hassaan khan
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hassaan khan
@hassaansci.bsky.social
thinking??? about hydroclimatic extremes and infrastructure systems @ Illinois
- chai/karak aficionado

\\ usual disclaimers
Reposted by hassaan khan
3C of global warming means droughts, & floods, of historically unprecedented magnitudes across broad swaths of the planet. It means the collapse of ecosystems, and possibly even cascading effects that could trigger any number of critical Earth system "tipping points." [12/n]
October 30, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
For this reason, the Gates memo presupposes a false dichotomy regarding climate outcomes: The choice we are faced with is not between "good for us" & "the end of the world," but instead how much harm we are willing to tolerate, and endure, in the years to come. [8/n]
October 30, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
Global emissions from heating are about 4x those from cooling.

Air conditioning is an important and lifesaving adaptation to climate change.

Decarbonize the grid.
July 26, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
So disappointing. Yes, we need to ramp up adaptation, but it's wildly premature to say "it's too late" and give up on decarbonization just because we didn't avoid climate impacts altogether.

A warmer world - with all its challenges - still deserves our love, and will always be worth fighting for.
July 6, 2025 at 1:13 AM
Reposted by hassaan khan
Feels like the current trend in the U.S. is that a lot of people will experience climate change as a creeping, steady boil of rising rents, insurance premiums and prices for everyday items that fewer and fewer people will be able to swallow month to month
June 20, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
Behind closed doors, fossil fuel advocates are trashing carbon capture and storage.

@desmog.com obtained audio of Bjorn Lomborg telling a private luncheon CCS is 'not going to happen.'

Oil companies only support CCS to get 'a lot of subsidies,' he claimed.

www.desmog.com/2025/06/05/c...
Carbon Capture ‘Not Going to Happen,’ Top Fossil Fuel Advocate Predicts
In audio obtained by DeSmog, Bjorn Lomborg told a Fraser Institute event in Vancouver that the technology is way too expensive to be viable.
www.desmog.com
June 5, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
Did another interview where I was asked how I study disasters and stay "optimistic".

This is very confusing for me because I am not optimistic. I am extremely pessimistic.

I think people mistake my making jokes for being optimistic. The memes are a coping mechanism, guys. It's all very bad.
June 2, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
I'm usually immune to being shocked...

Emissions from Land use and forestry (LULUCF) are set to nearly double, and match emissions from transport (!) in the 2030s, as forests are harvested and become a major carbon source.
May 28, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
My friend is in charge of the team that wrote the climate change adaptation plan for Switzerland and this is one of the things they expected.
Swiss village almost entirely destroyed after collapse of glacier buries it in mud
One person missing and Blatten devastated after huge cloud of ice and rubble inundates evacuated town
www.theguardian.com
May 29, 2025 at 6:24 AM
Reposted by hassaan khan
Water began flowing onto hundreds of acres of dry, sunbaked lakebed as California officials filled ponds near the shore of the Salton Sea in an effort to create wetlands that will provide habitat for birds and help control lung-damaging dust around the shrinking lake. www.latimes.com/environment/...
California turns on water to create new wetlands on the shore of the shrinking Salton Sea
California officials sent water flowing to create new wetlands along the shores of the shrinking Salton Sea. The project is intended to control dust and provide habitat for birds.
www.latimes.com
May 24, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
How do we have a stable world, let alone "economic growth," if nearly half a billion people will need to move away from coasts and (to use jargon) the value of all that fixed capital is slowly destroyed?
Woah, rare to see this kind of language in Nature 👀
“We show that +1.5 °C is far too high and that current climate conditions…could trigger rapid ice sheet retreat and high rates of Sea Level Rise... that would stretch the limits of adaptation” and could have “catastrophic consequences for humanity”
May 21, 2025 at 12:28 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
It's Teacher Appreciation Week. Here's how to appreciate teachers: pay them better.
Yes, What We Pay Teachers Matters
Paying teachers well is an essential part of a healthier public education system
nobody-wants-this.ghost.io
May 5, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
Pretty wild that "24/7" fossil fuel generation all suddenly went offline and basically only wind and solar were still producing during today's Spanish/Portuguese blackout.

"Baseload" power can be dramatically unreliable
Supply is starting to slowly recover, for now largely due to a slight pick up in imports. All nuclear/gas/coal (and a big chunk of renewables) still remain offline and likely won't return until demand can be safely ramped back up.

(legend included in the chart this time for those that asked)
April 28, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
I wrote about the doom loop of the climate crisis and the collapse of our shared reality for understanding and/or doing anything about it newrepublic.com/article/1942...
April 23, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
The massive explosion in use of satellite imagery by archaeologists has led to the discovery of hundreds of thousands of ancient sites and features across the world in the last 25 years, none of which were known about previously due to data resolution+coverage.

This is also a post about autism
April 22, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
A few thoughts:
- Globally, food loss and waste is responsible for ~10% of annual GHG emissions while aviation is “only” ~3%
- But everyone eats while only some (wealthier people) fly. One roundtrip flight DC-London is ~2 tons CO2e. Can’t do much of that and stay within a small carbon budget. 1/
I’m very pro-compost but this seems incorrect
April 22, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
I remember the first time I posted a video like this a bunch of older scientists took to Twitter to make fun of me for being too informal. If only they realized it’s videos like this that actually reach young people and that science communication is meant for the public — not other scientists!
April 21, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Reposted by hassaan khan
The ‘spiral of silence’ blocking climate action and how to end it

- Globally, people are hugely supportive of climate action but wrongly believe their fellow citizens are not - revealing the truth could spark a social tipping point

#The89Percent
Story by me
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
‘Spiral of silence’: climate action is very popular, so why don’t people realise it?
Researchers find 89% of people around the world want more to be done, but mistakenly assume their peers do not
www.theguardian.com
April 22, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Reposted by hassaan khan
I don’t know who needs to hear this but those five bags of clothes for good will you’ve been driving around in your trunk for two years? You can just drop them off and it takes two seconds. Truly wild stuff!
April 21, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”
— Pope Francis
The Pope Who Decried the Savage Inequalities of Billionaire-Class Capitalism
Pope Francis, who has died at 88, fought for economic justice with a consistency that distinguished him from the elites of his time.
www.thenation.com
April 21, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by hassaan khan
As @justinworland.com reminds us, "Francis paid special attention to the disproportionate impact of climate change on the world’s poorest and critiqued the economic structures that make this a reality."
Remembering Pope Francis's Climate Legacy
Pope Francis served as a voice of moral clarity, speaking and writing about the social consequences of human influence on the planet.
time.com
April 21, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Exquisite writing. Required reading for anyone parsing through the noise.
"The police chased me out of the beach parking lot. Now Walmart. I’m running out of places to sleep, and to be."

"Isn’t that negation of our existence? We are here and we are you and we are yours."

A searing and essential piece of writing.
My Life As a Homeless Man in America
An extraordinary firsthand account.
www.esquire.com
April 21, 2025 at 8:46 AM