James Rae

Nice one John - see also additional notes in thread below: bsky.app/profile/mudw...

Scientists slam Trump administration climate report as a ‘farce’ full of misinformation Experts say the report being used to justify the mass rollback of climate regulations has many claims based on long-debunked research

ICYM - Scientists slam Trump administration climate report as a ‘farce’ full of misinformation

- Experts say the report being used to justify the mass rollback of climate regulations has many claims based on long-debunked research

#climatecrisis
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Graph showing extinction rate over the past 300 million years and current pH reconstructions. Mass extinctions are consistently associated with ocean acidification.

More relevant for fossil fuel CO2 are rapid external carbon additions from large igneous provinces and the organic material they often burn up - consistently linked to mass extinction in the geological record www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification As human activity continues to pump nearly 50-fold more CO2 into the atmosphere than any existing natural sources, the oceans absorb it. Over time, this vast quantity of excess oceanic CO2 is expected...

These sorts of relatively slow reshufflings of carbon around the ocean also aren’t a relevant analogue for very rapid addition of carbon from an external source: in former case saturation state changes are muted, while with FF addition saturation state drops sharply www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

CO2 storage and release in the deep Southern Ocean on millennial to centennial timescales - Nature Analysis of deep-sea coral boron isotope data, as a proxy for pH and thus CO2 chemistry, provides evidence of CO2 storage in the deep Southern Ocean during the last ice age, and its rapid release on m...

It’s a pretty basic misrepresentation- they use our paper to suggest ice age ocean was more acidic, but we show this was only true for deep Southern Ocean, while upper ocean (much more relevant for OA-sensitive ecosystems) had higher pH! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

DOE climate report response form We are collecting names to assemble a writing team to respond to the DOE climate working group report. If you'd like to contribute, enter your info below. At this point, there is no guarantee what we'll do (if anything), but we want to keep our options open by collecting names. If you have any further questions, feel free to email me. We are primarily looking for Ph.D. scientists at universities or government labs in appropriate fields. I realize that this will exclude some qualified people and I apologize, but we felt this was necessary for a variety of reasons.

🚨 If you're interested in working on a coordinated response to the DOE climate report, please enter your info on this google form 🚨

Please RT this so as many people see it as possible.

forms.gle/BL9xUAfRxA...

‘A Serious Misuse of My Research’: Climate Scientists Say New Trump Energy Report Botches Their Work “Our work has no relevance,” an astrobiologist whose research was cited in the administration’s climate change report said.

🚨 At least 10 scientists, all cited in the Trump admin's new climate change report, told me that the report completely mischaracterizes their research.

I also found five citations with significant errors, and a paragraph missing an important citation.

I've been taking some time to dive into the US EPA's Proposal to revoke the Endangerment Finding related to Greenhouse Gases.

epa.gov/system/files...

They put forth multiple lines of argument about why the current administration believes this should happen.

🧵

Add me to the list! Rae 2018 misrepresented on page 7: we show deep ocean pH rose out of the ice - but surface ocean pH (the more relevant property for the vast majority of marine life) fell!

Please see thread below on catastrophic impact of geological pH change: bsky.app/profile/mudw...

Motherfucking wind farms…

Fascinating paper 👇 not only providing evidence for ocean acidification in the end-Triassic mass extinction, but also wider discussion of the role of reverse weathering in prolonging the effects, and how this changed with the evolution of open ocean calcifying organisms. ⚒️🧪

4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.

Finally for anyone needing a boost on climate progress in light of record temperatures and an acidifying ocean, please check out this wonderful article by @billmckibben.bsky.social - the challenge is huge, but so is our progress www.newyorker.com/news/annals-... 🧪💡🔌⚡️☀️

Not dumb at all - today the open ocean has lots of tiny planktonic carbonate shells that coat the seafloor when they die. This acts as an anti-acid: CO2 addition is part neutralised by dissolving those shells. But they weren’t around yet in the Triassic/Jurassic.

HUGE kudos to fantastic former @earthscista.bsky.social PhD student @mollytrudgill.bsky.social for leading this work, @carbonatefan.bsky.social for ushering us in to the rock record and being generally the best, and an amazing team including several @uniofstandrews.bsky.social BSc/MSc co-authors

These data demonstrate that ocean acidification is associated with all of the major mass extinctions where we currently have pH reconstructions. The TJ pH drop is similar to possible scenarios in 2100 unless fossil fuel emissions are rapidly reduced. 🐚🌊📉.

Modelled saturation state decline. Saturation state decline modelled in cGENIE for different carbon sources and different sizes of negative carbon isotope excursion for runs with a75 kyr onset duration. With the same carbon source as the main CIE (>−12‰), we interpolate an emission rate of >500 GtC/kyr associated with the initial CIE (~5‰) and thus a >6 drop in calcite saturation state in an ocean without pelagic calcifiers.

Faster carbon input at the extinction (indicated by its more rapid carbon isotope excursion) would have led to more pronounced acidification impacts, in particular due to the lack of a deep sea carbonate buffer (read oceanic anti-acid) - indeed this may partly explain this era's major extinctions

Oxygen, carbon, and boron isotope data, showing warming, carbon input, and acidification

Our new boron data cover the "Main" carbon isotope excursion, just after the end-Triassic extinction event. Comparing the carbon and boron isotopes allows us to fingerprint a volcanic carbon source from the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province as the Atlantic opened up.

Journal title in Nature Communications

🚨New paper just out on environmental upset at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary🚨

Using boron isotopes in fossil oysters, we find a major pulse of ocean acidification and CO2 rise, driving global warming and delaying ecosystem recovery following the end-Triassic mass extinction
rdcu.be/ev6XV

🧪🌊⚒️🐚🧵

A graph showing atmospheric CO2 reconstructions over the Palaeozoic, between around 500 and 250 million years ago. Our new data show low CO2 between 340 and 295 Ma, followed by rapid CO2 rise at the start of the Permian

This work helps better constrain a good chunk of the geological history of CO2 - but plenty more time intervals to come!

Palaeo-artistic rendering based on findings of this study and previously published literature. A relatively rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 approximately 294 Ma released the Earth from its penultimate icehouse (left) and transitioned the world to a warmer and drier climate of the Early Permian (right).

Kudos to @uniofstandrews.bsky.social research fellow Hana Jurikova for leading this massive collaborative project, Ross Whiteford for developing novel calculation methods, and brilliant collaborators who contributed all sorts of samples and expertise - plus amazing geological artwork

Rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 marked the end of the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age - Nature Geoscience A pronounced increase in atmospheric CO2 coincided with warming at the end of the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age, according to an 80-million-year-long boron isotope CO2 proxy record.

Super excited to share our latest on CO2’s role in geological climate change! Using boron isotopes in ~300 million year old brachiopod shells, we show that rising CO2 from volcanic emissions drove a profound change in climate that ended the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age ⚒️🧪🌊 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Confirmed: England has second worst harvest on record with fears… Data released shows England experienced it’s second worst harvest since 1983 after record breaking wet weather last winter, with recent downpours leaving many farmers unable to drill crops again

England has second worst harvest on record with fears mounting for 2025

Data released shows England experienced it’s second worst harvest since 1983 after record breaking wet weather last winter, with recent downpours leaving many farmers unable to drill crops again.

A pretty sunrise with the spires of St Andrews visible in the background

Nice thing about an 0830 sunrise is it’s easier to enjoy! Absolute beauty in St Andrews this morning.

Andrea Burke stands outside a University building at St Andrews in some epic grey and red academic robes with a fun wee hat on top!

Today my amazing colleague, lab mate, and partner @oceanicandrea.bsky.social officially became the first female Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences @uniofstandrews.bsky.social.
Let’s make sure it doesn’t take another 611 years to get the next
⚒️🧪🌊👩🏻‍🔬

We all think plastic pollution is a problem, and it is. In the nearly 70 years between 1950 and 2019, the world produced a total of ~9.5 billion tonnes of plastic.

But all the plastic we have EVER produced weighs as much as CO₂ we emitted into the atmosphere during the first three months of 2024!

UK electricity generation over the last 24 hours. Wind has provided a pretty steady 20 GW. Gas ramped up in the morning and evening but went back down during the middle of the day due to solar supply.

Yeah great point! Didn’t quite get there but great to see a solid 20 GW for the last couple days (e.g. green line below).

Also amazing how even at this time of year and latitude solar (yellow) can take a decent bite out of gas (orange) during the day.

☀️💨⚡️

grid.iamkate.com

Wind power in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

Yes! Has grown by a couple of GW and lots more in the pipeline too - though need even more to meet renewables and climate targets.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_po...

Wind generation now at 21.78 GW
Record is 21.81 GW sustained over 30 mins last December, so getting close!

Can check individual wind farms at excellent GB Renewables map below

💨⚡️🔌🧪⚒️

renewables-map.robinhawkes.com#4.25/54.2/-1...

Pie chart showing UK electricity generation as of 0800 Saturday morning. Light green bar shows wind, currently producing 20.2 GW and making up 65% of the electrons flowing through the grid!

With today’s high winds there’s potential to break the UK wind power generation record which stands at 21 GW.
Generation currently at 20.2 GW (65% of total UK generation) and building!

grid.iamkate.com

Storm Bert incoming!

Great visualisation from earth.nullschool.net