WORLD VIEW 15 April 2026 Why more fossil fuels won’t fix the Iran energy crisis Climate-friendly technologies are the best way to stymie rising inflation — and will get better and cheaper over time. By Gernot Wagner Spend any time discussing solar and wind power as a solution to climate change, and you are sure to encounter someone who asks about reliability. The Sun does not shine at night and the wind does not always blow, so fossil fuels will be needed forever as a back-up, they argue. But how reliable are fossil fuels? In the past two months, conflict in Iran has created an energy crisis — the latest in a series. Oil prices spiked within days of the start of US, Israeli and Iranian bombing in the Gulf region on 28 February. Fuel prices remain high and volatile, and the ripple effects are set to increase inflation in the coming months. Isabel Schnabel, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board, memorably named this effect fossilflation in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. There was, and is, one clear winner: renewables and other low-carbon technologies, from batteries to electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps. That is what distinguishes this Middle East oil and gas crisis from the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s. Then, renewables were mostly unavailable, and industrial decarbonization was on few people’s radars. Solar power cost at least 500 times more than it does today, and EVs, heat pumps and induction stoves were a pipe dream. Ditching fossil fuels is not all smooth sailing. In 2022, European natural-gas prices spiked to ten times their levels before the Ukraine invasion, resulting in long waiting times for solar panels and heat pumps. Prices for these rose as demand outpaced supply, an effect Schnabel dubbed greenflation. She used a third term, climateflation, to describe the economic effects of climate-induced weather extremes, such as food-price rises from crop failures (M. Kotz et al. Commun. Earth Environ. 5; 2024).

The Iran War has once again led to a bout of what @isabelschnabel.bsky.social memorably dubbed 'fossilflation'.

It's en vouge to talk about the solution as some massively complex undertaking. It really isn't. Get off fossil fuels faster.

My latest just out @nature.com

rdcu.be/fdxig

APRIL 7 VOTE JUDGE CHRIS TAYLOR Headshot of Judge Chris Taylor

Judge Chris Taylor is THE choice for Wisconsin.

Be ready to vote on April 7.

myvote.wi.gov

Picture of a person canvassing with a yard sign for Cris Taylor in the background

Wisconsin, let’s get out the vote for Chris Taylor for state Supreme Court - elections are this Tues. April 7th. Tell your friends, make a voting plan, and let’s get out there and defend our rights! @wisdems.org

Rising Tides and the Rejection of Science: A Future Under Water A Lansdowne Lecture from Dr. Andrea Dutton (Department of Geosciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Make sure to join us @seos-uvic.bsky.social @uvicscience.bsky.social tonight for the free public lecture by Dr. Andrea Dutton from UWisconsin-Madison titled "Rising Tides and the Rejection of Science: A Future Under Water 7PM tonight in BWC B150 events.uvic.ca/seos/event/1...

Tia Nelson, champion of environmental stewardship, to receive honorary degree from UW–Madison Nelson, who has been instrumental in advancing local, national and global conservation efforts, will be honored on May 8 at the spring commencement ceremony.

So pleased to see this announcement honoring Tia and her life's work. Congratulations! news.wisc.edu/tia-nelson-c...

Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf heading for collapse. Monthly average velocities Jan 2025 to Feb 2026 derived from EU Copernicus Programme Sentinel-1 SAR data. Grounding lines in black and yellow from NASA MEaSUREs

So, any other news yesterday?
Anything important?

Citizen scientists discover a Great Barrier Reef coral giant ‘like a rolling meadow’ Volunteer group Citizens of the Reef made the find as part of the Great Reef Census

Citizen scientists discover a Great Barrier Reef coral giant ‘like a rolling meadow’ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

@science.org.au @uwmadscience.bsky.social

🌊🧪I am honored to be the 2026 recipient of the Selby Fellowship, awarded by the Australian Academy of Science. Looking forward to speaking to (& with!) the public about climate change, sea level rise & coral reefs, drawing upon my field work in AU & around the world science.org.au/news-events/...

Here’s mine: not really sure how to interpret it though.

‘The biggest transformation in a century’: how California remade itself as a clean energy powerhouse The Golden State’s clean energy use hit new highs in 2025. As the Trump administration abandons US climate initiatives, can California fill the void?

Worth repeating: In 2025, California met 67% or more of its energy needs with clean energy on 90% of days. What state wouldn’t want these bragging rights?

Wonderful news, wonderful book, written by a wonderful person.

Sinking skyscrapers? As buildings got bigger in Sunny Isles, so did engineering concerns At least a handful of towers have sunk as much as two to three times more than expected, the Miami Herald found in a months-long analysis of dozens of engineering reports covering nearly every buildin...

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/e...

I really wish we'd stop calling them climate "skeptics" or "vaccine skeptics", if you jump off a cliff we don't call you a "gravity skeptic"

I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

Bill Gates Gave $3.5M to Think Tank Run by Climate Crisis Denier Bjorn Lomborg Tax records reveal that the billionaire’s foundation has donated for years to Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center.

@desmog.com reviewed US tax records which show Bill Gates’ charity has donated more than $3.5 million to a think tank run by Danish academic and climate crisis denier Bjørn Lomborg www.desmog.com/2025/11/05/b...

@uwmadscience.bsky.social @uwmadisonls.bsky.social

🌊 Science in Service: Andrea Dutton on Advocacy & Public Engagement YouTube video by Targeted Film

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiVO...

Many thanks to the wonderful Jean Bahr who nominated me for this award. And many thanks to all of you out there who are champions of climate communication. Our job will never be done, but we have strength in numbers and in some really amazingly talented people doing this work.

I really appreciate the recognition for this work that I find incredibly rewarding, but can also be depressing, challenging, and elicits comments/emails/letters from people who are - let's say - not fans. At least for the moment, I feel both seen and appreciated.

Award made of rocks with plaque reading: "Presented to Andrea Dutton 2025 GSA Public Service Award in honor of Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker"

Picture of Andrea Dutton smiling and holding her (heavy) award made of rocks.

Some personal news: This week I was awarded the Geological Society of America Public Service award for all my work communicating climate science to the public. I received this beautiful award (they know their audience, geologists love rocks!)

In a nutshell: there is debate, the 6-9 m number may be too high (but also may not be). Not all field sites agree. Certainly higher than present - how many meters higher depends on some assumptions about GIA parameterization and potential effects of dynamic topography. More work on this forthcoming!

Warming of +1.5 °C is too high for polar ice sheets - Communications Earth & Environment Warming of +1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels is too high for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and even the current climate forcing of +1.2 °C is likely to lead to several meters of sea-level ...

See the summary provided in this recent publication: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

For those interested, I’ll giving a departmental colloquium on “Nine months in the federal assault on climate science” on 10/29 at 11:30am EDT

Register here:

Southern Ocean evidence for recurring West Antarctic Ice Sheet destabilization during Marine Isotope Stage 11 - Nature Communications Recurring deep ocean oxygen minimum events occur in the Pacific Southern Ocean during the warm climate interval Marine Isotope Stage 11. They are linked with perturbed Antarctic Bottom Water formation...

Southern Ocean evidence for recurring West Antarctic Ice Sheet destabilization during Marine Isotope Stage 11

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Job ad for postdoctoral research in ice sheet modeling | Andrea Dutton 🌊 🌊 JOB ALERT!! Looking for a postdoc that does not rely on federal funding?? Looking to live in a city that is routinely ranked as one of the best cities to live in across the entire U.S.? Come jo...

🌊🌊JOB ALERT!! Are you an ice sheet modeler looking for a postdoc that does not rely on federal funding? Come join our research team at University of Wisconsin-Madison to study the physical and human dynamics of sea-level rise. www.linkedin.com/posts/andrea...

This is great news - Congratulations to Ángel! Also great to see not one, but TWO UW-Madison people in this year's MacArthur Class of Fellows. (Sébastien Phillipe in Nuclear Engineering being the other one).

New paper out by graduate student Andy Jones on California glaciers. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

In a UN speech today, President Trump said that "all of these [climate] predictions were wrong".

Back in 2019 I led a research effort to digitize old climate model projections and assess how well they did. Turns out they got future warming pretty spot on!