@georgemonbiot.bsky.social has done terrific work in promoting the importance of a more plant-based diet. It is thus with chagrin that I note that The Guardian's advertising department has published a "Guardian Labs" advertorial full of pro-McDonald's propaganda, www.theguardian.com/mcdonalds-my...

"Trump’s shuttering of the National Center for Atmospheric Research is Stalinist" by Bob Ward & yours truly in today's @theguardian.com @us.theguardian.com: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Warmest wishes on the fourth of Advent, and last day of Chanukah

AGU petition to save NCAR. Please share widely! agu.quorum.us/campaign/151...

Third of Advent 2025 (posted a week late)

AbSciCon2026 Madison, WI USA, 17-22 May, 2026 On behalf of myself and my co-convenors, I am pleased to announce the session: 43 - Habitable subNeptunes: Theory and prospects for observational identification Details and submission at: agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon...

Interesting article by my colleagues, on possible applications of existing international law to restraints on solar geoengineering. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Excellent Guardian lead editorial on the need for a moratorium on solar geoengineering. It hits all the right points, and highlights African opposition to normalizing the technology www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Paper day! A new paper on existence of subNeptune magma oceans, arising from a collaboration between Cambridge and my group. Lead author Robb Calder is Oli Shorttle's doctoral student. subNeptune Magma Oceans are getting to be a hot topic! arxiv.org/abs/2512.05816

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

Second of Advent, 2025

I'd love to see this work presented at our AbSciCon subNeptune session.

Solar radiation modification (SRM) is now a commercial industry, with startups raising millions to artificially cool the planet. But with development outpacing regulation, countries must act now to create governance frameworks to address SRM’s risks, write Scott Moore and Imran Bayoumi:

A very important article about a long-looming threat to environmental progress embedded in many (perhaps most) trade treaties.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the world premier of The Exoplanets, by composer @robertlaidlow.bsky.social , done by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall. It was a smash hit, thrilling and beautifully executed. To me, it was evocative of a very big Universe with lots

Solar geoengineering (a.k.a. SRM) has been much in the news recently, likely prompted by the amoral, alarming intrusion of venture capital into the profit-oriented Israeli geoengineering startup Stardust. There have been three articles in major outlets of which my favourite is by the

Holst's planets suite may have its famous "Jupiter" and "Neptune", but my new "Exoplanets" for @lporchestra.bsky.social has HOT Jupiters and SUB Neptunes 🪐🪐🪐 (Saturday 29th at 7.30pm!) youtu.be/kXi3TbD4_VA?...

In this video I explain how @stellarplanet.bsky.social and @climatebook.bsky.social research into these classes of planets inspired and informed some of the music. The concert premiere of "Exoplanets" is at 7.30pm on Saturday 29th November at the Royal Festival Hall in London - tickets here:

"The reason that I say [Big Car is] an existential threat, and it still is, is that cars kill an exorbitant number of people. There's no other industry in the world that kills the number of people that cars do that are allowed to call it an 'accident.'" —David Obst

Are you an early-career researcher who would like to work with me at MIT? The MIT Distinguished Postdoctoral Program is still open (Nov. 30 deadline, so hurry!) Details are here: eaps.mit.edu/research/pos...

For those who don't read Swedish, this interesting post summarizes the Aftonbladet article claiming that net CO2 emissions from Sweden have increased by a factor of 5 in the past 10 years. I read the Aftonbladet article, and this is all about Sweden's use of forest-derived biofuel.

"Bill Gates' climate comments are a distraction" | My new commentary for @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Research and development of CO₂ removal (CDR) should be a government-led effort, but all the people who were experts in various aspects of CDR in the US government are gone.

#AbSciCon2026 Our session proposal on identifying conditions for habitable subNeptunes has been accepted, and abstract submissions are open through Wednesday 14 January. Session details are here: agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon...

New article from the Solar Geoengineering Non Use Agreement team: "Solar Geoengineering for Profit" (Spoiler -- we're against it.) www.solargeoeng.org/solar-geoeng...

To all Dems: Stand firm for health care. Don't cave. Any promise Trump makes can't be trusted.

This is a really brilliant animation, showing how global warming has increased the probabilities of extreme heat. Note how it's not just a matter of a shift in the mean -- the distribution has gotten broader. Probably not enough data yet to tell if the tails have gotten fatter.

To all my melodeon friends: Bellows and Buttons is bringing its all-levels workshop to Oxford again next week. www.bellowsandbuttons.co.uk/courses/o25i... Note especially the session at The Plough Friday night 14 Nov., and the instructors concert Saturday, available even

The PRI Museum of the Earth, in Ithaca New York, is one of the great museums of the East Coast, punching way above its size and with an incomparable research collection. Help save them! www.priweb.org/mortgage-cam...

One of the rare occasions when I have some common ground with David Keith, but I'm not confident David and I are aligned on what would count as "responsible" research. To state my position briefly, computer simulatons are fuzzy territory for "responsibility," but

This is a useful piece on the Royal Society's solar geoengineering report, indicating that the report contains enough caveats that press can pick up on the dangers. One wonders, though, if there are any "right hands" that a technology like SRM can be put into.

UT Austin Habitability Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship astrobiology.com/2025/11/ut-a... #astrobiology #exoplanet

World premier Saturday 29 November, of The Exoplanets, composed by my colleague composer Robert Laidlow, and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall. Some background on the genesis of the piece is here: www.jesus.ox.ac.uk/astrophysics...

Another good way to help local bookstores, when you can't find what you want in your neighbourhood shop and they can't order it in for you, is to use Alibris. Their specialty is used books, but they have some new material as well. The main thing is that many independent booksellers supplement their

This is good advice. I have gone back to buying physical DVD's rather than streaming, and for folks in the UK and many other places I've found HMV to be a good source of DVD's online or in physical stores. There are streaming sources other than Amazon, but a lot of

I enjoyed all my visits to the PRI during the time I was making frequent visits to Cornell. It's an astounding place, and in a compact collection, rivals much bigger museums like the Field Museum for the understanding of the sweep of Earth history it conveys. They deserve our support.

Illinois friends -- please vote for Daniel! He's one of the good ones, and I've seen him in action for a long time. He's the best of the bunch running for Jan's seat. I live abroad now, but vote absentee in Daniel's district, and he has my vote.

My new essay on the future of life in space just appeared in Noema magazine! Kudos to Satwika Kresna for the lovely artwork.

The Collatz conjecture is endlessly fascinating, and anything that combines Collatz with Turing machines attracts my attention. Collatz is essentially a halting problem.

Exoplanet atmosphere characterization is built on a foundation of lab data and chemistry. We need more reaction rates, cross sections, & line lists, at a broader range of conditions than the Solar System. Got together with Earth/planetary scientists to comment on this: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This is a new low for journalism, perpetrated by The Times, in which their reporter got duped by a Bill Blasio impostor trashing leading NYC mayoral candidate Mandani . As reported by The Guardian. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I decided not to submit an NSF proposal this fall to support my future work at MIT, because of all the uncertainty surrounding how NSF is going to operate, but I will need to turn to NSF funding at some point. I would be interested to hear experiences of people who submitted to the NSF recently.

For the record, I don't think it likely that global warming alone could cause extinction of the human species, unless we got to the levels of CO2 that caused the End-Permian mass extinction -- and that would require tapping into a lot of low grade fossil carbon that is currently

An article about Bill Gates' reversal of his stance on the climate crisis appeared in the NYT international edition under the headline "After sounding climate alarm, he seeks to temper alarmism." This is an exceedingly bad headline as it appears to accept that those who express deep concerns about

New preprint alert! 🚨 “Let Them Eat Large Language Models: Artificial Intelligence and Austerity in the Neoliberal University”

Congratulations to Dr. Richard Chatterjee, my DPhil student who passed his viva on atmospheric escape today and is off to a position at Leeds. (Me on the left, his examiners Garcia-Muñoz and Tad Komacek on the right -- Tad and Richard are in the traditional subfusc, except should be white tie)

This article sums up my feelings about Oxford's deal with ChatGPT pretty well: www.oxfordstudent.com/2025/10/28/h...

Winding down on a placid Sunday evening after a fine weekend led off by a Balfolk dance to the tune of the incomparable band Blowzabella Friday, with some friends over from Paris. I've just had a nip of the Finnish Kyrö malted rye whiskey which I picked up on the way back from #EPSRCDPS2025

One reason I don't like "round number" Temperature Targets or the associated Overshoot Framing is that they are frequently used to justify SRM (as is Tipping Point Framing). I prefer direct (not net) carbon emissions targets (excluding CDR etc until they are proven and affordable)

And Oxford has also drunk the A.I. cool-aid, at undisclosed cost, and without consulation with the University's governing body (Congregation).