🧵A political/media guide to the "truth" about net-zero 1) Add up costs to install & run a net-zero energy system 2) Pretend fossil-fuelled alternatives wld be free 3) Do say "eco zealots are bankrupting us" 4) Don't say "free cars if we scrap net-zero" cos it sounds ridiculous 5) That's it! 1/10

@ncar-ral.bsky.social President Dr Antonio Busalacchi is giving an emergency press briefing at #AGU25 Says he has really seen outpouring support from community today at AGU NCAR is the "jewel in the crown" of efforts to predict the Earth as a coupled system, he tells journalists

I'm in New Orleans this week for AGU and looking for climate science stories for @carbonbrief.org 🔎 If you're here - come say hello and tell me about your research 🌍 #agu25

NEW – Analysis: What are the causes of recent record-high global temperatures? | @hausfath.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/C2k638E

DeBriefed: Deadly Asia floods; Adaptation finance target examined; Global south IPCC scientists speak out ✍️ @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org 📝 @daisydunne.carbonbrief.org Read here ➡️ buff.ly/Y7aHchc Subscribe to DeBriefed ➡️ subscribe.carbonbrief.org

NEW – Ongoing failure to agree AR7 timeline is ‘unprecedented’ in IPCC history | @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org @rtmcswee.carbonbrief.org Read here: buff.ly/rSMdzNf

NEW – UNEP: New country climate plans ‘barely move needle’ on expected warming | @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org @unep.org Read here: buff.ly/U0XaME9

To quote my friend @drkatemarvel.bsky.social, climate change won't make humanity extinct but we can do better than "not extinct". Raise your standards people!

NEW – The Carbon Brief Interview: UK Met Office chief executive Penny Endersby | @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org @pennyend.bsky.social @metoffice.gov.uk Read here: buff.ly/JlQwz79

In any discussion of food and farming, unless your solution can be scaled to feed 8 billion people, you shouldn't be taken seriously. Unfortunately, cottagecore fantasies that would feed only the richest consumers, leaving billions to starve, are all too common. www.monbiot.com/2023/10/04/t...

Last week, @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org and I attended the first-ever conference on climate "overshoot" in Vienna. Here's our summary of the wide-ranging discussions. (Bearing in mind we were two journalists covering 8 conference themes...!)

DeBriefed | UK political gap on climate widens; Fossil-fuelled Typhoon Ragasa; ‘Overshoot’ unknowns ✍️ Written by @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org @rtmcswee.carbonbrief.org 💻 Edited by @daisydunne.carbonbrief.org Read today's edition ➡️ buff.ly/UoRb43h Sign up for Debriefed ➡️ buff.ly/aLTmtZN

Jimmy Fletcher - former St Lucia minister and Paris Agreement architect- is speaking at the @iiasa.ac.at overshoot conference about how breaching climate targets will impact small island states Describes overshoot of 1.5C as "pathway of harm, loss and inequity that no small island state can accept"

Brilliant to work with @wellcometrust.bsky.social on this article which looks at how fungi are learning to adapt to rising temperatures — with serious implications for human health www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-f...

FACTCHECK: No, North Sea gas is not "four times cleaner" than LNG imports After Kemi Badenoch pledged to extract every last drop from the North Sea, we've been engulfed by waves of long-dead zombie factoids. "Four times cleaner" is one of the silliest. www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-no...

It seems like an age ago now, but back in 2020 I worked on an op-ed for @businessgreen.bsky.social from @kemibadenochmp.bsky.social where she explicitly backed net zero It states she is "proud" the UK is the "first major economy... to legislate to end its contribution to global warming by 2050"

That's a *chef's kiss* of a community note, though.

Are you or your loved ones worried about solar farms? Have you heard scary things about solar panels turning the countryside into an industrial hellscape? Fear not! We at Carbon Brief have just published the definitive article debunking solar myths ⬇️ interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/so...

The UK has seen widespread drought this summer. But to what extent are UK droughts being impacted by climate change? In a timely piece up on @carbonbrief.org today, @ukceh.bsky.social hydrologists look at whether global warming is making UK droughts worse www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-i...

Second, via @carbonbrief.org: interactive.carbonbrief.org/doe-factchec...

🚨 We’ve just updated @carbonbrief.org's factcheck of Trump’s ‘critical’ climate report. 🚨 Huge thanks to all the dozens of climate scientists who have helped us pull together this rebuttal — including the authors of our brand new additions. interactive.carbonbrief.org/doe-factchec...

Since #Brexit, UK now has lower standards than EU in: * protecting nature * water quality * air pollution * methane control * pesticides * chemicals * deforestation supply chains * waste reduction Only on marine protection does UK have a better story to tell www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

So many of these pics are in front of land that has been absolutely razed by farming activities

Truly devastating for Trump's climate report. It just shows once again: if you task a group of "climate skeptics" with a climate report, you get a mass of easily refuted falsehoods, as they simply do not have honest arguments on their side. interactive.carbonbrief.org/doe-factchec...

NEW – Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims | @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org @leohickman.carbonbrief.org @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org @rtmcswee.carbonbrief.org @tomoprater.carbonbrief.org Read here: buff.ly/AvcB7Aw

The EPA cited my paper in their argument against the endangerment finding today. However, their point is completely backwards: my paper actually supports the EPA's 2009 range of 1.8C to 4C warming by 2100. www.nature.com/artic...

NEW: A former Microsoft AI engineer says the company's "AI for sustainability" claims are BS, a distraction from their hyper-polluting AI contracts with oil companies. “From what I saw," he said, "I believe that finding and extracting more oil is one of the biggest use cases of AI today."

*small voice* Brontë country is just farmland though

NEW – Media reaction: The 2025 Texas floods and the role of climate change ✍️ @joshgabbatiss.bsky.social @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org @rtmcswee.carbonbrief.org @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org Read here ⬇️ www.carbonbrief.org/media-reacti...

Last week, scientists, journalists, policy wonks and campaigners took part in a conference on climate tipping points - from collapsing ice sheets and coral die-off to thawing permafrost to Amazon dieback @carbonbrief.org's full write-up of the event is now out - www.carbonbrief.org/tipping-poin...

NEW – Tipping points: Window to avoid irreversible climate impacts is ‘rapidly closing’ | @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org @rtmcswee.carbonbrief.org @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org @gsiexeter.bsky.social @pik-potsdam.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/ECWvN3z

At the #tippingpoints conference, @rockymtninst.bsky.social's Laurens Speelman is presenting on the “compounding effects’’ of clean tech adoption He says: “As tech gets better and costs reduce, sectors that were previously thought to be untippable start to become tippable"

At the #tippingpoints conference, @clubofrome.org's Sandrine Dixson-Decleve says the economic system is dictated by “shareholder value” and "no longer responds to the needs of people, planet or prosperity" Without changes to business models and business governance “we will get nowhere”, she says

Dr Patricia Pinho is talking about social tipping points among communities in the Amazon She points to a "direct link between violence to the environment and violence to people" Says this is a "huge problem" impacting the region, where there are 20% more homicides than a UN threshold

@wanderinggaia.bsky.social is speaking at the Exeter #tippingpoints conference She describes social tipping points as "a dramatic change" that tips a place people from "being a place to flee from, rather than a place to stay” This could be due to homes becoming uninsurable, or poor food supply

Not a lot of love for the press at the tipping points conference Rockström says the media is “getting it very wrong, seriously wrong” Dr Carlos Nobre points to a lack of coverage of the impacts of the degradation of topical forests, noting the "tremendous risk of epidemics and pandemics”

Prof Johan Rockström tells the tipping point conference "there are now, scientifically, a list of tipping element systems that fulfil the criteria of being at high likelihood of occurrence and reaching the unacceptably high impact [required to meet] global catastrophic risk criteria."

If extreme weather had a capital, it would be Mumbai. We’ve got it all: floods, sea-level rise, cyclones, heat islands. Mumbaikars are sick of being called resilient and being caught off-guard. But forecasting the monsoon is fraught, more so with climate change. My dispatch for @carbonbrief.org👇🏽

NEW – Guest post: Investigating how volcanic eruptions can affect climate projections | Dr May Chim, Dr Thomas J Aubry @cjsmith.be‬ Prof Anja Schmidt Read here: buff.ly/P4ZH3OE

ICYMI from last week - New research looks into the combined effect of global warming and a potential AMOC collapse on northern European temperatures. TL;DR is that winters could get much, much colder (down to -19C in London) while summers cool just a bit. www.carbonbrief.org/ocean-curren...

High warming rate fuels record-breaking weather The longer our measurements, the fewer record-breaking events we should observe. The opposite is the case - many more records and higher record margins I summarise the key takeaways of our ‪@natrevearthenviron.nature.com article in a guest post.

We don’t know how close we are to triggering an Atlantic Ocean circulation #AMOC breakdown - but now we know a lot more about what it would mean for extreme temperatures in Europe. Good @carbonbrief.org piece on a new study just out by the Dutch colleagues! 🌊 www.carbonbrief.org/ocean-curren...

Received this leaflet over the weekend from the PFFA. A bingo list of climate sceptic talking points, including: - world isn't heating - humans thrive in heat - increased co2 is good for plants - net zero to blame for energy costs - boilers cleanest way to heat homes - what about China?

DeBriefed | Earth eyes 2C; Why net-zero is not behind UK bill hikes; US academics stage climate science ‘fire hose’ ✍️ Written by @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org 📝 Edited by @daisydunne.carbonbrief.org Read here ➡️ buff.ly/wS28g3G Sign up to DeBriefed ➡️ buff.ly/3yIyDEZ

NEW – ‘Significant’ risk of Amazon forest dieback if global warming overshoots 1.5C | @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org w/ comment from @gergmunday.bsky.social Nico Wunderling @davidamckay.bsky.social David Lapola @chrisd-jones.bsky.social

My colleagues @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org and @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org have been at EGU in Vienna. For this week's DeBriefed newsletter they asked climate scientists how Trump's dismantling of climate agencies in the US is impacting their work. This by @carlschleussner.bsky.social... 💔

Back in sunny Vienna for #EGU25! @ceciliakeating.carbonbrief.org and I are in the hunt for exciting new science stories for @carbonbrief.org, so please do come and say hi if you see us 👋

At #EGU25 in Vienna for the first time with the brilliant ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org 👋 Come say hi or drop me a line - keen to hear what you're working on for @carbonbrief.org