Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The 2025 Nature paper by Gebrechorkos et al. on warming and global drought severity was retracted in early September 2026 due to calculation and coding errors.
The specific quantitative claims you listed from the 2025 Gebrechorkos et al. Nature paper are the ones that were reported and widely disseminated, and those published numbers are unreliable due to the calculation and coding errors that led to the retraction.
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The 2025 Nature paper by Gebrechorkos et al. on warming and global drought severity was retracted in early September 2026 due to calculation and coding errors.
The paper is: Gebrechorkos, Solomon H., Justin Sheffield, Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano, Chris Funk, Diego G. Miralles, Jian Peng, Ellen Dyer, et al. (2025). “Warming accelerates global drought severity.”
Nature 642(8068): 628- 635 (published online 4 June 2025; DOI 10.1038/s41586-025-09047-2). It has been formally retracted, with a Retraction Note published 2 September 2026.
Using high- resolution drought datasets (1901- 2022) that incorporated atmospheric evaporative demand (AED, sometimes called “atmospheric thirst”), the authors reported an increasing trend in drought severity.
Key quantitative claims included that AED had increased drought severity by an average of ~40% globally; that drought- affected areas expanded substantially in recent years (e.g., +74% on average in 2018- 2022 vs. 1981- 2017, with AED contributing a large share); and that 2022 was particularly extreme.
They linked the rise in AED to warming and argued this role would likely grow under further warming. The work received substantial media coverage and citations while active.
The authors retracted it after being notified of errors and identifying additional issues themselves. The main problems were:
Area- weighted grid cells were not used when calculating study- wide averages. This affected numerical values in the main text, Fig. 1b, and some Extended Data figures.
Results based on an earlier version of a dataset (GLEAM v3 instead of GLEAM4) were used in one Extended Data figure; the datasets are largely consistent for most of the period, but the proper weighting changed the 2022 drought– affected area figure.
A related coding and time stepping error affected date handling when subsetting data.
The authors stated that the errors changed the reported percentages (the corrected figures are expected to be somewhat lower) but that the overall conclusions were not overturned. They indicated they intend to submit a fully revised and corrected version for peer review. Retraction Watch coverage quotes the lead author describing it as a coding error unrelated to the underlying data or core methodology.
Lead author Solomon H. Gebrechorkos and co- authors including Ellen Dyer and Simon J. Dadson are (or were) affiliated with the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, related units. Other co- authors are from institutions including the University of Southampton, Spanish and Belgian research groups, US institutions (e.g., UCSB), and others. It is an international collaboration, not solely an Oxford “pack,” though Oxford researchers played prominent roles and the university publicized the original findings.
Retractions of high- profile climate- related papers for methodological or calculation errors do occur and are part of the normal scientific process of correction (especially for complex global datasets and derived indices).
The paper’s high citation count before retraction means some of the original quantitative claims circulated widely; corrected numbers, once published, will need to be checked against those earlier reports.
The authors’ stated position is that the directional findings on AED’s role hold, albeit with adjusted magnitudes.
Independent verification of any revised version will be the proper next step.
The specific quantitative claims you listed from the 2025 Gebrechorkos et al. Nature paper are the ones that were reported and widely disseminated, and those published numbers are unreliable due to the calculation and coding errors that led to the retraction.
They cannot be treated as established results.
The paper’s abstract and key findings stated (among other points):
An increasing trend in drought severity worldwide since roughly the early 1980s.
Atmospheric evaporative demand (AED, the “thirst of the atmosphere”) increased drought severity by an average of ~40% globally.
In 2018- 2022 versus 1981- 2017, drought- affected areas expanded by 74% on average, with AED contributing 58% of that increase.
In 2022, ~30% of global land area experienced moderate to extreme drought, with a substantial fraction attributed to increased AED.
The role of AED was expected to grow with further warming.
These figures were the ones circulated in media coverage and the authors’ own communications.
The official Retraction Note (2 September 2026) and related statements identify these problems:
Area- weighted grid cells were not used when calculating study- wide averages. This directly affected numerical values in the main text, Figure 1b, and Extended Data Figures 4 and 8.
Results based on an earlier dataset version (GLEAM v3 instead of GLEAM4) were used in one figure; after proper area weighting the 2022 drought- affected area figure was reduced.
A time stepping and coding error meant dates were not properly parsed when sub setting data for the 1981- 2017 versus 2018–2022 periods. This misclassified time steps and affected regional averages.
The application of an arid- regions mask (areas with mean annual precipitation < 180 mm) was not clearly explained and was applied selectively.
These are concrete computational and data- handling mistakes in producing the global and regional averages and percentage attributions. The authors themselves describe them as changing the reported percentages (they expect the corrected numbers to be “slightly lower”) while asserting that the broader directional conclusion, that rising AED linked to warming has exacerbated drought severity, still holds.
They withdrew the paper because the scope of corrections required full revision and new peer review rather than a simple correction notice.
The published numerical results (the 40%, 74%, 58%, 30% figures, etc.) are invalidated by the errors and should not be cited as accurate.
That is why the paper was retracted. However, the authors and the retraction notice do not state that the entire analysis or the qualitative finding is false or that the methodology was fundamentally invalid.
They frame the issues as correctable calculation and coding problems (including failure to area- weight properly and a date- parsing bug) and plan to resubmit a revised version. Independent evaluation of any corrected analysis will be needed to judge the revised magnitudes and robustness.
The colorful description of “comparing apples at the equator with dry ice in the Arctic” overstates what the documented errors were.
The documented failures were in area- weighting of grid cells, dataset version, time- period subsetting via code, and clarity of masking, not a wholesale mixing of incompatible physical regimes in the manner suggested. Area- weighting errors on a global grid can distort averages (especially if high- latitude or other regions are mishandled), which is why proper weighting is standard practice; that is precisely one of the errors acknowledged.
In short: the headline quantitative claims that were disseminated are not reliable. The paper is retracted for those reasons. Whether a corrected analysis will support substantially the same qualitative conclusions (with lower percentages) remains to be seen once the revised work appears and is scrutinized. Until then, those specific 2025 numbers should be disregarded.
The much-hyped “energy transition” has predictably failed.
The plants rejoice as CO2 enrichment continues. A greener Planet Earth is surely better than wind, solar, and battery industrialization from all points of view.
“There is no renewables ‘transition’ – ONLY addition.” (below)
The much-hyped “energy transition” has predictably failed. Grant Lukies presented the chart below and reported on social media:
For those of you paying attention – still no ‘transition’ evident whatsoever (to August 2025). 33 years of IPCC stewardship and panic and $billions spent and absolutely zero downward trend in slope of the curve.
THIS is THE failed KPI of alarmist catastrophism writ large. There is no renewables ‘transition’ – ONLY addition.
Is this bad news? Hardly. The plants rejoice as CO2 enrichment continues. A greener Planet Earth is surely better than wind, solar, and battery industrialization from all points of view.
Remember what Daniel Yergin concluded in The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (2020), p. 422:
As they grow, wind and solar and EVs will need ‘big shovels’ to meet their increasing call on mined minerals and land itself. It is estimated that an onshore wind turbine requires fifteen hundred tons of iron, twenty-five hundred tons of concrete, and forty-five tons of plastic. About half a million pounds of raw materials have to be mined and processed to make a battery for an electric car.
And more recently (2025):
[In 2020] when the [New Map] came out, there was still this kind of magical thinking almost about energy transition…. We’ve heard the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer say that, “Sorry to tell you all this, but oil and gas is going to be around for a long time in the mix.”
And James Hansen, father of the climate alarm, who stated:
The notion that renewable energies and batteries alone will provide all needed energy is fantastical. It is also a grotesque idea….
Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
And as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said this week at the G20 Meeting in Houston, the energy capital of the world:
It wasn’t true, the idea that somehow there was an energy transition going on in the world, and the energy transition was the highest priority. We’re not talking about energy transition because the transition was actually energy subtraction.
Pangea produced extreme continentality, strong monsoonal circulation, widespread aridity in the interior, altered atmospheric and ocean circulation, and influenced long- term CO₂ and temperature trends, often creating highly seasonal, harsh conditions unlike today’s more fragmented continents.
During the lifespan of Pangea, atmospheric CO₂ and global temperatures showed a clear long- term shift from icehouse conditions in the late Paleozoic to greenhouse conditions in the early Mesozoic.
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Pangea (roughly 335- 175 million years ago) produced extreme continentality, strong monsoonal circulation, widespread aridity in the interior, altered atmospheric and ocean circulation, and influenced long- term CO₂ and temperature trends, often creating highly seasonal, harsh conditions unlike today’s more fragmented continents.
With nearly all landmasses joined into one vast continent (stretching from near the South Pole to the North Pole and surrounded by the Panthalassa ocean, plus the warmer Tethys Sea to the east), large areas of the interior lay far from oceanic moisture sources.
This led to:
Very hot summers and cold winters in the continental interior.
Strong diurnal temperature swings (hot days, cold nights) in arid zones.
Limited moderating influence from oceans over much of the land.
Climate models and geologic evidence (evaporites, red beds, coals) indicate the interior was often inhospitable, with temperatures potentially exceeding 40- 50 °C in places during peak warmth, especially in the Triassic “hothouse” phase.
Pangea supported an intense, hemisphere- spanning “megamonsoon” driven by large land- sea temperature contrasts and the geometry of the landmass flanking the Tethys Sea.
Key features included:
Strong seasonal wind reversals and extreme wet- dry seasonality.
Heavy rainfall concentrated along eastern and some coastal margins (especially near Tethys), with models suggesting coastal daily totals that could greatly exceed modern monsoons in intensity in places.
Very dry conditions in the central and western interior, where moisture was diverted away.
The megamonsoon was particularly well developed in the Late Triassic when the supercontinent reached maximum extent. Precipitation was highly seasonal rather than year- round tropical. Later continental breakup progressively altered the global monsoon system toward more modern patterns.
Drylands covered a large fraction of Pangea’s land surface (simulations suggest ~50% and more during peak configuration, higher than in the more fragmented Cretaceous).
An extensive arid to hyperarid belt often spanned the equatorial and subtropical interior, unlike today’s wet equatorial tropics, because of the merged subtropical high- pressure cells, distance from moisture, and monsoonal diversion of rainfall. Evaporite deposits and other proxies record persistent dry conditions across much of the central continent.
Coastal zones and higher latitudes were generally wetter or more seasonal.
Simulations of the Pangea- era climate (e.g., around 250 Ma) show a weaker and wider Hadley circulation compared with the pre- industrial modern climate (annual -mean cells ~20- 45% weaker, poleward edges shifted outward by ~2°).
Ascending branches of the winter cells shifted more poleward, linked to the supercontinent’s geography and higher static stability in a warmer world. Global mean surface temperature in one hothouse simulation reached ~26 °C (roughly 13 °C warmer than a pre- industrial control).
Pangea’s configuration disrupted zonal (east- west) circulation patterns and limited the mixing of cold high-latitude waters into equatorial Panthalassa in some reconstructions.
The warm Tethys Sea supplied humid air and rainfall to adjacent coasts. Changes in ocean gateways and currents with assembly and later breakup also affected heat transport and polar temperatures.
Supercontinent assembly and breakup influence atmospheric CO₂ via volcanism, sea level, and silicate weathering:
Assembly is often linked to relatively lower sea levels, enhanced weathering of collision- related mountains, and cooling tendencies (Pangea’s early phase coincided with late Paleozoic icehouse conditions and Gondwanan glaciation).
The assembled supercontinent’s aridity reduced runoff and weathering efficiency in the interior, which models suggest helped maintain higher CO₂ and warmer continental temperatures (especially Middle- Late- Triassic).
Breakup increased continental runoff and silicate weathering in many simulations, drawing down CO₂ (from high Triassic values toward lower Cretaceous levels) while also involving changes in volcanic outgassing; the overall Mesozoic trend after breakup included greenhouse conditions.
These effects interact with large igneous province eruptions (e.g., end- Permian Siberian Traps) that drove major warming, ocean anoxia, and the largest mass extinction.
In summary, Pangea’s climate was characterized by strong geographic control: extreme seasonal and spatial contrasts, a dominant megamonsoon, vast interior deserts, modified Hadley cells, and feedback on the global carbon cycle that contributed to both icehouse and greenhouse intervals.
Geologic proxies (sediments, fossils, isotopes) and climate model experiments consistently support these patterns, though exact temperatures and precipitation amounts vary with assumed CO₂, topography, and solar luminosity.
The later breakup of Pangea shifted Earth toward wetter, more fragmented continental climates and different monsoon regimes.
During the lifespan of Pangea (roughly 335- 175 million years ago), atmospheric CO₂ and global temperatures showed a clear long- term shift from icehouse conditions in the late Paleozoic to greenhouse conditions in the early Mesozoic.
Values varied significantly, with large uncertainties in proxies, but the overall pattern is well- established.
Atmospheric CO₂ Levels (ppm)
Proxy data (paleosols, stomata, isotopes, etc.) and carbon-cycle models (e.g., GEOCARBSULF) indicate:
Period
Approximate CO₂ Range (ppm)
Notes
Late Carboniferous- Early/Mid Permian (~335- 260 Ma)
~300- 500 (often near or below ~350- 400)
Low levels during Late Paleozoic Ice Age (LPIA); comparable to or slightly above pre- industrial (~280 ppm)
Latest Permian- Early Triassic (~260- 245 Ma)
Sharp rise: from ~400 to 1,000-2,600 and more (peaks often 1,200- 2,000 or more)
Driven by Siberian Traps volcanism; some proxies show 4 times increase
Middle- Late Triassic (~245- 201 Ma)
Highly variable: ~500- 2,000 and more (many estimates 800- 1,500)
Elevated greenhouse levels; some records show spikes near Triassic- Jurassic boundary
Early- Middle Jurassic (~201-175 Ma, early breakup)
Generally, 500-1,300 (often 500-1,100)
Still elevated relative to today but lower than peak Triassic in many reconstructions
Overall trend: Low CO₂ during Pangea assembly (icehouse), followed by a major rise across the Permian-Triassic boundary and sustained higher levels (typically several times pre- industrial) through the Triassic and into the Jurassic.
Modern comparison: Pre- industrial ≈ 280 ppm; current ≈ 420 and more ppm.
Global Mean Surface Temperature (°C)
Estimates of global average temperature (GAT/GMST) relative to modern (~14–15 °C pre-industrial):
Period
Approximate GMST (°C)
Warming vs. Pre-industrial
Notes
Late Carboniferous- Early Permian (icehouse peak)
~12- 15 °C (sometimes as low as ~11- 14 °C)
Near modern or slightly cooler
Polar ice sheets present (especially Gondwana)
Latest Permian- Early Triassic
Sharp rise; peaks up to ~25- 33 °C in extreme estimates
+10 to +18 °C or more
Extreme hothouse after end-Permian extinction; tropical land temperatures often >40 °C
Middle- Late Triassic
Commonly ~20- 26 °C (some simulations ~25- 26 °C)
+6 to +12 °C
Warm greenhouse world; one 250 Ma simulation shows ~25.8 °C
Early- Middle Jurassic (early breakup)
Often ~19- 24 °C
+5 to +10 °C
Still warm, with some cooling relative to peak Triassic in certain models
Overall trend: Cool icehouse during early Pangea → extreme warming across the Permian- Triassic → sustained warm greenhouse conditions through the Triassic and into the Jurassic.
Tropical sea- surface temperatures were frequently >30- 32 °C, and continental interiors experienced even greater extremes due to continentality.
Key Comparison and Drivers
Early Pangea (Carboniferous- Permian): Low CO₂ (~300- 500 ppm) and cooler temperatures (near modern or cooler) → icehouse with widespread southern glaciation.
Late Pangea / early breakup (Triassic- Early Jurassic): Higher CO₂ (often 800- 2,000 or more ppm) and much warmer temperatures (+6 to +15 °C or more globally) → greenhouse climate with no permanent polar ice and extreme seasonal contrasts (megamonsoon).
The major transition occurred around the end- Permian (~252 Ma), strongly linked to massive volcanic CO₂ release from the Siberian Traps.
Supercontinent- related factors (aridity reducing weathering efficiency, changes in sea level and volcanism) also influenced the carbon cycle.
Proxy uncertainties remain large (especially for exact peak values), but the directional shift from low- CO₂ icehouse to high- CO₂ greenhouse is robust across models and data.
The Pangean megamonsoon was a vast, seasonally reversing atmospheric circulation system driven primarily by the extreme land- sea thermal contrasts of the assembled supercontinent Pangea (peak intensity in the Triassic, ~250- 200 Ma).
It produced strong wet- dry seasonality, heavy coastal rainfall in alternating hemispheres, and widespread interior aridity, with dynamics distinct from modern monsoons due to Pangea’s size, north- south span, and the warm Paleo-Tethys Sea.
The core driver was the enormous seasonal heating contrast between the vast landmass and surrounding oceans (Panthalassa and especially the warm Paleo-Tethys).
In Northern Hemisphere (boreal) summer, intense heating over Laurasia created a broad, deep thermal low-pressure system. High pressure developed over the cooler Gondwana. The resulting strong pressure gradient drove cross- equatorial flow from the south, drawing moist air across the Tethys toward eastern and northern Pangea.
In Southern Hemisphere (austral) summer, the pattern reversed: low pressure over Gondwana and high pressure over Laurasia drove northward- to- southward flow, bringing moisture to southern coasts.
This interhemispheric thermal contrast was amplified by Pangea’s C- or bipolar shape (large landmasses in both hemispheres flanking the equatorial Tethys), which maximized the seasonal pressure differential. Some models indicate seasonal pressure changes over the continent of ~25 mb (comparable in scale, though not identical, to modern Asian monsoon variations of ~36 mb).
Additional factors:
Paleo- Tethys warm pool: Elevated sea- surface temperatures supplied abundant moisture and, in some simulations, acted as a primary forcing for the location and intensity of monsoonal precipitation, sometimes outweighing pure land- sea temperature gradients alone.
Topography: The Central Pangean Mountains (formed by continental collisions) enhanced orographic uplift and rainfall on windward sides while contributing to rain shadows and stronger overall circulation (analogous to the Tibetan Plateau’s role today). Without them, models show a substantially weaker monsoon.
Disruption of zonal flow: The supercontinent’s size broke typical east- west trade- wind patterns, enabling strong meridional (north- south) and even temporary westerly flows on western coasts during peak intensity.
Sensible heating over land was the dominant process; latent heating from condensation further intensified rising motion and lowered central pressures, reinforcing the gradient.
Circulation and Precipitation Dynamics
Seasonal wind reversal: Surface winds shifted dramatically between seasons. Moist easterlies or cross-equatorial flows dominated the summer hemisphere’s eastern margins, while divergence under high pressure produced clear, dry conditions in the winter hemisphere’s interior.
Precipitation patterns: Heavy seasonal rains concentrated along eastern Tethyan coasts and some western tropical margins. Model estimates include coastal rates of several mm/day (up to ~5- 8 mm/day in peak rainy seasons in various simulations) and annual totals exceeding 1,000 mm in favored coastal zones. Interiors received little moisture year- round or only brief seasonal rains, creating vast arid to hyperarid belts (often spanning equatorial regions, unlike modern wet tropics).
Global averages: Roughly ~1,000 mm/year in some idealized simulations, but with extreme spatial gradients.
Non- zonal character: Unlike more latitudinally symmetric modern monsoons, the Pangean system featured strong hemispheric alternation and could reverse portions of the normal easterly equatorial flow.
Recent energetics analyses emphasize that continental area (especially tropical), latitudinal position, and degree of fragmentation control land- monsoon extent and intensity over tectonic timescales.
The Pangea configuration produced a spatially extensive land- monsoon domain (broad coverage) but with relatively modest average precipitation intensity compared with more fragmented Cretaceous continents (smaller area but heavier local rains). Global mean temperature/CO₂ changes had only minor effects on these metrics compared with paleogeography.
Seminal work by Kutzbach & Gallimore (1989) used an atmospheric GCM with idealized Pangea geography and showed extreme continentality, hot summers and cold winters, and large- scale monsoon circulations under various assumptions of elevation, snow cover, CO₂, and solar luminosity. Later higher-resolution models (e.g., HadCM3, CESM) and multi- million- year ensembles confirm the megamonsoon and its evolution.
On shorter timescales, orbital forcing (especially precession modulated by eccentricity) drove substantial variability in monsoon strength and rainfall (20- 50% in some Late Triassic simulations), with ~20 kyr, 100 kyr, and longer (~405 kyr, ~3.3 Myr) cycles recorded in sedimentary proxies.
Proxies supporting the dynamics include:
Widespread red beds, evaporites (arid interiors), and seasonal indicators.
Coals and humid sediments concentrated in coastal/seasonal zones.
Eolian sandstones and wind-direction indicators showing meridional/cross- equatorial and occasional westerly flows.
Loess and other dust deposits consistent with seasonal wind shifts.
Lacustrine and basin records (e.g., Ordos Basin, Colorado Plateau Chinle Formation) showing strong seasonality and orbital cyclicity aligned with model predictions.
Note that some regional records (e.g., parts of East Asia) show diachronous humidification that has been used to debate the universality or exact timing of a single “mega” system versus more zonal patterns in certain intervals.
The system strengthened from the late Carboniferous/Permian as continents assembled, peaked in the Triassic with maximum land area, and weakened as Pangea began breaking up after ~180 Ma.
Fragmentation reduced the extreme interhemispheric contrast, shifted continents poleward in places, and led to more regional, intense monsoons over smaller tropical landmasses (Cretaceous stage) before a broader, weaker configuration returned in the Cenozoic with continental reassembly.
In essence, the Pangean megamonsoon was a geography- dominated phenomenon: the supercontinent’s size and configuration created an amplified, hemispherically alternating monsoon that controlled rainfall seasonality across much of the land surface, leaving the vast interior chronically dry while delivering intense seasonal deluges to coasts.
Modern understanding integrates classic GCM results with high- resolution paleogeography, energetics analysis, and proxy records, confirming paleogeography as the primary long- term control.
In a recent article in the Independent, “Prince William warns ‘inch-by-inch’ action is not enough to stop climate change,” Prince William points at recent forest fires in the UK as evidence that climate change is devastating the globe and that the world’s peoples must make rapid, sweeping economic and social changes and sacrifices changes to prevent catastrophe. This is nonsense.
In a recent article in the Independent, “Prince William warns ‘inch-by-inch’ action is not enough to stop climate change,” Prince William points at recent forest fires in the UK as evidence that climate change is devastating the globe and that the world’s peoples must make rapid, sweeping economic and social changes and sacrifices changes to prevent catastrophe. This is nonsense. The kind of civilizational overhaul Prince William insists on would be unacceptably authoritarian and would produce far more harm and death than it would prevent. Also, this year’s wildfires are a bad example to point toward as evidence of climate change since they were neither unprecedented nor part of a long-term trend.
The Prince of Wales is reported to have made a series of comments hyping an alarmist perspective of climate change, albeit an optimistic one… with a deadline of course.
The Independent writes:
Current measures are proceeding at a snail’s pace “inch by inch” and are nowhere near enough to address the problem, he said.
…
He said action must be stepped up in what is left of this decade, effectively setting a deadline of 2030, less than four years from now.
He referenced this summer’s wildfires in the UK as an example of the troubling evidence that climate change is causing dangerous weather.
The problem for Prince William is that data debunks his wildfire assertions. Data from the collaborative project between NASA and the European Space Agency, Copernicus, covering the 2002 to 2023 time period demonstrate that over the past two decades there has been no trend towards worsening wildfires in the UK. (See figure below)
This summer’s wildfires burned about 23,000 ha of land in the UK, which is certainly high, but not unprecedented, and is clearly not part of a long-term trend according to this dataset. Global satellite data on wildfires likewise show that they are not becoming worse or more common, but the opposite. (See figure below)
Figure 2. Historical and Satellite data on wildfire acreage burned. Blue curve, global wildfire area burned reconstruction. Orange curve, global wildfire area burned measured by satellites. Graph plotted by Bjorn Lomborg, Ph.D.
The set of solutions that Prince William suggests to prevent supposedly dangerous climate change are nebulous, nothing specific is ever promoted in the article itself. The closest we get are those promoted by his Earthshot Prize competition, which thus far have primarily focused on environmental issues like cleaning up water resources and waste management. It is unclear what exact solutions he advocates for when it comes to, as Earthshot says, “fixing the climate,” but the Prince of Wales said his favored plans “requires people willing to fund them.”
He does deserve some credit for insisting at the same time that “competition, invention, and optimism are the best means of overcoming the multiple environmental challenges facing the world.” This is true, much better than top-down government intervention. But if, as he says, the world is moving too slowly and must “take action” to stop climate change, the solutions he has in mind almost have to be authoritarian and burdensome in nature.
Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for everyone else, the most stringent net-zero policies are also the most unpopular among even climate-concerned UK and European residents. As covered at Climate Realism three years ago, a YouGov poll showed that most Europeans believe that climate change is a problem, but few are willing to agree to changes like limiting the number of children they have or stopping consuming meat in order to reach net-zero carbon dioxide.
Meanwhile, net zero policies are preventing people from obtaining life-saving technology like air conditioning and the plentiful, reliable energy needed to power it.
Prince William is behind the curve when it comes to climate change, which seems to be collapsing as a popular cause even among true believers. He is also very misinformed, most likely by the biased media, about the history of European and global wildfire occurrences. Setting yet another deadline for climate action, like the dozens of deadlines that have gone by before with no ill consequences, will not make people believe more urgently that a climate cataclysm is in the offing or that radical changes in their lifestyles are justified.
Voluntary self-regulation by companies developing frontier artificial intelligence (AI) is “nowhere near sufficient” to address existing harms and prevent advanced autonomous AI models from circumventing human safeguards, UN human rights chief Volker Türk wrote on Monday.
“The current race towards ever more powerful AI is a step change towards greater existential risks to every aspect of our lives,” he wrote in an open letter.
The High Commissioner’s message comes six days after a former researcher at Anthropic – the company behind the chatbot Claude – resigned from his position while warning that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
…
People over profit
Mr. Türk rejected the industry argument that AI safety protections slow down innovation, arguing that nobody should be forced to give up their human rights to enable progress.
As it stands, he said the rights to life, food, privacy, health and security are all threatened by unchecked AI development.
Whether AI continues to enable disinformation and unequal automation or tackles the climate crisis and cures diseases depends on how companies and governments choose to respond to the current “watershed moment,” according to Mr. Türk.
“The generation now entering adulthood will inherit the consequences of the decisions being taken on this issue without having a say in them,” Mr. Türk wrote. “We owe it to them to ensure those decisions are made openly, with their rights in view, and with the humility that the scale of this undertaking demands.”
I have worked on AI for the last twelve years because I believe it could dramatically raise the quality of human life. I’ve written often about these incredible benefits: I believe that AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years, greatly accelerate economic growth rates, create a world of abundance and empowerment, and usher in a renaissance of democracy and freedom. I feel the urgency personally. My own father died of a disease that was cured just a few years after his death, and I myself survived an early-stage cancer that would not have been treatable even fifty years ago. Carefully wielded, AI can be the latest in a long line of technological miracles that have uplifted and ennobled humanity.
My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI. This dynamic is called recursive self-improvement, and it is starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic, as we and others have described. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.
…
I’m therefore proposing a three-step plan with the goal of pacing the frontier: building AI at a balanced rate that aims to ensure its safety while still achieving its benefits and grappling with important geopolitical dilemmas. To be clear, pacing does not mean halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third party evaluators to confirm this. Our pacing framework is an attempt to further strengthen our commitment to safety and encourage a race to the top. The first step is something Anthropic is unilaterally committing to (and calls on governments to require other frontier companies to match). The second step requires industry-wide coordination.1The third step requires global coordination. The steps do not need to be taken strictly in order, and some of them may be much harder to achieve than others, but I’ve found them to be a useful framework in thinking about what needs to be accomplished. The steps are:
Embedded Evaluators. Each frontier AI company commits to giving ongoing, employee-like access to a team of embedded third-party evaluators (such as METR), whose role is to verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes. This is the key step for verifiability of any pacing commitments, and has precedent in the banking industry, which sometimes involves regulatory “supervisors” embedded along with employees. Anthropic is unilaterally committing to this step now. We intend this to be part of a broader push to redouble efforts on our safety and alignment work.
Democratic Coordination. Frontier AI companies within democratic countries coordinate to establish common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress. Some forms of coordination that would be impactful for pacing are legally challenging, and will require government support.
Global Coordination. The US and other democratic governments attempt to coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance.
Can you imagine the compliance costs of the bureaucratic nightmare Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is proposing? The model the UN is gearing up to back?
A multi-billion dollar company with an entire floor of lawyers can afford such costs. A small startup with a good idea, not so much.
So why are AI companies so relaxed about slowing down, about “pacing”? Obviously only AI leaders know what is going through their own heads, but there is a problem with Artificial Intelligence the Anthropic CEO forgot to mention. For all their claims of progress, AI companies like Anthropic have hit a problem, a theoretical barrier. They may not have a choice about whether to slow down.
Make the AI more powerful, and it suffers out of control hallucinations – AI schizophrenia.
The AI Hallucination Paradox: The Smarter AI becomes, the More it Hallucinates
It might seem intuitive that a more intelligent, larger language model (LLM) would make fewer factual mistakes. However, recent research reveals a paradox: as AI models become more powerful, their tendency to hallucinate— i.e., produce confident but false or unfounded information — can persist and even increase in certain ways (Xu et al., 2024; Zhang et al., 2025). In other words, simply scaling up model size or training data does not straightforwardly eliminate hallucinations; in some cases, it worsens them. This paradox has critical implications: despite dramatic improvements in language fluency and reasoning, even state-of-the-art LLMs remain prone to fabricating details. In this article, we summarize two theoretical perspectives explaining why hallucinations are fundamentally unavoidable and how greater computational power can exacerbate them. We then illustrate the issue with an example of Anthropic’s advanced Claude model and discuss a proposed solution: a multi-agent architecture with a dedicated “hallucination monitor” agent to curb the spread of false outputs. We conclude by contrasting these findings with the mainstream assumption that more compute yields safer, more reliable models.
Keep the AI as is, and progress grinds to a halt, or requires crazy amounts of additional processing capacity for modest gains in capability.
There must be a way to overcome the artificial intelligence wall. Evolution solved the problem – our brains don’t experience this barrier to nearly the same extent as artificial intelligence systems.
Likely when the solution is discovered it will turn out to be really simple, an architectural principle nature stumbled across through incremental natural selection, which can easily be replicated once we know what to do.
Imagine somewhere out there is a brilliant data scientist with a novel theory of how to overcome this theoretical intelligence barrier.
If that scientist launches their own startup, all the big players, Anthropic, OpenAI and XAi, their models will be superseded junk. Their businesses will be toast.
BUT if there are massive bureaucratic hurdles and compliance costs to launching a new startup, that brilliant scientist will have no choice but to share their invention, to get a leg up from the incumbents.
As for the UN, in my opinion it’s just UN opportunism. Never let an opportunity go to waste.
President Trump’s take on the situation;
Trump Says AI Doesn’t Need More Guardrails and Calls Safety Fears a Hoax
President alleges that a conspiracy is undermining support for AI and data centers as industry leaders raise alarms about the technology’s risks
President Trump pushed back on the need for tighter federal regulations on artificial intelligence and dismissed safety concerns as a hoax that would leave the industry in financial ruin and hand China a competitive edge.
The president’s forceful messaging on AI comes as industry leaders sound increasingly urgent warnings about the need for regulation to guard against potential dangers from their own technology, while public backlash builds to the construction of the data centers needed to power it.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”
In my opinion President Trump has seen straight through the fog as he frequently does. Industry calls for AI regulation in my opinion are disguised self serving protectionism for incumbents, an attempt to create an AI industry cartel.
If adopted the kinds of heavy handed regulations being pushed would stifle US freedom to innovate.
History is being rewritten at an archaeological site in Morocco: Discovery of an ancient wall at Oued Beht.
Oued Beht and climate impacts center on how the site’s location in northwestern Morocco buffered it against broader North African aridification during the later Holocene, enabling a major Final Neolithic farming complex (c. 3400- 2900 BC) while much of the Sahara and other regions dried out.
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History is being rewritten at an archaeological site in Morocco: Discovery of an ancient wall at Oued Beht.
Researchers working at the Oued Beht site in northwestern Morocco have uncovered what they describe as the earliest known large- scale construction of a probably defensive nature in North Africa outside the Nile Valley. The multiphase ditch, rampart, and wall system dates to roughly 4,000- 3,500 years ago (equivalent to the Bronze Age in the western Mediterranean).
The structure cuts across a narrow section of the ridge between the river and a ravine, protecting the southern tip of the site (an éperon barré or barred spur). Earlier notes of earthworks and walls go back to the 1930s, but new 2023 excavations and radiocarbon dating have clarified its age and nature.
Building it required significant planning, coordination, and labor, pointing to more complex and organized societies in the Maghreb than previously assumed. It may relate to competition over land, resources, or control of movement rather than external invaders.
This builds on earlier work at the same site, which revealed a large Final Neolithic agricultural complex (around 5,400- 4,900 years ago), likely the earliest and largest of its kind in Africa outside the Nile Valley. That phase included farming (barley, wheat, livestock), craft production (thousands of polished stone axes, decorated pottery), and activity across at least 10 hectares.
The ridge saw renewed use in the medieval period (11th-13th centuries AD), with the defensive structure rebuilt, a nearby hamlet or farm, and a cemetery.
The discoveries challenge the long-held view that the later prehistory of the Maghreb was poorly understood or relatively isolated. Evidence suggests northwestern African communities were connected to wider Mediterranean networks (including southern Iberia) and participated in processes of social transformation, settlement shifts toward more defensible locations, and possibly more formalized leadership.
The findings come from a 2023 study published in Libyan Studies by researchers including Giulio Lucarini, Cyprian Broodbank, and Toby C. Wilkinson (reposted via The Conversation on phys.org, dated September 15, 2026). Ongoing work at the site continues to fill gaps in North African prehistory.
Bronze Age Maghreb trade involved exchange networks linking northwest Africa (primarily Morocco, with less evidence from Algeria and Tunisia) to the western Mediterranean, especially southern Iberia, from roughly the late 3rd millennium BC through the 2nd- early 1st millennium BC. These connections predate intensive Phoenician activity (from c. 800 BC) and challenge older views of the Maghreb as isolated or sparsely occupied before later historical periods.
Recent excavations at sites such as Oued Beht and Kach Kouch in northwest Morocco have been key to rewriting this picture. Trade appears to have been bidirectional, involving raw materials, finished goods, pottery styles, technologies, and possibly livestock or people, facilitated by the short crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar and coastal/maritime routes.
Key Evidence and Goods
African ivory and ostrich eggshell: A major export from the Maghreb to Iberia. North African elephant ivory use intensified in the Maghreb from around 4000 BC (linked to Saharan population movements and the end of the African Humid Period). Exchange networks with the Iberian Peninsula remained active at least until the end of the Early Bronze Age. Ostrich eggshell also appears in Iberian Copper Age and Bronze Age contexts. These materials indicate Maghreb communities supplied high-value exotic goods that supported social differentiation on both sides.
Pottery and material culture parallels: Painted pottery traditions at Oued Beht (Final Neolithic, c. 3400-2900 BC, with later activity) show similarities to southern Iberian styles. Bell Beaker- related ceramics (including Maritime styles) and other forms appear in Moroccan sites such as Kehf el Baroud. At Kach Kouch, handmade pottery includes forms with clear Iberian resemblances, pointing to shared stylistic and possibly technological exchange.
Metals: Local metallurgy evidence is limited in the Maghreb during much of the Bronze Age. A tin- bronze fragment from Kach Kouch (radiocarbon-dated c. 1110- 920 BC, with ~9.4% tin) is among the earliest known in North Africa west of Egypt; its chemical signature raises the possibility of imported tin (potentially European) or finished metal, as no clear local production infrastructure has been identified at the site. Other metal objects include copper items and later iron. Flat axes resembling Early Argaric (southern Iberian) types further suggest exchange. Iberia itself had copper and tin resources that fed broader Mediterranean networks.
Other indicators: Possible African cattle genetic influence (mtDNA haplotype T1) in Iberian Bronze Age remains supports livestock or population movement. Modeling of least- cost paths for ivory transport highlight a strong southwestern Iberia- Morocco corridor and additional links along Mediterranean North African shores. Defensive architecture at Oued Beht (c. 4,000- 3,500 years ago) and settlement shifts may reflect intensifying competition or control over resources and routes amid these interactions.
Major Sites
Oued Beht (Khémisset Province, Morocco): Large Final Neolithic agricultural complex (c. 3400- 2900 BC; earliest and largest of its kind in Africa outside the Nile Valley) with later Bronze Age activity, including the earliest confirmed large- scale (likely defensive) wall/ditch/rampart system in North Africa outside Egypt. It functioned as a production hub (polished stone axes, pottery) with clear western Mediterranean ties.
Kach Kouch (near Oued Laou, northwest Morocco): Earliest known Bronze Age settlement in the Maghreb (outside Egypt). Occupation phases include sparse early evidence (c. 2200- 2000 BC, contemporary with the Iberian Copper/Bronze transition), a stable farming village (c. 1300- 900 BC) with wattle- and- daub houses, silos, and mixed agriculture/livestock, and a later phase (c. 800- 600 BC) showing local continuity alongside Phoenician- influenced innovations (wheel-thrown pottery, iron, hybrid architecture). Pottery and the early bronze object highlight pre- Phoenician Mediterranean links.
Nature and Scale of Networks
Exchange was likely community-based or small-scale rather than highly centralized long- distance commerce of the later eastern Mediterranean type. The Maghreb participated in processes paralleling those in southern Iberia (e.g., Argaric societies with fortified hilltop settlements, metallurgy, and hierarchies, c. 2200-1550 BC). Connections extended into Atlantic and broader western Mediterranean circuits involving metals, amber, and other goods, though Maghreb evidence remains sparser due to historically limited research.
By the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age transition, networks intensified, setting the stage for Phoenician integration without simple replacement of local communities. Overall, these findings show northwest Africa as an active agent in western Mediterranean dynamics rather than a peripheral zone. Ongoing excavations continue to refine the picture, with many gaps remaining especially outside Morocco.
Neolithic agriculture in the Sahara developed within the context of the African Humid Period (roughly 14,800- 5,500 years ago, or ~12,800- 3,500 BCE), when the region was a “Green Sahara” of grasslands, savannas, lakes, and rivers supporting diverse flora, fauna, and human populations. Unlike the Near Eastern Neolithic model of sedentary village farming with domesticated cereals and animals, the Saharan pathway emphasized mobile pastoralism combined with intensive gathering and limited cultivation of wild plants, with full plant domestication emerging later and mainly along the southern margins (Sahel).
The Green Sahara enabled early Holocenehunter- gatherer- fisher communities (with pottery appearing by ~8,000- 7,000 BCE in places) to expand widely. A mid- Holocene arid event (~8.2 ka) and progressive drying after ~5,500- 5,000 years ago drove adaptations: increased mobility, reliance on livestock, and eventual southward migrations into the Sahel as the desert expanded. Pastoralism may even have temporarily delayed full desertification in some models by altering vegetation and fire regimes.
Domestic cattle, sheep, and goats appeared by the early to mid- 7th millennium BP (around 6,000- 5,000 BCE or earlier in some eastern/central sites).
Early evidence comes from the Tadrart Acacus (Libya; Takarkori and Uan Muhuggiag, ~8,300- 8,000 cal BP), Nabta Playa (Egypt), and other central/eastern sites.
Dairying is chemically confirmed by the 5th millennium BCE in the central Sahara (lipid residues on pottery).
A distinctive “cattle cult” is visible in rock art, cattle burials/tumuli, and ceremonial sites.
This multi- resource pastoralism (herding plus hunting, fishing, and plant gathering) became the dominant strategy across much of the Sahara by the mid- Holocene, contrasting with Near Eastern sedentary farming. Populations peaked with pastoral expansion before collapsing with aridification.
True domesticated cereal agriculture was not central to most Saharan Neolithic economies. Wild grasses (sorghum, millets such as Pennisetum, Panicum, Echinochloa, Brachiaria, etc.) were intensively gathered and processed (evidenced by abundant grinding stones and pottery).
Key findings include:
Wild cereal use and possible pre- domestication cultivation: At Nabta Playa (Egyptian Western Desert), carbonized wild sorghum and millets date to ~8,000 BP. At Takarkori rockshelter (Acacus, Libya), long sequences show gathering of wild sorghum and millets from the Early Holocene, with morphological changes suggesting cultivation without full domestication over millennia (especially after ~4,800 BCE for some small millets). Hundreds of thousands of wild cereal seeds indicate managed stands selected for “weediness” traits useful in fluctuating environments.
Domestication of African crops: Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum / Cenchrus americanus) shows a western Sahara/Sahel origin, with domestication processes underway by the 5th- 4th millennium BCE in northern Mali/Mauritania areas and fully domesticated forms spreading by the 3rd- 2nd millennium BCE. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) domestication evidence appears in eastern Sudan (Butana Group pottery impressions, 4th millennium BCE), with wild exploitation earlier across the Sahara and Sahel. These were suited to mobile pastoralists due to low water needs.
Near Eastern cereals: Emmer wheat and barley (of Southwest Asian origin) appear earlier than previously thought in Nubian/Sudanese Neolithic contexts (~7,000 years ago at sites like R12 and Ghaba cemeteries via phytoliths and dental calculus starch), and in the Fayum/Merimde by ~5,000 BCE, but these are more tied to Nile Valley developments than core Saharan ones.
Near Eastern cereals: Emmer wheat and barley (of Southwest Asian origin) appear earlier than previously thought in Nubian/Sudanese Neolithic contexts (~7,000 years ago at sites like R12 and Ghaba cemeteries via phytoliths and dental calculus starch), and in the Fayum/Merimde by ~5,000 BCE, but these are more tied to Nile Valley developments than core Saharan ones.
Other early plant evidence includes possible early watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) domestication signals in the Acacus (~5,500 BP).
Key Sites
Nabta Playa (Egypt): Multi- phase settlements with hearths, dwellings, cattle remain, wild sorghum/millets, pottery, and later megalithic structures (including a possible calendar circle) and cattle cult features. Early herding from ~8,700- 7,800 BCE phases.
Tadrart Acacus / Takarkori (Libya): Exceptional organic preservation showing long- term wild cereal management alongside early pastoralism and dairying.
Gobero, Adrar Bous, Ténéré (Niger/central Sahara): Burial grounds and pastoral sites reflecting population dynamics and livestock introduction.
Southern margins (e.g., Tilemsi Valley, Mali; Tichitt tradition, Mauritania; Gajiganna, Chad Basin): Where domesticated millet agriculture became established as pastoralists moved south with aridification (from ~3rd- 2nd millennium BCE).
Broader Implications and Transition
The Saharan Neolithic represents an independent African trajectory: pottery- using foragers becoming mobile pastoralists who managed wild plants, rather than a direct shift to village farming.
As the Sahara dried (~5,000- 3,000 BCE), groups migrated southward, contributing livestock, knowledge, and eventually cereal farming to Sahelian and sub- Saharan societies. Oasis agriculture (with techniques like foggaras) developed much later (e.g., Garamantian period, ~1st millennium BCE- AD).
Research continues to refine timelines through archaeobotany, lipid analysis, genetics, and modeling, highlighting human resilience and the role of climate in shaping African food production systems.
The Maghreb’s later Neolithic farming complexes (e.g., Oued Beht) partly reflect interactions and population movements linked to these Saharan dynamics.
Oued Beht and climate impacts center on how the site’s location in northwestern Morocco buffered it against broader North African aridification during the later Holocene, enabling a major Final Neolithic farming complex (c. 3400- 2900 BC) while much of the Sahara and other regions dried out.
Oued Beht sits on a limestone- marl- conglomerate ridge (170- 210 m above sea level) on the Zemmour plateau, overlooking the perennial Oued Beht river (which flows year- round from the Middle Atlas).
The area today is a semi- arid Mediterranean bioclimatic zone, with average annual rainfall around 481 mm near Khémisset (mostly in winter months) and marked inter-annual variability. It is currently used for cereal farming.
The northwest Maghreb’s position, between Atlantic and Mediterranean weather systems and near the Atlas range, provided more reliable moisture than interior North Africa.
This significantly moderated the aridification that intensified across much of northern Africa from the fourth millennium BC onward (linked to the end of the African Humid Period / Green Sahara). As a result, the region remained viable for agriculture when many Saharan and Sahelian areas saw population declines, increased mobility, or abandonment.
Excavations show a farming community with domesticated barley (notably naked barley), wheat, and peas, plus wild olive and pistachio (xerophytic species adapted to drier conditions). Livestock were kept, and there is evidence of plant processing (grinding stones) and storage (numerous deep pits/silos). Wild plant exploitation and a perennial river water source further supported the economy.
Geoarchaeological observations include:
Soil profiles with carbonate accumulation and translocation (from evaporation, root activity, and wetting and drying cycles).
Pits left open and episodically infilled by natural processes, such as after heavy rains (sharp boundaries, clay coatings, planar voids).
Ridge edges prone to rain- induced erosion, with colluvium and evidence of landscape stability alternating with erosion episodes.
These features indicate a climate with seasonal rainfall variability and occasional intense rains, consistent with a Mediterranean regime that supported intensive agriculture without requiring the more extreme adaptations seen farther south or east.
During the main Final Neolithic phase, activity focused on the larger, more open northern part of the ridge. By the early- to- mid second millennium BC (Bronze Age), focus shifted to the narrower, more defensible southern ridge, marked by the construction of a multiphase ditch, rampart, and wall system (the earliest confirmed large- scale defensive architecture of this type in North Africa outside the Nile Valley). This may reflect social changes, resource competition, or responses to environmental and social pressures, though direct climate causation is not established.
Regionally, Moroccan Neolithic sequences show climate influences: arid signals around 6.3 ka cal BP and the 4.2 ka event are linked to shifts in mobility, Saharan population movements toward more favorable rims (including the Maghreb), and changes in settlement patterns. Oued Beht’s success during the Final Neolithic highlights local climatic advantages that allowed continuity and complexity when broader aridification was underway.
Oued Beht, North Africa, and the 4.2-kiloyear event
The 4.2- kiloyear event (also called the 4.2 ka BP event) was a major Holocene climate episode of widespread aridification and cooling that began around 2200 BCE (approximately 4,200 years ago) and lasted roughly a century or more (often spanning the 22nd century BCE).
It is one of the most severe climate disruptions of the Holocene and marks the formal start of the Meghalayan stage. Proxy records (lake sediments, speleothems, pollen, marine cores, and dust fluxes) show intensified drought across much of North Africa, the Middle East, the Red Sea, the Arabian Peninsula, and parts of South Asia, with associated societal stresses.
In North Africa the event is generally recorded as a phase of increased aridity:
Reduced monsoon strength and enhanced evaporation.
Lower Nile floods in Egypt (around 2150 BCE), which contributed to famine, social disorder, and the collapse of the Old Kingdom.
Dry signals in Morocco (e.g., Tigalmamine in the Middle Atlas) and Algeria.
Broader evidence of hydrological instability, dust deposition, and vegetation shifts.
The expression was regionally variable.
The expression was regionally variable. Some northwestern sites show cooler/more humid intervals or complex “W-shaped” patterns rather than uniform megadrought, influenced by Saharan dynamics and Mediterranean westerlies.
Overall, the event accelerated the long- term drying trend that followed the end of the African Humid Period.
Oued Beht’s main occupation phases do not coincide directly with the peak of the 4.2 ka event, but the site’s chronology and regional context are relevant:
Final Neolithic phase (c. 3400–2900 BC / roughly 5,400–4,900 years ago): This is the major farming complex (earliest and largest agricultural site known in Africa outside the Nile Valley). It clearly predates the 4.2 ka event. The northwest Maghreb’s position, between Atlantic and Mediterranean weather systems and near the Atlas Mountains, provided more reliable rainfall and buffered the region against the progressive aridification that affected much of northern Africa from the fourth millennium BC onward. This climatic advantage helped sustain intensive cereal agriculture (barley, wheat, peas) and livestock herding at the site.
Bronze Age phase (defensive wall, ditch, and rampart system dated to roughly 4,000- 3,500 years ago / early-to-mid second millennium BC): This overlaps with or immediately follows the 4.2 ka event. Activity shifted from the open northern ridge to the more defensible southern tip, accompanied by the earliest confirmed large- scale defensive architecture of this type in North Africa outside Egypt. Researchers interpret the constructions as responses to increasing competition over land, resources, or movement corridors rather than external invasion. While publications on Oued Beht do not explicitly attribute the shift to the 4.2 ka event, the timing aligns with broader Mediterranean social transformations (e.g., the rise of fortified Argaric settlements in southern Iberia, c. 2200- 1550 BC) and the climatic stresses of the period.
In short, Oued Beht illustrates resilience in a relatively protected Maghreb microenvironment during the broader aridification of North Africa.
The Final Neolithic farming hub thrived before the 4.2 ka peak, while the later defensive architecture appears during the climatic and social upheavals of the early second millennium BC.
Ongoing research at the site and regional paleoclimate proxies continue to refine these connections.
Noel Cass:
I am a researcher focussing on the social and political aspects of energy systems and everyday life. I have researched areas including environmental audits of organisations, tourism and travel, everyday life and travel practices, public engagement with renewable energy technologies, the ethical implications of nuclear power and options for radioactive waste management, the social exclusion implications of transport policies on congestion and climate change, climate change policy in local authorities in the UK, the energy demands of the built environment, later focussing on office building designs, and the implications of changing office work practices.
I am a researcher focussing on the social and political aspects of energy systems and everyday life. I have researched areas including environmental audits of organisations, tourism and travel, everyday life and travel practices, public engagement with renewable energy technologies, the ethical implications of nuclear power and options for radioactive waste management, the social exclusion implications of transport policies on congestion and climate change, climate change policy in local authorities in the UK, the energy demands of the built environment, later focussing on office building designs, and the implications of changing office work practices.
Bradley/Cass Exchange
Does Noel Cass question climate alarm and/or UK energy policies that drive up rates while having no effect on global climate? No! Our exchange follows:
Cass: So, when the Montreal Convention stopped ozone destruction, does that make it a ‘scam’ to point out that coordinated international cooperation and environmental protection legislation averted catasrophe? If we hadn’t started to rein in emissions from the 90s, things would be a lot worse now. And incidentally, the positive feedback loops we are still facing will likely make climate change runaway and catastrophic anyway.
Bradley: Your analogy fails because CO2 is not a pollutant (criteria pollutants are) and climate mitigation policies are futile, wasteful, and do not affect global or local climate change. Adaptation with energy affordability and reliability is the imperative.
Cass: No, it applies, because climate change also needs coordinated international legislation to ban chemicals from the atmosphere. Mitigation is essential, if we continue fucking the planet up then adaptation will simply get more expensive and imposible. You turn off the taps before mopping the floor. All mitigation policies and behaviour changes and demand reduction strategies – EVERY SINGLE ONE – saves GhGs and reduces how fucked our children, grandchildren and descendents’ lives are, or if they can even exist. Your institute sounds like a waste of energy and oxygen.
Bradley: No, CO2 is not a pollutant. Climate model scenarios showing harm are not demonstrative because such models are causality-deficient and not testable. CO2 Science is real science–and indicative to CO2 being a positive externality.
Bradley: Also note the abject failure to regulate CO2 versus the results of the Montreal Convention. Hint, hint….
Bradley: Also, control your anger and emotions. Stop being vulgar. You sound like Betsy Rosenburg, who I criticize here.
Humility, Please
After my replies, Cass added a ‘funny’ motif without a substantive response. His disappearance is par for many alarmists who cannot refute the criticism and rest on confirmation bias of the intellectual elite and political class. He knows he is right and that the rest of us are wrong and driven by bad intentions. Wrong. His life work is, arguably, misdirected. And if he were to question the governmental energy paradigm, he would probably lose his job. He is emotionally committed, as shown by his vulgarities.
A comment by David Jordan put his own critic (and others like Cass above) on notice.
Your rhetoric is amusing to the majority of people who are astounded at the ego trips of the climate change sector. Just because you believe your cause is just – does not mean that your opinion is superior to everyone else. Climate science is a grouping – not a specialist science and climate scientists are not the Kings and Queens of science. You might all want to learn some humility instead of lording over everyone. Science is a contest of ideas and if climate scientists cannot take the heat – stay out of the kitchen.
What a shame that the UK is ruining its economy and exploiting its citizens for the symbolism of Net Zero. It is (past) time for the victims to stand up to the elites. The emperor has no clothes.
Scientists, including Keele University’s Emeritus Professor Peter Styles, have digitized and reanalyzed forgotten high- resolution aeromagnetic survey data from the late 1960s over the Afar region of Ethiopia, integrating it with other “vintage” magnetic data from the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
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Scientists, including Keele University’s Emeritus Professor Peter Styles, have digitized and reanalyzed forgotten high- resolution aeromagnetic survey data from the late 1960s (around 1968/69) over the Afar region of Ethiopia (and what is now Eritrea), integrating it with other “vintage” magnetic data from the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
The original survey, flown by Hunting Geology and Geophysics Ltd under the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in one of Earth’s most inhospitable climates, produced data that was largely overlooked after the 1970s.
The team (P.G. Purcell, R. De Ritis, and P. Styles) processed it with modern methods to create Total Magnetic Intensity and First Vertical Derivative maps.
The Afar region is a classic site for studying the early stages of continental breakup (rifting), where the African, Arabian, and Somali plates meet in a triple junction near the East African Rift, Red Sea, and Gulf of Aden. As basaltic rocks form and cool during seafloor spreading, they record Earth’s magnetic field polarity reversals as linear “stripes” (like barcodes or tree rings). A standard triple- junction model would predict a triangular pattern of these magnetic lineations radiating from the Afar Depression.
Instead, the reanalyzed data show magnetic anomalies trending roughly east-west in southern Afar (continuing the Gulf of Aden trend into the continent and nearly perpendicular to the younger NNE-trending Wonji Fault Belt of the Ethiopian Rift). North of the Tendaho- Goba’Ad discontinuity, anomalies trend approximately NW/SE (deviating ~30° from the Red Sea axis). There are little or no clear signature matching expectations for simultaneous, equal-rate rifting along all three arms of the East African Rift.
The researchers interpret the dominant magnetic signature as evidence of earlier (possibly Miocene) continental rifting as Africa and Arabia separated along a primary fracture following the Gulf of Aden- Red Sea path, later overprinted by younger magmatism and faulting. Cross- rift magnetic anomalies also appear in the East African Rift and Red Sea, though their origins remain unclear.
Professor Styles noted: “These findings give a unique perspective on how our planet is constantly changing and shifting right beneath our feet. It’s also a great example of the benefits of looking at all of the available data, even historical data, when testing new models and theories. Models come and go, but well- measured data lasts forever.”
The paper concludes that the 1968 Afar Survey data has been “resurrected from an undeserved obscurity” and can now contribute to studies of this complex region.
This work highlights the value of revisiting historical geophysical datasets with modern tools to refine models of how continents stretch, thin, and eventually form new ocean basins, processes ongoing today in East Africa and the Red Sea region.
The old data from the Afar region has been digitised and integrated it with additional “vintage” magnetic data from the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden regions. Credit: Keele University
Miocene rifting mechanisms in the Afar- Red Sea- Gulf of Aden region (roughly 23- 5 Ma) represent a critical phase in the transition from continental extension to seafloor spreading as Arabia separated from Africa. This period followed the Oligocene impingement of the Afar mantle plume (~30- 31 Ma) and the associated Ethiopian-Yemen flood basalt province. It is highly relevant to the 1968 Afar magnetic survey reinterpretation, which suggests that the prominent east- west magnetic anomalies in southern Afar may record earlier Miocene magmatic rifting aligned with the Gulf of Aden trend (later overprinted by younger structures).
Timing overview
Gulf of Aden: Rifting began in the early- mid Oligocene (~35- 30 Ma) in the east/central parts; climax of continental rifting ~20- 18 Ma; seafloor spreading initiated ~21- 17 Ma in the east and propagated westward.
Red Sea: Continental rifting initiated ~27- 23 Ma (late Oligocene- early Miocene) along much of its length, often linked to a major dike event ~24- 22 Ma. Significant Miocene extension occurred with limited early volcanism in places; seafloor spreading began later (~13 Ma or younger in the central/southern parts).
Afar and northern Main Ethiopian Rift (MER): Extension in Afar started ~29- 25 Ma shortly after the traps. A major reorganization occurred ~13- 8 Ma, with northward propagation of Afar rifting, rotation of the Danakil Block, and development of the triple junction configuration. The northern MER formed around ~11 Ma.
Geological events were strongly diachronous across the region.
Rifting mechanisms are debated and often involve a combination of processes rather than pure end-members. Common frameworks include:
Active vs. passive rifting
Active (plume-driven): The Afar plume causes uplift, lithospheric thinning, and decompression melting, driving extension. Evidence includes the spatial association with flood basalts and long-lived dynamic topography. However, pure active models struggle to explain the diachronous onset of rifting arms (Gulf of Aden earlier than Red Sea/MER) and the fact that oceanic spreading often initiated far from the plume center.
Passive (far-field driven): Extension results from plate- boundary forces, primarily slab pull from Neotethys subduction beneath Eurasia to the north, or changes in plate motion after collision locking in the Mediterranean region ~25 Ma. This better explains the relatively low volume of rift- related volcanism during the main Miocene phase in parts of the Red Sea/Gulf of Suez.
Hybrid models: Many researchers favor combinations. One recent proposal is plume- induced plate rotation: the Afar plume head generates horizontal asthenospheric flow and a “push” force that promotes rotation of the Arabian plate around a nearby pole, facilitating rifting along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. This integrates active and passive elements and accounts for progressive development of the system.
Modes of lithospheric extension
Pure shear (symmetric stretching): Uniform thinning of the lithosphere (classic McKenzie model). Common in earlier or less magmatic stages and parts of the southern MER.
Simple shear (asymmetric, detachment faults): Large- scale low- angle faults lead to asymmetric margins. Suggested for some Western Afar Margin structures and possibly parts of central Afar during later stages.
Magma- assisted/magma- controlled rifting: Magma intrusion and underplating accommodate much of the extension, weaken the lithosphere, and allow strain localization into narrow magmatic segments. This is dominant in magma- rich settings like central Afar and the modern northern MER. During the Miocene in the southern Red Sea/Afar, extension and volcanism migrated inland from border faults into narrow zones of intrusion, similar to present-day axial magmatic segments. Magma-compensated thinning can maintain relatively thick crust despite significant extension. flore.unifi.it
Strain localization and propagation Early Miocene extension was often distributed (“wide rift” style in central Afar during the Mio-Pliocene). Over time, strain localized into narrower zones. Rifts propagated (e.g., Gulf of Aden westward toward Afar; Afar northward as a relay with the Red Sea). Pre- existing structures (Precambrian fabrics, earlier faults) strongly influenced geometry. The Danakil Block began independent rotation in the mid- to- late Miocene, contributing to the complex triple- junction
Role of magmatism Miocene magmatism in Afar included dykes, plutons, and volcanic series (e.g., Mabla, Dahla). In southern Afar, linear magnetic anomalies (high- amplitude, E- W trending) may reflect intrusive bodies or early oceanic/transitional crust formed during this phase of Gulf of Aden, aligned rifting. Magmatism helped accommodate extension early, with a later shift toward more mechanical stretching or focused extrusive activity in some models. Cross- rift magnetic anomalies elsewhere in the system remain enigmatic.
The 1968 survey data show E- W magnetic lineations in southern Afar that continue the Gulf of Aden trend and sit nearly perpendicular to younger NNE- trending Ethiopian Rift faults (e.g., Wonji Fault Belt).
This supports the interpretation of an earlier Miocene magmatic rifting episode aligned with the Gulf of Aden, subsequently obscured by Plio-Pleistocene faulting and volcanism. Good correlation between magnetic anomalies and structures near the Gulf of Tadjura (Djibouti) contrasts with the mismatch farther west, highlighting the complex, multiphase history.
Miocene processes in this region illustrate how continental breakup can involve sequential phases of distributed then localized extension, strong magmatic influence in plume-affected areas, and reorganization driven by plate rotations and propagating rifts.
Analog and numerical models emphasize the roles of rotational extension, pre- existing weaknesses, and varying degrees of magmatism in producing the observed geometries. The system ultimately transitioned toward focused seafloor spreading, providing a natural laboratory for the early stages of ocean basin formation.
Ongoing research continues to refine these models using geophysics, geochronology, and structural data. The “resurrected” magnetic datasets add valuable constraints on the subsurface architecture of these early rifting phases.
A review of the 1968 Afar Magnetic Survey data and integration with vintage Red Sea and Gulf of Aden data
Miocene rifting mechanisms in the Afar- Red Sea- Gulf of Aden region (roughly 23- 5 Ma) represent a critical phase in the transition from continental extension to seafloor spreading as Arabia separated from Africa.
This period followed the Oligocene impingement of the Afar mantle plume (~30- 31 Ma) and the associated Ethiopian-Yemen flood basalt province. It is highly relevant to the 1968 Afar magnetic survey reinterpretation, which suggests that the prominent east–west magnetic anomalies in southern Afar may record earlier Miocene magmatic rifting aligned with the Gulf of Aden trend (later overprinted by younger structures).
Highlights
Vintage magnetic data in Afar show variable correlations with rift structure.
Integrated regional magnetic data provide insight into tectonic framework.
Magnetic anomalies align with some rift structures near the Gulf of Tadjura.
Magnetic anomalies in southern Afar are perpendicular to rift faulting.
Southern Afar magnetic anomalies might relate to Miocene rifting.
An extensive aeromagnetic survey of the Afar region of Ethiopia (and present- day Eritrea) was flown in 1968 to study this key site of embryonic continental breakup. The data received little attention after the 1970s.
The authors digitized and processed it, then integrated it with vintage magnetic data from the adjacent Red Sea and western Gulf of Aden. They produced Total Magnetic Intensity (TMI) and First Vertical Derivative (FVD) maps.
Key observations:
In southern Afar, magnetic anomalies trend roughly east- west, nearly perpendicular to the NNE-trending Plio- Pleistocene Wonji Fault Belt of the Ethiopian Rift and continue the Gulf of Aden trend into the African continent.
This contrasts with the fair- to-good correlation between magnetic anomalies and rift structures in the hinterland of the Gulf of Tadjura (Djibouti area).
North of the Tendaho- Goba’Ad discontinuity, anomalies trend approximately NW- SE, offset by ~30° from the Red Sea axial spreading trend (as seen onshore in the Erta Ale magmatic complex).
The authors suggest the enigmatic east- west magnetic trends in southern Afar may record earlier (Miocene) magmatic rifting aligned with the Gulf of Aden, later obscured by younger magmatism and faulting. Cross- rift magnetic anomalies also occur in the East African Rift and Red Sea; their origin remains unclear.
They conclude that the 1968 Afar Survey data has been “resurrected from an undeserved obscurity” and can again contribute to understanding this complex region.
The Afar Triangle, Red Sea, and Gulf of Aden form a classic plate-tectonic triple- junction setting. Early models treated much of Afar as oceanic or “pseudo- oceanic” crust.
The 1968 survey (flown by Hunting Geology and Geophysics Ltd under the University of Newcastle upon Tyne as part of the Upper Mantle Project) revealed long (often >100 km), high-amplitude (up to ~1000 nT) linear magnetic anomalies trending roughly east- west in southern and central Afar, similar to those in the western Gulf of Aden.
Contemporary workers (e.g., Girdler, Barberi & Varet) interpreted these as evidence of oceanic spreading or mini- spreading centres. Later analysis by Mohr (1976) highlighted the lack of consistent alignment between magnetic anomalies and surface rift structures, especially the near- perpendicular relationship in southern Afar, and suggested a possible earlier rifting episode.
The present study:
Digitized the original 1:500,000- scale TMI contour maps.
Compared the Afar data with overlapping modern/higher- resolution surveys (Djibouti and Adigala) to validate navigation accuracy and anomaly trends (good correspondence was found).
Upward- continued and merged selected public- domain vintage marine data from the Gulf of Aden (Whitmarsh, 1969) and Red Sea (Hall & Andreasen, 1977) to the Afar survey elevation (~1830 m).
Incorporated higher-level Yemen data for regional context but did not fully merge it.
The primary aims were to evaluate the quality and reliability of the 1968 data, compare the magnetic patterns with surface tectonic features, and briefly consider implications for regional tectonic history.
The work demonstrates the enduring value of carefully collected historical geophysical datasets. When reprocessed with modern techniques and integrated with neighbouring data, the 1968 Afar survey provides new constraints on the timing, geometry, and evolution of continental rifting and the transition toward seafloor spreading in one of Earth’s best natural laboratories for these processes.
Title: A review of the 1968 Afar Magnetic Survey data and integration with vintage Red Sea and Gulf of Aden data
Published: Journal of African Earth Sciences, Volume 233, January 2026, Article 105881
An extensive aeromagnetic survey of the Afar region of Ethiopia and (now) Eritrea was conducted in 1968 to investigate this complex tectonic province, long seen as a site of embryonic continental break-up. This vintage magnetic data, which has received little attention since the 1970s, has been digitized, processed, and integrated with vintage data from the adjacent Red Sea and western Gulf of Aden to produce Total Magnetic Intensity and First Vertical Derivative maps for the region. In southern Afar, the magnetic anomalies trend approximately east/west, almost perpendicular to the NNE-trending Plio-Pleistocene Wonji Fault Belt of the Ethiopia Rift segment, continuing the Gulf of Aden trend into the African continent. This is sharp contract with the fair to good correlation of magnetic anomaly and rift structures in the hinterland of the Gulf of Tadjura. North of the Tendaho-Goba’Ad discontinuity, the magnetic anomalies trend approximately NW/SE, deviating approximately 30o from the Red Sea axial spreading trend, as manifest onshore in the Erta Ale magmatic complex. The enigmatic near east-west trend of the magnetic anomalies in southern Afar may be related to Miocene magmatic rifting aligned with the Gulf of Aden but now obscured by younger magmatism and rifting. Cross-rift trending magnetic anomalies are also present in the East African Rift and the Red Sea, but their origin is not clear. With this publication, the magnetic data from the 1968 Afar Survey has been resurrected from an undeserved obscurity and can now begin to contribute anew to the study of this complex and fascinating region.
A peer- reviewed paper published in Nature on 19 August 2026 reports that the Antarctic Ice Sheet gained approximately 695 billion tonnes (Gt) of mass over a roughly 22-month period spanning 2021- 2023.
This was the largest mass gain of comparable length in the GRACE/GRACE-FO satellite gravimetry record, which began in 2002/2003.
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A peer- reviewed paper published in Nature on 19 August 2026 (led by researchers including Yunhe Wang from the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with international collaborators) reports that the Antarctic Ice Sheet gained approximately 695 billion tonnes (Gt) of mass over a roughly 22-month period spanning 2021- 2023. This was the largest mass gain of comparable length in the GRACE/GRACE-FO satellite gravimetry record, which began in 2002/2003.
The gain was concentrated in East Antarctica, especially Queen Mary Land and Wilkes Land (roughly 470 Gt, or ~68% of the total). It resulted from exceptionally heavy snowfall, driven by anomalous moisture transport (including atmospheric rivers) from the mid- latitude Indian Ocean.
Sustained warming of about 0.5°C in the tropical warm pool (western Pacific and eastern Indian Oceans) altered atmospheric circulation via Rossby wave trains. This created pressure patterns that funneled more moisture southward. The event was largely natural variability (anthropogenic climate change explained only ~9% of the snowfall anomaly).
Between 2003 and 2024, Antarctica lost ice at an average rate of ~140.5 Gt per year.
West Antarctica continued losing mass during the gain period (due to ocean- driven melting of ice shelves and accelerated glacier flow). The 2021- 2023 episode temporarily offset losses and even produced a near-zero or slightly positive overall balance for parts of 2021- 2024 in some analyses, but it does not reverse the multi- decade decline.
Earlier related work had already noted strong mass gains in 2021- 2022 (on the order of ~130 Gt/year) from anomalous precipitation; the 2026 study extended and attributed the larger multi- year signal.
Subsequent data (into 2024- 2025) indicate the anomalous accumulation period has largely ended, with mass balance turning negative again in more recent years.
In short, the headline figure is correct and reflects a real, well- documented temporary anomaly driven by tropical– polar teleconnections and heavy snowfall, not a reversal of Antarctica’s overall ice- loss trend under ongoing climate warming.
GRACE and GRACE- FO are a pair of NASA/German satellite missions that measure changes in Earth’s gravity field to track how mass (especially water and ice) moves around the planet.
Quick Overview
Mission
Full Name
Operational Period
Key Feature
GRACE
Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
March 2002- October 2017
First mission of its kind
GRACE- FO
GRACE Follow- On
May 2018- present
Continues the record and laser instrument
Two identical satellites fly in the same polar orbit, about 220 km (137 miles) apart, one behind the other, at roughly 490 km altitude.
Areas of higher mass (more ice, water, rock, etc.) pull the lead satellite slightly ahead.
The trailing satellite is pulled forward a few moments later.
Extremely precise ranging instruments measure these tiny changes in distance (down to a few micrometers with microwaves, and even nanometers with the laser on GRACE- FO).
By combining these distance measurements with GPS positioning and accelerometer data (to remove non-gravitational forces), scientists produce monthly maps of Earth’s gravity field. Changes in gravity are then converted into mass changes.
These are the primary tools used to measure ice- sheet mass balance.
In the 2026 Nature study we’ve been discussing, GRACE/GRACE- FO data showed:
Long- term Antarctic mass loss of ~140.5 Gt per year (2003- 2024)
The record 695 Gt gain between July 2021 and April 2023
They “weigh” the entire ice sheet from space without needing to land on it, capturing both snowfall gains and dynamic ice losses.
Bottom line: GRACE and GRACE- FO act like a planetary scale that continuously tracks where mass is being gained or lost on Earth, especially critical for understanding ice sheets and sea- level rise.
Multiyear tropical warm pool warming drives slowdown in Antarctic mass loss
Between 2021 and 2023 the Antarctic Ice Sheet gained ~695 billion tons of mass, the largest such gain recorded by the GRACE satellites.
The long- term trend (2003- 2024) remains a loss of ~140.5 billion tons per year.
The temporary gain was concentrated in East Antarctica (especially Queen Mary Land- Wilkes Land) and was caused by unusually heavy snowfall.
The driver was sustained warming in the tropical warm pool (western Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean). This triggered a Rossby- wave train that created a north- south pressure dipole (low south of Australia, high over East Antarctica), which steered extra moisture from the mid- latitude Indian Ocean onto the continent via atmospheric rivers.
Anthropogenic global- warming effects accounted for only ~9 % of the extra snowfall; the event was mainly natural variability.
Similar multiyear tropical- warm- pool warmings occur roughly once per decade.
The gain did not reverse the overall long- term ice loss, and West Antarctica continued to lose mass.
The authors demonstrate that the gain was driven by a recurrent atmospheric teleconnection from unusually persistent warming in the tropical warm pool (western Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean) during 2021- 2023.
This warming excited a poleward-propagating Rossby- wave train that produced a high-pressure anomaly over East Antarctica. The resulting circulation enhanced moisture transport (primarily from the mid-latitude Indian Ocean) and atmospheric- river activity onto Queen Mary Land and Wilkes Land, producing the extreme snowfall.
Model experiments and observations show that anthropogenic global- warming effects (poleward storm-track shift and Clausius- Clapeyron moistening) accounted for only ~9 % of the observed precipitation anomaly. Similar multiyear tropical- warm- pool warming events recur roughly once per decade and are distinct from the forced response to greenhouse- gas warming.
Conclusion of the paper: The 2021- 2023 mass gain is therefore probably temporary and does not yet represent a sustained, global- warming- driven moistening of Antarctica. West Antarctic losses continued throughout the period.
The article is a clear, faithful distillation of the scientific paper’s main conclusions and includes a direct quote from first author Yunhe Wang. It does not over- claim that the ice gain signals a reversal of climate-driven ice loss. It was a real, record- breaking but temporary snowfall- driven mass gain linked to tropical ocean conditions.
Title: “Antarctica Gained a Record 695 Billion Tons of Ice in Just Two Years”
Antarctic mass loss has been a major contributor to global sea-level rise for most of the last few decades, mainly driven by West Antarctica1. During 2021–2023, however, a sharp increase in surface mass balance over Queen Mary Land and Wilkes Land in East Antarctica offset West Antarctic loss and slowed the rate of total ice mass loss2,3. Although this slowdown is consistent with the expected long-term precipitation response to global warming through poleward-shifted storm tracks and Antarctic moistening4, our results point to a different mechanism. Here we show that the recent ice mass gain was linked to a recurrent atmospheric teleconnection driven by sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical warm pool, which experienced unusually persistent warming from 2021 to 2023 relative to the previous two decades. On the basis of observations and model experiments, we find that tropical warm pool warming excites a poleward-propagating Rossby-wave train that induces a high-pressure anomaly over East Antarctica, enhancing Queen Mary Land and Wilkes Land precipitation and driving the observed mass gain, with moisture primarily sourced from the mid-latitude Indian Ocean. Similar multiyear warming in the tropical warm pool recurs about once per decade in observations and historical simulations, and its influence on precipitation is distinct from the effects of global warming. Therefore, the recent Antarctic Ice Sheet mass gain is probably temporary and does not yet reflect a sustained, global-warming-driven moistening of Antarctica.
In Pecos County, Texas, crews are clearing scrubland for a power plant that will burn natural gas and answer to no one but Amazon.
Microsoft has signed a 20-year deal for power from a Chevron gas plant in neighboring Reeves County.
In 2021, Facebook’s parent company Meta declared climate change one of the most pressing challenges facing the world and positioned itself among the largest corporate buyers of clean electricity. Then came its Hyperion data center in Louisiana.
In Pecos County, Texas, crews are clearing scrubland for a power plant that will burn natural gas and answer to no one but Amazon. With 35 turbines and a generating capacity of more than 7 gigawatts, the plant will be able to produce more electricity than the Grand Coulee Dam. A state permit allows the facility to emit 33 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, roughly double what comes from an Alabama coal-fired generator that has topped America’s emissions tables for years.
Now recall who founded the company building the gas behemoth. That would be Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who just 5 years ago told delegates at a U.N. climate summit that a rocket ride had shown him a planet that was finite and fragile, prompting a pledge of $2 billion to “restore” nature. The applause was warm. The carbon-intensive private jet that carried Bezos to the Scotland meeting was noted by critics and forgotten by everyone else.
Now, his company is financing what may become the largest point source of carbon dioxide in the United States, whose contribution to the greening of ecosystems should be welcome.
You are watching a conversion, and it deserves your attention because of what forced it.
The template, not the exception Amazon did not stumble into natural gas. It joined a queue. Enverus Intelligence Research projects that user-owned turbines will account for about 40% of new data center capacity through 2030. Microsoft has signed a 20-year deal for power from a Chevron gas plant in neighboring Reeves County. Interconnection subscriptions are full, transformers are back-ordered, and the only metric that matters is the time it takes to get a power plant in operation.
In 2021, Facebook’s parent company Meta declared climate change one of the most pressing challenges facing the world and positioned itself among the largest corporate buyers of clean electricity. Then came its Hyperion data center in Louisiana. Regulators approved three combined-cycle gas plants for it in August 2025. In March 2026 Meta tripled the order, funding seven more and making the totals 10 gas plants and nearly $11 billion of investment. Meta will underwrite 15 years of revenue, while the turbines will run for 30 – a mismatch that has a dissenting member of the Public Service Commission warning that households may inherit the balance.
Elon Musk built an empire on the premise that combustion belongs to the past. In 2024, he said that a carbon tax was the only action needed to solve climate change. More recently, addressing G20 ministers, he warned of a significant power shortfall next year and defended data center construction against negative public sentiment. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, in the same meeting, asked governments for more electricians and more electricity. Neither man requested more wind and solar installations.
Energy Physics Forces a Hard Reset Big Tech’s turn toward dedicated gas power does not settle the climate debate, but it exposes the distance between a political narrative and a power grid capable of supporting industries. When servers must run, physics gets a vote and realities are acknowledged.
For example, at the start of 2026, every grid-scale battery in the United States combined could meet national demand for only 15 minutes. Modeling the PJM regional power system through 2045, Jonathan Lesser and Mitchell Rolling found that a grid of wind, solar, and batteries would need 10 times the generating capacity of gas and nuclear power. It would also cost about seven times as much, and cover a land area larger than the PJM service area, which comprises most of the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest.
Yet, despite these facts, pseudo-scientists, grifters, and demagogues lectured for 20 years that coal is immoral, natural gas is a bridge to nowhere, and so-called green technologies are the planet’s salvation. Banks denied financing for hydrocarbon projects in developing countries where surgeons operate under lights powered by unreliable generators and where hundreds of millions cook with sooty wood and dung.
The lesson is the same for data centers and households: Prosperity requires electricity that is available when needed. Dependable systems of conventional energy sources will continue to power the tech revolution and human progress for decades.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at theCO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.
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