Alec Luhn

After he ran out of oxygen, Dawa Sherpa spent six days hauling himself down Mt Everest through crevasses & avalanches, the 1st person to survive an accident at 7,500 meters alone www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The UK has parachuted medics & oxygen into the world’s most remote island for a man who got hantavirus on the Hondius cruise ship. Not sure if I should feel reassured or more worried at the drastic measures being taken… www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

“The rainwater is actually black, also saturated, it appears, with oil … That’s what’s coming down this morning … on the Iranian capital after the strikes took place.” A city of 10 million people is being showered in carcinogens. Via @cnn.com

RIP Bob Weir. This was the last song he ever performed, Touch of Grey at the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in San Francisco. No one knew he had just been diagnosed with cancer. Jerry Garcia was the sorcerer, & Robert Hunter was the mad poet, but Bob was the heart & soul of the Dead.

Yesterday I was reading about how a type of PFAS (TFA) has been found in cereals in the EU, which is considering designating it toxic to reproduction. Meanwhile in the US:

Hard to think of a better image of how humanity is heading into climate breakdown

40+ glaciologists just published a paper calling geoengineering to save the Arctic & Antarctic a dangerous distraction. But other scientists argue that with ice melting we at least need to research them. My report about a sea ice thickening experiment in Nunavut, on CBC www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

Trump’s EPA canceled a $20m grant to fortify the Alaska Native village of Kipnuk against flooding. Now 121 houses in Kipnuk have been destroyed by flooding, & a total 1,800 people have been evacuated in one of the biggest airlifts in Alaska history. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

72% of Americans: “Global warming is happening” Trump: Global warming is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world … & I’m really good at predicting things”

“A shutdown is an attentional event. It’s an effort to turn the diffuse crisis of Trump’s corrupting of the government into an acute crisis that the media, that the public, will actually pay attention to.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/o...

Olivia Campbell-Cavendish announced at @transpridebrighton.bsky.social that the Trans Legal Clinic has raided £70,000 to match JK Rowling’s donation to lawsuit against trans recognition

“Why your big ugly utility bill will get bigger & uglier under President Trump’s big beautiful spending bill”—a beautifully simple explanation here of the cost rises, which will be the biggest in red states @billweircnn.bsky.social

In congress: Bill to give billions to ICE, cut billions from Medicaid & renewables In the Supreme Court: Decision to limit challenges to Trump’s executive orders In the media:

Ed Milliband tells the largest ever London Climate Action Week that oil price ups & downs over Iran show “we need to get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuels” for energy security as well as climate #lcaw

Enric Sala, NatGeo explorer & exec producer of David Attenborough's 'Ocean,' calls the UN Ocean Conference "disappointing." Despite new MPA announcements, only 8-9% of the ocean is protected—& bottom trawling is still allowed in many areas, including by host country France

The glacier collapse that buried Blatten, Switzerland, was caused by permafrost thaw. The thawing mountain face had dropped 4m cubic yards of rock on the glacier, pushing it down the slope www.npr.org/2025/05/29/g...

The clearest ever images of the sun have revealed new plasma phenomena, including “coronal rain, city-sized droplets of plasma that fall to the sun’s surface as they cool” (h/t @jjaron.bsky.social) www.newscientist.com/article/2482...

“5 meters further south & it would have entered the bedroom, & that wouldn’t have been particularly pleasant.” Classic Norwegian understatement from a man almost crushed in his sleep by a container ship.

I went to Cambridge Bay 🇨🇦 near where the Franklin expedition was trapped in the ice & starved. Now the ice is melting so fast a geoengineering startup's trying to thicken it. It's controversial but 🇬🇧 gov gave $13m. (Vid by Taylor Roades) @sciam.bsky.social: www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-...

While experiments to block sunlight have been halted over public outcry, ice geoengineering trials are taking at the poles. I went to Arctic Canada to see Real Ice make new sea ice, for the @sciam.bsky.social podcast

If you’re going to chainsaw the iconic sycamore at Sycamore Gap, maybe don’t keep a video of it on your phone. 2 men have been found guilty & face “a lengthy period in custody.” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Allergies are getting worse. Pollen season has lengthened by 20 days. Also, pollen concentrations increased 2% because plants grow faster as CO2 levels rise. abcnews.go.com/Health/feels...

It’s a good thing he got away. Because it’s illegal to die in Svalbard.

Last week I got to visit CIMSS. If you’ve been to UW-Madison you’ve seen it: the tower with the satellite dishes on top. But its life-saving forecasting & data collection are at risk from NOAA cuts. Here’s “Earthrise,” a daily CIMSS satellite image set to music. www.channel3000.com/news/federal...

Is LA wildfire runoff poisoning sea lions? I guess we’ll never know 🤷‍♂️

A Russian drone hits the (internationally funded) Chernobyl containment. What was it Trump said? “Putin wants peace”?

Elon Musk does a Nazi-like salute & The Washington Post … cuts to the crowd. No mention anywhere 🤔

Timelapse of a fire annihilating a hill in Los Angeles in just a few hours. You can see from the smoke there’s a lot of wind www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5...

China has just become the 2nd largest historical emitter. That ups pressure on it to join the #COP29 climate finance goal. Don’t worry Trump will make sure the US remains #1 emitter www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

5 days into #COP29, activists are allowed to have a demonstration where participants might actually see it. They can’t name specific countries, companies or people apnews.com/article/clim...