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scaddenp at 10:53 AM on 4 November 2026It's the sun
Worth look at skepticalscience.com/Milankovitch.html for more details. Wikipedia has ths simple graph of past and future.
But if worried about the future, consider that ice cycle is feature of Pleistocene climate. The orbital variations have been around very much longer and leave their mark in seafloor cores. CO2 levels have to plunge low enough for the cold end of the milankovich cycle to result in snow persisting through summer at 65N to initiate an ice age. This happened at start of pleistocene (CO2 has dropped slowly through more of the Cenozoic) but we are now back at Pliocene levels of CO2. The planet is too warm for an another ice age.
Eclectic mentioned that we would have a very long interglacial anyway, This is from this paper (heavily cited), Imbrie 1980
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Eclectic at 10:08 AM on 4 November 2026It's the sun
Nostradamus @1319 :
Not really a precise answer ~ but it has been suggested that the current interglacial would "normally" [without our recent fossil CO2 release] be much longer than the average interglacials of the past mega-year. Owing to the present low level of orbital ellipticity. Maybe the next glacial about 15,000 years into the future?
Does this indicate that we would be wise to save most of our coal reserves for future need, to slowly eke out a trickle of CO2 emission to prevent major global freezing? At one stage, I had thought so ~ but then realized that the necessary CO2 emissions could well be achieved by decomposing limestone (of which there is no shortage) using electrical energy. Solar-generated and/or nuclear-generated (fission or fusion ~ yes, they may get to commercial fusion by the next 1,000 or 10,000 years of R&D ! ).
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nostradamus at 09:50 AM on 4 November 2026It's the sun
It looks like I found a relevant paper to my question but I don't have access yet.
Science, 2025, Barker et al., Distinct roles for precession, obliquity, and eccentricity in Pleistocene 100-kyr glacial cycles
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nostradamus at 05:19 AM on 4 November 2026It's the sun
I was looking for past and future insolation data covering the past and future ice ages ~ +/- 15,000 years from present and came across climate.gov data that I don't believe. It appears to be cosmic ray data scaled to insolation values?
Pierrehumbert in "Principles of Planetary Climate", (2010) p. 464 shows Berger and Loutre (1991) data, which is behind a paywall. It shows an insolation peak of 470 W/m2 10,000 years ago but no future insolation data. I wondered if someone could tell me when the next Milankovich solar insolation minimum is and if there is any concern that we would need to burn fossil fuels to heat the planet at that time?
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Eclectic at 01:41 AM on 4 November 2026Climate's changed before
Thank you, MA Rodger @909.
At first I thought you were being "short" with me
. . . but then, yes, deeply-buried childhood memories began to surface, from my Cretaceous or possbly Cretinaceous mental ages.
"Short ton" ~ a term I had not heard during the past quarter-century or more. Surely it is not still in use, except perhaps by exceedingly-lazy shipping agents . . . or as an example of "shrinkflation" in the realm of Mr Bezos.
Please do not mention bushels or hundredweights . . . or the modern newly-proposed drumpf [a measure of density].
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MA Rodger at 00:44 AM on 4 November 2026Climate's changed before
Eclectic @908,
Careful there!!
A well as tonnes of 1,000kg (= 2,204.6336lb), there are 2,240lb tons and there are 2,000lb tons. The last of these, the 'short' ton, is apparently used as the standard in the US and sits a whole 9.3% short of the metric tonne.
insecta @907,
While it is sloppy to mix tonne & ton in the same account, (& with 'ton' being either 'short' or 'long'), the quantites being considered are inexact enough that, be it tonne, imperial ton or US ton, it wouldn't alter the numbers presented (500, 5,000, 3,000) which may have different origins and thus different measures.
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Eclectic at 20:47 PM on 3 November 2026Climate's changed before
Insecta @907 :
The difference from metric to Imperial "ton" is less than 2%.
For purity's sake, the science-oriented site here should indeed stick with metric usage ~ but many of the site's readers are used to U.S.A. non-Imperial non-metric measurements . . . and all readers here are surely intelligent enough to easily cope with the conversions.
The broad-brush proxy CO2 estimates drown out the 2% stuff.
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benoitpasquier at 20:33 PM on 3 November 2026Where is global warming going?
Yes, that's what I saw too on the images I put in the GitHub gist in comment 100. Here is the replacement suggestion from that code snippet I shared:
PS: Sorry about the spam earlier, I got tripped exactly like you said... -
insecta at 16:26 PM on 3 November 2026Climate's changed before
Hello! I had a question about the units you use in your last two paragraphs in the basic-level article.
In the second-to-last paragraph, you write, "the estimated CO2 emission-rate ranges between 500 and 5000 billion tonnes per century."
In the last paragraph, you write, "Our current carbon dioxide emissions are not dissimilar to the estimated range for the Siberian Traps eruptions, at more than 3,000 billion tons per century."
I noticed that you switch from using metric units (tonnes, a measure of mass) to imperial units (tons, a measure of weight). I am wondering if this was a typo or an accidental use of two different units of measure. In either case, making a comparison between two values is not so helpful if they are in different units. Please let me know if I have misunderstood. Thank you.
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Bob Loblaw at 23:28 PM on 30 October 2026Where is global warming going?
Benoit:
The Mark I eyeball is enough to see that the Atmosphere and Continents circles (at 2.3% and 2.1%) should be a lot closer in size than they are.
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benoitpasquier at 11:46 AM on 30 October 2026Where is global warming going?
FWIW I also added a comparison (overlaid with transparency) to see the difference, in another comment to that gist.
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benoitpasquier at 11:44 AM on 30 October 2026Where is global warming going?
Hi Bob, you're right: I just eye-balled it was too big and overestimated the overestimate :)
I did the plot in Julia with code here: https://gist.github.com/briochemc/0055a26ba730f72f11161ec328f30efa and images available in comment. Please feel free to udpate here :)Moderator Response:[BL] Thanks for noting this. We'll look into fixing it.
I have deleted a duplicate comment, and an empty comment.
Just to point out: with 50 comments displayed per page, when you respond to the 50th comment (or 100th, or 150th), after you post your comment you get thrown back to the same page as the comment you are following. As a result, you won't see your new comment until you scroll down and click to go to the next page. If you re-post, thinking your comment didn't make it through, you end up with duplicates (or empty posts).
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Bob Loblaw at 05:38 AM on 30 October 2026Where is global warming going?
benoit:
Doing a screen check on the image (not extremely accurate), I tend to agree that the Ocean and Atmosphere circles may still be a bit off.
...but I don't see a factor of two for Atmosphere. I tried checking it two ways, using an enlarged version of the figure that made the Ocean circle 141mm in diameter:
- Assuming that the sum of the area all the circles was correct, and recalculating the correct circle size for each.
- Assuming that the Ocean circle was the correct area, and recalculating the correct circle size for the rest.
In either case, the smaller circles all seemed OK - one or two tenths of a mm adjustment in radius (so, within the crudeness of my method).
In the first case, (sum assumed correct), the Ocean circle needed to be 0.3mm larger in radius (0.7mm larger in diameter). The Atmosphere circle needed more adjustment: 2.4mm smaller in radius (4.8mm smaller in diameter). In the second case, Ocean is assumed correct, and Atmosphere again needs to be 2.4mm smaller in radius (but 4.9mm in diameter, due to a slightly larger version of 2.4). That's a 5mm diameter change on an enlargement that makes the current Atmosphere circle 27mm in diameter.
The change in radius (or diameter) for Atmosphere is about 1/6 of the current radius. The area error is more significant: it's nearly 50% too large.
How did you get a factor of two?
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Bob Loblaw at 04:37 AM on 30 October 2026How not to detect warming acceleration
Jeff T:
Yes, such a jump is physically unreasonable It implies either an earth/atmosphere heat capacity that is essentially zero (in which case global temperature could arbitrarily go up or down by huge amounts at any time), or a huge input/output of energy in a very short time (that nobody noticed).
There are quite a few comments on Zeke's original post at The Climate Brink (linked in the green box below the headline of this SkS repost).
Tamino also has posted on this particular new paper/analysis. He highlights some estimates of current warming using other techniques that do not suffer the discontinuity error.
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Jeff T at 02:46 AM on 30 October 2026How not to detect warming acceleration
Using a jump discontinuity in temperature involves the implicit assumption that atmospheric energy content can change instantaneously. That assumption violates conservation of energy. It is an egregious error of basic physics. It seems likely that temperature has been increasing more rapidly in the last decade+; we need more data to be confident.
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benoitpasquier at 16:05 PM on 29 October 2026Where is global warming going?
I' vey late to the party but I feel compelled to say it as we are using this image for a course: The areas of the disks still don't match the percentage values shown (despite being marked as fixed). I would say the 2.3% atmosphere disk is about twice too big relative to the 93.4% ocean one. Looks like this was drawn by hand instead of with software. Happy to help if you want a correctly updated version.
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MA Rodger at 16:04 PM on 29 October 20262026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #43
wilddouglascounty @1,
The problems with pointing 'inquisitive folks' towards 'reliable, up-to-date and understandable information' are perhaps twofold.
Firstly, AGW is a very broad subject. It is not just understanding the climate system (which is complex) and how well science has developed that climate understanding, but all the potential futures we are stoking up and what we are (and are not) doing about it.
Secondly, the on-line resources, while they are a lot better than in years-gone-by, are pretty rubbish at getting to the crux of the matter.In terms of places to 'point' folks at, these days there are increasingly dashboards showing the progress of AGW (for instance the UK Met Office or the Climate Change Tracker or a very recent arrival Zeke Hausfather's dashboard) but often the presentations are pretty rubbish. Consider the last graphic at the Observed Global Warming page of that Climate Change Tracker - does that say anything sensible to man-or-beast? It entirely lacks context yet the actual message is very important.
I would suggest a presentation, not of accumulative forcing but of incremental changes in forcing would make a lot more sense. And the only place I can think that provides anything like that is the table at NOAA's AGGI. Yet even there it is stuck down in the table as a percentage and agian lacks context.
(These days, a lot of folk home-in in the second-last graphic at Climate Change Tracker 'Observed' page which graphs the Earth Energy Imbalance as measured by CERES. Yet, what does the increasing imbalance actually imply? That's not easily answered.)
What I see as a better introductory graphic that sums up where we are with AGW is that AGGI incremental data plotted alongside the IPCC AR6 scenario data with SSP1-1.9 where we should be going and anything higher than SSP1-2.6 where we should be trying really really hard not to go. With that in mind, see the graphic here - POSTED 29th October 2026. -
wilddouglascounty at 01:10 AM on 27 October 20262026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #43
I will acknowledge upfront that this is purely a personal, subjective perception, but even as someone who has largely avoided mainstream media including internet social media, I'm finding that the volume and specificity of evidence about our changing climate and the subsequent dire projections are increasingly clear and are ever more dire. From Kate Marvel's new book Human Nature to the research and news summaries and videos on this and other sites, it is increasingly difficult to 1) Hear the misinformation out there still droning on and 2) knowing where to point people who are wanting more specifics about the nature and degree of the consequences of the shifting chemical composition of our atmosphere and oceans. I still point folks to this site as an excellent place to keep up and understand the situation; I'd love to hear other's choices they point to for inquisitive folks to go to for reliable, up-to-date and understandable information on the state of our climate, amidst the chaotic firehose of noise that passes as our information pipeline designed to sort out reality.
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Bob Loblaw at 23:38 PM on 25 October 2026The History of Climate Science
Following up on comments 46-49. Note that in this week's SkS News roundup, Europe is suffering another epic heat wave that is leading to excess deaths - another 50,000. The headline is "Europe’s killer heat this summer claims 50,000 lives. Climate change blamed for two-thirds of deaths". Direct link to the AP story.
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Bob Loblaw at 23:10 PM on 10 October 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40 2026
The context of Doug's comment is that the part in italics is directed towards the people that want to disagree with the overwhelming flood of evidence that we understand a lot about climate. As more and more evidence accumulates, they would need to keep trying to argue against it - without contradicting what they said last week (or last month, etc.)
One of the contrarian tactics is to use what has been called "the Serengeti Strategy". Try to look for what they think is the weakest link (or one individual), and attack that point only. And then try to infer that this weakness is an indication that all the rest of climate science has been disproven. It's like saying that the bridge is going to fail because they found one rivet that is loose, implying that the entire structure is as bad as that one rivet.
The internal consistency point is a key one: too many times I've seen one contrarian arguing that CO2 concentrations are too small to have any effect (the "trace gas" argument), while another is arguing that the effect is so strong that adding more can't have any additional effect (the "saturated" argument). They can't both be correct. They can be (and are) both wrong. SkS used to have a page that listed such contradictions, but it became too difficult to maintain because the contrarian positions have so many contradictions.
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Bob Loblaw at 22:51 PM on 10 October 2026The History of Climate Science
nostradamus @ 48:
"...increased duration..." seems rather benign, and it's not just the duration, but the intensity that is expected to change. And it's not just the observed changes since mid-20th century that are the concern, but the expected changes as we head towards the mid-21st century.
In the 2007 IPCC report, it is chapter 10 that deals with projections into the future. For context, there is frequent mention in the report of the 2003 European heat wave, which was a killer in many ways. Tens of thousands of deaths caused by the increased heat, by most estimates. The 2007 IPCC report gives extensive discussion of how evidence and modelling understanding had changed since the previous report. The graphic in the OP recognizes this advance in knowledge.
If you feel that "killer" may be over-the-top, what other term addresses the fact that death is part of the picture? "Deadly"? Some would make the same argument. "Dangerous"? "Catastrophic"? "Damaging"? Lots of possible choices from your favourite thesaurus, but all are subjective. All will be contested by contrarians that want to deny that there is anything to worry about.
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nostradamus at 07:06 AM on 9 October 2026The History of Climate Science
Thanks Bob. My main objection is seeing an emotional word like "killer" as a descriptor for a heatwave on a science site. Heatwaves can change in frequency, intensity and duration. Suggest a change in the graphic to:
"Probability of increased duration of heatwaves linked to global warming."
based on "Heat waves have increased in duration beginning in
the latter half of the 20th century." from AR4 Technical Summary: -
Doug Bostrom at 06:43 AM on 8 October 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40 2026
Thanks for kind thoughts about New Research.
We think of this weekly blast as having several purposes.
Not least and per Bob's remarks, "Disagree with all of this— coherently and with full internal consistency— and then again, on a weekly basis, indefinitely." Nope. Ain't gonna happen. It's impossible.
Consilience is a hard attack surface. -
Bob Loblaw at 01:07 AM on 8 October 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40 2026
I particularly noted wild's use of the phrase "...a fire hose of information...".
Recently, I was in a discussion with a "contrarian" below a newspaper story with climate change implications. He kept saying things along the line of "there isn't one paper that shows a proof of the connection between carbon dioxide and increasing temperatures". He kept throwing in challenges such as "show me one. They don't exist" and "I'll wait", etc. in a grade-school level of thinking he'd come up with a gotcha question that climate science had no answer for.
Aside from the aspect of expecting "proof", his challenge was based on the sophomoric view that "climate change" is a single, simple factor. Climate is a very complex process. Temperature is just one item that is affected by increasing CO2, and there are many, many moving parts to our understanding of climate in general (let alone CO2-induced changes).
I responded at one point saying there are tens of thousands of papers in support of our understanding of climate. He responded, rejecting that position, by saying that there are many that "elude" to the connection, but none that prove it. (Yes, he used the word "elude", when he probably meant "allude".) Once again, he only demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of science, how complex it can be, and how many different parts need to be examined and understood. And how it is evidence that accumulates in a vast reservoir of knowledge that convinces us of the likelihood that our understanding is correct.
As Alexander Pope said:
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.You can't drink at the fire hose of knowledge the same way you drink from a sippy cup.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:45 AM on 8 October 2026The History of Climate Science
nostradamus @ 46:
Expecting there to be a single scientific definition of "killer heat waves" starts to head towards the "Impossible Expectations" end of the discussion scale. Even just defining "heat waves" is going to lead to varying definitions, depending on the purpose of the analysis. (And by "purpose" I mean the question being asked, not the answer that is sought.)
Given the time line of the graphic you are looking at, the question is "what was being said about heat waves and deaths in the mid-2000s?" The IPCC reports are your friend - one was published in 2007. Chapter 3 covers a lot of discussion, and their table 3.7 includes their general definition of "heat wave" that was used to assess extremes:
Warm spells (heat waves)
Episode of several consecutive high-temperature days/nights.
Table 3.8 of the same IPCC report discusses the confidence level associated with the detection of various changes in extremes. For heat waves, the confidence is "likely". The phrase "heat wave" occurs many, many times in that report, but they seem to have avoided using the word "death" in the report. There is one reference to a paper discussing "heat-related mortality", though.
In June of this year, SkS republished a discussion of heat-related deaths that was originally published by Andrew Dessler over at The Climate Brink. It presents several ways of determining "excess deaths".
So, there is strong evidence for a concern about increasing heat waves in the mid-2000s, and the question of this as an influence on mortality rates is not new. We know that heat can kill. The graphic states, quoting it fully:
"Probability of killer heat waves linked to global warming".
For a brief summary of the state of the science at the time, this is not an unreasonable statement of the concerns being expressed at the time.
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prove we are smart at 22:47 PM on 7 October 2026Scientists link fossil fuel producers to the West’s worsening water shortages
Accountability for the greediest and most profitable companies in our consumer driven, monopoly creating societies? Don't hold your breathe-there is a reason old mine sites are never rehabilitated. Climate policy is a perfect example: the science is clear, but the political system gets stuck in cost‑benefit paralysis. Maybe the French kids protesting for school/education equality is reminding us, if you want real change, you have to fight the entrenched system to get it.
I'm sure the fossil fuel elites will down grade this result but belatedly a change in the accountability for fossil fuel extraction from the high court of Australia is a welcome sign, www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-07/mount-pleasant-coal-mine-high-court-ruling/107233650
This link explains,unless we change our societies fundamentaly, worstening news for everything in earths biosphere is coming, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejsHXeds6Y0
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nostradamus at 03:50 AM on 7 October 2026The History of Climate Science
Thanks for your efforts to debunk the disinformation about climate change science.
In the figure above (Climate science timeline, 1960-2010) there is a reference near ~2005 to "killer heatwaves". What is the scientific definition of killer heatwaves?
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:54 AM on 6 October 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40 2026
I second wilddouglascounty’s sentiments.
I would also thank everyone who contributes to publishing the Weekly News Roundups.
The “Climate Science and Research” section of the 2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40 includes the Planetary Health Check 2026. That document is the most recent update of the continuing evaluation of increased awareness and understanding of everything that really matters for the sustainable improvement of the future of global humanity and all of its sub-groups (down to individuals). Several of the items evaluated are specifically Climate Change Science. But there is clearly more that matters.
The following fundamental perspective (Theory – Hypothesis - Understanding) appears to explain the challenges of developing sustainable improvements for the future of global humanity, not just the challenges related to Climate Science.
Misunderstandings and lack of awareness produce damaging results for any group of humans. That applies to groups as small as couples up through business groups, political groups, sports teams, cultural groups, religious groups, and ultimately up to the entirety of global humanity.
Damage done by misunderstandings and lack of awareness of individuals or sub-groups can negatively impact All Others, not just the larger group that they are part of. Every bit of negative impact adds up.The concern is people who misunderstand things or have a lack of awareness. But the major problem is leaders and popular opinion sharers who choose to try to personally benefit from misunderstanding and lack of awareness. Those people will likely choose to avoid learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. And they will try to mislead others and keep others less aware rather than learning to help others learn and be more aware of how they can be less harmful and more helpful members of Humanity.
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irhaahmed at 14:20 PM on 5 October 20262026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40
thats a great read
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wilddouglascounty at 00:50 AM on 3 October 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40 2026
Doug, Mark,
I just want to thank you both and any others involved for continuing to provide this curated list of climate related research publications--it's truly an incredible amount. In fact, if more people would see how much of a fire hose of information is being collected on the topics covered, I think more people would be compelled to push for more mitigation measures, and stop dawdling about reducing our carbon emissions.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:41 AM on 1 October 2026The Worst Case Is Still on the Table
plincoln24,
I believe the answer to your question has already been well presented by Andrew Dressler.
When you re-read the entire document to understand the answer to your question, I would recommend paying particular attention to what follows the following words in section 2. RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 emissions may be implausible, but temperatures are not.
"One might reasonably wonder why we need SSP5-8.5 to estimate the upper limit of SSP2-4.5 runs. Why can’t we just use SSP2-4.5 runs to evaluate the upper limit? ..."
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plincoln24 at 23:29 PM on 30 September 2026The Worst Case Is Still on the Table
I don't understand. If the emissions scenario of RCP 8.5 is not realistic, doesn't it just make more sense to scrap RCP 8.5 and asses high risk low probability events based on high end values for the climate sensitivity in the reasonable emissions scenarios?
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photoMaldives at 19:07 PM on 26 September 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #38 2026
That's great, Doug! Many thanks for your prompt reply, and keep up the great work! :)
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prove we are smart at 16:44 PM on 24 September 2026India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge
"For its part, in India some 28GW of new coal capacity was newly proposed or reactivated last year, bringing the total under development to 107.3GW and under-construction capacity to 23.5GW.
The Indian government is planning to complete 85GW of new coal capacity in the next seven years, even as clean-energy expansion reaches levels that could cover all of the growth in electricity demand."
From the Carbon Brief link from the above article www.carbonbrief.org/new-coal-plants-hit-10-year-global-high-in-2025-but-power-output-still-fell
I suspect the Indian fossil fuel elites and the enormously powerful other world " Big Oil" elites will wish the Keeling Curve to never stop rising. This post by independant Australian journalists shows just a glimpse of why that curve hasn't stop rising. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zHdB7aOjfs
"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters" is attributed to Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher. This phrase reflects the transitional period of societal upheaval and uncertainty. Oh boy!.
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Doug Bostrom at 03:42 AM on 19 September 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #38 2026
Thank you for your kind remarks, photoMaldives!
We indeed struggled a bit with how to present "most cited." Our tooling is a bit limited on this creaky old system.We'll have a think about how we might better thread this needle. One possibility would be to have a very discreet "Most cited in retrospect" link (in smaller font size?) to an anchor in a separate section, as non-interruptive to the eye as possible.
For any bystanders wondering "why?" about the most-cited feature, it seems important for laypeople (all of us, depending on discipline) to see what research products in various research domains gain any traction as building blocks for further progress. -
MA Rodger at 23:14 PM on 18 September 2026Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy
The source of the OP above, CarbonBrief, is a UK-based organisaton so for non-UK readers (and perhaps a few UK readers as well) a quick** bit of ReformUK background may be useful. (**That is as quick as I can manage -I am a UK political activist.)
ReformUK has been quite a phenomenon within UK politics in the last few years. It is the creation of Nigel Farage who has campaigned on the far-right since 1991. Initially it was a single issue - leaving the EU and his vehicle was a party called UKIP (UK Independence Party). It had no success outside the low-turnout elections for the EU parliament when the issue would fire up right-wing Tory voters enough to go out and vote UKIP or Tory when others stayed home. (UKIP got a quarter of the 2014 vote, the biggest share but not far above the two big parties.)
Particularly during the Brexit referendum Farage found his dictats hindered by rival factions undermining him. And in following years he was plagued by many wanting to turn the party further to the right and adopt toxic policies. So he left UKIP and formed the Brexit Party at the start of 2019. Farage actually owned this party which was incorporated as a private company. Farage was the major shareholder with a couple of other shareholders including millionaire Richard Tice who was the main financier.
The new party yopped the vote and gained over a third of the vote in the May 2019 EU parliament elections, this amid the turmoil of negotiating the EU exit. Both main parties did badly (a sign of things to come) but it was all rather silly with the UK on the verge of its EU exit.
Back in the real world, the Brexit Party got just 2% in the UK General Election later (December) that year.A month later, the UK legally left the EU (Jan 2020) and a year later Farage left politics, his job done. Tice became leader of the party which had become re-named ReformUK although Farage was still the party's legal owner. It slowly gained support and with the Tories floundering, ReformUK had gained about 10% support as the next General Election drew near. It was called for July 2024.
Then six weeks out from that election Farage returned to lead ReformUK again. (We now learn he was peronally gifted £5million by backers, perhaps payment to induce him to return.) They got a bit of a boost in popularity (14%) but not enough to deliver more than a handful of MPs. Importantly, while the Labour Party got a massive majority but did not 'win' the vote - it was ReformUK splitting the right wing vote that delivered for them.It was quite evident that Labour would win and soon lose support, just as the Tories did in government. This was shown in the local electons of 2025 & 2026 which got Labour into a panic. The change in Labour leadership this year has reversed that slide although ReformUK were already losing support (from last autumn) and today have dropped significant popularity (25% down from 32%).
The challenge Farage and ReformUK was always going to appear in a General Election. They certainly would not gain a majority in individual constituencies and their toxicity will result in massive tactical voting - their main opponent in each seat being supported by all to block ReformUK winning. This doesn't happen in local elections which also have lower turnouts (like the old EU parliament elections). And in parliament, MPs of all ilk aren't gonna support them being in government.
So a ReformUK government has always looked unlikely, and increasingly so as their true nature becomes plain (rather than being seen as a 'breath of fresh air'). The problem ReformUK pose is that they will continue to command significant support and other parties (mainly the Tories) will attempt to grab some of that support by adopting ReformUK policies. (This was how we got the stupid Breixt referendum in 2016.) And one of those policies now being readily adopted is the trashing of Net Zero targets and insisting high energy bills and disappearing industries are a result of said Net Zero targets.
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photoMaldives at 20:28 PM on 18 September 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #38 2026
Hi guys, I love your work, and avidly follow your weekly updates. A suggestion, if I may ? I wonder if the recently introduced "Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago" entries might be better suited to a separate category of their own, at the bottom ? I ask for purely selfish reasons, as I visually scan down your list to pickout the latest papers of interest (marine, and/or Indian Ocean region), and the "Most cited" makes this more difficult. Many thanks, and keep up the great work. :)
[PS: I did try to add the sections to my adblock, but there does not seem to be a unique css class for me to target] -
Eclectic at 11:47 AM on 15 September 2026Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy
Prove @1 :
Yes, "Reform-UK" is a waste of time, regarding climate politics.
Have to agree about Youtube's "Belle of the Ranch" ~ who I find very informative on various U.S.A./political events.
"Belle" puts out 2 or 3 brief videos per day, typically about 4 minutes long. An intelligent woman, with a dry & droll sense of humour ~ and she seems to have good sources of information..
The videos are shot in a shed (carrying on her husband's tradition ~ and he himself has a past list of similarly intelligent commentaries, under the title of "Beau of the Fifth Column", IIRC.)
"Belle" nowadays presents as Farmer's Wife & past Military Nurse. The folksy Southern Drawl, baseball hat, and checked shirts go with the package!
Definitely good for brief updates on major current events.
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prove we are smart at 10:42 AM on 15 September 2026Factcheck: Reform UK’s 45 false or misleading claims about climate and energy
Yes, I started to read the rest but such old debunked crap spewed out by corrupt elites was too much to finish. At least my increasing doomerism was called out by a positive and plain speaking "Belle". www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhSBPVr_h4s
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RedRoseAndy at 02:50 AM on 6 September 2026Forget more reservoirs; should the UK just build desalination plants instead?
Offsetting CO2 Emissions with Fish
[snipped]
Professor Oswald Schmitz is quoted in ‘New Scientist’ as saying: “Fish have a “tremendous” impact on carbon storage. “Part of it is in just the sheer biomass of these animals,” he says. But bony fish also fix carbon into insoluble minerals in their intestines as part of their way of dealing with constantly ingesting seawater. “It’s a sort of rock-like substance that they poop out and that sinks to the ocean bottom really quickly.” Collectively, marine fish account for the storage of a whopping 5.5 gigatonnes of carbon each year.” (Man produces 37.41 gigatonnes of CO2 a year.) Scientists say that we used to have nine times as many fish as we do now, so there is plenty of room for a man-made increase in fish numbers by offsetting companies, if we got fish stocks up to historic levels our fish would store 49.5 gigatonnes a year, which is more than man produces in a year at the moment.
Using my method of preventing fish extinction can also, then, be a method for offsetting CO2 emissions, and even reversing global heating.
A Practical Solution To Fish Stock Depletion
Fish in the wild are being over exploited, and whole fish species face extinction. But there is an easy way of preventing these extinctions. An international law should be passed which ensures that the gonads of all fish caught are liquidized and put into water containers, the fish are usually gutted anyway so this would not be a great hardship for the fishermen. Once liquidized, artificial fertilization takes place, and after twenty four hours the fertilized fish eggs can be released into the sea. The bucket of young fish needs it’s temperature equal to the sea they are released into to prevent fry death, so standing for a length of time with the fry bucket in the sea needs a wet suit before release. When this is scaled up by offsetting organisations a less painful method will be used. Ensure that the water in your bucket is the temperature of the sea to avoid fish deaths. It does not matter where the eggs are put back because the fry of each species find their way back to the environment they originally come from.
In this way, the sea can be repopulated, and fishing can even become sustainable.
The Japanese were the first country to fish in this way, and had their Navy protect the massive shoal until the fish matured. I have only heard of it being done the once, though.
Perhaps using sonar in fishing can be banned in order to give our fish more of a chance in life.
Fish Facts
If we could multiply the global population of saltwater fish by a factor of nine, we would sequester an additional 48.4 billion metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every single year.
To put that scale into perspective, this represents roughly 1.3 times the total annual global CO2 emissions from all human activities combined (which sit at around 37 billion tons).
Breakdown of the Maths
The Baseline: Peer-reviewed oceanographic research demonstrates that marine fish collectively transport roughly 1.65 billion metric tons of pure carbon (C)( from the sunlit upper ocean into the deep sea annually through their faeces, respiration, and dead carcasses.
The 9x Increase: Multiplying this fish population by 9 would scale that annual biological carbon pump to 14.85 billion metric tons of carbon.
The Net Gain: Subtracting our original baseline gives us a net increase of 13.2 billion metric tons of pure carbon being moved into the deep ocean every year.
Converting to CO2: Carbon atoms bind with oxygen in the atmosphere to form CO2. Because a molecule of carbon dioxide is heavier than a single carbon atom, we multiply the weight of the carbon by a chemical ratio of 3.67 to determine the atmospheric equivalent.
Moderator Response:[BL] Off topic, self-promotion, and something you have posted in the past on other topics (where it has also been off-topic).
You are now approaching a behaviour of spamming these threads. Any further such behaviour will lead to your account being closed.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:17 AM on 3 September 2026Forget more reservoirs; should the UK just build desalination plants instead?
Stephen @ 1:
Since you seem to know both costs and implementation times for stopping population growth, would you care to share specifics? Are you speaking globally, or just for the UK? Do you have access to a full cost/benefit analysis? What policies or controls would you put in place to make this happen?
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Stephen Hackney at 23:36 PM on 2 September 2026Forget more reservoirs; should the UK just build desalination plants instead?
It would be cheaper and faster to just stop population growth.
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prove we are smart at 11:31 AM on 30 August 2026Skeptical Science New Research for Week #35 2026
Occasionally I will read a topic and I found this one of interest, government/NGO section: pressgazette.co.uk/comment-analysis/survey-reveals-gap-between-climate-change-concern-and-actual-news-coverage/ However to keep climate change awareness personal, urgent and a priority, this among many "look-up" articles may help fence-sitters realize our predicament.. thebiggestlie.wedonthavetime.org/
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Chappo at 15:55 PM on 26 August 2026Trump’s Iran war supercharged EV sales everywhere except the U.S.
Good article Dana.
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Johnlangab at 00:01 AM on 22 August 2026Climate Trunk - Science
Hi Douglas (?)
I like your suggestion for It's Us — let me try to clearly show that.
On it's bad, I see what you mean. They're not, they are simply hypotheticals so not to invite fatalism. It's what could happen, not what is likely to happen.
And on it's fixable, yes, point taken. I try to make that point in the write up. The graphic itself is busy as is, so let me think this one through more.
Thank you.
John -
wilddouglascounty at 00:55 AM on 20 August 2026Climate Trunk - Science
Excellent start, looking forward to your continuing to produce this "trunk." In the meantime, a little feedback on your graphics so far:
It's Us: Is the third column the result of subtracting the second column from the first? I think it must be, but it's ambiguous, and could be played with to show this more clearly. Maybe stacking the first two columns on top of each other, with an arrow pointing over to the net warming column??
It's bad: The blue Net Zero milestones listed in your timetable are presumably inserted to show when a stabilized atmosphere milestone is reached, but you have two "heating stabilized" scenarios so it is not clear to me whether those Net Zero milestones are referring to the "low" or the "very low" scenarios.
It's Fixable: It would be helpful to me to expand the "putting it back" label to parenthetically include reducing emissions, energy conservation, tree, planting, agricultural improvements, and other organic sequestration methods as well as pulling it back out of the atmosphere. Reducing emissions should always be front and center, and using the biosphere to re-absorb the excess greenhouse gases should be explicitly mentioned lest we think we have to depend on pulling it out of the air with technologies not yet invented.
Hope this helps, and keep up the good work!
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foxydoxy at 02:02 AM on 18 August 2026CO2 effect is saturated
Response @895
[snipped]
If you cannot do this, and insist on trying to revisit the arguments CallItAsItIs made against others here, then I can only conclude that you are CallItAsItIs and want to have your posting privilege revoked yet again.
What in the world makes you believe that there aren't lots of others out there who aren't buying the SKS version of energy conservation either? You're going to have to do a lot of digging around before concluding that CallItAsItIs is me!
Moderator Response:Strike three. You have chosen the path that ends this discussion.
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Eclectic at 00:01 AM on 18 August 2026CO2 effect is saturated
Thank you, Moderator. And your hints are noted !
And fortunately, after re-reading CallItAsItIs's extensive old comments @722 et seq., I find that I still have some popcorn left at the bottom of the ten-gallon cardboard box (to sustain me).
(b) Foxydoxy @899 :
you are digging yourself into an even deeper hole of contradictions, by suggesting that the atmospheric molecules "below the extinction altitude" are operating by different physics principles than similar molecules higher up in the atmosphere e.g. at 15-meters altitude (or 65-meters, or 2000-meters, etcetera ).
Perhaps the higher-altitude molecules are suffering from cerebral hypoxia ? . . . or are altered by some other mechanism (a mechanism as yet unknown to 21st-Century physicists) ?
Enlightenment, please, if you can.
Moderator Response:There isn't enough popcorn in the world to keep going on at CallItAsItIs's misconceptions.
Note that the contents of the post you are responding to are no longer visible to regular readers.
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foxydoxy at 22:50 PM on 17 August 2026CO2 effect is saturated
[snip]
Eclectic @895
Say it ain't so, my friend !
Take it easy! I am not saying that those CO2 molecules can't be re-energized. If they are, however, then it must happen either below the extinction altitude or by collisions with N2 and O2 molecules. In the latter case, however, the source of the excitation energy is the combined kinetic energy of the two molecules in the collision, which in turn is part of the total thermal energy contained in the atmosphere. Now, for energy conservation in this case, the energy gained by the CO2 molecule in the transition must equal the thermal energy lost by the atmosphere in the collision. This means that if this newly excited molecule undergoes another collision (which would generally be expected in the lower parts of the atmosphere), then this molecule will once again lose its extra stored energy to thermal energy. At this point, we see that the combined effects of the excitation by collision and the subsequent loss of stored energy to thermal energy (from another collision) results into a zero-sum-gain of both thermal and IR energy.
Therefore, the only way that a net increase in atmospheric thermal energy can occur with CO2 is by absorption of 15 micron IR radiation below the extinction altitude.
Moderator Response:Strike two.
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Eclectic at 21:14 PM on 17 August 2026CO2 effect is saturated
Moderator,
would you be so kind as to correct my typo in the first paragraph of @897.
"no more 25um radiation" ought to read as "15um radiation".
A clumsy typo indeed ~ maybe I got infected with CallItAsItIs-itis ?
Moderator Response:Note to all:
Before you spend time responding to foxydoxy,, keep in mind that his posts are likely to get deleted when he refuses to do as indicated in recent moderators notes.
