More often heard than seen.
That’s generally one of the first and most common descriptions you’ll find when reading about the Water Rail, which made me especially pleased to cross paths with this notoriously elusive bird within minutes of the first time I actively sought it, summoned by its high-pitched, pig-like squeal.
It’s a call you can’t unhear.
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The march marked the third consecutive weekend of nationwide demonstrations against soaring costs of living, poor conditions in schools and police violence.
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Pablo Picasso would have been 145 earlier this week. Some are taken from us much too soon.
Continue readingThis offers a good survey of how battery range has grown over the past decade. It took about a month for us to kick free of range anxiety. From the story:
A decade ago, an electric vehicle with more than 300 miles of range would have cost you nearly $100,000.
Today, 300 miles of range sits in the middle of the market and consumers can expect at least 200 miles in even the least expensive models, based on the latest 2027 model-year data on fueleconomy.gov.
This increase in range reflects falling battery costs and technological improvements. It’s helping boost the appeal of owning an EV by reducing range anxiety—the fear of being stranded mid-trip with nowhere to charge.
Link.
On the Promenade des Anglais, nearing sunset.
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And a brief introduction to Polish interwar poet and novelist Bruno Jasienski, whose best known work is ‘I Burn Paris’.
Continue readingMore on last summer’s deadly heat in Europe, which many have already forgotten about.
Malta, Italy and Hungary experienced the highest death rates, according to a study by the Imperial College of London’s Grantham Institute published last week in the journal Nature Health. Naples was the hardest hit city, where 815 people per million died from summer’s relentless heat.
The NY Times reports:
Severe heat killed more than 50,000 people in European cities and towns this summer, according to peer-reviewed estimates released by scientists in London on Friday.
That is three times as many people as would have died had humankind not warmed the planet by burning oil, gas and coal, the researchers said. Their estimates suggest that this summer’s intense heat was Europe’s deadliest by far this century.
The study, which modelled historical relationships between heat and health in 854 cities, found a record death toll powered by the heatwaves in 2026, nearly twice that of either of the next two deadliest years.
An image captured 16 years ago today. I hope he’s doing well.
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Global temperatures are on track to rise 2.6°C (4.7°F) above preindustrial levels by 2100, according to the UN’s Emissions Gap Report 2026 released on Tuesday, which examines and tracks the gap between nations’ climate goals and the reality on the ground, seas and air.
The report concludes what we already knew from previous reports and studies released this year: governments are failing.
Continue readingAnd the trees can’t even be used.
I switched out of Gmail yesterday. And increasingly use Ecosia for web searches.
In addition to the 250,000 trees felled at Muhos, Mari Annala, an ecologist from the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL), estimates that an additional 150,000 trees were felled at Otanmäki. Because the trees have been felled illegally, she says wood from the two sites cannot be sold to wood-processing plants.
The move has also prompted questions over why Finland’s renewable energy sources are being used to power international corporations.
Link.
Thursday’s door.
Continue readingArctic agendas are shifting to national security and the hunt for rare minerals. That has translated to an unprecedented slashing for wildlife research in the region at a time when climate change is dramatically reshaping every facet of life on the planet’s northern reaches.
“There have always been ebbs and flows in the support for environmental monitoring in the Arctic,” said Larry Hinzman, an expert in Arctic change at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “But what we are seeing now is unprecedented. It’s heartbreaking because we need to know more than ever how to respond to a warming Arctic that is affecting almost every facet of life.”
And:
The decline in Arctic research comes at a time when at least 96 Arctic and sub-Arctic mammal and bird species may be responding to warmer winters, earlier spring snowmelt, and profound landscape changes by migrating earlier in the year and traveling farther afield, sometimes in new directions. But dozens of studies have shown that these journeys don’t always lead to more food. And they often expose birds to additional parasites and pathogens and put them at greater risk of predation.
Link.
Bologna is sometimes called La Rossa (“the Red”), a nickname rooted as much in its terracotta-and-brick architecture as in its tradition of left-wing and anti-fascist politics. It is also a university town, where those warm, terracotta-coloured walls serve young creatives as an inviting public notebook for stencils and scrawls and paintings and tags.
Continue readingIncredible footage from the CBC show The Nature of Thing of a Great Gray Owl hunting voles burrowing in the snow, relying almost exclusively on its incredible sense of hearing. And specially adapted feathers that allow it to swoop in in dead silence.
Ranging from 61 to 84 cm (24 to 33 in) in length, the Great Gray Owl is the world’s largest species of owl. Their breeding range stretches from the Pacific coast of North America –California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia– east to Quebec and in Europe from Finland and Estonia across northern Asia. The CBC video was shot in Manitoba.
Via kottke.org.
The heating planet is fueling unrest, that’s been clear. The past month of youth protests in France, which come after the country’s hottest year, are just one example.
The students’ demands are far-ranging: more teachers, smaller class sizes, a shortened school day and an overhaul of the post-secondary college application system. But the heart of the revolt is indignation over crumbling school infrastructure—a problem laid bare by climate-change-fueled heat waves.
This year was France’s hottest on record, and the country counted 8,000 excess deaths during the summer’s heat waves. In June alone, deaths spiked 11 percent compared to the same month in 2025.
France’s schools, meanwhile, were not built for the hotter world the students have inherited after generations of fossil fuel use have warped the climate. Many buildings were designed to hold onto heat; air conditioning is rare. As classrooms recorded temperature peaks above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this spring, schools reported incidents from fainting to nosebleeds.
Link.
Student protests in France over school conditions that began about a month ago continued to spread across much of the country today, here in Nice included.
Continue readingA family of Barn Owls has taken up residence on a rooftop on New York City’s Upper West Side. The family includes adolescents who are learning to fly.
The owls begin their evenings at about 7:45 p.m. with a series of screeches, Ms. Williams said. The adolescents hop along the water tower’s roof and take short test flights. Then the adults depart. Sometimes, they perch on sections of the Kenilworth Building on Central Park West, scanning alleys and the park for mice and rats. When they return with food, the children hop with excitement. By 10 p.m., the horrifying screeches begin to quiet.
Last night’s waxing crescent moon, from the Promenade des Anglais in Nice.
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In the Giacometti Hall at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, pictured above, Alberto Giacometti’s “Walking Man” appears to be entering from the lush woods beyond the glass. The image doesn’t quite do justice to the work—or to its stunning setting beside the Garden Lake, just a few metres away.
It’s an apt image for a museum, located in the quiet town of Humlebæk just north of Copenhagen, that feels less like a conventional gallery and more like a journey through art, architecture and landscape.
Continue readingOn his excellent Substack, The Climate Brink, climate scientist and researcher Zeke Hasufather notes how quickly renewable energy continues to expand and grow and how, despite arguments by skeptics to the contrary, renewables are displacing fossil fuels.
Twenty years ago, wind, solar and other non-hydro renewables were close to a rounding error. In 2005 they supplied a mere 2.0% of the world’s electricity generation. By 2015 that had risen to 6.8%, and by 2025 it was up to 19.8%. According to the IEA Electricity 2026 outlook, non-hydro renewables will supply around 21.8% of global electricity in 2026, edging past natural gas (21.6%) to become the second-largest source of power after coal.
Link.