Map showing the western United States mean temperature for January to March 2026 relative to a 1991-2020 departure.
Almost the entire Western United States is averaging more than 5°F warmer than the most recent 1991-2020 climate baseline so far in 2026, which is truly remarkable. Off the color scale here!
Graphic from wrcc.dri.edu/my/
Yes, and I think the problem scales when non-gov't funders adopt either the FY 26 paper budget or the censorship as waymarks for their own decisions.
I'm often told some in Congress are "quite reasonable behind closed doors" & I'm shown FY26 flat funding as proof.
But existential threats to science like multiyear funding mandates, censorship, and political control of funding decisions remain unaddressed by the party in power.
But if scientists used to sit at the table with both Ds & Rs, it sort of feels like Rs (at least leadership) stood up a while ago (cigarettes, climate change, vaccines) & fully left the room last year with an all out attack on public science funding. How can we be bipartisan if one party walks away?
Data centers are a physical manifestation of AI infrastructure and they've become a flashpoint precisely because they're tractable. They exist in specific places, consume specific resources, can be seen and pointed to. I spoke with @lorenaoneil.com @rollingstone.com about our urgent AI reckoning.
Okay, thank you.
thanks for sharing this, Ian.
This reads like the exec summary of a white paper, which made me wonder: are there general observers/expert witnesses to the negotiations, eg Young? Or is every party seeking independent counsel from different corners? Sorry if I've missed in the reporting!
I agree with your assessment, and appreciate the way you ask guests to engage on this on Volts. And I also wonder if there isn't an aspect of this that exists outside social: a desire to focus on negatives about past policy bc then the delta between Then and Now is smaller. The losses not so stark.
Happy birthday to her! What gifts.
same:)
Now that they are safe and back, I find the satphone difficulties very sweet because it's this improbable moment of relatability. It sounds like every time I use my mobile phone in my own house and someone on a customer service team tells me they can't hear me and they'll call me back #ArtemisII
They're turning it off and on again! They're just like us! 🩵☎️ #ArtemisII
"Olympics tears," as my kid calls them.
Ha! it's because anyone flying there takes their private jet through Scottsdale airpark these days
you must be going somewhere popular:)
lol. thank you for this. fwiw, I see it, too...
Public health experts have been begging news outlets to stop using needle shots because a quarter of Americans have needlephobia and will avoid getting vaccinated because of it and these images feed into it... and yet we (as an industry) still keep using them
"The world asks, as it asks daily:
And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured?"
- Jane Hirshfeld, "Counting, This New Year's Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me"
If you have have thoughts to share about how you incorporate this into your lab or curriculum or teaching/mentoring practice, I would love to learn. Thank you!
Grief doesn't obviate other responses, but I think it is prerequisite to some. I worry that in responding to the flood of uncertainty and threats to science--at least, federally funded science in US--we skip this step because we do not have a legible public practice. I wonder about it for trainees.
and grieve, I think.
and of course a funding announcement is small potatoes in the face of many other things.
certainly not a primary or sole reason to grieve.
But today, I was struck again by the cumulative weight of ppl's desire to describe the value of the lost thing here -- a mode of scicomm I'm not sure we teach.
So whether the story on #NSF #LTER funding stops here (unlikely), or whether this is another awful beat in this infernal tick-tock of a timeline, I'm reposting all the grief I see. Because I think making the grief more visible is good #SciComm and good practice. Not enough, but something. 🧪
While I'm no expert, any of these stages seem good occasions to grieve. Things are lost, even if LTER funding opportunities come back.
& I think what this place is not very good at -- like most other US IRL spaces -- is grieving. And what we need more now than ever is a public practice of grief.
People are fired or RIFed or attacked or ignored or all of the above. Programs are dismantled or archived or paused, some reanimated on paper by courts months later or funded, on paper, by a mostly supine Congress. The marks of violence are left in agency windows as threat or reminder of negligence
The way time elapses around federal appropriations and obligations in a *normal* cycle--which makes lots of assumptions and requires lots of asterisks--is already strange, an insider knowledge it takes fiscal years to learn.
But in this era, that already arcane calendar has been fractalized.
One of the really difficult aspects of this era--on all planes--is the uncertainty.
Long-term ecological research, #LTER, helps show us changes to and in ecosystems over time, reducing uncertainty and allowing us to better plan for the future.
Given stated admin goals, LTER is an obvious target.
My first research job was at Hubbard Brook LTER, getting to be part of the work understanding recovery from acid rain, itself a success of EPA programs also being gutted.
They are discarding the best parts of our country. Nothing to do but fight back every inch and prepare to rebuild.
OMG. The LTER program is one of the best, most ambitious programs in ecology. It's 26 sites supporting science about the long-term and large-scale phenomena. Like: how does farming change soil over time? How do sites recover from disturbance? What makes a healthy river? etc. 💔💔
I was THRILLED when #Scholastic not only found an #Indigenous artist for my book cover, but Tlingit Taakw.aaneidí artist #KelseyFoote is a DREAM.
Learn and see some of her process!
#alaskanative #middlegrade #book #writer
verastarbard.com/2026/04/06/t...