With current pledges, the world's on track for 2.6°C of warming in 2100 compared to preindustrial levels. 10 years ago, before the Paris agreement, it was 3.6°C 20+ years ago, we thought it would be 4-5°C So 2.6°C is better, but the problem is that climate impacts are way worse than we predicted.

This makes me kinda proud. "The Handmaid’s Tale came about thanks in part to a winter spent in a fisherman’s cottage in Blakeney, Norfolk, in 1983, which was so grim she abandoned the novel she was working on.” www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...?

92%: the percentage of funding for Nigel Farage's far-right political party Reform UK that comes from fossil fuel interests. Across the world, anyone blaming immigrants, etc, it's all just a smokescreen to allow the rich to keep on getting richer by killing our planet. share.google/W2gwfc0XVpUy...

So, I thought I’d try using the built-in Wordpress assistant to generate an image for one of my web-pages, as it didn’t want to upload an actual word cloud I’d generated. I think my job’s safe for now.

Think of this when you do your plastic recycling. Better to avoid plastic altogether where you can. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...?

Indeed, catastrophic climate change, including a decent chance of shutting of the Atlantic circulation and plunging the UK & northern Europe into a mini ice age as the rest of the world eats the resulting excess heat, is the explicit policy choice of the right, and they want us to vote for it.

Our next Norwich (UK) (Climate) Emergency Drinks gathering will take place tomorrow (Thu 12 June) from 7:30pm. If you fancy mixing with people working on, active about, or just interested in climate & related issues, send me a message and I'll give you the details.

I've written a short piece on LinkedIn about the UK's recent endorsement of #Morocco's autonomy plan for occupied #WesternSahara, and why this is a major foreign policy error. It links to the much longer article on my blog. www.linkedin.com/pulse/uks-la...

The 1 June UK-Morocco #JointCommuniqué announced by #DavidLammy & the #FCDO states that #Morocco’s 'autonomy plan' is “the most credible, viable and pragmatic basis for a lasting resolution of the dispute” in Western Sahara. It isn't. Here's why. nickbrooks.wordpress.com/2025/06/06/l...

My latest article, in response to the strategic dialogue between the UK and Morocco, announced on 1st June.

Happy to share my first piece in @opiniojuris.bsky.social on "Settler Tourism in #WesternSahara and the Commodification of Occupied Territories", where I take aim at @ryanairofficial.bsky.social & others and draw comparisons with Trump's plans for Palestine as Riviera opiniojuris.org/2025/05/23/d...

The 1990s adoption of neoliberalism by the centre left really ought to be seen for what it is: the successful capture of liberal politics by what is straightforwardly a eugenicist, far-right ideology. It's just that almost no one did the reading.

OUT: You can’t connect extreme weather to climate change 5Mn AGO: You can’t connect extreme weather to fossil-fuel companies IN: 🎁🔗⤵️ www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is research for impact - great support for climate litigation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Trump has now sold out the Ukrainians, the Palestinians, and the Sahrawis, in each case giving the occupier exactly what they want with no push-back. Not exactly hard-nosed negotiation from an expert deal maker. Rather spineless capitulation by a weak mind too easily impressed by aggression.

The Day After Tomorrow is better each time I watch it. Sure, the science is beyond dodgy, but its treatment of the political economy of climate inaction, differentiated vulnerability, fragility, embedded adaptive capacity, and complex impacts, is exemplary.

#Adaptation isn't about preserving the status quo, but about managing inevitable and often painful change. Our new paper on 'curating transformation' looks at lessons from heritage management for wider adaptation & managing losses & damages (open access). www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Do any of my #climate / #adaptation contacts have expertise in communications from parties to the UNFCCC on other parties' NDCs? DM me if so. Thanks.

Saw a sobering presentation about demining in Western Sahara, followed by another on Moroccan drone attacks on civilian targets, by the Sahrawi Mine Action Cooperation Office this morning. These are the types of drones being used by Morocco in incursions in the Sahrawi controlled areas.

Folks, if you're planning a holiday in Morocco, please consider that you'll be supporting a military occupation & the attempted erasure of the Sahrawi people's culture, identity, and presence in their homeland. Sent from a refugee camp housing Sahrawis displaced by Morocco's aggression.

If getting rid of people was the way to solve climate change, the first to go wouldn't be the poor - it would be the better off high emitters, including many of the proponents of the 'overpopulation' narrative, and, indeed, you and me.

If you have any reach on Bluesky, please consider reposting so I can find old and new friends (and then I’ll follow you back 😊). I'm Alexander Verbeek and publish about the climate crisis, environment, the beauty of nature, science, walking, sustainability, wildlife, photography, water, and energy.

From the Sahrawi National Museum, here is a breakdown of the provenance of land mines planted by Morocco in Western Sahara 🇪🇭

Hanging out with jurists, lawyers, public prosecutors and the like to address the legal aspects of the conflict in Western Sahara, with a focus on natural resources, climate change, climate justice, and #adaptation.

I'm off to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, to talk to international jurists about how the impacts of climate change interact with, and are amplified by, the Western Sahara conflict.

There may well be some smaller farmers who will suffer as a result of the changes in inheritance tax. But you can bet this is being whipped up by large landowners and cynical well-off culture warriors who just don't want to pay more tax.

This is, indeed, indicative of how worthwhile it is to keep plugging away with climate action. But I still worry about the extent to which those policies and pledges will be implemented and delivered honestly and transparently, without creative accounting & dodgy nature based solutions.

Of course Morocco supported this new Rynair route to a territory it occupies contrary to numerous UN resolutions and Western Sahara's status as a non-self-governing territory, because Rabat is desperate to normalise and legitimise its occupation, and these arrangements help it do just that.

Counting elements of the carbon cycle as contributing to net-zero while not counting territorial emissions from systems that flip from carbon sinks to carbon source, along with other omissions & creative accounting, are reasons I'm deeply sceptical of warming projections based on policies & pledges.

#COP29 highlights so many reasons why we need to anticipate massive and ongoing climate upheaval throughout this century and beyond. We still need to fight to ensure mitigation is a strong as possible, but we need to plan for 2°C of warming relatively soon, and 3°C or more by the end of the century.

A while back, I wrote some reflections on my two decades working as a climate change adaptation consultant. It caused quite a stir on - er - LinkedIn. I thought I'd share it here now that I'm back floating in the BlueSky. nickbrooks.wordpress.com/2024/06/06/a...

negotiators *expect* Saudi Arabia to be obstructive at UN climate talks. If they're shocked, it must be *bad* www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/c...

So, everyone's here now, I hear. I might become active again, now there is a larger and more diverse ecosystem. I'll try and stick to climate justice, resilience, Western Sahara & other interesting stuff, and minimise personal gripes. No promises though.

I'm breaking my long social media fast to shamelessly plug all the fun new climate change adaptation training offerings at my little firm, Garama 3C Ldt. Have a look - the world urgently needs to up adaptation ambition, and we can help! garama-training.com

Happy Valentine's Day.

One more time in the green section before the end of the year 😭 WILL I LEARN ANYTHING FOR 2024? All signs point to NO

Bye.

This article from the Sunday Times warning about the "Greenhouse Effect " is nearly 45 years old. Politicians have known the existential threat climate change poses for decades yet have done little to nothing. Time to stop talking and take action #cop28

This is why the US, China etc fighting to preserve the current situation of basically non-existent rules for carbon trading is such a big deal. This will only get worse: more trades, larger numbers, and huge amounts of $$ flying around the world into pockets. bsky.app/profile/keta...

So, it appears the #COP28 agreement is a big pile of hollow crap that represents real progress.

Middle East scholars afraid to speak out - our new survey shows widespread self-censorship, intense pressures, and feeling abandoned by campus administrators. My new piece with Shibley Telhami in the Chronicle of Higher Education abuaardvark.substack.com/p/gaza-and-a...

Denial Denied: Denier Denies Denial 🧪 www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Oh my.

It's Energy day at COP28. Just five countries – US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK – are responsible for over half (51%) of all planned oil and gas field developments from now to 2050. NEW Article in COP28 newsletter ECO

"In the past five years, the European Space Agency has found hundreds of ancient microorganisms resistant to antibiotics in the Alaskan permafrost, and Chinese hunters have isolated 33 ancient and previously unknown viruses dating back at least 11,000 years..." www.bbc.com/future/artic...

I spent the last 80hrs working as part of the Kick Big Polluters Out team of classifiers who poured over 84,000 attendees of COP28, working to find their links to the fossil fuel industry Tl;dr: there are loads of them Would be great if you could share, thank you 🙏🏼 www.cnbc.com/2023/12/05/c...

"US oil production is also at a record high, with output of 13.2mn barrels a day in September. It is now producing more oil than any country in history even as Opec+ countries curb supply in a bid to bolster prices." www.ft.com/content/d2b2...

Here is this November compared to all prior Novembers in the record. This year saw the largest exceedance of a prior November record by far in the JRA-55 dataset.