As Another Oil-Fueled War Erupts, Study Reveals Planet Heating at Unprecedented Rate
Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The findings mean global temperatures are on track to surpass 1.5°C above preindustrial levels before 2030.
Nearly a week into President Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran that is likely to increase climate-warming emissions, new research has found that the pace of human-caused global heating has accelerated over the past 10 years.
The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters on Friday, concluded that global heating had nearly doubled from a rate of less than 0.2°C a decade from 1970-2015 to 0.35°C between 2015-25. This would put global temperatures on track to surpass 1.5°C above preindustrial levels before 2030.
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“Warming proceeding faster is not unexpected by climate models, but it is a cause of concern and shows how insufficient the efforts to slow and eventually stop global warming under the Paris Climate Accord have so far been,” study authors Stefan Rahmstorf and G. Foster wrote.
Scientists had long suspected that global warming was speeding up, given that the past three years were the three hottest on record. Yet previous studies had not been able to find statistically significant evidence of acceleration. The new study removed the natural variability from solar variations, volcanic eruptions, and El Niño from the data, which revealed a statistically significant speedup.
“How quickly the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how rapidly we reduce global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to zero.”
It follows a study from 2025 that found a smaller increase of 0.27°C per decade from 2015-24.
“Either way, this represents a significant increase in the rate of warming,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and a co-author on the earlier study, told The Guardian. “[This] should be worrying as the world hurtles toward crossing 1.5°C later this decade.”
Whatever the rate of increase, the solution, from a scientific perspective, is clear.
“How quickly the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how rapidly we reduce global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to zero,” Rahmstorf, a Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research scientist, told The Guardian.
Yet the findings come at a time when emissions look set only to increase, as the US launches an oil-fueled war on Iran that risks drawing other major military powers into a greater conflict.
“The outbreak of any war is bad news for the climate, just as the election of politicians hostile to climate action is,” Mark Hertsgaard, Covering Climate Now executive director and co-founder, and Giles Trendle, former managing director of Al Jazeera English, wrote in a newsletter on Thursday. “The climate implications of this new war are not the center of attention at the moment, but they are essential context for understanding what’s at stake. At a time when civilization is hurtling toward irreversible climate breakdown, to overlook the climate consequences of three of the deadliest militaries on Earth going to war would be journalistic malpractice.”
War itself increases greenhouse gas emissions. Studies have found that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine emitted as much in its first two years as the annual emissions of the Netherlands, while Israel’s genocide in Gaza emitted as much in its first four months as each of the 135 lowest-emitting nations in a year.
The Conflict and Environment Observatory observed 120 incidents of environmental harm during the first three days of the Iran conflict, and noted that attacks on oil and gas infrastructure had global implications:
There are also consequences for the global environment through changes in greenhouse gas emissions. Attacks on oil and gas sites will release methane, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gasses, but the curtailment of production—as has occurred with Qatari LNG [liquefied natural gas], oil production in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Israeli offshore gas—does not necessarily reduce emissions. Instead energy price signals can lead to short term substitution, as well as more complex downstream energy supply changes over longer timeframes.
Fossil fuels are also required to power the machinery that makes war possible.
“What’s beyond dispute is that this war could not be fought without oil,” Hertsgaard and Trendle wrote. “The aircraft carriers, jet planes, and the myriad support systems they require gobble immense quantities of fossil fuels. Which helps explain why the US Department of Defense is the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases globally.”
There is also the speculation that control of fossil fuels is one motivation for the war itself, given that Iran has the world’s third-largest reserve of oil. While Trump has not included oil in his incoherent word salad of war aims, as he did when he kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, climate advocate Bill McKibben pointed out that members of US oil industry have said that they would rather develop Iran’s oil than Venezuela’s, as its industry is more “structurally sound.”
“Europe, Asia, and other regions whose energy costs skyrocket because of this reckless escalation by the Trump administration are reminded, yet again, that fossil fuels are volatile, insecure, and expensive.”
“The military attacks on Iran are not about peace and democracy, but rather about sowing fear, bloodshed, and despair as the US attempts to further destabilize the region and secure access to profitable natural resources that it wants to control,” the Climate Justice Alliance said in a statement. “This is not surprising given recent foreign policy actions taken by the Trump administration in Venezuela and Cuba, and our ongoing history of engaging in coups, occupations, and endless wars to control resource-rich countries, especially for oil and gas.”
Yet, at the same time, the war is already offering an object lesson in the dangers of relying on fossil fuels—for everyone except fossil fuel CEOs. The war could disrupt markets such that profits soar for Big Oil and liquefied natural gas companies while ordinary people suddenly find themselves struggling to pay gas or heating bills.
“Iran is in the middle of one of the world’s most important energy corridors,” Lorne Stockman, Oil Change International research director, told Common Dreams. “Roughly 20% of global petroleum flows through the Strait of Hormuz, so when military escalation disrupts that route, global energy markets are immediately impacted.”
Stockman continued: “That instability means higher energy bills for people around the world while communities in the region suffer the devastation of war. Europe, Asia, and other regions whose energy costs skyrocket because of this reckless escalation by the Trump administration are reminded, yet again, that fossil fuels are volatile, insecure, and expensive. The only question is whether governments will heed that signal and make a fair fossil fuel phase out a priority.”
Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Tzeporah Berman made a similar point on social media: “Drones hitting Saudi oil fields, Qatar halting LNG production, Iran putting a squeeze on the Strait of Hormuz, and US attack on Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminals—all of it should be a wake-up call that fossil fuel phaseout is a national and energy security priority.”
Yet Berman noted that the energy landscape is different today than it has been during previous periods of war.
“Unlike previous oil wars renewable energy is now available at scale,” Berman continued. “It’s distributed, diversified, and resilient. Most importantly, solar panels don’t blow up and once they are in place you don’t need ships to constantly feed them to make energy. The sun is looking like a pretty stable energy source right about now.”
Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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Ocean Warming Drives ‘Deeply Concerning Loss of Marine Life,’ Study Shows
Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Noting that species are at risk from not only warming waters but also overfishing, one expert argued that “any management reform must simultaneously address both drivers of change.”
Humanity’s continued reliance on fossil fuels led to last year being among the hottest on record, and oceans store over 90% of the excess heat from greenhouse gases. A study out Wednesday details how the related long-term heating, warm years, and marine heatwaves “pose serious but poorly quantified threats” to fish species.
“To put it simply, the faster the ocean floor warms, the faster we lose fish,” lead author Shahar Chaikin of Spain’s National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN) told the Guardian. “A 7.2% decline for every tenth of a degree per decade might sound small… But compounded over time, across entire ocean basins, it represents a staggering and deeply concerning loss of marine life.”
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For the study, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, Chaikin, his MNCN colleague Miguel B. Araújo and the National University of Colombia’s Juan David González-Trujillo analyzed 702,037 estimates of biomass change for 33,990 populations of 1,566 fish species across the Mediterranean, north Atlantic, and northeast Pacific between 1993 and 2021.
“On shorter timescales, warmer years and marine heatwaves were linked to sharp biomass losses of up to 43.4% in populations at the warm edge of the species’ range and biomass increases of up to 176% at the cold edge,” the study states. Chaikin warned in a statement that the temporary jumps in cooler areas could send misleading signals to managers of fisheries.
“Although this sudden increase in biomass in cold waters may seem like good news for fisheries, these are transient increases,” he explained. “If managers raise catch quotas based on biomass increases caused by a heatwave, they risk causing the collapse of populations when temperatures return to normal or when the effect of long-term warming prevails, because these are short-lived increases.”
González-Trujillo stressed that “unlike extreme short-term weather fluctuations, which can vary dramatically, this chronic warming exerts a constant negative pressure on fish populations in the Mediterranean Sea, the north Atlantic Ocean, and the northeastern Pacific Ocean.”
Specifically, Chaikin said that “when we remove the noise of extreme short-term weather events, the data show that this warming is associated with a sustained annual decline in biomass of up to 19.8%.”
Given the findings, Araújo emphasized that fisheries’ managers “must balance localized increases with long-term declines extremely carefully to avoid overexploitation.”
“As ocean warming continues, the only viable strategy is to prioritize long-term resilience,” the study co-author said. “Management measures must plan for the biomass decline expected in an increasingly warm ocean.”
Carlos García-Soto is a scientist at the Spanish National Research Council, which manages MNCN. Although not a study co-author, he also highlighted the need for policymakers to understand the “clear risk of misinterpretation” detailed in the new paper.
“In a context of accelerated climate change, policies cannot react solely to extreme events or be based on short-term signals,” García-Soto said in a statement. “They need consistency between science, planning, and governance, especially in shared ecosystems or on the high seas.”
Also responding to the research on Wednesday, Guillermo Ortuño Crespo of the International Union for Conservation of Nature said that “I believe this is a methodologically sound and valuable study that provides valuable evidence on how different components of ocean warming affect fish biomass.”
While recognizing the well-documented and devastating impacts of fossil fuel-driven heating on marine species, Ortuño Crespo also warned that “there is a risk, in my opinion, that climate change will become the main explanation for changes in marine species biomass, leaving aside overfishing.”
“Historically, overfishing has been the main determinant of biomass declines in many fisheries around the world,” he noted, citing the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. “The proportion of overexploited stocks globally continues to increase, indicating that fishing pressure remains a dominant risk factor. The current challenge is that this overfishing crisis is being further exacerbated by ocean warming and deoxygenation.”
“In terms of public policy, the study is highly relevant because it emphasizes that fisheries management systems must become more climate-adaptive,” Ortuño Crespo said. “Any management reform must simultaneously address both drivers of change: climate and fisheries. Adjusting quotas solely on the basis of climate without reducing overcapacity and the impact of high-impact gear, such as bottom trawling, is likely to be insufficient to recover stocks.”
Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Morning Star Editorial: Time for clarity – no support for a US attack on Iran
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/time-clarity-no-support-us-attack-iran
President Donald Trump listens during a Board of Peace meeting at the U.S. Institute of Peace, February 19, 2026, in WashingtonPRESIDENT Donald Trump has now assembled the largest US military force in the Middle East since the disastrous and criminal Iraq invasion in 2003.
It is not there for show. The chatter from Washington is that a US attack on Iran is now a “90 per cent” likelihood.
It is still possible that the deployment is simply to pressure the Iranian regime into complying with US demands regarding its nuclear power programme and its wider policy across the region.
But Trump has already attacked Iran once during his second term, and he is under pressure from the Israeli government to move towards overthrowing the regime in Tehran, something that would require military action on a far larger scale than previously, and co-ordination with pro-US political forces like the son of the deposed Shah.
So the danger of war seems imminent. The anti-war and labour movements here in Britain need to be clear-sighted.
Any military action by Trump, or Israel, or both would be a gross violation of international legality and a criminal imperialist adventure which would risk an escalating conflict across the Middle East. The peoples of the region, including the Iranian people, would be the losers.
…
If Trump and Starmer want a peaceful and stable Middle East, Israel is the rogue power which needs to be curbed. Instead it is armed, supported and diplomatically protected by the imperialist powers.
These are not nuances, but the heart of the crisis in the Middle East. The anti-war and solidarity movements here must not be distracted from their main responsibility — challenging the imperialist interventions and alliances of the Starmer government — by the temptation to sit in moral judgement on those who are its targets.
The future of Iran is for the Iranian people alone to determine. US or Israeli military intervention must be firmly opposed, and the British government pressed to dissociate from any such plan.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/time-clarity-no-support-us-attack-iran
