Dr Keith Walker @SteelFolk@qoto.org

Catastrophic (and to be frank - hugely depressing)

This new research in @PNASNews suggests earth will cross the 1.5 degrees C temperature increase threshold in the next decade (within just 10 to 15 years) and is likely to exceed 2 degrees C by around 2060.

This should be THE lead story on the news today (and onwards) and the lead action point for our governments. It should trigger a massive call for real global action to combat the #climateemergency - sadly though I fear this news will barely register.

We have to stop believing the siren calls of future technology solutions and #carbonoffsets - the immediate need is a rapid end to the use of #fossilfuels and a massive rollout of #renewableenergy

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207183120

#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

Twenty years ago today, at almost exactly this time of day. #columbia #nasa

https://www.space.com/columbia-space-shuttle-tragedy-20-year-anniversary

Vale Will Steffen.
We've lost a truly leading thinker on climate change, someone who made a difference in how the world understands it. And a gentle, positive human being.
I worked with Will when he was founding director of the ANU Climate Change Institute, and owe him much.

Just a reflection: Sometimes the excitement of climate modelers about the increasing computational resources becoming available to them could stand in the way of prioritizing the big science questions they actually seek to address.

#NeverForget

Happy Monday morning! Here's a short-eared owl looking all beautiful while perched on a stump.
📸 by Sergius Hannan
#BirdsOfAlaska

Why it would require greater applied mechanical force to rotate an electric dynamo when electric power is being supplied to an external resistance load than rotating the dynamo without the load - the change of kinetic energy per unit time is diminished in the presence of electric power supplied to the external load so that the internal generating conductors inside the dynamo cannot move faster than without the load. to barely rotate the dynamo without rotational acceleration what is needed at least is applied mechanical power equals the electric power needed in the load.

It's Sunday, our day off from the show. Brad and I are at Covent Garden, at the spot where Eliza Doolittle bought her flowers to sell. Now there's a Shake Shack there.

Embrace change, or else you'll go nuts.

Allegiance is open! Thank you to The Times, All That Dazzles, Theatre Monkey, and WhatsOnStage for the positive remarks! I am having so much fun bringing this story to London. There is still time to get your tickets!

Go to https://allegiancemusical.com/.

Can’t wait to see you!

🚨#EOjob alert! EUMETSAT is looking for a #RemoteSensing Scientist to work on hyperspectral infrared level-2 products.

⏰deadline: 2 February
➡️more: https://eo.belspo.be/en/agenda/remote-sensing-scientist-hyperspectral-infrared-level-2-products

Fancy using some high-resolution optical satellite imagery for your research?

@SIOS_KC
are inviting proposals to access Planet data over Svalbard. ❄️🐻‍❄️

⏰ Deadline: 28 February

Information Webinar: 20 Jan!

Another great editorial opportunity!

Nature Materials are looking for an editor with a scientific background (and research experience) in biomedical engineering and soft matter.

In addition to a deep understanding of their own subject, they should be able to demonstrate a general interest in other areas of biomaterials, nanomedicine, cell therapy and/or soft materials.

Closing date: 12th February 2023

https://www.nature.com/naturecareers/job/associate-or-senior-editor-nature-materials-springer-nature-769562

#editorial #publishing #jobs

This is deeply wrong, but it's an interesting *kind* of wrong.

Our perception of the past telescopes: there's the recent past, what we remember; the middle past, what our parents and grandparents remember; the long past, out of living memory but still preserved in familiar stories; and everything else. As I've said before, a lot of Americans' idea of *human* #history seems to go roughly as follows:

1. #Cavemen.
2. #Pyramids.
3. #Jesus.
4. Robin Hood and King Arthur.
5. #Columbus and #pirates.
6. #Pilgrims and George Washington.
7. #Cowboys.
8. World War Two. (One must have happened somewhere?)
9. #Hippies and #Vietnam.
10. The real world begins with the momentous event of my birth.

Nor is this uniquely an American problem—some places have better educational systems than others, but I think people everywhere hold similar mythologized versions of world events leading uniquely and inevitably to their own central place in the world.

So here's an extreme version of the same phenomenon applied to natural history. Most reasonably educated people have some idea that not all prehistoric animals lived at the same time (although poor #Dimetrodon is forever going to be mixed in with #dinosaurs) but they do tend to lump enormous spans of time together: #mammoths and #sabertooths, before that all dinosaurs all at once, and before that ... I dunno ... jellyfish or something.

#Creationists, of course, turn it up to 11.

The two lead authors on this review of #LongCovid for Nature (paywalled, alas) both have debilitating chronic versions of long covid or related illnesses & managed to pull this together.

It's hard for healthy people to understand the toll this kind of brain work takes on people with cognitive dysfunction. They deserve huge thanks.

#covid #immunology #MEcfs

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2

There's an interesting new paper in the journal Ecological Economics. The title is:

"Assessing U.S. consumers' carbon footprints reveals outsized impact of the top 1%"

This is from the abstract --

Unsustainable environmental degradation and extreme economic inequality are two of humanity's most pressing challenges. They are intimately linked. Climate-altering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are disproportionately driven by consumption among wealthy and socially privileged groups, yet poorer and socially marginalized peoples face disproportionate climate harms.
________________________

What really grabbed me, however, was the chart below, created by Andrew Fanning using data contained in the paper. It clearly illustrates the massive scale of carbon inequality in our modern society.

#Inequality #GreenhouseGases #Emissions #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice

I guess I'll end with my usual plea: don't buy Starlink internet. Or if you do, please tell them that you, a paying customer, care about the night sky. They need to make it a priority to make their satellites fainter and use fewer of them - this is a very doable engineering problem that they don't care about right now. There are many other ways to provide internet around the world that don't ruin the night sky and destroy low-Earth orbit.

#SaveTheNightSky

"...the industry’s approach on #climate really hasn’t changed since scientists first started warning that the burning of fossil fuels was becoming a problem: push “solutions” that keep #fossilfuels profitable, downplay climate impacts, overstate the industry’s commitments, and bully the media if they don’t stay on message. It’s the same five-step plan, deployed to the same end: preserving power, subsidies, and social license."
@amywestervelt
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/24/oil-gas-climate-disinformation/ #ClimateChange

Just got word.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy is renewing a legislative push AB813, defeated in 2018, that would *effectively* allow export of coal-fired power from WY to CA & the shutdown of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant. https://bit.ly/3Cwhehu

Truly ... the fossil fuel industry will do ANYTHING to avoid the cessation of operations.

The fight is not over!
#NuclearPower