ADAM TOOZE

RT @ProfMarkWilson: For more on this, see the work of @jpietruska including her book *Looking Forward* (2017) twitter.com/adam_tooze/sta…

Economic history of weather forecasting! US-centered by fantastically interesting post to eh.net about development of storm tracking and warning systems from 1860s. eh.net/encyclopedia/a… https://t.co/lmVIESs32R

From 1780 to 1795 the Societas Meteorologica Palatina, based in Mannheim, organized a network of 37 weather stations scattered across Europe and the United States. Thirty-one of these stations carried out synchronous observations! FYI German climate peeps: @Jmhaas @SchickGerhard https://t.co/y0GmBNIw8q

Halley’s “An Historical Account of Trade Winds, and Monsoons, Observable in the Seas Between and Near the Tropicks, With an Attempt to Assign the Phisical Cause of the Said Winds” of 1686 charted an explosion of global knowledge in centers of calculation in Western powers. https://t.co/wUEQs9oG9Y

Infrastructure is: Embedded Transparent Has Reach Learned as part of membership Links to conventional practice Standardized Built on a base Visible on breakdown Changes in modular fashion. according to Susan Leigh Star and Karen Ruhleder, quoted by Edwards, Vast Machine. https://t.co/QoKFoAYW4l

RT @paolomossetti: China' carbon neutrality challenge is huge. This is a list of European nation states ranked by CO2, if they are arrayed…

"To be modern is to live within and by means of infrastructures: basic systems and services that are reliable, standardized, and widely accessible, at least within a community.” Edwards, A Vast Machine. https://t.co/Zkk29sMA7e

"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” T.S. Eliot Little Gidding columbia.edu/itc/history/wi… https://t.co/C3ywMWEUwk

"Climate knowledge is knowledge about the past. It ’ s a form of history — the history of weather — and the infrastructure that creates climate knowledge works in the same way that historians work.” Paul. N. Edwards A Vast Machine. https://t.co/37anLGrTJN

"This pattern of development — from systems to networks to webs — is visible in the histories of most large-scale infrastructures.” Rereading Paul N. Edwards’ brilliant history of climate data and modeling: A Vast Machine. https://t.co/B2o1yXjvVX

In India, GDP has been crushed and inflation is pushing up. Meanwhile, in China, the economy is growing at close to 5% and inflation is falling! @SoberLook https://t.co/a2yMKrngPM

Ahead of Paris 2015 conf, @PikettyLeMonde @lucas_chancel calculated a @BrankoMilan style elephant curve of global emissions. Shows surge in EM. piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/ChancelP… New in @ForeignPolicy I ask how we get a decarbonization deal beyond G4, for G40. foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/17/gre… https://t.co/9BAws61mj0

Faced with scale of corona shock, the EU is going to have to talk about fical rules. A general push to slash deficits right now would risks inducing a disastrous double dip shock. @Frank_vanlerven @NEF @ojblanchard1 @alfie_stirling all making case. ft.com/content/dca053… https://t.co/J16gK6IJm8

From German Presidency of EC you would expect emphasis on trade & getting things done. But, so far, there is little progress in trade talks with Lat Am or China, despite general sense of urgency. @alanbeattie wants to know what’s up. ft.com/content/3d1424… https://t.co/LoOkCMCRq6

4 phases of global climate politics: 1980s: WESTERN scientists identify GLOBAL problem 1990s: COPs-> GLOBAL climate politics & deadlock 2010s: SUPERPOWERs agree to talk -> Paris. 2020: Can we generalize specific decarbonization plans. New for @socialeurope socialeurope.eu/china-takes-th… https://t.co/S8J9p0BkO7

Famously, 5 m people left Wuhan ahead of holidays Jan 18-24 when corona was spreading. Some went abroad. VAST majority flew to rest of China. What was decisive, what created the March pandemic, was how societies & governments reacted to common threat. ig.ft.com/coronavirus-gl… https://t.co/uAuC72y9MN

Italian corona outbreak striking. Excess deaths concentrated in Lombardy. In Rome, no excess mortality. Conclusion? Earlier you do comprehensive shutdown in March the more you can localize it. Basically same lesson as in China just 4 weeks late. ig.ft.com/coronavirus-gl… https://t.co/uQogc29mAe

RT @JonasAlgers: "Energy is a business for state capitalists. Twelve of the top 20 corporate CO2 emitters are state-owned." @adam_tooze H…

Like Mexico & Peru, the UK gov & its state machinery have had a hard time producing meaningful COVID mortality data. Big gaps btw official attribution, ONS & excess mortality data. ig.ft.com/coronavirus-gl… https://t.co/uSCLnZmsna

Is era of European “climate leadership” coming to an end? Xi may not be the climate frontman anyone expected. Geopolitical mood music is ominous. But, finally, the debate about decarbonisation at the global level begins in earnest. New for @socialeurope socialeurope.eu/china-takes-th… https://t.co/rRRQdiwOZH

Patchwork epidemic: With less than 1/20th of world’s population, the US accounts for one in 1/5 officially attributed to Covid-19. But almost nowhere in the US looks like the US as a whole. Huge variation btw NYC, other big cities, small towns, rural etc. ig.ft.com/coronavirus-gl… https://t.co/SBTytoHsvG

Peru and Ecuador which imported corona early from Europe have had the worst mortality for countries for which we have data. ig.ft.com/coronavirus-gl… https://t.co/RQTVD7bh8r

@PatPorter76 For sure there are. But I would argue, those are tactical/operational decisions. At the strategic level the trade-off disappears.

Provincializing Europe: How big is Xi’s decarbonization challenge relative to EU’s Green Deal? In this @socialeurope column I rank EU nations v. Chinese provinces in terms of CO2 emissions. City of Beijing > 19 EU member states. @Jmhaas @70sBachchan socialeurope.eu/china-takes-th… https://t.co/gBuUA87GPL

In Europe, regions that were hardest hit by Covid cases in the spring are doing worst in autumn outbreak as well. Not yet true in the US. Will the NYC success hold up? ig.ft.com/coronavirus-gl… https://t.co/wqCFyiht3V

At the grand strategic level, evidence suggests there is no trade off: Countries that were unable to control their corona outbreaks have tended to suffer the most economic pain ig.ft.com/coronavirus-gl… https://t.co/R3wHF66n2t

If you want a compacted version of Coen's fascinating argument about scale, it is here: muse.jhu.edu/article/620983 Coen, Deborah R. "Big is a Thing of the Past: Climate Change and Methodology in the History of Ideas." Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 77 no. 2, 2016, p. 305-321

Anyway, for anyone taking a broad view of the Anthropocene and its history I would say it was essential reading. And for those stuck in trenches of contemporary climate debates it will provide deeply thought-provoking background. On how our predecessors struggle to grasp climate.

Suppression of fact that this is a brilliant piece of Central European history, obscures fact that it has vital stuff to say about the importance of land empires in thinking about geography, climate and science.

Turns out Habsburg climatologists had rather intimate ways of thinking about climate! Sacher Masoch and all … https://t.co/UsS2LeOBnT

Striking that the press/author decided to bury fact that "Empire" in question is Habsburg Empire in Central Europe. Probably not sexy (though on that score the book itself has a VERY surprising twist at the end) ….

Yesterday I sat down & read Deborah Coen Climate in Motion Science, Empire & the Problem of Scale in a single, somewhat delirious sitting. I have to say, it is amazing! Such a rich, surprising account of 19th-century thought and politics. @yale_history press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book…

Olam, world’s largest cocoa trader, can now trace 100% of beans it sources direct from mainly poor peasant farmers = 12% of global supply. Enables basic compliance. Much lower for Mars, Nestle. Ferrero ignores question from @FT. Make choices! ft.com/content/f6dbc1… https://t.co/ZcbkhsRAd6

RT @jossgarman: "If comprehensive global assemblies are unmanageable and superpower deals are too narrow, what is needed is a more manageab…

US tax authorities are collecting less than half the amount of revenue from audits than they did in 2010. @propublica via @SoberLook https://t.co/X5r8YtTy6P

60% of Global Fund Managers expect the US election outcome to be contested. BofA research via @SoberLook https://t.co/DdisRzXCrL