Category Archives: Uncategorized

by Mila Zinkova

Reassessing The Coldest March by Susan Solomon

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by John Ridgway

In an earlier essay [1] I explained how positive feedbacks can lead to potentially problematic scientific mono-cultures. I also acknowledged that poor research design and data analysis had become commonplace within the behavioural sciences, largely as a result of a ‘natural selection’, driven by the career enhancement that comes with publication. However, I did not question whether there were any reward structures within climate science that may also have led to a natural selection for bad statistical practice.

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by John Ridgway

Any politician faced with the challenge of protecting the public from a natural threat, such as a pandemic or climate change, will be keen to stress how much they are ‘following the science’ — by which they mean they are guided by the dominant scientific narrative of the day. We would want this to be the case because we trust the scientific method as a selective process that ensures bad science cannot hope to survive for very long.  This is not a reality I choose to ignore here, but it is something I would certainly wish to place in its proper context. The problem is that the scientific method is not the only selector in town, and when all others are taken into account, a much murkier picture emerges – certainly not one that is clear enough to place a dominant narrative upon an epistemological pedestal.

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by Judith Curry

A month has passed since the DOE climate assessment report was published.  It’s time to reflect on what we might learn from the responses to this Report.  Of particular relevance is the report that was issued earlier today, led by Andrew Dessler.

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by Art Rangno

How we fooled ourselves about the effectiveness of cloud seeding.

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by Judith Curry

Climate science is baaaack 

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By Joachim Dengler

Are the natural carbon sinks failing?

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by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)

Part 3 of this series examines power markets, promoted by policymakers (FERC) and industry advocates to lower costs through competitive bidding and merit-order dispatch. While markets can optimize resource allocation in many sectors, they struggle to deliver affordability and reliability in electricity systems dominated by intermittent renewables. This post first explains how power markets operate, then highlights their challenges, and finally explores why they amplify the cost challenges associated with wind and solar.

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by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)

In Part 1, we showed how wind and solar’s low costs over 80% of the time are overwhelmed by expenses at peak times such that they offer no cost advantages to the generation mix. Residential solar follows a similar pattern: it seems affordable for homeowners, but raises system costs through rate structures that over-incentivize adoption. Generous subsidies, like retail-rate net metering, drive excessive solar growth, risking grid stability and shifting costs to non-solar customers that are often less affluent. Less generous rates for residential solar slow adoption, but better align solar adoption with grid needs, ensuring fairness and sustainability.

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by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)

Wind and solar power are often touted as the cheapest sources of electricity in many regions, capable of delivering low-cost energy for the vast majority of the time. At first glance, this might suggest that an energy mix heavily weighted toward renewables would be the most economical choice. However, this assumption overlooks a critical issue: the fat tail problem. Just because a resource is cheaper most of the time does not mean it reduces overall system costs. This post, the first in a series, explores why prioritizing wind and solar can lead to higher costs, starting with an analogy from the financial world.

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by Judith Curry and Harry DeAngelo 

We have a new paper published in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, entitled “A Critique of the Apocalyptic Climate Narrative.” The paper reflects the JACF’s ongoing interest in publishing articles that analyze important Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues in ways that are useful for investors, money managers, and corporate directors, as well as for economists and legal scholars who study corporate governance.

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by Russ Schussler (Planning Engineer)

On April  28^th Spain, Portugal and parts of France suffered a major grid outage. A  formal evaluation will likely be released at a later date cataloging many of the contributing factors and system deficiencies. Unfortunately, such reports often provide more confusion than clarity, as they tend to prioritize the triggers for system outages over the underlying causes. Post hoc it is easy to look at the vast data available and construct favored narratives about how the outage might have been avoided. This piece will look at “advance” warnings that point to the true cause of the blackout in Spain, Portugal and parts of France.

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by Douglas Sheil

Last week an article in Science, by Seo and colleagues, provided compelling evidence that the world’s land surface is getting drier. This global drying averaged a loss across all land surfaces of over two centimeters of water in two decades.

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by Chris Morris

Geothermal power stations are mature technology with proven performance, reliable operation and ideal for baseload generation. The units are synchronous, so they support the grid.  The production from them is considered by most to be renewable. They do not use fossil fuels to provide the heat. It is not “carbon free”, but no generation truly is. It has a relatively small footprint, environment harm is low, and it can coexist with farming or industrial development. Most developments have a cheaper energy cost than onshore wind, using published accounts for analysis. For countries or areas where the resource is there, geothermal generation is very viable.

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by Ross McKitrick

I have a new paper out in the journal Nature Scientific Reports in which I re-examine some empirical work regarding agricultural yield changes under CO₂-induced climate warming. An influential 2017 study had argued that warming would cause large losses in agricultural outputs on a global scale, and this played a large role in an upward revision to the Biden Administration’s Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) estimate, which drives regulatory decision in US climate rulemaking. I show that a lot of data had been left out of the statistical modeling, and once it is included there was no evidence of yield losses even out to 5 C warming.

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by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)

The purpose of this article is to summarize and debunk many of the issues in the narrative surrounding  the proposed green energy transition as applies to the electric grid.  The issues are so numerous that this piece is at once both too long and too short. A full unraveling deserves a book or series of books. This posting however challenges the narrative through summary comments with links to previous posts and articles which can be read for a more detailed explanation or for greater depth.

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by Russ Schussler (Planning Engineer)

Prequel to “Unravelling the narrative supporting a green energy transition.”

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by John Ridgway

How an emergent scientific consensus results from social engineering enabled by prosocial censorship. Continue reading →

by Planning Engineer (Russ Schussler)

In October of 2024, the isolated small city of  Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia with a 36 MW load (including the large nearby mines) could not be reliably served by 200 MW of wind, a 53 MW solar array, significant residential solar, and a large 50 MW battery all supplemented by diesel generators.

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by Lucas Bergkamp

On the 12th of November, the Hague Court of Appeal ruled in the “climate case of the century” that Milieudefensie (“FoE”) filed against Shell in 2019. FoE demands that Shell reduce emissions throughout the entire chain by at least 45% by 2030. The foundation “Man & Environment” (M&E) joined the case to represent the interests of Dutch citizens.

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by Frank Bosse

Neither the trend analysis nor the model-observation comparison supports the conclusions of the attribution study that found:

“The combined change, attributable to human-induced climate change, is roughly a doubling in likelihood and a 7% increase in intensity.” 

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by Dan Hughes

This post challenges the conventional framework for simulating meltwater flows on glaciers and ice sheets.

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by Leigh Haugen

AI’s role in amplifying dominant narratives will continue to stifle dissent, limit open debate, and impose restrictive controls on society. If we allow this to continue unchecked, AI will become a tool for shaping thought, controlling discourse, and eroding the very freedoms it was meant to empower.

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by Dr. Joachim Dengler

This post is the second of two extracts from the paper Improvements and Extension of the Linear Carbon Sink Model.

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