Is Amol Rajan auditioning for a column in the billionaire media? What other explanation can there be for the questions he asked Miatta Fahnbulleh MP this morning? Here's what he should have asked: dustandjoy.substack.com/p/is-amol-ra...

Is Amol Rajan auditioning for a column in the billionaire-owned media?

I can't understand the questions he asked the UK's new energy secretary this morning in any other context

dustandjoy.substack.com

I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.

1/ @mjflepage.bsky.social argues in @newscientist.com that more North Sea drilling doesn't matter for the #climate, because what counts is how much we burn. He's usually excellent as a climate writer and I found the piece a real let-down. A thread on why. 🧵

You want to watch this wonderful video from Joss Fong and her two partners at Howtown about AMOC, with a lot of well-researched background on oceanography and paleoclimate. It also features the nicest guy in paleoceanography, Jerry McManus. 🌊

Why is this one spot not warming?

YouTube video by Howtown

youtube.com

Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.

We were delighted to co-host a screening of the #NationalEmergencyBriefing this month at our centre hub, the University of Bath, convened by our CAST Director Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE, who was an expert advisor to the film, alongside Pete Phelps, Climate Action Lead. 📽️

Time series of daily values of subsurface temperature in the eastern tropical Pacific, starting on 1 May 2026. It shows that the thermocline has lowered by ~50 m, creating an enormous heat source which we can't (yet) see at the surface. Subsurface T anomalies are up to 9°C,...

Pragmatic = dealing with things sensibly based on real world conditions Real world conditions = humanity getting torched due to burning fossil fuels

Dr. Aaron Thierry@thierryaaron.bsky.social · 5d ago

‘It’s too fast, too big’ Yup - the penny is dropping Across the entire geological record, our world has NEVER heated up as rapidly as it has in the last hundred years or so www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘It’s too fast, too big’: speed of climate crisis is devastating crops, say farmers

Drought and extreme heat are killing plants, driving up prices while also making some farms economically unviable

theguardian.com

Cheshire & Warrington #CommunityEnergy Masterclasses. Masterclass 5 covers Commercial & Finance. 5️⃣ Commercial & Finance, 8 Sept, 13:00-15:00 BST www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ecw-commun... 🧵6/6

ECW Community Energy Masterclass 4: Community Energy Governance

Join our free masterclasses providing guidance and support on key themes to community energy groups in Cheshire and Warrington.

eventbrite.co.uk

Cheshire & Warrington #CommunityEnergy Masterclasses. Masterclass 4 covers Community Energy Governance. 4️⃣ Community Energy Governance, 1 Sept, 13:00-15:00 BST www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ecw-commun... 🧵5/6

ECW Community Energy Masterclass 4: Community Energy Governance

Join our free masterclasses providing guidance and support on key themes to community energy groups in Cheshire and Warrington.

eventbrite.co.uk

Cheshire & Warrington #CommunityEnergy Masterclasses. Masterclass 3 covers Detailed Project Development & Challenges. 3️⃣ Detailed Project Development & Challenges, 25 Aug, 13:00-15:00 BST www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ecw-commun... 🧵4/6

ECW Community Energy Masterclass 3: Project Development & Challenges

Join our free masterclasses providing guidance and support on key themes to community energy groups in Cheshire and Warrington.

eventbrite.co.uk

Cheshire & Warrington #CommunityEnergy Masterclasses. Masterclass 2 covers Introduction to the Feasibility Process. 2️⃣ Introduction to the Feasibility Process, 18 Aug, 13:00-15:00 BST www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ecw-commun... 🧵3/6

ECW Community Energy Masterclass 1: Community Energy in 2026

Join our free masterclasses providing guidance and support on key themes to community energy groups in Cheshire and Warrington.

eventbrite.co.uk

Cheshire & Warrington #CommunityEnergy Masterclasses. Masterclass 1 covers Community Energy in 2026 1️⃣ Community Energy in 2026, 11 Aug, 13:00-15:00 BST www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ecw-commun... 🧵2/6

ECW Community Energy Masterclass 1: Community Energy in 2026

Join our free masterclasses providing guidance and support on key themes to community energy groups in Cheshire and Warrington.

eventbrite.co.uk

📢 New: Cheshire & Warrington #CommunityEnergy Masterclasses. 5 free sessions to help community energy groups navigate project development, governance and finance. Hosted by Scene on behalf of Enterprise Cheshire & Warrington, with the North West Net Zero Hub. 🧵1/6

Open letter to the PM on Rosebank & Jackdaw oil and gas fields, covered in the Guardian: www.theguardian.com/environment/... Full letter here: climateuncensored.com/letter-to-th...

15/ We didn't dodge the worst case. We narrowed one route to it. Several others have gotten wider. But the worst case was never fixed. It's a function of what we do next. We can always take actions that make it less bad. That's the part the relief takes, and the doom takes, both miss.

14/ There's two ways to read this. One: we have less room for manoeuvre than we'd hoped. The other, & this matters, every link in the chain is also a link we can act on. Cutting emissions does more work than we thought. So does protecting carbon sinks. So does building resilience

13/ Worth turning the word "implausible" around. The CMIP7 paper says SSP5-8.5 is implausible. Good. But, alas, a 2°C world being a safe one is also looking implausible.

12/ Tipping point thresholds have also been adjusted down considerably. It's now estimated that Greenland ice sheet collapse, West Antarctic ice sheet collapse, and warm-water coral reef die-off could be triggered at around 1.5°C of warming.

Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points

Global warming greater than 1.5°C could trigger multiple climate tipping points.

science.org

11/ And there's a second front: impacts. The spread of possible outcomes at a given warming level is wider than usually communicated. New work on weather extremes shows that at 2°C, worst-case projections for droughts, extreme rain & fire weather reach what the average model projects at 3 or 4°C.

Moderate global warming does not rule out extreme global climate outcomes - Nature

Extreme global climate outcomes may occur even under moderate 2 °C warming and may turn out to be more extreme than model-averaged projections at 3 °C or 4 °C warming.

nature.com

10/ So even just on the way from emissions to warming: → feedbacks pushing concentrations up → forcing already tracking the high pathway → sensitivity tail trimmed on the low end Together, they keep high warming on the table.

9/ Forcing → warming. Satellite measurements of Earth's energy imbalance are tightening constraints on #climate sensitivity. → Very low sensitivity estimates are increasingly unlikely. Same forcing is now expected to produce more warming than the previous lower estimates suggested.

Observed trend in Earth energy imbalance may provide a constraint for low climate sensitivity models

Climate forcings by greenhouse gases and aerosols cause an imbalance at the top of the atmosphere between the net incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation from Earth. This Earth energy...

science.org

8/ Concentrations → forcing. Work by @drjamesehansen.bsky.social and colleagues demonstrates that when we include all GhGs we can see the growth rate of forcing is currently tracking the RCP 8.5 pathway, well above RCP 6.0, RCP 4.5 and RCP 2.6

Warning! This “Colorful Chart” is Censored by IPCC

James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha and Dylan Morgan

jimehansen.substack.com

7/ And these feedbacks are already activating. Permafrost thaw & Arctic wildfires are eating about a quarter of the carbon budget for 1.5°C. This is already happening now, sooner than the standard scenarios assume.

Permafrost and wildfire carbon emissions indicate need for additional action to keep Paris Agreement temperature goals within reach - Communications Earth & Environment

Including permafrost and wildfire carbon emissions reduces the remaining allowable carbon budget for keeping the global average temperature increase below 1.5 degrees by 25%, according to Earth system...

nature.com

6/ From that @carbonbrief.org article: "Under the highest available C-cycle feedback estimate in the literature a RCP6.0-related emissions scenario could result in 2100 atmospheric CO₂ concentrations equal to those in the standard RCP8.5 concentration scenario" Lower emissions. Same destination.

5/ The other links aren't going so well for us. Emissions → concentrations. As the world warms, forests, soils and oceans absorb less of what we emit. Carbon-cycle feedbacks mean lower emissions can still produce higher CO₂ in the air.

Analysis: How ‘carbon-cycle feedbacks’ could make global warming worse - Carbon Brief

Yet climate change also depends on an under-appreciated factor known as “carbon-cycle feedbacks”. Accounting for uncertainties in carbon-cycle feedbacks means that the world could warm much more – or ...

carbonbrief.org

4/ The new CMIP7 paper makes a claim about the start of that chain: → SSP5-8.5, the very-high-emissions scenario, has become implausible. That's a reasonable update. But it's being read as: high-end warming risk is off the table. That doesn't follow, because it's a claim about just one link.

The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP7 (ScenarioMIP-CMIP7)

Abstract. Scenarios serve as a critical tool in climate change analysis, enabling the exploration of future evolution of the climate system, climate impacts, and the human system (including mitigation...

gmd.copernicus.org

3/ Getting from emissions to forcing to warming runs through a chain: emissions → concentrations → forcing → warming Each link carries its own uncertainty. And this uncertainty is not our friend!