What mattered this week

America pulling ocean sensors out of the water, just as an oceanic cold blob emerges that will kill us all

Trump again? Uh huh. The US is yanking a working paid-for $368m deep-ocean monitoring network - just as the oceans hit record heat and the Atlantic current wobbles.

I’ll swim anyway. Ain’t about your holiday. A cold blob is emerging that might mean eternal winter for Europe. Not joking. 🙃

Read more: DeBriefed — Atlantic current monitoring at risk (Carbon Brief, 12 Jun)

Most of the signs are bad, but there’s some quiet good news too

Meaning? The amount of CO₂ we pump out stopped growing around 2013 - has been roughly the same each year since.

So CO₂ is falling? Hell naw. We still shove up ~40 billion tonnes a year, so the total in the atmosphere is way up. The tap is still running, we just stopped opening it wider. Not victory. But good.

Read more: Zeke Hausfather — The Climate Brink, "what if emissions had kept growing"

And more bad as well. Midwinter, Antarctica: 15°C

Well I’m not swimming there? Warmer than normal: roughly 20°C above average for the date. In the dead of the southern winter.

How bad? The scientists say: "an enormous anomaly." We say OMFG WTF WTF.

Why care from a desk in London? Because the same trapped heat - the planet's energy imbalance jumped 40% since 2021 - is what reroutes your weather, your harvests and your insurance premium.

Read more: Antarctic winter record (Guardian) · Earth's energy imbalance +40%

One thing to worry about

The Himalayas are turning green (EcoNews) 🌲

Plants are growing up slopes that were ice a generation ago. Glaciers gone.

Problem? Up to 1.6 billion people downstream drink, farm and generate power off meltwater that isn’t coming anymore 😱.

One thing to be optimistic about

For the first time ever, solar beat coal in US power production (ABC). Last month solar made 12.8% of US electricity. Coal: 12.2%.

In Trump's America? Yup.

It’s cheaper and easier than anything else.

If you’ve got more time…

A new word has been coined for our age: The Anthropocene. National Geographic calls it a “unit of geologic time used to describe the most recent period in Earth's history when human activity became the primary driver of profound planetary, climatic, and environmental change.”

And what will this era bring us? Johan Rockström says business as usual means the planet locks into a hot state, and stays there for around 1,000 years.

Oh.

Not a hot century that then cools off. Not a slow slide we can reverse later.

Read his “We’re in the Anthropocene - Now, what?”

It's a one-way ticket to hell.

Well done us.