written 28 June, 2026
published 5 July, 2026
Once upon a time, a king commanded the tide to halt. The king knew the limits to his power, and was trying to teach his foolish advisors about those limits. However, our "king" is the fool, believing he is the boss of reality. Perhaps this comes from his upbringing by a sociopathic father, or a life of being catered to as a very rich man, or his decades as a reality TV character. He acts like he is playing president in a reality show, where he gets to decide all the plot twists, just on his say so.
In fact, our distractor in chief is skilled. Witness the still unresolved war on Iran, the "vandals" in the reflecting pool, the "taxpayer free" multi-billion dollar ballroom, the constant effort to restrict voters, the quest to fund his goon squad, and the new fear of "godless communist Democrats". These are all efforts to hide his pedophile involvement with Epstein, and his massive family corruption. However, behind all the political posturing, there is an even a more profound issue being ignored: the growing climate crisis.
With the foolish idea that what you don't know can't hurt him, the president has devastated most of the climate science systems in the U.S., pushing climate out of the daily news cycle. Despite this, there have been a few small victories. His defunding of the Global Ocean Monitoring network, a valuable, decade long system of tracking what is happening out of sight of land, was reinstated by judicial order. Motivated individuals have saved vital climate data sets from destruction.
The AI economic frenzy, which is driving the stock market to new highs every day, proposes construction of hundreds of data centers. Whatever the eventual social benefits, if any, the demands for massive amounts of electrical power and cooling water have created public pushback across the country. The power demands are supposed to be solved by onsite natural gas, or diesel, generators, accelerating the climate crisis, assuming the AI bubble doesn't pop soon.
But reality doesn't care what foolish humans think or do. This summer could be an extreme fire hazard. U.S. acres currently burned are ahead of normal. Locally, the June like heat in March dried things out, disrupting the normal spring cycle of flowers budding and pollinators hatching. Last week, temperatures in London were 97°F and France reached 111°F. Most of Europe doesn't have air conditioners. Several hundred people have already died of the heat. The oceans are warmer, stressing food chains, adding more moisture to any storms, and fueling stronger hurricanes.
The Arctic Ocean has less summer sea ice now than ever previously recorded. Northern nations are positioning themselves to take economic advantage of newly available Arctic resources, and quicker shipping across the top of the planet. But less sea ice has decreased the nutrition of that ocean basin, adversely affecting global fish stocks.
A more serious concern is lurking in the Arctic Ocean floor: 200-10,000 gigatons of frozen methane. Dark open ocean water absorbs more solar heat than reflective white ice. The Arctic basin is relatively shallow, meaning heat can more easily reach the sea floor. Methane changes directly from solid to gas at -32°F. Methane is 100 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, over the time frame of a decade. When enough heat warms the Arctic Ocean floor, massive amounts of methane will be released into the atmosphere, rapidly heating the air, increasing the methane release, potentially building to a catastrophic heat pulse.
Over the last 200 years, combustion from the industrial revolution has added about 1,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, raising the global temperature almost 3°F. If just one percent of the frozen Arctic methane is released, we would experience double that additional heat rise in a few months. New reporting is that the Arctic could be ice free next summer, much sooner than previously expected, as planetary heating is increasing. That isn't to say the methane burst will happen that soon, but having no summer sea ice is a worrying precondition.
We just celebrated 250 years of American existence, founded on the radical aspiration that all people deserve respect, not just wealthy men. Today we are challenged to embrace another radical aspiration that all living systems deserve respect, not just wealthy humans. If our country, or even our species, expects to survive another 50 years, we need new leadership, not another self-centered rich man.
