This is Not Cool

Climate Feedbacks Strengthen Shocking Heatwaves

I’ve been talking to some Senior Scientists in recent months, working on a new series of videos that will be aimed at this current wave of “New” Climate Denial, which is the same as the old climate denial, but aimed, perhaps at a generation that hasn’t been well informed, or perhaps that can not remember a world that was not burning.
Yesterday, I spoke to Daniel Swain, one of our most valuable players on the science comms team. As always, lucid, eloquent, informative, and had a lot to say.
Above, we discussed some issues related to the recent shocking heat events in the US and Europe.

Bloomberg:

A troubling pattern has emerged in this summer’s heat: Not only has it broken records, it’s done so often by margins far above the previous all-time highs.

These heat jumps are part of a larger shift of climate change seeming to accelerate. Ocean temperatures just reached a new high for the early summer. Sea levels are rising faster than before, while new records for daily rainfall are being set at a rapid clip. The pace of global warming itself has quickened in recent years.

While scientists have long braced for climate change, the growing severity of its impacts is shocking them.

Today’s climate can “seem like an unexpected step change” from that of a few years ago, said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University.

Project 2025 Science Cuts Cripple Weather Warnings

A lot of people are noticing. Less weather data, compliments of DOGE cuts, means more holes in model output, and more nasty surprises.

Politico:

At issue, meteorologists say, are spending reductions imposed under President Donald Trump by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team last year that have thinned the network of weather balloons the National Weather Service launches twice daily — and which provide crucial information for severe weather warnings for communities across the country.

“The issue is the forecast,” Thomas Winter, emergency manager for Franklin County, Kansas, said of the twister that hit his community southwest of Kansas City. “There was a zero percent chance of thunderstorms — and that forecast comes from the storm prediction center out of Oklahoma.”

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data show the standard early morning launches of weather balloons — which are coordinated globally to measure wind, temperature, humidity and pressure — are no longer happening regularly. Meteorologists say the dearth of weather balloons flying over the Great Plains, Southwest, interior Northwest and Midwest have compromised severe weather forecasts, putting communities at risk of being unprepared for sudden floods, thunderstorms and tornadoes.

Meteorologists say because of Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce, the National Weather Service offices in the West are too sparsely staffed on the midnight shift, which usually handles morning weather balloon releases. Those offices have instead pushed those launches to later shifts, creating sizable data holes for crafting severe weather forecasts.

Topeka Capital-Journal:

Early on April 13, the National Weather Service forecast almost no chance of tornadoes in east-central Kansas. But that evening, several twisters tore across the region.

The next morning, people in Ottawa picked up the pieces of homes and businesses.

Ohio Rains are Biblical

WTOL Toledo:

TOLEDO, Ohio — A rare and unusual slow moving “meso low” pressure system remained nearly stationary for over 24 hours across northern Ohio with torrents of rain that fed off of the warmer waters of Lake Erie in what seemed to be endless waves of downpours.

The torrential rainfall has led to devastating flooding and what could amount to historic rainfall of biblical proportions. It appears that the Kelleys Island rainfall of 17.19 inches, according to personal weather stations, would be in line with at least 1-in-1,000+ year rain event.

School Bus Magic Keeps Grids Stable in Heat

Reuters:

Schools are out for the summer, but the batteries in more than 200 electric school buses are helping some people in the U.S. find relief when temperatures soar.

From California to North Carolina, yellow electric school buses are sending power ‌back to the grid, easing some strain when demand spikes during heat waves. Hundreds more are expected to come online.

The stored energy from school buses and other electric vehicles is dwarfed by power plants. But efforts to use their batteries to return power to electrical systems, known as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), show how EVs could fortify strained power grids.

Fully deployed V2G projects involving about 230 of the nation’s roughly 6,700 electric school buses now have the capacity to supply about 8 megawatt-hours of power at a given time, according to the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Electric School Bus Initiative.

Global Solar Shift Has Arrived

RenewEconomy (Australia):

Solar is not just getting cheaper; it is sprinting down a learning curve that has held for half a century, with module prices falling about ten-thousand-fold as cumulative capacity has exploded.

That is my first message: a technology whose cost keeps dropping predictably as deployment grows, and where every new gigawatt makes the next gigawatt cheaper again.

And beating the trend line.

The second message is about speed.

When we line up all major power sources from the year each first exceeded a bigly amount of energy – 100 TWh – solar and wind are now racing ahead faster than coal, gas, hydro or nuclear ever did – nuclear did move fast for a while there, but then it stopped. Wind hasn’t.

And batteries are climbing even more steeply from their own 100 TWh “year zero”.

Heated Indiana Solar Meeting is Typical

When anti-clean energy groups get involved in local discussions about solar or wind energy, this is pretty typical of what you see.
A great deal of rudeness and entitled behavior from people who tend to isolate themselves in their own social media siloes – typically closed Facebook groups that block dissenting views or inconvenient facts.
It’s not pleasant, but it is critical that clean energy advocates make a point to attend these meetings and offer civil, well informed comments, while behaving like adults.
It’s amazing how much a few people can change the chemistry of a room.

The Weekend Wonk: Finding Power in the Grid’s Couch Cushions

We’ve been sitting on it the whole time.

Description:

Amit Narayan is the founder and CEO of GridCARE. His thesis: America doesn’t have a power shortage, it has a visibility problem. The grid runs at only about a third of its capacity, and GridCARE uses AI to scan it the way an MRI scans a body, finding power utilities simply cannot see with planning tools built decades ago. The company has unlocked more than a gigawatt in the last six months and is actively analyzing over ten. Narayan’s bet: 300 gigawatts are reachable on existing infrastructure within three to five years.

Jigar Shah and Jamie Nolan dig into why the grid sits so underused, and the detail that captures the whole problem: hyperscalers are so power-starved they’re eyeing data centers in space, when the power they need is already on the grid at home.
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I’m going to keep hammering these points til everyone gets it.

Washington Post:

Imagine a restaurant open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week that always maintains a full staff. With the exception of weekend nights and the lunch rush, the restaurant will be empty a lot of the time. But the restaurant’s owner is paying to keep it open all the time — spending money on staffing and rent even when the number of customers is low.

That’s the reality of the U.S. electricity grid. It is built to handle “peak demand” — moments of high electricity usage that often happen in the height of summer or in the frigid cold of winter. Power outages can be life-threatening, so utilities have to make sure that, at all costs, the power stays on.

“Hurtling Toward the Wall” – Oil/Gas Crisis not Over

It’s incredible the inertia of even the relatively sane, fact based media, to keep ignoring the continuing deficits owing to the Hormuz closure, and act like every thing is back to normal.
Not so, according to the expert interviewed by Bloomberg.

Mathew Cappucci: Americans “Uncomfortable with Science”

Mathew Cappucci is one of our best science explainers, here addressing current heat waves in the US and Europe, and finally, America’s continual difficulty understanding climate change.

UPDATE: Senior Meteorologist John Morales weighed in similarly on the heat wave.

U.S. heatwave to peak on the 4th of July. But it’s already dangerous, and I’m most concerned about *minimum* temperatures of 87 in Newark and 84 in New York & Washington. Human suffering worsens when the body can’t cool down at night. My @CNN interview on the #heatwave and more. pic.twitter.com/OvDxWLXf9Y
— John Morales (@JohnMoralesTV) July 3, 2026

Not Your Founding Father’s Heat Dome

How hot was it on July 4, 1776 ?

Tony Pann, Meteorologist, WBAL Baltimore, on Facebook:

PHILADELPHIA WEATHER JULY 4th, 1776: the image (above) is a picture of Thomas Jefferson’s actual weather notes from July of that year! (monticello.org) At 1 PM on July 4th, it was 76 degrees and dry…rather cool for this time of the year.

New York Times:

Heat and humidity as severe, prolonged and far-reaching as this week’s would have been “virtually impossible” in the Northeast and eastern Canada before humans began warming the planet, a team of scientists said on Friday.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of oil, gas and coal have trapped more of the sun’s heat at Earth’s surface, raising temperatures worldwide for more than a century. Summer hot spells are nothing new, but because of the excess heat around the planet caused by global warming, they can produce higher temperatures today than they once did.