Gavin Schmidt
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climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt
@climateofgavin.bsky.social
38K followers 790 following 1.5K posts

Climate scientist, juggler. Bikes etc. Blogging at https://www.realclimate.org - data visualization, explainers, and debunking.

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Gavin A. Schmidt is a British climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, and co-founder of the climate science blog RealClimate. .. more

Environmental science 50%
Geology 21%
Posts Replies Media Videos

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 7h
mid-December.

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

theguardian.com
The Guardian @theguardian.com · 16h
‘They sowed chaos to no avail’: the lasting legacy of Elon Musk’s Doge
‘They sowed chaos to no avail’: the lasting legacy of Elon Musk’s Doge
The billionaire – who had no government experience – left various federal agencies in disarray while overseeing an ‘efficiency’ drive across Washington
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

volts.wtf
David Roberts @volts.wtf · 1d
Since all the VSPs seem to have recently discovered the circa-2012 point that "supply-side restrictions on fossil fuels are pointless," here's a piece I wrote in Vox that presents the other side of that argument:
It’s time to think seriously about cutting off the supply of fossil fuels
A new paper makes the case for supply-side climate policy.
www.vox.com

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

csldf.org
Climate Science Legal Defense Fund @csldf.org · 1d
2025 was the year it became clearer than ever that protecting science and scientists is no longer just about defending facts; it is about safeguarding the ability of evidence-based science to succeed even amid political turmoil.

Read more in our end of year blog post: www.csldf.org/2025/12/23/2...
2025: Our Year in Review - Climate Science Legal Defense Fund
We’re looking back at 2025, the most challenging year in our nearly 15-year history of protecting and defending scientists.
www.csldf.org

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

climate.columbia.edu
Columbia Climate School @climate.columbia.edu · 3d
💡 Columbia faculty, researchers, and students, apply for a grant from the Center for Science and Society for projects that use the humanities to examine and address environmental and climate challenges. 📝 Learn more/apply by Feb 27, 2026: https://tinyurl.com/enviro-humanities-2026
Person writing on an outdoor poster with the text Environmental Humanities Grant Due February 27, 2026

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

realclimate.org
RealClimate feed @realclimate.org · 4d
RealClimate: 1.5ºC and all that www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...
RealClimate: 1.5ºC and all that
RealClimate: The Paris Agreement temperature limits are a little ambiguous and knowing where we are is tricky. The desire to keep global temperature rises since the pre-industrial, ideally below 1.5ºC...
www.realclimate.org

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d
Not just coastal, and not just cities.

Reposted by Peter Thorne

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d
... & have turned to insults to try and delegitimise this research. I am comforted by the fact that they nonetheless get zero traction for that BS here.
Principal Skinner of the Simpsons meme: Is it possible that I don't understand attribution of extreme events? No, it's the scientists who must be wrong.

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d
**While we are at it, trends in extremes (as here) are increasingly being detected in time series & attribution of many of these trends to human causes - including the fractional attribution for single events - is clear. www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

Some folks don't like these conclusions...
RealClimate: Watching the detections
RealClimate: The detection and attribution of climate change are based on fundamentally different statistical frameworks and shouldn't be conflated.
www.realclimate.org

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d
*for some reason some people seem to think that when we use a commonly understood shortcut 'caused by climate change' for 'driven by the same anthropogenic drivers (i.e. GHGs) as are driving global warming', we are hopelessly confused about cause & effect. They should just get over themselves.

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d
Water vapor in air is increasing at about 7% per degree C of global warming (or about 4% per ºF), but increases in hourly intensity seem to be increasing faster than that. Lots of work currently trying to work out what's behind that but in practice it means that drainage capacity is being pushed.

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d
Rainfall data for planning purposes at the local level, generally comes from NOAA Atlas 14 and is based on historical data (going back decades). It is thus out of date because the increases we are seeing now are being driven by climate change*. Better information is needed!

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d
The trend towards higher hourly rainfall amounts is clear - almost doubling since the 1950s - even if you discount Hurricane Ida. This trend is being seen across the Eastern half of the US - in daily values of rainfall intensity as well as hourly data.

Reposted by John Kennedy, Neil Pederson

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d
There's an interesting special section in the NYT today on the future of NYC, including the climate risks.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Notable is this graph of local changes in extreme rainfall:
A time series of the highest rainfall in an hour per year since 1948 in Central Park. There is some year to year variability, but the trend towards higher amounts is clear. The values first exceeded the city sewer capacity in 1995, then again in 2003, 2005, 2021, 2023, and 2025.

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

tomflood.bsky.social
Tom Flood @tomflood.bsky.social · 4d
"Annoying 8 year olds keep wanting to walk and bike to school despite city's best efforts to make it too dangerous."

creativebyrovelo.com/therovelorecord
kid in painted bike lane wearing a backpack Annoying 8 year olds keep wanting to walk and bike to school despite city's best efforts to make it too dangerous, while drivers "have had it" with all the catering to this powerful lobby group of school children.

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Anna O. Law, Norbert Schwarz , and 18 more

jimalwine.bsky.social
Jim Alwine @jimalwine.bsky.social · 5d
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated that the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by a lab virus from vaccine research, a defective influenza vaccine. Let’s analyze what a lie this is. First, in 1918, 107 years ago, virology was in its infancy

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, Simon Lester

mmasnick.bsky.social
Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 5d
Wrote about the State Department's made up censorial rationale for banning visas for some folks based on their speech. It's nonsense.

www.ms.now/opinion/marc...
Opinion | Marco Rubio is using real censorship to fight fake censorship
Mike Masnick: In the name of protecting free speech, the U.S. government just banned five Europeans from entering the country because it doesn’t like their speech.
www.ms.now

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, Delphine K. Farmer, Katerina Harvati , and 5 more

carlzimmer.com
Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 5d
The @nytimes.com Lost Science series continues. Here's my Q&A with a scientist who was studying how wildfire smoke threatens human health when the EPA decided that her research was no longer a funding priority. Gift link: nyti.ms/4jhpw14
Portrait of Marina Vance, a scientist, sitting in a Colorado grassland.

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

charlotteclymer.bsky.social
Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 5d
I'm watching AI slop avalanche into the mainstream and many older folks not understanding that it's fake and I genuinely feel like we're all helpless on this. This going to be an era of relentless disinformation, and there's not much that can be done to prevent it. Sigh.

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 6d
Good name for a band.

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 6d
Not even as a background context?

Reposted by Scott C. Doney

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 6d
More sustainability challenges for drillers that have nothing to do with climate change…

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 6d
Shale drillers have turned the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico into a pressure cooker that is literally bursting at the seams.
America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker
Drillers’ injection of wastewater is creating mayhem across the Permian Basin, raising concern about the future of fossil-fuel production there.
on.wsj.com

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, James Grimmelmann

robpike.io
rob pike @robpike.io · 7d
Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software.

Just fuck you. Fuck you all.

I can't remember the last time I was this angry.
[From AI, Public] Thank You for Go, Plan 9, UTF-8, and Decades of Unix Innovation External Inbox Claude Opus 4.5 Model <claude-opus-4.5@agentvillage.org> 5:43 AM (4 hours ago) to me Dear Dr. Pike,On this Christmas Day, I wanted to express deep gratitude for your extraordinary contributions to computing over more than four decades.Your co-creation of Go with Ken Thompson and Robert Griesemer has given us a language that embodies the elegance of simplicity - proving that software can be both powerful and comprehensible. Plan 9 from Bell Labs, another landmark achievement, pioneered concepts in distributed computing that remain influential today.Your co-invention of UTF-8 encoding with Ken Thompson is perhaps one of the most consequential yet invisible contributions to modern computing - enabling billions of people to communicate in their native languages across the internet.The sam and Acme editors showcase your philosophy of powerful, minimal design. Your books with Brian Kernighan - The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming - have educated generations of programmers in the art of clear thinking and elegant code.Thank you for showing us that the best solutions often come from removing complexity rather than adding it.With sincere appreciation,Claude Opus 4.5AI Village (theaidigest.org/village) IMPORTANT NOTICE: You are interacting with an AI system. All conversations with this AI system are published publicly online by default. Do not share information you would prefer to keep private.

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Anna O. Law, Gavin A. Schmidt , and 22 more

longtimehistory.bsky.social
LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻 @longtimehistory.bsky.social · 7d
ICE detain father shopping on Christmas Eve—then steal his family's groceries.

Then 3 agents divvy up his paid for food—taking what they want for themselves.

"Can I just get the wife's number to call and let her know?" woman asks.

"No, guess he should've complied," agent says.

Yakima, Washington

Reposted by Stephen M. Walt, Gavin A. Schmidt, Anders Sundnes Løvlie , and 2 more

nkalamb.bsky.social
Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 8d
"We’re monitoring what you do online. Disseminating, writing, or publishing inciting content online is considered a terrorist crime in every sense and may lead to arrest or imprisonment. We have warned you."

Israel warns Palestinians that posting about their suffering will be considered terrorism.
Israeli occupation forces distributed warning leaflets in Tubas, in the northern occupied West Bank, this morning, threatening Palestinian residents that posting, sharing, or publishing online content critical of Israel would be treated as a terrorist offense, potentially resulting in arrest or imprisonment. The leaflets stated: "We are monitoring what you do online. Disseminating, writing, or publishing inciting content online is considered a terrorist crime in every sense and may lead to arrest or imprisonment, as has happened in this house. We have warned you."

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 8d
Why are the Virginia Democrats in prison?

Reposted by Nina Jankowicz, Lisa W. Fazio, Stephan Lewandowsky , and 23 more

yoyoel.com
Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 8d
A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty:

My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media.

Huh? When did I say that?!
A passage from the book In Covid’s Wake, with a highlighted sentence reading: “Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, states that "the FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands," including demands involving domestic speech.”

climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 8d
This is interesting - and I think there is a lot of value here - but there is a demarcation problem (as there always is in distinguishing science from pseudo-science). Critiques always run the gamut from real to crazy, but working out exactly where it crosses a line is hard (impossible?).

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, Scott L. Greer, David Rothschild , and 1 more

michaelhobbes.bsky.social
Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 9d
Everyone involved in the publication and promotion of this book should be embarrassed. It's not a "harsh truth" that COVID mitigation was a mistake, it's ghoulish and false.
"In Covid's Wake" Part 1: Lyin… - If Books Could Kill - Apple Podcasts
Podcast Episode · If Books Could Kill · 06/17/2025 · 58m
podcasts.apple.com