Tate Arrest Shines Light on Climate Denial’s Low T Energy

Manosphere influencer, sex trafficking dirtbag and (of course) climate denier Andrew Tate has been arrested, again, this weekend, and the clips have gone gloriously viral. This week also, Defense Secretary (self styled as “Department of War”) Pete Hegseth called for members of the military to have their testosterone levels evaluated, and if necessary, enhanced.
Suspect he will be first in line?

Readers here will remember Tate coming off on the losing end of a social media tiff with Greta Thunberg in 2022. (below)
The larger question worth exploring is, what have we learned about the psycho sexual dimension of climate denial?
Above, Paul Krugman discussed recently with Heather Cox Richardson.
Richardson points to the compulsion in the modern Republican Party to assert domination over women, minorities, and nature.
Tate’s decision to pick a fight with Thunberg showcased both his hatred and fear of women, and his antipathy toward a living planet.

Guardian:

Cars are routinely tokens of virility and status for men, and the image accompanying his tweet of him pumping gas into one of his vehicles, coupled with his claims about their “enormous emissions”, had unsolicited dick pic energy. Thunberg seemed aware of that when she replied: “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”

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Below, the arrest.

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Think Positive: Solar Punk is a Gen Z Vision

The AQI index is under 100, and I was able to get out and putter around the yard this morning, until I started coughing, then time to come in.

Nevertheless, mental health requires that we think about possible positive futures, and the video above does a nice job of that, with some real-world examples of a “Solar Punk” esthetic that at least gives pointers to a better world that still could be.

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Environment America:

Despite this rapid growth, we’ve barely scratched the surface on America’s immense potential to generate clean energy on our rooftops. America could produce the equivalent of 45% of the electricity we currently use from rooftop solar, yet, in 2022, rooftop solar provided only 1.5% of America’s electricity. 

US Department of Energy:

According to National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) analysis in 2016, there are over 8 billion square meters of rooftops on which solar panels could be installed in the United States, representing over 1 terawatt of potential solar capacity. With improvements in solar conversion efficiency, the rooftop potential in the country could be even greater. Residential and other small rooftops represent about 65% of the national rooftop potential, and 42% of residential rooftops are households with low-to-moderate income.

NREL estimates that an average of 3.3 million homes per year will be built or will require roof replacement—representing a potential of roughly 30 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity per year. If even a small fraction of these new roofs had solar installations, it could have a significant impact on U.S. solar power generation.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters on Fires, Smoke, and “Climate Havens”

Jeff Masters is co-founder of Weather Underground, a former Hurricane Hunter, and was my colleague for years at Yale Climate Connections, where he writes on Weather and Climate issues.

Jeff Masters at Yale Climate Connections:

The award for worst air in the nation yesterday went to the city that has in the past billed itself as a climate haven: Duluth, Minnesota. The city’s 24-hour air quality index, or AQI, for PM2.5 particle pollution hit 934, over three times the threshold for “Hazardous” pollution. This shattered Duluth’s previous all-time AQI record of 159 set July 20, 2021. EPA pollution records go back to 1999.

Meteorologist Chris Vickers, WTOL Toledo:

HEALTH EMERGENCY! The AQI in Duluth, MN has surged to a mind blowing 1167 late Thursday evening! Hazardous air quality of this magnitude, almost four times the limit that is hazardous, is unprecedented.

At these levels, acute health hazards are possible for all, especially for those exposed to contaminated air for longer duration.

For Northwest Ohio, *IMPROVEMENTS* in air quality are expected by Friday evening.

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Canadians at It Again in Oregon Fires

Massive lightning event in Oregon sparks uncontrolled fires.

I blame Canada.

Be on the lookout for this suspect.

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The Weekend Wonk: How Not to Do a Data Center

Great CNBC report above profiles Elon Musk’s “Colossus” Data Center just outside Memphis in South Haven, Mississippi.

Takeaway: Primary objections to this facility stem from the install of a large number of gas turbines, essentially big jet engines, to power the facility, without proper pollution control or sound mitigation (if that’s even possible).

This is the configuration that is most problematic from a climate perspective, as well.

The report has interview clips from Jigar Shah, former Director of the Department of Energy Loan Program Office under Joe Biden, and one of the sharpest observers in this space.

Mention is made at the end of how other communities are attempting to head off this kind of fiasco – Illinois new Data Center Power Act is given as an example.
Key concepts would be – Bring your own Clean Power, no jet engines, get a plan on the water issue. (clean power ie solar or wind, kind of negates the water issue when coupled with closed loop cooling systems)

The Associated Press recently reported that, “Michigan, Oregon and Minnesota led the way, enacting laws in the last 18 months designed to protect their pre-existing requirements that electric utilities use only emissions-free energy sources by 2040.”

Compare and contrast Musk’s Memphis project to Google’s plans for new Data Centers in Michigan and Minnesota:

Washington Post:

Google, Meta and others have resorted to modified jet engines, diesel generators and rebooting nuclear and coal plants to power their data centers, while asking electric utilities for grid upgrades. That’s contributing to rising electricity prices, up 42 percent since 2020.

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Compare and Contrast: Two Candidates Respond to Toxic Air

Above, Abdul El-Sayed will compete in the Michigan Democratic primary against Rep. Haley Stevens to be the US Senate nominee to replace the retiring Gary Peters.

Below, John James is the Trump endorsed candidate in the Republican primary for Michigan Governor.
Voting is on August 4th.

UPDATE: Below, CBC reporting on US lawmaker’s criticism.

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The New Climate Denial – a Dishonest “Dog’s Breakfast”

Yet another interview in my series on the “New Climate Denial” that we have seen resurrected in the Trump administration, in fact, Andrew Dessler was the first scientist I spoke to several months ago on this.
Above, we set the table a bit, and Dr Dessler did say that, at least, in the recent “Climate Working Group” report from Chris Wright’s Department of Energy, a motley crew of geriatric fossil fuel apologists admit grudgingly that a greenhouse effect exists, but that’s “a pretty low bar.. it’s like acknowledging that the Earth is round..”.

Below, Dessler mentioned another issue, the denial that Sea Level rise is accelerating, something that recent research has firmly established.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution:

A July 2025 report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) claims that U.S. tide gauge measurements “in aggregate show no obvious acceleration in sea level rise beyond the historical average rate.”

However, a new study by Chris Piecuch, a physical oceanographer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), reaches a dramatically different conclusion.

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Meanwhile, in the Arctic, Fires on the Increase

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A wildfire along Greenland’s coast in August 2017 was one of the most damaging in its history.Photograph: NASA

Bookmark this for the next person that tells you “forest management” is the cause of increasing wildfires.

There are no forests in Greenland.

Guardian:

Scientists have expressed concern after two wildfires broke out within a week of each other on the Arctic island of Greenland earlier this month.

Fires were burning close to Sisimiut, Greenland’s second largest town and a popular tourism centre, on 14 and 15 June, satellite imagery has shown, while a second blaze hit Kujalleq, on the island’s southern tip, on 17 June.

While most of Greenland, a largely autonomous territory, is covered in vast ice sheets and thick glaciers, a significant part is ice-free and covered in tundra. Wildfires in these areas are rare, but becoming more common.

For two fires to break out this early in the summer, however, is particularly unusual. “Vegetation fires at high northern latitudes are more usual in July and August,” said Dr Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

Sonja Diaz, a scientist at the Environmental Change Research Unit of the University of Helsinki, who conducted field research in Greenland after a major wildfire in 2019, said the timing was not unheard of but that it felt “quite wild” to see the island burning so early in the year.

“Wet [conditions] and snow do not favour fire ignition and spread,” she said. “The conditions need to be warm and dry enough.”

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Zeke Hausfather on Climate Predictions and Clean Energy

Climate deniers are partying like it’s 2009, and it looks like we have to walk thru all this BS yet one more time.

As part of my newest series of interviews with scientists on our current wave of “New Climate Denial”, I spoke with Zeke Hausfather last week.
Some of Zeke’s remarks have been brutally misused by the Climate Denial establishment.
I was on local public TV with a rep from our friendly neighborhood Right Wing Think Tank, the Mackinac Center, a few months ago, and the gentleman mentioned Zeke, purp0rtedly, as a climate scientist who had backed off the well established physics and revised dire predictions for planetary warming.

The real story is that Zeke, and other experts, have recognized that clean energy has become so competitive in recent years, that the worst case scenarios for carbon emissions have become less likely – not that the physics has changed.

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New York Times:

It’s rare for technical papers about climate modeling to kick off a heated public debate, or attract attention from the White House.

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