Tag: Global Heating

Guardian Claims We’re Still Only Approaching the Climate Point of No Return

Please, please, let’s cross one of these imaginary tipping points.
This is nonsense. We already know with absolute certainty from paleo evidence that 3-4C global warming does not represent the end of economic activity.

A dramatic landscape featuring a swirling storm, lightning in the sky, and large rocky formations, with an explosion of water and energy in the foreground.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

World map illustrating climate tipping points, highlighting areas of significant environmental change such as Greenland Ice Sheet loss, Amazon Rainforest dieback, and Arctic Winter Sea Ice collapse.

Please, please, let’s cross one of these imaginary tipping points.

Point of no return: a hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say

Continued global heating could set irreversible course by triggering climate tipping points, but most people unaware

Damian Carrington
Environment editor Thu 12 Feb 2026 03.00 AEDT

The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said.

Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth” climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed.

At just 1.3C of global heating in recent years, extreme weather is already taking lives and destroying livelihoods across the globe. At 3-4C, “the economy and society will cease to function as we know it”, scientists said last week, but a hothouse Earth would be even more fiery.

The public and politicians were largely unaware of the risk of passing the point of no return, the researchers said. The group said they were issuing their warning because while rapid and immediate cuts to fossil fuel burning were challenging, reversing course was likely to be impossible once on the path to a hothouse Earth, even if emissions were eventually slashed.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points

This is nonsense. We already know with absolute certainty from paleo evidence that 3-4C global warming does not represent the end of economic activity.

That evidence is the PETM. CO2 levels during the PETM may have been as high as 2520ppm – 6x higher than today. There is no evidence life suffered during the PETM, quite the opposite. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, was the age of monkeys. Our mostly fruit eating monkey ancestors thrived on the abundance of the hothouse PETM, and colonised much of the world, only retreating when the cold returned.

If a bunch of monkey ancestors with brains the size of match boxes prospered in such conditions, then we could definitely cope.

Fish also did well during the PETM.

Study: Ancient Fish Thrived During PETM Extreme Global Warming

With abundance on the land, and a sea teaming with fish, and proof that our monkey ancestors did really well during previous periods of extreme warmth, how could a few degrees of warming possibly mean “the economy and society will cease to function as we know it “?

The answer is it can’t. Even if such extreme warming were to occur, our society and economy would do just fine.

And there is no possibility anthropogenic CO2 emissions could cause anything like PETM levels of global warming. The world today is very different from the world of the PETM, powerful geological forcings which appeared after the PETM have kept our world locked in the Late Cenzoic Ice Age for the last 34 million years.

Double The Atmospheric CO2? Fuggeddaboutit!

The truth is, our world is not too hot, our world is dangerously cold. During the last glacial maximum, CO2 levels dropped so low it was almost an extinction event.

Life on Earth was nearly doomed by too little CO2

We are currently in one of the coldest periods of the Late Cenzoic Ice Age. We are also in the cooling phase of the Holocene, our current interglacial, which is a serious concern. Sea level today is around 3ft lower than 6000 years ago, during the warm phase, the Holocene Optimum.

The truth is we need all the warming and CO2 emissions we can produce, to try to hold back the next 100,000-year ice age. Because when the next glacial maximum strikes, next time ice age conditions cause CO2 levels plummet, our species might not get so lucky as we were last time glacial maximum conditions brought our species to the brink of extinction.

Illustration of a distant planet in space, characterized by a smooth, icy surface and surrounded by stars.

Wrong, The Guardian, Oil Company Operations Aren’t Making Heatwaves Worse

In The Guardian’s article, “Carbon emissions from oil giants directly linked to dozens of deadly heatwaves for first time,” Damian Carrington reports on a study claiming that the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from just 14 major fossil fuel companies were enough to cause more than 50 heatwaves that “would otherwise have been virtually impossible.” This is false. Heatwaves were far worse in the past than today and it is impossible to link any particular heatwave to emissions from any company or group of companies, since data show no causal connection between emissions and changes in heat waves, at all.

A historical photograph depicting a group of houses in a flat landscape under a dark, overcast sky, suggesting an impending dust storm.
 1930s Dust Bowl

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

Screenshot of an article from The Guardian discussing carbon emissions from oil companies linked to heatwaves, with the word 'WRONG' prominently overlaid.

In The Guardian’s article, “Carbon emissions from oil giants directly linked to dozens of deadly heatwaves for first time,” Damian Carrington reports on a study claiming that the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from just 14 major fossil fuel companies were enough to cause more than 50 heatwaves that “would otherwise have been virtually impossible.” This is false. Heatwaves were far worse in the past than today and it is impossible to link any particular heatwave to emissions from any company or group of companies, since data show no causal connection between emissions and changes in heat waves, at all.

The piece frames the research they reference as a legal turning point, arguing that oil producers could now face liability for specific extreme weather events. The article quotes researchers as stating that “the emissions from any one of the 14 biggest companies were by themselves enough to cause more than 50 heatwaves that would otherwise have been virtually impossible.” It goes further, citing campaigners who assert: “We can now point to specific heatwaves and say, ‘Saudi Aramco did this. ExxonMobil did this.’”

The claim that “global heating is making heatwaves more frequent and more intense across the globe” ignores historical records, runs contrary to peer-reviewed evidence, and lacks any evidence of a causal connection in data.

Studies published in peer reviewed journals like the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology show that U.S. heatwave frequency peaked in the 1930s Dust Bowl era, long before modern emissions rose dramatically. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s U.S. Climate Extremes Index confirms that while recent decades have seen notable heatwaves events, there is no clear, consistent upward trend surpassing the 1930s. This graph, shown below, using that data and published by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, discussed in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heat Waves, underscores just how unsupportable the claim made by The Guardian is:

A graph depicting the Heat Wave Index from 1890 to 2020, showing a significant peak during the 1930s and fluctuating values in subsequent decades.

There is no upward or worsening trend in heatwaves in recent decades. Nor is there a trend of heatwaves that tracks the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, much less a trend linked to greenhouse gas emissions from particular oil companies or the industry as a whole.

The attempt to pin specific weather disasters on particular companies stretches science far beyond its limits. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report acknowledges that while attribution science can estimate probabilities, many categories of extreme weather, including droughts and tropical cyclones, cannot yet be definitively linked to incremental global warming. The IPCC itself warns that uncertainties remain high, particularly when applying global climate models to regional, short-term events. If the leading authority on climate science admits the limitations, it is implausible that a handful of researchers can leap directly from model outputs to courtroom-ready claims of individualized corporate culpability.

Attribution studies rely heavily on counterfactual scenarios produced by computer models rather than actual observed and measured climatic changes. The Guardian itself admits the method compares today’s world to a “world before mass burning of fossil fuels” by simulating what the world might have looked like absent industrial emissions. This counterfactual world is not observable—it is generated inside computer climate models that remain riddled with uncertainties about clouds, aerosols, and ocean cycles, and the biases of the modelers whose assumptions about how the climate responds rising greenhouse gas emissions are built into the models. Linking ExxonMobil or Saudi Aramco to a single heatwave is pure speculation dressed up in scientific language, but it has no basis in fact. It is nothing more than science fiction, dressed up as scientific fact in furtherance of a political/lawfare objective.

Even legal scholars cited in the article concede that the road to liability is “littered with legal and evidentiary potholes.” Those potholes exist for good reason: because weather is influenced by countless factors including natural climate oscillations like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and El Niño–Southern Oscillation. The study referenced by The Guardian tried to assign corporate responsibility for a specific 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave which has been thoroughly debunked in the Climate Realism article: Expert Analysis: ‘Climate Change’ Had No Significant Role in Pacific Northwest Heatwave. The claims made in the study ignore the long history of extreme events in that very region, such as the record-setting 1941 heatwave, which occurred when the Earth was cooler and when CO2 concentrations and emissions were lower.

Even if, contrary to the evidence, CO2 emissions could be linked to a trend in worsening heatwaves, which they can’t since no such trend exists, it is not the oil companies that are producing the emissions, but rather the governments, industries, companies, and people using fossil fuels to power modern society that are actually producing the emissions. Emissions are the result of our individual and collective choices in the modes of transportation and products we use, and the way we generate electricity, not oil companies making fossil fuels available for such uses.

By highlighting the assertions made in this false attribution study, The Guardian abandoned journalism in favor of activism. Instead of soberly reporting the limits of attribution science, it stages a morality play where oil companies become convenient villains and every heatwave a courtroom exhibit. This isn’t science—it’s propaganda masquerading as news. Readers who should be able to expect their media outlets to inform them by discussing evidence and revealing hidden truths, got theatrics instead from The Guardian, which, with some regularity,  produces baseless alarmism in furtherance of a scary narrative for political ends when the facts don’t cooperate.

Carney Brings Eco-Tyranny to Canada

Leftist Prime Minister Mark Carney might not be as prissy and preposterous as his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, but he is just as tyrannical. He’s told Canadian companies that there will be penalties for those that don’t conduct business in the way he wants them to. We don’t think he’s building gulags in Nunavut for refusenik executives, but we see the hammer and sickle he’s trying to hide behind his back.

ChatGPT

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Issues and Insights Editorial Board warns of Carney’s history of climate diktats in their I & I article Eco-Stalinism in Canada.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Leftist Prime Minister Mark Carney might not be as prissy and preposterous as his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, but he is just as tyrannical. He’s told Canadian companies that there will be penalties for those that don’t conduct business in the way he wants them to. We don’t think he’s building gulags in Nunavut for refusenik executives, but we see the hammer and sickle he’s trying to hide behind his back.

Before he was prime minister, Carney claimed that “climate change is an existential threat” and “we all recognize that,” both of which are untrue, but that’s the way authoritarians operate – the only “truth” or “pravda” is whatever they say it is.

He went on to say that “if you’re taking steps, making investments, coming up with new technologies, changing the way you do business, all in service of reducing and eliminating that threat, you’re creating value” and “are part of the solution.” These companies, Carney promises, will be rewarded for their obedience to the central planners.

But woe be unto those “who are lagging behind and are still part of the problem,” because they “will be punished.”

Carney has a history of threatening punishment for companies that don’t conduct business in accordance with his wishes. An October 2019 Manchester Guardian article listed a number of occasions in which he warned that businesses falling behind in the pursuit of net zero emissions “will be punished” and those “that don’t adapt” to the framework laid down by the climate bosses “will go bankrupt without question.”

“Carney has led efforts to address the dangers global heating poses to the financial sector, from increasing extreme weather disasters to a potential fall in asset values such as fossil fuel company valuations as government regulations bite,” said the Guardian.

Mark Carney, former Co-Chair of GFANZ (Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero), accompanied by (from left) Ravi Menon, Loh Boon Chye, and Yuki Yasui, at the Singapore Exchange, for the GFANZ announcement on the formation of its Asia-Pacific (APAC) Network

Carney’s threat of punishment is not the possibility of imprisonment but rather the punishment of investors who will move their capital elsewhere. This happens every day, of course. Investors penalize companies that underperform and mismanage by withholding their capital.

But Carbon Tax Carney‘s menace is backed by the power of the government, and it’s not materially different from the tactics used by Barack Obama, who promised before being elected president that he would use policy to bankrupt coal companies.

Obama’s plan was to charge “a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” Apparently the punishment worked. The coal sector lost more than 49,000 jobs between 2008 and 2012, in part due to “increased regulatory initiatives by the Obama administration,” the Washington Post reported.

Obama’s policies not only “contributed to massive job losses in coal country,” says the Heartland Institute’s Sterling Burnett, but also to “the premature shuttering of vital coal-fired power plants.” They “were a factor in profitable coal companies being forced to file for bankruptcy.” 

After almost a decade of Trudeau, Canadians put another climate crusader at the head of their government rather than Pipeline Pierre Poilievere. Carney won’t save the world, because there is no global warming threat, but he now has the power to put companies out of business if they don’t follow the party line.

Canada becomes less glorious and free almost daily.

Global Bankers: The Paris Climate Accord is Dead

Apparently, it is President Trump’s fault global CO2 emissions are out of control.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Apparently, it is President Trump’s fault global CO2 emissions are out of control.

US banks predict climate goals will fail – but air conditioning firms will thrive

Reports predict global heating will bring catastrophes and that air conditioning market could grow by 41%

Oliver Milman
Thu 3 Apr 2025 04.39 AEDT

The world is on track for disastrous global heating – but this will create profits for some air conditioning companies, according to forecasts by leading Wall Street financial institutions.

…

“We now expect a 3C world,” states a March analysis by Morgan Stanley. This level of global heating above preindustrial times is well beyond the 2C limit agreed to by governments and would lead to catastrophic heatwaves, floods, economic strife and other upheavals.

…

“We are clearly seeing a broad retreat on climate from the finance sector,” said Paddy McCully, senior analyst at Reclaim Finance, a group that pushes financial firms to act on the climate crisis.

“It is to a very large extent being influenced by Trump and his agenda of accelerating climate change, although also due to banks using Trumpism as an excuse to roll back commitments that they had never actually intended to keep.”

Morgan Stanley’s investor research on air conditioning is “mind numbingly cynical”, McCully said. “Especially as it comes just months after they first weakened their decarbonization targets and then quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance.”

…Read more: 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/02/us-banks-climate-goals-fail-air-conditioning

Before you rush to put all your money into air conditioners, this report was produced by the same Morgan Stanley which upgraded their outlook on Chinese real estate to “attractive” in 2021, a few months after news of the Evergrande scandal broke.

China’s Harbin lends hand to property firms; Morgan Stanley upgrades sector view

By Reuters
October 11, 20216:05 PM GMT+10

BEIJING, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Harbin has become one of the first cities in China to announce measures to support property developers and their projects, which have been shaken by the deepening debt crisis at property giant China Evergrande Group (3333.HK)

…

In a further positive sign for developers, Morgan Stanley lifted its view on China’s real estate industry to “attractive” from “in line”, saying regulators may relax their grip on the sector to help stabilise it and support the economy.

…Read more: 

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/harbin-among-first-chinese-cities-announce-steps-help-property-developers-2021-10-11/

If anyone has a link to the Morgan Stanley global warming report, please share it in comments.

One positive, this alarmist banker vision of a 3C warmer world implies there will still be a functioning economy. At least some people are expected to have enough money to buy air conditioners.

In fairness Morgan Stanley is not all orange man bad. In a recent article Morgan Stanley praised President Trump’s banking transparency measures.

Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer

Beware insurers wanting to increase premiums!
The Guardian’s Damian Carrington has fallen for the old trick!

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Beware insurers wanting to increase premiums!

The Guardian’s Damian Carrington has fallen for the old trick!

The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.

The core business of the insurance industry is risk management, and it has long taken the dangers of global heating very seriously. In recent reports, Aviva said extreme weather damages for the decade to 2023 hit $2tn, while GallagherRE said the figure was $400bn in 2024. Zurich said it was “essential” to hit net zero by 2050.

Thallinger said: “The good news is we already have the technologies to switch from fossil combustion to zero-emission energy. The only thing missing is speed and scale. This is about saving the conditions under which markets, finance, and civilisation itself can continue to operate.”

Read the full story here.

Meanwhile back in the real world, Allianz are doing very well thank you! All of these supposed weather disasters have not made a dent in profits.

https://www.allianz.com/en/investor_relations/results-reports/annual-reports.html

Operating profits increased to £16.0 billion last year, a margin of 9% of premiums.

Taking away the Life Sector, the Property and Motor Sector still accounted for over half the total profit.

The insurance business is all about calculation of risk, which then leads to the setting of premiums. If risks increase, for whatever reason, premiums rise in line; the insurer over time continues to make his margin.

Some things may become uninsurable, a house built on a flood plain, for instance. That’s tough luck for the homeowner, but the house should clearly never have been built there.

But overall weather losses have been falling in real terms as a proportion of GDP:

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/climate-change-is-showing-its-claws

Given that the world’s GDP is estimated at $106 trillion, Roger Pielke’s figures suggest weather losses of about $200 billion a year, in line with the $2 trillion quoted by Aviva for the decade to 2023.

The Guardian would like its readers to believe that such numbers are catastrophic and unaffordable for the insurance industry. In reality it is just business as usual.

But what better way to push up premiums than to play the climate card.

A Note to The Guardian – Opinion Is NOT Science

A recent article in the newspaper The Guardian reports that some of the ”world’s top climate scientists” believe that disaster is soon to occur due to what they claim will be an additional degree of warming on the planet. This is a false narrative. The earth has experienced similar temperatures in the past without disastrous consequences. In addition, one should note that opinion when it comes to climate science has had a terrible track record.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

A recent article in the newspaper The Guardian reports that some of the ”world’s top climate scientists” believe that disaster is soon to occur due to what they claim will be an additional degree of warming on the planet. This is a false narrative. The earth has experienced similar temperatures in the past without disastrous consequences. In addition, one should note that opinion when it comes to climate science has had a terrible track record.

The opinion piece, titled “World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target,” starts off with gloom and doom in the first couple of paragraphs:

Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.

Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts, and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.

First, as Climate Realism has previously discussed, here, for instance, the 1.5°C so-called limit is an arbitrarily made-up threshold. There is no scientific evidence that surpassing the 1.5℃ politically established amount of warming will result in worsening extreme weather events. What’s true of the 1.5℃ threshold is equally true of the 2°C limit, as Roger Pielke Jr., Ph.D. explains in his article, The Two Degree Temperature Target is Arbitrary and Untethered.

In The Guardian article, the opinion of “climate experts” suggests that disasters are afoot, with experts telling the paper that “massive preparations to protect people from the worst of the coming climate disasters were now critical.”

Leticia Cotrim da Cunha, at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said: “I am extremely worried about the costs in human lives.”

“I am convinced that we have all the solutions needed for a 1.5C path and that we will implement them in the coming 20 years,” said Henry Neufeldt, at the U.N.’s Copenhagen Climate Centre. “But I fear that our actions might come too late and we cross one or several tipping points.”

What’s ironic, is that both The Guardian and those “climate experts” have missed the fact that in Europe, both the 1.5° and 2°C “limits” have already been surpassed, with no deleterious effects.

Below in Figure 1 is the Berkeley Earth average surface temperature record for Europe since about 1780. Europe is a good location to analyze, because some of the longest continuous temperature records are from Europe. It shows that not just 1.5°C, but 2.0°C of warming has already occurred.

Figure 1. (click to enlarge) Berkeley Earth average European temperature showing a 2.0°C rise since about 1820. Source: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/europe Annotated by Anthony Watts

Claims that reaching such temperatures supposedly driven by increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere are causing or will cause disasters, such as climate tipping points, have been repeatedly debunked at Climate Realism, not a single one of those predictions has come true.

Also, Cotrim da Cunha’s stated worry that warming will result in more humans dying is belied by the fact that research shows that 10 to 17 time more people die of cold than heat, and that as the Earth has warmed the number of people dying from temperature related illnesses has fallen dramatically. 

Given that track record, it hardly seems likely that some additional warming will result in disasters. According to a 2023 study by the University of California Santa Cruz, Earth has experienced higher CO2 levels and warmer temperature in the past, as seen in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2. Temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide over the past 66 million years. Bottom numbers indicate millions of years in the past; right-hand numbers, carbon dioxide in parts per million. Hotter colors indicate distinct periods of higher temperatures; deeper blues, lower ones. The solid zigzagging line charts contemporaneous carbon dioxide levels; shaded area around it reflects uncertainty in the curve. (Adapted from CenCO2PIP, Science 2023)

Earth survived, and history shows that humans are highly adaptable, thus the alarm over missing some arbitrary climate target temperatures we’ve already reached is both unjustified and moot.

What we have here is nothing more than an opinion poll of people whose entire careers are built upon hyping climate catastrophe, whose and reputations will be destroyed if the climate crisis narrative is untrue.

Scientific thinking and practice involves forming testable hypotheses, deciding how to test those hypotheses, doing the tests and analyzing the results to formulate proof and test theory. The claims of climate catastrophes, when they have been tested by experience and time, have proven false. And the future disastrous climate scenarios the experts are forecasting can’t be confirmed outside of the climate models that the self-same experts reference and rely upon to for their opinions. Opinion about science is not science at all but a belief.

This Guardian article is not news, but rather simply gives voice to so-called “experts,” whose past claims about the future are one long train of failed predictions. The Guardian has proven time and again that when it comes to “reporting” on climate change, it and its writers are shameless promoters of the climate crisis narrative which has no basis in evidence or data.

Study: Venomous snakes likely to migrate en masse amid global heating

In venomous snake filled Australia, we’ve developed a very simple solution to the snake threat: Buy a cat.
Greens complain about house cats decimating the local wildlife, and this complaint is largely true.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Sell your automobile or the snakes will get you?

Venomous snakes likely to migrate en masse amid global heating, says study

Researchers find many countries unprepared for influx of new species and will be vulnerable to bites

Neelima Vallangi Fri 3 May 2024 19.35 AEST

Climate breakdown is likely to lead to the large-scale migration of venomous snake species into new regions and unprepared countries, according to a study.

The researchers forecast that Nepal, Niger, Namibia, China, and Myanmar will gain the most venomous snake species from neighbouring countries under a heating climate.

Low-income countries in south and south-east Asia, as well as parts of Africa, will be highly vulnerable to increased numbers of snake bites, according to the findings published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.

The study modelled the geographical distribution of 209 venomous snake species that are known to cause medical emergencies in humans to understand where different snake species might find favourable climatic conditions by 2070.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/03/venomous-snakes-migrate-global-heating-study

The abstract of the study;

Climate change-related distributional range shifts of venomous snakes: a predictive modelling study of effects on public health and biodiversity

Summary

Background

Climate change is expected to have profound effects on the distribution of venomous snake species, including reductions in biodiversity and changes in patterns of envenomation of humans and domestic animals. We estimated the effect of future climate change on the distribution of venomous snake species and potential knock-on effects on biodiversity and public health.

Methods

We built species distribution models based on the geographical distribution of 209 medically relevant venomous snake species (WHO categories 1 and 2) and present climatic variables, and used these models to project the potential distribution of species in 2070. We incorporated different future climatic scenarios into the model, which we used to estimate the loss and gain of areas potentially suitable for each species. We also assessed which countries were likely to gain new species in the future as a result of species crossing national borders. We integrated the species distribution models with different socioeconomic scenarios to estimate which countries would become more vulnerable to snakebites in 2070.

Findings

Our results suggest that substantial losses of potentially suitable areas for the survival of most venomous snake species will occur by 2070. However, some species of high risk to public health could gain climatically suitable areas for habitation. Countries such as Niger, Namibia, China, Nepal, and Myanmar could potentially gain several venomous snake species from neighbouring countries. Furthermore, the combination of an increase in climatically suitable areas and socioeconomic factors (including low-income and high rural populations) means that southeast Asia and Africa (and countries including Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, India, and Thailand in particular) could have increased vulnerability to snakebites in the future, with potential effects on public human and veterinary health.

Interpretation

Loss of venomous snake biodiversity in low-income countries will affect ecosystem functioning and result in the loss of valuable genetic resources. Additionally, climate change will create new challenges to public health in several low-income countries, particularly in southeast Asia and Africa. The international community needs to increase its efforts to counter the effects of climate change in the coming decades.

Funding

German Research Foundation, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España, European Regional Development Fund.Read more: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00005-6/fulltext

Models all the way down.

In venomous snake filled Australia, we’ve developed a very simple solution to the snake threat: Buy a cat.

Greens complain about house cats decimating the local wildlife, and this complaint is largely true.

But one of the forms of wildlife cats are really keen on killing is venomous snakes. They like the taste. So most of us tolerate the occasional endangered bird being dragged through the cat door, in return for almost total protection from animals which could kill us or our kids.

Did I mention cats are really popular in my part of Australia? My cat got plenty of treats and fuss a few years ago when it saved me from a snake.

The snake unexpectedly fell off the rafters of an outdoor patio area onto my table, landing just behind my laptop.

The snake didn’t hang about, it was much too worried about getting away from the cat. Though to be fair it probably climbed into the rafters in the first place because my cat was stalking it. The snake got away on that occasion, though the snake was badly wounded – the cat clawed and bit it, but the snake managed to slip through a crack in a fence where the cat couldn’t follow.

Of course, encounters between snakes and cats are less common in an urban environment, my snake encounter occurred when I was living on an acreage property. Snakes aren’t the smartest animals, but they know what cats smell like, and usually stay well away from anywhere heavily frequented by their ancient enemy.

I’m not sure how popular house cats are in the nations named in the study, but I bet they will become a lot more popular if a venomous snake threat emerges, whatever the cause.

COP 28: Climate Hysteric Peter Kalmus Has the Sads

In the latest episode of what could be mistaken for a satirical comedy, Dr. Peter Kalmus, a self-proclaimed climate activist and NASA scientist, has expressed his dismay over the recent COP28 summit. His opinion piece, “COP Out: Wrapping Up a Useless Climate Summit That Should Fool Nobody,” reads like a script from a dystopian drama where the villains are fossil fuels, and the heroes are, well, apparently not the attendees of COP28.

From Watts Up With That?

In the latest episode of what could be mistaken for a satirical comedy, Dr. Peter Kalmus, a self-proclaimed climate activist and NASA scientist, has expressed his dismay over the recent COP28 summit. His opinion piece, “COP Out: Wrapping Up a Useless Climate Summit That Should Fool Nobody,” reads like a script from a dystopian drama where the villains are fossil fuels, and the heroes are, well, apparently not the attendees of COP28.

Kalmus paints a picture of COP28 as a grand assembly of the world’s elite, jetting in on their private planes to a petrostate, to discuss the perils of the very industry that fueled their arrival. The irony is so thick here that one could cut it with a knife. The summit, according to Kalmus, was nothing more than a stage for the fossil fuel industry to make “dirty side deals”.

Some wealthy humans flew on private jets to the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate, for a two-week meeting. Many of these humans work for the fossil fuel industry. The petrostate leveraged its host status for dirty side deals to expand fossil fuels. There was a session on sustainable megayacht ownership.

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/cop-out-wrapping-up-a-useless-climate-summit-that-should-fool-nobody-opinion/ar-AA1lHi6U?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ad9c0e089b12489a875e5a576bcb4cf5&ei=24

The appointment of Sultan al-Jaber, a fossil fuel CEO, as the presiding official of a climate summit is akin to putting a fox in charge of the henhouse, suggests Kalmus. His portrayal of al-Jaber’s promises to continue investing in oil and expanding fossil fuels post-summit paints a picture of a mustache-twirling villain, gleefully plotting the world’s demise.

The presiding official was a fossil fuel CEO, Sultan al-Jaber, who, days earlier, had said some anti-science, denialist garbage-words. Two days after the meeting ended, he promised that his oil corporation will continue investing in oil and expanding fossil fuels. OPEC, in a joint statement with the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, congratulated the UAE on the “positive outcome” for the fossil fuel industry.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/cop-out-wrapping-up-a-useless-climate-summit-that-should-fool-nobody-opinion/ar-AA1lHi6U?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ad9c0e089b12489a875e5a576bcb4cf5&ei=24

Kalmus doesn’t hold back in his apocalyptic vision of a world ravaged by global heating, with floods, fires, and broken systems. The fossil fuel industry and industrial animal agriculture are the chief architects of this impending doom. One might expect a superhero to swoop in any moment now to save the day, but alas, this is the real world, and Kalmus seems to believe we’re fresh out of caped crusaders.

We are all in grave danger from global heating, which appears to be accelerating, is irreversible, and is driving all the flooding and heat and fires. It’s caused almost entirely by the fossil fuel industry, with industrial animal agriculture in second place.

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/cop-out-wrapping-up-a-useless-climate-summit-that-should-fool-nobody-opinion/ar-AA1lHi6U?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ad9c0e089b12489a875e5a576bcb4cf5&ei=24

The COP28’s 21-page “global stocktake” is ridiculed as too little, too late. Kalmus is appalled that it took thirty years just to mention fossil fuels in a COP decision text. The stocktake’s call for transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems is dismissed as nonbinding, unquantitative, and insincere. It’s as if Kalmus expected a binding global treaty to be signed then and there, magically solving all climate issues.

The wealthy fossil-fuel-industry-influenced humans at COP28 produced 21 pages called the “global stocktake.” The stocktake mentions “fossil fuels” once, on page 4. People who wish to argue that COP28 wasn’t a complete failure have been calling this “historic.” And technically it is, because fossil fuels have never been mentioned in a COP decision text.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/cop-out-wrapping-up-a-useless-climate-summit-that-should-fool-nobody-opinion/ar-AA1lHi6U?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ad9c0e089b12489a875e5a576bcb4cf5&ei=24

The loss and damage pledges from rich nations, amounting to $700 million, are scoffed at as grossly inadequate. Kalmus compares the United States’ pledge of less than $20 million to the budget of an average high school, highlighting the disparity between the scale of the problem and the response.

In Kalmus’s eyes, COP28 was nothing short of a spectacular failure, a charade that serves only to perpetuate the status quo. He calls for a new international summit and fossil fuel treaty system, free from the influence of the fossil fuel industry. His solution? A stronger climate movement and a ban on the fossil fuel industry from negotiations.

We need to start by agreeing that COP28, like other COPs, was a complete failure. Claiming that it was somehow not a failure, clinging to bits of false hope, generates a powerful illusion that business as usual can continue. We’ve been doing this for 30 years now. The possibility of keeping heating to under 1.5 degrees C has been squandered. If we cling to false hope that it’s working, we will keep doing it, year after year, making no progress. This is what the fossil fuel industry wants; this is how we lose a planet.

We then need to establish an international summit and fossil fuel treaty system that isn’t broken under the weight of fossil fuel industry corruption. To do this, we need to ban the fossil fuel industry from the negotiations, and doing this will require a stronger climate movement. Every single one of us can work, in our own way, to make the movement stronger. Be a climate activist: join with other climate activists—we’re not hard to find—and take risks. It’s up to us.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/cop-out-wrapping-up-a-useless-climate-summit-that-should-fool-nobody-opinion/ar-AA1lHi6U?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ad9c0e089b12489a875e5a576bcb4cf5&ei=24

Global Heating Will Make Your Beers Taste Worse!

A new brainless pseudo- study of climate change.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

  h/t Ian Magness

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Do Guardian readers actually believe this nonsense?

Climate breakdown is already changing the taste and quality of beer, scientists have warned.

The quantity and quality of hops, a key ingredient in most beers, is being affected by global heating, according to a study. As a result, beer may become more expensive and manufacturers will have to adapt their brewing methods.

Researchers forecast that hop yields in European growing regions will fall by 4-18% by 2050 if farmers do not adapt to hotter and drier weather, while the content of alpha acids in the hops, which gives beers their distinctive taste and smell, will fall by 20-31%.

“Beer drinkers will definitely see the climate change, either in the price tag or the quality,” said Miroslav Trnka, a scientist at the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. “That seems to be inevitable from our data.”

Beer, the third-most popular drink in the world after water and tea, is made by fermenting malted grains like barley with yeast. It is usually flavoured with aromatic hops grown mostly in the middle latitudes that are sensitive to changes in light, heat and water.

In recent years, demand for high-quality hops has been pushed up by a boom in craft beers with stronger flavours. But emissions of planet-heating gases are putting the plant at risk, the study found.

The researchers compared the average annual yield of aroma hops during the periods 1971-1994 and 1995-2018 and found “a significant production decrease” of 0.13-0.27 tons per hectare. Celje, in Slovenia, had the greatest fall in average annual hop yield, at 19.4%.

In Germany, the second-biggest hop producer in the world, average hop yields have fallen 19.1% in Spalt, 13.7% in Hallertau, and 9.5% in Tettnang, the study found.

The taste of beer does not just depend on the hops, but it explains part of the drink’s popularity, said Trnka. “Across the pubs of Europe, the most frequent debate except weather and politics is about the … beer.”

But weather and politics are both changing the taste of beers. World leaders have promised to try to stop the planet heating by more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, but are pumping out too much greenhouse gas to meet that target.

The study found the alpha acid content of hops, which give beer its distinct aroma, had fallen in all regions.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/climate-crisis-will-make-europes-beer-cost-more-and-taste-worse-say-scientists

Can anybody honestly say that beer tastes any different to what it used to? Or worse?

Indeed, the explosion of new craft beers and styles tells the opposite story. Brewers are using their skills to produce better beers, taking advantage of the abundance of quality and varied ingredients from around the world. And they will carry on doing so.

As for the nonsense about falling hop yields, the UN data shows the exact opposite, both in Europe and specifically in Germany:

https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

The best bit though is the Guardian’s claim that global heating will push up prices, because the very last paragraph includes this quote from a German hop farmer :