Nate Maynard

The Urgency Does Not Exist: My statement on Deep-sea Mining to the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources This week, I was invited to testify in front of Congress on the environmental and social impacts of deep-sea mining for the House Natural Resources Committee hearing Deep Dive: Examining the Regula…

The Urgency Does Not Exist: My statement on Deep-sea Mining to the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources

www.southernfriedscience.com/the-urgency-...

One of the biggest microplastic pollution sources isn’t straws or grocery bags – it’s your tires Every few years, the tires on your car wear thin and need to be replaced. But where does that lost tire material go? The answer, unfortunately, is often waterways, where the tiny microplastic particle...

I see there’s a post about microplastics going around with a photo of drinking straws, so here is my semi-regular reminder that the 3 biggest sources of microplastics are tires (45%), synthetic clothing particles (35%) and paint (~10%).
Lay article attached:

How should we deal with space junk? Space recycling, of course | CNN Junk is accumulating in space at a fantastic pace, with millions of pieces orbiting the Earth, and humans need to figure out a way to deal with it.

Good news, everyone! Today is my first day as a climate and weather editor for CNN (For realsies, instead of a temp position. I'm bona-fide now) and I got to publish my first CNN byline on the same day.

www.cnn.com/2025/12/08/c...

Taking place at DAYBREAK on Thursday! Join us for a happy hour focused on sustainability

www.facebook.com/events/15201...

I am fundamentally uncomfortable with western multinationals saying that we have to mind the deep sea for cobalt because cobalt mining in the DRC is too environmentally destructive and can't be regulated.

Remind me, who built those mining industries and undermined their ability to regulate?

It's a 1984 reference war is peace. Wow he's such a genius!

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders?

Food systems are the #2 contributor to climate change, the #1 driver of deforestation, the #1 driver of biodiversity loss on land, and the #1 user of freshwater.

(It follows that food systems contain many solutions to these problems.)

The river that came back to life: a journey down the reborn Klamath Less than a year after four dams were removed from the river, life has blossomed along its banks, presenting new challenges and joys of recovery

Nature turns a page. With concrete cleared, rapids return. Salmon reclaim old grounds. The river speaks. Restoration is real, because rivers were meant to run free.

#KlamathRiver #DamRemoval #RiverRestoration

It took only 8 years for solar to go from 100 to 1,000 TWh...

then it took only 3 years to go from 1,000 to 2,000 TWh.

Solar is growing faster than any source of electricity in history ☀️

Five-panel comic about environmental decline. First shows declining biodiversity graph with animals. Second illustrates global interconnected crises affecting Earth. Third and fourth panels depict rolling stones representing deep-rooted social patterns affecting nature's decline. Final panel shows diverse group of people observing wildlife and nature, suggesting hope for better futures. Marked as Chapter 1 and 2, illustrated by Michaël Olbrechts.

🚨 Nature is in decline — but change is possible.🌍

The @ipbes.net #TransformativeChange Assessment reveals what drives biodiversity loss & how we can build just & sustainable futures for nature & people.

🎨 Michaël Olbrechts

🔗 www.biodiversity.be/4128/%F0%9F%...

Scientists have been publishing climate models since ~1970.

A good way to evaluate their skill is to compare what they expected to happen in the years after the model was published to observed climate changes.

It turns out most models were pretty spot-on:

What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT? Very small compared to most of the other stuff you do.

There are lots of things that warrant discussion & debate about AI, but "it uses too much energy" is a short-sighted critique that will appear silly in retrospect.

Nurgle rise up

Trump Takes a Major Step Toward Seabed Mining in International Waters (Gift Article) A new executive order pits the United States against the rest of the world over the question of who can exploit mineral resources in shared waters.

It's wild that all my colleagues who are funded by a deep sea mining company to research the topic ultimately conclude that we shouldn't mine the deep sea.

We should stop seeing the ocean as a place to exploit instead of a place of wonder and beauty and an essential part of our life support system.

Single stream recycling doesn't work! Just too easy for cross contamination for the sake of convenience.

The 10 largest contributors to historical CO2 emissions*

*fossil emissions only, not including land use.

From one of our data insights this week: ourworldindata.org/data-insight...

Greenpeace Is Ordered to Pay Energy Transfer, a Pipeline Company, $660 Million The environmental group had said the lawsuit, over its role in a protest movement, could mean an end to its operations in the United States.

If the appeal fails, this is likely to be the end of Greenpeace USA:
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/c...

Domino meme Small domino: your actions, right now Large domino: a better world in the future

You know we can use the domino meme to look forward in time too, right?

A picture of the Kyoto stage

Delegate badges given out to the audience

Kyoto the play was excellent. See it if you can! Probably the best climate media I've ever seen.

Just got an email from the Fulbright Association. As of right now, funding has been cut off to 12,500 US citizens currently abroad and and more than 7,400 foreigner scholars and students in the United States

Beaver releases into wild to be allowed in England for first time in centuries Exclusive: Government to grant nature groups a licence for release of rodent species after earlier setbacks The release of beavers into English waterways is to be allowed for the first time in centuries, the Guardian can reveal. The environment…

Beaver releases into wild to be allowed in England for first time in centuries

Correct.

Meeting the US government’s 2050 “sustainable” aviation fuel target using corn ethanol would require ***120%*** of the amount of US land that currently grows corn for all purposes (food, feed, fuel).

(In other words, more than doubling the amount of US farmland under corn.)

Britain’s net zero economy is booming, CBI says Green sector growing at triple the rate of the UK economy, providing high-wage jobs and increasing energy security The net zero sector is growing three times faster than the overall UK economy, analysis has found, providing high-wage jobs across the…

Britain’s net zero economy is booming, CBI says

Carbon removal is the next big fossil fuel boom, oil company says Occidental wants to use climate tech to boost oil and gas production.

So a fossil fuel company that bought a CO₂ removal (CDR) startup for $1.1 billion plans to use the CO₂ captured from the atmosphere to get more oil out of the ground. It's…not great at all.

The 2025 #LAfires destroyed 16,000 structures, displacing thousands. A professor who studies managing risk in the face of climate change shares solutions for protecting low- and moderate-income residents. #climatesky 🌎 #housingcosts #resilience https://buff.ly/3Qmcbab

A quarter of US shoppers have dumped favorite stores over political stances A new poll also found that four in 10 Americans have shifted spending to align with moral views in recent months

ESG is dead. Long live ESG.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Pessimists sound clever.

Optimists change the world.

I love this depiction of the energy transition by RMI.

That famously green company Shell has put out its new energy scenarios and, boy, they are worth your time.

Here's a thread 🧵

By 2100, in the worst-case scenario, the oil company sees global warming peaking at 2.2C. In the most ambitious, it comes back down to 1.3C. www.shell.com/news-and-ins...

This isn't your grandpa's solar

Trump's offshore wind freeze could cost the US thousands of jobs and billions in investment. An energy policy professor explains why the Northeast and California stand to lose the most from this setback: https://buff.ly/3Q5YFHg (Barbara Kates-Garnick, Tufts University) 🌎 #climatesky #greenpower