Image by Immo Wegmann.
America has never been so dry, so thirsty, yet so committed to fossil fuels and CO2-engineered heat as in the years 2025-2026. “Co2 Levels Hit Highest Ever Recorded, WMO Says, Warning of More Extreme Weather,” Reuters, Oct. 15, 2025. This has all the earmarks of a bad ending.
Moreover, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), effective May 28, 2026: “The world is already smashing heat records. It’s expected to get hotter.”
Our anthropogenic planet has become a virtual “heat machine.”
This puts datacenters smack dab in the center of attention as “heat machines” in their own right. “The vast data centers that power artificial intelligence guzzle huge amounts of energy but they also have another alarming impact, according to new research. They are creating “heat islands,” warming the land around them by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, and making life hotter for more than 340 million people.” (Scientists Have Found an Alarming Environmental Impact of Vast Data Centers, CNN, March 30, 2026). More on this horror story to follow, titled: Datacenter Wars?
Meanwhile, something very strange is happening with a twist that’s beyond anything in the record book of human behavior. It’s getting hotter, relentlessly hotter on a multi-year acceleration basis never seen before, but meanwhile everyday life continues to trudge along as if it’s normal, going to work, kids to summer school, trips to distant places, picknicks and barbeques, watching baseball and lazy days at the beach. On the surface it all seems so normal, nothing much to worry about, it gets hot on occasion, especially during the summer. But it’ll cool down this coming fall.
But what’s happening is not normal at all. Behind the scenes and in some cases directly in front of everybody with any curiosity, a very dangerous abnormality is fast at work.
The world is drying up right before our eyes. A dangerous heat syndrome is now a settled trend, higher and higher, year over year, with fossil fuel emissions at all-time highs, and accelerating, but nothing’s in sight to stop this ghastly trend. Over time, consequences bring a surreal world with people slowly resembling heat-induced zombies.
The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that 58.4% of the lower 48 states were in drought as of early June 2026 with expectations of a brutally hot summer almost upon us. According to Global Drought Extremes in 2025, Nature, April 20, 2026: “In 2025, global annual drought affected ~30% of the global land surface.” In 1900 it was ~12%.
Meanwhile, expanding drought or not, regardless, the world’s largest banks are solidly behind funding more heat, more drought, more pain for average Americans. More on this insanity to follow.
The first three months of 2026 shattered historical records as the driest start to any year in recorded U.S. history dating back to 1895, threatening another 1930s Dust Bowl event, but this time aquifers are dangerously lower than 90 years ago, to wit: “The Largest US Groundwater Supply Is Running Out,” Newsweek, May 28, 2026.
“In some areas, groundwater levels have dropped by more than 200 feet since large-scale irrigation began, according to U.S. Geological Survey data—one of the clearest signs of long-term depletion. Satellite analyses have also shown widespread declines across the aquifer, with maps revealing concentrated losses in heavily irrigated parts of Texas and Kansas,” Ibid.
Datacenter Water Demand Enters the Ecosystem Equation for the First Time
Eureka! The Guardian reports 517 of 809 planned US datacenters are set for areas that saw drought in the past year, “despite some facilities using millions of gallons of water a day for cooling.” This is the most rapidly developing divisive issue in modern history. People are already up in arms, but AI development is still in its infancy stage.
“AI data centers are currently consuming 550 million gallons of water per day. That’s roughly the same rate of water consumption as the entirety of the world’s bottled water industry.” (AI Data Centers’ Water Consumption Breaks 264 billion Gallons in 2025 as Devastating Drought Hits Nearly 63% of U.S., Mordor Intelligence, June 6, 2026)
Meanwhile, the world’s financiers are on track to exaggerate ecosystem/water usage equations with graphs pointed sharply downward.
World’s Largest Banks Ga-Ga Over Fossil Fuel Financings
More heat is on its way, guaranteed, to wit: “The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an “unfathomable” increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.” (World’s Largest Banks Pledge $906bn to Fossil Fuel Companies in ‘Unfathomable’ Increase in 2025, Report Finds, The Guardian, June 9, 2026)
Meantime, just as summer begins, “Spring Heat Wave Shatters Records and Brings Deaths in Europe,” PBS News, Science, May 26, 2026: A new twist to various impacts of record-setting heat with “several drownings reported in Britain and France as people tried to cool down.” The UK smashed a century-old temperature record twice within 24 hours, and people drowned while trying to escape the heat. This has potential as a Stephen King script, “Heat Monster Drowns Townspeople.”
“We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that heat wave events such as this have been made more likely and more severe due to climate change arising from our emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases,’ said Peter Thorne, director of the ICARUS Climate Research Centre, at Maynooth University, in Ireland. ‘But, nevertheless, many of the records being set, particularly in the U.K. and France, are mind-bogglingly crazy,” Ibid.
Speaking of crazy, UK, commuter trains to and from the Waterloo station were delayed because of reports of “smoke on the rails.” According to the rail service: “The operator also issued a general alert to all passengers, stating that services across its entire network ‘may be revised’ because of the hot weather….” (Waterloo Train Delays: ‘Smoke on Tracks’ Disrupts South Western Railway Services at Major London Railway Station, The Standard, May 26, 2026)
A recent Le Monde’s masthead boldly recognizes the tenth year following the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut fossil fuel emissions (ed. – it’s the biggest joke of the decade, a total failure) on May 12th 2026: “Day by day, disaster after disaster, a stark picture is coming into focus: 2026 could go down as one of the most extreme years ever recorded in climate history. The first months of the year, records have been broken for ocean temperatures, early heatwaves, massive wildfires and torrential rains. On Tuesday, May 12, scientists and international agencies renewed their warning, as El Niño’s likely return is set to further intensify an already accelerating climate crisis.” Yet, governments and businesses refuse to properly, aggressively deal with this ‘biggest threat ever’ to humanity,
Major Push Back Regarding Issue of Global Warming
“Researchers said they were ‘deeply concerned’ that the fight against global warming is being ‘pushed to the back burner.’ Several governments and corporations have scaled back their climate ambitions, while US President Donald Trump has escalated attacks on the environmental transition. ‘In our everyday work, we see just the devastating impacts from climate change that we already have now, when we are not quite at 1.5 degrees warming,’ said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London.” (Le Monde, Ibid)
Datacenter Wars?
Climate change has never been so threatening to society, and maybe worse. Yet, government and business largely ignore the severity of colliding forces by (1) enhancing fossil fuel production (2) lessening, or ignoring, commitments to Paris 2015 (3) pretending some kind of technology will ‘save the day’. Considering the proficiency of CO2 removal technology, it won’t! But one technology, i.e., AI Datacenters, with early-stage Datacenter Wars just starting*** will assuredly intensify the issue in the worst possible way, at the worst possible moment, as anthropogenic climate change hits its apex in a human-generated climate system that’s turning frenetic.
*** In the first four months of 2026, Americans rejected or restricted more data centers than they did in all of 2025. The numbers tell the story: 49 rejections last year, 79 already this year. Something has snapped. A backlash is building against the physical infrastructure of the AI boom, and it’s bipartisan, emotional, and growing fast.
Robert Bryce, a veteran energy reporter who has spent the last 16 years cataloging local revolts against energy projects, says he has never seen anything like it. His Renewable Rejection Database documents nearly 1,200 cases of communities pushing back against wind, solar, and battery projects. But the new Data Center Rejection Database—launched at the suggestion of his son, who watched the same dynamic unfold across Europe—is filling up at a pace that dwarfs anything in the renewable space. (From Boom to Backlash: The New War Over America’s Data Centers, Financialsense.com. May 20, 2026)
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