In my new essay for New Atlantis, I write about how the climate discourse became increasingly detached from the actual climate science. Popular understanding of the relationship between climate change, extreme weather, and natural disasters is basically wrong. 🧵 In reality, there would still be major heatwaves, droughts, floods, and hurricanes without climate change. The primary driver of extreme weather events, now and in the future, is natural climate variability, not climate change. The impact of climate change is on margins.

The outrage of clean energy modelers at any suggestion policies based on their models might not work out as predicted is really something. Doing so makes us "ivory tower elitists"(@robbieorvis), "anti-innovation and anti-abundance"(@JesseJenkins), "neo-malthusian"(@arthurhcyip) Techno-optimism, in model world, is spoken, er, modeled into being - a modern day green prosperity gospel. "The EV revolution is inevitable AND we need forever subsidies and strict regulations to make sure it happens!!!" That is the true Breakthrough gospel according to Jesse.

How tough are new Biden EPA fuel economy standards? It depends. If EV sales don't hit Biden targets, new rule will price gasoline powered vehicles out of the market. If they do, impact will be modest.

New essay in @WSJ with @TheBTI Ashley Nunes. wsj.com/articles/dont-… Biden target is 67% by 2032. Most other estimates are far lower (e.g. IEA = 15% in 2030). The standard is a fleet average, so higher EV penetration = lower fuel economy requirement for ICE vehicles in fleet and lower EV penetration = higher fuel economy requirement for fleet.

This @jon_rauch in @atlantic piece gives very good account of effort to reinvent the nuclear industry, which is much needed. But efforts to parse problems with the industry from environmental opposition from an insane regulatory framework are misguided. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… The regulatory framework, as it evolved from late 60s onward made the kind of innovation Rauch describes extremely difficult. The industry, meaning utilities didn't push back because, at least initially, there was no reason to.

The backflips by many on the EcoLeft to insist that the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka is due to neoliberalism or capitalism, not insane agricultural policies long advocated by EcoLeft is really something. A few points they always leave out:

https://twitter.com/kmac/status/1551906421096448000

1. Rajapaksa didn't come up with his fertilizer ban out of the blue to deal with his exchange rate policies. He proposed a ten year transition to fully organic agriculture in his presidential campaign, well before the pandemic.

1. Hi @tomphilpott. Wondering why you chose to erase my colleague and coauthor, @SaloniShah101 from this post? Perhaps because acknowledging her would undermine the whole Breakthrough Bros/culture war spin? Wondering what @ClaraJeffery thinks about that? motherjones.com/politics/2022/… 2. That would also explain why you are so intent on conflating Shellenberger/Carlson Green New Deal blah blah blah with our carefully researched essay, published months before most people were paying attention to crisis.

1. Unpopular opinion: the playing field in cycling is less level today than it was in the bad old EPO days. Back then, the basic performance enhancing formula was well understood, utilizing widely available drugs that were mostly cheap and available to all over counter in Europe.

https://twitter.com/TedNordhaus/status/1550228901732941826

2. This guy could buy a trunk full of corticosteriods, EPO, and testosterone, have his wife drive it around France, and finish 3rd in Tour De France. (They were for his mother-in-law). theguardian.com/sport/2002/jul…

1. More anti-nuclear bullshit from Harry Reid's last NRC chair, @allisonmacfar. Nuclear waste disposal is not a technical problem. It is a political problem, one that Macfarlane was installed at the NRC to perpetuate. bloomberg.com/news/articles/… 2. Whether small modular reactors create marginally more or less waste than large light water reactors is an entirely academic question. No matter the technology, nuclear reactors create very little waste.

1. Am I a mass murderer? That is the question I ask in my latest @TheBTI Journal essay. 2. In the essay, I argue that extreme framings of climate risk, such as the one above, are not simply marginal or fringe but rather say explicitly what is implicit in most mainstream framings of the issue today. thebreakthrough.org/journal/no-16-…

1. The roll out of hysterical nuclear "experts" last night by cable outlets like @CNN was really something, egged on by anchors losing their minds as they talked about images streaming from a dark CCTV camera despite having no idea what they were actually looking at. 2. Here, watch @ShepardSmith10 on @thenewsoncnbc, interrupt @jeffnavin on the air, to show an image that he describes as a "strike on the #1 reactor by Russian troops" as @CNBC loops slow motion video in the background. cnbc.com/video/2022/03/…

1. If there were any doubt that CA's environmental community remains fully unreconstructed on the nuclear question, @NRDC's Ralph Cavanagh puts it to rest. nrdc.org/experts/ralph-… 2. Cavanagh engages in all the classic "not anti-nuclear but..." obfuscations I wrote about recently... thebreakthrough.org/blog/the-true-…

1. "Not anti-nuclear but..." is the true face of the anti-nuclear movement. Over decades, progressives and environmentalists have constructed a regulatory framework that has made it virtually impossible to license and build nuclear reactors economically.thebreakthrough.org/blog/the-true-… 2. I decided to write about it out of frustration after writing a response to a deeply disingenuous essay in @ForeignAffairs by @allisonmacfar. Macfarlane positions herself as a disinterested observer. Nothing could be further from truth. foreignaffairs.com/articles/world…

1. Assuming, Biden can get current reconciliation deal over the finish line, this package was always basically the best Biden was going to do. $500 billion, not $2 trillion for climate. No real regulatory stick to shut down fossil or make dirty energy expensive. 2. As @atrembath and I argued in Persuasion last year, for structural/constitutional reasons, would be case even with bigger Dem majorities. Additional seats come from the same sorts of places that are constraining Dem ambitions politically today. persuasion.community/p/to-fight-cli…

1. When all is said and done, I predict much of environmental community will end up opposing every low carbon technology at climate scale INCLUDING wind and solar. That's because movement is NIMBY all the way down. Here's how NY, @nytimes and these three guys illustrate problem.

https://twitter.com/TedNordhaus/status/1428125815896559618

2. All three have been deeply involved in blocking NY gas production, closing largest nuclear plant, and peddling fantasy that state could instead meet all energy needs with wind and solar. That is why they are eco-celebrities. Because they tell enviros what they want to hear.

1. Here we go again. How does @howarth_cornell conjure an obvious falsehood - that burning hydrogen produced with natural gas with CCS is more GHG intensive than simply burning the gas?

https://twitter.com/howarth_cornell/status/1427813636534329344

2. First, use worst case assumptions through out the analysis. 3.5% upstream leakage versus 1.5 - 2.5% that characterize vast majority of studies.

1. Thrilled to publish the new issue of @TheBTI Journal - "Uncomfortable Knowledge," in celebration of Steve Rayner and his remarkable legacy. Featuring Rayner's final essay, Mark Sagoff, @charleskenny, @EricMerkley and @decustecu, and Joanna Szurmak. thebreakthrough.org/journal/no-13-… 2. In "Policy-making in the Post-Truth World," published posthumously with Dan Sarewitz, Rayner argues that declining public faith in science and expertise is more a function of the inappropriate use of science and expertise than it is science denial. thebreakthrough.org/journal/no-13-…

1. I have a new essay on what @michaelemann climate war is really about. Reader's digest version: it's not about either science or climate action but reinforcing affective environmental identity. thebreakthrough.org/articles/the-f… 2. Mann was badly harrassed and mistreated after Climategate. But since then, the abused scientist has become an abusive bully, reducing all of climate politics to friends and enemies lists and trafficking in falsehoods and misrepresentations about latter. thebreakthrough.org/articles/lette…

1. Have global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels peaked?

@KenCaldeira and I have made a Long Bet @longnow. I say they have. Ken says they haven't. Neither of us is feeling particularly confident in our position.

Thread

longbets.org/848/ 2. Back in May, when Ken first proposed the bet, I felt more certain, in part because it looked like it might take several years before a vaccine was ready and a full global recovery was underway.

https://twitter.com/TedNordhaus/status/1263634542276960256?s=20

The disinformation and cherry-picking that @billmckibben @KateAronoff and others are using to smear @ErnestMoniz is breathtaking.

https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/1306172813359886336

The "analytical error" to which Bill refers is that Moniz has accurately represented the balance of evidence, which shows a) methane leaks reduce but do not remotely eliminate the benefits of shift from coal to gas. As @hausfath demonstrated last year. thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/…

1. Very much looking forward to joining @KendraWrites @noahqk @leahstokes and @jnoisecat to discuss how best to think about stimulus, economic recovery, and decarbonization. Thanks to Noah for inspiring the conversation and my response. Some key points...
thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/… 2. We now govern from crisis to crisis. Sustained and rationally planned policy-making simply doesn't happen at the federal level any longer and hasn't for a long time. This has important implications for both economic and climate policy.

1. Against claims that a wave of public concern about climate change is cresting, public opinion about climate change has been largely unchanged over 20 years. What has changed is that Democrats, and most especially Democratic elites care MUCH more. nytimes.com/2020/08/24/cli… 2. The story is based on @JonKrosnick long-running survey. What is most striking about public opinion is not how much it has changed but how stable it has been. On basic questions: Is it happening, will it get hotter, is it human-caused, virtually no change.