Gavin Schmidt
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climateofgavin.bsky.social
Gavin Schmidt
@climateofgavin.bsky.social

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

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%

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

New speed camera replacement just dropped in Ford’s Ontario

I don't quite understand it either, but the conversation with LeCunn and Adam Brown is kinda interesting. LeCunn is sceptical (as in the FT article), but Brown is all in and completely uncritical. Odd. pioneerworks.org/broadcast/vi...
Deep Thoughts of Artificial Minds | Broadcast
PW builds community through the arts and sciences to create an open and inspired world. Discover experimentation and production in art, science, music, and technology at PW.
pioneerworks.org
“Survey after survey has shown that business owners overestimate how many customers drive to their stores vs walking or biking. In a 2012 Los Angeles study, more than half of the store owners on the bike-laned part of the boulevard thought most of their customers drove. The actual number was 15%.”
I read all the studies on the economic impact of bike lanes. Here's what I learned.
Research proves that bike lanes are good for business. So why do so many stores and restaurants still oppose them?
www.businessinsider.com

mid-December.
In news that should surprise no one…
280 million e-bikes are slashing oil demand far more than electric vehicles
E-bikes and scooters displace 4x as much demand for oil as all of the EVs in the world.
arstechnica.com

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

‘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

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

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

💡 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

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

Not just coastal, and not just cities.

Reposted by Peter Thorne

... & 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.

**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

*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.

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.

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!

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.
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:

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

"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
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
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
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

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

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.

Good name for a band.

Not even as a background context?

Reposted by Scott C. Doney

More sustainability challenges for drillers that have nothing to do with climate change…

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

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
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.
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
"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.