Peter Thorne

I’d never have guessed.

Le jour le plus anormalement froid en France sur les derniers 365 jours👇, voire même dans certains endroits depuis plus de 10 ans, voire 20 ans!
L'occasion de refaire de la pub pour la page climat qui accompagne le journal de La météo & du climat #JTMC sur FranceTV
www.franceinfo.fr/environnemen...

This was such a fun photo to set up, taken by Thomas Reiter through a sleep station window on Mir. The sun was so bright we were all squinting like crazy. But I love how it shows the texture of the Shuttle's rough, protective hide, and the glimpse of humanity (and my moustache) against the universe.

Nations clinched a deal ... that is pointless without an obligation on nations to end all new fossil fuels extraction and development, and to stop the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere that is cooking us! FFFS! #COP30

What if I told you that the entire point of the COPs is, at root, to single out their key export

Two billion kids would REALLY appreciate it if we did more about this than just make a few non-binding promises every year & then instantly forget about them.
#COP30

As I always say when some right-winger starts going on about "red tape that slows innovation", every regulation on the books represents a lesson we as a society learned the hard way, and then encoded so we wouldn't forget. It's someone's blood & pain.

America putting most of its eggs in the generative AI basket, China going hard into green tech. When history looks back on this period, someone is going to look awfully stupid.

The world is fractured. The climate talks reflected that. Delegates from nearly 200 nations — not including the U.S. — showed they could make some progress. But they deferred the hardest decisions.

#COP30 "exposed the world as it is — haltingly and slowly tackling climate pollution, and fragmented by rising economic nationalism and protectionism, rather than the united, optimistic community of nations that produced the Paris climate agreement 10 years ago."

www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

In retrospect, it was a mistake to use the time where we had an advantage to add fart mode to our cars

Landscape in limited palette of Payne's Grey, Raw Umber, Green Gold, Old Gamboge & Warm White. Rolling hills dominate the composition: largely dark on the left side of the pass, but with rock and flora detail; Suggestion of a small cottage nestled into the lower hillside, then most of the right half of the panel lit up by moonlight. Small strip of dark night sky at the top, with bright white cloud in front of the moon and a dark line along the ridge, emphasising the curve.

I think this painting might be finished, but I've been staring at it for too long! Oil on panel, 70 x 100cm.
#oilpainting #landscape #hills #moonlight #irishart #maybefinished 🤔

Reducing emissions without phasing out fossil fuels is like being full after a big restaurant meal and telling the waiter to keep delivering new dishes to the table with a promise that your kids and your neighbor who is not even at the table will pay the bill.

I'm of 2 minds about climate negotiations these days.
There's part that invested a decade in COPs as a path to change. That part remembers the feeling of being with thousands of people coming together to try to take care a collective life support system.

Linocut lino block half carved/half not, with the pencil sketch marks still visible on the uncarved bit. The image is of a man’s face looking to the right.

Reverse work in progress.

#linocut #wip #printmaking

New text @cop30brazil.bsky.social provides a glimpse of where #COP30 might land.

Some reflections on references to science and evidence. /1

unfccc.int/sites/defaul...

Two dead in separate collisions in Waterford and Louth An 18-year-old man and a woman in her 70s have died in separate collisions in Waterford and Louth.

Two more road deaths in urban areas in the last 24 hours. A failure to introduce default 30 km/h speed limits in Built Up Areas reflects poorly on the Irish Government. #VisionZero road deaths? A pipe-dream unless attitudes change. www.rte.ie/news/regiona...

Nitrates derogation Back in the early nineties all across the EU a rule was introduced to protect rivers and streams from agricultural run off. At the last count 7,000 out of 137,000 farms in Ireland had received a derog...

Over the 19 years Ireland has had a derogation from the nitrates directive we have backed ourselves in to a corner. Which now leaves us having productive and economically viable farms or cleaner rivers and lakes, but not both.

Listen: 👉 www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

Imagine, if you will, that NASA updated its website to suggest gravity might not exist, prompting CalTech and CERN to release statements saying, "With great sadness, we can no longer recommend listening to NASA."

This is what's happening in epidemiology.

Nitrates derogation Back in the early nineties all across the EU a rule was introduced to protect rivers and streams from agricultural run off. At the last count 7,000 out of 137,000 farms in Ireland had received a derog...

I had the a welcome opportunity to move beyond the standard Punch & Judy media setup to properly look under the derogation hood, & explore why the Government measures are failing our waters & failing our farmers.

www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

The Irish Times published and lauded John Collison's op-ed, but did they fact-check it?

Andrew Jackson did. Thoroughly.

If you spent time reading the original, you'd want to give time to this counterpoint as well.

Half of Cork farms inspected by Council failed water quality protection regulations Half of the farms inspected by Cork County Council under the National Agriculture Inspection Programme (NAIP) this year have failed to comply with the government’s Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) reg...

We're constantly being told that pollution prevention measures are working and more time is needed to show results. But the rivers don't lie.

www.independent.ie/regionals/co...

Extreme Northern Lights from last night over Tombstone Mountain Park, Canada 🍁 These shots are unreal — some of the most breathtaking aurora photos to come out of Canada this year. 🌌✨ Tonight is the last day you will get to witness the best auroras of our lifetimes, all over Canada and most States of USA. Don't miss it.

Extreme Northern Lights from last night over Tombstone Mountain Park, Canada

These shots are unreal — some of the most breathtaking aurora photos to come out of Canada this year.

A man in a Batman costume and a pregnant woman in a crowded subway car, their faces obscured by pixelation. Text on top of the image reads: "Fig. 1: An example of the experimental setting, with Batman and a woman simulating pregnancy stand in a crowded metro"

Science will often take you to unexpected and delightful places. In this study, researchers hypothesized that riders in a crowded subway car would be more likely to offer their seat to a pregnant person if there were someone in the subway car dressed as Batman 🧪🦇

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

NASA, SpaceX Launch US-European Satellite to Monitor Earth’s Oceans - NASA The Sentinel-6B satellite lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California at 9:21

About the size of a full-size pickup truck, a newly launched satellite will provide ocean and atmospheric information to improve hurricane forecasts, help protect infrastructure, and benefit commercial activities.

Learn more about the Sentinel-6B satellite: https://go.nasa.gov/43yVTSm

'UK shouldn't pilot cruelty - my fears over asylum shake-up' Labour peer Lord Alf Dubs, who fled Nazis as child as part of the Kindertransport, writes for The Mirror on the government's proposed shake-up of the asylum system

'UK shouldn't pilot cruelty - my fears over asylum shake-up' writes Lord Alf Dubs

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

Brown begins work on $7 million microplastics research initiative Brown’s team in the SIMCoast initiative will focus on modeling microplastics in the Narragansett Bay. 

Brown faculty, including IBES fellow @baylorfk.bsky.social & affiliate @maratimes.bsky.social, are part of the new SIMCoast initiative modeling microplastics in Narragansett Bay.

“It’s a fantastic way to do interdisciplinary work and learn from others,” Freilich told @browndailyherald.bsky.social.

With all eyes on the big COP30 agenda items, WIM review talks have stalled.

Negotiators and civil society observers say it has come down to Kenya blocking the decision.

This goes back to Kenya wanting to host the Santiago Network secretariat in Nairobi. It says current host Geneva is too expensive

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As the final text is being hammered out here in Belém for #COP30, the issue of fossil fuel phase-out is on the table again.

Looking at the actual numbers from the IPCC AR6 1.5°C assessed scenarios to decompose reduced fossil fuel output vs. carbon capture and storage - CCS (i.e. abatement)

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