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Colin Carlson Profile picture
Colin Carlson
@ColinJCarlson
Climate epidemiologist at @Georgetown 🔜 @YaleEMD, PI of @viralemergence, working to save what can be saved, so as to open up some kind of future.
Jan 30 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Climate change has killed at least four million people. I wrote this because I felt like I was the only one who had noticed. If you ever read and share anything I've written, I hope it'll be this short piece, out today in @NatureMedicine
nature.com/articles/s4159…
A screenshot of the full text of the Nature Medicine commentary "After millions of preventable deaths, climate change must be treated like a health emergency." (The full text doesn't fit in the alt text, I'm sorry) Cutting greenhouse gasses isn't enough anymore. National governments have to meet the challenge of climate and health with substantive commitments: access to essential medicines; access to high-quality care; access to food and clean water. And @WHO needs to give them a blueprint.
Dec 4, 2022 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
As an expert in climate change impacts on biodiversity, with half a decade of experience studying extinction, I think this kind of rhetoric from scientists toes the line on climate denial, and I think the way journalists relay it probably crosses that line theintercept.com/2022/12/03/cli… There should be more perspectives from people who study climate-biodiversity relationships in these pieces as a counterfactual - it tells you something you don’t see those people espousing this framing. It’s really deeply troubling.
Oct 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Real talk, my most regretted pre-pandemic project idea that I shelved was putting together a podcast of climate scientists and writers doing 30 minutes of a climate-themed DnD campaign and 15 minutes of this-week-in-climate talkback. I'd still do it if I had the time! It's especially hard not to go back to this idea after watching @dimension20show's A Starstruck Odyssey season, which I think plays with some of the same themes of capitalist dystopia that would make this a fun exercise while also keeping it light, fun, and meaningful
Oct 16, 2022 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Absolutely fascinating because, among other things, absolutely all of this shit is completely and 100% made up. It's exactly as real a vision of the future as Spelljammer 5e. But, there are people who earnestly believe it, which is part of why science communication matters here The geology, hydrology, ecology of this is 99% fabricated in service of an extremely real and consequential politic that imagines a second great era of colonialism. "Doomerism" isn't having a tired moment reading the newspaper: it's this specific accelerationist imaginary
Oct 16, 2022 • 9 tweets • 6 min read
I know I've been quiet about work lately, between Verena ramp-up and a family medical emergency, so here are some other folks' work I'm very excited about or spending a lot of time with right now The Polycrisis, over at @phenomenalworld and organized by @kmac and co., is an exciting new take on what's happening in the geopolitics and global strategy of climate and the things it touches 👇
phenomenalworld.org/interviews/geo…
Jul 28, 2022 • 38 tweets • 8 min read
The idea that "monkeypox spillback into rodents will prevent it from ever being eliminated" seems to be taking hold lately in some people's fears. At this stage, it's scientifically incorrect 🧵 1. Let's talk terminology.

A pathogen is eliminated when human-to-human transmission is fully interrupted (you achieve "zero human cases" for some length of time you decide makes sense).

A pathogen is eradicated when it's *gone* (think smallpox: only exists in labs).
Jul 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Not to do a centrism but, while my choice between "compromise climate bill with bad things" and "better climate bill without bad things" would be obvious, my choice between "compromise climate bill" and "geoengineering is a dinner table political debate by 2025" is also not hard? It's impossible, when you log on to do this specific tweet or any variation on it (such as the above), to know whether deploying a bit like this is actually clarity of thought or centrism brain, but I think Rob is pretty unambiguously right here
Jun 25, 2022 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
What's in a public health policy response to Dobbs? I've been keeping track of ideas for 24 hours because it's the only thing keeping me sane 🧵 Before I jump in, two disclaimers
1. I often work on or adjacent to health policy but lack expertise in both MCH and U.S.-specific policy
2. I'm going to try to steer clear of the three big solutions that put responsibility on individuals (vote; donate; be a clinic escort)
Jun 24, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Tech / doctors are talking about how to stop collecting and storing information that makes people vulnerable to prosecution in a post-Roe world. Reminder: academic researchers also NEED to plan for this too, right now. A recent tangible example of the problem (1/5) At #EEID2019, conference participants were invited to participate in the VirScan study, which comprehensively profiled serological exposure to pathogens. A (neat!) virology project focused on dynamics of disease and immunity in human populations. (2/5)
Apr 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
As climate change reshapes life on earth, it may also become the single biggest upstream driver of pandemic risk. Our new study in @Nature simulates how 3,139 species will share viruses - and create new spillover risk hotspots - over the next 50 years.
nature.com/articles/s4158… What you should know:
1⃣ Animals (esp. bats) will bring viruses to new places
2⃣ Southeast Asia is a hotspot, but risk is global
3⃣ The process is probably well underway in 2020...
4⃣ ...and worse, won't be stopped by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
nature.com/articles/s4158…
Apr 20, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
This is actually one of my favorite questions about our new study, so let's talk about it for a second🧵

tl;dr: yes more than no, for two reasons - one is biological, and one has to do with priorities Basic info you need to know: there's a hump-shaped curve that connects temperature to the rate, or R0 (you might remember this from the pandemic!), of disease transmission for most vector-borne things, including malaria.
Apr 20, 2022 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
Geoengineering is often framed as a tool for climate justice. Today, our new study in @NatureComms challenges that idea, showing that solar geoengineering would create regional tradeoffs and potentially increases in malaria risk worldwide. (1/4)
nature.com/articles/s4146… There are winners and losers, not just relative to possible warmer futures (roughly +3° [L] and +5°C [R] relative to pre-industrial, per AR6) but also relative to the present. A world with climate change and geoengineering isn't the same as a world without climate change. (2/4)
Apr 2, 2022 • 11 tweets • 7 min read
@JBYoder @jrossibarra Oh no, it is @JBYoder @jrossibarra So, I realize this isn't an answer to the spirit of the question, but by the letter, I would actually say something like 95% of SDM studies probably do something like this. Most people use GBIF data agnostic to content (and so historical specimens of unknown age) and a "present"
Mar 4, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Given the #ipcc report's focus on maladaptation to climate change, I wanted to reup the most striking example I've ever seen: California's reliance on prison labor for firefighting, and the failure of that "adaptation" when Covid hit the prison system
nytimes.com/2020/08/22/us/… Inmate labor for fighting wildfires is also gaining traction elsewhere, such as in Australia
thewest.com.au/news/bushfires…
Mar 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Empathy is the heart of solving the climate crisis. But empathy for who? For people who look like us, scrolling on our phones, struggling to feel empowered? Or for people on the frontlines of the crisis? Think how much information we could share if we centered ourselves 10% less. When I say information, I really do mean information. There's a lot of important messages in this report. They're also not really being served up by any central comms team in a clear way. Going through, finding them, sharing that info is paramount right now.
Mar 4, 2022 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
If you want to make a difference in the climate crisis, but you feel powerless as a scientist (especially if you're just getting started! students, I'm talking to you!), I wanted to share one story with you from my time working on the #ipcc report I was part of a small core team that wrote the health section of Chapter 9: Africa. Our job is just to summarize what's out there - so if there's a gap, and no one can fill it, we're stuck - even if we know something is really important.
Mar 2, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Yesterday we published the highest-resolution snapshot of the vertebrate-virus network; today, we're announcing our next big data project. If you help us pull it off, it could change everything from climate change research to early warning systems for spillover. We don't normally announce data projects so early in development, but over the last few months, we've started to feel like all roads lead to the same place: this is the step disease ecology needs to take if we want to answer the big questions. It's also utterly doable.
Mar 2, 2022 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
Jokes aside, I got curious about this - when an IPCC assessment report comes out, what do presidents say in the State of the Union address? So I looked back... 🧵 Tonight: some brief mentions of energy transition; next to nothing on impacts or the urgency of the problem. (@robinsonmeyer is right in above thread: this is *how* Joe Biden talks about climate change.)
Mar 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
I've applied for bigger NSF grants as an early career prof than the funding that entire African countries have received to work on climate change research *over 30 years*. It's hard to wrap your mind around how severe the adaptation gap really is. It's hard to contextualize these kinds of numbers sometimes, but $1-10m is easily the size of, say, most of the say 2-5 year research grants you apply for as a scientist. One grant's worth.
Mar 1, 2022 • 40 tweets • 15 min read
If - like me - you sometimes feel a bit lost when you hear climate experts talk about "transformative social change," I have a bit of a theory about why. Heartfelt thoughts from a scientist who worked on the new #ipcc report 🧵 Let's start with the basics. The @IPCC_CH report released yesterday is clear about the need for transformative change - like the Special Report on 1.5C was before, like the @IPBES transformative change assessment will be. There are no half solutions to a planetary emergency.
Mar 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
If, in the two years of pandemic response, you found the phrase "I am begging you to care about other people" rattling around your brain: I am as a climate scientist begging you, today, to care about other people. It feels like this report is passing by unnoticed. I'm speaking to everyone but especially public health folks. I feel utterly seasick at the idea that tomorrow I'll have to scroll through hundreds of Covid and Ukraine tweets to find the odd climate change one. I am begging you to listen. Dear god.