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Tuesday

8.9 out of 10 based on 15 ratings

Monday

9.1 out of 10 based on 20 ratings

Sunday

9.6 out of 10 based on 15 ratings

Climate pollution causes boreal forests to grow 12% — recklessly spreading greenery in Arctic

By Jo Nova

NASA has finally studied the LandSat satellite images of vegetation down to 30 metre resolution and discovered with “unprecedented detail” that climate change is a good thing.

The northern boreal forests are the largest terrestrial biome in the world, and it’s warming faster than any other forest type, and loving it.

This is the catastrophe they’ve been warning us about…

Satellite record shows boreal forests expanded 12% and shifted north since 1985

What kind of pollution causes forest growth?

It’s time we got serious about the benefits of CO2.

The analysis revealed that boreal forests both grew in size and moved northward. The forests expanded by 0.844 million km² (a 12% increase) and shifted northward by 0.29° mean latitude, with gains concentrated between 64°N and 68°N. Their work also showcased the capacity of new growth to act as a carbon sink. Young boreal forests (up to 36 years) hold an estimated 1.1–5.9 petagrams of carbon (Pg C) with the potential to sequester an additional 2.3–3.8 Pg C if allowed to mature. Landsat’s long-time series of highly calibrated data allows researchers to study how ecosystems shift over decades, a crucial insight into our changing world.

What’s not to like about CO2Extinctions are declining, cyclones used to be nastier, floods were worse, Pacific Islands are growing not sinking, and sea levels used to be much higher.

REFERENCE

Min Feng et al, Northward shift of boreal tree cover confirmed by satellite record, Biogeosciences (2026). DOI: 10.5194/bg-23-1089-2026 bg.copernicus.org/articles/23/1089/2026/

 

10 out of 10 based on 118 ratings

Saturday

9.6 out of 10 based on 14 ratings

Sacré bleu! Macron blames renewables for Spain’s blackouts, France drops renewables targets, expands nuclear

Emmanuel Macron

By Jo Nova

The world is backing away from renewables

Wow. What a turnaround. President Macron, a man of The Blob, has come right out and blamed the Spanish Blackouts on renewables.  No system, he says, can be so dependent on renewables. Everyone knew this, but few in power would say the words.

Back in 2017 this was the man who had a plan to shut down 14 nuclear reactors in France. Today he plans to push through a law to reverse that. At the same time, the current French renewable energy targets have just been dropped by 20%. Instead of building 150GW of unreliable power, the new target will be about 120GW.

Back in April, Spain finally celebrated 100% renewable  energy, and within days suffered a national blackout  that caused at least five deaths and left thousands without lighting and the internet, and panic-buying petrol and food. The blackout spread as far as Portugal and Southern France.

Macron blames renewable energy for Spain’s national blackout

— By Kieran Kelly, The Telegraph

French president says European neighbour’s deadly power cuts were caused by shift towards net zero

In response to a large-scale power cut that left millions in the dark in April, the French president said no country could rely so heavily on renewable energy.

But Mr Macron said: “The Spanish power outage is not related to interconnections, but rather to the fact that no system, at least with current technology, can support such dependence on renewable energy. Stability in the energy mix is needed because otherwise, shocks that are too big occur. But it’s not just about interconnections. Networks are needed.”

Spain generates about 60 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, including wind, hydropower and solar power, according to Red Eléctrica de España, its electricity grid operator. Around 20 per cent comes from nuclear power plants.

Supposedly renewable energy is free and nuclear plants are wildly expensive.

If renewables were cheaper, France would know — yet France chooses the nukes.

The French rebirth of nuclear power started a few years ago. But the plan to close these power plants still needs to be expunged.

Spain is aiming for 80% renewables by 2030 and the UK Labour government is aiming for 95% “clean”. But Australia is larger, hotter, and more sparsely populated, with tons of coal and gas, and has no interconnector cables to anywhere, yet we’re aiming for 82%. Fifty shades of crazy.

Photo:  Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

 

10 out of 10 based on 111 ratings

Friday

9.3 out of 10 based on 16 ratings

The EV experiment has become a bloodbath — $140 billion wasted — more to come

EV doom. The collapse of an industry. AI assisted.

By Jo Nova

At some point, Western governments decided to pick winners, and set deadlines for inventions and discoveries and most car manufacturers clapped quietly. They didn’t speak up, presumably because they didn’t want to look like a climate denier. But it’s been a disastrous choice for the  auto makers that jumped onto the EV bandwagon with both feet.

A few days ago the corporate mothership for Fiat Peugeot and Chrysler,  announced a $26 billion US dollar loss and shares fell 27%. This ignominiously follows the brutal $20 billion dollar Ford write down. The CEO of Stellantis has announced a reset of the company and in a radical plan, decided to “make our customers and their preferences our guiding star.” Crikey — they will try making cars that customers actually want, rather than ones that change the weather.

Robert Bryce estimates the known losses add up to  $140 billion in the last 4 years. And that’s only the money burned by Ford, Stellantis, GM, Mercedes, Volkswagon, Rivian, and Lucid.

Other companies have signed and bragged about big deals that they later backed away from. But they haven’t necessarily announced their EV specific losses. So who knows how much Honda, Renault, Mitsubishi, Volvo, and BMW have lost?

All up, Bryce estimates that the average loss per EV has been around $25,000.

The auto industry’s gamble on electric cars has turned into a catastrophe

By Matthew Lynn, The Telegraph

In reality, it turns out that electric cars are only a small part of the overall market and that, insofar as it exists, Chinese manufacturers will capture most of the sales.

There have been two major problems. First, EVs may only be a niche product. Next, where there is a market, the new breed of Chinese brands led by BYD is walking away with it.

The traditional auto giants thought the transition was just a matter of replacing an internal combustion engine with a big battery, but it turned out that an EV was a piece of electronics with wheels attached. It has much more in common with the mobile phone market than anything the petrolheads running the industry were familiar with.

It is far easier to create a new EV company from scratch than to convert one of the traditional giants.

The blunt truth is this: the massive bet that the auto giants took on EVs has backfired spectacularly.

If China had paid off Western politicians to force their own citizens to subsidize Chinese cars they could hardly have destroyed the Western car industry any faster.

If your country is home to legacy fossil fuel carmakers then schemes like the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) work like an anti-tariff  – It’s a ruling that punishes local industry and forces them and their customers to subsidize foreign car makers. The government sets an arbitrary target, and insists that, say, 22% of all cars sold must be EV’s. The public don’t want that many EV’s but the ZEV ruling contains the financial equalizer. If the fossil fuel car manufacturer doesn’t meet their target and sell enough EV’s they’ll have buy credits from a company that did.

Or if companies sell both kinds of cars they can raise the prices of their fossil fuel cars and use those super profits to make their own EVs cheaper. Either way, fossil fuel cars get more expensive and EVs get cheaper until the 22% target is reached.

Ultimately, the tradies and renters who buy the fossil fuel cars are subsidizing the electric cars bought by the rich. 

Australias NVES (New Vehicle Emissions Standards) is very similar to the UK scheme.

 

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 118 ratings

Thursday

10 out of 10 based on 10 ratings

Trump to wipe out “Endangerment Finding” and pardon CO2 in largest act of deregulation in US history

Ring of Sauron

By Jo Nova

Trump to throw Saurons ring into the volcano this week — soon CO2 will NOT be legally classed as pollution that endangers human life

Trump always wanted to cut the power of the “Climate Change Hoax” at the source, which was the 2009 Endangerment Finding.   It is the excuse for Big Government to get itself into your car, house, air, steaks and factories while thieving from your wallet.

A spokesman at the EPA described this as “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” so we know it hurts The Blob.

The Endangerment Finding was the 2009 legal determination that CO2 caused everything bad, and therefore government agencies had an obligation to protect the public from it, and companies had to track emissions, cars had to be purified, emissions had to be tracked and certified.

Trump to Repeal Landmark Climate Finding in Huge Regulatory Rollback

Meridith McGraw and Benoît Morenne, The Wall Street Journal

The Trump administration is planning this week to repeal the Obama-era scientific finding that serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation, according to U.S. officials, in the most far-reaching rollback of U.S. climate policy to date.

The reversal targets the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which concluded that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The finding provided the legal underpinning for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules, which limited emissions from power plants and tightened fuel-economy standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act.

“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in an interview.

Officials said the rollback would equate to more than $1 trillion in regulation cuts, though they didn’t provide details on how they came up with the number. They said that rescinding the finding would result in an average per-vehicle cost savings of more than $2,400. Public health and environmental groups have said federal climate regulations help prevent hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year.

Big-Government hellfire is tied to the Endangerment Finding. Like Sauron’s ring of power  it was sacred,  must not be questioned, binds all others, and centralizes control in the hands of a central authority (like the EPA). And like The One Ring of Middle Earth it would corrupt even the good hearted.

The immediate effect of this is said to be on cars. But there will be legal wrangling. Environmental groups will challenge the finding in court, dragging out the process for years. The Environmental Defence fund called the endangerment finding “a vital tool”. Eventually this opens the door to reducing rules in other areas like power plants, and oil and gas infrastructure.

One official estimated this would save a trillion dollars in regulatory costs — which also means a trillion dollars worth of dependent workers will need to find other jobs.

Thanks to Helen D and Climate Depot.

 

 

10 out of 10 based on 126 ratings

Wednesday

9.4 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

Dept of Climate Change gives $1.6m in trips to Brazil as reward for prophets, activists, sycophants

By Jo Nova

Cynics are wondering what, exactly Australia got for spending $1.6 million sending 75 people on a two week junket in Brazil last year?

Australia, of course, got nothing, but this is the bread and butter currency for The Blob.  How else can you convince bored bureaucrats to pretend warming causes cooling, and maintain the righteous indignation!

Getting a free trip to Brazil surely ranks pretty high on bragging lists at Saturday night dinners. That shine helps make up for the mental effort of selling your soul and pretending that Sunday night’s pot roast causes floods in Dhaka.

It also provides the inspiration to keep the next generation of Blobocrats focused. The underlings learn that people who shed tears about climate change get rewarded, while the critics don’t. Just one ill advised remark, one careless joke, could compromise the plane tickets.

Australia spends $1.6m sending 75 officials to Brazil for UN climate climate summit

Responses to Senate estimates questions on notice have revealed Department of Climate Change and Energy sent 32 officials, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade sent nine officials, and the Department of Agriculture sent one official to Belém, Brazil in November last year for the UN Conference of the Parties summit.

And the Department of Climate Change budgeted $1.6m for their 32 officials to fly to Brazil, it said.

And this $395,000 (described below)– it’s just an investment for the future. One day a Youth Climate Coalition leader will end up in a heavily edited documentary promoting your Department. Think of this as advertising money and it all makes sense….

The department also revealed it disbursed a $395,000 grant program for other organisations to attend the COP30 summit. This included groups like the Aboriginal Carbon Fund, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, United Nations Youth Australia, and Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia.

Remember, even as the Departments of Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture enjoy their tours of the Amazon,  that some fishermen, farmers and foresters have lost their jobs in Australia due to whimsical policy changes. Labor has recklessly damaged these industries, while the Departmental Chosen Ones use their tax dollars to party in Latin America.  See The Australian detail the $1.5m taxpayer bill for 75 public servants to attend UN climate change summit.

 

These C.O.P.s are always the same,
The delegates jet off without shame,
As fortnight junkets do appeal,
They delay the big ‘deal’,
Reached late on the last night, they claim.

–Ruairi

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 106 ratings

Tuesday

9.6 out of 10 based on 9 ratings

Monday

8.1 out of 10 based on 29 ratings

Sunday

9.3 out of 10 based on 20 ratings

Solar photovoltaics degrading faster than expected — 8% may only last 11 years

Canberra Solar Plant, ACT.

By Jo Nova

Engineers really don’t like phrases like “right skewed degradation with a long fat tail”

But new data suggests that’s exactly what’s is happening in the global solar fleet, and it’s bad news for insurers, installers, and grid planners.

One of the largest and longest studies ever done has looked at 11,000 solar panels around the world and found the same mysterious bump in unexpected failures. Surprisingly it didn’t matter whether the panels were installed in hot, cold or humid environments, the unexpected failures were still there. This suggests the higher failure rate is a systemic problem, not just something that afflicts those installed, say, in humid areas, or in the desert.

UNSW study finds up to 20% of solar panels degrade far faster than expected

By Casey McGuire Electrical Connection

Lead author Yang Tang says this has serious implications for system longevity: “Most solar systems are designed to last around 25 years, based on their warranty period.”

“But at least one in five systems degrade much faster than the typical rate and roughly one in 12 degrade twice as fast. This means some systems could lose about 45% of their output by the 25-year mark or reach the end of their useful life in as little as 11 years.”

From the Press Release:

This long tail is more than a statistical oddity. It especially poses a large financial risk for solar farms, where hundreds of thousands of panels are installed, since the data indicates there is a hidden cost associated with samples that do not perform as well or for as long as they should.

Importantly, it has also been shown that the extreme degradation observed in these panels is not related to the climatic conditions they are exposed to – ruling out the possibility that the data was being skewed by samples placed in extreme environmental locations such as very hot deserts.

Across the whole global fleet, the system performance degrades at 0.9% per year. The graph below plots the degradation rate of the energy produced from each panel.  A few lemons are declining at 2, 3, or 4% annually.  But the surprise is a big fat bump in panels degrading at 1.3% – 1.8% per year. That bump means that a lot more panels might fail within the warrantee period and need replacing.  Maintenance costs and insurance bills will have been calculated on a normal curve, so this is an ominous sign that quite a lot of panels will not make it to the 25 year expected lifespan, and they won’t be producing as many kilowatts as expected either. So maintenance costs are going to be higher than expected. Electricity costs will be more, and to get rid of “the bump” will raise the prices of new panel designs. Someone will have to improve testing and throw away more dud panels before they leave the factory, or they will have to increase the safety margins on components.

 

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2026/01/research-targets-long-tail-solar-panel-issue

 

Given that hardly any solar plants are 25 years old, we don’t know how the degradation curve will evolve over time. It’s possible these early unexpected failures might grow into a fatter longer tail as the solar fleet ages.

There are three kinds of failures:

  1. Infant mortality –– when young panels die in the first few months due to manufacturing defects or transport and installation damage.
  2. The long tail surprise — between 3 – 12 years. These could be latent microcracks that slowly spread, it could be moisture ingress, or hot-spot feedback loops. These are hard to detect and fix because they might look fine early on. There are also interconnected failures where one component depends on another. If the backsheet is damaged, water can leak in. These failures can multiply in a domino effect.
  3. Natural attrition — panels are expected to wear out and age from 15 to 30 years due to the slow damage of UV radiation, and cycles of hot and cold. This is a predictable failure rate that warranties are designed around.

It’s the second sort that wasn’t expected. And Tang et al point out that microcracks might not even cause a problem for several years, but gradually put stress on other components until there is a cascade of failure.

Who could have guessed that equipment covering tens of thousands of square kilometers with complex electronic components would break in a thousand tiny ways?

h/t Chris Uhlmann “Systems Under Strain”.

REFERENCE

Tang. Y. et al (2026) Understanding and Reducing the Risk of Extreme Photovoltaic Degradation, IEEE Journal of Voltaics, Vol 16. 1.

Press Release UNSW — Cracking the ‘long tail’ problem: new research targets hidden solar panel issue

Photo of a solar plant in the ACT by JoNova

 

10 out of 10 based on 100 ratings

Saturday

10 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

Suspected biolab found in rental house in Las Vegas with reports of cleaners falling “deadly ill”

By Jo Nova

We need to talk about bioweapons…

A house cleaner known only as Kelly reported a suspicious garage in an AirBNB in Las Vegas to the FBI a few weeks ago. Apparently it was normally locked, but when it was left open she noticed a foul “hospital” smell. On Saturday investigators found fridges  and carted away “more than 1,000 pieces of evidence”. They arrested a man who managed the property and discovered the owner he worked for was in jail and used to own the Reedley illegal bioweapon lab as well. That was the lab found by sheer chance that had vials of samples marked “Ebola”, “HIV”, Covid-19″ and “Tuberculosis”. There were also a thousand lab mice in there and people wearing hazmat suits.

Righto, so having found a hostile, highly dangerous, existential potential threat in 2023, no one asked the question, “does he own anything else?” No one thought to look at his other properties?

Kelly, the AirBNB cleaner was probably extra suspicious because she and another employee reported that the garage made them sick:

Police source describes falling ‘deathly ill’ after entering Las Vegas garage where biolab was found

By Darcy Spears, Alyssa Roberts, KTNV, Las Vegas.

She and another employee both reported becoming “deathly ill” in April 2025, about five days after going into the garage. Their symptoms included “breathing issues, fatigue, couldn’t get out of bed, and muscle aches.” Both believed they were sick because of the biolab in the garage. Kelly also told the FBI that Solomon’s wife got sick after entering the garage, and that “a lot of people in the house have gotten sick, including one female who ended up in the hospital with severe respiratory issues.”

The man who managed the house is known as Ori Solomon, who apparently manages another 37 AirBnBs. The house owner, meanwhile,  is a Chinese citizen called Jia Bei Zhu (aka “David He”) who was arrested after the Reedley lab was uncovered, and was jailed in California. Records show he phoned Solomon 467 times in the last year.  And again, no one thought that was worth following up? Apparently being jailed doesn’t slow down organised crime, or possibly our enemies.

Most ominously, in this case he wasn’t jailed for having vials of Ebola in his fridge, because, the CDC refused to analyze the samples. Zhu could not be charged with any type of bioterrorism crime if no one “found” any evidence of viral threats.

It’s not only baffling that this happened, but also that we didn’t hear about it.

This is according to Kevin Kiley, a congressman in California:

The Reedley lab was discovered in December of 2022, when a code inspector came upon a suspicious warehouse. Inside, she found many Chinese nationals “wearing white lab coats, glasses, masks, and latex gloves,” along with “thousands of vials of biological substances” and 1,000 mice. It was later learned these were “transgenic” mice “genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus.” A further inspection found “blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums” along with thousands of vials of “suspected biological material.” Some of the vials were labeled with the names of infectious agents, while others were labeled in a “code” that was never deciphered.

At first, the CDC refused to investigate, and even hung-up on local officials who asked for help. After Rep. Costa got involved, the CDC did an inspection and found “at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including HIV, Tuberculosis, and the deadliest known form of Malaria.” Yet the CDC did not bother to test any samples, even those with unknown contents, making it “impossible for the Select Committee to fully assess the potential risks that this specific facility posed to the community.” The Select Committee report calls this “baffling.” Later, local officials discovered a refrigerator in the lab labeled “Ebola.”

He also notes there did not appear to be any profit based reason for the lab, but there was funding from China:

While the supposed purpose of the lab was to sell test kits, in fact all the company did was buy counterfeit kits from China and re-sell them in the United States. Thus, there was a “lack of apparent legitimate (or even profit-motivated criminal) motive in the operation of the illegal facility.” Meanwhile, Jesse Zhu, its operator, was “receiving unexplained payments via wire transfer” from Chinese banks.

As it happens, the house in Las Vegas is right next to a large water reservoir, and only a few miles from the Nellis Air Force Base. A small outbreak at an inconvenient time might be quite handy for an adversary? Though Richard Ebright worries more that enemies might want to carry out a false flag operation against a US “select-agent” (bioweapon) lab.

It seems the FBI has discovered a new interest in the Reedley labs a few days ago and went back to get stuff they left behind the first time. We might hope they were finally getting around to investigating it, but perhaps they are just covering their own asses?

Yet again, we are reminded that no matter how corrupt we think our institutions are, it’s worse.

What’s more scary — that officials have found another possible biolab in Las Vegas (and there may be many more), or that it was obviously and easily connected to the Reedley bioweapon lab found in California, and no one bothered to investigate? I mean, which is worse — that we’re in a cold war with the potential of being in a hot one, or that our worst enemies may be on our own side, or already paid off by the enemy?

h/t Bally in Qld.

There are more details at RedState, and on X, but where are the rest of the media?

9.9 out of 10 based on 74 ratings

Friday

8.9 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

Extreme heat will make Darwin unlivable say ABC prophets and soothsayer activists (who don’t know it was hotter 120 years ago)

By Jo Nova

The Northern Territory will become unlivable says the ABC, mindlessly parroting the latest activist-blob voodoo.

The ABC Blob News spent nearly $3 million dollars of our money today but didn’t spend ten minutes cross checking the latest scare.

Extreme heat will make Northern Territory unlivable within 40 years, activists warn

By Matthew Qvortrup, ABC

The Climate Justice Alliance, a coalition of health, housing, environmental and social service organisations, says rising temperatures and increasingly severe heatwaves present a direct and immediate threat to people across the Territory, particularly in the Top End.

Environmental advocate Ned Bible from Jesuit Social Services said the scale and speed of warming meant urgent, coordinated action was needed from all levels of government.

“Without urgent action, extreme heat will make the Northern Territory unlivable in less than 40 years,” Dr Bible said.

If only the ABC spent two minutes searching the historic temperature records on the BoM site they’d see that while temperatures have risen since the 1940s, Darwin has long good records and it was hotter 120 years ago. And before anyone says “non standard equipment” the answer is “No” — Stevenson screens were installed in Darwin by 1894 and they recorded many annual mean temperatures above 33 °C in the next ten years. Temperatures today have only just returned to to that with the help of hot airport tarmac, population growth, electronic sensors and radar interference. If any data needs correcting in this graphs, it’s probably the recent readings which might be in shrunken 60L screens, with electronic equipment that records one second records and gusts of hot air off the tarmac.

The temperatures in Darwin fell, and it’s taken nearly 90 years to recover:

Sources: BOM Data for Darwin post office and for the Airport.

The ABC lie by omission

They show the recent graph but not the historic one.

And that cooling trend has been known for 75 years — it also stretched across a vast area of Australia including Alice Springs, Hay and Bourke, and was written up in a peer reviewed paper by Deacon et al in 1952.

Jennifer Marohasy analyzed the data from Darwin and concluded that what the BOM had done to the original data was “indefensible”.

If they don’t rewrite history, they just ignore it…

The Climate Justice Alliance seem to think climate change will hurt the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples disproportionately more than everyone else. But haven’t they been here for 40,000 years? If so, their ancestors survived the Holocene when the world was so much warmer that the seas were 1.5 metres higher around Australia. I hear the air-conditioners were not too good either.

The cruellest thing we can do to anyone in a heatwave is make their electricity unaffordable because we’re trying to change the weather.

If we sold off the ABC we could buy a billion dollars worth of  airconditioning for the poor.

REFERENCES

Deacon, E.L. (1952) Climatic Change in Australia since 1880, Australian Journal of Physics, Volume 6, Pages 209-218. [PDF]

ABC “News”  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-04/climate-change-will-make-nt-unlivable/106301158

 

 

10 out of 10 based on 105 ratings