$21bn investment is a bullshit figure that won’t generate actual jobs of economic activity that actually improves lives. Tell them to fuck off www.afr.com/politics/fed...

Mr Tehan: “Small modular reactors & micro reactors should be part of the energy sources that are available to data centres and AI as they continue to evolve and expand in the future” A perfect fit for anthropics plan to have ~1.4GW of capacity by next year 🙃 www.couriermail.com.au/news/nsw/coa...

📐by my calculations Renewable energy deployment has avoided ~68x as much dangerous climate pollution in Australia than carbon capture has 🤨 This = more in my latest for The Point -> thepoint.com.au/opinions/260...

Is 29,900 signatures a lot? It does sound like a lot.

Only tangentially related (I think?) but was reminded of this passage (bottom para) in the latest Quarterly Essay Would much rather be writing code than reviewing it or managing it ..

The Trump admin gives the go ahead for the satellite weapon featured in a Bond film (Die Another Day).

Great article on AI & code "the never-ending slop submissions take serious mental toll to manage & sometimes also a long time to debunk. Time & energy that is completely wasted while also hampering our will to live" (technically about maintenance but broadly applicable) www.ft.com/content/cec8...

feels like a real landmark of impunity that major corporations are making federal crimes part of the interview process

If you are a researcher that uses slop machines to create figures for your talk, you are embarassing yourself

"...but what about when the gas does flow and coal doesn't dig?" www.afr.com/policy/energ...

Spoke to ABC about datacentre things today, alongside Bronwyn Cumbo from UTS Pathologically refuse to listen to myself - so can't really tell you exactly what was said, but tl;dr (should be?) along lines of not great for emissions, prices, energy transition etc www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

They say an author is "pregnant" with a book. As a new mum, I can confirm the analogy doesn't stop there: books have a postpartum period too — copy-edits, page proofs, sleep deprivation and all. Anti-fascist Economics has reached the final pass at @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social! Out in October!

What kind of sociopath has EVER looked at a PDF document and said to themselves, "This could be a podcast?"

.."Greenhouse gas emissions rose 18%, the largest annual increase Google has reported, driven largely by manufacturing AI hardware, including chips and servers." www.axios.com/2026/06/30/g...

‘Energy skeptics’ in 2016: “This extreme weather event that caused problems in South Australia’s 40% clean grid is PROOF RENEWABLES DON’T WORK.” ‘Energy skeptics’ in 2026: “This extreme weather event that didn’t cause problems in South Australia’s 85% clean grid is PROOF RENEWABLES DON’T WORK.”

Significant increase (..almost ~50% 🤯) in cumulative generation from coal in the latest ISP. FY27 projection is a mere ~27%~ higher than where we thought we would be in 2024 ISP 🥲.

Attention fellow energy nerds: we're running an "Open-Source Energy System Modelling Workshop" later this year! Looking for contributors - presentations, demonstrations, tutorials, and open discussion on topics relevant to the open-source energy modelling community .. anything really! 🔌💡

I've put a new piece of analysis out today showing how Shell's Prelude LNG terminal will receive a butt tonne of free offset credits from the safeguard mechanism for no other reason than because it repeatedly exposed its workers from life threatening risk. Really!

It will never stop being funny to me that the street fighter subreddit has a much better, well reasoned ai policy vis a vis literally all universities.

liberated from our brains, how wonderful www.afr.com/work-and-car...

This is grim as ... remind me again why are we building the torment nexus? www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/u...

It's completely normal for your daffodils to start flowering in 2nd week of winter...... right? 😬

Australia needs to rapidly reduce the use of diesel in urban areas, concentrating on heavy vehicles and public transport, before ultimately considering restrictions on diesel light vehicles in urban environments, Chris Johnson and Ben Elliston write. #pollution #diesel

Here's something you can't stick a piece of tape over: the widespread and fully socially permitted assumption that if you wear pervert glasses in public they are going to be smacked off your face by the largest and most physically intimidating person in the vicinity

hey quick question, am I having a stroke

Five year anniversary of this piece ... policy context and discussions have evolved - but think this still largely holds up. Hopefully not still talking about the same thing in another 5 years time www.abc.net.au/religion/sol...

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: “We’re a sovereign nation and my government will make decisions based upon the Australian national interest”. Indeed. Meta should pay and can certainly afford to pay. www.smh.com.au/business/com...

.. another day, another report on the costs of AI (this one from United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health) 🔌💡 unu.edu/inweh/collec...

Just to be clear: the light pink bars are the **deficit**

Here's the source and the original chart (which I think has clearer colours) www.brookings.edu/articles/the...

This is violence 😭

It would seem no one consulted the finance department on the wisdom of setting up a "Who can consume the most resources" competition

look how much craftsmanship we've lost in clothing in just a hundred years

.. a breezy 2.4GW datacentre proposed for outer west Melb 😳

"The cost of data centre growth in Ireland: Households paid an estimated €715 million more in electricity bills" Excellent, detailed new FOE Ireland modelling confirming with hard evidence that this industry is making power less accessible www.friendsoftheearth.ie/news/the-cos...

So here for this kind of long form journalism: www.theguardian.com/food/2026/ma...

Data centres powering AI could demand as much new electricity as cars & houses until 2040, per Greenpeace analysis. It's not just the size of the energy demand, but also its immediacy: forecasts for data centre energy use jumped 6x over the last year www.abc.net.au/news/...

DCA: "claims that data centre growth is going to demand the energy grid uses more fossil fuels applies equally to electric vehicle charging, household electrification & manufacturing" Important context missing! Something I said earlier to @cameronwilson.bsky.social: www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

HEY EVERYONE - I've got a new report out today! It's with @greenpeaceap.bsky.social and it just an absolutely huge and lovely exploration of - False claims of renewable energy use - Growing links bw tech and gas - Our call for a moratorium (!!) Read it here! www.greenpeace.org.au/greenpeace-r...

‘Malawi has exhausted its strategic fuel reserves and is selling part of its gold holdings to raise foreign currency, as the economic shockwaves from the Iran conflict deepen an existing fuel crisis in one of Africa’s poorest countries.’ www.ft.com/content/273a...

As @dylanjmcconnell.bsky.social points out in this @ryancropp.bsky.social piece, the only way new data centres meet the bare minimum standard of not worsening coal/gas use is expanding the Capacity Investment Scheme. There's just no way around the math here: www.afr.com/policy/energ...

"Data centre operators & their customers are underwriting new, RE projects [...] This adds an additional 1.5TWH of renewable energy to the grid and offsets 70% of data centre energy use" Mate, you're the guy that comes to party with 7 beers and drinks 10. Who care's if you bought an "additional" 7

.. call me crazy, but this does not exactly sound like an "increase efficiency" win www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

if i was going to give a college commencement speech i would make sure to start with something the students could rally behind. something like "we will mechanically suck the youth from your bones to feed a mechanical eschaton, which my generation will use to climb heaven and become new gods"

A world without gas infrastructure? If we aggressively electrify the economy, green methanol could cover most of the remaining non-electric demand - without needing large-scale hydrogen or methane networks. New paper in Joule: "A Minimal Methanol Backstop for High Electrification Scenarios"

A small but significant victory in a massive battle to defend human rights and international law. Francesca has been vindicated even in the courts of the superpower that sanctioned her for doing her duty www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

as a data journalist I am obliged to argue for a synthesis. a third way. We can create a world where both stories and spreadsheets support each other to thrive. A world where we don't judge a spreadsheet by its file extension but by the content of its cells

Victoria has launched a Greenhouse Gas Emissions Dashboard, allowing interactive exploration of Victorian data from the Australian National Greenhouse Accounts via a PowerBI report. A link to the Dashboard is at www.climatechange.vic.gov.au/greenhouse-g... #springst #climatechange

.. who could possible say? 🤷‍♂️