Quick Take — Alarmed by Trump’s cuts, scientists are talking weather and climate science. For 100 hours

Meteorologists and climate researchers aim to run a livestream for 100 hours to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to weather and climate research…

Also : the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget cuts about 90 per cent of funding for one of the country’s biological and ecological research programmes.

Known as the Ecosystems Mission Area, the programme is part of the United States. Geological Survey and studies almost every aspect of the ecology and biology of natural and human-altered landscapes and waters across the country.

The proposed 2026 budget allocates $29 million to the project, a cut from its current funding level of $293 million. The budget proposal also reduces funding for other programmes in the United States. Geological Survey, as well as other federal science agencies.

The budget still has to be approved by Congress, and scientists are seizing the opportunity to save the E.M.A. In early May, more than 70 scientific societies and universities signed a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, urging him not to eliminate the programme…

Source

Below: a recent article on climate change

Quick Take — Climate change: US home insurers’ rates become increasingly prohibitive

17% increase, following 20% increase last year. LA fires will cost $250 billion (NYT). Many insurers refuse to serve California customers.

Just months after fires devastated parts of Los Angeles, one of the leading home insurers in California, State Farm, is temporarily raising rates 17 percent.

The sharp jump, after a 20 percent rate increase last year, is sure to strain family finances in what is already one of the nation’s most expensive states for home insurance…

Even before the fires struck Los Angeles, state officials were scrambling to stop insurers from abandoning the California market as wildfires grow more frequent and destructive.

The Los Angeles fires only made the risks to homeowners, and insurers, more apparent. The total economic toll of the fires, including property damage and longer-term economic losses, is expected to top $250 billion, according to AccuWeather, making it one of the most expensive disasters of all time.

Under the January 2025 disaster

Quick Take — Are we ready for a future without chocolate? The answer (perhaps) lies in carob

Chocolate – a universal symbol of comfort, pleasure and celebration – is about to become a luxury good [we have been saying this for years]. This is not a provocation: it is a snapshot of a market on the alert, overwhelmed by unprecedented price increases. In 2024, the cost of cocoa went up 300% wholesale. And the reasons go far beyond the law of supply and demand.
Plantations in West Africa, where most of the world’s cocoa comes from, are increasingly suffering from climate change. High temperatures, erratic rainfall and increasingly difficult biodiversity management are putting the very survival of cacao trees at risk. To this is added an even more worrying phenomenon: some farmers in Ghana are abandoning cocoa to engage in illegal gold mining, a more profitable and immediate activity. The result is a hole in the market: a global shortage of about 500,000 tonnes of cocoa in 2024. A deep crack, which has prompted several companies to ask: can we imagine a future without chocolate – or, rather, without cocoa?

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