Jon B

Twitter recluse - avid follower - worried Dad - Retweeting to the void for posterity’s sake, we can’t say they didn’t tell us. Born 339ppm.

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@PhilipProudfoot @LucyGoBag With all the greenwash, I also don’t think people grasp that we’re making things worse, quicker than any other point in human history with co2 emissions at record levels in 2025.

https://t.co/KbaUgig32d

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@DoctorVive We choose disavowal. A roof over our head, an income, ‘stability’ for our children. Different laws in different countries, but stepping out of line in protest in the UK now might mean time in prison - lose the roof over your head, your income and stability for your children.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

A newborn sperm whale can’t swim. It starts sinking the second it’s born. If nobody pushes it to the surface, it drowns in mile-deep water.

On July 8, 2023, a sperm whale named Rounder went into labor off the coast of Dominica. Researchers from Project CETI, a $33 million AI initiative out of MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern that’s trying to decode whale language, happened to be there doing routine fieldwork. They had drones in the air and underwater microphones running. What they captured over the next six hours just got published in two papers, one in Science and one in Scientific Reports.

Eleven whales gathered at the surface before Rounder even started delivering. Her mother, Lady Oracle, was there. So was her daughter Accra. Three generations in the water. But the wild part: half those whales belonged to a completely separate bloodline that normally keeps its distance from Rounder’s family. On a typical day, these two family lines split off to hunt in different areas and rarely cluster together. For the birth, they all converged before labor started. The unrelated family somehow knew it was coming.

The delivery took 34 minutes. Sperm whale calves come out tail-first with their flukes still folded from the womb. They haven’t developed the oil-filled organ in their heads that helps adult whales float, so the moment they’re born, they’re dead weight in the ocean. Every adult whale in the group, related and unrelated, started taking turns pushing the calf up to breathe. They kept this rotation going for three hours. When a pod of pilot whales (known to be aggressive toward sperm whales) and a large group of Fraser’s dolphins showed up during delivery, the adults formed a wall around the newborn until the threat passed.

The underwater audio is where it gets interesting. CETI’s microphones picked up the whales changing their vocal patterns during the birth. The click-based sounds they use to talk to each other shifted at specific moments, and vowel-like structures appeared in the recordings. This builds on what CETI found in 2024 when they ran machine learning on over 8,700 recorded whale calls and discovered sperm whale communication isn’t a basic 21-sound code. It’s a system of about 300 distinct sound combinations, with the whales adjusting rhythm and timing in real time, speeding up and slowing down the way a musician does mid-performance. A 2025 follow-up from UC Berkeley found these clicks also contain vowel patterns, something scientists had assumed only humans could produce.

Sperm whales carry the largest brain of any animal on the planet. About 9 kg. Roughly six times heavier than yours. The evolutionary analysis in the new Science paper suggests this kind of cooperative birthing goes back over 36 million years, to the common ancestor of all toothed whales. The calf was spotted a year later, swimming with its family.

[Nate Bear @NateB_Panic]

The storms get bigger and everything keeps breaking but all some people can think of is technological progress. Fucking mental illness. Also it's a propeller plane and a combustion engine. Same tech as 100+ years ago

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@danielsilas @BBCRosAtkins @katierazz @thetimes Also Simon Bailey (former national lead for child protection) on Tuesday’s World at One, about 9min 50 in.

https://t.co/eE5cdSkTtW

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@wblau @ThierryAaron The years and months of the budget remaining in the corner of the screen, or as a sub header in any climate article.

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@MrMatthewTodd Good piece here, talks about a Trump presidency about halfway down. Climate disaster will be an opportunity “A society crashing from one incompetently managed disaster to another offers ample opportunities for corruption, graft, and profiteering”

https://t.co/ZwglCZHbcm

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@LucyGoBag Discussed here at length too - hat tip to @NickGBreeze for a brilliant podcast series.

https://t.co/t20EI5nLJj

[ClimateGenn Podcast @ClimateGENN]

New ClimateGenn Episode: 'Nature Is Angry! A New Era Of Extreme Weather: UK Met Office Chief Meteorologist & Climate Risk Prof Join The Dots.'
https://t.co/CVKRX7e2QN @NickGBreeze @HayleyJFowler

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@BrianTu85458331 @BritWeatherSvs @NIAbbot @LBC Thank you - I did, couldn’t find it after a quick skip through the show on Saturday.

[Simon Oldridge @SiOldridge]

The UK’s carbon capture plans will cause emissions to soar past targets.

This is a fossil fuel industry scam of epic proportions.

Why? My thread on a letter from leading scientists to @Ed_Miliband 👇

And a concise briefing for your MP:
https://t.co/NADoaDzc9B #CCS

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@richardpayne94 @RachelReevesMP Hello, saw you on @BBCNews whilst also reading this thread.

https://t.co/yjbgkpff54

[Andy Summers @Summers_AD]

Even farms worth £5,000,000 will in practice only pay Inheritance Tax of less than 1% per year (for 10yrs). How can that be?

Some worked examples...

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@NickJF75 @ProfLizBentley https://t.co/wI9B7GHN45

[Eoghan Gilmartin @EoghanGilmartin]

The failure of authorities to issue public warnings in time before the devastating floods in Valencia offer an example of what it means when far-right policies meet environmental disasters.

One of Vox's conditions for backing the PP's Carlos Mazón as regional premier was the elimination of the Valencian Emergency Response Unit.

[Dr Charlie Gardner (also on the blue place) @CharlieJGardner]

1/ We're rightly terrified of feedback loops and tipping processes in the climate system - but what about climate feedbacks in our social and economic systems?
🧵

[Bill McKibben @billmckibben]

Hottest temperature ever recorded this late in the year in the Northern Hemisphere

[Joyce Msuya @JoyceMsuya]

The entire population of North Gaza is at risk of dying.

[Olga Lautman 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @OlgaNYC1211]

So CNN is reporting that @washingtonpost did have an endorsement ready to go and Bezos stepped in to stop it. Also that they expect there will be resignations. Disgusting and dangerous

[Dr Charlie Gardner (also on the blue place) @CharlieJGardner]

Once upon a time I thought the relationship between scientists and governments would be like that between a look-out and the captain of a ship

You know, one warns of danger and the other takes appropriate action to keep everyone safe

How fucking naive 😂😢

[Jon B @SitOnTheWheel]

@jonathanwatts Is hope just a symptom of disavowal - just one of the many coping mechanisms we use to get us through the day?

https://t.co/6adMK5ReFf

[Josh Ellis @jzellis]

Elections in America are a Kobayashi Maru if you're progressive. There is no victory, only resignation and nightmare. I don't think Harris will do anything that makes my life better in any way or solves the problems I personally care about.

But I know for a fact Trump won't.