SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT AVAILETH (1)
GOOD NEWS!
The malign influence of the Catastrophic, Anthropogenic Global Warming meme (CAGW) (2) that more than 40 years ago escaped to infect the world – like a virus from a Wuhan Lab – is finally beginning to collapse.
THE EVIDENCE is CLEAR
Despite $16 trillion (an estimated figure by Bjorn Lomberg) spent by world governments in CO2 abatement schemes over the past 25 years, atmospheric levels of CO2 have continued to rise.
Today fossil fuels provide more than 86% of our energy needs: 25 years ago it was 88%. Most of the balance, then as now, comes from nuclear and hydro (3). Although the absolute amount of energy from wind and solar has increased over that period, so have all other sources of energy. Despite their incredible cost, new wind and solar installations have been additional, not transformational. A rising tide of demand has lifted all boats: there has been No Significant Energy Transition.
A rising tide lifts all boats. (Click for larger, sharper image)
World Energy Production in 2025. Source: Statistical Review of World Energy
With the best sites already taken, new wind and solar “farms” are having to be built in widely scattered, remote, onshore or offshore locations. This requires thousands of kilometers of new transmission lines to link up these dispersed sources. That cost much more than the generators themselves. Governments attempt to overcome this problem with large subsidies, but the capacity of even rich countries to do this is limited. The resulting distribution bottlenecks will make the renewable installations currently being built stranded assets (see: Barclays Transition Realism White Paper February 2026 for a detailed argument on this case).
Despite, or realists say because of, increasing atmospheric CO2 levels and a barely noticeable rise in global average temperature (4) over the past 150 years, all measures of human wellbeing – wealth, health, nutrition, clean water, education – show that humanity is thriving. But the killer metric – the one that encapsulates all others, is longevity. According to Our World in Data, in 1900 average global life expectancy at birth was 32 years; in 1950 it was 45 years; in 2021 it was 70 years while today (2025) it is 73 years. Huge relative inequities still remain of course (700 million have no access to electricity), but the poor of yesterday would consider themselves rich if they had even half the comforts, amenities and opportunities available to the poor of today.
In Paris, in 2015, the 21st annual United Nations Conference on Climate Change (known as the Conference of Parties, or COP 21), concluded with an agreement that participating countries should take steps to move the world to Net Zero human carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.
Paris 2015: Hubris
On its own insistence, China (who, in 2025, built one new coal-fired power station per week and currently emit almost as much CO2 as the rest of the world combined) was exempted from the Agreement on the self-proclaimed grounds that it was a “Developing Nation”. China got to move their net zero aspirations to 2070. Genuine Developing Nations were given a similar free pass.
North America and Europe were the first to ratify the 2015 Paris Agreement and became the most enthusiastic implementers of Net Zero programs. As a result, their electricity prices soared and industries closed or moved offshore. Increasingly, East and South Asian countries have become the manufacturers of much of the world’s industrial and consumer goods
Even as many countries continue to protest that they are still true believers (just give us more time and more money), Governments are slowly waking up to the reality that, although energy from the sun and wind is free and renewable, the machines, devices and wires required to capture, store and distribute it most definitely are not. And that cost is ruinous.
These machines and devices are largely bought from China who are able to make them more cheaply than anyone to a large extent because their industries use cheap power derived from burning from fossil fuels. There are no prizes for guessing where a large proportion of the Western World’s $16 trillion has gone.
Annual new-installed, coal-derived electricity capacity in gigawatts from 2015 – 2025. h/t Jo Nova
The result of this great wealth transfer from West to East is obvious. According to the International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook, in 2025 the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of India rose by 6.6% and in China by 4.8%. Compare this with the United States at 2.2%, United Kingdom 1.3%, Japan 1.1%, France 0.3%. Germany 0.2% and Australia 0.1 %.
As a result, western countries are scaling back on ambitions to power their economies solely with wind and solar. Instead, they are re-opening or refurbishing coal-fired power stations, building new ones and scrambling to sign up new coal, oil and gas supplies. But great damage has been done and the transition to rational energy policy is slow and dependent on changing political whims. The sclerotic economies of Western countries are in danger of becoming a permanent feature.
In 2020 - the 5th Anniversary of Paris - COP25 was held in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. Welcoming delegates, Prince Charles (as he was then) described the meeting as “the last chance saloon” for climate action.
In 2025, Scott Morisson, Prime Minister of Australia and a former fierce champion of fossil fuels, in an apparent Damascene conversion, signed his country up to the Paris Net Zero by 2050 Target. Morrison has since admitted that he did this because of political expediency, not conviction. One of the last to sign up to Paris, Australia might well become one of the last to leave, switching the lights off as they go.
With hindsight, COP25 in Glasgow now increasingly appears to have been the “last chance saloon” for climate alarmist madness.
Following COP25, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and their flagship offshoot the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) was set up by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney (more on Mark Carney later). The NZBA was a cartel of over 140 banks and financial institutions that colluded to deny funding for fossil fuel exploration, development and infrastructure, the money to be transferred instead to finance renewable energy schemes. The alliance reportedly controlled $130 trillion in assets.
Mendicant Governments and NGOs lined up for the chance to get their fingers sticky in that honey pot.
But the group was formally disbanded on October 3rd, 2025, following its abandonment by virtually all major US, European and Japanese banks (5).
The most recent UN climate conference in November 2025 was COP 30. It was held in the Amazonian town of Belem in Brazil on the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. The meeting ended in disagreement, recrimination and futility with much hot air expended and nothing of substance accomplished.
It is hard to escape the fact that the Paris Agreement for Net Zero by 2050 is now a sick joke more honored in the breach than the observance by those countries foolish enough to ratify it.
Paris 2025: Nemesis
MARK CARNEY RECANTS
The wokest banker of them all. Formerly Governor of the Bank of England, the UN Special Envoy on Climate Action, instigator and promoter of the Net Zero Banking Alliance. Now Prime Minister of Canada.
Carney is now steadily walking back the draconian CO2 abatement schemes of his predecessor Justin Trudeau (see footnote 6).
Meanwhile global coal consumption and atmospheric CO2 levels reached record highs in 2025 (7).
BILL GATES RECANTS
The world’s first centi-billionaire and public philanthropist. A longtime supporter of Climate activism.
On October 2025 (just before COP 30 in Brazil), Gates issued a statement saying:
“Climate Change does not pose an existential threat to civilisation”.
Matching actions to words, Gates severely cut back the funding and activities of his climate advocacy and policy group Breakthrough Energy, stating that his money would be better spent on combating disease and poverty.
JAMES HANSEN RECANTS
Former Director of the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Widely acknowledged as the father of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) scare.
In 2024, James Hansen, wrote:
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy”.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE WORLD OF SCIENCE
An October 2025 paper (8) published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society shows that species level extinctions due to climate change “have not significantly increased over the last approximately 200 years” thus hopefully putting an end to the absurd claim by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that CAGW is causing or will cause the Sixth Mass Extinction event in the history of life on earth.
Numerous papers have been published (9) showing that the majority of small, populated Pacific and Indian ocean island countries continue to grow in area despite modest sea level rises. And that includes these poster children of the climate catastrophists – the tiny island nations of The Maldives, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Throughout the world, ticking Climate “Doomsday clocks” (and they come in many forms) are regularly reset to avoid them becoming a permanent record of failed prediction.
Satellite reflectance imagery by NASA conclusively demonstrates that, since this data became available in 1980, the world has become around 20% greener (i.e.- an increase in the Leaf Area Index or LAI) largely as a result of increasing atmospheric CO2 fertilisation. Higher CO2 levels also increase drought tolerance of plants, as shown by studies of leaf stomata. Yields from all major global food crops have been steadily increasing since the 1960s. (see footnotes 10 and, 11).
We are living in a golden age of agriculture. Fears of widespread famine due to overpopulation – the great Malthusian scare of the 1970s and 1980s – are now a thing of the past.
The world in 2024, from reflectance satellite data. All green coloured areas have shown an increase in plant growth over the previous 45 years, whilst desert areas (white) have decreased in area. Source of data: NASA
The effects of atmospheric CO2 fertilisation. An existential problem?
Over the last 100 years, deaths from weather-related natural disasters (after adjusting for global population increase) have declined by over 95% ! (footnote 12).
Official figures from Our World in Data. Humanity is thriving. Where is the existential crisis?
In 2025, coral cover on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef , an UNESCO World Heritage Area, was at its highest level since detailed surveys began more than 40 years ago.
Graph compiled by Peter Ridd from the Australian Institute of Marine Science annual surveys of the entire 2300 km length of the reef.
Sceptical scientists are now increasingly getting their papers published and having alarmist papers retracted even by those gatekeepers of CAGW orthodoxy – the editors of the leading Journals Science and Nature (see HERE).
The Museum of Once-Fashionable Science.
BUT SOME POLITICIANS and LAWYERS IGNORE FACTS in FAVOUR of IDEOLOGY
Two examples:
(1) In 2024 and 2025, the UN Secretary General António Guterres, variously declared that it is: “Climate crunch time”, that “The oceans are boiling” and that “Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits”. However Guterrez Antonio helpfully added “There is an exit off the highway to climate hell”.
The “exit” Antonio was referring to is the 2015 Paris Agreement for Net Zero by 2050.
In a performative stunt for Time Magazine in 2019, António Guterres, wading into the waters off Tuvalu to illustrate rising sea levels, merely demonstrated that the oceans are not boiling.
(2) In July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - fifteen unelected and unaccountable lawyers sitting in The Hague – declared a “human right” to avoiding the “indisputable, urgent and existential threat” of Climate Change. The President of the Court Yugi Iwasawa added that Climate Change was an “an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet” (source AP News, July 23, 2025).
The legal opinions of the ICJ matter. They will, as intended, encourage and enable years of future litigation and lawfare.
Fifteen unelected lawyers sitting in The Hague. Although nominated from mostly Third World countries, their lawyerly dress, pretensions left wing opinions are pure European
But lawyers step outside their legal role to become political activists when they pronounce on complex and contested scientific matters in which they have no knowledge, training or credibility.
And few politicians ever saw a passing bandwagon that they did not want to join.
No doubt the majority members of these groups are sincere and well-meaning people who see themselves as noble Saviors of the Planet. But they have neither the wit nor the wisdom to realise that the wheels of their bandwagon are wobbly and about to fall off, and the cheering crowds are thinning as activists move on to more fashionable causes.
Where once they shouted, “Climate Action Now”, today they shout, “Free Palestine” or ”Globalise the Intifada”.
But what of the climate scientists who designed, built and drive the Climate Change bandwagon? The majority still pay service (or, at least, lip-service) to the climate catastrophe meme. It is worth remembering that these scientists are dependent for their funding – their very careers – on politicians. These scientists scare public and Government with their doomsday models: the politicians, suitably scared, then support the scientists with oceans of money. It is a vicious, self-reinforcing ouroboros loop (see footnote 13), armored against evidence and reason (see my previous posts, The Mathew Effect and There is no Wisdom in Crowds).
As Upton Sinclair pointed out in 1934:
“It difficult to get someone to understand something when his career depends upon his not understanding it”.
Fads and fashions in the wider, non-scientific community (cultural memes) are relatively ephemeral and tend to appear and disappear suddenly and mysteriously. But scientific fads and fashions (paradigms) that have the weight and inertia of established Institutions behind them can take decades to die out as their adherents, one by one, retire or die.
Because they have invested so little time in acquiring them, the enthusiasms and opinions of the young can change easily (for examples, see footnote 14), but for the heavily invested old, the process can take much longer. Dissenters to fashionable memes soon learn that objection carries a cost that their conformist colleagues never pay.
The years of hard study and training that it takes to master a field of science tends to impose rigidity of thought and resistance to new ideas. To this human failing a new and additional rigidity is now being imposed on institutional science by AI Large Language Models, all of which are “trained” on orthodoxy and consensus as part of their basic architecture (15). Artificial intelligence is incapable of being creative, of thinking outside the box unless guided by a real intelligence. Science advances by questioning established paradigms.
THERE is HOPE BUT THERE IS ALSO A WARNING
“It is easier to fool a man than to persuade him he has been fooled” Mark Twain
For sceptics, although many battles were won in 2025 and the possibility of an end to the struggle is in sight (Say not the struggle naught availeth), it is too soon to celebrate. The war on the Climate Change doomsday cult is far from won. As 2025 rolls over into 2026, die-hard cultists, both institutional scientists and the useful idiots who support them, have merely retired to lick their wounds, plan new strategies and double down on their alarmist predictions. “They do not see reality as evidence of their extremism, but as evidence that they were not extreme enough”.
In a re-purposed garage, your local branch of the doomsday cult is currently working hard…
Swimming in an ocean of hydrocarbon products, useful idiots are working hard.
******
(Updated and reformatted March and August, 2026)
Footnotes and References
(1) The title of this post is a line from an 1855 poem by Arthur Hugh Clough. “Say not the struggle naught availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain: The enemy faints not nor faileth, As things have been they yet remain…. But Westward, look, the land is bright”. Winston Churchill popularised the quote in a speech to the House of Commons in the dark days of 1941.
(2) Around 2010, the CAGW global warming meme was in trouble. Global average temperatures had been in slight decline for over ten years. the 2009 UN Climate Conference (COP 15 in Copenhagen) was an acknowledged failure with no agreement among its 60,000+ delegates; the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2009-10 was one of the coldest and snowiest in decades and thousands of hacked (or leaked?) emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia had been made public in 2009 demonstrating years of malpractice and scientific finagling by prominent CAGW researchers - a scientific scandal that became known as Climategate.
To meet the crisis the promoters of the meme cynically changed its name from Global Warming to Climate Change. This provided an easily remembered alliterative handle to their cause and was rapidly adopted by doomsday cultists. It had the additional advantage of allowing climate scientists to attribute any future extreme weather event – heat or cold, flood or drought, calm or storm, over-abundance or scarcity – to rising CO2 levels. It was a theory immune to falsification because, for every bad event that happened, they were able to argue “rising atmospheric CO2 levels caused it”. Correlation means causation, right? But a theory that can explain everything, predicts nothing.
(3) Source: Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution
(4) Averages obscure individual reality. If Elon Musk walks into a bar, everyone there becomes a billionaire, on average. No one experiences a global average temperature: a global average telephone number would be about as useful.
(5) Source: New York Times. https://nytimes.com/2026/01/17/climate/how-wall-street-turned-its-back-on-climate-change.html
(6) On gaining office in March 2025, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney immediately abolished the Federal Government carbon tax and the EV mandates of his predecessor Justin Trudeau. Later that year he indicated approval of the 2000km Keystone XL Pipeline, cancelled by Trudeau in 2017. The pipeline is designed to take crude from Alberta oil fields to refineries in the western and mid-western United Sates. He also approved construction of a new crude oil pipeline from Alberta to Canadian west coast refineries and ports. At the same time Carney encouraged increased production from the Athabascan Tar Sands of NE Alberta. In March 2026, during a State visit to Tokyo, Carney emphasised Canada’s ability and willingness to double its LNG exports to Japan.
(7) Source: International Energy Agency. https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-25/executive-summary
(8) P.S.Kench et al (12 authors) 2023: Nature Communications. Reef islands have continually adjusted to environmental change over the past two millennia. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36171-2 and…
P.S. Kench et al (3 authors) 2018: Nature Communications. Patterns of island change and persistence offer alternate adaptation pathways for atoll nations. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-02954-1
(9) K. E. Saban & J. J. Weins. Proceedings of the Royal Society Oct 2025. Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals. Proc Biol Sci (2025)292(2057): https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.1717
(10) Sources: Our World in Data- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/key-crop-yields
and… Nature Reviews Earth and Environment 7, pp 209-212 (2026): Vegetation Greenness in 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-026-00776-0
(11) Another reason for the ever-increasing yields of all major food crops is the ever-increasing use of nitrate (NH3) fertiliser, a product known as urea. Nitrogen is the major gaseous component of the atmosphere – abundant, ubiquitous and free. It is hydrogenised to nitrate using the Haber-Bosch Process. The hydrogen comes from natural gas. The cost of nitrate fertiliser is largely the cost of natural gas.
The effect of nitrogen fertiliser on a crop of wheat. Photo source: Deli Chen, University of Melbourne
(12) Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/decadal-deaths-disasters-type.png
(13) Ouroboros : An ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail. An endless loop. A vicious circle.
If you Google this word, you will be informed that it is an ancient symbol representing: ”the infinite loop of time”. Whatever that means. In my opinion – meaningless baloney. In my opinion, the real symbolism is perfectly clear: evil eventually destroys itself.
(14) On ephemeral cultural memes. As a boy, I remember the schoolyard fashion for Yo-Yos (spinning tops on the end of a looped string). It came from nowhere and swept the world but lasted all of two years. Today, for the young, it is six-seven. And no, I don’t know what that means either. Wikipedia doesn’t know what it means and I think that’s rather the point. When old guys like me (and you too, dear reader, if you’re over 16) get to hear of a pop-meme, it’s already yesterday’s thing. But Science memes last a good deal longer.
(15) Joe Nalvan Jan 5, 2026: AI Models and Their “Knowledge” of Climate Change. https://judithcurry.com