Professor of energy & climate change - translating climate science into carbon budgets, policy goals & mitigation options.
Co-founder @Clim8Uncensored
Nov 21 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1/5 This COP29 IPCC event demonstrates a key reason why we haven’t responded to the Paris 1.5-2°C & equity commitments. IPCC (WGIII) bureaucrats stifle any sense of urgency & foster a discourse of delay. The saving grace was the ever-insightful @KanitkarT
2/5 With its main focus on Working Group 3 (WGIII) on how to cut emissions, several of the speakers reinforced a series of deeply misleading claims: 1)WGIII is not “policy prescriptive" 2)difficult to bring in the social sciences; 3)economics is not prominent in the assessments.
Sep 10 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
2024 @TyndallCentre annual Assembly at Manchester Uny. Kick off with @HayleyJFowler outlining UK & wider ‘infrastructure vulnerabilities’. Regional models are, as yet, unable to simulate the scale of recent weather extremes in Europe. Well worth following Hayley &colleagues work.
Delegates consider rising climate impacts on different sectors. I suspect many of us who work on climate change struggle to imagine futures chaotically disrupted by rapidly rising temperatures. Are we intellectually locked into incremental shifts to today’s norms? @TyndallCentre
Jan 24 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
@CarbonBrief @rtmcswee @AyeshaTandon @JimSkeaIPCC @SISeneviratne @FrediOtto @valmasdel @JoeriRogelj @schipper_lisa @CelineGuivarch @_chandnisingh 1of4: This @CarbonBrief article suggests a Byzantine IPCC structure unfit for purpose?
AR7 "delivered by the end of 2028" (200GtCO2 from now) "will gauge progress towards the Paris goals"!? Surely far too late for 1.5-2°C, but we daren't say so. We're living in never-never land.
@CarbonBrief @rtmcswee @AyeshaTandon @JimSkeaIPCC @SISeneviratne @FrediOtto @valmasdel @JoeriRogelj @schipper_lisa @CelineGuivarch @_chandnisingh 2of4: By the "end of 2028" & assuming global CO2 still at ~40GtCO2, then, for a good (83%) chance of ≤2°C, global CO2 emissions (basically fossil fuel use) would need to reduce, globally, at 7.5% year-on-year (based on AR6 carbon budget); this rises to 10% with Lamboll's budget.
Feb 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
1of4 @bbcnickrobinson@amolrajan To understand national rates of phaseout of fossil fuel production, aligned with the Paris temperature & equity commitments, this report, based on the IPCC's latest carbon budgets & with clear assumptions, may help. pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles…
2of4 @bbcnickrobinson@amolrajan To understand the remaining carbon budgets & associated rates of global mitigation, this post provides a transparent & straightforward update of the IPCC's 2020 values to Jan 2023. climateuncensored.com/how-alive-is-1…
May 27, 2021 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
@rickardnordin 1/5 A rapid revision of Sweden's climate policy framework, putting its strategy inline with the country's Paris temperature & equity commitments rather than expedient politics. See tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… for a sequential logic from Paris to Swedish mitigation. @IsakStoddard@rickardnordin@IsakStoddard 2/5 Immediately tighten Sweden's planning rules, requiring all new buildings to be passive house standard & where viable include solar thermal/PV. A rapid retrofit of Sweden's existing built environment. A huge uptake of wind energy - offshore & onshore. @IsakStoddard
Apr 30, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/6: I suggest separating mitigation commitments, with strictly no substitution between them! For example: 1) CO2 from energy use 2) CO2 from industrial processes 3) CO2 form land use etc (LULUCF) 4) non-CO2 GHGs from LULUCF 5) non-CO2 GHGs from industry 6) Carbon Dioxide Removal
2/6: By definition the 'net' of net-zero permits &even encourges substitution. Not only does this facilitate the unscrupulous, but there are v.different physical,chemical &temporal characteristics of different GHGs from different sources that make substitution deeply problematic.
Feb 19, 2021 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
A short thread outlining my headline thoughts/experience on citizens' assemblies as a means for exploring the scope and scale of potential climate policies. #CitizensAssembly@ScotClimateCA@Profiainstewart@Daisynmurphy@keelingcurve@KA_Nicholas@lwhitmarsh@jillian_anable
1/With govts &many official institutions failing to implement policies to cut carbon in line with their fair contribution to the Paris 1.5-2°C commitments, citizens’ (climate) assemblies have a potentially key role in exploring what is necessary rather than politically expedient.
Dec 9, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
1/ The Govt's committee on climate change has added its 6th budget period on the pathway to ‘net-zero’ by 2050. But @theCCCuk suggests it's not possible to convert Paris 1.5-2°C into UK mitigation, as the minister asked for: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl… & planb.earth/wp-content/upl…
2/I find it disturbing @theCCCuk has adopted the climate sceptic ruse of "it’s too uncertain" (Ch8/3/c) as an excuse for not aligning its advice with the Paris 1.5-2°C commitments. Another “discourse of delay” – i.e. “push non-transformative solutions”? cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Dec 5, 2019 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
1. Listening to #BBCInsideScience with @AdamRutherford my colleague @clequere noted the UK had cut its CO2 by over 40% since 1990. However, include CO2 from aviation & shipping, along with our imports & exports & the UK's cut in its total carbon emissions is much nearer 10%.
@AdamRutherford@clequere 2. Much to this 10% cut is due to the banking crisis/recession along with coal closures driven by the EU's sulphur directive. Certainly the carbon price has had some impact along with renewable polices, but only at the margins. #BBCInsideScience @adamrutherfod @clequere