Assessing Carbon Removal, and other stories
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from science writer and editor Ramin Skibba. You can read more about the newsletter here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post.
I’m relieved and heartened that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was finally released from Russia today, after being held for 16 months. We need victories for journalists, who face harassment and threats in so many places around the world. Just yesterday, Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul was killed in Gaza City while reporting on the assassination of a Palestinian politician.
In other journalism news, despite the many layoffs at some major media companies earlier this year, it’s encouraging to see writers, editors and other journalists team up to form their own outlets, like Defector, 404 Media, and Sequencer. On July 17, the National Association of Science Writers hosted a virtual roundtable that I moderated and helped organize on such writer-owned publications and the continuing demand for quality science journalism and science writing. You can watch the archived video here, though it’s only available to NASW members. (And if you are a science writer and aren’t a member, you should join us!)
Will Burying Biomass Underground Curb Climate Change?
We’ve seen lots of hype from businesses, the White House, and even some IPCC scientists, about carbon dioxide removal, which perhaps could aid efforts to limit climate change and stay below the disastrous threshold of two-degree warming. Maybe it could work, but as you’ll see in this piece, the technology and economics remain unproven, and I’m skeptical of the carbon credit market, which has a poor record, to the say the least. (I could write a whole separate piece about how carbon offsets have been a greenwashing disaster.) If you’ve been wondering what this carbon removal talk is all about, check out this new feature I wrote for Undark magazine.
In other writing…
The New York Times published its list of the best books of the 21st century so far. It includes many brilliant, exceptional volumes, but it was disappointing to me to see snubs for notable science and nature nonfiction books, such as by Rebecca Skloot, Mary Roach, Ed Yong, Emma Marris, and Michelle Nijhuis. Skloot’s award-winning book about Henrietta Lacks definitely should’ve made the list.
Pooping on the moon is a messy business, by Becky Ferreira in WIRED
Mortality wars, a piece by Shaan Sachdev in The Drift magazine about how death toll debates in Gaza and Iraq affect our views of the conflicts
Some good investigations: The death squads hunting environmental defenders, by Alessandra Bergamin in In These Times; How four US presidents unleashed economic warfare across the globe, by Jeff Stein and Federica Cocco in the Washington Post; and Oil companies sold the public on a fake climate solution—and swindled taxpayers out of billions, by Amy Westervelt in Vox
The mysterious, deep-dwelling microbes that sculpt our planet, in NYT Magazine by Ferris Jabr, excerpted from his new book, Becoming Earth
Hakai magazine, I’m devastated to hear, will likely shutter at the end of this year. I've enjoyed working with this British Columbia-based outlet, which publishes engaging stories about ocean-related and coastal news and science. Here’s hoping they get an influx of funding or find a way to continue in some form. Please support them.
What I’m reading: Cosmicomics, a collection of brilliant short stories by Italo Calvino.
Looking back: Seven years ago I published this, one of the first pieces I wrote for Hakai magazine, about marine archaeologists deciphering the role climate change and drought played in felling Eastern Mediterranean empires 3,000 years ago.
More about me: I’m a science writer and journalist based in the Bay Area. I was WIRED magazine’s space writer until December 2023, and before that I worked as a freelance writer and an astrophysicist. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net, and on Twitter and Bluesky. I’m also former president of the San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) and on the board of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), though the opinions I express are mine alone. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you’re welcome to subscribe too.