Meteorologists and climate scientists have raised the alarm about the current El NiƱo, which began in June, and is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years. It will add extra heat into an atmosphere in which temperatures are already rising rapidly due to human-caused global heating, and supercharge extreme weather events.
So what do we need to know about El NiƱo?
1. El NiƱo is part of a natural cycle in the Pacific Ocean
El NiƱo is part of a wider climate pattern called the El NiƱo-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. It has a cool phase, known as La NiƱa, as well as a āneutralā phase. El NiƱo and La NiƱa events typically last between nine and 12 months, but can go on longer.
In the Pacific, trade winds blow from east to west across the tropics, pushing warm surface water from South America towards Asia and pulling up cold water from the deeper ocean off the South American coast.
During an El NiƱo event, the Pacific trade winds weaken, or even reverse locally, allowing the warm surface water to spread back towards South America, suppressing ocean upwelling. This typically brings very wet conditions to the west coast of South America and leaves south-east Asia unusually dry.
2. It releases heat into the atmosphere, increasing global temperatures
The hotter waters in the western and central Pacific Ocean release heat into the atmosphere, raising global temperatures. El NiƱo is linked to more frequent, more intense heatwaves on every inhabited continent. Coming on top of existing global warming, this means 2027 is almost certain to be the warmest year on record.
During a summer of heatwaves, drought and wildfires, both legal challenges against expansion at Gatwick and Luton airports have been rejected, giving both airports the green lightā to expand in a double blow for our climate. This reinforces how important it is to win the fight against Heathrow expansion.
The current consultation on Heathrow expansion is open until 1st September.
The post below draws on my presentation in the workshop āHow do we counter mis & dis information and the far right?ā at the Climate and Nature Education Festival on 14 March, organised as part of the trade union year of climate action. Note that disinformation is strategically promoting untruths while misinformation can be unintentional.
On 3 January 2026, Donald Trump announced on social media that the US had invaded Venezuela and kidnapped President NicolƔs Maduro and his wife, without even seeking congressional approval and against international law.
Last month, implementing an oil blockade of Venezuela, Trump demanded in a typically unhinged social media post that Venezuela "return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us."
The White House has announced the US intends to retain control of all sales of future oil production. Vice president JD Vance said, "We control the energy resources, and we tell the regime youāre allowed to sell the oil so long as you serve Americaās national interest, youāre not allowed to sell it if you canāt serve Americaās national interest."
Trump is also talking about more illegal military operations, threatening Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Greenland, and has announced the total withdrawal of the US from the UN climate process, along with 65 other international and UN bodies.
Delivering for his backers
Less than two years previously, in a meeting with oil industry executives, Trump had demanded they raise $1bn for his White House re-election campaign and promised in return that if he was re-elected he would remove all climate regulations and environmental restrictions on pollution to boost their profits. The oil industry in turn wrote out executive orders ready for Trump to sign when he regained power.
Venezuela's massive oil reserves
Venezuela is sitting on oil reserves of over 300 billion barrels - more than any other country in the world, even Saudi Arabia, and three times as much as US reserves. Unlike Saudi Arabia or the US, however, this oil is mostly ultra-heavy crude oil, comparable only to Canada's tar sands. Because it is literally like tar, it needs to be melted with steam to be extracted and then diluted with lighter oil so it can be exported.
The global insurance industry is a massive paradox. On the one hand, they are bearing some of the massive financial costs of climate breakdown, and have raised the alarm about increased disasters making some areas 'uninsurable'.
On the other hand they provide the insurance on which the fossil fuel industry depends, underwriting destruction now, and helping make this future inevitable. Campaigners have focused both on urging insurers to rule out specific projects - such as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline - and on adopting policies to rule out fossil fuel insurance. Researchers found that insurers restricting insurance to coal mines contributed to the shift away from coal in the US.
Not all insurers are equal though. The Boycott Bloody Insurance campaign has a table which rates insurers based on their involvement with fossil fuel companies, detention & surveillance contractors, military companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza and controversial weapons such as nuclear weapons. It also includes information (where available) about insurance companies' investments in these areas.
We joined trade unions and climate groups outside Parliament to demand that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, stop prioritising shareholder profits and start funding a just transition for North Sea workers and their communities. The market-led approach to the energy transition is failing. Shareholder profits have been prioritised over affordable energy, adequate public investment and good, green jobs.
The coalition is calling on the Chancellor for an emergency funding package of Ā£1.9 billion per year for North Sea workers ahead of the Spending Review. A funding package on this scale is urgently needed for oil and gas and supply chain workers to make the transition into renewable energy jobs, ensuring that workers and communities benefit.
The call is endorsed by the largest union representing UK offshore workers, Unite the Union, as well as the National Union of Rail and Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and Aberdeenās Trades Union Councils. 65 climate groups including Greenpeace UK, Uplift, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Oil Change International, Global Justice Now, Extinction Rebellion and Platform are also part of the coalition.
The Ā£1.9 billion emergency funding package to create permanent, unionised renewable energy jobs and support the countryās oil and gas workers to transition into them is comprised of:
Ā£1.1 billion per year to develop permanent, local jobs in public and community-owned wind manufacturing.
Ā£440 million of further investment each year for ports, on top of the Ā£1.8 billion already committed through the National Wealth Fund.
Ā£355 million per year to develop a dedicated training fund for offshore oil and gas workers, with match-funding from industry.
The hot temperatures on May 1st across most of England and Wales were at least three times as likely due to climate change - and you can see that on the map below from Climate Central's Climate Shift Index.
This useful tool is not a straight temperature map - it shows how statistically unlikely temperatures would be if we hadn't heated up our atmosphere, land and oceans with fossil fuels.
You can see that there are extremely abnomally high temperatures in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan and western India, South East Asia, much of sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil.
Image
And then you might wonder, "Why haven't I seen anything about these heatwaves on the news?" The truth is that record-breaking temperatures elsewhere in the world rarely get a mention in UK media, unless they are in southern Europe where many of us take holidays.
These records are broken so frequently that, in a way, abnormal heat has become the 'new normal'. However, this phrase is misleading if it is taken to imply that things will stay the same - unless we stop burning fossil fuels, the weather will continue becoming more extreme.
The articles below were originally published on the Greener Jobs Alliance blog.
The case for union involvement and retrofit as public works
The Retrofit for the Future Campaign, launched at an online meeting on 19th March, is a collaboration between the Peace and Justice Project, Fuel Poverty Action, community and rentersā union ACORN, and health professionalsā campaign group Medact. Detailed demands are set out on the campaign website, but in a nutshell they address three key areas:
A proper plan for developing a skilled workforce to carry out energy efficiency retrofits.
Protection for private sector tenants against evictions or rent hikes after retrofit work on homes.
Accountability to residents for the quality and effectiveness of work on their homes.
Climate campaigners and retrofit specialists have long pointed out the urgent need to address the UKās leaky buildings (with homes currently contributing around 20% of territorial emissions), as well as the formidable task of building the needed skilled workforce, the inadequacy of training programmes that fail to equip trainees with a holistic understanding of the thermal dynamics of the building, and the dreadful health consequences of badly implemented retrofits resulting in cold bridges, damp and mould, too often with no redress for householders.
Furthermore, with the government increasingly leaning in to the rightwing framing of climate action as an unaffordable imposition on ordinary people, the case for a campaign that counters that by clearly articulating the synergies between climate action and good jobs, health, decent housing and lower energy bills becomes indisputable. However, as supporters we have some, hopefully constructive, points to make, relating both to the campaign demands and, connectedly, to the work of translating the common interest of workers, activists and communities into an effective campaign.
The UK's Royal Society was founded in 1660. Among its fellows have been numbered some of the most notable scientists in human history, such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. Election as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) is still a significant honour, for scientists who are not just eminent in their field, but have made a significant contribution to scientific knowledge.
To carry out groundbreaking scientific research, it is not necessary, of course, to be a nice person. However the Royal Society does have a Code of Conduct. It has not, apparently, expelled a Fellow in the last 150 years. But in August 2024 a group of 74 Fellows sent a letter to the President of the Royal Society, raising concerns about Musk's conduct and asking whether he was "a fit and proper person to hold the considerable honour of being a Fellow of the Royal Society".
The Royal Society's refusal to take action led in November to Professor Dorothy Bishop resigning as a Fellow, explaining her reasons for doing so on her blog.
Since Donald Trump's inauguration of President as the United States, Musk has wreaked havoc, taking a leading role in attempts to dismantle vital US government functions. This goes beyond even the concerns about his politics and support for the far right. As detailed below, his actions are causing massive global harm and include direct attacks on scientific research.
In September 2024, scientists and NGO representatives wrote to Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, calling on the government to pause plans to invest Ā£1bn in carbon capture and storage to produce blue hydrogen (from fossil gas) and to capture carbon dioxide from new gas-fired power stations. (see coverage in the Guardian here)
One of the main concerns raised in our letter was that even if carbon capture is successful (and the technology has a dubious record) it cannot compensate for the upstream emissions from methane leaks, transport and processing of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US.
A follow up letter expanding on some of the concerns was sent a month later, but it was not until 10th February that we received a reply from minister Sarah Jones at DESNZ (the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero). Despite waiting five months for this reply, it does not address the problem that the UK's current plans seem to rely on increased imports fracked gas from the US. These have very high associated emissions because of methane leakages during production and transport, and a significant climate impact.
We will continue to campaign on this issue. Last year the UK Supreme Court ruled that planning applications for fossil fuel projects must take into account 'downstream emissions' from burning the fossil fuels extracted. We believe it is just as vital that upstream emissions should be taken into account.
