Observations from the Little Bunker
A systematic observation of climate change, extreme weather events, and their cascading effects on society
🌍 Latest Environmental Observations
The political psychology of climate denial
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 16 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02523-7Climate denial in political discourse is fuelled by psychological factors such as psychological distance, cognitive dissonance, confirmation...
Hope—and Many Fears—Follow in the Wake of Trump’s Plan to Transform Wildland Firefighting
The Departments of Interior and Agriculture announced a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. But layoffs, confusion and budget cuts have sparked doubts.By Kiley PriceOne of...
Can a Flood-Prone Coastal City Learn to Live With Water?
Instead of billion-dollar floodwalls and surge barriers, Hampton, Virginia, is relying on rain gardens, plant-lined storage basins, restored marshes and 3D-printed concrete reefs seeded with...
After Hurricane Katrina, a New Orleans Architect Turned to the Dutch to Learn to Live With Water
Before the storm, the city tried to engineer water out of sight. But, David Waggonner says, “you can’t live with water if you can’t see...
The country’s biggest magnesium producer went bankrupt. Who’s going to clean up the $100M mess?
Bill Johnson has witnessed the extent of US Magnesium’s pollution up close. He’s seen the wastewater pond that was so acidic it bubbled like a...
How the Trump administration is fast-tracking logging in Illinois’ only national forest
When the Forest Service approved the sale of nearly 70 acres for commercial logging in southern Illinois’ Shawnee National Forest in late 2024, Sam Stearns...
This is another ‘ozone layer’ moment. Now, we must urgently target methane | Mia Mottley
The oil and gas industry must be legally bound to cut methane emissions. With climate tipping points approaching, time is running out • Mia Mottley...
Tuesday briefing: What polar bear DNA tells us about a warming Arctic
In today’s newsletter: As species across the world struggle to keep pace with global warming, how do we report the rare glimmers of hope without...
A hidden climate shift may have sparked epic Pacific voyages 1,000 years ago
Around 1,000 years ago, a major climate shift reshaped rainfall across the South Pacific, making western islands like Samoa and Tonga drier while eastern islands...
Hack reveals reviewer identities for huge AI conference
Software bug leads to exposure of peer-review records for 10,000 papers
Disaster Survivors Denounce Proposed FEMA Downsizing
A leaked report recommends halving the size of the nation’s disaster response agency, while holding states responsible for a much larger share of response and...
How Trump’s Big Ag bailout is alienating his MAHA base
At a White House roundtable last Monday, president Donald Trump, alongside Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and a handful of other leaders in the government, announced...
Seafloor telecom cable transformed into giant earthquake detector
Dense seismic array more than 4000 kilometers long promises new views of Earth’s interior
NSF pares down grant-review process, reducing influence of outside scientists
Memo cites overburdened staff, but some say move also aims to elevate White House priorities
What's Really Driving Up US Electricity Prices? We Unpack the Numbers.
Since 2010, the average price of electricity across the United States has risen by almost 30% with no signs of slowing down. This year alone,...
Peak glacier extinction in the mid-twenty-first century
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 15 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02513-9Many mountain glaciers will disappear with warming. Here the authors assess how many glaciers will disappear per...
Morrisons becomes first UK supermarket to delay net zero targets
Britain’s fifth-biggest grocers postpones goal by 15 years, to 2050, saying new ambitions cover whole supply chainMorrisons has become the first UK supermarket chain to...
Guest post: How the Greenland ice sheet fared in 2025
Greenland is closing in on three decades of continuous annual ice loss, with 1995-96 being the last year in which the giant ice sheet grew...
Glaciers to reach peak rate of extinction in the Alps in eight years
Climate crisis forecast to wipe out thousands of glaciers a year globally, threatening water supplies and cultural heritageEurope live – latest updatesGlaciers in the European...
How Green Jobs in Dire Dawa Benefit Women and the Environment
An ambitious reforestation program in Dire Dawa’s watershed is helping to restore hundreds of hectares of farmland and reduce flood risk, while providing 7,000 new...
Guest post: Why cities need more than just air conditioning for extreme heat
Cities around the world are facing more frequent and intense bouts of extreme heat, leading to an increasing focus on the use of air conditioning...
Virginia Regulators Weigh Expanded Use of Data Center’s Polluting Generators
The state’s Department of Environmental Quality would expand permissible uses during emergencies to include “planned outages” by grid operators, presumably for power line upgrades. Environmentalists...
One Big, Shining Beacon for Climate Hope
“Here Comes the Sun” author and activist Bill McKibben on his newfound optimism, harnessing energy from heaven vs. energy from hell and how there are...
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