This week's climate and energy news roundup covers recent developments in environmental policy and energy sector updates. The compilation addresses ongoing discussions about climate science and renewable energy trends from the Watts Up With That? publication.
Quote of the Week: “The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.” — Albert Einstein
Number of the Week: 1,153 acres for preservation vs. nearly 1,900,000 acres
By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
Scope: This TWTW discusses Howard Hayden’s questioning of an interview of Al Gore discussing his twenty-year-old film. Then, TWTW discusses a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) on attributing extreme weather events to human-caused global warming. TWTW concludes with a proposal to change the procedures for approving the electricity needed by data centers.
A Puff Piece: ABC News celebrated the 20th anniversary of Al Gore’s move, “An Inconvenient Truth”, with a fawning interview of Mr. Gore titled “Scientists were dead right.” No tough questions such as why did you get causation backwards? According to the Antarctic ice cores which were used in Gore’s film, temperatures rose first followed by CO2 increases (from warming oceans) by an average of some 800 years. Thus, CO2 increases cannot cause these temperature rises, but the temperature rises can cause CO2 increases. (The oceans store 50 to 60 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere and cold water stores more CO2 than warm water.)
In his publication, The Energy Advocate, AMO physicist Howard Hayden addressed some of the problems with the interview. He wrote:
“ABCNews interviewed Al Gore on the 20th anniversary of his 2006 Inconvenient Truth Movie. The article begins [1]:
The scientists have been right about climate change all along, says former Vice President Al Gore on the 20th anniversary of the release of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Oscar-winning documentary about Gore’s campaign to educate people about climate change.
When asked by ABC News chief meteorologist and chief climate correspondent Ginger Zee whether the film and its predictions on global warming hold up, Gore responded, “Unfortunately, yes.”
As noted before, the IPCC’s predictions were all over the map. When you predict everything, you predict nothing. Pick a date. Pick a temperature. They predicted it!
I wish I knew how to give credit for the graph below!
Full story reconstructed from Wattsupwiththat.com. Formatting and media may differ from the original.
[1] ‘Scientists were dead right’: Al Gore says on 20th anniversary of ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ https://abcnews.com/US/scientists-dead-al-gore-20th-anniversary-inconvenient-truth/story?id=133922490”
To TWTW the graph line of “Last 11000 years climate changes causalities by IPCC and climatologists” is consistent with GRIP2 ice cores taken at Summit Station, Greenland (elevation about 3,216 meters (10,551 feet) above sea level). But as with Hayden, TWTW was unable to discover who inserted the “Don’t know” arrows. Nor does Mr. Gore know what caused the previous increases and declines in temperatures. It was not CO2, which was roughly constant during the glacial period at 180 to 200 parts per million in volume (ppmv), then gradually rose to about 250 to 280 ppmv prior to the industrial age starting about 1750 with the development of the improved steam engine by James Watt (1769) with a separate condenser.
The above “Don’t know” graph applies to many organizations that are considered scientific but follow the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These organizations may use the tools of science but ignore natural variability, thus assuring their own ignorance. See link under Challenging the Orthodoxy.
Attribution Non-Science: As discussed in several TWTWs such as the ones on February 20, April 18, and April 25, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) participated in a biased, but important document prepared for use in Federal Courts – the US Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The document ignored the fact that in physical science, physical evidence is the ultimate and final judge. Human opinions are subordinate to physical evidence in physical sciences, though they may be important in behavioral and social sciences such as sociology and psychology. Although the co-publisher of the US Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, the Federal Judicial Center, retracted the chapter on climate change, the dubious chapter “How Science Works” continues with sections such as “Science Is Carried Out by a Community that Holds Members to Norms” and “Science as a Human and Community Endeavor.”
On July 15, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued a press release “The Science of Extreme Event Attribution — Which Analyzes Climate Change’s Influence on Specific Weather Events — Has Advanced, But Challenges Remain.” The press release states:
“A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine provides a comprehensive assessment of the current capabilities of extreme event attribution (EEA) — a scientific field that analyzes whether and to what extent human-caused climate change influenced an individual extreme weather event, such as a specific heat wave or hurricane.
The scientific tools, observational datasets, and methods developed and used for EEA have advanced considerably over the past decade and increased the confidence in EEA results for some types of weather events, says the report, which evaluates progress made since a 2016 National Academies report on the subject.
However, confidence in EEA study results varies significantly across different types of extremes, the report says. The highest confidence is associated with findings for extreme heat and cold events and others strongly influenced by a warming atmosphere, such as large-scale heavy rainfall events. Confidence is lowest for phenomena where observational records are limited and for phenomena that depend on small-scale dynamic processes that are inadequately reflected in global climate models, such as severe convective storms like thunderstorms and tornadoes.
‘Significant progress has been made over the last decade, with major advancements in methods and modeling that allow for more robust assessments of extreme events,’ said James Hurrell, chair of the committee that wrote the report, and Scott Presidential Chair of Environmental Science and Engineering at Colorado State University. ‘But the field still faces challenges, and addressing them is necessary to fully realize the value of attribution science. We hope our recommendations will guide those efforts.’ [Boldface added]
Decades of data and research indicate that human-caused climate change is altering the frequency and intensity of several types of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, record-breaking heat waves, and extreme rainfall.
EEA allows scientists to move beyond detecting broad trends and instead investigate how climate change influences individual extreme events — yielding information that can help communities and decision-makers better understand the role of climate change in local weather events and inform their planning and policy. The field has expanded into the nascent field of extreme event impact attribution (EEIA), which studies the extent to which human-caused climate change has influenced the impacts of an extreme event, such as human health impacts or economic losses.
EEA studies compare the observed event’s characteristics, such as its likelihood and intensity in the current climate, with a “counterfactual” world without human-caused emissions. Researchers use a combination of observational data, weather and climate models, and statistical models to make these comparisons and quantify the effect of climate change on the extreme event. [Boldface added]
Over the past decade, increased scientific understanding of the physical drivers of extreme events, expanded observational data, new statistical techniques, and improved models have together contributed to advances in EEA capability, the report says. For example, radar, satellite, and on-site observations have expanded in terms of area and length of time covered, resulting in additional data to support EEA analyses for many regions. And the use of larger ensembles of climate model simulations is enabling researchers to more effectively separate the human-caused climate signal from natural variability. [Boldface added]
The report claims significant advances but ignores the fact that attribution studies are not based on best, linear, unbiased (BLUE) modeling. It states:
Driving further advances in attribution science
The report urges a range of actions to further strengthen EEA and EEIA science and their usefulness, including:
The global community of EEA and EEIA researchers should develop a common overarching framework with recommended best practices. Such a framework would help systematically advance the science, integrate the research communities, build public trust, and enhance the usability of results.
More studies are needed that apply multiple EEA approaches to the same event, in order to increase the robustness and reliability of the findings.
Operational EEA programs — which produce routine, rapid EEA studies — should conduct periodic peer review to enhance confidence in attribution results and provide an opportunity to identify areas where developments might be needed, particularly of understudied event types.
Researchers should continue to develop and improve the models and data underlying impact attribution, with particular emphasis on regions and hazards that lack reliable tools — especially the Global South and cascading and/or compounding events.
Significant opportunities exist to expand the usefulness of EEA and EEIA through collaborations with stakeholders. For example, working with local experts to co-develop studies that meet their intended needs, including necessary quantification of uncertainties and targeted communication, will enhance the value of attribution results.
The study was undertaken by the Committee on Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts and sponsored by the Bezos Earth Fund, National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Heising-Simons Foundation, National Academy of Sciences Arthur L. Day Fund, and Robert Litterman.
The report is called the “Consensus Study Report: Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts 2026.”
Of the global climate models which ones in the graph “Newest IPCC Climate Models Vs. Climate Reality” (above) does NASEM approve? None of them has been validated and NASEM ignores that significant issue. If one accepts global climate models as proof, the right model can prove whatever one wishes. Accepting the work of the UN IPCC and the global climate models, the NASEM has no explanation for the climate changes shown in the GIPS2 graph above. The NASEM has abandoned geological evidence of past climate change and has adopted a view like that of the UN IPCC: that only humans cause climate change, natural variability is insignificant. This view is false and contradicted by millions of years of natural climate variability including periods when the deep oceans (below 2000 meters, 6600 feet) were 6 to 8 or more degrees C (11 to 15℉) warmer than today. The leadership of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has abandoned physical sciences for politics.
See links under Defending the Orthodoxy, and for past criticism of the National Academies see https://www.sepp.org/the-week-that-was.cfm with key words such as NASEM, how science works, and D-O Events.
Proposed Large-Load Compact: For over a decade electricity generation in the US was roughly stable. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2010 Electricity Net Generation was about 4,125,000 million kilowatt-hours. It was not until 2022 that this amount was exceeded with 4,231,000 million kilowatt-hours. This stability misled green politicians to claim they could “build back better” by destroying reliable generation from coal, nuclear and hydro and replace it with unreliable generation from wind and solar.
High-tech industries became their darling example. Now, high-tech industries are demanding huge amounts of ultra-reliable electricity for their data centers. The prospect of huge increases in costs of electricity to consumers has resulted in protests (while returning to past reliable sources is ignored). New York State is a prime example: Indian Point Nuclear Power Station were closed even though they provided 25% of the electricity to New York City. Now, New York State has (temporarily) banned new major data centers while it explores sources of reliable power that are yet to be discovered.
Writing in Power Mag. Emeka Obikwelu, the director of Grid Systems at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, suggests a revamping of the system of treating customers to the grid in “Why AI Data Centers Can No Longer Be Treated as Passive Customers.” He writes:
“For decades, even very large electric customers fit inside a familiar planning model. A factory, refinery, industrial campus, hospital complex, hospital system, or manufacturing facility requested service. The utility studied the load, identified required facilities, assigned costs, and folded the demand into its forecast and capital plan. That model treated the customer primarily as load: something to be forecast, connected, and served.
Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers are testing that assumption. Their power requirements are large, their commercial timelines are compressed, and their reliability expectations are unusually high. A developer may seek service in one or two years. A utility may need several years to complete studies, secure transformers, build substations, expand transmission, arrange generation, evaluate fuel requirements, and obtain permits or regulatory approvals.” [Boldface added]
Obikwelu suggests that for data centers Time to Power Has Become a System Constraint, and this requires planning reform:
“A 500-MW request from a customer with site control, financing, a phased energization plan, credit support, and a defined supply strategy is different from a 500-MW exploratory inquiry. A fully firm data-center load differs from one that can curtail during emergency conditions. A facility with observable, fuel-secure onsite generation differs from one with emergency generators permitted only for limited backup operation.
The old interconnection model asked whether the grid could serve the load. The new planning model must ask under what conditions the load can connect quickly without weakening reliability, affordability, or system visibility….
FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] supplies the regulatory anchor for this discussion, but the planning reforms required to operationalize that action extend beyond the tariff order itself. Drawing from FERC’s tariff concerns, Berkeley Lab’s speed-to-power framework, the Energy Systems Integration Group’s (ESIG’s) interconnection recommendations, and emerging large-load practice, five reform areas emerge: project maturity, cost responsibility, coordination, study design, and flexible service.”
The reform areas include project maturity; cost responsibility (existing customers should not be asked to absorb costs caused primarily by a new large customer unless there is a clear system benefit); coordination; study design; and flexible service. Onsite backup generation is a valuable component, but this will upset green politicians who have vowed to stop greenhouse gas emissions. The problem is complex and needs to be addressed maturely. Simply banning data centers is childish. As Obikwelu concludes:
“The answer is to define the conditions under which large loads can connect quickly, pay fairly, operate transparently, and support rather than destabilize the grid. Large loads should no longer be treated merely as passive customers at the end of the delivery system. At their current scale, they are becoming planning actors whose decisions affect everyone else connected to the grid.
The next grid-planning question is not simply how fast large loads can be connected. It is what obligations should come with connection at that scale.”
See link under Energy Issues – US, Article # 1, and https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec7_5.pdf for US Electricity Net Generation.
“While roughly half of the presidential monument proclamations involved fewer than 5,000 acres, they have ranged from less than 1 acre to about 283 million acres. The Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument was established by President George W. Bush in 2006 with 89.5 million acres; President Obama’s 2016 expansion of the monument adding approximately 283.4 million acres made the monument roughly 372.9 million acres.”
“The Antiquities Act requires that objects protected by a monument be of historic or scientific interest, and that the area reserved for the monument to protect the objects be the smallest area compatible with their proper care and management.
The term ‘Objects of historic or scientific interest’ has been stretched to include landscape areas, biodiversity, ‘viewsheds,’ and ‘remoteness.’”
See link under Washington’s Control of Energy,
https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R41330/R41330.33.pdf, and
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science
Idso, Carter, and Singer, Lead Authors/Editors, Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), 2013
#Canary in a Climate World: Advice from a top physicist
By John Robson, Climate Discussion Nexus, July 15, 2026
But mercifully what he [John Clauser] has to say in this chapter is not primarily focused on climate change. Rather, it’s an attempt to inspire young minds to appreciate the beauty of science which, in fairness to his rough tongue on climate, is a far cry from the ugliness of politicized science.
Experimental Lab Research: The Climate Sensitivity To A 400-Fold Increase In CO2 Is 0.1°C
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, July 12, 2026
Link to paper: Radiative and Convective Heat-Transfer in the Atmosphere: Some Basic Laboratory Studies
By Michael Schnell, Hermann Harde, Science of Climate Change, Vol 6.1, 2026
Click to access SCC-Vol.6.1-09_Schnell-Harde.pdf
From conclusions: In both cases, the tank is filled with the GHGs HCG (hydrocarbon gas [a propane/isobutane mixture] and CO2, and for comparison argon, so that both, radiation effects of the gases and the influence of a temporarily formed gas layer (gas-lake) of the heavier gases, can be investigated.
[SEPP Comment: The experiment does not include the dominant greenhouse gas, water vapor. However, the important issue about this experimental study is that it simulated a 400 x increase in CO2, and still the temperature only rose by 0.1℃ — which demonstrates that it’s all over for an increasing greenhouse effect on Earth via CO2.]
Climate consensus research is the worst, most invalid research ever published in journals
And social “scientists” use it to mislead participants
Link to paper: Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature
By Mark Lynas, Benjamin Z Houlton and Simon Perry, Environmental Research Letters, Oct 19, 2021
Consider the captivating journal article “An alternative carrier solvent for fingermark enhancement reagents”, published in Forensic Science International.
It was counted as part of the purported 99% scientific consensus on human-caused climate change by Lynas, et al. (2021).
New Study Highlights The ‘Dominant Role’ Of Aerosol/Cloud Interactions In Shaping Climate
By Kenneth Richard, No Tricks Zone, July 17, 2026
Link to paper: Assessing Aerosol Radiative Forcing and Atmospheric Absorption Over South Asia: A Multi-Model Intercomparison Study
By Amit Kumar Sharma, et al., JGR Atmospheres, Feb 17, 2026
Why Europe’s Heat Waves Are Getting Worse
Part 1, “Climate change” describes the outcome, not the causes. Here’s what’s actually behind Europe’s worsening heat waves.
By Roger Pieke Jr., His Blog, July 13, 2026
The image at the top of this post is real — not AI. It shows the Earth as a thermostat with the message: “You Control Climate Change.” The 2006 PR campaign was developed by the European Commission…
I am unaware of any robust quantification of how much of Europe’s heat wave trend comes from greenhouse gases versus aerosols versus soil moisture versus circulation changes versus modes of variability versus cities — much less the complex inter-relationships among these various factors. What I do know is that the simple story that climate change causes heat waves is unsatisfactory.
Science Over Climate Narrative: Dr. Matthew Wielicki to Lead America’s Climate Research
Dr. Matthew Wielicki’s appointment signals a course correction toward true scientific rigor and away from narrative-driven climate alarmism.
By Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, July 13, 2026
I join Secretary of Energy Chris Wright in his sentiment: I welcome the new era where data, not rhetoric, is the arbiter of truth.
Matt Wielicki is an honest scientist who follows the data wherever it leads. That is what science is all about. He will lead our efforts to honestly present the empirical climate data to guide policy makers.
[SEPP Comment: Wielincki will lead the Congressionally mandated U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)]
The Science of Extreme Event Attribution — Which Analyzes Climate Change’s Influence on Specific Weather Events — Has Advanced, But Challenges Remain
Press Release: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, July 15, 2026 [H/t Anthony Watts]
Link to the Consensus Study Report: Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts 2026
Earth has a natural thermostat and scientists finally know how it works
Press Release, Syracuse University, July 16, 2026 [H/t Bernie Kepshire]
Link to one paper: Shelf-invading low-oxygen waters control Cenozoic organic carbon burial rates
By Rosalind E. M. Rickaby, et al., PNAS, Apr 21, 2026
Link to second paper: A reversed latitudinal ocean oxygen gradient in the Proterozoic Eon
By Ruliang He, et al., Nature Geoscience, Jan 13, 2026
Scientists have identified a hidden feedback loop that may explain how Earth has regulated its climate for tens of millions of years. As sea levels rose and fell, they changed how much phosphate reached the open ocean, affecting marine life and the amount of carbon buried beneath the seafloor. That burial removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping cool the planet.
