News I've Come Across Recently

Antarctic ice gained about 108 gigatons each year from 2021-2023, offsetting sea level rise by 0.33 mm/yr. But it lost 4,780 Gt of ice since 1979, until 2023. (Gt=billion metric tons)

Greenland lost 6,529 Gt ice from 1979 to 2023. 

That's 11,309 Gt together, a total contribution of 31.4 mm of sea level rise. 3.14 cm. 1.24 inches.

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Berkeley Earth also found this past August as the warmest August in their records, since 1849. The August global temperature anomaly was 1.71 ± 0.11°C (3.07 ± 0.20 °F) above the 1850–1900 average. And it's the second warmest among all months in their record. They wrote:

Roughly 10.2% of Earth's surface saw its warmest August on record — 9.1% of land and 10.7% of ocean. 75 countries set national August records, and continent-wide August records were set for Africa and North America.

They also wrote:

With eight months of data in hand, a record annual average now looks probable. We calculate roughly a 93% chance that 2026 becomes the warmest year on record, up from about 69% in the July update and 12% in June. The most likely alternative is a 2nd-place finish.

Lots of graphs are on the same page. 

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Robert F Kennedy Jr says the department of Health and Human Services, which he's in charge of, is investigating chemtrails. Which don't exist. Spending time on conspiracies while Americans are having an ever more difficult time accessing affordable healthcare. I'd be infuriating if I expected anything out of the US government, but not anymore.

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The Trump administration has started calling bike (bicycle) lanes "DEI bike lanes." DEI stands for "diversity, equity, and inclusion"--being sure to care about minority groups of whatever sort. It "boasts of cutting $1.73bn already allocated for cycling improvements to city streets," says The Guardian. 

Why?? They don't burn gasoline! And Trump licks the bottoms of the fossil fuel industry because they gave him $219 million for his campaign in 2024. The Guardian:

The Trump administration’s plans to stymie and defund bike lane plans in the US, on the unusual basis that they are DEI tools, will hurt efforts to improve roadway safety, non-motorized transportation advocates say.

The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, posted on X this month that he had redirected $1.73bn allocated for “Biden-era DEI pet projects” to “America’s actual backbone: ROADS, BRIDGES, AND SHIPPING PORTS”.

It's difficult impossible for me to imagine the ignorance and malevolence that went into this decision. It's very clear by now that Trump has no interest in running the government for the benefit of ordinary people. We see it in so many areas: health care, energy, climate change, tariffs, AI, the National Park system, foreign relations and many more. It's disgusting and I only hope there is enough left by the time he leaves office--I hope every morning when I first look at my phone--that these policies can be rebuilt for the good of the people and the country.

"These Tech Titans Are F--king Psychos"

Some evidence on why the AI tech leaders should be the last people deciding the future of human society, put rather directly:

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Will AI Devalue Humans?

This clip of Tristan Harris really makes me think. It contains a quote by Sam Altman of Open AI which is...well, incredible and outrageous at the same time.

 
Harris is a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.

 
Someone I heard said of the CEOs at Trump's recent meeting of AI tech bros, where Trump announced the formation of a "Super Intelligence Force" {eyeroll}, that their suits don't fit and do we really want tech nerds with limited social skills creating the future of the human condition. Excellent question.

 

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search(+A +B) and search(+A -C)

Anymore it seems impossible to do a Web search that includes particular terms. A search like

+A +B

gives results where term B is not in the search results. Google does this, and now DuckDuckGo does it too, and as far as I can tell, so does Bing. And if you try to exclude term C

+A -C

the search results still include C, especially, I think, if it's commonly associated with A.

Does anyone have a solution for this? I think it's because the search engines don't want to return null results because they want to include their advertising links. 

It's frustrating. Or am I doing something wrong?

Edit 12-Oct: took out the quote marks that were around the search term, since they mean something on search that I didn't mean here.

The Last Humans Alive

I asked Grok: Create an image of the last group of humans alive on Earth after global warming and climate change have killed everyone else.

It created this. A little harsher than I expected, but OK.

Link.

El Nino region's amazing SST

Here's a chart (thanks Grok) showing the sea surface temperature of the Nino3.4 region in the central Pacific Ocean. The SST is going off the chart. 

The high bulge to the right of 2026's line is 2015, which peaked on Nov 18, 2015 at 29.81°C, an anomaly of 3.26°C relative to a baseline of 1982-2010. 

Here's a time series of the same region. If El Ninos' strength is increasing over time, I wouldn't say it's obvious from this graph? What do you think?

Of course someone should do a calculation.

Ocean Heat Content Clearly Accelerating

Here are the latest ocean heat content numbers from NOAA, through 1Q2026. Eyeballing, it looks clear that OHC is accelerating for both regions. 

0-700 m region: linear slope = 0.22 W/m² = 0.035°C/decade

                           acceleration = 0.0089 (W/m²)/yr = 8.9 (mW/m²)/yr

where "mW" is milliwatts. 

0-2000 m region: linear slope = 0.68 W/m² = 0.037°C/decade

                             acceleration = 0.0079 (W/m²)/yr = 7.9 (mW/m²)/yr

The R² numbers are all high, > 0.90.

All this bother over milliwatts!   :-)

PS: corrections welcome, especially on the unit conversions.

Island Boy

This lively woman, Brooke Eby, said she was finally diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, or, she says, the same disease that Stephen Hawking had, "before he became an island boy." 

I hope you know what that means. 

I wonder if that will be his lasting impression in the public sphere.

Don't know if any of you care. Probably not.

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Her name is Brooke Eby. She had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., at 33. She died yesterday at the age of 37. 

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