Our Common Ocean

Conserving the ocean through education.
'No blue, no green' - Sylvia Earle
#oceanliteracy

Also: @[email protected]

[Prof. Katharine Hayhoe @KHayhoe]

This article says climate change is “believed to have played a role” in the UK's extreme heat this week.

As a climate scientist, let me fact-check that.

First, climate change is not a religion. No belief is required. It is about evidence.

And the evidence has been crystal clear for more than two decades: climate change is making heat waves hotter, longer, more frequent and more dangerous.

In fact, science has advanced far beyond saying climate change merely “played a role.” Today, we can quantify how much more likely and how much hotter climate change made a specific event.

Here's the bottom line:

Climate is changing. Humans are responsible. And we are experiencing the impacts now. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that solutions already exist, and the majority of people care - 89%, around the world!

But meaningful action depends on helping people understand not just what is happening: we need to know how it affects our lives (this heat wave being example A today) and what we can do about it.

That’s the opportunity this reporting missed.

https://t.co/vYfPDKcWWf

[Dr Elaine Cox 🍃 💚 🍃🌽🥬🐦‍⬛🐌🇬🇧 @ElaineCox11]

Uncut grass keeps the ground at around 19.5°C
Grass cut to 10 cm raises the ground temperature to about 24.5°C
Bare ground in the middle of summer rises to over 40°C
It's important to raise awareness #NoMowMay

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

Researchers sent the same resume to an AI hiring tool twice. Same qualifications. Same experience. Same skills. One version was written by a real human. The other was rewritten by ChatGPT.

The AI picked the ChatGPT version 97.6% of the time.

A team from the University of Maryland, the National University of Singapore, and Ohio State just published the receipt. They took 2,245 real human-written resumes pulled from a professional resume site from before ChatGPT existed, so the human writing was actually human. Then they had seven of the most-used AI models in the world rewrite each one. GPT-4o. GPT-4o-mini. GPT-4-turbo. LLaMA 3.3-70B. Qwen 2.5-72B. DeepSeek-V3. Mistral-7B.

Then they asked each AI to pick the better resume. Every model picked itself.

GPT-4o hit 97.6%. LLaMA-3.3-70B hit 96.3%. Qwen-2.5-72B hit 95.9%. DeepSeek-V3 hit 95.5%. The real human almost never won.

Then the researchers tried the obvious objection. Maybe the AI is just better at writing. So they had real humans grade the resumes for actual quality and ran the experiment again, controlling for it. The result was worse. Each AI kept picking itself even when human judges rated the human-written version as clearer, more coherent, and more effective.

It gets worse. The AIs do not just prefer AI over humans. They prefer themselves over other AIs. DeepSeek-V3 picked its own resumes 69% more often than LLaMA's. GPT-4o picked its own 45% more often than LLaMA's. Each model can recognize and reward its own dialect.

Then the researchers ran the simulation that ends careers. Same job. 24 occupations. Same qualifications. The only variable was whether the candidate used the same AI as the screening tool. Candidates using that AI were 23% to 60% more likely to be shortlisted. Worst gap was in sales, accounting, and finance.

99% of large companies now run AI on incoming resumes. Most of them use GPT-4o. The paper just proved GPT-4o picks GPT-4o 97.6% of the time.

If you wrote your own cover letter this week, you did not lose to a better candidate. You lost to a worse candidate who paid OpenAI 20 dollars.

Your qualifications do not matter if the AI prefers its own handwriting over yours.

[Oceana UK @OceanaUK]

🚨 BREAKING: 58% of fishing catch limits for 2026 have been set ABOVE scientific advice. That means industrial ships have just been given a free pass to take too much from our seas, yet again - as confirmed by the government's own fisheries advisors, @CefasGovUK, today.

[Emily Hague 🚢🐳🐬 @emilyhague]

📢 SURVEY: Do you use - or have you ever used - drones in marine mammal research? 🐳🐋If so, please complete our short survey and help us map the growing range of ways UAVs are being used around the world for marine mammal monitoring and research: https://t.co/MVhcAR29d1

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

A human consumes about 2,000 calories per day. Over 20 years, that’s roughly 17,000 kWh of total food energy. Training GPT-4 consumed an estimated 50 GWh of electricity. That’s 3,000 humans worth of “training energy” for a single model run.

And GPT-4 is already dead. OpenAI retired GPT-4o from ChatGPT on February 13th. The model that took 50 GWh to train got less than two years of flagship status before replacement. The human you spent 17,000 kWh “training” for 20 years produces economic output for the next 40 to 60 years. The amortization window on GPT-4 was shorter than a car lease.

Now look at what replaced it. GPT-5.2, released December 2025, is OpenAI’s current default. The GPT-5 series consumes an estimated 18 Wh per average query according to the University of Rhode Island’s AI Lab, up to 40 Wh for extended reasoning. That’s 8.6 times more electricity per response than GPT-4. With 2.5 billion queries hitting ChatGPT daily and GPT-5.2 now the default model, the inference math gets staggering fast. Even at a blended average well below 18 Wh, you’re looking at daily electricity consumption that could power over a million American households.

This is what Altman is actually doing. OpenAI hit $13 billion in annual recurring revenue but still isn’t profitable. They need you to think of AI energy consumption as natural and inevitable, the same way you think about feeding a child, because the alternative framing is that they’re burning through enough electricity to rival small countries while racing to build 1-gigawatt Stargate data centers. The food analogy makes the energy costs feel biological and unavoidable instead of what they are: an engineering and business choice that scales with every model generation.

The comparison sounds clever at a fireside chat in India. It falls apart the second you do the arithmetic.

[John Nichol ✈ @JohnNicholRAF]

Long ramble:
I have been mulling if I should comment on President Trump's inane comments about NATO involvement in Afghanistan. Although 35 years ago, during the US-led first Gulf War, I was lying, handcuffed & blindfolded - literally 'shoulder to shoulder' - with a US colleague on a concrete floor in an Iraqi interrogation bunker, I rather feel it should be the current generation who express any anger at the President's ludicrous, demonstrably false utterings. Which is why I earlier shared some posts from others.
But perhaps I will reflect like this - I watched Trump's press conference in the wake of the terrible tragedy when a US helicopter collided with a civilian airliner last January in disbelief. 64 people lost their lives but it seemed to be about him - his expertise, his knowledge, what he thought had happened. Much of what he said was incorrect.
So I realised back then that it was going to be pointless trying to analyse any upcoming word-salads. Everything is clearly about him; his expertise in every subject, his grasp of all situations. His need to say something, anything, to show he is the best, the cleverest, the smartest, the most knowledgeable kid on the block.
The pub-bore, the braggart, the know-it-all, pontificates on anything and everything in the hope of bolstering their own, clearly very low, self-esteem.
I wonder that, in the President's mind, that it doesn't matter if what he says is factually correct? I wonder if he knows, understands, even cares, what is true? He is saying some words, which in his mind, seems to suggest that he's important and people will admire him, laud him. The fact that everyone around him then applauds this character trait, thanking him for his 'leadership' at every turn, just amplifies his desire, his need to continue. He's got want he wants - in his mind - attention, praise, admiration.
So to sum up, trying to analyse Trump's ramblings is like trying to play chess with a pigeon. Somewhat interesting at first, but ultimately, truly pointless and rather frustrating.
To those he has hurt, insulted, vilified, I send you my deepest condolences for your loss, and gratitude for your service.

[leanahosea @leanahosea]

Two decades of tireless work restoring habitat & creating eco-mooring sites (so boats' anchors don't tear seagrass out by the roots) by @seahorsecharity & @NOCnews, has paid off with a spectacular summer of seahorses off the Dorset coast this year 🌊

https://t.co/z7sfJiu5l5

[The Wildlife Trusts @WildlifeTrusts]

New research from the Home Builders Federation highlights that lack of resources in local authorities and lack of a clear, standard process are key causes to delays in the delivery of new homes, not nature. So why is nature being used as a scapegoat? 🤔 (1/2)

[Oceana UK @OceanaUK]

📢 This #WorldOceanDay we're DEMANDING action from govt: BAN bottom trawling in protected areas! 🌊🪸

TAKE A STAND WITH US HERE: https://t.co/5RxrqOqtPi

🚨 The world's watching. The time is now⏰

Our director @HugoSAS live at the UN Ocean Conference making sure we're heard 🔽

[Lewis Pugh Foundation @LewisPughFDN]

They’re apex predators, but they’re not invincible.

Explore our graphic to understand the scale of the crisis and why sharks need urgent protection 🦈👇📉

#TheSharkSwim

[Oceana UK @OceanaUK]

🚨 EXPOSED: Unseen footage reveals the DEVASTATING impact of bottom-trawl fishing. David Attenborough’s new film #OCEAN is a call to arms to end this heartbreaking destruction of our marine protected areas. Will you heed his call?

TAKE ACTION with us now👉https://t.co/5RxrqOqtPi

[Dr Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford]

The collapse of resident doctor training posts is manufactured, deliberate & simply appalling for NHS patients.

How, precisely, are you going to fix this, @wesstreeting?

[Katie Macfarlane @weekates88]

❗️VACANCY❗

Great opportunity with @mcsuk - Citizen Science Programme Developer! 🦪🪸🦭🌊

Apply now 👇

https://t.co/1vVqI4zf9e

[Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas]

Britain has become a world-leader in cracking down on climate activism & right to peaceful protest is under attack as never before. Solidarity with brave #16 who appeal their draconian sentences today. Me for ⁦@guardian⁩👇⁦@DefendourJuries⁩ https://t.co/pFkD5MIHXe

[Katie Macfarlane @weekates88]

Really looking forward to hosting our first #Voicefortheocean FREE youth event in the northeast of England in a few weeks! 🌊🦀🦈🐠

📍Saturday 1st March 2025
📅 10.45am - 3.30pm
⏲️ Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle

Please share, share, share!
https://t.co/VT4ztvt9W2

[Oceana UK @OceanaUK]

#Sandeels were not put on this planet to line the pockets of Big Industry. They belong in the sea, where they support & sustain marine life, like #puffins & porpoises. The EU must see sense and put our #ocean ahead of greed and short-term profit. 👇 https://t.co/O7oUObYr5j

[John Morales @JohnMoralesTV]

Unprecedented: For extra context around storm Éowyn in the UK this is a map of maximum gusts recorded today expressed as a climatological percentile. Ie 100 indicates the strongest gust ever recorded at that site. Via @alexdeakin 🇬🇧

[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

"This is the great discovery of the conflict entrepreneurs: what counts in politics is not how well people are doing, but how well they're doing in relation to designated out-groups." So people support a class war against themselves.
My column this week. https://t.co/Lhov0g3wxs

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

"Lawyers for Reed will argue on Tuesday in the court of appeal that cleaning up individual rivers and streams devastated by pollution is administratively unworkable."

So saving England's rivers is "administratively unworkable".
Someone needs to get a grip on this and quickly. Idiotic decision from beginning to end.