The earth is changing in ways the news cycle cannot photograph

Microplastics and nanoplastics in the atmosphere are now demonstrably affecting the planet's radiative balance — locally, they exceed black carbon. The plastics are not a future warning; they are an active climate forcing. European beech forests, *Fagus sylvatica*, the canonical broadleaf of the continent, are losing vitality and dying across the continent under drought and heat stress, and the structural diversity that was supposed to buffer them is failing at the extremes. A 33-year primate st ...