d'oh!

They read about the Late Devonian mass extinction and are starting to get freaked out by the runaway eutrophication

We lost a real one this week. Nice obit for "true villain" Exxon CEO Lee Raymond by @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social. I'll always remember him for his inspiring words: “I’m not a U.S. company and I don’t make decisions based on what’s good for the U.S.” RIP heatmap.news/daily/lee-ra...

The NSF just eliminated geoscience postdocs, is trying to destroy NCAR, and is now dismantling the world's best array of ocean observatories for no reason, just uncomprehending childlike spite towards anyone who wants to learn anything about this planet www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...

for what it's worth, I'm going down with the ship of Reading Books and Writing My Own Stuff

"Interestingly, they found that, particularly for Greenland, that none of the models had melt rates as high as observed *even with* RCP 8.5 forcing"

Endless thanks to @ericnyquist.bsky.social for catching people's eyes with his beautiful cover art!

Had a similar experience talking to a grad student recently who was studying taphonomic bias in the fossil record and was advised against using the word "bias" for fear of tripping the DEI censors. Things are stupider than you can imagine

On NSF’s postdoc page, the biology and earth science fields have been completely eliminated; the only remaining fellowships are in math, astronomy, engineering, and “entrepreneurship.” Weird choice not to support research on the life support system for 8 billion people. www.nsf.gov/funding/post...

If politicians want to water down their language about climate change because they think it's more politically salable that's fine, but it remains true that we're deranging the planet at a pace that has virtually no analog in the fossil record, even for a planet with a very volatile climate history

For your weekend asmr needs: me, speaking about carbon dioxide and the carbon cycle, at length, again www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_j...

Interesting move being the governor of Louisiana and deciding to drown New Orleans to "save" $3 billion. (LECZ=low-elevation coastal zone) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Started reading THE STORY OF CO2 IS THE STORY OF EVERYTHING by Peter Brannen (recommended on a great book list by @ferrisjabr.bsky.social), and it is PHENOMENAL. I'm only about 20 pages in and my brain is already swirling with thoughts and cool new facts.

Fantastic review of my new book Lost Worlds in the Wall Street Journal: "Throughout, Mr. Wyman evokes the sights, sounds and smells of entire lifeways that have disappeared." www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

You're hearing it more and more

Sorry if this news screws anything up for anyone, but it turns out that rivers during the Cambrian period didn't wind as much as they do today pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulle...

Happy publication to my friend @stevebrusatte.bsky.social, who wrote a fantastic and sweeping evolutionary history of birds! A great gift for the theropod-head in your life

Pictured: my butt cheeks spanning 1.5 billion years across The Great Unconformity

The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything by @peterbrannen.bsky.social The Great Quake by Henry Fountain The Old Ways by @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social Proto by Laura Spinney Savage Landscape by Cal Flyn (def some recency bias going on, sue me)

Time to learn more about what happens when hegemonic decline, sectarian strife, and millenarian fervor on all sides lead to regional war, and then to regional war spiraling out of control.

This weekend news broke that President Trump has fired members of the National Science Board (NSB), which oversees the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). This independent governing body has advised U.S. presidents and Congress on scientific policies for more than 75 years.

Hear science journalist Peter Brannen @peterbrannen.bsky.social discuss his book 'The story of CO2 is the story of everything: How carbon dioxide made our world' 🗓️ Tuesday April 28th 11am Mountain 📍 CU Boulder East Campus, SEEC S228 and Zoom calendar.colorado.edu/event/peter-...

The eloquent and deeply knowledgeable @peterbrannen.bsky.social is without question one of our best contemporary writers on Earth history & science. If you haven't read his eye-opening debut on mass extinctions, The Ends of the World, and his magisterial, epic follow up, you should remedy that ASAP.

'The NSF has only committed $500 million of the $8 billion it was appropriated for the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The NSF will lose the billions of remaining funding if it does not spend it by Sept. 30.' thehill.com/homenews/adm...

Tracked down a couple recent Scientific Americans in which I have a weird feature on how far into the future you could possibly send a time capsule, as well as a cool spread on my new-ish book (complete with actual photograph of me holding a giant CO2 molecule) pls read at your convenience thx

I'll be at the LA Times Festival of books this Saturday talking with @peterbrannen.bsky.social, @laurapoppick.bsky.social and Dillon Osleger about their books. Come say hi if you are at bookchella! www.latimes.com/events/festi...

Just looked at the sun through a solar telescope. Sublime but a little disturbing, they wouldn‘t have made it so bright if we were supposed to see that stuff

The Late Holocene De-Costanza-fication Event “A cause of male pattern baldness became much less common over the past 7,000 years, contributing to an estimated 1–2% decrease in the prevalence of baldness.” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Deeply shameful to be an American right now. The only thing more shameful is being in a position of power and doing nothing to stop this

Leftist radical Dwight Eisenhower: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

Kind of amazing at this late date that the merged Standard Oils of New York and New Jersey are having their banner year

Maybe unpopular opinion but I think people too glibly hand-wave away physical/geological concerns about things like continuously declining ore grade, which probably isn't going to get much better given we have to mine more copper in next 30 years than previous 6,000 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Where I disagree is I do not think you can separate China’s partial and emerging “electrostate” model from its enormous coal industry, nor do I think you should ignore that China has leaned back *into* coal since 2021. Neither the US nor the Chinese energy systems are entirely laudable end-goals.

Me: my book covers a huge chronological scope, 250 years! @peterbrannen.bsky.social: Check this shit out

"The very things that the Ice Ages forged in us to keep us alive, I think are our best hope for keeping us alive in the future." spoke with Living on Earth about Snowball Earth, Pangaea, the Pleistocene, and gratitude for being alive. @insideclimatenews.org insideclimatenews.org/news/2803202...

Behold, the biggest point source of CO2 outside humanity, the volcanic system of Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira in the DRC, which emits an astonishing 16 thousand tons of CO2 a day (we emit over 100 million tons a day)

Thomas Friedman-level mixed metaphor achievement unlocked. Hate politicizing the bathwater while coming home to roost as a chicken that overeggs my pudding

ha, whaat? It wasn't my impression that Cambrian schist makes for very good petroleum source rock

I just resigned from NASA. It breaks my heart to leave, but I’ve become convinced the best path forward is to do the best science I can, and that can’t be here anymore. I’m still in love with the promise of those four magic letters. Ad astra per aspera, and remember: Earth is the only good planet.

Just finished The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything www.goodreads.com/book/show/17... by @peterbrannen.bsky.social and am left awestruck. A fantastic, important read, for all of us lucky fire primates.

This line, that it's everyone's fault, is also indistinguishable from the oil industry's own legal defense

Had this experience in January at a boomer bar, all the songs were implausible (but obviously AI) beachy/reggae covers of, like, Guns n' Roses and everyone was nodding along, loving it. Singularly dispiriting moment in my cultural life.

Here's what I wrote about oil shocks in my new-ish book (that also talks about Snowball Earth and the end-Permian mass extinction if you're into that sort of thing)

As a voter whose main issues were destroying the state capacity, scientific research base, and credibility of the country, illegal military strikes abroad, summary executions, disappearances, and childhood diseases at home, AND trashing the global economy, I'm quite pleased with how things are going

I very much enjoyed listening to this book. It does a great job capturing the links between CO2, climate, oxygen, plate tectonics, and Earth history which are both simple and incredibly complex! Recommend!

Counterpoint, it's all geology

The Deccan Traps live on 🦕🌋 (Réunion is thought to be the still-erupting expression of a hotspot that started massively erupting in India right around the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, so much so that the lava then could have covered the lower 48 United States 600 feet deep)

This book is amazing

Not to be crassly opportunistic, but if you’re genuinely curious about how there came to be an ocean of fossil fuels in the crust, why humans now emit 100x more CO2 than all volcanoes on earth, and want to begin that story 4 billion years ago, might I recommend www.harpercollins.com/products/the...