Quercus

Relying on an old energy grid, hurricane-battered Puerto Ricans face frequent blackouts. Bad Bunny showcased the crisis in his historic Super Bowl halftime show just weeks after the Trump administration canceled programs meant to build a cleaner, resilient system on the island.

Pharmacophagy in insects: Ecological and evolutionary perspectives on the non‐nutritional use of plant specialized metabolites Insects interact with plants not only for nutrition but also to actively seek plant specialized metabolites (PSMs) for chemical defense, reproduction, and self-medication—a behavior known as pharmaco...

Did you know? Insects eat plants as medicine. #OpenAccess
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Map reveals America’s most vulnerable drinking water utilities New index shows 67 million Americans rely on high‑risk water systems as climate threats outpace utilities’ disclosures.

Our new paper led by Dr. @zialyle.bsky.social assessed the climate risk to US drinking water utilities, & many of their revenue bonds don't reflect their climate risk. Here's the paper: www.nature.com/articles/s43.... Melissa Fleur Afshar wrote about it in Newsweek: www.newsweek.com/new-study-sh...

ICYMI: our new paper on climate risk to US drinking water utilities. Climate impacts threaten water utilities across multiple hazards: fire, drought, sea level rise, flooding, extreme weather, & other hazards. But many long-term utility bonds don’t mention the risks: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Power After the Storm As climate change can exacerbate extreme events the need for science-based, proactive grid modernization is more pressing than ever.

📣NEW @ucs.org analysis documents how extreme weather events were behind all the largest power outages in the Central U.S. over the past decade, affecting hundreds of thousands of customers and demonstrating the urgent need to build a more resilient electric #grid.

Segregation Academies in Mississippi Are Benefiting From Public Dollars, as They Did in the 1960s ProPublica identified 20 schools in the state that likely opened as segregation academies and have received almost $10 million over the past six years from the state’s tax credit donation program.

ProPublica identified 20 segregation academies in Mississippi that received almost $10 million over six years through a state-funded program.

At least eight opened with an early boost from state-funded vouchers in the 1960s.

(Published Nov. 2024)

Some of the most incisive education reporting over the past 3 years (especially in the South) has come from @propublica.org—and I’ve been proud to be included in several of their stories.

As Black History Month begins, a reminder that history is present.

Republican Congressmen, AGs, state finance officers, etc. have been undertaking a hazing campaign the last three years sending threatening letters to investors demanding they, e.g., "Abandon... the practice of framing deterministic future outcomes as long-term risks"

www.esgdive.com/news/state-g...

Tapping into risk in America’s drinking water A new Drinking Water Utilities Climate Risk Index finds utilities serving 67 million people face high climate risk. Yet 36% of their bonds omit climate change, revealing gaps in preparedness.

Dr. Lyle's paper is in @commsearth.nature.com and here's the CMU news about it: engineering.cmu.edu/news-events/.... Tl;dr climate bad water good

Climate change risk index and municipal bond disclosures of United States drinking water utilities - Communications Earth & Environment 67 million customers across the US rely on drinking water utilities that face higher climate risk than accounted for, which exposes major gaps in climate adaptation and resilience planning, suggests a...

🚨Our new paper led by Dr. @zialyle.bsky.social looked at how climate change poses risks to US drinking water utilities & if their bonds disclose these risks to investors. Utilities serving 67 million people have high risks, but 36% of their bonds don't mention climate: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

I’m sharing this video again because people don’t really get what these data centers and ai are doing to our planet and our communities. Especially Black communities because they were strategically placed there.

I need you to listen to these people.
STOP USING AI. STOP SUPPORTING AI.

Having diverse trees in playgrounds helps young children feel good https://relationalthinkingblog.com/2025/12/10/plain-language-summary-having-diverse-trees-in-playgrounds-helps-young-children-feel-good/

Read the full paper here https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70227

Opinion | The New Food Pyramid, Brought to You by Big Meat

“If Americans increased their protein intake by just 25%…it would require about 100 million acres of additional ag land each year — an area larger than Michigan, Ohio & Pennsylvania combined — & increase annual emissions by 100s of millions of tons of CO2e, according to @worldresources.bsky.social.”

Where The Prairie Still Remains | NOEMA Are pioneer cemeteries key to the Iowa prairie’s revival, or its final resting place?

cool read.
www.noemamag.com/where-the-pr...

The tiny skull of a ruby-throated hummingbird (OUVC 10851) sits on the tip of a finger. The even tinier humerus of this bird sits in front of the skull.

T. rex is more closely related to this little dinosaur (a hummingbird) than T. rex is to Allosaurus. Also, a hummingbird's humerus is way smaller than it's eyeball. Go home, evolution, you're drunk! 🦖

Mammals have evolved into ant eaters 12 times since the dinosaur age, study finds Mammals have developed some unusual eating habits over the past 100 million years, but a new study has uncovered the surprising lengths to which some have gone to satisfy one of the more peculiar—a ta...

Tired: Everything evolves to be a crab.

Wired: Everything evolves to eat ants.

From invasive species tracking to water security – what’s lost with federal funding cuts at US Climate Adaptation Science Centers The people who manage America’s aquifers, wetlands, shorelines and recreation areas rely on federal science as they face new and rising risks in a changing climate.

You probably heard the US admin is threatening to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research: but did you know they already froze funding for the 9 regional Climate Science Adaptation Centers? From tracking invasives to helping tribes with drought, here's why the CASCs matter ⬇️

Gigantic SUVs are a public health threat. Why don’t we treat them like one? The anti-tobacco playbook could help turn the US public against their beloved oversized cars.

“Car bloat”—increasingly oversized automobiles—worsens road safety, affordability and the environment.

Here are some of the stories I wrote in 2025 examining the trend and proposing solutions. 🧵

In @vox.com, I likened car bloat to secondhand smoke (which helped bring down the US tobacco industry).

a google earth satellite image looking northeast with the san gabriel mountains at the bottom in greens and browns, and the lighter colored mojave desert at the top. a wide fan of grey coloration spreads across the desert.

that alluvial fan coming out of the san gabriels near wrightwood really is something: visible from the pelona schist that just comes pouring down wildhorse canyon when 10" of rain falls like it just did, spreading out 15+ miles into the mojave

Changes in the Frequency of Flood Events Across the United States Detectable by the Middle of This Century Climate-informed Poisson regression models are developed to predict and project the changes in the frequency of flood events By the mid-21st century, flood events are expected to be more frequent...

"By the mid-21st century, flood events are expected to be more frequent predominantly in the eastern United States"

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

"urgent need for flood mitigation measures"

tl.dr --> Floods in the East. Drought in the West

On average, Christmas Day was 15.4F above the 1991-2020 normal. Seems warm. Seems bad.

🚨🔥 Warmest Christmas on record for the Contiguous U.S.! The average high of 57.9F and the average low of 36.6F each broke the Christmas record by a full 3F. 🔥🚨

Statewide survey aims to put California’s fungi on the conservation map Getting to The Cedars, an ecological preserve in California’s Sonoma county, is a slog. Multiple rivers and creeks must be crossed, and it can be tough going on an often storm-destroyed road. But…

A state-funded survey across California has uncovered hundreds of fungi new to science, part of a first-of-its-kind biodiversity effort.

Often overlooked, fungi support plant growth and store carbon — knowledge that could guide conservation and forest restoration as wildfires intensify.

Science’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year: The unstoppable rise of renewable energy Clean energy infrastructure is being deployed with unmatched scale and speed—and China is leading the way

“This year, renewables surpassed coal as a source of electricity worldwide, and solar and wind energy grew fast enough to cover the entire increase in global electricity use from January to June, according to energy think tank Ember” www.science.org/content/arti...

Compounding Impacts of Extreme Climate Events on European Birds Under Climate Change When multiple simultaneous or successive extreme climatic events occur, compound impacts can follow, where the effects of one event worsen the impacts of another. Surprisingly, the risks that these c...

Compounding risks of climate change: the authors "assess European birds’ historical exposure to multiple extreme events and identify where and how the risk of compound events will change under different emissions scenarios". doi.org/10.1111/con4...
Spoiler alert: compounding increases risk ☹️

The Green Book Project catalogues this history of segregation in public accommodations, documenting local businesses that defied the norm of racial segregation. Explore the papers, methods, download data, and share your story 3/3 greenbookproject.osu.edu #GreenBookProject #CommunityMap
#EconSky

Segregation in public accommodations was the major venue for protests during the Civil Rights Movement. Economists have not spent much time considering how discrimination in public accommodations affected economic activity. This is now a major focus of my work. 2/3 www.nber.org/system/files...

70 years ago today, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. Days after Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 for violating the ordinance requiring Black residents of Montgomery to accept second class treatment, the Black community organized and boycotted the city’s buses for over one year. 1/3

Project Jupiter Reflects New Reality of Permian Development Energy Transfer, Kinder Morgan, Natural Gas, Permian, San Juan, The Daley Note Posted by: East Daley Analytics A massive data center planned by OpenAI and Oracle in southern New Mexico shows the new dynamic influencing pipeline investments in the Permian Basin. The two technology companies are partnering in Project Jupiter, a four-building data center campus located in Santa Teresa, NM. The facility in Doña Ana County will be developed and operated by BorderPlex Digital Assets and Stack Infrastructure, which plan to construct an onsite natural gas–powered microgrid capable of supplying 700–900 MW of generation directly to the campus. The companies intend to invest more than $165B over 30 years, making Project Jupiter one of the largest private technology investments proposed in the Southwest. In the Data Center Demand Tracker, East Daley Analytics expects the full campus to be in service by October 2029 and to consume 110–140 MMcf/d of gas once fully operational. Kinder Morgan’s (KMI) El Paso Natural Gas (EPNG) system could benefit from this new demand. EPNG’s South Mainline runs through Doña Ana County and transports Permian gas across southern New Mexico (see basin and regional pipeline map from Energy Data Studio). However, East Daley’s West Coast Supply & Demand model shows the South Mainline is fully utilized seasonally. A second option is Energy Transfer’s (ET) new Desert Southwest expansion on Transwestern Pipeline, which is expected to add at least 1.5 Bcf/d of takeaway capacity from the Permian toward Arizona and Southern California. ET has been light on details for its latest pipeline, including the planned route. But in a project update on its website, ET lists Doña Ana County as a delivery point for Desert Southwest. Assuming the new pipeline traverses southern New Mexico, it could provide additional volumes to the county and support Project Jupiter’s demand. ET plans to start Desert Southw…

Close to 1 full goddamn gigawatt of gas (open-cycle, so the most inefficient kind) for the "Project Jupiter" site in New Mexico.

This whole article is a stunning illustration of how data centres are incentivising new fossil infrastructure:

eastdaley.com/daley-note/p...