🚨JOB ALERT🚨 Heya friends -- I'm looking for a postdoc! This time we're looking at the ethics of technology deployment for climate change mitigation. Full description in the link! Quick details: CVs and cover letters to me by 1 April; $75k/year for up to 21 months; remote within the US is ok.

NEWS: Six months before the Trump admin began bombing Iran, the Department of State fired its oil and gas experts. State’s energy division got completely DOGE’d. And with it went the people who knew how to plan for a global energy crisis.

Things are apocalyptic for science in the US. It might not seem that way to everyone because many academic scientists have tenure and get to keep their jobs (for now), and most grants last three years, so many scientists still have funding. But it's going to get way worse.

Judge Barbra Streisand presiding.

70's yesterday, snow today. Checks out.

there it is @roryjohnston.bsky.social on Odd Lots walking through the practical, material effects of even a mildly extended stoppage of traffic through Hormuz as he says, it's so bad it's traditionally been used as a thought experiment for how bad things can get podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...

Join me at the Applied Machine Learning Conference in Charlottesville, VA, April 17-18! We have great keynote speakers: @vickiboykis.com and David Luebke from NVIDIA, and the rest of the lineup will be announced, soon! Scroll down on the reg. page for various ticket options appliedml.us/2026/

1908: the Lancet, one of the most respected scientific journals, calls for 18 age limit on reading in bed amidst a moral panic surrounding children becoming "addicted" to novels, which were "designed to keep kids hooked" and destroy their attention/mental health

Hey #EnergySky! This summer we are organizing a 2-day energy data lab for early career researchers from August 11-12 at Georgia Tech. It will be a mix of tutorials, open lab time, and networking. Applications are due April 3 – for more info, see our blog post: bit.ly/catalyst-dat...

This is why Emily, Josh, and so many others like us have been thinking and organizing for the necessary public ownership transitions that we _must_ put in place to succeed. We can both make sure we see the end of fossil fuels and make sure the phase out builds more justice, not more catastrophe.

@commercialsolarguy.com am I right to think that $3500/kW for a share of a ~1MW community solar farm seems steep?

What’s a reasonable price per kW for building 1MW commercial (community solar) these days? And how much should a customer expect to pay for buying a fraction of the project? #energysky

According to a new court filing, the Trump administration has a six-page list of banned words that Head Start locations are forbidden from using when describing their programs. Among the censored words: "disability," "race," "women," "trauma," "Gulf of Mexico." Short thread with the full list. 🧵

ReEDS has tx line capacity in both direction. Many cap expansion models use a single value. Better to use the avg or max? Max makes sense if power flows continue in the same direction. Any thoughts? @wilsonar.bsky.social @nworbmot.bsky.social @oetenergy.bsky.social @bistline.bsky.social 🔌💡

🧪Let’s set the record straight. AGAIN Andrew Wakefield’s paper was RETRACTED by The Lancet in Feb 2010.

My new favorite bathroom sign

The #USRSE (research software engineering) conference wrapped up today. I was excited about 1) the number of undergrads attending, and 2) that there are already recent college grads working in the field. It's great to see the field expand beyond those of us with PhDs that stumbled into it.

Me, a rock climber: I have calluses on all my fingers. Me, after getting a new set of GravelKing tires on my bike: Oww, my thumbs hurt 🥺

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/09/24/m... "Levitt was a University of Chicago professor, he has (by academic standards) nearly infinite resources, he could study whatever he wants, and he’s going for . . . clicks?"

NEW TOOL: a one-stop, searchable home for 250+ state energy and climate policies, targets, and incentives. Perfect for planners, policy-makers, and analysts. apps.epri.com/energy-polic...

Just found out that EIA downscales annual generation to monthly at most hydro plants using a sample of surveyed plants. ORNL has a paper where they reconstruct monthly generation from 1980-2019 at plants >10MW using local proxies. #EnergySky @catalyst.coop www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Living the dream. All 6 of biked to the beach!

Today on SHIFT KEY Summer School: how do electricity markets work? I give @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social a primer on marginal generators, bid curves, and capacity markets. Listen @heatmap.news or wherever you get your podcasts. 🔌💡

#EnergySky I noticed that Idaho Power lists ALL of their existing/proposed storage units as flow batteries (FLB) in EIA860. They also show max discharge rates as 4-10x the charge rate. Duration is 4 hours in all cases. Anyone know if these are just LiB, or actually something different?

With Copilot and Claude 4 it finally feels like I have a tool that can take instructions (or vague ideas) and implement them in my code. I *could* have written a decorator that fills function args using dict values in a class singleton, but I would have taken days. Just did it in an afternoon 🤯

Anyone have a good analysis of the GW of potential gas plants by COD in the US, based on known gas turbine supply deliveries? #energysky

I'm digging into the EIA 860 Energy Storage file, where there are a bunch of columns that describe its application (arbitrage, frequency reg, backup power, etc). Values are "Y" or "PR". But PR isn't described anywhere! After some digging, I'm pretty sure that PR is "primary". You're welcome.

It’s helpful to remember that not everything in the world is turning to shit. Last week my family went to Banff, which was absolutely incredible. Thanks Canada, for working to keep it wild.

Later today, 12pm ET

ICE just arrested Brad Lander, the NYC Comptroller and one of the leading candidates for Mayor, without grounds. He was conducting routine immigration court work, escorting individuals from hearings. He asked ICE for their warrant - well within his legal rights. This is political intimidation.

And again, the measles vaccine is estimated to have saved more than 90 million lives globally in the last 50 years. ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

Not true. I see you're a luxury watch dealer. I'm also interested in watches. Let me show you how free and easy migration has allowed you to earn a living. 🧵

You and your children will breathe more air pollution because of this action. People will have more asthma attacks. People will have more heart attacks. All while climate impacts accelerate.

The EPA's reasoning to justify repealing greenhouse gas regulations for power plants is so tortured, I feel like my brain has been waterboarded after reading it 🤯 The justification goes like this...🧵(1/8)

🚨 NEW RESEARCH: The energy transition is more disruptive—and could move much faster—than most people think. It’s not just about swapping old tech for new. Shift to clean energy is a complex web of feedback loops, tipping points & surprises. Our new 📖 👇 www.scurveeconomics.org/publications... 🧵

Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺

It has long been clear DOGE's numbers are made up, but here in response to my comment they're giving up the game: They're not doing anything like cost-benefit analysis. "Savings" is a transfer from U.S. households to businesses. It's grift all the way down. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/u...

Thanks to the incredible folks at EIA who responded to many emails as I tried to understand the data in NEMS.

This guy stole $10 million from the employees of his nursing home to buy himself a luxury yacht and Cartier watches. He PLED GUILTY. And because his Mom gave Trump $1 million, he just got a pardon. And this story barely makes the news today. WTF. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/u...

I’m watching the destruction of our country in real-time and still manage to be amazed at what each new day brings.

TLDR -- you can get unit-level O&M data out of NEMS for generators in the US! The data are easy to misunderstand so I've provided some helpful details. @catalyst.coop

Long before EIA had an open NEMS GitHub repo, I started using a 2019 AEO report on existing generator O&M costs. It splits plants into a few cost bins by size. Turns out EIA doesn't use those values! In an addendum they say plants are split into further subgroups. 1/n www.eia.gov/analysis/stu...

Today on SHIFT KEY: how the GOP mega-bill would reshape the US energy economy: heatmap.news/podcast/shif... An exclusive look at REPEAT Project's new report on the impacts of policy repeal on US energy costs, investment, emissions & more. Stay tuned at repeatproject.org today for more soon! 🔌💡

AEO 2025 was released in April and I wanted to see if coal prices for electric power changed from 2023. The 2023 prices were lower than observed prices in some regions and led models to run coal at high CFs. Good news--prices start ⬆️! Then they crater as NEMS retires nearly *all* coal capacity. 1/3

There’s so much happening right now, I thought I’d put together a running thread on the dismantling of #climate and research and knowledge infrastructure in the United States 🧵

No one has been returned from CECOT even as we learn more and more about the arbitrary and illegal nature of this operation. The Republicans continue to stonewall the courts. Don’t let this story slip from view.

I just attended a faculty meeting today to discuss these issues & let me tell you, it's a pretty grim outlook. We're going to lose talented international students, have to downsize research efforts, train less postdocs, accept less students and produce less research to benefit America & the world. 😡

Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society