Climate scientist (ex-MetOffice, MInstP), glaciologist (PhD), engineer (CEng), bike mechanic, beekeeper, gardener & father. M0VTZ. @clv101@fediscience.org
Wales
Joined May 2009
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We've heard a lot recently about the global #foodcrisis. Most coverage focuses on Russia's invasion, blockade of the Black Sea preventing Ukrainian grains & cooking oil exports, high gas prices cutting fertiliser production and sanctions further limiting Russian exports. But...🧵
Chris Vernon retweeted
The brand new ECMWF El Niño forecast has just arrived, and it's quite something.
It shows the El Niño peaking around or just above 4°C in December.
But what's most notable is the duration of record-breaking conditions, with with many members remaining above 3°C into April!
So much noise about US #diesel export ban! If we see a ban it will be small ~20-30% of exports. Enough to rebuild their domestic reserves over couple months without crude run cuts at the refineries. A limit might be domestic distribution, moving from Gulf to East and West coasts.
Chris Vernon retweeted
📽️ What happens when the world's biggest exporter of one of the most important substances for modern civilisation decides to stop exporting it?
We might be about to find out.
🛢️Primer on US diesel and the coming fuel crunch, inc why it could be especially grisly for Britain👇
No, that is s not 'the answer'! It makes very little material difference, very little. The 'answer', if you want an all caps soundbite, is to REDUCE OUR RELIANCE ON FINITE FOSSIL FUELS.
Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline has been damaged by drone attacks. The strait of Hormuz is restricted, Houthi bandits threaten shipping routes into the Red Sea. Another oil shock is coming.
Yet our Prime Minister and his Cabinet are behaving like a flock of ostriches, heads buried so deep in the sand they could strike oil themselves.
The answer is simple: DRILL OUR OWN OIL AND GAS IN THE NORTH SEA.
Looking forward to this one.
I was the first White House Special Advisor for AI. My friend Tantum Collins was Director for Technology and National Security, joining government after five years at Google DeepMind. Our jobs were to help make AI safe and ensure that democracies led the way in inventing and using it well. Today, I’m a professor at Johns Hopkins and an advisor to Anthropic and others, and Tantum is the CEO of Inherent.
Long before we served in government, we thought that humanity was on track to create AI systems that outperform humans at virtually every cognitive task. This was once a fringe hypothesis. It now seems inevitable.
THE BITTER STRUGGLE is our new book about what’s happened, what’s coming, and what’s at stake. From nanometer-scale chips to gigawatt data centers, we will show you why AI is so powerful, and why its progress will accelerate from here in ways that feel like science fiction. We will take you into the Oval Office with President Biden, the Situation Room with the Cabinet, and the Roosevelt Room with leading CEOs — and we will examine what has happened under President Trump. The decisions made in these rooms, and in Silicon Valley, will determine which nations gain a decisive lead in AI. Whoever wields that technology will gain a power unlike any in history. The next few years may decide the next few decades.
But, most of all, together we will confront AI’s hardest questions. What is the proper relationship between the companies inventing the technology, the government, and the public? How can we make sure AI is safe and trustworthy? How do democracies win without losing our values?
And how can humanity figure all of this out when we are so quickly running out of time?
That question is why we wrote this book — and why we believe the answers are too important to only be debated in closed rooms, including the ones we once sat in. We are so excited to finally share our work with you.
The book is available for pre-order now and out November 10th from Crown. penguinrandomhouse.com/books…
ALT Book cover: The Bitter Struggle — Superintelligence, Superpowers, and the Fate of the World, by Ben Buchanan and Tantum Collins.
Chris Vernon retweeted
I was the first White House Special Advisor for AI. My friend Tantum Collins was Director for Technology and National Security, joining government after five years at Google DeepMind. Our jobs were to help make AI safe and ensure that democracies led the way in inventing and using it well. Today, I’m a professor at Johns Hopkins and an advisor to Anthropic and others, and Tantum is the CEO of Inherent.
Long before we served in government, we thought that humanity was on track to create AI systems that outperform humans at virtually every cognitive task. This was once a fringe hypothesis. It now seems inevitable.
THE BITTER STRUGGLE is our new book about what’s happened, what’s coming, and what’s at stake. From nanometer-scale chips to gigawatt data centers, we will show you why AI is so powerful, and why its progress will accelerate from here in ways that feel like science fiction. We will take you into the Oval Office with President Biden, the Situation Room with the Cabinet, and the Roosevelt Room with leading CEOs — and we will examine what has happened under President Trump. The decisions made in these rooms, and in Silicon Valley, will determine which nations gain a decisive lead in AI. Whoever wields that technology will gain a power unlike any in history. The next few years may decide the next few decades.
But, most of all, together we will confront AI’s hardest questions. What is the proper relationship between the companies inventing the technology, the government, and the public? How can we make sure AI is safe and trustworthy? How do democracies win without losing our values?
And how can humanity figure all of this out when we are so quickly running out of time?
That question is why we wrote this book — and why we believe the answers are too important to only be debated in closed rooms, including the ones we once sat in. We are so excited to finally share our work with you.
The book is available for pre-order now and out November 10th from Crown. penguinrandomhouse.com/books…
ALT Book cover: The Bitter Struggle — Superintelligence, Superpowers, and the Fate of the World, by Ben Buchanan and Tantum Collins.
Chris Vernon retweeted
Tous les facteurs d'une crise agricole majeure sont en train de se conjuger.
La situation hydrique en France se détériore rapidement, au point de compromettre les semis d’automne et d’hiver. C'est indiscutable : sur 95 % du territoire, l’indice hydrique des sols atteint 0 % dans les neuf premiers centimètres (carte de droite). Les horizons superficiels sont totalement desséchés, rendant les conditions de germination et de levée particulièrement défavorables.
Et les perspectives météorologiques n'offrent guère de répit : aucune pluie véritablement efficace n'est attendue à l'échelle nationale avant le 27 septembre au plus tôt (carte de gauche).
Je ne sais pas si vous mesurez pleinement ce qui est en train de se jouer. Nous assistons à une convergence de facteurs susceptibles de provoquer une grave crise agricole et alimentaire :
➡️ L'énergie : des coûts énergétiques élevés qui fragilisent les exploitations agricoles et renchérissent les coûts de production, de transformation et de transport.
➡️ La géopolitique : des tensions internationales croissantes qui accentuent l'incertitude sur les marchés agricoles, énergétiques et alimentaires.
➡️ Le climat : cinq mois de conditions climatiques particulièrement éprouvantes, qui ont déjà lourdement affecté les récoltes de 2026. Désormais, la sécheresse se prolonge jusqu'aux semis des cultures qui seront récoltées en 2027. Nous ne parlons donc plus seulement des conséquences sur une campagne agricole, mais d'un risque de transmission des difficultés d'une année à l'autre.
➡️ El Niño : le réchauffement des eaux du Pacifique équatorial constitue un facteur de risque supplémentaire pour les productions agricoles mondiales. Selon son intensité et son évolution, il pourrait perturber les régimes de précipitations de plusieurs grandes régions productrices, avec des répercussions possibles sur les récoltes et les prix alimentaires internationaux.
J’observe les crises climatiques, je les analyse et je les documente depuis des années. Mais aujourd’hui, nous entrons dans une multicrise.
Une situation où les crises climatiques, agricoles, énergétiques et géopolitiques ne se succèdent plus, mais se superposent, interagissent et amplifient mutuellement leurs conséquences.
Le danger ne réside plus seulement dans la gravité de chaque crise prise isolément, mais dans leur accumulation et leurs effets en cascade. Et c’est précisément ce qui rend la situation actuelle particulièrement préoccupant...
Chris Vernon retweeted
ALL-TIME HIGH DIESEL CRACK
The US diesel crack spread (i.e., refining margin) is now sitting above $111/bbl (vs Brent), the highest level on record.
The industrial workhorse fuel is currently trading at roughly $220/bbl, more than double the price of prompt crude futures.
Chris Vernon retweeted
CHART OF THE DAY: Global coal demand has surprised the @IEA massively to the upside: it’s running ~1 billion tonnes higher (~9%) than the agency had expected only five years ago.
The forecasting error equals to the anual demand of the EU, Japan and the US — combined!
Chris Vernon retweeted
The Black Sea is becoming another commodity chokepoint.
Russia and Ukraine are now hitting ports and shipping infrastructure on both sides, disrupting wheat, oil,
fertilizer and coal flows.
Add that to Hormuz and the Red Sea and the global trade system is getting steadily more fragile.
#Ukraine #Russia #BlackSea #Commodities #EnergyCrisis
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Chris Vernon retweeted
China had actually been importing less through June, about 11.0 million barrels a day against 11.9 in February, so a spree now reads as restocking into scarcity rather than demand. A $16 premium over Brent says Asian buyers are paying up for physical barrels close to home, which is how a multipolar oil market behaves when chokepoints are at risk. China crude imports 👇
Chris Vernon retweeted
CNN is now reporting the most detailed satellite pictures I have seen so far of damage to the crucial East-West pipeline in Saudi Arabia.
It quotes a US official as saying it was attacked by drones originating from Iraq.
The full report is here: edition.cnn.com/2026/09/11/p…
Chris Vernon retweeted
My scenario :
There were three separate drone strikes (at least) on the E/W pipeline pumping stations today.
The fire is first detected at 100 MW total at 9:37am GMT, then spikes to 200 MW by 1:25pm, and even 350 MW by 3:30pm GMT.
Since then it has been declining in intensity. I get an update every 10 minutes. If the pipeline itself was ruptured, there would be a pool of ignited fuel and thus an increased ignited surface area over time.
This is consistent with an emergency depressurization of the pipeline, which means the pipe is off until repairs are performed.
I used a different satellite that overpassed two hours ago, and it was still burning bright but located exactly on the flares.
Looks like emergency flaring to me, because it is unlikely that only flares would be struck in an attack, and a direct pipeline hit would have created a very visibly ignited pool of fuel over the past 6 hours.
In any case, sounds like trouble/repairs. We'll get an optical image tomorrow morning.
Remember coal is the easiest fossil fuel to replace - it's mostly used for power generation where there are many mature, alternatives. Nuclear, wind, solar, hydro etc. Even gas at around third CO2. That we aren't 'even' cutting global coal burn does not bode well for climate.
BREAKING: Global coal demand will rise to a **record high** of ~8.94 billion metric tons in 2026 (up ~1.2% from 2025), according to new @IEA estimates.
The increase reflets the shift from gas-to-coal due to the Iran war and the impact of El Niño weather pattern on hydropower.
Is there a lot of talk about the Saudi's East-West pipeline being hit today. If true, this seems as serious as it was inevitable. Pipelines don't offer security.
Looks like the Houthis might have actually scored a direct hit on the E/W pipeline. Confidence flag is tagged at maximum, and FRP printing above 70 MW blows way past conventional fire(~30 MW).
FRP >70 MW scream high-pressure crude rupture and blowout conflagration. Brightness is literally maxing out and clipping the saturation cap on the VIIRS I4 band.
Cross-referencing the delta between VIIRS and MODIS orbital passes, FRP anomaly printed 60+ MW for an 8 hour duration minimum. A garden-variety valve leak or routine gas venting simply cannot sustain that burn duration or heat signature.
Faded the controlled burn or flare stack hypothesis too. Pump stations sit dozens of clicks apart on the ROW, but these heat anomalies are tightly clustered along a sub-10km stretch.
No normal maintenance operation or controlled burn is conducted on such a massive scale simultaneously across multiple points spaced just kilometers apart along the pipeline route.
Something definitely went down.
#oott #iran
Chris Vernon retweeted
If 2026 SSTs follow a similar trajectory to 2023, we could see all-time record high SST anomalies within the next month or two.
Chris Vernon retweeted
The latest Nino 3.4 sea-surface temperature (preliminary) is 2.78°C above the 1991-2020 baseline, marking the 99th consecutive daily record, a full 0.79°C higher than the previous daily record set in 1997.
The Climate Casino is taking the OVER on 3.0°C by the end of September.
