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:
Main Topic: The Shifting Politics of Climate Change
Dear Diary. Most of us in the climate world have written off American consecutives thinking that most have bought into climate disinformation so much that they will never support green initiatives. We think that they won’t support green initiatives because they have a) become anti science via Fox News and other propaganda b) loath heavy handed central government solutions c) just don’t like change away from traditional lifestyles. Yes, there are some MAGA groups out there that will not change their minds on the climate issue, but new polls suggest that conservatives are becoming more open to scientific causes and solutions to climate change.
This is all very good news. As I wrote yesterday, it appears that Trump’s stranglehold on U.S. policy is loosening, mainly because of his botched Iranian War. I sincerely doubt that Republicans will be in charge of the House of Representatives after this November’s midterm elections. During the two years wait between late 2026 and 2028, in which Trump will become a nasty lame duck, the U.S. will be contending with the ramifications from a super El Niño combining with an already warmed Earth due to climate change. During that period conservatives will be more agreeable to climate change solutions because of unfortunate worse consequences coming from a changing Earth.
Here are more details from the New York Times:
The Shifting Politics of Climate Change – The New York Times
The Shifting Politics of Climate Change
A new poll suggests Republicans may be more movable on climate change than previously thought, plus more climate news.
While words and phrases like “decarbonization” and climate “crisis” were shown to be ineffective, messages saying that pollution led to rising costs and extreme weather were more likely to persuade U.S. voters.Credit…Paul Ratje for The New York Times
By David Gelles
June 18, 2026
You’re reading the Climate Forward newsletter. News and insights for a warming world.
Before we get to new data on how climate change could become a winning political issue, let’s get caught up on some breaking news:
Trump administration backs off plan to end ocean monitoring: The administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368 million ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill.
Recent research from Gallup found that 44 percent of U.S. adults “worry a great deal about global warming or climate change,” with another 22 percent saying they worry “a fair amount.”Credit…Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The politics of a warming planet
Conventional wisdom among the political class holds that climate change is not a winning issue.
Most voters are more concerned with kitchen-table topics like affordability, the thinking goes. Under this logic, environmentally focused Americans are already going to vote for climate-friendly candidates. And climate deniers can’t be won over by a little campaign messaging.
As Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer wrote earlier this month, many leading Democrats are shifting their messaging on environmental and energy issues, no longer calling for an end to oil and gas and de-emphasizing the direness of the threats posed by climate change.
But a wave of recent polling suggests that the politics of climate change are more nuanced than that. Global warming is, in fact, a serious concern for many American voters, the polling suggests, and with framing that emphasizes solutions instead of sacrifice, it can be a powerful motivator for real policy change.
Take, for example, April research from Gallup, which found that 44 percent of U.S. adults “worry a great deal about global warming or climate change.” That’s among the highest percentages since 1989, and just short of the all-time high of 46 percent registered in 2020.
Another 22 percent of Americans worry “a fair amount” about climate change, meaning it’s an issue that is solidly on the radar for two-thirds of U.S. adults .
A survey last year from George Mason University also found that about 65 percent of Americans were “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about global warming.
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And unlike in some previous studies, when climate change often ranked near last among voters’ major concerns, that poll found that the threats posed by a warming world were squarely in the middle of the pack, above issues like crime and health.
A partisan gap
At the same time, climate change has never been more partisan.
A full 72 percent of Democrats say they worry a great deal about the issue, the second-highest figure on record, according to Gallup. Just 6 percent of Republicans say they are worried about climate change, the lowest figure on record.
That’s no big surprise. Many Republican politicians and voters are following the lead of President Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and drastically rolled back federal support for clean energy and pollution controls, among a host of other moves.
That partisan split is echoed in a new report from Potential Energy Coalition and the Rockefeller Foundation, two nonprofit groups, which surveyed 88,000 adults in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.
While words and phrases like “decarbonization” and climate “crisis” were shown to be ineffective, messages saying that pollution led to rising costs and extreme weather were more likely to persuade U.S. voters.Credit…Paul Ratje for The New York Times
The survey found that the partisan gap on climate issues was by far wider in the U.S. than in other countries, and it also had the widest ideological gap of any issue tested in the U.S.
The results showed that 93 percent of left-leaning Americans call climate change an urgent problem, compared with just 54 percent on the right. That’s a 39 percentage point split.
Compare that with France, where the survey found that the issue “is essentially non-partisan,” with 84 percent of left-leaning voters and 79 percent of right-leaning voters calling it urgent. In Britain, there was a 12 percentage point partisan split on the issue; in Germany, there was a 19-point gap.
But in the United States, the partisan split is only getting worse.
After four years when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. anchored much of his domestic policy around efforts to curb planet warming emissions, the Trump administration has worked to undo many of those efforts, while promoting fossil fuels and deriding clean energy initiatives promoted by Democrats as the “Green New Scam.”
What messages work
Another insight from the recent polling: It turns out some of the most common sustainability buzzwords aren’t great at engaging people.
In the Potential Energy report, words and phrases like “decarbonization,” “net zero” and climate “crisis” were shown to be ineffective at getting people to support policies that promoted clean energy and reduced reliance on fossil fuels.
By contrast, when Americans were exposed to plain-spoken messages about the fact that pollution is leading to rising costs and damaging extreme weather, they were more likely to support climate action.
“It’s not whether you should talk about it, it’s how,” said John Marshall, executive chair at Potential Energy Coalition. “When we pick messages that feel too ideological, or feel too big, or feel too constraining, or feel too liberal environmentalist, it doesn’t move people.”
But, he said, when you talk to people about climate change and focus on “the costs and consequences of pollution, you actually move them a great deal.”
This was also true when it came to Republicans, the poll found.
When voters were exposed to messages that centered on sacrifice, scarcity or bans, support for climate action waned. But when the message centered on promoting health, increasing affordability and reducing pollution, support increased.
Some of these findings make intuitive sense. Voters will naturally respond more positively to messages that articulate a brighter future, rather than being told what they can’t have.
But describing a problem as all-encompassing as climate change brings a risk of being Pollyannish, too.
It’s all well and good to talk about the benefits of clean energy. But whether or not voters like the term “net zero,” the science is clear that it will take a huge global effort to stop the worst effects of climate change. Until politicians, businesses and consumers do the hard work of phasing out fossil fuels, temperatures will continue to rise.
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 Saturday
(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.)