Time to Pay up

[saywhat-politics]

Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System

The $368 million network of instruments collecting data in both the Atlantic and Pacific has been critical to climate and ocean research.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatories-initiative.html

[contemplatingoutlander]

According to The New York Times:

Scientists have used data from the system to understand how the ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, how changes in ocean temperature such as marine heat waves might affect fisheries or signal bigger shifts in the climate, and coastal flooding along the East Coast. The station in the Irminger Sea has been key to understanding changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, a global conveyor belt of water that some scientists are concerned may be weakening as a result of climate warming. A collapse of the current could have severe weather effects. [....] Craig McLean, who was the acting chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the first Trump term, said the move was part of a pattern in the Trump administration. “This reflects the further lack of understanding that the current administration has of scientific value and scientific merit,” Dr. McLean said. “By dismantling such a system, we push the United States back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership.” [color emphasis added]

Trump is indebted to the fossil fuel industry for their 2024 election support, so he is doing everything he can to dismantle climate science, regardless of the damage it will do to the planet.

It's like with COVID, when Trump said, “If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”

The problem is that even if Trump doesn't allow scientists in this country to measure changes in ocean temperature, it won't stop climate change from happening--it will just stop the US from being able to more accurately predict climate changes, and to be better prepared for them.

source [modified]

[quakerjoe]

[dead---planet]

Wait until you hear about ecological collapse.....

[rjzimmerman]

The mystery surrounding a mass die-off frustrates beekeepers and the bee industry

A parasitic varroa mite is visible on a dead bee in 2023 in College Park, Maryland. | Photo courtesy of AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Excerpt from the Sierra Magazine:

As the weather began to cool toward the end of 2024, Bret Adee, a beekeeper in South Dakota, discovered that his typically busy hives were no longer bustling. He was preparing to send them to California, where his bees help to pollinate almond groves. However, he was shocked to find that nearly three-quarters of his bees were gone. 

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “You feel like you've thrown your own life away.”

Adee is one of hundreds of beekeepers in the United States who lost over 60 percent of their colonies in late 2024 and early 2025. It was the nation’s worst-ever mass honeybee die-off and the second major population crash in the past two decades. The first took place in 2006–07.

Scientists from the US Department of Agriculture scrambled to find out what went wrong. Last June, the agency declared it had solved the mystery. Colonies had succumbed to viruses that were spread by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. The harmful viruses included two strains of deformed wing virus that stunt and tatter bees’ wings and shorten their lifespan.

But Sierra has learned from university researchers that the hives were also exposed to a cocktail of agricultural pesticides that may have played an important role in weakening bee health. The USDA has not yet published the pesticide data.

The scientific debate raises larger questions about the role beekeepers might be playing in the collapse, and whether commercial pesticide companies should be held accountable. It also highlights that other factors, such as climate change, are wreaking havoc in hives.

In early 2025, the USDA took samples from 113 colonies—some of which were weak and dying; others were strong—within six large commercial beekeeping operations. Researchers also examined 39 mites from five of the beekeeping operations and found that all were resistant to amitraz—a pesticide widely used by beekeepers to manage the varroa mites. The agency’s researchers concluded that amitraz applications did not effectively control the mites.

“These viruses are responsible for recent honeybee colony collapses and losses across the US,” said a USDA press statement from June 2025.

“Amitraz has been suspected of losing efficacy after decades of heavy use, and our results strengthen this claim,” wrote the USDA researchers in a study that was published in February in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

These findings have enraged beekeepers who feel that the USDA was trying to pin the blame on them for poor bee husbandry and for overusing amitraz in ways that contributed to the development of resistance in mites. If beekeepers rely just on amitraz, year after year, then the mites can more quickly develop resistance than if they switch mite treatments with other chemicals and methods. But some beekeepers who didn’t use amitraz or who alternated its use say they also lost many colonies.

Steve Ellis, a commercial beekeeper in Minnesota and president of the Pollinator Stewardship Council, an industry group, said that he finds the USDA statements “misleading and inappropriate.”

Some beekeepers said that they felt the study was too small to be representative of beekeeping across the country. They also feel that the researchers drew premature conclusions because the analysis did not include data from tests on agricultural pesticide residues in bee colonies. Agricultural pesticides such as neonicotinoids can harm bees, analyses show. A few bee professionals have wondered if pesticide poisoning or contamination contributed to the die-off.

[kafkasapartment]

Blomstrandbreen, Svalbard. Archive image from Kongsfjorden with the glacier Blomstrandbreen in the background in 1918.

Bottom: taken in the same location & month by photographer Christian Aslund. 27th August 2024.

[thoughtlessarse]

How Antarctica warmed by 28°C in the depths of winter – and what it signals for the decades ahead

A new study highlights one of the largest temperature anomalies recorded anywhere, ever.

In the middle of the Antarctic winter, during months of darkness when temperatures often dip below −30°C, the continent warmed dramatically. In July and August 2024, temperatures in parts of East Antarctica rose by up to 28°C above average and stayed high for more than two weeks. To put that in perspective, a similar anomaly in the UK would push January temperatures into the mid 30°Cs. In a recent study, colleagues and I show the Antarctica heatwave was not simply unusual weather. It was a rare atmospheric disturbance, amplified by human-caused climate change, offering a glimpse of what could become more common in the decades ahead. This was not an isolated event. It followed a heatwave in March 2022, when temperatures in some Antarctic areas soared by nearly 40°C above average – one of the largest temperature anomalies ever recorded anywhere on the planet. Together, these events point to a clear shift: extreme warming is no longer confined to traditionally vulnerable regions.

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[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

The Earth from Mars. Taken by the Curiosity Rover.

[dead---planet]

Life will go on there, without us.

[sataniccapitalist]

[sataniccapitalist]

Earth's glaciers are on the verge of COLLAPSING, ominous study reveals

Earth's glaciers are shrinking at 'alarming rates', experts have warned - with 408 gigatonnes of ice lost in 2025.

[thoughtlessarse]

‘Toxic’ mix of warming and agriculture is decimating US birds - study

‘Extremely adaptable’ bird species are declining at an alarming rate – with worrying implications for humans.

Billions fewer birds are flying through North American skies than decades ago and their population is shrinking ever faster, a new study has found. The decline is mostly due to a combination of intensive agriculture and warming temperatures. Nearly half of the 261 species studied showed big enough losses in numbers to be statistically significant and more than half of those declining are seeing their losses accelerate since 1987, according to the paper published in journal Science. The study is the first to look at more than the total bird population by examining the trends in their decrease, where they are shrinking the most and what the declines are connected to. “Not only are we losing birds, we are losing them faster and faster from year to year,” says study co-author Marta Jarzyna, an ecologist at Ohio State University. Are shrinking bird species at risk of extinction? The only consolation is that the birds that are shrinking in numbers the fastest are species – such as the European starling, American crow, grackle and house sparrow – with large enough populations that they aren't yet at risk of going extinct, says study lead author Francois Leroy, also an Ohio State ecologist. Cornell University conservation scientist Kenneth Rosenberg, who wasn't part of the study, says the species declining fastest in the new research “are often considered pests or ‘trash birds,’ but if our environment cannot support healthy populations of these extreme generalists and extremely adaptable species that are tolerant of humans, then that is a very strong indicator that the environment is also toxic to humans and all other life.” The same bird species showed the biggest population drops in Rosenberg's 2019 study that found North America had 3 billion fewer birds than in 1970, but didn't look at changes in the rate of loss or causes.

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[bowlby4]

[dead---planet]

Time for our turn to be extinct.

[charnel-grounds]

— Martial Leiter

[eerieclam]

Emperor Penguin now Endangered due to climate change

BirdLife International’s new Red List assessment reveals the shocking impact of climate change on Emperor Penguins.

[ukpkmkk]

[ukpkmkk]

[themooninthestars]

[mapsontheweb]

1970 vs 2026

[nasa]

That's us, together.

While we're looking up at the Artemis II astronauts journeying to the Moon, they're looking back home at us. 

In this image, Earth peeks through the capsule window, reminding us that a view like this relies on the ingenuity and hard work of countless people back home.

In the second image, we see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere.

Follow the Artemis II astronauts on their journey to the Moon:

[dead---planet]

I wonder what the colors will be after nuclear war.