Caspar Donnison

b)

This was just posted by @tbretc.bsky.social on another platform. The Chicago Sun-Times obviously gets ChatGPT to write a ‘summer reads’ feature almost entirely made up of real authors but completely fake books. What are we coming to?

A line graph illustrating the relationship between cumulative CO₂ emissions and global surface temperature increase. The title reads: “Every tonne of CO₂ emissions adds to global warming.” A subtitle states: “Global surface temperature increase since 1850–1900 (°C) as a function of cumulative CO₂ emissions (GtCO₂).” Y-axis (vertical): Labeled “Find out” on the left side (as a humorous annotation), with the actual scale running from 0°C to 3°C, representing the temperature increase. X-axis (horizontal): Labeled “Fuck around” at the bottom (as a humorous annotation), with a scale ranging from 0 to 4500 GtCO₂, indicating cumulative CO₂ emissions since 1850. A black jagged line represents historical global warming data, rising steadily from near 0°C to about 1.1°C as cumulative emissions reach approximately 2500 GtCO₂. The graph highlights a near-linear relationship between cumulative CO₂ emissions and global temperature increase, as stated in a text box within the plot area. Five colored shaded regions (with corresponding trend lines) represent different future emission scenarios (until 2050): SSP1-1.9 (light blue) SSP1-2.6 (blue) SSP2-4.5 (orange) SSP3-7.0 (red-orange) SSP5-8.5 (red) These scenario pathways show increasing temperature outcomes with higher emissions, with SSP1-1.9 leading to the lowest warming and SSP5-8.5 to the highest. The graph replaces conventional axis labels with the meme-inspired phrases “Fuck around” (X-axis) and “Find out” (Y-axis), emphasizing the consequence of emissions on global warming.

Here's a figure from IPCC AR6 Summary for Policymakers showing the linear relationship between fucking around and finding out.

Every tonne of CO₂ we add to the atmosphere makes things worse for us and all other living things.

Ship of the Day, in the SF Bay. This is the Heavy Load Carrier ‘UHL Fresh’ (built 2024: very fresh!), coming from Brazil to the US West Coast: headed to the Port of Stockton. I couldn’t find out what it’s carrying today, possibly wind turbine parts as it has shipped these before. #shipoftheday

Introducing the "tree ring plot": a new way to visualize global surface temperatures. Each ring is a year, and each colored cell represents a day in global average temperatures (compared to a 1850-1900 preindustrial baseline).

Stirring talk at SF Climate Week from @globalecoguy.bsky.social & @projectdrawdown.bsky.social on their new ‘Drawdown Explorer’: an online data-driven tool that will empower people to explore climate solutions in their own communities. Launching in June!

I’ve lived in California car-free for 5yrs, fueled by European stubbornness. Similarly, many here stick to their cars, even in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Bay Bridge into SF. So how can we facilitate sustainable behavior shifts? Improving alternative travel options is a big part of it.

SF Climate Week! And it started for me aboard the Klamath vessel, with a panel discussion on sustainable travel in the Bay Area: electric ferries are coming in 2026 😊

The early morning Amtrak from Oakland to Sacramento: great views, relaxing, WiFi to do morning emails = better than driving.

This is a Ro-Ro ship, meaning ‘roll-on/roll-off’ (a vehicle carrier). Her name is ‘Hyperion Ray’ and she has a capacity of approx 10k cars! #shipoftheday in the Bay.

The abuse of GWP* was revealed in my paper with Caspar Donnison ( doi.org/10.1088/1748... ). Explaining metrics to the House of Lords was an interesting experience here committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/129705/pdf/ . Their report reflected our contribution well.

They shouldn’t be doing that, & got fined for it. They rapidly built a supply-chain to 7 Mt annually: it requires huge oversight. From what I’ve read, the vast majority of it works well. And it can & should work better, the new sustainability requirements reflect this.

CCGT was on the cards if the biomass didn’t go ahead, but whether it would have replaced all the coal, we don’t know; either way, the alternative to bioenergy would have been increased fossil fuel use vs what we have now.

If, like me, you sometimes get bamboozled with the various metrics used in climate science, this letter is a masterclass in communicating the difference, and why it matters.

If Drax didn’t convert from burning coal to burning biomass over ten years ago, the UK would not be coal free in 2025. Many people don’t like biomass burning, but it is undeniably much better for the climate than burning fossil fuels.

The debate continues on the climate impact of livestock methane, so confused by the GWP* tool. As Donal says in his letter, every tonne of methane causes warming equally; farmers are being misled by a false narrative that some count less than others.

Look at that rain forecast map!! I decided to be sensible this morning and take my bike on the bus down the hill on my commute to work.

Happy Tuesday! From the SF Bay Area, where we are being pummeled by an atmospheric-river fueled storm. After a very dry January, we’re expected to get around 3 inches of rain in the next few hours.

This was the traffic at 6:15am on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge today. The BART train runs this route every few minutes. Culture change - to public transit - is hard, yes, but this is a massive open goal: people don’t want to be stuck in traffic at 6am!

Pine martens are also near my hometown in mid Wales, which is very cool. Haven’t seen one yet, I hear they are very secretive.

San Francisco has been particularly affected by hybrid/remote working changes since 2019. Still, with car traffic second only to NYC there’s a massive opportunity to get more stressed and delayed motorists out of cars and onto Bay Area trains!

‘The San Francisco traffic is getting worse’ from the SF Chronicle. It’s the 2nd worst US metro area for traffic and yet the Chronicle still reports motorist aversion to using public transport (BART). Downtown BART exits are only a third of their 2019 levels!

www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/t...

“Factory closures highlight the turbulent shift to a green economy, exposing political challenges and the urgent need for an equitable move to net-zero.” Without one, climate goals will be derailed.

Welcome to Food/ClimateSky!

- sharing silly thoughts is called “manureposting”

- we don’t say “lol” or “lmao” we say “N₂O” or “N₂OOOO”

- like methane, our posts are forgotten relatively quickly but are 80 times more potent than others’ posts over a 20-year time period

The train is a great alternative to driving between the Bay Area and Sacramento. I’ve done it so many times and I still stare in wonder at the views. Less stress, less pollution, good WiFi, conversations with nice people. Today’s train is the busiest I’ve seen post-pandemic!

The worse a city is for cars the better it is for pedestrians, public transit, and cyclists!

Eating less beef is a climate solution. Here's why that's hard for some American men Climate researchers have long grappled with how to get Americans to eat less beef, a food with a huge global warming impact. Now some are thinking about it through the lens of gender.

Fellow dudes.

We eat a lot of beef.

Eating less beef and more of nearly anything else would greatly reduce the climate impacts of our food choices.

And we can still be manly men.

Risk to rely on soil carbon sequestration to offset global ruminant emissions - Nature Communications While accounting for intrinsic differences between short- and long-lived greenhouse gases, solely relying on soil carbon sequestration in grasslands to offset warming effect of emissions from current ...

And this other recent paper also addresses the topic: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is a fascinating topic that I did not know about. Rain absorbs CO2 as it falls and deposits this in the oceans. It impacts ocean-air flux by 1) increasing ocean turbulence and 2) altering the air-sea CO2 concentration gradient. Rain increases the ocean C sink by 5-7%!

I oil mine but I have been seriously considering switching to a waxed chain because I’m getting fed up with oil on my clothes! Interested to hear your thoughts on the performance difference though?