by Daniel Brouse
December 17, 2025
Climate change is not simply warming the planet; it is fundamentally increasing the amount of energy circulating through the Earth system. As thermal energy accumulates in the atmosphere and oceans, it is increasingly expressed through extreme "energy events" -- wind, precipitation, heat, and rapid pressure gradients -- rather than through gradual, evenly distributed change.
One of the clearest manifestations of this trend is the growing intensity and frequency of extreme wind events. These are not isolated anomalies. They are the mechanical outcome of a hotter, more chaotic atmosphere with destabilized circulation patterns and amplified pressure contrasts.
On December 17, 2025, Wyoming experienced an extraordinary and dangerous wind event that underscores this accelerating trend.
Wind Gust and Location
Such wind speeds are similar to those found in category 4 hurricanes, despite occurring far inland and outside of tropical systems -- a hallmark of increasingly energized mid-latitude weather.
The sustained and extreme winds across mid-December 2025 created severe hazards, particularly for high-profile vehicles.
These disruptions are not merely logistical inconveniences; they reflect growing systemic risk to transportation infrastructure in a climate that increasingly produces wind extremes beyond historical design thresholds.
Extreme wind events are tightly linked to atmospheric energy imbalance. As greenhouse gases trap additional heat:
In this context, record wind gusts are not random outliers. They are mechanical expressions of a hotter, more unstable atmosphere operating under nonlinear dynamics.
The Wyoming wind event of December 2025 should be understood as a warning signal. As climate change accelerates, extreme wind events are becoming more frequent, more intense, and more geographically widespread. Infrastructure, freight systems, emergency services, and public safety planning are increasingly misaligned with the realities of this new atmospheric regime.
What occurred in Wyoming is not a glimpse of a distant future. It is evidence that the future is already here -- and that extreme energy events are becoming a defining feature of the climate system we now inhabit.
* Our probabilistic, ensemble-based climate model — which incorporates complex socio-economic and ecological feedback loops within a dynamic, nonlinear system — projects that global temperatures are becoming unsustainable this century. This far exceeds earlier estimates of a 4°C rise over the next thousand years, highlighting a dramatic acceleration in global warming. We are now entering a phase of compound, cascading collapse, where climate, ecological, and societal systems destabilize through interlinked, self-reinforcing feedback loops.
We examine how human activities — such as deforestation, fossil fuel combustion, mass consumption, industrial agriculture, and land development — interact with ecological processes like thermal energy redistribution, carbon cycling, hydrological flow, biodiversity loss, and the spread of disease vectors. These interactions do not follow linear cause-and-effect patterns. Instead, they form complex, self-reinforcing feedback loops that can trigger rapid, system-wide transformations — often abruptly and without warning. Grasping these dynamics is crucial for accurately assessing global risks and developing effective strategies for long-term survival.
What Can I Do?
The single most important action you can take to help address the climate crisis is simple: stop burning fossil fuels.
There are numerous actions you can take to contribute to saving the planet. Each person bears the responsibility to minimize pollution, discontinue the use of fossil fuels, reduce consumption, and foster a culture of love and care. The Butterfly Effect illustrates that a small change in one area can lead to significant alterations in conditions anywhere on the globe. Hence, the frequently heard statement that a fluttering butterfly in China can cause a hurricane in the Atlantic. Be a butterfly and affect the world.