Ten years ago I made a bet with @BigJoeBastardi; he thought that the world would cool, while I projected it would warm. We settled on a paid dinner for me each year 0.1C above the prior decade avg (2001-2010) and for him each year 0.1C below, using UAH.

He now owes me 5 dinners
I had originally suggested a $10k bet, based on the past warming trend continuing, as I outlined here: rankexploits.com/musings/2011/b…
Joe countered in the comments that he was not willing to wager $10k, but was happy to make a bet around dinners. He suggested using UAH satellite troposphere data instead of surface temperature data, and making it relative to the prior decade's average:
Eagle-eyed viewers may note that one year (2011) in the figure in the first tweet was in the "Joe wins a dinner" range. Back in 2011 only UAHv5 (blue line) was available, but we did not specify if the winner would be based on data available at the time or retrospectively.
I'm happy to take one dinner out of my winnings, and only have Joe owe me four. That said, he has studiously ignored the results of this bet in the past, so I'm not particularly optimistic about him paying up...
Also, while Joe suggested steak dinners, I'm more than happy to take my winnings in the form of lower-cost (and lower-emissions) non-steak options. Perhaps a box of @ImpossibleFoods burgers instead?

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Zeke Hausfather

Zeke Hausfather Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @hausfath

2 Feb
The National Academy of Sciences has a great new report on accelerating decarbonization of the US energy system, taking a deep look at what is needed to put us on track for net-zero by 2050. A few major takeaways: nap.edu/resource/25932… 1/5
1) Clean energy needs to scale up dramatically by 2030. This will require record-setting deployment of solar and wind technologies, get rid of all coal and some gas-fired power plants, and preserving operating nuclear plants and hydroelectric facilities where possible. 2/5
2) Zero-emission vehicles as 50% of new sales by 2030, prioritize heat pumps in homes and buildings (mandatory for most new construction) while increasing efficiency, start decarbonizing industrial processes/heat with low-carbon alternatives (hydrogen, CCS, adv nuclear) 3/5
Read 5 tweets
29 Jan
Meeting Paris Agreement climate targets will involve building a lot of big clean energy projects extremely quickly. We need to streamline permitting, remove barriers, and take the power away from NIMBYies to gum up the works if we want any hope of a rapid energy transition
We are talking about some large-scale land use changes happening in a 30-year timeframe; here is what the region around St. Louis might look like in 2050, for example:
Similarly, we will require a huge amount of new transmission to help balance out generation and demand in a high renewable future:
Read 5 tweets
28 Jan
A lot of time is wasted in oft-superficial debased about whether renewables or nuclear will be the key to decarbonization.

The reality is that both will play a key role in reaching our ambitious climate goals. Some new results by @VibrantCE show how.

A thread 1/10
Some of the most cutting edge research on how to integrate clean energy into the grid is done by @DrChrisClack and his team at @VibrantCE. They have done perhaps more than any other group in analyzing the important role that variable renewables can play.
They find – as do most others who build similar models – that wind and solar will be biggest driver of near-term power sector decarbonization. However, they do so using the huge amount of gas capacity we have to fill in the gaps. Heres capacity in their new zero-by-2050 scenario:
Read 11 tweets
28 Jan
Theres lots to be excited about with the new Biden climate EOs. But at the same time meaningful, durable climate policy will also require legislation.

In a new @TheBTI report we take a deep dive into policies that are both impactful and could become law: s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/uploads.thebre…
On the energy side some big ones are supercharging DOE loan authorizations to support early-stage clean energy companies, more funding for geothermal/carbon removal/small modular nuclear, grid modernization through a nationwide "supergrid", and extending support for renewables.
On the transport side, we argue for investing in expanded EV charging infrastructure and investments in ports and airports to reduce emissions, deal with maintenance backlogs and adapt to future climate changes:
Read 6 tweets
28 Jan
There was quite the epic energy twitter thread yesterday involving dozens of different folks. Unfortunately Twitter makes it rather difficult to read the whole thing, so I wanted to highlight one set of discussions for potential follow-up:
Based on a discussion of differences between @JesseJenkins's GenX model and @DrChrisClack's WIS:dom model, I brought up the idea of a CMIP-like process to compare outputs given a common set of inputs/scenarios, similar to whats done in EMF for IAMs today:
Jesse suggested that he is working with EDM to fundraise for something like this:
Read 9 tweets
27 Jan
Current commitments by Paris Agreement signatories are far from sufficient to get us to well-below 2C. But @ClimateEnvoy's statement today that Paris alone would lead to "3.7 to 4.5 degrees" C warming appears to be inaccurate. state.gov/special-guest-…

A thread: 1/4
When the Paris Agreement was first passed, a detailed analysis by @JoeriRogelj and colleagues in Nature found a best-estimate (50th percentile) warming of 2.9C (2.2C-3.5C) for unconditional NDCs and 2.7C (2.1C-3.2C) when including conditional NDCs: nature.com/articles/natur… 2/4
Similarly, the folks at @climateactiontr at the time estimated that that Paris commitments would result in around 2.7C (2.2C to 3.4C) if pledges and targets were met. At the time current policies led to ~3.6C warming, but today they only lead to ~2.9C reflecting progress made 3/4
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!