Tootfinder

Science That's Actually Interesting
A fun, light-hearted deep dive into topics from climate and environment to health, technology, space and human behaviour. Informative, entertaining and refreshingly human, this is science for curious listeners who love stories and want to stay curious about the world...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory:

Barry Jones had been thinking about climate change since the 1960s.
But as he would discover, foresight rarely aligns with political incentives.
“I would say to Bob Hawke: ‘Look, we’ve got to take the issue of climate change seriously’,” he recalls.
“And he’d say, ‘but when’s the impact going to be seen at its worst?’
“And you think, well, it might be another 25 years
and he’d reply:
‘Well, you come back to me sometime later, before the 25 years is up, …

The man who knew too much: Barry Jones on Albo, Putin and the end of the line
At 93, the Labor legend and former science minister is eyeing the “exit ramp”. But he isn’t going quietly, taking aim at Anthony Albanese’s lack of courage on reform and a political system that has lost its way.

The Trump administration is eroding vital climate data (The Economist)
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/02/04/the-trump-administration-is-eroding-vital-climate-data
http://www.memeorandum.com/260205/p85#a260205p85

"Healing of the Ozone Layer Shows Power of Science and Global Unity"
#OzoneLayer #Climate #ClimateChange

Healing of the Ozone Layer Shows Power of Science and Global Unity | Happy Eco News
The healing of the ozone layer shows how science and global unity can repair Earth’s natural shield, offering hope for tackling today’s climate and environmental challenges.

The preprint of the paper is here btw: #MachineLearning methods to emulate #Greenland ice sheet melt via European Weather Cloud computing
https://europeanweather.cloud/use-cases/machine-learning-emulation-accelerate-climate-science

Ocean damage nearly doubles the cost of climate change #ocean

Ocean damage nearly doubles the cost of climate change
Ignoring the blue economy has left a multi-trillion-dollar blind spot in climate finance.

The U.S. Forest Service is closing 57 of its 77 research facilities in 31 states
under a reorganization plan announced this week,
threatening science that looked at how wildfires, drought, pests and global warming are putting pressure on forests.
The agency plans to consolidate its research division into a centralized office in Fort Collins, Colo.,
and move field researchers to locations in nearby states.
But employees said they feared the move would lead many s…

Forest Service Will Close Research Stations That Study Wildfire Risk
Scientists say their work on fires and climate change could be lost as the agency moves its headquarters to Utah from Washington and shuts 57 research stations.

Interesting #science and #engineering solutions in Colombia
"The pioneering technologies range from low-cost solar water heaters to a children's see-saw that doubles as a water pump, from edible forest gardening to biofuel. Some were inspired by traditional methods used by local indig…

'One of the harshest places on Earth': The 1960s green 'Utopia' that tried to reinvent the world
In an extreme environmental and political climate in remote Colombia, one maverick village has relied on homegrown inventions to survive.

US Government Is Accelerating Coral Reef Collapse, Scientists Warn – Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/03/trump-policies-climate-coral-reefs-collapse-science/

Top climate scientist leaves NASA, because telling the truth there has become difficult. Sad.
Looking forward to hear from you in a new position, Kate!
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/climate/kate-marvel-nasa-resign.html

Kate Marvel, Prominent Climate Scientist, Resigns From NASA
Kate Marvel, a well-known author, joins an estimated 95,000 people who have left federal science agencies since President Trump returned to the White House.

Proud PhD supervisor moment: @… have nice write up to Elke Schlager's brilliant work, (now a preprint in @…) on how we can use #MachineLearning methods to emulate #Greenland ice sheet melt via European Weather Cloud computing
https://europeanweather.cloud/use-cases/machine-learning-emulation-accelerate-climate-science

I guess fossil fuel companies follow tobacco industry playbook: first deny and discredit the science, later deny responsibility. It'll work until a big case is won and a precedent it established. But by then most of the current management will be retired, so sadly it'll likely pay off...

"Americans Believe in Science, Just Not Its Findings"
Also over a decade old. I wonder if it will ever change.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/americans-believe-in-science-just-not-its-findings/3…

Die Klimaforscherin Kate Marvel hat ihren Posten bei der US-Raumfahrtbehörde #NASA aufgegeben und begründet dies mit politischen Eingriffen in die #Klimaforschung.
Seit dem Amtsantritt von Präsident #Trump

Kate Marvel, Prominent Climate Scientist, Resigns From NASA
Kate Marvel, a well-known author, joins an estimated 95,000 people who have left federal science agencies since President Trump returned to the White House.

African climate science policy has a serious blind spot: The slowing Atlantic circulation #Africa

African climate science policy has a serious blind spot: The slowing Atlantic circulation
The climate fiction movie The Day After Tomorrow, released in 2004, popularized the devastating effects of sudden climate change on Earth. The plot dramatizes the consequences of a shut-down in an ocean current, and features the Northern Hemisphere plunging, within a few weeks, into an ice age.

On Tuesday famed climate scientist Kate Marvel joined the more than 10,000 people with PhDs in science, engineering and mathematics who, according to Science, are reported to have left the U.S. federal workforce since
Donald Trump took office in January.
Marvel resigned from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences (GISS), where she studied climate change and its effects on Earth’s systems. In her resignation letter, she wrote that “the decision to leave was not an easy one.”…

Top climate scientist Kate Marvel just resigned from NASA. Here's why
Climate scientist Kate Marvel talked to Scientific American about her decision to leave NASA amid federal government turmoil and funding challenges

Earth on Track to Become Uninhabitable, Scientists Say
https://futurism.com/science-energy/earth-uninhabitable-climate-change

Earth on Track to Become Uninhabitable, Scientists Say
The planet is close to entering a death-spiral that could bring about a worst-case-scenario known as "hothouse Earth."

"BP accused of ‘insidious’ influence on UK education through Science Museum links"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Climate

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
A recent review in #Science highlights knowledge gaps of the "calcifying plankton" role for biogenic carbon removal in #climate models. Coccolithophores (algae), f…

Philip Ball:
"There’s a broader issue at stake here too that pertains to the place of AI in scientific research. Too often now, we hear claims of how AI will replace human scientists and, in doing so, will solve our most pressing problems: curing all disease, solving climate change, figuring out how to conduct nuclear fusion. Such claims are never supported by experts in those fields—and that’s not because they want to convince us that they are indispensable after all. Rather, it i…

AlphaGenome: On the Promise and Limits of AI in Science
PHILIP BALL | According to the old story, we once thought that all this other DNA was just “junk,” a term coined in this context in the 1970s. It was accumulated over the course of evolution, for example by viruses inserting their genetic material into ours, and it did nothing useful but just cluttered up our genome the way all our old detritus of a lifetime clutters up our attic.

National Academies of Sciences says no to demands it remove climate info
State attorneys general won’t get climate chapter removed from a legal manual
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/national-academies-of-sciences-r…

National Academies of Sciences says no to demands it remove climate info
State attorneys general won't get climate chapter removed from a legal manual.

EPA to repeal its own conclusion that greenhouse gases warm the planet and threaten health (Evan Bush/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/epa-to-repeal-endangerment-finding-climate-change-emissions-rcna258250
http://www.memeorandum.com/260210/p169#a260210p169

According to reporting by Bloomberg, about half of the data centers slated to open in the US in 2026 will either face delays or outright cancellations.
The publication interviewed analysts at market intelligence company Sightline Climate, which in research first flagged by Ed Zitron last week noted that 12 gigawatts worth of power-consuming data centers are set to open in the US this year.
But here’s the catch:
they say only a third of those are actually under construction r…

Almost Half of US Data Centers That Were Supposed to Open This Year Slated to Be Canceled or Delayed
The vast majority of data centers scheduled for completion over the next few years have yet to even break ground.

“In western democracies, ageing and dying seem to have been reclassified as soluble problems,” clinical psychologist Frank Tallis in writes.
This is delusional – “a retreat from reality, and narcissistic”.
Climate-crisis denial, he suggests, in a striking formulation, can be seen as “the denial of death on an apocalyptic scale”.

For reasons I am revisiting an old classic: Manabe and Stouffer, 1980.
The field of climate science is now effectively mostly about proving how correct those first simulations of the gigantic carbon experiment in the atmosphere were.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247488071_Sensitivity_of_a_Global_Climate_Model_to_an_Increase_of_CO2_Concentration_in_the_Atmosphere

WATCH: Trump, EPA's Zeldin announce end of scientific basis for U.S. action on climate change (Matthew Daly/Associated Press)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/watch-live-trump-zeldin-to-announce-end-of-scientific-basis-for-u-s-action-on-climate-change
http://www.memeorandum.com/260212/p88#a260212p88

Trump administration is erasing history and science at national parks, lawsuit argues
Conservation and historical groups sued Tuesday,
challenging Trump administration orders removing exhibits on slavery, civil rights, Indigenous history and climate science from national parks.
A federal judge ordered restoration of an exhibit about enslaved people at George Washington’s Philadelphia home,
comparing the censorship to Orwell’s dystopian “1984.”
The removals exte…

Trump administration is erasing history and science at national parks, lawsuit argues
A lawsuit filed in Boston says orders by President Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant U.S. history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.

"Even if warming is limited to 2°C, wildfires, storms and beetles may boost Europe forest loss"
#Europe #Nature #Climate

Even if warming is limited to 2°C, wildfires, storms and beetles may boost Europe forest loss
Forest damage in Europe caused by wildfires, storms and bark beetle outbreaks is projected to increase compared to recent decades under all analyzed climate scenarios, according to a new international study, published in Science, with contributions from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Under pressure from Republican state attorneys general, the agency that advises
the U.S. Supreme Court and federal judges on scientific and technical matters has
withdrawn the entirety of its content on climate change from a new judicial reference manual.
The move by the Federal Judicial Center leaves judges without any official support on how to weigh evidence about basic weather and climate changes
-- just as numerous climate cases make their way through state and f…

Under GOP Pressure, Federal Agency Pulls Climate Change Chapter From Official Manual for U.S. Judges
The “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence” — updated for the first time in 15 years — eliminates some 90 pages about climate science and comes just as numerous climate cases make their way through state and federal courts.

Trump Administration Readies Plans to Dismantle Renowned Science Lab (Eric Niiler/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/climate/ncar-breakup-plan-nasa-noaa.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260313/p78#a260313p78

Northern hemisphere snow cover is shrinking—new analysis tracks how fast #environment

Northern hemisphere snow cover is shrinking—new analysis tracks how fast
Faculty at Mississippi State University are continuing work at the intersection of mathematics, statistics, and climate science with the publication of a new study examining regional snow cover trends across the Northern Hemisphere. The results suggest shrinking snow coverage as well as seasonal shifts for when the wintry layer comes and goes. The study, "Regional Analysis of Snow Presence Trends in the Northern Hemisphere," was published in January in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.

"Crocuses are blooming early – here’s what this means for nature"
#Nature #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange

Crocuses are blooming early – here’s what this means for nature
The hard science behind these dainty flowers.

"Dozens of British businesses pledge to set science-based emissions targets"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Emissions #Climate

RE: #Arctic #Antarctic #Polar #ClimateScience #ClimateModelling #EarthObservation #Climate #IceSheets #SeaIce #Permafrost