One should never underestimate the incompetence of government. But one should also be aware that when such incompetence reinforces the agenda of senior politicians and public servants it is far less likely to be rooted out, or even noticed, than when it runs contrary to that agenda. Thus it is revealing that calls for an independent audit of Australia’s weather records, including crucially the accuracy of the digitizing of the long-run historical ones, are being opposed by the current Labour administration of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

These records are important partly because they’re among the very few direct temperature observations that we have from the dreaded “pre-Industrial” era, especially outside the continental United States. (The earliest are actually from Sydney in 1858 not 1861.) For the rest, the whole claim that there’s been 1.5C of warming, or even wackier claims like “Global temperatures reached 1.65C above preindustrial levels, scientists said on Thursday”, depend on us knowing from proxy data how hot it was in 1861 everywhere to two decimal places. Which plainly we do not.

When you look at the original Australian data, you see temperature in Fahrenheit entered to one decimal place. They were trying to be precise: As the Australian observes:

“The temperatures are recorded in fahrenheit and in meticulous detail: dry bulb, wet bulb, maximum and minimum in the shade, mean, max in the sun, minimum on the grass, dew point, and on it goes.”

But you don’t therefore conclude that they’re exactly right. You realize there were real fallible humans trudging out to real fallible thermometer installations on what was meant to be an exact schedule and peering at mercury in a glass tube and estimating what it said and trying to write it down accurately. But if you believe that every 09:00 reading was taken at exactly 09:00, that nobody ever slept in or lingered over breakfast or hurt themselves going downstairs you are not fit to comment. Which oddly is not the problem here.

It is significant. Though it pales beside the fact that nobody was even attempting such measurements over most of the land surface of the Earth at the time, never mind the oceans. But it also pales beside the fact that the BOM utterly flubbed the digitization, so these crucial records are false and worthless.

For instance, as The Australian demonstrates graphically, if you take the measurements for August 1907 and those from August 1867 they match exactly, to the decimal, every single day. And why? Because someone copied the correctly-digitized data from 1907 and pasted it in for 1867:

“A fact check by The Australian at the National Archives confirmed the double-up did not exist in the handwritten records and the 1867 data was wrong online.”

And it’s not merely rewriting the past:

“The data errors are not just historical, with the audit, conducted with pattern-recognition software, finding more than 40 per cent of the flagged entries or events dated after 1990.”

It’s such a mess that one is tempted to suspect incompetence on the grounds that conspirators would have been more careful. Though when it comes to human folly, very little is impossible.

As the paper also reports:

“The audit also identified what it described as a ‘broken seam’ pattern, in which 14 days of data were repeated, followed by a two-day gap precisely where source records were missing, then another 15 days of duplicated readings. In other instances, there were 17 consecutive days of identical daily maximum temperatures, a flatline the audit said was statistically impossible.”

And on and on it goes:

“Other examples included 647 consecutive days with no observations at a station rated to ACORN standard, the reference network used for climate calculations, and 408 consecutive days at another station with no decimal precision recorded.”

So yes, incompetence rages. But not just incompetence. The records are important because of the theory that the Earth is heating relentlessly due to human GHGs. And thus it is that in addition to bungles by people who didn’t seem to know what Ctrl+C Ctrl+V did, or what 1907 was, there are deliberate adjustments. And these are tendentious in the extreme:

“The audit also found that at Sydney Observatory, maximum temperature adjustments were positive in every year from 1910 to 2020, amounting to 110 years of one-way changes with no net cooling adjustment applied.”

Why? Because they just knew what the readings should be, and the data were a national treasure only as long as they said what they should say and if not we have ways to make you talk.

Nobody with any interest in factual accuracy, regardless of their polemical position or lack of same, could possibly think it wasn’t a mess requiring investigation. Could they?

Well, the BOM spewed the usual rhetoric:

“The bureau rejects allegations of fraudulent or deliberate manipulation of Australia’s temperature record – there is no evidence to support this assertion, and it has no basis in fact.”

Moreover, bwa bwa bwa; it praised itself because it:

“worked continuously to maintain the integrity, quality and transparency of Australia’s meteorological and climate datasets”.

So are you fools? Heck no.

“BOM said it was ‘aware of a report produced by a member of the public regarding Australia’s long-term temperature record’. Bureau analysis of the underlying data related to the dates in question has confirmed a small number of duplicated historical daily temperature records, namely four post-1910 months relevant to ACORN-SAT. These account for fewer than 200 daily values from a dataset containing more than seven million values. Our assessment is that they have a negligible effect on Australia’s long-term temperature record.’”

Bosh. There were dozens of errors. And of course “BOM did not explain how the duplications had occurred.” And to be fair, it may well have no idea. But to minimize the problem and defend the mess as in the finest tradition of public service is the response of people not only arrogant and inept but also wedded to the results.

On the face of it the opposition is very peculiar since they are presumably confident about the facts behind their long-standing climate alarmism. And also presumably confident about the accuracy of BOM statistics. Why do they want to give ammunition to their critics?

As they already have. Australian commentator Topher Field began a podcast “Chalk up yet another win to the conspiracy theorists”. And we say also to Conquest’s Second Law that the best way to predict the behaviour of a large organization is to assume that it’s secretly controlled by a cabal of its enemies. That the data has been brazenly mangled is exactly the kind of thing that fuels theories that climate alarmism is a deliberate plot. Refusing to check once it’s been discovered and publicized is even worse.

And there they go again.

On the question of whether he’s sincere about doing good and just happens to be doing well, Gina Pappano of InvestNow writes in C2C Journal that Mark Carney always was and still is an international man of greenery and never mind the expensive suits that, along with his bankerly resumé, do tend to distract people:

“Carney’s pro-growth moves – like approving new LNG export facilities – generate constant newspaper headlines and news reports. Meanwhile, however, his bureaucrats are quietly preparing to strangle the very economic revival Carney claims to desire, as revealed in a publicly disclosed but little-discussed new policy, inspired in part by Communist China and known as the ‘green taxonomy’.”

And she warns that “Canada can either open itself for business, or it can commit to a net-zero future. It can’t do both.” Though we add that it can do neither, remaining closed for business while missing net-zero by a mile.

We also add snidely that given Carney’s actual track record, from inflation in the UK when he governed the Bank of England to his vaunted GFANZ folding like a cheap lawn chair, having it all fall to bits would also be very much in keeping with his resumé. But one thing Carney’s very good at is walking away with his pockets full of cash. So maybe he’s doing well by doing harm. It wouldn’t be the first time. It also wouldn’t be a plot, partly because it’s all so visible.

For instance, Carney of course has still shares in Brookfield. And it is by no means impossible that the firm would welcome him back if he tired of his jaunt into politics or Canadians tired of him and his blarney (for instance when the Palestinian non-state he recognized cancelled elections he said they were committed to, he told journalists “We are certainly holding [the Palestinian Authority] to account”, a revolting mix of empty words and untruth). But in any case he also has shares in such firms directly. And speaking of plots, or lack of same, in comic Canadian political “what conflict of interest?” fashion, all his holdings were put in a “blind trust” but he could see them before they went in and as they did so and there was no instruction to the trustees to liquidate them and buy he knew not what, so he knows exactly what’s in there. A Conservative MP asked “How is that not corrupt?” and the answer was stony silence and mocking smiles, meaning this is Canada and these are Liberals.

It is also a government classic, and typical of Canada though by no means unique to it, that the heat pump announcement prompted an immediate declaration from, gosh, the government-funded Canadian Climate Institute that “New federal support for home retrofits will give modest boost to affordability and electrification, but more action needed” And the Canadian government is definitely continuing down the green garden path more broadly, or the false trail in the deep dark woods, boosted by independent propaganda from independent entities it pays for. Including subsidized media outlets writing things like: “Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canadians will be able to get rebates up to $10,000 for installing heat pumps, but experts called the $2-billion program simply a good start and not a comprehensive plan to lower emissions from homes across this country.”

Thus Carney supposedly represents a breath of fresh practical banking air after the daffy Justin Trudeau. But this “landmark“ heat-pump thing basically revives a Trudeau initiative while labeling it bold and new. And moreover, “Canada successfully prices seventh green bond issuance, raising $2 billion”. And to hear them tell it, nothing could go wrong and never should be heard a discouraging word:

“This week, the Government of Canada successfully priced its seventh issuance of Canadian-dollar-denominated green bonds, raising $2 billion in a new 10-year offering. This issuance saw robust demand from investors, with environmentally and socially responsible investors representing a significant share of buyers (44 per cent). The final order book stood at over $3.6 billion. Government of Canada green bond issuances support the growth of Canada’s sustainable finance market by providing a sovereign benchmark for other issuers and high-quality green investment opportunities backed by Canada’s AAA credit rating. Green bonds unlock private capital to speed up projects such as green infrastructure and nature conservation. These investments support economic growth, create jobs, and help build a cleaner and more resilient Canadian economy.”

But who are these “environmentally and socially responsible investors” or ESRIs? Not by any chance Canadian public-sector pension funds and heavily federally regulated industries?

Besides, what are these “green bond” things? Well, see:

“Canada’s Green Bond Program allows investors to support Canadian investments in climate action and environmental protection, while fostering further development of the Canadian sustainable finance market.”

Allows? They’re already allowed. Why can’t investors simply support Canadian investments, say by investing in them? Well, actually what happens is that various government departments classify some of their spending, aka “investment”, as green through, we are not making it up, a Yes-Minister-style interdepartmental committee, specifically the “Interdepartmental Green Bonds Committee (IGBC)… co-chaired by Finance Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, includes representatives from 12 federal departments and Crown corporations.” This nest of red tape then looks at some of the money the government was going to borrow anyway and relabels it green.

The sorts of things involved are “Development and pre-licensing of Terrestrial Energy’s Integral Molten Salt Reactor”, the “Parkland EV Charging Network”, and “6,778 green bond-eligible medium and heavy-duty ZEVs incentivized” by Transport Canada, plus electric school busses. So not really investments of the sort you could sell to investors by there being a positive return on the money. The kind you get when Mark Carney relabels all spending “investment” and then claims to be spending less and investing more because shut up.

His government has of course leaped into committee, or perhaps central committee:

“In November 2025, the Government announced its intention to explore the development of a Sustainable Bond Framework that would allow for the issuance of both green and new transition bonds to be aligned with the arm’s length, made-in-Canada sustainable investment guidelines (also known as a taxonomy) and to expand the Framework to incorporate economic sectors as the taxonomy is being developed. The Canadian Climate Institute, alongside Business Future Pathways, are leading this work, with the expectation that investment guidelines will be finalized for three priority sectors by the end of 2026.”

This taxonomy being a blueprint, or greenprint or even redprint, for centrally planning the Canadian economy according to the dreams of zealots not the desires of consumers.

As for “fostering further development of the Canadian sustainable finance market” we always thought “sustainable” in finance meant “pays for itself” and “isn’t dependent on never-ending subsidies” but hey what do we know.

Of course the Canadian government and its provincial counterparts entertain no doubts about their own economic as well as environmental genius:

“The federal government is making it easier for low- to median-income households in Newfoundland and Labrador to make their homes more energy efficient, more comfortable, and more affordable all while reducing emissions.”

Such nice people. And so smart:

“The federal government is investing $10.5 million, and the province’s electrical utilities – Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro and Newfoundland Power – are contributing an additional $3.15 million. This funding will help more than 1,400 homeowners and renters access upgrades such as heat pumps and insulation improvements.”

It’s investing because the federal government never spends anymore. But the actual rate of return to it on these investments is not something to inquire into. The rate of return to the makers of heat pumps, and to shareholders in those firms, is another story. Or lack of story, in the subsidized Canadian media.

The press release is a masterpiece of misinformation. It conceded “a slower than average start to the season” before doing a happy dance that things got worse. As in “wildfire activity, driven by periods of prolonged heat, drought and low humidity, became significant in several regions across the country.” Perhaps because with over 300 billion trees Canada always has fires? And indeed had much worse ones two hundred years ago and more?

Ah but nay. Instead they pick cherries with:

“Wildfire activity was also extremely intense in the Northwest Territories, which accounted for over one third of the total area burned in Canada in 2026.”

Is it unusual? That territory is just over 11% of the Canadian land mass, and particularly inaccessible. But remember that just as half of all drivers are below average (at least), so wildfires are not evenly distributed geographically just as they are not evenly distributed temporally. Some might be happy that other places burned less. But they try to make it sound bad by leaving out the comparative data:

“Overall, Canada had more than 5,400 wildfires this year that burned approximately 4.5 million hectares.”

So how bad is it? Well, not very:

“While the situation on the ground has improved significantly, there are several wildfires still active across the country.”

Fully several? We are all going to fry.

It being 2026 in Canada, they work in the obligatory indigenous references including:

“As a result, since April 2026, wildfires forced more than 33,750 people from their homes, including more than 8,800 people from First Nations communities.”

Other minorities don’t even get mentioned nor do women. But they were presumably hardest hit.

Being utter weasels, they don’t mention climate though the implication of that “longer, more complex and more challenging” is clear that something has changed. Which they reinforce by wrapping up with “As Canada continues to face longer and more complex wildfire seasons” without offering any evidence that they are either longer or more “complex”, whatever a “complex” fire season might be. Different coloured flames, perhaps? Fire in the sky as well as underground? Fires that are cold as well as hot?

Nobody reading that press release would possibly get the message that as fires are bad it is nice that in 2026 Canada had a relatively quiet season. Which is, oddly, the truth, despite the incompetence as well as confusion of our federal government on the file.

Indeed, with the US midterms coming up, Heatmap had the gall to headline “The Battleground Districts Where Electricity Bills Have Surged the Most” and say “September bills in competitive Republican-held districts have risen by a median of 21% between 2024 and 2026.” On which basis you might suppose that voting GOP in a swing district was a good way to pay more for power. As they apparently believe since they also write:

“looking over the past 12 months, bills in competitive Republican-held districts have risen twice as fast as those in competitive Democrat-held seats (8% vs 4%). Overall, 22 of the 29 Republican-held House seats in active play this November are in places where electricity bills have risen more than 10% since Trump’s election.”

Colour us naïve. But perhaps it’s because these districts are in blue states subject not to the evil orange climate troll’s malicious ignorance but to the pure and noble initiatives of, oh, say, New Jersey’s Democratic governor and legislature like New Jersey’s 7^th District, the first one they profile. Or Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor and legislature like Pennsylvania’s 10^th, the second. Or New York’s Democratic governor and legislature like New York’s 17^th, the third.

The usual suspects are still saying the usual stuff. Bloomberg Green, for instance, reports that “Clean Energy Is Poised to Set New Records in the US”. Which of course proves nothing except that governments are hipped on the stuff, especially as:

“There’s a clean energy bonanza underway in the US, with record volumes of renewables forecast to be installed this year – and then again in 2027, according to BloombergNEF. However, the rapid advance for solar and wind developers is being propelled by a rush to claim expiring federal tax credits.”

Wait, if it’s such a hot investment why would loss of some special tax credits spell the end? Maybe not such a recipe for low bills, is it?

Certainly not in Britain where, Net Zero Watch reports, “Households face debt ‘doom loop’ as energy bills rise”. The doom loop being something only people profoundly ignorant of economics could fail to foresee, and duly did. What happens is that more and more people can’t afford their power bills at all, and the suppliers are required by the same state that kept investing in “cheaper” alternatives and pushing up prices to add surcharges to customers not yet too broke to pay, thus driving them into the delinquent camp:

“According to The Telegraph, unpaid debts already add £67 a year to the average household bill under Ofgem’s arrangements. That figure could rise to £100 if arrears continue to increase, adding further pressure to households already struggling with energy costs.”

And they add drily:

“The warning raises questions about how quickly the Government’s promised reductions in energy costs can provide relief.”

About as fast as the last 10 times, we’ll wager. So tell us again how it’s big bad conservatives who push up energy prices? Though to be fair in Britain the allegedly conservative Boris Johnson was a major villain in this story, because in office he acted like a left-wing radical. (And to keep being fair, and borrowing a phrase from Maj. Dennis Bloodnok, he may not have been acting.)

The transition isn’t exactly a recipe for energy security either. And yes, when Britain’s Energy Secretary recites talking points about how “I’m 100pc confident that [the lights] won’t go out this winter” any sane person would run out and buy a portable generator. Especially since Bjorn Lomborg just pointedly pointed out that with this vast green energy transition:

“Currently, batteries can power the US for less than 18 minutes”.

And if you’re into the supposed simple physics of climate, he adds:

“To avoid blackouts, solar and wind need months of storage, costing trillions/ Fossil fuels don’t need storage because they are their own storage”.

In which regard we have to note Heatmap complaining that:

“Net Power Surrendered Its Clean Dreams to Data Center Demand/ The zero-emission pioneer is doing the dirty work for the AI boom.”

Now they do have a point in that:

“Net Power was founded to pioneer a new form of natural gas power plant with zero emissions, but it has given up on that technology and recently acquired 10 natural gas reciprocating engines that it plans to co-locate with a data center on the site intended for its first commercial plant.”

But they also miss the point:

“‘We believe the clean piece is important,’ Net Power CEO Danny Rice said during an August earnings call when he announced the company’s pivot to building unabated natural gas plants. ‘But just as it’s always been, it will only come at scale once society’s basic energy pillars of reliable, affordable power are fully in place. Power demand is outstripping supply today.’”

And um yes? Sound of penny dropping? Or roof if you knock out the “basic energy pillars” of “reliable, affordable” stuff that actually works?

An alert reader forwarded us the Manhattan Contrarian post from Oct. 18 “When Ignorant Ideologues Take Control Of Major Economic Decisions” and while we take issue with the pejorative use of “ideologue” to mean a person suffering a mental disease whose only visible symptom is that they do not immediately adopt our opinion when we shout it at them, we agree with his point about politicians in New York and elsewhere:

“who know nothing about how an electrical grid works ordering that the existing functional generation system shall be replaced within a few years by a new system based on intermittent generation from wind and sun.”

And we also endorse his analogy between their theories and Mao’s murderous “Great Leap Forward” with its crackpot innovations in agriculture:

“Places like California, much of Europe, and Australia are in the grip of the same fantasies. Just build enough wind turbines and solar panels and close down the dispatchable fossil fuel generation, and everything will work just fine. It’s not a lot different from a person who has never grown a crop ordering that you double your yield per acre by planting twice as many seeds.”

Of course nobody dared tell Mao he’d been wrong and millions had died because if they had, millions plus them would have died. In democratic societies you can say it. But like Mao they’re not the ones going without, they still can’t heeeeear you, and they blame Trump because wind is neither reliable nor affordable and he was against it.

As the Contrarian observed in an Oct. 21 followup “The New York Times Shows Democrats How To Run On ‘Energy Affordability’”, the evidence is clear. He himself had earlier:

“cited easily-available data from the federal Energy Information Administration showing that, among the contiguous 48 states, there is a sharp divide between states run by Democrats – which have the highest prices – and those run by Republicans – which have the lowest prices. The six states with the highest prices consist of California plus five Northeastern states that have joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in an effort to intentionally drive up their consumer electricity prices. The twelve states with the lowest prices are all solidly Republican with the sole exception of purple Nevada (where the Governor is a Republican). Prices per kWh in climate-obsessed California and the Northeast are double and more the prices in many Republican-run states.”

He then dissects the Times technique of picking a sad tale of two people with high energy bills in red Oklahoma, blaming them on climate change making air conditioning more necessary, and implying that it’s because Republicans are skeptics, without checking almost any of the facts in the story from actual temperatures in Oklahoma to energy prices and usage to whether a couple running one AC unit could really be spending $500 a month on it. As he writes:

“The Times is treating its readers like fools, as usual. How can Democrats possibly run on the issue of ‘energy affordability.’ It’s easy — by focusing on emotional stories that in reality have nothing to do with ‘skyrocketing’ energy prices, and by leaving out (or lying about) all the key facts. Meanwhile, there absolutely is evidence of skyrocketing electricity bills in blue states like New York and California, but for obvious reasons the New York Times chooses to ignore that evidence. After all, we wouldn’t want to slow down our ‘climate leadership’ agenda.”

Not until they’ve spent all our money, anyway.

In a striking departure from modern journalistic practice, we responded by Googling “Scope 3”. And it turns out to be something very revealing in its unrevealingness. For instance, from the “Carbon Trust”:

“The Greenhouse Gas Protocol – which provides the most widely recognised accounting standards for greenhouse gas emissions – categorises GHG emissions into three ‘scopes’. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from the purchase and use of electricity, steam, heating and cooling. By using the energy, an organisation is indirectly responsible for the release of these GHG emissions. Scope 3 includes all other indirect emissions that occur in the upstream and downstream activities of an organisation.”

So here’s the problem. Scope 1 is reasonably easy to measure, at least in principle. It’s the GHGs you emit directly by doing whatever you’re doing, minus presumably staff breathing out CO2 while at work. Scope 2 isn’t too bad: it’s the same as Scope 1 except it’s from your power suppliers for whatever share of their output you acquire. But Scope 3 is a very different beast. It’s all the emissions from all the people you bought stuff from, plus all the emissions from all the people who bought your products. All of them. Every single one. Even your kid’s lemonade stand. And all based on pseudo-scientific “accounting and reporting standards” that sound good, make work, generate money and are no use in the real world.

Here we must again cite Leonard Read’s 1958 classic “I, Pencil”, a demonstration even from a simpler era when people used pencils not AI that tracing out all the steps involved in making things, was inherently a transcomputable and never-ending quest. Thus, the pencil tells the reader, “not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.” Take any part of it: the wood, the paint, the eraser, the graphite, and you touch a global supply chain of near infinite complexity. Among a great many other things, that:

“My bit of metal – the ferrule – is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.”

And to explain who made the coffee and shoes and razor blades for the miners, and who produced the fuel for the ships that carried these goods about, and who made the machine tools to create sheet brass, and on and on, would defy any central planner even before they got to the problem that all these people in turn used pencils (we said it was 1958). Which is why after an initial burst of idealism Soviet Five-Year Plans were essentially reduced to replicating last year’s plan and adding a few percent.

Now imagine trying to track all the carbon emissions. Because it’s what Scope 3 aims to do as if it were a mere detail.

Incidentally Soviet planners from the 1960s on into the 1980s actually thought that more powerful computers would overcome this problem, being unclear on the concept of “transcomputable” particularly as it applied to systems with feedback loops. Then the USSR done died. But not this hope.

Thus Heatmap insists that it can be done with their handy guide, which “lays out a four-step playbook for closing the gap between scope 3 commitments and measurable supply chain progress, using domain-specialized sustainability AI” and from whose three “What you’ll learn” gems the first is:

“How to move from spend-based estimates to product-level emissions data in hours – with AI-powered material mapping and multi-agent validation”

Oooh. AI-powered. Domain-specialized no less. And multi-agent validation. We suppose it beats getting it all from Agent 86. But not by much because the fantasy of measuring all the carbon outputs from all your inputs relies on the fantasy of measuring all your inputs and you can’t.

In a market economy, a real one, you don’t have to. As Read also said, as long as you know the price you must pay for the immediate inputs, how to assemble them into outputs, and the price you can get for those outputs, you can tell whether a purchase is rational. But if you have to know more than you can, you’re sunk. Especially if you don’t know you can’t.

Welcome to the wonderful world of carbon accounting. Do not mistake it for the real kind of accounting though.

Or indeed the government kind, as Lorrie Goldstein wrote in early October in the Calgary Sun that:

“We’ll never know the total cost Canadians paid to fund former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s failed climate change policies that Prime Minister Mark Carney has largely abandoned. That’s because in addition to the upfront costs, there were the lost opportunity costs caused by putting a damper on the expansion of Canada’s oil and natural gas sectors for a decade.”

Even the upfront costs are a bit of a mystery, being spread over 149 federal agencies and supplemented, contradicted or otherwise impinged on by 364 provincial and territorial programs. The downside is impossible to estimate. And so are the results, other than the incineration of over half a billion dollars of public money… not counting municipal follies. Now imagine trying to put a dollar value on the carbon emissions prevented via the bad weather supposedly prevented worldwide. It simply can’t be done, even for part of the public sector in one country. It certainly can’t be done for the entire private economy of the globe. Not with all the pencils in the world, or all the computers. Though at least with the latter you can program in the answer you want and get it back out.

Oh, in a related story, and an incomprehensible one for related reasons, Bloomberg Green warns that in addition to using way too much energy and way too much water, AI data centres use way too much water:

“Data center developers have started touting new technologies that slash the amount of water needed to cool hot-running servers in drought-stressed places like Arizona. Those efforts, though, are not addressing the vast majority of the water consumed by the AI buildout. Miles away from multiplying data centers, power plants are now consuming enormous volumes of water to generate the electricity required to run artificial intelligence, including those more efficient cooling systems.”

What, are they creating hydro dams? The story, amazingly, doesn’t say, while thundering that:

“New research indicates that such indirect water consumption is rapidly growing. In a recent paper, University of Michigan researchers estimated water used offsite would boost the total annual consumption of three large AI data centers planned for the state by 14 billion gallons.”

Following the links, we eventually learned from a different branch of Bloomberg that everything has costs:

“Generating the electricity used by data centers consumed another 211 billion gallons in 2023 – about 12 times the amount data centers consumed directly. That’s because power plants fueled by fossil fuels, much like data centers, require water for cooling. Nuclear, geothermal and hydropower sources of electricity also consume varying amounts of water; solar and wind sources use little or none.”

It seems the water evaporates and then leaves the solar system or something. (That something being falls back to Earth and reenters the hydrological cycle.) But why stop there?

Don’t data centre workers drink water? And then… well, never mind because it’s disgusting. And don’t the people who sell them food drink water? And mix it with antifreeze in their radiators? And water their lawns? There’s no telling where it might stop. Or whether.

P.S. If carbon accounting did work they might not like it. Tammy Nemeth recently chortled “Imagine my surprise this morning when I read “climate correspondent” Chris Hatch’s Zero Carbon newsletter grouching that emissions from Canada’s oilsands are ‘rounding errors’ in the grander scheme of global emissions.” And what if people realized their own emissions didn’t make a ding dang bit of difference even if human CO2 were causing bad weather? There’d be a run on the carbon bank.

The author list includes some familiar names if in some cases from a surprising profession: University of Alabama climatologists John Christy and Roy Spencer, but also University of Guelph and Michigan State University economists Ross McKitrick and Timothy Vogelsang. So why economists? Because answering the question requires statistical tools developed in the econometric literature.

To follow the issue requires keeping track of many things that sound alike. For instance tropics (the lowest latitudes) and troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere), especially as here we are concerned with the troposphere over the tropics.

We are also concerned with warming trends at the surface and at every layer of the atmosphere as you go up through the troposphere, in both models and the real world. Models say that the warming aloft should be larger than at the surface by some fixed ratio, generally assumed to be about 1.4:1. So if greenhouse gases cause 0.1 degrees C warming per decade at the surface, and as you go higher the warming gets amplified by a factor of about 1.4, you’d expect to see about 0.14 degrees C per decade in the mid-troposphere, if the surface warming were 0.2C you’d expect 0.28 in the mid-troposphere, if 0.3 then 0.42 and so on… if the models are right.

It has already been shown that they’re not in one key way. Actual observations show less amplification, with a ratio more like 1.1 than 1.4. The question is whether that difference is “statistically significant” or not. The world being a complicated place, mathematicians and especially those in the statistical branch of mathematics have devoted a lot of time and though to the question of how to separate a meaningful difference from random fluctuation, aka “signal” from “noise.” And of course if that difference in ratios is within the range of random fluctuation, the modelers can use the feeble dodge that while they’re wrong they’re not “significantly” wrong and maybe the gap is merely due to “noise” in the complicated climate system.

Oddly enough, considering how old the science of statistical analysis is and how important in many real-world areas like insurance, the technique for figuring out whether two trend ratios are significantly different was only recently developed by Professor Vogelsang. He was working in the econometric field, but as this kind of robust mathematical technique works on data generally not just economic data, he now applies it to the tropical troposphere problem in this study. And the result of his elegant method is anything but pretty.

The authors compared trend ratios (warming aloft to warming at the surface) between observations and models, more specifically from five different observational data sets versus those from 39 different climate models. In the vast majority of cases, individual models show too much amplification of warming at a statistically significant level, and so do the models taken together as a group. So the excuse for excess warming in models, already feeble, has the added disadvantage of being wrong. It’s not the case that the models get the abstract physics of amplification right and merely bungle the real-world surface temperature. They get both wrong.

The authors then discuss why it might be happening, again from a technical point of view. And it’s not simply the case that some models’ Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, their belief in the absolute amount of warming in degrees caused by any given relative doubling of atmospheric CO2, is too high, although that error is certainly a problem. But here, the study claims, something more specific is going wrong: the models inject too much moisture in the tropical troposphere in response to warming, compared to what happens the real atmosphere.

It’s a revealing flaw because water vapour feedback is a key driver of warming in models. What far too many alarmists and journalists do not grasp about the allegedly “simple” physics of the alleged “greenhouse effect” is that CO2 by itself does not warm very much. H2O is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, and a key assumption rather than demonstration of the orthodox “Enhanced CO2 Effect” hypothesis is that the small amount of warming caused by CO2 directly leads the atmosphere to absorb more H2O thus amplifying the effect. And if it’s not true as a general rule, the whole hypothesis falls apart.

It’s apparently not true in this specific case. And therefore, as an example of the general issue, by allowing too much water vapour to accumulate the models overpredict the tropical troposphere response to a little carbon dioxide-induced warming. So they have the physics wrong as well as the facts. Not a good look.

Of course if the study had shown that only a few models got the amplification rate wrong while the majority got it right, we would chalk it up to minor errors in the weakest models. But in this case, as in the tropical troposphere studies more generally, almost all the models get it wrong, and the only ones that look approximately correct have low sensitivity.

If we confined our attention to those models we’d conclude climate warming is not a big problem and not worth sacrificing our economic future over. Which, in fact, is what we conclude.

The holiday reference is, of course, a nod to the origins of the weather phenomenon’s name, which is Spanish for “little boy”. And not just any little boy in this case but the Christ child, reflecting the tradition that every few years warm winds would blow over the South American coast at Christmas time, offering a pleasant break from the normal freezing and storms, for which the locals were grateful to God because in those pre-enlightenment days warm weather was considered a blessing, whereas now we know better.

Or do we? In the topsy-turvy world of alarmism warm winters are now once again a blessing, this time for alarmists who want to keep the public in a state of perpetual alarm. So a premature fizzling of El Niño is like a lump of coal in the stocking of the greens. And it’s what is going on. Have they been naughty in how they handle data or something?

So it seems. Mass shows the SST profile for the Nino 4 region, the western reach of the tropical Pacific:

After peaking in June they rapidly tapered off and went below normal by mid-September. Meanwhile NOAA is predicting the centre of the El Niño region, called Niño 3.4, will collapse quickly in the early winter, reaching neutral conditions by April or May:

But Mass also points out that El Niño forecasts are very uncertain including these latest ones. Still, the experts should have finalized their forecasts for winter 2027 by sometime in late summer 2027. The only thing they will agree on before then is that whatever happens it was your fault.

As Heatmap observed on September 15, “Grain Trains Pained by Diesel Strain”. And we add plain to anyone with a brain. Which might exclude them, as they added:

“The average fuel surcharge for grain shipments on U.S. railways more than doubled over the past year, in the latest sign of how soaring energy prices will spur inflation of food costs.”

Riiiight. And you’ve been hoping to limit supplies of and raise prices of diesel for years expecting… what? As that piece continued:

“House Democrats are out with their first new climate agenda since the Green New Deal’s glory days of 2020. This time, however, it’s more of what the top Democrat behind the proposal called ‘a workable plan for long term economic and job growth’ than an emissions-cutting blitz.”

Gosh. Wonder why? Could it be that contrary to their expectations, but in line with predictions from sensible people, raising the cost of energy would make people poorer not richer? Including Axios tugging at the heartstrings with:

“The Iran war is sending diesel costs higher as many school districts are already grappling with bus driver shortages, Axios’ Josephine Walker reports. That’s a double whammy leading to missed breakfasts, late classes and fewer school activities. The big picture: Districts are consolidating routes and cutting trips to save money and manage shortages.”

OK. But what did you think would happen if carbon taxes, offsets and the whole regulatory and taxing panoply were brought into force precisely to force people to burn less diesel? D’oh. As the Wall Street Journal wrote “Soaring diesel prices driven by the U.S. conflict with Iran are rippling through a consumer economy that runs on fuel.” But at least they weren’t surprised by the connections. A lot of people apparently were, having ignored the old warning to be careful what you wish for.

We observed above that Trump had managed what the alarmists could not, to increase the cost of hydrocarbon fuel dramatically. Though as Breitbart Business Digest rightly observes, diesel prices while painfully high are not at a record level once you adjust for inflation. But Trump’s fervent green opponents had already managed, though they deny it, to increase overall fuel costs by forcing the substitution of expensive alternatives for affordable oil, gas and yes coal. And it turns out that it was bad not good too.

Thus, for instance, the Washington Times writes that “Massachusetts governor shifts green-energy stance to face voters stuck with big gas, electric bills”. And while it is easy to criticize politicians for changing their positions, and for how they do it, including denying the obvious with profound and committed insincerity, the key fact is that Gov. Maura Healey:

“facing a rising fury about the high cost of heat and electricity as she runs for a second term, took an extraordinary step. She asked the Department of Energy to expedite approval of a natural gas pipeline expansion project in the state. The move marked a dramatic pivot from the governor’s staunch opposition to increasing the use of fossil fuels in the state’s energy mix. Just a few years ago, Ms. Healey wagged her finger and proudly boasted of her role in blocking two natural gas pipeline projects while serving as the state’s attorney general. That move, which contributed to residents paying much higher prices for natural gas imported from overseas, has become a top campaign talking point for her Republican opponent, former medical-device executive Mike Minogue.”

As the Wall Street Journal put it: “Add Gov. Healey to the list of Democrats mugged by energy reality.”

Oh well. If disgruntled unmugged progressives can no longer vote for Ms. Healey, they can turn to President Trump, who is still denying that he had anything important to do with rising diesel costs, saying their record levels were “mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine war, not Iran” and would now come down because he had made an art of the deal where Russia and Ukraine would not attack one another’s “energy targets” though neither they nor anyone else seems aware of it except Mark Carney in one of his obsequious moods.

Then Trump made some sort of unilateral and bizarre deal with Russia to cement his reputation as unscrupulous as well as short-sighted. Not that Europeans were not desperately buying all the Russian LNG they could while slagging Trump and standing with Ukraine rhetorically (“On their way into their meeting, the EU’s foreign ministers remained united in their insistence that increasing pressure on Moscow was the only way forward”), thus cementing their reputation as unscrupulous as well as hypocritical and short-sighted. And to think our enemies consider the West decadent, self-indulgent and weak-willed.

Actually one person who is sort of enjoying the irony is Robinson Meyer over at Heatmap, a frequent target of our critiques. On Sept. 17, he wrote:

“Back in March of last year, I coined the phrase ‘Degrowth Donald’ to describe President Donald Trump’s accidental environmental impact. Trump might say that climate change was a ‘hoax’ or ‘scam,’ I said. But when you looked at his actions, a different set of beliefs emerged. He imposed a 10% tax on Canadian oil – a far more effective deterrent on consuming Albertan crude than a decade of protests against Keystone XL. He taxed foreign car imports and levied new tariffs on single-family-home building materials. You could say he had, I don’t know, rhubarb politics – a MAGA red stalk erupting in big green leaves. Of course, Trump’s actual environmental politics are far more complicated. He has declared war on wind energy and gutted greenhouse gas rules.”

Normally conservatives are at least somewhat wary of the “Law of unintended consequences” because they doubt human omnipotence and understand incentives. But Donald Trump is not a normal conservative, to put it mildly. And normal conservatives still understand that what really matters is not what some politician said would result from their actions, or thought would, or hoped would. It is what was likely to result and what did.

Meanwhile Trump also had the pseudo-inspiration to allow the “tax-free dyed diesel that is normally reserved for off-road use in vehicles such as combines and tractors” to be used for trucks and for farmers on roads, on the theory that while it’s bad to have tax-free diesel it’s also good if the government panics.

Of course Scientific Communism, unaware that everyone has decided high fuel costs are bad, weighed in against deregulation of anything, emailing on Sept. 29 that:

“The Trump administration announced plans to roll back fuel regulations, lowering the number of miles per gallon cars must achieve. It could be a disaster for the environment, experts say. | 2 min read”

And two minutes well-wasted, despite the experts who say, since if prices are high people will change their behaviour to reduce use. Duh. (Also, the Biden restrictions were a subdolous attempt to force people to buy EVs not a superfluous attempt to make ICE cars more efficient.) Even Bloomberg Green seems to get it, hailing people buying more minivans and fewer SUVs as fuel prices rise. But of course it’s because most activists don’t understand this basic point that they wanted higher prices and thought they wouldn’t hurt. Although contradictorily they wanted them to cause people to be able to afford less fuel. Apparently they thought we didn’t need fuel. Which brings us back to Roger Pielke Jr.

As he further observes in the piece we started with, Trump had run into what he called “the iron law of climate policy” a decade and a half ago:

“The iron law of climate policy is immutable. It means that substantially increasing the costs of energy, which supports every aspect of modern life, is off the table as a policy option for achieving deep decarbonization. That goes for formal pricing instruments as well as so-called ‘shadow’ instruments such as efforts to limit supply of energy resources in hopes of driving up prices.”

Alas, he underestimated the capacity of politicians to do disastrously dumb stuff by mistake, and of advocates to advocate it in culpable ignorance of the probable or certain effects. So the fact that it wasn’t a rational policy option had little bearing on whether it would be proposed anyway, happen anyway, and leave its proponents dismayed by its disastrous results. And as Doomberg pointed out, the impact is disastrous, including contributing to recent menacing unrest in France.

How did so many people not know that making life unaffordable would prove upsetting, and rightly so? And what else don’t they know?

Apparently the film cost almost $300 million to make and promote. But is unlikely to earn $100 million of which the theatres get half. And as Breitbart sneered:

“Who was this movie made for? Who’s the audience for an ugly-looking movie that uglies up a major American movie star in a movie trailer where everyone’s using their outdoor voice in the most obnoxious and smug way imaginable?”

A fair question. And the answer seems to be the imaginary public so committed to the cause that they don’t care if a movie is good as long as it’s well-meaning.

Hence the New York Times “The Morning” chide-pleaded:

“The Tom Cruise film ‘Digger’ bombed at the box office. David Gelles, host of our climate newsletter, says it should nonetheless be recognized for its go-for-broke attempt to dramatize the catastrophic effects of climate change.”

As one supposes with Soviet cinema, where you weren’t meant to care if a biographical trilogy on Lenin was poorly scripted, badly acted, feebly edited and unendurably protracted since it praised Lenin.

So what is Gelles’ argument? Um it’s:

“‘Digger,’ the new film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu starring Tom Cruise, has drawn mostly savage reviews. Critics have pounced on the writing, the acting, the production, the structure. Every aspect of it. But whatever you think of ‘Digger,’ one thing about it can’t be ignored: It is a climate movie.”

As one might say of Plan 9 from Outer Space: “It is a horror movie.” And get the reply “Yes, but it’s not Psycho.” But where Plan 9 was made on a shoestring by a director who was washed up without ever having been successful and later turned to “sexploitation” horror-porn, and featured footage from a burned-out Bela Lugosi shot for a totally different project, this one’s by a major studio with a huge action star. Indeed, as Gelles adds, as if it made it better not worse:

“In fact, ‘Digger’ is one of the biggest-budget, widest-release, starriest pieces of climate media ever made.”

So what’s their excuse? For him it’s left-wing propaganda, that’s what:

“Because despite whatever else is going on with the film, ‘Digger’ is one of the most audacious attempts yet to communicate the causes of global warming, its potentially catastrophic effects and who is to blame.”

Far from being audacious, climate doom propaganda is so trendy critics have assumed Cruise chose the storyline to boost his chances at finally winning an Oscar. In the wake of Al Gore’s An Inaccurate Truth, thirty-plus years of IPCC reports, billions of dollars of activism and a string of climate finger-wagging snoozefests the only audacious thing is claiming the world needs to hear more about it. Yes, somehow Cruise teamed up with a director who holds just that view. Gelles quotes the director that back in 2015:

“Greenland was not in the conversation; methane was not in the mainstream language of the media. Now, methane is one of the biggest monsters ever.”

Attack of the Giant Methane! Or perhaps Heroic Little Sisters of the Mongolian Grassland or The Seven Brave Tractor Drivers. Though if you were to, say, do an online search for Greenland and climate you would not find that the place was terra incognita or indicta back then or that methane was a hidden gas. (For instance here’s NOAA from Dec. 11 2015: “Surface melting affected more than half of Greenland Ice Sheet in 2015” and “If the Greenland Ice Sheet were to melt away completely, ocean level would rise roughly 23 feet (7 meters). So scientists have good reason to watch Greenland melt closely.” And here’s the start of a paper in Ecosystem Health and Sustainability from March 16 2015: “Greenhouse gas (GHG)-induced climate change is among the most pressing sustainability challenges facing humanity today, posing serious risks for ecosystem health. Methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are the two most important GHGs after carbon dioxide”.)

What Gelles calls “climate media” is a singularly costly and dud-filled genre. For instance Don’t Look Up or The Day After Tomorrow, both with big budgets, a chichi Hollywood A-list cast, and gall to spare. Of the latter Gelles writes:

“‘The Day After Tomorrow,’ from 2004, imagined what might happen when the conveyor belt of ocean currents that carries warm water toward Northern Europe falters. (Spoiler alert: The Northern Hemisphere is plunged into a new ice age overnight.) When ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ came out, that scenario was squarely in the realm of science fiction. But today, scientists are mounting an urgent effort to understand just how fast those currents, known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC, are changing, and whether a rapid change in Europe’s climate could occur this century.”

Unless it doesn’t. (And if you care about facts, AMOC scaremongering was as shrill in 2015 as today, and as speculative.) But apparently if you’re in the climate cult, even a terrible film saying all the same stuff again is an instant classic because it says all the same stuff again. Oh, and Gelles is happy because:

“More climate films are on the way, including ‘A Statement’ this fall. The film, starring Paul Rudd and Paul Giamatti, dramatizes a real-life 1980 meeting in Florida at which 20 experts discussed what to do about global warming. Nearly half a century after that meeting, the world is still trying to coordinate an effective response.”

Which you might think would itself be a satire, except satire can’t keep up. Including with:

“‘This film is a disaster movie,’ Iñárritu said of ‘Digger.’ ‘But the disaster is us.’”

Yes. You as in filmmakers who created this movie disaster. And as George Orwell said long ago, “ALL ART is propaganda but not all propaganda is art.”

The cross-town New York Sun certainly wasn’t buying this clunky effort:

“The complete commercial failure of ‘Digger,’ Tom Cruise’s biggest flop in two decades and potentially of all time, can be ascribed to several factors. It is a difficult arthouse film, like most of its director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s work, masquerading as a laugh-out-loud mainstream comedy. Imagine Tarkovsky’s ‘The Sacrifice’ coming on like Ben Stiller’s ‘Tropic Thunder,’ and you have an idea of how total the gap between audience expectations engendered by the early marketing and the finished product is.”

If anything, the whole production team were invoking Conquest’s Second Law that the best way to explain the behaviour of any large bureaucratic organization is to assume that it’s secretly controlled by a cabal of its enemies. Indeed, the Sun added:

“It is an extraordinary exercise in wrong-footing viewers, so much so that there is a valid argument to be made that around 80% of the film is deliberately bad, in terms of the OTT performances, clunky dialogue, and headache-inducing thematic assault on various social sacred cows. This, naturally, makes it neither a good film nor, as it turns out, a successful one.”

Still, if you missed Leonardo DiCaprio’s trite Before the Flood, which unsurprisingly “received mostly positive reviews from critics” despite being wildly inaccurate, including that as Wikipedia says “The film covers effects of climate change in various regions of the world” whereas climate change is a series of effects not a cause, you can watch this film and pine for the clarity and uplift of Ingmar Bergman.

We won’t give a plot spoiler, not least because after the Sun did we were too confused to be in any position to and we’re certainly not about to pay to see it in hopes of finding out. But we will mention that this last Warner Bros. production before the merger with Paramount to form “Skydance” (do not try this at home) was such a mess, the film and the marketing, that on the way out Warner disposed of both its “visionary chairs”.

That Hollywood has lost its way, including Disney, is not news. The more woke they get, the less people like their films. As Breitbart also suggested:

“Maybe make movies for Normal People? Just an idea.”

The problem is, they think they are.

They’re having a hard time partly because Peltola is half-indigenous and therefore half-untouchable. (And not in the bad Indian caste system way.) And also partly because she’s a Democrat in a red state and therefore in the finest traditional of impartially left-wing media must be helped to win. Hence the teaser’s “Here’s a look at Peltola’s path to Washington.” Do not look for them to explore her GOP opponent’s path.

To their credit, they do deal with the widespread impression that she has issues with her temper, her tendency not to show up for work, and staff turnover. On which we will merely say that if so she is not the first person to be different (and worse) in private, nor the first politician. We do not offer it as an excuse, merely a comment that humans are complicated and often in deeply flawed ways. But as usual we prefer to focus on ideas so let us look instead at how her politics baffles the Times:

“Her politics are complicated, too, reflecting the idiosyncrasies of her state: She is pro-gun, pro-oil and pro-gas – but also pro-environment and especially pro-fish. And she is, at root, a person whose people’s way of life is dying after decades of disruption to salmon fishing, the cascading consequences of climate change, corporate excess and government restrictions. There are fewer fish and more limits on fishing. People smile, but grievance stews.”

It’s a revealing passage… not about her politics, but about the Times. Including the tendency to romanticize the ways of the ancestors, and the fact that with so many clear and direct reasons for a decline in fisheries they have to throw in the climate bogey ruining streams or whatever it’s doing. The thing about “her people’s way of life” is particular odd, unless you are versed in the complexities of identity politics, because her dad was a white guy from Nebraska which may like much of the world be facing struggles and disruption. But apparently if you’re half-aboriginal you’re entirely aboriginal. Thus Republican colleague, now Senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski described her as “a warm, positive, smart and authentic Yup’ik woman”. Not, be it noted “some Nebraskan”.

Why the Times would then be baffled that she was in favour of guns, resource development and a kind of Davey Crockett style is odd. Among other things, aboriginals are famous for hunting which is tricky without weapons. Of course purists might say they should use traditional ones not European firearms, but it’s a view more popular in universities than hunting camps. Instead the Times writes that in the 2010s, as she took a break from public office while serving on a City Council then becoming a lobbyist, before serving as Executive Director of “the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, an intermediary between Alaska Natives and the outside agencies establishing and enforcing the rules and regulations” and writing “Like nearly everyone raised on the Kuskokwim, I am made of fish,” in its 2020 annual report:

“the fish crisis mostly kept getting worse. The Yup’iks of the Kuskokwim couldn’t fish the way their people had fished for thousands of years. In an attempt at conservation, state and federal restrictions now determined when, how and how much they could fish, a scenario utterly counter to their culture of subsistence, severing the rhythms of generations and upending their relationship with the river and the salmon.”

Ah, the wisdom of the elders. If only others had it. But of course “the way their people had fished for thousands of years” was with bone or wooden hooks wearing animal skins without motorboats, firearms, flashlights, Gore Tex or any of that stuff so it’s all a bit of a western liberal fantasy. As is the idea that you could let people use all these modern tools and they wouldn’t overfish because they are of a uniquely virtuous race genetically in harmony with nature.

We do not dwell on identity politics because we are obsessed with it. We dwell on them because the Times is:

“To succeed statewide here, said John-Henry Heckendorn, an Anchorage-based Democratic strategist, a Democrat must assemble a convoluted coalition almost at odds with itself – Natives and not, rural and not, commercial fishermen and subsistence fishermen, on and on. ‘Mary’s political talent,’ he said, ‘has been her ability to inhabit those tensions.’”

But why should there be “tensions” between different races? Why can’t people live in a city and love nature, or live in the country and value urban amenities? Why for that matter can’t “commercial” fishermen, apparently code for “white people”, have similar interests with “subsistence” fishermen, code for “aboriginals” in stuff like, oh, say, preserving fisheries.

Well, see:

“She inhabits those tensions because she is born of those tensions. Ms. Peltola is Alaska and Nebraska, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and the Lower 48, Yup’ik collectivism and American individualism. Being ‘double’ can be an advantage, she says, and she is not wrong. It also, though, can be a source of some untenable tug.”

Ah yes, aboriginal collectivism. The red red man, one cannot say but can apparently think, before writing tortured prose like “some untenable tug”.

Incidentally the piece also writes that in 1998:

“Then known as Mary Sattler, she campaigned for the State House as a Democrat, prioritizing would-be voters in villages. ‘Villagers say Sattler is a kass’amirteq, meaning someone who acts like a white person,’ a reporter from The Anchorage Daily News wrote that August. Her campaign manager, who spoke better Yup’ik than she did, doubled as her interpreter.”

Despite which, and having gone to school in Pennsylvania and Colorado, and being praised by a friend as “doing the things that I would traditionally put in the male category” like, um, driving a boat:

“As a college student, she was the runner-up for the Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics in 1993 and then crowned Miss National Congress of American Indians in 1995, performing two Yup’ik dances and wearing a wolf-hair headdress when she won.”

Egad. Eskimo? It’s amazing the Times will even print the word.

Here it is worth noting that many people who, in a neutral and unbiased way, desperately want Democrats to win elections and liberalism to stop being a recipe for disaster and become a prescription for good government, have been trying for years to create a “Blue dog” kind of Democrat who is left-wing without being a divisive lunatic.

Think of The West Wing’s, President Josiah “Jed” Bartlett, a nice down-home name, who among other things had won a Nobel Prize in economics, Keynesian of course and developing-country-focused but not an overspending inflationary nitwit, was brilliant at chess, a devout Roman Catholic and not prone to messing with interns although Martin Sheen, who played Bartlett, “described the character as being drawn largely from Bill Clinton” according to Wikipedia.

Or think, if you have a long memory by modern standards, of Senator Sam Nunn, who represented Georgia in the Senate for 25 years as a Democrat “who often broke with his party on a host of social and economic issues”, received bipartisan praise on his retirement, and then tried to reestablish a bipartisan centrist position on foreign policy while his party galloped madly to the left instead, by now turning savagely on Israel. Nunn, predictably was active in the Coalition for a Democratic Majority inspired by “cold war liberal” Senator Henry Jackson (D WA 1953-83+) that also tried to keep the Democrats from going crazy left, many of whose members transitioned via neoconservatism to the Republican Party when the effort failed.

Then think of the New York Times, which is baffled that a person could be left-wing without being divisive, that they could be pro-gas and pro-environment, that they could be pro-gun and a MAGA nut.

By the way, in a classic piece of modern journalism, the piece winds up “This race, say independent analysts, could go either way.” Ah, the experts who say. But the big point is that the Times wants Democrats not to be weirdos, but if they find one who isn’t, they ask why they’re such a weirdo as not to be weird.

Or more precisely whatever they wrongly imagine has happened. The problem here, at least for them, being that natural disasters generally are not getting worse. As Roger Pielke Jr., in sharing “My Presentation on Disasters to the Financial Stability Board”, reminds us:

“One of the most common errors I come across in interpretation of trends in economic losses from extreme weather events is the misuse of economic loss data to infer trends in weather and climate events. Such errors are endemic. For instance, the authors of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) opened their report by claiming that NOAA’s ‘billion-dollar disasters’ tabulation showed an increase due to asset changes and changes in climate – without decomposing the role of each – explaining that in the 1980s the United States experienced one such disaster every four months, and today it experiences one every three weeks. The clear implication was that changes in climate were driving loss trends. That was simply false.”

Despite which even the Wall Street Journal, in its modestly-titled “The Future of Everything”, shrilled “Extreme Weather Is Everywhere Now – How to Prepare Your Home”. Et tu, Wsje?

Et id. It went on:

“Nor’easters, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and whatever this year’s super El Niño may bring to your corner of the world – is your home disaster-proof? No matter where you live, chances are climate preparation is worth considering, says Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy and sustainability expert who has studied U.S. climate resilience under a grant from NASA.”

Climate preparation. Climate resilience. Whatever happened to weather? Well, they say it got worse:

“She [Jaffe] was part of a team whose research shows that extreme heat and rainfall have already intensified in many parts of the U.S., and some of the next severe weather events are going to come in places that haven’t had such an event to date.”

Which is quite something. And that something is “lucrative” given such grants, even though actual data do not support the existence of such trends no matter how much you want them to be. (For instance their advice includes “Bonus points for an address higher on a hill, where flood risk is mitigated” but not the observation that “Head for the hills” is an old expression because floods are old news.) As it’s also quite something that El Niño is at once the excuse for the promised constant worsening of Atlantic hurricanes not happening, and proof that climate change is ruining the weather even while improving it.

Now you may think we are attributing ghoulish glee to people who are only concerned and sympathetic. But their rhetoric rather gives them away. The Times, for instance, said “Hurricane Isaias was gathering strength as it barreled toward the Gulf Coast on Thursday” and spoke of “a scenario that would bring potentially damaging conditions along the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.”

They it weighed in on “Here’s how Hurricane Isaias exploded in intensity in a few hours.” Exploded. Barreled. Devastating three states:

“Hurricane Isaias surged into Category 3… a remarkable increase in strength… The phenomenon of a storm growing so powerful so quickly is known to meteorologists as rapid intensification.”

Basically what they’ve been waiting for all season with dour expressions as things stayed calm and safe. (They were also apparently enjoying their nation’s supposed failure in the Iran War.) Though again as noted below, Isaias evidently did not make landfall as a mighty 3 or even a 2 despite tortured attempts to torque it.

Scientific American was a bit more responsible for once, admitting that “the Atlantic hurricane season has been historically quiet this year” before rushing out their alibi:

“That’s in no small part because of a strong, brewing El Niño, which typically dampens Atlantic hurricanes with unfavorable wind conditions. The region had seen no hurricanes form between June and September – an unparalleled dry spell.”

And it didn’t hail Isaias turning into Godzilla, writing instead that it was a “Category1”, the weakest:

“Officials officially upgraded Isaias’s status from a tropical storm to a hurricane – a storm with wind speeds at or above 74 mph (119 kph) – at 3:30 A.M. UTC on October 8.”

Moreover, with attention to the “how do you know” issue that’s far too rare in this kind of coverage, they also said:

“According to meteorologists, that’s the latest first hurricane since satellite tracking began. (Prior to that, a hurricane that didn’t make landfall could go unnoticed, making it hard to say if this is the latest-forming storm for the region ever.)”

Unfortunately they bungled it, because there’s no way that an unnoticed storm could steal its record even if someone had noticed it.

Meanwhile NBC emailed “BREAKING: Isaias becomes Category 3 hurricane as it approaches the Gulf Coast” only to have to report that in fact:

“Hurricane Isaias made landfall near Destin on the Florida Panhandle around 8:30 p.m. local time as a Category 2 storm with 105-mph sustained winds. The storm weakened in the hours ahead of landfall tonight and further weakened to a post-tropical cyclone as it moved inland. Isaias is the first hurricane of an unusually quiet Atlantic season.”

Especially as to repeat it didn’t actually hit land even as a 2. Still, on the plus side:

“As Isaias moves inland, across the country in Southern California, monster waves are mauling that area’s coast. The storm was sending 5-foot swells of tidal surge against the already-battered beach fronts.”

Yay! Death and doom!

Or not, since even Heatmap, whose morning newsletter starts with “Daily Conditions” that always describe bad weather to give the impression that it really is everywhere now and did not use to be, was reduced on Oct. 14 to:

“Hurricane Simon is lingering off Mexico’s coast as a new tropical depression that could form into a powerful storm begins gathering strength • Iceland has issued an orange-level warning – the notch just below the most severe – across the whole country ahead of an intense storm that could bring vicious winds and snow • The mountain areas surrounding Los Angeles are on red alert for wildfires throughout the rest of the week.”

The latter being the usual Santa Ana winds that have brought dangerous fire seasons for at least 500 years, before which observations are lacking. Though a New York Times writer assures us with regard to these long-understood winds and fire hazards that “as weather patterns change as a result of climate change, historical information can become less reliable as a predictor of the future.” Once again mistaking effect for cause. Plus a tropical depression being pretty depressing if you were hoping for Category 5s one after another. And winds and snow sounding more like winter than global heating.

As for El Niño, well, a bad one is bad. But not climate. In fact the worst of which we have any really credible record was in … 1877. And millions starved especially in India and China. Despite which Heatmap hollers climate:

“El Niño is a cyclical phenomenon, occurring when temperatures in a particular stretch of the Pacific Ocean rise half-a-degree Celsius above the average of the preceding 30 years. But there are signs these natural variations are happening less predictably because of climate change, and we know for sure that a warmer atmosphere makes the baseline for its impacts worse: king tides, Kelvin waves, and storm surge piggyback on top of rising sea levels to result in more severe coastal flooding and erosion. A warmer atmosphere also holds more water, which means more rain – perhaps 200% above normal – which, in turn, results in flooding and mudslides further inland, as well.”

So even if it’s not climate change it is, just as climate change is causing more hurricanes even if it’s not. (Oh, and that item resurrected “atmospheric rivers” just as we were starting to miss them.)

Given how bad weather can be, and usually has been, you’d think they’d be happy that all the Atlantic has had by mid-October is one that dropped to Category 2 before coming ashore and wilting. Even if it raises the question why they kept saying climate change was making hurricanes worse. And before that, during a hiatus from 2006 to 2017 in major ones making US landfall, that climate change was making them less severe due to “wind shear.” And before that when there were quite a few that climate change was making them worse.

Instead they drop the topic or change the subject when the facts are inconvenient, while giving themselves an out just in case 2027 sees a lively Atlantic hurricane season. As they would, and in which case they’ll do a really happy dance.

Despite waddling around looking comically unfit to survive in nature red in tooth and claw, penguins, with the very cool scientific name Sphenisciformes, actually flourish from the equator to the South Pole, with larger and thus better-insulated ones obviously being more common where it’s colder. It’s all part of the marvel of nature, including that having first developed the power of flight, which seems to us terrestrials like the A1 supreme deluxe way of avoiding being eaten, getting to food fast etc., some birds then chucked it to go back to running around but with fewer legs, like ostriches and emus but also kiwis and, in the good old terrifying days, the “terror birds” who ran up to 30 mph, stood up to 9 feet tall and “ripped the flesh from the body of other animals” and whose very name “Phorusrhacidae“ is already frightening.

Others even decided running was also not for the birds, and walking was barely tolerable, so they jumped back into the water from which their ancestors had emerged during the Devonian. And it worked. Indeed, speaking of penguins’ evolution, Wikipedia adds that:

“There was a great diversity of species in subantarctic regions, and at least one giant species in a region around 2,000 km south of the equator 35 mya, during the Late Eocene, a climate decidedly warmer than today.”

Warmer than today? Say it ain’t so! But it is. And a giant penguin, due to the fact that life likes warmth and struggles in cold. (There’s a reason Emperor Penguins are as lonely as they are hardy.) Now however we are doing them in. The NG article starts:

“In the storm-driven wilderness between South America’s southern cape and the frozen boundary of mainland Antarctica, the South Sandwich Islands form an isolated, crescent-shaped archipelago of rock and ice. Its rugged, northernmost isle, Zavodovski Island – where chinstraps and macaroni penguins blanket the hillsides that surround an active volcano – has held the title of the largest penguin colony on Earth.”

And we know what you’re thinking. If the place is bristling with penguins, they must have pooped away the snow long ago. Unless they all died, which apparently they did:

“as chinstrap penguins began facing steep decline across the Antarctic Peninsula starting in the 1980, scientists wondered whether this remote island was faring any better. Through an analysis combining aerial drone surveys and manual population counts, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered that in fewer than fifteen years, the island’s chinstrap population has plummeted by 63 percent – a loss of over half a million penguins.”

And not for climate biologists the boom-and-bust cycle we learned about back in ye day in high school biology. Heck no:

“Their findings, published today in the journal Current Biology, identifies the island as home to the fastest-declining chinstrap population in the world, with climate-driven losses documented continuously since 2011. The decline wipes out more than a quarter of the total penguin population on Zavodovski, ceding the island’s title of world’s largest penguin colony to Cape Adare in Antarctica’s Ross Sea.”

Note the phrase “climate-driven losses”. Since we don’t know what climate is driving or how it’s untestable. But it’s taking us with the penguins:

“The Southern Ocean is no stranger to loss. This news comes just six months after Emperor penguins and Antarctic fur seals were officially declared endangered with declining sea ice levels cited as a leading culprit. Acting as the planet’s primary climate buffer, the Southern Ocean absorbs nearly three-quarters of global ocean warming and a fifth of man-made carbon.”

Again, how you’d test any of those assertions is anyone’s guess, though whether they’re going to ask for and get grants to test them is a certain no. As it’s a certain yes that warming faster than yadda yadda:

“Below the surface, warm intermediate waters are melting the continental shelf, while deeper ocean layers in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea are warming up to five times faster than the global ocean average at equivalent depths – dismantling the frozen platforms that sustain Antarctic marine life.”

So we’re all going to die:

“‘The Southern Ocean is changing rapidly, more rapidly at the moment than anywhere else on the planet,’ says Peter Fretwell, a remote sensing expert for the BAS and co-author of the study. ‘What we’re seeing in Antarctica now is an early warning of what’s to come over the rest of the world.’”

What, dead penguins? Plus we thought the Canadian Arctic was warming faster than anywhere else except wherever any particular journalists lives or works. Though apparently the penguins haven’t stopped pooping just because they stopped living:

“On shore, they were met with pungent volcanic fumes and penguin guano. The island’s surrounding coastal features have names like Acrid Point, Stench Point, Reek Point, Pungent Point, and Noxious Bluff. While they found far fewer than expected chinstrap penguins on the island, the nearby population of macaroni penguins was growing; their numbers increased by around 28 percent between 2011 and 2016.”

Wait a minute. If climate is killing chinstraps, who stuck a feather in their beak and called it macaroni? Why aren’t they all dead? Ah, see:

“‘The area is transitioning into a sub-Antarctic state, so we’re losing the more maritime Antarctic chinstraps, and we’re gaining macaroni penguins because the ecosystem is getting more suitable for the warmer water species,’ says Norman Radcliffe, a seabird ecologist at BAS and the study’s lead author.”

And the science rigorously blames climate no matter what:

“The research team pinpointed the reason for chinstraps’ steep decline by systematically eliminating other potential culprits: The island has ample space for nesting, which means interspecies competition was unlikely. Local krill fishing is banned within the island’s Marine Protected Area, suggesting overfishing wasn’t eliminating penguin prey. And a 2016 volcanic eruption may have killed some of the chinstrap population, but did not alter the data showing a steady, decade-long decline. Instead, the study authors say the chronic drop points squarely to regional ocean warming and sea-ice loss – though questions remain about how off-site krill fishing along connected ocean currents might worsen the strain.”

See how it works? A volcano blew up their homes, and people are trawling their food massively. So all climate all the time:

“Long term, scientists expect climate change to reduce the region’s overall biodiversity.”

Even though climate change is an effect not a cause and the tropics have a lot more biodiversity than the poles above and below the water. Also forget all that silly evolutionary adaptation:

“Experts say Zavodovski’s chinstrap penguins are unlikely to seek out more habitable waters on mainland Antarctica. ‘A lot of people think that animals move south, but generally penguins are quite site-faithful, and they stay where they are,’ Fretwell explains.”

Just maybe because it’s a good site, despite booms and busts. But in any case and despite it all, here comes the dung of heat death from Phys.org which, remarkably, never manages to tell us what kind or kinds of penguins are doing the deed (and neither does the by-now-obligatory press release though the study itself, while vague, does allude to Gentoo and um what’s this Chinstraps and our online searches suggest some Adélies as well and maybe a few Emperors):

“Penguin poop is fertilizing snow algae blooms along the Antarctic Peninsula, feeding dense green algae patches along the coastline, a new study shows. These expanding stretches of green snow melt faster than clean, white snow, potentially speeding up the spread of snow- and ice-free areas of Antarctica. As temperatures rise across Antarctica, snow algae habitats are expanding along the coasts, darkening the surface and leading to even more warming and snowmelt. By tracking their poop across the snow, penguins are inadvertently supplying the algae with vital nutrients that keep the blooms green and make the melting effect even stronger.”

And as always it’s worse than it is. Including the job of collecting the stuff and telling it from red snow algae:

“requiring the team to get close to smelly bird droppings to gather algae-tinted snow in bags with ceramic spoons.”

But science marches on, and so do penguins and the climate change troll:

“As penguins waddle their way closer to the South Pole in response to changing conditions, there’s potential for guano-fertilized snow algae habitats to expand and spread their melt-enhancing effects over a larger area. But scientists’ projections of Antarctic melting don’t yet account for this phenomenon.”

Quite. Because nobody actually knows it’s happening so send more money as:

“more data is needed before guano-fueled greening can be added to snowmelt projections for the Antarctic Peninsula.”

Or not if it turns out penguins have always lived in Antarctica and they have always pooped, temperatures are not rising across Antarctica and so on. So just in case MSN rebellows a Daily Mail story recycling glacier doom:

“Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is even more dangerous than we thought: Study says sea levels could rise TWICE as much as previous estimates”.

And if a penguin poops on it, well… Just kidding. There are no penguin colonies on the Thwaites Glacier. We blame climate change.

P.S. In case you actually love science and don’t mistake it for politics, “Sphenisciformes” comes from the Greek for wedge-shaped (σφήν or phonetically sphḗn via σφηνίσκος or sphēnískos meaning small wedge) and the Latin for “shape”. And yes, it’s related to the early synapsid “Sphenacodon” which means “wedge point tooth”. So now you know.

Her (now late) husband went first. It began when they watched footage of “shrieking, baseball bat-wielding social justice warriors” on Evergreen College campus having a meltdown upon learning a professor disagreed with them. Baffled at how those students at institutions of supposed higher learning had instead been indoctrinated into an infantile victim mindset that left them so unstable and enraged, her husband began looking into issues on which they had previously accepted the progressive narrative and one after another began crumbling.

In response Margaret grew uneasy at him not the state of progressivism, and began researching how to deprogram her husband from what she thought was right-wing propaganda. But ideas have consequences, and in the process it hit her that “right-wing” now meant “liberal” and those in her tribe had become “illiberal”.

At that point she too began re-examining her beliefs and assumptions and in the process “recovered from menticide”. One belief after another crumbled, except the mighty fortress and last refuge of climate change. But eventually it too gave way to honest questioning. She saw the social structure that had come to resemble strict religion at its worst, with high priests, sacred texts, mandatory tithes, endless guilt and costly penance, and a distinct lack of charity including in of course seeking and finding heretics and skeptics to burn at the stake.

At this point she began doing real, probing research, delving into IPCC reports, NASA webpages and other authoritative sources. But she also looked into Climategate and saw what the high priests had been doing when they thought no one was looking. Learning about the greening effect of CO2 was another important revelation for her. And when she looked at what the greenest politicians had in store for the public she saw the same lockdowns, deprivation and social control they tried to achieve using Covid. A lifelong green progressive realized she’d been had, and discovered liberalism and science only by re-thinking all her assumptions, painful though the process was.

But the truth shall set you free and we hope that readers of the #Canary volume will find in it much truth and intellectual freedom.

Not that we are obliged to. If North Atlantic hurricanes specifically were getting more numerous and more severe the climate crowd would claim it as vindication for their prediction. Indeed they have done, and in a very peculiar fashion. Any time there is a severe North Atlantic hurricane they point to it as vindication, even if it’s in a year with completely normal storm numbers. It being North Atlantic hurricanes in particular not hurricanes worldwide. So they do claim to have made a prediction, though typically only after the phenomenon has taken place. But North Atlantic hurricane numbers are not going up, nor is intensity, and this year has been record-setting for its quietude.

OK, then. Maybe all the storms are in the Pacific. And yes, there have been typhoons there this year. According to the Colorado State University real time tropical cyclone tracker there have been 24 hurricanes there this year compared to the historical average of 20.6 for this time of year, including 17 major hurricanes compared to the historical average of 11.3, “Gotcha!” right? We’re all going to die? Woo hoo!

Except not really. Looking at the Roger Pielke Jr. Extreme Weather dashboard entry on tropical cyclones the global Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index, which adds up not just the number of cyclones around the world but the energy they pack, is up a tiny amount this year but shows a declining trend overall:

So whichever way we look at it, the hypothesis is falsified. Which matters in real science, though as so often the climate kind appears to be different.

You see, it started with a research ship named for Sir David Attenborough of, um, plunging walrus fame. Well, OK, a long and distinguished career as a science popularizer tainted by joining the climate cult and starting to twist evidence out of shape as so many in it do. And it seems the ship:

“was working near the Sorgenfri glacier in south-eastern Greenland when a kilometre-long wall of craggy, bulging ice collapsed into the fjord. The scientists on deck watched in stunned silence as an estimated 18 million tonnes of ice slowly flipped over, sending up vast plumes of spray.”

Cool, huh? Wish you’d been there? Ah but nay. A harbinger of doom:

“Iceberg calving on this scale was once relatively rare – but it has become commonplace in recent years as Earth warms. And that acceleration could have catastrophic impacts that extend far beyond Greenland. It is weakening a system of ocean currents in the North Atlantic that is vital to societies in Europe and around the world.”

Bosh. Typical alarmist bosh. Three sentences, and three massive fatuities.

First, the ocean currents in the North Atlantic are not weakening. People thought they were until they discovered a flaw in the way it was measured… back in 2024. Second, it’s not news to say “could have” because, as we repeatedly retort, “unless it doesn’t”. (As we also complain that when drastic cooling is cited as an obvious consequence of drastic warming we are in the presence not of a scientific theory but of a cult.) Third, and most pertinent here, what possible data set could let them declare that “iceberg calving on this scale was once relatively rare”?

What do they know of iceberg calving off Greenland in 1700? In 1300? In 511 AD or 511 BC?

These questions, as so often in climate “journalism”, go unanswered because they go unasked. Instead we’re told of massive uncertainty that is secretly certainty, followed by:

“That is why an £81 million plan is now afoot to build an early warning system that could alert humanity if AMOC is nearing a dangerous tipping point. Data now being collected by the Attenborough research ship is core to that plan. ‘We might be committed to centuries of change without knowing it,’ said ocean scientist Paul Holland at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) as he prepared to set sail from the port of Harwich, UK, some weeks earlier. ‘We might be passing these tipping points without realising.’”

Again we are like someone beset by wasps, flapping and swiping as they swarm. For instance, if they don’t know they are committed to “centuries of change” they should swap their lab coats for dunce caps since climate has always changed, on a scale of centuries and longer, and fluctuated even over much shorter periods. Also this nonsense about “tipping points” because in the real world, a thing only tips once and then it has tipped over and is on its side. The whole metaphor is nonsense, and jump-scare nonsense.

As the actual plan-like object declares:

“A climate tipping point is a critical point in Earth’s climate system that, when crossed, can trigger large, irreversible changes. Major Earth systems risk crossing climate tipping points this century, potentially exposing half a billion people to flooding while threatening biodiversity and food security. Yet we have very little data on when, how, or whether these will happen.”

And again we might well contrast the constant yelling about hurtling toward tipping points, past them and so forth with this claim that we have “very little data” on when or how etc. Including such things as Scientific Alarmism’s “9 ‘boundaries’ keep Earth livable. We’ve breached 7 of them”. And of course if they still did real science, or just logic, you’d have to include that since neither they, their readers, the planet nor the audience are currently dead, the Earth must still be “livable” so those seven weren’t actually boundaries beyond which everything was laid waste.

In case you care, according to that story when the panic-mongers, sorry researchers in question at the “Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany” had:

“published the first Planetary Health Check in 2023, they found that human actions, from fossil fuel burning to excess fertilizer use, had pushed Earth past six of the nine boundaries. Last year we breached a seventh – ocean acidification.”

So the Earth was already unlivable in 2023 and became mega-unlivable in 2025 due to the oceans becoming too acidic for life despite being (a) still alkaline and (b) full of life like that other bit of our planet, the land. Still:

“Surpassing one of these limits isn’t a recipe for automatic doom, like flipping a switch. Rather ‘it’s like blood pressure,’ said Katherine Richardson, an Earth systems scientist at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the 2023 report, to Scientific American at the time of that report’s release.”

So it’s not a limit. Nobody with legitimate medical knowledge ever called blood pressure a limit nor will they. Which means the people calling these things boundaries are doing it for clickbait. And declaring us megadead on some and just recently deceased on others is pseudoscience.

Still, as we totter about like zombies still moving and even talking despite our recent demise or demises, and our looming ones, it’s worth pointing out that they’re digging in the wrong place. The “first 26 teams that will be funded within its five-year £81 million Forecasting Tipping Points programme” (and no, they don’t say what “it” refers to though it appears to be ARIA aka the British government Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or admit we deniers do not have all the money though they evidently have loads of it) have the job of looking for data. Whereas the problem is that they do not know what data would indicate that AMOC is about to join us in the rhetorical graveyard.

The press release explains that:

“The projects span three, deeply connected technical areas, united by a multiyear, coordinated field campaign across two parts of the Earth system that could cross tipping points in the next century: the Greenland Ice Sheet and Subpolar Gyre. The technical areas are:/ 1. The design and development of sensing systems in the ocean and cryosphere – for example Oshen, a UK-based startup, is trialling the deployment of hand-deployable, wind-propelled autonomous robots at sea to collect year-round data on critical ocean-atmosphere processes./ 2. The deployment of sensing systems in Greenland Ice Sheet and Subpolar Gyre – for example: Greenlandic research institute ASIAQ will deploy new robust climate monitoring stations in the previously inaccessible eastern coast of Greenland to help develop more comprehensive forecasting models./ 3. Unlocking the necessary computational methods to create and test early warning systems – for example: The University of Exeter is looking to improve early warning of tipping points, focusing on the subpolar gyre, by combining theoretical advances, AI, and a deeper understanding of the physical processes involved.”

And you might well ask how “new robust climate monitoring stations” in remote bits of Greenland will “help develop more comprehensive forecasting models”. Especially since the last bit is about “a deeper understanding of the physical processes involved” because at the moment they don’t understand currents so they don’t know what the data is telling them, if anything. Alas, they don’t know that they don’t know:

“‘In a similar way to how we use monitoring stations to detect and warn for tsunamis, we’re aiming to establish networks of climate monitoring systems to detect early signs of critical shifts in our climate.’ said Gemma Bale and Sarah Bohndiek, the Programme Directors co-leading the programme. ‘Through these systems, we can equip decision-makers with the data they need to confront the threat of abrupt climate change head on.’”

If only you knew what those early signs were this late in the day. And what would “data” do to help decision-makers “confront the threat of abrupt climate change head on” if anyone knew what that phrase meant either? They need information, a structuring of the bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion of data points, that relies on knowing what’s happening, why, how to stop it and what the climate “should” look like as opposed to the mess it currently is.

Seriously. The idea is to have politicians control ocean currents. On the plus side, they can’t. But it’s an amazing aspiration as well as a massive waste of time, money and brains. Especially as they’re going to try to collect more information about what’s happening now without having anything to compare it with, from how frequent iceberg calving has been in the last 12,000 years to why the AMOC shut down last time it didn’t.

As Wikipedia puts it about what appear to have been dramatic AMOC fluctuations during the last glaciation, “There is not yet a consensus explanation for why AMOC would have fluctuated so much, and only during this glacial period.” Nor are we certain it did, let alone why:

“The paleoclimate evidence is not currently strong enough to say whether the D-O events started with changes in the AMOC or whether the AMOC changed in response to another trigger”.

But it’s fun to watch an ice cliff go “Whoosh!” into the ocean and then read humanity’s obituary yet again. At least they seem to think so.

The Canadian government’s tendency to treat words as deeds is not unique. But it is certainly well-developed. Thus when you read “Atlantic Canadian companies tap into Europe’s growing wind energy market” you might well think someone had sold somebody something. But no. It’s just more wind of the oratorical sort:

“Atlantic Canada has long been an exporter of energy products. As the world shifts toward renewable sources, demand is growing not only for clean power, but also for the expertise behind it. From wind and marine energy to the technologies that support them, the region’s companies are developing innovative products and services for both domestic projects and export markets around the world. Today, the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, announced that nine Atlantic Canadian companies and energy sector organizations are taking part in WindEnergy Hamburg 2026. Participants include Waterford Energy Services Inc., which supports the construction, operation and maintenance of energy projects, and Eskasoni First Nation, a partner in the Truro Heights Community Wind Project.”

A junket to a conference. And what will happen there? More wind, of course, again rhetorical:

“Throughout the event, participating companies will connect with European buyers, suppliers, and investors, build new relationships, identify potential customers and partners, and pursue new commercial opportunities. They will also showcase their products and services to key decision-makers, raising Atlantic Canada’s profile in the European renewable energy sector. This comes as Atlantic Canada positions itself to play a larger role in the wind energy sector, with growing momentum in offshore wind development and clean energy exports driving new opportunities for companies across the entire supply chain. The Atlantic Energy Strategy, which has been referred to the Major Projects Office (MPO), is expected to drive demand for expertise in marine operations, engineering, environmental services, and project delivery across the region. By building relationships with global industry leaders and gaining insight into established European markets, Atlantic Canadian companies can strengthen their ability to compete for work both abroad and here at home.”

There’s that Major Projects Office again, tasked with saying a thing is good and should get a faster approval process we didn’t create yet, while basically failing to get anything from inbox to pseudo-outbox.

Incidentally, in the middle of all this it emerged that the Prime Minister’s smug assertion that we would suddenly not just meet our long-neglected NATO pledge of spending 2% of GDP on defence, but blast past it at scale and speed not seen in generations to 5%, was just revealed as utterly hollow by a Parliamentary Budget Office report. And the Parliamentary Budget Officer commented dryly that:

“I think it’s fair to say that the government’s plans in the next five years or over the next 10 years are still in formation. I think that it is also fair to say that there remain numerous ... kind of elements of that plan to be elaborated and set forth over this five-year period, let alone the 10-year period.”

In reporting this farce the National Post added:

“The Carney government has been criticized for not showing its work on its defence spending plans. Budget 2025 and the spring economic update from 2026 lacked any breakdown of its defence spending projections. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters more details will come on his government’s defence spending plans, although he provided no timeline.”

Indeed. Because it’s how they roll… their tongues.

They also leaped into committee, turning their new Defence Investment Agency “into a Crown corporation so that it will have a permanent structure and a clearer mandate and reporting path” because nothing creates rapid efficient decision-making like a new unaccountable bureaucratic entity:

“Government officials said Tuesday that the new Crown corporation will mean that it will be easier to recruit experts and structure contracts so that they’re more like private sector purchases and offer taxpayers better value.”

As for actually procuring gear, well:

“Officials emphasized the importance of buying Canadian and helping the domestic defence industry gaining greater access to capital…. the move will also mean the creation of a new cabinet post, the associate minister of national defence for procurement. The organization would also have its own board of directors, chief executive, employees and annual plan.”

Priorities, priorities, rhetoric, rhetoric.

So to return to the pipeline, as Menzies explained, the guy behind that Substack “who appears to spend his days doing what Parliamentary reporters should be doing – reading the fine print that fuels the Machinery of Government (MOG)” reposted someone else posting the entire text of the Prime Minister’s announcement in Fort McMurray (carefully chosen for maximum PR value due to its location in Alberta, its pivotal role in supporting our oil and gas industry, and its ghastly 2016 fire which was proof positive of man-made climate change until it turned out to be one of those things that happens periodically not the first in an endless series). And then that author “added valuable context”, specifically:

“I pulled the Canada Gazette notice to check what listing a pipeline under the Building Canada Act actually triggers. Adding Pacific Link to Schedule 1 (the statutory register of national-interest projects) is not an approval or a construction permit. Under subsection 5(1.1), listing only initiates an internal review by the Major Projects Office to draft project conditions, which the government confirms will take until September 1, 2027. As I tracked at Hansard Files (https://www.hansardfiles.ca/p/west-coast-oil-pipeline-route), the proposal still lacks an engineered route and cost structure. The announcement does not clear shovels; it starts a 12-month regulatory clock.”

It’s curious that during the 2025 election Carney promised to build “at a speed and scale not seen in generations”, and now he and his ministers applaud themselves for doing same having skipped over the messy bit where you actually do it.

For instance one recent press release using the phrase in self-congratulatory fashion actually referred to “investing” in the modernizing of an existing curling rink in Bathurst, New Brunswick, including insulating “its five-sheet curling facility” and if you believe nobody in this country has renovated a curling rink in less than, say, five years since World War II you too could serve in Carney’s cabinet or PR office. Even if this one was done in consultation with Indigenous partners and will help “ensure the facility can continue serving the community in a changing climate.” Take that, Alaska Highway. Or whatever their benchmark is.

This time the plan is somehow to draft tentative project conditions within a year. And many observers who ought to know better treat the making of the announcement as the same as the deed being done. Even Juno News, typically skeptical of big government, Carney’s Liberal Party and central Canadian clichés, gushed:

“West Coast Oil Pipeline officially fast-tracked as project gets national interest status/ Project officials say the Pacific Link pipeline could add up to $30 billion annually to Canada’s economy.”

Yeah. Unless it doesn’t. And when? Well um see:

“Listing Pacific Link under the Building Canada Act shifts Ottawa from considering whether the pipeline should proceed to an accelerated federal review focused on the conditions under which it can be built. ‘Today we’re ready to move forward for Albertans, for Canadians,’ Carney said Thursday in Fort McMurray after consultations with more than 130 Indigenous communities.”

We might add that in Canada, by deliberate government policy, even if you consult with more than 130 Indigenous communities (or even with the people in them, for those who dislike collectivism and identity politics) it just takes one to bring everything to a screeching halt. And yes, the latest greatest thing in identity politics is white socialists using aboriginals to paralyze development including the kind desperately needed in remote aboriginal communities.

In consequence of which the investment climate here is so bad, especially for energy projects involving any significant non-urban land, that the pipeline project in question won’t be built by the private sector and will instead rely almost entirely on government funding, private investors being too smart and far-sighted to fall for such things, while politicians who’ve spent a career asserting that governments are wise and visionary and capitalists short-sighted and dim rush in. Except for the rushing bit.

So it’s all fine and good that:

“The proposed pipeline would carry more than one million barrels of oil per day from Alberta to B.C.’s south coast, largely following the existing Trans Mountain corridor.”

But it won’t until it’s built. Which at the languid pace at which our government builds things rapidly means:

“Ottawa aims to finalize the project’s conditions by September 1, 2027, clearing the way for construction, with the pipeline targeted to begin operating in 2032-33.”

There’s that sluggish pace again. Since it appears currently to be 2026, it means the government is planning to take longer to build one pipeline than it took to win either World War. Talk about speeds not seen in generations.

Also, Juno said:

“Ottawa estimates the project will cost between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion, including contingencies.”

And of course their record on estimating costs is even more risible than on estimating timelines. Naturally we’ll all get rich, though:

“Ottawa projects the pipeline could generate more than $20 billion in annual GDP and create up to 140,000 jobs. Federal officials estimate broader benefits from higher oil prices could push the economic impact to as much as $30 billion annually.”

Could. Unless it doesn’t. For instance because not one major oil pipeline company was willing to take it on. Meanwhile Alberta’s allegedly conservative/libertarian premier Danielle Smith amplifies the Liberal propaganda:

“For Smith, Thursday’s announcement represents another major step toward construction. ‘Today sends a clear message,’ she said. ‘Canada is ready to build.’”

No. Canada is ready to bloviate and hold committee meetings to draft an agenda for a protocol to create conditions for a tentative framework for a memorandum on devising a structure for reviewing the writing non-binding project conditions.