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22 Sep, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Carbon cycle feedback, anyone?

California’s Wildfires Had an Invisible Impact: High Carbon Dioxide Emissions nytimes.com/2021/09/21/cli…
A carbon cycle feedback means that warming temperatures cause the release of more carbon dioxide (or other GHGs) and that this in turn causes more warming.

A warming climate leads to more forest fires, which release carbon into the atmosphere, is a classic carbon cycle feedback.
The other oft-discussed carbon cycle feedback is warming temperatures thawing permafrost, which then decays and releases GHGs into the atmosphere, leading to more warming.
I've tweeted about this before and described why it is so worrying. Read that thread.
There's no reason to think these carbon cycle feedbacks are important yet and no one really knows when they will become important. Let's hope it's not soon.
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More from @AndrewDessler

Andrew Dessler Profile picture
23 Sep
Cleaning my desk and finding a lot of interesting stuff. Turns out that things go from interesting to trash and back to interesting over 12 years. Image
I really need to clean off my desk more often. I am not sure this has been on my desk buried since 2007, but it’s possible. Image
Also on my desk: in 1989, Fred Singer sent this document to my father trying to get his support for this piece on “misuse of environmental science”. He gave it to me 10-15 years ago. I need to scan that in. ImageImage
Read 7 tweets
Andrew Dessler Profile picture
20 Sep
More on @ERCOT_ISO and the Texas grid. In a previous 🧵, we talked about how the supply of energy on the TX grid is very tight. This is not ERCOT's fault — it's a fault of the way the market is set up.

But that doesn't mean ERCOT is blameless. A 🧵:
ERCOT makes seasonal forecasts in order to ensure that supply is sufficient for the demand. You can find them here: ercot.com/gridinfo/resou…
For the last winter, we can compare these forecasts to forecasts we make from a large ensemble of climate model runs and to reality. More info can be found in the preprint written by my grad student, Jangho Lee (eartharxiv.org/repository/vie…).
Read 16 tweets
Andrew Dessler Profile picture
18 Sep
Why is Texas electricity both unreliable and expensive?

Let me tell you about some new research by my grad student, Jangho Lee.

A 🧵:
Using historical data we got from @ERCOT_ISO's web page, we developed a statistical model of electricity demand as a function of temperature and an inferred long-term trend of non-climate factors (e.g., population).
If we plug historical temperatures (ERA5) into the statistical model, we can reproduce almost exactly the historical power usage. This plot shows a comparison of seasonal maximum power:
Read 19 tweets
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

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