Brian Kahn

Oh that little stat? Yeah that's the free newsletter I edit six days a week, which hey you should subscribe

Have to believe the COP30 venue is a psyop to convince negotiators of the urgency to address climate change. There's now been:

🔥A fire that burned through the plastic venue
🌊Frequent flooding due to improper drainage
🌡️Inadequate AC for a tropical location
🚨Lax security to stop protesters

YouTube video by AFP News Agency Fire breaks out in pavilion at COP30 climate talks: AFP journalists | AFP

It's honestly a miracle nobody was hurt, looks pretty serious www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-6G...

Fire Breaks Out at COP30 Climate Summit Venue in Brazil A fire erupted inside the packed UN climate summit in Belem, Brazil, on Thursday, forcing a panicked evacuation of thousands of delegates just as negotiations reached their final days.

The venue where UN climate talks is taking place just caught on fire. Metaphors really write themselves these days...

Brazil Is Pouring Money Into the Amazon. These Companies Want a Piece. Startups are rushing in to monetize the COP30 host’s push to preserve the rainforest before it turns into a driver of climate change.

📉The voluntary carbon market crashed bc credits didn't do what they claimed. Offsets 2.0 is here, with hard, inventive work on the ground.
🌴A look at the race to control carbon, from under the banana and cacao trees.
By Fabiano Masisonnave and me: 🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

This is quite a story: the US employed every strongarm tactic available, including personal threats against delegates and their families, to derail an agreement on reducing shipping emissions that was almost finalized. on.ft.com/47lq3dZ

The Biggest Arctic Carbon Sink Is Increasingly Unstable Scientists at the top of the world are racing to uncover how rapidly the Arctic’s permafrost is thawing.

I recently went to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska w/US scientists to study the effect of saltwater on fast-thawing permafrost. 1st in a series by @bloomberg.com on the world's natural carbon sinks with @hayleywarren.bsky.social and @eroston.bsky.social

A thread follows: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

RFK Jr. Orders CDC to Study Alleged Harms of Offshore Wind Farms Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff to probe the potential harms of offshore wind farms, according to people familiar wi...

RFK Jr. has directed the CDC to study if offshore wind farms can harm health, including the electric magnetic frequency generated from undersea cables

FEMA Tells Staff to Name Whistleblowers or Risk Losing Jobs Investigators are looking for staffers who anonymously endorsed an open letter criticizing the Trump administration’s cuts to disaster funding.

FEMA is hunting for signatories of a letter criticizing Trump's cuts to disaster funding. Employees have been interrogated, threatened with being fired, told to not bring counsel, and had to sign an nondisclosure memo forbidding them to disclose the investigation's existence

wait now I actually want to do this

it's an area I need to brush up tbh

going back to school to get my BA in Posting

Trump Set to Cancel West Coast Hydrogen Hubs Amid Shutdown Fight The Trump administration is planning to cancel billions of dollars earmarked for hydrogen projects in California and the Pacific Northwest as part of its first tranche of funding cuts following the go...

Trump is planning to cancel billions in funding for clean hydrogen hub projects — but mostly in blue states

Fun fact: "carbon footprint" is a term coined by the oil industry

Sea ice extent, defined as the total area covered by ice of at least 15% concentration, is one of the most commonly used indicators of long-term Arctic sea ice conditions. The primary source of extent observations is the 46-year record (starting in 1979) derived from satellite-borne passive microwave sensors. This satellite record tracks long-term trends, variability, and seasonal changes from the annual extent maximum in late February or March to the annual extent minimum in September. In recent years, minimum extents are ~50% of the values in the 1980s.

Anyways here's what's actually happening with Arctic sea ice per last year's Arctic Report Card

Climate science denial talking points bingo:
🔴 "Al Gore"
🔴 "Arctic was gonna have no ice anymore 10 years ago"
🔴 Highlighting a single year as irrefutable evidence

Chaos Inside FEMA as Death Threats Distract From Hurricane Response Internal documents show how online conspiracies and personal attacks disrupted FEMA during back-to-back hurricanes last year.

New docs obtained via FOIA reveal how the personal attacks to FEMA staff last hurricane season were much worse than previously known, including swatting & doxxing of officials.

Story @bloomberg.com, w/ @davey.bsky.social @jasonleopold.bsky.social (gift link): www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Screenshot of text: These and dozens of other actions taken since Jan. 20 paint a clear picture: The Trump administration is going to war with established climate science. Mass firings, regulatory rollbacks, program closures, and funding cuts across agencies have compromised the nation’s ability to gather and assess data on climate change, reducing the amount of high-quality information that policymakers and business leaders can use to guide their decisions, potentially for years to come.

Once again tapping the sign www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

E.P.A. To Stop Collecting Emissions Data From Polluters

Can't set limits on emissions if you don't know how much polluters are emitting... www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/c...

heck yeah congrats doc!!

NASA Blocks Chinese Citizens With US Visas From Working on Space Programs NASA has blocked Chinese citizens with US visas from working on agency programs, people familiar with the matter said, as Washington escalates anti-Beijing rhetoric with both nations racing to the moo...

Big scoop from @eroston.bsky.social and @lorengrush.bsky.social : NASA has barred Chinese citizens with US visas from working on agency programs. That includes university scientists, grad students and contractors

NASA Blocks Chinese Citizens With US Visas From Working on Space Programs NASA has blocked Chinese citizens with US visas from working on agency programs, people familiar with the matter said, as Washington escalates anti-Beijing rhetoric with both nations racing to the moo...

Big scoop from @eroston.bsky.social and @lorengrush.bsky.social : NASA has barred Chinese citizens with US visas from working on agency programs. That includes university scientists, grad students and contractors

"The Trump administration aims to increase..oil and gas production, a major source of..emissions contributing to more intense disasters.. Meanwhile, the impacts of #ClimateChange are piling up, from intense #heatwaves to massive #wildfires to deadly #floods. Last year was the hottest ever recorded."

Trump Is Dismantling Climate Science at a Dangerous Pace The White House has blocked efforts to measure, respond to and fight global warming. That puts all Americans at risk.

The Trump administration is taking a "cluster bomb approach" to rolling back climate science and environmental policy and undertaken rouhgly 400 anti-science actions since January. It could take the US decades to recover what is being lost, and some things may be be permanently gone

Trump's Policies Cut US Clean Energy Outlook by 23%. Source: BloombergNEF

"At this time last year, the US was issuing gold-standard climate science and enacting a fitful policy to speed the energy transition. Now, the government is memory-holing some of that science and outright blocking wind and solar power." www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet... by @blkahn.bsky.social 🔌💡

US Taxpayers Will Pay Billions in New Fossil Fuel Subsidies Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill A report finds that President Trump’s flagship legislation will grant $40 billion in new subsidies to the oil and gas industry over the next decade.

NEW: i took a look at new research from @oilchange.bsky.social which finds that taxpayers are on the hook for an additional $4 billion per year in fossil fuel subsidies thanks to the one big beautiful bill:

Trump Is Dismantling Climate Science at a Dangerous Pace The White House has blocked efforts to measure, respond to and fight global warming. That puts all Americans at risk.

“They’re doing away with science. That, to me, is enormously troubling,” said Bush's EPA head Christine Todd Whitman.

“We have basically an EPA that’s totally been defanged of its mission,” said Obama's EPA chief Gina McCarthy.
www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

no need to rub it for those of us with 3000 word features that dropped just after! [stares into middle distance]

Trump Is Dismantling Climate Science at a Dangerous Pace The White House has blocked efforts to measure, respond to and fight global warming. That puts all Americans at risk.

At an alarming pace, the Trump administration has fired climate scientists, rolled back regulations, interfered in data collection, and cut planning and emergency response funds. That puts all Americans at risk.

Read The Big Take ⬇️

Trump Is Dismantling Climate Science at a Dangerous Pace The White House has blocked efforts to measure, respond to and fight global warming. That puts all Americans at risk.

🚨Hot off the press🔥
LIGHTS OUT
How Trump's war on climate science is weakening the US

A feature about the White House's "cluster-bomb approach" to dismantling the world's most sophisticated scientific apparatus. By @zhirji.bsky.social @blkahn.bsky.social and me

🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/features/202...