David A. McKay

Cartoon showing UK, US, and Soviet bases in Antarctica, with the UK base consisting of a tent and someone from the British Council lecturing bored penguins on English Literature, the US base consisting of a bar and penguins playing baseball, and the Soviet base consisting of a barbed wire-fenced camp and penguins doing military drills

Tangentially reminds me of Russell Brockbank's take on differences between UK/US/USSR Antarctic missions during the International Geophysical Year:

That's definitely not to say that public information campaigns & sci-comm aren't needed, but to me this event (& a few other things I can think of recently) implies more heavily that lacking the right information is the key issue, rather than confronting power.

Climate orgs ofc don't really do this, but I think scientists are a bit more prone, e.g. the 'national emergency briefing' in the UK last week & campaign now for an emergency broadcast arguably leaning on idea of MPs/public not knowing enough. (still wrapped in wider narrative of emergency though!)

For my last lecture I had to log in to 5 different things (one of which didn't even work) before I could get started... Thankfully not yet needing to authenticate before starting a lecture yet, but I wouldn't be surprised!

Yeah, I also struggle to see this (or the common logic that it *must* be feasible because it's in IAM scenarios, or otherwise TPs will happen). More sympathetic to moderate expansion of 'NBS' + ⬇️deforest = ⬆️sink, but social & economic constraints make it modest, and w/o mitigation that fails too...

The world lost the climate gamble. Now it faces a dangerous new reality | Johan Rockström | 68 comments While we are still waiting on a COP30 agreement in some form, the core scientific message is clear. Global warming will exceed 1.5°C in the near term, pushing us into overshoot and increasing risks fo...

Not so keen on big J's spin on this emphasising large-scale CDR then 😉? www.linkedin.com/posts/johan-...

Considering a Masters? To celebrate the new Sussex School for Progressive Futures, Sussex Uni. has announced 10 £10k scholarships for selected courses, including our Climate Change, Development & Policy MSc!

Details here 👇 + a Virtual Masters Open Day on 29/11/25:

www.sussex.ac.uk/study/fees-f...

I remember being shocked back in 2004 when someone brought a BNP leaflet in to school headlined "Asylum is making Britain explode" (which I believe was widely denounced). Now, two decades on, official Labour government policy is only a whisker less inflammatory...

World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds Fossil fuel emissions have hit a record high while many nations have done too little to avert deadly global heating

Paper on sink dynamics here: rdcu.be/ePDDS

And some reporting here: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

(also, typo on *its - oh, for an edit button here, like on masto!)

The new Global Carbon Budget is out, updating preliminary results reported above, & suggesting that while 2023-24 was bad for land sink it seems to be bouncing back this year. As Zeke notes 👇, the bigger story is it's emerging decline, not a sudden & total collapse. I'll update explainer on it soon!

A man in Roundhead costume in the Lewes Cliffe Bonfire Society prpcession carrying a sign saying "Trust in God & Keep your Powder Dry" with flaming torch as attached, surrounded by others carrying flaming torches dressed as Roundheads and Suffragettes.

Wild Roundhead spotted out in Lewes on #TheFifth

I had a great chat with @smartcookies.bsky.social podcast a little while back, covering climate change, denialism, doomism, tipping points, and geoengineering.

Watch here www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxH... or listen via wherever you get your podcasts!

www.patreon.com/the_smart_co...

#ClimateChange

I had a great chat with @smartcookies.bsky.social podcast a little while back, covering climate change, denialism, doomism, tipping points, and geoengineering.

Watch here www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxH... or listen via wherever you get your podcasts!

www.patreon.com/the_smart_co...

#ClimateChange

Mossn't grumble.

Screenshot of quote from linked article saying "Lentonist science requires, in the authors' view, a Leninist response"

ha yes, I thought this was quite the quote! (not sure if it's from the book though)

Screenshot of section of interview of Johan Rockström by Exame: Exame: In the last World Economic Forum, there was much talk that A.I. and Fusion energy could solve the climate issue through mass carbon absorption. Would AI not be, in reality, a dangerous distraction? Rockström: A.I. can become a distraction that receives disproportionate amounts of focus when we have a planetary crisis. And not just A.I., but also the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the ridiculous tariffs of the Trump Administration. There are many factors that push us away from the necessary focus on fighting climate change. For instance, I always get asked whether I am worried about A.I. because of the energy consumption of their data centers. I answer that I am not, because of the simple fact that renewable energy sources are being developed so fast that we should have abundant energy. My concern lies in biodiversity, fresh water, minerals, the soil, and the entire biosphere.

He was even more blunt in this interview, categorising Gaza & Ukraine as distractions: exame.com/en/brazil-is...

(also odd on not being worried about AI energy usage, as renewables will inevitable be abundant...)

The rapidity of oil/gas decline without investment in this report struck me too - from eyeballing, not super far off rate needed for well-below 2C (or even 1.5 if had started earlier): bsky.app/profile/drsi...

Analysis: Shell says new ‘Brazil-sized’ forest would be needed to meet 1.5C climate goal - Carbon Brief For the first time, Shell has released a “pathway” showing how the world could potentially meet the Paris Agreement’s ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Or indeed when 1 of Shell's 2021 global net-zero scenarios involved planting a *Brazil-sized* forest to make up for continuing fossil fuels to 2100: www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-she....

People on the ground may be sounder on its limits, but it has been used by suits to justify continued emissions!

Analysis: UK misses tree-planting targets by forest the ‘size of Birmingham’ - Carbon Brief UK governments have fallen short of their tree-planting targets since 2020 that they have failed to plant an area of forest nearly the size of Birmingham

It's also been commonly taken up in that way by politicians, e.g. UK parties outbidding each other on tree-planting targets back in 2019 election to make up a big chunk of net-zero plans, with generally underwhelming results: www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...

It's also fine to climb up motorway gantries, if it's for a flag bsky.app/profile/davi...

Yvette Cooper MP | Good Morning Britain | ITV | 17 July 2023 | Just Stop Oil YouTube video by Just Stop Oil

Strange how Just Stop Oil activists were imprisoned even for being in a *meeting* about going up the gantries, with Cooper calling JSO "dangerous & irresponsible" for triggering motorway closures by doing so, and yet now popping up one to put a flag on is all good... youtu.be/ney0E6sNceU?...

Yvette Cooper MP | Good Morning Britain | ITV | 17 July 2023 | Just Stop Oil YouTube video by Just Stop Oil

Strange how Just Stop Oil activists were imprisoned even for being in a *meeting* about going up the gantries, with Cooper calling JSO "dangerous & irresponsible" for triggering motorway closures by doing so, and yet now popping up one to put a flag on is all good...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ney0...

Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds Scientists say ‘shocking’ discovery shows rapid cuts in carbon emissions are needed to avoid catastrophic fallout

Recent news for context: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Overall the general picture is the same though: the AMOC weakens with warming, the larger that warming the more likely it is to collapse in the long run, that collapse would radically change life in Europe & the tropics, and one part of it could go much sooner. But also: deep uncertainty remains!

Shutdown: can climate change make ocean currents collapse? A recent study renewed worries that the ‘AMOC’ – a key set of ocean currents – could soon pass a tipping point and shutdown this century, with major ramifications for the cl…

Apropos of recent AMOC news, I've finally gotten round to updating this AMOC tipping explainer from a couple years back with some of the flurry of papers published since then - check it out if you'd like some more background:
climatetippingpoints.info/2023/08/15/a...

#AMOC #TippingPoints #Climate

Complementarily, one can think of this (and other categorisation problems) in terms of an n-dimensional phase space on which the main PCA principal component maps roughly on to an existing axis/spectrum construct (like sex, left/right-wing, etc.), but never perfectly, or capturing all variation.

Obviously this doesn't mean Arctic sea ice loss isn't happening (it is! and this slowdown likely means next drop is bigger) or isn't a problem (it's already causing harm!), but given how things are actually panning out the dark-boosterism that Arctic sea ice seems to attract doesn't seem very useful

A graph from a 2018 Extinction Rebellion talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VkC4SnwY0) showing Arctic summer sea ice volume data from 1979 to 2018, showing a decline in particular after 2000, with various trends fit to the data that hit the zero line mostly around 2022.

Graph from The Guardian's article showing Arctic summer sea ice extent (note extent rather than volume, but former correlates with latter) showing gradual decline from 1979 to 2000, faster decline 2000 to 2010, and then roughly plateauing from 2010 to now

How it started // How it's going

(p.s. 1st graph - from XR's first talks in 2018 - is volume rather than extent, which amplifies changes, but the two have similar trends)

Writing this in 2019, there was a small cottage industry in dodgy Arctic sea ice trend-fitting to claim collapse by 2022. Instead, it's plateaued, in line with projected 1st ice-free summer in 2030s/40s plus natural variability. A case study in power of process understanding vs. naïve trend-fitting!

Are Earth’s natural carbon sinks collapsing? This autumn, several media articles reported on a study showing the global carbon sink on land – which so far has drawn down around a quarter of human carbon dioxide emissions – took up…

For more background, check out this explainer I wrote last year on why claims of a 2023 carbon sink collapse were wide of the mark (and which I'll update soon-ish on what the unexpected lack of a land sink recovery in 2024 likely means): climatetippingpoints.info/2024/12/03/c...