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Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Do electric vehicles almost always have a lower carbon footprint than gasoline-powered cars? The EPA, IPCC, and many independent studies have found that electric vehicles have lower lifetime emissions than gas-powered vehicles in nearly all cases. “Lifetime” calculations include emissions released during EV manufacture, as well as the generation o

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Thanks to the transition from fossil fuels to clean technologies, what used to be considered the worst-case climate change scenario now appears to be outside the realm of plausibility, climate scientists said in a recent study. That study made headlines in May when President Donald Trump falsely claimed that climate scientists had admitted that their projections had been wrong, a claim akin to an anti-vaxxer gloating that the official end of the pandemic proved that COVID was never a problem. And the study contained sobering news: The best-case climate scenario is close to slipping out of reach, and a business-as-usual scenario is still a very dangerous one, with high risks of

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 24, 2026 thru Sat, May 30, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (7 articles) Malnourished Gray Whales of the Eastern North Pacific Are in `Serious Trouble` The population has plummeted over the past seven years as climate change triggers mass starvation in warming Arctic waters. Inside Climate News, By Blaine Harden, May 24, 2026. An Unusually Early Heat Wave Breaks Temp

Open access notables Climate Change Communication in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Schäfer et al., Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Chang Artificial intelligence (AI), and especially generative AI (GenAI), is rapidly reshaping climate change communication (CCC). Once dominated by news coverage and public campaigns, CCC now extends across scientists, NGOs, corporations, journalists, influencers, and citizens—all increasingly encountering and adopting AI tools. This article provides a comprehensive review of scholarship on the nexus of AI and CCC, synthesizing insights scattered across disciplines from social and computer science, and inter

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters In brief: Scientists expect dramatic swings between active and inactive hurricane seasons in the future. The risk of back-to-back hurricanes is growing.  Hurricanes are expected to get more damaging and deadly.  Wild year-to-year swings — from punishing hyperactive seasons to quiet years with little activity — could well become the norm for future Atlantic hurricane seasons, according to recent climate change research.  The latest science paints a complex but alarming

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters, and Piers Forster With the release of the new van Vuuren et al 2026 paper on the emissions scenarios that will be used in the upcoming IPCC 7th Assessment Report, the internet has been abuzz with debate over the implications of the formal retirement of the RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 scenario. The president of the United States even weighed in over the weekend in his own unique style, posting that “the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”. van Vuuren et al justify this move by noting

This is a re-post from And Then There's Physics If you’ve been paying attention to the climate debate on social media you might have noticed the RCP8.5 debate rearing it’s ugly head again. This is because a new set of emission/concentration projections have been developed for the climate modelling community (CMIP7). These new projections no longer include an RCP8.5-like projection and so all of those

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 17, 2026 thru Sat, May 23, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (6 articles) What the US Would Lose If It Eliminates the National Center for Atmospheric Research 'I think there's a great loss for the wrong reasons. There's no good reason for dismantling this or tearing it down,'' a former NASA chief scientist says. Inside Climate News, Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth, May 16, 2026.

Open access notables Attribution of UK Temperature Changes to Anthropogenic and Natural Factors, Amos et al., Atmospheric Science Letters Understanding the extent to which human activities have influenced regional climate is a key scientific and policy challenge. The UK is one of the world's best observed regions climatically, with a long and reliable temperature record that makes it an important test case for regional detection and attribution. Here, for the first time, we apply optimal fingerprinting to UK mean 2-m air temperature changes using the Estimating Equations method, HadUK-Grid observations, and CMIP6 simulations. We assess the extent to which obser

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson The odds are in El Niño’s favor right now. This natural weather phenomenon, part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, occurs when warmer-than-average water extends throughout most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean just below the surface. That’s happening now. And powerful bursts of westerly wind have pushed immense amounts of warm water eastward, toward the Niño3.4 region where sea surface temperature, along with other atmospheric conditions, is used to assess the state of ENSO. On May 14, in its monthly ENSO outlook, the NOAA/National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center gave an 82% chance that El N