Kate Littler
@palaeoclimate.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer in Palaeoclimate | Department of Earth & Environmental Science, University of Exeter (Cornwall) | Marine geology | Micropalaeontology | Geochemistry | IODP | Birding | Parenting small humans
Reposted by Kate Littler
Have universities tried saying this?
September 16, 2026 at 10:11 AM
Have universities tried saying this?
Jeeze Louise.
And apparently pulling out of the new Falmer campus too. Yikes.
And apparently pulling out of the new Falmer campus too. Yikes.
'Brighton informed its University and College Union (UCU) branch on Monday (14 September) that it intends to terminate its current trade union recognition agreement and all collective agreements on terms and conditions from next June.'
Brighton looks to redraw trade union agreements and close campus
UCU and UNISON warn changes to trade union agreements could lead to unions being derecognised
www.timeshighereducation.com
September 15, 2026 at 3:45 PM
Jeeze Louise.
And apparently pulling out of the new Falmer campus too. Yikes.
And apparently pulling out of the new Falmer campus too. Yikes.
Ooof that’s quite a reduction 😬
NSF is consolidating its geoscience research grants into a new program, GEOcore and reducing annual grants to $110 million total in 200-350 awards. Typical was about $300 million in 1,200 awards. Not including institutional grants ($1.3 billion/yr) and those may be gone.
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
Geosciences Core Research: Atmospheric, Geospace, Earth and Ocean Sciences (GEO Core)
www.nsf.gov
September 9, 2026 at 7:59 AM
Ooof that’s quite a reduction 😬
The ‘protests’ at Dover today are really frightening. That these men feel emboldened to act in this way without impunity should scare us all.
Just so we are clear:
The 83yo priest on the left is a terrorist. The balaclava-clad men on the right are protestors with legitimate concerns
The 83yo priest on the left is a terrorist. The balaclava-clad men on the right are protestors with legitimate concerns
September 5, 2026 at 2:08 PM
The ‘protests’ at Dover today are really frightening. That these men feel emboldened to act in this way without impunity should scare us all.
Confirmed there will be no compulsory redundancies at Exeter for now because enough staff took ‘voluntary redundancy’ over the summer.
(Is it really ‘voluntary’ with a metaphorical gun to your head of being in a small compulsory redundancy pool though? 🤔 )
We have lost so many good colleagues 😞
(Is it really ‘voluntary’ with a metaphorical gun to your head of being in a small compulsory redundancy pool though? 🤔 )
We have lost so many good colleagues 😞
September 4, 2026 at 3:40 PM
Confirmed there will be no compulsory redundancies at Exeter for now because enough staff took ‘voluntary redundancy’ over the summer.
(Is it really ‘voluntary’ with a metaphorical gun to your head of being in a small compulsory redundancy pool though? 🤔 )
We have lost so many good colleagues 😞
(Is it really ‘voluntary’ with a metaphorical gun to your head of being in a small compulsory redundancy pool though? 🤔 )
We have lost so many good colleagues 😞
My youngest son is doing imagination play with his extensive car collection.
Just overheard him lamenting another stall on a steep hill-start:
“Oh not again. Come on baby!”
I feel seen and not in a good way 😅
Just overheard him lamenting another stall on a steep hill-start:
“Oh not again. Come on baby!”
I feel seen and not in a good way 😅
September 4, 2026 at 8:26 AM
My youngest son is doing imagination play with his extensive car collection.
Just overheard him lamenting another stall on a steep hill-start:
“Oh not again. Come on baby!”
I feel seen and not in a good way 😅
Just overheard him lamenting another stall on a steep hill-start:
“Oh not again. Come on baby!”
I feel seen and not in a good way 😅
Ah that lovely week at the beginning of September where the kids still aren’t back to school but all the ‘summer’ childcare camps are finished and you’ve maxed out grandparents and the weather has crapped out and you’ve run out of entertainment ideas and you’re supposed to be back to work.
🤦♀️
🤦♀️
September 2, 2026 at 8:30 PM
Ah that lovely week at the beginning of September where the kids still aren’t back to school but all the ‘summer’ childcare camps are finished and you’ve maxed out grandparents and the weather has crapped out and you’ve run out of entertainment ideas and you’re supposed to be back to work.
🤦♀️
🤦♀️
Reposted by Kate Littler
Crop art at the Minnesota State Fair! It is what it says it is - art made from various parts of crops, primarily seeds, lentils, and grains, occasionally leaves or flowers.
For any non-Minnesotans viewing this, I'll start with mostly less political pieces. It's harder than you might think.
For any non-Minnesotans viewing this, I'll start with mostly less political pieces. It's harder than you might think.
August 30, 2026 at 9:14 PM
Crop art at the Minnesota State Fair! It is what it says it is - art made from various parts of crops, primarily seeds, lentils, and grains, occasionally leaves or flowers.
For any non-Minnesotans viewing this, I'll start with mostly less political pieces. It's harder than you might think.
For any non-Minnesotans viewing this, I'll start with mostly less political pieces. It's harder than you might think.
Reposted by Kate Littler
America's national parks are being quietly taken apart: mass layoffs, record budget cuts, monuments shrunk by millions of acres, protected land reopened to drilling. None of this is speculation. Ten sourced examples, one at a time. 🧪
August 28, 2026 at 2:57 PM
America's national parks are being quietly taken apart: mass layoffs, record budget cuts, monuments shrunk by millions of acres, protected land reopened to drilling. None of this is speculation. Ten sourced examples, one at a time. 🧪
Ditto for paleoclimate.
You only have an exciting ‘big picture’ story by amalgamating lots of little ‘parochial’ studies (often that couldn’t attract significant external funding), running some pretty models, and submitting it to Nature.
Please recall that the next time you are on a grants panel.
You only have an exciting ‘big picture’ story by amalgamating lots of little ‘parochial’ studies (often that couldn’t attract significant external funding), running some pretty models, and submitting it to Nature.
Please recall that the next time you are on a grants panel.
Your big data is only a big data set because a whole bunch of people did the insignificant, unworthy of your time, not important enough to publish, effort to build & maintain collections over the years, which you then scooped up into your dataset for a proper "big picture" study. <6/n>
August 28, 2026 at 5:02 PM
Ditto for paleoclimate.
You only have an exciting ‘big picture’ story by amalgamating lots of little ‘parochial’ studies (often that couldn’t attract significant external funding), running some pretty models, and submitting it to Nature.
Please recall that the next time you are on a grants panel.
You only have an exciting ‘big picture’ story by amalgamating lots of little ‘parochial’ studies (often that couldn’t attract significant external funding), running some pretty models, and submitting it to Nature.
Please recall that the next time you are on a grants panel.
Reposted by Kate Littler
Reposted by Kate Littler
The fallout from the collapse of this glacier - a torrent of mud surging down the valley - killed hundreds of people. Gone, in a flash. Those people were wiped out by anthropogenic climate change. Our governments are simply not responding quickly enough to this disaster which is already upon us.
An incredibly well-timed Landsat 9 pass captured the effects of yesterday’s catastrophic glacier collapse near the Nepal–Tibet border. The event was so massive that it was detected by seismometers around the world.
August 27, 2026 at 8:06 AM
The fallout from the collapse of this glacier - a torrent of mud surging down the valley - killed hundreds of people. Gone, in a flash. Those people were wiped out by anthropogenic climate change. Our governments are simply not responding quickly enough to this disaster which is already upon us.
“…the university had seen "exceptionally strong demand from students wishing to study at Exeter this year..””
Record recruitment to the point we are asking students to defer a year because we can’t house them?
Ideal time for mass staff redundancies 👍
thetab.com/2026/08/26/i...
Record recruitment to the point we are asking students to defer a year because we can’t house them?
Ideal time for mass staff redundancies 👍
thetab.com/2026/08/26/i...
'I may be forced to defer': Students left with no rooms amid Exeter's accommodation shortage
One student said he was 'encouraged' to seek private rooms, only to discover the rent was more than his student loan
thetab.com
August 26, 2026 at 8:30 PM
“…the university had seen "exceptionally strong demand from students wishing to study at Exeter this year..””
Record recruitment to the point we are asking students to defer a year because we can’t house them?
Ideal time for mass staff redundancies 👍
thetab.com/2026/08/26/i...
Record recruitment to the point we are asking students to defer a year because we can’t house them?
Ideal time for mass staff redundancies 👍
thetab.com/2026/08/26/i...
Channeling my sadness today with a donation to one of Dolly’s greatest achievements - supporting kids’ reading and education all over the world.
(I can also recommend Booktrust for those based in the UK: www.booktrust.org.uk)
(I can also recommend Booktrust for those based in the UK: www.booktrust.org.uk)
Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in participating areas.
imaginationlibrary.com
August 25, 2026 at 7:24 PM
Channeling my sadness today with a donation to one of Dolly’s greatest achievements - supporting kids’ reading and education all over the world.
(I can also recommend Booktrust for those based in the UK: www.booktrust.org.uk)
(I can also recommend Booktrust for those based in the UK: www.booktrust.org.uk)
Not talented, courageous, sassy, wise, kind, beautiful Dolly?!
Nooooo!!!
💔 💔 💔
Nooooo!!!
💔 💔 💔
August 25, 2026 at 7:10 PM
Not talented, courageous, sassy, wise, kind, beautiful Dolly?!
Nooooo!!!
💔 💔 💔
Nooooo!!!
💔 💔 💔
Reposted by Kate Littler
🧊 A tropical ice core rewrites the methane record
A new tropical ice core shows equatorial wetlands emitted more methane before industrialisation than polar ice cores ever suggested.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10938-1
#ClimateScience #Methane #IceCore 🧪
A new tropical ice core shows equatorial wetlands emitted more methane before industrialisation than polar ice cores ever suggested.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10938-1
#ClimateScience #Methane #IceCore 🧪
A global atmospheric methane record from a tropical ice core - Nature
A 2,000-year Peruvian ice core record of atmospheric CH4 concentrations contains the first historical global CH4 record from the low latitudes, and implementation of a four-box model indicates higher ...
doi.org
August 24, 2026 at 5:00 AM
🧊 A tropical ice core rewrites the methane record
A new tropical ice core shows equatorial wetlands emitted more methane before industrialisation than polar ice cores ever suggested.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10938-1
#ClimateScience #Methane #IceCore 🧪
A new tropical ice core shows equatorial wetlands emitted more methane before industrialisation than polar ice cores ever suggested.
🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10938-1
#ClimateScience #Methane #IceCore 🧪
Reposted by Kate Littler
Actually felt proud to see that line at the top and realise it was this stupid little island
We are very good at some things
We are very good at some things
📈 GREAT CLIMATE NEWS 📈
Renewables keep powering ahead. They now power *a third* of the world's electricity supply.
And that number is only going up and up and up.
Renewables keep powering ahead. They now power *a third* of the world's electricity supply.
And that number is only going up and up and up.
August 24, 2026 at 7:57 AM
Actually felt proud to see that line at the top and realise it was this stupid little island
We are very good at some things
We are very good at some things
It’s been interesting to see which plants have dealt well with drought (not often an issue in Cornwall!).
Many wild plants seem to have done ok, with a particular shout out to wild carrot which has thrived.
In the garden, the verbena bonariensis has been a low maintenance star and butterfly fav.
Many wild plants seem to have done ok, with a particular shout out to wild carrot which has thrived.
In the garden, the verbena bonariensis has been a low maintenance star and butterfly fav.
August 23, 2026 at 7:31 PM
It’s been interesting to see which plants have dealt well with drought (not often an issue in Cornwall!).
Many wild plants seem to have done ok, with a particular shout out to wild carrot which has thrived.
In the garden, the verbena bonariensis has been a low maintenance star and butterfly fav.
Many wild plants seem to have done ok, with a particular shout out to wild carrot which has thrived.
In the garden, the verbena bonariensis has been a low maintenance star and butterfly fav.
Some hardy plants like heather and gorse are tough enough to grow on heavy-metal rich Cornish mine waste.
They soften this post-industrial landscape, and provide nectar and shelter for all sorts of other creatures, as well as a splash of colour in late summer.
#wildflowerhour
They soften this post-industrial landscape, and provide nectar and shelter for all sorts of other creatures, as well as a splash of colour in late summer.
#wildflowerhour
August 23, 2026 at 7:12 PM
Some hardy plants like heather and gorse are tough enough to grow on heavy-metal rich Cornish mine waste.
They soften this post-industrial landscape, and provide nectar and shelter for all sorts of other creatures, as well as a splash of colour in late summer.
#wildflowerhour
They soften this post-industrial landscape, and provide nectar and shelter for all sorts of other creatures, as well as a splash of colour in late summer.
#wildflowerhour
Reposted by Kate Littler
Preparing an Earth Sci or Geog course for fall? Please check out geologypics.com. There, find >5500 searchable captioned photos for free download to promote good instruction. Just uploaded 60 new photos I shot from this year-- coastal to desert, rocks to landforms. Please share! #teaching #geology
August 23, 2026 at 5:09 PM
Preparing an Earth Sci or Geog course for fall? Please check out geologypics.com. There, find >5500 searchable captioned photos for free download to promote good instruction. Just uploaded 60 new photos I shot from this year-- coastal to desert, rocks to landforms. Please share! #teaching #geology
Reposted by Kate Littler
James Bond: you think I haven’t faced death before?
Supervillain: oh, I don’t expect you to die, Mr. Bond. I expect you to suffer.
*opens travel funding reimbursement software
I think you will find your motorboat rental and casino reservations especially complex
James Bond: no. no. pls kill me
Supervillain: oh, I don’t expect you to die, Mr. Bond. I expect you to suffer.
*opens travel funding reimbursement software
I think you will find your motorboat rental and casino reservations especially complex
James Bond: no. no. pls kill me
August 21, 2026 at 2:19 AM
James Bond: you think I haven’t faced death before?
Supervillain: oh, I don’t expect you to die, Mr. Bond. I expect you to suffer.
*opens travel funding reimbursement software
I think you will find your motorboat rental and casino reservations especially complex
James Bond: no. no. pls kill me
Supervillain: oh, I don’t expect you to die, Mr. Bond. I expect you to suffer.
*opens travel funding reimbursement software
I think you will find your motorboat rental and casino reservations especially complex
James Bond: no. no. pls kill me
Reposted by Kate Littler
Optimist: The cup is half full
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Oceanographer: The water in the cup is Denmark Strait Overflow Water that formed in the Nordic Seas and entrained Atlantic intermediate waters when it cascaded of the sill of Denmark Strait
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Oceanographer: The water in the cup is Denmark Strait Overflow Water that formed in the Nordic Seas and entrained Atlantic intermediate waters when it cascaded of the sill of Denmark Strait
Optimist: The cup is half full
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Modeler: In Scenarios 2, 4 and 3b the cup is half full. In the remaining Scenarios, it is half empty except Scenario 5c where its state is sensitive to the chosen discount rate.
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Modeler: In Scenarios 2, 4 and 3b the cup is half full. In the remaining Scenarios, it is half empty except Scenario 5c where its state is sensitive to the chosen discount rate.
Optimist: The cup is half full
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Science Fiction Writer: The cup is a crystalline super computer and the liquid is hyperintelligent, they want to know why humanity should be allowed to exist, you have 30 minutes to respond and the answer must be danced by a cat
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Science Fiction Writer: The cup is a crystalline super computer and the liquid is hyperintelligent, they want to know why humanity should be allowed to exist, you have 30 minutes to respond and the answer must be danced by a cat
August 22, 2026 at 6:11 AM
Optimist: The cup is half full
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Oceanographer: The water in the cup is Denmark Strait Overflow Water that formed in the Nordic Seas and entrained Atlantic intermediate waters when it cascaded of the sill of Denmark Strait
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Oceanographer: The water in the cup is Denmark Strait Overflow Water that formed in the Nordic Seas and entrained Atlantic intermediate waters when it cascaded of the sill of Denmark Strait
With ever more uni students ‘choosing’ to live with family rather than on/ near campus (due to £), it’s clear that closing departments and leaving ‘cold spots’ in certain subjects is going to limit options.
And it’s not just ‘niche subjects’ - think English, History…
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
And it’s not just ‘niche subjects’ - think English, History…
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
More students planning to live at home for uni over 'insane' living costs
Students like Jessica say they worry about missing out on student life, but feel they have no choice but to stay at home.
www.bbc.co.uk
August 22, 2026 at 7:39 AM
With ever more uni students ‘choosing’ to live with family rather than on/ near campus (due to £), it’s clear that closing departments and leaving ‘cold spots’ in certain subjects is going to limit options.
And it’s not just ‘niche subjects’ - think English, History…
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
And it’s not just ‘niche subjects’ - think English, History…
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
As a former kid growing up with asthma in London, who remembers the black gunk in her nose when venturing ‘up town’, I’m all for ULEZ!
Wish it has existed in the 80s/90s.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Wish it has existed in the 80s/90s.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Ulez led to better lung size and function among London children, study finds
Researchers find capacity stunted by pollution restored after introduction of ultra-low emission zone
www.theguardian.com
August 19, 2026 at 6:45 AM
As a former kid growing up with asthma in London, who remembers the black gunk in her nose when venturing ‘up town’, I’m all for ULEZ!
Wish it has existed in the 80s/90s.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Wish it has existed in the 80s/90s.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
To hell with LLMs.
It is fundamentally breaking the uni staff - student relationship, based on mutual trust & respect.
Students, I want to be your instructor, your mentor, & a friendly presence.
I don’t want to be locked in a perpetual arms-race where you try to cheat and I try to catch you 😞
It is fundamentally breaking the uni staff - student relationship, based on mutual trust & respect.
Students, I want to be your instructor, your mentor, & a friendly presence.
I don’t want to be locked in a perpetual arms-race where you try to cheat and I try to catch you 😞
August 18, 2026 at 12:27 PM
To hell with LLMs.
It is fundamentally breaking the uni staff - student relationship, based on mutual trust & respect.
Students, I want to be your instructor, your mentor, & a friendly presence.
I don’t want to be locked in a perpetual arms-race where you try to cheat and I try to catch you 😞
It is fundamentally breaking the uni staff - student relationship, based on mutual trust & respect.
Students, I want to be your instructor, your mentor, & a friendly presence.
I don’t want to be locked in a perpetual arms-race where you try to cheat and I try to catch you 😞