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This website gets skeptical about global warming “skepticism”.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #2 2026

8 January 2026 @ 9:14 pm

Open access notables A desk piled high with research reports A Long-Term Shift in Flow Regimes over the Antarctic Peninsula, Guarino et al., Journal of Climate We present consequences of Antarctic surface warming for the stability of the lower atmosphere since the 1950s. We show that the surface atmosphere over the Antarctic Peninsula has become less stable, and that this reduced stability favors the generation of atmospheric gravity waves from the Peninsula, one of the major sources of atmospheric waves on the planet. We provide a physically based explanation (i.e., a shift in flow regimes) for the increased gravity

UK renewables enjoy record year in 2025 – but gas power still rises

7 January 2026 @ 10:06 pm

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief The UK’s fleet of wind, solar and biomass power plants all set new records in 2025, Carbon Brief analysis shows, but electricity generation from gas still went up. The rise in gas power was due to the end of UK coal generation in late 2024 and nuclear power hitting its lowest level in half a century, while electricity exports grew and imports fell. In addition, there was a 1% rise in UK electricity demand – after years of decline – as electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps and data centres connected to the grid in larger numbers. Other key insights from the data include: Electricity demand grew for the second year in a row to 322 terawatt hours (TWh), rising by 4TWh (1%) and hinting at a shift towards steady increases, as t

Six climate stories that inspired us in 2025

7 January 2026 @ 1:43 pm

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington Renewable energy and climate action boomed in communities, states, and the world in 2025, despite setbacks at the federal level in the U.S, so much so that Science designated the “seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy” as its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. Climate solutions come in all shapes and sizes, and at Yale Climate Connections, we started off the year with the launch of our climate solutions hub, a page designed to help you easily identify climate actions that fit into your life. It’s a great place to find a climate-related New Year’s resolu

How to steer EVs towards the road of ‘mass adoption’

5 January 2026 @ 8:27 pm

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Izzy Woolgar, director of external affairs at the Centre for Net Zero; Andy Hackett, senior policy adviser at the Centre for Net Zero; and Laurens Speelman, principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute Electric vehicles (EVs) now account for more than 

2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #01

4 January 2026 @ 3:34 pm

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 28, 2025 thru Sat, January 3, 2026. Year 2025 Statistics As this is the first news roundup of 2026 and we therefore have the complete year 2025 "in the can", we thought that you might enjoy some stats about what we shared during the previous 12 months. All told, we shared 1470 links from about 270 different outlets, the vast majority of which provided fewer than 10 links and the bulk of shares originated from just 25 different outlets. The Top10 are: The Guardian (190), Skeptical Science (164), Inside Climate News (108), Yale Climate Connections (67), Phys.org (63), Carbon Brief (58), New York Times (54), The Conversation (52), Grist (47), CNN (38), followed by The Climate Brink, The Washington Post, DeSmog, Climate Home News and NPR. Among the shares are also 53 links to Youtube vid

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #1 2026

1 January 2026 @ 10:35 pm

Open access notables A desk piled high with research reports Editorial: Surviving the Anthropocene: the 3 E’s under pressing planetary issues, Sanita Lima et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Scientists, including stratigraphists, all agree that our species has changed planet Earth in unprecedented ways. But contention exists around the actual start date and the diachronicity of the global human impact (Boivin et al., 2024). Indeed, the term “Anthropocene” is not the first attempt to name the consequences of human activities on our planet (

Direct Air Capture

30 December 2025 @ 10:05 pm

This is a re-post from And Then There's Physics I thought I’d written about this before, but can’t seem to find a post. Either, my searching ability is poor, or my memory is poor. I mostly wanted to highlight an interesting YouTube video by David Kipping that illustrates why Direct Air Capture (DAC) is thermodynamically challenging. I encourage you to watch the video (which I’ve put at the end of this post) but his basic conclusion is that thermodynamic constraints mean that implementing DAC at the necessary scale would require a significant fraction of all global electricity consumption. I wanted, however, to work through some of the numbers myself and to do the calculation of how much DAC we would need to use in a slightly different way. A key point is that given an atmospheric concentration of 400 ppm and a temperature of 300K, it ta

IEA: Declining coal demand in China set to outweigh Trump’s pro-coal policies

29 December 2025 @ 8:17 pm

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Josh Gabbatiss China’s coal demand is set to drop by 2027, more than cancelling out the effects of the Trump administration’s coal-friendly policies in the US, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Global coal demand is due to grow by 0.5% year-on-year to reach record levels in 2025, according to the latest figures in the IEA’s annual market report. Yet this will be reversed over the next couple of years, as a faster-than-expected 

2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52

28 December 2025 @ 3:40 pm

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 21, 2025 thru Sat, December 27, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) Lost Science - She Tracked the Health of Fish That Coastal Communities Depend On Ana Vaz monitored crucial fish stocks in the Southeast and the Gulf of Mexico until she lost her job at NOAA. New York Times, Interview by Austyn Gaffney, Dec 18, 2025. Save NCAR

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #52 2025

25 December 2025 @ 8:38 pm

Open access notables A desk piled high with research reports Satellite altimetry reveals intensifying global river water level variability, Fang et al., Nature Communications River water levels (RWLs) are fundamental to hydrology, water resource management, and disaster mitigation, yet the majority of the world’s rivers remain ungauged. Here, using 46,993 virtual stations from Sentinel-3A/B altimetry (2016?2024), we present a global assessment of RWL variability. We find a median global fluctuation of 3.76 m, with pronounced spatial patterns: significant RWL declines across Central North/South America and Western Siberia, and increases across Africa, Oceania, Eastern