I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.

Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.

Lowest ever Rhine water flow measured at the German-Dutch border in July was 782 m³/h, in 1976. Now, we're at 680 m³/h!

Pornainen, Finland (pop 5,000) is now heated by a silo of crushed soapstone. I spoke to CNBC about it. 100 MWh, charged when power is cheap, emissions down ~70%. Days to weeks of storage, no critical minerals. www.cnbc.com/2026/07/25/f...

Finland’s radical answer to renewable energy’s biggest headache: The world’s largest sand battery

A small Finnish town has turned to the world's largest commercial sand battery to tackle a major hurdle in the energy transition: intermittency.

cnbc.com

Now that millions of electric vehicles have been on the road for a decade or more, we have the data to check in on how their batteries are holding up. Quite well, it turns out.

EV Batteries Are Defying Expectations After Hundreds of Thousands of Miles

Industry experts think newfound knowledge of battery durability is a game-changer for consumer confidence in EVs.

wsj.com

Dank der starken Stromerzeugung aus erneuerbaren Quellen hat Deutschland im ersten Halbjahr 2026 im Saldo nur 1,25 TWh Strom importiert. Im ersten Halbjahr 2025 waren es 9,6 TWh. www.energy-charts.info/downloads/St...

BREAKING: Parliament votes for the UK's seventh carbon budget, targeting an 87% cut in emissions by 2040 332 in favour 94 against

Last week, Frontier announced that we are doubling the size of our advanced market commitment to support the development of durable carbon removal, with an additional $915 million from both existing Frontier members and new ones like Anthropic

$915M in new funding to drive carbon removal's next phase of growth

Frontier is committing an additional $915M to accelerate the world's best carbon removal companies, with Anthropic joining as a new buyer alongside Stripe, Google, Shopify, Salesforce, and H&M Group.

frontierclimate.com

Um netto null zu erreichen braucht es Kohlenstoffentnahme. Aber wer soll die machen, wenn sie nicht vorgeschrieben ist? Das @umweltministerium.de will jetzt Anreize schaffen, berichtet @mediathoms.bsky.social share.deutschlandradio.de/dlf-audiothe...

CO2 raus aus der Atmosphäre - Umweltministerium will Markt anreizen

share.deutschlandradio.de

You are working on scenarios relevant for climate change mitigation and/or sustainable development ? As an author of the chapter on scenarios in next IPCC report, I am interested ! Please inform us about your scenarios. See here, how to do so: zenodo.org/records/2041...

EV charging infrastructure made in Berlin..

Where would CO2 emissions go if there was no climate policy? People have been trying to answer that question for years, & depending on socioeconomics and model, CO2 emissions could rise (like RCP8.5) or even decline (like RCP4.5)! www.theclimatebrink.com/p/on-the-dea... 1/

An update of my figure on atmospheric CO2 increases (rdcu.be/buifD). The atmospheric increases each year, in line with CO2 emissions, but has large variability due to El Nino (reds) and La Nina (blues). Has the increase slowed? Statistically, that is hard to say... 1/

ANALYSIS: Wind and solar have saved UK from gas imports worth £1.7bn since Iran war began 😎 Record-high wind+solar output 🔥 Record-low gas generation ❄️ First ever winter with wind+solar out-performing fossil fuels 🏆 Wind+solar beating gas for 15 straight months 1/5

The arc of the scenario universe is long, but it bends inevitably toward more realistic emissions. A new paper outlining the emissions scenarios we will be using in the upcoming IPCC AR7 report notes that "the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible".

"AI data center" moratoriums are not the way. They risk pushing burdens to places with less regulation, and driving up the price of compute, which will worsen inequality. jacobin.com/2026/04/ai-d...

THREAD: The IEA global energy review 2026 * CO2 record high, but growth nearly ground to halt * Clean energy shaved 3bn tonnes off CO2 * Fossil-fuel power pushed into reverse * Age of Electricity "confirmed" * "Extraordinary" solar growth * Batteries up 40% * EVs up 20% 1/10

New steel value chain in the making? Iron ore from AUSTRALIA; Energy from the SUN + desali'd water from the OCEAN (that will largely circulate in a closed loop) -> to produce Hydrogen in NAMIBIA -> to produce DRI for GERMANY In April first 80t produced (later 15kt/a) www.heise.de/news/Stahlpr...

Stahlproduktion mit Wasserstoff: Erzreduktion im Industriemaßstab gelungen

Die Stahlproduktion zu dekarbonisieren, ist ein wichtiger Schritt hin zu klimaneutralem Wirtschaften. In Namibia wurde nun ein Meilenstein erreicht.

heise.de

MSFT *is* the carbon removal market, so if this is anything more than a brief pause, it's a v. big deal & v. bad news for an already shaky sector. via @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social heatmap.news/carbon-remov...

NEW: Microsoft Is Pausing Carbon Removal Purchases The tech giant has been the overwhelming buyer of carbon removal technologies, accounting for 90%+ of industry volume last year. Now sources tell me it’s pausing its voluntary buying. a @heatmap.news exclusive heatmap.news/carbon-remov...

This is quite extraordinary- scientists set a kind of trap for AI chat bots by inventing a fake disease. AI told people it was real and… the deliberately bogus preprints started being cited in peer reviewed literature 🫣 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real

Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

nature.com

In ihrem aktuellen FAZ-Gastbeitrag beklagt Katherina Reiche eine "Selbsttäuschunug" in der Energiepolitik. Tatsächlich fällt der Täuschungsvorwurf aber teilweise auf sie selbst zurück, denn der Text enthält diverse falsche oder irreführende Zahlen. Ein Thread. (1/17) www.faz.net/aktuell/wirt...

I can't stop admiring this photo by the Artemis II crew made of the moon. (Nikon D5 shot at f 7.1 at 800th of a second on 400 iso at 80 mm)

There it is—Dated Brent (i.e., spot) crude hits $144.46/bbl, a new all-time high.

#NowHiring The @wmo-global.bsky.social , which with UNEP set up the IPCC in 1988 to provide policymakers with assessments of science related to climate change, is recruiting the position of Secretary of the IPCC to lead its Secretariat. ➡️ lnkd.in/gsGqXPGU 📆 Apply by 16 April 2026

#Artemis II - We have the first image from yesterdays Lunar flyby captured by the crew on Orion EARTHSET. April 6, 2026. Humanity, from the other side. First photo from the far side of the Moon. Captured from Orion as Earth dips beyond the lunar horizon. 🚀🌕🌍

IPCC: ‘Frustrating and disappointing’ meeting leaves AR7 timeline in deadlock ✍️ @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org @daisydunne.carbonbrief.org Read here ⬇️

IPCC: ‘Frustrating and disappointing’ meeting leaves AR7 timeline in deadlock - Carbon Brief

Governments are still at loggerheads over the timeline for publishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...

carbonbrief.org

"Defending Net-Zero: A New Role for Carbon Dioxide Removal" My @libmod.de policy brief on why CDR policy must be reoriented to actively defend the net-zero objective is now available in English: libmod.de/en/policy-pa... Key messages 🧵 /1

🚨 BREAKING: The European Commission has urged people to work from home, drive and fly less, and for EU countries to urgently roll out renewables, as it warned of a prolonged energy crisis as a result of the conflict in the Gulf. Full story: www.politico.eu/article/euro...

The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is problematic, a 20-year time horizon is even more problematic... CO2 & CH4 behave differently making the GWP inappropriate (GWP* better if used correctly, separate targets better, etc) @hausfath.bsky.social explains www.theclimatebrink.com/p/using-a-20...