US politicians, even Democrats, no longer mention climate change, according to a recent report grist. Apparently, after their 2024 election defeat, Democrats have concluded that global warming is not a winning issue. Their calculus is somewhat confirmed by a recent one Pew poll Climate change ranks ninth among Americans’ top concerns.
Meanwhile, hard-won US national climate data, scenarios and analyzes are quietly disappearing from official government websites. A prime example is the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a county-by-county breakdown of potential risks of 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees of warming from pre-industrial levels. This major report on climate impacts and responses is a congressionally directed, interagency effort to provide “the scientific basis to support informed decision-making across the country.” A Clone of government website Hosted by Climate.us; The Trump administration took down the official site, which was here.
Those seeking to mitigate climate change did a victory dance in May, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced it was retiring its RCP8.5 scenario — the worst-case trajectory in which humanity continues to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century. We were at the Post Carbon Institute saying For a decade or more that scenario was unrealistic and should be discarded, because it assumes the Earth is burning more fossil fuels than it can reasonably supply. However, dropping RCP8.5 at this politically fraught moment fed a predictable glot-fest from climate deniers. For example, the The New York Post The editorial board announced that the revisions show that climate warnings have caused “untold damage” to the public, the economy and “the average person’s pocketbook.” Fox News host Sean Hannity emphasis that a “top UN-backed climate change panel has now waved the white flag of surrender” and is “tacitly admitting that the world will not actually be destroyed by climate change.” Donald Trump claimed In Truth Social that the United Nations just admitted that its own climate projections were “Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!” and called global warming research the “green new scam.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world, it is becoming clear that Earth is breaching the 1.5°C limit that world leaders pledged to limit global warming to in 2015, in their efforts to avoid a catastrophic future. Earth first 1.5-degree threshold exceeded In 2024; However, in 2025, the global average surface temperature Cooled to 1.44 degrees above baseline (2025 was still the third-warmest year on record). The 1.5°C limit in the Paris Agreement is defined as a multi-year average temperature; By that standard, many climate scientists expect the threshold to be breached Before 2030. Overall, the world is heading for 2 degrees of warming accelerated. The question climatologists are now asking: Will it still be possible to keep warming down? 3 degrees At the end of the century? 1.5, 2, and 3 degrees of impact will vary Monumental: in 3 degrees, 3.25 billion people At least annually will be exposed to severe heat-humidity.
As I write this, Europe is emerging from an unprecedented heat wave in which 1,300 people died from factors associated with high temperatures. Europe is Fastest warming continentWarming at twice the global average—but its people are unaccustomed to and unprepared for sustained warming. According to “This heatwave would have been virtually impossible even 50 years ago without human-caused climate change,” said Theo Keeping, a research associate at Imperial College London. On the other side of the pond, as the United States celebrates its 250th Independence Day, a Heat dome Settled over the eastern half of the country, more than 160 million Americans are under extreme heat warnings.
Also, a Unusually strong El Niño Developing in the eastern Pacific. The expected effects of this “super” El Niño include increased flood risk in the southern United States, drier and hotter weather in South America, and prolonged droughts and reduced agricultural production in South Asia. Climate change is one contributor to the unusual strength of this El Niño: Due to continued global warming, ocean temperatures are now highest level ever recorded. Although El Niño is a naturally occurring climate cycle, warmer ocean waters are driving that cycle to extremes.
Another result of climate change: the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a global deep-ocean current that helps keep Europe warm, among other things, is slowing. Cold meltwater from Greenland and Arctic sea ice diluting Dense, salty ocean water that drives currents. A complete cessation of the flow before the end of this century, once considered a remote possibility, is now a given high odds By climate scientists and oceanographers. View recent Crazy Town Podcast Episode Featuring Emily Scoring for a fascinating discussion of this world-changing development.
Collectively, we seem to have wandered into a strange new psycho-political terrain: as we approach the collapse of the Earth system and therefore the pillars of civilizational support, rational concerns are being replaced by paranoia. The reasons are undoubtedly complex and include the rise of social media, the consolidation of media companies, the politicization of the climate debate by fossil fuel companies, and the emergence of right-wing centi-billionaires shaping the attitudes of entire nations.
But I’ll add one more possible explanation half-jokingly. in him Science BlogUgo Bardi suggests that increasing CO₂ levels in the Earth’s atmosphere, in addition to warming the planet, will also gradually reduce human intelligence. As evidence he cited a 2024 paper Richard Buxton, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Diego, has shown that “the oxygen-to-CO₂ balance in brain tissue is critical. As CO₂ increases, the energy available to maintain neural activity decreases.” The United States has always been a conflicted, if not crazy, country (after all, it tolerated slavery for decades and elected Donald Trump as president twice) Maybe now, with the nation at 250 years old, the extra CO₂ it’s breathing in is starting to erode what’s left of its collective rationality.
If you want to buck that trend, don’t lose sight of the big picture (the Earth is a system of systems, nature must be at the center of human concern, and energy is the real currency). Adjust your view to incorporate new data and events. Don’t give in to scrolling political doom. And surround yourself with green plants that produce lots of oxygen.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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Previously published Reprinted on and with resilience permission
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