Some early indications that we may be dealing with a formidable El Nino event by the fall.
@bennollweather.bsky.social reports...
www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026...
NEW – Pace of global warming has nearly doubled since 2015, study says
✍️ @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org
Read here ⬇️
No ships at all going through the Strait of Hormuz
Wait. Didn't Kulp & Strauss warn us of this in 2019? www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Good news: Scientists were wrong about how bad sea level rise is.
Bad news: It’s even worse than we thought.
Aid cuts are eroding the world’s ability to detect and respond to food crises.
Advances in AI can help, but without sustained funding for primary data collection, responses will be less effective, explain Jean-Martin Bauer and @hanshengchia.bsky.social:
https://go.cgdev.org/4shNZGD
Happy birthday!
China’s latest energy data offers a signal worth paying attention to. In 2025, emissions from energy and industry fell by 0.3%, modest, but notable, even as total energy consumption rose by 3.5%.
The key driver? A continued surge in solar power capacity.
The solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs) and wind turbines exported from China in 2024 are set to cut annual CO2 emissions in the rest of the world by 1%, some 220m tonnes (MtCO2). www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chi...
"The utility has pointed to the region’s historically cold winter as a cause of rising heating demand and costs...But in an email to The 51st, Pepco’s own data show that their D.C. customers actually used more energy in January 2025 than January 2026."
Critical minerals are reshaping geopolitics and driving a new frontier: deep-sea mining. As countries aim to secure their supply chains, the push for the seabed accelerates, reshaping the debate around deep-sea mining.
Full analysis on @stimsoncenter.bsky.social: stimson.org/2026/current...
This is very exciting for JHU! Congrats 👏🏼
FELLOWSHIP! We’re proud to announce the launch of the Climate Science Serving America fellowship, open to early- and mid-career scientists & engineers who work on climate solutions.
Full salary, benefits, and a research stipend. Remote anywhere in the United States.
drawdown.org/news/project...
Federal officials now project that Lake Powell will "most probably" drop below power pool level — meaning Glen Canyon Dam will no longer be able to generate hydropower — before the end of this year: www.landdesk.org/p/the-colora... via @landdesk.bsky.social
I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.
I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion
People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it
The US has become a climate bully.
The sabotage of the IMO shipping levy is the most dramatic example. The pressure on Vanuatu to stop its legal efforts is the most recent.
My new piece for @foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/18/t...
Conveniently forgotten.
@ipcc.bsky.social AR6 SPM C.3 :
"Hard limits to adaptation have been reached in some ecosystems (high confidence). With increasing global warming, losses and damages will increase and additional human and natural systems will reach adaptation limits (high confidence)."
Two years ago, Ethiopia did something no other rich country has yet. It banned the import of new fossil fuel cars. In that time, the country went from less than 1% of its vehicles being electric to more than 6% — higher than the global average. Read our feature:
🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
With aid cuts hitting Africa hard, governments must protect essential services while pursuing long-term self-reliance.
Biniam Bedasso maps responses to the 2025 disruptions, finding the most aid-dependent countries are least able to adjust:
https://go.cgdev.org/46dh1yO
The Colorado River situation is a big f*ing deal, more than most people outside the West realize.
With data centers expected to become the largest source of electricity demand in the Pacific Northwest, Washington legislators are pressing ahead with a bill aimed at protecting the grid and offsetting potential hikes for utility ratepayers. washingtonstatestandard.com/2026/02/11/h...
Today we’re launching Open Climate Risk, a fully open option for U.S. building-level climate risk data. It’s unique because it allows you to see not only risk scores, starting with wildfire, but also the complete underlying dataset, methods, and codebase. carbonplan.org/research/cli...
Grazalema, Spain, received over 2,000 mm (78 inches) of rain in just the last 20 days.
Over a year’s worth of rain — and it’s only early February. This is hydrologically absurd.
Good gut check. At the same time, the symbolism of the US loudly and proudly shirking its responsibilities seems to be having a chilling effect across forward-leaning allies...
THERE'S NO MEANINGFUL US CLIMATE REGULATION TO WIPE OUT
look I want my government to acknowledge CO2 bad too but this is not a massive deregulatory victory or whatever
More than half of the world’s new electric cars are now plugging into Chinese sockets instead of lining up at gas stations. By 2024, it is estimated that China’s EV sales were growing about 40% year on year, even as some Western markets stumbled.
www.ecoticias.com/en/china-sol...
ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps.
If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...
"You'll certainly see an initial tranche of money very shortly," Waltz said. "It'll be a significant ... down payment on our annual dues ... I don't believe that the ultimate figure is decided, but it'll be in a matter of weeks."
www.reuters.com/business/fin...
This risk—now this reality— was clearly foreseen 20 years ago when in first started working on climate change, and warnings were given— but no one wanted to hear them and some fought to belittle the Cassandras. So many Americans are now trapped in a terrible position as a result.
