“Adjusted trade deficit” is the new adjusted EBITDA

NEW: The doctor behind breakthrough Parkinson’s research was among the scientists purged from the National Institutes of Health, the US’s leading medical research agency. www.wired.com/story/doctor...

In the hearing this week on Fix our forests, the statement was made that 75% of those already laid off were red carded. This summer’s fire season, if it isn’t a quiet one, is going to be a reality check for these policies. www.eenews.net/articles/for...

Recommended watch: A short video report by ABC News explained how the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses automated techniques to record climate data.

As federal research grants continue to be frozen, and NIH staff is being gutted, please note this study was funded by federal research grants, including from NIH. If they continue with staff cuts, and continue to freeze new awards, this is just one example of what we lose.

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

The termination of 850 Indian Health Service physicians, nurses, and dentists will have a grave impact on access to care for millions of Native Americans. Upholding our treaty obligations is not optional.

I saw this but didn't the IRA define greenhouse gases as air pollutants? Didn't Congress do this specifically to short circuit this kind of hackery? Someone smarter please explain

Here we go again. Another round of very strong & locally damaging offshore winds is imminent across SoCal. Due to now record-dry vegetation, this will result in another "extremely critical" wildfire risk period, esp. across parts of LA & Ventura counties Mon-Tue. #CAwx #CAfire

Isn't there some quip about how it's cheaper to hang a flat screen TV over a hole in your drywall than pay someone to come out and fix it?

I'm half convinced there's a Tim Powers novel of this.

The "Relative Nino Index" (helpful in a warming climate) suggests a stronger #LaNina influence than traditional measures would otherwise indicate (esp. strong/north-shifted NPAC jet), w/wet PacNW and dry SoCal: www.climate.gov/news...

The Triassic is my favourite geological period. Such a carnival riot of diversity, and a defiant raspberry to the preceding Permian catastrophe.

Here is a hopefully useful chart for those who think China's electricity demand growth is driven by data centers (part of IT services), EV charging, solar manufacturing or EV manufacturing.

This is not surprising. Our work showed that coal-to-gas transition is unlikely to be replicated in other countries because of (i) high LNG prices, (ii) lack of gas/pipeline infrastructure, and (iii) national security concerns. DoE's analysis reaffirms that conclusion. pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

Using their filed integrated resource plan, the utility identified hundreds of projects that could be switched to cutting edge American technology saving $Billions for ratepayers and overcoming decade long “death by pilot” www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/co...

How could we actually structure a market system that is actually capable of deep decarbonization? Energy only markets are going to get stuck on cannibalization and undervaluing reliability. Vertical utilities tend to be slow and under capitalized...

That’s Dr Emil to you all!

P.S. this thread introduces the first 3 papers in the thesis. bsky.app/profile/emil...

My last PhD work is now a preprint! Feedback welcome! How should governments choose climate policies in second-best power markets with incomplete long-term contracting? We see some surprises: wind & solar subsidies can be more cost-effective than CO2 pricing... ceepr.mit.edu/workingpaper... 🔌💡

Less pollution, more service, quieter trains. Everyone is happy! jalopnik.com/ridership-of...

Awesome to see Notre Dame repaired and re-opened.

"precisely because, for the longest time, the online economy seemed to have marginal costs as close to zero as made no odds, it expanded until the constraints became impossible to ignore." backofmind.substack.com/p/just-a-few...

"It’s more appropriate to think of the lithium-ion battery not as a single invention, but as a steady accumulation of many inventions that were needed to both make a battery practical and to unlock its full potential." This is true of all innovation. www.construction-physics.com/p/how-we-got...

These two papers, taken together, really cause a rethinking of behavioral economies. Rather than having anomalous risk preferences; it looks like people have complexity aversion to "hard" decisions, especially on valuation, which drives behavioral anomalies. Herbert Simon ftw.

feedback, damping, oscillation and bank runs. and doughnuts, don't forget the doughnuts open.substack.com/pub/backofmi...

Georgia has pulled down so much IRA money. The gravitational pull of Rivian plant in that area of the state will be enormous.

A person on a bicycle is by far the most energy-efficient among animals and machines per distance traveled relative to body weight. The bicycle is magic. www.jstor.org/stable/24923...

first daft Friday post in a while, it's been all too much egghead stuff recently open.substack.com/pub/backofmi...