Marcy Rockman

The @nationalacademies.org has just launched a fast-track review of evidence regarding whether greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. You can submit papers, articles, data, and other comments through August 27 at their main input portal: nas.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?...

RealClimate: National Climate Assessment links RealClimate: For some reason, it has become hard to locate the various National Climate Assessments (NCAs) that have been produced by the USGCRP over the decades (and it's pretty hard to find the USGR...

If you are having trouble finding National Climate Assessment reports, they are here.

www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

NATHPO July 25th 2025 News Release The National Association of Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO) condemns the erasure of Indigenous history as the Department of Interior implements "Secretarial Order 3431 - Restoring Truth and Sa...

"You cannot heal a wound by pretending it does not exist, and we cannot honor Americans' shared history by sweeping it under the rug."

Statement from the National Assoc. of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers on NPS's removal of a sign in Muir Woods with updates to its historical story.

Muir Woods exhibit is first casualty of White House directive to erase history "In order to know your role in history, you need to see yourself in it."

“To me, the biggest irony is that the Trump administration says it wants to tell a more balanced version of history, and that’s exactly what this sign did,” Villano said. “It didn’t remove anything. It just layered in what had been missing.”

I'm one of the federal climate staff who were pushed out under Trump 1. My role was managing cultural heritage under climate change at the NPS. Over the past 7 years, I've been gathering research to help build a better federal system for heritage (and that is better integrated with climate).

The State Department fires remaining employees who worked on climate change The firings of nearly a dozen people in the State Department’s Office of Global Change include the last U.S. climate negotiators.

For a long time, I wanted there to be clear culture & heritage expertise on the State Dept. climate team. Now the team is gone entirely. There are so many dimensions to this loss, it's hard to capture - #ClimateHeritage

Kate RaworthKate Raworth: Senior visiting research associate and lecturer at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute and co-founder and conceptual lead of Doughnut Economics Action Lab The tipping point that I fear we will fail to cross is [the social tipping point] around transforming our mindsets. We need to move from the extractive, degenerative economy towards a regenerative one. This all starts within our head and it underlies everything. [A failure to do this] is what is driving us towards all these [Earth system tipping points].

This is also my concern for tipping points - the social ones that are held off, which pushes us over the physical ones.
www.carbonbrief.org/experts-whic...

Postcards with climate change and heritage words banned by the Trump administration.

Look what I made! Ask me for a postcard next time you see me.
#ClimateChange
#Heritage
#HeritageAtRisk
#BannedWords

Nations Must Act to Face Climate Crisis, Top Regional Court Says - Inside Climate News An advisory opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights also concluded that governments have special obligations to protect and support environmental defenders.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an opinion saying that nations have legal obligations to try to reduce the impacts and eliminate the human causes of global warming.

Ignoring Public Outcry, House Votes for National Park Service Staffing Cuts "Lawmakers must do better before we become the generation that stands by as our national parks and this American legacy collapse.” - Daniel Hart, NPCA's Director of Clean Energy and Climate Policy

BREAKING: During parks' moment of greatest need, the House voted to finalize the reconciliation bill, which claws back $267 million of previously committed staff funding. Now it will move to the president’s desk. www.npca.org/articles/958...

The White House took down the nation's top climate report. You can still find it here The National Climate Assessment is the most influential source of information about climate change in the United States.

The White House took down a website hosting the nation's top report on how climate change is affecting the United States.

okay and here is my ‘sounds like a shitpost but it’s genuine’ UK heatwave tip: if there is a Saxon or Norman church near you, and it’s open, go sit in it. not gothic, they have too many windows, get you some thick stone walls with some high up tiny windows. they stay cold. and you can just sit there

What @aroddick.bsky.social said-

‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage The administration asked for help erasing language on park displays that failed to emphasize American grandeur, but visitors have not identified any examples.

This adds to my hope: "Instead, in the nearly 200 submissions NPS received in the first days since the solicitations were posted, visitors implored the administration not to erase U.S. history and praised agency staff for improving their experiences."

"Scotland’s Solway Firth is our first Landscape Connections project ...
It will use the grant to plan a ‘whole seascape approach’ to protecting and developing the coast’s natural and cultural heritage."
#coastalhistory #environmentalhumanities

www.heritagefund.org.uk/news/scotlan...

Secretary Burgum must protect our monuments. We are on the verge of what could be the largest rollback of protections for national parks and monuments in U.S. history. By taking action today, you can support our parks, monuments, and communities...

The Antiquities Act gives the president power to CREATE national monuments. Not ERASE them. That is illegal. Sign your name at npca.org/protectmonuments

For the reasons discussed above, we conclude that the Antiquities Act permits the President to alter a prior declaration of a national monument, including by finding that the “landmarks,” “structures,” or “objects” identified in the prior declaration either never were or no longer are deserving of the Act’s protections. 54 U.S.C. § 320301(a). Because Con-gress directed that the “parcels of land” reserved in connection with such a monument be “confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected,” id. § 320301(b), this can have the effect of eliminating entirely the parcel previously associated with a national monument. Castle Pinckney’s contrary conclusion was wrong, and it can no longer be relied upon.

DOJ opinion from May 27 sets a foundation for undoing protections of the 1906 Antiquities Act, potentially very broadly. This is not good news for public lands, and cultural and natural heritage, Tribal places, and marine areas now held as national monuments.

www.justice.gov/olc/media/14...

Opinion | 13 students on what studying history taught them about the present Progress can be undone. There’s plenty we don’t know. But change is possible.

Some short powerful letters from students on what studying history now is teaching them-

wapo.st/45evxXm

Robert MacFarlane — Is a River Alive? - with Ross Andersen — at Conn Ave

The wonderful writer @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social will be in DC tomorrow (6/5, 7pm ET) to talk about his new book! So looking forward to this.

politics-prose.com/robert-macfa...

This sounds so good! I wish I could be a fly on the wall-

Hands Off Our History The president’s shameful “skinny budget” would decimate national parks. NPCA explains why we must continue to defend the integrity of our historic sites.

The phrase "national parks" is most often linked to nature and scenery such as at Yellowstone and Yosemite. But ca. 2/3 of all national parks were established to recognize history and culture (and all parks hold these).

In the U.S., Archaeology Stares Down an Uncertain Future

Adding to this article to note that all three legs of US archaeology are being cut:
- loss of federal staff, care of federal lands
- cuts of funding, university research & elsewhere
- challenges to NEPA & archaeology as part of other environmental compliance

Drawing of a white man in a gray suit standing at the top of a brown dirt cliff who has just thrown a coiled up rope to a man in the water below who has his arms up, waving for help. The man on the cliff isn't holding on to any part of the rope, so the man in the water will be receiving a lump wet rope attached to nothing. Words in the gray sky above the cliff say "Knowledge is Useless if We Don't Know How to Use It." source: https://joshuto.substack.com/p/the-greatest-challange-the-golden?r=1gxdhi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

Saw this today and it resonated: firing of federal scientists, cutting off research, loss of heritage to climate impacts, banning of words, silencing of stories

New Order Threatens Park Service’s Efforts to Protect and Explore American History .

“Should rangers at Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument avoid speaking negatively about slavery? Should rangers at Manzanar National Historic Site avoid the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II? This sets a dangerous precedent of prioritizing nostalgia over truth.”

On October 24, 2023, Spelling Bee did not accept "muppet" as a word on its list and I still think less of them for this.

There’s so much happening right now, I thought I’d put together a running thread on the dismantling of #climate and research and knowledge infrastructure in the United States 🧵

This is such a loss. I was an AAAS S&TP Fellow at EPA in ORD as well and it was an invaluable experience. As I remember, EPA pays for its Fellows in advance, so a budget-cutting argument in May would be an odd one.

Historians of Archaeology - Online Support Group Welcome to the Historians of Archaeology (HoA) Online Support Group! Please use this form to join the group and to join our mailing list. Membership to the group is free, all meetings will be hosted ...

🏺🗃️ Historians of archaeology are always welcome to join our online support group!

Sing up here: forms.gle/7UVKDmfRhJXB...

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👋the group is open to all career stages

Blue and white logo of the Department of the Interior in upper lefthand corner Centered in faded blue is the heading: United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service/1849 C Street, N.W./Washington, D.C. 20240 In black text: below [As amended by Memorandum dated March 3, 2025] FEB 10 2014 Policy Memorandum 14-02 To: All Employees From: Director (handwritten) Jonathan Jarvis Subject: Climate Change and Stewardship of Cultural Resources

D. Consult Broadly: Consultation to inform the assessment of resource significance must engage a broad array of stakeholders. This will ensure that our actions are based upon thorough, up-to-date understandings of how and why our resources are valued by many groups, including Native Americans and other traditionally associated people, visitors, and the scientific community. It is critical that we engage with all stakeholders to identify their important stories...

The federal eraser has changed

"why our resources are valued by many diverse groups"

to

"why our resources are valued by many groups"

in the 2014 NPS policy memorandum for climate change and cultural resources. Rest of its content appears intact. May it stay -

www.nps.gov/subjects/pol...

Archaeology Southwest Prepares to Fight Unlawful Grant Termination - Archaeology Southwest Archaeology Southwest prepares to fight termination of our recently awarded NEH grant. The DOGE-rescinded award supported our collaborative project with Tribes to document culturally important animal ...

BREAKING: We're fighting termination of our recently awarded NEH grant. The DOGE-rescinded award supported our collaborative project with Tribes to document culturally important animal and plant species. www.archaeologysouthwest.org/2025/04/21/a...