Peter Jacobs

Peter Jacobs

@pjacobs.bsky.social

climate science (paleo, modern, future); public understanding of science (consensus, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6951-7126 Mastodon: fediscience.org/@peterjacobs Bird Site: https://twitter.com/past_is_future

3.9K followers1.7K following3.2K posts

Operational forecast models starting to show the next round of WWBs that the longer range looks were picking up on for early November. SSTs still climbing. It's like people think any temporary lull is the end. I wish that were the case! Unfortunately this is not how ENSO works. 🫠

Anton Gerashchenko@antongerashchenko.bsky.social

Steve Witkoff to Putin: You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.

We are just now nearing the end of another ~2 week Westerly Wind Burst event and there are some indications of another potential round coming towards the end of the month. And there is So. Much. Subsurface. Heat. How long will this event take to play out when we finally, actually do max out?

Not trying to pick on anyone, but it seems like there are wx people out there who don't understand the time lags involved with the atmospheric coupling or expressing the built up subsurface heat, to say nothing of how seasonality interacts here. Nothing so far indicating this event has peaked sadly.

Peter Jacobs reposted

The evolution of Hurricane Isaias from when it was first named to reaching category 3 strength this morning (9 October 2026). Warm water + moist air can be a dangerous combination in the Gulf. For the latest version of the Hurricane Threats & Impacts guidance, visit www.weather.gov/srh/tropical...

Peter Jacobs reposted

In fact the latest Vortex Data Message from NOAA recon suggests that the eyewall of Isaias is now CLOSED again. If it remains closed this time, that should at least in theory lay the groundwork for Isaias to start strengthening at an apreciable rate again, perhaps even rapidly.

Government employees are often warned to not even accept shared rides from their contractor counterparts or private sector colleagues to ensure they're avoiding the appearance of corruption. A must read here.

"Honey please I need you to get this done for me." How Kimberly Guilfoyle pressed a MAGA ally to transfer $100,000 to her Amex account. on.wsj.com/4hOljSg

Peter Jacobs reposted

Déjà vu. Nearly three years ago, @drtedros.who.int got duped by false propaganda into stoking rumors of a coverup of a mysterious illness in China. Now he's citing, but not specifying, "media reports" of a second employee in Russia. No such credible media reports appear to exist.

Since the first media reports, @who.int has been actively following up on the reported death of a laboratory worker at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute in Irkutsk oblast, Russian Federation. My full statement ⬇️

big contingent at the intersection of biology, technology, money, & Twitter who seem to believe the real lesson in The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that the boy didn't falsely cry wolf often enough & he should have aggressively gaslit people about non wolf events in the past being covered-up wolf attacks.

Peter Jacobs reposted

PRINT OF THE DAY I do sometimes photograph things other than the London Underground! Today we’re heading up to Scotland & the brilliantly yellow West Street Station on the Glasgow Subway. I love the futuristic look of these trains in this composite photo. If you like this print see link attached

And now Big Balls & associates (who are working for the National Design Studio) are attempting to get access to sensitive federal data via the new Executive Order about America dot gov.

Eric Geller@ericjgeller.com

GAO has a new report about how agencies gave DOGE staffers vast access to sensitive data and largely refused to verify to GAO that proper security controls were in place. The most remarkable part is the agencies' displays of pique & rancor toward GAO for asking questions. www.gao.gov/assets/gao-2...

Relative NINO3.4 anomaly is already over +2.5C and this event is not over. Motivated reasoning is a helluva drug.

Peter Jacobs@pjacobs.bsky.social

Two flavors of 2026/2027 El Niño minimizers on display. Left: Atlantic hurricane wishcaster. Right: anthropogenic climate denier. Both hoping the traditional Southern Oscillation Index is showing what they want to see. (Both wrong.)

Peter Jacobs reposted

feels like a real landmark of impunity that major corporations are making federal crimes part of the interview process

Paresh Dave@peard33.bsky.social

OpenAI hardware chief Tang Tan allegedly helped coach recruits on how to evade Apple’s data security protocols and directed them to bring confidential Apple parts to job interviews at OpenAI. www.wired.com/story/apple-...

Peter Jacobs reposted

congratulations to everyone on reinventing Worse Cable

IGN@ign.com

Disney+ has altered its user agreement to clarify that ads will be allowed on all subscription tiers. https://bit.ly/4hhOjBo

Andrew Couts@couts.bsky.social

Absolutely horrific: Thanks to a false intelligence "generated with the help of artificial intelligence," the US military nearly carried out an operation aboard a Chinese ship because the incorrect intelligence said it was carrying nukes, according to @cnn.com. edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...

Peter Jacobs reposted

You Might Think White Supremacists are Distasteful; Here’s Why You’re Wrong part 315 of an ongoing series at the New York Times

A.J. Bauer@ajbauer.bsky.social

Find you someone who loves you like the New York Times loves the sartorial preferences of right-wingers.

NBC News@nbcnews.com

The Pentagon is weighing a drastic plan to pull planes, ships, weapons and tens of thousands of U.S. troops from Europe, despite warnings from NATO allies about the growing threat of Russian aggression, sources say.

Peter Jacobs reposted

Replying to @davidho.bsky.social

NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.

Information is often culturally transmitted thru trusted ingroup sources (uncontroversial). When people oversell the significance of or try to browbeat people as luddites about frontier models / agentic AI, do they genuinely believe that is going to convince skeptics? Or is it just virtue signaling?

View full thread

There's a sweetspot for people who lacked previous exposure to eg deep learning, who are active on social media, and who have use cases that do genuinely immensely benefit from the recent advances from the insane resources spent on AI that can make it feel like magic that others are missing out on.

I am sure for people in that sweet spot it is maddening to see others uncritically regurgitate misinformation about how bad the technology supposedly is! (It's also maddening to see people who think Claude finding & plotting data is life changing assume that anyone who doesn't must be misinformed.)

Information is often culturally transmitted thru trusted ingroup sources (uncontroversial). When people oversell the significance of or try to browbeat people as luddites about frontier models / agentic AI, do they genuinely believe that is going to convince skeptics? Or is it just virtue signaling?

I'm not asking rhetorically. If the goal is to just say "these people are in denial/hoodwinked about AI, but not me!" that's fine. If the goal is to say "sure, there is insane hype about this stuff but you're also misinformed & missing genuine benefits" wouldnt that imply a different comms strategy?

Peter Jacobs reposted

A friend of mine works in AI and thinks bad things are about to happen. He sold his home and moved his family out the country. He said that if you own a home in a walkable San Francisco neighborhood near a taqueria with good veggie options, you should sell your home for super cheap right now.

This pic ⤵️ & the unfolding ENSO event remind me of an incredible piece of trivia: Sylvester Stallone was going to star in a movie where an El Niño somehow thaws out a pack of sabertooth tigers which then kill a bunch of people in and around Los Angeles before being taken down by an anthropologist.

Mike DiGirolamo@mikedigirolamo.bsky.social

'Big Cats' from Sharon Guynup and Steve Winter stands out to me as more than a collection of top-tier wildlife photography. These are stories of honest hope for big cats on the brink, and for conservation in general. Winter is the person who took the photo of P-22 the cougar with the Hollywood Sign

Peter Jacobs reposted

Ebola outbreak in DRC grows to 7,200 cases as government officials suggest transmission has peaked This remains the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history. Read more: https://bit.ly/4xYoei2 📷: UN Photo, Ari Gaitanis / Flickr cc