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Andrew Dessler Profile picture
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28 Aug, 6 tweets, 2 min read
I strongly disagree with those who say now is not the time to talk about the impact of climate change on hurricanes (also known as tropical cyclones, TCs).

This is exactly the time to see what our actions have brought us.

Here's what the recent IPCC report says about TCs:
We're getting more rain from TCs. This is a result of more water vapor in the air, so more water converges into the storm. The only way we would not get more rain from TCs is if convergence somehow declined, an outcome that seems unlikely.
TCs are getting more intense. However, we don't have a good feeling for the total numbers.
Why are TCs getting more intense? Physics!
Finally, humans have raised sea level, so the storm surge will be worse. Admittedly, it's a relatively small percentage increase. But because climate impacts are non-linear, small changes can lead to huge changes in the impact.
Make no mistake, this storm will do more damage because we have warmed the climate.

I join everyone else hoping that the Louisiana coast makes it through the storm in good shape. Godspeed.

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More from @AndrewDessler

Andrew Dessler Profile picture
12 Sep
In case you’re wondering why 2 feet of sea level rise over the coming century matters, it’s because it turns a 2–4 foot storm surge into a 4–6 foot storm surge. That will increase the damage exponentially.
Sea-level rise impacts are non-linear so that going from. 3 ft storm surge to a 5 ft storm surge could increase the damage by orders of magnitude. It depends on local thresholds.
Ugh. Either Pielke is an idiot or he's intentionally misreading what I said. The data support both hypotheses, so I won't speculate on which is correct.

What I'm saying is this: if you add 2 ft of SLR to a 2-4 foot storm surge, you get the damage of a 4-6 ft storm surge.
Read 5 tweets
Andrew Dessler Profile picture
7 Sep
A lot of wrong takes in this thread. If you want to provide energy to people at the lowest cost, solar and wind ARE the best choice.
You want evidence? Let's look at what the Texas energy market is doing: It's installing wind and solar. Why? They are the cheapest energy source.
This is true *despite* the enormous subsidies that fossil fuels get.
Read 6 tweets
Andrew Dessler Profile picture
4 Sep
Climate change has gotten me thinking about the Drake equation and the future of humanity ...

What is the Drake equation, you ask? A 🧵:
The Drake equation is an example of order-of-magnitude estimation. There's some quantity you want to know (in this case, how many intelligent civilizations there are that Earth can communicate with), so you break it down into the terms that would constrain the value.
From the wikipedia page, here are the terms.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equ…
Read 10 tweets
Andrew Dessler Profile picture
1 Sep
About 2/3rds of global warming comes not from direct heating by CO2, but from feedbacks. The most powerful feedback is water vapor. As CO2 warms the climate, the mass of water vapor in the atmosphere increases. WV is itself a greenhouse gas, so this creates more warming.
This process, known as the water vapor feedback, can double the warming you get from CO2 alone. As such, it is one of the most important processes in the climate system.
It has long been speculated, and recently been well documented, that relative humidity (RH; the amount of water vapor in the air relative to saturation) in our atmosphere remains relatively fixed as the climate warms.
Read 6 tweets
Andrew Dessler Profile picture
31 Aug
One of the great mis-directions form climate deniers is to focus on *deaths* in a disaster. Obviously, deaths are important. But in the rich world, natural disasters don't kill very many people.
For example, Ida's death toll is (right now) less than 10, which is amazing considering how intense of a storm it was.

But while people survived, the damage and suffering is extreme.
People may be out of power for weeks.
nytimes.com/live/2021/08/3…
Read 4 tweets
Andrew Dessler Profile picture
31 Aug
In case you're wondering how well it's going in Texas with no mask mandate in schools, here's @CSISD's number of COVID cases for 2020-21 school year (in blue) compared to the first two weeks of 2021-22 school year (in red).
This is a still from this video. In it, the spokesperson says they'll keep the school open for as long as they can, but at some point so many teachers/administrators are sick that they'll have to shut down.

.@GovAbbott says he's relying on "personal responsibility". But at what point does keeping the schools open become more important than letting people make their own decisions?
Read 4 tweets

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