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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · 6d

Wild Roundhead spotted out in Lewes on #TheFifth

A man in Roundhead costume in the Lewes Cliffe Bonfire Society prpcession carrying a sign saying "Trust in God & Keep your Powder Dry" with flaming torch as attached, surrounded by others carrying flaming torches dressed as Roundheads and Suffragettes.

Reposted by David A. McKay

David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · 9d

I had a great chat with @smartcookies.bsky.social podcast a little while back, covering climate change, denialism, doomism, tipping points, and geoengineering.

Watch here www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxH... or listen via wherever you get your podcasts!

www.patreon.com/the_smart_co...

#ClimateChange

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · 9d

I had a great chat with @smartcookies.bsky.social podcast a little while back, covering climate change, denialism, doomism, tipping points, and geoengineering.

Watch here www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoxH... or listen via wherever you get your podcasts!

www.patreon.com/the_smart_co...

#ClimateChange

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · 20d

Mossn't grumble.

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Oct 10

ha yes, I thought this was quite the quote! (not sure if it's from the book though)

Screenshot of quote from linked article saying "Lentonist science requires, in the authors' view, a Leninist response"

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Sep 28

He was even more blunt in this interview, categorising Gaza & Ukraine as distractions: exame.com/en/brazil-is...

(also odd on not being worried about AI energy usage, as renewables will inevitable be abundant...)

Screenshot of section of interview of Johan Rockström by Exame:

Exame: In the last World Economic Forum, there was much talk that A.I. and Fusion energy could solve the climate issue through mass carbon absorption. Would AI not be, in reality, a dangerous distraction?

Rockström: A.I. can become a distraction that receives disproportionate amounts of focus when we have a planetary crisis. And not just A.I., but also the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the ridiculous tariffs of the Trump Administration. There are many factors that push us away from the necessary focus on fighting climate change. For instance, I always get asked whether I am worried about A.I. because of the energy consumption of their data centers. I answer that I am not, because of the simple fact that renewable energy sources are being developed so fast that we should have abundant energy. My concern lies in biodiversity, fresh water, minerals, the soil, and the entire biosphere.

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Sep 20

The rapidity of oil/gas decline without investment in this report struck me too - from eyeballing, not super far off rate needed for well-below 2C (or even 1.5 if had started earlier): bsky.app/profile/drsi...

Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · Sep 16

The IEA says that without any new investment, oil-and-gas production would plummet

FT reports that this will be "greeted enthusiastically" by the industry, which has long said it "needs to spend heavily to maintain its current production"
4/6

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Sep 4

Or indeed when 1 of Shell's 2021 global net-zero scenarios involved planting a *Brazil-sized* forest to make up for continuing fossil fuels to 2100: www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-she....

People on the ground may be sounder on its limits, but it has been used by suits to justify continued emissions!

Analysis: Shell says new ‘Brazil-sized’ forest would be needed to meet 1.5C climate goal - Carbon Brief

For the first time, Shell has released a “pathway” showing how the world could potentially meet the Paris Agreement’s ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

www.carbonbrief.org

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Sep 4

It's also been commonly taken up in that way by politicians, e.g. UK parties outbidding each other on tree-planting targets back in 2019 election to make up a big chunk of net-zero plans, with generally underwhelming results: www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...

Analysis: UK misses tree-planting targets by forest the ‘size of Birmingham’ - Carbon Brief

UK governments have fallen short of their tree-planting targets since 2020 that they have failed to plant an area of forest nearly the size of Birmingham

www.carbonbrief.org

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Sep 2

It's also fine to climb up motorway gantries, if it's for a flag bsky.app/profile/davi...

David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Sep 2

Strange how Just Stop Oil activists were imprisoned even for being in a *meeting* about going up the gantries, with Cooper calling JSO "dangerous & irresponsible" for triggering motorway closures by doing so, and yet now popping up one to put a flag on is all good... youtu.be/ney0E6sNceU?...

Yvette Cooper MP | Good Morning Britain | ITV | 17 July 2023 | Just Stop Oil

YouTube video by Just Stop Oil

youtu.be

David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Sep 2

Strange how Just Stop Oil activists were imprisoned even for being in a *meeting* about going up the gantries, with Cooper calling JSO "dangerous & irresponsible" for triggering motorway closures by doing so, and yet now popping up one to put a flag on is all good... youtu.be/ney0E6sNceU?...

Yvette Cooper MP | Good Morning Britain | ITV | 17 July 2023 | Just Stop Oil

YouTube video by Just Stop Oil

youtu.be

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Sep 2

Strange how Just Stop Oil activists were imprisoned even for being in a *meeting* about going up the gantries, with Cooper calling JSO "dangerous & irresponsible" for triggering motorway closures by doing so, and yet now popping up one to put a flag on is all good...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ney0...

Yvette Cooper MP | Good Morning Britain | ITV | 17 July 2023 | Just Stop Oil

YouTube video by Just Stop Oil

www.youtube.com

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 29

Recent news for context: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds

Scientists say ‘shocking’ discovery shows rapid cuts in carbon emissions are needed to avoid catastrophic fallout

www.theguardian.com

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 29

Overall the general picture is the same though: the AMOC weakens with warming, the larger that warming the more likely it is to collapse in the long run, that collapse would radically change life in Europe & the tropics, and one part of it could go much sooner. But also: deep uncertainty remains!

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 29

Apropos of recent AMOC news, I've finally gotten round to updating this AMOC tipping explainer from a couple years back with some of the flurry of papers published since then - check it out if you'd like some more background:
climatetippingpoints.info/2023/08/15/a...

#AMOC #TippingPoints #Climate

Shutdown: can climate change make ocean currents collapse?

A recent study renewed worries that the ‘AMOC’ – a key set of ocean currents – could soon pass a tipping point and shutdown this century, with major ramifications for the cl…

climatetippingpoints.info

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 26

Complementarily, one can think of this (and other categorisation problems) in terms of an n-dimensional phase space on which the main PCA principal component maps roughly on to an existing axis/spectrum construct (like sex, left/right-wing, etc.), but never perfectly, or capturing all variation.

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 20

Obviously this doesn't mean Arctic sea ice loss isn't happening (it is! and this slowdown likely means next drop is bigger) or isn't a problem (it's already causing harm!), but given how things are actually panning out the dark-boosterism that Arctic sea ice seems to attract doesn't seem very useful

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 20

How it started // How it's going

(p.s. 1st graph - from XR's first talks in 2018 - is volume rather than extent, which amplifies changes, but the two have similar trends)

A graph from a 2018 Extinction Rebellion talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VkC4SnwY0) showing Arctic summer sea ice volume data from 1979 to 2018, showing a decline in particular after 2000, with various trends fit to the data that hit the zero line mostly around 2022.

Graph from The Guardian's article showing Arctic summer sea ice extent (note extent rather than volume, but former correlates with latter) showing gradual decline from 1979 to 2000, faster decline 2000 to 2010, and then roughly plateauing from 2010 to now

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 20

Writing this in 2019, there was a small cottage industry in dodgy Arctic sea ice trend-fitting to claim collapse by 2022. Instead, it's plateaued, in line with projected 1st ice-free summer in 2030s/40s plus natural variability. A case study in power of process understanding vs. naïve trend-fitting!

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 20

For more background, check out this explainer I wrote last year on why claims of a 2023 carbon sink collapse were wide of the mark (and which I'll update soon-ish on what the unexpected lack of a land sink recovery in 2024 likely means): climatetippingpoints.info/2024/12/03/c...

Are Earth’s natural carbon sinks collapsing?

This autumn, several media articles reported on a study showing the global carbon sink on land – which so far has drawn down around a quarter of human carbon dioxide emissions – took up…

climatetippingpoints.info

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 20

Quote from me on this. Obviously not good, but not unexpected - the more warming there is, the harder it gets for natural carbon sinks to keep pace with rising CO2, but in absolute terms we still expect them to keep on taking up carbon in to the future (just not as big a % of emissions as so far).

New Scientist @newscientist.com · Aug 19

Climate change is increasingly affecting the ability of Earth’s natural carbon sinks to soak up excess CO2, and this means more of the greenhouse gas we emit is staying in the atmosphere, leading to further warming.

Earth's carbon sinks are being eroded by climate change feedback loops

www.newscientist.com

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 18

Stockholm?

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 12

Hi Aaron, this was an interesting paper describing recent CH4 sink dynamics w.r.t. air pollution, quantifying how increased O3/H2O & decreased CO helped increase CH4 sink over last 2 decades, partly balancing increased CH4 emissions (mostly from tropical wetlands & anthro. sources): rdcu.be/eAm3h

Air pollution modulates trends and variability of the global methane budget

Nature - An integrated observation-driven and model-driven approach demonstrates that, from 2005 to 2021, periods of high atmospheric methane growth were linked to trends and variations in OH...

rdcu.be

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Reposted by David A. McKay

Dr Adam Levy @climateadam.bsky.social · Aug 11

I've wanted to make this video for literal years, and finally summoned the courage.

Is permafrost *really* a climate time bomb?

Thank you @davidamckay.bsky.social for the input!

youtu.be/97-egzC-xjk

Is Permafrost Really a Climate Time Bomb?

YouTube video by ClimateAdam

youtu.be

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David A. McKay @davidamckay.bsky.social · Aug 10

Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons holding a copy of Adorno's Minima Moralia and saying "Marge, have you ever actually sat down and read this thing? Technically even going to the bathroom is fascism"

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