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Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
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25 Feb, 25 tweets, 7 min read
One of the best parts about writing for @CarbonBrief is the ability to do in-depth explainers about complex climate and energy issues. Here are a few of my favorites that I worked on over the years.

First up, explaining the shared socioeconomic pathways: carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-…
CMIP6, the next generation of climate models: carbonbrief.org/cmip6-the-next…
Understanding climate sensitivity: carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-…
Why we think around 100% of observed warming is due to human activity: carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-s…
How well have climate models projected global warming in the years after they were published: carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-w…
How do climate models work? carbonbrief.org/qa-how-do-clim…
What are integrated assessment models and how are they used? carbonbrief.org/qa-how-integra…
How much carbon budget is left to limit global warming to 1.5C: carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-m…
And why the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C expanded this carbon budget: carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-t…
When might the world exceed 1.5C and 2C of global warming? carbonbrief.org/analysis-when-…
How carbon-cycle feedbacks could make global warming worse: carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-c…
Understanding the controversy over the high-emissions RCP8.5 global warming scenario: carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-…
How data adjustments affect global temperature records: carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-…
How every part of the world has warmed – and could continue to warm: carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-eve…
How electric vehicles help to tackle climate change: carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-…
What Greenland ice cores say about past and present climate change: carbonbrief.org/factcheck-what…
How global warming has increased US wildfires: carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-…
The role of natural climate solutions in combatting climate change: carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-n…
What climate models tell us about future rainfall: carbonbrief.org/explainer-what…
Why the sun is not responsible for recent climate change: carbonbrief.org/why-the-sun-is…
Why US carbon emissions have fallen 14% since 2005: carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-u…
Why the UK’s CO2 emissions have fallen 38% since 1990: carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-t…
How the rise and fall of CO2 levels influenced the ice ages: carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-…
How climate change is accelerating sea level rise: carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-…
Tornadoes and climate change: what does the science say: carbonbrief.org/tornadoes-and-…

And many more (as well as others by the excellent folks at @CarbonBrief), but I've reached my 25 post limit for the Twitter thread!

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More from @hausfath

Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
22 Feb
In recent months three different deep decarbonization scenarios have been produced from high-resolution grid integration models. In a new analysis at @TheBTI, my colleague @erikolsonn and I look at lessons they provide about what is needed: thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/…

A thread: 1/19
The three models we examine are Princeton's Net Zero America (NZA) project (by @JesseJenkins et al), the @VibrantCE Zero By Fifty scenario, and results by a team of researchers led by Jim Williams at USF. 2/
All three take a deep-dive into how US could reach net-zero emissions by 2050, down to level of where each new generating facility might be located, where transmission lines would be built, and how electricity sources can meet hourly demand in different regions of the country 3/
Read 21 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
20 Feb
There is some truth in Gates's suggestion that making new clean energy tech cheap for can be more important than deploying existing clean tech.

But it neglects the fact that a big part of making clean tech cheap is deployment: driving economies of scale and learning-by-doing.
We should recognize the need to do both: accelerate the deployment of existing clean tech to further drive down costs (particularly for more nascent clean tech like EVs that are on the cusp of cost-competitiveness with fossil alternatives) AND dramatically scale up RD&D.
The quote in the original post is from @yayitsrob's excellent interview in the @TheAtlantic this week: theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
Read 5 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
18 Feb
Geoengineering is not a solution to climate change, and at best might be a "break the glass in case of emergency"-type bandaid to buy us time.

That said, I disagree with Bill here that small-scale research projects will "take the heat off" of the push for decarbonization. 1/5
Here is where I could see geoengineering playing a role: say, at some point in the future we have gotten our emissions under control, but climate sensitivity was high and we've locked in 2.5-3C warming even though we thought we would limit warming to 2C. 2/5
We discover some previously unknown planetary-scale climate feedback mechanism with hysteresis that will lead to substantial additional warming if temperatures remain >2.5C. We need to actively suck lots of CO2 from the atmosphere to get temperatures down to safe levels. 3/5
Read 5 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
17 Feb
There has been a lot of confusion over the drivers of the Texas blackouts. While more will become clear in the coming days, neither renewables nor insufficient gas capacity were the culprits. Rather, it was the lack of resiliency of to extreme cold conditions.

A thread: 1/9
Texas has seen an explosion of cheap wind power in recent years. Wind now produces around 20% of Texas' electricity. However, at the same time Texas has also been building a lot of gas capacity; gas generally works well with wind, able to quickly ramp up to fill in gaps. 2/
Because it is intermittent, the grid manager @ERCOT_ISO does not rely much on wind to meet extreme demand events such as the one we are experiencing right now. Rather, they have enough gas (and nuclear/coal) capacity on standby just in case high demand coincides with low wind. 3/
Read 9 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
15 Feb
Much of the US is experiencing extreme cold temperatures. But we should not read too much into this when it comes to climate change; its both not an unusual day for global temperatures, and there is not much evidence that climate change is making cold extremes more common.
We can see that while the US and part of Russia are exceptionally cold at the moment, other parts of the world have much warmer than average temperatures. A warming world is still one with regional weather variability!
At the same time, there has been a strong decrease in the number of extreme cold events in many parts of the world. Today's event feels so extreme in part because its become much rarer in recent decades. (@RARohde has a good graph of this, but I can't seem to dig it up)
Read 8 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
11 Feb
There has been a lot of discussion about negative emissions technologies (NETs) lately. While we need to be skeptical of assumed planetary-scale engineering and wary of moral hazard, we also need much greater RD&D funding to keep our options open. A quick thread: 1/10
Energy system models love NETs, particularly for very rapid mitigation scenarios like 1.5C (where the alternative is zero global emissions by 2040)! More problematically, they also like tons of NETs in 2C scenarios where NETs are less essential. 2/10
In model world the math is simple: very rapid mitigation is expensive today, particularly once you get outside the power sector, and technological advancement may make later NETs cheaper than near-term mitigation after a point. 3/10
Read 10 tweets

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