Humans aren’t rational. We don’t evaluate facts objectively; instead, we interpret them through our biases, experiences, and backgrounds. What’s more, we’re psychologically motivated to reject or distort information that threatens our identity or worldview – even if it’s scientifically valid. Add to that our modern media landscape where everyone has a different source of “truth” for world events, our ability to understand what is actually true is weaker than ever. How, then, can we combat misinformation when simply presenting the facts is no longer enough – and may even backfire?

In this episode, Nate is joined by John Cook, a researcher who has spent nearly two decades studying science communication and the psychology of misinformation. John shares his journey from creating the education website Skeptical Science in 2007 to his shocking discovery that his well-intentioned debunking efforts might have been counterproductive. He also discusses the “FLICC” framework – a set of five techniques (Fake experts, Logical fallacies, Impossible expectations, Cherry picking, and Conspiracy theories) that cut across all forms of misinformation, from the denial of global heating to vaccine hesitancy, and more. Additionally, John’s research reveals a counterintuitive truth: our tribal identities matter more than our political beliefs in determining what science we accept – yet our aversion to being tricked is bipartisan.

When it comes to reaching a shared understanding of the world, why does every conversation matter – regardless of whether it ends in agreement? When attacks on science have shifted from denying findings to attacking solutions and scientists themselves, are we fighting yesterday’s battle with outdated communication strategies? And while we can’t eliminate motivated reasoning (to which we’re all susceptible), how can we work around it by teaching people to recognize how they’re being misled, rather than just telling them what to believe?

About John Cook

John Cook is a Senior Research Fellow at the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne. He is also affiliated with the Center for Climate Change Communication as adjunct faculty. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website which won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge and 2016 Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education. John also created the game Cranky Uncle, combining critical thinking, cartoons, and gamification to build resilience against misinformation, and has worked with organizations such as Facebook, NASA, and UNICEF to develop evidence-based responses to misinformation.

John co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts with Weber State University professor Daniel Bedford. He was also a coauthor of the textbook Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis and the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. Additionally, in 2013, he published a paper analyzing the scientific consensus on climate change that has been highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. He also developed a Massive Open Online Course in 2015 at the University of Queensland on climate science denial, that has received over 40,000 enrollments.

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2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #10

Posted on 8 March 2026 by BaerbelW, John Hartz, Doug Bostrom

Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Change Impacts (8 articles)

• Humanity heating planet faster than ever before, study finds "Researchers identify sharp rise to about 0.35C every decade, after excluding natural fluctuations such as El Niño" The Guardian, Ajit Niranjan , Feb 6, 2026.
• Dangerous heat for Tour de France riders only a ‘question of time’ "Rising temperatures across France since the mid-1970s are putting Tour de France competitors at 'high risk', according to new research." Carbon Brief, Giuliana Viglione, Feb 24, 2026.
• Wildfire Seasons Are Starting to Overlap. That Spells Trouble for Firefighting. "Simultaneous emergencies in different parts of the world could stop countries from sharing ground crews and equipment, new research warns." The New York Times, Rebecca Dzombak, Feb 27, 2026.
• Will climate change bring more major hurricane landfalls to the U.S.? "A deep dive on the latest hurricane science." Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters, Feb 27, 2026.
• Rising carbon dioxide levels are now detectable in human blood earthdotcom, Sanjana Gajbhiye, Mar 1, 2026.
• Wildfires in the far north may be releasing centuries of stored carbon Earthdotcom, Sanjana Gajbhiye, Mar 2, 2026.
• Warming Triggers a Chain Reaction of Disturbance in European Forests "Escalating wildfires, wind damage and insect outbreaks could threaten tourism, water supplies and biodiversity, a new study shows." Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn, Mar 4, 2026.
• Scientists have been underestimating sea levels — for decades "Our coasts are more vulnerable than we realized."Scientists have been underestimating sea levels — for decades Vox, Umair Irfan, Mar 4, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (6 articles)

• Q&A: How Trump is threatening climate science in Earth’s polar regions Carbon Brief, Daisy Dunne, Feb 20, 2026.
• Trump Is Attacking Climate Science. Scientists Are Fighting Back. "It’s easy, looking at the past year, to see the damage the administration has done. But researchers are also stepping up, trying to fill the gaps." The New Republic (TNR), Robert Kopp, Mar 1, 2026.
• Scientists Decry ‘Political Attack’ on Reference Manual for Judges "More than two dozen contributors to the manual criticized the deletion of a chapter on climate science by the Federal Judicial Center" The New York Times, Karen Zraick, Mar 2, 2026.
• OBITUARY: The DOE Climate Working Group Report, 2025-2026 It died in a footnote The Climate Brink, Andrew Dessler, Mar 02, 2026.
• Beyond ‘Endangerment’: Finding a Way Forward for U.S. on Climate "Environmentalists are challenging the EPA’s repeal of the “endangerment finding,” which empowered it to regulate greenhouse gases. Whether or not the action holds up in court, now is the time to develop climate strategies that can be pursued when the political balance shifts." Yale Environment 360, Opinion by Jody Freeman , Mar 3, 2026 .
• As New York Energy Costs Surge, Attention Turns to Landmark Climate Law "The battle to lower costs has reached the State Capitol, where concerns have emerged about the fate of a 2019 climate law and its ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."As New York Energy Costs Surge, Attention Turns to Landmark Climate Law The New York Times, Hilary Howard, Mar 4, 2026.

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Skeptical Science New Research for Week #10 2026

Posted on 5 March 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack

Open access notables

Abrupt Gulf Stream path changes are a precursor to a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, van Westen & Dijkstra, Communications Earth & Environment

The Gulf Stream is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The AMOC is a tipping element and may collapse under changing forcing. However, the role of the Gulf Stream in such a tipping event is unknown. Here, we investigate the link between the AMOC and Gulf Stream using a high-resolution (0. 1°) stand-alone ocean simulation, in which the AMOC collapses under a slowly-increasing freshwater forcing. AMOC weakening gradually shifts the Gulf Stream near Cape Hatteras northward, followed by an abrupt northward displacement of 219 km within 2 years. This rapid shift occurs a few decades before the simulated AMOC collapse. Satellite altimetry shows a significant (1993–2024, p < 0.05) northward Gulf Stream trend near Cape Hatteras, which is also confirmed in subsurface temperature observations (1965–2024, p < 0.01). These findings provide indirect evidence for present-day AMOC weakening and demonstrate that abrupt Gulf Stream shifts can serve as early warning indicator for AMOC tipping.

High-Resolution Projections of Extreme Heat and Thermal Stress in Southeastern U.S., Lu et al., Weather and Climate Extremes

Reports from western U.S. firefighters that nighttime fire activity has been increasing during the spans of many of their careers have recently been confirmed by satellite measurements over the 2003–20 period. The hypothesis that increasing nighttime fire activity has been caused by increased nighttime vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is consistent with recent documentation of positive, 40-yr trends in nighttime VPD over the western United States. However, other meteorological conditions such as near-surface wind speed and planetary boundary layer depth also impact fire behavior and exhibit strong diurnal changes that should be expected to help quell nighttime fire activity. This study investigates the extent to which each of these factors has been changing over recent decades and, thereby, may have contributed to the perceived changes in nighttime fire activity. Results quantify the extent to which the summer nighttime distributions of equilibrium dead woody fuel moisture content, planetary boundary layer height, and near-surface wind speed have changed over the western United States based on hourly ERA5 data, considering changes between the most recent decade and the 1980s and 1990s, when many present firefighters began their careers. Changes in the likelihood of experiencing nighttime meteorological conditions in the recent period that would have registered as unusually conducive to fire previously are evaluated considering each variable on its own and in conjunction (simultaneously) with one another. The main objective of this work is to inform further study of the reasons for the observed increases in nighttime fire activity.

Minimizing climate risks will require accelerating the energy transition on all levels and in all sectors. Replacing 1.4 billion fossil with electric road vehicles will, however, be a process spanning multiple decades. Expanding electric bus transit has the potential to reduce the demand for electric cars while needing little additional infrastructure. Yet, accelerating the electrification of public mobility is a challenge in itself. This paper explores the system-wide effect of applying the emerging strategy of e-retrofitting to Europe’s bus fleet. Diesel buses are thereby retrofitted with electric drive-trains, which reduces environmental impacts compared to the production of a new battery-electric bus. This strategy allows to accelerate bus fleet electrification by 15 years and to increase annual transport services by a maximum of 25%, all without the need to prematurely retire functioning buses. Applied across Europe, e-retrofitting buses can save greenhouse gas emissions up to 300 million tons CO, generate jobs, offer business opportunities, reduce raw material demand, and requires minimal additional infrastructure.

ClimarisQ is both a web and mobile game developed by the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace to support climate change communication through interactive decision-making. This paper presents an exploratory evaluation of the game based on a post-play questionnaire completed by 77 users. Respondents rated ClimarisQ positively in terms of usability and scientific credibility. Self-reported outcomes indicate that the game supported reflection on the complexity, trade-offs, and uncertainty of climate-related decision-making, rather than the acquisition of factual knowledge, particularly among users with prior expertise. The respondent group was predominantly composed of educated and climate-aware adults, which limits generalization to other audiences. Beyond the questionnaire, the game has been tested in dozens of facilitated sessions with thousands of non-specialist participants, with consistently positive feedback. These results suggest that ClimarisQ can function as a complementary tool for climate education and outreach, especially when used in facilitated settings that encourage discussion and interpretation.

The phasing-out of coal-fired power generation is a critical policy imperative in the energy system transition towards climate change mitigation. This research examines whether the public is willing to share the costs that will arise from the phasing-out of coal-fired power generation. To this end, this study analyzes the public's willingness to pay for policies aimed at reducing coal-fired power generation and assesses their economic feasibility. Stated preference data from 1000 Korean households nationwide are analyzed using the contingent valuation method and cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The results indicate that households are willing to pay an average of KRW 4514 (USD 3.45) with a 95% confidence interval of [KRW 4,087, KRW 5017] per month in additional electricity fees for the next five years to implement compensation and support measures for the phasing-out of coal-fired power plants. The results of the CBA, including sensitivity analysis, suggest that the implementation of support and compensation policies for coal power phasing-out may not be economically feasible. The Korean public is not yet fully prepared to bear the costs associated with the phase-out of coal-fired power generation, and either increased electricity tariffs or excessive government investment for this process could provoke considerable controversy.

From this week's government/NGO section:

Takeaways from USA TODAY’s investigation of clean-energy opposition, Bhat et al., USA Today

America’s renewable energy buildout is facing resistance, not just in Washington but in county commission meetings across the country. A growing number of local governments are restricting or outright blocking large-scale wind and solar projects. These restrictions come in the shape of bans, permitting requirements that make projects economically unfeasible or moratoriums that may or may not eventually expire. All the while, changing economics and improved technology have made wind and solar cheaper than natural gas and far cheaper than coal.?The investigation identified at least 755 counties with regulatory mechanisms that render it difficult or impossible to develop large-scale wind or solar projects. The investigation relied on data collected for 3,142 counties covering all 50 states through official announcements, county board meetings, news reports, emails and phone calls to public offices.

Oil spill. How fossil fuel interests are seeping into the voluntary carbon market rulebook, nigo Wyburd and Jonathan Crook, Carbon Market Watch

Despite belonging to the highly polluting fossil fuel sector, major oil and gas companies are not only among the largest buyers of carbon credits, they are also heavily invested in seeking to shape the voluntary carbon market. The authors zoom in this outsized role. They focus on how oil supermajors employ greenwashing strategies, including offsetting their emissions and using carbon credits to give the illusion of meaningful progress towards reaching their climate targets. Driven by a desire to safeguard the supply of cheap and low-quality carbon credits, some fossil fuel companies have also been engaging with policy and governance processes through both formal and informal channels. These fossil fuel interests consistently back approaches that promote carbon credit use that is in alignment with their commercial interests, including expanding the supply of different carbon credit types and continued market growth. In parallel, these companies operate in close proximity to the institutions tasked with defining and safeguarding carbon market integrity, such as the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) and the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity initiative (VCMI). While insufficient information is publicly available to assess whether the outcomes of the work undertaken by voluntary initiatives has been directly influenced by oil and gas companies and other market actors, there are sufficient grounds to consider this a credible risk that warrants serious scrutiny.

93 articles in 45 journals by 477 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Abrupt Gulf Stream path changes are a precursor to a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, van Westen & Dijkstra, Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-03309-1

Amplified Mesoscale and Submesoscale Variability and Increased Concentration of Precipitation under Global Warming over Western North America, Guilloteau et al., Journal of Climate Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0343.1

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Will climate change bring more major hurricane landfalls to the U.S.?

Posted on 4 March 2026 by Guest Author

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters

In brief

• The strongest hurricanes are likely to grow stronger as a result of climate change. 
• So far, there has been no significant increase or decrease in the number of major hurricanes making landfall in the United States. 
• However, it’s likely that there has been an increase in the number of major hurricanes in the Atlantic as a whole since 1946.
• Also, the intensity of landfalling continental U.S. hurricanes has increased, so even if the total number of landfalls has not increased, their potential to do damage has.
• When major hurricanes do hit, they will do more damage than they did in the past: They will be stronger, wetter, and bring higher storm tides because of sea level rise.
• Expect to see more periods of major U.S. landfall activity in the future, but also gaps when no major landfalls occur.   

When I wrote my first-ever blog post on a named storm in the Atlantic on June 9, 2005 — for Tropical Storm Arlene — little did I expect the season of atmospheric mayhem that awaited.

An incredible 28 named storms, 15 hurricanes, and seven major hurricanes later — including four Cat 5s and four U.S. landfalls by major hurricanes — New Year’s Eve 2005 found me blogging on Tropical Storm Zeta a half hour before midnight. I wondered, not for the first time, if climate change had caused us to cross a threshold into a new realm of permanent atmospheric frenzy, since the 2004 hurricane season had also been bonkers.

I asked myself, “Is this going to happen for every Atlantic hurricane season from now on? If so, I’d better get off the computer and go drink some champagne!” And I did.

Fortunately, the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season was an incredible relief — below average in all metrics, with no landfalling hurricanes anywhere in the Atlantic. And remarkably, for the next 11 years, no major hurricanes hit the U.S. — the longest such gap on record (Fig. 1). Perhaps more unbelievable: No hurricanes of any kind hit Florida from 2006-2015 — a 10-year landfall drought.

Figure 1. Landfalling mainland U.S. Category 3, 4, and 5 hurricanes since 1900. The blue trend line shows no significant trend.

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Just have a Think - The Primary Energy Fallacy finally laid to rest!

Posted on 3 March 2026 by Guest Author

This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator Dave Borlace. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).

Video description

Why does the global energy transition look so slow in the headline statistics — even as solar, wind, EVs and heat pumps surge ahead? New analysis from EMBER argues the problem isn’t the transition — it’s the way we’ve been counting it. By shifting the focus from “primary energy” to “useful energy” the paper reveals how electrification dramatically reduces wasted energy and why renewables are far more competitive than traditional charts suggest.

Support Dave Borlace and his "Just have a Think" channel on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/justhaveathink

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The AI-Augmented Scientist

Posted on 2 March 2026 by Zeke Hausfather

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink

I was reminded of Arthur C. Clark’s famous third law the other day, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I’d recently gotten Claude Code set up on my computer, and was using it to help write the code for some reduced-complexity climate model runs. Suddenly projects that would have taken hours or even days were running in minutes. It was not perfect – I needed to carefully help it create project plans, develop tests, and review the results – but it represented a remarkable step up from the capabilities I was familiar with in past web-based LLM interfaces.

I’m something of an unusual climate scientist as, rather than working in academia, my main role is as the climate research lead at Stripe, a financial technology company in Silicon Valley. As such, I’ve probably used AI far more than most other folks in the scientific community, given that we are strongly encouraged to use it extensively for work. I’ve also worked directly with AI labs on projects to evaluate the performance of LLMs in answering climate science questions, and to help enable AI tools to support scientific collaboration.

I started using GPT3.5 back in 2022 when it first came out. Initially it was a novelty but not particularly useful for scientific applications. It was quite prone to hallucinations, would get into endless spirals of errors it would then try and fix, and would often grossly misinterpret instructions. But it had decent skill at coding, and could (sometimes) help solve bugs in my code much faster than trying to search Stack Overflow or old Reddit posts.

This changed with the release of GPT4 in 2023, and particularly with the release of Code Interpreter that could automate data analysis and visualization capabilities. It still hallucinated, was not great at writing, but could arguably code better than the typical scientist. One of the earlier projects I did was to ask it to help visualize how unusual the summer of 2023 was in terms of global temperatures, which helped generate both the ideas of and code for this somewhat viral Climate Brink post (which I referred to as “gobsmackingly bananas” at the time).

Today the tools are much better than they were in 2023. Hallucinations still exist, but they are much less frequent. As someone who has used these tools more than most in the scientific community, I have a good sense of what they work for and what they do not do well today. The tools I primarily use now are Claude Code (Opus 4.6, via my terminal) and the web-app for Gemini (3.1) for projects where integration with my email, Drive, and other parts of the Google ecosystem is helpful.

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2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #09

Posted on 1 March 2026 by BaerbelW, John Hartz, Doug Bostrom

Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Policy and Politics (13 articles)

• States push climate superfund bills despite Trump’s opposition "The legislation would make oil and gas firms pay for climate damages from burning their products. Trump has referred to such laws as 'extortion'.” Canary Media, Sarah Shemkus, Feb 17, 2026.
• Data Centers Are Not a License to Drill Union of Concerned Scientists, Laura Peterson, Feb 18, 2026.
• Why rejecting the endangerment finding also rejects climate science Chemical & Engineering News, Leigh Krietsch Boerner, Feb 18, 2026.
• The reckless repeal of the Endangerment Finding Union of Concerned Scientists, Opinion by John Holden , Feb 19, 2026.
• ‘Irreversible on any human timescale’: Scientist revea‘Irreversible on any human timescale’: Scientist reveals best and worst-case scenario for Antarcticals best and worst-case scenario for Antarctica "Despite being far away from civilisation, a melting Antarctic’s "disastrous" consequences will ripple across the world, researchers warn." euronews.com, Liam Gilliver, Feb 20, 2026.
• Trump is making coal plants even dirtier as AI demands more energy "The US is lowering its standards for power plant pollution while generative AI and the Trump administration revive old coal plants." The Verge, Justine Calma, Feb 20, 2026.
• Health and Climate Consequences of EPA’s Endangerment Finding Repeal ‘Cannot Be Overstated’Interview by Jenni Doering "In short: the agency will no longer be able to regulate carbon pollution or greenhouse gases—though a couple of scenarios might prevent President Trump from getting his way." Inside Climate News, Interview by Jenni Doering, Feb 21, 2026.
• Under water, in denial: is Europe drowning out the climate crisis? "Even as weather extremes worsen, the voices calling for the rolling back of environmental rules have grown louder and more influential" The Guardian, Ajit Niranjan, Feb 21, 2026.
• Why the endangerment finding mattered so much for health and the climate Harvard School of Public Health, Karen Feldscher, Feb 24, 2026.
• China cashes in on clean energy as Trump clings to coal "The Trump administration has rolled back environmental protections and blocked green energy development, China is forging ahead." Deutsche Welle (DW), Sarah Steffen, Feb 24, 2026.
• Here’s a reality check on Trump’s AI pledge "Trump’s promise to protect power customers’ wallets from data centers covers only part of the costs of expanding AI." Politico, Zack Coleman & Peter Behr, Feb 25, 2026.
• Trump touts ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda – but no mention of climate crisis "President derided Biden’s ‘green new scam’ during State of the Union address, and hailed the rise in US oil production" The Guardian, Analysis by Dharna Noor, Feb 25, 2026.
• Trump is dismantling climate rules. Industry is worried. Brookings, Commentary by Samantha Gross & Ryan Beane, Brookings, Feb 26, 2026, Aug 26, 2026.

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Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9 2026

Posted on 26 February 2026 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack

Open access notables

Relative Vulnerability of US National Parks to Cumulative and Transformational Climate Impacts, Michalak et al., Conservation Letters

National Parks are under threat from multiple interacting climatic changes, which have already triggered transformations in these protected landscapes. We conducted a multidimensional analysis of climate-change vulnerability for National Parks to identify which parks are most at risk of climate-change impacts and therefore in the greatest need of targeted climate-change vulnerability assessment and planning. We identified 174 (67%) parks as most exposed to one or more potentially transformative climate impacts including fire, drought, sea-level rise, and forest pests and diseases. Cumulative vulnerability across multiple dimensions was the highest for parks in the Midwest and eastern United States due to high physical exposures, the exacerbation of existing stressors, and high surrounding land-use intensity. Western parks exhibited lower cumulative vulnerability due to less intense land use and topography that may provide climatic refugia. However, western parks tended to be most exposed to multiple transformative impacts. These widespread, diverse threats highlight not only the need for coordinated evaluation of vulnerabilities from multiple perspectives, but also the need for park managers to evaluate and plan for potentially irreversible ecological changes to the landscapes and resources that parks are intended to preserve.

[At time of publication the US executive branch has acted to censor access to previously available information about climate change for park visitors.]

Increasing synchronicity of global extreme fire weather, Yin et al., Science Advances

Concurrent extreme fire weather creates favorable conditions for widespread large fires, which can complicate the coordination of fire suppression resources and degrade regional air quality. Here, we examine the patterns and trends of intra- and interregional synchronous fire weather (SFW) and explore their links to climate variability and air quality impacts. We find climatologically elevated intraregional SFW in boreal regions, as well as interregional synchronicity among northern temperate and boreal regions. Significant increases in SFW occurred during 1979 to 2024, with more than a twofold increase observed in most regions. We estimate that over half of the observed increase is attributable to anthropogenic climate change. Internal modes of climate variability strongly influence SFW in several regions, including Equatorial Asia, which experiences 43 additional intraregional SFW days during El Niño years. Furthermore, SFW is strongly correlated with regional fire-sourced PM2.5 in multiple regions globally. These findings highlight the growing challenges posed by SFW for firefighting coordination and human health.

Coastlines retreat tipping point under storm climate changes, Aparicio et al., Scientific Reports

Projected changes in ocean–atmosphere coupling under global warming suggest an intensification of storm climates, which, combined with sea-level rise, poses profound challenges to the resilience of sandy shorelines. Therefore, the definition of relevant indicators assessing beach response regimes to wave climate is crucial for future forecasts Here, we analyze 23 years of satellite-derived shoreline positions together with offshore wave data to quantify storm-induced erosion and post-storm recovery tendencies at synoptic scales. Our approach integrates statistically robust storm composites, compared against in situ observations from six sites worldwide, and demonstrates that daily storm-induced shoreline dynamics can be inferred from monthly global shoreline datasets. By extending the analysis using 60-year of wave reanalysis, we identify a critical threshold beyond which shoreline evolution shifts from a seasonal to a storm-dominated regime, leading to persistent erosion trajectories. Since the late 1950s, the proportion of storm-dominated beaches has increased by 2% globally, with pronounced hot-spots emerging. While local beach morphology remain essential to fully resolve coastal dynamics, our findings reveal coherent large-scale tendencies that complement site-specific surveys and provide a global framework to guide targeted field efforts. These results highlight the pivotal role of storm regime shifts in shaping the future evolution of sandy shorelines.

Deliberate destabilization on trial: Fair-process lessons from the Czech Coal Commission, ?ernoch et al., Energy Research & Social Science

Expert commissions have become pivotal in coal-phase-out governance, yet their capacity to unsettle incumbent coal regimes remains contested: do they genuinely shift entrenched power relations or merely create an illusion of participatory legitimacy? Drawing on energy-justice and transition studies, this article approaches the issue from the perspective of procedural justice and assumes this tenet of justice is crucial in shaping the outcome of an institutionally induced destabilization. We develop a four-part framework of procedural justice – member selection, stakeholder balance, deliberative conditions, and public transparency – and apply this framework to the Czech Coal Commission (2019–2021), which was established as an expert body tasked with establishing the coal phase-out schedule. Our results show that the Czech Coal Commission was blatantly procedurally unjust. Discretionary appointments, industry-leaning membership, and compressed timelines that circumscribed substantive deliberation ultimately enabled coal incumbents to retain power over the outcome. This case underscores that rigorous procedural design is a necessary precondition for commissions to function as effective agents of destabilization within fossil-fuel regimes, and that design choices must be addressed if similar bodies are to support credible and socially legitimate coal exits.

From this week's government/NGO section:

Nearly half of Americans think they'll see catastrophic impacts of climate change in their lifetimes, Alexander Rossell Hayes, Economist/YouGov

A majority (59%) of Americans believe that the world's climate is changing as a result of human activity. A further 22% say the climate is changing but not because of human activity. Only 6% say the climate is not changing Nearly half (45%) of Americans think they will see catastrophic impacts of climate change in their lifetimes. About one-third (31%) do not think they will see catastrophic effects, with the remaining 24% not sure A majority (57%) of Americans say the U.S. should do more to address climate change. Only 16% say that the U.S. should do less Most Democrats (90%) and a majority (58%) of Independents say the U.S. should do more to address climate change. Republicans are more divided: 25% say the U.S. should do more, 29% say it should not change what it's doing, and 33% say it should do less Younger adults are more likely than older Americans to say the U.S. should do more to address climate change.

Global Warming’s Six Americas, Fall 2025, Leiserowitz et al., Yale University and George Mason University

In 2009, the authors identified Global Warming’s Six Americas – the Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful, and Dismissive – six distinct audiences within the American public. The Fall 2025 Climate Change in the American Mind survey finds that 25% of Americans are Alarmed and that the Alarmed outnumber the Dismissive (11%) by a ratio of more than 2 to 1. Further, when the Alarmed and Concerned are grouped together, about half of Americans (52%) fall into one of these audiences. Overall, Americans are more than twice as likely to be Alarmed or Concerned than they are Doubtful or Dismissive (24%).

99 articles in 56 journals by 670 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Coastlines retreat tipping point under storm climate changes, Aparicio et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-40886-9

Ecological Feedbacks in the Earth System, Donges et al., Earth System Dynamics Open Access pdf 10.5194/esd-12-1115-2021

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