Zeke Hausfather
Climate scientist and energy systems analyst; writes The Climate Brink with Andrew Dessler.
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Zeke Hausfather did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsA rapidly warming climate and retreating glaciers are increasing risks of these sorts of events in the region, whether or not we can ultimately attribute this particular event.
↗What we can and cannot say about climate change and the Nepal disastertheclimatebrink.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsBut the existence of old events tells us nothing about whether the odds are changing, and heat waves happened in 1900 too (just less frequently).
↗What we can and cannot say about climate change and the Nepal disastertheclimatebrink.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsRather, what drives risks is how fast the ice and the frozen ground beneath the ice are changing.
↗What we can and cannot say about climate change and the Nepal disastertheclimatebrink.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsThis is the Jevons paradox in action: making compute cheaper per token in turn tends to lead to greater levels of AI use.
↗The real energy use of agentic AItheclimatebrink.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsWhich is why the lever that actually matters most is the carbon intensity of the electricity.
↗The real energy use of agentic AItheclimatebrink.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsUnlike aviation, this is an end-use we already know how to decarbonize.
↗The real energy use of agentic AItheclimatebrink.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 6 days earlier
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Their wordsit tells you that a single warm year, or even two, cannot distinguish between "very rapid acceleration driven by aerosols and high sensitivity" and "the trend and more modest acceleration plus a very strong El Niño."
↗Why Hansen may end up being right about 2026theclimatebrink.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsI'd personally give a central estimate closer to 3.5C than Hansen's ~4.5C
↗Why Hansen may end up being right about 2026theclimatebrink.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 8 days earlier
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Their wordsA record set during an ecological disaster in one part of the country is not evidence that the whole country, much less the planet, was hotter.
↗Hot days, cold thermometerstheclimatebrink.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThird, raw daily data is the wrong tool for this question. Time of observation changes and the 1980s switch to MMTS sensors both suppress modern hot day counts relative to the past, and the raw and homogenized series diverge almost exactly when the instrument transition happened.
↗Hot days, cold thermometerstheclimatebrink.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThe overall US warming trend (around 0.5F per decade since 1970 in max, min, and mean temperatures) is robust in every dataset, raw or adjusted, satellite or surface.
↗Hot days, cold thermometerstheclimatebrink.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 days earlier
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Our reading
Fuel buildup from forest mismanagement cannot occur in forests that were never actively managed
Their wordsYou cannot have a fuel-buildup from forest mismanagement in a forest you were never managing.
↗Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest managementtheclimatebrink.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordswarmer air is exponentially "thirstier" (saturation vapor pressure rises ~7% per degree), so it pulls moisture out of live vegetation and dead fuels alike, priming the landscape to burn.
↗Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest managementtheclimatebrink.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsFuel management is valuable around communities, but is essentially useless across the remote boreal.
↗Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest managementtheclimatebrink.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 4 days earlier
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Our reading
Strong agreement among forecast models does not by itself mean those models are skillful.
Their wordsModel agreement this strong is unusual, though I'd note that agreement is not the same thing as skill as I discuss later on.
↗The Strongest El Niño Evertheclimatebrink.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
El Niño events typically peak near the end of the calendar year, between November and January.
Their wordsEl Niño almost always peaks near the end of the calendar year - typically between November and January, occasionally as early as October
↗The Strongest El Niño Evertheclimatebrink.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsglobal temperature lags ENSO by around three to five months, most of this event's warming will land in 2027, which is now shaping up to be a genuinely alarming year and the warmest on record by a sizable margin.
↗The Strongest El Niño Evertheclimatebrink.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 4 days earlier
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Their wordssince 1970, natural forcings have been roughly flat, internal variability averages out over the longer period, and greenhouse gases explain essentially all of the observed warming.
↗What drove the early 20th century warming?theclimatebrink.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsAs air quality regulations cut sulfur emissions, warming from greenhouse gases is being unmasked.
↗What drove the early 20th century warming?theclimatebrink.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordsBut broadly speaking we expect atmospheric CO2 to keep growing until we cut emissions pretty substantially (e.g. to <50% of current levels).
↗Plateauing CO2 emissions have slowed atmospheric growththeclimatebrink.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Atmospheric CO2 concentration is a lagging indicator of emissions trends, not a leading one.
Their wordsEither way, atmospheric CO2 is better seen as a lagging rather than leading indicator of changes in emissions, as it is harder to see the effects of emissions reductions on concentrations over shorter time periods.
↗Plateauing CO2 emissions have slowed atmospheric growththeclimatebrink.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThat being said, we still expect some weakening of carbon sinks in a warmer world - something we have started to see in the data.
↗Plateauing CO2 emissions have slowed atmospheric growththeclimatebrink.com 3rd of 3 in this piece