The main purpose of this 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).😜
Main Topic: Invasion of Venezuela- It’s All About the Oil
Dear Diary. The Era of Trump rolls on with yet another egregious move with climate ramifications. We witnessed yesterday the toppling of the Venezuelan Maduro regime with lightning success. For months Trump’s military has blasted small boats out of the Caribbean with the excuse that they were running drugs from Venezuela. Trump actually admitted that the real reason for going after Maduro was not drugs funneling into the United States, or Maduro’s corruption, or even the fact that Maduro apparently won illegitimately with less votes than the opposition, but oil plain and simple. I invite all to read Rachel Maddow’s 2019 book Blowout to learn how badly oil corrupts governments worldwide, which will enlighten everyone about what is going on here. Maduro’s decapitation has been applauded from Venezuelan circles seeking justice, but there are international questions of legality about whether or not one head of state can remove another outside of a war declaration.
In any case, American oil companies will be able to sink their teeth into Venezuelan soil to extract and process oil more efficiently than their local counterparts. And of course, any more oil extracted will just add to carbon pollution already in the air.
Here are more details from the New York Times in an opinion piece:
Opinion | Now We Know Trump’s Aim in Venezuela: Oil – The New York Times
Trump Finally Told Americans What This Was All About
The New York Times
Mr. Hennigan writes about national security issues for Opinion from Washington.
- Jan. 4, 2026
Over the past four months, President Trump and his cabinet members offered a meandering list of vague and at times conflicting explanations why the administration was amassing warships, attack planes and thousands of military personnel off the coast of Venezuela.
It was about drug smuggling (despite the fact that little cocaine and virtually no fentanyl comes from that country to ours). It was about President Nicolás Maduro’s attempts to destabilize the United States by flooding the southern border with freed prisoners and mental patients (a claim made without evidence). It was about how Venezuela stole oil and land from American businesses (though that’s not entirely true, either).
Now Mr. Trump appears to have come clean. In the wake of Saturday’s predawn military operation in Venezuela, in which Mr. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured and flown to a U.S. warship, Mr. Trump made clear that it was essentially about the oil all along.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” he said at a news conference later on Saturday morning.
The president spoke at length about securing American industry access to Venezuela’s oil fields, which account for roughly 17 percent of the world’s known reserves. A sustained U.S. military presence will be required, he indicated, for the foreseeable future. How many troops will be needed and for how long is anyone’s guess. In the meantime, the United States expects to run the Venezuelan government “until such time that we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s willingness to use the U.S. military in legally dubious and audacious ways has become a running theme of his second term. The self-proclaimed peace president is showing that American warfare, once contemplated and debated, is now an almost daily expectation. Since returning to the White House not quite a year ago, Mr. Trump has authorized U.S. forces to launch airstrikes or night raids across Yemen, Iran, Somalia, Nigeria, Iraq, Syria and now Venezuela.
The United States has not formally declared war on these countries, which is why many Americans might wonder why our troops are engaged in operations there. Mr. Trump, after all, campaigned on promises to keep the U.S. military out of such foreign interventions. But looked at another way, his actions are a continuation of something that’s long been happening: For a quarter century the global war on terror has habituated Americans to their presidents authorizing lethal military operations in countries many of them would struggle to find on a map.
Mr. Trump labeled Mr. Maduro a “narco-terrorist,” along with the alleged criminal group the Trump administration says he leads. It’s the language the administration needed to establish political and legal cover to topple a leader for whom it lacked compelling evidence of posing a direct security threat to the United States, though Mr. Maduro has led a repressive regime for more than a decade. While U.S. administrations since Sept. 11, 2001, have stretched executive powers over the military under the banner of maintaining national security, they did so while generally keeping Congress apprised of the missions underway.
Now we’re watching a president seem to unilaterally decide on regime change. It is illegal, it is antithetical to the democratic process, and it’s another example of Mr. Trump misleading the American people about his true intentions.
Leading up to Saturday’s attack, Mr. Trump’s team framed the buildup of U.S. military activities in the Caribbean, including strikes on some 30 boats that have killed at least 110 people, as a limited effort to counter Venezuela’s drug smuggling. Saturday’s operation, which involved months of planning and highly orchestrated execution, resulted in Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores making their way to the United States aboard a naval ship. Both have been indicted in federal court and are expected to appear before a U.S. District Court judge in New York City.
Mr. Trump said that Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s interim president, would act as a partner in allowing the United States to run her country, though she later declared that Mr. Maduro was the nation’s “only president.” America, of course, has an abysmal track record in helping run other countries; its forays into nation building in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya were all spectacular failures. Ms. Rodríguez’s comments make clear that Mr. Trump is without a detailed road map for how to prevent the same thing from happening in Venezuela.
But let’s set all that lack of planning aside and recognize the audacity of what’s just occurred: The president has enlisted the United States in an open-ended obligation to govern a foreign country with the stated goal of exploiting its sizable oil infrastructure for America’s economic gain, and perhaps for the Venezuelan people.
In the past, American presidents have tried to perfect the art of preparing the nation for war. This typically has entailed a few months of speeches, international trips to build a military coalition and high-profile offers giving adversaries a way out, short of armed conflict. All of this is done in hopes that the American public and Congress alike will understand and appreciate why conflict — never anyone’s first choice — is necessary to advance the United States’ interests.
Little of that well practiced routine was on display ahead of the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela. The president muddled what his policy goals were as he amassed a wide range of forces in the region. He refused to seek congressional approval for his actions, possibly because some Republicans didn’t agree with them. He didn’t even privately notify Congress in advance of U.S. forces’ capture of Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores.
At every turn, Mr. Trump has demonstrated his unwillingness to concede Congress’s constitutional right to declare war. Last year Republicans blocked a bipartisan Senate resolution that would have legally prevented Mr. Trump from engaging in direct conflict with Venezuela. This was a mistake. Republicans and Democrats must reassert this authority before he acts again unilaterally in the growing list of places he’s already threatened — including Mexico, Panama, Canada and Greenland. Americans must not continually find themselves embroiled in conflicts for reasons they barely understand.
More on Venezuela
To Trump, on Venezuela: You Break It, You Own It
Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise
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W.J. Hennigan writes about national security, foreign policy and conflict for the Opinion section.
Here are some “ETs” recorded from around the planet 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.)