Renewables Overtook Global Electricity Demand Last Year. Really!

I bet, we are dealing here with a lot of wishful thinking and data manipulation! More propaganda than fact?

Was the solar+wind power generated electricity actually used?

The vague language of the news reports does not distinguish capacity from generation or private household generation from commercial generation etc. I have some serious doubts about the claims of such enormous solar power generation growth as stated by Ember!

What exactly is included in the euphemistically and falsely called "clean energy"?

Who funds the think tank Ember?

Ember vision/mission statement: "We’re a global energy think tank that aims to accelerate the clean energy [???] transition with data and policy"

"“Record growth in solar, especially in China and India, was a driving factor for clean energy sources [???] surpassing the world’s strong demand for electricity in 2025, according to a new global power analysis.

Clean power generation [???] grew 887 terawatt hours last year, exceeding overall global electricity demand growth of 849 terawatt hours, according to a report by energy think tank Ember, released after midnight Tuesday London time.”"

"... Together with growth in other clean sources, this solar surge drove clean power to meet all global electricity demand growth in 2025. Solar alone met three-quarters (75%) of the increase, while solar and wind together met almost all of it (99%).

In total, clean generation rose by 887 TWh, slightly exceeding demand growth of 849 TWh. As a result, fossil generation fell by 0.2%, making 2025 only the fifth year this century without growth in fossil electricity. ..."

Renewables Overtook Global Electricity Demand Last Year - Human Progress

Renewable energies overtook global electricity demand last year, led by solar growth in China, India

Solar surge halts fossil electricity growth worldwide in 2025 (original news release)

A majority of health research focuses on men's bodies. Nonprofit FemTechAZ aims to change that. Really!

A case of junk journalism! I have seen at least one other, similar news report this week!

Feminists have been repeating this story since the 1960s or so!

Yes, for historical reasons medicine focused on male bodies in the past, but this is not true anymore for at least the past 50 years. It time to cancel this false, outdated  propaganda!

Caveat: I did not read the entire article.

A majority of health research focuses on men's bodies. Nonprofit FemTechAZ aims to change that

When the once prestigious AAAS again promotes demagoguery and fallacies

Bad news! What a shame and pseudoscience by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)!

Because of the global reduction in air pollution, now we have to reflect the "sun's radiation back to space"? What a nonsense!

"Global warming [???] is bad news for polar bears, seals, and walruses; the Arctic sheets of seasonal sea ice they frequent have been on the decline for decades.

An ambitious idea seeks to intervene: sea ice thickening [???], where engineers drill through the ice and pump up ocean water to freeze on top in an attempt to delay summertime melting. If successful, the extra ice would also make the poles brighter, reflecting more of the sun’s radiation back to space [???] and lessening a dangerous climate feedback loop.

Like all geoengineering ideas, it’s controversial. But field trials have begun, and the first results are out: while pumping thickens ice, those gains don’t stick around. ..."

"A simple idea [??] underpins an audacious intervention to augment Arctic sea ice and slow the climate feedback loop accelerating its disappearance. Drill holes through a floe, pump seawater onto its surface, and let the cold do the rest. The first results from two field tests show the technique can thicken the ice. But they also show those gains don’t last. ..."

ScienceAdviser

Artificially engineered sea ice grows—but tests are too small to combat melting "First Arctic trials show pumped seawater can bulk up ice, but results aren’t lasting—and may not scale"

Past greenhouse gas emissions will cost global economy trillions | Stanford Report. Really!

Shocking! Even the Stanford University promotes such nonsense!

Not enough, Nature journal published this dubious research! There is at least a 50 years long history in Western countries of dubious calculations of environmental damages. It is e.g. a cherry picking exercise much liked by biased scientists!

What about e.g. global population growth? What about China?

"In brief

• Researchers developed a new framework for calculating “loss and damage,” or harms from climate change that countries can’t prevent by cutting emissions or avoid through adaptation.
• U.S. emissions since 1990 have caused more than $10 trillion in global economic damages, with roughly a third of the damage hitting the country’s own GDP.
• Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a potential alternative to compensation for damages caused, but becomes much less effective if action is delayed [???].

..."

From the abstract:

"Climate change is causing measurable harm globally. Political and legal efforts seek to link these damages with specific emissions, including in discussions of loss and damage (L&D); however, no quantitative definition of L&D exists, nor is there a framework to link past and future emissions from specific sources to monetized, location-specific damages.

Here we develop such a framework, which is integrated with recent efforts to estimate the social cost of carbon. Using empirical estimates of the non-linear relationship between temperature and aggregate economic output, we show that future damages from past emissions—one component of L&D—are at least an order of magnitude larger than historical damages from the same emissions.

For instance, one tonne of CO2 emitted in 1990 caused US$180 in discounted global damages by 2020 ($40–530) and will cause an additional $1,840 through 2100 ($500–5,700).

Thus, settling debts for past damages will not settle debts for past emissions.

In other illustrative estimates, a single long-haul flight per year over the past decade leads to about $25k ($6,000–77,000) in future damages by 2100, and US emissions since 1990 caused $500 billion ($180–1,300 billion) of damage in India and $330 billion ($110–820 billion) in Brazil. Carbon removal offers an alternative to transfer payments for settling L&D, but is increasingly ineffective in limiting damages as the delay between emission and recapture increases."

Past greenhouse gas emissions will cost global economy trillions | Stanford Report "Future climate damages from past emissions dwarf the economic harm already inflicted, a new study shows."

Quantifying climate loss and damage consistent with a social cost of carbon (open access)

With declining diversity, the U.S. theatrical film industry faces an uncertain future. Really!

More DEI nonsense!

Diversity by itself does not good or even great movies make! Obsession with DEI may have also contributed, besides making US movies more palatable to international audiences, to the decline of Hollywood great movie making in the past several decades!

"Key takeaways

• The UCLA team’s latest release on theatrical film finds the industry missing opportunities to support diverse filmmakers and bring audiences back to the theater as Hollywood loses footing to foreign productions. 
• Horror, the most common genre last year and a favorite of Black and Latino audiences, had the highest median return on investment, and demonstrates a potential place for profit growth.
• Representation for women onscreen and behind the camera showed volatility, as female employment metrics hit a downward trend after last year’s highs, falling to 2022 and even 2018 levels.

..."

With declining diversity, the U.S. theatrical film industry faces an uncertain future  | UCLA "Studios ignore diversity’s potential for profit, according to the 2026 Hollywood Diversity Report"

How Russia has finetuned its disinformation campaign in 4 years of Ukraine war

Recommendable! Amazing how much disinformation to discredit the Ukraine or its president the propaganda machine of Putin the Terrible produces! Don't be fooled!

(247) How Russia has finetuned its disinformation campaign in 4 years of Ukraine war • FRANCE 24 English - YouTube

Make equity non-negotiable in clinical research. Really!

Do we need to postpone or even jeopardize clinical research to satisfy DEI demagogues?

"Make equity non-negotiable in research
Underrepresentation across sex, age, pregnancy, disability, migration status and socioeconomic disadvantage in clinical research is more than an ethical concern: it's a barrier to safety and reproducibility that exacerbates biases in care, argue a group of biomedical researchers and lawyers. The group has developed the EQUITRIAL framework to provide a metric for representation in clinical trials and a template for translating ethical aspirations into practice. The ‘inclusion by design’ approach looks to work within current clinical trial systems and allows representation to be audited and corrected."

Nature Briefing: Translational Research

Embedding equity in clinical research governance (no public access, but article above has link to the paper)

How food shortages reprogram immune system response

Amazing stuff!

It appears this article was not yet published in the Immunity journal as of now according to Google Scholar and the Immunity journal! The article below does not contain a link to the journal article.

Notice how ideology and demagoguery permeates this article by Cornell University! The use of the ideological term "food insecurity" in this context is foolish and wrong! There is a huge difference between a food scarcity and food insecurity!

"When food is scarce, stress hormones direct the immune system to operate in “low power” mode to preserve immune function while conserving energy ... This reconfiguration is crucial to combating infections amid food insecurity [???]. ...

The answer could help the 47 million Americans who are food insecure [???] and face the risk of infectious diseases every day. ...

The results ... found that mice on a calorie-restricted diet fought off infection as well as mice that were fully fed, but did so while using very little glucose. This was possible thanks to glucocorticoids, stress hormones known for their role in regulating blood glucose. The researchers determined that glucocorticoids acted like master conductors, reorganizing immune cells and their energy usage to provide a survival advantage. ..."

How food shortages reprogram immune system response | Cornell Chronicle

Widely publicized studies have made extreme claims about microplastic accumulation are deeply flawed

I am not surprised! I have blogged here many times that Plastophobia is a serious medical condition and that most warnings about plastics are largely alarmism and hysteria!

"Over the past few years, a number of widely publicized studies have made extreme claims about microplastic accumulation in the human body. But a recent investigation by The Guardian finds that much of the research is deeply flawed, with many reported detections likely driven by contamination and false positives. Critics say a commonly used detection method can mistake fats in human tissue for plastic, and that some studies report amounts of microplastics that are simply “not biologically plausible.”"

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup - by Malcolm Cochran

Doubt Cast on “Microplastics Throughout Human Body”

‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body "Exclusive: Some scientists say many detections are most likely error, with one high-profile study called a ‘joke’"

In fish, chronic low dose exposure of common pesticide speed aging and death. Really!

Is this research part of the usual, frequently repeated propaganda and demagoguery regarding pesticides?

The featured research is about a single fish species and it is a predator fish!

Apparently, the researchers did not rule out any other factors that could have caused the shorter lifespans of this fish species in some of the lakes. How amateurish!

This research was done in China. How much does the Communist Party of China care for the environment and health? In general communist countries have a very bad historical record when it comes to protecting the environment.

"In fish, low doses of common pesticide speed aging and death

Chronic exposure to pesticides and other pollutants can devastate wildlife populations—sometimes in dramatically obvious ways. But more often, the exact cause of harm remains a mystery. Now, a study published this week in Science finds that the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos speeds up aging in a common lake fish by shortening the protective caps on its chromosomes, leading to premature death. ..."

"... The research began with field studies in China where collaborators examined thousands of fish collected over several years from lakes with differing levels of pesticide contamination. Rohr and colleagues observed that fish living in contaminated lakes lacked older individuals, while populations in relatively uncontaminated lakes included many older fish. This pattern suggested that fish were not failing to add to their populations, but rather were dying earlier in life. ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Most studies of the negative effects of pesticides focus on acute lethality, but we are increasingly recognizing that chronic, low-dose exposure has pernicious effects. Huang et al. studied the effects of low but chronic exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos on the lake skygazer, a predatory fish common in lake ecosystems in China. They found that in lakes with persistent low-dose exposure, these fish had shorter telomeres, and the population was made up of mostly younger fish. Experiments in the lab confirmed that exposing fish to low doses of the pesticide shortened telomeres. ...

Abstract

Low concentrations of chemicals are widespread in the environment, but exploration of the effects of their chronic exposures on animal life span in the wild is limited.

Field investigations showed that fish populations of lake skygazer (Culter dabryi) with chronic low-dose chlorpyrifos loads had shortened telomeres and truncated age structures.

Laboratory experiments confirmed that chronic low-dose chlorpyrifos exposure induced telomere degradation and reduced survival in a dose- and physiological age–dependent manner, whereas acute high-dose exposure did not.

Together, these studies provide evidence that chronic low-level chlorpyrifos exposure reduces life span and population viability in a wild fish by accelerating physiological aging.

Given the pervasive presence of low pesticide concentrations in the environment and the conserved mechanisms of aging across vertebrates, these findings raise concerns that even low doses of pesticides may pose long-term risks to longevity."

ScienceAdviser

Long-term pesticide exposure accelerates aging and shortens lifespan in fish (original news release)

Chronic low-dose exposure to chlorpyrifos reduces life span in a wild fish by accelerating aging (no public access)

Council on Foreign Relations: The 10 Worst U.S. Foreign Policy Decisions, According to Historians. Really!

A very lousy video by the CFR! Since when are native Americans part of foreign relations! It also repeats the worn out Mossadeq and the Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction propaganda.

What is the ratio of transgender women to transgender men in the US?

Based on news media coverage there should be a very significant imbalance between the two in favor of transgender women.

News media, academia, Google and Bing use at least three very deceptive tricks to report the ratio (or to inflate the numbers):

1. Heavy reliance of self reporting via opinion surveys
2. They mix in nonbinary individuals (whatever this means)
3. Very high, disproportionate inclusion of teenagers and young adults in these surveys. Teenagers and young adults are known to be susceptible to manias, current influences and hype etc.

Maybe transgender men are more hiding their identity for understandable reasons and they may not share showers and locker rooms as much.

According to Google a "full transition" (either way including necessary surgeries) costs can "exceed often $100,000".

When you ask Google it will give you a politically correct answer with a strong leftist tilt: "While older data suggested more trans women than men, recent U.S. estimates from the Williams Institute (2025) show a near-even split among transgender adults (around 33-34% each for trans women and men), with a significant portion (about 33%) identifying as nonbinary, indicating evolving self-identification trends, especially among youth, notes The Guardian [???] and USA Today."

Notice also how Google mixes in self-declared nonbinary individuals to obfuscate the answer. 

Bing also provides a similar, but more diverse answer to the question: "

The ratio of transgender men to transgender women varies across different studies:

• According to a UCLA study, approximately 34% are transgender men and 33% are transgender women, indicating a nearly equal distribution.
• The National Center for Transgender Equality's survey found that 23% identify as trans men and 47% as trans women, suggesting a higher prevalence of trans women.
• Some sources suggest a general ratio of 2:1 or higher for trans women over trans men. 

Overall, the ratio can vary, but recent studies indicate a significant presence of both transgender men and women in the population."

The other trick being used to 

"At least 2.8 million Americans [???] – including 724,000 in the 13-17 age bracket – identify as transgender, according to a recent analysis of data from federal and state health departments by the University of California, Los Angeles.

Of the 2.1 million adults who identify as transgender, about 33% are transgender women. About 34% are transgender men and 33% are transgender nonbinary adults, the UCLA study said." (Source)

How Many Adults and Youth Identify as Transgender in the United States? (This is one of the main recent and relied upon reports on this subject) "Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, and advanced statistical modeling, this study estimates the population of adults and youth who identify as transgender nationally and in each of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia. It also provides estimates regarding gender, age, and race/ethnicity."

Notice what a shoddy chart by the UCLA School of Law, the absolute figures for each group are missing (they only appear when your cursor hovers above the greenish bar)

As deep-sea mining race ramps up, mission will assess whether ecosystems recover afterward. Really!

Alarmism and hysteria! This has been researched multiple times in the past since about the 1970s/1980s, e.g. Norway offshore drilling of crude oil, mining of deep-sea polymetallic nodules, Great Barrier Reef etc.

Yes, these ecosystems do recover over time!

As deep-sea mining race ramps up, mission will assess whether ecosystems recover afterward | Science | AAAS "A new series of research cruises will study rare abyssal species in areas slated for mining"

Are the desperate Dimocrats trying to manufacture another George Floyd incident?

It has quite the appearance!

The mayor of Minneapolis seems to be an utter and dangerous fool! He is a demagogue and incites violence! Who voted for this dude twice!

The incident: A Minneapolis woman, was shot and killed by an ICE agent Wednesday morning (1/7/2026).

The mayor of Minneapolis (age 45, official photo, source). Does he not look eerily similar to this other fool Pete Buttigieg?

Household Food Security in the United States in 2024

What is "food security"? A loaded ideological and propaganda term of art? A very cunning attempt to elevate food to the level of national security?

There are so many food donations available in the US like in few or even no other countries of the world!

The good news: "2024 food security report will be the last after the USDA decided to terminate future reports"

How many illegal immigrants (incl. unaccompanied children) were "food insecure"? I bet this report does not say!

"Overview

An estimated 86.3 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2024, with access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households (13.7 percent) were food insecure at least some time during the year. Very low food security is the more severe range of food insecurity where one or more household members experience reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns at times during the year because of limited money or other resources for food. In 2024, 5.4 percent of households experienced very low food security."

Household Food Security in the United States in 2024 | Economic Research Service

Global Health NOW: Understanding America’s Mounting Malnutrition Rates; and Navigating Zimbabwe’s Deadly Roads "Understanding America’s Mounting Malnutrition Rates" Really!

French think tank IREF: Against All Rationality, the EU Persists in its Net-Zero Delusion

Net Zero is indeed a terrible demagoguery by proponents of big government socialism! Net zero is absurd!

"The European Commission has approved a new step towards its 2050 ‘net-zero’ objective, targeting a 90% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels by 2040. But a recent report by the French think tank IREF (Institut de Recherches Économiques et Fiscales) delivers a sobering reality check. ...

A recent report by the French think tank IREF (Institut de Recherches Économiques et Fiscales) delivers a sobering reality check. Simple arithmetic already raises red flags. EU emissions fell by 37% over the 33 years from 1990 to today. Achieving an additional 68% reduction in just 17 years would require nearly tripling the pace of decarbonization. If this acceleration fails, the economic consequences of such a quick drop in emissions would be severe. ..."

Think tank IREF: ‘Against All Rationality, the EU Persists in its Net-Zero Delusion’ - Clintel

Loi climat de l’Union Européenne: un désastre économique et sociétal sans aucun effet sur le climat

Racial Disparities in Housing Returns - American Economic Association. Really!

Again, the AEA promotes junk science and demagoguery!

These very clever authors of this research even capitalized White like in White homeowners! 

This is not an apple to apples comparison, but skin color ideology bias! This is disgusting racist research!

What about white compared to brown or black Hispanic homeowners?

If economic circumstances and location of residence of these homeowners irrespective of skin color had been the same or very similar in this study, then probably no significant "racial differences" nor "racial gap" were found.

From the abstract:

"We show that higher rates of distressed home sales (i.e., foreclosures and short sales) among Black and Hispanic homeowners severely reduce realized housing returns for these groups—in particular, to a level below that realized by White homeowners. Yet absent financial distress, houses owned by minorities do not appreciate at substantially slower rates than houses owned by non minorities. Racial differences [???] in liquidity and income stability, which are imperfectly observed by lenders, are important determinants of differences in distress. Policies that prevent foreclosure among distressed minorities can mitigate the racial gap [???] in returns."

Racial Disparities in Housing Returns - American Economic Association (no public access)

The stalled progress of gender equality in the US labor market (Research Highlights Featured Chart by AEA). Really!

It is a disgrace for the American Economic Association to promote such demagoguery! See also my blog post here on this demagoguery of a gender pay gap.

What or how much does workforce participation have to do with this "gender equality"?

What is wrong with the chart below? 

1. Data stops with the 1990s. Why not more recent data?
2. Education, workforce participation and age do not determine wage outcomes as much as other factors! It is foremost the choice of jobs, changing jobs, relocating for jobs, prior job experiences, job promotions, career ambitions and so on!

The authors of this paper use again the old, false, and worn out trope of child rearing (why not elder care etc.)! Although, the US abandoned the draft in 1973, still predominantly men choose military service which may or may not negatively affect/impact their lifetime income as well.

The first author Richard Blundell is a highly recognized, older economist, if I am not mistaken. His accumulated lifetime citation count is 109,830, which is quite good! He started publishing research articles in the late 1970s.

"The gender wage gap narrowed dramatically from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, with women's wages converging toward those of men across all income levels. Then progress stalled, and despite continued advances in women's education and workforce participation over the subsequent quarter century, the gap has persisted. [???] ..."

From the abstract:

"We estimate the full distribution of life cycle wages for cohorts of men and women in the United States using a quantile selection model to account for systematic differences in employment by gender and education group. 

Although common within-group time effects [???] are shown to be a key driver of labor market inequalities across gender, important additional differences by birth cohort emerge with more recent cohorts of women delaying child rearing [???] and, by implication, the onset of child penalties in wages.

These cross-cohort differences help account for the stalling of progress in gender wage gaps over the past quarter century."

The stalled progress of gender equality in the US labor market

Labour market inequality and the changing life cycle profile of male and female wages (original news release from 4/13/2023 plus working paper)

Labor Market Inequality and the Changing Life Cycle Profile of Male and Female Wages (no public access)

Figure 5 from the authors’ paper shows their estimates broken down by educational attainment.

Light-driven catalyst can break down PFAS forever chemicals

Good news!

Remember so called "forever chemicals" is mostly alarmism, hysteria, and demagoguery! Unfortunately, too many scientists engage in this nonsense too!

Alert: Plastophobia is a serious disorder. Please seek immediate medical help! (Caution: satire)

What about all the benefits of plastics in our lives? What are the possible substitutes (how healthy are the substitutes)?

"But their ongoing impact on health issues in humans and other animals is being uncovered. Some PFAS are carcinogenic. The new research ... describes how a material can use light to catalyse a reaction which breaks down a range of pollutants in water including PFAS. This kind of approach has previously shown promise in breaking down PFAS. ..."

"... The process involves the use of a class of materials known as covalent organic frameworks, or COFs, whose porous structure ⎯ and hence high surface area ⎯ make them useful in light-driven, or photocatalytic, reactions. When they interact with light, some of the electrons in COF molecules get displaced, forming holes, and this bifurcation of charges is what makes COFs good photocatalysts. ..."

From the abstract:

"Nature-inspired photocatalysis provides a sustainable solution for energy conversion and pollutant degradation. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs), with tunable properties and high porosity, have shown promise as photocatalysts, though their synthesis often requires extensive efforts. In this study, we report the in-situ growth of COFs on defective hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) surfaces to form hBN@1,3,5-triformylphloroglucinol (Tp)-4,4′-diamino-[1,1′-biphenyl]-3,3′-dicarbonitrile (DBCN) heterostructures. Bandgap analysis and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy revealed the formation of type-II heterojunctions, enhancing charge separation and minimizing recombination. Density functional theory simulations confirmed efficient charge transfer at the COF-hBN interface. The hBN@Tp-DBCN heterostructures demonstrated remarkable versatility, achieving nearly complete degradation of dyes, pharmaceutical waste, and persistent compounds such as perfluorooctanoic acid [PFAS]. Practical implementation in vertical and horizontal configurations further validated their application potential. This research underscores the efficacy of hBN@COFs heterostructures in photocatalysis and offers a promising direction for metal-free heterostructures in artificial photosynthesis and water treatment."

Light-driven catalyst can break down PFAS forever chemicals | News | ConnectSci

Engineered material uses light to destroy PFAS, other contaminants (original news release)

Covalent organic framework/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructure photocatalysts for efficient degradation of emerging contaminants (no public access)

Graphical abstract

Science’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year: The unstoppable rise of renewable energy. Really!

Who is the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) trying to fool with their wokeness! Ridiculous!

Science’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year: The unstoppable rise of renewable energy | Science | AAAS