Mike Murphy
@mjamurphy.bsky.social
I'm an applied economist interested in how we get better at interacting with natural systems. You can find out more about my research at mjamurphy.com Personal account, only Scottish football takes guaranteed correct
Gift link. The climate disaster arrives on Sesame Street: “A fierce storm tore through the set of the 57-year-old show to help children make sense of extreme weather…children born in 2020 will experience up to 7 times more extreme weather than children born in 1960.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/c...
Climate Change Comes to Sesame Street (Gift Article)
An episode this week focuses on the dangerous effects of warming, without mentioning climate change.
nytimes.com
We are heading into an unprecedented El Niño event. Combined with supply chain disruptions for fertilizer and fuel, there is significant risk to agricultural production in many countries.
Zeke Hausfather@zekehausfather.com · 3d agoI'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.
Susanna Berkouwer@sberkouwer.bsky.social · 2d agoSubsidies for clean cookstoves can abate carbon dioxide at only $7 per ton of CO2. We account for issues like imperfect additionality, stove breakage rates, non-usage or low usage by some buyers, and others. Read my article with @joshtdean.bsky.social in Climate Change Economics: lnkd.in/gw8hr9Mu
Extreme weather is complicated (there are over 150 definitions of drought in the literature!), the Earth system is complex, models are imperfect, and we still have much to learn. But it's remarkable how spot-on most of our predictions have been: drawdown.org/insights/is-...
Is climate change unfolding faster and fiercer than scientists expected?
Climate change is undeniably here, and it’s bad. But is it, as some are claiming, worse than even the scientists expected?
drawdown.org
Good framing that starts from the risk. Insurance is the signal. The fundamental problem is climate change causing increased physical risk to housing.
John Vaillant@johnvaillant.bsky.social · 3d agoSenator Whitehouse said it better than anyone: "Climate risk makes things un-insurable. No insurance makes things un-mortgageable. No mortgages crashes the property markets. Crashed property markets trash the economy.” #wildfire #Spokane #insurance
"[AC] units are expensive, energy is often expensive, and upgrading grids is expensive. Though more than 80% of the world’s population regularly encounter the kind of heat for which cooling is needed, just 40% of those people are able to get ac." [🎁 link]
The geopolitics of air-conditioning
Heatwaves are making access to AC a political problem around the world
economist.com
That’s easy to do in Stata, you just need to access an invisible, cryptically-named matrix that requires learning a different programming language to view
The first stop for many people caught up in the US criminal justice system is a local jail. Many have healthcare issues involving eg mental illness and/or addiction. But jails don't view themselves as healthcare facilities. @marcellaalsan.bsky.social marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2026/08/heal...
Healthcare in jails
I post market design related news and items about repugnant markets. See my Stanford profile. I have a 2026 book : Moral Economics The subtitle is "From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work."
marketdesigner.blogspot.com
today is maybe the anniversary of the battle of talas, when the early medieval world's two great powers bumped into each other
Today (?) in Central Asian history: the Battle of Talas (751)
The Abbasids defeat a Tang Chinese army and secure Islam's foothold in Central Asia.
foreignexchanges.news
Hey energy friends - I have a solar question. I'm looking for the energy an acre of solar panels can generate. I thought it would be easy, but I'm getting dodgy references, and government sites not working. If you have a good reference for that number, I'd sure appreciate it! 🙏
The Roosevelt Institute asked a bunch of climate wonks to put our heads together to talk about what a national Democratic platform should look like. 2029 is really not that far away and there's a lot of work to do.
Roosevelt Institute@rooseveltinstitute.org · 6d agoClimate policy isn't going away because Washington stopped talking about it. Americans are already paying the price through fires, floods, heat, and rising costs. Our new collection asks a different question: what should the next agenda for climate look like post-DOGE and the rollback of the IRA? 🧵
🚨 New today in Nature 🦟 After decades of debate, we show that climate change has probably made malaria worse in sub-Saharan Africa, causing about 1 extra case per 1,000 children. But: malaria eradication efforts have pulled the other direction 200 times harder. 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I didn't attend the AAEA meetings, but apparently John's speech moved a lot of my friends. John is a superb researcher and a great role model for new development economists entering the field. I'm glad to see those with non-traditional career tracks in academia being recognized in the profession!
International Food Policy Research Institute@ifpri.org · last wk.IFPRI Nonresident Fellow John Hoddinott has been named a 2026 @aaea-economics.bsky.social Fellow. Congrats on this well-deserved honor, John, & thank you for your enduring contributions to IFPRI and the global development community! 👏 #AAEA #FoodSystems #Nutrition #SocialProtection @cgiar.org
++BREAKING++ The UK and Spanish governments have issued a joint statement overnight: "[We] agreed that this summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life." www.gov.uk/government/n...
The statement: a hold and 3 dissents—Hammack, Kashkari, and Logan wanted a hike now. That was the only info. No rationale for the hold, no hint at what a hike would take. Not one word of the data discussion changed after six weeks of inflation and jobs surprises. None, zip, nada. Never seen that.
*Trojan historian watching as the Achaeans break down the gates* Wow, my civilization is undergoing a complex transformation from a heavily centralized and stratified administrative society to a more socially-fragmented modality of living in which material culture is dispersed amidst smaller sites.
Climate-friendly alts to beef aren't just limited to veggies, and legumes? Replacing beef with fish, chicken, or other animal proteins can go a long way in reducing the carbon footprint of your diet. Learn more from Research Associate, @enviroem.bsky.social: https://bit.ly/4x2yGnz #plantbased
Now that the entire tech industry is on board, here’s a call to build AI models not just with open weights but with an open corpus.
Public Intelligence
A call for AI models with open weights, open source, and open corpus.
argmin.net
The costs of net zero are a lot lower than the costs of current policy
Chris Wallace@chriswallace.bsky.social · last wk.‘Bordeaux…is considering a total evacuation of the city of 270,000 people, with fires just 30 miles away. ‘France has already launched its largest peacetime evacuation.’ www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c6ffeee...
We need to urgently transition from fossil fuel use to prevent fire conditions from continuing to worsen
Daniel Swain@weatherwest.bsky.social · 2w agoThe extraordinary wildfire outbreak across Oregon, eastern Washington, and southern British Columbia has become even more alarming amid critical fire weather conditions. Over 500,000 acres have already burned in OR & WA alone, and that number could be >1 million acres by Mon.
