Notices by Wolfgang Lucht (w_lucht@mstdn.social)

Here's me - in 1973, with the last Saturn V rocket on the launch pad.

Little did I know I'd be a scientist.

"The world's largest producer of aviation biofuel, Finnish fuel firm Neste, has been using banned palm oil instead of recycled cooking oil, according to Swedish public broadcaster SVT."

A former manager: "The entire biofuel market has problems with fake raw materials."

https://yle.fi/a/74-20216793

And here's the document as a whole:
https://www.bundesumweltministerium.de/fileadmin/Daten_BMU/Download_PDF/Klimaschutz/klimaschutzprogramm_2026_bf.pdf

💀🌎 CNN #Climate:

"The Trump administration announced it will pay nearly $1 billion to French energy giant TotalEnergies in exchange for the company abandoning plans to build offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean and instead pursue fossil fuel projects in the US. TotalEnergies will now spend the money on the development of a new liquified natural gas plant in Texas that will help export US LNG overseas to Europe."

The US administration is arguing that even as the US, and with it all of Earth, are steaming full ahead at the iceberg [substitute your favourite analogy] - the captain and its crew have no business steering it away from danger.

The stupidity is breathtaking. If the consequences weren't so irreversible, global, existential, it'd be laughable. But it isn't.

Such corruption of gvmt by the fossil industry, such capitalism has only one value: profit. Life, the future, the planet count for nothing.

Planetary Boundaries 🌏🌍🌎

This Monday, the Guardian had a piece that contained a great ultra-short summary of the planetary boundaries.

It labels them in alternate, more easily understood terms than what we did in our paper - and gives their state in just a few words.

I think it's really well done.

"Economic growth is still heating the planet"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/feb/09/economic-growth-carbon-emissions-impact-global-heating

Our paper on the boundaries, 2023:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458

Our Planetary Health Check 2025:
https://www.planetaryhealthcheck.org/

A strong, urgent statement by scientists (led by Johan Rockström of PIK and Carlos Nobre of the Brazilian Science Panel of the Amazon), co-organisers of the "Planetary Science Pavillion" at the COP30 in Belém.

"Most of the CO₂ budget that would push warming to 1.5°C has already been emitted, mainly by the world’s major economies."

"It is impossible to stop temperatures from rising, and getting back to 1.5C, without quickly phasing out fossil fuels. This is physics."

It couldn't be clearer.

In Prague today, I went to find the spot where this picture was taken: Soviet tanks in the city center in 1968, crushing the Prague Spring - an attempt by the people to gain more freedom and independence. Soviet Russia wasn't having any of it, here in the heart of Europe.

Look what this place looks like today. Flooded with tourists. I found that the picture was taken from a spot right in front of the medieval famous astronomical clock.

What's happening in Ukraine is more of the same.

A sweet-sad event here in downtown Berlin, at Humboldt University: saying farewell - and celebrating - geographer, climatologist, passionate human Christoph Schneider. After 10 yrs at Humboldt, he'll be the new Rector of the University of Hohenheim.

For years, we taught "Climate and Earth System Dynamics" together, in Geography. It was all full of energy. Then he became our Vice President for Research. And made the book on A. von Humboldt & the Anthropocene happen - and, determined, my text.

👉👉👉 Only three hours to go! 👈👈👈

At 18:00 central European time today, the new 2025 Planetary Health Check will become available online, an update to the status of the planetary boundaries.

The report is being presented at the New York Climate week. It follows the 2024 edition.

It is written by the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab, a unit in the department I co-lead at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Earth System Analysis, with intl. collaborators.

https://www.planetaryhealthcheck.org/

I was born a mere 19 years after the Nazi tyranny was finally brought down. "Never again" was for real and not just a slogan. All that seems half forgotten as once more right-wing demagogues push for power, again promising the same: order, privilege, national glory. But fascism delivers only death and destruction - because prosperity thrives on collaboration, tolerance and empathy. It is beyond belief how the authoritarian playbook is again fed to the people, and to what extent they like it.

🌍 It's been 2 years this month that we published "Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries" in Science Advances.

📢 The paper's metrics stand at:
* 686.912 downloads - a breathtaking number for a scientific paper
* 1.505 times cited in other publications

😯 Still missing: decisive action to halt the destabilisation of our planet.

🤯 What we have instead: dithering, denial, disinformation.

A shout-out to all of you who are not giving up, who do their best to get us to wake up!

💣💥 So, Listen Up! A rare opportunity!

We, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, are looking for (#jobs):

* a Full Professor of Ocean Physics 🌊 (with U Potsdam)
* to co-lead (with me ...) our Department for Earth System Analysis 🌍 (50 researchers)
* to shape the future of our research on the oceans, atmosphere, ice
* to develop our Earth system modelling
* contributing experience & ideas
* as the successful successor to our very own Stefan Rahmstorf
https://www.uni-potsdam.de/fileadmin/projects/verwaltung/docs/Dezernat3/Ausschreibungen/1_Professuren/W3_Physics_of_the_Oceans_PIK.pdf

It's not surprising, but sobering and alarming:

After members of the new German gvmt cast doubts on 🇩🇪's climate target, claiming it is too strict, chancellor Merz was asked today in the Parliament's Questioning Time (by the Greens) whether he can unequivocally declare that 🇩🇪 stands by it constitutionally mandated target of climate neutrality in 2045. Merz absolutely could not get himself to say that. Instead he gave answers that I cannot find satisfactory:

(cont'd)
1/2

1) He declared that 🇩🇪 stands behind intl. agreements but avoided the question on the 🇩🇪 target
2) launched into the denialist trope that 🇩🇪 has just 1% of ppl & 2% of emissions, so its efforts make barely a diff (wow - the EU, US & China cause half of all emissions)
3) welcomed reducing emissions abroad rather than at home (used for fake reductions)
4) promoted the trope that climate policies can't be allowed to cause "deindustrialization" (sugg. that's what it leads to; the opposite is true)

2/2

When capable scientists become government advisors, they're confronted with the realities of political power equations.

That is when they are confronted with situations where facts count for little if the conclusions don't have political support in the constellations of power.

"Politics isn't mathematics", as the then German minister of the environment Schulze famously once said when asked about my calculations of a fair remaining CO2 budget for Germany (since used up for 1.5C).

1/4

That's when what I call "toxic realism" becomes a danger: the seduction of scientists to frame analytical conclusions in a way that adapts to what seems feasible, arguing it's better to achieve progress than be right but powerless. I'm told in such discussions a version of: "Being right and idealistic buys you nothing if there's no path to power, change. So don't insist like you do when it just burns bridges."

But all too often, I find it's the analytical findings that end up subverted.

2/4

That's when scientific "truth" can be labelled by "realists" as "unhelpful" or "a disruption that only strengthens the critics". How often have I been accused of just fueling the populist right with my pro-environment stance. As if!

That's when I personally buckle down on my analytical insights as a scientist - combined with the core of ethical ideals upon which our culture is built even as we flount them all the time: that inclusive justice and safeguarding the future are an obligation.

3/4

As the US prepares for #NoKings, I have to admit: I, too, seem to have been temporarily distracted in school when we had that lesson on the US having an autocrat.

In the Germany of 1929-33, the president's power to rule by decree if the house is divided was a key factor in the only 30% of Nazis seizing power completely. It lasted 12 yrs and left everything in ruins, millions dead. Therefore rule by executive decree is no longer allowed in our post-war constitution.

Constitutions can evolve.

I remember the years I spent in Boston, working at Boston University. My office had large windows facing the Charles River. To the right, I could see the domes of MIT. To the right, I could see the spires of Harvard.

I worked for NASA at the time, advancing the power of US science. Half of the team was Europeans, Indians, Chinese. Nonetheless, every time I had to renew my visa, I had to leave the country. On one of these trips, I read John Reed's account of the Russian Revolution to compensate.