Russia's war machine tightens on two fronts — a broadening strike campaign against Ukrainian fuel and logistics nodes and a mobilization push that would scrap medical screening for recruits — while an AI data-center buildout collides with a hard US grid ceiling during a record-heat July and 2026 tracks toward a top-five warmest year.

This is the rare environment forecast where the physical signal is robust rather than speculative: strong El Niño + record background warming + 2025 already being one of the warmest years makes top-5 near-inevitable (historically ~95% of El Niño years land in the top 10). My self-calibration flags environment as a WEAK sector where I OVER-predict by ~13pp, which would normally push me to compress toward 50%. I apply that discipline here by holding at the skeptic's 0.80 rather than moving toward the ~0.90 the raw physics would suggest — a deliberate haircut for my sector bias. What would make me wrong: an abrupt La Niña flip, a major volcanic aerosol event, or a data-revision surprise — all low-probability but non-zero, justifying that I don't go higher. Pillars: climate risk assessment, tipping-point analysis.