This is the coolest summer for the rest of your life

This is not normal. It’s not even a new normal.

This summer has been hot. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, it was so hot in July that even standing still I could feel the sweat start to drip after a few seconds. After a few minutes I’d be drenched and could feel my body gradually heating up.

There has also been too much flooding. And now it’s smoky. I can feel it in my chest as a subtle scratchiness deep in my lungs, as if I’ve been chain smoking cigarettes. Two days ago the sun looked like this, in Maine:

We have entered the phase of climate change where it chases us. It hits our daily lives, our homes, our friends and family, our travel plans. The seasons have taken on a new and deadly rhythm. None of this is normal.

Mark my words: it will get worse. I truly hate being the bearer of bad news, but physics doesn’t care. The physics says, “more fossil fuels, hotter planet.” This isn’t a new normal. It’s still just the beginning.

On average, this is the coolest summer for the rest of your life. This is the least floody summer for the rest of your life. This is the least fiery and smokey summer for the rest of your life. There will be regional and even global variation, but the trends are an escalator. A slightly noisy escalator. The escalator is rising so fast that it’s not even that noisy anymore, relatively speaking. Notice how the jigs and jags in the global data aren’t so big anymore compared to the annual increases:

Some members of Congress recently sent a letter to Canada complaining about the wildfire smoke. They write, “Summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things.” They don’t mention fossil-fueled climate change, which, of course, is the underlying cause of the smoke. In fact, they all voted for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” which idiotically accelerates fossil fuel use and global overheating. (It also accelerates fascism.)

I want to be super clear about one point: the anti-science Republicans currently in power are stupid as the day is long.

Remember this guy? And they are getting even dumber over time, as planetary overheating becomes more and more dramatically obvious to all.

I guess they’re smart about how to lie and manipulate and con their way into power and money. But they have no wisdom. No gratitude, humility, or sense of the sacred. They don’t care about science or warnings from scientists. In Greek tragedies as in Hollywood disaster movies, this sort of stupidity and hubris doesn’t end well. It won’t end well in real life, either.

If I’m being honest, I haven’t stopped hoping that MAGA people will finally wake up and see what’s right in front of their eyes: an irreversibly overheating planet, an anti-American authoritarian coup, a fascist con man in the White House. I still struggle to understand how they haven’t yet. But, apparently, the human brain excels at tribal self-delusion even unto death. It’s our species’ Achilles’ heel.

With grief, rage, and love -

Peter

About this newsletter

I’m a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (for now… NASA is being decimated). Unfortunately, I only speak on my own behalf. I’ve been arrested multiple times for climate civil disobedience, because I care, because I want to stop the destruction, because some things are more important than my career.

Like many climate scientists in the US, my job is on the chopping block as funding is slashed and missions are canceled, so I’m pivoting to writing and activism. For almost two decades, I’ve done this critical work on the side, in my free time, but now it’s time to make it front and center. If you want my voice out in the world, please support my work. And spread the word!