This month’s open thread. Lots of salient stuff this month so please try and stay focused and constructive!
Reader Interactions
337 Responses to "Unforced variations: Oct 2025"
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Dave Borlace does more excellent coverage, this time on El Nino changes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP2d4MedFPI
References (easily found in “show more” at video):
Global climate mode resonance due to rapidly intensifying El Niño-Southern Oscillation – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64619-0
Relative Niño – a new way to measure El Niño–Southern Oscillation. Changes to the way we calculate sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean – https://www.bom.gov.au/news-and-media/relative-nino-a-new-way-to-measure-el-nino-southern-oscillation
Atomsk’s Sanakan @ 27 Oct 2025 said: “The most likely scenario is Killian read something on a topic like catastrophic climate change. Then Killian misrepresented that as being about human extinction. For instance:”
He may have. However there’s an alternative explanation. A few weeks ago I asked google gemini if any papers had been published claiming climate change had a 5% or similar risk of human extinction. Answer was essentially that none that gemini could find but that a 5% possibility of human extinction by 2100 is cited in some studies from a combination of ALL environmental and societal problems. I suspect Killian was confusing this with studies just related just to climate change. Sorry I didn’t keep a record of the details of the gemini response. But Killian has posted comments on wider societal and environmental problems so I can see how he might be confused.
I find myself in an unusual position partly defending this man. Because while I think climate change is a massive threat to humanity, I frequently disagree with Killians views. He’s been posting comments on this website for over 10 years. He has several times made huge dubious sounding claims about the science and mitigation. Example are that SLR is now more than exponential, and that regenerative agriculture is considerably more productive than industrial agriculture. I asked for citations and he couldn’t provide any. But he did provide copious quantities of personal abuse. I rarely respond to his comments now because its generally the same things hes said in the past.