S. W. Lawrence, MD
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swlawrence.bsky.social
S. W. Lawrence, MD
@swlawrence.bsky.social
600 followers 130 following 390 posts
Writer of climate fiction or cli-fi. But my work is preapocalyptic and optimistic, unlike most works in this space.
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AAAS: “Bee-hunting beetles are the first animals known to fake the smell of flowers.” This investigation of parasitic blister beetles demonstrated a novel form of chemical trickery. “Deception is everywhere,” says May Berenbaum, an entomologist at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.
Aggregated blister beetle larvae. “Certain orchid flowers, for example, look and smell like female bees, prompting males to pollinate them when they try to mate.” The larvae of blister beetles emit a mix of volatile scents resembling a flower, then latch on to a bee lured into contact, hitch a ride to the beehive + consume the eggs. “For self-defense, this family of flightless beetles oozes the toxin cantharidin, which was used in antiquity as medicine and also as an aphrodisiac in medieval Europe.” Another North American species attracts pollinators by concocting and emitting imitation sex pheromones. Ryan Alam, an organic chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, became fascinated by these insects, collected them in Germany, + placed them in a greenhouse cage with sandy soil planted with wheatgrass and other tasty plants. “The beetles mated, burrowed into the soil, and laid thousands of eggs…after they hatched, the larvae climbed the grass stems.” Alam, working with gloves to avoid blisters from cantharidin, collected + ground up the larvae + placed the concoction in a gas chromatography-mass spectrometer, which revealed the chemicals in a complex mixture by plotting them on a graph called a chromatogram. “Several of the eight most abundant molecules found, such as linalool oxide and lilac aldehyde, are often found in flowers and are known to attract pollinators.” Both genders of bees were attracted in testing. Of course, both genders of human have been known to use floral attractants as well.
January 26, 2026 at 2:58 PM
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AAAS: "As Greenland loses ice, global sea levels will rise—and its own will fall." My wife + I returned last nite from a week's vacation on our own coast, in northern Oregon + southern Washington. But it is Greenland that is experiencing "glacial isotactic adjustment."
Greenland losing ice. Its continental crust is rising up after centuries of compression by mammoth ice. Picture the Greenland Ice Sheet [GIS]—roughly three times the size of Texas and in some places more than 3 kilometers thick—"In the very places where glaciers are melting and shrinking, the land beneath will rebound as the burden eases, meaning [relative] seas may fall even as the meltwater causes them to rise elsewhere." The rapid melting of the GIS now constitutes about one-fifth of the global sea level rise, + when it melts it is free to travel far away, resulting in 'expanding coastlines, dried-up fjords, and future complications.' Another more subtle point: "the effect is intensified by gravity itself: The sheer mass of the GIS gravitationally attracts ocean water, but this attraction weakens as Greenland loses ice, sending seawater sloshing away." Published today in Nature Communications, "the research shows portions of Greenland’s coast will rebound far more sharply than expected, causing seas to fall by anywhere from 1 to nearly 4 meters by 2100." Andra Garner, a Rowan University climatologist, said “we think about sea level rising and the challenges that will create...but in places like Greenland, sea levels are falling—and that also creates challenges.” The parts of Greenland moving up the most are "western and southern Greenland, including the island’s economic and cultural hub, [which] will likely bear the brunt of the retreat, posing major problems for shipping and food security." Roger Creel, a geophysicist at Texas A&M University, commented, "It’s the difference between getting from your port to the ocean or having to build a new port."
January 25, 2026 at 3:27 PM
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CleanEnergyCanada: “Europe enjoys 21 EVs selling for less than $40,000 Canadian. Only one is available in Canada: report.” To start, loonies to dollars: €40,000 = $28,787.
Chinese EV. Canada has an affordable EV problem, as lower-priced new electric vehicles have become an extinct species [there], and that simply isn’t the case in other countries. “Accordingly, Clean Energy Canada analyzed the European car market to see what affordable electric options Europeans enjoy today compared to Canadians.” In short, Europe has 21 EV models selling for less than the equivalent of $40,000 Canadian, and only one of those cars, a small, relatively low-range Fiat, is available in Canada (it is the only sub-$40,000 EV available in Canada, period). ‘All but three of these EVs have driving ranges of over 300 km =186 miles, and only seven of them are from Chinese automakers, or exactly one-third of the list. Ten are European, three are Japanese, and one is South Korean. None are American.’ Research in Toronto and Vancouver metro regions shows that only 27% of respondents were willing to spend more than $40,000 on a new EV…whereas a car coming in under $40,000 drastically increases the pool of potential buyers to roughly half the population (49%).” Half the population—whew—would love to see that in the U.S. “Clean Energy Canada supports a broader, complementary suite of measures, including lowering the tariff on Chinese EVs to ensure an adequately competitive market and bringing back federal EV rebates for a limited period to help households address current upfront costs.” Clearly, these are the kinds of policies that would benefit Americans. Ranges will go up + costs will go down, as we dealing with technologies, not fuels.
January 18, 2026 at 2:02 PM
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ClimateCentral: “2025 in Review: U.S. Temperatures.” Climate Matters analyses are based on open-access data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—which, not incidentally, just had its funding protected by Congress.
Bar graph of average American temperature over yrs since 1895. “The nine warmest years for the U.S. have all occurred since 2012—part of the ongoing warming trend in the country and across the globe, driven by heat-trapping pollution from burning fossil fuels.” And get this: every single county [including our very own Whatcom County] was slotted into this record, like a thousand-piece puzzle [actually 3244 pieces in 2022]. “Analysis based on Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index found that average 2025 temperatures were made warmer by human-caused climate change in every U.S. county.” As a result, our weather has not been exactly placid. “The U.S. experienced 23 [inflation-adjusted] billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2025—including its most costly wildfire [Los Angeles] and a record number of billion-dollar severe storms.” It almost goes without saying, but I will say it here nonetheless: “The pollution-fueled climate impacts of 2025 will only intensify with continued fossil fuel use.” Or more colloquially, it’s certainly gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight—almost everywhere. And my wife + I even heard a few confused frogs croaking last nite—in the middle of winter. This cannot be good.
January 17, 2026 at 2:02 PM
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CanaryMedia: “EPA plans to give 11 coal plants a free pass on toxic ash disposal.” I’ve been a little hard on the EPA recently, but they deserve it. Here’s another reason: “The Environmental Protection Agency plans to let 11 coal plants dump toxic coal ash into unlined pits until 2031.”
Coal ash pond. This is a full decade later than allowed under current federal rules. Unfortunately, this move “tosses a lifeline to the polluting power plants, because if the facilities were barred from dumping ash into unlined pits, they would be forced to close, since they can’t operate if they don’t have a place to dispose of the ash, and the companies say finding alternative locations for disposal would be impossible.” Really, do you believe this excuse? If the health of the air, the land, the adjacent waterways + the local population are not deemed important to an agency set up to protect the environment, then perhaps we should at least change its name to Polluters Are Us [PAU]. “These 11 plants have already circumvented the 2021 deadline to close such pits, through a 2020 extension offer from the first Trump administration.” Coal ash dumped in unlined pits can leach into groundwater, potentially contaminating drinking water wells with carcinogens and other dangerous elements. “Back in 2018, the federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 2015 federal regulation on Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) must be strengthened to better deal with such sites.” The ruling led to an April 2021 deadline to start closing unlined coal ash ponds. The R.M. Schahfer plant in Indiana is known to have contaminated with “arsenic, molybdenum, cobalt, and radium… in groundwater near the pond, and the coal ash is held back by a dam with a high hazard rating, meaning its failure would be likely to cause death.” Ashley Williams, executive director of the advocacy organization Just Transition Northwest Indiana, put it succinctly, “We just see this proposed rule as a downright unlawful, reckless attempt by the Trump EPA to let polluters keep polluting.”
January 16, 2026 at 4:21 PM
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NatureGeoscience: "Deglaciation of the Prudhoe Dome in northwestern Greenland in response to Holocene warming." Gorgeous photo of Greenland’s Prudhoe Ice Dome [at top].
Ice Dome at top. "Constraints on the extent of inland Greenland Ice Sheet [GIS] retreat during the Middle Holocene (~8–4 thousand years before present) are limited because geological records of a smaller-than-modern phase largely remain beneath the modern ice sheet." Scientists therefore "drilled  through 509 metres of firn and ice at Prudhoe Dome, NW Greenland, to obtain sub-ice material yielding direct evidence for the response of the GIS to Holocene warmth." They used a technique called "infrared stimulated luminescence" measurements from sub-ice sediments, which revealed that the ground below the summit was exposed to sunlight as recently as 7.1 ± 1.1 thousand yrs ago. "This proposed complete deglaciation of Prudhoe Dome, coeval to reduced extent at other ice caps across northern Greenland, is consistent with interglacial-only δ O-18 values from the Prudhoe Dome ice column and ice depth–age modelling." [δ O-18 values, pronounced "delta-oxygen 18," represent the ratio of 2 stable [nonradioactive] oxygen isotopes, namely O-16 and O-18—which serves as an excellent proxy of paleotemperatures]. These "results point to a substantial response of the northwest Greenland ice sheet to early Holocene warming, estimated to be +3–5 °C from palaeoclimate data." This is worrisome, as this range of summer temperatures is similar to projections of warming by 2100 CE. Not to mention the fact that complete melting of the GIS would lead to about 24 ft of sea level rise over centuries.
January 15, 2026 at 1:24 PM
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AAAS: “Jellyfish sleep a lot like us—and for the same reasons.” Jellies are not fish, instead, technically, cnidarians. “Despite lacking a central nervous system, jellyfish + sea anemones have sleep patterns remarkably similar to those of humans, researchers report today in Nature Communications.”
Jellies asleep. The work suggests that sleep arose early in animal evolution to ‘help the first neurons rest + repair.’ But sleep is risky with predators out + about. “Yet species across the animal kingdom spend multiple hours a day dozing off—even ancient groups including cnidarians, which include jellyfish, anemones, and corals—all among the earliest animals to develop neurons.” Researchers in Israel studied the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) and an upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea Andromeda). “In an aquarium, they exposed them to 12 hrs of light and 12 hrs of darkness over multiple days…[using] infrared cameras to monitor how often the critters pulsed their umbrellalike bells, a sign of wakefulness.” The jellyfish were less active at night, pulsing their bells roughly five fewer times per minute than during the day. Hit by a flashing light, ‘the cnidarians took roughly 20 seconds to respond at night—more than twice as long as alert jellies during the day.’ But “anemones followed the opposite schedule: They were more active at night and slowed their movements and response times during the day.” Next stage: “When the team churned the water in the aquarium over 6 hours during the night to disrupt the sleep cycle…the sleep-deprived animals slept 50% longer than their well-rested counterparts the following day.” And they found melatonin had…sleep-inducing effect on the cnidarians, causing the anemones and jellyfish to snooze at times of the day when…usually active. Damaging DNA with UV or certain chemotherapy drugs also led to more ‘sleep.’ Not clear if they omitted teenagers from the study participants.
January 14, 2026 at 2:20 PM
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LinkedIn: “A climate reality check from Bill McKibben.” This is from a guest post on Katharine Hayhoe’s LI site. Hayhoe is a certified climate scientist, and McKibben is a prolific writer on nature + climate.
Australian solar map. Hayhoe states, “Bill is one of the most well-known and longest-serving climate activists in the U.S., and he knows a thing or two about how hope keeps us going, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.” Interestingly, unlike me, both are people of faith, hence believe in shepherding + caring the planet. I can certainly get on board with that. “Fun fact, biologists in 2014 named a new species of woodland gnat—Megophthalmidia mckibbeni—in his honour.” McKibben has authored more than 20 books since publishing “The End of Nature” in 1989…widely regarded as the first book about climate change for a general audience. “The Australian government has just announced that beginning next July, residents of three of the country’s six states will get three free hours of electricity every day, with the rest of the country to follow in 2027.” The free offer is a way to get Aussies “scheduling their lives a little differently to take advantage of the surplus—one imagines that many of them will be programming their washing machines to run midday, and charging their EVs then, too. It’s a good moment to be selling ever-cheaper household batteries too, since Australians can charge them on the cheap power and then run their homes all night.“ McKibben thinks this is “potentially an epochal moment—in some ways as remarkable as the invention of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution.” Back in the 1950s, the nuclear industry laughingly promised electricity “too cheap to meter.” I go back far enough to remember when Ralph Nader stated the Sun is the only safe nuclear reactor. And meant it.
January 13, 2026 at 5:13 PM
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CleanTechnica: “EPA Rejects Colorado’s Regional Haze Plan, Including Coal Plant Retirement Dates.” The Colorado’s Regional Haze State Implementation Plan was broadly supported by the state, utilities, industry, and environmental groups.
Blowing coal dust. “The state’s plan includes retirement deadlines for coal plants that several utilities voluntarily proposed and asked the state to include in its plan.” Furthermore, under the Clean Air Act and federal Regional Haze Rule, “states must reduce air pollution and improve air quality in national parks and wilderness areas…[including] Rocky Mountain, Great Sand Dunes and Black Canyon National Parks.” Of course, the mendacious “EPA claims the voluntary coal plant retirements included in the state’s plan would harm grid reliability, but this is incorrect because the state and the utilities have long planned to retire the coal plants and to replace their generation with cheaper and cleaner resources.” The EPA initially proposed a partial disapproval of Colorado’s haze plan, but the final rule released today rejects the entire plan. “Today’s news follows a recent illegal 202(c) order from the Department of Energy to prevent the planned retirement of Unit 1 at Craig Station.” This order threatens to raise ratepayers’ utility bills and worsen air quality for surrounding communities. “According to an analysis by Grid Strategies, if the plant is dispatched at its average output over the last few years, costs could rise to $20 million over 90 days, equating to approximately $85 million per year, or even upwards of $150 million per year if the plant is required to operate in must-run fashion.” Which excludes healthcare costs. Dirty coal is going down kicking + screaming, but just like in Trump’s first term, it is going down. Note the blowing coal dust in the photo, + muse on the fact that mercury + other heavy metals are achieving windblown dispersal to air, land, water + people’s lungs. Makes you want to say ‘goldarnit,’ and do somethin’ about it.
January 12, 2026 at 3:38 PM
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AAAS: “Paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever in 1812 Napoleon’s devastated army.” In the autumn of 1812, ‘Napoleon + his Grande Armée of over 500,000 soldiers retreated from Moscow with few supplies and in the face of winter.’
Famous painting of Napoleon. Countless soldiers of the French army succumbed to infectious diseases, but the responsible pathogen or pathogens remain debated. Unsurprisingly, “the retreating French [were] vulnerable to disease, and the main suspects have long been typhus + trench fever, both documented in historical accounts.” But the scientists “were not able to detect Rickettsia prowazekii (the agent of typhus) and Bartonella quintana (the cause of trench fever), which had previously been associated with this deadly event—based on PCR results and historical symptom description. As detailed in Curr. Biol. (2025) 10.1016/j.cub.2025.09.047, “Barbieri et al. managed to recover and sequence ancient DNA from the teeth of 13 French soldiers who died in Vilnius, Lithuania.” Unexpectedly, there was no trace of either of these epidemic diseases. “Instead, they detected Salmonella enterica enterica…the causative agent of paratyphoid fever, + Borrelia recurrentis, responsible for relapsing fever transmitted by body lice.” Historical descriptions of the soldiers’ illnesses match paratyphoid fever symptoms. The Cossacks were constantly harassing their flanks, + the monstrous cold proved deadly. “One can only imagine the appalling conditions the French suffered during this disastrous campaign.” Hubris, intransigence, + lack of military intelligence proved as lethal then as it does now 2 centuries on. Unhappily, the early decades of this century will always be known for resurgent warfare.
January 11, 2026 at 4:09 PM
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AAAS: “The real da Vinci Code..” In 2024, microbial geneticist Norberto Gonzalez-Juarbe gently took swab samples of a centuries-old red chalk drawing on paper entitled Holy Child. La
Scientists. “The late art dealer Fred Kline, who acquired the drawing in the early 2000s, had claimed stylistic features such as left-handed ‘hatching,’ a trademark of Leonardo da Vinci’s, link Holy Child to the Renaissance master.” Other experts say 1 of his students could have produced it. ” In a remarkable milestone in a decade-long odyssey, he and other members of the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project (LDVP), a global scientific collective, report in a paper posted today on bioRxiv that they have recovered DNA from Holy Child and other objects.” The preprint [not yet peer-reviewed], concludes’ that Y chromosome sequences from the artwork + from a letter penned by a cousin of Leonardo both belong to a genetic grouping of people who share a common ancestor in Tuscany, where Leonardo was born.’ But ‘far from proof,’ says geneticist Charles Lee, whose team at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine analyzed samples from Holy Child—limited by the fact that da Vinci had no known descendants, + that his gravesite was disturbed in the 19th century. “Circumstantial evidence that the DNA fragments are Leonardo’s could come from other LDVP research: Y chromosome sampling of recently identified living descendants of his father, and efforts to extract DNA from tombs where his relatives are buried.” But identifying Leonardo’s DNA is “about as hard a target there is” in ancient DNA research, says S. Blair Hedges,evolutionary biologist at Temple University. Until now, decisions of authorship depend on expert opinion of criteria such as how a brushstrokes was made. LDVP’s effort “doesn’t just open a new window, opens a whole new world” for authenticating art, says chemist Stefan Simon, director of the Rathgen Research Laboratory. Tantalizingly, “Well known that Leonardo used his fingers along with his brushes while painting,” says Ausubel, “so it could be possible to find cells of epidermis mixed with the colors.” Not just fingerpainting speaking to us from ten centuries ago.
January 10, 2026 at 2:41 PM
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AAAS: “Against all odds, a curious sea creature survived the dino-killing asteroid.” It was some 66 M yrs ago that a 14-km asteroid struck near the Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico.
Midsize ammonite fossil. This ejected millions of tons of debris, “creating a tsunami 4.5 km high and engulfing the world in caustic ash and flames.” Three-quarters of life perished from the impact + coupled volcanic eruptions, including the nonavian dinosaurs that had ruled unchallenged for 160 million years. “Ammonites, which formed elegant spiral shells from a few mm to ~ 3 m across, were long considered a textbook victim of the end-Cretaceous asteroid.” For over 350 M yrs, they thrived in ancient Earth’s oceans…but after the asteroid struck, they seem to all have swiftly disappeared. “Whether ammonites survived [beyond the Cretaceous] has been debated for about 2 decades,” says Kyoto University paleontologist Amane Tajika, an ammonite expert who led the 2023 study. In 2025, to resolve the uncertainty, Marcin Machalski, a paleontologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the new study’s lead author, directly studied “the sediments surrounding ammonite fossils from the Stevns Klint limestone beds in eastern Copenhagen, some of them apparently deposited after the end-Cretaceous extinction.” Scanning electron microscopes scrutinized the sediments surrounding 10 fossil ammonites from 3 different genera to precisely determine which layers of rock they came from. “It convincingly shows that some ammonite species did indeed survive the asteroid impact before disappearing for good,” says Margaret Yacobucci, an ammonite expert at Bowling Green State University. “Ammonites would have been extremely vulnerable to ash-clouded skies, with high metabolisms as adults and a larval stage that relied on photosynthetic microbes for food.” Nonetheless, Machalski and his colleagues estimate they survived for at least 68,000 years after the cataclysm, finally falling victim to falling sea levels + their diminished diversity—which would have made ammonites a “dead clade walking,” unable to bounce back. Sounds like an old western movie soundtrack, does it not?
January 9, 2026 at 3:19 PM
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CleanTechnica: “How Long Until China Is At 90% Plugin Vehicle Sales?” More than half of China’s new vehicle sales are plugins—54% across the first 11 months of 2025 (33% BEVs alone, rest are PHEVs).
Chinese EV priced under USD30,000 for European market. ‘It seems like a blink of an eye from China crossing 20% plugin vehicle sales to crossing 50%—country just flew from somewhat notable to electric vehicles taking over the market.’ But the question is: “can China’s electric vehicle sales keep rising as they have been, or are they about to stall?” Throwing a wrench into the mix, “China is no longer focusing on EVs (or New Energy Vehicles) in its 5-year plan, and it’s a little unclear what that means—is it stepping off the acceleration pedal or do the country’s leadership see the market as mature enough to push it out of the nest and let it spread its wings?” Fortunately, we have the example of first-mover Norway to see what happens after the 50% margin is reached. A reader comment by ‘neroden’ in the article stated: “It took four years for Norway to go from 50% to 90%, and it should not take more than five for China, so they’ll be at nearly-all new vehicles electric in 2030. The Chinese companies are overbuilt enough for the Chinese market that they will need to ship cars abroad to keep their margins up, and they’re already doing it (BYD being in the lead on this). This means mass electrification of one country after another as the Chinese carmakers target them with inexpensive electric cars.” The fossil fuel companies don’t want to hear this, but I would hate to have to bet against electric cars—which is what they are doing. Not just betting, but also scheming + plotting against them in many countries around the world, especially in Africa.
January 8, 2026 at 1:26 PM
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AAAS: “Deep-sea earthquakes fuel huge plankton blooms in Antarctica.” Several tectonic plates underlie Antarctica; their boundaries create the Australian Antarctic Ridge + toward the east the Pacific Antarctic Ridge, associated with hydrothermal vents + heightened earthquake activity.
Algal bloom between ice floes. As “the Pacific Ring of Fire accounts for nearly 80% of global seismic activity, similar processes might occur…and should be investigated.” Vents 1800 meters deep ‘burble + belch out scalding water rich with iron and other compounds, [which] nourish the microscopic plankton that krill + other crustaceans eat, sustaining a food web that culminates in larger predators such as penguins, seals, and whales.’ Though the waters off Antarctica are cold and harsh, researchers have long observed they support huge phytoplankton blooms. “The waters above the Australian Antarctic Ridge host…an exceptionally large bloom—in 2014, this microbial mélange spanned about 266,000 sq. km of ocean—an area about the size of New Zealand.” In 2021, earth + climatology scientist Casey Schine at Middlebury College + her team ‘discovered the blooms over the Australian Antarctic Ridge were similarly fueled by deep-sea vents.’ To investigate the potential influence of earthquakes along the Australian Antarctic Ridge, they consulted earthquake records, satellite imagery from 1997 to 2024, + prior data collected from deep-sea chemical sampling missions. “Their analysis found that blooms grew largest when earthquakes of magnitude 5 or greater occurred in the weeks to months prior to the Antarctic phytoplankton’s growing season.” Consequently, “the Southern Ocean’s plankton blooms play an important role in regulating global CO2 levels, so they ultimately help determine how much human-emitted carbon dioxide gets sucked out of the atmosphere.” Thus, some climate models may need modification—the constant dance of scientific advance.
January 7, 2026 at 3:43 PM
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AAAS: “Chemicals in million-year-old fossils reveal animals’ lives in detail.” Some 2.4 M yrs ago, “a large + now-extinct elephant meandered along the grassy shores of Lake Malawi in East Africa…scientists know it was a juvenile that munched wormwood bark + mulberry leaves.”
Dentine from elephant tooth. "Scientists know it was a juvenile that munched wormwood bark + mulberry leaves—and may have been fighting an infection when it died.” Forensic investigations. “In a study published earlier this month in Nature, scientists report that fossil bones and teeth from that elephant and other fossil animals dating back millions of years ago contain metabolites [compounds], tiny byproducts of internal metabolic processes.” The study “inaugurates paleometabolomics”—as the field is known—“as a robust, biomolecular tool for extracting … data from millions-of-years-old fossils.” Tim Bromage, biologic anthropologist at New York University, + his collaborators studied “fossilized bones and teeth from animals excavated from areas near ancient hominin sites, including Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Makapansgat in South Africa, + Chiwondo Beds in Malawi.” Using a mass spectrometer, they compared metabolites to databases of compounds known to be made by similar living [extant] organisms. “Surprisingly, these analyses revealed thousands of metabolites in each sample, hundreds of which could be matched definitively to contemporary organisms.” Two gerbils and one squirrel from Olduvai Gorge contained metabolites associated with the genes that metabolize estrogens. “A squirrel from Olduvai Gorge, the elephant from the Chiwondo Beds, + a bovid from Makapansgat contained metabolites possibly associated with immune response to Trypanosoma brucei, the parasite that causes ‘sleeping sickness’ in humans.” Finally, “in a 1.8-million-year-old squirrel from Olduvai Gorge, the researchers uncovered metabolites that illustrate a diet of asparagus + aloe—plants that indicate a dense forest canopy.” These beat anything coming out of those CSI shows.
January 6, 2026 at 2:25 PM
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AAAS: “Signal Transduction Scaling a new limb .” I’d never thought that salamanders had mythical power before, but perhaps I should reconsider. “Salamanders may be slow, but they have a superpower.”
Adult axototl salamander. "They can regenerate a lost limb [throughout life], which grows to the correct size despite the animal’s size varying several fold as they age.” Lyubaykina et al. in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (2025) 10.1073/pnas.2503086122 examined how such sizing could work. I wish someone could pronounce Natalia’s last name for me—Lyubaykina—but for now your guess is as good as mine. The researchers “found that growth of the new limb is regulated by interacting gradients of two [interacting] signaling molecules,” Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) and Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF8), which are produced at [distinct proximal + distal ends] of the regenerating limb and sustain tissue growth through a pair of oppositely oriented morphogen signaling gradients. “Tissue growth decreases the overlap between both gradients and eventually halts morphogen signaling and arrests tissue growth.” BTW, I did not make up these names but obviously somebody with a sense of humor did. “The authors used mathematical modeling and measurements of the two gradients to show that proper sizing needed some static gradient parameters that didn’t change as the limb bud grew, even though other gradient parameters dynamically changed.” It would be a huge phylogenetic leap, but being a medical type, I would surmise that working out these mechanisms could potentially be used to assist in tissue regeneration in mammals as well. Of course, the tricky part might be the reconstruction of nerves.
January 5, 2026 at 2:12 PM
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CanaryMedia: “Chart: US steelmaking is slowly getting cleaner.” We badly need technological progress, partly in terms of pollution reduction—global estimate of deaths from air pollution 7 M per yr according to WHO—but also for the other critical goal of electrification of heavy industry.
Bar chart showing reduction coal use in metal making. “Steelmaking’s reliance on coal makes it one of the world’s dirtiest industries, but all new capacity in the works for the U.S. as of May 2025 will use technologies that sidestep the need to burn the fossil fuel.” Importantly, this includes several operating electric arc furnaces capable of producing millions of metric tons [M tonnes] of steel each year. However, America does still rely heavily on coal-fired blast furnaces to purify iron ore. “But forthcoming projects will all use direct reduction, which uses natural gas as a fuel—and ironmakers could eventually replace that gas with carbon-free hydrogen.” Summary statement: “The U.S.’s steel and ironmakers are recording slow but steady progress toward getting off coal.” Sooner the better, as clean coal is an oxymoron. And you know what people say about people that believe in oxymorons, don’t you? If not, figure it out.
January 4, 2026 at 1:39 PM
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TheCoolDown: “Experts sound alarm as ‘unprecedented’ phenomenon unfolds across US: ‘We’re closer to the edge … than we realize.’” Snow droughts in Utah could impact how much water is available in 2026.
Dry mountain valley in Utah. “Utah tends to get an average of 275 inches of snow a year, but this winter has seen a 25-year low of snowfall.” That low currently stands at 44% of normal. To belabor the obvious, it’s not just skiers + other winter sports fans who are impacted by the warmer weather—it could have a serious impact on water supplies. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the country’s two largest reservoirs, rely on melted snowpack to provide water to 40 M Americans. “According to the Colorado River Research Group, even a near-average snowpack over the colder months could mean that these reservoir water levels could drop to a record-low in 2026.” Slowing recovery, dry soils near Lake Powell in particular will likely soak up a lot of water before it reaches the water system. “Three-quarters of the water usage in Utah goes towards agriculture, so low levels and potential droughts could have a severe impact on food systems, farmers’ income, and the economy as a whole.” Some households on private water systems may open dry taps at some point. Crops will suffer. Wildfires will be an increasing risk. I’m going to have to remember the phrase “snow drought,” + incorporate that into my vocabulary. A social construct, not a meteorological definition, but still evocative.
January 3, 2026 at 12:59 PM
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TheHill: “Trump is repurposing clean energy funds to revive coal power.” The Energy Department has been dipping their fingers into the till, in order to roll out $625 M in coal-focused programs aimed at recommissioning and modernizing coal facilities.
Coal plant. “But nearly no one is talking about where this money is actually coming from: carbon capture technology programs under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and carbon capture demonstration and large scale pilot programs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, along with funding for rural and remote energy resilience.” A recent Notice of Funding Opportunity explicitly draws $350 M from unobligated balances appropriated for carbon capture demonstrations and large-scale pilots. “This is money Congress set aside to commercialize carbon capture, not to recommission coal plants…but those projects originally selected under these programs in the Biden administration, already underway, were abruptly cancelled by Secretary Chris Wright, seemingly to make room for the new coal-revival agenda.” The double-speak by the Energy Department only states that projects “may be staged so that near-term reliability upgrades are federally cost-shared without requiring immediate Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage installation, while later phases incorporate … carbon-management components.” And of course—in practice—this allows a coal plant to accept federal dollars for upgrades now as long as they mention carbon capture in their applications, but with no practical mandate to install it later.” As another slap in our faces, “Federal grant awardees are not obligated to continue into later phases. They can opt out at any point with no penalty. That means the government can give out millions upgrading coal plants under the statute, on the premise of future carbon capture that never actually happens.” If this is not a rigged system, I don’t know what is. We were warned from childhood not to let the fox into the henhouse, but now we are paying the price.
January 2, 2026 at 4:36 PM
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Oilprice[.]com: "The Permian Is Drowning in Its Own Wastewater." An issue with excess wastewater in Texas is a challenge to an industry that is pumping almost half the nation’s oil.
Produced fracking wastewater holding pond. "The Permian basin's massive oil production from hydraulic fracturing generates huge amounts of wastewater, and the industry is running out of safe places to dispose of it." Hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking' is water-intensive; "the Wall Street Journal [WSJ] noted that drillers in the Delaware Basin are pumping between 5 and 6 barrels of fluid for every barrel of oil they recover," which is unsustainable. As is a current solution, switching from deep disposal wells to shallower ones to avoid 'changes' in seismic activity, as reported by the U.S. Geological Survey [USGS]. "There is so much wastewater across the Permian that it is moving into old wellbores, causing geysers that cost a lot to clean up; that pressure in injection reservoirs in some parts of the Permian has reached 0.7 pounds per square inch per foot—0.2 pounds higher than the threshold over which liquid can flow up to the surface [+/or] potentially affect drinking water." The unwanted water geysers the migrating water is causing can cost $2.5 M to plug, with the Texas Railroad Commission [historical oddity] also shutting the injection wells that it suspected were leading to leaks, wrote the WSJ. “Bit by bit, it adds cost, it adds complexity, it adds mechanical challenges,” one Chevron executive told the WSJ. "Potential solutions, such as treating the water for release into rivers, face regulatory hurdles and would add significant, unwelcome costs to producers operating below $60 per barrel West Texas Intermediate [WTI]." This is a mess. This is bleak. But cheer up folks, one more reason to get an EV, right?
January 1, 2026 at 2:02 PM
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Grist: “The EPA website got the basics of climate science right. Until last week.” What took them so long? The Trump administration purged 80 pages of factual information about the deteriorating climate—including the concept that humans are responsible.Fa
Climate change science. ‘The EPA’s page explaining the causes of climate change now focuses on how “natural processes,” like variations in Earth’s orbit and in solar activity, influence the climate [disinformation starts with kernels of truth].’ Gretchen Gehrke is one of the dedicated people who monitor federal websites at the behest the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. Important data have have already disappeared from other government sites—including the National Climate Assessments, a series of congressionally mandated climate reports translated for public consumption—many of the previous changes were language swaps, replacing “climate change” with more innocuous phrases like “future conditions” or “extreme weather.” But the changes at the EPA “represents a more radical rejection of mainstream science.” That’s sad, “as the resources on the EPA’s site were used by teachers, businesses, and local and tribal governments, as well as the public, since they translated the jargon-filled language of scientific reports into something more useful and accessible.” EPA staff ridiculously claim it is upholding “gold-standard science.” The hypothesis is that these changes are part + parcel of the EPA’s plan “to reverse the agency’s own “endangerment finding” about CO2, so this has huge political + economic knock-on consequences. Similarly, “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently changed its stance on the relationship between vaccines and autism, with a new page saying that a link between the two can’t be ruled out—horrifying current staffers, who said their employer was spreading misinformation.” I should balance that out by reporting that the National Weather Service is still putting out accurate weather reports. I almost hesitate to state this for fear of putting a bigger target on this trusted agency.
December 31, 2025 at 4:05 PM
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CanaryMedia: “Nuclear power’s loud-but-quiet year.” In terms of press releases, huge American governmental support, + pledges to build new nuclear power—2025 was a gangbusters year.
2 Belgium reactors mothballed. In terms of adding more reactors to the U.S. grid—nothing to hear but crickets. “In fact, around the world, more gigawatts’ [GW] worth of nuclear reactors were retired than turned on this year, according to new data from the consultancy BloombergNEF.” In the first 11 months of this year only 2 new reactors came on line, totaling 1.8 GW. Meanwhile, seven reactors totaling 2.8 GW of capacity were permanently shuttered. “Overall, the world had 417 reactors in operation churning out 337 GW of power as of the start of this month.” In spite of legislators in Belgium “voting in May to repeal a 2003 law that required the country to phase out nuclear power entirely,” they mothballed 2 reactors this year. “Taiwan also contributed to the decline when it closed the last reactor at its Maanshan plant on the island’s southern tip, completing the country’s long-awaited exit from atomic energy…Russia will round out the closures by decommissioning three 12-megawatt units at a plant in the Arctic by the end of this month. But these shutdowns may mark a turning point from a global retreat from nuclear. “Around the world, new technologies are racing toward maturity, shuttered reactors are being revived, and dealmakers are seeking to shore up the future supply of clean electricity by investing in new nuclear power.” Looking ahead, “next year is the first time in at least 15 years that zero reactors worldwide are slated to shut down.” Though closures will pick up again in 2027, “new capacity is projected to dramatically outpace shutdowns through 2029.” On top of that, according to Chris Gadomski, the lead nuclear analyst at BloombergNEF, ​“there’s a lot of hesitation among countries in the world to do business with the Chinese, ”who are currently building reactors at a far faster rate than any other country.” I look forward to following all these stories of industrial or ‘socialism nested within’ capitalism next yr.
December 30, 2025 at 3:16 PM
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CanaryMedia: “Chart: EVs are ascendant — and gas cars are past their prime.” Many Americans suffer from a misapprehension about the surging success of electric vehicles globally.
Chart of drop in gas cars. because of our short-sighted + politicized resistance to the rollout of EVs—even though in 2024 vs. 2023 the U.S. ‘experienced sales growth of over 10%, largely driven by the release of new electric vehicle models and availability of EV tax credits, which provided financial aid to consumers.’ Worldwide, “nearly 11 million new EVs were sold around the globe last year, with most of those new EVs hitting the road in China.” Only 15 yrs ago, EVs + hybrids were practically nonexistent. In fact, I didn’t even have one that far back. Now, proponents of internal combustion engine [ICE] cars will immediately object to the inclusion of Plug-Hybrid-EVs [PHEV] + hybrid electric vehicles [HEV] in this collection, but 3 points of rebuttal. First, I will grant that the pure electric car is the only category that never needs an oil change or fuel except electricity, but the other 2 vehicle groups clearly will serve as thoroughfares to complete emancipation from fossil fuels. Second, EV charging systems are being disseminated rapidly in all 50 states in spite of vehement federal hostility. Third, this is a discussion only of personal vehicles + light trucks, not heavy-duty transportation, which I will leave to another day. What is sending chills down the backs of the petroleum corporations is the statement that internal combustion engine vehicles are officially past their global peak. “At their all-time high in 2017, worldwide sales of pure ICE vehicles hit 79.9 M units—last year, sales dropped to 54.8 M.” While I was not a math major, sounds like a drop of > 25 M in just 7 yrs. Round that off as 80 M dropping to 55 M in less than a decade. Or it’s a broken-elevator descent of over 31%. Would you imagine petroleum executives are paying attention as the rug is being pulled from under their feet? What do you anticipate will be the progression of this industrial collapse? I’m not a betting man, but I would surely hate to bet against this trendline.
December 29, 2025 at 3:23 PM
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AAAS: “Two ancient humans, including famed ‘Iceman,’ had cancer-causing virus.” A warrior’s tale: ‘Some 5000 years ago, the corpse of a man known as Ötzi, “the Iceman,” froze in the Alps along what’s now the Austrian-Italian border.’
Artist's Iceman. The mummified remains were notable for preserved clothing, weaponry, + tattooed skin, with death most likely from an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder. Wound infection perhaps. “But before Ötzi’s death, he also endured broken bones, intestinal parasites, and soot-blackened lungs.” Now, in a paper, “posted to the bioRxiv preprint server [not yet peer-reviewed], researchers report that Ötzi and a 45,000-year-old Homo sapiens fossil from western Siberia both contain stretches of DNA from the cancer-causing human papillomavirus, HPV16.” Part of the human condition is the presence of hundreds of human papillomaviruses—mostly innocent—”but about a dozen [of which] can lead to genital and throat cancers, constituting roughly 5% of cancers worldwide.” But another great vaccine, highly effective + available since 2006, quashes most of these infections + the attendant risk of cervical + laryngeal cancers. “A 2023 study of more than 3000 Finnish teens found that 8 years after immunizations, the highly cancerous types of HPV targeted by the vaccines mostly remained absent, but the diversity of other types increased.” Pimenoff + colleagues in 2017 traced back HPV16, the culprit underlying many cervical cancers. “They found that HPV diversified alongside early hominins and that modern humans seem to have encountered one of today’s dominant variants of HPV16 some 60,000 years ago, possibly by mating with infected Neanderthals.” A contrary opinion comes from a team led by molecular biologist Marcelo Briones of the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), arguing “it’s more likely our species transmitted the cancer-causing HPV16 to Neanderthals rather than the other way around…supporting this scenario, in a previous project applying the same approach to Neanderthal fossils, Briones’s team found the low-risk HPV12—not the highly cancerous HPV16. Either way, as always, count me in as a vaccine believer.
December 28, 2025 at 2:06 PM
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Oilprice.com: “Why Christmas Is the Most Stressful Week for the Diesel Market.” Santa runs on diesel, not reindeer. “Every year, the global holiday economy depends on a short, unforgiving surge in distillate consumption that powers trucks, ports, warehouses, refrigeration, + backup generation.” its
Diesel entering tank. After crude, diesel is the most economically critical fuel in the system; holiday season strains logistics and exposes how thin the margin has become in some already-tight diesel markets, particularly in Europe. “Recent weekly data show U.S. [diesel] supply running close to 4.0 million barrels per day [Mbpd], near the upper end of the post-pandemic range, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration weekly petroleum status report.” There is little margin for error when logistics volumes increase in the final weeks of the year. “Since the loss of Russian diesel flows, [Europe] has become structurally dependent on long-haul imports from the U.S. Gulf Coast, the Middle East, and [oddly] India.” The system is vulnerable to disruption because replacement diesel barrels travel farther, arrive later, and compete with the same shipping capacity needed to move goods. “Unlike gasoline, where weak consumer sentiment can soften demand, diesel consumption in late December is tied to physical throughput.” Packages still move even if margins are thin. ‘Missed deliveries turn quickly into lost sales, spoiled inventory, contractual penalties, and reputational damage.’ And “the demand is locked in by calendar and contracts, not price.” The U.S. has become Europe’s marginal diesel supplier, with distillate exports frequently running around 1.1 to 1.3 Mbpd, according to EIA export flow data. Precarity should not be an operating principle. Nor subordination to a mercurial government.
December 27, 2025 at 2:05 PM