Geopolitics is complicated and I damn sure don’t have all the answers, but I do know what arrogance, indifference to human suffering, and malevolent destruction of everything that gave us hope for a brighter future looks like
Kidnapping visa-holding graduate students (from buildings many friends lived in!) for what? To ensure America becomes a less free country? To discourage the smartest people in the world from dreaming of coming here? To make our universities less innovative?
We must decide if we are outraged by child abuse and willing to take steps to ensure it doesnt happen, or if we think it’s pretty cool actually
Grazalema, Spain, received over 2,000 mm (78 inches) of rain in just the last 20 days.
Over a year’s worth of rain — and it’s only early February. This is hydrologically absurd.
Yes, of course we're spying on you -- it's lucrative! Do I look like a six-yacht loser? -- but don't think about what ICE or Palantir or your local deputy sheriff's nephew is doing with this capability. Puppies!!!
using 30 years of data to reason about rare extremes is irresponsible but if theres nonstationarity it’s super duper irresponsible
It would be cool if we could take our expensive hazardometer and go “validate” probabilistic risk estimates through direct observation. Until then…
completely agree but would just add it’s not just future changes — the probability distribution of rare events CANNOT be empirically validated from short records, trends or no
Featuring a quote from @jdossgollin.bsky.social!
As Adam notes, the core problem is these scores cannot be validated (in the strictest sense) for future use, because there are too many assumptions about future changes. We need to be transparent about these and look across a range of projections.
Apparently I am so tired I cannot write a coherent sentence. Thanks, daycare germs!
Tools that help savvy companies who hire scientists like @kellyhereid.bsky.social use, in conjunction with lots of other information, to answer specific questions are not intrinsically useful for ordinary people making the biggest financial decision of their lives
I am calling for a complete and total shutdown of daycare germs until somebody can figure out what the hell is going on (while I still have some backup care days left for 2026)
Climate risk science's greatest project successes have come in part due to transparency and reusability. We show that at the paper-level, there is plenty of room for growth. We talk about why this matters, what researchers can do, and how the greatest progress requires institutional support
This paper began as a manifesto but (largely thank to @crispapoll.bsky.social's hard work) evolved into an empirically grounded, thoughtful, and nuanced analysis of why transparency is *especially* critical for #climate #climaterisk research and how current standards fall short
Sorry editors -- I got about a billion invitations to review this week and had to decline most of them. Prioritizing (1) society journals, (2) open access journals, and (3) journals I have recently submitted to, down-weighted if I have more recently reviewed there.
All emails should cost $0.01. An email to all 20,000 people on campus should cost 200 bucks -- enough that you have to accept accountability and justify your choice, not so much that important stuff is blocked
floodplains are a good concept in some geographies, but the gap between how they are communicated vs calculated made me assume I was misunderstanding for a long time!
Agree 100% but also, floodplains are a silly concept in flat subtropical places where it can flood anywhere
^this is me. In water & climate extremes, uncertainties that we can't quantify from data (model structure, techno-socio-economic futures, etc) often dominate parameter uncertainties, which we can quantify (conditional on our model and data). Which is nice, but not the main attraction.
Kelly's point is why I think the merits of Zillow removing climate risk scores (www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/c...) is fairly nuanced. To make it clear: Zillow clearly did not do this for the right reasons, and the realty and developer lobbies have long been opponents of better climate information.
My favorite thing about Thanksgiving week is that all the companies who’s crap I need to unsubscribe from hopefully send me multiple reminders
Our free and open source software for estimating property level flood risk under uncertainty now has a peer reviewed software paper!
We would love your thoughts for improvement and contributions! github.com/abpoll/unsafe
@jdossgollin.bsky.social @vsrikrish.bsky.social
On Wed, Dec 10 I am offering a comprehensive introduction to Bayesian regression modeling, with exercises in both RStan and PyStan, at a steep discount in an effort to raise funds for World Central Kitchen and United Farm Workers. For registration details see betanalpha.github.io/courses/.
There seems to be very little coverage, but Hurricane Melissa is about to do terrible damage to millions of people.
gdacs.org/report.aspx?...
Climate risk models require DEEP expertise to use well. It is easier every day to download some black-box risk estimate for your house/community/portfolio. However, the common mindset of "some data is better than no data" can lead to trouble!
Thanks to everyone who is out (on behalf of all of us knocked out by daycare germs) to demand and defend accountability, transparency, democracy, and the very concept of morality.
Man taking a stand in a town hall meeting saying "resiliency is not a real word"
I literally only use this app to grumble
I knew having kids would change my life, but I wasn’t ready for Spotify to pack my recommendations with 98% white noise and nature sounds
📊New research published in #ERCL - in the 'Focus on #ClimateChange Informed Catastrophe Modeling to Support #ClimateRisk Management'
🌧️Bayesian spatiotemporal nonstationary model quantifies robust increases in daily extreme rainfall across the Western Gulf Coast: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
