Pooja Babu

You can’t reboot the planet if you crash it What Gates is putting forward aren’t legitimate arguments that can be made in good faith. They are shopworn fossil fuel industry talking points.

"You can’t reboot the planet if you crash it" | My commentary on Bill Gates' flawed new climate missive for @thebulletin.org: thebulletin.org/2025/10/you-...

I'm very concerned about all the #GlobalSumudFlotilla detainees, but especially Hannah Schafer, who seems likely to be held in extended detention in Israel. Israeli armed forces have committed grave and multiple breaches of international law in attacking the flotilla and mistreating its crew.

Pseudoscience is popular in part because it seeks to confirm our beliefs.

Science can be less popular in part because it seeks to interrogate our beliefs.

Good science, like good art and literature, can upset the established ways in which we see the world.

A screenshot of a post by the Jane Goodall Institute on LinkedIn stating that they learned that Dr. Goodall passed away due to natural causes in California while on her speaking to her current speaking tour there.

The world has lost its most powerful advocate for nature and hope. Yet many remain who will continue her legacy and I know she will continue to inspire generations more.

Beyond Time: Unveiling the Invisible Burden of Mental Load This paper introduces a novel, scalable methodology to measure individual perceptions of gaps in mental load -- the cognitive and emotional burden associated with organizing household and childcare ta...

🧵New paper out:

“Beyond Time: Unveiling the Invisible Burden of Mental Load”

with Barigozzi, Monfardini, Montinari, @elenapisanelli.bsky.social @svevav.bsky.social

🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2505.11426

/1

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

From things I've seen recently, I think many people would benefit from reading this. It's short, and it's free.

👉 rdcu.be/dbFbB

The destruction of the Gaza city mosque is a devastating loss to humanity as a whole. A part of our global medieval heritage destroyed in furtherance to a genocide. I despair.

How We Came To Know Earth | Quanta Magazine Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history. This series from Quanta Magazine guides you through basic climate science — from quantum effects to ancient hothouses, from...

Climate science is the most significant scientific collaboration in history, and its lessons are a massive human achievement. “How We Came To Know Earth,” our new series, is a guide to the modern understanding of fundamental climate science. www.quantamagazine.org/series/clima...

Silk worm is a moth My stupid ignorance and poignant realization.

A new post on nature, my ignorance, and a poignant realization.
#sciencesky #scicomm #naturesky

thoughttrail.substack.com/p/silk-worm-...

The last 3 years have been the hottest in around 125,000 years.

CO2 levels are their highest in MILLIONS of years.

But most people have no idea this is happening, let alone what it means for our kids’ futures.

Our politics & media have failed our children. We should be furious.

Silk worm is a moth My stupid ignorance and poignant realization.

A new post on nature, my ignorance, and a poignant realization.
#sciencesky #scicomm #naturesky

thoughttrail.substack.com/p/silk-worm-...

The genius of trees: how forests have shaped humanity, from chocolate cravings to our ability to dream Since our early ancestors came down from the canopy, we may think we have learned how to live without trees. But our lives remain intertwined in incredible ways

The genius of trees: how forests have shaped humanity, from chocolate cravings to our ability to dream

Big tech’s selective disclosure masks AI’s real climate impact Google claims to have disclosed new information proving its own efficiency. But it has hidden the bigger picture. Guess what: I’ve got the bigger picture for you right here in this big old po…

HEY friends: recently seen heaps of "disclosures" from AI companies of the energy cost per question you type into chatbots (most recently from Google)?

Presenting per-query 'efficiency' is part of big tech's efforts to hide its extremely real and happening-right-now climate impacts!

NEW POST -->>>

I find it funny when people—and I’ve seen comments like this — say we need to build fusion reactors instead of wasting time on solar. It’s like, honey, there’s a big fusion reactor in the sky that is always sending us power and we just need to collect it.

Antony Loewenstein: Israel has killed more journalists in the last 22 months than were killed in the US civil war, WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza Israel controls the flow of food into Gaza. It has calculated how many calories Palestinians need to stay alive. Its data shows only a fraction has been allowed in

It cannot be denied: this is a deliberate and coldly-calculated famine, engineered by a technologically-advanced state which knows exactly what it is doing.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

The Not-So-Visible Climatic Cost of Feeding the World. How does the food we eat affect the climate?

My attempt to explain the hidden climatic costs of food. Please give it a read!

#climate #food

open.substack.com/pub/thoughtt...

Text reads: Watership Down by Richard Adams Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton Mink River by Brian Doyle The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Veryln Klinkenborg The Call of the Wild by Jack London White Fang by Jack London The Bees by Laline Paul Pod by Laline Paul Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt North Woods by Daniel Mason The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay Fox 8 by George Saunders I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky Flush by Virginia Woolf

I’m looking for examples of literary fiction/novels for (or beloved by) adults that have animal narrators or that otherwise make a serious effort to portray the experiences/inner lives of (ideally non-anthropomorphized) animals & other nonhuman beings.

Here’s what I have so far. What would you add?

The Not-So-Visible Climatic Cost of Feeding the World. How does the food we eat affect the climate?

My attempt to explain the hidden climatic costs of food. Please give it a read!

#climate #food

open.substack.com/pub/thoughtt...

Two billion people don’t have safe drinking water: what does this really mean for them? For billions, it can mean hours spent collecting water. For almost a million, it means dying from disease.

Two billion people don’t have safe drinking water.

I really like the article of my colleague @hannahritchie.bsky.social, in which she shows what this concretely means for these people, by relying on the portraits of families in Gapminder's Dollar Street project.

ourworldindata.org/what-no-safe...

I frequently take comfort in the fact that the Universe is vast and beautiful and entirely unaffected by petty human foolishness

🚨 New in Nature Human Behavior! 🚨

Binary climate data visuals amplify perceived impact of climate change.

Both graphs in this image reflect equivalent climate change trends over time, yet people consistently perceive climate change as having a greater impact in the right plot than the left.

👇1/n

How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren’t Saying A growing body of research attempts to put a number on energy use and AI—even as the companies behind the most popular models keep their carbon emissions a secret.

how much energy does your ChatGPT search really use? i wrote about the trials and tribulations of putting a number on AI emissions, & how some of the most powerful companies in the world could clear it up for us — but they're staying silent. feat a peek at new research from @sashamtl.bsky.social !

Does a ChatGPT query really use ten times more energy than a Google search? Does training any AI model emit as much CO2 as 5 cars? and can AI help us reduce global GHG emissions by 10%? 🤔

We tracked down the origins of these numbers 🕵‍♀️ and wrote a paper about it!

arxiv.org/abs/2506.15572

Finally some numbers about ChatGPT's energy and water use? ⚡

Even if this is the true amount of energy used for a query (and that's a big if!), multiplied by the billions of queries a day, this adds up massively.

And that's not counting image generation, which is much more energy-intensive!

Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, with most of this used to raise livestock for dairy and meat.

How much would our agricultural land use decline if the world adopted a plant-based diet?

The Emotional Whiplash of a Climate Scientist | Atmos Dr. Kate Marvel explores the grief, anger, wonder, and love she feels studying climate change in an excerpt from her new book, Human Nature.

You can read the introduction to my book in the wonderful Atmos magazine here:
atmos.earth/the-emotiona...

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

We emit ~40B tons of CO2 annually in recent years, but ~10B are absorbed by forests/land ecosystems & another ~10B are absorbed by oceans.

Without those natural carbon sinks, CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere would be twice as high.