iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

2°C by 2040. That's where the trend lands if warming keeps running at its post-2011 rate of 0.39°C a decade. The CMIP6 climate models in this chart land there too We're crossing 1.5°C as we speak: 2024 cleared it, 2026 will too, and next year's record #ElNino points at 1.7°C

https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#models

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Naomi Oreskes argues in 'Why trust science?' That eugenics was never a true concensus position of the scientific community... www.theguardian.com/science/2019...

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

12/ Some version of AI may be here to stay. How fast it spreads and what it's used for are still ours to decide. Calling it inevitable is a way of taking that decision away from the public.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

10/ Germany once got about a quarter of its electricity from nuclear power. It shut its last reactors in 2023. Whatever you think of that decision, it shows an entrenched technology can be unwound.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

9/ The companies selling CFCs said for years there was no workable alternative. Once a ban was on the way, they found one. Industry claims about what's "impossible" tend to change when the rules do.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

8/ "It's already everywhere, so it's too late." Leaded petrol was in almost every car and CFCs were in every fridge. Both were phased out. We kept the cars and the fridges and dropped the harmful version, which is the kind of choice we can make about AI.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

7/ GM crops dominate American farms. In Europe, regulation and public opposition kept them marginal. It was the same technology and the same companies, and Europeans got a different outcome because they made different choices.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

6/ "The money is too big to stop." In 1971 Congress cut funding for America's supersonic airliner. In 1973 the US banned supersonic flight over land because of the booms. That ban has held for 53 years. It's only now being eased, for jets quiet enough to pass a noise test.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

5/ In the 1990s China was marketing a laser weapon designed to blind soldiers. In 1995 China and the other major powers agreed to ban blinding lasers. Rivals can agree to leave a working weapon on the shelf.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

4/ "If we don't, our rivals will." In 1963 JFK warned that 15 to 25 countries could have nuclear weapons by the 1970s. Today there are nine. Treaties and export controls limited the spread of the most powerful weapon ever built.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

3/ Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1996. Dozens of countries went on to ban human reproductive cloning, and mainstream science treated it as off-limits. Thirty years later there's still no credible cloned human.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

2/ In 1974 the scientists who had just learned to splice DNA called a halt to some of their own experiments. At Asilomar in 1975 they agreed safety rules before carrying on. The people closest to a new technology chose to slow it down.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

1/ People keep saying AI is inevitable. History disagrees. Plenty of technologies were called unstoppable, and societies stopped them or shrank them down to a niche. A thread 🧵

evitable
adjective
uk /ˈev.ɪ.tə.bəl/ us /ˈev.ə.t̬ə.bəl/

able to be avoided or prevented:
He believes that world war is evitable.
Inevitable suffering due to persecution is to be distinguished from evitable sickness.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

"The good news is that according to the latest IPCC report, if we enact aggressive emissions limits now, we could hold the warming to 2°C. That's only HALF an ice age unit, which is probably no big deal." 🙃 www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.p...

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1379:_4.5_Degrees

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Go see 'Pressure'. "Because the storms that I'm talking about are real, and the jet stream that's propelling them towards the Normandy coast is real, and the wrath of nature is real. And if you ignore it..." youtu.be/xpVZho3fjhg #ClimateMovie

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

9/ The moral is simple. Act now and act fast. The next fraction of a degree may cost far more than the last one did. Every fraction of a degree matters. They don't all matter equally.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

5/ Eg. 3. A town floods. Rebuild once & it recovers. Flood it again before the recovery finishes and insurers leave, values fall & the tax base shrinks, so there's less money for defences before the next one. Later action means more events landing on a place already weakened by the last.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

4/ Eg.2 The Amazon. Warming means more drought & fire. The forest loses trees, so it makes less of its own rain & dries further. Wait long enough & it flips from carbon sink to carbon source, feeding the warming that started it. Cut early & the chain never closes. Cut late and it works against you

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

3/ Example one. At 1.5C a heatwave in a drought strains the grid and some crops fail. At 2C the same event runs hotter and longer. Rivers drop below what power plants need, blackouts hit during peak heat, food prices spike, and the people least able to cope lose cooling just when they need it most

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

1/ "Every fraction of a degree of warming matters." True, and a dangerous platitude. It quietly suggests warming is a smooth dial, where each tenth of a degree costs about the same as the last. It doesn't. The later ones cost far more. Here's why. 🧵

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

You know what happens when a plane 'overshoots' a runway. It doesn't just 'return'.

Aerial view of an American Airlines Boeing 737 that overshot the runway, lying wrecked on rocky ground beyond the airport perimeter, fuselage split open and wings buckled, with emergency workers nearby.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Sometimes gorgeous Southern Hawker dragonflies come and land on me to eat their lunch, and I must stand very still so as not to disturb them until they're finished devouring the unfortunate hoverfly.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Scientists warned us this would happen. E.g. This study from 2013 published in Nature Climate Change. www.nature.com/articles/ncl... When recovery time becomes > return period the ecosystem degrades to collapse The same will be increasingly true for other ecosystems, including agricultural ones!

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

States of emergency declared after extreme weather: up 📈 Countries declaring per yr: up 📈 Share of weather disasters labeled as such: up 📈 2000-04: ~24/yr across ~17 countries 21-25: ~53/yr across ~29 That's 1 in 8 recorded weather disasters, up from 1 in 25. All p<0.05 EM-DAT (CRED/UCLouvain)

Two stacked line charts titled "States of emergency declared after extreme weather, 2000-2025".

Top panel, counts per year. A dark blue line shows weather disasters with a recorded emergency declaration. It starts at 15 in 2000, dips to 10 in 2001, jumps to 41 in 2003, then fluctuates between 21 and 56 before rising to a peak of 61 in 2024 and falling to 46 in 2025. A red line shows the number of countries issuing at least one declaration. It follows a similar path, from 13 in 2000 to a low of 8 in 2001, then between 15 and 36, ending at 27 in 2025. Dashed trend lines run through both: declarations rise 0.91 per year (p=0.004), countries 0.40 per year (p=0.021).

Bottom panel, the share of all recorded weather disasters carrying a declaration. It runs at 4.2% in 2000 and 3.0% in 2001, steps up to 13.1% in 2003, then moves between 7.2% and 15.4% for the rest of the period, ending at 14.0% in 2025. A dashed trend line rises 0.21 percentage points per year (p=0.013).

Source: EM-DAT, CRED/UCLouvain. Hydrological, meteorological and climatological events. Declarations are recorded at country level and include subnational declarations

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

"we're just beginning to realize what actually can be done with the steam engine in the way of continuous performance, economical performance &reduction in maintenance that will continue it in service, so that it can be more ably discussed in the year 1980 than it will be at this convention in 1930"

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

We knew we'd grind them down eventually! Two down, one to go 💚✊️

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Three cheers for @cultureunstained.bsky.social and @scientistsonsurviv.bsky.social and the rest of those who've joined in the campaign for a fossil free @sciencemuseum.org.uk 🥳 Equinor defeated. BP defeated. Just Adani left to go !!! www.fossilfreesciencemuseum.com

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

3/4 This isn't just one river. The EU's Drought Observatory recorded extreme low flow across the Rhine, Loire, Po and Danube in late July. Four of Europe's major rivers, at once.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

2/ Deltares, the Dutch government's water research institute, calculated in 2019 that a 2018-scale event would hit roughly once every 60 years, rising to once every 10–20 years by 2050. It has now happened in 2018, 2022 and 2026. www.h2owaternetwerk.nl/vakartikelen...

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

1/4 In August the Rhine at Kaub, its shallowest point, fell below 10cm. The previous record low, set in 2018, was 25cm. In June 2025 the body regulating Rhine shipping said flow would not clearly change before 2050, and deferred any decision on measures to 2027. www.ccr-zkr.org/files/infovo...

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

"Thirty glaciers, or even more, are likely to disappear without a trace by the end of summer." #Switzerland 🇨🇭 www.blick.ch/life/wissen/...

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

It's too late for non-radical futures. A slide from a recent talk by @kevinclimate.bsky.social on the stark choice that faces us. You can view the whole talk here: youtu.be/ABptBPMWitU

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Yes, there is such a thing as #climate comedy and @stuartgoldsmith.bsky.social is rather good at it. You can see him at the @edfringe.bsky.social this month, & then on tour. He even cites @ssteingraber1.bsky.social on the importance of playing with your kazoo 😁

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

2/ In the UK 🇬🇧 @climatenewstracker.bsky.social finds: "Analysis of TV and radio programmes from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky News by Climate News Tracker found a significant 12% drop in climate coverage year-on-year between 2024 and 2025." climatenewstracker.org/climate-cove...

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

"Critically, several participants noted that the framing of the question around a single threshold was itself misleading: damage character changes progressively, and the notion of a discrete transition point may obscure a more gradual but accelerating departure from smooth-function behaviour"

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

"This shows an ambitious clean air zone can drive pollution levels down, rapidly restoring children's stunted lung growth" 👏👏👏 www.bbc.com/news/article...

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

6/ Which raises a question about how we all talk about this. We keep describing climate change as something that arrives in 2100. That's easier to sit with than saying it's happening now, because a problem for later is a problem that can wait. Are we ready to look at things as they already are?

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

5/ This has already happened. Yet the headline files it under what life will look like in seventy-five years. It will get far worse, and it has already begun. Is it doomism to point that out?

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

2/ Cities plunged underwater. Hat Yai 2025. Porto Alegre 2024. Houston 2017. New Orleans 2005, still around 90,000 residents short twenty years on.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

1/ Is this headline misleading? Yes, but not in the direction you'd expect. The problem isn't that it exaggerates. It's that it puts in 2100 what has already started. 🧵

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

13/ Worth noting "warmist" is a term of abuse coined by deniers. Adopting it as a construct name tells you something about the frame

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

7/ The intervention taught participants to be on guard for intensity. They watched a generic video on emotional language, then read text applying it to climate: "horrific" instead of "serious", "apocalypse" instead of "crisis" The paper defines doom as "extreme portrayals of climate change"

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

4/ The four "doom" headlines used came from real news articles. Two from the Daily Mail were used as published. The other two from the Guardian were edited: "predictions play out" became "play out with no escape". "Heat and drought hit Europe" became "unstoppable and fatal impacts mount".

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

1/ Doomism means saying it's too late and nothing can be done. It doesn't mean saying things are bad. One recent high profile paper in @pnas.org treats conflates this. Whilst another paper in the British Journal of Psychology treats naming who funded climate delay as conspiracism. A thread 🧵

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

"That's it for the four cast, hope you're wiser" - Matt Frei, @channel4news.bsky.social No, I'm not! You just hosted a completely one-sided discussion with 3 Net Zero sceptics who all lined up to trash the #ClimateChange Act & validate Badenoch's plan to revoke it That's not balanced journalism!

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