🗣️ Published today in @aeajournals.bsky.social. Ethan Lewis and I use a visa lottery, as a nationwide randomized experiment, to test the effects of foreign labor on US firms and workers. doi.org/10.1257/app.... A concise summary from @nber.org —> www.nber.org/digest/20221...

Gutted to hear of the passing of V. “Ram” Ramaswamy, who had led NOAA's influential climate lab, GFDL, since 2008. He had a truly American success story and lasting legacy. May his memory be a blessing to his friends and family.

It’s never been a secret that the MIT Joint Program on Global Change, the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum and the Princeton Carbon Mitigation Initiative received funding from and engaged intellectually with the fossil fuel industry.

Please circulate our Call for Papers for the POLITICAL ECONOMICS OF SUSTAINABILITY CONFERENCE @gsb.stanford.edu, Nov 11-12. Submission deadline: Aug 31. Jointly organized with @allanhsiao.bsky.social www.gsb.stanford.edu/events/polit...

The scale of devastation in Venezuela continues to unfold. Sadly, it is likely that the loss of life will notably increase in the coming days. The World Bank cites the country's GDP at ~$120 billion. If USGS PAGER estimates are close, damage costs could equal a notable percentage of the economy.

Technological change is hard to predict. For every amazing solar and battery story, how many carbon storage and cellulosic biofuel disappointments are there?

Spoke last week to Law360 about California's proposal to require insurers to do long-term (ie out to 2050) assessment of solvency risks. With the federal government being what it is, this is kind of the only climate finreg game in town

The UK summer of 1976 was an extraordinary heatwave for its time. On the 50th anniversary, we look back to learn about what that event can tell us today. For those who experienced the heatwave it is engrained in the memory, but it gives us a stark warning about future extreme heat for the UK.

Hazard, separation, vegetation, building codes impact fire vulnerability from @gollnerfire.bsky.social's group "Among pre-2008 structures, 46.5% were destroyed...among post-2008 structures subject to the WUI Code, 47.7% were destroyed." Better codes don't help if they're just in higher risk areas.

Out now in Nature: Human Behavior: @obrian.bsky.social and I find that since about 2016, conservatives have become less healthy than liberals on a range of medical indicators. Since 2020, conservatives have died at higher rates, including of non-COVID-related causes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great to see unanimous bipartisan support in the Senate for Earth observation and foundational geoscience - and to see this work against the wrecking ball this Administration is taking to science www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/c...

Breaking News! y-axis alert! Nino 3.4 sea surface temperatures are now more than 3 standard deviations above the 1991-2020 mean, forcing an extension of the y-axis up to 3.5σ. And that line way at the bottom? That's 1988.

Grateful to the editors for their leadership on this special collection. Here’s our paper that’s included in this collection. It’s led by @zialyle.bsky.social, and titled “Climate change hazard index reveals combined risks to United States drinking water utilities” iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Closing editorial for the Focus Collection on "Climate Change Informed Catastrophe Models" with @climate-done.bsky.social @kellyhereid.bsky.social and Chia-Ying Lee is out now and open access in @iopp-environment.bsky.social iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Public comments might seem hopeless with an Administration hell-bent on destroying US science. But I've learned that these all contribute to the evidentiary basis for future litigation. Even if this asinine rule goes through, your comments can help our lawyer friends defeat it in court

A plea to submit comments on the new proposed OMB rule that would put all U.S. science funding totally at the whim of political appointees, framed by a recap of the Weather and Climate Livestream a couple weeks ago. deepconvection.substack.com/p/speak-out-...

Finally! An article about the AMOC circulation that isn’t just clickbait / hype, and provides some real physical insights about how the ocean works. It turns out the ocean may be far more resilient than clikbait stories suggest. A very worthwhile read! www.science.org/content/arti...

Are Carbon Tariffs Climate Policy? Only if they come with a carbon tax attached. www.nber.org/papers/w35307

New study finds increased wildfire smoke has erased 4 years of progress in controlling surface ozone pollution. "Premature deaths from fire-sourced ozone have increased by 318 deaths per year since 2013, with post-2013 mortality 46% higher than pre-2013 mortality." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Carbon Brief is launching a new fortnightly climate science newsletter called "Cited"! Sign up here to get the latest updates from our awesome science team:

Only a few days left to apply for the role of Principal Research Scientist at @theturing.bsky.social 👾 Come and help establish our new Theme in #AI for Climate Resilience #AI4Climate

so this is what they mean by cat modeling

The Livestream is in its second of 2 days, it has been amazing! Tune in to a continuous science-a-thon with great talks by brilliant scientists, hosted by other brilliant scientists. Plenty of audience Q&A. It's a really unique thing, actually. It'll be a document for history books.

I worked hard on this story, it's important, & I want to share it. I'm also finding it difficult to put it out there without this context: Just as I wrapped up final edits last week, I got word that a friend vacationing in Arizona had died after overheating on a hike. www.eenews.net/articles/dea...

Excited to share a new paper, with co-authors Adam Gold and Helena Garcia, published today in Nature Water: “The economic value of wetlands in reducing riverine flood losses in the USA” 🎉 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I was also initially somewhat skeptical of a billionaire for governor, but Tom Steyer won my vote with his @volts.wtf interview. He seems to have policy ideas and political courage sufficient for the challenges we face www.volts.wtf/p/tom-steyer...

Dallas Fed estimate for how much lower inflation would be without Trump tariffs www.dallasfed.org/research/eco...

The major task before climate science today is improved projection of climate impacts. This involves hard-to-predict socioeconomic and ecological response. And adaptive potential is hard to estimate. If statistical methods have little predictive skill, we need improved mechanistic understanding.

TIL heat is really killing a lot of people in Europe. hannahritchie.substack.com/p/heat-guns-...

I wrote something about creativity in science. Why would one write such a thing? That's the first question the piece addresses. There's general reasons, and then there's my current weird personal quest... deepconvection.substack.com/p/creativity...

Final installment of the Virtual Seminar on Climate Economics for this year - TOMORROW!! Shifrah Aron-Dine from UC Berkeley will present "Rebuild or Relocate? Recovery After Natural Disasters" Register here: cepr.org/events/event...

The RCP8.5 debate has gotten silly, but my own hot take is this whole thing is a failure in communicating probabilities and the scenarios community should just bite the bullet and do this quantitatively, rather than relying on squidgy terms like "implausible" or "worst-case" to do the heavy lifting

In 1990, carbon pricing existed in a handful of Nordic countries. Today: 80 instruments, 99 national and subnational jurisdictions, $100B+ in annual revenue.

#EconSky, it's that time of the year again: time to submit your abstracts to Heartland, a fantastic environmental economics conference at UIUC. The 2026 edition will take place Oct 22-23 (Thu-Fri) with Joe Shapiro as keynote speaker. Spread the word! publish.illinois.edu/heartland/

The gloomy headlines about the future of American higher ed been seemingly relentless. But the discourse is missing some basic(and surprising) facts about what’s actually happening right now. Here are 10....

Guess what - the easiest way to tax the rich is to tax the rich! Who knew?

Economics - this discipline so many climate folks love to hate. James Rising and I have a chapter out today in the Handbook of Climate Economics summarizing and evaluating some of these "constructive critiques" www.sciencedirect.com/science/chap...

LBL is hiring, at the Staff Scientist level, an extreme weather researcher to be the new leader of the CASCADE project! phxc1b.rfer.us/LBLDaKGef

Does new transmission actually move the needle on clean energy? Here's a month of California data before and after SunZia came online. Wind is up by a third, and gas down by a third. Judge for yourself.

Interested in how AI and the energy transition are shaping the next phase of U.S. economic growth? Join EG and @costasamaras.com, professor @cmu.edu for a discussion on how these dynamics interact and what they mean for future growth. 🗓️ June 10 | 1:30-2:30 pm RSVP ➡️

The floating gas tax - one of my favorite economic ideas! Stabilize gas prices with taxes and avoid the real pain of volatile energy costs. It makes sense on so many levels. So of course everyone hates it. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/05/18/n...

Two more EPA RA opportunities for econ students, in the air office. Position 1: zintellect.com/Opportunity/... Position 2: zintellect.com/Opportunity/... #econ_ra

Very interesting paper teasing out the nuances of flood risk distribution in the US using an incredible individual-level dataset. Documents a huge concentration of flood risk among the very highest income group - lots of wealthy people enjoying the coast and river views from their second homes.

Bad news: Climate change could eliminate more than 90% of the range of 1 in 10 plant species by 2100. Good news: Well... technically there isn't any. But this paper does have terrific figures!

Then there is what happened just last night on California's grid with the arrival of the extra SunZia wind power. Those natural gas plants that wait poised to surge at sunset ... just weren't needed. 1.5 GW of gas during the day to be ready went to 1 GW at sunset with 9 GW of batteries. Amazing.

When California was in serious drought a few years ago restaurants stopped giving glasses of water unless requested: the height of performativitiy in a state where like 80% of water use is going to agriculture

While chatting with some friends, it occurred to me that other people could benefit from a summary understanding of what's going on in the oil and gas markets. Here are some little pictures to give you the big picture. 🧵

Roughly 40% of the $6.8 billion in annual lifesaving benefits from Uber are pure externalities, per Anderson/Davis (2026): $2.7B in benefits to other drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists who never opened the app. That alone exceeds Uber's annual US ridesharing shareholder surplus.

This month is the 20th anniversary of Al Gore's climate documentary. It was a watershed moment for public awareness of the climate crisis, and a life-changing event for me. For @climateconnections.bsky.social I revisited the film to see how it has held up and how much progress we've made 🧵 [1/9]