Emma Tompkins

Mine are older, but last week I was looking at their toddler pictures - fondly reminiscing. I completely forgot about the mixing and the stuffing of random stuff phase: spoons in dvd players, tea towels under sofas, biscuits in places you never thought someone could squish a biscuit!

‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases

Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.

The Enshittificator Digital products and services keep getting worse. In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved…

Criminally funny, but also I'm crying inside

Norway comes for the #TechBros

www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

vimeo.com/1168468796?f...

I work on climate adaptation - which means I believe we can innovate and prepare for some amount of anthropogenic climate change. However i also assume we rapidly reduce our emissions and sequester huge amounts of GHGs. Lower temp tipping points 1-2C) terrify me. We are unprepared

Progress in adapting to climate change: 2025 report to Parliament - Climate Change Committee Footnotes have been removed from the HTML version of this report. For the footnoted version of this report,…

And useful resource showing how well we’re (not) doing … www.theccc.org.uk/publication/...

Resource for UK local authorities to identify climate risks and consider adaptations to them. lcat.uk.

Climate projections for the uk are for wetter winters. Lots of resources weather.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-chan....

I’ve just been on the train from Birmingham to the south coast. So much land underwater - I was wondering how this will affect food prices this summer. Trains had to stop at Brockenhurst due to flooding at Sway (no trains passing through). I will look forward to your article.

‘They pushed so many lies about recycling’: the fight to stop big oil pumping billions more into plastics Plastic production has doubled over the last 20 years – and will likely double again. For author Beth Gardiner, metal water bottles and canvas tote bags are not the solution. So what is?

Petrochemicals for plastic are, says Beth Gardiner, “expected to be the largest single driver of oil demand in the decades to come."

Oil companies understand that the shift away from fossil fuels is a threat to their profitable business model.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

As someone who works on the impacts of climate change I am embarrassed to my core to admit that prior to reading this article I had not made the link between #GHG emissions and plastic use. Plastic production = 3.3% of total CO2 emissions. ourworldindata.org/ghg-emission...

Argh! Now I don’t know which one to read first 🤔. Off to read reviews now!

Not read- but I’ll give it a try. Thank you.

The great derangement by Amitav Ghosh (although it’s more cli-no-fi)

I tried to take a photo of a grasshopper on my windshield, but now it looks like a gigantic bug destroying the town.

excellent thread on research paper reviewing knowledge of risks of #AMOC weakening by 2100. AMOC collapse has global impacts and cd cause extreme cooling in Europe, and accelerated sea-level rise along the US Atlantic coast. Spoiler: AMOC weakening is likely under all SSPs

Headline: "Scientists discover emperor penguin colony in Antarctica using satellite images"

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

Brilliant article about our lovely London and why some UK politicians (and American ones) are engaged in a fake smear campaign

White text on green background reading, 'This is a very rare opportunity to protect a huge swathe of beautiful and biodiverse countryside surrounding the Cerne Abbas Giant. Please join me in supporting this important appeal.' Sir Stephen Fry. An illustration of the Cerne Abbas Giant is on the bottom of the post

Fast-forward to 2025 and Sir Stephen Fry is supporting our appeal to safeguard the Giant’s lair.

Your donation today will help us raise the funds we need to rise to the occasion: buff.ly/j1w0Mbn

Ah thank you for this beauty to make me smile!

A Cat 4 and 5 extravaganza: A look back at the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season » Yale Climate Connections Extraordinarily, three of 2025’s 13 named storms (23%) reached Category 5 strength: Erin, Humberto, and Melissa.

After 9 straight years with a landfalling hurricane—and a record 5 straight (2020-2024) with a major hurricane landfall—the U.S. escaped any hurricane landfalls in 2025. With the unprecedented disarray affecting FEMA and NOAA, we were extremely fortunate not to be tested by a major hurricane!

If you’d like to hear Ben Santer talking about this “arc of history” from the IPCC’s discernible influence finding 30 years ago to the present, then his talk at CRU’s 50th anniversary is a nice intro to climate fingerprinting youtu.be/ZinW-m2GDvU?...

A climate scientist reflects on 30 years fighting the 'forces of unreason' Thirty years ago, the IPCC agreed on a historic finding: “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”

A wonderful and extremely personal review of the state of climate science 30 years on by one of the world's leading #climate scientists.

thebulletin.org/2025/11/a-cl...

From Copernicus: This shows how the expected date for breaching 1.5C has been creeping ever closer in recent years. The orange date shows the baseline for the extrapolation; the red date shows when 1.5C is breached based on the trend...

Excited to share #PhD in @unisouthampton.bsky.social with www.findaphd.com/phds/project... on “The Volcanic Mind” using volcanic risk reduction lessons to explore how resilience emerges from the interplay between emotional trust and deliberative confidence in times of crisis

Surreal but excellent video about how we interact with nature. I’d have loved a sci-fi ending where killer bacteria lead the next transformation…

Cars driving in snowy and icy conditions with headlights on. Text overlay reads: ‘BLOG POST 19 November 2025 – Staying safe in snow and ice: Met Office WeatherReady tips.’ Met Office logo appears at the top

❄️ We’ve issued an amber warning for snow, with further warnings for snow and ice across parts of the UK.

Stay safe with our #WeatherReady tips

www.metoffice.gov.uk/blog/2025/me...

Students draw flood-adapted homes as part of the workshop

GCSE students from three local schools came onto campus to learn about the flood risks affecting Southampton.

They took part in interactive workshops with
the More Than Maps team, learning about the models and methods used to assess and adapt to flood risks.

southampton.ac.uk/geography/ne...

@climatecentral.org hired the NOAA scientist who was in charge of maintaining the billion dollar weather disaster data set and is going to continue it! Here is the new home of the Billion Dollar Disaster's data set: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters | Climate Central Explore U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters since 1980, including total costs, trends, and impacts.

Today, the U.S. faces one billion+ dollar climate/weather disaster on average every 2w. That's a massive increase from one every 4m in the 1980s.

This is 'global weirding' and people are taking notice!

The government told NOAA to stop tracking these events: but @climatecentral.org is on the job.