Dominik Wiedenhofer

„Brüsseler Abgeordnete & die Kommission wüssten genau,dass viele Chemikalien 🇩🇪 Konzerne – in #Plastik Produkten, Lasuren, Hautcremes, Putzmitteln & Weichmachern –der Gesundheit schaden. „Doch das nehmen alle Verantwortlichen in Kauf, um Deutschland & die EU als führenden Chemiestandort zu sichern.“

Flawed economic models mean climate crisis could crash global economy, experts warn States and financial bodies using modelling that ignores shocks from extreme weather and climate tipping points

“The climate scientists we surveyed were unambiguous: current economic models can’t capture what matters most – the cascading failures and compounding shocks that define climate risk in a warmer world – and could undermine the very foundations of economic growth.”

Should be the top story everyday.

commentary:
Godale+
doi.org/10.1038/d415...

"Analyses of a Swedish tree-ring archive suggest that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide has lowered soil-nitrogen supply, which could cap carbon storage by land ecosystems"

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared with those remaining on a chronological feed, whereas switching the feed setting in the opposite direction, from algorithmic to chronological, had no effect.

Turning on the ‘For You’ algorithm on X may shift users’ political opinions towards more conservative views, reports a paper in Nature. These effects are shown to persist even after users return to a chronological feed. 🧪

Great graphic showing cities on a triangle graph showing if they are most oriented to public transit, active mobility or cars.

Have you seen this? This recent study of mode share (the % share of transportation trips that are by car, transit, walking, biking etc) relative to city size and income levels in almost 800 cities in 61 countries. Interesting results. HT @davidzipper.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Pretty much the most important thing happening in the world right now.
www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chi...

Gestern hat die 🇺🇸 Regierung das „Endangerment Finding“ zurückgenommen.

Aber auch in Österreich 🇦🇹 findet eine schleichende Aushöhlung der Klimapolitik und der Klimaforschung statt - durch Verzögerungen, Budgetkürzungen, Prioritätenverschiebungen und politisches Wegsehen.
#WissenSchafftKlimaschutz

Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been ‘flat or falling’ for 21 months - Carbon Brief China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole.

Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been ‘flat or falling’ for 21 months
www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chi...

Shared Socioeconomic Pathways | Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are a set of scenarios that describe potential future developments in society, economics, and demographics until the end of the 21st century. This Explorer pre...

For a decade, the Shared Socioeconomics Pathways #SSP are used for scenario research related to climate change mitigation.

Now, GDP & population projections were updated by @iiasa.ac.at & the team at the #OECD, and the #ScenarioServices team set up a new interactive app to explore the scenarios!

Ecology & Society: Disastrous consequences: shortcomings of resiliency strategies for coping with accelerating environmental change Natural disasters driven by climate change have increased in frequency, intensity, and scale. The consequences of these disasters include the loss of human lives, property damage, increased economic ...

Disastrous consequences: shortcomings of resiliency strategies for coping with accelerating environmental change
Allen+
doi.org/10.5751/ES-1...

contrasts risks of government focus on resiliency
vs. need to also plan and prepare for adaptation and transformation

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio) YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

How well can we quantify when 1.5 °C of global warming has been exceeded? Abstract. Parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement agreed to limit the long-term increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C and pursue efforts to keep temperatures below 1.5 °C relative to p...

New discussion paper just dropped that’s taken shall we say a little work to get this far … essd.copernicus.org/preprints/es... please be kind. Not on an at all sensitive topic in the slightest.

Resilience and malleability: New directions for socio-metabolic research in times of multiple crises The world faces multiple crises and disruptions, such as climate impacts, pandemics, geopolitical tension and competition, conflicts, and wars. Socio-…

The world faces multiple crises and disruptions, such as climate impacts, pandemics, geopolitical tension and competition, conflicts, and wars.

Here, we discuss how social metabolism research can address these pressing issues.

@bokuvienna.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.

It is universally acknowledged in academia that the world needs fewer better papers -- fewer inconsequential micro-advances where the aim is to help careers, not society.

How do we solve this collective action problem?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
richardtol.substack.com/p/quality-vs...

Liberalism Did Not Fail, Conservatism Did We are moving from an ideologically multipolar world, to a bipolar one.

I didn't know who @polphilpod.bsky.social was before this year, but he's rapidly become one of the few writers who consistently makes sense to me. Feels like stumbling on a oasis in the desert.

Anyway, I strongly endorse every word of this piece:

New paper out in Nature Clean Technology: renewables are growing fast, but rising energy demand—especially from data centers & cooling—risks slowing fossil fuel phase-out. AI can help climate solutions, but only with strong demand-side policies. 🌍⚡️

‘Shattered’: US scientists speak out about how Trump policies disrupted their careers Researchers lay bare the human toll of lay-offs, funding cuts and attacks on science one year after the president’s return to the White House.

This is so grim. Science isn’t just something nerds do, but the foundation of the modern world. What the Trump regime has done to US science will harm Americans for generations.

Energiecluster: Netto Null – wie kommen wir auf Kurs? YouTube video by BOKU University

Podiumsveranstaltung: Netto Null – wie kommen wir auf Kurs?
Dienstag, 27. Jänner 2026, 18 Uhr
BOKU Peter-Jordan-Strasse 82, Wilhelm-Exner Haus (HS01)
➡️ Livestream auf www.youtube.com/live/BEqUqQR...

Ideational diffusion and the great witch hunt in Central Europe - Theory and Society The great upsurge of witch trials in early modern Europe remains a historical puzzle. Popularly known as the “witch craze”, this eruption of persecution is puzzling because belief in witchcraft had ex...

Fascinating historical analysis finds that higher local circulation of a popular witch-hunting manual increased a city's likelihood of holding its first witch trial by about 30%. An early, quantifiable example of the harmful impact of fake news!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Photos Capture the Breathtaking Scale of China's Wind and Solar Buildout

The scale of China's clean energy buildout is difficult to fathom. Check out these pictures.

The linguistic wall On April 25, 1953, a short paper appeared in the journal Nature that changed the world.1 It was barely a page long and contained a single, simple diagram. But what stands out today isn’t just the…

...are making it harder and harder to extract the necessary information.

Vinoy presents some reasons for this evolution, but also some potential countermeasures.

www.scicomm.be/post/the-lin...

#scicomm #informationdesign

1/ Yes the globally wealthy have outsized emissions, and yes that’s a massive problem

But it’s actually only a small part of their devastating influence on the conditions that support life
🧵

What's the deal with closed-loop geothermal? I talk to Eavor’s Jeanine Vany and Mark Fitzgerald about the engineering breakthroughs that could finally make geothermal geography-agnostic.

Today on Volts: "closed-loop" geothermal energy digs deeper than conventional geothermal & does not require natural hotspots, so it can be done anywhere. I talk with Eavor, a cutting-edge Canadian startup that has just opened its first closed-loop facility in Germany, about the possibilities.

Chinas Urbanisierung fordert Klima und Ressourcen.
Eine Studie mit Beteiligung der BOKU University zeigt, wie stark Chinas Gebäudebestand seit 2000 gewachsen ist.
@bokusec.bsky.social @dominikwiedenhofer.bsky.social
➡️: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Abundance and characteristics of plankton and microplastics along the northern coastline of Central Java, Indonesia This study aimed to characterize microplastics (MPs) and analyze the composition of plankton in the coastal waters of Central Java's North Coast. The …

🦠 New study along the coast of Central Java, Indonesia, finds more #microplastics (10–42 particles/L) than plankton (13–15 ind/L) at all sites! We urgently need better governance to combat #plastic pollution!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

With the world's eyes on US oil interests, let's not forget who benefits: The richest of the rich. Our research shows: 50% of the record fossil fuel profits in 2022 went to the wealthiest 1% of US Americans, the bottom 50% only received 1%.

Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Environmental impact and net-zero pathways for sustainable artificial intelligence servers in the USA - Nature Sustainability The rapid expansion of AI server installations in the United States poses sustainability challenges in terms of water usage and carbon emissions. A study now quantifies these potential impacts and out...

"We show that the AI server industry is unlikely to meet its net-zero aspirations by 2030 without substantial reliance on highly uncertain carbon offset and water restoration mechanisms"

An annual additional 24-44 megatonnes of CO2 per year to 2030, from AI in the US alone ->

Building material stock drives embodied carbon emissions and risks future climate goals in China - Nature Climate Change Reducing the embodied carbon emissions of building material stock is essential for mitigation. Using a high-resolution multiyear dataset in China, researchers show the historically massive contributio...

China experienced unprecedented scale and speed of urbanization - here we map these dynamics at 30m resolution for the past 20 years to understand implications for reaching #climate targets and a more #CircularEconomy

@BOKUvienna @bokusec.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

www.iiss.org/research-pap...

Qianjiadong Reservoir in southern Hunan, China, produces a double harvest: solar energy and yellow carp. The solar farm produces up to 80 megawatts of power while the fish forage beneath the panels. With a massive scale-up of solar and wind at home and cheap exports of the technology, China is driving a worldwide surge of renewable energy—Science’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

Learn more about this year's #BOTY and other big advances in science: https://scim.ag/493Tpgx