File this under propaganda. Last week, the TX Texas State Board of Education modified its operating rules. Now they have to teach things like this: I wonder if they'll also teach how the reliance on fossil fuels weakens our national security. How the Ukrainian war is a war built on fossil fuels, how Saudi Arabia is interfering in our elections, how we actually invaded another country to secure the oil supply.

A 🧵about tenure, a form of job security that is granted to professors and academic researchers after a certain period of employment. It provides protection against unjustified dismissal, so they can focus on their research and teaching without fear of reprisal. It basically says that you can only be fired only for cause (eg, misconduct or not doing assigned responsibilities). You can read @TAMU's policies here: rules-saps.tamu.edu/PDFs/12.01.99.…

Climate change played a role in this ongoing disaster. A short 🧵:
washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… To be clear, climate change is making hurricanes like Ian more destructive:

https://twitter.com/SoMAS/status/1575523861466054656?s=20

My grad student, Jangho Lee, and I have a pre-print on future temperature-related mortality in U.S. cities. It is presently under review, so caveat emptor.
eartharxiv.org/repository/vie… This follows up a 🧵 I did a week or so ago. Read that for background.

https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1620100338664742912?s=20

I typically don't respond to comments like this, but this seems like a teachable moment. The comment, as written, reads like "Don't worry about climate change, we'll adapt." This is one of the most common arguments from climate dismissives.

https://twitter.com/PatrickTBrown31/status/1620137918303199234

First, note the way it's written "In reality, the MMT will adjust." It gives the impression that adaptation will happen automatically, with zero policy, and at no cost. It avoids the fact that adaptation is a choice we make.

An explanation about why people argue about what kills more, extreme heat or cold: A lot of work has been done on connecting mortality to heat. Probably the most famous is this paper by Gaspirrini et al.
thelancet.com/journals/lance…

why are biofuels bad? @steveghan1 challenged me to a better critique than "they're dumb". so here goes:

first, why they're good: b/c the CO2 released from burning biomass was absorbed from the atmosphere during the growth of the plant, there is no net increase in atmospheic CO2 why they're bad: the rate of photosynthesis limits the power generated by biomass to ~0.6 W/m^2 of farmed land. this is much less than the 20-40 W/m^2 you get from solar power. this means that growing reasonable amounts of biomass will require enormous amounts of land.

Today was the first day of the Texas Center for Climate Studies high-resolution modeling workshop. Prof. and associate dean Ping Yang welcomed everyone to @TAMU @TAMUArtSci @tamu_atmo Peter Caldwell from Lawrence Livermore talked about the high-resolution version of the @ENERGY's E3SM model

My class doesn't think much of Biden: The class is 39% democrats

deniers often point at "the ozone hole" and pretend that it was somehow an overblown problem. in fact, we truly dodged a bullet. it's too bad that people don't realize that science saved the planet.

https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1156639660371795968?s=20

in fact, if you're looking for people that were wrong, it was those saying that it was "too expensive" or "too hard" to fix the problem. here's Fred Singer in 1989 in the National Review:

A short 🧵 to explain why "it hasn't warmed in 8 years" is consistent with humans driving large warming over the century. To begin, let's consider the monthly satellite temperature record: You'll see that there are lots of wiggles on the lines, ups and downs, ... We largely understand what are driving these: El Ninos, La Ninas, volcanic eruptions, ...

A few thoughts on the cloud feedback paper by Vogel et al. A 🧵:
nature.com/articles/s4158… Cloud feedback refers to the vicious cycle where a warming climate changes clouds in such a way that it provides even more warming. In this way, clouds will amplify the warming from carbon dioxide alone.

I've just become aware of "effective altruism". It's not really new: it's just the latest in a long line of strategies that rich people use to justify doing terrible things to make even more money. If you go back to the '70s, you'll find Milton Friedman's argument that it was the *social responsibility* of business to increase profits.
nytimes.com/1970/09/13/arc…

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how climate science operates. A short 🧵:

https://twitter.com/jamessmithPT_/status/1590168355167956992

There are two ways you can make a prediction: 1) statistical and 2) physics.

If you want to make a prediction of the next roll of a pair of dice, you could roll them 10,000 times and the statistics of those rolls will provide a good estimate of the next roll.

I’ve been thinking about the NYU organic chem prof who was fired (perhaps) because he was too rigorous.

I think this all goes back to very high tuition. A 🧵:

via @NYTimes nytimes.com/2022/10/03/us/… If tuition is $1000 per year, it’s a lot easier for a prof to say “You can’t hack this class, you need to find something else to study.”

This thread by @harryhhutch is 100% wrong. Renewables generate cheaper power than fossil fuels. Let me explain why. A 🧵:

https://twitter.com/harryhhutch/status/1584523474584100866

This errant thread is based on a common misconception: that renewables are so unpredictable that you have to always have fossil power ready to take over. This is not correct.

I was at a meeting the other day and made the argument that the US cannot drill our way to energy security. Someone in the audience responded that the problem was Joe Biden and the fact that he's hampering oil drilling in the U.S.

That's wrong. A 🧵 explaining why: The important thing to understand about the oil market (and, increasingly, the natural gas market) is that the price is set by global supply and demand.

Got an email today from a student at a TAMU system school saying that his prof told him that climate change was not caused by carbon dioxide. The prof also sent along these "analyses": My response:

if you're wondering why climate impacts seem to be getting much worse suddenly, let me introduce you to the concept of non-linearity. A short 🧵: In a linear system, things change in straight line. If climate impacts are linear, then every 0.1°C of warming would give you the same amount of damage.

In a non-linear world, on the other hand, every 0.1°C of warming produces larger damage than the previous 0.1°C.

from @MatthewCappucci and the @washingtonpost

Why the Dust Bowl was hotter than this heat wave, despite global warming washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… here are all of the plots I sent him (only one made it in), based on Berkeley Earth data (@RARohde)

Summertime average high temp in 1936:

This is a super-interesting article about the @ERCOT_ISO grid and bitcoin miners. A few thoughts in a 🧵:

https://twitter.com/gmorgenson/status/1550465154957119488

According to SEC filings, RIOT Blockchain Inc. has a long-term contract (to 2030) to buy energy from TXU at 2.5 cents per kWh.

I am shocked that TXU can sell energy that cheaply. It must be super cheap wind and solar.

sec.gov/Archives/edgar…