Howard Lee

And on cue he goes to cash in with the private sector to make $$$ after having destroyed our foreign assistance and global health programs. www.reuters.com/world/former...

Coal is still the worst killer of avians, by fuel type.

🔥

• Deadly Russian ballistic missile attack hits Kyiv university, bridge, medical centers • Ukrainian postal service forms private air defense force, shoots down Russian drones • 302,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded by Ukrainian drones since January, Defense Ministry says

🦇 Bat people, ecologists, is this legit? I ask because of the disingenuous campaign to claim massive bird deaths due to wind turbines, so I'm primed to be suspicious. There does seem to be a PNAS paper, though. 🧪🦇 phys.org/news/2026-10...

Post your Arab colleagues/predecessors "Muawia was born to Badeah Sukkar and Muhamed Nor Al-Deen Barazangi on 14 September 1941. He grew up in the city of Damascus, Syria, and graduated in 1965 from the University of Damascus with a bachelor’s degree in physics and earth sciences with distinction."

Imagine being simultaneously this racist and yet completely wrong.

Tree roots are hugely important for the functioning of the Critical Zone. Our latest post to Substack shows how geophysics can help us better understand the distribution of roots non-invasively. 🧪🔬🌲 Radar Reveals the Secret Architecture of Tree Roots criticalzonenews.substack.com/p/radar-reve...

I wonder if estimates of the Earth's capacity for geologic CO₂ sequestration account for people's opposition to having it in their backyards. 🧐

I mourn the unnecessary loss of life, all in the name of Putin’s vain ego

My latest for National Geographic looks at the 131 new Hittite cuneiform tablets unearthed at Šamuḫa (c. 1400 BCE) & what they tell us about everything from augury to an epidemic that killed Hittite children. Thx to @digkabri.bsky.social, Theo van den Hout, @knpazuzu.bsky.social & ISAC for aid. 🪏

Massachusetts

Sedimentary, my dear Watson ⚒️

I really like the point made here: Dems should be making a public case right now for novel tactics like defunding Trump's corrupt prosecutions, to make them more intelligible later:

"One of the clearest findings from our research is the significance of authenticity. Staff from working-class backgrounds often face an unspoken expectation to adapt: to align with dominant norms of speech, behaviour and self-presentation." theconversation.com/working-clas...

NHTSA has proposed using cyan-colored lights to identify vehicles operating autonomously. The idea comes in a draft proposal released last Friday Full story https://electrek.co/...

I wonder how much the prospect of subtracting a leap second (versus the usual adding) because of meltwater transferring mass towards the equator speeding up rotation (slightly), factored into the decision

New paper in the wild! 🧪⚒️ Dolomite is a weird mineral, for many reasons. One of which is that most of it is old. But there is a bit of new dolomite, such as in the Abu Dhabi sabkhas, and we used those to control for the seawater signals dolomite retains. Link: https://doi.org/10.1130/G55014.1​

The editor should not be sending out papers for review that clearly need copy editing. It would make the review process smoother and make it easier to say yes.

A smaller gap but a worse future. Current policies, result in warming being kept below 2.8°C by 2100. The most optimistic case, where all NDCs and net-zero targets are achieved keeps warming to 2.1°C. This is a worsening from last year's report, mainly because of the policy roll-backs in the US.

Absolutely disgusting, but what can we expect from an adjudicated rapist and a congenital liar?

Yes, again (other 4 parts of Bill's Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis have been supported for years): www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar... This Young et al paper helps pin down glaciation timing schematic in Earth Transformed(2013) Fig 15-3. Bill's 2013 AGU talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TOT...

Obama: "The one thing that the current president is focused on other than home improvements is enriching himself ... we've got a US ambassador shaking down a donor to pay off her credit card bills. We learned a Venezuelan billionaire wanted a pardon so he paid one of Trump's lawyers $50 million"

Obama: "We've seen this movie before. I starred in it. I've got a long-form birth certification to prove it. This stuff didn't work on me. It's not going to work in Michigan on Abdul."

The Oval Office looks like Liberace inherited a dictatorship.

That war in Europe is about one region, the Sudetenland. At its core, it's about one part of a country that Hitler wants...

Bill Ruddiman vindicated ⚒️🧪 arstechnica.com/science/2026...

Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: “Our support for Ukraine is not charity. “It is an investment in our own security and in the future of a democratic and peaceful Europe. “We cannot allow Russia to succeed. The fight for freedom must continue.”

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...

My new book is here! "When the Well is Dry: How Water Fuels Violence and Shapes Peace"! #water #peace #security Order it now from your favorite independent bookseller!

Me too...

Tim has just had a haircut all over his head.

New: Low-info voters, who put Trump in the White House, now look even more anti-Trump than high-info voters, and give Dems bigger margins on the generic ballot. 1 out of 3 Trump voters who can't name the party in charge of Congress now back Dems for 2026. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/poll-low-i...

Opulent October Tom Thomson 1915-16

Last month was the 2nd hottest September on record for our planet. The last couple of years have been exceptionally warm considering the historical record. 📈 This data is using NOAAGlobalTempv6.1.0: www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/lan...

A 430 million-year-old coral, Halysites, which resembles a tiny chain. A tabulate coral from the Silurian Much Wenlock Limestone Formation, possibly from Wren's Nest, in tropical Dudley 🏖 #FossilFriday ⚒🌏🔬🧪🌊

How far will Trump go to derail…everything.

Krastios remains blissfully unaware that the flourishing of private industry research that he thinks will usher in a new golden age only exists because of the research policy he claims is outdated. Cowan pressed him a bit on this, but not aggressively enough.

"Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is brilliantly translated for our times" www.theguardian.com/books/2026/o... 🏺

I'm not an anti-money laundering expert, but reading through Cole's piece, there appear to be dozens of the most serious violations, greatly aggravated by the fact that Kushner was taking massive sums from foreign governments while advocating their interests before the US Government.

⚡️️️️️️️Rosneft admits losses from Ukraine's refinery strikes becoming unsustainable, Bloomberg reports. Officials at Rosneft have privately voiced concerns that even a few more months of Ukraine's continued attacks could lead to lasting damage for the company.

Extreme greenhouse warmth triggered two major flora turnover events of the past 120 million years ⚒️🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...