Brian Smoliak

My #Climate #Strategy: #Reduce greenhouse gas emissions > #Drawdown greenhouse gas concentrations > #Reflect sunlight to limit warming/impacts > #Adapt to remaining warming/impacts

MAJOR IMPACTS TO NOAA SERVICES COMING all of the listed websites/services from NOAA are set to disappear tonight due to contract terminations with no backups or recovery possible. this is almost unimaginable

This 👇🏼

@PeterOlivier And we might also say that we’re witnessing maladaptation, a failure to adjust adequately or appropriately to the environment and situation.

feels like the rate of change now exceeds the rate of adaptation across a lot of society, culture, climate, and economics

@ZLabe I’m so sorry Zach. I see your contribution and I believe in you, wholeheartedly.

After nearly two weeks of overwhelming uncertainty, today it happened. I was fired from my dream of working at NOAA. I'm so sorry to everyone also affected. My job was to strengthen NOAA's use of machine learning and AI for subseasonal-to-decadal weather and climate prediction

@PatrickFIanagan @DKThomp Section 174 came up a few times in the House Small Business Committee hearing on SBIR/STTR youtube.com/live/fddbTWHJS…

I don't have a NBER working paper to link to, but I'm in groups chats with small business owners who have laid people off or shuttered firms exactly because of this rule. The WSJ has interviewed small and large businesses about it: wsj.com/articles/the-t… Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz has an excellent explainer of the accounting mechanics. blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/ The abruptness of the accounting change did create a nice natural experiment for economists, so I expect academic papers to be published on it. @real_eric_ohrn writes about the impact of expensing rules on employment and I know he's doing research on it.

Smart piece by Rogé Karma: The labor market is frozen Graph 1. Hiring has declined steadily for years and, as a share of total employment, is at its lowest level since 2014 (when U3 was about 6%) Graph 2. The unemployment rate for recent college grads is now consistently higher than unemployment for all workers—a rarity in the last 30 years

Will the President be responding to OPMs “5 things I did last week” email? Will the Supreme Court Justices? Cabinet members? Setting aside the ethics of this email fracas, it’s still very unclear whether it applies to all federal employees.

Folks are getting worked up about my recent claim that U.S. National Weather Service costs $3-4 per person/year. Well, some math: NWS budget of ~$1.3 billion, ~160 million tax returns, & ~345 million Americans means ~$8/taxpayer, or (indeed) ~$3.75/person. That's...quite a deal.

@PatrickFIanagan @mjwhansen What can be done? I have appreciated the persistent comms from you all

Some of you recall the work the Small Software Business Alliance did to lobby Congress to fix Section 174. Michele Hansen, who valiantly led that effort, (@mjwhansen) merged the SSBA with The App Association and handed responsibilities to them in Nov. Unfortunately, fixing 174 does not seem to be a priority for the App Association. Their 23 page letter to the Trump admin doesn't mention 174 or taxes once.

I came away from this discussion feeling optimistic, empowered, and emboldened to continue the work of building a more resilient society. I recall reading Randy’s book “Don’t be such a scientist” with great interest in graduate school @UWAtmosSci

My @squarespace saga is nearly over. They completely dropped the ball on the acquisition of Google Domains and are now dragging their feet as I try to transfer my business domain away. @SquarespaceHelp is a hollow shell, devoid of any humanity. Caveat emptor.

Nature just published a piece on why probability doesn't exist. Lee Cronin said many times chemical reactions are not real. Your genetics professor probably confessed to you before that there are no genes. Biologists still disagree on whether cell types are even real. And we already discussed how there is no such thing as aging. This summarizes one of my favorite parts of doing science - the longer you stare at your cherished concept, the more it disintegrates and becomes non-existent. Seems to be a universal feeling - struggle to describe reality with words and numbers - experienced by many across fields.

I always seem to wait for the last minute to carve a pumpkin 🎃. This year the weather inspired me ❄️ #HalloweenBlizzard #1991 #Minnesota

A+ 100% autumn weather day #Minnesota. Get outside for 20 minutes today, for you wellness 🍂

@nickhaltermpls Flip of the coin for the rest of us eastern Minnesotans.

HOLD THE LINE WESTERN MINNESOTA

We are truly humbled to serve this Nation from coast to coast. From wildfires to space weather, from record temperatures to marine weather and devastating hurricanes, we know it has been an incredibly busy fall season. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by these events and preparing for the next one. Your safety is our top priority, and we are working around the clock to provide the best forecasts, warnings, and messaging to help keep you prepared. weather.gov

@patiomensch Beaut of a blue sky der fella

Fishing for compliments.

@Revkin Indeed, IMO the more significant climate change question involves whether this magnitude of flooding is becoming more frequent.

There's a meme and message running around claiming it's a signal of #climatechange that #hurricanehelene devastated a supposedly storm-safe inland high-elevation city like Asheville. This is false and dangerous misinformation, conveying that the solution is to stop global warming. Asheville has experienced TWO previous flood disasters driven by fading hurricanes - in 2004 and 1916 (both from double hurricane hits): x.com/Revkin/status/…

@AlexLaplaza_ Solutions that can quantify or even estimate avoided losses will likely have an advantage in the market. That underscores the importance of demonstration and pilots to help build the business case.

A principal problem in resilience and adaptation: Projects need upfront capital. Returns often come in the form of avoided losses. Avoided losses are often delayed, intangible, or distributed. Even if they aren't, recouping investment is harder with savings than profits.

@AlexLaplaza_ @MarshallBBurke Insurance policies that incentivize risk mitigation can help promote avoided losses. I’d like to see premium discounts for early adopters of A&R solutions across insurance policy domains: e.g. home, commercial property, health, business interruption, workers comp, crop insurance

@MarshallBBurke Two I've been thinking about: 1. Insurance is predicated on avoided losses AND very vulnerable to climate impacts. It could be a powerful means to finance and deploy solutions 2. Focus on solutions with co-benefits that can recoup investments (e.g, AC that lowers energy bills)