What climate tech should make this year's 10 Breakthrough Technologies list? (Quick, I'm on an editorial brain storming call and have no ideas of my own! 🙏)

Tomorrow is the deadline for submitting a comment to stop the administration from dismantling U.S. science. There are nearly 280,000 public comments filed so far! But! Do not assume they are all, or even most, against the proposal. This is a key pillar of Project 2029 - wind down federal R&D.

Psst…how about following some journalists who cover climate, energy, and the environment?

Are worms helping dairy farms tackle one of ag's biggest environmental challenges? 🪱 New MIT Technology Review article explores how vermifiltration can help improve manure management by reducing pollution, improving water quality & lowering emissions. 1/ www.technologyreview.com/2026/07/07/1...

Today, @jtemple.bsky.social published an article in the MIT Technology Review about emerging manure management solutions in California! And I’m quoted in it! Check it out! www.technologyreview.com/2026/07/07/1...

More and more farms are testing out various means of cutting pollution from livestock manure, including an idea catching on in the biggest dairy state: worms.

Made a version of this point in my Reno datacenter development boom piece. Indirect (basically Scope 2) water use through additional electricity consumption can be the much larger share: www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

Correct your priors: Private money is going after clean energy, governments are using public money to prop up fossil fuels "About 59% of all money spent on the fossil fuel system came from taxpayers in 2015. By 2025, that climbed to 68% and spiked at 78% in 2022." www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Climate change: a status report 🧵

Remember the global climate goal of no hotter than 1.5°C? Climate change plus a very powerful El Niño could lead to the first month with a global average temperature above 2°C early next year.

Must read piece by Allison Arieff on how SF needs arts to thrive (and how little tech money is doing to support it) www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/arti...

Macabre but cool stuff from @jesshamzelou.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2026/07/03/1...

Sounds like a great gig!

Especially thoughtful piece today from @sammyroth.bsky.social, on the dumb discourse from the climate change has been overhyped bros. open.substack.com/pub/climatec...

Sensible advice about how to deal with the heat. I'd add a couple of things that might be helpful: 1. Drinking water doesn't actually cool you off. What cools you off is sweat. If you get dehydrated, you don't sweat. If you don't sweat, body temp rises and you get in trouble.

More & more evidence that voluntary corporate climate pledges are no substitute for regulatory mandates — and certainly can't be advanced as an argument against the need for them.

Amazon and Google just reported emissions jumps of 16% and 18%, respectively, in 2025 compared to 2024. The main driver is not hard to guess: data centers and AI. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I'm the first to acknowledge I've just become a grumpy old person, but one of my deepest held beliefs is that we all should normalize asking people to turn off their Insta-tock-reels in public spaces.

my hottest climate take is that I don't believe in moral hazard, like "we can't [study/talk about/do thing] because liars who lie about everything will lie about it" is not a persuasive argument to me

Scoop with @mercohn.bsky.social: Johns Hopkins University is laying off more than 100 employees in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Carey Business School and central administration. Hopkins is suffering "debilitating" decreases in federal research funding www.thebanner.com/education/hi...

NEW: This is the story of how one of the most influential climate papers in history came to exist thanks to one of the companies most responsible for causing the climate crisis — and one with a financial stake in the technologies described in the paper. w/ @drilledmedia.bsky.social

This is Leah's account of how she worked on creating and passing the Inflation Reduction Act (which is not nearly as dead and gone as people think; stay tuned for more from her on that).

People who run or profit from oil and natural gas companies have been pushing pro-fossil propaganda into K-12 school curricula for at least 80 years. The latest page in the playbook, exposed by @marinscotten.bsky.social at Heated: heated.world/p/an-educati... h/t @emorwee.bsky.social

WSJ working hard for the most unflattering picture and framing.

Microsoft was leading the field on clean energy procurement practices and ambitious climate goals, but this project seems like a pretty clear abandonment of all of that: www.chevron.com/newsroom/202...

Squeals in delight (but, like, in a totally manly way). 🚨🚨New Phoebe Bridgers album drops in August!!!!!! 🚨🚨

Climate.us is officially live! After NOAA ended Climate.gov’s day-to-day operations in 2025, former team members built Climate.us to carry that work forward. Their explanations and graphics have always stood out to me as clear, accessible, and transparent. I’m really looking forward to this reboot.

This cannot stand.

Exclusive: The National Science Foundation is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by roughly 20% to 30%, even though its overall budget is down just 3%. https://scim.ag/4xY2KCm

This isn’t actually funny but I keep cackling to myself when people say we should pursue AI because it will tell us how to solve climate change. Like, we *know* how, we’re just not. ::burns so much fossil fuel to ask:: hey AI, what do? AI: “stop burning fossil fuel”

Elliott Smith biography coming out in August. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/744288...

Research confirms that the more skilled professionals like doctors and software engineers rely on AI, the more their skills degrade. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

just read another article about how AI can save you time to do "deeper thinking" instead of writing and omfg my dudes, the writing *is* the thinking

Solar geoengineering is often portrayed as a relatively cheap and easy fix for climate change. But as researchers take a harder look at the nuts and bolts of the concept, they’re finding numerous uncertainties, missing machines, and big things that would still need to be built (like polar airports).

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Hard to beat this Moxie classic — which my mom, who took up painting in her retirement, later reproduced. ❤️

Prolly a wee-bit late in my career to be a NPR Tiny Desks intern, but it's one of my favorite things in the world and seems like a really fun gig:

speaking as someone who has worked inside the media for almost my whole career: I think there was a brief, very unusual period when mass media, for all its flaws, created a consensus view of reality shaped, at least in part, by earnest efforts at truth-telling, that is gone forever

More & more solar geoengineering research is moving beyond computer modeling, delving into the design & engineering work needed to develop aircraft, dispersion systems & more. Much of it is happening at @davidkeith.bsky.social's new group at the University of Chicago: Freebie link for my latest:

I took a crack a trying to capture the chaos of the moment in scientific research—generational change in what happens and how practitioners feel about it, the end of a decades-long program to orient science only toward "productivity," product, and capital. www.scientificamerican.com/article/amer...

BREAKING: Judge Angel Kelly blocks Interior Sec. Doug Burgum's “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” Order as "a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization" and orders DOI to "restore and reinstall" removed materials "forthwith." ORDER: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Hey Bay Area Look! Kitties! You should adopt them.

I have a new story out today at Technology Review, and they gave me a gift link to share! www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/12/1... It's about thoughtcriminal archivists, word-fame, and how to get through a dark age without losing your soul. Much.

My latest, for the good folks @theatlantic.com. A profile of the climate scientist @weatherwest.bsky.social, a genuine multi-tool when it comes to public communication www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...

Nick Bilton has brought in a consultant to help manage his transition to @60minutes.bsky.social. He's also brought on board a 24-yr-old screenwriter as an "operations manager" — www.reuters.com/business/med...

If any other president had said "I"m going to destroy demand for liquid fossil fuels by permanently increasing their cost; wipe out America's cattle herds; spur the biggest wave of investment in renewables in history through energy insecurity" Congress would shut them down. Not this one!

Took a break from editing and writing about my passion (climate and science) to write about my other passion (trying to figure out where Phoebe's next popup show will be)

DRI is doing valuable work on mountains snow/rain and the communities in and below them that are so impacted by exactly how all that precipitation arrives and how long it stays in the mountains.

It’s bizarre being a policy-oriented researcher in an environment where evidence and public opinion are basically irrelevant to what happens. We’re not informing policy any more, friends; we have to make politics.