February 12, 2025
The North American Fire Deficit
An important new paper published this week in Nature Communications looks at the historical record of fire in North America — A fire deficit persists across diverse North American forests despite recent increases in area burned. Parks et al. find that large fires of recent decades in North America are not unprecedented: Our study of 1851 tree-ring fire-scar…
February 10, 2025
Hits and Misses
The term “scenario” was introduced by a group of researchers at the RAND Corporation in the 1960s. Herman Kahn explained its origin in 1979: “We deliberately chose the word [scenario] to deglamorize the concept . . . There is no a priori concept that a scenario should be taken seriously or that it is intended to reflect aspects…
February 3, 2025
IPCC at the Crossroads
Long-time readers of THB will know well that I am strongly supportive of formal scientific assessments — a form of science arbitration, as defined in my book which gives this site its name. Scientific assessments are essential for understanding what relevant experts collectively think they know, what they think they don’t, along with surfacing uncertainties, disagreements, and…
January 17, 2025
Climate Science Whiplash
Did you know that climate change is making the San Francisco region more foggy? The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier. Did you also know that climate change is making the San Francisco area less foggy? Declining fog cover on California’s coast…
January 8, 2025
The Interests of the U.S. and the Honolulu Climate Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court
The Office of the Solicitor General — part of the Department of Justice —was created by the Statutory Authorization Act of June 22, 1870. The Act states that there shall be an officer “learned in the law,” to be called the Solicitor General, to assist the Attorney General in the performance of his or her duties. The…
December 6, 2024
U.S. Hurricane Overview 2024
Yesterday, The Washington Post published what can only be described as a hit piece on the nominee for Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. The Post took issue with Wright’s claim that: “[R]eports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) actually show no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes.” The Post claimed that Wright was misrepresenting the most recent IPCC assessment report….
December 2, 2024
Partisan Professors
Faculty in U.S. universities overwhelmingly hold views on the political left. That probably won’t be news to most THB readers. Today’s post documents just how extreme today’s left-leaning ideological uniformity has become among professors and shows that in the past, across disciplines faculty were much more politically diverse. The lack of diversity among professors is…
December 2, 2024
Intellectual Hospitality and Genuine Debate
Of the American holidays, Thanksgiving is by far my favorite. Over my academic career, Thanksgiving provided a much-needed respite in the final weeks of the fall semester before the home stretch leading to final exams. Much more importantly, the Thanksgiving week is about spending time with loved ones, celebrating family traditions, gathering together around a…
November 13, 2024
Global Existential Risks
In 2022, on a bipartisan basis, the U.S. Congress passed the Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act of 2022 requiring the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate an expert assessment of global catastrophic and existential risks. The Department of Homeland Security published the first Global Catastrophic Risk Assessment two weeks ago, and reached some important — and one surprising —…
October 24, 2024
Climate Journalism Done Right
Today, The Washington Post has published a lengthy analysis titled, “The real reason billion-dollar disasters like Hurricane Helene are growing more common.”1 The article, by the Post’s Harry Stevens, is brilliantly done — extensively reported, data rich, grounded in a large body of research, with a wide diversity of voices. Watching reactions to the article will…