The Week Between Christmas and New Years

Not just British… Govs everywhere are looking at climate change -& its ecological & societal consequences- as something that can be ignored until we sort out the “urgent” things… Scientists biggest mistake was/is the belief that producing evidence would elicit proper action from decision-makers 👇👇👇

Carbon fairytales is a good moniker for the smoke & mirrors sold as CCUS. I get it for managing the oil & gas politics, but that doesn’t make CCUS a viable climate policy. Maybe short term gain, surely long term pain… www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/23/opinion/canada-carbon-storage-fossil-fuels

I’m not an economics expert, but one lesson I take from GFANZ is that relying on the market to address climate change doesn’t work. We may still need the market, but we also need strong regulatory frameworks to make the market work. Otherwise, short term greed wins. www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

🚨☀️ICYMI: Our paper, now out in PNAS, revisited the 2003 heat wave in France, showing a much larger role for climate change than previously understood: 6,000 deaths in one month directly caused by fossil fuels. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Hype. No form of CO₂ removal is a climate solution as long as we’re still releasing >40 billion tonnes of CO₂ every year from fossil fuel burning.

If you are in the US and you would like to send a message to your elected representative about the proposed dissolution of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, @agu.org makes it easy with a template here: agu.quorum.us/campaign/151... #AGU25

I wish I could attend this. If you can, do. 👇👇👇

Are you joining the Symposium on restoration: Habitat restoration for diadromous fishes – best practices and impacts on stock assessment? If you are an ECS, make sure to apply for an ICES-sponsored travel grant when you submit your abstract lyyti.events/p/Symposium_...

Another insane move from the Trump regime. One of NCAR's contributions to climate science is the development of the Community Earth System Model (CESM), which is used by researchers worldwide. Here's a simulation of air-sea CO₂ fluxes from CESM.

For day 17 of our #PLOSClimateCountdown, we're highlighting research by @zoejean88.bsky.social and colleagues: "Marine communities do not follow the paradigm of increasing similarity through time" journals.plos.org/climate/arti... @afredston.bsky.social @mkoenalonso.bsky.social

While we could understand that the crumbling world order is likely driving these choices, @lindamcquaig.bsky.social conclusion is not wrong. We are trading off a livable planet for a potential quick response to the current geopolitical crisis. That’s not a good deal. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Localized nutrient colimitation of phytoplankton growth rates across the subtropical South Pacific Ocean www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... #jcampubs 🌊

Co-occurrence is associated with horizontal gene transfer across marine bacteria independent of phylogeny academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc... #jcampubs

I talked to @heyjohnryan.bsky.social at KUOW about adapting to increasingly strong atmospheric rivers, and that reducing risk ultimately requires tackling GHG emissions. "If we don't do that, atmospheric rivers are going to keep growing stronger...It's going to overwhelm our ability to respond.”

Catastrophic flooding in BC and WA is putting thousands at risk. We’ve always had heavy rain and floods; but as the world warms, they’re becoming more frequent and severe. And it was a UVic research team that ID'd the human fingerprint in increasing extreme precip. www.nature.com/articles/nat...

While Canada drives forward looking into the rearview mirror, dialing back its climate policies & embracing an expansion of fossil fuels, the developing world is looking through the windshield & embracing clean technologies... the West plays checkers, China plays chess... www.cbc.ca/news/science...

The Land of the Free… no more 👇👇👇

"...despite #climate change being the major threat to global health many journals had until recently published little or nothing. A joint editorial published in multiple journals increased coverage, & for many journals it was the first thing they published on climate change & #health"

Join ICES Workshop on unavoidable survey effort reduction 3 (WKUSER3) 📅12–16 January 2026 📍Copenhagen, Denmark Investigate challenges to maintaining consistent time series of survey data products for stock assessment models 🔔Register by 14 December icessurveys.typeform.com/to/aogNZhoR?...

I really hope the faint optimism expressed at the end of this piece comes true. My take is much more prosaic; the new geopolitical realities, trade war included, made short term economic growth the only thing of value, the long-term sustainability be damned. 👇👇 www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

We don’t know enough to have a reasonable working understanding of the functioning of these deep sea ecosystems, let alone to assess the impacts of industrial activities on them. A moratorium on considering permitting deep sea mining until we can do this properly should be a no brainer. 👇👇

While this is happening, instead of asking these questions, in Canada we are dismantling our climate policy and implementing layoffs that “strip away science-based expertise on climate change, forest fires, and sustainable resource management”. Go figure.. 😔 www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/05/n...

"Temperatures are rising at twice the global average, with intense heatwaves that are pushing society to the limits. Human health, ecosystems & economies can’t cope with extended spells of more than 50 °C – it is simply too hot to handle" - @wmo-global.bsky.social #MENA wmo.int/news/media-c...

Food for thought. www.nationalobserver.com/2025/12/01/a...

This account of events is quite revealing, and profoundly disappointing for those Canadians that want a credible, evidence-based approach to climate change. www.thestar.com/politics/pol...

"We need to wake up here. The World needs to wake up. Not just in terms of trying to cap this at 1.5 degrees C, limit emissions, and limit the warming. But also we need to adapt to this. So the governments need to wake up in terms of preparing... to reduce the impact, as well as increase resilience"

" #Climate scientists have already warned that extreme weather events ... will continue to worsen as temperatures increase," said Renard Siew, climate change advisor to the Centre for Governance and Political Studies in Malaysia. "That is exactly what we have been seeing."

In an emergency media ­conference on Nov 27 Malaysian Meteorological Department director-general Mohd Hisham Mohd Anip said this is the first time a tropical storm is reaching such strength. "its uniqueness is that it is occurring in the Strait of Malacca – something that has never happened before"

The new geopolitical landscape may have drove @mark-carney.bsky.social to this choice, but for this to make sense it also needs to assume that the world will badly fail at controlling climate change, & that Canada should actively contribute to that failure. Disappointing. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

so much for those Value(s)

New from me: I talked to CDC staffers about the new vaccines and autism page. They said things like: “The best way I can put it is it feels like we’re on a hijacked airplane.” “I think people are starting to see that we can’t fulfill our mission here.”

If we continue on this path, I can see a future where the normalization in the use of the notwithstanding clause enables the undoing of Canadian democracy where who has rights, and who doesn’t, becomes a choice of the powers that be. It is not a nice future. www.thestar.com/politics/pol...

🚨NEWS: NDP Leadership Candidate Tony McQuail had a message for his donors on my podcast today: Don't send him any more money, for now. Send it to fellow candidate @votetanille.bsky.social until she raises enough to survive the next cut off. Watch as Tony made news (and almost made us all cry):

The destruction of US science will be felt worldwide for decades. Take it from @msier.bsky.social, who was the lead program director for the Biological Oceanography program at the US National Science Foundation.

Excited to share that I’ll be speaking at Memorial University on Friday! If you’re in St. John’s, make sure to come out. I’ll be talking about how I became a tech critic and how I‘m seeing the current challenges with generative AI and digital sovereignty.

Nearly every panel I spoke on this year ended with the same question: "What gives you hope?" My friends, that question expired years ago. (If you need receipts, my book Saving Us is literally a 300-page answer.) The real question is: How are you PRACTICING hope? Because Greta is right ..

If we don't rapidly phase out fossil fuels, we can say goodbye to coral reefs, the Greenland and Antarctic icesheets, and permafrost. The results will not be pretty.

Interesting questions and takes being posed here... 👇 www.hilltimes.com/story/2025/1...

Charts like this paint an overly optimistic picture Many countries are off track for delivery & are unlikely to fully implement their current policy targets without greater action E.g UKs Climate Change Commitee asseses that there is insufficient implementation to meet 40%of our emissions target!

"The @climateactiontracker.org has downgraded Canada's overall rating to ‘Highly Insufficient,’ primarily due to weakened policy ambition, slow implementation, and a widening gap between current emissions levels and Canada’s 2030 target" climateactiontracker.org/countries/ca... #Canada 🇨🇦

The large increase from 2018-2021 was driven by #Climate activism. Lesson: The widespread mobilisation of the climate emergency movement ( @fridaysforfuture.bsky.social @xrglobal.bsky.social, @sunrisemvmt.bsky.social @endegelaende.bsky.social ) was crucial for creating political salience

“Promoting new fossil fuel projects is nation burning, not nation building” 👇👇 www.nationalobserver.com/2025/10/29/n...

🚨 The news-media is utterly failing to cover these momentous scientific findings. The public is not being informed of the danger posed. The UK chief scientist Dame Angela McLean just highlighted this as an issue of national security - why are no news outlets covering it ?!? 🤯 #EndClimateSilence

The devil is always in the details.. and this is a big detail. 👇👇👇

At risk of oversimplifying a complex negotiation, my initial reaction is that you don’t back down when something seems to be working. If Ontario blinks, Trump will keep pulling these stunts even more often, & increase his tantrums rhetoric… if that’s even possible. www.thestar.com/business/ont...

Really important paper led by my @iiasa.ac.at colleague Alex Nauels www.nature.com/articles/s41... “The difference between decisive climate action today and continued high emissions is not just measured in degrees of warming but also in meters of sea-level rise” 👏👏👏

Fair analysis. @mark-carney.bsky.social credentials led many to believe that he would advance climate policies. Instead, he is dismantling them. Right now climate action is no longer a clear distinction between major political parties in Canada. Sorry kids... www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

"If we fail to protect permafrost ecosystems, the consequences for human rights, biosphere integrity, and global #climate will be severe. The policy implications are clear: the faster we reduce human emissions and draw down atmospheric CO2, the more of the permafrost domain we can save."

This is the key problem: Regulatory Capture. This doesn’t mean that if you address it solutions will be easy; they still will be darn hard. Trade-offs & difficult decisions will still be made, but fair examination of evidence will be behind them. At last govs will be acting in the public interest.