Chris Mooney Profile picture
Journalist @washingtonpost, lecturer @YaleEnvironment, climate communicator. Views my own.
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Aug 7, 2023 10 tweets 3 min read
1. Thrilled that our story about rapid sea level rise and the threat to New Orleans is now out! This is a joint production with @ZoeannMurphy, @washpostphoto and @JohnMuyskens, and many others at the Post -- and the work of many months.
https://t.co/WoV3kkAlA0washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…
2. On the one hand, New Orleans and the state of Louisiana generally are about as well prepared for climate change as anybody.
Nov 8, 2021 37 tweets 10 min read
1. Last night, the Post published a major story of mine -- authored with 5 colleagues, aided by many others still -- that has been in the works for months. It was intense but I am so happy with the result
washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… 2. To sum it up briefly: The Post has found a frankly staggering gap between what countries report as their emissions to the UN, and what independent scientific datasets say is really happening out there.
Oct 13, 2020 20 tweets 6 min read
1. We have major piece out today about the importance and power of genomic sequencing in battling the coronavirus pandemic. washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/…

with reporting by @brady_dennis @sarahkaplan48 and myself and stunning graphics by @Harry_Stevens 2. Here’s how it works: The roughly 30,000 character coronavirus genome adds a new mutation about twice a month, or every two transmissions. The vast majority of these mutations don’t have a significant biological effect.
May 19, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read
The most definitive analysis yet of the effect of the #coronavirus on global emissions finds a 17 percent plunge in early April. But this will be short lived, and total 2020 emissions may only fall 3 to 7 percent washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… w/ @brady_dennis @JohnMuyskens 2. Here's another chart by @JohnMuyskens showing the regional emissions declines. The peak decline of about 17 percent would have been higher if all countries had locked down at the same time. But China, the biggest emitter, of course shut down first.
Mar 27, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
1. Data that I and @abtran pulled together suggest that the U.S. is still well behind in coronavirus testing. Yes, we ramped up, but we have a massive population and have only tested about 0.2 percent of it. 2. Yet several countries, like Germany and South Korea, have tested half a percent or more of their populations. And Norway has tested 1.5 percent of its country already! fhi.no/en/id/infectio…
Mar 27, 2020 19 tweets 5 min read
1. It’s getting pretty hard to deny at this point that the #covid19 pandemic is especially dangerous for men, particularly older men. washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03… 2. Data from multiple countries now support this claim. In my latest story, I dig into the Spain data in particular which are quite detailed. Men are 65 percent of deaths, but they also have more symptoms, more severe cases in general, more hospitalizations, more ICU admits.
Mar 19, 2020 12 tweets 5 min read
1. The #COVID19 pandemic is taking on very different forms in different countries. And yet in both of the two worst outbreaks so far – China and Italy – men are dying more than women.
washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… 2. The pattern also appears in South Korea, when far more women than men have been initially infected, based on the current data. Nonetheless, more men have died so far. cdc.go.kr/board/board.es…
Mar 16, 2020 14 tweets 4 min read
1. So let’s talk about smoking, air pollution, and #Covid19 washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… 2. I spent last week researching this subject -- our story published late yesterday – and here’s what I found to be the bottom line: There are widespread suspicions of a link and good reasons for those suspicions. But, current published research doesn’t give definitive answers.
Mar 6, 2020 4 tweets 2 min read
1. In this story, @JohnMuyskens and I looked at @gcarbonproject data to see when emissions have actually declined notably in the past. The answer is "world wars, sweeping economic contractions or large-scale geopolitical events such as the fall of the Soviet Union." 2. If recent trends continue -- with emissions in China down by a quarter in recent weeks, and oil markets and air travel showing disruption around the world -- the novel coronavirus could join this group. But it's very early to say for sure.
Feb 19, 2020 12 tweets 3 min read
1. Talk about a case where paleo-climate research could have some big policy implications. washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… 2. It sounds like scientists just doing what scientists do -- drilling into Greenland ice, withdrawing samples of ancient air from ancient ice...typical.
Jan 31, 2020 13 tweets 3 min read
1. Two very different climate stories from yesterday – but they’re actually closely connected. Not only that: Together, they underscore a bit of a paradox in the current outlook on how bad things could ultimately get. 2. On the one hand, as @afreedma and I reported, there’s a growing argument that the worst case climate scenario used in so many modeling studies is too…worst. washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/0…
Dec 27, 2019 26 tweets 8 min read
1. Announcing 2019's twelfth and final installment of “2C: Beyond the Limit,” our series exploring the fastest warming places on the Earth. And, I have to say, it’s a striking note to close the year on. washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/… 2. @bydarrylfears and @bonjomo traveled to Australia – and then, from there, to its southern island of Tasmania – to investigate a devastating ocean warming hotspot that has formed.
Dec 19, 2019 29 tweets 7 min read
1. The idea that the globe is warming isn’t based on computer models.

It’s based on millions of measurements, taken on land and at sea over some 170 years.

washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/… 2. That’s the key upshot of the tenth installment of our “2C: Beyond the Limit” series, powered by massive data and graphics work by our team of @johnmuyskens, @Harry_Stevens, @asteckelberg, and @monicaulmanu. I was fortunate to serve as a writerly apprentice to them.
Dec 13, 2019 22 tweets 7 min read
1. We hear a lot that the world must avoid the dangerous limit of 2 degrees Celsius – 3.6 F -- of warming.

What nobody mentions is, there are already places on Earth that have warmed double that amount – 4 degrees C, or 7.2 F.

This is one of them.

washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/… 2. In the ninth installment of the “2C: Beyond the Limit” series, @eilperin and @bonjomo take us to the North Slope of Alaska, which is experiencing one of the fastest warming rates on Earth.
Dec 11, 2019 14 tweets 4 min read
1. It was a pretty rough day yesterday for Arctic news. Nothing that, if you were watching closely, you didn't expect But still, it kind of all came at once. 2. I covered the Greenland news. Yes, we know ice losses there, and in Antarctica, are accelerating. But learning that as a result, they're now on the high end sea level pathway -- well, that was new washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…
Dec 6, 2019 23 tweets 7 min read
1. Announcing the 8th installment of our “2C: Beyond the Limit” series, in which @PostScottWilson and @mrchavezphoto visit the CA county where a 1969 oil spill helped trigger Earth Day – Santa Barbara -- but which is now experiencing rapid climate change. washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/… 2. Santa Barbara is one of a cluster of counties in Southern California that showed up as having outsized warming from 1895-2018 when we looked at @NOAA’s county level data. The others are Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, and to a somewhat lesser extent, San Diego.
Nov 27, 2019 15 tweets 4 min read
1. This amazing explainer video (by William Neff), which is part of our Angola story today, highlights a massive climate chain reaction that has gotten far too little attention thus far. That needs to change. 2. Basically the video is explaining this -- the concentrated ocean hotspot off the coast of southern Angola.
Nov 27, 2019 26 tweets 9 min read
1. For our 7th “2C: Beyond the Limit” piece, @maxbearak and @vanhoutenphoto visited Angola, and found a gut-wrenching story about a town that's contributed virtually nothing to climate change – but is being targeted with eerie precision nonetheless.
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/… 2. Meet Tombwa, Angola, built on fishing. It sits onshore of a crucial oceanic juncture where the Benguela Current, traveling up from southern waters along Africa’s southwest coast, has traditionally delivered nutrient rich, cool waters through a process called upwelling.
Nov 26, 2019 7 tweets 2 min read
1. Key figure here: Emissions need to decline by 7.6 percent per year, between 2020 and 2030, to stay on track for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7F), says @UNEP 2. How do I put this...that's pretty hard to imagine.

In carbon dioxide equivalents, researchers behind the @UNEP report told us, that's starting around 4 billion tons of reductions per year.
Nov 12, 2019 33 tweets 9 min read
1. Excited to announce the 6th installment of "2C: Beyond the Limit." To me, this is one of the most striking stories that we found. It’s about dramatic changes playing out vast stretches of the northwest Pacific region as (or so we put it) “climate dominoes begin to fall.” 2. This story is by @simondenyer, who runs the Post’s Tokyo bureau, with photos by @salwangeorges. Both traveled to Hokkaido, Japan’s most northern island, for this tale of salmon, ice, and frightening changes in the most dynamic sea ice system on Earth.
Oct 31, 2019 23 tweets 5 min read
1. Announcing the 5th installment of series, “2C: Beyond the Limit.” This time, @brady_dennis and Bonnie Jo Mount take us to the fragile Magdalen Islands in the center of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, just north of the Canadian Maritime provinces. 2. They’ve seen 2.3 degrees C of warming and even more than that
-- 3C -- in winter, which is when it really counts in this particular case.