The World Meteorological Organization on March 18 announced that last year was the warmest on record – for the 10^thstraight year. WMO Secretary General Celeste Saulo reported that last year’s global mean surface temperature was 1.55 degree Celsius above the 1850-1900 average. “This is the warmest year in the 175-year observational record, beating the previous record set only the year before.”

The goal of the Paris Accord – from which Trump has again withdrawn the U.S. – was to stay below the 1.5 degrees mark while trying to cool the heat of fossil fuel industrialization.

In fact, a year-end report from World Weather Attribution and Climate Central found, “People around the world suffered an average of 41 extra days of dangerous heat this year because of human-caused climate change, according to a group of scientists who also said that climate change worsened much of the world’s damaging weather throughout 2024,” according to CBS News.

Friederike Otto, the lead researcher for WWACC, observed: “The finding is devastating but utterly unsurprising: Climate change did play a role, and often a major role in most of the events we studied, making heat, droughts, tropical cyclones and heavy rainfall more likely and more intense across the world, destroying lives and livelihoods of millions and often uncounted numbers of people.

“As long as the world keeps burning fossil fuels, this will only get worse,” Otto warned.

These changing conditions threaten some of the most delicate and roughest creatures with whom we share Planet Eden.

The journal Science reports “rapid butterfly declines across the United States during the 21st century.” During the first 20 years of this century, “total butterfly abundance fell by 22% across the 554 recorded species.”

At the larger end of the animal spectrum, a University of Toronto Scarborough report posted by Science Daily concluded, “Researchers have directly linked population decline in polar bears living in Western Hudson Bay to shrinking sea ice caused by climate change.”

Polar bears spend so much of their time in the Arctic Ocean and on sea ice that they are classified marine mammals.

“A loss of sea ice means bears spend less time hunting seals and more time fasting on land,” says Louise Archer, a U of T Scarborough postdoc and lead author of the study.

“This negatively affects the bears’ energy balance, leading to reduced reproduction, cub survival and, ultimately, population decline,” she said.

The adverse effect on most humans comes in the form of chaotic weather patterns such as the shifting of Tornado Alley to the Mississippi Valley and the aridification of California, the Southwest and into the southern plains, areas which have experienced deadly and devastating wildfires recently.

So, what is an irresponsible, catastrophe-causing capitalist to do with the overwhelming evidence of dangerous global warming. Trump denies and lies. Then he takes actions that will increase the damaging impact greedy fossil fuelers can inflict upon Earth and all who live here.

Even before taking office, Trump endorsed a dirtier, hotter world by telling the United Kingdom it was “making a very big mistake” by imposing windfall taxes on North Sea drillers.

As reported by The Scotsman, America’s biggest windbag called out to “open up” the North Sea and “get rid of windmills.”

On his first day in office, Trump “indefinitely paused new offshore wind leases in U.S. Coastal waters,” and CNBC analysts fleshed out the story saying that wind power could “provide enough combined power for more than 12 million homes in the U.S.”

His administration has also shelved Defense Department assessments of the security risks global warming could spawn stemming from people uprooted from devastated lands. And his EPA looks to enshrine his climate denial lies into policy by ignoring the evidence and declaring no negative impacts from greenhouse gases.

In February, Inside Climate News reported that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued a directive that “weakens public land protections to push fossil fuels.”

Just last month, NPR reported Trump’s Environmental Pollution Agency “announces dozens of environmental regulations it plans to target.”

Among those regulations in the crosshairs are ones “giving oil and gas companies more ‘flexibility’ to dispose of highly toxic wastewater,” according to Inside Climate News.

“Trump’s declaration of a sham energy emergency attempts to set into motion the weaponization of national security law to dismantle generations of public health and safety protections,” according to Tyler Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program. “The ultra-wealthy fossil fuel executives who donated huge sums to Trump’s campaign see this fraudulent emergency declaration as an opportunity to destroy the remarkable progress of wind and solar development, while maximizing fossil fuel exports and domestic consumption.”

Then on April 8, Trump signed four executive orders aimed at boosting “beautiful, clean coal,” the first, and among the worst, of the Industrial Revolution’s fossil fuels that began creating the overheated greenhouse that is Earth today.

WMO’s Saulo assessed the global warming evidence as “a wake-up call that we are increasing the risks to our lives, economies and the planet.”

But we know too well how Trump World feels about being “woke” up to reality. The reality is that the planet got hotter each year over the past 10 years and that the consequences have been devastating.

Trump’s policies will make matters worse.