Enjoyable with numbers – by Invoice McKibben

Last time I marked the fifth anniversary of this article with a remarkably heavy burst of study—a ‘where do we stand’ abstract that permit me converse on the highest doable stage about our previous, current, and future. So in fact I’m worn out, and maybe you as effectively. We’re going to proceed much less systematically this time—I’m going to indicate you some numbers which have arrived in the previous few days, and attempt to make sense of every of them, with solely slight regard for the way precisely they match collectively.

And it’s all a helpful reminder that although the local weather and vitality crises have every thing to do with psychology and sociology and economics and political science and theology and love and artwork and winter, they’re rooted in quantifiable bodily truth, which can’t be wished away and which have to be confronted resolutely.

So, to start:

#76.9 levels Fahrenheit

That was the common temperature for the decrease 48 states in July, according to just-released federal stats, making it the most well liked month in American historical past, 3.3 levels hotter than the twentieth-century common. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, Wyoming was the furthest above common for the month. Among different issues, this growth robs local weather deniers of a cherished speaking level. July 1936 had been the co-record holder. We understood why—within the words of climatologist Andrew Dessler:

During the early twentieth century, aggressive plowing and the alternative of native grasses left Great Plains soils uncovered. When drought circumstances developed, these degraded soils dried out shortly, lowering evaporation and soil moisture and reinforcing the warmth.

But attempt telling that to Fox News. Dessler, by the way in which, has had a fascinating three-part sequence on these century-old midwestern extremes. But now it’s principally educational; we’re residing in a warmer nation than any American has ever seen. And certainly a warmer world. As Jeff Masters reports, July 2026 tied for the warmest month within the planet’s historical past, with July 2024

#3.6 levels Fahrenheit

That’s how a lot temperatures have risen on common in Europe because the Nineteen Sixties, in keeping with the brand new State of the Climate 2025 report, which veteran analyst Bob Berwyn broke down this week. Just take into consideration that for a second, as a result of it lets you perceive the dimensions of what we’ve completed. When you stroll exterior your own home, in Europe or America, it’s three levels hotter than it could have been a simply few many years in the past. Think of that quantity of additional warmth (and do not forget that ninety p.c extra is saved away within the oceans, ready to be launched).

Writing from Berlin, Jim Tankersley and Tatiana Firsova provide a vivid account of what that looks like in each day European life.

It’s altering the way in which youngsters see summer time.

“Some days it’s too hot, and the heat is just so oppressive. I’m more of a winter person,” stated Sophia Nachtsheim, 15, who visited Krumme Lanke on Thursday together with her mom and three youthful siblings.

#$65 billion

That’s the windfall revenue to this point for the oil business due to the Iran conflict, in keeping with a brand new analysis from the parents at Oil Change International.

The 5 main worldwide oil firms (IOCs) recorded huge jumps in earnings in Q2 2026 in comparison with the identical quarter of 2025. Their whole adjusted internet earnings amounted to $51 billion for the three months – that’s practically $400,000 per minute. Meanwhile, folks all over the world are paying round 30% extra for gasoline and diesel, with some nations, significantly in Southeast Asia, seeing will increase of 80% or extra.

It would in fact make nice sense to tax these windfall earnings, earned fully on the again of useless Iranians and Americans, and everybody who’s paying $4.50 a gallon on the pump. Portugal really is, at a 33% charge. Exxon’s Darren Woods has responded to wider EU efforts with threats

“We canceled investments that we had planned for Europe based on the last time they passed a windfall profits tax. In fact, we’re suing the EU because we don’t think that’s a legal taking for the industry.”

#4.8 p.c of worldwide energy-related carbon emissions

So far the vitality debate round AI has centered on how a lot electrical energy it takes to run knowledge facilities. But the quantity above comes from a special heretofore uncounted a part of the issue: it’s what a new study says synthetic intelligence may add to the environment just by making it simpler for the fossil gasoline business to search out and exploit oil and gasoline wells. Emily Atkin has a topnotch account of the brand new research, which makes it clear {that a} knowledge heart may as effectively have an oil derrick sitting on high. She contains these extra numbers

Specifically, they discovered that Big Oil’s use of AI to supply extra oil and gasoline may create 3.3 to 13.3 instances extra local weather air pollution than powering AI’s knowledge facilities.

On the low finish, these instruments may allow extra yearly carbon emissions equal to Mexico’s, in keeping with the analysis. On the excessive finish, they may allow yearly local weather air pollution equal to Russia’s—the world’s fourth-largest emitting nation.

Meanwhile, I discussed this parenthetically final week, however it deserves extra consideration: local weather researcher Zeke Hausfather took the time to calculate how a lot vitality is used if you actually use AI “agents” for finishing up duties. And the reply is: loads. Asking Claude a query is just not so energy-intensive, however as he explained to Robinson Meyer this week

Increasingly AI is being utilized in an agentic kind. And that extra signifies that you give AI a set of directions or a aim to realize. And then AI goes off and does many, many, many, issues to attempt to obtain that aim. AI brokers are, not less than within the company world and the software program engineering and scientific world, the overwhelming majority of AI use immediately. And these brokers make each far more difficult calls than the prompts would counsel and plenty of, many extra calls. And so if you have a look at the precise vitality use of those AI brokers, it’s one thing on the order of 600 instances bigger per immediate than the standard, like, sort one thing in a chat field and obtained to get an instantaneous response. And in order that does find yourself including up. I really checked out two months of my very own AI use as a result of I had native logs of all the numbers there…I discovered that on common I used to be utilizing about three kilowatt hours a day for my agentic vitality use which is the equal of operating two fridges.

#70%

That’s been the common development in U.S. battery installations during the last three years, in keeping with the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and it’s persevering with to speed up. Here’s the chart

Notice that it’s persevering with to rise this 12 months. And so long as we’re doing charts, right here it’s damaged down by state, with batteries in lavender. You’ll notice that solely 4 or 5 states are actually taking part within the battery revolution to this point, which leaves huge room for fast development elsewhere. Batteries are the transformative expertise for the second half of this decade, as solar and wind have been for the primary half). Note additionally the unimaginable injury the Trump administration has completed to the wind business.

#44%

That’s how a lot you’d save in carbon emissions by retiring your inside combustion automobile and changing it with an EV—even when it was solely two years outdated, and taking into consideration the quantity of vitality used to construct each autos. A brand new study in Science from G. Elliott Campbell makes an attempt to reply a query that’s puzzled many good-faith folks: does it actually make sense to do away with my ICE automobile if I’m fearful concerning the local weather. It does, starting the day you drive it off the lot. It’s considerably extra difficult when you promote your used gas-guzzler to another person, however as Science editor Jesse Smith notes

The vitality impression advantages from swapping an EV for an ICEV start to accrue as early as the primary day of the lifetime of the ICEV, and that alternative early within the life cycle constantly gives reductions in greenhouse gasoline emissions. Financial issues may also have an effect on when folks select to make the alternative, in fact, however from the angle of emissions, it’s virtually by no means too quickly to modify.

As Campbell explained to Tik Root

“We’re trying to show that there’s not an environmental motivation for extending the lifetime of a gas vehicle,” he stated. “Electric vehicles are a very clear winner.”

This isn’t true of every thing you personal, by the way in which. It principally relies on whether or not the carbon emissions of the factor principally come from constructing it, or from powering it. Hence this chart that Professor Campbell despatched me. Hold on to your cellular phone one other 12 months!

#20 p.c

That’s how a lot of French nuclear capability is offline attributable to low river ranges with the summer time’s warmth and fierce drought. (Oh, and a jellyfish invasion at a coastal plant, itself attributable to warming seas). As Le Monde experiences,

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP) calculations based mostly on knowledge printed by vitality group EDF since 2015, 20.4% of producing capability was unavailable. Between 9:45 am and 10:00 am, EDF’s nuclear fleet recorded a brand new peak in outages attributable to “environmental constraints” or “external environmental causes,” each by way of the variety of reactors shut down or working at diminished output and by way of misplaced producing capability.

The level is to not say ‘shut down nuclear power plants.’ It’s merely to level out that cost lengthy leveled at solar and wind—that they supply “intermittent power”—might be more true now of different vitality sources (together with the pure gasoline that may get shut down if, say, a conflict breaks out within the Strait of Hormuz). See the numbers on batteries above—I believe it’s fairly clear that when you join them to a photo voltaic or a wind farm you’ve obtained among the world’s firmest energy. By the way in which, that’s how BMW has stored its Hungarian plant churning out EVs even because the nation’s lone nuke shut down, inflicting a cascading vitality scarcity throughout the nation.

#22%

That’s how a lot home airline emissions have fallen in Austria during the last three years, because the authorities banned brief haul flights to home locations that have been served by trains; one thing comparable occurred in France, which handed a extra restricted model of the identical regulation. As Logan Varsano writes,

These preliminary successes in Austria and France are promising.

They additionally immediate a lot of follow-on questions: What could be the local weather profit if such insurance policies have been extra broadly adopted throughout Europe? What in the event that they have been applied past Europe’s borders? What in the event that they have been utilized to short-haul worldwide flights, and never merely home routes?

Research published in 2021 discovered that, in Finland, changing all short-haul flights with non-high-speed rail may minimize emissions by 95%. One 12 months later in 2022, totally different researchers took a broader look at business passenger flights throughout 31 nations. A 2023 study took a better have a look at Spain’s two busiest home corridors: Madrid-Barcelona and Madrid-Valencia. In 2024, data from IATA centered a lens again on France. And extra not too long ago, a September 2025 study on business intra-European aviation concluded that substituting short-haul flights with rail options may cut back a visit’s emissions by as much as 97%, relying on the size of the journey.

I’d simply add: metropolis heart to metropolis heart trains are infinitely nicer than coping with airports, not less than for me. Until we get the blimps up and operating, extra rail please!

#5.5 levels Celsius vs 2 levels Celsius.

This final one is somewhat difficult, however it underscores an important level I hold attempting to make on this publication: we should act quick!

It comes from a new study concerning the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Currents, or AMOC, an important warmth distribution on planet earth, and one we’re threatening to wreck by elevating temperatures. What the research—out immediately in Nature—calculates is the danger of elevating the temperature quick, which is what we’re doing now. On a “slow ramp,” this laptop mannequin reveals that the currents keep steady till temperatures are raised 5.5 levels Celsius—which is numerous respiration room. But when you ramp up the temperature shortly, going previous 2 levels Celsius can shut them down. Rosa van den Dool interviewed one of many research’s authors:

The rationalization lies in how the ocean is ready to alter to alter. “Under slow warming, the entire ocean, from the surface down to its deepest layers, has time to gradually reorganize and adapt to the changing conditions,” says co-author Henk Dijkstra, professor of dynamical oceanography. “Under faster warming, the ocean simply can’t keep up.”

According to the researchers, the essential warming charge lies round 0.3°C per decade, a tempo the world is already approaching. Van Westen compares it to driving a automobile: “If you’re driving toward a wall, it makes sense to steer around it. To do that, you need to brake, otherwise you fly off the road. When it comes to global warming, the world is still pressing extra hard on the accelerator right now.”

Math can’t inform us every thing we have to know concerning the local weather disaster. At some stage, the essential calculation is concerning the dimension of the human coronary heart, and whether or not we’re prepared to essentially press for the change that’s required. But math illuminates the parameters that people should dwell inside, and it shines a light-weight on our prospects. Above all it explains why these are the essential years: temperatures and options are rising at the very same second. Our job is to see if we are able to nudge the percentages on this race.

And we are able to, so we should. Thank you for being a part of the battle!

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In different vitality and local weather information:

+An rising line of assault on photo voltaic arrays is that they’re taking over “prime farmland.” I don’t know why this assault isn’t mounted on, say, ethanol farms, which cowl vastly extra acreage and produce vastly much less vitality, however in any occasion a brand new New York State analysis has undercut the entire premise. It finds that when farmers have a dependable earnings from photo voltaic arrays, they usually broaden their agricultural operations. As Kathryn Krawczyk writes,

After the Trump administration accused the state of fast-tracking photo voltaic farms on prime farmland, New York leaders fired back final week, saying that renewables ​“empower our farmers to keep their land in use and in their family, while avoiding the threat of permanent conversion or abandonment.” That’s as a result of farmers can lease a plot to photo voltaic builders and return it to agricultural use on the finish of the array’s life, because the state officers defined in their 11-page letter.

“A recent study by Cornell found that the overwhelming majority of farmers who received solar lease payments used that income to continue or even expand farming on their land, not to exit farming or scale back operations,” the leaders wrote. ​“Discouraging or inhibiting property owners’ ability to independently make choices about what they can and cannot do with their land can cause financial harm and undermine fundamental property rights.”

Meanwhile the New York State League of Conservation Voters and the Laborers Union have teamed as much as urge Albany to maintain increasing the state’s photo voltaic program.

As the nation celebrated its 250th anniversary, photo voltaic was our savior. We have been near not having sufficient vitality to assist our have to hold cool because the temperatures soared over 100 levels. But photo voltaic diminished our peak demand by practically 8% — and saved ratepayers from paying an extra $200 million for electrical energy, in keeping with the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency.

As our summers get hotter, we discover ourselves asking the identical daunting query yearly: Can New York’s vitality grid maintain up throughout a warmth wave?

Solar vitality has been stepping up when New Yorkers wanted it most, serving to hold the grid dependable whereas responding to near-record demand.

Data from the New York Independent System Operator, which manages the state energy grid, reveals that rooftop and neighborhood photo voltaic tasks minimize statewide peak electrical energy demand by greater than 4 gigawatts. Solar equipped 15% of statewide electrical energy demand throughout peak hours on the most well liked day of the warmth wave, in keeping with knowledge from Grid Status. This is what a cleaner, extra resilient grid appears like: air conditioners operating full blast, powered by photo voltaic era throughout New York.

And another piece of fine information from upstate New York: ClientEarth has gone to court docket to force a big company—Thermo-Fisher—to supply fossil-free retirement funds, on the attention-grabbing grounds that forcing folks to put money into oil and gasoline can violate their non secular beliefs.

For Dr. Andrew Hartley, his retirement plan has been quietly working towards his beliefs. Dr. Hartley is a statistical science director whose religion directs him to steward and shield the planet and shapes how he lives: he cycles virtually in all places, banks with an establishment that does not fund fossil fuels, and helps lead two environmental non secular organizations. So, when he requested his employer — Thermo Fisher Scientific, a $180 billion life sciences firm publicly dedicated to a “healthier, cleaner, safer” world — for a single fossil-free fund choice in his retirement plan, he anticipated to be heard. Instead, the corporate selected to disregard him for over a 12 months.

The authorized basis for this case comes from an unlikely place. In 2023, the Supreme Court strengthened employees’ proper to spiritual lodging. In Groff v. DeJoy, the court docket dominated that employers can not deny non secular lodging simply because they create minor inconvenience or trivial price. Employers should present a real, substantial burden on the enterprise.

This issues right here as a result of Dr. Hartley’s request was not unduly burdensome on the big firm that employed him: he merely needed one extra fossil-free fund — a standard, broadly accessible choice that may permit him to save lots of for retirement with out violating his religion. Thermo Fisher has supplied no rationalization for why that may be a considerable burden on its enterprise.

+I’ve described the upcoming People of the Sun gathering on the Standing Rock reservation. You can get tickets here, and notice the chance to underwrite attendance by Native Americans elsewhere within the nation who might not be capable of afford the journey on their very own.

+Interesting news from radio-collared pronghorn antelope close to a giant photo voltaic farm in New Mexico: leaving some gaps between varied components of the photo voltaic discipline appeared to offer the animals sufficient room to maintain touring the place they wanted to go. Daniel Garcia:

Nearly all the collared females that lived near San Juan Solar didn’t steer clear of the ability utterly.

They didn’t discover any distinct boundaries the place pronghorns abruptly halted their use of the close by habitat. The animals continued to maneuver in the direction of the fences and ran with the working arrays