Peter Thorne

This is an eye-watering tax cut that will go directly into the pockets of big chain restaurants. This tax cut would fund the equivalent of building Luas Finglas every year.

Perfect cartoon.

Will I be the first to suggest the carbon offsets worked exactly as planned: they delayed real action for another 25 years

This morning I read the article from @irishtimes.com and rang & wrote to them to ask for a correction. They corrected the headline, and the article author @conorpope.bsky.social wrote back to confirm that it had changed. I opened up the app this evening and it’s wrong again.

A recipe for avoiding 15 million deaths a year and climate disaster is fixing food, scientists say Scientists are presenting new evidence that the worst effects of climate change can’t be avoided without a major transformation of food systems.

A reality check for me was working with students on an internal carbon accounting platform that Bon App our food provider uses. Beef was less than 5% of our purchases but around 50% of our food emissions even with international work to be plant forward.

apnews.com/article/plan...

There is an important conversation that should be going on (maybe at the UN level?) about this, as it will become worse with time (as more satellites are orbited).

Nations worked together to build the Montreal Protocol to protect the Ozone Layer.

These constellations threaten all of that work.

Wiley set to earn $44m from AI rights deals, confirms “no opt-out" for authors The US publisher is the latest to capitalise on deals to give tech firms access to its authors’ content to train their Large Language Models (LLMs).

Everybody makes money out of academic authors except the authors...News.

Wiley is the latest academic publisher to reach a multi-million deal to allow access to its content to AI developers, with no opt out, let alone payment, for the authors who created that content.

Unacceptable to put the costs of the AI boom on the backs of families struggling to pay their bills. It’s a crisis.

Before and after images show glaciers vanishing before our eyes They are melting like never seen before, changing landscapes around the world beyond recognition.

Thorough reporting on the scale of the loss of Switzerland’s glaciers

Solar is very cool and good but I cannot ever compute this weird thing that has emerged where it's presented as the only non-fossil technology and consequently gets 99.99% of the focus, whether from media or modellers. It's not a good thing, bc a diversified mix = faster decarbonisation

You might think that the mayor of Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's vast Northwest Territories, would be a fan of giant pickups.

Nope. He's disgusted by car bloat.

www.linkedin.com/posts/benjam...

Persistent eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean upwelling since the warm Pliocene Upwelling generates a nutrient-rich “cold tongue” in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean (EEP), with impacts on global climate, oceanic biological productivity, and the carbon cycle. The cold tongue ...

🌊 New study overturns the “permanent El Niño” idea for the warm Pliocene

Upwelling in the eastern equatorial Pacific has persisted for 5 million years, even under ~3°C warmer climates

Future upwelling may be more resilient than feared…

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Macron remarks are notable- some quotes: "We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies."

Electric taxi grants are really effective: they target some of the most heavily used vehicles on our roads.

The grants are always oversubscribed: the @greenpartyie.bsky.social is calling for the budget to be doubled.

Figure from a Hydrology and Earth System Sciences article about projections of drought in Australia, showing much larger changes for a drought index that includes potential evapotranspiration (SPEI) than for one that only includes precipitation (SPI). Source: https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/29/4689/2025/hess-29-4689-2025.html

This is a common finding when studying drought in the recent instrumental record and in future projections: much more change in metrics that include the impacts of warming (on vapor-pressure deficit and potential evapotranspiration) when compared to changes in precipitation alone.

Opinion: Those outraged by a €100k bike shed should look at the annual cost of renting out car park spaces We have completely normalised investment in congestion, pollution and the continuation of car-first planning, writes Ciarán Cannon.

An important perspective from @ciarancannon.bsky.social!

The contrast between active transport and car infrastructure becomes even starker once you factor in the broader financial and health costs of cars, whether it's inactivity, air pollution, or noise pollution (to name but a few negatives...).

Pope Leo Speaks About Climate Change. Is Anyone Listening? - CleanTechnica Building on the actions of his predecessor, Pope Leo this week called for all humans to care for the Earth that sustains us all.

Priestley Director Piers Forster is quoted in an article by @cleantechnica.bsky.social welcoming Pope Leo’s climate advocacy, stating that small steps and statements from influential figures can help shift public and political momentum toward environmental action.
cleantechnica.com/2025/10/02/p...

Jason Cullen from the Dublin Commuter Coalition said a response from a staff member from the Junior Transport Minister, Sean Canney's office, during that presentation, was alarming. "The clear indication that we got from the Minister's staff member there, was that it would be at least 18 months before we see any form of instruction to local county councils. 'When I pointed out to him that within that time 20 to 30 cyclists will probably have been killed on our roads due to the current trends that we're seeing, the response from him was that it is 'regrettable' that that will happen. "It really took my breath away."

The response from the Minister's representative at yesterday's meeting in Leinster House was shocking.

It's very clear that this government is not taking road safety seriously and people will die as a result.

www.fm104.ie/news/fm104-n...

An official told councillors that the national body rejected a request for crossing outside school, but FOI request shows  no such request was made Local media reported that a council official told councillors that Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) rejected the request for crossing outside a school in Carrick-on-Suir, but, after a Freedom of Information request, TII said no such request was made. TII are responsible for the national roads, and councils apply to them for funding safety improvements on the national roads, even within urban areas.

An official told councillors that the national body rejected a request for crossing outside school, but FOI request shows  no such request was made

Local media reported that a council official told councillors that Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) rejected the request for crossing outside a…

Is this the most embarrassing error in the DOE Climate Working Group Report? mistaking detection for emergence

My latest on The Climate Brink:

Is this the most embarrassing error in the DOE Climate Working Group Report?

The DOE CWG authors confuse detection and attribution with emergence.

On July 29, 2025 a Mw 8.8 earthquake off Kamchatka launched a Pacific-wide tsunami, right as the SWOT satellite flew south-to-north taking altimetry measurements of the wave train. In our new preprint, we pair SWOT with nearby DART buoys to capture the tsunami’s propagation and its source

‘Planetary health diet’ could save 40,000 deaths a day, landmark report finds Diet allows modest meat consumption and would also slash food-related climate emissions by half, says report by 70 leading experts from 35 countries Adoption of a plant-rich “planetary health diet” could prevent 40,000 early deaths a day across the world, according to a landmark report. The diet – which allows moderate meat consumption – and related measures would also slash the food-related emissions driving global heating by half by 2050. Today, a third of greenhouse gas emissions come from the global food system and taming the climate crisis is impossible without changing how the world eats, the researchers said. Food production is also the biggest cause of the destruction of wildlife and forests and the pollution of water. Continue reading...

‘Planetary health diet’ could save 40,000 deaths a day, landmark report finds

🧊Our researchers have just finished analysing ancient Antarctic ice spanning 1.2 million years of climate history!

The Beyond EPICA project extends the ice core climate record by 400,000 years, helping us to understand long-term climate patterns and improve future predictions.

Climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires Climate change and land mismanagement are creating increasingly fire-prone built and natural environments. However, despite worsening fire seasons, evidence is lacking globally for trends in socially ...

Published today: our new paper showing a 44-year trend of increasing global wildfire disasters (fatalities and economic losses) due to climate change-induced extreme weather. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Spain’s Renewable-Energy Boom Loosens Gas’s Grip on Power Prices Soaring renewables output in Spain is weakening gas’s grip on electricity prices, setting the country apart from much of Europe where fossil fuels still dictate the cost of power.

"Spain’s rapid renewables build-out means its power prices were set by fossil generation just 19% of the time, down from 75% in 2019. As a result, wholesale electricity was almost a third cheaper than the EU average"

Imagine having cheaper power

Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

2015-2024

😊📹

bsky.app/profile/kosm...

Got a phone call late afternoon on Tuesday during my visit to our Wallops Island, VA, ozonesonde site that NWS was immediately halting the 2x daily soundings there (WAL). Indeed they have disappeared from the map starting 1 October: www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/soundi...

This is the *most* British science story.

Rain ☔️
Enthusiastic amateurs.
Quietly recording 1000s of records.
To be mirrored later by the volunteers who digitised each of those original hand written numbers.

Sometimes it’s not the data - it’s the people that make the story.