Cloud feedback is one of the most important—and least understood—climate multipliers. That makes efforts to better understand and control aviation-related cloud formation particularly significant.
On August 18, 2026, the landmark £5 million “Operation Blue Skies” project was officially launched, marking the world’s first airspace-scale trial of contrail avoidance across an entire oceanic region.
The initiative targets the Shanwick Oceanic airspace in the eastern North Atlantic, one of the world’s busiest aviation corridors. The region is estimated to account for roughly 5% of global contrail warming.
Supported by the UK government and technology partners, the project will test whether relatively small operational changes—such as adjusting flight altitudes and routes to avoid atmospheric conditions conducive to persistent contrail formation—can significantly reduce aviation’s climate impact.
Contrails are more than short-lived streaks across the sky. Under cold, humid atmospheric conditions, aircraft exhaust can create ice crystals that persist and spread into cirrus clouds. These clouds can alter the Earth’s radiation balance by trapping outgoing heat, producing a warming effect that can substantially exceed the warming associated with the aircraft’s carbon dioxide emissions over short time scales.
The project is particularly important because contrails and their associated cloud effects remain among the largest uncertainties in assessing aviation’s total climate impact. Current estimates suggest that non-CO₂ effects, including contrails, account for roughly one-third of aviation’s overall climate impact.
Operation Blue Skies therefore represents more than an aviation experiment. It is a real-world test of whether targeted operational changes can interrupt a climate feedback with potentially significant consequences—without requiring new aircraft technology or eliminating flights.
If successful, the approach could provide a relatively inexpensive way to reduce aviation’s near-term warming contribution while researchers continue working to better understand the complex interactions among aircraft emissions, atmospheric moisture, clouds, and climate.
The significance extends beyond aviation. Climate change is increasingly revealing that the atmosphere is not simply a passive recipient of emissions. Feedbacks involving clouds, water vapor, ice, and atmospheric circulation can amplify or modify the initial forcing, sometimes producing effects far larger than the original disturbance.
Operation Blue Skies offers an opportunity to test whether understanding those feedbacks can translate directly into practical climate mitigation.
For decades, we have studied the relationship between earthquakes and climate change. Early in that work, there was little evidence that changes in global temperature were having any meaningful effect on tectonic activity. That conclusion was reasonable at the time. Climate change was expected to progress relatively slowly, over centuries or even millennia, and the resulting changes in surface mass and hydrological conditions were correspondingly gradual.
That assumption no longer describes the world we are entering.
The rate of climate change has accelerated dramatically, and many of the associated physical changes are now occurring on timescales measured in decades, years, and—in some cases—even months. This does not mean that global warming is heating the Earth’s crust enough to expand tectonic plates and cause earthquakes. That effect remains negligible.
The more important mechanism is mass redistribution.
Climate change is rapidly moving enormous quantities of water and ice around the planet. Ice sheets are losing mass, glaciers are retreating, permafrost is thawing, groundwater is being depleted or redistributed, reservoirs and lakes are experiencing increasingly extreme fluctuations, and sea level is rising. These changes alter the loads imposed on Earth’s crust and, in some locations, the pressure and stress conditions surrounding faults.
Earthquakes are ultimately controlled by stress. A fault can remain locked for centuries while tectonic forces slowly accumulate until the stress exceeds the fault’s resistance to slip. Climate-driven changes in surface loading do not create the tectonic forces responsible for most earthquakes, but they can modulate the timing, location, and frequency of seismic events by nudging already-stressed faults closer to—or farther from—the point of failure.
That distinction is critical.
Climate change does not need to cause tectonic earthquakes to become a meaningful factor in seismic risk. It only needs to change the conditions under which faults fail.
Glacial Unloading
One of the clearest mechanisms is the loss of glacial and ice-sheet mass.
For thousands of years, enormous glaciers and ice sheets have imposed immense loads on the Earth’s crust. When that mass is removed, the crust responds through a process known as isostatic rebound. The underlying crust rises as the weight above it decreases, changing the distribution of stress within the lithosphere.
In regions undergoing rapid deglaciation, this unloading can alter stress on existing faults and increase seismic activity. The effect is particularly important because the removal of ice can continue for decades or centuries after the initial climatic warming.
The key point is simple: when climate change removes trillions of tons of mass from the surface, the crust responds.
Permafrost Thaw and Meltwater
The destabilization of frozen ground introduces another mechanism.
As permafrost thaws and glaciers retreat, meltwater can penetrate fractured rock and mountain systems. Increased fluid pressure within faults can reduce the effective normal stress holding the fault surfaces together. In simplified terms, water can make it easier for an already stressed fault to slip.
This does not mean that every episode of melting will produce an earthquake. Rather, it creates another pathway through which rapid environmental change can influence the mechanical conditions surrounding faults.
Where faults are already near failure, relatively small changes in fluid pressure can matter.
Hydrostatic Load Shifts
Climate change is also producing increasingly extreme changes in the distribution of surface water.
Severe droughts remove enormous quantities of water from reservoirs, lakes, soils, and groundwater systems. Extreme precipitation and monsoon events can then return massive amounts of water over remarkably short periods.
That changing weight alters the stresses imposed on the crust.
Large reservoirs have long been recognized as capable of inducing or modulating seismicity, particularly where water infiltration increases pore pressure along faults. Climate-driven swings in precipitation, drought, groundwater storage, snowpack, and reservoir levels can produce similar loading and unloading effects, although the magnitude and significance vary greatly by location.
The important issue is not simply how much water exists. It is where that water is, how rapidly it moves, and how that movement changes the stress field.
Sea-Level Rise
Sea-level rise represents another large-scale redistribution of mass.
As land-based ice melts, water that was previously stored on continents is transferred into the oceans. At the same time, the increasing weight of seawater changes the loading conditions along continental margins and beneath coastal regions.
These effects are generally small compared with the enormous tectonic forces responsible for earthquakes. Nevertheless, in regions containing faults already close to failure, even relatively small changes in stress can influence the timing of seismic events.
The scientific question, therefore, is not whether sea-level rise is going to cause earthquakes worldwide. It is whether rapid changes in ocean loading can measurably influence seismicity in susceptible regions.
The Planet Is Moving Water at an Extraordinary Scale
Perhaps the most remarkable evidence that this redistribution of mass is physically significant comes from Earth’s rotation itself.
When ice sheets lose mass, that water does not disappear. It is transferred from land—particularly from the high latitudes—into the global ocean. Over time, ocean circulation and gravity redistribute that water across the planet, with a substantial portion ultimately moving toward lower latitudes.
The quantity of water involved is so enormous that the redistribution is measurable in the Earth’s rotation.
The “Figure Skater” Effect
Earth is not a perfect sphere. Its rotation causes it to bulge slightly around the equator, making the planet an oblate spheroid.
The basic physics is familiar from a figure skater spinning on ice. When mass moves farther from the axis of rotation, the moment of inertia increases and the rate of rotation decreases. When mass moves toward the axis, the opposite occurs.
The redistribution of water caused by melting ice therefore changes Earth’s moment of inertia and slightly alters the length of the day.
This is not theoretical speculation. Modern geodesy can detect these changes.
Earth has lost well over 35 trillion tons (gigatonnes) of ice from its polar ice sheets and glaciers over the past few decades, with the resulting meltwater being redistributed through the global ocean system, ultimately increasing ocean mass at lower latitudes. That represents an extraordinary transfer of mass from the high-latitude continents toward the oceans and, through gravitational and rotational processes, toward the equatorial regions.
The mechanical consequence is the counterpart to isostatic rebound. Where ice loss removes an enormous surface load and allows the crust to rebound upward, the accumulation of additional ocean water places an increasing load on the seafloor and coastal crust. In effect, while the high latitudes are experiencing unloading, lower latitudes are experiencing climate-driven loading.
The magnitude of this redistribution is difficult to comprehend: tens of trillions of tons of mass are being transferred across the planet within a geologically instantaneous interval.
Climate change is therefore not merely changing atmospheric temperature. It is physically moving enormous quantities of matter across Earth’s surface—and the solid Earth responds mechanically to that redistribution.
From Temperature Change to Mass Redistribution
This is where the relationship between climate change and seismicity becomes more interesting.
The traditional question was:
Is a warmer atmosphere heating the crust enough to cause earthquakes?
The answer is essentially no.
The more important question is:
Is rapid climate-driven redistribution of ice, water, and surface mass capable of altering the stress and pressure conditions acting on faults that are already tectonically stressed?
The answer is yes, in principle—and in some settings, observations already demonstrate that environmental loading can modulate seismicity.
The magnitude of the effect varies enormously from one region to another. Tectonic forces remain overwhelmingly dominant, and climate-related loading should not be portrayed as a replacement for conventional earthquake science.
But that is precisely why the issue deserves attention.
A fault does not have to be pushed from a state of complete stability to failure by climate change. It may only require a small additional perturbation when it is already near its failure threshold.
As climate change accelerates, the frequency and magnitude of these environmental perturbations are changing as well.
The climate system is becoming a faster-moving component of Earth’s physical system. The question is no longer whether climate can interact with the solid Earth. It is how much, where, and how rapidly those interactions can alter seismic risk.
U.S. retail sales fell unexpectedly by 0.6% month over month in July 2026, coming in well below the forecast of a 0.1% increase. The data, released this morning, points to a significant slowdown in American consumer spending and a reversal of the momentum seen in previous months.
Key Figures From the July Report
Headline retail sales: Down 0.6%, following a revised 0.2% increase in June.
Excluding autos: Down 0.3%, versus expectations for a 0.2% increase.
Excluding autos and gasoline: Down 0.2%, compared with an expected 0.3% increase.
Control group sales: Down 0.4%, missing the projected 0.3% gain.
Bad News for the Economy
The broad-based weakness suggests that American consumers are becoming increasingly constrained by high prices, elevated living costs, and strained household budgets. Discretionary spending appears to be particularly vulnerable as consumers cut back in response to declining purchasing power.
The slowdown is also affecting financial-market expectations, potentially strengthening the case for a more accommodative Federal Reserve monetary policy in the months ahead.
But there is another way to look at these numbers.
Demand Destruction
This may be another indication of demand destruction—a sustained reduction in consumption caused by rising prices, declining purchasing power, supply constraints, or the availability of alternatives.
Climate change can contribute to this process in several ways. Extreme heat, drought, flooding, wildfires, and other climate-related disruptions can damage agricultural production and supply chains, increasing the cost of food and other necessities. Rising insurance, energy, transportation, and infrastructure costs can further squeeze household budgets.
Food prices are particularly important. Climate-driven disruptions to agriculture can contribute to food inflation, creating one of the most direct ways climate change reaches the household budget. When essential goods become more expensive, consumers have less money available for discretionary purchases.
That creates an uncomfortable paradox.
Bad News for Consumers. Good News for the Climate?
For lower-income households, this is unquestionably bad news. Families already living close to the edge have far less ability to absorb higher food, housing, energy, transportation, and insurance costs. For them, demand destruction isn’t a lifestyle choice. It can mean doing without necessities or postponing purchases they would otherwise make.
But from an environmental perspective, declining consumption can have an unexpected benefit.
Our economy is built around a powerful cycle: produce more → sell more → consume more → produce even more. Economic growth has traditionally depended heavily on increasing consumption of energy, materials, goods, and services.
If rising costs begin breaking that cycle, the result could be a gradual decline in resource consumption.
That is the paradox of demand destruction:
What is bad news for the economy can sometimes be good news for the environment.
A reduction in fossil-fuel consumption, material throughput, unnecessary production, and resource-intensive consumption can reduce environmental pressures. In that sense, demand destruction could unintentionally contribute to the transition away from an economic model based on ever-increasing consumption.
The problem is that we should not confuse economic hardship with a successful environmental transition.
There is a profound difference between people consuming less because they have chosen more efficient, sustainable alternatives and people consuming less because they can no longer afford what they need.
The first represents managed transition.
The second represents contraction.
The challenge is to find a way to reduce humanity’s environmental footprint without forcing the people least able to absorb the costs to bear the greatest burden.
That may ultimately be one of the defining economic challenges of climate change: how do we move beyond consumerism without making poverty the mechanism that gets us there?
The climate costs of fossil-fuel dependence are increasingly outweighing its benefits—not in some distant future, but here and now. We are moving beyond arguments about what climate change might cost decades from today. Across the Western world, climate impacts are already imposing costs of hundreds of billions of dollars in real time.
Insurance is only one part of the story.
Infrastructure, agriculture, transportation, labor productivity, public health, energy systems, and financial markets are all beginning to absorb the cost of a destabilizing climate. The economic question is therefore changing. It is no longer simply:
“What will climate change cost us?”
It is increasingly:
“How much are we willing to pay to preserve an energy system that is becoming progressively more expensive to maintain?”
Climate Stress Is Becoming an Economic Stress Test
The physical infrastructure of the global economy is already being affected.
Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc has warned that climate change is putting increasing pressure on European waterways and that substantial infrastructure investment will be needed to keep the Rhine operating as a critical transportation artery.
But the economic importance of waterways extends far beyond shipping.
Rivers, lakes, and reservoirs are also critical components of the energy, industrial, agricultural, municipal, and ecological systems that support modern economies.
When water levels fall or water temperatures rise, power plants can be affected directly. Thermoelectric and nuclear power plants rely heavily on water for cooling. If river flows become too low, or water temperatures become too high, operators may be forced to reduce generation or temporarily shut down units because sufficient cooling capacity is no longer available or because thermal discharge limits are exceeded.
That creates an economic chain reaction:
Lower river flows or higher water temperatures ↓ Reduced cooling capacity ↓ Reduced power generation ↓ Tighter electricity supplies ↓ Higher electricity prices and grid stress ↓ Higher operating costs for industry and consumers
The same waterways that transport fuel, raw materials, agricultural products, chemicals, and manufactured goods can therefore also be essential to producing the electricity needed to move and manufacture those goods.
Water is simultaneously a transportation system, cooling system, industrial input, agricultural resource, and ecological asset.
When that system becomes unstable, multiple economic sectors can be affected at the same time.
Low water levels can also restrict the movement of coal, oil, natural gas, grain, chemicals, construction materials, and other bulk commodities. Barges may have to reduce their loads or make more trips to transport the same volume of goods. In some cases, alternative transportation by rail or truck becomes necessary, increasing fuel consumption, congestion, labor costs, and emissions.
Flooding creates the opposite problem.
Excess water can damage ports, locks, bridges, rail connections, roads, warehouses, industrial facilities, and electrical infrastructure. A waterway can therefore become economically disruptive at both extremes—too little water and too much water.
Agriculture is similarly exposed. Rivers and reservoirs provide irrigation, livestock water, and municipal supplies. Persistent drought can reduce agricultural output while increasing competition among farmers, cities, industry, ecosystems, and energy producers for increasingly scarce water.
There is also a less visible economic cost: water temperature itself is becoming an economic variable.
Warmer rivers can reduce their ability to absorb additional heat from industrial processes and power-plant cooling systems. At the same time, warmer water can stress aquatic ecosystems, fisheries, and drinking-water systems, creating additional regulatory, treatment, and ecological costs.
This produces a broader economic concept that is often missed in conventional disaster accounting:
Waterway disruption is not a single-sector problem. It is a systems problem.
The Rhine and Danube are not simply waterways. They are components of Europe’s economic infrastructure. They connect ports, factories, power plants, farms, cities, mines, warehouses, rail networks, and consumers. When climate conditions interfere with their operation, the economic consequences propagate through the system. A river does not have to disappear to create an economic crisis. It only has to become less reliable. And reliability is one of the most valuable—and often least visible—assets in a modern economy.
The Economic Toll of Extreme Weather
Global extreme weather and natural disasters are generating enormous economic losses. Recent estimates from the International Chamber of Commerce, insurers including Swiss Re, and disaster-loss tracking organizations show that severe convective storms, wildfires, floods, and other extreme events are producing annual losses measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The first half of 2026 alone has already produced approximately $100 billion in global economic losses, while the cumulative economic toll over the past decade has reached roughly $2 trillion, according to recent assessments.
And the year is not over.
The second half of the year normally includes the peak of the North Atlantic hurricane season, creating the potential for another substantial wave of losses.
The Major Economic Drivers
Escalating annual losses. Global disaster losses continue to accumulate at extraordinary levels. The combined economic losses from 2022 and 2023 alone have been estimated at roughly $451 billion.
The concentration of U.S. losses. The United States remains a major source of global insured catastrophe losses. By June 2026, the country had already experienced 12 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, with estimated losses totaling approximately $31.9 billion.
Severe convective storms. Hail, tornadoes, straight-line winds, and other severe thunderstorms have become an increasingly persistent source of financial losses. The United States recorded a record 21 billion-dollar severe-convective-storm events in 2025.
Extreme heat and productivity. The economic damage from climate change is not limited to destroyed buildings and infrastructure. Heat reduces worker productivity, particularly in construction, agriculture, manufacturing, and outdoor occupations. Global heat-related productivity losses have been estimated at roughly 1% of world GDP annually—around $1 trillion.
The long-term U.S. bill. U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters have generated cumulative damages exceeding $3 trillion since systematic tracking began in 1980.
The Trajectory Is the Story
Recent U.S. disaster statistics illustrate the increasing economic burden:
Year
Billion-Dollar Events
Estimated Damage
Major Loss Drivers
2025
23
~$115 billion
Severe storms, wildfires
2024
27
~$182.7 billion
Severe storms, tropical cyclones, extreme heat
2023
28
$145+ billion
Severe storms and other extreme events
The important point is not that every individual disaster can be attributed exclusively to climate change.
The economic signal emerges from the frequency, intensity, persistence, and cumulative cost of extreme conditions.
Climate change does not need to create every storm, flood, drought, or wildfire to transform the economics of risk. It only needs to increase the probability, severity, or duration of damaging events enough to alter the cost structure of society.
That is already happening.
“Demand Destruction” Is Our Friend
This brings us to one of the most powerful—and least appreciated—economic mechanisms in the energy transition:
Demand destruction.
The International Energy Agency has projected that global oil demand will decline more sharply than previously expected in 2026, forecasting a reduction of approximately 1.6 million barrels per day.
The significance extends beyond the number itself.
As an economist, I am less concerned with establishing a specific date by which the world must eliminate fossil fuels than I am with changing the economic forces that sustain fossil-fuel demand.
That distinction matters.
People do not necessarily change because someone wins an argument about climate science. They change because incentives change. Prices change. Risk changes. Availability changes. And eventually, behavior changes.
Money Moves People
I am unlikely to change the minds of the roughly 20% of Americans who are ideologically committed to policies that accelerate fossil-fuel dependence.
But that leaves the vast majority of the population. And economics can do much of the work. Integrated Climate Stewardship begins with reducing unnecessary consumption.
Consumerism drives energy demand, resource extraction, pollution, waste, and habitat destruction. Every unnecessary unit of consumption represents another demand for energy and materials somewhere in the global economy.
Consume less, and demand falls.
Demand falls, and the economic incentive to produce falls.
That is the mechanism.
The Economics of Personal Climate Stewardship
Today, only a small fraction of Americans appear to be pursuing a deliberately structured net-zero lifestyle through continuous behavioral reductions, efficiency improvements, and intentional balancing. But this does not mean the model cannot scale. The critical question is how climate stewardship is presented.
If reducing climate impact is framed exclusively as sacrifice, people resist. If it is framed as economic self-interest, the equation changes.
What happens when people discover that reducing unnecessary consumption can save them thousands of dollars a year?
What happens when energy efficiency lowers household expenses?
When smaller vehicles reduce fuel, maintenance, and insurance costs?
When reducing waste means buying fewer things that do not provide meaningful value?
When local production and durable goods become economically attractive?
When conservation becomes synonymous with financial resilience?
The behavior does not have to begin with ideology.
It can begin with a household budget.
Vote With Your Dollars
This is where the remaining majority of the population becomes economically important.
When millions of people begin making purchasing decisions based on cost, durability, efficiency, resilience, and environmental impact, they collectively alter demand.
When demand changes, markets respond. When fossil-fuel demand declines, the economic incentive to extract, refine, transport, and sell fossil fuels declines with it. This is fundamentally different from waiting for governments to impose every change from the top down. It is a bottom-up economic transition.
People do not have to agree about everything.
They do not have to become climate activists.
They do not even have to agree about climate policy.
They simply have to discover that some forms of consumption are no longer worth what they cost.
The Feedback Loop
The process can become self-reinforcing:
Lower unnecessary consumption ↓ Lower household costs ↓ Lower energy and resource demand ↓ Reduced fossil-fuel demand ↓ Lower economic incentive for fossil-fuel expansion ↓ Greater investment in alternatives and efficiency ↓ Further reductions in fossil-fuel demand
This is an economic feedback loop.
And unlike many climate-policy debates, it does not require everyone to agree on the destination before beginning the journey.
Demand Destruction Is the Transition
The transition away from fossil fuels is often described as a supply problem:
How quickly can we replace coal, oil, and natural gas?
But there is another side of the equation.
How quickly can we reduce the demand that makes fossil-fuel extraction profitable?
That may ultimately be the more powerful question.
We do not need to convince every person to become an environmentalist.
We need to make lower-carbon choices increasingly rational economic choices.
The climate crisis is already generating enormous costs. Insurance premiums are rising. Infrastructure is being stressed. Agricultural productivity is being disrupted. Heat is reducing labor capacity. Extreme weather is destroying capital. Supply chains are becoming more vulnerable.
These costs are not theoretical.
They are appearing on balance sheets, household budgets, insurance statements, government budgets, and corporate earnings reports.
The economic system is beginning to receive the bill.
And money moves people.
Demand destruction is not the enemy of the energy transition.
I use phasing out in a way that means completely ending the use and production of fossil fuels down to zero. Phasing down means a gradual reduction or scaling back in FF use over time without specifying a complete stop. Would add or alter that in any way?
How would you define differntiate ‘transition away’?
Reply:
I would slightly modify your definition of “phasing down” to: “a gradual reduction or scaling back in fossil-fuel use over time without specifying a date for complete cessation.”
There are really two separate issues for me:
1. For this generation, I prefer net-zero carbon emissions as the immediate goal. If someone isn’t already moving toward net-zero, I think they should start now. We don’t need to wait for a theoretical future phase-out date to begin reducing emissions.
2. As both a climatologist and an economist, I’m not convinced that setting a specific date for the complete elimination of fossil fuels is ultimately what matters. In the U.S., roughly 20% of the population appears ideologically committed to policies that would accelerate climate change. Nothing I say or do is likely to change that.
But that still leaves roughly 80% of the population—and I think economics is going to do much of the work.
Right now, perhaps only ~0.5% of Americans are seriously attempting a structured net-zero lifestyle through continuous behavioral reductions and intentional balancing. As more people discover that net-zero can actually save them thousands of dollars a year while also leaving a better environment for their children and grandchildren, I expect consumer behavior to change.
When the remaining ~79.5% begin voting with their dollars, fossil-fuel demand will fall. That creates demand destruction, which ultimately means suppliers will have less and less reason to produce fossil fuels.
So, ironically, I don’t think we necessarily need to establish the exact date when fossil fuels reach zero. The market may establish that date for us. The “complete stop” happens when there is no longer sufficient demand to sustain the fossil-fuel supply chain.
Question:
When you use the term net zero is it with the understanding that the “net” component allows continuous greenhouse gas emissions under the assumption that unproven removal technologies or flawed offsets will balance them out later, delaying necessary fossil fuel phaseouts?
Net zero is a contentious term within my community and I want to be clear that I understand how you see and apply it.
Reply:
That’s an important distinction. When I use the term net-zero, I’m talking about it at the personal/lifestyle level, and I am not using “net” to justify continuing to emit greenhouse gases while assuming that unproven technologies or questionable offsets will clean up the problem later.
What I mean is closer to “Holistic Net-Zero Living” or “Integrated Climate Stewardship”: reducing and, wherever realistically possible, zeroing out the emissions associated with my own lifestyle first, while also taking responsibility for the impacts I can’t immediately eliminate.
For me, that means a 360-degree carbon strategy:
ZEROING OUT / STRUCTURAL DECARBONIZATION
Electrifying transportation and home energy
Increasing energy efficiency
Using clean electricity
Reducing fossil-fuel consumption as close to zero as practical
Reducing high-carbon consumption, including dietary choices
BEYOND MY DIRECT FOOTPRINT
Supporting ecosystem restoration and conservation
Protecting forests and biodiversity
Supporting businesses and technologies that accelerate decarbonization
Using my purchasing and investment decisions to create economic demand for cleaner alternatives
So I’m not saying, “Keep emitting and someone will remove it later.” Quite the opposite. The first priority is eliminating the emissions themselves.
I think of the “net” component as recognizing that an individual cannot instantly eliminate every indirect emission associated with modern life. Rather than pretending those emissions don’t exist, I try to compensate through additional positive actions while continuously working to reduce the underlying footprint.
Ultimately, my goal isn’t simply to achieve a favorable carbon-accounting number. It’s to change the way I live so that my actual fossil-fuel demand approaches zero—and to use my economic choices to help make that transition happen systemically.
That’s why I sometimes think “holistic net-zero living” or “integrated climate stewardship” communicates what I mean better than simply saying “net-zero.”
Question:
Why continue using the language of ‘net zero’? What economic model do you see best aligns w/ what you have outlined?
Reply:
Haaha… good questions.
A: I’m actually in the process of writing the paper that officially changes my language from “net-zero” to “Integrated Climate Stewardship.” So thank you for pushing me on that. I think the new terminology better captures what I’ve been trying to describe.
B: I’m also working on the economic model, and that one is considerably trickier—not because of the terminology, but because AI is changing the underlying economics so rapidly.
I see AI as a double-edged sword. On one edge, as AI replaces more human labor and productivity, the human contribution to economic production could eventually become a much smaller share of GDP. AI may also be capable of producing enormous amounts of economic value with far less energy per unit of output than traditional human labor and many existing production systems.
But the other edge of that sword is wealth distribution.
If the ownership of AI, capital, and productive capacity becomes increasingly concentrated, we could see extraordinary productivity growth occurring alongside increasingly unjust wealth inequality. We could potentially solve one problem—resource and energy efficiency—while creating another: who actually owns and benefits from the productivity?
That’s the economic model I’m wrestling with now: how do we build an economy where AI-driven productivity, decarbonization, consumer savings, and environmental stewardship reinforce each other while the resulting wealth is broadly distributed?
That may ultimately be a much bigger economic question than the climate transition itself.
Question:
Have you been sitting with the economic of degrowth in all of this then? Sounds like there is that tension in what is being considered.
Reply:
Yes. I’ve been sitting with the economics of degrowth quite a bit. And I think there’s an interesting tension here.
Traditional capitalism is fundamentally tied to population growth, human labor, productivity, and consumption. But AI potentially breaks that relationship. If technology increasingly replaces human labor, then economic growth can continue—even accelerate—while the economic value of human labor declines, perhaps dramatically.
So I’m not sure the future necessarily looks like “degrowth.” It may be something stranger: exponential technological growth occurring alongside declining human labor demand, an aging population in the developed regions of the world, and potentially declining population worldwide.
That raises a much bigger question: if human labor is no longer the primary engine of economic value, what exactly are we trying to maximize—and how should the economy distribute the benefits of that productivity?
That’s the economic model I’m wrestling with right now.
Question:
What about lands and waters in these considerations?
Can we agree that what we need must be either mined or grown?
Raw materials come from somewhere with significant externalities — often left out of economic theory.
My other issue is the assumptive ghost of interest-bearing-debt as a driver of unnecessary growth.
Reply:
Yes—and I think land, water, and raw materials have to be part of the model. My initial modeling, however, is pointing toward a very different problem than the one we traditionally assume.
If AI continues improving itself, productivity could eventually become extraordinarily resource-efficient. Very little additional human labor—and potentially much less land, water, or energy per unit of economic output—may be required for productivity and growth. At the same time, consumers could be forced to consume much less because their income from labor is declining. And as solar and other clean-energy technologies continue becoming cheaper, the pressure for some forms of mining and extraction could decline as well.
That brings me back to your point about interest-bearing debt. I think sovereign debt may become the critical part of the equation.
Productivity gains and abundant cheap clean energy are profoundly deflationary. Deflation sounds wonderful for consumers in theory—but not if it is accompanied by collapsing labor income. You could have falling costs and prices while households simultaneously lose the purchasing power needed to buy anything.
Now add governments facing enormous debt obligations while their traditional tax base is shrinking because human labor is becoming less economically valuable. Governments could increasingly rely on interest-bearing debt to finance poverty reduction, redistribution, and some form of basic income.
And that creates a potentially nasty feedback loop: AI-driven productivity → declining labor income → shrinking tax base → rising sovereign debt → greater reliance on monetary expansion → inflationary pressure.
Historically, severe sovereign debt problems have sometimes been resolved through substantial currency devaluation and inflation. I’m not saying hyperinflation is inevitable—but it is one of the risks I’m now modeling.
The really strange possibility is that we could simultaneously have exponential productivity, increasingly abundant cheap energy, falling costs of production—and increasing economic hardship for ordinary people.
In other words, the problem may not ultimately be whether the planet can produce enough. It may be whether humans can maintain enough income, purchasing power, and economic agency to participate in the abundance that AI creates.
That, to me, is where the economic model gets really interesting.
One way into discussing climate change as a whole is to refer to the water cycle, because most people learned about it at school.
The water cycle is now supercharged by extra heat in the oceans.
Warmer seas produce more evaporation – and that extra water vapour* carries the extra heat high into the air. The water vapour then releases the extra heat into high-altitude air as it condenses to make clouds. So weather systems are becoming more energetic, more chaotic. Like other aspects of the climate systems, the water cycle seems to be creating more extremes – prolonged droughts, and also sudden huge rainfall events.
*7% more water vapour for each extra 1 C degree of average global temperature, so we’ve added about 10% at this point. Changes of state (such as evaporation and condensation) involve lots of heat – in physics this is called latent heat.
Our system gives no value to global commons such as the atmosphere or the oceans, because they are not seen as “scarce commodities”. One oak tree does not matter, because there are vast numbers of oak trees.
Pumping sewage into the sea doesn’t matter, because the sea is too big for it to matter.
Pumping CO2 into the air doesn’t matter, because the air is limitless.*
This is a mythological view of the world, and generally people prefer myths to facts, because facts don’t obey wishes.
*In fact if there was a lift that could travel vertically at the speed of a fast car, within minutes you’d need breathing equipment.
— Rocky Rex
Human CO2 Climate Change: All You Need to Know An unprecedented rate of Earth-system change.
The Geological Society of London (the UK’s expert association of professional geologists since 1807) says:
” ….the current speed of human-induced CO2 change and warming is nearly without precedent in the entire geological record, with the only known exception being the instantaneous, meteorite-induced event that caused the extinction of non-bird-like dinosaurs 66 million years ago” (H/T Rocky Rex)
We’ve arrived at a very similar observation in our own work, but I don’t think I’ve seen it stated this clearly—or published elsewhere. Thanks, Rocky, for helping to illuminate it.
Juxtapose the two and let me know whether the comparison can be communicated more effectively.
Multiple climate indicators now point to rates of warming-related disruption far beyond those observed during the modern instrumental era.
There is no well-established geological analog for a sustained, multi-variable, decade-scale pattern of accelerating change across the full Earth system at the resolution available in contemporary observations. If sustained, this may represent one of the most abrupt large-scale climate transitions in Earth’s geological history.
Rocky replied:
I’ve been citing that for a long time, and I’m always impressed by how many people can totally ignore it. It’s very much the scientific version of “The Good Ancestor” poem, it should hit people between the eyes and wake them up. All the signs are that we are entering an abrupt climate change process. Have I told you this true story before?
In the mid 1950s, Russell Coope was looking for a PhD project after graduating as a geologist. He noticed beetle remains in ice age deposits in a gravel pit in the UK Midlands. His supervisor, Prof Fred Shotton, said something like: “I expect they are just modern beetles that have got stuck to the surface.” Fred was wrong – a rare event.
Coope decided to base his PhD on recording what kinds of beetles there were in different ice age deposits, to see where it led. He discovered that the mix of beetles was linked to the temperatures at that time.
He did this by comparing his layer-by-layer collections with collections of beetles from different places in the modern world – beetles happen to evolve very slowly, so the actual variety of beetles hasn’t changed much over the last million years or so.
As his research proceeded, Coope was shocked to find that the beetles showed that at times, during the ice ages, temperatures had changed significantly in just a few decades – his beetles showed that the Earth’s climate is not fundamentally stable.
He had discovered abrupt climate change events, a previously unknown phenomenon. Geologists had always assumed that most processes were slow.
I had the good fortune to be a student in Coope’s palaeontology lectures long ago…. and also in Fred’s physical geology lectures. (In 1943, Fred Shotton was involved in a secret project that produced geological maps of certain beaches in northern France…… that’s a movie that should be made by someone)
“We are messing with the trigger that causes climate change….the outcome is likely to be ferocious.”
The climate system is not simply warming—it is changing how it responds to that warming. Coupled climate feedbacks are becoming one of the most consequential dimensions of climate risk in the 21st century because they amplify changes and connect individual tipping-point pathways into larger cascading effects.
The longer warming persists, the more climate feedbacks become active. As these feedbacks interact, we are already observing nonlinear responses, amplification, and cascading impacts across the climate system. Hundreds of feedback mechanisms have been identified, and many can couple and reinforce one another, contributing to the accelerating pace and increasing magnitude of climate change—The Domino Effect.
by Daniel Brouse, Sidd Mukherjee, and Rocky Rex
Can Anthropogenic Global Warming Be Proven?
Yes.
The isotopic signature of atmospheric carbon dioxide provides direct evidence.
Fossil carbon is depleted in 13C and contains essentially no measurable 14C (radiocarbon), because 14C decays over thousands of years.
Observed atmospheric trends show:
A measurable decline in the 13C/12C ratio
A measurable decline in atmospheric 14C concentration
A measurable decline in atmospheric O2 concentration
These shifts form a remarkably consistent fingerprint.
The carbon isotopes tell us where the additional carbon is coming from. Fossil fuels were formed from ancient biological material and therefore have a characteristic isotopic signature: relatively little 13C and virtually no 14C. As fossil carbon is added to the atmosphere, the atmospheric CO2 isotope ratios shift in precisely the direction expected from fossil-fuel combustion.
The decline in atmospheric oxygen provides an independent piece of evidence.
When fossil fuels are burned, carbon combines with atmospheric oxygen:
C + O2 → CO2
The process consumes O2 and produces CO2. Because the additional atmospheric CO2 is accompanied by a measurable decline in atmospheric O2, the observations are consistent with large-scale combustion of carbon rather than simply a redistribution of carbon through the natural carbon cycle.
This is especially important because the ocean, vegetation, and atmosphere continuously exchange carbon and oxygen. Natural processes can move carbon between reservoirs, but they do not explain the simultaneous long-term pattern of rising CO2, falling O2, declining 13C/12C, and declining radiocarbon.
Together, these measurements provide a chemical and isotopic fingerprint of fossil-carbon combustion.
Volcanoes do not produce the observed isotopic pattern, and the natural carbon cycle cannot account for the simultaneous changes in the required direction and magnitude.
The molecules carry their own fingerprint—and the atmosphere is preserving the evidence in both carbon and oxygen.
It has no business blocking roads, or sweeping away bridges.
What if an ambulance was stuck on the wrong side of the river?
Give the clouds a suspended sentence.
They are trying to remind us that a warmer world has wetter air. They should go and tell China, not us.
Arrest the rain.
How dare it remind us that the climate is changing?
Let’s pretend it always rained like this.
Sentence the melting ice to 10 years in the cooler.
Why does it matter if the sea floods Bangladesh?
And Miami can be the New Atlantis.
The Earth is protesting?
We are not interested – just lock it up.”
The Good Ancestor
A poem by Daverick Leggett
Every day I walk a hundred years to the hill where my great, great granddaughter sits. I carry words of blessing and reach to touch her back.
But feeling me near she turns, sad-eyed and heavy with grief.
“What was it like?” she asks, “when the great whales swam, when the birds sang you awake, when the rains came soft, and the soil smelled sweet underfoot?”
And the blessings catch in my throat.
On darker days she turns, her famished face charred, and eyes sunk in their bony orbits, burn with curses.
And the blessings froth at my mouth with the poisonous spume of betrayal.
On the darkest of all days I walk the hundred years and find no one there.
Let today be the bright day. Let today be the bright day I lay my hand upon her back.
And, feeling me near, she turns and blesses me, saying,
“Your love was fierce enough, sweet ancestor, your love was fierce enough.”
About Rocky Rex
I was a science teacher for a long time – and I taught geology when I could. Rocky Rex began as a poster on my lab wall….I was given a T Rex poster, and as soon as I pinned it up I knew he was called Rocky Rex. The name just came to me, out of nowhere.
He gave a focus for information added to his notice board. He ended up making money for school funds by appearing on T-shirts, pens, key-rings etc.
It wasn’t long before some of the other staff started calling me Rocky. This was all long before the internet existed, but when social media appeared it just seemed obvious that my avatar would be Rocky Rex. I like keeping my online stuff slightly disconnected from my offline life. [I actually did a physics degree, but we had to take an “additional science” course in the first year, so I chose geology. It was the same geology course taken by those doing a joint degree in geology and archaeology. ]
Some of the most fascinating—and concerning—climate feedback loops are ones that were barely considered in climate models a decade ago. They illustrate how a relatively small change can trigger a cascade of nonlinear responses, making them particularly relevant from a chaos theory perspective.
Chaos Theory and the Acceleration of Climate Change
Climate change isn’t just one feedback causing another.
It’s becoming a network of interacting feedbacks where seemingly unrelated processes reinforce each other in ways that traditional linear thinking struggles to capture.
Our newest infographic explores some of the Earth’s most unusual and recently recognized climate feedbacks, including:
This is nonlinear amplification: modest initial changes propagating through interconnected systems to produce responses far larger than the original disturbance.
As these hidden connections strengthen, predicting climate behavior becomes increasingly difficult using simple cause-and-effect models.
Understanding the network is becoming just as important as understanding the individual feedbacks.
🌍 Every new connection matters.
1. Zombie Fires (Overwintering Peat Fires)
Feedback loop:
Higher temperatures → more drought.
Peat ignites during summer fires.
Fire smolders underground all winter.
Fire re-emerges the following spring.
Vegetation and insulating peat disappear.
Permafrost thaws.
Ancient carbon and methane are released.
More warming → more fires.
These fires can survive beneath snow because peat acts like charcoal, insulating the combustion. They’re becoming increasingly common across Canada and Siberia as warmer, drier conditions expand.
2. Greenland Ice Algae
Perhaps one of the strangest biological feedbacks.
Feedback loop:
Warmer summers melt snow.
Microscopic algae bloom on exposed ice.
Dark pigments reduce ice reflectivity (albedo).
More sunlight is absorbed.
Ice melts faster.
More liquid water supports additional algae.
Researchers call this biological darkening. In parts of Greenland’s “Dark Zone,” algae have become a measurable contributor to increased melt.
3. Thermokarst Lakes
One of the least intuitive feedbacks.
Feedback loop:
Permafrost begins thawing.
Ground collapses into depressions.
Lakes form.
Water conducts heat much better than frozen soil.
Deeper permafrost melts.
Ancient organic carbon decomposes.
Methane bubbles escape.
Methane accelerates warming.
Small lakes become “hot spots” that can emit disproportionately large amounts of methane.
4. Beaver Expansion in the Arctic
As northern regions warm:
beavers move farther north,
they build dams,
ponds trap warm water,
warm water melts surrounding permafrost,
wetlands expand,
methane emissions increase.
An animal once considered ecologically beneficial in temperate regions becomes an unexpected amplifier of Arctic warming.
5. Boreal Forest Beetles
Cold winters historically killed bark beetles.
Now:
milder winters
more beetles survive
forests die
dead forests burn more easily
fires release carbon
soot darkens snow and ice
additional warming allows beetles to expand farther north.
6. Wildfire Smoke Darkening Snow
Smoke doesn’t just affect air quality.
Wildfire ash and black carbon settle on:
glaciers
Arctic sea ice
mountain snowpack
This lowers albedo, causing earlier melt, which exposes darker land and ocean surfaces that absorb even more solar energy.
7. Arctic Shrubification
As tundra warms:
shrubs invade formerly snow-covered areas,
shrubs absorb more sunlight than snow,
shrubs trap drifting snow,
deeper snow insulates the soil,
winter soil temperatures rise,
permafrost thaws faster.
A simple change in vegetation alters the thermal properties of the landscape.
8. Rain-on-Snow Events
Increasing winter rain instead of snow causes:
ice crust formation,
vegetation damage,
reduced insulation,
altered hydrology,
increased runoff,
greater summer drying,
increased wildfire risk.
This feedback connects winter weather directly to summer fire seasons.
9. Kelp Forest Collapse
Marine heat waves can eliminate kelp forests.
Loss of kelp means:
less carbon uptake,
reduced coastal cooling,
altered nutrient cycling,
warmer coastal waters,
additional kelp mortality.
10. Ocean Stratification
Warmer surface oceans become lighter.
This reduces vertical mixing.
Consequences include:
less oxygen reaching deep water,
reduced nutrient upwelling,
warmer surface layers,
marine heat waves become more persistent,
coral bleaching,
weaker biological carbon pump.
11. Wetland Methane Pulse
Heavy rainfall creates:
saturated soils,
oxygen-poor conditions,
methanogenic microbes,
increased methane emissions,
additional warming.
Ironically, wetter conditions can increase greenhouse-gas emissions from wetlands.
12. Glacier Elevation Feedback
As glaciers melt:
their surfaces sink,
lower elevations are warmer,
melting accelerates,
glaciers descend farther into warmer air,
retreat speeds up.
Greenland exhibits this effect over large areas.
13. AMOC Freshwater Feedback
Greenland meltwater freshens the North Atlantic.
Fresh water is less dense, reducing deep-water formation.
This can alter ocean circulation, redistribute heat, and change regional weather patterns. Some studies suggest this may also increase subsurface warming near marine-terminating glaciers, enhancing ice-sheet melt.
14. Lightning Feedback
Warmer air produces:
more atmospheric moisture,
greater instability,
more lightning,
more wildfire ignitions,
greater carbon emissions,
additional warming.
Recent studies indicate lightning activity is increasing in parts of the Arctic, where lightning was historically uncommon.
These gases further warm the atmosphere, increasing microbial activity even more.
Why these are important for chaos theory
What’s striking is that these feedbacks don’t operate independently. They form an interconnected network in which one process often triggers several others. For example:
Warming → zombie fires
Zombie fires → soot deposition
Soot → darker snow and ice
Darker ice → faster melting
Faster melting → thermokarst lakes
Thermokarst lakes → methane release
Methane → additional warming
Likewise:
Warming → Greenland algae
Algae → lower albedo
Lower albedo → more meltwater
Meltwater → larger algal blooms
These interactions exemplify nonlinear amplification: a modest initial perturbation can propagate through multiple coupled systems, producing a response much larger than the original forcing (The Butterfly Effect). That networked behavior is one reason Earth-system responses can become increasingly difficult to predict with linear cause-and-effect thinking.
By Daniel Brouse Economist & Climatologist Membrane Domain USA August 10, 2026
Our system gives no value to global commons such as the atmosphere or the oceans, because they are not seen as “scarce commodities”. One oak tree does not matter, because there are vast numbers of oak trees.
Pumping sewage into the sea doesn’t matter, because the sea is too big for it to matter.
Pumping CO2 into the air doesn’t matter, because the air is limitless.*
This is a mythological view of the world, and generally people prefer myths to facts, because facts don’t obey wishes.
*In fact if there was a lift that could travel vertically at the speed of a fast car, within minutes you’d need breathing equipment.
— Rocky Rex
Earth’s Thin, Changing Atmosphere: How Human Climate Change Is Reshaping the Troposphere
Human-driven climate change is profoundly altering the thin atmospheric layer in which we live—the troposphere. Greenhouse-gas accumulation is changing its temperature, vertical structure, moisture content, and relationship with the layers above it.
The atmosphere may look enormous in many illustrations, but relative to the size of Earth, the layer where virtually all human life and weather occur is remarkably thin. Climate change is not simply warming this layer; it is changing the structure and dynamics of the atmosphere itself.
1. The Troposphere Is Expanding
As rising greenhouse-gas concentrations warm the troposphere, the atmosphere responds dynamically by expanding. One measurable consequence is a rising tropopause—the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere.
Observations from radiosondes and satellite GPS-radio-occultation measurements show that the tropopause has risen substantially in recent decades. In the Northern Hemisphere, studies find an average rise of roughly 50–60 meters per decade since 2000, with tropospheric warming identified as the primary driver.
This does not mean that the entire atmosphere is simply being pushed upward like a solid layer. Rather, warming changes the temperature structure and density of the atmosphere, causing the troposphere to occupy a greater vertical extent.
The result: Earth’s already-thin weather layer is expanding upward.
2. Warming Below, Cooling Above
One of the clearest fingerprints of increasing greenhouse gases is a vertical temperature contrast: the troposphere warms while much of the stratosphere cools.
This occurs for different physical reasons in the two layers. In the troposphere, increasing greenhouse gases reduce the rate at which infrared energy escapes directly to space, contributing to warming near the surface and throughout much of the lower atmosphere. In the stratosphere, increasing CO₂ enhances radiative emission to space, producing cooling.
The observed long-term cooling is strongest in the middle and upper stratosphere, where NOAA assessments attribute much of the trend to increasing CO₂ and other greenhouse gases. The lower stratosphere is more complicated: its temperature has shown little long-term global trend since the late 1990s because multiple influences—including ozone changes and natural variability—act simultaneously.
This creates a changing thermal structure across the tropopause.
That matters because temperature gradients help organize winds, atmospheric circulation, jet streams, and the movement of weather systems. Changes in the troposphere–stratosphere system can therefore propagate downward into the weather patterns experienced at Earth’s surface.
3. A Warmer Atmosphere Carries More Water
A warmer atmosphere can contain substantially more water vapor. The Clausius–Clapeyron relationship implies approximately 7% more water-holding capacity per 1°C of warming near typical atmospheric temperatures.
This does not mean that every location becomes 7% wetter. Actual atmospheric moisture depends on evaporation, circulation, precipitation, and regional conditions.
But where additional moisture is available, a warmer atmosphere can support larger amounts of water vapor and heavier precipitation.
Water vapor is itself a powerful greenhouse gas, creating an important positive feedback:
The same additional moisture can also increase the potential intensity of extreme precipitation because storms have access to larger quantities of atmospheric water.
In other words, climate change is altering not only the temperature of the atmosphere but also the amount of energy and water circulating through our thin atmospheric habitat.
4. The Ozone Layer Is Being Affected—But Not Simply “Compressed”
The expanding troposphere interacts with the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere (UTLS), a region where chemistry, radiation, and atmospheric circulation are tightly coupled.
Climate change can alter stratospheric temperatures, circulation, water vapor, and ozone distribution. Increasing greenhouse gases cool the stratosphere and modify atmospheric circulation, while ozone changes themselves affect stratospheric temperature and circulation.
However, it is misleading to say that the expanding troposphere simply “compresses” or “thins” the ozone layer. The ozone layer is not a rigid physical shell. Its distribution changes through interacting chemical and dynamical processes.
Importantly, the global ozone layer is currently recovering from the effects of ozone-depleting substances because of the Montreal Protocol. Climate change nevertheless continues to interact with ozone chemistry and stratospheric circulation, making the relationship between the two systems increasingly important.
5. The Bigger Picture: A Thin Layer Undergoing Structural Change
The most important point is not that climate change is merely making the atmosphere warmer.
It is reorganizing the atmosphere vertically and dynamically.
The troposphere is expanding. The tropopause is rising. The troposphere is warming. Much of the stratosphere is cooling. Atmospheric moisture is increasing as temperatures rise. Circulation patterns are changing. And the interaction between the troposphere, stratosphere, water vapor, and ozone is becoming increasingly important.
All of this is occurring within a layer that is astonishingly thin compared with the size of Earth.
That is perhaps the most important perspective:
We do not live on Earth beneath an enormous atmosphere. We live inside an extraordinarily thin atmospheric layer wrapped around a planet.
Human activity is now changing the physical and chemical properties of that layer on a global scale.
About Denialism and Ecofascism: Science Is Science
The Observation Glad to know you’re watching out! At the same time, this divisiveness—when we desperately need everyone to pull together because it’s a CRISIS, right?—makes me somehow deeply sad.
That’s a big job right there… How do we reach those who seem furthest away from any kind of understanding? We need both a Winston Churchill and a Mahatma Gandhi in this endeavor…
The Response Agreed. Both denialism and ecofascism are ideologies that ultimately defy logic. In very different ways, they can become a kind of combination of self-destruction and destruction of others.
I’ve spent years battling misinformation, propaganda, and rhetoric. To the best of my knowledge, neither Sidd nor I have successfully converted—or even educated—a single committed denier. Climate science has somehow been transformed into a “belief” system. But science has nothing to do with belief. 1 + 1 = 2. If someone refuses to “believe” that, what exactly can you do?
From the beginning, our work has been based on observations, data, mathematics, and the laws of physics. So yes, I think this is at the heart of the crisis. When we started this work, we genuinely believed humanity would eventually take action. We thought we had thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years to adapt. That was the one thing we got wrong.
A couple of years ago, after explaining my continuing attempts to reach climate deniers, I asked Sidd what we could possibly do. His response was essentially, “Dude, just tell them to look out their window.” It sounds simplistic, but there is profound truth in it. The consequences are becoming increasingly difficult to deny.
Since then, we’ve had to rebuild much of our modeling. A +4°C world within thousands of years is no longer the worst-case scenario we worry about. The possibility of 4–7°C of warming within a century has become a much more serious concern in our work.
And then there is the political dimension. The rise of white-nationalist and authoritarian governments in the U.S. and elsewhere has made an already difficult problem considerably harder. Paradoxically, though, history offers one small reason for hope: fascism ultimately fails. It is inherently self-destructive.
The “drill, baby, drill” mentality is economically and environmentally self-defeating. A severe economic contraction could, ironically, buy humanity some time for adaptation while drastically reducing emissions. That is hardly the future anyone should want, but history has repeatedly demonstrated that systems built on extremism and authoritarianism eventually consume themselves.
So yes—we desperately need both the Churchill and Gandhi dimensions: the willingness to confront reality without flinching, and the willingness to keep reaching for people rather than giving up on them. I’m just not sure humanity has ever faced a crisis where we needed both quite this badly.
Sidd said: “frightening article by Jeff Masters. We saw some of this coming, the flood risk aint just along the coast, it extends 100 miles inland… the water cant get out …”
In the 1990s, Sidd and I began developing real-estate-based climate risk models. From the beginning, one of the underlying high-risk factors was flooding—and, closely linked to it, the availability and affordability of flood insurance. In the early 2000s, we met with FEMA, Fannie Mae (FNMA), and Freddie Mac (FHLMC) to better understand their flood-risk modeling and emerging plans for managed retreat.
In October 2023, Sidd observed: “Now I am thinking the violent rain will be a bigger problem before we die.”
That concern has become increasingly relevant. As the Earth warms, warmer air can physically hold more water vapor than cooler air. For every 1°C (1.8°F) increase in temperature, the atmosphere can hold approximately 7% more moisture, increasing the potential for extreme precipitation. Over a 10°C increase, atmospheric moisture-holding capacity would nearly double, creating the potential for substantially more intense rainfall.
The problem, however, is not simply the amount of water falling from the sky. It is also what happens when that water moves across the landscape—and whether infrastructure and government response systems are capable of managing, containing, and recovering from the resulting flows.
Flow forces scale with the square of velocity (v²). As flow speeds increase—whether from heavier rainfall, steeper runoff, or more intense hydrological events—the destructive force of moving water rises rapidly. Density further magnifies this effect. Water is roughly 800 times denser than air, meaning that a comparable flow velocity can produce dramatically greater force.
Together, we developed a series of models incorporating the Clausius–Clapeyron relationship, the extreme energy transfer within the water cycle through latent heat, and fluid-flow dynamics. These models increasingly pointed toward a risk structure in which flooding could no longer be treated as an isolated coastal problem. Instead, precipitation intensity, runoff, topography, infrastructure vulnerability, insurance stress, and limited recovery capacity can interact and compound one another across much larger regions.
By 2026, the framework had evolved from a theoretical real-estate climate-risk model into a broader multiplicative risk framework that could be evaluated against observed real-world conditions.
The latest evolution of this work is presented in the following three papers:
