Kate Littler

'As scientists, we are increasingly being asked to tell the public the truth about the crises we face in simple and direct terms.

The truth is that we are shocked by the ferocity of the extreme weather events in 2023.

We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.'
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Well well well…

A screenshot from sewage map.co.uk showing Cornwall and parts of Devon. Many of the out pipes to the sea are highlighted with a poo symbol, indicating they are actively discharging raw sewage to the sea, while many others are shown with an exclamation mark indicating they discharged recently. Every single time we have significant rain this happens. Every time. Summer or winter.

“A Santas Against Sewage swimming event had to be called off due to sewage in the water prompting an onshore protest over pollution instead.” 🤦‍♀️

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

So depressing to have to check www.sewagemap.co.uk every time before swimming.
Cornwall map this week after 🌧️ is 🤮

Changing European hydroclimate under a collapsed AMOC in the Community Earth System Model Abstract. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is expected to weaken or even collapse under anthropogenic climate change. Given the importance of the AMOC in the present-day climate,...

"It is therefore vital that #climate change projections of European hydroclimate for the (far) future consider the possibility of #AMOC changes, & the exacerbated effects this would have on projected regional hydrological changes & consequences for ecosystems & society"

The Indian Ocean disaster is a climate tragedy — and needs more attention A region unused to tropical cyclones has had three in a week. The world needs to ask why this happened, not look away.

“A region unused to tropical cyclones has had three in a week. The world needs to ask why this happened”

The Indian Ocean disaster is a climate tragedy — and needs more attention www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned…”

WB Yeats.

Amazing shot- well done

What we told UK leaders about climate and nature at a national emergency briefing With so many influential people in the room, the hope was to see a tipping point in the engagement of political, faith, business and cultural leaders.

theconversation.com/what-we-told...

'The Earthlycrumb Tragedies'

(with apologies to Edward Gorey & for being overly morbid)

A poem in 26 Skeets... 🧵

We’re not a nation that is used to the concept of drought and water as a limiting resource.
We live on a bunch of rainy islands in the sea, right? ☔️

Well we had better get our head out the sand and come up with a joined-up approach quickly, or reality will bite in the very near future.

Winter heliotrope flower

Red campion flower

Yellow gorse flowers

A cracking couple of basalt pillows near st ives. Hand for scale

Some gorse, occasional red campion, and a stand of winter heliotrope were the only flowers I saw on the north coast today.

Did spy some very nice pillow basalts thought 😉

#wildflowerhour

Revealed: Europe’s water reserves drying up due to climate breakdown Exclusive: UCL scientists find large swathes of southern Europe are drying up, with ‘far-reaching’ implications

The latest grim news

Refugees heading north from baking, waterless, southern Europe, will meet those heading south from a cold, crop-less northern Europe as the AMOC shuts down

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

True, and problematic as: a) it’s our national broadcaster and so should be covering the breadth of important news topics, b) it’s still one of the most trusted news sources in this age of fragmentation and disinformation.

Maybe I’ve missed it, but this briefing didn’t get a whisper on the BBC yesterday or today.

Drowned out by post-budget handwringing and 20 other things.

I assume lots of journos were invited to this event… ?

Scientists warn of severe climate-related risks to UK economy and security Experts lay out scale of changes needed in ‘first-of-its-kind national emergency briefing’ in Westminster

Thanks to @sioldridge.bsky.social @nickoldridge.bsky.social & the team for their monumental efforts in pulling together yesterday’s National Emergency Briefing www.nebriefing.org on climate change. Thanks also go to those MPs, journalists & others who attended.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Getting post from older members of my family addressed to “Mrs husband’s-full-name” cracks me up.

Like a) I never legally changed my name, b) that’s Dr Littler to you if you want to be formal 😅

Our guest speaker Dr Peter Heintzman (white male, blue shirt) standing to the right of a projection of his talk on ancient DNA techniques. It’s not the most thrilling photograph but gives you an idea!

Really enjoyed hosting @palaeopete.bsky.social yesterday for an excellent departmental seminar on applications of sedimentary ancient DNA, and a subsequent PhD viva.

I learnt many things!
What a fascinating and fast moving field 🧬

Thanks Pete!

🌍 🧪 ⚒️

Bar graph showing zonal mean surface air temperature anomalies for the period of October 2025. All latitude bands observed above average temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980.

Take a look at this... Remarkable "warmth" last month across both polar regions when visualizing temperature departures by latitude. The x-axis is quite stretched out here compared to my usual monthly update of this graphic.

GISTEMPv4 using their 1951-1980 baseline (data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/).

A really informative and entertaining (and slightly scary) talk from the indefatigable Prof. Alley.

Yes, it’s brutal. I’m so sorry.

Nothing more any of you could have done. Top NSS! Great research! International collaborations and reputation!
🤷‍♀️

HE is such a flipping mess right now.

Sign the Petition Save Geology at the University of Leicester

I don’t normally share petitions, but good friends and colleagues are going to lose their jobs as part of the planned cuts to the geology dept at Leicester.

Consider adding your signature here:
www.change.org/p/save-geolo...

An excellent dept that doesn’t deserve to be decimated. 🧪⚒️🌍

COP30 could confront "glaring gap" in clean energy agenda: mining Resource-rich developing countries want the impacts and benefits of mineral extraction to be part of climate talks

⛏️ COP30 could be the first to discuss the impacts and opportunities of mining the minerals needed for the energy transition.

tinyurl.com/392badee

The UN climate talks have never addressed the material dimension of the energy transition before.

I'm going to be tracking those discussions here👇

Whoa…

I’m sure it’s fun to pick through, but this giant uncurated pile of core makes me feel a bit queesy.

All its context and orientation lost 😱

£150 with an advance ticket.. would have been 300 on the day 😬

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

The staff were all super nice… I feel sorry that they have to deal with aging signalling and rolling stock that keeps failing. Definitely time for more investment!

@crosscountryuk.bsky.social

True or false: trains should be waterproof?

😂

The empty biscuit packet I am currently using to catch the rainwater that is coming is from the ceiling of this train onto my seat. Classy.

Ah yes, now I remember why I don’t go up north very often.

The crosscountry train from Durham to Cornwall takes 9 hours at the best of times, and today it’s over an hour late… the toilet door is broken… and the rainwater is literally coming in from the ceiling and dripping onto my seat.

👍👍👍

China’s emissions have peaked, five years ahead of schedule. A moment of epochal importance.

bsky.app/profile/carb...