Donald Trump may have only recently re-entered the Oval Office, but his radical anti-climate ideas are on the march across the globe.

A CORRECTIV investigation can reveal that politicians, think tanks, and economists are now spreading Trump’s ideologies in Germany – right up to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its leader Friedrich Merz, the front-runner in the race to be Germany’s next leader, with federal elections due to take place on 23 February.

It’s a late summer morning at the Alte Münze complex in Berlin-Mitte. The Prometheus Institute, a libertarian German think tank, and one of its founders, Frank Schäffler, have organised an event that they describe as a “Freedom Summit”.

Schäffler is a member of the German Bundestag (parliament) for the Free Democrats (FDP) and is a self-described climate sceptic. The event is aimed at young people up to the age of 35 who, according to the event’s advertising, should consider the institute to be a “home for freedom”.

On a table in a workshop held in the summit’s “Thatcher tent” lies a collage of the Statue of Liberty with Argentinian President Javier Milei’s head, wielding his trademark chainsaw. It’s a symbol of his intention to cut the state down to the bone. Growing numbers of FDP politicians have been publicly backing Milei in recent months, with party leader Christian Lindner saying on a talk show in November that we should dare to be a little more like Milei.

At first glance, the summit appears to be a colourful mix of talks, drinks, and free market projections of the future. But there’s much more to it, as CORRECTIV’s research shows.

We have tracked financial flows and investigated political and economic connections that extend from the U.S. and Hungary to the top echelons of German politics.

Our findings show that this network not only includes Schäffler’s Prometheus Institute. A number of politicians from the FDP and CDU, and groups closely associated with these parties, are also closely linked to controversial anti-climate organisations in the U.S. – with some of them benefitting financially.

Indeed, Trump and Milei’s election victories are fuelling an alliance between conservative and libertarian think tanks in the U.S. and Germany, joined by politicians and corporate lobbyists. (...)

Abstract:
Global temperature leaped more than 0.4°C (0.7°F) during the past two years, the 12-month average peaking in August 2024 at +1.6°C relative to the temperature at the beginning of last century (the 1880-1920 average). This temperature jump was spurred by one of the periodic tropical El Niño warming events, but many Earth scientists were baffled by the magnitude of the global warming, which was twice as large as expected for the weak 2023-2024 El Niño. We find that most of the other half of the warming was caused by a restriction on aerosol emissions by ships, which was imposed in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization to combat the effect of aerosol pollutants on human health. Aerosols are small particles that serve as cloud formation nuclei. Their most important effect is to increase the extent and brightness of clouds, which reflect sunlight and have a cooling effect on Earth. When aerosols – and thus clouds – are reduced, Earth is darker and absorbs more sunlight, thus enhancing global warming. Ships are the main aerosol source in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. We quantify the aerosol effect from the geographical distribution of sunlight reflected by Earth as measured by satellites, with the largest expected and observed effects in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. We find that aerosol cooling, and thus climate sensitivity, are understated in the best estimate of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Global warming caused by reduced ship aerosols will not go away as tropical climate moves into its cool La Niña phase. Therefore, we expect that global temperature will not fall much below +1.5°C level, instead oscillating near or above that level for the next few years, which will help confirm our interpretation of the sudden global warming. High sea surface temperatures and increasing ocean hotspots will continue, with harmful effects on coral reefs and other ocean life. The largest practical effect on humans today is increase of the frequency and severity of climate extremes. More powerful tropical storms, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, and thus more extreme floods, are driven by high sea surface temperature and a warmer atmosphere that holds more water vapor. Higher global temperature also increases the intensity of heat waves and – at the times and places of dry weather – high temperature increases drought intensity, including “flash droughts” that develop rapidly, even in regions with adequate average rainfall.

Polar climate change has the greatest long-term effect on humanity, with impacts accelerated by the jump in global temperature. We find that polar ice melt and freshwater injection onto the North Atlantic Ocean exceed prior estimates and, because of accelerated global warming, the melt will increase. As a result, shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely within the next 20-30 years, unless actions are taken to reduce global warming – in contradiction to conclusions of IPCC. If AMOC is allowed to shut down, it will lock in major problems including sea level rise of several meters – thus, we describe AMOC shutdown as the “point of no return.”

We suggest that an alternative perspective – a complement to the IPCC approach – is needed to assess these issues and actions that are needed to avoid handing young people a dire situation that is out of their control. This alternative approach will make more use of ongoing observations to drive modeling and more use of paleoclimate to test modeling and test our understanding. As of today, the threats of AMOC shutdown and sea level rise are poorly understood, but better observations of polar ocean and ice changes in response to the present accelerated global warming have the potential to greatly improve our understanding.

Houses in the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods were still ablaze when talk turned to the cost of the Los Angeles firestorms and who would pay for it. Now it appears that the total damage and economic loss could be more than $250 billion. This, after a year in which hurricanes Milton and Helene and other extreme weather events had already exacted tens of billions of dollars in American disaster losses.

As the compounding impacts of climate-driven disasters take effect, we are seeing home insurance prices spike around the country, pushing up the costs of owning a home. In some cases, insurance companies are pulling out of towns altogether. And in others, people are beginning to move away.

One little-discussed result is that soaring home prices in the United States may have peaked in the places most at risk, leaving the nation on the precipice of a generational decline. That’s the finding of a new analysis by the First Street Foundation, a research firm that studies climate threats to housing and provides some of the best climate adaptation data available, both freely and commercially. The analysis predicts an extraordinary reversal in housing fortunes for Americans — nearly $1.5 trillion in asset losses over the next 30 years. (...)