Javier Vinós: Seis cosas imposibles de creer

Javier Vinós, a Spanish scientist (PhD in molecular neurobiology turned independent climate researcher), author of books like Climate of the Past, Present and Future and Solving the Climate Puzzle, and president of the Asociación de Realistas Climáticos, published an opinion piece titled “Seis cosas imposibles de creer” (Six Impossible Things to Believe) on December 23, 2025, in Libertad Digital.

Echoing the White Queen’s boast in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass of believing “as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” Vinós argues that European and Spanish authorities are asking citizens to believe six implausible claims about climate change and the energy transition.

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From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Javier Vinós provides the list in his yearend Clintel post Six Impossible Things to Believe.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Like Alice’s White Queen, European and Spanish authorities
want us to believe six impossible things about
climate change and the energy transition.

In Alice Through the Looking-Glass, a character by Lewis Carroll says, “One can’t believe impossible things,” to which the White Queen replies, “When I was your age, I sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Like Alice’s White Queen, European and Spanish authorities want us to believe six impossible things about climate change and the energy transition, before and after breakfast. These six impossible things to believe — and yet many people, like the White Queen, do believe them — are as follows:

The first is believing that humans have — or could have in the near future — some degree of control over the climate and the weather, and that through our actions we can reduce the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, floods, droughts, or sea-level rise. Anyone who believes this is capable of believing anything.

The second is believing that the climate, in its extraordinary complexity with hundreds — perhaps thousands — of variables, is controlled by just one: changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases. The theory and models that propose this are based on a good understanding of the properties of CO₂, but a poor understanding of the other climatic variables. And the fact that no solid evidence for this theory has emerged, despite decades of intensive searching, makes it very difficult to believe.

The third is believing that an energy transition is taking place or will take place. There are no examples of energy transitions. We use more biomass, coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium than at any other time in history, and we are simply adding the so-called renewable energies, which are installed, maintained, and replaced thanks to hydrocarbon fuels. Our energy use is growing faster than our capacity to install renewable energy. The transition is a myth, and anyone who claims to believe in it is either lying or poorly informed.

The fourth is believing that the use of hydrocarbon fuels is going to be abandoned. At the recent climate conference in Brazil, a group of countries, including Spain, pushed for the agreement to include a roadmap for abandoning those fuels. They were forced to back down, and hydrocarbon fuels are not even mentioned in the final agreement. Eighty-three governments supported that roadmap, but together they represent only 13.6% of the world’s population. The remaining 86.4% shows no intention of abandoning the source from which the human species obtains 85% of its external energy.

It is impossible to believe that such an abandonment will take place because, 33 years after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and 10 years after the Paris Agreement, support among nations for abandoning hydrocarbon fuels has decreased rather than increased.

The fifth is believing that a reduction in global CO₂ emissions will occur. These emissions are linked to human development and population growth. Many regions of the planet remain underdeveloped, and the world’s population will continue to grow in the coming decades.

Since the first climate conference in Berlin in 1995, where strict emission-reduction commitments were adopted — but only for “developed” nations — global CO₂ emissions have increased by 70%. These 30 years should be enough to convince anyone that they are not going to stop rising.

The Fantasy

The sixth is believing that energy can be decarbonized. Only 23% of the EU’s final energy consumption is electricity, and only 70% of that electricity comes from carbon-free sources. One third of it comes from nuclear energy, which Spain rejects and which was installed in the last century. So far this century, the EU has managed to decarbonize less than 10% of the energy it uses. Most of the planet is not even trying.

These six things are impossible to believe, but if we refuse to believe even just one of them, the entire climate and energy strategy of the European Union and the Spanish government is revealed as a tragic farce. Based on these impossibilities, our national and European governments have committed themselves to a transition whose consequences we are already suffering:

♦ more expensive energy,
♦ declining industrial production and competitiveness,
♦ increased risk to the power grid,
♦ environmental policies with tragic consequences,
♦ greater indebtedness, and, ultimately,
♦ an accelerated decline of Europe relative to the rest of the world.

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Here is a summary of the six impossible things he lists (translated and paraphrased from the original Spanish article):

1. Believe that climate change is an emergency
   Despite decades of warnings, extreme weather events and climate-related impacts have not worsened as predicted. Data shows no clear upward trend in disasters or deaths when adjusted for population and exposure.
2. Believe that renewable energies (wind and solar) are cheaper than fossil fuels
   Intermittent renewables require massive backups, grid reinforcements, and subsidies, making the overall system costlier. True levelized costs, including reliability, favor dispatchable sources.
3. Believe that electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly
   Accounting for mining, battery production, electricity generation (often coal-based in many grids), and disposal, EVs have a higher lifecycle environmental footprint than efficient internal combustion engines in many cases.
4. Believe that hydrocarbon fuels will be abandoned
   Despite 33 years since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and 10 years since the Paris Agreement, global support for phasing out oil, gas, and coal has decreased, not increased. Demand continues to rise, especially in developing nations.
5. Believe that the energy transition will reduce energy poverty
   Policies driving up energy prices (via subsidies for renewables and restrictions on fossils) are exacerbating energy poverty in Europe, forcing households to choose between heating and eating.
6. Believe that these policies will significantly affect the climate
   Even if fully implemented, unilateral actions by Europe and Spain would have negligible impact on global temperatures, as emissions growth is driven by Asia and developing countries. The effect is symbolically tiny compared to natural variability.

Vinós concludes that these “impossible” beliefs underpin costly policies that deliver little climatic benefit while imposing economic and social harm.

He advocates for realistic, evidence-based approaches over alarmism and ideological transitions.

This piece aligns with Vinós’s broader skeptical stance on mainstream climate orthodoxy, emphasizing natural variability (e.g., solar influences, meridional heat transport) over CO₂ dominance.

His views are popular in realist/skeptic circles but controversial in consensus climate science.