Unfollow

IMPASSE out now! sup.org/books/literary…

Not to be a killjoy but that monkey's not gonna learn how to read

Blithe confidence about massive scientific uncertainty must be hot this season.

429.32 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 18-Mar-2026 keelingcurve.ucsd.edu

people misunderstand the icarus story. the problem was not that he flew too high. it's that the wings were made of beeswax, which offered very little resistance to heating. with modern materials he would have had no problems. we can fly as close to the sun as we want now

All signs continue to point to an exceptional, long-duration, and record-breaking to (in some cases) record-shattering March heatwave initially centered across U.S. Southwest but expanding to much broader region next week. This is effectively a full-on summer heatwave in March.

Whew. All signs are increasingly pointing to a significant, if not strong to very strong, El Niño event. I'll have more to say in coming weeks & months, but for now I'll just say that this is increasingly likely to become a major regional-to-global climate driver in 2026-2027.

One Battle After Another is supposed to be an adaptation of Vineland but I think you can just as accurately call it an adaptation of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer’s mom turns out to still be alive

Ever since I was a small boy I knew I wanted to complicate a dominant narrative in my field

Claude Levi-Strauss circa 1949 be like:

@dwallacewells And yet they care about a whole bunch of other stuff a lot more. It's a "finite pool of worry" issues.

Alarm isn't spiking, and sits below a couple of recent highs. But the basic trajectory of concern doesn't look like a free-fall but a long plateau. Between 63% and 70% of Americans have been either "very" or "somewhat" worried in every poll since Oct 2017. climatecommunication.yale.edu/app/uploads/20…

It's widely assumed that Americans have moved on from climate worry. The invaluable Yale survey on Climate Change and the American Mind tells a different story: more Americans are worried today about warming than during Waxman-Markey, the Paris accords, or I.R.A. negotiations.

@kunktation @dwallacewells Have you read Fressoz's book on this? I found it persuasive. harpercollins.com/products/more-…

I really appreciate @dwallacewells' work, but this—green energy supplementing rather than replacing fossil fuels—seems to me the main story, not just a qualification to the story of the "green transition." GHG emissions keep rising—w 2025 projected to reach the highest level ever

The Impasse is an exploration of pessimism. If we want to have any hope at all for the future, it must be grounded in a recognition of human limits—a view Scranton calls ethical pessimism. Find us at #HMLondon2025 📚 buff.ly/dInxU0H @stanfordpress

"A tour de force. Scranton provides arguably the most comprehensive review available of relevant human behaviors and issues, written in crystal-clear language…. an indispensable reference for anyone concerned about climate change." Thanks to @Choice_Reviews for the great review of IMPASSE! choicereviews.org/review/10.5860…

Great article by @jacobsiegel in @tabletmag about how the 20th-century figure of the American man has been replaced by a "dribbling sludge of bitterness." tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

Donna Haraway circa 2003

Global monthly temperature anomalies, with ENSO status... Next El Niño will be... interesting.

I talked about IMPASSE on @CSPAN Book TV with Keith Makato Woodhouse. Thanks to @SeminaryCoop for hosting. c-span.org/program/book-t…

"In IMPASSE... Roy Scranton dispenses with the pieties of climate discourse – hope, innovation and 'net zero' platitudes – and offers something far rarer: an unflinching case for ethical pessimism." (TLS) IMPASSE is now available as audiobook. Check it out! audible.com/pd/Impasse-Aud…

This is why you should always put a sock on the end of a bat.

I was anti-AI until I saw this 😂