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Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film 'Digger,' starring Tom Cruise as a caricatured oil billionaire, is reportedly on pace to become one of the biggest box-office failures in history despite its high budget. The film uses a play-within-a-movie structure, revealing that its broad satire of an oilman and a Trump-like administration's climate response is actually a theatrical reenactment of past events.
Researchers and former officials gathered at Queen Mary University of London for a war-game exercise simulating how nations, companies and NGOs would respond to solar radiation modification technologies that could cool the planet by reflecting sunlight. Participants, including climate researcher Colleen Golja, played roles ranging from national governments to indigenous groups and tech firms, testing how a race to deploy such technology might unfold. The exercise revealed that reaching consensus on ethical, science-based deployment proved far harder than expected.
A Nature commentary responds to a proposal by Joseph Stiglitz and colleagues for an International Panel on Inequality modeled on the IPCC, noting that the IPCC has inspired calls for similar bodies on antimicrobial resistance, migration, pandemics, food systems and AI governance. The piece argues that not every global problem is suited to an IPCC-style authoritative assessment structure.
MIT Technology Review has included US startup Brimstone in its 2026 list of 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch, a subscriber-only feature. Brimstone produces lower-carbon cement alongside critical minerals, using silicate rocks instead of limestone to cut emissions from the cement-making process by about 60%. Separately, the publication's upcoming print issue explores the technical and political hurdles to building a self-sustaining lunar base.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London ran a tabletop exercise last September simulating how nations, NGOs, indigenous groups and companies would respond to emerging solar radiation modification technologies. Participants, including roles for governments and tech firms, struggled to agree on ethical guardrails for deploying methods such as spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere to cool the planet. Climate researcher Colleen Golja, who advised players on the science, said she expected easy agreement on ethical research but instead encountered sharp disagreement.
Court filings in Massachusetts' 2019 lawsuit against ExxonMobil have surfaced internal company documents, including a 1988 memo from an Exxon research executive warning that a global climate consensus could hurt the company financially. The filings also include more recent internal statements from Exxon scientists questioning the company's public claims about biofuels and carbon capture as climate solutions.
Daily sea surface temperatures in the Tropical Pacific are running about six degrees Fahrenheit above normal, the highest level on record for this metric. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has raised its estimate that this year's El Niño will surpass the intensity of any event since 1950, from 75 percent to 83 percent, and some scientists believe it could grow stronger still. UNICEF has separately warned that hundreds of millions of children could be affected by the pattern's knock-on effects.
NOAA is forecasting a 100% chance of an extremely strong El Niño persisting through December, with over 80% odds it continues through February. The event has already set multiple daily heat records in the tropical Pacific, including a peak of 3.4 degrees Celsius above normal, and NOAA's three-month forecast projects heat could reach 2.7 degrees Celsius, potentially surpassing the previous record of 2.4 degrees Celsius set in 1982-1983.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis measured coast redwood leaves twice monthly over two years and found that photosynthesis activity drops sharply during periods of extreme heat. The trees appear unable to cool themselves fast enough in high temperatures, effectively slowing their internal processes of gas exchange and growth.
Forecasters say a strong El Niño climate pattern is now established and will shape U.S. weather through the winter. The pattern tends to bring warmer-than-normal conditions to the northern U.S. and wetter conditions to the South, with periodic extreme swings in temperature and storm activity.
Researchers studying a recurring, elongated cloud near Mars's Arsia Mons volcano say it forms through a physical process never before documented in a planetary atmosphere. The cloud behaves differently from typical water-ice clouds seen elsewhere on the planet, prompting closer scrutiny of how it develops and dissipates.
A batch of previously undisclosed internal files from ExxonMobil shows that as early as 1988, company scientists and researchers were aware of the potential negative impacts of climate change mitigation efforts on the firm. These documents include memos warning of possible financial risks if a global consensus on greenhouse gas reduction emerged. The release coincides with ongoing legal battles over Exxon’s climate change disclosures and accountability.