The us government discussing immigrants as an alien invasion is horrifying. I am an alien. I have an alien registration number that the US govt gave me. I came here, started a family, started a company, made a home. The white house staffers who did this can go fuck themselves.

These buildings are really beautiful (as is a lot of Vancouver's newer highrise development). I ran past them during the Sun Run 10k earlier this year. They have balconies built into fishtail shapes.

I've got to say that I'm really disappointed in the recent discourse surrounding the RCP8.5 scenario. The lack of context and understanding is something I expected from the usual suspects, but it's frustrating to see such bad takes from people and outlets who should know better.

The power went out on Sunday night and we are entering day 3 of this outage. The batteries were offline this time. I have gotten too soft for this.

The dire ‘math problem’ of the Colorado River I asked Anne Castle how far western states’ leaders are from really addressing the crisis. Her answer: Nowhere near. www.latimes.com/environment/...

btw, regulators confirmed to us this morning that the 19 new turbines (and the 27 already on site) are not part of an air permit granted in March, meaning xAI has more than 1 GW of unpermitted gas power at Colossus 2 right now

Let’s remember: (1) the fossil fuel industry is desperate to pollute for free; if they can’t pollute for free, their business model collapses. 🧵

Spiralling global temperatures (1850-2026) It is exactly 10 years since I first put this animated graphic of changes in global temperature online. #ClimateSpiral It instantly went viral. People watched it over and over again. It still offers the power to shock a decade on.

Cursed to scream this into the void forever but: this is an absurd comparison and tells you absolutely nothing at all about whether aggressive deregulation and The Free Market results in a lot of clean energy @ramez.bsky.social should 1,000% know better than to say something like this A short 🧵

Everything is "much faster than predicted" We are on a highway to hell.

Had a meeting in a San Francisco cafe yesterday. The young students at the table next to us were fascinated with our drinks - a latte and a cappuccino. I am not sure they'd ever seen an espresso drink ordered "for here" in a nice mug before.

This is... really hopeful.

I visited Paris for the first time around 2007, rode across half the city in heavy traffic without bike lanes, got stuck blocking traffic in the Champs d'Elysee when the light changed. When I was back there last year it was leafy, clean, bikes everywhere. We can have nice things.

Nice piece by @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social in the NYT. Draws readers in by leading with AI data centers (timely, newsworthy, hot) but then pivots to regional transmission governance, a topic no one reads about by choice. Also has fancy graphics. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is my dream.

gas processing facilities like this are all over the Permian. Methane blasting out of flare stacks. This is where Europe gets its gas

As a human and a citizen I am in favor of universal health care. As an employer I am VERY in favor of it.

Xavier Becerra addresses single-payer healthcare in California in a way I can appreciate. He talks about the logistics of making it happen. He says it won’t be easy, but it can be done. I respect that. Too many politicians make it sound easy, then drop it once they’re elected. Becerra gets it.

Consider for a moment how much the 2020-2025 period differs from the 2000-2005 period. Consider how small the temperature difference was that unleashed this level of chaos we are experiencing. Now consider how chaotic 2030-2035 will be considering it will be the same number of degrees warmer…

There are innumerably many reasons why any exchange of nuclear weapons is horrifying to contemplate. But I want to dispel rumors that newer science suggests that large-scale consequences would be much less severe than perceived during Cold War era. That simply isn't the case.

Things are moving fast in the energy world thanks to the latest war. I cover a lot of the highlights of the past week in this piece.

“They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science…And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees”

Far from having fallen off the political agenda, climate change is at the center of Trumpism. 3/n

Obviously, we need to phase out all gases and all sources as quickly as we can. Cutting methane and other short-lived gases will abate temperature increases in the near-term, which might really help with mitigation and prevent rapid warming impacts.

The fact is, methane has caused about 30% of the warming we have seen to date. And all non-CO2 warming pollution, taken together, has caused about half of the warming so far. And of the CO2 warming we have seen, a big chunk of that has been caused by deforestation.

Lovely sign from the young woman standing next to me. On the other side, a 95 yr old woman musing that next time she would make a sign with some illustrated brown-nosing.

Do not let your kids use Roblox. Their safety practices are insufficient and their abuse record is dismal.

The latest at @volts.wtf gets into the actual shape of the AI-boom-induced “energy crisis” and its a whole lot more complex (and hopeful!) than the public discourse lets on. (TLDR a lot of it is not lack of capacity, but outdated utility and regulation models.) www.volts.wtf/p/for-data-c...

'hey what are you up to over there? wow thats pretty cool.'

Today on Volts: how can we get data centers hooked up without screwing over the grid or other ratepayers? Two of my favorite thinkers, @astridatkinson.bsky.social & @jessedjenkins.com, lay out a new model whereby data centers bring some of their own generation & utilities offer flexible connection.

It's critical that we manage the impact of datacenter load growth on the grid, and provide AI safety guardrails, but this is not the way. Apart from anything else, datacenters aren't just AI (not even the big ones) they're just all the online services that everyone uses all of the time.

Dear EU:This is just one more reason why it will be impossible for US LNG to ever meet your methane standards. It's invisible without an OGI camera so they can just dump it in the atmosphere. And they do. All the time. Bad news, it's over 80 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

New York's governor is trying to undermine the 2019 climate law that the NY legislature passed with overwhelming support. Where the rubber meets the road: Accounting for methane, the main component of natural gas and a fast/potent climate pollutant. 🧵 with some background on methane.

The U.S. Postal Service's leader says it is set to run out of money in less than a year and may have to stop deliveries because of declining mail volume and what USPS sees as burdensome requirements. n.pr/4bu15df

It is the anniversary of the My Lai massacre today. I'd say that even more than most years, it's important to remember what happened. And the role Hugh Thompson, an active serviceman, played in both stopping and publicising it. Despite enormous military, political and public pressure to stay quiet.

A little GIS to start the morning. For a few months now, I've been puzzling over just how close the world's first deep-sea mining test came to ploughing through the world's largest cold water coral reef. I finally have an answer, and it's: Less than 2 kilometers.

Revealed: the world’s worst mega-leaks of methane driving global heating

Europe just ran one of the most important energy transition experiments in history. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe had to rapidly replace Russian gas imports. Working with 27 member countries will different languages was not easy, they got it done in years not decades. Thread 🧵

"This is not efficiency... This is the systematic elimination of scientific stewardship at the world’s largest biomedical research funder. And most people have no idea it is happening." Destroying the research that will power future discoveries and violating the Constitution

1. If oil prices have you thinking "should I finally switch to an electric vehicle" my advice is, yeah! Lots of good low mileage used ones to be had. 2. It's not without its hiccups. Here's what I learned after a year of driving an one. www.wsj.com/business/aut...

But most interestingly, we're already starting to see power prices decouple from gas through the simple expedient of…burning less gas The UK and – in particular Spain – show what can happen when you shift away from gas, whereas Italy shows what happens if you don't 6/8

NEW: Why does gas set the price of electricity – and is there an alternative? Make yourself a tea (or grab a beer??) and enjoy my Friday longread on marginal pricing, ideas for market reform – & how to break the link btwn gas & power prices for good www.carbonbrief.org/... 1/8

AI companies are paying screenwriters, lawyers, and other white-collar professionals to produce the training data needed to automate their jobs. I spoke with more than 30 workers about conditions inside this fast-growing and extremely secretive new gig economy.

I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out: www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

Steve Scherer was a Reuters’ bureau chief in Canada. Then he got laid off, had to leave the country, and now drives for Uber in Virginia, in a country he doesn’t recognize anymore after working for 28 years abroad. [stevescherer.substack.com]

So excited for this!

Having gone a little way down a prepping hole a while back, I decided to go all-in on the future of human civilization.

A couple of weeks ago, my cofounder - and friend of 20 years - passed away unexpectedly. Cody Smith, @supah.green, was one of the good ones. Indeed, one of the best.

A couple of weeks ago, my cofounder - and friend of 20 years - passed away unexpectedly. Cody Smith, @supah.green, was one of the good ones. Indeed, one of the best.

This hypothesis doesn't hold up to scrutiny and yet is accepted as gospel truth in the electricity sector. Brendon's experiment is interesting, but trained experts looked at this and i included it in our policy analysis paper, Overcharged (in my pinned post). www.hbs.edu/ris/Publicat...