This record, like records of how often the Tiber or Thames froze in winter, Indigenous oral histories, and other historical sources, can document climate records before widespread instrument-based data (i.e. the 1880s), and add important local and fine-grained detail to scientific climate records.

Apparently Schrödinger's Tortoise is still with us!

193 is a great run, but even so it’s still sad to lose a living link to all that time. Jonathan the tortoise was born during the first stage of the Industrial Revolution, perhaps a decade after the death of Napoleon, while Andrew Jackson was president, and before Victoria became queen.

“Nothing short of shocking.” After a dry winter and hot spring, the snow-scarce US West careens into a foreboding summer while Colorado River Basin states can’t agree how to to share limited water, FEMA is in disarray, and firefighting capacity on federal lands has been dangerously diminished.

“This particular year is as clear an indication of the influence of climate change as anything we’ve seen.”

AI data centers guzzle water and energy, but they can also create heat and heat islands: “Surface temperatures increased by an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit after a data center started operations. In extreme cases, nearby temperatures increase by up to 16.4 degrees.” www.cnn.com/2026/03/30/c...

2002 IIRC was the worst single year for Colorado basin preciptiation since 1580. not even close to that this time

Gift article. “This is all happening on a planet in the middle of its own transition, one that may well last thousands or even millions of years and to which few nations have even begun to properly adapt. In the meantime, vulnerabilities proliferate like heat.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/m...

In a county without enough water for people or crops, where the Colorado River may soon dwindle, the county commission wants an AI data center without any environmental review or revealing the name of the company it will be built for. Why would residents be dubious? www.latimes.com/california/s...

The spare, brutalist concrete stations were meant to echo the neoclassical architecture of DC, but could now also stand as relics of an older, more advanced civilization.

Utah’s Deer Valley closes after its second shortest season and its lowest snowfall ever, even as it opened 100 runs and 8 lifts in new, significantly lower terrain. “By 2026-27, the resort hopes to have close to 4,400 skiable acres. It also hopes to get more snow.” www.sltrib.com/news/environ...

Seems like an alarming data point for anyone concerned about the future viability of homeowners or property insurance in the US.

“A surprise Monday downpour dumping 2-4 inches of rain per hour caught meteorologists off guard… Climate change is intensifying Hawaii’s Kona low storms, leaving forecasters scrambling as their models struggle to predict moisture retention in these systems.” www.latimes.com/environment/...

There’s been a ton of corporate consolidation in ownership of resorts that won’t be reliably skiable sooner than anyone wants to admit. Are they trying to squeeze out a last round of profits, hoping to sell, hoping for a gov’t bail out, or just in denial? Unfortunately, any of these are possible.

Thread. “Black households are less likely to be approved for disaster aid, receive smaller payouts via the federal government and private home insurers, and lose wealth after disasters while white households gain it, even controlling for factors like income, homeownership, and local damage.”

“The US has caused an eye-watering $10tn in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself, new research has found.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

LA County emergency management officials had been pushed to send out an alert about high winds and fire risk, “but no such alert was sent. The residents of west Altadena did not receive a targeted emergency alert until 3:30 a.m. the next day, nine hours after the fire started.”

Looking good ❄️😬🔥

Informative and infuriating.

Gift article. AC “is increasing rapidly because people are increasingly in these heat waves, where there are actually threats to life.” As AC spreads in once cooler US cities and worldwide, it speeds climate change, even as cooling becomes a public health issue. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/u...

An informative and alarming analysis of the deadpool looming at Lake Powell: “The 710-foot-tall dam was designed for a world in which water levels would never be too high or too low, despite the fact that the Colorado is by far the most variable river in North America.” www.hcn.org/articles/the...

For understandable reasons, we have been focusing a lot on the West, but there's a much broader signal. Many stations across the entire southern half of the U.S. are recording their highest average maximum temperatures on record so far this March. Graphic by sercc.com

Climate and affordability are interconnected crises. With record temperatures and wildfires already arriving in March, and people working multiple jobs just to make rent, US fire departments are struggling to find volunteers. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Groundwater depletion is an accelerating problem, but a rare success story is worth learning from, since “researchers have calculated that large portions of California’s irrigated cropland will need to be permanently left dry in the coming years.”

Uh oh

I’m gonna tell everybody this is actual footage of me exiting for a sabbatical. (Or possibly teleporting to a Waffle House like the latest FEMA weirdo.😜)

...And, again today, a huge swath of the continental United States clear across from the Pacific Coast to Mississippi River is experiencing all-time March monthly record heat. Some locations are so hot that they are actually exceeding *April* all-time record highs. Incredible.

“I’m looking at satellite imagery right now as we speak, and I’m starting to see visible wildfire plumes pop up in states like New Mexico and Arizona and Colorado,” said Swain. “Today, it’s mid-March. That is extraordinary.” www.latimes.com/california/s...

The next time I need an excuse to leave a zoom meeting early I’m gonna tell everybody I’m being teleported to a Waffle House. (Also, being teleported to a Waffle House may be your best chance of survival the next time a big disaster hits the US.)

“In the US west, the seasons that people and nature were used to for centuries are disappearing, putting many, including outdoor workers and those without air conditioning, in danger…The threat isn’t distant – it is here.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Climate disasters will cause all kinds of hardship and havoc, but the near-term insolvency of some private and public insurers, and the possibility that parts of the US may become functionally uninsurable, is yet more proof of how the climate crisis is already here.

Gift article. The coldest camping trip I ever took was the North Rim one June. I was fortunate to see that snowy forest before it was gone. “In every direction the aspens were dead. So too were the ponderosas…what foresters call the “standing dead,” ghost trees.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

“The executives’ total pay rose, because Edison ties most executive compensation not to safety, but to the company’s financial performance. And last year, Edison’s profit jumped more than 200% — from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $4.5 billion — despite the Eaton disaster.” www.latimes.com/business/sto...

From Aspen to Park City, many ski towns were once mining towns, with physical reminders of that past still visible. Sooner than many of us think, mountain hikers may be walking past abandoned lifts and other relics of another dead industry. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/c...

“Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today.” “It is really maddening,” said Cara Horowitz at UCLA…if you upgraded the infrastructure a little bit, did good housekeeping, you could solve a really important part of the problem.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“The sweltering temperatures are arriving months earlier than typical…making the early-season heat particularly dangerous…California has grappled with a rise of heat-related deaths in recent years as climate change has driven more prolonged and severe episodes of extreme heat.”

Oscar-winner Ryan Coogler recalling how a college writing professor pushed him to become a screenwriter & the possibility of #Sinners being taught in film curriculums someday: “I have so much respect for professors…for dedicating their life to future generations & making sure their minds are solid.”

The same story is playing out in the interior US West too.

Somewhere between “OBAA is Spielberg’s Green Book”and “Sinners’ power of music scene was just an iPod commercial” I’ve started thinking maybe it was a bad idea to fire all the movie critics.

After a weird, warm, dry winter the US West can kiss whatever snow it managed to get goodbye.

The program & menu of the first Academy Awards at the #Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (1929) courtesy of the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library: digitalcollections.oscars.org/cdm/ref/coll... #Oscars

Alarmingly, I think I’m beginning to understand the mindset of US leaders left so deranged by the launch of Sputnik that they demanded NASA draw up plans to nuke the moon.

Edith Head played a huge part in the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, and though she didn’t win an Oscar for it, her work in Vertigo was spectacular, making movie viewers as obsessed as Jimmy Stewart at his first sighting of Kim Novak. youtu.be/Beac86mN8XM?...

The allegation is explosive, contested, and potentially damning: Was a key LA County employee asleep as fire spread to West Altadena, hours before any warnings or evacuation orders were finally issued? laist.com/news/climate...

I haven’t stopped thinking about this article ever since I read it, and the new article below feels like a continuation: “AI is African intelligence.” It’s almost like exploitation of African labor has been central to the history of global capitalism all along. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

BP just got approval to do deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico? WHAT COULD GO WRONG?!?!?

A debate about some of the most iconic but endangered trees on earth. Fire is part of their ecology, but 20% of mature trees burned just in 2020-21. Is their lifecycle still viable in a new climate and fire regime? How much should we intervene? They outlived the dinosaurs, but may not survive us.

Afterwards, LADWP chief engineer William Mulholland, designer of the dam and the LA Aqueduct—who had just declared the dam safe—said he envied the dead. (And the actual death toll was likely higher due to agricultural laborers in the Santa Clara Valley and elsewhere who were swept away uncounted.)

This fiasco is going to end up being Vietnam times the 1970s Oil Crisis plus the Gilded Age. Incredible.