Laura Routh
@laurarouth.bsky.social
On break from writing about climate change at https://www.thestatesclimateproject.com/ and elsewhere, too. Born 316.91 ppm. Caregiver to a loved one. Following posts on climate, economics, and mental health.
“Because Silicon Valley is not selling useful; it’s selling transformation—with all the grand promises, return on investment, genuine risk, and collateral damage that entails.”
three years ago today ChatGPT launched. so i wrote about its legacy (for now). (turns out a whole hell
of a lot happened in just 3 years) www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
of a lot happened in just 3 years) www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
The World Still Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGPT
OpenAI’s chaos machine turns three.
www.theatlantic.com
December 1, 2025 at 6:13 AM
“Because Silicon Valley is not selling useful; it’s selling transformation—with all the grand promises, return on investment, genuine risk, and collateral damage that entails.”
Reposted by Laura Routh
A reminder, in light of that NYT story today, about skill and spread across climate analytics providers:
Getting good climate info in the hands of individuals would be highly valuable. Just not convinced we're actually there yet.
Getting good climate info in the hands of individuals would be highly valuable. Just not convinced we're actually there yet.
Absolutely fantastic study comparing anonymized outputs of climate analytics models.
Everyone loves to bag on flood (rightly so), but can we talk about how the spread here is "30mph breeze to Cat 5 hurricane" www.fca.org.uk/publication/... HT @ruarirhodes.bsky.social
Everyone loves to bag on flood (rightly so), but can we talk about how the spread here is "30mph breeze to Cat 5 hurricane" www.fca.org.uk/publication/... HT @ruarirhodes.bsky.social
November 30, 2025 at 8:19 PM
A reminder, in light of that NYT story today, about skill and spread across climate analytics providers:
Getting good climate info in the hands of individuals would be highly valuable. Just not convinced we're actually there yet.
Getting good climate info in the hands of individuals would be highly valuable. Just not convinced we're actually there yet.
“The otherworld rewards skilled navigators and destroys the careless: Treasures turn to leaves; fairy wives eventually disappear back home; hubris causes travelers to be lost forever, or worse, to wither and die.” @defaultfriend.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/o...
Opinion | Your Phone Isn’t a Drug. It’s a Portal to the Otherworld.
www.nytimes.com
November 28, 2025 at 8:15 PM
“The otherworld rewards skilled navigators and destroys the careless: Treasures turn to leaves; fairy wives eventually disappear back home; hubris causes travelers to be lost forever, or worse, to wither and die.” @defaultfriend.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/11/28/o...
“The planet has seen entire living worlds wiped away by warming many times before, and there’s no reason to think it’s sentimental about organized industrial society.”
This is really, really good.
Wrote about how climate change is bad www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...
November 24, 2025 at 7:56 AM
“The planet has seen entire living worlds wiped away by warming many times before, and there’s no reason to think it’s sentimental about organized industrial society.”
Reposted by Laura Routh
“The lifetime emissions generated by every 3.5 Americans today will kill one person by the end of the century.”https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/measure-climate-progress-in-lives-improved-by-gernot-wagner-2025-11?
How to Measure Climate Progress
Gernot Wagner thinks tackling the problem is justified on social and economic grounds, not existential ones.
www.project-syndicate.org
November 24, 2025 at 3:07 AM
“The lifetime emissions generated by every 3.5 Americans today will kill one person by the end of the century.”https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/measure-climate-progress-in-lives-improved-by-gernot-wagner-2025-11?
Reposted by Laura Routh
Now that the Sept and Oct data are (belatedly) in, it looks like 2025 will be the second warmest year in the record (~80% probability). The last three years are in a class of their own.
November 15, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Now that the Sept and Oct data are (belatedly) in, it looks like 2025 will be the second warmest year in the record (~80% probability). The last three years are in a class of their own.
Reposted by Laura Routh
Yes no CRISIS. "At stake is not the narrow insurers’ view of the “pooling of risks” or a dramatic wake-up moment of a doom loop prophesy, but rather a citizenry bound in “communities of fate” & the moral economy of the welfare state. "
www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ins...
bsky.app/profile/laur...
www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ins...
bsky.app/profile/laur...
“ … it’s not entirely clear that it will ever play out as a system-wide financial catastrophe—more likely is that we see more of the same, with intensifying and unevenly distributed social consequences.” Great overview from @katemac.bsky.social and Tim Sahay www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ins...
Insurance in the Polycrisis | Kate Mackenzie & Tim Sahay
The future is triage on an uninsurable earth.
www.phenomenalworld.org
November 16, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Yes no CRISIS. "At stake is not the narrow insurers’ view of the “pooling of risks” or a dramatic wake-up moment of a doom loop prophesy, but rather a citizenry bound in “communities of fate” & the moral economy of the welfare state. "
www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ins...
bsky.app/profile/laur...
www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ins...
bsky.app/profile/laur...
“America’s problem isn’t that we lack wealth - we have enormous wealth - it’s that we’ve made our wealth invisible while letting everything visible decay in a way. We’ve inverted the formula.” A must-read piece from @kyla.bsky.social ! open.substack.com/pub/kyla/p/3...
30 Days, 8 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?
Traveling the country to understand it
open.substack.com
November 13, 2025 at 8:09 PM
“America’s problem isn’t that we lack wealth - we have enormous wealth - it’s that we’ve made our wealth invisible while letting everything visible decay in a way. We’ve inverted the formula.” A must-read piece from @kyla.bsky.social ! open.substack.com/pub/kyla/p/3...
Another quotable line: “Rather than the ideal of reasoned debate, social media sets the stage for constant jousting, rewarding those who can be viral and have memes ready in their memory, as today’s Homeric formula shifts both our political and neurological landscapes.”
“The elites are ecstatic about imagining a vast, uneducated, and unproductive population forced to pay companies like OpenAI to access the written word and to approximate thought.”
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
We Used to Read Things in This Country | Noah McCormack
Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.
thebaffler.com
November 13, 2025 at 8:19 AM
Another quotable line: “Rather than the ideal of reasoned debate, social media sets the stage for constant jousting, rewarding those who can be viral and have memes ready in their memory, as today’s Homeric formula shifts both our political and neurological landscapes.”
Reposted by Laura Routh
“Climate-related disasters forcibly displaced 250 million people globally over the past decade, the equivalent of 70,000 displacements every day, according to a report by the UN refugee agency.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Climate disasters displaced 250 million people in past 10 years, UN report finds
Floods, storms and droughts have uprooted people across the globe as rising temperatures intensify conflict and hunger
www.theguardian.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:01 PM
“Climate-related disasters forcibly displaced 250 million people globally over the past decade, the equivalent of 70,000 displacements every day, according to a report by the UN refugee agency.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Reposted by Laura Routh
High latitude blocking, and especially when located near or over Greenland, tends to severely disrupt mid-latitude weather patterns for weeks at a time--resulting in unusually persistent troughs/ridges and associated warm/cold air outbreaks that can defy seasonal predictions.
November 8, 2025 at 11:20 PM
High latitude blocking, and especially when located near or over Greenland, tends to severely disrupt mid-latitude weather patterns for weeks at a time--resulting in unusually persistent troughs/ridges and associated warm/cold air outbreaks that can defy seasonal predictions.
Reposted by Laura Routh
Then, by late week, pronounced ridge-trough pattern over continental U.S. will shift eastward & partially break down--likely opening the "storm door" along the West coast. A pretty wet period is likely thereafter, with moderate to even heavy rain extending all the way into SoCal.
November 8, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Then, by late week, pronounced ridge-trough pattern over continental U.S. will shift eastward & partially break down--likely opening the "storm door" along the West coast. A pretty wet period is likely thereafter, with moderate to even heavy rain extending all the way into SoCal.
Reposted by Laura Routh
Must-read debut @crampell.bsky.social newsletter for @thebulwark.com explains the hidden costs of Trump’s tariffs…
…and asks whether he’ll be smart enough to let the Supreme Court kill them
www.thebulwark.com/p/how-the-su...
…and asks whether he’ll be smart enough to let the Supreme Court kill them
www.thebulwark.com/p/how-the-su...
How the Supreme Court Could Save Christmas
If Trump lets them.
www.thebulwark.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Must-read debut @crampell.bsky.social newsletter for @thebulwark.com explains the hidden costs of Trump’s tariffs…
…and asks whether he’ll be smart enough to let the Supreme Court kill them
www.thebulwark.com/p/how-the-su...
…and asks whether he’ll be smart enough to let the Supreme Court kill them
www.thebulwark.com/p/how-the-su...
“Where are we heading? Are we subject to the whims of a madman? For the first time in most people’s memory, our economic future seems uncertain for a new reason: The immediate past cannot tell us what comes next.”
November 6, 2025 at 5:06 AM
“Where are we heading? Are we subject to the whims of a madman? For the first time in most people’s memory, our economic future seems uncertain for a new reason: The immediate past cannot tell us what comes next.”
My 22 yo took this tonight. You can’t tell from the photo, but it has a double halo. Beautiful evening!
November 6, 2025 at 4:16 AM
My 22 yo took this tonight. You can’t tell from the photo, but it has a double halo. Beautiful evening!
Reposted by Laura Routh
i closed out my column this week with this preemptive jab at basically every commentator currently looking for ways to say that last night didn’t count
November 5, 2025 at 3:21 PM
i closed out my column this week with this preemptive jab at basically every commentator currently looking for ways to say that last night didn’t count
So glad to see this www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/u...
Democrats in Mississippi Break the G.O.P.’s State House Supermajority
www.nytimes.com
November 6, 2025 at 12:13 AM
So glad to see this www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/u...
Reposted by Laura Routh
these people obviously have not read the Gates memo
November 5, 2025 at 7:25 PM
these people obviously have not read the Gates memo
“Hoping that clean energy will be absolutely cheaper than fossil fuels at a scale needed to decarbonize our energy system is a gamble – and one with loaded dice.”
There are a lot of things I agree with in Bill Gates' new climate memo, but I think it sets up a false dichotomy between reducing emissions and helping the world's poorest. I've put together a piece with my thoughts over at TCB:
On the Gates climate memo
There is a lot of things I agree with in Bill Gates’ new memo on climate change, but I think it fundamentally sets up a false dichotomy.
www.theclimatebrink.com
November 5, 2025 at 11:15 PM
“Hoping that clean energy will be absolutely cheaper than fossil fuels at a scale needed to decarbonize our energy system is a gamble – and one with loaded dice.”
Reposted by Laura Routh
“The election of two new public service commissioners represents a seismic change in Georgia’s energy landscape and reflects a new politics of electricity in America.” heatmap.news/politics/ali...
Democrats Win 2 Key Energy Races in Georgia
A “seismic change” comes for the state’s Public Service Commission.
heatmap.news
November 5, 2025 at 3:01 AM
“The election of two new public service commissioners represents a seismic change in Georgia’s energy landscape and reflects a new politics of electricity in America.” heatmap.news/politics/ali...
Good take on the Bill Gates memo, imo. While reading it, I was reflecting on the 2023 power outage in Davis, CA, which happened during an extreme heatwave. It was 116 when our power shut off from heat having damaged our utility’s equipment. A hotter world makes these kinds of mishaps riskier.
I just recorded a short video--essentially an updated version of my social media threads--on the Bill Gates climate memo. Despite agreeing with some points therein, I still think its framing is fundamentally flawed and thus also its key conclusions.
Thoughts from a climate scientist on the Bill Gates climate memo
I wanted to offer my thoughts, as a climate scientist, on the widely discussed memo published by Bill Gates in late October 2025. While I actually do agree with some of the specific points made therein regarding the urgent global need to accelerate efforts to reduce global poverty and improve human
www.youtube.com
November 4, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Good take on the Bill Gates memo, imo. While reading it, I was reflecting on the 2023 power outage in Davis, CA, which happened during an extreme heatwave. It was 116 when our power shut off from heat having damaged our utility’s equipment. A hotter world makes these kinds of mishaps riskier.
Reposted by Laura Routh
Confused or curious about the Bill Gates climate memo? I've got you covered! TOMORROW at 1:30pm PT, I'm talking with 4 great scientists. Sign up for an important convo w/ @katharinehayhoe.com @kimcobb.bsky.social @hausfath.bsky.social @weatherwest.bsky.social: coveringclimatenow.org/event/the-bi...
The Bill Gates Memo: Climate Scientists Respond With Urgency — Covering Climate Now
Ahead of this month’s COP30 summit in Brazil, billionaire investor Bill Gates is advising world leaders that global warming “will not lead to humanity’s demise” and that effort to reducing emissions a...
coveringclimatenow.org
November 3, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Confused or curious about the Bill Gates climate memo? I've got you covered! TOMORROW at 1:30pm PT, I'm talking with 4 great scientists. Sign up for an important convo w/ @katharinehayhoe.com @kimcobb.bsky.social @hausfath.bsky.social @weatherwest.bsky.social: coveringclimatenow.org/event/the-bi...
“But the dipole now appears to be a solid 100-150 miles farther south than earlier anticipated–and this has substantial implications for northern California even as southern California continues to be dry and mild.”
Quick Weather West update today for sake of discussing fairly strong atmospheric river that will arrive in NorCal Tue-Wed, bringing widespread rain, gusty winds, and maybe isolated t-storms. Warm still, though, so Sierra rain vs snow, & dry in SoCal. #CAwx
After anomalous late Oct warmth, a sooner-than-expected shift back toward wetter conditions in (at least) NorCal - Weather West
A quick blog update amid shifting conditions I suspect that more than a few of us, at our busiest and most chaotic moments, have exclaimed to exasperated friends and colleagues that we "wished there were two of us to help share the load!" Well, in this present moment, I am not sure a single clone
weatherwest.com
November 4, 2025 at 4:30 AM
“But the dipole now appears to be a solid 100-150 miles farther south than earlier anticipated–and this has substantial implications for northern California even as southern California continues to be dry and mild.”
Reposted by Laura Routh
Strong article on many aspects of the insurance crisis in California. Particularly appreciate the attention to the exceptions to the 85% market share rule.
California Promised Insurance Relief, But Delivered Loopholes www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/u...
California Promised Insurance Relief, But Delivered Loopholes www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/u...
California Promised Insurance Relief, But Delivered Loopholes
www.nytimes.com
November 1, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Strong article on many aspects of the insurance crisis in California. Particularly appreciate the attention to the exceptions to the 85% market share rule.
California Promised Insurance Relief, But Delivered Loopholes www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/u...
California Promised Insurance Relief, But Delivered Loopholes www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/u...
“Only through the revelation of hidden knowledge and the cracking of codes by a righteous minority can the malefactors be unmasked and defeated. The morality is as simplistic as the narrative is complex: It is a battle between good and evil.”
There's never been a better time to be a conspiracy theorist.
In this brand-new package, MIT Technology Review breaks down how this moment is changing science and technology—and how we can make it through.
Introducing: The New Conspiracy Age: www.technologyreview.com/supertopic/t...
In this brand-new package, MIT Technology Review breaks down how this moment is changing science and technology—and how we can make it through.
Introducing: The New Conspiracy Age: www.technologyreview.com/supertopic/t...
The New Conspiracy Age
There’s never been a better time to be a conspiracy theorist. An MIT Technology Review series The New Conspiracy Age Everything is a conspiracy theory now. Conspiracists are all over the White House, ...
www.technologyreview.com
October 31, 2025 at 5:23 AM
“Only through the revelation of hidden knowledge and the cracking of codes by a righteous minority can the malefactors be unmasked and defeated. The morality is as simplistic as the narrative is complex: It is a battle between good and evil.”