☕️ RE-HEATED ☙ Thursday, July 17, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Hunga Tonga is back, refreshed and revisited. But the truth is, it never left. It's Classic C&C, with hindsight.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Given the Childers family travel adventures yesterday, which resulted in very little sleep and lots of moving around, today’s post features a spruced-up edition of Classic C&C— a fresh update to one of the most popular C&C posts of all time. Best of all, it’s even more relevant now than when it first ran. Welcome back to the weird, wild, world of Hunga Tonga.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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July 28, 2023’s Coffee & Covid was titled, “Overheated.” It would become one of the most-read posts in C&C history and is still often mentioned in the comments. I am re-running that classic story, with updates and revisions, because it is even more relevant now.

To set the table with sharp steak knives, let’s begin with an apocalyptic Bible verse, describing the Second Trumpet of Revelation:

The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.

Rev. 8:8.

The conventional Christian interpretation has always been that this verse describes a comet or large asteroid striking the oceans in the End Times. I was never satisfied with that explanation, since the author —the Apostle John— obviously knew what comets were. If he meant “comet,” why not say so? But if his vision revealed a massive underwater volcano, he might easily have described it as something like a great mountain.

After the record-shattering Hunga Tonga undersea eruption in 2022, millions of acres of the sea literally turned red, the combined result of megatons of sulphuric ash and a rust-red cytoplankton bloom observable from space.

If there were a single news story that best illustrates the pathetic failure of our modern scientific “expert” class, that story would be about the largest and most ecologically devastating geological event in human history, which occurred in 2022, yet most of you still probably have never even heard of it. It’s a story non grata because it shatters the approved climate narrative.

Since 2022, the oceans have been going crazy. The Gulf Stream is failing (unprecedented). Scientists are “sounding the alarm bell” about collapsing Atlantic Meridional currents (never seen before). The South Atlantic Geomagnetic Anomaly is growing and spreading, threatening the satellite industry (totally unique). Ocean temperatures are reaching record all-time highs,, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean to the South Pacific, threatening the most populous top layer of sea life.

What goes up, must come down. Since 2022, the weather has been decidedly … strange. If not historic. And it is all related to a lot more water. All-new “gorilla hail,” turbo hurricanes, record cyclone intensity, and global flash flooding —even in the desert— are now regular headline features. So much so that the End Times podcasters are having a field day with all this weird weather. Welcome to the new normal. NPR, this week:

What could have caused a flurry of seemingly unexplained oceanic and meteorological outliers in only a few years? SUVs? Freon? Greta Thunberg’s flagging faux celebrity?

Well, relax into the hot tub time machine, prepare for acceleration to 88 mph, and let’s travel back in time and space to July, 2023’s Coffee & Covid, lightly edited for modern audiences and Portlanders.

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July 28, 2023 — Overheated

The “experts” are experiencing peak climate hysteria as record summer heat waves wash across Europe. Smarter scientists are pushing back. But there is one massive, unreported story that provides a complete explanation for any increased world temperatures we might be living through this summer. It’s not atmospheric carbon dioxide. Whatever it is, it heated up the ocean depths, to the point that it’s making coral reefs unlivable for the crusty little critters:

Meet the historic, record-smashing Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption of 2022, which I bet you never heard of. Eighteen months ago, in January 2022, you were probably distracted by covid mandates, or maybe Biden calling himself “Senator” again. The short version is a well-endowed underwater Pacific Ocean volcano named Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, 490 feet under the waves, which massively erupted, bigger than any other modern volcanic eruption, even bigger than Mount Pinatubo and possibly Krakatoa.

One reason it didn’t make bigger news is that it was boringly underwater and no villages were buried in burning lava. But it should have made bigger news. The erupting lava instantly vaporized fantastic, unimaginable amounts of sea water, which billowed into the atmosphere, changing the water composition of Earth’s atmosphere and heating it up for years. In just a few days, the superheated water from the Hunga Tonga eruption blanketed the entire globe, pole to pole, East to West.

Here’s an August, 2022 NASA headline about the eruption, alongside a satellite photo of the massive blast:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere

“Unprecedented” is accurate. But that word doesn’t do justice to the scale of this environmental catastrophe. NASA’s climate experts (it’s anybody’s guess why a space agency dabbles in the weather) described Hunga Tonga as one of the most dramatic events in modern history. It generated a trans-oceanic tsunami that reached all ocean basins, every continent’s shorelines, and over 40 countries thousands of miles away.

It caused the most intense atmospheric explosion ever recorded by modern instruments.

One of the most important side effects was that Hunga’s eruption broke all records for injection of water vapor —the most powerful greenhouse gas— into the atmosphere. NASA:

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, 2022, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.

The [eruption] not only injected ash into the stratosphere but also large amounts of water vapor, breaking all records for direct injection of water vapor, by a volcano or otherwise, in the satellite era. …The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano … could remain in the stratosphere for several years. This extra water vapor could influence atmospheric chemistry, boosting certain chemical reactions that could temporarily worsen depletion of the ozone layer. It could also influence surface temperatures … since water vapor traps heat.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. It was so powerful it even affected space. From a March 2022 preprint (14 authors):

But even those record-shattering calculations were only early estimates. Over the next year, data showed NASA badly underestimated the full amount of water Hunga Tonga had vaporized into the atmosphere. Current estimates are three times higher than initially thought: scientists now believe it was closer to 150,000 metric tons, or approximately 40 trillion gallons of superheated water instantly injected into the atmosphere.

Talk about a greenhouse. Just ask Floridians about humidity. Water vapor — humidity — is a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

A study published in April this year (2023) analyzed the 1-year aftereffects:

With a year’s hindsight, the 2023 researchers concluded that Hunga Tonga was one of the most remarkable climate events in modern history, and its effects are expected to persist for years:

[D]]ue to extreme altitude reach of the eruption, [Hunga Tonga’s] volcanic plume circumnavigated the Earth in only one week and dispersed nearly pole-to-pole in three months. The observations provide evidence for an unprecedented increase in the global stratospheric water mass by 13% as compared to climatological levels. As there are no efficient sinks of water vapour in the stratosphere, this perturbation is expected to persist several years.

The unique nature and magnitude of the global stratospheric perturbation by the Hunga eruption ranks it among the most remarkable climatic events in the modern observation era.

Despite all these shattered records —too many to list— we never heard anything about Hunga Tonga. (Thanks, media.) Hopefully, you’re starting to think that maybe the hot summer weather this year (2023) might have something to do with this historic volcanic eruption and all the oppressive new water vapor injected into the air just last year.

If so, you aren’t the only one. Here’s another study, also from this April (2023):

Meet the “global warming” plume completely ignored by corporate media. The researchers were even more direct in connecting the “historic summer heat wave” to Hunga Tonga:

We find that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption produced the … largest perturbation of stratospheric water vapour observed in the satellite era. … [A]fter two weeks, due to dilution, water vapour heating started to dominate the top-of-the-atmosphere radiative forcing, leading to a net warming of the climate system… This is the first time a warming effect on the climate system has been linked to volcanic eruptions, which usually produce a transient cooling.

Volcanoes usually cool down the planet, since they also spew ash and smoke, which blocks the sun (cue Bill Gates). But undersea volcanoes shed their particulate debris into the water, and boil water into the sky. In other words, by heating instead of cooling, underwater volcanoes produce the exact opposite effect from land ones.

Before it was savagely suppressed, the Hunga warming story briefly made the science news. Here’s an EOS headline from March (2023):

The story reported that Hunga Tonga’s global warming effects could last five more years, through 2028. Other scientists suggested it might be seven or eight years. At this rate, the plume will likely outlive Joe Biden.

Corporate media isn’t ignoring the story because it lacks dramatic graphs and charts. Here’s one showing how atmospheric water vapor increased recently, compared to the prior twenty years. The atmosphere’s water concentration is off the chart:

For the first time since water vapor tracking began, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is pegged out at the maximum, all across the board. It is literally off the charts.

Corporate media is ignoring the most influential and dramatic climate event in modern history because you can’t legislate underwater volcanoes. They don’t pay taxes or emissions penalties. You can try to regulate underwater volcanoes, but they stubbornly won’t listen. And what’s the fun in that?

Corporate media only exists to further political ends. Since volcanoes aren’t subject to politics, why bother?

🌋 “Okay Jeff,” I can hear you asking, “nice volcano theory, but who else thinks this?”

Well, the brilliant Ethical Skeptic, an independent data researcher who has done so much great work crunching covid mortality figures over the last few years, recently turned his attention to the climate. He noted another startling fact that you probably never heard of: for some reason, worldwide ocean surface temperatures have bafflingly jumped rapidly this year (2023) — much too fast for any cause to have been atmospheric. (Ed. note: everybody’s noticed ocean heating now. Ethical was ahead of the pack, as usual.)

One telling example is polar ice. Antarctic ice has recently started melting at an unprecedented rate, plunging off an icy cliff. But, baffling scientists, it happened during a record cold winter in Antarctica. The melting is painfully dramatic, and started shortly after Hunga’s eruption:

As you can see if you read the fine print, this scientist said the “sudden dramatic drop in sea ice … could not possibly have been caused by the atmosphere.” But then … what caused it?

How about Hunga?

Ethical Skeptic didn’t focus on Hunga specifically. His theory is broader, that the oceans are heating up due to increased activity in the Earth’s molten core. But that is the kind of activity that could provoke giant underwater volcanoes to erupt. Various data support his theory. One study he often cites found dramatically increased water temperatures at abyssal depths — deep, deep underwater, where increased air temperatures have little or no effect.

In other words, Ethical is suggesting that the water is heating the air — not the other way around. And magma is heating the water. It’s a theory that explains everything.

🌋 Right on cue, “science” has become baffled. From just a month ago, in mid-June (2023):

Though scientists are baffled, corporate media and its repulsive allies are busily blaming ocean warming on carbon dioxide — a perfectly ludicrous notion. Here’s one example from Vice News (they paid to promote the tweet!). In a clip showing ocean water bubbling around, attached to an article about rising Red Sea temperatures, Vice didn’t quite claim carbon dioxide is heating the water, but it sure strongly implied it:

🌋 The following 2023 stories all show scientists reporting deep-sea “hydrothermal vents” that are “hot enough to melt lead”:

Hot enough to melt lead is pretty dang hot. What causes boiling-hot, deep-ocean vents? Volcanic activity. Magma from the Earth’s core is heating up the water, which is venting out, raising ocean temperatures and putting even more water vapor into the atmosphere, which heats the air through greenhouse effects.

Needless to say, activity inside the Earth’s core has nothing to do with manmade carbon dioxide.

Hysterical corporate media articles about global warming ignore all these facts. They ignore Hunga Tonga. They ignore rapidly melting Antarctic sea ice. They ignore abyssal water heating and related deep-sea data. They only want to show you the summer heat map and run clips of cantankerous teenage climate propagandist Greta Thunberg swanking around on sailing yachts and whining that your SUV is literally killing grandma and will eventually burn the Earth into a pile of hot ash.

Don’t you believe it. “Science” has only the barest notion of what heats and cools the Earth, and they even refuse to grapple with the evidence they do have. The climate has been changing ever since God created the World. It is the pinnacle of human hubris to believe that we know what the optimal global climate is, or to think we can somehow freeze that optimal climate into place without breaking everything else.

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It has been two years since I ran that story. In that time, scientists have only become even more baffled about the weather and the malfunctioning oceans. But Hunga Tonga explains all of it. Remember— humans have never seen anything like this. It is truly historic and unprecedented, exactly the kind of thing that might pop up in an apocalyptic religious text.

Following the initial flurry of science articles about the warming effects in 2022, the Hunga Tonga story went into lockdown. Other studies have been published, but they have been embedded in amber-like academic paywalls and official snubbery. Wikipedia’s Hunga Tonga page drips with sneering condescension about the volcano’s effect on the Earth’s climate.

Even though Hunga injected 146 million metric tons of water vapor into the stratosphere —an unprecedented amount, roughly 10% of the total stratospheric load— Wikipedia’s editors would have you believe the effect was negligible. They are nuts.

But the last two years have done nothing but vindicate our 2023 post. More significantly, it appears (to me) that Hunga Tonga not only filled the atmosphere with unprecedented amounts of extra water —what goes up must eventually come down— it also knocked the oceans off kilter. It sent a boiling tsunami around the entire world. It shot a global sonic wave around the planet twice. The explosion was more powerful than Russia’s biggest nuclear bomb, Tsar Bomba.

The blast delivered an extraordinary vertical impulse —akin to a megaton-class hammer strike— directly above a complex subduction zone sitting right at the edge of the Pacific Plate. The imaginable geologic knock-on effects are potentially staggering. Earthquakes. Secondary eruptions. Tsunamis. And so on.

And it’s still smouldering. The Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Project reported this month that “activity at Home Reef continued during 21 June-5 July,” and “the Maritime Alert Level remained at Orange (the third level on a four-level scale) with advice to stay at least 2 nautical miles (3.7 km) from the island.” No swimming.

The point about all this incomprehensible historicity is that the experts have no idea what the long-term implications are, since they’ve never seen anything like this before. They’re flying blind. We’ve never recorded this much water vapor injected directly into the stratosphere. We’ve never watched a volcano generate a tsunami across all ocean basins.

We’ve never seen a pressure wave circle the globe twice, triggering atmospheric resonance, magnetic perturbations, and ionospheric effects. The truth is, this eruption broke the Earth’s normal rulebook; and the experts, for all their sensors and simulations, are now guessing while pretending they know what they are talking about.

Hunga Tonga isn’t old news. It’s today’s headlines.

I am an incorrigible optimist. I am sure we’ll be fine. But what remains unspoken is that the trends we can see strongly suggest that the planet is headed for more volatility, not less. And I keep thinking about John’s Second Trumpet. I’m not saying this is the Second Trumpet —the verse goes on to say “a third of the ships in the sea were destroyed”— but if it isn’t, it’s very Trumpet-like.

In conclusion, Hunga Tonga is the prime suspect for all the recent weird weather and bizarre oceanic activity. Geoengineering isn’t off the hook for causing flash floods— cloud seeding when the skies are oversaturated with record water vapor levels might not be such a terrific idea. But climate science is a bad joke when it ignores the flaming mountain in the room— the biggest potential driver of everything we’ve been seeing.

Have a terrific Thursday! Yesterday’s feeds saw a flaming mountain of news, and we’ll get to it all tomorrow, in a fresh C&C roundup of extra-caffeinated news and commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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