-driven global weather models

I am watching them. So far, they are a joke.

A view of Earth from space showcasing weather patterns, with swirling clouds and visible landmasses.
A close-up view of Earth, isolated on black, showcasing vibrant blue waters, detailed continents, and soft, swirling clouds

From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

So here is the big headline:

NOAA deploys a new generation of AI-driven global weather models

I am watching them. So far, they are a joke. All over the place, little run to run consistency, in short, they mimic the NOAA GEFS, the flagship of the US models that over the years billions have been spent to develop, being abysmally in last place even on day 5 vs the European (red) and Canadian (blue). I am sure the UKMET is beating it, too.

A graph displaying the performance metrics of different weather models, showing three lines representing the NOAA GEFS in black, the European model in red, and the Canadian model in blue, with plotted data points across various valid dates.

The Euro AI’s are also all over the place.  The recent  Thanksgiving to Christmas cold shot, seen by us and bullet pointed in the Aug 29 issuance of our winter forecast, was not seen till mid November by models. Even now they are all over the place on January.  But believe it or not, I am not here to hammer them on the weather, but on something else I found out.

Every December, I meet with some prominent climate skeptics (who shall remain nameless to protect their innocence) at an undisclosed location, which we always keep secret, to make sure Climate nuts don’t show up and spray paint us orange (Okay it’s a place near Boston). So, two of them are engaged in a major project to make sure the AI’s are getting all climate information, not just what the existing paradigm is. Basically, they are doing on a grand scale what you have seen me do in some of the blogs.  So, I assumed that once corrected, once the AI admits its wrong and did not see something, it becomes part of the AI’s database.

WRONG

Apparently, what goes on here, as I understand it, is that it will not incorporate what it’s forced to correct. So, it’s getting a continuous stream of information that is one sided and even if corrected, will not adapt it. It may come to the conclusion that it does, and the conclusion may be opposite of what it was before you asked it to go look at the other ideas, but then it does not get incorporated in.

So it will respond and correct itself with you, but it won’t then change its database to adapt that as its answer to someone else.

This is quite interesting to me.  The man-made climate agenda is not going away.  It’s simply retooling for the day that the current people in charge are no longer in charge.  The idea that I see with people on my side that we are “winning” is laughable to me.  History should tell you that.  A small group of zealots convinced they have the answer have always managed to somehow seize control, and to them, climate policy is the ultimate control tool.

The AI is a tool, also. But I suspect most of them are being programmed by people who have a worldview that is strongly in support of the man-made climate disaster scenario.  And since that exists so strongly in the AI’s, it’s a daunting task to get an even-handed presentation of information for them to consider. Their fallback position is always what was fed into them, as even when admitting something, they apparently are not incorporating it.

And I don’t know about you meteorologists out there, but if you are watching AI models like I am, you’ll see that they’re only arguably a bit better. The analog method of forecasting beat them like Scarlett O’Hara’s mule for the early cold, and another major battle is evolving in front of us for 2 weeks ago models were singing a winter’s over tune, and now they are coming around to our analog ideas about January.

Obviously, a tool that can summon facts quickly and advise on an answer is great. Just beware what you are being fed here. Including NOAA headlines about their AI’s, but most importantly, understanding that just because you get an AI to admit your point, it doesn’t mean it will become part of its database.

Someone once said, “it’s not who votes that matters, but who counts the votes.”

With the AIs what really matters is who is feeding it the information. And given statements like what that eminent climate giant John Kerry just said:

“You know, there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,”

They are not going away, and they are going to make darn sure they control the AI’s. The goal is to push AI’s as the answer ( be it NOAA headlines) and then make you naturally accept their authority.

The only solution: challenge authority!

Big Tech May Soon Have Monopoly on Power as America Faces Energy Crisis

As Big Tech develops more artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, advocates flaunt the promise of more jobs and innovation, while others warn about the impending power crunch and potential antitrust issues as a handful of companies could dominate the power sector.

Two technicians working inside a modern data center, surrounded by server racks with glowing blue lights.

From The Daily Caller

Daily Caller News Foundation

Audrey Streb
DCNF Energy Reporter

As Big Tech develops more artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, advocates flaunt the promise of more jobs and innovation, while others warn about the impending power crunch and potential antitrust issues as a handful of companies could dominate the power sector.

Former Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ Antitrust Division Jonathan Kanter told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday that he’s concerned antitrust issues will arise over energy as data centers burn through mass amounts of power, potentially at the expense of local communities. Since data centers burn through so much power, they could dominate the energy sector as they drive up costs for the consumer, though several energy policy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that expanding AI is necessary despite the power problems it poses.

“Looking ahead, energy, power is going to be an extremely important area of focus for antitrust enforcers,” Kanter told the WSJ. “Data centers consume more natural resources, and the cost of power goes up, and data centers consume power at the expense of local communities and businesses.” 

(RELATED: Ready For Blackouts? Techies Are Buying Up One Of The Remaining Reliable Sources Of Power For Their AI Needs)

The Trump administration unveiled an AI plan on July 23 which included the rapid build-out of data centers and noted the vitality of surpassing China in the AI race, all while several energy policy experts, grid watchdogs and the Department of Energy (DOE) warned that America’s already insecure power grid is being strained by soaring data center demand.

Electricity demand is expected to reach a record high in the coming years, rising by 25% by 2030, according to data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and a report from ICF International. Data centers are driving much of the demand, and some industry experts like Kanter are concerned that Big Tech companies may end up hogging the electricity grid.

Steve Milloy, senior legal fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, told the DCNF that escalating data center demand and green energy policies are driving up electricity costs and reducing reliability. He added that it would be “no surprise” if environmental groups turned to antitrust threats as Trump dismantles parts of their climate agenda.

“While it’s quite possible that many consumers will face high prices for less reliable power in the near-term because of tremendous data center needs and a grid that has been crippled by green policies, what we actually need are more power plants and fewer green policies,” Milloy told the DCNF. “As their climate agenda fails, it’s no surprise that greens are threatening antitrust prosecutions against Big Tech and electricity generators. The rapidly growing demand for power is such that Big Tech is cutting whatever deals it can with existing power generators pending construction of more conventional (fossil fuel) power plants.”

President Donald Trump has moved to boost conventional energy resources like coal, though he’s also championed resources like nuclear and geothermal. Trump and Congress have cracked down on “market distorting” Biden-era wind and solar subsidies all while the Department of the Interior (DOI) declared that it will not give preferential treatment to resources like wind and solar that it considers to be “foreign-controlled” and “unreliable.”

Trump declared a national energy emergency his first day back in the Oval Office and the DOE has warned that blackouts could increase 100-fold by 2030 if America continues to phase out reliable power sources without suitable replacements. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at an American Petroleum Institute event on permitting reform in Washington, D.C., on Monday that he considered how to get more power on the grid every day, and that permitting reform is the way forward. Burgum argued that power feeds data centers and AI will drive much-needed innovation.

President of Truth in Energy & Climate Frank Lasee told the DCNF that it would be fair if Big Tech funded power for its data centers, as they are driving up demand. Owners of data centers are reportedly looking to strike deals with energy companies to secure power, with many exploring nuclear energy as a reliable source to meet their growing electricity needs.

“These profitable giants can afford it and should pay their own way,” Lasee said. “Let’s win the AI race with China — without hiking bills for everyday electricity customers. Antitrust violations should only come into play if Big Tech uses their monopoly status on needed services they provide to gouge their customers or collude with their competitors to limit competition among themselves. A hospital or bank needs their data services, they are served best by a competitive, fair market for those services.”

The DOJ declined to comment for this story.

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COP30 insanity vs the global tide of climate and energy reality

The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) is in full tirade down in Belém, Brazil. Many of the 50,000+ attendees arrived via the sleek private jets they always take to planet-saving climate conferences. To make travel from the airport to the host city easier, Brazil felled some 100,000 rainforest trees and, worse, scandals to build an oil-based asphalt highway. They’ll chatter endlessly and devour mountains of meat.

From CFACT

By Paul Driessen

African woman holding a solar panel with her community in the background, promoting renewable energy in rural areas

The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) is in full tirade down in Belém, Brazil. Many of the 50,000+ attendees arrived via the sleek private jets they always take to planet-saving climate conferences. To make travel from the airport to the host city easier, Brazil felled some 100,000 rainforest trees and, worse, scandals to build an oil-based asphalt highway. They’ll chatter endlessly and devour mountains of meat.

These Terra do Brasil rainforests are also where illegal loggers go for “at least half of the balsa wood” used as the core of wind turbine blades — to save the planet, of course.

But lest these inconvenient facts — or President Trump trashing the COP and climate agenda before the UN General Assembly — get excessive attention, climate alarmists and their grifter allies have been busy ramping up hysteria over “horrific impacts” from climate change and extreme weather.

Google Chrome’s AI overview says climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe; melting ice caps and raising sea levels; making water scarcer in some regions while flooding others; wrecking ecosystems and biodiversity; making warming oceans more acidic; and threatening agriculture as well as human and planetary health.

It’s all exaggeration and fabrication, exported endlessly from computer models and imaginations — but not supported by actual, real-world data or evidence.

Despite Earth’s ever-changing climate, neither hurricanes nor tornadoes are becoming more frequent or severe, nor are floods and droughts. Biodiversity is threatened most by blanketing vast areas with solar panels and wind turbines, as well as mining and processing raw materials to manufacture them. Earth’s barely warming oceans are slightly alkaline (pH 8.1), not acidic. More atmospheric carbon dioxide helps crop, forest, desert, and grassland plants grow faster, better, and with less water.

But fear-instilling “news” headlines and “studies” keep fueling the COP30 fires:

Climate change and extreme weather events could drain the world’s blood banks, they proclaim. It threatens to make running marathons even harder. Deciding whether to have a pet is one of the “most climate-intensive decisions” we make. Humanitarian visas must be created for Pacific Islanders whose homes will soon be drowned by rising seas.

Climate change is creating “deadly rivers in the sky” and “supercharging” extreme rainfall. The climate crisis disproportionately impacts Indonesian women and girls. Danish farmers must use methane-reducing feed supplements, which cause plummeting milk yields, diarrhea, fevers, and miscarriages in dairy cows.

Not to be upstaged, climate modeler Michael Mann and comrades issued a dire report, ranting that “we are hurtling toward climate chaos. The planet’s vital signs are flashing red.” The dangers “are no longer future threats but are here now!”

Lions and tigers and bears — oh my. What to do? Begin by taking a deep breath and following Bill Gates.

Despite (still) sending millions to climate-crisis groups and issuing multiple stark warnings, Mr. Gates now says climate change is not a crisis and will not destroy the planet or cause “humanity’s demise.” He now says we must focus on improving lives, healthcare, and living standards for the world’s poorest countries, particularly by ensuring that they have plentiful, dependable, affordable (PDA) electricity and fuels, especially coal, oil, gas, and nuclear.

That’s an admirable start. Hopefully his foundations will now send millions to climate-realism organizations — and billions to real PDA energy projects and modern housing, hospital, school, and infrastructure efforts in Asia, Latin America, and especially Africa.

Additionally, so far this year, 893 companies have pulled out of the Science-Based Targets Initiative, which requires “scientifically validated climate targets” and “greenhouse gas” (GHG) “emission goals aligned with international standards.” Not only were those targets never science-based or scientifically validated — they were always unachievable moral preening based on faulty computer-model forecasts of human and planetary catastrophes allegedly due to fossil fuel use.

Further underscoring the weakening global adherence to the phony scientific, economic, and ethical “consensus” over an alleged manmade climate crisis, since December 2024, dozens of large U.S. and foreign banks have withdrawn from the Net Zero Banking Alliance. The exodus forced the UN-inspired alliance to close its doors and cease operations.

Nevertheless, despite the major setbacks, rent-seeking COP30 attendees continue to fulminate about planet and humanity’s dreadful fate.

Like the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” they stand armless and legless, refusing to give up, screaming futilely at their departing supporters: “They’re just flesh wounds. Come back here! I’ll bite your legs off.”

In other apt cinematic analogies, once these COP creatures are given life by politicians, Dr. FrankUNstein, and a random jolt of electricity from distant wind turbines, they terrorize in seeming perpetuity. In Brazil, they’re shapeshifting planet-saving solutions and demands.

For decades, COP gatherings focused on “Mitigation” — demanding trillions of dollars from de-industrializing developed countries to control climate, weather, and people’s energy use and living standards. This, they assured us, would prevent manmade cataclysms predicted by computer models that begin with the assumption that rising GHG levels cause disasters. That old dog rarely hunts anymore.

So this year’s COP30 focus has shifted, first, to “Adaptation” — demanding trillions from de-developing countries for studies, planning, and “resilience-building.” This, they assure us, will help poor nations adapt to climate cataclysms that models and studies allege result from worsening temperatures, weather, and sea levels that developed countries (but not China, India, or Russia) are still causing. More empty gestures.

And second, additional trillions for “Reparations” to poor and developing nations (ie, Swiss bank accounts) for climate and weather damages that rich countries purportedly caused in the past.

Poor countries and people have God-given rights to PDA electricity, fuels, and petrochemical products that enable them to take their rightful place among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people. They don’t have a right to threaten or blackmail developed countries for mitigation, adaptation, or reparation cash.

Ironically, many COP30 attendees — as well as the United Nations, World Bank and climate scolds like Mike Mann and Al Gore — would deny them those rights and even access to modern transportation, housing, and agricultural technologies. Because, as Barack Obama told South Africans in 2013, “If … everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, the planet will boil over” — unless we eliminate fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy.

Add to that poll findings that (#8) an eye-popping 45% of Americans would be willing to pay only $12 annually to “address climate change” and over half would pay zero. In reality, a government-orchestrated switch to wind, solar, and battery electricity would force families to pay thousands of extra dollars every year, endure frequent blackouts, and struggle with fewer jobs and lower living standards.

All these are compelling reasons why President Trump is not attending COP30 and why the United States should formally withdraw from the Paris climate accord/treaty and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the twin mothers of all climate machinations.

Many counties would follow, and people everywhere would be much better off.