Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Global warming is real and human-caused. It is leading to large-scale climate change. Under the guise of climate "skepticism", the public is bombarded with misinformation that casts doubt on the reality of human-caused global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming "skepticism".
Our mission is simple: debunk climate misinformation by presenting peer-reviewed science and explaining the techniques of science denial, discourses of climate delay, and climate solutions denial.
Volcanic cooling
Posted on 19 May 2025 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink
The climate has warmed by around 1.4C over the past 170 years as a result of human emissions of CO2 and other GHGs that have accumulated in the atmosphere. However, GHGs are not the only thing that has an impact on the climate system.
Major volcanic eruptions can result in cooling that lasts a couple of years after the eruption, by emitting large amounts of light-reflecting sulfur dioxide aerosols high into the atmosphere.
The precise climate impacts of an eruption are determined by a number of factors. These include:
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How much sulfur is emitted. Some volcanic eruptions are more or less sulfur rich, with the total sulfur content determining the potential magnitude of cooling resulting from the eruption.
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How explosive the eruption was. Sulfur dioxide is relatively short-lived in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) where it falls or rains out on the order of days to weeks. Its only when it is lofted into the upper atmosphere (the stratosphere) by a highly explosive eruption that it can contribute to sufficiently long-lived cooling to meaningfully alter the global climate.
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How close the volcano is to the tropics. If an eruption occurs in higher latitudes (e.g. the Laki eruption in 1783 in Iceland) the resulting aerosols will be concentrated in one hemisphere and have a smaller global impact (though a big regional one!). In contrast, eruptions near the tropics result in aerosols being distributed in both hemispheres.
We can use a simple climate model (FaIR) to simulate the global surface temperature impacts of recent volcanic eruptions, removing other factors (e.g. El Nino and La Nina events) that might complicate the interpretation of surface temperature records alone. Models also allow us to go further back in time to 1750, though for periods in the more distant past we have to infer the size of volcanic eruptions and their sulfur content through records in sediments and ice cores.
Here we’ve run 841 variations of the FaIR model across the parameter space to match the range of climate sensitivity and response identified as “very likely” in the recent IPCC 6th Assessment Report. This lets us both identify the median response and the 5th-95th percentile uncertainty interval.
2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #20
Posted on 18 May 2025 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom
Plugging the Weather & Climate Livestream planned to start on May 28
During the past week and thanks to Andrew Dessler's ClimateBrink article listed below, we became aware of an initiative started by early career scientists which is well worth highlighting. Here is the information from the event's website:
SAVE AMERICA'S FORECASTS
Whether it's tomorrow's temperatures or the sea level in fifty years, Americans need to plan for our futures. For generations, the US government has invested in the science that helps us do so, building one of the greatest meteorology and climate science communities in the world.
In recent months, this community have been thwarted in our mission of serving the public due to substantial cuts and firings. These actions have already hurt our forecasts, endangering Americans as hurricane season approaches. Legally required assessments of the climate are being stopped, and far more drastic cuts are being proposed.
But it's not too late to stop these cuts. Already, public pressure has helped to reopen shuttered weather data centers. To help keep this pressure building, meteorologists and climate scientists from across America want to fulfill our mission by sharing our science with you - so we're coming to your screens, speaking and answering your questions, for over 100 hours, in this science-filled, non-partisan event:
The Weather & Climate Livestream
From Wednesday, May 28th to Sunday, June 1st, join meteorologists and climate scientists from across the US as we share our work, and show you what makes it so vital. We will clarify the impact of the cuts on this research, and answer your questions about weather and climate research in the US. Information on how to watch is coming soon. If you are a scientist who wants to participate, please visit this speakers page to learn more.
Please check out the event's homepage to learn more and get the latest information!
This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks!
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Change Impacts (6 articles)
- Bees are particularly affected by higher temperatures and more intensive land use, new study reveals Bees and humans share a problem overnight temperatures rising due to climate change. Phys.org, Lutz Ziegler, May 10, 2025.
- Thousands of outdoor workers are threatened by this change - and it's getting worse Jason Poulter, Unite's national officer for construction, told how he visits construction sites without shelter despite extreme heat in the summer. Daily Express :: UK Feed, Steph Spyro, May 10, 2025.
- A very warm April — and thoughts on a key climate threshold What we can say about the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit today. ReportEarth, Chris Mooney, May 12, 2025.
- As temperatures rise, the US Corn Belt could see insurance claims soar Crop insurance is a lifeline for farmers. But research shows it's not ready for climate change. Grist, Frida Garza, May 14, 2025.
- Climate Change Nearly Doubled Pregnancy Heat Risk Days in U.S. Climate Central quantifies how climate change is influencing the extreme heat associated with increased risks of preterm birth around the globe. Climate Central, Staff, May 14, 2025.
- Ice roads are a lifeline for First Nations. As Canada warms, they`re disappearing. Indigenous peoples are navigating the slow collapse of winter roads — and an even slower pace of help. Grist, Hilary Beaumont, May 15, 2025.
Fact brief - Did Viking settlers enjoy a warm beach climate in Greenland?
Posted on 17 May 2025 by Sue Bin Park
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Did Viking settlers enjoy a warm beach climate in Greenland?
While Greenland’s southern coast supported some vegetation in the Medieval warm period (950-1250 CE), it was not warm enough for a beach climate.
The period was primarily a regional event, affecting Europe and parts of the North Atlantic. Studies of glacial sediment in Greenland indicate glaciers were near their maximum extent during these years. This suggests Greenland did not experience the same degree of warming as continental Europe. Exile Erik the Red chose the name "Greenland" to attract settlers rather than accurately describe the landscape.
Vikings settled certain areas of Greenland during these years, but abandoned their settlements after the Medieval warm period ended and the Little Ice Age began. Their experience shows how a changing climate can cause forced migration.
The Medieval warm period was caused by high solar activity and low volcanic activity. In contrast, today’s climate change is caused by human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
The Washington Post Here’s the real reason the Vikings left Greenland
University of Maryland Greenland was Green/Ice Free in the Viking Times: Brief Responses to Climate Change Denialism Statements
The Conversation Climate explained: what was the Medieval warm period?
Science Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly
Columbia Climate School Study Undercuts Idea That ‘Medieval Warm Period’ Was Global
Making fact briefs available as videos on Youtube
Posted on 16 May 2025 by BaerbelW
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending harmfully misleading claims, produced primarily for use by thinly-resourced newswrooms but also directly available to the general public. We announced this (renewed) collaboration in April 2024 in a blog post and have published more than 30 new fact briefs since then. Each fact brief comes with a unique and short URL which is ideal to use when linking to it. A screenshot of each fact brief is also available as a "share graphic" and you can access all of them via a link like this one: https://skepticalscience.com/pics/FactBrief-1970s-ShareGraphic.jpg. You only need to use the relevant "code" which you can identify in the list of all published fact briefs:
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Fact brief question |
Fact Brief | Rebuttal | Gigafact |
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Was an Ice Age predicted in the 1970s? |
sks.to/gfb-1970s | sks.to/1970s | On Gigafact |
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Did global warming stop in 1998? |
sks.to/gfb-1998 | sks.to/1998 | On Gigafact |
Unfortunately, neither these links nor the share graphics will work well in the comment threads on Youtube where comments containing links to anything but other Youtube-videos often don't survive for long as they get automatically deleted (at least this happens to me whenever I forget and include a link in a comment!). I started to wonder how I could make the fact briefs available as a video and decided to try with the help of a powerpoint slide deck which could then easily be saved as an mp4 video file, ideal for uploading to Youtube.
For each slide, I needed a screenshot set to the same width and position as well as the short URL to the fact brief. I also added a start and end "screen" for each group of 10 fact briefs and an auto-click every 10 seconds to move from slide to slide. I then saved each block of 12 slides as an mp4 file to make a 2 minute video.
The result of this activity is a little playlist in my Youtube channel called "Fact briefs" which right now contains 3 videos and to which I'll add another video whenever the next batch of 10 fact briefs is complete. Each video in the playlist comes with a description listing the included fact briefs and the clickable timestamps they start at. The lists below show the fact briefs' questions, the related videos' linked timestamps, the links to the share graphics and fact briefs.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #20 2025
Posted on 15 May 2025 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Institutionalizing politicized science, Moynihan & Herd, Science [editorial]:
The opening months of the Trump administration represent a historic disruption to America’s scientific agencies. Staff have been fired or reassigned in the name of efficiency, resulting in chaos. Grants have been canceled mid-project for featuring the wrong words. “Pauses” and “reviews” are designed to block spending, in the hope that Congress will make the current impoundment of funds a baseline for permanent disinvestment. While the scientific community waits to see what the new normal will be, the Trump administration has a plan to institutionalize a much more politicized structure of control over government broadly, including both public scientific investments and the use of scientific knowledge in policy actions.
Earth's Energy Imbalance More Than Doubled in Recent Decades, Mauritsen et al., AGU Advances [commentary]:
Global warming is caused by the imbalance between the incoming radiation from the Sun and the reflected and outgoing infrared radiation from the Earth. The imbalance leads to energy accumulation in the atmosphere, oceans and land, and melting of the cryosphere, resulting in increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather around the globe according the the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Observations from space of the energy imbalance shows that it is rising much faster than expected, and in 2023 it reached values two times higher than the best estimate from IPCC. We argue that we must strive to better understand this fundamental change in Earth's climate state, and ensure our capacity to monitor it in the future.
Heat-related rest-break recommendations for farmworkers in California based on wet-bulb globe temperature, Parajuli et al., Communications Earth & Environment
Extreme heat is a global public health concern that is becoming more frequent and severe in recent periods. Translating Earth science data into policy-relevant metrics, such as rest breaks, is challenging but needed to protect outdoor workers from heat stress. Here, we determine rest-break requirements for the farmworkers of the Imperial and Coachella Valleys in southern California, which have a high poverty rate and the highest heat-illness rates in California. We used high-resolution outputs from a validated Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) at 1-km grid resolution that includes irrigation, a key modulator of heat stress in the study region. We calculated exceedances of heat stress indicators under three existing policy guidelines that use wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT), heat index (HI), or dry-bulb temperature (DBT), and translated them into rest breaks needed for farmworker safety. WBGT-based rest minutes are most sensitive to the spatiotemporal variation in heat exposure compared to DBT or HI and vary with acclimatization status, season, and work shifts. Recommended rest breaks to protect farmworkers from heat stress range from 2 to 32 min per work-hour between April and August. Although results are specific to California, our method is adaptable for calculating region-specific rest break requirements worldwide.
This research is funded by the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) Climate Action Grant award R02CP7521 “Rural heat islands: Mapping and mitigating farmworker exposure to heat stress” and in part by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s From Learning to Leading: Cultivating the Next Generation of Diverse Food and Agriculture Professionals Program (NEXTGEN) grant no. 2023-70440-40156/project accession no. 1030734. S.S.P.S. was partly supported by a National Science Foundation grant (Award No. 2324008). Computational work in this research was carried out at Expanse supercomputer at San Diego Supercomputing Center through the ACCESS program of the National Science Foundation.
Conspiracy belief and opposition to wind farms: A longitudinal study, Winter et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology:
The extension of wind energy plays a crucial role in achieving global climate goals. However, wind farms often face opposition by local communities. Recent research found cross-sectional evidence that conspiracy belief is an important predictor of wind farm opposition. The current work extends this finding and sheds light on the temporal relationship between these variables. A preregistered, three-wave study among German adults (N = 297) using Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel analyses found support for our hypothesis that an increase in conspiracy mentality (i.e., the general propensity to believe conspiracy theories) predicts more negative attitudes towards wind farms close to one's hometown four months later. We also found evidence for the opposite direction, namely that an increase in negative attitudes predicts higher conspiracy mentality four months later. Thus, conspiracy belief and wind farm opposition seem to mutually reinforce each other. Interventions and preventive measures should aim to break this vicious cycle that otherwise might curb the progress of the energy transition.
Software to Enable Ocean Discoveries: A Case Study With ICESat-2 and Argo, Scheick et al., Geoscience Data Journal
Increased anthropogenic stressors (e.g., warming, acidification, wildfires, and other extreme events) present complex observational challenges for Earth science, and no one sensor can “do it all”. While many remote sensing technologies are available at present, scientific disciplines are often trained to use only a specific subset, greatly limiting scientific advancements. Here we present open-source software (icepyx) that lowers the barrier for entry for two remote platforms offering vertically-resolved information about the ocean's subsurface: ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2) and Argo floats. icepyx provides object-oriented code for querying and downloading ICESat-2 and Argo data within a single analysis workflow. icepyx natively handles ICESat-2 data access and read-in; here we introduce the Query, Unify, Explore SpatioTemporal (QUEST) module as a framework for adapting icepyx to easily access and ingest other datasets and present Argo data as the initial use case. Seamless retrieval of coincident data from ICESat-2 and Argo enables improved targeted and exploratory studies across the cryosphere and open ocean realms. We close with recommendations for future work, discussion of the value of open science, relevance of our work to upcoming satellite missions, and an invitation to join our programming community.
K.B. acknowledges NASA grant #80NSSC20K0970, J.S. acknowledges NASA grant #80NSSC21K0505. Z.F. thanks #NPP168273S under the NASA Postdoctoral Program.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990-2023, Environmental Protection Agency
Overall, gross CO2 emissions have decreased by 4.2 percent since 1990 and decreased by 2.7 percent since 2022, consistent with trends in fuel combustion emissions. In the United States, fossil fuel combustion accounted for 92.7 percent of gross CO2 emissions in 2023. Nationally, within fossil fuel combustion, the transportation sector was the largest emitter of CO2 in 2023, followed by electric power generation. The decrease in coal use and associated emissions from 2022 to 2023 is mainly due to reduced use in the electric power sector and is driving the overall reduction. The increase in natural gas consumption and associated emissions in 2023 is observed mostly in the electric power and industrial sectors, the increase in petroleum use is mainly in the transportation sector, Note: The EPA did not publish this report on its web site according to mandatory convention; the Environmental Defense Fund filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the report and published it publicly last week.
Arctic Climate Change Update 2024: Key Trends and Impacts. Summary for Policy-makers, Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme
Between 1979 and 2023, the Arctic warmed three times faster than the global average. Arctic annual air temperatures have risen by 3°C since 1971. Arctic surface air temperatures are increasingly rising above the freezing point of 0°C. Precipitation in the Arctic increased by 2–10 percent between 1979 and 2023; with most of the increase coming in the form of rain at the expense of snow. The surface area with daily precipitation in the Arctic has also increased, hence precipitation has become both more intense and widespread. Satellite observations of extreme wildfires around the world from 2003–2023 show that the largest regional increase was in the Eurasian Arctic, where the number of extreme wildfires increased by more than a factor of four. Ice losses from Arctic glaciers accounted for most of the world’s land-ice loss from 1979–2023, making the Arctic the largest regional source of global sea-level rise. From 1992–2020, the rate of land-ice loss from Greenland was nearly twice that of Antarctica, with an averaged
146 articles in 60 journals by 957 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A spectroscopic theory for how mean rainfall changes with surface temperature, Cohen & Pincus, Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.adv6191
Changes in the Coastal Wind Field and River Runoff Conditions Expose Kongsfjorden (Svalbard) to the Influence of Atlantic Water, De Rovere et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2024jc020924
Northeast Pacific Marine Heatwave Mechanism Inferred from Adjoint Sensitivities, Wang et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0274.1
How climate change is raising your electricity bill
Posted on 14 May 2025 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler
In August 2023, during an especially brutal Texas heat wave, I opened my electricity bill and was stunned by the total. As someone who studies climate change, I couldn’t help but connect the dots: global warming had made the heat wave worse, and that extra heat was driving up how much I had to spend on electricity.
That realization led me to a simple question: how much of this bill was due to climate change? I set out to answer it and, 1.5 years later, I published a peer-reviewed paper. This post explains the method behind that analysis and why I estimate that climate change added about $80 to electricity costs for every Texan in 2023.
Understanding the link between climate and electricity demand
The amount of electricity consumed is strongly affected by the outside temperature. We can see this by plotting Texas temperature from ERA5 reanalysis vs. ERCOT energy demand:
Sabin 33 #28 - How reliable is wind energy?
Posted on 13 May 2025 by Ken Rice
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles" written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #28 based on Sabin's report.
As with solar energy, complete reliance on wind energy would pose intermittency challenges. However, wind, solar, and storage together can provide the majority of the country’s electricity without compromising reliability1, and energy efficiency and grid flexibility mechanisms can support a renewable energy-based grid. (Lovins 2017) Hydropower has also been found to support wind and solar by compensating for intermittency in those sources (Shan et al. 2020). Moreover, building more long-distance transmission infrastructure can enable greater reliance on wind and solar generation2, and linking offshore wind projects through offshore transmission networks is also expected to enhance grid reliability.3 A National Renewable Energy Laboratory report concluded that “wind power can support power system reliability” by providing “active power controls,”4 which are mechanisms for balancing the power generated by wind farms with the power consumed on the electricity grid (van Wingerden et al. 2017). And although the reliability of wind and solar energy was questioned following Texas’ widespread power outages in the winter of 2021, Texas’ grid failure was primarily caused by freezing natural gas infrastructure, rather than failures at wind and solar farms, though nuclear, coal, and wind also experienced disruptions at a smaller scale.5 (also Busby et al. 2021)
Wind energy has already been successfully incorporated into the United States’ electric grid at significant scale.6 Domestic energy production from wind more than tripled between 2011 and 2022, from 120 billion kilowatt-hours (2.9% of total energy production) to 435 billion kilowatt-hours (10.3% of total energy production).6 Some states have seen even more rapid growth. In 2021, wind energy accounted for 58% of electricity production in Iowa, and 43% of electricity production in Kansas.7
Wind power has enabled Iowa not only to reduce energy costs, but to generate additional revenue by selling excess power to neighboring states during shortages.8 Today, Iowa is considered one of the states with the most reliable energy systems.9 In California, electricity generated from wind power increased from roughly 3% in 2009, to roughly 7% in 2022.10 Electricity generated from natural gas declined from roughly 56% in 2009, to roughly 47% in 2022. Yet even with this increased reliance on wind power, California’s grid reliability has remained consistent, and largely above national averages.11 California has even been able to briefly meet 103% of its energy demands exclusively from renewable sources, demonstrating that a large economy can by powered by renewable energy.12 The UK has also made substantial progress utilizing wind power, which was responsible for 26.8% of overall energy production in 2022, and which helped stave off the worse impacts from the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.13
How to deny climate change using the IPCC report
Posted on 12 May 2025 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
The new Department of Energy secretary, Chris Wright, until recently was the CEO of Liberty Energy, the nation’s second-largest fracking firm. In 2024, the firm published a manifesto called “Bettering Human Lives,” in which Wright makes a provocative statement that would be reassuring – if only it were true:
“Another thing that we often hear about climate change is that it leads to a significant increase in extreme weather events with deadly consequences. This claim is false. Extensive reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) actually show no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, or weather-related droughts,” Wright wrote in a CEO letter introducing the report.
The IPCC is a U.N. body with the job of providing information about climate science to governments. Thousands of scientists volunteer to contribute to its reports, which are published every five to seven years.
Wright’s claim about what the IPCC says is effectively rebutted by atmospheric scientist Jim Kossin, one of the lead authors of the IPCC report, in the video below by Peter Sinclair, a former Yale Climate Connections contributor.
“We have high confidence that extreme precipitation events are increasing in intensity and frequency and that human actions are playing a substantial role,” Kossin says in the video. Even for drought, where the science is somewhat less certain, “We still have good confidence that drought extremes are increasing and that human actions are playing a role,” Kossin adds.
Understanding the limitations of the IPCC report
The IPCC report is considered the gold standard of climate change information because it is the result of a years-long assessment process by hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists, who subject it to a rigorous review. However, the IPCC report can be exploited by those with vested interests against acting on climate change. Here are four ways to do so:
2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #19
Posted on 11 May 2025 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom
This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks!
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Policy and Politics (7 articles)
- How the political consensus on climate change has shattered Despite unswering public attitudes on climate change, for a number of reasons both benign and malign the UK finds itself struggling to maintain strong commitment to net zero. BBC News, Helen Catt, May 02, 2025.
- Trump budget would decimate climate, renewables funding The preliminary funding proposal outlines cuts the administration wants for myriad clean energy, climate and environment programs. E&E News, Politico, Andres Picon, May 02, 2025.
- 100 Days of Trump 2.0: Renewable Energy Siting and Permitting Sabin Center for Climate Change Law researcher Matthew Eisenson reviews legal aspects of the Trump administration's interference with market forces in US energy modernization. Sabin Center Climate Law Blog, Matthew Eisenson, May 5, 2025.
- EPA reorganization signals end to climate work The agency plans to eliminate offices that track planet-warming emissions and regulate air pollution. E&ENews, Jean Chemnick, May 05, 2025.
- Trump Administration Decommissions Sea Ice Data That Sounded an Alarm on Arctic Climate Change Cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are now degrading the datasets used to monitor the most rapidly warming parts of the planet. More such moves are coming, NOAA has warned. Inside Climate News, Peter Aldhous, May 07, 2025.
- How Trump cuts could affect your weather reports Following the budget’s release, all living former directors of the National Weather Service, which falls under NOAA, drafted an open letter warning of drastic impacts if the proposed cuts were implemented. The Christian Science Monitor USA, Caitlin Babcock, May 07, 2025.
- Trump admin ends extreme weather database that has tracked cost of disasters since 1980 CNN, Andrew Freedman, May 8, 2025.
Climate Change Impacts (6 articles)
- Dangerously hot in Alaska? New warnings show climate change impact. National Weather Service to launch first heat advisories in Fairbanks and Juneau this summer in response to climate change. USA Today, Dinah Voyles Pulver, May 3, 2025.
- Ice Free Arctic Ocean by 2030 now a real possibility! We're NOT ready!! "Just have a Think" on Youtube, Dave Borlace, May 4, 2025.
- How the climate crisis threatens Indigenous traditions in Canada: `It`s not the way it used to be` Shorter winters and thinning ice are imperiling cultural activities in the north, including hockey, broomball and hunting The Guardian, Hilary Beaumont in Cat Lake First Nation, May 05, 2025.
- Children born in 2020 will face `unprecedented exposure` to climate extremes Children born in 2020 will face ''unprecedented exposure'' to extreme weather events, including heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, even if warming is limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. Carbon Brief, Ayesha Tandon, May 07, 2025.
- Global temperatures stuck at near-record highs in April: EU monitor Global temperatures were stuck at near-record highs in April, extending an unprecedented heat streak and raising questions about how quickly the world might be warming. Phys.org, Nick Perry & Benjamin Legrendre, May 08, 2025.
- Climate change made recent flooding in Midwest, South more intense, report finds The deadly storms that tore through eight U.S. states in early April, killing at least 24 people, were made significantly worse by climate change, according to a study released this week. CBS News, Sarah Metz, May 08, 2025.
Fact brief - Is the climate as unpredictable as the weather?
Posted on 10 May 2025 by Sue Bin Park
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Is the climate as unpredictable as the weather?
Climate predictions are more reliable than weather forecasts because they model long-term trends driven by large-scale, predictable factors, like greenhouse gas emissions, rather than short-term local conditions.
Weather forecasts aim to predict daily changes in temperature or precipitation with great detail. These are primarily influenced by rapidly shifting conditions, making forecasts less accurate beyond a few days. Small changes in today’s weather can lead to very different outcomes tomorrow.
In contrast, climate models project broad patterns over decades, predicting how the planet’s baseline will shift. Projections of rising average temperatures are based on well-understood factors like the greenhouse effect, recently driven by our constant CO2 emissions.
A review of climate models published since the 1970s found that they accurately predicted the rise in average global temperatures.
Scientists continue to refine models with historical data and lessons learned since the beginning of computer climate modeling fifty years ago.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
EarthScan Weather vs. climate: can they be predicted?
NOAA Climate Models
Geophysical Research Letters Evaluating the Performance of Past Climate Model Projections
Carbon Brief Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming?
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #19 2025
Posted on 8 May 2025 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
The post-truth era and how science education keeps ignoring it, Erduran, Science:
Conventional educational strategies in combatting post-truth seem to emphasize merits of truth, evidence, and reason. Such focus misses key elements of the post-truth era. It ignores the political dynamics that engulf science as well as the antiscience campaign that is deliberately carried out and amplified in the public domain. Post-truth demands a cultural shift in science education to ensure that sociological and political contexts of science are explicitly taught and understood. The sooner the science education community commits to dealing with the post-truth problem, the more likely that educational environments will be able to equip students to recognize the cycles of warfare on truth that demand perseverance in dealing with deliberate and manipulative undermining of science.
The Case for the Anthropocene Epoch Is Stronger Than the Case for the Holocene Epoch, Skelton & Noone, Earth's Future:
The recommendation that the Anthropocene be denoted as a geological epoch was recently rejected by the International Union of Geological Sciences. Here, we compare the scientific rationales presented for the Anthropocene, the Holocene and the six other epochs in the Cenozoic Era: the Pleistocene, the Pliocene, the Miocene, the Oligocene, the Eocene and the Paleocene. We also present a historical perspective on the process through which the Holocene was accepted as a formal geological epoch. We conclude that, from a purely geological perspective, the scientific case for the Anthropocene as a geological epoch is stronger than the case for the Holocene and as good as or better than the cases for several other epochs in the Cenozoic Era.
Anthropogenic climate change contributes to wildfire particulate matter and related mortality in the United States, Law et al., Communications Earth & Environment:
Climate change has increased forest fire extent in temperate and boreal North America. Here, we quantified the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to human mortality and economic burden from exposure to wildfire particulate matter at the county and state level across the contiguous US (2006 to 2020) by integrating climate projections, climate-wildfire models, wildfire smoke models, and emission and health impact modeling. Climate change contributed to approximately 15,000 wildfire particulate matter deaths over 15 years with interannual variability ranging from 130 (95% confidence interval: 64, 190) to 5100 (95% confidence interval: 2500, 7500) deaths and a cumulative economic burden of $160 billion. Approximately 34% of the additional deaths attributable to climate change occurred in 2020, costing $58 billion. The economic burden was highest in California, Oregon, and Washington. We suggest that absent abrupt changes in climate trajectories, land management, and population, the indirect impacts of climate change on human-health through wildfire smoke will escalate.
Research was supported by NIH/NIEHS under award number K23ES035863.
The role of science in the climate change discussions on Reddit, Cornale et al., PLOS Climate:
Well-informed collective and individual action necessary to address climate change hinges on the public’s understanding of the relevant scientific findings. Social media has been a popular platform for the deliberation around climate change and the policies aimed at addressing it. Whether such deliberation is informed by scientific findings is an important step in gauging the public’s awareness of scientific resources and their latest findings. In this study, we examine the use of scientific sources in the course of 14 years of public deliberation around climate change on one of the largest social media platforms, Reddit. We find that only 4.0% of the links in the Reddit posts, and 6.5% in the comments, point to domains of scientific sources, although these rates have been increasing in the past decades. These links are dwarfed, however, by the citations of mass media, newspapers, and social media, the latter of which peaked especially during 2019–2020. Further, scientific sources are more likely to be posted by users who also post links to sources having central-left political leaning, and less so by those posting more polarized sources. Scientific sources are not often used in response to links to unreliable sources, instead, other such sources are likely to appear in their comments. This study provides the quantitative evidence of the dearth of scientific basis of the online public debate and puts it in the context of other, potentially unreliable, sources of information.
Groundwater dominates snowmelt runoff and controls streamflow efficiency in the western United States, Brooks et al., Communications Earth & Environment
Climate change in seasonally snow-covered mountain catchments is reducing water supply and decreasing streamflow predictability. Here, we use tritium age dating to show that contrary to the common assumption that snowmelt quickly contributes to runoff, streamflow during snowmelt in western US catchments is dominated by older groundwater. The average age of streamwater during snowmelt runoff (5.7 ± 4.3 years) was intermediate to the average age of groundwater (10.4 ± 4.5 years) and recent precipitation, indicating that 58% (±34%) of snowmelt runoff was derived from groundwater. Water ages, streamflow, and groundwater storage were mediated by bedrock geology: low-permeability hard rock/shale catchments exhibited younger ages, less storage, and more efficient streamflow generation than high-permeability sandstone/clastic catchments. Our results demonstrate that snowmelt runoff is the result of multiple prior years of climate mediated by groundwater storage. Including these interactions will be crucial for predicting water resources as climate and landscape changes accelerate.
This project was supported by National Science Foundation awards 2208424, 2012123, and 2043363.
Increasing frequency and spatial extent of cattle heat stress conditions in the Southern plains of the USA, Lee et al., Scientific Reports:
Oklahoma, as part of the Southern Plains region and a key contributor to U.S. cattle production, faces increasing heat stress due to climate change, which can adversely influence livestock. We analyzed data from 121 Oklahoma Mesonet stations (1998–2022) to assess the spatio-temporal patterns of heat stress that influence cattle production across the state. Using the temperature humidity index (THI) and comprehensive climate index (CCI), we counted the number of days that exceeded critical thresholds for cattle production. Based on THI, only 12% of stations showed a significant increase in heat stress, while more than 60% did based on CCI, driven mainly by significantly lower summer wind speeds. Statewide cattle and calf inventory data showed a significant decrease in cattle numbers, especially following years with a large number of heat stress days based on CCI. At the county level, decreasing inventory often aligned with increasing heat stress, which suggested a strong relationship between heat stress and cattle health. With the number of heat stress days increasing by up to four days per year, adaptive strategies are crucial to mitigate the negative impacts of heat stress on cattle health and productivity in this region.
S.L. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service’s SCINet Program and AI Center of Excellence (ARS project nos. 0201-88888-003-000D and 0201-88888-002-000D) and administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) through an interagency agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the USDA. ORISE is managed by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) under DOE contract no. DESC0014664. P.B. was supported by an internship program funded by the NASA Oklahoma Space Grant Consortium.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Global Methane Tracker 2025, International Energy Agency
Methane is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, and rapid and sustained reductions in methane emissions are key to limiting near-term global warming and improving air quality. The energy sector – including oil, natural gas, coal and bioenergy – accounts for more than 35% of methane emissions from human activity and has some of the best opportunities to cut these emissions. The annually updated Global Methane Tracker is an essential tool for raising awareness about methane emissions across the energy sector and the opportunities to bring them down. The Tracker presents the latest sector-wide emissions estimates – based on the most recent data from satellites and measurement campaigns – and discusses different abatement options along with their associated costs. This 2025 update adds several new elements, including: country-level historical emissions data; an interactive tool to explore international methane initiatives; and estimates of emissions from abandoned fossil fuel facilities. It also features a fully open-access model for exploring abatement options in the oil and gas sector.
Voters Reject Trump’s Free Pass to Polluters, Jennifer Hadayia and Catherine Fraser, Data for Progress
Trump has proposed rolling back 31 environmental regulations, including those that aim to cut pollution from cars and trucks and restrict emissions of mercury. Rolling back rules and allowing bad actors to further exceed their permit limits does not prioritize public health or public safety, especially in an already-lax regulatory environment. Voters are concerned. New polling finds that a majority of voters (68%) are concerned by these repeals. This includes 82% of Latino and 79% of Black voters — highlighting how both the harms of and concerns around these environmental rollbacks often most impact people of color. The authors found that voters are particularly concerned about the impact of these rollbacks on human health, with a plurality of respondents (37%) saying that these impacts are their top concern, followed by 17% who say accelerated climate change impacts. Black voters are especially concerned about harms to human health as a result of these repeals, with 43% saying it is their top concern.
119 articles in 51 journals by 779 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Compound marine heatwaves and tropical cyclones delay the onset of the Bay of Bengal summer monsoon, Zhou et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science Open Access 10.1038/s41612-025-01061-5
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation’s Response to CO2 Increase: Assessing the Roles of Surface Flux and Oceanic Advection Feedbacks, Garuba et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0143.1
The influence of cloud cover on elevation-dependent warming over the Tibetan Plateau from 1984 to 2022, Wu & Gao, Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2025.108188
Observations of climate change, effects
Coexposure to extreme heat, wildfire burn zones, and wildfire smoke in the Western US from 2006 to 2020, Hu et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.adq6453
Emerging trans-Eurasian heatwave-drought train in a warming climate, Jeong et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.adr7320
World’s cargo ships to pay more for dirty fuel under new rules
Posted on 7 May 2025 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson
Alandmark policy crafted in April by members of the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization, or IMO, will tax international shippers based on the carbon content of their fuels. The draft policy is due to be finalized in late 2025.
The agreement that emerged from the 83rd meeting of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee was undeniably a compromise – critiqued by activists and oil-rich nations alike. Yet it’s also undeniably historic. As the organization put it, “The IMO Net-zero Framework is the?first in the world to combine mandatory emissions limits and [greenhouse gas] pricing across an entire industry sector.”
Key measures of the approved draft include:
- A fee of $100 per metric ton on emissions surpassing a threshold that will ratchet up each year for carbon intensity (based on greenhouse gas emissions per mile and per unit of cargo capacity), with the fee rising to $380 per metric ton beyond a higher threshold.
- A system that allows ships to “earn” carbon credits and trade them with other ships. Credits can be earned by using lower-emission fuel and/or contributing to a fund that will support low-carbon research, infrastructure, tech transfer, and capacity building, as well as help reduce harm to vulnerable states.
The IMO’s overall emission reduction strategy, launched in 2018 and updated in 2023, envisions reducing fuel intensity by 40% by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions from international shipping by around 2050.
Members of the International Maritime Organization assemble for the opening of the 83rd meeting of IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Group on April 7, 2025, in London, England. (Image credit: IMO/MEPG via Flickr, CC-BY-2.0)
Sabin 33 #27 - What is the effect of wind turbines on property values?
Posted on 6 May 2025 by Ken Rice
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles" written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #27 based on Sabin's report.
Multiple academic studies have assessed the impact of wind turbines on property values. Most recently, a March 2024 study found that having a wind turbine in a home’s viewshed reduces the sales price by 1.12% on average (Guo et al. 2024). The study found that the negative impact of turbines on property values was primarily observed for urban, rather than rural, properties, and that any negative impact on property values disappeared within ten years after turbine installation. The study also found that turbine installations have become less disruptive to home values over time: the researchers found no statistically-significant impact on home values for turbines installed after 2017 and stated that the 1.12% average impact “is larger than the effect one would expect for recent and future installations."
For comparison, a December 2023 study found evidence that, when a wind development is announced within one mile of a home, prices decline by up to 11% compared to homes three to five miles away (Brunner et al. 2024). However, home prices return to within 2% of inflation-adjusted pre-announcement levels roughly five years after the project enters operation. The study found that the population of the county mattered: the decrease was roughly 15% in counties with over 250,000 people but statistically insignificant in counties with fewer than 250,000 people. The study also found no statistically-significant adverse impacts on home sale prices outside of 1.25 miles from the nearest turbine.
An earlier study from 2021 testing how turbine size affects property values at varying distances found that, on average, nearby turbine installation decreases home value by 1.8% (Dröes & Koster 2021). The study also found that the farther a turbine was placed from a home, the less impact it had on property value. The greatest impact, a price drop of 8.3%, occurred when a large turbine (>150 meters) was placed within 750 meters of a home. The greatest impact from a medium sized turbine (50–150 meters) was 3.4%. Beyond 2,250 meters, moreover, the 2021 study found no discernible price impact from turbines. A separate study found no impact beyond 3 km (Jensen et al. 2018). The figure below shows how, for the 2021 study, size and distance of a turbine impacted property value.
Figure 16: Graph shows how different size of wind turbines, and distance from property, affects home value. Turbine height is calculated as axis height plus half of the rotor blade diameter. Source: Droes & Koster (2021)
Another academic study of roughly 50,000 Rhode Island single-family home transactions located within 5 miles of a turbine site found no statistically significant price impact (Lang et al. 2014). While yet another academic study of roughly 50,000 home transactions (spread across nine states) within 10 miles of a turbine site likewise found no statistically significant evidence of a price change.1 By contrast, a 2011 paper found that the presence of a fossil fuel fired power plant within 2 miles of one’s home decreased its value by 4–7% (Davis 2011). Among the fossil fuel power plants in the study sample, 92% were natural gas plants.
Finally, these impacts can be mitigated. For example, multiple studies recommend clustering turbines within wind farms (Jensen et al. 2018, Dröes & Koster 2021). One of these studies found that adding a turbine within two kilometers of an existing turbine had a statistically insignificant impact on house prices. It bears noting, however, that turbines must be spaced in such a way as to minimize wake interference, the phenomenon where an upstream wind turbine interferes with the production of a downstream turbine (Houck 2021).
Visualizing daily global temperature - part 2
Posted on 5 May 2025 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink
There are is a lot of dire news in the world these days – the dismantling of US climate policy, the apparent canceling of the 6th National Climate Assessment, etc. So sometimes its worth taking a break from doomscrolling and indulging in one’s hobbies.
Some folks collect trading cards, make miniatures, or do crafts. My hobby is making climate data visualizations (which, I suppose, is not the most uplifting occupation!).
A week ago I was playing around with a climate “tree ring” graph that I shared on social media that had daily global surface temperature anomalies between 1940 and 2025 as colored rings. But with reanalysis data (ERA5 here) we have both temperature anomalies (e.g. changes relative to 1850-1900) and absolute temperatures, and I thought it might be interesting to make a similar graph of absolutes as well.
I also wanted to make some improvement to the plot: rather than using rings for years (which created a discontinuity at the start and end of the year) I created a continuous spiral. I also added monthly labels around the outside to make it easier to read.
2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #18
Posted on 4 May 2025 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz
This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks!
Stories we promoted this week, by category:
Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles)
- Scientist Who Helped Prove Humans Changed the Climate Watches Evidence Being Erased Livermore Lab’s Ben Santer spent decades tracing humanity’s imprint on the atmosphere. Now, the data behind his work is under attack. San Francisco Public Press, Michael Stoll, Apr 23, 2025.
- Why Australia’s most prominent climate change deniers have stopped talking about the climate Global heating sceptics now argue it is more palatable with the electorate to pivot from climate denialism to anti-renewable energy scepticism Australia News, The Guardian, Ben Smee & Graham Readfearn, Apr 26, 2025.
- Trump administration dismisses all authors of major climate report, throwing US assessment into limbo Climate, CNN, Andrew Freedman, Apr 29, 2025.
- White House dismisses authors of major climate report The White House has dismissed approximately 400 scientists and other climate experts who were working on a major report about how climate change affects the U.S. ... a move that threatens to curtail climate science and make information about global warming less available to the public. NPR, Rebecca Hersher, Apr 29, 2025.
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #18 2025 Skeptical Science's weekly digest of newly published research on human-caused climate change. Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, May 01, 2025.
- Scientific societies say they'll do national climate assessment after Trump dismissed report authors Two major scientific societies say they will fill the void from the Trump administration’s dismissal of scientists writing a cornerstone federal report on what climate change is doing to the United States The Independent News, Seth Borenstein, May 02, 2025.
- Revealed: Forecasts of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels soar in Trump`s first 100 days Tariff chaos hampers Trump’s pledge to ‘drill, baby, drill’, but analysis still shows surge in planet-heating emissions The Guardian, Oliver Milman and Will Craft, May 02, 2025.
- How Massive Cuts to NOAA Could Impact Everything From Weather Apps to Agriculture to National Security How Massive Cuts to NOAA Could Impact Everything From Weather Apps to Agriculture to National Security Inside Climate News, Interview by Jenni Doering, Living on Earth, May 03, 2025.
EGU2025 - How the week in Vienna unfolded
Posted on 2 May 2025 by BaerbelW
Note: This blog post was written "day by day" during EGU25 happening in Vienna from April 28 to May 2. Should recordings of the Great Debates and possibly Union Symposia mentioned below, be released sometime after the conference ends, I'll include links to the ones I participated in. I'll also add links to related reporting as I happen upon it.
This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) started on Monday April 28 both on premises in Vienna and online as a fully hybrid conference. This year, I decided to join the conference in Vienna for the whole week, picking and chosing sessions I was interested in. At the time of publication this blog post was still an evolving compilation - a kind of personal diary - of the happenings from my perspective.
As this post has gotten fairly large, you can jump to the different days, via these links:
Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday
The already published prolog blog post contains general explanations about the session formats as well as my planned itinerary for the week.
Monday, April 28
To start the week, I attended Union Symposia (US5) at 8:30am: Bridging Policy and Science for EU Disaster Preparedness
One of the greatest risks to our security is the impact of climate change. Extreme weather continues to ravage ever greater areas of Europe through floods, fires and droughts, throughout the year and across the European Union. The EU's new strategic agenda for 2024-2029 states that it will strengthen its resilience, preparedness, crisis prevention and response capacities in an all-hazards and whole-of-society approach to protect its citizens and societies against different crises, including disasters. [read the rest of the abstract here]
To start the session, the conveners had a surprise for us attendees: they asked us to get together in small groups and wander from one flip-chart to the next which they had set up around the lecture hall. Each flip chart had a question and we had about 10 minutes at each to discuss the question posed on it. I was with a group tackling the question "What are the main barriers in your view to a successful interplay between science and public authorities?" We came up with these thoughts before we had to move to the next "station": perception of scientific work as opinion pieces, vested interests, different interests, agendas, ideology, method differences, communication and vocabulary, and timeline differences. Other groups will have added their thoughts to this collection as we did with two other questions before the time allotted for this exercise was up, taking us back to our chairs.
Then it was the panelists turn to give short statements about the topic at hand:
Chloe Hill (EGU) presented a quick overview about "science for policy" in general, which included mentions of available newsletters and published policy briefs. She also introduced EGU's new Climate Hazard and Risk Task Force and made a plug for the many policy-related sessions happening this week in Vienna.
Andrea Toreti (European Commission Joint Research Centre) explained the three main areas where "Bridging Policy and Science" plays a role:
- "Science follows Policy": providing independent, evidence-based knowledge and science, supporting European Union (EU) policies to positively impact society.
- "Science informs Policy": Promoting trust and collective intelligence activities for co-creation between science and policy
- "Science anticipates Policy": providing foresight, thinking about worst-case scenarios which may have low probability. Keeping innovation and interdisciplinary in mind.
Julia Berckmans (European Environment Agency) briefly introduced the European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA), a comprehensive assessment of current and future climate risks in Europe.
Annika Fröwis (University of Vienna) reported on the creaition of a EUropean Higher Education Network for MAster‘s Programmes in Disaster Risk Management (EUMA) which will be a full credit masters course at the university and is currently under development. Its main objective is to deliver advanced education for Civil Protection (CP) & Disaster Risk Management (DRM) professionals.
These presentations were followed by a Q&A session tackling questions from the attendees in the room as well as collected online via Slido. The recorded session may eventually go online; if so I'll then update the blog post with the video link.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #18 2025
Posted on 1 May 2025 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Monitoring Scientific Integrity in the US: Silencing Science Tracker
Ordinarily we employ the term "scientific integrity" in connection with staying true to ethical norms of the philosophy of science. Today however in the US there is an external threat to scientific integrity. The structural integrity of the US scientific enterprise is being actively attacked and degraded by forces uninterested in our better understanding of our world and thus how we can better thrive.
The scope and speed of the destruction levied on US science practice challenges our comprehension; it's hard or impossible for us as members of the general public to see the scale of wreckage now unfolding in the US.
This issue of New Research features articles that entered the publication pipeline before the advent of the current US executive administration. Abstracts don't tell us that we are likely reading "last words" from voices we'll not hear from again. Akin to victims of a shipwreck left in icy water, there are authors in this week's edition who are slipping from view forever, their capacities to improve our lives forever ended.
The scientific community is not naturally equipped to communicate this threat to us all. But given that we're all harmed by rampant administrative violence being inflicted on the scientific world, it's important that we know why and how we're intentionally being made more ignorant, that we have a fuller picture informing whatever personal decisions and replies we may make in the face of current events (ideally, voting with a factually accurate informational foundation leading to wise choices).
Fortunately there are people with practiced skills and estabilished resources for helping us comprehend the amount of damage being done to science, and who is responsible for that. Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund have long maintained a resource for just this purpose, the Silencing Science Tracker. While both sponsoring organizations are climate-focused, the Silencing Science Tracker has always been comprehensive across scientific disciplines and affords us a complete picture of the breadth and depth of the assault we're witnessing.
At all levels, ignorance is not strength. Ignorance is additive. Ignorance of what's happening to US science will compound as much larger ignorance, our being blindsided by various harms and unable to to help ourselves as we face bad weather, bad seismicity, bad pathogens. The Silencing Science Tracker reduces ignorance and is a useful operational instrument for monitoring our communal intellectual health.
Open access notables
Public opposition to coal-fired power in emerging economies, Alkon et al., Energy Policy:
Constructing new coal fired power plants presents significant climate, ecological, health, and economic risks. This presents sometimes acute tradeoffs for leaders in emerging economies, where rapid economic and population growth are driving large increases in electricity generation demand. Against this backdrop, combining a novel conjoint experiment with qualitative interviews, we find widespread public opposition to coal-fired power. We also find that this opposition is politically consequential, diminishing support for politicians who support coal-fired power and increasing expressed propensity to engage in social protest. These findings inform our understanding of the social reception of coal infrastructure, as well as the political implications of energy development in key emerging economies.
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, United States (award #1949486)
State-level climate obstruction and discourses of climate delay: insights from Arizona, Eskridge-Aldama, Frontiers in Climate:
This study applies the discourses of climate delay (DCD) framework developed by Lamb et al. (2020) to analyze Arizona legislative discourse surrounding House Bill 2686 (2020) and House Bill 2101 (2022), both of which had significant implications for state-level climate governance. Using qualitative discourse analysis of public hearing transcripts, I identify rhetorical strategies that obstruct climate action, particularly those used by utility representatives and their allies. The analysis reveals that delay tactics most often emphasized the negative consequences of climate action and promoted non-transformative solutions, especially those aligned with fossil fuel interests. In contrast, “redirect responsibility” and “surrender” strategies were used less frequently, and “whataboutism” was notably absent. This absence suggests that, in Arizona, obstruction is less about shifting blame and more about affirming local identity and resisting perceived external influence. Based on these findings, I propose an expansion of the DCD framework to include a new subcategory—“pride, identity, and culture”—to capture how regional cultural values influence climate discourse. This study contributes to climate policy scholarship by demonstrating how localized rhetorical strategies sustain climate inaction and by offering a refined framework for future research on discursive climate obstruction.
How tidal properties influence the future duration of coastal flooding, Talke, npj Natural Hazards:
This paper uses a combined theoretical/empirical approach to show that 4 primary factors impact inundation times during high-tide flooding: the amplitude, period, and relative phases of semidiurnal and diurnal tide forcing, and the maximum water-level above a datum. Some regions—such as the US Gulf Coast—have tidal properties that lead to long high-water stands ( > 20 hours). For the same inundation depth of 0.2 m, regions with large semidiurnal tides are inundated for only 1-2 hours. Within individual estuaries, the potential duration can vary by a factor of more than two. Combined with relative sea-level rise rates that vary from less than 0 mm/yr to 10 mm/yr around North America, the observed timescale to transition from a zero to two-hour tidal flood length varies from 1-87 years. This large spatial variability in tidal inundation properties has implications for hazard planning, ecological adaptation and the future evolution of coastal flood events.
This work was supported by National Science Foundation grant 2013280, the California Delta Stewardship Council, CONTRACT # DSC- 21024, and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, contract W912HQ24C0020.
Coastal adaptation and damage costs at different global warming thresholds, Wong et al., npj Natural Hazards:
Climate change is worsening coastal hazards, elevating the need to mitigate and adapt to future warming and sea-level change. A key question is how future warming relates to coastal impacts in terms of adaptation costs and economic damages, and the potentially unequal distribution of these impacts globally. We use an integrated modeling framework to generate estimates of future coastal adaptation costs and damages, discounted through the year 2150, at multiple global warming thresholds. As warming crosses the 1.5 °C threshold, we find that high-end (95th percentile) coastal damages nearly double, from 1.3 T to 2.3 T US$. Beyond 2.5 °C warming, low-end (5th percentile) damages increase from 1.2 T to 1.6 T US$ and the Global South faces disproportionately high damages as a percentage of regional GDP. Given the plausibility of 2.5 °C warming in even SSP2-4.5, these results highlight the importance of emissions reductions to avoid sizable and inequitable increases in coastal impacts.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. DMS-2213432. V.S. and C.D. were supported by the MultiSector Dynamics program area of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research as part of the multi-program, collaborative Integrated Coastal Modeling (ICoM) project.
Low-Altitude High-Latitude Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Is Feasible With Existing Aircraft, Duffey et al., Earth's Future:
Here, we simulate an ensemble of 41 short stratospheric aerosol injection simulations in the UK Earth System Model in which we vary the altitude, latitude, and season of SO2 injection. For each simulation, we diagnose aerosol optical depth and radiative forcing and estimate the global cooling under a sustained deployment. For altitudes up to around 14 km, high-latitude injection maximizes global forcing efficiency. Aerosol lifetime variation is the largest contributor to changes in efficiency with injection location. Seasonal SAI deployment with low-altitude (13 km) and high-latitude (60°N/S) injection achieves 35% of the forcing efficiency of a high-altitude (20 km), annually constant, sub-tropical (30°N/S) strategy. Low-altitude high-latitude SAI would have strongly reduced efficiency and therefore increased side-effects for a given global cooling. It would also produce a more polar cooling distribution, with reduced efficacy in the tropics. However, it would face lower technical barriers because existing large jets could be used for deployment. This could imply an increase in the number of actors able to deploy SAI, an earlier potential start date, and perhaps a greater risk of unilateral deployment.
Beyond ‘Not in my electoral Year’: Why do some elected officials oppose renewable energy projects?, Delcayre & Bourdin, Global Environmental Change:
This study aimed to examine the reasons behind the wait-and-see and resistant attitudes of local elected officials regarding energy transition projects. Although there is consensus on the importance of renewable energy in combating climate change, its implementation at the local level often encounters opposition from several actors, including elected officials. This study identified the internal, external, and personal factors that influence this opposition by conducting semi-structured interviews with the French officials and stakeholders involved in the energy transition and by analysing the local and regional press. Our findings indicate that political strategies, regulatory complexities, and personal beliefs play significant roles in shaping officials’ decisions regarding energy transition projects. Furthermore, by proposing a typology of elected officials according to their modes of opposition, we offer insights to promote effective and sustainable local energy transitions.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Sigma. Natural catastrophes: insured losses on trend to USD 145 billion in 2025, Banerjee et al,, Swiss Re Management Ltd
Last year’s insured losses from natural catastrophes were on trend at USD 137 billion. Following the long-term trend of 5 ? 7% annual increase in real terms, insured losses from natural catastrophes will approach USD 145 billion in 2025. This year started with wildfires sweeping across the Los Angeles area in January. The currently estimated USD 40 billion of resultant insured losses is a record high, but the fires on their own will not be cause of notable deviation from the annual loss growth trend. The scale of losses elicited a reinsurance response, with two thirds of the claims payouts coming from primary insurers, and the rest from reinsurers.
Managing the UK Economy in times of the Climate Emergency, Emma Dawnay, Green House Think Tank
To have the best chance of successfully transitioning to an economy which is not dependent on fossil fuels, the economic system which drives human activity must be reorganized. The ‘needs’ of financial markets must become subordinate to the ‘needs’ of physics to maintain planetary conditions compatible with human civilization. The mainstream consensus on how a national economy should be managed has little theoretical underpinning; rather, it has evolved with the massive growth in financial markets. The shortcomings of the mainstream consensus have been highlighted by non-orthodox economists for decades, but now more than ever this consensus needs to be reassessed as it is limiting our response to the climate emergency as well as causing unnecessary austerity and hardship. This briefing aims to explain descriptively how a national economy works, how the current consensus is limiting what we can achieve, and how the UK economy could be managed differently.
165 articles in 62 journals by 839 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Beaufort Gyre Liquid Freshwater Content Change Under Greenhouse Warming From an Eddy-Resolving Climate Simulation, Shan et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl113847
Disentangling anthropogenic and dynamic contributions to recent ocean warming, Lee et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science Open Access 10.1038/s41612-025-01043-7
Energy Gain Kernel for Climate Feedbacks. Part III: Reconciliation of the Apparent “Negative” Nature of Lapse-Rate Feedback, Sun et al., Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 10.1175/jas-d-24-0168.1
Make China great again!
Posted on 30 April 2025 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler
As readers of this Substack will know, I've been increasingly concerned about the destruction of one of America’s greatest competitive advantages: our university research system. Recently, the Trump administration announced that they were going to cut university overhead rates to 15%. This sounds like a discussion that would put an accountant to sleep, but it's actually quite important, as this post describes. This was originally published Apr. 18 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
There’s an important battle brewing over university overhead rates. Sounds boring, right? But hang with me and you’ll see why this is so crucially important to America. It will determine whether breakthrough technologies emerge in American labs or Chinese ones.
Last week, the Department of Energy slashed university overhead rates to 15 percent. They claim this saves taxpayers $405 million annually while ensuring funds support “support scientific research—not foot the bill for administrative costs and facility upgrades.” This is dangerously misleading.
To understand why, let me start by explaining what “overhead” means. When you picture a university research lab, you probably imagine scientists in lab coats, surrounded by high-tech equipment, performing groundbreaking experiments. What you see in this mental image are what we would call “direct costs”—things that are directly involved in a research project.
What you don’t see are the countless support systems making that research possible. Air conditioning, electricity for lighting, wifi, janitorial services, administrative support for payroll and purchasing, and a million other things that cannot be neatly assigned to a particular research project but without which research cannot be done.
These costs are what go into “overhead” and they fall into two main categories. First are shared, distributed expenses spread across the entire research enterprise that would be impossible or absurdly inefficient to track project-by-project: think HVAC systems, IT support, building maintenance, administrative staff processing grants, library resources, and safety training.
Trying to determine how many kilowatt-hours each of the 300 experiments running in a building consumed, or what percentage of the university’s toilet paper expense should be charged to a specific project would be a bureaucratic nightmare.
Second are long-term investments that must be spread over many years: constructing laboratory spaces for faculty, building office space and classrooms for graduate students, building core research facilities, and upgrading infrastructure.
When a university recruits a promising new scientist, they might invest millions in building out lab space before that researcher has even secured their first grant. These costs should be recovered gradually over time.
Sabin 33 #26 - Is wind energy good or bad for jobs?
Posted on 29 April 2025 by Ken Rice
On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles" written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #26 based on Sabin's report.
Wind power is a fast-growing industry, creating many U.S. jobs. In 2021, wind energy production employed roughly 120,000 U.S. workers, creating roughly 5,400 new jobs (up 4.7%) since 2019.1 The Department of Energy suggests that this sector could employ as many as 600,000 U.S. workers by 2050.2 As noted previously, the United States’ Fifth National Climate Assessment predicts that there will be nearly 3,000,000 new solar, wind, and transmission-related jobs by 2050 in a high electrification scenario and 6,000,000 new jobs in a 100% renewable scenario, with less than 1,000,000 fossil fuel-related jobs lost.3
Figure 1: Energy employment from 2020 to 2050 under various U.S. net-zero GHG emissions scenarios. Source: U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Most of the current domestic jobs are in manufacturing.4 Over 500 U.S. manufacturing facilities now specialize in producing components for wind power generation.5 For turbines installed in the United States, approximately 70% of tower manufacturing and 80% of nacelle assembly also occurs domestically.6 Furthermore, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics identified wind turbine service technicians as the fastest growing occupation between 2022 and 2023, growing roughly 45% in size during that time.7
EGU2025 - Presentation about our collaborations
Posted on 28 April 2025 by BaerbelW
As mentioned in the recently published prolog to EGU2025 article, I submitted an abstract to talk about some of the collaborations we've had with other groups and websites over the years. This blog post is a "companion article" to that presentation in session EOS1.1 Science and Society: Science Communication Practice, Research, and Reflection and will go into somewhat greater details than is possible in the 8 minutes available during the oral session. The collaborations are listed along a timeline as they happened. You can download the full presentation in PDF-format (5MB) here.
Klimafakten - Nauka o Klimacie - Denial101x - FLICC-Poster - Repustar - Gigafact - Sabin Center - IUD
Klimafakten - 2011 (ongoing)
In November 2011 we announced our partnership with the newly launched German-language website klimafakten.de. They'd approached us earlier in the year as they wanted to start with a set of professionally translated rebuttals before the Climate Talks in Durban, South Africa (COP17). In the weeks leading up to the launch, Toralf Staud and I collaborated on how best to go about this partnership. We tackled questions like how best to create translated versions of graphics or how to avoid double work by for example linking from a translated rebuttal "stub" on Skeptical Science to Klimafakten. Since then, we've collaborated on several publication announcement and generally kept in touch about debunking climate myths and successful climate communications - an area that Klimafakten branched out into in recent years. Most of the website is in German but they also have an about page in English.
