Climate
May 28, 2026 — John Hinderaker
I think most people had already figured out that climate hysteria is a money-motivated scam by the time the U.N. threw in the towel on its most extreme forecasts. Lacking support at the federal level, climate fanatics are in retreat in the U.S., and around most of the world. This is largely due to the fact that observation–the ultimate criterion–consistently fails to verify the theories that are embodied in climate
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May 26, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Graham Greene designated his less serious fiction “entertainments,” though he eventually dispensed with the designation. One such “entertainment” was the thriller Ministry of Fear (1943, now with an introduction by Alan Furst), turned into the 1944 film of the same name directed by Fritz Lang. Greene’s novel comes to mind this morning in connection with the Brussels Signal daily newsletter Brussels Calling! From Brussels Calling! I learn that Spain has
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May 26, 2026 — Scott Johnson
I studied Gulliver’s Travels in Jeffrey Hart’s course on early eighteenth-century English literature, from Dryden through Pope. Hart was a great teacher and this was a great course. In Part III of the book Gulliver recounts his voyage to Laputa. Laputa is an island levitating in the sky. This is Gulliver’s description of the men he first encounters in Laputa when he climbs up to the island: At my alighting,
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April 1, 2026 — John Hinderaker
Hysteria about global warming stems from the fact that, as best one can estimate, the Earth’s average temperature has increased by around 1.1 degree C over the last century. Global temperatures have fluctuated widely in the past, and it has long been debated whether the current increase is anything unusual. At the Science of Climate Change, computer scientist Les Hatton recounts a relatively simple analysis that he conducted, using the
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February 23, 2026 — John Hinderaker
I have been following debates over global warming since the 1990s. In the early days, the oil companies defended themselves both by challenging the bad science underlying the global warming theory and by pointing out the benefits of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. At one time I had a VHS documentary called “The Greening of Planet Earth” on that topic. The benefits of CO2 are indisputable, as anyone who knows
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February 21, 2026 — John Hinderaker
The supposed “green” transition is the biggest boondoggle in human history. Bjorn Lomborg calculates the amount spent globally, to date, at $16 trillion: Climate campaigners tell you green is cheap It isn't Global green transition cost is now $16+ trillion, rising with over $2 trillion/year (2% of global GDP) 113x our spending to avoid hunger Still, fossil CO₂ emissions set another record last yearhttps://t.co/ypTLqfQ2Hq… pic.twitter.com/xHqj9eFUXi — Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) February
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February 13, 2026 — Scott Johnson
The good news is that the Trump administration has announced its repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding.” As Matthew Hennessey puts it in the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression newsletter this morning, the finding is the “2009 determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. It was the legal basis for most federal climate regulation, allowing Washington technocrats to treat carbon dioxide, methane and four other
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February 12, 2026 — John Hinderaker
Climate alarmist Michael Mann was for quite a few years the go-to “climate scientist” in the left-wing press. But the Associated Press’s sub silentio deletion of Mann from its story on the Trump administration’s revocation of the Obama administration’s CO2 endangerment finding suggests that Mann may have lost that status. The Associated Press is, of course, on the Democratic Party’s team on this issue. They are wrong, but that isn’t
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February 10, 2026 — John Hinderaker
The world’s “leaders” have been fulminating against fossil fuels for decades now. Not only that, they have been agreeing with one another, in a series of solemn pacts, to do away with oil and gas (also nuclear, for no apparent reason) and transition the world to wind and solar, in order to reduce CO2 emissions. And they have backed their pledges with money; more than $10 trillion has been spent
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February 9, 2026 — John Hinderaker
Global warming morphed into climate change so that liberals could complain about any inconvenient weather and blame it on free enterprise. Thus, we have the absurd situation where liberals claim that “climate change” causes both excessive heat and excessive cold, whichever happens to be occurring at the moment. This makes no sense. Saying that climate change causes warmer (or colder) weather is circular. It is like saying that my weight
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January 25, 2026 — John Hinderaker
The “green” movement is built on a foundation of lies. Climate change? Sure, the climate has been changing for millions of years. But Earth’s climate, over which we have little or no control, was politicized by, as much as anyone other than Al Gore, Michael Mann. Mann is the creator of the infamous “hockey stick” chart, showing Earth’s temperatures stable until the very recent future, and then spiking sharply upward.
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January 24, 2026 — Bill Glahn
It had escaped my attention that the current winter storm is named “Fern.” From the New York Post, Massive winter storm Fern’s icy blast grounds thousands of weekend flights, entire state warned to stay home for days. It turns out that the state is Texas. Scroll down to paragraph 12 where the Post reports, Conditions were forecast to be so bad in some areas, particularly those pounded by ice, that
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January 23, 2026 — Bill Glahn
From what I can discern from the latest weather forecasts, some two-thirds (66 percent) of America will be wiped off the maps by Monday morning. It reminds me of last fall’s hurricane hype, where not a single storm hit the continental U.S. From the Weather Channel, Massive Winter Storm With Damaging Ice In South, Heavy Snow From Texas To Northeast To Affect Over 230 Million Last I checked, the population
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January 22, 2026 — Bill Glahn
I first moved to Minnesota in 1995, and have spent many a cold winter there. But I never heard of the exploding trees. I am well aware of the trick with the exploding boiling water. This is a new one for me. From the U.K. Daily Mail, As a potentially historic winter storm prepares to slam the US, meteorologists have warned that conditions could become so brutal that trees could
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December 31, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Satellite records indicate that there was a sharp uptick in global temperatures in 2023, followed by a steep decline by 2025: Warmists were ecstatic over the 2023 increase, which they attributed to “climate change.” (It makes no sense to say that a change was caused by change, but put that aside for the moment.) As to the subsequent decline, they were almost entirely silent. It seemed obvious to me that
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November 3, 2025 — John Hinderaker
A week ago, Bill Gates released a long memo on climate that got a great deal of attention. He said more or less what critics like Bjorn Lomborg have been saying for a long time: sure, increased levels of carbon dioxide will tend to increase global temperatures to some extent. But the increase will be modest and will not have catastrophic consequences. Rather than impoverish the world in a futile
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October 22, 2025 — Scott Johnson
As I recall, John Rosenthal used to alert us to his writings on race and law, but it’s been a long while since we last heard from him. He has now forwarded us a link to his current Brussels Signal column “German government promotes ‘terrorist’ Antifa with ‘guides for Antifa thugs.’” He reports (links omitted): While some European countries have hastened to follow US President Donald Trump’s example in designating
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