While the usuals are overhyping the not new result that RCP8.5 is implausible this century, many things are on the table beyond 2100 and allowing for carbon cycle feedbacks. Fossil fuels use and reserves are uncertain. The climate story is still tied to human decisions.

climate-bsky...this figure from IPCC AR5 (fig9.42) showed no correlation between CMIP5 absolute global mean temperature and climate sensitivity. Has anyone made such a plot for CMIP6?

One aspect of climate modeling that is not intuitive to the public is how it’s actually very far from “all or nothing.” This is quite important for the usefulness of the endeavor and for constructing model hierarchies 1/

Planets: Earth, Venus, Titan, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Europa, Enceladus All other “moons” are in tiers. Io in tier 1. The Moon in tier 2 Kuiper Belt object: Pluto and many others Asteroids: Mercury, Mars

Hold on. We the taxpayers are going to pay companies $900 million, which is more than 6x what we spend on wind power R&D, to NOT build wind power at a time when electricity prices are spiking and we need more clean power?

Comedy show went well. The audience learned a little about planetary energy balance, the habitable zone, why we have oxygen in the air, the slow carbon cycle, and why Venus is cheap real estate on Zillow.

Does this mean the NASA budget cuts will be much smaller than advertised?

On today’s Earth Day, there’s much to celebrate, but not the vast industrial respiration project, in which humans consume oxygen to return CO₂ to the atmosphere from ancient, long-buried organic carbon, the very burial that helped give us the oxygen we breathe.

Some simple truths about methane vs. CO2. I've said this before, in various ways, in various peer reviewed papers, but I keep repeating it with variations hoping the message will get through somehow. (1) CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. If you introduce a new CO2 emission source into the system

Former NASA climate scientist, now Senior Scientist at Project Drawdown, Dr. Kate Marvel, has a fantastic piece in the New York Times today. This is a must-read if you care about science, the planet, and the future. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...

I'm with Katie, Artemis isn't very scientifically interesting, but if it can boost interest & support for NASA science (which is just a fraction of the budget) I'm all for lots of pictures of eclipses. Maybe if DOGE came around after Artemis, funds wouldn't be spent on an empty building in NYC...

In PHM the radiative forcing in the next few decades is some -20 W/m2 (not sure how long the Sun keeps dimming). think you’d need to devote lots of resources to manufacture some sort of lab GHG that plugged up atmospheric windows while you try to figure out astrophage. 1/

No thick atmosphere around TRAPPIST-1 b and c from JWST thermal phase curves www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/2 These comparison photos have been pretty popular over the last few days, I think to imply something about the dirtiness of the planet. Putting aside that the difference is due to photographic reasons and nightside viewing, etc, the Earth has less air pollution now and this is a good thing.

I was happy for the Southern-Hemisphere folks fo a minute that they finally had their moment of triumph, only for it to be grabbed again.

It must be amazing to be one of the few humans to see a solar eclipse, except with Earth doing the obscuring (from Orion spacecraft's window). I'm no photographer, but it seems impressive to grab the moon-lit nightside of Earth of this quality.

I love these views. It's hidden how fast they accelerate by the cameras tracking them, but they're going 10,000 mph only 5 and a half minutes after launch. And it still takes 6 days to get the moon. Space is big.

Don’t know what that molecule is but I wonder if ²H₂O (D₂O) or HDO can shed light on an ancient lunar magma ocean, and even speculative very early thin lunar atmospheres (e.g. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...). Some NASA GISS work explored this agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

I imagine this will always be the case. CH4 work is a lot of pipe tightening, leak fixing, landfill capping, and bovine digestive optimization. CO2 work is replacing the machinery of modern life without crashing the economy. Hard to do everything w mixed incentives & metrics that mix their effects.

Okay folks I've responded to the data center heat island paper. It is the worst study on AI and the environment I've ever read, by far. Thank you to @beijingpalmer.bsky.social for flagging. blog.andymasley.com/p/data-cente...

It’s simple. Focusing on CH4 is like obsessing over the noise of a concert but continuing to go work in heavy machinery at a construction site, with no earplugs, for most of your life. Or staying inside on a high air pollution day but smoking for decades. It’s great, but rather beside the point.

But under-discussed in the “thresholds” discourse is that it’s much different if one crosses some mark for 10 years than 1000 years.

For those in NYC, I'll be doing a bit about habitability at the Caveat comedy venue on April 25 www.caveat.nyc/events/nerd-...

The response of the forced climate system is remarkably simple.

Project Hail Mary is one of my favorite books, and a pretty good movie (though I have quibbles) but a key premise is that space-bacteria Astrophage "sees" CO2 spectral signatures in Venus' dense CO2 atmosphere, which it travels to for breeding. Although, it would see missing light, not extra light.

1/Some disagreements with this & Jim Hansen's post on the runaway greenhouse jimehansen.substack.com/p/runaway-cl...: 1) feedback math f=1 not necessarily runaway, it just means you need more terms in a Taylor series, a linear expansion isn't enough. It's just a local picture of the energy balance.

I know these were incredibly difficult samples to get and measurements to make and correct and I admire many of those involved, but I'm skeptical of the new low Pliocene CO2 values published today, especially in light of the boron CO2 proxy (not to mention a warmer-than-today Pliocene)

Interesting stuff. I also don't understand Eric Wolff's commentary about the ocean driving things on 10-100kyr+ timescales. The oceans don't have internal dynamics that evolve on those timescales.

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

As a rare climate scientist working in Silicon Valley, I've been drinking from the AI firehose a lot more than my peers. I thought it would be helpful to lay out my experiences of both the promise and pitfalls of using AI to accelerate scientific research:

@climatebook.bsky.social once called climate change, “humanity’s final exam” and it turns out we’re failing the non-graded survey the instructor gives on the first day of class to make sure students know how to add some numbers together.

Last December, weather and climate scientists sat down with us to tell us why they loved the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and why it benefits us all. Last night, the NSF began dismantling it. Listen to what they have to say, and why it's urgent that we #SaveNCAR wclivestream.com/act

Does anyone have experience talking about science at a comedy club? Seems like I will and would love some climate/planetary related things that could be good for that setting cc @drkatemarvel.bsky.social @climateofgavin.bsky.social

At some point we need to be stronger with the language of just calling all these people frauds. In any case, flawed analysis aside, no one seriously thinks the highest sensitivity cmip6 models should be the basis for decarbonization and economic destruction.

Indeed, though it’s good to be well calibrated in one’s despair.

A Minnesota woman observing ICE agents in her car was cornered on one-way streets. An agent approached, called her by name—citing facial recognition. Days later, her Global Entry and TSA privileges were revoked, with no explanation.

NASA needs to follow suit.

Domestic terrorism

Meanwhile…

The bar for non-peaceful protest is extremely high, one I have never thought to advocate for in the U.S. in my lifetime. I believe we have crept up on that bar, as state sanctioned domestic terrorism has been unleashed in an indirect declaration of civil war by the administration.

I don’t know why anyone is worried about not giving weight to lives in pollution policy, when we’re going to win over protein.

A woman recording an ICE agent tells him "Shame on you." The agent responds, "Have you all not learned from the past couple of days?" "Learned what?" she asks Then he knocks her phone out of her hand

Renee Macklin Good's wife, Becca Good, released a statement and it moved me to sobbing tears: archive.is/ur35j

So a CBS Evening News reporter actually did a pretty solid breakdown of the ICE murder video, talking to a former agent who details all the ways Ross messed up. And yet: It didn’t air on the actual show tonight. CBS did post it to YouTube—and it has nearly 800k views already youtu.be/6ywLEESFDu0?...

Just another one of those hard to focus days....

Breaking: MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Minnesota investigators say they can't access evidence after fatal ICE shooting and FBI won't work jointly on probe.

It was a murder. A murderer decided he wanted to murder someone today and then did. There is no ambiguity or whataboutism; case law is clear that someone not a danger to others that is running away cannot be shot at. You do not have to be prosecutor or lawyer to recognize and understand this.

ICE is now executing people for driving away. Phase 2 is here.