Eleanor Howden

🚨The most important graph in the world has another year of data, and it doesn't look good!🚨

NASA CERES satellites measure how much sunlight Earth absorbs and how much heat is radiated back to space.

The difference is heat accumulation, which has more than tripled!

Will AI and data centres be the main drivers of future electricity demand?

No. The biggest drivers will be the electrification of industry, transport and buildings. When powered by clean electricity, the benefits are fundamental: vastly higher efficiency, dramatically lower emissions & cleaner air.

Do cities in the U.K. (or rather their municipal authorities/councils) have the legal powers & financial resources to bring in the policies needed?

Analysis: UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time - Carbon Brief Nearly 100 UK newspaper editorials opposed climate action in 2025, a record figure that reveals the backlash against net-zero in the right-leaning press

Two things to learn from this.
1. The rightwing newspapers are lobby groups whose purpose is to advance the class interest of their proprietors.
2. Lobbyists for the rich and powerful lose their jobs if they are not prepared to lie.
www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...

Lurching towards constitutional impropriety Opinion: Constitutional law expert and former Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer takes a deep, concerned look at the risks this Government is taking with hasty law changes

“Our Constitution depends upon a sense of restraint and principled behaviour of ministers.”

LOL!!!!

We max-mined our constitution.

🤦🏽

#nzpol

Mining rules rolled back - wetlands and biodiversity hotspots in the firing line - Greenpeace Aotearoa The Government confirms a major rollback of environmental protections, clearing the way for mining in and around wetlands, significant natural areas, and highly productive soils.

Reminder:
This is what your corrupt National Party/NZ First/ACT coalition government slipped thru while you were busy stressing about how you afford any kind of Christmas this year. #nzpol

Vote these bastardos out.

www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/pre...

Kākāpō Cam: Rakiura the kākāpō – 2026 nest YouTube video by Department of Conservation

If anyone wants to see a livestream of a #kakapo on their nest, then Rakiura is back on her nest NOW. #kakapo2026 #conservation

www.youtube.com/live/BfGL7A2...

⚠️AI + tax evading loopholes has only made the world richer for the richest oligarchs—while mass laying off millions number of workers. None of it will trickle down—don’t let them trick you otherwise. Pass it on.

But we must also be aware of the pitfalls ahead. Some Canadian tech executives that, until recently, were pushing for a Conservative government are embracing a program of digital sovereignty as well, but it is explicitly not one that centres the public good. Instead, they’re pushing the government to continue pulling back on regulations, while deploying billions through public procurement, incentives, and subsidies to flood into their businesses. They want to hold onto the Silicon Valley model and the harms that it’s created, but better cash in on it for themselves. They want to join the digital colonizers rather than bring them down.

We can’t believe we can recreate the Silicon Valley model in every country around the world.

Leaving digital tech to the private sector was a mistake. It’s time for a greater public-sector and non-commercial role in tech development to ensure it serves the public.

disconnect.blog/escaping-the...

There is one thing we can say for Trump’s attacks on Canada: they have finally given us the space to speak openly and honestly about many of the ways the U.S.-Canada relationship has not been working for us for a very long time—and the digital dimension of our lopsided economic integration is a massive part of that. If Canada is to regain greater autonomy over its affairs and build a better society, we must get serious about reclaiming our digital sovereignty.

Trump’s belligerence has been useful in at least one way: it’s allowed us to openly acknowledge that our relationship with the US hasn’t been working for a long time, and it needs to be quickly recalibrated. That’s true for tech as it is in so many other domains.

disconnect.blog/escaping-the...

What the Hell is Going On in the North Pacific? YouTube video by Climate Chat

We talked about this in detail on Climate Chat:
www.youtube.com/live/BNZ_biC...

Unhook ourselves from oil and gas and we unhook ourselves from dependency on dictators, autocrats and expansionist regimes all over the planet.
Renewables and other low-carbon energy sources are not just good climate sense. They are also good political sense.

As Trump rewrites the rules in Venezuela, NZ faces a foreign policy reckoning

The US intervention in Venezuela makes it clear NZ’s ‘softly softly’ foreign policy isn’t a feasible long-term response to a shifting world order.

Qianjiadong Reservoir in southern Hunan, China, produces a double harvest: solar energy and yellow carp. The solar farm produces up to 80 megawatts of power while the fish forage beneath the panels. With a massive scale-up of solar and wind at home and cheap exports of the technology, China is driving a worldwide surge of renewable energy—Science’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

Learn more about this year's #BOTY and other big advances in science: https://scim.ag/493Tpgx

Winner of top science prize blames ‘batshit’ Budget for brain drain Dr Samuel Mehr says the Government values science, but their ‘idiotic’ approach to funding it will cost them their brightest.

yes, indeed, it is deeply ironic that this was funded soon after I called NZ science policy 'batshit', in print, regarding their downsizing the same programme paying for our research

Why people with dementia can be so moved by music Researchers are looking into why patients can still have a powerful response to music even as their memory fades.

Here's a piece on our new Marsden project on music in dementia (w/ Lynette Tippett at UoA and @carolynfredericks.bsky.social at Yale)

Having known several people with Alzheimer's, all of whom retained their music perception and musical memory, I'm eager to learn more about these puzzling phenomena

CO2 Rise Directly Impairs Crop Nutritional Quality This analysis studies the direct effect of CO2 rise on nutrient quality by synthesizing pre-existing data on ~59,000 samples across 43 different food crops, where half of the plants were grown under ...

The meta-analysis is here for those who want to read the original paper.

Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative Drastically reduce emissions first, or carbon dioxide removal will be next to useless.

In recognition of us doing fuck all to reduce emissions, let me remind y'all that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is useless unless we decarbonize drastically.

rdcu.be/dbFbB

That's a BILLION DOLLARS this government is underspending in health. A BILLION DOLLARS taken out of healthcare!

They have the money, they just don't want to spend it. Not on on hospitals or doctors or nurses or admin staff or regional health care, or anyone of a myriad of needed items.

#nzpol

Strong local democracy is not an inconvenience OPINION: As a 40-year sector veteran, with the scars to prove it, I am fascinated to watch the current machinations local government is being put through.

Strong local democracy is not an inconvenience - https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360913821/strong-local-democracy-not-inconvenience - Details and more news at: https://nzccl.org.nz/news

Cycling like the Dutch would slash the world’s carbon footprint If everybody cycled like the Dutch, we could offset the UK or Australia’s entire carbon footprint.

“Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6km each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, annual carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.” @euronews.com

Tonight on the Collective, a bit of a 2025 retrospective with Tania Waikato! We’re looking at the RSB, Voter suppression, TPM break downs, media influence stats and more! 7pm on BHN and Paul… The Other One channels and some host channels as well :)

The epic story of Australia and its first peoples — like you've never seen it The story of Australia and its peoples is vast and deep. It's one you should know, but possibly one you've never been told. Well, not like this anyway.

This is fascinating
Finally the full stories of our native Australians are being told in the mainstream media
www.abc.net.au/news/deeptim...

Only millionaires would complain about other people's holidays And forget about unpaid family carers

Found some rather more professional words to express my sweary thoughts on millionaire men utterly ignoring all the unpaid work many women and carers do over the holiday period.

open.substack.com/pub/drbex/p/...

Why we need to tax the super rich more.

Their wealth is growing MUCH faster than everyone else's.

And they're using it to outbid you for real resources: housing, assets, healthcare, education and everything else of real value.

Thank you, @madhupai.bsky.social for your post about The Conversation. Readers can find the report here: ipdcolumbia.org/event/landma...

World Inequality Report 2026 YouTube video by World Inequality Lab

Today, we are publishing our World Inequality Report, which reviews the most recent #inequalitydata and exposes the magnitude of #inequality across time, space and all its dimensions.

👇Share this thread, share the report!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=R67u...

The work highlights the need to understand biological systems' capacity to keep pace with rapid climate changes and maintain efficient carbon sequestration. Especially since the current rate of warming is 10x faster and atmospheric CO2 concentrations rising about 15x faster.

🆕 Cost-effective #climate #mitigation would reduce fossil fuel consumption in the EU by around 90 percent by 2050, compared to 2020. Rapid expansion of renewable energy and widespread electrification are key drivers of this shift, researchers show. ⬇️
www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/late...
#NetZero2050

The EPA website showing this insightful 800,000 year methane concentration graph has been taken offline...

Reality doesn't change by pretending it isn't real.