A new study published in a Nature journal finds no acceleration (even a slightly negative acceleration, -0.0003 to -0.00005 yr⁻²) in global-scale drought trends in the modern era of “global warming”.

The zero-acceleration (or slightly declining) trend in global drought appears in Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) observations across 125-year (1900-2024), 75-year (1950-2024), and even the most recent 43-year (1981-2024) records.

Scientists who prefer to advance the narrative that human activity is driving warming, and climate warming accelerates global drought, have historically used negligent statistical methods to “artificially inflate” drying trends six-fold.

Image Source: Wu et al., 2026

A 2022 study that analyzed global annual precipitation trends from 1900 to 2020 also found “no evidence…to show that there has been any increase in precipitation deficits in recent decades that might be attributable to global warming.”

Image Source: O’Connell et al., 2022

Online German BlackoutNews here reports on details of a proposal by the SPD Socialists Party parliamentary group (SPD-Bundestagsfraktion) to tax productivity gains resulting from the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to fund bleeding social programs.

Image by NTZ using Grok AI

The extreme left SPD socialists aim to secure new revenue streams (such as a potential “AI dividend”) for the welfare state to offset anticipated losses in payroll taxes and social security contributions if AI replaces human labor.

Although no specific tax rate has been set yet, the plan targets the extra revenue generated through automation, digitalization, and increased process efficiency.

How incompetent can policymaking get?

The initiative creates a conflict with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s economic strategy, which claims to prioritize boosting competitiveness, encouraging investments, and accelerating productivity before discussing redistribution (“growth first, then redistribution”).

German corporate tax rates remain high internationally (at around 30.13% for corporations in 2025). While the federal government aims to reduce corporate burdens to attract investment, the proposed tax works in the opposite direction.

5 reasons it’s a bad idea

Opponents and economic critics argue that taxing AI-driven productivity gains presents several major drawbacks:

1. Implementing a tax specifically on productivity gains penalizes companies for improving efficiency. Businesses bear all upfront financial risks—purchasing AI infrastructure, data pipelines, computing power, and retraining staff—with no government support if the initiative fails. Taxing the returns when projects succeed distorts the risk-to-reward ratio.

2. Capital and tech investments are highly mobile. In a globalized market, companies choose locations based on energy costs, tax burdens, and overall return on investment. Given Germany’s existing high tax environment, introducing an extra levy on technological adoption could push domestic companies to relocate AI R&D or deter foreign investment altogether.

3. Taxing productivity gains before they materialize prioritizes revenue distribution over economic growth. By dampening the incentive to automate, the policy risks slowing total output—which ultimately limits the future tax base for standard corporate profits, wages, and consumption.

4. From a practical standpoint, defining and measuring “productivity gains purely derived from AI” is extremely difficult, How do we know if the productivity gains arise from AI or from better management, standard software updates, market shifts, or hardware upgrades creates immense administrative complexity?

Moreover, compliance costs for tracking AI-specific gains could burden small and medium enterprises (SMEs) far more than large corporations.

5. Many developed economies facing demographic shifts rely on AI and automation to maintain economic output despite a shrinking labor force. Taxing AI adoption disincentivizes technology that resolves labor shortages, risking structural stagnation.

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Image Source: Wu et al., 2026

In contrast, the nSCS temperature record has been flat to slightly declining in recent decades (Ma et al., 2021).

Image Source: Ma et al., 2021

A 2021 coral proxy study indicates from ~6000 to 2000 years ago nSCS annual SSTs were 3-4°C warmer than they were from 1994 to 2004, with the modern SSTs the coldest of the last ~6000 years.

Image Source: Zhou et al., 2021

Experts are warning that Germany is heading into the heating season with dangerously low natural gas reserve fill levels. Currently, Germany’s gas reserve fill level stands at only 55%!

Normal for this time of year is 90%.

Last February, Germany’s natural gas reserve fill level dipped to a worrisome 20%, but late February warmth saved the day. In September, 2025, Germany the fill level had been 73%, — a level considered too low for mid September — yet still far above this year’s measly 55%.

Under average winter temperatures, a 77% starting level is projected to be enough to keep heating running and leave around 38% in storage by spring. So currently, with only 55%, a prolonged, a severe cold spell would mean daily withdrawal demands could outpace delivery capacity, creating potential shortfalls of up to 25% on peak days in January.

The concern surrounding Germany’s current 55% gas reserve fill level stems from a combination of strict operational constraints, market incentives, and the risk of severe weather. Due to slow injection speeds over the summer, operators have consistently failed to meet that daily rate. If current filling trends continue through autumn, analysts estimate reserves will peak at onl

In response to the warnings, Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) insists that supplies remain secure. Total gas currently stored ~136 TWh still exceeds the total volume withdrawn across the entire previous winter (~134 TWh).

Failed government green energy policy

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD), has framed the low gas reserve fill levels as a direct failure of the government’s green energy policy.

Weidel argues that the depletion of reserves and current low storage levels leave German industry vulnerable and increase energy prices. She contends that cutting off long-term reliance on cheap Russian pipeline imports—and relying instead on expensive LNG or renewable structures—has systematically weakened the nation’s infrastructure and economic stability.

“The so-called energy transition is the biggest millstone crushing our economy and dragging it into the abyss,” Weidel said. “Expensive, dysfunctional parallel structures are being subsidized while proven and cost-effective infrastructure is being systematically destroyed.”

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According to a new study published in a Nature journal, from 2020 to 2024 the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) gained mass at a rate of +67.5 Gt/yr, reversing the modest 2003 to 2019 mass loss (-100.6 Gt/yr) trend.

This recent 5-year mass gain trend was driven by a massive increase in snow and ice accumulation (SMB).

Combining the mass loss (2003-2019) and mass gain (2020-2024) trends, Antarctica as a whole contributed a grand total of just 0.35 cm to sea levels over this 21-year period.

Image Source: Kolbe et al., 2026

A Google search of NOAA’s Arctic Report Card record since 2020 indicates that over this same 5-year period (2020-2024) the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) mass loss rate slowed to -147 Gt/yr.  This is a substantial deceleration when compared to the –267 Gt/yr mass loss trend from 2002-2019.

Image Source: Google searches for 2020-2024 NOAA Arctic Report Card

Together with the AIS 2020-2024 mass gain trend of +67.5 Gt/yr and GIS mass loss trend of -147 Gt/yr, we learn that GIS and AIS combined lost -79 Gt/yr over this 5-year period.

A total AIS and GIS mass loss rate of -79 Gt/yr translates to just +0.22 mm/yr of meltwater sea level rise equivalent from 2020-2024.

This would serve to undermine claims of a recent acceleration in the rates of sea level rise.

During the Medieval Warm Period, or Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), the ocean heat uptake rates had dipped to about 1500 ZJ.

Today (2000 CE), the global ocean heat uptake has fallen to just 500 ZJ. In other words, even with the warming since 1750, we are still only about one-third of the way back to the ocean heat content values achieved 1000 years ago, when CO2 was 275 ppm.

“…the ~500 ZJ of heat uptake during the modern warming era is just one-third of what is required to reach MCA levels.”

Image Source: Gebbie, 2021

Image Source: Gebbie and Huybers, 2019

Putting ocean heat uptake rates in a temperature context, the top-to-bottom ocean is today (1994-2013) warming at a rate of just 0.0011°C per year (Wunsch, 2018). This is an annual warming rate slightly more than one one-thousandths of a degree.

We are supposed to believe this rate is both alarming and unprecedented. It is neither.

Image Source: Wunsch, 2018

The study assesses 203 glaciers in the AIS Western Peninsula and documents a statistically significant rising surface mass balance (SMB) trend since 1980 and stable to slightly positive glacier elevation change (+0.02 m per year) from 1989 to 2020.

A 40-year positive SMB trend suggests the region is storing more water as snow and ice on land rather than releasing it into the ocean.

Image Source: Thota et al., 2026

In the MDR interview and his broader public communication strategy, Stefan Rahmstorf addresses the rise of alternative, populist, and fringe media platforms.

Exclude skeptics from debate

He suggests that rather than trying to engage them in debate or change their minds directly, he calls on mainstream journalists and established media outlets to strictly avoid giving a platform to skeptic voices from alternative channels.

Investigate skeptics

According to Rahmstorf, alternative media channels often frame their content as independent, “free speech,” or grassroots skepticism, and calls on the established media institutions and investigative journalists to trace where these channels get their material, who funds them, and how political or economic interest groups amplify them.

“We scientists explain the data and facts of climate change, but journalists need to investigate who is serving the market for disinformation and where the money is coming from,” says Rahmstorf. “”It is the job of journalism to uncover who is behind these campaigns, who is funding them, and what interests are being pursued.”

Avoid debating skeptics

Rahmstorf says that it is ineffective to try to debate or convince dedicated alternative media creators or their hardcore audiences in comment sections. It’s a debate that alarmist climate scientists cannot win. The Potsdam Climate Institute researcher thinks communication efforts should focus on the broader public—those who are exposed to alternative media snippets via social media or messaging apps. Clear, accessible explanations using real-world data and verifiable facts help build immunity against misleading claims before they take root.

Rahmstorf tells MDR that science communicators and mainstream journalists need to anticipate the false arguments likely to emerge from alternative outlets and pre-bunk them.

Why are the climate ambulance chasers now way out in Nepal, grabbing at straws? The reason is because there’s little weather action anywhere else that would support the alarmist climate narrative – not even the Arctic.

Typically this time of the year you’ll find them chasing huirricanes in the Atlantic basin, or hollering doomsday warnings way up in the Arctic.

August 27 Arctic sea ice extent

Strangely, the alarmists have been mysteriously abesent from the North Pole region for many years now. Al Gore’s warning (citing experts) of an ice free Arctic by 2013 never materialized. Here’s the August 27 Arctic sea ice extent since 1990:

Chart by NTZ. Data source: Meereisportal

The data show that late-summer Arctic sea ice (August 27) has remained stable over the past two decades!

The post-2007 trend slope is only -0.01 million km²/year, a significant deceleration compared to the rapid loss rate of -0.105 million km² per year observed between 1990 and 2006. In a nutshell, Arctic sea ice late summer minimum has been stable for 20 years!

Record low burned area in Europe 

And espite all the screaming from the media about Europe’s hot and dry summer, and raging forest fires, the data show very calm and encouraging conditions in terms of burned area for 2026 over Europe:

Source: GWIS

The reality is that burned area across Europe this summer has remained at a record low, and will likely remain on track to finish far below normal as rain sweeps over Europe again. These are inconvenient news for climate alarmists.

Low Atlantic cyclone activity this year

Also the hurricane season isn’t cooperating.

The next chart depicts the comparison of the 2026 Atlantic Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) –which tells us how frequent and strong hurricanes have been– against historical averages and notable El Niño analog years through late August.

Chart by NTZ. Data source: https://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?loc=northatlantic

2026 Atlantic cyclone energy has been only 11% of normal activity.

Now you know why the climate ambulance-chasers have all gone to Nepal.

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