7 of Earth's 16 Vital Climate Signs Just Hit Record Extremes

Tuesday, October 27, 2026

The future we've feared is already here. In a new report, researchers detail how grim the climate crisis has become in 2026, and how Earth's climate system continues to plunge farther and faster into terrible new territory. "Rapid destabilization is now a diagnosis rather than a warning for the future," says co-lead author William Ripple, an ecologist at the Oregon State University College of Forestry.

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... The authors include renowned climate experts: Michael Mann from the University of Pennsylvania, Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the Australian National University, Johan Rockstrm of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Anjal Prakash of FLAME University, among others.

Of 16 climate indicators the coalition tracks, seven have reached record extremes, the report finds, while several others also show troubling trends.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, for example, exceeded 428 parts per million in May -- higher than at any point in the last 2 million years.

Rising CO2 levels are driven largely by humanity's CO2 emissions, which have also soared in recent centuries. Today's atmospheric CO2 is about 50 percent higher than it was in the late 18th century, before the Industrial Revolution, the report notes.

Meanwhile, the rate of global warming appears to be speeding up, too, having risen from 0.19 degrees Celsius per decade between 1970 and 2010 to about 0.36 C per decade since. ...

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-10-27 03:32 PM | Reply

... President Donald Trump will use a campaign swing through Texas on Tuesday to announce a plan to ease methane rules for oil and gas producers, seeking to show voters he is working to bring down gasoline prices a week before the midterm elections. ...

Trump plans to announce an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to roll back Biden-era rules that required companies to fix leaky equipment and regularly check wells for escaping methane, a potent greenhouse gas, a White House official said. The administration is casting it as a way to produce more energy and lower costs.

The plan would give relief to small, low-output wells and end a program that used outside groups to report large methane leaks, the official said. It would also ease rules aimed at phasing out the routine burning off of gas at oil wells. ...

#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-10-27 03:35 PM | Reply