The line between believing a scientific result strongly enough to advocate for it with zeal and becoming a zealot is a thin one!

All you foundations and wealthy universities should be funding the rejected proposals from NSF. Get rid of all the overhead associated with having your own funding process. There will be an abundance of highly rated and expertly vetted science that will not get funded as a result of these cuts 1/2

Science Magazine@science.org · last mo.

Exclusive: The National Science Foundation is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by roughly 20% to 30%, even though its overall budget is down just 3%. https://scim.ag/4xY2KCm

Volcanoes are cool. Except when they erupt and then they’re really hot. Like really hot. And loud. And generally fucking awesome. Highly recommend.

Scientists: Well our best guess for extinction-causing climate change from the Earth History is probably catastrophic cooling associated with stratospheric aerosols. Tech bros: Well that COULD happen but I could also save the world and become a gazillionaire! LFG! Fermi paradox answered.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3mo ago

A company at the forefront of solar geoengineering — the notion that blocking radiation from the sun could cool a warming planet — says its tiny spheres can reflect the sun’s rays without harming people or the environment. Critics say private companies have no business altering Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s 😎 to wear helmets kids! Take it from this 😎 dad.

Is Bluesky just LinkedIn light? Are there substantive scientific discussions to be had here? Or just a lot of horn tooting and finger wagging?

Woop woop for N isotopes and a deeper understanding of the origins of Pleistocene glacial cycles!

Princeton University@princeton.edu · 3mo ago

Eight Princeton professors were elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year. This marks the largest number of new academy members from Princeton University in at least a century: https://bit.ly/4wgvVzt

Serious FOMO over here in the USA while all the new data from Beyond EPICA. Whose got the 🫖 @tinyicybubbles.bsky.social?!

One fun facts about GWPs: those passionately arguing for 20-year GWPs over 100-year GWPs probably would not passionately argue for a 7% discount rate over a 3% discount rate (and might, correctly, think 3% is too high for long-lasting societal risks) yet mathematically these are almost the same

Today I learned what the expression 'soup to nuts' actually means. Makes a lot more sense now, but who eats nuts for dessert?!

Why is it that they always use the stock photo of McMurdo when posting bad news about NSF?! www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...

Trump ousts National Science Board members

Members of the independent board that guides the National Science Foundation said they received a notice from the White House that their position was being terminated.

washingtonpost.com

My first NSF rejection of the year! The wheels must be turning! I'll have the chance to apply and get rejected again!

A new agreement between TCNJ and Princeton will allow eligible undergraduate and grad students to enroll in select courses at the other institution during the fall and spring semesters at no additional cost: https://bit.ly/4tqr2le

Getting direct measurements of CO2 from Pliocene-aged ice has been a Holy Grail of climate science! A new paper by @jmarkspeterson.bsky.social provides a record of CO2 going back 3million years(!), with (let's say) intriguing implications for anthropogenic climate change doi.org/10.1038/s415... 1/

Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past 3 million years - Nature

Blue ice records from Antarctica are used to determine methane and carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 3 million years.

doi.org

For the first time, scientists have measured atmospheric gases from the late Pliocene, yielding data that could help to predict the future climate

Ice core reveals low CO2 during warm spell 3 million years ago

For the first time, scientists have measured atmospheric gases from the late Pliocene, yielding data that could help to predict the future climate

newscientist.com

If this is your scene*, maybe this job is for you? Three-year PDRA in ice core gases at @cambridge-earthsci.bsky.social www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc... *Scenes from the Beyond EPICA gas analysis in Copenhagen.

While everyone is (rightly) obsessed with levels of CO2 in the atmosphere 3 million years ago, don't sleep the observation that avg. atmospheric methane (CH4) DOES NOT APPEAR TO HAVE CHANGED AT ALL over the last 3 million years (1/4). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past 3 million years - Nature

Blue ice records from Antarctica are used to determine methane and carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 3 million years.

nature.com

New results from old ice....happy to answer any questions!

Ice core reveals low CO2 during warm spell 3 million years ago

For the first time, scientists have measured atmospheric gases from the late Pliocene, yielding data that could help to predict the future climate

newscientist.com

I very much enjoyed listening to this book. It does a great job capturing the links between CO2, climate, oxygen, plate tectonics, and Earth history which are both simple and incredibly complex! Recommend!

Peter Brannen@peterbrannen.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Not to be crassly opportunistic, but if you’re genuinely curious about how there came to be an ocean of fossil fuels in the crust, why humans now emit 100x more CO2 than all volcanoes on earth, and want to begin that story 4 billion years ago, might I recommend www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

Some cool science coming up so I guess it’s time to start posting again?

Would anybody like to read one of my long threads about a 2.5bn year old rock, bacteria that could produce oxygen but not consume it, and tank production in wwii

🚨 New manuscript! 🚨 We use speleothem calcium isotopes and Mg/Ca to reconstruct rainfall amount. Turns out central Vietnam was 50 % drier during the LGM 🤯. Climate models agree but most underestimate rainfall change. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Quantifying changes in central Vietnam rainfall amount since the Late Pleistocene

Paleorecords of the Southeast Asian autumn monsoon indicate that global sea-level change drove abrupt shifts in rainfall, yet the magnitude of these c…

sciencedirect.com

What’s it like doing fieldwork in Antarctica? 🥶 Sarah Shackleton and @blueicedude.bsky.social from @princeton.edu can answer that. They just found a 6-million-year-old ice core—a key piece to improve our current climate models! My story for @eos.org eos.org/articles/new...

New Lessons from Old Ice: How We Understand Past (and Future) Heating - Eos

Fragments of blue ice up to 6 million years old—the oldest ever found—offer key insights into Earth’s warming cycles. Researchers are using these ancient data to refine models of our future climate.

eos.org

New research from John Higgins @blueicedude.bsky.social & Sarah Shackleton @princeton.edu, comments from Lidia Ferri, story by Mariana Mastache @deerenoir.bsky.social.

⛺️ up! Drill down! Just another day in paradise looking for Earth’s oldest ice.

We've got a new record for the oldest air ever discovered. 💨 Scientists led by Princeton's @blueicedude.bsky.social and Sarah Shackleton uncovered air trapped in ice that is 6 million years old.

Scientists discover oldest air on record trapped in 6-million-year-old Antarctic ice

Scientists discover oldest air on record trapped in 6-million-year-old Antarctic ice

space.com

🥶 Led by Princeton's @blueicedude.bsky.social and Sarah Shackleton, a team of scientists has discovered the "oldest directly dated ice and air" on the entire planet in Antarctica.

Six-million-year-old ice discovered in Antarctica offers unprecedented window into a warmer Earth

A team of U.S. scientists has discovered the oldest directly dated ice and air on the planet in the Allan Hills region of East Antarctica.

phys.org

The natural weathering of ALL THE ROCKS in the world removes almost 1 billion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere every year. Enhanced rock weathering is an attempt to use a minuscule fraction of ALL THE ROCKS to remove many times more CO₂.

How spreading rocks on fields could combat climate change

‘Enhanced rock weathering’ is a simple, but also hard to measure, way of capturing carbon

ft.com

To be fair trilobites were around a lot longer than humans (250 million years give or take) and were wiped out in the by a great global catastrophe than has some parallels to anthropogenic climate change. They also preserve 😍 fossils. Not so niche to me!

Richard Waite@waiterich.bsky.social · last yr.

Sometimes I think my food/climate stuff is super niche and then I see accounts that are like “I exclusively post about trilobites”

Today those of us funded by @NSF received this memo. Perhaps the most concerning statement: “Therefore, all review panels, new awards, and all payments of funds under open awards will be paused as the agency conducts the required reviews and analysis.”🧪