Sound wave science series 1. Tumor destruction

My dream for Kansas is millions of acres of vertical bifacial solar shielding the increasingly parched wheat fields, but as the article points out, they are just barely getting started on solar at all. www.canarymedia.com/articles/sol...

Time to add a dollar or 3

The napkin math on clean power deployment to decarb in 30 years is a megawatt a minute (525.6GW/yr). The catch is that's after capacity factor adjustment, so this amount of solar is about 25% of the way there.

www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-a... NYPA and OPG to collaborate on nuclear technology, a move that, in the wake of Trump blocking offshore wind and NY electrifying heating (100-ft rule just ended), seems increasingly necessary.

Stop using half of it for alfalfa in the desert? It's the Dril candles tweet, but alfalfa.

Is it still a magnetic personality if it is repellant?

Transparently illegal, but even if these projects get finished, no one is going to try to build another one. Possibly ever, definitely until the next Democratic administration.

Here's a gift link to the NYTimes article on today's order to stop work on all US offshore wind farm construction. 🔌💡 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/c...

Wärmepumpe

Why is "hydrogen fuel" in this sentence, especially in the past participle tense?

So for humans it adds fingers, and crabs subtracts 4 legs

Saw a vanity plate on the road the other day, IAMMEME - either a far too online person, or a grandmother.

626 mile winter trip completed with the EV, getting about 99MPGe. 3 charge stops, no charging issues, though some planning required and nearby food options sometimes lacking. Time cost vs ICE: about an hour

I think it's telling they put the power use in context (1 million homes) but not the water use (252 acres of UT alfalfa out of 500,000).

The thing about RFK jr. being a terrible head of health and human services is like…yeah. Yeah, he is literally the worst possible person for the job.

This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

What's the etiquette on somebody sitting in their car at 93% when all the chargers are full the Saturday before Christmas...

www.canarymedia.com/articles/ene... We may be getting to a point, thanks to the battery revolution, where replacing the capacity value of a coal plant may be easier than replacing its energy value.

40% of CAISO all time peak. Absolutely grid re-shaping amount of solar and storage.

Vibes are bad

www.latitudemedia.com/news/forms-f... Checked in on Form Energy, the 100-hr iron-air battery company, and they are chugging along. Some sales in MN already. Though they do seem to be intentionally misunderstanding this study for marketing purposes. Those 85 hours are probably across like 20 days

www.wrtv.com/news/local-n... County to my east looking at restrictive solar ordinance- 400 acre max, 1000ft setback from nonparticipating property lines. So you make a 4174ft square, with a 1000ft border, making a square donut of 875 acres on which you are only able to use 400 acres (46%)

"Long into the future" might be the most puzzling bit of this

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. Learn more about this year's #BOTY and other big advances in science: https://scim.ag/493Tpgx

I was never really worried about trading LNG permitting for anything in the Manchin-Barrasso permitting reform bill - there were already more permitted facilities in the pipeline than would ever get built.

These are the people who are willing to go on the record. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...

In Utah, about 80% of water diversions are for agriculture, and about 80% of that is for hay crops like alfalfa. The west's limited water is largely being turned into beef. extension.usu.edu/irrigation/r....

All you really need to understand about water usage in the western United States is that every single use - even the ones that sound egregiously wasteful like AI data centers - rounds down to 0 compared to what irrigated agriculture uses

as an environment reporter i think the bigger convo is re the energy use of ai vs its (comparatively minimal) water use, and how the data center buildout could not only increase emissions, but also open up cultural permissions for us to pursue more fossil fuel development in the name of the AI race

news.mit.edu/2025/nuno-lo... Another tragic loss One wonders about the hole this will leave in fusion science.

January 6 was like a much dumber version of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch and yet a plurality of American voters were like, Yeah, let’s give that guy the nuke codes again. An absolutely world historical debacle of societal ignorance. I’ll never understand it.

Most likely this amounts to naught,but there's a Monkey's Paw universe where we crack aneutronic fusion, but it makes Trump the richest man on Earth. And somehow Devin Nunes is in charge of it.

Titanium Power?

Uhh... #energysky

Sounds a bit arbitrary and capricious...

Huge good news: as documented by Ben Storrow of @eenews.bsky.social, the NECEC transmission line was activated around 1 PM today & is feeding power from Quebec to the #NewEngland grid! This means lower emissions and lower prices, and we can already see the latter./1 www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

I know many of you who follow me don't work in climate science, but this is the biggest story in climate right now. Breaking up NCAR makes us all less safe and is another act of self-harm that will take decades to recover from.

14 Thousand transformer shortfall this year. Both Siemens and Hitachi are expanding (in NC and VA) but they won't be online until 2027 and 2028. Tariffs killed the Cleveland Cliffs expansion. wvmetronews.com/2025/05/07/c...

Idea: permitting for good stuff, not bad stuff

Donate to the World Food Program here. I gave again today, as I have a few times as these articles have popped up. Admittedly, partially to feel less terrible about what the government of my country (and Elon Musk, in this case) is doing to my country and the world. donate.wfpusa.org

interestingengineering.com/energy/china... Thermoacoustic heat pump shatters longstanding practical upper temp limit for heat pumps (518 vs 392ºF) There was a French company trying to launch a residential thermoacoustic HP, but I haven't heard much lately. www.pv-magazine.com/2023/01/02/r...

You think they're just yanking coal plants out willy nilly?

Unbelievable. This would be a terrible blow to American science, writ large. It would decimate not only climate research, but also the kind of weather, wildfire, and disaster research that has underpinned half a century of progress in prediction, early warning, and increased resilience.

As a lunch break thought experiment, I thought - "What's a reasonable way to calculate a 'You're never going to need more money than that' level of wealth"

(1) 🔌💡 #Greensky #climatesky #academicsky Hey climate peeps! I have big news. My wife, Dr. Lisa Kaul, is running for NY State Senate, driven by the urgency of climate action & climate justice. Let me tell you about her. 🧵

1. One wonders how long until your iron-rich deposit is oxidized and you have to move on 2. If this displaces fossil hydrogen where curremtly used, OK, great, but selling to data centers for electricity seems like a dubious proposition

Idea: AI = flying cars Helicopters are flying cars. But we don't all drive helicopters because 1. Energy intensive 2. More extensive training required 3. Other solutions are good enough for most cases Helicopters can save lives, AI can discover drugs. But using both all the time? Nuts.

Probably good news for political momentum?

We really let cars screw up our cities