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By Jo Nova
A few days of war and a $100 oil spike was all it took for the EU to figure out the bleeding obvious after wasting a $1000 billion dollars.
Couldn’t they have seen this coming ten years ago, or a hundred?
German Chancellor Merz lamented the loss of Germany’s nuclear plants 6 weeks ago. Ursula von der Leyen must have been shaken by events in the Red Sea:
PARIS, March 10 (Reuters) – Reducing Europe’s nuclear energy sector was a “strategic mistake”, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday, as governments grapple with an energy crunch from the Iran war. Europe produced around a third of electricity from nuclear power in 1990 but that has fallen to 15%, she told an event in Paris, leaving it reliant on oil and gas imports whose prices have surged in recent days.
This is a long contorted way to avoid saying that “fossil fuels are extremely useful”:
Being “completely dependent on expensive and volatile imports” of fossil fuels puts Europe at a disadvantage to other regions, von der Leyen said in a speech.
“This reduction in the share of nuclear was a choice. I believe that it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power.”
Likewise, The Blob arrange their sentences so oil and gas are mentioned at the same sentence as “soaring energy prices”, so we are left with a bad taste, but the word that matters here is not oil or gas, but the adjective “imported“:
The continued heavy reliance on imported oil and gas exposed European countries to soaring energy prices in 2022, when Russia cut gas deliveries after the invasion of Ukraine.
They speak with forked tongue. Oil and gas don’t cause “soaring energy prices” — it’s a lack of oil and gas that does that.
Finally, carbon credits are flowing to nuclear power
It is a sign that the end is near for the renewables fantasy — it never made any sense that nuclear power couldn’t earn credits for low emission electricity, unless of course, it accidentally ‘solved’ the climate crisis.
In a sign of the EU’s increasing acceptance of the technology, von der Leyen said the executive Commission would offer a 200-million-euro guarantee for private investments in innovative nuclear technologies.
She said the money would come from the EU’s carbon market.
Australia can’t build a nuclear plant by 2040, but the EU will have SMRs “by the early 2030s.
There is a revival of nuclear power on all over the world.
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By Jo Nova
This below, is the latest graph of coal plants in operation in the world today.
Luckily there is one place on Earth where carbon emissions are irrelevant.
Global Energy Monitor: Coal Plant Tracker (GW)
While most CO2 emissions cause wars, droughts, and kill eagles, there are some CO2 emissions that just create refrigerators, so nobody minds.
Where is that Boycott, Divest, Sanction China Movement?
China has 1,271 gigawatts of operating coal power capacity, over half of the world’s total.
The UN has met every year for twenty-eight years to badger everyone to stop using coal to appease the Goddess of Trace Gases and Weird Weather — all while China became the coal furnace of the world.
Or perhaps The UN met every year, so China could do exactly that? Lord above, imagine if the bureaucratic diplomats of the West could be bought off so easily by trophies, trinkets and photo-opportunities? Or perhaps they were naively trapped in cheap honeypot schemes? As a trade strategy, it would be a bargain. And it surely was.
Somehow life on Earth depends on Extinction Rebellion protestors, but they can’t seem to find the Chinese Embassy.
And just so we can appreciate what a standout China really is, let’s compare China to every country in the world.
Everything else is irrelevant.
10 out of 10 based on 90 ratings
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 AI eats energy for breakfast. By Jo Nova
AI hunger for reliable baseload power is insatiable
Consider the situation in the UK. More than 140 data center projects have applied for a grid connection in the UK. If they all get connected they could draw 50 gigawatts of electricity, which is more than the rest of Great Britain uses in a single peak day.
Thanks to Paul at Notalotofpeopleknowthat:
By Matthew Field ( Telegraph)
The data centres being built to power Labour’s AI ambitions will use more electricity than the rest of the country put together, the energy regulator has admitted.
Ofgem has disclosed that more than 140 data centre projects have come forward seeking grid connections, with requests for more than 50 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.
If these projects were all built and operating at full capacity, they would require more power than Britain’s peak daily energy demand this month of around 45GW.
The energy watchdog said the UK power network was facing “rapidly growing demand queues” and “unprecedented large-load connection requests”.
Ofgem said the volume of grid connection requests it had received “exceeds even the most ambitious demand forecasts”
Friends of the Earth have noticed that this might get in the way of the sacred cow called Climate Change (though it’s hard to imagine how, since wind and solar power are free and cheap and everyone likes them, right?)
So Friends of the Earth and 5 other NGO’s are warning that AI might ruin all their decarbonizing plans. But the rate of change has been extraordinary.
Ofgem has seen a surge in demand for connection applications – the total capacity of contracted connection offers rose from about 41GW in November 2024 to around 125 GW by June 2025. For comparison, peak electricity demand in Great Britain on 11 February 2026 was 45GW.
[The letter] calls for data centre developers to demonstrate that their projects will not cause an increase in the UK’s overall carbon emissions or local water scarcity, as part of a forthcoming national policy statement (NPS) on data centres.
The AI race is a hell-for-leather competition to create the ultimate force-multiplier before our adversaries do. Therefore our adversaries would be crazy not to fund the non-government agencies that slow down progress.
AI is wrecking the renewables bubble even before it grows up.
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By Jo Nova
China wants to rule the world
And so the media circus continues. China’s new five year plans are out, and no matter what they are, the media has to pretend China is a good little carbon player like everyone else. No one can admit the truth, that China’s emissions are so big everyone else is irrelevant. That China breaks all the rules while cornering the market selling junk wind-and-solar-generators to an audience that doesn’t need them.
To say so would destroy the illusion — like turning up to a party with a carton of antimatter.
And now China wants to govern the vassal states (like Australia) presumably to make sure they continue to be forced to buy the junk generators, so they can’t compete with China in making real things.
Climate change is a racket that serves China and the UN.
[Bloomberg] China aims to “actively participate in and lead global climate governance,” according to a draft of the country’s 2026-2030 five-year plan published Thursday.
While the developed world have been sabotaging their own economies, China’s carbon emissions have lifted off with a rocket. In their last five year plan they promised only to reduce carbon intensity, which is not the same as “carbon emissions”. Carbon intensity measures how much carbon dioxide they produce per unit of GDP. So they can reduce intensity, while they burn more coal than ever, (which they are) as long as the economy is growing even faster than their coal burning. (Which it is). Thus and verily they are putting out more CO2 but making more fridges for the world for the same bucketload of emissions.
If we believe the UN propaganda “carbon intensity” doesn’t heat the planet, only carbon emission do*, but no one cares that China uses an accounting trick to pretend it is “doing something”.
In the last five year plan China promised to reduce its carbon “intensity” by 18 percent, but only succeeded in reducing it by 12%. In the next five years they are only going to aim for a 17% reduction. and they have given up even saying they are planning to phase out coal power.
So how does Reuters report this?
This is what China’s emissions look like (below). I can’t see a whole lot of stopping short of quitting coal in that graph?
Bloomberg meanwhile says: “China Is Staying Cautious on Its Path to Hit Peak Emissions“. It’s a headline that hits the right Climate Bingo keywords but says almost nothing, other than China is still increasing its emissions.
“We will actively yet prudently work toward peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality,” Premier Li Qiang said.
What he didn’t say was that they might not “achieve carbon neutrality” for a thousand years. But who cares, right? Not the Greens, that’s for sure.
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By Jo Nova
Donald Trump has driven a poleaxe through the Climate Voodoo Machine — destroying the legal basis for climate activism, pulling out of 66 Globalist agencies, setting the dogs of DOGE onto the climate cheerleaders and threatening the cabal of Banksters. Yet, despite all that, there are no hordes in the streets begging for carbon credit schemes.
Could it be that no one really ever cared?
Even the devoted billionaires can’t manage a press conference from a private yacht to “save the world”.
The people have figured out that climate change was a scam and The Democrats know it. They don’t want to talk about climate change in case they turn off the voters.
Things are so bad The Guardian has allowed a DeSmog “journalist” to write a story about it, and we can tell. As bad as The Guardian journos are — they have nothing on the poison pen of a DeSmog jilted writer — you denying denier, you.
“In my 26 years of being focused on climate, I’ve never seen anything like this. Trump is gutting everything they ever stood for,” Marc Morano, a long-time climate denier, said in January at the World Prosperity Forum, a five-day event in Zurich, Switzerland, billed as a rightwing alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“Billionaires are silent. Democrats in Congress have been silent. Climate activists. There has been no pushback on this,” Morano said – and he may have a point, according to some experts who research the climate denial movement.
The billionaires have left the room
The Guardian has no idea, but Climate Change is dying for all the right reasons. The public figured out that their electricity bills would never go down, and the believers were always wrong. So in the US the voters voted for Trump, and the firestorm that unleashed was exactly what they wanted.
Instead of protesting, Bill Gates dropped everything he used to say and suddenly said we should worry about other environmental issues. And BlackRock and the bankers are more interested in AI. Everyone was more interested in AI, and the datacenters ate the business case for unreliable energy for breakfast.
“The Trump administration just marched in and destroyed the crown jewel of climate science in the United States,” Robert Brulle, a professor of environment and society at Brown University, told me, referring to the Trump administration’s dismantling of the country’s premier climate research center, National Center for Atmospheric Research, in December.
“And nothing happened. There wasn’t even a whimper. I never thought I’d ever say this: Marc Morano is correct.”
For Brulle, the environmental sociologist, addressing the growing hush around climate must go beyond talking. “I think the climate movement in the United States has failed. It has flat failed, and that means we need to rebuild this movement in a completely different manner,” he said.
Maybe try building something on evidence instead of models?
Once upon a time big money managed to whip up some rent-a-crowd school girls to glue themselves to paintings. But now that the grants are gone, the groups don’t have the mojo, or the money to arrange the death-robes and the printed placards.
The polls always showed that only a few percent cared enough to want to donate money or buy carbon credits.. Half of Australia doesn’t want to pay a single cent on Net Zero targets...
The fact that the giant ship of climate angst ran out of steam so quickly shows it was never powered by much anyhow.
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By Jo Nova
It’s not just a cult, it’s a cult with our money.
When the government is funding research to fine tune ways to turn hairdressers into propaganda agents, we know they have far too much of our cash.
Imagine the screams if Big Oil were funding research like this?
edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Andrew Zinin Phys Org
The study, published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, reveals that hair salons are hubs of trust, community and conversation where climate action can take root and spread.
Exactly how long will hairdressers be “hubs of trust” for — if they start regurgitating woke propaganda, and lecturing clients?
The research shows that hairdressers can be influential in everyday conversations with clients about climate and sustainability and are successfully prompting people to rethink their sustainability habits—ranging from their use of water and energy to their choice of bank or diet.
This is just another form of hidden advertising
It’s just low grade pollution in science, and deceit with the budget. The government does market research but calls it “science” and publishes in a peer reviewed paper, however the sole point of the knowledge is not to discover something to benefit humanity and share it, but to trick a few more people into buying solar panels or voting for governments that flagrantly waste their money.
Hands up who wants the government inserting itself in “long term relationships”?
Dr. Sam Hampton from CAST said, “Hairdressers build trust over months and years. That kind of relationship is gold when it comes to discussing climate change. We found salons to be unique spaces where clients feel safe, relaxed, and open to new ideas.”
But not open to all ideas, only the government permitted ones.
REFERENCE (Seriously?)
Briony Latter et al, Public engagement and climate change: exploring the role of hairdressers as everyday influencers, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-06781-4
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By Jo Nova
The one-eyed science monster is here again to scare teenage girlies
No one is funded to poke holes in the CO2-octopus, so researchers can follow a silly idea for a long time. In a normal world someone would have scoffed and squashed this horror show in the tea room.
It is yet another meaningless correlation pretending to be a dangerous trend. Supposedly rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air around us is tainting our very blood, causing a public health crisis. Atmospheric CO2 is “higher than anything humans ever experienced” says Dr Phil Bierwirth, worried that current CO2 levels are beyond what we evolved to deal with, and 100% wrong.
Poor Dr Bierworth obviously doesn’t realize that even though atmospheric CO2 has risen from 320ppm to 420ppm, normal indoor CO2 levels are 500 to 1,000 ppm, and the air we breathe out is 40,000ppm.
We don’t need a quarter century to raise our blood CO2 levels — we can hold our breath and get there in sixty seconds.
Or we just need to go jogging.
Since he is a retired environmental geoscientist, it was cruel to set him up to fail so badly on what is a beginner medical question.
 by Edvard Munch — Phys Org
Rising carbon dioxide levels are being detected within the human body, with new research warning a key blood marker for the gas could near its healthy limit within decades if current trends continue. The findings are especially relevant for children and adolescents, whose developing bodies will experience the longest cumulative exposure to rising atmospheric CO₂.
Using data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the team examined blood results from around 7,000 people every two years between 1999 and 2020.
Average levels of serum bicarbonate—a marker closely linked to carbon dioxide in the body—have risen by approximately 7% since 1999. Over the same period, average calcium and phosphorus levels have declined.
So many travesties of correlation in modern science use the term “mirror”:
These changes mirror the rise in atmospheric CO₂, which has increased from about 369 parts per million (ppm) in 2000 to more than 420 ppm today.
Humans evolved in an atmosphere containing roughly 280–300 ppm of CO₂. The average annual increase over the past decade has been about 2.6 ppm per year, with 2024 recording a 3.5 ppm rise.
“It appears we are adapted to a range of CO2 in the air that may now have been surpassed.
“As CO2 in the air is now higher than humans have ever experienced, it appears to be building up in our bodies. Maybe we can never adapt such that it is vitally important to limit atmospheric levels of CO2.”
We not only evolved to deal with high levels of CO2, it is an important signaling mechanism in our blood — high CO2 levels tell red blood cells to give up their oxygen. It’s how our blood gets oxygen to the cells that need it the most.
Whole health movements have been built upon raising the CO2 levels in our blood — like the Buteyko breathing or the Alexander technique — both used to reduce asthma.
If bicarbonate levels are slowly rising in blood perhaps it might be because there is more time spend indoors, less sunlight, poor breathing techniques, poor fitness levels, or more people with sleep apnea?
The obsession with energy efficiency means air flow indoors is more restricted than ever and thus we probably sleep in rooms with higher levels of CO2 than we did 30 years ago.
Whatever it is, modern witchdoctors will try to reduce blood bicarbonate levels with windmills.
UPDATE: CO2 dissolves in blood with the equilibrium reaction:
CO2 + H2O ⇄ H2CO3 ⇄ HCO3– + H+
If you hyper or hypoventilate for a few minutes it is possible to shift the direction of the flow here and even change blood pH. The pace of breathing, and the shallowness or depth will change the bicarbonate levels (HCO3-).
Check out the title of the paper! A ‘potentially toxic atmosphere within 50 years!’ It could only be written by zealots living in a crazy bubble.
As Dr Faustus remarks below, most of the CO2 in our blood is created by our metabolisms as we burn fats and sugars. A small rise in the air around us is irrelevant.
REFERENCE
Alexander N. Larcombe et al, Carbon dioxide overload, detected in human blood, suggests a potentially toxic atmosphere within 50 years, Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health (2026). DOI: 10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5
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Don’t forget the Blood Moon happening tonight in Sydney at 8:50pm, Brisbane 7:50pm, Perth 7:04pm (on sunset). The peak ‘totality’ will occur 1 hr 15 mins later, and last an hour (so between 10pm-11pm EDT Australia). In the US it will be visible in the early hours before dawn starting at 4:50am on the East Coast, reaching totality at 6:04am EST (US time) .
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Apologies for what appears to be an attack slowing the site this week. 🙂 I have temporarily added an extra check to reduce the load. Let me know if it is too much of a pest.
_________
Best wishes for the people of Iran.
9.7 out of 10 based on 67 ratings
By Jo Nova
In a shock move, the German government will allow citizens to use oil and gas to heat their homes again, even though this might increase global temperatures by a thousandth of a degree in 80 years time. The government or rather, the taxpayers, will still be forced to subsidize 30 to 70% of the cost of a new heat pump, but won’t actually fine anyone or put them in jail if they buy an oil or gas heater. (Yay, “freedom”.)
Green groups responded with all the wisdom we’ve come to expect:
EuroNews
One critic has called the move “an unconditional fulfilment of all the wishes of the fossil fuel lobby”.
“This reform is a disaster,” Green Party parliamentary group co-leader Katharina Dröge told the German Press Agency (dpa).
“The CDU and SPD [Social Democratic Party] have today made it abundantly clear: climate protection is completely irrelevant to this coalition,” she added. “The federal government has abandoned the achievement of the climate targets.”
Germany still relies on oil and gas for 80% of its heating needs. The mandate to force people to switch to at least 65% renewables for heating came into place in 2023.
People disliked heat pumps so much they just stopped building new homes.
By Deborah Cole, The Guardian
She said: “The dilemma was that Robert Habeck’s heating law had unsettled homeowners. Sales of modern heating systems, heat pumps and modern gas boilers plummeted. People stopped building altogether.”
The dispute poisoned relations in the coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and pro-business Free Democrats and is often called the beginning of the premature implosion of that government.
The left always go too far.
Germans are still free to buy heat pumps, or use biomass or biofuel if they want to. The “disaster” here is that Germans have some freedom to choose. And if the renewable heaters were cheap to run, no one would need a mandate to force compliance.
The Green Left Agenda is falling apart.
Photos adapted from Image by Image by PayPal.me/FelixMittermeier
and Presentsquare Presentsquare
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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