'How cheap renewable energy is finally flattening emissions' is Science Magazine's 2025 Breakthrough of the Year

I'm beginning my year-end retrospectives with Science Magazine explaining How cheap renewable energy is finally flattening emissions, its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

For decades, rising carbon emissions have accelerated climate change, but this year marked a critical turning point that could finally reverse that trend. Renewable energy has now graduated beyond the need for subsidies and incentives, emerging as a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels in many countries. News Editor Tim Appenzeller and policy expert Li Shuo describe the economic forces behind this shift, and the obstacles that remain to the continued rise of green energy.
...
1:15 The graph has mislabeled trend lines. "Other renewables" generate more energy than hydropower alone.

This is the same good news reported in PBS Terra says 'We Just Crossed Our FIRST Tipping Point… And It’s NOT What You Think'.

Unlike passing the other tipping points, like the AMOC, permafrost, West Antarctic ice sheet, and coral reefs, passing the renewable energy tipping point is good news. I wrote about it in DW News asks 'Earth Overshoot Day: What can we do to try live within the planet’s limits?'

[C]onvincing people to be less wasteful, particularly creating less food waste and eating less meat, especially beef, would be helpful. [One] could consider that to be a technology. So is renewable energy. Between the two, it would move Earth Overshoot Day back more than a month. Progress!

Yes, it is, and it's good news I can share with my students. Welcome to blogging as professional development.

Science Magazine's video is shorter and more focused than PBS Terra's, so it's one I'm more likely to show to my students. Again, welcome to blogging as professional development.

Here are the runners-up:

• Custom gene editing shows promise for ultrarare diseases
• New weapons against a sexual scourge
• Neurons make a deadly donation to cancer cells
• An all-seeing eye on the sky
• Face to face with a Denisovan
• Large language models do science
• Triumph of calculation helps resolve particle mystery
• Xenotransplants set new records
• Rice that beats the heat

Including the "winner," that's four health stories, two computer science stories, one of which is also a physics story, an astronomy story, an evolution story, a genetics story that touches on climate change, and an energy story that also touches on climate change. Six of these are biology in some form, so these selections please me as a biologist. One of them is also paleontology, so I'm doubly pleased as a paleontologist. All of that is on top of the good sustainability news.

Not all of 2025's science stories were good. Follow over the jump for the bad news this year.

'The REAL Science of Groundhogs' for an early Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day is really tomorrow, but it's also Sunday, when I post my entertainment features, so I'm celebrating early with SciShow describing The REAL Science of Groundhogs.

Groundhogs are famous in North America for "predicting" when spring will come (and also that Bill Murray movie). But while they might make for terrible meteorologists, they actually play a valuable role in several other scientific fields.

Even though I am a paleontologist who studies the Pleistocene, I hadn't heard of the 16,000 year old stone tools from the Meadowcroft Rockshelter until I watched this video. That means I learned something new, making today a good day. That written, it's not a complete surprise, as I mentioned "Early peopling of the Americas steps closer to acceptance" as a runner-up in Weight loss drugs Science Magazine's Breakthrough of the Year for 2023. Science Magazine wrote the following about the discovery.

In 2021, researchers working in White Sands National Park in New Mexico announced a potentially paradigm shifting discovery: unmistakable human footprints, left on the muddy shore of an ancient lake as early as 21,000 to 23,000 years ago. The team based those dates on seeds from a grassy aquatic plant that were found in layers surrounding the footprints and dated by radiocarbon. But there was room for doubt, because the seeds could have absorbed ancient carbon from sediments dissolved in the lake water, boosting their measured age. So the White Sands team redated the footprints using pollen from land plants and quartz grains embedded in sediments between and below the tracks. The new dates line up perfectly with the original paper, they reported in October.

If the dates are correct, the prints were left at the peak of the last ice age, when glaciers covered Canada, suggesting humans must have made the journey into the Americas before those ice sheets formed.

The new work has persuaded some initial skeptics. Others still wonder whether wind or erosion might have deposited older sediments on top of the footprints, making them appear more ancient than they are. But all are eager for more clues about the White Sands people, such as a hearth or stone tools, which could confirm their presence as well as provide hints about their culture. This year’s redating could spark a re-evaluation of other contested sites and will likely send archaeologists racing to excavate other ice age sediments in search of confirmation—or even more surprises.

NOVA PBS Official uploaded a video about this finding, Humans May Have Lived in North America Earlier Than Thought.

Scattered seeds help reveal when ancient humans first left footprints in North America.

Ten thousand years earlier than the previous accepted date — wow!

I also learned new things about the importance of groundhogs in health research, including hepatitis B, but the gag referencing the Groundhog Day movie overshadowed them. Thanks to the pandemic, I already know what living in a time loop feels like.

Since there is no new episode of Saturday Night Live tonight, I plan on covering GRAMMY Awards tomorrow. Stay tuned.

'Can a twice-a-year shot help end the HIV/AIDS epidemic' — Science Magazine's 2024 Breakthrough of the year

I closed yesterday's entry with a program note and a rhetorical question: "Stay tuned for year-end retrospectives. What did you think were the best and worst of 2024?" I didn't get an answer from my readers, so I turn to Science Magazine as it asks Can a twice-a-year shot help end the HIV/AIDS epidemic, 2024's Breakthrough of the Year.

HIV infects more than a million people every year worldwide. While decades of research have led to effective treatments and pre-exposure prophylactic (PrEP) drugs that have dramatically reduced the impact of HIV/AIDS epidemic, completely wiping the virus out has remained out of reach. Lenacapavir, a new twice-yearly PrEP injection, may be the solution. Two clinical trials this year showed the drug can offer near complete protection from HIV infection, and the long-lasting effects mean daily pills could be a thing of the past, as long as it is accessible to populations who need it most. Science journalist Jon Cohen, physician-scientist Linda-Gail Bekker, and biochemist Wesley Sundquist describe the history of HIV/AIDS prevention and the unique mechanism that led lenacapavir to be named the 2024 Breakthrough of the Year.

I began the month writing about Freddie Mercury for World AIDS Day, who exemplified the human cost of the disease, so it's only fitting that I begin wrapping up the month and year by examining the science to combat it. I already show a SciShow video to my students about HIV/AIDS treatments, but I might add this to the mix.* I learned something new from it, and it's always a good day when I learn something new. I hope my students will agree.

Unlike last year, my reaction is not being "slightly disappointed" and asking "Wasn't there something more impressive among the runners-up?" I think this is worthy of being Breakthrough of the Year. Just the same, I'm examining the nine runners-up for Breakthrough of the Year along with four breakdowns. Follow over the jump.

Weight loss drugs Science Magazine's Breakthrough of the Year for 2023

When I told my readers to "Stay tuned for this year's version of the top science story," I had no idea what it would be. Imagine my surprise to find out Science Magazine declared it was How these weight loss drugs offer benefits beyond the scale. Yes, Ozempic. Surprise!

Weight loss medications like Ozempic and Wegovy are examples of GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs. By mimicking a hormone produced in the body, this class of drugs has proven to be an effective way to treat diabetes and, more recently, obesity. This year, clinical trials revealed their beneficial effects on other chronic conditions that can be associated with obesity like heart failure and kidney disease. Despite their widespread and growing use, GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs were by no means an overnight success – decades of developments, unexpected discoveries, and some notable failures all paved the way to the 2023 Breakthrough of the Year.

On the one hand, I'm slightly disappointed. Wasn't there something more impressive among the runners-up? On the other, this is a scientific breakthrough that is improving the health of millions of people, possibly including me.* That is probably enough to justify its designation as Breakthrough of the Year.

Speaking of the runners-up, Science Magazine named nine of them for a top ten list of 2023's science breakthroughs:

• Earth’s carbon pump is slowing
• Hunt for natural hydrogen heats up
• The AI weather forecaster arrives
• New hope against malaria
• At last, modest headway against Alzheimer’s
• Early peopling of the Americas steps closer to acceptance
• The din of giant black hole mergers overheard
• Early-career scientists rise up
• The dawn of exascale computing

Science also listed four breakdowns of 2023.

• U.S. Antarctic meltdown
• COVID-19 aftershocks
• Superconductor claims hit resistance
• Research on Twitter goes down the drain

Grouping the stories by area, that's four health stories, three business of science stories, two climate and weather stories, one energy story, one astronomy story, one physics story, one archeology story, and one technology story. I guess 2023 was a good year for health breakthroughs but not a great year for the business of science. I can accept that.

I plan on continuing the retrospectives covering the year about to end until New Year's Eve with this year's version of the year in space tomorrow. In the meantime, stay tuned for the final movie installment of my Saturn Award nominations series.

*I've been proscribed Ozempic and have completed my free sample. Now I have to convince my insurance company to cover it to continue. Wish me luck!

Bumblebees show their intelligence by rolling balls and pulling strings for World Bee Day

Happy World Bee Day! Since honeybees have their own day, I'm looking at the other well-known group of social bees today, bumblebees. In particular, I'm examining their more fun behaviors as indicators of their intelligence, beginning with SciShow's Bumblebees Play ... And it's Adorable.

There’s just about nothing better than watching a kitty play with a ball of yarn, but there’s another unexpected animal that enjoys playtime, too! And certain birds appear to have the abilities of self-control!

The last year I took classes for my M.S. degree, I enrolled in both mammalogy and ornithology. One of the things that struck me after taking both classes was that mammals played a lot but birds played a lot less. The textbooks reflected this disparity, with pages and pages devoted to play in the mammalogy text, but maybe half a page in the ornithology text. The same professor taught both courses and I asked him about it and he said that the books accurately reflected the two classes' behavior, with the mammals playing more because they were more intelligent. Birds don't have to be as bright as long as the best solution to a problem is to fly away. No surprise that the most playful birds are the corvids, the same birds the video examined for their intelligence.

What does this have to do with play in bees? I found bees being bright enough to play a good argument in favor of them being brighter than I expected. However, I should have known better, as scientists have been studying intelligence in bumblebees for years. Follow over the jump for three more videos of bumblebees demonstrating their problem-solving skills from six years ago.

James Webb Space Telescope is the top science story of 2022

It's the last week of 2022, so it's time for me to look back at the year about to end with retrospectives until New Year's Eve. I'm changing up the order from previous years and beginning this year's series with the year in science. As I have all those years and more, I start my examination with Science Magazine's 2022 Breakthrough of the Year: JWST's golden eye sees the universe anew.

Not many telescopes get introduced by the president, but JWST, the gold-plated wunderkind of astronomy built by NASA with the help of the European and Canadian space agencies, deserves that honor. It is the most complex science mission ever put into space and at $10 billion the most expensive. And it did not come easy.

Science Magazine has more at 2022 Breakthrough of the Year on their website, including nine runners-up and three stories in a category I don't remember seeing before, Breakdowns of the Year. Those include the failure/discontinuance of Zero COVID in China, international conflicts and tensions affecting science cooperation among the major powers, and the war in Ukraine causing an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. I agree; none of these are good news.

WatchMojo compiled their own list of the Top 10 Biggest Scientific Discoveries of 2022.

These scientific discoveries will blow your mind! For this list, we’ll be looking at the most amazing things we learned through scientific research this year. Our countdown includes Brain Cells Playing Video Games, Footprints from the Ice Age, A Detailed View of the Distant Universe, and more! What do you think is the most significant discovery here? Are there any we missed? Tell us in the comments.

WatchMojo added an obvious top ten story in the comments and pinned it.

The discoveries keep coming! On December 13th, researchers announced that they'd managed to produce more energy from a fusion experiment than they'd put in, a groundbreaking step towards abundant clean energy!

That was only one day after WatchMojo uploaded the video. There is such a thing as being too soon. Just the same, I doubt nuclear fusion would have displaced the JWST from the top of either list.

Speaking of the JWST, this post makes for a second installment on the space telescope after Time introduces the 2022 Nobel Prize winners plus the Innovator of the Year for Nobel Prize Day. I plan on covering it again tomorrow for 2022 in space, along with the successful DART mission that made both Science Magazine's and WatchMojo's top ten. Stay tuned.

2021's top science stories from Science Magazine, WatchMojo, and Nerdist

After looking at 2021 in space, it's time for me to examine the year in science as a whole. I begin, as I have the past four years, with Science Magazine and Science’s 2021 Breakthrough of the Year: AI brings protein structures to all.

Bounty of new structures will forever change biology and medicine
...
0:00 Introduction
0:13 Runner-up: Ancient human DNA in soil
1:07 Runner-up: NASA lander detects Red Planet's core
1:56 Runner-up: Psychedelic treatment for PTSD
2:39 Runner-up: Potent pills boost COVID-19 arsenal
3:35 The 2021 Breakthrough of the Year: Protein structures for all

This top five list pretty much covered my scientific interests, biology, including paleontology and medicine, and space. All it needed was a story about the environment. That will be the subject of tomorrow's retrospective, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The video above reflects the expert's opinions about what was important in science this year. Now for the first of two popular lists, beginning with WatchMojo's Top 10 Biggest Scientific Discoveries of 2021.

These scientific discoveries will shape the world for years to come. For this list, we’ll be looking at the most fascinating and significant things that scientists learned about the world in 2021. Our countdown includes The Maximum Human Lifespan, Complex Thoughts Mirror Fractals, New Organic Molecules on Mars, and more! What recent scientific discovery excites you? Tell us in the comments.

I'm going to be a good environmentalist by recycling my reaction from last year.

As much as I'm aware that WatchMojo and its sister channel MsMojo are premiere clickbait factories, at least they produce high-quality, well-researched clickbait, so I'm going to keep using their videos. Besides, this was a good list.

I'm not as sure about the next source whose video I'm embedding, Nerdist's The Best Tech and Science Breakthroughs of 2021 (Nerdist Now w/ Dan Casey).

With 2021 coming to an end, it’s time to look back on all the year’s most exciting and bizarre contributions in the world of science and tech. From monkey’s playing pong with their minds to helicopters on Mars, Dan’s here’s to break down everything you might have missed on today’s episode of Nerdist Now!

The one topic all three videos agreed on was NASA's exploration of Mars, although the scientists preferred Mars InSight to the popular journalists choice of Perseverance and Ingenuity. Give the latter time and I expect it will produce amazing scientific data to go along with its amazing technology.

Stay tuned for more retrospectives through to New Year's Eve.

The top science stories of 2020 from Science Magazine, WatchMojo, SciShow, and 'Nova' on PBS

After yesterday's The top TV shows of 2020 according to IGN, WatchMojo, and IMDB, I'm back to recycling ideas for retrospectives of 2020. Today, it's The top ten science stories of the year, itself a retread of 2018's Breakthrough of the year for 2018 from Science Magazine. As I have both years, I begin with Science Magazine's top ten list, 2020 Breakthrough of the Year.

Each year, editors and writers choose a top research achievement as Science’s Breakthrough of the Year. This year, that honor goes to the multiple COVID-19 vaccines that have succeeded in large human trials—and are now being deployed around the world. But there are a lot of other advances to talk about, from figuring out the origin of Fast Radio Bursts to the discovery of the earliest known figurative art. Check out a few of the runners-up candidates—and this year’s Breakthrough of the Year—in this video rundown.

Like everything else about 2020, something related to the COVID-19 pandemic was the top story. At least it was good news, not more horror and disaster.

Follow over the jump for the other videos showing the top science stories of the year about to end.

Massive crater discovered under Greenland for Apophis Day 2019

Stay tuned for this year's celebration of Apophis Day, when I observe the perils of space.  Asteroids!

When I promised my readers that in yesterday's NASA on returning to the Moon for Yuri's Night 2019, I had no idea what I would find.  What a little searching for videos about asteroid impacts posted since Apophis Day 2018 yielded was quite the surprise.  Science Magazine presents an overview of the discovery along with its implications in Massive crater under Greenland's ice points to climate-altering impact in the time of humans.

The 31-kilometer-wide Hiawatha crater may have formed as recently as 12,800 years ago when a 1.5-kilometer asteroid struck Earth.

NASA Goddard has more of the story behind the find as well as more details about the techniques used in Massive Crater Discovered Under Greenland Ice.

In a remote area of northwest Greenland, an international team of scientists has made a stunning discovery, buried beneath a kilometer of ice. It’s a meteor impact crater, 300 meters deep and bigger than Paris or the Beltway around Washington, DC. It is one of the 25 largest known impact craters on Earth, and the first found under any of our planet’s ice sheets. The researchers first spotted the crater in July 2015, while they were inspecting a new map of the topography beneath Greenland's ice sheet that used ice-penetrating radar data primarily from Operation IceBridge, an ongoing NASA airborne mission to track changes in polar ice, and earlier NASA airborne missions in Greenland.

I think this is quite the discovery, but it did not come as a complete surprise.  I wrote about the possibility six years ago in Hot (not): a cold blast from the past.

Ice core data supports ancient space impact idea
By Simon Redfern Reporter, BBC News
August 1, 2013

New data from Greenland ice cores suggest North America may have suffered a large cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago.

A layer of platinum is seen in ice of the same age as a known abrupt climate transition, US scientists report.

The climate flip has previously been linked to the demise of the North American "Clovis" people.

The data seem to back the idea that an impact tipped the climate into a colder phase, a point of current debate.

The tip back to a colder climate is not the issue.  In fact, it's a key point of "An Inconvenient Truth," which I'm showing to my Environmental Science class this week.  Here's the relevant question from the worksheet.

What is the likely effect of the melting of the Greenland ice cap on ocean circulation and global climate?

In the movie, the idea is that the release of meltwater from a large glacial lake diluted the Gulf Stream, causing the water to become less dense and unable to sink to the bottom of the ocean off Greenland, jamming up the global thermohaline circulation and sending the planet back into an ice age for another thousand years.  An analogous melt of water from the Greenland icecap, which is beginning to happen, would do much the same thing, slowing ocean circulation and cooling Europe.  Both of those are indeed taking place.

The effect of the proposed meteor impact would be that the explosion itself caused the flood and then added the cooling effects of all the dust from the impact on top of it.  That doesn't mean that the slowing of the Gulf Stream and cooling of the area around the North Atlantic isn't going to happen; it already is.  Instead, it means that the magnitude of the cooling that results won't be as big as happened 12,900 years ago.  That might actually be a good thing.

Another thing the impact would do would be to lessen the culpability of humans in the extinction of large mammals in North America and Europe at the time.  Humans definitely contributed, but a meteor impact would definitely shift some of the responsibility off of our ancestors.  It would also make the case for the deadliness of asteroid impacts, as if that wasn't already in the news.

It looks like the crater responsible for the layer of platinum may have been found.  Also, I just finished showing "An Inconvenient Truth" to my students this week.  What an interesting coincidence!

That's it for Apophis Day.  Stay tuned for the winners of the 2018 Coffee Party Entertainment Awards for movies.

2018's Breakthrough of the year for 2018 from Science Magazine

The next installment of retrospective entries for 2018 is the top science stories of the year.  Here is 2018 Breakthrough of the Year from Science Magazine.

Learn about our Breakthrough of the Year: tracking development cell by cell. Nine other advances are recognized as runners-up.

For another list, read 10 science stories in 2018 that made us go, “Whoa, that’s awesome” from Vox.

Neutron star collision detected and other top science stories of 2017

When I posted Gravity waves and other top science stories of 2016, I had no idea that the discoverers of gravity waves would win the Nobel Prize for physics this year, but they did.  Gravity waves are still the number one science story of the year, at least according to the AAAS and Science Magazine, as they named them Breakthrough of the Year, 2017.

Check out what Science's editors deemed the top results of 2017, including our Breakthrough of the Year!

That discovery topped most of the other lists I examined from what I considered reputable sources.  The other stories that Science Magazine placed in this year's top ten that showed up elsewhere were CRISPR and its role in gene therapy, the discovery of the oldest Homo sapiens fossils in Morrocco, and a new endangered species of orangutan.  Stories that Science Magazine did not mention that made many other sources' top science story lists included the Great American Eclipse and the end of the Cassini mission, perhaps because they were not breakthroughs or discoveries, even if both were big news.

Follow over the jump for videos from New Scientist, Curiosity Stream, Science News, and Scientific American on their top science stories of 2017.

March for Science today for Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!  In yesterday's The resistance for the sixth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News, I mentioned that "I'm planning on posting a first-hand account of tomorrow's March for Science in Ann Arbor sometime next week."  So, just like I did for the Women's March, I'm posting a preview of the event.

I begin with Science Magazine's Behind the scenes at the March for Science.*



How a simple text message launched a global movement.
Next, Scientists: Why We March.

#MarchforScience coming in April 2017. Scientists will not step back while war has been declared on the Planet's Life Support System.

That's why the scientists are marching.  Futurism's March for Science on Earth Day in a City Near You explains why the rest of us should be, too.



Science is under attack. But we can stand up for it.
I've already posted about when and why environmentalism became a partisan issue.  I hope I don't have to blog about how science became one, too.  Just the same, if it does, I will.

*I'm Director of Partnerships for the Coffee Party.  After the march is over, I'm going to contact Ayana Johnson to see if the March for Science is still looking for partners for future events.

Videos for my biology classes--dinoflagellates, thylacines, and pandas

I blog for a number of reasons, but one is a form of professional development.  In addition to organizing my research, I will park videos here that I plan to use in my classes using the stories I tell my students label.  Since I'll be teaching my evolution, ecology, and biodiversity class starting next month as well as new sections of my environmental science class, it's time for me to stock up.  Here are three videos that popped up on my YouTube subscriptions over the past few days.

The first is from AAAS/Science Magazine: Hunting microbe wields a “gatling gun” harpoon.

Single-celled organisms have intricate microscopic weapons evolved for capturing prey.

As soon as I saw the preview image, I knew this was about dinoflagellates.  At least now I have something interesting to tell my students about them other than red tides and bioluminescence.

Follow over the jump for two videos about mammals that work equally well for my advanced students as for my general onces.

Bill Nye and I get our wish from Trump on Mars, sort of

In last November's Trump pulls a Gingrich on space, I found a silver lining in the dark storm cloud of a Trump presidency, writing "space policy is the one area where Trump might actually be good for the country."  I also wrote of his campaign plank on space that "Trump's plan is actually not a bad idea."  I was not alone in my hopes.  Last week, The Planetary Society uploaded Bill Nye's Open Letter to President Donald Trump to its YouTube channel to urge him to do what the organization thought was necessary to achieve the goals of the plan and then some.

Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, and our Board of Directors present five recommendations to the Trump administration as it contemplates the future of the U.S. space program.

This week, Newsy reported Trump signs bill to let NASA explore Mars.

President Donald Trump authorized $19.5 billion in funding for NASA for fiscal year 2017.

That was an increase from the $19.1 billion for NASA in the proposed budget Trump submitted last week, so that was an improvement, if not the 5% increase Nye was asking for.  As for me, I'm treating this the same way I did the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee finally being placed on the Endangered Species List, as a rare bit of good news coming out of this otherwise deplorable administration.

That written, I still stand by my conclusion from that entry in November.

Sorry, I want more ambitious goals for both space exploration and climate monitoring along with people who understand science and technology in charge of both.  This combination isn't good enough for me.  It's like hoping for the alternative history in "The Man in the High Castle" to happen just so there could be commercial SSTs by the early 1960s...The cost would be too high.

Funding for NASA research into climate change was still cut in the new bill.  That's not all.  Here's the cost, as depicted by Science Magazine, in terms of cuts to all kinds of federally funded research.


The cost is indeed too high.

Physicist retires from congress

While I’m on the subject of Representatives retiring and their replacements, here’s an item from Science Magazine that I first included in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Our best animal friends) last Saturday night: Rush Holt to Leave Congress.

One of two physicists in the U.S. House of Representatives announced today that he is retiring at the end of the year.

Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), a plasma physicist, didn’t reveal why he has decided to leave Congress after eight terms, or what lies in his future. “This is not the time to discuss next steps in my career; that can come later,” said Holt, who was assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory before coming to Washington in 1999.

However, one science lobbyist who knows him well speculates that Holt, who was beaten badly in the Democratic primary last year for an open Senate seat, could still harbor statewide ambitions. “If you wanted to run for governor [in New Jersey in 2017], getting out of the House is probably a good idea,” says Mike Lubell, head of the Washington, D.C., office of the American Physical Society. “At least, that’s what I’d advise him if he asked me.”

The bad news is that a scientist is leaving public office.  The good news is that he may not be gone for good.  Here’s to hoping he runs for N.J. Governor in 2017.  The state needs someone better than Fat Bastard.

Weather and climate news for Memorial Day

I'll begin with Extreme Weather Conditions Plague Entire Nation from ABC News.  It's slightly old news, as it came from Friday's uploads, but it does demonstrate what's been happening lately.

Record breaking rainfall in the South, snowfall hits Northeast on Memorial weekend.

It looks like there will be more severe weather to come as NOAA via Science Daily forecasts an Active or 'Extremely Active' Atlantic Hurricane Season Predicted for 2013.

In its 2013 Atlantic hurricane season outlook issued today, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is forecasting an active or extremely active season this year.

For the six-month hurricane season, which begins June 1, NOAA's Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook says there is a 70 percent likelihood of 13 to 20 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which 7 to 11 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 3 to 6 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher).

These ranges are well above the seasonal average of 12 named storms, 6 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes.

The drought is also continuing.  Not only is the economy repeating the 1930s, so is the climate of the Great Plains.  Michael Wines of the N.Y. Times describes the situation in Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust

HASKELL COUNTY, Kan. — Forty-nine years ago, Ashley Yost’s grandfather sank a well deep into a half-mile square of rich Kansas farmland. He struck an artery of water so prodigious that he could pump 1,600 gallons to the surface every minute.

Last year, Mr. Yost was coaxing just 300 gallons from the earth, and pumping up sand in order to do it. By harvest time, the grit had robbed him of $20,000 worth of pumps and any hope of returning to the bumper harvests of years past.

“That’s prime land,” he said not long ago, gesturing from his pickup at the stubby remains of last year’s crop. “I’ve raised 294 bushels of corn an acre there before, with water and the Lord’s help.” Now, he said, “it’s over.”

Meteor Blades at Daily Kos has more weather, climate, and other environmental news in Green diary rescue: The redwoods, the High Plains Aquifer and fracking ourselves crazy.

Follow over the jump for additional weather and climate news.

Pandemics and collapse

Although the author of Peak Civilization, the article at The Oil Drum about the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, might disagree, it looks like disease might have contributed to the end of the expansion of the Eastern Roman Empire under Justinian.  Charles Choi of LiveScience explains in Plague Helped Bring Down Roman Empire, Graveyard Suggests.

Plague may have helped finish off the Roman Empire, researchers now reveal.
...
The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, has been linked with at least two of the most devastating pandemics in recorded history. One, the Great Plague, which lasted from the 14th to 17th centuries, included the infamous epidemic known as the Black Death, which may have killed nearly two-thirds of Europe in the mid-1300s. Another, the Modern Plague, struck around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, beginning in China in the mid-1800s and spreading to Africa, the Americas, Australia, Europe and other parts of Asia.

Although past studies confirmed this germ was linked with both of these catastrophes, much controversy existed as to whether it also caused the Justinianic Plague of the sixth to eighth centuries. This pandemic, named after the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, killed more than 100 million people. Some historians have suggested it contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire.

To help solve this mystery, scientists investigated ancient DNA from the teeth of 19 different sixth-century skeletons from a medieval graveyard in Bavaria, Germany, of people who apparently succumbed to the Justinianic Plague.

They unambiguously found the plague bacterium Y. pestis there.

The same source who sent me the above article also sent me the next, which I placed together in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Carbon Dioxide 400 ppm) on Daily Kos as a reminder that, to paraphrase Samuel Clemens, history may not repeat, but it certainly does rhyme and also that resource depletion and environmental degradation aren't the only threats to civilization.

Discover Magazine: Pandemic Chatter
By Keith Kloor
May 10, 2013 12:22 pm

I’m not on the pandemic beat, but some of the best science journalists are, and they are busy these days. Today, David Quammen, author of the recently published and critically acclaimed book, Spillover: Animal infections and the next human pandemic, has an op-ed in the New York Times. It begins:

Terrible new forms of infectious disease make headlines, but not at the start. Every pandemic begins small. Early indicators can be subtle and ambiguous. When the Next Big One arrives, spreading across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people, it will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places — reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention. Such reports have been coming in recent months from two countries, China and Saudi Arabia.

The worrisome Chinese bird flu strain that has gotten a lot of attention is not, in its present form, going to cause a pandemic, says Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control (CDC). But if you want to learn about the potential for its lethal mutation, and why you should be worried about it, read this piece in Foreign Policy by veteran science journalist Laurie Garrett.

Follow over the jump for the latest on the other pandemic threat coming out of Saudi Arabia.