Climate Science Denial

IEA: Fossil-fuel use will peak before 2030 – unless ‘stated policies’ are abandoned

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Original article by Simon Evans and Ho Woo Nam republished from Carbon Brief.

The giant Kooragang Coal Loader at Port Newcastle Australia. Credit: IconsAustralia / Alamy Stock Photo

The world’s fossil-fuel use is still on track to peak before 2030, despite a surge in political support for coal, oil and gas, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook 2025, published during the opening days of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, shows coal at or close to a peak, with oil set to follow around 2030 and gas by 2035, based on the stated policy intentions of the world’s governments.

Under the same assumptions, the IEA says that clean-energy use will surge, as nuclear power rises 39% by 2035, solar by 344% and wind by 178%.

Still, the outlook has some notable shifts since last year, with coal use revised up by around 6% in the near term, oil seeing a shallower post-peak decline and gas plateauing at higher levels.

This means that the IEA expects global warming to reach 2.5C this century if “stated policies” are implemented as planned, up marginally from 2.4C in last year’s outlook.

In addition, after pressure from the Trump administration in the US, the IEA has resurrected its “current policies scenario”, which – effectively – assumes that governments around the world abandon their stated intentions and only policies already set in legislation are continued.

If this were to happen, the IEA warns, global warming would reach 2.9C by 2100, as oil and gas demand would continue to rise and the decline in coal use would proceed at a slower rate.

This year’s outlook also includes a pathway that limits warming to 1.5C in 2100, but says that this would only be possible after a period of “overshoot”, where temperature rise peaks at 1.65C.

The IEA will publish its “announced pledges scenario” at a later date, to illustrate the impact of new national climate pledges being implemented on time and in full.

(See Carbon Brief’s coverage of previous IEA world energy outlooks from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.)

World energy outlook

The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) is published every autumn. It is regarded as one of the most influential annual contributions to the understanding of energy and emissions trends.

The outlook explores a range of scenarios, representing different possible futures for the global energy system. These are developed using the IEA’s “global energy and climate model”.

The latest report stresses that “none of [these scenarios] should be regarded as a forecast”.

However, this year’s outlook marks a major shift in emphasis between the scenarios – and it reintroduces a pathway where oil and gas demand continues to rise for many decades.

This pathway is named the “current policies scenario” (CPS), which assumes that governments abandon their planned policies, leaving only those that are already set in legislation.

If the world followed this path, then global temperatures would reach 2.9C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 and would be “set to keep rising from there”, the IEA says.

The CPS was part of the annual outlook until 2020, when the IEA said that it was “difficult to imagine” such a pathway “prevailing in today’s circumstances”.

It has been resurrected following heavy pressure from the US, which is a major funder of the IEA that accounts for 14% of the agency’s budget.

For example, in July Politico reported “a ratcheted-up US pressure campaign” and “months of public frustrations with the IEA from top Trump administration officials”. It noted:

“Some Republicans say the IEA has discouraged investment in fossil fuels by publishing analyses that show near-term peaks in global demand for oil and gas.”

The CPS is the first scenario to be discussed in detail in the report, appearing in chapter three. The CPS similarly appears first in Annex A, the data tables for the report.

The second scenario is the “stated policies scenario” (STEPS), featured in chapter four of this year’s outlook. Here, the outlook also includes policies that governments say they intend to bring forward and that the IEA judges as likely to be implemented in practice.

In this world, global warming would reach 2.5C by 2100 – up marginally from the 2.4C expected in the 2024 edition of the outlook.

Beyond the STEPS and the CPS, the outlook includes two further scenarios.

One is the “net-zero emissions by 2050” (NZE) scenario, which illustrates how the world’s energy system would need to change in order to limit warming in 2100 to 1.5C.

The NZE was first floated in the 2020 edition of the report and was then formally featured in 2021.

The report notes that, unlike in previous editions, this scenario would see warming peak at more than 1.6C above pre-industrial temperatures, before returning to 1.5C by the end of the century.

This means it would include a high level of temporary “overshoot” of the 1.5C target. The IEA explains that this results from the “reality of persistently high emissions in recent years”. It adds:

“In addition to very rapid progress with the transformation of the energy sector, bringing the temperature rise back down below 1.5C by 2100 also requires widespread deployment of CO2 removal technologies that are currently unproven at large scale.”

Finally, the outlook includes a new scenario where everyone in the world is able to gain access to electricity by 2035 and to clean cooking by 2040, named “ACCESS”.

While the STEPS appears second in the running order of the report, it is mentioned slightly more frequently than the CPS, as shown in the figure below. The CPS is a close second, however, whereas the IEA’s 1.5C pathway (NZE) receives a declining level of attention.

Number of mentions of each scenario per 100 pages of text.
Number of mentions of each scenario per 100 pages of text. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

US critics of the IEA have presented its stated policies scenario as “disconnected from reality”, in contrast to what they describe as the “likely scenario” of “business as usual”.

Yet the current policies scenario is far from a “business-as-usual” pathway. The IEA says this explicitly in an article published ahead of the outlook:

“The CPS might seem like a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, but this terminology can be misleading in an energy system where new technologies are already being deployed at scale, underpinned by robust economics and mature, existing policy frameworks. In these areas, ‘business as usual’ would imply continuing the current process of change and, in some cases, accelerating it.”

In order to create the current policies scenario, where oil and gas use continues to surge into the future, the IEA therefore has to make more pessimistic assumptions about barriers to the uptake of new technologies and about the willingness of governments to row back on their plans. It says:

“The CPS…builds on a narrow reading of today’s policy settings…assuming no change, even where governments have indicated their intention to do so.”

This is not a scenario of “business as usual”. Instead, it is a scenario where countries around the world follow US president Donald Trump in dismantling their plans to shift away from fossil fuels.

More specifically, the current policies scenario assumes that countries around the world renege on their policy commitments and fail to honour their climate pledges.

For example, it assumes that Japan and South Korea fail to implement their latest national electricity plans, that China fails to continue its power-market reforms and abandons its provincial targets for clean power, that EU countries fail to meet their coal phase-out pledges and that US states such as California fail to extend their clean-energy targets.

Similarly, it assumes that Brazil, Turkey and India fail to implement their greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes (ETS) as planned and that China fails to expand its ETS to other industries.

The scenario also assumes that the EU, China, India, Australia, Japan and many others fail to extend or continue strengthening regulations on the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, as well as those relating to the fuel-economy standards for new vehicles.

In contrast to the portrayal of the stated policies scenario as blindly assuming that all pledges will be met, the IEA notes that it does not give a free pass to aspirational targets. It says:

“[T]argets are not automatically assumed to be met; the prospects and timing for their realisation are subject to an assessment of relevant market, infrastructure and financial constraints…[L]ike the CPS, the STEPS does not assume that aspirational goals, such as those included in the Paris Agreement, are achieved.”

Only in the “announced pledges scenario” (APS) does the IEA assume that countries meet all of their climate pledges on time and full – regardless of how credible they are.

The APS does not appear in this year’s report, presumably because many countries missed the deadlines to publish new climate pledges ahead of COP30.

The IEA says it will publish its APS, assessing the impact of the new pledges, “once there is a more complete picture of these commitments”.

Fossil-fuel peak

In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the IEA’s outlook for fossil fuels under the stated policies scenario, which it has described as “a mirror to the plans of today’s policymakers”.

In 2020, the agency said that prevailing policy conditions pointed towards a “structural” decline in global coal demand, but that it was too soon to declare a peak in oil or gas demand.

By 2021, it said global fossil-fuel use could peak as soon as 2025, but only if all countries got on track to meet their climate goals. Under stated policies, it expected fossil-fuel use to hit a plateau from the late 2020s onwards, declining only marginally by 2050.

There was a dramatic change in 2022, when it said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting global energy crisis had “turbo-charged” the shift away from fossil fuels.

As a result, it said at the time that it expected a peak in demand for each of the fossil fuels. Coal “within a few years”, oil “in the mid-2030s” and gas ”by the end of the decade”.

This outlook sharpened further in 2023 and, by 2024, it was saying that each of the fossil fuels would see a peak in global demand before 2030.

This year’s report notes that “some formal country-level [climate] commitments have waned”, pointing to the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement.

The report says the “new direction” in the US is among “major new policies” in 48 countries. The other changes it lists include Brazil’s “energy transition acceleration programme”, Japan’s new plan for 2040 and the EU’s recently adopted 2040 climate target.

Overall, the IEA data still points to peaks in demand for coal, oil and gas under the stated policies scenario, as shown in the figure below.

Alongside this there is a surge in clean technologies, with renewables overtaking oil to become the world’s largest source of energy – not just electricity – by the early 2040s.

Total energy demand chart

In this year’s outlook under stated policies, the IEA sees global coal demand as already being at – or very close to – a definitive peak, as the chart above shows.

Coal then enters a structural decline, where demand for the fuel is displaced by cheaper alternatives, particularly renewable sources of electricity.

The IEA reiterates that the cost of solar, wind and batteries has respectively fallen by 90%, 70% and 90% since 2010, with further declines of 10-40% expected by 2035.

(The report notes that household energy spending would be lower under the more ambitious NZE scenario than under stated policies, despite the need for greater investment.)

However, this year’s outlook has coal use in 2030 coming in some 6% higher than expected last year, although it ultimately declines to similar levels by 2050.

For oil, the agency’s data still points to a peak in demand this decade, as electric vehicles (EVs) and more efficient combustion engines erode the need for the fuel in road transport.

While this sees oil demand in 2030 reaching similar levels to what the IEA expected last year, the post-peak decline is slightly less marked in the latest outlook, ending some 5% higher in 2050.

The biggest shift compared with last year is for gas, where the IEA suggests that global demand will keep rising until 2035, rather than peaking by 2030.

Still, the outlook has gas demand in 2030 being only 7% higher than expected last year. It notes:

“Long-term natural gas demand growth is kept lower than in recent decades by the expanding deployment of renewables, efficiency gains and electrification of end-uses.”

In terms of clean energy, the outlook sees nuclear power output growing to 39% above 2024 levels by 2035 and doubling by 2050. Solar grows nearly four-fold by 2035 and nearly nine-fold by 2050, while wind power nearly triples and quadruples over the same periods.

Notably, the IEA sees strong growth of clean-energy technologies, even in the current policies scenario. Here, renewables would still become the world’s largest energy source before 2050.

This is despite the severe headwinds assumed in this scenario, including EVs never increasing from their current low share of sales in India or the US.

The CPS would see oil and gas use continuing to rise, with demand for oil reaching 11% above current levels by 2050 and gas climbing 31%, even as renewables nearly triple.

This means that coal use would still decline, falling to a fifth below current levels by 2050.

Finally, while the IEA considers the prospect of global coal demand continuing to rise rather than falling as expected, it gives this idea short shrift. It explains:

“A growth story for coal over the coming decades cannot entirely be ruled out but it would fly in the face of two crucial structural trends witnessed in recent years: the rise of renewable sources of power generation, and the shift in China away from an especially coal-intensive model of growth and infrastructure development. As such, sustained growth for coal demand appears highly unlikely.”

Original article by Simon Evans and Ho Woo Nam republished from Carbon Brief.

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Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Continue ReadingIEA: Fossil-fuel use will peak before 2030 – unless ‘stated policies’ are abandoned

No time to recover: Hurricane Melissa and the Caribbean’s compounding disaster trap as the storms keep coming

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Hurricane Melissa tore off roofs and stripped trees of their leaves, including in many parts of Jamaica hit by Hurricane Beryl a year earlier. Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images

Farah Nibbs, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Headlines have been filled with talk of the catastrophic power of Hurricane Melissa after the Category 5 storm devastated communities across Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti in October 2025. But to see this as a singular disaster misses the bigger picture: Melissa didn’t hit stable, resilient islands. It hit islands still rebuilding from the last hurricane.

Jamaica was still recovering from Hurricane Beryl, which sideswiped the island in July 2024 as a Category 4 storm. The parish of St. Elizabeth – known as Jamaica’s breadbasket – was devastated. The country’s Rural Agriculture Development Authority estimated that 45,000 farmers were affected by Beryl, with damage estimated at US$15.9 million.

An aerial view of a city damaged by the hurricane. Mud is in the streets and buildings have lost roofs and walls.
St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, suffered intense damage from both Hurricane Melissa in October 2025 and Hurricane Beryl a year earlier. Ivan Shaw/AFP via Getty Images

In Cuba, the power grid collapsed during Hurricane Oscar in October 2024, leaving 10 million people in darkness. When Melissa arrived, it struck the same fragile infrastructure that Cubans had barely begun to rebuild.

Haiti’s fragile situation before Hurricane Melissa cannot be overstated. The island nation was still reeling from years of cascading disasters – deadly hurricanes, political instability, gang violence, an ongoing cholera crisis and widespread hunger – with over half the population already in need of humanitarian assistance even before this storm hit.

This is the new reality of the climate crisis: Disasters hitting the Caribbean are compounding and can trigger infrastructure collapse, social erosion and economic debt spirals.

The compounding disaster trap

I study disasters, with a focus on how Caribbean island systems absorb, adapt to and recover from recurring shocks, like the nations hit by Melissa are now experiencing.

It’s not just that hurricanes are more frequent; it’s that the time between major storms is now shorter than the time required for a full recovery. This pulls islands into a trap that works through three self-reinforcing loops:

Infrastructure collapse: When a major hurricane hits an already weakened system, it causes simultaneous infrastructure collapses. The failure of one system – such as power – cascades, taking down water pumps, communications and hospitals all at once. We saw this in Grenada after Hurricane Beryl and in Dominica after Hurricane Maria. This kind of cascading damage is now the baseline expectation for the Caribbean.

Economic debt spiral: When countries exhaust their economic reserves on one recovery, borrow to rebuild and are then hit again while still paying off that debt, it becomes a vicious cycle.

Hurricane Ivan, which struck the region in 2004, cost Grenada over 200% of its gross domestic product; Maria, in 2017, cost Dominica 224% of its GDP; and Dorian, in 2019, cost the Bahamas 25% of GDP. With each storm, debt balloons, credit ratings drop and borrowing for the next disaster becomes more expensive.

Social erosion: Each cycle weakens the human infrastructure, too. More than 200,000 people left Puerto Rico for the U.S. mainland in Maria’s aftermath, and nearly one-quarter of Dominica’s population left after the same storm. Community networks fragment as people leave, and psychological trauma becomes layered as each new storm reopens the wounds of the last. The very social fabric needed to manage recovery is itself being torn.

The interior of a school that has been torn apart by hurricane winds. Desks and debris are scattered and light shines through the rafters
When schools are heavily damaged by storms, like this one in Jamaica that lost its roof during Hurricane Melissa, it’s harder for families to remain. Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images

The trap is that all three of these loops reinforce each other. A country can’t rebuild infrastructure without money. It can’t generate economic activity without infrastructure. And it can’t retain the skilled workforce needed for either when people are fleeing to safer places.

Rebuilding a system of overlapping recoveries

The Caribbean is not merely recovering from disasters – it is living within a system of overlapping recoveries, meaning that its communities must begin rebuilding again before fully recovering from the last crisis.

Each new attempt at rebuilding happens on the unstable physical, social and institutional foundations left by the last disaster.

The question isn’t whether Jamaica will attempt to rebuild following Melissa. It will, somehow. The question is, what happens when the next major storm arrives before that recovery is complete? And the one after that?

Without fundamentally restructuring how we think about recovery – moving from crisis response to continuous adaptation – island nations will remain trapped in this loop.

The way forward

The compounding disaster trap persists because recovery models are broken. They apply one-size-fits-all solutions to crises unfolding across multiple layers of society.

Breaking free requires adaptive recovery at all levels, from household to global.

A line of people pass bags of food items one to another.
Residents formed a human chain among the hurricane debris to pass food supplies from a truck to a distribution center in the Whitehouse community in Westmoreland, an area of Jamaica hit hard by Hurricane Melissa in October 2025. Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images

At the household level: Helping amid trauma

Recovery isn’t just about repairing a damaged roof. When families experience back-to-back disasters, trauma compounds. Direct cash assistance and long-term, community-based mental health services can help restore dignity.

Cash transfers allow families to address their own needs, stimulate local economies and restore control to people whose lives have been repeatedly upended.

At community level: Mending the social fabric

Repairing the “social fabric” means investing in farmer cooperatives, neighborhood associations and faith groups – networks that can lead recovery from the ground up.

Local networks are often the only ones capable of rebuilding trust and participation.

At the infrastructure level: Breaking the cycle

The pattern of rebuilding the same vulnerable roads or power lines only to see them wash away in the next storm fails the community and the nation. There are better, proven solutions that prepare communities to weather the next storm:

A man looks into an open drainage area that has been torn up out by the storm
Hurricanes can damage infrastructure, including water and drainage systems. Hurricane Beryl left Jamaican communities rebuilding not just homes but also streets, power lines and basic infrastructure. Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images

At the global level: Fixing the debt trap

None of this is possible if recovery remains tied to high-interest loans. There are ways for internal financial institutions and global development lenders to allow for breathing room between disasters:

The current international disaster finance system, controlled by global lenders and donors, requires countries to prove their losses after a disaster in order to access assistance, often resulting in months of delay. “Proof” is established by formal evaluations or inspections, such as by the United Nations, and aid is released only after meeting certain requirements. This process can stall recovery at the moment when aid is needed the most.

The bottom line

The Caribbean needs a system that provides support before disasters strike, with agreed-upon funding commitments and regional risk-pooling mechanisms that can avoid the delays and bureaucratic burden that slow recovery.

What’s happening in Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti today is a glimpse of what’s coming for coastal and island communities worldwide as climate change accelerates. In my view, we can either learn from the Caribbean’s experiences and redesign disaster recovery now or wait until the trap closes around everyone.

Farah Nibbs, Assistant Professor of Emergency and Disaster Health Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.

Continue ReadingNo time to recover: Hurricane Melissa and the Caribbean’s compounding disaster trap as the storms keep coming

Global Energy Report Offers Choice for Humanity: Renewable Transition or ‘Dystopian Future’ Pushed by Trump

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A wildfire breaks out in a forested area in Antalya, Turkey on September 18, 2025. (Photo by Mustafa Kurt/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“At COP30, governments must reject this nightmare fantasy, uphold a just transition, and choose a fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout,” said one climate campaigner.

An International Energy Agency report published Wednesday underscores that world leaders are at a crossroads and must decide whether to embrace an ambitious transition to renewable energy or succumb to the agenda of US President Donald Trump and others bent on propping up the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry.

The IEA said in its flagship World Energy Outlook that under a so-called “current policies scenario,” oil and fracked gas demand could continue to grow until the middle of the century, complicating the organization’s earlier projections that global fossil fuel demand could peak by 2030.

The change came amid pressure from the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers in the United States, the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. The New York Times noted Wednesday that “Republicans in Congress have been threatening to cut US government funding to the IEA if it does not change the way it operates.”

“In an essay posted online, the authors of this year’s report said they were restoring the current policies scenario because it was appropriate to consider multiple possibilities for the way the future might unfold,” the Times added. “They did not say they were responding to pressure from the United States.”

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said in a statement that the scenarios outlined in the new report “illustrate the key decision points that lie ahead and, together, provide a framework for evidence-based, data-driven discussion over the way forward.”

Under all of the scenarios examined by the IEA, “renewables grow faster than any other major energy source” even as the Trump administration works to roll back clean energy initiatives in the US and promote fossil fuel production.

China, the report states, “continues to be the largest market for renewables, accounting for 45-60% of global deployment over the next ten years across the scenarios, and remains the largest manufacturer of most renewable technologies.”

The analysis was released as world leaders gathered in Belém, Brazil for the COP30 climate talks, which the Trump administration is boycotting while lobbing attacks from afar.

David Tong, global industry campaign manager at Oil Change International, said the IEA report “sets out a stark and simple choice: We can protect people and communities by safeguarding 1.5ºC [of warming], settle for a disastrous business-as-usual 2.5ºC, or choose to backslide into a nightmare future of much higher warming.”

“This year’s report also shows Donald Trump’s dystopian future, bringing back the old, fossil-fuel intense, high-pollution current policies scenario, charting an unrealistic pathway where governments drag their energy policies backwards and rates of renewable energy adoption stall, leading to high energy prices and unmitigated climate disaster,” said Tong. “At COP30, governments must reject this nightmare fantasy, uphold a just transition, and choose a fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
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Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Continue ReadingGlobal Energy Report Offers Choice for Humanity: Renewable Transition or ‘Dystopian Future’ Pushed by Trump

The Telegraph’s Record of Climate Falsehoods

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Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

The Daily Telegraph front page. Credit: Steven May / Alamy

The newspaper has been scolding the BBC for its editorial failings, while issuing a string of climate corrections.

The Telegraph, which has accused the BBC of bias and a lack of editorial rigour, has been forced to amend a swathe of climate inaccuracies.

The BBC’s director-general and CEO resigned this weekend after a critical review of the broadcaster’s coverage was leaked to The Telegraph.

The Telegraph has used this opportunity to slam the BBC – saying that the “BBC has just signed its own death warrant” and that its future is “now in doubt”. The paper is also reporting that the BBC is now reviewing its climate and energy coverage over accusations of bias.

However, The Telegraph has repeatedly made basic errors in relation to its climate coverage in recent times.

According to its corrections and clarifications page, The Telegraph published four articles in December and January that included the false claim that Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband plans to build 1 billion solar panels to meet his net zero emissions targets.

In reality, reaching net zero by 2050 will require a tenth of that figure – 100 million solar panels.

The Telegraph has repeatedly castigated the BBC in recent days for its apparent lack of fairness, yet the newspaper frequently attacks its opponents using hyperbolic, incendiary language – even when its facts are wrong.

One of the reports that used the false solar panels statistic was entitled, “Miliband’s eco lunacy will wreck Britain and enrich the Chinese dictatorship”.

In an article from Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice entitled, “Ed Miliband’s solar farm building spree will ruin our countryside for ever”, the newspaper also claimed that the solar panels set to be installed over the next decade will cover an area of farmland the size of Greater London – a falsehood that had to be corrected.

Tice is a notorious climate science denier who has suggested that CO2 is “plant food”.

Other Telegraph falsehoods have included the amount of undersea cables and overland power lines needed to reach net zero, the amount that would be saved by manufacturers if “net zero costs” were scrapped from bills, and that Britain has been “paying the highest electricity prices in the world for second year running”.

The BBC has made 33 corrections to its coverage overall this year, compared with 114 corrections from The Telegraph.

“Looking to The Daily Telegraph as an arbiter of journalistic accuracy and ethics is like calling on the fox to give you advice on securing the hen house,” said Mic Wright, author of Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn’t and Why it Matters.

“The paper’s attacks on the BBC are not remotely done in good faith and are the result of the publisher’s ideological and commercial interests. There is no world in which The Telegraph’s output would survive the level of scrutiny applied to the BBC’s journalism.”

The leaked review of BBC editorial decisions was produced by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the broadcaster’s editorial standards committee. He claimed that a speech by Donald Trump during the 6 January 2021 riots on Capitol Hill in Washington DC had been selectively edited by Panorama to suggest that Trump was encouraging the riot.

Trump is now threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion (£760,000).

While Trump’s speech was edited to distort his words, he did tell his supporters to “walk down to the Capitol”, after which rioters smashed through barricades, ransacked the U.S. Capitol, and injured 174 police officers. When he re-entered office in January 2025, Trump retrospectively pardoned all 1,600 individuals who were charged or convicted in relation to the attempted coup.

“It’s easy to see why Trump wants to destroy the world’s number one news source,” said Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey. “We can’t let him.

“The BBC belongs to all of us here in the UK. The prime minister and leaders from across the political spectrum should be united in telling Trump to keep his hands off it.”

The Telegraph was approached for comment.

The Telegraph’s Climate Deniers

As DeSmog has shown, The Telegraph has ramped up its aggressive, inaccurate, anti-climate attacks over recent years.

DeSmog’s analysis of opinion and editorial articles about the environment published on The Telegraph’s website in the first 100 days of the current Labour government found that 94 percent were anti-green – attacking or undermining climate science, policy and technological solutions, or environmental activists. 

The Telegraph focused on Ed Miliband, with its columnists regularly deploying ad hominem attacks, labelling him “red Ed” and “mad Ed”. In one article, columnist Allison Pearson called Miliband “thoroughly mental Mili”.

In an article last week about the BBC, Pearson said: “We have become accustomed to BBC journalists lying by omission and the prioritisation of pet subjects – I swear there isn’t a spark caused by two sticks rubbed together in southern Europe that hasn’t been seized on by climate editor Justin Rowlatt as evidence of man-made global warming.”

Pearson has formal ties to climate science denial groups – a common feature of The Telegraph’s climate commentators.

She is a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than current levels.

Telegraph journalist and GWPF director Allison Pearson. Credit: Keith Morris / Hay Ffotos / Alamy

Fellow Telegraph columnist Lord David Frost is a director of Net Zero Watch, the GWPF’s campaign arm. Frost – who has no scientific training – has claimed that “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial” to Britain. He was recently appointed director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, an anti-climate lobby group that received funding from oil major BP for decades.

Individuals associated with the GWPF wrote at least 48 articles in The Telegraph during Labour’s first 100 days, yet their ties to the climate denial group were not mentioned once by the newspaper. 

“When disinformation is allowed to run rampant, this can have devastating consequences for democracy – as is already being seen in the United States,” said Richard Wilson, director of the campaign group Stop Funding Heat. “Clearly we all therefore have an interest in ensuring that every UK media outlet – including the BBC – maintains the highest possible standards of accuracy.

“Equally, anyone familiar with The Telegraph’s long track record of misleading climate coverage may have questions about their new-found enthusiasm for rigorous and accurate reporting.”

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet.”

The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide pollution “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”

A previous DeSmog analysis found that, during the six-month period to 16 October 2023, 85 percent of The Telegraph’s editorials and opinion pieces on environmental issues were anti-green.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, previously said the editors of The Telegraph had “lost their minds when it comes to climate change”. 

“Both newspapers [The Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph] are campaigning against climate policies,” Ward told DeSmog. “They are bombarding their poor readers with laughable propaganda, particularly in their comment columns.”

Additional research by Joey Grostern

Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.

What does it mean to be a climate denier?

Continue ReadingThe Telegraph’s Record of Climate Falsehoods

COP30: Ode to the Amazon

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https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2025-11/ode-to-the-amazon-cop-30-brazil-belem-indigenoous-climate-change.html

The Rio Guajará (Guajará River), part of the vast Amazon River delta 

As COP30 kicks off in Belém, Brazil, we look at the significance of hosting this year’s UN climate conference in the heart of the Amazon rainforest.

The world’s largest rainforest – home to more species of plants and animals than anywhere else on Earth – is opening its doors, giving humanity a chance to do right by the planet that hosts it. As we walk through the rainforest, we are humbled, as it reminds us that it is the heartbeat and the lungs of our planet.

Here in Belém, “the gateway to the Amazon”, life moves in time with nature. The air is thick with humidity, sudden tropical showers fall, followed by the hum of insects and the call of birds. Vultures circle above, herons perch on the riverbanks, and capybaras wander through the green patches that break the city’s skyline. Coconut water stalls line the streets, purple açaí leaves a natural liner around the lips of the men, women and children who eat it – with their fish or in their milkshakes. Even amongst the hustle and bustle, as the streets fill up, Belém is very clearly inseparable from the forest that cradles it.

…

Representing the Holy See just prior to the opening of COP30, at the leaders’ summit on 7 November, Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, reminded delegates of Pope Leo XIV’s message: “If you want to cultivate peace, care for creation.” Cardinal Parolin reminded world leaders that the climate crisis is not only a question of technology or finance, but of justice and solidarity – pointing out that ‘those in the most vulnerable situations are the first to suffer,’ and he called for COP30 to become ‘a sign of hope’ in a world already ‘in flames’ from both environmental and human conflict. 

His words echoed those of Pope Francis in Laudato si’, who wrote that “we have no such right” to destroy creation, reminding us that humanity’s vocation is not to dominate the earth but to till and keep it – to care for the world and for every creature that shares it with us. 

The message is clear: caring for the planet is inseparable from caring for one another.

As delegates gather in Belém over the next two weeks, the world will watch for commitments that can bring together words and action, pray for funding that reaches the communities protecting the world’s organs, and hope for agreements that honour both people and planet.

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2025-11/ode-to-the-amazon-cop-30-brazil-belem-indigenoous-climate-change.html

Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Continue ReadingCOP30: Ode to the Amazon