Techno-optimism around AI reveals the contempt these CEOs and tech bros have for the work most of us do. They think writing, thinking and art can all be automated by AI because *they* can’t do any of those things.

Ok, but can we funnel some of the SSP 8.5 skepticism towards the “overshoot” scenarios which introduce a magic CO2 removing button? Like, what are we doing here? There is no remotely plausible technology that does this and the entire scenario is predicated on “and then something magical happens”.

If you've ever wondered what would happen if a response to a review was filled with really bad puns and references to Star Wars, I’ve got you covered. I just hope the reviewers rise to the occasion because I think we can do something really special here.

I don't want AI. I don't want AI doing my writing. I don't even want AI to help me code. But if I'm going to have AI shoved down my throat, at the very least can we get a copy-paste function that doesn't immediately and always reformat a Word document to look like a ransom note?

The level of racism and transphobia and shear callousness involved in people outside the US looking at what the US government is doing to people of color and trans folks here, some of whom are US citizens, and saying “these people are privileged” is intense

I would like to propose a small corner of academia be kept AI free. A handful of journals could vow to forbid AI in any form by authors, editors and reviewers. Let's go back to old fashioned mail correspondences.

Very technical, but fun preprint up for comments. The idea behind this dates back to a paper and series of correspondences written by John Nye, one of the founders of quantitative glaciology in the 1950s that has recently been revisited by the geophysicist Roger Buck. 1/

Europe’s temptation is to seek a diplomatic solution to Trump’s threat to invade Greenland. This is the wrong approach because it treats a lack of impulse control as a diplomatic problem. Y’all need to assemble a team of preschool and kindergarten teachers and let them have at it.

Frederick Douglas gave a speech 150 years ago today in Ypsilanti about civil rights, masked kidnapping and violent repression of free speech.

This is an example of when this app can be truly wonderful with an expert chiming in with a deep and delightful dive about the history of Mark Twain quotes in response to my inability to track down a source for a pithy statement attributed to Mark Twain about climate.

I'm teaching a 200 person intro climate course and the textbook has a nice quote attributed to Mark Twain "Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get". The problem is that, as far as I can tell, Mark Twain never said those words.

Anyone asserting that professors are indoctrinating students needs to teach a 200+ person intro class. How am I going to find time to indoctrinate students when I spend all day responding to emails with variations like "As stated in class and in the syllabus . . ."

Everyone understands that the Trump administration rhetoric towards Greenland, a sovereign nation, means that the Antarctic Treaty is effective dead right?

As someone who mostly works at the local scale, I find these vague arguments about “supply side” and “demand side” to be counter productive. The reality that most of my climate peers are ignoring is how much the battle for net zero is fought in local zoning meetings and planning commissions. 1/

Just a few things I'd like to say about this @hausfath.bsky.social piece. The first is that every 10th of a degree of heating over 2C raises risks for multiple irreversible catastrophes MORE than every 10th of a degree of heating under 2C. That's why the 2C target exists. It's not random. 🧵

Writing down the unwritten rules is good, but why not put some of the rules directly in the advertisement? We can tell people not to include marital status because of discrimination concerns. Or not to email directly. You can even include templates for cover letters with the honorific you prefer.

There is an increasing emphasis on climate migration to plausible climate havens, like the Great Lakes. I’m skeptical because most research suggests that, with some exceptions, most people stay close by when they move. 1/

By this logic, shouldn't we also require opinion columnists (and presidential candidates) to submit their SAT scores to ensure they are qualified? Of course, the first question we all ask when looking for a plumber is what was your SAT score?

I've been mostly offline for the past few weeks. Woke up this morning and made the mistake of checking in to find out we illegally started a land war and kidnapped the president of Venezuela???????

As a glaciologist, I find it delightful that the fundamental unit of HVAC systems—the ton—is based on the latent energy it takes to melt ice.

Grad student Tanner May has a new fun paper out in the Journal of Glaciology that is kind of magical. The magic trick that Tanner performs is that he manages to estimate thickness of glaciers using only surface elevations and nothing else. This shouldn't work, but it does. Let me tell you why.

Heat pumps are a terrific technology, but I wish more people understood that there are regions where heat pumps don’t make economic sense and this has to change if we are going to electrify and decarbonize.

The strongest letters I've seen are able to put the candidates work in context and explain why your research program is exciting and innovative.

I think we need to have AI disclaimers in our manuscripts so I have helpfully started to include one: No AI, generative or otherwise, was used in this work and all awkward phrasing, misplaced semi-colons and poorly commented code are solely attributed to the authors discretion and poor taste.

Geoengineering will never be a meaningful climate solution because the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is thousands of years and that fact will never stop the quasi-monthly think pieces about how we need to do more "research" on geoengineering.

Funny story. Back in 2022 we won an *Emmy award for a documentary we made about an expedition to Greenland. Due to an elaborate game of paper-rock-scissors, the Emmy award now sits in my office and I like to joke that I want to be introduced as an Emmy award winning climate scientist.

With COP going on (again) and sea level rise back in the headlines, I have been reminded how much the major controversies in glaciology echo previously controversies. For glaciology, these have always revolved around flow, fracture and friction. 1/

I have been vigorously lobbying for a Crime Scene Investigation Antarctica (CSI-Antarctica) for the past decade, but the networks seem strangely uninterested.

Alright let me tell you a story about a prominent scientist in my field and my first conference. This was in the days when most had adopted PowerPoint, but some of the older folks still showed up with actual physical slides to show on one of those old fashioned overhead projectors.

I'm in Toronto and it is hard to express how much an entire nation is willing the Blue Jays to win to spite Trump.

The question isn’t will the seas rise, but what are we going to do about it because even the most optimistic projections tell us that sea levels are going to continue to rise and it increasingly looks like the more pessimistic scenarios are more plausible.

I was interviewed for this great piece about sea level rise. Solid reporting here on the scientific controversy, but I like that Evan ended with my bigger picture quote that a lot of the controversy doesn't really matter because by 2100, we will be talking about a radically different coastline.

Most climate scientists strongly believe our mission is to provide better climate information for decision making. The mantra at every meeting is let’s reduce uncertainty and provide full probability distributions!

It should be obvious to everyone, but for the hedge fund managers at the back, a compact that restricts academic freedom isn't about merit or access. The goal is control and a return to a segregated system where elite institutions solely serve the interests of the wealthy. 1/

My soapbox for today is that physical climate scientists need to be exposed to qualitative methods.

The University: We need to become leaders in climate and sustainability and there is an urgent need to develop climate science courses. Me: Our department has climate in the name and we already offer courses on climate science at every level. The University: Who invited you to this meeting?

This isn't important, but I'm getting tired of academics using "climate" and "sustainability" interchangeably. There is overlap between climate and sustainability work. Conflating the two and not being precise about what you mean creates confusion.

Here are some takeaways from the panel on AI and climate. AI is being used to speed up some research tasks, but this comes with significant costs. Those costs includes the environmental impact, which can be immense and will be paid by future generations. 1/

Panel on AI and climate actually went well? At the end I had the audience and panelists get up and move to one side of the room or the other depending on whether they thought AI was a net harm, neutral or positive for society. That is a real histogram.

I just got a spam email asking me if I'm attending Fruit Attraction this year and I have so many questions.

I am scheduled to moderate an AI and Climate panel tomorrow for climateweek at umich and, remembering that I thought the iPhone would bomb and picked betamax over VHS, I might be the worst choice to moderate any tech related conversation.

Heat kills more people than flooding, but we invest way more money in preventing flooding than cooling people. Strategies like more air conditioning, accessible cooling centers and strategic green space are all effective at reducing mortality and need to be promoted.

A new study point out that polar geo-engineering is both dangerous and unfeasible. This study is getting press, but the article is accompanied by a curious response from a handful of authors that have been strongly advocating for polar geo-engineering. 1/

Alright so I think after the RFK hearing, the DoE climate report, attempt to rescind the EPA endangerment finding and *waves hands* everything, it is clear that we are seeing the most sustained attack on science in my lifetime. And, believe me, I’ve seen some shit.

Lots of misunderstanding about sea level rise and the potential for extreme sea level rise and collapse of ice sheets. 1/

The sea level rise chapter is silly. You can’t infer global sea level rise from a handful of tide gauges in the US because global sea level is *global*. 1/

Columbia now has a vice provost for authoritarian compliance.

I have never used AI nor do I ever intend to because if I actually wanted to be more productive I can stop procrastinating, but where is the fun in that.

I talked to a journalist today about glacial geo-engineering and the thing that stuck to me was how much of the interview kept coming back to the “debate” in the community. Not everything is or should be a debate. 1/

Folks, the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is centuries and overshoot scenarios involve CO2 emissions shooting above the threshold and then dropping below again *this* century.