Rachel Dobbs

@dobbs.bsky.social

Award-entering journalist @TheEconomist, mostly covering climate change.

LNER trains now have signs in the toilets informing people that period products are available, for free—just ask the staff for "a package for a friend". Which is excellent except that I can't think of anything more Austin-Powers-bananas to overhear someone saying to a conductor on a moving train.

The most iconic figure in the environmental sciences is the Keeling Curve, the CO₂ record from Mauna Loa, Hawaii. @noaa.gov had a wonderful site where you could visualize and download these data, and now it's just gone. These data belong to us and we should not let this happen!

A line graph showing atmospheric CO2 levels at Mauna Loa Observatory from 1955 to 2025. The y-axis represents CO2 mole fraction in parts per million (ppm), ranging from 320 to 420 ppm, while the x-axis is years.

One Gen-Z girl to another in the cinema last night, having just been shown an add for Audible: "Imagine listening to Atomic Habits as an audiobook. You couldn't skip anything!" 💙

So I think Biden pardoning Hunter is broadly a bad move BUT also I really want someone to write a "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" style play about how that decision got made over Thanksgiving in the Biden household

9 days in—& w 2 official days left—latest draft suggests that #COP29 negotiators have agreed that new climate finance goal should be “USD X trillion” per year. On one hand: lol, I too could have guessed it would be X amount of money On the other: X *trillions* in the text feels significant (?)

At every COP I end up playing one song on repeat. At Glasgow it was Radiohead’s “Karma Police”; in Sharm it was the Succession theme tune (lol); “No Children” by The Mountain Goats in Dubai; this year “Money” (Pink Floyd) & “Good Luck, Babe!” (Chappell Roan) are tied. Interpretations welcome.