Tidbits

All climate all the time: the New York Times “Climate Forward” looks at “Mexico’s war on stinky seaweed”, claiming that more and more sargassum, “a type of floating macroalgae that emits a rotten-egg smell as it decomposes” is washing up on beaches in, and revolting tourists in, Mexico and other nearby spots. Evidently there’s buckets of this gunk out in the Atlantic and they have to admit that “At sea, sargassum patches are important habitats for turtles, crabs and fish” before saying it reeks when it washes ashore and it’s our fault too: “Though sargassum volumes fluctuate, the overall trend line is clear: Warming oceans, along with nutrient runoff from farming, are making the stinky seaweed more prevalent and extending its growth season.” Oh. Along with nutrient runoff from farming. Just that, a massive industry with a massive footprint? Sure. But see climate change… and since according to one professor this hydrogen-sulphide-emitting malodorous ecosystem pollutant was never seen in the Caribbean and then “Starting in 2011, everything changed” we now know when man-made climate change hit with a stench. Or not as this claim smells funny because the Sargasso Sea has occupied the tropical Atlantic for centuries if not millennia and sargassum dates back millions of years. But see climate change…
National Geographic gets all excited, too excited perhaps, about “Digging for Neanderthals under a medieval Welsh castle”. Too excited because so far all they’ve found nothing Neanderthal, just some sludge and “The preservation of the organic material found so far means that precise radiocarbon dating is possible; and pilot studies show ancient DNA is preserved in the cave sediments themselves, as well as in bones.” But they also don’t get excited enough about, for instance, hippopotamus bones about 120,000 years old that “indicate that Britain was semi-tropical at the time”. And even though they are thrilled that “The research also aims to show how the region changed under a climate that ranged from almost tropical to an Ice Age” they totally overlook that if Britain was semi-tropical in the last interglacial, the “Eemian”, then today’s temperatures are not “unprecedented” or “hottest ever”, that temperature is not driven by CO2, and that warmer temperatures do not spell runaway warming and mass-extinction catastrophe. Quite a lot to find under the castle where Henry VII was born (no, really) and an astonishing amount to overlook totally even while dancing about on it.
From the “climate ate my Amazon” file, an article in Phys.org that tries to convince us there were vast pre-contact civilizations in the Americas conjures one up in the Amazon: “New research conducted using airborne laser scanning reveals that a multicultural civilization that flourished in southwestern Amazonia between 600 BCE and 850 CE was home to millions of people. Spanning roughly 183,000 square kilometers (71,000 square miles), the Aquiry civilization built large centers for political and ritual purposes.” But of course civilization with advanced technology, even if primitive, means you-know-what, so according to the lead author: “The civilization also affected ancient Amazonia’s carbon production and carbon balance, which should be better accounted for in future climate models.” The actual study makes no mention of, say, peach palm plantations having caused the Roman Warm Period. But to the scholar with a hammer, everything looks like a CO2 molecule.
Sabine Hossenfelder, whose soporific presentation style does not appear to have diminished her popularity, produced an interesting video on the “warming faster than average” meme that makes four worthwhile points we summarize here in case you too find her mode of speech narcoleptic. She points out (eventually), as we have, that the reason just about every country is warming faster than the global average is that the global average is based on both land and ocean, all countries are on land and the land is warming faster than the oceans. Thus her verdict is “The headlines are not wrong exactly but misleading”. She also checks that the widely cited and ridiculed headlines are real and they are. (Actual fact-checking: quite the concept.) And she checks that the stories in question are based on real studies and they are though, she cautions, of variable quality. Finally, she notes that the headlines more or less interchangeably speak of a place warming faster than average and warming faster than anywhere else which are in fact very different claims, just as you can be more intelligent than average without being smarter than everyone else. So what excuse is there then for running the same headlines over and over? We note without bitterness that her YouTube channel has 1.79 million subscribers and… OK, we are bitter but never mind. The point is that surely among that number are at least a few climate reporters or editors. Do they understand? And if so, do they care?
People keep claiming that the “green energy transition” will save us money while saving the planet. But permit us to balk when Canary Media happily tells us “Smaller homes are delivering smaller energy bills and other benefits for some Massachusetts residents. More families are building ultra-efficient accessory dwelling units on their properties that they can rent out or use as in-law suites, tackling both a pricey housing market and sky-high energy costs.” We’re all for relaxed zoning including so-called “coach houses” or “carriage houses” (or, if you’re a sociologist or an urban planner, “accessory dwelling units” – ugh). But really this is an own-nothing-and-be-happy story, whose actual message is if we made it too expensive to live in a house, go live in a hut and thank us.” No thanks.
Rose-coloured glasses also come in green, as Heatmap offers to explain “How Clean Cement Startups Are Riding the AI Boom”. The answer, to spoil the plot, is that without government subsidies they’re not because clean cement isn’t really a thing so much as a grant application. But just put on a pair of these babies and you can see it stretching from here to the horizon.

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