It's a little hard to fit everything into news stories like this but something I wanted to spell out - Prof Yasuyuki Aono was an *incredibly* dedicated person, by all accounts, who brought us the now-famous cherry blossom climate indicator.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
This is the Season 3 finale of The Climate Chronicles, and now - at last - we enter the era of written sources. Season 4, debuting this summer, will take us into classical antiquity.
You can find the Chronicles wherever you listen to podcasts, or check out: theclimatechronicles.com
#ClimateChange
Collapse! Mega-drought!
The 16th episode of The Climate Chronicles explores whether a wave of drying brought about the collapse of the world's first empire, 4200 years ago. It's a huge episode: more than 8000 words and 65 mins of audio. #EnvHist
theclimatechronicles.com/2026/04/07/e...
This second edition is essential reading - for everyone. If there’s one book I’d recommend in environmental history, it might be this.
With an introduction by @brdemuth.bsky.social! #EnvHist
Excited to discuss "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean" at Georgetown on Monday.
And talk about timing. Seeing the Moon this morning, knowing that the #Artemis astronauts just flew around it, gave me the most surreal sense of Earth's precarity in a dynamic universe.
events.georgetown.edu/eia/event/ri...
Other factors to consider:
1. A very low snowpack in the American West.
2. The destruction of USAID.
3. A complicated and perhaps deteriorating situation for grain exports in Ukraine.
4. Weakening deterrence in the Taiwan Strait.
It could be a perfect storm. Hopefully not!
The combination of a very strong #ElNiño - which should reduce harvests across Asia, Australia, Africa, and parts of the Americas - with soaring fertilizer and fuel prices, owing to the ongoing closure of the Strait of #Hormuz, could make for a devastating year of food shortages and social unrest.
A WHOLE CIVILIZATION WILL DIE TONIGHT My son needs lunch, and I have to put his backpack together, but a whole civilization will die tonight, so I'm wondering if they've closed their schools. Like, a snow day, maybe, except instead of snow it's "keep your children home so if you die, you die together" — instead of "well open back up once the plows have cleared" it's "we don't know if we'll be here tomorrow, hold your babies tight." It's just "talk" I'm told, which I've been told before. "It's how the president makes his deals." But I've never heard anyone talk about other human beings this way, and I'm not certain I can look my son in the eyes if we all agree to stomach it one more time. A civilization will die tonight, but as I zip up his backpack and kiss him off to school I think: if this is what we call leadership then I'm not entirely sure ours isn't already dead. @michaelfdubois Mukad A QuBoy @michacifdubois
Brutal.
Second - what is #collapse, has it happened in history, and is it looming in our future? It's a tough topic to think about, but luckily, "If you’re focused on climate... there are no signs that this is imminent." Ask me again in ten years. (2/2)
grist.org/culture/jem-...
Recently, I enjoyed chatting about the history, and possible future, of #ClimateChange.
First - did drought cause social unrest and conflict in the late Roman Empire? Tree ring evidence suggests maybe, but the textual evidence seems ambiguous. (1/2)
www.newscientist.com/article/2520...
I knew about the 1969 moon landing. And knew that news of the My Lai massacre came out in '69. But I had those events in separate boxes. Occurs to me now that it must have been disorienting to feel proud of (one aspect of) your country, while also deeply shamed by its crimes.
Almost 60 years ago, the defining image of #Apollo was Earth rising above the Moon. Now, the iconic image from #Artemis may be the Earth setting behind the Moon. I hope there's no deeper meaning in that....
“But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.” —Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch
There's something uncanny about how different a picture can feel when you know that people took it, rather than robots. This is a Moon we haven't seen - or felt - in over 53 years. #Artemis
Infinite shades of grey and yellow, framed by brilliant snow-white and pitch-blackness. A Moon-world that, to our modern eyes, is immediately, obviously alien. Bereft of all that sustains life on Earth, but no less human – a collection of environments embedded in culture for 300,000 years." 3/3
A milky glow appears in my peripheral vision. Subtle at first, it brightens quickly, drowning out the stars: a white fire to herald the coming of a world. An undulating horizon wheels into view: mountains, cliffs, peaks and valleys, entangled, intersecting. A bewildering complexity. 2/3
This, from a version of "Ripples," is what the #Moon looks like through a small telescope:
"On an ordinary autumn night, I crouch over a delicate refractor, waiting in breathless silence. Peering through my eyepiece, I admire faint stars glittering in the gloom, diamond-dust on black velvet. 1/3
Earth is part of a mosaic of dynamic cosmic environments - or so I argue in “Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean.” And that’s partly why space exploration is so important. #Artemis
A magnificent snapshot of one of the world’s most important relationships: Saharan sands on the left, the Amazon rainforest on the right. Carried west by the trade winds, the sand fertilizes the jungle, and the jungle helps stabilize Earth's climate - for now. #Artemis
Reminder, we currently have people in space, heading toward the moon.
Amazing orbital view of the Artemis 2 launch, as seen from the GOES-19 satellite.
🧪
Two quick notes (from the review):
First: can we please put to bed the idea that the Little Ice Age involved a global cooling of 2 °C. It's an outdated and, now, dangerous idea.
Second: it's amazing how much good interdisciplinary work depends on respecting people in fields other than your own!
Here's an essay-length review of 4 new books on the history of #ClimateChange, with my thoughts on how the scale of our analyses and the depth of our engagement with global warming alters the kinds of stories we can tell about history (and their accuracy). #EnvHst online.ucpress.edu/hsns/article...
It will never stop being wild to me that it takes just 5 minutes to leave the atmosphere. It’s such a thin, tenuous veil that separates us from the void. #Artemis
"The most fossil fuel-friendly government in recent U.S. history has shown us all just how risky reliance on oil and gas can be — and taught the world that true energy security lies in accelerating toward a cleaner, electrified future." #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/o...
In a new Nature study, we show that extreme global climate outcomes may occur even under moderate 2°C warming for several sectors.
The findings reinforce the urgency of limiting warming well below 2°C.
Together with @erichfischer.bsky.social @janasillmann.bsky.social @zscheischlerjak.bsky.social
Are you at #ASEH2026 and want to learn more about what on earth has been happening with Greenland? 🇬🇱 Join me, @dagomardegroot.bsky.social @gfitz.bsky.social Ron Doel, and Tom Robertson this afternoon at 2:15!
Yesterday, I was so grateful to receive Georgetown's Stevens Faculty Excellence Award. It's been a wonderful 11 (!) years at Georgetown, and it's an honor to work alongside so many inspiring colleagues, like my fellow award-winners. college.georgetown.edu/news-story/s...
You're the best of us, Kate.
You can find "The Climate Chronicles" wherever you listen to podcasts. You can watch episode trailers on YouTube, and read transcripts (with original visuals, discussion questions, citations, and a glossary) at TheClimateChronicles.com. #EnvHist #ClimateChange
