June 27, 2025
Top Five Climate Change Narratives in the Media
Today, in cool and cloudy Washington, DC, I’ll wrap up my AEI Summer Honors Course (THB Pro subscribers have access to the syllabus and the reading packet here). The students have been absolutely fantastic and the discussions lively and informed. A highlight of the week was a chance to visit the U.S. Department of Energy and…
June 16, 2025
The Most Amazing Climate Policy Figure
You’d be hard pressed to find a more fascinating straight line. The figure below is one of the most amazing graphs in all of climate policy.1 It shows the decarbonization of the U.S. economy from 1992 to 20252 — with decarbonization is defined as the ratio of carbon dioxide emissions (from fossil fuels) to GDP (in 2025$). I was…
June 9, 2025
A Note on Roger Pielke Jr. and Extreme Greenhouse Gas Scenarios
My AEI colleague Roger Pielke Jr. posted some useful observations recently on the politicized use of extreme greenhouse gas (GHG) scenarios for purposes of the usual climate scaremongering and support of policies that I would describe as ideological opposition to fossil fuels. Roger takes particular aim at an extreme scenario called “Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5,” which Roger…
June 4, 2025
What is a “Worst Case” Climate Scenario?
The implausibly extreme and hugely popular climate scenario RCP8.5 made it into President Trump’s executive order last week on “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” Ironically, the Trump administration’s characterization of RCP8.5 did not quite reach the “gold standard,” and maybe not even a “bronze standard. “ The EO states: [Federal a]gencies have used Representative Concentration Pathway…
May 30, 2025
Atlantic Hurricanes Preseason 2025
There has been no tropical cyclone of hurricane strength anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere so far in 2025. If we get to June 5th — which looks quite possible if not probable — then 2025 will have the latest date on record (since 1970) for the first NH hurricane, breaking the record of Ava, which…
May 23, 2025
Heavy Metal
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 study, by Simon Michaux of the…
May 20, 2025
The Politicization of Intelligence
Last week, Tulsi Gabbard, appointed by President Trump as the Director of National Intelligence, fired the top two officials of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) after The Washington Post and the New York Times reported that the Trump Administration had ignored the findings of its NIC related to its deportation efforts. Today, I explain what is going on, setting the stage…
May 19, 2025
Ten Provocative Graphs
The figures and data below are all hot of the press and shared to help get your weekend off to an intellectually stimulating start. Enjoy! The Earth is Darkening In a new posting, climate scientist James Hansen calls our attention to a “BFD”: Earth’s albedo (or reflectivity) is the portion (percent) of incoming solar radiation that…
May 14, 2025
The Future is Already Here Somewhere
One of the challenges, even for experts, in making sense of climate projections is that the scenarios underlying the projections are so complex as to be impenetrable without a lot of effort and expertise. Opaque assumptions make interpreting climate projections fraught with challenges and consequently, they are easily misinterpreted and misused. Today, I try to…
May 9, 2025
RIP NOAA’s Billion Dollar Disasters
Last June, my peer-reviewed paper on problems with NOAA’s Billion Dollar Disaster (BDD) tabulation was published. Today, NOAA announced that the BDD tabulation would no longer be updated by the agency, explaining that it has been “retired.” While some media have chosen to make the BDD retirement about the Trump administration, there has also been some excellent reporting indicating…