@robb-b.bsky.social , an old friend, made a connection on bluesky recently, and we were reminiscing about a play date for our family's guinea pigs. At the time I only had a crummy early electronic camera, but here are the pix I found from the time. First, Rob's family piggies:

Winding down on a Sunday evening with Mary Robinette Kowal's book, "Martian Conspiracy" and a nice tot of Kyrö Finnish malted Rye whiskey. Almost ready to face a new week.

Without noticing it particularly, I've found I'm now over 900 followers. Very gratifying. It would be a great Christmas present if I could get to a round 1000 by December! Meanwhile, it's been terrific to have such great engagement and dialogue. My thanks to everybody who had read and responded.

I'm really astonished at and ashamed of Zeke Hausfather that he would have thrown his lot in with a charlatan like David Keith on solar geoengineering. Why should I pay attention to anything else he says at this point?

Given the Zeke Hausfather has drunk the cool-aid on solar geoengineering, and subscribes to the fantasy that it can be kept in a box once deployment starts, I agree with Mike it's time to re-up this. I expect stupidity from NYT these days, but not from Zeke. What a disappointment.

This is pretty stupid. I don't expect better from David Keith, but Zeke Hausfather should know better. For all the pontificating of the Solar Geoengeineering boosters, once the technology develops it won't be the scientists (even the more responsible ones) who get to decide whether it's deployed..

Yes, happy birthday Suki! It's been great to have known you all these years, going back to when I was a grad student coming down to GFDL to do my computations on the TI-ASC (that was an early supercomputer -- TI later repurposed the name for their Advanced Scientific Calculator). My JFM Essay...

Working on a JWST Cycle 5 proposal, he says to himself "I now have fixed the LAST BUG in this code!" Famous last words?

We knew K2-18b was extremely unlikly to support a liquid water ocean. That was made pretty clear in my subNeptune runaway paper, and made even clearer by Hamish Innes' paper on bringing H2+H2O into the picture. But there can be "waterworlds" without liquid water -- they can have layers of

A pleasant fringe benefit in the wake of the #EPSCDPS2025 meeting in Helsinki was an acquaintance with Finnish rye whiskey. Rye has a kind of low connotation (cowboy shots) and some rye is mediocre or even vile. But the best rye is really excellent -- in US expressions, I'd point especially to

Elon Musk hit a new low at the recent Unite the Kingdom (sic) right wing ralley in the U.K. I've received word that the Royal Society council is going to take this up (though they still couldn't bring themselves to name names). Who knows if they'll go beyond the "polite note" they sent earlier.

The Guardian is one of the best newspapers around, and one of the few that unabashedly speaks truth to power. Plus, they have a superb track record in investigative reporting. And of course, they are absolutely tops in their devotion to reporting on the climate crisis. I've just sent in my donation

I like Adam's work, and wish the department the best, but if I were an early career person thinking of this position, I'd have to ask myself whether given how Columbia disgraced itself by caving in to Trump, there could be any reassurance Columbia would have my back if my climate work irritated him.

#exoplanets I'm re-upping this paper by my former student R.J. Graham and myself, on deep carbon cycle instability in the outer reaches of the habitable zone. It hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Sounds like a great occasion for a celebration!

The AGU prevailed in its lawsuit against the Trump administration's mass firings of civil servants. It's a bittersweet victory though, since the court states it is too late to hire any back. It does remove a stain on their records, and prevents future firing. news.agu.org/press-releas...

The land carbon sink, and what happens to it in a warming world, is one of the "known unknowns" I worry about most. At some point, it could start adding a significant amount of additional carbon to the carbon we release by burning fossil fuels.

Incredible opportunity from the MPG to start your own research group!

More folk music for Oxford Locals. The legendary Blowzabella band, with legendary melodeon virtuoso Andy Cutting, is coming to Oxford and playing for a bal Friday 24 October. Tickets will go fast! blowzabella.co.uk/event/608304... . No previous balfolk dance experience necessary.

For Oxford Locals and fans of folk music and good ale: The monthly Scandi/French session will happen again Monday, 15 Sept. at the Half Moon, 17 St. Clement's St. We start at 8 PM and usually run to about 10:30, maybe later if feeling lively. I'll be there! New musicians welcome,

While in Helsinki, a bit of serendipity is that I stumbled on the Elite Ravintola on Hesperiankatu. Old school, which means you can get paistetut muikku ja perunamuusi, but what really made it for me is that the actor/singer Vesa-Matti Loiri was a regular there, and we got to see his favorite

About a week ago I mentioned the recently released Swedish "kulturkanon" but deferred commenting on it because of being (happily) tied up with a planetary science meeting in Helsinki. First, to remind you, here is the whole list of what's in this supposed kanon www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/kult...

This is a really amazing site for keeping track of how your feed is doing. Check out ClimateBook Bluesky follower stats: bluefacts.app/profile/clim... I don't aim to be viral (and at the rate I'm going won't be) but am very happy with the engagement of the followers I have. Still hoping for 1000!

Farewell to #EPSCDPS2025 . Thanks for a great week, and see you again in two years, I hope!

#EPSCDPS2025 : Interesting talks by Xuan Li (collaboration with Richard Chatterjee) on revising cosmic shoreline to incorporate molecular weight, and by Erik Meier Valdes on what has been learned so far from the Hot Rocks survey. (Most interesting is that LHS1478b has a tentative hint

#EPSCDPS2025 : Now at the Cosmic Shoreline session, co-chaired by Jake Taylor (Oxford Glasstone fellow) and Richard Chatterjee (Oxford PCDgroup doctoral student finishing soon #proudadvisor ) . This session deals with the question of when a planet can retain an atmosphere.

#EPSCDPS2025 : One big takeaway from Yami's talk is that putting a volatile layer over a magma ocean greatly increases partial pressure of rock vapours (mostly via oxygen reactions). Results presented are only up to roughly 10 bars though, so not subNeptune like. More work!

#EPSCDPS2025 Soon the second GEOASTRONOMY session will be starting. In this session, among other interesting talks, Oxford PCDgroup postdoc Claire Guimond will talk about the expectation of ubiquitous CO2 sources on rocky planets. I will give my talk on subNeptunes as rockyworlds,

#EPSCDPS2025 I had intended to not do too much microblogging in this meeting, since it is a bit of a distraction for me, but there has been so much exciting stuff going on I couldn't resist the temptation to share. Hope y'all don't mind! And there will be more Friday morning, incl. my own talk.

Missed one of today's Oxford PCDgroup crowd: Poster F221 by Richard Chatterjee et al, ( #proudadvisor ) on refining atmospheric escape calculations. Such an embarassment of riches! Richard is defending his thesis soon.

Next up Harrison Nicholls a doctoral student from the Oxford PCD group finishing up soon ( #proudadvisor ). Harrison is talking about "Super-Earth lava planet from birth to observation: photochemistry, tidal heating, and volatile-rich formation " using the modelling framework developed in his

#EPSCDPS2025 : Following a talk on Pellissard on the effect of fast magma ocean freeze out on mantle water retention on Venus (related to Harrison Nicholls' recent paper on convective shutdown and M.O. freeze-out time) Lena Noack is talking about CO-rich atmospheres arising from M.O. interactions.

#EPSCDPS2025 : Apurva Oza presents a very interesting idea for detecting exomoons by their alkali metal escaping clouds, which can be huge. Sodium is very optically thick, so detectable at low density. Found a doppler redshift on WASP 49 Ab . Could this be evidence of a volcanic exomoon?

#EPSCDPS2025 : Next up, Sarah Joiret arguing that the primordial atmosphere of Mars was massive. Combining geochemical constraints with models of dynamical evolutionof the Solar System. Main argument is that noble gas signature indicates that the capture of solar nebular gas most have been

#EPSCDPS2025 : Back in session on bridging geoscience and astronomy (mostly engaging very similar topics to the GEOASTRONOMY sessions) Starting with a talk by Matthew Roche on atmospheric loss during giant impacts, including dependence on impact angle and impact parameter.

#EPSCDPS2025 : Razvan Caracas is talking on a general theme which is becoming a hot topic in planetary science (esp. for subNeptunes): The way interactions between volatile envelopes and magma oceans affect atmospheric composition. Razvan is using advanced molecular dynamics

#EPSCDPS2025 : I am now at the 15:00 GEOASTRONOMY session, on what determines chemical composition and thermochemical evolution of planets. I won't try to tell you about everything, but will flag a few things. Right now Georgios Perdikakis is talking about stellar nuclear processes that destroy

#EPSCDPS2025 At the DPS Awards Ceremony now. Great to see so much impressive talent recognized. I already mentioned Lisa Kaltenegger's Sagan Medal. Now, Faith Vilas, winner of the Kuiper Prize, is talking about highlights of her long career in planetary science, extending from asteroids to disks.

#EPSCDPS2025 : Make sure to catch Alex McGinty's poster ( #proudadvisor ) F219 today on modeling of the phase curve of the lava planet TOI 561b .

#EPSCDPS2025 : Won't go into details, but very illuminating talk by Thomas Drant on how interior redox state can be inferred from atmospheric composition. It even included a consideration of when photochemistry dominates over thermochemistry. Most impressively, the latter even drew on

#EPSCDPS2025 We just finished a talk by Hannah Woodward on effect of supercontinent distribution on surface habitability. Now PCD group doctoral student Marylou Fournier-Tondreau (#proudadvisor) is talking about her work on seafloor silicate weathering,

#EPSCDPS2025 Paul Byrne gave many important insights about the history of volcanism in the Solar system, but had one slide that was off the mark, in which he put the subNeptune TOI 270d on the same slide as Europa, tagging it as a "hycean world" with a subsurface open.

Thursday at #EPSCDPS2025! The first of two big days for folks from my Oxford Planetary Climate Dynamics (PCD) group. Kicking off with a session on bridging geoscience and astronomy, chaired by PCD postdoc Claire Guimond. Session leads off with a talk by the always engaging Paul Byrne

Hamish Innes just finished talking about subNeptunes at #EPSCDPS2025. In his doctoral work at Oxford (#proudadvisor) he identified conditions for existence of a liquid water ocean at subNeptunes, concluding they have to be much more weakly irradiated than any current candidates

Talk today by Oxford PCDgroup alumnus Hamish Innes " Hycean worlds can only form under extremely cold and water-rich conditions " at 11:48 in Room Jupiter. Many other great talks in this session, which starts at 9:30 AM and continues after coffee, at 11AM (all in Jupiter).

Just remember, if you live in the UK, this is YOUR TAX DOLLARS at work, funded through ARIA, which is wasting money not just on this but a lot of other poorly conceived projects with little oversight or accountability.

A few Finnish foods to try while you're in Helsinki for #EPSCDPS2025 : (1) Karjalan (riisi) Piirakka with mashed butter and egg (called "buttermush" in my family (2) Viili (most hotels don't have it for breakfast. Get some at your nearest K-kauppa) (3) Uunijuustoa (also called leippajuustoa) ...

Decades ago, when I first started hanging out in Finland, I was very much taken by this little noise Finns used to make when expressing vigorous agreement, or sometimes when responding to something startling. It was a kind of whistling inhaled breath, with mouth pursed. You'd think it was some

With emissions still rising 📈 and the catastrophic consequences 🔥 becoming ever clearer, geoengineering is getting ever more tempting 🧪 But a review has concluded that the main methods proposed to save polar ice 🧊 are not doable or won't work www.newscientist.com/article/2495...