Holocene Age Prevails

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Four people standing on the deck of a ship face a large, white mushroom cloud in the distance.

In weighing their decision, scientists considered the effect on the world of nuclear activity. A 1946 test blast over Bikini atoll. Jack Rice/Associated Press

Yesterday we learned that scientists declined the invitation to officially declare us in a new age:

A panel of experts voted down a proposal to officially declare the start of a new interval of geologic time, one defined by humanity’s changes to the planet.

The Triassic was the dawn of the dinosaurs. The Paleogene saw the rise of mammals. The Pleistocene included the last ice ages.

Is it time to mark humankind’s transformation of the planet with its own chapter in Earth history, the “Anthropocene,” or the human age?

Not yet, scientists have decided, after a debate that has spanned nearly 15 years. Or the blink of an eye, depending on how you look at it. Continue reading →

McKibben Discusses The Future With John Kerry As He Moves On

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“There’s a lack of knowledge, a lack of due diligence, a lack of basic education on the issue of climate,” John Kerry says.Photograph by Alain Jocard / AFP / Getty

With a transition this important, and especially when McKibben has a conversation like this one it is worth two posts in a row:

John Kerry Thinks We’re at a Critical Moment on Climate Change

As he steps down from office, the first Presidential envoy on the climate says that we have made progress, but we’re not moving fast enough.

He’s been perhaps most closely involved in negotiations with the Chinese government, in particular with his longtime interlocutor Xie Zhenhua, who retired in December at the age of seventy-four. One of Xie’s last encounters with Kerry came last December at the cop28 climate talks in Dubai, where Xie’s eight-year-old grandson presented Kerry with a card for his eightieth birthday. Continue reading →

When Embarrassment Really Means Shame

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Alex Wong / Getty

The sentiment is appreciated, but we should use the stronger word, shame, in describing the feeling many of us share:

Goodbye to America’s First Climate Envoy

John Kerry believes the world can still limit global warming, even if U.S. climate politics are “embarrassing.”

The smallest hint of frustration had crept into John Kerry’s voice. We were talking about international climate diplomacy, which for the past two years has been Kerry’s job as the U.S. special presidential envoy on climate, a role President Joe Biden created to signal his commitment to the issue. Continue reading →

New Ways Of Thinking About Exxon

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Her work is funded by Exxon, he’s skeptical of industry. Rebecca Grekin, left, and Yannai Kashtan at Stanford, where they study and teach.

We have made our views on Exxon clear, and also been open to new ways of thinking about them. In the spirit of being open to new ways of thinking, without being foolish, this story is worth a read:

He Wants Oil Money Off Campus. She’s Funded by Exxon. They’re Friends.

The two friends, both climate researchers, recently spent hours confronting the choices that will shape their careers, and the world. Their ideas are very different.

Two good friends, Rebecca Grekin and Yannai Kashtan, met up one crisp December morning at Stanford University, where they both study and teach. The campus was deserted for the holidays, an emptiness at odds with the school’s image as a place where giants roam, engaged in groundbreaking research on heart transplants, jet aerodynamics, high-performance computing. Work that has changed the world. Continue reading →

Lithium From A Well

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The drilling rig at ExxonMobil’s first lithium well, in southwest Arkansas. EXXONMOBIL

Thank you, Fred Pearce. It is not easy to trust ExxonMobil or any other petroleum company to do the right thing, but this sounds better than most of what we hear about their common practices:

In Rush for Lithium, Miners Turn to the Oil Fields of Arkansas

The Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas was once a major oil producer. Now, companies hope to extract lithium — a key metal for electric vehicle batteries — from its underground brines using technologies they say could reduce mining’s carbon emissions and water use.

The town of Smackover, Arkansas, was founded a hundred years ago when a sawmill operator got lucky: his wildcat oil well yielded a gusher. Continue reading →

Climate Change Challenges In Italy’s Food Basket

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The inside of a rice plant about to flower. With global heating, farmers fear extreme weather events such as drought will become more frequent

Thanks to Ottavia Spaggiari for this article, and to Marco Massa and Haakon Sand for the photos. We are closer to the challenges coffee faces in the context of climate change, but we know it is a global race to find solutions:

Risotto crisis: the fight to save Italy’s beloved dish from extinction

After drought devastated prized arborio and carnaroli harvests in the Po valley, new rice varieties offer a glimmer of hope. But none are yet suitable for use in the traditional recipe

Biometeorologist Marta Galvagno at work

For most of winter and spring in 2022, Luigi Ferraris, a 58-year-old rice farmer from Mortara, a town in the Po valley, remained hopeful. Rainfall had been down 40% in the first six months of the year, and snow had accumulated thinly in the Alps, prompting an 88% drop in the amount of water coming to the Po River from snow-melt; flow in the river and its connected canals was at a historic low. Continue reading →

Arizona Youth Climate Coalition

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(Photo credit: kevin dooley / CC BY 2.0)

Thanks to Yale Climate Connections for this:

High schoolers helped develop Tuscon’s climate action plan

They may not be able to vote yet, but they’re already having an influence.

In the past few years, young people have made headlines with their fight against climate change. Continue reading →

Costa Rica’s West Valley Coffee Region

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Historically the West Valley region of coffee farms were different from other coffee-growing regions of Costa Rica. One of the hallmarks of this country’s coffee farming culture has been the regional cooperative into which virtually all top quality beans get sold to. West Valley also had its own cooperative, but not the type of solidarity typical of Tarrazu.

That has changed recently, as a new generation of farmers have taken over the family enterprise, many educated now not only in agronomy but also entrepreneurship. They see that innovative practices–crop yield and quality improvements–can be advanced in conjunction with those who are otherwise competitors. West Valley farmers learned this and practice it, now making some of the best coffee on hand.

Whales, Big Brains & Codas

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Shawn Heinrichs

Marine biologists are full of surprises, and those who study whales sometimes give the best surprises. Thanks to Ross Andersen and The Atlantic for this story:

HOW FIRST CONTACT WITH WHALE CIVILIZATION COULD UNFOLD

If we can learn to speak their language, what should we say?

One night last winter, over drinks in downtown Los Angeles, the biologist David Gruber told me that human beings might someday talk to sperm whales. In 2020, Gruber founded Project CETI with some of the world’s leading artificial-intelligence researchers, and they have so far raised $33 million for a high-tech effort to learn the whales’ language. Gruber said that they hope to record billions of the animals’ clicking sounds with floating hydrophones, and then to decipher the sounds’ meaning using neural networks. I was immediately intrigued. For years, I had been toiling away on a book about the search for cosmic civilizations with whom we might communicate. This one was right here on Earth. Continue reading →

AI’s Energy Appetite

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Inside the Guian Data Center of China Unicom, which uses artificial intelligence in its operations. TAO LIANG / XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGES

For all of technology’s contributions to conservation, energy consumption is one of the downsides. Thanks to David Berreby and Yale e360 for this:

As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires

Generative artificial intelligence uses massive amounts of energy for computation and data storage and billions of gallons of water to cool the equipment at data centers. Now, legislators and regulators — in the U.S. and the EU — are starting to demand accountability.

Two months after its release in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT had 100 million active users, and suddenly tech corporations were racing to offer the public more “generative A.I.” Pundits compared the new technology’s impact to the Internet, or electrification, or the Industrial Revolution — or the discovery of fire.

Time will sort hype from reality, but one consequence of the explosion of artificial intelligence is clear: this technology’s environmental footprint is large and growing. Continue reading →