Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
On September 23, the autumnal equinox, villagers in Dongjiao, a farming community on the edge of Xiangyang in central China, set out crayfish, peaches, and banquet bowls for the country’s ninth Farmers’ Harvest Festival. They had earned the feast.
But where are the headlines? Had the harvest fallen by a few percentage points, a dozen stories would have linked the decline to a “climate breakdown.”
A harvest of such unprecedented size by the world’s most populous grain producer does not fit the fable of a dying planet. Crisis merchants dominating the media have invested decades in a story of scorched fields and starving millions. A nation of farmers celebrating abundance is an embarrassment. Here’s the truth:
On September 23, the autumnal equinox, villagers in Dongjiao, a farming community on the edge of Xiangyang in central China, set out crayfish, peaches, and banquet bowls for the country’s ninth Farmers’ Harvest Festival. They had earned the feast.
With more than a fifth of the autumn crop area already harvested, Agriculture Minister Zhang Zhu said the country was on track for another bumper harvest for the full year. In 2025, annual grain production exceeded 700 million tons for a second straight year, giving every Chinese citizen more than 500 kilograms of grain, well above a benchmark for food security.
The science behind the harvest is not mysterious. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the raw material of photosynthesis. Wheat and rice, the staples of China, respond positively to elevated CO2.NASA reports that up to half of Earth’s vegetated lands greened significantly over a 35-year period, with 70% of that greening attributed to rising atmospheric CO2 acting as a plant fertilizer. Another NASA analysis showed that China and India dominate this planetary greening. China alone accounts for a quarter of the global increase in leaf area despite covering but a fraction of the world’s vegetated land.
Warmth has helped, too. Longer frost-free seasons in the northeast have allowed rice and corn to spread across Heilongjiang, China’s largest grain-producing province. It is fitting that three driverless harvesters opened this year’s festival in Harbin, the provincial capital. China saw more flooding than drought this year, with the worst confined to local pockets, but overall conditions favored farming.
But where are the headlines? Had the harvest fallen by a few percentage points, a dozen stories would have linked the decline to a “climate breakdown.” Positive reports get a shrug. The industrial emissions of carbon dioxide elevating the gas’s atmospheric concentration are producing undeniable benefits that those demonizing CO2 refuse to acknowledge.
The human consequence of this agricultural ascent should end claims of a planet in terminal decline. China’s per capita food supply rose from 2,328 kilocalories a day in 1980 to 3,029 in 2000, a 30% jump, with average intake near 2,830 kilocalories by the early 2010s. Meat consumption quadrupled between 1980 and 2009, from 14.6 kilograms to 58.2 kilograms per person.
Behind those rising calories stands affordable energy. About 70% of the ammonia produced from natural gas and coal is used to make fertilizers that help to make possible China’s crop yields. Tractors, pumps, and combines run on diesel. This is the production chain the net-zero lobby and crisis propagandists pretend does not exist.
Western lenders and diplomats addled by climate dogma are urging governments of developing nations to reduce the use of fertilizers and fossil fuels. Sri Lanka tried a version of this when it banned synthetic fertilizers in 2021. Rice output collapsed within a season, and the country slid into economic crisis. China took the opposite road and now celebrates record harvests.
The media’s silent treatment of these facts is a necessary tactic of keeping alive the apocalyptic climate narrative. Every acre of global greening, every rising calorie, every record harvest chips away at the claim that humanity faces a climate emergency requiring the surrender of affordable energy and industrial agriculture.
The climate industrial complex depends on the specter of a failing biosphere and is threatened by grain-production records and thriving ecosystems. So, editors skip the hopeful stories and gin up ones about receding glaciers that have been melting since the end of the last great glacial advance more than 10,000 years ago.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at theCO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.
For more than four decades, Americans have been subjected to a relentless drumbeat of environmental doom. They have been terrified by warnings of acid rain, the ozone hole, melting ice caps, drowned coastal cities, superstorms and mass extinctions. Then came Al Gore and increasingly apocalyptic warnings about global warming, which has since been rebranded as “climate change.”
Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 bestseller, “The Population Bomb,” promised mass starvation in the 1970s. Instead, Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution fed a billion more people. Being wrong has never slowed down the doomsayers.
For more than four decades, Americans have been subjected to a relentless drumbeat of environmental doom. They have been terrified by warnings of acid rain, the ozone hole, melting ice caps, drowned coastal cities, superstorms and mass extinctions. Then came Al Gore and increasingly apocalyptic warnings about global warming, which has since been rebranded as “climate change.”
Today, we can see the consequences. Two generations of young people have been taught not to respect the environment, but rather to fear the future.
The numbers are disturbing. A Lancet Planetary Health survey of 15,793 Americans ages 16 to 25 found that 85 percent were at least moderately worried about climate change, including 58 percent who were very or extremely worried. More than half said climate change made them hesitant to have children.
Other research points the same way. A review of multiple studies found that stronger climate worry lines up with wanting fewer children or none at all.
Think about that. We have convinced millions of young people that the future is so bleak that they should reconsider having children.
Yet the picture of a dying planet bears little resemblance to the measurable world around us.
The Earth is getting greener. NASA reported that 25 to 50 percent of the world’s vegetated land greened significantly between 1982 and 2015 — an increase in leaf area roughly twice the size of the continental U.S. Researchers attributed about 70 percent of that greening to rising carbon dioxide.
So carbon dioxide is not merely an emission — it is plant food.
Agriculture tells the same story. The world now grows nearly three times as much grain on the same acre as it did in 1961. The cropland saved is close to the area of the U.S. and India combined. Credit better seeds, machinery, irrigation, modern farming, fossil fuel-derived fertilizer, and that carbon dioxide boost.
Our air is cleaner, too. EPA reports that emissions of the six main air pollutants fell 79 percent between 1970 and 2024, even as the economy grew 338 percent, Americans drove 195 percent more miles, and the population grew by two-thirds.
Prosperity has surged as well. The number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide fell from roughly 2.3 billion in 1990 to about 800 million today, even as the world population grew by nearly three billion. Life expectancy, literacy, and living standards are at record highs.
We have heard the doom and gloom predictions before. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 bestseller, “The Population Bomb,” promised mass starvation in the 1970s. Instead, Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution fed a billion more people. Being wrong has never slowed down the doomsayers.
None of this means environmental problems are imaginary. It means they are problems to solve and not reasons to surrender.
Previous generations built dams, cured diseases, split the atom, crossed oceans, and landed men on the Moon. They faced world wars, depressions, and nuclear standoffs, real existential dangers. Their answer was not to stop having children. It was to build a better world for them.
Even Elon Musk, who believes strongly that man-made carbon dioxide threatens the climate, preaches innovation and expansion — not retreat and despair. That is the mindset young people need.
So teach the real problems we can do something about — not false climate doom. Teach the triumphs, not just the panic. Teach how human ingenuity cleaned our air and rivers, tripled crop yields, cut extreme poverty by two-thirds, and greened a massive share of the planet.
Parents, this one is on us. Ask your school district what your children are being taught about climate, and what they are not. Ask to see the curriculum. Ask whether a single one of these numbers appears in it. Then say so out loud at the next school board meeting.
Two generations have been taught to fear the future. Let’s teach the next one to build it.
The Guardian claims in ‘Planetary boundaries’ necessary for flourishing of life have been massively breached, scientists warn, that seven of nine supposed “planetary boundaries” necessary for life to flourish have been breached, leaving Earth outside a “safe operating space” as “climate disaster looms.” This is grossly misleading.
The first problem is that planetary boundaries are not physical tripwires beyond which humans suddenly cannot flourish. The framework was created to define a precautionary “safe operating space” based on selected Earth-system processes.
The Guardian claims in ‘Planetary boundaries’ necessary for flourishing of life have been massively breached, scientists warn, that seven of nine supposed “planetary boundaries” necessary for life to flourish have been breached, leaving Earth outside a “safe operating space” as “climate disaster looms.” This is grossly misleading. Real-world measures of human and ecological welfare show a planet on which human population, life expectancy, agricultural production, protection from natural disasters, and even global vegetation have increased dramatically during the very period in which The Guardian says conditions for flourishing have been collapsing.
There are legitimate environmental problems involving pollution, habitat destruction, species loss, and land use. Those deserve serious discussion. But The Guardian does something quite different. It bundles a collection of environmental indicators into a conceptual framework called “planetary boundaries,” labels seven of them breached, and leaps from that to rhetoric about deteriorating “planetary life support systems” and the world “standing on the edge of the abyss.”
The first problem is that planetary boundaries are not physical tripwires beyond which humans suddenly cannot flourish. The framework was created to define a precautionary “safe operating space” based on selected Earth-system processes. Even the scientific literature describes it as a framework based on an evolving understanding of Earth-system resilience, not a set of experimentally demonstrated points beyond which human civilization ceases to prosper.
If seven of nine conditions necessary for human flourishing have been “massively breached,” as The Guardian’s headline announces, an obvious question follows: Where is the corresponding collapse in human flourishing?
Let’s start with food.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reports that global cereal production increased 27 percent from 2010 to 2024, reaching 3.1 billion tons, with the increase driven primarily by improved yields. Oil crop production increased 50 percent during the same period. Climate Realism has repeatedly documented the same inconvenient trend: yields for major crops such as corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice have risen substantially during the period of modern warming.
That is a strange-looking collapse of Earth’s “life support systems.”
Then there is something The Guardian has repeatedly been reluctant to give its proper weight: carbon dioxide is plant food. Satellite observations show substantial global greening. NASA reported that between one-quarter and one-half of Earth’s vegetated land experienced significant greening from 1982 to 2015, with CO₂ fertilization identified as the dominant driver in the associated study. Climate at a Glance summarizes the extensive evidence for this global greening as well.
Apparently, nobody informed the plants that Earth’s life support system is failing.
Human beings seem equally reluctant to follow The Guardian’s script.
According to the Federal Reserve, global life expectancy rose from about 51 years in 1960 to more than 73 years in 2024. The United Nations estimated the world’s population at approximately 8.2 billion people in 2024, after decades of enormous population growth. Population growth certainly creates environmental challenges of its own, but it is difficult to reconcile longer lives supporting billions more people with the breathless suggestion that Earth’s ability to support human flourishing is disintegrating before our eyes.
Extreme weather mortality tells an even more embarrassing story.
Climate at a Glancereports that deaths from weather-related disasters have fallen by more than 99 percent during the past century, based on international disaster data. Humanity has become vastly better at protecting itself through forecasting, infrastructure, communications, transportation, medicine, air conditioning, heating, irrigation, engineering, and abundant energy.
The temperature mortality evidence is particularly awkward for the climate catastrophe narrative. A massive 2021 study in The Lancet Planetary Health, using data from 750 locations in 43 countries, estimated that cold-related mortality vastly exceeded heat-related mortality. From 2000 to 2019, declining cold mortality more than offset increasing heat mortality, producing a net reduction in the overall temperature-related mortality ratio. Climate Realism has repeatedly pointed out this inconvenient fact when media outlets portray warming as an unambiguous mortality catastrophe.
The Guardian’s treatment of extreme weather is equally revealing. It points to recent floods, European wildfires, U.S. summer temperatures, and the Tibet-Nepal flood as evidence that the planet is “out of balance.”
That is not a climate trend analysis. It is a collection of frightening anecdotes.
Climate Realism and Climate at a Glance have repeatedly examined claims involving hurricanes, floods, drought, wildfires, heat waves, and other extremes. The observational records do not support treating every destructive weather event as evidence that the planet has crossed some generalized threshold into catastrophe.
The Guardian even resurrects the familiar Amazon tipping-point scenario, warning that there is a “chance” the rainforest could transform into savanna, with severe worldwide consequences. Notice the language: there could be a tipping point that could produce disastrous consequences. This is speculation about a possible future outcome being placed alongside actual present-day disasters to create the impression that the feared future has already arrived.
This is the fundamental problem with the article. The Guardian substitutes an abstract index of environmental pressures for actual measurements of human welfare, then treats the former as more meaningful than the latter.
If humanity were truly losing the environmental conditions necessary to flourish, one might reasonably expect human flourishing to be deteriorating. Instead, the broad historical direction has been longer lives, vastly greater food production, sharply lower vulnerability to weather disasters, and the capacity to sustain billions more people.
None of that proves environmental problems do not exist. It does demonstrate how absurd it is to wave away enormous improvements in observable human welfare while declaring that Earth’s ability to support human civilization has been “massively breached.”
The Guardian is no longer merely reporting environmental risks here. It is peddling fear. Phrases such as “climate disaster looms,” “worst levels ever recorded,” and “standing on the edge of the abyss” are the vocabulary of catastrophe marketing, not sober scientific journalism.
A newspaper genuinely interested in whether humanity is flourishing would examine how humans are actually doing. The Guardian largely avoids that evidence because it wrecks the story it wants to tell.
The planet faces environmental challenges. Humanity should address genuine problems with evidence, technology, adaptation, conservation, and sound policy. But declaring the planetary life support system to be approaching the abyss while people are living longer, producing more food, surviving natural disasters at vastly higher rates, and inhabiting a demonstrably greener planet is not serious analysis.
It is apocalypse journalism, and The Guardian has once again confused frightening its readers with informing them.
Climate is dynamic, and warmer periods have often coincided with human prosperity and thriving ecosystems. To ignore this historical context is to embrace a selective amnesia, driven by an apocalyptic agenda.
Climate alarmists treat fossil fuels as the producer of soot and environmental damage, yet the record is more complicated and quite positive. New research shows nitrogen deposition from the burning of hydrocarbons has helped to expand plant growth and the greening of large parts of the planet.
A Nutrient Hidden in Emissions
A 2026 global analysis published in Ecography examined increased vegetative greening across major ecosystems and found that one of the strongest statistical links was nitrogen deposition, greater even than changes in climate and land use. NASA’s own Earth science material lists the second-largest driver of greening as nitrogen, accounting for 9% of the effect. Increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, also from the use of fossil fuels, accounts for 70% of greening, according to NASA.
While often framed as a pollutant, reactive nitrogen, released primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels, has been quietly fertilizing our planet. Although 78% of the atmosphere is made up of nitrogen, it is not in the form that many plants can use. However, nitrogen oxides released from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas act as a fertilizer that plant roots absorb and use to build proteins and chlorophyll.
Farmers pay good money for synthetic fertilizer built on exactly this chemistry. Nature, through the everyday byproducts of industrial civilization, has been delivering a diluted version of that fertilizer to forests, grasslands, and agricultural fields for more than a century.
You will not hear this from researchers who depend on alarming headlines to renew their next grant. Academic funding bodies do not reward scientists for reporting that industry has quietly fertilized half a continent’s worth of new leaf area. Instead, they reward papers that confirm a bogus crisis narrative.
Chemistry aside, much of the agricultural abundance of the modern world exists because the planet warmed out of one of the coldest periods in the last two millennia.
Warmth Feeds Us Historians call it the Little Ice Age, a 600-year cold spell that gripped much of the globe until the middle of the 19th century. Harvests failed repeatedly. Grain prices spiked. Livestock starved in barns for lack of fodder. Rivers that had never frozen in living memory turned solid enough to walk across. Regions with already short growing seasons had them grow even shorter, and famine followed.
In contrast, warmth helps big time. Not just today, but in earlier warm periods that had temperatures comparable to today’s. During the Medieval Warm Period, European vineyards crept northward into England and Norse farmers grazed cattle on pastures in Greenland that today sit locked under permafrost.
These historical precedents underscore a crucial point: Climate is dynamic, and warmer periods have often coincided with human prosperity and thriving ecosystems. To ignore this historical context is to embrace a selective amnesia, driven by an apocalyptic agenda.
Undeniable Relationship Between CO2 and Plant Growth Notwithstanding the extraordinary warmth enjoyed by Greenland’s Norse farmers 1,000 years ago, they did not have an advantage present today: elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the very molecule falsely blamed for overheating Earth. The physiological benefit of a richer CO2 atmosphere for plant life is not a fringe theory. It is established fact, confirmed by government scientists and others.
A NASA-backed study using three decades of satellite data found that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide has been the dominant driver behind a surge in global leaf area equivalent to roughly two additional continents’ worth of green cover, with NASA reporting that carbon dioxide fertilization alone accounts for the majority of that effect.
Research of crop yields show that wheat increases by 20% to 30% under elevated CO2, rice by 15% to 32%, and soybeans by up to 46%. Greenhouse operators routinely elevate CO2 levels up to 1,000 parts per million to turbocharge tomato, cucumber, and lettuce production.
These facts have largely been concealed by the climate industrial complex that relies on fear for its continuation. Bureaucracies thrive on emergency declarations. Journalists, preoccupied with their predetermined agendas, repeat the apocalyptic script because it sells. This blindness carries real costs. Developing nations face pressure to abandon the fossil fuels that could lift their people out of poverty.
The question is no longer whether fossil fuels have greened the planet. The evidence is overwhelming. Will people in power have the courage to acknowledge it as a benefit?
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.
Satellite data from NASA’s GEDI mission show that tropical forests on different continents respond differently to climate factors such as temperature and aridity, with effects further modified by soils, topography, and other local conditions.
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Satellite data from NASA’s GEDI mission show that tropical forests on different continents respond differently to climate factors such as temperature and aridity, with effects further modified by soils, topography, and other local conditions.
In a 2026 Nature study (“Heterogeneous climatic controls on tropical-forest biomass”), researchers affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), the University of Maryland, NASA, and a Brazilian university analyzed roughly 16 million 2020 GEDI spaceborne LiDAR estimates of aboveground biomass (AGB) in intact lowland forests of the Amazon, Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia.
GEDI (Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation) is a full-waveform LiDAR instrument developed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland. It is mounted on the International Space Station (ISS) and provides high-resolution, dense sampling of Earth’s 3D surface structure—especially forest canopy height, vertical structure, and topography—between approximately 51.6° N and 51.6° S latitude.
GEDI is an active remote-sensing system that fires short pulses of near-infrared laser light (wavelength 1064 nm) toward Earth.
The light reflects off vegetation, the ground, and other surfaces. An onboard telescope collects the returning photons, which are converted into electronic signals and recorded as a function of time. This produces a full waveform—a continuous vertical profile of reflected energy rather than discrete points.
GEDI remains one of the highest-resolution and densest-sampling spaceborne LiDAR systems ever flown for vegetation and topography.
Key findings
Higher temperatures were generally linked to lower biomass, but sensitivity varied sharply by region: Congo Basin forests were the most sensitive (e.g., roughly 27.6 Mg/ha AGB decline associated with temperature increases in reported analyses), Amazonian forests moderately sensitive (~11 Mg/ha), and Southeast Asian forests relatively insensitive (~0.1 Mg/ha).
Water limitation/aridity had the strongest negative effects in Southeast Asia (strong biomass declines in more arid sites). Amazonian forests often showed peak biomass at intermediate aridity; African forests were relatively insensitive. Effects of temperature and drought anomalies intensified with overall aridity and interacted with soils and landscape features.
In the tallest forests (trees >70 m), storms (lightning and windthrow) emerged as a major negative driver of biomass.
These patterns help resolve earlier conflicting results from plot-based or regional studies: the differences largely reflect real biological and historical variation rather than just methodological inconsistencies. Africa’s drier evolutionary/climatic history, Southeast Asia’s wetter history, and the distinct trajectories of the Americas have shaped species composition and climate responses that persist today.
Co-author Helene Muller-Landau (STRI) noted that the study “definitively shows that tropical forests on different continents respond differently to climate,” consistent with enduring legacies of historical climates and evolutionary paths. Lead author Matheus Henrique Nunes emphasized that global analyses alone are insufficient because effects are highly context-dependent, underscoring the need for local expertise and data.
The results improve predictions of how tropical forests (which store ~40% of global forest carbon) may respond to ongoing climate change and highlight that resilience and vulnerability vary substantially even among intact forests. Networks of standardized ground plots (e.g., GEO-TREES) will remain important for validating satellite biomass estimates.
The paper is available via the DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-10880-2; press coverage from STRI/Smithsonian and the University of Maryland provides accessible summaries of the work.
Heterogeneous climatic controls on tropical-forest biomass
Heterogeneous climatic controls on tropical-forest biomass is a 2026 Nature paper (published 12 August 2026; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10880-2) led by Matheus Henrique Nunes (University of Maryland / NASA GEDI), with co-authors including Helene C. Muller-Landau (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute), Eric Bastos Görgens, Adrián Pascual, and Ralph Dubayah.
The study analyzed ~16 million spaceborne LiDAR-derived estimates of aboveground biomass (AGB) for 2020 from NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission. It focused on intact lowland tropical forests in three major regions: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia.
Key results show that climatic associations with AGB are heterogeneous and strongly context-dependent:
Temperature effects dominate in drier forests. Congo Basin forests are the most sensitive to warming (largest AGB declines), Amazonian forests are moderately sensitive, and Southeast Asian forests are relatively insensitive.
Water limitation / aridity has the strongest negative effects in Southeast Asia (strong AGB declines in more arid sites). Amazonian forests often peak at intermediate aridity; African forests are relatively insensitive to aridity.
Effects of temperature and drought anomalies intensify with overall aridity and are further modified by soils and topography.
In the tallest, carbon-dense forests (canopy height >70 m), storms (lightning and windthrow) emerge as a strong negative driver of biomass.
These patterns help reconcile previously conflicting findings from plot-based or regional studies. Differences largely reflect genuine biological and biogeographical variation (rooted in distinct evolutionary and climatic histories of Africa, Asia, and the Americas) rather than solely methodological differences.
Tropical forests store a major fraction of global forest carbon (~40%). Understanding how climate controls their biomass is critical for predicting climate–carbon feedbacks. The results demonstrate that simple global relationships are insufficient: accurate predictions require accounting for interactions among climate, disturbance, soils, topography, and regional biogeographical context. Local expertise and standardized ground networks (e.g., GEO-TREES) remain essential for validating satellite estimates and refining forecasts.
Data and code supporting the analyses are publicly available via Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19474558). Press summaries from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the University of Maryland provide accessible overviews of the work.
Tropical-forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is a major component of the global carbon cycle and understanding its response to climate change is crucial for predicting future climate–carbon feedbacks. Yet debate continues as to whether differences between studies in observed associations with climate reflect true regional variation or methodological differences1,2,3,4,5. Here we analyse around 16 million spaceborne-LiDAR-derived estimates of AGB for the year 2020 across intact lowland forests in the Amazon, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia to investigate how climatic variables differentially relate to AGB on pantropical scales. We show that climatic associations with AGB are heterogeneous and depend on environmental context. Temperature dominates in drier forests, with AGB in the Congo Basin the most sensitive to warming, whereas Southeast Asian forests have the strongest declines in AGB under increasing water limitation. Across regions, the effects of temperature and drought anomalies intensify with aridity and are further modified by soils and topography. In the tallest (above 70 m), carbon-dense forests6,7, storms (lightning and windthrow) emerge as a strong negative driver. These results reconcile previously conflicting findings and show that predicting tropical-forest carbon storage requires accounting for interactions among climate, disturbance, soil and topography in a variety of biogeographical contexts.
Five astronauts ordered to take shelter and prepare for evacuation for roughly two hours as Russian crew attempted to fix a crack on its portion of the orbital laboratory,
Five astronauts ordered to take shelter and prepare for evacuation for roughly two hours as Russian crew attempted to fix a crack on its portion of the orbital laboratory,
NASA and Roscosmos are dealing with a worsening but still controlled air leak in the Russian Zvezda service module transfer tunnel (PrK) of the International Space Station (ISS).
The leak briefly prompted NASA to order astronauts into a docked Dragon spacecraft in case an evacuation became necessary.
Mission control in Houston radioed the station around 9 am EST (14:00 UTC) and sent four Crew-12 astronauts into SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom: NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The four launched on Crew-12 in February, and the capsule doubles as their lifeboat until their scheduled return to Earth in September. NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who reached the station aboard a Russian Soyuz, joined them inside the Dragon.
The call from the ground was direct. “All USOS (US Orbital Segment) crew members need to execute … Emergency Procedure 3.4: Crew Dragon, establish Safe Haven,” controllers told the crew. “If we need (you) to suit up, we will do that once we’re inside the Dragon.”
A worsening air leak aboard the International Space Station (ISS) prompted five astronauts to take shelter and prepare for evacuation for roughly two hours on Friday as Russia attempted to fix a crack on its portion of the orbital laboratory, according to NASA. pic.twitter.com/H4PmxSDf4A
NASA reversed that order roughly two hours later and told the astronauts they could return to the station as the agency and its Russian counterparts examined the rate of leaking air.
NASA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, the station’s two primary operators, have debated for months over the cause and potential fixes of small air leaks aboard Russia’s Zvezda service module, a key structure of the ISS, a football field-size orbital laboratory where astronauts live and work in space.
Roscosmos said on Friday that its experts had detected two leaks aboard the ISS but that there was no immediate threat to the crew. The first leak was quickly sealed, and preparations were underway to seal the second one, Roscosmos said, adding that there was no threat to the spacecraft’s systems.
Engineers have traced the problem to microscopic cracks in the PrK structure, which have caused slow leaks of the station’s atmosphere since at least 2019, and have proven difficult to permanently seal.
Engineers believe the leaks are caused by microscopic cracks in the module’s structure. Russian cosmonauts have repeatedly inspected and attempted to seal the cracks, but a permanent fix has eluded them. After a few months of pressure stability inside the PrK earlier this year, Roscosmos confirmed in May that the air leaks had returned.
Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, typically keeps the PrK sealed off from the rest of the space station to isolate the leak from the crew’s living quarters and workstations. This allows the transfer tunnel to be maintained at a lower pressure than the rest of the station. When cosmonauts need to access the area, such as for inspections, repairs, or transferring cargo to or from a docked Progress supply vessel, they pressurize the PrK to match the pressure inside the rest of the station. This allows the cosmonauts to open up the PrK to complete their work.
A statement posted by Roscosmos on its Telegram channel suggests this is what was happening early Friday. “Specialists from the Russian ISS segment’s main operations control team detected a leak in the chamber” during pressurization of the PrK.
…Russian and NASA officials also did not say what compelled Roscosmos to plan an immediate repair after discovering the two potential leak sites on Friday. They also did not say when cosmonauts might try again to patch the leak, or if any future repair effort might again force the US crew members to take shelter.
It’s a good thing that NASA plans to retire the ISS around 2030 using a specially built “space tug,” likely based on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. The $1 billion plan involves a controlled deorbit that will send most of the 400‑ton complex burning up in the atmosphere and the remaining 40–100 tons into the remote Pacific “spacecraft graveyard” at Point Nemo.
NASA officials now say that the last cargo capsule will depart the ISS around mid–2029, ahead of the official end of operations in 2030.
Once the last crew have gone, the station will continue to fall over several months until it reaches the ‘point of no return’ at an altitude of 175 miles (280 km).
Roughly 18 months before the ISS crashes down in 2031, the modified Dragon capsule will dock with the station and prepare to deliver the finishing blow.
Speaking at a press conference in 2024, Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS manager, explained that the tug would do this over several stages over 18 months.
Inside NASA’s $1 BILLION plan to destroy the ISS: As the latest leak sparks evacuation fears, experts reveal how the doomed space station will be destroyed in 2030 https://t.co/eF9tARbsJW
Between aging Russian hardware, recurring microcracks, and geopolitical strain, relying on stop‑gap patches and optimistic press releases does not appear to be a sustainable long‑term strategy. NASA’s decision to fund a controlled, Dragon‑based deorbit and send the aging outpost to a fiery end over Point Nemo is a necessary, responsible transition away from a creaking Cold War–era platform toward newer, commercially driven stations.
On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA’s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) instrument, bringing the data collection phase of the mission to a successful and scheduled end, surpassing its planned two-year mission.
On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA’s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) instrument, bringing the data collection phase of the mission to a successful and scheduled end, surpassing its planned two-year mission.
Installed on the exterior of the International Space Station since November 2023, AWE studied atmospheric gravity waves, which are giant ripples in the atmosphere caused by strong winds flowing over tall mountains or by violent weather events, such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. The AWE instrument looked for these waves in colorful bands of light in Earth’s atmosphere, called airglow. Funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Division, AWE investigated how atmospheric gravity waves propagate upward to space and contribute to space weather — conditions in space that can disrupt satellites, as well as navigation and communications signals.
“The AWE mission has proven that our atmosphere is not a ceiling, but a living, breathing ocean in the sky,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “For the first time, we can see how a thunderstorm in the Midwest, a hurricane over Florida, or a wind gust over the Andes sends invisible ripples — atmospheric gravity waves — crashing into the edge of space like waves hitting a shoreline. By mapping these ripples from the International Space Station, we’ve discovered that Earth’s weather doesn’t just end at the clouds, instead it reaches out beyond our planet, shaping the space weather that impacts our orbital economy.”
This artist’s conception depicts the Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) scanning the atmosphere from aboard the International Space Station, measuring variations in infrared airglow to track atmospheric gravity waves as they move up from the lower atmosphere into space. Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory
During AWE’s 30-month residency on the station, the instrument captured four infrared images every second, tallying more than 80 million nighttime images, which is when airglow can be seen. It observed atmospheric gravity waves from numerous extreme weather events, including a tornado outbreak across the central U.S. in May 2024 and Hurricane Helene impacting the gulf coast of Florida in September 2024.
“We’ve seen atmospheric wave signatures associated with major terrestrial events, which provided a clear example of how intense weather systems can generate measurable upper-atmospheric responses,” said AWE’s principal investigator, Ludger Scherliess of Utah State University in Logan.
These events revealed variations in the types of atmospheric gravity waves created by different kinds of storms. For example, when AWE viewed atmospheric gravity waves generated by a thunderstorm in north Texas on May 26, 2024, it saw they were smaller and more irregular, with a notable asymmetry from north to south, compared to waves created by storms in the same part of the country earlier that month.
This image from AWE shows concentric atmospheric gravity waves caused by a severe weather event that included a tornado near the U.S.-Mexico border on May 3, 2024. Captured during orbit 2529 of AWE’s stay on the International Space Station, the image shows waves spreading across Texas and Mexico in near-perfect circles, a sight rarely observed with such clarity prior to the AWE mission. NASA/Utah State University
It is important to understand variations in the density of plasma, which is electrically charged gas, in Earth’s upper atmosphere instigated by atmospheric gravity waves, because these variations can disrupt radio signals traveling between satellites and the ground, and from satellite to satellite, degrading the accuracy and reliability of systems used for navigation, timing, and communications.
In a recent study, AWE measurements also revealed the gravity waves with the greatest influence on the upper atmosphere have small horizontal wavelengths, ranging from 30 to 300 kilometers, which AWE was specifically designed to measure.
With its data-collection phase complete, the AWE instrument was turned off to make way for another science experiment that will take its place on the outside of the space station. Called CLARREO Pathfinder (Calibration Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory Pathfinder), the new instrument will take measurements of sunlight reflected by Earth and the Moon that are five to 10 times more accurate than those from existing sensors. The exchange of instruments is a key part of the space station’s mission and versatility as an orbiting laboratory for various types of research.
As the International Space Station traveled over the southeastern United States on Sept. 26, 2024, AWE observed atmospheric gravity waves generated by Hurricane Helene as the storm slammed into the gulf coast of Florida. The curved bands extending to the northwest of Florida, artificially colored red, yellow, and blue, show changes in brightness (or radiance) in a wavelength of infrared light produced by airglow in Earth’s mesosphere. The small black circles on the continent mark the locations of cities.
Utah State University
In the coming days, a robotic arm on the space station, called Canadarm2, will remove the AWE instrument from its location. Soon afterward, the AWE instrument will be loaded into part of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft that will deorbit and burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere. However, all of AWE’s observations will ultimately become available to the public and the scientific community for ongoing research and discovery.
“Data from AWE will continue to be made public for both professional researchers and citizen scientists,” Scherliess said.
Some of this data already is available, including interactive, online visualizations on Utah State University’s website, where AWE’s observations are “painted” in swaths onto a globe or on a map as the space station orbits the planet. Users can rotate the visualizations to view atmospheric gravity waves from different angles.
A still image from an interactive visualization shows AWE data collected over the Western Hemisphere. Utah State University
Launched on Nov. 9, 2023, AWE is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory built the AWE instrument and provided the mission operations center.
Hear more about AWE by listening to episode 334 of NASA’s Houston We Have a Podcast, recorded on Jan. 26, 2024.
By Vanessa Thomas NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on Mars, including seven carbon-containing compounds never previously identified on the Red Planet. The findings, published April 21, 2026, in Nature Communications, come from analysis of a rock sample drilled in 2020 at the “Mary Anning 3” site in Gale Crater’s Glen Torridon region (clay-rich sandstones ~3.5 billion years old).
NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on Mars, including seven carbon-containing compounds never previously identified on the Red Planet. The findings, published April 21, 2026, in Nature Communications, come from analysis of a rock sample drilled in 2020 at the “Mary Anning 3” site in Gale Crater’s Glen Torridon region (clay-rich sandstones ~3.5 billion years old).
The NASA found:
21 organic molecules identified in total via the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.
Seven new detections on Mars, including:
A nitrogen heterocycle (ring structure with carbon and nitrogen) — a potential precursor to RNA/DNA-like molecules.
Benzothiophene (sulfur-bearing aromatic compound, also seen in meteorites).
Other aromatics like naphthalene, plus molecules with methyl, ester, and carboxylic acid groups.
This is the greatest diversity of organics confirmed on Mars so far, building on prior detections of simpler hydrocarbons.
The breakthrough came from a first-of-its-kind “wet chemistry” experiment on another planet: SAM used tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) to break down larger, possibly macromolecular organic material into smaller, detectable pieces. (This technique had been tested on Earth with the Murchison meteorite.) Clay minerals in the ancient lakebed environment helped preserve these compounds for billions of years despite surface radiation and oxidation.
Significance — and the necessary caveats:
These molecules are building blocks of prebiotic chemistry — the kind of carbon-based compounds that, on Earth, played roles in the emergence of life. Their presence in an ancient habitable environment (lakes, streams, clays that could concentrate organics) strengthens the case that early Mars had the right chemistry for life to potentially arise. Project scientist Ashwin Vasavada noted it shows Mars was “amazingly habitable” billions of years ago.
However — and this is crucial — scientists emphasize they have no evidence these came from biology. Organics can form through purely geologic or abiotic processes:
Meteoritic delivery (common in the early solar system).
The nitrogen heterocycle and benzothiophene are exciting because they resemble precursors to genetic molecules or interstellar organics, but they do not prove (or even strongly indicate) past microbial life. As one researcher put it: “Is it life? We can’t tell.” Sample return to Earth labs will be needed for deeper isotopic or structural analysis to distinguish biotic from abiotic origins.
Broader context for the search for life on Mars:
This adds to a growing body of evidence from Curiosity (and Perseverance in Jezero Crater) that ancient Mars had liquid water, diverse minerals, and complex carbon chemistry — all prerequisites for habitability. Organics have been detected before on Mars (including by Curiosity in earlier samples), but this TMAH experiment unlocked a richer diversity by tackling more complex material.
It doesn’t overturn the consensus that Mars is currently inhospitable on the surface (cold, dry, thin atmosphere, high radiation). Any life would have been ancient, likely subsurface, or in protected niches. Future missions (e.g., ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover) may run similar wet chemistry experiments, and NASA’s Mars Sample Return remains a high priority for definitive answers.
In short: Exciting step forward in understanding Mars’ chemical history and prebiotic potential. It renews optimism for the planet’s past habitability without jumping to “life found.” Rigorous, incremental science like this — distinguishing correlation from causation — is exactly how we narrow down whether we’re alone in the solar system.
Curiosity continues its climb up Mount Sharp, providing more data on how Mars evolved from a wetter world to the dry one we see today. More discoveries likely ahead.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie on Oct. 25, 2020, after drilling a rock sample from a spot nicknamed “Mary Anning.” After years of extensive analysis, the sample has revealed the greatest diversity of organic molecules ever found on Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
After years of lab work, the results are in: A rock that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drilled and analyzed in 2020 includes the most diverse collection of organic molecules ever found on the Red Planet. Of the 21 carbon-containing molecules identified in the sample, seven of them were detected for the first time on Mars.
Scientists have no way of knowing whether these organic molecules were created by biologic or geologic processes — either path is possible — but their discovery renewed confirmation that ancient Mars had the right chemistry to support life. What’s more, the molecules join a growing list of compounds known to be preserved in rocks even after billions of years of exposure on Mars to radiation, which can break down these molecules over time.
The findings are detailed in a new paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications.
Orbital and close-up views showing drill holes at the Mary Anning sites in Gale Crater, where the sample was collected.
The rock sample, nicknamed “Mary Anning 3” after an English fossil collector and paleontologist, was collected on a part of Mount Sharp covered by lakes and streams billions of years ago. This oasis surged and dried up multiple times in the planet’s ancient past, eventually enriching the area with clay minerals, which are especially good at preserving organic compounds — carbon-containing molecules that are the building blocks of life and are found throughout the solar system.
Among the newly identified molecules is a nitrogen heterocycle, a ring of carbon atoms that includes nitrogen. This kind of molecular structure is considered a predecessor to RNA and DNA, two nucleic acids that are key to genetic information.
“That detection is pretty profound because these structures can be chemical precursors to more complex nitrogen-bearing molecules,” said the paper’s lead author, Amy Williams of the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Nitrogen heterorcycles have never been found before on the Martian surface or confirmed in Martian meteorites.”
This is an annotated close-up of three holes NASA’s Curiosity drilled into Martian rock at a location nicknamed “Mary Anning” in October 2020. The sample where the rover found a diverse number of organic molecules came from “Mary Anning 3.” (A nearby spot nicknamed “Mary Anning 2” went unused.) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Another exciting discovery was benzothiophene, a carbon- and sulfur-bearing molecule that’s been found in many meteorites. These meteorites, along with the organic molecules within them, are thought by some scientists to have seeded prebiotic chemistry across the early solar system.
Martian chemistry
The new paper complements last year’s finding of the largest organic molecules ever discovered on Mars: long-chain hydrocarbons, including decane, undecane, and dodecane.
“This is Curiosity and our team at their best. It took dozens of scientists and engineers to locate this site, drill the sample, and make these discoveries with our awesome robot,” said the mission’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “This collection of organic molecules once again increases the prospect that Mars offered a home for life in the ancient past.”
Both sets of findings were made with a sophisticated minilab called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), located in Curiosity’s belly. A drill on the end of the rover’s robotic arm pulverizes a carefully selected rock sample into powder and then trickles it into SAM, where a high-temperature oven heats the material, releasing gases that instruments in the lab analyze to reveal the rock’s composition.
In addition, SAM can perform “wet chemistry,” dropping samples into a small cup of solvent. The resulting reactions can break apart larger molecules that would be difficult to detect and identify otherwise. While the instrument has several such cups, only two contain tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH), a powerful solution reserved for the highest-value samples. The Mary Anning 3 sample was the first to be exposed to TMAH.
To verify TMAH’s reactions with otherworldly materials, the paper’s authors also tested the technique on Earth with a piece of the Murchison meteorite, one of the most studied meteorites of all time. More than 4 billion years old, Murchison contains organic molecules that were seeded throughout the early solar system. A Murchison sample exposed to TMAH was found to break much larger molecules into some of the ones seen in Mary Anning 3, including benzothiophene. That result verifies that the Martian molecules found in Mary Anning 3 could have been generated from the breakdown of even more complex compounds relevant to life.
Curiosity recently used its second and final TMAH cup while exploring weblike boxwork ridges, which were formed by ancient groundwater. The mission team will be analyzing those results for a future peer-reviewed paper.
Trailblazing for future missions
Built by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, SAM is based on larger, commercial-grade lab instruments. Getting such complex equipment into the rover required engineers to dramatically shrink it down and develop a way for it to run on less power. Scientists had to learn how to heat up SAM’s oven more slowly over longer periods in order to conduct some of these experiments.
“It was a feat just figuring out how to conduct this kind of chemistry for the first time on Mars,” said Charles Malespin, the instrument’s principal investigator at NASA Goddard and a study coauthor. “But now that we’ve had some practice, we’re prepared to run similar experiments on future missions.”
In fact, NASA Goddard has provided several components, including the mass spectrometer, for a next-generation version of SAM, called the Mars Organic Molecular Analyzer, for ESA’s (European Space Agency) Rosalind Franklin Mars rover. A similar instrument, the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer, will explore Saturn’s moon Titan on NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft. Both instruments will be able to perform wet chemistry with the TMAH solvent.
More about Curiosity
Curiosity was built by JPL, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
News Media Contacts Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
The Washington Post recently ran a Feb. 11, 2026 article titled “Scientists thought they understood global warming. Then the past three years happened.” As I read it, and as we move through this Adirondack winter, my mind couldn’t help drifting to the green grass of the ballpark. And with the annual bombardment of “hottest year ever” rhetoric and spring training underway, it also drifted back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when home runs and performance enhancing drugs ruled Major League Baseball.
The Washington Post recently ran a Feb. 11, 2026 article titled “Scientists thought they understood global warming. Then the past three years happened.” As I read it, and as we move through this Adirondack winter, my mind couldn’t help drifting to the green grass of the ballpark. And with the annual bombardment of “hottest year ever” rhetoric and spring training underway, it also drifted back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when home runs and performance enhancing drugs ruled Major League Baseball.
It was a time when players used substances that disrupted the natural rhythm and record book of the great game. Human growth hormone aided recovery. Anabolic steroids boosted power and bat speed. Players got bigger, stronger and faster. Records fell. Balls were launched out of ballparks. In 1998, Mark McGwire hit three home runs estimated at more than 500 feet. In the 27 MLB seasons since, under ten have been measured that far.
That era of baseball offers a useful analogy for how temperatures are presented to the public today.
First, consider NASA’s use of a baseline reference period, the foundation on which its temperature results are built. It is the same baseline the Washington Post used in its piece.
Reference baselines are subjective — they can amplify or mute the public-facing visual, and they are not anchored to any physical constant in the climate system. They are simply a choice. NASA’s choice is to plot temperature values against a 1951-1980 baseline, and that choice matters.
Those three decades sit squarely in a period influenced by heavy sulfate aerosol pollution, when industrial emissions reflected sunlight and cooled the planet. This midcentury cooling is well documented, and it temporarily offset earlier warmth, especially in the United States, where the 1930s remain the warmest decade in the instrumental record.
When you choose a cool, aerosol-suppressed era as “normal,” everything after it looks hotter by comparison. The public sees maps drenched in red and orange, labeled “1.2C above normal,” without realizing that “normal” itself was shaped by aerosol-driven cooling.
It’s worth remembering that the cooling from the 1950s through the 1970s was once framed as a sign of an impending ice age. And beginning around 1980, which happens to coincide with the start of the satellite era, clean air policies across North America and Europe triggered a massive reduction in sulfate emissions. The climate narrative has since swung decisively toward warming, but the midcentury period remains an era of heavy pollution and intense atmospheric aerosol flux. Choosing it as a baseline reference period is, at the very least, difficult to justify.
Then there is homogenization. I wrote about this in more detail in my Jan. 30 Enterprise column. It is the practice of adjusting and blending data from different weather stations into a composite temperature value. Proponents argue that raw records are messy.
Stations move. Instruments change. Observation times shift. Surroundings get paved over.
In principle, that sounds reasonable. But to correct for these issues, agencies apply statistical adjustments that critics, including myself, find questionable. And in practice, earlier decades are often adjusted cooler while recent decades are adjusted warmer or left unchanged. The net effect is a steeper warming trend.
Add a third ingredient: urbanization. Cities are hotter than their rural surroundings. Asphalt, concrete, buildings and waste heat all contribute to the well-known urban heat island effect. Many long-running stations that were once rural are now surrounded by development. Even small siting changes, closer to buildings, parking lots or runways, can nudge temperatures upward. This warming is real, but it is local, not global, and certainly not caused by carbon dioxide. Yet, when these stations are blended into global averages, they add heat to the record in ways the public rarely hears about.
So the final product, a temperature graph built on a cool baseline, adjusted through homogenization and influenced by expanding urban development, lands in front of the public as a single, authoritative curve. The complexity disappears. The choices disappear.
The uncertainty disappears. What remains is a simple story: the planet is warming faster than ever before, and the evidence is beyond question.
Temperature homogenization and selective baselines function much like a slugger juicing up on HGH and steroids. Each choice has a stated scientific purpose, just as every shot in the arm, or wherever else it landed, had a performance purpose. But the combined effect is hard to miss. Add urbanization, and it’s like putting a juiced up slugger in a ballpark with a short fence.
The bottom line is simple: if you want warming, we can show that, and if you want it to look juiced up, we can show that too. And that 1951-1980 temperature baseline used by NASA and the Washington Post is a doozy, a real shot in the arm. If I wanted to present warming in the strongest possible light for the public, that’s the baseline I’d choose as well.
Unfortunately, what the public rarely hears is a more measured framing: the Earth has been warming gradually since the end of the Little Ice Age (1850). Human influences, such as a century of sulfate aerosol flux, can affect temperatures, but natural variability remains the dominant force in shaping year-to-year and decade-to-decade swings. This variability is led by the sun and is the backdrop against which all other influences play out. In addition, the planet’s energy balance is further shaped by volcanic activity, cloud behavior, powerful ocean atmosphere oscillations, water vapor dynamics and the diminishing radiative impact of CO2 beyond its first few hundred parts per million.
Yes, just as many late 1990s ballplayers were boosted by performance enhancing drugs, today’s temperature products are enhanced by a mix of homogenization, urbanization and selective baselines. Baseball eventually had to reckon with what those choices did to the record book. Climate communication faces a similar moment. If we are going to talk honestly about a fascinating area of science, we need to separate the natural rhythm of the climate system from the statistical steroids we keep injecting into the data. Until then, the annual temperatures will keep clearing the fence, but we should not pretend the fences have not moved.
Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said Thursday that climate and earth science at the agency will “move aside” as it refocuses solely on space exploration.
Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said Thursday that climate and earth science at the agency will “move aside” as it refocuses solely on space exploration.
“All the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last administration had at NASA we’re going to move aside, and all of the science that we do is going to be directed towards exploration, which is the mission of NASA,” Duffy, who also leads the Transportation Department, told Fox Business.
“That’s why we have NASA — is to explore, not to do all of these earth sciences,” he added.
NASA, which stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, explores both air and space. It has historically conducted science related to both Earth and space, including climate science.
A pivot away from climate science is not necessarily a surprise — the Trump administration has sought to deny and downplay climate change’s impacts and has moved to dismantle scientific research, including by dismissing scientists working on the National Climate Assessment.
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