Ruth Mottram
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ruthmottram.bsky.social
Ruth Mottram
@ruthmottram.bsky.social
14K followers 5.8K following 2K posts
Climate scientist at DMI, Greenland, Antarctica, polar regions in general.
Dipping a toe in yet another social media site. Mostly on mastodon though @ruth_mottram@fediscience.org
Blogging at sternaparadisaea.net
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ruthmottram.bsky.social
Ruth Mottram @ruthmottram.bsky.social · May 20
In case you were wondering why we're doing glaciology fieldwork in NW Greenland this year, here is (part of) the answer...
It's all to do with an early break up of sea ice.

❄️🧪🥼⚒️⛏️
Animated gif showing series of satellite images from early March to mid-May this year, the sea ice (white) gradually and then abruptly fractures and retreats.
ruthmottram.bsky.social
The inside beef on how and why the US (a developing gangster state on this evidence) managed to delay Shipping's Big Plan for Decarbonization, What Now? Tristan Smith
#GreenTransition
Episode webpage: cleaning-up-leadership-in-the-age-of-climate-change.simplecast.com/episodes/e22...
November 13, 2025 at 6:47 PM
ruthmottram.bsky.social
One of my first teenage jobs was doing in QA in a uniform factory, according to NATO (yes *that* NATO) guidelines, they were allowed to differ in length and pocket symmetry by no more than 5 mm.
Ever since I have been disappointed in the lack of rigour about sizes in normal clothes manufacturing
katebevan.com Kate Bevan @katebevan.com · 22h
<extremely first world grumble>I have two pairs of jeans. Both Levi's, both the same version (721 skinny; yes, I'm old, skinny til I die, thank you), both the same size. Only difference is the colour: one lighter denim, one darker. One fits fine-verging-on-snug, the other is a bit too big. *sigh* 🤷‍♀️
November 13, 2025 at 10:47 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
duncanrobinson.bsky.social
Scandi taxes means Scandi kickbacks
ironeconomist.bsky.social ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 23h
The UK just has incredible attention to detail when it comes to making sure the people who pay all the taxes can’t have nice things. Child benefit? No. Free Child car? No. Cut price bike to cycle to work? No.

Functionally we are telling people they pay too much tax to get anything from the state.
jim.londoncentric.media Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 1d
Rachel Reeves is setting the Cycle to Work scheme on fire as part of the war on salary sacrifice policies! on.ft.com/4oKXNrC
November 13, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
zatapatique.bsky.social
You absolutely have to bribe your top quintile with goodies, because 1) it limits zero-sum brain disease spread 2) it creates a powerful constituency for a public services floor, & 3) the admin/cognitive load of means testing means they'll get theirs anyway, so you end up subsidising them regardless
November 13, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
zatapatique.bsky.social
This is basically the biggest thing I have changed my mind on in adult life. Having been raised in a Land Of Plenty soc dem, I was convinced of the 'insane subsidy to the rich' case for means testing until I came over here, saw the alternative, and I am now an Universal Coverage absolutist
ironeconomist.bsky.social ironeconomist.bsky.social @ironeconomist.bsky.social · 23h
The UK just has incredible attention to detail when it comes to making sure the people who pay all the taxes can’t have nice things. Child benefit? No. Free Child car? No. Cut price bike to cycle to work? No.

Functionally we are telling people they pay too much tax to get anything from the state.
jim.londoncentric.media Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 1d
Rachel Reeves is setting the Cycle to Work scheme on fire as part of the war on salary sacrifice policies! on.ft.com/4oKXNrC
November 13, 2025 at 10:31 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
glialcellar.bsky.social
The split line between democracies and dictatorships has become thinner. It used to be distinct because it was based on an economic model. Now, the transition to unfreedom has become more invisible because it is accompanied not by poverty and shortages, but by the dismantling of institutions
February 24, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
glialcellar.bsky.social
It turned out that my generation had to live in the most subjective period of the country's history. That its future depends on our decisions or inaction.

That independence is a theorem that needs to be proved every day.
February 24, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
paullewismoney.bsky.social
Scientists from over a dozen countries from China to Chile cooperate to study a supernova in real time bit.ly/4i0QlG4 a break from the febrile news of politics and war. Humans can be so great. And so dreadful.
First glimpse of exploding star reveals how a supernova is born
When a giant star dies, a vast explosion erupts from its surface. For the first time, astronomers have observed this ‘shock breakout’ moment
bit.ly
November 13, 2025 at 10:00 AM
ruthmottram.bsky.social
Next week I will participate with @oceaniceeu.bsky.social @h2020protect.bsky.social @crices-h2020.bsky.social + @polarres.bsky.social in a policy briefing in Brussels, with MEP Group on Climate Change, Biodiversity & Sustainable Development +@eupolarcluster.bsky.social

polarres.eu/polarreseven...
Polar Science for Global Action: Strengthening Climate Preparedness through EU Leadership - PolarRES
Join us for a high-level event on policy needs for the Polar Regions, stemming from the research of four EU projects — PolarRES, CRiceS, PROTECT, and OCEAN ICE. We will discuss the rapid changes in th...
polarres.eu
November 13, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
nickharkaway.com
Chaser.

bsky.app/profile/malw...
malwaretech.com Marcus Hutchins @malwaretech.com · 1d
What's super cool is that even though the majority of the audience is atheist, the places that did help received significant donations (one disclosed it was $75k+). A couple of people also did the same experiment on gangs, drug dealer, etc, and found they were more likely to help than churches. 3/3
November 13, 2025 at 6:55 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
nickharkaway.com
Shot.
malwaretech.com Marcus Hutchins @malwaretech.com · 1d
There's this woman doing an absolutely wild social experiment on TikTok. She calls random US churches with the sound of a baby crying in the background, explain the baby hasn't eaten in over 12 hours, and asks for 1 bottle of baby formula. She has a public spreadsheet of how each one responded. 1/3
November 13, 2025 at 6:54 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
glenpeters.bsky.social
No. Oil demand will keep rising if you make certain assumptions and policies.

The current policy scenario tells us which assumptions lead to rising oil demand. Yes, many assumptions are unrealistic as Dave explains. Therefore we would not expect oil to rise to 2050.

FT headline is wrong, clearly.
cleanpowerdave.bsky.social Dave Jones @cleanpowerdave.bsky.social · 2d
🤡OIL DEMAND WILL KEEP RISING🤡

What are the IEA assumptions that make rising oil demand so improbable?
November 12, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
dwdderwetterdienst.bsky.social
Guten Morgen!
Auch heute konnte wieder ein grandioser Sonnenaufgang beobachtet werden.
Hier sehen wir rot und orange leuchtende Wolken, eingefangen von der Webcam auf dem großen Feldberg im Taunus! 🌄
Webcambild vom großen Feldberg im Taunus von 7 Uhr. Darauf zu sehen ein farbenprächtiger, in rot und orange leuchtender Sonnenaufgang.
November 13, 2025 at 6:45 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
gilesyb.bsky.social
In 2015 I wrote that Trump, Grillo, Corbyn and UKIP were the revolt of people who hate being told it is more complicated than that. Tim's lovely piece discusses populism and the aversion to the cognitive effort needed to dismiss convincing-sounding bullsh1t. Free link above 2/
November 13, 2025 at 6:45 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
noupside.bsky.social
New from me: “working the refs” has come for Wikipedia. The same type of attacks alleging anti-conservative bias that right wing politicians have make about social media are coming for the encyclopedia — because of its critical role in shaping AI answer engines.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
The Right-Wing Attack on Wikipedia
The free internet encyclopedia is widely used to train AI. That’s why conservatives are trying to dethrone it.
www.theatlantic.com
November 12, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
katharinehayhoe.com
Delighted to speak with @republik.ch, in company with two dozen other climate experts, on what has happened in the last 10 years since the Paris Agreement.. and what we expect to happen in the next decade!

Read more: www.republik.ch/2025/11/08/w...
A photo of me and a quote in German which, translated into English, reads "The next decade will be marked by tipping points. And not just the looming tipping points in the climate system, but also social and technological tipping points that will help us."
November 12, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
sidseljlyster.bsky.social
Befolkningens mangel på viden om deres rettigheder og muligheder er et kæmpe retssikkerhedsproblem, både i Danmark og Norge. #dkpol
New Blog Post
Hvorfor urigtige forklaringer i familieretten kun får konsekvenser, hvis du selv reagerer
raadvild.dk
November 13, 2025 at 12:38 AM
ruthmottram.bsky.social
"is there a way to encourage voters to calm down, slow down and think twice, in an information environment that pushes us all to hurry up and feel?"

How populism became popular - on.ft.com/4nT3lyP via @FT
How populism became popular
It appeals more to a way of thinking than to a set of ideas — but is it just wrong?
on.ft.com
November 13, 2025 at 5:38 AM
ruthmottram.bsky.social
The thing I love about this is that I inherited from Dutch family a few RELX + SHELL shares. RELX (Elsevier) always outperformed oil + I always meant to sit down and work out if it was coincidence (return v. sensitive to buying/selling dates)

And now @hansonmark.bsky.social has done it for us.
Wow
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 2d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 12, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
jmkorhonen.fi
A trusted, widely followed source of news and information that is 100% in Finnish hands is in this day and age a strategic asset and capability, just like fighter jets or long range missiles.

But the far right demonstrates again and again that their overriding objective is winning culture wars.
November 11, 2025 at 6:51 AM
ruthmottram.bsky.social
Daily #AcWriMo: not as much writing as I wanted but completed first 1/4 of main paper, got final draft from colleague on 2nd, ok comments back from reviews on 3rd AND 4th & 5th paper a colleague is leading now out as preprint online. 🙌

And we found an obscure bug in the model code 🙄
#FediWriMo.
As a reward for meeting #AcWriMo goals, I'm posting gratuitous fieldwork photos. Here my colleague Abraham is testing a makeshift sled for the EM instrument we used this year to measure sea ice thickness. A man stands in soft snow pulling a scientific instrument on a plastic sled. The machine is about 40cm long but has large metre long tunes coming on either side perpendicular to the main instrument. In the background mountains snow and sea ice. The sun is shining in a blue sky
November 11, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
bournemouth4eu.bsky.social
The Telegraph's "attacks on the BBC are not remotely done in good faith & are the result of the publisher’s ideological & commercial interests. There is no world in which The Telegraph’s output would survive the level of scrutiny applied to the BBC’s journalism.”

open.substack.com/pub/writesbr...
The Telegraph’s BBC hypocrisy
A paper that knows a thing or two about editorial f*ck-ups...
open.substack.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
joannechocolat.bsky.social
Unsolicited writing advice, no. 18181999:
"Write what you know" is limiting advice, which leads to limited writing. Instead, know what you're writing about. That means due diligence: good research, wide reading, specialist help and advice if you need it. Stay curious. Try new ideas. No limits.
November 11, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
jmkorhonen.fi
The Finnish far right has been trying their damnedest to do the same for the most trusted news source in Finland, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle).

Due to #Finland ‘s geopolitical situation, in the age of infowars that is mindboggling strategic stupidity, if not outright fifth-columnist.
jburnmurdoch.ft.com John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 3d
A single shared source of truth is essential for a functioning democracy.

Without it you’re left with fragmentation, polarisation and a perpetual culture war where the discourse focuses on what divides us rather than what we have in common.

My column from last week: www.ft.com/content/5060...
Why American-style polarisation is spreading across the west
New research shows how incentives in the modern media ecosystem help explain rising division and negativity
www.ft.com
November 11, 2025 at 6:51 AM
Reposted by Ruth Mottram
kennethnrgaard.bsky.social
Danske børn er nu i snit 8,2 år, når de får deres første telefon, og at langt de fleste får en smartphone.

Det er godt nok tidligt.
Danske børn får en telefon, når de er otte. Også selvom deres forældre hellere ville vente
Gennemsnitsalderen for den første mobil er faldet til 8,2 år. Hvorfor giver forældrene en mobil, før de selv ønsker det?
www.zetland.dk
November 11, 2025 at 7:41 AM