Simon Donner

In Game-Changing Climate Rollback, E.P.A. Aims to Kill a Bedrock Scientific Finding

What makes this rejection of science even more sad and pathetic is that the folks involved can't even come up with a new bullshit arguments, they are using old ones recycled from the 1980s and 1990s.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/c...

Canada’s Carbon Offset Projects Probably Don’t Offset Carbon. What Could Replace Them? This article was written by Lucy Binfield, Isabella Morgante and Professor Hisham Zerrifi as part of the University of British Columbia’s…

Carbon offsets aren't working -- what can we do instead? Great article following on research done by a team here at UBC, as part of our Solutions Scholars program (more here: climatesolutions.ubc.ca).
medium.com/@lucybinfiel...

Finalizing Canada’s oil and gas methane regulations Cutting oil and gas methane emissions 75 per cent by 2030 will leverage Canadian success and expertise. Reducing methane ...

Incisive short article from @climateinstitute.bsky.social on what should be an easy climate "win" -- cutting methane emissions from oil and gas, an action for which the technology is ready to go.
440megatonnes.ca/insight/fina...

That's why doom-ism irks many experts. The message of climate science is not “1.5°C or bust.” It is that “every action counts.” To put it simply, the IPCC reports find that he more that the world can do to reduce emissions, the less the planet will warm, and the less that people will suffer. (2/2)

The Paris temperature limits, and also the planetary boundary thresholds, are often incorrectly seen as fundamental features of planet, when they are really policy judgments, geopolitically and socio-culturally mediated verdicts on the levels of change that the world may consider dangerous. (1/2)

Been part of many debates about the ideal plural for Prius.

Consequential differences in satellite-era sea surface temperature trends across datasets - Nature Climate Change Global datasets of surface temperature and sea surface temperature (SST) are routinely used in climate change studies. Here the authors show that while surface temperature datasets closely agree, four...

Valuable comparison of different sea surface temperature datasets, with implications for computing global temperature trends and extremes, climate model experiments and marine climate impacts research
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Trump’s budget hurts the fight against climate change, but all is not lost OPINION: “When it comes to stopping climate change and creating a cleaner, more prosperous future for Americans, it’s not game over. It’s game on,” Jonathan Foley writes.

"Climate solutions will continue gaining momentum and change the world. It might not unfold as quickly as we want, or in the exact way that feels most logical, but is inevitable - @globalecoguy.bsky.social
www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...

Canadian wildfire smoke ruining Americans' summer, says letter from Congress members | CBC News Canadian wildfire smoke is travelling south and making it difficult for some Americans to enjoy their summer, says a letter from six members of Congress to Canada's U.S. ambassador.

What are we doing? File this under the any attention = good attention theory of politics. The letter strikes me as 100% performative, written to generate a public response and news cycle, rather than to be taken seriously as a policy matter.
www.cbc.ca/news/world/c...

Flow of the Guadalupe River outside Kerrville, Texas. What gets me is thinking about what all those people experienced, the shock and panic as the river quickly rose. We can be mad about the lack of warning systems, about a million other decisions that weren't made. We can also just be sad.

UBC is recruiting a new Canada Excellence Research Chair in Ocean Ecological Modelling. This is a great opportunity for a mid-career scientist studying our changing oceans - CERCs are the best funded research chairs in the Canadian research system.
research.ubc.ca/media/file/c...

Delivering Geological Net Zero • After 2050, you can't sell stuff that causes global warming. • So, if you're selling stuff that is causing global warming today, you have 25 years to fix it - by capturing and permanently storing one tonne of carbon dioxide for every tonne generated by your activities and the products you sell. • And no pinkie promises just to stop selling that stuff in 2049.

Myles Allen with a straight forward message: To stop climate change, companies must stop selling stuff that cause global warming. @gsiexeter.bsky.social

I spend quite a bit of my time around energy policy wonks and am regularly reminded that even people whose job it is to track the energy industries often don’t fully get how quick the solar+storage biz is moving

Full budget: www.noaa.gov/sites/defaul...
Summary: www.axios.com/2025/07/01/n...
Snapshots below

... this isn't that. This is ideology (climate = bad) leading people to act in a coarse manner against their own self-interest, as it risks wasting the capital investment in building the programs, giving away leadership in science, and undermining American's ability to prepare for extreme events...

The proposed NOAA budget cuts all climate research, closing labs, offices and measurement systems. Other countries (🇨🇦) are jealous of NOAA's depth, breadth, quality and history of atmospheric and ocean research. If you want to streamline that work, cut budgets, there may be a rational discussion...

This comes to mind because I've seen the dynamic is SO many professional settings (faculty meetings, etc.), in which folks might have voted differently had their vote been private, for better or for worse. Again, a better solution may be to prioritize professional integrity and courage in hiring!

The US Senate vote for that destructive bill seems like a game theory problem. Secret ballots might have led to a very different outcome... though arguably bad precedent in a democracy, and may not work given media pressure. Alternative is to just elect people with a least a sliver of courage.

Rewiring the energy debate The electrotech perspective

Recently discovered the Electrotech Revolution blog from the smart folks @ember-energy.org and it's absolutely nailing some loose ideas I've been circling around for years. This piece, "Rewiring the energy debate," has me nodding along throughout electrotechrevolution.substack.com/p/rewiring-t...

Voice recognition on? I've had that happen, not realized that the mic was still on, and had Microsoft insert background song lyrics into the paper I'm editing...

Doug Ford unveils latest plans for Ontario Place redevelopment Premier Doug Ford has unveiled his latest plans for the controversial redevelopment of Ontario Place.

Er.. the proposed $400 million parking garage on Toronto's waterfront is necessary and expensive because every spot will have an EV charger to meet future demand... right?
www.thestar.com/politics/pro...

The figure is from the IPCC Sixth Assessment's Synthesis Report: www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/s...

Climate action is not just about future generations. The choices we make today will help determine the climate impacts that people alive today, people in our lives, will experience over the rest of the century (and beyond).

Figure is from IPCC Working Group 1's Summary for Policymakers: www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/w...

We talk a lot about the level of climate warming, have we passed a given threshold, and less about the rate. The rate is the core problem: we are changing climate faster than society or the environment can adapt. If it took 10,000 years to warm by 2 C, this would be a different conversation.

Guest post: How solar panels and batteries can now run ‘close to 24/365’ in some cities - Carbon Brief The white paper sets out how near-continuous “24/365” solar power has become an economic and technological reality in sunny regions.

New analysis: How solar panels and batteries can now run ‘close to 24/365’ in some cities
www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-h...

Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice Share This Editorial

This is one of the sharpest and darkly funniest things I've ever read.
theonion.com/letter-to-co...

There's value in both for sure. In this case, the department doing the hiring has many of the people you describe, but is shorter on natural scientists.

Ha, thanks. More of a pipe dream and in-joke right now... folks around me are probably tired of me saying I wish I could find the time to write more.

Uh... so I shouldn't start a Substack?