Before The Last Glacier Melts

What kills a person is not the heat itself; it is the moment sweat can no longer cool the body. For most people reading this, that moment feels far away. For millions of people, it has already arrived, and there is a way to measure it: wet-bulb temperature. Most of us have never heard the term "wet-bulb temperature" before, but we are going to hear it often from now on. Wet-bulb temperature is not just another weather number; it is a measure of what heat and humidity do to the body together. Do not confuse it with the "feels like" temperature; how hot something feels to a person depends on many different factors. This is a far more scientific concept. It takes its name from a thermometer wrapped in a wet cloth. A dry thermometer only tells you how hot the air is; a wet one also accounts for how much of that moisture the air can still hold. The body's cooling method is not some complicated mechanism; it is simply sweat evaporating from the skin. As sweat evaporat...

For the past few years, a concept has been drifting from the margins of climate discussions toward the center: **marine Carbon Dioxide Removal**, or **mCDR**. Investment is growing fast; "ocean carbon credits," which numbered only a few thousand a year not long ago, topped 340,000 last year. Major companies like Microsoft are pre-ordering hundreds of thousands of credits for trials whose results are not yet known. It sounds appealing: the ocean already absorbs carbon from the atmosphere, so what do we lose by "speeding up" that process a little? The answer is far more complicated than it seems. This piece draws on three sources: the Ocean & Climate Platform's policy brief published in June 2026 ("Navigating Hopes and Threats"), the underlying npj Ocean Sustainability perspective article signed by nearly thirty scientists ("Three Challenges to Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal"), and the Stockholm Resilience Centre's coverage that brought ...

In April 2026, the IPCC formally declared that RCP 8.5, one of the most debated scenarios in climate science, is no longer realistic. According to the report, the rapid growth of renewable energy and the partial transformation brought about by climate policies have made the highest-emissions pathway increasingly unlikely. For many observers, the announcement was reassuring news. Yet there is reason to be cautious about that sense of relief. The same report also quietly acknowledged that RCP 2.6—the pathway designed to keep global warming below 2°C—may no longer be realistic either. Taken together, these two statements reveal a profound contradiction at the heart of climate science today. The retirement of RCP 8.5 is partly welcome news. Coal consumption is unlikely to rise to the levels assumed by that scenario, and renewable energy has expanded much faster than many expected. However, it is important to distinguish between emissions pathways and temperature outcomes. The fact that RCP...

News from Germany last week once again laid bare the deadlock in climate policy. Germany's Expert Council on Climate Change officially declared that the federal government will be unable to meet its 2030 and 2040 climate targets under current policies. Legally binding commitments sit on paper while the energy, transport, and buildings sectors fall persistently short. According to the independent council, an overshoot of between 60 and 100 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent is expected within the country's carbon budget. For many, the news came as no surprise. Germany has long positioned itself as a climate leader. Yet the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition formed after the 2025 elections has made economic recovery its priority and is seeking to roll back its predecessor's climate agenda. Voters were decisive in shaping that choice: high energy prices, industrial decline, and the perceived cost of the "green transition" translated into real electoral consequences. The German case...

“COP31 will take place in Antalya in November 2026.” Many people in Türkiye know this sentence today. However, almost no one reflects on what this actually means, what it could change, or what kind of opportunity it represents. For most people, COP31 is simply seen as a large international meeting that will take place in Antalya between November 9 and 21. It is perceived as a two-week event with some temporary intensity and visibility, after which everything will return to normal. For much of the business world, the issue is framed even more narrowly: will there be hotel rooms available in Antalya during those dates? This perspective shows that we are completely missing the bigger picture. Because COP31 is not an event—it is a process. What truly matters is not the two-week meeting itself, but the multi-year period leading up to it and continuing afterward. Since Antalya was announced as the host, climate change has already moved to the top of the agenda in Türkiye. This momentum will ...

When the possibility of a Super El Niño is discussed, most debates actually start from the wrong place. The issue is not simply whether a strong El Niño will occur. The real issue is the conditions under which this event will now take place. Because the climate system we are in today is no longer the same system in which past El Niño events occurred. The most important recent development in the Pacific Ocean is the significant accumulation of heat in the upper few hundred meters below the surface. Such heat buildup is usually a precursor to El Niño. Under normal conditions, warm water that accumulates in the western Pacific moves eastward when the wind patterns allow it, and when it reaches the coasts of South America, it interacts with the atmosphere and raises global temperatures. What we are observing today suggests that this process has already begun. However, the critical question is this: will this be a typical El Niño, or will it develop into a much stronger event—a so-called “S...