Ana Unruh Cohen, PhD

👻 Happy Halloween! 👻

SCOOP: Former Biden senior climate advisor John Podesta said senators should renegotiate the bipartisan permitting deal & he believes the bill’s permit certainty language hands Trump a “loaded Howitzer” to go after public lands. For @heatmap.news

Hard to believe the 'lower costs by wasting more of the product' narrative remains live in the shale patch

I dug into Anthropic's 240,000-word prospectus so you don't have to. The AI giant said data centers are likely to increase gas prices, it's not interested in nuclear or renewables, and it's looking to expand abroad in part due to U.S. data center backlash. subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter/2...

Reading: Trump’s cuts have exposed US to ‘cascade’ of El Niño dangers, experts warn www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Two firefighters died in Yosemite battling a remote blaze that they might have been better off leaving alone — but thanks to the Trump administration’s new policies, letting it burn wasn’t an option: www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...

NEPA for the win

A student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting the Serbian government has won in the country's general election. Aleksandar Vučić's Progressive Party, in power for 14 years, conceded defeat on Sunday night. https://cnn.it/4zhej7Y

New from me: The US has faced a higher cost than any other country from the global Hormuz oil shock, with the crisis adding $160 billion to its fuel bill — or $471 per person on average — despite being the world’s largest oil producer.

October 26, 1975 – “The Endangered Atmosphere” conference begins… allouryesterdays.info/2022/10/25/o...

Cornell Lab's Wild Birds Revealed. The 5th video in the series explores Brown and American White #Pelicans, two similar-looking birds each with unique flying and hunting styles. Brown Pelicans prefer coastal marine habitats, hunting with a breathtaking dive from high above the waters...

🎶 His name is Lula. He is the winner 🎶

Ancient plants reveal that the vestiges of the North American ice sheet started expanding a few thousand years ago, but that climate change caused it to reverse course.

I just finished Retro, a really fun & thought provoking novel by & @jessicagolds.bsky.social! You can read an excerpt but really you should just get the book & read it. Enjoy!

Peak application of dendrochronology. 10/10, no notes.

People's courage in Minneapolis was a clear turning point, maybe the most important pivot, in Trump 2 so far.

"The U.S. military over-relied on AI for targeting in Iran and as a result bombed an elementary school, killing over 100 children. We have disturbing testimony from Israeli military officers that AI target selection made them feel morally absolved when they killed civilians."

In court filings, wind companies say the Defense Department has perpetuated delays on projects instead of restarting a review process they were ordered to resume. https://www.washingtonsun.com/energy-environment/pentagon-wind-projects-review-frozen-court-filings

"Between 2023 and 2025, the gas share of MISO’s queued capacity increased by about a factor of five." As of this September, "fast-tracked capacity additions are 54% gas by total capacity, 84% gas by generation capacity, and 93% gas by anticipated annual energy generation."

In a little-noticed webpage update, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a plan to decommission its online web archive at the end of the year, a move that would wipe tens of thousands of publicly available environmental resources from the web.

The Trump administration has given some of the country's biggest sources of toxic pollution a free pass, according to an investigation out today by @ericlipton.nytimes.com and me. @nytimes.com gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill devastated deep-sea life—and it hasn’t recovered according to a recent 13-year study. ALSO a cautionary tale about other industrial activities such as #deepseamining. www.science.org/content/arti...

“The proportion of estimated heat deaths attributable to human-induced climate change shows a marked rise over time, increasing from 39% in 2000 to 68% in 2025.”

JUST POSTED: Today at The NYT we are publishing a major investigation into how President Trump used his executive powers to expose millions of Americans to greater cancer risks. A six month-long investigation built on more than 10,000 pages of FOIA records. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

Solar has become “the obvious choice” for consumers, said Nsitem. “As the US-Iran war pushed up global fuel prices, the cost of operating these generators has risen, making solar systems much more attractive overnight.” Gift link

Beam me up!

Trump has made more stock trades in his second term than all 535 members of Congress combined.

JUST POSTED: A Russian energy giant has secretly moved to acquire a position in a massive Alaska gas project. Its part of talks between Witkoff/Kushner & Putin. But CEO of US company resigns after learning of Russian money in the project. A wowzer of a story. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/u...

Early flood cost estimates: $4.7 billion UN Loss & Damage Climate Fund payment: $20 million The world isn't ready for climate risks hitting home now, let alone the orders of magnitude increase coming down the line www.reuters.com/business/env...

The battle to keep the Roadless Rule goes on. Thank you to the hundreds of thousands who submitted public comment. American Rivers wrote a good overview of where things stand & why the Roadless Rule is so important for conservation, water supply, & wildfire prevention. @americanrivers.bsky.social

When first reported, 2025’s jobs reports added up to 1.2 million new jobs. After revisions, the economy added just 116,000 — 90% less.

El Niño is everywhere in the headlines, but ultimately human-caused climate change is the key reason for the record global warmth. 📈 Curious about how these two climate stories relate? Learn more in our latest report: www.climatecentral.org/climate-matt...

What most people don't know: when you fill up a petrol car most of the energy never moves it. Petrol car: 13–21% of the crude oil's energy reaches wheels. Electric car on today's UK grid: 43–45%. Electric car on wind+solar: 77–80%. That's why we don't need to replace fossil energy one for one.

Kudos to NBC New York for saying it without equivocation: "The US is to blame for the world falling behind in the fight against climate change."

19-effin-55

70 percent of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

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The question of regulatory misbehavior against clean energy does need to be resolved before Democrats will vote for this bill. This misbehavior sends all the wrong signals.

See renewables.org

😮 Comparing El Nino’s Current State: 2026 makes 1997 look like Child’s Play! Who lived in #Florida in 1997-1998? I was a whipper-snapper weatherman in #Tampa back then. It was a crazy winter…

Knowing that most people care about the climate is important. We call it one of the “six key truths” about climate change: It’s real It’s us Experts agree It’s bad There’s hope OTHERS CARE In fact, it’s the strongest predictor of many important measures of issue engagement.

More bad, sad news about coral reefs:

With these latest stats - 110 GWs of gas-fired power on private grids under development - you can see what the fossil fuel industry and Big Tech love the permitting reform bill. bsky.app/profile/kost...

The exchange between El-Sayed and "Tommy" reinforced for me how much of this political moment centers on the tension between the idea of a pluralistic democracy where power is shared and the vision of a country centrally if not exclusively for white Christians. Gift link: