Silvia Caldararu🌿

I'd love to talk to prospective postdocs who are thinking about the role of land in the climate system about applying! If that's you please reach out!

We could look at this another way and say we had half a century or thereabouts when this kind of prejudice was not normalised across Europe. We have a long history of this shit.

Morning Womble! I've almost finished All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu. It's not really my kind of story but Ken Liu is a fantastic writer so to my surprise I've been enjoying it

I was feeling a little bleak after teaching a climate science lecture and listening to a talk from the Climate Change Advisory Council yesterday so I wrote a quick TTRPG inspired by a short story by Naomi Kritzer and titled from a quote by David Graeber.

I will be practicing this laugh for certain questions at conferences

If you need 150 people in palaeontology, geology, zoology, scicomm and related. And I could list more, but ran out of space!

I got one of these emails too. Can't decide if spam or more academic metrice BS.

The thing about countries that have had dictatorships in the recent past, like Portugal and Romania, is we can quickly recognise the threat for what it is

LOOKING FOR A NEW ACADEMIC OPPORTUNITY?

Regius Professorship in Meteorology & Climate Science - a role awarded to the University of Reading by Queen Elizabeth II

Seeking an exceptional academic leader who will shape the future of meteorology & climate science.

jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

I had to cancel a lecture yesterday because the building was flooded. Today I almost missed a different lecture (Climate Science...) because of a landslide on the train line. There is more rain coming tonight. We need better climate adaptation plans around here, it's only going to get wetter.

Adding a barcode to a historic specimen in Trinity College Dublin herbarium.

We are looking for a dedicated and passionate digitisation assistant to help us image the historic herbarium collections in Trinity College Dublin. If that sounds like you, please get in touch and apply!

my.corehr.com/pls/trrecrui...

Morning, Womble. I'm about two thirds of the way through The Incandescent by Emily Tesh and it's absolutely fantastic

Today I learned “Norwegian Christian laws forbade citizens from conversing with and interacting with trolls, and in documents dating from 1274 to 1781, doing so would result in severe punishment” (source: Wikipedia), and I kinda think many people nowadays would be better off if this law was revived

A to-do list for Government: what one thing could it accomplish in 2026? Voices from across Irish life choose a single thing the Government should – and could – try to accomplish in its second year in office

A to-do list for the Government from the Irish Times and friends…

Zero mention of climate change, emissions, biodiversity or nature.

The planet is on fire, but apparently that didn’t make the cut.

A screenshot from the EPA Ireland project reporting website asking if the project has a dedicated Twitter account

Hi @epaireland.bsky.social why are you still asking if research projects have a twitter account as part of the annual reporting? That place is full of fascists, bots and produces CSAM, you shouldn't encourage people to use it

Scientists, seriously

🔔 Job opportunity: Postdoctoral Researcher @atu-ie.bsky.social

🍃 Rural land-use governance in Ireland

▪️Closes: 8th Jan 2026 at noon
▪️Employment basis: 24 months
▪️Salary: €46,305 - €52,863
▪️Location: Galway City Campus
▪️Apply here: buff.ly/lFmh25Q

I have this wild thought that when history books look back on conflicts in the 2020s they'll call it the climate wars

More satire for today's events:

This is a very sweet video about climate guilt and how to achieve more without beating ourselves up about it

AI showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be ready to pull plug, says pioneer Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio warns against granting legal rights to cutting-edge technology

No, AI is not showing signs of self preservation, it's just fancy linear regression ffs. Can we stop this nonsense already
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

6 peopel sitting around a table with Christmas decorations in the background

And finally, of course, Christmas lunch. Multiple people were taken down by a nasty flu, we'll need to make up for this in the new year.

A green cake with coloured coconut flakes, a pink tower like construction and a sensor on top

Cake! our department has an annual Botany Bake Off, which this year was won by Josua. That is a £D printed flux tower with a functional CO2 sensor. Hlf the cake has a lot of different colouts, represnting plant diversity in the real world and the other half has only two, like in a model.

In November, gabriela, the first group Phd student, handed in her thesis. The defence will be in March. Bittersweet for me to see her go, but so proud!

A group ofabout 20 people posing in front of soem trees

In June we all went to Berlin for the annual QUINCY model workshop. It's fantastic to work in such a community

A group of people sitting on stone steps in the sunshine

a hilly green landscpae with some people walking away from teh camera down a path

Retrreat! In May we all spent a couple of days in a cottage in the Wicklow Mountains. Hiking, cooking together and sitting around a fire.

a scientific poster on a board, iwth someone explaining it and three people listening

a very large group of people in front of a screen in a lecture hall

four people standing in a conference room

Conferences! EGU of course - Camille led a session, gabriela (PhD) had. aposter and I had an invited talk. Then Midori (PhD) presented a poster at the eLTER conference in finalnd. Then we all went to the launch of ICOS Ireland.

Two new group members! Camille Aabdie started as a postdoc in January, working on functionaal diversity and belowground competition and Carmen Watkins started in August, also as a postdoc, workind on tree resistance to pathogens

a group of nice people, smilimg, standing by a railing with trees ub the background

It's been a great year for the Plant Ecology Modelling group. Academia sucks at time but this team is truly amazing.

Here are some of the things we did this year. Not papers, you can find those elsewhere, but everything else that makes a team a team.

Currently reading Aerth by Deborah Tomkins.

2025 favourites:
SFF: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
General fictoon: Private Rite by Julua Armfield
Non fictoon: One Day Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad