Climate change issues, prevention, adaptation 14

Richards, E., Carman, J., Fernandez, L., Verner, M., Rosenthal, S., Goldberg, M., Kotcher, J., Maibach, E., & Leiserowitz, A. (2025). YPCCC Resources on International Public Opinion on Climate Change. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/ypccc-international-resources...

"... Support for the Paris Agreement
In May 2025, with our partners at George Mason University, we found that 79% of U.S. registered voters support the United States’ participation in the Paris Climate Agreement, and 65% opposed President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Agreement. Support has remained very high (more than 90%) among liberal and moderate/conservative Democrats since we first asked this question in October 2017. Support has varied among Republicans over time, but support for U.S. participation has increased since 2021 among both liberal/moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans...

In our international research, we find strong support for participation in the Paris Agreement. For example, 73% of Indians favor India’s participation in the Agreement. Likewise, in a new nationally representative survey in Indonesia — which is soon to be published — 85% of Indonesians favor Indonesia’s participation in the Paris Agreement. Finally, in a survey of 31 countries and territories worldwide conducted in partnership with Data for Good at Meta, we found that support for participation in the Paris Agreement ranged from 96% in Costa Rica to 74% in the United States.
Other Top Insights

Many people in the Global South are still not aware of climate change...

However, people worldwide say climate change is affecting hazards like heat waves, floods, and storms and say climate change is making them worse...

Messages that emphasize the harms of climate change from extreme weather, and the threat to our children’s future, are effective across many countries and audiences...

Majorities in many countries are Alarmed about climate change, especially in Latin America...

The 2024 U.S. election was not a referendum on climate change — Americans’ understanding that global warming is happening and a serious problem, and their support for climate action, did not change before, during, or after the election..."
---------------------------------------------

Jeff Berardelli ‪@weatherprof.bsky.social‬ | November 4, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Chief Meteorologist and Climate Specialist WFLA NBC Tampa

Most Americans support the Paris Agreement.
Seems hard to believe right now.
But notice the downtick/ uptick after presidential elections. Less people care when they think the government is on it. But when the government is out, interest grows again.
{Graph} https://bsky.app/profile/weatherprof.bsky.social/post/3m4tojrmn722n

For the holidays(?), an award-winning game focussed on assembling citizens in a democracy to address climate-change 😃 Free download, I think? Or maybe $10?

Diem - A Citizens' Assembly Game - Trailer (1:15)
Aric McBay {~ August 2025}
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGps0kSAOUM

Diem: A cozy democracy sim created by Polyvale Studios for the Citizens, Assemble! jam. You are the co-chair of a day-long Citizens' Assembly; choose your owl-inspired citizens and guide them through an agenda that you devise. Your goal is to build shared understanding and cross-cultural connection, with the aim of passing as many propositions as possible.

Play the prototype now! polyvale.itch.io/diem

Diem design, writing, & programming by Aric McBay. Owl voices, copyediting, QA & playtest management by Leslie McBay. Original music & sound effects by Winnie Liu.

Iceland Raises National Security Alert Over Possible Atlantic Current Collapse
meteo24news | 13/11/2025

"Iceland has officially classified the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current system as a national security issue and an existential threat, prompting the government to prepare emergency response scenarios, according to statements made by the country’s Climate Minister to Reuters.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a vital ocean current system that transports warm water from the equator toward the poles and returns cold water southward. This circulation helps keep European winters mild.

... Scientists warn that a collapse of the AMOC could trigger a “mini ice age” in northern Europe, causing winter temperatures to plummet to unprecedented levels and bringing heavy snow and ice. The AMOC has collapsed before, most notably just before the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago.

Iceland’s Climate Minister, Jóhann Páll Jóhannsson, emphasized that this is “the first time a climate-related event has been formally presented to the National Security Council as a potential existential threat.” The country’s ministries are now coordinating efforts to assess risks and prepare contingency plans covering sectors from energy and food security to infrastructure and international transport.

A collapse of the Atlantic current would have far-reaching global impacts, potentially destabilizing rainfall patterns that sustain agriculture across Africa, India, and South America, and accelerating the melting of ice around Antarctica..."

https://meteo24news.gr/english-edition/iceland-raises-national-security-alert-ov...

Goof! Wrong thread

Is the Atlantic Ocean circulation close to tipping? (14:54)
Earth System Analysis - Potsdam Institute | Nov 16, 2025

"Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of Physics of the Oceans, explains the latest science on #AMOC shutdown danger in a keynote for ATLAS25 in Helsinki, 23 October 2025.

Transcript..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULJXqOZuY-8&feature=youtu.be

Rick Thoman ‪@alaskawx.bsky.social‬ | November 16, 2025 at 8:49 PM:
Climate specialist with ACCAP/IARC at UAF, highlighting Alaska and Arctic climate, environment & Indigenous cultures.

"Mid-November ice extent in the Bering Sea (west of Alaska) 1978-2025 based on NSIDC data. In hindsight, the step change between 2001 and 2002 is remarkable for its consistency. The 2002-2025 median is 65 percent lower(!) than the median of the prior 24 years.
{Graph sea ice extent 1978 - 2025} https://bsky.app/profile/alaskawx.bsky.social/post/3m5s4c3cttk25

But then, Alaska Indigenous experts in the region have been telling us for many decades that sea ice timing and quality nowadays is very different than what it used to be..."

Tehran’s water crisis is a warning for every thirsty city
Shayna Korol, Vox | 22 Nov 2025

"... if nothing changes, Tehran may soon face Day Zero — or when a municipality can no longer supply drinking water to its residents and taps run dry. In October, President Masoud Pezeshkian claimed that Tehran could no longer serve as the country’s capital, citing the water crisis as a major factor.

”If it doesn’t rain in Tehran by late November, we’ll have to {formally} ration water,” Pezeshkian told Iranian state media on Thursday. “And if it still doesn’t rain, we’ll have to evacuate Tehran.”

... water mafia ... megaprojects ... arid ... climate change ... agriculture ... geopolitical tensions inside and outside ...

... David Michel, senior fellow for water security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies ... argued that cities have to prioritize business models that provide the resources and revenues needed for water systems to operate, maintain, and expand to serve new customers.

... Economic incentives like volumetric tariffs, where the cost of water is proportional to the amount consumed ... reducing pressure on the poorest consumers..."

https://grist.org/drought/tehrans-water-crisis-is-a-warning-for-every-thirsty-ci...

Duncan A. Meiklejohn et al. 2025. JAMA Insights: Climate Change, Allergic Rhinitis, and Sinusitis. JAMA, Published Online: December 3, 2025. doi: 10.1001/jama.2025.19748 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2842287 PAYWALL

Allergic rhinitis affects approximately 1 in 6 adults, and chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) affects approximately 1 in 8 adults in the US.1,2 Climate change, due in part to rising global temperatures secondary to release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases, is a growing public health concern that affects many human organ systems, including the upper airway. Climate change affects sinonasal health directly by increasing aeroallergens and indirectly by changing weather patterns that result in drought-related dust, increased concentrations and stasis of air pollutants, worsening of wildfires,3 and heat-induced increases in ground-level ozone (O3). This JAMA Insights summarizes evidence regarding climate change, air pollution, and sinonasal health.

Alt National Park Service · Facebook 9 Dec 2025
"The EPA has scrubbed most of its website of any mention that human activity is driving climate change."

US judge strikes down Trump order blocking wind energy projects
Associated Press | 9 Dec 2025

"... Judge Patti Saris of the US district court for the district of Massachusetts vacated Trump’s 20 January executive order blocking wind energy projects and declared it unlawful.

Saris ruled in favor of a coalition of state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington DC, led by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, that challenged Trump’s day one order that paused leasing and permitting for wind energy projects.

... The coalition includes Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state and Washington DC. They say they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars collectively to develop wind energy and even more on upgrading transmission lines to bring wind energy to the electrical grid.

The government argued that the states’ claims amount to nothing more than a policy disagreement over preferences for wind versus fossil fuel energy development that is outside the federal court’s jurisdiction. ..."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/09/judge-blocks-trump-order-wind-en...

New ACEAS Explainer highlights risks of slowing global ocean overturning circulation

"The Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS) today published a new Explainer on the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) – a vast system of ocean currents that underpins Earth’s climate and ocean health...

... The Explainer details:

how the MOC works, including its Atlantic and Antarctic branches
evidence of modern-day changes, such as the North Atlantic ‘cold blob’ and abyssal ocean warming
future scenarios, including the risk of a shutdown
potential impacts on climate, biodiversity and human security..."

https://antarctic.org.au/new-aceas-explainer-highlights-risks-of-slowing-global-...
-----------------------------------------------------

What is the Meridional Overturning Circulation and why is it important? (8p)
Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science | Nov 2025
https://antarctic.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ACEAS-MOC-Explainer-DIGITAL....

Experts call for rethink of global sustainable development agenda as 2030 deadline looms
Monash University, edited & reviewed by Lisa Lock & Robert Egan | January 19, 2026

Through a detailed content analysis of the 2030 agenda, the 23 researchers spanning 17 research institutions globally reconstructed the "implicit theory of change" that shaped the SDGs {Sustainable Development Goals}. They found that the framework assumed global goals would naturally translate into national strategies, mobilize actors, and ultimately transform societies, without considering the impact of roadblocks that would impede change.

...a more systematic, evidence-based approach is needed to design the post-2030 agenda.

... The study identifies several systemic weaknesses that have hindered progress, including limited national leadership, weak incentives for business and non-government actors, superficial voluntary reviews, missing or outdated target areas such as artificial intelligence and international spillovers, and insufficient clarity on the transformations required to achieve the goals.

With proposals for the next global sustainable development framework already emerging, the researchers argue that a systematic method is needed to assess which ideas are both impactful and politically feasible within an increasingly polarized global landscape.

The study also emphasizes that societal transformations in energy, food systems, finance and governance must occur before the goals can be achieved, and that takes time.

With negotiations on the post-2030 agenda expected to begin in 2027, Dr. {Cameron} Allen {Monash U} said the scientific community has a critical role to play in shaping a more effective framework..."

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-experts-rethink-global-sustainable-agenda.html
-----------------------------------------

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
1. No Poverty
2. Zero Hunger
3. Good Health & Well-being
4. Quality Education
5. Gender Equality
6. Clean Water & Sanitation
7. Affordable & Clean Energy
8. Decent Work & Economic Growth
9. Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequalities
11. Sustainable Cities & Communities
12. Responsible Consumption & Production
13. Climate Action
14. Life Below Water
15. Life on Land
16. Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions
17. Partnerships for the Goals
https://sdg.iisd.org/sdgs/
-----------------------------------------

Cameron Allen et al. 2026. A theory of change approach to enhance the post-2030 sustainable development agenda . A better approach is needed to assess potential impact and feasibility of proposals. Science 15 Jan 2026. Vol 391, Issue 6782. pp. 241-244. DOI: 10.1126/science.adz5704 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz5704

"Abstract
As the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) nears and progress remains limited, researchers are proposing measures to enhance the next, post-2030, agenda to improve implementation ... With more proposals expected in future, we argue for a systematic approach to help researchers and policy-makers design and assess them. This requires a theory of change that explains how and why proposals will improve implementation of the next agenda, while also considering their political feasibility. We start by constructing an implicit theory of change underpinning the current 2030 Agenda ... to revisit how the SDGs were intended to work and identify key successes and failures. We then propose an approach for assessing proposals put forward to improve the post-2030 agenda on the basis of their impact and feasibility..."

DW News @dwnews | 6:48 AM · Jan 24, 2026:

"Climate change used to be a central topic at the World Economic Forum. But this year, the forum organized 60% fewer panels focused on climate and nature compared to 2024.
Did Donald Trump succeed in pushing climate off the agenda?"

(2:31) https://x.com/dwnews/status/2015028809351790961

🌍❄️ The entire temperate Northern Hemisphere is now frozen, with the exception of the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain.
🔹It is rather rare to see the polar vortex spread out so extensively at the same time across both America and Eurasia.

- Météovillages @meteovillages | 5:28 AM · Jan 30, 2026
Translated from French X . com

{map} https://x.com/meteovillages/status/2017183165056422071/photo/1

It's impressive, but whoever made that map cheated. Cutting out the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands is misleading.

The Sea Level Calculator: A Comprehensive Data Resource for Coastal Communities
NOAA Office of Coastal Management {accessed 1/31/2026}

https://coast.noaa.gov/states/stories/sealevel-calculator.html
https://coast.noaa.gov/sealevelcalculator/

>15 jjwilson61: Above average temperatures in Arctic, Pacific, Antarctic? I wondered what, if anything the North American and Europe deep freeze portends, if anything, for Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).

Heather Cox Richardson | February 12, 2026 (Thursday) {Facebook}
{History prof, Boston College}

"In a ceremony at the White House yesterday, surrounded by coal industry leaders, lawmakers, and miners, President Donald J. Trump was presented with a trophy that calls him “the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal.” At the event, Trump signed an executive order directing the Defense Department to buy billions of dollars of power produced by coal and decried “the Radical Left’s war on the industry.” Anna Betts of The Guardian noted that Trump also announced the Department of Energy will spend $175 million to “modernize, retrofit, and extend” the life of coal-fired power plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky.

As Lisa Friedman pointed out in the New York Times last month, the United States has been the largest polluter since the start of the industrial era, but emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, have been declining since 2007. Trump maintains that climate change is a “hoax” and has withdrawn the U.S. from the main global climate treaty. Since he took office in January 2025, U.S. emissions have increased 1.9% largely because of the renewed use of coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked the scientific finding that has been the basis for regulating emissions from cars and power plants since 2009. That finding, called the endangerment finding, reflects the consensus of scientists that greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas endanger the health and general welfare of the American people.

The Trump administration says scientists are wrong about the dangers of climate change and that the regulations hurt industry and slow the economy. It claims ending the rule will save Americans $1.3 trillion, primarily through cheaper cars and trucks, but it did not factor in the costs of extreme weather caused by climate change or the costs of pollution-related health issues.

Last year, Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow of the Washington Post reported that at a campaign event at Mar-a-Lago in April 2024, then-candidate Trump told oil executives they should raise $1 billion for his campaign. In exchange, Trump promised he would get rid of Biden-era regulations and make sure no more such regulations went into effect, in addition to lowering taxes. Trump told them $1 billion would be a “deal,” considering how much money they would make if he were in the White House ...

https://www.facebook.com/100044557238708/posts/1446290806866147/?rdid=NjFzSn8AJK...

Growing evidence points to link between autism and wildfire smoke
Zoya Teirstein | Feb 12, 2026

"... wildfire smoke is supremely unhealthy — about 10 times worse than inhaling car exhaust and other pollution emitted by burning fossil fuels. The ultra-fine particles that trees and vegetation release during combustion penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, exacerbating preexisting conditions like asthma and, recent studies suggest, damaging internal organs.

... The first study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology, analyzed data on more than 200,000 children born in southern California between 2006 and 2014. It found that those born to mothers exposed to 10 or more days of smoke in their third trimester had a 23 percent greater risk of being diagnosed with autism by age 5. Pregnant women who endured between six and 10 days saw a 12 percent higher risk of such a diagnosis in their kids.

Notably, the study found that average wildfire smoke concentration across the entire pregnancy or individual trimesters had no material effect on autism diagnoses. What did make a difference was the number of days a person in their third trimester inhaled the pollutant. Even one day of exposure had an effect.

... The second study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environment International, examined a much bigger sample — some 8.5 million births in California between 2001 and 2019. It, too, found a link between wildfire smoke exposure and autism diagnoses, though its different methodology yielded more nuanced results. When researchers looked at average smoke exposure across all births, the association was relatively weak. But among women who experienced intense smoke episodes — particularly those in the top 10th percentile of exposure — the link was substantially stronger. And it was strongest in people who live where population centers meet undeveloped land and who are not exposed to very high levels of general air pollution normally.

For women in the highest percentile of wildfire smoke exposure who otherwise lived in areas with relatively little background air pollution — such as car exhaust and urban smog — the odds of having a child diagnosed with autism were 50 percent higher than among those with lower wildfire smoke exposure. The researchers adjusted their analyses for non-wildfire related sources of air pollution.

... Autism spectrum disorder affects 1 in 31 8-year-olds in the United States. The extent to which the neurological condition, which researchers widely agree is largely determined by genetics, may also be influenced by environmental factors remains an active area of research...

https://grist.org/health/growing-evidence-points-to-link-between-autism-and-wild...
-------------------------------------------

David G. Luglio et al. 2026. Prenatal Exposure to Wildfire and Autism in Children. Environ. Sci. Technol. Jan 20, 2026, 60, 4, 2907–2916
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c08256 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5c08256 Free Access

-------------------------------------------

Karl O’Sharkey et al. 2026. Prenatal exposure to wildfire-related PM2.5 and autism spectrum disorder in children born in California between 2001–2019. Environment International Volume 208, February 2026, 110131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2026.110131 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412026000899
--------------------------------------------

Margd: We got significant relief from wildfire smoke with taped-together Corsi-Rosenthal box fan air filter, tested effective against viruses, etc. : https://corsirosenthalfoundation.org/instructions/

EMAIL: "... The 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average face approximately $6 billion in expected annual losses from physical climate risk?

That's $200 million per company (equivalent to 2.6 basis points of market cap), and it's reshaping how investors think about operational disruption, supply chain resilience, and long-term valuation.

We just released The New Cost of Doing Business, our latest research report that connects extreme weather directly to business interruption, profit warnings, and market outcomes for America's largest public companies. This is the first analysis of its kind to quantify physical climate risk at this scale, linking asset-level exposure to financial impact across the Dow 30 ..."
----------------------------------------------

REPORT
The New Cost of Doing Business
First Street | February 11, 2026
https://firststreet.org/research-library/the-new-cost-of-doing-business-report
-----------------------------------------------

WEBINAR
The New Cost of Doing Business: How climate risk impacts enterprise value, and how to respond
Date & Time: Feb 24, 2026 10:00 AM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Description
"Join First Street for a webinar unveiling new research, The New Cost of Doing Business, examining how physical climate risk is affecting corporate operations, financial performance, and enterprise valuation across America’s largest public companies..."

https://firststreet.zoom.us/webinar/register/7417703285014/WN_P5mwavtqRgCXUWaAas...

U.S. Supreme Court decides to hear climate case against ExxonMobil and Suncor Entities
Boulder County | February 23, 2026

"Court will consider companies’ bid for immunity from damages claims after Colorado localities’ win in state supreme court

Key points:
- The United States Supreme Court has decided to review a Colorado Supreme Court decision allowing Boulder County and the City of Boulder's lawsuit against ExxonMobil and two Suncor entities to proceed.
- The communities filed this lawsuit years ago, alleging that the oil companies’ actions have greatly contributed to an altered climate that harms the communities.
- The rising costs of dealing with the climate crisis led these communities to take legal action so that the costs do not fall on taxpayers alone.
- This legal fight has been going on since 2018.
- Boulder County has argued that the case belongs in local court..

... “Our case is, fundamentally, about fairness. Boulder is already experiencing the effects of a rapidly warming climate, and the financial burden of adaptation should not fall solely on local taxpayers. We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will not hamstring our right under Colorado law to seek the resources needed to build a safer, more resilient future,” said City of Boulder Climate Initiatives Director Jonathan Koehn ..."

https://bouldercounty.gov/news/u-s-supreme-court-decides-to-hear-climate-case-ag...

Winkelmann, R., Garbe, J., Donges, J.F. et al. Mapping tipping risks from Antarctic ice basins under global warming. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02554-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02554-0 Open Access

Abstract
The Antarctic Ice Sheet is subject to amplifying feedbacks which can accelerate ice loss and lead to effectively irreversible retreat. We here analyse the distinct nature and risk of long-term ice loss for each individual drainage basin under different levels of warming. Depending on topographic and climatic conditions, we find that ice loss in some basins unfolds gradually with warming, whereas other basins are characterized by a critical threshold or tipping point beyond which large parts eventually disintegrate. A first threshold, potentially as low as 1–2 °C above pre-industrial levels, triggers the long-term collapse of ~40% of marine ice volume in West Antarctica. Marine-based sectors in East Antarctica, representing ~5 m of potential sea-level rise, are at risk of losing stability at 2–5 °C. Our results imply that the Antarctic Ice Sheet does not act as one single tipping element, but rather as several tipping systems interacting across drainage basins.

PNAS: "At 3 °C of warming, climate-driven wildfire smoke could kill 64,000 Americans annually—a 60% increase over current levels. Incorporating that mortality into carbon cost estimates raises the domestic monetary value of CO2 mitigation by 74%."
-----------------------------------------------

Minghao Qiu et al. 2026. Valuing wildfire smoke–related mortality benefits from climate mitigation. PNAS, February 19, 2026. 123 (8) e2533772123. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2533772123

Abstract
Human-induced climate change has increased wildfire risks, associated air pollution, and health damages in North America. Despite its large potential for damage, climate-induced wildfire smoke is rarely incorporated in estimates of the societal costs of climate change. We develop an integrated framework to estimate air pollution from climate-induced wildfire smoke (fine particulate matter, PM2.5) and the associated mortality damage in the United States across different trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions and global mean surface temperature. Our framework accounts for fire–vegetation feedbacks by empirically estimating the effects of past fires on future burn probability. Under 3 °C of global warming (relative to 1850–1900), we estimate that smoke exposure will lead to 64,000 deaths annually in the United States ..., a 60% increase above estimated annual smoke deaths during 2011-2020. Limiting global warming to 2 °C reduces smoke-related mortality by 14% (8,900 deaths per year) relative to our estimate for 3 °C. For every additional tonne of CO2 emissions in 2025, we calculate a net present value of monetized damage (i.e., a partial social cost of carbon) of $11.2 ... due to climate-induced wildfire smoke mortality in the United States. Incorporating wildfire smoke damages into existing nonwildfire damage estimates increases the US domestic social cost of carbon by 74%, substantially increasing the expected benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation within the United States.

OPINION: Beyond ‘Endangerment’: Finding a Way Forward for U.S. on Climate
Jody Freeman | March 3, 2026

"Should the Supreme Court agree with the EPA, no future administration could use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases.

The best near-term climate opportunity with growing bipartisan support is to pass legislation modernizing the U.S. power sector.

There is also growing support for improving federal disaster response, which will be vital as floods, heat waves, and wildfires intensify.

Even if the endangerment repeal holds, much of the oil and gas industry has signaled it wants to keep the methane rule ... The most recent methane rule, from March 2024, received praise for holding companies to consistent standards while allowing flexibility to test emerging technologies ..."

https://e360.yale.edu/features/endangerment-finding

Larcombe, A.N., Bierwirth, P.N. Carbon dioxide overload, detected in human blood, suggests a potentially toxic atmosphere within 50 years. Air Qual Atmos Health 19, 44 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5#Abs1

Abstract
Anthropogenic activities are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. There is mounting experimental evidence that lifetime exposure to these increasing atmospheric CO2 levels can negatively impact the normal physiology of organisms. However, directly assessing this in humans is very difficult. We analysed serum bicarbonate (HCO3−), calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) levels from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1999 to 2020 as indirect proxies for atmospheric CO2 exposure. Over this period, average bicarbonate levels in this population show an increasing trend which parallels rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Both Ca and P have decreased steadily over the same period. If these trends continue, blood bicarbonate values could be at the limit of the accepted healthy range in half a century, and Ca and P will be at the limit of their healthy ranges by the end of this century. Studies indicate that, after this time, elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, leading to CO2 accumulation in the body, has the potential to cause a range of adverse health effects. These findings highlight the urgent need for significant reductions in anthropogenic CO2 emissions to safeguard public health.

I had read that Lake Erie water quality changed after deforestation by settlers, and again when foliage recovered, but apparently CO2 took a dive post-1492 when Great Dying (disease) decimated indigenous agriculture. Read somewhere else that central/southern US indigenous people were similarly decimated: Europeans arrived to find abandoned settlements. Is depopulation what it will take today? Or a Depression. Yikes...

Koch, A., et al. 2019. Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492. Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 207, 1 March 2019, Pages 13-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.12.004

"Highlights
• Combines multiple methods estimating pre-Columbian population numbers.
• Estimates European arrival in 1492 lead to 56 million deaths by 1600.
• Large population reduction led to reforestation of 55.8 Mha and 7.4 Pg C uptake.
• 1610 atmospheric CO2 drop partly caused by indigenous depopulation of the Americas.
• Humans contributed to Earth System changes before the Industrial Revolution.

... 1. INTRODUCTION
The arrival of Europeans in the Americas in 1492 CE marks the onset of disease epidemics resulting in the loss of the majority of indigenous people living in the Americas over the subsequent century... Indigenous land use was widespread before European arrival, particularly in Mexico, Central America, Bolivia and the Andes where terraced fields and irrigated agriculture was practised ... , and across Amazonia where diverse pre-Columbian land uses left its traces in the composition of contemporary Amazon forests ... Thus the Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas ... after 1492 CE likely led to a reduction in land use. Fields and fallow areas then underwent secondary succession and in many cases increased carbon stocks as they reverted towards similar prior states. ..."

"At a time when civilization is hurtling toward irreversible climate breakdown, to overlook the climate consequences of three of the deadliest militaries on earth going to war would be journalistic malpractice."

Trump’s War With Iran Is Also a Climate War
Mark Hertsgaard, Giles Trendle | March 5, 2026

"Fossil fuels are structurally embedded in modern warfare.

... Wars unleash gargantuan amounts of planet-warming emissions: Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, has generated emissions equal to the annual emissions of France. {the U.S. Department of Defense is the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases globally, as Neta Crawford, a professor at Oxford University, documents in her book The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War} Those extra emissions drive deadlier heat, drought, storms, and other impacts that wreck livelihoods, destabilize economies, and spur migration, making armed conflict more likely. ...

... Yet war has the perverse effect of pushing the climate story down the news agenda. The news media is event-driven, prioritizing breaking developments and immediate threats. And wars generate powerful images and dramatic narratives, which stoke the public appetite for news (at least in a war’s initial stages). Climate change, by contrast, typically unfolds over longer timescales. Except during acute disasters, such as hurricanes or wildfires, the climate story tends to lack the urgency that garners headlines and boosts audience interest.

... Is this a war for oil? The fact that Iran possesses the third-largest oil reserves on earth inevitably raises the question, as does the long history of U.S.-Iranian conflict over those reserves, including the CIA overthrowing a democratically elected leader who sought to nationalize them. When the U.S. attacked Venezuela in January, President Donald Trump openly said that he wanted to gain control of that country’s vast oil reserves ... more reporting is needed ..."

https://newrepublic.com/article/207314/iran-war-climate-crisis

Long-term ocean warming reduces global fish biomass by up to 19.8% annually. Warmer years and marine heatwaves were linked to sharp biomass losses of up to 43.4%.

Chaikin, S., González-Trujillo, J.D. & Araújo, M.B. Long-term warming reduces fish biomass, but heatwaves shift it. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03013-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-026-03013-5

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-026-03013-5.epdf?sharing_token=59dcrQpvep...

Abstract
Long-term ocean warming, interannual temperature variability and marine heatwaves pose serious but poorly quantified threats to marine species. Here, to quantify and isolate their individual effects, we analysed 702,037 estimates of biomass change across 33,990 fish populations (1,566 species) between 1993 and 2021, covering major Northern Hemisphere basins. Long-term warming was associated with an annual biomass decline of up to 19.8%. However, on shorter timescales, warmer years and marine heatwaves were linked to sharp biomass losses of up to 43.4% in populations at the warm edge of the species’ range and biomass increases of up to 176% at the cold edge. Accounting for these edge-dependent ‘winners and losers’ in response to long- and short-term warming will be essential to avoid overexploiting transient biomass gains. Ultimately, management strategies must plan for the biomass loss expected under continued ocean warming.

Testing the waters: can pumping chemicals into the ocean help stop global heating?
Olive Heffernan | 10 Mar 2026

"To some it was a reckless experiment but scientists hope the dispersal of 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine could ease the climate crisis

... Albeit small in scale, their study, which has yet to go through peer review, found promising results. Over five days at sea, the Loc-Ness project used state-of-the-art technology including autonomous gliders, long-range autonomous underwater vehicles and shipboard sensors to trace the dispersal of 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide, an alkaline chemical that was tagged with a red dye, from the release site.

During that period, they measured up to 10 tonnes of carbon entering the ocean and an increase in local pH at the deployment site from 7.95 to 8.3, which represents a return of ocean alkalinity to preindustrial levels. The experiment showed no significant harm to creatures including plankton and fish and lobster larvae, though the team did not measure the impact on adult fish or marine mammals ..."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/10/sodium-hydroxide-ocean-globa...

Nature Reviews Microbiology: The cryosphere remains one of the least-understood microbial ecosystems on Earth, but as climate change accelerates, cryosphere microbial communities will have an increasingly prominent role in Earth’s biogeochemical cycles. This Review discusses the effects of climate change on cryosphere microbial ecosystems.

Sugden, S., Davis, C.L., Quinn, M.W. et al. Current and projected effects of climate change in cryosphere microbial ecosystems. Nat Rev Microbiol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-025-01251-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-025-01251-1

Snook, R.R., Bretman, A., Dougherty, L.R. et al. The consequences of rising temperatures for animal fertility. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-026-00142-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44358-026-00142-4

Key points
Elevated temperatures can decrease reproductive output at temperatures below those causing mortality; hence an understanding of this phenomenon is critical for predicting organismal responses to climate change, including downstream effects on humans

Variation in thermal vulnerability within and between species is shaped by how temperature affects the fertilization environment experienced by gametes, the interaction between the magnitude, duration and frequency of heat exposure, and by the relative sensitivity of each sex and life-history stage; additional complexity arises under multiple stressor conditions and from uncertainty as to whether phenotypic plasticity aids or exacerbates responses

Heat-impaired reproductive output alters predictions of climate change impacts on species distributions and population persistence; however, evidence for ecological and evolutionary consequences is taxonomically limited, and scenarios involving shifting species interactions and community-level variation in thermal fertility sensitivity are unexplored

The potential for adaptive increases in reproductive heat tolerance depends on heritable genetic variation, sex-specific genetic architecture and linked traits, and temperature-dependent DNA mutation; yet evidence for adaptive responses is sparse, limited by a small number of studies in few taxa

Recognizing fertility-based vulnerability is essential for assessing the effects of climate change on populations, species, communities and ecosystems, including subsequent ecosystem service effects; improved taxonomic coverage under more complex conditions is required to anticipate ecological and evolutionary consequences and responses across scales

AI set to map risks of future climate disasters
Soraia Raupp Musse | 18 March 2026

"... A tool is needed for community-level sharing of disaster information — information that everyone can navigate and rely on. Residents need to know what their risks are, how to spot early signs of a natural disaster and where to find reliable, local guidance on what to do.

To this end, Brazil is developing an artificial-intelligence agent that will provide climate-disaster information and advice for its residents. This is one of the first large-scale national initiatives to integrate AI, simulations and citizen participation into a tool for disaster preparedness aimed at individuals. It is shepherded by the National Institute of Science and Technology in Simulation and Monitoring for Individual Assistance in Extreme Climate Events (INCT-SIM-AI).

For each household, the tool will store data, including an address and any particular needs relating to potential evacuations. These will be combined with public data through each state’s emergency-management agency to provide residents with accurate and up-to-date information.

Developing such a tool is a human challenge as much as a technical one. No community is homogeneous: people differ in terms of their social, economic and educational conditions, and in how they trust technology and interpret warnings. Scientists must listen to local people and communicate clearly with them.

And so, in July 2025, the government launched an interdisciplinary institute to bring together researchers, throughout Brazil and from abroad, in computer science, AI, psychology and social sciences, with 11 million reais (US$2 million) of investment over five years. A preliminary tool (see go.nature.com/3nhghco) provides information about the 2024 flood in Porto Alegre. A pilot is expected later this year. It will work as a ‘Google Maps from the past’, which residents can use to look at water levels for a specific address and date. Providing access to data on past disasters is the first step towards informing people about how rain and floods can affect the places where they work and live.

The project has three pillars ..."

{Paywall} https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00835-y

Trump Officials Weigh New $1 Billion Deal to Stop Offshore Wind Farms
Maxine Joselow | March 17, 2026

"... Senior administration officials are drafting settlement agreements that would pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina ...

Under the terms of the proposed settlements, the Interior Department would cancel the leases in federal waters for the two projects ...

In exchange, TotalEnergies would abandon its plans to begin building the wind farms. It would also commit to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas, as the Trump administration prioritizes the production of fossil fuels over renewables like wind and solar power.

.. The Trump administration is now 0 for 5 in its efforts to stop wind farms under construction. The settlements would be the first time that it targeted wind farms that have yet to begin construction but have won leases ..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/climate/offshore-wind-settlements-trump.html

A Super El Nino event is forecast for later in the year, which will release a lot of heat from the ocean. Sure hope wet bulb mortality event isn't in the cards though there will be deaths, no doubt. :(

Record-shattering March temperatures in Western North America virtually impossible without climate change
World Weather Attribution | 20 March, 2026

Key Messages
- Heatwaves are the deadliest type of extreme weather, with hundreds of thousands of people dying from heat-related causes each year. Extreme heat is most deadly earlier in the year, when people have not acclimated to the heat, and vulnerable people are exposed to high temperatures for the first time.
- Heatwaves as observed in March 2026 in Western North America are still rare events, even in today’s climate which has warmed by 1.3°C due to the burning of fossil fuels, with a return period of about 500 years. As this assessment partly includes forecast data, to prevent an overestimation of the extremeness of the event we use a return period of 100 years throughout the analysis.
- Observation-based data products show a strong increase in the likelihood and intensity of heat waves in the region, suggesting that such events have become about 4°C warmer as a best estimate, and that events as warm as in March 2026 would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change. Climate models strongly underestimate this observed trend but still show a significant increase in extreme heat. - We combine models and observations, giving equal weight to both lines of evidence, and find an estimated increase in intensity of 2.6°C for such events, with an increase in likelihood of a factor of about 800. This means that without climate change it would have been virtually impossible for the event to occur.
- We also combine climate models and observation-based products in the same way to study changes in only the past 10 years, during which time the world has warmed by approximately 0.4°C. In this short time, we find an increase in intensity of such heat events by 0.8°C and an increase in likelihood of a factor of about 4.
- We also investigated changes in heat extremes at other times of year and across the region. We find that while increases are evident across all months, the most substantial warming signal for heat extremes in this region occurs in March. In this month, temperatures in the current climate are as much as 6°C higher in parts of the region than those observed under a baseline climate approximately 1.3°C cooler. An abundance of weather stations with long records across the region also show a majority of strongly increasing trends with warming, which provides an additional line of evidence to the findings from this analysis.
- Heat action plans that reduce heat-related deaths are increasingly being implemented across the region, which is encouraging. However, there remains an urgent need for an accelerated roll-out of heat action plans in light of increasing vulnerability driven by the intersecting trends of climate change and population ageing, paying also special attention to the mental health impacts of extreme heat (Stewart-Ruano et al., 2025). Cities are hot-spots for heat risk, so urban planning needs to focus on measures to reduce the urban heat island effect, such as increasing cooling green and blue spaces.

https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/record-shattering-march-temperatures-in-...

5m tonnes of CO2 emitted in just 14 days of US war on Iran, analysis finds
Damien Gayle | 21 Mar 2026

War in the Middle East is draining the global carbon budget faster than 84 countries combined...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/21/middle-east-iran-conflict-environm...

US interest in electric vehicles surges as gas prices jump amid Iran war
Oliver Milman | 21 Mar 2026

"Online searches for electric and hybrid cars increase as war-linked fuel prices hit highest levels in nearly three years ..."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/21/us-gas-price-surge-iran-electri...

Scientific American: "Drought conditions can boost both soil-dwelling and human-hosted bacteria’s ability to resist antibiotics. And as rising global temperatures dry out more of the world, more people may be exposed to these treatment-immune pathogens."

Xiaoyu Shan et al. 2026. Drought drives elevated antibiotic resistance across soils. Nat Microbiol (23 March 2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-026-02274-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-026-02274-x#Abs1

"Abstract. ... Here we establish drought as a driving force of antibiotic resistance in the soil, with potentially far-reaching public health consequences. Across various geographic regions and soil types, we consistently observe metagenomic* signatures of enrichment for antibiotic producers under drought conditions. Experimentally, we demonstrate that drought-induced lowering of water content concentrates natural antibiotics, thereby intensifying selection against sensitive strains and favouring antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Using clinical surveillance data from 116 countries, we show that the average frequency of hospital antibiotic resistance is strongly correlated with the local aridity index, even after controlling for regional income differences. Together, our findings reveal an underrecognized link between climate factors and antibiotic resistance."
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* "A metagenome is the total collection of genetic material (DNA) extracted directly from an environmental sample—such as soil, water, or the human gut—containing multiple, often non-culturable, microorganisms. Metagenomics bypasses culturing to analyze community composition and function, revolutionizing insights into microbes." (Google AI summary from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/metagenome)

US has caused $10tn worth of climate damage since 1990, research finds
Oliver Milman | Wed 25 Mar 2026

"US, top carbon emitter in history, has ‘a lot of responsibility’ for causing ‘substantial’ harm globally, scientist says ..."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/25/us-climate-damage-research
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Marshall Burke ET AL. 2026. Quantifying climate loss and damage consistent with a social cost of carbon. Nature volume 651, pages 959–966 (25 March 2026) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10272-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10272-6 Open access

Abstract. ... we show that future damages from past emissions—one component of L&D {loss & damage} —are at least an order of magnitude larger than historical damages from the same emissions. For instance, one tonne of CO2 emitted in 1990 caused US$180 in discounted global damages by 2020 ($40–530) and will cause an additional $1,840 through 2100 ($500–5,700). Thus, settling debts for past damages will not settle debts for past emissions. In other illustrative estimates, a single long-haul flight per year over the past decade leads to about $25k ($6,000–77,000) in future damages by 2100, and US emissions since 1990 caused $500 billion ($180–1,300 billion) of damage in India and $330 billion ($110–820 billion) in Brazil. Carbon removal offers an alternative to transfer payments for settling L&D, but is increasingly ineffective in limiting damages as the delay between emission and recapture increases.

Foreign Policy essay is worth a read, I think. Can the middle powers "... convert their mineral wealth, demographic weight, and hard-won diplomatic capacity into a genuine third path—one that refuses both the planetary ecological suicide of the Axis of Petrostates’ clientelism and the infrastructural dependency of the Green Entente ..."?

Electrostates v Petrostates
Nils Gilman | March 2023

"Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney didn’t come to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January to offer hope. He came to pronounce a death. The liberal international order—that elaborate architecture of institutions, norms, and U.S.-guaranteed public goods constructed in the aftermath of World War II—was over, he announced, and the rupture was irreversible. But Carney’s eulogy, sober and precise as it was, understated the depth of the break.

U.S. President Donald Trump isn’t merely ending a set of diplomatic arrangements or a particular configuration of great-power relations. He is presiding over the end of the fossil-fueled model of industrial civilization that made the liberal order possible, profitable, and, for a time, politically sustainable. Trump didn’t initiate the decline of fossil fuels’ global metabolic hegemony; it was instigated by the manifest instability posed by climate change and rivalrous oil-access impediments like the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. But he has ensured a rivalrous competition, rather than a smooth transition, to replace it.

The liberal international order’s replacement thus won’t be negotiated in Geneva or adjudicated in The Hague. It will be determined by who controls the energy flows, mineral deposits, and technological systems on which all modern life now depends.

This is an ecological cold war, and it differs from its predecessor in ways that matter enormously. The original Cold War was a contest between liberal capitalism and Soviet communism—between two theories of how human societies should develop themselves economically and organize themselves politically. The new cold war is a contest between competing metabolisms.

On one side, the Green Entente: China and an emerging electrostate bloc, which has bet its industrial future on solar panels, batteries, and the vast mineral supply chains that feed them. On the other, the Axis of Petrostates: the United States under Trump, Russia, and the Gulf monarchies, which have staked their power and fiscal survival on prolonging the fossil fuel era and weaponizing energy abundance against those who would end it.

Ideology still matters at the margins—but it cuts across these blocs rather than defines them. As during the Cold War, the winner in the struggle may well be determined not as much by the actions of the superpowers themselves as by the choices of the nations caught between them: what Carney called, with characteristic understatement, the middle powers.

The Axis of Petrostates is a reactionary coalition—led notably by the United States, in tacit coalition with other major oil- and gas-producing states such as Russia and the Gulf monarchies—whose economic models and civilizational narratives are inextricably tied to fossil fuels. For these leaders, oil and gas are more than commodities; they’re proof of national virility, fuel for a specific brand of traditionalist restoration, and leverage they can use to undermine the liberal order they all detest.

Upon returning to office, Trump effectively decided to wave the white flag on the global competition for green technology leadership by rescinding subsidies for the industries of the future. To be sure, rather than straightforwardly admitting defeat, Trump went on the rhetorical offense, with his 2025 National Security Strategy dismissing climate change as a “disastrous” ideology and speaking of national “energy dominance” as a counterpoint to weak (and feminine-coded) green globalism. Echoing similar gender anxieties, Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that oil revenues can fund Russia’s pursuit of a unique, self-sufficient Orthodox civilization that resists “Western decadence.” And for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s oil bounty promises to transform the desert kingdom into a high-tech global hub while maintaining Islamic leadership. In sum, while they differ in regime type, all three are united by a shared vision of “fossil sovereignty” that sees the green transition as a Trojan horse for a liberal and regulatory worldview that threatens their specific forms of centralized power and masculinist national identity.

To ensure that global demand for fossil fuels remains buoyant, the United States is leveraging the advantages of incumbency. Unlike the Green Entente, which must build an entirely new energy production, distribution, and consumption infrastructure from scratch, the Axis of Petrostates is playing infrastructural defense—a strategically easier position. It is using its financial and military weight to protect existing global fossil fuel supply chains—with Trump threatening, amid the war on Iran, to “take over” the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the Persian Gulf’s oil passes—and encouraging developing nations to lock in their developmental model with coal- and gas-fired power plants and internal combustion infrastructure.

Under Trump, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., which under former President Joe Biden had been restricted from financing fossil fuel projects abroad, has redirected its lending toward coal, gas, and oil infrastructure in the developing world, effectively subsidizing the export of metabolic lock-in alongside the hardware itself. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove European nations to seek alternative gas supplies, Trump has pressured European allies to purchase more U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a condition of continued security guarantees. These contracts, typically spanning 15 to 20 years, are commitments as binding as any infrastructure investment. The United States thus aims to create long-term metabolic dependency.

This new petrostate alliance is a marriage of convenience rather than a monolithic bloc.

Within this bloc, Saudi Arabia serves as the swing supplier not merely through diplomatic weight but through the cold math of extraction geology. The House of Saud’s long-term vision for itself is as the last fossil fuel producer left standing even as the world shifts. The cost of oil extraction in the Gulf is the lowest in the world, rarely exceeding $10 per barrel—far below the cost of shale fracking in the United States (about $62 per barrel, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve) or Russia (where the least expensive wells cost $25 to $40 per barrel to operate). This means the Saudis can survive price wars that would bankrupt their allies. By maintaining the ability to flood the market and crash prices, Riyadh can simultaneously punish transitioners and ensure that fossil fuels remain the path of least resistance for developing economies.

Those differences underscore that, like Berlin-Rome-Tokyo in the 1930s, this new petrostate alliance is a marriage of convenience rather than a monolithic bloc. While Moscow, Riyadh, and Washington are aligned on the desire to maintain global fossil fuel consumption, and to spreading disinformation about climate change to do so, they are also price competitors on the global oil market. Many geopolitical differences continue to divide them: The United States and Russia remain at loggerheads over Ukraine, and Russia and Saudi Arabia continue to back different sides in regional wars from Iran to Sudan to Syria.

Opposing the petrostates will be the Green Entente, dominated by China. While the United States and its new compadres retreat into retro fuels, Beijing has positioned itself to dominate the emergent post-carbon energy system.

Born of a technocratic ambition to secure regime legitimacy and capture the industries of the future, China dominates every link in the green industrial value chain: According to the International Energy Agency, China controls more than 90 percent of global processing of rare earths and 94 percent of the production of permanent magnets (essential for electric vehicle motors and wind turbines); its share in manufacturing solar panels exceeds 80 percent; and it produces more than 70 percent of all EV batteries and also accounts for over 70 percent of global EV production. Nine-tenths of China’s investment growth in 2025 was in the green energy sector. It has also decoupled this growth from Western demand: Some 47 percent of China’s green tech exports now flow to emerging markets, making it the indispensable partner for countries across the global south, from Africa to Latin America. In short, by leveraging its authoritarian developmental state, China has gone in less than a generation from the world’s greatest environmental villain to its green tech hegemon.

Those inclined toward the Green Entente often view ecological modernization as an imperative for sustaining planetary habitability. But this isn’t just about environmentalism. Green technologies possess fundamental thermodynamic advantages over fossil fuels, which suffer from expensive energy losses during extraction, refining, and transport. For most terrestrial purposes, EVs, being simpler to manufacture and maintain, are already functionally superior to internal combustion engines. Likewise, the marginal cost of green energy production is already cheaper than that of fossil fuels, even if we ignore environmental externalities. Even skeptics of the likelihood of a speedy green transition, such as Vaclav Smil, concede that green tech is winning in energy production and transport.

China has gone in less than a generation from the world’s greatest environmental villain to its green tech hegemon.

The European Union, having suffered from its reliance on Russian natural gas and now facing a parallel dependence on a belligerent United States (which also happens to have tens of thousands of troops stationed on European soil), has a strong strategic incentive to join the Green Entente. The logic behind this alignment would be pragmatic: Europe provides affluent markets, while China provides the industrial muscle. The same applies to countries such as India and Japan, respectively the fourth- and fifth-biggest economies in the world, which rely on imports for most of their oil.

The trouble, of course, is that joining this bloc isn’t a simple trade agreement; it effectively means entering a hierarchical system led by Beijing. Because China has secured a massive (perhaps even insurmountable) lead in both green power generation and transport systems, any country seeking to go green is essentially forced to adopt Chinese hardware and standards. From this perspective, the Green Entente could represent the emergence of what Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann have labeled the “Climate Leviathan”: a global system where the climate emergency is used as a pretext for a new form of command-and-control dominance, in which tribute is paid in technological dependency and the risk of political blackmail at the hands of what is also a deeply illiberal and nationalistic regime in Beijing.

The transition from the liberal international order to the new eco-ideological cold war forces a brutal strategic calculation on the countries caught between the two blocs. What Carney called the middle powers—a diverse group ranging from wealthy established nations such as Canada, France, and Japan to emerging giants such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia—face an illiberal double bind: to choose between dependence on a bloc of militarily aggressive petrostates whose preferred technological suite all but guarantees planetary ecological ruin and bowing to the budding Leviathan in Beijing.

If the original Cold War was in large measure a contest for the “hearts and minds” of the postcolonial world over competing models of economic development, this new era will be a contest for the metabolic souls of the middle powers—the infrastructural and energy foundations on which their futures will be built. And unlike ideological allegiance, energy infrastructure is sticky. Once a country builds its grid around natural gas, once it populates its roads with internal combustion engines, once it ties its industrial base to petrochemical inputs, reversing course becomes extraordinarily expensive. Likewise if a country chooses the electrostate route. The leaders of both blocs understand this, and both are weaponizing it.

The Axis of Petrostates will deploy energy as leverage in two directions simultaneously. Internally, the United States and Gulf producers will use cheap, readily available fossil fuels as a tool of clientelism—offering developing nations fast, affordable energy access in exchange for long-term infrastructural lock-in. Saudi Arabia can flood global oil markets at will, crashing prices precisely when green alternatives become cost-competitive, thereby undermining the investment case for electrification in price-sensitive economies.

Externally, the petrostates will use energy as a coercive instrument against the Green Entente itself—threatening to cut supply, manipulate prices, or destabilize fossil fuel-dependent transition economies that haven’t yet completed their shift to renewables. Europe, still dependent on LNG even after the Russian rupture, remains acutely vulnerable to this kind of pressure.

The Green Entente, meanwhile, will leverage its dominance of clean energy hardware with equal deliberateness. Control over solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, EV supply chains, and rare-earth processing gives Beijing an infrastructural chokehold over any nation seeking to modernize its energy metabolism. The leverage here is less about price crashes and more about standards, compatibility, and dependency. A country that builds its grid on Chinese inverters, populates its roads with Chinese EVs, and routes its energy data through Chinese digital management systems has effectively joined the Entente whether it intended to or not.

Though regime mouthpieces deny it, China will also use access to green finance and technology transfers as diplomatic currency, rewarding alignment and withholding cooperation from those who hedge too visibly toward the Axis. What’s more, for countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea, trading U.S. petro-hegemony for a Chinese electro-hegemony not only is at odds with long-standing ideological and ethical commitments to democracy and human rights but also threatens to hollow out their already shaky industrial bases.

The critical question for middle powers is whether genuine independence remains possible or whether the physics of energy infrastructure will eventually force a choice. Grid interoperability, financial clearing systems, equipment serving networks, and deepening human capital investments will all incentivize making a commitment one way or the other. Intensifying geopolitical pressure will raise the cost of straddling—but also the incentive for such powers to carve out space between the two blocs.

Call it a new nonaligned movement.

The original Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was born of the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955 and formally established in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1961. It was led by a legendary quintet: Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia’s Sukarno, and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito. These leaders sought a “middle course” for states that had just escaped the shackles of colonialism and refused to be drafted into the binary madness of the Cold War.

A principal aim of the NAM was to promote economic cooperation among postcolonial states as an alternative to economic dependency on either the Soviet Union or the United States. Their mission was as much psychological as it was political: a demand for dignity, self-determination, and what Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere called a “positive neutrality” that would prevent their territories from becoming a mere theater for superpower proxy wars.

Whereas the original NAM was about maintaining ideological and economic autonomy apart from the Cold War division between the Americans and the Soviets, the new grouping will be more about infrastructural nonalignment. Unlike the original NAM, which was led by impoverished postcolonial states, today’s middle powers possess significant diplomatic, military, and economic capacity. They have the resources to form plurilateral diplomatic arrangements that can bypass traditional, decaying institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, United Nations, or World Trade Organization. A green energy and trade agreement between Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore or a mineral producers’ compact between Brazil and India requires no great-power blessing and answers to no hegemonic arbiter.

The material specificity of the transition also provides some middle powers with forms of leverage that were unavailable during the first Cold War. Because the electrostate model requires vast quantities of critical minerals—lithium, cobalt, rare earths, and so on—countries rich in these resources have become a crucial strategic prize. States such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan, which are all well-endowed with both hydrocarbons and green tech-relevant minerals, are successfully pursuing multialignment policies to host investments from both blocs, playing Beijing and Washington against each other to maximize their own national autonomy.

The strategies that middle powers are adopting with respect to another domain of U.S.-China geostrategic rivalry, namely artificial intelligence and other forms of computation, provide a clue as to what infrastructural nonalignment may look like. Rather than accepting a prepackaged “stack” from either superpower, many middle powers are seeking a third way. Vietnam, for instance, is developing its own AI instances rather than committing exclusively to U.S. or Chinese hardware. In Africa, entrepreneurs are engaging in “algorithmic suturing,” melding Chinese hardware with Western software to create local solutions that neither superpower fully controls. India, too, is developing its own model of AI sovereignty.

Beyond the material specifics of infrastructure, what makes this new nonalignment structurally different from its predecessor isn’t just the greater capacity of its constituent members but their collective willingness to treat multilateral institutions instrumentally rather than reverently. Where the original NAM operated largely through the U.N. system—lobbying, petitioning, and passing resolutions in forums ultimately controlled by the great powers—today’s middle powers are constructing parallel architectures. The expansion of BRICS, the growing diplomatic weight of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the proliferation of regional development banks all reflect a shared instinct: that the existing rules-based order was designed by and for a particular configuration of power that no longer exists.

These nations aren’t so much seeking to overthrow the system as to route around it, building bilateral currency swap agreements, regional supply chain compacts, and technology-sharing arrangements that reduce their exposure to any single superpower’s leverage. The new movement will likely lack a formal secretariat or founding charter; its coherence will emerge not from ideological solidarity but from the shared pragmatic interest in preserving optionality.

But, as with the original NAM, the middle powers also face deep internal divisions, split between oil producers that benefit from high prices and transitioners that are desperate for energy security. This fault line may prove the new movement’s biggest vulnerability. The original NAM fractured repeatedly along precisely these kinds of material interest lines—between commodity exporters and manufacturing economies, between nations seeking foreign investment and those pursuing import substitution—and today’s configuration carries analogous tensions.

An Angola or a Nigeria, whose state revenues remain overwhelmingly dependent on hydrocarbon exports, has fundamentally different incentives than a Bangladesh or Kenya, whose development trajectories depend on affordable, reliable electricity and whose populations are acutely exposed to climate disruption. The former has every incentive to align quietly with the petrostate bloc, prolonging the fossil fuel era that underwrites its fiscal survival. The latter needs the electrostate bloc’s technology and finance, even if it resents the dependency that comes with it.

These aren’t disagreements that can be papered over with diplomatic communiqués. They reflect genuinely incompatible material interests, and any new nonaligned coalition will be forced to manage them continuously or risk the kind of internal incoherence that eventually hollowed out its predecessor. The most likely outcome is a fragmented landscape of issue-specific coalitions: nations clustering around shared interests in mineral pricing, climate finance, or technology access without ever fully consolidating into a coherent third pole.

Ultimately, the choice for the middle powers comes down to what kind of modernity they want to inhabit. The petrostate bloc offers a backward-looking, carbon-intensive vision in which the weak and the small are firmly subordinated to the strong and the large—a world where energy abundance is weaponized as clientelism, where cheap oil buys loyalty, and where the infrastructural lock-in of a thousand procurement contracts slowly forecloses the future.

Joining a China-led Green Entente offers something formally more progressive: a forward-looking, post-carbon model that takes seriously the physical constraints of a warming planet. But it, too, carries a dark shadow—the potential subordination of national metabolic sovereignty to a Beijing-centered supply chain architecture that trades one form of dependency for another. This is a strategic abyss: to align with the aggressive, decaying past or the efficient, neo-totalitarian future.

What makes this moment historically distinctive is that the choice isn’t primarily ideological. The original Cold War was, at its core, a contest between competing theories of how human societies should organize themselves—democracy versus communism, markets versus planning, individual liberty versus collective mobilization. The new cold war cuts across all of those categories. Authoritarian petrostates and nominally democratic ones sit comfortably in the same bloc. China’s green authoritarianism and Europe’s climate liberalism compete within the same potential Entente. The organizing axis is not political philosophy but physical metabolism—who controls the energy, minerals, and technology on which modernity relies.

This is why the new nonaligned movement, if it coheres, will look so different from its predecessor. It won’t be animated by Bandung-era solidarity or Third Worldist ideology but instead by the icy pragmatism of plurilateral mineral-purchasing clubs and technological suturing. Its greatest asset is the very materiality of the transition: The lithium under Argentina’s salt flats, the Kalgoorlie nickel-cobalt project in Australia, and the rare earths distributed across Indonesia and Kazakhstan give the middle powers a form of leverage that the postcolonial NAM never possessed. Its greatest vulnerability, as the original grouping discovered to its cost, is internal fracture—the irreconcilable tension between oil producers whose fiscal survival depends on prolonging the fossil fuel era and transitioners whose development futures depend on ending it.

Carney’s eulogy for the old order at Davos was not a lament. It was a recognition that the rules-based liberal international order—that pleasant fiction of lawyerly norms and institutional deference—had already been torched and that the question was no longer how to restore it but how to survive its absence. The middle powers are the crucible where the answer will be forged. Their success depends on whether they can convert their mineral wealth, demographic weight, and hard-won diplomatic capacity into a genuine third path—one that refuses both the planetary ecological suicide of the Axis of Petrostates’ clientelism and the infrastructural dependency of the Green Entente.

Carney’s eulogy for the old order at Davos was not a lament. It was a recognition that the rules-based liberal international order—that pleasant fiction of lawyerly norms and institutional deference—had already been torched and that the question was no longer how to restore it but how to survive its absence. The middle powers are the crucible where the answer will be forged. Their success depends on whether they can convert their mineral wealth, demographic weight, and hard-won diplomatic capacity into a genuine third path—one that refuses both the planetary ecological suicide of the Axis of Petrostates’ clientelism and the infrastructural dependency of the Green Entente."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/23/climate-change-world-order-green-transition...
{Via} https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10174699746880457&set=a.1015194100051545...

The world just lived through the 11 hottest years on record — what now?
Rachel Fieldhouse & Mohana Basu | 23 March 2026

"Measurements of Earth’s energy input and output reveals that the planet is more out of balance than ever before.

... For the first time, the report includes a measure of the accumulation of heat on Earth and in the atmosphere. The indicator, called Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI), has been used by climate scientists for at least a decade and measures the difference between the amount of energy that Earth receives from the Sun and the amount radiated back into space. It allows scientists to monitor the rate of global warming. A positive EEI value means that the total amount of heat stored on Earth is increasing.

Last year, the EEI reached its highest level since observations started in 1960, the report states. The increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere traps heat on Earth, reducing the amount of warmth that is radiated back into space ..."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00946-6
----------------------------------------------

World Meteorological Society. State of the Global Climate 2025 (WMO, 2026).
https://library.wmo.int/records/item/69807-state-of-the-global-climate-2025

No snow. No water. Restrictions grow across West as drought fears rise
Trevor Hughes | March 30, 2026

... climatologists say will be a dangerously dry summer across the West. In many areas, all-important snowfall has been half of normal, with even hotter, drier temperatures expected in the coming months.

Much of the nation is in drought already, but the headwaters of the Colorado River is among the driest places, along with south Texas and all of Florida. Alarmed civic officials across the West have already begun ordering restrictions on watering lawns, cleaning cars and even whether restaurant patrons get served glasses of water...

... {senior climate scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center} Brad Udall said it's hard to put into words just how bad things are ... early ski area closures will likely be followed by ranchers selling off cattle, and then skies darkened by wildfire smoke as dry vegetation burns ... 2026 may go down as the worst year for Colorado River flows in recorded history ...

... if Colorado River flows this year are as low as projected, {Lake Powell} level could by this fall drop below what's known as "power pool," or the minimum level necessary to spin the turbines ... {hydroelectricity for about 500,000 households across the Southwest}

... {Wyoming} State Engineer Brandon Gebhart warned some communities to prepare for no{t} having adequate drinking water supplies in the coming months.

USA Today via
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/no-snow-no-water-restrictions-100403321.html

Arctic sea ice at lowest recorded winter level as heat records smashed
Ryan Mancini | 03/27/26

"... “This record low maximum gives a head start to the spring and summer melt season,” NSIDC senior research scientist Walt Meier said in the center’s report. “One or two record low years don’t necessarily mean much by themselves, but in the context of the significant downward trend that we’ve observed since 1979, it reinforces the dramatic change to Arctic sea ice throughout all seasons.” ..."

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5805227-record-low-arctic-sea-ice/

The Return of a Super El Niño: How the Rapid Collapse of La Niña is Triggering a Massive Global Shift for 2026
Andrej Flis | 12/03/2026

A massive global weather shift is now underway as the multi-year La Niña officially collapses, making way for a rapidly developing El Niño. Latest ocean analysis reveals a significant subsurface warming in the tropical Pacific, signaling a strong event is likely to emerge, likely reaching Super El Niño status by the end of 2026.

... El Niño is likely to peak during Winter, bringing its main impact during the 2026/2027 Winter season across the United States, Canada, and also Europe.

A Super El N
iño differs from a normal event because the warming in the Pacific becomes more intense, resulting in an even stronger impact on global weather. This can lead to much more extreme weather shifts, turning typical seasonal changes into high-impact events like massive flooding, severe droughts, and significantly altered storm tracks that can affect the entire planet.

... it is already evident that we are in for a strong global weather shift in 2026 ...

ENSO Cycle: Driving the Global Weather System ...
The Great Transition: La Niña Collapses as a New El Niño Emerges ...
A New El Niño Event About to Start ...
2026 Ocean Forecast: Is a Super El Niño Developing in the Pacific? ...
Summer 2026: The First Atmospheric Impacts of a New Phase ...
Atlantic Shield: How Will El Niño Impact the 2026 Hurricane Season for the U.S.? ...
The Winter 2026/2027 Outlook: A El Niño Season in the Making ...

https://www.severe-weather.eu/long-range-2/super-el-nino-2026-forecast-la-nina-c...

El Niño forecast suggests risk of low water levels along Panama Canal*
Lars Jensen | Apr 10, 2026

"As if the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea haven’t caused enough concern for commercial shipping, Lars Jensen warns of the potential for weather-related disruptions once again at the canal by year-end... {In addition to} the geopolitical perspective where Panama is presently squeezed between US and Chinese interests. That is an uncertainty unto itself ..."

{30-day free trial} https://www.joc.com/article/el-nino-forecast-suggests-risk-of-low-water-levels-a...
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* margd: Panama Canal is fed by inland fresh water. Ships reduce cargo where water levels are low.

America’s largest reservoir nears record-low water levels after dropping 6 feet in a month
Katie Hawkinson | 10 April 2026

"Lake Mead’s water temperatures have also gone up, prompting concerns about water treatment operations

... Bronson Mack, an outreach manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, {said} that Lake Mead is now at about 35 percent capacity and that it could drop another 16 feet by 2027. He also pointed to the “very low snowpack” this past winter, which has caused dry conditions.

Still, Mack told the outlet that Southern Nevada’s water supply is still safe: “We are drawing water from the deepest part of the lake. Our pumping station can pump to the deepest elevations.”

... according to federal projections released last month, Lake Mead could reach record-low water levels by November 2027 ... That level would be approximately 1,032 feet, 8 feet lower than a previous record set in 2022.

“Most of the turbines are cooled by Lake Mead water, so they run into problems if they have hot water, and if we lose power at Glen Canyon and Hoover Dam, that’s a big problem for the West,” {Todd Tietjen, the regional water quality manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said} ..."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lake-mead-reservoir-drops-wate...

"The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is driven by the sinking of cold, salty water in the North Atlantic, which acts as a "conveyor belt". Salt increases water density, causing it to sink and flow southward, bringing warmer surface water northward. Climate change, particularly Greenland ice melt, adds freshwater, reducing density and weakening this sinking process." https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/amoc.html

Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought
Damian Carrington | 15 Apr 2026

"Scientists say finding is ‘very concerning’ as collapse would be catastrophic for Europe, Africa and the Americas

... The research combined real-world ocean observations with the models to determine the most reliable, and this hugely reduced the spread of uncertainty. They found an estimated slowdown of 42% to 58% in 2100, a level almost certain to end in collapse.

The Amoc {Atlantic meridional overturning circulation} is a major part of the global climate system and brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. A collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50-100cm to already rising sea levels around the Atlantic.

... Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: ... “I now am increasingly worried that we may well pass that Amoc shutdown tipping point, where it becomes inevitable, in the middle of this century, which is quite close.” ... a collapse must be avoided “at all costs”. “I argued this when we thought the chance of an Amoc shutdown was maybe 5%, and even then we were saying that risk is too high, given the massive impacts. Now it looks like it’s more than 50%. The most dramatic and drastic climate changes we see in the last 100,000 years of Earth history have been when the Amoc switched to a different state.”

... The Amoc is difficult to model because it is governed by subtle differences in water density caused by salinity changes over the entire Atlantic. The reduction in uncertainty in the new analysis results from identifying the models that better reflect surface salinity in the south Atlantic, which scientists already knew was important. This makes the work “very credible”, said Rahmstorf.

Rahmstorf said Amoc slowdown in 2100 may be even greater than in the new, pessimistic assessment. This is because the computer models do not include the meltwater from the Greenland ice cap that is also freshening the ocean waters: “That is one additional factor that means the reality is probably still worse.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/critical-atlantic-current-si...
-------------------------------------------------------

Valentin Portmann et al. 20026. Observational constraints project a ~50% AMOC weakening by the end of this century. Science Advances, 15 Apr 2026. Vol 12, Issue 16
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx4298 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx4298

_______________________________________

margd: After cod collapse, scientists detected reduced salinity in waters off Newfoundland (1990s). Portmann et al. (2026) may have more precisely predicted timing of AMOC collapse, but scientists have seen this coming for a long while. Time has almost run out to stop irreversible collapse of AMOC... :(

Nature Portfolio: "Coastal groundwater is under growing threat. A paper in Nature Water reports an analysis of about 480,000 wells, which shows declining water levels in over 20% of coastal areas, increasing the risk of saltwater intrusion from rising seas."

Nolte, A., Bender, S., Hartmann, J. et al. Coastal groundwater-level trends reveal global susceptibility to seawater intrusion. Nat Water (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-026-00619-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-026-00619-8 OPEN ACCESS

Fig. 2: Recent groundwater level trends across global coastal zones by IPCC region.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-026-00619-8/figures/2

Abstract
"... Here we present a global assessment based on in situ observations from ~480,000 coastal monitoring locations. From 1990 to 2024, 21% of gridded coastal areas show statistically detectable rising or falling groundwater-level trends with magnitudes 0.1 m yr−1 or greater and with declines becoming more frequent in the last 9 years. More pronounced changes are observed for deeper water tables ... , in arid settings ... and in some rural areas. Seawater intrusion susceptibility is higher where seaward freshwater discharge is weak or where hydraulic gradients reverse landward, leaving limited hydraulic resistance to seawater intrusion. Extrapolating observed trends suggests that these conditions mostly persist (93.4%), while 3.5% newly emerge and 3.1% stabilize (gradients strengthen seaward). The results provide global evidence for prioritizing monitoring and management of coastal groundwater at risk of salinization."

Nature Portfolio: "Coastal groundwater is under growing threat. A paper in Nature Water reports an analysis of about 480,000 wells, which shows declining water levels in over 20% of coastal areas, increasing the risk of saltwater intrusion from rising seas."

Nolte, A., Bender, S., Hartmann, J. et al. Coastal groundwater-level trends reveal global susceptibility to seawater intrusion. Nat Water (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-026-00619-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-026-00619-8 OPEN ACCESS

Fig. 2: Recent groundwater level trends across global coastal zones by IPCC region.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-026-00619-8/figures/2

Abstract
"... Here we present a global assessment based on in situ observations from ~480,000 coastal monitoring locations. From 1990 to 2024, 21% of gridded coastal areas show statistically detectable rising or falling groundwater-level trends with magnitudes 0.1 m yr−1 or greater and with declines becoming more frequent in the last 9 years. More pronounced changes are observed for deeper water tables ... , in arid settings ... and in some rural areas. Seawater intrusion susceptibility is higher where seaward freshwater discharge is weak or where hydraulic gradients reverse landward, leaving limited hydraulic resistance to seawater intrusion. Extrapolating observed trends suggests that these conditions mostly persist (93.4%), while 3.5% newly emerge and 3.1% stabilize (gradients strengthen seaward). The results provide global evidence for prioritizing monitoring and management of coastal groundwater at risk of salinization."

After 9,000 years of cultivation, rice has reached its thermal limit
Jerald Pinson • April 14, 2026

"... Scientists warn that over the next 50 years, global warming caused by the emission of greenhouse gases will accelerate to a pace that is 5,000 times faster than rice, and many other crop species, have ever had to contend with at any time during their evolutionary history.

Left to its own devices, even rice — with its proclivity for heat — would almost certainly be unable to keep up. With the help of humans, who carefully breed and genetically engineer new varieties, it’s possible rice will be able to cope. But, said Nicolas Gauthier, curator of artificial intelligence at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the best-case scenario is not something anyone’s looking forward to ..."

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/after-9000-years-of-cultivation-rice-h...
---------------------------------------------------

Gauthier, N., Alam, O., Purugganan, M.D. et al. Projected warming will exceed the long-term thermal limits of rice cultivation. Commun Earth Environ 7, 84 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03108-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-03108-0

Abstract
Rice is a staple food for over one billion people in Asia. Understanding rice’s historical thermal limits is critical for predicting its response to future climate shifts. Here, we integrate contemporary records of rice cultivation, archaeological data spanning rice’s long-term history of cultivation, and temperature projections for the past and future to assess how warm temperatures have constrained rice’s distribution and the adaptive strategies used to sustain its production. These thermal limits have remained consistent throughout rice’s domestication history despite its genetic diversification and geographic expansion. Over the past 9000 years, domesticated Asian rice has rarely thrived where mean annual temperature exceeds 28 °C or warm-season maximum temperature exceeds 33 °C. By the end of this century, projections estimate that the land area exceeding these thermal thresholds could expand by ten to thirty times in Asia’s major rice-producing nations. Rice-dependent regions face unprecedented challenges in maintaining this staple crop under projected warming.

Burning wood for power worse for climate than gas equivalent, report finds
Fiona Harvey | 20 Apr 2026

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/20/burning-wood-power-worse-cli...
-----------------------------------------------

Searchinger, T.D., et al. 2026. Decades of increased emissions from forest-fuelled BECCS. Nat Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01817-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-026-01817-8

Abstract
Should climate policies encourage bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) using wood from existing forests? Although mitigation pathways in integrated assessment models often rely on BECCS fuelled by energy crops, European governments are moving to financially support BECCS sourced instead from existing forests. To estimate its emissions and financial costs, we develop a model that transparently tracks carbon flows from forest to end use and allows policymakers to easily alter assumptions. Modelling multiple wood-sourcing scenarios, we found that BECCS is unlikely to generate negative emissions within 150 years, is likely to produce higher emissions for decades than using natural gas without carbon capture and is likely to increase electricity costs by ~3.5-fold. Only limited improvements occur even if half of the wood comes from residues and half from fast-growing plantations. These results reflect the fact that most emissions occur before the power plant and therefore cannot be captured, and that wood has twice the carbon intensity of natural gas and generates electricity less efficiently. These results counsel against emerging BECCS policies, and our easy-to-use model allows policymakers to evaluate results and different scenarios themselves.

Not-so-happy Earth Day ...

{Graph, global temperature change relative to 1961-2010, 1850-2025} https://x.com/WeatherProf/status/2046990000064000317/photo/1

Corpus Christi Plans to Declare a ‘Water Emergency.’ What Does That Mean?
Dylan Baddour, Neena Satija of KUT, and Emily Salazar of KEDT | April 23, 2026

"City leaders intend to make unprecedented cuts to water use in September but aren’t sure exactly how, as schools and hospitals drill for water..."

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23042026/corpus-christi-water-emergency-expla...
-------------------------------------------------

After a decade of missteps, Corpus Christi careens toward water catastrophe
Dylan Baddour | March 9, 2026

"City officials expect to reach a “water emergency” within months and run out of water next year. That would halt jet fuel deliveries to Texas airports, hike gas prices and trigger a local economic disaster without precedent ...

The imminent depletion of water supplies in Corpus Christi threatens to cut off the flow of jet fuel to Texas airports and other oil exports from one of the nation’s largest petroleum ports, triggering potential shockwaves through energy markets in Texas and beyond ..."

https://www.kedt.org/texas-news/2026-03-09/after-a-decade-of-missteps-corpus-chr...
--------------------------------------------------

City of Corpus Christi: "Stage 3 Drought Restrictions are In Effect. Learn More at Stage3.CCTexas.com."

https://www.corpuschristitx.gov/department-directory/corpus-christi-water/water-...

Yuling Wang, M.Med., and Xiangdong Mu 2026. Bronchial Casts from Inhalation of Forest-Fire Smoke. Published April 18, 2026. N Engl J Med 2026; 394 (16): 1634. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMicm2518379 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm2518379

{see photo}
______________________________

For inexpensive, effective relief, consider taping together a box fan and four furnace filters if you and yours suffer from smoke this summer: https://corsirosenthalfoundation.org/instructions/

Interesting: to tame excess algae in the Great Lakes (1970s), decision was made to reduce phosphorus (not nitrogen) in detergents. Wonder if this strategy was adopted in lower latitudes -- though study below examined ocean processes not inland freshwater.

PNAS: "Phosphate scarcity helps explain ocean methane emissions from oxygen-rich ocean waters. A new study finds methane is released when microbes break down organic compounds for phosphorus, with most escaping to the atmosphere in subtropical regions."
----------------------------------------

Newly discovered ocean methane source could fuel climate warming loop
Eva Cahill (Words) and Thomas Horig (Photography) | 16/04/26

https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/newly-discovered-ocean-methane-source-cou...
-----------------------------------------

Shengyu Wang et al. 2026. Phosphate scarcity governs methane production in the global open ocean. PNAS March 17, 2026. 123 (12) e2521235123
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2521235123 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2521235123

Abstract
The observed supersaturation of methane (CH4) in open-ocean surface waters implies widespread CH4 production within the well-oxygenated mixed layer, driving emissions of this potent greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. ... We find that only linking methane production to phosphate (PO4) scarcity can explain the observed supersaturation pattern, which is highest in subtropical gyres where PO4 is in short supply. These findings suggest that CH4 release during PO4-limited cleavage of the organic compound methylphosphonate is the dominant production pathway in the open ocean. Because this process is confined to the stratified low latitude surface, it is uniquely suited to efficiently emit the CH4 it produces to the atmosphere (more than 90%), before the CH4 mixes to depth and undergoes oxidation (less than 10%). As predicted future ocean warming and stratification exacerbates PO4 scarcity over coming centuries, our model predicts that oxic CH4 production and the resulting CH4 emissions will increase up to twofold, contributing to a suite of positive feedback between climate warming and natural greenhouse gas sources.

How the Trump Administration Ended Independent Science at the E.P.A.
Lisa Friedman | April 27, 2026

" ... more than 1,500 biologists, chemists and other experts at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development ... have been laid off, reassigned or pressured to retire. Today, only 124 researchers remain, and this month they must decide whether to remain employed they will abandon their work and move to different parts of the agency, or the country.

Those who stay will no longer serve in an independent unit designed to be free from political interference. Instead, they will be overseen by Trump appointees or in a new unit directly under the administrator, Lee Zeldin. An internal memo in one office reviewed by The New York Times says its future research must “align with agency and administration priorities.”

... during the Biden administration, the office dived into the health consequences of climate change and discovered, among other things, that extreme heat could significantly worsen dementia. The Trump administration’s version of the E.P.A. no longer has researchers dedicated to climate science.

Critics said the moves are part of the administration’s deregulatory fervor: Without independent science, they said, there can be few new limits on pollution or toxic chemicals. ...'"

{Gift article} https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/climate/epa-science-trump-cuts.html?unlocked_...

>55 margd: Trump and company make T.D. Lysenko look like a real amateur.

>56 alco261: History rhymes, they say ...
__________________________________________

CO2 breaks record at 431+ F. Super El Nino this year. AMOC is weakening. How much longer can our leaders ignore what's happening??

Globally, one-quarter of freshwater fauna are threatened with extinction ... (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08375-z)
------------------------------------------------------------

Kayalvizhi Sadayappan et al. 2025. Riverine heat waves on the rise, outpacing air heat waves. PNAS, September 22, 2025. 122 (39) e2503160122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2503160122 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2503160122

Significance
Riverine heat wave events—periods of abnormally high riverine water temperatures (WT)—can substantially impair aquatic ecosystems, water quality, and food and energy production. However, comprehensive analysis of riverine heat waves is still emerging, long hindered by fragmented and discontinuous WT data. Here, we used a deep learning model and reconstructed consistent daily WT in 1471 U.S. river sites (1980–2022). Results show that riverine heat wave events occur less frequently and intensively but last nearly twice as long as air heat waves. Alarmingly, riverine heat waves have risen at much faster rates than air heat waves. Results here underscore the need for coordinated monitoring and data consolidation efforts for riverine heat waves, and their incorporation into global climate risk assessment and adaptation policies.

This Bitter Earth
Rosa Lyster | May 14, 2026 issue

"The world’s salt lakes are the canary in the coal mine for the climate crisis, and they are shrinking at a drastic rate...

Reviewed:
Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History
by Caroline Tracey
Norton, 256 pp., $31.99

Around the world, birds flock to salt lakes, drawn by the flies and brine shrimp that live in them, and by the relative absence of predators. ... "

{Paywall} https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/05/14/this-bitter-earth-salt-lakes-tracey/

Pentagon Slow-Walks 165 Wind Projects Citing National Security Concerns
NBC Palm Springs | May 7, 2026

"The Trump administration is doubling down on efforts to delay the expansion of wind energy, moving its focus from offshore projects to land-based developments. According to the American Clean Power Association (ACP), the leading trade group for renewable energy, the Pentagon is currently slow-walking the reviews of at least 165 wind projects on private land, citing national security risks to military readiness.

... the stalled projects represent approximately 30 gigawatts of power—enough to supply electricity to millions of American households.

ACP CEO Jason Grumet stated that the administration is "abusing the current permitting system." In a letter to the Pentagon, the association noted that some individual project reviews have now stretched beyond six months without resolution ..."

https://www.nbcpalmsprings.com/2026/05/07/pentagon-slowwalks-165-wind-projects-c...

A vast dam across the Bering Strait could stop the AMOC collapsing
Joshua Howgego | 9 May 2026

"If a key ocean current collapses it could plunge northern Europe into a big freeze. Now researchers are weighing up a drastic intervention – building a 130-kilometre-wide dam between the US and Russia

It would be an engineering project on a truly epic scale, but we may one day need to consider building a dam between Alaska and eastern Russia. The audacious proposal would be designed to stave off the worst consequences of the collapse of a vital ocean current, and researchers have been mulling it over this week at a major conference.

The idea comes from Jelle Soons and his colleague Henk Dijkstra at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who study the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC. This current system, which includes the Gulf Stream, is a major reason why northern Europe has a relatively mild climate for its latitude ..."

{PAYWALL} https://www.newscientist.com/article/2525888-a-vast-dam-across-the-bering-strait...
--------------------------------------------------

Could a dam between Alaska and Siberia stabilise the AMOC?
PhD candidate Jelle Soons explores an extreme intervention in the climate system
24 April 2026

"... Soons wondered whether a dam in the Bering Strait could help prevent the AMOC, a large ocean circulation system, from slowing down or collapsing. Earlier research suggests that this circulation was stronger during the Pliocene, between five and two million years ago. At that time, sea levels were lower and the Bering Strait was closed, meaning North America and Asia were still connected. This raised a question: what would happen if that connection were closed again today?

... Timing also turns out to be crucial. If the intervention is implemented early enough, it may support the circulation. But if the AMOC has already weakened, the effect could reverse ... "

https://www.uu.nl/en/publication/could-a-dam-between-alaska-and-siberia-stabilis...
--------------------------------------------------

Jelle Soons, Henk A. Dijkstra,The effects of a constructed closure of the Bering Strait on AMOC tipping behavior. Sci. Adv. Vol 12, Issue 17, eaeb7887 (24 April 2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb7887

Abstract
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the present-day climate and could potentially collapse under sufficient freshwater or CO2 forcing. While the effect of the Bering Strait on AMOC stability has been well studied, it is unknown whether a constructed closure of this Strait can prevent an AMOC collapse under climate change. Here, we show in an Earth system Model of Intermediate Complexity that an artificial closure of the Strait can extend the safe carbon budget of the AMOC, provided that the AMOC is strong enough at the closure time. Specifically, an equilibrium AMOC under a sufficiently low additional freshwater flux has an increased safe carbon budget given a timely closure of the Strait, while for higher freshwater fluxes (and corresponding weaker AMOC), a closure reduces this budget. This indicates that constructing this closure could be a feasible climate intervention strategy to prevent an AMOC collapse.

New Orleans ...

Tulane researchers say Louisiana could lead global climate adaptation efforts
Stacey Plaisance | May 04, 2026

"... Louisiana’s accelerating shoreline retreat and coastal depopulation offer an opportunity to develop strategies for households, infrastructure and regional economies to adapt to climate change.

... While coastal populations globally continue to grow, Louisiana stands out as an exception. Nearly all the state’s coastal zone has lost residents since 2000, particularly following major hurricanes. The researchers say this trend suggests climate-driven depopulation has already begun and may accelerate as sea-level rise increases the impact of future storm surges.

A key finding highlighted in the study involves an ancient shoreline identified by geoscientist and co-author Zhixiong Shen, now a professor at Coastal Carolina University. The shoreline formed about 125,000 years ago north of Lake Pontchartrain, roughly 30 miles north of New Orleans. At that time, global temperatures were about 0.5 to 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels, and sea levels were 10 to 20 feet higher than today.

“With global climate now almost 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than in the mid-1800s and on track to exceed 2 degrees, we are likely already locked in for the shoreline to move that far inland,” said lead author Torbjörn Törnqvist, the Vokes Geology Professor in Tulane’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the School of Science and Engineering. ..."

https://news.tulane.edu/pr/tulane-researchers-say-louisiana-could-lead-global-cl...
-------------------------------------------

Törnqvist, T.E., Castro, B., Keenan, J.M. et al. Climate-driven depopulation and adaptation realities in America’s coastal ground zero. Nat Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01820-z
{Gift} https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-026-01820-z.epdf?sharing_token=zUiA_vnkYm...

Abstract
With global temperatures poised to exceed the 1.5 °C Paris Agreement threshold—a level that triggered substantial ice-sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial—low-elevation coastal zones face sea-level commitments far beyond current planning horizons. With this geological frame of reference, we examine the impact of sea-level rise on what may be the most physically vulnerable coastal zone in the world using prehistoric and contemporary patterns of human mobility. We highlight the positive aspects of the recently commenced out-migration in this region and argue that the fate of communities landwards of this coastal zone will be decided in the next few decades.

{Coastal map, LA, MI, AL, FL} https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1462242242598704&set=a.657327789756824

>60 margd: That sounds like an epically bad idea. Has anyone studied the ecological consequences of damming the Bering strait?

We are coming down to epically bad options, I'm afraid ...

>63 margd: That's unfortunately true. I've been watching the objections to solar geoengineering and carbon capture, and to nuclear, and it's pretty clear the those who are objecting have kind of failed to realize just how colossally fucked we are right now. Nobody says that any of these technologies are without problems, but all of them are clearly going to be necessary to any sort of recovery from the position we - species-wise - have put ourselves in.

>62 jjwilson61: We'd also want to study the ecological consequences of the collapse of one of the major oceanic circulation systems. Allowing this would also qualify as an "epically bad idea".

Tyler E. Bagwell et al. 2026. Global and regional climate modes modulate armed conflict risk. PNAS, May 11, 2026. 123 (20) e2532935123. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2532935123

"Abstract
... Our results reveal the following: First, conflict risk heightens during El Niño, but ENSO-associated risk does not scale linearly with teleconnection* strength; and, evidence for threshold behavior varies with spatial aggregation. Second, El Niño-related increases in conflict risk arise through its dry teleconnections, with limited evidence for wet teleconnections. Finally, the more regionally confined IOD also influences conflict, with both positive and negative phases elevating risk in strongly teleconnected regions, namely the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia. These results reveal that modes of climate variability can differentially shape conflict risk, offering insight into societies’ vulnerabilities to natural climate fluctuations and, by extension, anthropogenic climate change."

* "Teleconnections are significant relationships or links between weather phenomena at widely separated locations on earth, which typically entail climate patterns that span thousands of miles." https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/what-are-teleconnections-connec...

{Map, spatial-temporal distribution of conflict onsets 1950-2023
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1399759528848292&set=a.620717003419219 }

‘Green card for the planet’? Fifa’s World Cup is on pace to be a climate catastrophe
Jules Boykoff | 17 May 2026

The 2022 World Cup failed to deliver on its environmental promises. From air travel emissions to heat-related dangers, the 2026 edition will be even worse

... Fifa named the problem of climate change in its promotional materials but only pretends to address it. A “green card for the planet”? More like a big middle finger.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/17/world-cup-climate-change

More than 100 UK datacentres plan to burn gas to generate electricity
Aisha Down | 18 May 2026

"Requests for gas connections by operators amount to more than 15 terawatt hours per year, endangering climate targets ..."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/18/uk-datacentres-plan-to-burn-gas...

After Struggling With EVs, US Automakers Pivot to Energy
Aarian Marshall | May 16, 2026

Ford and GM are backing away from electric vehicles and moving into the battery storage business. And it all comes back to AI ...

https://www.wired.com/story/after-struggling-with-evs-us-automakers-pivot-to-ene...

Prancevic, J.P., Finke, C.E., Peterson, E. et al. Silicate-derived calcium as a pathway to low-carbon Portland cement. Commun. Sustain. 1, 78 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44458-026-00056-4

Abstract
Cement production accounts for 4.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions by releasing carbon dioxide from limestone and using an energy-intensive process. Decarbonization technologies, including lower-carbon alternative cements and carbon capture, have existed for decades but have not been adopted. Here we examine the viability of making ordinary Portland cement using carbon-free silicate rocks (like common basalt) instead of limestone. Our thermodynamic analysis shows that producing Portland cement from basalt could require less energy than traditional limestone production, highlighting the potential to simultaneously reduce cost and emissions. We identify a set of proven unit processes to produce Portland cement and supplementary cementitious materials from basalt minerals that could reduce the total energy demand by 30% with respect to conventional production, while eliminating process emissions entirely. Also, the ratios of calcium, iron, and aluminum in basalt are favorable for meeting the global demand for Portland cement, steel, and aluminum from one feedstock.

Canada's updated its plant hardiness map — and growers are seeing their options bloom
Cameron Mahler · CBC News | May 19, 2026

"Plant growing zones shifting amid climate change, says scientist ... While the biggest changes to the map were in western Canada, places like Almonte in eastern Ontario increased by a full zone ..."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/canada-plant-hardiness-map-climate-change-...

Song, R., Yin, F., Muller, JP. et al. Coal plants persist as a large barrier to the global solar energy transition. Nat Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01836-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-026-01836-5

Abstract
The global energy transition depends on solar photovoltaic (PV) power displacing fossil fuels to deliver projected climate and air quality benefits. However, aerosol pollution from co-located coal plants actively suppresses PV energy production. Here a global, facility-level dataset shows that aerosols reduced global PV generation by 5.8% in 2023 (111 TWh). From 2017 to 2023, annual aerosol-induced PV energy losses from existing systems were, on average, equivalent to one-third of the energy added by new PV installations. In China, aerosols caused the largest PV energy losses worldwide, reducing national PV generation by 7.7% in 2023. The corresponding annual loss-to-growth ratio averaged 38% and frequently exceeded 50%. Despite continued coal expansion, PV energy losses have declined by 1.4% yr−1 since 2017 owing to stricter emission controls. By contrast, the USA, where co-location of solar and coal plants is limited, experienced only 3.1% aerosol-induced PV loss. Given the slow pace of global coal phase-out, these results reveal a constraint on solar performance that, if unaccounted for, could lead to a systematic overestimation of the transition’s contribution to climate and air quality goals.

Many fascinating articles here that you have recently posted, especially the one about potentially building a barrier to address the issue of AMOC. Thanks for posting these!

>72 karspeak: :D Unfortunately, we live in interesting times ...

Scientists improve knowledge on sea level rise—and confirm it has been accelerating since 1960
Chinese Academy of Sciences | May 20, 2026

"Sea level rise is a direct consequence of human-induced climate change: global warming. It is relentless and very hard to stop. It arises from human-induced warming and the consequential expansion of the ocean, plus the addition of more and more water from melting glaciers and ice sheets. It will continue long into the future.

... global average sea level has risen by 2.06 millimeters per year since 1960—but with the pace doubling in recent decades to reach 3.94 millimeters per year between 2005 and 2023. Ocean warming is the largest driver, accounting for 43% of the rise as warmer water expands and takes up more space.

The study also explains why global sea level rise accelerated. Since 1960, the primary contributors have been accelerated ocean warming and reduced land water storage. In recent decades, since 1993, ice loss, including the accelerated melting of glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic, has become increasingly important. These worrisome trends are likely to persist over the coming decades ..."

https://phys.org/news/2026-05-scientists-knowledge-sea.html
---------------------------------------------

Huayi Zheng et al. 2026. Improved closure of the global mean sea level budget from observational advances since 1960. Science Advances, 20 May 2026. Vol 12, Issue 21
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea0652 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aea0652

Henk A Dijkstra et al 2026. Transitions of the Atlantic Ocean Circulation. Nature Reviews 15 p. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-026-00945-6

{Sharing token} https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-026-00945-6.epdf?sharing_token=YataHmnDmx...

>62 jjwilson61: :(

Malnourished Gray Whales of the Eastern North Pacific Are in ‘Serious Trouble’
Blaine Harden | May 24, 2026

"The population has plummeted over the past seven years as climate change triggers mass starvation in warming Arctic waters.

... A surge in malnutrition-related mortality has cut the eastern North Pacific population of gray whales in half, to about 13,000 last year from about 27,000 in 2016, while reducing calf births by 95 percent, according to counts by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This whale stock is one of the most studied in the world, and scientists say the current population nosedive has lasted longer than previous cycles of decline monitored over the past 60 years ..."

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24052026/pacific-gray-whales-threatened-by-wa...

New mathematical model suggests global population crash by 2064 {worst case scenario
Alessio Zaccone | May 25, 2026

... we modeled what could happen if major environmental crises abruptly imposed severe carrying-capacity limits on Earth, through climate collapse, pandemics, conflict, or resource shortages.

Under a deliberately conservative worst-case assumption that Earth's sustainable carrying capacity suddenly dropped to around 2 billion people, our model predicts a rapid global population decline, with humanity potentially halving by around the year 2064.

In the article we stress that this is not a forecast, but rather an illustrative mathematical scenario intended to show how sensitive population dynamics may be to abrupt environmental or societal changes. We emphasize that the current trajectory remains relatively stable and does not imply imminent collapse.

https://phys.org/news/2026-05-mathematical-global-population.html
--------------------------------------

Alessio Zaccone and Kostya Trachenko 2026. Global population crisis scenarios predicted by a general nonlinear dynamical model. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Volume 209, Part 2, August 2026, 118542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chaos.2026.118542

"Highlights
... Two scenarios: crisis now halves population by 2064; unchecked growth collapses
2078.
• Key control parameter K {a real parameter that can be positive or negative, e.g., crisis such as global conflict, sudden climate acceleration, major epidemic} emerges as predictor of crisis in population dynamics ...
• Most general model to date allows robust fit to past data and scenario forecasts...

Fig. 1. Evolution of the global population over the past 12,000 years until now ...

Carrying capacity scenario
While the SEF regime ... does not present a doomsday criticality, future developments may lead to a deviation from this trend. A crisis (global conflict, sudden climate acceleration, major epidemic) could reduce the efficiency of resource exploitation and abruptly activate a carrying-capacity constraint. ... Earth’s carrying capacity ... If the crisis were to set in today, ... With a deliberately conservative choice ... Eq. (8) predicts ... a halving of population by 2064. This scenario is approximately compatible with a global population peak around 2030 recently predicted by Yakovenko ..."

戴凡 13h {5/26/2026, Facebook}
https://www.facebook.com/moronatwork

"My friend just shared the following. Instead of debating at exactly how many degrees a person will start dying, I just want to remind everyone that half a billion people live within 5° of equator.
On top of that, anyone living near a desert (Middle East, Sahara, Australia, etc) will also start suffering.
All because of the average human’s stupidity, and the end stage capitalism billionaires.
—————————
Back in 2022, University of Pennsylvania looked at the human limits of heat and humidity and discovered that real human limits are lower than the theoretical ones from the 1940’s which were never tested. The real world experimental limit was a wet bulb temperature of 31c, above which even fit and healthy people suffer from heat exhaustion and die without external cooling in a few hours. The theoretical limit from the 1940’s was never experimentally tested as back then such conditions were unattainable in the natural environment and even ships boiler rooms didn’t achieve those conditions. Kolkata hit 30c wet bulb yesterday, which kills the elderly and infants in a few hours of unprotected exposure.
The future is here, it’s not just evenly distributed
https://archive.ph/3VYFk
https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/humans-cant-endure-temperatures-and-humi...
----------------------------------------------------

Daniel J. Vecellio etal. 2026. Evaluating the 35°C wet-bulb temperature adaptability threshold for young, healthy subjects (PSU HEAT Project). Journal of Applied Physiology, Volume 132, Issue 2. 2022 Jan 28. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00738.2021 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00738.2021

"... Perspectives and Significance
In this paper, empirical physiological data were used to determine the validity of the theorized human adaptability limit to rising temperatures due to climate change. In all six of the experimental protocols, critical wet-bulb temperatures were significantly lower than the 35°C threshold proposed in the literature (7) and popularized in the lay press. Larger deviations from the 35°C threshold, some as high as 10°C, were found in hot-dry environmental conditions. Subjects in these protocols experienced higher, increased dry heat gain, with no statistical difference in sweat rates compared with subjects in the more warm-humid environments, where critical wet-bulb temperatures were nearly constant between 30°C and 31°C. Two conclusions are therefore apparent: 1) The theoretical 35°C wet-bulb temperature threshold does not hold up under experimental testing and 2) there is likely not one critical threshold that can be set, especially so in lower-humidity environments. Future studies should examine the role of acclimatization on heat tolerance as well as how the impact of these conditions would affect critical wet-bulb temperatures in vulnerable populations such as the elderly.

AMOC for laymen :(

Is Earth’s most vital ocean circulation heading for collapse? Latest science is concerning! #AMOC (8:43)
Weather Professor Jeff Berardelli {Tampa, FL} | May 29, 2026

Could the AMOC really collapse!? A brand new study shows what science has long surmised - decreased poleward heat transport in the Atlantic - a slow down of Earth’s most vital circulation the AMOC - is indeed the cause of the very odd cold blob (warming hole) in the N. Atlantic. This video provides a simple and brief summary of why the AMOC is so vital, how our #Florida Gulf Stream contributes, how a heated climate is putting it in jeopardy, and what the latest science says about the probability of collapse and what the vast impacts would be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqAobZbVHq4

Benjamin G. Freeman et al. 2026. The fate of mountain biodiversity in a warming world (Review). Nature Reviews Biodiversity, 25 May 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-026-00167-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44358-026-00167-9#Abs1

{Sharing Token} https://www.nature.com/articles/s44358-026-00167-9.epdf?sharing_token=A9zEvsLCV6...

ABSTRACT ... We highlight three main take-home messages. First, mountain species largely showed resilience in response to Quaternary {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary} warming: species showed variable responses over short timescales, but communities generally tracked temperature changes over longer timescales, with little evidence of climate-driven extinctions. Second, mountain species show a mix of vulnerability and resilience in response to modern anthropogenic warming: species show variable elevational range changes, and there are cases of mountaintop extirpations. Third, vulnerability to modern climate change appears to be most pronounced in tropical species, high-elevation species and species whose ecological traits are associated with greater climate exposure. Both Quaternary and modern data reveal that mountain species can be much more resilient than often assumed by standard forecasting approaches, but accumulating evidence suggests many tropical mountain species are vulnerable to current warming.

‪And to everyone who is wondering, “how could humans be causing more than 100% of the warming?”
— it’s because, according to natural factors, the earth should be cooling right now.
So our emissions are offsetting that cooling AND causing all of the observed warming.

- Katharine Hayhoe‬ ‪@katharinehayhoe.com‬ · 7m {May 30, 2026}
distinguished professor & chair, Texas Tech
chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy
board member, Smithsonian NMNH
advisor, Lawson Climate Inst UofT
alumna, UToronto and UIUC
author, Saving Us
https://bsky.app/profile/katharinehayhoe.com
--------------------------------

This is all just a part of a natural cycle, right? (8:07)
Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe | Sep 13, 2017

All this worry about warming when it’s just a natural cycle. The climate is always changing and today’s no different -- right?

Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher, Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5_zpjerQFo

Hashem Al-Ghaili · {11h, Facebook}
·
Being worried about what‘s happening to the planet is seen as being somehow “woke,” leaving society dangerously complacent in the face of escalating planetary peril.

With the devastating impacts of the climate crisis unfolding in plain sight, why aren’t we absolutely terrified?

Ultimately, climate journalist Alan Rusbridger argues that public fear and urgency have been paralyzed because the issue has been successfully trapped within the polarizing boundaries of the modern culture wars. Rather than being treated as a unifying scientific emergency, caring about the future of the planet has been weaponized and, as a result, is now dismissed as merely the anxieties of the overly concerned.

To combat this dangerous paralysis, Rusbridger asserts that the media must fundamentally shift its approach.

For too long, news organizations have fueled polarization instead of holding up a mirror to the genuine, deep-seated anxieties of their readers. By treating climate change as a cultural battlefield rather than a shared physical reality, the press has failed to mobilize the collective action necessary to confront the crisis.

source: Rusbridger, A. (2026, May 30). The impact of the climate crisis is obvious. Why aren’t we more terrified? The Independent.

Map Shows 6 US Reservoirs at Their Lowest May Levels in 30 Years
Published
May 27, 2026

"... In the Colorado River Basin, the country’s two largest reservoirs—Lake Mead and Lake Powell—are both under significant strain. Lake Mead, home of the Hoover Dam, held about 7.8 million acre-feet of water, or 49.2 percent of its typical level for this time of year, while Lake Powell was even lower at 5.7 million acre-feet, just 38.5 percent of average.

... The most extreme shortfall was recorded at Choke Canyon Reservoir in Texas, where storage had dropped to just 49,551 acre-feet—11.9 percent of its typical level

... "Currently, 20.19 percent of the continental United States is in extreme drought on the U.S. Drought Monitor with a new update coming out tomorrow," {Brian Fuchs is a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center} said. "Conservation and smart water usage is key, but some customers will see reduced deliveries and that will impact many, including those in agriculture."

... While the current data reflects seasonal lows rather than all-time records, federal projections have warned both reservoirs could again approach or fall below their historical minimum levels if dry conditions persist.

Lower reservoir levels can limit drinking water supplies, reduce irrigation for agriculture and cut hydropower output if water drops below key operating thresholds. With demand set to rise over the summer, current levels offer an early warning of how quickly pressure can build when dry conditions persist."

https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-6-us-reservoirs-at-their-lowest-may-levels-in...

Startup Faces Scrutiny Over Sulfur Dioxide Balloons
Stasia DeMarco | April 16, 2025

EPA investigates controversial startup for unauthorized sulfur dioxide releases in climate cooling scheme.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a formal information request to a controversial startup known as Make Sunsets, which has launched over 120 sulfur dioxides (SO₂)-filled balloons into the atmosphere as part of a private geoengineering effort intended to cool the planet and generate climate “cooling” credits for sale.

... Make Sunsets, which is already banned in Mexico, publicly states its goal is to “scale significantly” and claims to have conducted at least 124 balloon launches. Its operations aim to mimic the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions by dispersing SO₂ into the stratosphere, a controversial climate intervention strategy that many scientists warn could have unintended environmental consequences.

Sulfur dioxide has been regulated by the EPA since 1971 as part of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) program. Short-term exposure to SO₂ is known to impact the human respiratory system, particularly in individuals with asthma or other pulmonary conditions. Additionally, SO₂ contributes to acid rain and the formation of fine particulate matter, which can impair visibility and damage ecosystems ..."

https://eponline.com/articles/2025/04/16/startup-faces-scrutiny-over-sulfur-diox...

UNDRR {UN for Disaster Risk Reduction post in Facebook, 6/3/2026}:
"🔥This study in Nature Communications shows that today's wildfires in North America are less frequent – but more destructive – than in past centuries, increasing the risk of more severe fires in the future.
The researchers found that historical fires were more frequent but less intense, due to practices like traditional Indigenous burning and natural lightning-caused fires– which reduced forest fuel and maintained balance.
The "fire deficit" today allows fuel to build up, creating conditions for more devastating wildfires.🌲 https://ow.ly/cN9550WIRgy "
-----------------------------------------------

Parks, S.A., Guiterman, C.H., Margolis, E.Q. et al. A fire deficit persists across diverse North American forests despite recent increases in area burned. Nat Commun 16, 1493 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56333-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56333-8#Abs1

Trump administration dismantles critical ocean-floor observation network
Eva Cahill | May 2, 2026

"... The Trump administration is dismantling a $370 million ocean-floor observatory network installed a decade ago to collect critical climate data on coastal environments, marine ecosystems, and powerful global ocean currents.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced it will begin removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments this June. The decommissioning will pull monitoring hardware from the waters of Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and a critical region between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) began full operations in 2016. The monitoring system was engineered to provide continuous, real-time climate data to global researchers for 25 years.

... The closure of this climate data network follows policy laid out by conservative strategist the Heritage Foundation. The shutdown was recommended in their Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” document – a 900-page document designed specifically to act as a blueprint for the Trump presidency.

In 2024, Project 2025’s authors explicitly targeted the network, claiming the OOI was “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism” and advising that “the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.”

Since taking office, Trump’s administration has consistently targeted the network’s budget, and proposed 80% funding cuts in both 2025 and 2026. While Congress successfully pushed back on both occasions to restore the necessary money, the NSF moved ahead with decommissioning, despite managers previously attempting to save the network by limiting data collection to cut costs.

To date, the OOI system has provided critical data used to understand how the ocean absorbs atmospheric greenhouse gases, how marine heat waves threaten commercial fisheries, and how sea levels trigger coastal flooding along the East Coast.

Fixed 2,800 metres below the surface, the Irminger Sea moorings have been crucial to tracking dangerous changes occurring in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC), a global current system that scientists fear could be destabilising.

Moorings stretching west off Newport, Ore, and Grays Harbor, Wash, captured data about temperature, acidity and oxygen data used by the commercial fishing industry to anticipate devastating environmental shifts.

The infrastructure cost $370 million to build, but required $48 million annually to maintain.

The network’s high-tech design featured heavily hardened instruments built to withstand extreme deep-sea pressure, corrosive seawater, and withstand destruction from marine life.

By using remotely controlled robotic vehicles and underwater gliders to beam data directly back to labs onshore, the network allowed scientists to safely collect large amounts of information without launching risky, difficult, and expensive deep-sea boat expeditions every year ...

https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/trump-administration-dismantles-critical-...

Tyler E. Bagwell et al. 2026. Global and regional climate modes modulate armed conflict risk. PNAS, May 11, 2026. 123 (20) e2532935123. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2532935123 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2532935123

Significance
Climate variability can alter the risk of armed conflict. Leveraging empirical modeling on a dataset of armed conflicts and the natural experiments provided by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), we offer insights about climate variability and conflict: First, El Niño is known to heighten conflict risk, but we show its effect does not scale smoothly with a region’s climatological connection to ENSO, but may exhibit threshold behavior. Second, conflict risk rises primarily through El Niño’s dry, rather than wet, teleconnections. Last, we show that the IOD, whose effects are regional, can alter regional conflict risk. Our results provide essential details on the climate–conflict relationship, with implications for managing climate risks.

Conflict map in PNAS's FB post: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1416585943832317&set=a.620717003419219

Trump Admin must have forgotten to deactivate this data series... :(

Prof. Eliot Jacobson ‪@climatecasino.net‬ | 1:02 PM · Jun 5, 2026:
https://bsky.app/profile/climatecasino.net/post/3mnkmjzf63s2p

"Breaking News! Code Yikes!
May 2026 Mauna Loa CO2 data was just posted by NOAA, and a new record high was set for CO2, now at 432.34 ppm.
Also, there was a new record for the 36-month annualized rate of growth for CO2, now at 8.28 ppm per 36 months. {Graph}"

NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

Mysterious ‘cold blob’ in the Atlantic suggests the AMOC is weakening
Alec Luhn | 4 June 2026

"A patch of ocean south-east of Greenland is the only place on Earth that is cooling, and it could be a sign that the warm water "conveyor belt" in the Atlantic is slowing down...

Climate modelling has suggested that a slowing AMOC is carrying less warm water to the north Atlantic, resulting in the cold blob. However, other modelling has placed most of the blame on the atmosphere.

... rapid warming of the Arctic has reduced the temperature difference between the pole and the tropics, shifting the jet stream northwards into the cold blob region. The arrival of these strong westerly winds has forced more evaporation and churned up the water, drawing heat out of the ocean.

Greater evaporation has also led to more clouds, shading the cold blob from the sun’s warmth, another study suggested.

... “The subpolar gyre passing this tipping point could already lead to serious climate impacts in western Europe as early as in the 2040s,” says {Stefan Rahmstorf at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany} ..."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JV5mepEBRfLfW-xyjBIUPvZzVBJN0OSm/edit

{Paywall} https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529078-mysterious-cold-blob-in-the-atlanti...
---------------------------------------------

Rahmstorf, S., Jendrkowiak, J., Gou, R., Cheng, L., Ruiz-Angulo, A., & Björnsson, H. (2026). Multidecadal Atlantic “warming hole” heat content variations are caused by ocean heat transport, not by surface fluxes. Geophysical Letters, 53, e2025GL118383. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL118383 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2025GL118383 OPEN ACCESS

Plain Language Summary
A region of the northern Atlantic–sometimes called the “cold blob”–has cooled since the 19th Century while the rest of the world has warmed. It is particularly the ocean which has cooled there. Scientists have been discussing whether this is because ocean currents bring less heat into this region, or because more heat is being lost through the sea surface there. An analysis of temperature data sets based on measurements show it is the former–changing ocean heat transport–which dominates heat content changes in the “cold blob.” This is of concern because a further weakening of Atlantic heat transport in future climate change could lead to serious impacts on climate and weather conditions in Europe and other parts of the world.

How Denmark's wind and solar investments shield it from global energy turmoil
Malcom Brabant | May 20, 2026

"The European Union’s climate commissioner has told the 27-country bloc that the only way out of energy crises fueled by the wars in Iran and Ukraine is homegrown energy, and that the EU must accelerate its transition away from fossil fuels. One country leading the charge towards green energy is Denmark ..."

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-denmarks-wind-and-solar-investments-shield...

Raupach, T.H., Portmann, R., Siderius, C. et al. Shifting hail hazard under global warming and effects on crop hail risk. Nat. Clim. Chang. 16, 696–703 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02660-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-026-02660-7 OPEN ACCESS

{Global map} Fig. 2: Changes in multiproxy, multimodel mean annual hail-prone days by future epoch. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-026-02660-7/figures/2

Abstract
Hailstorms cause damage across the globe and endanger crops, but their changes in a warming climate are not well quantified. Here we apply three hail proxies to an ensemble of global model projections to show divergent changes in hail-prone condition frequency worldwide. Changes depend on whether the proxy allows instability increases to be offset by temperature or moisture increases. Uncertainty on hail projections remains high, especially in the tropics. In projections with 2 °C and 3 °C of mean global warming, ensemble-mean hail-prone conditions shifted polewards, with decreases in hail hazard in the mid-latitudes and increases in colder regions. Across 26 crop types with fixed exposure and vulnerability, hail risk was generally projected to increase for winter crops such as wheat and decrease for summer crops such as maize. Poleward shifts in hail hazard may attenuate yield increases from similar shifts in crop regions under climate change.

>61 margd: Bluewashing the immensity of what we're up against?

Scientists Say New Orleans May Need To Move—Here are More Likely Options
Jasmine Laws | Jun 05, 2026

"... "our existing buyouts program has moved a little over 40,000 people over the last several decades—it's nowhere near up to the task of moving whole cities," {Linda Shi, director of the Master of Regional Planning Program at Cornell University} added. "Relocation is incredibly complex, often painful and traumatic, and rarely done well." ..."

Could New Orleans Be Moved?
Moving New Orleans - The Implications
What Could Be Done Instead?

https://www.newsweek.com/scientists-say-new-orleans-may-need-to-move-here-are-mo...

China's Great Green Wall: The giant artificial forest designed to slow the expansion of 2 deserts
Sascha Pare | Dec 12, 2025

"Since 1978, China has planted more than 66 billion trees along its borders with Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan — and Chinese authorities plan to plant 34 billion more over the next 25 years. If they succeed, the Great Green Wall will increase Earth's forest cover by 10% since the late 1970s.

The Great Green Wall, formally known as the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, is designed to slow soil erosion and sand deposition that has been increasing since the 1950s due to huge urbanization and farmland expansion. These changes exacerbated the region's already dry conditions, which in turn created the conditions for more sandstorms. Sandstorms blow away the top layer of soil and deposit sand, degrading the land and increasing particulate matter pollution in cities.

Northern China was dry before the urbanization boom of the 1950s, because the Himalayas create a rain shadow over the country's border with Mongolia that limits precipitation in the region. This is why the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts are so enormous; combined, they cover 618,000 square miles (1.6 million square kilometers), which is slightly smaller than Alaska, according to the Royal Geographical Society.

Despite China's efforts over the past five decades, the Gobi and Taklamakan are still expanding...

... Nevertheless, the program inspired Africa's Great Green Wall, which will be a 5,000-mile-long (8,000 km) tree belt across the continent to slow land degradation and desertification."

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/chinas-great-green-wall-the-gian...

‘Woefully unprepared’: extreme heat will double US hospitalizations by 2040, study finds
Oliver Milman | 9 Jun 2026

"Sharp rise in hospital visits will in turn drive up annual healthcare costs for heat-related conditions to over $1bn

The number of annual heat-related emergency department visits or hospitalizations across the US are set to rise from about 109,000 cases a year to as many as 237,000 cases by 2040.

This, in turn, will almost double annual healthcare costs for heat-related conditions to more than $1bn ..."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/09/extreme-heat-double-hospital...
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B. Corpuz et al. 2026. Impact of Extreme Heat on Emergency Department Admissions for Childhood and Adult Asthma: An Evaluation of Earth Observations and Heat Wave Definitions. GeoHealth. First published: 06 May 2026. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GH001501 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GH001501 OPEN ACCESS

Abstract
"... This study investigates the association between heat wave definitions and summertime asthma-related emergency department visits in Baltimore, Maryland from 2016 to 2022, including 819 adult and 695 pediatric exacerbations. ... We found strong associations between asthma exacerbations and nighttime heat wave definitions based on relative thresholds of minimum temperatures when census block group or tract level temperature estimates were used. These relationships were significant for both age groups and showed elevated risks in socially vulnerable areas. In contrast, heat wave definitions derived from the city's primary National Weather Service synoptic weather station show associations between asthma and daytime heat extremes, suggesting that the character of the heat hazard depends on the scale at which it is defined. The extreme heat event definition used by Baltimore City's Code Red system showed no significant association with exacerbations. These findings highlight the importance of data resolution in shaping health inferences related to extreme heat in urban environments. Further, this study demonstrates that, regardless of spatial scale, extreme heat is associated with asthma exacerbations in both age groups.

‘Severe’ stress on oceans as rate of sea level rise doubles in 10 years, UN warns
Karen McVeigh | 8 Jun 2026

"Global effort needed to limit effects of pollution, industrial fishing and climate crisis ... The UN’s third World Ocean Assessment, which reflects the work of nearly 600 scientists from 86 countries, looked at the oceans’ health from 2021-25.

... The scientists’ key findings include:
- Sea levels continue to rise at an increasing rate, from 2mm a year prior to 2015 to 4.3mm a year in 2023.
- 16% of the increase in global ocean heat since 1955 occurred after 2018.
- The greatest relative warming has been observed in the Atlantic Ocean and the southern parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
- Large gaps in knowledge persist – with only 27% of the ocean floor mapped by 2025, deep-sea ecosystems remain poorly understood ..."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/08/un-world-ocean-assessment-se...
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The Third World Ocean Assessment (WOA III)
https://www.un.org/regularprocess/woa3

Study finds resistant bacteria in homes with sewage backup:
Sampling of homes with sewage backups found enterococci bacteria, including multidrug-resistant strains, in 46% of dwellings.

Study finds resistant bacteria in homes with sewage backup
Chris Dall, MA June 9, 2026

"... While sewage backups are a concern for homeowners everywhere, the authors say they’re concerned that more people could be exposed to potentially pathogenic bacteria as extreme weather events, like floods, become more common and sewer systems continue to age.

“Our research underscores an urgent need to invest in upgrading water and sewer infrastructure to protect public health from this growing threat,” corresponding study author Nick An, a PhD candidate in the UMD School of Public Health ..."

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/study-finds-resistant-bacte...
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News Release 5-Jun-2026
Drug-resistant bacteria found in homes from sewage overflow
Reports and Proceedings, American Society for Microbiology

"Key Points:
- Sewage overflows occur when untreated sewage enters homes or the environment through broken or clogged pipes, or when the sewage system is overwhelmed.
- A new study shows that these overflows in homes can expose people to antibiotic-resistant or even multidrug resistant bacteria.
- As extreme weather events become more frequent and sewer systems continue to age, more sewage overflow events mean more households could be exposed to these disease-causing organisms ..."

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131032

Here are 10 ways a ‘super’ El Niño could impact the planet
Benjamin Selwyn | 9 Jun 2026

1. Drought
2. Shock to global food supply chains
3. Wildfire risk
4. Excess rainfall
5. Increased coal consumption
6. Grid failure risk
7. Declining fish stocks
8. Heightened geopolitical tensions over critical agricultural inputs
9. Higher rates of heat illness
10. Civil conflict

... Taken together, these impacts reveal not just a climate event, but a global system in which environmental shocks are transmitted through supply chains, unequal trade and energy provision and consumption, disproportionately burdening the poor in the global south.

... two ways out of this spiralling ecological and social crisis. The technology and knowhow exist to transition away from fossil fuels to renewables, but without transforming the global systems that organise supply chains, energy and trade, these solutions will remain uneven in their reach and impact.

There is also extensive knowledge on building resilient agricultural systems that can generate food security while contributing to ecosystem restoration. But again, breaking out of an export-orientated, chemically intensive agricultural system will take large-scale political transformations."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/09/super-el-nino-global-econo...

Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry
Canada on fire: The catastrophic and escalating effects of wildfires on lives and communities

"Executive Summary
... From 1981 to 2018, more than 300,000 wildfires prompted over 400,000 evacuations, including the 2016 Fort McMurray, Alberta wildfire, which displaced nearly 90,000 people and caused approximately $9.5 billion in losses... Over the past decade, Canada has averaged more than 5,000 wildfires annually, burning roughly 2.9 million hectares each year... In one recent year alone – 2023 – wildfires burned 14.6 million hectares of land throughout Canada, shattering previous records both nationally and regionally. Figure 1 illustrates the cumulative extent of the national burned area composite in Canada for the period 1972 to 2024.

Three consecutive record-breaking wildfire seasons—2023, 2024 and 2025—have demonstrated that climate change is accelerating fire behaviour beyond the capacity of existing systems. Wildfires are now a crisis.

... millions of Canadians are exposed to toxic wildfire smoke for days, weeks or sometimes months at a time. ... The economic costs of wildfire smoke now exceed the costs of fire suppression itself.

Indigenous communities—who have lived with fire for millennia—remain under‑resourced and sidelined. ... Strengthening Indigenous-led governance, training, equipment access and long-term funding is imperative.

Forestry and agriculture—the economic pillars of rural and northern regions—are also at a crossroads. Wildfires are reducing timber availability, damaging infrastructure, eroding supply chains and undermining the viability of forest-dependent communities. Agricultural producers are losing livestock, crops, equipment and land; they face rising insurance costs and inadequate business risk management programs that do not respond quickly enough during wildfire emergencies. ...

... no single authority is responsible for wildfire preparedness, response and recovery in Canada. Provinces and territories manage wildfire suppression; federal departments provide emergency coordination, scientific advice and funding. Municipalities struggle with limited resources including adequate evacuation supports and training for firefighters. Coordination challenges contribute directly to delayed response times, inconsistent planning, uneven access to equipment and personnel and a system that mobilizes only once disaster is already underway, none of which are moving at the speed of the current wildfire crisis.

Despite these challenges, the committee learned about solutions. For instance, prescribed and cultural burning, proactive fuel management, expanded FireSmart implementation, wildfire-resilient infrastructure, modernized building codes, enhanced predictive modelling, early-warning systems, and investments in new technology such as satellite monitoring, aerial firefighting capacity and advanced drone systems all offer pathways toward greater resilience.

To co-exist with wildfires, the committee believes that a whole-of-society approach is needed; one that is based on collaboration between federal, provincial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous governments, to ensure wildfire preparation, adaptation and resilience measures are built into all communities and business sectors, in particular forestry and agriculture. ...

Recommendations {15} ..."

https://sencanada.ca/en/info-page/parl-45-1/agfo-canada-on-fire/