The science of science is to robustly challenge the science, and not to just blindly accept it. Climate and energy news from Germany - by Pierre L. Gosselin
Higher sea levels were due to a warmer climate, or the consequence of more water in ocean basins rather than locked up on land as ice.
In a new study, scientists assess they can now clearly separate “tectonic and climate signals in Holocene sea-level records” by precisely identifying patterns of long-term vertical land motion near coastal regions.
Meters-higher relative sea levels during the Middle Holocene have often been attributed to land uplift, or glacio-isostatic rebound – the gradual rising of the Earth’s crust as the weight of glaciers and ice sheets melted away.
This tectonic attribution precluded explanations that the sea level highstands could have been connected to a warmer climate and consequent smaller ice sheets and glaciers.
In the study we learn tectonic signals along 500 km of Chilean coast have been largely constant over the last 125,000 years. In other words, there has been negligible vertical land motion in this region.
As reliable indicators embedded in marine terraces clearly show Holocene relative sea levels were 3.2 m higher than today along this Chilean coast from about 7000 to 5500 years ago, it can be determined these highstands were a consequence of water-loading, or a warmer climate.
Another new study calls attention to the 1.76 m higher sea levels along the coasts of southeastern Australia 6000 years ago, falling to 0.59 m higher than today by 2000 years ago.
Australia is another region that would not be heavily impacted by glacio isostatic rebound, which again affirms these higher sea levels were linked to eustatic (climate-related) processes.
Off topic. Today, I’m writing on the World Cup and all the tiresome, parroted criticsm and accusations that get aimed at FIFA by mostly shallow minds.
The FIFA World Cup is actually one of the world’s best investments.
The World Cup is about people coming together. Image generated by Grok AI
A celebration that unites billions of people
Let’s be honest: governing bodies of sports are never short of critics. But if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture, there is something truly extraordinary about what FIFA achieves every four years.
At a time when the world feels more fractured than ever, the FIFA World Cup does something almost no other event on Earth can do: it unites billions of people in a shared celebration of human potential.
When you break down the numbers, the infrastructure, and the sheer joy it brings, the World Cup isn’t just a game—it’s one of the most constructive investments humanity makes. Here is why.
1. The ultimate “feel-good” product
Think about the sheer scale of the World Cup. For one glorious month, billions of people across every time zone are tuned into the exact same wavelength. It is a premium cultural product that keeps the entire globe in a festive, electric mood for weeks. I can’t think of any other event that achieves that.
In an era dominated by stressful news cycles and social polarization, the World Cup offers a universal, much-needed psychological uplift. Neighbors who rarely speak gather at local pubs; strangers on opposite sides of the world high-five in fan zones; and nations of vastly different political, religious, and economic systems put aside their grievances to play by a single set of rules. It is a rare, beautiful reminder of our shared humanity.
2. A massive engine for jobs and businesses
Beyond the emotional high, the economic ripple effects of a World Cup are staggering. Hosting or even just broadcasting the tournament acts as a massive catalyst for macroeconomic growth.
When a country hosts the tournament, a historic influx of international visitors fills up hotels, packs restaurants, and crowds public transit. It’s not just major corporations benefiting either—local artisans, street vendors, and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) routinely experience their highest-earning periods in history.
Even outside the host nation, the tournament fuels a massive global ecosystem. From sports bars and apparel manufacturers to digital streaming platforms and advertising agencies, the event sustains and creates hundreds of thousands of jobs worldwide
3. A lasting legacy of infrastructure
We often see photos of the stunning new stadiums built for the tournament, but the real magic happens outside the stadiums. Preparing for a World Cup forces host nations to rapidly accelerate crucial public works projects that benefit local societies for generations.
To accommodate millions of fans, cities modernize their international airports, expand high-speed rail systems, overhaul urban public transit, and upgrade digital telecommunications networks. These projects employ massive local construction workforces during production and leave behind a highly competitive, modernized infrastructure that elevates the quality of life for citizens long after the final whistle blows.
4. Turning profits into progress
A common misconception is that the billions generated by the World Cup simply disappear into a corporate vault. In reality, FIFA operates as a non-profit association. The vast majority of the revenue generated by the World Cup is systematically redistributed back into human and athletic development through initiatives like the FIFA Forward program.
This money goes directly toward funding grassroots football pitches, youth academies, and training facilities in economically disadvantaged regions—giving children safe spaces to play and grow. Furthermore, this funding has catalyzed the historic growth of women’s football globally, breaking down cultural barriers and creating entirely new professional pathways for women worldwide.
The big picture: Football vs. Warfare
If you want to understand the true value of the World Cup, look at it through the lens of global spending.
Every year, humanity pours trillions of dollars into geopolitical conflicts, defense, and armaments. The return on that investment? Destrained budgets, flattened infrastructure, generational trauma, and deep human misery.
Now, look at the billions of dollars that global citizens and corporations willingly invest in the World Cup. That capital goes toward building bridges, modernizing cities, creating jobs, empowering youth, and generating collective joy.
Of course FIFA is far from perfect. Critiques of large institutions will always be necessary to push for continuous improvement. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the incredible asset we have in the World Cup. It stands as a shining example of how humanity can use its wealth to celebrate life, unity, and excellence, rather than financing division and destruction.
Currently, every day that sees a high temperature reading of over 30°C is causing the media blare out warnings of runaway climate heating and killer heatwaves.
The EIKE video addresses current German media reports (including from Bild and Focus) warning of extreme heatwaves in 2026 and 2027 due to the upcoming El Niño phenomenon. Climate scientists such as Daniel Swain, Carlo Buontempo, and Theodor Coapman are cited predicting historic weather events, record-breaking years, as well as extreme droughts and wildfires.
But the EIKE video criticizes that scientists often phrase their forecasts using the subjunctive mood or speculative language (“I believe,” “probability is increased”), a tactical approach common among climate researchers to legally and scientifically protect themselves in case the catastrophic predictions do not come true.
Natural phenomenon
The video emphasizes that El Niño is a completely natural phenomenon known for centuries. Due to the weakening of trade winds off South America, less cold deep-sea water rises to the surface. The warmer surface water absorbs less oxygen and CO2, leading to a die-off of plankton and causing the marine food chain to collapse. Historically, the collapse of the Moche culture in the 8th century is even attributed to severe El Niño effects.
TheEIKE interprets the absence of the CO2 theory (anthropogenic climate change) in the cited scientists’ statements as a strategic shift. Because criticism of the CO2 theory has grown too loud lately, alarmists are now switching to purely natural phenomena to secure their positions.
In a new study, Professor of Earth Sciences Dr. István Kovács emphasizes that climate models fail to account for CO2 emissions linked to tectonic processes or widespread mantle degassing.
Instead, the modern carbon budget accountants primarily consider CO2 emissions from the tiny number of Earth’s active volcanoes and ignore the non-negligible mantle-derived emission quantities of from continental regions where no active volcanism exists.
So while on one hand it is true that “the natural geological flux from Earth’s interior continues to play an essential role in regulating atmospheric CO2 over geological timescales,” on the other hand “our understanding is heavily biased towards areas of active volcanism.”
This active-volcanism-only bias serves to severely underestimate natural contributions to the carbon cycle and consequently leads to inaccurate flux measurements.
According to Euronews, climate scientists are annoyed about what they call “targeted disinformation about heatwaves” on the Internet.
They say this is leading to a noticeable wave of aggression and harassment against researchers, expecially women.
Image created by P. Gosselin using Grok AI
Germany’s online Euronews has an article and accompanying video report that address the increasing spread of misinformation online following extreme heatwaves and the resulting consequences for the scientific community.
Climate scienists resent high-reach posts by skeptics that circulate on social media that are aimed at discrediting news reports of “unprecendented heat waves”. These reports often reference earlier historical heat periods such as the extreme heatwave of 1921 or the record summer of 1976 in the UK. These historical accounts are often accompanied by comments suggesting that people back then “didn’t make such a fuss” about it, which is intended to imply that today’s temperatures are nothing new and have little to do with CO2 emissions.
More frequent and intense today
Climate scientists vehemently contradict this narrative. They do not deny that severe heatwaves occurred before industrialization. However, the core issue is different, they claim. Due to global warming, these extreme weather events now occur significantly more frequently, intensely, and for longer durations than in the past.
“In the past few years, we have been experiencing heatwaves that are so extreme that some of them would have had near-zero probability without human-caused climate change,” said Sonia Seneviratne, Professor of Climate Science at ETH Zürich.
Climate scientists also resent accusations that global temperature data is being systematically manipulated to artificially sensationalize the climate crisis. That is not true, they insist.
“Harassment”
In the Euronews article, Dr. Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist Berkeley Earth, equates the stream of ccritical comments made by readers to harassment. “Most of the harassment, fortunately, consists of people throwing insults at me online. However, many of my colleagues, especially women, experience significantly worse.”
Germany’s DWD national weather service has published its monthly, preliminary, data for May 2026.
These data also include the preliminary regional averages for temperature (14.1 °C) and precipitation (65 mm).
In terms of temperatures, 14 of the previous 100 Mays were warmer than May 2026, with 2018 taking the top spot at 16 °C. There is a clear warming trend; only three Mays were warmer before 1980 (data).
Precipitation, on the other hand, shows a very mixed picture in May: of the 100 previous years, 44 were drier, 25 of which occurred before 1980. The driest May was in 1989 (28.2 mm), the wettest in 2007 (131.1 mm). Graphically:
May mean temperatures in Germany [°C]
The graph above shows the raw data and (in bold) a 30-year low-pass filter applied to the Loess data, similar to the DWD method.
A rise can be seen up to around 1950, followed by a drop of approximately 0.5 °C, a rise of 1.4 °C after 1980, and a more or less flat trend after 2006. There is also a great deal of variability in the data after 2000; between 2018 and 2019, the range is 5 °C!
A lot of weather (as is usual for individual months), yet the trend is still clear. Spring as a whole (averages for March, April, May:
Spring mean temperatures, Germany
Here, the trend is even clearer after 1980, with temperatures rising by around 2 °C since then. At 9.9 °C, 2026 is 1 degree cooler than the warmest spring on record (2024), and there have been a total of six warmer springs, none of which occurred before 1980.
May mean precipitation in Germany [mm]
To put it briefly: quite a bit of “fluctuation” with no clear trend. Interestingly, between 2005 and 2015 there was a slight upward “spike”: apparently by chance, there was a cluster of “wet May months”.
What can be seen in the temperatures is a ‘climate effect’, quite robust, although it has been stagnating in May for about 20 years, despite the record set in 2018. For spring as a whole, no trend stagnation is apparent.
With the best will in the world, nothing of the sort can be detected in the precipitation. It could become more variable in May; the wild ‘spikes’ after 2000 perhaps suggest as much, when compared with the years before 1980. Overall, May 2026 was completely normal in terms of precipitation. Any current ‘drought fantasies’ (we reported on these) are entirely misplaced and not evidence-based. The same applies to the spring as a whole:
Spring mean precipitation in Germany [mm]
Summary
Although it was not particularly wet (127.1 l), this is by no means exceptional. A total of 14 of the 100 previous springs were drier, six of which occurred before 1980. These data also show no climate trend, only a great deal of natural variability.
“Unlike dispatchable fossil-fuel or nuclear generation, solar and wind power output varies unpredictably with weather conditions, leading to mismatches between supply and demand.” — Sargentis et al., 2026
New research utilizes stochastic analysis to assess the effectiveness of renewable energy sources (RES) in satisfying energy demands in Greece.
Results indicate solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind power only meet annual energy demands 32% and 44% of the time, respectively. When electricity is needed to heat or cool a home, wind and solar power cannot deliver most of the time.
Furthermore, a greater penetration of RES is known to “increase reliance on fossil-fuel generation or increases the risk of blackouts.”
Heavier reliance on wind and solar power is also “linked to higher electricity prices.” So we pay more to obtain less.
“Although solar photovoltaic (PV) generation can theoretically meet annual per-capita electricity demand, its stochastic variability significantly limits system reliability in the absence of storage. In the examined case study, a PV-only configuration satisfies demand during only about one-third of the examined time steps, while also producing substantial surplus energy that must be curtailed.”
If reliably meeting electricity demand is the intended goal of a higher penetration of wind and solar power, a documented ~62% combined failure rate demonstrate these technologies are severely unreliable and inadequate.
Wind turbines are blighting Germany’s landscape and delivering very little. Image: Vernunftkraft.de
Daniel Wetzel in Die Welt (paid article) on a phenomenon: more and more plants are being put into operation, but the yield does not increase to the same extent.
The core of the report:
The installed wind power capacity in Germany rose significantly between 2020 and 2025 (by around 14 gigawatts).
However, the actual amount of wind electricity generated over the same period barely increased and remains at around 106 terawatt-hours per year.
Wetzel describes this as a ‘wind power puzzle’ and discusses several possible causes:
Several years with weak wind conditions,
More frequent curtailments of wind turbines due to grid bottlenecks,
The expansion of wind farms at weaker inland locations,
So-called shading or ‘wind theft’ effects between wind turbines.
The article argues that doubling the installed capacity does not automatically lead to a doubling of the electricity yield, and questions whether further expansion is running into physical and systemic limits.
However, the article also demonstrates very well that the thesis that wind and solar complement each other perfectly is flawed. The sunny holiday weekends in the spring of 2026 clearly showed that wind power has to be curtailed because millions of solar systems are pushing their electricity into the grid unregulated. Wetzel calls it cannibalization. This will not be solved with more power lines either—too much is too much.
Germany has gone to arguably insane lengths to go green when it comes to generating electricity. Not only is the country commiting economic suicide with its Energiewende, it is also undergoing ecological suicide in some regions. One example is the destruction of virgin, fairy tale forests, such as the Reinhardswald in the state of Hesse.
The Blackout News article highlights a viral warning from retired forester fJosef Erhard.
Speaking out against a planned wind energy zone in his former district within the Bavarian Forest, Erhard leverages decades of boots-on-the-ground experience to shed light on a side of the green transition that many city-dwellers and politicians rarely see.
Incredibly destructive
Many people assume that putting a wind turbine in a forest simply means clearing a small circle for the mast. Erhard warns that the reality of the construction phase is incredibly destructive.
To transport components like 80-meter-long rotor blades and to bring in heavy-duty cranes, existing narrow logging trails must be drastically widened. New access roads with massive turning radiuses have to be bulldozed straight through the trees, ditches built to divert water away, turning quiet woodlands into heavy-construction zones.
“Wind power in the forest: that means forest clearing/deforestation,” reports Blackout News.
More deforestation to clear way for wind turbines in northern Germany. Photo by P. Gosselin
Irreversible forest floor destruction
Rich soil is the foundation of a healthy forest, and Erhard emphasizes that the damage done here is permanent – it cannot be reversed. The sheer weight of construction vehicles causes severe soil compaction. Once compressed to this degree, the earth loses its ability to absorb rainwater and nurture tree roots.
Huge construction road ditches intercept and redirect rainwater and streams away from the downside forest, damaging the biotope. Furthermore, each turbine requires a massive reinforced concrete foundation dug deep into the earth—structures that will remain buried long after the turbine’s lifespan is over. These too massively interfere with the biotope’s water supply system.
Unviable environment
Forests aren’t just collections of trees; they are complex ecosystems. The area slated for development is a known habitat for protected species, including lynxes, wildcats, bats, and birds of prey.
While forests can naturally recover from storms or beetle infestations, Erhard points out that clearing land for wind energy permanently transforms natural habitats into industrial zones. He pulled no punches regarding the threat to wildlife, grimly referring to the spinning blades as “shredders” for birds and insects.
Water pollution
Forests act as giant natural sponges and filters, playing a critical role in replenishing groundwater and securing local drinking water. Erhard warns that digging deep trenches for power cables, carving out roads, and compacting the soil disrupts natural water flow patterns. In high-altitude ridge lines, this could have devastating consequences for downslope water tables and community water supplies.
Massscale damage and no benefit
Finally, the veteran forester questions whether wind power in forests is actually as sustainable as marketed. He points to the environmental impact of microplastic shedding from the rotor blades, the risk of hydraulic oil leaks, and the carbon footprint of global supply chains required to source the thousands of tonnes of turbine materials.
Furthermore, he notes that regions like southern Germany are notoriously low-wind areas, meaning these projects are often heavily dependent on government subsidies while still requiring conventional power grids to back them up when the wind dies down.
Josef Erhard urges policymakers to rigorously weigh the actual energy output of these turbines against the irreversible, long-term destruction of our natural carbon sinks, biodiversity, and drinking water resources.
Not mentioned in the Blackout News article are the local climatic impacts that turbines have. Studies have shown that air speed on the leeward side of the turbines causes the airt temperature to rise, which would only contribute to drying out the forest whose water system has already been severely damaged by the contruction.
In short, you can’t get more environmentally-criminally negligent than this source of power.
Century-scale patterns of solar activity suggest the onset of the next Little Ice Age cooling period is here.
Newly published research utilizing historical solar magnetic field phase analysis documents the impact of solar activity on Earth’s temperature.
Cold “Little Ice Age” periods can be reliably linked to Grand Solar Minima (GSM).
For example, during the Maunder Minimum (late 1600s to early 1700s), solar irradiance is thought to have declined by about 3 W/m², and consequently the Northern Hemisphere cooled by approximately 1°C.
Using pattern analysis, it may be assumed that the onset of the next GSM has arrived, and global cooling will be realized over the next few decades.
“During a GSM a reduction of solar irradiance is expected by about 3 W/m² from the modern level that causes a decrease of the average terrestrial temperature by about 1.0C.”
“In summary, it can be concluded that the modern grand solar minimum (2020-2053) predicted 10 years ago by Zharkova et al, 2015 has arrived and will progress as expected until the mid of century. There is the cold weather with huge frosts and snows recorded in January- February 2026 in the whole Northern hemisphere from the West to the East and from the North to the equator. The little ice age associated with the modern grand solar minimum is here…”
Germany’s online WELT (published mid-May 2026) outlines a major health and climate policy demand made by a “high-level expert commission” to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Symbol image generated by Grok AI
According to WELT, a pan-European expert commission on health and sustainable development, appointed by the WHO and chaired by former Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, is urging the WHO to declare the climate crisis a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern.” This is the WHO’s highest level of alert, which was previously triggered during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Climate change an acute “medical emergency?
In its report, the commission emphasizes that the climate crisis is no longer an abstract threat to future generations. Instead, it is an acute danger to global health, security, social cohesion, and human rights.
Former German Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD socialists) is a member of this commission, and he strongly supports the proposal, calling climate change an acute “medical emergency.” He warned that climate change must be placed at the very top of the WHO’s agenda, arguing that waiting makes no sense given the severe health consequences, such as tens of thousands of heat-related deaths and the health impacts of fossil fuel combustion.
Phase out fossil fuels
The WHO report outlines concrete steps for action. Firstly, the WHO should establish a central “Climate Information Hub” to provide scientifically sound forecasts and fact-checks.
Secondly, national governments are urged to firmly anchor climate risks within their security and healthcare policies and to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels.
The steps also call on the WHO reviewing every two years how well individual countries are preparing their healthcare systems for climate change. Furthermore, medical staff should receive better training in sustainability and climate adaptation.
The timing of the report’s submission was strategically chosen to precede the annual World Health Assembly of the WHO in Geneva, aiming to initiate a debate on updating international health regulations.
According to a recent presentation by climate scientist Dr. Ole Humlum published in Science of Climate Change:
Real-world observations show both cooling and warming trends in the Arctic, Antarctic, and Tropical oceans since ARGO monitoring was introduced in 2004.
Real-world observations show no trend in global precipitation since 1979.
Real-world observations show global cloud cover decline since 1985. A decline in cloud albedo means more solar radiation can be absorbed by the surface. Thus, the decline in cloud cover can easily explain the warming of the last 40 years.
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