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Planetary Energy Imbalance Jumps 40% Since 2021

Thank you Big Oil and enablers. The data is out: Our planetary energy imbalance has surged 40% since 2021, hitting 1.12 Watts per square meter. We are physically forcing extra heat into our system at a horrifying rate. What this actually means: >Every single day, the sun shines down and pours clean, raw energy. In a healthy scenario, the Earth takes what it needs and radiates the excess heat back out into the cold vacuum of space in a self-regulating loop >Big Oil has broken that loop: When we burn coal, oil, and gas, we dump billions of tons of greenhouse gases (like carbon dioxide and methane) into the atmosphere. This pollution acts like a suffocating blanket wrapped around the globe. Sunlight passes right through it to warm the surface, but when that heat tries to bounce back out into space, it hits the blanket and gets trapped >The Earth Energy Imbalance is the difference between the amount of energy arriving from the sun and the amount that successfully escapes back into space. It is the planet's energy bank account >Surging energy imbalance means the gap between incoming and outgoing energy is widening at an accelerating, hockey-stick rate. Latest data: Earth's energy imbalance surged by 40% in the first half of the 2020s, hitting 1.12 Watts per square meter >That's 1.12 Watts of extra, unescaped energy for every single square meter of the entire planet's surface, running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's the energy equivalent of exploding hundreds of thousands of atomic bombs inside our atmosphere every single day >This trapped energy doesn't just vanish. First, over 90% of that trapped heat is forced straight into our oceans which are acting as a giant buffer. Result: marine heatwaves that bleach coral reefs to death, collapse fisheries, and structurally alter marine life. Second, the trapped energy powers the melting of permanent ice reserves at a record pace, which dumps trillions of tons of freshwater into the sea, driving up global sea levels. Third, trapping this much energy in the system supercharges the global weather machine to suck moisture out of the soil and give us devastating, multi-year droughts and apocalyptic wildfires. Then, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, it dumps that moisture all at once in economy-wrecking floods