Tristan Caro

Marching toward 200 100% WindWaterSolar days in CA

Oct 16: 198th day in 2025 w/WWS >100% of demand

WWS met 54.5% of demand in '25

Gas down 37% v '23 & 19% v '24
PV up 44% v '23 & 15% v '24
Batteries up 203% v '23 & 57% v '24

Demand down 1.2% v '23 & 2.1% v '24 despite more AI

Save the Whales. But Save the Microbes, Too.

Microbes sustain all ecosystems yet they’re nearly absent from conservation frameworks.
The @IUCN Microbial Conservation Specialist Group aims to change that.
Honored to co-chair this global effort.
Great @nytimes piece by Carl Zimmer:
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/s...

My fantastic department at CU Boulder is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor! This is a broad search spanning nearly all areas of biology. Applications are due Nov 13, 2025. Feel free to reach out to me with questions, and please share widely.
jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

Predatory practices plague modern science, but the origins & reasons of their success can be identified—and solutions exist. Instead of blacklists, funding agencies should foster accreditation systems. See analyses & proposals of the EAM Task Force of @femsmicro.org on the matter shorturl.at/gVXJR

4,000 gone: Inside NASA’s brain drain In exclusive interviews, ex-NASA scientists speak out on the impact of the agency's mass departures.

"The secret sauce has been poured down the drain," says David Draper, former Deputy Chief Scientist of NASA, over the recent firing or departure of 1000s of NASA employees, which will be catastrophic for the legacy of the US🇺🇸😖🚀

www.planetary.org/articles/400...

h/t @floragraham.bsky.social 🧪

go plasmidsaurus!

HiPOD: Colorful Layers in a Crater Wall

A kilometer-wide cutout shows layers sloping from the crater’s rim at right downward toward its floor. A gradient of enhanced colors indicates diverse compositions.

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_069737_1500
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
#Mars

Opinion | Warning: Our Stock Market Is Looking Like a Bubble

And the bubble: "In financial markets, a bubble occurs when the level of investment in an asset becomes persistently detached from the amount of profit that asset could plausibly generate... A.I. investment fits that pattern."

Nobel Prize given for showing the importance of investing in science for innovation and long-term economic growth. Basically the opposite of what the US is doing. 😭

U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country In South Carolina, more than 150 unvaccinated schoolkids are under quarantine after being exposed to measles. Across the U.S., total case counts could be even higher than the official number.

“CDC has confirmed 44 measles outbreaks in 41 states this year…The vast majority of cases were in people who were unvaccinated; 27% percent have been in children under the age of 5. About 1 in 8 measles cases have resulted in hospitalization.”

Vaccination is so important to protect our communities.

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department. Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of publ...

“I'm optimistic that, you know, five years from now a majority of kids are going to be in a private school choice program.” www.propublica.org/article/educ...

Stony Brook is hiring an Assistant or Associate Professor in Marine Molecular Ecology (assistant encouraged, molecular broadly defined, includes microbial omics!): apply.interfolio.com/174869

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

Not sure people realize how INSANELY DRAINING data centers will be on our planet.

If you imagine data centers as their own country, they'll rank fourth in global electricity use by 2035 — outranked only by China, India, and the U.S.

Read this in @bloomberg.com👇

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

with @isotopes.bsky.social and @kopflab.bsky.social

Researchers are reanimating 40,000-year-old microbes They're alive!

Thrilled to see coverage of our work in Alaskan permafrost!! Now in @popsci.com by @andrewpaul.bsky.social

www.popsci.com/environment/...

The rich must eat less meat Scientists say rich countries need to eat a lot less meat. Will the environmental movement finally listen?

“For the past 2 decades, scientists have…landed on the same takeaways—esp. that rich countries must shift their diets to be more plant-based. But that message has, with few exceptions, failed to incite action by governments and food companies, or even the environmental movement itself.” #EatLancet

#ProtistsOnSky

Scientific illustration showing a cross-section of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It features three labelled layers: An ice shell at the top, with visible cracks releasing jets of water vapour into space; an ocean in the middle, depicted as a large body of water beneath the ice; a rocky core at the bottom, shown emitting heat that may drive the jets. In the background, Saturn and its rings are visible in space.

🆕 The discovery of new complex organic molecules at Saturn's #Enceladus enhances the likelihood that the moon is habitable 🪐

On Earth, these molecules are involved in chemical reaction chains that lead to the more complex molecules essential for life.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭 🧪 ☄️

End GDP mania: how the world should really measure prosperity The obsession with economic output as a measure of human development puts sustainability on the back burner. Researchers can now help to devise better indicators.

The obsession with economic output as a measure of human development puts sustainability on the back burner

go.nature.com/4pNC96G

i wouldn't call myself an expert on capitalism or anything but this does indeed seem like something of a problem

wow!! what's going on here

Slide with text “Support Society Journals: Society-based journals help build and advocate for our scientific communities” showing the logos for non profit publishers ASM, ACS, ASBMB. microbiology society, Science, and ISME. Underneath “for-profit journals do not” showing logos for Nature, Elsevier, Frontiers, CellPress, and MDPI.

A reminder to please support non-profit publishers.

It’s good for science and scientists.

It’s a responsible use of taxpayer dollars.

It requires resisting peer pressure to submit to Nature journals.

Thanks @bacteriality.bsky.social for this helpful slide for microbiology journals.

The first steam-powered passenger rail trip was on 27th Sept 1825 (200th bday is nuanced - regular passenger steam slightly later). Here's transport carbon footprint today - Eurostar easily cleanest cos fully electrified. I hope the next 200 yrs has even more (electric) trains! With lower prices...

That's devastating ... there must be so many students in that position. Back when I was in grad school I deferred applying as well. What a nightmare

Microbial Resuscitation and Growth Rates in Deep Permafrost: Lipid Stable Isotope Probing Results From the Permafrost Research Tunnel in Fox, Alaska Microbial growth is extremely slow within the first 30 days of thaw. Temperature may drive which taxa are active, but not growth rates Subsurface microbes preferentially produce glycolipids over ...

The vast majority of permafrost exists in the subsurface. What happens when this deep, ancient permafrost thaws? How fast does it take microbial communities to "wake up"?

This project now published in JGR, with @isotopes.bsky.social , @kopflab.bsky.social , et al., aims to address that question!

The GRFP announcement from NSF cuts out an entire cohort of 2nd year students from consideration, without warning. This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community. If someone wants to work with me to craft an open letter and solicit signatures, LMK.

Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.

Wow! This is amazing news. Having friends who are confronted with Huntington's, this brings a ray of hope.

bbc.com/news/article...

Translucent, green chrysotile prism with lots of wispy white fibres coming out of it. From Soanesville, Western Australia. Specimen on display in the Natural History Museum, London.

White mass of matted chrysotile fibres. From Ivybridge, Devon, England, UK. Specimen on display in the Natural History Museum, London.

265 of #365Minerals 🧪⚒️

Chrysotile:
- A serpentine group mineral
- The most common type of asbestos
- Forms via low temperature metamorphism of peridotite
- Its name comes from the Greek words chrysos (gold) and tilos (fibre) #minerals #MineralMonday

"Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change," a brief communication in the journal Nature Climate Change. There's a map showing regions of the world, and pie charts of relevant studies as they apply to different health impacts like "heat-related deaths" and "maternal and child health"

🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...