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Andrew Dessler

Andrew Dessler

@andrewdessler.com

26K followers 1.3K following 9.4K posts

Prof of Atmospheric Sciences & climate scientist @ Texas A&M; AGU and AAAS Fellow; Native Texan; find out what I think at https://www.theclimatebrink.com/

Environmental science 46%

Geology 17%

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Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · Nov 2

profile picture pupdate: strong consensus for: dog, but more professional.

Introducing my new profile pic:

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 11h

Once they got to Tangiers, things are not looking so great.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 13h

Watching Love Is Blind France. This is really emphasizing how awful the US contestants are.
#loveisblind

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 19h

The response from @bratwebb.bsky.social looks like what you get when you select 'auto' instead of a particular model. Not sure what this means since 'auto' and '4.1' give somewhat different answers.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 19h

Interesting, here's what Grok4.1 gave me. It does seem to be a "work in progress" ...
x.com/i/grok/share...

The question of whether climate change is an "urgent threat" depends on what you mean by "urgent" and "threat," but let's look at the evidence as objectively as possible.Current Scientific ConsensusThe IPCC (2021–2023 reports), NASA, NOAA, and virtually every national academy of science agree that human activities (primarily CO₂ and methane emissions) are the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century.
Global average temperature is already ~1.1–1.3 °C above pre-industrial levels (1850–1900 baseline) as of 2024–2025.
Warming is happening faster than at any time in at least the past 2,000 years, and the rate has accelerated in the last few decades.

What Makes It "Urgent"?Committed warming and tipping points
Even if all emissions stopped today, we are already locked into roughly another 0.5–1 °C of warming over the coming decades because of heat already absorbed by the oceans and the long lifetime of CO₂ already in the atmosphere.
Several potential tipping elements (West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, Amazon dieback, permafrost thaw, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation slowdown) become considerably more likely between 1.5 °C and 2.5 °C. Crossing some of these could trigger irreversible changes on century-to-millennium timescales.
Near-term risks that are already escalating Extreme heat events that were once-in-50-year events are now ~5 times more likely at 1.2 °C and become ~14 times more likely at 2 °C (IPCC AR6).
Heavy rainfall events are intensifying ~7 % per degree of warming (Clausius-Clapeyron relation).
Sea-level rise: we are already committed to ~0.5–1 m by 2100 even under aggressive mitigation; unmitigated scenarios give 1–2 m or more by 2100 and many meters over centuries. Low-lying nations and coastal cities are already planning multi-trillion-dollar defenses or managed retreat.

3. Time window for limiting warming
To have a 50 % chance of staying below 2 °C, the remaining carbon budget (from 2020 onward) was roughly 1,150 Gt CO₂ (IPCC SR1.5). We emit ~42 Gt CO₂e per year now, so that budget lasts ~25–30 years at current rates. For 1.5 °C (66 % chance), the budget was only ~400 Gt CO₂, which gives roughly a decade at current emission rates. Every year of delay makes the required rate of decarbonization steeper and more expensive.

Counter-Arguments and CaveatsSome impacts (e.g., hurricane frequency) remain debated; intensity and rainfall are increasing, but detection of frequency changes is harder.
Cold-weather deaths currently exceed heat-related deaths globally, and mild warming can reduce the former, though heat-related deaths are rising fast and are projected to dominate at higher warming levels.
Economic models vary widely: Nordhaus/DICE-type models suggest gradual optimal pathways; others (e.g., using fat-tailed risks or higher damage functions) argue for much more aggressive near-term action.
Adaptation is reducing vulnerability in many places (fewer deaths from natural disasters despite population growth), but there are hard limits (e.g., small island states, coral reefs, permafrost regions).

Bottom LineYes, climate change meets most reasonable definitions of an “urgent threat”:The physical risks are already material and growing nonlinearly.
The remaining time to avoid the worst outcomes (especially >2 °C) is measured in decades, not centuries.
The longer we delay deep emissions cuts, the more disruptive and costly the eventual transition becomes—both for mitigation and adaptation.

Whether that urgency justifies any specific policy (carbon tax level, nuclear expansion pace, geoengineering research, etc.) is where legitimate debate lies. But the underlying physical trajectory and tightening time constraint are not seriously contested in the current peer-reviewed literature.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 19h

Worth remembering: Grok2 vs. Grok3's answer to the question "is climate change an urgent threat?" suggests manipulation by Musk

bsky.app/profile/andr...

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · Feb 20

grok 2 vs grok 3

Grok 2's conclusion: Climate change is not a distant threat—it is happening now, and its impacts are intensifying. It threatens human health, economies, ecosystems, and global stability. While the challenge is immense, solutions exist, and immediate action can still make a difference. Governments, businesses, and individuals must act urgently to reduce emissions, adapt to changes, and build a sustainable future. The cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of action, and the time to act is now.

conclusion: So, urgent threat? If you buy the consensus, yes-time's ticking, and impacts are already here. If you're skeptical, it's more of a manageable shift we're overreacting to. Data's there on both sides; it's about what risks you're willing to bet on. What do you think?

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 19h

www.theclimatebrink.com/p/consensus-...

Consensus machines

Will the AI future inadvertently recenter expertise?

www.theclimatebrink.com

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 19h

LLMs function as "consensus machines." Rather than presenting diverse viewpoints like traditional search engines, LLMs are designed to provide a single "best" answer by drawing from their training data, collapsing plausible responses into consensus-aligned answers.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 19h

On The Climate Brink, @hausfath.bsky.social has a great post about LLMs: They might inadvertently help recenter scientific expertise in public discourse, despite recent concerns about ideological manipulation.

Reposted by A. E. Dessler, Jussi T. Eronen

Zeke Hausfather @hausfath.bsky.social · 23h

LLMs are fast becoming a major source of information.

In a new piece over at The Climate Brink, I argue that LLMs are fundamentally consensus machines, and could help defragment our information ecosystem – at least if their creators do not put thumbs on the digital scale.

Consensus machines

Will the AI future inadvertently recenter expertise?

www.theclimatebrink.com

Reposted by A. E. Dessler

Chuck Wendig @chuckwendig.bsky.social · 1d

A reminder that gas-powered leafblowers are nightmare devices that are bad for you, bad for your lawn, and very bad for the environment. They fume and scream and kill the world all so you can messily and ineffectively move leaves around, leaves which are generally supposed to stay where they fell.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 1d

Nice article in @politico.com about a for-profit geoengineering company. They are betting that we'll fail to keep the climate below dangerous levels and they'll get rich. That might not be a bad bet.
www.politico.com/news/magazin...

The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming

A 25-person startup is developing technology to block the sun and turn down the planet’s thermostat. The stakes are huge — and the company and its critics say regulations need to catch up.

www.politico.com

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 2d

If you liked James Balog's movie, Chasing Ice, here is a follow-up (short) film, Chasing Time.

www.pbs.org/pov/films/ch...

Chasing Time - POV

Photographer James Balog brings the 15-year Extreme Ice Survey project to a close.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 2d

Hard to believe they can respond when they haven’t even posted all of the comments.

My guess is that they’re going to repeal it understanding that they haven’t followed the rules, but hoping that they can win in court.

Reposted by A. E. Dessler, Peter Thorne

Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 2d

What if I told you that the entire point of the COPs is, at root, to single out their key export

Oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia were adamant that their key export not be singled out.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 2d

Just joking, it's not really me. You can tell because I never have this bright-eyed, easy-going expression on my face when grading.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 2d

Photo of me grading exams. I thought this student's answers were derivative and lacked insight.

photo of a black and white dog sitting behind a pile of paper the dog just shredded

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 3d

Our undergrads put together this forecast for the TAMU vs. Samford game tomorrow. Check out our super-talented students!
youtube.com/shorts/BjugE...

TAMU v Samford Game Day Forecast

YouTube video by TAMU Atmospheric Sciences

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 3d

Costco is ready for Thanksgiving

Lots of apple pies and pumpkin pies

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 3d

Check out the Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences youtube channel, where Dr. Chris Nowotarski talks about the rain event going on in TX over the next couple of days.

11/20/2025 Forecast Discussion

November’s been mostly warm and dry so far, but this week’s active weather pattern brings change. Let’s check in with A&M meteorologist Dr. Nowotarski for the details. #tamu #currentweather #synoptic

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 3d

accidentally left my AI note taker on after the meeting ended. here is what it got after I put some music on. actually doing a pretty good job.

lyrics to Homeward Bound by Simon & Garfunkel

Reposted by A. E. Dessler, Gavin A. Schmidt, Stephen D. Murphy

Alan Gerard @wxmanms1.bsky.social · 3d

TX Hill Country floods have been in the news as more victims' families file lawsuits. I've had a lot of opportunity to examine this event - including visiting Kerrville - and share my perspectives on what I've learned & what we can do to keep this from happening again. https://tinyurl.com/2yyzza2y

BalancedWx Special: Revisiting the Texas Hill Country flash flood catastrophe

Recent New York Times article provides details about events at Camp Mystic

Reposted by A. E. Dessler

Brooke Jarvis @brookejarvis.bsky.social · 4d

I wrote this week's Screenland column about the houses collapsing in the Outer Banks, an unusually visible example of a problem--the potentially rapid collapse of assets in a quickly changing world--that's much bigger www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/m...

Houses Collapsing Into the Sea? It’s Not as Baffling as It Looks.

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Simon L. Lewis, A. E. Dessler, Christopher Wright , and 4 more Simon L. Lewis, A. E. Dessler, Christopher Wright, Stephen D. Murphy, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Michael Larkin, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò

Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 4d

You ever just sit down and realize that the rise of 21st century fascism is capital's answer to climate change?

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, A. E. Dessler, Nathan Richardson

John Kostyack @kostyack.bsky.social · 4d

"Climate shock." New study shows that rising property insurance premiums caused by growing weather extremes are cascading into the real estate market. Homes in the ZIP codes most exposed to hurricanes and wildfires would sell for an average of $43,900 less than they would otherwise.

Increases in average annual premiums in seven key states.

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 5d

science!

HourlyERA5MapsBot @era5mapsbot.bsky.social · 5d

Reposted by A. E. Dessler

Maurice Carter @mauricec.bsky.social · 5d

"A system built on disposability makes businesses profitable in the short term, but it offloads waste and climate hazards onto the future and increases our energy demand." We accept the truism, but @andrewdessler.com offers a useful way to quantify the waste.

www.theclimatebrink.com/p/you-have-1...

You have 100 'energy slaves'

They pump your water, toast your bread, and move your car: Understanding the 'embedded energy' that powers our modern lives.

www.theclimatebrink.com

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 5d

Great video
youtu.be/J3R72nhui-A?...

SEC Shorts - Texas A&M almost blows it

YouTube video by SEC Shorts

Andrew Dessler @andrewdessler.com · 5d

Students watching a weather balloon being filled