Fun fact: this would be true if we lived on Pluto
Climate economist, Columbia https://gwagner.com It’s pronounced juggernaut without the jug.
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Fun fact: this would be true if we lived on Pluto
Statement tonight from Alan Garber, 31st president of Harvard. Good for him. Good for Harvard. Good for standing up to defend "core values of American higher education." And (again) what about all those "Harvard about to cave" stories? Main point: Worth reading what Garber says.
Ah yes, there's that — a DEMOCRAT-controlled HELLHOLE, no less.
Timeline cleanse, Astor Place, NYC
PS: Skip whatever EPA is putting up instead and e.g. check out interactive.carbonbrief.org/doe-factchec... on the DOE report used in support of the Trumpian argument that climate poses no social cost.
I guess the official US Social Cost of Carbon is now $404.
2 kids going to 2 different schools, 2 parents going to jobs on different sides of town City × [2🛴 + 2🚲] = #freedom no car can provide
…thus necessitating journalists' reliance on experts for such warnings, lest the headline itself is perceived as partisan. Rinse, repeat.
This really says it all: journalism relies on experts to warn when expertise is under threat, at once justifying the Right's assault on science and making the defense of science a partisan project
😔
If a few health professionals say something you don't like, all said it and we should destroy the CDC. If a few students say something you don't like, all higher ed said it and we should end academic freedom. If the president and his party does something, that's one guy spouting off, let it go.
Point of comparison: school pickup in a DEMOCRAT-controlled urban HELLHOLE (The masks will give away that this was 3 years ago. Turns out it's such routine, we don't exactly take daily videos.)
Car brain is a disease
No. Seriously. After doing a of collapse for my PhD, I absolutely think *** this is the least of our worries *** For future climate change. Distraction from actual Insane amounts of rain Heat waves Storm surges Wind storms Heat heat heat Fires
Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):
I gave a campus talk last night on Trump's first 100 days for the WUD Society & Politics group. A student asked me if I thought that, at some point, we might start to describe the US as a competitive authoritarian regime. I said that we were already there, it's just that most folks haven't noticed:
not only is our society physically segregated, and our political moment reenforced by an urban / rural divide. social media platforms have created a truth segregation where these kind lies can flourish in algorithmic walled gardens it's truly a dangerous dynamic
Yes www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...
Lower East Side?! :)
That shot was from the East River track, which is about to be closed through next year, part of the $1+ billion makeover to climate-proof the lower East Side. 💪
Good morning from the Democrat-controlled, crime-ridden, anti-family HELLHOLE that is lower Manhattan. (Not shown: the family dog, hiding in shame.)
Combating obesity by buying bigger pants, fails every time.
Mea culpa, climate nerds! Meanwhile, "Gulf Stream ⊂ AMOC" ⊻ "AMOC ⊂ Gulf Stream"?
Oh Gernot, you have way too many climate scientists following you to say that AMOC = Gulf Stream for climate nerds. I pity your notifications, but i want you to know that you deserve it .
Sigh
RFK Jr: We need to stop trusting the experts... Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy, it's a feature of religion and totalitarianism.
Thanks for the explainer! I do rather like this Carl Wunsch title: "Gulf Stream safe if wind blows and Earth turns" www.nature.com/articles/428...
;) I'm with Carl Wunsch on this one.
For a second I thought the @financialtimes.com was starting its 2028 U.S. presidential election coverage particularly early this time around.
I will never 'simplify' AMOC to read Gulf Stream. I will never 'simplify' AMOC to read Gulf Stream. I will never 'simplify' AMOC to read Gulf Stream. bsky.app/profile/sara...
Perfect title. Up there with "Why do Bedouins wear black robes in hot deserts?"
At some point in the not too distant future the conventional wisdom will be that this was a period where the US focused on dumb shit while China took the lead in multiple domains
You know how the Gulf Stream (AMOC, for the climate nerd set) keeps Europe habitable? The latest tipping points paper is making the rounds for good reason. AMOC collapses past 2100 in *all* projections iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1... Good @economist.com take www.economist.com/leaders/2025...
![Figure 1. (upper) Ensemble means of the AMOC strength and (below) total ocean heat transport at 26°N in the model simulations in which the northern AMOC shuts down. The letters are ordered from top to bottom to correspond to lines with decreasing values in year 2300/2500. The short cyan line shows the observed (yet insignificant) trend of the RAPID observations [21, 22] for 2005–2023 (upper) and 2005–2020 [23] (below).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3nekuksdc3y37mr7q66aaq4d/bafkreief3gzrwyhemgj77br3xekpalcft76trwmbh5cjpcopibwtpcdlry@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Meanwhile, the @nytimes.com's feel good design issue features a gas stove prominently in the "wellness" kitchen. Sigh.
Superior tech, that's for sure.
Less asthma, better food. There really is no excuse. And yeah, induction comes at any price point. The cheapest option used to be the contractor-grade gas stove for $300, now it's the $60 IKEA induction plate. #ClimateTech FTW www.bloomberg.com/news/feature... [gift link]
Wäre höchst an der Zeit, ja gwagner.com/austrian-rail-lines
Our comment on the DOE CWG report is done. It tips the scales at 439 pages, approx. 3x longer than the DOE report. This is related to Brandolini's law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. Example: refuting one sentence.
This is how you write a headline. It definitely isn't how you run the EPA. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/c...
A “tariff rebate check” is like setting your kitchen on fire and then mailing yourself a bucket of water. There's an easier way to avoid the burn.
This is a real photograph of Washington, DC this week, where the United States president has ordered military occupation in peacetime, and ordered the display of colossal portraits of himself. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
The bottom one-tenth now losing $1,200 make barely more a year than the $13,600 gained by the top decile. Obscene.
Excellent climate tech primer
Upshot: EVs pay for themselves even without subsidies. The one that doesn't? The overpriced Tesla www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Indeed 😊 gwagner.com/SLK
Notoriously-not-green operator of New England’s electric grid warns that the trumps move to halt an (already 80% completed) offshore #renewable #wind farm *will reduce reliability of the grid* 🤔 “Delaying the project will increase risks” it said: thehill.com/policy/energ...
Hah, happy to serve with all the most cryptic climate takes.
*soldiers, sheesh. Then again, whoever ordered this can't spell either.
So so many factors that have contributed to this mistaken perception. And yeah, it's a major problem for climate, too: efficient, well-run, dense, walkable, transit-oriented cities make real nature possible.
90%(!) cuts at the National Park Service to maintain DC parks. Now it's National Guard solides doing the work, who aren't exactly cheaper. Another DOGE "cut" that is anything but
Nice. That puts you quite close to Glacier 3000? bsky.app/profile/tori...
Trump's 50% tariffs on India take effect today. We'll all be poorer for it. Me earlier this month in the Times of India gwagner.com/toi-trump-tariffs
Deal, though we would need to do quite a bit of field experiments to check enforcement of local ordinances.
I could get used to this kind of office view. 😍
Do you ever think about how the fine for peeing in public is substantially more than the fine for dumping tonnes of CO₂ in public?
Expropriate a private company, drive up electricity prices for everyone, and all because you'd also like to screw over women
Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.
This, too, is #climatetech: USB chargers on a local public bus. WiFi, too, of course.
Yes, the stakes here are large. Very large.
The cement industry emits eight percent of global CO2 — and #startups like Brimstone and Sublime aim to change that with cleaner tech. Professor @gwagner.com writes that high costs and slow adoption remain big hurdles. www.ft.com/content/6aa5...
At this point this is no longer just about wind or renewables, this is about basic investment certainty. Lack thereof is why investors demand 20+% return for the same investment in Egypt that gets 6% return in Germany (and yes the US is already at 7 or 8% in this calc) www.axios.com/2025/08/25/t...
On the plus side: the century-old train from Zugspitze to Garmisch is spectacular, Garmisch has >hourly direct connections to Munich, and the flow of humanity emerging from each train is beautiful 😍
Most fun/sad part: the German kid pleading with the parents to stay on in the train past Eibsee. "No, we have to get out. Our car is here." More pleading. "You'll have your iPad!" 😿
Same glacier less than 100 years ago. www.bayerische-gletscher.de/nsf/nsf_bild...
This train from the top of the mountain goes past the massive parking lot at the Eibsee all the way to Garmisch, with easy connection onward to Munich and elsewhere. There's zero excuse for a 500-car lot at the Eibsee.
Sigh 😞
Easily the most depressing part of my recent PNW trip was just how much snow and ice were missing from every angle of Mt. Rainier compared to when I used to live there. This sucks. All of this just sucks.
And here it is, the car ad at the Gletscherbahnhof (glacier train station).
Welcome to the saddest remnants of what once was a proud glacier. But, hey, WiFi works, so Yay Modernity!
A look at what's left of the one remaining glacier on Germany's tallest mountain. This week's Spiegel explains how the glacier is slated to lose its status in the next year or two(!).
Gondola up the Zugspitze 🚠
Indeed. It's climate *in*action that breeds political cynicism much like it's governmental inaction on housing, food & fuel prices, or mayors failing to pick up the trash, that breeds cynicism & popular revolts
It's too late for despair.
Only really unclear, if you really, really prefer it to be unclear, I'm afraid.
Sigh 😔
Reuters poll: 57% of Americans fear that American democracy is in danger — including 4 in 10 Republicans.
I fail to see what is unclear here: www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...
Noooo, not the Non-Use Agreement :) bsky.app/profile/gwag...
On the left: Nate Cavanagh, a 28-year-old DOGE staffer and college dropout. On the right: Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old exiled Afghan scholar. This is the story of how DOGE targeted Halimi on social media. Then the Taliban took his family. 🧵
The topic: geoengineering, in a "debate" with @wolfgangcramer.net Plenty of nuance, of course. Also plenty of agreement. The big difference: I didn't sign the Non-Use Agreement; gwagner.com/GtG instead calls for a deployment moratorium, with an explicit call for research.
Today's mission: Schneefernerhaus at the Zugspitze, Germany's tallest mountain, for a taping for an @artefr.bsky.social documentary. The name is sadly apt: "Schnee" (snow) is rather "fern" (far) these days, and the remaining glacier is slated to lose its status in the next couple of years.
Housing policy = climate policy
There really is no excuse not to cut that gas line. Email from ConEd just now: "Get up to $10,000 To Boost Efficiency With Air-Source Heat Pumps" Would have cut our install costs 5 years ago by >30% gwagner.com/curbed-coop
Getting off before then ;)
One kid jumps up from his book, phone in hand: "Look at that castle. Peak European!" Other kid: "Nah, mid! That's not even Austria yet." 😎
I realize I'm a year late here, but these new ÖBB Railjets are something else. Best train out there, made even better. If you told an American Amtrak rider that you could transverse the Alps in a perfectly designed, quiet workspace with stable WiFi & espresso delivered to your seat, 🤯
Actually I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States with my hand on @bpl.boston.gov’s 1782 edition Aitken Bible—also known as the Bible of the Revolution.
You know how Trump promised to cut electricity bills by 50%? Anyone surprised things are going the other way? heatmap.news/energy/why-i...
The green transition will not be stopped by Trump or anyone else. Just look to Ethiopia, and Morocco, and Nepal, and Pakistan, and Turkey www.economist.com/finance-and-...
My Trade Secrets today. Everyone says Donald Trump conducts trade and tax policy like a mafia boss. But dealing with him often means not just an offer you can’t refuse but an offer you can’t rely on — sometimes an offer you can’t understand. on.ft.com/45KbJcQ
Just Arsenale, I'm afraid. Too much rain for Giardini. Quote hotel concierge: "That much rain is new. Climate change."
And it wasn't even staged. Just him processing.
I am a former congressional lightweight who doesn’t understand the first thing about soft power. By Mike Gallagher
Yup. Taste test: delicious.
While it may seem like a dark time for climate tech, there are good reasons to believe that the next few years will see the emergence of new forms of clean energy. We explain why econ.st/4oI7FCu Photo: Prologis
Everyone's walking that one path between St. Mark's and Rialto Bridge bsky.app/profile/gwag...
Truly.
