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dukesjeff.bsky.social
🌎🌱Climate change science and global change ecology at Carnegie Science. Professor (by courtesy) at Stanford. [Private account, not representing employer]
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Taking action on climate change is like pushing a boulder, @katharinehayhoe.com told @chrfield.bsky.social today @stanfordwoods.bsky.social, with govt policy as the undulating path beneath. The terrain has gotten a lot steeper lately (up AND down), but she’s optimistic we’re still making progress.

Could this be the biggest climate story of the year? For the first time on record, China's emissions are falling due to clean energy growth, not slow power demand Full analysis + outlook by Lauri Myllyvirta: www.carbonbrief.org/... 1/7

Recently, all the AAAS Science & Tech Policy Fellows at EPA were terminated from our positions with little notice and for no clear reason. This effectively ended a partnership that had been going since 1980 and which had brought hundreds of scientists to the EPA as fellows, many of whom stayed. 1/7

🚨🚨 Deranged letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard’s president, cutting off federal funding for any new grants. Worth reading in full. It is NUTS.

President Trump's "skinny" budget request absolutely eviscerates scientific research funding. The @aaas.org estimates the request would constitute an 82.5% reduction in research spending (and that's just the agencies named in the request).

Upset about federal funding cuts in the US? Want some ideas of what to do? I wrote a long-ish blog post about it here ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com summarizing things I learned meeting with Senate & House aides this week with the @aibsbiology.bsky.social Congressional Visits Day event.

We need US voters to understand that Trump's crew is essentially vandalizing the scientific infrastructure that generations of taxpayers bought and invested in. Thank you, communicators, for trying to reach the public on this.

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“This will hamstring international climate cooperation at the worst possible time,” said one official, referring to the upcoming global climate talks called COP30. (ceding strategic advantage to China. Of course policy changes will do that too.) www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

For those interested in the history of ecology: a nice Earth Day piece on the scientific legacy of the Desert Laboratory in Tuscon and the role that Carnegie Science played in supporting early ecological research. 🧪🌐🌍🌎🌏🌵 carnegiescience.edu/news/desert-...

Happy 🌎🌍🌏 #EarthDay, friends! Here are some snapshots I took while doing fieldwork last week in Indiana. A couple of understory wildflowers in the forest, and some footprints in the mud next to the weather station we were fixing. (Do you know whose footprints these are?)

Glad to see the MRCC is back up! Funding restored by NOAA/Dept of Commerce. But ridiculous that funding for regional climate centers was removed in the first place.

It feels like things are hitting a tipping point. Key debrief items: - The Harvard letter - FDA food safety inspection - Financial devastation of NIH, NOAA, USGS - DOGE hits NSF - grant terminations - Doublespeak & disinfo And more This was Week 13 buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

🚨Report your NSF grant terminations! 🚨 We are starting to collect information on NSF grant terminations to create a shared resource as we have for NIH. The more information we collect, the more we can organize, advocate, and fight back! Please share widely! airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

Update ww2.aip.org/fyi/judge-bl...

Most rail services in the US still use polluting diesel locomotives. Recently, our commuter rail system in San Francisco, @caltrain.com, was electrified. Good news: we found DRAMATIC air quality improvements once the electric trains replaced the diesels. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Energy Department cuts university overhead rates to 15% on research grants www.science.org/content/arti...

Critical yet often overlooked is that NOAA's Oceanic and Atmospheric Research maintains vital long-term monitoring programs like the CO₂ Keeling Curve that, while essential, often struggle for funding from agencies like NSF that prioritize hypothesis-driven research over sustained observation.

NEW: The Trump administration swiftly cancelled dozens of international student visas Friday at Stanford and University of California campuses, including UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego. One UC San Diego student was taken into custody at the border for deportation: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Great thread about California wildfire history

Just one day left for US climate research and practitioners to apply to our call for experts for the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report!

From today's Stanford Daily, the student newspaper. stanforddaily.com/2025/03/31/e...

US Federal employees do so many important and fantastic things, it’s pretty much impossible to track them all. Did you know they safeguard the genetic treasures of agriculture ? www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/o...

It’s been a devastating 24 hours with 3 NIH grants terminated…all focused on the health and wellbeing of trans or intersex youth. If folks have any ideas of foundations that may be interested in supporting the completion of these projects so years of work aren’t wasted, please let me know. 🙏

Shutting down coal-fired power has already prevented 70k US deaths in the US, points out @benjealous.bsky.social of @sierraclub.org, speaking at @stanforddoerr.bsky.social. Toxins from coal burning and other bad practices kill w/o regard to skin color or income. Environmentalism welcomes everyone.

This conversation is worth a listen for anyone interested in the politics of taxation, deficit and debt in the US. Or anyone who likes Scottish accents. Or just about anyone, frankly. (I also enjoyed the next segment of the show, interview on US food regulation with @hbottemiller.bsky.social.)

Merci, French scholars!

Honk for science! Science provides so many benefits for people and nature, for our health and economy. Great to see this enthusiasm at #StandUpForScience2025 in Palo Alto today.

My latest: The mass firings at NOAA can feel abstract. Here's what was lost at one research center -- the birthplace of climate modeling. Fired staff became U.S. citizens to pursue these dream jobs, only to have their dreams upended.

The Bay Area weather radar (KMUX) has been out of service for more than 24 hours now. An expensive broken part needs to be replaced and specially ordered, but that may not be possible due to ongoing freeze on government credit card spending, I’ve been told.

Good bye Twitter! 😥 HELLO BLUESKY!!! 😀

I interview a lot of international scientists. Without fail, every single conversation starts with some version of: "We are watching in horror. How can this be happening in the US?"

Dear federal scientists: If you have been affected by the probationary firings and would be willing to speak with Science, please reach out to me by email ([email protected]) or on Signal. We can guarantee annonymity.

Made a friend today while doing fieldwork.

I have been trying to keep track of the California fires today. Here are a few resources I like for tracking the fire location, including a couple sites that collate satellite data. Do you have other good resources to share? (1/n) NASA's FIRMS: firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:tsd;d...

Researchers at Purdue University recently developed the iForester app to make it easy and fast for foresters to measure the diameters of tree trunks, not the branches. Seemed to work ok for this year’s National Christmas Tree by the White House, though. Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate!

We at @carnegiescience.bsky.social are one of the partners for this center and these projects 👇🏻

With help from a tiny tracking tag, "murder hornets" have been eradicated in the US. I like this quote: “I’ve gotta tell you, as an entomologist — I’ve been doing this for over 25 years now, and it is a rare day when the humans actually get to win one against the insects.” apnews.com/article/murd...

Climate change is affecting where species can live. In some ways, we can think about the changing ranges of native species using the theoretical frameworks developed for biological invasions. @haleyflickinger.bsky.social explores these ideas in this new paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...