Climate Change and CO2 Derangement Syndrome
4 hours ago Guest Blogger
Jules de Waart
Being right is not enough
Cargo cult science and the CO2 derangement syndrome
1. Introduction
After two relatively cool years temperatures in 2023 rose dramatically for over a year. This was followed by an almost equally dramatic decline starting around April 2024; a drop in temperatures that continued throughout 2025 and the first months of 2026. (See also the graph below with the satellite measurements, as published by Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville.)
From January 2023 to April 2024, the temperature rose by a full degree Celsius. This increase was spectacular and inexplicable. The warming during the entire industrial period (from 1850 to the present), the main reason for the IPCC’s concerns, was about one full degree Celsius. Established names in climate science, Zeke Hausfather and Gavin Schmidt, wrote a joint article in the New York Times stating that: “We do not fully understand why 2023 was as warm as it was.” Gavin Schmidt was in 2024 even more outspoken: “Climate models can’t explain the 2023 huge heat anomaly – we could be in unchartered territory”’. But the decline that began around April 2024 and continued throughout the year 2025 was equally inexplicable. In unchartered territory, the IPCC could no longer be our guide. We do not really know whether or not this cooling continues in 2026 and later, but we can be sure of one thing; CO2 and other greenhouse gases cannot have been the dominant cause of these temperature jumps. CO2 concentrations rose by about one percent a year, far too little to have had such dramatic effects!
Virtually all peaks and dips in the graph from 1980 till now coincide with natural causes. El Nino’s, ENSO and other periodic changes in the worldwide ocean currents, can explain at least a significant part of the warming. For an explanation of the “record heat” during 2023 and the beginning of 2024, Lightfoot&Ratzer concluded that it was not CO2 but an eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga that caused the rapid increase in temperature (Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences (August 2025). This single eruption increased the stratosphere’s water content by about 10%, enough to temporarily boost the temperature. They also predicted an imminent cooling; and were absolutely right. It was a crucial counterexample to the IPCC position.
A rapidly growing number of (peer reviewed) publications are appearing that cite other explanatory factors. These include changes in solar radiation, clouds, cosmic rays, water vapor emissions from submarine volcanic eruptions, atmospheric brown clouds, changes in the Earth’salbedo, whether or not due to human influence, and some (but not a dominant) influence of greenhouse gas concentrations.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/03/10/climate-change-and-co2-derangement-syndrome/
