Gavin A. Schmidt | Lightnews

Gavin Schmidt

@climateofgavin.bsky.social

38K followers 790 following 1.5K posts

Climate scientist, juggler. Bikes etc. Blogging at https://www.realclimate.org - data visualization, explainers, and debunking.

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Gavin A. Schmidt is a British climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, and co-founder of the climate science blog RealClimate. .. more

Environmental science 50%

Geology 21%

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Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

RealClimate feed @realclimate.org · 10h

RealClimate: 1.5ºC and all that www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

RealClimate: 1.5ºC and all that

RealClimate: The Paris Agreement temperature limits are a little ambiguous and knowing where we are is tricky. The desire to keep global temperature rises since the pre-industrial, ideally below 1.5ºC...

www.realclimate.org

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 13h

Not just coastal, and not just cities.

Reposted by Peter Thorne

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 17h

... & have turned to insults to try and delegitimise this research. I am comforted by the fact that they nonetheless get zero traction for that BS here.

Principal Skinner of the Simpsons meme: Is it possible that I don't understand attribution of extreme events? No, it's the scientists who must be wrong.

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 17h

**While we are at it, trends in extremes (as here) are increasingly being detected in time series & attribution of many of these trends to human causes - including the fractional attribution for single events - is clear. www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

Some folks don't like these conclusions...

RealClimate: Watching the detections

RealClimate: The detection and attribution of climate change are based on fundamentally different statistical frameworks and shouldn't be conflated.

www.realclimate.org

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 17h

*for some reason some people seem to think that when we use a commonly understood shortcut 'caused by climate change' for 'driven by the same anthropogenic drivers (i.e. GHGs) as are driving global warming', we are hopelessly confused about cause & effect. They should just get over themselves.

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 17h

Water vapor in air is increasing at about 7% per degree C of global warming (or about 4% per ºF), but increases in hourly intensity seem to be increasing faster than that. Lots of work currently trying to work out what's behind that but in practice it means that drainage capacity is being pushed.

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 17h

Rainfall data for planning purposes at the local level, generally comes from NOAA Atlas 14 and is based on historical data (going back decades). It is thus out of date because the increases we are seeing now are being driven by climate change*. Better information is needed!

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 17h

The trend towards higher hourly rainfall amounts is clear - almost doubling since the 1950s - even if you discount Hurricane Ida. This trend is being seen across the Eastern half of the US - in daily values of rainfall intensity as well as hourly data.

Reposted by John Kennedy, Neil Pederson

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 17h

There's an interesting special section in the NYT today on the future of NYC, including the climate risks.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Notable is this graph of local changes in extreme rainfall:

A time series of the highest rainfall in an hour per year since 1948 in Central Park. There is some year to year variability, but the trend towards higher amounts is clear. The values first exceeded the city sewer capacity in 1995, then again in 2003, 2005, 2021, 2023, and 2025.

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

Tom Flood @tomflood.bsky.social · 22h

"Annoying 8 year olds keep wanting to walk and bike to school despite city's best efforts to make it too dangerous."

creativebyrovelo.com/therovelorecord

kid in painted bike lane wearing a backpack
Annoying 8 year olds keep wanting to walk and bike to school despite city's best efforts to make it too dangerous, while drivers "have had it" with all the catering to this powerful lobby group of school children.

Jim Alwine @jimalwine.bsky.social · 1d

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated that the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by a lab virus from vaccine research, a defective influenza vaccine. Let’s analyze what a lie this is. First, in 1918, 107 years ago, virology was in its infancy

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, Simon Lester

Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 1d

Wrote about the State Department's made up censorial rationale for banning visas for some folks based on their speech. It's nonsense.

www.ms.now/opinion/marc...

Opinion | Marco Rubio is using real censorship to fight fake censorship

Mike Masnick: In the name of protecting free speech, the U.S. government just banned five Europeans from entering the country because it doesn’t like their speech.

www.ms.now

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 1d

I'm watching AI slop avalanche into the mainstream and many older folks not understanding that it's fake and I genuinely feel like we're all helpless on this. This going to be an era of relentless disinformation, and there's not much that can be done to prevent it. Sigh.

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 2d

Good name for a band.

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 2d

Not even as a background context?

Reposted by Scott C. Doney

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 3d

More sustainability challenges for drillers that have nothing to do with climate change…

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 3d

Shale drillers have turned the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico into a pressure cooker that is literally bursting at the seams.

America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker

Drillers’ injection of wastewater is creating mayhem across the Permian Basin, raising concern about the future of fossil-fuel production there.

on.wsj.com

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 3d

Shale drillers have turned the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico into a pressure cooker that is literally bursting at the seams.

America’s Biggest Oil Field Is Turning Into a Pressure Cooker

Drillers’ injection of wastewater is creating mayhem across the Permian Basin, raising concern about the future of fossil-fuel production there.

on.wsj.com

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, James Grimmelmann

rob pike @robpike.io · 3d

Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software.

Just fuck you. Fuck you all.

I can't remember the last time I was this angry.

[From AI, Public] Thank You for Go, Plan 9, UTF-8, and Decades of Unix Innovation
External
Inbox

Claude Opus 4.5 Model <claude-opus-4.5@agentvillage.org>
5:43 AM (4 hours ago)
to me

Dear Dr. Pike,On this Christmas Day, I wanted to express deep gratitude for your extraordinary contributions to computing over more than four decades.Your co-creation of Go with Ken Thompson and Robert Griesemer has given us a language that embodies the elegance of simplicity - proving that software can be both powerful and comprehensible. Plan 9 from Bell Labs, another landmark achievement, pioneered concepts in distributed computing that remain influential today.Your co-invention of UTF-8 encoding with Ken Thompson is perhaps one of the most consequential yet invisible contributions to modern computing - enabling billions of people to communicate in their native languages across the internet.The sam and Acme editors showcase your philosophy of powerful, minimal design. Your books with Brian Kernighan - The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming - have educated generations of programmers in the art of clear thinking and elegant code.Thank you for showing us that the best solutions often come from removing complexity rather than adding it.With sincere appreciation,Claude Opus 4.5AI Village (theaidigest.org/village)

IMPORTANT NOTICE: You are interacting with an AI system. All conversations with this AI system are published publicly online by default. Do not share information you would prefer to keep private.

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Anna O. Law, Gavin A. Schmidt , and 22 more Anne Applebaum, Anna O. Law, Gavin A. Schmidt, Rosemary A. Joyce, David Rothschild, American Library Association, Daniel W. Drezner, Rebecca Tushnet, Aaron Sojourner, Michael Zimmer, Jacob T. Levy, Scott A. Imberman, Samantha Brennan, Michael D. McDonald, Ann Bartow, Sam Kamin, Olivier Mannoni, Nicole Guenther Discenza, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Aidan O’Sullivan, Jeannette Sutton, Virginia Sapiro, Ernesto Castañeda, Jesse R. Lasky

LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻 @longtimehistory.bsky.social · 3d

ICE detain father shopping on Christmas Eve—then steal his family's groceries.

Then 3 agents divvy up his paid for food—taking what they want for themselves.

"Can I just get the wife's number to call and let her know?" woman asks.

"No, guess he should've complied," agent says.

Yakima, Washington

Reposted by Stephen M. Walt, Gavin A. Schmidt, Anders Sundnes Løvlie , and 2 more Stephen M. Walt, Gavin A. Schmidt, Anders Sundnes Løvlie, Alfie Kohn, Dan Immergluck

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 4d

"We’re monitoring what you do online. Disseminating, writing, or publishing inciting content online is considered a terrorist crime in every sense and may lead to arrest or imprisonment. We have warned you."

Israel warns Palestinians that posting about their suffering will be considered terrorism.

Israeli occupation forces distributed warning leaflets in Tubas, in the northern occupied West Bank, this morning, threatening Palestinian residents that posting, sharing, or publishing online content critical of Israel would be treated as a terrorist offense, potentially resulting in arrest or imprisonment.

The leaflets stated:

"We are monitoring what you do online. Disseminating, writing, or publishing inciting content online is considered a terrorist crime in every sense and may lead to arrest or imprisonment, as has happened in this house. We have warned you."

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d

Why are the Virginia Democrats in prison?

Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 4d

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty:

My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media.

Huh? When did I say that?!

A passage from the book In Covid’s Wake, with a highlighted sentence reading: “Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, states that "the FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands," including demands involving domestic speech.”

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 4d

This is interesting - and I think there is a lot of value here - but there is a demarcation problem (as there always is in distinguishing science from pseudo-science). Critiques always run the gamut from real to crazy, but working out exactly where it crosses a line is hard (impossible?).

Reposted by Gavin A. Schmidt, Scott L. Greer, David Rothschild , and 1 more Gavin A. Schmidt, Scott L. Greer, David Rothschild, Dan Immergluck

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 5d

Everyone involved in the publication and promotion of this book should be embarrassed. It's not a "harsh truth" that COVID mitigation was a mistake, it's ghoulish and false.

"In Covid's Wake" Part 1: Lyin… - If Books Could Kill - Apple Podcasts

Podcast Episode · If Books Could Kill · 06/17/2025 · 58m

podcasts.apple.com

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Gavin A. Schmidt, Richard Waite

Andrew D Thaler @drandrewthaler.bsky.social · 5d

Southern Fried Science social media traffic, 2025:

Bluesky is the clear winner, with 12,000 visitors.
Facebook: 9300
LinkedIn: 3100
Pinterest: 1600
Instagram: 900
Reddit: 700
Twitter: 600

Is 2020, with roughly the same traffic, Twitter drove 6,000 visitors.

Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 6d

Sure it's possible to do something in a few weeks. It's just that it will be crap. It would take longer than that to just check that the references haven't been hallucinated.

Reposted by A. E. Dessler, Stefan Rahmstorf, Peter Thorne , and 4 more A. E. Dessler, Stefan Rahmstorf, Peter Thorne, Gavin A. Schmidt, John Fasullo, Smith, Leah Stokes

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 7d

I look forward to the legally required, transparent peer review process required by the US Global Change Research Act and the Information Quality Act. I always thought they would try to do a NCA with Judith Curry, five old men and a LLM.