Tag: Reuters

Wrong, Reuters, An Early Champagne Harvest Isn’t Proof of Climate Change

Reuters reports in “Record-early champagne harvest highlights climate change impact on French vineyards” that this year’s record-early Champagne grape harvest demonstrates the impact of climate change on French vineyards and signals a troubling future for the region’s wine industry. This is misleading.

AI generated by Grok

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

Reuters reports in “Record-early champagne harvest highlights climate change impact on French vineyards” that this year’s record-early Champagne grape harvest demonstrates the impact of climate change on French vineyards and signals a troubling future for the region’s wine industry. This is misleading. The best available evidence suggests the article mistakes one season’s unusual weather for long-term climate change and presents normal agricultural variability as proof of a climate trend.

One of the oldest rules in climatology is that weather is not climate. Yet Reuters ignores that distinction almost immediately.

An unusually warm spring and summer will accelerate grape development. Cooler, wetter years delay it. Vineyard managers have known this for centuries because their livelihoods depend on understanding exactly how seasonal weather affects vines. Some years, the harvest begins early. Other years, it stretches well into September or October. That is simply how agriculture works.

Reuters treats this year’s harvest date as though it were evidence of climate change rather than evidence that 2026 had an unusually warm growing season. Those are two very different conclusions. The 2026 growing season in France was indeed exceptionally and historically warm, kicked off by the warmest spring recorded since 1900 with an average temperature anomaly of +1.7°C above seasonal norms. So, it’s no surprise that grapes grew faster in the warmer weather.

The article repeatedly links this year’s heat and drought directly to climate change without ever demonstrating that connection. Instead, it strings together observations about warm weather, earlier harvesting, reduced yields, and changing grape chemistry, then simply assumes climate change is the explanation.

Reuters quotes an agroclimatologist saying harvest dates across French vineyards have advanced by roughly three weeks over the past 50 years. Even if that observation is accurate, it does not establish that climate change is solely, or even primarily, responsible.

Viticulture has changed enormously during that same period. Growers have adopted improved grape clones, different rootstocks, modern canopy management, precision irrigation, improved pest control, better disease management, more accurate weather forecasting, and sophisticated monitoring of grape maturity. Harvest decisions have become more precise because growers now monitor sugar content, acidity, and phenolic development with tools that simply did not exist decades ago.

Reuters never asks how much of the changing harvest schedule reflects these advances rather than changes in climate, yet that that omission matters.

The article quotes one winemaker recalling that harvests used to occur after school resumed and that harvesting before mid- August once seemed unimaginable. Those recollections make for colorful journalism, but memories are not climate data. Harvest timing has never been fixed on a date.

Agricultural history is full of unusually early harvests, unusually late harvests, bumper crops, crop failures, droughts, floods, frosts, and heat waves. Farmers have always adapted because weather has always varied from year to year. That variability is precisely why climatologists distinguish weather from climate. Reuters blurs that distinction throughout the article.

The story also ignores a point that cuts against its narrative.

Champagne grapes are harvested when they reach the desired balance of sugar and acidity, not on a fixed calendar date. If weather accelerates ripening in a particular year, growers harvest earlier. If cooler weather delays ripening, they harvest later.

That flexibility is not evidence of climate change affecting the harvest, it is evidence farmers and vintners adapt to weather, exactly as they have since the rise of agriculture.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in Reuters’ reporting is that it never considers alternative explanations. Every observation is viewed through the lens of climate change, even though year-to-year weather variability provides a perfectly reasonable explanation for an unusually early harvest.

This has become a familiar pattern in climate reporting. A hurricane becomes evidence of climate change. A drought becomes evidence of climate change. A flood becomes evidence of climate change. Now an early grape harvest is added to the list.

But isolated events do not establish climate trends. If they did, every unusually late harvest, cool summer, or damaging spring frost would have to be cited as evidence against global warming.

No serious climatologist would make that argument. Reuters should not make the opposite one and they are irresponsible for doing so.

Good journalism requires more than finding an unusual event and attaching the words “climate change” to it. It requires demonstrating, rather than asserting, that climate change is the most likely explanation after considering natural variability and other contributing factors. Of course, that requires research into history and growing cycles, which Reuters never undertakes. Instead, it turns one growing season into another climate morality play, leaving readers with the false impression that a single year’s early Champagne harvest somehow proves a long-term climate crisis.

By the way, even if climate change were resulting in earlier harvests, that wouldn’t necessarily mean disaster or proof of a crisis for the industry. Farmers and vintners regularly adapt to changing conditions. A crisis would be if harvests failed or declined substantially overtime, and data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show that that is not the case.  Reuters’ story is advocacy masquerading as reporting. Its readers deserve better.

Cheap Renewables? Reuters Recycles the Myth

“Wind and solar developers naturally want the public to equate nameplate megawatts with reliable supply, subsidized bids with total costs, and rapid deployment with technical necessity. They are selling projects. Reuters should be doing something different. The press should test industry claims, not launder them into economic commonsense.”

From Master Resource

By Lisa Linowes

Editor: Reuters’ warning that ending wind and solar subsidies will raise electricity prices is the latest version of a familiar argument. Lisa Linowes (WindAction) challenged this argument when it was used to defend the Production Tax Credit in 2012 (Wind Energy Without the PTC) and in 2014 (AWEA Spins Price Distortions to Save PTC). More than a decade later, Reuters is again defending the undefendable. 

“Wind and solar developers naturally want the public to equate nameplate megawatts with reliable supply, subsidized bids with total costs, and rapid deployment with technical necessity. They are selling projects. Reuters should be doing something different. The press should test industry claims, not launder them into economic commonsense.”

Once again, a major media outlet is laundering the renewable-energy industry’s sales pitch through the authority of its news brand. In “Killing wind and solar subsidies will make US electricity more expensive,” Gavin Maguire, global energy transition columnist at Reuters, argues that phasing out federal wind and solar tax credits will raise prices, weaken reliability, and leave the United States unable to meet rising demand. The premise is simple: America needs more electricity; wind and solar make up much of the capacity now being added; therefore, slowing their development must make power scarcer and more expensive.

That conclusion is assumed, not demonstrated. The column treats nameplate capacity as dependable supply, heavily subsidized prices as evidence of low cost, federal renewable-energy tax credits as comparable to modest provisions for other resources, and batteries as though they generate electricity. These are not minor errors. They are the argument.

Nameplate Capacity vs. Dependable Power 

A megawatt of solar is not equivalent to a megawatt that can be dispatched on demand. Solar declines late in the day and disappears at night. Wind follows weather, not system needs. A wind project may produce substantial annual energy while delivering little during a heat wave, cold snap, evening peak, or regional emergency. That does not make wind and solar useless. It means their nameplate capacity cannot be treated as dependable capacity.

Yet Reuters slides among capacity, generation, supply, and power as though they were interchangeable. It cites large numbers of proposed renewable megawatts and assumes they will strengthen reliability. But the relevant question is not how many turbines or panels developers install. It is how much dependable electricity the system can deliver during its most constrained hours. Reuters’ Maguire never asks that question.

Subsidized Prices Conceal True Cost

The Reuters column also presents wind and solar as inexpensive because they can bid into wholesale markets at very low prices. But a low bid is not the total cost of electric service.

Wind and solar receive substantial subsidies at both the federal and state levels. The federal Investment Tax Credit (extended 14 times since 1978) becomes available when a qualifying project is placed in service, while the federal Production Tax Credit (extended 12 times since 1992) is earned after the project begins generating electricity. In both cases, taxpayers shoulder a significant share of project costs, helping projects pencil out and allowing developers to sell power at prices that omit much of the cost taxpayers have already absorbed. What is advertised as cheap electricity is, in reality, heavily subsidized electricity.

The claim that “every energy industry is subsidized” is equally misleading. Wind’s PTC is an uncapped production subsidy: qualifying projects receive a federal credit for every eligible kilowatt-hour produced during their ten-year eligibility periods. Every new qualifying project creates another ten-year stream of credits.

According to the Energy Information Administration, tax subsidies to renewables between FY 2016–22 totaled $83.8 billion versus $9.3 billion for oil and gas and $15.3 billion for coal. In 2022, renewables received almost five times more tax reduction than that of oil, gas, and coal ($15.6 billion vs. $3.2 billion).

Even after Congress last year accelerated the termination of these subsidies for new wind and solar projects, Treasury estimates that the ITC and PTC in FY 2026–35 will reduce federal revenues by $156.4 billion, while the newer clean-electricity production and investment credits add another $73.1 billion—a combined total of approximately $229.5 billion. Although the newer credits are nominally technology-neutral, wind and solar dominate the development pipeline and are positioned to receive most of the benefits. Without this, the wind and solar industries as they are known today would not exist.

Federal subsidies are only one layer. State policies impose additional costs through renewable mandates, renewable-energy certificates, above-market contracts, net-metering programs, transmission expansion, and other mechanisms. In Massachusetts alone, these state-mandated climate and energy programs cost ratepayers more than $4 billion annually. Many of these costs are collected through delivery charges, public-policy riders, and other portions of electric bills rather than through the energy-supply line, making them difficult for customers to identify.

Moving costs into the federal budget and less visible portions of electric bills does not eliminate them. It disperses and obscures them. A low contract or wholesale price is therefore not proof that wind or solar is inexpensive. It reflects only the portion of the cost left in the advertised price after taxpayers and ratepayers have absorbed the rest elsewhere.

“Everyone receives subsidies” is qualitatively true but quantitatively not. The argument also neglects that fossil-fired generation has been punitively regulated for several decades, making their net subsidy arguably negative. In any case, the disproportionate welfare for wind and solar is an argument for eliminating all explicit subsidies for all energies and their technologies.

A Contrived Choice

The article also groups batteries with wind and solar as resources capable of filling the electricity gap. But batteries do not generate electricity. They store power produced elsewhere, have finite duration, incur losses, and must be recharged. A 500-megawatt battery lasting four hours is not equivalent to a 500-megawatt generator capable of operating for days.

Reuters’ Maguire then asks, “If not renewables, then what?” and quickly disposes of every alternative: gas is constrained by turbine shortages, nuclear takes too long to build, hydropower has limited room to expand, and geothermal remains small. Having defined the alternatives out of contention, the column presents wind, solar, and batteries as the only practical answer–a contrived choice.

Is There Ever a Right Time?

Reuters insists that now is the wrong time to end wind and solar subsidies. But the rationale for those subsidies changes with the circumstances. During more than a decade of stagnant electricity demand, renewable advocates insisted subsidies were necessary to force a transition away from fossil fuels. Now that demand is growing, the same subsidies are portrayed as essential to prevent shortages.

Under this logic, there is never an appropriate time to end them: stagnant demand requires subsidies for decarbonization, while rising demand requires subsidies for resource adequacy. That is not a timing-sensitive economic analysis. It is an unfalsifiable defense of permanent government support.

Policymakers can retain existing nuclear, coal, and gas plants that would otherwise retire, uprate facilities, reform markets to value dependable capacity, require large new loads to secure firm supply, improve demand response, and procure resources based on performance during critical hours rather than nominal capacity.

The claim that every cancelled renewable project creates a permanent shortage is just as weak. Existing thermal plants may remain open, other generators may be built, and different technologies may become economical. The Reuters column assumes no substitution and then declares the shortage inevitable. That is advocacy, not forecasting.

Reuters identifies the article as commentary. That does not excuse the absence of serious analysis by columnist Gavin Maguire. The piece offers no regional capacity analysis, no examination of critical-hour performance, no alternative resource portfolio, and no accounting for total subsidies, transmission, or integration costs. Instead, it reproduces the renewable industry’s script and presents continued government intervention as an economic necessity.

Wind and solar developers naturally want the public to equate nameplate megawatts with reliable supply, subsidized bids with total costs, and rapid deployment with technical necessity. They are selling projects. Reuters should be doing something different. The press should test industry claims, not launder them into economic commonsense.

The United States does face rising electricity demand. But the objective should not be to maximize subsidized turbines, panels, batteries, or nominal megawatts. It should be to secure a portfolio capable of delivering power during critical hours, in the locations where it is needed, at the lowest total cost to consumers and taxpayers.

Reuters mistakes the renewable industry’s political success for technical necessity. That serves developers well. It does not serve readers trying to understand the grid.

Lisa Linowes is executive director and spokesperson for WindAction, a trusted resource regarding the costs of large-scale renewables, where this post recently appeared. Her previous posts at MasterResource can be found here.

Parmesan Cheese Is Not Endangered by Climate Change, Reuters

A photo presentation from Reuters claims that parmesan cheese is threatened by climate change because heat waves are causing declining milk production and more expensive cool storage costs. This is false.

From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A photo presentation from Reuters claims that parmesan cheese is threatened by climate change because heat waves are causing declining milk production and more expensive cool storage costs. This is false. Cheese production has been increasing amid modest warming, and the cost of temperature controlled storage is not going to get cheaper if you force a transition away from less expensive energy sources like fossil fuels.

The presentation, “How climate change is putting traditional parmesan cheese at risk,” introduces the topic by saying that “Heat waves are taking a toll on Italy’s parmesan cheese industry, reducing milk production and increasing energy costs,” and that cooling is expensive.

One photo caption of cheese in cold storage says that the peak of recent heatwaves in Montecavolo di Quattro Castella, Italy, caused a 30 percent increase in daily power use. Another shows dairy cows being misted with water to cool them down.

If the climate change of the past decades were damaging cheese production, one would expect to see yields of milk and cheese production drop along with the modest temperature increase. Based on ERA5 reanalysis satellite anomaly data (whether or not this dataset/model can be trusted is up for debate) there has been an increase in the number of “hot days,” or days above 86°F in Italy, but data simply does not show that it’s impacting the production of cheese.

In fact, Parmigiano Reggiano, one of the main cheeses highlighted in the Reuters coverage, has experienced significant growth in production over the past decade, setting a new all-time record in 2021 that was then broken in 2025. (See the chart, below). This is despite the fact that there are fewer cows. So the production growth is based on improved yields from cows. Like all agricultural products, not every year is going to be a great one, but the long-term trend for Parmesan is positive.

CLAL.it

Weather events like heatwaves will always add to electricity costs, and always have.

Ironically, what actually could endanger parmesan production is if Italy leans too hard into so-called green energy, which is more expensive and could make production cost-prohibitive for many cheesemakers.

Italy has already begun to make this mistake. Electricity demand is rising even as Italy increases the amount of intermittent, expensive solar it has installed across the country. Despite solar installed capacity expansion, electricity generation in Italy has declined as the country attempts to “decarbonize.” Natural gas still powers the bulk of Italian electricity, but cheap coal has been shut down over time. Renewables like wind and solar are not cheaper than traditional electricity generation fuels when the Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity are accounted for; electricity generated from solar can be 10 times as expensive as natural gas and four times more expensive than coal.

Also, it should be obvious that culling dairy herds in order to mitigate the impact of cattle on methane emissions as some European leaders have recommended, would also be disastrous for all cheese production.

While it may be an interesting to see how weather can impact the cost of electricity or animal husbandry and dairy operations, it is false to claim climate change is causing problems for Italy’s cheese producers.  Parmesan production is thriving, but if Italy insists on “decarbonizing” in the name of climate change, it may suffer some real declines. With this story, Reuters is reaching for a political angle rather than accurately portraying the state of Italy’s dairy industry and the threats posed to it by expensive, intermittent wind and solar power.

Riding the fusion money train

Global investment in fusion energy hit a record of $4.8 billion in the past 12 months, bringing total investments since 2021 above $14.2 billion. Last year’s total investment in 45 private companies, said Reuters, was 69% higher than in the previous 12 months. At least 17 fusion companies have raised at least $100 million.

Futuristic Digital Technology and Global Innovation Background Collection.

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

Global investment in fusion energy hit a record of $4.8 billion in the past 12 months, bringing total investments since 2021 above $14.2 billion. Last year’s total investment in 45 private companies, said Reuters, was 69% higher than in the previous 12 months. At least 17 fusion companies have raised at least $100 million.

The investment surge, says Reuters, signals growing confidence that fusion can augment the electric grid in the 2030s. Quantum computing and artificial intelligence are among the reasons for the surge in faith that “the Holy Grail” is closer than ever.

Researchers recently demonstrated the first quantum computer calculations of FLiBe, a molten salt made from fluorine, lithium, and beryllium that is a leading candidate material for breeding and extracting tritium inside fusion reactors.

Experts from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Cleveland Clinic, and IBM successfully calculated nine different molecular configurations of FLiBe – an important step toward designing materials capable of producing the fusion fuel tritium.

Artificial intelligence is becoming a critical enabler for fusion funding, as AI data centers gobble up electricity in unprecedented amounts. Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants are heavy investors in fusion.

AI is also being deployed to tackle four major challenges: designing materials that can withstand extreme neutron flux; stabilizing super-hot plasma (100 million °C), handling extreme thermal loads (heat flux), and maximizing energy output (fuel cycle optimization).

AI is simulating complex plasma physics, discovering novel materials and control strategies, integrating with real-time hardware to improve stability and efficiency, and enabling digital twins and immersive modeling for design and troubleshooting – all at speeds previously unthinkable.

In a partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Google DeepMind is using deep reinforcement learning to stabilize plasma shapes in tokamaks and to develop TORAX – a fast, differentiable plasma simulator – to optimize performance and control strategies. Microsoft is using generative AI for molecular design and AI emulators for rapid material – saving years of trial-and-error.

AI and quantum computing have augmented the response to President Trump’s call to restore the United States as the world leader in nuclear energy. The Department of Energy and private investors now believe that fusion can begin supplying electricity to the national grid – and to stand-alone facilities – in the next decade.

Just last month, the DOE released a finalized Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap – a national strategy to accelerate the development and commercialization of fusion energy on the most rapid, responsible timeline in history. The roadmap – informed by at least 800 scientists and engineers, 15 private companies, 10 national laboratories, and 70 universities – identifies critical science and technology gaps that the DOE, industry, universities, and national laboratories need to close to enable fusion to help satisfy America’s energy appetite.

The unified strategy, to be implemented via the DOE’s newly established Office of Fusion, is built around three primary drivers: building critical infrastructure to close fusion materials and technology gaps; innovating through advanced research, high-performance computing, and AI; and growing the U.S. fusion ecosystem through public-private partnerships, supply chain development, workforce growth, and commercialization pathways.

The inflow of money to fusion companies affirms that the strategy has broad support.

A sizable chunk has gone to Google-backed TAE Technologies, which recently underwent a reverse merger with Trump Media & Technology Group, led by Trump ally Devin Nunez. Trump Media agreed to provide up to $200 million in cash to TAE at signing and $100 million more upon initial filing.

TAE Technologies is primarily focused on advancing aneutronic fusion power, which produces minimal radioactive waste. The technology utilizes a field-reversed configuration to optimize plasma confinement and stability. The company, which had raised $1.79 billion before the merger, plans to pick a site by yearend and create a commercially viable fusion reactor by 2030.

Jeff Bezos-backed General Fusion on July 13 became the first publicly listed fusion power company, beating TAE Technologies by several months. On its first day, the stock went up sharply. A recent merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III brought much-needed cash to the company, which had raised over $600 million from private investors since 2002.

General Fusion relies on magnetized target fusion, which uses magnetic fields to create magnetized plasma inside a chamber lined with liquid lithium. The company hopes to turn on its first power plant “by approximately 2035.”

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, spun out of MIT, is developing a process that fuses hydrogen nuclei using high-temperature superconducting magnets. The firm, which has raised nearly $3 billion from investors that include Google and Nvidia, hopes to turn on its SPARC tokamak fusion energy machine in 2027. Google has already agreed to purchase half of the output from the Arc, a 400 MW commercial power plant CFS wants to build in Virginia.

Microsoft will be the first customer for Helion’s field-reversed configuration reactor, in which magnets surround an hourglass-shaped reaction chamber. Helion, which has raised $1.5 billion (and is valued at $15.5 billion), plans to produce electricity from its reactor in 2028. Investors include Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, and BlackRock.

Helion’s Polaris reactor is more like a battery than a traditional power plant. There is no heat, no steam, no turbine, all of which leak energy. Essentially, a 60-foot tube slams two plasma rings together at a million miles per hour and the recoil is harvested as electricity. Helion says it can recover electricity from each pulse at +95% efficiency. If the technology works, it may have the inside track in the fusion race.

Because the NRC in 2023 decided that fusion machines have more in common with particle accelerators than with fission reactors, fusion reactors are not impeded by decade-long federal reactor reviews. Last month, Helion obtained state Radioactive Materials and Radioactive Air Emissions licenses, making the firm the first fusion power facility to have all its licenses in hand. Polaris is also the first privately funded fusion machine to run on deuterium-tritium fuel.

It’s not just American fusion companies that are raking in cash.

Google just backed Germany-based Proxima Fusion with $468 million. The firm, which hopes to build Europe’s first commercial fusion power plant, has reached $2.7 billion in valuation. Proxima is developing stellarator technology and hopes to have its fusion demonstrator – a proof-of-concept precursor to a commercial power plant – up and running in the early 2030s.

First Light Fusion, spun out of the University of Oxford, has spent less than £45 million to achieve fusion by firing a projectile at a target using a two-stage gun. First Light wants to partner with existing power producers to develop a pilot plant in the 2030s that would produce about 150 MW of electricity and cost less than $1 billion.

Fusion is no longer “30 years away,” we are told. But who will win the race?

Investors today are betting on very different fusion technologies, but with construction and operational costs potentially varying widely, the companies that get to energy production first may – or may not – be the ultimate winners. Betamax preceded VHS and had superior quality, but VHS was cheaper and better served the movie-watching public.

No, Reuters, Climate Change is Not Threatening Europe’s Resources

In the article, “Climate change and pollution threaten Europe’s resources, EU warns,” Reuters asserts that climate change poses a “direct threat” to Europe’s natural resources, citing an EU environment agency report, and warns of worsening droughts and extreme weather. These claims are patently false. History shows far worse droughts in the past with no appreciable trend of other types of extreme weather events becoming more common or severe. Europe’s resource problems are caused by humans, stemming from overuse and poor management, just not from human-caused climate change.

A landscape depicting a drought-affected agricultural field with cracked earth, farmers working, and a warm orange sky at sunset.
MEGADROUGHT of year 1540: Europe’s Forgotten Weather Catastrophe.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

A cracked and dry corn field in Les-Rues-des-Vignes, France, with small green plants emerging from the ground, overlaid with the word 'FALSE' in bold red letters.

In the article, “Climate change and pollution threaten Europe’s resources, EU warns,” Reuters asserts that climate change poses a “direct threat” to Europe’s natural resources, citing an EU environment agency report, and warns of worsening droughts and extreme weather. These claims are patently false. History shows far worse droughts in the past with no appreciable trend of other types of extreme weather events becoming more common or severe. Europe’s resource problems are caused by humans, stemming from overuse and poor management, just not from human-caused climate change.

The article declares that “Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent and is experiencing worsening droughts and other extreme weather events.” It further states that more than 80 percent of protected habitats are in poor condition, blaming climate change and pollution.

“The window for meaningful action is narrowing, and the consequences of delay are becoming more tangible,” European Environment Agency executive director Leena Yla-Mononen told Reuters. “We are approaching tipping points – not only in ecosystems, but also in the social and economic systems that underpin our societies.”

The is political rhetoric couched in weak science.

The reality is far more mundane. The European Environment Agency’s own data show that water stress is primarily linked to intensive agriculture, industrial demand, and population growth. As the “Review of National Water Allocation Policies in Six European Countries” documents, many European countries continue to over-allocate water rights, creating artificial scarcity even in years with average rainfall. This is a governance problem, not a climate one. Similarly, biodiversity decline across Europe is overwhelmingly the result of land use change, habitat fragmentation, and invasive species—not a few tenths of a degree of warming over the last few decades.

When it comes to extreme weather, Reuters’ claims are directly contradicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report which notes there is little to no attribution of many types of severe weather to climate change. As Climate at a Glance: Extreme Weather summarizes, data do not support claims that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent or severe worldwide.

Further, Europe’s worst droughts occurred long before today’s modest warming. The megadrought of 1540 lasted an entire year, with contemporaneous records describing riverbeds across central Europe running dry, widespread crop failure, and thousands of deaths. More recent severe droughts struck in the 1920s and 1940s, periods that cannot be blamed on modern greenhouse gas emissions. The paper “The 1921 European drought: impacts, reconstruction and drivers” describes the 1921 European drought as “the most severe and most widespread drought in Europe since the start of the 20th century.

In “A drought climatology for Europe,” decadal trends show “greater pan-European drought incidence in the 1940s, early 1950s … and lesser drought incidence in the 1910s, 1930s” over the 20th century.

And there are many more worse droughts even further back in the past, before climate change even had a name, as this graph from the 2021 paper Recent European drought extremes beyond Common Era background variability shows:

Graph showing the historical trend of droughts in Europe over the calendar years, with marked periods of wet and dry conditions and significant drought events labeled.

Compared to these historical drought episodes, recent intermittent summer dry spells are far from extraordinary.

Also, as detailed in multiple Climate Realism posts on the topics neither floods, here and here, for example, nor wildfires, here and here, are more frequent or severe now than they have been in the past.

Even heatwaves are neither more frequent nor deadly now than they have been historically, with deaths from temperatures declining.

Europe’s actual environmental challenges—such as nutrient pollution in rivers, overfishing, and urban sprawl—require pragmatic policy solutions, not grandiose climate pledges. By conflating resource depletion with climate change and exaggerating extreme weather risks, Reuters has misled its audience. The problems it describes are not new, not worsening because of climate change, and not solvable by CO₂ reductions. They are solvable by better governance, better planning, and better science. Once again, journalism has been sacrificed to climate alarmism.

China’s Solar Sector Has Slashed 87,000 Jobs Since 2024

Over 40 solar firms have delisted, gone bankrupt or been sold since 2024.

A group of five individuals in gray jackets working intently at a table scattered with small, broken pieces, likely in a workshop or industrial setting. The background features a solar panel mounted on the wall.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Repost from Irina Slav’s Oilprice.com:

Headline about China's solar sector job losses, stating 87,000 jobs cut since 2024. Published by Irina Slav on August 1, 2025.

Chinese solar power companies shed a third of their workforce last year, amid intense competition and overcapacity that drove losses, Reuters has reported, citing company filings.

Also, last year and this year so far, more than 40 sector players have gone bankrupt, delisted, or been bought by other companies from the industry, the report also said, citing a report from the country’s solar industry association. The layoff numbers stand at a total of 87,000 people, from five of the biggest solar businesses in China.

“The industry has been facing a downturn since the end of 2023,” a Morningstar analyst told Reuters. “In 2024, it actually got worse. In 2025, it looks like it’s getting even worse,” Cheng Wang also said.

The downturn follows three years of frenetic expansion sponsored by the government, which elevated solar to a key industry for economic growth. This expansion resulted in overcapacity, which sank prices and destroyed profits for many.

Full story here.

The take home message is that solar panels are not as cheap as the renewable lobby would have you believe. Overcapacity in the solar industry, funded by government hand outs in China have depressed prices well below the cost.

Eventually prices will start to rise once the surplus production has been sold off.

Check Your Facts, Reuters, Mediterranean Wildfires Aren’t Unusual Historically, No Reason to Blame Climate Change

A recent story posted by Reuters blames recent wildfire numbers and severity that have erupted across Mediterranean Europe on climate change. Data and history debunk such claims. Satellite data from Europe and the United States show wildfire is in decline globally, including across Europe, and research and reports show wildfires have been common across the arid Mediterranean region throughout history.

A wildfire burns through a forested area, with dramatic flames and smoke rising against a backdrop of mountainous terrain at sunset.

From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

Firefighters battling a wildfire near Marseille, France, with a red fire truck visible amidst smoke and trees.

A recent story posted by Reuters blames recent wildfire numbers and severity that have erupted across Mediterranean Europe on climate change. Data and history debunk such claims. Satellite data from Europe and the United States show wildfire is in decline globally, including across Europe, and research and reports show wildfires have been common across the arid Mediterranean region throughout history.

In the Reuters story, “How climate change fuels wildfires in Europe,” writer Kate Abnett writes, “[w]ildfires have burnt 227,000 hectares of land since the beginning of the year – more than double the average for this time of year over the past two decades,” noting that while this years acreage lost to wildfires is far above the recent average (consistent records have only been kept since 2002), it is far below the recent record.

Abnett uncritically blames climate change for causing the Southern Europe’s fires, writing:

Scientists say the Mediterranean region’s hotter, drier summers put it at high risk of wildfires. …

Climate change exacerbates this risk, by creating hotter and drier background conditions. In the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, that has contributed to the fire season starting earlier in recent years, breaking records for the intensity of fires, and burning more land.

Greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning coal, oil and gas, have heated the planet by about 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. Europe has warmed at twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Abnett’s narrative may be compelling, but it is compelling fiction, unmoored from a historical understanding of fire in the region, and refuted by hard data and research.

As a matter of geography the climate of the Mediterranean region is naturally arid, prone to drought, extreme heat, and yes, associated wildfires. Abnett in particular discusses wildfires in parts of France (documented, for example, here and here), Greece (documented, for example, here and here), Spain (documented, for example, here and here), and even Syria (documented, for example, here and here). Syria is not normally considered part of Europe but I guess Abnett threw it into the mix because there are fires burning there and it is located to the Mediterranean Sea. The problem is research and historical reports from each of the countries and regions mentioned by Abnett show that wildfires, often set intentionally by people during wars, have been common there.

Fire helped shape the ecology of the entire region. Some past fires have been huge. For instance, more than 112 years of global warming ago, when global average temperatures were cooler and humans weren’t contributing significantly to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, the great Thessaloniki fire burned for 13 days, left more than 70,000 people homeless, and destroyed two-thirds of Greece’s second largest city.

Factions have used fire as a tool to fight wars throughout history. In fact, many of the fires in Syria today have been set during its ongoing political strife or civil war. In the waning days of the Assad regime, it became common for militia’s fighting the government to set fires, which drained resources from the regime. Nowhere in Abnett’s story does she discuss the fact that many fires now burning and that have scorched the region in recent years have been the result of human carelessness, and sometimes intentionally set for political reasons or purely perverse ends.

That’s the history and context Abnett ignores in her rush to climate judgement.

Additionally, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) undermines Abnett’s linking long-term climate change and the increase in wildfires. The IPCC says in Chapter 12 of its Sixth Assessment Report there has been no observable change in the wildfire regime. “There is low confidence in any long-term increases in meteorological drought or fire weather at the global scale,” states the IPCC. The organization goes on say that, based on trends and models forecasts, it does not expect any observable change in wildfire behavior, numbers, intensity, or acreage lost, to arise by 2050 or even by 2100.

On this point, the IPCC would seem to be on solid ground since satellite data sets from NASA and the European Space Agency both show a decline in wildfires in recent decades.

In short, since wildfires are declining, it is impossible for climate change to be making wildfires more frequent or severe.

To the extent that people perceive wildfire trends as worsening it is likely due to the fact that with population and associated housing and infrastructure growth and expansion into regions historically prone to wildfires, more people are being affected by wildfires when they occur even when they aren’t as widespread or severe. In addition, the 24-seven global news cycle, a factor that never existed in human history before the last 50 years, makes people aware of even distant wildfires when they occur, making fires appear more frequent.

In the end, rather than focusing on the real factors behind today’s wildfires, Reuters chose to continue the drumbeat that climate change is behind everything bad that happens. This is especially unfortunate with regard to discussions of how to reduce wildfires, since the story ignores real world means of preventing and/or reducing the extend and damage from wildfires when they occur, such as increased active forest management, improved access for firefighting purposes, and hardening infrastructure. Instead, the story implies falsely that if only humans stopped burning oil, natural gas, and coal, wildfires would be relegated to the history books.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Wildfires are natural. They have been, remain, and will continue to be a fact of life for the foreseeable future, regardless of fossil fuel use. But the judicious use of fossil fuels, can help fight fires, by powering equipment, pumps, and timber removal machinery, for example, and by providing the on demand electric power and plastics which house electronics used to discover, map, track and to pinpoint suppression efforts. Fossil fuels also allow society to to map potential fuel load build ups and favorable meteorological conditions rapidly, to anticipate and possibly prevent fires before they occur. That’s what Abnett would have the world give up to prevent a modest rise in future temperatures.

California Dems Reportedly Scrambling To Find Buyer For Refinery After Running Owner Out Of Town

California Democrats are reportedly rushing to find a buyer for a refinery scheduled to shut down in 2026 as a potential gas crisis looms over the state, according to Reuters.

A man in a suit passionately speaking at a podium with a sign behind him that reads 'No gas and oil,' with an oil rig visible in the background.

From Watts Up With That?

THE DAILY CALLER

Audrey Streb
DCNF Energy Reporter

California Democrats are reportedly rushing to find a buyer for a refinery scheduled to shut down in 2026 as a potential gas crisis looms over the state, according to Reuters.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) is reportedly actively seeking buyers to stop the upcoming closure of the Valero refinery in Benicia, California, according to three people familiar with the matter that spoke to Reuters. Democrat officials are now reportedly scrambling to keep the refinery operating in California after enforcing stringent regulations that have helped prompt refineries to close across the state for years.

“CEC is engaging with market players to explore pathways for the continued operation of in-state refineries,” the agency told Reuters. (RELATED: Gas Crisis Looms Over California As Dems Continue To Impose Crippling Regs)

CEC did not specifically confirm that it is looking for a buyer to Reuters, but did say that it is working to ensure that the refinery stays open. Valero announced its Benicia, California, refinery closure in April, and Phillips 66 refinery is also scheduled to shut down by the end of 2025.

A spokesperson for Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom pointed the DCNF to Newsom’s recent comments about working with oil refiners and producers to help keep fuel supplies steady, as well as his April letter to CEC urging them to “redouble” efforts to cooperate with refiners.

Golden State residents already pay some of the highest prices at the pump across the U.S., though two major refineries scheduled for closure and strict regulations may spike gas costs to as high as $8 per gallon as soon as next year, according to one study from the University of Southern California.

Oil refineries have been closing in California for years, and the state hasn’t seen a new major refinery built in decades, according to the CEC. Programs like California’s “cap-and-trade” program combined with strict low-carbon fuel standards are contributing to regulatory pressures that are driving refineries out of the state, industry experts have previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Critics like Republican California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones also note that stringent regulations imposed by Democrats have pressured refineries to leave the state. The refinery closures, in tandem with more regulations going into effect, have led some California officials to worry about a potential gas crisis in the state.

CEC and Valero did respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

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It’s a 100% flip: Reuters suddenly admits Net Zero policies have been a resounding failure

In a rush, at least one opinion writer at Reuters is suddenly saying all the things skeptics have been saying for years: all the things’ Reuters has hidden from the world about renewable energy.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Wow. Just Wow. Trump gets elected and Reuters realizes renewable energy is unrealistic

In a rush, at least one opinion writer at Reuters is suddenly saying all the things skeptics have been saying for years: all the things’ Reuters has hidden from the world about renewable energy.

It is hard to believe, but it’s all there… the naked utter failure of solar and wind to reduce CO2, to reduce oil and gas, and to reduce prices. Edward Chancellor calls it a “resounding failure”. He has the devastating figures, and even the graph showing how countries with more renewables have more expensive electricity. He has another graph of the share market failure of renewables compared to the fossil fuel success, and he uses the words “tumbled” and “soared”.  To grind it home,  he explains how we just export our manufacturing to China which uses coal (is this news?). He calls Net Zero an “illusion” where we think we lower our emissions but we actually raise them overseas.

There is carnage among the sacred cows…

Climate policy requires a more realistic approach

By Edward Chancellor, Reuters

LONDON, Feb 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) – The pursuit of net zero carbon emissions has been a resounding failure. Despite trillions of dollars spent on renewable energy, hydrocarbons still account for over 80% of the world’s primary energy and a similar share of recent increases in energy consumption, according to The Energy Institute. Coal, oil and natural gas production are at record highs. Emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise inexorably. The financial markets were already losing confidence in the energy transition before Donald Trump returned to the White House. A more realistic approach to climate policy is urgently needed.

What they don’t say is that all this was unmistakably obvious for a decade or more, that thousands of engineers and scientists have been telling the world this would happen, and that Reuters wouldn’t report them, not even when they had a Nobel prize.

Solar and wind power have grown to a mere 3.5% of primary energy production. The levelised cost of renewable energy – which measures of the net present value of electricity produced over a plant’s lifetime – has declined sharply over the years. But this has not resulted into lower electricity prices. In fact, as the share of the energy mix provided by renewables has risen, electricity prices have tended to increase. That’s because wind and solar power are intermittent. Since storing energy in batteries is uneconomic, traditional sources of power are still needed as backup, which is expensive.

Why now? Because reality is making Reuters look stupid — it’s not the reality of high costs or blackouts, but the reality that Trump won, and set fire to the “transition” fantasy by dumping Paris, dropping subsidies, opening gas fields, and installing a corporate energy CEO as the US Energy Secretary. Chris Wright and JD Vance are dropping truth bombs in speeches that can’t be ignored.  Word is spreading fast, and if Reuters don’t report this, they risk being turned into the same irrelevant wreckage the US mainstream media channels already are. As the US economy ramps up, other countries will have to let go of their green delusions in order to keep up. The game changed. There’s no point upping the ante in the UN-poker game if the main player has played a Royal Flush.

Even the graph! An actual graph!

Source Reuters and Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2024

Two graphs!

Presumably the owners of Reuters have sold out of their renewable stocks. (Readers here read about this trend in October 2023.)

Source: Reuters, and S&P | P.Thal Larsen.

So this is arse-covering, forgive the language, but this is also an escape clause for allies and believers

The owners of Reuters (whoever they are) — are presumably part of The Blob, since they have covered up its failures for decades, and gave millions to Hillary. This article is also an escape clause for allies and a warning to jump ship. It’s full of excuses — we were misled by an era of low interest rates; we had good intentions; we didn’t realize China made all our stuff with coal, you know, and Energy transitions take a very long time. What a shock!

The way Edward Chancellor writes, anyone could have got this wrong. Even the oil giants made mistakes, you know, and are now looking to rebuild their fossil fuel business. Never is there any question that say, National Energy Managers ought to have done their homework, or that Energy Ministers should have done due diligence before recklessly trying to transform electricity grids based on what Al Gore and a teenage girl told them to do:

Not long ago, investors worried that traditional energy companies would be left with “stranded assets” – oil and gas fields abandoned as demand for fossil fuels dried up. Yet earlier this month Shell (SHEL.L), opens new tab announced a near-$1 billion writedown for its investment in a wind project off the New Jersey coast. BP (BP.L), opens new tab is scrapping targets for increasing generation of renewable energy and cutting oil and gas production. As Lees writes, “across the sector, oil majors that shifted their portfolios to green energy are now realising their mistake and are looking to rebuild their fossil fuel business.”

 The world still urgently needs an alternative to fossil fuels.The energy expert Vaclav Smil has likened the costs of the planned energy transition to those incurred by a nation fighting total war for decades on end. The era of zero interest rates created a sense that the supply of capital was infinite and its cost negligible. Rising interest rates dispelled that illusion. The economics of wind and solar power, with their large upfront investment costs and relatively low operating expenses, have been upended. Wood Mackenzie calculates that every 2 percentage point increase in the risk-free rate raises the levelised cost of renewable electricity by around 20%.

I’ve always said there will come a day when everyone says “I was always a skeptic”

This is the start of that normalization. It’s not the end, but it’s the beginning of the end in the energy battle.

But it’s not even the start of the science battle. They’re still “believers” of big-gov bad-science.  The world still urgently needs an alternative to fossil fuels….

What the world still urgently needs are real journalists and honest media. It needs accountable Ministers, and bureaucrats that get sacked. If we don’t learn from the last mistakes, the next episode of parasitic loot-and-pillage is just around the corner.

And Reuters is still covering up for them.

Hat tip to Climate Depot

Why We Still Need Fossil Fuels, Despite Reuters Propaganda

Wind farms have been the primary source of electricity in the United Kingdom for the past two consecutive quarters, marking the longest stretch on record that renewable energy has surpassed fossil fuels in U.K. electricity generation.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Today’s misinformation from Reuters, who once upon a time used to be a trusted source of news:

Wind farms have been the primary source of electricity in the United Kingdom for the past two consecutive quarters, marking the longest stretch on record that renewable energy has surpassed fossil fuels in U.K. electricity generation.

Total electricity generation from wind sources during the first three months of 2024 was 25.3 terawatt hours (TWh), compared to 23.6 TWh from all fossil fuel sources, according to data from energy think tank Ember.

Wind power accounted for an average of 39.4% of total electricity during the first quarter of 2024, compared to 36.2% from fossil fuels.

Wind output also exceeded fossil fuel-powered output during the final quarter of 2023, marking the first time that wind power has generated more electricity than fossil fuel plants in the U.K. for consecutive quarters.

When combined with output from solar farms, total electricity output from renewable sources in the U.K. was 27.1 TWh during Q1 2024, the highest quarterly total ever for the U.K. and a record 42.2% share of total electricity generation.

WIND LULL OVER SUMMER

Due to seasonal lulls in wind speeds during the summer, that renewable electricity generation total may start to decline over the coming months.

In 2023, wind generation during the second and third quarters were 46% and 34% lower respectively than during the first quarter, and similar declines in wind generation are possible in 2024 if normal wind speed patterns unfold.

Higher solar output during sunnier periods will offset some of the decline from wind farms, as solar output in the U.K. tends to peak at around 5 TWh during the second quarter of the year, compared to just below 2 TWh during the first quarter.

But as wind farms typically generate roughly six times more electricity than solar farms in the U.K., total renewable generation is still likely to dip notably during the middle of 2024.

Utilities looking to keep fossil fuel use to a minimum during the summer may deploy greater quantities of electricity generated by nuclear reactors, bioenergy facilities and hydro dams to ensure total generation loads remain stable.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/wind-overtakes-fossil-fuels-uk-electricity-generation-maguire-2024-04-23

It has utterly no relevance at all how much electricity wind power produced over the quarter. What is relevant is that we still needed a full fleet of CCGT stations to fill the gap when the wind did not blow.

Their naivety in believing that you can simply tap into nuclear power in summer is shocking, coming as it does from an outfit that advises the imbecile Ed Miliband. Nuclear plants cannot be switched on and off in this way, and certainly would not be economical.

That is why we are still wholly reliant on natural gas to provide enough electricity when we need it.

https://gridwatch.co.uk/demand