Loren Albert

Accounting for albedo in carbon market protocols - Nature Communications The paper analyzes the impact of omitting biophysical effects from carbon credits on climate mitigation. It shows that some Voluntary Carbon Market projects may result in net warming due to albedo while others enhance cooling.

I'm excited to share this work led by Lynn Riley investigating albedo impacts from afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation projects. We hope the findings will guide future projects in the fight against climate change. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Jane Goodall's final lesson Honoring Jane Goodall's life, Pope Leo's first climate address, and finding hope in action

This week, we lost one of the world’s greatest advocates for people and nature. Even in her final days, Dr. Jane Goodall was urging us not to give up, and now her legacy lives on through the countless voices she inspired.

Read on Mailchimp: shorturl.at/lDxXk
Read on LinkedIn: shorturl.at/VOiPa

I am fairly skeptical of many ways people use LLMs, but drafting a refutation of misleading statements that have regurgitated in variants many times over the last couple decades and therefore are well-represented, alongside refutations, in training data is not an obviously terrible application.

The world's top court makes a climate decision Big global win for climate, heatwave disaster in Kashmir, and supporting innovation for lasting change

This past week brought a landmark legal opinion for climate and set another series of staggering heat records: a powerful reminder of why we all have a role in accelerating climate solutions.

Read the full edition of the newsletter here:

Contrarian climate assessment from U.S. government draws swift pushback Researchers say DOE report cherry picks data to downplay threat of greenhouse gases

So what makes a climate assessment? In short: not this new Energy Dept report, which rehashes contrarian greatest hits with areas of known uncertainty -- that climate scientists talk about all the time.

It's all a little grim. Who needs 721 authors when you have 5?

EPA eliminates research and development office, begins layoffs The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees.

The EPA has eliminated its research division, which for decades has provided the science behind regulations on clean air, clean water, and toxic chemicals.

The US can afford to monitor, research, and regulate the impacts of industries on human and environmental health. We are just choosing not to.

Advocating for science
www.agu.org/events/webin...

And a petition: oppose-the-layoff-of-the-nist-atomic-spectroscopy-group.org#Petition

Trump cuts threaten a measurement lab critical for advanced chips and medical devices The Atomic Spectroscopy Group provides standardized measurements used across wide swaths of science and industry. The Trump administration plans to cut it.

Standards and measurements sound boring, but they are absolutely essential to science. Trump cuts threaten a measurement lab critical for advanced chips and medical devices

www.npr.org/2025/03/26/n...

The FAQ on the COA form is a little vague on the criteria to use, but it is generally accepted that, if there was no communication among a subset of co-authors on a particular paper, then it doesn't rise to the level of a collaboration to list. (Streamlined COA forms help program officers.) (19)

Frequently Asked Questions: Collaborators and Other Affiliations (COA) Information Template Do you have questions about the Collaborators and Other Affiliations (COA) Information Template? You can get them answered here.

Also, NSF takes conflicts of interest seriously. That said, when you're filling out your COA form, listing every single co-author might not be necessary. When papers have many co-authors (e.g., genetics papers), not everyone rises to the level of a collaborator. (18)

www.nsf.gov/funding/seni...

NSF Implementation of Recent Executive Orders Information for the NSF community regarding executive orders.

Oh, one more thing. This website is probably the best resource for NSF's response to the executive orders: www.nsf.gov/executive-or...

Please check there first before emailing the program officers (who have been coached to email you this link as a first response). (17)

Finally, have confidence that the program officers and staff members working in NSF’s directorates are among the most committed and thoughtful people that you could ever hope to meet, doing their absolute best to uphold the agency’s mission as long as the time allows. (16)

Perhaps now more than ever, cultivate curiosity in your students and reassure them that there are paths toward becoming a scientist in the future. Education and training remain a huge part of the NSF mission. (15)

Great ideas can come from anywhere, and congressional legislation (e.g., CHIPS and Science Act) has directed the NSF toward the goal of broadening participation in science. Researchers can organize and approach the legal counsel at their universities for clarifications on their activities. (14)

If you are invited to submit a draft of an abstract, recognize that abstracts are written for public audiences (i.e., taxpayers), not your academic peers. Make it clear why this study is worth doing. Avoid jargon. Think big picture. Minimize potential for misinterpretations. (9)

Upon learning that yesterday would be my last day as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, I shared this parting message with my colleagues. The next few months will be frenetic and stressful for them. Here are some things that you can do to help them with the mission ahead. (1)

Are the Trump team’s actions affecting your research? How to contact Nature Use this form to share information with Nature’s news team, or to make suggestions for future coverage.

Share the impacts on your research:

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

An important read:

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

See you in the streets 💪🏻

Back of Tesla covered in bumper stickers like "Bought before we knew Elon was crazy" and "bought before the hand gesture."

Tesla Owner Running Out of Room For Bumper Stickers Explaining Tesla Ownership: bit.ly/3X1tdOs

Some people asked if I could list real impacts from some of the recent federal decisions. Here are SOME real impacts our team has faced already in 3 weeks:

1. Im quite certain 1 project (likely 2) I have that support low income high school students across the country, will be canceled. 🧪

Just found Alt NIH on Bluesky. Hoping to find a good Alt NSF, Alt NASA, Alt USDA.... heck, how about an Alt universe I can join for at least 4 years...

FAI is closely tied up with Koch-world. A majority of its employees and board members have Koch ties.

FAI’s goal is as said here, to privatize government including NIH and NSF.

Proximal remote sensing: an essential tool for bridging the gap between high‐resolution ecosystem monitoring and global ecology A new proliferation of optical instruments that can be attached to towers over or within ecosystems, or ‘proximal’ remote sensing, enables a comprehensive characterization of terrestrial ecosystem st...

Proximal remote sensing helps bridge the gap! Congratulations to Zoe Pierrat and other co-authors on this New Phytologist article: doi.org/10.1111/nph....

Hello Blue Sky! Good to be here. How well can leaf reflectance spectra predict hydraulic traits in Amazon trees? Find out in our new RSE article led by Dr. Maquelle Garcia! authors.elsevier.com/c/1kGKn7qzT3...