State of the Global Climate 2025

The State of the Global Climate 2025 by the WMO is out and confirms once again what we have already known for decades. This one comes with a cool ArcGIS Dashboard of the 2025 Extreme Events, a great tool for presenting such data.

The Dance of the Continents

Dance of the continents is a very nice Esri Story Map showing the interplay of plate tectonics and evolution over the last 600 million years. I especially like the first section where you can step backwards in time to see the (current) continents come together first as Pangea and then again as Rodinia.

AI & Jobs: Vulnerability

Saw this on Flowing Data: Jobs vulnerable to AI. This links to Measuring US workers’ capacity to adapt to AI-driven job displacement where the authors 'mapped' job vulnerability as a function of a) exposure andb) adaptability.

Defossilization

That was a new term for me: defossilization. We will still very much need carbon-based compounds (even after we transition to 100 percent sustainable energy) for manfacturing of plastics, detergents, medicines, and more.

Okay, so we still have plenty of oil around...so why not use the oil for that? We should have plenty 'excess' capacity in the oil fields! Plan is a CO2-to-methanol process powered by solar energy and then the methanol is converted to olefines (e.g. ethylene & propylene) which are petrochemicals that can be used to manufacture plastics and more.

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is always a worthy read & watch:

• They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity (The Guardian)
• https://youtu.be/HZdKKD0oLrs

Here's his main take from the article:

The 'old' heart of Christianity was lover & concern for other as lived by Jesus. The 'new' heart of Christianity is personal salvation and that required them to 're-make' Jesus into some else entirely.

Back in the late 1950s, some 52 percent of Americans were part of the so-called mainline denominations (e.g. Methodist, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, etc.) and about 33 percent were Catholics. Modern Christanity is instead dominated by megachurches, TV ministries, and right-wing evangelicals who are the MAGA core.

Mainline Protestantism surrenderd their version of Jesus to this new toxic form of Christianity without a fight & we see the same thing today with America: we are surrendering our version of America (as imperfect as it is) to MAGA without much of a fight.

Your Electricty In Real-Time!

Two nice web apps & smartphone apps:

• Electricity Maps (global)
• ISO New England Real-Time Maps & Charts

AI: The Good & The Bad

So many nuances to AI - here's a compilation of resources:

• Cheap AI chatbots transform medical diagnoses in places with limited care
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