++A psychologist explains why we want conversations to end sooner but usually get stuck. +
++Have you ever been stuck in an awkward conversation? +
++Of course you have. Who hasn’t bumped into that weirdo at the party who can’t stop talking? Or the chatty “gym guy” who can’t seem to understand that wearing headphones means “leave me alone”? Or the coworker who has to complain about something new every morning in the elevator? +
++Here’s the good news: The pandemic is almost over. We’re all going to be re-released into the social wilderness. The bad news is that you won’t be able to avoid thorny encounters anymore. +
++And if there’s a universal form of anxiety, it’s the feeling you get when you desperately want an interaction to end but can’t make it happen. The strange thing is it’s totally unnecessary: If we weren’t so desperate to avoid awkwardness, we could walk away or simply tell people what we want. But most of us don’t. +
++A study by a group of psychologists published in March throws some light on these dynamics. The researchers monitored more than 900 conversations and asked participants to report how they felt about the interaction, when they wanted it to end, and when they thought the other person wanted it to end. The findings won’t surprise you: Conversations “almost never ended when both conversants wanted them to” and “rarely ended when even one conversant wanted them to.” It turns out that, on average, conversations lasted about twice as long as people desired. +
++And that’s true not just of random conversations, like those at the gym, but also of interactions with friends, family, and loved ones. Roughly two-thirds of people said they wanted those conversations to end sooner. +
++I reached out to Adam Mastroianni, a doctoral student at Harvard and the study’s lead researcher, to talk about why our conversations last too long, how we can end them sooner, and why we should be less pessimistic about our interactions — and perhaps lean into the awkwardness. +
++A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows. +
++Sean Illing +
++Why do most of our conversations last longer than we want them to? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++Actually, the question of whether they last longer or shorter than we want them to is pretty complicated. The paper is about how conversations last a different amount of time than we want them to, which is both longer and shorter. I can walk you through the levels, and you can stop me whenever you get bored. +
++Cool? +
++Sean Illing +
++Cool. +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++So when you just ask people, “Was there a point at which you felt ready for that conversation to end?” About 70 percent say “yes.” And for the vast majority of those people, they wanted it to end way earlier. So if you just look at that number, it looks like most people want their conversations to end before they do. +
++Then there’s a minority of people, roughly 30 percent, who wanted the conversation to keep going, and they wanted it to keep going by about as much as the other people wanted it to end sooner. You could look at that and think they cancel each other out, and therefore conversations don’t really end sooner or later than people want them to. +
++But if you dig a little deeper, you see that these numbers mean something different. If I say I wanted to go five minutes earlier, I’m totally sure about that. But when someone says they wanted to go 20 minutes longer, that’s a prediction. Maybe they would, or maybe they’d change their mind after a few minutes. So we can’t really weigh these numbers against each other. +
++Sean Illing +
++I’m starting to get bored … +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++Yes, most people wish conversations ended sooner. +
++Sean Illing +
++Is this true not just of conversations with random people but also [of conversations] with friends, family, and loved ones? Do those tend to last longer than we want them to? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++Yeah, this was true of every kind of conversation that we studied. In one of our studies, we brought people into the lab who were meeting each other for the first time, and they talked as long as they wanted to. In our other study, we surveyed people about the last conversation that they had. If you think back to the last conversation you had, it’s probably with someone that you know really well and talk to all the time, especially in times like these. And we got the same results in both studies. Very few people say the conversation ended when they wanted it to, and they didn’t think it ended when the other person wanted it to either. +
++Sean Illing +
++Confusion is unavoidable, but the one thing we can always do is communicate our preferences to the person we’re talking to. Why don’t we do it? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++Imagine what would happen if you did. If you said, “I want to go,” you could offend me because I wanted to keep going. And now all of a sudden you’re saying that you’re done. If you said, “I want to keep going,” now you might trap me because I wanted to stop. And so instead of taking that risk and offending people one way or the other, we both hide our desires, so maybe nobody gets what they want but we also don’t offend anybody. And so we both leave dissatisfied, but we also leave as friends. This might be one of the prices that we pay for living in a decent society — we don’t all get exactly what we want all the time. +
++Sean Illing +
++So you’re saying the price of a decent society is a veneer of bullshit? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++I mean, you could call it bullshit or you could call it politeness. +
++Sean Illing +
++Did you find that most people were afraid to offend the other person? Is that the main concern? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++We’re afraid of offending people but also trapping them. If I was talking to you, and you had a little billboard that flipped up on your forehead when you wanted to go, I’d want to go too. I don’t want to talk to somebody who doesn’t want to talk to me. If I knew you wanted to continue, maybe I also would want to continue. +
++One of the reasons why conversations don’t end when people want them to is that we want different things. And part of the reason we want different things is because we don’t know what the other person wants. And this is a unique situation in which what I want is dependent, at least in part, on what you want. +
++Sean Illing +
++Those things — honesty and politeness — are really in conflict, aren’t they? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++Yeah, you can think of politeness as a series of rules. And the whole reason you have rules is because this isn’t what you would do if you did exactly what you want. We don’t need a rule that says you should continue to breathe, or that you should eat a bunch of ice cream. These are things that people would do whether you told them to or not. But we do need rules to govern people’s behavior around things that they might not do automatically. +
++What we think of as politeness is typically something that we think we do with strangers. But we don’t really think of it as politeness with people we know; we just think of it as kindness. But it’s the same thing: It’s a series of rules that govern your behavior toward another person. If I didn’t want to be kind to my partner or to my mother or to my friends, I would just walk away exactly when I wanted to. But because I care about them, and I don’t want to hurt their feelings and they don’t want to hurt mine, we’re willing to all stick around maybe a little longer than we would otherwise. +
++Sean Illing +
++The shitty thing is that we all kind of know when someone has checked out of a conversation. You can see it in their face [and] in their eyes, and yet most of the time we keep on chatting. No one’s willing to acknowledge what both people already know. Are we just stuck with what game theorists call a “coordination problem”? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++There’s actually two problems at play here that create this coordination problem. One is that we might think we know when the other person wants to leave, but when you notice that someone is shifting around, maybe breaking eye contact, looking a little glazed over, maybe that was the first moment they felt ready to leave, or maybe they felt ready to leave 10 minutes ago and you didn’t notice it then, or they didn’t signal it to you then. When we ask people to guess when the other people wanted to leave, they were off by about 60 percent of the length of their conversations. They had no idea when that person wanted to go. So that’s the first problem. +
++The other problem is that even when we’re pretty sure of what the other person wants, you can’t just end a conversation at any time. You can think of a conversation like driving down the highway. You can’t just exit at any point, or else you’re going to end up in a ditch or in a storefront or running into a tree. I can’t just interrupt a story. There are all these rules that make it pretty clear to both of us when we’re allowed to get out. And those exits have some distance between them. +
++Sean Illing +
++I’ve had a couple periods in my life where I really tried to be authentic in my personal interactions, and I learned pretty quickly that people don’t like that. We’re so used to playing this choreographed social game, and radical honesty blows the whole thing up … +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++But what is your authentic self? Is it the thing that wants what it wants in the very moment that it wants it? Or is it the part of you that also cares about what the other person thinks? Is your authentic self the one that wants to rip a big fart the second you feel a rumbling in your tummy? Or is it the part that goes, “I don’t want to make other people feel embarrassed or have to smell the noxious fumes coming out of my ass.” Both of those could be some part of your authentic self, and maybe your authentic self is whatever emerges from the conflict between those desires. +
++Sean Illing +
++Yeah, I don’t think my authentic self has ever wanted to drop farts on interlocutors, but I did find that if you really listen to people, if you give them your total attention, it can create some awkwardness because it’s not normal. But let me ask you this: Do you think the social benefits of playing the politeness game outweigh the potential benefits of a more honest game? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++I don’t know for sure, and I’d love to know better. All of our studies were on Americans, and you and I are both pretty familiar with the rules that govern conversations in America. They’re not universal rules. In other cultures, the rules are much stricter, and so people might get stuck a lot more often than they do here. In other places, the rules are a lot more loose, and you can just say something like, “I’m done. Goodbye.” And what we don’t yet know is whether people actually enjoy conversations more when they tilt more toward the strict or more toward the loose. +
++Sean Illing +
++If it’s true that most conversations last longer than both people want them to, wouldn’t someone be relieved if you’re actually willing to own that and be the one to pull the rip cord? Are we just overthinking this? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++Maybe. We do know that the people who are left wanting more, that 30 percent, enjoy the conversation just as much as people who say it ended exactly [when] they wanted it to end. There’s not many of those people, but those two points are pretty much the same. So it’s definitely better to leave people wanting more than it is to leave people wanting less. +
++Sean Illing +
++What’s your best advice to people who want to get better at ending conversations without also being assholes? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++The big tip is that it’s almost always better to go too short than too long. If you’re feeling unsure about whether the other person wants to go but think that you do, that’s a pretty appropriate time to go. Especially if you could always talk to that person again. But the trick is that one of the reasons why conversations are so fraught is that it feels like the very fact of our parting is evidence that something has gone wrong, because if I liked you and you liked me and we were having a nice time, why don’t we keep going? You don’t stop eating ice cream when the ice cream tastes really good. You stop when you’re sick. +
++I think the best way to end a conversation is to address that problem head-on, to signal to the other person that nothing has gone wrong here — it’s just that sometimes, two people have to stop talking to each other, and this is one of those times. And this is why a main way people end their conversations is by signaling that they have to. You say, “I’d love to keep talking, but I gotta do X.” But another way to do it without lying is just to say, “I had a nice time talking to you, looking forward to doing it again.” +
++Sean Illing +
++What do you do when you collide with that person — and we all know this person — who just refuses to notice your signals? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++One of these people sort of inspired the paper. There was a person in our department who will remain nameless and, in fact, isn’t even there anymore. But you knew that if you were walking by this person you should be on the other side of the room or on the phone, because otherwise you’d be talking to them for an hour. How do you get out of a conversation with such a person? Maybe tell them about this study and they’ll get the hint. But otherwise, the nuclear option — besides walking away — is literally to say, “This has been really nice. I have to go.” If they don’t get it at that point, there’s no hope. You should probably walk away. +
++Sean Illing +
++Most people are probably more comfortable being honest with friends and family, but do you think we should try to take the same approach to ending conversations with everyone? +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++That’s a good question. I think people might feel more comfortable with their families and friends, but the stakes are higher. If we’re chatting because we’re both waiting for a bus, I don’t want to hurt you because you’re another person, but I’m not as worried about what you think about me. But if you’re my partner or my mom, I am more worried. You mean a lot to me, and I don’t want to hurt you. So the relationship means more, and it’s hard to take the same strategy. I mean, who wants to cut off grandma in the middle of her story? I don’t. Sometimes it’s good for us to just sit there and listen. +
++Sean Illing +
++I also think most of us are too pessimistic about our interactions. Sometimes conversations die not because we run out of stuff to say but because we’re in our damn heads too much. We’re not present, and that inattentiveness kills momentum. +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++That’s totally true. We can see this in our studies. This is a unique domain in which people are more pessimistic than they should be. Usually people are more optimistic than they should be. “I think I might win the lottery,” or “I definitely won’t break my leg,” that’s something that happens to other people. But when it comes to social interactions, people say things like, “Oh, I’m worse than other people at remembering names,” or in our studies, “I think other people liked me less than I liked them.” +
++Worrying is a huge dead weight on conversations. The best thing we can probably do is relax and just let the conversation run its course. All of these people that we’re trying to get out of conversations with, maybe they’re the ones having the most fun, and we should be doing what they’re doing instead of giving ourselves over to our neurotic thoughts and trying to escape. +
++Sean Illing +
++Conversations will always be fraught with uncertainty because we can never know what someone else is thinking. But the anxiety we feel is a choice and a consequence of worrying too much. I’m going to try and do less of that. +
++Adam Mastroianni +
++Maybe the best way to think about ending conversations is what happens when you start having thoughts about leaving. Ask yourself: “Is this an anxious thought? Am I running because I’m afraid that I’m being judged? Or do I really need to get back to work (or whatever)”? If it’s the latter, if it’s real, then yeah, that’s a good time to leave. But if it’s fear, then maybe that’s the time to stick it out. +
++The secret to wombat poop, how skies turn orange, and what a cold ocean blob could mean for the climate. +
++This story is part of Down to Earth, a new Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis. +
++This time last April, on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the world was coming to grips with the isolation of quarantine and the economic and travel slowdowns that defined the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even now, with the rollout of vaccines, the virus continues to affect our daily lives. And the toll keeps growing: 3 million dead and more than 140 million cases worldwide. +
++If anything, the worst public health crisis in a century has brought our understanding of our planet, and our place in the fragile yet resilient web of life throughout it, into stark relief. +
++Amid so much grief and loss and uncertainty, the biodiversity crisis paced ahead over the past year, becoming a much bigger theme on the world stage. The climate crisis worsened, too. Wildfires blazed. Ecosystems became even more fouled up than they already were. A tree-heavy Google Doodle marking the occasion of Earth Day this year drives it all home. +
++At the same time, the marked reduction in human activity spurred by the pandemic — what some experts have dubbed the “Anthropause” — has afforded scientists and researchers opportunities to observe the natural world like never before. Coinciding with these unique observational windows has been an increase in attention on Indigenous knowledge and land stewardship as a way forward in combating ecological catastrophe. +
++In true Vox tradition, here are the 10 most concerning, intriguing, and — dare we say — hopeful things we learned about our planet since the last Earth Day. +
+
+
+- We saw just how quickly ocean noise pollution can drop, and how much that can help marine life
+
++For a moment last spring, things got very quiet in the oceans. +
++The drop in human activity that came with the pandemic resulted in drastic and voluntary sound reductions that ran the underwater gamut: from a drop in shipping noise, the predominant source of man-made ocean noise pollution, to decreases in recreation and tourism. All of it suddenly ceased. +
++In Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park, the foraging grounds of humpback whales, the loudest underwater sounds last May were less than half as loud as those in May 2018, according to a Cornell University analysis. A May 2020 paper in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America found that underwater noise off the Vancouver coast was half as loud in April as the loudest sounds recorded in the months preceding the shipping traffic slowdown. +
++Chronic underwater ocean noise had been rising over the past few decades, to the detriment of marine life that have evolved to use sound to navigate their world. “There is clear evidence that noise compromises hearing ability and induces physiological and behavioral changes in marine animals,” reads an assessment of marine noise pollution research published in the journal Science in February. +
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Richard Shucksmith/Barcroft Im/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
++The majority of ocean noise pollution is a byproduct of economic activity. But compared with massively complex issues like climate change, noise is relatively easy to turn down, at least a little. Silencing it at its source has an immediate positive impact: Famously, researchers studying right whales on the East Coast measured a drop in the animals’ stress hormones in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, after shipping traffic abruptly dropped. Even tiny fish larvae are better able to locate the coral reefs where they were born, which themselves emit sound, when the oceans get quiet. +
++Man-made ocean noise has since ramped back up and is now stabilized near pre-pandemic levels. But it fell silent for long enough last March, April, and May that a global team of scientists is actively scrubbing through audio recordings gathered by around 230 non-military hydrophones — underwater microphones — that monitor ocean noise around the world. They aim to study the “year of the quiet ocean” in the context of ocean sounds before, during, and after the pandemic. +
+
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+- A new study found that the Amazon is likely warming — not cooling — the planet
+
++The world’s largest and most species-rich tropical forest, the Amazon, is home to billions of trees that not only provide refuge to a diverse assemblage of organisms but also store and absorb a huge amount of carbon dioxide. +
++That’s what makes the conclusion of a study published this spring so alarming: Due to human activity, the Amazon is likely contributing to — not offsetting, as one might expect— global warming. “The current net biogeochemical effect of the Amazon Basin is most likely to warm the atmosphere,” the researchers wrote in the paper. +
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Tarso Sarraf/AFP via Getty Images
++While the Amazon is still absorbing loads of CO2, human activities in the basin, such as deforestation, are driving up emissions of CO2 and other more potent greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide across the basin. +
++Deforestation, for one, deals a double punch: It both releases gases into the atmosphere and removes CO2-absorbing trees from the equation. That equation now sees the Amazon generating more greenhouse gases than it emits, the study suggests. (It’s worth noting, though, this is all really complicated. For more, check out Craig Welch’s story in National Geographic or read the full study here.) +
+
+
+- We discovered a bunch of new species
+
++While humans have made a mark on all corners of Earth, we’ve only discovered a small fraction of the species that occupy it. In fact, that fraction could be smaller than 1 percent. And remarkably, not all of those species are tiny microbes and insects. They’re also fish, lizards, bats, and even whales. That’s right: Even giant mammals can elude scientists. +
++In January, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said they discovered a new species of baleen whale in the Gulf of Mexico. (You can find the paper describing the discovery here.) Other teams of scientists are also on the trail of what could be yet another new whale species. +
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AP/Frank Glaw
++Last year, researchers documented scores of new plants and animals, from geckos and sea slugs to flowering plants and sand dollars, as Vox’s Brian Resnick reported. Our favorite? Brookesia nana, a thumbnail-sized chameleon native to northern Madagascar. It may be the smallest reptile on Earth; it’s certainly the cutest. +
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+- We got a much clearer picture of just how much wildlife we’re losing
+
++The numbers aren’t good. +
++In September, the World Wildlife Fund published a report showing that the global populations of several major animal groups, including mammals and birds, have declined by almost 70 percent in the last 50 years due to human activity. +
++A separate report, published in Nature this year, found that populations of ocean sharks and rays have plummeted by more than 70 percent in roughly the same period. And one-third of freshwater fish have been found to be at risk of extinction. +
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Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images
++A number of species were also declared extinct over the last year. Those include the smooth handfish, a bottom-dweller that rests atop human-like appendages on the seafloor. It was the first marine fish species to be declared extinct in modern history. (Environmental journalist John Platt has a list of recent extinctions in 2020 at Scientific American.) +
+
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+- Protecting plants and animals hinges on a thriving ecotourism industry
+
++In the early days of the pandemic, the popular “Nature is healing” meme overshadowed a darker reality in many parts of the world: As travel ground to a halt, so did revenue from wildlife tourism, putting some wildlife conservation efforts at risk. +
++The fallout was most severe in Africa. According to a new collection of research from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a government and civil society group, more than half of the continent’s protected areas had to pause or limit field patrols and other operations to stop poachers in the wake of the pandemic. +
++“Parks have emptied out to a large extent and there’s no money coming in,” Nigel Dudley, a co-author of one of the IUCN papers, told Reuters last month. +
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Roger de la Harpe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
++Some communities are deeply reliant on wildlife tourism. Late last year, Vox’s Brian Resnick spoke to veterinarian Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, who is working to keep coronavirus-susceptible gorillas alive in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. +
++When tourism dropped, “everybody was struggling,” she said. “The local economy suffered and poaching went up.” (You can read more of Resnick’s conversation with her here.) +
+
+
+- Researchers uncovered more proof that a key system of ocean currents is weakening
+
++Graphics that show changes in ocean temperature over time generally reveal one trend: The ocean is heating up. But there’s one critical exception. Just below Greenland lies a large patch of water that’s cooling off. And that patch has scientists concerned that we could be nearing a tipping point for the climate. +
++The cold patch, scientists say, signals that a network of currents that bring warm water to the North Atlantic — known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — is slowing down, and the melting of ice on Greenland is likely a culprit. One paper, published in the journal Nature in March, suggests that the current AMOC slowdown is “unprecedented in over a thousand years.” +
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NASA Goddard
++The AMOC shapes weather across multiple continents, so any major slowdown will carry major consequences that could include faster sea-level rise in some regions, stronger hurricanes, and other changes in weather, to say nothing of the impacts to marine ecosystems. +
++But to be clear, the science on this is new and complex. For a great run-down, check out this recent visual feature in the New York Times. +
+
+
+- The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs gave rise to the Amazon rainforest
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++The massive asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago may be best known for driving non-avian dinosaurs to extinction, but it also transformed entire ecosystems. +
++It may have even given rise to the Amazon rainforest, according to a study published in Science earlier this month. The finding is based on an analysis of about 50,000 fossil pollen records and 6,000 fossil leaf records in Colombia from before and after the asteroid crashed into what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. +
++The data reveals two vastly different forests. Before the event, the forests were stocked with conifers and ferns, and the trees were spread out, with plenty of room for light to stream through the canopy. After the asteroid event, however, flowering plants started to dominate the landscape and the canopy became much more tightly packed, resembling the forest we know today. +
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Getty Images
++“If you returned to the day before the meteorite fall, the forest would have an open canopy with a lot of ferns, many conifers, and dinosaurs,” study co-author Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama told New Scientist. “The forest we have today is the product of one event 66 million years ago.” +
++The idea here is that the asteroid impact somehow triggered a series of events that led to the modern Amazon rainforest. What were those events? One theory the researchers offer is that, before the asteroid, herbivorous dinosaurs prevented the forest from becoming dense by eating and trampling plants. +
+
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+- A review of more than 300 studies showed that the rate of deforestation is lower on Indigenous lands
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++The global conservation movement is pushing forward a plan to conserve 30 percent of the Earth by 2030 — an initiative known as 30 by 30 — and increasingly calling for Indigenous communities to be central to that effort. +
++These groups have historically been uprooted from land in the name of wildlife conservation. There is also greater evidence that forests fare better when they are governed by Indigenous and tribal territories. +
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Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images
++A recent UN review of more than 300 studies found that forests within tribal territories in Latin America and the Caribbean have significantly lower rates of deforestation where land rights are formally recognized. +
++“In just about every country in the region Indigenous and tribal territories have lower deforestation rates than other forest areas,” wrote the authors of the report, which was published by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. “Many Indigenous territories prevent deforestation as effectively as non-Indigenous protected areas, and some even more effectively.” +
+
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+- Wildfire smoke can turn the sky an apocalyptic orange
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++If there was one day in 2020 that defined the climate emergency, it could have been September 9, when the sky above San Francisco turned completely orange. +
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Jessica Christian/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
++Strong winds had carried smoke from fires burning across California to the atmosphere above the city. Particles of soot absorbed or reflected blue light from the sun, letting only orange-ish light through. (Wired has the details.) +
++But what made the image go viral wasn’t so much the science but what it symbolized: a growing climate catastrophe. +
++Climate change is making wildfires more frequent and severe, and 2020 provided more devastating evidence. Last year was California’s worst wildfire season on record. By the end of the year, nearly 10,000 fires had burned over 4 million acres — an astonishing 4 percent of California’s total land, according to the state. +
+
+
+- Scientists finally solved the mystery of why wombats poop cubes
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++Sure, it may not have kept you up at night, but the mystery of the bare-nosed wombat’s poop puzzled scientists for decades. Why do these adorable, chunky marsupials, native to Australia and Tasmania, leave behind feces with six sides? +
++Thanks to a new study — published in the journal Soft Matter — we now have the answer. +
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Getty Images
++Building on research published a few years earlier, a team of scientists found that wombat intestines have regions of varying thickness and elasticity that contract at different speeds: The stiffer regions contract relatively quickly, while softer sections squeeze more slowly, together forming a cube-like shape. +
++But there’s still a bit of mystery left: Why is their poop shaped like this? The jury’s still out, but some researchers believe it’s because wombats climb up on rocks and logs, and the cube-like shape prevents the feces from rolling away. This is key for wombats because they use piles of feces to communicate with other wombats. +
++What a difference a year makes, truly. +
++
+This April, Vox’s podcasts are teaming up to cover some of the most important issues threatening life on Earth. Check out the full list of episodes in the series. +
++A conversation with Andrew Steer about the US Earth Day climate summit, and how he wants to spend Bezos’s money. +
++It’s a momentous week for action on climate change. On Thursday, the White House is convening 40 world leaders for an Earth Day summit where the United States is expected to announce new commitments to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Washington Post, the US is considering doubling its previous target, cutting emissions 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. In doing so, the US — the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter — would end up committing to the largest cuts in emissions in the world. +
++Many other countries are also not sitting idle. Major economies like the United Kingdom, the European Union, and even China have their sights set on zeroing out their greenhouse gas emissions entirely. Others plan to ramp up their ambitions from the tepid goals set in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The accord aims to limit warming this century to below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, with a more ambitious target of 1.5°C. +
++It’s been a struggle to get to this point, with decades of stops and false starts just to get countries to agree to limit climate change at all, not to mention the last four years of US backpedaling under Donald Trump. Now, scientists say the world has less than a decade to get on course for meeting the 1.5°C goal. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are poised to rise again this year as economies rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic. +
+ ++Andrew Steer is a leading authority on international climate change policy and has been closely involved in the ebbs and flows of global action for more than a decade. He worked as a special envoy for climate change at the World Bank between 2010 and 2012. And until recently, he led the World Resources Institute (WRI), one of the premier think tanks on climate change and other environmental issues. WRI’s work has been indispensable for my own reporting, from their policy papers on energy to their visualizations to their briefings walking reporters through the intricacies of international climate negotiations. +
++Steer was recently poached by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to lead the Bezos Earth Fund, one of the world’s largest climate philanthropies, pledging to spend $10 billion by 2030 to address climate change. +
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