Month: November 2025

Low bar, but Secretary of Energy Chris Wright is probably the smartest guy in Trump’s cabinet. That’s one reason why I find him to be such a detestable figure, because he knows he’s lying, and, like Trump, he lies when he doesn’t even have to.
The interview with Wright, above, focused on new plans for a billion dollar loan to rehab the Three Mile Island Nuclear plant. I wish them luck, truly. But then Wright got unnecessarily wayyy out over is skis.

“People are tired of expensive electricity prices, and the Trump administration is all in to do something about it.”

“There are no meaningful subsidies for fossil fuels.”

David Gelles in the New York Times:

But when I asked Wright, a former fracking executive, about the government’s support for fossil fuels, he said there was none.

“There are not oil and gas subsidies,” he told me. “In the United States, oil and gas and coal are huge taxpayers and don’t have any subsidies that I’m aware of. And I’ve been in the business for 40 years. So if you can find the subsidies, tell me where they are.”

But, despite Wright’s claim, fossil fuel companies have benefited from specific elements of the U.S. tax code for decades.

Coal, oil and gas interests in the U.S. received more than $16 billion in subsidies in 2023, according to the Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker, which is maintained by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Lazard:

Despite facing macro challenges and headwinds, utility-scale solar and onshore wind remain the most cost-effective forms of new-build energy generation on an unsubsidized basis (i.e., without tax subsidies). As such, renewable energy will continue to play a key role in the buildout of new power generation in the U.S. as the lowest-cost and quickest-to-deploy generation.

Continue reading “Big Subsidies for Trump Energy Plans (and Donors)”

With the United States withdrawing from the most important wealth building industries of the new century, China’s strategy of working with and in the developing world has moved into the spotlight.

Future histories of the world may well show that the second election of Donald Trump marked the sunset of the American Century.
Good discussion below from Democracy Now with Bill McKibben.

Why the “Epstein hoax” is a lot like the “Climate hoax”.
Denial is far, far more than a River in Africa.

Just when you thought he couldn’t be any more despicable.

Kate Aronoff in New Republic:

It’s rare for Trump to rebuke his own supporters, but this specific line of attack—in which he claims that those demanding more documents on Epstein are “weaklings” falsely convinced of a plot cooked up by Democrats to advance radical leftist goals—follows a familiar playbook: namely, that of climate denial, which claims (among other things) that climate change is a plot cooked up by Democrats to advance radical leftist goals. Let’s call Trump’s new position Epstein Denial. Unfortunately for Trump, it’s not really working out for him. 

In order to understand why a strategy that’s historically been so successful for Republicans is now tearing them apart, consider the function climate denial has had for the party. Republicans have spent years deriding policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incentivize renewable energy as “Green New Scams,” and long calledclimate change itself a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese government. The strategy, which has roots in the tobacco industry’s efforts to cover up the harm caused by its products, serves the material interests of reliable Republican donors in the fossil fuel industry. Although oil and gas executives have known for decades that their companies’ products contribute to global warming, they funded right-wing think tanks, advertising campaigns, and politicians spouting a contradictory array of talking points: that climate change isn’t real, is overblown, or is actually good.

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In the recently released emails, Epstein, who was spending Christmas, 2016 at Mara Lago, wrote to celebrity physicist Lawrence Krauss with some climate denial talking points. I preserved as many of the misspellings and grammatical errors as spell check would allow.

Continue reading “Leaked Files Show Epstein’s Climate Denial (of course)”

Utility Dive:

• Power outages across the United States are getting longer, according to a recent survey by JD Power, which cites “increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events.”
• The average length of the longest power outage has increased in all regions since 2022, from 8.1 hours to 12.8 by the midpoint of 2025. Customers in the South reported the longest outages, averaging out at 18.2 hours, followed by the West at 12.4 hours, it said. 
• Mark Spalinger, director of utilities intelligence at J.D. Power, said in an interview that while the duration of outages is increasing, the number of customers experiencing them is not. In fact, over time, the percentage of people who experience “perfect power” without any interruptions is gradually rising. However, disasters like storms and fires “are becoming so much more extreme that it creates these longer outage events that utilities are now having to deal with,” he said. 

J. D. Power:

Disasters Become a Fact of Life for Many U.S. Electric Utility Customers 
Extreme Weather to Blame for Half of all Outages Reported in First Half of 2025

Disasters, such as the Los Angeles wildfires and severe spring and early summer thunderstorms that caused flash floods throughout many parts of the United States, have contributed to more than $131 billion in global losses in the first half of 2025. They have also created a new set of challenges for the nation’s electric utilities—and their customers—who were already straining under the weight of rising costs, aging infrastructure and an uncertain economy.

In response to the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events, J.D. Power expanded its U.S. Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study methodology to better understand the impact of weather-related power outages and service disruptions on customers. This Utilities Intelligence Report dives into key data points gathered from J.D. Power studies to chart the scope of power disruptions throughout the first half of 2025 and identify strategies utilities can use to help mitigate the negative effects of extreme weather on their customers. Data collected in this report is from 2025 and includes weather events from 2024 and 2025.

Continue reading “Blackouts Increasing. Weather Extremes Big Factor”

Long past time to update on one of Climate’s most urgent threats – a slowing or shutdown in the ocean’s conveyor belt that maintains the climatic regime that current civilization was built under.
Stefan Rahmstorf is one of the acknowledged global experts on this, and his recent talk, above, is comprehensive but compact, 14 minutes.
Rahmstorf’s write up in Real Climate below is more detailed.

Stefan Rahmstorf in Real Climate:

The #AMOC is the reason for Europe’s mild climate. Evidence that it is slowing has been piling up over the years – it now is likely at its weakest in at least a millennium, and it may even be approaching a tipping point. Here I will show you the latest high-resolution images – and also discuss whether there is serious evidence speaking against an ongoing AMOC weakening.

Our regular readers are well aware of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC in short, a large-scale overturning motion of water along the whole Atlantic which transports a quadrillion Watts (that is 10¹⁵ W) of heat to the northern Atlantic, partly via the Gulf Stream. (If you are new to the topic, check out this article.)

Instabilities of the AMOC have produced some of the most dramatic climate changes in recent Earth history, well-known to paleo-climatologists (see e.g. my by now ancient review in Nature 2002), and concerns that we are destabilizing it by causing global warming has been rising sharply in expert circles in recent years (see last year’s open letter by 44 experts).

One reason is what we are observing in the northern Atlantic. And another reason is the latest model simulations by the Dutch research group in Utrecht. A recent paper by van Westen et al. (2025) has shown that the much-feared tipping point where the AMOC breaks down (first demonstrated in a simple box model in 1961) is also found in a high-resolution (eddy resolving) ocean model – destroying any hope that it might be an artifact of too coarse and simple models. This tipping point has been consistently demonstrated across the entire model spectrum by now, and the cause is well-understood (a destabilizing salt transport feedback).

Also, that model simulation and paper provide us with the AMOC ‘fingerprint’ in sea surface temperature (SST) in unprecedented detail. So let’s have a look (Fig. 1)!

Continue reading “AMOC Update: Odds of Ocean Current Collapse are Alarming”

Typical climate delayer tactic is to downplay the real human damage that climate change is doing today. Much of that has to be teased out of larger statistical records, and that work is now being done.

Down to Earth:

Heatwaves have become India’s most dangerous disasters in terms of human mortality. Three of the five warmest years in India have been recorded in the past decade (2015-2024). Heatwaves in India are projected to occur thirty times more often by the end of the century if the global mean temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius.

Per our estimate (see below), a single heatwave — even one lasting just a few days — causes tens of thousands of excess deaths in India. Despite the rising toll, heatwave mortality remains under-reported, poorly tracked, and largely absent as a target for preventive actions.

Between 2000 and 2020, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported 20,615 heatstroke deaths, based on its annual Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India reports (NCRB, 2000-2020). During the same period, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) listed 17,767 heatwave deaths, based on state-reported disaster mortality compiled under the Annual Report on Heatwaves in India (NDMA, 2021). In contrast, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) recorded just 10,545 deaths in its Climate Hazards and Vulnerability Atlas of India, using data from State Disaster Management Authorities (IMD, 2022). These figures, all from official government sources, differ by nearly a factor of two, and the discrepancies arise from differences in methodology, data sources, and reporting responsibilities.  Nevertheless, they give the impression that annual excess mortality from heatwaves in India is about 1,500, a tiny number relative to daily all-cause deaths in India of about 25,000.   

Peer-reviewed studies suggest the actual death toll from heatwaves is far higher than both official and media counts. Many heat-related deaths go unrecognised or are misclassified. Public health experts note that physicians often record only the immediate medical cause on death certificates, without acknowledging the role of heat as the underlying trigger. As a result, official statistics “barely scratch the surface” of the true human cost of heatwaves.

Courthouse News:

Europe’s hottest summer on record came with a staggering price. In just four months of 2024, more than 62,700 people died from heat, according to a new study in Nature Medicine. Researchers say it is the latest sign that extreme temperatures are not a distant threat but a growing public health emergency already unfolding across the continent.

Continue reading “Climate Change: Killing Us Now”

Flat earth. People are waking up, all around the globe.

Earth.org:

For the first time in the history of the Conferences of the Parties (COPs), the issue of the integrity of information on climate change has gained central prominence in international negotiations. The Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate, launched during COP30 in Belém this Wednesday (12), brings together countries, UN agencies, and civil organizations in a global commitment to combat misinformation that threatens the fight against the climate crisis.

In an exclusive interview with CENARIUM, Guilherme Canela, Director of the Division of Digital Inclusion, Policies and Digital Transformation at UNESCO, explained that the initiative seeks to strengthen technical and regulatory capacities in developing countries, without abandoning fundamental principles.

“UNESCO is the United Nations agency for issues of access to public information, freedom of expression, safety of journalists, etc. We have told our 194 member states that we are open to technical cooperation, training of personnel and regulators, and discussion of governance of the digital ecosystem, always with one non-negotiable principle: the protection of freedom of expression and access to public information cannot be compromised,” Canela stated.

Continue reading “Climate Denial a Symptom of Larger Reality Dysfunction”

Guardian:

Water, and its absence, has become Iran’s national obsession. In the mosques of northern Tehran the imams have been praying for rain, while the meteorologists count down the hours until the weather is forecast to break and rain is finally due to fall from the sky.

Forecasts of “rain-producing clouds” are front-page news. More than 50 days have passed since the start of Iran’s rainy season and more than 20 provinces have not yet had a drop. The number of dams that have less than 5% of their reservoir capacity had increased from eight to 32, and the crisis has spread from the central plains right across the country.

On Sunday, despite some reports of localised rainfall, authorities attempted to take matters into their own hands, launching cloud seeding operations to try to induce rainfall. Cloud seeding involves spraying particles such as silver iodide and salt into clouds from aircraft to trigger rain.

In Tehran, only 1mm of rain has fallen this year, a once-in-a-century event (the capital’s average annual rainfall between 1991 and 2000 was 350mm). All this comes on top of five previous years of drought. The second half of November is normally the snow season in the capital.

Continue reading “Water Crisis Could Cripple Middle Easter Mega-City”

Predictions are hard. Especially about the future. – variously attributed to either Physicist Neils Bohr or baseball player Yogi Berra

Wall Street Journal:

Oil and gas demand could continue to grow until the middle of the century, according to a new International Energy Agency scenario that shifts away from previous expectations of so-called peak oil demand because of slower adoption of green technologies.

The Paris-based agency, which represents oil-consuming nations, said that under this scenario, demand for oil and natural gas would continue to grow to 2050, while coal goes into a decline before the end of this decade.

The agency includes multiple scenarios in its annual report, which often serve as an influential baseline for governments and companies when mapping out energy policy and investment.

Hannah Ritchie in Sustainability by the Numbers:

Take a look at the headline clippings (above) (from the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Offshore Technology, and Telegraph India). There were many more.

These refer to the International Energy Agency’s newly published “World Energy Outlook 2025”. In this report, the IEA projects the evolution of global energy demand — and individual sources — in the coming decades under a number of scenarios (as we’ll see, this emphasis is important).

One of these, which was retired for a few years but has made a comeback, is the “Current Policies Scenario” (CPS). That’s the one that all of the headlines are referring to.

Before we get into what this scenario actually entails — and think about whether it’s likely — it’s worth clarifying what the IEA means, or does not mean, by it. It is very clear in its report that:

“The CPS is not a forecast or a prediction of the way the energy system will unfold. Nor should it be interpreted as a “business-as-usual” scenario.”

Again, it is a scenario. It is not a forecast or a prediction. So at least half of the headlines above are immediately incorrect. It might seem like I’m being pedantic on terminology (as are the IEA, since they dedicate entire articles trying to clarify this), but these distinctions matter.

A scenario is basically a “what if” story. It makes a bunch of assumptions, and asks what the outcome will be — in terms of energy supplies, or CO₂ emissions — if those hold true. They’re useful in exploring what the future would look like if the world did x or y.

Continue reading “The Uncertainty Principle: What Yogi Berra Knew about the Solar Future”

It’s been clear for decades that those who will suffer the most as climate warms are the poorest and most vulnerable, many of whom are in the developing world, and places like Sub Saharan Africa.

The counter narrative we’ve heard, notably from Secretary of Energy and Oligarch Wannabee Chris Wright, is that ramping up fossil fuel development and use is vital to provide a better standard of living for the poor. No explanation for how a transmission system, which took a century to build in the Western world, and which no Oil Oligarch has magnanimously offered to build, would somehow magically appear in Africa and Asia, as Oil companies puncture, pollute and plunder their way thru the global south.
No acknowledgement of the path of pollution, poverty, and disease already done in places like Nigeria, Ecuador, and elsewhere.

With the inauguration of the most nakedly pro-fossil administration in history, the very first official act was to cut off aid to precisely those vulnerable populations that Wright, and other fossil operatives claim to love so much.
They would literally rather cut off a market to some their most fervent. supporters in the US farm community, and watch tons of good food rot in warehouses, than have it be distributed to people, especially brown people, in desperate need.

The New Yorker:

Within hours of being sworn in, President Trump signed an executive order for a “pause” to all foreign assistance. Secretary Rubio sent a cable suspending every program outright. No program staff could be paid. No services could be delivered. Medicines and food already on the shelves could not be used. No warning had been given to the governments that relied on them. It was immediately obvious that hundreds of thousands of people would die in the first year alone. But the Administration did not reconsider; it escalated. Elon Musk exulted in swinging his chainsaw. Within weeks and in defiance of legal mandates, he and Rubio purged U.S.A.I.D.’s staff, terminated more than four-fifths of its contracts, impounded its funds, and dismantled the agency. Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court did anything to stop it.

Continue reading “Climate Denial’s Brutality toward the Poorest”