Tim Pagella

today’s hot take: most machine learning research, particularly that touches on any human phenomena (attempts to “solve” any human related problem) is conceptually and methodologically hollow

The hidden cost of your supermarket sea bass Revealed: an investigation shows how consumers buying fish in the UK are playing a role in food insecurity and unemployment in Senegal

Don’t buy sea bass www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Unsplash image of the Earth, mostly the nightside with a tracery of city lights on every continent.

OK, this is wild.

In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them.

It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*.

What the HELL?

1/

How stopping deforestation is a powerful “emergency brake” climate solution When people think of climate solutions, they often focus on smokestacks, tailpipes, and other artifacts of our fossil-fueled economy. That’s fitting since roughly two-thirds of the world’s greenhouse ...

Stopping deforestation is one of the best ways to help stop climate change. But we don't focus on it nearly enough.

drawdown.org/insights/how...

I’ve just come back from the Netherlands! Yup I agree - but met many livestock farmers trying to address it (with agroforestry). The more extreme end of European livestock farming and serious lock in.

Huge numbers of assumptions in those models. Why don’t they just measure?

‘An exciting moment’: England’s urban and rural trees mapped for first time ‘Groundbreaking’ tool aims to help tree-planting efforts and identify areas to create nature-rich habitats

Great that this is now available www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I’m just saying that’s where ‘no goals’ took us last time 😀

If rewilding us about letting nature do its thing (😀) - then it’s pretty reasonable to see trees as a big part of it surely? Just thinking about where we were about 5000 years ago…

Comic by Stephen Collins for the Guardian. Script as follows: Scene is a British WOODLAND by a RIVER. A NATURALIST is stood next to a cage, and TV NEWS REPORTERS are filming him and the cage. 1 NATURALIST: And now It is my great honour 2 NATURALIST: to reintroduce the first wild beaver back into Britain 3 [Cut to the BEAVER’S CAGE. Its door is open and the Beaver is leaned nonchalantly up against the opening, smoking a cigarette.] 4 BEAVER: Well, well, well. 5 BEAVER: Look who's come crawling back. 6 BEAVER: Got a rubbish ecosystem have ya? 7 BEAVER: Not happy with the *critical anti-flood infrastructure* engineered by the flippin *badgers*? 8 BEAVER: I almost didn't recognise you without one of my ancestors on your head… 9 BEAVER: First you wipe us out… now you ask us to come back and build dams for free… You actually expect me to be *pleased* don’t ya? NATURALIST: I'm so sorry I…I… 10 BEAVER: “Ooh la la, the Brits have come crawling back…” Do I look like *Michel flippin’ Barnier*? 11 NATURALIST: I-if there’s some kind of… *remuneration* we could offer I-I’m sure… 12 BEAVER [throwing cigarette to the ground]: Unlimited pond weed, two tickets to Abba Voyage. NATURALIST: Done. [ends]

beaver's return

Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from 36 fossil fuel firms, study shows Researchers say data strengthens case for holding firms to account for their contribution to climate crisis

Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from just 36 fossil fuel firms, study shows

- Researchers say data strengthens case for holding firms to account for their contribution to climate crisis

@influencemap.bsky.social
#climatecrisis #carbonmajors
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I ran Britain’s army. I know what it needs. Don’t cut aid to fund defence | Richard Dannatt History shows targeted aid reduces the burden on the military. Labour is risking the very security we are trying to ensure, says Gen Lord Dannatt, former chief of the general staff

Even the military recognise this is a poor idea. What a disaster

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Pay attention to perennial crops’ sustainable development potential, urge scientists - CIFOR-ICRAF Forests News These under-researched crops can yield big wins for people and the planet – if we get policies right

Pay attention to perennial crops’ sustainable development potential, urge scientists.

These under-researched crops can yield big wins for people and the planet – if we get policies right.

Learn more:↪️ bit.ly/3CM5ATa

#TreesPeoplePlanet

Sadly large hedgerow elms are a thing of the past; thankfully we have Rowland Hilder’s paintings to remind us of these magnificent trees.

Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities “Since Goma fell, I’ve lived in fear. I don’t dare leave my house.” These are the words of Justin Shamutwa Masumbuko, general coordinator of the Indigenous rights NGO ADELIPO-Congo. For several months...

Our team’s phones are blowing up with accounts from DRC

“We are not just individuals caught in the chaos, but we are wildlife defenders, advocates for peace, allies of the community — each carrying a deep sense of responsibility to our families & our work

I fear something catastrophic is coming.”

graphical summary of progress to targets by type

EU's Green Deal
has 154 targets
32 ‘on track’
64 working but not on track to meet targets
15 ‘not progressing’ or ‘regressing’
+
43 inadequate data

report:
publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/h...

…and that is where much of the actual risk lies

Landscape in Madagascar with tropical smallholder agriculture

4-years PhD position in the BRIGHT-Futures project with Prof Ingo Grass at the University of Hohenheim in Germany:

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of Tropical Smallholder Agriculture

Apply by 24.03.25

www.uni-hohenheim.de/en/job-openi...

No, renewables don't need expensive backup power on today's grids The actual story is the opposite: renewable energy pushes the most expensive fossil fuel plants out of business, lowering costs for consumers

Read and bookmark this wonderfully lucid @andrewdessler.com explainer on why renewables intermittency isn't the problem that fossil fuel lobbyists and low-information trolls claim it is.

A winter landscape of fields with snow and orange grasses. To the left is a huge bur oak. To the right is a quote from Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species: “What a struggle between the several kinds of trees must here have gone on during long centuries, each annually scattering its seeds by the thousand; what war between insect and insect - between insects, snails, and other animals with birds and beasts of prey - all striving to increase, and all feeding on each other or on the trees or their seeds and seedlings, or on the other plants which first clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of the trees”

Today is Darwin Day, in celebration of the birthday of Charles Darwin. In my view, he is the most important scientist in history. He was also a delightful writer, and wrote books across a broad range of biology. They are very readable. 1/3

I’m worried that the cat content here has increased dramatically under Trump. Understandable, but I’m a dog guy. All these unintended consequences…

André Guimarães: “Fires in the Rainforest: The Impossible Economics of a Disappearing Amazon” | The Great Simplification Episode 151

In this conversation, Nate is joined by agronomist & economist André Guimarães to explore the history of deforestation in Brazil, the difficult relationship between local economies, animal agriculture, and the health of the Amazon at large.

www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/151-...

YouTube video by Nate Hagens Artificial Intelligence and the Lost Ark | Frankly 83

I have a huge amount of time for Nate Hagens youtu.be/Mh6iuXmJ6uM

UK scientist wins prize for invention that could help avert ‘phosphogeddon’ Phosphate, key to food production, is choking waterways, but a new sponge-like material returns it to the soil for crops

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Trust in your own life experience and your own inner wisdom. Don’t put your faith in empty promises of leaders. Evaluate people based on actions and impact more than words.
#strength #wisdom #science #pagansky #witchsky #faith #experience #wisdom #proverb

#JustOut Modeling carbon sequestration in soils and biomass in heterogeneous #agroforestry systems? See our new study using the DayCent model on 5 temperate silvoarable and 1 silvopastoral systems @usyseth.bsky.social @johansix.bsky.social @cirad.bsky.social

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Excited to share a new @ifpri @ifpri.org WP: tl;dr - trees are high-return, + encouraging extremely poor households to adopt climate-smart agroforestry practices may be highly beneficial. #econtwitter #econsky

Agroecology offers blueprint for resilient farming in northern Ghana Farmers in Ghana’s Upper East region traditionally decided when to plant and harvest their crops in rhythm with regular rainfall cycles. But the rains now come at increasingly odd times, farmland is turning into desert, and farmers have been forced t

In Ghana, agroforestry is offering a glimmer of hope: by integrating trees, crops and livestock on their fields, farmers are finding ways to restore their land and secure livelihoods.

news.mongabay.com/2024/12/a...

Policy briefs now out from our work on climate change across African mountains www.nature.com/articles/s41... that was summarised brilliantly by one respondent “you can take your cows to another mountain but you can move your crops”

English: www.bc3research.org/index.php?op...