Peter Thorne

I had a few very close shaves when I lived close enough to maynooth to bike commute. Now thanks to landlord selling up and housing crisis too far so instead a considerate electric car driver (and that garners even more opprobrium). Stay safe and if you are swinging by maynooth or edenderry …

'Close pass' drivers offered education by police Drivers caught passing too close to cyclists are offered education rather than prosecution.

Lots of people in Ireland could use this education. 🙃

My book - ClimateINJustice is shortlisted for the @wainwrightprize.bsky.social ! Really happy about this, as it's not traditional conservation writing - but conserving & fighting for us humans & our rights wainwrightprize.com/shortlist-20...

Devastating footage of a flash flood destroying a village in Uttarakhand, northern India, today. Such events will become increasingly severe and more frequent as global temperatures rise. Posted by Channel 4 on IG.

Wild & stormy seascape in oils: A wave in the foreground, with hills just visible on the horizon and dark clouds above.

I am offering my recent oil painting, Clouds Over Connemara, as the prize in a raffle to raise much needed funds for the extraordinary Muslim Sisters of Eire: msoe.ie
Please, please share and buy tickets if you can 🙏
More info about the painting (& artist!) here: www.artachart.com/available-wo...

Imagine we all drove EVs and then someone came along and proposed an ICE vehicle…

Video credit: Nic Cruz Patane (link in Alt text)

👀 Mesozoic atmospheric CO2 concentrations reconstructed from dinosaur tooth enamel ⚒️
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Even if self driving cars at scale were a real possibility (they aren't) the last thing this city needs is more cars

NOAA-15, 1837 UTC Overpass: THE finest view of Storm FLORIS today by any satellite, period. @simonleewx.com

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.

Trump administration takes aim at satellite that measures carbon dioxide and crops

This would be such a huge waste. Glad to see my @carnegiescience.bsky.social colleague @annamichalak.bsky.social quoted.

www.npr.org/2025/08/04/n...

Journey times up, deaths down: Welsh 20mph speed limit still divisive two years on Protests continue against default lower limit in urban areas that supporters say is working ‘exactly as intended’

On the one hand, far fewer people are being killed. On the other, some people get to work two minutes later. So it's impossible to say whether it's good or not.

The 2023/24 El Niño event exhibited unusually weak extratropical teleconnections - Communications Earth & Environment Extreme sea surface temperature warming in the tropical Indian Ocean and Atlantic in 2023 suppressed the rainfall pattern induced by the 2023/24 El Niño, reducing its tropical and extra-tropical impac...

Big El Niños 🌊 usually come with big 🌎 teleconnections.
The one in 2023/24 didn't. Why?
Rainfall anomalies in the tropical Pacific were suppressed due to greater warming in Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Led by Lei Zhang, with @matcollins.bsky.social
@cires.colorado.edu

WMO coordination of weather, climate and water services is central to global safety, security and development, but sustainable funding remains a challenge. In 2025, we call for both public and private sector engagement.
📎 bit.ly/3UEwSQt

NEW: Extraordinary footage has emerged of the huge tsunami that hit Russia’s remote Kamchatka peninsula after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake on July 30th.

(🎥 Doni Nikz)

a man is making a surprised face while sitting at a table in a restaurant . Alt: Nathan Filion making a surprised face while sitting at a table in a restaurant in response to a very silly argument.

Silliest argument I've seen that some folks are using to defend the DOE report. Apparently, the number of citations to the IPCC reports in a report critiquing the IPCC is a measure of how much the DOE authors *agree* with the IPCC.

Umm...

People say chatgpt is great for brainstorming ideas. I asked it a direct research question -- it cited my paper but the explanation is the exact opposite of my findings.

Scientists slam Trump administration climate report as a ‘farce’ full of misinformation Experts say the report being used to justify the mass rollback of climate regulations has many claims based on long-debunked research

What’s embarrassing about the DOE report is that it’s the same climate denier (we used to call them skeptics) talking points from when I was in grad school three decades ago. Can’t these deniers come up with something fresh?

Utility wildfire risk now includes fish falling from the sky.

11) it’s mind boggling how much cheaper air travel is than full price rail travel. A short notice ticket from Copenhagen to Gothenburg (a 4 hour journey) is €250, but you can fly Gothenburg-Stansted at 3 days notice for €30. Until we fix this, we’ll struggle to control demand for flights.

🧵 Here is my Europe map set of August rank maps for several climate variables. They show where August ranks compared to all other months (from 1 to 12).

August rank of temperature compared to all other months. 1/9

know your parasites 🪱🕷️🦟

Why are AI blackouts very likely?AI electricity consumption scaling FASTER than utility electricity

4.4% of US electricity in 2023 went to data centers. Berkeley Lab Report estimates 6-12% of nation's electricity will go to feed AI! @emmavigeland.bsky.social
eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/defaul...

For the rest of us, this example should seed skepticism that public subsidies on their own can create political realignment. Climate policy needs sticks- that means clear milestones for fossil winddown that come with serious sanctions for noncompliance, and clear, fair offramps for compliant firms.

Not at all a coincidence that this type of clean-energy comms - which presents a positive case in forceful terms rather than trying to dance around the issue - is coming almost exclusively from non-US firms. The comparison tells us a lot about why the IRA failed. More below:

1/9

What to make of POTUS's attempt to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)?

Let's run down what knowledgable people are saying...

It has been the honor of my life to serve as Commissioner of BLS alongside the many dedicated civil servants tasked with measuring a vast and dynamic economy. It is vital and important work and I thank them for their service to this nation.

Lee, S., Byrne, M. P., Loikith, P. C., & O’Dell, C. W. (2024). Zonal contrasts of the tropical Pacific climate predicted by a global constraint. Climate Dynamics, 62(1–2), 229–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06741-7

Lots of interesting stuff buried in the DOE report.

For example, here's a reference that doesn't exist:

RealClimate: The Endangerment of the Endangerment Finding? RealClimate: The EPA, along with the "Climate Working Group" (CWG) of usual suspects (plus Judith Curry and Ross McKitrick) at DOE, have just put out a document for public comment their attempt to res...

AI in the DOE report? This ref (p29) is fake:

Lee, S., Byrne, M. P., Loikith, P. C., & O’Dell, C. W. (2024). Zonal contrasts of the tropical Pacific climate predicted by a global constraint. Climate Dynamics, 62(1–2), 229–246. doi:10.1007/s00382-023-06741-7

www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

Nothing every changes except the climate When I became a climate scientist nearly 22 years ago, I started accumulating books on the subject. One of the first was called something1 like “Global Warming: Apocalypse or Hot Air?” …

Nothing ever changes but the climate

Thorts on a repought.

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2025/08/01/n...

Worth remembering that coal is the most deadly form of energy we have.

Incomparably more dangerous that renewables or nuclear.

And that's even if you ignore climate change.