The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Here is a new feature for this blog, which I will add daily. This is the latest inciteful Green News Report from my friends Desi Doyen and Brad Friedman at Progressive Voices. Hit ‘continue reading,’ listen, then hit return to see my daily topics:
Green News Report with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen
Episode: 9/24/2026 — More info…
Dear Diary. We are in a race to electrify the whole planet, making sure that the power generated comes from renewables. All coal and gas generation of electricity as well as fossil fuel powered vehicles must be resigned to history lest our climate get ruined and along with that our civilization destroyed. I for one along with many of my compatriots don’t know if we will win that race.
I have been measuring the effects of climate change via my record temperature research, which are quite alarming. The rate of global warming appears to be rising. Yet climate scientists like Dr. Michael Mann are growing more optimistic due to the rate that renewables are coming online.
Another big player in climate is former V.P. AL Gore. He too is cautiously optimistic concerning our future. Here are his latest thoughts from the Associated Press:
For videos of V.P. Al Gore that I did not repost, hit the following link:
With renewable energy boom, optimistic Al Gore sees climate change victory coming | AP News
Former VP Al Gore: A clean Earth is within world’s grasp even as climate dangers accelerate
September 25, 2026
NEW YORK (AP) — Longtime climate warrior Al Gore sees victory within Earth’s grasp. But he worries that it could still slip through humanity’s fingers.
“While we’re in grave danger, but I think there is a possibility that 2026 will be looked back upon in the history books as the beginning of a positive tipping point,” Gore said in a sit down interview with The Associated Press during New York Climate Week. He sees a good chance the world is peaking its use of coal, oil and gas, which cause global warming, as solar and other renewable power is overtaking dirtier fossil fuels.
History makes the former U.S. vice president hopeful. He compared the effort to make a cleaner world to the U.S. civil rights movement, Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid movement and women’s equality efforts as “the other great morally based challenges that humanity has confronted in the past.
“And in all of those prior movements,” he said, “there were times when the advocates felt despair but they kept going because courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the determination to go forward in spite of it.”
Nature makes him nervous because Earth’s warming is accelerating and with it extreme weather, such as heat waves and the deadly glacier collapse and flooding that killed 1,300 people in Nepal.
“I’m temperamentally optimistic, but the dangers are extremely grave, getting more so all the time,” said, Gore, often accused of being a doomsayer by nonscientist political opponents. “We’re seeing these extreme events come fast and furious. They’re worse as well as more frequent. … It’s like a nature hike through the book of Revelation.”
A race between old and new power
“This is a close race between the unfathomable risk we are taking, the unacceptable damages we are enduring on one hand, and the incredibly exciting advance of all the clean, cheap, job-producing alternatives that people not under the sway of the fossil fuel industry are adopting in droves,” Gore said.
He ticked off factoids such as Africa installing 100,000 solar panels per day, that 91% of the new U.S. electricity generation was renewable and that 30% of all new car s sold globally this year will be electric. And, he said, in Pakistan the common dowry now includes three solar panels.
Who will win the race? “The answer is in our hands,” Gore said. “The last chapter of this story won’t come for a while, but I think we really are at a turning point.”
Ten years ago, 55% of the world’s investment was in fossil fuels and 45% in renewables. Now it’s 65% renewables, Gore said. He said society changes when a new technology becomes cheaper than the old one, much like cellphones supplanting, then replacing landlines.
Experts say Gore is right to be optimistic
Three climate scientists basically agreed with Gore’s assessments of both increasing dangers, but also still had an optimistic outlook.
“I agree with Al Gore that we have incredible progress on exponential rise in adoption and decline in price for renewable electric green solutions,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany. “But the dilemma, so far, is that they largely meet growing energy demand. We are not yet bending the curve on oil, gas and coal.”
Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare of Australia said he’s generally optimistic like Gore “about what we can achieve particularly with the rapid development of clean technology.” But, he said, “I am the at the same time fearful that this is not fast enough and is being held back by the fossil fuel industry.”
Even though change isn’t fast enough, the University of Pennsylvania’s Michael Mann said Gore’s tone is crucial: “Doomism, despair and disengagement is the greatest threat at this point. We must not fall victim to it.”
Gore is having none of that. At 78, he thinks he’ll see meaningful bends in the carbon pollution curve in his lifetime. But even if it takes longer, that’s OK, Gore said, paraphrasing the Jewish Talmud:
“You are not required to finish the work, but you are required to undertake it.”
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Borenstein is an Associated Press science writer, covering climate change, disasters, physics and other science topics. He is based in Washington, D.C.
Here are some “ETs” recorded from around the U.S. the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Sunday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)