ClimateFran

🗳️The entire country is watching to see if California voters will soon approve a proposed one-time, 5% tax on the state's wealthiest residents. Want to know what the fuss is all about? Tune into this fiery SIEPR Economic Summit debate, linked in 🧵 below. #Prop40 #BillionaireTax

ICYMI: Last week released our Q3 2026 Natural Catastrophe & Climate Report. While direct catastrophe loss costs are below average YTD (>$242 billion economic / >$92 billion insured), which is actually typical during El Niño, the societal impacts have been considerable. www.ajg.com/gallagherre/...

An enormous public good for anyone working on climate impact assessment. Moving the bar for assessment of impact uncertainties.

Announcing the 2026 #AMSPhotoContest winners! 🥇 "Diamond dust sky eye" by Jaroslav Fous 🥈 "Sea Dragon" by Chris Elkinton 🥉 "Cirrus, the Veils of the Moon" by Roberto Bueno 🏅 Members' Choice: "Rainbow Cataclysm" by Jeremy Janus Check out more photos on AMS Headlines: https://bit.ly/481Yg28

“All models are wrong, but some are useful” - words to live by working on climate change George Box was also a @casbsstanford.bsky.social fellow, working in Study 16 just across from where I am this year.

No such thing as a threshold level of warming where "we're doomed" - every ton matters

Intriguing new paper finds the US corporate tax code subsidizes CO2. The dirtiest firms pay ~10 cents on each dollar of capital income; the cleanest pay 14. Why? Machinery and equipment are good collateral, so they borrow more, deduct more interest, and shrink taxable income.

Gasoline-only cars now make up just 49% of global new vehicle sales, down from 73% in 2021: electrek.co/2026/10/05/g...

🚨Tomorrow! 🚨Join us for the Virtual Seminar on Climate Economics with Katherine Wagner from UBC

Another day, another monthly tide record in San Francisco. Even more shocking, the highest tides of the month aren't predicted until Oct. 27 and 28, a half foot higher than today. November, December and January king tides will be in another league. More: www.sfchronicle.com/weather/arti...

Next Thursday, join all the cool kids for the second in this fall's Virtual Seminar on Climate Economics! Katherine Wagner from UBC presenting new work on "Labor Lock-In in the Fossil Fuel Industry" 8am Pacific, 11am Eastern, 5pm Europe cepr.org/events/event...

Very excited to be presenting my ~75 page paper that can easily fill an 1 - 1.5 hour economics seminar in 8 minutes at AGU. Oh wait, 6 minutes with 2 minutes for questions

Congratulations to NSF NCAR scientist Marika Holland for becoming a 2026 MacArthur Fellow, an award commonly known as the “genius grant.” Marika uses Earth system models to study polar regions, improving our understanding of sea ice predictability & polar climate variability. https://bit.ly/4xWSau7

When I worked at the White House, we constantly had to correct the speeches and memos that started with "The cost of college is rapidly rising." It's one of those zombie ideas that is hard to kill. College can be expensive, and moreso than it was for our parents, but let's get the facts right.

Confused by all the debate about the new permitting reform bill? Here is a quick cheat-sheet of the most important provisions, and their likely impact on emissions:

Kaiyu and I spent a few years together in David Lobell's lab when he was a post-doc and I was a PhD student. Power-house academic making big strides in agriculture, big data ad the environment, as well as a wonderful human being. Huge congrats Kaiyu! kaiyuguan.nres.illinois.edu

Shot: $5 a gallon gasoline Chaser:

Major u-turn from Justice Alito as Supreme Court reveals he will no longer participate in the big climate change case being argued next week. Previously, the court told NBC News there was no reason for him to step aside despite his earlier recusal in same case.

In 2024, dam demolition on the Klamath was completed, letting long-controlled stretches of the river flow free. Now, the first stats for how many salmon are returning are in. It's good news: Thousands migrated upriver in '24 and '25. But recovery is not guaranteed. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/c...

For a century, we’ve essentially been running an Enhanced Weathering field trial. In our Nature paper out yesterday, we show that agricultural liming in the Mississippi River Basin acted as a net CO₂ sink—while offering a rare century-scale analogue for EW. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/n: Because of record-breaking diesel prices, the Trump Admin is reportedly considering a diesel export ban. There is one part of the country that this would squeeze tremendously, risking physical shortages that would prevent people from heating their homes in winter: New England (PADD 1A).

Virtual Seminar on Climate Economics starting THIS THURSDAY - register here for the zoom link

Not an exaggeration to say when authoritarian thugs distort scientific research toward their own petty or prejudiced tastes, economies suffer, national security is compromised, people die. Exact proportion of each of those consequences varies from one authoritarian state to another, but all happen

The Virtual Seminar on Climate Economics returns next week for a banger 2026 fall season. Kicking off with Greg Casey on the hot button topic we all want to know the answer to - "Are Carbon Tariffs Climate Policy?" [I'm guessing "no"] Get your front row tickets here cepr.org/events/event...

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Great Miami Hurricane, which brought Category 4 wind / surge damage to a city which was still in its infancy. Things have changed A LOT since. Just look at the graphic below highlighting population and housing unit totals from 1900-2025. Staggering! (1/2)

Corporate emissions accounting is a morass of vested interests and obscure technical loopholes you could drive a cybertruck through. Not a sound foundation for serious climate policy. See also "green" hydrogen.

No bad spots at CASBS but my study has one of the best views IMHO

Going forward, the US National Science Foundation research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and Earth sciences is $110 million per year. Trump's illegal war with Iran cost the Department of Defense (i.e., the American taxpayers) $38 billion in the first 5 months, or $220 million per day.

On The Climate Brink: The Atmosphere Just Set a Water Vapor Record. Aug. 2026 probably had more water vapor in the atmosphere than any month in the last few thousand years, if not a 100,000 years. www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-atmosp...

Another banger of a paper by Jacob Moscona. economics.mit.edu/sites/defaul...

An incredible article about the wildfire situation that was recommended on X by two fire chiefs I deeply respect and we all should listen to, Bobby Garcia and Kim Zagaris. California is lucky to have them both. Can we listen to what they and others are saying? grist.org/extreme-weat...

Latest from our editorial board: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Two extraordinary charts from today’s PISA test results: 1) School test scores continue to collapse internationally, underscoring how this is no longer a Covid effect but sustained decline. Those falls in reading and maths are equivalent to about two years of lost schooling.

Data from 10 million US high schoolers show that exposure to air pollution driven by wildfire smoke slows the rate of learning and increases achievement gaps by race and income, from A. Patrick Behrer, Joshua Goodman, J. Parker Goyer, and R. Jisung Park www.nber.org/papers/w35670

Have been very much out of office on a hiking trip for the past two weeks but now I’m back I’m excited to share a bit more about this new research. Short version: electricity demand for heating and cooling (particularly on peak days) looks set to rise basically everywhere in coming decades. (1/n)

The compounding nature of extreme heat is accelerating the degradation of our aging infrastructure. This is yet another daily example of climate change impacts in real time.

Fascinating use of the Environmental Impacts Frame dataset to track individual outcomes from wildfires - slow recovery particularly in lower income households