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Peter Gleick 🇺🇸

@PeterGleick

Aug 11

Here's the news about the Arctic, in a nutshell (or a short 🧵):
1. The Arctic is warming as much as four times faster than the rest of the planet.
nature.com/articles/s4324…
2. This warming is due to the way the atmosphere circulates & delivers heat, an increase in...
(1/4)

warm ocean waters pushing further into the region, melting ice, the ice/albedo feedback that increases absorption of sunlight into the Arctic Ocean as ice melts, & reductions in sunlight-reflecting aerosols over the past decades.
3. This increase in temperature was...
(2/4)

both expected by climate scientists, & greater than models predicted.
4. Among the consequences OUTSIDE of the Arctic are impacts on the jet stream/trade winds, a worsening of extreme droughts & floods due to changes in storm patterns from the Pacific Ocean, & impacts...
(3/4)

Read 4 tweets

Peter Gleick 🇺🇸

@PeterGleick

Jul 31

A climate 🧵.
Are you wondering why and how #climatechange can worsen /both/ floods and droughts?
Here's a short explainer:
1/9
#floods #droughts

First, both droughts and floods occur naturally as extremes of weather. As humans have started to change the climate, we're affecting both extremes.
2/9

Droughts are worsening in some places for two main reasons. First, higher temperatures from global warming dry out soils, increase evaporation of water, accelerate snowpack loss, & more. Second, changes in atmospheric circulation divert rains away from some regions. Both...
3/9

Read 10 tweets

Peter Gleick 🇺🇸

@PeterGleick

Jun 20

A short thread on the Colorado River crisis.🧵

In 1993, my colleague Linda Nash & I released a major assessment of the threat of climate change for the Colorado River, for the USEPA...

An urgent call for Western states to 'act now' latimes.com/environment/st…

That report (EPA230-R-93-009, "The Colorado River Basin and Climatic Change") evaluated how expected climate change would affect runoff, hydropower, salinity, and reservoirs.
Here are a few of the summary conclusions from that 1993 study, now unfortunately, coming true:

"Our results suggest that certain aspects of the hydrology and water-supply system of the Colorado River Basin are extremely sensitive to climate changes that could occur over the next several decades. Not only are significant changes in runoff possible, but...

Read 9 tweets

Peter Gleick 🇺🇸

@PeterGleick

Jun 18

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1537970670805450755

A short thread 🧵about Perry's threat to have Texas build, license, and regulate nuclear reactors on its own.
First, a reminder that Perry was Trump's Secretary of Energy, but apparently learned nothing while there.
Second, because Texas has its own electricity grid, it'll be...

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1537970670805450755

on its own for the costs. And building many nuclear reactors will almost certainly bankrupt the state.
Third, it'll have to buy nuclear fuel from the federal government or (god help Texas) also build nuclear fuel processing plants, also bankrupting the state.
Fourth, someone...

please ask Perry where exactly in Texas they'll be locating their nuclear waste repository.
Fifth, which Texas regulatory agency will be responsible for regulating nuclear plant construction and operations and I'd like to see their detailed regulatory requirements, now please...

Read 5 tweets

Peter Gleick 🇺🇸

@PeterGleick

Apr 19

An unhappy thread about the continuing power of the fossil-fuel industry.
I had the opportunity today to offer in-person testimony to the California Senate in support of a bill that would ask state #water agencies to integrate the science and reality of #climate change into...

their evaluation and management of water rights permits and licenses – a long-overdue need. We have to stop giving away rights to #water that may not even exist. To their credit, the Senate appears highly supportive of this. But…

While waiting to testify, I listened to arguments, pro & con, over a series of other bills, including two that would close old historical loopholes that exempt the California oil & gas industry from certain environmental regulations or remove modest subsidies that favor them...

Read 9 tweets

Peter Gleick 🇺🇸

@PeterGleick

Mar 9

An angry thread.
A well-platformed climate disinformer has just tweeted a deceptive "cherry-picked" graph about US temperatures. It's a master class in deception.

His graph implies the US is getting colder in winter, but to argue this he's had to abuse the data, as follows:

@BigJoeBastardi

Here is @BigJoeBastardi graph, showing central US being colder in Jan-Feb, for a select 13-year period, compared to an average that includes the SAME period (a data violation all by itself). But look... compare those 13 years to a longer (60 yr) average? That cooling disappears

Next, he carefully chose "Jan and Feb", but what happens if he has just picked Dec, Jan, and February and compared it to the longer 60-year average?
His "cooling" also totally disappears.

Read 7 tweets

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