This week, we take another direct look at the most sacred cow in climate orthodoxy: the CO₂ greenhouse effect. A trio of papers challenge not the symptoms but the central mechanism, asserting that not only is the greenhouse theory flawed, it is unphysical. That’s not rhetorical flourish; it’s thermodynamics. We also tour the solar system to ask: where exactly is this supposed greenhouse effect manifesting outside Earth? The answer is sobering. Meanwhile, Europe’s ESG agenda is in retreat, carbon capture dreams meet thermodynamic nightmares, and a rainforest nation becomes an oil superpower. Perhaps the only thing shrinking faster than climate logic is Nemo himself.
CHART OF THE WEEK
SCIENCE
IPCC misrepresentations: comments made by former IPCC contributors after cutting ties with the politicized body — so scientists no longer subject to professional repercussions.
IPCC scientist #31 - Dr Johannes Oerlemans: “The IPCC has become too political. Many scientists have not been able to resist the siren call of fame, research funding and meetings in exotic places that awaits them if they are willing to compromise scientific principles and integrity in support of the man-made global-warming doctrine.”
The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea the authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861 and Arrhenius 1896, but which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism by which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such a mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles clarified. By showing that
(a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects,
(b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet,
(c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 °C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly,
(d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical,
(f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero,
the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
Our take: This paper delivers a direct and methodical falsification of the CO₂ greenhouse effect using foundational principles of physics. The authors argue that the radiative greenhouse hypothesis violates the second law of thermodynamics by suggesting that a cooler atmosphere can heat a warmer surface through back-radiation, a concept not supported in classical thermodynamics. They also critique the oversimplified energy budget models that ignore convection, latent heat, and real atmospheric dynamics. Their conclusion is stark: the atmospheric CO₂ greenhouse effect, as popularly portrayed, lacks physical validity.
By now, a huge number of measurements of infrared absorption by various substances have been performed using infrared spectroscopy. To determine the ability of these same substances to absorb heat, measurements of heat capacity have been made, which allow one to determine the amount of thermal energy required to heat a given amount of this substance to a certain temperature. However, there is not a single experiment that allows one to establish a connection between the amount of infrared energy absorbed and the change in temperature of the substance. No relationship was found between the infrared spectral characteristics and heat capacity.
If there really was a connection between infrared absorption and heat absorption, it might show up in some way in infrared spectra. For example, the IPCC estimates the global warming potential of sulfur hexafluoride to be 23,500 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. The concentration of SF6 in the atmosphere is about 10 parts per trillion. To register an infrared spectrum, the concentration of the substance must be at least 0.1%, i.e. 100 million times greater than in the atmosphere. One might expect that the absorbed infrared energy converted into heat, taking into account the back radiation to the walls of the gas cell of the spectrometer, should show up in a noticeable change in temperature. However, such an effect was not observed with this or any other substance. It can be concluded that no laboratory experiment provides reliable confirmation of the existence of the greenhouse effect.
Our take: This paper revisits the longstanding question of whether the greenhouse effect has ever been experimentally verified—and finds the evidence lacking. The author critically evaluates the most commonly cited experiments and demonstrates that they fail to isolate the specific radiative impact of CO₂ under controlled conditions. Instead, they often conflate radiative and convective processes or rely on assumptions embedded in models. The paper underscores a crucial point: the greenhouse effect, as popularly described, remains more of a theoretical construct than a rigorously proven physical phenomenon.
Evidence of the greenhouse effect in a planet's atmosphere may be a change in the temperature of the atmosphere and/or surface that can be reliably attributed to greenhouse gas, taking into account all other factors affecting temperature. The method of comparing global average and effective (blackbody) temperatures adopted in most modern studies cannot be considered correct due to the lack of data on the distribution of temperatures on the planets and the amount of energy emitted by the planets. At the same time, the lack of difference between these temperatures may serve as an argument against the greenhouse effect.
When comparing the temperatures of Venus and Mercury, the higher temperature on Venus is usually attributed to the greenhouse effect of CO2 in the atmosphere of Venus. However, it is not possible to quantify the influence on temperature of such astronomical factors as the much longer solar day on Venus, the greater difference between the distances from the Sun at perihelion and aphelion for Mercury, and the much smaller mass of Mercury.
For Venus, it has been established that the amount of solar energy reaching the surface is only 2.5% of the total amount, therefore, almost all the energy is absorbed by the atmosphere. The distribution of solar energy by wavelength, according to data for the Earth, corresponds to the range from ultrashort to 4μ. Since the main absorption bands of CO2 are at 4.3μ and 15μ, it turns out that either carbon dioxide could not absorb the incident solar energy, or the absorption of heat by the atmosphere is not associated with the ability of the gas to absorb infrared radiation. The latter is more likely.
When comparing the atmospheres of Earth and Mars, it is clear that the total atmospheric pressure on Earth is 160 times greater, but the partial pressure of greenhouse carbon dioxide is 15 times greater on Mars. At the same time, the difference between the average global and effective temperatures on Mars is within the calculation error, which, according to theory, does not indicate the presence of a greenhouse effect. This obvious contradiction is not explained in any work on the greenhouse effect in planetary atmospheres.
An attempt to prove the presence of a greenhouse effect in Titan's atmosphere also cannot be considered convincing, since the authors could not explain what the source of the energy is (The energy of solar radiation on Titan is approximately 90 times less than on Earth) and did not prove how nitrogen and hydrogen could acquire the properties of greenhouse gases under these conditions.
As a result, it can be concluded that the existence of the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere of planets has not been proven.
Our take: This paper presents a compelling planetary-scale critique of the greenhouse effect by examining temperature profiles across celestial bodies in our solar system. The author shows that planetary surface temperatures correlate more strongly with atmospheric pressure and solar proximity than with greenhouse gas concentrations. Venus, often cited as a runaway greenhouse case, is instead explained by its dense atmosphere and high surface pressure—not by CO₂ alone. This perspective aligns with the adiabatic lapse rate model and further undermines the notion that trace gases like CO₂ are the primary climate control knob. It’s a valuable reminder that universal physics—not political narratives—should guide our understanding of climate.
You’ve probably seen it by now. National Geographic and every major outlet are screaming some version of:
"2024 was the hottest year ever—and the coldest year of the rest of your life."
That claim collapses the moment you ask a simple question:
Compared to what?
To keep the climate panic engine running, each year must be declared the hottest, every anomaly must be historic, and every event must be framed as proof of worsening climate extremes. This isn’t about science anymore—it’s about maintaining an illusion of crisis to justify more money, more control, and more censorship of dissenting views.
In order for climate change to be perceived as an existential threat, the warming must be portrayed as not just rapid, but unprecedented. This is why every temperature record today is measured not against a full climate history, but against the narrow window of the industrial era, roughly 1850 to present.
French President Emmanuel Macron called for the elimination of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), joining a call by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to scrap the new law requiring companies to address their negative impacts on human rights and the environment across their value chains.
Speaking to global business leaders at the “Choose France” International Business Summit on Monday, Macron framed the elimination of the CSDDD as part of a major push to reduce regulatory and compliance burdens on companies to help improve competitiveness by creating a level playing field with the U.S., China and other companies.
As part of the EU Commission’s Omnibus process launched in February 2025, aimed at significantly reducing the sustainability reporting and regulatory burden on companies, implementation of the CSDDD has been delayed by a year to 2028, and a series of changes to the directive have been proposed, including requiring full due diligence only at the level of direct business partners, reducing the frequency of monitoring the effectiveness of due diligence from annual to every 5 years, and limiting the amount of information that can be requested from small companies. In the leadup to the Omnibus, France had already called for “an indefinite postponement” of the implementation of the CSDDD.
In his speech to business leaders, Macron made clear that he is calling not just to simplify the CSDDD, but to eliminate the law altogether.
Munich Re, one of Europe’s largest insurance companies, and the world’s biggest reinsurer, announced that it has chosen to withdraw from a series of climate-focused industry coalitions, including the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA), the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative (NZAM), Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) and the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), citing legal and regulatory pressures and climate disclosure complexity.
Despite exiting the climate groups, however, the firm reiterated that “climate protection remains an urgent priority for Munich Re,” and that it will independently “continue to pursue our goal of contributing to the achievement of the Paris climate targets.”
In a statement announcing its new decision, Munich Re said that the move was made amongst “an increasing ambiguity in assessing private initiatives under the legal and regulatory regimes across various jurisdictions.” The firm added that climate-related disclosures and other related administrative requirements have become very complex, and are disproportionate to the impact achieved in terms of climate protection.
Our take: Munich Re’s official statement cites “increasing ambiguity in assessing private initiatives under the legal and regulatory regimes across various jurisdictions” and the disproportionate disclosure burden imposed by Net Zero coalitions like NZAOA, NZAM, CA100+, and IIGCC. Rather than rescinding their climate ambitions, they’re stepping away from the politics, suggesting that when legal, regulatory, and political pressures collide, virtue-signaling groups crack first. Expect the actuarial and emissions math to follow, one way or another.
The Hottest Year Ever? Not Even Close.
You’ve probably seen it by now. National Geographic and every major outlet are screaming some version of:
"2024 was the hottest year ever—and the coldest year of the rest of your life."
That claim collapses the moment you ask a simple question:
Compared to what?
To keep the climate panic engine running, each year must be declared the hottest, every anomaly must be historic, and every event must be framed as proof of worsening climate extremes. This isn’t about science anymore—it’s about maintaining an illusion of crisis to justify more money, more control, and more censorship of dissenting views.
In order for climate change to be perceived as an existential threat, the warming must be portrayed as not just rapid, but unprecedented. This is why every temperature record today is measured not against a full climate history, but against the narrow window of the industrial era, roughly 1850 to present.
In 2024, Climeworks’ direct air capture (DAC) Mammoth plant in Iceland captured just 105 tonnes of carbon dioxide. That’s not per day, not per week, that’s total, across the year. For context, that’s less than the annual tailpipe emissions from a dozen long-haul trucks, or roughly one-thousandth of what the company said the plant was built to remove. In mid 2025, the company began laying off a minimum of 10% of its ~500 staff. For a firm that raised over $800 million in equity and subsidies, hailed as a pioneer of direct air capture, the numbers are sobering. But they are not surprising. They are merely the inevitable result of colliding hopeful techno-optimism with the brutal constraints of physics, economics, and scale.
DAC has always promised a seductive narrative: the ability to suck carbon out of the sky, store it underground, and buy ourselves a climate mulligan. It promised to clean up after fossil fuels without requiring too many lifestyle changes. It was a technology that said yes — to oil companies, to airlines, to governments slow-walking their emissions policies. And for a time, it looked like it might work. Big names like Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify lined up to buy carbon removal credits at $600 a ton or more. Government agencies began pouring in cash. The US 45Q tax credit was sweetened to $180 per ton. Europe and Japan set aside funds. And dozens of startups bloomed. But beneath the marketing sheen, the physics was never on DAC’s side.
Removing CO₂ from ambient air is a thermodynamic slog. The concentration is a measly 0.04% — less than one molecule in 2,500. Capturing it means moving vast volumes of air across chemically active surfaces, then applying heat, vacuum, or electric fields to regenerate the sorbents. The most mature systems, like Climeworks’ solid sorbent modules or Carbon Engineering’s hydroxide-calcination loop, require on the order of 2,000 to 3,000 kilowatt-hours of energy per ton of CO₂. Even newer concepts that promise electrochemical capture still hover around 700 to 1,000 kWh per ton. And that’s just to capture it. Compressing, transporting, and injecting it underground adds another layer of complexity and cost.
Our take: Climeworks’ fiscal collapse lays bare the enormous scale and cost mismatch of direct air capture—from capturing just 105 tonnes in 2024 despite a mammoth $800 million investment, to revealing DAC’s status as a “thermodynamic slog” dependent on niche subsidies. It’s a reminder that, until the unlikely physics, energy demands, and economics align, DAC remains a distraction, not a solution, raising the question: why chase billions for vacuum cleaners.
Professor gets $3M to research carbon capture and storage in N.L.
The ocean's floor a dark, mysterious place, but one Memorial University professor sees it as an opportunity — and a storage room.
"We're not talking about a big cave underground or a tank underground," engineering professor Lesley James told CBC Radio's The Broadcast. "We see water running through sand and rocks on the beach, it's between those sand particles and those rock particles where we'll actually store the CO2."
James is researching methods of compressing carbon dioxide after it's been captured from the air, smokestacks or other sites, and then injecting it into sedimentary rocks offshore.
One issue with resolving the climate crisis is that doing so would require the world’s wealthiest people to make lifestyle changes. But many rich people — especially those who see wealth accumulation as some kind of game or goal in itself — aren’t willing to sacrifice any privilege, even if their choices are causing others to suffer.
A new study confirms what other research has found: the affluent among us are by far the biggest contributors to climate disruption. Our global consumer-capitalist economic system doesn’t just fuel inequality; it also creates mountains of waste, drives numerous plants and animals to extinction, fouls air, water and land and accelerates the climate problem.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, found the wealthiest 10 per cent of the world’s population (those earning over C$67,000 a year — so, many of us, including me) was responsible for two-thirds of warming from 1990 to 2020. The world’s most impoverished regions, where people have contributed little to the climate emergency, have been the most severely affected by its impacts, ranging from excessive heat and droughts to water shortages and impaired crop yields.
Those at the very top of the money chain are even more to blame. The richest one per cent were responsible for 20 per cent of global heating, and the richest 0.1 per cent accounted for eight per cent. “We found that the wealthiest 10% contributed 6.5 times more to global warming than the average, with the top 1% and 0.1% contributing 20 and 76 times more, respectively,” the reports states.
Our take: David Suzuki’s call to “save the climate, tax the rich” reads less like environmental policy and more like moral theater, blaming the wealthy with grandiosity while ignoring the economic and energy freedoms that made any progress possible. It’s absurd and immoral to threaten prosperity for the sake of virtue signaling, punishing the very people whose capital and innovation underwrite both current lifestyles and future potential for decarbonization (not that this is important) without any clear pathway to real impact that would promote human flourishing.
European “green” funds holding more than $33bn of investments in major oil and gas companies have been revealed by an investigation, despite fossil fuels being the root cause of the climate crisis. Some of these investment funds used branding such as Sustainable Global Stars and Europe Climate Pathway.
Over $18bn was invested in the five biggest polluters: TotalEnergies, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP. These topped a 2023 Carbon Majors ranking for oil and gas production among shareholder-owned firms. Other investments by funds following EU sustainable finance disclosure regulations (SFDR) included those in US fracking company Devon Energy and Canadian tar sands company Suncor, the investigation by Voxeurop and the Guardian found.
Investors claim that holding a stake in a company allows them to influence the firm’s pursuit of climate goals. However, no major oil and gas producer has plans consistent with international climate targets and many companies have weakened their plans in the last year, according to a report from Carbon Tracker in April.
Our take: since it is rational to hold the shares of the big energy companies, large investment pools do so. However, due to irrational
As a place that's about 85 per cent covered in rainforest, Guyana has long been an environmental darling for being a carbon sink, rather than a net emitter like most countries around the globe.
Protecting its rainforest has also been profitable for Guyana, earning the South American country hundreds of millions of dollars through a groundbreaking agreement with Norway in 2009, along with several subsequent deals to sell carbon credits.
But then, the country struck the proverbial gold mine, when offshore oil was discovered in 2015. Production began about five years later.
"Some persons saw it as a blessing: 'We're going to finally be rich, we're going to be the Dubai of the Caribbean,'" said Benita Davis, project co-ordinator at Policy Forum Guyana, a network of 23 organizations focused on climate change.
"Everybody got really excited, while the environmentalists shook in their boots."
At the same time, the majority of Guyana's population has lived in poverty for decades, earning less than $5.50 US a day, according to the World Bank. After being so poor for so long, Guyana is finally getting a taste of prosperity after becoming the world's newest petrostate.
Late last year, the government gave every adult a one-time payment of about $700 Cdn.
Over the next decade, Guyana could lead the world in growing its oil output, according to the International Energy Agency.
Guyana is regarded as the fastest offshore oil development in history. But building up the necessary supply chains to support the sector is an ongoing challenge, along with finding enough skilled workers.
Our take: Guyana is charting a path that many Net Zero ideologues dread - embracing responsibly managed offshore oil to lift its people from poverty, even as it proudly remains a carbon sink thanks to its vast forests. This isn’t hypocrisy, it’s a moral and practical win: energy abundance now enabling real human flourishing, not delayed dreams of green purity. Their model exposes the moral bankruptcy of punishing energy use while forests stand, and proves that prosperity and environmental stewardship can, and should, go hand in hand. You go Guyana!
In late 2024, in the industrial city of Newcastle on Australia's east coast, a flotilla of kayaks paddled into the harbor shipping lane to block a massive coal ship from docking.
The "climate defenders" gathered by activist group Rising Tide aimed to temporarily blockade the world's largest coal port and bring attention to a climate crisis caused primarily by burning fossil fuels. It also called for an end to new coal, oil and gas projects.
The New South Wales (NSW) state government and the police had attempted to stop the blockade in the courts. But after a judge lifted an order creating an exclusion zone at the port, the protesters held up the coal tanker for over 30 hours. Some 170 activists were arrested for alleged crimes, including the disruption of a major facility. Most could face fines of up to 22,000 Australian dollars (€12,350) or two years in jail, under a 2022 anti-protest bill.
The law criminalizes public assemblies that disrupt major public infrastructure such as roads, tunnels and ports, and was a response to past blockades by climate protesters. The then-NSW attorney general said that prior laws did not sufficiently penalize the "major inconvenience that incidents like these cause to the community," along with "severe financial impacts" due to "lost productivity."
Our take: Protesters mustn’t be above the law: when environmental demonstrations infringe upon the rights of others, disrupting traffic, endangering public safety, or damaging property, they incur serious consequences. While peaceful assembly is a right, crossing into illegal disruption voids any special immunity; justice must be applied equally to protect all citizens. The rise in sentencing, from nonviolent climate activists in the UK to pipeline protesters in the U.S., illustrates that violating others’ rights is not activism, it’s a choice with real legal outcomes .
The first notable act of our newly-minted culture minister, Steven Guilbeault, was to recite to media scribes the myth of peak oil. Asked whether pipelines would continue to be a disruptor to Alberta-Ottawa relations, he replied:
“The Canadian energy regulator, as well as the International Energy Agency, are telling us that probably by 2028, 2029, demand for oil will peak globally and it will also peak in Canada.”
“So… before we start talking about building an entirely new pipeline, maybe we should maximize the use of existing infrastructure.” He went on to claim that the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX), which came online in 2024, was running at only 40 per cent capacity. This was wildly incorrect: in 2024, TMX ran at 77 per cent capacity, and that share is projected to grow over the years to reach 96 per cent in 2028.
As for peak oil, Guilbeault was also very likely wrong. For years, activists have claimed that the highest volumes of oil consumption were just over the horizon, only to be proven wrong time and time again. Just like how the deadline on COVID restrictions of “two weeks to flatten the curve” was stretched to two years, the impending decline of oil constantly moved farther and farther out.
It’s fair to assume that someday, perhaps if humanity unlocks fusion energy and superconductors, that oil will be a thing of the past, much like how coal no longer fuels trains and firewood is no longer used for cooking, at least in the developed world. But that’s likely years, even decades, away yet — the experts certainly haven’t reached a consensus. Indeed, artificially constraining oil production and forcing energy prices to rise for climate reasons could hamper the very technological advancement we need.
For the last several years, investor activism to further environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals has faced significant antitrust scrutiny in the United States. This scrutiny reached a new level in June 2024 when the U.S. House Judiciary Committee released an interim majority staff report claiming that a “climate cartel” of activist shareholders and institutional investors “colluded” to force companies to reduce carbon consumption.[1] In its report, the majority staff claimed that the “climate cartel” included “collaborating” groups such as Climate Action 100+, the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ); pension funds including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS); nonprofit organizations; stockholder engagement services; activist investors; asset managers; and proxy advisors.
Now, the antitrust scrutiny appears to be significantly increasing. In a recent appearance on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast “Triggered,” Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson said that the FTC is currently investigating groups publicly agreeing that they will consider ESG factors when investing and agreeing to not invest in “fossil fuels.”[4] Ferguson continued that considering ESG factors when investing is “terrible for shareholder value” and also harms workers. Ferguson concluded by stating that the FTC is “looking at this right now” and that these concerns are “really important to us.”
Asset managers and investment advisors who include ESG considerations as factors in their investment strategies should be very concerned by the FTC Chair’s announcement that the FTC is currently investigating the use of ESG considerations in investment decisions. An investigation by the Judiciary Committee could lead to new legislation that prospectively prevents future conduct, but it is unlikely to lead to liability for individual entities for past behavior. In contrast, an antitrust investigation by the FTC can be very invasive and burdensome, but the bigger concern is that an FTC investigation can lead to liability for past conduct and significant restrictions on future decision-making.
Our take: when politics and economics mix, the result is always harmful to freedom. Freedom means you have the right to act, so long as you respect the rights of others. With politics so deeply in control of so many aspects of economics, the mix is toxic. When one side uses politics as an economic weapon, opponents of course complain, but then the other side takes a turn pulling the levers. The problem is not which side has their hands on the elvers, the problem is that such levers exist.
More than 7,000 years ago, humans first began mining copper. Since then, humans have mined more than 700 million tonnes. According to a fascinating study of the metals requirements of a net zero energy transition, the world will need to produce another 700 million tonnes of copper over the next 22 years.
The estimated total quantity of metals to manufacture one generation of renewable technology units to completely phase out fossil fuels (replace the existing system) is far larger than existing strategic thinking allows for.
Battery banks will not be useful for stationary power storage in large quantities, even though policy makers believe this is the most useful option to stabilize intermittent power grids (EMA 2020). The numbers presented in this study show that there are not enough mining production or mineral reserves to deliver enough metal to manufacture enough batteries to do this, where the majority of the metals would be needed to produce battery banks for power buffer delivery.
Most the strategic documents to plan to phase out fossil fuels examined in this study, did not do an audit of the number technology units (cars, trucks, etc.), the physical work they did over a period of time, or the physical requirements to replace that capacity. There was no sense of the scale of the task before us to phase out fossil fuels.
Our take: this jives with what we see all around us in the investment industry; that is they have not conducted a full-context due diligence, and instead proceeded to make policy in the absence of critical knowledge.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s “ideological” net zero policies are a threat to national security because of their reliance on Chinese technology, the former head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove has warned.
Speaking to The iPaper, Dearlove outlined the risk of using Chinese technology in the UK’s wind farms, solar panels, electric cars and other green energy infrastructure.
Dearlove said: “The problem is you’ve got the ideological Ed Miliband pursuing zero carbon without a thought for the impact on national security.” He added: “It’s so crazy… the whole policy is completely mad.”
Our take: national security is making its way back into the energy policy priorities of some governments, but there is still a long way to go.
Fish similar to those made famous by the movie Finding Nemo are shrinking to cope with marine heatwaves, a study has found.
The research recorded clownfish living on coral reefs slimmed down drastically when ocean temperatures rocketed in 2023.
Dr Rueger explained: "It's not just them going on a diet and losing lots of weight, but they're actively changing their size and making themselves into a smaller individual that needs less food and is more efficient with oxygen."
