Atmospheric CO2 just keeps on climbing

Another “milestone,” of a very problematic sort.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere peaked above 430 parts per million in 2025—the highest it has been in millions of years—according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego on Thursday…

The last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations topped 430 ppm was most likely more than 30 million years ago, Ralph Keeling, who directs the Scripps CO2 Program, told NBC News.

"It's changing so fast," he said. "If humans had evolved in such a high-CO2 world, there would probably be places where we wouldn't be living now. We probably could have adapted to such a world, but we built our society and a civilization around yesterday's climate." - Common Dreams

The corporate "bigs," climate denial, and social media

Many of us didn't need a study to know full well this is happening. But it's good to have it documented and proved.

From 2008 to 2023, nine of the nation’s largest oil, agrichemical, and plastics trade groups and corporations posted thousands of tweets on the social media platform X, and their messaging on environmental issues was strikingly “obstructive” for climate policy and action, a study published (in January) in the journal PLOS Climate concludes.

The study found that all of the organizations, including the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), were mentioned by at least four of the other groups – helping to essentially create an echo chamber for similar messages. The groups also frequently tagged regulators and the media in their posts, with researchers finding the Environmental Protection Agency was tagged 795 times and the Wall Street Journal, the most mentioned media organization, tagged 517 times out of more than 125,000 X posts.

“Our study suggests that climate obstruction in different industries is more coordinated than is generally recognized,” said co-author Jennie Stephens, professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at Northeastern University and of Climate Justice at the National University of Ireland Maynooth.

“Combined with the high engagement of the petrochemical derivative and fuel sectors with government regulatory, policy, and political entities in the energy and environmental in particular, this suggests strategic attempts to undermine and subvert climate policy through social media,” the authors wrote. - DeSmog

Big Ag's ongoing push to control the narrative

This article is actually wide-ranging, with plenty of positive stuff in it. It just so happens that I’m quoting this:

Industry representatives took that messaging and ran with it. Multiple panelists repeatedly referred to an amorphous “them” to refer to an uneducated public without their hands in the dirt. As a result, the conversations often felt politicized and at odds with other discussions happening around the country, in which politicians are calling for shifts away from classes of pesticides or experts are recommending Americans reduce meat consumption (which is currently much higher than dietary guidelines recommend) to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

This framing was most prominent on a panel devoted to the U.N. Food Systems Summit, which almost immediately turned into a narrative of industry efforts to thwart what they saw as an “anti-animal-ag agenda” driving it. One of the major criticisms scientists and activists had of the U.N. event was that it gave powerful food and agriculture corporations too much of a voice. And, panelists at the Sustainable Ag Summit from the meat, dairy, and animal feed industries laid out, step by step, how they came together to ensure that their interests were represented, specifically by preventing any recommendations to reduce meat consumption. - Civil Eats