Top all-time · #7772
Steve Newman
Personal blog · climateer.substack.com · on HN as snewmanscienceeconomics
Steve Newman writes Climateer, a personal blog at climateer.substack.com about science and economics. Since 2022, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 44 times, most often “I finally understand methane lifetimes”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Making sense of the challenge of climate change. Click to read Climateer, by Steve Newman, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- I finally understand methane lifetimes3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-04-29
- Everyone gets numbers wrong, even the New York Times2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-04-17
- Fossil Fuel Growth Doesn't Mean We're Not Making Progress2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-08
- Finding Land for Renewables Is a Policy Challenge, Not a Technical Challenge2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-16
- We can do better than “same, but electric”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-29
- Justify Every Word2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-30
- Easing Out of the Sulfur Trap2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-03
What Hacker News says?
https://climateer.substack.com/p/methane-lifetime > Methane emissions decay gradually, with an average lifetime of about 12 years (“perturbation lifetime”, which is what matters for climate purposes). > This will increase by roughly 35% if methane concentrations double, or decrease roughly 25% if concentrations return to pre-industrial levels. Methane is actually 150x-ish worse than CO2, but it breaks down over time…
Comment linking /p/methane-lifetime
on “The Ethereum merge is done”Submitted I liked the idea of carbon offsets until I tried to explain it as a story · 394 points
HN discussionNice. Yeah, the numbers in press articles are basically always wrong; it's just a question of whether you can notice the error. https://climateer.substack.com/p/numbers
Comment linking /p/numbers
on “Saskatchewan, Ontario to roll out mini-nuclear reactors”Submitted We can do better than “same, but electric” as a story · 287 points
HN discussionI agree that the concept of "buying time" has merit. One good way to apply that would be a cap-and-trade system, with a gradually shrinking cap. Trading offsets within a cap-and-trade system avoids the criticisms I'm making. But I see a lot of companies trumpeting use of offsets in the context of their own individual plan to achieve reduced or zero emissions. This is where the problems come in: 1. It is often presen…
Comment linking /p/focus-on-2050
on “I liked the idea of carbon offsets until I tried to explain it”Submitted How should net metering affect your electric bill? as a story · 234 points
HN discussionI agree with most of this, but we keep finding clever ways to knock down sectors that had seemed impossible to electrify. For instance, FleetZero claims to have a practical approach for global shipping [1]. It's not yet proven, but I haven't seen a serious counter-argument. Even for jet travel, we may be able to whittle away at the problem with electric planes (or trains!) for short routes, and hydrogen for medium r…
Comment linking /p/better-than-fossil
on “I liked the idea of carbon offsets until I tried to explain it”Submitted I finally understand methane lifetimes as a story · 213 points
HN discussionIt kind of does, but calculating its actual lifetime or warming effect is tricky. This post explains it quite nicely: https://climateer.substack.com/p/methane-lifetime
Comment linking /p/methane-lifetime
on “Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas”Submitted Everyone gets numbers wrong, even the New York Times as a story · 120 points
HN discussionTransitioning to sustainable electricity is necessary but not sufficient, we also need to address methane, cement and steel production, and a bunch of other things. Regarding the urgency of methane in particular: https://climateer.substack.com/p/aerosols
Comment linking /p/aerosols
on “Using satellites to uncover large methane emissions from landfills”Submitted Can We Please Never Talk About Dedicated Biomass Again as a story · 24 points
HN discussionThis is confused: water vapor is indeed a fairly potent greenhouse gas, but it remains in the atmosphere for only a short time. Adding water vapor to the atmosphere, even in large quantities, does not result in any non-rounding-error impact on climate. See https://climateer.substack.com/i/60052576/you-thought-the-ma... for a slightly longer explanation.
Comment linking /i/60052576/you-thought-the-main-greenhouse-gas-was-co-but-its-actually-water-vapor
on “Leak ruins NASA moon rocket launch bid; next try weeks away”Submitted Confusing Times Ahead as a story · 5 points
HN discussionhttps://climateer.substack.com/p/better-than-fossil?s=r
Comment linking /p/better-than-fossil?s=r
on “Retirees who live on cruise ships”Submitted Easing Out of the Sulfur Trap as a story · 4 points
HN discussionLearning curves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#:~:te... . More on the subject: https://climateer.substack.com/p/learning-curves https://www.volts.wtf/p/learning-curves-will-lead-to-extreme... https://www.volts.wtf/p/which-technologies-get-cheaper-over#...
Comment linking /p/learning-curves
on “Why does nuclear power plant construction cost so much?”Submitted Visualizing CO₂ as a story · 3 points
HN discussionUnfortunately you can't really rely on this sort of comparison between numbers obtained from different sources, except in the most unambiguous circumstances, which rarely arise for a complex topic such as sector emissions and cost of mitigation. The 1.5% and 2.4% figures may use different methodologies. The total-cost-to-decarbonize estimate probably entails a variety of unrealistic assumptions; it's hard to take in…
Comment linking /p/numbers
on “UK’s largest steelworks given £500M to decarbonise”Submitted We Need to Get Better at Coordination as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI maintain two, with pretty different content. Both are intended to explore deep topics (AI and climate change, respectively), aiming for a middle ground between academic papers (meaty, but often hard to understand + contextualize if you're not already an expert) and popular press (often over-simplified or off the mark). https://amistrongeryet.substack.com/ – was intended to be a general "things I've learned after c…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?”Submitted Climate and AI as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou are correct that water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas. Despite that, water vapor emissions are not generally considered to impact warming. I think that is because the water content of the atmosphere is already in balance due to the massive amount of evaporation and condensation (e.g. rain) that is constantly going on. If we dump some extra water vapor into the atmosphere, that will balance out as a bit of e…
Comment linking /i/60052576/you-thought-the-main-greenhouse-gas-was-co-but-its-actually-water-vapor
on “Seaflooding”Submitted Everything You Need to Know About Climate Science in Seven Words as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPlanting more trees (and, more important, preserving existing trees) is an important tool in the toolkit, but shouldn't be overestimated, and I don't think the word "easily" is warranted. Project Drawdown estimates that 3.2 to 4.96 Gt CO₂/y could be sequestered (through 2050) using a combination of tropical forest restoration, temperate forest restoration, and tree plantations on degraded land. The upper figure is o…
Comment linking /p/forestation-2
on “US needs much more than the IRA to get to net zero by 2050”Submitted Justify Every Word as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fossil Fuel Growth Doesn't Mean We're Not Making Progress as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted To Be Possible, an Idea Must Seem Inevitable as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Dinosaurs had long tails, and so will fossil fuels as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How 8 billion people warmed 5,500,000 gigatons of air as a story · 1 points
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