Environmental News

Many technological innovations have facilitated expansion of the Human Enterprise, among them, animal husbandry. (That's what it's called; do not infer that humans are husbands with subsequent ewww).

There have been negative consequences:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02165-x
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09192-8

 

Many reports here are doom and gloomy, and so when those to the contrary appear, I do try to include them. Here is another:

Global soil organic carbon levels on the rise due to climate change | EurekAlert!

TL;DR There is a lot of carbon stored in global soils and it is increasing. Beyond accounting, high-carbon soils benefit plants and critters living in them.

 

However ...

Other threads here about orbital-satellite problems focus on uncontrolled reentries that risk bonking something important. Orbital collision risks appear there, but they are not really the same thing. I extract one very surprising quote from:

Nearly everyone opposes Trump’s plan to kill space traffic control program - Ars Technica

“The military currently performs the spaceflight safety mission, providing up to a million collision warnings per day to give satellite operators a heads-up that their spacecraft will encounter another object …”

I added emphasis to that, because dang.

However the word "will" above is obviously wrong choice. No Kessler yet

 

Beetles in a library:

Hungary’s oldest library is fighting to save 100,000 books from a beetle infestation | CNN

Lead off quote:
"Tens of thousands of centuries-old books are being pulled from the shelves of a medieval abbey in Hungary in an effort to save them from a beetle infestation that could wipe out centuries of history"

Oh man. 100 thousand old books have holes in them. They will be restored with probably some written characters lost that can mostly be replaced from context. Dial down the lurid.

This is bad. 100 thousand of library's 400 thousand old books have holes in them. These beetles are not super fast, so what we have is a library where workers have not been 'tending to their flock'. If other libraries of history take this to mean they ought to do more inspections, then some benefits will accrue.

The damaged books are being bagged up and bags filled with nitrogen gas for a while. Execute beetles, eggs and immatures, Alabama-style.